#and the implications of treating it

[kasumingo]

Even if the sentiment about feeling the same about fictional characters as we do about real people was real, it should not be encouraged or used as a leverage

[fourgottencoast]

> covid shares significant parallels with HIV, (depletes immune system, but while HIV targets t cells, covid can target most cells in the human body and while hiv targets nuclei, covid targets mitochondria) but with the additional trait of being airborne

> can affect virtually every system/organ of the body, including heart/lungs and brain (even with a mild case) and is also cancer causing/accelerant

> has a viral persistance (how long it remains in the body) of at least a year throughout the body, including the brain, even after death .

> multiple infections may happen yearly since there are little to no precautions, meaning not enough time or treatment is given to clear viral load. also means that it is being allowed to consistently evolve.

> disability rates in the US have jumped by 40% since 2020

> can literally cause a new form of AIDS

> virtually all precautions have been dropped since 2022, peak infection rates (according to wastewater data) were in jan 2022

> risk of long covid/damage from covid compounds with each infection

> over half of all covid infections are asymptomatic, most people will not know how many infections they've had because cheap/free consistent testing is not widely available

> treatment often expensive/doctors do not take long covid seriously and/or are uneducation on it and its treatment, meaning most will go without treatment that acknowledges the root cause

> if left untreated, HIV will nearly always progress to AIDS , and chronic HIV usually progresses to AIDS in 5-10 years (may be faster in some people)

it's been 5 years since it's onset in late 2019/early 2020, and 3 years since 2022. it's becoming more and more apparent that more and more people are unwell and i am genuinely terrified at what the very near future will look like, especially when the overwhelming culture is still so resistent to acknowledging covid.

[elysiality]

I NEED post-stillbirth, spiralling into grief, slowly going insane teen Shauna to meet Callie Sadecki nobody understands me...

the angsty mother-daughter dynamics food would be so fucking good... esp when Callie inevitably brings up Jackie....

[lukashaaa]

Patho fanart of varying quality

[rocketbirdie]

just put in my two weeks, so to speak.

[dreadark]

that ivan loves till is the most obvious thing about them

but. does ivan know that…?

the ivan that regards his own feelings as shallow, the ivan that learned how emotions are expressed only from copying others… does he even know that the love he’s felt for so long is love? probably not. and part of the reason is the one he loves himself

because the easiest example he has of love is till's feelings to mizi. till outright calls it love, and ivan watches him so much he has to be aware of this and till’s love to mizi is totally unselfish, right. he doesn’t seem to actually want much from her—just that she's still there and still "mizi"

but ivan can't be satisfied with just watching he… wants. ivan wants till’s attention, till’s affection—

surely this selfish wanting can’t be love

...no wonder he was never able to express his feelings straightforwardly when he belittles them so much but he can’t stand not having anything either, so he does… whatever he does instead to get any scraps of attention he can, from someone he's convinced doesn't care about him at all only showing affection when till can't see it, right until he knows he's going to die

but ivan's feelings for till are all he still has of himself... to think of them as shallow...

I've seen this translated as "I should've been kinder" to him (till) or to her (sua)

but really, the one he should've been kinder to was himself

[knight-of-aether]

the horse god of resurrection and the trickster god of time, together in eternity

Something about the idea of mortals becoming divine... something about the promises we make, the masks we grow into, and the trials that shape us into greater versions of ourselves.

(I'm waxing philosophical about game theories and fantasy cosmology again, send help (and video essays))

[floatingonapaintedsky]

"we can't take the implications behind Hypnos' dialogue seriously he's the comic relief" me screaming into the void: whether intentional or not comedy is a commentary on some part of a character and/or the viewer/reader's reality! hypnos' out of pocket comments about his family would not land if no actual tension between them existed.

[magstorrn]

enfield may seem like a one note side character and exposition machine but let it not be forgotten he's the only member of the cast with the dubious honour of having spent five hours in a room with edward hyde

[razables]

aren’t you forgetting something important?

[two-dolla-bills]

I decided this needed a part two lol

Edit: now there's a part 0.5

[latelylately]

Estraven and Genly in Jesus iconography, featured on stamps. Genly holding the ansible as Christ pantocrator, and Estraven bearing the cross. as requested by my friend @yungihore !!!

[commsroom]

this is a sensitive topic for me, so i really hate that i have to make this post, but unfortunately it keeps becoming relevant: stop infantilizing hera, and stop making excuses for it.

