#idk I just think there's so much to find about history and society and humans in classics

[comradekatara]

i read somewhere that, after the war, zuko at least hands hama over to the swt instead of keeping her in fire nation prisons 'till the end of her life. Which is nice, I think. But I'm also curious as to how that would work out.

Most notably: how do you think it'd go down if she were to meet Pakku? given they both have some sort of connection to kanna's life, the idea of them being forced to interact even once entertains me very much. like, old waterbending master pakku—white lotus member—who has grown up in a patriarchal society and actively forbidden women from training to fight, under the precedent they are somehow ontologically weaker, fragile, and belonging in the healing huts... THAT guy, meeting his former fiancé's old friend: (or current wife's if you go by canon, which, eugh) A woman who not only fought in the front lines but ended up becoming one of the most skilled, creative, and deadly waterbenders in history. How would he react when finding out that a woman came up with blood bending? How badly would Hama mind-fuck him?? Because I'm confident they'd hate each other's guts-- no way she'd tolerate him,,,

And on a similar note—how would Kanna feel upon reuniting wirh Hama and discovering what she put Katata through, in your opinion? Idk, I'm just full of puppetmaster thoughts today. Hama is incredibly interesting and I wish she wasn't handled so much like a Halloween Specisl creepy witch, (even though katara herself is handled and written pretty well in this episode, i think. but i digress.)

i mean obviously i think about this all the time. i personally think that zuko hands hama over to the swt upon katara's request, and she and aang personally deliver her on appa (sokka is not there, for the very deliberate reason that if he knew what they were doing he would very vocally disapprove). and so katara is sort of retraumatizing herself by doing this, but she also feels like it's necessary specifically because she needs to be able to look hama in the eye and tell her why they're not actually the same (especially now that she actually did bloodbend someone in cold blood). katara has the love and support and safety to step back from her anger and her pain and her grief and hang onto her own humanity and allow herself to be the bigger person even in moments of abject rage and acute trauma, and hama doesn't. hama is a victim of her circumstance, and that's part of what makes her so uniquely terrifying to katara, because katara has that same capacity to make people hurt, she has the same tools at her disposal, and she has the same justifications to exercise that power. but unlike hama, she hasn't actually been pushed past her limits. sometimes she can see the cliff's edge, and sometime she even teeters on the line, but hama was fully just shoved off without a parachute, and that's really what separates them above all. i think katara should be allowed to acknowledge that and forgive herself for that, even if hama doesn't directly apologize to her (although in my mind she does, and it's not enough, but it's also so much more than katara ever expected to hear). even if it is too late for hama, katara deserves to heal.

frankly, i don't really give a shit about pakku or his reaction to hama. i also don't actually think that he thinks woman are ontologically incapable of being talented waterbenders of whatever; he's a pretty worldly guy, the reason he clings to these traditions isn't born of the belief that they're grounded in logical evidence like sokka's is, it's because he believes in the preservation of a system that benefits and valorizes him. pakku thinks katara belongs in the healing huts because he comes from a culture that dictates that women belong in the healing huts. like, he might also subscribe to the bioessentialist logic that women are better healers and men are being fighters, but that honestly doesn't really matter, because (unlike sokka) his epiphany lies not in the fact that woman can fight, but in the fact that his role in upholding these systems has actively driven his loved ones away due to his cruelty. he decides to be kinder, to women and in general, because he realizes that being an asshole has negative consequences. but frankly, who cares what he thinks of hama. realizing that your sister tribe in the south deserves aid and protection after being subjected to a century of genocide is kind of too little too late imo. unlike katara, sokka, aang, or kanna, who can approach this situation from the perspective of being a genocide survivor who even remotely understands hama's trauma, pakku really has no place in this conversation to me.

as for kanna...... god. hama/kanna reunion is genuinely one of the most heart-wrenching concepts to me in all of atla. as a sidenote, hama/kanna fanfic goes so hard every time. there's a total of like 15 fanfics for them on ao3 (last i checked) but they're all sooooooo. fucking delicious. tide locked........... ugh. anyway. i cannot fathom kanna's reaction upon learning that her closest friend once upon a time is not only alive, but also a convicted felon, for crimes including but not limited to manipulating her granddaughter, violating her (and sokka's) bodily autonomy in cruel and perverse ways, and forcing her to participate in that mode of violence in a way that traumatized her forever. even if you don't read them as former lovers (although it is indubitably better that way) it's so gut-churning. kanna lost so many people over the course of her life, and to learn that one of them has returned but in the worst way possible must be mind-boggling and distinctly unreal. like how do you even process that. first, how do you process how much pain she must have went through to become the kind of person who is capable of doing this, and then, how do you process the knowledge that the person you once loved most in the world irreparably hurt the person you now love most in the world? obviously she would always prioritize katara's safety over anyone else's no matter what, but god. kanna has led such a fascinating and impossibly difficult life, and it's not over yet.

[natreads]

anyone else really tired of “classic lit” being seen as only one type of book when in reality it’s just a category for older books that are a part of a (western, I admit) literary canon and in fact there are many different types of genres that are included in it

[person4924]

new about me

my name is sam !! thats basically all u need to know but theres (a lot) more under the cut!!

im a lesbian (???) and ace

they/she (this is my pronouns page)

im probably genderfluid so u can really use any idc

i’m neurodivergent of some sort (i don’t even know anymore)

a minor (don’t be weird)

my personality type is INFP-T

things i like (the things bolder r what i talk about the most)

harry potter (fuck jkr)

marvel

the marauders

boy meets world

it

osemanverse

paper girls

teen wolf

owl house

shameless

glee

stranger things

friends

andi mack

the last of us (i’ve only watched the show tho, but i know most of what happens in the games)

riordanverse

musicals

poetry

reading

cats

animals

fictional characters

music

movies

tv shows

art

writing

women

sitcoms

brooklyn nine nine

new girl

hamilton

grishaverse

stand up comedians

ocean animals (specifically sharks)

community

moths (and just kinda winged bugs in general)

greek mythology

dawsons creek

bojack horseman

halloween

the sky (like stars, the moon, the sunset, etc)

jelly fish

criminal minds

animals

ted lasso

scooby doo (the older movies from the 2000’s ish specifically but all of it too)

everything sucks!

