#(abnormal) reflections

[lesbianlothcats]

I just want to say one more thing for now, to anyone who is struggling right now because the Bad Batch has been your comfort show but how they handled Tech has potentially ruined that for you, you’re not alone. I know that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, but you aren’t alone.

[frogaroundandfindout]

Dick telling Bruce that he refuses to keep denying that Bruce is a part of him and that he is proud to have been Robin (Teen Titans Spotlight #14)

[bobbinalong]

"kon would wear a crop top, jon would not" says WHO

[implicitdemandforproof]

if i think too much about tyler joseph self titled era i start getting sick to my stomach

[iamdangerace]

Screaming Sneakers, (Abnormal) Reflections from the Marching Orders E.P. (1982)(Limited Edition Pressing (100 copies)).

[katchwreck]

Hi comrades, itʼs been a minute. Sorry for being inactive on here over the past months, but I thought I would share something here that I wrote two years ago on this day.

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

The ever so misanthropic and cynical arrogance of the petty-bourgeoisie is a universal class trait spun from the intensified monopolizing tendency of capitalism.

*Why did not the lousy serf chose to become a noble? The sub-human deserves no dignity nor affection in their own miserableness. It is not I who have made it the way society functions; it is their own faults for not being capable to determine her own desire.*

... Such is the rotten and mischievous mindset of the dissonantly deflecting oppressor, who steadily is on the hunt to advance in itʼs own economic, and thus hierarchical societal ranks of sorts.

Fear and trickery is constantly used as inducement by the oppressing part (again)st the oppressed part.

Capitalism is, by no (but also every) means, different than feudalism in this regard. It is only the material circumstances and structures that has developed, mainly due to the variousness of technological advancements throughout, and mainly so in the imperialist cores by the extraction and transfer of resources and labour power, which produces both value and, moreover; abundance and scarcity.

As Karl Marx described it when he so eloquently detailed the result of the increased antagonism between two conflicted, yet inbound, poles:

“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.”

Let me be perfectly clear to you who may read this: the ongoing treats and attacks against the proletariat across the bourgeois states by the capitalist class – behaviorally and rhetorically as individuals, or from the state power itself, whether it comes to austerity-packed reforms or state police and military brutality and repression — is ONLY going to intensify (grow worse and, with that, more obvious) unless the working class study to become class-conscious (awareness means vigilance) of the systematic dependency and thereafter organize, and fight back to put an end to the perpetual spiral of exploitation that is both in- and out of control.

The ruling class perpetualizes the status quo, and they hold on to it by every and any tool possible; from mass media to manufacturing consent through education and various of everyday material and holding of means of communications to productions, to mass-surveillance, to commercially glamorous nothingness, to parlamentarism to manufacturing and determining monetary value and societal laws, norms and abnorms, thus what “is” and what feels right and “is” and what feels wrong, passionate passivity, social alienation, division, wars, meaningless conflicts, better versus worse, competitions, appropriations, corruption, controlled linguistics, receptions, meaning... our very existences.

[cuntstable]

the whole feeling of ”i wasnt supposted to live this long” is fairly common with people whove grown up w various mental health problems like depression and suicidality etc etc. and i can definitely relate to that too but like theres something about like… when you grow up in a scary actively dangerous enviroment where you as a child are just actually fearing for your life on the regular, just expecting that one of these days youll die. and then that day just never comes, at least not until youre already an adult. its difficult to accept that youre alive! its so crazy i feel like ive been trying to adjust to Not Living In Mortal Fear for like over a decade now and it still feels strange. like its hard to plan for future and to believe in it but i guess i AM just happy to be alive and safe. that has to be enough too

[roobylavender]

i’m torn between indian and pakistani mainstream media bc i feel like the former tends towards wanting to be progressive as a whole but often makes haphazard attempts in the process that certainly have their heart in the right place but are still not doing quite enough and then the latter is like 90% straight women hating shite from the gutter but the leftover 10% that is actually worth something is some of the most phenomenal stuff you have ever seen and near close to perfect. but it’s only 10% and you have to wait and wade through so much of the shite to even get to it

[jainenkept-a]

ignatius has been acting like a little hussy in my brain lately. so. in the spirit of sunday funday, if you send 🤫 (hush. if it's not showing up for you), he'll dirty-talk your muse and leave them with a fantasy/scenario to do with whatever they please. we'll start out with established ship partners and then maybe i'll open it up to everyone in a separate post, if it goes well.

