CW - mind-blowing lack of critical thinking skills, spider slander, etc.
what in the HOT HELL is this (blurring out the user cause I'm not here to start drama)
Bored??? the poor thing looks emotionally damaged.
he finally got rescued by the people who abandoned him for months, who he was willing to be tortured and die for, and he had to watch his brother die because of it. not only did he die, but he died in front of him, for him. spider and Lo'ak were the ones holding him up as he bled out (we can't see from the angle, but he also probably held pressure on the exit wound).
he saved his dad (which I won't be discussing why I don't blame him for that, cause I don't care enough) who cared for him more in a couple of months then the Sully's did for him in 16 years. he has no idea what he's supposed to do, what's expected of him. he feels out of place in what should be his family. he's never been included in family life with them and now he's at the funeral of his brother. the women who almost killed him literally 5 feet away.
he looks like he's dissociating, numb, cause I don't know, he's a kid who just want through a shit ton of traumatizing events back to back. he looks hesitant because he knows one wrong move, one ounce of perceived disrespect could get him killed.
he looks like a traumatized 16 years old reacting to his brothers death. cut him some slack. there is so much going through his head, he's just floating through the motions.
if you think he's being disrespectful, check yourself, cause that's genuinely terrifying.
“I hate the script, the vault dwellers sound so cheesy—“ my Brother in Steel you realize that’s the point, right? They were bred to act like the physical embodiment of an HR e-mail. Did you not catch the memo that Vault-Tec put out regarding their experiment facilities?
its funny because Percy has been spiraling ever since pjo and whenever he has a particularly bad episode you have other characters actively worried about it and you think to yourself surely they're going to intervene, surely someone is going to talk to him about it, and then like no one ever does lol
Fig: Hah! - Nobody ever expects an Archdevil rockstar to be nice.
Riz: … yeah. - 's just budget work tho. (the stuff I'm working on) - I've heard it's boring.
page 05
Fig: yeah, but you do it…
Riz: It keeps things going, right? - Nothing happens if nobody sits down and - does the thing.
Fig: That's right… - though. Yeah.
page 06
Fig: sometimes it's someone else who - doesn't want the same thing to happen.
Riz: … - mm.
page 07
Riz (off screen): …It took me a long time to get that not everyone likes doing what I do. - 's probably because you guys are so nice– - or. - kind.
Riz (off screen): to anyone too, not just. - the people you /love/.
page 08
Riz: that's not how it is elsewhere. - The world's– not. hostile. - but 's not like it's kind.
Riz: So I'm doing as much as I can now…
page 09
Fig: Hey.
Riz: ?
Fig: Go dig some dirt with me.
page 10
Riz: [blank speech bubble] - oh you meant like - actual dirt. (not incriminating information)
Fig: o yea.
Fig: there's clay in the backyard soil. - sometimes when I'm sun deficient or something I go touch dirt for a bit.
page 11
Fig: here u go
page 12
Riz: uh
Fig: now we make a thing! - 'm pretty good at freehanding a bowl.
Fig: I'll show u
page 13
Fig: just– yep, flatten that out as evenly as u can, then–! - actually ur nails'd be so good at cutting out the strip. [larger than usual space] wait. - wait. wait u can carve patterns with them! we HAVE to try
Riz: uh - What. do I carve?
Fig: anything!!!
page 14
Fig: and– yep just seal the inside uh. seam?
Fig: yep that works - okay time's up! all contestant hands up
i dont know how else to put this but to approach books (or any media, really) solely for the sake of relatability is genuinely incredibly heartbreaking......to have such little (or such unwilling) imaginative scope that you cannot stretch yourself, even marginally, in a different direction to what you’ve known or are used to knowing when the very POINT of stories is to transport you somewhere else, into someone else, so you can do just that........when fran lebowiz said a book “is supposed to be a door!” and george saunders said good prose “is like empathy training wheels” they were right!!! they were so so so SO absolutely entirely right!!!!!
