I Don't Think A Lot Of People Realize How Addictive Outrage Can Be. You Do Get A Dopamine Hit From Feeling

Americans really really need to be less paranoid and more capable of tolerating minor discomfort in public. Not everyone is a pervert/rapist/strangler/fiend. In fact, very few people are. Treating every violation of normal order as though it is a threat is why people are getting shot for turning around in a stranger's driveway. This happens within the frameworks of basically every ideology present in American culture. It is an American illness. If your vision of the world doesn't have room for saying "I'm sure it's nothing" then you really gotta work some shit out.

GAMER APOLLO

Every day I think about gamer Kristoph. This entire official art is great. Klavier is being a pretty boy, Apollo is intense, Trucy has that autistic stare, Ema is rage quitting in the background… but Gamer Kristoph REALLY gets me.

I love how literally every version of the Princess could be interpreted as a piece of the Shifting Mound and, no matter how weird our relationship with her gets, it’s still applicable to our relationship with her as a whole.

Smitten and Damsel show how the Long Quiet and the Shifting Mound are star crossed lovers.

Skeptic and Prisoner reflect their inability to escape without working together. They are both Prisoners, even if only one is wearing a shackle.

Hunted and Beast present them both as archaic forces of nature that must change and adapt. As death, Beast is an offensive predator, and as life, Hunted is defensive prey.

Stubborn and Adversary demonstrate that the two gods are true equals in every sense, and that death means nothing to them in the end as long as they have each other.

Cheated and Razor show how conflict is in their nature, and that no matter how much violence the Shifting Mound dishes out, the Long Quiet is always strong enough to stand against her.

Broken and Tower show the contrast of Shifty’s embrace of her godhood vs the internal conflict of the Long Quiet, as well as the desire to embrace her for everything she is regardless of her flaws. Perhaps, in a twisted way, Broken shows an embrace of our godhood as a whole…

Cold and Spectre demonstrate the dynamic set by the Construct: a killer and his victim, as well as showing the true power of the Long Quiet, and showing that, underneath the struggle and conflict, LQ could end this all disturbingly quickly if convinced to.

Paranoid and Nightmare show the fear that infects the dynamic of the two gods, like Paranoid’s fear of the Nightmare and the Nightmare’s fear of sharing her heart, along with the desire to know the other but the inability to do so organically.

Opportunist and Witch, like Stubborn and Adversary, show the equality of their relationship, but rather than one built out of mutual respect, its mutual animosity fostered by the artificial tension of the construct. It’s the opposite of Skeptic and Prisoner, as, rather than realizing they can escape together through mutual trust, they both try to win against the other when it’s not a winning game.

Contrarian and Stranger show the inherent contradictions in the Gods’ natures; like Shifty says, aspects of who they are contradict themselves, and nothing can exist without contrast and change.

I’m a Sonic fan, but nuh-uh. Not even close. A CYBER’S WORLD isn’t just nostalgic. The very first time I played Chapter 2 the sound of it just washed over me and took me somewhere I’ve never been before. City Escape is a fun and upbeat song, but not much more than that.

Video Game Track Bracket Round 5

Escape from the City from Sonic Adventure 2

vs.

A CYBER'S WORLD? from Deltarune

Propaganda under the cut. If you want your propaganda reblogged and added to future polls, please tag it as propaganda or otherwise indicate this!

Escape from the City:

Imagine you're a ten year old with a brand new Gamecube and you're booting up your first ever 3D Sonic game after years of 2D gameplay on the Sega Genesis, and as the first level begins THIS high energy song starts playing, and it's every bit as epic and cool as you imagined it would be. YES Sonic the Hedgehog, I WILL follow you and set you free and trust you and we will escape from the city. The nostalgic memory of this specific song is part of why I love this game so much. Like what a way to open your game.

It is one of the most iconic and well known sonic songs. It is a banger and a perfect opening section to the game.

me going 15 miles over the speed limit ROLLING AROUND AT THE SPEED OF SOUND GOT PLACES TO GO GOTTA FOLLOW MY RAINBOW

A CYBER'S WORLD?:

It has a great nostalgic quality to it even though the game came out only two years ago.

