#and pitting them against each other and pointing blame is literally what the system is doing to keep them from recognizing the truth.

[transmascutena]

i'll also say. as much as it isn't justified, nanami's victimblaming of anthy is literally a coping mechanism. she has to believe it's anthy's fault or she'll have to face the fact that the same thing could very easily happen to her. which is the same reasoning for utena's similar reaction later

[immoralimmortals]

Name 2: Deidara

Hello! I've decided that I have enough tidbits I've written for some Akatsuki members in my fic that I can make posts of them. There's a running story, but I hope you can enjoy this standalone post. Think of them as drabbles c:

Deidara's subplot is largely about him thinking Takara is powerful and has sinister motivations...and yet he loves it.

Hidan - Kakuzu

“I have to say, my dear—" A coo earlier from her lips is returned in kind right behind her head. "—bravo!”

“AH!”

Deidara mirrors, too, a brief shout of his own as she jumps in such a way at his sudden/not so sudden arrival that instead of tumbling backwards inside, she tumbles out. Goodness, how dynamic...! He's going to be kept on the tips of his toes, isn't he?

“Ohhh, no you don’t—!”

Wind roughens her eardrum, pulls at her hair as a swoosh carries her away— literally carries her away. After expecting to slam her corpse upon the ground and finding she has not, the performer pries open her eyes against the harsh sunlight. Her vision gradually adjusts to the sight above that is playing savior, a smirking face and fluttering yellow hair like woven gold. White wings are behind him, and though he sits upon his creation, its clay feathers make him look like the angel. It’s like a daydream...

One starkly blue eye pins her down as she’s held in his arms as they glide midair, passing clouds until the bird finishes spiraling down, not even a bump to indicate once they've landed. Oh so masterfully, the truest artist forcefully pulls away her reigns. The sun overshadows, makes his face so darkly lit as he beams down, his eyes and voice slick with mischief or something worse.

“You’re quite the performer,” the latest houseguest kisses up, not feeling one bit of grief for that mouse in the slightest. He forged it, after all, from his own chakra— his very life essence. As its god, he chooses when it dies, and what narrator keeps a character past its usefulness? ...Good narrators, that is.

There’s something in his voice as he looks down at her...so cool...so calm...so sweet…and it’s menacing. She catches his visible eye twitch slightly as his smile grows and shows more teeth, unsettled and unsettling.

“...I’ve heard a lot about you...un.”

As her one real, brief attachment and comfort continues to explode beyond bits and pieces, filling the sky behind sunshine hair with rainbows like all the world’s a stage and this is all his show, there’s a pit in her stomach:

...This man may be her worst nightmare, proving the point of her soliloquy by pulling the rug from under her feet just for kicks. And he savors that fact, knowing very well that two can try to play her game. “Let’s get to know each other...shall we?”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

“W—huh?! Lady!!!”

As Deidara shakes the woman by the shoulders, her eyelids do not raise and all of her weight is still leaning against his body. Out fucking cold.

“What—how—” Finally, he recognizes the blame should be external to this house. “Sasori! What’d you do to her!”

The dark figure still stands in the corpse of a creation of his own, his own macabre art he’s so very proud of to the point that her reaction is beyond fathom. Calmly as ever, knuckles raise to grip the sack over Sasori’s head, pulling it off to the grand reveal of a pretty boy’s face, the soft swish of his doll-like hair. Dull brown eyes blink, and the most expression to be read off of them would be akin to seeing your snack cost one cent more than you thought it would. That is to say...not very much.

“Nothing, fool. ...I see your scheme is failing spectacularly.”

“I told you not to interrupt!”

And as the puppetmaster shrugs, Deidara growls with all of the strength in his throat, trying to get it out of his system before his opponent's ears are awake to listen.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Custom-fit seduction isn’t as...straightforward as Deidara expected it to be. Maybe her jutsu is a touch more about changing him than changing herself to suit his tastes. Either way...he is very, very careful to not hear her song for more than a few seconds, no matter how lauded it is, especially so. There’s a hunch that’s where the hardest punch is, if he heard the stories right. No one really cared about this traveler, after all, until she started singing. But what he doesn’t know is that it’s hard to beat someone at the game when you proposed 3D chess and they’ve already playing with checkers for the past couple months.

It’s approaching night one, he laments, a bite to his thumb. The woman has been as flighty as can be:

“You always look so cute when you cook, un?!” A playful bump into her side practically sends her across the room, even when he was purposefully gentle.

“I! Sure! Okay!!!” she shouts, nearly burning dinner as it slides off of her pan and into the fire, an extension of her shaking arm. “Oh SHIT—”

And then later:

“Wow...these roses…” the man murmurs, black-lined eye hooded before it briefly closes. He takes a long, exaggerated sniff of one before plucking it from the bush and offering the flower to the mysterious lady. “They almost smell as nice as you...un.”

“…” She and the roses have the exact same color in common, and she holds it in her hands so tight that the thorns make her hand bleed.

Yet again:

“Damn, I cannot stand the way your curves look under that dress, my dear. Give a guy some space! You’re making it difficult!”

But of course, she takes him literally and runs out of the room, leaving him still smiling with his mouth but glaring daggers with his eyes. She really is making this damn difficult. What’s the strategy? What’s she getting at…?

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

“...Did you mention Itachi?”

The bomber waits for her to nod, even as he knows the answer. It’s all about leading the play, doing a “yes and” improv.

“It’s really impressive of you to beat his genjutsu. Perhaps there’s something I can learn from you after all...”

And though none of these words or their intent make sense at all, she can at least read that his tone, most surely, is pleased. And she is a people pleaser, after all...so this must be something closer to good than her fate was moments before confession.

“Let’s start over, shall we?” A palm enters her personal space, waiting for acceptance. “I’m Deidara, Deidara of Iwagakure.”

Tentatively, fingers of her own curl and uncurl near her chest, nervous as a mind races in thought and dodges coming fears. Finally, they stretch, and he understands now what was meant when he heard her touch is so very soft. The edges of her mouth twitch...twitch...and upturn. Then, a sound. Giggling...she’s giggling…!

“You...never told me your name until now!” the woman reveals, amused to high heavens. “I thought you were keeping it a secret!”

So now it's his turn to flush red as a tomato. “What?! No way! You must have missed it. I would have never...un.” As her free hand comes to her mouth to cover an upcoming, uglier laugh, he hums long and hard in disapproval and decides to take revenge.

“What the SHIT!”

Her hand is pulled away in an instant at a mysterious, moist touch, and where her palm was is now a gaping maw, a human mouth on his FUCKING HAND with tongue and teeth and maybe even a throat and all. He smirks, and this time it’s real. He goddamn means it. What a little shit.

“My kekkei genkai,” he explains. “Good lesson, Takara!”

And the first time he utters her name, and it sounds so natural from his lips like it's really her own. But then, as if to say “Okay, I mean it this time”, the arm of his lowers...and it comes back up, asking her to trust him, ignore the age old tale of “fool me once, fool me twice.” And even as the glossy, wet muscle slithers back between thin lips, she hesitates in much the same way she twitched back and forth to touch his pale, angelic wings the night before.

But curiosity is so enticingly morbid, to purposefully hold a mouth to her skin not too unlike trusting a siren’s spoken song.

Her palm on his now feels so strange, knowing that it could kiss her at an moment. Or lick again. But she swallows, and the woman refocuses on new beginnings, second chances.

“I’m Takara,” she weaves, telling the story of who she has become, “Of Hoshigakure.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

“Oh, Deidara!” The coo falls from her lips like honey, thick and golden and dramatic. “I’ve never been so in love in my LIFE!”

“Oh, my darling Takara…” he returns, wrapping her in a bow with his entrapping adoration. “But surely we can fall even deeper...”

Sasori stares at them as they pose in the hallway, just for him to see, the woman in pink, white, and blue with a wrist to her forehead like a fainting southern belle as she’s held around the back by the movie star-gorgeous blonde. He blinks, slowly again, and if he was a cat, his tail would be flicking in agitation.

“Oh, you’ve caught me…! I’ve used my feminine wiles to seduce all these men under my thumb...and yet here I am, absolutely melting in your touch! How did you do it?!”

“Of course, dear...it was my plan all along!”

An actress's gasp is loud enough to fill an auditorium, the woman going full ham just as Deidara's story needs in order to win. His eye looks up in hope to take in a sore loser's barest approval...—

"...Huh?"

—...Just in time to witness his poisonous partner pointedly walking away without a damn word, even after all of his efforts.

“S-Sasori no danna! Where are you going! ACKNOWLEDGE ME, DAMMIT!”

“You’re both the biggest idiots I’ve met in this life or any other.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

“I don’t...think...I could ever...be...pretty.”

The brow’s furrowing deepens and his smile widens at this absurd thing the performer just said.

“Does it matter?!”

The breath hitches in her throat. She knew it. She fucking knew it, she’d never be—

“Even if you don’t think so...it just is. You are. Facts don’t change even if you don’t believe in them, un.”

This is such a roller coaster of emotions and twists that she’s mute, having no idea what to say to that. Turns out this is advantageous to the sculptor, shaping this situation into what he wants it to be. “The way your emotions are so fleeting...how well you speak without words...it’s envious, you know. The way you carry yourself?” He huffs, and it makes her heart do loop-da-loops. “...No wonder Kisame calls you a princess.” The sky blue becomes partially hidden, an eyelid lowering as he turns up the charm to impress the charmer. “It’s an earned title, un.”

But surely...surely this isn’t something so specific to her, she sourly hopes…!

“Do you think everyone...is pretty?” the woman reaches. The blonde man rolls his eyes up in retort.

“Well, yeah! But. Doesn’t make you less so, un. I might have been buttering you up, but I don’t need a scope to see that.”

…

Oh.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

“A butterfly...it’s a little late for you this time of year, friend.” Almost like they were made for it, one of her fingers are offered to the bug and it eagerly accepts, the siren withdrawing a symbol of nature’s beauty so it may be properly seen by them both. Another chuckle— no, a giggle!...— and she smiles wide enough to show her own teeth. Her eyelids lower so slowly as if the flutter of her lashes alone could scare the creature away. “You looked like Tobi’s mask, black and orange on his face like that!”

Deidara ignores the heat on his cheeks, being compared to someone so uncouth, and instead lets his pout speak for him...that is, until he has a question. “Takara-chan...what do you mean by that?”

“Well, his mask is orange and the eyehole is—”

“No. I get that. The other thing you said.”

“Ahhh, mmmm, oh!” Vocalizations help her remember what happened mere seconds ago. “It’s getting late in the seasons for butterflies to still be alive, at least if things here work the same way as where I was before.” The perch for the bug is raised, letting the flame of its wings catch the glitter of sun rays. “With fall around the corner, I don’t expect you to stick around here.” How lovingly she looks at the insect, Deidara notes. The way her eyes pinch, the adoration that graces her lips. Ah...yes…

That’s the goal he’s going to set.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

With yet another hum today, Deidara cocks his head and tries to imagine such a thing. To be up in the air, high enough to fly over mountains...and yet not feel it? Then what’s the point? Might as well be asleep in a crate the whole way if you’re missing the experience of flying. “So…” he prods, cautiously seeing if he can reboost his pride. “...You’ve never flown. Not really.” She shakes her head.

“No...of course not. That’s not a thing.”

“…”

And to make sure she spots the softness reentering his eyes, Deidara gently takes fingers under her chin and turns her face to look at them. As best as he can tell, she’s at least not lying about the fear. He waits patiently until he knows she sees him, sees his convincing, confident smile.

“You haven’t lived till you tried it.” The hand lets go, and thankfully her stare remains, no matter how tenuous. “Give it a shot, un?”

“…”

Her heart isn’t even beating right now, it’s just a tight, twisting black hole sucking the rest of her in. He’s insane. He’s insane…!

…

She’s insane.

Redness tinges her cheeks once more as she preemptively apologizes. “Forgive me if I cling too hard.”

“Darling—” Oh, she realizes. He hasn’t called her that since they pretended to be in love. Her heart reenters the fray; she can tell since it’s doing flips now to pump hot, excited blood through the body. “—It would be an insult if you didn’t.”

Not even five minutes later, the woman wraps her arms around his back tighter and tighter with each flap of clay wings, the scent of salty earth an aura as she buries her face in his neck and gilded hair exactly as soft as it looks, with one eye barely able to peek in the frontier of the heavens. The turbulence rings in her ears and as he laughs so fondly, she shrieks. Like being on a rollercoaster, it is in both fright and exuberance.

But the ground is so beautiful from up here, and though a rough lover, the wind plays with her hair until it sends tingles down her back.

And for Deidara to turn his own back on someone... Risk is most certainly the most erotic of foreplay. They ride until the day is over and the sky turns red, the night the same color as the morning she died. Butterflies chase and dance around them, beginning the long journey home for the winter.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

“Oh— Don’t go ruining your nails over it, but…” The tongue on his face sticks out as he reaches into his pocket. “I finally finished this, un.”

The lips of a palm close as he couldn’t have helped but gave one last finishing touch, the little statue she’s seen him working on since the day they met. It is a girl in a hat wearing a dress and holding a bag over her shoulder. Does she look like that? The thing is cupped in her hands, the amount of detail helping her eyes twitch more and more to take it all in. Blink, blink, blink. It feels like her vision is more in focus than before, edges not quite so fuzzy.

It takes a while for the sculptor to realize that she is returning it to him, the way it’s so slow and gradual how she pushes her palms back in his space. “No, no! That’s yours to keep, un.” But she gets even closer to him; Deidara hums in confusion as the gift is taken back; he twists the thing in his fingers, looking for flaws. “What? What’s wrong?”

Bright blue eye twitched back up with a hum as her index finger unfolds to point at him. “...You want me to keep it for you,” he guesses. The barest of nods, but the point continues. “What?” Continues. “What about me?”

…

Oh. He smiles wide, not the sort he puts on— cool, collected, angled ever so slightly to the side on purpose— but one big and toothy and unabashedly sincere. If this is still a performance, somehow, then it is one that deserves his applause. Even without a voice, what a powerful siren she is.

