#but neither of us is inherently wrong its

[ghost-of-the-machine]

i feel. like bad? i need to get it off my chest!!!!

soo. okay i

i avoided my friends for like.. almost a month i guess. 22 days, the only reason i know that is cuz she counted. i didnt think she would, and i feel.. so much conflict. im avoidant when she brings it up, i dont wanna talk about it cuz i know she wont like what i have to say

she got drunk one night, like *really* drunk and she shared with me some pretty real feelings she probably wouldnt have otherwise. it hurt me, but i know she was hurting too. she *insisted* i speak about it, like. VERBALLY, anyone who knows me knows i fall short there. i

things have just been the way that they were for so long, i guess when it changed it was jarring maybe? ive been the loser. we're all losers, but i was the only one in my entire friend group who didnt have other friends outside of said friend group, but now i do!! and it makes me feel so happy, that i have so many friends i love so dearly yknow? but it makes me feel bitter that she doesnt like that

do you know how embarrassing it was? anytime i THOUGHT i had something good, id go and ramble happily about someone who i didnt realize id be LOSING in the next few months. embarrassing, shameful! but not this time

i guess me talking about it made her feel scared, but it upset me, because she got really upset when i told her i love all my friends equally.. i guess she didnt wanna hear that someone i met less than a year ago could be someone i love as much as her, which i get. i get how it sounds, but its not like that!! i love them UNIQUELY. she brings me things they dont, they bring me things she doesnt, im content and balanced and thankful for all of it

i handled it. poorly, i feel like i handled it poorly but i dont blame myself too much, im not known for this skill i guess. she started crying and it? it was like a joke at first but she was emotional cuz of the alcohol and it very quickly became not a joke, its the first time ive like.. heard her cry? and i felt bad that it was my fault and i really dont know how to comfort someone like that, its not a social skill i have upfront!!! over text its easy to collect my thoughts, but verbally? too much mental energy is being used on holding a conversation alone. but i also dont feel bad because its not WRONG for me to love my friends equally, i dont blame her for how she felt ofc

i didnt think i mattered so much to her, i guess. but she told me about it, and it made me... uncomfortable. like, TERRIBLY uncomfortable. thats why i did it, why i started focusing somewhere else. i came back suddenly, they were in the middle of playing a game and it felt so.. alien? like. it made me feel sick, this is my HOME and i felt like a stranger almost. i know 22 days isnt so long, but. idk, ive tried to keep in better contact, we are playing the games now, as we should!! but the truth is that after knowing it hurt her when i talked about my other friends, i just.. stopped talking about them, but i do things with them EVERYDAY, thats my day!! if i cant talk about them, i have nothing to say i guess

its bittersweet, ive sorta gotten back to being the unhinged loser they enjoy having around ig but i still dont talk as much as before, i dont want to because i dont wanna hurt her yknow? im HAPPY. im happy, so happy

she said she felt ashamed feeling the way she did, said she hates that shit but its still how she feels, i dont blame her. honestly?? its giving bpd like MY PERSONAL OPINION... with the way she described how she felt about me, i think shes one of us but. that adds a whole other layer, the discomfort i felt, is that how i make people feel? when im obsessed with them? when i feel like i cant exist without them? it feels so wrong to say things like this, shes my best friend, ive known her for years.. its just. we dont do emotions, i guess? and i think thats wrong of me cuz she expressed that she wanted it like that, she wanted to be open and vulnerable, and i didnt like it!!! we can do it over text sure, but.. sit and talk with me? she dmed me the other day saying like 'dommm we should vc, i wanna get drunk and have therapy again while you give me good advice'. i ignored her text, on purpose. usually its NEVER on purpose, if i dont respond you can bet like 100% i clicked the message, read it and then went back to what i was doing because i was distracted, or i have a really bad tendency of THINKING my replies and not actually sending them and being like yep. social interaction well done. but no, i ignored it on purpose. anytime she asks us "guys, yes or no..." i say no, cuz i know the question is if she should drink or not. i know she'll still drink anyways, i just leave early, pretend my new sleep schedule is the reason why, pretend im tired because it makes me uncomfortable still

im not good at it!!! i cant give her what she needs like THAT.. i cant have her sit there and tell me all her problems and cry, i CANT because i dont know how to handle it! like i genuinely have no idea how to handle that at all. over text i could probably manage just fine, but she wanted me to sit there, wanted my camera on and everything.. i felt like i really? i mean i TRIED, i did my best, i listened to her, i can always do that.. the problem is she wants advice, you will not get advice from me if im forced to physically speak. so i just feel like i let her down, yknow? i dont know

ive backed myself into a corner probably, im too scared to be open cuz she tends to forget the things she says when shes drunk, so maybe she doesnt remember telling me how she feels about me? i guess theres an added layer of discomfort, because like. when we were 18 i think? she drunkenly confessed that she had a crush on me and it felt really.. ive never seen her differently for that, you can absolutely trust. shes my best friend and i never pushed her away despite those feelings, i just had to tell her i didnt feel the same and it never came up again, and we've been fine! but, knowing how she feels about me now? it makes me uncomfortable because of that, its hard to describe. idk its a lot of mixed feelings!!!! nothing i could ever tell her, probably

and it made me feel horrible for all the times ive ever talked fondly about my friends, or the times i was breaking down so badly over them that i had no choice but to cry and wail in my channel, knowing literally only one of them probably would respond (which was true, they talked me thru it a little bit). thats where our emotional talk ends. i dont want to be emotional with someone i know physically, it stresses me out!!!! yes i love you so much, you are my entire world!! ill kiss yr hair and hands and we can cuddle, we can spend a whole day together and go out to eat, we can sit at home and play games, we can do all of it! but.. online its easy, im words on a screen. physically?

i hate to feel GUTTED. i hate feeling vulnerable, i hate feeling EXPOSED. that first time i went to therapy for fucking GENDER DYSPHORIA and our first session was *wasted*, wasted because i had to tell my mom that i wanted to kill myself. sinking in my stomach. all those times ive had traumatic response to them fighting, the fucking scars because of that, the times my family have seen the scars. IM TIRED imf ucking tired, i hate to feel that way. i hate being exposed i hate having my heart on display i hate it all!!! i hate someone knowing something about me, i wont let myself be pressured into sharing trauma and details, i want it SECRET. share yr trauma with me, thats FINE, but its like. idk i wanted that call to end to fast, it was completely out of my comfort zone and i feel GUILTY for that. im averse to change, i really hate change actually. i made a whole post talking about our dynamic and how i adored it, and then it was sorta flipped on its head? i stopped playing that little dragon game on roblox cuz i was playing that while we were talking and anytime i fly around looking for chests, the memory of that conversation comes back to me. i want to forget

we fit like a glove, we're back to how we always have been when we talk, but.. she mentioned it the other day. thats how i knew i was avoidant for 22 days, she told me she counted. i felt bad, cuz i hoped she wouldnt notice. i couldnt think of anything to say, other than "well.. i was monster hunting idk man" and she sounded upset with me when i said it. we moved on quickly but. im not made for that. what did she want me to say? whatever she wanted, i clearly didnt say it. idk i just feel lost, feel stuck and the worst thing?