the sun bearer trials

atypical

octonauts

spencer reid

my fav movies are tick tick boom, my girl, dead poets society, breakfast club, the outsiders, hamilton, stand by me, cmbyn, lady bird, beautiful boy, luca, nimona, (500) days of summer etc.

musicals i like are hamilton, tick tick boom and the greatest showman

my fav taylor albums are folklore, evermore, reputation, 1989 and speak now but i love all of them really (please please ask me abt them omg)

my current hyper fixation is the marauders (more of a life-long obsession atp) and criminal minds

i’m currently reading the extraordinaries

my fav music people (i’m really just giving a short list of many): conan gray, cavetown, current joys, queen, rainbow kitten surprise, the front bottoms, harry styles, noah kahan, taylor swift, phoebe bridgers, the fray, coldplay, olivia rodrigo, billie eilish, boygenius, gracie abrams, sufjan stevens, maya hawke, the smiths, lucy dacus, julien baker, the smiths, sleeping at last, mitski

i mostly post about whatever hyperfixation and/or character/person has overtaken my brain, music and analysis things

i appreciate tone tags and i try to use them as much as possible

i’m always looking to talk to more people and i’m always bored (don’t be weird istg)

my fav books are any alice oseman book, the outsiders, the perks of being a wallflower, i fell in love with hope

child of athena (i think) and a ravenclaw

biggest pandalily shipper you’ll find

i love love love making character analysis’ or song or movie or tv show or books or ships or whatever

i also write sometimes!! (i suck ass)

and i’m person4924 on ao3 but i can’t figure out how to link it

this is my spotify (i have the best music taste in the history of human kind btw)

this is my discord (in case of KOSA or if it’s just easier to talk on there)

this is my airbuds idk if anyone actually uses it but i thought it’d be fun to share music with mooties

please please please send me asks i have no hobbies or friends and im always bored please please please (im on my hands and knees begging please please please)

i have a tagging system!! idk how much ill remember to use it but yeah!! (its also new so only my new posts will have them) #sam shut the fuck up -> rants/yapping #asks!!! -> asks #polls!!! -> polls #crazy? i was crazy once... -> headcanons for characters/analysis things

[roseamongroses]

something about the history of spider-byte's name (and intial lack therefore of a last name) is calling to me. like even now that margo has a last name, ppl still don't recognize her civilian identity bc of how little screentime she had and the brevity of the comic appearance.

hmmmm ok i've marinated. idk much about tech so take the terms with a grain of salt and just focus on the emotional story. think i have some headcanons:

margo lives in a society where it's common to use virtual reality to escape/ experience life but margo is actually one of the more extreme cases of this escapism

she's friendly with others, something doesn't seem to be wrong, but her peersknow she's always connected to the vr/always online. they don't notice how little they know about her home life or about her, despite her being familiar with everyone else.

-

and this disconnect only becomes worst once she takes on the mask of spider-byte. helping people in the way she's always desired to be helped is fufilling, but it doesn't take long for margo to become lost in her online persona.

-

the longer she spends as spider-byte, the more the two worlds blur. and once she gains the ability to physically manifest her avatar, her spider abilities begin to transfer into her irl body

-

at first margo was excited about this change. she could finally be the hero she wanted to be inside and outside of her vr- headset, but she quickly discovers that her bodily automony is being manipulated.

-

sometimes her skin glitches, changing into a rainbow of colors without her say-so (she'd have to fake sick to avoid questions from her peers/parents) . sometimes when she splits her avatar her body doesn't immediately return and if it does it never feels the same. as if data is missing.

-

but most obvious is that her understanding of humanity--of herself changes. not in a cruel way, but she feels an alienation from human connection that she'd never experienced before. she saves the day, not because of her childhood desire to do good, to be saved and save others, but because it is her avatar. it is her purpose as spider-byte, not the dream of margo kess.

-

it's when margo catches herself refering to herself spider-byte, even when she was outside of vr relaxing that she begins to investagate further.

-

she begins to question her relationship with the cyber crime police department and how easily they accepted her" "vigilatism"/ eventually she tracks down conversations between the department and an unknown scientist/ leading cyber security company. i'm thinking of this being her "doc oc" connection, but im open to other villian parallels tbh

-

the thing is this "doc oc" knows that margo has been tracking them . they think its funny. they're facinated with their experiement and are very willing to play along with the investagation as long as they get to observe their subject.

-

the fact that margo got "bit" was part coincidence. the program/ bug was sent out to find a suitable host. someone isolated, someone online for long hours to properly conduct the experiement, someone who had the need to escape and become something more.

-

it could've been anyone. they were meant to be corrupted entirely by the program, only leaving behind a husk irl as they accepted their new reality. but margo was different her need to do good was so great that it redirected the prgrams goals entirely. allowing for her persona of a hero to infliratrate her real life and vice versua in a way "doc oc" had never seen before

-

doc oc at first wanted to let margo live as a hero . but her changing the bug--resisting its intended purpose intrigued them more. it wasn't enough to collect data on the experiement spider-byte anymore. now doc oc needed to break her. to rebuild her and understand what makes her so special

-

and this back and forth does mean margo loses a lot. some days she doesn't even remember her last name. but she's motivated now to reclaim her life, her heroism, and make sure no one else is taken advantaged ;like this again

[wahoopli]

drop the sanderson thoughts lmao. did you read the wired article everyone’s talking about?

yes i did read the wired article. it was weird? fine? i agree with the take that the writer thought it would be more interesting, and then had to come up with a story on a deadline.

