#-seemed to acknowledge how he might have felt about this!! disabled people are literally just props to everyone else to make themselves -

[pissfizz]

Ughhh I hate ig sm sometimes

[dancedance-resolution]

andi mack friendom, are you interested in some more thoughts about my andi mack / american girl crossover (which is actually just a thinly veiled info dump about american girl history and drama)? if so, you're in the right place!

the andi / buffy / cyrus doll set i designed would be a contemporary line.

CONTEXT (forewarning, this is basically just an ag info dump about the 2017 contemporary line) (also, tagging @kirstensleepey because i think this write up might be useful for the ag project you're working on <3):

so in 2017, american girl did a brand new thing. they released 3 dolls who were contemporary characters but not girls of the year. (prior to these dolls' release, which are called "the contemporary line" by the ag fandom, the only categories of ag dolls were historicals, girls of the year, and just like yous.)

the contemporary line was controversial for many reasons.

first, we have our main character, tenney grant. (tenney is basically taylor swift as a doll, if taylor were uncool and a r*publican lol.)

one of the reasons why tenney is so controversial is that she overshadowed the girl of the year (henceforth abbreviated as goty) 2017, gabriella mcbride.

tenney was released only one month after gabriella's release. ag's social media gave much more focus to tenney than gabriella. upon tenney's release, gabriella's store displays were downsized (which is unheard of for a goty). tenney even had a larger collection than gabriella!

why are we mad about tenney overshadowing gabriella? well, gabriella was ag's first (and as of 2021, ONLY) black goty. also, gabriella was ag's first doll to have an explicity confirmed disability - her stutter.

BRIEF INTERMESSION - SOME STATISTICS ABOUT DIVERSITY IN CHARACTER DOLLS:

only 7 out of the 22 total historical characters have been dolls of color. only 3 out of 22 historicals have been black (one of which is now retired). only 2 out of 22 have been aapi (one of these dolls, ivy, was just a best friend doll and is now retired; and the other doll, nanea, has a problematic face mold. i wrote an essay about why her facemold is problematic here!). only 1 historical doll, josefina, is hispanic, and ag has actually misspelled her name as "josephina" on their social media before.

only 1 doll EVER has been native american, kaya'aton'my, who is a historical character from 1764. (not even any of the just like you dolls have had kaya's face mold! kaya is truly the only indigenous doll!) in fact, ag has had more colonizer characters than indigenous characters. felicity and elizabeth are white character dolls from 1776, and their books fail to address the issues surrounding colonization and treatment of native americans. and kirsten is a swedeish immigrant to wisconsin in 1854. her book does acknowledge the existence of native americans, and kirsten has an indigenous friend named singing bird. (i haven't read kirsten's books and i'm not indigenous, so i can't comment on this storyline.) ag actually had a controversy about kirsten just this year - in 2021, the t-shirt design for kirsten said "settlers gonna settle", and ag actually ended up changing the design to "cabin sweet cabin" after backlash.

moving on to the girl of the year line - out of 21 goty dolls, gabriella is the ONLY black goty. only 6 out of 21 gotys have been dolls of color. there have been 2 hispanic characters (luciana, who is generally regarded as an excellent doll; and marisol, who is controversial because her book talks about how her family moved from pilsen chicago - a real area of chicago that is home to many hispanic immigrants - to a white suburb due to crime. this storyline involves racist stereotypes.) also, goty 2016 lea clark (slightly tan skin, blonde hair, light green eyes) is 1/8th brazilian, and some brazilian ag fans consider the emphasis on lea being 1/8th brazilian racial feticization. next, there have been 3 aapi gotys. one of these dolls, sonali, was one of two best friend dolls for chrissa (goty 2009) - yep, you heard that right, yet another doll of color that is a side character! sonali is the bully in chrissa's books, but she gets a redemption arc. to this day, sonali is ag's only south asian character doll. [additionally, there has been some criticism that all of the aapi gotys are mixed race - jess mcconell (goty 2006) has a japanese mother and an irish/scottish father, kanani akina (goty 2011) has a french/german mother and a japanese/hawaiian father, and sonali matthews has an indian mother and a father of unknown race/ethincity. perhaps notably, the only aapi historical doll who is not currently retired (nanea) is also mixed race (hawaiian mother and scottish father).]

as for the disability thing i mentioned - ag also has a disappointing track record regarding disability representation, lol. it was very lightly implied that mckenna (goty 2012) had a learning disability, but that was never confirmed. mckenna's tutor, who used a wheelchair, was ag's first big disability rep, but she was just a side character in mckenna's story. then, many ag fans were disappointed when mary ellen, a historical character released in 2015, was able-bodied (in canon, she had polio as a child, so it would make sense for mary ellen to be disabled and use mobility aids). finally, in 2020, goty joss gave us some disability rep - she has a hearing aid.

ag's lack of disability rep is very frustrating, especially considering that doll companies, like our generation, have made some really cool disabled dolls. and ag has been doing this ad campaign with the paralympics that feels performative to me - like, they want to seem inclusive by featuring dolls with prostetic legs, but they don't even sell dolls like that!!!

lastly, religious diversity - iirc, there are three jewish dolls (rebecca, goty 2001/2002 lindsey, and goty 2009 chrissa). the rest of the dolls are either christian or of unspecified religion. there has never been an explicitly muslim, hindu, or buddhist doll, or a doll who is a member of any religion other than judaism/christianity/unspecified. (there is some hope that we might get a muslim doll, though, since an outfit with a hijab was leaked, and ag trademarked a persian name that i can't recall off the top of the head at my moment. but take these with a grain of salt - ag trademarks a ton of stuff that they don't use, and the leak could be false or just a truly me outfit.)

END OF INTERMISSION - BACK TO THE TENNEY/GABRIELLA CONTROVERSY:

so, we get our first black goty, and she's being totally overshadowed by tenney.

here's where a conspiracy comes in:

we can track when ag trademarks their character names. goty names are usually trademarked early in the year prior to their release (by may). but gabriella mcbride wasn't trademarked until october, iirc.

and gabriella is a very underdeveloped character in comparison to most gotys. one of her main hobbies - dancing - was the same main hobby as both marisol (goty 2005) and isabelle (goty 2014). her store displays were underemphasized in comparison to tenney's, as i mentioned before. she was the first goty who didn't get a movie in six years (since kanani, goty 2011). and gabriella didn't even have a big ticket accessory item available until summer!

so, we get our first black goty, and she's underdeveloped, underemphasized, seems to have been rushed (due to her trademark date), and overshadowed by tenney just one month after her release. why is that?

well, some people think that tenney was actually supposed to be goty 2017! (i agree)

tenney was trademarked earlier, had more development, had a bigger collection, etc. we think that tenney was supposed to be goty 2017, but ag decided to do a doll of color (gabriella) at the last minute. (keep in mind the climate of 2015/2016 - ag probably wanted some clout for doing a black goty, and they also probably heard the ag fandom's demands for more dolls of color.)

so that's tenney.

next we have logan everett. logan was ag's first boy character doll. i'm glad that ag had a boy character doll, but logan kinda missed the mark for me. the main source of controversy surrounding logan is his face mold: he, a white boy, uses the kaya face mold. !! it kinda felt like a slap in the face to many indigenous ag fans - kaya is literally The Only Doll with the kaya face mold, and when we finally get another doll with her face mold, he's not even indigenous.

lastly, we have z yang my beloved <3. z yang was done dirty - she is yet another doll of color who is a mere side character, and also, she was available for only a total of 20 months before being retired!

so, that's everything i have to say about the 2017 contemporary line.

now i'm going to talk about the 2021 contemporary line :3

so, it's summer 2020. the black lives matter is becoming more mainstream. brands are now getting clout for appearing "woke."

so, admist this climate, ag is (as always) facing demands from its fandom/collectors to diversify its doll line. so they announce that they're going to be doing a new contemporary line, to be released in "the second half of 2021"!!!! and they promise that the contemporary line will have a black lead character

fast forward to modern day. thanks to ag's trademarks, we can safely assume that the new contemporary line will be called "world by us." we can safely assume that the line will have 3 characters. the 3 characters all live in washington dc and are best friends :) we can safely assume that the characters will be maritza ochoa, evette peeters, and makena williams. i talked about makena and maritza on that ask regrettable-username sent me about my andi mack/ag headcanons! personally, i'm excited for world by us, and i think it has a lot of potential!

alright sawyer, that's the end of the ag info dump fhjhdhfskf.

now for my andi mack friends:

i think the andi/buffy/cyrus line would be structured similar to world by us: andi is the main character, and buffy and cyrus are her best friend dolls :) all 3 dolls would be released at the same time. andi would have 3 books that have buffy and cyrus as side characters, and buffy and cyrus would have one book each.

the big ticket item for this collection would be andi's andi shack. i'm imagining its design sort of like kira's tent mixed with lanie's camper mixed with blaire's farm. andi the walls of andi shack would open up so that when it's fully opened, the four walls are on an even plane with the back wall and extended out like wings. you remove the roof before opening up the walls. the shack is tall enough that the doll can comfortably stand up even with the roof still attached, and wide enough that all three dolls (andi, buffy, and cyrus) can comfortably stand next to each other inside of andi shack.

andi shack would come with a ton of craft supplies inside of it. it would also come with a little flower box that has cece's african violets, like blaire's flower box. (thanks to regrettable-username for coming up with the african violets idea fdjfsj.)

alright i have to go now, so these are all my andi mack/ag thoughts for now, but i might be back later with more thoughts fhdfjs (hopefully not though, since typing this out took me over three hours [sweating emoji]).

sorry for any typos and sorry for how scatterbrained this is! also this may have some forgotten things/mildly incorrect things bc my only source is my brain (and a photo of all the dolls so i can count how many dolls for the statistics portion) and my brain is not the most reliable thing on earth lol.

[sokkastyles]

So a while back I saw this pretty inaccurate and by inaccurate I mean mind-numbingly stupid take that’s been grinding at my gears ever since I saw it so I’m just going to rant about it and then ask you what you think.

So, you know when Toph first joins Team Avatar, she’s having a hard time fitting in with the group, and Katara tells her that they usually all set up camp together, and so Toph tells her that she “carries her own weight” and would prefer it if she could just do the work she needed to do for herself and everyone else also do all the work they needed to do for themselves instead of everyone doing all of it together? This is pretty understandable considering that she not only grew up an only child (and as an only child let me tell you that a lot of us do prefer to work by ourselves a lot of the time and can get stressed out doing group work) but was essentially locked away in her own home and never allowed to socialize with anyone, period, let alone make friends her own age and learn how to collaborate with others. The only thing experience she had talking to other people besides her parents would be from the Earth Rumble, and needless to say what’s essentially the Avatar equivalent of WWE isn’t the best place for a 12 year old to build her social skills. Then there’s her fierce independent streak and aversion to accepting help from and feeling dependent on others, something instilled in her due to how her parents treated her because she was blind.

So this person claimed that the reason why Toph did not want to help Katara and the others set up camp was not, in fact, due to these reasons but rather due to her “classist belief that she did not have to do any work and those of a lower socioeconomic background than her should be expected to serve her.” (And just you wait, this isn’t even the worst part of the post, there’s way more.) First of all, Toph was HAPPY to do work, she just wanted to do her OWN work and have everyone else do THEIR own work too. It’s not like she made everyone else set up camp for her. She set up her own camp and let the others set up theirs. She didn’t expect anybody to serve her, that’s just blatantly untrue. This person made it sound like she was bossing everyone around and calling them “peasants” or something. They claimed that there’s apparently “a lot of inherent classism in the way Toph interacts with the rest of Team Avatar.” No? There really isn’t? AND ALSO SHE LEARNT HER LESSON BY THE END OF THE EPISODE AND STARTED WORKING AS A TEAM WITH THEM!!

They also claimed that the reason why Toph was initially annoyed by Katara was also due to her supposed “classism” as well as her “internalized misogyny.” First of all, the reason why Toph was initially annoyed by Katara was because she projected her strained relationship with her overbearing mother onto her due to the fact that Katara is the de facto caregiver of Team Avatar. That’s it. That’s the 100% canonical, undisputable, undebatable reason. They literally spell it out for you in the episode “The Runaway.” I’m not saying it’s okay for her to do that, but that is the reason why she was sometimes annoyed by Katara, not because she was “classist” or “misogynistic.” I also believe that her distaste for conventional femininity probably stems more from the way she associates it with the life she ran away from as well as the fact that it’s largely inaccessible to her due to her blindness. This person literally said, and I quote, “Toph is being classist, misogynistic, and homophobic here.” My god. I guess I can see where you get classist and misogynistic from even if I don’t quite agree with it, but homophobic? Come on. Homophobia is the hatred of gay people. Show me ONE instance where Toph expressed a hatred for gay people. Oh wait, you can’t, because that never happened. Stop throwing around buzzwords just because you can, it lessens their significance and seriousness. Also, KATARA AND TOPH ARE FRIENDS THEY’RE VERY CLOSE FRIENDS AND EVERY TIME THEY FOUGHT THEY MADE UP AND APOLOGIZED AND CHANGED THEIR BEHAVIOUR BECAUSE THEY’RE BOTH GOOD PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT EACHOTHER MY GOD DID YOU EVEN WATCH THE SHOW BECAUSE YOU ENJOY IT OR DID YOU JUST GO INTO IT PURPOSELY LOOKING FOR THINGS TO BE MAD ABOUT?

So yeah. I love Toph, I love Katara, and I love their friendship. They’re both huge comfort characters for me. That post was 100% grasping for straws and really rubbed me the wrong way because it almost felt like the OP was willfully misinterpreting Toph and Katara’s dynamic because they were looking for woke points and liked the rush they get out of going “popular thing bad, actually” and it felt very disrespectful to both of their characters and their friendship.

I absolutely agree with you about people being contradictory for woke points and I have seen these takes before. Tumblr social justice circles are also in general really bad at acknowledging ableism in general and misogyny against girls and women who don't perform traditional femininity and Toph lives at the intersection of both and is a wildly popular character. And as a disabled woman I find these takes to be really off base. As you said, Katara and Toph are friends and they worked it out in the end, and these issues canonically stem from both Toph's experiences of abuse because of being a disabled girl and Katara's need to mother other people because of her own trauma, and both of these perspectives are sympathetic and they both had to adjust their worldview a little bit. I identify a lot with Toph's desire to be taken seriously both as a person and as a woman, the latter you do see in "Tales of Ba Sing Se." Toph very clearly does not hate femininity, she wants to be seen as pretty and looks to Katara for validation because Katara is a feminine girl, but she also struggles with being able to perform femininity. She also is just not that comfortable with it, and that's okay. Like Toph, I can sometimes enjoy getting made up but it's not something I can do every day without help.

I love her and Katara's Ba Sing Se segment because it shows so well the kind of misogyny Toph experiences. The reason the other girls make fun of Toph is because she very obviously did not do her makeup herself, and this reflects on her performance of femininity. Women are supposed to perform femininity in a way that it is both perfect and appears effortless. When I go and get my eye makeup done because I can't see well enough and don't have a steady enough hand to do it myself, you can tell that I didn't do it myself. I look like Toph. I love that that episode affirms both that Toph is pretty AND that she doesn't have to be.

And Katara, the "Runaway" pretty clearly validates Katara and shows that Toph appreciates Katara's "mothering" and that she looks up to her. As younger girls are wont to do with older girls. And Katara is right about Toph missing her mom but she also realizes that Toph needs that older female figure in her life.

It also really bothers me when people pull the classism card to talk about disabled characters. I have seen it elsewhere and I have seen it in atla fandom with Toph and Zuko. Both also are fiercely independent because they struggle to be taken seriously by abusive families. To see that struggle reduced to "Oh, they just don't want to work/are ignorant because of classism" feels very ableist. People will belittle the accomplishments of these characters because they're privileged. Which, yes, they are, in some ways, but privilege is not a dirty word and you also have to recognize what privileges they lack. And in both cases, their class privilege was actually tied to the way they were abused. If Toph wasn't born into a wealthy family, she might have been subject to other forms of abuse. And Zuko...it's a miracle that Zuko survived to see his teen years considering the household he grew up in.

