Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.

dovesndecay:

There is no “after the revolution.” No “ideal world.” I don’t care how much progress we make, we will always fail someone, hurt someone, and the best thing we can do is accept that, and keep striving to make it better as we go.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t say this to discourage anyone from trying to make that ideal world. Quite the opposite.

I feel like it’s very naive to continue to approach these big changes we want to make in the world as if there’s an “after it’s all over” when we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

We should always be striving to make life better, even when life seems pretty damn good.

chiribomb:

jennyslateswife:

Every geopolitical crisis really just exposes how a. a lot of people use tumblr and only tumblr as a news/historical source and b. a lot of people on this website have main character syndrome where they think they can walk into a situation they just learned about last week and fix it.

And I think nothing exposes that more thoroughly than a random Ukrainian getting an anonymous ask asking how they can help and then posting a facebook link with “answers.” Some of which are effectively nazi groups. And it gets 10k notes from proud leftists who really think they’ve done something and then are even prouder of themselves when the version they reblog has a note about “HEY, SOME OF THOSE GROUPS ARE RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS!” without clarifying which groups or like… why maybe we shouldn’t be asking lay people in Ukraine about intensely complicated situations in general.

I’m not trying to shame people’s impulses to help. But spreading information you have no way of vetting because none of you actually look at other sources (or the other sources you look at are just… wikipedia) in an attempt to seem like you care just exposes how much you don’t actually care.

It just makes it look like you think caring helps and thus makes you a better person.

But real life isn’t care bears and caring isn’t magic.


Flitting from crisis to crisis with reblogs to prove you care isn’t solving anything. Especially when you drop a crisis as soon as another one pops up because humans aren’t equipped to juggle this much tragedy. And most tragedies are solvedby intense specialization and focus, not Topic Du Jour-esque empathy.

I saw a post the other day that called this out for what it is, people wanting the credit for caring but knowing they’ll never actually have to put any work into it because it’s impossible. Almost none of the people who reblog stuff like that had any intention of donating anyway, and if you asked them to lift a finger in any kind of way that didn’t get them credit, they wouldn’t do it.

I got really annoyed when I saw several posts on Tumblr and Twitter self-righteously criticising people who didn’t post about what was happening in Ukraine, or else they posted about it but they also kept posting about what they usually post about. It rubbed me horribly wrong for being rude and insensitive to the many reasons people may not have the emotional or mental energy to deal with it, but it also struck me as being an extension of the same dangerous attitude that contributes to misinformation. The fact is that not everyone’s opinion is valid. Not everyone has the same level of knowledge or understanding about a given issue or topic, and not everyone should be opening their mouths. I used to think it was just that people liked to hear themselves talk or that they were all too stupid to recognise that 10 minutes of googling doesn’t qualify you to talk about foreign policy or public health or military strategy, but I really think that a lot of people feel obligated to say something because they’re afraid of being seen as a bad/uninformed/unempathetic person. I think this is worse among the left, because at least they are more likely to see caring as a good thing in the first place, but it’s incredibly performative and does more harm than good.

There is something to be said for “awareness,” but even that can actually be harmful, because nothing is actually getting done, or things are getting done but in bad ways, but all these people feel they’ve met the requirements by reblogging a post and now they’re clear to ignore anyone who actually has something for them to do, the same way we saw a bunch of people donate bottled water to Flint years ago, consider their conscience satisfied, and never do anything else to get the actual problem addressed despite residents telling them what they most needed them to do. In this case, a major problem is not knowing what information to trust and what is propaganda, and adding half-baked opinions into the mix muddies the waters even more. Everyone is too afraid to think critically about the information they’re seeing, if they even have the ability to, because it was never really about doing something useful so much as it was about making sure other people see that they are signalling the right opinions. It just feeds back into itself. It’s better, in their minds, to say something stupid and potentially dangerous than to not say anything at all, because otherwise their internet worlds will turn on them and accuse them of not caring/supporting imperialism/being racist/being a right wing plant/being selfish etc. We live in a world where if you don’t tweet out a moral position it might as well not exist.

