#or at least borderline ableism

[i-dont-even-noa]

Why are we at a point where people are praised for not allowing families to sit together on planes. Why are we elevating people who would rather make people miserable than having the slightest bit of compassion. Why is it considered the right thing to do to cause distress and discomfort and hurt?

This is something that keeps coming up on my news feed, and every single time I feel a little less safe. I used to have to take planes several times a year to travel to and from my home town, and every time I would be petrified that I would be stuck in a wrong seat or separated from my mother. I was terrified that because someone was willing to pay more money than I could, I would have a panic attack or an episode mid flight, which would at the very best be humiliating, at the worst, physically damaging to me or another passenger. I can only imagine a child in the same situation- autistic or not- in a loud, enclosed space tens of thousands of feet in the air, forced to sit with a stranger, because some TikTok influencer publicly berated their parents for something they likely couldn't control. For asking for some basic sympathy, some human decency.

[mirror-imaged]

i think i should be allowed to kill anybody who says they believe everybody with cluster b disorders are abusive hahahahahahaha

[earthstellar]

Currently combing through the Transformers Exodus novel, as I often do.

Some notes, by which I mean, this is going to be long:

Using an Abandoned Hydraulic Mining Facility as a Battle Arena: This Sort Of Happened in Real Life -- Know Your Labour History

The building in Kaon that is used by Megatron for gladiatorial battle is an abandoned hydraulics works, and on the page prior to this it refers to extremely deep slag pits, which indicates this hydraulics facility was almost certainly used for mining. The location is given specifically as "to the south of Kaon's centre".

This makes me wonder if the now-abandoned Orgreave Coking Plant may have been some inspiration to someone somewhere in building the backstory; A coking plant uses massive amounts of hydraulic machinery and components, and the location of this specific facility is to the south of the centre of Rotherham.

Plenty of Brits work on Transformers, and I wonder if any English people who may have been on the team for developing the Aligned Continuity bible/character backstories might have thought of Orgreave as some kind of inspiration.

It's worth noting Orgreave Coking Plant was famously the site of a huge labour dispute which turned into a borderline Battle of Harlan situation, called the Battle of Orgreave in 1984.

Which makes it excellent potential inspiration, both visually and in terms of historical significance in union/labour and working class struggle against the oppressive upper class- A significant theme in Transformers.

Nearby, there is also the abandoned Orgreave Colliery, and while all abandoned collieries would fit the mechanical and dark, heavy design of Kaon, Tarn (the location, not the bot) and so on, it's still worth pointing out that Orgreave has plenty of industrial ghosts (abandoned industrial facilities).

That having been said, hydraulic mining works could also refer to actual hydraulic mining methods rather than just any hydraulic machinery present, which would also explain the large pits that Orion Pax sees at the site in Kaon, and would add another level of horror: Using fluids to carry out this type of mining would be a huge hazard to bots. I'd imagine rusting was a common problem, not to mention gradual armour/frame wear, increased fall/slip hazards for most frame types, etc.

CONTENT WARNING: Here's where some medical conjecture begins, you might want to skip this section if you're sensitive to medical discussions! There is no detailed comparison to any particular real world cases in this segment, however there is brief mention of ableism in a fictional context.

This would also account for the description of optics and audials needing more frequent repair even prior to suffering any gladiatorial damage--

--In some frame types, these components/sensory systems may be more exposed to the environmental pollution as mentioned in the text, but also, would be sensitive to abrasive damage from spray back/high pressure soil/stone/crystal like particulate materials present in Cybertron's surface and sub-surface layers acting essentially as sand paper against their bodies as they worked in any such hydraulic mining sites.

This is the type of shit Kaonite workers in these mining facilities were likely exposed to on a regular basis, because they are Cybertronians and could physically tolerate this kind of thing without dying-- At least, not right away.

A combination of repeated extreme wear, chronic overwork, likely poor medical resources, and complicating factors like questionable access to healthy fuels etc. would have inevitably resulted in a generally very unwell population with high workplace casualty rates.

This was the type of life most low class/caste heavy labour designated frame types were assigned to, under the Functionist system.

I've talked about my headcanons re: hearing disabled Megatron before, and it's kind of interesting to see that canonically here, that's very much possible. Audial damage from mining, audial damage from the fighter's ring.

But in general, the Kaonite population is seriously at risk, especially medically. Same deal with other low class/caste designated regions across Cybertron. Much like many Appalachian mining populations, where COPD is as common as flies in summer, the chronically poor health of this population would be staggering in comparison to better-off polities like Iacon.

Rust in their optics, rotting their optical components from within, likely leaving many workers sightless--

--At which point they were probably deemed "useless" under the ableist Functionist system, as they would then likely be unable to work their prior jobs or would only be able to work in limited or different capacities; Any system that determines worth by perceived functionality is inherently ableist, and Primus knows there were almost certainly no disability accommodations provided or available potential repairs/treatments in places like Kaon on Cybertron.

As a result, these newly disabled bots were likely left unemployed and therefore without any income source for Shanix, therefore left to their deaths via fuel deprivation etc.--

--Unless they fell in with mob-controlled sources of materials or aid, as a last resort...

Apparently Megatron Displaced The Local Kaonite Mafia: Pit Bosses Could Be Mob Bosses Too

This is also a real thing, as a lot of productive industrial facilities (not just mining, but textiles etc.) were often tied into in local black market raw material goods and organised crime shit, owing to less than moral site owners and company bosses. (At least in the USA, it may have varied in other countries or from region to region.)

This is because if you have a productive facility, you can make a fuckload of money bypassing any common sense safety rules or proper waste/product handling or disposal protocols etc. and skip the whole regulated market and just go right to making a fuckzillion moneys from whoever will buy this shit illegally.

(This is part of why a lot of Appalachia is polluted to hell and back-- Even at the time, a lot of these industrial works and companies knew perfectly well that dumping coal ash and other horrible shit into every single river and creek available was a bad idea. They did it anyway. Why? It saved money overall and they didn't have to pay for more long distance drivers to reach actual approved waste sites etc.

For those of you who may not be familiar with this USA specific shit, let me introduce you to the concept of a Superfund Site. It's depressing. Most are former industrial illegal waste dumping sites. These places are so fucked up that even the American Government was forced to acknowledge how bad it is. Some of them are straight up literal nuclear waste sites.)

This has been a huge problem in American industrial history, because America can turn out some very, very productive sites using very, very unsafe and cruel means to force workers to work. Paying in scrip etc. were all methods to ensure a workforce could not leave. And so on.

Not to mention the horrendous impact on Native populations, the poor in general, immigrants in general, etc. who were all subject to the worst possible treatment throughout.

And there are many modern examples too-- Not just in the USA, but in many places around the world, such as Peru. Note that capitalism is often the facilitator of mistreatment, pollution, etc. and serves as the motivating factor for much of this fuckery worldwide. This also includes factors like western companies wanting to appear more "green", so they simply go abroad to abuse people in other nations and exploit their labour and raw labour products instead.

Capitalism is the root problem, on Earth and evidently, likely on Cybertron as well.