tbh i feel like the more interesting story is that mormonism is a settler colonialist monument to white cisheteropatriarchy, and that really shows in sanderson's writing. stormlight especially really demonstrates this. it's structured to be all about oppression (darkeyes, the singers) but sanderson's narrative continually prioritizes the oppressors. that's so mormon! the book of mormon is so racist and present-day mormonism is so invested in whiteness and imperialism, esp with sending missionaries to convert people of color in the global south.

and like... we talk all the time about how sanderson is great at writing queer characters when he's not trying to. how his romances really fall flat. to me it's all connected to mormonism. he's talked before about how he doesn't really have emotional ups and downs, and the article kind of touches on this too. mormonism is such a passion-less religion. if you've ever been in a mormon church building, they're the most boring buildings alive. there's a complete lack of culture, art, life. mormonism is designed to produce nuclear family clones who have the same opinions and have a very "nice" society.

i'm rambling, and i have lots more thoughts, but i just think the way sanderson writes romance really positions it as a Thing You Put In A Narrative and not, like, a messy human experience. and that's so mormon. you serve a mission for the church as a late teen and then come back and are expected to marry. marriage is one of the essential Steps toward exaltation.

obviously the other really interesting thing is that the magic of the cosmere tbh is extremely mormon in a way I find very interesting and sometimes like! one of the key doctrines of mormonism is that if you live your life perfectly, you'll become a god and create your own worlds the same way god did with us. it's a complicated and fascinating idea, and i don't think it's terribly difficult to make the connection to whiteness and the settler fantasy of it all. but in the cosmere, humans become gods. gods are bound by rules (also important in mormon theology). ruin and preservation created scadrial and built it and humans from scratch.

idk i just feel like if you've read sanderson's work (which the wired writer says he did) and have a solid understanding of mormonism, there's a much richer and more interesting story to tell than what that article gave. it barely scratched the surface imo.

disclaimer, i say all this as a white queer exmormon who has lived in utah her whole life. i love lots of things about mormonism, and i can't separate my personal and family history from the church. it's defined my life up until the last couple of years, and that's the place i'm speaking from.

[flashnthunder]

Miscellaneous tag game

@grumpy-liebgott and @sharkboyandlavalieb tagged me <333 and i am of course a million years late

Favorite place in the world you’ve visited?

inside the us i would say maine, i love the ocean/forest combo it's got going on

Something you’re proud of yourself for?

coauthoring several medical research papers as an undergrad, which is like my one and only flex and it's a nerdy one

Favorite books?

new hampshire- robert frost, the art of being human- michael wesch, ajax- sophocles (yes, only one of these is technically a book ik)

Something that makes your heart happy when thinking about it?

it might be cheesy to say music, but music and my friends <3

Favorite thing about your culture?

from the midwest US (so there's not that much), but i was raised very much in borderline appalachia and the older i've gotten the more i've come to appreciate that as part of how i was raised, so i would say quilting! i was taught to quilt by the women in my family and i still cherish the connection to them through that

When did you join the HBO War fandom? What was the first show you watched?

band of brothers in 8th grade, my history teacher would play it for us and i'm pretty sure he used it in place of actually teaching but he was a real one and also a drill sergeant so i don't think anyone argued with his methods

Have you read any of Easy Company’s books? If so, which ones were your favorite?

have NOT read any BoB books, but i have read most of the ones that inspired the pacific + a shit ton of pacific memoirs in general

Favorite HBO War character and your favorite moment with them?

lip and luz with the dud shell, bull watching out for the younger replacements, the officers in the eagle's nest, and just in general all of episode 8

Do you make content for any fandoms, if so; what sort of content?

band of brothers, top gun, the pacific (hypothetically), mota now it looks like, way back to my roots would be star trek and also whatever was going on with bandoms in hs that is a dark time

Favorite actor/actress and your favorite film of theirs?

oooh idk it changes, but last year i was on an ethan hawke kick- 'adopt a highway' and 'first reformed' are two he's good in (obligatory dead poets society mention ofc)

Favorite quote/s that you wish to share with others?

"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." - sarah williams

Random fact your mutuals/followers don’t know about you?

so bad at fun facts uhhh. uh. i am double-jointed in my hands.

If you’re a writer, do you need a beta reader (say yes so I can be your beta reader 🤭)?

i have NEVER had a beta reader and i am simply too scared to ask how it works because i'm not sure anyone should have to be subjected to my writing process but!! always willing to give a new thing a shot

Three things that make you smile?

my dog when she stretches in the sun, swimming in a creek in the summer, sitting in the car with my best friend while it rains

Any nicknames you like?

izzy! i have liked it well enough to all but legally make it my real name, other than that izzy-maye from people i'm close with, or iz/izzers when people are in a hurry

List some people you love to see around on tumblr!

@andromeddog art makes me go feral, @mutantmanifesto killer art that is living rent-free in my mind, @ewipandora MWAH you already know you make my day better on here, @onehelluvamarine has me kicking my feet giggling when they're in my notifs, @terresdebrume lovely writing <3

What would you do during a zombie apocalypse?

foolproof 3 step plan, ready for it? 1- find a good ditch 2- lay down in the ditch 3- just let it happen

idealistically i think i could go chill in the woods for a semi-significant period of time and be alright

Favorite movie?

logan's run (comfort movie, questionable 70s sci-fi), the hunt for red october (always feeling very big feelings on this), arrival, apocalypse now, fury, dead poets society, alexander (like the 4 hours version because im insufferable like that) the old star trek movies

Do you like horror movies?

i love horror movies WITH people you will not catch me watching them on my own, but 100% love love getting to sit on someone's couch and watch one

Tagging:

(no pressure and apologies for any double tagging) @ewipandora @blood-mocha-latte @deputy-buck @lamialamia @blurredcolour @saturnwisteria @staud + anyone i tagged in my answers and forgot to tag down here, or anyone who just wants to do it :)

[nesisamess]

i am GUESSING that one of the points of the drdt mv was to overload us with so much information that it is hard to pick out what is important and what is inconsequential… that being said, here are a few things i noticed/am hypothesizing (also this will contain spoilers for the mv AND for chapter 2, plus fair warning that most of this may be nonsensical if you haven’t watched the video <3)

first off: the wingding translations at 0:36

so i translated it and… it’s just a rickroll. that’s it. huge L moment for me when i realized

next: the girl at 1:05

her hair is too different to be Mai and she doesn’t look like any of the female students, so I ruled that out. My first thought was that she was David’s sister, Diana, but i’m a little unsure of this theory because I’m not even sure Diana is real (this relates to note #11, since the amount of spaces match up with Diana’s name, but i’m not sure since i couldn’t find the 11 in the mv itself)

the crossword puzzle at 1:22 aka #1 in the description notes.