We need to normalise and encourage people saying “yeah you know what I actually don’t know enough about this topic to say something about it and it’s better for me to stay silent than it is to say something wrong just for the sake of being on-record as an empathetic and good person.” It’s better to put your energy into one or two topics than to try to divide it amongst a hundred. You couldn’t address every issue in the world even if you tried. Let the people who are experts deal with things of their expertise and stop acting like anyone who isn’t vocal about all of your specific issues is a bad person.

geekthefreakout:

Shifting Perspective: A Coda to “Things Past”

AN: Garak’s growth is one of the most fascinating things to me. I always thought this episode must have had a profound effect on him, but of course the show did not explore it, so I’m going to. That said, be aware of colonialist thinking, an oppressors perspective of oppression, and of Garak SLOWLY coming to realize that the occupation of Bajor was bad, actually. If these things bother you, proceed with caution.

Garak should have been working on Ensign Barrows’ new suit. He had the material in front of him, the cuts already made. A simple matter, really, to sew them together now.

But he couldn’t stop thinking. Tain would despair of him, he knew. A disciplined mind should not be so easily distracted. Yet he couldn’t seem to wretch his mind away from the Bajoran whose place he had taken when he was brought into Odo’s guilt ridden mind. The man unjustly killed, who had been doing nothing more than trying to survive.

He’d known, of course, about the conditions on Terok Nor. He’d come through now and again prior to his exile, completing some duty or another. And then, of course, he’d set up his shop in the last few years, never realizing that it was meant to be permanent until Dukat’s smug, sneering face had passed along the order as the rest of the Cardassians were pulling out. He’d been aware, in a distant sort of way, of the injustices wrought by his people. Of the deaths, not just from executions which might have been just, but from starvation and exhaustion. He hadn’t allowed himself to give it much thought then.

Keep reading

badcode:

badcode:

badcode:

people will see a post about how queer subtext has value and immediately respond “OH so you HATE all canonically queer stories now? how dare you” like no i wrote that post directly in response to people with “the curtains were fucking blue” brainrot immediately dismissing literally any and all stories (especially ones by queer writers) that don’t end in a five second kiss and the characters riding off into the sunset together and achieving the prototypical American Dream nuclear family happy ending as either meaningless or queerbaiting. i promise you queer writers from decades past whose work was historically censored or destroyed due to societal homophobia would also hate empty rainbow capitalism ~representation~

also “explicit representation is the ONLY value a story has” is how we get people recommending media by just saying “it has lgbt rep in it!” full stop with nothing about the actual story or the genre or the characters beyond their gender/sexuality (again, plays very well into empty rainbow marketing tactics where execs want to check a neat box to sell media as a product to certain target audiences regardless of quality or actual deeper-level connections to queer experiences), and also valuing only explicit surface-level representation in the text rather than supporting queer writers being able to tell the stories they want to tell however they want to tell them is how we get things like that part of one of hannah gadsby’s sets where she was like “yeah an audience member came up to me after a show once and complained that there wasn’t enough lesbian content and i was like ‘i’ve been standing on stage the whole time?????’”

ALSO seeing people say the only queer rep that matters is the kind that is in your face enough that straight people cannot avoid it or pretend it doesn’t exist so they are forced confront things that make them uncomfortable, which okay yes some stories do serve that function and that is still valuable but my god acting like no queer stories have any value except in relation to straight people’s experience of them???? that something doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter unless the moral of the story and how you’re supposed to feel about it is fed to the audience (and specifically the cishet audience) through direct talking head exposition??? it’s like not even about celebrating queer people’s actual lives and experiences anymore, everything is a ship war and it’s about owning the cishets and winning points on twitter or in the public sphere and sure i love making straight people uncomfortable as much as the next person but turning that into the entire basis of my existence and the metric by which i measure every story i engage with sounds just so fucking hollow and joyless

whispsofwind:

Ok ok I watched “The Wire” from Ds9, and it’s truly just as good as I was led to believe. It’s such a fascinating piece of character study for Garak, especially in the light of all the ground work the show already made with Cardassians.

