#Plural Obfuscator

[the-silent-fellowship]

i hope you don’t mind me making another request but could you also make a flag for the term obfuscator? (https://pluralpedia.org/w/Obfuscator)

Obfuscator

[PT: Obfuscator]

“An obfuscator is a masker or prism who is also a persecutor, and forces masking onto the system in ways often detrimental to their attempts to live a healthy life. The obfuscator may prevent the system from asking for help, or allowing the system to divulge any secrets, even when it’s clear that doing so is the healthier choice. The obfuscator may be unaware they are doing this, or that they are even a headmate.” - Pluralpedia

[ID: in Alt text]

[Tags] @system-term-archive, @pluralitywords, @pluralterms, @radiomogai, @plurchive

[ijustwannamakeemojis]

[ID: Six pixel hearts of various flags in order being Lazymate, Obfuscator, Masker, Caesian, Posier, and Faucet. End ID]

@the-silent-fellowship Obfuscator, Masker, Faucet

@polyextranth Caesian

[vivisheadspace]

is it normal to be dysphoric over not being conjoined with another girl? I think I'm slowly going insane

Believe it or not, the intense longing to be a conjoined girl has been so ingrained into my being, that I literally don't have memories of me not wanting to be conjoined at any point of my life! At my youngest, I'd wish every day that I'd somehow "grow another head" and... well it's clear I never grew out of that, haha...

In fact, I theorize that this feeling was so intense that it actually somewhat obfuscated in my mind that I was transgender as well! It's a bit tricky to recognize gender identity when you have a constant longing for another aspect... Granted, I probably should have figured it out a bit sooner when I started having fantasies in high school about having a conjoined trans sister who I transitioned alongside, since "I really wouldn't mind and it seemed nice!" Mhm, yeah, totally nothing there to examine...

On a more direct note, having spent a lot of time with therian/otherkin and plural friends especially, yeah it's not terribly uncommon to feel very genuine gender-tangential dysphoria or euphoria involving traits that go beyond what are typically seen as traditionally gendered traits. I really can't recommend enough to explore these feelings with someone you trust, in digital OR physical spaces!! Roleplaying definitely helps, at least a little!

[yvanspijk]

Latin had six noun cases, but in all Romance languages except Romanian, nouns only have one singular form and one plural form left. What happened? This extra large infographic tells you in ten steps how the Latin case system collapsed – and how the accusative case emerged victorious.

What caused the case system to collapse in the first place? There were multiple factors. Regular sound changes did a lot of damage: many endings had come to be pronounced the same: -ō and -um; -is and -ēs; -us and -ōs; -a, -am and -ā; -e and -em. This obfuscated the system a lot.

[etz-ashashiyot]

One of the wildest things on a lot of your posts talking abt culturally christian issues (ie the leftist politics + calvinism one) is how regularly culturally xtian atheists seem to think there's this, like, glut of other non-christian religions regularly operating with some force in the US cultural/political sphere and they'd be ignoring some giant demographic of religious people who aren't christians if they didn't wildly overgeneralize when talking about Christian influence in politics. Like there's just not another religion that has any sort of cultural or political cachet on a large scale. There's not another religion that even exists in America on a fraction of the scale Christianity does. Even if every religion operated the same in terms of encouraging blind obedience and breeding conservatism, it still wouldn't matter bc in terms of american demographics and politics non-christian religious people are basically a rounding error. It's not even relevant. And this is the annoying side of religious pluralism as a sociopolitical effort bc it obfuscates the reality of the fact that America is comically, overwhelmingly Christian, and the culture is overwhelmingly Christian, and it just doesn't make any sense to talk about Religious People in America as a cultural and political force and pretend that could ever mean anything other than christians.

Which is why it matters that you talk about Calvinism, specifically, because that's a set of values and beliefs that inform America, and if America had been founded and primarily led by Catholics its cultural Christianity would look quite different, but anti-theists can't have that conversation bc then they'd have to acknowledge that religion is more complex than "heaven is up hell is down"

For real though!!

The kicker is that this attitude, too, is culturally Christian. Because Christianity really likes to portray itself as the One True Religion and is the only one taught in any detail here, a side effect of that is all other religions are viewed through a Christian lens. So there are a lot of assumptions made that they think and operate similarly, albeit with different people cut and pasted into the familiar roles, when in reality everything is affected, up to and including even how one defines religion at all.

And when you try to explain this to them they just talk past you and repeat themselves because they literally cannot conceive of how other frameworks exist, never mind operate. I've had more effective conversations with a donkey.

[folcanta]

Shape shifter

i essentially said this in my folken post but my posts are too long so i'll put it in its own.

In episode 10, not knowing his name, Hitomi is asked to do a reading on "the prisoner." As soon as Miguel Lavariel breaks out of prison, Hitomi draws a blank card mid-reading— because Miguel is no longer "the prisoner." Miguel is the only one of Dilandau's guys for whom we get a surname, and the function of providing an identity in this episode is to tell us about how Hitomi's— and Folken's— power works.

Similarly, Folken can't read/predict Dilandau the way he can with Van. Because "Dilandau" isn't a person.

