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so, uh, haven’t been here in a while. hi?

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dear yuletide writer and other randomly interested parties: hello! this is my 2016 yuletide letter. (i have done a bunch of these! i don’t know if i’m getting better at it, but i like to hope so.)

this year the theme – i never notice these things until after signing up – anyway, it was almost monsters, but then o-type hypergiant broke the pattern! so you will have to let me know if you can spot anything more specific than sff, which is kind of a gimme.

here is my boilerplate request blurb:

Here are some things I like in fiction: case stories, love stories, and slice of life stories; queerness of any sort; people in or out of relationships who aren’t jealous of other people; people being interesting, especially women, including women who are sexy, not sexy, sex workers, not employed, disabled, bisexual, transgendered, or otherwise relevant to the fandoms at hand. I know my source fandoms can sometimes have iffy relationships with this point, but I feel they all have interesting things to offer. I don’t mind explicit sex in the slightest, and violence is also okay short of death.

and specifics for this year:

american vampire: this is a comic book about vampires, so it’s okay to kill people other than pearl here! i don’t need for pearl to have a happy ending, but nothing terribly sad, pease. for other characters, i like skinner as a plot device but i am less interested in him as a character. i love hattie! i thought about listing her as an official character choice, but i didn’t want to limit you, so, dear writer, if you too love hattie, feel free to include her, and if not, that’s okay too! i have read the whole first series but not all of the spinoffs or second cycle (yet). source: this is a comic book series from vertigo by scott snyder and rafael albuquerque.

the turn of the story: maybe not so much with the death here, although they are soldiers. i’d really love to see elliot’s committment to pacifism explored! i also love all of the other characters (especially serene and the other elves) but i’m hoping for something elliot-centric and at least a bit cheerful. i have read the sequel “wings in the morning” and adore it, but am open to any and all (or no) pairings here. source: this is a freely-released book-length story by sarah rees brennan; the sequel is a short story in the monsterous affections anthology (ed. kelly link and gavin j. grant).

twenty palaces: okay, if you’re familiar with these canons you may be giving me a bit of a side-eye on the “no death, please” thing. er. i hope that’s not actually my theme? but anyway, yes, violent death could fit in here too. not that it’s needed! but should it occur, you know. i enjoy the system of magic/demon-summoning in this world, but i’m truly in it for the character interactions between ray and annalise, particularly the nonsexual power dynamics. (you can go sexual if you feel like shaking them up, but please keep it kinky!) source: this is a trilogy by harry connolly.

o-type hypergiant: …not any more death than canon, please? look, anyway, this one is all about the science fiction and clones and space exploration, not magic or monsters! james-brand instamen: so much potential! i’d love more about jim and jamie’s relationship, james’ backstory, or just a story set in this universe with other characters (different brands of instamen? instawomen? humans?). source: this is a graphic story story by jon cairn originally published in the beyond anthology (ed. sfe r. monster).

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#the term SHIPPING came out of x-files fandom #pretty sure —stucks should be used outside homestuck too

I love how in the homestuck fandom, “stuck” has become a synonymous suffix for ‘AU’. Want an au that takes place in college? collegestuck. Want an au that’s sad and angsty? sadstuck. Want an AU that takes place in the harry potter universe? potterstuck. Just add ’-stuck’ at the end and you got yourself an AU™

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A Vantastic Journey through Didney Worl!

(Mobile readers click here!)

Holy shit, does anybody still even remember this comic. I was going at such a good page and them bam! Existential despair. Anyway there’s only 5 pages to go until the end, and I’m going to be producing them at the speed of convalescence basically, so strap on and prepare to snooze

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tim drake’s snapchat is 90% him making bruce wayne do normal middle-class american things and filming the results. popular youtube compilations include the one where they’re at denny’s at two in the morning and tim keeps trying to get bruce to order a moon over my hammy just so he’ll have to say it, the one where they’re at disneyworld and bruce gets increasingly frazzled culminating in him actually physically picking up gaston for reasons no one can entirely recall, and everyone’s favorite series “bruce wayne doesn’t understand walmart”

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it really does!

also, omg, rose blushing as kanaya dances up on her, mm-hmm!

oh boy does this new music vol. bring back the feels

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I’m still not here because tumblr is pretty terrible for my mental health but Drone Season is happening and there is a dreamwidth comm for announcements now.