[ap-trash-compactor]

.

[fictional-worlds-are-exquisite]

uni course was talking about the importance of reflection and I was over here like don’t worry i have an anxiety disorder I reflect on every single action I have ever taken 🙂

[bredforloyalty]

i had a good day i like having things to do but unfortunately i have just remembered i am insane</3

[shotmrmiller]

god going on a date with johnny whom you matched on tinder and he's the type of guy you avoid like the plague; jaw-dropping good looks, cheeky ㅤㅤsmiles, hits the gym more in a week than you've done all year and worst of all, could charm the pants off a snake.

so it's truly no wonder that you end up letting him bury his face between your thighs and lap at your glistening sex until your moans almost turn into screams and you haven't even left the bar's driveway, then left to watch johnny wipe the condensation off the windshield with a spare shirt so he can drive you home all the while his chin drips with your slick.

he fucks you against the front door once inside, legs hooked over his arms, then again over your couch, hand curled around your throat, and again, in front of your full length mirror while he tells you how pretty you look taking all of him, to look at how pretty you look, his crystalline eyes latching onto yours through the reflection, pretty as a peach.

then he leaves you with his spend sticking your thighs together, a languid kiss that tastes of you, and with his personal number on a scrap piece of paper.

and that's the last you hear of him. he'd said that he's quite a busy man, military and whatnot, and all in all, while you'd raked your nails down his back on the first date, it had been a date. you require more than good sex to get into a committed relationship.

a swipe of your thumb brings up tinder again, and you match with another bloke not your type. big, broad man, biceps the size of your thighs with a deadpan stare that sees right through false bravado. but he's doesn't seem to care in the slightest that he makes you nervous, doesn't care that you stutter out responses to his rather abnormal questions.

simon takes you home and sits eerily silent with his hands dwarfing the steering wheel as you chew on your lip before tentatively inviting him in for a nightcap, and you must be the luckiest person on the planet because he's just as devoted to your pleasure as your last partner.

he brings you peak after peak with his tongue, his fingers, swirls your pearl with the tip of his misaligned nose. then he lets you be on top first, concentration knitting your brows togethee as you try to fit all of him in and pride warms your cheeks when you can hear his teeth audibly grind as his fingers bite into the soft of your waist once you take him to the root, thighs flush against his hips.

you come undone more times than you can count, the neighbors more than likely knowing his name by the time he walks out the front door (after checking the locks on your windows) and that's that.

until it isn't because a text from johnny awakens your phone screen, an invite to a restaurant downtown next saturday, one you've only ever fancied of eating at and well-

a date is a date, isn't it?

you tell him to pick you up at seven and he tells you to wear something you wouldn't mind letting him keep underneath, preferably something in red. (must've seen that particular number while you looked for some sleeping shorts before he left that night.)

hopefully you won't feel too bad breaking things off with whoever doesn't ask you to be theirs first.

(simon and johnny fuck each other to the thought of you back at base, simon's fist viciously tight around johnny's cock as he's got him drooling into the flattened pillow, almost like she's fucking you too, eh, johnny?)

[magnus-and-the-dragon]

one time the silt verses said “you can never really overreact to a parent; you’re just yelling back through the decades making up for lost time”

and i literally had to pull my ass over while driving to jot that shit down

and i’ve been thinking A Lot about my dad lately and i put on my next episode in my silt verses relisten today and, coincidentally, encountered that quote Again

and i’m just. over here Dwelling. pls don’t contact.

[mangled-by-disuse]

Tried to put this in the replies, but it got long and is relevant to the OP, so:

Less so than the average British/South African white guy of his time, which is to say: yes, but not notably so.

He did also speak very bluntly in his response to the Nazi requests to translate his work, claiming he would have been proud to be a genuine Aryan [that is, from the Indian subcontinent] but unfortunately he's just German and English. Some of that is "Oxford fellow thinks he's being very smart" rhetorical devices, but he also does seem to have been pretty vocally of the belief that different cultures and ethnicities held value, and while he left South Africa very young and considered himself English, he did also remark on the brutality and inhumanity of the apartheid regime there. He also criticised C.S. Lewis' assertion (in The Last Battle) that some people couldn't get into heaven on the basis of race and culture, but "have a theological argument with C.S. Lewis" does seem to have been one of his primary hobbies at the time so idk if that was purely anti-racist.

