#your worldview is just so bleak and depressing and for what?

[insanechayne]

~ ~ ~

[noddytheornithopod]

Time to word vomit my despair time thoughts because hoo, David...

Okay watched the new Despair Time, and even if actually was right and saw it coming... seeing David come apart and reveal he was a lying liar was still pretty scary.

Firstly, those sprites. Especially when there's shadow over his eyes and they glow. Second, the voice actor does such a great job and changing his demeanour. And lastly... his personality.

He has traits of other antagonists, but he also feels like something new. Like, he has the arrogance and elitism of Byakuya, but honestly Byakuya is an angel compared to David's cynical worldview.

Like, Byakuya just thought he was better than everyone else because he really went through shit to become what he was. David, we don't know his backstory, but he doesn't just look down on everyone... he seems to hate them.

The stuff about people refusing to change sounds key... it sounds like something has made him decide to see only the worst in people he doesn't like, like he even said "if they did change, it means deep down they were already good".

So like... we have someone who is arrogant and looks down on everyone, but fueled by a really bleak nihilistic, cynicism fuelled outlook.

Also honestly? I'm with Teruko. I felt he was off from the start. How he acted with Xander always felt off, given he always said something like he didn't like being around fans, but then suddenly he acted like Xander was his bestie, lol.

Also... he totally has Teruko's secret. The way he said "why don't you share yours?" felt very pointed.

Also... what the heck happened between him and Hu? She even went as far as saying he "toyed with her heart". David's "not so different" speech was ruthless. She was REALLY defensive, too.

This is making me think even more that Hu is the true killer. As Teruko said, David's deceiving everyone, even as he lifts his facade. If he exists to manipulate everyone, then would he really be so stupid to just kill? Maybe his arrogance would get in the way... but yeah

So Hu has not only felt off to me, but not only are they continuing to build to her secret (something where she's not as strong as she looks, suicide attempts make a lot of sense TBH), there's now clear emotional stakes now.

At first, I was just suspicious of her, wondering what she was up to... but now I'm worried for her. What did David do to you? Did he make you do anything that would make you, say... murder?

Also, if Hu IS the murderer, I feel like there's going to be significance to Arei's death resembling a suicide, assuming that IS her secret. Guess we'll see what happens.

Anyway... Whit, dude, come on. I think your lives are more important than David's career. :v I have to wonder why he felt the need to protect that specifically so much though. Did David also talk to him?

Also... Ace, I'm sorry for ever finding you annoying. Okay, maybe you still are annoying sometimes, but exposing David? Cool move. You still gotta get over your Nico hate boner (well, besides the attempted murder part), but you did cool.

Arei... gosh, now I feel even more bad for her. David comforting her really was all a lie, huh? Toying with her heart too, huh? You probably toyed with the hearts of the fandom too, think of all the people who believed in you who are now heartbroken, David! 

Oh yeah... David doesn't even seem happy. The family depression secret might be a lie in the context of the motive, but even as he looks down on everyone, he doesn't seem like someone who's happy with his life.

He might be arrogant, but he doesn't feel like someone who is relishing in his status, despite the whole "yeah everyone exists to be taken advantage of" mindset he seems to have.

Like I said, there's something about his cynical worldview that feels very nihilistic, even bitter. I even remember his secret quote about wishing someone would just die... that doesn't sound like a happy person.

Anyway, who else... Veronika is as delightfully chaotic as usual. Teruko is badass, though gosh even David was cornering her at the end with the cliffhanger. On that note, Charles is the MVP, even risking his friendship with Whit to pursue the truth. What has he realised though?

Also, Nico, I know you probably attempted murder, but I still love you, my Autistic cat dog furry whatever enby. Being the first to agree with Teruko to see that David was still bullshitting, epic. Also for a moment, I was expecting him to defend Ace. Maybe that will come later.

Anyway... gosh, I'm not okay. And we're only mid-trial.

[crescendo-system]

As a survivor of abuse, I am very tired of Tumblr's frequent 'people are inherently good' posts

I don't say this as in I believe people are inherently Bad, but as in if people are truly inherently good, then what does this say about those who abuse others? Who take advantage or manipulate? Who extort and hurt and frighten? Do you say this to mean they are capable of changing their ways; as in they should be forgiven and given chances?

If your answer is a clear cut 'yes' or 'no', both are the wrong takeaway. The answer should be that it's contextual and nuanced.

People are Capable of good. People are likewise Capable of bad. It shouldn't be 'inherent'. Inherent implies a call for humanizing them, I feel like. Making them sympathetic. Making them forgivable. Making any bad seem like a mistake, nothing more, because Deep Down they're Good. Is Trump inherently good? Was Hitler? The people who decided capitalism was a good idea? Colonialism? Racism? Slavery?

Good and Bad are subjective and nuanced qualities. Some people may genuinely believe they are doing good with their wrongdoing, if their worldview is skewed enough. Some people though genuinely don't care to do 'good', unless it earns them something in return. Maybe their apathy is rooted in trauma. Maybe they're genuinely just unaware.

But people aren't inherently good or forgivable or sympathetic.

And I do truly understand when people say this, they're trying to push back against apathy, fatalism, depression, bleak mindsets that let people fall into a fog of nothingness and letting the world burn around them. That is so prevalent in this day and age, and the tumblr users writing posts like this are trying to counterbalance that.

But for someone like me, who watches their abuser continue to do wrong for nothing but her own gain, and who sympathizing or giving the benefit of the doubt only makes the situation worse.... it just sits wrong. If humans are inherently good, then she is not human. But dehumanizing her isn't the solution. That 'others' her and othering people isn't going to help matters either.

She is human. She is capable of being good. She is equally capable of being bad. And over the years, has reinforced her behaviors of being bad. She is not inherently good. She was not inherently bad, either. She has made those choices, based on some context I will never know, to become bad. Maybe she had trauma. Maybe there's a condition in her brain. Maybe there's a disconnect with her actions and intent. That doesn't change how she impacts the world around her. Subjectively speaking, it's bad.

Maybe someone else would say she's good. But if I treat her as inherently good, it puts me in further danger of being manipulated by her.

Idk. Maybe I misunderstand why people write those posts. But they always come off as pleas for forgiveness for humanity, in a way that feels like they ask the reader to turn a blind eye to all the bad.

It's not as simple as Good or Bad. It's nuanced. I just wish people wrote it more like that than trying to spin it as only one or the other. That's basically the takeaway here.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: Heathers

Heathers is a film that in some ways has not aged well, due to the plot involving bringing guns to school, murdering bully classmates, and an attempted terrorist attack on a high school by an angry, disaffected white boy. Back when this came out in the 80s, there was far less concern about things like school shootings, so this film could play these things up for black comedy rather than try to portray it seriously. But really, this is one of those rare occasions where it’s actually true to say “a film like this could never be made today!”

And it’s a real shame too, because beneath the pitch black comedy and dark subject matter there is a lot of solid, resonant messages and a plot that actually deconstructs the shallow view imitators and even some fans have of it.

I think perhaps the most important thing this movie did was show high school as it is: a miserable, shitty pile of cliques and unhappy teenagers struggling to make it through a single day without desperately wishing for their untimely demise. There is rampant bully, belittling, lies, slander, cruel pranks… this movie doesn’t waste any time sugarcoating things. And while yes, some things are played up for dark laughs, I can confirm myself that the cruel and miserable atmosphere of this film’s high school is barely off base from reality. I think just about the only thing lacking in realism is the fact that a guy like J.D. wasn’t called to the office on day one and grilled extensively by the principal, but hey, it was the 80s.

Another thing is how this movie deconstructs its core concept as the film goes on. Everything is set up as a movie where the miserable, bullied, browbeaten Veronica rises up with her handsome new boyfriend and strikes back at the nasty bullies in her high school, killing them off one by one. Fuck yeah! Revenge is awesome! Except… it isn’t. It’s shown that, as awful as these people they killed were, they still had families and friends who loved them, they had so many people who cared, and even if that wasn’t enough the way they set up their deaths as tragic suicides only goes to make them martyrs, rendering the vengeance hollow as in death all their sins in life are erased and ignored and people look far more fondly on them. Hell, by framing the jerk jocks as gay lovers killing themselves because they couldn’t openly be together, they managed to make a bunch of people in the late 80s be less homophobic! Need I remind you this was the decade in which the F-word was a pretty casual curse word instead of one of the absolute worst things you could possibly say? Their revenge was just that toothless.