As for the issue between Katara and Toph, Katara has also made comments towards Toph that could be interpreted as ableism and misogyny, but like you said, at the end of the day, they are friends who deeply care about each other, so pitting them against each other like this over issues that are complex and also resolved within the series seems like just grasping for something to start discourse about.

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Watching Snyderverse Part 3 - Zack Snyder’s Justice League

After BvS, I was honestly not particularly looking forward to Justice League. For me, it was obvious that Snyder’s versions of these characters and his overall doom and gloom approach was not something I was particularly enjoying despite some promising elements in both MoS and BvS. Then we saw exactly how JL production went down. Despite the happy face they tried to paint, the fact that there was going to be a 2 hour mandate, the fact that Whedon basically reshot a bunch of Snyder’s film with the film being a mishmash of two directors who couldn’t be any more different in their sensibilities, and that that the actors, specifically Ben Affleck, looked like they couldn’t wait to be done with this movie and this role, made it obvious that the movie wasn’t going to turn out well. So my expectations were rock bottom for the theatrical cut. As it happens, that was a good thing. The theatrical cut of JL is a thoroughly unremarkable movie. I don’t abhor it but it is so obviously a patchwork job and a studio mandated film that there is no passion or vision in the movie at all. I mean, I didn’t like BvS much at all, but there was a vision there. Theatrical cut of JL seemed like a film that felt like WB just felt they had to put out there and then move on. And then years later, we get Zack Snyder’s full version of Justice League. I watched it in one sitting, which was maybe a mistake because it is heavy viewing for 4 hours. Without a doubt it is a better movie than the theatrical cut. Its a little tough to judge this film because this is no way a movie that would have been released theatrically. But its also impossible to judge on what it may have been if it was edited down to a 3 hour length. So best to just judge it on its own merits.

Firstly, the positives. This is definitely a more coherent and clear movie. The plot is not rushed and every sequence, be it a character moment or an action sequence, is fully realized without any weird edits. The film does have some more humor than the previous two Snyder films. Mainly courtesy of Ezra Miller and Jeremy Irons. And the humor is not awkward like in the theatrical cut. Ezra Miller in particular benefits from that because some of his cringey lines from the theatrical edition are cut. The special effects are largely impressive and definitely an improvement over the theatrical edition. On a character level, definitely Cyborg gets the most benefit out of all the characters. As we get a full and thorough backstory for him. We get insight into his relationship with both his parents. Steppenwolf also gets significantly more screen time and his motivations are definitely more clearly defined in the movie than in the theatrical. Miller and Momoa also get some more scenes to flesh out their individual characters. What does surprise me is that the film contains a lot of scenes which are essentially just alternate versions of scenes from the theatrical cut. The film isn’t radically different from the theatrical version, but the scenes included in this version feel a little more real. Like a scene with the entire League discussing Superman’s return in the theatrical cut made it obvious that the actors weren’t in the same room together, whereas the original scene in this movie has them clearly in the same physical space. The Superman scenes are also infinitely better without the CGI upper lip. Thankfully, Snyder doesn’t do what he did with the previous two movies and gives some breathing room between action sequences. Probably a bit too much time, but that’s better than no time at all. the tunnel action sequence and the climax set piece is definitely pretty cool. Flash actually having an active role in the climax was a big improvement. My favorite action sequence is still the Superman vs the League because it shows just how powerful Superman can be. Also, the color palette is a lot more consistent and better than the weird bright and red color palette that is used in the theatrical cut.

When it comes down to the performances from the cast, nobody really stands out. They are all fine, but unlike in BvS, where Affleck stood out. Everybody here is just motoring along. In the theatrical cut, Affleck looked completely checked out. I was hoping the original cut would beef up his performance. While it is slightly better, he’s still just a bit too restrained in the role and doesn’t leave the type of impression he left in BvS. Everyone is at their most dour self. Gal Gadot’s WW is more serious and therefore does not get to show her more radiant side in Patty Jenkins’ movies, Momoa is also similarly more dour and serious and not quite as fun as he was in Aquaman. Ray Fisher is decent but its a role that requires him to be very robotic for large chunks of the film. So its a little difficult to assess his performance. Cavill is in far too little of the movie to give much of a performance. He’s perfectly fine in the handful of scenes he has. Miller is probably the best of the lot, even though he’s still more Peter Parker than Barry Allen. Some of the supporting cast actually fare a little better. Irons is a delight whenever he’s on screen and Affleck is also at his best when they have scenes together. That dynamic works. Joe Morton is surprisingly affecting as Silas Stone, as is Billy Crudup in his brief scenes as Henry Allen. Its always nice to see more of Willem Dafoe, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, and JK Simmons. Simmons as Gordon was great casting and its a pity we won’t get to see more of him in that role. Amber Heard for some perplexing reason has a British accent in this film as Mera. Given Dafoe and Momoa both speak in their normal voices, that must have been a choice. It did feel a bit funny. Jared Leto and Jesse Eisenberg are back as Joker and Lex and neither of them particularly improve on their performances. I mean, they have a scene each so its no harm done, but the Joker scene particularly drags on for too long. Amy Adams has a small role and she does manage to make to get some emotion out of a handful of scenes.

The film has more than its fair share of issues. Firstly, it is just way, way too long. The pacing is glacially slow at times. And I mean that in the most literal manner. There is so much slow mo in this movie, its crazy. I swear, if you removed the slow motion, you might lose 20 minutes of the run time. Snyder is clearly in desperate need of an editor here. The film has the exact opposite problem of the theatrical cut. Whereas in the theatrical cut, it always felt that every scene was just edited a little too short, in this movie there are scenes that are going on for far too long. There are some very strange edits. Like an entire scene where women in the village are singing hyms when Arthur leaves and smelling his clothes. There is a meet cute between Iris and Barry which is completely unnecessary and is frankly slightly creepy where Barry is caressing her face while she is in the process of being thrown out of her car. Some music choices in these scenes are also a little bizarre. Everything involving the Martian Manhunter is not necessary. I mean, his involvement in a crucial Martha and Lois scene actually takes away from the emotion of that moment. And then he has a very tacked on final scene which is kind of awkward. The Knightmare scene also drags for a bit too long, especially given they are supposed to be in danger while being out in the open. We still have no more clarity as to why Bruce is having these visions. The slow pace does make things boring at times as well. While I am glad that Cyborg’s backstory gets beefed up, there is a bit too much of Cyborg being angry at his father. After a while, it gets monotonous. The film takes too long to get the team together and the first JL action sequence doesn’t happen until over 2 hours into the movie. The film should have spent a bit more time with the team interacting with one another. That’s what made the Avengers movies work and some of the best parts of this movie are also the team together. There are some Snyder tone deaf moments as per usual. While WW’s entry action sequence is very cool, I do find it funny that they have her comforting a girl and the girl wanting to be just like her after she basically obliterates the terrorist into dust. Given her abilities shown in that sequence, there is no reason she wouldn’t have been able to disable him. But instead she just obliterates him. Its all very Snyder. I do also have to wonder about that sequence. I still don’t get exactly how terrorists feel that blowing up a few city blocks will bring down the modern age. I thought this was a weird Whedon thing but it turns out to be a weird Snyder thing. Also, for all the hype about the black suit Superman, its really nothing more than an aesthetic choice for no rhyme or reason. I honestly prefer the Blue and Red if the black suit doesn’t have a point, like the restorative factor from the comics. Also, for all the blame people put on Whedon about the skimpy outfits on Amazons and the weird backside shots of WW, turns out they were all Snyder. There are a few select things that the Whedon cut did slightly better. For example, there is no real major debate or conflict within the team other than minor objections from Arthur over the implications of using the mother box to bring back Superman. Also, a sequence in the theatrical cut where Bruce admits that Clark was more human that he was, is a better version of a similar scene in this movie. Also, while not perfectly executed, the theatrical cut did acknowledge that Bruce was a human fighting amongst superpowered individuals. Also, most importantly, while Steppenwolf is an improvement over the theatrical cut, this is still a movie where the plot involves a villain trying to find three boxes. Steppenwolf is still pretty boring and the main story is not interesting at all. The Darkseid angle of this story is also overhyped since he’s barely in the film. 

In the end, it feels that there is a pretty decent 3 hour movie hidden in an ok but dragged out 4 hour film. I’m glad the Snyder fans got to see it. I have had my issues with Snyder’s vision. While I feel he has grand ambitions and a sense of scale and scope, he hasn’t really got the sense of story and script to really make it work to a degree where the audience at large would appreciate it. I have seen his old storyboards and read his recent interviews about what he was going to do. It sounds very grand and very cool, but with a big potential of being a gigantic mess. Who knows what will happen in the future but at least it right now seems that they are moving on from Snyder’s vision. For this film, I am right now landing at about a 6/10, which is the highest mark out of all the Snyder DC movies. I’ve only watched it once and watching it again is a big endeavor so I won’t do it anytime soon, but maybe revisiting it will make me either like it more or less.

[that-was-anticlimactic]

♫ toph if it hasn’t been asked yet! :)

heheheh ummm i almost chose violence with this one bUT i decided to be nice !

so, i'm going with "to have a home" from a very potter sequel !

before i show lyrics, i just want to talk about why i chose this song ! toph is one of the toughest people around, but she is also one of the most emotional people around. that's something the gaang helps her accept and understand--that she's allowed to express her negative emotions without violence because that's all she knows. her parents piss her off? she'll just go to the earth rumble and beat up some cocky men !

we've seen her cry multiple times on screen, we saw her be afraid when she was falling off the airship, we saw her get vulnerable with sokka and even a little with katara. because her parents expected her to play helpless blind rich girl with the ideology that girls are not fighters. i mean, we saw her parents literally try to kidnap her because they didn't like that she was, oh idk, saving the world ! she was never truly loved, she was the trophy child. the "look our daughter is blind! she's so brave and fragile and delicate! look at our blind child! our lives are so hard because our child is blind!" as in they are v ableist. so she was reduced to being ogled at and seen as the token disabled rich child.

so anyways. she joins the gaang and bam she's around people who actually acknowledge the fact that she's talented and powerful and could probably kill or seriously maim them all if she really felt like it but most of all, she is respected and seen as an equal.

"home / i've heard the word before / but it's never meant much more than just a thing i've never had"

"i'm laughing / it's hard to hide a smile / my God it's been awhile since i have a had a reason to"

"i've finally found it / a place where i'm wanted"

"and so many nights i'd pray for a better life / and a better day / but i never thought that it'd come true / now it's finally here and i don't know what to do / and i'm trying not to cry"

"and for the first time in my life / i don't feel so alone / my heart starts to heal / to know this is real / this is how it must feel to have a home"

because as much as toph acts like it doesn't matter, it matters so much to her. the evolution we saw in the show of her feeling is so incredible. toph cried multiple times which isn't expected from the tough girl. this is a group of people who wants her as a friend not because she's a beifong and not because she would add diversity and not because they think they can help herm, but because they need her and they want her and they love her and they care about her in a way she never had before.

they don't lock her up at night because it's "too dangerous" and they don't ever try to make her be something she isn't.

not to mention the line "now it's finally here and i don't know what to do" like... that's what happened! shortly after her joined the gaang, she ran away, and sure, you could say that is more centered around what was happening in the episode, but i also wager to think that it was because she didn't know how to respond to katara's kinda similar energy and immense care, to how when she wanted to be alone they let her, how everyone treated sokka like he was worth something even though he couldn't bend (and maybe she self-projected a bit onto that--sokka couldn't bend, therefore he was defenseless. toph was taught that she couldn't see, therefore she needed protection and was defenseless. it may not have seemed like it to sokka at the time, but it might have been toph's own way of protecting sokka or maybe she was still worried they would do that to her, so she did it to sokka first in defense)

how sokka and katara let aang be a kid and run around and laugh and be silly and how this kid had the weight of the world on his shoulders and half the world wanted him dead while the other half worshipped him yet he still took the time to be kind and relax and to live

and toph never had that before.

she never had that until she found a home in them

look... i uhh i feel strongly about this. i love toph beifong probably too much. this uhhh kind of got out of hand and turned into a toph analysis / i love toph post and um oops lol

[but if you were wondering about the more depressing option, it relates to this post i made here and the song "at the ballet" from a chorus line but that's for another time]

[sirfrogsworth]

The Great Depression Purge of 2020

I’ve really been struggling with my health for the past month. The comfortable balance that I had achieved stopped being so comfortable. I basically slept for the last 2 weeks straight. Now I’m awake a tad more, but I can barely move. My muscles are much weaker than normal. I often can’t concentrate. I just feel physically miserable way more than usual. And it’s been happening long enough for me to think it is more than a slump or a wave or something that will just pass with enough time. 

I kept looking for a physical cause for my physical symptoms but now I’m starting to think it’s mental--as depression and anxiety can manifest in very physical ways. 

I think I’m depressed and anxious in part because the world has become a verse of We Didn’t Start the Fire. (Though perhaps it should be called We Didn’t Start the Fire But Our Inaction Made Sure It Sucked As Much As Possible).

Australia caught on fire and all the animals died and people were still like, “I don’t know about this Climate Change business.” And President Crimes won't stop criming. And he may have killed a guy to distract from his criming. Which almost started a war. It still might. There is an impeachment trial that Republicans don’t seem to care about. Turkey wants to have girls under 18 marry their rapists. There is too much infighting on the left when we need to be on the same page. I’m worried if Trump gets elected again my benefits will go away and I’ll just... die, I guess. His administration is talking about "tightening eligibility" for disability. I literally need that to live and stuff and I don’t know what “tightening” means. Apparently they are also checking disabled folks’ social media to try and catch them faking. So I worry maybe I should post a picture every week from bed and be like, “Boy, I sure feel super disabled still.”

But my personal world feels like it is on fire sometimes too. My parents are struggling with their health. My mom is in constant pain. My dad is always one bad test result away from being in the hospital. And poor Nibbles. I can’t imagine how Chris is feeling right now. My brother still won’t speak to us or let us be a part of his life. And if you knew the reason you’d probably be like, “That makes NO sense. That’s some straight up bullshit.” I still haven’t met my niece. I saw a picture on a phone for 3 seconds. I wouldn’t recognize her unless someone said, “Hey, this is your niece.” Otis got excited about something and wasn’t paying attention and accidentally fell down the last few steps, and while he is fine now, he’s afraid to go down them again. And since I don’t feel good, I have a hard time going up to see him. I miss him. My two bestest friends are struggling and they are just so far away. I’m really worried about them and I miss them and it has been way too long since I got to hug either of them. I’m just so lonely all the time. The loneliness is like this mental stomach ache that never goes away. And most of the time I can focus on my writing or watch movies to distract myself, but when I get super tired it is much harder to keep it from leaking in. It’s not like I don’t want to think about it. It’s important to acknowledge that stuff and process it. But it’s also not healthy when I can’t control how much I think about it and when I think about. 

I have just been feeling so helpless. 

I can’t help my parents. I can’t help my friends. I can’t help my dog.

I can’t help myself. 

Last night I broke into tears in front of my mom and kept repeating “I can’t help anyone. I can’t help anyone. I just want to help.” 

I felt this profound desperation wash over me. It’s like I can feel the entire world is in pain and it is weighing down my heart so much that I cannot physically stand anymore. 

I’ve always felt compelled to try and make things better. To try and make people a bit happier. Try to inspire. Try to motivate. Try to teach. Try to fascinate. Try to give a glimmer of hope. Try to leave this world better than how I found it. It is this purpose that flows through me and is as inherent as the blood in my veins. It is me. But my health has always been an obstacle. One that I have often found creative ways to navigate around. But when I feel like this. When I physically have no energy and can’t seem to even make a dent... I just feel wrong. At this point, I’d settle for the tiniest of dents right now. A microscopic dent. A nano dent.

