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tempestswing · 1 month

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Ranking the Dark Council:

hi! I was writing some notes for a piece of SWTOR fiction I am working on, and decided to create this list as a fun way to share that information.

Dark Council Pre-Shadow of Revan:

12. Darth Aruk - we know nothing about this character, other than that they were head of the Sphere of Sith Philosophy. According to the Wiki, rooting out Revanites was supposed to be their job. What a failure, hopefully they still have a job after Shadow of Revan?

11. Darth Rictus - Also kind of a mystery, which is ironic since he was head of the Sphere of Mysteries. Rictus does appear in a novel called 'Annihilation', but that book is mostly about Theron Shan. All we really know about Rictus is that he's (A) old, (B) dislikes aliens, unless they're murderous enough, and (C) founded the Dread Executioners to take down the Dread Masters. Not enough information to rank any higher.

10. Darth Acharon - at least this guy appears in the game. He's kind of a nothing character though. He defended the imperial occupation of Corellia unsuccessfully. He was head of the Sphere of Biotics. Since he died on Corellia, he would presumably have been replaced by Shadow of Revan, but we don't know who by.

9. Darth Arkous - hate this guy, but he's still technically head of the Sphere of Military Offense after the Hutt Cartel plotline. God, what a bag of dicks he is though. The one good thing about this character is that he's technically Lana Beniko's master? Although she's an advisor rather than an apprentice, so he gets no credit for the existence of awesome Sith wife.

8. Darth Decimus - Also found in game on Corellia! Decimus is actually present in the imperial quests, so you get a lot more interaction with him than Acharon. Canonically, he also trained Krovos! Krovos is really cool, so decimus should get a few points by association. Not enough to bump him up the list though. For the head of Military Strategy, he's not a very good commander.

7. Darth Ravage - You can meet Ravage at the end of the Inquisitor and Warrior storylines, and for all imperials he is present during the cutscenes preceding the Emperor Malgus flashpoints (although does nothing to help?). The main reason I'm putting Ravage so low is that he's a little bit inconsistently written. He'll gladly say "good riddance" to Darth Thanaton's death in the inquisitor plotline, but if you kill Baras in the Warrior plotline, he'll show up at Nathema and be all offended that you claimed power by murdering your master... does he know what a Sith is?

6. Darth Mortis - I have a bit of a soft spot for Mortis. He's got a no-nonsense demeanour which is rare amongst Sith, and he's clearly serious enough about their philosophy to join a secret conspiracy against the alliance if you "squander" the power of the Eternal Throne - a petty move, this man is a bitch after my own heart. He also is the one who snaps Darth Thanaton's silly little neck, which definitely earns him a few points in my eyes. As a point, he's involved in the Macrobinocular missions, which I did not enjoy, but he was a highlight of the questline.

5. Darth Acina - WOMEN IN POWER!!! Empress Acina is better than Emperor Vitiate. Unfortunately Acina is kind of bland, I really don't feel strongly about her either way. I've killed her on Iokath in most of my playthroughs, even if I don't intend to defect to the republic later. I might be lesbian but I just don't like her that much. Her reforms to the Empire are interesting though, I do have to give her credit for making the Empire slightly less racist and Sith dominated.

4. Darth Vowrawn - Silly guy!! This man is genuinely quite funny. He's a blast to spend time with at the end of the Warrior story, after dealing with Baras' grumpy ass for close to fifty levels. His choice to help the Wrath with the Hand on Rishi says... something. He's genuinely an interesting character to me, especially since he maintains that joviality when he becomes Emperor. It's tempered, to be sure, but I think it does show it wasn't entirely an act. Vowrawn could be a genuine friend to the Wrath.

3. Darth Jadus - Sue me, I like unapologetically evil characters. Jadus is not just an evil clown, he's an evil circus. Schemer to the core and melodramatic as fuck. I chose to serve him without a second thought in my agent playthrough. I appreciated the name drop on Iokath and I have 1% chance 99% cope that he will return at some point in the story.

2. Darth Occlus/Nox/Imperius - OCs are fun. No further notes. I should probably drop the lore for my verison of this character, huh... maybe in another post.

Darth Marr - Everyone's favourite tired Dad just trying to keep his society from collapsing as his colleagues bicker about inane bullshit. I reckon he drinks coffee straight outta the pot in the Dark Council's break room. I really wish he hadn't died, but his force ghost shenanigans were neat and I liked seeing him find a measure of redemption. Again, I am on a high dose of copium but if Malgus can return after being killed and abandonded on an exploding space station why can't someone scrape Marr off the floor of Zakuul and rebuild him. I do also low-key ship Marr with Satele Shan?

anyway, that's my totally subjective ranking of Dark Council members.

#swtor #Dark Council #Sith #sith warrior #sith inquisitor #darth mortis #darth Marr #darth acharon #darth acina #darth decimus #darth arkous #darth jadus #darth ravage

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notyouraryang0dd3ss · 23 days

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I would like to add. Swifties and anyone adjacent who excuse Queen Swiftie's behavior really are the scum of the earth. I was on Tik Tok as one does bestie and the way this one black woman was not defending either but pointing out that Taylor Swift rehashing her beef with Kim K and Kanye is a telltale sign that her entire career is based off being a professional victim and she is no better than the villians on shows like Law and Order SVU because she never healed from whatever happened and the way people continued to bring up what Kanye did amd Kim editing the clip and all I could say was "so why didn't Taylor sue??" If what Kanye did to her with that MV and song was so detrimental to her mental health, WHY DIDN'T SHE SUE!? She sued Olivia Rodrigo FOR a BRIDGE IN a SONG! and a college kid for having a page dedicated to cataloging public accessible information about celebrities! But she didn't sue the big bad Kanye and Kim because she didn't care! Her stans cared more, which made her jump into action. Her stans dont see that Taylor isn't a feminist. In her own words, she said that in like 2015-2016. Taylor is a girl who centers men in her life, she is only as good as who she has linked on her arm, all of her friends are phoney, she forces friendships to seem likeable amongst demographics who dont even look her way. She wants to be relatable, and sis hasnt been relatable since her debut album. The only way she can get any kind of clout is by chasing beef from years prior. I am not a Kim or Kanye fan at all, but the way Taylor is in a twisted sense of irony proving the only reason she has the clout she has is because Kim and Kanye.🤷🏾‍♀️

wait can you send the link of that tiktok? that sounds super interesting. also she sued a college student???? for THAT????

she (the tiktoker) makes a great point because taylor has sued for much less. she definitely is milking the kim/kanye thing because its been 8 years (yes 2016. that was 8 years ago) and 15 years since kanye/2009 mtv awards. she benefits from the framing kanye as “the over aggressive black man” who is mean and hurts the “innocent docile white woman” or taylor swift. that’s why her fanbase is so racist—the most visible celeb conflict she’s had have been heavily racialized aka kanye…twice.

taylor stans are too far gone and also don’t do their research. theyre not really feminists either, they just adopt whatever ideology their queen has atm and use that to defend her.

taylor is uber obsessed with men. which is funny with how much her fans are like “dont define her by her relationships!” when she literally does. like her fans even tried to guess who this album was about. like cmon…

her #GirlSquad freaks me out so bad. its so unnatural 😭 and you’re right she cements her current relevance in past beef its so weird. like why do her fans still harass jake gyllenhaal and calvin harris. soooooooooo weird

and unfortunately whether she likes it or not the mtv 2009 awards was a major turning point for her exposure into the mainstream and it was with fucking kanye 😭