And it all comes down to J.D. While he’s built up as this cool, rebellious figure bent on teaching society a lesson, as the film goes on it’s shown that even with all of his excuses, even with his shitty life, he’s still ultimately just a pathetic, angry, broken loner lashing out at the world around him without a care for who he hurts. Ultimately this is what helps drive Veronica away from him and reject his ideals. J.D. is a truly interesting villain; in many ways, he’s a prototype for Arthur Fleck from Joker, a broken man with a shitty home life who is driven to madness and murder because of the cruel, remorseless society he lives in; Christian Slater even seems to be doing his best Jack “The Joker” Nicholson impersonation in this film, even. And much like Fleck would decades later, J.D. shows that a shitty life never justifies atrocities, and for all the sympathy he can be afforded he definitely does cross the line, and the movie doesn’t really pretend otherwise.

This movie is filled with dark social satire of things like the sensationalizing of teen suicide, the awfulness of high school, the hollowness of revenge, and all of that, and yet it feels that far too many people take this movie at face value, viewing it as some sort of deranged power fantasy in which the bullies get what’s coming to them and their victims come out on top. I’m not sure where they get this idea because by the end of the film J.D. is dead, Veronica has survived but is fundamentally changed as a person, and all the people who bullied them are now forever remembered as tragic angels with their bad qualities brushed aside, because sometimes dead is better, as they say.

It’s interesting to note that the original ending of this movie would have been far darker than the ending we got, with the bomb going off and J.D.’s deranged worldview - “Let's face it, all right! The only place different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.” - being reaffirmed. I think that such an ending would have utterly ruined the film and made it a hard sell to anyone with a shred of decency. It would just be far too bleak and joyless, and not even in a fun way. It’s just depressing. The ending we got, where Veronica rejects J.D.’s insane bullshit and decides to live, is far more powerful and resonant.

This movie is such a brilliant deconstructive parody of 80s teen movies, shining a dark light on the less pleasant aspects of being a teenager while showing the futility of revenge, the baggage that comes with dating a quote-unquote bad boy, and sort of deranged mindset that would lead someone to think murdering their classmates could somehow make the world a better place… And yet so many fans take it at face value and just see at as “Wow! Cool revenge against the bullies story!” This movie is so much more than that, and to reduce it down into something s tacky, tasteless, and just plain not what it is at all is disturbing, to say the least. Let me put it this way: if Heathers actually was what some of its fans believe it is, I would probably agree that the movie shouldn’t exist.

But thankfully the movie isn’t that; it’s an absolutely brilliant dark comedy and an 80s classic. If you can stomach some truly dark and unpleasant subject matter and laugh at some really fucked up things, this is the movie for you, though I really hope you can use your critical thinking skills and not come out thinking J.D. had a point. It’s a fucked up movie about fucked up people showing the dark underbelly of high school and the society that produces that dark underbelly, and in that regard it excels. It’s the perfect cup of drain cleaner to wash down all those John Hughes movies.

[janiedean]

nebraska is the title song from bruce springsteen’s eponymous 1982 album, which is incidentally the objectively best record he’s ever put out or at least it’s in the top three and about everyone agrees about it in some kind of miraculous conversion of fan and critics’s opinions.

nebraska is not just a turning point in springsteen’s career, as it was the first time he put out a record which was pretty much bleak/depressing material with not much of a way out of it and a great stylistic change from his usual as it’s all voice, guitar and harmonica, to match the bleak atmosphere of the songs, but it’s also a damn gem of a song that everyone should listen to, so please let me have a go at it. ;)

now, background: nebraska is about real life serial killer charles starkweather, who in turn bruce learned from while watching terrence malick’s excellent movie badlands (guys y’all really should watch it it’s REALLY GOOD!). tldr, this dude at nineteen took his 14-yo girlfriend around nebraska and wyoming for a week or so and killed ten people and was then sentenced to the death penalty, and that’s all you need to know on the subject. bruce was interested in the story, researched it and wrote the song about it and put it as first in the album to which it gave the title, and that should already suggest you what you’re signing up for. but now on to the lyrics, shall we?

I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died

the opening is reminiscing of the malick movie we discussed before - the scene with the girlfriend twirling her baton is lifted right from it, and gives us an excellent summary of the entire song because bruce is good at summarizing things: you know that the protagonist, as the song is in first person, sees his girlfriend on the front lawn, takes her into his car and they killed ten innocent people. now, if you aren’t listening to the song you don’t know that he’s singing it in an extremely flat voice in such a way that he seems extremely detached from what he/the POV of the song has done, which makes the entire effect even creepier. so, what happened on the ride?

From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path

here we have another example of how good is bruce at painting a very vivid picture with ten words - we know where they left from (lincoln nebraska), we know what weapon he used (the .410), and then he went through the badlands of wyoming killing everything in his path, which if you know how the badlands of wyoming look, should give you a pretty damn good idea of the scenery. if you’re like jon and sansa stark and failed geography, I’ll remind you:

suggestive, huh? so, he has you visualize the entire thing while singing flatly and without emotions about a guy who went on a murder spree without many emotions about it himself. which is made clear in the next line:

I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun

so: he’s not sorry, and he sees it as having had some fun. now, usually people who murder even one person without wanting to have life-lasting trauma because of it, because I assure you, no one likes murdering people in general. just a thought. then again if you look up starkweather he seemed to think he was above the law and to have a fairly nihilistic worldview according to which *dead people are all on the same level* so we can assume that mr. starkweather had definitely issues that no one had noticed/most people would have overlooked in the year of the lord 1958 and that went untreated resulting in the murder spree.

anyway, they got caught as it was bound to happen, which then results in the next passage:

The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest

now, bruce doesn’t really waste much time with the trial because even if we didn’t know shit about the story before we might have guessed that he’d be captured/sentenced the moment he said he killed a bunch of people, so what we know is that they sentenced him guilty and to death too, and when he says leather straps across my chest we also know it’s an electric chair even if he doesn’t have to say it, and then you also get the midnight in a prison storeroom visual that gives you an idea of something fairly sordid and carried out in a haste when no one can see for how horrid the entire situation is. the entire point isn’t even making you empathize with him because you’re not supposed to... but the entire picture it paints is supposed to make you feel really, really creeped out including being in the head of an actual mass murderer, which is usually not a place where you find people feeling sorry or re-elaborating their trauma tied to their actions, because this guy certainly has no trauma related to them nor feels sorry about it. which we can see for true in the next bit:

Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor head back You make sure my pretty baby is sittin' right there on my lap

as in: when he talks to the sheriff in extremely blank/flat terms about his own death (pulls the switch/snaps my poor head back, poor being the only thing that suggests us he actually has feelings about it) the only thing he wants (which cannot happen obviously) is that his pretty baby is sitting on his lap, which considering that starkweather was 19 and she was 14 when the entire thing went down makes the entire thing sound really fucking creepy as it should sound. but that is what he cares about. not the people he killed, not his guilt, not any consequences of what he might have done, just that his girlfriend is there to see him die - which isn’t a thing he gives much of a fuck about anyway. and at this point you're wondering, what’s the point. well, the final stanza is giving you the point, even if he could also not giving you any point and it would still hold up because that’s entirely it, the guy killed people because he could and because he was angry, not because there was a point.

