#just y’know like conversational vs educational?

[felinefractious]

The queue is still going strong but I’ve slowed down on answering messages because I’m ✨ sad ✨ so if you sent a message know that I probably did receive it and will get around to it when the mood allows.

Sad boy peeking for tax. He got is annual and shots today, he was very brave.

#not colors #pinned #i need a tag idea for him #also casual questions about him are likely to be answered #just y’know like conversational vs educational? #oh and for anyone struggling with grief #i can’t recommend it’s okay not to be okay by megan devine enough #i’m gonna watch infested on shudder now

[airlock]

so! Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a game that delves deep, although not very deep, in the complexities of politics and administration... and so, people get to talk about how these things happen, both in Fódlan and, as a token of comparison, in the real world!

which is why I, some college student with no background in polisci whatsoever, have decided to write this whole post on the realistic reasons why people should not want a meritocracy, whether it’s being brought about their favorite white-haired girl in a fictional world or being promised by a politician in real life who is probably swindling you

sounds like a bit of a trip, right? meritocracy is a compelling idea on paper -- eliminate entrenched privileges, give everything to the people who deserve it. we especially find such ideas inspirational when we live in times of ridged inequalities, where some people are born with everything and others with nothing, and the former continue to take everything even as they repeatedly prove their failings, while the latter toil no matter what qualities they might have. nonetheless, it’s just not that simple, and the meritocratic ideal is even one of the things that got us into this mess to begin with!

let’s go blow by blow, shall we?

merit is subjective

as it turns out, meritocracy is a very fancy way of saying “I want the people who are in charge to be good people” -- which is what we’d all be supporting if it were just that simple! you might have noticed the snag, though, in that it looks a lot more ridiculous when you replace “meritorious”, “accomplished”, “competent”, etc. with “good”, despite those being equally vague descriptors of value.

I’ll get to the point: what is merit? who decides what is merit? who decides what is meritorious?

you might quickly find out that these questions have haunted not only governments but every form of administration for millenia now -- schools, companies, recreational competitions, the artistic world... and no one, no one, ever arrives on a one answer that always works.

since Edelgard never puts forth ideas of a system through which merit might be determined -- like, say, exams, which have their own failings -- the assumption is that she’s intending to handpick whoever she might want in charge, which is a common way of implementing meritocracy. and also a terrible one! now, your position in society is dictated by the extent to which you can impress the emperor -- who, however discering, isn’t perfect, or capable of giving everyone the clinical eye. if a system of “impress the person in charge to get in” were capable of living up to the meritocratic ideal, most of us would be having far less trouble with jobs.

although not all of us, anyway, since so many of us are neurodivergent -- and oh yes, those of us who are should know from a mile away that meritocracies have this particular problem...

the meritocratic ideal is ableist

callout post for the- ahem

have you perchance seen Edelgard and Linhardt’s support conversations? the one where he repeatedly frustrates Edelgard by being too neurodivergent to put his gifts to the efficient streamlined methodology that she favours? the one where he makes it clear that he can’t thrive in a result-oriented environment, so Edelgard busts her rump to figure out some way to give him a job that makes use of his talents?

well, he was lucky that he got to personally befriend the emperor and weasel her into some distincitvely unmeritocratic policy, because anyone else who cannot thrive in a result-oriented environment will have no such luck. and that’s precisely what a meritocratic society is: a result-oriented environment of society itself.

hell, you could even take a moment to notice that a lot of the insults that are routinely hurled at disabled people are also the criticisms that people make of those they wish to eliminate through meritocracy. y’know, “lazy”, “weak”, “moocher”, the works.

now, would this be any better if our Supreme Arbitrer of Merit were exceptionally woke and able to mitigate this, be it through assistance or by implementing metrics of merit that better suit the neurodivergent? perhaps. but as we think through these utopias, we ram a separate problem...

meritocracies cannot be implemented in a vacuum

the meritocratic narrative has us constantly thinking of the incompetent privileged vs. the competent underprivleged, but those simply aren’t the only types of people who exist in society. in fact, we’d have to expect that privilege would mostly make people more competent -- this doesn’t sound great until you realize that the alternative is to claim that poverty is good because it builds character and other similar kinds of nonsense we very much know to be untrue.

when it comes down to it, anyone can sit on the throne and say “I declare meritocracy to be happenning right now”, but saying that doesn’t erase the inequalities previously existing in the system. if I decided to make the whole world participate in a race a month from now, everyone starting from the same starting line and running the same course to the end, who do you think would win -- someone who eats well everyday and has as much leisure time as they want to practice running, or someone who has to continue working three jobs? sure, every now and then you’d have an exceptional runner out of the unexpected end, and you’d also have lots of privileged people who just don’t feel like runnin’, but systematically speaking, most of the winners would still probably be the ones who can throw more resources at winning.

and that’s to say nothing of the fact that pre-existing privileges also make it a lot easier to perform merit. I’ve mentioned both schools and exams so far in this post about meritocracy, right? there’s something in that topic that my mind keeps coming back to, actually -- entry exams for universities in my country.

right now, my country is experiencing an elusive demographical phenomenon where the majority of the population is college-aged; in a good country, this would mean college-level education would be thriving, but in this country, it means that each university has become far more selective with who gets to enroll. thus, all the universities with any sort of prestige above the level of “pay to get your Instant Diploma (Just Add Water) here” run yearly entry exams and enroll the people who get the best scores. sounds meritocratic, right? except now, there’s also a rash of cram schools dedicated to training people to do well on these exams, and with the high demand, they tend to be somewhat costly. in other words, if you’re born into money, you’ll have an opportunity to be taught the rotes necessary to pass the verification of merit.

people haven’t yet figured out a way to prevent meritocracies from just completely corroding under the weight of that problem, given enough time. whatever the metric you set for merit -- even if it is, in fact, the metric of “impress the emperor” -- someone will start selling better prospects for fitting that metric, and the ones buying will be the already privileged ones.

but even if it weren’t for all that...

meritocracy is discrimination

so far, I’ve mostly exponded on the issues with “merit”; however, the real gaping one actually lies in “kratos”, power.

“everything to the people who have earned it” sounds like good mote, if you don’t think too much about the converse -- “nothing to the people who have not earned it”. however successfully you might address all the other problems I’ve brought up so far, the fact is that meritocracies, inherently through their design, build societies of haves and have-nots.

and the thing is, there’s no turning back once you do that. eventually, a generation will pass, and the haves and have-nots will have passed the torch to their children; whose children will be best prepared to perform merit? and besides, giving power to the meritorious means they get to make decisions, set policies, write laws -- what’s stopping them from decreeing, blatantly or subtly, that society should favour their own and disfavour their enemies?

in other words, meritocracies can’t create societies with more equal opportunities, because they are inherently unequal themselves. in fact, basically all the notable unequal systems we’ve experienced historically were born as meritocracies of some sort. you know the nobility system that edelgard hates so much? in real-life Europe, the nobles were mostly the far-flung descendants of the most meritorious roman generals. and as for us, living under the boots of the 1% who can do whatever they want? once upon a time, these people had all the same rights as a peasant. and when the day comes when we finally topple these buffoons in the name of not just a better society but also an extant planet, the only way we can break the cycle is by not buying into the idea that meritocracies are a good thing -- be it in fiction or in real life.

#my stupid text posts #Fire Emblem is tagged in this post #Fódlan FE is tagged in this post #FE16 spoilers are tagged in this post #the text proper also touches on ableism and inequality so yeah that happens

[spectral-ask-memes]

for a character you would personally befriend, 38: how does your OC react to and handle stress? 39: how does your OC handle anger? 40: how does your OC handle grief? 41: what is your OC’s greatest fear? 42: what makes your OC happy? 43: what kind of sense of humor does your OC have? 44: what are some things that greatly upset your OC? 45: what are some things that annoy your OC? 47: how easily does your OC forgive? 48: what are some of your OC’s vices? 50: what secrets does your OC have?

i have once again decided to not do a character from the Poe Thing so take monroe (because i love them) 

38: how does your OC react to and handle stress? 

this is actually a very good question because they’re one of the characters that is just kind of There and can’t serve the purpose that they were originally brought into the group for (the group wanted a doctor, and monroe is a veterinary student) 

so they kind of. just. don’t. they tend to let things happen but also just push it down when they get Too stressed, or they’ll talk to either quinn (their cousin), riley (a character in a similar situation), or avery (because They just?? i don’t know how to explain it, but They can be very good to talk to if you want a minute to not worry about serious conversation 

39: how does your OC handle anger?

they try to talk about it with their family/friends, because we support dealing with your emotions in a healthy way in this household (or, sometimes, they might start doing random bullshit [in the beginning, and to a specific character] to the person they’re mad at)

 40: how does your OC handle grief? 

they. all i can think about is how they basically do reverse grief (they have a friend who was a ghost but then becomes human then possibly dies again) 

but they just kind of,,, shut down again. 

41: what is your OC’s greatest fear? 

being sent away, dying, or having to watch avery brush Their teeth with tomato mint paste again. 

42: what makes your OC happy? 

their friends! being able to actually help with animals!! learning about the funky creatures!! books!! biology!! 

43: what kind of sense of humor does your OC have? 

uh. when they and luis are about to get murdered by a cult and said cult starts playing dies irae (song of death), they make a comment about how much they like the song. they try to limit the amount of taxidermy done because it’s commonly something associated with the less than great. they help start the “father vs. daddy” conversation. 

44: what are some things that greatly upset your OC?

they aren’t a fan of any of the creatures getting harmed. they also aren’t a fan of possibly being Wanted? 

 45: what are some things that annoy your OC? 

the rats. almost being sacrificed because Cults Are Like That, apparently. 