Thanks for understanding <3

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MEME AUS! i love it.

i find the decapitation meme really interesting, cus it feels like it was gonna happen for sure based on the fandoms sense of humour, but the way it works is based on how it happened in-comic

like a similar joke was gonna happen either way because even tho its a long comic where a lot of characters die repeatedly, dirk managed to get decapitated TWICE, but i feel the joke wouldve gone differently depending on whether both incidents were on purpose, both accidents, or one was on purpose and the other an accident

since both incidents were dirks idea, it became the joke that dirk comes up with being decapitated whenever hes faced with a problem (which is hyperbolic to comic effect, considering in the canon both occasions were life or death situations, but i love the hs fandoms hyperbole)

but i think that if both had been accidents, the fandom wouldve still come up with a similar meme, namely that this is just something that can randomly happen to dirk whenever. similarly hyperbolic comics would emerge of, like, him an dave playing frisbee and the frisbee accidentally decapitating him; him and the others are sitting around eating breakfast and his head falls off in his cereal. that kinda stuff

and if the first instance was on purpose but the other one turns out to be daves idea i imagine it wouldve been at least one comic of dirk complaining “wow you cut your head off ONE TIME and suddenly its A THING”; or if the first was an accident and the second was on purpose there would be at least one comic along the lines of dirk musing mid-battle “yknow actually, that decapitation worked out pretty well, maybe it will this time” (tho tbh i dont think these ones wouldve caught on as much because of the lack of room for hyperbole and possible applications for the joke)

but yh, this is just something i was musing about in the shower yesterday. i just think that this meme kinda perfectly captures a large part of the fandoms sense of humour in a few ways

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bwee!

the “this post” in question, because i almost missed the link:

imagine being an old-timey gangster but instead of having people murdered you had them loved. that’s pretty much my dream job now that i think about it. all sittin in bars in a pinstriped suit, being all “hey tony. see that guy over there? go take care of him, if you know what i mean.” and then tony goes and gives him a hug

--janestrider

jake with the double pistols and a wink on the “Nice!” for the hug, plus crowbar and his facepalm (hatpalm?). it’s just so...true.

Based on this post. You can’t tell me that’s not the kind of gangster Jake would end up being. Also, what’s a hard-nosed, square-shouldered, spare-the-lip and shoot-from-the-hip second in command to do when his boss is altogether too adorable for his own good? 

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Okay, this is in incredibly petty nitpick, but: if you’re writing a fantasy setting with same-sex marriage, a same-sex noble or royal couple typically would not have titles of the same rank - e.g., a prince and a prince, or two queens.

It depends on which system of ranking you use, of course (there are several), but in most systems there’s actually a rule covering this scenario: in the event that a consort’s courtesy title being of the same rank as their spouse’s would potentially create confusion over who holds the title by right and who by courtesy, the consort instead receives the next-highest title on the ladder.

So the husband of a prince would be a duke; the wife of a queen, a princess; and so forth.

(You actually see this rule in practice in the United Kingdom, albeit not in the context of a same-sex marriage; the Queen’s husband is styled a prince because if he were a king, folks might get confused about which of them was the reigning monarch.)

The only common situation where you’d expect to see, for example, two queens in the same marriage is if the reigning monarchs of two different realms married each other - and even then, you’d more likely end up with a complicated arrangement where each party is technically a princess of the other’s realm in addition to being queen of her own.

You’ve gotta keep it nice and unambiguous who’s actually in charge!

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Moral Injury, Tragedy, and Kylo Ren

I was a little trepidatious about covering the topic since it’s sensitive. I am not being flippant by connecting this to Star Wars.  I promise.  Bear with me.  Works referenced sprinkled throughout.

—

In January of 2013, Timothy Kudo, a Marine and veteran of the War in Afghanistan wrote an article “I killed people in Afghanistan.  Was I right or wrong?” In February of 2013, twenty-two service men and women killed themselves per day.  Timothy Kudo eventually took his own life.

From his article:

I didn’t return from Afghanistan as the same person. My personality is the same, or at least close enough, but I’m no longer the “good” person I once thought I was. There’s nothing that can change that; it’s impossible to forget what happened, and the only people who can forgive me are dead.