Can you imagine the amount of Shanix these fucking Kaonite mob bosses were making, possibly from selling raw materials and energon crystals mined in Kaon to other polities with fewer natural resources, arranging illicit under the table deals with large energy distributors etc. in other regions? Depriving Kaon of its own natural goods and stealing the near-entirety of their labour, constantly, endlessly?

(If this all reminds you a bit of Marx's Theory of Alienation, you are correct.)

Much of Kaon is, essentially, a Superfund Site. Dangerous industrial waste, materials, and abandoned facilities, all affecting the population in all sorts of ways into perpetuity even long after one industry dies and another rises-- Or a new industry never comes along, and you end up with even worse off sections of an already brutally deprived area, living in the remnants of an equally hellish past that was just marginally better enough to make some bots yearn for the good old days of having a job to be worked to death at.

If this is relatable or frustrating to you, you are correct. These are all real world problems. It's easy to relate to the plight of the Kaonites-- Megatron, at this time, is still largely a sympathetic figure to many.

Because of course, even from the outside, it is clear that this degree of suffering cannot be sustained. Even Orion Pax recognises this, despite his own total lack of exposure and lack of class awareness at the time in which he initially starts speaking with Megatron.

Anyway. Briefly back to our real world example, because it's important here:

All of this capitalist corruption is another example of systemic level rot; A lot of the time regulators knew that facilities were engaging in illegal dumping and worker rights abuses etc. but couldn't do anything about it due to a lack of federal involvement and lack of means or resources to raise a larger case or investigation on the scale that would be needed.

And of course, some regulators and investigators were paid off. Sigh.

It's genuinely impressive that Megatron was able to run off an industrial crime syndicate, because that shit goes very deep and has lots of tendrils that tie into pretty much everything else going on in a given area, especially in towns or regions where only one or two industries make up the entirety of everything.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Megatron gained such a large following so quickly.

Nobody else in Cybertron was willing or able to acknowledge (let alone try to address) the horrible abuses going on in Kaon.

Endless, brutal labour, often resulting in horrible deaths. No reward for any of their work, with much of their meagre pay going to the mob and likely to companies based in other polities around Cybertron, so none of the materials or money ever stayed local. No care was put into their living conditions or standard of living, with most bots being used up and worn down with nothing to show for it but the industrial hell that consumed their own region.

And by getting the organised crime rings out of the local industries and community, by turning this abandoned facility into a gladiatorial ring, that provided both a more personally rewarding use of their physical skills developed through hard manual labour and gives an opportunity to gain legitimate funds and potentially fame-- Granting a social status previously completely unattainable to Kaonites, while clearly being built up on the legacy of all of their prior labour.

No wonder the appeal to follow Megatron was so strong, even in the early days.

Not even Primus helped these people, none of the Primes helped these people--- But Megatron did.

And that is powerful, to be liberated by one of your own, someone you know truly understands the difficulty and suffering and misery of a cruel, unending grind.

All that most of these bots could ever look forward to previously was dying in a hopefully not-as-painful way.

Now, there is potential for a genuinely tangibly better future, quite possibly for the first time in Kaon's history. Certainly for the first time within living memory.

Megatron turned an immiserated local population with no hope and no prospects beyond being worked to death into up-and-coming athletic stars with a burgeoning sports industry, using their local culture and previously disparaged frame types to prove the inherent wrongness of the class/caste system to a literal mass audience.

Megatron essentially took waste from the Cybertronian equivalent of colliery spoil tips and used it to forcibly create some kind of real hope and better future for every Kaonite, both individually and gradually on a larger regional scale, while living under an oppressive system that was just as likely to kill him in the same way as it had been killing everyone else around him his entire existence.

Megatron turned an industrial hell into a revolutionary city-state.

And he started local, he started with the injustices closest to him, what was visible rot to him in the environment he grew up in. Start small, strategize, your morals are your fuel-- In part because they keep stealing the fuel we mine. Does that seem fair? Does that seem just? What sense does it make, to have a system in which your most important workers are kept deprived and struggling into perpetuity?

He is the perfect Cybertronian revolutionary, he is the figurehead the people of Kaon needed, and his words were heard planet-wide from an arena he facilitated the building of himself, that he reclaimed from decay and loss.

From the bare frame structure of an abandoned mining pit, Megatron spoke words that inspired the downtrodden and lifted up countless impoverished populations through solidarity, the collective power of the working class, the low caste bots, the low class frame types.

The people that were previously discarded, were now using their means and their frames for their own purposes, gradually weakening the grip of the Council, gradually proving to more and more bots that this system is broken and this world can be better and we deserve better, and by any means, we will obtain better. We will make it better, with or without your permission.

No wonder Megatron became so powerful, so quickly.

He appealed perfectly to his people and others in similar living conditions, he articulated perfectly the flaws in oppressive Cybertronian society, he showed that different frame types can and do have multiple uses beyond the classist interpretation of their build schematics--

--All Megatron did, fundamentally, was care.

He cared about what was happening around him, he did not buy into the idea that life has to be miserable and this is the way things are and it can never change or get better, he saw and lived the awful conditions and suffered discrimination and understood that working together for each other would improve things for all.

And he acted on this understanding. There is always someone who is first to act, because there must be.

And Megatron does not act in half-measures.

I like that they mention him getting rid of the crime syndicates, here; It gives you a good idea of his morality pre-war.

It would have been easy to collaborate with these crime syndicates for some time, to secure funds for a new gladiatorial ring.

But instead, he took out the crime syndicates entirely and opted to build his arena inside an abandoned facility.

No capitulation to capital.

No money was exchanged, not a single Shanix, no deals made. No fucking around. This is Kaon, and you are no longer powerful here.

Megatron is increasingly powerful, however, because he embodied to the people the collective power of the people; He reflected themselves and their experiences back at them. But actions like this also played a large part in gaining that trust, in proving his skills and worth as a revolutionary and potential leader. It's not enough to be like everyone else. You have to prove you're not just another asshole looking to exploit everyone for influence or other personal benefit.

If you want a collective movement, it has to be about the collective. And for Megatron, it very much was. And things like this helped him prove that from very early on.

The Council and the mobs effectively have no authority anymore; They are losing control. Megatron, very quickly, becomes the accepted authority. Kaon becomes a freed city-state, it escapes the grasp of Functionism.

Standing up to one crime syndicate may not seem significant in the grander scheme of things, knowing how things occur in the story from this point onward.

But it is hugely significant-- It is a very important thing to highlight.

Because it is "smaller" things like this which are actually massively important and impactful.

And each "smaller" thing built up, and improved things for people to the point where Kaon could function entirely independently with a better off population of previously severely oppressed peoples.

Every "smaller" thing counts. Every "smaller" thing is the entire world to someone, or to a lot of someones.

How many lives were saved and debts erased, when Megatron took out this one crime syndicate?

How immediately did that improve a lot of lives, how quickly did that endear those people to him, to his ideology, to his plans for their collective future? How fast did they start listening, when he started speaking?

This is how revolution happens.

