#Using a mental illness to explain a character's entire character is a bad idea and makes it seem like it's who they are entirely

[themothwhisperer]

Here’s the thing that’s bugging me a bit about the finale: How Lottie and Shauna were handled.

The entire group has two things in common. First; they lost all societal structure. The set of norms, rules and values they’ve been raised with is progressively disintegrating. Inevitably and perhaps inadvertently, this process is happening inside every single one of them. The wilderness is the new real world. They are forcefully disconnected from what their past life once was. And second thing; they are teenagers. Which means they are at higher risk of being influenced by any outside factor. Literally any factor can alter them in some way (and obviously landing in the middle of a gigantic forest is a monumental shock). Their mental stability and psyche are inevitably fragile. This is the essence of what it means to be a teen. They all had their issues and weaknesses and messes before the crash. It only makes sense for all this to persist. We could even say that the logical conclusion is for it all to get worse. Much worse.

And we sort of have those glimpses that make us believe that. But yet, here we are with this not-so crazy hunt considering the only people actively approving were Lottie and Shauna.

To me, the message it passes is the following: the one and only villain in this story is Shauna Shipman. She is your ultimate cruel, cold and rotten-to-the-core bad person.

Because here’s the thing, the one and only other person standing beside her, soaked in this insanity, blood and madness, is Lottie. But Lottie isn’t even intrinsically bad! Lottie is sick and has been off her medication for an incredibly long period. Mental illness is backing and explaining her behaviour. Her coping mechanism is the wilderness and everything it entails.

That takes us to our last one standing: Shauna. Our true evil outcast. She’s completely alone, everyone against her. Nobody understands her anymore. Only Jackie ever did. So what does that mean? Only Shauna was deeply affected by the events and was wholly absorbed in them? She completely lost her way? Became an animal? Yeah, sure. But why is she the only one? How does that make sense. They are on survival mode 24/7. Witnessing terrible things. This doesn’t mean I was hoping/expecting every character to be unhinged. Simply more characters. Feeling ambivalent at least. And not just out of fear for their leader. But by pure and effective influence and severe shared trauma. Teenagers are mimics, echoes of each other. They copy and learn from each other. On the other hand, I like the idea that some of them are holding on strongly to their convictions regardless, such as Van and Nat. But the fact that it’s one person versus the rest of the group feels a tiny bit odd.

Why is Shauna so isolated?

Why is she the only one salivating from the thrill and excitement of a hunt?

In a way, they were all mocking her. Pretending to chase while covering tracks. There’s some massive dissonance. They’re all different people on an individual level, yes, but Shauna is not the only one who committed horrible acts beforehand. They all (or almost) had their moment in which they reveled into something brutal. And what else can we expect really? They lost all guides in this world, they have nothing to hold on to. But ultimately, they find the light at the end of the tunnel and reach the surface of sanity once more. There is also something very beautiful about this concept also however. But the endgame remains. It’s everyone except Shauna, of course. She simply cannot see the light anymore.

Perhaps this is a subject that would be delved into more during a potential fourth season (which I sincerely hope will happen). But as for now, I feel like Shauna is becoming a weapon. Like she was responsible for all their misery, to the smallest of detail. She’s extremely villainized. As if all the darkness was contained in her body, tightly sealed, not leaking a drop on any other Yellowjacket. There would be room for so much more nuances when it comes to the characters if only this rage was shared.

[cultkinkcoven]

Special reminder to all the new Luciferians that forgot that he is the adversary, yeah, he’s gonna fuck with you FOR FUN.

If you’ve been working with Lucifer for a week or so and have started getting “conflicting” messages, you are not alone 😩. Lucifer loves to test us, he loves to see how deep our values go. He will purposely say things you disagree with or it would seem like he would disagree with just to fuck with you. This dude LOVES to debate.

For example, a large part of my relationship with Lucifer involved coming to terms with my neurodivergency. For weeks we were working on accepting my limits, being aware of my disorders and having patience for myself. But during a meditation I got the very strong message from him “People with mental illnesses are just looking for an excuse to be lazy”

and I was like ????? what the fuck???? No they’re not??? You fucking idiot???? Who am I talking to right now???? And he was like “yes and anyone who claims to have a disorder without a diagnosis are just looking for attention. Prove me wrong if you think differently”

and I blew up, providing so many arguments for why he’s wrong and why that stance is so stupid, and eventually after a while he was like “Hm… that’s interesting. I guess you’re right. Now that we’ve established this I guess we won’t need entertain the idea anymore”

and any time after that, when I was having self doubts, maybe I’m just faking it for attention, maybe I’m just lazy, Lucifer has been like “OH! So I guess I WAS right!” and I’ve been like NOOO!!!!!! YOURE WRONG!!! THE ENTIRE IDEA IS STUPID AND I WONT LET YOU TELL ME OTHERWISE!!!

and Lucifer will then be like “Oh, good then. Don’t let you tell you otherwise either”.

He will press your boundaries, even if only to make sure YOU know where your boundaries are. When writing a spell together Lucifer has been like “yes, we will also need to sacrifice a cat”

and I’ve been like “wtf no we’re not sacrificing a cat why the hell would I do that”

and he’s responded “Because I said so. You will obey my order without question.” (again, extremely out of character, this is a test’!)

until I finally put my foot down and say “I don’t care who or what you are, doing this goes against my core values and I will not abandon those for you or anyone. With all due respect I refuse to do this task”

and Lucifer will be like “I’m just fucking with you, I really liked the way you stood your ground against me though, that was very hot”

and for even less obvious things, Lucifer will test you. He wants to know why you think the things you think. We recently had a very long conversation about the concept of Pedophilia. Super uncomfortable, a conversation I didn’t know we’d ever have, but it was important. He starts by asking me if pedophilia is wrong. Um what??? Obviously???

“Why is it wrong? Explain your reasoning.”

Well because it hurts kids.

“What about non offending pedophiles? What about pre offending reformed pedophiles?”

You don’t have to have the answer to those questions, but you must understand that the answers to those questions matter, even though they are incredibly uncomfortable. Are there evil people? Do evil people deserve empathy? What is an evil person? I don’t like thinking about that, that’s the reason why I don’t have an answer. Lucifer will force you to come to that answer.

“How do we conduct a society where we prevent pedophiles from hurting children without creating another form of discrimination? Do you believe pedophiles deserve empathy? Do they deserve to die? How do we deal with murderers and rapists without becoming murderers and rapists ourselves? How do you console yourself with the reality that some people genuinely enjoy evil things? If you were the Emperor of Hell, how would you manage all the most wicked people who have ever lived? Why is incest bad? Why is murder bad? Do racists deserve to die? Do war criminals deserve to die? Who should be allowed to determine who deserves to die? How far does your empathy extend to people who have done horrible things? How does your moral compass navigate these complex scenarios? What is right and what is wrong? Why do you believe the things you believe?”

There will be times when it seems like he’s trying to do everything in his power to just disagree with you. It’ll seem like he’s leading you to argue with him, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’ll ask you questions that should seem like common sense. He’s establishing that not only is it okay to disagree with him, but that at times, he will force you to, to ensure that you are not deriving your own personal values from “whatever God tells you”. He will lie to you, just to see if you’re able to identity a lie. He will say things that he obviously doesn’t believe, only to hear why YOU don’t believe it. It’s important to be firm on your boundaries even if your God is pushing them. You should not be afraid to disagree. You should not be afraid to disobey if it is important to you. Lucifer is not a Shepard and you are not a sheep. You need to understand your own morality alone, without God, without a cheat sheet telling you the answers. and you need to be firm on those. To the point that if God Himself told you differently, you wouldn’t budge.

So if you’ve started working with him recently and are confused as to why he suddenly started saying things you disagree with, investigate what he may be trying to get across. You’ll learn a lot more about yourself.

[they-them-that]

The mishandling of Jinx's mental health/illness

Trigger warning: s*cide, depression, ableism, ptsd

(edit: I did a bit of rewriting to make the post more cohesive but the same points are made for anyone looking back and seeing changes)

There were a lot of issues with the Arcane season finale. Writing quality aside; discarding the Undercity storyline in favour of an apolitical conflict (Viktor and Ambessa), the "we just need good cops" agenda, the unaddressed abuse that transpired between Cait and Vi, the questionable difference between how Ambessa (an older butch black woman) and Caitlyn (a young feminine wasian) were treated committing the same offences, the overall disjointment of the black characters' storylines, the poor portrayal of physical disabilities and prosthetic limbs, and probably more... What I want to focus on right now is Jinx's storyline and the absolutely harmful trope of "redemption through sacrifice".

In the first arc, Vi believed Jinx had to die and told Caitlyn to "take the shot" when the opportunity rose, essentially consenting to Caitlyn killing her sister and not considering peaceful alternatives (as if that's her choice to consent to). When Jinx calls out Vi for turning "blue belly" and gassing the Undercity, Vi responds that "she's not taking responsibility for Jinx's actions anymore" even though these are Vi's actions. She also tells Jinx that it's Jinx who "killed her sister".

In the second arc, Vi calls Jinx "delusional" and says "at least our parents will never get to see what a psycho their daughter turned into". She also refers to Jinx's psychosis as "fantasies" and treats it like an annoyance rather than a real mental illness Jinx can't control.

I get that Vi doesn't understand the complexities of Jinx's mental illness, she's mad with her and it's understandable, she's not gonna forgive terrorism. Jinx also ended up putting Vi through an abusive and traumatic experience at the end of season 1 so there's no reason for her to be sympathetic towards her. However, I did find the way Vi talked to Jinx to be... triggering as someone who has experienced gas lighting and made to feel like my own mental illnesses made me delusional or bad.

The language Vi used was ableist!

It ends up feeding into the harmful idea that mentally ill people are dangerous and need to be eradicated rather than victims of circumstances who need support, resources, and human empathy. Although yes, everyone is responsible for their own actions and human empathy can only go so far, associating a lack of morality with mental illness and seeing it as an individualistic moral failure is ridiculously harmful! I've been constantly seeing the internet diagnose random people with narcissism, bipolar disorder and even schizophrenia because they act in ways that aren't considered socially acceptable or they do something problematic (not all being intrinsic or only explainable through mental illness!). Even worse is that none of these diagnoses come from a place of concern or well meaning, it's an insult and it's to justify bullying and devaluing these people because of the idea that mentally ill people are too "far gone" to be worth compassion. It's an incredibly dehumanizing and ableist stigma that still persists. Mentally ill people still deserve to be listened to!