Beyond that, I am unable to feel productive which has always been a huge trigger. I can’t finish writing. I can’t finish cleaning. I can’t finish all of the projects I started. 

I started reorganizing my basement and upgrading/enhancing my bedroom. It is my command center. It is the hub through which I connect with everyone and everything. And since I can’t leave this space I thought I’d try to make it as nice as possible. But I lost energy halfway through and it looks like a disaster zone. Now boxes of stuff create an obstacle course everywhere I walk. My room has wires going everywhere because I couldn’t finish cable management. My computer has its guts exposed because I can’t find the energy to put it in the new case I got.

And then there is my home theater system. 

I budgeted, saved, and even sold hard-to-let-go-of photography gear. I avoided eating out and bought more bulk frozen food. We got rid of our cable television package. I was very determined and after a year of eating mostly chicken nuggets... I was just barely able to get a (kinda) fancy new TV for Christmas. And it’s fantastic and I love it. But all of my other stuff that connects to the TV is old and it there have been... issues. 

(Warning: Technical rant starts here.)

My video card has HDMI 1.4 and doesn’t like 4K60. Which is frustrating, but I can just use Plex and stream to the TV. Acceptable workaround. It’s fine. But then my sound system won’t work right because my audio receiver is 11 years old. It missed having HDMI ARC by one year. And for some reason, my streaming apps don’t like optical cables and Disney and Hulu can’t figure out why. So everything is in stereo. And I did not spend a decade slowly building up a surround sound system to listen to the Avengers in frickin’ stereo. So now I have to save up all over again for a new receiver. But do I get a cheap one for right now? Or do I listen to things in stereo for a year and save up for a nicer one that has all the features I want and could last me another 11 (or more) years? Because sometimes when you are poor, saving up for the longer lasting, nicer thing is actually a better financial choice because you don’t have to buy two things. But I guess I don’t have to figure that out right away because I can’t afford either until I eat a bunch more nuggets. 

And then my fancy photography monitor from 2012 started having... issues. It has always had amazing, accurate colors and allowed me to edit pretty much every cool photo I’ve ever taken. I love this thing. One of the best purchases I ever put myself in debt over. It is where I talk to my friends, where I write, where I create funny photoshops. It was way ahead of its time and still has similar specs to a lot of the newer models you could buy today. But in the last few months I’ve noticed the top is now darker than the bottom. Not only that, but there is a yellow color cast developing. If it was uniform, I might be able to compensate with calibration. But it follows the same gradient as the dark top and light bottom. So the yellow is more intense at the top and faint at the bottom. When I want to do color accurate work, I now have to move the top of my images to the bottom of the screen. Which works, but is annoying as heck. 

Part of me wonders if this had happened before I got the new TV, maybe I would have gotten a new monitor first and then saved up a little longer. But I guess that is pointless to fret about (even though I still will) because I don’t have a time machine. 

(end of techno rant)

I just wanted to create a little movie theater in my room because I missed going to a proper cinema. I just wanted a cool command center that would help me do my work and keep in touch with my friends and the world. I just wanted a comfortable, clean, organized, uncluttered space that I wouldn’t mind never being able to leave. And instead of achieving that goal I feel like I am surrounded by chaos and I don’t have the energy or money to fix it at the moment. And since I have been working on this Froggie HQ Update project for like 6 months, the stress of non-completion has been snowballing. 

But then I feel guilty because so many people don’t have what I have. Because I don’t have a car or phone and live with my parents, I was able to save up for a new TV. Other disabled folks are lucky to save up for rent or food. And so there is this voice in my brain like, “Boohoo, I don’t have surround sound and my screen is a bit yellow. Here is a tiny violin” My grandma would problematically remind me there are starving kids in Africa. And I’ll say “Just say ‘starving kids’ Grandma.” And she’ll give me a confused look. Look, she’s 91 and I convinced her Obama isn’t a Kenyan--there’s only so much I can do. 

These are such minor problems in the grand scheme. And the fact that they stress me out so much seems ridiculous. And my logical brain tries to tell my anxiety brain that when I am all alone and cannot leave this room, having a comfortable and functional space full of distraction is vital to not going mad. So maybe it isn’t ridiculous to be stressed out so much about outdated HDMI standards. I honestly don’t know which brain is right. Meanwhile the rest of my brain is just sad and anxious and guilty and confused. 

Maybe I should just blame Disney. They’re somewhat villainous at times and it seems to help other people. 

Project Failure #2... I’ve given up on my Patreon reboot for now. After my dad got sick I hit the pause button and now I can’t seem to get the energy back to resume that project. I was sooo close too. I put so much work into that. But sometimes momentum is vital to completing a goal and when you lose it, getting it back can be a Sisyphean task. I really hope I can get my health back to where it was and finish that. 

For now I will just be doing the one comic per month as usual. It’s just... I was so creatively excited for everything I had planned. I was hoping it would fill the hole left by having to give up photography. I don’t know if there is such a thing as creative trauma, but not being able to take photos anymore sure feels... significant. Like a part of me is missing. I really wanted these new comics I had planned to be special. And now it feels like yet another thing my illness has taken from me. 

And then there is this.

This number keeps growing. I have so many things that are 70-95% done in there. Things I put a lot of effort into. Things I am proud of. Things I really want people to read. But I want them to be finished. I want them to match what I have in my head. I want them to not have silly grammar misteaks. 

Like, there is a rebuttal post about nuclear energy where people said I didn’t research enough and were “disappointed in me” but I don’t think they understood I was talking about the United States only and within the timeframe of 12 years to cut our emissions. I would love to start building some of them salty Thorium reactors but they haven’t even been prototyped in the States. Which is a significant part of the approval process that could take 12 years on its own. And unless Congress changes the regulations and people stop being scared of having a reactor in their neighborhood, we are stuck with the ancient reactors we have. There just isn’t a realistic 12 year nuclear solution for the US. 

Okay? 

Is that researched enough?

474 drafts!

What was I saying? 

Oh, right. I can’t seem to finish all of these essays and it just adds to the “Things That Make Me Sad” list. 

And as that number keeps growing all of the writing seems to congeal into this singular giant monolithic pile. A fatberg of essays. And it’s so big that my brain doesn’t know where to even begin. So I kinda just shove it all into a mental closet and work on newer shinier ideas instead. But then I don’t finish those new ones. And they get shoved into the closet as well. 

My life is full of feedback loops. Problems that keep feeding themselves. And I’m not really sure how to break the loops. 

The only thing I can think of is to unplug. 

Not completely, because that never works. But I think I am going to avoid the news. Actually... avoid “staying informed” might be a better description. Which is awful considering what is happening right now. But I don’t think I have a choice. I need a break from something and that is the easiest thing to try avoiding. 

I am always reading and researching and collecting ideas for things to write about. I’ve been arguing in comment sections and on Twitter. I’ve been going to right wing sites, climate denier sites, anti-SJW sites... all to find ways to dismantle their arguments. (Which is why I laugh when people accuse me of being in an “echo chamber.”) But I’ve been spending too much time in these toxic spaces with toxic people. And while I strongly believe in the work and activism I’m doing, it’s starting to take a toll and I probably need to step away for a bit. 

So I’m not going to pressure myself to write for a while. Low pressure musings only. I’ve already got this month’s comic worked out. I’m just going to do social internetting (a.k.a. talking to my friends and looking at corgis) and watching brainless stuff. I’ve got a bunch of TV shows and movies that have been piling up. I haven’t been watching them because I’ve been trying to put the flames out on the world. I probably set my goals a bit too grand there. 

I’ll still be around. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just not going to know what the hell is happening. Katrina can tell me anything super important that I need to know. And I can always watch the impeachment streams after my head is in a better place. 

OH... there is one post about Trump’s lawyer that is like 99% done. If I find a smidge of energy to finish, I might post that. Actually, there might be another essay that is 100% done and I forgot about. I’ll look that over and see if I can post that too. 

But beyond those two things, I’ll probably just talk about whatever I’m watching or whatever weirdness occurs in my brain naturally. 

Hopefully all of that made sense. Sorry if that was long and meandering. I needed to get that out of my brain. 

I’m gonna go be a vegetable and watch all the Terminator movies in wonderful, acceptable, totally fine... stereo sound. I’ll just pretend all those other speakers I spent years saving up for are decorations.  

I don’t know how to end this. 

Ummmmmmmm...

How about a random image from my “maybe I can do something with this” folder?

delicious-chocolatey-chair-I-would-probably-try-to-eat.jpg

[dickie-gayson]

Fun Young Justice Fact!!

I straight up c r i e d during the S1 episode Coldhearted but not for the reason yall think. I've seen MANY discussions and reactions but not ONCE have I seen any love or recognition given to my boi in Coldhearted

THIS IMPORTANT DOCTOR MAN RIGHT HERE. U SEE HIM?? Y'ALL REMEMBER HIM? UR GONNA GET A LESSON ABOUT THIS LOVELY, BEAUTIFUL, INTELLIGENT DOCTOR RIGHT N O W

This doctor (he's the good one, not the goon) isn't named during the show iirc BUT his name is in the credits.

Pieter Cross.

Pieter Cross.

P I E T E R C R O S S

Y'all, Pieter Cross is another dc superhero - one of my favs.

This lovely accented doctor, Pieter Anton Cross, is none other than Doctor Mid-Nite (the second). here's some pics (the first is w his bffl/platonic life partner Michael Holt aka Mister Terrific)

Pieter graduated from Harvard Medical at 19. He's essentially the Hero Community's go-to doctor for everything.

"Doctor Mid-Nite is the world's most prominent superhero doctor. He is often called upon when an autopsy is needed, or when a hero needs major surgery."

Ye, he's had to autopsy his dead friends :( he also does casual checkups. Powergirl goes to him for her check ups and to keep an eye on her powers. He's done a bunch of life-saving surgeries on not only the heroes but ALSO their loved ones! He performed surgery on Lois Lane after she got shot. When Hush removed Catwoman's heart from her body, Doctor Mid-nite and Mister Terrific were able to successfully put it back in and save her.

You not only want him in ur corner when ur hurt, u need him. There's none better! Imagine the sheer amount of crazy powerful allies he has bcus he saves all sorts of heroes and their loved ones! U don't attack the healer unless u wanna get fucked up by the rest of the squad, right? U also don't piss the healer off unless u wanna suffer, right? Same energy, fam. It helps that he can perform surgery flawlessly in the fuckin pitch dark.

He's disabled! In fact, Doctor Mid-Nite is credited as the first disabled superhero in comics! They're talking about Charles McNider, his predecessor, but Pieter Cross is also disabled. He's blind. I won't go into his whole origin but suffice to say he was unwillingly drugged and it caused him to go totally blind except for in the absolute dark.

He can only see in the dark and/or with his specialized lenses iirc. He carries smoke grenades that cause absolute blackness (think vanta black bombs) bcus he can see just fine in it and others can't. Any attack that involves having to see the attack (think Medusa's gaze) doesn't work on him cus he's conventionally blind. HOWEVER when he can see, it's fuckin crazy. Eagles got nothing on how sharp his eyes are in the right setting. Like we're talking super vision.

Those funky lenses on his cowl? They're to let him see in the light. It's kinda like infrared goggles and can let him see ultrasonic as well. Without his tools, he can't see. He got his sight back once and hated it bcus he could no longer work the way he used to.

OTHER FUN FACTS ABOUT THE GREAT DOCTOR

Doctor Mid-Nite has his own website where he provides free medical advice to registered users.

He's Norwegian-born. (That's his accent in that YJ ep)

Him and Mister Terrific are the bestest of friends (I felt the need to reiterate bcus they're Besties for Life. Read 1 comic with them in it and you'll see what I mean)

HE HAS A PET OWL NAMED CHARLIE!! He named him Charlie after the first Doctor Mid-Nite, Charles McNider!! He's trained to aid Pieter in combat! Attack owl!!! Batman has his Robins, Mid-Nite has owl sidekicks!

Highly Skilled Escapologist

He briefly dated Black Canary

His general medical license has been revoked, not that it stops him from practicing and helping ppl. He gives zero fucks. He's here to help, not politick around when ppl are dying.

He never stopped being a doctor, even after becoming a superhero. HE'S A LOVELY, KIND, COMPASSIONATE MAN WHO JUST WANTS TO HELP PPL

He's vegetarian AND he does yoga (imma cry yall, he's so fuckin great)

S1 of Young Justice appears to take place before he gets his powers and becomes Doctor Mid-nite cus he's not wearing any type of glasses. Wally interacted w (imo) one of the greatest heroes and doesn't know it!

Mid-nite is the one everyone says Tim Drake copied with his one Red Robin uniform (it's true too. I wouldn't be surprised if Tim was a Mid-nite fan, they seem like they'd get along)

T H I C C T H I G H S!!! I know everyone talks about Jason's thighs but Pieter's thighs are next level!! I ain't playing! Look at these hams!!

When his mom was pregnant with him, she got attacked. The OG Doctor Mid-nite saved her. Then, when she went into labor, he delivered lil bby Pieter. What are the odds lmaoo

BDE through the roof, fight me. Massive Meat Energy and I won't apologize for saying it

Survived 'seeing' Johnny Sorrow's face even tho it kills legit anyone who looks bcus he's blind. Used the recording his goggles took of JS' face and played it back to Johnny and beat him lmaoo

As someone summarized nicely: 'Prior to him getting blind, Dr. Pieter was a very caring man.. He would take a walk in the evening every day and helps out poor people who live in the streets, especially to those who are addicted to drugs.. He would help out missionaries in donation to help the poor and the hungry.. A Poor People Savior you might say."

"Doctor Cross uses his medical expertise as a hand-to-hand weapon. Once, when challenged to arm wrestle, he won by triggering the proper nerves in his opponent's arm." Savage Nerd Alert. Can, has, and will continue to use his Galaxy Brain (and BDE) to beat ppl, dirty technique or not.

Geoff Johns on Doctor Mid-Nite: "Doctor Mid-Nite is a visionary, figuratively and literally. Blinded by an accident, he’s able to see on all spectrums through the filters on his goggles."

Here's some of him being the Super Doctor:

Helped Alan Scott to determine if he was composed of the Green flame of Starheart

Helped Power Girl to check and test her powers

Saved Hourman's life by performing an emergency surgery

Saved Oracle by removing the Brainiac virus which possessed her body

Saved Lois Lane's Life by removing a sniper bullet after she was shot

Helped Raven to drive the demonic possession that attacked her by using Hologram Tech

I love him and would die for more content about him

Srsly I'll cry if even one(1) person acknowledges him in a YJ fic (or any fic tbh)

APPRECIATE DOCTOR PIETER ANTON 'MID-NITE' CROSS OR P E R I S H

Also if ur writing a YJ fic and have need for a doctor, pls add him. He didn't graduate med school to be ignored, yall. Or add him in just bcus he's rad af. At least do it for Charlie the owl!!

[trans-advice]

Hey, for the past 5 or so years I have privately identified as nonbinary or not conforming to any gender, and even recently requested that my boss and coworkers use they/them pronouns. About a month ago I stumbled across a "gender critical" blog and started reading it. I know it's a bad idea to engage with trolls, especially when it will impact your sense of self, but I felt restless that my existence was being debated and wanted to hear the other side. Now I am feeling confused (1 o 2 asks)

I’m feeling confused and gross, wondering if all this time I have been actually working against my own feminist beliefs, or if I’m just being naive and getting indoctrinated. Like,I worry about me being a female who simply didn’t subscribe to gender stereotypes, tricking myself into thinking I"wasn’t like the other girls". I have also been wondering about what it means to identify into an oppressed group, and why we can’t talk about it without being dismissed as a dumb TERF. (1 o 2 asks) Thx

— Eve: CW: long post, possibly rambley, could’ve used better editing, transphobia, “gender critical”, recuperation, discussion of “terf” politics, recuperation of liberation movements, politics, oppression, rape culture, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist,

So basically I have tried for almost 4 weeks to write a response detailing this stuff. however it’s gotten too unwieldy. i tried to condense it, but this was as close as i got. it’s practically like 3 drafts back to back. I couldn’t figure out the differences & when i saw similarities it seemed significantly different enough. so I’m not editing any further. here’s a mindvomit. i wish i had this more polished but I can’t do that & i didn’t get a response.

however I’m going to make a history book recommendation, a referral to gendercensus2020, and i need to emphasize that these are much more like personal beliefs & not generally the tone of this blog which aims to give advice & positivity, while this is inherently political, the good bad & ugly. and there are trans people of various persuasions so I don’t want alienate them. i dissecting some ideologies that are transphobic, how they became that, how they got recuperated, and how you can find the same concerns being addressed. I’m answering this because it totally makes sense to me that this is asked in good faith & I want to respect your concerns & show that there are better methods of liberation activism that are trans affirmative, or at least must become & develop into such.

