#I HOPE YOU LIKE AN ESSAY I'M SORRY

[metalforhands]

this probably seems like a stupid question but about that post about danse, does he really canonically fall in love with sole before blind betrayal? i never really put an official marker on when it happens but i'd like to see your take on it and also maybe what the character implications are for him and sole that you mentioned

omg hi!! it's not stupid at all! i'm more than happy to delve into danse's voice lines again. i’m in a danse mood and it's been a while >:)

fallout 4, at its core, is heavily reliant on the choices the player makes. so there are different timelines. in some timelines, sole and danse don’t meet at all. in some timelines, danse’s relationship with sole is strictly platonic. in some timelines (ie the timelines where sole fails their charisma checks when flirting with danse) he does not show signs of liking sole early on. you get my point. it’s worth noting this is how it works with the other romanceable companions as well.

however, if you pass all of those charisma checks for the romance options, he does (imo) show signs of being flustered and having feelings for sole before blind betrayal. for the rest of this post, i will be talking about this specific timeline. 

and of course, this is just my own opinion, and it has been a while since i’ve typed up fo4 meta, so i very well may be missing something. with that in mind, onwards!

let’s talk canon first. here’s some lines from his second affinity conversation.

{player flirted with you unexpectedly (positive response) / Surprised} I... I didn't know you felt that strongly about our... well, about us.

[player had just flirted with you / Apologetic} I'm sorry if I seem... confused. You've certainly given me something to think about.

danse’s feelings more than likely kick off around here. this conversation is interesting - for context, it’s the one about cutler. it’s at this point that danse finally opens up to someone, and admits that he considers sole to be as close to him as cutler was. so, when sole flirts with him, danse (who does respond positively) becomes flustered, and mentions that it’s “something to think about”.

knowing him, he probably did, in fact, Think About It.

then his third affinity conversation:

{Flirting} It's comforting to know that I can speak to you as more than just your commanding officer.

the above is said independent of sole flirting with him, and it does have the “flirting” marker in the files. just something interesting worth mentioning. okay, continuing on.

{Surprised the Player has flirted with you / Surprised} I.. I don't know. I never thought you'd ask me something like that.

{Surprised the Player has flirted with you / Surprised} It would depend... on the circumstances, but I suppose we'll just have to see what happens when the time comes.

danse acting shocked sole is showing interest in him is a reoccurring trend we’ll be seeing often. it’s a self worth thing. danse’s lack of self worth is something that seeps into every aspect of his character, and it only worsens when he finds out he’s a synth. but that’s besides the point.

for context, this is the conversation about danse’s lack of confidence in his abilities, and the situation involving haylen. sole is asking if he’d be willing to hold them if they ever needed it. 

and danse does try to flirt back here. in his uh. own special way.

i think danse being noticeably flustered in these conversations, and even entertaining any of this to begin with, is evidence enough that he’s like. pretty into sole before blind betrayal. danse isn’t a flirt. he isn’t a philanderer. he takes his role in the brotherhood seriously. it’s like, his whole sense of purpose. he would quickly shut down anything that could jeopardize that... like, for instance, a romantic relationship with his subordinate.

like, even during his romanced post blind betrayal dialogue, he says this:

We can't let our relationship interfere with our work. It just wouldn't be right.

if these are his thoughts when they’re dating, and not even in the bos together anymore, imagine how he’d feel when he was still their co?

and like, danse is danse. he’s not very expressive or well spoken about his feelings. so again, the fact that danse of all people is acting flustered and entertaining anything (ie not shutting down sole’s flirting) pre blind betrayal says a lot.

now onto my own thoughts.

i really like how the game sets this up. danse doesn’t sponsor sole with any ulterior, romantic motives. he genuinely believes in their abilities as a soldier. it’s only until they become close friends that he starts showing signs of liking them.

and this is why sole not being able to romance danse until after blind betrayal, and after he is no longer their commanding officer, is very notable to me as well. i feel if they confessed to him before blind betrayal, he would.. probably turn them down, even if he had feelings for them. that’s just the kind of guy he is. it’s not really the best time, and i feel he wouldn’t want that kind of inappropriate power imbalance. if blind betrayal never happened, i feel he would wait until they were of equal rank, or until the bos’ job in the commonwealth was finished.

additionally, sole not being able to romance danse also implies they’re not willing to make a serious move outside of harmless flirting. not until danse is out of the bos, anyways. so take that as you will.

now onto post blind betrayal thoughts. 

i feel that, in this timeline, while danse did have feelings for sole during blind betrayal, he was also literally suicidal. it was not the time to be thinking about romance; he had more... pressing issues at hand. if anything, i feel like his feelings would only strengthen his self loathing at this point.

this is semi confirmed during his final affinity conversation:

{feelings confused / Surprised} Are you saying you're... in love with me?

