#but this line of thinking feels rather victim blamey

[oomox]

i keep seeing shit on instagram about "man repeller outfits" and it's pissing me off so bad bc in my experience, there is no man repeller outfit. as a femme i've been dressing crazy for years and all it's done is get me more unwanted male attention. & i refuse to give it up even with the harassment and discomfort im subjected to bc it's who i am and now these basic nonfemme women think they can save themselves by doing what i do? no you fucking idiot, there is no way out. you will always be an object they think they have a right to an opinion on -- thats the reason men talk disparagingly about womens fashion in the first place!!! dressing in ways that you think might be unappealing or unattractive is still catering to the male gaze and letting patriarchal thinking control you

[butevensomharewrite]

Introduction Post

Welcome to my sideblog (currently in hideous colours but I'm working on it, stick with me, they're temporary) for, as the title says, my My Hero Academia rewrite, But, Even So, because I need a place to put my ramblings and thoughts and sketches.

So, I'm never a fan of using the word "fixing" when it comes to rewrites, because that implies objectivity and also I'm not so arrogant I think I'm so amazing writer who knows best. I'm just doing a rewrite, not claiming to fix anything or be superior, to my specific tastes as a "what would I do" with hindsight. Like there's no way Horikoshi could foreshadow Humarise despite it being a really cool element of worldbuilding, when it was made just for the anime movie way later, and so the had to be backfilled rather than foreshadowed, and also knowing where arcs are going helps to plan for them. I'm just kicking over Horikoshi's tower, stealing his building blocks, and building my own tower with them.

That said, what's the overview and plan? Here's a few of the major points, feel free to pop in a chat about any of them or anything not on the list.

An extended timeline. Lots of things as less rubbing when over the full 3 years of UA rather than one. Izuku mastering all the quirks of OFA? Makes way more sense if he's unlocking them slowly over 3 years. Bakugou's arc? He makes alright progress for a single year, but over 3 he's got even more to grow. Academia? I want to slow down and focus on academia. Less jarring transitions? For example, Todoroki goes from "nah sorry I'm not over my trauma enough to use my fire Bakugou" to "ok sure I will against Stain a week later" when we could spend time unpacking his trauma and working through this stuff.

Bakugou in general. A big contentious part of any rewrite, which is why this section is so long, he and fandom's relationship to him is lot to grapple with but he has so much potential. As I said, 3 years gives him more time to grow, but also I want to start earlier. I think a lot of the issues people have with him are seeded very early on but also in some culture clashes, but it's a tricky line to walk between softening his actions enough to make his redemption believable without removing what he did or his responsibility for it. So, I think it comes two fold, at the start, then a third later. First, Bakugou is supposed to be a sort of "society made this ego monster" type but we don't see enough of that society beyond the supposedly perfect UA, so I'd want to expand that more. The hype everyone builds around him and Bakugou's pressure to be perfect inadvertently put on him by Mitsuki trying to reign in his ego (pointing out his every flaw to try and counter the hype but instead enforcing yelling and slaps and the idea that if it's not perfect, it's not worth anything to her), and so a better look at Midoriya's bullying. People often ask why Bakugou doesn't get detention or why the teachers cover it up, and that shows the culture clash. Detention isn't really a thing in Japan, it's just having a chat with your teacher or counsellor, or public humiliation where you stand there and your teacher screams at you. And bullying in Japan is often led by the teacher. They're not covering it up, they're the ringleaders, because Midoriya is the weird kid who needs to be corrected (remember, public humiliation as correction) and even refusing to join in will make you a target. I'm not saying this is right, but that's how it often is, Japan is very victim blamey to the point where I know friends who've been called difficult for not forgiving someone who assaulted them, publicly (this is why characters like Natsuo refusing to forgive are so important). Status quo is king and everyone else's comfort is more important than yours, and for goodness sake's never admit there's a problem because that means you're a problem and you're making your problem other people's problem, how could you??? So it should be less "Bakugou bullied Midoriya" and more "Midoriya was bullied, and Bakugou was the only one who stayed in the plot" which does double duty of soften, a little, Bakugou's role by showing more people involved, and expands the idea that Midoriya is bottom of the pile by being quirkless where everyone is involved. Especially since, even in canon, we have 10 months of Bakugou ignoring Midoriya and still see the teacher humiliating him and classmates picking on him, I want to expand that to make it more obvious for western readers, since they'll be the majority of readers of this, I'm sure. Second, Bakugou's actions having direct consequences earlier, rather than the karmic ones. I mean, the plot goes out of its way to humiliate Bakugou sometimes, but it's more often than not narrative and karmic rather than direct. So, I intend to kick off Bakugou's journey a little early, while still in middle school, but making it clear it's a consequence of his own actions. He got himself into a position because of his actions, and now he's messed up. And this also avoids the suffering for redemption trope, because no you don't have to suffer for redemption because that quickly leads to a narrative implying if you're suffering it's because you've done something to deserve it, you know, victim blaming, and the slippery slope into hurting yourself as penance for wrong doings. Instead it's a matter of a serious incident, or suffering, making you revaluate your position. There's a difference, and it's important to me.

