perfectlyuseless

[katyspersonal]

I think I’d like to note a few more things on Maria’s clothing as well.

She does dress masculine, but it’s not very out of the ordinary. Gratia, Henriette, Eileen, and Yurie all wear traditionally masculine clothes as warriors, and even compared to them, Maria did not appear to be one to entirely bury her feminine traits. She wears her lumenflower brooch, flower chains, a ribbon in her hair, and a feathered hat that resembles the female Cainhurst knight hat alongside a more common hunter’s hat. Compared to the other masculine women of Bloodborne, Maria still has a clear balance between her masculine and feminine attire.

The male Cainhurst knight set is actually traditionally way more feminine-looking already, but Maria turning it into a hunter’s uniform inspired by Gehrman works well because the set already bears more resemblance to traditional hunter wear than the female knight’s garb.

Again, even in the wider world of Soulsborne, Maria is not unusual for being masc in an older time period. What is more relevant is her unique way of approaching a traditionally male dominated field in a Victorian setting, and not burying her feminine traits. Every other female hunter I mentioned dresses entirely masculine, but Maria keeps a balance. She could have given her more elegant Cainhurst fashion, which is undeniably more feminine, but she didn’t. This makes more come off like more of a feminist in her time than the other women that clearly didn’t do the same.

Gehrman dressing the Doll like he did was an interesting choice, but something tells me he didn’t do it out of a malevolent or disturbing reason. We know the Doll clothes reveal the love of their creator, not the desire for female submission or sexual depravity. The answer doesn’t need to be complex when trying to explain why Gehrman’s motives might not have been twisted. The answer is right in the game. It was something that came from love. Why it manifested in that way is up to interpretation.

Oh! I appreciate you expressing your take on the matter here, anon! I just want to correct a little bit! The ribbon Maria ties her hair with appear to be the headpiece of Knight's set that is male version of it, and Henryk is another hunter that uses feathers in his hat!

As for Yurie/Julie, Choir garb in my opinion is not masculine clothing but rather... neutral clothing? It is a robe of a religious group and in my opinion they'd aim for suppression if not erasure of identity! Blindfold cap covers upper part of their faces and whereas it has lore reason (letting the 'stars' show them the world guide them instead + Willem reference), but also from design standpoint it covers the most expressive part of the face - the eyes area. They are also called Choir, I think they would try to appear all identical and interchangeable, anonymous, including obscuring gender presentation rather than being feminine or masculine! (I like to think realistically, anyone with long hair would tuck them under the hat... 🤔) So yeah! I just need to be honest with what we are discussing here.

But you have a rather good core point:

(Screenshots are courtesy of Bloodborne wiki ( x ))

You can see male Knight, Maria and female Knight sets, and... that sets are actually similar. The 'masculine' thing about Maria's version of the set is use of grey ribbon to tie her hair, leaving out puffy sleeves and leaving out the skirt. Which... tells us actually not all that much about her presentation?

No, but really! I would say there is a difference between disposing of flea-like blood-drunk monsters in the comfort of the royal castle and running in dungeons/streets/hamlet full of fish mutants apparently. There might have been a practical reason for leaving the skirt (and slightly longer cape) out. Knights stay in the castle mostly to dispose of Bloodlickers that just jump and suck blood, Maria however, disposes of beasts that could effectively drag a long skirt/longer cape down with their claws! Puffy sleeves of female set are made from lighter and expensive material, but Maria's coat is (reasonably) of thicker and rougher material that might be a hassle to repeat the puffiness even if Maria wanted to! And ribbon could be just an element common in Cainhurst to tie hair, definitely not likely to be banned for women. Maria needed a big hat, not a tiny decorative hat when hunting. Again, 'comfort of the castle' thing, you know?

Clothes are not necessarily masculine, but they ARE practical.

Basically? You are right, there is no need for big essays and elaborate analyses to begin with. Maria is not 'unambiguously masculine', Maria is... Maria. She presents as Maria. Given the setting her preferences are... sooooo up to interpretation, and the only solid thing we have is that Gehrman certainly had no personal interest in feminizing her. (Woulda been odd anyways since he trained her to kick ass to begin with).

We appear to have entered the problem of 'western fandoms can only analyze any media through the lense of 21th century american values regardless of context, setting, country of the production or even basic common sense'. Woman seems masculine? Then she MUST be masculine for the same reasons why an american woman would be in 21st century would be masculine, by logic of such people. It is just something I absolutely cannot connect with, because I engage with fiction to escape the struggles and visions of reality, not to carry them with me. And I love media from overseas, coming from different cultures or set in a very different setting because it gives me perspective varied from what I already see all the time. Hence why I personally never had much hype for passing her as butch/egg/etc, or for projecting issues with creepy men on Gehrman. Because:

There are plenty of fictional universes that do touch themes of feminism and queer presentation as it is in many 1st world countries of our century, are made by westerners and for (mostly) westerners, there are many indie creators or just artists that have many characters like this and explore these themes - in plain way, without having to force it in! Bloodborne just feels like a whole different thing that is good for what it is, not for what it could be.

I also always had impression that when FromSoft games want to say something regarding characterisation - they SAY it. I think Elden Ring cemented this for me with the "Dolores fashioned herself as a man" or... idk, Entire Personality of Seluvis. They are very coy with lore and world-building and timelines, indeed, but not with presenting something. Does it mean that interpretations are now bad and banned? Of course not. But it is mindset like 'Maria is masculine she is the gnc icon everyone who thinks otherwise is just a cowardly incel whose pp shrinks at the sight of a masculine woman why do you want to take away our ONLY representation under guise of loving the lore and truth?!' that does inspire me to go in the trenches to defend Gehrman's honor dfsjhdfsdsf

Meanwhile Gratia and Henriett leave the chat:

I've talked a lot but I see what you are saying, anon. It is more about 'people who have eyes WILL see naturally, without any essays or analyses' and like... I guess so...? I just have it basically coded in my brain to ramble about my interests and read lectures to the classroom with like 2 people in it, hahaha. Maybe there should be fandomry class in the schools since we can't escape the internet and media anymore, and I will work as a teacher. xD /j

[veliseraptor]

July Reading Recap

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. I can see why people said this one had Adrian Tchaikovsky vibes because in terms of the worldbuilding and the alien species involved it absolutely did. I was not super enamored of the part of the plot that wasn't on the Tines' world (which was...an important part of the plot), but my investment in the politics of the Tines and the worldbuilding around them made up for it. I'm curious about the apparent sequel and whether it's worth reading - does anybody know?

Thousand Autumns: vol. 5 by Meng Xi Shi. I have finished Thousand Autumns and my verdict on it mostly hasn't changed from what it's been throughout: enjoyable but not really fully clicking for me. I liked it! But I didn't love it, and I don't know that it'll stick with me the way other books have, or compel me to do a reread.

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon. Maybe I just don't have a sense of humor, but I felt like this book was trying too hard to be funny/clever and it landed wrong for me. It was interesting, certainly! And I learned some new things from it, and probably will go on to read the author's other book (about women in Ancient Rome), but this one tonally was not a winner, for me personally.

Ballad of Sword and Wine: vol. 1 by Tang Jiu Qing. Rereading this one (Qiang Jin Jiu, they're really going off in their own direction title translation-wise there) with the official published translation even though I am also binding it, because I can, I guess. And I still deeply appreciate how unhinged Shen Zechuan is, but in, like, mostly a way where it's not obvious to most people until they've known him for a little while. Also the sheer amount of politics, which I'm following better on this second readthrough. I think it'll be rewarding to reread.

The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan. One of two Jewish fantasy books I read this month, just by chance (I wasn't intending on a theme, they'd both been on my to-read list for a while). I liked it a lot! I thought it was going to be a stand alone and feel a little funny about it being a series (I'm always looking for more stand alones), but I am also looking forward to more of it.

The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann. I've really enjoyed the other David Grann books I've read/listened to (The Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon) but found myself fairly underwhelmed by most of the essays here. It's not that they weren't good (they were) or interesting (most of them were), it just didn't feel like they were that good or that interesting. Maybe I just like his full-length books better.

Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland. It was fine? Not as good as I'd hoped. I called the twist which was satisfying for me personally. I don't know if I'm going to be reading the sequel. Most of the POV characters I liked fairly well, which is the main thing this book had going for it, but one of them bored me to tears and that inflected my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. This book earned its five stars by making me cry in the last 20%. Overall a beautiful book, though, relatively quiet; I wasn't sure about it early on but then it hit a turn that really got me. Makes me want to read his other book. The summary on the back really does not do the book justice but I don't actually know how I would explain it better, and I recognize that makes it a difficult recommendation.

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb. This one was really good and a lot of fun. Very Jewish, too, which was enjoyable and not something I run into all that often in fantasy books. Just...very charming, entertaining, a joy to read.

I'm currently reading Godkiller by Hannah Kaner though I should be reading Edenville since I have it checked out from the library (I'll get to it!). I keep meaning to get back to reading more nonfiction (or realistic fiction) and then getting distracted. My plan for upcoming books, though, includes The Ratline, To Shape a Dragon's Breath, and (after years of having it sit on my shelf) Beauty Is a Wound. We'll see how on task I stay or if I end up wandering off to other stuff.

I'm currently looking for horror and mystery/thriller recommendations, though, so if anyone has any of those I will take them.

[epicfranb]

Rewatching Kino's Journey and I'm like Kino is so non-binary coded. But then episode 4 comes around and it's such major honest to god non-binary coding, I'm not even sure if it's unintentional anymore. So here's my little essay about it, ig.

Fair warning for potential spoilers under the cut! Before reading, I highly suggest watching this anime (it's really good) or just the episode in question. You don't really need any context for this, other than the basic premise of the show: Kino travels with a sentient motorcycle called Hermes. As for where to watch it, I always watch on aniwave.to. Again, this is episode 4, so go watch it!!