{feelings confused / Puzzled} This doesn't make any sense. After everything the Brotherhood taught you, how could you be in love with... well, a machine?

Player Default: You're not a machine, Danse. In fact, you're more human than most people could ever hope to be.

as mentioned by the little note for his voice actor, danse is very, very confused post blind betrayal. he’s all but given up on the thought of sole having any interest in him, let alone interest in being his friend. so when sole outright confesses their feelings, he is baffled.

further supported in another one of his romanced lowered affinity conversations:

{Concerned} When you revealed how you felt about me, I have to admit... I was caught off guard.

{Concerned} Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I wasn't pleased to hear it. I just never had anyone profess their feelings towards me that way.

so in conclusion, i feel there is evidence for danse having feelings for sole before blind betrayal, and i feel blind betrayal itself was so life shattering and insane that it kinda threw a bomb at their whole situation.

my own personal way of handling danse post blind betrayal is waiting a bit before romancing him. i feel danse needs some time before entering a relationship, and i feel the dynamic between him and sole at this point would just be really angsty mutual pining LMFAO.

but yeah! i hope this was fun to read at least, because i had a lot of fun writing it! thank you again for the ask and feel free to ask for clarification on any of this! danse post blind betrayal is a whole other essay of its own, so i tried to stick to pre blind betrayal! ;D

[dailyfigures]

Thinking about finally adding a Miku figure to my collection and I’m looking for recommendations on good ones that aren’t too hard to find these days.

A few criteria:

I only buy scales, not interested in prize/nendo/etc (prefer 1/7 but I’m okay with other sizes)

Love super cute outfits and hair styles

Hate super large bases for figures

Do you have any suggestions?

congrats on your mikufication! it's a little difficult to confidently recommend mikus since i get almost all my figures secondhand (so less readily available) and the ones i don't own i can only judge on visuals (which is ofcourse a matter of taste) and not quality. i'll still share some of my favourite mikus and hopefully you can get some inspo! :)

my favourite 1/7 mikus i own are trick or miku, heart hunter, vintage dress, digital stars 2020 (base is kinda big tho, takes up half a detolf shelf) and lam rock singer. of those only trick or miku and lam rock singer are readily available on popular figure sites.

my favourite 1/8 mikus i own are 2014 racing miku, 2016 racing miku and harvest moon.

some cute recent releases/preorders are NT style casual wear (1/6 scale), 39's special day, symphony 2022, racing 2010, racing 2021 private, 15th anniversary, maneki neko and 16th birthday. all of these should either be available for preorder or should be available soon when they release.

some cute ones that are a bit older are shaohua, hanairogoromo, the first dream, sakura fairy, 10th anniversary, birthday 2021, memorial dress, with solwa, racing 2019 and tony haregi. you might still be able to find a few of these still available on popular figure sites but you'd probably have to find them secondhand. the myfigurecollection comment sections can help with that.

please note that i don't own any of the figures in the last two categories so i can't judge the quality, the mfc comment section can also help with that! i hope any of this is useful for you!!!

[ask-the-bone-boys]

[[ok gang i am genuinely so sorry to be doing this literally RIGHT before the end of the event but i've got a whole buncha stuff lining up irl that i am starting to reeeaaally need to address/prioritize and there are a couple things that i still want to do for the "finale" here that i haven't had the time to set up, so all of this is to say iiii need to take at least a day or two to Slow Down And Chill for a bit

I haven't entirely decided if this means I'll take a full break like i have been for the weekends or if I'll just post a little less than I have been, it depends on how I end up feeling really. I will absolutely try my best to make up for the days I've missed tho! I have something pretty cool planned that I think has the potential to be pretty fun, just like i said I gotta set things in place first haha]]