Thirdly, and it gets its own point, Bakugou needs a plot. I'm keeping Horikoshi's blocks, so Midoriya, Bakugou and Todoroki are the main trio, but Bakugou's story is so tightly related to Midoriya's he's taking screen time but also not doing as much as he could. Having a character arc be the main focus is fine, but it's a bit jarring when everyone else is doing their own plot and Bakugou is just following Midoriya. Midoriya has AFO/Shigaraki, Todoroki has his family, and Bakugou has... his feelings. So he needs to be doing his own but entwined thing. And I'm giving him Stain, because they've got fascinating potential. They both admire All Might but took the wrong messages, they both want to be heroes but kinda suck at the heroic nature part, they both have impossibly high standards that only All Might really meets, both get frustrated by heroes being more interested in appearances than doing stuff, and both lash out violently, and would despise each other, but can culminate in a slightly altered final war confrontation team up against AFO to protect All Might.

A focus on the a main cast. While I appreciate Horikoshi's wide and varied cast, the attempt to give them all somewhat even focus leaves them all kinda shallow to me, and also leaves some important characters side lined for too long. So, instead the theory is by focusing on Midoriya, Bakugou and Todoroki clearly as MCs with their own paths early on, we don't have the problem of people like Iida, Uraraka and Asui dropping off as Bakugou and Todoroki slowly take over their roles by Midoriya's side. Instead we clearly have the main three from start, and then the secondary group of Uraraka, Iida, Asui, Kirishima, Kaminara and Momo supporting them, and then everyone else. And hopefully, by streamlining and focusing on the core group, they get deeper, and strong character defining entrances from the others make up for their falling to the side. Also, giving these guys things to do as well. With an extended timeline there's more time for them to have more plot important roles. Letting Uraraka develop her martial arts and actually fight, letting the girls deal with the sexism of heroics (capitalise on the fact that one of Bakugou's earliest redeeming moments was seeing Uraraka as a competitor not just a cute fragile girl, expand on that Horikoshi why did you make that point just to drop it?), take time on things like Momo's second guessing in situations she can't prepare for in advance, Kaminari also has massive potential that's never tapped into but retool him in time to be a human stungun, give the heteromorph plot to Asui, there was nothing wrong with it being Shoji but it did come out of nowhere when Asui was right there and a solid character.