If we could see the pendant in these moments, we might imagine it swinging wildly, never settling on a point. Dilandau exists in name only— a false identity propped up by Zaibach as an experiment. There's no one there. Celena is buried under a warped artificial fate, and Folken doesn't know Celena. He tells Allen this in episode 24. Maybe he's bullshitting, maybe he's not— it would be weird for him to know nothing about Dilandau, but, that weirdness is also in keeping with his inability to keep Dilandau in line. Equally, Dilandau doesn't know anything about Folken! He had no idea he was from Fanelia or that he was Van's brother, had no idea how or why Folken could control Escaflowne. He doesn't figure it out until Folken tells him in the drama CD, and based on Dilandau's account (for whatever that's worth,) they only met when they were paired up.

Dilandau's fate never takes the place of Celena's. Arguably, Dilandau's fate could never be Celena's— Dilandau's fate, if it existed, is more like Van's fate, if Van continues on the same path, leaning into bloodlust. Dilandau claims to have killed dragons, something Van needed help to accomplish.

Dilandau is an obfuscation. The very first purpose he serves is to appear as more than he is. Dilandau has a crown, a throne, and servants. He obscures Folken's position. Then, quickly, although Folken lacks these things himself, we're shown evidence after evidence that Folken greatly outranks him. Dilandau is an image. A phantasm. A mascot.

okay now i'm thinking about the colour symbolism we're all already well aware of, blue elder siblings and red younger siblings... since Jajuka and the Dragonslayers are coded blue/purple, maybe that information serves a dual/different purpose for Dilandau in-universe, where it's intended to pacify him, making him more likely to carry out his role if he subconsciously associates blue with trustworthiness. i don't think this is true but it is An Idea.

Whether or not the Dragonslayers themselves are captives, Folken does tell us that the sorcerers experimented on children plural. While i'm at it, i'll briefly note here that Alseides is the name of some nymphs in Greek mythology. Oreides... well that just means imitation gold (copper/zinc alloy) doesn't it? And what about Oread?

Dilandau is somehow their "patron," but we see over and over that he's much more reliant on them than they are him. They are sacrificed again and again to keep him safe. They offer themselves up readily as targets in spite of his abuse. They may as well be empty vessels... much the same as him.

Based on Dilandau's function, and Jajuka's to him, it seems pretty clear that the Dragonslayers' primary and literal function is to exist for Dilandau. Let me rephrase that: their singular purpose is to substantiate the idea of "Dilandau." Programmed to never let the mask slip. They don't need him any differently than an ant needs a queen. We see very clearly just how much Dilandau needs them, torn apart and unable to bear his own weight without them. They are part of his planned identity too, as if all together they're a composite organism.

That's why his deterioration is so sudden and devastating... the truth of the emptiness revealed by their absence. The trauma of losing them, unmooring Dilandau, isn't necessarily due to losing them as friends— the type of relationship they have isn't one Escaflowne rewards with "friendship". It's more like losing the links in a chain, the locks on a safe, the flotation devices waterlogged, left drowning in a shallow pool.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 3 "teliko" thoughts

ahh, this one sounds interesting… let us see.

HATER ALERT: i actually felt almost no interest during this episode… until the very end. the monster was scary, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, and when our agents are separated doing different tasks, we lose that emotional heart of the show. i did feel attached to our new friend mr. duff, but from seeing how these episodes go, i knew what was going to happen to him. the ending was great- i love when they save each other! but the other parts were kinda just… eh. and the stuff they introduced that was supposed to build up to the bigger plot also didn’t interest me. i was like okay, so we just get another one of these deep throat fellows. i hate to say it, but i was kind of bored!!!

despite this announcement, let us return to the liveblogging

good to be reunited, i say after 2 days having not seen an episode. might have to quit my job when i finish this show because there will be nothing else to carry me through lmaooo i NEED to look forward to scully and mulder time AND THEN scully and mulder discussion time directly after!!!!

we are on a plane. ah yes, the flute my mutual phoebe speaks of is playing. shoutout to @azure-firecracker. i see some people in cool outfits and a child playing with what looks like a yellow barney doll? not one of barney’s friends… it looks like barney himself, but yellow. interesting.

oh! this fellow is reading french! it’s a paper about repairing some infrastructure! i like that i can read a few words :)

ACK! a creature with white painted skin and a red human eye is watching our francophone friend! oh boy, i paused right as this eye filled my screen and it was deeply unpleasant. 

so francophone friend is trying to use the airplane bathroom but i am spooked because that thing is somewhere… and he looks up and SCREAMS!!!!!

now the plane has arrived… but where is our dude who went to the bathroom? an entirely different guy is climbing up from the ground. and his eyes look like they are bleeding????

so where is OG francophone dude???? BLEAH! he is dead and now HIS face is painted all white!!!

so did we get some body swap stuff going on….?

oh gosh this is creepy…. something about that skin paint and red eye combo is freaking me tf out…

HUH??? intro time has been interrupted by new words in the title sequence!!! they read “deceive inveigle obfuscate”… had to look up “inveigle” but it means to persuade… what are we dealing with here??

i can’t figure out what the pattern is for why some special episodes have different title sequences…. oh i bet the OG fans were trying to CRACK the code back in the day

(author's note: i think the titles change when we learn stuff about the various deep throats? plural. you'll see why i specify plural later on)

back at the headquarters. scully is coming into skinner’s office. she is in a very nice white suit! she remarks that there isn’t much traffic at this hour… she showed up at 5:17 AM?!?! she needs a RAISE!!

she is introduced to a dr. bruin from the philly CDC. well this sounds like it is going to be a scary matter if it involves disease. she shakes this guy’s hand but doesn’t say anything. can’t tell if it’s a silent read or not…

so four young men have gone missing in philly recently, all Black. and there are no leads… until last night! owen sanders, reported missing, was found dead near a construction site. but he wasn’t killed!!! disease....?

so he shows her a photo of a dude painted white and is like “i thought he was black” and the doctor is like yeah he was. but maybe a new disease caused depigmentation. so we should get a microscope.