If Vi was gonna be mad at Jinx, she could've just stuck to the terrorism and her working for Silco, actual tangible actions worth holding her accountable for. Weaponizing her mental illness isn't that, it's just plain ableism!

Finally, we get to the end where Jinx and Vi can finally properly heal and rebuild their relationship but Warwick loses control and Jinx ends up sacrificing herself to save Vi. The s*icide ideation song picks back up as she makes the sacrifice...

At the end of the second act, Jinx loses Isha and Vander and we end up spending the entire third season seeing Jinx lose the will to live and it's incredibly distressing. We see depression eat her alive, we see her harming herself picking at her nail bed, we see her asking Cait to kill her already. We get a soundtrack literally about accepting death while Jinx attempts to take her life in slow motion with artistic visuals. Then we see her pull the pin multiple times as Ekko rewinds time. Big yikes! This isn't the first time Arcane portrayed s-cide attempts/ideation (Jayce, Viktor, Marcus) however the way it's done with Jinx felt far more brutal and romanticized that genuinely distressed me.

What keeps Jinx alive for a little longer is... joining a war. Prior to Jinx's s-cide attempt, Vi tells Jinx she can essentially redeem herself if she helped Piltover in their war against Noxus. Jinx very clearly heads off to k herself instead yet Vi interprets it as Jinx refusing to risk her life to protect her oppressors as if that's a crappy thing of Jinx to do. We later end up seeing Jinx helping in the war, redeeming herself again to Vi, as if she has to make herself useful to be of value.

I hate this ending, it doesn't even matter if she possibly survived in the end. What's insinuated is that her s-cide was inevitable and even necessary for her to be redeemed and find peace. The "Sacrificing yourself for redemption" trope is already bad enough as is but the fact that we've seen Jinx want to escape life makes it far more upsetting because it ends up being posed as the ideal ending for Jinx. This also perpetuates the idea that our worth is in our value to society; Jinx, a mentally ill impoverished hazbin with no one left, needed to be sacrificed for Vi, someone who's already met her potential to society with a partner, career, and patriotic conviction.

All of this ends up telling me that being mentally ill causes the suffering of people around me and that their suffering is on my conscience. That I should be expendable for them to make up for it. It's fucked up, I hate seeing Arcane perpetuate these ideas from the perspective of Vi who's values are portrayed as absolute. Joining the war and helping Piltover was the "right answer". Let's just forget there was supposed to already be a civil war between Piltover and the Undercity where Jinx was on the "wrong side", the thing that catalyzed Vi's ableist.

I needed a story of someone like Jinx, someone so misunderstood and traumatized, to find happiness and not just in an alternate universe or some hint that she might be alive. It was so painful to watch Jinx be robbed of any meaningful connections and relationships in a way that felt like she was being punished for how she turned out. When mentally ill people are socially isolated and vilified, we desperately need stories that allow them to bathe in the sunlight. I'm so deeply upset and heartbroken that Arcane ended up following an immensely ableist troped "fate" for Jinx...

[nyaagolor]

Just finished Higurashi Arc 7 (Minagoroshi) and imma be honest with yall, I was not really vibing with the plot twist until i started thinking about it less as something to take at face value and more something to engage with as an extended metaphor. Higurashi as a complete work has four major thematic categories to me (agency, community, delusion, and fate) and Himinizawa Syndrome feels more narratively satisfying as an interconnection of those themes than as a home-stretch scifi twist (hear me out)

Ryukishi has an interview where he talks about his reasoning behind the plot twist, explaining that he wanted the audience to challenge their implicit biases around the ideas of mental illness and agency-- namely "if someone commits murder under the act of a drug, why are they not culpable when someone who does the same under the effects of a severe mental illness IS culpable?". From a metatextual standpoint, this serves as a challenge to the audience, but I think this framing has implications for the themes as well. Minagoroshi spends a lot of time focusing on the interaction between the themes we've been introduced to throughout the series, namely in the sense that if enough people believe something, it becomes reality. This is used in the context of Rika's miracle, the ostracism of Satoko by the villagers, and the delusions experienced by the "infected" themselves. It's not about the actual reality of the situation-- if a delusion is such a strongly held belief to an individual or community that it inspires action, that belief "becomes" real, and this is the part I think applies to Himinizawa Syndrome and Takano

The way that Takano talks about Himinizawa Syndrome and the way that people are encouraged to act based on her words is a pretty good mirror of the symptoms of the "disease" itself. She self isolates, operating entirely based on her own skewed view of the world and the people around her while engaging in conspiratorial thinking and retroactive explanation. Keiichi, Rena, Shion, and Satoko all develop Himinizawa Syndrome, but we see throughout the arcs how many people and situations act as instigators to exacerbate preexisting traumas and mental health conditions. The disease also only starts progressing when they're in Himinizawa, not "far from their queen" like Takano suggests. The fact that the nature of the delusions-- from their actual content to their frequency and the lines of the thinking the characters go down-- are extremely specific and more associated with the individual traumas and illness we know them to have further pushes me in that direction. Despite Takano insisting that lymph node itchiness is a symptom of Himinizawa Syndrome, the only people who experience it are those who knew about it beforehand. We have the benefit of knowing the loops, but Takano's "explanations" of symptoms feel more like working backwards from observable but likely unconnected events rather than something based on reality, which is exactly the kind of rationale that Rena was experiencing in the height of her own delusions

While I do think that Himinizawa is textually supposed to be an actual Thing, it makes more sense to me to view it as Takano's own false belief, made into a tangible reality because she believed in it enough to convince others of the same. We never see the "tragedy" that's supposed to happen after Rika's death, only that people acted because they believed it was coming. This-- the whole "a shared delusion becomes reality and thus fate itself" thing-- feels very thematically satisfying as a sort of final conflict for the series. Takano, the big bad villain, is stuck in a self fulfilling prophecy in a way, taking agency in such a way that she falls victim to her own actions. She believed so strongly in a "curse" that it became real, and ironically enough under her own definition, she is the one suffering from this "disease" she created the most

(Also Ryukishi loves tackling political issues so the idea that the local rural Japanese government of 1983 would misidentify and mistreat the mental illnesses of some teenagers isn't that out of left field to me)

[myragewillendworlds]

I’m a 18 year old transexual male, have known about it since I was about 10 or 11, and have been struggling with a bad dysphoric episode this past month, so forgive the irrationality and how stupid this may sounds.

Lately I have been frequenting some ‘truscum’ forums online and, though I agree with most of their premises (main point being ‘you need sex dysphoria to be trans), I’ve found some ideas that have been making me feel ‘less of a man’. Though I’m not generally feminine in posture and habit, I’m highly introverted [bordering on shyness] and have some ‘girly’ habits and likes, such as still liking stuffed animals even at my age [please, don’t take it as infantilizing myself] and enjoying making colorful notes, with nice pens and nice titles as well. My friend group is mixed gender-wise, but the majority is made cis female. For some of these ‘truscum’ individuals, this makes me merely GNC, and though I am sure my dysphoria is real and I am caving the path towards my medical transition, it does make me feel weirdly insecure and intensifies, somehow, the dysphoria.

I’ve seen you are somewhat of an specialist when it comes to topics like this, therefore I wanted to have your insight, if possible.

Thank you for reading this and forgive me for any mistakes regarding the English language, it isn’t my mother tongue.

It took perhaps mere months before the word "truscum" began being used by underage morons who had neither the maturity nor the general desired level of intelligence to be speaking for an entire community in trying to convince outsiders of its need to be taken seriously. And it was a meme word before then too, one that I always warned against using for the very reasons it almost immediately became a problem. Point being: it means nothing to me that someone calls themselves "truscum", other than that it makes them sound like an immature asshole. I have never used that label.

That being said–

I don't think behavior alone makes someone transsexual or not transsexual. Sex dysphoria does.

The only relevant question is: do you experience sex dysphoria because of the sex of your body? And because people have severely watered that definition down over the years as well, here are some follow-up questions; which, no, aren't specifically covered in this wording in the DSM or ICD, but any diagnostician worth their salt would ask you:

Is the level of distress you experience life-debilitating?

Have you experienced this at least since the onset of puberty?

Looking back at your childhood, can you (with hindsight) recognize that your male gender identity was in fact present then as well? For example: did you feel a familiarity/kinship towards male family members, did you prefer playing with boys, did you prefer boy clothing/toys/items, did it feel natural to identify yourself with male characters, did you feel you didn't belong in groups with girls/women, etc.

Does a future in a female body seem impossible, surreal and/or utterly agonizing and miserable to you?

Do you experience sex dysphoria over all your natal sex characteristics; meaning, including the actual sex organs? There is no such thing as a transsexual male that lacks dysphoria over having female sex organs. Then you're just not male, therefore not transsexual.

Finally: are there no alternative explanations that could believably explain your dysphoric feelings, such as relevant trauma or mental illness? Do you wish to transition for the sole sake of changing your sex, and not for any ulterior goals or beliefs possibly linked to trauma or mental illness?

You should be able to answer 'yes' to these questions if you are transsexual.

The things you're mentioning aren't typical in guys your age, no, but those are taught things, not biologically innate things. Chances are, if you were raised as a boy, you likely wouldn't have done or enjoyed these (as much) as they would probably not have been encouraged, either by your parents or your peers. On the other hand, if you had been born male and still had these interests, you probably would've ran into the exact same sentiments from your peers that this makes you less of a guy. You'll find that many cisgender men have similar experiences with having their masculinity questioned.

Most transsexual people, I would say, do 'outgrow' most of these social behaviors as they fully embrace and live as their desired sex (and HRT may play a role in these changes as well). Perhaps you will too, when/if you start HRT and grow up into a man. Or perhaps you'll be a man who likes coloring pencils. It's hardly the deciding factor. Not like men have to trade in their cocks the moment they're ever found guilty of pulling out a glittery marker.

[sudusong]

My Kerubim Playlist - explained

Very self indulgent post going into details on why I picked certain songs for my playlist. Will explain the other playlists later because this post took ages to write.

CHILDHOOD PART:

1. Kikuo - the Good Child and the Fox Spirit

I chose this song because Ecaflip is a bad father. Yay <3

It's also a parallel to the song "You Are A Worthless Child" by Kikuo, which is on Atcham's playlist.

2. Regina Spektor - Two Birds

I chose this song because,,, I like to think that Atcham and Kerubim had very different visions if their lives and futures, when they were kids. And Ecaflip's manipulation didn't really help.