[paellegere]

hey girlie it’s me, sam winchesters gay lover, your mootie 🥰🥰🥰 i just wanted to let you know, that your tags on the post about that wincest video are based and i agree with every word, hashtag slay couldn’t agree more i loved reading your essay in those tags heart ❤️

omg thank you!!! i'm basically only capable of talking in essays whether people want me to or not, unfortunately

i just have a lot of feelings on this topic and the whole "canon or not canon" argument is weird to me; the themes are pretty darn clear in supernatural (it is NOT known for its subtlety) so idk man. they don't have to kiss to be canon. and they don't have to have a romantic relationship to be canon either. how many times do they get into relationships with other people only for it to be treated as cheating/betrayal/abandonment, only for them have to give up that relationship in order to reaffirm their devotion to their brother

that's just what the text says. i'm not under any kind of delusion that they have some secret sexual or romantic relationship, but that doesn't change that sam and dean are each other's most important person regardless of that. which is really awesome imo, that romance isn't treated as more important than whatever horrible thing they have with each other, and that they don't have to consummate their relationship with romance/sex in order for it to be the most important one they have

(and of course there's romantic/sexual subtext, like parallels and metaphors and misunderstandings and jokes, but to me that just provides a solid foundation for presenting this relationship between them as the most important even though it's not romantic or sexual—because this language of romance is the only one we know, really, when it comes to writing important relationships between characters. it's the only one we know in our own personal lives, to a large extent. so you use the romance/sexuality to symbolize the actual bond they have. which is so much worse lmao)

anyway i think spn is fairly unique in this way because of how no other relationships can really ever stand parallel to the one they share; even in other shows that center male friendship, romance is allowed to coexist with brotherhood. for sam and dean, it's not, and that becomes a point of tension and conflict and resolution many, many times over the course of the show. so like yeah!!! just because it's not romantic or sexual doesn't mean it's not canon, in the sense that their relationship is the point of the show, and it is the most important relationship they have. they chose each other above all else, every single time. yknow, it's "the epic love story of sam and dean" and all that

[nyaskitten]

wu ninjago... I love you...

[misclogarts]

asian parents will literally do everything except get their kid therapy (devotion 2019)

[sneez]

fairfax in 70s clothes because i think seventeenth-century men would love flares and incredibly loud shirts and questionable woollen tank tops. i don't have a better explanation than that i am afraid

[fantasticalleigh]

seeing so many videos on YT lately that are like “I read this dark romance book and i’m calling the police” or some condescending put-down derivative

babe if it’s not for you then put it down and find something new to read nobody wants an hour-long video of you yucking someone’s yum

[drawnecromancy]

amecareth is a monsterfucker? context? <3

OH god the context for that one is a series of fantasy books written in french by Anne Robillard, Les Chevaliers d'Emeraude (the Knights of Emerald in english, the 12 book series has been translated in english (!!rare thing to have happen) and is available as ebooks on her website but I don't really recommend them).

I'm going to put a content warning here for rape even though I'm not going to go into graphic detail.

The Big Bad Evil Guy, Emperor Amecareth of the Tanieth, has a hobby called "raping non-Tanieth people to have hybrid kids and have them learn magic and have a gaggle of superpowered evil kids to take over the world".

I think the Tanieth are meant to be beetle-humanoids ? But their home was once compared to an anthill so they're just ant guys in my brain. Little funny ants who are super tall and will kill you.

The manner in which Amecareth is written is very "he's evil and he rapes people for shock value, with 0 care attached to those kinds of storylines", and rape is rarely a subject I enjoy writing about, so I was just... writing a fanfic where he really is just the Tanieth equivalent of a monsterfucker, and doesn't rape people. Also he's the Tanieth equivalent of a very lost 20 year old in that fic.

I think he could be an immensely interesting character while still being an evil imperialist motherfucker (literally) without the need to go "yeah he's a rapist to tell you he's evil in a Shock Anecdote !"

But that would just loop back to my general gripes with Anne Robillard's writing - I think there's often very little care or substance on whatever she's writing/implying at any given moment. Amecareth being a rapist could be a useful character bit in the hands of another writer. I don't want to write that, as I don't think I have the skill to do so currently, so I'm chucking it out in the waste bin.

Now, realizing that political alliances with all sorts of human and non-human people is SUPER USEFUL if you HAVE KIDS WITH THEM ? and THEN using these kids as a way to give more power to your evil empire ? THAT's what I want to write about, and that's pretty much what "Amecareth is a monsterfucker" is about, if we add onto that first love and getting his ass handed to him.

A brief summary of the fic would be :

"Amecareth gets thrown out of his home by his father the emperor of the Tanieth for being too ambitious for his own good, and is told to go invade a southern continent about it on his own if he's THAT smart. Once there, Amecareth begins studying the people living there, finds love, war, and death in rapid succession.