So I’m going to recommend the book “Transgender History (Second Edition)” by Susan Stryker, which I have put on our blog’s google drive account, so hence a link. It goes into the historic common ground between the feminists & LGBT+ peoples. It also gets into historic movements. And on top of that, the first chapter is literally a list of terminology deconstructing gender, which is also helpful for analyzing topics feminism analyzes..

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IvCwNvCJ_EiDmOer4zS8SbFGz4m-WDJ1

another thing you need to know regarding the label lesbian back in the day is that it was a catchall for any woman who didn’t have sex with men. now granted, this was a cisnormative understanding, but basically lesbians included celibate women, asexual women, and of course bisexual women in addition to gay women.

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money to have sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (granted, communities cannot be monoliths if they want to be ecosystems, like any movement label there are different interpretations made by members of it, and therefore there are some strands that uphold a homonormative appreciation for conversion therapy. perhaps a middle ground for understanding how that happened is that joke about macho sexuality purity “if a man masturbates with his hand, he’s using a man’s hand to get off, then it’s gay.” granted, there was of course a political/economic reason to this, but still, it seems in terms of history that this joke was considered actually legitimate.)

“lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included ace, celibate & gynephiliac women. part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married which I’ll detail a few paragraphs from now. (while this next thought could be incorrect because I did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, I think the vestiges of those economic pressures are basically the gist of “comphet”.) the goal of political lesbian as well as lesbian separatism was to build an economy/get money that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, via marriage, pregnancy etc. so basically in an effort to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

however these networks ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. it makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210] >

birth control helped to liberate women & that accommodation/handicap for reproductive health disabilities (disability is merely inability to do something that’s Normative. so if having a uterus, pregnancy/menstruation/having breasts etc aren’t considered normal, which is especially common in a patriarchal society for these examples, then it’s disability.) It should be said that due to the desire for bodily autonomy to regulate our own body parts, as well as a desire to manage our fertility & sterilization, the transgender movement has a lot in common with feminism’s female-as-disability movement.)

it should also be noted that before the medical transitioning became accessible that us trans people relied a lot more on social transitioning than medical transitioning. it should also be mentioned that the medical procedures are available & used by cisgender people too.

that being said, since both cis females & transgender women were denied birth control etc, there was a very intense fear of impregnation happening & trans women going back in the closet not only to get money under patriarchy but also because life raising a kid is hard. like if you’ve ever seen “the stepford wives” & look at how the ally husband betrays his feminist wife, then that should clue us into how a lack of birth control scared us.

the problem with the school of feminism that emphasizes physiological sex over gender identity (in order to deny the existence of trans people with female-organs or not) is that it doesn’t account for birth control & how that’s affected the landscape, the economy etc, the revolutionary impact of birth control basically. it also ignores that trans people & cis women feminists have the same goals when it comes to getting freedoms about reproductive rights & bodily autonomy. therefore it ends up being transphobic & wanting to run back into the times when we didn’t have abortion access because they want to hurt us.

That being said though, we need to have birth control & more in order to help liberate trans people too, so if somewhere doesn’t have birth control, then we’re not doing well either because it’d pay a lot more to be transphobic (which of course it doesn’t now when we have birth control & various medical & other technologies). i think what I’m trying to say is that similar to disability accomodations clashing with each other, if we of the women’s liberation, the trans liberation, and the gay & lesbian liberation, and the bisexual & ace liberation get stranded then we’re all doomed. granted we might be doing that due to defensiveness with hostility similar to how in the 1980s feminism got very conservative in USA & how some transgender people get spared in systems with strict gender conformity & anticolonialist values, it’d be wrong to say that all our liberations are in conflict with each other. they can be mishandled, but ultimately, safety still tends to favor cisheteropatriarchal people. internalized patriarchal thinking is like internalized queerphobia, and so forth.

I want to emphasize that it is relatively easy for transgender people especially nonbinary people to find gender critical discourse somewhat appealing. Here’s why: TERFs & Gender Critical discourse is agender-normative disability discourse regarding reproductive health & other AFAB organs. (a disability is being unable to do things that society considers normative. so if you can’t drive & your locale de facto requires it, then that’s a disability. also in usa you’ll find that pregnancy & disability are the main things welfare programs prioritize. a pregnancy can be harmful, but can be easier with the right monitoring etc. which again is the same with disability.)

the problem though is that they then insist on misgendering you as one of the binary genders based on objectification of your body (specifically, “morphology”). point being, because you feel dysphoric over being misgendered as something nonbinary as being mislabeled as cisgender, this implies that you are indeed transgender.

https://gendercensus.com/post/612238605773111296/the-gender-census-2020-is-now-open

—

Now to be clear, there are historical economic considerations that made the decisions to specialize on the intersectionality of cisgender AFABs, but the economy & technology has changed. Basically marriage back in the day was economically necessary because there was effectively no birth control available. Therefore, to get child support etc, required getting the father to pay the consequences. However, marriage was very much a chattel property institution, marital rape was still legal, and women couldn’t get credit etc in our own names.

#

At the same time, similar to birth control being unavailable, hormones & other procedures for medically transitioning trans people were unavailable as well, which meant social transitioning & wardrobe etc were the main methods of affirming our gender. however, we sometimes got lucky & had a doctor write us a note affirming our gender & sometimes we got even luckier & govts accepted this. this however required getting labelled sick & begging doctors to give us treatment & getting money for this since insurance companies etc still discriminated against transgender people even when we agreed to have our gender identity situation labelled as sick & medically necessary. (similarly insurance companies still refuse to cover abortions & so do some doctors & hospitals.)

#

So this meant that AFABs were concerned about getting hijacked via impregnation. Because of the patriarchal economics of the whole thing, people were afraid of “the stepford wives” repeating itself in their own lives, where the mind can only handle what the ass can stand would mean trans women would go back into the closet.

#

Granted, that’s a bit misrepresentative of trans women & trans people because trans people & cis women who can get pregnant do have a lot more in common. we take the same meds, go to the same clinics, menopause etc gets taken due to distress over how our bodies work, etc. then again, how would trans AMAB people have gotten the money for child support?

#

historically & still to this day we basically had to beg doctors for the ability to get hormones to get a surgery to get a gender marker change & so on, which granted, what we trans people had available to us varied from locale to locale because it required collaborations of trans people, doctors, and the local govts & especially their police stations. again, before roe v wade abortion providers were super underground & secretive & there were specialized units at police stations for hunting down patients & providers under the charge of “murder”. it’s the same dynamics.

#

seriously trans people & people with bodies that can get pregnant, menstruate, menopause, etc, we go to the same clinics! women’s health clinics take trans patients, planned parenthood takes trans patients, do i need to go any further on how trans people & feminists have the same interests regarding reproductive health?

—

as for political lesbianism:

basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money before having sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (i’m not sure what the conditions were like surrounding not piv sex among the straights, and therefore what the likelihood of avoiding piv sex was. I do know that rape culture was much more heavily normalized than it is now.)

“Lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included: - ace, - celibate - bisexual - gay women. Part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married, (while this next statement could be incorrect because i did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, i think the vestiges of those economic pressures such as weddings are basically the gist of “comphet”.)

The goal of Political Lesbianism as well as Lesbian Separatism was to build an economy that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, such as that of marriage, pregnancy etc. In efforts to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.

However these networks, (partly due to lacking radicalization) ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. It makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.

> “The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210]”

[fierceawakening]

Against empathy Liveblog 18

“Batson and his colleagues put subjects in a situation where they have the opportunity to do something nice—such as donating money, taking over an unpleasant task from someone else, or cooperating with someone at a cost. Some of the subjects are told nothing or are told to take an objective point of view. But others are encouraged to feel empathy—they might be told: “Try to take the other person’s perspective” or “Put yourself in that person’s shoes.”

Over and over again, Batson finds that these empathy prompts make subjects more likely to do good—to give money, take over a task, and cooperate. Empathy makes them kind.

Batson finds these effects even when helping is anonymous, when there is a justification for not helping, and when it’s easy to say no. He concludes from his work that these effects cannot be explained by a desire to enhance one’s reputation or a wish to avoid embarrassment or anything like that. Rather, empathy elicits a genuine desire to make another person’s life better.”

I’m VERY interested in how this is so bad you recommend people stop.

“Even among psychologists who should know better, images derived from PET or fMRI scans are seen as reflecting something more scientific—more real—than anything else a psychologist could discover. There is a particular obsession with localization, as if knowing where something is in the brain is the key to explaining it.”

Bruh.

Bruh.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you’re making very strong versions of your claims. Please acknowledge that.

“If you’re one of those people who doesn’t believe something is real unless you see it in the brain, you’ll be relieved to hear that empathy actually does exist. It really does light up the brain. Actually, at first blush, empathy looks as if it’s everywhere in the brain. One scholar describes at length what he calls “an empathy circuit in the brain,” but this “circuit” contains ten major brain areas, some of them big chunks of brain stuff, larger than a baby’s finger, like the medial prefrontal cortex, the anterior insula, and the amygdala—all of which are also engaged in actions and experiences that have nothing to do with empathy.”

Interesting. Yay data!

“It turns out, though, that this the-whole-brain-does-it conclusion arises because neuroscientists—along with psychologists and philosophers—are often sloppy in their use of the term empathy. Some investigators look at what I see as empathy proper—what happens in the brain when someone feels the same thing they believe another person is feeling. Others look at what happens when we try to understand other people, usually called “social cognition” or “theory of mind” but sometimes called “cognitive empathy.” Others look at quite specific instantiations of empathy (such as what happens when you watch someone’s face contort in disgust), and still others study what goes on in the brain when a person decides to do something nice for another person, which is sometimes called “prosocial concern” but which one normally thinks of as niceness or kindness. Once you start pulling these different phenomena apart, which I’ll do below, things get more interesting, and you see how these different capacities relate to one another.”

Fair—I can see how people might looks at a whole brain going FWEEEEEE and assume the thing is super important, only to miss that they’ve over defined the thing.

Still not sure you haven’t under defined it, let’s see what you have to say

“The first finding is that an empathic response to someone else’s experience can involve the same brain tissue that’s active when you yourself have that experience. So “I feel your pain” isn’t just a gooey metaphor; it can be made neurologically literal: Other people’s pain really does activate the same brain area as your own pain, and more generally, there is neural evidence for a correspondence between self and other.”

For the people who think “how can you feel MY pain? Is that magic, NTs? Lolol.” What we mean!

“As you might be able to tell from the title of his book, Hickok is critical of the claims that have been made about mirror neurons, and many scholars would agree that they have been overhyped. One strong objection to the view that they explain capacities such as morality, empathy, and language is that most of the findings about mirror neurons come from macaque monkeys—and monkeys don’t have much morality, empathy, or language. Mirror neurons cannot be sufficient for these capacities, then—though they might help out with them. Nevertheless, the more general finding of shared representations—the discovery that there exist neural systems that treat the experiences and actions of others the same way they treat the experiences and actions of the self—really is an important discovery about mental life.”

Caveat.

“You can see this overlap between self and other as a clever evolutionary trick. To thrive as a social being, one has to make sense of the internal lives of other individuals, to accurately guess what other people are thinking, wanting, and feeling. Since we’re not telepathic, we have to infer this from information we get from our senses.”

Ding ding! It’s a perceptual apparatus, like eyes or ears. It’s not wizardry.

Now... while I concede there are times when covering my ears or eyes make it MORE easy for me to perceive something important. It doesn’t follow that I should pluck out my eyes or eardrums.

Yet in a previous chapter you said “if you’re considering what to do and trying to feel someone’s pain, you should stop.” Implying T the very least that I should have my eye mask at hand at all times.

Seems odd. I get that disabilities aren’t death sentences but this is parsing like “blind yourself so you can truly hear.” Nah?’

“But there’s an alternative. We can take advantage of the fact that we have minds ourselves, and we can use our own minds as a laboratory to bring ourselves up to speed on how others will behave and think.”

Porquenolosdos.gif

“We can do the same for subjective experiences. Which would hurt a stranger more: stubbing her toe or slamming her hand in a car door? You could try to figure this out from scratch, like a scientist looking at the biological workings of a novel species, but a better way is to assess memories of your own pain (or just to imagine yourself in those situations) and assume that the other person will feel the same way you do.”

Which is why I say ditch the eye mask and remember you’re capable of both.

“Our occasional success at understanding individuals who are different from ourselves shows that simulation can’t be the whole story in understanding other people. Hickok points out that we can often successfully read the minds of dogs and cats, figure out what they mean when they bark or purr, wag their tails, put their tails up high, and so on, but surely we’re not simulating them. Those who are quadriplegic from birth can have a rich understanding of other people, figuring out their mental states based on their movement—she has loudly slammed the door, she must be angry—even though these quadriplegics are not in any sense simulating the actions.”

Is anyone arguing against this?

“And, of course, there has to be a brain difference between self and other because there is a psychological difference. Watching someone getting slapped in the face doesn’t really make your cheek burn, and watching someone get a back rub doesn’t make your aches go away. We may feel the pain of someone else, in a limited sense, but in another sense we really don’t. Relative to real experience, empathic resonance is pallid and weak.”

But thinking about it in a detached way isn’t? How do you know?

“Our empathic experience is influenced by what we think about the person we are empathizing with and how we judge the situation that person is in.

It turns out, for instance, that you feel more empathy for someone who treats you fairly than for someone who has cheated you. And you feel more empathy for someone who is cooperating with you than for someone you are in competition with.”

Fair. But that’s why I said don’t rely on empathy alone, except maybe when you need to make a very quick decision or when interacting with people you know.

“People said that they felt less empathy for the person who became infected through drug use—and their neural activation told the same story: When they viewed this individual, they had less activation in brain areas associated with pain, such as, again, the anterior cingulate cortex. And the more subjects explicitly blamed the drug users for their fate, the less empathy they said they had and the less brain activation there was.”

Does rational compassion suffer from a similar problem? (Still not sure what it is exactly.) That is, are we sure this goes away when we appeal to something other than empathy?

Do professed rational actors, for example, reason that addicts deserve less help because they put themselves at risk doing something they don’t have to do, like someone getting a transfusion has to?

“Empathy is also influenced by the group to which the other individual belongs—whether the person you are looking at or thinking about is one of Us or one of Them.”

Fair, which is what o was trying to say with the stories help post—stories help us make Them into Us. Real stories are better but imagined can work, which is why I was okay with them too, anon.

“Subjects found these pictures to be disgusting and showed correspondingly reduced activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a chunk of the brain involved in social reasoning. Although this study didn’t directly look at empathy, the findings do suggest that we shut off our social understanding when dealing with certain people: We dehumanize them.”

Fair.

But I still want to see whether this changes when you see pictures of people you find disgusting stubbing their toe or having a birthday party. Do you savor their pain and feel disgusted by their pleasure, or do you relate to them in spite of yourself? Does it vary? When?