i dont want to be exposed to anyone but them. like THATS the thing, maybe if i didnt have them then id be fine with it, but.. it makes me uncomfortable, feels like betrayal. they can see that side of me, no one else can because i dont WANT anyone else to. i trust them, i feel safe enough to be vulnerable around them, its a big step for me and one that i dont take lightly. its not her fault i dont feel safe, and lord knows i trust her!!! its just.. different. opening up is hard, i feel more.. understood? i guess you could say. idk its just. hard to describe. i love my friends so much, but my friendships are all UNIQUE and thats why i love them. talking to either is fulfilling!!! incredibly, in very different ways but still!

idk it just sucks i guess, it makes me sad that me talking about my happiness is a sore spot for her, ive never been happier in my whole life!!! but i know it probably hurts her that it wasnt her that gave me that happiness. theres nothing i can do about that!! she makes me happy in another way, one exclusive to her. we are so sillay in vc, its FUN i have so much fun with her, but i think that.. maybe by telling her that a while ago, i fucked up. i shouldnt have told her she was my BEST best friend, i shouldnt have i just get.. natural tendency to tell people what they want, avoid conflict.

it feels like it established an accidental conflict, one no one else knows about. did i make her think i loved her more than my friend? or my other friend? like it makes me sick, but you cant just BACK TRACK. i cant just say actually? like i love them also yknow. cuz that would hurt her probably, its like im fucked no matter what!!! sure we ahve good chemistry in vc, the best chemistry in that whole friend group when vcing, but? i used to refer to one of them as my spouse like. MUTUALLY, we were married platonically okay. the other one? i love him so much hes so silly and . GRGR like. i just hate this idea, but its all my fault it exists. no backbone. i love my friends EQUALLY. i have a lot of love to give everyone, it would hurt me so badly if i wasnt loved equally, thats why i love the way i do. i even told her, im INSISTENT with it. i refuse to love inequally, it would hurt people and i hate that!!! but. i hurt her regardless, its. IDK man its a lot im just airing this out, she'll never see this, none of them will. good

we can move on from this, we mostly already have. im just scared i might have to put my foot down a bit, and tell her that it made me uncomfortable, i dont want to put her in that situation but if we get there then we get there. we'll be okay im sure

[spaghettioverdose]

Am I stupid or something because I agree with all of your post but I don't know what's wrong with small businesses. Am I a capitalist because I'm disabled and can only make money selling stickers or am I missing a bigger picture

Because this is tumblr and people in the notes will immediately read three lines of this and accuse me of pissing on the poor, I will begin with a disclaimer that I am neither comparing you to a Elon Musk nor calling you evil.

So, you sell stickers. I would assume that in this context you are selling your own stickers with your own designs, rather than working as a cashier selling someone else's stickers, since you're disabled and you mentioned you can't work a job. You are therefore selling a product you own (whether you produce the stickers entirely yourself or use a 3rd party company) for a profit at a (presumably) online store instead of selling your labour power for a wage. This, by definition would make you petit bourgeois.

When communists talk about class positions, it is not a question of an individual's morality, motivation or amount of income.

Being a small business owner (or petit bourgeois), means that your class interests and the class interests of the workers (the proletariat) come into conflict. As a clear example, let's say in this scenario that you are selling a sticker design on a 3rd party website that specialises in this service, and they source the actual physical stickers from factories around the world. Here, you are essentially selling your intellectual property to the company in exchange for some of the profits from its further sale. Perhaps many of those factories are in the global south, in countires with very low wages and few worker protections (due to intervention from imperial core bourgeoisie powers). One day, the political struggle for worker rights and higher wages is won in some of these countries, driving up the cost of production for the stickers. Perhaps there is also a victory for a union of delivery service workers at home in the imperial core, driving up wages and protections for them as well, further cutting into profits.

The function of the 3rd party sticker company is to strive for ever-increasing profits the capitalists who own it and its investors. The cut in profit will have to be made up elsewhere. This will be done by investing in political groups that are willing to repress worker movements within these countries, shifting production to countries that have yet to achieve these worker victories, cutting corners on their imperial core workers, increasing their price of service by taking a larger cut of your profits, or a mixture of some or all of these.

In that scenario, the proletarian class interests (higher wages, more protections and regulations) are in direct conflicts with the interests of the bourgeois 3rd party sticker company (higher profits, meaning lower wages and less protections and regulations) and by extension, yours, as your class interests also revolve around profit. When workers gain more power, it cuts into your profits. As a petit bourgeois, you are incetivised to support and pursue bourgeois and petty bourgeois politics such as IP laws.

As an individual, you can be whatever kind of person with whatever politics and views you have. As a petit bourgeois small business owner, you have a certain class position that comes with a certain set of class interests. You can always choose to forego your own class interests and instead support the class interests of the proletariat by being a communist even while continuing to be petit bourgeois or even as full on bourgeois. Very notable example being Engles who, although he was a factory owner, he was also one of the two founders of marxism, with the other one being Marx.

The point I was trying to make in the post that probably got you to send this anon, is that there isn't anything inherently communist or "leftist" about supporting small businesses. It is both an incredibly common liberal policy and talking point to support small business, and it does not serve the interests of a proletarian political movement to protect the petit bourgeoisie or ally with them, except in certain instances and involving certain sections of the petit bourgeois, rather than a blanket statement of saying that the small business owner is a nobler form of capitalist.

[sysmedsaresexist]

hey fellas it's me again

systemscringe is using this horrible essay (https://text.is/pluralkit-) to say that systems shouldn't use pk (and by extension simply plural) even though it's blatantly wrong, promotes the "evil alter" stereotype at the end, and DOESN'T EVEN HAVE AN AUTHOR

this stupid essay made me think that sp wasnt something i should use (and sure, its not good for SOME people, but it can be helpful, and it is for me). now that i am using it ive been able to learn more about my system and fronting triggers and i really dont want any other systems to go through what i did.

i would debunk it myself but i feel like yall have more reach than i do, and i also know youre more researched than me and would be able to do a better job.

if u could help that'd be great :)

Sigh. Systemscringe back at it again, making things more difficult for literally everyone. First things first:

Pluralkit, Simplyplural, and anything similar are NOT inherently harmful to people who dissociate.

They’re also not inherently helpful, either.

To say they are always harmful will confuse people on how to recognize the signs of increased dissociation. That makes it harder for people who are actually harmed by using these things to get help. It also invalidates people who are genuinely helped by these tools. These tools do not inherently prevent integration. For some people, tools like these can help them recognize and work with their systems, which is necessary for reducing dissociation.

"To be an integrated human, as Dan Siegel (2010) insists, requires 'differentiation—with linkage,' that is, it necessitates the ability to make distinctions between different parts of the self, to name them as parts, but also to link them to other parts and to the whole of which they are a part." - Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, by Janina Fisher, Page 21

To say that Real Dissociative(tm) people don’t use these tools is utterly false, a bad excuse to fakeclaim people, and they know it; these tools are popular as hell in the online community, and many people, even people who eventually found them harmful, have used them. Can we please put this “faker” shit to rest so that actual productive conversations can be had?

Personally, I think that there's a lot of things to critique about both pluralkit and simplyplural (hereafter just called pk/sp). They're not perfect -- nothing is! I'd love to have a nuanced discussion about how they can be helpful and harmful to different people and why, but often it feels like I can't have discussions like that. Not when just using pk/sp gets entire subreddits calling you a faker, not when systems who simply dislike pk/sp get called "sysmeds," not when we approach these things as either Always Good or Always Bad.

