#i experienced a microagression

[iveneverbeenmorestressedinmylife]

They both wanted to call him so many slurs here.

[stairs-feooff]

White emos need to think about the fact that a lot of y’all are really microagressions Georg

[thenixkat]

If anyone has a Dungeon Meshi discord server that isn't the Dunmesh one I'm interested in hearing about it

[traxanaxanos]

“Again, the short laugh. ‘You may simply call me Gres, Mr. Johnson. It is usually the best that human tongues can do with my name.’ His tone grew more wistful. ‘Samantha was the only human who was ever able to pronounce it properly.’“

-from Letting Go by Keith R. A. Decandido in Star Trek Voyager: Distant Shores, edited by Marco Palmieri 

I’m not sure if this is the originator for Greskrendtregk shortening his name to Gres in beta canon, or if this is following another beta canon novel’s decision to do it. I’ve also seen fic authors shorten his name this way - not sure if it’s because they’re following beta canon or that Greskrendtregk is a lot to type out.

But!

As a person with a long name that starts with a G that absolutely no monolingual English-speaker can get right on the first try I hate this decision. It’s not that humans physically can’t say Ktarian names - Samantha has obviously figured it out and can say it. So it’s more that awkward balking that happens when people just don’t want to try, that annoying little laugh of “oh haha, that’s quite a name/ I’ll never be able to keep that straight” or the immediate insistence of “Well I’m going to call you [nickname].” Greskrendtregk has clearly met that multiple times, and just decided its easier to forward an alternative, a nickname, a shorter version, which I get because its tiring! I have also made the decision of “I guess I will simply be a different person at work” after spending weeks correcting everyone. I get it but it doesn’t make me any less mad about the phenomenon.

The episodes with Ensign Ro fighting to get her name said correctly in TNG touch on this as well, the (because its sci-fi) human-centrism and, more importantly, the (because its sci-fi written by a specific make-up of people) English-language-centrism that casually strips people of their names and the personal and cultural import they have.

[drdemonprince]

The article regarding about annoying queer people sparked a by now long forgotten memory.

When I went to my first pride I snuck out secretly and thus was there after the parade. Most people were already some form of drunk or high(didn't know that at the time, I was 15 and naive beyond hope)

That was also the first time I saw puppies ever. In retrospect I must have stared and seemed like one of those annoying "no kink at pride" puriteens. They probably just wanted to allow themselves a small joke but what happened in praxis was, that a grown, white man in only puppy mask and boxers crawled up to me, stood up, started sniffing my breasts and when I started panicking and running away he run after me and everyone else watched and laughed. I think I screamed for help or cryed to please leave me be and was ignored but I can't remember much past the fear.

To them it was probably a small joke but to me it set me back for years. I didn't go to pride in that city ever again and took years to move past "no kink at pride" opinions, an opinion I didn't even have before that.

I felt incredibly isolated and wearing a small rainbow bracelet and cutting my hair took so much bravery. And it earned a lot of backlash too?

So often I see coloured hair and pins as this cutesy cringe thing of no consequence, but for me it resulted in hours upon of arguments and insults. It was worth it, because it helped me built my own identity apart from my families bigotry, but it sure wasn't fun or cutesy. Ultimately it led me to becoming brave enough to actually discover who I am and start making connections with the wider queer community.

Thankfully I had no social media accounts or I would have had some truly stupid arguments.

What I'm saying is, yes young queers can be annoying and it can be tiring to deal with them but being an asshole and vilifying them isn't the solution.

Making fun of teenagers doesn't make yourself more valid and doesn't give you the status of being an old experienced queer.

I'm saying teenagers here but the fun thing about queer people is that we can discover ourselves at any point in time. So it's less teenagers and more people newly discovering themselves as queer.

I get how annoying they can be very well now, doing voluntary work at pride does that.