I’m still educating myself on the history of Israel and Palestine, but it seems to me that the main reason that people on the left are so in favor of a Palestinian state and not an Israeli state is because of the widely accepted narrative of Israelis being “the white colonizers” in this situation. If this assessment is correct, I think it exposes part of the problem with how willfully the left has accepted the idea of white people being colonizing bad guys. I don’t want to minimize white European’s legacy of imperialism of course, I believe dismantling that legacy should be done with care and a strong foundation in factual reality, because leftists have learned to hate the white settler, and that seems to be all fine and good until suddenly all it takes to dupe those leftists into anti-Jewish behavior is to convince them that Jewish people are white settlers. It seems that, in a movement aiming to combat hate, prejudice towards ANY group, even if it would appear to be punching up, acts as a blind spot through which they can find themselves acting prejudiced towards a historically down-trodden people.

The problem with antisemitism and anti-Zionism

Someone recently reblogged this post I shared that called out antisemitism in pro-Palestinian rallies. An action I was initially happy about, until I went into this person's blog, and saw a lot of posts that I, as an Israeli-Jewish person, find incredibly antisemitic. I found myself utterly baffled by that. Because this person clearly recognized the things said in these rallies were extremely antisemitic, and yet, they posted a lot of things that were rooted in the same antisemitic worldview. Can't they see it? And I think the main problem with the current pro-Palestinian movement is that they honestly can't see the line between being on the side of compassion and humanity and being critical of Israel's actions, to spreading horrible lies and dehumanizing Israelis and Jewish people. And the ugly truth these people refuse to face is that the reason they can't see when they cross this line is probably unconscious antisemitism.

You don't need to hate Jewish people to be antisemitic

Antisemitism, like many other forms of racism, often works on an unconscious level. Maybe you have Jewish friends. Maybe you fought for better Jewish representation in media. Maybe you are even Jewish yourself. But over the years you have been exposed to a lot of antisemitic ideas and stereotypes that altered your worldview and made you more vulnerable to believing Jewish people are the bad guys.

If your gut reaction to this is- "but Israel is actually doing bad things, so I'm actually right about hating them." Please keep reading.

Your idea of Israel and what it stands for is based on the worldview of the most radical right-wing Israeli activists at best, and blatant lies at worst.

Imagine if we took the words of the most radical Republicans out there, the ones that go after trans kids and believe women should have no right over their own bodies, and believe all Americans are supporting this idea. That wouldn't have been very fair of us, right? Because there are a lot of people in America who are fighting for a better future. A lot of people who are standing up for human rights.

Just like the United States isn't a homogeneous entity, filled with only trump supporters, Israel is also an incredibly diverse place, with people who have radically different ideas about how Israel should look. Even the current Israeli government, which is extremely right-wing, and has people in it I personally believe should have never been in a position of power, is probably a lot less evil than you were led to believe by ill-intent strangers on the internet. Mainly because this is still a democratic government, in a democratic country, which has a lot of checks and balances that (for the most part) manage to prevent people with radical ideas from making them into official policies.

I don't blame you for believing the reports you see from Gaza. As a pacifist, and as someone who voted for left-wing parties ever since I was eligible to vote, someone who truly believes the Palestinians has a right to self-determination and sees how problematic the occupation is, I struggle a lot when I see posts about the suffering of the people in Gaza. Wars are horrible. I never want to see other people suffer. Let alone children. I wish I could go there right now and take all of them somewhere safe. I wish none of this was happening.

But I also know who my people are, and the values they stand for. And what I noticed about these anti-zionist posts is that they are often written in a biased, misleading way. They often attribute malicious intentions to Israel's actions. And they often jump to conclusions, without giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. Without asking the right questions. And often, without any sort of proof. Some of these posts are outrageous lies. Others are incredibly biased and fail to mention the terrorist organization Israel is fighting against.

Only a small amount of them are coming from unbiased sources that describe the reality of the situation without giving in to personal interpretation.

But most of you can't tell the difference. You are seeing lies about how IDF soldiers are targeting children, or about how Israel is lying about their true evil intentions, and you accept them as the truth, without questioning the intention of the person who wrote that post. Without stopping to think this is incredibly dehumanizing to think Israeli people are capable of such monstrous actions. Without examining your own biases. And that's incredibly problematic, and yes, this is antisemitic. Because you would have never spread this kind of accusation about any other group of people without definitive proof.