Academia! With longer to spread the timeline, there's more time for actual academia. Lessons and fun stuff like that. More interaction between departments. Hero students are paired with a support and business student at the start of the year, given a mock budget and taught to run a mock agency, to file reports on heroics class to make money and use that money for support upgrades and have their management spin the story to get more UA Bucks or get out of paying fines and damages. Which also works as commentary on how the heroes at the top get more money = more resources = bigger cases = more fame = more money becoming a cycle you have to figure out how to break into if you want to get to the top. And things like the ethics of heroics. When is it right to focus on defeating the bad guy over rescue? Is it ever? What if they get away and hurt more people while you're evacuating? Is "my quirk isn't suited" and excuse? Publicity training, training beyond just combat as more than a cute OVA, hero law, community service, handling trauma and victims and mental health (you'd think heroes dealing with victims constantly would have a better idea how to handle traumatised kids beyond traumatising them more), there's so much academia that could be covered!

Brief Villain Notes. More mixing and overlapping for villains and arcs in general. I don't hate the AFO possession plot in concept, but I think it's great way to have Shigaraki doing his own thing and maybe taking some of the league with him. Mr Compress actually known as a master thief, lets drop some hints, have some kids tracking him during internships, that kind of thing. Earlier Dabi. I don't have the reveal like Horikoshi did, so I have to play other cards with him. Give him ice before the last second and make it matter. He's Shouto's inverse. While Shouto uses ice to reject his father, Dabi uses fire because he wants Endeavor's approval and attention even in his own messed up way. At the same time, give Dabi more of a reputation, he wants Endeavor's attention after all. More about the Kurogirir stuff rather than just a weak reveal. Strengthen the Shigaraki and Midoriya line. Have them meet more, talk more, Midoriya even meeting Shigaraki pre-UA and simply offering help because he looks kinda lost. Toga in general is just kind of messy and needs some streamlining and I need to really sit down and ponder what her core really is and how to apply it, so I'm not too sure right now. The MLA, much like Humarise, should be seeded way earlier. Especially with plots like Uraraka, who can't help her family because she needs a license to use her quirk to do so and their goal is free quirk use, and they have a political party, and Curious should be in the press scrum at the Sports Festival, Re-Destro has a support and clothing company, he could be providing for UA.

Ok, I think that's the broadest strokes.

[waterloggedsoliloquy]

18 & 20 for the ask game. i need to hear how this hypothetical drama would unfold

you picked the GOODIES

18.) what aspect of the story would get you #canceled on twitter?

this is a toughie is the thing. while im not one of those creators thats terrified of being offensive or problematic, i also dont pay that much attention to elements of work that might offend. im more interested in being genuine and trusting my message rather than relishing in having #problematique content.

that being said i think a lot of people would not like that sicely isnt a g*ld st*r lesbian or that lucerne doesnt use labels, bc twitter is really hung up on what characters "really" are or what stories "really" mean.

i think theyd also do that thing where theyd be like ugh look at these children currently in abusive situations why are they not acting 100% perfectly, the author clearly has no idea what theyre doing with portraying abuse, this is just torture porn and fetishizing ptsd/osddid. bc theres no way that the things that happen in CW could ever happen to people, bc abuse happens to other people and never in anything i might have to interact with.

20.) your ocverse just got a movie trilogy a la hunger games style. how have they horribly mangled your message/theme so that the movies are now a showcase of what the original was condemning?

This ones also a toughie actually bc a large part in why the hunger games movies contributed to showcasing what the original work condemned is because the media circus and bloodsports as vapid entertainment were directly being condemned in the original and #Media isnt really a huge part of carousel waltz. i think in order to really turn carousel waltz on its head youd have to be simultaneously very victim-blamey to the children but also prop up the adults as the ones who must "save them", bc children cant do anything on their own and cant be trusted to have legitimate grievances with the adults in their lives. flattening midas into either a villain who never cared about the people he abused or apologizing for him as a well-meaning patriarch who was just led astray and by proxy flattening the abuse into depictions more palatable to the wider consumer audience would do it i think.