Do many of those we consider annoying queers hold some harmful opinions? Yeah sure. (The amount of white queers, teens or adults, not dealing with systemic oppression beyond their own is staggering and they more than deserve to be called out. Just to be very clear, when I talk about annoying behaviour I do NOT mean microagressions or discrimination in any way)

But annoying behaviour is not synonymous to that and maybe we should all just start being less mean in public spaces? I get how satisfying it can be to get a hit tweet via a bitchy twitter reply now, but quite honestly I am more ashamed of that now than when I was running around in hoodies and short hair being painfully naive.

Because then I wasn't being mean to anyone. I had some stupid takes sure but no outlet. On twitter I was making fun of people to validate my own queer-ness. (Personally I think I was covering up for the fact that I was afraid the queer people I worked so hard to be part of wouldn't consider me one of their own. So I worked hard to show how I'm not one of "those queers".)

Either way, thanks for reading all this and thank you for sharing the article because it is something I strongly agree with. Just let people be annoying without making fun of them for it. It doesn't need to be a big deal.

Thank you for this wonderful, vulnerable, honest message about your slow path to self-acceptance in the face of a lot of barriers, anon. I'm glad that despite everything you've found your way.

Yeah, I think queer people have many reasons to feel terrified at the rising "no kink at pride" discourse, but sometimes when we lash out at puriteens we sound a bit like the childfree people who say that they hate kids?? Like, we're blaming literal children for an ideology of protecting "The Family" that has been foisted upon us.

I'm guilty of it. I was HAUNTED by the social pressure to get married and pregnant and raise a bunch of kids. It caused me massive dysphoria and didn't jibe with my queer identity. But I rebelled against it for far too long by saying that I hated kids.

It was not the kids' fault! It was the ideological specter of The Family as an institution that isolates and attacks all nonconformity and 'deviant' sexuality! Me being an asshole to children was not gonna set me free, kids were even more disinfranchised than I was!! I don't think I was ever overtly cruel to children, just kind of aloof and freaked out by them, but I definitely *did* say some numbskulled shit to my friends with kids a few times. Completely missing how disempowered mothers (and it was usually mothers) are in society BECAUSE of these same forces .

And I think something similar is going on here. Queer people are tired of having "Family Friendliness" shoved down our throats by corporations and conservatives, and so then we lash out... at young queer people. it's fine to have 18+ areas and events; It's very, very important to me that spaces like Furfest have them. But that's not the same thing as claiming young people have no space in our community as a whole. And I do think we need to erode the barriers between the adult and child worlds in a whole lot of ways, and reorient our attitudes toward nudity, sexuality, roleplaying, etc in public life. but that also doesn't mean a pup should run you out of a pride parade actually fucking sexually harassing you.

It feels great to be able to talk about this stuff! Thanks for your message.

[ktempestbradford]

Jumping off of what I said in this post about having to dismantle certain toxic ideas about myself, I realized that folks might not know how deeply not being a straight, white, cishet, able-bodied, Christianized male (aka the Dominant Paradigm) in the West messes you up mentally. It's a huge mental health problem that isn't always addressed.

When I started up my latest round of therapy I began to acquire labels for some of the ways I acted or reacted to situations. One day in session I was like: Was that a trauma response? It was, wasn't it? And my therapist confirmed. What confused me is that I didn't think I'd experienced trauma.

The idea I had of trauma was some Major Incident in which something Very Bad had happened to me or near me. Or it was about being in abusive situations, usually at home. The kind of ways trauma is depicted in the media.

Then I came across a Twitter thread in which the person said that everyone needs therapy, especially marginalized people, because the way Western society works, anyone who is not the Dominant Paradigm or doesn't hew closely to it is constantly being harmed by society.

Are you BIPOC? Racism is almost everywhere, and where it is, it's constant. It's also not always KKK-level in your face racism; it's more often wave after wave of microagressions on top of whatever challenging condition you're in due to historical racism. In other words: Chronic.

Are you neurodiverse? Good luck not being overstimulated by allegedly benign activities like going to the grocery store. Good luck not being criticized on a daily basis because you can't act "normal". Try holding down a job that expects you to sit at a desk for 8 hours yet you can't even sit in a quiet environment because the asshole CEO read that open office plans make employees more productive.

