@bettrdays / bettrdays.tumblr.com
thoughts on polyamory?
thanks for asking! first of all, I think love is weakness by another name and you should be killing everyone with your demon blade
the reading comprehension on this site is awful. the true power is in the demon blade. that's how it kills everyone.
Guys. I found him.
junji itō was so right when he said this
this too
junji ito was right about everything actually
*pretends to be shocked*@chirpsythismorning
a gay song was playing in the byler scene (tarzan boy)
literally the same lights (which was done on purpose)
remember that Mike parallels Jack
Man, this is hilarious. It's doesn't even qualify as similar; it's outright identical. There's no way this is an accident. They really dressed up the roller rink to look like a gay bar from Dawson's Creek. I heard the Duffers are fans of that show, but I didn't know it ran so deep. Then again, they've always been about the details in pretty much everything.
sucks that the party is supposed to be important n meaningful and yet [to me, it feels like] the duffers put more effort into scoops troop than them. sad sad sad i'm gonna walk off a cliff immediately
mask off 💀
it turns out i'm a little soft hippy centrist shitlib after all: i don't like it when civilians get killed. i am beholden to the idea that life is sacred, holy, and inviolable, that civilians are innocent no matter how much you do not like them. i am against cruelty—i have always been against it— and i believe that informs my understanding of the past and present: i am against the apartheid state and the blockade, i am against the ongoing carpet bombing of gaza. i will not cheer with you when dead bodies get dragged and spat on in the street, i do not think it is a moment of liberation when children get kidnapped and beaten. because i am against cruelty i do not celebrate shooting up 250 stupid concert goers. because of the principles i hold i don't like it when israel murders children, as it has done so in the last 48 hours, with the world's support. i do not support a government that kills over 200 innocents with impunity in retaliation. i do not understand what massacres justify which other massacres. it is barbaric to deny clean water and basic medicine to children; it is barbaric to shoot them, it is not a revolution. i don't like the kahanists and their state that led to this and i don't like hamas. i will not support the state of israel—i never have—and the impending invasion of gaza, instigated by two groups of fascist religious fundamentalists. i think cheering any part of this tragedy atrocious. but now i've gone and pulled a both-sides!
i want you to look at what's happening as a real act and not a media event where you pick the side that's convenient for your team. set aside the outrage, look at the people dying, and think of each life, that holds so much and is a miracle in itself. try to understand the immense tragedy of what it means for that to be cut short. do you not value life? does your value of life inform your politics? do you not support palestinians because you value life?
i’ve consistently posted about how opposed i am to violence targeting bystanders, the terror and bloodshed it achieves and nothing else. the history of the twentieth century, still unfolding around us, tells me that much. if you are celebrating, you are either an idiot, consumed by online politics, or you have lost some sense of humanity; look around—look carefully—and try to preserve it instead
If we consider powers as a means to present themes of sexuality, then looking at Will & El and how they mirror each other in narrative can reveal different angles on this topic and how the two sides of the coin come together to create a balanced whole.
Very very lengthy discussion of sex, sexuality, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse below the cut.
Sitting outside, smoking joints on my porch at 3 am listening to the summer turn to fall is really peaceful and satisfying.
Need this
to a child from the Victorian era this would be the equivalent of a watered down white claw
liquid yikes
Do not let the antishippers find the Got or House of the Dragon fandom cause they'll cry
Or Labyrinth, or Flowers in the Attic, or any one of Stephen King's books. It's almost as if the wider public understands that fiction can be both fucked up and entertaining without the need for a moral lesson following after, or that it's an indictment that you're going to partake in the things you read about.
Antis are so far removed from reality, and they have to remain that way in order to not have their beliefs constantly challenged and torn apart.
The focus should really be on people learning how to consume a wide range of media in a healthy way, and that includes being able to process feelings of disgust, rage, and discomfort in cases where the narrative absolutely is intending you to feel that way!
It feels like we're witnessing a lot of people now grow too comfortable with what they are familiar with that they project their inability to process negative feelings on others and blame the content itself.