(note: sorry for my very crappy drawing lmao)

you can see that if you adhere to the note in the description and use their proper first names, it fills in perfectly. However, instead of having David’s name anywhere in the crossword, instead we have Mai. The description says to “exclude our protagonist” (in this case that would be David) so this makes sense.

I honestly know next to nothing about Mai (i’m unsure if information about her is out there and if so where to find it), so the importance of her being included might be lost on me.

Also: Each of the characters has a roman numeral attached to them so this might relate the roman numerals that pop up throughout the video? Idk, just something to think about.

at 2:02 it shows the same sort of voting thing that we saw at the end of chapter 2, however this time all 16 votes are voted towards one person. we know this couldn’t be possible for any future case as too many people are dead, so I wonder if this is just representative and doesn’t actually reference any real game event? this also relates to #12 in the description. it was at this point when i realized they were out of order, since I saw 15 and 17 beforehand

at 2:23 Xander shows up, along with the lyrics “if something is important, then it’ll break and disappear” which makes me heavily question how David actually feels about him. Beforehand, I figured that David was lying about looking up to Xander and was just saying that as a part of his whole fake persona, but I’m starting to question if he was telling the truth even maybe a little bit. this could be talking about something else, though, like Xander’s importance to figuring out the mastermind or something like that.

at 2:40 it shows this string of letters and numbers along with ‘correct’ at the top and ‘incorrect’ at the bottom. the note it relates to, 13, has a character that also means correct/positive

Throughout, there are many references to literature and the such, but one of the few that I recognized which was mentioned a few times: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai (Speaking of, it’s an intensely interesting novel and I highly recommend checking it out and also researching some of the history behind the author)

Now, in the novel, the main character seems handsome and charismatic to others, but both he and the narrator of the beginning and end book describe him as inhuman, troubled, and disturbed. He is able to keep a facade when underneath, he feels intensely alienated from society and others. It does, honestly, remind me of David in some ways—people want to follow him because of his charisma, but in reality he is not who they think he is. I should probably leave this part short, since I could most likely write a whole thesis about No Longer Human, but there are a ton of parallels between Ōba Yōzō and David if you want to do more research into No Longer Human.

A few miscellaneous thoughts:

I have absolutely no clue what the various items at 2:56 relate to. My first idea was that certain items related to certain characters (Ex: the broken clock is eden’s, the hair clips, megaphone, and fan letters are David’s, and the portraits for the corresponding people) but I also think these items could all just relate to David in some way (If so, I find the materials for a noose and the serpent incredibly interesting)

It’s weird that Hu was included in the credits along with the other characters we might expect. I didn’t think David held much stock in their ‘friendship’ at all, but maybe it was more important than I originally thought?

I decided to not try and dissect the lyrics as I believe that would be better done by someone who has a better understanding of Japanese than I do

In total, I could find the pieces that relate to 1, 2, 7, 9, 12, and 15-21. I considered that the roman numerals could be the numbers in the description also, especially since note 10 mentions roman numerals, but I doubt it since there are numbers which double up as both normal and as roman numerals.

and last but not least, the morse code at the very end. It translates to:

“You still believed in me despite everything I’ve done. But that’s just fantasy, isn’t it? I simply chose to believe that you did. After all, I’m incapable of being someone without you.”

this took an hour to translate only for me to scroll down the comment section and see someone already had translated it :,)

ANYways this is really really interesting, even though it is very ambiguous. Is the speaker David? If so, who is he speaking to? If it is David, this leads me to believe that his “breakdown” might also be an act, and he might still truly care what other people think of him. It also brings up a lot of questions, like who is he speaking to??? fr i want to know. I just know this boy has Trauma and I want to Know It.

if you saw anything I missed or I made a mistake somewhere please tell me!! I wrote this from 1 to 4 am because Hyperfocus and i watched the video probably 5x over on .25 speed (not including repeating certain sections). I know there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t include, I probably didn’t because I wasn’t sure of the importance or I didn’t want to make this too long (failed on that goal but oh well), but if you have another perspective please share!

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

So I’m thinking about like. Elven subcultures. Because when you force people into molds of perfection and discard anyone you see as not fitting that people - especially young people - will be pissed as all fuck. And Elves don’t have social media like we do, so it wouldn’t even be commodified like subcultures now are.

Like, we all make jokes about how emo Tam is, but... what if that’s the point? What if he wears black, dyes his hair, gets angry and dark to separate himself from the light saturated society that was willing to leave his sister for dead just because she wasn’t perfect? Yeah, Elves ‘aren’t musical’ or whatever, but what about Dex, after he fixes Sophie’s iPod for her, getting curious about human music. Like, what if listening to human music becomes like an alt thing? What if people like, form bands with self made instruments that aren’t like the ones humans have because all they have to go off is sound?

What about art? I made a post a while ago about Linh being a street artist and Keefe being a surrealist, but what if they’re not the only ones? What about art movements as well, imperfect and flawed and messy, communicating issues everyone wants so much to cover up? What about messy clothes that would make nobles faint instead of the conservative cloaks and skirts and suits they’re all used to?