(that was funny to me because he was very clearly a Black man just painted white with actual paint... writers, do not think such tricks could fool medical doctor dana scully)

so i am not to believe that these guys were NOT actually painted, but rather they lost their pigmentation? okay, okay, noted. i am suspending my disbelief 

skinner says they hoped someone with a background like scully could make a quick analysis. this is also funny because i feel they should have maybe gone to a specialist in skin conditions that could possibly cause such effects...? but for plot reasons it Must be her. i mean she IS kinda the best, so maybe she can figure it out. by 7:30 am she is doing an autopsy.

OH! she says the bleaching of the irises suggest a cellular reaction… bleh. sounds very nasty.

“hey, i heard you were down here slicing and dicing”, says mulder, entering the room and sabotaging her nice little recording session 

(mulder makes a michael jackson joke that feels wrong) (also he is popping sunflower seeds in the morgue)

he is very suspicious… not believing it is a real disease… 

“mulder, not everything is a labyrinth of dark conspiracy” <- LMAO i’ve reblogged that moment before but now i really get to see it!!

“and not everybody is planning to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate” <- she said the words omg…. (he watches and pops a sunflower seed)

what a lovely vocabulary she has, the better to look at him disapprovingly with 

he wants to join the case and she looks off sort of by the camera and looks SO done lmaoooo

cutscene to another man, mr. aboah, who conspicuously seems to be missing some pigment on his back. and in a way that does not look like paint.

someone is knocking at his door. oh! it’s marcus duff, his immigration counselor, who has arrived to talk about naturalization. mr. aboah welcomes him into his room, but the lights are off and it is very hard to see, i note. duff agrees it is very dark! and brings this fact up! so he turns one light on, and they sit to do paperwork. 

duff says aboah looks ill… but he denies it. so duff says he knows how lonely it is to be newly arrived to the US, and that he can help aboah bring over his whole family. long silence... suspiciously long silence… then a thank you.

mulder is going to the lab and there he sees agent pendrell! LMAOOOO he wants to wait for scully but mulder says she has a date just to mess with him… THEN SAYS IT’S WITH A DEAD MAN BECAUSE SHE IS DOING AN AUTOPSY LMAOOOO

damn, everyone knows how down bad this dude is.... that is soooo funny and also pathetic. unfortunately i do lowkey loathe this pendrell fellow. like stay away from her yk?

so, what did they find in the autopsy… a seed of a rare flower indigenous to certain parts of west africa!

(cutscene to mulder on the phone, holding the seed) “it contains a cerebropathic glycoside. does that mean anything to you?” <- i love when he asks her medical questions because he doesn’t know wtf any of that stuff means... it makes my heart grow three sizes to see him deferential

and she knows what it means!! it’s a depressant. she is still in the morgue, now covered in lots of blood all over her coat 

oh! she found something that could explain his lack of pigmentation… “his pituitary gland was necrotized”, which is a funny thing to say even if it actually has a very important meaning! the pituitary gland controls hormones... and melanin!

“i have identified the effect, i am still looking for the cause” <- i love her so terribly, and her rigid but in a lovely way line of thinking... this is a very important specification!

“where are you, mulder?” “off to water the seeds of doubt. bye bye” omg he actually said bye. that has to be a first. also where is his ass going…

there’s something different about the way his hair is brushed in front of his face today and hmmppppgh he looks. handsome.

he is off to the UN building again… and we see ms. covarrubias, from before??? was he lowkey stalking her….?

yes! yes he was, and approaches her in the dark! this is deeply weird behavior, even for him... also why does he think she can help with this case. he’s onto something… but what? 

she flat out denies knowing about this case. but he doesn’t buy it.

WAIT. i see what is going on here… is she going to be deep throat 3.0?!?!?!

damn... we’re nearly at a deep throat a season at this pace...

not sure i like that tbh. like are we gonna just keep getting and losing deep throats. it's getting a little old. also, whatever happened to that one senator who would leak stuff to mulder? was that just a two episode and never mention it again kind of thing?

hmm.

okay, back to philadelphia i think. yes, this is confirmed by the eagles hat this guy has on. OH! he was hit in the head with something. it looks a thorn, and it digs deep in his head and got all bloody, bleh! he is losing his vision after this, and stumbled onto the bench behind him. everything is deeply trippy from his point of view, and the bus driver leaves angrily, thinking he is on drugs, which was very rude.

but as the bus driver pulls away, we see aboah on the other side of the street!!! who is losing even more melanin in his skin as time goes on!!! and also has one eye all pink now!!!

(intense chanting over a drum beat)

next day, scully is with the bus driver from before, asking about what went down. he claims he asked the dude if he needed help, which is very much not true. 

and mulder arrives! alfred kittel, 17 years old, went missing last night. this is not good.

mulder’s convinced it has to do with another rare seed, and he pulls out some file that deep throat 3.0 must have given him. and it’s a photo of our francophone friend from the very beginning of the episode, who was also found dead and without pigment!