This is the story that led to Enkidiev's First War against the Tanieth."

[miiuusagi]

@goldenlaquer HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! ❤️

[flockrest]

Hi, another lurking anon. I kept re-reading "Cooking is Communal" post- sorry if that's not the title. I was very curious on your views of Revali's lonely nature (his personality). He feels somewhat abstract to the rito culture...? Or I might be reading into it too much.. And based on the AU- where he is brought back to life, would Tulin try to look for a way to break that lonely aspect of his? I would ask more? But I do not want to overlwhelm. But thank you so much for the posts you do about the Ritos though, its always an enjoyable experience and makes me think a bit more.

hi, welcome! no need to apologise for anything, very glad the post ( which can be called anything you see fit ) resonated with you to a point where you'd follow up on it! and oh boy. you are not reading too much into it, i have A Lot to say about revali and whatever the heck he's got going on with him and his Issues — of which his loneliness is a huge part of — and how that interplays with his people's culture and his love for them as a whole.

just to preface before we get into it: thank you lots for sending this in and for your kind words!! genuinely, it makes me beyond happy to know that my rambling is appreciated ♡ don't be afraid to ask me more if you'd like, i promise you won't overwhelm me because i'm a verified sucker for discussing meta in-depth!

i touched on this in the tags of the mentioned post but to me, pre-calamity revali does come across as someone who denies a lot of things ( very evident ingame ) and also denies himself of a lot of things — especially when it comes to anything that could be significant interpersonally! there's very clear implications that he's been lonely, if not completely alone, for a great bulk of his life; there are even clearer walls he's built up to cope with this and ensure that nobody can ever see or acknowledge this.

to paraphrase some old disco ramblings: he feels like someone who clings so damn hard onto this image he's carefully crafted for himself to present to others — presented for so long that it's not just a second skin so much as it is something deeply embedded — so that nobody can possibly suspect he is in any way lacking. not in skills, or grit, or the ability to be anything but most especially a champion.

or, you know, in any meaningful company at all.

and he just doesn't have the resources, emotionally or otherwise, to really let any of that peek through? he is so vehemently against this idea that he is not enough for anyone, including himself — admitting that he's lacking in any sense aligns with that. there's this line from when i was still testing him out that still stands out to me because i think it really just captures him in this context nicely:

Revali was born chosen by no one. He learnt, very quickly, to choose himself. And now, here he is.

we will never know for sure what his early life was like! but given the hints, there like. had to be a point where he accepted all the hurts of being alone, where he stopped earnestly trying to seek company and approval and being wanted from/by others because the only constant he had was himself. all he needs, an idea that forms at an early age and follows him into older youth, is himself — he can't be unreliable, he can't be conditional.

i think by that time, his seeking turns into something more like ensuring, if i'm making sense? like i don't doubt he's always strived for neverending self-improvement — half-out of a legitimate want to be better and half-out of a desire for attention — but now he's determined to make a name for himself, to make anything for himself, so that nobody can ever skip their gaze over him again. this isn't look at me, this is don't ever look away.

so he just. won't seriously admit to himself that he wants anything more from anyone pre-botw, which constrains any effort — from others or himself — to get closer, and like...be real with each other. to form an actual relationship. he still feels these desires, he just refuses to acknowledge them and it makes me want to shake him in a jar!! self-isolation at its finest! he puts up grandiose airs and all this pomp, because who else can he trust to do it for him! who else can he trust to see his "real worth", even as that's exactly what he's trying to get others to do! this guy is not okay!!

and! regarding rito village and their culture back then: i don't think it deviates from what i currently have in mind for them, but pre-calamity rito village feels like...it is not the same as post-calamity rito village. i think their flock was definitely bigger in that there were more people present and settled in those peaks in revali's era ( compared to both dineli's or tulin's ), so while core values and teachings remain unchanged, the sense of community does not.

it's always intense, but like. post-calamity rito village had to deal with the severe loss and trauma that calamity ganon wrought with him, which tinges their emphasis on togetherness with a touch of this is essential to our survival ( which may actually be a repeat of what happened with dineli's flock, mid- and post-the imprisoning war ). when revali was born, i feel like the community was much like a rural town with the ties the villagers had with each other; when he died, it was more like a covert — in that the world is suddenly way smaller and everybody is connected to everybody for their own preservation. and this is carried on to future generations, a lasting idea of flocking together is above all a priority, even for their travellers who leave the village behind for extended periods of time. i. honestly think this might count as intergenerational trauma?