but i dont know if it being a movie trilogy would necessarily cause those changes to occur-- movies are visual and sequential like comics but usually have to be 2 hours or less and are overwhelmingly held hostage at the whims of distributors, executive boards, investors, etc. so the influences it would have over carousel waltz would be along those lines. i think that with the time crunch it'd probably be really easy to make the story less subtle, and to have to hammer home points. certain characters necessarily would not have as much screentime and focus in a movie trilogy, which i think WOULD contribute to being an example of what im trying to condemn, and a movie might inadvertently say that some abused children are just collateral damage and we can move past them, some abused children dont have interiority or anything to draw attention to them, some abused children are more important or worth rescuing more. its also very important to me that most of the carousel waltz kids r not white, and that the grownups are, but casting would probably whitewash them or try to make the story colorblind instead of keeping in how midas' abuse takes advantage of his identity of whiteness over them. combine this w the idea that there needs to be adults to save these kids and u get a white savior araceli. if this concept makes you want to gnaw your leg off at the ankle to get the shackle off, that just means youre still human! try to hold onto that feeling.

since magical girl isnt a big genre in the west theyd try to reflavor it as some other thing like superheroes or a dnd party or something. or theyd want to age up the kids so the bad things happen to a more acceptable age group bc the idea that kids might have bad things happen to them is a scary thought so theyd completely miss the point abt it being a story abt child abuse and now its a buncha late teens-early 20s bullshit.

im actually debating how much swearing i want in carousel waltz (it was really hard writing guardians dilemma without zizi swearing) but executives would only let me have one fuck and would not let anthea call anyone a cocksucker :(

[chiisana-sukima]

@jinkieswouldyoulookatthis -- I realized it would probably be easier just to paste relevant parts of the conversation up til now in a reblog of this ask, so, continued from here:

Acknowledging that there are consequences to every action we take, every choice we make, no matter how well justified at the time we made it, and that those consequences affect other people in ways that sometimes hurt them in deep and lasting ways, is not blaming.

I agree with this 100% and hope I didn't come off like I was saying the above would be victim-blaming. Rather I think that Berens thinks that Mary actually is partially to blame for everything Dean says to her in the scene where he confronts her, and that the most likely intended reading of the scene is that it's generous of him and healing for him and Mary both to put the whole truth out there, and for Dean to empathize by realizing he's made similar mistakes and forgive her for an understandable but very harmful mistake she made so they can start new and begin a more healthy and realistic relationship. I think if the viewer comes away from the scene with this interpretation, they have the "correct-est" interpretation of the scene, in that they've reached the intended conclusions and gotten the intended emotional catharsis.

Unfortunately, since I don't think it was her fault in any meaningful way, that's not the emotional response the scene evokes in me. In a situation where there's no fault, but only a statement of cause and effect, I believe I hate you or [list of horrible outcomes], all of it was because of you aren't things anyone needs to hear or say from or to a loved one. That's not to say Dean isn't justified in feeling that way or that he doesn't need to say them to someone, I just think Mary isn't the person it would be healthy or good for the relationship for him to say them to. Pretty much anyone else--perhaps Cas or Rowena, since they are friends with complicated relationships with family of their own-- would be better.

Of course, in the episode, I am definitely wrong, because Berens has set it up so that she needs to hear those words in order to break free from the MoLs' brainwashing. But I think it's Berens who is wrong-- both about how causation works and about how healthy relationships work. He appears to have forgotten or ignored that she was coerced and even what order the events happened in, and has written Dean's lines as much harsher than I think a scene that could be cathartic for both of them--assuming she is not blameworthy--should have gone. That's where I think Berens is victim-blaming. If she's blameless, "I'm angry at you so often, even though I know it wasn't your fault. But I love you so much too" is the cathartic, relationship-healing thing to say. If Dean hates her for things that are not her fault (which would be 100% understandable), that's a Dean problem and she's not the appropriate party to solve it.

(This is not intended as a criticism of Dean btw, although I'm certainly not above criticizing him; the whole scene just didn't work for me, and Berens wrote Sam endorsing monster genocide and often saying stuff that reads as victim-blamey to me too. It's a criticism of Berens. Also omg this is so long already lol. My apologies.)

