I'm a theorist at heart, so I'm going to postulate a reason for the vilification of Billy as a character relative to the other similarly aged men in the series.

Obviously many people within the harringrove and Billy fandom view him as potentially effeminate and perhaps less masculine than he is portrayed in the show. But within the context of the show, he is hyper-masculine and he is hated for it.

Casually in our society over the past twenty years or so, we have begun to vilify men as a reaction to the often pervasive issue of harassment, assault, and worse on women. This is a logical conclusion, but it has become watered down to simply hating masculine men and hating anyone who likes men. (IE, all bi girls like all girls and only some men- which is biphobic and untrue).

On the other hand, J0nathan and 3ddie look more feminine. 3ddie and Billy both have long hair, but 3ddie is thinner, wears layers, and is portrayed as more cowardly. These are very basic assumed traits of women in media, it's easy to latch onto that. And yes, it is reductive. I'm not passing judgement positively or negatively, it's just an observation. (A similar thing has happened with Luke Skywalker because by today's standards, he looks more androgynous or feminine, though he was masculine in the 80s)

St3ve is an interesting case- he is pretty masculine in S4, he's bulked up a bit, and attention is drawn to his hairy chest and physical prowess. But he wasn't always like that. In S1-S3, he was thinner, dressed in lighter colors, and looked more feminine (by today's standards). I think this somewhat contributes to him getting a pass.

I want to be clear, I'm not passing judgement on any of these characters for how they look. This is neither a negative nor positive observation and I recognize that these traits are reductive.

However, I think it's Billy's overt masculinity that contributes to how much he is hated. It's a product of casual derisive comments, along with all of the other reasons that others have already identified.

everyone should attempt an artisan craft at some point in their life because it would cut down the number of comments questioning why handmade goods like ceramics or textile craft or woodworking are so expensive

and this is an unrealistic expectation, but I think the attempt should include seeing through to the end at least one "finished" item, no matter how clumsy or lumpy your first attempts might be. like to me, there's a huge difference in perspective between attempting to learn how to crochet or throw a pot for a few days, acknowledging that it's harder than it looks and giving up, versus committing to finishing that scarf or clay pot you started and working on it for weeks while you painstakingly learn from your mistakes and grow attached to your project while also simultaneously hating it.

once you finish the latter, your perspective changes from "why does this crocheted blanket cost $200" to "holy shit I can't believe they're charging $200 for this crocheted blanket instead of $2000" because you may have known crocheting is hard, you may have easily agreed with the idea that "handmade goods take time and effort" even before attempting a craft, but now you know firsthand the absolute time sink it takes to make things. like yeah dude, that one item took you 2 months to make and probably wasn't even an ultra complex item if it was the first thing you made, now imagine attaching an hourly wage to that time to calculate the cost (and this is ignoring every nuance of the artistic element and master crafters being able to work faster/charge higher because of their years and years of experience)

anyway this rant has been motivated by a comment I saw on someone else's ceramic post asking why a mug was $60 and they understand it's handmade but $60 just seems overpriced, and bro do you know how long ceramics take to make. that mug probably took at minimum 3 weeks between how long it takes to throw the mug, dry partially, trim the mug, dry fully, bisque fire, wait a day for the kiln to cool, sand and paint and glaze, glaze fire, wait a day for the kiln to cool, take product photography of the mug, write description and list the mug online for sale, im not even including the skill needed to complete all these steps without the mug literally exploding or collapsing while also making it an appealing piece of art, aaaaaaaaaaaaa

He wonders what age he’s finally reached. The Time War used years as ammunition; at the Battle of Rodan’s Wedding alone, he’d aged to five million and then regressed to a mewling babe, merely from shrapnel. Now, the ache in his bones feels… one thousand years old? Well. Call it nine hundred. Sounds better.

In the same way RTD's 'Doctor Who and the Time War,' where the above quote is from, is a page from a novel that doesn't exist, this is a splash page from a comic that doesn't exist. Time War PTSD, much like the war itself, is multidimensional.

Now available as a print by popular demand!

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

despite, despite, despite!!

Yes, yes, Sanji letting Zoro help in the kitchen by letting him chop vegetables because he's good with pointy objects.

BUT. Have you considered?

They live in a world without most electrical appliances. A FUCKTON of physical labor goes into baking (and keep in mind how often Sanji bakes treats for the girls).

Sanji being tired (physically) and not feeling like taking 10 min to whip whipped cream. Being tired (mentally) of Zoro making fun of him for never working out. Sanji saying "fuck it" and just starts putting him to work.

The foccacia dough needs to be kneaded? "Have fun working a sticky mess for 20 minutes, asshole"

Need meringue? "No, STIFF peaks marimo. Don't tell me you're wimping out already"

"Are you even TRYING to flatten that steak Marimo?"