#ask #anon #notyouraryang0dd3ss #kim kardashian #kanye west #anti taylor swift #anti swifties #kimye 2016

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opinated-user · 8 months

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a thing of note: when we call out LO's sockpuppeting, we do it to remark how she's using those other accounts in order to manipulate people (like how she uses sucky boi's asks to put even more social pressure on Lolo accepting an online relationship... which ended up working, unfortunately), distract them from something else or she uses them as a excuse to say stuff she wanted to address anyway. it's also just fun to laugh about how obvious they are. no personality, no likes, no follows, nothing in their entire online existence but asking LO questions or flatter her. not to mention how LO has asks completely disabled, but these one account coincidentally manages to pass through in order to send her those asks. it's an easy call out. when LO tries to say that Brittany has sockpuppets... she's not really saying anything with that. even when she calls me another account from her, what does that accomplish actually? does it make anything that was said on this blog untrue? does it make Brittany a liar, despite the mountains of evidence we have between the multiple blogs? even if it was true, so what? it would be weird and unnecesary from Brittany to do that, but it wouldn't make her a liar. it wouldn't mean that she doctored anything. even someone that is weird and does unexplicable things can have a point. if she did lied, then you can just argue that lie, it doesn't matter if it comes from this account or whatever else alts she claims Brittany has. if it's true and you can't disprove it or ague against it, then again, it doesn't matter where it comes from. that's why i have no issue embracing it in jest. because it means nothing. my screenshots are still there. my arguments are not being contradicted. even if my entire existence is fake, doesn't make LO any less racist, any less transphobic, any less bigoted or any less predatory. it's pointless, but more importantly, it's funny that LO thinks that's a point and so i think we should treat it with the mockery it deserves.

#lily orchard

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felizusnavidad · 2 months

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hey, i'm not sure if you're comfortable with people complaining about something to you so if you don't like it, just let me know!

it's just that a tweet about how hamilton is "unfortunately good" blew up and the quote tweets were pissing me off. people saying that they sincerely wish lin manuel miranda was less talented so they could "hate him for being insufferable more efficiently"? so many people saying it's unfortunate that he's talented because he's so annoying. it's exactly the point that anon made about people just looking for a reason to bash on him, and i couldn't deal with it.

i would honestly prefer it if the hate was coming from people who hated his music style and sincerely thought he wasn't talented, at least it makes sense. people saying "oh no i listen to the soundtrack a lot" but then proceeding to make fun of its creator is so much worse to me.

it's totally fine anon, i am always up for discussion, whether you want to complain about something or just simply share a fun fact from your life.

i agree with you, it literally doesn't make any sense & it's one of the reasons i'm trying to stay away from twitter, i also saw a lot of haters there. it's so funny to me that they can actually admit he's talented, but at the same time they hate his personality, because... exactly, because what? i don't understand why they find him annoying, can somebody explain, please? also, hear me out... it's actually possible to listen to someone's music & avoid watching/reading interviews if you don't like them. I KNOW, SHOCKING. but not as shocking as wasting your time talking about someone you hate so much. go touch some grass you loser.

also how pathetic it actually is that people are ashamed of listening to hamilton... like, why would i be ashamed of listening to something that makes me happy? something that i genuinely think is good? maybe we should just, idk, start enjoying things? hamilton literally occupied my entire spotify wrapped last year & i was still happy to share it with my friends, because it brought me joy, so what is the problem?

anon, i genuinely think people are just being racists. there are a lot of very problematic people out there but somehow they always get away with it because they're white. i hate the world we're living in.

#...aaaaaand another essay #idk i feel like it's my job to defend this man on the internet #does he need it? no #but just like you anon i can't stand the hate #i said this once before i'm gonna say this again #you can hate me all you want but say one bad thing about lin - be prepared for the fight #where the hell is my gun #lin manuel miranda #lmm #anon #i saved every letter you wrote me*

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spaceorphan18 · 3 months

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I think I'm losing my mind. I was on reddit and I uninstall that yesterday cause of glee subreddit(if you don't know what is glee subreddit, there is a social media app called reddit where people of common interest or region can get together and discuss on topics posted) . So the glee reddit is kinda annoying. As far as what I've observed , that reddit has more of brittana fans and they kept bashing klaine.

The funny thing is that they hate klaine for the same reason they love brittana. Well hate and love is one's feeling. But I don't know if this particular incident triggered me. Someone was as usual bashing on klaine in a klaine Christmas celebration post. Not a hate post. So I got into a heated argument. Then there was a DM that a person accused me of lifting lines from other peoples fic to mine. And they blocked.

The thing is this fandom is not so young. Meaning you would have fics on almost all genres with similar kinda writing. I am just pissed that person accused me without any proof. Not just that.

There is this another person, who is on tumblr too. They say that they love Kurt but they said what Kurt did to get back to klaine relationship was cringey. I asked what made him cringey cause he didn't do much to get into relationship. It was all sue. And they just typed "stfu" get as spontaneously as they can.

Now what broke the camels back was I put a misinterpreted statement on another post. And I didn't know one of Rachel's dad in s3 was black but not as black as what they showed in the s1. Someone explained that the actor Brian stokes was mixed ,has black ethnicity and had lighter colour than the dude shown in s1. I agreed and I said that was my point and oh my god,the downvotes.

I just said call me racist if you want,I don't care and there is this person who called me stfu came up,called me annoying and I need help. I just cited that they have less temper and I don't need a psychology lesson from them and the person just bitched and said to seek professional help.

I don't know why I am ranting to you. I'm so sorry. I just want someone to talk me through this. This keeps pissing me off.

Hey dear! No, it's fine - sometimes it's just easier to write it all out and just let yourself feel all the things. And it's totally fine.

I'm sorry for all the crap you've been going through! It's rough when fandom does not feel like the fun place you want it to be.

I am aware of reddit and have never really been a fan. I've heard the Glee fandom on there is pretty terrible in general, so I've always avoided it. It's hard, sometimes, when there doesn't feel like a lot of places to go -- especially when the fandom has very much faded and dwindled. But my best advice is to always step away from the places that make you angry.

(It can be hard, I know! When I first joined tumblr, I think I followed people I didn't really like mostly because I felt like I /needed/ to hear their wrong take. It took me a while to figure out that it was better mentally to not engage at all.)

There are also a lot of people who would rather revel in their hate of a thing than rejoice in their enjoyment. There have been psychological studies about how anger brings people together more than love. (Interestingly, I remember a long time ago there used to be a forum for Chris fans and the biggest, most trafficked thread was about hating Darren.)

I think the other unfortunate thing so often in fandoms is that people only really want to hear what they want to hear and be validated that their opinion is the /right/ one instead of listening to what other people have to say and respecting that some people don't respond to the same things you do. It's unfortunate that things become black and white and lines need to be drawn, but alas, the internet (and humans) have always been tribal like this.

Meanwhile, the best thing I can say is just enjoy the thing you like. These people are just going to be assholes whether you engage with them or not, so why give them a platform? Your mental health is worth more than their time - so give yourself a break.

You're welcome to come chat with me any time. :)

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twilightguardian · 11 months

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Explain to me how they fixed Sienna Khan? The morally grey POC Woman with a vision? The actual wasted potential? If your response is to focus on Adam Taurus? Congratulations! You may just be a racist misogynist when it comes to fanfics! Because in FRWBY, sienna khan does not exist, only the male self inserts do.

lol Xel is this you? (jk jk) The hour I decide I let anon asks back up I get this. It's too funny.

Is this supposed to be an r/explaintomelikeimfive? Or whatever.