For instance, I am aware that I cannot handle very explicit and violent scenes of SA, and had no warning when I first watched The Flowers of War movie. I remember being so affected, I was haunted by those scenes for days. But I don't condemn the movie for existing just because it contains a subject and content that makes me uncomfortable and upset. Especially for what was a war movie.
Ugly things deserve to exist. The critical focus should be on the execution and narrative intent, and even if those end up being bad, people are allowed to make bad things! People can suck at writing! They exist!
We cannot be wishy washy when it comes to creative freedom, especially when you try to commit what is "morally good" to paper under such a subjective perspective.
Multiple things can exists at once, and in this case it's also the fact people are getting too comfortable with the thought of normalizing certain topics and not in a media literacy type of way, but more of a
"Fiction doesn't equal reality!" Or more disturbingly "So long as they only do it behind close doors and doesn't effect me I don't see the problem"
No one has any issues with horror, or disturbing media, and before anyone says anything I say this as an English literature teacher who focuses on Post war literature so you can IMAGINE the things I have to teach and share understanding with
To word as simply and crudely as possible look below
And not to demonize, but if you are watching say Lolita, and rather than understanding that this is from the POV of a predator and has layer of layers to the story, and instead ingredients IDOLIZING and making this sad story out to be sexy, chic, or god forbid, romantic, then you need to stop and question why and see if you have any further issues adding to it
And as much as people hate to acknowledge this, authors DO infact need to be watched and criticized when needed. It's incredibly easy to make CP, romantic violence, bigotry, and hate filled works, and simply slap a genre label on it and then cry "THE ANTIS A RUNING EVERYTHING AND TRYING TO CANCEL ME 😭😭😭😭"
Splatterpunk ESPECIALLY has this issue and is happening with more frequency this last few years
To simply call someone an anti without even stopping to think why and to ignore the same critical thinking you demand others to use is sad at best and bitterly pathetic most of the time
Perhaps you're not getting the point of the original post, so I'm going to back up a bit. You may not have been in fandom spaces for long enough to know that "proshipping" is a term created by antis so they could carve out an "us vs. them" space in fandom.
Proshipping was the default. "Live and let live" was the motto most fans lived by, at least when I first got into fanfiction in the 90s. This is how I (and a lot of people) define it.
I know exactly why antis think they way they do. I was Mormon once. You don't get more pro-censorship, thought-policing than that. So, yes, I have years of personal history and critical thinking when it comes to considering the media I consume. Don't worry about me, I'm doing just fine.
What I worry about are young people growing up in this environment where fantasies aren't only considered sinful, they're considered harmful, and they're being told to purge them from their thoughts if they want to be a good person. I can't even begin to describe how harmful that is to children and adults alike.
Tl;dr: as someone who's been in a creative slump TWICE as a result of this, EXTREMELY harmful. Because it tells me that I'm a terrible person because because I like characters in danger, that essentially being mean to Sims negates my reaction to actual people suffering
I’ve said this multiple times on here, so some people who follow me will have heard this rant already, but:
My mom is a college professor whose special subject is media criticism and the effects of media on children. Therefore, my parents were extremely focused on moderating our media consumption. We had four TV channels and two of them were PBS. I have never in my life played a video game all the way through. I read the books my mom assigned to her students for fun (“Consuming Kids” was my favorite). My job as I got older was to screen stuff for content considered inappropriate for my younger siblings or other people’s kids. Even when we watched movies or TV or commercials, my parents would analyze them in front of us and encourage us to analyze them ourselves. What techniques are they using in this commercial to get you to buy it? What's the subtext in this scene? What message is this scene trying to convey?
So when I say that antis are Not Doing It Right, I’ve got textbooks and almost 30 years of lived experience backing me up.
There are three major problems with how antis approach media criticism.
#1: Ignoring the concept of individual analysis and multiple lenses.
A key concept in media criticism is that there is no one way to interpret a work. Certainly there's how the author might want you to interpret it, but part of communication (which is what media is) is the effect on the audience member. How I interpret a particular work is going to be influenced by my personal experiences; someone else may interpret the exact same thing differently.
