you have not begun to see the horrors of love

I've noticed in recent years that, at least within mainstream usamerican culture, the sympathetic petty criminal archetype has largely fallen out of favor. you still have plenty of stories of noble nights, benevolent aristocrats, sympathetic mercenaries, but the idea of a thief with a heart of gold is increasingly rare. often petty criminals are just used as uncomplicated cannon fodder, so the protagonist has something human-shaped that they can kill or mutilate without remorse. you see this with dnd players often. the wicked king or the cruel dragon can be reasoned with, but a highway bandit robbing caravans to eat is perfectly fine to torture to death with sorcery

this is no less common outside of fantasy, either. god knows how many books, films, games, about sympathetic soldiers, police, even mercenaries. sometimes they try to reckon with the inherent violence and cruelty of these careers, but they rarely have the fangs for a message sharper than "sometimes good people have to do bad things." but a thief? a mugger? god forbid, a drug dealer? uncomplicatedly evil vermin, all. again, just used as cannon fodder, purely to provide something human-shaped to hate and brutalize without conscience

there is an obvious racial angle to this, as people grow more leery towards "those people are evil and inhuman because they look different," the message shifts to "those people are evil and inhuman because they are criminals," paired with heavily biased (and significantly more publicized) criminalization of racial minorities to achieve the same goal of publicly condoned repression and violence

How is it that you can a music library of like 1,200+ absolute bangers but as soon as you put it on shuffle in a group setting it's like. anime opening you added in 2010. homestuck parody song. musical artist who was cancelled last year for kidnapping and eating children in his basement. Hamilton

I can't believe some people are actually reblogging this like "Tch. Omg, so embarrassing OP, I can't believe you would ever admit to liking Hamilton 😏 " like ok, first of all congratulations for hatching as a fully formed adult in 2022 from the pure white egg of a virgin swan i guess. Raised in a cave on a diet consisting solely of nuts and berries and leftist twitter clapbacks. "ooooooh, I've never had a complicated relationship with a piece of art that was phenomenally well-received at the time but aged like milk as later reflection revealed the fundamental flaws in its premise that were in fact present from its inception but which I didn't notice because I was 17 and hadn't heard of neoliberalism yet" Should we throw a party? Should we invite Anthony Fantano? Anyway second of all. you draw the line at Lin Manuel Miranda but you're fine with basement guy?

gay men brought back 70s mustaches, lesbians brought back 80s mullets, and now straight dudes are just walking around with both thinking they stumbled onto this styling choice by accident. say the line meryl (cerulean sweater monologue but specifically about how gay culture creates taste)

can we go back to acknowledging that ignoring someone’s chosen pronouns is always misgendering, even when you’re using neutral ones instead

i bring a sort of “you should maybe interrogate your so-called ‘preferences’ to make sure they’re not literal textbook examples of severe unconscious bias” vibe that my woke gay friends dont really like