Are you anywhere under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella? Welcome to the constant barrage of invasive questions from strangers, invasive laws, invasive religiosity... Once again, an allegedly benign activity (going to the bathroom in public) can be a damn crucible if you don't look like the "right" kind of woman or man. Have fun navigating the medical system when you want affirming health care.

I could go on. Disabled people, poor or working class people, fat people, any people who have been historically marginalized and oppressed all experience this. It is trauma. It is harm. It does affect us. But it's Chronic and Systemic. That's the crux.

Because we have to keep on going even with all this. It's every day and it's not easy to escape. So we "deal with it." Some of us have good coping strategies and or supportive family (bio or found) and that really helps. It doesn't alleviate the overall problem. Thus, we all need therapy (so the OP of that Twitter thread concluded).

I don't know that we ALL need it. And I for sure know that some mental health practitioners and therapy frameworks are quite harmful to marginalized people. I'm very lucky in that I have a great therapist and the treatment I'm getting is informed by my identity and background, not ignorant of it. Not everyone has that or has access to it.

What I do know is that we all need Community. True community offers true support, which is necessary for healing.

We also all need to know that our mental health struggles and our trauma are real and valid, even if they don't look or manifest the way we've been conditioned to recognize them. Don't let anyone invalidate your experience or mental health struggles because you don't fit into a specific, wrongly-labeled box.

And don't let anyone tell you that this society isn't out here traumatizing you, because it is. Society doesn't need to be this way. But here in The (European Colonizer Created) West, that's what those with more power have chosen for the rest of us. And it sucks.

I have nothing but hugs and empathy for all the other people out there experiencing this. The only piece of advice I have is: Find community, hold on tight to each other, be that oasis of Okay that others need and they'll be that same oasis for you. <3

[daisyishedwig]

Holy shit, am I writing again? Perhaps for a bit. Anyways, who wants some kid Kurtbastian from my Love Stage rewrite?

“You,” the Director said, zeroing on Kurt, kicking his legs in his aunt’s makeup chair, “can you act?”

Kurt blinked at him, “I do plays for my mom,” he said hesitantly.

“And I thought it was the little girl you were looking to replace, not the boy,” Kurt’s mother said, resting a hand on Kurt’s shoulder. 

“He’s already got makeup on, throw a wig on his head, he pass for a little girl easy. Face like that…” he’d trailed off and Kurt’s mom had frowned, but Kurt did not understand what he meant. He would later, as insults about his feminine features and high voice abounded, but at the time he hadn’t know he’d just experienced his first microagression. 

Once he was in the dress and standing in front of the cameras he’d felt his first taste of stage fright. There were so many people than his usual audience of his parents and his stuffed animals, and the lights were so bright. His eyes flitted around the set, wide and scared, his whole boy trembling. 

His mother, now in the group of adults “attending the wedding”, stepped forward and he knew she would stop this and take him back to the safety of the dressing room if he asked. But then another young boy stepped in front of him. He was taller than Kurt, limbs almost too long for his body, like they were growing faster than the rest of him.

“Hi,” he said, smiling warmly, “is this your first time on a set?” 

Kurt nodded shakily.

“Bit scary, isn’t it? But that’s okay, I’ve done lots of acting, so I’ll be here for you.” The boy shoved his hand in his pocket and dug something out. “Do you want to see what I use when I’m scared?” He held out his hand to Kurt and he peered down at a marble in his hand, green and brown with a little swirl of blue and golden flakes flecked through it. 

“It’s my lucky charm,” he whispered, “kinda looks like your eyes, doesn’t it?” Kurt smiled softly and took the marble from him to inspect it closer. “Would you like to use it today?”

Kurt looked up at him in surprise. “But what will you use?”

He grinned and grabbed Kurt’s free hand, squeezing it tight. “I’ll use you.”