In reality, how helpful or harmful pk/sp can be is an entirely subjective matter. It's a personal issue to your system and your system alone. I know systems who find pk/sp to be very helpful and I also know systems who find them to be unhelpful, even harmful. In my own experience, I've found that pk/sp made my symptoms worse. So, I just don't use them. It's literally that simple.

Notice how the essay makes such broad sweeping statements about pk. They don't say that it can increase dissociation between alters, they say that it will. They don't say that it can lead to delusions, they say that it will. How about instead of jumping to conclusions, we actually ask the community what their experiences are? I’ll get us started:

I also notice that the essay states that the functions of pk go against treatment recommendations, but I don’t know a single clinician who is using pluralkit to treat their patients. AFAIK, they’re correct that it’s not really an accessibility tool, but it’s also not a therapeutic tool either? So, I don’t understand why they’re judging it like it is one? It’s just a discord bot, dude. It’s not that deep.

I don’t want to glance over the harm they’re talking about, though. Stuff like pk/sp can reinforce dissociation. You can have an unhealthy relationship with them. That’s not specific to pk/sp, though, it can be like this with anything seemingly innocuous. I know some people who self-harm by reading fanfiction…doesn’t mean that everyone who reads fanfiction is self-harming, or that fanfiction is universally harmful. That's why, instead of telling people pk/sp are Bad and Always Harmful, we need to spread awareness so that people actually know how to recognize actual harm and take care of themselves. That’s why I’ll leave this post off with a list of some red flags. Anyone is free to add on, but remember that these are potential signs of harm. If you think your use of pk/sp is harmful or unhealthy, please investigate that with a professional or close loved one!

Some red flags that pk/sp may not be helping you:

Episodes of dissociation, switching, and/or memory loss became more frequent or severe after you started using them

They make it harder for your system to cooperate; you all feel less connected than before

There’s more conflict within the system than before

You feel pressured to say who is fronting or when a switch happened, even if you don't actually know

You feel pressured to create a profile for system members that you don't know a lot about or are unsure if even exist or ones that specifically don’t want a profile

You sometimes wish you had more system members so that you could have more proxies or profiles

You or system members feel like you aren’t allowed to have your privacy or anonymity

You feel like you can't talk in discord servers that don't have pk

Using them makes your system members feel less real / less connected as a system

Using them is the only thing that makes your system members feel real / more connected as a system

You don’t really want to use pk/sp but you feel like you’re a faker or doing something wrong if you don’t use them

[linisiane]

The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois

It's fascinating to me to think about how satire is used as the 'touch grass' or 'be fucking for real' genre. Oftentimes it's making fun of tropes/conventions by humorously contrasting them with reality, which is exactly what Disco Elysium is doing with the RPG!

It goes hand in hand with the idea of RPGs as escapist power fantasy. RPGs are often thought of as the ultimate self-insert fantasy by its detractors or worst players, ahem looking at all those DND horror stories about entitled mangsty murderhobos.

One of the most infamous criticisms of Disco Elysium is its lackluster combat.

ID A screenshot of a random forum discussion post by dungeon master Zed Duke of Banville. It reads: "Disco Elysium has neither combat nor exploration, and therefore is missing two of the three fundamental components (or sets of components) that define the RPG genre." End ID

The game has essentially bordered off your ability to make Harry into a power fantasy murderhobo because you just are physically unable to equip an longsword or cuisse to murder your average citizen on the street of Martinaise.

But even on a less mangsty level, it subverts a lot of the basic expectations of RPGs.

Like the encounter with the racist lorry driver! You never get the ability or quest to change his mind, you only choose how you react to him.

Where other RPGs might let you act as the white savior or the white knight of chivalric romance, no questions asked, you're changing the minds of everybody who's wrong so we can all get along, Disco Elysium really makes you confront your ability to whiteknight, makes you confront if whiteknighting is even helpful, and why you wanted to whiteknight in the first place.

It’s part of the fun/humor experience of Disco Elysium that you at first expect to solve the world’s problems with a couple quests and lines of ‘good’ dialogue and then get socked in the faced with the fact that yeah, you can’t do much, you’re one person, what did you expect, asshole? Cuno doesn't fucking care!

By subverting our RPG expectations, it forces us to become more aware that these expectations even exist and how they fall short of reality. Yet, despite this subversion, the world of Disco Elysium feels so much realer to us.

ID a screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue YOU - "Don't call it a dump, you've made it nice and cosy here." NOVELTY DICEMAKER - "Yeah." She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. "Or maybe it's the entire world that's cursed? It's such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted." "That's why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls." "It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...." She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under the light. End ID

Like, Neha is highlighting this little meta element of how you can stack your Harry in any RPG to pursue a certain ending or situation, but the actual outcome is still influenced by a dice roll out of your control.

A lot of the satirical humor in Disco Elysium comes from the absurdity that you can do everything right or everything wrong, and the dice can still fuck it up or save it for you—not just for things like high-fantasy attacks, but mundane things like remembering your name.

The dice are, at their core, about how RPGs aren't just for the control fantasy, of winning high-fantasy battles, but also can represent life as it is, mundane and uncontrollable.

Similarly, Harry is clearly written—complete with all the 'lore' that this would entail—to couch his RPG protagonist nature in the real.

If RPG characters are blank slates? Let's give ours amnesia! Need fast travel?! Kim teases the 41st Precinct for constantly running everywhere by calling it the Jamrock Shuffle. He needs to have deep and intimate conversations with everyone, even when they're strangers? Yeah, that's so weird we gave him the name 'Human Can-Opener,' and everybody remarks on his uncanny manipulation skills.

It's commenting on difference between controlling an RPG avatar and navigating in a human body.

As Kurvits said: “In reality we do not have control, or complete control, of our minds. Just like our body, it is something that we give-not even commands wishes to, and we hope it's gonna do it. We hope it's not gonna break down, we hope it's not gonna rebel against us.”

In one type of RPG fantasy, we don't even question our total control and even assume the joy is from the control.

But in Disco Elysium, we lack control and find joy in it anyway. That is the fun of the game making us, the players, 'self-aware' about its RPG elements, and it especially resonates with anybody not able-bodied, anybody neurodivergent.

[holmsister]

As for Shuro/Toshiro... lemme see if I can put this coherently. The long and short of it is, this is Ryoko Kui doing the thing she does in which she uses the dungeon as a neutral background in which characters with different ideas can clash and come to terms with each other. We're not supposed to side with Toshiro, but we are not supposed to side with Laios, really, mostly because there is no "right" and "wrong" here.

A character who is heavily coded as autistic and comes from a northern europe coded culture (low-context - information is supposed to be conveyed in the most straightforward and clear way possible, even when said way is considered rude) meets another character who is extremely shy and comes from a japan coded culture (high context - info is supposed to be inferred by a mix of behaviour and conversational allusion, maintaining peaceful interpersonal relationships takes precedent over efficiency).

Neither of them are inherently wrong in the way they approach the other. Yes, Toshiro shouldve said something, but he doesn't know how. He was not taught how to handle someone like Laios. Conversely, Laios was not taught how to read between the lines and understand what a person is trying to convey if they are not speaking directly.