"Yes, it needs whipped cream. YES, I know you just made some yesterday. We need more"

Zoro's shoulders are burning but he's trying SO HARD not to lose face with the cook and meanwhile Sanji is silently losing it at Zoro's shock that cooking can in fact be a workout

Well, I guess you didn't have much of a choice either

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

thinking about wolfwood (ID in alt text)

Etho being the wool man, think i've seen it before somewhere

big problem with the perimeter covering videos is that they restart my "dig a big hole" disease. like i had plans. i have builds i wanna make. i also should be asleep. instead im selecting the perfect chunks to build a hole straight to bedrock. in my hardcore world. i am sure this will have 0 consequences.

id fumble him so bad

They call me the engineer the way I just built that robot !!!!

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

no, but really, we need to talk about the casual objectification that has become the fallback discourse of the internet: if you're pretty and dressed nicely, you're a slut. and if you're even vaguely outside of their body standard, you're fucking disgusting.

too-frequently, people position sex workers as being "the problem". they sneer you're addicted to pornography, you don't know what a real woman looks like. but real women are in pornography. the real bodies on display are not the issue here: the issue is that other people feel extremely confident when commenting on someone's physique.

2000's super-thin is slowly worming its way back into the public ideal. recently i saw someone get told to "go for a run", despite the fact she was on the thinner side of average. not that it would ever be appropriate to say that: but it's kind of like sticker shock when you see it. people think that is fat? holy shit. do they just have no idea about things?

but what are you going to do about it? that's the problem, right. because chances are - you're a normal person. we can say normalize carrying fat on your body, but we are not the billion-dollar diet industry. we are not the billion-dollar fashion industry. we are just, like. people. who are trying to make content on the internet, without being treated shittily.

as someone who has been on both sides of things: you are treated better when you are thin and pretty. this is statistically correct. i am not saying that you cannot be bullied for being thin; i'm saying there are objective institutional biases against certain bodytypes. there are videos of men and women who lost weight all saying: i now know for a fact exactly how much worse you're treated. in the comments, some asshole inevitably says something akin to you deserved to be dehumanized when you were fat.

which means that ... the easiest thing to do is be pretty and thin. it is the path of least resistance, because of course it is, because any time you post a picture of yourself without a thigh gap, someone immediately comments something like you need to try a diet.

the other half is also dehumanizing though, huh, just in a different way. when i put on makeup and nice clothes, i am told i slept my way to the top as a professional. do you know how many women in STEM have told me they purposefully dress to "unimpress" because they already struggle to be taken seriously and if they're ever considered pretty - it for some reason takes away from their authority.

so they make it seem like it's your fault. you, existing in a body - it's your fault! if you didn't want shitty comments, don't have a body. they position us against each other like chess pieces; vying for male attention we don't even need.

and i can be an authority on this unless you think i'm fat and unattractive. when i am pretty and thin, i'm an activist. when i am just a normal person who makes a good point: i am immediately dismissed. nobody fucking believes you if you're not seen as attractive. you literally lose value. you cease to exist.

but the whole time, it feels like - is anyone actually grounded the fuck in reality? the line of "pretty and thin" keeps shifting. nobody seems to understand what "a normal weight" even looks like, because it's not something that exists - you cannot tell a person's health by looking at their body. even if you think you could tell that, even if you're sure a person is dangerously overweight - people are not your dolls. they do not need to be dressed up or displayed properly to soothe your aesthetics. you aren't concerned for them, you're stealing their agency. you don't get to say if they're "allowed" to take pictures and post them on the internet - you don't get to tell them how to exist.

people hide behind "the obesity epidemic" without any actual qualifications. they crow things about "normalizing unhealthiness".

but it's bullshit. i have visible abs. there is a pair of parallel lines on my body, even when i'm relaxed; where my obliques meet my abdominal wall. i am proud of this because it means i'm strong, because i overcame an eating disorder only to be ripped as fuck. it is genetic and physical luck that i even get any definition, i'm pleased as punch.

but it does mean that my abdominal wall sticks out a little bit. the other day i posted a video of myself dancing, and, for a moment, my shirt slipped. you could see a little bit of my stomach. i was cartwheeling to the floor. moments before this, i'd had my foot over my head.

a guy slid into my DMs. a row of vomiting emojis prefaced: you should really lose some weight before you think about dancing.

i stared at it for a long time. there was a time when i would have been triggered by this, where it would have encouraged me to starve myself. i would have ignored the fact i'm flexible, agile, good at jumping: i would have lost the weight for a stranger's passing comment. i would have found myself and my body fucking disgusting.

and for what? to please what? because why? so that he can exist in this world without an unchallenged eyeball? what would my self-hatred even accomplish? usually i write paragraphs. obviously. on this particular occasion, in this body i've been at war with for ages: i just felt exhausted.

it shouldn't be even worth saying. it shouldn't be hard to explain. all of this emotional turmoil when he cannot even comprehend the most basic truth: i am not an object on display for him.