( seriously, they are not a long-lived folk, yet the calamity has left such an indelible mark on them?? i'm so emo about how revali did not ask for a memorial, he asked for the flight range because it would be useful for him in the present and also for his people in the future, but they gave him this tragic permanency anyway. it's not a celebration of what he did, it's a commemoration to what he couldn't do; saki literally says, of revali's landing, "so named in the hope that none might forget the events of that horrible day". what a mournful way to frame it?! )

that is all to say: it's very plausible that the rito village revali grew up in would allow a solitary, neglected or orphaned fledgling to slip through the cracks. and maybe it's only initially, maybe it's just too late, maybe the fledgling then coats his own cracks over with a self-made balm and decides he won't let anybody make him feel lonely again and shuts himself entirely off, but. as i mentioned in the other study post, his lack of relationships wasn't always his fault, though it probably becomes so as he grows much older.

AND THE THING IS, revali doesn't stop caring about everyone ( and when i say everyone, i mean his people ). he can't! he can convince himself that he has no care for their affections ( and sometimes, he even fails this. he even fails this. i think about that diary entry where he talks about proving himself to the world when "the world" has done shit all for him, and i think about how a good percentage of his perception of "the world" was still narrowed down to his home then ), but he still loves them a great amount.

( to clarify: he cares for them the way you'd care for someone from a distance. you don't really know them, and you probably or would probably get along with them even less, yet you want to keep them around anyway. )

that's just something he's been raised with, steeped in because it's part of his culture, and also just. he's seen practically everything his village has to offer: perhaps all the worst parts in living through the bitterness of being lonely amongst a flock, but also all the best parts! sorry, i know i went absolutely off on how isolated he must've been and felt, but realistically his life couldn't have all been utterly miserable. fleeting joys are still joys! shallow connection is still connection! that came out harsher than i meant but the point is he genuinely loves his home and culture and people, even if his way of proving it is unhealthy and derives from a place that he definitely needs to go to therapy for ( i.e. his love for them is bound to his perceived self-worth. he has to "earn" his "right" to love them by excelling at what he does best, by being special enough, because he's unconditional with himself but they aren't! they aren't )!!

vaguely related, but this is, for me, why he never stops chasing achievements in combat. like ever. it's why rest/inaction forced by his severe injuries in the au where he survives is debilitating in more ways than one and emotionally frays him to a near-breakdown-turned-actual-breakdown. speaking of that, though!

yes!! yes, yes, tulin would absolutely be doing his best to bring revali back into their fold and make sure he stays there! you can see it in-play in my first thread with buck ( whose positively glorious revali can be found @/galestrings ♡ ); he's a kid who just so wholeheartedly believes in revali's goodness, refuses to not see the best of all his qualities, and so incessantly follows after him to Bond!!

i won't speak too much on this because i do want to continue seeing it play out with any revalis who would be willing to explore this with my tulin, but in connecting with him — even on a surface-level — i imagine that might provide a bridge to connecting with the rest of the village too! ( and it doesn't have to start with tulin, but i like my master-disciple bonds too much to let it not, in the case of my take on revali asflsd )

ANYWAY YEAH, that's what i have to say on this stupid bird vis-a-vis his loneliness!! god if you made it here without skipping over anything, i'm blowing you some friendly kithes. mwah mwah! hope i haven't chased you away with this, i'd love to hear your thoughts and receive more questions if you were so curious! thank you so much again for sending this in!! ♡

[welcometogrouchland]

Absolutely fascinating to be in the middle intersection of knowing that Thing is really popular, and that because Thing is popular there's a fair bit of vocal backlash to thing (because people are very mad Thing is popular when they don't like it) and you find yourself running through the unpleasant takes (not bad, just not what you're here for) from people who don't like Thing like snow white running through the scary fucked up forest until you finally find the fucking cottage where people who like Thing talk about Thing. Then you pass out in the cottage and when you wake up a bunch of small and opinionated creatures still carrying their burdens from the content mine arguing about Thing and also now your presence in relation to Thing bc you were clearly fleeing from the bad takes forest. This metaphor isn't what I wanted it to be but you get the idea

[maelstrom007]

ask game! What order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else? :3

From my Get To Know Your Fic Writer Tag Game

Lulu I adore you I can always count on you to ask stuff this is so much fun

99% of the time I find myself writing in chronological order. I'm not sure what it is but that's just naturally where my brain likes to go. I really like to know the context and reasoning behind a scene, and for me the best way to do that is to write a little bit (more like several chapters) of the stuff that happens before we get there.