“it says here the cause of death was undetermined” “yeah, undetermined scully, but not necessarily unknown” <- so what does that mean… like they just didn't investigate because they were scared to learn the truth? hmm.

some police are knocking at aboah’s door the next day, asking him about the missing person’s case- notable, one Black officer is talking about how weird of a name aboah is. i see this attempt on commentary, and acknowledge it, but it feels... odd.

and despite denying having any informationon the missing man's whereabouts, who is in aboah's office but kittel, the kid who was hit with a seed last night, missed his bus, and was reported missing! he is quietly gasping, watching the TV, and oh…. he is losing pigment in his eye and skin as well!!! WHAT IS GOING ON

aboah opens his mouth really really wide and…. PULLS SOMETHING OUT OF HIS THROAT??? what was that!?? what was that.

hey. what was that...

mulder and scully are now visiting mr. duff, the guy who was helping out mr. aboah with his naturalization process. they’re asking him to cross reference his list of clients with a list of people from that flight where our francophone friend sadly was killed, and mr. duff thinks they’re trying to catch illegal immigrants, unto scully busts out the word “public health crisis” and then things kick into gear.

mulder checks aboah’s place, but no luck. she’s going on about how it’s her duty to find and solve this disease as a doctor ( <3 ) and he recognizes aboah in a crowd of construction workers… but when mulder approaches he sprints!!! little did he know of mulder’s trackstar skills. 

scully thinks he jumped through the fence, but mulder finds him… in some sort of hole???

so it’s MRI time for aboah, to figure out we is going on. the doctor is saying he looks asymptomatic, but mulder is pouting in the window, so scully asks to run a few more tests. and apparently aboah can’t communicate with them due to the language barrier… so they called mr. duff, who is very angry that his client has been arrested.

mulder says “we only arrested him because he ran when we tried to question him, and i want to know why he ran”...

(CRINGE! CRINGE! INSENSITIVE WHITE MAN ALERT!)

...which causes mr. duff to respond with “sir, if you had ever been beaten by the police, or had your home burned to the ground for no other reason than being born, then maybe you would understand why he ran” oh! mulder cringe moment intensifies, even after this heartfelt explanation from mr. duff, as he INSISTS aboah ran because he’s hiding something 

“where are you going?” “to find someone who i know plotted to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate” (silly words said very angrily)

so he’s at the burkina faso embassy. talking to the man who mulder thinks requested to stop the investigation into the first man’s death. this is a bold accusation... but not one the man seems to deny.

he says that his people, the Bambara, are farmers, and he grew up hearing stories of the Teliko, spirits of the air. they hide in small holes- which could be how aboah got in that pipe, i suppose- and oh no, the doctor back at the hospital is looking for mr. aboah while our unnamed embassy man is explaining how the teliko emerge at night!

the man from the embassy talks about his experience with an air spirit as a child, and how his father saved him from one. but then, they found his cousin dead and entirely white, like the dead men. which is why he knew it was real.

(zoom in on aboah in a tiny drawer of a food delivery cart) OH! the eyeballs peeking out are CREEPY

next morning, they’re looking at x rays. scully says aboah has something lodged in his throat… like that thing we saw him take out before!! and even more disturbing… look at the saggital section, just below the hypothalamus! NO PITUITARY GLAND!

GASP! this is impossible! (i love the medial jargon)

mulder emerges into the room just as they say this to point out that aboah has disappeared!

mr. duff is heading back to his car, but aboah is on the prowl. mr. duff is very happy to see him, and gives him a ride home. NOOO DON’T LET SOMETHING BAD HAPPEN TO THIS GENTLEMAN!!

NOOO! mulder is investigating the food cart when scully reports that mr. duff’s car was found abandoned…. with the keys still in the ignition. do not hurt him.

WHAT? cutscene to aboah holding this BIG NEEDLE thing over duff while one of his eyes is very pale…. where is that needle going…. OMFG HIS NOSE I CAN’T LOOK… 

the police arrive just after some crunching noises were heard and then also some snuffling in the pipes as aboah escapes into them. but luckily, duff is alive.

mulder is proposing that he is basically a vampire for melanin?

wait, hold on, what is going on about now? “the lost tribe- a clan of sub-Saharan albinos linked by their common congenital deficit who’ve adapted over generations by…” “what, by stealing other people’s hormones?”

well, scully, i must say i had a very similar reaction to his hypothesis!

so why wouldn’t it be an isolated case? she asks. a very good question! because of what someone told mulder last night… “so you’re basing this theory on a folktale?” “it’s just another way of describing the same truth, right? i mean, all new truths begin as heresies and end as superstitions. we fear the unknown, so we reduce it to the germs that are most familiar to us, whether that’s a folktale or a disease or conspiracy”

well... that is an opinion you can have, i guess?

scully with the counterpoint: why leave his own country to come here and do the killings? his smarts ass reply: free cable…. or liberty n whatnot idk

mulder pulls over to a demolition site, which he thinks might be connected to one of the other bodies, so he just. busts a hole in there and walks in. fully knowing that it is a demolition site with active asbestos. okay!!! get that mesothelioma suit king

creepy music as they explore… and hear clanging in the dark…. mulder is gonna climb a ladder now.

BLEH, THE SCARY EYES ARE WATCHING!!!!

