thequietqueer

BISEXUALS GROW FROM THE GROUND

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

“Voting for the lesser of two evils doesn’t work.”

How would you know? It’s never been tried for long enough.

Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris all lost.

Biden won, but most people spent his entire presidency shitting on him and giving him absolutely no credit for his successes, which were MANY. (If you need a refresher: RFMA, PACT Act, Chips and Science, Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson etc.)

You can’t say “vote blue no matter who” and “vote for the lesser of two evils” doesn’t work if you refuse to ever give it a chance of working.

Also I hate that phrase “lesser of two evils” when we’re talking about someone who supports unions and immigrants and healthcare and food assistance and queer rights and voting rights over someone who is literally trying to end us all.

And the lesser of two evils is, by definition, BETTER.

It’s like the difference between a wound with a bit of an infection, and literal death. Those aren’t comparable.

Democrats are not perfect and no one has ever claimed otherwise, but they are making lasting change. It’s slow and it’s not linear , but it is happening.

Pro forced birth Democrats have been all but forced out the party. Same with anti-gay Democrats AND anti-trans Democrats. You don’t see many Dems supported by the NRA at all anymore. And all Dems believe in the climate crisis.

This was NOT a given even 10 years ago.

Democrats are not becoming more conservative. They’re becoming less. Across the board. Progressive policies have become a deal breaker.

This is what you’re saying is one of “two evils”?

Give me a break.

Do you want things to get better or do you want to scream “perfection only!” and watch it get worse?

Cause that’s what we’re living right now.

We’re living in a refusal to vote for and celebrate the successful harm reduction, or “lesser of two evils,” as you say.

There are rarely examples where we actually get to see what happens if the “lesser of two evils” wins.

And the thing is, when they win, they’re shit on so successfully that we lose next time. Again, Biden.

They do something, or many many things right and the goal post gets moved, again and again.

In the end, the only knowledge anyone has of their actions is that they can’t do anything right.

That’s a dangerous way of seeing the world.

I know this cause we are living it.

What is happening right now is a product of that way of thinking.

I don’t need to find statistics or read a report cause this is our reality.

This is what happens when people refuse to vote for and celebrate the wins of “the lesser of two evils.”

When people choose a candidate in the primary who has no chance of a snowball in hell of winning and then complain and don’t vote when a candidate they REALLY didn’t like becomes the party nominee.

This is our life.

We don’t have to imagine it.

And yet, the mantra hasn’t changed. The goalpost keeps being moved. Dems don’t get any credit for doing ANYTHING right. People spread demands that are literally impossible and convince other people that they are not only possible, but easy. And enough people refuse to vote for harm reduction that the harm is constantly increased.

Perfection is the enemy of progress. That’s not just a catchy phrase, it’s a fact.

If Al Gore had won, we would be A LOT further along on climate than we are now, and we would not have gone into Iraq.

If Hillary Clinton had won, we wouldn’t have lost the Supreme Court. We would still have Roe and affirmative action and the VRA and the Chevron Doctrine.

If Kamala Harris had won, we wouldn’t be at war with Venezuela and Iran and possibly Cuba and maybe Greenland? Trans people would not be attacked at the federal level. Immigrants would not be kidnapped off the streets. We would still have the Department of Education and labor and a DoJ that doesn’t do the president’s bidding.

THIS is the result of refusing to vote for and support the lesser of two evils, WE ARE LIVING IT!

So maybe going forward we stop. We give a chance for the lesser of two evils to actually work. To scream from the rooftops every time they do right thing. We don’t just vote for it once, but do so over at least a decade.

Cause we’ve tried your way. It hasn’t worked. This exact moment that you are reading this post is proof of that.

So let’s try this way, for once. Let’s give this country a fighting chance at actual progress.

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Also prev tags:

Biosecurity

Customs management (you do not want people importing a bunch of stuff that doesn't meet your country's safety standards, for example)

Things like that one lake in Europe where three national borders coincide and they built an island specifically so you can run between countries for fun

Things borders shouldn't be for:

(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)

Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean 

Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe

Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay

Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden

Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)

Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)

Here and here are websites where you can play with sand

Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods

Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails

Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis

Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)

Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites

Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)

Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3

Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm

Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests

Here is a website of calm rain noise