3. Maretu - The Flavor of a Cockroach

I chose this song because it's very unique in being a song about bullying from the perspective of a bystander/bully. I don't think Atcham was having a good time in the orphanage, and him not having a good time was also making Kerubim feel unwell.

4. Eve - Sister

The thing about my playlists is that I like to use them as a medium to retell the story of a character. I think it goes well with Maretu's song because it expresses Kerubim leaving Atcham behind.

5. SEDO - Bad Mouthing

While I don't think Kerubim was bullied in the orphanage, I do think he was excluded and tried to cope with it by clownery and denying it was happening. And by trying to leave Atcham.

6. Abuseken - Um, Ren-kun?

This is a special type of song I add to playlists - a "vibe-builder". This song might not fit a character but it expresses story ideas of Kerubim and Atcham being badddd to each other, because the entire song is two people going "I'm going to kms because you don't love me" "Good I think you should in fact kys" at one another, which is entirely how I think they talked to each other at the tail end of still being on talking terms when they were kids.

7. Pinocchio-P - Isn't it "A"

The last song is very "Kerubim and Atcham" /neg, while this one portrays a conflict between two people in a less mentally ill way, exploring that neither is right and that both are looking at the world with different opinions that may or may not be the same opinion viewed in a different light. I thought it might be important to use this song to reiterate my belief that in this situation there is no right or wrong side.

8. Maretu - Maegamist

I always interpreted this to be a song from the POV of someone who closed their eyes from mistreatment someone close to them suffered, either by someone else or by their own hand - before realizing far too late how bad things have gotten. I do think Kerubim coped his way into Atcham detesting him.

9. Glass Animals - Space Ghost Coast to Coast

This song is inspired by the singer's real experience of finding out that his childhood friend tried to commit mass murder, and I think that when Atcham went off the deep end Kerubim uhhh. struggled. As we've seen in canon, while he feels bad about their relationship, he also unflinchingly thinks Atcham is a very mentally ill individual and has nobody to blame but himself for 90% of the predicaments he's in (at least, ever since leaving the orphanage). So this song's unflinching "I understand life hurts, and I want you to get better, but you are insane" energy is very fitting.

ADOLESCENCE / ADULTHOOD PART

10. Glass Animals - Take a Slice

This song is another of those "vibe-builder" ones. This song is very lustful, the most sexual one Glass Animals ever did. It follows the story of a female sex worker who is falling in love with one of her clients. I think it's a good opener for the part of the playlist that touches on Kerubim's youth, because the lyrics are vague, and Kerubim has an inherent femininity to his self-confidence and his crush on Lou, which is very well expressed through this song. He's a bit of a femme fatale to me, and this song is very "Kerubim Crepin at his most confident, to the point of arrogance. He is cute and sexy and dangerous, and he knows it".

It's also a very high point, which serves well, considering his life gets worse afterwards and the songs do reflect that.

11. K.Flay - High Enough

This being the first song after the one that serves as the "character intro" of adult Kerubim immediately sets the stage to his relationship with Lou being completely fucked and unhealthy, with him using this relationship to numb the pain of everything that happened to him.

12. K.Flay - Thicker than Dust

His "femme fatale" that was expressed in the last song is, in a way, just him abusing various substances and falling in love with people to distract himself from the whole "my parents died and I went to orphanage and my brother hates me and is a criminal now" thing. Less real confidence and more of him confusing numbness and need to distract himself for confidence and happiness.

13. K.Flay - Wishing It Was You

While he is using his on-and-off relationship with Lou as a painkiller, he does love and pine for her - but the whole song being "I'm drinking and imagining myself giving you head instead of drinking" is kinda very Kerubim-core. At this age he wasn't very deep and WAS addicted to multiple substances imo, including alcohol, frat boy style.

14. K.Flay - Fever

This is also a Lou pining song, but in a far more desperate way because Kerubim is a very lonely person and his way of living his life actively makes him miserable.

15. K.Flay - FML (FUCK MY LIFE)

Guys I don't think alcoholism and substances and being a cute sexy adventurer and dating are fixing him.

16. K.Flay - Bad Things

This is a very sad, hopeless, and introspective song about trying to drown one's troubles in addictions. With this one, I am slowly upping the sadness ante. And also, it is the first Very Self Aware Kerubim Song, even if it is hopeless (basically saying "I will never get better and I will be alone forever.")

17. K.Flay - Make Me Fade

A spiritual sequel to me including "High Enough" by K.Flay in this playlist. Instead of speaking of the relationship as a painkiller, this song goes fully in the "you make feel like I have disappeared, and it's a good thing", and feeling like Lou not being there is torture.

It also touches more on the budding understanding that life is baddd. Like with the lyric "Sad about the bad I've done, on my grave, please believe me."

18. K.Flay - Can't Sleep

The last K.Flay song in this huge chunk of the playlist that's nothing but K.Flay music.

The most explicit song in the whole "my life is bad" arc. References other people being displeased with the way of life that is being led, which fits with Lou probably not liking Kerubim's self-destructive behaviours but not really being able to help him and blaming him for said behaviours.

19. Glass Animals - Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth

This is so ironic about someone who seems shallow and very confident, hiding behind a veneer of being cool and sexy. The song itself seems funky and filled with vibes, but hides something deeper and more violent/ill.

This song seems like a conversation he would have with himself, extremely self-hatingly.

20. Abuseken - Menthol Tear

Another "vibe-building" song. It doesn't fit him well outside the context of this playlist, but here it is included to express his rising feelings of jealousy, "she is going to leave me fr fr", and feelings of inadequacy.

21. SODDIKEN - Hansel

This song might not fit him entirely, but it is a mirror of the song "Gretel" by SODDIKEN which is on Atcham's playlist, and does express a sense of a slipping mental health + Kerubim's abandonment issues and need to be the center of attention and love.

22. skyfish66 - Go Big or Go Home!

ALL GAMBLERS QUIT JUST BEFORE THEIR BIGGEST WIN! But to be serious, this is extremely Kerubim-core to the point of being self-explanatory.

It fits with the previous song's theme of "upping the ante to be liked" and turning your life into a show. And it is kinda... Ecaflip City-ish.

23. Kikuo - Love me. Love me. Love me.

OK so what if your father was a god and he wanted to manipulate you into spending centuries living with him and to do that he constantly berated you and said you were worthless but also sad you're literally the most wonderful and cool and amazing child ever. And what if your relationships all fell apart because you keep using people to fill the void within you that you have felt ever since your family died and your brother left you. Wouldn't it be fucked up or what.

24. TX2 - I Would Hate Me Too

"I'm a 5'4'' manwhore who slit his wrists. there's a reason I keep wrecking relationships. And I would fucking hate me too" - worlds realest kerubimcore lyrics.

25. Akali - Surrender

This is an another "vibe" song, and a very dark and cryptic one. I always interpreted it to be about a conversation that takes place during a break up caused by severe mental illnesses that have eroded a relationship in ways that are both unfixable and haunting, and uhhh. You can guess why it is in the kerulou part of this Kerubim playlist.

26. Nantoka-P - Love Love Nightmare

Its just a horror song, but lyrics "which one of us is the bad one?" and "I wished I would be the only one who exists for you" are Very kerulou, especially as reflections on a relationship that has ended.

27. DECO*27 - Ghost Rule (Cover by Crusher)

If I don't add this song to the playlists of characters whose central trait is being a liar/faker, the Blorbo Police will execute me.

28. GHOST - ROTARY DIAL

An angry sort of "everyone always abandons me and I hope every one of them dies for having boundaries and cutting me out of their lives for my negative influence" song. He deserves a moment of being toxic and a hater.

29. Red Vox - In The Garden

A song about the guilt that follows habitually ruining relationships, trying and failing to change, and escape responsibility for your actions.

30. K.Flay - Punisher

Themes of divinity of one's self in their life, which flows into the theme of being one's own worst enemy and obstacle.

31. K.Flay - Yes, I'm Serious

This always makes me cry, whether I'm listening to it normally (I am a big fan of K.Flay and the circumstances behind it's making are just. heartbreaking) and in the context of Kerubim.

In a way, in the context of this playlist, it's the finale of the "Kerubim being very mentally ill" arc of this playlist that's been happening since song #20.

It's very introspective and has many self-realizations, in a way.

"Really, I feel like I'm feeling the feelings of my inner child whose been pounding the ceiling; Repeatedly asking for reasons and soothing, so I found a bottle and covered the bruising; But I was confusing a numbness for comfort, abandoned myself while I slipped under cover." — ngl these lyrics make me fucking insane both in blorbo context and normal person context.

32. Shikiura Sougo - Poison me, I want to drown in you.

It's a very beautiful and dare I say cute song reflecting on a horrible relationship that is described as being "a painkiller" and "poison", ending with words that go something like "I want to face you properly and say I really do love you."

I think it's a very cute and melancholic sort of post-break up kerulou song. In the context of Kerubim, even knowing how bad things were, he still loves her and wishes neither of them did this harm, even if it is far too late.

33. Glass Animals - Heat Waves

This song is literally about a relationship that failed and it has lyrics like "I wish I could make you happy". Big divorcecore track. I am going to throw myself into a river.

34. K.Flay - Slow March

This song is about life moving on regardless, as you try to heal and make sense of everything that happened. I think he'd be in limbo, after the divorce, for a pretty long while. There's a reason none of his stores in the show take place after it...

35. Rainbow Kitten Surprise - It's Called: Freefall

This song is about battling suicidal ideation after things went just completely Over. Besides that, it also is a conversation between a godly figure representing the bad urges and vices and the desire to die (but also, depending on the interpretation of the song that you prefer, might be trying to help instead, despite his evil nature), and a man who is at the end of his rope and is talking to him out of loneliness.

Kinda Ecaflip-core ngl.

36. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

It's a song about growing old. It's a song about moving on from even the things you thought were completely world-shattering. It's a song about regretting your youth.

It's a song about hoping to have a child just to show them how beautiful the world is before the damage is done.

37. DECO*27 & Pinocchio-P - (Not) a Devil

The version in my playlist is a cover, because I think the subs there are beautiful than the subs on the official upload of the song.

I think "angel who is being choked by purity and trying to appear better" and "demon who is trying to appear angelic" is a very good aesthetic for Kerubim and Atcham. Two opposites that are more similar than one might think.

I think this kinda fits because after the divorce and growing old, Kerubim and Atcham start actively beefing again due to going to a war AND due to Atcham trying to kill him in Astrub.

38. Nashimoto - Die In a Place Where I Can't See You

LITERALLY all of Kerubim's feelings on Atcham as an old man. He still loves him. (Sadly.)