I'll tag @kurtsascot, @backslashdelta, @fallevs, @lusthurts, @annepi-blog, @bitbybitwrites, @calsvoid, @cryscendo, and @wowbright

[miraclemaya]

this sounds funny but i do think a lot of people can not comprehend that they live in a society. like it's just so solipsistic. like you see it with people who align themselves with whatever minority as an ally, and because they hold this identity, nothing they do can be bigoted. no one else can understand more no one else can be hurt in ways you don't understand. actually in my experience women aren't hurt by patriarchy so it's not a real problem anymore even when countless women tell me otherwise because im not a misogynist so i clearly understand this. racism isn't a big problem or at least only exists among trump supporters and i don't really care what you are saying about your experiences being harrassed by literally endless microagressions because im not racist and im smart.

god what pisses me off most is like when you have someone that is part of a minority group that doesn't believe they are systematically oppressed. like ive personally see brown people who don't believe in racism, women who don't believe in misogyny, and trans women who don't believe in transmisogyny and its just so mind-boggling. like awesome that you've apparently never experienced it in anyway (or more like rationalized it as being due to whatever excuse you can come up with) but are you really so self absorbed to just ignore the countless fucking stories of people around you screaming into the world saying that yes they are oppressed. is it because it makes you feel smarter by being detached.

[thedeliaishere]

I kinda want to like make a write up or something on transmisogyny in lolita spaces. not to say it's particularly bad, because I have experienced far more support among the EGL community than I have from the general population. but we, pardon the meme, live in a society so everyone does have perceptions kind of colored by transmisogyny as both transphobia and misogyny are both prevalent social forces so like. uncomfortable microagressions are somewhat common. this isn't in response to anything that happened to me or anything I just think it would be interesting

[jechristine]

In regards to what Lila said about how Tashi not experiencing any microagression, yeah, she was just great with no outside hate and that’s a moment where it took me out cause it wasn’t realistic and I was like it would’ve been good to have a consultant who could write towards that since they were so insistent on having Tashi be Black cause of Serena, Venus or Coco when we all have seen first hand the racism and microagression they’ve faced as Black women tennis players which Tashi doesn’t in the film. It’s still a good film but just an odd choice to say you want Tashi to be of a certain race but then explore none of the issues that the Williams sister or any other Black woman in tennis go through.

I haven’t had time to catch up on my dashboard yet so o didn’t see Lila’s comment, but yeah, to @marie08rt point, too, about how Black women writers would have had so much to contribute…

[dropintomanga]

Berserk's Continued Popularity and Trauma

I often keep up with what's selling in the manga world, so it's not a surprise that I check out ICv2's Manga Week when the site posts up interviews and insights about the industry. What caught my eye this time was Kentaro Miura's Berserk still being a top-seller and a top manga franchise in the English-speaking side of the world.

How popular is Berserk right now? It was the top manga franchise of Fall 2023 beating out everything that was either Shonen Jump, Junji Ito or Attack on Titan. The Deluxe Editions have sold well for all of 2023, especially the first edition (which contains Volumes 1-3 of the series). It helps that Dark Horse Comics, the North American publisher for the manga, has been promoting the Berserk Deluxe Editions non-stop. Even when they didn't announce anything new at Anime NYC last year, Dark Horse made a huge note about the latest Berserk Deluxe Edition that would come out.

I think it's great that Berserk is getting a lot more attention (especially after Kentaro Miura died) because this is a story about trauma and how we still carry the wounds of it at times.

In my opinion, Berserk is a story about people trying to overcome their own trauma - one caused by interpersonal relations. Ultimately, it's about three people in particular. Guts, the main hero who falls into despair after his experiences in the Golden Age Arc and has to deal with the curse of constantly being hunted by monsters beyond his imagination. Griffith, the antagonist who once had admirable dreams, but fully gives into darkness after going through painful torture and is the main source of Guts' trauma. And Casca, the strong heroine who becomes a victim of Griffith's desires and mentally shattered as a result until recent events in the manga. The connection between all three characters says it all - sometimes, the trauma caused is not from strangers who are "dangerous," but those closest and dearest to us.