And what you're specifically looking for in a work is also important. The point of analyzing something through different lenses – a queer lens, a feminist lens, a post-colonial lens, whatever – is to look at the same thing from different angles. And even then, two different people might have two different perspectives even within the same framework, looking for the same things. Consider the argument about whether specific Disney movies are feminist or not - they're looking at the same material, but coming to different conclusions based on their interpretation of it.
So you can't unequivocally say "this glorifies violence" or "this promotes misogyny" outside of very, very specific examples (I'm thinking about shit like The Turner Diaries, here). You can certainly make that as an argument, and back it up using evidence, but ultimately, that is your interpretation, not objective fact.
#2: Failing to understand what media criticism is trying to solve.
Whenever someone points out that fiction is not reality, someone always responds that it affects reality, and then will point to something like The Jaws Effect as an example of how media affects real-life things. I'm pretty sure that's what @sweetlavenderdarling is referencing.
Which: sure! I won't dispute that! The issue is failing to understand how and why media affects real-life things.
The first thing is that, barring a few exceptions, the majority of media's influence is in the aggregate. Watching one period drama with a majority-white cast is not going to make you think that all of European history only involves white people. What can make you think that the past was whites-only is if every single period drama you ever watch has an all-white or majority-white cast. Watching one action movie is not going to make you violent. What can make you violent is if the main way you see problems being handled is through violence (regardless of whether the tone is "this is a horrible thing but we have no choice" or "it's totally cool to murder people").
The second thing is that, just as we cannot claim our single opinion is objective fact, we can't claim a 1:1 cause-and-effect thing between "X is in media" and "person believes X," because different people can interpret the same thing differently. There's a difference between me watching, say, an Alex Jones broadcast vs. a longtime fan of Alex Jones listening to the same thing: I'm not going to become a conservative conspiracy theorist solely from listening to it because my perspective on it and preexisting beliefs are very different from those of than a true believer.
And we can actually see this in an example antis love to trot out: Finding Nemo. Antis love to pull out Finding Nemo as an example of people's behaviors changing (i.e. a spike in owning clownfish and blue tangs as pets) based on it being in a popular work. Here's the problem with that argument: the entire point of Finding Nemo is that keeping tropical fish as pets is a bad thing. THAT'S WHY THEY NEED TO FIND NEMO.
The scene where Nemo gets caught is treated like a human child getting dragged into a white van in front of their parents. Home aquariums are portrayed as jails where longtime residents go insane. The little girl with the braces is a terrifying eldritch murderer from the fish's perspective because she shakes them to death. Finding Nemo can't be more obvious in how it treats owning tropical fish as pets: it's not romanticized, and in fact is universally portrayed throughout the film as a very bad thing that no one should do.
And a shitload of people either didn't pick up that message or did but ignored it. Because there's no 1:1 transfer of message to audience.
#3: Failing to provide an actual solution/ignoring the next steps.
Okay, so you've identified a problematic element of a work. And you're concerned that it's going to affect your thinking or other people's thinking! Cool! Awesome! Now what?
A short list of things that you can possibly do to mitigate its effects:
What doesn't help literally at all:
I realize that this is a very long response but I am Sick and Tired of antis pretending that their ship wars are somehow a force for moral good or completely ignoring their own biases to focus on stuff they personally don't like.
This is a great post for understanding the problems with anti-shipping and fandom policing, so I thought I'd add a note about the psychology.
Antis are authoritarians who find themselves in fandom spaces. Like all authoritarians they experience a lot of anxiety when they encounter things outside their own experience. That anxiety drives them to engage in violent behavior (social violence, harassment, gatekeeping, and the like) in order to try to feel less anxious, and so you get all of the moral panicking.
Authoritarians are people who haven't yet fully developed into emotionally mature adults that can control their own fear. This makes them extremely sensitive to fear of the other and drives emotional decision making. The authoritarian bias that drives them to do three things: Make an in-group and police it, make an out-group and attack it, and put a charismatic person in charge to wield violence on behalf of the in-group.
You can see a similar example of this behavior in other kinds of authoritarian groups, from TERFs to white supremacists to far-right conservatives, all of whom have wildly out of line reactions to things like modern art, drag performance, or pretty much any kind of art that makes them contemplate their worldview.