--

Anyway, thank you as always if you read any of this-- I know this got very long and it is nearly 2 AM now where I'm at, so it may have lost a bit of coherency here and there.

tl;dr labour history is important, fuck capitalism (this includes fictional capitalism), and intersectional solidarity is key to collective survival in general but especially among the working class and all groups subject to systemic oppression/discrimination in various forms

[kittydragondraws]

This Fandom is Weirdly Misogynistic and Ableist

Yeah great title there bud.

So originally this was going to be a half-baked rant about how people disrespect V, but the more I brainstormed that I came to realize. This fandom in general has a problem with misogyny and even ableism towards not just V, but Uzi as well. Heck, I would almost say Uzi moreso.

When it comes to personality butchering, I'd say V gets it worse. The number of times I've seen people make her sound like some petty, vengeful ex makes me want to rip my laptop screen off its hinges.

And most of the reason they do this, episode 4.

When Uzi and V are together in the cabin, V tells Uzi that it's better to stay distant because she'll have to kill Uzi next. Afterwards saying that N's made friends with rocks before, and that he'd move on from her death just fine.

Now, I honestly love this scene. It's a moment where Uzi and V get to be together and V gets to show her true colors without having to hide them from N. She expresses her desire to kill Uzi, because she believes it'll keep N safe, and tells her about the rock friends to make her feel like she's just some cheap novelty to N. This scene is great.

Yet apparently, some people looked at this scene and saw it as V being jealous of Uzi's relationship with N and wanting to kill her over it.

Now I just have to ask... why. This scene is so easy to understand when you just sit and think about it, so why did so many people default to it being a ship thing?

Maybe because she's just a pantless whore who exists just for people to thirst over. At least, that's what Reddit bros and Discord trolls would have you believe.

Now, I do feel it's a bit stupid to look at an unpopular female character and say "well you'd like her if they were a guy", but with V I have a feeling that's exactly the case.

V's not fan service, she's not a hoe or some crazy ex. She's just trying to keep herself from losing one of the few sane constants in her crazy, messed-up life.

But of course, she can't be an intelligent or deep character, she's just a petty woman upset at Uzi for stealing her man and who needs to put on some pants.

Now Uzi, I'd have to say her treatment is worse. Not just because it's the same sexist bullshit V has to put up with, but because she's neurodivergent.

Okay, that was a lie, she's not canonically neurodivergent. But she does have a lot of traits of a neurodivergent person. Being a social outcast, thought of as weird because of her interests and behavior.

Most people who headcanon Uzi as neurodivergent seem to agree that she could have autism, ADHD, or BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), and I just wanna talk a bit more about her unofficial BPD diagnosis because I think that's the most fascinating out of the three.

In this image I highlighted some symptoms that feel very similar to personality traits Uzi has. Like, it's so similar it almost feels weird to say Uzi having BPD isn't canon.

Now I know what you're going to say, "But Kitty this is just people's headcanons."

And you know what? Fair honestly. But even if Uzi doesn't have autism, ADHD, or BPD, she almost definitely has some form of trauma and you'd be hard-pressed to try to argue with me she's neurotypical.

Uzi's not a pick me, she's a traumatized, possibly neurodivergent, girl trying to hold onto the first friend she's ever made.

Or hey? Maybe she should just suck it up and learn to take care of herself.

Honestly, this post is just a TLDR version of this.

[shizunitis]

old man yells at cloud: shen qingqiu and the fandom

cw: discussions of homophobia, abuse & ableism

this was not supposed to get this long, or this disorganised. there’s also a lot of profanity because i am who i am. i half-apologise. annoyed/-ing yapping continues under the cut. i’ll reward u at the end with something i promise

look. listen. hear me out

i agree that shen “yuan” qingqiu is oblivious and it’s funny to see him panic and scramble for a foothold in the insane world of pidw, but some of you honestly sound like you think he should be drawn and quartered for having trauma.

y’all safely out of the closet, loved, accepted and supported since the womb? is that it? you’ve never hurt someone by believing lies purposely fed to you by “the system”? lies that, when questioned, get you punished or shunned? you’ve never been guilty? you’ve never been scared? you’ve never had to hide a part of yourself to be accepted? you’ve never been frustrated by your loved ones’ insistence that “they know better”?

“mxtx wrote a novel where the internet troll gets his comeuppance for bullying the poor author” cannot coexist with “abuse/pain/unjust punishment cannot give birth to a healthy society”. either you want shen yuan broken and made into something else more palatable to you, or you want him to be free to dote on and protect binghe and heal. it is clear what the story chose to do.

there’s a whole ass novel out here that’s basically screaming “be compassionate! be kind! be vulnerable! accept others as they come! solipsism is a bullshit thought experiment and not some grand theory about the nature of the universe!” and yet you’ve somehow, as if hungry for blood, focused solely on the shortcomings of a lost, inexperienced young man trying to make the best of his situation while being coerced by an omniscient, omnipotent, asshole of a god.

there is no clearer allegory in modern media about the destructive influence of coercion, brainwashing, and thought policing, than the one presented in svsss. and yet! here i fucking am, coffee-less, reading with my own two eyes corpsezun-cold ass takes on the “proper” ways of navigating self-discovery.

i hate having to be the one to tell someone to touch grass, so i’ll just urge you to read something else, something literal and educational about the struggles of queer/disabled/vulnerable people in unkind societies (all of them) and outright hostile ones (most of them). watch documentaries, seek out the elders of your communities, think back on your own unpleasant experiences, speak with people you don’t agree with and approach conversations with curiosity. lurk in fandoms before you post.

this is something you’ve internalised: that a queer person must be pure of mind and spirit to expect compassion. that a vulnerable person you deem weak must not be listened to since clearly, someone else knows better. that someone who makes a mistake/misunderstands something should be shunned, or at the very least berated in spite of having already faced the consequences of their actions.

y’all don’t have to love everyone to be kind to them and understand them. and honestly trying to “punish” a repressed queer man for how he’s choosing to survive in a hostile environment by spouting borderline-cruel bullshit about his thoughts that never leave his brain just tells me that you have done close to no self-assessment and are liable to hurt people by accidentally saying some horrendous shit you don’t even realise is painful to hear.

as you have done, and keep doing, especially when seriously and without a moment of reflection you post non-jokey “haha shen yuan is stupid and oblivious of course that happened. every friend he has trying to assert control over his choices is a just and reparative consequence of his stupid pea-brained attempt to survive. the system was good actually.”

i fucking love making ‘liu qingge was a victim’/‘lmao bingy is horny gripping shizun connect the dots’/‘shizun cannot be trusted outside for more than half an hour’/‘lmao ballad of bingqiu’ jokes because yeah! that happens! you get people who crush on you! people sometimes get infatuated with you! sometimes people get very invested in your life! sometimes people worry and care even if you don’t realise it!and it is somewhat comical in hindsight, a bit endearing, a lot bewildering, but ultimately mundane and entirely human!

