#//seriously I'm sick of this happening

[momentomori24]

[This has been sitting in my draft for a while lol]

When it comes to Curly's failings, I always see people bring up his obvious failure to protect Anya and him prioritising Jimmy, who was the rapist in that situation. Which is completely valid btw and we should rake him through the coals for that alone even more. But I also see too many people saying that Curly "didn't enable Jimmy" or playing softball for his actions. And I could maybe see where that comes from if that incident was the only thing we had to point to-- but that wasn't all he did, is it? Curly being indifferent or not taking Jimmy's mistreatment and belittlement of Anya seriously was hinted at so much earlier than that.

Namely, the very first time we play from Curly's point of view. Let's just skip the fact that Curly was putting everyone in danger by not taking his psych evals seriously and simply giving the same answers to pass them even tho he was shown literal minutes after this scene being clearly not-sane, and go straight to the point I actually wanna get into. Which is this:

These scenes in isolation wouldn't be that bad. From his pov, it's played off as comical and it is. Jimmy being a brony (not really lmao) and getting playfully dragged over it is funny. But unfortunately this is the first example out of many for Curly's complacency. Anya is complaining about Jimmy not taking his psych evals or her seriously, which is easy to believe considering how much he rags on her for "not being a good nurse" (she kept Curly alive on hopes and dreams how dare you). So he keeps making her do silly and inappropriate reports she clearly doesn't wanna do, which is kinda shitty (also borders on harassment). But rather than actually saying something about Jimmy's behaviour or even acknowledging how it sucks he says this:

Mate, that's not a good thing 💀 He's clearly aware that the problem is Jimmy's lack of respect for Anya specifically. He knows that if he, his friend and a man in power, were the one doing the evals Jimmy wouldn't try that disrespect. But it's Anya, a meek woman who ranks lower than him so he thinks he can get away with it (which he DOES), and Curly's shown as comfortable in knowing that. He doesn't chew Jimmy out for making Anya uncomfortable nor does he reassure her that he will do something about it. All he does is take it off her hands this once and helps Jimmy power through it to get a good diagnosis (even tho we know he's DEFINITELY not sane either). He doesn't even mention Anya's discomfort or confront him on his inappropriate behaviour, just teases Jimmy in good fun instead because he doesn't think of it as anything serious. It's subtle and pretty minor in comparison to everything else, but I think it's worth pointing out. Especially because this convo takes place after Jimmy had assaulted her, which makes this so much worse.

If you need any more evidence of Curly being an enabler you need not look further than Anya herself. And I'm not just talking about the way he failed her here-- I'm talking about Anya's own view of Curly and the way said view influences her actions.

Just look at her choice of wording. "What would you have done". This is in response to him saying that she could've come to him if she were feeling stressed, which she-- in his eyes-- didn't. The question itself implies that she had no faith in Curly to actually help despite his insistence that he would've, which I think is significant because it shows that she's very much aware of Curly's shortcomings when it comes to her situation AND it's one of the first (or the first time) she actually verbalised her lack of trust towards him or anyone directly. Prior to this scene she had told him about her rape and the rapist, presumably because she trusted him to handle it. And he dismissed her because the rapist was his best friend, and that evidently deeply scarred her. Enough so that she secretly took the gun and hid it someplace else and didn't even tell Curly were that was, because she knows that if Curly has access to it there's a so much greater chance Jimmy will have too, insinuated by the line "the least I can do is make sure he never gets it either". Speaking about the gun:

It sucks so bad that this perception of him isn't even inaccurate nor unjustified. That despite everything Jimmy had done to her and everything he could still do to her, he'd very likely still not allow her access to the gun for protection. Because that's exactly what he didn't do anyway. He didn't attempt to keep her safe from Jimmy, instead he just pretended that nothing was wrong and still let Jimmy's belittlement of her pass. He didn't give her the gun after the incident, because she wouldn't have hid the case if he had. Despite his desperate reassurance that he'd do anything, he did nothing but make it worse for her and she KNOWS that. It's so frustrating knowing he entrusted the axe to Swansea when he needed it but not the gun to Anya when she needed it too. Also this:

The fact that his knee-jerk reaction to her admitting that she's pregnant was "Who would you--" is so fucked, especially considering she's already told him what happened. "Who would you" what? Who would you fuck? Who would you have sex with? That choice of wording drives me up a wall-- SHE wouldn't and didn't do anything or anyone. That was JIMMY. The potential sentence implies that she had any choice or agency in her pregnancy. She didn't. And the fact that Curly had to ask "who" insinuates that he's been putting Jimmy's action out of sight and out of mind the whole time, choosing to not think about them or what happened to Anya at all. And considering he still made her do Jimmy's evaluations despite being able to do them himself and literally didn't even think of making sure she gets psych evals done too--especially AFTER getting sexually assaulted--that might actually be the case (I haven't seen anyone make a stink about that piece of info so I'm going to because what kinda colossal fuck up IS that??).

I vaguely had a post like this in mind but seeing so many people be like "well Anya did some wrong stuff too like leaving Curly alone with Jimmy but you don't get mad at HER for that so why is Curly not doing anything about Jimmy being alone with Anya so different??" actually makes me want to blow some people up. Jimmy's an abuser, sure, but Anya has no real reason to believe that he'd actually harm Curly. From her perspective, they were close, close enough that Curly would not only let Jimmy continuously disrespect her but also get away with assaulting her too. That, and she knows that Jimmy was closer to Curly than anyone and more likely to be civil around him than he ever was to her. She has barely any reasons to suspect Jimmy would harm Curly when they're alone. Curly, on the other hand, has every fucking reason on the planet to think Jimmy would harm her when they're alone. He knows he raped her (likely in her room at night too). He knows that he sexually harasses her. He knows that he doesn't respect her at all. And that was BEFORE the crash. Anya tried insisting on giving Curly his medicine, only for Jimmy to keep aggressively insisting that he'll take care of it despite her protests. Curly didn't try to keep them separate at all even though he was the Captain and had the power to do so. And this should go without saying, but leaving your rapist alone with his best friend that he was close to and enabled/protected him and leaving your friend alone with the woman he raped (and might have repeatedly assaulted given his free access to her) is NOT THE SAME and I'm going to start chucking some people down a waterfall because what the fuck is that argument 💀 Actually leave it to the fandom of the game where the rape of a woman is the catalyst for the events that unfold to use her trauma to defend the guy that enabled it in the first place. Bloody hell.

The reason why this whole Curly discourse pisses me off is because it-- from what I can see-- ONLY brings up his failures 1-0 days before the crash and the Dead Pixel scene (or all the discussion around other points are drowned out by those two). Those scenes, while important to talk about, are not the only things he's done, and focussing on those as the only things is a mistake that comes short of understanding the issue. When it comes to Curly the main defences I see for him are "he was trying not to escalate the situation" and "he was trying to keep things under control the best he can" and "he was waiting for the right time to help Anya", but those don't work when you look at the bigger picture of everything he's done.

He half-assed through his psych eval despite clearly not being sane (and KNOWING he's barely sane, he literally admits it to Jimmy's face). He still continued to task her with Jimmy's psych evals. He brushed over Jimmy's sexual harassment of her as a joke. He didn't think about making sure she got psych evals done herself after being raped. He gave Swansea the axe but didn't give Anya the gun despite it being for "unrest amongst the crew" (whatever the hell THAT means). He let her assault slip his mind that she had to remind him. He's literally a blond man. He took no action to hold Jimmy responsible for anything, and prioritised how his violation of Anya would affect him rather than her. He ignored her demands for him to get rid of Jimmy. He still allowed Jimmy free reign of the ship as co-pilot even after he was openly fantasising about killing everyone and had a major motive and the means to do just that. He was potentially thinking of making her miscarry to cover up what happened. He was so accustomed to her sucking up being disrespected and disturbed that he didn't even notice a difference in her behaviour until she hid the fucking gun. There's so much other shit he's done and hasn't done, and not talking about them or glossing over them makes it so easy for people to argue that he isn't actually an enabler or just minimise the severity of his neglect.