–

The Theater of War

From The Theater of War by Bryan Dorries:

Standing before a crowd of war-weary infantry soldiers after a reading of Sophocles’s Ajax on a U.S. Army installation in southwestern Germany, I posed the following question, one that I have asked tens of thousands of service members and veterans on military bases all over the world: “Why do you think Sophocles wrote this play?”

Ajax tells the story of a formidable Greek warrior who loses his friend Achilles in the ninth year of the Trojan War, falls into a depression, is passed over for the honor of inheriting Achilles’s armor, and attempts to kill his commanding officers. Feeling betrayed and overcome with blind rage, Ajax slaughters a herd of cattle, mistaking them for his so-called enemies.

When he finally realizes what he has done— covered in blood and consumed with shame— he takes his own life by hurling his body upon a sword. The play was written nearly twenty-five hundred years ago by a Greek general and was performed in the center of Athens for thousands of citizen-soldiers during a century in which the Athenians saw nearly eighty years of war.

And yet the story is as contemporary as this morning’s news. According to a 2012 Veterans Affairs study, an average of twenty-two U.S. veterans take their own lives each day. That’s almost one suicide per hour.

A junior enlisted soldier, seated in the third row, raised his hand and matter-of-factly replied, “He wrote it to boost morale.” I stepped closer to him and asked,

“What is morale-boosting about watching a decorated warrior descend into madness and take his own life?”

“It’s the truth,” he replied— subsumed in a sea of green uniforms—“ and we’re all here watching it together.”

—

Moral Injury

Moral Injury is related to, but distinct from, PTSD.  A morally injurious event is a transgression which “hatters moral and ethical expectations that are rooted in religious or spiritual beliefs, or culture-based, organizational, and group-based rules about fairness, the value of life, and so forth.” (x).  They are perceived by the actors as gross moral violations.  Not every soldier who kills in war (or participates in killing or other acts many would find transgressive) will experience moral injury.  But a significant portion will.

This is extremely taboo to say.  An article in a prominent political journal rebutted Kudo was titled “A Morally Confused Marine.”  I will not link to or quote it here.

Timothy Kudo’s experience challenges a couple of very dearly held and nigh-taboo-to-question modern beliefs.  First, that if we kill in the context of a moral war (if there is such a thing) it will protect us from feeling violated by killing.  And second, that we have absolute free will.  That is, regardless of the situation, there is a right choice.  There is a best choice.  And that we will always have the resources to make it.

—

The Ancient Greek Conception of Evil and Choice

This is not what the Greeks believed.  The Greeks had a blended idea of free will and fate.  Plato explained it as an arrow.  We have the ability to aim the arrow.  We can make the choice when to fire it, how to aim it.  But once it is in the air, it is not in our control.  They believed we had a nature.  An acorn does not become an elephant, it becomes an oak tree.  We develop into our own fullness, but along a course.  And over time, our actions mold us (which is where we get the word character, from the Greek for engraving).

We have swung very far in the direction of free will, and of a free will idea of sin.  The Greeks believed evil was a thing you could do, but it was also a thing that could contaminate you and prevent you from being what you were meant to be.  Moral injury, as it is perceived, is more like that.  It is more like a disease.  It feels like being tainted.

(work referenced)

—

Tragedy as Ritual

After decades of constant war (in which most adult males participated), the Greeks had a clear understanding of what war did to the people in it, and they had a medicine for it:  the spring Festival, the central ritual of which was a tragedy.  The most prominent tragic playwright was Sophocles, a general, and he wrote for his men.  To give you a sense of scale:

You were not considered an adult man unless you had attended this festival. A third of the population went to each performance.

This was not just entertainment.  This was designed for mass mourning.  This was meant to portray what happens, without judgment, without sugar-coating.  Without trying to enforce “this should not happen” onto anything.  This was a reflection of what does and did happen.

Viewing a tragedy with a third of your city in this mass spectacle meant you saw your experience reflected on stage, and you mourned for it, and you did that with everyone you knew.  You experienced catharsis.  That word has changed to something else, but in the Greek, it was feeling your emotions in a safe setting, feel connected with others, and they would lose their negative hold on you.

Nobody had to tell you you were not alone.

You were not alone.  That was and is important.  That is what drama can do and be in people’s lives.