Since Laios is the main protagonist and we see most of the story from his POV, and also since most people on this website are American (low context culture), its easy for people to assume we are supposed to side with him. But I don't think that's the author's intention at all. Remember - Kui is Japanese writing for a primarily Japanese audience. From THEIR POV Toshiro's behaviour is perfectly understandable. It's also worth noting that there is a lot of extra material that gives further context to the Toshiro/Laios relationship.

One of the main points, for example, is how Laios gets Toshiro's name wrong. When they first met, Toshiro is immediately an object of curiosity to Laios BECAUSE he is a foreigner from a faraway land. Laios immediately invites himself to become his friend and starts asking question after question. When he finally remembers he's supposed to ask for Toshiro's name, he misunderstands it as Shuro, and Toshiro is too shy to correct him. "Renaming" the foreign side character for the benefit of the Western main character is an extremely loaded symbolic choice from Robinson Crusoe's Friday onward. I am not aware of the particular history of this trope in Japanese literature, but other elements of Toshiro's story suggest that renaming in his culture is something that is often done to slaves. Ryoko Kui is generally very deliberate about details like these. I highly doubt this is a random choice.

Of course Laios does not do it on purpose and Toshiro understands this and decides to let it slide, but its still something hurtful that Laios does to another person without even realising that hes doing it. This is a type of mistake he does often and he will do again across the story.

Again. Not saying Toshiro is perfectly right either, but there is a reason why they finish the meeting on relatively decent terms - because they BOTH recognise how they went wrong.

Toshiro realises that he needs to be more direct and determined about what he wants, but this is a reality check for Laios as well. He has been able to coast by so far in the dungeon without giving much thought to other people's wants and needs, thanks to the help of friends who care for him and are willing to follow him, but the story is changing pace and scale. Soon he might have to make some difficult decisions that involve the life and death of others. He needs to learn to listen.

This is why the Toshiro confrontation happens in the same span where we see Chimera!Falin going on a rampage, and Kabru trying to establish a friendship with Laios to assess what kind of person he is. Several narrative threads are coming to a head - the conflict with Toshiro is the tangible result of the tensions we saw around Laios' uncaring attitude from the beginning.

[bringcal]

This was inspired due to wolfertinger666's post I've just reblogged, and will be a long one, but bare with me here.

I been on the internet like way too long and too young for my age, and I never understood spreading callouts. I don't think I ever have in my life. Before I even understood them as a tool used to socially kill trans people and push an agenda of anti-queerness, I always just thought the contents tended to be stupid, and vast majority of callouts often like to use different manipulation and deception tactics that the average person can easily be manipulated by. I think most abuse survivors can agree with me here that they have at least seen one callout in their lives where they have read and easily recognized what the person spreading the callout was doing was emotional manipulation.

I have always been that person who reaches out to the person subject of the callout to help them, and I've always been disgusted in the anti-critical thinking and pro-harassment sentiments surrounding callouts, because those are the exact same things that I've been subject to after being in an abusive relationship online.

When I talk to people victims of callouts, they often have the same fears as I do due to me being in an abusive relationship: Paranoia people are stalking you, not feeling safe to share anything, having to change identities to get away from the harassment, etc. And thats because people who make callouts and create harassment mobs use the same abuse tactics. I had to delete all my accounts, change names, interests, and stay off the internet for months to try and get away from my abuser, because he would stalk me and get others to do the same, and convinced everyone that I was the one being shitty. I stayed paranoid, and sometimes still do, that I will be "found" and messaged again even though its been 6 years since we broke up.

When you have experience yourself in this sort of thing, you realize people who change their identities to get away from callouts aren't trying to "get away" due to nefarious reasons. they just want to live and grow, they want an actual support system and to be better, and never consented to their faults being publicized, and a lot of the time their faults being put on them have never even happened, or are blown out of proportion. It started to click when you realize callouts often try their best to dehumanize the person at hand, and really try to hammer in the " born inherently evil" or "too far gone" point to get people to socially outcast their victims. It often works even with people who would normally be against that sort of thing, I notice a lot of people end up deleting the callout they helped spread later saying they don't actually care or realize how ridiculous the op is being, without realizing the op still got what they wanted. Callouts only spread if theyre able to get you to that " reactionary " level of emotion to manipulate you to just doing anything.

People don't realize that the thing theyre doing actually has lasting effects on the other person. The thing you reblog that you care about for 2 days and then forget will follow the other person forever, because TERFs and Kiwifarms motherfuckers are a different breed of passionate for harassment. My IRL bestfriend I've known for a decade has a girlfriend who made a joke 6 years ago that went viral that everyone took seriously and she still, to this day, gets messages harassing her. The joke wasnt even offensive or directed at anyone, people literally just hated her because she was a communist.

So anyways, I don't like callout posts and neither should you. Make no exception. Literally just keep it to yourself and gossip with friends. Reactionary harassment campaigns do nothing. You're one "fuck up" or one "walking into the wrong person" to getting one yourself. Don't allow callout makers to turn your brain off.

[a-faggot-with-opinions]

Responding To The "Aromantic Manifesto"

So I found this aromantic manifesto earlier today and I have many thoughts and opinions about it. Mainly that it's really bad, and it is homophobic. It uses a lot of big words and complicated language to sound smart, but it's not actually conveying good ideas. I'm going to respond to it piece by piece. By the way, I am aromantic, but I am also gay, so that's the perspective I'm looking at this through.

The main points of this manifesto, as outlined in the beginning, are:

"Romance is inherently queerphobic."

"The organisation of queerness around the celebration and pursuit of romantic desires and pleasures reinforces queer oppression."

"Queer liberation must abolish romance as its long-term goal."

Point 1 is bad because the activism for lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights has LITERALLY been all about being able to love whoever we want to. We didn't fight for centuries to legalize gay marriage to have someone say that us loving someone else is inherently queerphobic. Implying that gay love is somehow oppressing someone else makes you the queerphobic one.

Point 2 is wrong because we've been fighting for our rights for literal centuries, and we've already decided that trying to repress our sexualities for any reason, is actually bad and contributing to our own oppression. The only way to make real progress in solving queer oppression is by expressing ourselves loudly. It's okay to dislike amatonormativity. I dislike amatonormativity. But that doesn't give you an excuse to be homophobic.

Point 3 is even more incorrect. That's because a movement that is fighting for people historically marginalized based on who we love isn't going to have abolishing romantic love as a goal. It's okay to be aromantic and not want romance. The problem comes in when you try to force everyone else to repress their romantic desires because you simply don't like it. That's bad.

The next part is extremely insulting to me as a trans person. They compare gay men wanting to date other men and not wanting to date women to gay men wanting to date trans men. Newsflash, assholes: trans men are men!

If straight people can’t help who they love, then neither can gay people. Nor, one might suppose, racists and transphobes, and people who find disability and fatness unattractive.

This is an obvious homophobic argument. They're implying by this that gay men not wanting to date women is the same as gay men not wanting to date trans men, implying that men who don't love women are misogynistic. It's transphobic to compare the experience of being gay to transphobia. Tell me you've never spoken to a trans person in your life without telling me.

Queer oppression is not just the experience of prohibited desire. It is also the experience of hierarchical and violent desire. It is also the experience of undesirability.

What the fuck are they even saying right here? Queer oppression is literally about the experience of prohibited desire and the lack of experience of expected desire. I can maybe understand where undesirability comes into play, since especially as a trans person I get cis people trying to equate my sexual attractiveness with my worth as a human being, but experiencing hierarchical and violent desire?