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled They wanted to know why I did what I did Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world.

aaaand now you get the whole actual Meaning Of The Thing thrown in your face in three lines which need a lot of unpacking, but in order: they declared me unfit to live has a not so slight implication that it’s wrong for someone to decide who’s fit to live or not... which then in turn is kind of ironic coming from someone who killed ten people because he could, but that doesn’t make it any less true that he’s operating in a system that declares people unfit to live... same as he did, so he’s most likely asking why they have the right to decide it and he doesn’t. then we add that they wanted to know why he did what he did, which is the crux - until now he just said he had fun and he felt like it. now, bruce springsteen has no idea of why starkweather did it because of course he never knew him and only researched the topic, and the movie obviously had its take on things but it’s a movie. so what he does? he provides an answer which is also a reference to flannery o’ connor’s story a good man is hard to find’s ending where a similar thing was said (guys honestly read that it’s an a+ short story you should)... as in: well, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world. he GUESSES, he doesn’t know. *well, sir* suggests an answer like he’s just shrugging and providing it because it just occurred to him, not that he thought about it. but then what’s the point? that the world is mean. and it sucks. and meanness exists and you can’t do anything about it, and he was mean same as the world he comes from and so he did something mean that will result in his soul being hurled into the void (but other people said it, not him, he most likely doesn’t even think his soul will survive the execution), but that’s it. there’s nothing else. there’s no reasoning, there’s no guilt, there’s nothing. just, there’s a meanness in this world. dot. and since the world is mean people do mean things such as kill innocent people, to whom mean things happen all the time, and you can’t do shit about it. and then the song is over and you’re left with a chill running down your spine and wondering, is it really just as bad as that?

but since the singer isn’t giving you any answer either way and he’s not sympathizing with the murderer nor is trying to make you sympathize with him, he’s just telling him like it is, you as in the listener have to put effort into it and do the math and decide for yourself if you want to agree with the fact that the world is inherently mean and it sucks and it inevitably will do it over and over again, or if you want things to be different. you can’t know either way. he’s not telling you to judge his murderer not to sympathize with him. he’s asking you to think about it.

hm. imagine that.

now, if only people actually followed that advice and thought about things including how narratives focusing on seventeen-year olds having to kill someone in order to save people after developing ptsd for two years are not meant for the reader to blame the seventeen-year old with ptsd but the system that fucked him over that much, that would be even better now, wouldn’t it? ;)

[gluteus-canis-familiaris]

Melancholia (2011)

"...She theorized to me that her constant anxiety, perhaps, had prepared her for the current moment. She found a strange peace, as the world ordered itself to match her perception of it. Moreover, despite the quarantine, she didn’t feel so isolated anymore, alone in her own way of thinking. For a chronically uneasy person, global calamity can, oddly, engender companionship: Everyone suddenly feels the way you always have."

"...In a stand-up set, the comedian Aparna Nancherla memorably compared chronic anxiety to a sort of training module for disastrous times: “Anxiety is finally on message,” she said. “If you’re an anxious person, it’s kind of like, ‘Well, this is what we trained for. This is our Olympics.’”"

- Mallika Rao (May 9, 2020) The Melancholia Postulate. The Atlantic

"...It is a film that, over the decade since its release, has become a kind of talisman for film fans who have experienced depression, such is the visceral power of its depiction. It is so powerful because it refuses to do what people in the grip of mental illness are often pressured to do: make the pain small. There is a defiance to making the pain so big that it literally prefaces the end of the world."

"...He was also deeply struck by the way in which Von Trier showed the physical side of depression – how it creates a heaviness that settles in the bones, making everything an effort. In Part Two, in another bath scene, Claire tries to coax a naked Justine to step over the porcelain rim into the water. But she can't make it and just sags in Claire's arms. "That really struck me," says Graham, "because when it [the depression] was particularly bad, that's exactly what it was like. And I've never seen that in another film. It's so soul-sapping and overwhelming and all-consuming. It's not just that you're feeling down mentally or glum. It affects your whole body, so that you can barely move."

"...In the final estimation, what is so remarkable about Melancholia's portrayal of depression is not only the details but its entire worldview. It's a film that, like many of Von Trier's works, offers a provocation: the depressed outlook, it dares to suggest, is the correct one. The world is ending. Resistance is futile. All you can do is accept this state of catastrophe and relax into the beauty of this final spectacle."

- Sophie Monks Kaufman (May 13, 2021) Is Melancholia the greatest film about depression ever made? BBC Culture

"...Violent death is often a shabby business in the movies. It happens in depressing bedrooms, bloody bathtubs, shattered cars, bleak alleys. Its victims are cast down empty of life. Here is a character who says, I see it coming, I will face it, I will not turn away, I will observe it as long as my eyes and my mind still function."

- Roger Ebert (November 9, 2011)

[yr-bed]

I’m neither a Genius.com editor nor a secondary school English teacher working through war poetry, so I understand lyrics are not a puzzle to be decoded so that all the colours line up and you get the plain, obvious meaning of what’s being sung. Listening to Destroyer this past decade, and the past couple of years in particular, has been an uncommon delight—Dan Bejar’s lyrics are so ambiguous, evocative, self-referential, bleached in ironic detachment, as to resist any easy reading. My most-played song of 2020 was “The Raven” from that year’s Have We Met. I listened to it on a loop some days! It was a compulsion! The tenderness, the depressive worldview, and the archness of the opening lines: “Just look at the world around you / Actually, no, don’t look.” A romanticism undercut by a reality check, because look: everything is fucked! But the warmth of that initial impulse, and of wishing to protect another from sharing the singer’s awareness of how bleak the world actually is. A sin eater whose primary mode of being is not religious martyrdom but gallows humour, the modern sort we wring our hands about when teens do it.

This past week I’ve been listening to “Dream Lover” a lot, because it’s a banger. It storms out of the speaker almost before you’ve hit play, like someone’s knocked on your door and then barged straight through before you’ve reached for the handle to let them in. That squealing sax! Those drums being pummelled! And Bejar swaggering between them, sounding wearied but unbeaten, not the detached lounge singer of the albums that bookend it, but somewhat genuine: possessing a hard-earned wisdom and clarity, even when singing about an imagined romance. I recognised the literal meaning of the refrain only this morning, listening as I made coffee. “Aw shit, here comes the sun,” a reluctant embrace of the waking world because it means losing the titular romance. Admittedly, the context I’ve been rinsing the song is important in explaining how I’ve been taking that line previously: I’ve just emerged from a period of quarantine, locked away not only from the world but the rest of my negative-testing housemate, and still feeling the effects of COVID. Listening to the song in my room, coughing, spluttering, feverish, that refrain echoed the Beckettian, resigned acceptance-cum-determination that stopped me going insane during my isolation.* Yeah, this is shit, but we carry on. Shit, here comes the sun. Things are bad now, and they’re about to get better; with that knowledge, and thanks Boethius, the acceptance also that things will get shit again afterwards. Just look at the world around you!

* Update: Embarrassed to admit that, only upon listening to the track again in the shower, I realised the lyrics “You're sick in bed / You're sick in the head” may also have spoken to me during this time...

[seventeendeer]

How do you feel about season 3 of rick and morty so far?

While I overall love the series very much and The Rickshank Rickdemption was probably my favorite episode ever, I have both likes and dislikes about the episodes following it. I’m gonna put my feelings on it under the cut, because it’s not 100% praise and not everyone wants my overly analytical ass ruining their fun, I bet.

okokokok so: the good stuff first.

I really like that the writers are going straight for the throat on character development. It’s super refreshing to see a cartoon for adults that isn’t afraid to take itself seriously and explicitly explore its characters’ flaws and relationships without a hint of irony.

I extra super like Morty’s development, plus the exploration of Beth and Jerry’s characters now that they’re out of that “we hate each other but also love each other” subplot they used to share. IMO, they’re both a lot more interesting and fun separately, and I really like that Beth is picking up some of Rick’s flaws. It’s not often you see a female version of that archetype.

Making it clear that Rick’s worldview is extremely off and that his priorities aren’t cool is also nice, since it’s been implied from the beginning that we’re not supposed to agree with him, but it has never before been so clear why we shouldn’t.

Now. For the bad stuff. And I personally think there is some bad stuff.