There have been times where I've written the stuff that happens before hand, and when I 'arrive' at the scene that inspired me to start, it turns out that the way I wrote the characters, or their motives, no longer match the scene that inspired everything. In this case I can either go back and change things, or I can change the inspirational scene to match what I've been writing. And honestly I tend to do the latter, just because I've been writing so much at that point that my perspective on the characters motives are unlikely to change. So I'd rather abandon or alter an idea than put my writing in a box if that makes any sense?

I will say there's a bit of a caveat with the 'favorite scenes first' bit. Often when I come up with an idea, I'll make a google doc and the first thing I'll do is write a blurb explaining the scene that popped into my head that made me want to write, along with any overarching plot points that I thought would be important for me to remember. Sometimes these blurbs are two sentences long, and others are proper paragraphs were I'll do a really rough outline of a critical scene. So yes, technically I write 'favorite scene first', but I don't use them as a proper starting point. Just a reminder of what I was thinking, then I go off and start several chapters before that and if my story works out to where including that scene makes sense then hallelujah babey.

[amrv-5]

sorry this is out of curiousity and you totally can not answer it but what is the long fic you’re writing about

ahh hello!! no problem I’m happy to answer (i love.... talking about writing....i will ALWAYS love talking about writing. it fills me with absolute joy to talk at length about themes ideas motifs etc in my writing. even if they’re just ‘what in god’s name were you thinking’ i will ALWAYS love questions!!)! 

in general terms, the as-yet untitled Long Fic is just another post-war fic about Hawk and Beej trying to adjust back to life in the States on their own, and eventually finding their way back to each other again. extremely down-the-line, absolutely no supernatural twists, high realism. It’s only stupid long because I’m trying to give that the space it needs to feel real to me, and that amount of space is turning out to be: A Lot.

a broader series of themes & questions (so far lol) are below the cut for mild thematic spoilers, length, and (sorry) minimizing exposure to pretentiousness purposes:

So You Want to Know What the Long Fic is About: A Condensed Thematic Overview of 158K (For Now) of Straight-Up Realist Historical Fiction Where, No Joke, a Significant Portion of That Length is Dedicated Solely to Guys Thinkin’ Real Hard About Stuff, Guaranteed to Make You Say ‘Holy Fuck, I’m Sorry I Asked, Please Just Shut Up’ With Parker, Your Resident Guy Who is Normal About TV

1. Mis- and non-communication.

What happens when you go from sleeping three feet away from your best friend in the world to living so far away a letter takes two weeks on a round trip? How do your methods of understanding each other (and misunderstanding each other…) change? How does or can one maintain closeness when literal proximity is denied? How does somebody handle abandonment when the abandonment in question was unavoidable (i.e. nobody to blame--the death of a mother, maybe, or the end of a shared living situation)?

2. Justice, suffering, and recompense.

This is where the pretentiousness comes in, I know this makes me sound like an asshole I just care about American case law a lot and it infects all of my writing, etc. etc. Anyway. How do we approach ideas of suffering and justice when they fall outside the jurisdiction of an American view of legal culpability? How does one go about trying to seek justice when they are provably, demonstrably hurt, but there is nowhere to direct the blame? These questions are kind of slippery and weird, so I’ll try to frame it more directly: somebody in this story is going to struggle (as they always do in my work) with despair. It is a serious and life-long struggle. How does a person in that situation move beyond ideas like fairness, justice, and being owed relief, to accepting that ‘fairness’ doesn’t really exist in terms of things like personal neurochemistry? And how, then, does that acceptance hold itself in relation to larger forms of human injustice--how does somebody accept their own ‘unfair’ situation as a reality they must bear while continuing to maintain ideological opposition to injustices that can be changed?

3. Empathy and invisible strife.

A little bit of an overlap with the previous set of ideas, but this one flows out of one of my favorite poems in the world, “Musee des Beaux Arts” by Auden (check it out, if you haven’t read it!). The narrator states:

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

And then, later: 

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

I am compelled by how frequently awareness of strife is set aside in day to day life, especially in American life, and that comes through big time in the Long Fic. 

At a psychological level, there’s a certain idea, I think, that it is very evident when people are doing badly; that you will always be able to tell; that the solution is as simple as reaching out, or asking for help. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Somebody can be having the worst day of their life, be absolutely at the end of their rope, be seconds away from losing it completely, and five feet to the left there could be somebody else making a ham sandwich. So that comes through a lot in the work--this borderline absurdist, tragicomic idea that nobody’s ever really going to know exactly how you feel, and even if they did, they might be too busy doing the crossword to notice.

And at a less granular level, you can apply this (and will see it applied) to the American cultural response to the Korean War, which was incredibly muted. Even though millions of people died, even though the daily suffering of people, especially local civilians, involved was immense, because it was so (to an American domestic point of view) far-off, most people just went on with their lives. People celebrated birthdays, TV shows were produced, city council meetings dragged gaily on.

These things seem inevitable, and the ideas behind them kind of obvious: of course the world keeps turning when bad things happen. People just aren’t built to maintain ceaseless fear, anger, outrage, etc. at tragedy that is not directly affecting them, because they are concerned with the business of being alive. The people that do manage to maintain constant attention to large-scale but abstract or not immediately visible tragedies tend to go crazy, self-immolate, and/or quit their fancy math professorships at Berkeley in order to start direct mail marketing campaigns. Everybody else tends to feel bad about an issue, maybe they’ll see if they can do something small to help, and then they forget about it and keep managing the minutiae of their own lives. Yes, of course this or that issue is tragic--but I’ve got to do my taxes, or I’ve got to hit a deadline, or I’ve got to go to the store. The ploughman keeps working, too busy to investigate the splash. The ship sails on with somewhere to get to. 

But then again, even if the logic is sound, from Icarus’s point of view the world has got to seem awfully cold and mean.

[birdmenmanga]

I feel like my mother has been attempting to fish for a coming out as transgender from me but I tacitly refuse to come out until I’m financially independent and stable and also because I know she’s horrible at serious conversations and always knows the wrong things to say despite her best intentions. “I’m actually more progressive than you think” wink wink nudge nudge okay mom I hope you’re ready to hear about birdmen then

[whynotcherries]

you wanted asks, so i’m here with asks! two questions that are slightly similar:

what do you think deserves more representation in media?

what do you think is getting a good amount of representation in media, but this representation is usually inaccurate?

thank you for the ask, anon! <3 i kind of rambled (hence the cut), i apologize, but i would hope you wouldn't answer this question without expecting a long response 😭❤️

for the first question, i think disability as a whole deserves more representation in media. i am slightly biased in wanting to see more chronic illness rep (because that's sort of the thing that i definitely would've benefited from seeing in media before ending up with one) but i think most (...all?) disabilities are under-represented.

i would love to see more representation of *specifically* the chronic illnesses people live their whole lives with, but don't generally know they have until they're in unignorable constant pain/discomfort. like, an example of a big one is EDS. like, children should know chronic joint pain isn't just what everyone experiences, and people should know about co-occurring illnesses, and how being "double-jointed" is, way more often than people would assume, hypermobility.

it's just common chronic illnesses taking years to be diagnosed because nobody's heard of them. i would love for that to stop happening. i feel like tiktok is introducing more people to things like POTS, but there is such a need for it in official media. it's important for people not to be learning solely from strangers on the internet.

the second one is a really hard question to answer 😅 off the top of my head, there's not really a specific group that's represented in a way that's well-described as "as often as it should be, but badly."

in general, i think the issue of misrepresentation of any group is the result of under-representation on sets and in creative spaces... and usually when a group is under-represented on sets, they're under-represented in media, too. when there are voices of any given group involved in the creation of media, there are more people working to make sure the thing is created accurately. and when there's enough existing media depicting one group, there's more public critique from the audience about the accuracy of how they're depicted in said media, which will allows for more well-researched and accurate future work... (obviously, this only really applies when artists listen and do research). to help fix the issue of under-representation, more people need to create media with more diverse casts, and they have to actually involve people of those groups in the creation of their media in some way, and they have to accept criticism after doing both of those things.

but ALSO, the idea of something getting a "good amount" of representation is kind of subjective, and in most cases, so is accurate representation.

**and, just as a disclaimer, i am not an expert on any of this and there are definitely points of view i haven't learned yet. i am nineteen years old and taking one social justice class, which is not nearly enough experience to know a lot.**