Sienna is such a nothing character that literally anything you do with her would be a marked improvement of what canon did with her. She had literally five minutes of screen time. Well, alive. 10% of her screen time she was dead on the floor.

Nothing significant about Sienna changed in FRWBY other than referencing her earlier than she did, giving her more screentime, and showing her downfall to Adam just as it had been in canon. The difference being we see more of her being the leader of the WF, and more of the internal politics itself. Sienna had to make a tough decision to allow Onryu, a character we never see on screen in FRWBY, btw, to be sent to jail in order to salvage the reputation of the White Fang.

Sienna has a role to play, and unfortunately, it's never going to be a big one. Maybe if RT went with "Remnants" instead of "RWBY" and made the show less focused on the main girls, then there could be more focus on people outside of the main cast of heroes and villains. As it stands, Sienna is just a bit player in a B Plot. There's only so much expanding even FRWBY can do with the limitations FRWBY has in place without shifting the main story to being about the White Fang instead of Salem.

That's all she was in canon though. Just to prop up Adam. She came into existence in the episode she was killed, and was only there to show Adam's lengths he'll go to get what he wants. In canon, she only existed for Adam. In FRWBY we at least see a little more of her outside of that one scene. We see how she made Ilia feel conflicted alongside her interactions with Adam and how that affected her. So, no, FRWBY doesn't have her focus on Adam, that's canon.

No, it really doesn't. Your mentality on this is rather childish and black and white. These are case-by-case basis we're dealing with and to boil down someone as being a racist or misogynist over a fanfic because you don't like it is really disgusting and says more about you than the people you're going after. Maybe step outside. Breathe fresh air. Touch grass. You know what grass is, right? That green stuff on the ground. No, it's not the floor, it's called ground. Dirt. Earth. Terra.

lmao seriously what the fuck is wrong with you.

Oh look there, Sienna existing in Fixing RWBY.

#rwby #rwde #anonymous #lmao I got basically nothing from anyone #until now #I guess it's a good thing I didn't have time before

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nokingsonlyfooles · 1 year

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The Dark Secret of Zootopia? (Part 1, Identifying the Problem)

What? If you're a fan, you already know Zootopia's "secret."

It was originally a dark dystopia where the predators wore "tame collars," but the Zootopia team got nervous about how depressing it was and did a last-minute rewrite that used most of the old assets and plot points! Right? So are we gonna do a deep dive on that?

Not quite.

What if I told you that despite the rewrite that took out the obvious metaphor for systemic oppression, more evidence of systemic issues remains and... it probably doesn't make any difference?

So that half-assed poll I put up suggests more than one person would like to see me take Zootopia apart, and that probably means delving into the racism metaphor, but, man, I don't have the headspace for that today! So I took a spin through the Headscratchers page, hoping to find something a little more compact. There had to be something other than the racism metaphor that a lot of people had trouble with, right? Sort of an appetizer for a busy Tuesday?

Nnnot really.

Here's an obvious Libertarian voter who can't fathom that people would be racist when it runs contrary to good business practices! We go through quite a few tropers positing non-racist or less racist reasons to refuse Nick service - including one who believes prejudice against predators "wasn't a thing" until Judy's press conference, and before that people just didn't like foxes - before some hero arrives with a fire extinguisher and says, I'm paraphrasing, "Racism isn't rational! End of story!"

Then we got this question, which has the answer contained in it already!

I've trimmed the first response, from someone who apparently sees nothing wrong with just rolling up and asking to pet a sentient being. "It doesn't have to be a metaphor for anything"!? They go on to posit that maybe it's a taboo in funny animal society. 'Cos, you know, you don't have to read Zootopia as a metaphor for human society if you don't wanna.

(The Author! He's already dead! Why you gotta desecrate the corpse like that?)

It takes a few more self-soothing responses from evident people-petters before, again, someone rolls up and says, "It is exactly white people wanting to 'pet' black people's 'weird' hair, something that is unfortunately a fairly common patronizing occurrence in the U.S., at least."

And after that, we still get this:

"I have a Black friend and he lets me pet him all the time! Cut white people some slack! They're just curious! Let us pet you!"

Zootopia is racism lite, folks. Zootopia calls out racism primarily as something an individual does when they make decisions based on their preexisting biases - which, in Nick and Judy's cases, stem from childhood traumas that we get to see on-screen.

This is a version of racism that a child - with a little hand-holding from a caregiver - could understand. All but the most toxic conservatives ought to be okay explaining this kind of racism, including the toxic neoliberal centrists! "You see, little Kayden, there is no such thing as 'society.' 'Racism' is what happens when a lot of individuals make bad decisions. All you have to do to stop it is make better decisions, and encourage others to make better decisions too! Why, when I was your age, we chose better hairsprays without CFCs in them, and that fixed global warming and the hole in the ozone layer forever!"

"Auntie Margaret Thatcher, isn't climate change still a..."

"WE FIXED IT FOREVER, LITTLE KAYDEN." *strained smile* "So just don't buy fox spray! If enough people don't buy it, they'll stop making it."

"Why is it okay for someone to make a spray specifically to hurt foxes in the first place?"

"...If you don't stop asking questions, I shall bury you under the Aberfan coal tip with all the rest, little Kayden. Eat your popcorn."

But even that's too much for some folks! They retreat behind the ambiguity of the metaphor and wonder why the funny animals make such odd decisions, in the willful absence of context. With no context, why would a bunny be able to say, "It's okay if we call each other 'cute,' but you shouldn't." That's blatant hypocrisy. Bunnies don't own "cute." It's just a word!

Don't apologize, Benjamin! Why would you do that?

This entire movie is a modern Aesop fable and you need that human context. "Cute" privilege to "n-word" privilege is a one-to-one correlation, like petting a sheep is to petting a Black person. It only makes sense because you live in human society and you can fill in the blanks - because you have seen similar manifestations of bias and you already know they're not okay. You don't even have to know why or agree. To get the joke, you just have to know this stuff happens and people think it's rude. That is not a high bar to clear!

And that is, apparently, the level of anxiety we have about unpacking our own racism. Not even the systemic kind. Not even the big issues those scary "woke" zombies are trying to "cancel" you about. Just, "An individual - including you, for you are an individual - can make bad decisions based on their experiences."

Whaaaat? No I don't!

"These animals have nothing to do with me and therefore, this movie makes no sense."

These are the people Zootopia needed to reach. Not the ones who already had a clue, the ones who were so scared of getting one that they buried their heads in the sand and refused to acknowledge reality itself. So here's a cheerful little film with an animal metaphor and an optimistic resolution! Surely they must feel safe enough to unpack racism in this context?

But they didn't. Much like Green Book, this film was safe and simple enough to walk away with an Oscar from an Academy that's mostly white, male, and terrified of minorities - and the people who didn't want to get "woke" slept right through it. I don't think that's what they were going for, given that V 1 of this film had systemic oppression worn around the neck of every predator with a blinking light on it.

Remember, they reused assets and plot points from the original and rewrote everything fast. Traces remain. But if the ostriches in the audience can't understand "cute" privileges, do they have any hope of noticing Judy's bathroom at the police academy has a toilet that can kill her and no accommodations for a species her size?

Well, they might have. But the way the film handles it gleefully assassinates everyone's chance to see the systemic issues and respond to them appropriately.

Tune in next time, for Judy Hopps, bunny cops, "Black Excellence" and our old friend Barack!