As much as I like that the writers are working with character development and arcs and serious themes, I’m honestly kind of sad to see so much of the humor be sacrificed in the name of it? It takes away a lot of the spunk and energy the narrative used to have, and slows everything down. Plus, when you take the humor away from this show, it honestly just gets really depressing. In the first two seasons, it was cartoony enough to pass for black comedy a lot of the time, but the characters’ callousness towards each other is almost never played for laughs in the post-premiere season 3 episodes. On top of that, the emotional moments are no longer these occasional gentle/quiet moments that make you think, but really upsetting dramatic things happening to the characters with immediate and disastrous consequences.

I completely adored the way the first two seasons juggled dark humor with a very subtle emotional undertone. The endings of Rick Potion #9, Close Rick-counter of the Rick Kind, A Rickle In Time and Auto Erotic Assimilation come to mind. All of these moments were understated and show-don’t-tell-ish enough that they truly stood out and left an impact - most importantly, because they contrasted with the rest of the show.

90% wacky, zany, high-energy comedy VS 10% quiet, somber moments. The contrast and distribution makes the emotional moments that much more surprising, unique and captivating.

Because season 3 instead talks about and explains the characters’ feelings overtly, it loses that elegance and poignant detail. It’s no longer possible to have those ambiguous, thought-provoking endings, because their context is different. It’s no longer a little jab of unease and empathy with characters who are otherwise played for laughs, now it’s simply a part of another bleak ””””mature”””” narrative dragging on and on towards what we can only hope is a satisfactory conclusion.

I personally preferred this show as a silly sci-fi comedy with like, Secret Unlockable Character Depth if you pay attention and notice the little differences in how the characters interact over time. I love cartoons like that, they were the norm when I was a kid and seeing a cartoon for adults go the same route was fun. Until uhh. It decided to get weirdly serious and bleak. I guess

On a similar note, I’m really not a fan of the increase in gore. I can normally stomach gore just fine if I expect it to happen, but this season has gone way above and beyond what’s pleasant anymore. Mainly because I can’t really tell why it’s there?? I guess some people find excessive gore funny or something, but I just think it’s weirdly attention-hogging, and in the context of the new more serious tone of the series, it just gets uncomfortable, I don’t know which reaction I’m supposed to have to it

I’m not sure how I’d feel about the series going back to the way it used to be after going so serious for a while, since, again, the context would be very different, but I’m still interested in seeing where it’s going. It’s clearly building up to something, plus it’s still creative and weird enough that it’s entertaining, even if the writing is clumsier and less pleasant.

Also, I know how much the creators care about this show, which makes its flaws a lot more forgivable, in my opinion. It’s clear that they’re super anxious to make it good. Any story is better if you know that it’s made with love, even if it doesn’t suit your personal tastes as much as it could have.

So yeah, long story short, I think it’s lost some of its charm by devoting so much of its time to characterization over humor, but I still like it, I still get excited about new episodes. I just hope it's going to evolve into a totally new third thing soon before the darkness and bleakness runs its momentum into the ground.

[thankyoufinnick]

I was looking back at an old review of Mockingjay from a friend of mine who’s a trauma therapist. It was very influential on me, in that I took literally her advice to not read Mockingjay and to write an AU conclusion to the trilogy instead. I had finished Mags’ Weapon and was over 100,000 words into Mags’ War before I let myself read or watch Mockingjay or be spoiled.

I swear no one will ever believe the things I came up with myself that happened to be canonical. DAMMIT.

Anyway. I was reading this part, where she says

I was bored by the PTSD in this book. It felt very textbook, especially as everyone had the exact same symptoms. It was like "flashbacks, check; nightmares, check; jumpiness, check; loss of concentration, check; total despair, check." It wasn’t that it was wrong, it’s that neither people nor mental illnesses are cookie-cut-outs.

And of course I went, OMG, my characters have all those! Idk why, I *know* I went to a lot of trouble to decide who has what when and why. But of course I had a momentary freakout. Sigh. But it’s all good, because it gave me an excuse to think about which characters have which symptoms and why.

Jumpiness

I wrote extensively about Finnick and Annie’s jumpiness in another post. I’ll just add that Cashmere is *not* jumpy, for reasons discussed at the end of that post. Cashmere likes physical danger, she knows how to handle it. She doesn’t want to die, in fact her survival instincts are quite strong. But loud noises do not set her off.

By no coincidence, I didn’t even *write* her first Hunger Games. You just a few sentence of watching the recap with her during her Flickerman interview afterward, and it’s a bit of a blur. She had way, way more traumatic things happen to her, like, her entire life up to that point, and her entire life after her Victory Ball up until the AU divergence in Mags’ War. (She gets about six good months to enjoy her victory before Snow breaks out the forced prostitution.)

It’s also worth mentioning that Annie’s jumpiness dies down with time, especially with treatment, and Finnick’s with time, especially as exhaustion and depression start to replace hypervigilance.

Nightmares

Cashmere also does not have nightmares. She has dreams, of course, but a nightmare to her is going to be dreaming her brother’s alive, and then waking up and finding that he’s not.

Finnick originally didn’t have nightmares, then I reread a bit of canon where he has nightmares. Okay, fine, I’ll give him nightmares, but VERY FEW, and not the same kind Annie has.

Annie has nightmares about being hunted, killed, tortured, tormented, etc.

Finnick has equally violent dreams, but they aren’t *distressing*. He’s a lot more comfortable with violence than Annie. (This comes straight out of me and my partner: I have way more frequent and intense violent dreams*, but mine don’t bother me, and hers bother her a lot, like for the whole rest of the day. She also has anxiety disorders; I don’t.)

* Given the things I read, write, watch, and imagine, I wonder why, lol.

So as Finnick gets older and starts to care about people and develop a sense of responsibility, he gets a few nightmares about bad things happening to people he cares about. And when he wakes up from them, he won’t be able to go back to sleep. But he has insomnia anyway, so that’s nothing new. As he puts it, sleeping isn’t nearly as much of a problem for him as not sleeping.

Flashbacks

Annie’s the one with super strong flashbacks. She’s the one who was traumatized for a very brief period of time, and she can’t stop reliving the events. She’s the one who when the smoke alarm goes off, *knows* she’s in her kitchen but *feels* exactly like she’s in her arena, and has to go hide in the closet while she relives watching her district partner being beheaded and hiding from the Career pack until the earthquake and the flood. She always knows where she is, but it barely even matters.

Finnick, for a while after his two Hunger Games, gets fairly low-level flashbacks from triggers. Rain after the first one, because the thing that got him in his first arena was acid rain, and fog (I just realized the fog trigger line went away as part of a major delete! Note to self to work it back in somewhere else.) after his second one, because of the poison fog. Mags :( <3. But they wear off, and aside from grieving Mags, they don’t bother him *that* much.

If I ever write the sequel to Mags’ Heir, there’s one scene where a smell that reminds him of one of his patrons sets him on edge, but he doesn’t know why. And for very specific reasons: his MO was to power through and deny that he had any problem with it. Only after someone else figures out that the smell set him off, does he realize he was gritting his teeth and powering through an otherwise comfortable and enjoyable evening with family.

The only event flashbacks Cashmere gets are when she sees Katniss. Other than that, her traumas were more along the lines of “my entire abusive childhood” than “the one discrete bad thing that happened to me.” So certain interpersonal interactions trigger extremely strong emotions in her, like fear of disappointing authority figures, that make her feel like she’s five years old again, but not specific events. (She never disappointed them or got punished in any major way. She just had no security and lived her entire childhood in fear of disappointing her caretakers.)

Johanna gets a couple quick flashbacks, one when she’s telling someone about a traumatic event, and her body unconsciously adopts the same posture, and one where she feels like she’s switching back and forth between the present and the past for just a few seconds.

Loss of concentration

Finnick has zero loss of concentration. Funny, because he spends half of Mockingjay unable to concentrate. But that does not strike me as a problem he has (quite the opposite).