This reads as someone saying that queer romance is inherently evil and we're oppressing ourselves and we're totally at fault for our own oppression. QUEER ROMANCE AND SEXUALITY ARE NOT INHERENTLY EVIL AND SAYING THAT THEY ARE IS HOMOPHOBIC, IT'S 2023. Why is this even a hot take?

The next section talks about the "privatisation of love," which is a model for why they think that queer activism has been missing the entire point. Let's see what this author has to say about that.

While the domestic sphere fashioned by heterosexual kinship relations has been historically designated as private life, queer intimacies have instead been regarded as a matter of public concern due to moral panics associating them with predation and perversion throughout history.

This is a very sloppy, incomplete reading of the way that homophobia works. I'm not going to get into my theory of how homophobia works in this post, but anyone who's actually experienced homophobia in their lives will tell you that this ain't it. For one example of how that's incomplete, in recent years queer people have been encouraged by society and especially the right to hide our queerness and abandon our culture in favor of mainstream society. This isn't trying to make us a matter of public concern, it's trying to make us disappear. This isn't how oppression works.

This next section focuses on how romantic love is allegedly used as a hierarchy.

People who regarded as romantically attractive are invariably upward-mobile, white-proximate, gender-appropriate, able-bodied, slender/muscular etc.

Maybe. Just maybe. That is just a reflection of how society views people who aren't white, aren't gender conforming, are disabled, and are fat. Racism, transphobia, ableism, and fatphobia weren't invented by romance. The way that romance in our society works simply reflects those things that already existed. "I just find them unattractive" has been an excuse to discriminate against people for ages. That isn't because romance is inherently THE hierarchy, but instead it's because it's used as an excuse.

Often, calling romantic partners “compatible” just means their placements on the romantic hierarchy are relatively equal in privilege. Calling romantically unattractive people “compatible” with each other, on the other hand, easily sounds condescending.

I don't have much to say about this. This is simply not how romance works. While compatibility is not a great concept and I have critiqued it before, this ain't it.

Queer romantic ideals remain incredibly heteronormative, only celebrating the most privileged and “compatible” of queers and condemning more marginalized queer people all the same.

This quote is really interesting because it's pointing out a very real issue with society (the fact that society encourages assimilated queers) and tries to blame queer activists for it. No, we do not want to assimilate. Society wants us to assimilate, and some of us try to do so. However talking to most queer activists will reveal that we don't want to assimilate. We want to be treated with basic respect.

Queer romance does not resist heteronormativity as much as it assimilates queer desire, making us hold on tightly to whichever relative privileges we have and hate ourselves for whichever we don’t.

Hello? This is projection. This is exactly what the person writing this manifesto has been doing the whole fucking time.

By peddling the illusion that romance can be made queer, heteronormative capitalism forces queer people to try solve their problems of undesirability and unhappiness privately by finding the “right” partner, rather than directing their anger towards public action.

Gay people in the past got into romantic relationships that often got us killed. Did we do that because of heteronormative capitalism trying to force us to find someone? No. What the actual fuck are these people even talking about.

We propose aromanticism as a counterpublic that responds to queerphobic violence by mobilising public resistance instead of escaping inwards. Aromanticism is a principled commitment to finding radically nonviolent ways of relating to others.

There's so much to unpack in this quote. Firstly, the author believes that aromanticism is a choice. It is not. I was born aromantic and even if I choose to get into a relationship that does not make me any less aro. This is also implying that (gay) romance is inherently violent, which is Homophobia 101.

If you already have a romantic partner, we are not asking you to “leave” them, but to aspire to love them in a different, queerer way.

There's no such thing as more or less queer. If you're queer, and you love someone, congratulations, that's queer love. It doesn't become more queer if you call it something other than romance.

I'm not going to go over the last part, but this last quote is some icing on the cake of homophobia we've just eaten.

Just be aware that similar hierarchies of desirability exist in sex as in romance.

It shouldn't be a hot take in the year 2023 that claiming that all sex is bad is a very culturally Christian thing to do, as well as being very traditionally homophobic. Sex negativity is weaponized against queer people far more often that it is against cishets.

To conclude, I'm just going to say that this manifesto takes real frustrations that even I have with amatonormativity, and turns them into denial that romance exists, and blatant homophobia. It's also very hard to understand, so if I misinterpreted something, please do let me know. While I do think that aphobia is bad, being homophobic isn't a solution and is just going to cause us to be hated even more, as well as alienating gay aros.

[prettysweetprettysweet]

something that I wish ppl would keep in mind when considering Achi and Karan's relationship is that it's not uncommon for the level of love/devotion to be nonreciprocal in romantic relationships, and that doesn't make it inherently an unsound relationship. love in general is kind of impossible to quantify, but you can get a rough feeling for it, and not everyone has the same wiring re: love and romance and all the ways to manifest them.

it reminds me of that episode of Malcolm in The Middle where (disclaimer: i'm recalling this from memory only) Hal begins to worry when he has a realization that Lois might not love him as much as he loves her. ultimately, in a very loving and reassuring way Lois is like yes its true, I don't love you as much as you love me, but that doesn't mean I don't love you sincerely or that I would want to be with anyone else. if I was as obsessed with you as you are with me, we would be fucking all time time and never get anything done and our lives would go to shit - the way things are works for us!

some people, like Karan and Hal, are just so fucking next level freaks about love and it would be very hard for their partner to constantly match them in intensity. in both cases, 'matching' their level means just letting them obsess and dote and be horny freaks. like, Achi is clearly a very introverted person and i got the feeling that Achi isn't too crazy about public displays of affection involving kissing. his way to match Karan is letting him hang off him and kiss him but shrug away from it/feign exasperation to temper it. neither of them seem unhappy with that arrangement.

this is not to say that its wrong for someone to need to have a matching level of love/romance from their partner; for some, that is a requirement and a deal-breaker if it isn't met, and that is 100% valid. but I also think that an 'imbalance' doesn't devalue or compromise the integrity of a relationship. they find their equilibrium in other ways.

[solarpunkcast]

re "there's not really any israeli civilians": could you expand on that a bit? (/genuine) bc the way that's phrased could be interpreted poorly. like for example in applying that logic elsewhere, the lives of canadian or usamerican civilians are fair game bc the government slaughtered the natives. don't get me wrong here, israel shouldn't exist and neither should the usa or canada and revolution/decolonization is messy and violent but these efforts can be supported without inherently condemning the lives of people who were born into it and fed propaganda. obviously there's gonna be collateral deaths but saying there's not really any israeli civilians is not great. does that make sense?

the Israeli settlers are not only complicit but ACTIVELY engaged in oppressing Palestinians. the comparison you want to make with USA and Canada is that of the old Western Frontier: those settler families moving Westward also engaged in violence against Native Americans. They killed buffalo, took bounties, clear-cut land, etc. However they justified it, they chose to be settlers not civilians.

So the same thing is happening now. Israel's existence requires an Us vs Them mentality to maintain its settler colonialism. It whips up its settlers against Palestinians. These settlers engage in acts of terrorism and violence against Palestine with no request from their government.

These people have chosen to be settlers, not civilians:

Sometimes the police help settlers engage in terrorism:

And further still, sometimes the fucking police have to admit settlers have gone too far:

None of the Israelis participating in these events are civilians. They have chosen to be settlers. None of these 3 articles is an outlier and 100% has repeat offenses that you can find.