“You want one of me! Don’t you?” And for the first time since she came back, she smiles too, and Deidara feels like a butterfly.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

How far the woman has come in a matter of days. The keys of the piano not only ring out so much more easily under her touch, but she— using a skill impossible prior— can now watch and instruct someone else on how to follow her lead. Deidara sits next to her, spot where Sasori was before, drinking in her advice on how to arch his wrists and what notes sound best when played together. It’s so adorable how his tongue sticks out, just a little bit like when he’s working on his clay.

His visible eye glances back to her not once but twice, and she realizes she herself has a big, dumb smile on her face. The glance is mirrored, her looking away and looking back, smile shrinking a bit.

“Caught you looking at me instead of the keys, un.”

And now she’s bright pink to match the new broach at her neck.

“Sorry. I just...noticed that thing you do.” She interrupts herself, but the mistake has already been made; Deidara hums at her questioningly. “With...your tongue?”

“What thing?”

Oh god, he doesn't know, does he...? You gotta be kidding. “You stick it out when you’re concentrating.”

Now he’s rosy too. “I do not!” He absolutely does and he knows it.

“I—” Well...facts are facts, but to insult with telling the truth ain't fun, either... “—Sorry.”

“No, no" the blonde interrupts, removing his hands from the keys; they seem to grin with either anxiety, tension, or excitement. "Don’t back up! We’re arguing now, Takara-chan,” he says deviously, and it reminds her of when he asked her to pinpoint exactly why she likes stories about alienation. Deidara glances to make sure his fingers are poised above the correct notes, waiting to turn his glance back onto her accusingly before pressing a particularly dramatic chord. Drama queen. “What do you mean I stick my tongue out when I’m concentrating?”

Taken aback, all his tutor can do is blink and stutter. “That...you...do?” The chord is pressed again, twice as if trying to provide a sense of menace.

“Is that all you got?”

“I— yes!" the woman counters, and though her brow curls, she is most certainly grinning just like the mouths centering his palms. "Deidara…there isn’t really more I can say! I just see you do it!” A pause...oh. Maybe...she misunderstood his tone. Apologetically, her next words come much softer. “I...don’t mean to embarrass you.”

“You’re not,” he answers reflexively, though most certainly he is. Gosh...it's like she can't so much as be excited without feeling bad. Good thing he's here to train her out of it. “But the consideration is...appreciated. Now..." The man reposes, wrists lifted and ready to continue to something that makes her a bit more happy. "...Where were we?”

[silverthelovebug]

Starts breathing really hard (I’m just gonna copy and paste my old rant)

“I know Cerise and Ramona kinda dip their toes into the water of the privilege of passing, Cerise avoiding the evil wolf stereotype all together with her hood while everyone immediately assumed Ramona is in the wrong. How Ramona embraces her half wolf side and Cerise hides it out of shame and for her own safety. But!!!! I just wish it was more than just sharp teeth and pointy ears with fur that stops right before it actually connects with their head

I dunno, I think it’d just be cool if she had to shave constantly 24/7 or else be at risk of being exposed as half-wolf whilst Ramona flaunts her body hair and fur, it’d also help the whole idea of safely passing as the accepted norm

Though!! This also means Ramona sometimes does play into other people’s stereotypes, I definitely think she acts more aggressive around people because she’s the daughter of the Badwolf, it’s what’s expected of her, but I don’t think it means she likes it. When Ashlynn & co. was throwing accusations her way, she scoffed at them and literally said “I get it, blame the Badwolf.” When later in that episode it’s shown she’s been watching over Justine each night to make sure she’s safe because she knows about her sleeping enchantment.

But when the others see her doing that, they immediately think she’s the one who’s been stealing and destroying the ballet shoes because, that’s just what a Badwolf would do

And I think that’s where the whole rivalry with Cerise comes from and why she was mocking her for being “Just a Hood”. She doesn’t have to face those stereotypes against her, she’s passing, she’s safe. No one immediately points their finger at Cerise and blames her, they think she’s kind and sweet, which she is, but no one knows she’s the same as Ramona. Both parties understand this when Professor Badwolf tells them to knock it off and keep their secret longer until they graduate. They’re both very much victims of the system despite Cerise literarily changing things about herself so no one would bat an eye.

The whole school pits them against each other as “Hood vs Badwolf” because that’s what everyone expects of them, and they have no other choice but to play into it. Not to mention this act probably went too far and that’s why Ramona had to go to the Reform School, Cerise got hurt or something similar along the lines, which just pushed more stereotypes into Ramona being aggressive and evil and it doesn’t help that Blondie is trying to get them to fight more

Justine’s episode could’ve gone more into misconceptions and realizing who you are as a person is not what other perceive you to be, and maybe both Ramona and Justine could relate to that moral instead of…. “I don’t know what my destiny is despite the fact I’ve been dancing my whole life and I’m the youngest of 11 sisters”

Though I doubt they would be able to accomplish this in three minutes or less.”

(I dunno, Justine is just major wasted potential when you already have a character who’s whole concept is doing ballet (aka Duchess), I know they didn’t get time to develop her but what we get is just bare bones that often, people forget she even exists)

Not to analyze a character that was in barely any episodes, but do you guys think that Ramona feels like Cerise is ashamed of being the daughter of the big bad wolf. Like we know that Cerise isn’t ashamed of her dad or anything like that but do we think Ramona knows that. Like Ramona makes such a big deal about the fact that Cerise wears a hood like that’s what she tells her dad she’s upset about when he confronts the girls. To be fair literally not more than a few seconds later she acknowledges that if anyone found out they’d flip their crowns, so deep down I think she knows Cerise has to hide that part of herself for the sake of their family and not by choice. However it still must be hard to not take it to heart a little when she’s literally calling you a wet dog in the hallways.

[sepublic]

With the covenscouts this episode, I appreciate how the show is portraying them not as evil monsters, but still regular people who like Lilith or the rebels or the rest of our faves, were also fooled by the coven system and it’s not really their fault for it. Even Raine, who outsmarted Terra’s brainwashing, briefly bought into the coven ideals for a bit before they realized the truth. Freaking Kikimora is humanized as not just some monster but a person coming from a place of genuine pain and desire for validation, and we learn this after she’s eagerly tried to kill Hunter, and this revelation isn’t framed as contradictory either!

It really sells that yes, the coven system tricks people and most witches are also people who also fell for the propaganda. You can try so hard to be woke but inevitably, you’re going to be swayed. And it’s a pretty fair assessment of the other common grunts, who are less ‘important’ to us and the narrative, but their status and rights as just regular people is still highlighted. It reminds me of Luz’s lesson in Elsewhere and Elsewhen and Hollow Mind, where to her it’s just SO obvious how evil Belos is, surely she wouldn’t fall for that, which is an arrogant mindset that can lead to victim-blaming and dismissing others as less critical or ‘morally good’ than you for continuing to follow that lie. To which King points out that nobody wants to believe they’ve been following a lie their entire life, something he personally already related to and was going to continue to by the next day.

And then Luz realizes; She is not immune to propaganda and has BEEN tricked this entire time, we all think we’re super woke and I’m sure Belos uses that assumption against people, like his coven heads who think they’re more privy than everyone else to what’s really going on, which distracts them from the truth behind the truth. It’s a fairly realistic assessment of reality that most people aren’t enemies or monsters, they’re just getting by with their lives and what they think is right and true. They’re just not perfect!

...But just like in real life; Amidst all of the generally good-faith and just misguided people you encounter, you will find someone who IS malicious and cruel and operating from a place of bad faith. There’s Belos himself, Terra, Adrian, that one covenscout who was weirdly prepared to kill a child... But as Labyrinth Runners establishes, you ultimately shouldn’t let that discourage you (Tellingly, that murderous covenscout is immediately told off by his sensible teammate).

Yes, there will be a few bad people who take advantage of kindness and hurt you. But generally speaking, it’s more logical and frankly worth it to assume and extend compassion towards others, in the faith that they will reciprocate and it will mean something, because to most people it does! Even if those people do initially take advantage of your kindness, it’s not a wasted effort and you just have to keep trying, sometimes even with that same person... As Amity sees with Hunter, who initially rebuked and used her compassion against her, but it wasn’t for nothing and it did eventually contribute to his realization;

Which is so important for Hunter and Gus, the latter especially of whose trauma causes him to literally lose his assessment of reality and doubt in his perceptions, only for Hunter to reiterate as Gus did for him; The reality is that most people do mean well and will respond well. Don’t let these bad-faith actors mess with your perception of reality and cause you to see the world as a much more hostile place than it actually is, that is legit how they get to you, to divide and conquer and pit people against each other, so they don’t unite against the actual problem. Which in this case is the system, tellingly.

And I just think that’s SO important, especially with how abusers gaslight victims into thinking of the outside world as too hostile and dangerous to receive them, forcing them to stick to the confirmed ‘safety’ of their abuser; As Hunter himself realized! Belos was wrong, the world and people ARE generally good, and it’s people like Belos who are the exception, not kind strangers like Luz and her friends. Even someone like Alador can change because he’s not truly operating from a place of malice; Kindness and trust IS worth it!

[the-0th3r-side]

The Cultivation World's Fundamentally Corrupt Society in MDZS

One of the best things of MDZS, which demonstrate really well the central themes of the novel, is that while the cultivators used false morality and hypocritical justice as a shield to justify practicing so much dehumanization and tyranny, Wei Wuxian was the only one who actually exercised that justice and followed the concept of what a cultivator should be for real.

It's funny because they accused Wei Wuxian of all sorts of things when he was literally just doing his job as a cultivator - protecting the innocent and fighting against evil – It’s quite the irony seeing Wei Wuxian being condemned for doing what already is, or should’ve been, the very ultimate goal of cultivation – apart from imortality – in the first place. To me, just the fact that the Clans did function based on an aristocratic system immediately points to the idea that the purpose of cultivation, in the MDZS universe, is a simple sham for nobles to maintain their privilege and monopolize the power.

“Those who oppress others and do evil while relying on the power of their Clan should be killed. Moreover, they should publically beheaded in front of tens of thousands of people so that nobody repeats their mistake – Wen Mao, founder of the Wen Clan”

By this, it’s clear that they strayed so drastically from their original intente to use power to help, to actively oppress. The Jiang who used to be a care free sect., turned to be a clan “you could never, in any way, offend”, the Lans, whose motto is “Be Righteous”, and have a whole wall of rules that says, “do not jugde others”, “be kind”, “do not bully the weak”, “do not make assumptions about other” etc, turned to be a sect where what matters the most is to “look rigtheous” and “prioritize not troubling the powerful”. 

MDZS universe is ruled by a fundamentally corrupt society, where the sect leaders congratulate each other on maintaining this facade of civilization and morality, which consist of purposefully ignoring the rot that takes place out of sight and is sometimes even publicly acknowledged, but fully accepted. Because no one cares about injustice, corruption, tyranny, as long as it doesn't affect them directly or their peers ( not even of the smaller clans, only the great sects) and most importantly, it can be easily excused and brushed off if it is caused by a clan leader, an heir or descendant of the main line.

For example, the complete extermination of the Tingshan He Clan, which had no objection. The fact that no one did anything when LanlingJin refused to execute Xue Yang after Nie Mingjue's death, even though he was responsible for the annihilation of an entire clan and was recreating the Yin Tiger Tally, a weapon of mass destruction. Or the matter of Jiang Cheng torturing and killing "demonic cultivators" being something know even by disciples of Gusu Lan and this is never treated seriously because these people were not importante enough to make a fuss, and let's not even talk about the Nie cultivation method, because it's a bottomless pit of hypocrisy.

It’s clear that, for the cultivation world, the only objectionable thing is the voice that differs from this dirty dishonesty, who identifies the farce for what it is and refuses to be part of the "brainwashing", or rather, the legitimate alienation. It is only reprehensible those who do not accept the veiled injustice that the Clans propagate in the name of unfounded reasons and who, in order to blame this system, goes against the meticulous facade of “honor and morals” created by the cultivation world, the facade that normalized, for the sake of 'good diplomacy’, the act of turning a blind eye to the cruelty, classism, oppression and authoritarianism of the Clans.

Logically, to be able to keep this arbitrary system working, it was necessary the fabrication of a new villain, “ The Great Evil" in common, hated by all and capable of taking the blame for everything and be used to justify all sorts of brutal and inhuman behavior. It was essential to use the villain's performative defeat to create a false, but allowable, sense of collective peace, sustained by innocent lives, that permit them to keep the face of righteous in the social circle of 'important people', while not forcing them to actually do something against the real problem, because all the bad things that happened were the ‘scapegoat's fault’. And this was not something fated to happen only with Wei Wuxian or the Wen Remnants, it was an an act bound to always happen in an infinite cycle, because inevitably one of the Clans would do some shit that would need someone to be criminalized and used as a guinea pig in order to hide their own corruption.

Basically, it's an entire society that hides behind "justice" in a reality where the very concept of that justice in question can only be judged by the Clans, predominantly from their own personal interests and not for what is really right or wrong. That is, justice is only right when it is theirs, outside of that, it becomes arrogance, madness, heregy. The real truth is unimportant in this scenario, much less innocence.

[...] “Don’t you understand? When you're standing on their side, you're the bizarre genius, the miraculous hero, the force of the rebellion, the flower that blooms alone. But the second your voice differs from theirs, you’ve lost your mind, you’ve ignored morality, you’ve walked the crooked path” [...]

For the ones at the top of the social hierarchy, nothing they do is criminal as long as it does not oppose the tyranny and the ‘absolute truth’ of the Clans. But anyone who doesn't have a noble lineage is worth absolutely nothing and has no right even to their own life, the people deemed as "below them" only serve as an tool to the powerful to use, to shut up when faced with offenses and to bow their heads in obedience, and that’s why Wei Wuxian died, he was a servant that did not know his place and tried to rise above his station.

Even in a narrative of Individual . Vs Society, there is no way one individual could defeat this problem, the actions of Wei Wuxian, Xiao Xingchen, MianMian and even Lan Wangji to some extent, were doomed to fail in the face of an evil as rooted as the evil that is the corrupt society. And MXTX was brillant demonstrating this.

[thebestsandiever]

Regarding the chaos and aftermath of the Verstappen crash at the 2021 British GP

Before I begin, this is solely my own thoughts on the crash and aftermath of it, resources and intel being from various news reports, articles, interviews, social media reactions/on track fans reactions, commentators, careers etc. Also important, this post was made around 11 PM CEST, so other news after that or in the midst of this, I haven’t considered.