39. Shikemoku - Hocus Pocus

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHY THIS SONG IS ON THE PLAYLIST.

40. K.Flay - Mean It

A song about wanting to get better to love someone more sincerely and without selfishness.

"I hope to die next to my daughter, let her sing me to sleep. Having made the mistakes of a mother, still I taught her to breathe [...] So when the world gets painful, she becomes her own god."

41. K.Flay - Get it Right

A song about wanting to become better, despite your impulses, wanting to break the cycle and carve out a good life for yourself despite how much it hurts.

42. K.Flay - Giver

Song about trying to unlearn selfishness and find a new way of living.

43. Pinocchio-P - KICK-ASS *LITERALLY

A song about waging a one-man war against your past self by holding yourself to new standards of not being a bad person, for the sake of your happy future and other people.

44. Iyowa - Until Your Tears Dry

World's Hardest Challenge: Imagine Kerubim singing this to Joris, without crying, throwing up, and then killing yourself.

I think this song fits very well with Dofus Cartoon-era Kerubim, and his thoughts on life, and Hopes and Dreams about Joris not repeating his mistakes in life.

45. Nagisa - Touch

A song about loving someone so gently to the point you'd melt at touching them, and yet hurting them anyway. Dying dying dying.

46. Trickle - Homunculus

A song about having tried everything but still being mentally ill and ashamed of yourself. Because bros, I don't think Kerubim is healthy even during the show, even if he did do a lot of work on himself.

47. Onoken - Fluquor (Deemo OST)

I shit you not, this song is literally canonically (I'm about to spoil a major plot twist from an oldass mobile game) about dying in the arms of your child who has no family left except for you, and your thoughts on it being "Being left alone is scarier for me, than it is for you. I don't think I'm going to heaven. Please hold me just a bit longer... But please don't forget to let go of me before I drag you with me."

Isn't it fucked. Haha. Btw it's one of those songs you should listen to at least once in your life.

48. VocaCircus - Déjà Vu

A song about cyclical relationships. I think it fits Kerubim and Atcham well, esp with them meeting once again in the movie. (Albeit not for long...)

49. syudou - Handle with Care

Imagine using a child to heal your mental illnesses and give you therapy and giving them so much brain damage that they begin to feel pleased when doing that after 6 centuries.

You will NEVER guess why this is on my Kerubim playlist.

50. R.I.P. - Mommy (Twins in Paradise OST)

Vewn's short indie animation "Twins in Paradise" is the closest we as a society will come to experiencing whatever emotions a depressing OVA about Kerubim and Atcham's childhood would make us feel. Marcy and Darcy are LITERALLY Kerubim and Atcham.

51. Hanyuu Maigo - Aun Beats

Listening to this song and thinking about Atcham dying in Kerubim and Joris's arms in the movie is just as emotionally devastating as listening to this song and thinking about the 48487538 years of separation between Qilby and Shinonome, or The Situation between Nora and Efrim.

This song has done a lot for doomed siblings economy, despite not being about siblings and instead the concept of doom itself.

52. Sohta - Twilight Station

I'm insane about Kerubim feeling anxious and ashamed of all his faults and the ways he wronged Atcham (and Joris).

53. Faded Paper Figures - Pointing at the Moon

This song feels the same way Kerubim loves people, and I think it's a good song for the end of the playlist. He loves everyone he's met this way.

54. Faded Paper Figures - Relatively

A general crepinjurgen-core song that touches on the theme of their relationship lasting forever.

[akuma-tenshi]

so this is a big, long rant about sexism in the idv community bc it's been on my mind lately and i need to put it out there. this is what i've observed after almost four years in the fandom and been stewing on for a long-ass time. if you don't feel like reading an essay on how annoyed some random enby on the internet is, then don't click the read more and just keep scrolling. don't interact with this post if all you're gonna do is get mad; i'm not here to piss anyone off, just make observations. and if this isn't your experience, good for you and please direct me to whatever circles you run in because i need to be there.

so, i've noticed that the idv fandom is extremely shit when it comes to how they treat female characters, and nobody really.. talks about it?? the only person i've ever seen actually discuss it used it as a way to drum up sympathy for ada. which, if you know me, you know really fucking pisses me off. because there are SO MANY OTHER EXAMPLES of sexism in this community, but no, clearly because we have sympathy for a male victim of abuse we're being sexist towards his abuser.

the thing is. there is so much to point to when you talk about how the fandom is sexist. it's very common to see female characters boiled down to just a couple traits. mary?? hot mommy step on me. michiko?? soft and gentle and demure (don't think i won't notice the weird shit about how that's a very common stereotype of asian women btw i see it). demi?? hot and drinks a lot. emma and lily are "uwu mentally ill babies". annie is soft. emily is either an irredeemable monster or a bitch, depending on who you're talking to. patricia is scary and mean. sangria's a girlboss, grace is soft and gentle, martha is spunky. and if you ask anyone their thoughts / ideas on these characters beyond those short descriptors you get nothing. i'm starting to fucking hate the word "girlboss" because it's all anyone says in response to like half these characters.

male characters are given alllllll the nuance in the world you can't talk to an aesop fan without them going into their endless headcanons / theories on why he's the way he is or how he's not actually that bad of a person or how cute he is or whatever. look at norton, or eli, or orpheus, or luca, or edgar, or joseph, or ithaqua, or any characters in that vein, and look at how the fandom treats them. look at the endless fanfictions and character studies and ships and x readers and headcanons. and then look at what female characters get. nowhere near that much.

i feel like margaretha and emily are the ones who suffer the most from this male-centric view by the fandom. they're characters who are inherently intricate, whose actions can't be explained away as entirely good or entirely bad. but that doesn't stop people from actively trying. they're going to act like margaretha wasn't being horrifically mistreated by her husband and just decided to burn down the circus for funsies or whatever. they're going to act like emily isn't trying so fucking hard to help emma and repent for what she's done. neither of them are meant to be read as black-and-white, but people will try because if they have to use more than two braincells on a female character they're going to implode.

meanwhile you get paragraph after paragraph about the intricacies of the argument between luca and alva. you get so many people analysing the relationship between norton and orpheus and how they're both kinda dicks but also both kinda have points. you get endless people defending joseph's actions bc his brother's dead and he's terrified of growing old / forgetting the people he loved / dying. you get so many fucking stories about how y'know, edgar's not that bad actually.

AND I'M NOT AGAINST ANALYSING THESE CHARACTERS!!! idv, especially in recent years, has been doing some great things with character writing. like, fuck 'em, they've got their issues, but they're still really good with some stuff and deserve credit. but don't act like it's not obvious how so many people have overlooked women (and poc, don't think i've noticed people ignoring the intricacies behind william and ganji as characters as well in favour of "himbo" and "bastard who cares", but i'm white so that's not exactly my place to talk) in favour of their favourite skinny whiteboy of the week.

they're that way with older-looking characters, too. if an idv guy has facial hair, you bet your ass he's also getting boiled down to his base traits. jose's an alcoholic, kevin is self-sacrificing and likes women, kurt is a little guy, kreacher is Awful, charles basically doesn't fucking exist anymore. but again not the focus of the talk atm.

it's just. so upsetting. esp. since most of my favourite idv characters are women but everyone i talk to about them is like "oh yeah demi's hot" or "aww annie's such a nervous little baby" or "god patricia's such a cool girlboss". and even when the shit they say is positive in a vacuum it still makes me so upset bc THAT'S NOT ALL THEY ARE!! demi is kind and loving and hardworking in the face of a world that only ever hurt her. annie's life has been an endless stream of pain and heartbreak and the only thing she really wants is freedom. patricia is literally cursed and is trying to find her place in the world.

also. i fucking hate ada but she falls victim to this too. as much as i despise the "you dislike her just bc you're sexist" thing and as horribly uncomfortable as she makes me, don't act like you haven't seen how her entire character is boiled down to how much she "loves" this man. don't act like you haven't seen how her entire character, all of her promise and potential, is forgotten in favour of that fucking trainwreck of a relationship. i bet half the fandom can't tell me anything about her other than her relationship with emil. emil suffers from this too, with his backstory and personality and life of abuse becoming an afterthought, but again, not what we're focusing on.

this is not an isolated thing or confined solely to the idv fandom. this happens in fandoms everywhere. but because idv is so close to my heart i feel like i really need to talk about it. there's so little content of female characters when there's fucking daily content of male ones. and don't get me wrong, i do like male characters. norton is literally one of my favourite fictional characters and i love talking about / analysing him. but i can guarantee a lot of people wouldn't be so interested in him if he was a woman.

sorry, just needed to get that off my chest. mandatory "this doesn't apply to everyone in the fandom" and "if this doesn't apply to you then i'm not fucking talking about you". we were so against the ashley wood collaboration bc of how much he sexualised michiko (and women in general) but like. do y'all really care that much?? bc i really don't think you do.

[hannahwatcheshorror]

PEARL (2022)

A character study about a young woman finding her way through some complicated feeling no one else seems to have. Throughout the film you can see Pearl struggle with her humanity and it is rather fascinating. You get to see how things got set up for the previous movie in the series, “X,” or you can just enjoy this as a stand alone film. The pacing is very good, it wastes no time getting things going or keeping them there. Not a perfect film but a weird one that I think fits nicely into the Horror genre.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Hello Herman” vibes right out the gate, “you’re a superstar, yes you are, yes you are,” but also killing small animals is surely a sign of what's to come in Pearl’s future, I mean, honey… (At least Maxine was just a coke fiend before she met you.) I like that she feeds Theda the alligator but it debunks my “she's a witch” theory from “X” and also I wish she didn’t feed the gator with a pitch fork, what if she stabbed the poor thing and it couldn’t death roll a certain hot blonde in the future?

Pearl exhibits some strange behavior from the beginning of the film, it’s hard to tell if it’s mental illness, a reaction to the stressors of life, or if she might just be a little evil. She doesn’t have the easiest life with her husband at war, her strict mother, her disabled father, and her dashed dreams of dancing for an audience, but she isn’t entirely without. When the man working at the cinema encourages her to live her youth, you feel that she is entitled to spreading her wings a bit, but then we get a harsh reality check at dinner when Mama informs us how tight money is.

