Oh To Be Two Older Queer Men Eating Strawberries In Our Garden At The End Of The World

I am floored I am flabbergasted I cannot believe it

In the game, Bill and Frank were almost nothing. Bill was a joke character, he shows up, he’s a doomsday prepper, he helps you fight zombies, gives you a truck battery, and you leave. Ellie steals some comics and a gay porno magazine from him, and he’s never seen again.

Frank WAS nothing. You never see him. You find his BODY, he got bit and hung himself, and he got bit trying to escape Bill because he hated him so much and the note says he’s happier dead than living another day with Bill 

And then the show. The show took that shallow, mean storyline, and made it beautiful. 

Now Bill and Frank are real characters. We know them. Really KNOW them. And they don’t hate each other. In fact they’re in love. They’re really IN LOVE. And yes they argue and disagree sometimes but they’re a real couple who really love each other while still being two people so sometimes they fight. That doesn’t change that they’re in love 

And they GET TO BE IN LOVE, the whole time, they’re doing things for each other. They’re living in their little gated paradise and it’s beautiful. They make it pretty. They grow food. They’re eating gourmet meals. They’re not just surviving. They’re thriving. They’re living

They took that mean spirited game story, and they made it the point, the heart, the example of what people are still fighting for. The proof that yes, even in the middle of the apocalypse, you can still live a good life. Not an easy life, you will still have bad days, you’ll have bad days with the ones you love, but you will still love them, and they will still love you. And then, with all these grizzly, horrific deaths we see two deaths that are peaceful. Painless. Two men who die old, satisfied, and in the arms of their purpose. 

Don’t you see? It’s about hope 

Bill and Frank are hope  

Hey, let's talk about anons like this, because I know some people haven't been in a position to see the patterns these play out in on broader scale and may indeed not spot the trap.

And it is a trap.

An ask like this has several purposes.

First, it uses social justice language in passive aggressive and manipulative ways to try to coerce a behavior. In this case, the desired behavior is usually for the recipent to participate in community shunning and/or harrassment. The language above is intended to put the recipient on the defensive where, in the haste to disassociate themself from the Bad Thing, they quickly disassociate themself from the bad person, often with no particular fact checking or evidence.

The message is also intended to create a sense of being surveilled and judged by an unknown amount of people with unknown amount of social power and an unknown amount of relevance to your life.

Notice that these asks are usually framed as if they are coming from a follower or potential follower, someone who is addressing you personally and who cares about your opinion and who your blog has an effect on. However this is usually.... very much not the case. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch a gossip campaign from like this from the outside, you will very quickly notice that messages like this get sent in mass batches to dozens and dozens of strangers. (You can often turn these up with a tumblr search, if you look.)

The sender does not know you and probably does not follow you. They have a person they don't like (possibly for their stated reason and possibly not), and they are going through the reblogs of a post from that blog and mass messaging *everyone* with a form letter. They will not see your response and they will probably never even see your blog again.

Which brings us to the second goal of whisper campaigns like this:

Notice that I blacked out the names above? That's because when the recipient answers anonymous asks like this, they provide a platform for the opinion on their blog. An anonymous message like this that gets posted doesn't just spread gossip and apply pressure to the recipient, it is spread to the recipient's entire community.

The *goal* is to get access to your community. The *goal* is to use you as a soapbox.

Is the information accurate? Did anyone check? Does the anon have an ulterior social motive? BIG SHRUG

If you go into the comments on one of these whisper campaigns you will see that *most people never bother to check.*

They assume good faith from a follower, they're off balance defending themselves, and they jump straight to conciliation.

It's a really, really effective form of social manipulation, and really really commonly misused.

i think that every child should have unrestricted access to thick blackberry brambles or some other delicious fruit that grows encased in a painful fortress. i think wading through thorns to reach the cluster of shining ripe berries you spied through a gap between the tangled vines teaches you something important. not sure what though

yes we all know about medieval jesters waging psychological warfare in times of combat, but wait there’s more!

at the beginning of battles they would ride in on horseback, juggling swords or lances, and taunt & bait  the opposition. soldiers would get so angry they would break rank & weaken formations just to try to kill the fool

"The transition from [the barter system to currency] is hard to understand; how can human cravings be fetishized into pieces of metal? The answer is elegant because it reveals not only the origin of money, but its character even today. Money was and still is literally sacred: 'It has long been known that the first markets were sacred markets, the first banks were temples, the first to issue money were priests or priest-kings.' The first coins were minted and distributed by temples because they were medallions inscribed with the image of their god and embodying his protective power. Containing such manna, they were naturally in demand, not because you could buy things with them but vice-versa: since they were popular, you could exchange them for other things.

The consequence of this was that 'now the cosmic powers could be the property of everyman, without even the need to visit temples: you could now traffic in immortality in the marketplace.' This eventually led to the emergence of a new kind of person, 'who based the value of his life — and so of his immortality — on a new cosmology centered on coins.' A new meaning system arose, which our present economic system makes increasingly the meaning-system. 'Money becomes the distilled value of all existence ... a single immortality symbol, a ready way of relating the increase of oneself to all the important objects and events of one's world.'

If we replace 'immortality' with 'becoming real,' the point becomes Buddhist: beyond its usefulness as a medium of exchange, money has become modern humanity's most popular way of accumulating Being, of coping with our gnawing intuition that [the ego does] not really exist. Suspecting that the sense of self is a groundless construction, we went to temples and churches to ground ourselves in God; now we ground ourselves financially.

The problem is that the true meaning of this meaning-system is unconscious, which means, as usual, that we end up paying a heavy price for it. The value we place on money karmically rebounds back against us: the more we value it, the more we use it to evaluate ourselves."

- David Loy, from "Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today." Buddhist Ethics and Modern Society: An International Symposium, edited by Charles Wei-hsun Fu and Sandra A. Wawrytko, 1991.

I’m going to hold onto my community, friends, and loved ones as tight and as close as I can. We have to be there for each other. We are all we have, and that is the most important thing to me.

joel: dad mode™ on

ELLIE WILLIAMS & JOEL MILLER THE LAST OF US | S01E03: Long Long Time

bonus: joel still refusing to give ellie a gun

Btw you can be intensely critical of the Democratic party and recognize that it is full of aged out of touch moderates who are refusing to meet the urgency of the moment,

and also recognize that voting for Democrats is extremely important because it allows things like the confirmation of Justices and prevents the literal fascist party from gaining more power and that harm reduction is an important end in itself

These things can coexist

Politics is a long game. Being disappointed and angry today does not obviate your responsibility to participate

I consider this a short ranged attack shuttle meant for rapid hit and runs on soft targets, relying on its sensors and mobility to stay one step ahead of any aggressors