I didn't get him (and I need to save my keys for Silver's birthday, sob) so I looked up his groovy, and I'm not over how incredibly dramatic and epic and cool it looks in direct contrast to the absolutely ridiculous context. just look at that dynamic action and his majestic sparkling tears and keep in mind that this is pretty much right after a bunch of characters have been dance battling for his soul.
and then even the actual moment of the groovy is just like
this is NOT a negative in the slightest, I love it all, this truly was an incredible update in so many ways
crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.
i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.
in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.
i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.
i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.
plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.
the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.
we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.
i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.
a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.
today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.
honestly i think a HUGE part of the issue is that most of the left doesn't really understand antisemitism
after wwii it became wildly Unpopular to be blatantly antisemitic. obviously, it still happened. but the result of this is that instead of antisemitism being studied as a historical and pervasive form of oppression that has been around for thousands of years & has many many precedents BEFORE the holocaust.... it became:
something just simply Rude to say or do. if you're a polite liberal/conservative or a leftist, it's just something that is socially unacceptable. there is no real weight to this.
something when FIRMLY believed is ONLY held by people like nazis and white supremacists. who, as we know, are The Enemy and none of us can ever be like them at all ever by the virtue of... not being them. no need to watch your own behaviors, bc you are not a nazi! only nazis could ever be Actually antisemitic
something that erupted out of the ground in germany in the early 20th century, culminated with the holocaust, and ended after. antisemitism did not exist before that and it was solved after when the saving grace of the united states and england liberated the jews from the nazis out of the goodness of their hearts
however absolutely none of this is true. antisemitism stretches back thousands of years and it has not, for the most part, been only "fringe" conspiracy theorists and white supremacists who perpetuate it
antisemitism has been, by and large, presented as very logical. throughout, again, the thousands of years of history of antisemitism, very regular people have been antisemites. and most of them had reasons they felt were perfectly logical and understandable and most of all just. jews were trying to kill their children, of course they hated them! jews were purposefully trying to keep them poor, of course they hated them! jews believed Wrong Things and were morally and spiritually corrupt, of course there was something wrong with them. jews betrayed their country, lost them a war that ended with their husbands and brothers and sons dead, and now were living among them and taking advantage of social benefits out of the goodness of the hearts of the german people, of COURSE they hated them! and the nazis themselves were backed up by science at the time. scientific racism was THE science at the time. charles darwin was a scientific racist. it was all very logical.
and did jews actually do these things? no. but these people saw enough proof that aligned well enough with their morals and their beliefs and their fears & so to them it was completely logical and justified. it wasn't a fringe theory that only an insane person would believe in, or something impolite. it was true to them. to their morals, to their fears, to their core beliefs. it was true.
and so now we see a LOT. a lot of leftists being dragged ass first into antisemitism. because they don't even think they CAN be antisemitic. THEY aren't nazis and THEY aren't white supremacists, of COURSE they aren't antisemitic. but... well. the jews are doing things that go against their morals. they're doing things that validate their fears. the jews are violating things that go against their core beliefs! so of COURSE it is LOGICAL that they should hate them. of course, it is still rude to say "the jews are evil" so it gets replaced with "zionist". (and before you ask yes i am anti-zionism and do deeply believe what israel is doing is unjust and cruel) but even that is slipping.
it is getting all the more popular to go that one step further and instead of just making posts like "spam the hanukkah tag because the Zionists need to learn what their religion stands for" that are blatantly just replacing "jews" with "zionists", they are logically moving to being mask off. if zionism is wrong and half the world's remaining jewish population lives in israel, what about the rest? aren't they suspect? would they not ALL commit atrocities if given the chance? aren't they all racist for believing they're an ethnicity? aren't they all complicit? aren't they all threatening our deeply held leftist beliefs? it's a little weird and everyone has been too quiet for too long bc it's been rude to say but now you can get 300k notes for posting blood libel so why would you keep quiet anymore?