#zootopia #deep dive #racisim #judy hopps #nick wilde #social issues

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evanwritesgames · 10 months

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On Ideology and Practicality in the Age of Grift

I'm probably not going to be a successful independent creator. And there's lots of reasons for this that are beyond my control. We often talk, amongst ourselves, about those reasons. External factors like what artists are paid are situations we'd like to change, but require a lot more than one person's pushing to get it done. So we can safely say it's beyond a single creator's control and we can commiserate about this when we need to, raise awareness, and write primers that tell people about these problems.

This is all good. When you go from there to factors you can control, things get dicier. Ideology, which drives the discourse about uncontrollable external shit, falls by the wayside and convictions suddenly become a lot more flexible. This is about practicality. One must be practical if one is to survive a capitalist dystopia. You won't hear any argument from me about that idea, not in the abstract. I get it. I was raised pretty poor by Canadian white people standards and I know what it's like to wonder where my next meal is coming from, where my mom disappeared off to while looking after a younger sibling, be bullied for wearing hand-me-downs, etc.

As a younger adult, poverty was a badge of honor for a certain type of person and because of economic shifts, the brunt of which are still being born by my generation, being poor in your 20s was no longer a thing you hid because you hate to be pitied, or a cynical yuppie aesthetic, but a norm. Most of my friends were paycheck to paycheck and we knew people who weren't and those were the people who usually threw the parties, hosting their legions of friends who didn't have rich parents buying them a college house in a bear market, providing an "alcohol budget" weekly (this was a common thing, believe it or not), etc. A lot of those more privileged people kept on receiving privilege and not all of them, unfortunately, stayed or became aware of it and sensitive to its absence in others as it became very clear that millennials, at least, are a semi-deliberately impoverished cohort.

Anyway. There are a lot of good reasons to be ethically flexible, ideologically practical, in today's world. But for me, there are limits and they aren't gentle.

For example, I quit Facebook when I found out about Cambridge Analytica. No one else I knew did. I quit Reddit during the Trump years when fascist, racist subreddits were front page and suddenly filled to the brim with angry idiots and the far larger number of young kids being influenced by them. I quit Twitter when Musk bought it and made it a safe space for murderers, fascists, and bigots.

I am sure that, before long, something will happen with Tumblr and I'll say "there it is, that funny feeling". I'll quit, eventually feeling less horrified and more frustrated and angry about sacrificing yet more fragile reach in this vicious online circus. After that, I'll note that my peers ignore the problem and suspend their convictions, if they have any, in favor of something else. A different priority.

Using any of these social media is, in my opinion, a moral hazard. It's worse if you make money through that use, because suddenly you've got blood on your hands. Real blood. Dead people. Unintended consequences. You're probably reading this and something deep inside you is just recoiling from this idea. You do NOT want to be responsible for the unintended consequences of your actions. Who would?

And you or someone else will be tempted to view the above as more shit you can't control. But this isn't really true, is it? You can quit social media, it's just that in doing so you have to say goodbye to what precious little control you have in an Age of Grift. You tell yourself that it's okay, that there's no ethical consumption under griftopia and you'll just consider yourself a fighter by other means.

All of that is fine, too, I guess. It's not really my business to judge the decisions of others except, of course, that's not true either. We all judge each others' decisions all the fucking time. That's what social media, deep in its black heart, really is. It's a social control mechanism that runs on judgment. We've come up with all kinds of euphemisms for this, but it's mostly claptrap that easily reduces to simple monkey logic, playground politics, etc.

So if you feel judged by what I'm saying, I guess that's too bad. Scroll on to the next thing that makes you feel judged and hope the judgment is kind, that the judgment is more like "you are cool if you get this reference" and you can say, "I get this reference" and receive a small dopamine hit for your time.

In spite of my pontificating, I get it. I ask myself every single day if I'm just kidding myself taking these ideological positions that shoot me in both feet. I have made things a lot harder for myself by quitting these spaces, by taking these positions, and by shouting this message from the rooftops -- occasionally, when I'm not busy having a mood spiral or panic attack over the state of things and how, like it or not, we need each other to make things change and when you look around and everybody's eyes are still on the capitalist prize they tweet about despising, you don't feel very revolutionary. I will probably not be a successful independent creator.

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tubbietommo · 1 year

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real question here for someone who never saw primer Seb live, was Seb ever a racist misogynistic piece of **** as Max has been? the fking Seb fans on twitter defend MV0 while ignoring that even when Seb was an asshole he was not raised as MV0 and even when toxic he was never a bad person like this, Seb himself got into this when he chose to defend RB and Massi after the 2021 fiasco, now fans are still defending MV0 behaviour and saying they are the same which they are FUCK*NG NOT.

I think we genuinely need to get away from the idea that Seb was an asshole. An asshole does intentionally things to piss people off.

I unfortunately didn't see Seb in his Red Bull years (started watching in 2015 as a Verstappen fan lol, the more you know), but I would like to say that I've seen enough/ if not everything from his red bull years inside the car and outside. Seb was brutal, he was rightfully so confident, quite cocky and people took the whole 'oh he was such an asshole back then' because the media took all that and made Seb into a villain. Which is kinda funny cause if I watch old Red Bull videos I see literally the same Seb that just retired (only difference is that Seb now decided that there's more to the world than racing and that he has a voice to speak that out).

The only "controversy" outside of the car that I can think of is his interview with Lee Mckenzie about the red dress. But that shouldn't even count cause those two have a good relationship (she even knows his family) and Lee Mckenzie addressed that pretty recently and took that as banter. (I'm mentioning this cause I remember there was a time on here when people just were looking for problematic things, took this Seb x Lee thing and just ran with it. It was pretty dumb.)

I had a disagreement on twitter with one of my seb mutuals about the whole seb asshole thing (note: I was sick, was bored and had nothing else to do lol) and the only thing they defend themselves with is either things that happen in the heat of the moment on track (like saying fuck you to Charlie, calling someone an idiot) like sorry but that's more being a human being with emotions, full with adrenaline and pretty much a microphone under their mouths (and I have the same feelings towards Verstappen about this. Like I don't care if he calls someone an idiot or a dickhead) than that they are assholes. Like as long as you don't use words that you know you shouldn't be using you good. And you can use A LOT of words. And if you accidentally let one slip out of your mouth because it's unfortunately (and weirdly) pretty standard in your country, and people are offended, fucking apologize??? It's genuinely not that hard to say sorry.

The only thing that is the same between Seb and Verstappen is that they race(d) for Red Bull, won championships with them (one less controversial than the other), and they both aren't PR-trained robot's (which I appreciate). But the thing is when Seb raced against his rivals (Alonso and Lewis) it was always done with a lot of respect. I don't like Alonso, and to me he was pretty toxic outside the car. But damn Seb and Alonso racing each other has always giving us some of the most amazing things to watch. Even the past two years I got excited when those two had to fight each other cause you know it would be good without them crashing each other out (always gotta leave that space).

Anyways there's a reason why Seb never said that he saw his younger self in Verstappen and I agree (seriously, if Verstappen was racing for Mercedes and winning championships with them no one would be comparing those two)

Hope this kinda answers the questions you have. If someone wants to add to this go ahead, if someone disagrees go ahead, if someone thinks saying fuck you to someone else is an asshole thing go ahead and call me an asshole caus I've done that plenty in less stressful moments, etc.

#sorry that this post is so long did not do that on purpose

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mindastardust · 1 year

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My thoughts regarding the esc 2023 final/results

Okay, I’ve had some time to think about this (and actually sleep a bit) and this is my (probably a bit disorganized) thoughts on the situation. (I’m from Sweden, so I’m a bit biased, but I’ve done my best to give a fair answer/judgment to everything that I’ve seen)

1. The blatant misogyny and racism

The amount of misogyny and racism directed toward Loreen that I’ve seen is truly disgusting. I’ve read things that seemed like direct quotes from the Swedish democratic party (aka the racist party) and that’s never, ever okay. It’s completely fine to dislike the song/the number/the singer we still need to treat them with the bare minimum of respect.