Berserk is so relatable because we carry on the weight of whatever personal trauma we experienced without realizing its hold on us until it becomes apparent. The worse thing is we often have a very hard time talking about it.

Around 2021, I heard about a certain book about trauma that took during the COVID pandemic. It was Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score. Originally published in 2014, the book blew up for good reason because COVID forced everyone to confront issues kept hidden for a long time. Van der Kolk talks about how horrible people can be to one another and that psychiatry seems to ignore the complexity of trauma when it comes to helping its victims.

Because of the nuance and how long it takes to heal, maybe that's why we can't talk about trauma easily.

Which is why I want to get to this point - I sometimes find it hard to talk about Berserk because of the sexual violence and horror aspects. Yes, fans love to call it the GOAT and/or recommending the manga to other manga/Western comics fans. But I will say I can't exactly recommend Berserk to anyone who's experienced trauma, especially sexual trauma. If they haven't come to terms and/or processed their pain, why would any manga fan shove Berserk in their face? I know there's heavy debate about microagressions and triggers, but just because it's critically-acclaimed doesn't mean it's for everyone.

I will say that the sexual violence in Berserk is used in a way to highlight the brutality of the real world at times. It serves its purpose in the story. Maybe I feel that Berserk is about acknowledging the dark side of life. The world is full of absolute cruelty. And maybe more importantly, you never fully move on. That's the key point. Moments that hurt will stick by you for a long time. People love to shame others for not being able to move on and/or cheer up. They don't know how trauma forces its victims to stay still out of a realistic yet unhelpful fear of certain kinds of people.

But you can still move forward. I'm admired by Guts fighting in the face of despair. He embodies the belief that you probably can never move on from whatever emotional pain you experience and that's okay. At least take the steps to make your own life worth living. It's the best you can do for yourself.

And a good start to moving forward is accepting the bad thoughts. I recently read how positive thinking is pushed so hard to promote better mental health. Some positivity is fine, but there's so much pain in this world that all the wellness industry strategies in the world will never make go away. It is a huge problem when we're told to grit and grind while suppressing our inner-most vulnerabilities.

A lot of people can't handle that kind of vulnerability. Maybe that's why I'm happy that Berserk is being discovered by new fans. Guts is a strong yet so very vulnerable hero. I think it's those vulnerabilities due to his trauma that allow him to gain some very good friends (Puck, Farnese, Serpico, Isidro, and Schierke) along the way who genuinely care about him.

We all want someone to acknowledge our pain and be willing to sit with and stick by us through the neck of it all.

I remember a friend who once told me that when they went to see someone perform, all of their grief and vulnerability was so apparent that they wished that they didn't need to air it out since a lot of people can't handle it. I told them I can handle it and they said that I was built different.

Much like the popularity of Berserk these days and what I hope the series encourages, I want my difference of being able to sit with trauma to be the norm.

[wild-wombytch]

Ok, I'll pin this before shits go insane. The TL;DR is that I'll be temporarily uninstalling social medias so I have no idea whether I'll reply to about everything or when. All the following posts on this blog are queued. I'm probably not leaving radblr, just going on hiatus.

Putting the rest under the cut because I feel the best thing to do is being open-hearted and honest. I want to explain the reasoning nobody cares about behind it and I don't want to spam everyone's dash about this : (TW negativity, mental health, trauma dumping?, personal, pretty lengthy, blah)

I'm definitely overdramatic due to my own mental shits, but I'm getting SERIOUS anxiety from my reply to this post about poverty and middle class.

I don't regret it per se. I almost chose to ignore it because this is a painful topic and those who never experienced it wouldn't believe the amount of spits in the face you get from the middle-class as someone poor in the form of about daily microagressions and what trash you interiorize from it (you don't get much from billionaires because they don't even know we exist and they clearly don't frequent us, they fuck with us as a class but not on an individual level). As everything engaged with emotionally, it can quickly become a bomb. Yet, radblr has made (and still makes, we're all WIP after all) me someone less passive and more inclined to speak up. I'll never be grateful enough for that. So I chose to "woman-up" and make my voice heard. As insignificant as it seems. Because no one can talk for me better than myself.

