The Lord Of The Rings - Art By Donato Giancola

i actually love steves asshole friends from s1. theres something so compelling about a couple who are both just complete assholes. they both think its so funny to be mean and they seem to do it as a couples activity. they like that about each other, they think it’s cute & hot. theyre like that “he hates everyone but you” trope but its both of them, its mutual. its them against the world (by choice). extremely rare top x top energy. truly hand in unlovable hand. 

@/anonymous

How do u deal with all the problematic aspects of One Piece (transphobia, sexism, etc?)

Okay, so I’ve hit most of the individual “problematic” elements of the series individually, and I’m not going to regurgitate my thoughts here, but I feel like there are a lot of people in fandom today who hyper focus on individual flaws of a story to the point of being unable to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. This goes for a lot of things, not just One Piece, because we live in a world of surface level hot takes, and most people don’t take the time to think critically about the media they consume. 

To put it simply, it’s not as easy as “[X Series} did [X Thing] bad, and therefore [X Series] is bad”. 

Using a non-One Piece example, the last couple months I’ve been reading through Moby Dick. It’s a book that was written in the 1850s and has a lot of the causal racism that you’d expect from the time period. It’s a story that condones and encourages the indiscriminate slaughter of sperm whales for nothing but the oil they produce, vilifies albinism, is overly long and at times incredibly pretentious. 

I don’t enjoy Moby Dick because of the racism. I enjoy it for its insight into 1850s whaling life, the symbolism of Ahab’s futile struggle, and because Ishmael describes a certain species of porpoise as a “huzzah whale” due to the fact that they’re small, happy, and fat. I read past the offensive stereotypes and see the genuine friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg and read quotes like “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian” and see that Melville was trying to work past the caricatures typical of the time period, and even if he was successful by the standards of today, he is to be commended for the attempt.

The flaws of Moby Dick (and its author) do not detract from the overall quality of the work, at least for me. It is one of the great American classics, warts and all. And while I believe stories can shape what we feel and believe, at the end of the day It’s the reader’s responsibility to separate fiction from reality. Do you, the reader, feel like One Piece’s flaws outweigh it’s merits? Is the bad so egregious that it forever sours the good? Or are you aggressively picking at aspects you personally don’t like and throw it in the face of fans who do?

There are aspects of One Piece that can be rightly criticized, both in structure and content, but I don’t read the series to validate my beliefs and opinions. I can think [Insert Controversial Character Here] is a fun character and not condone their actions. It’s a story, there needs to be conflict. If nothing problematic happened it wouldn’t exist. 

(Note that there’s a difference between a conflict that’s necessary for the plot and a misstep by the author. The people who came away from things like Sanji’s timeskip antics thinking they were funny already thought things like that were funny. Oda did not make it so.)

Oda is not free from his culture and worldview. Neither am I, and neither are you. Sometimes you’ve got to bridge that gap yourself and meet the author halfway, and in the instances where you can’t, there are ways of having a healthy discussion within the fandom that don’t devolve into shouting matches and name calling. This goes both ways—people who blindly defend a series can and often do have the lack of critical thinking as mindless haters. 

And if a series (or a book, or a movie, or whatever) truly causes that much distress, then don’t engage with it, and don’t shit on the people who do. It really is that simple.

why are christian bale and patrick bateman the exact same person

What for? I don’t know lmao. Here sound of DGHDA and night Stupino

Killer but if he had oni teeth and stuff lol

no repost lol

If Rafa can't play at Roland Garros (😭😭😭) I want to see Daniil winning it.

i got Real Mad about misinterpretations of my Favorite Boy again.

[shakes reddit by the shoulders] GOD IS A METAPHOR

(inspired by that meme on this topic with the same energy.) (transcript under the cut)

[An arrow that reads "That Scene in Liore" points at Ed.]

[An arrow that reads "That Scene in Liore" points at Ed.]

[An arrow shooting over the head of the person viewing this scene shows the description:

"The first major example of Edward's virulent Pride in believing science/alchemy is the Answer, that to "Stand on your Own Two Legs" is the way of progress. That he is the only one he can rely on to restore his and his brother's bodies.

Then to have that worldview come crashing down with the catalyst of the Nina Event and the staggering realization that "We're just Human!" and this leading him to spend the entire series learning time and time again that the solution is Other People. He can't fix it all alone. That diversity brings power, that we cannot exist above or without anyone else.

That One is All, All is One."]

[A crude illustration of a gawking dudebro in a fedora. An arrow points to him reading "IDK, fuckin' Elon & the Like-Minded"]

"Wow!! A character who spits in the face of God and Organized Religion! A Cool Atheist(tm) just like me!"