Tag: rant

Do people even have the concept anymore that you can find something awful and fascinating at the same time? Like, I found Catra and Adora’s dynamic exciting, engrossing, and very, very gay. That doesn’t mean I am obliged to go around defending Catra’s every action or insisting she has to be redeemed. (I sure hope not, that would be weaksauce when she’s worked so hard to be her own person and the villain she wanted to be.) You won’t catch me going around saying that trying to kill Adora or bring about eternal winter is fine and child soldiers aren’t responsible for their actions even after they’re grown up and have been given clear chances to turn away. Adora doesn’t owe Catra a solitary shit when she’s tried for the entirety of Season 1 to get her to leave and got a nice payback in the form of attempted murder.

Do I ship it in the sense of liking the dynamic and enjoying the content? Fuck yeah! Tragedy! Villainy! Internal conflict! Bring it on! Do I ship it in the sense that I insist it must be pure and perfect because I personally like it, endlessly justify Catra’s shitty treatment of Adora and outright war crimes, and flood every tag insisting that the Rebellion are just as bad as the Horde and that Glimmer, Angella et al. are the true villains? Hell no.

(Not saying Catradora fans do this, by the way. I am referring to the behavior of a different group of annoying fans.)

If you take this as me saying you shouldn’t ship Catradora and you are a bad person if you ship it because it’s wrong and bad and impure, congratulations, you have proved you have no reading comprehension whatsofuckingever and are just putting words in my mouth, whether out of stupidity or malice.

If you think I have ever tried to dictate what other people ship beyond expressing personal distaste in the proper tags and calling for civil behavior, then congratulations, you are a liar. Fuck, I’ve even produced reylow content depicting it as the unhealthy, abusive, borderline rapey ship I see it as, and would have done more if I saw it as romantic at all (which, for the reading challenged, does not mean that you are not allowed to) and if that section of the fandom were not such a misogynistic, racist, abuse apologist nightmare.

Furthermore, if you think calling out a group or individual’s bullshit in the tags reserved for that without even interacting with them is the same thing as harassing and policing them, then CONGRATULATIONS you are a silencing piece of shit who wants to shut down opinions that differ from yours by disingenuously conflating criticism with harassment. You winner of a person you.

lj-writes:

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lj-writes:

Karabiner doesn’t work anymore after the Mojave update and I can’t figure out how tf to use this Karabiner Elements bullshit. I guess I need to read the documentation to rebuild all my settings in a completely different way… fuck…

This hell system won’t even respect my modifier key swaps anymore, and these were system settings that had nothing to do with any third-party app. Moom is broken too, and there goes my windows management. Fucking hell…

It looks like the modifier key snafu was due to my keyboard being detected as a Virtual Keyboard due to Karabiner Elements so I needed to change my modifier keys on that keyboard in settings. One problem down, 10,000 to go.

I also hardly noticed because there was so much other shit going on, but I lost my second display again just a day after doing a PRAM reset to get it back. Lovely. Could another PRAM reset get me back my monitor and Karabiner, by any chance? I’m really not looking forward to redoing all my hotkeys from scratch. I mean I probably should be moving on to KE because the old Karabiner wasn’t supported for ages and I was holding onto it out of sheer inertia, but it’s still such a pain.

So I got my second display back by uninstalling and updating the DisplayLink driver. Now I just need my keyboard and windows management settings back for everything to work normally, but now Karabiner Elements seems to be… gone… from my system…? I didn’t like it, true, but neither KE nor Karabiner is working anyway. Idek with this bullshit anymore.

I thought Keyboard Maestro might be a good replacement for Karabiner, but it falls short in so many ways–I don’t get nearly enough control with a UI approach, mouse actions are practically nonexistent, key replacements don’t work as intended, and it’s hard to find options for even basic things like disabling default key actions. Karabiner just… worked for me. Until it didn’t.

After multiple installs and uninstalls and booting/installing in Safe Mode, I’m coming to the conclusion that Karabiner and even Elements will stay broken in Mojave and my only options are to downgrade or use KM as an imperfect and partial replacement until something better comes along.