47: how easily does your OC forgive?

fairly easily, sometimes! it really depends on what you did. 

they’re probably not forgiving that cult anytime soon, because. y’know. but they also forgive luis for his general dickish-ness that he’s got in the beginning (he Educates himself and becomes much better) 

 48: what are some of your OC’s vices? 

right now, i imagine them to be rather impulsive and a bit impatient (they try to explain a thing when they figure it out, but get frustrated because the others aren’t really getting it quickly)

50: what secrets does your OC have?

as of right now, there aren’t really any big ones that i can think of! 

[cakeandcrows]

I remember this one time I was watching some documentary about a white actress, I can’t recall who. One of her first roles was something like... a German lesbian with some kind of drug addiction (I think cocaine?). Point is, in her interview segment about it, she said something like, “When my mother heard about the role, she said, ‘if I were you, I would have told the director to pick just one of those things, not all of them at once.’” And all I can think about is how like... so many of us on here are more than one kind of minority or ‘invisible’ identity, or neurodivergent, or in some level of recovery from one thing or another. 

Like, this isn’t huge news, y’know? Yeah, privilege is a thing. And people are so absolutely unaware of it when they have it that it makes me want to scream. I’m even unaware of my own privilege a lot of the time and I won’t go into a moment of how I feel when I realize I’ve forgotten, because my guilt on the matter is irrelevant. I just need to get better at keeping myself in check and that’s that. 

Yeah I’d love to be cis some days because of how much easier it would make my life (and honestly for not many other reasons, I’m pretty happy being trans... if it just... y’know, weren’t for how people react to it). Sometimes I think, “Man, straight people are fucking insane; how on earth do they function,” while looking back on the days when I thought I was straight and realizing that even back then I was lost as hell, but some days I’m just like, “If I were straight, would life really be so much easier?” And it would. It really would. If I were also cis at the same time. Etc. 

And I don’t want to make this into an us vs them sort of thing for even a minute, either, because everyone has common ground somewhere. Does that common ground always matter as much to one person as it does to another? Probably not. Jeff Be/os probably shares a home town with a fuck ton of people but I’ll bet he doesn’t give a shit about a single one of them, or that commonality, while you could see a popular rock band and never hear them shut up about how proud they are to be from the West Coast. Sometimes it just doesn’t fucking matter to other people what you have in common with them, because to them, what’s different is so much more volatile. And it goes both ways. 

There’s people from my home town, my graduating class, and even old friend groups that I could never see myself talking to again because of how we’ve split paths in beliefs and lifestyles. Or, maybe they’ve stayed the same and I’ve changed, or the opposite... and I’ll bet they’d see how I’ve changed and think the same things of me. “Wow, I want nothing to do with that person.” 

I’m just... constantly having little wake-up calls over and over again of how some people seriously think that I’d choose a harder life on purpose. And I’m not ashamed of living as I am; I’m very proud of who I am and what I’ve overcome to get here. 

Customers at work, where I feel like I live 2/3rds of my life these days, are always just like... a window into the world for me sometimes. Most people don’t mention my pronoun button. Some people don’t notice it outright and misgender me because they’re looking at my face; entirely being polite and engaged, and not at all aware of how they’re upsetting me. I let it go a lot of the time. It’s not worth it.

There’s the few good folks who listen carefully and patiently and are seemingly brought to a new awareness by my gentle explanations. They’re polite and they honestly revive part of my faith. Like the guy who opened his coffee order saying, “yes, miss,” and left the store tipping his hat to me saying, “thank you very much, sir.” God or whoever does things fucking bless that guy.

Then there’s the people who decide to look at my pin, and ask about it. So far, it’s either people who are just reading it aloud for the sake of it, and then becoming confused but not actually wanting to understand so much as they’re just desperate to make some kind of conversation with a Youth (which is wild because I’m 25??). They don’t actually care, so I don’t really put effort into explaining. They either cut me off mid-explanation, or listen and don’t say anything further. 

Then there’s the people who look at it and laugh at me. Or the woman who decided it was a good idea to read it, listen to my explanation, and say, “You know, my daughter tried to explain that to me. I just don’t get it. I think it’s silly and too complicated. People should just stick to the old ways.” Like... lady. What the fuck do you want me to do about it. Why the fuck do you think telling me this will make me happy or even... want to engage further. I straight up just don’t understand where these people get off. They’re just as rude and uninterested in me as a human being as the people who start rattling off their order and refuse to wait for me to get it all down before shoving their credit card at my face. They do not care. They do. Not. Care. And my patience is starting to wear extremely thin. 

I had a new coworker, who knows I’m trans, the other day stop mid-sentence to say, “Oh, you know, sister? Oh! Also, I call everyone ‘sis’, boys or girls.” “Not me, you don’t.” “...oh?” “You don’t call me that. Ever.” 

“ >:/ tch. Glad we got that out of the way.”

It’s not cute. I don’t think it’s endearing. I don’t think it’s funny. And I don’t give a shit if you call other people that. If you thought about it for five seconds you’d realize how insensitive and fucked up it is. If anyone, anywhere, I swear to god, just thought about ANYTHING for five fucking seconds... I wish... I hope, that they’d be better human beings than they are. 

Like, god, what a horrible inconvenience it is for you to have to stop and think about what to call another human being. To use their name. To use the right pronouns. To avoid nicknames or pet names that would be inappropriate for such a person. Heaven forbid you have to do that for anyone, right? Why am I different? Why are you trying to step on my toes and see if I’ll just sit here and take it? I know why. Everyone knows why. And I’m so sick of being the dog under the table who gets kicked every time it whines about having no escape or being surrounded by the feet of people sitting around the table. 

I don’t hate being trans. I don’t hate being pansexual. I don’t hate being poly. I don’t hate myself. I hate the people who hate me for being myself and intentionally or ignorantly go out of their way to make my life an extra level of hell Just Because They Can. , 

I have been bullied and abused all my fucking life by one kind of person or another and not a single excuse I’ve been given justifies it. Humans are better than this. I want to have faith in humans. And there are good humans; I surround myself with them. But if I have to pry yet another motherfucker’s eyes open to yet another goddamn social issue they were too thick-minded to notice, and then have them turn around and bless me and hail me for some kind of... Joan of Arc bullshit, calling my suffering and my existence some kind of blessing, like my life had to be this hard to spread words and messages across time and space to reach their Oh So Important Ears, I’m gonna choke. Or... even the people who mean well that just straight up make me think that they actually believe that the queer people in their lives are some sort of Manic Pixie Dream (gender) who’s come into their lives to teach them something new and advance their own character development. That’s what it fucking feels like! Being reduced to someone else’s educator and being placed as a Background Character in their own fucking Growth Arc. 

If there’s some sick destiny where I’m lined up to be some kind of flogged messenger to idiots for the rest of my life I want a motherfucking refund. Ship me off to the next incarnation. I don’t care if I come back as a ladybug for two days and die under somebody’s shoe. 

And I’m not somebody’s teacher. I’m not somebody’s martyr or savior. I’m not somebody’s free fucking Queer Almanac and Seasonal Guide to the Experiences of Not Their Own. I’m so fucking tired of explaining myself. 

I’m so fucking tired of People ™ But I also want to have so much faith in People ™ that I think I’m just setting myself up for disappointment. 

Sometimes people prove me wrong and it’s okay. Other times I write a several paragraph long rant at one in the morning. Fuck me honestly, just, fuck me and boy howdy do I wish I could pluck one or two things off my list of identities if only for the sake of not having to Explain Shit To People ™

And at the same time, I very clearly care about people. I want people to understand because fuck, I was there! I used to be some Jacked Levels of Crazy and I was hugely homophobic when i was a teenager. I look back on the way I used to be and I can’t feel proud of who I was and what I believed. I know a lot of it was internalized hatred and disgust. I know all of that shit now. But I see myself in some people and that’s the mistake I make sometimes. Most of the time, I’m fine; I help other folks learn something new and it’s good and I feel fine about it. I just hate feeling like other people assume it’s my motherfucking duty to tell them and speak on behalf of all non-cis, non-straight people everywhere. I sound like a goddamn Gender and Women’s Studies textbook. 

Fuck, I’m going to bed... 

#rant #long post #2/14/2020 #transphobia tw

[dukeofriven]