why WOULDN'T you just say "thank god someone finally said it i was worried about stepping on toes" when someone makes a post full of antisemitic conspiracy theory. why WOULDN'T you say "i don't care if all of israel gets bombed and every single person dies after this lmfao they deserve it"? (which would wipe out, again, half the world's population of jews- many of whom living there are anti-zionist and actively protesting their government. or. you know. children.) why WOULDN'T you make posts about how jewish identity is just nazi aryanism? why wouldn't you make posts about how the jews are privileged in america bc they run hollywood and the economy? why WOULDN'T you say the star of david is a hate symbol to you now and that you mistrust anyone using it? or that you find anyone speaking hebrew suspect?
these are all perfectly logical. to you. and YOU are not a nazi or a white supremacist. so it can't be antisemitic.
Gojo Satoru stands far away from you, leaning against the opposing wall stiffly with hands in his pockets. His blindfold is down, a rare frown twisting his lips downwards. His hair is a mess, a clear indication of the utter frustration he’s in. Despite the distance, the tension between the two of you is palpable, suffocating.
He’s absolutely livid.
Deservedly so. You should have listened to him and stayed out of his fight but you didn’t. Now you have to simply stand there like a goddamn Special Grade Sorcerer and take whatever he’s about to throw at you.
Who knew a fight with a low level, shape-shifting curse would cause all of this.
You swallow the knot in your throat, preparing for a half-hearted apology. “I’m so—”
“You—” He straightens himself, finger pointed out in accusation, “—had one job. I asked you to stay out of my way— no, I ordered you to stay out of my way. And what the hell do you do? The absolute fucking opposite. Do you ever think before you act?”
Gojo’s eyes narrow deeper, the sharpness of the glare hitting you right in the chest and making you flinch. Ouch. “What makes you think you can make the rules? Have you forgotten that I outrank you? I—”
“Do not pull rank with me.” You snap. So much for just standing there and taking it. “You know damn well I am just as strong as you are.”
“Special Grace Sorcerer doesn’t mean that you’re the strongest.”
“Oh, you mean like Suguru?” Low blow, but the ripple of emotion against Gojo’s face is satisfying. It’s the same slack look he had twenty minutes earlier, when the curse morphed into the figure of his best friend.
“Don’t say his name. You don’t get to say his name.”
You can’t help the bitter laugh that bursts out of your lips. “You weren’t the only one friends with him, Satoru. And you froze. So, yeah, I’m fucking sorry for fighting your battle for you.”
“You were reckless and out of line.” His voice stays level, refusal of letting his anger get the best of him. The throbbing vein in his forehead says otherwise. “I have to pull rank if you choose to act like one of my students.”
Rage makes the vessels of your face pop. You try opening your mouth but nothing comes out, your face is too hot, too hurt.
Satoru keeps going. “I fight alone. This was my battle, and you are too stubborn to understand that. So why don’t you focus on your own missions so I can do mine?”
“Fine.” You shake your head before turning to leave. “Fight alone, stand alone, be fucking alone. My fault for thinking that you might not like to be by yourself all the time.”
You walk out the room, the thump of your own heart loud in your ears, leaving Satoru alone with his own shadow.
Losing my shit about this article in which a transphobic Tory was so busy panicking about existing in the vicinity of a Trans that she almost certainly misheard "jeans" as "penis" and decided that not only was this a problem with the other woman, but also that the world must be informed of this pressing danger.
"a trans woman! I had to stand directly behind her....I thought, 'this is going well', I'm handling The Situation fine'..."
translated: I saw a tall woman with broad shoulders. How would I get out of this alive? I thought. she has a PENIS. PENIS PENIS PENIS. through some force of PENIS I mean will I managed to PENIS behave normally towards her. My hands were PENIS PENIS PENIS shaking as I tried to dry them. summoning up all my PENIS courage I said 'dryer's crap innit'. she turned to me and said " yeah I'm just goiPENIS PENIS PENIS"
It's been a week and I'm still shaking. This proves trans women are the problem and I'm not weird. I'm fine. It's fine. If you think about it I'm the hero hePENIS!!!!!