Oh, wait, no, it happens once in the shower. He’s definitely under stress, and it strikes him as unusual, but it’s no more than what happens to most of us non-pathologically: you’re so deep in thought that you lose track of what you did in the last 5 minutes, and you can’t remember whether you’ve washed your hair yet or not. It bothers him so much, because concentration is so critical to his success as soldier and as spy, and he’s under so much pressure. Similarly, you’ll also see him, at the very end of Mags’ Heir, lose track of what day of the week it is (like you do), and come down very hard on himself, when the truth is, this means the pressure on him has finally let up and he’s gotten used to not everything being life or death, and it was a *healthy* thing to do.

Johanna gets it only as a side effect of medication or sleep deprivation caused by chronic pain, not as a PTSD symptom in and of itself.

Annie and Cashmere both get it, for different reasons. (And here’s where I especially feel like I didn’t just go through a checklist, but their symptoms actually emerge from their personalities and experiences.)

Annie gets distracted easily because she’s constantly straining her ears for something bad to happen, someone to attack, an earthquake to strike, anything. Every little sound sets her on edge. Sometimes this means she loses her concentration.

Cashmere’s more or less fine with the prospect of physical danger. Where she zones out is when people are talking. She has to read their body language and their tone of voice and try to figure out what they want to hear so she can not disappoint them. Sometimes this comes at the expense of being able to hear *what* they’re saying. This, of course, reinforces her belief that she’s stupid and can’t handle the simplest non-scripted social situation.

Total despair

I don’t know if anyone gets *total* despair. You get depression, negative thinking, catastrophic thinking, self-flagellation, pessimism...but this universe is just not as bleak as Mockingjay. (Considering all the bad things that happen, my partner teases me about torturing my characters, and I’m always like, “No, this is my kinder, gentler AU! It’s way worse in canon!”).

Cashmere in the Quarter Quell, maybe. 

Even Finnick at his most clinically depressed may have a very warped worldview around *himself* stemming from his endless self-sacrifice (trying to avoid too many Mags’ War and Mags’ Heir spoilers here), but he retains the ability to be satisfied that he accomplished something good for other people. 

Annie right after her first Hunger Games is in pretty bad shape, but her problem is primarily anxiety, with depression secondary to it. She’s scared to death, but she’s fighting to get better because she believes it can get better.

So I actually think most of the characters’ symptoms come from an interaction of their innate personalities, their childhoods, their traumas, and their lives after the trauma, and not just “PTSD causes these symptoms.”

Johanna’s the one whose personality I have the weakest grip on. She’s also the reason this fic has taken so long to write--I have such a hard time figuring out what she thinks, feels, and does. I finally got something together that I think I can post, but I’m least confident that she makes any kind of coherent sense. Oh well.

[hellyeahomeland]

Is Homeland getting too bleak?

Laure (@laure00001): Homeland was never a happy show. Season One was about a bipolar, deeply damaged woman having a dysfunctional affair with a man she rightly suspected to be a terrorist. Later that man was hanged publicly… and believe it or not, the series only got worse from that point on. Drowning babies. Gas chambers. Euthanasia. Mental and physical disabilities. And now, sexual abuse of a minor.

So… Is Homeland getting too bleak? Do you admire the show’s bravery, or is it getting too much for you?

Zefir (@zeffy001):  Oh YES HOMELAND IS BLEAK! And it got so much worse… compared to the beginning…

Laure: But are you sure, Zefir? They hung the father of the pregnant heroine before her eyes.

Ashley: Sure, but the darkness is just unrelenting at this point.

Sara: Yeah, Homeland has gotten considerably bleaker since the series premiered. Watching season one episodes is weird for the reason that the Brody family is around, Saul isn’t terrible, and Quinn isn’t there. But also, it didn’t make you want to burrow into a hole and stay there forever…

Laure: I guess there was a normality to Brody’s family that helped ground the show.

Sara: Carrie had a snappy rapport with her CIA colleagues. Dana fucking Brody was comedic gold. And Dana and Jessica bickering…

Laure: But was there ever a happy episode?

Sara: “Happy” is not the right word. The show was never happy. But it’s worldview has gotten SOOOO much darker and more cynical since the beginning.

Zefir: A lot of shit went on in the first three seasons, but it was fun to watch. Now it’s pure pain.

Ashley: There was levity. There was room to breathe.

Sara: The closing statement of season one was “love wins the day.” Brody was pulled back from the brink by the love he had for his daughter. The worldview now is “no one can be trusted, and people you love will be constantly torn away from you, so why bother loving at all?” Ironically, Carrie’s fears from the first three seasons – she can’t get too close, because she will have more to lose – have been validated.

Zefir: So we all agree about the bleakness. The question is, was it necessary?

Sara: You can make the argument that it’s more artistically honest to be that dark. Or, just more artistic… But also, the themes of the series have changed over time.

Ashley: And to some extent you need to respect what the characters are going through.

Laure: And the world – the real one – has gone bleaker.

Zefir: I don’t think the world in general got that bleaker.

Frangi (@frangipaniflower001): The Homeland world certainly has. But the Quinn/Astrid/truck driver scene was a bleak funny moment.

Ashley: I don’t know how they can sustain an audience with this downward trajectory.

Sara: We’ve received so many asks lately, to the general tune of “if this show continues to be this relentlessly depressing I’m out…” and not in four years had I even seen one or two. Now we receive a few a week.

Frangi: What I find the more disturbing though is the lack of communication. It’s classically Homeland, but it was so palpable in the last episode.

Laure: Speaking of 6.07, what about Quinn, and what we learned about his past? Does it make the show retroactively even worse?

Ashley: No. Pieces fit together.

Zefir: Yes. It made everything we knew about Quinn so much worse.

Frangi: It explains so much. I keep going through the Quinn scenes in my mind, like a film running backwards, and I think, oh yes… That Rob/Quinn scene in 4.12. It was always one of the more touching scenes for me. Now it’s unbearable. Would people love less a broken hero or a victim of sexual abuse?

Sara: They are making us challenge and question Quinn’s heroic nature. They are taking the things we loved about him--sprightly, physically powerful/towering, sharp, level headed--and literally turning it all inside out.

Ashley: Can’t do anything about his cheekbones though.

Laure: They could mess up his face…

Zefir: Don’t give them ideas!

Sara: I would be surprised if the abuse was ever explicitly referenced or called out, but it will inform every single scene we see of Quinn from now until the end. It also reframes the Quinn/Dar relationship and Quinn’s psychology. It explains why Quinn felt so attached to the group. And the writers are giving justification for Quinn to kill Dar later in the season…

Zefir: I really hope he does.

Ashley: If Quinn doesn’t kill Dar, this whole story is gratuitous and extra gross.

Laure: Ok, people, your conclusions… Will you stop watching if they don’t turn the lights up a little?

Zefir: I will, if there’s no hope left. But the writers won’t let the hope die.

Sara: I would only stop watching if they killed Carrie. Full-stop, no questions asked. If they killed off Franny I would have to think about it. Otherwise, I’m stuck with this until the end.

Frangi: Killing Franny? Oh my God.

Laure: They will never do that. Too dark, even for Homeland. And this is a show with a gas chamber.

Sara: I used to think that Homeland would end with Carrie in a psych ward. It would be the most depressing and nihilistic ending ever. But it would be interesting…

Laure: Oh sure, “interesting.” But I would never re-watch.

Sara: It would be the series finale! You wouldn’t have to!

Laure: But people re-watch entire shows. And that would poison the series retroactively.

Ashley: Actually, the endless darkness of this season gives me hope. I feel the show will end with the characters finding some kind of peace.

Frangi: I hope so. Or what message would it send? That fucked up people in a fucked up world don’t deserve happiness?

Laure: Who knows? It’s Homeland. They want the sales of antidepressants to soar. Maybe it’s a conspiracy. Showtime and Big Pharma. And on this note, thank you everybody! It’s a wrap!

Frangi: Can we go back to listing all the ways Quinn should kill Dar? I vote for a bullet in his crotch. Don’t put this in the debate, Laure.

Laure: Of course not.

Laure: You can totally trust me.

[conepines]

On motherhood, sexuality, and Christians...