until it actually starts affecting you in real ways. until people try to corral your movements because they “can’t trust you to be safe” without listening to you, a grown ass adult who clearly knows something they don’t. until your own mistakes come to bite you in the ass and, when you’ve fucking fixed it, you get berated and judged for it because others’ self-righteousness takes precedence.

good people learn and change and take responsibility for hurting those around them. they allow those who have erred to find a better path forward. they act with compassion and respect for even the most undesirable of their peers.

there are many messages in svsss that you can learn from. while it falls short in some aspects (naturally, by virtue of being written by a high-schooler), it does not fail in presenting a human perspective on fucked-up circumstances and asking you to understand and empathise.

characters are there to hold up a mirror for you. it’s a safe, consequence-free opportunity to look inwards and decide if you’re okay, or if some things might need addressing.

fandom is a playpen and you get to do whatever you want forever to the dolls. but your playmates are real people who, in some cases, are susceptible to your influence, and will be hurt by how you choose to present your commentary. when they leave the sandbox and see the distorted reflection of your arguments come alive in the real world, they will then internalise it, just as you have.

and then i’ll have to read it and it’s, frankly, depressing to see what my Not Homophobic, Very Woke (lie) high-school classmates would say all over again. is that what you want? to be likened to a 15 year-old eastern european boy? really?

obviously i’m not talking about jokes, bits, comedies, haha hehe’s, or fanfic depictions that i may not agree with from a storytelling standpoint.

i’m not the mayor of who-gets-to-talk-ville, but i’ve lived all my life in a deeply homophobic, racist, ableist and economically fucked country of former soviet influence and it just, like, annoys me to see the same sentiments in these kinds of spaces coming from inexperienced/young people who just don’t realise the impact of their own ignorance. i hope i’ve made this clear even if i sound like a finger-wagging dirty-mouthed grandpa yelling at the kids on my lawn.

fuck i’m so tired

anyway. here’s the reward:

ah… that makes me feel so much better. <3

[genderkoolaid]

For the experiences with exorsexism: I can't change my gender marker to X because I risk not being able to receive my SSI payments or at least having a harder time getting them because of the way Social Security handles gender markers. That's on top of just the simple risk of being discriminated against by them for being nonbinary+disabled (and especially disabled in part by mental illness).

It's always the disability benefits. Can't get married, can't save money even if I was receiving enough to save, can't receive an actually survivable let alone liveable amount of benefits, can't expect the system not to be borderline genocidal but because I'm being given anything at all asking for decency is "entitlement", can't change my gender marker to be accurate.

Oh, and if even the safe states become too dangerous for trans people in the US, my partner and I can't ever emigrate to a safer country because our autism diagnoses alone would bar us entry, let alone being on benefits. That's more of a general ableism/transphobia intersection but like... we could die because of it, so worth mentioning.

Anonymous asked: When having an “X” gender marker, insurance loves to deny coverage on any “male exclusive” OR “female exclusive” healthcare, including pap smears, prostate exams, even mammograms. No matter what your body has, insurance companies seem to believe non-binary means that you no longer have genitals, hormones, or breast tissue.

Grouping these two together since they mention the same issue; its very emblematic of how we approach trans inclusion that we have started allowing people to be legally X on paper, but we haven't actually done any work to change our systems to recognize that these people Have Body Parts and Can Be Disabled

Thank you for sharing.

[bonefall]

elder bones, what made you want to turn the politics of warriors into a story of anti-fascism? or, at least a part of the story is.

A mix of family and friends I've lost to radicalization + personal experience with the alt-right pipeline after a painful religious deconversion + frustration with how I feel parts of canon's messaging fall into authoritarian talking points

WC as a series is pro-xenophobia and even, sometimes, dips into outright eugenics. I don't know if the books contributed to where I ended up, but I do know that they were in my head a lot in a time I was vulnerable. The way that it treats foreigners and outsiders was particularly painful, especially the Tribe.

Over and over again, we see a pattern in the series where the Clan cats are superior to other cultures, and all their internal problems are caused by Born Evil cats or Barbarous Foreigners. Groups that are peaceful (Tribe) are borderline incompetent, needing to be saved over and over. Culturally, Clan cats are framed as superior by the narrative, with a way of life that is fragile and must be protected against outside threats. Their God is infallible, even when we see it fuck up and act maliciously over and over, but you're meant to ignore that.

Scourge shows up in the last book of TPB, one-shots Tigerstar, and presents BloodClan as love-and-friendship-hating foreigners that pose an existential threat to the Clans. A common enemy to unite against, who will destroy your culture, your people, if not stopped. In a final effort, Firestar rejects his kittypet roots once and for all and embraces his destiny. The Clans win in the end because of their superior religion and Clan bonds, and then... the alliance falls apart immediately, returning to petty squabbles because they don't have a supreme force to fight against.

The enemy is both strong and weak. Fear of difference. Action for action's sake.

The 'lazy' and disabled are treated like burdens who need to find something 'useful' to give their society, with bigotry towards them not challenged, but 'corrected.' "Actually they're NOT useless, they help do X thing sometimes!" You could argue that Jaypaw is displaying internalized ableism when he's insulting Longtail and Brightheart, and that's a fun reading, but that's not called out in the text or even really addressed.

Certainly wasn't my takeaway, when I was young and stupid and in a bad environment. So in my own head, I'm not putting themes in it that weren't there before; I'm subverting what I feel is written on the page.

(intentional or not, mind you. I don't think the writers are pro-authoritarian, I think writing xenofiction brings out subconscious biases. You write the world the way you think it "naturally" is, and that can be revealing.)

WC says that its villains were born with a 'darkness' inside of them, and with their deaths, "peace" (a normal amount of killing each other over rocks) can be restored. And I'm saying, instead, the darkness is in Clan culture itself.

So, that culture needs to change. Just like it has in the past, just like it will in the future, as is the nature of a living culture. Until then, the set of ideas they call "Thistle Law" is a sickness, a weed, and it needs to be cleared away with radical ideas.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Okay but y'know who would've been the perfect character to use as a secondary foil to Dabi in addition to Shouto being the first instead of Bird Bitch?Momo.Their upbringings are significantly different but not entierly-Momo was abused by her parents with adultification and verbally abused by them in a way that's so normalized that she has no clue of either of those things even happened to her,Dabi was abused by Endeavor in the classic way with constant verbal degragation and physical assaults.And they both had the same motivation and justification behind them:They wanted them to be the perfect child.Momo's abusers in the sense of her becoming the ideal proper 'mature' woman,Dabi's abuser in the sense of the most powerful hero.They parallel eachother in a contrasting way and so do their trauma responses by extension and their dynamic has so much untapped potential that i genuinely think it's one of Horikoshi's dropping the ball moment's that he never had them share a bond or at least pointed out their different similarities