AND NO!!! mulder is hit by one of the seeds!!!! he is calling out for scully as he trips into another dimension. NO!!!! he has fallen down!!!

scully rescue time….? now she must climb the ladder…. and sees him toppled onto the ground!!!

she hears some clanking about and climbs into a vent… which had to be awful to film… the teliko is above her!!!!!!

more vent crawling…. AND OMG!!! the dude from before, alfred kittle, is in there, and now very very very white and dead!! rip king :(

but she finds mulder in there, alive. he can only groan softly. aww poor meow meow. but something rapidly approaches….

JEEZ.. IT'S ABOAH/THE AIR SPIRIT, AND HE’S CRAWLING ON ALL FOURS AND BARRELLING TOWARDS HER WITH SHINY SCARY EYES LIKE A CAT WAAAH

scully whips out her gun and fires two shots… and aboah (do i call him aboah? IS he still the man named aboah? was he ever? or was he just a spirit?) anyway he seems to have disappeared?

(mulder still groaning) “it’s okay, mulder. i’m here. okay?” <- oh…… a rescue scene…. oh be still my heart…. i was not expecting to feel so Tender

so she beats the vent open, and finds the other bodies of the missing men in there. then she pulls his body out of the vent, apologizing to him for yanking on his legs to get him out, which was quite sweet, before slumping him up against one of the bodies to call 911.

OH! scully badge number reveal! JTT0331613. so WRITE THAT DOWN, SUPER FANS. but as she calls, the creature slash aboah returns behind her… 

mulder is groaning and trying to let her know… and she gets the hint, whips around with her gun, and shoots!

phenomenal communication between them with no more than faint moaning from mulder. truly highlights their connection.

this time, it appears there is no escape from the bullets for the teliko, as she sits with mulder among all of the bodies

oh! scully is wrapping up the episode and she has these round glasses on and my heart is skipping a few beats!! this is field journal entry 74.

good news! mr. duff survived!! and aboah is being charged for murder, but aboah is dying as they speak and may not live long enough to stand trial. and she’s confident science can explain the whole thing… “but what science may never be able to explain is our ineffable fear of the alien among us, a fear which often drives us not to search for understanding, but to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate, to obscure the truth not only from others, but from ourselves” (and fade to black)

well! my initial thoughts…

it seems this episode existed only to introduce us to deep throat 3.0. that seemed to be the only greater overarching plot point there. which is fine, we rarely get any contributions to the overall plot in these monster of the week episodes, but… this one just didn’t do it for me.

idk, i was kind of bored?? the only times i felt things were when mr. duff was very kind, the spookiness of the creepy faces, cringe at mulder’s insensitivity, and when scully saved him at the end. that was it for me. oh, and ick at pendrell. that was it. everything else was just kinda there.

when they’re separated…idk, it just doesn’t hit the same. but i did like seeing more into medical scully! and her dogged determination slash sworn life goal being to find answers and help people! so that was good. but... idk, the concept was really interesting, i just feel like the ball was fumbled in terms of execution, and i can’t even really pinpoint why. 

here are some possible theories as to why i felt this episode was unsatisfactory: we didn't really KNOW anything about our monster of the week. he had no real compelling motivation or backstory or anything. he just showed up, like the fat vampire from season 3, who also stood out to me as a bland monster of the week. in terms of if he was a person at one point or always a vicious air spirit- who knows? the logic wasn't explained.

mulder's racial insensitivity gave me hives which is reason enough on its own for me to dislike the episode. mr. duff was like "maybe aboah was running because of the way this country treats Black people", which is an entirely valid point, and then mulder was all NUH-UH HE'S EVIL and THAT is why he is running. and then... that being what actually happens also rings kinda hollow. that sort of profiling that mulder just did isn't what gets people treated so terribly or abused at the hands of law enforcement in the first place. but i'm supposed to think mulder just Knows this through his magical judgement. hmm.

the succession of deep throats is also getting a bit old for me. i enjoyed one and two, but now it's feeling like a regeneration thing. what makes deep throat 1.0 and x's deaths compelling if we just get a new one every single time?

so: maybe i am a hater. and that is okay. in a way, we are lucky to have episodes that are just sort of mid. because i have been raised in a world of 6 hour long episodes being 1 season. i have grown up in a world designed solely for streaming, and that compactness forfeits the luxury of the exploration of world building or playing with genre that the 24 episode per season format from this era allows. so in this piece of what i believe is just a kind of boring episode, i am realizing how lucky i am that such a thing exists now that they are no longer being made.

[cayomuchacha]

sadly it seems a vocal plurality of americans will simply always prioritize their material security over the lives of others.

you know, until harris actually makes concrete acceptable progressions wrt Palestine, until that happens KAMALA HARRIS CAN CHOKE, because, well ONE SHOULDN’T THINK that a military expansionist apartheid regime and genocidal rogue state such as israel deserves ANY right to “self defense” in a clear obfuscation of israel’s violative, menacing, authoritarian, expansionist and so clearly the antithesis of a self defensive position in the region.

I really, really don’t think any well meaning Democrat should so calmly accept such unacceptably condoning rhetoric of a pariah state committing genocide. We must demand from and hold accountable our leaders to the ideals from which we draw our collective power as a democracy.

:3 no respect for treaties with genocidal states! in breaking decency and humanity they thereby break the treaties! Which necessarily invoke propriety and good faith relations. please dont act like you liberals actually believe in treaty law now when you keep so quiet over broken treaties with Cuba, Hawai`i, Native Sovereign Nations, and beyond.

fuck you uncaring americans who only wish to elect a democrat so you can tune out from political engagement. many of us aren’t granted that luxury

[zignifier]

📌Pinned Post

Yo. About a month ago I made this post announcing my departure from this blog. (Feels like much longer...)