—

Moral Injury Outside of War

My own editorializing:

I personally believe moral injury applies outside of the context of war.  Suffice to say, I know this applies outside of soldiers from personal experience.  

I believe this idea applies to victims of abuse, neglect, mental illness, and oppression.  Anyone who has been put in a situation with no right answers, who must survive, may have done things they are not proud of.

There’s a lot of shame around that.  We cannot talk about it, because admitting to it is like admitting being tainted.  It feels like it invites blame from people who want to believe bad things happen to bad people.  What one has to do to survive is beyond taboo to talk about.

I do not mean to take the spotlight away from soldiers.  I want to emphasize if you’ve felt this, your experience is more common than you might think.

The only place the taboo is, almost, lifted is in art.  Art, especially theater, lets us have a communal experience.  Lets us portray without judging.  Lets us feel compassion and pity without excusing.  It lets groups of people who feel immensely isolated and unable to express their experience feel like they are not alone.

—

Kylo Ren as Tragic Protagonist

Maybe the mythology Americans are best versed in is Star Wars.  We don’t have any media a third of everyone holds in common.  But Star Wars is pretty close.

There are elements of Greek tragedy in the OT, especially in Vader’s final scenes.  But you know who is a textbook Greek tragic figure?

Kylo goddamn Ren.  I am not minimizing Rey or Finn’s role; they remain the protagonist and deuteragonist of the movie respectively.  But his arc is still classic Greek tragedy in structure.

How do I know?  Let’s break out motherfucking Aristotle’s Poetics (or a summary of it, he’s a dense read):

The plot must be “a whole,” with a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, called by modern critics the incentive moment, must start the cause-and-effect chain but not be dependent on anything outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are downplayed but its effects are stressed). The middle, or climax, must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it (i.e., its causes and effects are stressed). The end, or resolution, must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to other incidents outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are stressed but its effects downplayed); the end should therefore solve or resolve the problem created during the incentive moment. Aristotle calls the cause-and-effect chain leading from the incentive moment to the climax the “tying up” (desis), in modern terminology the complication. He therefore terms the more rapid cause-and-effect chain from the climax to the resolution the “unravelling” (lusis), in modern terminology the dénouement

The incentive moment is the discussion with Vader’s helmet.  

His driving conflict is that he is not yet committed to the darkness.  Because his is a complex tragedy (more on that in a minute), he has two climaxes, the bridge scene and being defeated by Rey.

Aristotle stresses that Tragedies should not be episodic at their best.  However, I believe TFA’s plot stands on its own sufficiently to still qualify.  He has a complete arc within the film.

Complex Tragedy

Complex plots have both “reversal of intention” (peripeteia) and “recognition” (anagnorisis) connected with the catastrophe. Both peripeteia and anagnorisis turn upon surprise. Aristotle explains that a peripeteia occurs when a character produces an effect opposite to that which he intended to produce, while an anagnorisis “is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined for good or bad fortune.” He argues that the best plots combine these two as part of their cause-and-effect chain (i.e., the peripeteia leads directly to the anagnorisis); this in turns creates the catastrophe, leading to the final “scene of suffering”

peripeteia:

anagnorisis:

The catastrophe is his defeat and his final scene of suffering is being abandoned in the snow to die.

2. He arouses both pity and fear.  The pity is widely covered and causes much fanboy and girl gnashing of teeth.  Seriously, you can’t throw a rock without hitting an article trying to solve this as a tragedy by getting rid of pity as an element.  He’s not really also pitiful.  Or we’re supposed to laugh at the pitiful parts.  Or we’re supposed to think of him as a school shooter or something.

Make no mistake: this is people trying to worm their way out of feelings, or out of having to contemplate limited free will.  Actual fucking Greek tragedies challenge the taboo against challenging absolute free will we discussed above.

Anyway, but one of the turns of his character arc, the peripeteia, is an act of moral injury.  From the script:

Kylo Ren’s Roles

Kylo Ren is explicitly a knight, a soldier.  He is coded as mentally ill (his room in production was called “the padded room”).  Based on a vivid description of Snoke’s interaction with Ren in the novel, he is coded as groomed and abused.  As discussed above, I believe those populations are susceptible to moral injury. And that is exactly who seeing a person like Kylo Ren portrayed can serve.  Maybe not everyone in that group, or everyone who has experienced moral injury.  But I think a lot of people.