The only thing tighter than the money was how tight the women in that house were wound up because it came to physical blows very quickly. The worst part is they both had reasonable points but things heated up so quickly. Speaking of heating up quickly, Mama. Pearl accidentally (on purpose) pushed Mama into the fire and her dress caught up and burned her badly. Papa watched the whole thing (remember, disabled). Mama was sent to the punishment basement to die while father got his favorite pillow. Pearl goes to the cinema worker to run away but he takes her home first and gets spooked and tries to leave so she freaks out and kills him, classic Pearl! Here we get to see her iconic pitchfork before it was iconic.

When the church dance audition rolls around, Pearl really hams it up… Which the Church folk don’t want, they want someone cute and blonde like Pearl's sis-in-law. Pearl gets all her anger and sadness off her chest to her Sissy-in-law before taking a lot of Sissy’s chest and back and everywhere off with an ax. Finally, her husband returns to the gruesome stage Pearl has set with her parents at the table, complete with a roast pig in the middle, rotten, maggoty, and molding. He is horrified at his wife, his Pearl, and all she can do is smile and cry. The unease you feel as Mia Goth grits her teeth at the camera while tears roll down her cheeks, the tendons in her neck splaying out, as the screen slowly closes around her in a black circle, evokes just the final feeling we needed. I felt such sympathy for both characters in that moment though after I remembered what they both got up to in “X” I felt much less bad for them. This movie posed the idea that misery breeds misery. The old “If I can’t be happy, no one can be.” Which is a sickening mindset to have but could explain a lot about the events in “X.”

-----------------------HANNAH WATCHES HORROR--------------------

[ideahat-universe]

Surreal, but not incomprehensible.

A lot of people are getting into ENA and seem to really enjoy it, which is GREAT. But what I don't like to see from people is the Single Core processing that takes place with understanding ENA.

I can't even tell you which one is worse, so I'll just list all the bad takes.

How many drugs did the artist take?: None, for the artistic process. This is a correlation fallacy. Artists are sometimes suffering with mental illness or stressors due to a variety of different factors, and take drugs to cope with those factors.

But they typically do not use these drugs to tap into the creative part of their mind.

Really think about it. Imagine you spent years honing your craft and seriously creating a unique style for yourself, only for people to think that the key to your success isn't hard work. It's narcotic usage.

I need to observe this high: This is as bad as the previous one. For starters. We have a drug addiction problem. Please stop passively promoting it by suggesting that what you or anyone else should be doing is consuming mind-altering drugs for the sake of watching a cartoon.

Weed smokers, I'm looking you straight in the eyes with this one. Smoking weed impairs cognitive functions. It slows your ability to process things and shortens your memory capability.

Humor is often dependent on the element of surprise as well as sharp timing with gags. If you are constantly high on cannabis, you are processing at an extremely slow speed, which means comedy at a moderate pace is much funnier and absurdist jokes hit harder because your comprehension is weaker.

If you need to be high to enjoy something, you're basically insulting it because when high, you have lower standards.

ENA makes no sense. It just vibes: NO, NO NO, Common mistake, but sad mistake. Just because you can't understand everything in ENA doesn't mean that the ENA series is entirely incomprehensible. We can't speak about the full plot of Dream BBQ because we have to see the future chapters, but the story of all the other ENA episodes are straight forward.

Auction Day: ENA visits an auction, and it's a real auction (also the auction day shows up at the end of Dream BBQ with much of the same characters).

Extinction Party: is ENA going to a party (that she technically wasn't invited to) just so she can give a compliment to her friend Moony.

Temptation Stairway: Moony and ENA race to get a seemingly magical wish granted.

Power of Potluck: ENA misunderstands the directive of ding-dong ditching as a way of having fun, with the idea of just having fun in general.

None of that required Matpat to make a three parter video essay or a Video Essayist to make a 5-hour break-down, and it didn't require a content creator sitting down to dissect every musical note used in every scene in ENA to figure out what the plot of a given ENA episode is.

It's all the little things that don't make sense. We don't know if it's taking place in a digital world or in some afterlife/purgatory or some strange combination of those two. We don't understand the design ethos of most if not all characters. Furthermore, we don't understand why they talk the way that they do, and we don't understand various little things like doors, genies, blood IDs, Mannequins, or even ENA as an entity.

Or do we?

ENA's universe just is. There is no bread crumb trail, there is no lore dump in the form of various audio recordings. (well, there are audio recordings, but it's not exactly a lore dump) there is no fish out of water or a newbie to have the world explained to them. Everyone in the ENA series understands their universe to such an extent that nothing needs to be explained, even though so much of it doesn't make clear sense.

It is like going to a foreign country and trying to figure out what people are doing when you don't understand anything about them. Which is funny because half the cast of ENA speak a variety of different languages that are all understood by every other character but is not understood by the audience across the board.

There is consistency in the madness of ENA's world (or worlds, as the case may be)

For instance;

Blood ID, seems like a strange thing. Is it actual blood? Not sure, but blood can be used to identify people in real life, and it functions that way in game as well. In Extinction Party, ENA is expected to offer a blood sample to enter the party. In Temptation Stairway The Shepard gives ENA a blood ID to pass inspection in a future area and sure enough Mariya checks the ID and recognizes that it's not ENA's blood. It's someone else's identification. Blood is needed to attend the Purge event, and bus stops in Uncanny Streets require a blood ID to use.

It really is just identification.

Doors have been a consistent feature since Extinction Party. Light blue buildings or objects that can take a person to a different realm.

Doors require an owner to govern it. Temptation Stairway explicitly shows off the realm of the Great Runas who governs their door, Ulysses says that the door is fully closed. What is the door? The light blue mannequin that Runas, ENA, and apparently Moony traveled through.

At the end of Dream BBQ, the Uncanny Streets takes on a very pale and gray aesthetic with most characters and creatures replaced with talking gravestones. This environment matches the look and has a similar sound to Auction Day.

In the grayed out, Uncanny Streets, you can find the phone number of the Auctioneer who was selling the Hourglass dog in Auction Day.

With this it can be assumed that Auction Day is not a singular realm but the result of a realm being sold off.

The currency? Chocolates. Chocolate coins have been the currency of this universe since the Auction Day video, and comes up again in Dream BBQ.

Speaking of something not being singular.

There are many, many mannequins in the worlds of ENA, and they vary between moving around and seemingly having sentience to being lifeless dolls littering the environment.

Temptation Stairway shows that there's a link between the mannequins and ENA, and Dream BBQ shows ENA becoming a mannequin to escape the remnants of Uncanny Streets and warps to the mannequin seemingly placed in the hub world strategically.

Season 1 ENA and Season 2 ENA are seemingly different people, with the witches referring to the motherboard item as a gift another ENA gave her and Kane referring to a group of ENA's.

Additionally, in Temptation Stairway, the Shepard refers to ENA as if they were a group and the NO ENA sign at the crowd door is there to forbid any iteration of ENA from entering the realm.

There are multiple ENA's? Where are they? If the Shaman is anything to go by, they are inactive. Multiple instances of the same person can create a disorientating effect, where the thoughts of one are transferred into another person. A theory that ENA asserts as true by saying it along with him in synch as if it was common knowledge, even though the Shaman's words and actions are treated as spurious and bizarre.

The Shaman uses the pool to duplicate a perfect clone of himself and ENA can do the same or alter the form based on a variable we haven't discovered quite yet, but we know that all ENA's are essentially Mannequins possessed by whatever ENA truly is.

There are many mysteries to ENA's worlds, but it's worth considering that most things are just visual and auditory gags, and that a lot of designs are based on mythology, culture, and occasionally random internet references. Sometimes very obscure ones.

This lends to the absurd and surreal nature of the series design, but it's not incoherent. This is not Dadaism.

What baffles me the most is how pervasive this idea that ENA is untouchable when it comes to being understood, that most people don't even try. Where is the Night mind videos breaking down the world of Joel G? Why is there only a GT Live of ENA, even though far less popular games and shows have earned a game theory (or film theory) spotlight?

Why are there channels dedicated to dissecting the plot of Deltarune, even though Deltarune is not a mystery and will not have multiple endings to dissect?

Why are there still people trying to figure out the plot of FNaF even though it's been demonstrably thrown together and ret conned seven hundred thousand times and in all iterations of the story it's just bad man kills children?

ENA is way more consistent than FNaF. And maybe this is like asking for the Monkey's Paw to curl, but again, I think it's insulting to look at ENA and just shrug at how weird it is and only define it as "that crazy weird series that no one understands." But then turn around and make a multitude of videos covering a random ARG where the plot is that a demon is killing people and treat something very straight forward as if it were a complex mystery waiting to be thoroughly solved?

This is exactly what drove David Lynch crazy when he was making Twin Peaks. Make something that requires effort to understand. Everyone writes it off as a quirky, drug infused nightmare that you need to watch while high. Meanwhile, the bland, straight forward serial murder mystery is slurped up like so much creamed corn in a can.

I'm not asking people to roll around in cold sweats at 2:00 AM, wondering who Unforgiven Frank is. I just think something this well put together series deserves actual reverence and shouldn't be mined for Wacky Zacky internet thumbnails.

[bumblebeerror]

jesse what the fuck are you talking about...

i know you said you won't respond, but i don't care. you don't have to. i'm replying because i feel the need to reply. i'm not looking for a response anymore.

"i'm aggressively kind, and not nice" what. i want to study your brain under a microscope. the entire paragraph about what you do with your friends is alien to me. it just does not compute. i don't understand. what the fuck even was that? i've never done that or seen anyone do any of that. what the fuck?

kidness isn't a human right.

education, food, water, shelter, family, medicine... those are human rights. you are not entitled to kindness simply because you were born into this world. you have to earn it.

the fact that you believe bad people like the ones i mentioned deserve kindness tells me you have clearly had a very good, safe life and have never been truly hurt or come face-to-face with evil. if you did, you'd quickly change your philosophy. let me guess, you also oppose the death penalty? figures.

i am not about to fotce myself to disobey my instinct/intuition. when my gut tells me something, it's for a reason. when i get the creeps around a registered sex offender, i can't just ignore that. not just for moral reasons, but because it's a self-preservation instinct too.

"kindness isn't empathy, kindness is compassion" EMPATHY AND COMPASSION ARE SYNONYMS?????????????????????? they mean the same thing. literally what's the difference???????? what.

i've been bullied extensively, please don't fucking lecture me on what bullying does. i can honestly say bullying had a positive effect on me. it helped me build thicker skin and now i'm no longer so hypersensitive. it builds character for many people.