Israel has had 75 years of apartheid. How many living family members do you have that are older than that?

[patrasche-enjoyer]

I suppose it is neither unfair nor untrue to say that Subaru craves connectivity to other humans, something that was certainly fostered by his youth, which was plagued by loneliness and isolation due to his more than complex relation to his father, his imposter syndrome as well has his anxiety disorder, all of which came to their worst climax in his high school years.

Of course, as soon as he is reincarnated and can "start from zero" as the title of the series would imply, he takes the opportunity to reconnect with others, as many of us would do too. However, due to the inherently isolating nature of RBD, he quickly falls back into his old habits of searching for connectivity without actually baring his true self to others. Of course RBD isn't completely at fault for such behavior, Subaru still carries wounds from his past, he never confronted his issues nor did he unlearn harmful habits, even with a "fresh start", it was impossible to truly get better.

[Side note: I do really enjoy that re:zero does not just take into account Subaru's previous life, but also the hardships he had to face back then and doesn't make them seem like lesser struggles in comparison to his newer problems]

Of course, caring about someone deeply and them forgetting about you entirely, as would be the case with RBD, could, at its worst, break almost everyone. So it is not strange, in fact, that Subaru, who is already starved for connectivity, would come across as near obsessive over the people he cared about, especially from the perspective of others who do not remember him from previous loops.

My man Otto doesn't have that fucking excuse tho, he saw Subaru for like a minute and was like "hey is anybody gonna obsesse over that?" and not wait for an answer, my man is ready to kill not just himself but eradicate entire fucking countries for Subaru, there is clearly something wrong with him and being around Subaru clearly unlocked some awful part of his brain

[xclowniex]

you've reblogged some posts about how people hide their antisemitism in antizionism. I'm trying to educate myself further, could you please explain how?

It's great that you are reaching out to educate yourself further.

Zionism as an ideology just means that the State of Israel should exist in one form or another in Southern Levant.

Zionism is not an inherently violent ideology. Just like with any ideology, there are those who are violent and those who aren't. Not all zionists are jews and not all jews are zionists.

Zionism also doesn't mean that Palestine can't exist. Palestine isn't even mentioned in the base ideology of Zionism. You can have zionists who believe in Palestine not existing, however that is not zionism. That is an added on opinion to zionism, like a side to a main meal if we are to use a metaphor.

If you believe in a two state solution, you are a zionist as you believe that the state of Israel should exist.

Some people hide their antisemitism behind antizionism. People who do that usually wouldn't have the opinion that they do about Israel for other countries. Whilst not all Israeli citizens are jews, Israel is mostly comprised of jews. The fact that a person is having a certain opinion only about a jew majority country and not any other country is cause for concern. What about that country is different to other countries? The answer is a majority Jewish population.

An example of anti a country when it's really about hating jews, which does not involve Israel is South Africa's immigration policy in the 1930's. SA limited the amount of immigrants from countries with a high Jewish population but did have any limits for low Jewish population countries. On the Wikipedia page about that, it is called antisemitism and I think most people can agree that it is antisemitism as the only reason why those high Jewish population countries are limited is because if their high Jewish population.

So as you can see, before Israel's existence in the modern world, jews have faced antisemitism hid as being against a country.

If the amount of jews a country has is the only difference as to why they are getting special treatment negatively vs other countries, that is antisemitic.

Genuine critiques of the Israeli government is valid and is not antisemitism. Critiques of the Israeli government which you wouldn't have about any other government is antisemitic.

A lot of people will call unvalid critiques antizionism even though it counts as antisemitism.

The best way to know if someone is hiding their antisemitism as antizionism is to go "does this person hold the state of Israel to different standards than other countries" if the answer is yes, then you are seeing antisemitism.

Another form of antisemitism being held as antizionism is if someone views all zionists as being violent and anti Palestine. As I touched on earlier, zionism is not inherently either of those two things. Yes some people can be both of those thing, a zionist and violent/is anti Palestine, however zionism is inherently neither of those things.

If you believe that a state of Israel can't exist without Palestine being destroyed, why? Because it's never been successful as peace? Communism has never been successfully implemented yet a lot of antizionists believe in Communism and don't think doing so is wrong or harmful. Israel has never broken a ceasefire before. So its not like there hasn't been attempts for Israel to exist alongside Palestine from Israel.

If someone believes that all zionists are violent and hate Israel, it also poses the question of why someone believes that an ideology born by jews is inherently violent?

Now getting into my personal opinion to take this as you will.

Antizionism is impossible to implement without harming jews. If you got rid of the state of Israel, what happens to the jew who lived in Israel?

Jews are not allowed to immigrate to Gaza by Hamas. Hamas wants to kill all jews. Do you really think that will stop once Israel no longer exists? What's the other alternative? Forcing all jews to immigrate to other countries? How well do you think that is going to go when over 6 million people need to move to other countries. Think about refugee crises. Those have not been handled well. Do you think that potential crisis of having to rehome 6 million jews will be handled with ease? Wanting either of that is antisemitic not antizionism.

A one state solution for either country will not work and therefore a two state solution needs to be put in place which Israel has wanted since its existence in the modern day.

[givemearmstopraywith]

My mom keeps asking me why I stopped going to confession (I'm catholic, but it's complicated) and one of the reasons why is that it feels stupid and pointless to me. But is there like good reasons why I maybe should give it a try? Is confession even biblical? Or am I right for staying away from it? (side note: I've not been to confession for about 6 years now (I think), but before that I've been going to confession pretty much regularly for maybe 10 years. So it's not something I've just "tried" once and never again.)

there is no biblical precedent for confession as it exists in the catholic church. in 1 john 1:9, we're told that if we confess our sins to one another, God is faithful to us and forgives us. number 5:7 lays out the historical jewish practice of publicly confessing sins and making restitution. confessing to a priest means that you are confessing to a mediator between yourself and God, and that mediator gives you your restitution for those sins- these are works, since in catholicism we are justified through faith and works and not by faith alone, as in the protestant tradition. there's a lot of strength and depth to justification through faith and works, rather than just justification through faith: but i think you, like many christians, probably crave "works" that are a bit more comprehensive, more humane, than what is typically utilized in confession.

on the other side of this issue, hebrews 3:1 and 7-22-27 tells us that jesus is the high priest of our confession, the one mediator between God and men. on christ can forgive sins: but importantly the priest does not forgive your sin himself, he simply acts as a mediator on your behalf- a descendent of prophets, you might say. part of what i like about the anglican church is that the confession of sins is built into the liturgy, said as a congregation before partaking of the eucharist. this to me seems pithy and practical. but i am also someone who suffers from scruples: i never feel quite good enough, i am oppressed by the knowledge of my own fallenness and base nature (but i am getting better at not feeling this way all the time- nobody should, God does not want us to be crippled by guilt).

it is neither right nor wrong to stay away from confession. what it comes down to is your calling. everyone is called, but we are called in different directions. some are called to partake fully in the life of the catholic church, with its rites, rituals, sacramentalism, and tradition: all of these things are beautiful and meaningful in their own way, but they will be neither of those things to anyone who is not called to it. some are called to have a personal, private relationship with God. others are called to not have one at all. whether we conceive God in an inherent manifestation of "thinginess" or not, we are all called somewhere. it is the nature of being human, because to be human means to be woven into the universe and all it contains. the other thing is that we all do require confession on some level, because we all commit acts that are devoid of goodness- whether accidentally or with purpose.