I have poured so much effort and time on this and I want to cry–why is it so impossible to get something as basic as keyboard customizations working? Why does Apple have such a hate-on for me using my computer that I paid for the way I want to, with apps that I use at my own risk? Is the entire Apple ecosystem going to come crashing down because I use scroll wheel as a back/front button, or because I press the middle button and swipe to scroll? Assholes.

I know U.S. Republicans are probably feeling really good right now, but am I the only one who thinks they’ve made a monumental blunder? By sticking with their nominee they’ve branded themselves yet again as the Party of Rape, they’ve fired up the anti-Republican voting and donations base, and they’ve tied themselves to a Supreme Court Justice who has repeatedly perjured himself and so has opened himself up to the possibility of being the first Justice to face impeachment since 1969. This is not good long-term thinking.

It’s almost like someone that has been abused their whole life might have sympathy with murder victims of their abusers. How is Finn unrealistic? Like you said, there is precedence for this in the real world. And if this is the one weak reason they have for not liking Finn, but they find remorseless privileged school-shooter Kylo Ren compelling, I have to think there’s something else driving the dissonance, even if it’s unintentional. (Moth)

Yeah it’s interesting how there’s always a reason to find Finn boring, unsympathetic, and unrealistic. He’s too perfectly good or too violently bloodthirsty, too childishly naïve or too aggressively sexual, too emotionally healthy to be realistic or too emotionally broken to be romantic (not with Rey, that is–because evidently Rose is perfectly safe with a creepy obsessive stalker). If there’s one thing I’ve learned in fandom it’s that a Black character will never be good enough for fandom, often for wildly contradictory reasons.

The only time I remember Finn smiling was during the Canto Bight stuff and I was so enraged by that point that it really didn’t do anything for me.

Enjoy Everything Great About The Last Jedi:

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But of course, he couldn’t even have this because according to Rose he was being a naïve child who knew nothing about the suffering of the universe at The First Order’s hands (lmaoooooo) and needed to get Angry!! Of course, the moment he did get angry as ordered–I mean, he has a lot of practice obeying people who hurt and coerce him–he is suddenly Wrong and Rose is a saintly soul who just cares about animal rights.

Except not, you know, the rights of kids forced into child labor because man, fuck enslaved children. The moment they get free all they get up to is do things like try to live their lives and save their friends so that people who know better like Rose are FORCED to injure and blackmail them so they know their only purpose is to serve others.

NEwayz bye-bye space horsies, live free until you starve in the wild or are just rounded up again so Rose “Saving What We Love” Tico can wank about how morally upright she is!

ds9vgrconfessions:

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[I actually love Ezri Dax and found her to be interesting/relatable. But the one thing that bugged me? The lack of emphasis on how gross Bashir and Quark drooling over Ezri was – to the point of making Bashir her endgame love interest. For both Quark and Bashir, their early drooling over *Jadzia* – however limited – had felt smarmy to me (each in his own way), and the way they seemed to see Ezri as a second chance with Cute Dax #2 felt that much creepier. Bashir/Ezri actually hooking up? Yuck! ]

Seriously. Wasn’t there an entire early episode about how immature and self-serving Julian’s crush on Jadzia was, and how they’re so much better as friends? It also seemed like a loophole in the “no dating prior hosts’ partners“ rule, which they did another entire episode about (the first time they did a same-sex relationship in DS9, possibly Trek itself, and it put two women in a forbidden and tragic romance that was an echo of prior feelings from a male-female marriage. I get limitations of the times and all, but I still hated it). I mean the rule seems to be based on either the new host’s consent being suspect or the symbiont moving on to new experiences rather than be stuck in the past, and hooking up with the (retconned) “second choice” seems bad either way. Ezri and Whorf’s attraction to each other was at least revealed to be unhealthy, but somehow Ezri and Julian are perfectly okay and healthy? Right.

It would have been so much better, SO much, if Jadzia would never have considered Julian as a romantic or sexual prospect–which I truly believe was true until the Season 7 retcon–and Julian and Ezri had been a true friends-to-lovers deal based on Ezri’s attraction, not some lingering regret from Jadzia for what might have been. Now that would be the Dax symbiont actually exploring new ground and Ezri becoming her own person outside of Jadzia’s shadow. That would have been actual character growth after the whole mess with Whorf. Instead we are told Ezri and Julian were basically Ezri and Whorf 2.0 which uh… is not a good thing.

