Everybody Hates Nang

dirtypuzzle:

anothersolarpunk:

ace-scientist:

queeranarchism:

If safety in your ideal society is entirely based on care by networks of affinity, and does not provide care for people who are not liked by anybody, then your society is actually even worse than the situation we are in now.

Pissing off people close to you or over-exhausting your social network or isolating yourself is often an inherent part of many mental health problems, addictions, etc. By the time people need care the most, they have often lost all their networks of affinity, and with some bad luck, any of us could find ourselves in that situation.

There has to be unconditional care available for the more unlikable of us, or there isn’t really a safety net for any of us.

The thing that concerns me the most is that the people I see arguing for only informal/community support networks are often in communities that have a lot of interpersonal drama and poor conflict resolution skills. So it’s like…this should be your primary support network, but also people get excommunicated on a regular basis? That’s a terrible idea for everyone involved. People who have caused harm still deserve help, and people who have been harmed deserve the ability to set boundaries and remove people from their lives in ways that aren’t sentencing that person to losing all their options for basic support.

Reblogging with tags from @kdhume

the goal should always be a dozen different overlapping support networks, both informal and formal, institutional and interpersonal, distant and close. so if one net fails, there’s half a dozen more below it.

(via stardustizuku)

notquiteaghost:

notquiteaghost:

notquiteaghost:

once again opening a ship tag on AO3 and opening a dozen fics and closing out of almost all of them immediately because they would not fucking act like that

why is it – i know why. this is a rhetorical question – that so many people have a fixed idea of what A Romance looks like and will mold the characters to fit it. rather than molding what the romance looks like to fit how the characters think and act.

like. i am drawn to repressed sarcastic bastards who would rather run into a burning building than verbalise their feelings. that is their appeal. why are you having them say ‘i love you’ while holding their partner’s hands in full view of two dozen other people. stop that. they wouldn’t fucking do that. other things can be a love confession. other things can be a display of affection. have you never anticipated someone’s needs! done a task they hate without having to be asked! remembered their favourite food! rearranged your plans for their convenience! punched someone in the gut for insulting them! have some damn imagination!!!

hallmark movies won’t tell you this but the love languages are actually access intimacy, in-jokes, learning the little details, attack dogism, and voluntary vulnerability

apricops:

but I wanna get rewarded for consistent long term effort nooooow

(via chumpmoves)

vaspider:

commasameleon:

vaspider:

apteryxdrake:

witchbabywigg:

boldlygoingthefucktobed:

fierceawakening:

deanhugchester:

legsdemandias:

legsdemandias:

I absolutely will die on this hill, access to fiction that makes your skin crawl and open discussion about it is the best way to keep that skin crawling fiction from happening in reality.

It doesn’t matter if it is ~positively~ or negatively portrayed. If you censor it, we don’t talk about it, then we can’t protect against it.

If you are seriously against CSA, then you should absolutely read Lolita. Yeah, the book that set the western world on fire with weird sexual conversations. 

That book perfectly breaks down what a lot of very real sex abuse looks like. It details how predators look for victims (family members), it details what happens to the child who is enduring abuse (she acts out, she screams randomly, she does very poorly in school, etc, etc), and it shows who the most dangerous perpetrators are (intelligent, well liked, charismatic). 

That book will make your skin absolutely crawl! Once you get out of the head of HH long enough to look at the world Dolores was dumped into, you’ll cry your eyes out. But you know what it’ll do? It’ll open your eyes. 

That book has a lot of weird reactions. Some people turn on Lolita, some people turn on HH, some people turn on Nabokov, but it came out when Freud was still respected. That book came out in the middle of “little girls want to fuck older men and it’s their fault it happened and they’re crazy”. 

It turned the world around. Some of the discussions about the book are nasty!!! Even from Kubrick and Nabokov. Their discussion about Lolita makes my SKIN CRAWL!! They talk about it in a very POSITIVE and WEIRD way. But it opens your fucking eyes and that’s the POINT. 

Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality. 

Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality.

Emphasizing this last sentence because it’s so well put. We have to engage with things that make us uncomfortable so we can learn to be better.

Yes! I recall reading a quote from Nabokov about why he wrote it. What I remember him saying was “I read in the news about a man who was arrested for molesting girls, and I became curious. Why would a person do that? So I wrote from the perspective of someone who would.”

That’s… that’s not even weird, I don’t think. I wonder why people do horrible things all the time.

I don’t actually think Nabokov had everything about it right. It seems to me that many real molesters are much more aware of what they’re doing and sometimes even perving on the cruelty of what they’re doing. HH seems kind of quaintly Freudian in comparison.

But that’s what Nabokov would have seen around explaining it, so it makes sense.