Maybe it's absolutely nothing for a lot of people (and I guess it objectively IS nothing) but it is ENORMOUS for someone battling crippling anxiety (and I'm not choosing the word "crippling" lightly. My mental health literally gives me such tangible physical pains, gluing themselves to my already existing back issues/arthrodesis that I am physically disabled. I am heavily medicated. I am in a day hospital. I recently genuinely considered asking for a full-time internment in a mental hospital for maybe a month or two because I am becoming dangerous for myself and a burden). I used to be so passive, shy and anxious that I wouldn't voice my opinion at all in fear, that's how I got into the TRA movement so obediently. Exactly the example of Solanas about women completely conditioned out of their female power and inner worlds by their fathers, then becoming the emotional rags and handmaiden of every other men. I'm slowly unlearning that. Participating in something like that was part of the process. I don't know if I dose well. If I should dose and not be too "spicy" at all. Probably not. Radfems showed me the key to my shackles and I'm just starting to understand how it works. Yet, now I'm projecting all of my past experiences on this and fear I'm from one hand encouraged in a direction and going to get my neck broken for it from the other as a punishment. I shouldn't care, yet I still do at this point of my journey.

Again, I'm a mental mess. All is a bit blurry and unreasonable when we talk about anxiety/ptsd. I fear I'm going to get terfed out the terves and cancelled, do to speak. And it is oddly terrifying due to the mess I internalized and how highly and gratefully I look at radfems, with my tendency to idealize.

So when I was about 70% of my reply and I rechecked the whole thread to see it was Tepkunset out of all the Tumblr users I was "siding with"...fuck, did I stutter a nervous laugh. When I made this blog, I made a point to avoid interacting with hers, because I also used (and still do, to some degrees) highly look up to her. Like radfems, she is smart, brave and outspoken and I was all starry-eyed for her. She doesn't know of me and would probably block me on sight now (and probably will if that's not already done by seeing my reply), but she had genuinely been a model to me and got me in social justice and to think deeply about a lot of things, including myself as someone existing within bigger systems. I'm not making shits up when I say she changed the course of my life and I wouldn't be here in my journey if it wasn't for her. It was a process for me to actually embrace "heresy" and accept that I disagreed with her, my icon, about gender issues (which is a shame, because I think if cancel culture wasn't such a thing, she would genuinely be an amazing person to debate with). I've never been into celebs cult but that definitely was a close one. That's why I didn't interact with her blog, other than sometimes paying a visit and reblogging through other blogs as to not be blocked by her. Because I genuinely still respect her and want to hear about her thoughts even if I don't necessarily agree with them anymore, and want to see if she's okay and sometimes I rake my drawers to send money her way when life gets Bad™.

So that's some bullshit irony there that I feel torn in my "loyalties" among people I deeply admire yet disagree with and who themselves probably only intereacted with me anecdotally and know of me as much as they know of the flies in their kitchens. So essentially all that noise is in my head only yet what if I told you my back pains that almost miraculously vanished after seeing an osteopath yesterday just came back and now I can't lay on my back at all, no matter how many painkillers I take? Yes, I'm stressing out that bad over a Tumblr post no one cares about. If it was a telenovela it would be one of these scenes where a character is caught between a fight between their current crush and ex and has to pick a side and gets rightfully dumped by both.

So yeah, it also stirred a lot of things I haven't processed yet about my TRA days and even shittier moments of my life. I definitely wasn't ready for that.