A friend of mine just shared this article in a closed group and I am so grateful that things like that are being written at all. Let me talk a second about my ideas about motherhood.

I was always raised being spoken to about my future husband and future children. It was assumed of me and probably every woman, especially in the church. My parents did not grow up religious though their parents identify as vaguely religious (muslims and catholics but like they eat pork and don’t go to mass or anything, it’s just an internally held belief system I guess). My dad converted to christianity and began serving at a church as a youth group leader. My mom became a christian after drunkenly asking my father what it means to be born again. When they got married, my mom had been a christian for like....not a lot of time. So she was thrust into the church sphere with very little independence in her spiritual identity. This is my take on it anyway, having not existed and all. Take it with a grain of salt. 

Then they had me. They got married in July of 1990 and had me in August of 1991. My mom went from being a non religious single woman to being a christian mother in very little time. Her entire worldview was new. My father is a humble and respectful person, so learning biblical principles for the home like husbands love your wives as christ loves the church / women submit to your husbands as unto the Lord was not a terrifying proposal. Ideally, this adds up to two selfless people making sacrifices for and trusting eachother. My mother respects my father as the “head of the household” but truthfully they do operate as a team and he never exercises authority in a way that implies her desires and ideas are lesser. This is like....just really not often the case in other christian marriages. So while I was raised with these ideas, I couldn’t help but notice the way they are abused by others. Spousal abuse justified with that passage is sickening. But I digress.

The point is, my mother entered into a new sphere of reality and everything made sense for her. So raising me was very idealistic for her. Here was a pure, new being and a chance to show her the way life was truly supposed to work, and unlike my mother, she (me) wouldn’t have to go through 20 years of confusion and pain and existential dread before finally finding the truth. No, she would grow up loving Jesus and one day be a wife to a masculine, gentle leadership oriented husband and have her own godly children and slowly improve the world with the grace and humility of a wholesome family unswayed by the world. 

Now...being raised this way, I didn’t think twice about the fact that I would be a wife and mother someday. I even opted to go to Bible college once I graduated high school because, literally this is what I would say, “I don’t want to invest into a career for myself because what will the point be when I get married and have a family and then don’t have time for the career anymore?” Which is logical if my heart’s desire was actually to be a wife and mother, but the truth is that I had zero other options. I was always told I could do and be whatever I wanted, but when it boiled down to logistics anything I did towards a goal that wasn’t ministry was heavily discouraged. When I was younger I used to say that I had a feeling I was going to marry a pastor. I knew what to expect from it from growing up with it and it just seemed like the right thing to do because nothing else matters. It makes sense that I would think that, since it’s all I knew. And my parents kind of took that as gospel. I had to marry someone in ministry, because that’s the right thing to do. 

Once I graduated bible college with an associates degree in literally nothing, I was still single and returned home to work at starbucks. I had breakdowns every once in awhile after about a year went by because I had no prospects of a future. I had no path. I had no plan. What the hell was I doing? Waiting for someone to marry me? I was starting to hang out with more young married people, and my friends were getting married. The allure was GONE. Marriage didn’t seem like the dreamscape it had seemed like in the past. I was seeing young men who grew up being told wives submit to their husbands, and don’t watch porn for the love of God don’t masturbate just wait for your wife...and men whose mothers did everything for them because they were doting so heavily over their perfect little man. These men get married with no skills to take care of themselves and a boatload of sexual repression that they’ve been anxiously awaiting a wife whose duty it is to take care of it. They’ve been taught that their sexuality is of such high importance that a wife who refuses to sleep with them is being sinful. Hell, women are taught that too. I was taught that when you are married, your body belongs to your spouse and theirs to you. I understand this scripture, again, to imply selflessness rather than dominion. But hell if that matters to young christian men. Because when you repress sexuality, things get ugly. You can tell them not to watch porn, but they’re going to especially if you’ve quarantined it as some super secret thing and added the allure of forbidden fruit. Why not instead teach men (and women???) the way that porn affects the brain on a neural level by training it to respond only to supernormal stimuli, and the ways that can lead to erectile disfunction or inability to become aroused when you are with a real life partner? Wouldn’t having realistic information about sexuality be helpful for literally everybody involved? 

I started to realize that marriage for its own sake was just not worth it. Growing up in a culture that assumes marriage is imminent and builds its entire framework of reality around in-home dynamics...was a weird place to decide I didn’t care about marriage. When people told me that I would make a great wife someday it literally offended me. I was horribly depressed living at home and a woman at my church told me she was praying for my future husband and I asked her if she could just pray for me, like about myself and my present tense, because I was miserable and didn’t care about men. 

When I decided to pursue a career in education, it was because it was a career path I knew I could handle and would be welcomed into as a woman, but also because I needed a goal that wasn’t wifery and motherhood. An identity in that became increasingly bleak. Not because I was single, but because I was watching others go through it and be incredibly disappointed and it horrified me to watch people committing to lifetime agreements and slowly becoming disenchanted with life. Pregnancy and engagement announcements made me anxious instead of excited. That was definitely me projecting. I remember saying to my co-worker James that I wanted to have a career path underway before I accidentally get married and ruin it. That’s an insane statement, as he pointed out, and I can hear it hahaha but I knew if it happened it was going to screw everything up because suddenly I’d be a slave to someone else’s goals. How long did I have to be my own person? Had I even ever been?

When I gave up on my plan to move to Oregon and study Early Childhood Education, I moved to Maine instead and worked on a farm with a woman who was endlessly interesting, energetic, opinionated and big hearted. She was a Christian, but had too much life experience to be like my mom. We could talk about God and prayer and faith and church and scripture in a way that didn’t feel contrived and scripted. Like..you could go off script. You could say, “I don’t agree with that” or “i don’t understand that” or “that wasn’t my experience”. It didn’t mean our souls were in peril and there wasn’t an anxiety surrounding that. It was just freedom to speak about things in a realistic way. She never questioned my love for God and still commends me for never letting go of it. I don’t know what my life would be like now if I hadn’t met her. 

One thing that sticks with me incredibly about her life experience...is her regret of motherhood. She loves her two sons more than she can even express, but the experience of sacrifice and pouring yourself out for someone else was expected of her and absolutely taken for granted. The fact that her children call her out of obligation on her birthday and Mother’s day sickens her so much that she dreads it. They were raised by a single mother who busted her ass after leaving their deadbeat father, working incredible hours to give them a good life with the added stressors of being a woman trying to make it alone. Trying to provide for a family by yourself is hard enough, and being a woman makes it worse. I don’t think her sons will ever understand her experience, and they don’t care because they are two successful men. When you’re a successful man, nothing in the entire world matters to you at all. Or so it seems.

Now I work at the newspaper with two other people close to my age, the rest are in their 50′s and up. They have children who are older than me and still live at home. They constantly talk about how exhausted they are by it. One of them has a daughter who got into a domestic violence incident with her childrens’ father and pulled a gun on him. My coworker was in the middle of it for months, helping get the kids to school and between the two parents so they wouldn’t break the restraining order against eachother. Another coworker moved in with her adult son after her husband died, and he pushed the bills onto her and quit his job. His son was running an electric space heater on the top floor and racked up a $300 electric bill that she had to pay. Another has a daughter who just cannot keep her head above water between high monthly costs of living and low paying jobs that she qualifies for. A common qualm. These people assumed that their children would have independence by 18, move out and make something of themselves in the world. What they didn’t account for is how much more unfair the world becomes by the day. Some of their kids literally cannot get the resources to change their circumstance. Some of them are just lazy. Some are sickeningly anxious and can’t fully detach without having an absolute meltdown, because the world is a madhouse. Parenthood never ends. 

When I had a minor surgery and got the bill, I mentioned the cost to a friend of mine who had just had a baby and she told me about the cost of that. I had no idea how expensive it was. Just having a baby. Becoming pregnant. Costs thousands of dollars. 