And Nabokov really does seem aware, on my reading, that HH is doing harm, and that the idyllic love affair he’s dreaming of is in his head. What’s actually going on is just seedy and gross.

It’s hard to read, hard to understand, and messy.

But those things are what make it good, rather than just “hey look I picked a shocking topic have some torture porn.”

(I hate the term torture porn but it’s the best term I can think of rn)

Nabokov gave extensive interviews and talked about Lolita often. He gets such a raw deal. I have compiled a bunch on my main blog here. i just hate nabokov misinformation so here are three for you:

Do you closely follow Lolita’s fate?
I feel obliged to keep up with the destiny of Lolita. After all, people stop me on the street and ask me to comment on opinions. So I have to know what is being said about me.
Lolita is an indictment of all the things it expresses. It is a pathetic book dealing with the plight of a child, a very ordinary little girl, caught up by a disgusting and cruel man….But of all my books, I like it the best. The last bone always tastes best.

Nabokov…predicted: “Those who keep looking for spicy bits will not find them. They will not be able to read the book through—they will get bored too soon. The only thing that might be attractive is the diary H.H. keeps. And then, who would be attracted by a 12-year-old girl?“

Vera Nabokov…refilled his glass. “Tell them about the child,” she said.
“Oh, yes. I am rather bitter about this. I am in favor of childhood—in fact the very first book I ever did was a translation of Alice in Wonderland into Russian. Anyway, a few nights ago, on Goblin night, a little girl—she was 8 or 9 I think—came to the door for candy. And she was dressed up as Lolita, with a tennis racquet and a pony tail, and a sign reading l-o-l-i-t-a. I was shocked.”

By all accounts and backed up by extensive interviews, Nabokov wrote a psychological thriller and expected people to be shocked and compelled by it in the same way you can’t look away from a train wreck. His worst crime was total naivete. He literally never expected that anyone would take it as a romance.

nabokov wrote "don’t create the torment nexus” and then children showed up at his door dressed as the torment nexus and people forever will be like “you wrote about the torment nexus, which is the same thing as being in support of the torment nexus”.

The first time I asked a person about the book Lolita, they told me “it is a romance, it is about a young woman and an older man falling in love”. Then the second time someone told me about it, they said it was a nauseating accusation of society. And the third person told me it was a terrible story about an adult predating on a kid.

I really wish the first interpretation never existed. I wish the author’s naivete over expecting utter shock and disgust from everyone wasn’t naivete but how society really is.

I don’t believe censorship is the solution, but I do think such books should be restricted to the classroom with a good learning structure so as to give people context, or at least they should be released with additional commentary so a new reader can understand the entire context.

Also, such books need trigger warnings. I was a victim of CSA. When I was a kid I had a veracious need to read every book in existence, and had I accidentally come across that book and started reading it, that horrible book would have completely wrecked me. Perhaps permanently. It certainly did my head in as an adult to find out that people think such a thing was “romance”.

That is censorship. Restricting who can read a book is censorship. That is exactly what it is.

As frustrating as it is that people read things “the wrong way,” and they do, and they always will, making sure people “read the book in the correct and approved way and take away the correct and approved meaning” is… not a thing that should ever be hoped for.

Commentary editions are great! Restricting where and how and by whom things can be read? Not so much.

The solution is never to restrict who reads a book. The solution is to make sure everyone who reads a book discusses that book with lots of other different kinds of people with lots of different kinds of opinions. THAT is how you dispel “wrong” readings. THAT is how you help people who have a reaction to a reading which is potentially “harmful” or “problematic” to be more accepting of diversity, more able to cope with evil in the world, more able to discern evil, and more emboldened to denounce it when discerned.

No. People need to have the opportunity to do so.

Anytime you say “make sure” or “must” about reading, it’s a form of enforcing one way of consuming books, and that’s a bit of backhanded enforcement of correct opinions. If someone wants to read the book and never talk to anyone about it? That is one of many “correct” ways to read the book.

And the thing is… even when we’re talking about something like Lolita, where there is definitely a wrong way to read the book, people are allowed to be wrong about art. Yes, even this art. Yes, even this book. They have to be allowed to be wrong about art, because the minute that you start trying to force people to observe the Correct Way of consuming art or thinking about it, you aren’t just doing a big ol’ censorship, you’re holding the door open and yelling “QUICK, ALL YOU BAD ACTORS! I’VE JUST MADE IT OKAY TO MANDATE CORRECT OPINIONS ABOUT ART! QUICKLY, COME BAN ALL THE ART YOU DON’T LIKE!”

And that always, always lands on marginalized artists first, last, and hardest.

So, yeah, a robust community with the option to join into meaningful discussion about what you’re reading? Super great. Super awesome. Fully agreed.