Since this is about the non-binary coding, I'm gonna keep the summaries short and to the point. The backstory starts with Kino saying she doesn't remember her past name anymore, but expresses the only thing she remembers about it being the bullying. This moment in itself doesn't have an obvious meaning, it is purely symbolic. The episode starts with her in a field of the flowers she was named after, long after she forgot her name; she is there later as a child, starting a new life with a new name; and it ends with her as an adult, which is the moment that leads to the scene in the beginning, nicely looping back in this circle-like narrative. This has more to do with the general ideas of freedom that the show has, rather than specifically to the topic of this essay. I just thought it was interesting how it explicitly shown that she did not like her birth name.

To avoid confusion from this point on, I'm going to refer to Kino the main character as "this girl". This is because she meets a traveler named Kino. The two spend a lot of time together, and the girl explains to the traveler the tradition of this country. This is that when children turn 12, they get an operation to "become an adult". Children are free to do whatever they like, while adults must work and nothing else, and, since this is such a big burden, they get an operation to always be happy despite it.

The girl asks if Kino has a job, and Kino says that traveling is his job. The girl then asks, "Do you hate your job?" and Kino says "No, I like it." and the girl says "Then it's not a job."

Kino realizes this is kind of fucked up and is visibly conflicted on whether he should leave the place as is, or help this girl he's made friends with somehow. He talks to this girl about the tradition, and this exchange happens:

In a world with such a clear distinction between a child and adult, it is unthinkable to the girl that someone could just be neither. This man is grown up, but he does what he likes. And he doesn't even have an answer for "what" he is. He's just "a man named Kino, that's all. And I'm on a journey."

"Doing what you like to do?" The girl asks.

"That's right, I like traveling." Kino says.

He asks the girl what she likes to do. She says she loves singing! He suggests she then should become a singer. She says she can't, because she has to grow up and take over her family's business. But it's fine, because it's about to be her operation and day and she "will be happy, even if she has to work at the inn".

The next day, the girl is conflicted. She asks her parents if it is necessary to have the operation. "Is there no other way that I can become an adult by just being myself?" Her parents are terrified and very mad at her, and the whole street gathers up to tell her off, calling her a "failure", "defective", "a waste of a girl", which are also common attitudes towards queer people in our world. They realize it was the traveler that planted the ideas in her head. The traveler agrees that each country has its own customs, and the people allow him to leave peacefully... Except the girl will be killed, for "defying her elders". Her father charges at her with a knife, but Kino shields her and dies. at this point, Hermes, the motorcycle, starts speaking to her.

This exhange continues the theme of "the secret third thing" and the freedom of choice outside of defined norms. Within the norms, it becomes clear in this scene that you either become "an adult" or you die; but, just like the traveler Kino was "a secret third thing", the girl can also run away and continue being herself. That is the third choice she gets here. And she takes it.

She rides away, Hermes giving her instructions on how to ride properly, she breaks the country gates and escapes to the grand outside. She stops and falls over on a field of flowers, the ones she was named after. She looks back and whispers "Kino..." but Hermes assumes it was her introducing herself to him. Surprised he referes to her as Kino, she throws away the last part of her past she had on her and accepts her new name.

Now that we're done with the summary, let's dissect this.

First off, Kino in her childhood looks very feminine. She has long hair, wears a pink dress and a pink headband with a cute bow. And, s we know her from the future, she looks very androgynous, her hair is short, her voice is much lower, she wears masculine clothing and an oversized coat that she got from the traveler.

She changes her looks, she changes her name, from one that she did not like to one that reflected her better, which is something that many trans and non-binary people go through. Here, I want to mention that even the traveler she met also looks sort of androgynous, which is also coding in itself, imo.

In the country where she used to live, there were two ways to live: being a child and being an adult. One did not have any sort of choice in the matter, it was decided for you. This is, of course, similar to the way that we get assigned a gender at birth and are expected to pefectly perform that gender, with no option to switch or be something else.

But young Kino meets a person who defies everything she believed in her life. He's free to go and do whatever he likes, he doesn't fit in the binary of this country, and he grew up free to be himself. This is wild to Kino at first, but she keeps thinking about it and realizing she does want to keep doing things she likes. She doesn't want to get brainwashed into doing things she hates with an unchanging smile on her face. She wants to be herself, to be free. She doesn't get that choice, of course, not while she's still in the country. She admits that becoming an adult like them would be as bad as dying; because she would lose all her personality and individuality. That's when Hermes opens her eyes to this: she DOES have a choice. Actually, this is her only chance to take it. She runs away, and she's finally free, and she throws away her past and continues life under a new name.

Even if all this is unintentional, this episode's themes still speak to the ideas and beliefs of trans and non-binary people. It is an episode about freedom of choice, freedom to be yourself despite what your culture may impose on you. This is an episode about leaving your past behind for a better future. So, in a way, this episode IS about being non-binary.

Thank you for reading!! I hope there aren't any major mistakes in here. If there are, please let me know so I can fix it (kindly, please). Like, obviously I said words like "feminine/masculine/androgynous" which are labels which don't always fit everything they get assigned to. I hope that it's clear that I used them intentionally for the purposes of getting a point across. Hope you enjoyed, and I've convinced you to watch (or rewatch) this awesome anime!! Bye-bye ^_^

[wander-wren]

today i am angry because lightlark keeps (kept? i think it’s dead) getting compared to the hunger games

i don’t know if tumblr saw the lightlark drama and i’m not interested in rehashing it especially bc some of it got uncomfortably personal towards the author at one point and also it was months ago so just! suffice it to say lightlark is a book by alex aster, it is a terrible book, and i did not put myself through the torture of reading it but i did watch a 7.5 hour video essay

(i think the essay could have been 6 or even 5 hours, and i think this person went a little too hard on the critique at some points, so that rubbed me wrong a little but it was also extremely thorough and i was bored.)

but anyway. one of the big things about lightlark is that it was marketed as “hunger games x acotar” which is….fine. but every time someone compares a book to thg i’m automatically suspicious because no one does it right.

and of course, neither did lightlark.

the book is a complete disaster so i will try to stick only to the relevant points but seriously. there’s so much.

the official premise of lightlark is that six realms in a fantasy world have been cursed for hundreds of years. each curse is (supposed to be) a twisted version of the realms magic, and the curses also cut them off from their main island of lightlark. except for once every century, when the island becomes accessible for 100 days and the six rulers travel there to try to break the curses via death tournament.

but then you get to the book and learn that the curses are only broken if a ruler dies without an heir, since their special ruler magic just transfers to the heir and no one gets anywhere. this was only a caveat so we could have a young protagonist ruler, i’m sure. ALSO, IMPORTANTLY, if a ruler dies without an heir, their entire realm also dies.

and obviously that’s bad so the rulers have to consider carefully who they want to kill, and they keep putting the killing off bc it’s not easy to condemn thousands of people to death.

so why, pray tell, the FUCK, are you doing a death tournament every century.

(they’re not, by the way. the first 50 days are dedicated to some demonstrations that are definitely hunger games inspired and meant to allow the rulers to forge alliances bc even though there’s only six of them they’re also required to partner up for some reason?? but there’s almost no fighting and almost all the fight scenes end very quickly with no real damage to the main character. it got really annoying really fast.)

but like, let’s pretend for half a second that lightlark IS about six rulers fighting to the death to break a curse. it’s still not even close to being like the hunger games.

the hunger games was about teenagers under constant surveillance forced to perform and then kill for the masses, many because they weren’t rich enough to buy their way out or into good training.

no one except the rulers and the essential staff is even allowed on lightlark, and no i don’t know why that is. and the characters spend the entire book trying to avoid killing each other as much as possible (well, minus two cases) bc they want to find another way to break the curses. i don’t understand why it’s billed as this big bloody dangerous battle even in-universe when everyone involved really REALLY doesn’t want to fight.

also, this isn’t related to the thg nonsense, but if i’m talking about lightlark i have to talk about That Twist. alex aster really loves her twists and is very proud that no one can see them coming but that’s because reading the twists is like watching the street for cars, then trying to cross and getting hit by an airplane.

as i said, the characters keep trying to find a new way to break the curse, even though it’s been 500 years and many of the rulers have been alive that long (no i don’t know if that’s normal or a ruler perk, it’s not explained) so they SHOULD have tried all of these fairly obvious methods by now but SURE, JAN. this book would make so much more sense if it was only the first century and everyone was still scrambling to figure the curses out. but whatever. alex aster wanted her protagonist to be in a love triangle with two 500yo men

(there’s nothing inherently wrong with that and i actually really loved grim, not for the reasons i was supposed to bc the writing was bad, but i liked him, until—well, put a pin in that.)

ANYWAY. THE POINT. our protagonist, who i guess i should say is named isla, needs to find “the heart of lightlark” which “blooms where darkness meets light.” everyone assumes they’re looking for a super special flower but they can’t find it. then, isla decides this random-ass bird that’s only almost gotten her killed twice is DEFINITELY going to show them the heart, so they follow the bird.

and at dawn, the bird lays a fucking egg. and it falls out of the nest. and cracks. and the yolk. floats. into the air. in time with the rising sun.