  Comments and discussions are welcome, though remember to keep the tone guys. I rarely comment on anything on Tumblr, but looking at this chaos, I felt like sharing a bit.

  Starting on the incident that happened, I don’t believe that I can clearly decide what happened and who caused, and the only comments I have is that I believe it was a racing incident that has no bad intention. We hear in conclusion from sources (there was an after analysis) (e.g. also Lewis’ Sky Sports interview) that both could have given each other space. Lewis trying to get in, and Max defending his position. People who think Lewis did it intentionally clearly have no common sense, no one wants Max to end up going to the hospital (but he is fine so no worries). Of course, nothing excuses that a crash happened, and it’s a big shame.

  All the hate Lewis is getting should tone down, I think it’s fair to be critical in perspective of racing which consists of the crash and his comments regarding it, but anything that comments on something other than that with negativity, shouldn’t be.

  Something that many F1 fans have brought up and Horner I believe (slightly) is Lewis 15+ years of experience in Formula one and numerous of championships. Which I think in any sport or topic isn’t a fair argument, because mistakes happen to anyone, no one is immune to that, though this is not me calling the crash a mistake, because I don’t believe that is the right word. It’s more Lewis knowing the danger of closing in and Max of course defending himself on track, and this is the end result. And if anyone was a viewer of the Euro 2020 Football Cup Finals, it’s a bit like the Southgate criticism on the penalties.

  This also applies to all the fans who bring up Max’ aggressive and old nickname “crashstappen” from his early F1 career. Whether you have your impression from Netflix’ Drive to Survive or the fact that you’re new, anyone will agree that Max has matured greatly both on and off track, in my opinion one of the calmest drivers on the grid considering the amount of criticism, hate and burden that he gets/has. The fact is that there have been some people on Twitter (when I now and later comment on fans and reactions, it’s usually the very chaotic Twitter), that mentions Verstappen’s past, the infamous Baku and this season’s races where Lewis is the one who, in their words, “has backed up and gave space” (the reason I say their words is because I can’t quite remember so I won’t say that I know for sure). But again, as I mentioned, this is not valid, because it doesn’t excuse what happened today. Every track is a title fight, and previous races and tactics doesn’t apply to this. What I mean is that because Lewis gave space previous races, does it mean that Verstappen should crash? Or worded differently, because Max didn’t give space like he has previous times, that “it was coming” or that he should crash? Biggest takeaway from this is that past and future shouldn’t mean more than what happened in the present. This leading me on to a bit of the hate Max got which I think was quite undeserving, especially under his circumstances, which is f1 fans (mostly Twitter) calling it “karma” and using his young past to somehow “justify” the crash.

Also I really disliked the videos of “British fans” (we can’t actually determine that all were British, but it was home track) cheering when the crash happened, but in general I think cheering on a crash will always be awful even if you’re favourite driver gains position. Gladly though, it quickly died down on the stands as they realized it was hard impact. Very Euro 2020 vibes, though a much better English crowd- Just kidding, maybe you can see I’m not happy when any kind of fans act out of order (also I don’t hate English football fans, but sadly, the ones who make stupid actions overshadow the rest).

  Now I also want to comment a bit on the drivers and teams’ comments and the PR.

  So regarding Max’ social media post about the race. I honestly think it’s fair for him to be upset, no one wants to be taken out on the first lap considering that he is leading while a VERY good and competitive Lewis is trailing behind. My first reaction was that it was quite an aggressive post and the part about him unfollowing Lewis (if that is correct, I haven’t seen it myself yet) was obviously implying that he isn’t happy. Though, emotions run high as well does Lewis’ celebration reaction. I know his mind is to win on track and he has always been outspoken about that fact. Also I don’t quite believe that Max’ comments were full heartedly himself, but the PR team considering he’s just been at the hospital. I’m not happy with his post at all, but I understand both from a PR perspective and a driver’s. I believe almost any driver on the track would have said something like that in an interview if it happened to them. This just happened to be online because of health circumstances.

  Regarding Marko and Horner, I must disagree with their aggressiveness or at least the way they decide to comment on it. I do understand the anger, considering the championship but also concern for Max (anyone who knows their relationship knows that they care about him.) Again, I have to say emotions run high and if anything, managers are good at, and this is not specifically only attacking Horner, but it’s stirring up tension. I would say it’s fair for him to say, and quite expected, not saying I think it’s fair for Lewis to receive though (hopefully you get what I mean).

  Commenting a bit on Lewis’ Sky Sports F1 interview, we can confirm he didn’t know about Max going to the hospital before celebrating. Anyone who wins has the right to celebrate, especially at home, so props for his win, though unfortunately through a crash (this meaning Verstappen was his biggest threat on track). Though I wasn’t pleased about the commenting on Max. This leads further into the interview.

  We get Lewis’ insight on the incident and where he sees Max as the aggressive one, both not giving each other space and having the crash as end result. So in conclusion, Max trying to defend his position and Lewis trying to get in, fair. Please watch the interview, because it clears up a lot of what is spoken about in the media.  

My thoughts on Lewis’ response both before and after hearing about Max going to the hospital in the Sky Sports interview, is that he probably could’ve/should’ve toned down on Max being the aggressor, as they were both considering what the crash led to, and him saying that it was just about who was going to give space until it was too late. It kind of goes against what he just said. But I do agree that Lewis has the right to celebrate because he simply won. I also liked that he had championship spirit saying that considering what happened, it didn’t take the shine away from his win. It may sound disrespectful, and I do still kind of think it is, but on the other side, it’s him being competitive, and both drivers have each other’s respect on being able to fight on track. So he’s got the spirit, just maybe not the right interview to show the most competitive spirit (I think the most competitive spirit/response he’s shown this 2021 season)

  A bit more on his spirit and fighting on track is seen from Lawrence Barreto who tells us that Lewis has the “game on” spirit and is ready for attacks on track but there needs to be respect on track “and if not this will happen more often I guess.” - Lewis. Just a bit more closure from another source, I like that he is more responsive, but this does make it sound like he blames Max for it. I think any driver who are up against each other have the right or it makes sense to give the majority of the blame to the other, they have their own rear mirrors (see it from their own perspective when they drive, quite literally), but it isn’t the best comment to be honest. Since he says himself, both could’ve given space.

  My biggest disagreement that I must mention is the penalty Lewis got, which was the 10 second penalty. Assessing the severity of the crash with high speed, 51G impact, first lap etc. I think the penalty didn’t really serve much of a penalty, but this is also me being critical of the penalty system. These 10 second penalties don’t really make you lose that much of position (depends on car), also this is not a blow at Lewis but just the system. Afterwards, he was also given 2 penalty points. I think compared to someone like Yuki who also got 2 penalty points for crossing the white line twice while entering the pits and George yesterday at the Sprint Race (1 penalty point + 3 place grid penalty) are quite different but looking at the number, there isn’t a big difference in what’s given. But all of this penalty talk is on the stewards and system, so nothing against Lewis and he did take his penalty that was given.

  I did not comment much on the actual incident as I have a hard time really deciding (I can admit I see Lewis unintentionally drift a bit in + this being a very fast turn, I believe just a misjudgment but so many fans think it was intentional), so therefore do read and watch the current and coming interviews and articles to get some racing perspective. It keeps updating and even drivers like Riccardo, Leclerc, Alonso etc. have given their comments, and who better to listen to than professionals themselves. So I encourage you to get perspective there, because I know not all of us are the most technical fans, and we tend to comment by being led through a bias and crowd.

  But if we’re feeling a bit tired from today, so far the drivers are leaning towards a racing incident. They speak of it as quite unclear to determine, basically saying that both drivers could’ve done and were doing something --> could’ve given space.

  We all have to remember this situation is a big deal since it’s the only two to be fair at the moment, who are competing for the championship. Both mad talented and on each other every track. Media blows it out more than them and before we know it, they’re back to what they do best, which is drive.

  Heart goes out to Max, it was quite an impact and if not his worst crash so far in his career. His team radio was quite scary to listen to, I’ve never heard him so shook, but he is doing quite fine at the moment, and he will hopefully recover well enough for the next race.

  As well for Lewis, emotions are running high and people are quick to assume and accuse without using common sense that Lewis wouldn’t endanger Max or himself. He has every right to celebrate a win and props for him winning.

  In conclusion to those who has taken the time to read, don’t let my thoughts be any decider, but more so a way to understand and be a bit more open minded. We are all subjective in the end and I try to see from both perspectives and to be critical as well, not being led by others’ opinions. I’ve stated my sources, and this is only my overall thoughts at the very moment, so remember, as drivers evolve and move on, we do too.

  I again encourage you to watch and research with an open mind so not being led on bias, especially if you’re willing to spread anything on the topic. It serves a greater outcome than sprouting from emotions and lack of information, as we have well seen from this sport. Because media does influence and we as an audience is a part of it. So I must remind again, that this is simply my thoughts.

[soranis-sunshadow]

Why it’s not ok to compare Wrong Hordak to his defective brother.

It doesn’t sit right to me when someone pits two abuse victims against each other based on their coping mechanisms because their circumstances are never the same.

Wrong Hordak was immediately adopted by people who slowly de-indoctrinated him and offered him a supportive environment for all of that growth and healing to happen. When the BF squad kidnapped him, he was ardent about his service to Prime and he only followed them because they deceived him in believing they were servants of Prime.

By providing clear irrefutable evidence of Prime’s fallibility, deceit and the squad’s moral support throughout this moral crisis, they were able to wean him off of his programmed behavior and offer him a new onlook and an informed choice.

Hordak was a defective clone that was sent to die on the battlefield, in essence he was abandoned by his maker for being worthless and deflective. This is why his own disability is such a source of crippling shame and self-loathing, it made him unlovable in Prime’s eye, the person he was literally programmed to worship, love and blindly obey.

For all intents and purposes, Prime is the horde clones’ God. He appears to be all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent and he is their literal creator. Through doctrine, clones are taught that all creatures are beneath Prime, only His light and His love is relevant. (Prime is that much of a narcissistic monster)

 Even while stranded on an alien planet, cut off from his Maker, it makes sense for him to prove his worth through the only means that he was ever taught (worship and conquest), perhaps, that way, he may repent for his failure of being created defective.

It makes sense for him, a brainwashed cultist, alone and stranded on a strange and hostile world to try and bring it into Prime’s light. He didn’t know that he could have been free of Prime if he chose to integrate with the natives. Every time he detected Light Hopes’s portals on the surface of the planet, he went to investigate, hoping Prime had come for him. That is how he found Adora after all.

Of course Hordak was brutal, brutality was all he had ever been shown. Of course he conquered in Prime’s name, that is why he was created. Of course he condoned the training of children to become soldiers once they reach maturity, that is how he was made after all, he didn’t know any better.

It's important to note that before Entrapta, Hordak is essentially a recluse. He hides away in his laboratory and he doesn’t directly interact with most of his underlings who avoid him. In many of his appearances he clings to the shadows or is only shown on a monitor. 

Instead of proving his worth to Prime, he seemingly fails at all of the (impossible) tasks he had set himself to accomplish in gaining his God’s favor: He doesn’t conquer the planet (it’s a whole damn planet), he can’t treat his defect (it’s gotten to the point that he’s an emaciated sickly wreck dealing with crippling chronic pain and is immobile without his prosthetic armor), his attempts at making a new body for himself have failed (he is defective, any clone made from his genetic code would also be defective) and he can’t even open a portal to go home (the planet’s magic does not allow an exit from the different dimension it is in). After decades of failure after failure, that he blames himself for, he has grown bitter and hopeless.

That is why Entrapta and her message is so important to him. She teaches Hordak that he has inherent worth as an individual. His imperfections do not mark him as something lesser, to be discarded, to her, he can be beautiful just the way he is. This is when he starts considering  to stall the portal project, a project that has been his purpose for years, and considers staying on Etheria with her. "There was even a time you wished I would not come for you." - Prime

When he is told by Catra that Entrapta "betrayed” him, he doesn’t want to believe it at first but his own self-loathing plays a huge part in why he buys the lie. He is after all a defective and worthless failure. Catra’s lie is so much more plausible than anyone ever finding worth in him. As such he comes to reason that another person he has dared to get attached to has abandoned him.

Whereas Catra believes that everyone leaves her, when really she pushes them away, Hordak genuinely has had everyone important in his life "leave" him, as far as he knows. This is why we see Hordak in his most evil during season 4 when he has the arm cannon and he is sacking Salineas. He's completely fueled by insecurity and loss, he has something to prove again, to Entrapta and to Prime. He was eager to face her and show her, on the battlefield, that he can be worth something (affection).

When Double Trouble reveals that Entrapta was sent to Beast Island, Hordak believed she is likely dead after so long. He thinks his gullibility has cost Entrapta her life, another failure to add to the long list of sins.

When he is teleported on Prime’s ship, he is terrified of him. He tries to appease Prime in whatever way possible. His body language, his meek, scared tone of voice, and the terrified expression on his face coupled with the fact that he is literally shaking in fear convey the fact that Hordak himself knows he will not be shown mercy. In order to adapt to Etheria and further his goals, he had committed unforgivable blasphemy, he had taken a name and shown initiative. Prime violates his mind and erases him.

It comes as no surprise that once his memories of Etheria resurface because of Catra’s presence, memories of abject failure, of loneliness, of grief and of betrayal, he submits himself to erasure once again. (in season 4 he had actually let Catra in, he trusted her, they had started a tenuous friendship that weirdly enough went both ways. She too was glad to see a “friendly face”)

Once he finds the crystal Entrapta gave him, he starts remembering her. Her memory is so dear to him that he actively tries to hold on to whatever fragments of her he can hold on. He even hides this from Prime (his only lie in the whole show).

In the final confrontation, while still linked to the hive mind and in the presence of his god, he chooses Entrapta, not because Prime was proven to be wrong or evil or fallible but because Entrapta found worth in Hordak despite his imperfections. He goes against his creator still believing that Prime is all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent because he cared for Entrapta that much.