Due to the particular set-up of my new account, I am considering continuing use of this one for some purposes.

In order for that to be a sensible decision, let me contextualize why I stepped away from this blog in the first place.

I have cognitive and memory issues and occasionally lack of self-awareness of the realities of that. A. This has led to some embarrassingly off-base contributions to discourses with people I greatly respect, which I cannot easily mass retract. B. After finally receiving appropriate medical attention, I have narrowed down causes for my various health issues. I'd prefer to not elaborate on that further here. However, I feel it necessary to say that in my confusion and desperation navigating the healthcare system, I have said and shared things on this blog that amount to medical misinformation. Again, I cannot easily retract all of the offending material, and I do apologize for that.

By dint of the aforementioned issues, predispositions one could expect in an "autistic" and "mentally ill" individual, and what I must admit are merely personal flaws that I bear responsibility for, I have been far too credulous with idealists, liberals, and "rationalist"-adjacents, while simultaneously getting swept up in social media incentives and context collapse and thus taking people, who I might've otherwise agreed with, uncharitably. A. Granularly narrowing down who it is I've become entangled with through this blog that will present issue to me and those I care about and then disassociating from them would be a beastly undertaking.

Given 2A, and the openness with which I've previously discussed my struggles with scrupulosity, were I to make a blanket disavowal of this blog without further comment, either it would not be taken seriously, or I would be ridiculed for precisely the parts of this blog that represent the sincerely held principles I still stand by. Thus, here, I will give:

A Short Overview of My Beliefs

Communism will prevail around the world.

The project of feminism has not yet been completed, and it is imperative we develop and advance it. In the interest of that objective, I posit work be done to expand and iterate on Sizhens' Faggotization and The Extant Gender Ternary.

I generally agree with Caden transmutationisms' psychiatry tag, which is to say I take an antipsych stance. This is why, earlier in the post, I put the self-descriptor of autistic in quotes, as I do not know myself to have a neurodevelopmental condition. My hope with deploying the word in the context I did was to give an accurate mental image of someone who is credulous to their detriment due to struggling with certain forms of social implicitness and/or obfuscations in not so many words. Also, I believe many people would benefit from exploring their potentialities for plurality and its pathologization should be interrogated as an apparatus of the demands of legal coherence under liberal democracy.

Gender, race, the family, marriage, and religion must and will be abolished.

That being said, I will not entertain bad faith criticism of communist states for their "failures" to accomplish this.

Moving on from my broader political concerns, I believe mmmmalo and dingodad / lime-bloods to be at the forefront of analysis of Homestuck, and mmmmalo's contributions to the analysis of One Piece and Monogatari (Series) over at follyhodger are similarly invaluable. This warrants addition to the overview as I would find myself remiss to allow my endorsements of these two thinkers to be swept into my disavowals, as I very sincerely love what they do, and I think this shout-out conveys how I like to approach fiction in general without me having to go in much more detail. I also think I am allowed a little levity here.

Thank you for reading. Again, if you found me a valuable presence here, feel free to DM me for contact information, as I am not decided on the extent I will be using this blog again.

[fragmentedfrats]

Hello , May we please request a Level 3 template for a joint pain holder + pseudoprosecutor of your choice? Preferably Transmasc/Masc in general, please? We’ve been under a lot of pain recently as we’ve had more stress, and our muscles haven’t been the most kind to us especially — if you should decide to do a fictive and not a brainmade for whatever reason ( either is completely fine with us ) , can they please be from either a horror movie , outsiders , or as a whole any medias of your choice? Thank you so much .

Additionally , May we please claim the ‘🦢✨’ anon combo? Thank you so much .

┄ Name(s)﹕Radley, Alan, Mich, Kian, Clay, Merritt

┄ Age﹕19-23 (Either age-slide or up to choice)

┄ Pronouns﹕He/him, hy/hym, they/them, xie/hir, che/cher, pain/painself

┄ Gender(s)﹕Transmasculine, pomomasculine, masc-ish

┄ Species﹕Human

┄ Personality﹕Generally stubborn, caring, unintentionally rude at times, dead-set on doing cher role, enforces tough-love and while he may come off as hateful- he has good intentions for the most part.

┄ Role(s)﹕Joint Pain Holder, Pseudoprosecutor (Obfuscator, if you will)

┄ Sign-off emoji(s)﹕🕯️🪶

┄ Likes & dislikes﹕Mystery & horror & thriller genre, cold weather, nature, collecting trinkets. Crowded places, dishonesty & disobedience, cluttered spaces, loud noises, romance themes, the feeling of wet hair.

┄ Front triggers﹕Joint pain or aching in the body, severe mental stress, an outsider questioning if you might be plural, a headmate trying to confess being a system / anything related to such, or a headmate trying to stray from masking

┄ "Birthday"﹕Janurary sixteen (16)

┄ Hobbies﹕Learning about an insturment such as guitar, reading, listening to podcasts, hiking, practicing acting

┄ Habits﹕Pacing, heavy reliance on "fluff" or "buffer" words (such as like, um/uh, basically), laughing to try and fill uncomfortable or awkward silences, muttering, hair fidgeting, biting the inside of the cheek

┄ Aesthetics﹕

Headmate will likely not turn out exactly as desired.