"well, she's literally four years old" she's been fully conscious with an adult mind for most of that, awake for most of that, and in multiple places at once for most of that. do you think that is comparable to a child's life experience, or is it maybe representative of something else?

i assume you understand why it would be wrong to call lovelace "literally two" because the fact that she is a clone is textually representative of the trauma she's been through. i also assume you understand why hera occasionally making flippant or frustrated comments about her own struggles living as an AI is different from the text telling you who she is or how you should regard her. it's science fiction, and it's a show that uses science fiction concepts in ways that resonate with real ones. the ultimate fact of the matter is that hera could've been in a lab for 30 years, or for 200 years, in a different setting, and be written the exact same way: as a sheltered, isolated adult woman without real life experiences.

hera is not a child or teenager in a natural stage of development. she is an adult who never went through the usual stages of development or life milestones, who has adult friendships and responsibilities, but who feels she is permanently ill-equipped to handle her life because no one ever taught her how, or gave her the space to make mistakes. if you don't understand why this distinction is important in discussing her trauma, that there are real, adult people who feel the same way, people who feel they've only been alive for four years, women who were never girls... then i really don't know what to say to you.

and i guess i have to say it: it's inherently infantilizing to say her peers see her the same way they see an actual child, or to say she needs them to be parental figures, especially eiffel of all people. "adult women have parents too" not ones that are 30 year old men! and parents have responsibilities to children, even adult children, that are different from the responsibilities two unrelated adults who care about each other have. it fundamentally reframes hera's most equal relationship in a way that diminishes her autonomy within it. (and if you're arguing it's all equal anyway, then what does it add? why don't you consider friendship as important?)

i know some people will dismiss that point because i view eiffel and hera romantically, but i've never argued you have to. if you want to go down that road, it says some pretty awful things about the couple of writers and actors who also view it romantically if you think she was meant to be viewed as a child, much less comparable to his child. you're inventing problems that don't canonically exist.

i just don't understand why you would make it about eiffel at all - and eiffel does not have the right to be a parent; the only thing that will heal his relationship with his real actual child is in relation to his real actual child - instead of discussing what a disabled, isolated, traumatized adult might be able to offer a disabled, traumatized kid. isn't the whole point of hera not being like pryce about breaking cycles? why make her a passive figure in her own story when her entire story arc is about taking control of her life?

there's no utility to this line of thought that doesn't further demean and alienate her, while implying she isn't ready to be a fully autonomous adult person. i don't think most people mean to be ableist, but hera is canonically a disabled woman, and i don't like where that line of thought leads. and yes, she's just a fictional character and can't be hurt by it, but everyone brings some real-world biases to how they engage with fiction. she's written as a marginalized adult person, and her womanhood is textually tied to defense of her personhood and autonomy (as well as a parallel to lovelace, also a marginalized woman.) to paraphrase minkowski - "you are going to show [that woman] some goddamned respect."

[dutchs-paisley-vest]

Been thinking about Hosea a lot as I write this analysis on Dutch and Micah.

Maybe I’ll eventually whip something up about him, but for now I’m left with thoughts about knowing that not only is Hosea just as guilty as Dutch when it comes to how their boys were brought up (and continued to be treated through adulthood and ultimately up to their deaths), but also the way the two irreparably damaged John and Arthur’s entire lives beyond even their own comprehension. FURTHERMORE, they set forth a viscous cycle of familial violence and neglect that maintained momentum into the next generation. (See: John and Jack.)

The way Hosea’s action, but more importantly his inaction had in part led to… well, [gestures vaguely to RDR1 + RDR2].

Hosea might have been gentler than Dutch on the surface, but he saw it all, and at times both implicitly and explicitly encouraged it through the meticulous timing of his decisions to remain a “silent watcher.”

Yes, refusal to mitigate the violence makes him complicit, but the matter of the fact is… Hosea can’t even feign partial innocence as a third-party bystander because of how calculated he is in nature.

Additionally, there is no “third party.” Dutch and Hosea are a single unit. They occupy the same space even as two separate individuals in John and Arthur’s lives.

The deliberate nature of Hosea’s inaction puts him in the same position as the “perpetrator” because he isn’t just a watcher, he corroborates directly with Dutch and agrees with what he is doing on principle. He reenforces it in perhaps more subtle ways, but that doesn’t make him any less responsible for the outcome.

The only difference between the two is that while they’re dealing different cards, they are playing the exact same game.

[juniemunie]

"Why am I still doing this?"

"Don't you get it?"

"This is all just a show... and we're playing parts~"

[complainblogforthevoid]

When fic authors describe Jonouchi Katsuya's hair as dyed.

I get it, okay?

I get that usually you can find a blond delinquent in Japanese media and assume that the hair dying is an artifact of that. But we see that he's been blond since he was a kid, he wasn't rebelliously dying his hair to look like a thug when he was eight.

AND it's thematic okay!

People can assume Jou has dyed his hair and that changes their perceptions of him--they say ah he must be a violent thug, he's performing the Violent Thug Indicators. But he's not, and if he had been dying his hair when he was in the gang I think he would have stopped sometime after becoming friends with Yugi, as a physical demonstration of how he's leaving his violent past behind him.

The blond hair is just another way to indicate what assumptions people make about him not knowing the truth behind them.

For example blond hair = thug but really he's just half American and the hair is natural.

In duelist kingdom he really wants the money and people assume it's because he's poor and wants to spend it on getting cool stuff, but actually it's because his sister needs a surgery.

People choose Jou to duel because they believe he's an idiot and they can manipulate and beat him easily, and he is dumb and easily manipulated but also constantly surpassing people's expectations.