This is why Hordak's defiance against Horde Prime has so much impact, at least for me personally. Hordak is a character who never really got a choice up to this point. Arguably, it was less a decision and more of a last resort to protect Entrapta in whatever way he could. And even this choice was a zero sum equation. He either killed the one person that has ever shown him unconditional kindness or he turned against his God. It was a loss either way. The inescapability of Prime and the magnitude of his control over his clones is underlined by his possession of Hordak after he had declared his individuality and tried to kill him. In the deleted extended scene, Hordak himself is horrified at the fact that he had shot his Brother. His conditioning and indoctrination is still there. He never learned that Prime is a narcissistic monster and that he used his little brothers as chattel and had been consistently lied to.  He just wanted not to hurt Entrapta, this one choice is his first step towards individuality and freedom. This is the first time he actually exerts his own will and not Prime’s. He’s even making this obvious by saying "I am Hordak." I am someone, I exist.

I think Hordak is actually one of the best written characters in the show, and not because he's a sympathetic villain, but because he is very realistic to how a lot of children that experience neglect or other forms of parental abuse behave as they grow up. They only know anger and rage, never being shown love because they hide themselves in the shadows. Only when someone breaks down those walls can that person begin to heal.

Hordak and Wrong Hordak may be identical clones but their circumstances are anything but and it is wrong to pit them against each other. They are both victims of severe abuse. The comparison is not a fair one since one of them had all the means necessary to break conditioning while the other had all the circumstances necessary to enforce it. Despite what Hordak has done, he deserves to live and he deserves a chance to rebuild what he has destroyed in Prime’s name. Some of his victims may never forgive him, that is their choice. Nobody should have to forgive him. That is not how forgiveness works.  Etheria’s justice system is focused on rehabilitation, not on punitive vengeance.  Hordak too deserves a chance to heal after all that has been inflicted on him from the moment he was created. He deserves a chance at redemption.

I am open to more discussions on the subject if anyone is willing.

[the-blue-fairie]

On pitting characters against each other and bad media criticism in the Frozen fandom:

So, I made a post a few days ago about undue negativity towards Elsa in the fandom where I criticized a comment someone made on one of my posts The comment said that Anna deserved to know that she was loved and the deleted scene where Elsa shows Anna the memory of her parents should have been left in the finished film (something I agree with), but also said that, “Outside of Kristoff, Anna can count on everyone else using her, leaving her, and manipulating her” (something I do not agree with and I feel throws not only Elsa but Olaf, Mattias, and the Northuldra under the bus.)

But today this same commenter reblogged one of my analysis posts and praised it, so I thought, “Hey, maybe I was too harsh on this person. We seem to agree on certain things.” So I looked over at their blog to see if I misjudged them and...

Oh dear, where to begin? First of all, I don’t believe Lee and Buck “hate” Anna. I think they love Anna very much, just like they love Elsa very much. People in this fandom, when talking about flaws in the writing of F2, always want to claim that the writers/directors/actors are conspiring against their favorite character. You see it with certain people claiming that the filmmakers “hate” Elsa and you see it with certain people (like this individual here) claiming that the writers “hate” Anna.

Writing doesn’t work like that. Making a film is a long and difficult process and sometimes the filmmakers make mistakes or make bad choices or end up creating a scene with negative ramifications all while having the best intentions. It’s not malice, it’s just an unfortunate circumstance or, at worst, poor writing. And I’m not saying we can’t talk about flaws in F2 or scenes that are badly written and might undermine certain characters’ arcs. I do that all the time myself. But saying that those flaws are because the filmmakers hate one of their characters is... That’s not a valid way to go about film criticism.

I also don’t think that Lee and Buck “destroyed [Anna] to promote Elsa.” Now, I do feel that there are flaws in the writing of F2 and that has negative consequences sometimes for both of the sisters’ arcs. And I do have conflicting feelings about the fact that so much of Anna’s arc is about suffering, about watching her world crumble about her while she tries to keep it intact; whereas Elsa’s arc is so much bout validation. As someone who connects deeply with Anna’s pain in F2, Anna’s arc hurts to watch. And sometimes, on an instinctive level, I feel that Anna’s arc is cruel to her and that I can’t watch this character that I see myself in go through pain after pain after pain even when she is going to pick herself back up - and I do feel that the film should have given her more validation at points.

But even with my misgivings about Anna’s arc, I don’t think the filmmakers “destroyed her.” In fact, I think Anna’s arc is far more cohesive than Elsa’s in F2. (When I say this, everyone, I am NOT saying that “the filmmakers hate Elsa and that’s why Anna’s arc is stronger” and I’m NOT saying “something something conspiracy about KBell” - but I do feel the writers weren’t quite sure what to do with Elsa because she means so much to so many people and she’s kind of “too much for Disney: too powerful, too traumatized, too independent, too gay,” as a writer put it recently, and the writers are trapped having to write Elsa within the confines of the stifling Disney system - just as they are trapped in the same way when writing Anna.)  But anyway, I feel this person is completely wrong when they say Lee and Buck “destroyed” Anna. Anna is still Anna. She’s still brave, fearless, resourceful, struggling with her trauma day by day and striving forward to do the Next Right Thing. In my personal opinion, The Next Right Thing is the true spiritual successor of Let it Go and one of my favorite songs in the franchise - even if it hurts me so much to watch the scene that I hardly do... because it feels too real. But the fact it feels too real only goes to show the love that was put into it. The filmmakers didn’t destroy Anna.

Also... “Elsa should have been killed off and not brought back”? WHAT? That’s just... deliberately incendiary, trying to push people’s buttons. And I know Elsa is just a fictional character so you might say I should calm down but... that’s the thing. Elsa is a fictional character, so this person should calm down about her. How can you expend such hate for a character who has a good heart, who tries over and over to do the right thing and who, like Anna, has suffered trauma? Elsa isn’t a deliberately cruel character. Elsa is an incredibly loving and empathetic character. And while, yes, I’d argue that there are aspects of Elsa’s arc in F2 that are poorly written, that isn’t Elsa’s fault because Elsa isn’t real. As hb-pickle put it recently, if you have issues with the way Elsa is written, focus your energy on saying something like, “These and these aspects of the writing fell short and although it seems like the filmmakers wanted to convey [x], they actually ended up conveying [y] and [z] because of these and these flaws.”

As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s interesting to me how much this person’s attitude parallels someone like Isa’s attitude in key ways, in spite of the fact that one person ships KA and the other EA. It’s actually really interesting how much extreme KA shippers and extreme EA shippers have in common sometimes even when neither side will admit it because they hate each other’s ships and see themselves as utterly opposed. 

 And sometimes, it’s not even commonality in negative behaviors but in critiques that actually show a positive common ground between these two groups, if anyone paused to consider that common ground. I’m not saying we should be trying to find common ground with someone like Isa who behaves so corrosively though - just that there’s sometimes commonality in critiques from opposite ends of the fandom that I find surprising. Like, the post that this person praised in the tag was a post where I talked about Elsa’s conclusion in F2 feeling unearned because the film focuses more on Elsa’s connection to Ahtohallan than to human beings. I was saying that, although we have no evidence that Elsa literally lives on the glacier (something BEH proponents sometimes suggest), we DO have evidence that the film cares more about Elsa’s connection to the glacier than to people.

So my argument, this person’s agreement with my argument, and the BEH argument all align in strong ways, actually. We’re all trying to make an argument about flaws or frustrating issues with the way Elsa was written. We all agree about core aspects of what we are discussing. 

But where I try to say, “This is a flaw in the text that I feel distances Elsa from her humanity and, as an Elsa fan, I have mixed feelings about that,” this person feels, “This is a flaw in the text that means Elsa is bad and emotionally distant and the filmmakers don’t criticize this emotional distance because the filmmakers are bad and don’t care as much about Anna’s pain as they do Elsa’s validation and the filmmakers... love Elsa and hate Anna.” And then someone like Isa feels, “This is a flaw in the text that distances Elsa from her humanity and that proves the filmmakers hate Elsa.” And also, knowing Isa, she’d probably blame it all on the malice of Kristen Bell in a similar way as this person blames things on the malice of Lee and Buck.

But again, it’s not malice. At worst, it’s bad writing emerging from good intentions.

For years now, people in the Frozen fandom have had a bad habit of tearing certain characters down to prop their favorite characters up. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to tear Elsa down to prop up Anna up. You don’t have to pit the sisters against each other. You don’t have to tear Anna down to prop Elsa up. You don’t have to tear Kristoff down to prop Elsa up. You don’t have to tear Elsa down to prop Kristoff up. You don’t have to tear Olaf down to prop Kristoff up. And you don’t have to tear the Northuldra down to prop up your “vision” of Elsa.

You don’t need to tear characters down to celebrate those you love. 

And, if you read this and think I’m trying to order you to like certain characters or trying to stop valid criticism of characters or of the franchise, recognize that you’re approaching this post in bad faith. Because I value valid criticism and I engage in it myself... but extremist takes like these undermine valid criticism. They don’t help it.

(Also, I’m not equating people with Isa. Isa’s racist rhetoric sets her apart and makes her worse than other extreme people within the fandom, but that doesn’t mean other extreme people don’t have similarities to her behavior in other ways. And people should pause to check the extremes of their own biases.) 

[tenshindon]

Have you gotten Yamcha for the ask game yet? Or Tien? 😊

i have received Neither Chaps !!! So I will now do them both :) Pause on that :) gonna put this under a Read More since This Will Be Long <3

Yamcha:

Give Me A Character and I Will Answer:

Why I like them:

Uhhhh A Lot Of Reasons. Like. A lot. BUT I will be brief and say I like him because as a kid I always thought he looked cool and I always thought his first fight with Goku was radical. With My Big Man Brain Now I love him for just how sincere of a guy he is? And how loving and friendly and supportive? And I make fun of him for it but the wolf aesthetic genuinely is really cool- not to mention how he loves to change up his outfits and hairstyles!

Why I don’t:

I have no reason to hate this man. Like none exists. In The Most Platonic Way Ever he’s literally the perfect man and I would take him home to meet my mom and even then she would be happy with me dating a man if it was Yamcha Dragon Ball.

Favorite episode (scene if movie):

I have so many favorite Yamcha moments and ergo episodes good god help me BUT I will name ONE off the top of my head so I’m not stuck here forever and I really love the baseball scene in Z for Many Reasons it’s just so good it plays on loop in my brain 24/7 so I Will Say episode 10 of DBZ :)

Favorite season/movie:

The Tien Saga.... legendary.... yes he did get his leg broken but everything before AND after that??? Immaculate. Perfect. Astounding. No The Tien Saga Is Not Therapy But I Will Use It As Such

Favorite line:

Anything Yamcha says is music to my ears and is pure gold, and aside from The Iconic “Looking good, Tien!” quote from Budokai 3, I gotta say my actual favorite quote??

“No big deal. Bones heal, just like everything else.” -Yamcha to Tien in reference to his broken leg after the 22nd World Tournament

Like. It’s SUCH a simple line but it’s SO telling of Yamcha’s character?? Tien literally broke his leg with no concern of the long-lasting effects of doing so, not to mention his dickish behavior beforehand towards Yamcha beforehand. So for Yamcha to just be ready to forgive him at the drop of a hat when he sees Tien’s seem sincerely apologetic? Dude no one talk to me I’m going to write an essay again.

Favorite outfit:

I Mean This In The Most Platonic Way Part II but Yamcha can make Literally Any outfit and hairstyle look good it should be illegal. However I am legally required to choose One (1) outfit and at this point we should all know how much I adore the desert bandit fit of his. It’s just such a classic and cute look to him (not to mention The Sword <3)

OTP:

Oh You Know :) but if you don’t it’s Yamcha and Tien- even as just Friends They’re So Good I’m Going To Write An Essay like god I want what they have so badly.

Brotp:

I love his relationship with Puar, like I genuinely would love a small arc dedicated to how they even became friends in the first place since their origin together is so mysterious yet intriguing? But aside from The Obvious answer I love his brotherly relationship with Goku and Krillin! Unfortunately that relationship wanes as they all get older but I’ll always cherish the moments where he radiated such Big Bro energy.

Head Canon:

I’ve got a dumb amount of headcanons it’s terrible BUT I think my favorite headcanon is that Yamcha’s leg never properly heals after the 22nd Tournament.

Unpopular opinion:

I. Have a lot. Of unpopular opinions. Just genuinely loving Yamcha’s an unpopular opinion in of itself BUT One of my unpopular opinions is that Yamcha’s a flirt, a cheater, and promiscuous. If he’s ever portrayed as a flirt towards women, I can give it the smallest pass in the world that he’s trying to cope but even then that’s such a stretch in my opinion- and I guess this is on top of being a headcanon but Frankly I don’t think Yamcha’s ever even kissed anyone- he’s playing the long game everyone he’ll get his kiss on his wedding day btw that’s like. Partially a joke; I joke around a lot that Yamcha’s Super dedicated to the whole Nothing Until Marriage idea lmao.

A wish:

For the love of God Yamcha pack up your shit and Puar and just move in with Tien your apartment’s shit.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen:

Honestly? I kind of don’t want Yamcha to get a girlfriend? But I also DO because he wants that the most in life and it’d be great to see SOMETHING nice happen to him!

My only gripe with him getting a girlfriend (and hopefully then a wife) would be that his girlfriend wouldn’t be that well defined of a character and she’d just be said in Passing Mentions.

5 words to best describe them:

Perfect, immaculate, loyal, courageous, lovely 

My nickname for them:

Furry, Dumpy, and Wolfie!

Tien

Give Me A Character and I Will Answer:

Why I like them:

Again I Have A Lot Of Reasons BUT I love how like. Deceiving he is as a character. Like ask anyone and 90% of the time people will say Tien’s smart and serious and No Bullshit but no he is exactly the opposite he’s dumb as shit in any department outside of farming and fighting and he’s such a lil’ jackass when breathing next to Yamcha. 

Sincerely though, I absolutely love his character development- it’s one of my favorite arcs in Dragon Ball to be honest but That’s An Essay For Another Time. I also love how funny he can be, intentionally or not, and he’s surprisingly really relatable at times? And just his dedication to fighting’s really neat too; at this point he MUST know he can never be stronger than Goku but he still tries nevertheless and that’s really indicative of his bullheaded personality.

Why I don’t:

You could not pay me to dislike him I’d sell my kidneys for Tenshinhan.

Favorite episode (scene if movie):

Any episode from the gang’s escapades on King Kai’s planet good lord save me. That’s where Tien’s existence shines the best it’s so good.

