I Know Most Of Tumblr Is Thinking About The USA Right Now. But Fuck The Nz Government Right Now Too.

Everything feels awful right now but it isn't really. We still don't officially have a winner, but regardless of how the presidential election ends up, I wanted to take a minute and find what lights I can in the 3 a.m. darkness. Here's what I know:

* Kentucky overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to undermine the public education system by offering private school vouchers:

Louisville Public Media

Kentucky rejects Amendment 2 to allow private education funding, passes Amendment 1

Amendment 2 to allow public funds to go to private and charter school education was rejected universally in Kentucky counties when the Assoc

* Delaware has elected a transgender woman to the House of Representatives, the first out trans person of any gender ever elected to congress:

the Guardian

Sarah McBride becomes first out trans person elected to US House

McBride wins Delaware’s at-large House seat against Republican candidate John Whalen III, a former state police officer

* For the first time in history, two Black women will be serving in the senate at the same time, and they are only the fourth and fifth Black women ever elected to the senate:

the Guardian

US will have two Black women serving as senators for first time in history

Democrats Lisa Blunt Rochester from Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland both saw victories

* New York State has passed a constitutional amendment enshrining the rights of pregnant people (including the right to an abortion), LGBTQIA+ people, the disabled, immigrants regardless of legal status, and other at-risk groups:

Gothamist

New York voters pass Prop 1, enshrine abortion rights into state constitution

The constitutional amendment faced a tougher-than-expected fight after a right-wing campaign against anti-discrimination protections.

* Democrat Josh Stein has beaten self-avowed Nazi Mark Robinson to become governor of North Carolina:

NPR

North Carolina’s Josh Stein wins race for governor over Mark Robinson

 Stein is the current attorney general and he noted his work winning opioid settlements. But it was controversy over Robinson’s inflammatory

That's everything I know off the top of my head. It's not many bright spots, but it's not zero. I'm going to try to find more and I'll add them to the post. It's the only thing I can think of to do that isn't sobbing and throwing up or looking up Canadian immigration rules.

If you know more good news, I encourage you to add it in reblogs.

personally i’m a fan of when a story is like. the love was there. unfortunately. this all could have actually gone a lot easier for everyone if the love hadn’t been there but here we are

okay my current amphibia thought of the day is this screenshot

listen. here me out. but something about these two facing their worst fear (losing each other) but respecting anne’s wishes. something about acceptance and denial.

look at the horror on marcy’s face. she doesn’t voice her fears, but it’s clear in her expression: she knows this is a death wish. but she accepts what anne wants. we’ve seen her do everything she can to not lose her friends but in this moment, marcy does nothing. it’s the acceptance of loss with a small hope that anne will come back safe and sound because this is anne, her anne. no matter the time or distance, nothing can break them apart. maybe not even the fate of the world.

and then the denial from sasha “you better come back boonchuy”. because this whole thing? it’s out of sasha’s control once again but this is anne’s choice, her control. so this is sasha allowing anne to make her own decision even if it’s something sasha wants to fight, scream, kick and cry against. and that in itself is acceptance, not of loss but in trust, because that’s what anne taught her right? to remember to have faith in the people around her. and sasha wants to be better, better for them all, so she places that faith in anne to see herself return back to them.

“now it’s your turn to follow my lead” and god, what an ask to make when faced with the destruction of the world you’ve come to love and the person you’ve loved since forever.

I've been reading some stuff on punitive justice, and it made something click for me that I've observed a lot online but haven't been able to put into words before.

When someone does something wrong, that's bad, and the damage it does needs to be repaired while the person needs to try to do better in future to minimize repeating harm. We learn it in preschool - say sorry, don't do it again. If they keep at it, remove them from the situation where they can do the harm until they prove they're responsible enough to go back in.

So if it turns out someone DIDN'T do anything wrong, that should be a relief! There's no damage to fix, no internal errors to correct. Less work for everybody, literally no harm done. False alarm, all good.

The thing I've observed is, lots of people want them to have done something wrong. There's almost disappointment when it turns out there's no harm done. And I think that's because of this general undercurrent of punitive justice as morally righteous and desirable: someone does something wrong, you get to punish them. Turns out they're innocent? That's disappointing. Find another reason you get to punish them, or find another bad person you get to punish. But at the core of it is that desire to punish someone. Someone you can hurt in a way that makes you a better person for hurting them.

This particular brand of almost cannibalistic pseudo-justice is super common in tumblr, one of the most ostensibly liberal spaces on the internet; I see more borderline savagery in online discourse here than in the actually toxic parts of the internet that are just openly cruel for cruelty's sake. It's always thrown me for a loop, and has frankly also hurt me, because on the rare occasions I get personally dogpiled, it only actually stings when it makes me worry that I've legitimately hurt someone. If I did something wrong, or more realistically when I inevitably do something wrong, that would make it good and right for people to give me shit about it every day until I'm dead.

The thing that clicked for me most recently was this bit in Ijeoma Oluo's Be A Revolution:

Punitive justice is specifically, uniquely appealing to people who have suffered injustices. Of course it's the Tumblr zeitgeist. Everyone here is a marginalized person failed by at least one system. Punishing someone for perceived injustice is how someone the system has deemed worthless proves their value in blood, even if the person being punished hasn't harmed you directly - even if they haven't harmed anyone. "Righteous" anger isn't about the target in these cases, it's about the inflicter. This is how much my pain is worth.

And that kind of violent validation is so alluring and so very dangerous. It seeks an outlet, wearing the justification of justice. Who's in reach? Who's an acceptable target this week? What's a good reason to use?

Is there anything they could do that would make me stop?

WELCOME TO STOAT SATURDAY

Sasha, Consort of Guardian Anne

I mean if it’s requests you want I’m always gonna suggest the whole ghost Anne haunting her post canon self bc that’s just who I am 👀

just for u <3

how i feel about all the changes in s3

jentry chau vs the underworld has an insane case of show don't tell in its storytelling and i loooove analyzing it like its my job

so we're never really explicitly told mr cheng's exact age other than gugu alluding to a vague amount of centuries in episode 2

but the snake lady he goes to for help in the flashback, bai suzhen, is a famous folktale from the tang dynasty which is a VERY long time ago, 7th-10th century iirc. that's INSANE

he's been trying to revive xiao lan for 1000+ years. when he said there is no other way, he was serious. he would know

Out of context spoilers