Any kind of “must only read in classes or talk to people about it so we can be sure you interpret the art ‘correctly’” is a big no.

People have to be allowed to be wrong about books.

Yes, even that one.

Actually, there is no such thing about being wrong about a book or art. People are allowed to interpret it the way they want and how they interpret it is right. PERIOD.

Saying people are reading something the wrong way is censorship. Approval is just another form of bullying.

stuckinapril:

learning lately that a lot of confidence is about owning up. like “yeah i’m a little addicted to my phone right now” or “yeah i’m not really over this person yet” or “yeah i still get pretty anxious in crowds” just saying anything at all but then following it up w “but i’m trying to get better” and being super nonchalant and unaffected. so powerful. you would literally be undefeatable in the face of even the most judgmental person. no one can judge you for things you already know about yourself and are trying to improve on. the trick is to know yourself from the inside out, to hold yourself accountable, and to actively improve every day. like that is literally the secret to never feeling like you’re at the mercy of somebody else’s judgment

That’s all well and good until everyone says you aren’t improving and writes you off. You stay confident and everyone abandons you.

(via lichensings)

legsdemandias:

I absolutely will die on this hill, access to fiction that makes your skin crawl and open discussion about it is the best way to keep that skin crawling fiction from happening in reality.

It doesn’t matter if it is ~positively~ or negatively portrayed. If you censor it, we don’t talk about it, then we can’t protect against it.

The same is true for anything written, fictional or not.

If something or even someone makes your skin crawl, the best thing to do is to maintain access to it…and vice versa.

free-post-store:

schrodingers-egg:

ahagia-sophia:

nutsacktorturer:

ky-ju-deactivated20231122:

ky-ju-deactivated20231122:

I feel like practicing any skill would be way more fun if I could have a lil level increase thing that pops up in front of me every time I do good like in Skyrim

“Push ups increased to level 5”

“Writing dialogue increased to level 37”

“Coping mechanisms (healthy) increased to level 18”

$0

(via uberguber89)

Let’s suppose you have this character. The character is not our all-suffering yet much beloved hero who goes through the wringer. The character is not our hated villain. No, the character is an antagonist, opposed to the hero either personally or on principle, but at the same time not really a threat. In fact, the very idea that they could be a true threat is laughable. Maybe they’re childish. Maybe they’re spoiled. Maybe they’re a coward. They’re small potatoes.

But this character doesn’t want to be small potatoes. This character wants to be useful. This character, for all of their flaws, very much wants to do the right thing when it comes down to it and is seeing all those around them pass them by. Perhaps they weren’t gifted with the intuition, the insight, or the intelligence to punch above their shortcomings but their heart is in the right place when it comes to the big picture.

But in the course of events the character gets in over their own head. The character either doesn’t know their limitations or knows them but simply tries to defy those limit anyway. The character wants to be useful. And when the opportunity presents itself for the character to actually try to be a hero, the character tries to do so…and fails hard. Despite having a smidgen of power in their hands, the reality is they’re outclassed by the peril and outmatched by whatever situation and they’re in. They try and they fail.

Now that should be the end, but it is not.

Remember that villain that I mentioned before the one that this character is not. Well the villain has a way of forcing someone to do what they want. Maybe it’s magic or maybe it’s mad science but somehow your character who was once useless and once wanted to be a hero has been changed. The character is now broken and if their purpose cannot be filled by being a hero then it can be found by becoming a minion. And in the process of becoming a minion the character does things that can’t be taken back. The character is more than a pawn and by taking this route does become an actual threat. That character has found their use in dealing the suffering to others they felt.

But despite this no matter how bleak the world gets where this character inhabits, it’s a world where heroes eventually win. And this character, now a villain, despite there being no way of turning back still has a glimmer of hope that they could be the hero. This character holds on to this hope even after the character has seen where they have been replaced. The position and the life that they had was taken from them and then given to someone who came out of nowhere. The character spirals further and further to lower and lower points far from their cushy beginnings.

There is no hope. There is no way back. The only resolution that can be given is a merciful end and the illusion of getting one’s ex-position is shattered.

The question…where does the character go from here?

With everything that the character once held they are taken from them, is the character simply put out of their misery? Or can another character do the unthinkable and show this character that even if the path of life was diverged irrevocably, that the character does not have to die in despair or in self-destructive sadism? After all there is a path, maybe not for restoration but for redemption of a different sort, where one can be a hero without actually seeing oneself as one. One can recompense for the evil in the shadows without admitting to doing good and just living as an ordinary person. But an intervention is needed. Will that happen?

Or will the character just be bad, learn nothing, and simply be a tragic victim of machinations all around them while everyone else seemingly has a happily ever after.

As I said, “Let’s suppose…”