I also genuinely internalized that I shine in society by not being very smart or useful or assertive like the women I admire so much. I'm not even sure about what I write, because I have no inner voice, my thoughts happen as I voice them, my brain is barren cotton, a perpetual state of dream. I don't know which of my memories are exact and which are dreams and past thoughts. I have amnesia of full discussions I had and consents I gave and I am completely stunned when people prove me I said something, because, in all good faith, I have not a shred of memory. Maybe a drop of a hazy memory you'd have in a dream. My past self and my current self both seem unreal, like other people. So I stick to ideas I have of my identity, shards of it, labels. I fiercely defend them because they are the only sense of self I perceive at all. Because I don't even feel human outside of thel. So I still have the same fear as during my TRA days that a breeze can make everything crumble. Most women here are very bright, it would take nothing to unmask the lack of ability I have to counter, to emotionally rein myself in, to construct a consistent data-based retort. That's why I was afraid of radfems in my TRA days already.

Anyway, that plus my irl social life being toxic currently makes me cope by going on social medias, which I know are awful for my mental health, yet I persist inflicting that on myself. There are several medical leaves at the day hospital so I'm ~aLoNe~ with my shits. Then you know the shit circle of life it is : not sleeping, not eating, being more anxious, sleeping less, being more anxious, eating less, reflecting too deeply on which way of sabotaging myself is the most reasonable...

So radical times call for radical measures. I'm deleting temporarily all of my apps instead of seeing notifications all the time and obsessively checking if everyone hates me yet or if nobody cares and pondering which is worse by looking at a wall for a whole day trying to not think about SH. That's stupid, and cowardly and pathetic and unfair towards people who reads me and puts thoughts in their replies and it's many other ugly things probably. But if I don't I'll implode. I just want to break the circle of feeling like shit and back pains that ruin my life so I can get back on my legs and maybe tackle one thing at a time. And I quite literally need to touch grass, even if I don't want to see anyone in my irl circles for now.

I don't know if any of this made sense. I'd probably also regret dumping all that tomorrow. Sedation is finally starting to work, so I guess that's why I m so talkative so I'll surf on it, post this, delete everything and pray I'll also forget about this until it randomly pops into my mind and gives me an existential crisis 20y from now. Should I even be given a right to vote and access to internet until I'm fixed? Are those rights part of the reconstruction process and of creating a sense of self?

Idk, I'm just tired. I wish you all well during this time. Radblr is wonderful despite occasional disagreements. I hope we can still be sisters after that and hope you won't think less of me. If you do, well, you're probably right, I also think less of myself every time I dare to exist and open the mouth. I am also the daughter of my father, after all, so I have plenty of reasons to think I deserve my own hatred and other people's.

I said I needed to be honest and open hearted so I've been. That's also why it's the over sharing website I guess? Here's a random gif to conclude this because I don't know what else to say and this is all fairly embarrassing:

[saltminerising]

so funny to me whenever mods tag asks as homophobia. like i know its always about players but in my head its like oh my god... no..... the skydancers... theyre experiencing microagressions.........

[semper-legens]

168. Ducks, by Kate Beaton

Owned: Yes Page count: 430 My summary: Kate Beaton’s account of her time working in the oil sands, and the culture and people she encountered there. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

I've spoken about this book before. I don't really know why I chose to reread it - I've been down with Covid lately, and I needed something to read that was meaty, but wouldn't necessarily tax my addled brain too much. A graphic novel felt like the perfect solution, and this one is always an interesting read. It's not a nice story, or an easy story, but Beaton expertly keeps it from being a constant downer by weaving in moments of light and life and happiness throughout the text. Life in Nova Scotia is hard. Many people have to migrate to more populous areas of Canada in order to find work, and when they do end up in terrible jobs with high risks that leave them spending weeks and months away from home. But this environment on the oil sands, the environment that Beaton walked into in the 00s, was oppressive in other ways too. She experienced a lot of gendered violence, from sexist microagressions to straight-up assault, but despite how miserable her job was making her, she couldn't quit because she needed the money to pay her student debts.

