let me stay tenderhearted, despite despite despite

"What, you need consent for everything these days?" Literally yes. And not just these days, but always have and always will.

"Do I need consent to kiss my wife in the morning? Do I need consent to shake someone's hand after a business meeting? Do I need CoNsEnT to braid my daughter's hair?"

Yes, yes and yes. A neurotypical person of reasonably passable social skill should have the ability to either instinctively understand when their touch is welcome, or logically conclude when their touch is socially expected. If you truly, literally, genuinely cannot tell whether your own child delights in you playing with her hair or merely endures it, then yeah, maybe you shouldn't touch anyone at all, ever, before you learn how to do that.

"Do I need consent to make eye contact with strangers on the street? Do I need consent from everyone on board before I get on the bus?"

So yes, in fact, everything involving other people requires their consent in some way, shape, or form. That's what forms social mores and folkways! This is the very basis of society! A mix of explicit and implicit consent.

Boost the hell out of this. Liking is good. Reblogging is better.

I think a lot of people understand why this is bad, but in case some don't let me explain.

The nation was horrified by the recording of George Floyd being murdered. But what if it had never been recorded? Would Derek Chauvin still be out? Would they have tossed the case due to insufficient evidence?

Look, the 2020 protests resulted in laws being passed to hold police accountable. Were they fully successful? No. Does more need to be done? Yes. But there was more being done than I've ever seen.

Now, in the space of a few months we have

The SCOTUS ruling prisoners don't have the right to an appeal.

The SCOTUS ruling that cops can't be sued for failing to Mirandize people.

The SCOTUS rule the government can charge nonIndigenous people for commiting crimes on tribal land, stripping Native Americans of tribal sovereignty.

And in Arizona, people can't record cops within 8 feet of an arrest.

As someone who's been involved in snake conservation for my entire adult life, the single biggest obstacle we face is a lack of public interest. Rattlesnakes just aren't "cute" enough for people to care about them, and even when I'm talking about how horrific rattlesnake roundups are, one of the biggest responses I get is indifference.

Rattlesnake roundups are, put simply, festivals celebrating animal cruelty and the death and torture of rattlesnakes. They're disgusting, they're mindlessly cruel, and they only happen because rattlesnakes aren't cute enough to be seen as living, feeling animals, and they're treated like monsters because they're venomous snakes.

They're also simply not sustainable. Rattlesnake roundups kill snakes in such huge numbers that the kill counts are measured in pounds of snakes instead of individuals. They have been a huge factor in the recent consideration of listing eastern diamondbacks under the Endangered Species Act. Rattlesnake populations are well-controlled by predation, and they don't reproduce in enough numbers to sustain populations. Every year, noticeably less rattlesnakes can be caught for the festivals, and hunters resort to pouring gasoline into winter dens to chase out as many as possible, which obviously has a horrible effect on other native wildlife.

A few resources about rattlesnake roundups:

Here's a fact sheet from Advocates for Snake Preservation about roundups (this doesn't include graphic pictures, so it's great if you want to learn more but don't want to see images of the roundups)

Here's the website from ASP focused on roundup education - great information and links to current petitions to help stop roundups (TW for extreme animal cruelty)

Here's the Rattlesnake Conservancy's Save the Buzztails campaign - signing up for their newsletter is a great way to stay informed!

Snake conservation always suffers from a lack of donations, so if you're in the mood to donate to help stop roundups, ASP and the Rattlesnake Conservancy are both great options.

The only part of bismuth that’s black coded is her hair and arguably her voice, a much more overtly black coded character is literally part of the main cast. There are also, you know, actual black characters in the show and one of the main writers is black.

Rose bubbling Bismuth was narratively treated as a horrible and cowardly act, Steven doing the same after Bismuth tried to KILL HIM when she thought he might actually secretly be Rose is not the same thing.

Bismuth was narratively treated as in the wrong for wanting to kill in retaliation was because she was willing to kill as many soldiers and bystanders as would get in her way, despite most of them having been established as being brainwashed and forced into their roles just as much as she was. She is the one who attempted to kill Lapis during the war, directly leading to her being imprisoned and used as a tool for thousands of years.

Bismuth’s anger towards her oppressors was shown as justified, but the main character is a 14yo pacifist whose main motivation is to fix things without anyone getting hurt which becomes a severely traumatic experience over time as he tries to prove to himself that there is good in everyone and help them become better people, because he wants to save everyone.

The point of Steven Universe is to explore how aspects of an oppressive society can harm every person within it to some degree, the main antagonists are also supposed to be analogous to an unhealthy and toxic family. The point of the ending is not that you should forgive family members who have harmed you, but that you can reach some level of understanding with them once you’re all out of that environment and have your own independence. The entire show was largely teaching children through example healthy ways to communicate your emotions to form healthy relationships. The average child is probably not going to be up against genocidal fascists, so that isn’t what the narrative is reflective of. Many children do however have issues with communicating concerns or boundaries with parents and peers.

Who else remembers the accusations of the show being “lazy” because of infrequent animation errors or inconsistent scaling in later seasons? Guys the network was trying to quietly cancel the show for years, do you really think these artists had deadlines that were realistic? They had to fight for the right to show lesbian rocks holding hands every ten minutes do you think they had time to both make the animation sequences work and prevent scale inconsistencies?