I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW MUCH IT IS A LITERAL FUCKING EGG

no foreshadowing. isla has an internal monologue where she thinks she always did see the moon as an eggshell and the sun as yolky, but the yolky sun description happens twice in 400+ pages and the egg moon description happens Never, so like. shoutout to aster’s copy editor??

i can’t take this book seriously bc it is a literal egg an EGG isla has to carry an EGG YOLK to break the curses. there are scenarios where i could accept that but this Serious YA Fantasy Book is not one of them.

and since i mentioned the one thing i did actually like, i will explain isla’s one love interest, grim. technically her only love interest bc nothing about the other guy struck me as romantic but idk maybe her inner monologue was yearning or smthn. anyway, grim.

grim is from the least trusted/most stigmatized realm. he’s described as a huge hulking nightmare of a man, a demon, every badscary description under the sun. but like. the times he is alone with isla? he takes her to a chocolate shop during their first meeting and hand feeds her truffles, which is a little weird and overly sexual but…still. chocolate. then he hides her from another ruler no questions asked even though he has every right to be suspicious. he opens up to her and shit. he calls her “hearteater” (it’s a reference to her curse, her people eat human hearts to survive, no that doesn’t make sense either) (also isla is magically not cursed so our protagonist doesn’t have to be scary and gross and worry about that during the novel haha!) (guess what else is never properly explained….)

anyway grim calls her “hearteater” but like, almost in a teasing/endearing way, which is fun, and when they start to fall in love he just calls her “heart” which is ALSO cute imo i’m weak for nicknames. he’s like. the narration and aster really really want me to think he’s the scary bad boy but he’s just such a soft dude.

and then. ohhhh, and then. one of the other hit-by-airplane twists is that the weird sexy dreams isla has been having all book about grim? they’re not dreams. they’re memories. the two of them used to be together for about a year before the book started, and grim erased her memories as part of a plot to betray her yada yada i was braindead by this point so i don’t fully remember all 17 elements of the betrayal. but like…..first of all that retroactively makes all of their interactions but especially the chocolate thing kind of weird and creepy? also WHAT was the FUCKING POINT pf making her forget she loves you if you’re literally just going to seduce her immediately anyway. like. the book makes a halfhearted effort at having grim avoid her but it really didn’t feel like he was purposely being mean to push her away. because every time they did interact he was so sweet! sir!!

anyway he betrayed isla probably mostly to keep up the ambiguity of the love triangle and so aster could brag about more twists and i hate that bc WHY. he was doing so well.

anyway. i got so far off track. lightlark is a wild fucking ride and i did not even scratch the surface of the plot-hole filled mess that this book is. my sister does own it and i did check a few things bc i straight up could not believe they were real (like the egg. i cannot get over the egg.) so.

also this book only got published bc it went viral on booktok so that kind of tells you everything you need to know. the good news is it does give me some measure of hope/an ego boost bc if lightlark exists in the world…..surely whatever i’m doing can’t be too bad.

[nohoperadio]

The date for my annual performance review at work has been set for one month from today. The review day itself is not a big source of stress, it's the management's opinion that I'm good at my job, it's a mildly awkward thing to go through but it's very unlikely to "go badly" on the day.

However!

I gotta fill out the paperwork first, which consists of seven pages, each page representing one of the abstract work virtues ("teamwork", "initiative", "customer service" etc), and for each of these I have to write 3+ concrete examples of things I did over the past year that exemplify that virtue, followed by a description of how each thing I did impacted the business, followed by explaining what lesson I took from each thing.

This is a chore that combines several things I hate hate hate and am bad bad bad at:

homework (the paperwork doesn't have to be done at home, you can schedule work time to do it and this is considered fine, but this doesn't work for me at all for reasons we'll get to in a bit), I'm not even good at structuring my free time when the only things I'm trying to fit into my schedule are nice things I enjoy doing, let alone this

bullshitting, the whole thing is premised on an abstract dreamt-up-by-HR model of how people's jobs work that bears so little relation to reality that it's basically impossible to complete the form without a lot of bullshitting. You have to take utterly mundane and routine moments from your job that don't mean anything and write them up in a way that emphasizes how brilliant and special and passionate you are; also because they ask for an absurdly large amount of examples, you find you spend a lot of time and mental effort figuring out how to reword stuff you've already written elsewhere in such a way that it's not too obvious you're repeating yourself. I am extremely averse to bullshitting to an extent that I fully acknowledge is irrational and unhealthy but I don't seem to be able to do much about it: at uni I would occasionally miss deadlines because I couldn't figure out what my actual opinions were about the thing the essay was about, and I couldn't bring myself to just write an essay endorsing a conclusion I wasn't sure about. I hope that doesn't come across as even slightly a boast, there is no virtue there, it's an extremely fucking stupid attitude to have, I knew that at the time but I couldn't seem to change it. And I'm still kind of like that unfortunately, I can write bullshit but it feels horrendous and takes a ton of will power and progress will be comically slow.

expressing positive sentiments about myself, this one's self-explanatory I think

The result of these points is that I find writing these things so emotionally draining that it often takes like literal hours of psyching myself up/calming myself down just to find the right state of mind where I can even get started, and then often that leads to like, two or three bullet points worth of progress and then I'm exhausted. If this sounds dumb to you, well, yeah. That's why I can't realistically do it during work time, what am I gonna do request a whole day's worth of time and then produce like 30 words by the end of it? I'm not doing that. On top of these setbacks resulting from my unfortunate personality, there's also the fact that my particular role is quite different from most people's in the company but I still have to fill out the same standard form as everyone else, e.g. I rarely deal directly with customers so I have to really reach to argue that stuff I'm doing counts as "customer service", there's a lot of that kind of thing.

I'm not sure if I'm really conveying what I find horrible about this very well, but basically it's: 1] a lot of work, which 2] relies on skills I am extremely weak on and 3] aggravates my weird neuroses in various ways, and all the while 4] the whole thing is manifestly pointless and dumb. That's a recipe for aaaaaaaaaaaaa. If this year goes like the previous two years, I'll spend the weeks leading up to it feeling guilty and panicky for a significant portion of every day and doing that thing where I procrastinate the productive task constantly while not being able to really enjoy the things I'm using as procrastination either; I'll make ludicrously small amounts of progress on a handful of good days, but ultimately somehow force my way through most of it all in one go just before the deadline.

Maybe it won't be like that this time. My general being-a-person competence has been improving year on year for the past several, maybe this is the year I only moderately suck at this type of task. I shall let that sentiment have the last word here, not because it's especially plausible but because it feels virtuous to do so.

(I feel like it would be unjust to write this post and fail to say: I like my job. A lot! It's nothing very glamorous, I work in a bookshop and get paid marginally more than minimum wage, but: I find the work satisfying, I virtually never have the "ugh I can't wait till I can go home" feeling, and there's a small number of people there who I like very much and who like me in return. All three of those are things I literally could not conceive of being true of any job before I started here; when I said above that my being-a-person competence has improved the past few years, my job is a huge part of that. I have more positive feelings towards my work than a lot of people ever get to experience and I feel lucky for that. But this one particular aspect of it which comes once a year always kind of ruins my life for the better part of a month and I really wish it didn't exist.)

[porridgefeast]

ITSAY/IPYTM thoughts

In three parts because that's how I wrote it.

Oh-aew in a shirt which seems like the most meta English t-shirt text ever in Thai BL(ish) world (and there have been many others) but also seems like something Oh-aew would somehow own.

Part 1

I wasn’t assuming I’d have a ton to say about I Told Sunset About You. I wasn’t even planning on starting it at the particular moment I did, I just had it in mind I’d do so soonish. But wow, this drama hit me like a ton of bricks.

I tend to enjoy it when there’s a small gesture or moment onscreen that brings me back to uncertain romantic moments of young adulthood. Oddly enough, it’s often how someone leans (not kabedon-ish looming fwiw)—make of that what you will. (There’s this one moment in Between Us that hit me with something I can only describe as the world’s hardest pang.) But yikes, having so many... I guess first love feelings come up so hard and fast is really unusual and compelling, but almost too powerful for a sensitive creature such as myself. It’s certainly beautiful in an important way I think art is meant to be beautiful. But it’s less uncomplicatedly enjoyable than some things.

I don’t always have to identify with one character over another, even if one character is positioned as the protagonist of a story. I don’t always identify with anybody, though certain stories will pull me in in that way. But man, ITSAY gives me vertigo. Teh’s paradoxical mixture of obvious feeling and self-conscious reserve might normally make it so I’d be seeing things firmly from his perspective, but instead I whip back and forth between Teh and Oh in a borderline-painful way. I guess I just want so badly for them not to hurt each other.

Billkin’s left eyebrow jiggles like even Teh’s face is fidgeting nervously. At the point I’m currently at in the series, it feels like this kid is going to explode leaving only a fine mist. PP Krit is so still as Oh that it’s at least momentarily tempting to perceive him as solid, confident. But his steadiness is one of watching and waiting SO intently.

I feel like I could write an essay about the blinking alone, much less the overall category of looking. I don’t especially want to write it, but it’s there.

About midway through episode 2 I found myself kind of relieved to confirm there are only five episodes. I wanted to hurry through those most acute push & pull moments. But here I am at the beginning of episode 4 and it feels like it’s been a dang eternity.

Part 2

Back again after ending ITSAY and getting 4 1/2 episodes into IPYTM. I’m not writing about this show because I decided to do so, but because I don’t seem to have a choice. Not that I wouldn’t choose to do so, it’s just moot.

I think I’ve finally put into possibly inadequate words a thing Billkin does a lot as Teh. Sometimes his face just kind of goes... offline. He’s telegraphing despair while his face settles into a stiff mask. I find it a lot more true to life than what many actors do in similar scenes, but also very relatable in a way that’s painful! Again, in an art way. In a way that puts into practice the fact that we don’t only watch and read stories to pass time but because they help us understand ourselves. But part of me is annoyed, like a kid who’s been told to get in the car only to find they’re being taken someplace totally unforeseen and unappealing.

I find myself not wanting to explain what PP Krit is doing as much, but not because what he’s doing is less carefully crafted, certainly not because it’s less affecting. I said earlier that I was bouncing back and forth between identifying with each of them but not long after that first note of mine I stopped being able to identify with Teh very much. It might be a stretch to relate the events of this show too much to an experience of my own, but I was probably the Oh-aew in my first serious relationship, which was a very long one that was completely tied up with my entire college experience and a long first stage of adulthood.