It's shown that despite his lack of care for strangers generally,Dabi looks out for his own.He treats Toga like his little sister because she had a rough childhood due to her quirk too and his best friendship with Jin is so tender and strong that it borderlines on romantic and we all saw what he did and said to Hawks for his ableism motivated murder of him and it's not a coincidence that he's even more brotherly to Toga and unhinged after that event specifically.In addition to their shared history of parental abuse,Momo herself also has a bunch of disorders which unlike with Jin were not intentional-Let's be honest,if Horikoshi had made her autistic,adhd,anxiety and ocd intentionally,i don't even wanna think about how horrifically she would've been treated by both other characters and the narrative-but are too intertwined with her story to remove them and still have her be in-character so it's fun and interesting to think of Momo and Dabi having to interact with eachother due to her being a heroine in training and him a villain who's team's main enemies are friends and mentors

Both of them have also not fully escaped the treatment they got growing up-Momo was given a costume that was blatantly meant to sexualize her and gets put in charge of leading her classmates into war as literal child soldiers,Dabi still dosen't get believed as a victim of his father because he's 'too mean' to count as one.I would love to see stories of them slowly accidentally befriending eachother right after the Bakugou rescue arc and Dabi helping Momo see hero society isn't fair or kind to her either and Momo realizing just how often it is that situations like Dabi's happen-Hell,she helped rescue someone who's the same as Endeavor,only on a smaller scale.I don't think she'd instantly go villain nor that Dabi would force her to but the prelude to the war arc has her getting kicked out by her parents for standing up to them and because they found out she's been doing vigilanteism so she joins him because she knows he's right and because he's treated her better than almost every other adult in her life and in turn,she's made him realize that not every hero is thrown into it willingly and are just hurt kids like he used to be and that they're the real ones.'Creati' becomes 'Destruct' but before this all unfolds,we get Shouto and Momo being closer than ever as the series progresses due to the differences in Momo's plot and Dabi's involvement in it pulling Shouto into their orbits and Todomomo goes from a subtle but potent romance to a constant and in your face 'They're soulmates by choice' type of beat in the best and healthiest way possible

Momo gets to be written as a multidimensional teen girl character with no demonization for being an anti-heroine and not be erased as the second real first friend Shouto made in favor of a lifelong bully who told his number one victim to kill himself and Dabi gets to redeem himself by being the good older brother he never got to be as Touya and entering rehibilitation after the war ends because he refuses to die after getting to save Jin from Hawks so they can live out the rest of their lives together.Breaking the cycle of abuse is a much better story than shonen fuckery bullshit disguised as superhero homages when in reality it's disrespecting the history behind and core of comics

[masonshmason]

Blitzø, BPD, and the importance of positive mental health representation

NOTE: Before I begin, I want to make it very clear that I am only one person with borderline personality disorder, or BPD. There's a spectrum of how the disorder affects its sufferers and those around them. I'm not pretending to be an expert nor do I condone any form of self-diagnosis. If you feel that you exhibit the symptoms of BPD, please contact your mental health provider or community center.

TW for mentions of depression, s****de, ableism, and self-harming behaviors. It's gonna get heavy in here. Also I have no spoons to go image hunting so I will try to avoid text walls as much as possible I'M SO SORRY

So, what is BPD?

Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD, according to the DSM-V, is "a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and emotion, as well as marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts".

There are nine diagnostic criteria for BPD, but I'm going to cover the symptoms that I feel in my personal opinion that Blitzø exhibits most often throughout Helluva Boss:

Emotional instability in reaction to day-to-day events (e.g., intense episodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.

Impulsive behavior in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (in Blitzø's case these are gratuitous spending and sex)

A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes between idealization and devaluation (also known as "splitting")

Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

Insert precautionary "demons in hell, it's a comedy, etc" arguments but this is actually very important. I see so much of myself in Blitzø that even if the fact that he meets the diagnostic criteria is completely unintended by Spindlehorse, it's so important to have this level of representation as someone living with BPD.

BPD is not a "nice" disorder to have. It's not quirky, or innocuous, or cinnamon roll status, or something that is easily supported by mental health awareness allies. I would argue that no mental health disorder is. However, in the media and in some circles online, BPD sufferers are overwhelmingly stereotyped as toxic, obsessive, and sometimes even outright dangerous and violent.

I have found only one book worth its salt about BPD that speaks to the person who actually HAS the disorder, instead of directing its message to those around us--the wonderful I Hate You, Don't Leave Me by  Jerold J. Kreisman and Hal Straus. Books for supporting friends and family are important too, but the vast majority of support literature reduces us to a burden inflicted upon those we care about, instead of people who feel immense guilt and shame when we lash out at people we love. Or like Blitzø, push them away out of fear of being rejected and abandoned again when we inevitably do lash out.

To have a character who not only displays the worst of the worst symptoms of the disorder and is still treated like a person, like everyone else, is so important and I am so glad to have this weird little gremlin of an emotional support imp.

[sunkern-plus]

Hot take but people should be allowed to headcanon implied intellectually disabled and/or autistic but not stereotypically high IQ level 1 very low support needs high masking autistic characters as fat. Like I realized that people probably objecting to Hugo being headcanoned as fat at least in the more socially aware/social justice side of the street fighter fandom (disregarding fatphobic beliefs about how Wrestlers Can't Be Fat despite real life wrestler he was based off Andre the giant being, more most of his wrestling life barring early years, fat, likely because of the rapid weight gain often caused by the hormonal changes from gigantism even in adulthood and especially because Andre's tumor was literally inoperable if I recall) because "it's bad to portray fat characters as anything but level 1 high masking very low support needs autistic" (hello, level 2 no ability to mask probably medium support needs seeing as I literally am not allowed to use a stove without careful supervision because I will either burn the house down from spacing out or even burn my food in the pan autistic person here) or "it's fatphobic to portray fat characters as even borderline intellectual disability" (as if an intellectual disability of any sort bars you from being just as developed an adult, let alone a person, as one who doesn't have an intellectual disability). Like yeah my Hugo is fat hormonally disabled in multiple ways (not only gigantism but congenital adrenal hyperplasia as typically presents in amab people INCLUDING mild salt wasting pots like symptoms and virilization that xe feels is excessive because xe is neutrois and transandrogynous and at least wants low dose e and poisons repeatedly offered giving xem half of her usual dose but Hugo refuses because xir intellectual disability makes xir doubt xir own autonomy on occasion) and has autism with borderline intellectual functioning. Yes xe's a happy, fully realized character who is happy, exuberant, and even confident about xir sexuality. In fact, fat intellectually disabled hormonally disabled autistic level 2 headcanons Do deserve to exist like this and people who think it's a "fat stereotype" to headcanon a character with a disorder that causes insulin resistance and diabetes (gigantism) or is clearly coded as borderline to mildly intellectually disabled as well as autistic need to genuinely check their ableism

this post is supported by the REAL HUGO ANDORE PATRIOTS

[catcatb0y]

I dunno, honestly, the whole bullshit with disorder-abuse makes even less sense when you start to branch out more.

Myself and quite a few of my family members suffer from ADHD. I have it really, really bad.

Listen, I could spend hours breaking down the specific ADHD traits that made those adults in my life manipulate and at least borderline abuse me. The amounts of breakdowns I have had that I can link specifically to many different traits of those adults' ADHD symptoms is astronomical.