And while I'm already dragging Curly through the mud, I might as well just drag Swansea too. I've seen too many people being like "Anya should've told Swansea instead" and "Swansea was the one that actually took responsibility". Like, y'all realise he's not that much better than Curly, right? He already knew about what happened to Anya-- he admits it to Jimmy's face-- but he didn't do shit. He knew, but he still got completely shitfaced for months despite her earlier protestation to that (for very understandable reasons). He knew, but he still let Jimmy have the axe AND be alone with Anya while having it. He knew, but when Anya locked herself in the Medical and Daisuke and Jimmy asked for his help he didn't budge nor really showed any care. He knew, but the reason he finally decided to do something about Jimmy wasn't Anya, it was Daisuke. Her suffering and her eventual death weren't enough for him to take action either.

This game, on top of everything else, is a great depiction of rape culture. It doesn't just include the rapists, but the people (mostly men) that stay silent, do nothing, make excuses for and protect the perpetrator for whatever reason, and Swansea and Curly (Curly way more so than Swansea) are both active contributors to the environment that allowed for evil to flourish and continue unhindered until it destroyed them all. And while that arguably doesn't make them evil themselves or as bad as Jimmy, they are so much more a part of the bigger problem than the fandom likes to admit.

[Ok since this is kinda gaining a bit of traction please consider helping these guys out here, here and here. Thanks!]

[deoidesign]

I can't wait for this to come back!!! >>> when is this coming back?

[thelikesoffinn]

So what are we saying, are the Maze Runner books nice? Worth the read?

[crimeronan]

side effect of having my hydroxychloroquine work really well is that i'm forgetting what it felt like to be Really Horrifically Sick. both because of the emotional distance and because of my general memory issues. the memory issues are a LOT worse concerning Times When I Was Horrifically Sick.

so i'm actually pretty grateful to my past self for the amount of time i spent oversharing here. if i scroll back like seven months in my autoimmune tag i can find posts of me essentially going "eh, i'm sleeping for 22 hours a day but i don't really care anymore bc i've accepted i'm gonna die" and "life sux. can't breathe or think or feel my chest but that's constant so i don't wanna go to the ER about it AGAIN" and "docs took 14 vials of blood 4 x-rays several lung images several lung tests and an EKG before i even left the hospital today. even tho they havent gotten my test results back yet" and i'm like god Damn.

I REALLY LIVED LIKE THIS????????

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

'...you know jokes like those actually hurt me, right?'

"who said I was joking?"

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.

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'oh.'

[slippery-minghus]

oof

[music-for-them-asses]

Where are the cute guys with similar interests and values who didn't participate in January 6th in my area?? Am I gonna have to start overturning rocks with a stick?? Where the FUCK are they hiding

[battywitch]

.

[divinekangaroo]

What is your thought on the S6 Tommy and Lizzie sex scene, would you consider it to be dispassionate and disconnected, they don't kiss. Does it scream end of a relationship that is long time coming?

I think it looks like grief-stricken lovemaking, and an attempt to connect between people who’ve been married for eight years and having sex for some fifteen years and who just had a daughter die, so possibly passionate sex is not on the cards for a while, and maybe hasn't been on the cards for a long time prior either. 

This sex scene also lands at a time where it's burdened with a massive amount of emotional issues delivered, not just Ruby's death, but Duke's reveal, and Tommy having just been given a terminal diagnosis. Perhaps Tommy feels like he's on some kind of countdown now to find a way to ‘fix’ this tangle of grief and disappointment between him and Lizzie, hence relocating their efforts to a hotel room to try to re-spark something more passionate. 

It seems Tommy always takes the role of sexual initiator with Lizzie: so, given this is not their first time having sex after Ruby's death, this is possibly also one of many attempts by Tommy trying to use sex to provide and receive physical comfort and intimacy. The relocation to the hotel room is trying to let them get through it without Ruby coming into the conversation. Lizzie's got plenty of reasons to be mad at him, and is definitely hurt, but she isn't shunning him or cutting him off from sex. They're both still reaching out for each other in the way they know has worked for them in the past, because I do think they use sex in particular to connect when words tend to trip them up badly.