2. This is not the first time (and probably not the last)

This is not the first time a former winner is back. A recent example (that I also have seen other people talk about here) is Alexander Rybak who returned in 2018. I’m well aware that he didn’t win but he did win his semi-final and was, for a while, one of the favorites that year. And I don’t remember people campaigning against him for a whole week for that? I have seen some people talk about how his entry was fine since it was clear that he “didn’t even try to win and was just having fun”. I can’t find any source confirming this but I can find one interviewwith Loreen where she says that winning again wasn’t her main motivation for returning. And still, I see Loreen being accused of only caring about winning and being annoyingly “fake humble” (again, see 1).

Also, quite a few times in the past ten years, the televoting winner and the overall winner have not been the same. For example, the last time Sweden won, Måns only came third in the televoting category and this hate storm was mysteriously silent. Same thing 2016 and 2019, when Jamala/Duncan won in neither the televoting nor the jury votes but still won overall.

3. What is Eurovision about and who is it for?

Finland’s entry this year (and most years to be fair) is funnier than Sweden’s. Tattoo is not meant to be a funny song and Sweden generally sends more “normal” (or boring, if you prefer that word) pop songs rather than the more colorful, camp songs that most of us fans have come to associate with Eurovision. Do I think Esc would be more fun if we actually tried to send songs like that? Yeah, I do. I’d love for that to be a thing. Unfortunately, as esc works right now, it’s not the most “effective” thing to do if you want to win. As boring as it is, the more “normal” pop songs generally perform better than the more camp/crazy/creative ones.

We also need to remember that most of the 200 million viewers aren’t us. They are not live-blogging the whole show on Tumblr. They causally follow the show, most of them probably watching only the final. To call Tattoo “jury bait” is fine, cause it’s 100% true. To call it “normie bait” is less so. It implies that those more casual viewers (who might prefer music similar to “normal” pop rather than “classic esc camp”) don’t have the same right to an opinion as the “true esc fan” (whoever that might be). It also brings us to the question of how to identify that true fan. OGAE (the network of esc fan clubs) perhaps, who organizes the OGAE fan poll each year? But since Loreen won that one this year, I’m guessing that’s not a solution that’s good either.

Yes, Käärijä won the public vote (with quite a big margin) but Loreen came in second place and to act like everyone who voted for her doesn’t deserve to have an opinion is trying to silence quite a lot of people.

4. Was Eurovision rigged?

You all do realize that some of you sound a bit crazy, right? We clearly did not bribe the jury nor (do I believe at least) was this whole thing planned before the competition began. At best (if you want a conspiracy), Melfest (Sweden’s national competition) was rigged so that a “good artist” (in this case Loreen) would win with a very ESC-friendly song so that Sweden could have the highest chance possible of winning. Do I think this was the case? No. I don’t have any proof that our television network didn’t plan this. At the same time, no one else has any proof that they did.

5. So what now?

Loreen played by the rules and won. You are allowed to think the rules (the jury) suck (I can assure you that several Swedes hate the international jury we have at our Melfest each year). Should the rules change? I’m open to that. The rules have changed many times before and it might be high time for another change. There’s certainly much to gain in terms of goodwill by removing the jury right now. Also, kick out Israel while you’re at it. The fact that they’re still allowed to compete is disgusting.

TLDR; If you want to criticize Loreen (or anyone else), do it without being racist or misogynistic. Remember that former winners have been back before and that other entries than the televoting winner have won before. Realize that we Tumblre fans might not be the typical esc viewer. I personally don’t see how esc could have been rigged for Sweden to win and I do believe Loreen (and Sweden) played 100% by the rules, but I can agree that if those rules cause this much outrage, they might be due for a change.

#esc23 #eurovision

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mightyflamethrower · 8 months

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Updated at 1:58 p.m. ET on August 14, 2023

In 2008, when I was a writer for the blog Feministe, commenters began requesting warnings at the top of posts discussing distressing topics, most commonly sexual assault. Violence is, unfortunately and inevitably, central to feminist writing. Rape, domestic violence, racist violence, misogyny—these events indelibly shape women’s lives, whether we experience them directly or adjust our behavior in fear of them.

Back then, I was convinced that such warnings were sometimes necessary to convey the seriousness of the topics at hand (the term deeply problematic appears a mortifying number of times under my byline). Even so, I chafed at the demands to add ever more trigger warnings, especially when the headline already made clear what the post was about. But warnings were becoming the norm in online feminist spaces, and four words at the top of a post—“Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault”—seemed like an easy accommodation to make for the sake of our community’s well-being. We thought we were making the world just a little bit better. It didn’t occur to me until much later that we might have been part of the problem.

The warnings quickly multiplied. When I wrote that a piece of conservative legislation was “so awful it made me want to throw up,” one commenter asked for an eating-disorder trigger warning. When I posted a link to a funny BuzzFeed photo compilation, a commenter said it needed a trigger warning because the pictures of cats attacking dogs looked like domestic violence. Sometimes I rolled my eyes; sometimes I responded, telling people to get a grip. Still, I told myself that the general principle—warn people before presenting material that might upset them—was a good one.

Trigger warnings migrated from feminist websites and blogs to college campuses and progressive groups. Often, they seemed more about emphasizing the upsetting nature of certain topics than about accommodating people who had experienced traumatic events. By 2013, they had become so pervasive—and so controversial—that Slate declared it “The Year of the Trigger Warning.”

The issue only got more complicated from there. Around 2016, Richard Friedman, who ran the student mental-health program at Cornell for 22 years, started seeing the number of people seeking help each year increase by 10 or 15 percent. “Not just that,” he told me, “but the way young people were talking about upsetting events changed.” He described “this sense of being harmed by things that were unfamiliar and uncomfortable. The language that was being used seemed inflated relative to the actual harm that could be done. I mean, I was surprised—people were very upset about things that we would never have thought would be dangerous.” Some students, for instance, complained about lecturers who’d made comments they disliked, or teachers whose beliefs contradicted their personal values.

Read: The real problem with trigger warnings

To a certain degree, Friedman said, this represented a positive change. Mental illness was becoming less stigmatized than ever before, and seeking care was more common. But Friedman worried that students also saw themselves as fragile, and seemed to believe that coming into contact with offensive or challenging information was psychologically detrimental. In asking for more robust warnings about potentially upsetting classroom material, the students seemed to be saying: This could hurt us, and this institution owes us protection from distress.

Have we inadvertently raised a generation that has fewer tools to manage hardship?

Trigger warnings were only one part of a larger shift. Complaints quickly entered the wider culture, and were applied to “toxic” workplaces and “problematic” colleagues; students decried the “potential trauma” caused by ideas and objected to the presence of some speakers and works of art.

My own doubts about all of this came, ironically, from reporting on trauma. I’ve interviewed women around the world about the worst things human beings do to one another. I started to notice a concerning dissonance between what researchers understand about trauma and resilience, and the ways in which the concepts were being wielded in progressive institutions. And I began to question my own role in all of it.

