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what-alchemy

@what-alchemy / what-alchemy.tumblr.com

fanfictioneer | one of them there they/thems | old as balls
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Reblogged
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Genuine question. Does the red string of fate theory apply to rainbow elastic?

Do you think the suspenders and the Apple Watch band were cut from the same elastic?

(I know no, but fated mates au where these are Ted and Trent and they absolutely were cut from the same elastic band.)

#trent crimm#ted lasso#james lance#jason sudeikis
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Reblogged nevermindirah
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rubynye asked:

You write thorough analyses of concepts and events, so I thought I would ask for your take on Senator Booker's speech today. Some people say it was disrespectful. What do you think? Thank you in advance for your opinion.

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fozmeadows answered:

I think what Booker did was extraordinary on several levels. First, the sheer physical endurance it takes to speak for that long, almost uninterrupted, while remaining cogent, is absolutely incredible. Second, the actual content of what he said, based on what I've seen, was fantastic; he was impassioned, engaging and incisive, and the extent to which he kept on topic over that many hours is staggering. Third, the fact that he broke the record for the longest speech on the Senate floor, which is not only an achievement in its own right, but doubly meaningful given his status as a Black man when the previous record was set by a segregationist, Strom Thurmond, protesting the Civil Rights Act in 1957. And last but not least, the moral clarity inherent in rebuking, loudly and at length, the myriad abuses of a historically corrupt, fascist government while working to delay their business.

All that being so, I think there are only three plausible reasons for someone finding Booker's speech disrespectful. The first is predicated on agreeing so completely with the Trump administration's policies that disrupting their operation via a lawful, established form of political protest is cast as inherently bad - which would be very much in keeping with the logic of those who, to take just one example, see nothing illegal or indeed remarkable about Trump's insistence that the executive branch should be able to unilaterally overrule both the Senate and the judiciary. The second is predicated on being such a spineless appeasenik milquetoast that some nebulous concept of "civility" is considered more important, and thus more urgent, than doing literally anything to protest an administration so nakedly corrupt that the president is publicly shilling for crypto and Tesla in order to line his own pockets. And the third is, simply, racism, whether subconscious or overt, which here translates to the reflexive assumption that a Black man being loud and disruptive must of course be inherently bad, and certainly a worse offense than whatever he might be protesting.

So, in conclusion, no, I do not think Booker's speech was disrespectful - but even if it could be fairly labelled as such, as I don't believe this current administration is remotely deserving of anyone's respect, I'd still be cheering him on.

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Reblogged disregardandfelicity
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i was going to do a rant about this before seeing this tweet but imma just leave this here

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This goes hand in hand with pushing for only queer people to play queer roles. Which in theory sounds like a good thing to push for authentic representation when so much of the past stuff was bad.

Except the actual real world outcome has become queer leftists abusively dog piling any actor they deem "inauthentic" leading to actors being forcefully outed against their will before they were ready in an attempt to make the abuse stop. Including children. People have been justifying psychologically tormenting literal children for not publicly disclosing (and being firm and set in) their gender and sexuality in order to work.

In many wants it's set back queer media and made people just as afraid of queer roles ruining their careers and their lives as they were when bigots were doing it. Which is not an improvement to the situation! It's really only giving cover to people who want none of this to exist.

We could have just praised the process we wanted to see. Personally I love seeing Jim Parsons take that big normative sitcom money and fucking off to make emotionally powerful queer films with it casting queer actors whenever he can. But praising that will always be more constructive than bullying Kit Connor. If Daniel Craig wants to spend the rest of his career making charming gay detective movies about helping marginalized woman get revenge on abusive rich assholes, then I don't care what his sexuality is because it's still pushing queer media far forward.

We could have positively addressed rainbow capitalism by supporting queer-owed business. We could have accepted that mainstreaming queer iconography at Target (much of it designed by queer people who got to pay their bills making it) would make space for people buying that small batch t-shirt at Pride. It's not like people only ever buy one t-shirt in their life.

A closeted-for-safety trans boy buying his first binder at Target could have created an opening for the next one to be from Shapeshifters. Instead he may never get the chance to know what it would feel feel like to take the first step because the wrong packaging could endanger him and the (fair) price mightbe unaffordable.

We can't built perils into doing better. We can't keep calling nigh-impossible next steps"the bare minimum" and tearing into them for every imperfection if we want people to do them at all. At minimum that's a burnout machine. At worst it gives bigots leverage to maker sure we have nothing. Kindness and enthuses support of what we want to see happen makes way more progress.

Unfortunately many leftists are still so stuck in the purity-sin-redemption mentality, even when they surface-level reject Christianity, that instead of growth and change everything keeps getting treated as blasphemy unless it's perfect. Even though perfection is impossible. So the whole well is primed to be poisoned by the people who genuinely hate us.

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