You get pregnant, you have a million doctor visits and ultrasounds...you work until you’re so uncomfortable you can hardly function but you can’t afford to stay home, then you have the kid and get maybe 6 weeks for your body to heal and arrange for day care since you can’t afford not to work and in most cases that’s around $40 a day. Having a child sounds like a punishment. Your body is destroyed. Your future belongs to someone else who won’t even notice. You’re never going to escape debt. And the older they get, the more it requires. They have to go to school by law, but school is ridiculously ineffective and fosters anxiety and violence. Not to mention it’s being severely underfunded and that’s only getting worse under our new administration. You’re set up to fail in every single way. 

The only thing that would ever make this experience worth it....is truly wanting to be a mother. As I learned, even the genuine and endless love for your existing children does not outweigh the grief of not enjoying parenthood. Motherhood is an incredible experience for some, and they can weather the hardships because they have something that fulfills them. Others are not fulfilled and aren’t able to talk about it. 

I understand, with the way I was raised, why having children and being a mother is so revered and anticipated and encouraged. But I do not want it. It is not practical for my life. I don’t want to have children. When people tell me, “oh, you’ll change your mind, i never wanted to have kids but look at me!”, I want to cry. I don’t care how your experience went. All I know is every time someone told me “do this thing or you’ll regret it”, they have been absolutely wrong. I wish it wasn’t assumed that every woman would love motherhood if given the chance to experience it. I literally feel guilty at the idea of pregnancy. 

I could talk about this stuff forever but I have to pee really bad and Sean’s roommate just got in the shower and I have to go get my name change official’d up at the social security office so I should really get going. I just had a lot on my mind reading that article and thinking about the way I was conditioned to think about lifetime commitments like marriage and motherhood and I’m just really, really glad I didn’t get married super young (25 is still pretty young but I was ready to get married like in my teens) and start building the fake dream life I thought I was supposed to want, because realizing later that it’s not me would have been devastating to everyone involved. 

[criticalotterstudies]

The incel equivalent of taking the red pill is called “blackpilling,” and it’s much, much darker. The idea of “involuntary celibacy” began as part of a disgruntled reactionist community that sprang up in the early 2010s in response to the pickup artist community and its brand of misogynistic self-help dating advice for men. On an extremely misogynistic site called PUAHate, the “incel” first took form as a self-deprecating, bitter loner who rejected the idea that self-help mantras — like Reddit’s frequent advice to “hit the gym” — could work for him. If you were unfortunate enough to be born physically unattractive, the idea went, the brutal truth was that there was nothing society could do for you. Over time, this idea solidified into the dark “reality” behind the black pill and became a unifying theme across incel communities. The black pill worldview isn’t necessarily tied to the idea that you need to be in a relationship to be happy; it’s more like a doctrine that if you’re physically unattractive, you are unworthy of love, and therefore, all your attempts to form lasting relationships are not only destined to end in failure but are probably going to end up making you even more unhappy. As one moderator of an incel community told me, the core of the black pill worldview is bleak fatalism: “Instead of trying to make peace with your flaws and/or try to find someone who accepts you despite them, you declare that your flaws make you inherently unworthy of love as a person, and that any affection that you can get despite your flaws is just a shallow replica with ulterior motives.” Several members of the community I spoke with echoed this idea: If other people tried to protest to them that they were wrong and that everyone deserves to love and be loved, or that women do in fact love men for their personalities and not their looks, the blackpilled incel will often assume that they’re just trying to be nice, while rejecting the idea that any of these positive well-wishers could seriously be interested in them. Members of r/IncelTears, a subreddit for redditors who want to monitor the activities of incels, describe these encounters as frequently ending with the incel member accusing the “normie” of having ulterior motives or wanting to be secretly cruel. The incels I spoke with agreed with that assessment. “The blackpill for me is acknowledging that the whole ‘we love you anyway’ and ‘everybody is worthy of love’ is BS,” an incel named Sinbad told me. “And that there are in fact people who are too ugly to get a relationship.” The appeal of the black pill, for those who subscribe to it, is that once you’ve accepted this harsh reality, you can adjust and live your life accordingly. “It is liberating to think that way in a sense,” the moderator told me. “You can stop worrying about improving yourself, stop worrying about the years passing by and your chances getting slimmer, stop worrying about what will happen in the future, because you are certain of your place in the world and what is going to happen.” But, the moderator also added, “It’s a rather depressive outlook on life, to say the least.” ... It’s tempting to pass off some of this as self-deprecating humor, but incel culture is teeming with the kind of self-deprecation that gets dangerous fast. There’s a vibe within the community that encourages members to one-up each other in their commitment to their own hopelessness — a kind of public performance celebrating the idea that you are past the point of being helped. This idea can and frequently does verge into a glorification of suicide. Along with that performative rejection of self-improvement comes an equally wary attitude toward mental health support. In essence, the black pill worldview makes them think it won’t do any good — so there’s a kind of badge of honor worn around the idea that you’ve accepted no amount of therapy can help you. A frequent incel mantra is “stop coping,” encouraging one another to give up and accept that the way most people deal with problems won’t work for them. One member of Supportcel noted that within incel spaces, lines like “there’s no therapy for your face” are frequent. And incels who make gestures at improving one’s mental health tend to preempt their own moves with the rhetoric that “it won’t change anything.”

What an incel support group taught us about men and mental health - Vox

[bearrigan37]

Mind Vomit, Mind Laundry and Mind Garbage

Hey everyone.

Its been about a year and a half since my last real post. A lot of things have happened since that last post. I am not going to talk about a good chunk of it, because I just plain don't want to. The gist is that I lost a friend, I lost my job and lost my place to live. Thankfully my mother is tolerant of our shenanigans and is letting us stay with her. It's been rough, to say the least. The good things are that my sons are healthy and happy, and get to play around with their cousins and grandparents almost every day. The older one is almost done with his Pre-K, and even has a little ceremony coming up for it.

The thought that this child has grown so much is mind boggling. He's a little cutout of me (unfortunately, but thank the abyss that he also has his mothers genes). He'll start actual Kindergarten soon. His little brother is growing in his teeth, crawling, standing, and damn near walking already. The older one is the young ones favorite person in the world, and that's a big ray of happiness in my otherwise bleak worldview.

My wife has had her ups and downs as well. The school she used to go to that caused her tons of grief is going down for being generally shady and terrible, but the school she is going to now can no longer offer the classes for the degree program she is on. She did, however, get into some classes that will lead to a job with an old folks home, and will make her a CNA. Hopefully that acts as a foot in the door for her to get closer to her career of choice, labor and delivery nursing.

My mom and stepdad are slowly starting to do all the alterations to their house that they have been wanting to do, and seeing them out there painting and cutting wood and doing all their little projects makes my super happy for them. It took them both a long time to finally be in a place that allows that kind of stuff, and they're both finally in a place mentally where they are actually very happy. My sons adore my mom and stepdad, so that's a bonus.

My dad got his shop/cave set up and has a bunch of cool things in there. Amazon Echo turns on his air conditioning and that will always be novel to me. My boys got to spend some time with him recently too. My oldest preferred to play outside, but the younger one had a bit of a fascination with him. His laptop, his beard, the dog, all very exciting to the little guy. Being closer to my parents has brought a good amount of peace to my mind.

In the past year and change, I've done lots of thinking. Lots of anxiety, depression and dysphoria have rushed through me at breakneck speeds. I read an article from Transgender Universe lately that was pretty spot on, I'll link it at the end of this post.

Basically, it talks about the anxiety and mental acrobatics that a person goes through when even thinking about transitioning. It hit all the marks, and I recommend that you all read it. Funny that at the moment I type this paragraph, “Wired Wrong” by Steam Powered Giraffe started playing on my computer.

Anyway.

I lay awake a lot at night. I wake up at all hours in blind panic, or crushing anxiety. I think and think and overthink. The me that is now and the past me, have all laid the foundation for my current life. They've laid down the building blocks for what I have to deal with later on. I did a lot of things wrong, and a few things totally right, but they are both things that keep me up. Does the future me, the correct me, even have the strength to figure out how to deal with all that later on, when I'll be forced to? My decisions and lifestyle now have basically doomed me, lets breakdown how so that everyone has an idea of whats going on in my head.