Feminist writers were trying to make our little corner of the internet a gentler place, while also giving appropriate recognition to appallingly common female experiences that had been pushed into the shadows. To some extent, those efforts worked. But as the mental health of adolescent girls and college students crumbles, and as activist organizations, including feminist ones, find themselves repeatedly embroiled in internecine debates over power and language, a question nags: In giving greater weight to claims of individual hurt and victimization, have we inadvertently raised a generation that has fewer tools to manage hardship and transform adversity into agency?

since my days as a feminist blogger, mental health among teenagers has plummeted. From 2007 to 2019, the suicide rate for children ages 10 to 14 tripled; for girls in that age group, it nearly quadrupled. A 2021 CDC report found that 57 percent of female high-school students reported “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” up from 36 percent in 2011. Though the pandemic undoubtedly contributed to a crash in adolescent mental health, the downturn began well before COVID hit.

Teenage girls report troublingly high rates of sexual violence and bullying, as well as concern for their own physical safety at school. But it’s not clear that their material circumstances have taken a plunge steep enough to explain their mental-health decline. The CDC study suggests that, over the past decade, bullying among high schoolers has actually decreased in certain respects. Today’s teenagers are also less likely to drink or use illicit drugs than they were 10 years ago. And even before pandemic-relief funds slashed the child-poverty rate, the percentage of children living in poverty fell precipitously after 2012. American public high schoolers are more likely to graduate than at any other time in our country’s history, and girls are significantly more likely to graduate than boys.

Jonathan Haidt: The dangerous experiment on teen girls

So what has changed for the worse for teenage girls since roughly 2010? The forces behind their deteriorating mental health are opaque and complex, but one big shift has been a decline in the time teenagers spend with their friends in person, dipping by 11 hours a week—a decline that began before the pandemic, but was badly exacerbated by it. Since 2014, the proportion of teens with smartphones has risen by 22 percent, and the proportion who say they use the internet “almost constantly” has doubled. Part of the issue may be a social-media ecosystem that lets teens live within a bubble of like-minded peers and tends to privilege the loudest, most aggrieved voices; this kind of insularity can encourage teenagers to understand distressing experiences as traumatizing. “I think it’s easier for them to artificially curate environments that are comfortable,” Shaili Jain, a physician and PTSD specialist, told me. “And I think that is backfiring. Because then when they’re in a situation where they’re not comfortable, it feels really alarming to them.”

Applying the language of trauma to an event changes the way we process it. That may be a good thing, allowing a person to face a moment that truly cleaved their life into a before and an after, and to seek help and begin healing. Or it may amplify feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, elevating those feelings above a sense of competence and control.

“We have this saying in the mental-health world: ‘Perception is reality,’ ” Jain said. “So if someone is adamant that they felt something was traumatizing, that is their reality, and there’s probably going to be mental-health consequences of that.”

Martin Seligman, the director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent the past 50 years researching resilience. One study he co-authored looked at the U.S. Army, to see if there was a way to predict PTSD. Unsurprisingly, he and his fellow researchers found a link to the severity of the combat to which soldiers were exposed. But the preexisting disposition that soldiers brought to their battlefield experiences also mattered. “If you’re a catastrophizer, in the worst 10 or 20 percent, you’re more than three times as likely to come down with PTSD if you face severe combat,” Seligman told me. “And this is true at every level of severity of combat—the percentage goes down, but it’s still about twice as high, even with mild combat or no obvious combat.”

In other words, a person’s sense of themselves as either capable of persevering through hardship or unable to manage it can be self-fulfilling. “To the extent we overcome and cope with the adversities and traumas in our life, we develop more mastery, more resilience, more ability to fend off bad events in the future,” Seligman told me. “But conversely, to the extent that we have an ideology or a belief that when traumatic events occur, we are the helpless victims of them—that feeds on itself.”

Seligman also found that some soldiers who experienced severe trauma could not only survive, but actually turn their suffering into a source of strength. “About as many people who showed PTSD showed something called post-traumatic growth, which means they have an awful time during the event, but a year later they’re stronger physically and psychologically than they were to begin with,” he said. But that empowering message has yet to take hold in society.

so what would be a more productive way to approach adversity? Friedman, the former medical director of the Cornell mental-health program, compares building resilience to physical exercise. “It’s like any form of strength training,” he told me. “People have no hesitation about going to the gym and suffering, you know, muscle pain in the service of being stronger and looking a way that they want to look. And they wake up the next day and they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s so painful. I’m so achy.’ That’s not traumatic. And yet when you bring that to the emotional world, it’s suddenly very adverse.”

The problem is that this idea—that to develop resilience, we must tough out hard situations—places a heavier burden on some people than others. Friedman pointed out that people who grew up under constant stress, perhaps owing to abuse, poverty, or food insecurity, may find that this stress is “erosive” to their ability to use those resilience muscles. The exercise metaphor rankled Michael Ungar, the director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Canada. “Chronic exposure to a stressor like racism, misogyny, being constantly stigmatized or excluded, ableism—all of those factors do wear us down; they make us more susceptible to feelings that will be very overwhelming,” he told me. There are, after all, only so many times a person can convince themselves that they can persevere when it feels like everyone around them is telling them the opposite.Creating the conditions where resilience is possible is as much a collective responsibility as an individual one.

Tyffani Monford Dent, a clinical psychologist and an author whose work focuses on sexual violence and racial trauma, calls this “the resiliency trap.” Black women in particular, she told me, have long been praised for their toughness and perseverance, but individual resiliency can’t solve structural problems. From Dent’s perspective, young people aren’t rejecting the concept of inner strength; they are rejecting the demand that they navigate systemic injustice with individual grit alone. When they talk about harm and trauma, they aren’t exhibiting weakness; they’re saying, Yes, I am vulnerable, and that’s human. These days, patients are being more “transparent about what they need to feel comfortable, to feel safe, to feel valued in this world,” she said. “Is that a bad thing?”

Most of the experts I spoke with were careful to distinguish between an individual student asking a professor for a specific accommodation to help them manage a past trauma, and a cultural inclination to avoid challenging or upsetting situations entirely. Thriving requires working through discomfort and hardship. But creating the conditions where that kind of resilience is possible is as much a collective responsibility as an individual one.

if we want to replace our culture of trauma with a culture of resilience, we’ll have to relearn how to support one another—something we’ve lost as our society has moved toward viewing “wellness” as an individual pursuit, a state of mind accessed via self-work. Retreating inward, and tying our identities to all of the ways in which we’ve been hurt, may actually make our inner worlds harder places to inhabit.

“If everything is traumatic and we have no capacity to cope with these moments, what does that say about our capacity to cope when something more extreme happens?” Ungar said. “Resilience is partly about putting in place the resources for the next stressor.” Those resources have to be both internal and external. Social change is necessary if we want to improve well-being, but social change becomes possible only if our movements are made up of people who believe that the adversities they have faced are surmountable, that injustice does not have to be permanent, that the world can change for the better, and that they have the ability to make that change.

To help people build resilience, we need to provide material aid to meet basic needs. We need to repair broken community ties so fewer among us feel like they’re struggling alone. And we need to encourage the cultivation of a sense of purpose beyond the self. We also know what stands in the way of resilience: avoiding difficult ideas and imperfect people, catastrophizing, isolating ourselves inside our own heads.

In my interviews with women who have experienced sexual violence, I try not to put the traumatic event at the center of our conversations. My aim instead is to learn as much as I can about them as people—their families, their work, their interests, what makes them happy, and where they feel the most themselves. And I always end our conversations by asking them to reflect on how far they’ve come, and what they are proudest of.

That last question often elicits a powerful response. I started asking it because I hoped to let the women I met feel seen in full, beyond the worst things that had happened to them.