I don’t judge Teh too harshly, but he just seems SO young. Like, younger than I may ever have been. Part of what makes this show good at what it does is that I don’t quite know what’s going on with him a lot of the time. There’s certainly a part of me that wants someone to explain what goes on in his head, but the ambiguity works for this show’s narrative style.

Maybe this will become more apparent, but am I supposed to have a strong conviction as to what Jai’s deal has been? Because that guy seems determined to give some of the most intense mixed signals I’ve ever witnessed. I feel like the director was going okay in this shot you’re in love with Teh. Okay now in this scene you feel like Teh’s kinda gross.

Honestly Teh is super gross! Billkin is a cute kid and Teh has many endearing qualities but he is a MESS. About half the time (well, half the time we see him onscreen, who knows what he does during time-jumps) the kid is barfing feelings like No-face from Spirited Away after he’s eaten nearly everybody who works at the spirit bathhouse.

I strongly suspect these characters and performances would bring up different things for people other than myself. This show is taking my personal buttons and stomping on them; presumably for others it stomps on slightly different or even opposite buttons, and for others it might trigger very little whatsoever of their own personal baggage.

Well, back to it I suppose.

Part 3

I feel less urgency now that I’ve reached the end point of the two series. Which is good for me but it means I have less to say at this point.

I’m very curious as to how a rewatch of these two series would feel to me. At first I thought a rewatch might be great—often that way I can relax and appreciate things more, since I’m not distracted by suspense as much. But I could just as easily wind up dreading certain moments. So many public scenes, yall. So much shame being experienced!

I would like to take a short moment to appreciate Hoon. His mom-pleasing powers may have complicated things for Teh, but it was such a relief to me that he was a sweetheart and a good brother.

I’m glad there’s a happy ending but I’m relieved Oh-aew got several chances to be resentful. (Not that I would have been unhappy with some less-than-happy endings. Too happy an ending would have been odd tonally anyway for this show.) I’m pretty sure I laughed out loud when Oh-aew was like but this time if you have a problem can you tell me and we can talk about it?

I was so glad Tarn got a little cameo at the end. It felt like giving her her due. Recognizing how that moment made me feel makes me realize how much I appreciate Tarn having interiority and agency as a character.

In other news, maybe I’m now one step closer to being able to see Na Naphat onscreen without immediately thinking of him as Tawan from Kinnporsche. And usually saying “f*cking Tawan!” in my head. It hasn’t happened yet, but I hope to get there. I’m sorry Na Naphat, I guess that performance was almost too good.

[prisonicmorality]

ok i finished watching my silley little youtube video w my partner so now i can type out more inbox essays. ahem. i saw volo on my dash first but i can and will b sending u Full Essays on most if not all of ur other muses either thru ur askbox or on discord after i take my meds

im soooooooooo picky w volo portrayals truly but i love yours a BUNCH. it feels like such an obvious Thing to make now but i genuinely hadnt considered immortal volo before ur blog and i love the concept very much and your take especially!! ur volo feels like a natural progression of canon pla volo. like he's not the same character but that's sort of the point! does that make sense? i've seen redemption arc volo and i've seen nah fuck it we ballin lets keep tryin 2 end the world volo but i like yours better than both of those. its so hard to really nail ''neutral'' characters but you do such a good job with him. he's still a manipulative and charming little piece of shit (/positive) but like holy shit the Regret and self hatred brings so so so so much to him i literally cant even explain it??? HES JUST SO?????? god... like when volo finally dropped in pokemon masters for a hot sec reading his story stuff i was genuinely like "ummm not MY volo???" your volo is just so ingrained in my head that pokemon masters volo feels ooc to me.

i like him sooooo much. so much!!! love seeing him be a smarmy little flirt in general because like thats SO HIM but we obv dont get to see that in canon but i am 1000% sure that off screen volo was flashing his pretty boy eyelashes at everyone for sure.

thank u for understanding THE trainwreck dynamic too bc thats something i am also INSANELY picky with. no one gets them like we get them. love it for us!

MORTONNNNNNNNNN

im crying this is so good im so happy

i just hopped into call on discord and saw this ask and immediately started bawling because of how happy this made me feel. i dont even have words to describe how happy i am to know how much you like my volo and my take on him

honestly i feel similarly about your emmet hes so. i dont have nearly enough words im overwhelmed

all i can do is shake you and cry bc this makes me really happy and feel really proud of myself. everyone here just boosting my fragile ego about this guy

[starlight-phantom]

for the ask game--top ten danganronpa characters? from across all the games! :D

I feel like my answers might be a little bit basic bitch... But, if I like them, I like them, I guess.

1 - Hajime Hinata, ngl I adore all the protagonists but there's just something about Hajime that makes me so mentally ill. Like, if I think about his story for too long, I will cry. Just... I dunno the fact that his lack of self worth lead him to make a decision like that is heartbreaking. The older I get, the more I realise just how stupid and damaging the Hope's Peak system is.

2 - Shuichi Saihara, look... I love shy, quiet and reserved male characters, I love blue haired characters, I love detectives... The moment I saw Shuichi, I felt as if he had been made for me, and goddammit it worked because I love this boy. His development over the story is so good and I love how he bounces off all the other characters. I don't even know how to explain it, I just love him.

3 - Makoto Naegi, yes the three protag boys are my top three but that's probably because we get to hear their thoughts on everything throughout the game and that adds so much personality to everything. But Naegi's such a sweetheart and he's so cute. I feel like, even though he's basically the main protagonist of the whole series and he matures a lot in the DR3 anime... He's still everyone's baby boy. Also, his inner monologues when you investigate everything are just so funny.

4 - Kokichi Ouma, I fucking love this lil gremlin man. It makes me a little sad when people call him Komaeda 2.0 because I feel like the only thing they have in common is that they're antagonistic characters but other than that... Not really similar. But he is by far one of the most entertaining characters in the whole series, he steals the show in every scene he's in. And he, along with Kaito, perfectly embodies the themes of V3, with the whole truth vs lies and faith vs logic stuff going on and then Shuichi right in the middle, it makes for really interesting conflicts and character moments. Also, I wholeheartedly adore both the English and Japanese dubs for all of the games, but I just say that Derek Stephen Prince's performance as Kokichi is one of the best I've ever heard, he is clearly loving every single second of it and it makes Kokichi all the more entertaining.

5 - Chiaki Nanami, let's get the obvious part out of the way: she is adorable. I love her design, I love her personality, I love her voice, I love her little "hey hey" voiceline... She's just so cute, okay? But she's such a great character because she and Hajime seem to be able to bring everyone together but in very different ways and despite her more laid-back personality, she will immediately step in to calm things down - like when she smacked Akane when she attacked Nagito. Plus she's honestly so intelligent??? Like she is usually one of the first people to figure things out... But she's also the same girl that ate glue. And I love that duality. And while I have very mixed feelings on the DR3 anime, Chiaki was fantastic, seeing her continue to wait for Hajime after he had signed up for the Project broke my heart... But not as much as that one episode I just can't bring myself to ever rewatch.

6 - Nagito Komaeda, where do I even start with this fuckin guy??? He truly is one of the characters of all time. I feel kinda bad that he's ended up as such a meme because he is genuinely such a complicated character, but with some of the shit he does throughout the series, I am really not surprised he ended up like that. I do really want to explain why I love him so much but to do so would require an entire goddamn essay, so I won't. Also just... Megumi Ogata's voice. That's all. I love her performances.

7 - Kyoko Kirigiri, I said it before and I'll say it again: I love detectives. Honestly, I adore Kirigiri so much... Like I played the first game when I was thirteen and I had the biggest crush on Kyoko, I honestly don't understand how it took me an extra year to figure out I like women... But seriously, I love her design and colour scheme, her voice is gorgeous and I just love her relationship with Naegi so much.

8 - Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu, again the character development for this guy is just so good. I really didn't think anything of him at the beginning of the game but by the end of the game I adored him. I love his relationship with Hajime and how, by the final few chapters, him, Hajime and Kazuichi are like a lil trio who stick together. And again, Derek Stephen Prince... Goddamn, his performance in the Chapter 2 trial ripped my heart out.

9 - Kiibo, I just love this lil robot guy. I feel kinda bad for him for all the stuff he goes through during the story. Like he keeps getting really excited to show off his features but then everyone's just like "... Is that it?" And let's not forget how everyone used him to a battering ram to break open that water tank and just fucking threw him at it. The boy's been through a lot, most of it from Kokichi tbh. But he's such a cute character and his pride of being a robot and love for his creator is so sweet. Also, that little section in chapter 4 where Monotaro gets confused and acts like Kiibo is his dad is really cute, I remember a manga anthology did a chapter about that scenario and it was adorable.

10 - Nagisa Shingetsu, I really like not as many people pay attention to Another Episode and I get it, it's a spin-off with a completely different playstyle. Hell, I prefer the main games over this game too. But wow, the Warriors of Hope make me feel so bad whenever I play this game. Like, y'know when something is so upsetting, it causes a pit in your stomach? Yeah, that's these kids backstories... All of them make me feel awful but I got really attached to Nagisa because he's one of the ones that stuck around the longest and he had that moment of allowing Komaru to escape but then basically everyone around him manipulates him to make him do what they want and completely mess him up and it just hurts to watch. And it's just disgusting that his father refers to him as 'the subject' not 'Nagisa' not 'my son' just 'the subject'... I just wanna give him a hug... He deserves one after all the shit he's been put through.

[crystal-overdrive]

You mention that TT is an extension of your spirituality but I am going out on a leap here and state that I know you are not a Banite. How are you finding the two are linked?