First off, the two big things that are doing things to my general mental and physical health are my diabetes and my gender dysphoria. Because of the diabetes, I can’t take the pills for transitioning, because the pills are bad for your kidney and liver. The other options are injections or cream/ointment/patches. The injections are the most effective way of taking the hormones, and the cream is the least effective way. The injections are on a national shortage, and there is no real sign of that shortage coming to an end. I'm not sure how the cream would play out for me, honestly. I've been too in my own head to actually call my doctor and find out. More on that later.

Everything that has happened in the past year and change has stopped me dead in my tracks in doing whats best for me. I haven't called doctors, I haven't taken medicine, I haven't gone to school, I've done nothing. Well, I did finally get to go camping, and took a few trips into the desert with my brother in law, those always helped clear my head, but now its spring and my allergies would literally kill me if I stayed outside for too long. I got pericarditis last spring, every time I sneezed or coughed, it would create too much pressure on my heart and stop it momentarily because of a build up of fluid in the pericardium, or something like that. This happened because of viral infection, because allergies.

I worry about everything. I don't sleep, because I think of what is going to happen in the future. When I finally find work again, how far into my transition can I go before things get awkward, or violent for me? How long before someone finds a reason to fire me that allows them to claim that it wasn't discrimination? How do I explain myself to my sons teachers? What do I do if one of the parents of my sons friends decides my son can’t play with their child because of who I am? What do I do when faced with all that? How can I even justify going through with my transition, using all that money when it could be used to pay bills, pay for food, pay for doctors, or even just buying toys for my babies? This whole thing terrifies me. I'm scared to exist, merely because existing the way I want to exist could mean no job, no house, no life if I'm not careful, as in I could be killed because of what I am. The thing that scares me more than that is what will happen to my kids and my wife if I start presenting and people make the connection. Everything that could happen to them keeps me awake.  

I can't justify putting myself first at all. I need to put other people before me. I have a compulsion to do small things for myself to keep myself sane, like archery or hiking, but in the long run, I will never allow myself to put myself first. This leads to more problems.

Like my steadily declining health.

In that regard, I am purposefully putting off everything because of stupid reasons. Its like those fetch quest strings. Go get this, so that you can get this thing from that guy, who'll give you a thing to give to that guy over there who needs this other thing because blah blah blah. I put off working out because my back and feet wont allow me to work out in the ways I want/need to, but I dont go to the doctors to fix those things because [reasons], [bullshit], and [nonsense].

My diabetes is uncontrolled. I have had plenty of opportunities to go to doctors of all kinds of different fields to get me healthy. Doctors for my feet, my organs, my eyes, my back, doctors to get my weight down, start meal planning for a gastric sleeve, therapists, etc, etc, etc. I don't go. I never go. I know I should. I need to get myself into shape. I need to get the fatty tumor on my liver taken care of. I need to get insoles for my feet. I need to stay alive, but I hardly want to.

Because its inconvenient for everyone else.

I have to go to the doctor, well then I need to use the car to go way out to the outskirts of town to see her. I have to see another doctor later, and another later, well I've already used a ton of gas to do that, and I cant forget about how last time I went out to see my doctor, the tire went flat so we had to pay for new ones. Cant let that happen again. Doctors appointments at weird times? Cant try to get someone to babysit, they might be doing something else, I don't want to bother them. I'll just not go. It's easier that way.

That's how it goes.

Hell, even right now I feel terrible writing this instead of searching for a job. I mean, I know there isn't much more I can do to find one, short of getting out and going to places instead of applying online. I just feel bad. I don't really even play games anymore, because I feel guilty enjoying myself instead of providing, or even just trying to provide. I play strictly mobile games now, and the ones I play I just play because I'm part of groups and don't want to let them down. I'm playing a tabletop Fallout game with my wife that I created, mostly because she has been wanting to play D&D for a long time. My game is unpolished and rough, but she's enjoying it, so that's what matters.

I'm not writing this to complain, mostly. I'm going to complain anyway, because I try not to in real life, so I'm writing this on the off chance that more than five people read this. I'm writing this so that if there are any people that feel the same thing, they know that they aren't alone. The only reason I am comfortable typing this out in the first place is because I think only five to ten people read these when I put them out. Some of my dearest, closest friends have no idea who I am, even though I laid it out plain in the past posts. I guess that in a sense, it is a bit of a cry for help, but I'm allowed at least one, right?

Anyone?

*Ahem*.

Losing my job is the worst thing. I had started working at Sportsman's Warehouse, at the archery counter. It was great. Talk about bows, shoot bows, fix bows, and when I'm not doing that, head over to the gun counter and talk about guns, or do some minor work on scopes, sighting in rifles or whatever. Stock the shelves and clean when there is downtime. It was a fun, easy job. I lost the job because I fucked up an interaction with a customer, and mistakenly thought he wouldn't fire the air rifle I just cocked. Well he did, it was loud, and some people thought it was loaded. Corporate HR and Corporate LP decided I had to go. The managers did what they could for me but, I don't think they could even do much. I loved that job, I enjoyed the company of all the people I worked with. My bosses were cool.

All gone now.

Since I am living with my mom, there have been more troubles. My mom and step dad really like everything to be clean and neat, but I'm very lethargic most of the time. I try to help with cleaning and whatnot, but I just don't have the motivation. I know in my head that I shouldn't need motivation, I should just do it because I’m a god damn adult and that's what adults are supposed to do but... eh. Granted, I'm cleaning more here than I did when I was on my own.

My oldest son keeps telling us that he wants to go home, or go to the new house. Having to tell him that we are home, that there is no new house, and watching his little heart break is just the worst thing.

Living with my mom and step dad is great. We all get along great, we have fun and things aren't bad. I just know that we are a bit of an inconvenience. We dirty the house, eat the food, use the water, and don't really do much to help other than cleaning or occasionally buying beer. I wish there was more we could do, but I don't even know what there could be, without income anyway. We have money, but we need to use it to get a place, if there even is a place that will take us with no income, even if we can pay 6 months all at once.

Another thing is that my uncle was supposed to move down a while back, but the only place he can stay is here at my moms. We're still here, so he cant move down. I don't think he will move down until he knows we are back on our feet and stable. He's just like that, he likes to make sure everyone else is comfortable. He doesn't want to impose, I guess. Something like that. We create more inconveniences. So I'm a huge ball of anxiety and guilt and awful. This all contributes to the decline of my mental health. Dysphoria itself is bad enough but damn, just add everything else up and there's just a massive shitstorm on the horizon and I don't know whats going to happen when it hits. I don't know.

Additionally, I don't talk to anyone anymore. I don't know if I don't talk to them because of whats happening, or I just don't, or anything. I don't anymore. I would like to. I would, but I just don't. I guess its that motivation thing from before.

I mean, at this point I feel like I'm just rambling, but this is an important thing for people to know. Contact with humans outside of family is important. Having friends is important. I talk to a few of them online, but rarely.Plus I need to say all this stuff and not actually say it.

Point is, I don't know what my point is. I've got issues.

Everyone has issues, I know. I know that this is also my outlet, my way of letting people know how I feel about things and letting people know stuff about my life. It started out as my Daddy Blog thing and man did that go downhill fast. I feel the need to apologize for the content of these posts, though I know I have no reason to. Should be a little gateway into my head. I open myself to the public for that reason, to give people that gateway. Maybe something I type out and ramble about helps someone. Who knows?

God I hate posting these things, but I have to do it. I have to let it be known. Even if it makes me want to throw up because of nervousness. It’ll all just get worse if I don't.

Thanks for reading.

Links for more reading (Better reading)

My dads Amazon page! He has a ton of books.

https://www.amazon.com/Ron-Washburn/e/B008MN7D2U

My friends blog, she has adventures and ideas!

http://nearlyeloquent.com/

Transgender Universe article, and really just check out the site.

http://transgenderuniverse.com/2017/04/03/the-darkest-moments-in-a-transgender-existence/