Reflections On Blood Gulch

The strange thing about Red vs Blue is that there’s the original five seasons... and then there’s the real show. Well, that’s not exactly fair, but I don’t think it’s entirely unjust, either. There’s a time when I would have praised the original Blood Gulch Chronicles to high heaven - that was during its original airing, when I would have been, uh... a teenager of mid-aughts internet culture. So, obviously, take that guy’s word with a handful of salt. Dude would not admit to anyone he maybe kinda wanted to perform blowjobs, and also thought The Amber Spyglass’ “Republic of Heaven” was profound and not, y’know, deeply silly. He also thought The Belgariadi was one of the funniest fantasy series ever written - little “man” didn’t know shit.  Adult me - wiser, better-educated, a touch more comfortable in my self, somehow more undersexed alas - has a less clear-cut relationship with The Blood Gulch Chronicles. I just rewatched the first five seasons-and-mini-series for the first time since... hrmmm... first year university, when I finally got my roommate to break down and watch it. If not quite a decade, near enough to make no meaningful distinction. Parts of it are funny. Parts of it are still very funny - I said a few days back that I was shocked at how much of season 1 I could quote from memory: the production values are terrible, the audio objectively crap (especially in the early episodes), the acting often flat, but the quotability? Through the roof. But as the seasons drag on they... well, drag. If it wasn’t for a handful of scenes I recognized, I would have sworn I had never seen season 4: very little is worth remembering. The pacing is dire, with one character shunted off a quest that feels pointless throughout. The show’s attempts to take a silly joke machine and give it a story and a little gravitas are clumsy at best. I remember at the time finding the ending of season 5 really moving, but looking back at it now it was really the effects of the journey I was responding to: five-ish real time years of loving this weird little web show coming to -what felt at the time - a definitive end. (The future of Rooster Teeth was going to be The Strangerhood. Obviously.) Watching them all in a lump twelve years later, deprived of that “long journey” feelings it’s... it’s fine. I guess. Honestly, vast stretches of seasons 3-5 are just dull, and I was squirming in my seat, laughing occasionally but mostly just wanting them to get on with it - or, often, just get through it as I cringed in my seat. It’s an artifact of the bro-heavy internet culture of its time. Do you love the r-slur? Casual misogyny? Gay panic? A joke about a masculine woman having testicles? Slut shaming? Gay terror? Not-so-casual misogyny? Did I mention the r-slur? Then you’ll love Seasons 1-5 of Red vs. Blue. Calling them ‘offensive’ gives them a veneer of malice they don’t posses - what they are is just stupid. It’s unreconstructed schoolyard crudity straight out of the 90s: it’s a minor miracle nobody ever gets called a ‘fag’. (Well, they might have buried that in the audio mix for the Stereotypical Halo Multiplayer Gamerz, where it would at least be period-accurate.)  It is... an acquired taste, to put it politely. In a word of fairness I think its heart is in the right place: its got a callous, grudgingly belief in the power of losers and outcasts, like so much nerd-dominated media of the era. It showcases those friendships I always have a soft spot for: the people who constantly dump on each-other like total enemies but who will gouge the eyes out of any outsider who voices a similar sentiment. Curiously for something that came out so close to 9/11, after the first flush of the Iraq when even anti-war protests paid lip service to the Services, it has a withering contempt for war, armies, and soldierly in general. Nobility and honour appear in Red versus Blue only when uncaring and indifferent organizations are opposed: as the series will go on to show, the UNSC is no better than the Freelancers: there is no better army out there, no more-just war by empires, only patterns of venality and corruption recurring again and again. But much of that was in the future. In its original five season run, there’s a lot that’s just bad. Unfunny. Stupid. Tired. Badly paced. If you asked me where to begin with Red vs. Blue I would hesitate to say “at the beginning” because it might really turn you off. All which is context for why season 6 is such a shock to the system. I was surprised to learn that there was less than a year between the end of Blood Gulch and the start of Reconstruction, because damn does it live up to its name. Reconstruction gutted the original RvB down to its foundations - quirky characters, pointless conversations, tsundere philia - and rebuilt it from there. It feels like real adults are in the room now making the show - which is strange, given that Season 5 and Season 6 share the same sole writing credit to Burnie Burns. It’s like Burns took a three week vacation and found out how to write: the pacing in season 6 is so much stronger than in Blood Gulch: scenes flow naturally in to one another, the dialogue that isn’t jokes actually sounds like dialogue, with emotional weight and heft. The story works, is compelling, even if its left unfinished around the edges. And it’s still really funny, this time with a lot less r-slurs, misogyny, and other hallmarks of internet bro-ism But that trailer? It’s the trailer that boldly, confidently strides forward and says “things are going to be different.” It’s still a great trailer - hell, the most amazing thing about Season 6 is that the strongest dramatic element is series of testy letters exchanged between two brand-new characters, never seen on screen, on a subject of bureaucratic oversight. It sounds tedious - but it’s the driving force behind the entire season. Season 6 is where Red vs. Blue ‘gits gud’ and man do I want a book about what changed between Blood Gulch and Reconstruction because on so many key ways it is a fundamentally different show.

This trailer doesn’t play before you watch the season on Netflix and that’s a god-damn crime.

#red vs blue #blood gulch #the blood gulch chronicles #burnie burns #halo #netflix #long post

[xurkitips]

On Conveying Personality Through Chatroom-style Dialogue

A friend of mine shared screenshots of a roleplay he was having via a Discord server, wherein the style was chatroom/texting based. Each character would have a different style of typing completely unique to their person. Though unfamiliar with all of them, I could see what their personalities were like

Like real human beings, a character very much so has a “voice”. I mean that both in the literal sense, through their manner of speaking and what they say, but also through their self expression, interests, and actions. This carries over into the digital realm in ways we may not even notice. Text messages may not be verbal, no, but there are ways to show inflection.

There are many, many ways to show meaning through text. Here are some that I’ve picked up and utilized with my own characters:

Sentence structure

all lowercase sentences VS Grammatically correct

Lowercase gives off the feeling of someone familiar with others or willing to become familiar. It lacks the tension of formal writing, complete with its capitalization and proper periods ending sentences, and feels very casual and approachable. It may also be a sign of someone who doesn’t care much about perfection, a lazy person, or an easy going individual. Seems like a lot of internet regulars prefer this kind of typing style.

“im dying

‘deafening horrorcore rap’ ok i listen to literal noise and idk what this even is”

Using a properly capitalized and punctuated style is very formal, like one would see in a book, an official email, etc. It’s more serious and stern than lowercase is and may imply an older, more mature person typing...or maybe just someone trapped on their phone at the mercy of autocorrect. 

"I am always happy to see you, even if you are not feeling your best.“

“It's nice here.

Quiet.”

There’s a certain respectful steadiness to it as well. It can be calming to read at times.

Punctuation VS Lack of punctuation

End-stopped lines come with both a pause and a bit of a pointed and direct feeling. It strengthens both lowercase and grammatically correct styles, but in different ways. In conjunction with “proper” writing, it’s less noticeable, merely giving the reader a moment’s pause. In conjunction with lowercase, especially if the one typing isn’t keen on using periods, it can come off as stern, serious, passive-aggressive, or angry.

“whatever.

it's less excruciating than it would be without it.”

Removal of punctuation is a different story. Typically just shown with lowercase, it leaves it with that casual feeling intact, or like one’s sentences are more like quick thoughts or questions. Removing them from grammatically correct sentences does ease off some of the tension, implying someone with a more neutral-positive tone while still being more mature. 

“I’m not terribly good with conversation”

And then there’s the run-on sentences from those who type small novels per response. Usually complete with multiple and’s. It’s a sign of nervousness, enthusiasm, or oftentimes a younger character...

“actually i don't know much about it i just happened to see something online and it's apparently only manufactured overseas exclusively for this one particular shop and they made the original design and initial product i guess”

Oof.

Proper spelling (or lack thereof)

The better the spelling, the more the likelihood of the person being older, calmer, or neutral. There’s also a sense of being well educated or careful about one’s typing. Perhaps a confident air may exude from what they say, too.

“Can you come help me for a moment?”

Those who make a lot of mistakes will simply confuse words for other words, forget apostrophes, or type too fast to notice things missing or in the wrong location. Some just don’t really care enough or are too tired to deal with it. Too much focus and people know what they mean anyway. Probably.

“i laug hso hard hes come runin

he thougt i aws dyin”

It can also happen in very emotional situations, in bouts of laughter, crying, rage, or when one is drowsy, medicated, or sick. It tends to stand out when one’s style is suddenly very, very different and tips others off to something being wrong.

Younger characters, especially kids, also make spelling mistakes all the time depending on their age, whether due to sounding out words or just in a hurry to reply.

Short sentence fragments, single words, and lengthy paragraphs

Sometimes people with rapid-fire thoughts, who are excited, busy, stressed, or angry, will take to quick and short responses (sometimes of many fragments in a row). These show a similar feeling as do lines of poetry. Stacking small fragments on top of one another adds emphasis. The reader has to read them one by one rather than as a straight sentence. On its own, the word or fragment stands out and becomes more important.

"well

yeah thats

what i was tryina do

but i mean”

I’ve seen it used used for storytelling from one person to another in larger chunks of things, quick responses, for poetic value, and in irritation or passive-aggressiveness.

In full sentence conversations sent in short bursts, it’s also allowing the reader pause to read each comment without it feeling like a novella. Though it can also feel like someone is obnoxious, rambling on and on as the notifications keep coming, or has a lot to talk about and keeps thinking of more.

Then there are those who type rather large responses all at once instead of hitting the enter key with every sentence:

"Whoever did it was quite thorough; either the power in that area of the lab was cut while we were distracted or they tampered with the security cameras, because that footage is missing. But, we have some theories now. It had to have been someone with direct access to the laboratory. I hesitate to place blame on any of my coworkers...they're all my trusted companions and friends! And yet...”

It’s concise and a solid, complete story in one spot. Could be someone who loves to talk, could be someone who didn’t want a response before they were done talking. It’s also commonly seen by middle-aged texters who want to say everything they can all at once.

Exclamation points and Question marks

Simple one here. Question mark for a question or confusion, exclamation point for emphasis or an exclamation. But when a person adds multiple to a sentence it can convey more of the person’s feelings; 

“are you okay??”

Here is someone who is very concerned. Multiple question marks can imply things such as worry, stress, disbelief, and shock. There’s a sense of hurry and tension. Perhaps the person on the other end is frightened, easily afraid, or tends to have an overwhelming reaction to things.

“oh!!! it’s nice to see you!!!”

"! 

!!! 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Meanwhile, multiple exclamation points convey much more friendlier, happier tones. Often such things as surprise, excitement, happiness, friendliness. Users typing !! as a punctuation (like I tend to do) may do it as an assurance or to show how thrilled they are to talk. Occasionally !!!! is tacked onto an angry statement to be more of a shout, but I see it less and less.

Chatspeak and Internet habits

Shortenings of words have been a regular thing for ages. It’s easy, convenient, and gets the point across quickly. But the internet has taken it to a new extreme, where sentences can be almost entirely compromised of them.

“wtf r u talkin abt?? gdi man idk wuts even happening rn”

A character wanting to be quick to respond, always on the ball, always involved, may be more likely to utilize and understand chatspeak. They’re the social butterfly of the group. It’s also a sign of a long-time internet lurker who’s aware of what the lingo is, and how to use it. A complete lack thereof points toward either an older user or someone who’s unused to social media.

The more memes, the harder someone is trying to fit in. Or maybe they’re easily amused or just absorbed things from their friends without thinking about it. The comedian of the group is going to know the best ways to use them.