At the same time: this was at a time when the N-word was in common parlance (including in children's nursery rhymes and even in leftist discourse), when Britain had an empire and Tolkien had been raised in one of its colonies, and when the school system emphasised "the white man's burden" and the savagery and primitivism of "lesser" cultures. And Tolkien was not a radical, and not sufficiently concerned with race as a topic to break fully from that social conditioning. So it's not like he wasn't a racist, but he wasn't a racist by the standards of his time, background, and immediate environment. (Bearing in mind that his immediate environment was the same one that saw the rise of Oswald Mosley and Winston Churchill.)

What Tolkien WAS was a genuine, old-school British conservative, which I think is what right-wingers pick up on in his work. He had an engrained belief in hierarchy and traditionalism, and his arguments against capitalism come from Catholic semi-feudalism, not socialism. "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate/God made them high and lowly and each to his estate" is very much an underpinning of a lot of Tolkien's work, which emphasises the importance of working to, and being satisfied with, your status in life - Sam's strength is his humility and desire to be a simple gardener, but, while humility remains valuable throughout, Aragorn's strength is that he knows that he is born to be King. Ruling is all he can ever ethically do (noticeably, whether or not his people consent to be ruled - note that the first Man of Gondor he comes into contact with is Boromir, whose response of "ok mate where the fuck have you been when we were fighting and dying for the past forty years?", and that is cast as a mistake on Boromir's part, and he is told to sit down and respect the rightful king by Literal Voice Of The Gods Gandalf), and it would be wrong and evil for him to try to do anything else, just as it would be a moral wrong for Sam to try to be a king.

Lord of the Rings in particular is very concerned with noblesse oblige and the burdens of power - while, yes, the core story is "minor gentry [Sam is the only actual working-class character] rises above his presumed station and, through being literally and metaphorically one of the little people of the world, slips under the radar and completes a heroic quest", almost all the surrounding stories are about the difficult duty of managing power. And, unfortunately, this lends itself very readily to a "white man's burden" kind of reading - these people, you see, are simply of superior race (literally, in the case of the Elves, and in the case of Aragorn, Boromir, and the ruling class of Gondor being measured by their proximity to Númenorean bloodlines), and so it is their unfortunate duty to command and to cleanse the lesser (Orcish, and by extension Easterling and Haradrim) races from their nice, functional societies.

To be clear: I do not think this is how Tolkien intended it. I think, in his own traditionalist, cloistered-academic, Catholic way, he was pretty egalitarian. He doesn't treat the ruling class as actually better than the working class - Sam is no less a hero than Frodo, Merry, and Pippin, all of whom are gentry or nobility, and none of them are lesser as people than Aragorn or Elrond or even Gandalf or Galadriel - even if he does view class distinctions as fundamental and immutable differences. He values friendship, peace, and the laying down of grudges (against all the problems caused by revenge, note that Éomer's first and most noble act of kingship is "accepting the Dunlendings' surrender, treating them kindly, and making peace with them", and they are so impressed by this that they too put aside a centuries-long war and help rebuild the country they helped to destroy). While he often forgets that women exist (I will die on the hill that "three out of 22 rulers of Númenor were women, despite equal inheritance being explicit" is evidence that Tolkien just did not think of women as being half the population), he is quick to defend their value in both masculine and feminine pursuits, and to express them as people outside of marriage and childbearing - and his own life, in which he married a much older divorcée from a different religious background against all voices from their families, reflects that same sense of valuing women on human terms. He is a humanist, not in the religious sense but in the sense that he values humanity above all things in his writing; he writes consistently against power for its own sake, against war as glory, and against bigotry and condemnation.

BUT

he was also a traditional, dyed-in-the-wool Tory, Catholic-restorationist, pro-feudal Oxford don who was raised in a much more conservative time, place, and social class than most of us, and he brings that to his writing too. From a conservative perspective, reading with an eye for right-wing ideas:

Éowyn ultimately turns from the aberration of being a warrior and becomes a wife and mother, embracing "feminine" traits of healing and caring as part of her own healing.

