elsafowl

[elsafowl]

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

[elsafowl]

[elsafowl]

The Matriarch Isn’t the Villain. She’s the Mirror

I often hear a discourse where Celine in K-pop Demon Hunters, Alma in Encanto and Ming in Turning Red are seen as vilains. They’re the ones who restricted the younger generation, hurt them, and are ultimately responsible for their pain, trauma and self-doubt. They’re framed as the real villains of the story. But I’d like to differ.

These are stories of intergenerational trauma. They are women who survived, repressed, and tried to protect their families the only way they knew how: through control, perfectionism, and emotional suppression.

And yet, when the next generation begins to reclaim joy, freedom, softness — they become the obstacle. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re scarred. Their minds cling to survival strategies, unable to recognize that the environment has changed.

Alma is still stuck fleeing the colonizers.

Ming is still afraid of her true self.

Celine believes that fear and mistakes must be hidden.

It’s not about hating these characters. It’s about how unprocessed trauma twists love into control. How survival, unexamined, turns into rigidity. These women were never given space to process their own pain and they project it onto their daughters and granddaughters.

And here’s something we rarely say enough: intergenerational trauma can create toxic patterns but that doesn’t always mean there was abuse or conscious harm. Even when their love becomes suffocating or controlling, these women are not necessarily “abusive parents.” They are daughters of silence, fear, and sacrifice. And they were never taught another way. It’s important to make that distinction, especially in a world that often pushes a binary, punitive reading of family dynamics.

They’re the product of a generation that was told to endure. But endurance without healing becomes its own kind of violence.

What’s powerful in these stories is that they don’t end in vengeance. They end in confrontation and transformation. The confrontation is necessary: the younger generation refuses the silence. Refuses the shame. Refuses to carry a burden that wasn’t theirs to begin with.

The house is destroyed in Encanto.

Mei accepts her full self.

So does Rumi.

And in the best cases, this confrontation allows the elder to soften too. Alma opens up. Ming listens. And I’m hoping in the sequel, Celine will open too.

Maybe that’s also why these stories speak so deeply to POC audiences. These aren’t stories about cutting ties. They’re stories about how hard it is to transform them, to protect ancestral bonds while refusing to perpetuate inherited pain. In many racialized families, collectivity, loyalty, and intergenerational duty are sacred... even when they come at the cost of personal boundaries.

And sometimes, Western individualist frameworks read these tensions as dysfunction or villainy. But for us, they’re just the difficult truth of growing up and trying to do better.

These women aren’t villains. That would be too easy. They embody the fragile, necessary work of bringing change without breaking the thread. These stories are about refusing to inherit their pain without reflection. Because love, without accountability, is not enough.

These stories show us that each generation has something to learn from the next. And the new generation must also break free from the chains they inherited while preserving what is meaningfull.

But it’s not just their story.

One day, we’ll be the older generation.

And we’ll need to be humble enough to learn from the ones after us.

So don’t be a fool.

We may be Mei, Rumi, or Mirabel today.

But tomorrow, we could be Ming, Celine, or Alma.

And when that time comes, we’ll realize how hard it is to unlearn what once kept us safe.

So let’s have compassion for all these characters.

Because these stories show us not just how the cycle of generations works, but how it can make us better, stronger, and more connected... if we’re all willing to go through the change.

∘₊✧──────✧──────✧₊∘

If you’re curious, I’ve written more on K-pop Demon Hunters:

A post on the mental health themes woven through the songs — right here.

A breakdown of Celine-Rumi in comparaison to Gothel–Rapunzel dynamic — here.

An analysis about Rumi, Jinu, and the danger of sinking together — here.

Some book recs for each of the K-pop Demon Hunters characters — here.

[elsafowl]

being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?

[elsafowl]

WENCLAIR + Wednesday: A Novelization of Season One (part one) insp

[elsafowl]

WENCLAIR + Wednesday: A Novelization of Season One (part two) insp

[elsafowl]

Guillermo Del Toro on AI "art"

SDCC 2025: Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art

[elsafowl]

Okay just finished watching The Hunting Wives on Netflix, never imagined this show to be as chaotic and funny as it got, but I'm seeing multiple people saying it's "trash" and "full of plot holes" and "campy" and such??? I mean, I'm not a murder mystery specialist and I did watch the season in almost one sitting, so I probably missed a lot, but could someone tell me what's so bad about this show??? 👀

[elsafowl]

An aspect of The Hunting Wives show that is interesting to me is how quickly the protagonist, a white liberal (closeted) queer woman, assimilates into white conservative high society and values with only a token protest. She's alarmed at first about the NRA fundraiser but within no time at all she's joining hunts and has purchased her own gun; she tells her husband's boss his political speech was racist but flash forward and she's in the "in crowd" of the Hunting Wives who support those views and she's giving Margo advice to help her against political dirt digging. If it hadn't been for the murder charge she'd probably have kept right on jamming in her new environment, not speaking up, fitting in, driven by her desperation for connection and acceptance. To be clear this is a narrative feature, not a bug; it's what enables the story to happen. The show is full of messy, hypocritical, awful people, and that's part of what makes it popcorn-worthy. It's just. Wow, girl, that happened fast. You can cite all the factors that nudged her along but the theme of assimilation when it benefits her is the same.