"there's a reason you have trouble making friends" it's not my fault i was born this way. i've tried making and maintaining friends since i was a little child. but fuck it is impossible. making and maintaining enemies is very easy for me, however.

i'm sorry, but i don't think i can remember 20 people, let alone make 20 friends??? that sounds exhausting. i don't even truly know 20 people. i only truly know my mom, dad, sister, grandfather and (dead) grandmother. i think of the people i used to go to school with a lot, but i only knew them superficially. we never truly knew each other.

there are many reasons i have no friends. i think i know myself a little better than you know me. my problems are much deeper than just "not willing to be kind". i've always been distant and uncomfortable with intimacy. and i have a disneyland of problems and difficulties, so even if i did learn to be "kind", i would still have no friends.

it's better to be friendless and tough, than friendless and a pushover.

Yeah, alright. Since we’re off the idea that bullying teens as adults is remotely acceptable, I’ll play ball. You can take this answer or leave it - I don’t care.

1) I explained the difference between kindness and niceness already.

2) kindness is realizing the inherent value of another human and taking actions to that end, whether directly or in politics/raising awareness.

3) I am fat, disabled, poor, mentally ill, have lost several very close family members including my father, and I’m queer; if you think my life has been easy, I want whatever you’re smoking.

It is because my life has not been easy that I know that people deserve to be treated as people, even if they suck.

I don’t put myself in danger either. But it’s not hard to realize that prisons are new slavery or that sexual assault and torture via other inmates and guards isn’t a morally correct way to deal with anyone who breaks a law. I’d hope you’d also realize that being a bigot doesn’t exactly warrant the death penalty.

4) Empathy is the ability to put yourself in one’s shoes and understand where they’re coming from.

Compassion is actually helping someone in need.

Which is why autistic folks have been trying to make it clear for years that being low empathy doesn’t make you evil.

5) I’m sorry you’ve been bullied. Personally, the only thing bullying taught me was to hate who I was and mask extensively.

Have you considered that you struggle to make friends because you don’t reach out to people for fear of them bullying you? Have you thought of the possibility that being bullied in fact changed you for the worse and made you less able to be yourself and be open with friends?

There are loads of studies on what bullying does to developing minds. I’m sure you do feel as if it’s helped you. Check back in on that in 2 years eh?

6) You were not “born this way”. Humans are, whether you like it or not, social creatures. You have unfortunately been taught by your bullies that people are unpleasant and out to get you. This isn’t true, and it’s fairly easy to root out those who are when you’re an adult in control of who you talk to or see.

Because imma be straight up with you king. I’ve got ADHD and autism, and even with those difficulties making friends those disorders represent, I still make friends exclusively because I treat others how I want to be treated and try to be the friend I’d want to have. I have such a wide circle of friends because I treat them well without the expectation that they’ll always be able to match that. I’ve not had a problem since I started doing so.

You have trouble making friends because you are an unpleasant person who does not think of others, and because you have convinced yourself that you were not made to have friends. Have you ever planned an event for your friends? Do you ever reach out to talk to them? Have you ever tried being the friend you want to have?

Because until *I* started doing that, I was a lot like you. I even believed it was other people’s fault nobody wanted to be friends with me. And if that wasn’t the case, I just wasn’t suited to having friends. Sound familiar?

I am also viscerally uncomfortable with intimacy. I also have trouble expressing emotions. I have a flat affect. I have multiple health issues and neurological issues related to them. I do not understand how to comfort others. I still have friends and I still get on well. Don’t put up your own barriers, mate. There are plenty of folks who have similar issues. Unfortunately this is a case where you aren’t special, and that’s a good thing.

7) I’m sure being tough will get you far when you have nobody to rely on for help.

I’m not a pushover for recognizing that other people have needs and inherent value.

[syrips]

decided to sketch hoagie / agatha because self indulgence

ok so context about creating this pc:

the first CoS campaign i ever played was also my first time EVER playing 5e, cuz we moved from GURPS to 5e for CoS. either way, the CoS 1 DM pulled each player aside to help us manually make our character sheets. DM pulls me aside and is like 'ok what do you wanna play?' and me, with no context of CoS or 5e at all during the entire creation process, was like, 'i wanna be a redhead evadey vampire-hunter PC! oh i wanna call her Valentina, so gothic romantic! it fits!' and anyways my DM was like 'did you read the module?' and i felt bad like something was wrong but he wouldnt explain to me. so, with still no context i was all big brain like, 'okay nevermind. ill make something new that isnt related to that at redhead pc idea at all. give this new PC all the possible curses, corruption, suffering stuff! i dont care if she gets corrupted, dies, or goes insane, woo!' - and anyways the DM was way too onboard and gave my PC amnesia due to all the curses so i knew she was gonna go through ✨ trauma ✨

ok anyways here hoagie lore:

shes my cos/multicampaign piglin PC who is having an enjoyable corruption arc. since shes influenced by my cracked headcanon minecraft piglin lore, i decided to make her a yugoloth 'prototype soul' who reincarnates (pseudo-soul) repeatedly to gather souls for her 'prototype soul' back in her home plane. the more souls she collects the more corrupt she becomes. (DMs have me roll to discreetly steal souls from the party hehe. if i get 'caught' the party can kill me or exile me from the party, which happened at the end of LMoP then she got attacked by a warlock of azalin so thats something but anyways)

she consumes souls using her lil black book that she carries with her everywhere. the black book was a trinket but the CoS - 1 DM and LMoP DM, both made it where it was her personal journal and her warlock (strahd) pact tome. i made strahd the patron for obvious reasons but also because in CoS - 1, the DM decided to secretly make her a strahd consort, as he was entering her dreams trying to manipulate/soothe her while she was dealing with other curses stacking and breaking her sanity.

the DM never told me how charmed she was, but when she was conscious, she would react to things not there. except it was THERE BECAUSE STRAHD WAS STALKING US FUCK OYU STRA anyways her dreams got more and more corrupt cuz she was suffering from like the other stack of curses. my DM didnt tell me any of these curses until it was naturally revealed and she had to roll wis saves to not have a mental break down. shes fine though shes got strahd and i hate my dm for literally not telling me she was a consort until after the campaign ended but he couldnt say cuz it was one of the potential reveals where she wouldve betrayed the party

but yes thank you for reading

random junk here:

CoS 1 = Curse of Strahd (Ended. Strahd's Beloved Killed by the Abbot)

CoS 2 = Curse of Strahd (20 BC years after CoS 1. Ongoing, Strahd's Beloved Alive and in love with a PC)

LMoP = Lost Mine of Phandelver

N/A = Not Available until in-campaign reveal

ok goodbye!!

[aj28gaming]

Nagito's dementia and misuse of information

CAN PEOPLE STOP TRYING TO USE FRONTOTEMPORAL DEMENTIA SYMPTOMS TO EXPLAIN HIM?

.

What I mean is, yes he has dementia or is at least diagnosed with it

And I believe that he probably does actually have dementia (not saying he could've lied tho but he could've still been misdiagnosed)

But that doesn't mean he has all of the symptoms

.

I don't think we can confirm if he does or doesn't have dementia because he might just not have all of the symptoms

But I do know that using the symptoms to explain his character isn't a good idea especially since it usually undermines who he actually is

.

So stop using his dementia as a way to explain EVERYTHING HE DOES AND IS

He doesn't even have all the symptoms and is close to having almost none of them

Using a mental illness to explain a character's entire character is a bad idea and makes it seem like it's who they are entirely

Yes Nagito is diagnosed with dementia however that isn't who he is entirely

He is a complicated character with a lot of layers

And his illnesses definitely don't make up ALL OF HIS LAYERS AND CHARACTER

.

Okay now, let me explain

(These are a combination of all of the symptoms of Frontotemporal dementia that I have gathered)

.

(I AM NOT TRYING TO PROVE HE DOESN'T HAVE DEMENTIA BECAUSE HE MIGHT STILL HAVE IT, I'M JUST TRYING TO POINT OUT WHY USING THE SYMPTOMS TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING HE DOES IS A BAD THING)

.

Now onto the symptoms:

.

Behavior and/or dramatic personality changes, such as swearing, stealing, increased interest in sex, or a deterioration in personal hygiene habits

- No, and no not even when the killing game started. Yeah sure he laughs now, but that's no different from how he is normally since laughing for him is what he does when he gets surprised or stressed. He doesn't change much in the killing game, he still believes in hope and everyone else, still respects boundaries, still have crazy high intellect and empathy, still pushes people away

.

Socially inappropriate, impulsive, or repetitive behaviors

- not really, again the guy is a freaking gentleman even during the killing game. He respects boundaries, reprimands Teruteru for sexual assault during chapter 1, pushes people away and distances himself from others, isn't at all impulsive (usually quite the opposite really), and is usually planning and tries to remain calm and composed throughout the killing game (struggling tho cuz yeah killing game)

.

Impaired judgment

- here, I kinda disagree. I wouldn't say that Nagito is entirely in the right with everything he does, but I understand his views. The guy knows that no one is truly a bad person in the killing game because everyone was forced into it. He knows that even the blackened escapes and everyone dies, it isn't fully a bad thing because that means someone escapes and goes back home to their loved ones while the killing game ends

If a blackened succeeds, the despair would be of course everyone else dying and the blackened going through a lot of trauma, but the hope would be the end of the killing game and the blackened going home or to their loved ones or to their goal in life or whatever

If the blackened dies, the despair would obviously be the blackened dying and the killing game still continuing, while the hope would be everyone else still alive

Nagito isn't exactly wrong in wanting to help the blackened as well, of course, Nagito would want him himself to be the victim so another person gets a chance at escape and no one else would be the victim

Sadly for Nagito, that time never comes

Nagito doesn't want others to be killed, he wants to sacrifice himself instead as the victim instead of everyone else

.

Apathy

- .....big no. Nonononono. The dude is anything but apathetic.

"Apathy is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern about something."

Seriously, being a dude who is constantly supportive of everyone and their hopes in life and how passionate this dude gets about hope and despair, and the fact that he is the most stressed 24/7 about something bad happening due to his luck, this guy is seriously anything but apathetic

.

Lack of empathy

- No. If the guy truly lack empathy he wouldn't need to use Hope desperately as a coping mechanism, wouldn't care about the ultimates and their hopes and despairs, wouldn't constantly be thinking about helping the ultimates and overcoming despair, wouldn't be the most stressed out of everyone, and definitely wouldn't be in love with Hajime or even act the way he did in chapter 1

.

Decreased self-awareness

- You don't actually understand why you act the way you do. A good indicator that you lack self-awareness deals with how well you understand your emotions, actions, and behavior. People who lack self-awareness often feel constantly off-kilter, anxious, or angry.