It really seems to me that the Elven world is very whitewashed as well. What about POC Elves reclaiming their own histories and cultures? What about new languages aside from just The Enlightened Language being rediscovered and learned or even made? What about people adopting forms of dress from Elven cultures long lost in what was either an unconcious or purposeful cultural cleansing?

Ofc, this would all be very underground. The Council is literally a dictatorship who control the media, education, everything. But people find ways. Someone sneaks a smuggled MP3 player from the Human world into Foxfire and some people get curious, get interested, and get deeper. People find ways to meet up and talk. Maybe that’s where the rebel organizations, Black Swan and Neverseen, find people to recruit? Like, how else do you find people both angry at the world around them and ready to rebel?

Idk. Reading about the growth of alt subcultures in Europe and America rn and I’m just very interested in subcultures in the Elven world. Even aside from alt ones which is what I’ve focused on here.

[rudjedet]

hi!

this is random question and idk if you want to answer it but i still wanted to try asking.

i read your post about not caring too much if your book gets published bc you love writing and it kind of hit close to home.

i love philosophy, i want to study it, get at least MA in it, but everyone keeps saying it's an useless degree since it doesn't guarantee a lucrative job prospects and breaking into academia is almost impossible. yet i can't imagine giving up on it.

i imagine same things are being said about your field as well. so, my question is, what are your thoughts about this topic of "useless work", do you yourself profit financially from working in the field of your interest?

The only money I make off Egyptology is what people currently throw at me on my kofi, which isn't much (though people have been exceedingly generous and I appreciate it every time). The only money I've made off of writing came from the two short stories I published with the only Dutch magazine that pays (and total proceeds were less than €100).

But here's the thing: useless degrees don't exist in my opinion. Even if you don't land a job in academia/philosophy, studying it will have developed you transferrable skills. The trick is knowing which ones apply for which other jobs and how to market those to job interviewers. Studying ancient history gives you skills that might land you a job in e.g. data analysis or statistics, fields that seem mutually exclusive with ancient history but aren't.

Won't lie though, it's hard. Because the great majority of people doesn't see past your degree, and our capitalist hellscape means most if not all of arts/humanities-adjacent degrees and "hobbies" are nearly impossible to make a living out of. In that sense, sure, some degrees are indeed borderline "useless". But that's not the fault of the degree.

For me, Egyptology felt as the only degree I even could finish. That might be my brain lying to me because I've all my life been told that I give up too quickly, but either way, I just couldn't imagine myself doing anything else. Same with writing. So I'm just going to bash my head into the wall and try to make money in different ways until... idk, something else happens. Publishing is still not an end goal to me, but that doesn't mean I don't wish I could make a sustainable career out of either Egyptology or writing. In my opinion, universal basic income so that people can pursue what they want rather than need is the very first step we need to take to move towards a better society. I don't necessarily need to be paid for either Egyptology or writing, but I wish I could pursue them without worrying how I'm going to pay the bills.

I think a large part of being successful in your own endeavour if you want to actually work in philosophy/academia is going to be determined by your plan de campagne. Knowing what you need to get a job in your field, knowing that the chances are slim, knowing what your backup plans are... That's all stuff that will help you. I wish I could say "just follow your dreams and you'll get there" but that's a privilege not many of us get. I hope you will get there though, and I believe in you. If a philosophy MA is something you want to pursue, please find a way to pursue it.

[defensivelee]

Is the world where Six Lives takes place a Dystopia? It gives the vibes.

ooh interesting question!! i think that if we took wikipedia's definition of a dystopia, "a society that is extremely bad or frightening," it really wouldn't fit bc most people are actually pretty chill with the way things are! this world also has some cool stuff our world doesn't have (rlly chill with sexuality, no homophobia/transphobia, good with accessibility for disabled people, far less of a reliance on cars in their cities), so i can't say i would even be disappointed to live there. any normal person generally only worries, on rare occasions, about the overlifer terrorists... but then, wouldn't you worry too?

there are some societal concepts, beliefs, and laws that we really would find dystopic in our own society, tho. in particular i think we would all be terrified of "snake's eye for an eye." like... a law that pretty much guarantees your rapist won't be prosecuted if they just say one specific sentence? awful.

smoking is also a practice viewed with quite a bit of sanctity, as the devils loved to do it. however, the devils don't suffer from the consequences... humans do (tho to less of a degree than humans in our world do). but, to preserve this sanctity, companies and advertisements and even some scientists will just...straight up lie! it's like the promotion of cigarettes as healthy all over again but in a world already more advanced than ours. you're just allowed to smoke anywhere. in addition to these ppl not giving a shit about their lungs, there's also really really bad air pollution specifically in new amsterdam bc they don't have ANY filters on their power plants and coal is their favorite thing EVER and they fucking LOVE cars (still far less than any place in our world, tho). and nobody cares! there's a bit of corporate laziness there mixed with the view that smoke in general is rlly sacred... a bit like incense, but that is usually considered a pretty conservative idea and a pretty stupid one anyway bc smoke from power plants is not the same as tobacco smoke!! idk, religious infighting or whatever.

anyway, you'll notice that most if not all of these seemingly archaic views are intrinsically religious, and it might also look a little dystopic to us when there is no religious freedom and every single law, every single decision relies on this one universal religion and always has. however... nobody really cares, bc they don't need religious freedom if they all share the same one. unless, ofc, you support the overlifers, and there is quite a sizable amount of people that do.

and that's a whole other can of worms. should people be allowed to worship the overlifers, if their doctrine relies on violence, fear, and the separation and/or genocide of people depending on what kingdom they are descended from? the argument could be made that it shouldn't matter what the overlifers believe, what should matter is the fact that if people wanted a choice, they would not have one. is that not dystopic, then? and yet, it's also understandable, bc the people in this world don't want such dangerous and hateful ideals in their society! i know crazy conservatives, who want me dead for my identity and make it perfectly clear that they do, make my skin crawl! and this detail in the story is not meant to have an easy solution.

so it would really depend on your idea of a dystopia! nobody really would call it that, even the overlifers themselves-- it's a perfectly fine society, what's missing from it is 1. the re-separation of the four kingdoms 2. more murder 3. an overlifer ruler and so on and so forth. the point is, due to this world's history and the same constant religion that has commanded humanity since the dawn of time, a lot of things that WE would view as problematic and dystopic... they do not! and is that not the case even in our own world with different cultures?

i think it's an interesting theme that i've really enjoyed exploring in the story so far. should we switch up tradition, and, more important to this world, religion if it harms people? i cannot answer this question for six lives... it's really all up to interpretation.