[elsafowl]

There has been a crazy amount of fear-mongering about the age of first time moms getting older and older and how moms 40+ were the only demographic of women where the fertility rate rose, making it the first time in history that there are more women 40+ having children than teen pregnancies. The right is spinning this as being indicative of modern women being selfish and sewing in rhetoric about how a woman’s eggs dry up and blow away the moment she hits 30.

What is interesting is that they never mention the average age for a first time mom is 27 and the average age for a first time dad is 31. We are seeing dudes who are 50 saying “I’m not ready to settle down and start a family, I’m going to do that someday but I’m still out here seeing my wild oats.” My dad is 55 and several of his friends have had kids in the past 5 years. They’re angry at girls and women for not popping out babies the moment they start menstruating but not at men for deciding to start a family when they are GERIATRIC!

Maybe the birth rate would be higher if it was easier to find a good life partner and start a family sooner. Maybe it would be higher if there were less men dicking around for 50+ years and deciding to start a family only when they’re on the precipice of entering a nursing home, at which time their female peers have gone through menopause and the 20 something girls they chase don’t want them. It is always the fault of women when it comes to matters of reproductive health. It is their fault if they become a single mother. It is their fault if they don’t get to start a family until they’re 40+. It is their fault if they choose to be child free because of the state of the world and the amount of trust it requires to have a child with someone.

Why are grandpa-dads something we’re expected to turn a blind eye to and women over 40 having their first baby something we’re supposed to be angry at?

[elsafowl]

Can we include darebee.com with ao3 and wikipedia on our list of really good nonprofits with excellent services that we stan?

It's a free, no sign-up, no ads fitness resource created by professionals who view this as activism (fitness should be accessible to everyone), and it's very thoughtful and thorough.

Features I really like:

- all instructions for workout routines are diagrammed on single pages with a clean, easy to read layout

- there's 30 or 60 day programs you can follow if you, like me, don't know what to do. they take you through a rotation of workouts so you're working different muscle groups on different day for a specific purpose

- there's so much variety and there's a filter so you can find the level and your goals and type of workout you wanna do

- you don't need any equipment

- some of the programs are RPGs or adventure stories! How's that for motivation. There's also badges and achievements or something but I haven't looked that closely at how that works yet

- they're nerds. they name workouts after D&D classes. There's a Lannistrr workout, a batcave workout, a witcher workout

- I've only scratched the surface

I'm doing this really easy one to start out

[elsafowl]

What really ticks me off when talking about ai is when people are like "it's unavoidable" or "you'll have to learn to use it someday" or "its going to be part of the future" like no it's plenty avoidable actually if you have a spine stronger than a dandelion. You simply say "no" and continue to use your own goddamn brain.

[elsafowl]

Which path should he choose?

The path of the warrior, the path of the scholar, or the path of the artist?

[elsafowl]

Reblog to give prev the power to write their fanfiction

[elsafowl]

ideal living situation is what i call the 'sitcom special' : having all your closest friends live in the same apartment building or neighborhood where you each have your own space but can wander in and out of eachothers homes at will, seemingly always welcome and never at bad times. and also all of you only have jobs when its important to the plot.

[elsafowl]

I previously posted this on twitter but for all the smart people who don't have that hellish app, here's an entirely too long analysis on how Kleya and Dedra are mirrored characters and foils to one another

Both Kleya and Dedra are orphans. They had their families and innocence ripped away from them as children at the hands of the Empire, or, if we want to be more specific taking into consideration Dedra's age, at the ends of a government that rules via violence and repression.

Kleya's family and people are massacred and she is raised by one of the men responsible for said massacre. Dedra's parents are arrested and she is raised in a kinder block, an apparatus that works in tandem with the one that took her family away from her.

Dedra is 3 years old when she is taken away from her parents. At such a tender age, she has no recollection of her prior life, which means she completely interiorizes the Empire's values she's exposed to. Kleya is 11-12, old enough to remember exactly what was taken from her, to know it was an atrocity, and to hate who did it.

Dedra has no sense of self outside of the system that phagocytized her. She becomes the Empire. Its rules and structure are home to her. She finds affirmation in becoming the oppressive force that tears families apart, so she dedicates her life to enforcing that chokehold.

Kleya, too, was shaped by what was done to her, but she becomes the Cause. Her life is in service of freeing the galaxy from the Evil that took everything from her, of making sure no one else will ever have to experience what she did. Most importantly, it's her own choice.

The Empire wants the homogenization of its subjects, and Dedra embodies the Empire, but here is the hypocrisy and brilliance of her character: she is selfish. She is ambitious, ignores orders to seek personal glory. Dedra works in service to the system, cannot imagine anything outside it, but within the system she exists in, she wants to emerge as DEDRA.