┄ Notes﹕Sorry for the wait, anon! We had a busy day. also, apologies if this isn't up to your standards- this is quite literally our first pack ever, and we tried, we promise. If something isn't up to your standards or you'd like a change, please tell us.

Sorry to hear about your situation. We hope things get better for you, and we hope this guy can offer some help. "🦢✨" anon claimed. ♡

[tgrailwar-zero]

...weird question but, what did we look like before? And were we a collective before?

"It's vague. I recall you were nothing special to look at, my mind registered you just as a 'magus'… or, sorry 'wizard'. Perhaps it was some sort of mental obfuscation or disguise 'code cast', that would be the proper term. We never thought of you as a 'collective' until the War began, and you suddenly started referring to yourself in the plural. It was quite eerie."

[asharaks]

thinking about tia (for a change of pace) and like. the thing w tia is that their gender is subsumption — whatever their thing is, the thing that's consuming them (and killing them) — that's the thing that defines them. willingly and consciously. when they were bhaal's special little guy, they weren't using pronouns or a name because you don't need one to be an angel of death, or a prophet of the end, or the patron saint of murder. all you need is bloodthirst and devotion, and as bhaal's chosen that is all they were (and. worth noting. that was likely the happiest they've ever been) and their presentation matched that. bhaalist colours religious garb never letting the people around them forget that they are anything but their god's hand on earth.

after waking up on the nautiloid, they were pretty dissociated from their body and their presentation (covered in blood 24/7) and they dropped a lot of the ostentatious aspects, and obviously they're limited by the fact that they don't own anything at this point so it's whatever they found lying around, but they made it to the grove and found the tieflings and suddenly— they're a tiefling. everyone addresses them as a tiefling. the other tieflings greet them as kin, or something approximate; the druids greet them with disdain and hostility, and so tia Becomes A Tiefling with their whole stupid heart. and they're using they/them at this point because their body is in many ways just a broken weapon, and they've got things to think about other than gender, and because that's how other people are addressing them and they're going with it, and also because in their mind they are, at this point, one of the tieflings. they, plural — they, you and your people.

by act 2, they/them and the neutrality/inscrutability has become a kind of shield, just another layer of obfuscation between them and the world. they're starting to establish a place in the world that is theirs, made in their own shape, and that's bizarre and uncomfortable and in a lot of ways they'd like to hide from it, but that's not possible so they opt for making it (and themself) as inscrutable as possible. and, again, they're thinking about other things. at this point mostly wyll.

as time goes on, they adopt more and more of the vengeance paladin persona — doesn't matter that they broke their oath (first because they're in denial and later because it matters to them less) but they're still acting on those tenets, freer and more flexible now but still a believer in those principles. after the tieflings die and are imprisoned in the shadowcursed lands, that becomes a real anchorpoint for them. vengeance for my people, vengeance for us, vengeance for the black hole of their past.

and of course their relationship with wyll impacts it too — back and forth, and they struggle endlessly with their body — their blood wants to kill him and their god wants to kill him and so they want to kill him, and that battle against the Urge is as defining for them as anything else. they are in constant battle with themself, and they come to hate their body as the source of this conflict, and later as a gift from a god they love/hate, and they love their body as the thing that grants them freedom and the capacity to exist in the world and make their decisions, and of course wyll being present and attracted to them and loving them adds a whole new layer of complicated feeling there, because they do view their body as a separate entity from themself, while wyll sees them as a whole. and through act 3 it's this learning to reconcile their physical self with their mental self that helps heal some of the fractured self image — reclaiming their agency by making their specific choices, even when it's painful, and after the temple of bhaal there's definitely a fear there that withers will take advantage of their body the way bhaal did, but also. unexpectedly. they're glad not to be dead. and they're glad they're in this body, and they like that wyll likes it. because at this point they're completely devoted to him because they can't be normal and love things a normal amount. and it's a thing for them that wyll, specifically, is their romance option — because they'll never compete with the People Of The Sword Coast as a concept, to him, because they'll always be the hand of bhaal and he'll always be the blade of frontiers (or avernus) while he becomes the thing that they base their life around. because even after everything they're not capable of moderation when it comes to the way they love.

[sophieinwonderland]

Hi!

First: Lucien Greaves sucks, fuck him and all DID/plurality denialists.

That established, why do you not only insist on exclusively using his given name (Doug Mesner), but also accompany your valid criticism with mocking his chosen name?

Is it because Lucien Greaves is not a "normal" name? Do you deem a name he chose for himself not his "real" name? Are you against him having two names?

Aside from the fact that it's pointless to criticize him for something harmless when you can (and do) criticize him for the actual harm he does, all of these potential justifications for it cause collateral damage by throwing other totally innocent people under the bus (namely trans people and people from cultures whose traditions around names are different from yours).

I don't see these as comparable.

As I understand, Lucien Greaves isn't his chosen name. Or, to be more exact, Lucien Greaves is a stage name. A pseudonym. Like how Dwayne Johnson might call himself The Rock. In his personal life, Doug is Doug and always has been. Lucien Greaves is a name he uses specifically to protect him from social repercussions for his actions. (He's basically said as much.)

Doug wants a persona to be able to troll and toss SLAPP suits at people and ruin their lives. He wants to profit off of the suffering he causes, and still be able to go back home as Doug.

From what I've found, his actual name might actually be Doug Misicko and Doug Mesner is yet another pseudonym. Which, yeah, Mesner sounds like something he would choose too. But I'm not totally sure due to misinformation flying around about him. Or maybe disinformation to muddy the waters and further obfuscate his history.