Dear Doxieandthedead,

You've been to my house, you know that a big print of a black hand is the first thing you see when you walk in the door!

My worrying decor aside though, no I am not a real life Banite. I think you know some of this already but I'll explain it all for anyone else reading. I've realised I'm offering some really, really personal info here and will need to be careful not to reveal anything oathbound so bear with if it's not entirely clear. Essay post incoming...

So, I am in a druid tradition that works with the four elements, and as part of my training I've been on a journey through said elements. I was really looking forward to getting to fire because I thought I had an affinity with it. I've always seen myself as passionate, driven, a person of action. (One of Bane's epithets is He Who Takes Action) Fiery traits!

When I got there, I found that all the fire rituals were centred around a Goddess who I'd had trouble working with before. She's a big figure in Celtic Paganism but she'd just never seemed interested in me. When I tried to work with fire, tried to ask for her blessing, I had several rituals go wrong. Fire refusing to light, feeling nothing, being unable to concentrate, even a particularly nasty fall that involved a lot of blood that could have just been coincidence, but the timing was auspicious. Finally, I had an outright rejection. During meditation in one of these rituals, I felt freezing cold even though the room was warm and I had a literal fire in front of me, and I heard the words "the cold flame only, is meant for you". This really disturbed me, and I felt really quite despondent until I remembered where I'd felt this feeling before. 1) When I was a child and, despite being very quiet and trying not to attract trouble, I started a fight with a group of girls to make them leave a girl they were bullying alone. 2) When I made a formal complaint against someone who was mentoring us in a university competition for his sexism and harassment to prevent it happening to anyone else. 3) When I left the ex that isolated, manipulated and used me and when I chose myself despite the threats he made. Even though it had come with rejection this time, it had always been present when I'd done good things. Things that required strength and backbone and confidence. When I did these things and felt this cold energy I felt like I moved beyond fear to a cold certainty, like there was no option of not doing the thing. It had to be done and I was the only one capable of doing it. That is where Tav's experience of Bane as cold inevitability comes from. So much of the feeling and texture of ritual and spiritual experience in the fic is drawn from my real life. In terms of my own story, somewhere I'd gotten the idea that this Goddess' rejection of me was because I "belonged" to another reflection of the Goddess, a darker epithet. I can't find where this idea came from, but I make reference to it in my journal entry about the cold flame. I eventually found this Goddess (painfully obvious once I did, but it was a search) and she offered me transformation, both physically and mentally. I'm partially growing my hair as a devotional act, and Tav's hair acts as a symbol of her connection to Bane. In devotion to her I have become more confident, more truthful, more able to put myself first. She's not evil, but she's not kind in her myth, and she is seen as a dark mother archetype. She has also contributed towards the apathy I've been feeling in regards to living by my values as she's told me multiple times, in meditation, in reading, that selfishness is fine. And I have no idea how to feel about that, because my spirituality was such a driver of my environmentalism. So she's given me personal power, but in that process eroded my values. I think the comparison there is evident. Obviously what's happening to Tav is both extreme and evil and that is not happening to me, but taking it to those extremes in fiction is a way I can explore my experiences and feelings and also I get to write about fucking Enver Gortash so that's good too.

Yours in the Mysteries of the Gods, Crystal

[jade-of-mourning]

Hi, I was just passing by and I wanted to say that I really like your LOK posts! Keep up with the good work! Yue bay district's night market is one of my favorite LOK ideas of yours. I really like your Mako posts especially, it's nice to see people who don't hate him. Considering you've recomended steinbeck's fanfiction and reblogged a post about Mako being treated like a female character, I assume that you have seen that little era where people were making fem!Mako and lesbian makorra stuff? These were good times, would be nice to bring it back... I'm also really intrigued by that "girlcore Mako" (sorry, this is the best way I could phrase it) essay you'll never write. Not that I want to force you to write it, but I'm really looking forward to reading it. I would love to see what you have to say on this. This ask is all over the place, but I want to tell you that I love your LOK thoughts! Have a nice day!

hi anon!!!! thank you for stopping by, it's lovely to hear people like my content haha <3 and yes i'm a very big fan of mako if it isn't made obvious by the only content i've posted about as of late kjfdkbhgjbdf

yes! i can confirm that i'm a fan of steinbecks' writing and posts and i'm also a massive fan of the ancient fem!mako/lesbian makorra era <333 in my opinion mako would've made a better girl but. y'know. i can always fantasize about fem!makorra in my empty heart and maybe one day i'll draw them!

and yes i still really do want to write that essay! sometimes when i get too deep into tumblr posts on mako i find people saying here and there that they'll write the essay on how mako is a male female character but it's never actually on their profile, so ig i'll just have to do it myself. it's a sentiment that's been around for a long while but as far as i've scoured, no one's ever really stopped to fully deconstruct that as a concept. so though i'm probably underqualified to do so, i'm willing to try. regardless, i feel like reading him through a female lens somehow explains a lot about his reception/makes him easier to understand and sympathize with. one day,,,, after i finish my unhinged essay for school that i'm unironically writing about korra lmao

have a nice day yourself! thanks for dropping by :)

[sharkgirldick]

Hey this is that one person who sent that really long ask a few weeks ago about platonic relationships and girldick. Wanted to follow up because I sent that when was really tired and didn't explain my thougts properly I think.

When I sent the ask I was thinking about a conversation between me and my aro friend where we talked about how romantic relationships are always treated like they're superior to platonic ones and why that's dumb, and I guess was confused about how I agreed with them about that but simultaneously craved girldick on an unfathomable level.

I wasn't unaware that platonic relationships can involve sex, but I guess I just didn't think about it as a solution, more just some other thing separate from my relationships. Either way your answer helped me think, so thanks.

Mainly just explaining myself because I don't like how I came across as being super puritan but whatever. I am the martyr that will help future generations. Sorry for writing you an essay.

Fuck nasty be kind

Why, hello again!

Don't worry, I didn't think you were a puritan or anything. Sometimes we need reminding that our problems can have an obvious, straightforward solution.

I will say that I do very much agree that it's frustrating our society does put non-romantic relationships aside as if they're less important. Hell, I even consider my romantic partners to be my friends first.

I'm glad I could end up helping you, though.

Fuck nasty and be kind!!

[butchviking]

What's your least nuanced + therefore annoying opinion or position or take (Not music)

What's your most nuanced + therefore annoying opinion or position or take (Not music)

Also would you have liked Na na na na more if it hadn't been popular

(not music) is fucking throwing me im not sure i know how to have opinions that dont involve my chemical romance. um

my least nuanced opinion. is probably. god this is hard im the fucking nooancer. ok you know what fuck it my least nuanced opinion is jesus christ was a good man. thats the least nuanced take i can think of i fucking love that guy !!!!!

my most nuanced and clearly annoying opinion is definitely something to do w trans ppl. idk what tho. oh its probably pronouns. my situation there is so nuanced ive never even really attempted 2 explain it properly im like "its just vibes". i cant sum up a nuanced opinion for obvious reasons but i guess it would be "there are times when it is appropriate to use preferred pronouns and times when it is not" or smthn but i could write like. a 10,000 word essay probably if i cared to. music gets involved at some point when i write six paragraphs about the political and social and parasocial implications of she/her-ing gerard way

and oh my god it is hard to say. idk if its popularity made me love it more or less. can i say something terrible can i say something that was scarier to admit to strangers in the mcrnj crowd than my gender-critical beliefs can i say an opinion theyd have me executed for and even ray toro would dislike. I DONT LIKE PLANETARY GO... ITS A BIT OF FUN SOMETIMES AND I HAVE A DANCE TO IT WHENN APPROPRIATE BUT I JUST DONT LIKE IT NOT REALLY ITS NOT MY THING 😞 and na na na is very similar. i think it makes a good comparison for "what if nanana was less popular". planetary, being lesser-played, did not get to worm its way into my heart as A Classic the same way and didnt get the benefit of as many fun and memorable experiences singing dancing etc w friends and at events.. but also didnt suffer the overplaying issue. and ofc i DID get the special experience of seeing its first return tour playing, w the fun rainbow lights n everything. but i'd have sold either nanana or planetary for sharpest lives in a heartbeat im sorry. but if i could pick either nnn or p(g) to replace the other and be The Popular One then. well i w. i wouldnt really. i wouldnt really care. i think i would feel a little differently about nnn if it were less popular but ultimately i do not think i would like it more or less. i would simply trade it for any parade song or indeed any non-dd song in a heartbeat no matter what. i will be going out back to beat myself with the big horrible sticks now and i hope they are all rotted and my wounds become terribly infected

[tharizdun-03]

some thoughts on relationship anarchy

I am very fascinated by the concept of relationship anarchy, but I'm not sure I quite understand it.

I--well, I tend not to like using the term when asked to explain my political position, as it can simplify my views a bit much and it comes with some, uhm, unfortunate notions, that I don't wish to associate myself with, but, ideology wise, I would identify myself as an anarchist.  And as anarchism is a philosophy, and I don’t think that’s too grandiose a term,  that's intent on abolishing all oppressive systems and hierarchies, people who are in favor of that, also tend to lean toward preferring liberation from all sorts, even systems that aren't necessarily inherently oppressive.

It's also why I'm, as previously discussed, fascinated by gender abolitionism. Which isn't something I deem as an absolute necessity, but that I personally think would be to benefit. Anyway, the point is, that's how I was also introduced to the idea of relationship anarchy.

Now, relationship anarchy is the application of anarchist principles to relationships, so it's quite explicitly anti-amatonormative, anti-hierarchical, and usually, but not necessarily so, non-monogamous.