Kleya fights for the freedom and individuality of every being in the galaxy but she has stripped herself of any individual hopes/desires. Her own self does not matter to her, to the point that in 211 she doesn't get why Cassian wants to save HER instead of just caring about the intel. 

Even the fact that Dedra dates Syril shows this Selfish/Selfless dichotomy. Having a partner is, broadly speaking, a self-indulgent choice. It's an exclusive bond between yourself as an individual and another person, and Dedra gets herself a boyfriend who is like a pet that will do everything she wants. Kleya instead sacrifices everything to the altar of the Cause. She deprives herself of love or friendship or meaningful connections, she doesn't even entertain the possibility of seeking something for herself. 

And speaking about that, both Kleya and Dedra are extremely controlled, contained, emotionally guarded characters. The rigidity in their physicality reflects the need they both have to maintain control at all times, because vulnerability scares them.

They both grew up without tenderness or affection. Dedra understands love only through a lens of control and power. Kleya wills herself not to feel love at all.

It's very boring to me when people interpret Dedra and Syril's relationship as "she never cared about him, she only ever manipulated him because she is EVIL". That is so two-dimensional and not at all accurate. Yes, she is evil, she is a fucking monster. But also, from her perspective, Dedra does love Syril. We see it in the way she steps up to Eedy to defend him, when his happiness after the meeting with Partagaz causes her happiness. But that's the beauty and tragedy of it, and why she is such an amazing villain. Her understanding of love is completely warped. To her, love is all about ownership and control. But love is the opposite of ownership. True love is selfless, and it is freeing, and Dedra is terrified of freedom. She is someone who wants to love, but never can. Not really. Because control isn't love.

On the other hand, Kleya is someone who very much does not want to love. She wants to be as cold and unfeeling as she can because that will make her free from any vulnerability and she will better serve the Cause. But underneath that armor, she loves immensely. Kleya wants to be heartless, but love spills out of her.

They both have nervous tics that manifest when the control they desperately need is slipping from them. By definition, a nervous tic is something that can't be controlled. This crack in their armor reveals itself literally through a betrayal by their bodies.

Dedra in particular literally needs the dark to be vulnerable. She needs Syril to turn out the lights to have sex. She lets herself sob in Narkina only after the lights go off. Everything that reminds her that she is human is something to hide, something to be ashamed of.

Both have a mentor in Luthen and Partagaz. Dedra spends years trying to impress Partagaz only for him to make no qualms about casting her aside after the Axis fiasco. Kleya wants to hate Luthen, she refuses to consider him a father, yet she cannot help but love him, and when the time comes, Luthen gives up his life to save her. One is a bond of opportunism, the other is a bond of love.

And this is where it shows why they're such perfect mirrors as villain and hero. Dedra spends her whole life in service of a system that rejects her and spits her out. Kleya is ready to be tossed aside, but is instead offered love and kindness, by people she oftentimes had a hand in hurting. She is reminded that her life matters.

This show is SO intentional when it comes to its transitions. In the final montage of the show, Dedra and Kleya's ends are shown back to back, and I don't think it's a coincidence at all. 

Dedra ends up in prison bc of a chain reaction that started with her inability to let go of Axis. She disregarded all protocol in her obsession to catch him. And once she found Luthen, her arrogance led her to face him. She didn't just want to neutralize a threat to the Empire. She NEEDED him to know that SHE beat him. Except, she didn't.

Because Luthen wasn't Axis. Or at the very least, it wasn't just him. Kleya is the Axis Dedra never found, the one she never even knew existed until it was too late. Back in season 1, she tortured Salman Paak and he revealed that a woman had approached him and convinced him to hide the fractal radio in his backyard. That woman was most definitely Kleya. But Dedra, so meticulous with every other bit of information, didn't focus much on it. Her obsession with Axis blinded her. In her hubris, she let the most important piece slip through her fingers. She destroyed her own life for nothing.

Look at their final scenes. Kleya steps into the sunrise, sees the community she doesn't quite feel part of but that she helped create, a community that welcomes her. And she smiles. Dedra, alone and forgotten in the dark, is consumed by misery and despair, in a place that values its prisoners less than droids.

They both essentially started out in a box. Kleya in the metal compartment on Luthen's ship, Dedra in the kinder block. Kleya ends her journey out in the open, surrounded by light and life. Dedra ends her journey back where she started - in a sterile, lifeless box.

Dedra's ultimate personal defeat wasn't the leak of the Death Star information. That's a defeat for the Empire. Dedra's goal was to win against Axis. And she doesn't. She loses. Because Kleya gets to live.

[elsafowl]

FINALLY got around to dumping Spotify after their CEO continued to prove he's a fresh turd. (As if being a billionaire, not paying musicians, shoving AI garbage at us, and having an atrocious carbon footprint wasn't bad enough, he's now the chair of a AI-based weapons manufacturing company.)

I used TuneMyMusic ($24 annual fee you can cancel immediately, effectively paying only once) to transfer almost every single song from our Spotify account to Tidal. Tidal already has much better sound quality and they pay their artists much better. It migrated over 99% of our music, too, so there wasn't a huge loss.