Favorite season/movie:

His own saga man like. As much as I LOVE Redeemed Tenshinhan I also love how much of a jackass he was like why was he like that LMAO

Favorite line:

Again, aside from The Iconic x2 “Looking good, Yamcha!” quote, I gotta say it’s:

“Yes... sir! <3″ -Tien preparing to strike Goku with the volleyball fist during the 22nd World Tournament.

Also “I left Chiaotzu and Yamcha behind. This seems too dangerous for them.” -Tien to Gohan during the Resurrection F saga

Favorite outfit:

Like Yamcha, Tien’s outfits always hit. Not a SINGLE one misses. BUT I gotta say I love his classic tits-out look- more so for the fact I like how he shows off his scar as a kind of way to say he’s moved on from the Crane School like Damn Son you love to see it :,) Deep reasons aside, my second-favorite outfit’s got to be the Buu Saga listen man everyone just had the Hottest outfits in the Buu Saga you can’t blame me.

OTP:

Oh You Know :)

Brotp:

Tien has Two (2) friends in his life man the pool’s small but even if it WAS larger I would say Chiaotzu anyway LMAO. Love them dudes man.

Head Canon:

Tien is just. Terribly academically and socially stupid. The Social Ineptitude isn’t even a headcanon that’s just fact but when I said he’s stupid in every department But Fighting And Farming I meant it. Flirting with Tien is a nightmare. If you’re not Yamcha or Chiaotzu joking with him is a headache. He’s only smart in the vocabulary department other than that he couldn’t tell you how many planets are in the solar system. He’s dumb as rocks but is smart enough to convince everyone around him he’s smart because he knows what picayune means.

Unpopular opinion:

I have nothing but love and respect for Krillin, but it makes like. No sense to insist Krillin’s the strongest human on earth. Tien does not go hard on that grind 24/7 just for everyone- writers included- to reduce him to such trash when fighting. But why pit two kings against each other you know?

A wish:

Please just give him one good sexy fight that’s all I’m asking for. Also Tien PLEASE use the solar flare you dumb motherfucker YOU INVENTED IT??? Actually all of my wishes are fighting related but yeah Tien for God’s Sake acknowledge how crazy your move kit is and fuck it UP MY GUY.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen:

Tien please don’t get a random wife I fortunately cannot see that happening but for the love of God Toei if you make that happen I will actually commit arson. Any other fear I could have either has come true or cannot happen.

5 words to best describe them:

Deceivingly smart dumbass I love

My nickname for them:

Headass, Slap Head, My Man/s, Bald Motherfucker, Polyphemus Headass (I know Polyphemus is a cyclops but shush), Four Arms, Machamp, Stitch, Roach, King, and Ikea Dresser

[chibimyumi]

Sexism against men

【Reponse to this post】

Dear @nunted​,

✬Hello, first of all, men have to suffer getting their suffering under sexism denied :)))

✬ When a man is being sexually harassed or bullied in general, he gets victim-blamed by being shamed for his lack of masculinity, and cannot expect compassion from others.

✬ Especially in the 19th century, men were sent into the most dangerous jobs (the sewers, the mines, the battlefields etc.), and this exposure to danger was glorified as ‘manly duty’.

✬ Men were sent into death or a return with PTSD, and have to be happy about “being a hero of the country!!!”

✬ Men’s emotions were and are still being denied. Men are not allowed outlet for their grief, fears, and what not. Men have to either swallow these pains, or be swallowed. The only outlet men were really allowed was anger.

✬ Young boys were already being told that they cannot cry when they’re hurt, because “boys don’t cry”.

✬ Men were denied the chance of actually raising their children and form meaningful bonds with them, because “it’s a WOMAN’S JOBBBB”.

✬ A man’s value is defined by his productivity in a job that society chose FOR HIM. Anyone who did not live up to those arbitrary social expectations is made out to be a ‘lesser man’.

✬ The phrase “be a man” or “man up” is just a way of saying: “if you don’t live up to social expectations, YOUR identity is invalid.”

✬ Men are shamed for physically under-performing. “Can’t you lift that? You’re a man, right?”

✬ Boys who bully or misbehave are not sufficiently corrected, because “boys will be boys,”, and so boys have a greater risk of becoming socially loathed adults (from assholes to outright criminals).

✬ Men are made to bear the full financial burden of a family, and when he cannot he is seen as incompetent.

✬ Men are being pitted against each other in a futile battle of being acknowledged as ‘the alpha male’, of who is worthier of getting X, Y, or Z (often women), resulting in a longstanding tradition of masculine competition. (e.g. dick comparing is not something just done for fun; it reflects a very unhealthy psychology of lack of self-esteem.)

✬ A man’s success in ‘getting the girl’ is made into a measure standard of his value as human. Men who were not interested in ‘getting the girl’ for whatever reason were therefore considered less valid.

✬ Men are assumed to be ‘less refined’, which is glorified as ‘appropriately masculine’. But men were first denied the opportunity to hone such ‘refined skills’, and miss out on options that might otherwise have become their hobby or passion.

ET CETERA

I could go on, but I really hope that by this point you got the point.

I find it very ironic that you should respond in this way to a post where I never mentioned whether men did or did not suffer, on top of having explained why it is foolish to play Oppression Olympics.

Before anyone is going to respond with: “yeah but women......” I will say it again; we should NOT be playing Oppression Olympics.

“People want to appear clever by nominating the victim-champion, but perhaps it is best to ‘actually’ be clever, and lend our ears and compassion to multiple people’s pains.” (quote from earlier post)

I hope more people will learn to compute a higher number than one (1) group of victims.

Sexism is a systematic oppression mechanism that hurts literally everyone for different reasons in different ways. For the greatest part of history, women and/or ““lesser men”” have been made to suffer to accentuate the artificial superiority of men. Men meanwhile, have been made to suffer in a race based on unrealistic standards.

People would naturally find out that the expectations society prescribed for them is not right, and so sexism - or ‘gender roles’ - has been reinforced through centuries in the shape of a punishment-and-reward system. In this system EVERYONE is being punished and rewarded based on qualities that were arbitrarily decided by society.

Please do NOT continue this Oppression Olympics, because by doing so we are falling right back into this formula of: “pushing down others so one can artificially stand on top”.

I case you or anyone else is wondering why I posted this ⇊ picture and called this sexist, please allow me to explain.

The psychology behind narratives wherein a woman bullies a man, and that being played as humorous, is that it revolves around the (subconscious) sexist assumption that:

1. a woman can’t be a threat, so we don’t need to take her seriously. She is very infantilised and considered funny in the same way many find a baby looking murderous funny.

2. a man who is being bullied is inferiour, and should therefore also not be taken seriously. A man who is unsuccessful in deflecting harm or too “gentle/weak” to fight back is considered the clown - funny.

The moment we turn this formula around where we see Nino (♂Nina) bullying the female Phantomhive staff, he would automatically be called out for being a sexist, ‘a man who ignores and shit-talks women’.

If it were Elliot (♂Lizzie) who saw Ciella (♀Ciel) on top of Siegfried (♂Sieglinde), and immediately launched into a spin-attack for Ciella’s head, he’d automatically be considered a territorial dick.

The atmosphere would change quite dramatically. Why? Because we ARE taught to consider men a threat.

I could go on forever about the mechanisms of sexism and how everyone is a loser, but I don’t want to find the upper limit of Tumblr’s wordcount, or give them reason to introduce one.

I trust this has been enough to inform you a bit, but if you still wish to argue you are very welcome. But I advise you to consider your arguments or claims for a little longer before presenting them to me.

My Ask box has already been temporarily closed for a bit because it is a bit flooded now. But you contacted me through comment, so I trust you also know how to contact me again if need be.

[linkspooky]

Zenin Maki: Family or Strength

Zenin Maki is one of the most complex characters in the story of Jujutsu Kaisen, she’s also one whose motivations we know a great deal about already due to her being featured in the prequel, and her continued development in the main series. In her character she represents one of the main themes of the series, the conflict between defining yourself individually (by who you are and what standards you set) or by defining yourself by the people around you (conforming or going with the expectations of other people). Maki’s struggles to be an indivudual in a world that has already written her off as a failure is pretty central to the themes of the story. MORE UNDER THE CUT. 

Maki is caught in a pretty classic Want/Need conflict. All stories are rooted in a character’s conflict. Maki’s conflict is with herself as much as it is with the Zenin clan. 

 A want is at its simplest, the Thing Your Characters Wants is the plot goal.  [...] Whereas the Want is a direct equivalent of the plot goal, the Thing the Character Needs is a direct correlative of the thematic value. Whatever Truth your story is positing about reality, that is the ultimate Thing the Character Needs.  [x]. 

A want is oftentimes something the character defines for themself. It’s what motivates them to move forward. Whereas, the need is what the story itself says they need in order to grow. 

You don’t make a character change by giving them exactly what they want, which is why the want and need are often in conflict with one another. In most cases a character grows over the course of the story to realize their need in the end. The want motivates them, the need is their resolution. 

What Maki wants is to be recognized as an individual. She wants to prove her family wrong. Her family has already defined her as a failure. Just like how Getou sees her, because she has no natural talent for jujutsu sorcery her own family has denied that she’s even a person. She’s constantly dehumanized by them. If she’s not useful for Jujutsu Sorcery, then she’s nothing at all. For Maki, being her own person, and living for herself, her own amibtions, is an act of rebellion against her family who want to deny her everything. 

Maki’s want is an almost childish sense of revenge. An “I Told You So”. She wants to prove the people that dismissed her wrong, by proving she’s better than them. She wants to make the Zenin clan bow their heads to her. 

Wants are not bad things. They are what motivates the character to move forward. Maki’s spiteful amibtion, the fact that what she wants is basically no better than revenge, is neither a good nor bad thing in the context of the story. It’s her driving force. Maki is allwoed to be spiteful and angry at the way herfamily treated her. Yuta, who is basically one of the most soft-hearted and understanding characters in the prequel completely approves of her ambitions. 

The fact that she’s selfishly motivated. The fact that she wants to do all these things for herself. Her strong sense of individuality are not bad things. They are just the things that make Maki, Maki. In fact rebelling is basically the only way Maki can be an individual. Her urge to destroy her family is not presented to us as a bad thing, but rather something necessary for Maki to truly grow and be herself. 

However, once again a want is not the entire answer. You don’t make characters change by giving them what they want. 

Moron, this only works if I’m doing it by myself. 

Maki wanting to be stronger than anyone in her family. Her focus on individual strength above all else. None of these are bad, however it’s not entirely what she needs either. Look at what she says don’t go feeling like you got accepted. 

It’s almost like some part of Maki is afraid of those feelings of acceptance. She feels like family is something she has to throw away in order to be strong. 

I do not mean in a sense that Maki will not work with people on her team. She clearly has the ability to form connections with people as friends, get along with others, and even cooperate owith them as a team and care for her comrades. However, she never lets her feelings go any deeper than that. She’s gone so long without unconditional love and acceptance that she feels like she has to destroy her own need for such a thing. 

1. Maki vs Mai

Maki has two significant foils in the series who share this same conflict, choosing between your individual development and strength, and also your need to be accepted by the people around you. 

Mai is presented to us first as someone who looks down on Maki like the rest of her family. This makes sense because at the time the story was telling it from Maki’s perspective mainly. Maki tends to see her whole family, even her own twin sister, as the other. 

However, we’re presented with two different narratives. That of Maki who left the family and began to develop as her own person. That of Mai who stayed behind with the family, and had to continue living inside of an abusive household. The narrative becomes one of not Maki or Mai being the better sibling, but rather two siblings reacting to an abusive household in different ways. 

Mai has never once thought her sister was weak. She’s just parroting what the rest of the clan says about Maki in order to get Maki’s attention after Maki left her. Mai has always thought Maki was the stronger one between the two of them, but the thing is Mai doesn’t care about strength at all.

What Mai wanted was a personal connection with her sister. That’s why she mentions not telling her who her first crush is. In order to become her own person Maki has distanced herself from everyone, but that also means as a consequence Maki has shut Mai out. 

It’s clear Mai reads Maki’s declaration and decision to leave the family, to leave her behind in an absuive household to also mean that she’s rejecting her sister, the one family member who loves her for her. 

Once again neither sister is wrong. Maki wanting to run away from an abusive household when she’s a teenager and can’t really take care of her sister, or maybe even did not have the ability to bring her sister with her is not something that should bee expected fo a cihld. Mai turning against Maki for bieng left behind in an abusive environment, and not knowing a healthy way to reach out to her sister is also what’s to be expected fo a child. It’s not Mai and Maki who started this conflict, it’s the adults that pitted them against each other.

Mai is not trying to put Maki down because she sees herself as superior or anything like that, she literally has always thought Maki was much better than her. It’s a pretty basic cry for attention. 

Both sisters want and chose different things. Maki wanted to be herself, Mai wanted a family. Neiter of their desires are wrong or better than the other. Mai is not wrong for wanting a normal life, Maki is not wrong for wanting to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer.

However, because Maki has to draw such a clear line between herself and other people. She can’t accept or understand Mai’s feelings. The conflict between the two of them goes completely unresolved. Because, Maki doesn’t have to leave those connections of unconditional love and acceptance behind to be an individual, she just thinks she does. That is the point where her want clashes with her need. 

2. Maki vs Toji

Maki and Fushigoro Toji were both born into the Zenin clan, and both suffer from the same inability to see cursed spirits. While at first the comparison may look like a positive one for Maki, Maki is choosing to stay inside the system and work to prove herself better than what her family told her she was then going completely rogue and living as a mercenary for money like Toji did. 

However, eseentially both of them made the same choice. They chose power, and their own personal ambitions over their family. The first thing we learn about Toji in story is that he left his son behind, and practically forgot about him. 

While Maki is not responsible for her twin sister the same way that Toji is responsible for his son, they still both believe they have to throw away those kind of family connections in order to survive as an individual. They don’t allow themselves to feel that connection. 

Toji seems to live entirely for himself, and to prove others wrong about him. He has the same want as as Maki, to be stronger that the Jujutsu Sorcerers who dismissed him. They just chose different paths, Maki works from inside, whereas Megumi this late in his life has gone completely outside of the system. 