Smilies and Emojis

:D D: :DDD // :3 3: >:3 :3c // :o :O O:<

These kinds of smilies have always struck me as the most friendly. Whether used in devious ways or with genuinely heartwarming intentions, the playful, lightheartedness of the user really shines through these. 

"not a bad way to spend a lazy day :D”

“it's also my birthday :3″

It’s got just the right vibe to punctuate a sentence that’ll leave the reader feeling that the person likely means no harm or wants to be friendly, positive, or encouraging. I’ve met a lot of people that use these and turn out to be very kind or considerate people.

:), ;), ((((: and related

A long time positive, friendly smiley. 

"You said you've known them a long time? I think they would understand. :)”

And yet these days I tend to associate it with passive aggressive statements, plotting, slyness, devious behavior, or anger. Older users may be inclined to use :) as a means to show their emotional state, but newer users seem more inclined to do the opposite. The more parentheses there are, the more upset the person, it seems.

“man don’t u love it when the power’s out in the middle of the night it’s just (((: really great thanks (((((:”

Then the ;) smiley comes off more specifically flirty and a bit playful. Doesn’t seem to change much there.

“if i find a good chance 2 hook u up ill do my best ;)”

XD

The bane of my teenage existence. It’s a more old school sign of laughter, rarely seen in today’s world due to falling out of favor and becoming associated with, “LOL Rawr XD Tacos I’m So Randoom,” culture. But time to time you do see it. Mostly with sarcasm but sometimes with genuine intentions.

“xDddddDDD

It was a good joke. XD”

A character using it genuinely comes off more playful, and to me, personally, as an older person who’s genuinely unaware of the associations with the smiley itself trying to show how they laughed without using LOL. 

Letter/Character smilies

Y’know, things like .w. and ._. or owo, where the letters or symbols make a face. These are fairly popular, it seems. I don’t like using them myself, but know a few who do use them.

"I'm sorry that they can be mean qmq”

It’s a different feel from the others. There’s something soft to it, almost a gentleness. When these or Japanese characters are used, there’s more whimsy. It’s cute and almost a bit feminine. It may convey an open person or give the impression that said person is easier to talk to.

Though honestly I can’t see uwu and owo as anything but heavily sarcastic. I’ll be honest with you.

Emojis

The first rule of Xurkitips club is that we don’t talk about Emoji Movie. Just putting that out there riiight now.

Used sparingly by most for fun and for emphasis. Characters may use them to be lighthearted, aesthetically, joke, or to make a conversation more flavorful. The use of emojis may determine a character’s personality; I find that characters who use hand emojis like 👌 are rather laid back, those who use 🙃 do it passive aggressively, and we all know what kind of person uses 🍆.

Then there’s what in common terms known as, “The DudeBro”:

[MFKNSTARBOI]: the thing i never undstood about hair is why people buy shampoo like regular soap not good enough for you LMAO 😂😂😂

[gostones]: .

[BIGDICKTOYOTA69]: what the fuck man

[ahogekun]: do... you not use shampoo

[MFKNSTARBOI]: aaaah you guys got sucked into big shampoo as well 😔

[MFKNSTARBOI]: When it comes to horses 🐎  the stars in the sky ✨ or just man to man no bullshit advice 👬 IM youre guy 😤😂

I think this one speaks for itself.

#writing advice #milo's writing advice #writing tips #CRY THROUGH😭💦💦THE PAIN😢😩😩BUT KEEP GOING👀💯💪THE HUSTLE 😈👌NEVER ENDS🕛🕧🕟🚫STUDENT ATHLE

[danisnotofire]

howdy!! i'm a writer too and i'm searching for some sweet fellow-writer-y advice: what tips do you use to make individual characters' dialogue unique? i'm editing a novel draft (barely lol) and i always love finding out what other people do!

HELLO! i betcha didn’t think it’d take YEARS for me to answer this, but better late than never, right? right? 

anyway, here are some things i always think about when doing dialogue:

every single character has a specific way of talking. i don’t mean accent or dialect or lisp or whatever. those things should never be straight-written into dialogue. 

that means NO ‘theriously guyth my lithp ithnt that bad’ when writing with a lisp, no ‘wut the fuck’re yew tawkin’ abert’ when trying to convey an accent. 

you could try something like, “what the fuck are you talking about?” she asked in a slow and heavy texas drawl.  

similarly, stutters aren’t usually “i t-t-thought that we’d b-be able to t-talk?”. they’re easier to read and a lot more effective when written something more like, “i thought that- i thought maybe we could talk?” 

but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a character sound different just based on how they speak. think syntax. think speaking patterns. do they speak in run-on sentences? do they stutter? do they go back on what they say halfway through a sentence? are they an ‘um’ or an ‘uh’ type? what words do two different characters use to say the same thing? 

“Hey, so, I was walking down the street the other day and I caught sight of you but I wasn’t sure if it was you so I didn’t say anything ‘cause that would’ve been so weird if it wasn’t, but did you happen to be walking by that 7/11 last night?” vs “Hey, were you at 7/11 last night? I think I saw you, but I wasn’t sure.” 

you probably got a more bright/excited/rambly energy from the first one right? that’s run-ons. asking questions that they don’t wait to hear an answer for. repeating themselves a little bit. The second one isn’t bad, it’s just a different type of character. probably a little more calm. 

learn your dialogue grammar. here’s a handy post about it. your dialogue sounds INFINITELY better right off the bat if your reading isn’t getting stuck on glaring irregularities. in my creative writing class last semester, my prof literally had us hand-copy a page of dialogue from a short story so we could get them down. dialogue rules are like mis-built stairs– the second that something isn’t exactly to standard, it’s going to be brutally obvious. 

relatedly, you’re allowed to use words that aren’t ‘said’. But use them sparingly. If you do use them, shake it up by throwing in an action. Even in scenes where you need to use synonyms for said, you can often replace them with actions that convey the same emotion. 

“Fuck you.” She slammed the kitchen cabinet, then whirled around to face him. “I want you to leave.” 

“Of course.” He swiped his sleeve across his nose, ignoring the coffin that sat two feet away. “I’m sorry.” 

word choice. the coolest thing about writing dialogue is that it’s not 100% how we speak in real life. you’re a writer, you lie. you want the reader to be fooled into thinking real people talk exactly like this, but you have the added advantage of knowing exactly how the conversation gets to play out. why did that character use that specific word? why did they phrase it like that? were they foreshadowing this huge event in a line they said off-handedly in chapter 2? yes! you get to be in control of that! people’s words in written dialogue can be chosen so much more carefully than they necessarily are in real life, because you as the author know the story. you can have them imply or foreshadow or reference or insinuate anything. have fun with that power, because it’s awesome! 

going off that, what aren’t they saying? think about what your characters are trying to get across. think about what they’re too afraid to say out loud. think about things they want to convey without actually physically saying them. so much can be said by what isn’t said. 

i wrote a short story once that focused on hallucinations and what they were telling the protagonist. the whole point of it was that, at the end, she looked at something that she expected to talk to her, but it didn’t say a word. and that spoke volumes. 

take dialogue inspiration from everything around you! one of my writing profs told me dialogue was one of my strongest points as a writer, and he thought it had something to do with my theatre experience [which makes sense! scripts are 99.999% dialogue!!!!] i went through a phase when i was younger where i would transcribe every conversation i had in my head into words, just to think about how it would look as text. most of all, practice it. dialogue is just another writing skill. it’s only gonna get better if you, y’know, do it. 

the bright side of that is that you do dialogue every day. you see it in movies and musicals and tv shows and in overheard conversations on the train or in the coffee shop. it’s everywhere. it’s how we communicate! talking/communicating is how we get our gossip and our information and our diagnoses and our education! it pushes our lives along! it’s amazing, and getting to control every aspect of those inherently human interactions is one of my favorite parts of writing. 

of course, dialogue is a fluid thing. people have been experimenting with it since writing was invented. because there are an infinite amount of ways to hold a conversation, and an infinite amount of ways to interact with each other, there isn’t one single correct way to do dialogue. 

of course, if you’re writing a standard novel or fic or piece or whatever, then  it’s best to stick to the rules. but if you wanna try something new, go for it! i love experimenting with style and how that contributes to a story. faulkner had some fun with dialogue in the sound and the fury (i’m thinkin chapter 2 with quentin, especially his conversations with his father), where the stylistic blurriness of the conversation said a whole lot about quentin’s state of mind. there’s also some fun dialogue choices in nicole krauss’ the history of love, where she doesn’t always do the standard new-speaker-new-paragraph thing, which adds something to the story as well. 

there’s so much you can do with it to make it come alive and make your characters sound unique. i hope these helped, because they’re kinda what i base everything on myself!!

#my favorite of these is the word choice/syntax/speech pattern thing #i think thats 80% of my dialogue is just figuring out the speaking patterns of the character #which can also lead to a lot of problems when i can't quite figure that out lol #writing tips #writing #advice #long post // #crizps

[terriblelifechoices]

So, I couldn’t stop thinking about what @st00pz said about poor Jauncey and his autobiography regarding Ilvermorny: The Graves Years.  I suspect that would read more as an unintentional comedy, so maybe he decides to write a how-to guide for educators instead.

Specifically: how to deal with exceptional students who require very careful handling, because that thing about how if you give someone an inch they take a mile?  Yeah, that’s the Graves brood in a nutshell.  Like 90% of his examples are probably about Graves-specific.  

Educators from other schools (because of course there are other wizarding schools in America, what the hell, Rowling) probably look at those examples and go: “There’s no way that actually happened.”

To which Ilvermorny’s beleaguered instructors go: “AHAHAHAHA.  Sit down and let me tell you a story about the man we call Ilvermorny’s Bane and all his damn kids.”

TL;DR, more comment fic happened.  This is a follow up to this comment fic about Gawain vs. his potions instructor.

Galahad should probably not be allowed to plan things.  He tends to go zero to ‘full scale military assault,’ which will probably serve him well as an Auror/Director of Magical Security, but is sort of exhausting in a seventeen year old.