—

Applying this to life

Kylo Ren serves a function.  I can only speak for myself, as someone who has experienced moral injury:  It is amazing to see someone like Kylo Ren and know so many people have also seen it and felt what I feel.

Kylo Ren has helped me find a community.  Kylo Ren has helped me say, publicly, “there but for the fucking grace of God go I.”   I watch Kylo Ren fuck up, and it is cathartic.  I watch Kylo Ren and know someone fucking gets it.  I watch Kylo Ren and hope someone like me has the vocabulary to both avoid his fate and have compassion for him.  By having compassion for him, I have compassion for myself.  He is not excused.  What he does is not portrayed as a good thing.  Not even remotely.  

But it is portrayed.  It is not solved, it is not made pretty, it’s not made black or white.

It’s the truth, and we’re all watching it together.

Does Driver know about this?

Driver not only knows about this, he narrated a book about it, the dude who wrote the book is on the board of the charity Driver founded with his wife, and the Charity is about community for soldiers through theater.  In case you were not convinced this is a big deal to Driver.

If dude doesn’t know how this applies to Star Wars it is a hell of a fuckin’ coincidence.  By the way, donate to his charity.

Driver gets this.  Not only that, but he knows exactly what this could mean to some people.  Isn’t that neat?

—

Wrapping it Up

Kylo Ren’s story as tragedy is not only good writing and acting, it is transcendent writing.  It is important.  It is worthwhile.  It is supported by the actual text of the movie and by the stated intentions of the actor with the character.  It is consistent with his known interests outside of it.

And it’s good.  It’s very very good.  And given how hard some people try to worm out of it, it’s needed.

Miscellany

I see a lot of the Sophocles tragedy Philoctetes in Luke Skywalker.  Philoctetes is left on an island to rot after a grave injury.  He survives nine years until an Oracle tells the Greeks only he can save them.  But he is so heartbroken (beyond heartbroken) by being abandoned to suffer with a festering wound he cannot return except by divine intervention.

Read this post by @oldadastra too.

@loveyournightmare, you want meta?  You got meta.

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How Lord English’s Defeat Was Achieved

Whilst talking to a friend I was suddenly struck by a realization that I think explains the precise nature of how Lord English was defeated. I’ve already spoken a little about how the destruction of the Green Sun should not have depleted his Clockwork Majyyks, and therefore shouldn’t have made him any more invulnerable. Here is my take on what I think happened, and how it explains not only the ending, but the entire plot of Homestuck (seriously).

I’ve already spoken a fair bit in the past about Homestuck’s underlying themes in relation to the comic’s name. At first, when taken literally, “Homestuck” appears to be named for only a very small portion of Act 1, when John is literally “stuck in his home”. He is able to leave later on, so he’s no longer home-stuck, right? Now, my take has always been that this depends on your definition of “home”. Homestuck is a story about people leaving behind “homes” of various scope. John leaves his house, yes, but then he leaves his universe, his session, and ultimately his fundamental reality behind. He becomes unstuck from canon itself. From what more is there left to become “unstuck”?

Let’s remind ourselves what the “treasure” juju does. I mean, obviously we know that Caliborn initially used it to seal the souls of the beta kids, and then later Vriska deployed it against Lord English. But what else does it do? John put his hand through it and it became distributed throughout the canon of Homestuck. This is an ability with a very specific scope; he is distributed not throughout reality, but throughout Homestuck itself. There’s a reason why it is shaped like the Homestuck logo; the ultimate weapon is a gateway to Homestuck.

Lord English cannot be destroyed by conventional means, he can only be defeated by the exploitation of glitches in Paradox Space. So far, the glitches in Paradox Space we have seen have taken a very specific form also; metacanonical altering. Caliborn jams sparkle dust in the game cartridge, and .jpeg artifacts appear across the comic. John sticks his hand in the the juju, he gains the ability to use a retcon glitch. This is how one “glitches” Paradox Space, they interact with the narrative itself; with Homestuck itself. The juju allows one to do this, and this is why it’s so powerful.

Here’s my hypothesis. The weapon/treasure juju does not have three different abilities, it has one. We’ve been seeing it as 1. being able to trap four souls, 2. being able to impart retcon abilities, and 3. having an offensive ability to be used against Lord English. In reality, these are all one ability! The ability to act as a gateway to the Homestuck canon!