Toji s a lot more spiteful than Maki towards talented people. Maki’s more self directed and doesn’t blame everybody around her for her circumstances, so much. She’s a lot more focused on herself and her own sense of self improvement. However, both of them have an extreme amount of self awareness and use that to push themselves to develop their bodies to their absolute limit.

Toji is someone who is incredibly aware of his own limits, and rather than that making him unmotivated it causes him to be an extremely strategic thinker, and also push his body beyond even what most Jujutsu sorcerers are capable of. He makes excuses for his own violent behavior because he’s nothing but a reject and a monkey, but he doesn’t let other people’s talents be an excuse for him to be weak. When he sees Gojou fighting him at full power, he doesn’t hesitate or run away, he literally approaches the situation with an extreme amount of determination that believing he can overcome it. 

As a person he’s practically a disaster, always eating fast food, gambling, leaving his son behind, and acting immature and irresponsible with his business partner. Whereas Maki is much more cold and composed. However, this behavior stems from the fact that Toji, like Maki, has focused his entire life around fighting and therefore everywhere else he’s underdeveloped as a person. He’s the extreme result of Maki’s belief that if she’s stronger than her family, that will somehow fix what is missing inside of her. 

Toji even says he believed the only way to go against his family and continue being himself, was to twist his personality like this. That he had no choice but to become this way in order to deny what his family said about him. 

However, what Toji regrets as he’s dying is not that he wasn’t strong enough. He doesn’t even regret becoming a crimminal, or rebelling against the Jujutsu world. What he regrets is that he threw away his family in the process. 

What he wanted was to be strong. What he needed was a family. Maki and Toji are not exactly the same, but Toji is a cautionary tale that shows us that Maki’s choice to reject understanding and acceptance is unhealthy behavior. It’s what she wants and not what she needs. And these things are not mutually exclusive, Maki can both pursue her own individual strength and at the same time accept others around her. The manga has always advocated finding a balance, and a reconciliation between the two, rather than one as being more important than the other. Just like her conflict with her sister, beating her sister in a fight proves nothing. What Maki needs is reconciliation, the ability to understand her sister’s feelings and also have her sister be able to understand her own. 

She needs those connections to be an individual. We are defined by ourselves, we are defined by the people around us. It’s not either or, it’s both at the same time. Maki’s choice isn’t even a choice she necessarily needs to make, she’s allowed to choose both. 

[tf-reconciliation]

Prime Megatron vs. IDW1 Megatron analysis that no one asked for

This is really slapdash and was done in like an hour and a half this morning so there’s probably some incorrectness about timeline stuff (especially with IDW1 Megs), but this is pretty much all opinion. This is also really long, so I put it under a read more.

There’s some things to think about regarding Prime Megs vs other Megses with similar backstory (thinking primarily IDW1 [and this is all my interpretation based on what we get in MTMTE] Megs).

In Exodus, it’s implied early on that while Megs does want to reform the government of Cybertron he wants to do it with him at the top as “Prime.” My impression of this is that he has a thought process of “the government sucks, I could do it better, and I deserve to be the one in charge of doing it.”

Here’s Megatron’s speech to the Council in Chapter Thirteen of Exodus, without the narration unless it’s crucial for context:

“In the beginning I had not name. None of us did. We spoke to each other, down in the mines and the smelters, by electronic signature. We indicated each other by function. We assigned each other nicknames. I was D-16, named for the sector of mine where I conducted demolition operations. And then I saw my first match in the gladiator pits. That is where I first learned how life was for the lower castes that none of you ever take a nanoclick to consider. Each Cybertronian in that balcony has seen more Cybertronians die himself than the total of you in the rest of the gallery. Our lives are worthless!

Until--Until we decided we had worth. We, the lower castes. We, the bots who die in subsurface mills and factories creating all of the things that you up here take for granted. We learned that we were individuals by facing off against each other in the gladiator pits in Slaughter City and Kaon, and how did we know we were individuals?” He waited for a moment to let the question sink in. “We knew we were individuals because as we killed our opponents in the ring, we saw in their deaths the realization that they were individuals. And so we knew we were, too. In killing, we understood life. In being the most disposable of commodities--a gladiator, whose remains are thrown into the junkpile to be picked over and scavenged, the healthy pieces sold off to brokers in Iacon and Crystal City--in being disposable, we discovered that we had value. Someone would pay us for what we did. Someone would cheer when we killed, and roar in anger when we died.

So if our lives had worth--even to others just as worthless as we were--then we had the right to names. And that is how the sequence of events started that led to me being here before you today. My friend Orion Pax, I thank you for helping our cause gain this platform; and to the High Council, I express my thanks for your time and attention.”

This is your usual fare for miner-cum-gladiator-cum-revolutionary-cum-tyrant Megatron. The Council goes on to ask him about the bombings at Six Lasers (among others), and he says that he had nothing to do with it and that he “disavow[s] any act that does not ultimately herald a new and better era on Cybertron.” The Council then asks, “Are you not responsible if your rhetoric excites those unfortunates without your willpower, though? Do you not have the same kind of responsiblity that this Council and its members have, if your leadership position is to be taken seriously?”

Megatron does not directly answer the question. Instead he says, “What you have to worry about is what will happen if my leadership is not taken seriously.” I kind of see this response as a thinly veiled threat to the Council.

Now, this chapter is ultimately from Orion Pax’s point of view, so we get his views on things: “Orion Pax couldn’t decide whether to admire him or be scandalized that he could stand up in front of the High Council and ignore the truth.” Orion believes that Megatron is ultimately responsible for these bombings because of his rhetoric.

The plot moves on with Halogen, the main dude on the Council, calling for the Guilds to speak . Orion then gets up to speak, first insulting the Guild representative and subtly blaming the Guilds for loosing contact with the colony worlds. It is Orion who calls for the Council to choose a new prime: “Choose well, for a Prime might either lead Cybertron to a new golden era in history, or stand by as the dark energies of anger and resentment explode into planetwide chaose and war.”

We then move into chapter fourteen.

Halogen then goes on to say that these two have a point the caste system has already begun to be upended. Most of this is just plot and talking about Sentinel Prime and how he’s missing.

Orion has an epiphany: “We cannot count on anything. No existing structure can handle the problems we have raised.” And he realizes that Megatron has realized it as well, but has had a different reaction:

“Megatron looked as if he could gleefully have presided over the permanent and total destruction of every institution of Cybertronian civilization. Orion Pax wanted to be free. But if there were no Cybertron, if there were no Iacon or Hydrax or Sonic Canyons...then what good would freedom do?”

The Council goes on and on about the Matrix of Leadership, culminating with Halogen saying that it has bee lost for billions of cycles and according to Alpha Trion it might be found “in these turbulent times.” Megatron says, very softly, “yes” at this point. He thinks that Halogen is talking about him; he thinks that the council is going to choose him to be the next Prime.

And Megatron starts projecting, in my opinion. He’s angry, which he is allowed to be seeing as things didn’t go his way and anger is a natural reaction to that, he feels betrayed, though he hasn’t actually been betrayed. He accuses Orion of just wanting power. He begins to mock him: “Does Cybertron not call out in its hour of need and find...a data clerk?”

Its at this point that we get back to my earlier point of Megatron thinking that he should be in charge. He reminds Orion that he didn’t know the plights of the lower castes until he met Megatron. He learned from Megatron. I believe at this point that Megatron is having a moment of “Why should the student surpass the master? Why should this more privileged ‘bot be the Prime when I have lived this injustice first hand?” These are fair questions, and I do think that a good portion of why the Council chose Orion as the next Prime has to do with him simply being less confrontational in his speech.

To me, it seems that Prime Megatron wanted the power to change Cybertron himself, and when he was denied it, he resorted to violence. While he was a miner at the start, he is primarily a gladiator. He says it himself that he didn’t truly learn what life was like for the lower castes until he first saw, and began participating in, gladiatorial matches. He knows violent solutions to violent problems first and foremost. He also spends a lot of time in later chapters thinking about “when i’m prime…” and while some of that might be to blame on Dark Energon, I think it’s also a lot of his own thoughts. He first aspired to be the leader of the gladiators, which he became. What’s to stop him aspiring to be Prime?

Now, IDW1 Megatron is an entirely different beast (at least re: early early on ala “Births, Deaths, and Interventions” and Elegant Chaos). I’m not as familiar with him between the events of BD&I and basically the rest of anything. I don’t know how exactly he gets from miner to tyrant.

What I do know is that at the beginning, he does not want to be in charge. Terminus tells him that he has two weapons, his brain and his fists, and he must be prepared to use both of them. Megatron rejects being a figurehead. His job “is to articulate the injustice at the heart of the system in the hope that others might be inspired as one, to push against it.” Terminus is almost pushing him to be this figurehead that he doesn’t want to be.

M: “I’m not a figurehead.”

T: “But you may yet become one—and that’s why you need to listen to me. Never back down. Never compromise. Never bend. The moment you try to accommodate a rival set of interests, you subordinate your own. When your enemies realize they can’t corrupt you, or contain you, or appease you…that’s when you’ll have their attention—because that’s when you become a genuine threat.”

M: “You’re focusing too much on the individual. Lasting power rests with the collective.”

T: “Of course—but the masses need someone to rally behind. Someone to take point. And even after that, even after you’ve forced the world to be fair…the top table is set for one. You must be prepared to sit alone.”

Now. I have opinions about Terminus that aren’t…positive. But here he’s pushing—he’s pushing for Megatron to take control, to lead almost singularly; he’s pushing against what Megatron wants. I think it’s important to realize that at some point you might have to resort to violence of some sort, but I think it’s also important to encourage peacefulness until you get to the point where it is literally impossible to do otherwise.

In Elegant Chaos part 1, present day Megs has a conversation with Orion Pax (we love time travel shenanigans) and he asks, “Why rely on someone else coming along and doing your job for you—someone who may not actually want the job?” This question implies that at some point before the war properly started, he still didn’t want to be the one in charge. I believe that he was somewhat content writing and inspiring people to change the system.  As evidenced in Elegant Chaos pt. 2 when Megatron is talking with Impactor: “Because the revolution will be about ideas. Taking a new step, uttering a new word…That’s what the ruling elite fears the most. Violence solves nothing.” Also, if I remember correctly he hides under the table during the fight in the bar.

[meduise]

Whats some of ur fav dino, dino/hibari hcs?

finally i could reply to this ask!! which, anon, i still thank you for bc its the best thing i could ever be asked to talk about ww

reading will likely take some time, but i hope you and whoever else reads this post will share some hcs or at least find them nice ad interesting enough! and of course, i’ll be happy to answer more asks about it!! like the hibari-only post, i may come back to this one and update it over time

general warning for death mentions and spoilers from the novel “haneuma stampede”!!

hopefully this post wont be hidden from the tag search

dino headcanons

until i read about haneuma stampede, i pretty much always headcanoned dino’s hometown being naples, and this because i have neapolitan origins myself www in the light novel we get to know that dino’s hometown is a port city facing the adriatic sea (east) hence the opposite coast to naples, since this town faces the tyrrhenian sea (west). because of this piece of information, tho, i started thinking dino could be from bari, apulia’s capital city

being that a self projection, im still attached to that hc, so to keep at least a part of it i gave dino neapolitan grandparents LOL i mean, it’s not unlikely anyway

this is a recent hc but dino has a huge crush on is a big fan of immanuel casto, a gay italian singer whose most songs are explicit or suggestive and provocative

i think we all can agree that romario is like a second father to dino, right? their bond gets even stronger after cavallone nono’s death ;; romario will occasionally drop his habit to call dino “boss” and call him with his first name instead. dino will remind romario quite often how important he is to him beyond his role as his right-hand man

What Do You Mean Dino’s Tattoos Magically Appeared On His Body When He Was Deemed The Worthy Successor,,, i (falls on my knees) hc’ed that getting them done took A LOT and hurt A LOT and he yelled A LOT to the tattoo artist to stop inking and to his family that he didnt want to belong to that world,,,, im sorry dino

his tattoo and his duty as a boss in general dont give him much freedom (or should i say they dont give him freedom at all) so among the other hcs of situations where he has to cover his left arm, i have this one where dino cant but go to the beach when its empty and/or at night so that no one can see him but his men

the years may pass but he will still blame himself for his father’s death. and i mean. its pretty much true that it was his fault orz thanks light novel for giving me depress

onto the personality-wise hcs,, i talked about hibari’s enneagram type so i cant not do that for dino too. dino is 2w1, which gets called the servant. starting with the basic type: depending on the level of health, the two (”the helper”) ranges from being the most genuinely caring and helpful type to other people to being the type who gives expecting to be given something back to being the type who manipulates people into caring about them. i dont believe dino has fallen or will ever fall into the very unhealthy pit but he does get on the level where he thinks his generosity is the only thing that tie people to him and his people-pleasing attitude starts getting suffocating. he can be quite possessive, too. in a few words, type one is a very principled type, who fears being defective, bad and corrupt. therefore i assigned dino the one wing to kinda enhance the following paradox: being what he hates the most, aka part of a rotten system such as the mafia one. and with a role as a boss, to it. dino as a teenager never wanted to succeed to his father, and even now he wishes he didnt belong to that world but he loves his family, and even tho according to the moral he deserves to go to jail together with his men, he is self-admittedly too much of a coward to do that (theres so much more to add to this but if i do it will get REALLY long. there’s going to be another little enneagram talk in the d18 hcs anyway, lol)

_____________________________________________________________

dinohiba headcanons

these bitches gay good for them, good for them

advanced apologizes for being an angst fucker but for years my #1 headcanon has been a quite twisted one about dino and hibari not allowing themselves die by the hand of someone who isn’t each other’s. its a sort of oath. they feel like if one of them dies it will be unforgivable, and this will lead them to ultimately kill each other. in their mind, “it’s either both or none of them”, both know that they won’t be able to bear with the other being gone forever (yes, hibari too) and the only solution they find is leaving the world together, the same way they fought on it and against it together. the scenario i thought for this is a duel inside the reverse globe of needles. their last fight in hibari’s ultimate technique so that it’s literally just a world made of the two of them lol lol lol

tbh dino didnt like hibari at first, and with hibari being hibari it takes them long to warm up to each other. for long i mean some years w (years of anger, fights, hardship, trauma reveal, and so on)

their first bonding moment happens when hibari finds out about fon (yeah, all the stuff i talked about in my hibari hc post to which i have to add: i made my own timeline where the arcobaleno arc happens about 2 years later than shown in canon). dino is there to comfort him. dino hugs hibari and he lets him do. hibari cries. HIBARI CRIES for the third (3rd) time in his life there

i have this kinda specific hc of dino overhearing hibari sing hitoribocchi no sadame and getting sad about its lyrics

for obvious reasons even when they start dating they’re forced to spend most of the time away from each other but they make sure to be together at least on every anniversary

i love the established relationship trope so much therefore 80% of the times i think and write about them hibari is in his 30s and these two have been married for like 7 years 

i’ll get to the marriage proposal and ceremony another time hopefully in a fic too but of course romario and fon are chosen for their best men

idk if people consider ship playlists and such as hcs, but i associate savages by kerli and someone to stay by vancouver sleep clinic to them ;;

about someone to stay: the line will you fix me up? will you show me hope? is hibari -> dino, and the line can you keep me close? can you love me most? is dino -> hibari

and finally, to go back to the topic of enneagram: their compatibility according to their types. on the institute’s official site theres already a good description, which makes me cry everytime i go back to it because it literally starts with “These two types are more alike than they might appear to be at first”. part of this is given by the fact that unhealthy twos get the unhealthy traits of eights and healthy eights get the healthy traits of twos. i made a scheme for it:

i admit that i have no proof that the comparison is legit for the wings too, but finding out the stress/growth correlation even for them was very validating and satisfying, lol

some headcanons are missing from this post bc i decided to post the most important and my fave ones (the fave ones are those asked for in the first place but i cant shut up ashdjsdhfdjsdhfg)

but either way OVERALL i really, really love imagining both dino and hibari overcoming their hardships, individually and together, becoming the better versions of themselves the more the years pass, bringing their best qualities to each other and learning to accept and appreciate their different points of view. 

because of the way they are at first they... dont really start good, but with health and trust they make a powercouple tbh

[mrschandlerbing]

Goodbye 2019, You were eh... remarkable.