If anything Ezri’s “romantic” plotlines seem perfectly designed to mess her up long-term, and I felt so sorry for her because she chose to save the Dax symbiont out of compassion despite having no training or preparation for joining and she paid the price in so many ways.

I’m tired

If you went by the charges commonly flung at Finn you would absolutely think he’s a monster and the villain of this franchise. He’s been called traitorous, murderous, aggressive, obsessive, abusive, stalkerish. And now I’m dealing with TLJ stans saying Rose was right and he was hateful and violent for wanting to die for his friends. He was going to make the ultimate sacrifice, the same act Holdo is relentlessly lionized for, and I’m told the rules are different for him for Reasons and it’s a sign he’d given in to the Dark Side–and what’s more, he couldn’t turn away from it of his own accord like Luke did, he had to have Rose acting as his external conscience and physically beat some sense into him. Again. The way fans all but salivate at the thought of controlling and disciplining Finn with pain and physical force makes me want to throw up.

When he’s not demonized he’s dismissed as this pure cinnamon roll who is just too Kind and Good to do what needs to be done in war like, idk, murder and torture prisoners. Make no mistake, all the rampant war crimes apologism in this fandom is not only about rehabilitating Kylo Ren but also diluting Finn’s character. If the shooting of unarmed prisoners is a valid act of war, if torture is not a heinous crime but just something that happens between enemies in wartime, then Finn is no longer a conscientious and courageous soldier. He becomes simply a softie who is too good for this world, a weak-hearted deserter who didn’t have what it takes for the hard reality of war. Propping up Kylo Ren with these false premises always comes at the expense of Finn’s character. Always.

When he’s not being demonized or dismissed Finn is just… absent. In a lot of articles and fandom discussions you would not know that he is a major character, far less that he was the protagonist in TFA. When he comes up at all he is talked about like he’s just there, and not someone who is deserving of story weight and fan speculation like Kylo Ren and Rey are.

Spending time in fandom outside of a very narrow circle of Finn stans leaves me questioning my sanity and perception. Was he really a minor character like Qui-Gon Jinn or Mace Windu, both of which he has been compared to in terms of importance? Did I imagine his importance to his story, how revolutionary the character is in so many ways, what he means to me and so many others? Was I wrong in thinking the narrative would have been better if he had been given the dignity of making his own choices without having physical force used on him?

Responses to the character of Finn have revealed some truly frightening undercurrents in this fandom, so much mean-spiritedness and absolute refusal to give him any benefit of the doubt, to acknowledge his complexity, importance, or indeed his existence. I never dreamed I would ever be in a fandom where a character that commits mass murder and torture is treated like a hero and a conscientious ex-slave soldier like a villain or a bit character, yet here we are. The Star Wars fandom is like some kind of Bizarro World and it tires me out.

I haven’t interpreted the “save what you love” line as anything other than the final nail in the movie’s least-muddled message: don’t fight the fascist group coming for control over everything, it’ll only make your deaths slower and more painful, and instead huddle together with your loved ones in caves and hope that your deaths are quick.

thehungryvortigaunt:

lj-writes:

Truly a message for the times.

POC should stop being uppity and let the implacable white people handle everything.

Obey to your white boss without question, even if she’s high-handed, condescending, and shady as hell.

Wait for your white lord and god to come save you, even if there’s no reason whatsoever to think he gives a rat’s ass, else you’re as bad as the Nazis.

And if he doesn’t come? Then die at the fascists’ hands like the good little cannon fodder you are because that’s all you subhumans are good for.

themandalorianwolf:

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jewishcomeradebot:

I honestly can’t take it seriously when people claim Cardinal is a good person. Being less vile than Phasma and Hux is such a fucking low bar it doesn’t count. And the fact that people ship Vi with him is just, yeah no. 

By all means, let’s ship a Black woman with the white man who captures and tortures her. /s

I haven’t been able to get through the entire book tbh, because I find Delilah’s promoting of Cardinal as a Good Person™ very disturbing. The whole thing reeks of the Good Nazi trope.