“And now I have detention,” Gawain concluded.

Galahad pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the inevitable headache.  It didn’t help.

This was not how Galahad wanted to spend his evening.  He had, maybe, three hours of free time all week to spend with his girlfriend.  He did not want to spend them attempting to beat common sense into Gawain’s head, mostly because he was pretty sure that was a lost cause.

Sam, well versed in Graves sibling dynamics, just made an amused noise and kept her attention firmly on her book.  Sam thought most of the Graves sibling interactions were hilarious, as long as they kept her out of their drama.

This was Professor Jauncey’s revenge for the dueling club.  Galahad was sure of it.  And, okay, fine, Galahad could have been a little more subtle about taking over the dueling club, but Professor Branagh was an idiot who barely knew which direction to point his wand in.  Teaching people the proper forms and etiquette was all very well and good, but Dad always said that survival was more important than your manners.

Galahad agreed with Dad.  Jauncey probably did too, although he was not above making Galahad’s siblings Galahad’s problem.  Galahad couldn’t really blame the headmaster.  He was the oldest and therefore responsible for the rest of the little monsters.  If he could’ve foisted responsibility of them onto someone else ....

Well, he still wouldn’t have done it, because they were his siblings, but he’d have been pretty tempted.

“I’m not intervening with Papa on your behalf,” Galahad said.  Dad like to pretend he was a total hardass -- and he could be, with his Aurors - but of the two of them, Papa was the disciplinarian at home.

Gawain looked at him like he was stupid.  “I don’t want you to intervene with Papa,” he protested.  “I want you to help me make Jauncey see that Thompson is dangerous.”

Galahad folded his arms across his chest and frowned.  “Dangerous how?” he asked.  Thompson wasn’t a disgusting pig, like Saunders.  He was a bit of a dick, yeah, but he’d never struck Galahad as being much of a threat to anything other than people’s free time.  Thompson was a bit too fond of giving people detention.

Gawain’s you must be stupid look went frustrated with a side of incredulity.  “He wanted us to test our Pepper-Up potions on each other,” he said.

“So?” Galahad asked.  He remembered that unit from second year.  Olwen had done it, too.  It was part of the curriculum.  It was just the way things had always been done.

“So we’re students,” Gawain said, throwing his hands up in the air for dramatic emphasis.  “Libby Frasier’s in my class, and she’s melted more cauldrons than anyone.  Her potions never come out right!  If she’d drunk her Pepper-Up -- or if someone else had -- they’d probably be in the infirmary being treated for -- I don’t even know.  Accidental poisoning, probably.  Our potions are supposed to be, y’know, experiments.”

“He’s got a point,” Sammy murmured, not looking up from her book.

Gawain beamed at her.  The little brat knew full well that if he got Sammy on his side, Galahad would fold like a house of cards.

“How d’you reckon?” Galahad asked.

“Libby Frasier’s been in the infirmary for potions burns six times already this year, and it’s only October.  That’s almost once a week or so.  The poor thing’s a danger to herself and everyone around her,” Sam told him.  Sam -- whose childhood knack for healing charms had blossomed into the sort of talent that hadn’t been seen since the Bluebird -- worked as a student assistant in the infirmary.  Having a girlfriend who worked in the infirmary was very helpful when it came to dealing with his siblings; Galahad always had the inside scoop on whatever dumbass stunts they’d actually pulled versus what they wanted him to think they’d been doing.  (The Bluebird maintained that was a uniquely Graves trait.  Galahad suspected it was just what happened when most of your extended family was made up of Aurors, who were almost pathologically incapable to admitting to being injured, much less how badly said injuries hurt.)

“No one wants to be her partner in potions,” Gawain piped up.  “And Thompson’s not helping her much, either.”

People who were reckless with the lives entrusted to their care didn’t deserve that trust.  Dad had taught him that.  So had his siblings.  Looking after his brothers and sisters wasn’t quite the same thing as being the Director of Magical Security, but Galahad would have done anything to keep the little monsters from harm, just like Dad would have for his Aurors.

Sam’s mom maintained that Dad was the best Director of Magical Security MACUSA had seen in ages, because he knew that the lives of his Aurors weren’t coins to be spent cheaply.  People trusted Dad because they knew he wouldn’t put them in harm’s way unless he thought they would come home again.  (Or unless he absolutely had to, but that was a lesson Galahad suspected Dad hadn’t wanted him to learn just yet.)

“Alright, brat,” Galahad said.  “I’m listening.”

Gawain relaxed.  He was still young enough to believe that Galahad could fix anything.

“The thing is,” Gawain said, “Rosamund’s right.  It’s dangerous having students test their potions on each other.”  He scowled when Galahad raised an eyebrow at the mention of his crush, but Galahad figured a bit of brotherly ribbing was his due, seeing as every single person in his family had been completely insufferable while he was trying to work up the nerve to ask Sam out.  “It’s like Uncle Robert says, when he’s doing the lab safety speech.”

Galahad held up a hand.  Gawain had already given the lab safety speech once today.  And magic knew he’d already heard it enough; potions was pretty much the only safe after-dinner conversation during the holidays.  (Mostly because politics got dangerous with Dad and Aunt Seraphina in the room, wizards didn’t put much stock in religion, and who was having kids was … well.  Pretty much always Dad and Papa and therefore not all that interesting.)

“Student potions are especially problematic,” Sammy murmured.   “The dosages aren’t held to the standardized scale, and if you give a kid the wrong dosage for their body weight … There’s a reason potions are supposed to be prescribed by a qualified healer.”

“Or a potions master,” Galahad pointed out.  “Which Thompson is, or he’d never have been hired here.”  He considered that.  “That might actually be worth looking into.”  He made a mental note to follow up on that with George, Dad’s current protege.  George owed him a favor, after that thing with the murderous tomatoes last summer.

Sam sniffed.  “I doubt he’s run them for every single student.  I don’t know that anyone has, at least not past Isolt Sayre.  The Pepper-Up unit is taught as a hands on one because that’s the way it’s always been.”

Gawain set his jaw stubbornly.  “Just because that’s the way something’s always been done doesn’t mean that it’s right,” he said.

People liked to make a big deal about Galahad being Dad’s heir.  Or his clone, or Director Graves in miniature.  Galahad didn’t mind the comparison, although sometimes it chafed a little.  He knew that he took after Dad.  He had Dad’s ridiculously overprotective personality and his talent for silent, wandless spellwork, with Papa’s reserves of magical ability to back his talents up.  Olwen was like Dad, too, even if she deliberately modeled her behavior after the aunties.

Gawain, though.  Gawain was like Papa.  Out of all of them, he was the only one so far who had inherited Papa’s sensitivity to magic.

And, apparently, Papa’s habit for revolution.

“We can do better,” Gawain told him.  “Professor Thompson should be tutoring Libby privately, so she learns the same as the rest of us.  Or if he doesn’t want to do that, he should at least make one of the older kids do it.  And the rest of us ought to be taught how to be safe in a lab.  Even if we don’t go on to be researchers or potions masters or anything like that, it’s a good skill.  It’ll teach us to be clean, and aware of our surroundings, and to think about things methodically rather than just dumping shit in pots and hoping for the best.”

“Language, brat.  There’s a lady present.”

“You’ve said worse,” Gawain argued.

That was true, but Galahad’s point remained.  He caught his younger brother up in a headlock and rumpled his hair while Gawain squawked indignantly.

“Sorry, Sam,” Gawain muttered.  He shoved Galahad’s arm off and said, “Will you help me?”

“You’re my brother.  Of course I will.”

Gawain beamed at him.

“So, first thing’s first,” Galahad said.  “Sam’s going to get us some numbers.”

“Oh, am I,” Sam murmured, in a tone that promised he’d regret trying to give her orders later.  Sam Collins took orders from no one.

“Sam, darling, my sun, my moon, my stars, light of my life, would you please take pity on us poor idiot Graves boys?” Galahad asked.

Sam sighed.  “Fine,” she said.  “But only because I’ve got a soft spot for you idiots.  Someone’s got to look after you.  Merlin knows you won’t do it yourselves.”

“Can you look into how many cases there are of … Hm.  Student medical complaints after self-administered potions?” Galahad asked.  “Going back a couple years?”

“You’re lucky that you’re good looking,” Sam said tartly.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Galahad promised, all innuendo and dark intent.

“Gally,” Gawain whined.  “Ew.”

“Shut it, brat, I’m helping,” Galahad said.  “Next thing to do is get your classmates on board.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna be hard,” Gawain mused.  “Thompson’s a dick.”

Yeah, neither did Galahad, honestly.

“After that, we get someone who’s really good at potions to tutor you guys.  Maybe with some private lessons for Libby.”  Galahad flicked through his mental roster of the students in his year and the one below it.  Toussaignt would make the poor Frasier kid cry.  Hartman was his first choice, but Hartman hated him.

“There’s no one better than Andrea Hartman,” Sam pointed out.

“Hartman hates my guts,” Galahad reminded her.

“No, Hartman hates Olwen’s guts.  You, she hates by extension, but not quite as much.”

“How is that going to help?” Galahad asked.

“If you make Olwen make nice with Hartman, Hartman will agree to help you.”

Galahad laughed.  No one made Olwen do anything.  She’d followed where Galahad led, but she did it kind of like Dad did with Aunt Seraphina.  By choice rather than blind obedience, and will the knowledge that if Galahad proved unworthy, she’d take over in his stead.

Sam waited patiently.

“Shit.  Seriously?  You don’t want me to do something a little easier?  Like, I don’t know, pulling a star out of the sky for you to wear?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gally,” Sam said tartly.  “A star would be much too big.”

“Sam,” Galahad whined, because he’d outgrown that ridiculous baby name over a decade ago and really disliked the reminder.

“Galahad,” she retorted.

“Oh, fine,” Galahad said.  “The things I do for family, I swear.”

