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Legitimate Diversion

@legitimate-diversion / legitimate-diversion.tumblr.com

Evan. 29. He/him. Scenic designer in New York. No real focus. Background from The Illusionist (2010)
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unavoidable that you will be the villain in someone else's story. You will be painted in an unfavorable light. You will be the irredeemable one. and all of this will happen despite how nice you might usually be or how kind or how respectful or how warm. and you will just have to move on.

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orcboxer

Things that work in fiction but not real life

  • torture getting reliable information out of people
  • knocking someone out to harmlessly incapacitate them for like an hour
  • jumping into water from staggering heights and surviving the fall completely intact
  • calling the police to deescalate a situation
  • rafting your way off a desert island
  • correctly profiling total strangers based on vibes
  • effectively operating every computer by typing and nothing else
  • ripping an IV out of your arm without consequences
  • heterosexual cowboy

This post breaching containment has taught me that a lot of people seem to think they can accurately profile complete strangers. For the record, no the fuck you can't.

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txttletale

american gun culture literally has so many people convinced that the plot of Funny Games might happen to them at any time and the only way to prevent it is to vigorously defend their right to murder anybody who steps foot in their home

i keep posting "its bad to kill someone with a gun, even if they're stealing from you" and getting like a dozen responses of "yeah well what if someone broke into my house to Kill Me and they'd stop at nothing until i was dead would that be okay then?" and amiguitas i dont think thats very likely to happen to be honest

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max1461

This is what I keep talking about as "the logic of self defense". It's the same basic principle used to justify callout posts, "punching up" in a social justice context, a significant chunk of racism (in the US, mostly anti-black racism), hawkishness on the international stage, etc. etc.

"If (I judge that) there is any non-negligible probability that you will brutalize me, the right to self defense justifies me in using whatever means are available to brutalize you first, so that you don't do that."

Naturally, because it's fairly easy to construct a reason for yourself to believe that anyone you happen not to like has a non-negligible probability of brutalizing you, this line of reasoning will be widely utilized by people who just want to brutalize someone to begin with, for one reason or another. The idea that an arbitrarily harmful preemptive strike is justified by merely feeling under threat is widespread and, naturally, anathema to the goal of solidarity and friendship between all human kind.

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rosstmcd

Once upon a time I took a handgun course at a local gun shop, which was a bit of an odd experience since I was there because I like target shooting and everyone else was there for "self-defense."

But since that was what most people were there for, the instructor talked about defending your home. He said - and remember, this was a guy who worked at a gun store - that the current thinking among experts was that you should never go wandering around your house in the dark with a gun. Far too many bad things can happen.

What you do instead is that you designate a room in your house as a safe room. It might be your bedroom, or the bedroom of your youngest kid, or whatever. If that room doesn't have a lock on the door, install one. If you really want to go all-out, install a security door.

Then, if you wake up in the night and hear a suspicious noise, you quickly gather everyone into that room and lock the door. You can make this a family drill that you practice regularly, like you should be practicing evacuating in case of a fire and other emergencies.

Once you're in the room with the door locked, you can call 911 if it seems warranted. If you do have a gun, you can cover the door.

The advantages of this approach are:

If, as is most likely, the noise was your cat, or your teenager sneaking in after curfew, or your neighbor who came home drunk and mistook your house for his, then you will feel embarrassed instead of making a tragic mistake.

If it actually is someone breaking in, then it is very likely that they're just going to grab your TV or whatever and leave, in which case you and your family have stayed safe and you call your insurance agent in the morning.

In the extremely unlikely event that they are intruders who really do mean to harm you and start trying to break down the door, then you are in a much stronger tactical position then moving around your house in the dark. And your self-defense case, if it comes to that, will be on much stronger legal footing.

But really, the final scenario is so unlikely that the purpose of this procedure is 99% about keeping you from doing something you will deeply regret.