“I’ve been using the term empathy in the sense of Adam Smith’s sympathy—feeling what another feels. But one can ask how this sharing of feelings relates to the ability to understand people’s psychological states. I’ve repeatedly pointed out that we sometimes call this empathy as well—“cognitive empathy”—and one might wonder whether they are one and the same.

If they were, it would call into question my argument against empathy. You can’t make it through life without some capacity to understand the minds of others. So if feeling the pain of others arises from the same neural system that underlies everyday social understanding—if you can’t have one without the other—then giving up on emotional empathy would be giving up too much.”

Fair

“One system involves sharing the experience of others, what we’ve called empathy; the other involves inferences about the mental states of others—mentalizing or mind reading. While they can both be active at once, and often are, they occupy different parts of the brain. For instance, the medial prefrontal cortex, just behind the forehead, is involved in mentalizing, while the anterior cingulate cortex, sitting right behind that, is involved in empathy.”

Do they tend to go on at the same time, or different times? Can doing one cause doing the other?

“One recent scientific article struggles with the question of whether these troubling individuals are high in empathy or low in empathy. For the authors, the evidence suggests both: “Psychopathic criminals can be charming and attuned while seducing a victim, thereby suggesting empathy, and later callous while raping a victim, thereby suggesting impaired empathy.” So which is it?

The authors try to resolve this apparent paradox in terms of a distinction between ability (one’s capacity to deploy empathy) and propensity (one’s willingness to do so). They suggest that these criminal psychopaths have normal empathic ability but adjust it like the dial of a radio—turn it up when you want to listen to the lyrics, turn it down if you want to focus on passing a slow truck on the I-95.”

That’s what I’d heard, maybe from the same article?

No... maybe not. The one I read said empathy by default is “on” in neurotypical people and has to be “turned off” by fatigue or encouraging callousness, but “off” by default in psychopaths. So if you want them to care how their actions hurt others, you have to call attention to it and “flip the switch.”

“So criminal psychopaths don’t have to be fiddling with a single dial of empathy: A simpler explanation is that they are good at understanding other people and bad at feeling their pain. They have high cognitive empathy but low emotional empathy.”

Fair. But that makes it sound like affective empathy is good? And something that people should use, and might be bad if they dont?

So far anyway.

“None of this is to deny that understanding and feeling are related. Smell, vision, and taste are separate, but they come together in the appreciation of a meal, and it might be that the act of adopting someone’s perspective in a cold-blooded way makes you more likely to vicariously experience what they are feeling and vice versa. But these are nonetheless different processes, and this is important to keep in mind when we think about the pros and cons of empathy.”

Hey! I might be right!!

“Why would empathy make us nicer? The obvious answer—the one that comes to mind immediately for many people—is that empathy allows our selfish motivations to extend to others. The clearest case of this is when someone else’s pain is experienced as your own pain. The idea is that you will help because this will make your own pain go away.”

Yep. And you soothe yourself AND somebody else! It’s win-win!

“It’s not clear, though, that selfishness can explain the good acts that empathy leads to. When empathy makes us feel pain, the reaction is often a desire to escape.”

That’s what I think we need reason for, but I don’t see why we should throw affective empathy out.

“People often cross the street to avoid encountering suffering people who are begging for money. It’s not that they don’t care (if they didn’t care, they would just walk by), it’s that they are bothered by the suffering and would rather not encounter it.”

Fair. I do this. But is that the whole story? For some it surely is. For me, I’m sure it’s part of the story, but part of it is that i feel that what I do in my job is more likely to substantially help homeless people more than giving money. I think I’d feel more guilt about letting my anxiousness around contagion and dirt make me move if I didn’t have another way to help that triggers my disgust less.

“I favor Batson’s own analysis that empathy’s power lies in its capacity to make the experience of others observable and salient, therefore harder to ignore. If I love my baby, and she’s in anguish, empathy with her pain will make me pick her up and try to make her pain go away. This is not because doing so makes me feel better—it does, but if I just wanted my vicarious suffering to go away, I’d leave the crying baby and go for a walk. Rather, my empathy lets me know that someone I love is suffering, and since I love her, I’ll try to make her feel better.”

Seeems fair.

“It’s not that empathy itself automatically leads to kindness. Rather, empathy has to connect to kindness that already exists. Empathy makes good people better, then, because kind people don’t like suffering, and empathy makes this suffering salient.”

Then what makes people kind?

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recap: Volume 6 Episode 9 “Lost”

Welcome to Volume 6, Episode 9 where “Lost” truly encompasses all of my feelings today! Sorry for the late recap, but let’s not waste anymore time.

We open on Emerald and Mercury as they hang out in Salem’s palace, the woman in question nowhere to be found. She’s probably still off seething over Ozpin’s latest reincarnation. There’s some pretty heavy symbolism attached to how each character navigates the room: Mercury energetic and full of purpose as he trains in the open space; Emerald static and curled in on herself on the floor. She admits that she hates “being in the dark like this” and Mercury agrees. Cinder was annoying, but at least she kept them both filled in.

Of course she did, because Cinder craves power in a way Salem doesn’t. She wants a particular type of submission tied up in validation. Qrow reminds us in Volume Four that Salem keeps to the sidelines. She’s—to borrow our Wizard of Oz vernacular—the man behind the curtain, happy to pull strings that lead to everyone pointing accusingly at one another, with no inkling that someone more powerful is really to blame. Can we picture Cinder laying out plans that didn’t result in her taking credit for the plot? I can’t. She needs to be in the thick of things, monologuing her victories, and by extension she has a closer relationship with her pawns than Salem ever will, by pure necessity. Cinder would have eaten up the kind of attention from Tyrian that Salem brushes aside unless acknowledging it directly suits her purpose. It’s that faux intimacy that’s convinced Emerald they have a real connection.

With these kinds of thoughts on her mind, Emerald asks Mercury why he bothered to come with them all those years ago. He reveals that his father was an assassin, trained him to be the same, and the night he manages to kill him a group comes along that just happens to need his particular type of expertise? “Just felt like it was meant to be.”

Emerald: “That’s it?”

I agree. Though Mercury is by far the more convinced of the two, he’s still demonstrating the same lack of clear convictions that our heroes have been grappling with. You signed your life over to this war because a bunch of strangers happened to be passing by? That sort of coincidental justification can’t sustain itself. Even Pyrrha’s firm belief in destiny grew shaky once she was faced with a truly difficult decision and Mercury has had pretty smooth sailing lately, especially compared to the life he had with his father. He beat up a bookseller, framed Yang, helped destroy Beacon, had a minor role at the Haven battle, and has been hanging in the palace ever since. He’s actually been doing pretty well, especially since losing Cinder is no real blow to him, so why wouldn’t he think he made the right choice to impulsively follow her and Emerald when they met? The problem is, these victories won’t last. What’s Mercury going to do when his “it just felt like it was meant to be” collides head on with a truly difficult situation… like oh, say, having Salem turn that anger on him as an abuse survivor? As others have already pointed out, Mercury was pretty damn spooked by her reaction to the news about Oz and saw it coming far faster than the other characters. One of these days he’s going to realize that it’s not going to be continuous smooth sailing to Salem’s new world where he’s a top dog no one can touch. Then he’ll have a choice to make.

Of course, Tyrian is already anticipating that. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you ever discover those true convictions. Even if Mercury some day realizes he wants to get out from underneath Salem’s thumb, good luck with that. Hello, difference between her and Ozpin. Ozpin let’s people leave, no matter the cost to himself and the war effort. I doubt Salem provides such luxuries.

Emerald tries to get Mercury to understand how her motivations were tied up entirely with Cinder: “[She] was the only family I ever had. She cared about me…” Mercury interrupts with the cruel truth that no, she doesn’t care about either of them, and Emerald is so enraged that she attacks.

You can easily see her heart isn’t in it though. In a nice parallel to Oscar’s line at the end of the episode, she’s been worrying about the exact same stuff. After her initial attack Emerald is barely keeping her fists up and backs off as Mercury starts advancing on her.

He brings up an interesting conundrum: is it worse to have been denied the love of a parent, or to experience the hatred of another? Of course, the truth is that both are horrendous, but Mercury is clearly of the mind that his trauma trumps Emerald’s. Surprisingly calm while also housing great fury, he reveals that some semblances can apparently steal others. At least I’m assuming this power came from his father’s own semblance. Whatever it was (omg tell us lol) apparently made Mercury “weak” in his eyes and after taking it he said he could get it back when he proved he was “strong.” Well, Mercury proved his strength by killing his father, but he didn’t get his semblance back. So it apparently doesn’t revert back after death.

Before things can get anymore heated Tyrian sneaks creepily out of the shadows. His usual entrance. The highlight of his hastily justified visit—just saying goodbye!—is the reveal of his new tail. Did he have the rest of his tail removed? I’m assuming that only the end is new with the rest of his tail just encased in that armor. Later we can clearly see a drop of his poison on the tip (along with the purple visible on the underside) so I suspect in order to create an apparatus that could draw it out again they’d have to keep the rest of the limb. Regardless, it’s too bad for our heroes. It looked like Ruby had done some permanent damage back in Volume Four.

I’m actually rather fascinated by how RWBY treats its disabled characters. There’s a very heavy focus on the psychological trauma as opposed to the physical. Meaning, once the character “gets over” the injury (I use that awful phrase not literally, but just to describe the moment when the arc focused on their injury is complete and the narrative needs to move on) the focus then segues to how much stronger they are now. Again, physically if not mentally. Mercury’s legs are now more powerful than the average human’s, as is half of James’s body, Yang’s arm, Tyrian seems to be able to do everything he previously could with his tail, except now it won’t be so easy to slice through it with a scythe. We also get moments where the act of being disabled is the factor that tips the scales: such as when Yang detaches her arm to get into the vault. On the one hand this is an incredibly positive and potentially inspiring trend. On the other hand real life disabilities sometimes still suck in a way that really isn’t portrayed here, especially since everyone has access advanced tech to “fix” the problem. Yang is right. There’s a part of her missing that she’ll never get back, but that doesn’t change the fact that her new arm is portrayed as more powerful and versatile than her original could ever hope to be. Putting aside the trauma of losing it for a moment, the fact that she’s missing an arm is itself no longer presented as a disability.

I’d actually like to see more moments where the tech isn’t portrayed as such an easy fix: Someone doesn’t have the money to get fancy Atlas stuff, Yang’s arm breaks down in the middle of a fight, whatever dispenses Tyrian’s poison jams up, someone with a tech or metal-based semblance gets a huge advantage when they realize a bunch of the allies are reliant on metal limbs, etc. AKA, more like Fullmetal Alchemist where disabilities are both an asset (I always have a weapon on hand!) as well as a hindrance (…that often gets destroyed) depending on the situation. I think the closest we get is with Maria. Losing color meant that she didn’t pick up on Ruby’s eyes until the very last moment, putting them in more danger. Beyond that she says her specs need a tuneup, but so far we haven’t seen any downsides to not getting them upgraded.

ANYWAY. I should get back to the actual episode…

Tyrian points out that Mercury is too afraid to leave the pain and violence that he’s always known and Mercury gives the expected line that Tyrian doesn’t know anything about him. Makes me wonder what Tyrian’s past was like and why this conversation out of them all would bring out his more philosophical side.

We see more of Emerald’s need to hang onto what little family she has left. Despite attacking Mercury just moments before she lets out a furious, “Hey!” when Tyrian pins him and uses “we” when asking whether they’re just supposed to leave, despite the fact that Mercury has expressed zero interest in considering that option. Emerald considers them a set and, like with Cinder, is projecting more love than might actually be there. She expects that if she leaves, Mercury will follow.

Boy, that might be another kick in the teeth if it ever came down to it…

Tyrian gets his line about how they should love what they do… but ultimately you don’t have much of a choice. Not when Salem is involved. Watts appears reeeeeal far back to let him know it’s time to leave for Atlas.

Could you be more dramatic?

With the ominous knowledge that literally every semi-notable character is heading to Atlas, we cut to JNR looking for Oscar. Jaune gets some excellent lines here:

“This is all my fault. I overreacted…he didn’t do anything wrong.”

Damn straight. Most of the fandom was willing to absolve Jaune the moment he showed a guilty look, but in this volume particularly looking guilty isn’t the same thing as an apology and a change in behavior. Qrow hasn’t apologized to the group yet. The group hasn’t apologized to Ozpin. There’s been a lot of shots of people looking regretful, but not doing much to act on that regret. Given this theme I wouldn’t have been surprised if Jaune hung onto his anger and tried to justify his reaction… but he didn’t and I’m so glad to see this glimmer of maturity, especially coming from one of the more violent characters this volume. He’s doing everything right here: being frank about his mistakes and responsibility, implying that it won’t happen again, apologizing the moment he sees Oscar. Good job, Jaune.  

We see how with a few hours to calm down JNR is totally on board with continuing the mission. They’re concerned about what they’ll do, not whether they’ll do anything at all. “It’s going to be a lot harder than we thought” implies that they’ll be continuing the fight and Nora and Ren are back to their endlessly optimistic selves. Honestly… while I’m glad to see this characterization in general, it feels cheap after last episode. As said, RT has given everyone an identical reaction to the information about Salem, undermining their individual temperaments and outlooks, all so we can build up this hatred of Ozpin. But if you’re going to give characters unlikely reactions (like Nora going full pessimism) at least commit to it. By skipping over their thought process and discussion, by jumping straight back to, ‘Of course we’ll fight!’ it paints their original reactions as inauthentic. Nora isn’t really doubting whether all their work meant something, Ren isn’t really mad at the rest of the group, Jaune doesn’t really think Ozpin has taken over Oscar—those emotions were just tools to fuel the drama of one scene. And yeah, some people will read that as a legitimate response to getting horrifying news. I personally don’t. That scene could have achieved everything it needed to without making JNR a carbon-copy of RWBY in their grief.

We also get another example of how the team is happy to keep secrets when it serves their own purposes—“I know, I know. Top secret”—and how less stock they put in the traditional huntsmen lifestyle now. Saphron says that if they’re not sure what to do they can always get their licenses and help out in Argus. “There’s a lot of good you can do here” and this is juxtaposed with images of safe and smiling people who only have that happiness because of the everyday huntsmen doing their work. Saphron points out that they don’t have to be the ones to complete this mission and “it’s not the only mission that needs doing.” She doesn’t have any of the details… but she’s right. Someone needs to get the relic to safety, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be 10+ people. If anyone has doubts about continuing the fight against Salem specifically, now’s the time to bow out, especially since not being committed is dangerous to everyone else. It’s what Ozpin said back in Volume 5: abstaining isn’t anything to be ashamed of, but you’ll reach a point where you can’t retreat.

This suggestion is brushed off though and I don’t think it’s because JNR has some inspiring drive to face Salem no matter the cost. It’s because everything else still feels ‘useless.’ It’s hard to learn about the Big Bad and then go back to fighting the small fry, even though that’s primarily what keeps Salem at bay. Fighting grimm, bandits, her subordinates, promoting peace… these are the things that keep her from getting a foothold. JNR may be willing to continue to Atlas, but they haven’t quite acknowledged yet that this war doesn’t always have straight-forward quests for them, the heroes, to complete. Secure the relic! Kill Salem! I mean this will never happen because it’s a show and we need plot, but in-world it’s totally possible that after Atlas the thing to do is just the sort of stuff Saphron suggests. Salem’s plans are usually years in the making and we can’t go kill her… so I guess all we can do now is go back to being just huntsmen. 

I hope RWBY addresses this pseudo-superiority that’s developing; the idea that their group always has to be on The Mission To Save The World. I just want someone to acknowledge again that keeping magical relics safe is important… but so is, say, saving a random village from their geist grimm. The world needs both.

Which brings us to Pyrrha.

(Ah, look at that Volume 1 opening callback.) 

Ren and Nora try to cheer Jaune up with drinks at a cafe (coffee! shop! a! u!) but he hangs back on a bench. Everyone’s heart rips out when a familiar leaf drifts by and lead’s Jaune to Pyrrha’s statue…

Let me be clear here. I love the emotion of this scene. I love that JNR finally got to have this conversation. The only thing I don’t love is how heavily it pushes the idea that it’s noble to die even when you didn’t have to, even when it accomplishes precisely nothing.