Class is reified through Sam's heroism being that of a servant, and Aragorn's that of a king, and the return of the king is the source of great rejoicing.

Some races, and some classes, are simply better at things. Dwarves are better craftsmen. Men are better warriors. Elves are better at everything because they're special. they are also tall and fair and European

The idyllic Shire is a cottagecore dream of traditional British rural life, in which people know their place, women are real women, and everyone has good manners.

Most of the "good" societies are coded with European or Classical trappings (the exception is actually Gondor, which is pretty easily read as Byzantine), and opposed against a literal rampaging horde from the East. Some of the horde from the East are literally inhuman, while others are elephant-riding brutes who hold oblique historical grudges and strange religious customs. Compassion against these foreign invaders is looked upon favourably by the narrative, but only after you've killed them.

With the previous point, and the films, in mind, it is easy to conclude that regardless of species diversity, the Fellowship is a cadre of brave white men fighting to protect their society from a monstrous foreign threat - one in which a cunning trickster from within the main setting has puppeted the less evolved races into destroying Western civilisation.

While the story is anti-war, it is anti-war in a way that allows for cool battle scenes and noble deaths, and there are several points at which Dying For A Cause is lionised and seen as redemptive in a way that slots nicely into a lot of more militaristic ideologies (including fascism).

again, I cannot underline enough, I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS IS A FAIR READING OF THE NARRATIVE. I think it's an ideologically-motivated reading that ignores both Tolkien's personal views and large chunks of the text. But the thing is: the people who read it in the way I've described would probably say the same thing of your description.

The thing about Tolkien's much-discussed distaste for intentional allegory is: Lord of the Rings is not 1984. It is not an explicit political polemic. It is one man unpacking his Great War trauma and political anxieties, his expertise in Anglo-Saxon literature, his special interests in folklore and etymology, his love of the English countryside and his dislike of modernity, his Catholicism and his conservatism and his egalitarianism and his loneliness and his loves. It is not absolute in its politics, because it isn't trying to give you a political solution: it's trying to give you morals, yes, but they're as much personal ones as societal ones.

It is not a shock that right-wingers latch onto Tolkien's work, or see parts of their beliefs reflected there. It's still a fucking insult to the work, but it's not a shock.

Seeing conservatives and bigots being fans of Tolkien works is a special type of jumpscare bcs what are you doing here man? In the franchise about folks from different backgrounds and races come together in brotherhood to vanquish the villain? Where kindness and compassion and sinple happiness were seen as the best ways to keep evil at bay? Where war is not glorified and seen as a grim necessity to the point where the son of the author gor criticised the movies for glorifying the war too much? Where men openly engaged in feminine activities and were open about emotions other than anger? Where multiple characters gender presentation varied from those we normally associate with their gender? Where women were empowered in multiple different ways? Where greed was presented as turning one into a literal monster?Where the villains are all thinly veiled depictions of capitalism? Where care for the enviornment is seen as a given?

[vio1315]

I write my in depth thoughts about my brain for 18 paragraphs:

Okay, so... The other day I was thinking about the casual thought I’ve always had that I probably just live each day more or less understimulated. I was sort of aware that daredevils etc tend to have something like that which is what can lead to thrill seeking, so I never thought a lot about it. Like maybe it had autism link, idk. But I realized ‘hm, that’s actually kind of a specific thing to experience’ so was googling around This one thing that I found, which idk if it comes out of any research or just pure personal observation But it’s been stuck in my mind a bit Basically was putting ‘boredom’ as having 3 potential causes (if chronic?)

Keeping self from accessing emotions

Keeping self from having wants/desires (as a whole)

Understimulated, nothing new

And I pretty much fit all three in a sort of overwhelming way. The main issue being idk how to live without these things. So I’m going to go into excessive detail about it.

I think my biggest issue is the shut in thing, of course. I think a lot of the symptoms I have would be greatly reduced if not for that, and I’m planning to do what I can to help with it once it’s warmer out.