I started my 2019 totally different person. And I could probably speak for everyone we are different people now.

But why am I writing this now? I will explain that to you now. So grab something to eat sit back and relax. 

My bad year actually started back in September 2018. I started 5th grade in high-school. I was unexceptionally happy about the fact I was starting in that class it meant that I was about to learn a whole lot. Let's just say that I did. 

Not only subject matter but also about myself. 

Like I said I started my year in 5th grade. I thought it was going to be my best year. 

That was until everything went downhill...

I was sat in a class of with 3 others. (I go to a special school for people with physical disabilities that’s why the groups are small) All of them were boys one of them I’ve known for about 10 years (Let’s call him Landon)  and the others (I call them Nate and Zach) I’ve known them for around 4 years so I kinda knew what they were capable of. ( turns out I REALLY WASN’T prepared for the storm they were about to put me through)

For the first month, it was quite alright. it was fun and games. Good teacher, guys joking around throwing some harsh jokes, sometimes on the racist side (I will get you back on that.)  But everything started to go downhill when preparations started for the internship we were about to have, starting in September 2019. 

We were asked to dig down and find out our best and our worst qualities, our talents and the things we were absolutely bad at. That’s quite innocent I thought back then. Every now and then we had to share something with the class. All okay. But with exposing yourself comes a certain vulnerability and I felt that I was walking up against my own walls. For years I thought I was living quite alright that I had myself figured out. Once I realized that this was nothing like it, I started to fall into that endless pit. 

I suppose you're wondering where did Nate, Zach and Landon get into this story?

I'm getting there...

it’s not a secret that these days people are actually fearing change. That our society is filled with fear that our society is run by it. The strong are fed by fear. It’s no secret. WWI and WWII were huge examples of that. Oh, hell what am I talking about, no! Look at ISIS. Men and women severely brainwashed and played upon by their fears.  Where did it lead them? 

Imprisoned, crippled and still left with the idea that murdering people because they’re different because they love differently or believe differently in the name of God. 

As a Muslim myself (IDK if I can call myself that TBH seeing I know more about what it is to be a Christian than a Muslim and it’s Ironic and I feel a huge amount of guilt now that I am writing it. I think this is a disadvantage of attending a Christian school). 

You know, let’s just say that I’m a believer. Sound good? Thought so. Anyways, this brings me to my next point. 

Up until a few months ago, I was loud and clear about my beliefs I used to wear with it proud. Don’t get me wrong I still do, I always will, forever! 

But that faith has gotten a serious dent by my surroundings, by social media and my classmates. Why was that? Because I was laughed at.

I believe that God as put me on this planet for a reason. For a purpose. Even though I haven't found my purpose yet. We humans were originally created to take care of each other and our surroundings. (WE ARE FAILING BADLY AT THAT).  

Anyways it's not my point.

I was already falling Into that endless pit. And my classmates made it harder for me. Like, weeks I was trying my best to make my classmates like me. I would do that in ways that were hurting my values. The biggest one was, being myself. I felt like I had to change myself to meet up to their standards which lead me into making bad decisions. 

This leads me to the part were my fear consumed me. That fear was being forgotten. Not being noticed. and I started being very impulsive saying things, my opinions if you will, about everything dear to my heart at the time. Giving your opinion there’s nothing bad with that. But I have to admit I did it in a way that is not considered polite. 

To finally got my point, if you’ve read this far Thank you, you’re truly remarkable.

I wasn’t feeling very good in my skin. Everything that felt like the slightest insult to me made me go off like a nuclear bomb. It would scare off my teachers and my classmates. also, may I remind you I was the only girl in a class full of boys and GOD FORBID A WOMAN TO BE SMARTER AND STRONGER. My classmates, especially Nate, saw that I was struggling. So, for him, it was fun to racist comments and bring down my whole belief system. and often he would drag along Zach with him to make it worse. Landon would often keep himself hidden in the background often being ashamed of his friends but not standing up against them either. 

I can’t blame Landon though, it’s hard being in a group where toxic masculinity rules...

Anyways, I’d often apologise for my behaviour and I would often admit that I can be very impulsive. That I can be very mean at times. But I think for them hurting me was a fun game. because half of the time they would throw parties invite everyone except for me. Put pictures on facebook and laugh their asses off about something that happened back at that party. (May I inform you that one of those guests ended up naked on a bathroom floor peeing himself because of the amount of beer he drank? :-] ) But for me, that was a hit.

I was sat there crying my two best friends around me. So you might think What is this bitch complaining about now? If you do, you’re not the first. My classmates thought too. The thing was just, I didn’t feel respected I felt like dirt for them. Because there were countless times I’d help them out with their homework or send them my notes so that they could study easier. but here I am rejected and humiliated. 

Once I recovered from that disaster. I tried to get my shit together it went well for a couple days. They laid off. 

 But who could’ve said a simple cardgame would’ve given me my breakpoint? Exactly no one. Neither did I. 

Bear with me on this...

At that time we had a substitute teacher. He originally studied to be a biology teacher. So having to teach a class who has to make PowerPoints and Word documents daily must’ve been something new for him. It was no surprise to me he was overwhelmed half of the time and he couldn’t navigate in the cold claws of my classmates. He wanted to be the cool teacher and he was, he still is. 

But my point is he was lost and I was fearful. The teacher was explaining what was about to happen. 

So, basically, it was a normal card game. My classmates had to give a card with every 5 good qualities and 5 bad qualities. I even jokingly said “Oh, oh” implying something bad was about to happen. oh, boy is my gut feeling always right.

It was fun at first. I was kind. I was lifting up my classmates up only giving them positive once. But then Nate kinda caught up and took it as his moment to suck the attention to him.  So Nate started tossing bad cards. Zach thought it was funny cause I was pretty much unarmed. I had no intentions of hurting my classmates. Never.  

But once Nates started Zach kept adding. Nate kept adding. Landon was quiet. The teacher was completely lost for words to not knowing to interfere. They kept adding and adding.  Landon started placing cards too, bless the boy's heart only good once. 

I was lost for words. My throat was hurting. I felt tears come up. The teacher looked at me, asking if I was okay. But all I heard was them laughing them adding cards. 

complainer

mean

weak

cryer

sensitive

not funny

boring

They kept coming. I felt humiliated. The remaining parts of my confidence were shattered. There was nothing left 

BOOM.

I reached the bottom of the pit. There it was complete darkness. All I felt were tears streaming my breath was gone I couldn’t breathe. 

Was I being overdramatic? 

Perhaps, a little. 

But did it hurt? 

YES, IT DID.

That incident lead to my mother coming to school with me the following day. My teacher looked at us really confused when she saw my mom. I’d say it was normal. But that one day made my trust in adults really hard it was practically gone. 

Instead of calling them out. She looked at me. and the one thing she said. “I will discuss this with other teachers. Because I have a feeling that is what I have to do.” My blood boiled. My mom wasn’t happy either but what were we supposed to do? 

Indeed nothing. like yeah, we could talk back. But it was no use. I had a feeling she didn’t want to do anything about it. and nothing really happened. Things stayed like they were. I felt dead inside and I’d often cry. For every time I had a day off or I had a break. I’d be in bed most of the time or I’d try to distract myself by working for school. 

It changed ‘till one given day where we had religion. To close up the year the teacher asked us what hurts us the most and what faith means to me. 

So wrote it down and gave my answer. At that moment I basically exploded. the class fell silent. Not a word was said again. I was crying so hard I was literally choking in my own words. 

As I was explaining the whole situation my teacher smiled kindly at me and she just said. “You know sweetheart. People will always have an opinion about you. Always. It doesn't matter what you do and what you don’t do they always will. Have an opinion.” She started. “It’s only up to you what you let inside. I think it’s time for you to let go because you’re a remarkable girl. You’ll only be able to do that if you make this wall for yourself where you filter out the negatives and I’m sure you’ll feel much better.” she ended. It sounded so simple. But it took me a while to get there. But the first step that she let me take was to write a letter to myself first. a letter where I told myself how amazing and remarkable I am. 

and from that day on my mental health has only approved. I’m still in the same class with the same people. But none of them dares to open their mouth anymore. because I’m better and stronger than ever.

This year was for me a year I’d rather bury deep and forget because now I am only looking forward and trusting on my own gut feeling. Because I know that I am amazing. I am smart and from now on no man will get me so low again. NO ONE WILL. 

2019 you were ehh.. remarkable, but nothing is the same anymore. Thank you and GOODBYE.

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

(via The Welfare Gnome! It's Like a Sock Gnome Except This One Can Actually Kill You. Ft. Joker (Again))

The Welfare Gnome!  It’s Like a Sock Gnome Except This One Can Actually Kill You.  Ft. Joker (Again)

Cannabis Refugee, Esq.

Advertising / Media / Cultural Conversation

Capitalistic Patriarchal Medicine

Crohn's Disease Stories

Euthanasia / Suicide

Law / Legal / Benefits

December 20, 2019

According to the internet, a “sock gnome” is a mythical creature that pilfers socks.  Presumably it lives in or around the dryer where you put an even number of socks in and get an odd number out.  Sometimes it gets tricksy and spits out an even number but the pairs don’t match (meaning it’s pilfered one from more than one pair) but the usual evidence that you’ve had a sock pilfered by a gnome is that there is one left over that doesn’t have a mate and the missing sock never reappears ever.  This is a real thing (if not a real gnome) and everyone knows what this means.

Well, there appears to be a similar creature that lives at Social Services and pilfers sick and poor people’s applications for welfare benefits.  Or something, idk.  I assume these creatures are related but maybe not since this gnome doesn’t play games: it’s goal seems to be to drive you insane before it literally kills you.  I wrote here before about an application for benefits that went missing, along with a half a dozen other boondoggles that have wasted my spoons and left me scrambling to repeat some administrative process I was barely able to complete survive the first time.

Because while a sick person’s literal inability to jump through bureaucratic hoops is actually the best evidence that someone is extremely ill, someone has decided that only those who are well enough to sing for their supper (or pursue benefits) deserve to eat, as it were.  The first application that went missing was for food stamps, while today I found out that my application to get on a 4 month waitlist to see a doctor went missing 2 months ago and has not been since heard from: although my disability advocate hand-delivered it, the application was never received.

I didn’t know it had never been received since I was instructed to wait for 2-3 months for a phonecall from them whereupon they would then tell me that I had to wait another 4 months to see a provider.  Now I get to start the whole process over again.  Of course, the clock starts, again, from zero: 2-3 months for the application to be processed and another 4 months before I will be seen. And as both Crohn’s disease and high functioning Autism are untreatable and incurable, the only reason I’m even trying to get in to see a doctor is that I need up to date records of medical compliance (not actual therapeutic medical care since none exists) to support my claims for disability.  As if sick people have the time and energy for that.

Just “apply for benefits” then keep applying indefinitely or forever!   Just get showered, dressed, don’t eat or drink anything though because Crohn’s, get somehow transported across town, pretend to act human for a several hours while you are being humiliated, interrogated, starved and otherwise tortured in public, then somehow get a ride back home.  And do all of that without “acting” sick.  Easy peasy.

And truly, bureaucratic incompetence (or a welfare or Social Services gnome) isn’t even worth writing about and I wouldn’t bother writing about it except that it had an unsettling effect on me: I literally wondered, if only for a second, if I had hallucinated the whole thing and therefore wondered if my new disability advocate who had hand-delivered the applications himself, Dave, was even real.  Jesus Christ that was disturbing.  Around Halloween of this year, Dave had helped me complete numerous applications, some online, while he mailed some hardcopies out of town and hand-delivered the rest; the 2 applications that were both hand-delivered were supposedly never received.  One would be understandable, if not acceptable, but both of them?  I was shook.

Very shortly thereafter I realized that the only proof I even have that Dave came to pick me up several times, completed applications for/with me and took me home again is that one application we did online was actually received and has his name and information on it.  Much to my chagrin, they initially returned that “online” application to me in hardcopy to review, sign and return (WTF) but as it turns out, that bit of bureaucratic fuckery actually saved me from something awful — a literal break from reality — and was the only proof I had that Dave and our interactions were even real.  Also, my old disability advocate told me about Dave in front of another person and they both remember it.  (!)  So yeah, I’m legit losing my mind by now but at least I’m not delusional (that I know of). Everything about this is fucking terrifying.

Wait.  Is Dave even real?  Let’s review.