Now obviously I am only on S2 and I am trying not to spoil myself too much, so half of this is probably going to be disproved later on but eh.

The most obvious side of it is, naturally, the lies. So far we have seen that Cardassians, especially when in the military, rarely tell the truth out loud, preferring to obfuscate it or outright lie. In “Duet”, Marritza presents the lie as a truth to uncover, and the truth as a lie to refuse. And obviously Dukat rarely tells the truth (see his faux concern for the orphans he himself abandoned as a political move in “Cardassians”).

So it’s rather obvious that “just a plain simple tailor” Garak would tell his truths through lies. He tells three lies, three stories that reach the same conclusion. In this, he both mirrors and subverts the structure of the repetitive epic he and Bashir talk about at the beginning of the episode: the story repeats, but rather than ending with serving the State and dying happily, surrounded by family, each story ends with banishment, loneliness, and constant pain.

And I actually believe that the stories were true, as much as Garak is capable of being truthful. The three stories themselves are fake, but the details are true. Garak was a high ranking member of the Obsidian Order; he committed multiple atrocities, including killing and torturing civilians; he was still capable of remorse, and perhaps even acts of compassion; he is Tain’s son (yes I spoiled myself that one); and there was a betrayal involved.

And obviously the most blatant fact, the separation of Garak and Elim - one ruthless, one compassionate, the betrayed and the betrayer. Does Garak deserve to live among people who hate him, where “it’s always too cold and the lights are always too bright?”. Part of Garak seems to think that yes, he does deserve to be in so much pain that he would activate an anti torture device just to make it stop.

Another part yearns for forgiveness - and even asks for it, in an example of vulnerability that I think indicates Garak truly expected to die. Forgiveness for many things at once, I am guessing: for being a murderer and a spy, for being cruel, for betraying Cardassia (through compassion?), for betraying himself, for telling Bashir that he hated him.

(And obviously the fact that Bashir grants that forgiveness is an amazing scene in itself. What’s with Star Trek and grasping hands as a visual representation of intense homo-erotic feelings).

Another part that fascinates me about Cardassians in general, not just this episode, is the double thinking surrounding the concepts of family, State, and the military.

Family is, we are told, everything for a Cardassian. Specifically, biological family is, as a child with no family is of little to no value. Dukat swears to Sisko on his children in “the Maquis”, and Rugal’s father in “Cardassians” would lose his career and social status if it came out that he had abandoned his son on Bajor.

However, we are also repeatedly told that State is everything for a Cardassian. Garak considers betraying family for the State not only the best option, but the only option, and even compares his love for the concept of Cardassia to the feelings of a lover in “Profit and Loss”.

Family is everything and the State is everything, and these two concepts seem to remain separate and equally true.

On top of this, the military pushes the idea that they are the State, like any fascist regime ever.

And if they are the State, and State is everything, then they are everything - which means every atrocity they committed, from the occupation of Bajor to concentration camps to torturing the enemies, it’s all entirely justified, because it was all for Cardassia. And if the military is Cardassia, the military cannot be criticized without it being treason of the highest order - in fact, one could argue that betraying the military, which also means betraying Cardassia, is as close as betraying your own identity as a Cardassian as you can get.

Obviously not everyone seems to agree with this particular equivalency. The excellent “Duet” shows this through Marritza, a man who was willing to die in an attempt to purge the military and the atrocities they committed from Cardassia. If he could expose Cardassians atrocities, those atrocities could be atoned, and the planet would begin healing. And in “Profit and Loss”, as poorly written as I found it, we find out that there is at least one political movement that wants the military out of Cardassia’s government, which marks them as traitors of the State.

And all of this brings me back to Garak. Garak, who was a member of the Obsidian Order, who was the military, and whose biological father was the head of the Order.

(I didn’t spoil it for myself, but I am guessing from the lack of family names that Garak was illegitimate).

For young Garak, there would have been no distinction between family, State and military, no divided loyalties, because for him they would’ve been one and the same. Tain says Garak never needed to be ordered to do anything- and why there would have been the need to give orders? With the three great loves of any self-respecting Cardassian in one neat package, I bet Garak would have done, and has done, everything he needed to do. Be it murder, spy, torture, or go under invasive medical procedures.

