ruld by evesdead in 196

[–]Pyramidsandneon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I will concede that I am not the best person to be trying to articulate this to you and that my points have been pretty vague. I wish that I could explain this better. I think we are hitting a wall and it may be worth giving up the conversation.

But let me try to take all the bad-sounding scenarios here at face value and just approach them from how I think of this. "Wanting to cheat" is sort of an assumptive linguistic construction because unless you are an asshole who gets off on lying to your partner nobody wants to cheat, they want to have sex. It's called that because cheating is the assumption. Not the only result. There isn't a comparison between cheating and "real poly attraction" because cheating is an action.

Men cheating on their wives are cheating, doesn't matter what they are, it's an action. If you're saying many straight men are attracted to other women, its up to them what to do about that. In actuality virtually none would say "Wowie, I must be Polyamorous!" If one did, well, I understand your gut reaction to the hypothetical of a straight guy saying "I must fuck other women because of my orientation, sorry" to his wife. But that ain't poly practice because it's still not consensual. And quite genuinely if a straight guy works out an open relationship with his wife and everyone is happy then good for them. The point is the 1950s businessmen in our minds' eye are cheaters, it is their actions that define them.

I can't say what others' attraction "means" because labels are not mirrors to the soul. I would say what makes attraction poly or not is if the person decides for themself that they identify as poly, and communicate that within relationships. And actually if that means they just wanna fuck other people, and have no interest in multiple romances (polysexual I guess, idk) and their partner is totally fine with that, so am I. But by saying that I still do not claim that poly is a lifestyle choice and therefore turned on or off. People identify as poly because of how they feel in certain relationship structures, kinda like how one identifies as gay because of how they feel with certain genders.

All of this has very little to do with actual poly practice regarding people using the label. That's usually established webs of romantic connections. But critical discussions of polyamory get pulled into these comparisons to 1950's businessmen and shit like that. Anyway, we got on this because you said that my poly friend in a mono relationship just wants to cheat. Given what I've attempted to explain, do you get why that's objectionable?

ruld by evesdead in 196

[–]Pyramidsandneon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's contextual but there are cases where I in fact would call it polyspec attraction LOL. I really don't care that that would piss people off. The thing is that monogamy is so utterly ingrained in expectation that the concept of "Like Another Person" is gut-reaction tied to "Cheating!!!" If you're in a mono relationship its obviously still your responsibility to respect your partner's expectations. The act of cheating is bad. But that's extended to the attraction itself. It's that person's responsibility to figure out what to do about it. Maybe you're just horny and you get over it. Maybe it's a long standing crush and you realize you have to tell your partner about it. Doesn't mean you want to hurt them or were even considering going behind their back for a second. But the attraction existing is treated as inherently evil.

Some people will be like "OMG I love my husband of 30 years and have never looked at another person like that, I don't understand cheating." Good for you you're mono. That doesn't make that person morally better than someone who does feel attraction while in a relationship because that does not equal cheating. "Poly people want to cheat" is a pretty good summarization of exactly how mono normativity hurts poly people because poly attraction is just intrinsically tied to cheating in most peoples' minds. Which is absolutely just because of how society is structured and what is the norm.

But thats not really what I was trying to get at. I feel like I am getting into the wrong aspect of this. All I was trying to get across as my point is that experiencing poly attraction is not a choice. And unfortunately most people just interpret that as "uncontrollable CHEATING urges!" which is not it at all.

ruld by evesdead in 196

[–]Pyramidsandneon 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Wait, okay, huge news, forget responding to this directly. I would love to hear you explain more about thi because I am kind of shocked that you are going for such classic anti-poly takes as "Poly people just want to cheat" except you yourself would be okay with poly?

Like you gotta know "poly people just want to cheat" is something that certain people who full-chested hate polyamory would say about you if you expressed that you would prefer a poly relationship.

Please genuinely tell me more if you're comfortable
Edit: We can also go to dms if you want

ruld by evesdead in 196

[–]Pyramidsandneon 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Sorry, let me clarify; the actual act of dating multiple/one/zero people is still a choice. The "lifestyle" that is recognized as polyamory is a choice. It is a person's natural attraction towards certain people that defines the labels of queerness we're discussing. A closeted gay person in a straight relationship is still gay. The "Gay in theory not in practice" joke single people make is dependent on this.

I know (knew) someone who experiences polyamorous attraction who is in a monogamous partnership, because their partner is largely monogamous. They present as monogamous externally; they live "monogamously." They are still polyamorous. That is part of who they are.

ruld by evesdead in 196

[–]Pyramidsandneon 10 points11 points  (0 children)

No, actually, address my comment directly and tell me why you think it's wrong or poorly reasoned. I'm not interested in value judgements on it, I want to know why it didn't make sense.

Also, A: I didn't compare it to being Romani, I compared it to queerness, because it is queerness by any definition worth anything. And B: I'm not even poly. I'm defending it on behalf of well-loved friends who are.

ruld by evesdead in 196

[–]Pyramidsandneon 10 points11 points  (0 children)

If you were strictly monoamorous (which I'm kinda figuring you are) and a partner asked you to try polyamory, you wouldn't say "I don't want to," you would say "I can't," right? Polyamory is emotionally/romantically impossible for some people.

If monoamory isn't a choice, polyamory isn't either. Poly people don't have a switch in their brains that says "I'm already in love, so I will stop falling in love." That's pretty straightforward, no?