“How is getting good at potions going to make Jauncey see that Thompson’s dangerous?” Galahad asked.  “If we’re good at potions even though he’s a dick, it just makes him look good.”

“Oh, that’s not what Hartman’s going to be teaching you,” Galahad said, watching the plan unfold in his head.  “I mean, yeah, I do want you guys to learn lab safety because you’re right about the things it teaches you.”

“Sorry, I didn’t have a recording charm on.  Can you repeat that?”  Gawain ducked back, laughing, as Galahad took a swipe at him.  “What do you want Hartman to teach us?”

“Let me see if Hartman’s on board, first,” Galahad said.  “I don’t want to get your hopes up.”

*

Andrea Hartman was something of a potions prodigy.  Galahad knew for a fact that she was being scouted by the Fisher Institute and the Niehaus-Cormier group.  No one who wasn’t top of their class got to work for the Fisher Institute.  (See Exhibit A: Aunt Dindrane and Uncle Robert.)

He hadn’t expected her to have such a knack for teaching, though.  He’d sat in on the lessons - mostly to make sure that Ollie did not snap and murder Hartman, since Hartman had only agreed to help out if Ollie would play her assistant - and Hartman was actually really good at what she did.  She was thorough and methodical, which worked well with the students who were good at following directions, but just enough of an out-of-the-box thinker to be able to relate to the students who didn’t quite see the world in an orderly line.  She’d probably do really well at the Fisher Institute.

“Alright, minions,” Hartman said brightly.  “Today: the reward for all your hard work.”

Forty-odd second years looked up at her in semi-worshipful anticipation.  Or, in Libby Frasier’s case, actual worship.

“Today,” Hartman said, leaning forward conspiratorially.  “I am going to teach you to safely blow shit up and make a huge fucking mess of the potions classroom.”

“You are the best big brother in the history of ever,” Gawain told him.

“Sorry, I didn’t have a recording charm on.  Can you repeat that?” teased Galahad.

Gawain shoved him in the side.

“Make me proud, brat.”

*

Jauncey stared at Professor Thompson.  The man looked as though he’d tripped sideways into a surrealist painting, possibly while said painting was still wet.  He appeared to be wearing nothing but his underclothes, although that was hardly noticeable beneath the layer of orange slime he was wearing.  And that was mostly covered by the strange purple foam.

The purple foam smelled strongly of asafoetida and other, less pleasant things.

“I want that little brat expelled,” Thompson yelled.  “This is all his doing!  Do you know how many cauldron’s have exploded this semester?”

“Yes,” Jauncey said, because the director of finance had already raked both of them over the coals for that.  The phrase “does it look like I am made of cauldrons” had come up.  “Forty-seven.  A new school record.”

“Forty-seven!” howled Thompson.  “They’ll be coming out of my paycheck, next.”

“I think Fontaine was joking about that,” Jauncey soothed.  He really hoped Fontaine was joking about that, because if Fontaine wasn’t, his paycheck was likely to be sacrificed next.

“And if the cauldrons aren’t exploding -”

“Or melting,” Jauncey put in, because that had happened at least a dozen times too.

“- or melting, then the potions themselves are just -” Thompson made a vague gesture indicating a geyser of some sort. ��Or possibly fireworks.  “Except what they turn in is perfect.”

That was honestly the biggest mystery.  Jauncey had a few theories about how and why that was happening, and it mostly centered around Andrea Hartman’s brand new unholy alliance with Olwen Graves.

“Expelled!” Thompson said.

Jauncey sighed and summoned one of the Ilvermorny elves.  “Peridot, would you please bring Galahad to my office?” he asked.

“Not Galahad!” Thompson shouted.  “Gawain.”

Jauncey resisted to slam his head against his desk.  “On second thought, Peridot, just bring me a bottle of whiskey.  The sort Cook favors will be lovely.”

Peridot had been an Ilvermorny elf for longer than Jauncey had been alive.  “Will sir prefer the whiskey Cook drinks, or the whiskey Cook puts in the food?”

“Are they different?”

Peridot shrugged.

“Then I trust your judgment.  Bring me whatever is the least likely to make Cook come shout at me, please.”

“Sir,” Thompson protested, aggrieved.

“No,” Jauncey told him.  “I am not debating this with you now.”  Merlin’s balls.  He thought Gawain had gotten this out of his system.

Evidently not.

“I will discuss this with you once you no longer look like a walking advertisement for the importance of lab safety,” Jauncey informed Thompson.  “Merlin’s beard, man, why haven’t you showered it off?”

“I did,” Thompson said through gritted teeth.  “The reaction melted my clothes and resulted in this.”  He indicated the purple foam.

Memory nagged at Jauncey.  He’d seen that particular potions reaction before, but where?

Oh, hell.  Arthur Graves-Flores.

“Right,” said Jauncey.  “Then I suggest you head to the infirmary, and see if Healer Cole can do anything for you.  I will discuss this with you tomorrow, Thompson.”

“If you won’t do something about that boy -” Thompson said warningly.

Jauncey smiled blandly.  The students of Ilvermorny were under his care.  He was not the duelist he had been in his youth, but he was still equal to the task of defending them.

Thompson shut his mouth.

“I will deal with Gawain,” Jauncey promised.  And Galahad, and Olwen, and Andrea Hartman.  And probably Sammy Collins, too, for all that the Graves’ siblings were adamant about leaving her out of their mischief.

“See that you do,” Thompson snarled, and stomped out.

Jauncey put his head down on his desk.  When he looked up again, William the Pukwudgie was staring grouchily down at him.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Jauncey told him.  “Or do you want to give an old man a heart attack?”

William’s judgmental silence got a bit judgier.

“I know you’re older than I am,” Jauncey said.  “At least, as far as the stories go.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” William snapped.  “I don’t look a day over one hundred.”

“You know, remarks like that really don’t help,” Jauncey told him.  Even he didn’t know if William was the original William who had known Isolt Sayre.

Peridot reappeared with a bottle of whiskey for Jauncey and a bottle of berrywine for William.

“Thank you, Peridot,” Jauncey said.

William grunted something that might have been thank you.

“What do you think I should do?” Jauncey asked.

“With Thompson?  Or with the Graves brats?”

“You like the Graves brats.”

William shrugged.  “So do you.  They’re entertaining, and they’re good about not making extra work for us.”  By us he meant the pukwudgies and the house elves.

Jauncey hadn’t missed the way the pukwudgies on staff watched the Graves children after the Thunderbird Incident.  The pukwudgies complained about having to look after wizards - who were too naive and helpless to look after themselves, according to William - but he’d never heard them complain about Galahad and Olwen and Gawain.  He suspected he wouldn’t hear them complain about the rest of the Graves brood, either.

“Fine.  What do you think I should do about Thompson, then?” Jauncey asked.

William mimed shooting an arrow.  “Target practice?” he suggested.  “Or you could let them explain,” he added, seconds before there was a knock on the door.

Jauncey sighed and put the whiskey bottle in his desk.  “Come in, Galahad,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” Galahad said politely, stepping into Jauncey’s office.

He really did look just like his father, Jauncey thought.  There was a bit of Credence Graves in the tilt of his eyes and the sharpness of his jaw, though.  Olwen stood at his right hand, and Sammy Collins at his left.  Andrea Hartman stood next to Olwen.  Three weeks ago, Jauncey was fairly certain Andrea wouldn’t have even deigned to breathe the same air as Olwen, but he’d been teaching for long enough to know that teenage friendships were fickle and terrifying.

“I was hoping I might have a word with you,” Galahad said, still with that exquisite politeness.  He’d learned that from his Papa.  Percival Graves did not have much use for manners, but Credence could bring a man to his knees with just a few well-placed words.

“By all means,” Jauncey said, conjuring up chairs for the lot of them.  “Take a seat.”

#comment fic #my fic #Possible 'verse #The Graves Brood #The Graves Brood vs. Ilvermorny #Galahad Graves #Gawain Graves #Samantha Collins #st00pz

[spacecharr]

authenticity and weed, man

Alright, so I want to talk about authenticity and weed. And this might even just turn into a series of stream of conscience rants, because... there’s a lot of thought I’ve been having and it’s been interesting to explore them.

weed note: I’m at a 1 right now on some vaped Red Congo in my Pax.

Some of my big thoughts so far and I’ll expand on them in various #authenticity and weed posts. Then I’ll compile a big “index” of ‘em later.

Grass is Greener Netflix film is really interesting context of marijuana law in the US, the War on Drugs, the struggle of African-Americans and People of Colour 

The insidiousness of systemic racism and how even people who aren’t consciously racist still “buy in” to racist thoughts - how a progressive business person who is otherwise very liberal still thinks “those black people who were arrested for pot and got 14 years under a three strike law? Yeah, they can’t get a job in the cannabis industry not because of excessively prohibitive requirements to legally sell or produce, but because well... they’re potheads”. When the reality is that these individuals are very smart, some even do have strong educational backgrounds, and honestly growing weed isn’t a botanical science - it’s a skill that once learned doesn’t matter whether it came from Harvard or from your grandma’s backyard garden.

How it’s my duty almost to be myself - the kid-at-heart who loves to grow old, not grow up; the visibly out bi person (even though I don’t like being known as “that girl who brings her sexuality into everything); the person unafraid to (when appropriate and within consent) be physically affectionate with her friends of all ages; the person who entertains conversations on pokemon in the same coffee date where we debate socialism vs capitalism and how quick progress can be made.

Because really, let’s be honest, haven’t you ever wanted someone who was unabashedly able to have child-like exuberance for something you wanted to nerd out about?

Tying into the whole thing about being a visibly bi person - there’s a reason why I find it a duty of mine to be openly and visibly and vocally out. 

I’m safe - my family, my closest friends, my chosen family, my “team” of friends at work - all of them know I’m out and all of them have my back. In every avenue of my life, I have secured allies and know I am going to be safe. Not everyone has that.