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sew-birb

This is a problem the writers of the Simpsons have had to deal with - the Simpsons are late 80s, early 90s poor. They have two clunker cars, they live in a house that's old-fashioned and has crappy furniture because they can't afford to redecorate. Their TV is ancient. Their neighbors have visibly better stuff than they do, and when they shop they have to buy the bargain brands.

But their lifestyle now seems wildly out of reach to most modern kids! They have two cars! A big three bedroom house! Only one of the parents has to work! They have 3 whole children who they can afford to feed and clothe on a single income! It's an impossible dream life for most people today.

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yahoonews

“Commander Vimes didn’t like the phrase ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’, believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’.”

–Terry Pratchett, Snuff

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toygirly
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chongoblog

Every so often, I remember that like 80% of Tumblr (myself included) was completely enraptured by a show where the big twist was that the main character forgot his childhood friend was murdered by his sister, and for some reason only remembers his childhood friend ever existing as a dog.

And in that same episode it’s revealed that the same sister…..like…..hypnotized (?) the main character’s arch rival into hating him by, like, staring at him for a few minutes.

In our collective defense, this is when we all decided “hey we should probably stop watching Sherlock”

Wait What?

series 3 of sherlock: john marries mary morstan off-camera, the show mocks all the fans who kept the hype up during a two year hiatus, mary turns out to be an assassin who shoots sherlock, during which time he has a near-death-experience dream about his dog redbeard who was put down. also there’s a weird scene where john is revealed to be attracted to danger and so he dated mary because he was subconsciously picking up the fact that she used to be an assassin. also the series ends with sherlock committing murder in front of witnesses to save john and mary.

christmas special: sherlock goes on a bender where he hallucinates a victorian-era case, the episode ends with moriarty seemingly returning via social media and mycroft making a cryptic reference to “the other one.” oh, also any consequences from sherlock committing murder are immediately negated.

series 4: HOO BOY.

episode 1: mary is killed due to her assassin past, but no one really cares since she’s only been in the show for all of four episodes. she keeps coming back as a recorded voice/hallucination.

episode 2: john goes to a new grief counseler. also he keeps hallucinating mary. sherlock is told to solve a murder by the murderer’s daughter, but it turns out that while the murderer has a daughter, it’s not the woman who gave him the case to solve! eurus, sherlock and mycroft’s sister, has simultaneously masqueraded as john’s grief counseler and the murderer’s daughter and a random woman who keeps following sherlock because she’s a master of disguise! (to be fair, this is a legitimately cool reveal and I genuinely didn’t see it coming)

episode 3: HOO. FUCKING. BOY. eurus is sherlock and mycroft’s sister who’s been in a prison for the criminally insane for decades. mycroft has withheld this knowledge from both sherlock and their parents by claiming she died in a fire she started. turns out she’s able to hypnotize people with ???? her superior intellect ???????? and so even talking to her makes people want to do things for her like commit murder ????????? and so she’s somehow able to do things like escape from her scary island prison and then take herself back, blow up baker street, kidnap multiple people, and then pull Saw-esque morality problems on Mycroft and Sherlock and John where she just murders people for funsies with no apparent motive. IT IS DURING THIS SEQUENCE THAT IT IS REVEALED THAT SHERLOCK HAD A HUMAN BEST FRIEND THAT EURUS MURDERED BUT REWROTE HIS OWN MEMORIES TO IMAGINE IT WAS A PET DOG WHO DIED.

Y’ALL. IT IS SO DUMB. IT IS SO DUMB THAT THE FANDOM GENUINELY HAD A CONSPIRACY THEORY GOING FOR A WHILE THAT THERE HAD TO BE A SECRET FOURTH EPISODE - OF A SHOW THAT ONLY EVER HAD THREE EPISODES PER SERIES - BECAUSE THERE WAS NO WAY THAT SOMETHING THAT BAD COULD BE THE FUCKING FINAL EPISODE.

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earhartsease

I am so grateful to this post for vindicating my decision never to watch s4

1. I wish I was you.

3. Everything in this post is real

NO

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