And the specific name "Lucien Greaves," like everything else, is one intended to provoke a reaction. It's meant to sound like a movie villain. A pathetic man trying to make himself appear bigger and grow his reputation. Lucien Greaves is not a name, it's a trademarked brand owned by the United Federation of Churches LLC and a shield designed to protect him from those he harms.

[tillman]

rwby has a side character later in the series who's pretty explicitly plural and i think he's really well done i adore him. standard disclaimer that rwby can be a bit of a slog in the first few seasons due to lower production value but i think they're still fun and have a lot of charm to them (they're also the shortest of the seasons w episodes only 10 minutes a piece usually) and even if ur not vibing with them at first i highly highly recommend rwby in general and think it's super fucking worth it to get into

and then ik you said you dont do comics but if manga is ok i highly recommend tsubasa reservoir chronicle just in general bc it's literally my favorite manga of all time but also syaoran has some plural adjacent shit happening also later in the series. just do NOT watch the anime except for the ovas once you're far enough into the series for them bc the anime was so unbelievably fucking dogshit

manga is ok ! theyre a bit easier on the brain in terms of obfuscation in how to get into them LMAO. im not against comics i just dont like superhero media i think HEHE. ill put it on my list ... this is clamp ? i love the artstyle... swag.

and gerrrr rwby . i think thats very cool of them but man i dont think i could ever get into it even if i made a good attempt. ive tried numerous times across the years to give a shot but i think i just gotta accept its not at all for me. the storytelling and art style just kinda dont mesh w me. cool fightscenes though even if im not a guy who cares for flashy fights u gotta give them credit there

[lalagirltummy]

I see a lot of discourse surrounding identity labels and how ppl classify sexuality and body policing I don't understand any of it. Partly because I genuinely don't understand what some people are talking about because they throw around buzzwords to obfuscate they're saying between the lines

But also like...why do people care so much about how others label themselves? Plural enby transfems that call themselves slurs? Hell yeah. He/Her bi-lesbians? Rock on. Fat transmasc ppl that use neopronouns? Love it. Half the reason being queer is great is because everyone is unique and we really against social norms for the better.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous to take personal offense at how someone identifies beyond the like actual morally reprehensible stuff (racefaking, cultural appropriation, profiteering, etc)

Annoying mfers that make it their business to swerve out of their lane and hit someone else who's enjoying their life need to seek help and stop being a bitch to everyone else. You will experience so much more happiness in life if you stop stirring the pot.

[hiljametsa]

"They", the Big Other, and Earnest Communication.

The word "they", both the third person singular genderless and the third person plural genderless pronoun, came into English some time after the viking settlement of Norse speaking peoples in medieval England, replacing the native Anglo-Saxon word "hé" of exactly the same use and meaning. For the majority of the history of the English language, it seems that this word has been consistent in its meaning and usage. Yet, recently, at least in the last fifty years but perhaps in the last hundred, it seems a growing trend to use this genderless third person to refer to some opponent akin to what Lacan called the Big Other. It seems used this way in order to obfuscate the actual referent, and thereby to annul the user's responsibility of definition (if for no greater reason than as a dog-whistle, the "(((they)))” of certain internet comments) and undermine the responsibility for earnest communication.

Have you ever been talking with someone, or listening to some pundit speak on their topic, and heard this person say, as though you both know who is being talked about, that "they don't let us do this" or "they don't want this", "they believe this", etc., etc.? This, I think, is a problem, as a sophistic trick and an abdication of communicative responsibility.

The Big Other, for Jacques Lacan, is a radical, superstratified exteriority, i.e. the Law and its structures of external enforcement or other "objective" moral structures (of which the super-ego is the interior agent), which is not wholly dissimilar from Marxist ideas of market forces and the bourgeois as their agents and prophets. Insofar as these aforementioned pundits prattle on about the "they" which opposes them and their ideas, it seems that they (the pundits) are referring to something akin to this Big Other, in so far as it has some decisive power in the outcomes of events which, though combatible, is not yet successfully thwarted by whatever ideology they (the pundits) espouse. Call to mind the exposition by the nazis of the threat of "international jewry", an indefinite, imaginary external potency which must be combated, but has never yet been vanquished.

Whenever I hear such talk, whether it is the pseudo-socialist (Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, etc.) talking about the oppressive "they", however generally defined as colonizers, bourgeois, the culturally/racially privileged and so on, or else it be some neck-tied crypto-fascist (Peterson, Shapiro, etc.) shouting about neoMarxists, "liberals", or what have you, it seems I almost always hear them repeat, as though it were a mantra of opposition, "they, they, they", that Other, the Not-Me's, the great band of external ideological enemies who in their facelessness lose all real resistibility, but gain an almost fantastical opposability, as though they were like Tolkien's orcs, a pure evil to be abhorred and resisted even (and often only) in thought. This mantra tastes to me of cowardice at worst, and at best an impotence to truly point the finger at the real causer, the actual agent, the true potent force to be opposed or even destroyed. It seems a rhetorical sophistry, a canvas handed to the audience on which they might paint the face, write the name, or smear the likeness of whatever nebulous enemy plagues them in their self-martyrdom.

I hope that, if you speak of a "they", you have the courage to point your finger at the true, existent person, and not to try and win by deception the support of your audience against an indefinite, imaginary foe.