DID YOU HACK INTO MY DRAFTS FOLDER because I have this exact rant in there, but you put it much more succinctly than I could. Also I didn’t know this ship was a thing and how about a big No.

If anything the Cardinal gets worse at the end of the book. He lets Vi hobble out of the torture chamber, big whoop, on her own to sneak out of a Star Destroyer while still weak from the hours of torture he inflicted. Then, after the evidence on Hux the Elder’s murder he gathered at the expense of Vi’s agony gets him predictably laughed out of Hux the Younger’s room, he pretty much seeks suicide by Phasma out of despair. Guess who’s there to save his stupid dying ass after Phasma leaves him for dead? Yeah. Vi, having bounced right back from torture, wheels her torturer away to safety for the grand finale. I almost threw my ebook reader across the room for all I had been expecting/dreading this.

Also, while the Cardinal has some principles and scruples, they’re the sort of principles that allow him to torture someone potentially to death. Comparing him to Finn in terms of morality is just insulting. The Cardinal’s principles are the principles of loyalty and patronage–he wants to bring Brendol Hux’s murderer to justice because he owes the ginger turd everything, and he fools himself into thinking ginger turd jr. is going to give a shit, or indeed wasn’t in on it himself (spoiler: he was. Oh the shock). There’s also a big dollop of personal grudge here because Phasma was promoted ahead of him. I’m hard pressed to think of a more useless lump of bootlicking, self-deception, sanctimonious hypocrisy, and futility. And it looks like Vi has taken on the task of “fixing” him. Yay. Oh God there are reylows out there saying this is “foreshadowing” for their ship, aren’t there

I find that the only morally grey characters in the FO are either dead, deflected, or missing. Rae Sloane is probably the closet to morally grey, but…ya know….still works for the FO as of last reported.

Every character in the FO could have been a Finn, but chose to be a Phasma. Cardinal in a sense is a good metaphor of poor children that are recruited into gangs or terrorist groups, but turn out to grow into monsters.

I found the book ending to be a good one and fits into the narrative that the Resistance is just morally better than the FO. Plus I agree with Vi saving Cardinal just because it would be a waste to not interrogate him.

I like the Phasma novel because it reinforced the fact that any good the First Order might do, is still out if self serving pragmatic reasons and they are in fact wrong in every shade. I like Cardinal because he’s an interesting Anti-Villain on what Finn could have become if he had a weaker resolve.

Yeah, I think the Phasma novel was very good about showing that the FO has no morality whatsoever, only enough pretensions of morality to draw in people who are not completely evil and self-serving–but that the people with any semblance of morality are kicked out or leave. We don’t know what’s become of Rae Sloane; Cardinal, much as I despise him, at least had some standards of behavior; and Finn of course defected once the true nature of the organization became clear to him.

What irritates me about the Cardinal is not that he’s a monster, but that he’s a pathetic, self-deceiving hypocrite. At least villains like Hux and Ren proudly own their own villainy. The Cardinal tries to pretend he’s a good guy while doing monstrous shit. Worse, the narrative partially backs him up.

Don’t get me wrong, the novel is an unqualified triumph for Vi. She successfully played the torturer’s game in a situation where she was made completely helpless, and gained a valuable source of information for the Resistance in the process. Maybe the intel on the FO they gained from him has been or will be of use. He also knows more about the Stormtroopers’ early education than anyone, which will hopefully be of use in deprogramming children in particular and maybe adults as well. So yes, Vi was incredible, I’m just irritated that the man who tortured her is portrayed as somehow deserving her help in any way and particularly at fandom’s lionization of him.

I’m pretty sure the Cardinal can be brought around, mostly because he’s such a pathetically ingratiating turd who will latch on to those more powerful than he is. That’s about as much good as I can say about him. That, and he does genuinely seem to love the children in his care within the constraints of his environment, so he’d better get to work turning around any liberated children whom he helped indoctrinate and train for a fascist organization.

I mean he’s a realistic view of the kind of people who work for places like the FO, in a way–not everyone can be a hero like Finn, and if a Stormtrooper uprising happens I’m sure its ranks will have more Cardinals and Slips than Finns.