I am unafraid - I have enough finances to support myself should I lose my job and need to take a paycut or stay unemployed for a while (if point one doesn’t work), I’ve done some training so I’m at least a bit able to defend myself (and not ashamed to screech for help like a vulture if I need to), and, I mean... I’m literally okay with bad things happening to me - I’ll figure my way out of it. But if I can clear the lane for one other LGBTQ person, then literally that’s all I want.

I’m in a position of power - a lot of where this decision of mine is going to be visible is at work. Because I’m stepping up to start the first GSA in my company’s location in my city. I’m not the only LGBTQ person in there, I know that for a fact, but I’m gonna be the only one stepping up to start the organization.

Another point about this that is weird: I don’t want to be the leader. I don’t like leading. I prefer advising or following. But I also feel prepared to “suffer through it” in order to get what I want done, done. Especially if that means I do the heavy lifting that another person, who is not as comfy being in that position, doesn’t want to do clears the path for someone else to then take the lead and I can resume my place as advisor/follower like I want. XD

Oh, note note - this is also a loop back into authenticity and weed. I feel like it’s important for me to do all his because it is who I am and I enjoy that. 

Also note - I’ve gone up to a 3 at least.

For all those reasons, I have a duty to be visibly and openly bi. Because there’s other people out there who can’t do that. And people who want to have conversations with other bi people and it isn’t like we dress in pride flags year ‘round - but y’know, if I’m known to be an LGBTQ figure, someone might feel comfy asking me about my own orientation - and then that might lead to them being able to have those conversations.

Like, I finally met two other bi women - one of whom is a bit younger than me and the other is much older. The much older one is also very similar to me regarding her views on non-monogamy, kink, and sex positivity so there’s quite a lot of questions I have for her and I totally thought I was the only one who had the same sort of experiences she and I share. If I can help one other person feel the same sort of relief I did, then I’ll be happy and it’ll be worth all the doubt I’m feeling right now.

Aaaaand now I wanna just go get high some more. Brooklyn 99 and bath.

#weed #stoner #lgbtq #bisexuality #bi #authenticity and weed #red congo

[trendingnewsb]

How The Actual ‘Spoiled Elite’ Try To Silence Helpful Celebs

We’re into Week Two of the “Everyone versus The NFL And Everyone Else” kneeling controversy, and we are truly living in a golden age of stupid attempts to willfully misunderstand a situation in order to have angry takes.

It is a record-breakingly stupid time in America right now, and I wouldn’t dare presume I could actually change the opinion of anyone within the Colin Kaepernick Facebook comment cesspools that’ve globbed together over the past week. Plus, if you can’t tell from my doofy little avatar pic up there, I don’t exactly consider myself America’s preeminent spokesperson on racial issues. (I might not even be in the top five.) However, I do have a lot of experience with people on the internet saying dumb shit, and there’s one specific ultra-stupid criticism that keeps popping up again and again that I want to focus on: The idea that any wealthy celebrity who speaks out is automatically some out-of-touch, ungrateful elitist.

Last week, during Obamacare Repeal 5: Operation Miami Beach, Jimmy Kimmel spoke out against the Graham-Cassidy Healthcare Bill, and got blasted for being a “Hollywood elite” — a catch-all distinction that apparently disqualifies his Ivory Tower delusions of wanting poor children to be kept alive. Days later on Fox, Newt Gingrich attacked Colin Kaepernick and any other protesting athletes, calling them “arrogant young millionaires” who need “therapy” if they think they’re oppressed. Joe Walsh, the former congressman turned guy who’s constantly hate-retweeted into your Twitter feed, also called Stevie Wonder “another ungrateful black multi-millionaire” for protest-kneeling. It’s a similar critique as the Kimmel-bashing, with some hideous racist undertones to boot. Or not “undertones” so much as, y’know, “tones.” Loud, clear tones. It’s basically that jarring noise when everyone’s phones blare an amber alert all at the same time, but racist.

This specific critique — “celebrities and athletes are such spoiled rich ‘elites’ that any opinion they have is automatically nullified” — is so thunderously, nakedly stupid that we need to preemptively delete it from these conversations before the stupid people making these stupid arguments can proceed to their subsequent also-stupid-but-for-different-reasons arguments.

First off, Americans — and conservatives like Gingrich and Walsh in particular — clearly don’t believe that “rich elites” are incapable of exercising judgment. Jimmy Kimmel’s salary is estimated to be in the 12-15 million dollar range. Colin Kaepernick has made $43 million in his six-year career. They’re definitely financially “elite,” there’s no question. But Rex Tillerson, our secretary of State, was an ExxonMobil CEO who received a $180 million severance package. Betsy DeVos, our Education secretary, has a father-in-law worth $5.4 billion, and who is the 88th-richest person in the entire country. These people are orders of magnitude more “elite” than professional athletes and talk show hosts, and we’ve appointed them to positions of far greater influence. Should we all pile on these two anytime they open their mouths to offer any opinion other than “I am so gracious for being wealthy”?

Here’s the real reason this argument is unlockable-level stupid. Of COURSE there are out-of-touch celebrities whose wealth has insulated them from everyday life. We just wrote about five of them here. Celebrities like Robert De Niro and Jim Carrey have championed the “vaccines cause autism” horseshittery. Kylie Jenner tweeted about the dangers of chemtrails. Gwyneth Paltrow has built an entire brand around giving working moms advice and peddling expensive and un-self-consciously vague “wellness” products. That’s out-of-touch millionaire bullshit.

But when celebrities use their platforms to champion a cause for underrepresented people who don’t share their wealth or social standing, to no personal gain (and in Kaepernick’s case, considerable personal loss), that is, by definition, the opposite of elitism. Kimmel has repeatedly emphasized how his wealth and excellent health insurance have spared him the life of crippling debt that his child’s ordeal would have caused a poorer, uninsured family (if they received care at all). Blasting his “elitism” is the opposite of the point. He’s specifically advocating for the non-elite, even if it means he’ll end up contributing a disproportionately high amount of money and diluting his own access to healthcare services to some degree. Classic Hollywood bigwig behavior. Have another PRIME RIB at the BROWN DERBY during a MEETING, ya freakin’ Hollywood Man.

Kaepernick’s outspokenness unquestionably cost him a shot at a backup QB job this offseason. He’s lost out on millions of potential dollars, and his career could be over prematurely at age 29. And all for the selfish, spoiled privilege of being the most death-threatened and racially-slurred human on the face of the Racial Slur Death Threat Factory (aka the internet). A less selfish athlete would’ve just kept quietly earning millions of dollars instead of greedily forfeiting his job to crawl through a shit-pipe of backlash for a cause he believed in.

Again, Kaepernick’s message — raising awareness about police violence toward black people in America — has nothing to do with his own financial standing. He’s not coming out and saying “I believe deeply in two things: justice and not being grateful for having lots of money. Those are my two causes.” There’s not some imaginary financial line after which someone loses their ability to notice and point out things. And there are legions of non-millionaires making the same case for racial justice, and many of them are — shockingly — maligned by the same people who hate Kaepernick. It’s clear on every level that his finances are ideologically irrelevant to the people complaining about them; it’s just a quick and easy way to complain about something else and end the conversation.

Furthermore, that old refrain “You’re rich, what are YOU complaining about” has been hurled at every successful black celebrity who’s ever spoken out about anything, from Louis Armstrong to Jackie Robinson. The same press that championed Robinson’s “gracious” rise said the exact same shit when he started advocating for race-related causes. It’s such broken logic — “You can’t complain because you’re rich.” “What about the people who aren’t rich, who I’m specifically advocating for?” “We ignore them too. But unrelatedly.”

Can we just immediately dispense with this irrelevant “elitist spoiled millionaire” rhetoric whenever a celebrity acts in a demonstrably non-elitist way? It’s so completely beside the point, and even the people using the argument know this. There’s a friggin’ Marvel vs. Capcom select screen’s worth of other dumb, shitty arguments out there. Pick another one.

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For more, check out 4 Celebrities Who Got Blacklisted for Doing the Right Thing and 5 Acts of Staggering Hypocrisy From Self-Righteous Critics.

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[insanetwocubes]

Actually. I don’t think asking how is the right question to ask anyone but yourself. And I mean how as defined by two different ways. There is a path how and a means how. And they’re kind of similar, kind of different.

A Path How is the path you have to take as defined pre-existing rules. So lyke rules could be anything from economy/politics flow to physics. So lyke you want to get a high-end job that requires by the systems set in place for you to do a certain type of training. So lyke say the job is be a doctor. The path how to be a doctor legally is that you have to earn certain certifications by completing certain tasks (passing exams, entering residency programs, etc). 

However the Means How are the details that aren’t controlled by the rules. Lyke no one is requiring you to go to a specific medical school or enter a specific residency program. 

And if you’re not exactly like the 90% of Normals out there, listening to someone try to tell you your Means How method of how to get something in life is useless. It just never works in my experience. Yes, studying hard and drinking coffee seems the best way for you to do it. But it doesn’t help me, y’know. I think people like us need to just shut that out and figure things out on our own. Because they’re always wrong. 

And our Means How is probably always wrong for other people, too. 

It’s a thing I keep coming back to as evidence that we should keep our trap shut permanently lol

But I think Four consistently demonstrates that she needs at least an illusion of other-person contact to be...uhm....sane. Happy. To be happy. 

Don’t remember the last time I felt that one lol 

Uhm. Welp, I’m still kind of trying to give Four’s inside-outside idea a try. Because the brain found what works and technically the brain is me (and also motherfucking me hahaha). 

Anyway this a whole different topic lol. Maybe. We should stray away from explaining the means how--or at least emphasize that it’s super specific. I’m trying, I’m sorry. To lyke y’know. not fuck up and everything. And be lyke the least negative force on humanity. 