This isn't to say our soldiers are never wrong, and that there aren't any bad apples, or even systematic problems in the IDF and every allegation should be thoroughly investigated, because any harm to innocent people is terrible, unavoidable as it may be. And ideally, even terrorists should get a fair trial.

But if you think soldiers in Israel defense forces, who are mostly 18-21-year-old Jewish men and women from all sides of the political spectrum, are inherently evil and baby killers, you are in fact antisemitic.

Even if you believe your type of anti Zionism isn't antisemitism being anti-zionist is still not a great position to take.

I never defined myself as a zionist before. But it was more to do with my own disconnection with Judaism and my ideas about the place of religion in modern society than my belief about the right of Israel to exist.

I think it would be amazing to live in a utopian world where we have one multicultural democratic state where everyone lives together in harmony. But I’m also a realistic person. And someone who wants to keep living as a free woman with full rights in my home country.

And while I never felt particularly zionist, I was never an anti-zionist, and I never believed zionist was a bad word.

I'm probably not the first person who tells you this, but Zionist isn't a synonym for "everything I hate about Israel". It doesn't mean "a person who supports the occupation", or even "a person who only cares about the life of Israelis" or "someone who fully supports the Israeli government".

So what does it actually say? Let's look at a dictionary definition.

Do you notice what the definition doesn't say? Anything about Israel's borders or about the idea of a Palestinian state. There are many types of Zionism, some more radical than others. But as I said before, is it really fair to judge an entire group of people based on the idea of the most radical of them?

The truth is, most of us just want to live in peace. We want to go to work without finding ourselves at the scene of a terror attack or running to the shelter because of rockets. We want all the hostages to come home. We want to feel safe in our own homes. This is what it means to be a zionist. This is what you are standing up against. Not the "occupation," or the "settlers" or the extremists in the government. Just regular people who want to live their lives.

Zionism isn't colonialism

Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel. This was the land we dreamed of in 2000 years of exile, and it's a huge part of our religion and our culture. This doesn't mean the Palestinians don't have a claim to the land as well after living on it for so many years, or that what they went through in 1948 wasn't terrible, but it doesn't magically make Israelis into white colonialists who woke up one day and decided to take over a random land.

A lot of mistakes were made. In 1948, and especially in 1967. And we are paying for them now. But the idea that Israel is a colonialist state that represents everything that's wrong with society is entirely false.

If you support the existence of a Palestinian state but don't believe Israel deserves the same right, you need to ask yourself why that is the case.

Is that because you don't believe Jewish people when they tell you about their connection to the land of Israel? Because you think there is something inherently wrong with the existence of a state that is only for Jewish people? (But have no problem with all the Muslim and Christian states out there) Because you think Palestinian deserves to live from the river to the sea and Israelis should have nothing, or whatever the Palestinians would be willing to give them? Because you are more comfortable with the idea of Jewish people as a minority in a Palestinian Muslim state than the idea of them having their own free country? Because you think you know better than us what our future should look like?

Because all of these reasons are antisemitic.

PROOF IN CASE YOU NEED IT

UPDATE:

I put this in my reblogs but I’m going to attack this to the main post.

TRUMP HIMSELF DIDN’T CHEAT BUT SOMEONE DEFINITELY TAMPERED WITH THE ELECTION RESULTS.

^

Made by the amazing @the-gay-prometheus (genuinely thank you for saying this)

“Once you accept that Nazis, or pedophiles, or other evil people are subhuman, your definition of “Nazi” can be expanded.” Was literally just thinking about that. I’m hanging onto that quote.

Some common leftist beliefs

I've been seeing some peculiar beliefs in leftist spaces recently.

• Nazis are literally subhuman and deserve to die.

• Zionism is a Nazi movement

• All Jews are secretly zionists

To an outside observer, these beliefs can look innocent (I am far too guilty of number 1, honestly) but the problem is a lot of people believe all three. By the transitive property, they believe that all Jews are subhuman and deserve to die. That is a very familiar and terrifying sentiment to us Jews.

Be careful dehumanizing literally anyone. Once you accept that Nazis, or pedophiles, or other evil people are subhuman, your definition of "Nazi" can be expanded. It can even be expanded to include groups that were originally targeted in the Holocaust. Do better.

oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like "I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!" with no build up whatsoever.

Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked. 

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion. 

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story. 

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised.