#I had to make up a lot of stuff and extrapolate a lot

[tuna-keyboard]

Thinking about romancing Heinrix with a male rogue trader (as always), and a lot of my thoughts on the matter keep coming back to this idea of how hard Heinrix works to uphold expectations; of defining himself as an upstanding member of the Imperium in spite of his being a psyker. And a lot of that can be tied to these ideas of masculinity; what it means to look like a man, what it means to act like a man, what it means to think like a man. How strong you have to be, how powerful you have to be. He tries so hard to prove himself worthy by these restricting and often impossible expectations.

And instead of meeting those expectations himself, he goes and finds a man who he feels meets them better (depending on the rogue trader, of course) and, through his jealousy and desire, eventually falls in love. Attaining what he feels he could not achieve but always desired by externalizing those expectations onto his partner. Deeply unhealthy, deeply compelling. God, and that's to say nothing of what happens when it's inevitably revealed that the Rogue Trader is just a human; just as flawed and scared and imperfect as any other. Delicious. And THEN factor in the internal struggle, the emotional vulnerability that's needed to admit your attraction to someone you're traditionally "not supposed to". VERY deep well to play in.

[quixoticprince]

Yayyy!! Yippee!! I finally get to make one of these!! Art without the text under the cut and some long-winded elaborations:

How long I've been playing: well, it hasn't been a straight 11 years, rather off and on - but I have drawings of these guys dating back to when I was 14, so I'll give it to me. And man I had no business reading the fanfics I was reading back then It's also crazy how this was a super influential media for me in so many ways. It's the reason I ever made a tumblr, it changed the direction of my drawings for a long while, my broken sense of humor (gmod animation memes and yt poops were the brainrot back then), tf2 Sniper changed my god damned gender (rather, it was the inspiration for me to start socially transitioning at 15). This is part of my personal lore that I tend to not admit to 😓

Your main: I've always been completely ass at the game, and I can play flexibly, but I enjoy playing Sniper, and more recently as Heavy. Whenever I'm sitting around somewhere, occasionally throwing sandwiches and attracting Medics, I feel like this:

Favorite character: When I was younger it was definitely Medic, and I think you can tell that he's still up there based on how much I've drawn him! However, since getting back into it, I've felt quite a shift in focus towards Heavy, very strongly. It's unfortunate that he's side-lined in a lot of fanwork, and I think I'm also complicit in this so far - but for me it's cuz, how tf2 works is that it's going to prioritize humor over character and consistency haha, and Medic is just so loud and insane that he's really easy to make fun stuff with. Heavy is a more serious and grounded character, not to say that he's not funny or that he doesn't have his own cartoon slapstick moments! But that aspect of him is what is really really intriguing to me. I love his quiet, stoic, and intimidating character, I like how loud and boisterous he is when filled with bloodlust in contrast! I love his bird story and him getting into wrestling as a child from Poker Night. I love his back story setting, there's so much to extrapolate from a young boy in Russia growing up during WWII, what his parents must have been through before that from the aftermaths of the revolution, all the way to his fathers execution and his imprisonment. I love his strong relationship with his family, his role as an older brother, as a protector, as a man - the way that he performs these roles - and because I personally see him as bisexual - how his orientation intersects with all that! He is incredibly fascinating to me and I wish that he was played around with more to see a lot more corners and angles of these things that I listed! There's way more that I want to say here too but this is getting very long 😅

Character I relate to: It's so interesting that a lot of the characters have very strong, tho maybe dysfunctional, families. Heavy, Demo, and Sniper in particular really speak to me in that relation. From Heavy being an eldest brother (I am also an eldest sibling) the parentification that comes with that, especially with him probably being like 10 years older than his sisters from the looks of it. Demo and Sniper both struggle living up to their parents expectations (although there's a lot of love there from everyone), being disappointments in one way or another (not gonna deep dive into that lol), and the general alienation both of them feel. From Sniper not knowing why he's not like other Australians to Demo being "a black Scottish cyclops." And well, I'm Filipino, I'm queer, and mentally ill so - there's a lot to project there!

Class you want to play as: I find Medic incredibly stressful to play as but I find the idea of battle medics incredibly funny. However I usually find myself rushing around madly trying to cater to everyone, and I'd like to just not give a shit and just start stabbing people with a saw lol

Favorite ship: "I just like the dynamic" - The dynamic:

No but fr, they're really compelling to me, I'd probably need a longer more thought out post as to what I like about them and I was already going crazy up there ^ Overall tho I like that they're practically built for each other in terms of mechanics, really plays into my desire to spiral into intense codependency haha. I also think that Medic's drive to cheat death and hide behind meat shields plays really well into Heavy's desire to be a meat shield and a protector, and how nice it is in turn, that Medic can grant this man who's been around death, starvation, and war invulnerability. (He outsmart boolet, yknow?) They're also depicted together a lot and I like how much they enjoy each others company, and bring a lot of joy to each other. It's beautiful to me :'^)

Character you like to draw: What can I say! Medic is handsome! He is very fun to draw and easy to make memes and shit posts out of!

[creekfiend]

I wanted to make a bonsai kitten recovery post that outlines some of the stuff that I've been doing. Because I don't think that you need to ✨see a therapist✨ to start dealing with a lot of this stuff and I get really frustrated when that is the answer that everyone is constantly giving. Firstly a disclaimer, because I know what website I am on: this is a guide for things that have worked for me! I am not everyone and if there are things on here that do not work for you or even that you think are stupid, that is fine, but please do not make it my problem. If you are reading it and you're like "that sounds like it would actually be detrimental to my specific mental health because of my specific issues" then please disregard it. Use your critical thinking skills and do what you think is right for you!

My second disclaimer is that I didn't make any of this up myself; most of these are collected from various places either in therapeutic guide books or various websites about emotional regulation etc. Some of it is stuff that I have extrapolated from those places based on experience with what works for me or does not work for me. A lot of the way that I treat myself when I need to get my body and brain into a place where I can think about stuff productively is actually directly from gentle parenting guides, because frankly cptsd recovery stuff is very often like parenting a toddler. And the toddler is you. ALL THAT SAID,

The first skill that I had to get good at, that many of the other skills depend on, is to learn how to understand when I am Reacting to something. If I am Reacting it is extremely likely that that's going to only escalate the situation and make it much worse. I HAVE to be able to tell if I am Reacting emotionally to something in a way that is coming from a place of fear and panic. This is important because it involves not being prescriptive about your emotions. You could be Reacting to something that you do not logically feel is at all justified in making you feel that way and that doesn't matter! You can't be doing math equations to try to come to the answer of how you SHOULD be feeling; you have to be observing your mind and body to see how you factually ARE feeling and then respond to THAT. This can be really hard to learn how to do especially if you were abused as a child. (If you cannot think of yourself as someone who is abused as a child perhaps it would help to think of yourself as someone who simply was not taught various emotional regulation skills for mysterious reasons that have nothing to do with your parents' inadequacies.) I need to be able to glance inward and see what the physiological reaction that I'm having is and identify whether or not I feel like this is the biggest emergency in the world that needs to be addressed right now immediately! That is a sure sign that Mr Fight and Mr Flight are in the building and it is bad to make declarative statements or important decisions when that is the case. So, I have to work on dismissing them first. That is literally the first step to any of this. One of my friends calls this "fire mittens," which is to say, if you are wearing mittens that are on fire and you try to touch stuff, the stuff will also become on fire. You have to put the fire out first before you can touch other things.

Once I have determined that I am indeed Reacting and in a physiological state of fear, I have a document in my notes app that is a "what to do when you are in fight or flight mode" guide and it has several helpful things that I will try to outline here.

Firstly, the really important thing for me for trying to get back into an emotional state where I'm capable of making decisions and being thoughtful is to feel safe and comfortable. So I actually have some stuff in my document that is straight up just like "go in the blankie nest. put on this specific music album. light this specific scented candle." etc. You might want to have a specific food or drink that is comforting to you or some other sort of stim toy that helps you regulate. If there's any calming medication or supplements for anxiety that you take as needed, now is also the time to do that. Physical sensory grounding is really important for this. This is probably especially true if, like me, you are neurodivergent, but I think it is also true for everyone because we are animals! And you can't just think about it, you have to actually do it. Which sounds obvious but is the thing that has often tripped me up in the past. Once you start getting into the habit of actually physically doing this it DOES become easier though.

One of my rules is that if I want to respond to something but I am in fight or flight mode, I don't get to respond to it for at least 24 hours. I'm only allowed to respond once I've gotten myself out of fear mode. If it is some kind of comment on Facebook that has set me off, often this means that 24 hours later I realize that I actually don't want to get into it to begin with, which is great. If it's something that is pretty serious and interpersonal with a friend, sometimes that means I have to communicate to them that I'm going to take a while to process it and then get back to them. IMPORTANT: You CANNOT do this passive aggressively or else it undermines the whole thing. You can't phrase it in a way that will make your friends think that you are guilt tripping them for "making" you feel a way. It is VERY tempting to do this when you are in the first stages of trying to form this habit and you simply need to resist the urge because it will render this step worthless. I know. It sucks.

If I am feeling fearful and insecure about friends or loved ones, I also usually try to spend some time thinking about the people that I love and care about. Because often this stuff manifest for me as insecurity that the people that I care about do not care about me, or that they think that I'm being annoying, or that they are secretly thinking mean things about me. It's obviously not good for me to constantly be imagining that the people in my life who I care about are actually avatars of my own insecurity who are here to tell me that I'm secretly fundamentally unlovable! But crucially also it's ALSO not fair to those people to imagine them as that. They are not that guy, they are their own complex human beings with their own lives and experiences and interiority. So sometimes I do thought exercises where I will imagine my friends or loved ones doing things in their everyday lives and I will think about them as people and I will think about the things that they like to do and the things that they say and the places that they go, and I will try to imagine them fondly in those circumstances. This helps to remind me that they are just people and that the scary puppet wearing their faces is not real. To this end I sometimes will have a document of screenshots of things that they have said to me that I can use to reality check myself. I personally find reality checks to be essential for a lot of this. Things can feel true when they are not true at all. Things can feel wrong when they are actually true. The point of most of these exercises is to gently remind myself that those feelings are normal for me to be having, but that I do not need to let them dictate my responses.

It is crucial throughout all of this that you are nice to yourself. You can't talk to yourself in a mean way while you're doing this, or you will not get to a point where you are feeling safe enough to react from a place of not-fear. You can't make yourself feel ashamed or defensive for your emotional reactions. This is the particular area where I find gentle parenting protocols helpful. You HAVE to be patient with yourself.

Ok that's all for now bc I ran out of steam but I will try to think of more to add on another day maybe. Godspeed everyone

[andhumanslovedstories]

chapter eleven of what feels like the most soap opera ass fic I've ever written and then just a bunch of thoughts about writing it, which contains vague spoilers for my plans:

The inception of the fic basically went like this:

haha lol i'd be fun if sqq got real mad at the state of education

what would need to happen in this fic that doesn't happen in canon to motivate him to do something about it

oh shit he didn't unlock OOC so he has to figure out how to be his coddling indulgent self (which he's in denial about) while also being shen jiu

But the thing that really made the story get so much bigger in scope was when I was reading a fic with yqy coming clean to sj, and sj being like, "GASP. I forgive you." And I was "I simply do not believe that this is how it would happen." And I would have moved on with my life, but then I thought, "but like how would it happen." And more importantly, how could this conversation happen within the canon timeline but still involve Shen Jiu, the person this information affects.

The OOC idea and the need for Shen Jiu to be present in this fight scene came together to be like "what if sqq got sj's memories so he could rules-lawyer his characterization more accurately, and ends up being furious on sj's behalf?"

(This, btw, is why I knew I had to get much fonder of YQY and get a much better understanding of his character. When a pillar of your fic idea is a character getting ripped into for his choices, it is sooooooo easy to for it to come off as the author yelling their personal opinions or for it to be completely flat character bashing. Neither are interesting to read or write! Hence the crash-course in YQY appreciation, so now he gets his own emotional arc too. Everyone gets a goddamn plotline.)

Meanwhile I was also thinking about the implications of downloading another person's life into your head. If you have their memories and their body, are you them? What makes you not them? I didn't know! I sort of just kept writing and posting with the assumption that I'd figure something out, which I've finally nailed down btw. That's a relief! Also kinda the fun of WIPs where you're building the railroad track as you're on the train. I end up fanficing my own fanfic. Once stuff is posted, that's the canon, and I look at it and think, "if this was a book I was reading, what is the way I would extrapolate what's there to make a new but coherent story?"

That's why my outline becomes pretty useless after a while. The big picture doesn't change too much--I know roughly where all the major characters are going to be emotionally by the end of the story--but I discover the path I'm going to take there. Which usually means adding stuff. Liu Qingge wasn't going to get a POV, and now every chapter I'm like "fuck am I building a throuple". Ming Fan will have waaaay more a story line than I originally conceived. Early on, I was like "eh I'm not going to go too far into the brothel stuff," and can you guess what is going to be coming up prominently in the next few chapters? God help me.

Actually, there's only one major part of the outline that I cut: Shang Qinghua. He was originally very prominent early on, but turns out having the literal Word of God in a story about slowly discovering backstory is difficult to reconcile. So sadly, he doesn't get a real role. If you're curious, the original plan for him was that SQQ would realize he's a transmigrator much earlier in the canon, but the System would be like [shen jiu would not tell shang qinghua he is a transmigrator. ooc] which would lead to this series of SQQ trying to figure out how he can communicate around this. SQQ at a peak meeting being like, "do you think these DEMONS are PROUD of having made their WAY to us IMMORTALS?" while SQH is like, "AM I HAVING A STROKE?"

What's some other stuff about this fic? I've got a lot of thoughts bottled up, in part because I'm kinda snobby tbh in how I post. I'm like "*pushes glasses up my nose* the author's takes on the story should not be unavoidably present when reading the text" so I don't like to use ao3's author's notes. It's ridiculous and not a standard I hold anyone else too, but whenever I find myself wanting to address something in the notes, I know I must feel insecure about that part of the story. So either fix it or don't draw attention to it. But this is fine, you have to come here for this. This is DVD commentary.

My favorite part of writing this fic has been balancing Shen Jiu's character. As I'm fleshing out his sad backstory, I've been wary of essentially woobifying him. Reducing him to just someone who greatly suffered is so boring and flat. He NEEDS to suck. Or more accurately, he needs to be a very imperfect victim. Exasperating at his mildest, despicable at his worst. (Truthfully, I do think I can and should make him worse. Luckily this story is nothing but flashbacks to him at his worst so there's plenty of opportunities.)

This whole mental breakdown section has been an interesting balancing act because it's explicitly about how bad Shen Jiu's life was and now how bad Shen Qingqiu's is. It's the point at which I had to decide how torturous his time at the Qiu manor had been (me and Shen Qingqiu really discovered that together). On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the absolute worst saddest brutalist ideas I had for this era in his life, I'd say I settled on about a 7. Most of it is backstage in my head, but once I locked that down, I could start figuring out how much was bleeding through.

Anyway, it's been fun writing the angstfest of the last few chapters, but oh my god am I ready for a tone shift. There's usually jokes in my works, even the saddest bits, but jokes relieve tension which is the opposite of what I was going for. I didn't want any humor in the YQY conversation, then you have to keep not joking for a while to get the point across. There's still a lot of planned emotional shit, but I'm happy to not be wallowing for a while.

AND GOD AS MY WITNESS THIS STORY WILL NOT BE LONGER THAN 20 CHAPTERS. MAYBE IT'LL EVEN BE LESS!! IT IS DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO BE A WHOLE CANON REWRITE. PROBABLY!! IF TIANLANG JUN HAS ANY SIGNIFICANT SCREEN TIME, PLEASE KNOW THAT I HAVE FAILED.

[nkjemisin]

Hello NK Jemisin! I'm a huge fan of yours, and I wanted to thank you for writing all of the books you've written, and doing all that you do. You're really awesome and you are doing important work! :) I had a long question, if you have time to answer! What's your commentary on creating fantasy cultures, using real ones as inspiration? You've done this before in your stories, and I wanted to know if you had any guidance on doing it well. I'm writing my first novel right now (fantasy!) and am dealing with a surprising amount of guilt regarding using real cultures as a basis for my fake ones. On one hand, I want to create a really unique fantasy world, not the bog-standard European stuff. It's not only more interesting to me, but I also admittedly want to use my story to help introduce people to concepts that might be helpful in the real world, help readers understand what these real people go through and perhaps inspire change. On the OTHER hand, I don't know if it's 'my place' to do so (I'm Black btw, but I'm not just writing about Black-coded fantasy characters). And I'm worried about representing people in a harmful way, even if it's by accident. I'm even hung up about names! Should I use names from real languages related to the cultures I'm inspired by, or should I just make them up to emphasize that, while yes these people are clearly inspired by real cultures, they are ultimately *their own* thing. I'm really conflicted on this and am hoping you can offer some feedback and/or commentary. Sorry for the long ask. Either way, have a great day and I look forward to whatever work you do next!

If I can rephrase what you're saying here, it sounds like you're concerned about cultural appropriation -- specifically, which cultures you get to "borrow from" and "remix," how much remixing you can do before you've done damage, how to depict people from cultural backgrounds other than your own, etc.

If that's what you're asking, then there are whole schools of thought on how to "appropriate appropriately." A lot of thinking on this has evolved in the past few years, for good and for ill; Own Voices, for example. (The short version: the Own Voices hashtag movement started as a grassroots attempt to get marginalized voices telling the stories of their own cultures, because there's been a nasty trend of only white/Western/Anglophone/etc. authors publishing books about those cultures. The problem? Some publishers and readers started acting as if marginalized writers weren't allowed to do anything but stories in their own cultures -- a restriction, instead of an inclusion/correction. Worse, publishers, etc started using it as a marketing shorthand, in ways that were just... not good. They made it weird, basically.) But I'm still fond of the approach that's in Writing the Other, by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. It's centered on ethnicity/race, but a lot of its approach can be extrapolated to culture. There's too much good stuff in this book to summarize it easily, but you should read it instead of a summary anyway -- it's short.

I don't see the point of guilt, when it comes to something like this. Guilt is what you feel when you've done something wrong, and admiring another culture enough to want to tell a story featuring it isn't wrong. However, there are things you need to do -- research, conversations, considerations of power dynamics -- to reduce the harm you might end up doing by telling that story as an outsider. And note that no matter what you do, though, you might still end up doing harm. (Even people writing about their own culture can end up doing that.) If you fuck up, apologize, figure out what went wrong, and try to do better next time. That's really all you can do.

And then write whatever the hell you want. There's a persistent pressure on Black writers to only cover certain subjects, certain settings; nah. We get to have range, too. You've just got to put in the work to do it well.

Good luck.

[rouge-fauna]

I’m sorry I swear I was planning on moving on but then I had a conversation with my friend last night and now I’m triggered again… I don’t mind if people disagree but damn it was really frustrating, for a few reasons, one of them being that even if I’m biased I still think I’m a better source of information and opinion after having watched 12 hours of streams versus some reaction channel videos. Like sure I like Dream and relate to both c and ccDream but I’m not heartless or unreasonable. I’m not saying, ‘oh my poor autistic dweam can do no wrong.’ I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m here for the facts and truth and what it says and what is reasonable based on that. I’ve dropped plenty of other YouTubers for doing messed up things, and Dream would be no different if he actually did cross a serious line. But honestly I don’t think he’s really done worse than plenty of other creators and at least he has apologized which is more than you can say for most others. So by all mean hate him for whatever reason, there are plenty of YouTubers I dislike, but don’t do so because you think he’s a creep or because of things that just aren’t true, and give me a little more credit that I’d not just support anyone or use autism to justify anything.

The reason I’ve talked a lot about the autism and ADHD is because I feel like it is very important. But my friend (who is also autistic), last night was giving me a lot of shit for it, noting how autism doesn’t excuse behavior and is beside the point. The thing is though, this situation is not like how people are saying Elon doing the salute is an autistic oopsie, no I’m literally just pointing out actual statements and points the content creators have said about why they dislike Dream, which are literally characteristics of his neurodivergence. Look no further for an example than what Jack says in the podcast, “I genuinely think he lacks the ability to read social queues.” That’s literally just autism 101, I’m not making excuses for behavior, I’m just pointing out the why a behavior is happening to say it’s not because he’s some evil bad manipulative guy. Tubbo is the one who noted that Dream’s behavior was weird and inappropriate and how he didn’t seem to understand the social rules and stuff. Those are actually things that have been talked about here. People have actually commented on how Dream’s over explanation and stuttering and repeating himself and such is manipulative and all I’m saying is no it’s literally just AuDHD. I’m not making stretches for behavior here, I’m not extrapolating here on what Dream did, if anything I’m focused more on the actual comments of the opposing side.

Autism isn’t relevant to the situation because of the meme. It’s no longer about whether or not he is allowed to use the r word because he is autistic, it’s about this inherent loathing people have where a lot of their listed reasons are typical ADHD and autism characteristics. All I’m doing is looking at what they themselves said, I don’t even have to theorize, Jack straight up just said he thinks Dream lacks social queues as part of his discussion on why he dislikes Dream. What do you mean his neurodivergence isn’t relevant, when the reasons people are currently bashing him are neurodivergent traits. That’s like saying, well her blue hair is irrelevant to the conversation - well then why do you hate her? - because I don’t like how she always dyes her hair. Heh? It is relevant because the things they hate him for connect directly to autism and ADHD, it is relevant because the internet is making fun of him after that stream with Tubbo for how he speaks because of his neurodivergence. It’s relevant because the reason people believe these rumors or spread rumors in the first place is because of the inherent dislike of autistic people they are literally describing on air.

[rad-roche]

hi! i love love love the way you write nick valentine so much!! if it's alright to ask, are there certain things you keep in mind when you're writing his character?

you just write him so accurately and so well, and i've been trying to nail down his flaws and motivations and how he sees the world and have been having some trouble writing him for some reason, and wanted to know if you had any tips! thank you so much— i love your comics and your fic!! ♡♡♡

thank you very much!! and sure, it's no problem :} throwing in the caveat that this is just how i do it, and i'm no authority or anything. i just do fan stuff on the internet, and there are as many ways to write something, or somebody, as there are people to do it

out the gate i have good news and bad news. the bad news is 'oh god, is this in character?' never goes away. i get it all the time! i've never not had it!

the good news is, thinking about that means you're more likely to be perceptive about what does or doesn't feel 'right'. with that in mind, always reference your source material first and foremost. skim through quest compilations, dialogue. notice what words crop up a lot, stuff like 'oughta' and colourful turns of phrase like 'the biggest chip in the pile'. you have a lot of leeway with him since he's such a throwback to a certain kind of character, so while you don't have to do what i did and go full-throttle genre pastiche, reading a couple of old detective novels won't steer you wrong vis a vis his voicing. if you just want to write nick and don't have a wider interest in the genre, any lew archer novel is a really good look at how to do it. same big, bleeding heart, same propensity to have an awful time

as for character, flaws, motivations, it's kind of a hard thing to pin down because, by merit of wanting to write something, you want to bring your own spin to it, right? you can make some pretty sweeping changes and get away with it! the only romantic interest nick expresses in the game is flirting with irma and lamenting somebody else's dead fianceé. the thing i did with him and gloria is wildly different

my big thing going into it was, since dmt/dww is third person limited, i could really play up his flaws. so from there, i could extrapolate. i think part of what makes something feel 'in character' is adding two pre-existing points together and making something new from those. stuff that isn't out of nowhere, just a couple of steps along the road. just some examples from mine:

he's a detective, so he's a good logical thinker, but he's a freak occurrence he can't untangle = he overthinks simple things, especially in regard to himself and his happiness. it's left him both selfless/deeply empathetic and a little pre-occupied with himself and his circumstances

he loves the work he does and is willing to let late payments go = the business is running at a loss, and he only operates on the fact that everybody in town owes him a favour

the original nick was sent to a trauma treatment program after the preventable death of his fiancée + he frequently makes jokes at his own expense that he clearly means/is willing to put himself in harm's way frequently = nick, down to his bones, is clinically depressed, the severity of which varies from month to month

and so on and so forth. how 'in character' this is going to vary from person to person, rightly, but i think the method is sound even if you disagree with the conclusions. people are pretty complicated and contradictory, so you can lean into that. i hope absolutely any of that made sense lol

[marsreds]

I'm somewhat intrigued by the world hater majik/desscaras thing I must see what else you have in your brain

man, babyfish, that's not a weekday question, i have work to do but i'm rotating them in my mind like barbies in a microwave.

anyways! let's talk about why i find the (potential) relationship between Desscaras and the World Hater Majik (one of) the most interesting in the series.

First a disclaimer: We actually still know so. very. little. about WHM and how they work and what they want. It's literally sad how little we know! So a lot of what I talk about will be extrapolation and conjunction. But that's the fun of it, I feel!

So, what do we know?

We know that the World Hater Majik is accepting of their fate:

This guy's fine with the lot assigned to them. If they're not fine, they're not about to show it to anyone, they're not gonna fight it, it's "the sole reason [they] exist."

Which is literally the complete opposite of Desscaras's approach to fate.

We meet Desscaras fighting to acquire Uroro, because at the time that was what was the prophesied requirement to reach where the WHM is:

I can't find the post now, but the Japanese for the prophecy specifies that it'll be a magic man who acquires Uroro and that finesse got lost in translation, but it is a factor to my interpretation: Dess knew from the start that it can't be her in the prophecy and yet! She went for it. Because Desscaras fights fate.

This continues with the way she challenges WHM when they come face to face:

And then with the way she rejects the very premise of the prophecy by tying her life to Ichi's, because as she says herself, it doesn't matter what the prophecy says, throwing all of that on the shoulders of a child is just not right:

So right from the start you have two characters that operate from opposite positions, one passive, the other proactive. Just this on its own this makes their interactions extremely compelling to me. (There's stuff to be said about the ways Ichi and his attitude to it all compliments it all as well but. lol. this is already long.)

Of course, there's also the emotional aspect going on here. For the WHM emotions are a thing that needs to be pulled out of them like teeth, something that they're very aware and careful about; any show of emotion being suppressed and dismissed.

Yet, Descarras terrifies them:

Dess's side of things is equally interesting to me: She's usually so expressive and yet, while going against the WHM she's almost like a (mocking) doll:

(and yes, this really is just an excuse to show off everyone's favorite uber talented badass, are you appreciating her?)

She's locked in, her feelings neatly packed away because there's work to be done. That is, until this point:

This is the most expressive Desscaras acts in her entire confrontation with the WHM, and it's to seek understanding.

That is the crux of it for me: to Desscaras this is an enemy that has done her a great wrong. A wrong they've proceeded to express zero remorse over, going on to completely dismiss her feelings about it even. An enemy who is threatening her new family just as they've destroyed the old one. By all accounts, someone Desscaras has every right to strive to destroy, to try and get in at least a parting shot, she's shown she can get under their skin after all. Instead, she asks "What are you trying to do?!"

Here's the thing: we know that majik trials are not always shows of strength. We've seen many things so far: violence but also makeovers, endurance challenges, and I'm sure we'll see many more to come.

Desscaras is the greatest witch with the most majiks. For that you need brute force, yes, but you also need an unusual amount of empathy and willingness to meet the other where they are. I can't imagine Golconda had a trial where you needed to beat it up.

When Togeice called Desscaras kind, this wasn't just her saying it, we can infer from her status that this is just how Dess approaches life: with consideration and empathy for the other.

Interestingly, the WHM responds to this. They, big, broody nihilist they are, take the time to look back and detail their plans. Hell, they take it further, explaining their reasoning and promising they'll be back soon.

We've got two characters on opposing sides, with clashing worldviews and a whole mess of volatile emotions between them. Yet, the one instance a bridge is attempted, it's responded to in kind.

Finally, there's the aesthetic aspect of it: I've gone on about the WHM being the sacrificial lamb, the princess chained to a rock, and in general a fundamentally passive, resigned figure. (Seriously, go look at how they're posed in almost every panel they're in, they're in an action pose maybe twice).

Desscaras, in contrast, is always in motion, but on a more aesthetic note, Desscaras is a knight. She has a sword for a magic wand, when she meets royalty, she does a little bow with her hand to her heart, her volume cover has her in a duelist's position, etc. you get my point.

A princess chained to their fate, and a knight fighting it, on opposing sides of a conflict, yet both have demonstrated willingness to meet across the abyss. Kind of has a romantic air to it, don't you think?

so, yeah, there you have it! there's probably other stuff as well but fundamentally it comes down to the fact that i want to put them in a box together, seal it, and then punt it down a flight of stairs, just to see what happens.

[year2000electronics]

I think you should regale us with your thoughts on the addisons

THE ADDISONS! i like them a lot. i don't think i need to reinvent the wheel much though and claim that i have my own totally unique avant garde nouveau interpretation. i think people have done a really good job over the years of extrapolating what little dialogue we have of the addisons to think up some character traits The Addisons may have as a group of, say, five entities. one for each colour we see.

speaking of them as a group:

i headcanon them as a group of coworkers rather than siblings!

i prefer a more humanoid look for the addisons (given my track record) and i like it when people make them luminous/glowing. its fun!

i give them little cheek marks for fun. ive been calling them addison cutie marks

i'm of the belief that spamton was one of the orange addison's mannequins brought to life, and that's why he's so short/gains more doll features later on- his inherent differences are invisible at first (i draw him with very faint mouth lines and a far dimmer glow than the others as well as with no cheek marks) but the further he slips, the more they slip out. it makes sense to me because as a spam email he's inherently more malicious/less desirable than regular ads and it isn't until he slips through the cracks that he stops being able to mask as a regular addison

(yeah im drawing a bit from neurodivergence here. "for some reason he's different from us" being echoed by the addisons and nobody can really see why until it gets so bad that spamton's different traits have no choice but to bleed through because he's going through a total meltdown)

pink:

diva. catty diva. ambitious to a fault- a lot like spamton

based on the fact that pink is the one to have the lines that outright imply jealousy towards spamton when he got big, and also the fact that pink is the one who offers kris and noelle the freeze ring

he and spamton had a homoerotic rivalry where they were always butting heads and annoying each other, even including picking up stock of two rings nobody wants, but pink doesn't realize how much he really liked spamton until spamton's gone

but at that point he and the others had already walked away from him. it'd be a blow to his pride to ever reach out. not his fault spamton went wrong anyways. he made his choice

blue:

bleeding heart. bit of a pushover. kind but that kindness won't kick in until it's too late

based on the fact that his role is one that literally gives people stuff for free (free samples) and the fact that a blue addison is given the lines about going back to check in on spamton after everything's said and done

enjoyed spamton's company and worried about him but he was never able to grow a spine and make things his problem until it was too late. he's a bystander and that's the problem

tended to coddle spamton a little bit

orange:

the one who introduced spamton to the others, cos obviously i think it was HIS mannequin

the addison with the biggest ideas and the biggest quirks

if pink has spamton's ambition, orange has the same outspoken eagerness spamton does

fashion mogul (is the one with the mannequins!)

treated spamton as a bit of a "mini-me" because of being the one to find him, but that meant he never really saw spamton as being able to be on the same level as him

probably shied away from even thinking of spamton because he thinks "well HE messed up but that would never happen to ME". self recognition through the other (derogatory) basically

takes the biggest risks (aside from spamton) so he's about middle of the road in terms of profits cos he gains and loses a lot

yellow:

quiet, a bit distant, more businesslike

based on the fact that the yellow addison can only be seen from behind in the trash dump after spamton neo is defeated. perhaps he's more on the managerial side of things? or in even higher company than the city?

the one who most openly views spamton as a level below the rest of them thanks to his failing profits

still, he tries to rein in the others like pink from trying to push him down. wanted to see spamton prove himself once and for all

saw spamton's fall and disappearance as being unable to make it in the business world once and for all. that's showbiz, baby.

tl;dr:

[technically-human]

Do you write longer fics?! Just the tidbit of Charles in the Hell Train has my brain wheels turning. I can extrapolate and guess how some of their story would go, but you have such thought put into them. I would hate for you to be like "aw man they totally got this part of the au wrong!" if someone else tried their hand at it, and I would love to read more (and more art). You seem to do both really well

I write... Occasionally. I'm a bit insecure about it, especially in English. I would really love it if someone wrote about the reverse verse, even if their interpretation was different from mine! It would be a lot of fun to read that. I doubt I could make it entertaining enough, though.

I did write The Lamps Are Going Out which is an AU with Edwin as an evil spirit!

And I'm currently working on a couple of fics. Hopefully I'll actually finish them at some point. Here's a fragment of a fic I titled Possibly, maybe

The thing was, Charles had rejected people before.

Back when he was thirteen and alive, the neighborhood kids started taunting him about one of the girls. Amanda, who lived a few streets away from him, had apparently told someone that she fancied Charles, and the rumors spread until Charles himself heard about it. He had never given Amanda much thought, they often crossed paths while going to church, and that was Charles in his best behavior and therefore the most boring –and bored– version of himself. They had probably talked a total of ten times, half of them being a simple greeting. Charles didn't like her back, and resolved to ignore the rumors.

That worked for all of two weeks before Amanda decided to do something about it. She probably had been, Charles knew even back then, waiting for him to be the one to do something, as was the proper way. He wouldn't, though, and whether it was because she knew it or simply that she wasn't willing to wait, she ended up asking him out.

It had been uncomfortable, Charles could hear the giggles from two other girls who had accompanied Amanda and were waiting just a few steps behind her. He wanted to say no, really, because so far he had only considered girls in an abstract, distant sort of way, and again, Amanda wouldn't have been his first choice. But something like anxiety pooled in his stomach, wiping his sweaty palms against his trousers had helped none, and in the end Charles had blurted out an answer that he only fully registered as positive when Amanda squealed happily, her friends running to hug her and jump in place.

Always impulsive, Charles figured that it shouldn't matter. Dating didn't seem all that hard and, after all, he only ever saw her on Sundays. Of course, Amanda's plans were very different. Suddenly, she was everywhere Charles was at, and she always wanted to hold hands or talk or walk together. She would get her bicycle and follow him when he wanted to practice tricks on his skateboard –he was shit at it, and she certainly didn't seem impressed, demanding he paid attention to her after half an hour most of the time, even though she owned a walkman and could probably keep herself entertained– or expect him to walk her home despite the fact that he had to then turn around and walk back a couple streets to get to his place, which they had passed a few minutes prior.

The other neighborhood kids, who had initially mocked him for having a girl be into him, continued to laugh and whistle and shout stuff whenever Amanda took his hand or leaned against his shoulder or called him a cheesy pet name.

They only dated for three weeks, and she was Charles' first kiss.

One morning, as Charles was trying to recover from a cricket game the night before –they had won, and his team was closer to another useless trophy that he could use to decorate his room. His body was sore, but it was a kind of pain he usually welcomed– his dad barged into the room, demanding he do something useful instead of wasting all day in bed. Charles got up and followed his father to the garage, where it was decided that “something useful” meant helping him repair the car.

It was fun. His dad wasn't the most patient person, and he would very quickly resort to yelling if something wasn't understood on the first try, but Charles paid as much attention as he could, asked very little questions and only got scolded a couple of times throughout the day. By the end of it, the car was working properly and, although his body was aching even more than before, it was still a far more pleasant pain than the one his father tended to leave him with.

As was the case every time Charles successfully interacted with his father, he craved to make the day last. Sitting on the porch, his father drinking an ale, Charles taking a few disgusting sips whenever Paul offered the can to him, he searched his brain for a topic of conversation –one that wouldn't ruin the day, that wouldn't end with his body hurting in a different, perhaps more familiar, way– and ended up talking about Amanda. In all honesty, he couldn't quite recall what words he had actually used. Nothing unkind, he liked to think. He had not fancied Amanda, but she was a pleasant enough girl, if somewhat galling. Whatever came out of his mouth, it didn't make his dad angry, but instead caused him to laugh loudly and push Charles in a way that was meant to be friendly, but caused him to involuntarily tense every muscle in his body.

“Look at our Charlie,” his dad had said, smile huge, proud, and Charles had stared, stunned. “Breaking hearts already!”

Charles had smiled back, elated, proud of himself, feeling big and important and good, and like he was finally getting the hang of it, like soon enough his dad would run out of reasons to be angry at him, and everything would be smooth sailing from then on.

Breaking the heart in question was decidedly less fun than being praised for it. Amanda cried when Charles told her he didn't fancy her anymore. He hadn't felt proud of himself or big or good at all, and she stopped saying hello even when they crossed paths at church, where Charles was in his best, most apologetic behavior. His father never did ask how the breakup went, almost like he forgot that whole conversation. Charles was very careful to reject people properly, kindly, after that.

Edwin was a different story. There had been no neighborhood kids to warn Charles of his feelings, but in over thirty years of friendship, there were some moments in which he wondered. Sometimes, Edwin would look at him for a little too long, or smile a little too sweetly, or treat him a little too kindly, and Charles would wonder. He would then push the feeling aside, save his suspicion for more important things, and tell himself that, even if it was true –and that “if” was really carrying that whole sentence– it wouldn't be anyone's problem until someone went and opened their mouth about it. Charles promised himself he wouldn't be that someone. There was no joy that could come from breaking anyone's heart, let alone Edwin's.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to resent his friend when he decided to confirm what Charles only occasionally dared to suspect, and whatever bit of attention he ever afforded his dad, whatever bit of love he held for the most important person in the world, whatever bit of care he put into not breaking any more hearts, he poured into his answer, and willed it to be enough to stop himself from even cracking this precious thing that was offered to him, and that he only ever strived to protect.

Even with something like anxiety in his stomach, and with sweaty palms that he didn't even try to dry on his trousers, Charles reeled in that part of him that always wanted to make people happy, and rejected the person he loved the most in the world, unwilling to be impulsive about this.

[saltminerising]

I don't actually think a small pet site having a week-long event where users share digital pets themed around a video game franchise is the same as actively monetarily supporting a current boycott target. There are a couple degrees of separation there. FR wasn't announcing a partnership with Microsoft or anything lmao. A staff member was excited about a video game release and evidently was unaware of any related boycotts (and bestie me too, I had no idea).

If the thread had been about a franchise that's permanently stained by its creator like HP? Yeah, sure. But a video game franchise which is otherwise Fine on its own? I think the (granted, very small) number of people I've seen who are accusing staff of actively supporting actual genocide are a little trigger-happy with the language, quite honestly. And you see that everywhere on the internet. Everything is either an unforgivable enemy or a temporary, conditional ally. It's an exhausting way to live.

I know a lot of people are pretty tired and extra sensitive to this stuff this year/these past few years/let's be real every human on earth in all of time has been tired bc of whatever bullshit was happening during their lifetime, but I dunno man. It's a bit much in this *particular* instance, imo.

They deserve criticism for plenty of things but I don't think this instance of a staff member's excitement over a video game remaster combined with bad timing is on the same level as other things.

The internet encourages this kind of instant fiery reaction, in reaction to anything and everything. Everything is either 0 or 100. Once you learn that pattern... I don't know actually, but it's good to be aware of.

Send in tickets suggesting a proper apology/acknowledgement if you think one is warranted, but jumping to "they're guilt tripping us" and "they must actively support genocide, boycott THEM. Condemn THEM" is... again, I feel like there's a few degrees of separation here that need to be taken into account. Not everything is your enemy.

It's also worth remembering that they ALWAYS take a while to write up "proper" apologies/acknowledgements, because *as we well know* the site's users love to extrapolate a lot from very little. And until the "proper" one is ready, they HAVE to make a shorter one to provide a brief explanation. So again, send in tickets if you think a longer acknowledgement is needed, and don't assume mouse mod's currently standing message is the end all be all of it.

[plantsjustwannahavefun]

"Izzy Canyon dwellers just want to turn him into an innocent victim who did nothing wrong!"

Actually my problem is that, in hindsight, Izzy didn't do enough wrong to justify the common interpretation of his relationship with Ed. In my book, the first time in the series he legitimately crossed over to villainous antagonist territory - someone you actually loved to hate for it even if you understood his reasons - was when he set the British Navy on the Revenge. That way he not only betrayed his integrity as a pirate by consorting with the common enemy of all pirates, but risked Ed's life too - cause, like, come on, that "plan" to send CJ to convince Ed to leave Stede was so far-fetched it barely counts as a plan. I don't buy Izzy ever looking at CJ and going "yep that seems like a smart, responsible, trustworthy man I could rely on for a delicate mind games operation like this". It was an act of sheer desperation on Izzy's part, but he still chose to do it. IMO this was actually worse than what he said to Ed in S1 finale. Although of course that was very nasty, too.

But the thing is, we don't actually have any info on what their relationship used to be like before S1. We were only ever shown, not told - and both times from Izzy's perspective: the first time in S01E04 during his resignation rant, which was very heartfelt and I'm sure a lot of it was true, but it's still one-sided, and the second time during his deathbed speech, which was, again, one-sided and this time biased in another direction - instead of airing his pent-up grievanced Izzy was putting most of the blame on himself.

Other than this, the entirety of Ed and Izzy's pre-S1 relationship gets extrapolated from one single episode, S01E04. The narrative itself seems to want us to see it as a microcosm of their usual long-standing dynamic, at least on the surface. We see Ed being depressed and suicidal, trying to open up to Izzy about it, and Izzy shutting him down and making him act like Blackbeard again. Since it's already clear that Ed and Stede are the main characters, we're primed to see Ed as the victim here and Izzy being an annoying, insensitive nag.

Except the context of those interactions changes everything. The context being that they are literally about to be attacked by the Spanish - something Ed knowingly brought on them with his decisive power as captain - and Ed is deliberately withholding crucial information from his own first mate and the rest of the crew, making them all think they're going to die and he isn't doing anything about it. Izzy wasn't just being a boring buzzkill not being excited for Ed when he showed him that ship model. He was actively panicking and trying to do his job asking Ed for orders so they don't all get slaughtered.

So, yeah, those are some very exceptional circumstances that don't say anything about their typical day to day interactions go when they're not in immediate mortal peril due to lack of communication. Was this the first time Ed ever told him about not wanting to be Blackbeard anymore? Izzy didn't seem very surprised, so probably not, but we don't know, and if Ed had confided in him before, we don't know how Izzy reacted - but I'd like to point out that this time he didn't ridicule Ed in any way, he simply pointed out that they were about to die if Ed didn't do anything. Does Izzy usually indulge Ed in the stuff he finds fun when they're not about to be killed? Again, we don't know, but Izzy's playfulness during that first confrontation with Stede in S01E02, and his whittling and jokes in S2 showed that he wasn't always as grouchy and joyless as he's made out to be. We actually saw him smile when Ed got excited about Buttons, too. Pretty sure if Izzy always shut him down about things like that, Ed would have stopped trying to share it with him long ago.

And, finally, there's one piece of this puzzle that doesn't seem to fit in with the rest at all. The show both told us and implied that Izzy couldn't let Blackbeard go because his own identity was too tied up in it, and because he idolised the glory of violent pirate lifestyle. But if that's the case, then why did he have no problem with Ed wanting to retire? Izzy literally gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up on the whole "kill Stede and steal his identity so he could live the rest of his life as a rich aristocrat" plan. If Izzy only admired Ed as a pirate, and was so hell-bent on keeping the Blackbeard persona alive, why was he ok with Ed retiring? How does this square up with the idea that Izzy had been keeping Ed chained to piracy?

I'd honestly hoped we would get some flashbacks of the two of them in S2, and then S3 before that hope died too, because there's still so much we're missing.

[bedlamsbard]

thoughts on natasha's death? did you think it was fitting, in character, worth the cost of her never appearing again (barring, you know, shenanigans)? what kind of impact did it have on endgame in a narrative sense?

oh, I hate it.

I don't really have particularly strong thoughts about it, because I don't...like it? And because my Endgame AUs all go AU in IW, I've only dealt with it once (in the hypothetical Yonder sequel concept). (I often don't necessarily Process things that happen in canon unless I need to for fanfic reasons.)

One of the problems with the Vormir Problem is that it's a narrative trap, it's a gimme that's created only to make very specific things happen. And to some extent that's true for anything that happens in fiction, but it feels really glaring for both Gamora in IW and Natasha in Endgame, because the canon doesn't interrogate it in any way, it just takes the premise as a "this has to happen. also, the Red Skull is here and we're not going to deal with that either." Which makes it really difficult to deal with on a lot of different levels, because you either have to add in a lot of stuff that is explicitly not in the canon (and a number of very good fanfic writers have done this. I'm almost certainly not going to be one of them because frankly I don't care; the closest I've ever come to dealing with it is Bruce and the Hulk in Yonder) or you have to take it at its fucked up face value and that's also really difficult to do, at least for me.

I disagree with a lot of fen in that the MCU should just have characters quietly retire; I understand that there are actor contracts involved and that was the big thing with the three Endgame departures, but outside from that, on a characterization level, almost no one in the superheroing business is going to retire. Natasha tried in BW; it failed immediately. The only way 95% of the characters in the MCU are going to retire, based solely on their actual characterization, is in a box. The other 5% are people like Clint and Bucky, who got into this job mostly by happenstance and sheer bad luck. That doesn't mean I actually think that the MCU should have had Natasha/Steve/Tony all get killed off in this film, but I do get the problem that they ran into here, and I don't know what they could do to get around it, but that's their problem, it's not my problem. (I actually think Tony should have died at the end of IW, but that's a whole other unrelated thing.) (Again, because this usually needs to be said when I say something like this: I like Tony Stark a lot. This is not "I hate Tony and think he needs to do," this is "I think it would have better narrative sense for Tony to die in IW.")

Does her death have an effect on Endgame in a narrative sense? absolutely not and that's a whole other problem. if they were going to kill her off mid-movie, then her death should have hung over this movie like a shroud and an executioner's axe. it does not. (admittedly, part of the reason for this is because the bulk of the remainder of the movie is the world's worst battle scene, but that battle scene should have had a fucking gaping Natasha-shaped hole in it.) I do think that Steve does not go back to 1949 and stay there if Natasha is still alive; I think that was his final breaking point, however that is not in the actual text, that is me extrapolating cause and effect off his preceding characterization.

I mean, I don't know what there is to say about it necessarily. I hate it, I think it was poorly done not because I don't think the MCU should kill off characters but because it felt inauthentic in-movie, which was also the problem with Gamora's death in IW. Loki's death in IW feels authentic; again, I don't necessarily that they should have done it, but it's one I've thought about way more and it makes sense in-narrative. Tony's death in Endgame feels authentic; I don't love that one either, but for the two major deaths in Endgame they're treated worlds apart and Tony's death is given far, far more weight than Natasha's is. So there's that hanging over it too. plenty of people back when the film came out talked about the implications of Natasha's death and its framing (heteronormativity etc.), and I get that, that's not actually the part that matters for me, I just...yeah, I don't know what there is to say about it. I think Hawkeye dealt with it as well as anyone could and I'm curious to see if Thunderbolts touches on it too. I can think of half a dozen ways it could be ~fixed without bringing in an alternate universe version of Natasha, which is actually not a plot trope I like and I really hope they don't got there now that they've done that with other characters. Would I like to see her back in the MCU? Um...only if they make the movie they should have made, which is the Secret Avengers film set between CACW and IW that's been rumored a few times. I would rather not see her come back at all than come back poorly done, which is the same way I feel about Steve coming back. I'm a fanfic writer, I am capable of dealing with this.

[tanadrin]

i don't have any special insights or strong evidence for this, this is 1000% just Political Vibes, but i feel like there's a good chance this phase of political development sees a realignment that cashes out in, on the one hand, what you might call "revisionist ideology" opposed to "status quo ideology." and here by "revisionist" i mean the term in the way bret devereaux uses the term "revisionist powers," i.e., states that seek to challenge the current international diplomatic order, vs. the "coalition of the status quo" (roughly, but not 100%, the West/Global North/NATO+allies).

by modern standards the revisionist faction is made up of both left and right elements; the coinciding forces here isn't horseshoe theory all-non-liberals-are-the-same type stuff, but simply an alignment of what are in some respects ideologies coming out of very different traditions that are brought together by circumstance. part of this circumstance is that both are nostalgic: tankies who miss the USSR, right-wing populists who miss not having so many immigrants around, social conservatives who miss getting to call gay and trans people slurs, etc. There's a strain of strongman authoritarianism, social conservatism, and economic populism that cuts across what used to be historically very different categories, which is why you see leftist commentators who have defined themselves primarily through their opposition to liberalism rather than right-wing reaction arguing themselves into supporting trumpism; why socially-conservative parties who nonetheless claim the mantle of leftism, like BSW, can cannibalize a lot of the leftist vote in countries like Germany (or, in other countries, the former Marxist-Leninist parties just become outright conservatives and nationalists)--and the germ of this kind of shit goes back as far as like the original red-brown third way types from the 20th century, it's not like the angry contary reactionaries on both the left and right just now noticed they had stuff in common!

but one reason i am cautious about this thesis is that i think this is a type overrepresented online; and i am cautious about extrapolating too enthusiastically to the real world. i suspect that at some point somebody like sahra wagenknecht is going to realize she has quite a lot in common with someone like alice weidel. but maybe not! maybe i am too cynical.

and the "status quo" ideology is not, like, Objectively The Good Guys, here. this is the liberal, rule of law faction, but it's also the unabashedly capitalist faction, and in many ways the neoliberal faction, too--one that includes a lot of left-liberals, too, but left liberals who by virtue of finding themselves making common cause with other flavors of liberal are going to find their power diluted. and this is a faction that is happy to embrace social freedoms, albeit within certain frameworks: the "we heart gay prison guards" guys, in other words. insofar as it is the party of the status quo it's also the party that finds it harder to imagine things could be better, to push the envelope in terms of policy or even to provide a strong ideological account of what the world should be working toward. the pure grievance-and-xenophobia politics of revisionist politics don't provide much of a narrative in that department, either, but at least they provide someone to blame, and promise the catharsis of taking your anger out on the hated outgroup.

i think this would be a pretty dismal politics, but i think it would be a stable equilibrium for a while--at least as stable as left vs right proved for much of the 20th century. i think there are also a lot of other ways for the zillions of tiny incentive gradients and interest groups that make up society to align themselves in broad political dichotomies, though. i don't think there's anything inevitable or necessary about this alignment, anymore than there was about left vs right or, before that, court vs country or barons vs emperor or guelphs vs ghibellines or populares vs optimates. so if we do find ourselves there i think that's a trap we can escape--if we care to

[rifualk]

On Mental Health and Cosmic Embarrassment

I don't usually make a post in the aftermath of one of my spirals, so I bet most people see some of the vent posts I make, and assume I am just off my meds or something. I am on them but I might not be on the right ones. This is a thing that happens to me sometimes. I have psychotic episodes, where it feels like the things I am saying are completely inconsequential and I genuinely believe no one cares what I'm saying or, worst of all, that it cannot scare anyone that cares about me. I get too tired to fight my intrusive thoughts and I just ride them out. Most of my thoughts are not ones I enjoy having. I have trouble parsing what is real sometimes. For most of my life, out of a kind of primal shame and terror of being perceived or judged, I beat myself into believing that I just roleplayed as a crazy person online because I wanted attention for it, but it finally clicked for me at some point in my 20s that I was, and am, genuinely very mentally ill, maybe in ways that make me not-entirely-functional in the culture I inhabit. Also, I want attention for it.

Life is very embarrassing. I think embarrassment, shame, et al. is probably the most cosmic feeling of them all, because being embarrassed, for me anyway, leads invariably to my OCD extrapolating the embarrassment, no matter how slight, into its natural extreme, becoming a full-blown existential meltdown and often manifesting in some self-punishment. Or a lot of self-punishment. Instead of saying "everyone wants attention, it's not a big deal", my brain will overwhelm me with shame and make me vow to be quieter about the whole thing next time. Good emotions are meant to be expressed, I tell myself, and Bad ones are not. I think it's very unhealthy for people to not express their negative emotions openly. Or maybe I'm psychotic. I mean, I am psychotic. But maybe right now, too.

Ultimately this feeling peaks with the realization - again - that I'm a eukaryote. I live on a spinning ball of stardust in the aftermath of what had to have been a colossal disaster and waste of time. But it happened, and so now there's a bunch of stuff floating around, and some of that stuff started moving for reasons I don't personally understand and the implications of which scare me. And the moving stuff that moved faster got to stay moving longer. And so a chain reaction escalated, and eventually there were very large moving things whose survival adaptations had evolved in such a way that they could conceptualize and communicate complex information about the world around them, but they were also able to conceptualize themselves. This gave them a lot of grief. They wanted very badly for there to be an answer to why they were able to do that. Surely it served some purpose. But we never found one, and here we are.

I don't have a god to turn to. I have tried - earnestly, sincerely, and desperately - to reach out; I never hear back. I don't want to be an atheist, it's heartbreaking. Honestly. I want someone to be up there, or out there. Knowing there isn't, is just... cruel. It's horrifying and it wrenches my heart. Look at us, look how much we're suffering, where the fuck did you go, what the fuck is your problem? Help us!

In spite of everything, I am still not sure what I believe.

Don't you ever just cry about the world? Like, broadly? Don't you ever just have to take off your glasses and wipe the brine from them because you caught a glimpse of what people, as a species, could be capable of? And I get angry at myself, too. What am I doing about it? What even can I do? I can barely hold down a job. I am barely an adult. I am often mired in this feeling. It permeates everything. I'm living in a tragedy - not just my own, but millions and millions of others'. This is a nightmare. It's a nightmare and I'm an embarrassment, and my brain doesn't work right, and I'm living in a terrible reality that is shared by everyone, and yet somehow equally isolating and alienating to all of us. Does it have to be that way? Aren't we all lonely?

When I am spiraling I really do think that the end is near, either for me, or for everyone, or for both. To be fair, my confidence about humanity's future is not promising even when I am at my most sane. But in this kind of emotional place, the stakes are too high for me to care that what I say might come off as upsetting. It is completely overwhelming. I see my life up to this point, and I see how long I've been alive and realize I'm very Not Normal and I look and sound different than everyone around me and I'm an embarrassment. It's embarrassing to exist. It's embarrassing to be transgender, too. It's really, really embarrassing to be mentally ill and fully aware of it all the time. It's shameful. I am ashamed of how my family likely sees me. How my peers see me. I'm just a walking disaster. I feel like this bars me from leading a happy life or finding some success in art - It doesn't seem like you're allowed to be quite this much of a problem and "get away with it", does it? There's a bit of social sanitizing at work there - you are only allowed to be a certain level of messed up and if you pass that you're sort of a pariah. I don't think I've ever done anything pariah-worthy, but I can only see things from the inside of my own head, and there's a lot of unwanted noise in here.

I painted this when I lived in Oregon. I don't know how. I could not do art like this again if asked.

I'm not in a good place, generally-speaking. It could be worse - and it was for a long time- but it's still just not great. The main reason is that I am very homesick. I grew attached to the Pacific Northwest in a way I've never really grown attached to any other place. It had a quality that exists nowhere else. It resonated with me immediately and I knew right away from the moment I first set foot there that it was my home. I grew to be a part of it, and it's the only place I felt I somewhat-belonged... I have been away from Oregon for 2 whole years as of next month. I feel like I'm a fish out of water, or a sapling in the wrong soil. I can't and won't say that the place I live currently is a bad place, but it isn't my place, and the disconnect has been maybe the nastiest shock to my system in all my life. Finding the place I loved, and living for over 12 years there, only to be wrenched away from it so suddenly, left a shock on me that I think has yet to surface in my work. I'm excited to see what form it takes when it does. Location is very important to my mental wellbeing, more than I think it is for most people. Maybe I am a plant. It's also very important for my art. I've struggled to find inspiration since I moved here. That said, I've had the very precious opportunity to just work on myself - on my transition, as well as my personal issues. I think I'm getting better, gradually, in some way. I have a job now, at least. So it's not entirely bad. I even grew sunflowers last summer.

Around this time I got banned from twitter, but I don't feel any shame about the reason why because I believe in my message. But it forced me to be a lot less active online for a long time. It also made me lose a lot of support. That's been something I've grappled with a lot these last 2 years - that people really don't like people like me, for reasons that are mostly not our fault. I will likely always be something of an outsider for being who I am now, but I was one before anyway. It's still worth it. I like the person I'm becoming. I feel like only recently did I allow myself to feel this self-love. I was too embarrassed of myself. It took a lot of patience and a lot of de-tangling my self-worth from a lot of trauma. So it's likely I would have needed to go through all of this regardless of where I was.

I still slip up. It's an uphill climb and it's slippery. I like to be transparent about these things. It's a relief - feeling like I need to hide things is my default state and it's lovely to just let go of stuff so I don't need to keep it in my head all the time. I have a lot of hangups still. I get discouraged about my art still - I fear I'll never build myself back up to where I was before, and that there will never be a time when I can really pay the bills with it. Or worse-still, that it just isn't special enough to last. That it isn't remarkable enough to survive after I'm gone. But I think a lot of people who make stuff feel that way, and it's not our fault. There's some relief in that. I'm happy to have even a few people that care about me and my work, and something I've been trying really hard to remember in recent years is to take time to appreciate them. I'm not actually alone. I have a lot of people that love me. I'm not an outsider. I'm very lucky to know the people I do, and I hold a deep regret for all the connections I've let go of because I was just too sick. Deep down I really do wish I could love everyone. I have no ill will towards anyone, not really.

I still don't know what I'm doing. I am just doing my best, I think. I'm really, really tired. I don't want to get any older. I'm scared of the passage of time. My memory is so bad, it feels like time is taken from me without me realizing. I am 33 years old. I do not have 33 years worth of memories. There are huge leaps. Gaps where suddenly I was just older and in more pain. Being adrift in time like this is horrific - one day I will blink, and the present moment may be completely forgotten. It can't go this fast. It just can't. Something has to be wrong. I don't want to die, I don't want to miss out on so much life or be unable to remember it. I don't want to find myself on my deathbed someday way sooner than I think and be unable to string together any kind of coherent thread from my memories. What is it all for? It has to mean something right? Why am I doing anything?

I think I finally understand that love is why. I don't know much more than that. Love is real, and it's the answer. If you find love, don't take it for granted, ever. No love is perfect. Take it with all its flaws. You don't have time to bargain with it. Love like you'll never love again, love like it's your last day alive, love like it will keep you alive forever, because it will. Every year closer to death you get, you will feel the regret of all the times you did not follow your heart. Life is short. I'm finding this out entirely too late. It goes by so fast, and what you have at the end are people and memories of being loved. To be loved is to live forever. It's the thing that connects us to everything else. It's the source and the answer to everything. It makes more sense the older I get. It used to sound cheesy, but I believe it with more sincerity every day.

I'll be okay, okay

I once promised someone that I would stop self-harming. They are no longer in my life, but I kept the promise anyway. There are no new scars on my arms, or bruises on my head or face. I'm keeping this promise for myself, now.

[rainbow-femme]

Something that ultimately bothers me about Nessian is a problem I have with a lot of SMaas things in that she sets up something that seems really interesting and will lead to some really dynamic character development and a new direction for the plot

But then the scene ends and she doesn’t need that thing any more and it just gets swept under the rug (Like Cassian having his wings shredded trying to save Nesta from Hybern and the cauldron but then next time he shows up he’s fine and nothing all that permanent actually happened)

And I feel like ACOWAR, especially during the battle, set up a really interesting romance plot between Cassian and Nesta that got thrown away for enemies to lovers a third time

During the battle we see Nesta call out for Cassian to save him and him immediately breaking from battle plan to go to her when he hears her cry out

We also have Cassian saying that he wished they’d had a chance and they’ll find each other again in another life when he thinks they’ll die

And when Nesta thinks they’ll die she not only lies down on Cassian to die with him but also ultimately is using her body kind of like a shield for his

So, here’s how I extrapolated this

Cassian is devoted entirely to Rhysand, feels like he completely owes him both as his high lord and because he was saved as a child by being brought into the family. Rhysand loves Cassian but either Feyre, his kid, or being high lord will always come first while Cassian puts Rhysand first

Nesta was not a great older sister to Feyre growing up, but also she was a teenager with no idea what she was doing most of the time. Feyre gets taken and she feels awful and even risks her life trying to go to the wall and get her back. When she “fails” to save Elain from the cauldron (not her fault but not how she sees it) she becomes even more devoted to Elain, being just as traumatized but putting all of her stuff aside to care for her basically catatonic sister

Basically, we’ve got a set up of two characters who feel like they must completely devote themselves to someone else and not ask for anything in return, either out of a sense that they’ll never be able to pay back good that was done to them or because they’ll never be able to make up for what they perceive as a failure to care for that person previously

And then again in battle suddenly you have these moments where they’re willing to completely devote themselves to the safety of the other, but neither is used to someone else doing this back to them

So going forward they now have their usual person they devote themselves to but now this other person as well, which is conflicting, and then this other person insists on also trying to care for them which isn’t the deal because they’re supposed to do everything and not burden the other person with needs of their own. So both want so badly to do things for the other because that’s where their self worth comes from, but their self worth also keeps making them reject the others kindness

And while they’ve got their complicated relationships with how they feel indebted to their respective person, you could now have Cassian feeling like he owes Nesta because he failed to save her from the Cauldron and it was her shielding him with her body and he wasn’t able to do the same for her

So their romance would be two people intent on only giving and never needing, and suddenly there is a person who insists on giving them this unconditional attention and kindness and slowly they each learn to take moments where they allow themselves to be completely cared for and supported by someone without any guilt and believing they deserve it

There would still be the tension and miscommunications and confusion to draw out then getting together, and conflict and guilt over now not being completely devoted to the person they think they owe, and there could be conversations of “Oh my god I didn’t know you felt like you had to be like that with me, I want you to have relationships with other people and to be happy, not to feel like you have to be here for me and only me”

But nah, forget those moments in ACOWAR, they can’t stand each other, gotta enemies to lovers for the third time