[maxellminidisc]

I think some white trans people have a hard time coming to terms with the whole asian fetishization as a form of gender expression thing because I guess sometimes it's a source of idk "comfort" in a very confusing time but like it's not remotely a good excuse let alone a source of much empathy from me. Cause like as a poc who enjoys anime and frankly a lot of east asian media, I get how being presented with the idea that different gender expression than what we're used to in American culture can be very eye opening for a young trans person or even someone well into adulthood who's just coming to terms with their identity as a trans person, but I'm also conscious and try to remain conscious that that gender presentation, the perceived room to play with gender in a different way than what we know is different for people across cultures and even though I grew up in the US I've been made to feel very hyper conscious and conflicted about my own gender, both assigned and not, because of the way my ethnic culture's ideas of gender are perceived by white people.

Like take comfort from the idea that the option to express your gender in ways outside our own cultural pressures and presets exists, sure, but again, be conscious that the PEOPLE (and frankly, characters) you're seeing are rooted in a completely different set of cultural influences, rules, and standards within those societies that effect their gender presentation. Many times it may look gnc to you but to someone else who's actively living this sort of gender presentation or ease of playing with it, it may not be gnc at all and you reducing it to how you feel as someone outside that culture may end up being emasculating or forcing masculinity on someone who sees themselves as completely masculine or as feminine in a context outside of your western standards of either identity. Unless someone or even the material you're viewing within these respective cultures personally or actually notes that what they're doing is gender non conforming or experimentally challenging gender norms within their own cultural norm, then like yeah respecting that and acknowledging that is fine, but like don't be weird about it!!

And like same applies to characters, which I find ludicrous that y'all try to divorce so staunchly from their respective cultural origins. Like anime for example is like 90% of the time based in Japan or worlds very obviously based on Japan, or in Japanese stories/folklore/history, but the excuse is always "I think equating real people with anime characters is ridiculous cause Japanese people dont actually look like that". Like nobody is saying they do but they clearly are writing and creating things thoroughly through their respective Japanese lense and thus so much of it feels so inheritly Japanese. Only time I see white people acknowledge the Japanese root of something is if the damn anime or manga is a fucking period piece in like the Edo period or something, which is ridiculous.

Then to take it further and base your own sexual desirability of this western gaze of thinking all things Asian are inherently gnc is even weirder and yes, more racist. You're basing your sexual desirability on a fetishized and eroticized form of racism, more specifically a lense that always tries to frame Asian bodies as something purely for the sexual and submissive and not wholly human. Asian media isn't trying to like purposefully sell Asian fetishization to you, it's simply operating through it's own lense, even the sexual shit it is producing isn't like selling Asian fetishization, it's just selling the sexual through the lense of its respected culture (like what is popular in the sexual fantasy there for example); the racism on your part comes from viewing it as someone not Asian and thinking that just because its Asian it's either inherently sexual or if it is something sexual in nature, feeling entitled to Asian bodies; both in their purpose to you as sexual objects and as fetishizing them as something desirable for you to look like for the way you shittly perceive these bodies as inheritly feminine or androgynous.

White people as a whole have a massive problem with fetishizing Asian people but it is like alarming as a trans poc to see white trans people as a whole kind of turn that on its head as a form of gender goals or to make themselves feel sexy or whatever and the fact that y'all dont see anything wrong with that is even wilder. There is absolutely a huge difference in acknowledging and even appreciating a different perspective on what masculinity and feminity can look like in a different cultural context and thinking that anything that isn't what YOU'RE used to being inheritly gnc as a result.

I do think it's important to note that framing this problem as a trans femme mainly issue IS shitty and undoubtedly transmisogynist in nature, especially given that I've seen PLENTY of white trans masces doing the exact same shit with very little pushback. Like the amount of trans men I've seen basing their androgyny on idols or anime characters they label as "f*mb*ys" or even calling any remotely twinky asian guy (or hell not even, I've seen yall misgender Asian men of all shapes and sizes) a f*mb*y or labeling him with usually unwarranted or derogatory labels for feminine men (ie fruity, queen, diva) is fucking vile. White trans people as a whole need to be holding each other and themselves accountable for this shit.

[forlix]

hi! I'm back 🐼 and don't apologize, please, everyone has their hard days and weeks (even years sometimes)! I just hope you are good now and everything worked out fine!

firstly, I'm a real person indeed! and yes you do remind me of him somehow, idk maybe is the bubbly vibe or how sweet you are to everyone? idk, it just gives off lix's vibes and STOP!, you are not undeserving of it! you deserve all the great things that come to you! (also I'm not always the mom friend per say, but I'll def hurt people who hurt my friends type of person 🫣 also, PLEASE! Minho is my bias, this is too much! 🤭 but I wouldn't mind being the Minho to your Felix 👀🫂)

secondly, I'm always happy when people talk about going to international relations, it's so exciting! I finished my course a while ago, but I never actually left, I love it so much! I always loved non-governmental organizations, but after my exchange program I fell in love for real with the whole concept of War&Peace, my thesis was actually regarding how multicultural countries can be a blessing and curse depending on how you manage them, in the end it was about how the multicultural situation affects society, focusing a lot on the internal conflicts before, during and after the whole thing, so i I analyzed the rising and fall of the country viewing the multicultural aspect. sorry I'm rambling, but I just love to talk about it! I loved the course so much and all the people it gave me thanks to it, I honestly have such great experience about it, even after I had one specialization, during an MBA and starting my literature studies I met and became friends with such amazing people doing that course for the first time. I hope you have great memories of it!