The term was coined by Andie Nordgren (a Swede, yay!), or at least popularized, in her essay; "The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy" (which you can read yourself here; https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/andie-nordgren-the-short-instructional-manifesto-for-relationship-anarchy…), thst includes eight points that make up this philosophy.

My confusion arises when it is either vague or stuff that should be obvious in any relationship. One of the points is that love is abundant and every relationship is unique, basically that romantic relationships are not more important than friendships, which I like.

I've talked about it before (on Twitter that is), how I don't understand how people just get over their romantic love whenever they find a new person and the same applies here. I don't like viewing people with preconceptions or labels, as just people who satisfy my certain needs, if that makes sense? I think we should be able to love multiple people at the same time, I don't think any relationship is inherently more valuable than the other, but at the same time, not ranking or comparing relationships at all seems a bit off, cause obviously we'll just like some people more? But, if I've understood it correctly, is it just that a romantic relationship shouldn't inherently be the primary one of yours? This makes sense, but if it's that all people in our lives we should care for equally, I mean, that's just not the case.

The next point, I won't go through them all, don’t worry, but it is "love and respect instead of entitlement", that we should let our loved ones choose their own paths that keep their integrity intact without stopping them just so they'll fit our needs. This I 100% agree with.

I have always been for open relationships. It just makes sense to me. Even as a child, well, maybe not a child, but a young(er) boy. Altho, keep in mind that these are just my views and how I interpret my own feelings, by no means am I saying this is how it should be for all.

But, to me, love is unconditional. If it’s not unconditional, it’s not love. So if your relationship is love and it’s unconditional, then that’s the definition of open. You care about that other person. As soon as you say, ”alright I’ll do this for you BUT here’s what you have to do in return”, it’s no longer love, it’s a deal now. It's a negotiation. You do this for me, I’ll do that for you. So if it’s really love, it has to be an open relationship. 

Whatever that person needs, whatever they feel that they have to do, whatever they need in order to learn and grow and experience, you need to support that because you love them. And it’s not like, ”oh I’ll support this much of it but these other things, nah, that’s off limits you can’t do that”. Well, that’s a conditional relationship. But, ofc, open relationships sound very scary because there's fear that you won’t get what you want or what you need or that what you have will disappear. But that comes from a fear that if you don’t control things they will bite you. It’s this idea that we have to control everything for it to come out the way we want it to. And yes, open relationships automatically do mean that your partner(s) can go have sexual and romantic relationships with other people if they so desire. Ofc, you can still cheat if you just lie and hide it and stuff, you know, but yeah. This means I am also for stuff like polyamory. I don't mind monogamy, but more than one actual romantic relationship might be a bit too much to juggle for me, so I might just stick to open. But then again, I'm not even in a relationship with one person yet, so no rush lol.

But now, back to the relationship anarchy manifesto, every other point is more or less just obvious stuff, like trust and communication are key? Yeah, that's how every relationship works.

And it just kind of makes me confused about what the difference then between open relationships and relationship anarchy really is unless it's just that very first point that all relationships are equal?I am very fascinated by the concept of relationship anarchy, but I'm not sure I quite understand it.

Having read up on this concept a bit, I think I understand it now.

I understood the idea of not valuing a romantic relationship higher than a platonic one, but then I wondered, how about if you just like spending more time with your romantic partner? Especially when it's all new and butterfly-like.

I agreed with the idea that a romantic relationship shouldn't inherently be the most important one simply because of its nature, but was relationship anarchy implying that I should value all relationships equally as if

I like all of those people the same amount and want to spend an equal amount of time with everyone?

This was my initial confusion, but I got it clarified that relationship anarchy is not saying that, in fact, the opposite.

All relationships are relationships, so you should treat each relationship/person the way the specific situation calls for, the way you want to. And if "the way you want to" strengthens the autonomy of other people and yourself, it’s hard to go wrong.

More not valuing the romantic relationship more simply because that's the socially expected hierarchy of relationships, but valuing whichever relationship more just based on whichever one you want to spend time with at the moment, regardless of norms of how it should be.In other words, rather than having a relationship that you assign to the class of "platonic friends" or "romantic partners", each relationship begins without any rubric, and together you figure out what you want to do together.

Your relationship is a unique element that needs to be understood on its own terms. Maybe that's picnic buddies. Maybe it's playing video games and occasionally kissing. Maybe it's talking on the phone once a week.

Maybe it's you cheering them on whenever they find a new relationship. What subjects do you talk about, and are there any that you avoid? The point is that these aren't external prescriptions for how we ought to conduct our relationship.

And I like that. I've always felt that I want to meet people and connect with them on whatever level feels natural; so there should be no preconceptions about how this may happen. I do not want to care about labels. I do not want to pre-determine what kind of relationship

I may have with another person; neither because of relationships that I already have, nor because of looking for a certain kind of person. I just do not want to view other people in a functionary fashion, as people who satisfy certain needs.For example, there may be someone who you really enjoy spending time with, who you share amazing chemistry with, who makes you laugh like no other, and who you have amazing sex with; but because of their internal demons, the issues they need to work through or simply their peculiar idiosyncracies, they may not make a suitable partner if they were expected to fulfill the role of a typical monogamous partner. Maybe they have substance abuse issues or something, or they may be on housing benefits, or not good with finances.

They may not share very many common hobbies. I'm just making shit up, I dunno, but the point is that they may not score gold on all categories, but for the categories that are relevant to the relationship, they may be wonderful.

And since resonant relationships are hard to come by, why ruin them because of socially imposed expectations? Why stop enjoying the parts of your relationship that do work for the two of you simply because they can't fulfill all goals that a typical partner should?

Or why necessarily drop an ex even as a friend, if a friendship works fine? It just feels nonsensical to cut ties with a relationship like this just because of their individual struggles or specific differences. We all have our struggles, and we can't all share the same hobbies.

Relationship Anarchy would be great because you're not adhering to societal needs. When you don't have specific societal needs, you don't put so much unfair expectations on this person. Then, you're able to enjoy the relationship for the beauty that it is.Really, people practice this kind of thing lightly already with not having kids or marrying their partners. I don't want kids either. I don't think I even want to get married. Having a ceremony and all sounds lovely, but requiring a church/state to legitimize it is fucked up.

No "higher power" should say yes or no to this kind of decision. I don't want to contribute to that. We could just say we're married. I guess there are financial benefits and other rights that might be worth it considering the situation but (another reason it's fucked up).

This is probably more complicated for someone who's more outgoing, one of the reasons I’m interested in poly is that I don't meet many people lol. I require a lot of time by myself and maybe can’t easily spend enough time with someone to fully meet their needs for intimacy, sex, or whatever. Being poly would allow my partner(s) to be free to pursue fulfillment, and you know, since I meet so few people, I’m not sure I can really afford to turn down a connection when the rare one occurs lol.

And people say, you know, but what about jealousy in a poly relationship? Well. Jealousy, like ALL emotions, is a guide. It's a compass trying to show you something about yourself, your choices, your fears. The emotion itself is neither good nor bad.

What you do with it is what's important. How you use it to make better choices. Since I meditate, I've naturally gravitated to the Buddhist approach to tackling emotions; "Remember that you aren't being jealous, you're feeling jealous."

Jealousy is not who you are, simply what you're feeling. It may not make it any less painful, but if you can know that it will pass, over time you will find it much less difficult and distressing to deal with. Then again, it’s not like I’m in a relationship or anything now either way, so it’s not urgent for me to figure this out. I just thought about it cause when I encountered relationship anarchy, it didn’t sound like a belief system: it sounded like common sense.

Like the way things 'are', like the way that everyone should think about the world and act. So, I was confused about how it was described as stuff that had apparently been figured out and was untypical in reality.

But that's the thing, right? When it comes to either life philosophies or political ideologies, if you've stayed pretty consistent most of your life and you then encounter those systems of thoughts, they just feel obviously right to you.Not to run a propaganda machine or anything, but it's why I'm so attracted to anarchism. Not just because I believe it's the most effective framework for understanding how the world works (which includes organizing principles, strategies, tactics, etc), but also because anarchism as an ideology has a bigger philosophical reach than most since its implications are also moral, they affect every aspect of my life outside just political work. How I conduct myself as a human being.

And as it ideally is, an ideology is not something you choose to support. It's who you are, and you finally just happened to have found a name for it, which can help you broaden your horizons in similar directions. But anyway, I'm just musing.

[blindedguilt]

//So that essay I did. I ended up writing VERY VERY thinly veiled DOD fanfiction for the prompt which was basically “Write a first-person initiation into adulthood based off one of the stories in the textbook and a comparative essay between the two after” and so I ended up bullshitting the essay only reading the stories after I made the narrative lol i got a 96/100 anyways //I figured as it was about everyone’s favourite bilf of the bog that I’d post it here, but... //Reminder: This is my first time really solidly writing in first person since I was like nine, so it may be a bit rocky. First person is NOT my area of expertise lol //And ofc obvious trigger warnings for mentions of paedophilia and stuff (Nothing explicit though, of course!) //Enjoy!

“...And we’ll be married. You’ll see.” “I never saw you speak to each other.” “I said, you’ll see.”