They're very focused on each other’s faces in this scene, eyes open throughout, close and touching, a full length body press, so I think of how this sex scene is more about proximity and touch, which is intimate and connected.  The lack of kissing doesn't bother me one way or the other - I don’t really think of them kissing much, more touching /nuzzling. They don’t ever kiss in greeting the way some couples do, but they do embrace and usually touch/press faces. 

On whether a (tired, trying-to-connect) sex scene screams the end of a relationship a long time coming, I think they did a great job in S6 of playing the relationship dynamic as so very complex, you can never quite tell if a break up will or won’t be inevitable.  But that complexity, I find, is more in the dialogue and their other non-sexual physical touches, not this sex scene alone.  If there were a sliding scale as to ‘doomed relationship’ vs ‘fragile/imbalanced but ongoing relationship’, I’d put the sex scene on the ‘ongoing relationship’ side. I find it sweet and intimate and sad, and very middle-aged married couple, and they're both ok being a little bit pathetic with each other in favour of still making that effort to hold each other.

[i3utterflyeffect]

By the kickstarter stickman, I mean the one that shows up in this video, it’s the first 36 seconds, afterwards it’s just Alan explaining kickstarter stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwofhyizvnA

And as something to add to hangman, in response to a comment saying “Bruh for a moment I thought he was gonna start choking but guess not”, Alan replied with “yeah... we thought it might be too dark if he started choking”. They might not be choking but they could’ve been, just an idea to chew on <3

i keep forgetting that Alan made ava 1 when he was like, 13, it's so unreal seeing his face in that video because what the fuck this guy is a full-on adult in current day. all the videos i see are more current day. what the hell who is that he looks my age or even younger that should NOT be allowed

no thoughts on the kickstarter stick in particular though. seems like a typical ava stick pre-current era. really love that he went a completely different direction for sc though.

and also. oh my god. yeah no i wonder why that would have been too dark <- deeply horrified by the idea of that

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

not my online friend trying to have the "not all zionists" conversation with me rn

[fondfamilies]

when the show starts gideon's had time off for ptsd he buries it deep down & carries on & makes himself work with it, then when his little guy gets it too he passes on some shitty advice & otherwise (as much as we see) stays silent about it. then it all gets to gideon (you know, because he doesn't deal with it or take it seriously as far as we see) & he quits, leaving reid to keep working with ptsd & the bad advice. i love gideon but maybe it was good for reid to see that his mental health management was perhaps something to not take to heart too much hahah

[gloriousmonsters]

read camp dama.scus. enjoyed some stuff, really wish i didn't have the experience so often reading a book that's Good and Progressive and about Queer Affirmation etc of feeling like i'm side-eying the author like 'and you know that delineating the people that oppose you as pure evil that therefore deserves torture or death or being eliminated from society entirely is bad, right? you know that, right??'

[kelbunny]

Can things just stop breaking and falling apart please. I just want people to see my art and analysies.

I'm tired, I hate this, and I want to break something.

[bibiana112]

I too wish that the medical hack that made me grow up in a purgatory like state of existence would rot in prison Akane was so real for this

[fallowhearth]

Have spent my annual leave today catching up on administrative things related to my mum's legal docs and my brother's long term care plan. My brother has been doing great since my mum retired, he's much happier and making huge strides in expanding his life skills. Mum now has all day to devote to incredibly long and complicated forms, beaurocracy, and wrangling what meagre services are available. Not to mention the extra time she can spend with him. It really brings home how cruel and precarious the current state of affairs for disabled people is.

If you are disabled, the government relies upon you having a relative who has the energy, time, resources, aptitude, etc to take on a second unpaid full-time job as your carer. It relies upon you having replacement relatives to step in if your original carer gets old, sick, or disabled themselves. If you don't have such a relative handy, then go fuck yourself. There is no backup plan.