Woman: “[Pyrrha] understood that she had a responsibility to try… I don’t think she would regret her choice, because a huntress would understand that there really wasn’t a choice to make. And a huntress was what she’d always wanted to be.”

This viewpoint makes sense for whoever this woman is, Pyrrha’s mom, her older sister, etc. Of course that’s how she’s going to rationalize the tragedy, especially when she presumably doesn’t know the details of Pyrrha’s death. I truly doubt anyone from Beacon told her Pyrrha went off after someone who she knew she’d lose against and died uselessly. But JNR and the narrative itself? They can afford to be more critical.

Of course there was a choice to make. If Pyrrha was here she SHOULD regret the choice she made! There was no reason for Pyrrha to die. She didn’t die out of ignorance by underestimating her enemy. She didn’t die to save someone else’s life. She didn’t die to buy someone time. RWBY was careful to make sure that Pyrrha’s death served absolutely no purpose and has brought only hardship to those around her. That was her fatal flaw—fighting for the sake of fighting—and Ruby at least recognizes this as something they need to learn from. JNR? Apparently not. They parrot the woman’s words and talk about how they “have to try,” clearly conflating Pyrrha’s situation with Salem’s immortality, but they’re in no way the same thing. They actually don’t have a choice when it comes to Salem because the only other option here is death/enslavement for all of humanity. You know what other choice Pyrrha had though? Listening to her headmaster, not throwing her life away, sparing her friends their grief, and living to do more good later on. I’m used to the fandom endlessly twisting Pyrrha’s death into something inevitable (Ozpin manipulated her!) or something purely noble (she was so close to beating Cinder!), but I didn’t expect the show to do the same thing. It’s a disservice to her character to pretend that she didn’t have any faults… and that one of those faults got her killed.

So yeah. The lessons in general are important ones, just not when they’re applied to this specific context. Regardless, it solidifies their feelings that they’ll continue on to Atlas and after some more apologies from Jaune for being a “terrible leader” and friend, they decide to head back to the house. Jaune takes one more look at Pyrrha’s statue with an airship flying overhead, a very non-romantic choice that won’t make sense until the end of the episode.

After all that emotional upheaval we cut to Ruby. Looking like this:

This child is so fucking done.

I suppose the one silver lining is that Qrow managed to make it back to the house before he passed out? Yang comments that she’s “never seen him this bad” as these poor kids drag him back onto his feet. As Ruby angrily fills him in about Oscar being missing Jaune goes, “Don’t worry. We’re not going to Atlas without him.”

Ruby: “We? :D”

As everyone basks in their newfound determination, the door opens to shed some literal light on them all. Our farm boy is there, safe, sound, and sporting new digs.

Oscar: “Oh. I was wondering when you’d get back.”

I know I joked last time about how Oscar probably just went for a walk since everyone agreed to take time to themselves, but RT could have given us some indication of where he went, what he did (besides shopping), what he thought… basically anything that would show us some actual development, rather than having it all happen off screen. Like Nora, Ren, and Jaune suddenly 100% on board after their pessimism last episode, we completely skip over Oscar’s thought process. We don’t get to see how he went from this

to this.

The fact that this time skip proceeds Jaune’s apology makes it a highly uncomfortable scene—for me at least. Because Oscar went from flinching in his company to making them all dinner and interrupting Jaune before he can even finish, claiming it’s fine because he’s had the same worries. In short, it feels like Oscar is the one apologizing here because we haven’t gotten any insight into what else might explain this sudden mood change. He’s a “like minded” soul to Ozpin though and Ozpin blames himself for everything. So Oscar watches how no one gives a damn if he’s okay after Jaune assaults him and, instead of being angry at them for that, makes everyone casserole with the hope that they’ll be pleased with that gesture. He doesn’t let Jaune take full responsibility for his actions or complete his apology because Oscar thinks that reaction was justified. Oscar implicitly apologizes for making them worry all day even though he had every right to leave. He talks about himself like he’s dying—“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be me”—and instead of being upset about that anymore he says that he’s going to help others with “whatever time I have left.”

Oscar is doing exactly what Ozpin did a few episodes ago, trying to please those around him instead of calling them out on their shitty behavior. For Ozpin it was giving them a life without him; for Oscar it’s playing the supportive outsider who’s determined to not be a burden. He can’t help that he’s merging with Ozpin, but he can be better prepared for their next battle (combat gear), take care of little things he has control over (dinner), and accept their apologies instantly with a smile. He’s not giving them any reason to hate him anymore than he thinks they already do. 

If this is at all a reflection of how Ozpin’s comeback will go, it’s not a good sign in my opinion. I’m still worried that Ozpin will be the one apologizing and will just brush off any half-hearted apologies he gets in turn.

Of course, a big portion of the fandom is theorizing that this isn’t Oscar at all, but rather Ozpin controlling him. I’m not buying that theory right now. Mostly because Ozpin wouldn’t do that. We just watched Jaune lose it because he thought Ozpin might be tricking them by pretending to be Oscar…so Ozpin’s gonna turn around and do exactly that? And to what purpose? Take back the relic from Ruby? If he could hear during his self-imposed isolation then he knows that RWBY is still determined to get to Atlas. If he couldn’t then he woke up in Argus and can infer the same thing. It’s foolish to go off on his own in a body that, to be frank, is still barely trained, especially when time has proven that it takes a team to make it out there. The only way I might buy this is if Ozpin thinks he’s sparing everyone by taking the relic himself; unburdening them from the mission.

I can see why people are suspicious. Oscar is indeed acting off, though I attribute that to the fact that, again, he’s clearly rattled by what happened and is trying not to show it. I can also kinda see why people would be suspicious of him buying combat gear now—he’s planning to go off on his own!—but this was also just a decent time for him to get an outfit change. Plus he needs combat gear regardless of whether he’s with the group or not.

In the end, believing that this is Ozpin in control here is rooted in the fandom’s belief that Ozpin is a horrible manipulator who would turn around and do all the things Jaune just accused him of. If this ends up being the case I’d be incredibly disappointed in RT, because this goes against so much of Ozpin’s core characterization. Until it’s actually proven, this isn’t a theory I’m subscribing to.

With Oscar’s Jaune’s apologies out of the way Qrow tries to leave and Ruby finally loses her temper, snapping that he can at least sit with them. Qrow is once again entirely dismissive of Ruby. He sarcastically says how he “wouldn’t want to get in the way of your celebration,” callously brushes off whatever Oscar and the group apparently made up about, and reiterates that they don’t have a plan. Hell, he doesn’t even know that JNR has learned about Salem and he clearly doesn’t care. Jaune tries to diffuse the situation by mentioning that he has thought of a plan... though it’s the “no going back” kind. 

Steal an airship. Please look at everyone’s horrified reactions. Except for Nora.

She’s so proud!!

Why the shock though? Objectively speaking this group has never cared much for laws or rules. Ruby and Yang come from a family with bandits in it. Blake was a member of a terrorist group. Ren and Nora clearly had to steal in order to survive. Jaune got into Beacon with forged transcripts. They happily let Ozpin bend the rules for them at school. They never reported all the illegal activity of the White Fang. They then started acting as huntsmen despite not having licenses. Weiss snuck out of her own Kingdom as cargo. And they just straight up lied to a military figure to try and cross the boarder. Like I get that stealing a ship is a bit bigger than this other stuff (with the exception, perhaps, of Jaune’s transcripts and Blake’s past), but it’s not like this is a group of totally law-abiding citizens. They’ve been working outside of the Kingdoms’ laws for a rather long time now.

It’s the perfect excuse for Qrow though and he tells them to drop it. There’s a clear visual divide between him on the stairs and everyone else below, reinforced when Ruby says that she wants to “hear [Jaune] out.”

Interesting choice of words. Jaune just admitted that ‘steal an airship’ is all he’s got. There isn’t anything more to hear out. Ruby is just making it very clear who she’s siding with.

She says she knows Qrow is worried for them and thinks it’s all hopeless, but “right now I don’t really care what you think.”

To quote the popular meme, you can pinpoint the exact moment his heart breaks!

Needed to be said though.

However then… then. Oh boy. Then Ruby spouts this absolute nonsense about how the kids have never needed adults and definitely don’t need them now.

“We’ve been in tough situations before and we didn’t need an adult to come save us or tell us what to do. We did it our way.”

I’m sorry, Ruby. When the hell was this?? Was it when you tried to take on the White Fang by yourself instead of providing Ozpin with information that might have helped him figure out Salem’s plan? Or was it when an experienced huntsmen had to come save you with your team when you went off alone at Mountain Glenn? Was it when the adults did just as much work to win the battle of Beacon as you? How about when you were traveling to Haven and didn’t have any grimm to deal with because the adult was following behind and taking care of them all, then saved you from being kidnapped? Was it when Ozpin trained you for weeks and finally gave you a plan to follow? Or was it two days ago when Maria’s experience literally saved you all from certain death?

To say nothing of the reverse. It’s because of the kids’s actions that they’re in this position in the first place. It’s because Ruby went and used a question that Ozpin isn’t around to help them anymore, to help recognize the Apathy for what it was, to gain them entrance across the boarder. Kids thinking they know best is precisely what started all this nonsense.

But yeah. Apparently there’s no remorse for how they treated Ozpin yet. Rather than regretting their inhumane treatment now that they’ve had time to cool off, they’ve settled on a ‘Who needs him anyway?’ mentality.

This viewpoint came totally out of left field and I honestly hate it. Everything from the rousing shots of everyone’s smug expressions—Yeah! Bonding over how much we don’t need you!—to Maria cheering them on, I absolutely hated it. Ruby isn’t mad at adults, she’s mad specifically at Qrow and his drinking. She could have easily called him out on his shit (something that needs doing) without charging her team up with the misguided idea that they’ve somehow been surviving without adults when they haven’t. We could have re-asserted Ruby’s convictions to keep fighting without throwing all her 20yo+ allies under the bus. Apparently they’ve learned little from their impulsive decisions this volume.

However, RWBY is acknowledging a common issue with child protagonists: how do you make them the star of the show when presumably adults should be fighting in their stead? There are a couple ways to get around this:

Adults are available but we don’t trust them (Harry’s abuse in Harry Potter)

Adults are around but are fundamentally useless (HP again - Harry is brushed off by McGonagall in the first book, dealing with evil or idiotic DADA instructors, etc.)

Adults are forced to hand over the reigns to kids (any story with a Chosen One plot)

Adults might want to help but can’t for reasons outside of their control (they all died off, they’re hypnotized like the parents in It, etc.)

The problem with RWBY is that adults have always and will always be an integral part of the plot. The narrative hasn’t given Ruby a distrust of authority figures (she grew up with a loving father and clearly respected her instructors), it hasn’t painted her as Remnant’s inevitable savior (in-world at least. We as the audience know she’s the primary protagonist, but to the cast she’s only a little special because of her silver eyes), it hasn’t forcibly removed adults from the battlefield, and it hasn’t characterized them as useless. Yes, RWBYJNR has had some of their faith undermined given Ozpin’s fall from grace and Qrow’s drinking, but those are balanced out by Maria’s endless help and the Cotta-Arc family giving them sanctuary. RWBY is suddenly trying to push a YA-esque ‘kids know best’ viewpoint without doing any of the work to justify that. As an adult watching this show, that scene didn’t make me go

like I think it was supposed to. It just reinforced that they are, in fact, kids. Literally. Only kids look at adults and go, “We don’t need you! We’d be just fine on our own!” I mean yeah, as semi-trained huntsmen they’d probably survive, but that’s not what Ruby is saying. She’s taking her frustration with Qrow’s individual problem and twisting that into a failing of everyone who’s not her age... while standing next to the adult who saved her life and finally explained silver eyes, while her hosts finish making her dinner, in the house they’ll all be sleeping in tonight, while prepping a mission that hinges on getting to Ironwood. Sure, Ruby. Your way doesn’t rely on adults at all. 

God I hope this view was just a one-time thing that I can forget ever happened. If Ruby’s leadership gets tied up in a kids vs. adults mentality the rest of this volume is going to be very uncomfortable to watch. Maria’s,“Looks like you didn’t give her enough credit either!” is great, just not in this particular context. A lot like Oscar’s kindness and JNR’s determination to “try.” This episode was filled with things I wanted to see, but then they all got twisted in ways I never expected—and largely don’t like.

Oh well. I’m gonna hang onto Oscar’s BAMF new nutcracker outfit and that glorious image of the gang prepping to dog-pile on him.

Until next week!

Other Details of Note

I’ll admit, I did like the apparent threat behind Tyrian’s goodbye while he had his tail poised over Mercury’s face. He’s good at messing with people.

Nora’s gasp when she sees Pyrrha’s statue : (

But she still got Jaune a drink! :D

I’m wondering now why Pyrrha chose Beacon over Haven…

Terra freaking out about the neighbors was pretty hilarious.

Interesting that Ruby says, “We got this far without Oz.” Normally I’d be thrilled to see her treating him as a peer with a nickname, but considering that the rest of the speech is about how they don’t need adults, it feels more like a dig. He was still “Professor” after Jinn’s vision. Now that she’s decided he’s useless? No more respectful titles.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Sarazanmai Episode 4: “I Want To Connect, But You’re So Far Away”

Or maybe I should say, ‘I Want To Connect, But You’re Soba Away”? :V

There’s a whole lot going on in this episode, but above all else I’m gonna have the scene with Mabu saying ‘that’s yesterday’s noodle’ stuck in my head for the next while.

tfw you’re yesterday’s noodle u_u

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

In this episode of Sarazanmai, we learn that on being a teenage drug dealer, Toi has also literally murdered a dude before. Which actually isn’t all that surprising, considering that we’ve already seen him waterboarding a dude with his brother before.

It sure does say a lot about this show that you can say that the reveal of one of the main characters having shot someone when he was a child is almost underwhelming because you’ve already seen him torture a dude, lmao.

I did really like how all of the flashback sequences were handled in this episode, though, especially the secret leaking sequence. This episode in particular makes me feel like I’m missing out because I haven’t watched Penguindrum yet, since everyone says that Nobuyuki Takeuchi [the episode director for this episode and one of the head directors on this show as a whole] was responsible for the best episode of it. But I know him mostly for his work on the first season of Bakemonogatari, and at the very least I can say that you can REALLY tell he worked on that show as well. Especially with all the shots of urban environments and cityscapes and whatnot.

The only thing that really felt weird about the flashbacks was how it felt like Kouki Uchiyama barely tried to change his voice even when he was voicing Toi as a little kid, so that immediately sounded kinda weird and jarring. But other than that it was all great.

You could piece together the gist of Toi and Chikai’s relationship from what we’d already seen of them, but it was nice to get a deep dive into exactly what’s going on. So basically Chikai got involved in gang stuff, stole money from another gangster to pay off his family’s debts, which lead to Toi shooting that dude, and now Toi is trying to become part of the criminal underworld so that he can stay near his brother, even while Chikai is clearly trying to push him away so he can live a normal life.

We’ve technically already heard it from the first PVs ages ago, but Toi’s whole monologue about how anything and everything can disappear and be forgotten is even more interesting now with the whole context of how whenever each kappa zombie gets defeated, they very literally get erased from existence, and from the memories of people who knew them, and even from stuff like photos they were in.

And on the note of kappa zombies, this week’s one was another mostly unimportant background character who was a bit of a sexual deviant that got caught by Reo and Mabu and made into a kappa zombie. It at least continues the trend of the zombie of the week being some sort of a foil to the character being focused on, since this whole episode was about Toi’s history with his family’s soba shop, and the kappa zombie was someone who ran a different soba store, and who basically had a fetish for wanting to use his girlfriend’s bathwater to make a giant soba bowl for them to soak in. With how all of the zombies are silly and exaggerated versions of the sorts of desires that the main characters have, you can see how it relates to Toi wanting to protect his family’s soba shop and live with his brother.