my personal belief about sin is that it does not exist the way goodness exists, with form: sin is simply an emptiness, created by my own wrongdoing, waiting to be filled with goodness. part of how i feel that emptiness and try to fill it again is through public confession in the anglican church, by private prayerfulness, and by a concerted effort to minimize the harms i commit in my life as much as i can, which means restitution, reconciliation, and sitting with my guilt. but i have never felt personally called to the act of confessing my wrongdoing to a priest, although i have felt called to seek advice and clarification from them.

i am also someone who has a complicated relationship with catholicism and religion in general: i also had a mom who got on me for not performing my religiosity the way she expected me to, or the way i was taught or raised. my advice is ultimately, that this issue is between you and God. if its something you feel comfortable with, talk to God (or the universe, or Spirit, or whatever you conceive a higher power to be). wait. listen. pay attention. if your spirit does not feel called to confession, listen to it. in the practical side, i might suggest tell your mom that you are in a process of discerning God's call for you. if you are comfortable with it, you may want to talk to a priest or another member of clergy on this topic- you may also want to try attending a different denomination, or another faith tradition altogether. read the bible. read torah. read the qur'ran. pray. i spent a long time discerning what God wanted from me, went through a period of agnosticism, atheism, and other, more pearl-clutchy things, and ended up more involved in my faith than anyone, including my mom, ever expected- but i needed to walk away from it first. i needed find my way home. God does not mind if we wander. he made a whole world for us to wander in. God's story with humanity is full of people walking away and finding their way back where they started again: or they are taken to places they could have never imagined. either way, he is there. either way, you'll know. but lean into this place you're in now: it, like everything, has something to teach you.

[sokkastyles]

Hi,

Hope you are doing well.

I have come across the reblogs of The Reckoning of Roku and three things hit me.

The fact that the Air Nomads believe that the world would be better if everyone was a pacifist like them feels a bit like Sozin's thought process. This one is a reach, but I feel there is a small similarity.

I didn't understand the shot at the Fire Lady thing, because we are not shown anything about the Air Nuns mentioned in this novel. Is it a shot at fans? Because if so, this is a stupid attempt.

The novel feels like a deifying of the Air Nomads. That they were these pacifist people, but come to think of it, till book 3, I doubt it was implied that the Air Nomads were pacifist, to my recollection at least. And I doubt Aang's word can be taken into account, because no twelve year old will have an understanding of his culture.

I would like your thoughts on this.

The main problem with the "the world would be better if everyone were pacifists like us" thing is that it isn't inherently wrong. The world WOULD be better if everyone worked to end violence. The problem is that the novel and the series as a whole have a very shallow view of what pacifism actually is. They seem to think it means not eating meat and having a hands off approach to violent conflicts, while what Roku calls for is actual activism and bringing peace through justice. Gyatso declaring that wars would not exist if everyone were like the Air Nomads, while simultaneously advocating for not getting involved, does reek of the same logic Sozin used when he said that the world would be better off if the Fire Nation were to spread its greatness. Neither view is actually doing anything to promote peace.

And of course that doesn't mean Gyatso is just like Sozin, and it certainly doesn't mean that what happened to the Air Nomads was justified (a view I have seen expressed by no one except Aang stans accusing Zutara shippers of saying so in entirely bad faith). But a central theme of atla is that the Fire Nation thought they were the good guys. Their entire ideology was about the belief that they were making the world a better place, and any ideology that assumes the world would be better off if these other people were more like us, while not actually addressing conflicts, is an inherently flawed ideology.

Which would be great if, as I have seen some Aang stans say, also in bad faith arguments to hate on zutara shippers for pointing out bad writing, any of this were actually intentional. But the series is not actually interested in making Gyatso or any of the Air Nomads actual human beings. We're supposed to believe Gyatso is right simply because the Air Nomads are the good guys. And that's why what he says is dangerous. Nobody is saying the Air Nomads are not the good guys here. But it is glaring that the show put these words in the mouth of a character we are supposed to idealize, when the original show explored the dangers of that idealization as one of its main themes. It's because Gyatso is a good guy and a victim of genocide that the writers making him say this is so offensive.

The fire lady mention is absolutely a dig at zutara shippers, who invented the term because of the original show's deficit in depicting the lives of women. It feels like the creators are trying to dodge any accountability for their own sexism, something they have a history of doing. And yeah, it's telling that we still know nothing about Air nuns except that, according to Gyatso, there are "good reasons" for gender segregation. It reeks of "our sacred traditions vs their backwards sexism" as well as the creators once again trying to make excuses for their own sexism.

Which doesn't make any sense from a cultural perspective, but again, the franchise is not interested in depicting the Air Nomads as real people beyond the Shangri-La stereotype they've been running with. They don't even do a good job of trying to be progressive, because that line about how Air Nomads can move temples if their understanding of their gender shifts actually raises more questions than it answers, and just gives a gender essentialist and heteronormative view on lgbtq issues.

[lurking-latinist]

I just saw this awesome post about including mobility aids in fantasy writing, and I do not want to create a tangent but I *do* want to share some things I learned about disability in ancient Greece when I was researching that paper I wrote on the Philoctetes, so I am making my own post.

Philoctetes is a mythical figure who was one of the Greek heroes going to the Trojan war. Before they got there, he suffered a wound in the foot which would not heal. The other Greek leaders were unwilling to have the noise of his screams and the stench of the infected wound in their camp, so they abandoned him on a deserted island with only his famous weapon, the Bow of Heracles. He survived there for ten years. Now the war is almost over, Troy has almost fallen, but the Greeks have heard a prophecy: they cannot win until they have the Bow of Heracles. So wily Odysseus and young Neoptolemus (the son of the recently dead Achilles) go to the island where Philoctetes is still living, still dealing with his injury. Philoctetes is eager to escape the island, but can he trust the community that abandoned him ten years ago? Can they ever make right what they did to him?

Now that’s the type of story that someone might very well point to who was arguing that disabled people have to be neglected and excluded in a “historically accurate” story. And it’s definitely not an example of casual inclusion. But what that person would be missing is that Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation in this play was intended to be shocking to its Athenian audience. The audience is invited to identify with Philoctetes and to be horrified at how he does not receive the support from his community that real-world people with similar disabilities did receive, as we can tell from both textual and archaeological evidence.

Martha L. Rose’s book The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece emphasizes this. Look, here’s what I wrote in my paper, why should I rewrite it:

Rose approaches her material “though the lens of disability studies, which approaches the phenomenon of disability by assuming that there is nothing inherently wrong with the disabled body and that the reaction of a society to the disabled body is neither predictable nor immutable” (1). In other words, it is necessary to see what attitudes and assumptions about disabilities are actually recorded, rather than projecting any of our own assumptions. ...

Also unlike today, Greek concepts of disability were not medicalized. “Permanent physical disability,” writes Rose, “was not the concern of doctors in antiquity beyond recognition of incurability” (11). This does not mean that disabled people had no resources or were simply left to perish, of course. Rather, they were often cared for within their households and their communities (28), which means that both Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation form a shocking exception to the norm. The importance of community support suggests that Philoctetes’ joy at being reunited with humanity comes from practical as well as emotional needs. At the same time, the wide range of tasks and trades in the Greek economy meant that many disabled people were far from economically dependent (think of [the god] Hephaestus the lame smith), so that “[a] physically handicapped person earning a living would not have been a remarkable sight” (39). People unable to walk at all rode donkeys or were carried in litters, while those who walked with difficulty used a staff or a crutch (24-26).