However, a lot of this started long before I was a shut in too, and it absolutely lines up with these things. That’s why I’m somewhat okay if this is just an observation vs super substantiated. It is like..... I have literally built the core of who I am around these things wjdnsjdjx

To me, the idea of doing literally anything that causes someone even momentary discomfort was always sort of unbearable. And the fact this little blurb mentioned that communicating your needs etc was important just

Hate that.

Don’t know if I can do that

The idea that existence necessitates inconveniencing and agitating others is something I really can’t handle.

To some degree I can handle if someone is annoyed with just who I am or whatever, because that’s all very passive

But if I say something that causes them to feel negatively, then I’ve just committed something quite bad. I know since I was probably like 4, I had this intense desire not to burden anyone I can’t really remember anything that lead me to conclusions about it, just that I remember having amnesia at the time Waking up and thinking ‘I can’t remember anything that came before today’

I doubt anything that bad happened, but I kind of spiral about things, so I imagine I probably overheard something and just who knows

But unconfirmed, it’s just my best guess

From this desire has essentially grown the fact I really refuse to communicate preferences about things. If something bothers me, I really don’t like to talk about it, particularly with offending parties

If I tell someone they did something that bothered me, they’ll feel bad or something, maybe even become self conscious

And for what? Something I can theoretically get over? Or even for something that shouldn’t bother me? If I do those things, I’m the offending party I hadn’t really realized it before now, but I guess ultimately I kind of just removed my ability to want many things

People often ask my preference on things and I just literally can’t generate one most the time

Thinking about communicating these kinds of things is actually impossible feeling. I’m not a very sympathetic person or anything, I feel guilt so rarely I often have trouble thinking of any time within recent years I did

Yet even so, I am /so/ very adverse to hurting anyone in these kinds of ways I think it has seemed like sin for a long time for me but beyond that, I don’t like the idea of changing how people act either. The unintended consequences will come back around and make it worse for me ultimately Which also I guess is not dissimilar to how I worsened cutting out my emotions.

While of course I always would reprimand myself for wanting things that involved someone else needing to change as like selfish and all that

And that they were 100% fine in what they were doing, and that wanting anything else was abhorrent of me

It’s also like Wanting was one thing, but emotions that came out of that were even more evil So if you’re told ‘no’ for something and feel sad about it: that’s evil. That's wrong. They have a right to say no and therefore being sad about it is infringing on them, is lacking gratitude, and shows selfishness etc. If they knew you were sad you’d be guilting them which is also evil because then they have to feel bad also

So generally in my youth I trained myself out of these kinds of responses through self bullying and such. I haven’t resorted to that since hs probably But even up to recently, I realize I kind of came to hate things like ‘hope’. Eagerness and excitement. I’ve always driven myself to accept what I get and try to never ask for more. So acceptance of circumstances is generally second nature to me now. Be content in all circumstances. Which is to say, the idea that something could improve causes me considerable pain. Because it won’t improve. As far as things involving other people go, they simply never have improved. So holding onto the idea that they could just hurts a lot more than accepting this is the way things are.

Honestly getting excited for anything is just waiting for punishment. There is nobody in my life who is particularly reliable Not in the ways that do anything but disappoint where ‘excitement’ is concerned anyways. I know I very often have thought ‘that’s what you get for being excited’ when inevitably things fail to happen. As far as my memory goes, the ratio is quite literally 100% on the things I get excited for not happening Now we know this is faulty because I have emotional amnesia, so if it was ever fulfilled, I wouldn’t remember it. It’s only because I think verbally about disappointment that it is able to be remembered

Even so, I don’t love how often it happens even with mostly cutting out feelings like ‘excitement’ from most of my life by now

But you literally can’t tell people this. Nobody is really to blame for intentionally causing harm, so what? Cause pain by saying it sucked? I don’t see it as good. It can’t change anything, it can only make things worse. I realize by now my view of myself is essentially that of a liability. Can’t cause good in others, but can absolutely cause harm. I was in the pit again on the topic not that long ago, but God again saved me from committing to self isolation further

I still don’t fully know what good I’ll be to anybody, but God communicated to keep trying, so I guess He might still do something through me, so why not

This does not however fill me with motivation to communicate wants with people. This does not fill me with motivation to be vulnerable. Because there is no risk reward about it. There is a 0% chance of reward. It is all pain. Essentially what I would stand to gain if I ever healed my emotional weirdness is that maybe I could like things again, or form opinions about preference better It essentially isn’t a great deal in my mind. Trade out general contentment to be hurt repeatedly (and go to sin out of that) I can’t really do much about my environment either. Conflicting needs suck.