All of our choices have an impact, none of us are free from responsibility for those impacts and our part in what comes after as a result.

So, here is the part I mostly wanted to ask you about/discuss. I read a meta recently where the OP was saying that Sam tends to diffuse responsibility for things the OP felt he should not, and that Dean doesn't do this, but maybe takes on too much responsibility. And the thing I found striking was that my immediate response was "yes, I agree about Dean, but as to Sam, I know what kinds of things you mean and the responsibility should be diffused. It doesn't belong on him". I found it kind of funny that I'm a Sam girl (gn) and my instinctive response was exactly what the meta was disapproving of Sam doing lol.

And the weird thing is, this idea--that we are responsible for (? all) the impact of our own choices, even when they get beyond our immediate circle of control, is so alien to the way I think that I don't even think I understand what people who believe it actually believe. And since I've been rotating in my mind recently how Sam fans vs Dean fans self sort, I've been wondering if this is one of the main areas. (It's just a half baked theory--I havent been thinking about it long enough to decide how robust I think it is yet).

So, for example, I'm a retired nurse, and for the majority of my 28 years nursing I was an acute care float nurse, which is someone whose job is to go to the worst staffed floors in a hospital and do whatever specialty is needed there. I took early retirement in my 50s because, like many nurses, the job had ruined my health. When I quit, I was one of the most experienced nurses in the hospital, and they did not replace me. Research shows that every patient a nurse has above four (on a med/surg floor), increases the mortality rate 7%, so in practice, it's possible people have died about my decision. In my very strong opinion, this is not my responsibility. It's above my pay grade.

Another example: I have a younger brother who recently told me that he went to [home city from when we were little] for an academic conference and while there had hallucinations. We have a shared trauma history from the time we lived there and he also had a seizure disorder when he was young that he "outgrew". I have some what I believe to be very good advice for him--principally that while it was likely a trauma response it could also have been a seizure and he should see a neurologist. But he specifically stated he didn't want advice, so I didn't give any. God forbid he has a seizure and dies, I'll of course feel terrible, but it won't be my responsibility. What he does with his health is above my pay grade--I'm not inside his head and can't know what's best for him.

One of the main reasons I love Dean is his incredibly relatable survivor guilt. I too often feel like he does in Sam, Interrupted when he tells the psychiatrist in his head that the number of people he needs to save before he can feel okay is "all of them". But from my perspective, these are feelings, not truth. Sam and Dean (and Cas) are heroes for working way, way above their pay grade in stopping the Apocalypse, but it was never (imo) really "on" them, like the narrative sometimes seems to claim and sometimes seems to deny. Imo, their piece of responsibility in it is so minimal as to be meaningless.

This leaves the question then of "but when do people have responsibility for their decisions and actions" and for me personally, I think the answer is "people have the responsibility to be as compassionate as they're able to in the moment they're in, both to themselves and to others, and everything else will follow from that". I do think this is a pretty vague and pragmatic cost/benefit-style approach, and it actually does make me think of Sam, who has a core set of principals in which compassion is paramount, but then makes his decisions--not always wisely--somewhat on the fly.

So anyways, I'm very interested in your thoughts on what it means to be responsible for the results of your decisions and actions. Are there limits around this when your decision is constrained by outside forces you can't control or does "free will" for you mean that you're always responsible? How do you know how far back in the chain of events to go before it's not your problem anymore, or is it always your problem? Is what you love about Dean partly related to the difficulties in figuring this question out and knowing how to handle it?