So the banter had gone by so frequently then, and now stood I alongside his wife and his child, and mother on the other side, staring at the curves of his face and how it had thinned, still soft and child-like yet aged and grown in such a way none could have explained by any normal means. Perhaps, then, it was in the sight of those definitively unchanging eyes and how they gleamed the same way under the sun that had caught my attention, and in turn, his, and he turned to look back with some strange sadness that I had averted my gaze in some feeling between either abashedness or fear of any hint of understanding to be held. “...Why her?” “Her? Leonard, look at her.” “I do see her.” “Don’t you? You hardly even looked. Well…” “She… Is kind, isn’t she?” “Yes! And one day, I will make her my bride.” And so the village men had gone and lined up near the forest break on the army’s cart, the showing of the backs of their unnaturally cut hair settling an odd knot in the stomachs of I and who I was certain, the other few men who stayed behind. Orbas’s hair had been a similar length of the day I met him, so I had recalled, though the ends were splayed and framed that once pale neck in such a way that reminded me of the small leaves of a flaxen bush or perhaps a spring tree, though there was one small, favorite piece that strayed off the side of his face — His son, such a small child, had already inherited it — And so he had frequently kept tied and twined with the same strip of leather worn by men and women here. For Orbas, it was no more. I had thought to pick up his son at that moment; for his sake, his father’s sake, and as well my own. Near four and almost the same image as his father, that I had at times troubled myself in remembering his mother, and to see and grant his father’s own personal wishes of caring for that stray hair in his place (So as I had when we were mere boys), tying the silk strands in place, to have “him” so completely and totally reliant on me, it was comforting. The feel of the warmth from such a small body, held in my arms and placed against my own, the grip of small hands pulling against my cloak, was comforting. It was wish fulfillment, in a way. The circumstances in which we had met were entirely on Orbas’s own will. How he darted so confidently up to the smithing corner with frail legs that seemed ready to snap under his own weight, and I, feeble and feminine in mind as he was in body, having apparently gained some semblance leaning towards haughty self-bravado thought, ‘What does this mad fool think he’s doing? Who does he think he is?’ and was only further driven in such convictions when he spoke as if we had never once been strangers before. For Orbas, all it took was a single conversation —  And still, for all the good I’ve come to speak and feel for him, I think not once have I changed in my belief that he was completely mad that day in having tossed all pride aside to speak to the mollified mute of Atheren. 

He had dragged me from my crafts, introduced me to friends who would soon become my own, and had not once ceased for a day after to visit me in my practice there. Father was pleased at first, until he wasn’t, as I had gone from smithing and not speaking to speaking and not smithing, and following his harsh, booming rebuke towards the shaken lad as I could only offer my embarrassed gaze lowered towards the dirt, and bits of green with hints of metal in-between, he would come every other day instead. When we went out, with others or by ourselves as we later had, it had always been Orbas there to lead the way, the conversation, to give directions and warnings unless I knew better in my caution, to where I would try to speak — But I was merely a follower. I have always been, a fact with no shame in admitting and a fate I would think to show no more than indifferent contentment towards. “Why me?” I had asked. Another walk. “We never spoke before.” “Can you keep a secret?” I nodded. Something in my heart fluttered and leapt with those words. “Well… Haven’t you seen yourself?” Something must have been spoken in my silence as confusion or hurt in a way he didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see, prompting him to explain. “You never spoke to the adults or children your age, but only the animals and infants lost by their mothers. You panicked, but always found them home. We saw it. We all did, then, you know.” “...” “When you saw a fly being eaten by a spider, you would take a stick to it and try to ward it off. If you couldn’t reach, you’d find somewhere else to go that you didn’t have to hear it. Your father yelled at you because you had trouble baiting a fish hook. Other children… Normal boys, at least, we saw it and laughed. You, already bigger than the rest of us and yet hardly able to look anyone in the eyes. The girls fancied it, though, called you a gentleman and all, and so one day I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s someone he’s trying to impress with all this?’ and I began to get curious.” “No. I… I’m not trying to impress anyone.” “Well you certainly are when you follow every stupid order I give you.” I stared at the back of his head. A few more steps, and he peered over his shoulder at me, whatever look I wore causing those soft lips to curl up into a laugh. “There has to be someone.” “... There isn’t, honest.” “Say who. We can help you, Leonard, and you’re set to be wed before any of us. Haven’t you always spoken about wanting children? Yours and mine can be friends, and your sons will be older and teach my sons all about everything, just like us!” Something in those words had risen and tightened the back of my throat, and I spoke as I did back then, before I met him — Unable to look him in the eye, look at him at all, and my voice had grown so faint the sound had barely reached my own ears. “It is a secret. That is all.” … And as the years passed, that secret and I grew up and spent our years together, the “Secret” got married at fifteen, and I was sixteen, except he had grown out of being a “Secret”, and once I did, I thought to myself, “I am free” —  But I never did find a wife. When the friends of my childhood pointed them out, “That one’s pretty”, “I spoke to her, she is interested in you”, I only could only ever offer another soulless nod along to the increasingly agitated and growing band of married men, all who later had their sons I loved and adored just as I would have my own, and some had daughters, too. In that same year Orbas had gotten married, I moved on to another secret picking berries in the woods, another fixation skinning their knee on the ground, but after him, I never knew it as I did then — “Such a thing would be impossible,” I always told myself — And I continued life as a blacksmith’s son, a follower, and a coward to the war that brought itself to our town in search of new hands for slaughter. “Security” had been the word spoken to me that day, who chose to stay behind (The child incapable of baiting a fish hook or accepting nature in near all its form), in contrast to him, whose bravery sought the peace of the world, the heads of red-eyed monsters, all the glory and fame reflected back the small village of Atheren, even at risk of his own family, foraged and built. A family, one woman and her four year-old son, unable to fend for themselves. Once again he acted in a way that any madman might, entrusting his sole unmarried friend to care for a wife and son in his absence, and then again, perhaps not mad — Explicitly had he stated his trust with a laugh in that I had come “This far” without any luck, and furthermore went to cite our own, personal trust we had built in each other — He knew they would be fine because he simply knew me. Always the protector, and where I never did find a wife, I made my home among the children of the village. And as the cart started away through the woods with a forward jerk, and Obros, the sweetness grown out of his face, looked over his shoulder at me, his tiny son held in my arms, and smiled with that worried look, I smiled back. I gave him a nod in reassurance, and he slipped through that canopy of pine and birch and away towards war beyond. It’s alright now. Now, I am fine. He’ll be alright. He’ll be alright. It’s okay, because now, I’ve finally found someone. Someone I love, just as I loved you. It was a secret.

[mineofilms]

0

Okay… Let’s get real and let’s get dark… Isn’t that what “horror” is all about?

I am taking an extended break from politics/social media. I will still be here, but I am done defending both sides of this BS. We're not getting anywhere anymore. Both sides are terrible. What we all actually argue over -is over the concept of "less bad." Not which one is better, but rather which one is “less-bad.”

That isn't the way to be.

I am considering not even voting now I am so disgusted and mentally exhausted from this struggle. Probably fabricated by a few different groups of rich assholes on both sides. I might write one more essay on the topic of political theater because I have one started and a lot of notes on the topic. After that, I am making a very considerate effort to ignore both sides moving forward.

I realize I have said that before, a few times I can actually recall. I realize this. I am aware. My failures are obvious.

I am also finally shifting my writing focus to horror/science fiction, telling stories, freaking people out, maybe do something cool, and creating characters over dealing with think-tank BS for Rich Assholes and Intellectually Challenged Groups of People or ICGPs...

We all get sucked into this bullshit and I am just done allowing this to affect me.

I ain't nobody's tool or puppet.

People want to know what I am all about. I am a decent, too honest for my own good, dude who suffers greatly for a long periods of time. I am brilliant when I write, while sounding like an idiot when I speak live, in the moment. Scatterbrain is an understatement when talking live. That is why I write long-format, to begin with. So that I can slowly break down, disseminate and assimilate information. I know nothing else. My brain literally works different and connects dots to things in different ways that NONE OF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND. Most of you do not even try. I notice… The only thing that motivates me to be this way is spite.

I have a tendency to push buttons, do things to make others upset with me because I am addicted to the reaction of knowing I made someone so mentally-off their rocker, that they cannot function till I am no longer included in whatever activity we were in. I am more addicted to that in recent years than sex. I literally look at this feeling of spite as something better than sex. I know it isn’t right. My wiring is off. Been saying it, few listened, I am fine with it. That is why I try to stay away from most things or just make fun of everything, or bring some lighter humor to it. I realize it’s only funny if one is a cynical nihilist, like myself. I know most of you probably are not. I will lean with probability on that one. I will assume most of you are not.

So yeah. I hear that. I can lighten up. I can do that. However, if I pee my pants-laugh, I am posting it… I only really care about showing how both sides are fundamentally wrong. That this is a big illusion. We act like reality is supposed to be in a binary world but we're not. We as a species do not understand nor respect 4D… Politically; we get ‘terrible’ and ‘not-as’ terrible, piss/poop. You have to choose which one you want. I want neither, most would never want piss and/or pooh, ever... Yet, here we are. We are supposed to choose one. Now, that to me… Those are the dummies. The ones that concede to this, accept this and vote anyway for piss or pooh. No winner can exist under those conditions and here we are.

If you want to explain your side of that or want to prove that wrong, please, do so. I'd invite anyone to do that. I wrote this as a response to someone who wanted me to look into something political from the right and make a judgment on that.

This isn't a peer review… We are not peers... We are friends... Remember that…

I am too FK’n good for this and so are all of you…

I am sorry this is the world we live in.

This is why I plan to punch God in the dick the first chance I get.

Not kidding…

Nihilists don't believe in belief as the main attribute to make a thing real.

What is seen and inferred by the observer is.

We all should be working to get away from negativity. Not attract it. If these things in reality that macroscopically you cannot affect bug you so much.

Unplug…

I do it...

I am doing it again…

Granted not at the level I should. However, I will start with this and see how it goes. If I feel I need to completely unplug, I will do so.

I have spent the last two weeks working on fiction rather than talking shit about politics that I have no control over and just giving my opinion based on what little I infer from. During some downtime I’d made up memes because they made me laugh. Yes... I am that guy that will straight-up laugh at others' misfortune. I won't apologize for that.

I sin… I sin with intention to sin… I am the worst kind of sinner. I sin because others expect me to be the opposite. Who are they? Nothing and no one... That is the real reality out there.