Which makes particularly fascinating that, as indicated in “Profit and Loss”, the Garak we meet on Ds9 doesn’t believe that the military has the best interests of Cardassia in mind (but will still act as if he believes it if it means he could get home).

And it’s particularly interesting in the light of the two last stories he tells Bashir in “the Wire”: he went against his orders in one (because he was miserable or because he was compassionate, or perhaps both), and he betrayed (or was betrayed by) someone who was “like family” in the other. I daresay Tain is the closest thing to family Garak would have had, at least with the information I got so far. Tain, who was the Obsidian Order.

And well, if Garak would sacrifice family at the altar of State every time, and if he doesn’t believe that State and military are the same, I am going to conclude that something really big and really bad happened between Tain and Garak. And because of how Cardassian’s double thinking works, they would both believe that the other has betrayed Cardassia, this beloved ideal of theirs (which to me explains why Garak is both the betrayer and the betrayed in the last story he tells).

Unless, as a last addendum, we consider the possibility that part of Garak does still believe in the military/State dichotomy, and a betrayal of that dichotomy is what earned his “deserved exile” in the first place. Or perhaps he thinks he deserves it for the atrocities he committed, and that guilt is by itself a betrayal of Cardassia.

Especially the lies, indeed.

(Goddammit I told I would not write Ds9 meta but characters who lie are a weakness of mine and the fascist space lizards won. I’ll go hide in a corner now).

neurodivergent-noodle-deactivat:

neurodivergent-noodle-deactivat:

oh and by the way.

“men are evil” and “masculinity is bad” is just the new way of saying that “boys will be boys”.

not only is masculinity not evil, it also gives a get out of jail free card for men who behave badly. it gives them an opportunity to say “oh I’m just a guy, can’t help it”.

nope. men aren’t evil. and the ones that are bad shouldn’t be able to get out of it because they “can’t help it”.

lowkey regret making this post because. it’s kind of taking off, and people are reblogging it without knowing the context. which, to be fair, happens a lot, and it isn’t the fault of anyone on this site who resonates with what I post from time to time.

but… the idea of masculinity being evil was deliberately constructed just as “boys will be boys” started to go out of fashion. it’s the same idea, just reheated. and being used by slightly different people. which I guess is the point.

the idea that men are inherently bad people is an advantage to the exact same kind of man who was advantaged by “boys will be boys”. it signals to them that there’s something about male biology that makes them unable to control their impulses.

yes, “men are evil” is a TERF dog whistle. but, more importantly, it gets the idea into peoples’ heads that men are not to blame for anything they may or may not do. which is then going to lead to a terrible biological essentialism worldview (even if you include trans people in your “I hate men” rants!)

this isn’t misandry. it’s biological essentialism. there’s a difference, and the difference is that one of those things is real, and one isn’t. we’re all hurt by the impulse to assign certain normative characteristics to certain people. and that’s what I was trying to get at here.

neurodivergent-noodle-deactivat:

this took me far too long to learn, so I’m going to tell you something that you need to internalise.

you don’t have to tell people anything you don’t want to tell them. it’s not rude or disrespectful to be private about things. you don’t owe anyone that information, so how could it be wrong to withhold it?

queer but don’t want to come out? don’t!

have a trauma disorder but don’t want to tell people what your trauma was? don’t!

disabled but don’t want to talk about it? that’s right, simply do not!

practice telling people to go away when they ask invasive questions.

the responses I’ve been using in particular are “that’s between me and my therapist/doctor”, and “why does it matter to you?”

you don’t need a “reason” to want to keep things to yourself. you don’t need to tell someone your entire history so that they can label you as “valid”.

don’t tell people information you don’t want to share.

telltaletypist:

telltaletypist:

telling gay men that they are allowed to love each other freely, openly, and passionately will always be more important than reassuring insecure straight men that they can hug their bestie without being gay

the solution to men withholding love and affection from each other out of fear of being perceived as gay is to remove the stigma around being perceived as gay, not to “no homo” male affection