Hi! I'm really interested in some of the points you brought up in your reblog about Mary, free will, and our obligations to each other as people, but i also dont want to bother you if you feel done with the conversation. I'm especially interested in kind of a side issue, i guess (?), which is that I've been rotating in my brain where the division between Sam-leaning and Dean-leaning fans come from and am currently rotating the theory that, mirroring our blorbos, Dean-leaning fans tend to assign more causation inside individual characters and Sam-leaning fans tend to assign more causation to outside forces. I would love to discuss this with a Dean fan, but it's also such a touchy topic that it's hard to know how to go about it. If you are up for it, I would probably cut and paste your response off the Mary post into a new post and tag you in so as not to derail the Mary OP's post, but if you want to be done, I'm fine with that too. Do you have any preferences about this?

I am always up for discussions, especially when I know there isn’t animosity behind them (written stuff can be tricky that way sometimes and it’s nice to not have to worry about it). I’d love to hear your thoughts about it, go for it!

[scifimagpie]

In and Out of the Closet: A Fat Girl's Personal Style Journey

Content warning: this article deals with body image issues that may be triggering for some readers. Discretion is advised.

I am a member of the Disney Generation. This is hardly a revolutionary claim or point to make, but for a fat femme girl, who's also bisexual, it comes with invisible baggage and fears.

Full skirts, improbably round breasts, delicate waists, paneled gowns, shimmering fabric, vibrant colours, and jewels shaped my idea of not only desire, but also royalty. Studying history from a young age, I saw rich fabrics, precious treasures, embroidered and lined gowns, and I admired it. Drawing endless pictures of dresses and gowns, often with surprise cut-aways and deep decolletage, I both desired them and wanted to be them. Formal garb was both my ambition and my most secret hope, but it was also something I believe impossible for myself.

Fat girl life

My mother's body image issues left a deep impact on me, and readily transferred over to my own. I had always been sort of tall, but wished I was taller. Hating my muscles and fat, seeing the curves as proof of a lack of fitness - I didn't grow up within a corset, or with bound feet, but the cage and constant pressure of the BMI chart was just as strangling and hobbling.

In the 90s and 2000s, flatness and muscle and bones were the beauty ideal. I used to daydream about surgery and liposuction and waking up with a body that moved, looked, and felt different. For years, I tried to get by on 1000, 1200, or whatever number of calories per day would work - inevitably failing when encountering food, of course, or when sabotaged by my mother, who'd encourage me to 'live a little' and eat a salty or sweet treat, caving in to her own cravings. But soon, it'd be back on the wheel of nagging to exercise, not for the joy of movement, but to deal with the shame of my flawed body.

 In this way, I spent my teens and a good portion of my twenties - trying different techniques to shed stubborn pounds that were as good as nailed to my flesh - due, unbeknownst to me to hormonal imbalances. I learned to like certain things, and aspired to climb buildings and corners and walls and roofs, assuming that only by losing weight could I attain those literal high hopes.

At the same time, in the back of my mind, fashion and clothes I liked were often weighty. Elegant layers, oversized cuts, voluminous skirts, corsets swooping in to hug a waist I didn't think I had - these were things I associated not with femininity alone, but with being regal, imperious, and respected. Later, I became intrigued by swooping, voluminous clothes - Jedi robes, Amidala's gowns, even oversized boxy cuts in music videos. Finding ways to mingle these elements with layers has led to an unexpected but perfect style intersection for me.

#outfit #selfie #clinic #spoonielife

A post shared by SciFiMagpie (@scifimagpie) on Aug 23, 2017 at 2:39pm PDT

I stopped confining myself to things I 'could wear', and started experimenting with revealing my skin, taking inspiration from slimmer models as necessary and trying out a variety of looks. Overly modest circle skirts, sarongs with jeans underneath, a million skin-tight black turtlenecks, black and white tiered skirts, fishnets and lacy patterned tights, steampunk leather corsets, knitted sweaters and business-like skirts. Eventually, I achieved a more defined and coherent look, featuring cocoon sweaters, leggy wrap dresses, layered corset-cut vests, flowing circle skirts, and oversized scarves - where I'm at these days. Older style elements make their way into clothes, but I dress with more deliberation, strategy, and joy these days, not seeking to hide my shameful corpse under oversized tie-dye t-shirts and baggy jeans or in ill-fitting and suiting button-up shirts.