My parents are going like blind and deaf, so there’s nothing for it, but it’s like All the lights outside of my room are now painful to be around for very long. Everything got painted white so it also reflects way harder (and in general is ugly). Fridge now has blinding lights in it so I can’t see the top shelf All the devices are so loud and generally unpleasant noises

The shut in stuff has made me more sensitive to the sounds of survival like breathing and eating and so on, so that I can’t really stand being in the same room as people very often

And I can hear so much from across the house and I do what I can to drown it out, but I’m sure these measures are offensive

The temperature is always bad and uncomfortable I wait for summer just so I can sit outside basically all day because it’s a lot more livable vs inside

Food stuff keeps leaning to a lot of things that disgust me compared to before. It’s like I still consider my living situation very fortunate and stuff, and a lot of generosity has been extended to me

But it’s something that impacts every day and I have to monitor everything. I can’t be in the same room with people. If not for the sounds then for the lights, I have to carefully listen around to see if people are in the other rooms before I can plan out what I might do People tend to find it all funny.

It isn’t funny

I don’t like how people dismiss me now I don’t like how people don’t believe me now I’ve idly complained about some things, but am I going to make issues out of these things? No. It’s not my house. These things make it so other people can function. I can’t actually change peoples views of me, I can only make them see me as a nuisance, a killjoy, weak

The things that are known like me having to check silverware for several minutes to find something I’m willing to eat with are just things to view me as less for

Why would I talk about it If I tell people that things bother me, I become someone dangerous. I become a risk. Maybe even worse is becoming a novelty

Being bothered by things, to me, seems immoral I’ve put in a lot of work to never be bothered

And the thing I never admit to is that yes. It does apply to everyone. A good 70% of the standards I have for myself I do have for others too. But I can’t be mad at people for not getting it right, so generally I have instead considered that this puts more responsibility on me: someone who can actually handle things

This is of course not fair to people, but like.... it is what it is. And obviously, other people having so much more emotional needs and so many more problems and trauma and grief and (nobody is ever okay) means that I am even further a liability. I can’t afford to have problems or talk about issues (caused by them) because I will put someone over the edge and never know it.

But don’t worry, I also can’t help anyone.

And don’t worry there’s no hope anyways.

Nothing. Changes. For. The. Better.

Acceptance is the only way, except I’m the only one who can come to terms with any of it. Nobody else will or can. So how am I meant to tell anybody anything. How can I afford to let myself feel anything when there’s really never going to be a safe outlet for that. I’m still unclear, but I think probably most of this is something like OCD but idk how to view anything much diff

And the understimulated thing: obviously being shut in. Easy. I don’t challenge myself much in general though, so I should probably do that at least

Anyways, I always say stuff like this on tumblr because I literally am not going to unload this toxic waste anywhere else. And I’ve already had forms of it sitting in my mind for like 15 years anyways. It will go out into the world Somewhere, so here is good. I think probably it would be right that dealing with these 3 things would be ideal to be able to feel stuff normally again but honestly The cost is steep I don’t really want to

I don’t really know if I can afford to

For sure none of it makes me like ~a better person~ I think most people would interpret this as me being worse if they read it through. It is nothing that new to me. I don’t fully get how other people go their whole lives thinking so diff honestly. I’d say good for them because in theory they will experience the fullness of life then, but honestly they seem a lot worse off

Church was interesting to me in that during the sermon, it was mentioned how we tend to try and do everything on our own power without relying on God etc

And for sure, I have that in the weight I put on my errors

It isn’t as though God doesn’t work through these things as well

It isn’t as though I really can be perfect

Of course if I think about praying directly on matters like this, it’s actually terrifying I don’t really trust my interpretation of the world to be so correct that I could determine this line of thinking was bad. I’d be wrong somehow. I’d be asking for something bad when this was actually the right thing. So mostly sticking to things like guidance and wisdom requests because God knows the answer (Surely everything always has just the 1) /s