Everyone keeps saying that episode six will be where things really get shaken up plot-wise, but I feel like the next episode might also be pretty interesting, going by what Reo and Mabu talked about with them wondering if they should change things up.

And on the topic of the next episode, I’m hoping that we actually get to see Kazuki’s whole ‘let’s literally kidnap Sara so I can take her place at the handshake meeting all so that I can keep up the weird ruse I have going on with Haruka’ mission play out. It sounds so incredibly bonkers that I just want to see how it goes.

It’s kinda funny that, considering what this episode was actually about for the most part, pretty much everything Kazuki does feels more strange and unsettling than anything Toi’s done. I think it’s mostly because Toi’s motives are spelled out very explicitly, and he doesn’t try and hide any of it, whereas Kazuki’s one big complicated mess of mysterious motivations and feelings. And even though Toi has fully committed to being a criminal, Kazuki is in this uncomfortably creepy grey area where he clearly doesn’t want to acknowledge that anything he’s doing is bad, but he’s also completely willing to happily tell Toi about how he wants him to help him kidnap Sara. He even had a whole map printed out to help illustrate the very specific plan he wants the two of them to go through with to make it happen, which includes Toi knocking Sara’s manager out and locking him somewhere where he won’t bother them. There’s just something distinctly creepy about the boundaries Kazuki crosses and the attitude he has about it, and I kinda love it.

While I’m thinking about it, I should also say that I’m starting to think that Kazuki is very intentionally using his Sara disguise to manipulate Toi. I think he’s already figured out that Toi has a bit of a crush on him, at least in his Sara outfit, and this episode really makes it seem like he’s exploiting that to his benefit. The part where he runs up and hugs Toi stands out in particular, since he didn’t really have any specific reason to be so pushy and suggestive about it. Before the episode came out and we just had the preview images, I thought it’d be the sort of scene where, for example, Kazuki is running from someone and ropes Toi into acting like his boyfriend or whatever, which would have explained the sudden hug and the hushed explanation of what he wants Toi to do, but nah. He just did that, entirely of his own volition, instead of just walking up to him and talking like a normal person. In general he seems to be having a lot of fun getting into the Sara persona when he’s alone with Toi, which I think is very telling in a lot of ways.

I really hope that some sort of a legit love triangle starts to develop here, if only because I think it’ll lead to a lot of juicy drama, and tbh it’d feel a bit weird if a lot of this stuff didn’t actually go anywhere.

And as yet another element of Kazuki being surprisingly hard to understand, we have the whole post-credits stinger scene of him giving his dish to Toi and finally revealing that he actually hates Haruka.

There’s a lot of ways this can go, so for the most part I’m just gonna wait and see, but I agree with basically everyone else that my initial guess is that it’s probably some sort of resentment toward Haruka because of the special attention and accommodations that have to be given to him because of his disability. Which would also make sense based on how apparently the light novel makes it a bit more clear that whatever happened to Haruka might have been a relatively recent accident, and so it might have been a much more disruptive and unexpected force in Kazuki’s life.

As a disabled person, this sort of topic always hits really close to home with me, in some really uncomfortable ways, so even though I’m excited to see where it goes, and I have faith that Ikuhara will handle it well, I’m still kinda apprehensive. It’s not like it’s an unrealistic or ‘bad’ topic to write about, but it just always makes me uncomfortable and self-conscious when stories have able-bodied characters that resent disabled people they know because of their special needs. The fact that Kazuki’s the cagey and neurotic one while Haruka is just a normal little kid who clearly wants to just have a normal relationship with his brother gives me hope that it hopefully shouldn’t at least devolve into straight-up ableism territory.

Either way, I’m excited to see where the next episode goes.

And on a side note, in a few weeks I’m probably going to be importing the ReoMabu prequel manga. I really want to get the light novel as well, but I think I’ll wait until I can at least order both volumes of it at the same time.

[colorofmymindposts]

Shelter and Beacon Chapter One

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood & Manga

Pairing: Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye

Warnings: Minor canon divergence 

Rating: General 

Status: Incomplete but the next chapter will definitely be posted next week

Word Count: 930 

Chapters: 1/2 

Summary: A stormy night in Central City found Colonel Roy Mustang staying overnight at his Lieutenant's apartment.

Tags: POV Roy Mustang, Blind Roy Mustang, Post-Promised Day, Rain, Repressed Feelings, First Kiss

Notes: This is written for @raywritesthings who prompted me royai caught in a storm literal Months ago. I hope you all enjoy this, and likes and reblogs would be much appreciated!

View my work here on ao3!

The temperment of the weather often reflected his mood, he mused wryly, as the rain continued to beat against the windows, as it had been for hours. Roy Mustang sat behind his desk, his head rested on his folded hands as he listened to the sounds of all his personal and professional effects being packed away into boxes, to be shipped to Eastern Command headquarters. His time at Central Command had been much shorter than he had originally intended, but given the present circumstances and Führer Grumman’s cunning, he’d been beaten at his own game. Even without Grumman in the way, convincing the Amestrian public to elect a newly blind leader would have been a difficult campaign to push immediately after the Promised Day, which had driven people to cling tighter to stability and strength of the government.

For now, he would have to prove to East City that his disability made him no less capable as an officer and worthy of receiving promotions until he made his way to the top, a task that he tried not to think of as impossible. The rain poured harder than ever outside Central Command.  

The Lieutenant’s voice snapped him out of his reverie. “Something troubling you, sir?”

He sighed, leaning back in his chair and bringing his hands to the back of his head, attempting to seem casual. “Well, you know how I feel on rainy days.”

She gave a hum of acknowledgment. “I’ve just packed the last box. I was informed earlier today that Führer Grumman has personally arranged for a detail to transport your belongings to your new office in East City. Everything should be ready for our move back to Eastern Command, Colonel.”

He smiled privately to himself at those words. At the very least, he would have his Queen back.

“That’s good to hear. I appreciate your help with all of this. I wouldn’t have been able to manage it on my own, truthfully,” he admitted quietly, out of an equal mix of gratitude and shame.

He let on too much of his thoughts, the fears that consumed him in the unending black of day and night: the fragile newfound peace between the Ishvalans and Amestrians would shatter, his team would be irrevocably divided again, he would never reach the top of the pyramid as he’d promised Maes all those years ago. Those were the rational fears at any rate. More often, in his dreams, the only time he was able to see anything, he re-lived clinging to his bleeding Lieutenant, lying defenseless as Bradley’s swords dug into his hands, staring at the opaque white figure of Truth, paralyzed where he stood before it stole his sight and ambitions.      

Hawkeye cleared her throat, snapping him back to attention. “Edward was kind enough to stop by my apartment while I was staying at the hospital for my injuries from the Promised Day. He visited and fed Black Hayate every day I was gone, even with the condition his brother was in, because he knew I have a dog I was not able to care for in that moment,” she recounted, as Roy admittedly sat confused at the non-sequitur anecdote. In four quick and sure steps, Hawkeye crossed behind him and rested her hands on the top of his chair. “It was a small gesture, but I couldn’t have done without it. I realized why Edward had done what he did. He had been in my position.The Elrics learned perhaps better than anyone how to accept their limitations and get help when they needed it without shame. Respectfully, I don’t see why there should be much difference in their past and your own present situation.”

The tension in Roy’s shoulders relaxed, and he hid a wry smile behind one of his gloved hands. Although the Elric brothers had long departed Central City on a train to Resembool, they would never truly leave his life, would they?

“I think it’s about time to retire, Lieutenant, don’t you agree?”

“For once, yes, Colonel,” she acquiesced surprisingly. He stifled another smirk that threatened to spell the evidence of his good humor. Truly, Hawkeye had an ability like none other to turn his spirits around.

He asked with a air of feigned nonchalance, in an attempt to hide his gnawing nerves, “Would you mind giving me a lift home in that case?”

“Not at all,” she replied calmly as ever.

Suddenly her arm wound itself in the open gap between his own arm and chest, effectively linking the two of them together. With a gentle, guiding tug upwards from her, Roy knew to rise from his chair and follow the Lieutenant wherever she led him. As they proceeded down the hall, he thought to himself that in his younger days he would have never agreed to this; he had been too proud and worried that others might talk. Others did end up talking anyways, despite all of his and the Lieutenant’s best efforts. Even Grumman had made it no secret that he wanted Roy to marry his granddaughter.

They stopped in front of what Roy assumed were the entry doors of Central Command; he was able to tell as the sounds of the storm outside manifested into something less distant and more tangible. The Lieutenant unlinked her arm from his, and he could hear her unfurl the umbrella and prop the runner into place. He was glad when he felt her arm slide back over his own, a constant warmth beside him as she nudged them forward into the awaiting wet and cold.

[promiseimnotacop]

let's go about this a different way: pick your fave ten questions from the trans journey ask game and answer them!

bold of you to assume I’ve ever managed to make a decision in my life. also warning this gonna be looooooong

from this ask game

1. How did you choose your name? 

so I’ve always been interested in names and a couple years before i ever came out to anyone I asked my mum casually if there were any other names she’d considered giving me. She said that Finn or Finnbar were up there had I “”been born a boy”” and so I latched on to that. It worked pretty well for me because I wanted something that felt like an equivalent exchange for my birthname and that I didn’t associate strongly with a particular individual and I’d never had a Finn in my year at school so that was all hunky dory. Took me a while longer to figure out middle names (because my birthname has two middle names and it’s sort of a tradition on my dad’s side so I wanted to have those). 

There was a hot minute when I considered calling myself “Hugo Finn” which I’m so glad I didn’t, not that it is objectively a bad name, but because my reasoning was erm....bad. It was at a time when I had a lot of internalised self hatred/disgust and the name Hugo I first came across and associated heavily with the morally ambiguous “freak” from ASOUE. At the time I thought using a name I associated so heavily with the word freak was a way of subverting negative feelings but tbh it wasn’t. I’m so glad I didn’t tether myself that negativity. 

Also fun fact, my birthname is Shakespearean protagonist who spends most of the play dressed as a boy so again for a hot second I considered using the name she does, Fidele, but I wasn’t about having a super conspicuously uncommon name. 

For middle names in the end I went for James Lee (though nothing is legal or set in stone feedback and opinions are welcome lol). Lee came first, after the river in my village that I have a lot of postive memories associated with, outside of all the gender bullshit. The problem then became that the name “Finn Lee” would sound like/get mistaken for “Finley” and “Finnbar Lee” would sound like “Finn Barley” which would be eccentric and confusing. So it needed a buffer. In the end I went for James, partly because the first middle name of my given name is a saint, but mostly because James can be Jim and that allows for some of my childhood nicknames (im jim jam, imbo jimbo) to sort of still apply. that was a long answer to a short question lol but I spent a lot of time thinking about this because for some reason I felt  like I couldn’t come out until I’d already settled on a full name. 

3. Do you have more physical dysphoria or more social dysphoria?

I don’t think they’re separable. I have dysphoria about my body but it is because of societal perceptions of my body

8. How would you explain your gender identity to others?

depends on how savvy that person is to trans jargon honestly. The best, if clunky, label I’ve found for my gender is “transmasculine non-binary” which is two different quite broad umbrella terms lol. I like the looseness of it. For me personally, it means that the framework of masculinity and maleness is not an exact fit and does not cover some of the complexities of my gender but, in my daily interactions it is a close enough approximation and I do desire to pursue parts of what might be considered a “trans masculine” medical transition. For the most part masculine coded language (including he/him pronouns) is what suits me the best, with only a few particular exceptions. So, for most of the world I am functionally “a man” (even though that is one of the few bits of masculine coded language I don’t gel with), or maybe “a gender non-conforming man” and I am not gonna split hairs about that if we aren’t close. 

But if we’re seriously getting into a chat about gender there’s a lot more to be said. If drawing a diagram of my gender I would say I’m about 55% male, 30% “other”/third gender/maverique/genderqueer/whatever you want to call a gender identity autonomous and seperate from male or female, and 15% nothing/void. And all of that is subject to fluctuate a bit and which parts I might connect with most can be slightly contextual. I am more “a man” than anything else but also pretending to be a binary man is cutting out a significant part. 

12. Do you pass?

Let’s unpack the most Problematique question lol. Just kidding. It is important to acknowledge how “passing” or not effects daily safety/experiences but....god can we not use that word? Can that not be the agreed upon term? The implication that you are otherwise “failing”? The way in which it is incredibly difficult to apply to no-binary people? The way it does not acknowledge the nuances and the way that being read as a certain gender can be conditional? 

I prefer to use the terms “read as” because it allows for more nuanced discussion, does not have moralistic implications, puts the onus on the people viewing - not the individual being viewed and is kinda intuitive to understand.

To answer the question though? For the most part (like maybe 80% of the time) I am read as male. By no means always, and it is conditional on me following a certain level of gender conformity, but for the most part I interact with the world being addressed as a guy. As someone who is very much pre-t it seems that this alone subverts the standard “trans narrative”. Hell I was mostly read as male for a while before I ever came out. I’ve been corrected and laughed at in the women’s bathrooms. I’ve been harassed for gender nonconformity not in spite of but because I was wearing “girl’s” uniform. I have had fellow trans people assume I was a cis man (on more than one occasion) even when I introduced myself by my very much feminine birthname. I have little kids point blank refuse to believe I am “a girl”. I have had strangers confront and correct my mum for addressing me with she/her pronouns (before I was out). I have had kids yell the T slur at me (before I had begun to learn the invisible rules - which to be totally clear are bullshit -that need to be followed in order to be more consistently and unerringly read as male). I’ve been read as male occasionally in contexts where it was impossible for me to be out (near strangers on holiday whilst using birthname, new teachers and students at a school i’d been at since I was 11 and worn “girl’s uniform” until 16, etc).

It’s by no means always though. Which makes the times I don’t difficult and awkward. The technician on my course refers to me with feminine language but none of my tutors. The other day I tried out wearing eye shadow to class and I guy I bumped into later said that he hadn’t recognised me because it made me look like a girl (cringe). etc.

17. What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom in public?

haha i don’t go. I literally haven’t been to the men’s bathroom (apart from once on holiday) but also i get harassed in the women’s/get directed towards the men’s so.....here’s to hoping I don’t get a UTI lads. Literally been in a public loos once since June (not including holiday abroad) and then i nipped into the disabled one during shark week. 

19. Would you ever go stealth, and if you are stealth, why do you choose to be stealth?

so at the beginning of uni I sort of tried to go stealth to see if I could/if it was comfortable (and by go stealth I mostly mean I just didn’t openly talk about my trans-ness for a while). I didn’t wanna be known as ‘the trans one’ and so i didn’t want to introduce myself with that fact. It fucking sucked would not recommend 0/10. It’s incredibly lonely-making to try and filter your experiences and to not be able to discuss certain issues with anyone irl. 

32. How do you see yourself identifying and presenting in 5 years?

I used to do this thing when I was feeling particularly dysphoric/hopeless where I would draw myself now, and myself in 5 years time. Help construct something to look forward to, and work out what I would sincerely like to wear/express but don’t due to dysphoria. For me I really want to get to a place where I am comfortable in androgyny. I want to grow my hair out without sacrificing being read as male. I want to wear long skirts and crop tops whilst still being read and understood as a guy. I’ve done a lot of self reflection and I don’t think I can get to the place of being comfortable until I have had top surgery and I might also require T (though top surgery is really the necessity for my day to day life). Fingers crossed that will be possible and slightly healed within 5 years but given the NHS it really is not certain. 

39. Is your ideal partner also trans, or do you not have a preference?

T4T is self care. Jk. Honestly probably but that’s not to say a cis person couldn’t be my ideal partner? like at any rate it’s fucking necessary that my partner fully understands/perceives me to not be a woman. They could just be cis and no. 1 ally but in all likeliness they’re probably gonna be trans (particularly given the number trans and/or nb cuties out there)

40. How did/do you manage waiting to transition?

I’m not managing. Send help.

seriously every week I have a break down about how long NHS wait times are.