lastly, it wasn't really a conversation per say, bc I'm a bit shy with people idk or don't feel completely comfortable (unless they are mean, then I'm their personal nightmare if I want to), but I did ask you to add me to the spy x family au taglist, I think I commented after a while you had posted saying you were gonna write it, and you said you'd add me to the overall taglist, so yeah, that's all, wasn't an ACTUAL conversation, but you were so nice regardless, either way, I'm happy I found you and your tumblr, I hope you receive as much joy and happiness you give us (⁠｡⁠･⁠ω⁠･⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠♡

- 🐼

first of all, WAHH YOU'RE REAL! AND WAHH YOU'RE THE MINHO TO MY FELIX! application accepted with unbounding enthusiasm hehe LOOK it's us ily and i would hold you in the palm of my hand any day

sticking the rest under the cut bc i wrote u an essay (so NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR RAMBLING i can't hold anyone else to any standards in that regard i am the No. 1 perpetrator of that crime)

you are SOOOOOOOO COOL. oh my fucking god. i've always been curious about ngos and i would love some more of ur perspective on them - what about them did you love? and what do you recommend are the best ways to get involved? that's definitely a bucket list item for me once i find a cause i'm passionate enough about

and war and peace!!! oh my god!! in the least weird way possible my interest in ir has always centered around conflict, so we have that in common for sure! the most impactful classes of my life were about modern chinese history, about how china became the nation it is today and the role it's come to serve in the world over time, and american foreign policy, basically about how the u.s. found a new way to royally fuck everything up with every international conflict it got involved in. both were so interesting and changed my world view in irreversible ways. my specializations are 'east and south asia' and 'social development and human well being' btw

your thesis sounds INSANELY cool. on the note of multiculturalness i've been reflecting on the united states as a country and its citizens as a population a lot recently 1) because of biden's active promotion and enablement of israel's war crimes and 2) because i just came back from spending three months in east asia so there's been a lot of comparing and contrasting to do in terms of lifestyle, culture, society, etc. idk if it would be too much if u gave me the thesis statement or primary argument or maybe even the abstract of your thesis bc i'm so curious about your thoughts on this. but also totally TOTALLY okay if not!!! i feel like i'm overstepping just asking sorry i'm letting my ir nerd get the best of me

and AH. I THINK KNOW WHO YOU ARE 💡 and you're so so fine, bb, you will never receive any pressure from me to come off anon or interact with me in any shape or form that you're not absolutely comfortable with. "unless they're mean then i'm their personal nightmare" LMAOOO AS YOU FUCKING SHOULD THAT'S ON QUEEN BEHAVIOR!!!! make that two. if anyone is mean to you i will Find them and Hunt them like a timber wolf awoo. mark my words

i'm the one who should be happy that the universe brought you to me, lovely! thank you for being you, as always; i'm reciprocating every ounce of your warmth and light in your direction!

[queenofzan]

i really don’t understand why people are so willing and apparently eager to believe people in the past found large age gaps and child marriages acceptable. like, i understand we have an urge to feel better and smarter than people in the past, but humans are basically the same now as we have been for thousands and thousands of years.

historically, it was most common for teenagers to marry other teenagers. and honestly most of the time that was viewed pretty much the same as modern teens getting married right out of high/secondary school, ie, as a rash and hasty decision that they would probably come to regret (that might work out. maybe. if they were lucky.)

“but ani, what about political marriages in europe? we know they were getting fourteen-year-olds married!” first of all, that was a fairly uncommon thing when it did happen. most of the political marriages involving quite young people or large age gaps were in fact betrothal or marriage contracts for years before they were actual marriages. it was also afaik usual practice to let these marriages remain unconsummated for years, until both parties were of an age for it to be appropriate instead of creepy. (there was also more than one case of a political arrangement being imperiled by the failure to consummate a marriage that had been in place for years.)

like, when anything remotely resembling young teens being married to adults for political reasons happened, it was a: considered weird by most people b: given some leeway to the child participant to at least wait until they were closer to adulthood (which was usually somewhere around 16-20, not 13. being old enough to get a job and being old enough to get married were not necessarily the same thing.)

“oh but what about in [foreign country], i’m sure they did it” i bet you $1000 that any examples you could find are either racist propaganda or an outlier scenario!

the first ~20 years of human life have been pretty much the same for as long as we’ve existed, in terms of developmental milestones. if you think it would be weird and inappropriate for a 14 year old to marry a 35 year old, so would most other humans in history. 

like, i’m not saying abuse and rape and child sex abuse didn’t happen historically. obviously they did, just like they happen today. but it wasn’t some kind of wide-spread thing everyone accepted in most societies. it is in fact a sign a society is deeply sick when such things are tolerated and not looked at with a critical and watchful eye, and plenty of rules to make sure any children involved are kept protected by the standards of that society (which are often not that different from yours).

idk man it’s just really weird to see people arguing with historians about medieval people finding a grown-ass man having sex with a 16-year-old inappropriate like “oh they wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with it” buddy,

do you see what’s wrong with it???

[hergan416]

OH RIGHT

Just want to like. Throw a bit of journal article this way.

This method of reference -- in which sexuality and dirtiness interlock -- extended beyond the overtly sexual into whole regions and social classes. Leonore Davidoff has shown that Victorian reform efforts equated the lower classes with the lower realms of the body: "Victorians visualized the 'Nether Regions' of society which, by their definition, were inhabited by the criminal classes, paupers, beggars, and work-shy as 'the stagnant pools of moral filth' comprised of the 'effluvia of our wretched cities.'"43 -Sigel, Lisa Z. “Name Your Pleasure: The Transformation of Sexual Language in Nineteenth-Century British Pornography.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, no. 4 (2000): 395–419. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704910.

THIS.