This is not Nagito at all. The guy understands his emotions and behaviors which is why he is able to do the things he does and is able to conduct plans based on how much he understands his own self and capabilities. The guy is actually the most self-aware out of everyone, he knows about how people don't understand him and constantly misunderstand him and his intentions, he is aware constantly of his inability sometimes to properly explain his goals to people.

The guy has a lot of self-awareness and isn't afraid to take responsibility for his actions. Actually, it's because of how self-aware he is of his own self and his destructive luck cycle that he constantly blames himself for anything bad that happens.

The guy is seriously self-aware as hell and it's scary sometimes

.

Loss of interest in normal daily activities

- Nope, he hasn't shown any sign of apathy towards anything and is usually pretty hyped about doing daily activities. He is paranoid though on the daily because he fears for what his luck cycle might do

.

Emotional withdrawal from others

- Emotional withdrawal involves bottling up your emotions. It involves cutting out the people who could help us, because we're so used to rejection that we've learned to anticipate it. Because we've learned to disconnect from others, we develop other unhealthy coping mechanisms

Emotional withdrawal is defined as pulling back emotionally or physically by bottling up your feelings or disconnecting from others. Emotional withdrawal can be far more complex at times. It is comparable to a breakup, in every way but physical.

Kind of? Yes, he pushes people away, but he is still willing to spend time with people, especially Hajime, when they really insist. He politely pushes people away, but he isn't opposed to hanging out with people either though it is sometimes rare

.

Loss of energy and motivation

- .... I already said it before, the guy is full of motivation and energy and passion that it is scary sometimes

.

Inability to use or understand language; this may include difficulty naming objects, expressing words, or understanding the meanings of words

-.....WHY IS THIS HERE? THE GUY IN THE JAPANESE DUB CONSTANTLY FLEXES HIS DAMN ENGLISH VOCABULARY DESPITE IT BEING A JAPANESE DUB

AND THE FUCKING ENGLISH WORDS HE USES ARE FANCY AND HIGH LEVEL AS FUCK THAT I FEEL SMART JUST READING THEM

.

Hesitation when speaking

- Definite no, the guy isn't afraid to voice his own opinions and never hesitates and can get very vocal about the things he is passionate about

.

Less frequent speech

- Again, definite hell no. I wouldn't be surprised if his voice lines are longer than the voice lines of everyone else combined

.

Distractibility

- Nope. The guy is focused on his goals constantly. No matter what he does, you can always be sure that it is for a certain goal. He pisses of Fuyuhiko? It was to get a reaction from him to confirm his suspicions about the true culprit. He lied about the rope? It was to see how Mikan would react and how the trial would go to confirm his suspicions about Mikan being the culprit?

The guy is focused like a damn soldier

.

Trouble planning and organizing

-.....do I seriously need to explain? This is Nagito we are talking about

.

Frequent mood changes

- Not really. He usually acts or reacts a certain way because something happened like someone died or something. He is actually pretty normal with how he acts and reacts and doesn't really change his mood rapidly that much

.

Agitation

- Yes and no? Sure the guy gets paranoid 24/7, but is still somewhat more chill than agitated to an extent. He is easy going and is just paranoid about what his luck would do, he is vigilant but not necessarily agitated

.

Increasing dependence

- No. The guy is independent to a fault and only relies on others when his plans call for it. He also usually does things of his own accord and rarely with a partner unless he really needs to or his goal is to help that person specifically, which knowing him is a usual thing

.

Unwillingness to talk

- Again, no. The guy talks a lot and while he pushes others away, he wouldn't turn down a conversation if the other person wanted one

.

Lack of inhibition or lack of social tact

- Again, no. The guy is a gentleman and respects boundaries and definitely gets stressed especially in the killing game. The guy is also paranoid 24/7 on a normal day due to his luck cycle

.

Obsessive or repetitive behavior, such as compulsively shaving or collecting items

- No? Sure he clings to hope but that is more of a coping mechanism. If he isn't in a stressful situation like a killing game he doesn't get that obsessive as much about hope since he doesn't need to desperately cling to it as a coping mechanism

.

Unusual verbal, physical or sexual behavior

- No? He isn't at all like this. It isn't unusual to panic or use a coping mechanism desperately when in a situation like a killing game, and he doesn't do anything unusual like this when it's a normal day. Sure the guy gets paranoid, but that's it

.

Weight gain due to dramatic overeating

- No? Actually, I don't really know how much weight he gains to be honest so idk

.

.

.

My main point here is, yes there is a chance Nagito does actually have dementia, but using the symptoms as a way to explain his character undermines who he actually is and can cause a lot of misunderstandings of his character

Especially since I remember being told that they only added in dementia to his character backstory a little late during his character development and creation

It isn't a good idea to use his symptoms because it usually gets his character wrong and sometimes makes them excuse a lot of the things he has done

The guy is self-aware, isn't socially inept, is a gentleman, and socially intelligent as hell

.

And again

Stop using his dementia as a way to explain EVERYTHING HE DOES AND IS

He doesn't even have all the symptoms and is close to having almost none of them

Using a mental illness to explain a character's entire character is a bad idea and makes it seem like it's who they are entirely

Yes Nagito is diagnosed with dementia however that isn't who he is entirely

He is a complicated character with a lot of layers

And his illnesses definitely don't make up ALL OF HIS LAYERS AND CHARACTER

.

.

.

[gasterofficial]

could you explain how horrortale is ableist? i had no idea, and i'm shocked that it falls into those horrible characterisation :(

but if you don't want to, that's totally chill too! you don't owe some anon anything lmao ^-^

since I've had a couple people ask, I'm going to provide a slightly more in-depth explanation of why horrortale is ableist. content warnings for everything below the cut: ableism (obviously), discussion of graphic gore, unsettling content, and flagrant mischaracterization of sans undertale.

alright, so before we even talk about sans or alphys there's the whole issue of the treatment of physical and mental disorders (specifically psychosis) as a source of horror. this is an issue with the horror genre in general of course, so it comes as no surprise to see it in horrortale, but I really had higher hopes for the creator to not fall into those same tropes. i don't really want to read back through the comic to pick out all of the examples throughout, but like half of the main characters are at some point referred to as deranged, crazy, insane, or psycho and therefore "shouldn't be trusted." this is just classic "mentally ill/neurodivergent = scary!!!" and isn't just lazy horror but actively perpetuates harmful stereotypes. also this one is less egregious but papyrus is supposed to be scary just because he has yellow and crooked teeth??? bad dental hygiene = horror now. i feel like this is also ableist or classist or SOMETHING but i don't even want to try to define it past it being silly and dumb so. moving on.

ok so. sans himself. the entire conceit of sans's character in horrortale is that undyne smashes his head in because she's mad at him for not using his spooky magic eye to attempt to save the CORE from a power outage, and then after that he "suffers mood swings and delusions" that make him ~SPOOKY~ because obviously mood swings and psychosis make you an evil murderer who wants to torture children.

(image transcription: *His increasing psychosis makes him difficult to trust.)

(image transcription: *You're dead. A deranged goat mom made a twisted promise with a psychotic and it ended up with a bone up your throat.)

Both of the above images are in reference to sans, and the second one not only refers to sans as "a psychotic" but also calls toriel deranged. double ableism win!

Painting psychotic people or people who suffer from mood disorders as evil murderers isn't even as bad as it gets, either! Let me introduce you to the shitshow that is how this au treats alphys.

In this story, after undyne smashes sans's head in she takes his magical eye and gives it to alphys, who uses it to get the core back up and running, thereby saving the ENTIRE UNDERGROUND from magical starvation. thought to be dead, sans survives the beating through some sort of magical connection to his eye and immediately goes to find alphys and retrieve the eye. the literal instant he finds her he uses bone attacks to destroy the entire fucking CORE, takes his eye back, and then attacks alphys before leaving.

Let's just ignore how little sense sans's actions make both in terms of the storyline and his character, and take a look at what happens when others finally make it to the CORE and find alphys after sans is through with her:

yep. that's right. he leaves alphys ""lobotomized"" (this is the description the author used, though this is not at all what an actual lobotomy is) with her brain exposed, which somehow causes her to morph into quite possibly the worst stereotype of an insane mentally disabled person that i've ever seen!!! a stereotype of mental disability which we are explicitly meant to interpret as horror!!!

and yet, despite all of this, the creator and the majority of the fans who participated in a creator-run poll consider alphys to be the villain of the story, there is no follow-up of any sort on what happens to alphys, and sans receives no consequences for his actions.

so yeah, that is why i’m not a fan of horrortale sans and horrortale as a whole.

[vampiradelmal]

I absolutely agree that his actions can be explained, especially since he was essentially built into this by his father and (later) pennywise. Mental illness and influence from family can be a deadly combo when it comes to topics such as this. However, it is also of note to mention that the racism is completely glossed over most of the time.

The entire plot line and importance of this is ignored. It’s gotten to the point where most fans can ignore Henry’s flaws in favor of this view where he is just a boy who is abused. He is both the abused and the abuser. As the saying goes “hurt people hurt people”.

And like most racists who grow up in these families, black excellence is a threat. Mike thriving despite all the horrible things happening in his life—while Henry is being abused at his farm—creates what I can only assume to be a jealousy problem in Henry. Which could be why he kills Mr. Chips and bullies Mike. He wants his father’s approval and possibly sate the jealousy.

The problem starts when fans don’t recognize the importance of this plot line. It shows how deeply ingrained racism is in some people’s heads, as we see with the burning of The Black Spot and Maine’s Legion of White Decency (the Maine version of the KKK). This explains how racism and hatred is passed on through generations, and possibly how it could even lead to one’s demise as it does with Henry to an extent. It will rot your brain until you’re nothing but mush; as we’re seeing right now in this day and age with the chaos running amuck in the White House and the hatred being perpetuated against non-white communities.

But then we begin to forgive and forget. Right? This is coming from my view as somebody who is not white and has experience racist rhetoric firsthand, it simply gets to a point. Explanations are there but the excuses are not.

Although I think we can simply agree to disagree because in some way I think we see each other’s points. On one hand we can agree that racism is horrible, but do I personally think it can ever be excused? No, especially when it’s how whole communities are pushed back for centuries; martyred and brutalized in the name of jealousy and superiority.

Racism was prevalent in the 50s, in the 80s, and in 2025 it’s making an even bigger comeback. We can chalk it up to ignorance, hatred, or naivety, but those are just explanations at the end of the day.

Hatred will turn a person into something horrible but if it’s not affecting somebody directly, then why should they care?

