“Listen, Cap and I have our differences but I have enough respect for him to put that aside and mark down his exact time of death.”
“Oh my god.”
“All I’m saying is Hydra’s been trying since the forties but Captain America was murdered in cold blood right here right now by a high schooler.”
“Tony—“
“The ice couldn’t even do it but that’s because no amount of arctic ice in the world could measure up to the iconic freezer burn my kid just gave him.”
Shuri shouting out the floor is lava and recording the confusion among the avengers wondering why tchalla king of Wakanda hopped up on a counter cause goddammit his little sister pulls this shit all the time and peter is stuck on the wall because he’s also a child of the internet and understands the meme life and now his fate is sealed there will never not be a time Shuri isn’t camera ready and yelling out the floor is lava to see the wackiest places she could get peter to stick on
T’Challa ignored her once so she developed synthetic deployable lava and the next time she yelled the floor is lava it actually was. T’Challa lives in fear now because he knows if he doesn’t pretend the floor is dangerous, it will be.
Someone mentioned this term in a lower post where I was being harassed for refusing to argue with someone who I think is an obvious alt-right troll. I’d never heard of it before so off to urban dictionary I ran and man… It’s right on.
You do not have to engage with people like this. You don’t owe every person in your path an explanation.
This happened to me around Christmas. A guy messaged me, called me a dumb bitch, etc. I didn’t engaged with him because, why would I? He kept messaging me demanding why I didn’t respond. Citing his language to me I asked why would I want to.
He said he’d apologize if I would debate with him and answer his questions. I tried debating with him on and off for about a day. Finally it was Christmas Eve and I just realized I was getting no where so I told him that we had to agree to disagree. That angered him and said I’d promised I’d answer his questions. I’d felt like I had as best I could.
I told him again I was done.
He immediately took back his apology, resumed his insults, and essentially said that since I wouldn’t endlessly defend my case I was worthless and everything I said was worthless.
I realized then this whole conversation has been a mistake. He was willing to swear at and insult me and only apologize and show respect if I did everything he said no questions.
That was not respect and it was my mistake for not recognizing it earlier.
I’ll say again… You don’t owe everyone in your path an explanation. If you do decide to engage someone it can be on your terms.
Your worth and your beliefs don’t have to be validated by every troll under the bridge.
Now I have a word for it!
In my experience with fandom, people would come with what seemed to be very reasonable questions, but they would transparently try to set me up for “Gotcha!” moments. I could always tell because when I didn’t answer them in a way that sprung the trap, they would keep asking the same question again and again.
Best example – a questioner asked me “Why do you think Tyler Posey has had trouble getting roles as compared to his co-stars?” My response was “I don’t think he has had trouble getting roles.” This obviously wasn’t the answer they were looking for, so they kept asking the same question, again and again, and then accused me of refusing to answer. They wanted me to get into an argument where they could demand I acknowledge that he wasn’t a good actor.
Sea-lioning. I like it! Do you have a link to that comic strip?
One thing that I think is really interesting about Lars as a character is that he’s been shown to thrive and have massive positive development when he’s outside the context of like, conventional society.
It’s one of the reasons I can somewhat understand but ultimately disagree with criticisms of his, heh, let’s say Space Pirate arc. People saying that his enthusiasm, confidence, and level of competency while leading the Off-Colors was very out of character strikes me as an inaccurate take. Like, yeah, maybe if we’d had less time with Lars beforehand… But the thing is, we already had an entire episode showcasing how Lars thrives when he’s removed from an environment that has conventional social expectations pressuring him…
Lars has a lot of talents, and he can actually be very friendly and a great team player, but we just never saw much of that because a lot of Lars-centric episodes took place in Beach City, and mostly worked to demonstrate how much of a fucking wreck he is in normal society. He gets massively socially anxious, and is constantly worried about being accepted by those he deems cool/interesting/worthy of admiration. He works so hard at being something he’s not in order to fit in that he doesn’t even realize people are naturally inclined to like him, if he’d just stop trying so hard (The New Lars/The Good Lars). And this has been an issue for a long time, ever since he was a kid (as seen in the flashback in Horror Club).
Sadie’s commented multiple times that Lars is like a totally different person sometimes, but it’s only when it’s just the two of them. I think comments like these were originally taken by fans to mean ‘oh he only acts nice but doesn’t actually care about Sadie, he’s really just a selfish asshole’ when in reality the situation was ‘Lars is actually an okay guy and definitely cares about Sadie, but he just gets so fucked in the head when he’s in public that he can’t seem to help acting like a total fuckwad’
Not to say something like social anxiety excuses rude/mean/generally selfish behavior, but what’s most interesting to me is this sort of character arc, where someone very common and ‘normal’ becomes more and more confidant the more unconventional they become, the farther away from societal constructs they can get. Like, Lars died, turned pink, became like a weird magic portal/bag-of-holding, is stuck in space, and leads a misfit band of aliens… and he’s never seemed happier.
This is the other reason why I think people were too harsh of his breakdown during Lars of the Stars, saying it seemed out of place or that he recovered too well/didn’t actually change, and that they don’t really get it (or at least, aren’t looking at things from the perspective I am, which is fine). The whole point is that the moment Lars gets back in that headspace, thinking about his place in ‘the group’ (this being his relationship with The Cool Kids, who seem to work as a metaphor for society as a whole), he falls right back into old anxieties and habits. He sees things for what they’re not (Sadie’s happiness = Sadie trying to hurt him, rather than Sadie surviving through hard times as he is); he falls into self-pity and self-hatred, even though he’s absolutely thriving.
Anyway, I was just thinking about how that’s a cool arc; I remember always wondering what they were gonna do with this asshole, and in the end I’m really glad about the direction he went in. I think Lars is an interesting character, an example of how breaking away from conventional societal pressures and environments can help bring out the best in people.
Hopefully once he gets back to Earth, Lars will have a chance to show everyone just how much he’s changed for the better!
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
