theaudientvoid

[theaudientvoid]

Was reading thru the national association of black social workers 1972 condemnation of black children being adopted by white parents (commonly cited as a major turning point in us interracial adoption) and my god, its outrageous. Bog standard social conservative ralking points hastily coated over with the most tenuous veneer of 70s era progressive buzzwords

What makes it really galling is how easily you can adopt several of the arguments they make into ones that parents cannot suitably raise children having neurotypes or disabilities or sexual orientations or just general lifestyle preferences they dont. Ethnic separatism: not even once

(The stuff about the cruelty in severing adoptees from birth family contact are fair but also surprisingly minor in the scheme of the document)

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my greatest wildbow crime is that i really really ship syllian

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feel free to not answer this if it's too personal or ruims some kayfabe you've got going, but is your rection to the "why can't you just be like mister rogers" genuine or a rhetorical device? or a bit of both??

It’s mostly genuine. the moment kindness becomes a shibboleth, it also becomes kafkaesque horror. i.e., if you don’t deserve love until you’re as perfect as mister rogers, then everything mister rogers said was a lie, but for some reason we have to revere him anyway.

It ties into the whole stereotype of “kill urself (tw:death)” culture. The idea that “Kindness is mandatory, but no one deserves to be treated kindly”, so being a good person is about reciting fortune cookie self-help wisdom into the void while treating the individual people around you like shit.

“shut up and be wholesome” is not about helping people, it’s about trying to prove your emotional maturity via performative refusal to empathize with anyone who’s not a zen master. 

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At least the people in the bar are probably drunk, whereas people on tumblr arguing about whether scar from the lion king is gay or bisexual have probably never touched alcohol in their lives.

once i saw an argument break out in a gay bar over whether scar from the lion king is gay or bisexual so never let your romanticized view of Offline tell you that argument wouldn't happen in a real life gay bar. It Could.

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I want to be really clear about something: Planned Parenthood has done more to prevent abortion than the pro-life movement ever has.

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I cannot think of anything more self-defeating than a “religious exemption” enshrined in law.

Anyone who professes any religion – anyone who cares about any religion – should really, really, really not want the government chiming in on what qualifies as legitimate orthodoxy or orthopraxy.  That is a task for your priest or your prophet or your guiding angel, not for an agent of the secular state; and if you let the state’s agent make the call, at some point you’re going to find yourself very unhappy with what he has to say.

Anything that a believer should be allowed to do, in the name of his faith, is something that anyone should be allowed to do for any reason.

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Lottie really went “oh we’re eating people fr now?” and passed the responsibility off to Nat

#yellowjackets

[theaudientvoid]

I always get annoyed when Worm readers criticize Taylor & Cauldron without actually engaging with the premise, but there is evidence against them there. (Gonna focus on Cauldron in this post.)

There are some legitimate points to be made against them that I've probably heard most of already. There's the fact that so much of their choices stem for Contessa's desire for efficiency, and she turns away from paths that might be harder- although to be fair, there's more points of failure in, for example, telling the world's governments about the dangers of Scion.

There's the fact that when they choose who to bring into the fold, they take in people like The Number Man, a former serial killer, and that colors all the decisions their leadership makes.

There's a notion, tangential to Sveta's criticism of Doctor Mother- again, they took the easy path by dehumanizing their victims with test numbers and blocking off any sense of empathy, because they feel a need to live with themselves; even the lack of empathy clouds their judgement and their so-called objectiveness, leading them to hurt their victims more than they actually had to.

The thing that interests me though is that you can't really pick and choose which consequences count. They wanted to be consequentialist? Well, the Irregulars' raid on Cauldron HQ that hampered the fight against Scion is by definition a consequence. Acting like the Irregulars ruined a perfectly good plan is ridiculous, because if it was such a good plan then they wouldn't have been invaded.

They think the ends justify the means? Surprise! The ends include the Endbringers. There are so few Parahumans left alive by the time Scion turns on humanity that nothing Eidolon contributed could have been a net benefit. Especially considering what the Simurgh was planning near the end of Ward.

We also see some of that in Ward- all of the PR campaigns, all the cover-ups, it all comes crashing down the second the PRT is gone, and any attempt at communication is hampered by the fear of what an informed public might do. The anti-Parahuman who shot Fume Hood and set off the second apocalypse did so because he only had part of the story, and never actually had the chance to see the PRT & Cauldron's full perspectives.

[theaudientvoid]

#depends entirely on the body that they are on

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It's that time of the year again

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4D immersive claw reading experience (head ache)

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do you think jack slash and jeff the killer would kiss?

[theaudientvoid]

In terms of 'people haven't read comics' I actually think there's a nuanced position people sort of instinctively understand and don't spell out:-

A lot of people enter comics fandom via an adaption medium (be that movies, video games, tv shows, cartoons)

That means they come in with a level of background understanding of various characters existing and some knowledge of them via osmosis, either from adapted stories or reading fic

General fandom discussion tends to coalesce around a small subset of characters and story runs

Because getting into comics is expensive, people preference what's easily available and/or what's most highly recommended in an attempt to maximise a story they will like

This is where all the panicking about 'where to start' comes in - it's overwhelmingly huge to look at and people are scared of 'getting it wrong'

They then read a run of a comic. Given all of the above for DC it's probably going to be a Bat comic, and there's a good chance it's UTRH, Red Robin 1-12, Batgirl 2000, Robin: Son of Batman, or The Court of Owls. They want the best storyline after all and that's what people tell them are favourites

They have also from being peripheral to the fandom noticed discourse about how certain stories/writers 'don't get' or 'ruin' characters and then avoid reading those stories

Because people are likely to only have read this small subset of stories, the discussion then focuses further on that subset

Echo chamber, the narrative that there's no such thing as a consistent canon in comics causes people to continue to avoid reading further, because they've been told Not To Read certain writers, and what they read doesn't really match how the fandom describes it

Because they're enjoying the fandom, they lean into the fanon and just...never read more comics. Sometimes pride themselves on not doing so

You end up with people who have 'read comics' but they mean about 3 famous runs totalling well under 100 issues, and very little comfort with even DC teams or families outside of the Bats

The current situation compounds because people aren’t comfortable with reading characters written by different writers and how that changes the story, even though that’s a huge part of comics

[theaudientvoid]

If Ward is anime, then where is the "so bad it's good" first attempt at an english dub?

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“holy grail” is short for “holy grind rail,” a technique jesus used to get around jerusalem quickly

jesus being a carpenter is actually a common misinterpretation of the text! he shredded a different kind of board

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I am huge fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, and even though I stopped watched Game of Thrones in season 4 (I’m a bit of a book purist, admittedly) I’ve taken this chance to look back through some of my old ASOIAF fanart that I did from 2012-2015. I guess you can tell who my favorite characters are… Sansa, the Greyjoys, and Bran and Co. I need to do some recent Children of the Forest art!