The personal is political - pencil skirts included

I've hit a point where I can not only incorporate a variety of influences, but I receive social praise for my skills in doing so. I've begin to feel like I inhabit my own body, that it is not broken, ugly, or in need of repair. The vibrant body-positivity movement has helped this immensely. Then I saw this.

At first, I simply ignored it, because I didn't understand it and couldn't relate to it. But after talking about it with a friend, a sort of Pod People-like realisation snapped over me, and I considered that yes, most fat women ARE dressing according to this code. Pretend it's 1950 or face a return to the same old standards and shames. In my retail days, I had to wear carefully coiffed and chosen outfits and makeup, while my very tall, slim manager wore pilling sweaters and got not a word of criticism about it.

Chatting with my friend Katie de Long, who is also both a ferocious feminist and enthusiastic fashionista, I was dismayed and alarmed by the through-line of this pattern. In her words [edited slightly to remove my part of the conversation],

"...There are societal biases that make it MORE needed for fat women to prove their femininity.

No one ever thinks of the "hot curvy girl" as being draped in loose, structural clothes.

They see her va-va-vooming in a waist-training corset and full face of makeup. Anything that "erases" the figure or the curves is seen as undesireable, even if it fits properly and is well-tailored.

I think another thing is that plus sized women are trained to hide their size. We see Christina Hendricks or Amy Schumer's curves as being desireable.... so long as they're in a close-fitting pencil dress.

But I do admit I'm pretty prey to that shit too. I avoid wearing loose clothes, wear things too tight rather than too lose.... and get really sexual, lots of cleavage, short skirts, slit-up-to-there, etc. I love exaggerated shapes. So I've always hated really drapey clothes, or close-fitting clothes that don't highlight the figure (fuck you, leggings).

Plus, and I know this is victim-blamey, my first semester of college featured a police officer advising the girls in the freshman class to NOT wear loose clothes because it's easier for a rapist to get them off, even without scissors.

So for me, when I wear loose clothes, I have really nasty panic attacks about the idea of someone peeling them off me without my consent. When I wear tight clothes, I feel confident, that they'll have to use scissors, which is more likely to give me an opportunity to either get away, or seize the scissors and take out an eye. As well, my style's fuckyou femme, so for me [as a rape survivor], I feel like my gender and the violence I've suffered because of it is erased when I put on loose, minimalist designs."

What to wear?

At the end of the day, even though clothing choices are fraught with danger and hidden signalling that can be hard to understand, finding a way to express oneself through attire can be very important. From talking to my nonbinary "enby" friends, I've gotten even more insight into this. What strikes me as funny and maybe even uplifting is that my experiences with feminism and trauma have taken me in a circle. Instead of pretending to be a man, or having no identity at all, or seeing my childhood dreams as unattainable, I've been able to make my innermost desires come true.

There's an old saw idea that feminists are ugly, hairy, unconventionally feminine, fat, and basically undesireable. But taking back a sense of inner worth has given me the tools to fight my inner ugliness, wear makeup without feeling as though I'm faking something, and stop hiding my inner exuberance. There is freedom in ugliness and invisibility, and a merit to reclaiming or defying constraints - but at least for me, there is more joy in this new, permissive ground.

Ultimately, I hope that my experiences can make people feel a little better about their own secret desires and hopes. A lot of hay has been made about how 'style has no size', but there's still fierce debate about 'who can wear what'. But simply wearing what one wants isn't as easy as it sounds, and takes time. If you need it, take this as official permission to try out that thing, regardless of your gender. You are not 'too old' or 'too fat' or 'too thin'.

You are enough.

And it's okay if it doesn't look right at first. What matters is that your clothing expresses who you want to be.