There was a time when personal strength was the quiver that held an arsenal of virtues required for our success in life. These days there is no quiver and there are no virtues. I've seen too many videos of girls reduce to tears over what they call microaggressions. The proper response to a micro aggression is micro annoyance not emotional collapse.

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onbearfeet · 1 year

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The punch-Nazis posts always make me think of the time I started a riot in the third grade and the fact that I will never be sorry about it.

I have some recent Jewish heritage, but I was raised by and among white evangelicals. This put me in a weird position as a little girl with a long nose, deep-set hazel eyes, and dark, wavy-curly hair. In most situations, I read as just another white kid ... but anyone who was LOOKING for Jewish people would pick me out of a crowd quickly. (For proof of this, see my college's Chabad chapter and also every racist I've ever met.)

My grandfather on the non-Jewish side seemed more aware of this than most people, maybe because he was a WW2 vet. So one day when I was 8 or 9 years old, he sat me down with a book full of photos and explained to me what the Holocaust was. He told me that he needed me to do something for him: it would be my job to remember all this stuff for him, so that someday, when I was all grown up and people tried to tell me this hadn't happened, I could fight back even when he wasn't there to do it anymore. I was a very serious little kid and Grandpa didn't ask for much, so I agreed.

Not long after that, I was attending third grade at my not-NOT-a-segregation-academy Christian school when the PE teacher showed up to take us all to PE class. We dutifully lined up in the hallway, and as we started to follow the coach outside, he told us he had invented a fun new game called Concentration Camp.

Thanks to Grandpa, I was the only kid in the third grade who knew what those words meant.

To the credit of third-grade me, I didn't panic. I realized immediately that I had to run for my life, also realized that I couldn't just leave everyone else to die just because they had less useful grandpas than I did, and decided to save who I could. I grabbed the nearest non-white kid, rapidly whispered an explanation of what a concentration camp was, and tried to pull her away from the line of kids with me.

Unfortunately, I had overestimated my fellow third-grader. Instead of running, she stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and SCREAMED.

Even worse, she SCREAMED WHAT I HAD TOLD HER.

Other kids panicked. More screaming. Pandemonium erupted. We had made it halfway up the hallway, but we were still close to our classroom, so our third-grade teacher heard the blooming riot and came out to find out what the hell. She was about Grandpa's age, so when she heard the words "concentration camp" and saw the guilty look on the PE coach's face, she started tearing him a new orifice the way only an elderly church lady can do.

It turned out that Concentration Camp, the new game, was a modified form of dodgeball. The PE teacher had thought it would be funny to name a game after something no kid in a mostly white Christian elementary school in the 90s would know about. He hadn't counted on Granddad, or me.

My mother was called, and I got in a little trouble, but once my teacher realized I had genuinely thought people were going to die and had tried to save the nearest child rather than just running like hell, she stepped in with her church-lady voice and I was quietly let off the hook, except for a note in my office file that probably said something like "incorrigible shit-disturber".

I think about that incident whenever someone brings up the should-we-punch-Nazis thing. Maybe if more people agreed that Nazis deserved punching, that idiot PE teacher would have named his idiot dodgeball variant something else and I wouldn't have briefly convinced 24 third-graders that we were all about to be murdered.

Anyway, punch Nazis. Unless you're too short to reach them, in which case start a riot.

#punch nazis #antifascism #tiny troublemaker #grandpa was awesome though #he picked his youngest and scrappiest grandchild and gave her a MISSION #i have tried not to let him down #though I sometimes wonder if he knew what he was doing #i suspect he did #that third-grade teacher was great too #i kept in touch and ended up attending her funeral 15 years later #the place was packed with her former students #live a life that will fill your funeral with people whose lives you improved

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catsnuggler · 9 months

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It's funny, in a sad way.

I was raised in a religion that is inherently antisemitic; colonialist; has historically been anti-black racist, and, I've heard, still has some anti-black racist beliefs espoused in certain corners; nationalist, but especially American exceptionalist.

I left that religion, years ago, for a religion whose principles are much more radical, and much less reactionary, but which is largely inhabited by reactionaries who fundamentally misunderstand said principles; who rely on Nazi propaganda to attempt to understand the faith, ultimately failing in the process; but, regardless of how incorrect they are, they, unfortunately, form a sizeable, formidable cohort. The ones who aren't fascists tend to be liberals, though, rather than radicals, although there are other radicals, thankfully, some of whom I have had the fortune to make the acquaintance of.

Still, animism and ancestor veneration will always haunt me. It would be much simpler if I was just some random Norwegian, but, no, no, I'm a white American of English, Ulster Scots, and German (including Prussian) ancestry. I was born an invader, a descendant of invaders. I oppose invasion, so I don't worship those ancestors; I've been told I can venerate people I don't actually descend from, but... I barely feel kinship with living people, honestly; and my moral and political objection to invasion does not erase said invasion, and make me, and whatever harm I have done to this land from my existence alone, square with it.

To be blunt, I sometimes doubt whether I should even be worshiping the Norse gods here. I remember having driven through a fierce thunderstorm in Utah, years ago. It was so terrifying, it reminded me of stories of Thor battling the Jötnar. I praised Thor, in fear and wicked, mad laughter - but this was in Utah. Can I really say it was Thor? Is that not a denial of whatever local gods run the thunder there? I claim to be a polytheist. I say I believe there are far more gods than just the ones I worship. But then I attribute some thunderstorm in Utah to Thor, denying the existence or validity of local gods. That isn't right. It isn't square with either my religious beliefs of hard polytheism, or my moral beliefs of recognizing other religions, including Indigenous religions, as valid. In that respect, what difference is there between me and a Mormon missionary, if we both deny other people's gods?

Little wonder that I have lived mostly like an atheist for years. I still wear my hammer pendant. I still kiss it, to show I haven't completely forgotten the gods; I still love them; I still believe in them, and wish I could properly worship them. Yet I rarely pray, and only shortly, for this or that favor I won't repay anytime soon.

Yes, I know I'm posting to my main. I don't give a shit anymore, or at least, I'm saying that in a vain attempt to shield myself from how much this weighs me down.

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gerogerigaogaigar · 1 year

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Merle Haggard - Down Every Road 1962-1994

I've spent four consecutive hours on Merle Haggard now. This is basically the mans entire career it's a lot to take in and I just don't understand why there are so many compilations on this list. Early Merle Haggard is great, some of the singing cowboy croon but with a bit of edge, and stark lyrics about his real life growing up at the end of the depression, living as a vagrant and being in and out of jail. It's the original outlaw country and it's fantastic. Unfortunately Haggard had a major hit with the song Okee From Muskogee, a conservative anti hippie pro Vietnam war anthem. The question of whether he meant the song as satire or not is a debate that ultimately does not matter because, while a lot of left wingers including Phil Ochs found the song funny, it still became a republican anthem that got Haggard the attention of Nixon. The rest of his career is marked by a combination of reactionary politics and occasionally very interesting instrumentation. The inclusion of more and more elements of jazz, blues, and bluegrass throughout the 70s was neat, but he just fades back into blandness as his career rolls to a stop. I'll recommend this comp up until you hit Okee From Muskogee then just stop.

Donna Summer - Bad Girls

This isn't just Donna Summer's magnum opus, it's disco's as well. The combination of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder were unstoppable when it came to producing the best music in the world. This double album absolutely makes the most of its length bringing us extended disco grooves, a bit of rock influence and some soul numbers, plus Moroder's deliciously goopy synths. It's the most variety of any disco record I've listened to. Just listen to this one. Bad Girls my favorite disco album and prolly just one of my favorite albums period. This might be the first album that I think is exactly where it belongs on this list.