Even myself, like. I struggle every day to keep my ADHD, especially, from "winning." It makes me neglectful, it makes me forgetful, it makes me ungodly sensitive sometimes, and it makes me chronically awful with so many basic functions that lead to a power imbalance in a relationship.

But... "ADHD abuse" isn't a thing.

No one's talking about parents with untreated RSD lashing out at their kids for being 'too negative' (even though it happens). No one talks about executive dysfunction blocking people off from doing the things they said they were going to. No one is leaping to talk about how ADHD memory gaps can lead to intentional or unintentional gaslighting (like actually legitamate gaslighting, not just lying, like "You must be crazy I never said that," repeated over and over kind of gaslighting). Hyperfixations and similar obsessions can be detrimental!! And sometimes, when directed at a person, just as dehumanizing as NPD traits can.

No one jumps to talk about how untreated ADHD can lead to severe depression, anxiety, mood swings, up to and inclusing dissociation. How difficult it is to be around people with untreated or treatment resistent ADHD. How unintentionally abusive some of those traits can make people.

ADHD has its own little form of ableism where people treat it like the "kids who can't sit still disorder," when homie I am sitting so still my head is in the clouds and I can't see anything in front of me.

But generally people who aren't blindly ableist understand and acknowledge that ADHD isn't something that people chose and it exists on an incredibly vast spectrum. So many kids with ADHD grew up punished by their parents who even had ADHD themselves, and yet there's no mass dehumanization of people with ADHD to paint them all as abusers. People with ADHD can be incredibly neglectful to their friends or coworkers, people with ADHD can be incredibly neglectful towards their romantic partners; people with ADHD have to self police their own actions and responses to make sure they're not stepping over that little abusive line.

Having ANY form of neurodivergency, especially the ones that blur or alter your perception of reality, gives you a little boost towards the "bad" side of interacting with a power imbalance, but guess what? A shit ton of neurotypical people don't even need that little push to be complete fucking assholes!

ADHD abuse doesn't exist. Why the fuck would you think Personality Disorder abuse exists? (Much fucking less if "anyone can be a PD abuser," then it's just acknowledging an abusive pattern that has nothing to do with the name of a legally diagnoseable disorder and you're still just an asshole).

If you think this post is dragging ADHD as a scary/abusive disorder, go touch grass. Read a book. Tell me why you think the curtains are blue.

[villain-disorder]

|| Welcome ||

Hello, my name is Salem (he/they) and I am a member of a DID plural system. I'm a fictive and I'm also fictionkin and otherhearted, and my system all identifies as alterhuman at least to some degree. Most of my personal identities are villainous in nature, and me being queer and neurodivergent with "scary" disorders only solidifies that identity for me. I reclaim it. I use the label terrorpunk as it describes me and how I feel about it.

I have schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type), narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. I will not share the entire list of disorders I have been diagnosed with at this time. You will probably be able to figure them out over time, though.

Everything on my blog is free to reblog, I will turn the reblog feature off if I decide to. If your account lets you reblog it, then it is fine to be shared.

Tag list, links, extra info, etc under the readmore.

I (and the majority of my system) are also queer. We're bodily transmasc and bisexual. I personally am bisexual and masculine identifying but my gender is more complicated than that.

As I said, I fully reclaim the "evil" and "villain" stereotypes, though that does not mean that I will be spreading misinformation. No one is evil or a villain on the basis of their identity, I have just reclaimed that identity for myself because I can do what I want with my identity.

Tags

#salem speaks - Original posts.

#rb - Reblogs.

#srb - Self-reblogs.

#ask - Asks.

#alterhuman - Alterhuman related posts.

#art - Art posts.

#dangerous - Posts related to horror/fear/etc as a sort of aesthetic.

#disability - Disability related posts.

#neurodivergent - Neurodivergent related posts.

#reclaimed villainy - Posts relating to "scary and evil" things that I or others have reclaimed.

Warnings

Most of these are self explanatory. Mild mentions may not be tagged, I will tag severe or explicit cases of these.

#ableism

#alterhumisia - (Stigma against alterhumans/anti-alterhuman sentiments.)

#delusions - (Only in-depth discussion of delusional beliefs as to not trigger others psychosis.)

#hallucinations - (See above.)

#queerphobia

#self injury - (Of all types, images will not be posted, nor will encouragement of such.)

#vent

| Dividers. | Ask me anything. |

DNIS AND MY STANCES:

I don't care who or what you are, I accept you here as long as you don't cross any lines that are personal to me, and all you will have to deal with from me is a block. All system origins, alterhuman identities, disabilities, disorders and queer identities are welcome.

I also may not read DNIs thoroughly if they're hard to access or if they're too long. Those are not accessible to me. Please be mature and block me if you don't want me following you or interacting. This isn't a forum for specific niches of people who agree with all of your views, it's Tumblr. Use the block button.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

Pericles and Purple Scarves (or: why the fuck is the parrot so horny, and why does it matter)

(or: did i think about this way too much, or exactly the right amount? yes.)

[cws: fantasy racism/ableism, dehumanization, mention of homophobia and canon-typical grooming, non-detailed discussion of canon-typical SA/sexual harassment and canon-typical bestiality. this show is a thing and a half]

-

something i think about a lot is that like.... i joke about how delightful it is for various reasons that they made pericles So Relentlessly Horny, and it's fucking hilarious to me to see in real-time the dawning horror of people watching the show for the first time and realizing he's sexy. (their reactions to the tentacle scene are comedy fucking gold every time.)

on a doylist level the creators are obviously paying homage to his voice actor, making him stand out from the other mascots, and trying to make him charismatic, memorable, and that much more uncomfortable to the audience. and it worked! pretty much everyone thinks he's one of the best scooby-doo villains out there, and they're right.

(i'm not biased, i swear.)

when you look at it in-character, though, it makes a lot of sense that he'd be that way, and that's important. he's doing it on purpose.

for one thing--again--he stands out among all the other talking animals we see, because he is the one who comes across most as a depiction (an intentional one, anyway 🙃) of an actual person who happens to be shaped like a bird. the others all are Some Kind of Uniquely Goofy in the way that they act, be it how they talk or their general mannerisms or the fact that none of them seem to really have an implied Age. pericles is the only one who doesn't have some kind of silly voice or speech impediment or catchphrase what-have-you, and he's also the only one who comes across as being in specific life stages you could map onto a human corresponding to how old he is. he's even the only time we ever hear mention of a talking animal being a child, or having been once. everyone but pericles is just Mascot-Aged.