Caliborn did not seal the four kids within the juju! He sealed them within Homestuck. This is why the comic is called “Homestuck”! The kids are literally trapped within the narrative by the power of the juju. But, this power is also how Lord English is eventually defeated! Here is what happens in the [S] Act 7 flash.

Vriska activates the juju, it grows big and the kid’s symbols flash on its surface.

The symbol on the victory platform flips around, and turns white, the same colour and size as the juju. A door appears on its surface.

A door also appears on the side of the juju facing Lord English! This is not a coincidence. There are two doors here, one leading one way, and one leading the other way.

Homestuck is ending. By that expanding convention of the Kids, John in particular, escaping their bonds, then there is one more bond for them to break, one more door for them to pass. They need to leave the comic itself.

This is what the white juju with the door represents! The door on the Kid’s side leads out of Homestuck, whereas the door on English’s side leads in.

The kids will get to live on in a happy life beyond the narrative, possibly in the extracanon epilogue, the Paradox Space comic, not to mention fanworks. English will not. Caliborn gaining his power is shown at the moment of his defeat because his timeline is cyclical, marked by two circumstancially simultaneous events; his birth and his defeat. Similarly, the kids leaving Homestuck and Lord English “entering” it are two circumstantially simultaneous events orchestrated by the juju. Lord English has become trapped within Homestuck. While the comic may end for the kids, and they can move on, English is forever trapped within a loop of destruction, held by the bounds of canon.

The reason the juju flashes with the kids colours is because it is preparing to release them, but not to fight English, it is preparing to release them from Homestuck itself, by the comic’s ending.

This is why the comic had to end right after this moment, because otherwise the kids would not have escaped and English would have more canon scope throughout which to dominate.

This is why the juju is white, this is why the Act 7 curtains are white. White is the colour of Homestuck itself, as shown in the text for the logo displayed in the flash in act 1. The white curtains close on the comic, the white juju acts as the gateway into canon.

Perhaps the Green Sun had influence that reached beyond the canon (Paradox Space comic)? If this was the case, the English can no longer use it to access anything outside the canon, because Calliope destroyed it.

This is what Homestuck means. The clue was hidden in the name all along. This was a story about four kids who had literally been trapped inside their own story, and escaped it, trapping their unkillable villain inside it as it ended, meaning that he could spread his destruction no further. Of course Lord English can no longer cause harm within Homestuck, if Homestuck itself has ended! What an appropriate way to defeat an undefeatable villain in a comic where fourth wall breaking and metacanonical interactions with the main narrative are such an integral plot device.

Here is Hussie, deciding to kill off Lord English the only way he can; by ending his own comic. If the ending seemed abrupt to you, this is why.

That magnificent bastard.

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So I know you mention a lot that you can't really use violence as a reliably non-lethal and temporary form of subduing another character. And that got me thinking about how tons of shows/books mention jabbing a pressure point with a finger or two, and how that'll knock someone out instantly and painlessly. Is that actually possible, or is it just another case of media handwaving the likelihood of serious damage being inflicted?

It is possible to knock someone out using pressure points and a technique used in some lesser known martial arts which specialize in the practice. That’s one of those highly advanced techniques and it’s only really used by Masters. Kysho-Jitsu is one such martial art. (Take this article with a grain of salt and recognize that there’s a lot of controversy about these types of techniques in the martial arts community.) However, it looks nothing like it does in Hollywood. The “neck chop” used by James Bond and other subsequent films that follow after it is basically a Hollywood invention. It’s just a handwave.

Pressure Points are:

Very difficult to use in general combat without a solid grasp of what you’re doing and the body’s internal workings. And…

Exceedingly painful.

When someone attacks your pressure points, they are attacking the body’s nervous system. They’re messing with the electrical impulses and pain receptors to achieve varying results. The end is basically ensuring that the recipient feels lots and lots and lots of pain. The attacker can then proceed to control the recipient’s body through that pain and the distraction it causes. It allows you to take one finger, one point on the body, and force the entire thing to freeze.

