What if Kaguya's moon exile had been a bit different...

The crowd still singing the mattress line. I knew this would happen lmaoo

Hey, you all realize that the point of Watching and Dreaming wasn't "some crimes are so terrible that there is no point in giving the perpetrators opportunity to learn and make up for them," right? That it wasn't "violent bigots and abusive parents are automatically disqualified from redemption because to show them improving would be to sympathize with those crimes," right?

Like, you all watched the show where Caleb and Alador and frankly even Gwendolyn were paralleled with the worst of the worst villains, but actually tried to do better and succeeded, right? You all got that Belos had to die because he refused every opportunity to learn and work to correct his actions, right? You get that redemption doesn't necessarily mean being accepted back into the lives of people you hurt, but ultimately just means putting in the work to change, and that the refusal to change is the sole trait that really makes a villain "irredeemable," right?

You all got that the Collector is a direct character foil to Philip, as a lonely kid who grew up in an (allegorical) manipulative and intolerant community, and ended up hurting people as a result, but became the opposite of Philip by actually choosing to listen and mature at almost every opportunity? You get why "kindness and forgiveness don't always work, but are still no less important" was just as much the thesis of this episode as "yes, sometimes you do just have to kill a fascist" was, right?

(You remember that the first episode of this show was a highly metaphorical critique, but an unapologetic critique nonetheless, of the prison and justice system, right?)

the reason our democracy works is not because of a handful of wealthy land holders and colonizers. our democracy works because in the midst of this lovecraft country of ours that is drowning and burning under the white gaze of jim & jane crow, there are everyday folks in political and communal spaces building bridges, planting gardens, and defending human rights for all, not just for a few, and certainly not just for one badly dressed, angry faced orange.

"The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims."

--Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery

I'm never going to forget this btw. It's on Ang to decide if they deserve forgiveness or not, but since they show no remorse for their actions: I doubt they do. I've been talking about this situation for years. At the very least people in the industry should be warned that Holly Disch and Jay Goldstein were happy to get a human being killed over cartoons.

i also mainly think it's interesting that tim's robin series is conceptualized as far more conservative today than it actually was at the time (because of dixon's eventual descent into the uberconservative) because of the drug psas, the gun psas, the pregnancy arc, the hard on crime aspects when in actuality all that was...actually pretty bipartisan for the time. and despite the fact that i find his current politics horrid, when i look at tim's robin series alongside others 90s media i don't think dixon was lying that he was trying to keep it & tim as neutral as possible based on the standards of the time. those things we look back at are conservative by today's standards, but society & culture itself used to be more conservative across the board. like chuck dixon, a republican, pitched those stories. dennis o'neil, a liberal, okayed those stories.

also i think it's a little funny that tim gets the reputation of being dixon's mouthpiece when he was acting fairly standard for 90s media when steph was the one who was *actually* spouting off actual conservative talking points of the era & was basically his mouthpiece because he had more freedom and wiggle room with her as a side character instead of the restrictions of acceptability with a main character.

I think if I were really going to insert Harrow into the Ace Attorney setting tho, she'd be a defense attorney. One with an even more extreme philosophy than any in the game so far. She specialises in sentencing trials and plea bargains, representing guilty clients.

She knows that the falsely accused aren't the only ones who need someone in their corner when it feels like the world has turned its back. She learned that a long time ago, from a childhood.... friend. Someone she owes more than she could ever possibly repay, who believed in her and forgave her even when they both knew she didn't deserve it.

can i just say. what has been done to ADHD people trying to get their fucking meds in the USA the last year is criminal and people should go to prison for it. or maybe out in the stocks in the street next to some big barrels of rotten eggs. fuck the DEA, fuck the US healthcare system, fuck ableists and fuck people who are more terrified of potential drug abuse than actual real present and ongoing suffering

Quick color study 🎃

Digital illustration using black, purple and orange depicting a fem witch flying on a broomstick. She has a purple hat, black dress and striped socked with Pom Pom shoes. Text reads, ‘hex the prison industrial complex’

Anyone who excludes paraphiles from anarchism is not punk. If you police people's attractions and identity, your being authoritarian and you need to kill the cop in your head. Equating attractions and "thought crimes" to actual abuse is promoting fascist rhetoric.

No one is inherently harmful for existing. Being a paraphile does not equate to being a predator and saying so is being anti self-governance (saying people are unfit to govern themselves is an authoritarian talking point). That is a myth created by conservative groomer panic which sadly ignores the needs of grooming victims. Rather than demonizing and policing paraphilias, we should be creating open honest dialogue and adressing people's needs.