(fwiw, my personal read is that scooby is about the same age as the gang or equivalent. also there is So Much to unpack here about all that re: the mascots in general but that's a post for another time)

and the one thing they all have in common except pericles is that they are NOT supposed to be sexy. if anything, the ones we actually see talking (in a fever dream, to be fair) except scooby and pericles are obviously meant to be borderline or outright really goddamn annoying. (reggie/dyno-mutt is adorable but he is also on thin ice with me on this one, sorry little guy.)

and like. all of this lines up with the fact that the talking animals very obviously represent disabled people. even moreso than they represent racial minorities, which they very much do! they're a lot further toward ableism on the sliding scale of xeno bigotry (which is a big reason i'm iffy about just calling it fantasy racism). the infantilization of disabled people is, you know, A Whole Ass Thing, and being aggressively desexualized is a major part of that. Disabled People and Disabled Mannerisms are a Bonerkill.

enter pericles, who does not truck with any of this shit.

i've already got a lot of posts planned going into this subject in general, because there is So Much. but in short, the thing to remember when you examine anything about pericles is that he lives in a world that draws zero distinction between people like him and animals.

practically everything he does is, on some level or another, him yelling FUCK YOU LOOK AT ME I AM A PERSON, LOOK. I'LL MAKE YOU IF I HAVE TO. and what's something animals don't do, whether actual animals or annunaki descendants (at least the latter ones he's probably been around most)? they don't flirt. they aren't sexy. they don't act like a brand of seductive, even skeevy, person you might feasibly meet irl, if maybe a theatrical larger-than-life one who runs in certain circles.

(gay ones, to be specific. super, super gay ones. more on that in a minute.)

and, what's more: they don't flirt with humans. we never see anyone really comment on the very obvious Thing he's always had going on with ricky; but that doesn't come across as them thinking it's normal or acceptable so much as not noticing that it's a thing at all. it is that aggressively unthinkable that it would be. and this is backed up even more by the fact that people hear scooby ask shaggy if he's cheating on him by having a girlfriend and think nothing of it, and it continues to be treated as Romance vs Platonic Friendship/Pet Ownership. Gal Pals, but Worse!

so yeah, we have no idea what society would think of anunnaki descendants having sexual/romantic relationships with humans that they couldn't ignore. presumably it would be Pretty Well Disapproved Of, but like. who the fuck knows.

what we DO know is that pericles is considered so utterly beneath personhood that no one would so much as blink at him fucking an honest right to god animal. if it were anyone other than, y'know, pericles, they might even think it was cute.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.)

(moving on.)

so all things considered, as you can imagine holy SHIT would he have a reason or two to broadcast as hard as he can that not only that he is A Sexual Being, but one intended to appeal to human standards. it brings to mind queer people presenting in ways meant to be attractive to other queers, not straight people, except, well. instead of trying to get the attention of supportive people like you on the downlow, because you don't want the majority to know what kind of sexuality you're announcing, he's blaring I AM ONE OF YOU at that majority out of desperation and spite.

which, speaking of signaling queerness: pericles is a hundred percent gay-coded, as in the actual definition of 'as close to explicit as they could get away with, done on purpose.' there's the obvious--his relationship with ricky--but his VA, who he is to some extent modeled after, is an openly gay indie horror film icon, and given that and the time period he grew up in i don't think it's a coincidence that the one piece of clothing he chooses to wear is a purple scarf. (they even made him a sexual predator! yippee!)

so like, if anything it's pretty feasible that he might have actually observed that kind of thing as a phenomenon, especially with the demographic he'd actually be interested in, and pick it up accordingly. who knows if he ever managed to actually, y'know, Involve Himself with any human men--my interpretation is that he did and it went poorly 🥲--but it makes sense to me that he'd wear something like that; that he'd use his one opportunity to express himself with clothing to go HI HELLO I AM A PERSON DID I MENTION I LIKE MEN. WHO ARE PEOPLE. BECAUSE I DO

......and he STILL gets ignored no matter how hard he tries. i feel like that's one of the reasons he ended up being such a creep, honestly: operating on similar logic to the tag rant in this post, the conclusion he comes to is that well fuck you, you can't ignore me having a sexuality if i make it a problem for you. even if you try to pretend sexual violence and harassment aren't sexual, or don't recognize that it's happening at all, you are not going to walk away unaffected by it. if the only lasting evidence he's able to leave in the world that he's a person is causing damage that can't be shrugged off or undone, so be it.

(a real irony, isn't it, given how things turn out in the end.)

and like. this is one of the things that really bothers me about people trying to act like you shouldn't ship pericles or think he's attractive because Ew Gross Cringe That's an Animal (or transparently pretending it's because Problematic, not because cringe). either way do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, to be clear, but like... that's the point, man. that's the whole point. the writers are assholes who wanted you to miss it, and you did.

basically: just about everything pericles does is acting out in some way or another, and that's why we know what this man would sound like busting a nut. you're welcome.

[scifimagpie]

Back on Ash Tree Lane: Revisiting House of Leaves

Art by Michelle Browne, 2023. Yep, I'm back on my bullshit.

An abbreviated version of this appears as a review for the book on my Amazon and Goodreads accounts, but I realised I had more to say. 

Beware, because 

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

for this 23-year-old book (jeez) abound.

 I first read House of Leaves years and years ago, and then some friends suggested reading it for a book club this year. Naturally, I figured it was a good time for a revisit; it's probably been fifteen years or more since I picked it up. Maybe closer to twenty. (Jeez, I'm old.) 

Vibe Check

As much as parts of the book do genuinely deliver a dizzying thrill ride, the beginning of the book actually didn't quite hold up for me. But I have to admit, this is a book you have to binge - try to read it in long sessions. Also there's a ton of content warnings for this book - child abuse, sexual assault mentions, sexual harassment, mental illness, animal harm and death, infanticide, attempted child murder...plus some good, old-fashioned gore and body horror. Lots of horrible, excellent, spooky stuff, and it's generally treated with some respect. 

Once you start to "get" the book, the labyrinthine page formatting and the distracting footnotes - they're there for vibes most of the time, and to instill a sense of authenticity and realism - it's amazing. 

Is this book the most accessible thing I've ever read? Probably not. I don't even know how it is from a disability perspective - I'm not even sure how you'd make an audiobook that captures the vibe. (Maybe with lots of sound effects and clever editing tricks? Actually, if that exists somewhere, someone send it to me.)

And yet, the overall story, about the mental health issues of Johnny Truant, and the possibility of the entire thing being his invention? Or the invention of his mental health? And the subtle nested story meta-structure thing - is really sad and really cool. There's something very visceral about this sad, sad guy's lonely wandering and search for answers. 

A lot of people are tempted to skim Johnny's segments for some reason, but if at all possible, don't do that. Johnny's mother's institutionalization when he was young, his persistent struggles with poverty, mental health issues, substance use, and intimacy, as well as possible ADHD (just to take a few wild guesses), and the death of his "godlike" pilot father and the subsequent abusive monstrousness of his stepfather Raymond, are all essential parts of the narrative. 

Some griping

Yeah, it's at least borderline "dick lit," i.e. a book about man-pain bordering on the fetishistic (i.e., your On the Road, most Hemingway books, Crime and Punishment, Catch-22, Fight Club, plenty of other literary fiction titles - those are just some I've read that fit the bill). But this is "dick lit" that actually shares something scared, vulnerable, and alone, and shows the holes in toxic masculinity - as well as the dangers of mythologizing male figures in one's life. 