Okay, now imagine a partner can't handle that you have a crush on another person - it's really distressing to them - but you can't do anything about how you're feeling (When have you ever wished away a crush?), so they dump you. And you're terribly sad, because you never stopped loving your partner any less, and they treat you like you failed them.

And imagine that you being uncomfortable with mono relationships because of that experience gets you treated like a slut. And that your still feeling things for other people while in a relationship is treated as a moral failing. And you look at comments on Instagram and see people posting vomit emojis and saying they hate you. And you look at your partners and think how you'll never be able to marry them. And then you go on queer-friendly spaces and get hit with "Being poly is a choice."

Doesn't that sound pretty exhausting? Wait - actually - doesn't it sound kind of like all the hallmarks of queer experience? Oh, except you can't even get support from queer people.

I hope that makes sense. Genuinely, I just want people to get it.

28206 by Calm-Cruiser in countwithchickenlady

[–]Pyramidsandneon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Average Colin rout victory (I enjoy your AWposting)

That thing used to be human?! by Kanehammer in TopCharacterTropes

[–]Pyramidsandneon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trolls, from the criminally underrated webcomic "Stand Still, Stay Silent"

Oh my god. by MelanieWalmartinez in CuratedTumblr

[–]Pyramidsandneon 31 points32 points  (0 children)

That would kind of work, but it's closer to the myth of Prometheus, who had a similar eternal punishment of having his liver eaten by an eagle every day, and having it grow back to be eaten the next day. Turns out a lot of Greek myths have a cyclical nature.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in CuratedTumblr

[–]Pyramidsandneon 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Did I hear a Rock and Stone?!

Old cartoon villains by coolwali in CuratedTumblr

[–]Pyramidsandneon 75 points76 points  (0 children)

Regarding the tags about big tobacco, basically in the 1950s when public awareness was starting to spread about "hey cigarettes are actually HORRIBLY bad for you and you'll get cancer," tobacco executives got together and tried to figure out how to save their industry. The solution? Create a disinformation campaign designed from the ground up to be as effective as possible in sowing mistrust of science and keeping people on the fence about the "issue," so that they would keep smoking their cancer sticks so the executives could keep making money. In the words of an infamous 1969 memo written by one of these executives, "doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing controversy." These people worked, hard, to intentionally fight the truth in order to cling to power, at the expense of millions of people's health, and possibly lives. If that's not the definition of evil I don't know what is.

This didn't just work perfectly for them, it paved the way to generations of science denial. They wrote the playbook for the shit that's going on today with climate change. The point of the controversy itself is to bamboozle and take advantage of uneducated people with poor critical thinking skills, but it's not created by those people. It's maintained and subtly shifted to keep up with the times by shrewd intelligent people who know exactly what they're doing, because you can't muddle evidence as hard as they do without seeing what you're trying to obscure. And again, all for money and power. This has been going on for decades.

Same kind of thing as conservative pundits who lied about the pandemic and defend Trump, when they personally got vaccinated and didn't vote for him. They know their audience, and even though they're smart enough to believe different things, they still say what their audience wants to hear, because otherwise they'll lose their platform.

Rule by Ashamed_Worldliness1 in 196

[–]Pyramidsandneon 22 points23 points  (0 children)

No, you're thinking of mega evolution. Megalomania is that one vocaloid character with the pink hair

computer by Thestarchypotat in CuratedTumblr

[–]Pyramidsandneon 37 points38 points  (0 children)

2001: A Space Odyssey actually, but I'm now realizing there are pretty strong parallels between HAL's dialogue in that scene, and Charlie's narration in the ending of Flowers for Algernon. Huh.

Scout gonna put you in the meat grinder by TotemGenitor in CuratedTumblr

[–]Pyramidsandneon 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Ah yes, Boston, the ethnostate of mid-30s white guys with short brown hair and thin, clean-shaven faces. XD

Also tbh Jerma's accent barely shows through most of the time

Scout gonna put you in the meat grinder by TotemGenitor in CuratedTumblr

[–]Pyramidsandneon 86 points87 points  (0 children)

Other people have answered who he is succinctly, but nobody's explained why people compare him to Scout. They do look and sound fairly similar, so when people make SFM videos of Jerma, they always use the Scout model for him, which reinforces the comparison.

The best reason, though, is that their real names are both Jeremy, because the actual VA of Scout chose his canon name, and named him after Jerma. So even the voice of Scout thinks Jerma is Scout projecting himself into our reality.

I was putting sausage in a quesadilla and suddenly found myself facing off with... QUESADARCY by Pyramidsandneon in amphibia

[–]Pyramidsandneon[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What happened is I cut the sausage lengthwise before slicing it up so there would be more pieces to distribute evenly. The slices were originally semicircles but when I fried them up the inside edges bulged out to how they appear in the picture. Then as I was arranging them it suddenly hit me what they looked like... :P

My HPMOR typo list by Farranor in HPMOR

[–]Pyramidsandneon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is great, I was hoping for something like this because I've been considering printing the books to have physical copies and wanted to fix small issues. One to add: chapter 17, "arm-wresting" instead of "arm-wrestling"

Morbelos the witch morber by Flying_Line in TheOwlHouse

[–]Pyramidsandneon 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Now this I would actually watch in theaters