Being punk means imagining a radically transformed vision of justice for ALL people. If paraphiles are not considered or accounted for in a utopian future, it's still a dystopia. A radically transformed world includes paraphilias in comprehensive sex education and helps people establish healthy boundaries. We will still need an age of sexual and romantic consent in a transformed world, but using that to justify an oppressive state or forced institutionalization lacks imagination for alternative forms of self and peer governance and youth liberation.

Sure, it's ok to prevent abuse and harmful contact and to provide care for victims, but when you start condemning paraphiles for simply existing you are promoting systemic harm and oppression. Attractions and thoughts do not equate to actions. A transformed world helps both victims and abusers to recover and move on. No one is inherently irredeemable or needs to die for the sake of some twisted form of punitive justice.

We should be finding ways to to support paraphiles and reduce harm. Fascists think that the only way to prevent abuse is to censor and erase the existence of queer people and paraphiles, but to be punk is to accept people's lived realities and see people as they are rather than comparing them to some flawed ideal of a person that doesn't actually exist. There is no default identity and any attempt to define a "natural default human" has already been reduced to a false ideal construct that doesn't exist in reality. In the transhumanist sense, the lines between natural and artificial are basically arbitrary and made up. Normality is an illusion created to maintain the status quo.

Solarpunk Sunday Suggestion:

Educate yourself about the importance of peatland and mangrove ecosystems

Yeah it’s cool and all that Lyanna Mormont and Wylla Manderly are such vocal Stark loyalists. But it’s actually quite important that they share names with two of the most important women in Jon Snow’s life: Lyanna Stark - his mother, and Wylla - his wetnurse and rumored mother in universe. Such stunning loyalty from these two girls who are named after women so important to Jon just tickles all the key parts of my brain. These are the women who gave him life. And it’s even more poignant when we realize that by ADWD, when the girls are declaring their loyalty, Jon is the KiTN who bears the name STARK per Robb’s decree.

Now I'm sitting and looking at the Willow Tail trend stirring up around here that I've apparently triggered by being a troublesome snitch

Feels like throwing a tiny fish in a dusky scary pool to watch a magnificent legendary monster emerging to swallow it

I am satisfied, Willow Tail deserves better than she got

It always seemed odd how they just made her up to be the bad guy seemingly out of nowhere

no worries, you'll never find that take, it was a local not-English-speaking social media

It's me, the DOTC mosasaur, lunging up out of my tank to devour all the bad takes that come from weirdo Clear Sky stans lmao

I LIKE the bunny bones plot. I think it was cool to let Willow Tail be doing something kind of sneaky, holding a grudge from the last book. I enjoy the way she still have love and concern for Moth Flight, while also having beef with Red Claw. Dynamics like this are interesting and what I want more of in these books.

But the writers treat it like a woman lying is the most evil sin they've ever heard of. So they let Clear Sky carve her face like a pumpkin, killing her slowly in a stomach turning way, all while their precious writer's pets keep all of their power and never have to confront the fact that THEY ESCALATED IT. AT EVERY TURN.

The woman who lied pays for it with a slow, agonizing death, while men who murder and abuse don't even have to squeak out a "sorry."

I'm deadass, Clear Sky is forced to make peace and he says, "It was a dumb fight." Like, oh ok? A dumb fight? Did it fall out of the sky, asshole? Or did you make a hostage out of a leader's daughter and only doctor because you blamed HER for killing that son you let die?

Awful. Justice for Willow Tail. The punishment for lying should not be DEATH BY EYE GOUGING.

can i be candid? the reason why i love geto so much is because he reminds me of a younger me. i had a phase where i thought like him, blaming a whole group of people for my trauma. i was hurt, i was angry, and i was misguided—i directed my energy towards things that would solve nothing, like petty vengeance and vitriol, a forever outlet to burn through the pain. but i grew. and i realized that that was not the root of the problem at all. i was, in a way, “saved.” i changed. and if i could change, like i’m sure many people also have, then he could’ve changed, too. he was “saveable.” there was and always has been hope. after all, the systems in place in the jujutsu world aren’t so different to the ones we have in ours.

i was collecting some transformative justice resources for one of our volunteers in our discord server so i figured i'd share some here too:

for more, check out the #clarification-center channel of our server! every day, links to novels, videos, articles, and more are dropped. and this is also the same channel folks asks their questions! even if it seems silly or you feel behind in your activist journey, we trust that every question comes from an authentic place of curiosity!

-- reaux (she/they)