This was what made me start thinking about how I can't just look up how Victorians think about things and decide it applies to the MTP protags.

I cannot imagine Liam agreeing with an OUNCE of that. Nor anyone else in his group. Holmes either.

It might be worth it to look into the source being quoted here...here's the citation from footnote 43:

43. Leonore Davidoff, "Class and Gender in Victorian England: The Diaries of Arthur J. Munby and Hannah Cullwick," Feminist Studies 5 (1979), 89. See also, Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Imperial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 152-58.

I haven't even finished reading this article, so I haven't read that one. Maybe I go and find that it's not nearly as idk.... clear cut as this journal article makes it sound? I am not a feminist studies student or a historian.

But I'm also not doing a college paper. I tried to look up whether or not I could say "frig his ass" since apparently Victorians didn't think it was possible for another man to fuck an ass because apparently fuck was reserved for heterosexual things at that point and then ended up on an ENTIRE tangent (which admittedly has quoted enough Victorian-era porn that I have learned that anal intercourse was always buggery regardless of whether it was same sex or not... so I guess that's a thing. Interestingly... the context in which this came up was with a woman calling someone who couldn't bugger her like she'd asked a buggerer in roleplay? I think? The author was not doing much to provide context about that part of it, the concern was the crassness of the language compared to the language a hundred years before). ANYWAY my point is that this wasn't SUPPOSED to be something I was going to go down the rabbit hole on and I ABSOLUTELY am going to. But I've only so far got my foot in the door, and I'm just here to say that this is what broke me in terms of "oh they're Victorians they do what Victorians do" even though the WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF THE SHOW IS THAT THEY ARE FIGHTING AGAINST THAT SHIT THE VICTORIANS GOT BACKWARDS. HOW DID I MISS THAT?

And obviously it's possible they might still say... think human nether regions were dirty but that this comparison should not be applied to the lower classes... but at this point why would I do that? Why would I,

a porn author,

write that into my work when this VERY convenient thing has been dropped in my lap.

[tiktaaliker]

i think about "history offers preservation" a lot and one of the things that occurred to me is that in a lot of fics the adults are going "how DARE Arceus put a fifteen-year-old in charge of fighting dangerous Pokemon and saving the world!!" but like in this fic it's just a wild Pokemon that Arceus abducted, not an actual kid (tho idk how old rei is in human years, i know they took the form of a teen but for all i know that's just bc a small child would be noticed and commented on + an adult would be expected to be able to read/have a job/know a Lot about human society), so technically reactions to the situation might be different when ppl find out about rei? And Arceus IS Pokemon God with authority over all Pokemon, so it's like. Pokemon (under a human) got hisui into this situation, so another Pokemon (w other Pokemon) can solve the problem?

oh yeah for sure, I've been thinking it would be a bit of a mixed bag in terms of how people react? like, someone who's gotten close to rei/who knows them more personally is gonna be taking the reveal a LOT differently than like. some random construction corps member they never spoke to or even the pokemon league trainers in the future. but even then when people ARE concerned about the situation post reveal I think it would be a lot less "this teenager was given too much responsibility for one kid" and more "holy shit why is arceus tormenting this ditto in particular." and also a bit of the responsibility thing but to a lesser extent. OR one other thing I've been thinking about is that... in the Pokemon universe it almost feels normalized for kids to get into some PRETTY dangerous situations. like in every game a kid ends up fistfighting a mob boss or cultist leader or something like that??? kinda wack but would make sense if age isn't like... considered as much in terms of risk factor for kids on their pokemon journeys as long as they have a strong party with them. of course it would probably be different in hisui since practically NOBODY has a full competitive team but in the modern day it's just... not QUITE as unheard of for younger teens to get involved in world saving.

also yeah I honestly haven't decided what I want ditto rei's actual age equivalent to be but I've been writing history offers under the assumption that rei disguising as a teen would make it WAY easier for them to slip by the radar. like for one, there are kids probably just passing thru jubilife for their journeys and then moving on- so the locals won't be able to tell the difference if rei transforms into them. people are also prob gonna be WAY more likely to accept that rei is just some weird kid on their journey if they're a teen and do something strange, while like you said a very young kid would raise questions and an adult would draw too much attention if rei can't fit in well

[dirhwangdaseul-archived]

idk how cause im dumb but i do believe that there's like a certain responsibility from audiences nowadays to lead on how do people engage with art and entertainment like i don't have the words for it but living in a country that has shaped education very visibly and obviously to create engineers for the multiple national and mostly international industries that find cheap labor here, it has actually meant that the education drowns arts and reduces ofc any interest in them since parents and teachers themselves emphasize how little any activity that isn't about being "functional" in society will give people a chance to live, like i always remember that growing up, to look for that which is useful to eat and thus live, the image of the artist as some poor wanderer is so ingrained here that white mexicans actually do copy that look as they try poverty like a new skin (there's like a lot of racist caricatures they try to emulate hand in hand with that... god), and then when you consider how many people drop out by the time high school arrives? not even that like as far as a i remember till a few years back only secondary school (american junior high school) was mandatory, but theres already issues with parents not taking their kids to primary because the kids need to work for a living, so yay, already capitalist life being your teacher and telling you to earn your fucking life, how fun, but back to the school system, most of it only cares about chemistry, physics, maths, the practical the functional, with those subjects usually having a laid out understanding of the processes, but just so barely, very little understanding of the different intelligences of kids since kids are all expected to understand everything equally with the same methods at the same time while the rest of subjects like geography or civil education or history are treated as memory games without any humane understanding of the reasons for so much data to be important to remember, like no attention towards the ideas that shape people as people and not tools, so like idk i do think certain peoples if not all of us face a challenge in getting people to literally behave humanely because there are systems that have already ate the very souls of people that are part of the society they experience! it's like that for me really, it feels like everytime i engage someone in méxico and they find kindness before looking at me like im the next freak looking to take advantage of them it's a win.... and i know all of this sounds like nonsense but it's how i lived the school system so idk