Frank Sinatra - In The Wee Small Hours

If you gotta get really dramatic about your divorce then this is the way to do it. I'm typically more a fan of swingin' Franky than crooning Franky but this album is so dramatic I gotta respect. The perfect collection of songs about love and loss are matched by Sinatra's overly syrupy voice and the amazing orchestral jazz arrangements of Nelson Riddle. Sometimes personal and sultry and other time large and dramatic. It's a fantastic collection of ballads from the great American songbook.

Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson

Harry Nilsson was an artist who didn't really ever find his audience, if there was ever one to find. His only hits being covers and the terribly racist Coconut which is unfortunately featured here. In the world of 70s adult contemporary there were two types of sound, folk rock and art pop. Nilsson is the latter with dynamic arrangement and a sense for rock flair. The music itself works really well most of the time, but lyrically he can't decide whether he wants to be somber and morose or deeply unserious and goofy. If you don't mind the whiplash then it's mostly enjoyable, but I can't reconcile a piece of shit like Coconut with a masterpiece like Jump Into The Fire.

50 Cent - Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

It is impossible for me to take 50 Cent's ridiculous persona seriously. Just cause he got shot doesn't make this any less an act of kayfabe. I cannot get into his stupid fucking bravado at all. I don't know why, I tolerate a lot of campy bullshit from all kinds of artists, but 50 Cent is apparently my limit. Every word out of his mouth is the most ridiculous claim you have ever heard, from the people he's killed, to his sexual prowess, to the level of respect he commands. Plus his integration of melodic elements into the beats and hooks are really lazy. His hard ass persona and sing song hooks are so at odds with each other. The production kinda blows too, but the inconsistency is less 50 Cents fault than the trend in hip hop at the time of having a different producer for every song.

Nirvana - MTV Unplugged In New York

This concert is a great snapshot of Nirvana at their peak. It is nearly devoid of hits. The most popular song they play is Come As You Are and the rest is deep cuts and covers. The covers are honestly the focal point of the album. The Vaselines Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam, David Bowie's Man Who Sold The World, three Meat Puppets songs in a row, and it closes on a version of the folk song Where Did You Sleep Last Night. The Bowie cover is probably the most famous, but my god does Cobain nail the vocal delivery on Lake Of Fire and Where Did You Sleep Last Night especially. There may not be any cryptic suicide note to uncover here, but you can tell he was a tortured soul.

Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy

I like Zeppelin best when they are experimenting. Houses Of The Holy definitely sees them experimenting, although just fucking around might sometimes be more accurate. The album mostly consists of some of their best work. The Song Remains The Same, The Rain Song, and Over The Hills And Far Away are truly amazing. However we also have to contend with the mess that is D'yer Make'r, a pathetic attempt at a reggae song, and whatever the fuck The Crunge is supposed to be. It's only two shit songs, but on an eight song album that's a quarter of the runtime.

Alicia Keys - The Diary Of Alicia Keys

I can't in good conscience say that Alicia Keys is a bad musician, but if there was a factory default setting for neo soul singers it would be her. She never really reaches beyond the confines of 'I need a good man' balladry and she doesn't do it as well as most of her contemporaries.

Radiohead - The Bends

The entire Radiohead catalogue is a parade of angst ridden melancholy, but The Bends is more alt rock and more grounded than the rest. While the 90s were a hotbed of aimlessly dramatic alternative rock sad sacks, Radiohead brought this air of hopelessness that really just makes you feel bad. I don't think I'm selling this album very well. It's good, really good. Thom Yorke is very good at going from a whisper to a wail to a falsetto all in one verse, and Greenwoods guitars have an atmospheric quality that just drowns you. While their next couple albums would ramp up the quality and experimentation to unprecedented levels, The Bends still set the benchmark for quality in a Radiohead album.

#500 album gauntlet #merle haggard #donna summer #frank sinatra #harry nilsson #50 cent #nirvana #alicia keys #led zeppelin #radiohead

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cityoftheangelllls · 1 year

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How about Paulinchen (aka Harriet) for the ask meme?

Okey dokey!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Der Struwwelpeter is a German anthology of stories for children written by Heinrich Hoffmann in 1845; each of the tales concern children either misbehaving or not taking care of themselves, often with disastrous or gruesome consequences. Paulinchen/Pauline of "Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug/The Sad Tale of Pauline and the Matches" is absolutely no exception.

Favorite thing about them: The fact that she has talking pet cats! (Or at least that's what the story seems to communicate). I've always thought that was so neat and I wish that I had the ability to communicate with my pets or at least understand what they're saying.

Least favorite thing about them: I mean, not to say that pretty much all of the stories in Struwwelpeter aren't dark to some extent to get their cautionary theme across, but her story in particular is just so sad and disturbing. Even though she shouldn't have played with matches, she didn't deserve to burn until she was nothing but ashes. And this is coming from someone who gets nervous around fire and thinks that burning alive is one of the absolute worst ways to die.

Three things I have in common with them:

I'm very curious.

I have cats.

I have really long hair (something I have in common with the ways she's depicted in some of the illustrations)

Three things I don’t have in common with them:

I've never caught myself or something else on fire.

My cats can't talk.

I've never played with matches.

Favorite line: "Oh, what a pity! For, when they burn, it is so pretty; They crackle so, and spit, and flame; And Mamma often burns the same."

brOTP: Her and her cats, Minz and Maunz!

OTP: I am refraining from shipping this character with anyone as she is a child.

nOTP: Her and matches (haha, I'm SO funny)

Random Headcanon: I really like @suppenkasparcrazy 's rewrites of the tales in Struwwelpeter, as they are far less disturbing than the ordinal tales yet retain the cautionary aspects. In their version of "Pauline and the Matches", Pauline does still catch on fire after her mishap with the matches, but the flood of tears from her feline companions puts out the fire before anything disastrous can happen, and she still learns about the dangers of playing with matches. As I prefer to align with this version of events, I have a headcanon that Paulinchen avoided matches after the incident, to the point where she got nervous around fire, even the smallest of flames, as well as matches, of course.

Unpopular Opinion: Okay, this opinion may not be necessarily unpopular, per se, but, as I stated above, her fate was overly gruesome and, although she should have faced the consequences of engaging in something so risky in some way, she shouldn't have burned to death. To be fair, none of the children who were punished for their actions deserved to be punished in such outrageous ways (I initially thought that the racist kids who were dipped in ink were an exception, but then I remembered that they were only children and most likely learned their ways from the adults around them. Struwwelpeter really went above and beyond when pushing their cautionary agenda, and I'm wholly convinced that the purpose was to scare children into looking after themselves and listening to adults. As we have learned so much more about children over the past century and a half, such as how impressionable they are and how they should be taught about the consequences of their actions in ways that don't frighten them out of their wits, I believe that, if Struwwelpeter had been published today, the children in the stories would have survived and/or learned less deadly or emotionally scarring lessons about not misbehaving.

Song I associate with them: I unfortunately can't think of any at the moment. Unless it's "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys, but that would only be as a (vary dark) joke.

Favorite picture of them:

These particular illustrations for Struwwelpeter are my favorites, and this is my favorite depiction of Paulinchen. I love the arsenic green of her dress, her braids, her hair ribbons...it's so delightedly Victorian! And of course there's her cats trying to appeal to her.

(Should this be captioned " Disturbing Photos Taken Seconds Before Disaster"?)

#character ask game #struwwelpeter #paulinchen #pauline and the matches #der struwwelpeter #asks #character asks #my character asks #german literature

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