I personally consider the authoritarian reaction to art to be one of the best ways to assess whether someone is an authoritarian or not. It shows up in literally every authoritarian subculture regardless of their particular rationale or ideology. In short, if it's art that asks questions or makes you feel something or is wildly unlike the familiar, authoritarians are going to hate it. And they might even just destroy the art in question if you let them. Here's a really good breakdown of the cycle by Jacob Geller:
I hope this helps people understand why antis and other authoritarians seem so driven to attack people like they do.
Alright, so, this line caught my eye today:
What if NINA isn’t just a simulation? What if it’s time travel?
I talked in this post about Lost vs ST and Back To The Future and temporal displacement, and when we look at the symptoms of temporal displacement, temporal displacement causes nose bleeds, headaches, forgetfulness, and in the worst cases, death by apparent brain aneurysm (staring at all of the stroke imagery with NINA, and staring at how El has forgotten things, and staring at her nosebleeds in the NINA tank, and staring at her going into cardiac arrest/almost dying).
It would explain why Henry seems so weirdly present sometimes. Because he is. Because El is actually in the past. But how can she be in the past if her physical body is in the NINA tank? Well, going back to Lost, in Lost, it's the person's consciousness that time travels, and if El is doing the same
It would also explain all of the weird, multiple-timeline discrepancies during NINA.
And the Cali gang got a phone number for NINA, that they tried to call in a phone booth- not only are there the Doctor Who parallels that @heroesbyler has talked about that tie to time travel phonebooth imagery, but the Bill and Ted movies are also on the S4 board, and THOSE also have time travel phonebooths.
We’ve also got Hot Tub Time Machine, which isn’t on the S4 board, but the characters in Hot Tub Time Machine travel back to 1986.
I'm sure I'll expand this into a bigger analysis at some point, but I just wanted to get that idea out there.
no way did i just see someone on tiktok say that jonathan still has a strong parental figure with joyce while steve has neglectful parents...
be. so. fucking. fr. are we watching the same show? joyce is loving, of course, but is she really there for jonathan as much as he needs? at 16, jonathan had to take extra shifts to help out around the house (none of this is joyce's fault, of course, but come on, you cant say his family life is all fine and dandy because his mom is loving). not to mention that he had to deal with planning will's funeral and barely had time to grieve because he had to comfort his mother, who was having a whole psychotic breakdown. AND he had to basically be a father figure in will's life. i love joyce, but she isn't this super strong parental figure that protects jonathan from all harm, not that she doesn't want to be, but jonathan has had to basically help raise himself his whole life...
but noooooo, steve had a party one time and suddenly his parents abandoned him. be fucking for real right now. nothing wrong with that headcanon, but let's not fucking pretend that his fanon is canon and therefore he has it "worse" than jonathan.
Bottoms was a fucking riot. If ur on the fence go see it
not to be problematic but i literally do not give a shit about age gaps when dating vampires. they thirst for your blood. "but it's predatory!!!!" yeah. it is. "they're preying on you!!!" they're vampires. they do that. "it's a power imbalance!!!!!!" what part of vampires are you not getting
they eat people and can turn into bats and crawl around on walls, lizard fashion, and can hypnotize you with your eyes. a) the age gap is not the creepy part and b) the creep factor is kinda the appeal
they don’t age. that’s part of the horror of it actually. would you accept eternal life, if you can never progress? can never grow or change? you’ll live forever, eternal youth, but frozen exactly as you are now. you will never become the person you’re meant to be. you are trapped in the mind of a 17-year-old forever. also ‘theoretically old if you disregard the fact that he’s a vampire’ doesn’t even make the top 20 worst things about edward cullen list. girl he’s mormon. prioritize
I was nodding along with this the whole time until that last sentence, which hit me like a folding chair
Tumblr staff doing some kind of high-art Theatre of Cruelty in their web design. "You will not be able to tell where the posts are coming form, they will come relentlessly. We will turn off your accessibility settings. There will be....a clown." Regret to say they are the avant garde