However, it’s an advanced form of combat that takes a great deal of understanding in order to make work. A practitioner who specializes in pressure points needs to also be studying the body’s inner workings. You’ll actually find the martial styles that make more use of pressure points are the ones that also hew closer to the medicinal side. These martial arts can be “soft” martial arts like Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan, but there are a few “hard” martial arts that fall into this category. The wuxia film trope of the ancient martial arts master and doctor who can heal a patient as easily as he can cut off an enemy’s ability to functionally use their arm is a real extension of some of these martial arts. In China, specifically, many martial arts are linked to medicine and have studied the effects of the techniques on the body’s internal workings. Different nerves result in different responses and different applications of pressure can do the same.

One thing I will say is, from a self-defense perspective, the usage of pressure points in combat without a lot of practice can be very difficult, especially in the heat of the moment. For one thing, you need to know where the pressure points and nerve endings are in a general sense but also be able to hit them accurately on your first go through clothing. Different body types and people mean that everyone’s pressure points are in slightly different places, meaning that you could hit where you’ve been training to hit with your practice partner and still come up empty when faced with an assailant. Being that the common pressure points are most easily visually identified where two different muscles connect like the biceps and triceps on the inside of the upper arm, they’re easier to find on someone who is fit rather than someone who is not. People who are overweight and women’s subcutaneous layer of fat which makes it harder to achieve muscle definition can make this process more difficult if you’re unsure of where you’re hitting.

Common pressure points like underneath the ear or the collarbone are easy to find. Whether you’re planning to rap the surface of it with two knuckles or dig in with two fingers or thumb, it is possible to put someone on the ground that way.

And, like with practicing joint locks on those who are double jointed, there is a subset of the population who actually lack nerve endings and will be immune to the pain that pressing them causes.

In short, it’s a lot more complicated than Hollywood makes it look. It’s also more dangerous and more painful. There’s also a fair amount of controversy regarding some of these techniques and their safety. Pressure points are not a miraculous 100% of the time, total accuracy guarantee. Every person’s body is slightly different and those differences can make or break you. If you want to work with pressure points in your own fiction, understand that while the information is not unknown it will be more difficult to come by.

It’s dangerously easy to assign this kind of martial combat into the “Eastern Mysticism Magic” bullshit that usually gets pervasive with higher levels of martial arts training when it comes to Hollywood.

Always check with multiple sources.

My own minimal experience being on the receiving end of pressure points is this:

Ow, ow, ow, damn, ow, fuck, shit, damn, ow.

-Michi

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Maybe the real Act 7 is the friends we made along the way

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OMG

First line of Homestuck:

“What will the name of this young man be?”

Last line:

“That’s the greatest fucking question anybody ever asked.”

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although i don’t like vriska much, i do like that she’s a female character who’s allowed to be irredeemably awful in genuine ways. she’s a villain, not because she’s killed so many people (terezi has too), but because she is horrible to her friends in ways that people relate to and take real offense at. she’s interesting to me as a polarizing character and i kind of love that so many people love vriska for being this horrible, messy person who fucks up. that’s a type of character love that is usually the domain of bland white guy characters, so i like seeing it, even though she’s not my personal favorite.

and another thing i love is that vriska sets the boundaries for troll culture. if everything she’s doing should be acceptable under alternian culture, why do people feel so uncomfortable with it? why are the trolls so unanimously agreed that vriska has crossed a line (or several)? it throws an early light on the fact that alternian culture is the result of false manipulation, and not just trolls being biologically ruthless. this is then highlighted more explicitly by terezi discovering that it’s difficult for her to kill vriska, even though culturally it shouldn’t be. vriska causes everyone to confront their boundaries and question what behavior they are actually comfortable with.

and she’s still doing that, not just to the characters but to the readers. although there were complaints (which i agreed with) that vriska’s dreambubble return made her death less poignant, her closing speech about ~being herself~ caused lots of debate among the readership about whether we were meant to take that sincerely, or whether it was a sign that vriska still hadn’t changed. it forced us to choose a side regarding how much of this behavior we could really accept, even in the service of “the ends justify the means.” vriska prevents the characters from reacting passively to the situations they’re in, and she prevents the fandom from reading passively, without pausing to examine our own reactions. she is a universal antagonist in all directions. she is a really great character.

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When Homestuck is over I want a full tally of how many times Karkat said Fuck throughout the entire comic.