The creepy Oedipal stuff with Johnny's mother, as revealed in her letters from the mental institution, and the meta-fictional portrayal of Karen, as well as all the hookup girls, definitely fit too well into that Madonna/whore dichotomy. And it's worth saying that the book is extremely white and quite straight - for someone in LA, Johnny never seems to even encounter a queer person or drag queen/king, and homosexuality is only mentioned in a context of denigrating Will Navidson's masculinity, and questioning the fidelity of his wife, Karen. Even the book metatextually commentating on the mother/whore dichotomy, and having Johnny speculate on the inner lives of his hookups, does not succeed in fishing the book out of basic sexism. 

I can only speculate about ableism a little bit, but the character Reston felt like pretty good representation, and the mental health stuff - well, at least for me, it worked. The visceral horror of developing a family member's mental illness and recapitulating the cycle of trauma? Compulsive lying or avoidance of personal history to hide the horrors within? Yeah, I get it. Not all representation has to be Perfect (TM), and the institutionalization horror of his mother probably has some problems to unpack with it, but the cloying and suffocating nature of her attachment, as well as her desperate hunger for connection with the outside world, also shone through. 

I'll be honest - this is also a book that benefits from skimreading certain sections. I'm just not sure all the physics stuff actually adds to the narrative. I'm not a crunchy enough scientist to take value from it, personally. A lot of people hate Johnny, who is definitely not a Good Person, but I felt sympathetic towards the scrappy young man. I'm surprised Tumblr isn't all over House of Leaves, because he has "scrungly" disaster vibes for sure. (And possibly, considering how much he idolizes his friend Lude, a hint of coded bisexuality? For a book with a central focus on Greek mythology, it's agonizingly straight.)

The good stuff

My favourite sections are definitely the actual explorations of the house. It's no surprise that these are the segments that have resonated the most in pop culture - fans of the SCP (Secure, Contain, Protect) universe and HP Lovecraft have almost certainly run into the main concepts of this book already. 

I guess I'm a sucker for a good gothic novel, because there is something decidedly gothic about this one - it's a House, and it's Spooky, and it's about a Family and their mental illnesses. But in this case, the house is something that travels with Johnny, not just the physical location on Ash Tree Lane. The problems with the house for the Navidsons are all part of the baggage they carry with them. 

I've been sitting with the whole structural thing about the Minotaur, Theseus, Minos, and the whole stepson/stepfather hate thing, for a bit. There's this thematic element about Johnny being emotionally and mentally ill, and his mother being ill as well - that does seem like an intentional parallel? But there's also a thing about Zampano as Daedalus and a father figure, and Johnny as Icarus, soaring too high on his father's creation, only to be killed by it.

Is the entire thing an elaborate delusion? Is Zampano real? Who is this mysterious genius, this Daedalus-like figure whose invention - the book - ensnares and entraps Johnny, our humble Icarus and Minotaur? We certainly don't get answers, but he appears to be lonely, remote, and ripe for idealization. 

Is the Navidson Record meant to be real, or all Johnny's invention? The "editor" character is particularly interesting, especially because at no point do they clarify the reality or unreality of the manuscript.

When, throughout his extended mental breakdown, did Johnny possibly have time to pen this missive? It certainly seems possible that he was doing little else. But when was it accepted and submitted to a publishing company? The book definitely wants to give the vibe of just "appearing" in print. It's very "done" nowadays, but at the time, it was particularly revolutionary. 

Why does House of Leaves still work?

Well - in my opinion, HoL commits to the gothic and keeps you invested, but it also goes deep into the mental health issues that make up the backbone of both cosmic horror and the gothic novel. 

This, then, is probably why military takes on Lovecraftian fiction and the SCPs all kind of suck. I've watched a couple of Youtube videos and listened to a few Actual Play podcasts of Call of Cthulhu games with a Delta Green focus (that's a special forces take on Call of Cthulhu), and all of them just left me absolutely cold. (Maybe other people will enjoy these live-action takes on SCPs more than I did.) In addition to the fact that I'm just not much into jingoism, and I'm kinda critical of that whole carceral-state structure and the military industrial complex, conservative politics really don't work with cosmic horror or gothic novels. 

Sure, military elements can work great - in Lovecraft's Monsters, there's a rather good take on the story of Innsmouth that involves a military intervention - but it's also inherently critical of the role of said military. I do have some fondness for the Warhammer 40K universe as well, but that's also morally complex. 

Any kind of military apologia in the face of cosmic horror just absolutely sucks the scare factor right out of stuff. It's too objective and impersonal, when it should be intimate and invasive. And above all - really good horror must come from empathy. 

If you crave more

T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's What Moves the Dead, the HP Lovecraft stories "The Color Out of Space" and "Dreams in the Witch House" as well as the Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle are pretty excellent classic read-alikes; I haven't read Grady Hendrix's How to Sell a Haunted House yet, but I loved Horrorstor, and that's another decent read-alike for building-based horror. The "Endless Ikea" SCP is available on Youtube in multiple reading formats, as well as videos, and of course, there's always the original version on the website. 

The podcasts Welcome to Night Vale, TANIS, and the Rusty Quill Archives also all offer some good horror content if you want to savour the visceral fear of something breathing down your neck, too!

***

A writer and professional freelance editor, Michelle Browne lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

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[onewomancitadel]

I wrote the most recent multichapter I've posted (Rusted Knight and Fall Maiden) to articulate the magical feeling of climbing out of mental illness. At least in a lot of modern stories, I've never really seen it articulated in a Romantic way, only in clinical terms, and I've never really seen it described in magical terms or point-of-contact transformation. It's not an experience many people really get, and I guess that contributes to the characters' liminality.

At best the conception of mental illness is limited to borderline carceral terms - therapy, drugs - and rarely ever is it described in a humanistic context. At worst it's very anti-humanistic in its ableism, its rejection of the outer edges of human experience (which seem to be not-so-outer).

I debated posting it because there are a lot of reasons I shouldn't have, including that I really did write it for myself and didn't expect it to see the light of day, but that's exactly what my AO3 is for. Some people seem to think it's like... a streaming service? That you pay money for? With content on demand?

Anyway, it was just something I was thinking about.

[altosys]

bonjam. once again, asterishere harassing me. tw for misgendering, ableism n' more icky shit.

"sis" my brother in christ i have he/him in my bio. i thought you hated being misgendered yourself?

dude... oh my fucking god... if you really did your research when you self-diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, you'd know it's in the same goddamn cluster as narcissistic personality disorder... jesus christ, say you're an ableist white bitch without saying you're an ableist white bitch.

i... jesus christ i didn't know you were THIS ableist. also dude??? you're fine with calling people slurs?? tbf vinny is the epitome of the pewdiepie bridge moment, so at least i know this didn't come from nowhere.

still, no mention of "yeah i wouldn't call you a slur". dude. aster. shut your white ass up. please for the love of narc jesus, for the love of poc jesus, for the love of my mixed ass. shut the fuck up.

dude... a 13 year old and a 16 year old... dude. you're a pedophile.

hoping you never live to see another day, -electra & the rest of the quadra subsystem -circu