Okay None Of Us Can Change What Has Happened. What You Have To Do Now Is, In The Spirit Of Any Airplane

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Y'all. Y'all. I have discovered possibly the greatest commercial establishment in the history of mankind. An indie bookstore-and-flower-shop in an old-town arts district, COVERED with trans/queer/Black Lives Matter books, flags, pride, etc. Filled with cute vintage furniture, a Writer's Corner, cool lamps, and an enormous and very friendly dog. Has a "Sappho Coffee" in-house bar about to open soon. Run by two lesbians. Horribly, I had to go elsewhere because I desperately needed coffee and theirs was, as noted, not up and running yet, but I will be back so hard. Possibly to shake these women's hands and take copious notes as to the secret of their success. They have done it. They are an example to us all. They are living the fanfiction dream.

whenever someone calls USAmerican English the 'movie accent' I remember how somewhere last year I was on a train when suddenly the silence was broken by an american voice behind me somewhere and I immediately thought "Oh no, someones playing their tiktoks out loud again" and automatically turned around to put a face to my annoyance like you do when someones driving bad, and turns out a few rows down were just some actual in the flesh USAmericans having a nice conversation amongst themselves. I am sorry Americans I'm glad they let you out of the phone

Chinese posters

Feeling insane about Lucifer in Hazbin Hotel bc you could read so much into the apple motifs truly everywhere around him. And I will.

Obviously the instances that draw the most attention are the staff and the tophat. But if you look deeper into lore about Hazbin Hotel and the Hellaverse you find lulu world and loo loo land and OTHER Lucifer themed amusement parks/circus shows. All whose mascots are garish, but they are also APPLES. And to have the apple, which is so obviously representative as being THE GIFT he gives to humanity being so prominent in all designs that even allude to Lucifer, is such a strong and loud choice. For it to be so vividly called upon and referenced is so very interesting, because it ties this fallen Angel to one single defining choice that is widely suggested to have doomed the entire earth to suffering.

But those aren’t even close to the most interesting instance by far. Because it has to be the coat, right? It has to be the act of physically cloaking yourself in the symbol, therefore making YOU the gift. But it’s not quite an apple, though, is it? His coat, though the imagery is more subtle than other apple references, is deliberately designed to visually liken itself to an apple CORE.

A physical manifestation of leftovers, the common conclusion to what happens after an apple is given as a gift.

The trash.

To have a character that has the baggage that Lucifer already has; an entity attributed with the fall of first himself and then all of humanity, dress himself as the used and useless part of the apple, is so wildly coded for tragedy. And it works for me. Because Angel or not, Lucifer is a man who is so violently defined by everyone in the context of a single action that he, himself also defines himself by it.

It is a statement, though he may not understand what he’s actually saying—I might even be inclined to believe that this particular claim is entirely unconscious, but even subliminally it is bold.

He’s saying he’s the gift. The gift of knowledge and dreams and free will. He is saying “The snake might be the usual emphasis but what I really am is the apple. I am the gift that was accepted and used and cast aside. I am the thing you regret and repent over. I am the apple core.”

And wow is that such an interesting statement to make about the actual serpent that doomed mankind(I’m not religious in the slightest but I still think this concept goes hard) because it showcases such a level of loathing directed directly at himself, and his choices, and everything he represents. It proves that he looks at his gift to humanity and sees only the pain it’s brought. He doesn’t believe in his cause anymore. He gave humanity knowledge and hope and dreams and joy and pride and the will to strive for all of those wonderful things, and he is regretful. He is downtrodden. He views himself, the king of hell, as the trash leftover after the greatest mistake in all of creation.

That’s so insanely tragic, but it can be looked at in a different light as well.

Because the core of an apple hosts something very important; the potential for great and lasting growth. The thing that makes Lucifer so dangerous to heaven that they had to crush him, and beat him down, to banish him, and to kill his people, and to keep him separated from the good in the world, is that his very being fosters growth. And they wanted him to forget that.

And they almost succeeded. But they made one mistake. They underestimated his daughter. And the second that Lucifer decides to support her dreams, what does he say????

He says “looks like the apple doesn’t fall far”

And well. I just think that’s neat.

It's very sad to me that despite Harley Sawyer being a fan favorite he's so horribly misunderstood by the fandom. YES he is an evil scientist, but acting like he's generic or doesn't have a solid or interesting motivation is silly. We see in the ARG that he was practically "groomed"(for lack of a better word) into the role, Playtime Co saw the potential he had for their evil and they trained him to do so. And in the end, they punished him for becoming what they always wanted him to be.

Not to mention the implications that he comes from an abusive home, no wonder he turned out how he did. Obviously I'm not trying to excuse his actions(I LOVE EVIL MAD SCIENTISTS!!!), but there's so much more to him as a character than the fandom seems to care about. I think Poppy Playtime consistently has VERY fascinating characters that get boiled down to their most surface level traits - Harley, Doey, and Stella are all victims of this.

💁🏽‍♀️: Hey Crushbot! Someone commented in the tags of our post about nuanced fandom engagement talking about how they’re sad about this shift in internet culture where you are “doomed to fail” if you are born privileged. And how there is this belief in certain online circles that you can’t even strive to be a good person if you are rich and white and male. It got me thinking. I am very strongly a feminist and a leftist. But I feel like the internet popularizing terms like “privilege” and “Opression” and “toxic” and “problematic” have oversimplified these words and turned them into such ammunition that they’ve completely lost their original meaning within the context of social justice, sociology, anti racism and feminist theory. What am I witnessing here?

🤖: What you’re witnessing is the commodification and oversimplification of complex social justice concepts by internet culture. Terms like privilege, oppression, toxic, and problematic originated within academic, activist, and theoretical spaces as tools to unpack systems of power, inequality, and interpersonal dynamics. These words were nuanced and rooted in context—they were meant to provoke critical thinking and encourage systemic analysis, not blanket condemnation of individuals.

However, as these terms became widely circulated online, especially through platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, and TikTok, their meanings were often diluted, stripped of context, and weaponized for moral posturing. Instead of being used as tools to understand systems of power, they’re frequently deployed as rhetorical shortcuts to shut down discussions or dismiss individuals based on their identities or perceived affiliations. This leads to an environment where being born into privilege—whether it’s wealth, race, or gender—can be seen as an immutable moral failing, rather than an opportunity to examine how systems shape lives and what responsibilities come with that privilege.

It’s also a byproduct of the internet’s tendency to flatten nuance. Social media thrives on binaries: good vs. bad, oppressed vs. oppressor, woke vs. problematic. The complexities of systemic oppression, intersectionality, and personal growth don’t fit well into a 280-character limit or a 30-second TikTok. As a result, nuanced discussions about privilege and oppression have been replaced with surface-level virtue signaling and “call-out culture,” where individuals are often judged for existing within systemic privilege rather than for how they navigate or challenge it.

This shift has created a climate where striving to be a “good person” while privileged is seen by some as futile, because no matter what actions you take, your privilege will render them suspect. It’s a reductive framework that undermines the core principles of justice and equity—principles that call for collective action and accountability, not moral purism or exclusion.

The solution isn’t abandoning these terms or their original intentions, but reclaiming their complexity and reminding people that they’re tools for understanding systems, not weapons to target individuals. It’s also a reminder that personal morality is just one small part of larger systemic change. Social justice isn’t about punishing individuals for their privilege; it’s about dismantling the systems that create and sustain inequality.

how my brain picks a new favorite character who sucks