But. Being a positive is so convoluted and messy and complex and complicated from where we are personally right now. We’re trying to fix that. And I know. Well. Maybe I shouldn’t have been regretful. Because lyke Four is always talking about lyke y’know--uh what does she call it--armor vs. walls. And decreasing negative force is a very gray way of building a wall. Instead, following her current theory, I should be lyke “Hm, what skill do I need to pass on to other people in order to decrease the negative effect of this force.”

That skill would be just lyke y’know just have focus on what the rule-controlled requirements are. Everything else is just a suggestion or just one way to do it. And lyke, like I said, the rules don’t have to be human rules. They’re usually reality rules. Lyke you can’t complete a task by doing no part of that task y’know. But anyway we all know that talking about the strategy of the skill won’t teach anyone the skill. You have to lyke weave practice into it as you’re explaining it or everything you just said will be theoretical at best. Just another worthless idea. 

But see but lyke like I said this whole thing is hard because it has to be personalized and I have no fucking clue how to do that for other people and lyke anyway, it can’t ever be clearly communicated with just a one-way information stream. It has to be a conversation. Or, I guess not I don’t know. And for that conversation you need to know the goals that are required by reality. And those are lyke really hard to know if you don’t have lyke any ability to run many iterations, because you only teach a person a skill once, y’know? If they get it, they get it and poof that data is useless. Teaching isn’t really something that’s easy to fail in a productive manner. You’re not exactly seeing a person’s train of thought so lyke debugging it really really hard. And plus teaching is just whole other skill. Than all those previous skills. I don’t really care, honestly, I’m just detailing all of that for my own benefit. But lyke do you see what I’m saying? 

Lyke you can’t teach yourself the skill because you don’t know what the goals are. You can’t find out what the goals are because you don’t know if your theory is right. You can’t know if your theory is right because you’re not able to teach yourself the skill. 

The only way it will work if your theory happens to be right and you happen to guess the right goals.

But what if you work backwards and you try to make your theory right.

So if you try to make your theory right, you have that one goal. But lyke you don’t know the goal to achieve that goal.

That means you just have to keep trying.

But then but the end of the experiment you end up trying every single goal.

I mean you have to use educated guessing. And if your goal is to make something work, you only have to find the goals that work. From there you have a safety net to come back to and figure out all the details.

Four, look, this is really super complex.

Ohhhh nooo what a tragedy....

Don’t make fun of me. Okay so lyke say the goal is to uh prove this whole path-how and means-how thing. 

Mhm. So you first goal is to make it work, right?

Uh okay.

So you get a goal and then you try to achieve it using the bullshit that the Normals spew at you. And then you try to achieve that goal the way that works for yo.

So my goal is to get a goal.

I mean. Yeah. That’s why everything is super fuzzy down the road. You’re trying to prove a recursive theory without an example. Obviously you need an example.

Okay so I want this. 

Okay, so in order to get that goal you have to look at the reality goals. Those are obvious so far, right? You just need to do all those things.

Right...

Right. So getting the right answers, right? Let’s just go with that.

So then what’s the goal from there?

So you have a range of possibilities for what those questions could be. And now you tackle each possibility. How do you get the right answer if this question was on there and so on and so forth. And from there you can compare with what the bullshit is telling you. And there you go. 

So your goals are the possible correct answers to the given goal.

It would help me if you let me explain them in more detail, but yeah, basically. You kind of to create a tree of possibilities. 

Hm.... So it’s not lyke a vague catch all strategy like “just study.”

No, that’s the next step. You have to perform this whole experiment a few times to be able to see the pattern.

Oh, I think that’s where I was going wrong...

~Flare

#dicerolls #like if you read reblog if you want #txt #things4said #things1said #intersysconvos

[trendingnewsb]

How The Actual ‘Spoiled Elite’ Try To Silence Helpful Celebs

We’re into Week Two of the “Everyone versus The NFL And Everyone Else” kneeling controversy, and we are truly living in a golden age of stupid attempts to willfully misunderstand a situation in order to have angry takes.

It is a record-breakingly stupid time in America right now, and I wouldn’t dare presume I could actually change the opinion of anyone within the Colin Kaepernick Facebook comment cesspools that’ve globbed together over the past week. Plus, if you can’t tell from my doofy little avatar pic up there, I don’t exactly consider myself America’s preeminent spokesperson on racial issues. (I might not even be in the top five.) However, I do have a lot of experience with people on the internet saying dumb shit, and there’s one specific ultra-stupid criticism that keeps popping up again and again that I want to focus on: The idea that any wealthy celebrity who speaks out is automatically some out-of-touch, ungrateful elitist.

Last week, during Obamacare Repeal 5: Operation Miami Beach, Jimmy Kimmel spoke out against the Graham-Cassidy Healthcare Bill, and got blasted for being a “Hollywood elite” — a catch-all distinction that apparently disqualifies his Ivory Tower delusions of wanting poor children to be kept alive. Days later on Fox, Newt Gingrich attacked Colin Kaepernick and any other protesting athletes, calling them “arrogant young millionaires” who need “therapy” if they think they’re oppressed. Joe Walsh, the former congressman turned guy who’s constantly hate-retweeted into your Twitter feed, also called Stevie Wonder “another ungrateful black multi-millionaire” for protest-kneeling. It’s a similar critique as the Kimmel-bashing, with some hideous racist undertones to boot. Or not “undertones” so much as, y’know, “tones.” Loud, clear tones. It’s basically that jarring noise when everyone’s phones blare an amber alert all at the same time, but racist.

This specific critique — “celebrities and athletes are such spoiled rich ‘elites’ that any opinion they have is automatically nullified” — is so thunderously, nakedly stupid that we need to preemptively delete it from these conversations before the stupid people making these stupid arguments can proceed to their subsequent also-stupid-but-for-different-reasons arguments.

First off, Americans — and conservatives like Gingrich and Walsh in particular — clearly don’t believe that “rich elites” are incapable of exercising judgment. Jimmy Kimmel’s salary is estimated to be in the 12-15 million dollar range. Colin Kaepernick has made $43 million in his six-year career. They’re definitely financially “elite,” there’s no question. But Rex Tillerson, our secretary of State, was an ExxonMobil CEO who received a $180 million severance package. Betsy DeVos, our Education secretary, has a father-in-law worth $5.4 billion, and who is the 88th-richest person in the entire country. These people are orders of magnitude more “elite” than professional athletes and talk show hosts, and we’ve appointed them to positions of far greater influence. Should we all pile on these two anytime they open their mouths to offer any opinion other than “I am so gracious for being wealthy”?

Here’s the real reason this argument is unlockable-level stupid. Of COURSE there are out-of-touch celebrities whose wealth has insulated them from everyday life. We just wrote about five of them here. Celebrities like Robert De Niro and Jim Carrey have championed the “vaccines cause autism” horseshittery. Kylie Jenner tweeted about the dangers of chemtrails. Gwyneth Paltrow has built an entire brand around giving working moms advice and peddling expensive and un-self-consciously vague “wellness” products. That’s out-of-touch millionaire bullshit.

But when celebrities use their platforms to champion a cause for underrepresented people who don’t share their wealth or social standing, to no personal gain (and in Kaepernick’s case, considerable personal loss), that is, by definition, the opposite of elitism. Kimmel has repeatedly emphasized how his wealth and excellent health insurance have spared him the life of crippling debt that his child’s ordeal would have caused a poorer, uninsured family (if they received care at all). Blasting his “elitism” is the opposite of the point. He’s specifically advocating for the non-elite, even if it means he’ll end up contributing a disproportionately high amount of money and diluting his own access to healthcare services to some degree. Classic Hollywood bigwig behavior. Have another PRIME RIB at the BROWN DERBY during a MEETING, ya freakin’ Hollywood Man.

Kaepernick’s outspokenness unquestionably cost him a shot at a backup QB job this offseason. He’s lost out on millions of potential dollars, and his career could be over prematurely at age 29. And all for the selfish, spoiled privilege of being the most death-threatened and racially-slurred human on the face of the Racial Slur Death Threat Factory (aka the internet). A less selfish athlete would’ve just kept quietly earning millions of dollars instead of greedily forfeiting his job to crawl through a shit-pipe of backlash for a cause he believed in.

Again, Kaepernick’s message — raising awareness about police violence toward black people in America — has nothing to do with his own financial standing. He’s not coming out and saying “I believe deeply in two things: justice and not being grateful for having lots of money. Those are my two causes.” There’s not some imaginary financial line after which someone loses their ability to notice and point out things. And there are legions of non-millionaires making the same case for racial justice, and many of them are — shockingly — maligned by the same people who hate Kaepernick. It’s clear on every level that his finances are ideologically irrelevant to the people complaining about them; it’s just a quick and easy way to complain about something else and end the conversation.

Furthermore, that old refrain “You’re rich, what are YOU complaining about” has been hurled at every successful black celebrity who’s ever spoken out about anything, from Louis Armstrong to Jackie Robinson. The same press that championed Robinson’s “gracious” rise said the exact same shit when he started advocating for race-related causes. It’s such broken logic — “You can’t complain because you’re rich.” “What about the people who aren’t rich, who I’m specifically advocating for?” “We ignore them too. But unrelatedly.”

Can we just immediately dispense with this irrelevant “elitist spoiled millionaire” rhetoric whenever a celebrity acts in a demonstrably non-elitist way? It’s so completely beside the point, and even the people using the argument know this. There’s a friggin’ Marvel vs. Capcom select screen’s worth of other dumb, shitty arguments out there. Pick another one.

Love Cracked? Want exclusive content? Prefer an ad-free experience? We’ve got you covered. Sign up for our Subscription Service for all that and more.

For more, check out 4 Celebrities Who Got Blacklisted for Doing the Right Thing and 5 Acts of Staggering Hypocrisy From Self-Righteous Critics.

Subscribe to our YouTube, and find out why we’re lost in a sea of confusion in 9 Celebrity Freak Outs (That Were Totally Justified), and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow our new Pictofacts Facebook page. Good, sir.

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