In Henry’s case, if somebody had stepped in earlier I think things would’ve turned out differently. As you said, he is 12. He is just a boy.

But in the idea that we can collectively say racism can be excused when the one doing it isn’t ok, is just plain ol’ wrong and yet another way to enable white supremacy. Do I think you are a white supremacist? No. No, I think you just like Henry Bowers. And that’s fine. I also think he is an interesting character in how he represents how racism is passed on, how hatred ruins a person, and how parent’s shape their children. Children are gullible and their minds can’t process trauma! Moreover, I resonate deeply with how his pain and frustration causes him to lash out in any attempt to let people feel as bad as he does. Hell, maybe it’s even a cry for help.

But hatred is one hell of a drug. And violence against black and brown people is an epidemic.

Fiction can manifest into reality. And when we are grasping at straws in any way to excuse hatred, we have to stop and look at the real world, and what our opinions really mean to people who are not like us. The people who are really affected by it all.

Racism is taught, it can be untaught, it can be explained, it cannot be excused. If violence is excused, then when does it stop being inexcusable? Where is the bottom line?

EXTREMELY unpopular opinion:

I do not hold Henry Bowers accountable for his actions and I don't understand people that do, or that blame him for his behavior and say he deserved a punishment for it.

He was 12 years old, a literal child.

Henry was reactive and with severe mental health issues, pennywise genuinely made him schizophrenic at twelve, he was in 5th grade for fucks sake.

He was trained to act a certain way, talk a certain way, feel a certain way, and the only way he knew how to express himself was with violence, he didn't use violence with the intent of 'hurting' but with the intent of communicating, whether angry, sad, scared, frustrated, it's pretty clear he was fueled by fear half the times.

He doesn't understand his actions and doesn't comprehend they're wrong because he's never been taught they are wrong.

Beating him, humiliating him or punishing him would not help, period. Henry did not have an ego problem, he does not need to get his image damaged further, because he already thinks lowly of himself, you just can't help an abused child by hurting him further.

He shouldn't be punished anyways because it just wasn't his fault, how can you hold that kind of child accountable for what he did, the same way you'd hold accountable an adult?

How can you look at me and tell me that a fifth grader than was sent back TWICE because he sucked so bad at school, doesn't know how affection feels like and is still scared of the dark, is somewhat mentally intelligent enough to understand that what he was doing was wrong?

I don't particularly know why I'm so strong about this, but I've been there, I've been the troubled child in that sense, a lot of rage and sadness because you simply don't know what's going on and don't realize what people around you are doing to you.

[self-loving-vampire]

From a game balance perspective I do understand why so many games try to limit how many augmentations players can get by dangling the “Cybernetics Eat Your Soul” trope over them and taking away their humanity points (and, in Shadowrun, also their magical ability). This “humanity” metric is often directly tied to empathy, which certainly has... Implications.

Here’s one page of the Cyberpunk TTRPG manual.

Like... Why does it even work like this?

Let’s assume that getting fancy prosthetics and body modifications somehow removed your empathy. Kind of strange to tie your morality and decency to how many body-altering surgeries you have had (trans and disabled people are just doing it wrong apparently) but let’s just roll with it.

1- Why is empathy treated as a defining human fundamental anyway when there’s humans in real life who were either born without it or who lost it at some point for a variety of reasons? 

It just seems like another manifestation of the idea that abnormal empathy makes people somehow subhuman.

I may not be very attached to humanity myself (for entirely different reasons) but this still seems like a very bad place to draw a boundary between humans and non-humans.

2- A lack of empathy is not the same as a general lack of emotions. People with below-average empathy can be just as emotional as anyone else, the difference is that they just don’t also feel other people’s emotions.

3- Most importantly, low empathy by itself doesn’t translate to “I’m going to go on an irrational and self-destructive murder rampage for no reason.” 

This is really just the new “Without religion people will just go on random murder sprees.” 

I don’t even know how to explain to people that low empathy is not the same as the sadistic, pointless violence people just assume of the trait without ever actually thinking about it. 

A lack of affective empathy is not the same as malice or hatred either. All it means is a reduction or lack of the usual emotional flow from other people towards you. It doesn’t even necessarily mean you don’t value other people or don’t care about them, just that their emotions don’t become your own and may be difficult to understand/relate to.

This really just feels like the usual mental illness stereotypes but with added bio-essentialism.

I strongly prefer the approach of Eclipse Phase, which is a science fiction game with a more distinctly transhumanist bent. It is also not perfect but in that game altering and customizing your body however you wish is just normal, as is uploading yourself to exist without a body or downloading yourself into an entirely separate body.

The worst thing that happens if you do something as drastic as literally switching to a whole new body is that it takes time to get used to the differences, particularly if the new body is dramatically different from the previous one, and experience some mental stress from the loss of continuity of self.

In other words, problems that are actually understandable and interesting. 

You had to download into an undesirable body that doesn’t suit you at all because it was the only thing available at the place you had to transmit your mind to? Congratulations on the body dysmorphia, it’s stressful but you probably won’t just go on a homicidal rampage.

In fact, I find the setting of this game extremely useful when explaining transness to people in real life.

It also deals with issues relating to identity and what the self even is much better than cyberpunk fiction typically does. Your character is not their body, they are the information contained within. As a result, it is even possible for them to exist without any body at all.

The average person in this setting has a set of standard bio-augmentations (such as the ability to live on 3-4 hours of sleep and immunity to all normal diseases, including cancer) plus cranial computers and medical sensors. This doesn’t turn anyone evil and there is no humanity stat.

[balmacedapascal]

RYAN CORR WATCHLIST ◆ OUTLAWS

MOVIE: Outlaws (also known as 1%) DIRECTOR: Stephen McCallum WRITTEN BY: Matt Nable STARRING: Ryan Corr (Paddo/Mark), Abbey Lee (Katrina), Matt Nable (Knuck), Josh McConville (Skink/Adam), Simone Kessell (Hayley) PREMISE: "Set within the primal underworld of outlaw motorcycle club gangs, the film follows the heir to the throne of a motorcycle club, who has to save his brother's life by betraying his president." (wikipedia) RATING: 5/10 WATCHED ON: Amazon Prime

SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE ENTIRE FILM

Okay so this is the first thing I watched starring Ryan after discovering him and becoming a crazy lil fangirl for him in House of the Dragon. As someone who watched every episode of Sons of Anarchy, repeatedly, I was excited to see Ryan as this scruffy biker. And he makes a deliciously attractive biker. And that's about the only good part of the film.

The premise of the movie (which I couldn't find on wikipedia or IMDB in any more depth than the one sentence above) follows Paddo as he tries to find a way to save his brother's life. The movie starts with Paddo, his brother Skink, and his girlfriend Katrina being dragged out of their home by members of the Devils MC. It turns out Skink and another member of the Copperheads MC stole some heroin from the Devils and need to settle the debt. The other Copperhead is killed by the leader of the Devils, Sugar, and Paddo is told that either they work out a deal between the clubs or Adam's a dead man. The idea is that Paddo will convince his president to launder the club's money through businesses run by the Devils for a 30% cut. But when Paddo isn't able to convince Knuck, his president, to take the deal with the Devils, he's left trying to find a way to save them all.

The part of the film that I enjoyed the most (outside of just looking at Ryan in all the scruffy biker glory) was the relationship between Paddo and Skink and how obvious it is the two of them would do anything for each other. It's explained early in the movie that their father was abusive and in the end, Paddo killed him to save his brother and that seems to be what he's been doing ever since. It's never made clear what exactly Skink's problems are - he seems to use drugs but there's hints that he may have some kind of mental illness or learning disability. He's called simple by several characters throughout the film and repeatedly makes bad choices that leave Paddo having to clean up the mess. All of the issues throughout the film stem from Paddo's desire to protect his brother. When Skink is threatened by Sugar, Paddo makes a point of saying if they kill Skink, they'll have to kill him too. When Knuck throws Skink out of the club, Paddo doesn't hesitate to leave with his brother.

It's summed up best by a line that Katrina says: "And I know you'll do whatever it takes to look after us, that's why I love you so much. That's why those men love you, that's why Knuck is so fucking threatened." Paddo is a protector, through and through.

The rest of the story is not as great unfortunately. There's little to no development for a lot of the characters. Knuck, the president of the Copperheads, is shown as a violent, brutal man. Fresh out of three years in prison (we don't know what for), he seems paranoid about his power as leader of the club and his girlfriend Hayley seems to help feed that paranoia by reminding him that he should be the one with all the power. He's shown making choices solely for keeping all of the power in his hands and no other reason. It's what keeps him from dealing with the Devils, it's what helps widen the divide between him and Paddo, and in the end it leads to a lot of death and destruction.

Then there's Katrina, Paddo's girlfriend and one of the women who seems to keep things running at the clubhouse. She spends most of the movie insisting that her and Paddo deserve to keep everything they've built while Knuck was in prison and that Paddo should have the power in the club. It's made clear repeatedly that that's not what he really wants. In the end, all he wants is to keep the people he loves safe. And when he wants them all to just leave this life behind and start over somewhere else where they could be safe, she manipulates Skink into trying to kill Knuck, a choice that leads to both brothers dying in the end. While I do think she actually loved Paddo, I think she was more concerned with the power of heading the club and left her alone at the end of the movie.

TRIGGER WARNING - SEXUAL ASSAULT

Another part of the film that was hard to sit through was the sexual violence. Sexual content wasn't surprising for a movie like this. I was honestly expecting more scenes than what we got but what we did unfortunately get were multiple scenes of Knuck sexually assaulting multiple men both while in prison and once he gets out. If you're wanting to avoid those scenes, here's what the time stamps are and what all happens.

11:40-12:00, can only see Knuck's face and shoulders through a small window, and can hear grunting and talk

17:57-18:45, actual assault only lasts five to ten seconds before Knuck finishes, can see both men's faces and upper halves but that's it, Knuck threatens to murder the guy if he says anything about this

47:31-48:35, Knuck gets rough with David the prospect and shoves him up against the wall and rapes him. Close up on David's bloody and beaten face. After the scene David is seen coming out of the office looking rough and shaky.

All in all, the movie was not one I particularly loved and probably won't ever watch again. Ryan's performance was fantastic, lots of raw emotion in the scenes he shared with Josh McConville, and I'd love to see him in a similar role again. Just maybe with a better script. And having to watch him die onscreen once more was heartbreaking. So if anyone decides to go watch it after falling for him as Harwin Strong, tread carefully and be prepared for another sad ending.