Do what you love with who you love because, after all this suffering, yours, mine, our impact on the universe is zero... This is a real science theory; known as the Zero-Energy Universe Hypothesis. It suggests that the universe's total energy is zero, with the positive energy of matter balanced by the negative energy of gravity, making everything ultimately cancel out.

Let that sit in for a minute…

Everything you do, and affect in reality will at any given moment of the Universe’s everlasting timeline will equal ZERO. You do not affect Jack… Nothing you do matters from this Point of View. This does not include the fraction of time you do exist in. You affect reality as long as your energy can. Once it changes back to/from/whatever/wherever/everywhere/all at the same time, the influence and evidence of that effect drops to zero. If you are an above-average human, it might last longer. Look at David Bowie. How long do you think some entity, anywhere will be able to know what Bowie did and created? It only lasts as long as it lasts, after that, good luck trying to convert that energy back to its original form.

Reality is never perfect in the concept of what we humans think of as perfection. In reality perfection and infinity are one-in-the-same. That; “on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”

Remembrance of Earth's Past or known as (The Three-Body Trilogy) by Liu Cixin • Book 2: The Dark Forest

This series is sometimes referred to as “existential horror.” You get lost in the concept of “what if” this could all be at play at some point in Humanity’s near or perhaps distant future. That “what if” this is all some sort of simulation or video game where the plot is so fixed that any choice you make has no impact, imprint or evidence on the outcome of the game. That no matter what you do in the game; you end up at the same boss fight at the end, with the same life, the same weapons, the same everything. It's these types of environments where the lack of realism is felt and where we eventually realize that something is not right with said reality. Human beings possess a kind of intuitive alarm in our minds. I hear my father’s voice, as loud and clear in my mind. I know that voice. He is no longer with us. I hear a voice that isn’t a voice. It is a thought, but we describe it to others as a voice. Others do not hear what you heard. They only know of it because you described it to them. However, they do not actually know for themselves. Another example would be; we trust when we look up at the Moon that it is there, but you, I, most, have never been there to touch, see, step foot on it to know it if is actually there or not. Granted, we do know that it is there. We see it from Earth, we see its impact on the tides. We feel its gravity. Our mind alerts us when something doesn't feel real. That is usually how we know we are in a dream. Some things seem real, some seem normal and then you see a giant spider with I Heart Mum tattoos on all its legs in the sky where the Sun should be. Eventually, the brain will tell you what is real and what is not real. It is when our realities are flipped upside down and inside out, like a tesseract, that feelings on reality become existential horror. If we were in a simulation of reality and everything was so perfect that we’d begin to perceive the artificiality of our surroundings. We already do this. Social Media… It is plastered everywhere on our social media. No shit…

Apply all that to your common sense. How does reality feel right now? Especially with the political arena we are in. Something ABSOLUTELY does not feel right here… Yeah, we mean nothing. God cares not for you, me, your kids, your freedoms, their suffering, your suffering, and mine.

With all that...

All we have are those moments of love with those we love the most.

Become obsessed with that!!!

Not this Bull-Ass-Shit and it totally is.

It doesn't matter who we vote for.

We all lose…

It's ALWAYS been that way…

Love, Respect but even this is fueled by spite more than those other two put together.

That is my great addiction, SPITE…

0 by David-Angelo Mineo 7/25/2024 1,706 Words

[knowlesian]

i was asked about my second favorite joke and i have finally decided: it’s the exchange about the the orange, because holy shit is that a textbook example of a slyer, more character-informing sort of joke construction than the set-up/escalation of the crystals.

(no shade to the crystals, which i wrote about here: it is my favorite for a reason. it is maybe The Perfect Joke.)

that said, tiiiiiiiiime to over-analyze.

shoutout to the leadup, which lampshades lucius pulling absolutely acres of emotional weight for the people around him (and then makes it even better by stede just jumping in to do it himself and lucius not actually having to lift a finger, wooden or not) and the deadpan chorus of ‘it’s a rock’ in response to stede’s delusional glee.

secondary shoutout to how ed starts to clean off the orange despite verbally letting down stede easy— if stede’s superpower is being oblivious to reality and sometimes that makes him do things like run the fuck off without fully explaining himself, it’s also what makes him beautiful and so fucking ready to evolve.

stede is A Lot, but he’s family. his ability to look at the world and say ‘actually, i think it would be more fun if we did it this way and as such: i will be dragging those around me into my delusions that life and the world can be better than it currently is’ is fucking... i mean. what a gem, you know?

so ed says: it’s a rock, it’s a piece of shit, and he still rinses it off carefully anyway to answer this irrepressible ‘but what IF’ because just being around stede seems to allow people to assume these emotional risks, either through proximity to his privilege or his open-bedroom door management style (in a way stede can’t quite seem do for himself until he goes back to fix things with mary the writing on this SHOW my god) and then ed makes the best face when he realizes that once again, stede’s delusional belief in his ability to make things work has panned out: the rock is an orange.

like jim says: the old tree still had some fruit to give after all.

(sustenance frozen in time? a family legacy? jesus fuck if i start asking myself what is the orange, really, in specific relation to the tree itself i will not GET TO THE JOKE JESUS FUCK I HAVE NOT EVEN GOTTEN TO THE FUCKING THING YET. okay: the orange. like nana and stede and everybody else on this show, it’s a lot, but also it means a lot and i love it.

i cannot speak of the tree. the tree is this whole other insane post in the making. everything on this show means like six things at once on TOP of the actual plot and i’m mad at it. all the time, mad at it.)

finally: the actual joke.

I suppose you should have it. It’s your land.

It’s cool. Finders keepers.

Oh thank god! I didn’t want to give it to you. I think this is my new favorite thing!

jesus christ they do so much heavy fucking lifting with so few words on this show. all the time forever, they pack a whole essay into the words they use and how they use them.

okay: i’ll start on the surface, where it’s not even about words. stede is dressed for a cartoon safari. that outfit is calling up some very purposeful imagery, and it’s about one pit stop shy of him having on a literal pith helmet for no reason. 

so just visually, we have stede looking like he’s ready to go discover someplace people have lived for centuries, literally digging shit up on jim’s ancestral land, and wanting to take it home with him.

stede: the new face of the british museum!!!! 

(don’t @ me, i know i know be accurately mad. ‘the new face of the new zealand museum’ just didn’t have the right ring.)

because they’re really good at this shit they take that obvious visual gag and use it to show stede’s grown as a person since the party; he immediately sighs and tosses the orange off to jim. he knows the right thing to do here.

then we get jim getting to solidify/close a character arc chapter with tossing it back: they’re all good. they’ve got olu, they’ve got nana, and family isn’t something they need concrete evidence can exist for them anymore.

(plus: it’s very obvious stede wants it.)

this last part is where it gets very, very cool: stede’s response.

one of the rules for writing comedy (if you want to maximize storytelling alongside the jokes) is that your jokes need to inform character. ofmd is a fucking masterclass on that.

level one: stede is saying the quiet part loud. someone telling the truth in a socially inappropriate way is a staple in comedy: always has been, always will be. it’s just funny that he’s brightly like oh good!!!! i never wanted to share at all!!!! fuck you guys i want this orange, come to orange papa!!!!! 

comedy math is comedy math.

it’s reminding us that stede is evolving, but he’s still stede: he pulled back the impulse to go full main character syndrome and ignore the part of his miraculous orange discovery where the orange didn’t belong to him just because he dug it up while jim asked him what the fuck he was doing, but he really goddamn wanted that orange!!!!

which takes me down to the next level: stede doesn’t just love nice things, he defines himself by his love for/ownership of them. the first part’s fine and good with the narrative, while it seems pretty solidly against the second. 

sidenote: ed chucking stede’s generational wealth overboard is also ed giving them a space free of stede’s old life where they can figure their shit out together under the gaze of mary’s lighthouse, one day. i’m mad at the writers. VERY MAD.

if i had to guess where the show is going with this stede still loving/one day re-obtaining fancy pants and having plans to match won’t be an issue, so long as he knows who the fuck he is without those pants.

(...i did not intend that to be a sex thing but i stand by it now that i have made it so, your honor. tits AND ass, your honor: we want them both.)

stupid sex jokes aside, here’s where it gets really cool: this fucking miracle of a metaphor of an orange is now stede’s favorite thing.

not his riches; not his fancy pants. not something he bought with money he lucked into and inherited from his shitty father, not a symbol of wealth or class or status.

a humble orange. (consider: the humble lighthouse orange. fuuuuuck this show.)

a humble orange he obtained through honest means: jim gave it to him because stede’s a lot, but he’s family, and because stede’s fuckup with the oranges gave jim their family back in the form of nana knowing who they really are and accepting them in, cake and all, but also in the form of olu basically professing eternal love in the most wonderful way possible.

if stede wasn’t a dumbass with a fancy ship who picked jim up and didn’t know why oranges were crucial and wasn’t desperate to impress ed and the treasure map didn’t burn up because lucius was busy watching his dads fall in love right in front of his snake, does jim ever get this closure (or stede this orange)?

probably not. they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the shore party, they did NOT think they’d find a welcome here.

and then: they did. nana had cake waiting, nana is more concerned about murder stats than pronouns, and nana absolutely loves olu. without this day trip, jim might have spent the rest of their life wondering if family was unconditional, or if family ends where honesty begins.

that orange is a gift; that orange is a thank you.

and now thanks to all those dominoes stede has this orange, granted to him because of the two sides of his habit of forgetting reality exists, not in spite of one of them, and because a lot of the time stede forgets the rules the world tells him he should care about are actually supposed to matter to him.

stede defines himself by things: he is entering the next part of this story with the orange that means family and love that embraces nuance instead of wanting to hide or smooth it over as his favorite thing.

i mean. i M E A N.