Additional reading:

A Nigerian designer using fashion and style to explore feminism and self-expression

Information about the cost of existing in a female body and/or having periods and breasts

The ways we judge women and how it affects their careers *** Thanks for returning to the nest. Leave a comment and say hi! I want to hear from you. Keep up with the new releases by getting on the mailing list. Buy my books on Amazon, and keep up with me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!

[synesindri]

yessss the nexus point of their worldviews in who gets to determine what about themselves...i think what we see here is two characters who don't have a very solid understanding of their own philosophies and are in flux with their opinions, maybe, which imo is a lot of why they kind of talk past each other.

it's interesting how heaven's stance on fate seems to work...it's kind of out of individuals' control, but it's also 100% on them and they deserve what they get. it allows individuals enough agency to be blamed, but not to avoid doing the things that would cause them to be blameworthy.

gabriel's take on self-determination seems mostly to align with this, for the majority of his episodes/lines. like you said, he's very like "you did this" about how the apocalypse started, even though he also has always been saying that they don't have a choice so they might as well get used to the idea of everything fated happening. he comes across as if he feels helpless, even while using his power to control situations. he doesn't like the outcomes he's working for, but he's actively working for them anyway.

he definitely also is being dismissive of the ways lucifer has been victimized and hasn't been in control of his own destiny, in a "well what did you expect? of course the punishment for dissent is total rejection, solitary imprisonment, and death" way that seems harsh from perspectives that aren't that hardass about it. i definitely agree that that's an overshoot on his part about how much self-determination anyone has, in a way that seems in keeping with the heaven party line — but his sudden swing from "there's no point in fighting it, everybody should just strap in and do what they've been preselected to do" to "actually i might be able to stop this by intervening and asking lucifer can stop this, which is also something he have the power to do, and by giving the winchesters tools to make lucifer stop if he won't stop himself" makes it feel to me like he's Going Through A Change that he doesn't have time to sort through all the way.

because of this shift in his beliefs in whether the outcomes can be changed, the hammer of the gods dismissiveness and over-confidence in self-determination when he confronts lucifer reads to me as a combination of shifting the heaven version of self-determination to a more subversive version, and (maybe) also as that thing that happens often when people are changing their mind about something, where they will swing too far in the opposite direction from where they started, and it can take a while to settle into a perspective that is realistic/nuanced/good. he doesn't have time to process it as much as he maybe should in order not to be self-contradictory and kind of mean about it; the apocalypse is happening quickly and the timing of this encounter was out of his hands, so he ended up saying the perspective he had at the time, rather than whatever perspective he might have had if he'd had a few more months/years/centuries to work on it.

plus, like you said, it's a defense mechanism — he's maybe externalizing some of how he talks to himself in how he talks to lucifer in that scene. it might work ok internally for him to emphasize self-determination so strongly, but it's one thing to say stuff in a self-blamey way when he understands the background on why he's doing that, and and entirely different thing to say it to someone else who isn't where he's at and isn't going to agree.

and then lucifer, for his part, swings wildly between "no one gives us the right, we take it" to "don't make me do this" within only a few minutes in hammer of the gods — which is it?? and then by swan song he's talking about subverting fate and walking off the chessboard in a way reminiscent of gabriel's perspective on hammer of the gods...again, this doesn't seem like a fully developed perspective imo, and he doesn't fight for it very hard. but he's working through it, updating his beliefs and hopes based on new information, it just takes time he doesn't have. (and then, like lucifer in hammer of the gods, michael isn't ready to hear it, and so he shoots it down...but who knows if he had more time how it might change! i feel like michael is less motivated and temperamentally inclined to change perspective than gabriel or lucifer, but still...who knows, i guess)

(i think mostly what i said here was "oh god the apocalypse went so fast and everyone was in such a hurry!" which like. well 😂)

Hi there’s so much evidence in changing channels and hammer of the gods both that Gabriel blames Lucifer pretty much solely for his fall.