  At some point, I know my readers are going to get sick to death of hearing about this shit and I wouldn’t blame them.  Hearing about how the system truly victimizes people is unpleasant and predictably leaves those who don’t have to deal with it (yet) with the strong impression that disenfranchised people are “victims” experiencing “victimization” which is always, always read as a character flaw, or it is eventually, especially if it goes on for a long time and it often almost always does.  And this material is about as appealing to read as…idk, a book of vintage recipes where the first and second ingredients in every dish are Jello and fake mayonnaise?  Maybe.  There’s a trainwreck quality that’s hard to look away from, it’s interesting (at first) to see how all the various parts fit together (or ultimately don’t) and I suppose it’s possible to have compassion for the vintage cooks who were trying so, so hard to be resourceful and whatnot.

But eventually that person’s judgement will probably come into question and the blame will fall squarely on them if they consistently choose to participate in such insanity, in that case, preparing and serving Spaghetti-Os and sliced hot dogs suspended in savory Jello, or a canned ambrosia Yule log.  (I just watched a video of someone making a canned ambrosia Yule log from a vintage recipe, you can watch that here). Or in the case of a vulnerable person seeking benefits, choosing to consistently be relieved of their dignity and even being (seemingly) willingly neglected and abused.  The comparison is kind of a reach but what I’m getting at here is that it’s not pretty.  The things I discuss on this blog aren’t pretty.

So do I have an actual point?  Actually I have 2.  The first point I will make via another anecdote and is something I learned as a young attorney who was becoming seriously ill: I had been seeing a chiropractor/nutritionist for months to attempt to treat what was becoming unbearable chronic pain and GI issues when my health insurance company started denying his claims.  The “doctor” wasn’t being paid but I was still in disabling pain and his treatments were working.  Kind of. Until they stopped. We had to have “the discussion” which drew out our competing interests: my interest in continuing treatment without a lapse versus his interest in being consistently paid.  (Really, this is where the myth of the compassionate Western healer is always undone: the issue of money.  But that’s a post for another day.)  This discussion is never pleasant and as I learned, is absolutely meant to be ugly.

As a seasoned provider with decades of experience in the insurance game, the “doctor” calmly explained to me that part of the game is to pit the doctor and patient against each other so that they can’t provide a united front against the real enemy: the insurance company.  The goal is to have the doctor and patient part ways angry so that there is no reason to pursue an appeal and the treatment — whether it’s medically necessary or not — simply ends.  From the insurance company’s perspective, the problem (of exposure to liability) just goes away: if the doctor and patient part ways it doesn’t have to expend resources reviewing appeals and no further claims will be made, their exposure drops to zero, and they win.

Get it?  Bad guys 1, good guys 0.  And this, I think, is the dynamic playing out when people get fed up (and fired up) with hearing about what sick and disabled people go through — regular, relatively powerless people blaming and judging other regular, relatively powerless people for being “victims” instead of providing a unified front against our common enemy.  In this case, against our corporate and governmental overlords who spend billions if not trillions annually on “corporate welfare” and destructive black budget programs while reducing, eliminating or otherwise making inaccessible benefits that real people need to live in this shithole they created, not us.  And Big Medicine torturing sick people and deliberately (or leastwise predictably) making us worse.

We all have a choice, don’t we, to pick the correct side and to not fall into this deliberate trap set by the elite, to not go against our own interests, to decline the invitation to support our oppressors while undermining ourselves and our ilk, our own people.  Choose correctly.  It matters.

My second point is this.  I can only speak for myself when I say that I absolutely never wanted to be a “victim” and I spent my entire life and literally everything I had to try to ensure that didn’t happen.  I have written about that before if anyone wants to revisit that part of my journey, but what I haven’t directly said is this: once I had exhausted every resource I had accumulated over a lifetime (which wasn’t much), after I had asked everyone I knew for help and they all declined, after I had failed to cure myself of an incurable disease, I knew what was coming for me because I had spent my entire life trying to avoid it.

My experience as a benefits attorney only underscored what I already knew, which is that there is nothing there to catch most people when they fall, and there is no bottom to the abuse and neglect one will suffer, and literally endless opportunities to be victimized, once anyone, especially an unresourced, unsupported female, is no longer able to control her outcomes and sick women can no longer reliably control their outcomes.  I knew the benefits system would be inaccessible or inadequate, I knew I would be abused and neglected by doctors if I let them, I knew I could end up sick and homeless at the same time, I knew I could end up sick and homeless and raped and pregnant at the same time if there was nothing I could do to stop it, and I knew that once I got sick there was, in fact, little or nothing I could do to stop it.  I knew there would be no end to my suffering as a sick woman under capitalism and patriarchy.

I saw this coming a mile out, and to avoid that outcome I knew I didn’t want and knew I couldn’t handle (and shouldn’t be expected to) and to fulfill a lifelong promise I had made to myself to never “allow” myself to be victimized in this way, I attempted suicide.  4 times.   Four fucking times I took action against myself that was so incompatible with life that by all rights I should have died at least once if not every time but I didn’t die.  Each time I woke to this nightmare that won’t end and I had to go on, dealing with the same shit and with the same hideous constraints only even more sick and even more traumatized than I was before if that was even possible.  And it is possible, isn’t it — it is bottomless.  There is no end, there is absolutely no end to how bad this can and will get for me and for everyone in my position.

And to be clear, I started this blog after what ended up being my final (well, most recent) suicide attempt which was 2 years ago by now.  Get it?  Every single post on this blog was written after that and therefore was very nearly not written at all.  What I am documenting here, I think, is a fairly common experience that is almost always lost to time and tragedy: what it’s actually like to be this seriously, hopelessly ill, how “the system” works against sick people and sick women at every turn, and what it really looks like to have no options.  And while this surely happens all the time, every force in the universe, it seems, is working against most people actually knowing about it.  In fact, the most relateable thing I’ve ever read, the only thing that I have ever seen address these points and describe an experience nearly identical to my own was left behind by an activist/writer/seriously chronically ill woman in a suicide note.  I wrote about that woman, Anne Örtegren, and her suicide note here.  

In my own case, and this is the only reason you are hearing about it, I happened to be a seasoned researcher and writer with a specialized interest in dissecting the insane system of patriarchy, I had a preexisting platform on which to advertise this project and an audience that was open to hearing about it, and despite my best intentions and efforts, and those of everyone and everything else for that matter, where those intentions and efforts were not compatible with life, my life, I didn’t fucking die.  Not yet anyway.  I suspect that many women who experience what I and Anne Örtegren and others have experienced go down for the third and final time before anyone even hears them scream.  And if any of this sounds a little crazy to you, that’s only because it is.  It is completely, completely insane.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

so being abused the entire first 2 decades of your life: what’s up with that? Night Posts Edition

- classic when finding some “uh oh relatable!” content abt various Disorderres and there’s some thing like “many symptoms overlap with ptsd” and it’s like ooh which one is applying to me?? i mean spoilers the idea that The Grouping Of Non Nt Traits And Experiences Into Distinct Classifications is not actually...an exact science and for all intents and purposes it makes no difference if i am going “oh god #me” at an informative post about adhd if actually its ptsd acting exactly the same anyways so. but yknow it’s wild n zany being like “am i overstepping my bounds b/c this was caused by coping with trauma possibly? what audacity” and etc when it really....that doesnt matter....

- also ugh @ retaining things that downplay abusers’ responsibility for their actions (in specific things you’re personally dealing with, not like, as a general stance) and shift blame onto yourself like........you have to get so used to treating someone’s Abusive Behavior as something inevitable that you can’t ever expect them to stop doing, and thus pretty much considering someone abusive like a force of nature because they’re just gonna do what they’re gonna do whenever they next get Set Off rather than like.......a person who is responsible for their own behavior and in control of their own choices and like. especially zany when you’re a kid and they’re your parent so there’s the Power Imbalance of them being an adult and the other power imbalance of them being in control of your whole existence. but so like even just the other year i was taking the blame for calmly speaking back to a grownass man close to thrice my age raging at me and saying like, not verbatim but the idea of like “ugh i know it was partly my fault for even saying anything back to him because i knew he’d just continue to yell but unfortunately i just refuse to weather that kind of behavior without standing up for myself at all anymore” but like no!!!! that’s shifting all the responsibility for this other person’s behavior onto myself, like i Made him choose to shout at me at like 4am because he sucks and has some kind of superiority power trip issues. cuz i am well within rights to respond to anyone addressing me and it’s Not my fault at all that he chooses to react the way he reacts. 

- also that i was ready to excuse my being blamed for this by others because they were closer to that person than they were to me and i was gonna be like “okay i Get wanting to defend someone who’s closer to you” but no!!!! actually!!!! i may get it but i don’t condone excusing anyone’s horrible behavior in the least just cuz you know them or they’re friends or family or something. in fact that’s terrible. i’m just primed to be Used To It because of the weird situation of parental abuse where there’s other people also trapped in this location and daily life with an abuser and if someone “causes” the abuser to start being shitty then they’ll get blamed / resented for that. me and my siblings seem more like friendly acquaintances b/c we had to be pitted against each other in these kinds of ways for eons until we were all in our teens and got some more Space and kind of realized that we weren’t each others enemies and got closer and my dumb little brother was old enough to stop being a whiny binch and Owed me for helping him with math hw over the phone from 2 hrs drive away lol.....jk, sort of.....we did get along great eventually but then i left thanks to said abuse and us talking via twitter isn’t at all the same as us being able to talk in person :/

- also one thing that sometimes Strikes me is that when i’m like blandly recalling incidents of abuse like “oh yeah, that time” it bothers me less to think about stuff that happened to me specifically than to think about times it was Other people who were being treated that way. the latter was always equally or probably more upsetting and it always felt just as bad in the moment anyways, there was no major distinction in the Abuse In Progress experience if it was directed mostly on you than on other people

- all my life i’ve also been super stubborn which never helped and even Abuse MaGee would have to try to get creative with Disciplinary Systems and there was this golden “punishment” which was eat dinner in your room by yourself and i was like oh my god can i really. the horror of Family Dinner was like, this dark comedic farce playing out in that house for all our lives. christ. speaking of being stubborn this one time my sister cut my toe with a knife (half accidentally) because i refused to stop swinging my legs despite her holding the knife under the table lol and i also refused to tell on her b/c we were All In This Together (that is, Us vs The Abuser, which always took precedence over any internal conflict in our faction lol)

- always remembering how my “’”””””””defining”””””””””” trait was always getting good grades except the only reason i ever felt this pressure was the time my sister caught shit for getting a C, and i wasn’t even getting A - F letter grades yet and was already like jfc guess i can’t like....get a single C ever.....the joke is i’ve always been a godawful student who hates school, i just also managed to get great grades fairly easily, b/c of the devil probably. i’m sorry

- love to wonder what interests i might have been able to explore if i didn’t want to hide anything i was genuinely interested in and other True Thoughts And Feelings from my ‘rents. who knows!!! even now i’m not sure what i like and my vague ideas about it are all mostly In Theory and i don’t have any hopes and dreams b/c of never being able to really consider my own interests and desires and also because when every day of your life is basically spent in survival mode about everything else, that’s not really conducive to having dreams and ambitions. see also: like, being really poor

- The Weird Experience when only one of your parents is abusive and the other parent is also experiencing spousal abuse and so like, even though they’re your parent, you know that they don’t really have equal power as the abusive one because they too are being abused? it’s a complicated thing b/c that’s how every individual experience with abuse is (complicated). and so you’ve got this bizarre situation where maybe someone cares about you but they can’t really protect you from this other person. and like, my dad is crap and in some areas even a crappier person than my abusive mom and also i hate him, but i only hate him for certain things lmao not for being abused or some ways he tried to deal with it. i know what’s trash and what’s not

- the zany experience of No One Will Help You Ever.....lucky for me i eventually figured out on my own that what i’d been living with all the time had actually been abuse for real all along! and yet still i knew that like, there wasn’t much i could immediately do with that information because..........yknow, what do you actually do. i was basically already 18, so. and even if i hadnt been. there’s nothing to do for it!! just sucks to be you, basically. but an exception is that when one day i texted my friend to ask if i might be able to leave my house overnight and crash at their family’s place for a little bit, their parents immediately were like Yes Of Course and they let me stay there for a week and were very nice about all of it. between them and the nice trans lady who gave me some more Housing Assistance by letting me stay in her spare room for like, most of december.....my Allies. plus someone who talked to me via online once i bailed on my ‘rents! if they read this they know who they are and they have continued to be so kind and generous ugh love and appreciate you

- god just individual occasions of “THIS bullshit that i went through this one time” of especially ridiculous incidents.....i could go on for eons

- sort of tangentially related and related to the first point but ugh specific memories of Moments In Which It Continued To Be Revealed To Me That I, Individually, Was Prone To Being Kind Of Socially Ostracized.....like my ass started noticing that shit as soon as i was around other kids aka preschool aka 4 yrs old.......like i’m usually somewhat withdrawn and cautious and quiet in social situations especially what with the association that “misbehaving” = trauma exposure so, yknow, that might be a way that you’re pressured into just keeping to yourself and keeping your head down. but talk about “i don’t really relate to other people my age” lmao like i always preferred interacting with adults really while by and large dealing with the other kids felt like a challenge that i was never gonna actually come out on top of and i still remember individual Efforts i’d make to ~fit in~ and Participate that just fell flat or got me actively excluded....Ugh City........and it’s like, i could make a list of Social Traits i think i have that help make it difficult for people to be interested in interacting with me, or “contribute” to those joyous occasions when you get to sit back and take in the thinly veiled contempt directed at you by various shitheads, but like, even that’s not really the right way to explain it. its kind of more a Greater Than The Sum Of Its Weird Parts sorta combined experience where i guess i just have this kind of Negative Je Ne Sais Quoi that gets ya the social brushoff / rejection. c’est ce que c’est. the joke is i actually like people and socializing In Theory, i just usually don’t get to do it. shoutout to the advanced relatability of alana calling everyone Acquaintances b/c i literally did/do that lmao......like are we friends if we don’t talk all that often? it’s part on me cuz i’m crap at being the person to initiate conversation cuz too often i assume i’d be an annoyance and also b/c conversation with me is like, not great lmao but still......ce’st l’a v’ie

anyways (clip from that fuckin song where it’s like WHO CAN RELATE lmao.mp3)