So for writers: the ancient Greeks didn’t invent the wheelchair--but they had the wheel technology (I suspect the issue may have been with roads and pavements instead), so your Greek-inspired fantasy world totally can (which was the point of that earlier post). Or maybe your protagonist goes on their adventures with a faithful donkey sidekick that helps them get around. Maybe they are respected for their skill in a craft, making their home and workshop a lively meeting-place for customers. If you’re writing fantasy, you could be inspired by one of the myths of Hephaestus, in which he creates metal automatons--basically, magic robots--that not only support him as he walks, they also act as assistants in his workshop!

Anyway, the point of this post is basically just that I agree with the other post about including mobility aids in fantasy and I had some relevant knowledge in the back of my head. And also that you should read the Philoctetes. Look, here’s a recent free modern English verse translation: https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/sophocles/philocteteshtml.html

Oh, and if you would like to see my term paper or the relevant section from The Staff of Oedipus, message me, I will share them.

[raayllum]

I think sometimes the way I approach fic / meta writing / analysis stems from how I character build and write my OG stuff as well, because while the classical writing advice is about asking "what does your character want?" I've always found it most useful to ask "What does your character want, and what are they willing to justify to get it?"

(Asking how they justify their actions is also incredibly useful but more on that later.)

For example, when ('good') characters are under stressful situations and respond well regardless, we take that as being indicative of who they Truly Are—heroic, helpful, selfless, often even compassionate, etc, and when antagonists behave that way, we dismiss it as just glory hounding or being selfish, when it can Be multiple things at once.

When ('bad') characters respond poorly to stressful situations—threatening harm, using dark magic to saved loved ones, being angry and cold hearted—we take that as who they are, and when it's the protags, we say they're stressed or coerced or any number of things... that are true for the antags often, too! And still true even if you don't like them or have as much compassion towards them.

But unfortunately sometimes people are rarely inclined to do the opposite. They're rarely inclined to take antagonists' good moments as honest statements of their character because "well they're mean/evil" and often dismiss protagonists' complicated or less than stellar choices because "well they're good and they feel bad" (Viren saying he'll never forgive himself for the things he's done even when they saved his son, and Claudia crying over what she's done to save her father? yeah those scenes don't exist anymore sorry).

The fact of the matter is that, at least in TDP and in many other works (including my own), actual antagonists are not always evil and awful and morally bankrupt 100% of the time, and actual protagonists are not always perfect or good or making the right choice (because sometimes there isn't one, tbh).

Who your character is at their best and their worst, regardless of circumstance, is ALL of who they are. It all has to be taken into account. No cherry picking. Rayla can be selfish and dismissive and a liar who routinely fails at whatever she sets out to do and is awful at communicating, and Viren can love his kingdom and his family and genuinely believe that's what he's doing everything for, and neither encompasses their whole character. A perfect example is Claudia, who we cheer for when she chooses Soren over the world-saving mission of the egg in 2x07, and despair at when she chooses Viren over the world-saving mission of maybe not freeing the dangerous imprisoned Startouch elf in S4 and S5. Same principle, character, motivation, different circumstance, but we're happy about Soren (because he's not Viren) and bummed about Viren (because he's not Soren), and because character traits are consistent, and whether those traits are good or bad is inherently circumstantial. Claudia's loyalty can be great, and it can be a terrible, awful justification. Both of those things are true.

To be clear, this isn't to argue for false equivalency: Viren and Claudia and other antagonists are far more often Wrong than the protagonists are, and the protagonists are routinely more Right than our two favourite dark mages are. TDP likes its complications and circumstantial stuff, but there's still some things that are Bad No Matter What (like gaslighting your child, or routine dehumanization). And some of our associations are because antagonistic characters tend to be routinely cruel and mean, which are part of the horrible things they do, and protagonist characters are routinely kinder and more compassionate to the people around them, and protecting each other / innocent people is part of what makes them a good person, but... There's no inherent difference between a lot (not all, but some) of the actions the characters across the board take, particularly in arc 2, just their perspective and who we're personally more attached to and thereby more willing to justify their decisions surrounding.

Like idk my main WIP protag buries people alive en masse and tortures someone vindictively because they killed her friend and I'd still classify her as a Good Person (fictionally), and it's just always wild to me when people don't take All Parts and Choices and Relationships of a character into account especially because TDP spells it out for us over and over that we Should with quite literally every single character, whether those actions are good or bad:

Once again I am asking for encompassing wholes and character nuances where the only time a character should be like "well it's totally fine that you did a Thing actually" (Rayla towards Callum's dark magic use or Callum towards Rayla lying to/stealing from him) or "totally not okay that you did a thing" (Runaan about Rayla sparing Marcos, or Claudia doing dark magic) is taken as an aspect of Character Bias, not a definitive Narrative get off the hook slant or condemnation, because neither of those things Get us anywhere in a writing or analytical sense thank you

[plumesofio]

“Tme/tma is wrong because no trans person has gendered power over another” that’s just straight up not true. I’m trans and yet sure as shit have power over transw&fs. If wym is that other trans ppl don’t inherently all have power over tw&fs I get what ur saying, that’s an overly simplified view of things. But like. Some do and I get why tw&fs wanna talk abt it.

During my first job out as trans, I was still early in transition and most ppl just saw me as a kinda ugly cis girl. I’d cut my hair shortish and started dressing masc and wore my little he/they pin. I was the only trans person there at first. And yeah it wasn’t a great time that first year. Customers at my job would ask me what I was and misgender me on purpose. But with my coworkers, as much as I chafed against this being the case, I was taken in as one of the girls. Later a new supervisor transferred in, let’s call her Laura. She was a cishet white woman with a little pride flag pin, ‘cause she had a gay kid and allegedly supported gay ppl. She got my pronouns wrong a lot, no matter how often I corrected her (and when she used em she only used they, never he) and that sucked major ass. But for the most part she was nice enough to me. A bit after that though, a visibly trans woman was hired, Destiny. We quickly became friends so I got to hear a lot about how the work environment was going for her. To put it briefly, Laura started up a little mean girl clique with other employees that was all awful to Destiny. Like misgendering her, insulting her, giving her all the worst manual labor tasks, spreading rumors. Destiny is one of the kindest most genuine human beings on the planet I’ll have you know, she didn’t do a thing to deserve this treatment. It came to management’s attention but instead of firing Laura she just got transferred to a better position somewhere else. Even outside of that, customers would call in to complain about Destiny over nothing while misgendering her. Eventually she even got hate crimed when a customer called her a slur and threw a full drink at her. Neither of us work there anymore. But the point is—I could’ve joined that mean girl clique if I’d wanted to. I had the ability to be horrible to Destiny with little to no downside if I so chose. I had oodles of social power over her even though we were both trans. This isn’t the situation of every transmasculine person but like. There, in that store, I was the tme, and she was the tma. Plain as day.

I doubt the tme/tma framework will be used in its current state forever, it’ll probably improve over time. But if you want every trans woman and fem to just Accept that no trans person has any power over them? You have a lot of perspective to gain.