The book is an honest and raw memoir of Beaton's experiences and struggles while working on the oil sands for two years. There seems to be a split in the people she worked with - young women, like herself, there to pay a debt or earn some money and having to deal with a toxic workplace culture; young men, out to seek their fortune being inducted into this life; and older men, usually former fishermen or miners or other blue-collar workers who couldn't get jobs in other industries. It's usually the latter who are responsible for much of the low-level misogyny prevalent on the oil sands, with the younger men learning this behaviour at their feet. What I liked about this graphic novel was that, although her telling is obviously coloured by her perception and experiences, it's still a largely neutral telling, with many moments that humanise the older men and contextualise their behaviour. Men who worked on the ships before that industry died, men who worked in the mines before that industry die…it's no wonder they're bitter and suffering as much as they are. There's a layer of guilt, too. Beaton got to leave. For many, this is their permanent life. But none of that excuses what happened to her, and Beaton doesn't go too hard either way, laying out the facts as they happened, adding how she felt but trying not to condemn too hard. It's a thought-provoking read with more questions than answers, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested either in Beaton's life or in this sort of working-class story.

Next up, a man is found dead on a beach.

[parappah]

me and gf are on an adult field trip and we stopped in Forks (the town from Twilight) for like 15 minutes for a bathroom break and we already experienced like 2 microagressions. I had heard the town was racist but damn 😭 we couldnt handle the black girl and the trans girl for 10 minutes???

[oblivious-aro]

⭐

Despite being chronologically the first thing that happens, "Girl Talk" was actually the last thing I wrote for the fic. I did want to include that scene in the initial fic, but Where the Sky Meets the Sea actually starts during episode 4, and the Misako scene's all the way back in episode 1, so the pacing felt weird.

But it ended up being a little bonus prequel thing, so yay!

It was pretty wild writing Jay back at the beginning of his arc after I'd just finished writing him experiencing personal growth. Like, I literally went from writing Jay apologizing to Nya, to Jay doing a microagression on Zane XD.

But enough about Jay, I want to talk about Misako!

Misako's attitude in this scene was partially based on the attitudes I hear from a lot of the older women in my life. Specifically the "boys are just dumb like that" vibe. Everyone's got their coping mechanisms.

Even though the original scene obviously sucked, I did kind of like the idea of Misako giving Nya advice that leaves her feeling unsatisfied. Not that she's necessarily given bad advice, and just having someone in her corner trying to support her is the big thing for Nya, but Misako's words weren't exactly the most comforting to hear.

There's the undercurrent "if we knew how to stop sexism completely then we would have done it already", and Misako's years of experiences and blunt personality very much shape how she specifically deals with Ninjago's sexism.

Misako doesn't mean to be callous with Nya, she's just a very frank person who likes to cut to the chase.

She strikes me as someone who prioritizes efficiency and effectiveness over respectability or comfort. Practicality over social acceptibility. The obvious example in canon is essentially abandoning Lloyd to research the green ninja prophecy. It seems like pretty extreme action, but it's clearly done out of love, and she does find essential information for the fight. You can understand her actions, and also understand why Lloyd would be mad at her.

I may have been kind of cheating by using the explorers club, since it wasn't introduced until a couple of seasons after Skybound, but sue me. When it was revealed in the show that Misako was a member of the explorer's club, it's when her membership has been discontinued, and when asked about this, Misako doesn't seem to care about getting kicked out and goes into a mini disdain fueled rant about how the club is run generally (I can't find the line, but I'm 95% sure it happened).

They never really say why Misako joined the club, but I've inferred it was for the resources, but once Lloyd had fulfilled the green ninja prophecy she was no longer on a time limit, she was done putting up with the club's bullshit. When she was on a time limit however, she quickly learned how to compartmentalize and put up with the club's nonsense so she could focus as much time and energy on circumventing the green ninja prophecy.

I feel like after spending so many years in the club, she'd rather just move on from that organization than stay any longer and try to fight an uphill battle of reformation.

Not that she doesn't want to stand up to sexist jerks and support women generally (she 100% has a soft spot for Nya), she's just had enough of the explorer's club for a lifetime. Although you can definitely see some of the attitude and coping mechanisms she learned from the club in what she says to Nya.

Man, the writers really dropped the ball with Misako. She's so interesting.