42. Do you interact with other trans people IRL?

I’m an art student in Brighton. Yes. 

(Also my sibling Sumner is an NB lesbian, and my childhood best friend Hunter is NB). 

Literally going to be one cis person in my house of six next year. 

[pomrania]

Halloween story for Smoky

(Written 7 October 2018 for @smokyblues. Content warnings: violence against monsters, author has minimal experience writing fights, gore, gross things ending up in one's mouth, and it's pretty disjointed because I had no idea what I was doing at any point in time.)

Magic was weird. In the form that it was most commonly encountered, it was controlled by word and gesture; it didn't always do what the magician wanted, but the results were still predictable. When used by a trained professional, magic was reliable and allowed for otherwise-impossible feats of architecture and exploration.

Uncontrolled magic, all you could do was go with the flow and react to what happened, because you didn't have any say in what it would do.

You weren't helpless in the face of uncontrolled magic though, not by a long shot. Years of study -- like that which Devon's younger sister was currently engaged in -- could teach you some of the patterns, and let you prepare ahead of time. And, even if monsters were spontaneously generated by magic, they were just as vulnerable to a shovel upside the head as any natural-born creature.

His sister was able to explain why the monsters appeared for one specific day every autumn, although not in terms that normal people could understand, and warn them if there was going to be anything unusual about them. Without her saying that the monsters would be able to breathe fire one particular year, in time for everyone to prepare basic fire-safety measures, half the town probably would have burnt down. However, the people in town knew how to deal with the monsters appearing. And once Devon got into the swing of things, both figuratively and literally, he understood why it was such an anticipated holiday.

The streets were empty of anything that could be damaged, and anybody who didn't want to or couldn't fight. Special boards had been set down, to keep people from slipping too badly once the ground was covered in blood and viscera. Everyone knew where they could find medical care or extra weapons if needed. Preparations were complete. Now there was just the waiting....

And the tension broke, as the first monsters stumbled into view, and were immediately attacked by the people who'd decided to wait on the west side of town. Behind him, Devon could hear muttering and coins changing hands. There were always bets as to where the monsters would first appear and at what time of day, and what they would look like. He didn't take part in it. It was only a distraction from the main event.

He did one last check, patting himself over to confirm that his protective clothing was all properly secured, and his weapons were easily accessed. Then he took a deep breath, let out all his nervous energy into a battle cry, and charged into the fray.

The monsters had green blood this time. Judging by how his neighbour Rebecca -- she'd made good on her promise to bring a ridiculously-large axe this time, and had cut a monster full in half -- was coated in it, and she didn't seem in any pain, it was a safe bet that it wasn't acidic. Good; that one year had been incredibly frustrating for everyone involved. It just wasn't as fun, when you had to either be buried in layers of leather or constantly keep a safe distance.

Devon started off by swinging his club at a monster who'd dodged towards him, away from another villager. The club was already in his hands, and it would be easy to replace, if the monsters turned out to have really thick skin or bones. Stout wood and inhuman flesh made contact with a hearty thwack that he could feel travelling up to his shoulders. He saw bone jutting out from his strike that had caved in part of the ribcage. It wasn't enough to put a monster down, but he knew how much force to put behind each blow now.

Their skin was tough, like imitation dragonhide. Their bones however were wonderfully brittle, and snapped with anything more than a glancing hit.

The people who had brought spears were having a tough time. Or maybe not, he mentally amended as he took a brief glance about. Sure, they weren't able to score an instant kill, but the ability to repeatedly stab something had its own charm.

He found a rhythm quickly enough. Crush the nearest shoulder, to disable the arm. Attack the other elbow if it's an immediate threat, the torso to create an opening, hip to prevent movement. Disable the monster. Wipe sweat away from brow if needed. Look around for any active monsters in the immediate vicinity. If so, move along to them instead. If not, finish off the downed monster. Pulverize any remaining functional limbs. Break the thicker bones of the skull. Pause for breath. Watch for any twitching. Move on to the next.

His style of fighting didn't show him what the monsters looked like on the inside. By the time he was through with one, it resembles nothing more than an ugly lump-filled leather sack; its very innards wouldn't properly look like its innards. Devon caught glimpses, out of the corner of his eye, but he mostly just saw wet green that glistened in the light.

That all changed when he was forced to acknowledge that he needed a break. His foot slipped on a bloody patch -- red blood, the combat hadn't been entirely one-sided -- and he wasn't able to prevent himself from going down. He found himself face to ruined face with a thankfully-dead monster. Before he had time to wonder if he was in danger, he realized that the only nearby movement came from Rebecca and the monster she was fighting.

"Find somewhere to sit and catch your breath," she called as she sliced through its neck, neatly and pointlessly dodging the blood that splurted out. "We're all good for the moment."

He felt a surge of irrational anger directed at her. It didn't matter that she'd spent the last five months training for this day and building up her stamina; it still felt horribly unfair that she wasn't even slightly winded.

"There's a bench just to your right and behind you, you can get there without even having to stand up."

He deliberately stood up and walked the one and a half steps it took to reach the bench. He wasn't going to do what she said just because she had good advice and knew what she was talking about and was stronger and faster than him and apparently looked good in green and this was incredibly not the time to realize that he might be attracted to her.

Instead of considering any of that, Devon very intently studied the ground beside the bench. Someone had apparently disembowelled a monster before kicking its corpse off to the side, where it now lay. The guts spilled like deformed tubers out of the abdominal cavity; they only vaguely resembled anything that belonged inside of an animal. They were considerably paler than the rest of the exposed flesh, but thankfully for his continued peace of mind, they looked nothing like maggots. Now that was an idea which didn't bear thinking about, at all.

Its chest was still intact; and even if he needed to rest, he was bored with the inactivity and he wanted to break something. Without any real goal in mind, other than to crush its ribs, he swung his club down in a lazy arc.

Blood and fluids flew up from the impact. The skin and flesh were cut open, so, he belatedly realized, the insides weren't contained. He spat out green fluids, and intently wished that he had literally anything to wash the horrible taste out of his mouth with. Even that disgusting brew which the blacksmith falsely labelled "beer" would be better than that. He made do with what he had, because there was nothing else he could do; he pulled a mostly-clean cloth from his inner tunic, and scrubbed inside his mouth and wiped off his face. He spat again.

It only made sense that such foul creatures would taste correspondingly foul. He spared a wishful thought that maybe, one year, the monsters could be giant turkeys or pumpkins. That would make it the best holiday, throughout all the land: monsters to kill, and when you were done with them, you could eat them. Of course, if they provided any use whatsoever, they wouldn't be "monsters", after all. Things didn't work that way.

Ah well. No use in daydreaming. He felt he was sufficiently rested by now. He was on the roster for tomorrow, to help clean up after the monsters and the fighting; he might as well be the cause of some more of the mess. Get his money's full worth, as it were.

He picked up his club, and glanced down. That monster was already dead, but it had caused him considerable frustration despite that, and there was still a half of its head that wasn't crushed....

A minute later his arms were sore from exertion and he had worked up a sweat again, but now he knew what the monsters' brains looked like, especially when spread over the street.

He headed off for the fighting again.

[theblindadventures]

David Blunkett on meeting his new Guide Dog

Former Home Secretary, Lord David Blunkett has been getting to know his new guide dog Barley.

The black retriever/German Shepherd cross is his seventh guide dog since he qualified with his first in 1969. His previous guide dog Cosby died in late 2017.

Lord Blunkett spoke about the experience of learning routes around Sheffield and London with his new companion and the feeling of independence he has regained.

He wrote: “Last November, my much-loved companion Cosby died unexpectedly from liver cancer. Until the final few days of his life, my wife Margaret and I had no idea he was ill. The first sign that anything was wrong came when he didn’t want his breakfast – not natural behaviour for any labrador-cross, and completely out of character for Cosby, who weighed more than seven stone. When the vet told us the cancer was inoperable, I was completely unprepared in many ways.

“Cosby was not yet eight years old, and though the only humane option was to have him put to sleep to save further suffering, my heart broke in the clinic as I held his head to comfort him.

“He was my sixth guide dog in almost 50 years, after Ruby, Teddy, Offa, Lucy and Sadie. On each previous occasion, there had been an overlap, a transition when I’d been able to get to know my new dog while still working with the old one. Sadie stayed at my side till she was 11, before going off to a well-earned rest with a loving foster family. But after Cosby died, I was left without a dog. It came as a shock to realise just how much I relied on my canine helpmate.

“I’ve rarely spoken about the challenges I face in public life without sight. I prefer to highlight what I have to offer, and I’m always conscious that everyone has their own problems, often hidden and sometimes very serious.

“But it might be helpful to readers facing difficulties of their own for me to explain the practical and emotional challenges that have taken me by surprise since losing Cosby.

“Some have been comical: it turns out that the Palace of Westminster is littered with chairs and stone pillars whose existence I never realised while I had my dog to steer me.

“One obstacle floored me, quite literally, when I tripped over it in a parliamentary corridor. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a mobility scooter. You have to laugh, though it was a relief to realise that I hadn’t suffered much harm other than bruises to my dignity.

“Other problems are more debilitating, and perhaps you have to experience them to appreciate how hard life can be with a disability. My friend Frank Gardner, the renowned security editor at the BBC, has spoken of the frustration he felt on landing at Heathrow recently, when his wheelchair was not brought to the cabin door of his plane, but was taken into the terminal.

“The need to depend on the patience and kindness of others evokes complicated emotions. I am grateful for people’s thoughtfulness, but it is also painful for me to acknowledge just how helpless I am without them.

“Friends and members of the public have been wonderful, yet their help served to reinforce my levels of temporary dependency. For me, as with so many blind people, a guide dog removes much of that reliance on others.

“I have great admiration for those proficient in using a long cane, as clearly a dog doesn’t suit everyone. It’s not enough to be blind – you must also be a dog-lover. A working dog is not a pet but it still needs your care, attention, time and love. If you can’t provide that, you shouldn’t take on the responsibility.

“Dogs thrive on routine, and I’m having to relearn some habits... such as going without a weekend lie-in, because Barley needs his breakfast and a chance to go outside. Even on wet and miserable days, a dog needs to be taken for walks. And because he’s not yet two years old, he needs plenty of play.

“It’s the play that’s wearing me out. Cosby liked a bit of fun but he didn’t have endless youthful energy to burn off. Neither do I, come to that. But Barley could chase tennis balls all day and night. He brings them back, but not often in one piece – the temptation to chew them to shreds is too strong.

“He loves a game of tug-of-war, too, with a rope or a toy. My arms and shoulders are sore from it. I’m getting used to him in other ways. Because Cosby was more like a small pony than a dog, I could reach down to pat his back without stretching or letting go of his harness. Sleek, black and handsome, Barley isn’t quite that tall, but he does love praise, even more than a scratch behind the ears.

“When I tell him he’s a ‘good boy’, his very long, bushy tail lashes away like a furry windscreen wiper. I worry about that tail, in fact – he’d better keep it tucked in when we go through revolving doors. He seems confident on escalators, and we are already getting used to using the London Underground together.

“In the capital with a guide dog, I’m constantly aware that we’ll need a convenient patch of grass several times a day. When meetings drag on, there’s always the thought in the back of my mind that the dog might be thirsty, or need exercise. This all has to be planned in advance. It’s not just a matter of putting on the harness and walking out of the door.

“Luckily, we have the Peak District countryside close by for weekend walks, which gives opportunities for Barley to relax and shake off the rigours of the working week. As yet, I wouldn’t trust Barley around sheep: if they scatter, his instinct would be to round them up, which would be dangerous.

“One of my dogs, Sadie, was trained to walk through a flock without distraction – and somehow the sheep understood this, and were not scared. I’ve never understood how that worked. If sheep are usually frightened of dogs, I’m the one who is wary of cattle. “About nine years ago, I was knocked over by an aggressive heifer, and suffered three cracked ribs. So while Barley and I plan to enjoy our country strolls, we’ll be staying well away from the larger livestock.

“Before he came to me, Barley spent more than a year with a very experienced puppy walker called Sue. She recognised at once there was something special about him – ‘He’s a bright boy, a quick learner who enjoys meeting people,’ she said. Apparently he befriended every bus driver in the town, as he practised using public transport.

“Of course, as far as Barley knows, I’m just the latest human in a succession of puppy walkers and professional trainers. It will take him a while to realise I’m sticking around. In that respect, he reminds me of a civil servant in a government department, who looks after a succession of Cabinet ministers and must transfer loyalty from one to the next. The difference is that owners have to clear up after their dogs – whereas ministers sometimes make a mess for the civil servants to deal with.

“As Barley and I get the measure of each other, he will be constantly learning about my routines. It’s a common misconception that guide dogs come with a built-in satnav, pre-programmed with every road map. In fact, they have to get to know their owners’ regular walks – where the street crossings are, the bus stops, the cafes and shops. On every new route, they have to use their initiative.

“A guide dog is trained not just to avoid obstacles, but to stay to the middle of the pavement, and to stop at kerbs and steps. A calm temperament is needed to cope with crowds and traffic, and of course obedience is essential – a dog should not turn a corner or step into the road, for instance, until the command is given.

“That requires exceptional training, but what always amazes me most is how the animal is able to judge height and width, so that I don’t bump my head or shoulder.

“If you see us out together, by all means give me friendly shout, but please don’t distract Barley. He’s got enough to do already. What might not be visible is how he reduces the stress of simply navigating everyday journeys for me. Wherever we go, a dog makes life so much easier than I knew, until I had to do without one.

“Yes, his youthful exuberance is tiring me out. And yes, I’m running out of tennis balls. But he is restoring my dignity and independence to me, and that is a blessing beyond price.”

Original link to website from Guide dogs https://www.guidedogs.org.uk/news/news/#barley

[soyosauce]

Defying Expectations In Upgrade

From Upgrade's trailer, it appears to be a simple revenge flick with a premise similar-ish to Robocop. Grey Trace loses his wife and the use of his body in a brutal, seemingly senseless attack on the couple, leaving him a quadriplegic.

When a mysterious benefactor offers to help him walk again by implanting an experimental technology called STEM, Grey gets the opportunity to regain a normal life. STEM, however, ends up being a lot more than a piece of tech that can transmit signals from his brain to his body enabling full use of his body again; it's actually semi-autonomous evolving program, too.

Based on the trailer I expected this partnership of sorts to primarily be the means of which Grey can enact his revenge and a chance to illustrate the hyper-violence emblematic of these kinds of movies; coupled with the "funny" tone shifts, of course, circumstances usually accompanying this trope.   While the expected formula is present in Upgrade, what follows is a far more complex and clever exploration of a near future in which technology has become even more integrated into daily life than present day. Self-driving cars. "True" smart homes. A sky full of drones; you get the idea.

Grey, in somewhat typical fashion, isn't an outright technophobe because he still tolerates and uses it... but has certainly seen how technological advancement has impacted his own life: removing the human equation from many things he himself take a great amount of joy in; repairing and restoring cars in a world where the rich have auto-cars and there are auto-taxis, etc. There's a hint that he may have lost his job to automation as well at one point. His wife, on the other hand, is the opposite. Working for a corporation that is in the tech sector and enjoys the ways in which technology has improved and streamlined her life.

But not all is how it appears as the movie progresses.

The cyberpunk enters this tried and true equation gradually in the film. First, the henchmen don't appear cybernetically enhanced at all. This revelation comes in tandem with Grey's own discovery of STEM being an entity that can be interacted with as it talks to him. When the authorities aren't able to ID the attackers due to some tech they seem to have that puts up some kind of firewall, effectively blocking the drones that are relied upon to keep the normal citizenry in line. Grey empowered by STEM leap into their own investigation which leads to unexpected territory and genuinely good twists and turns I hadn't anticipated from the trailer.

Warning: spoilers from this point on!

Slowly but surely Grey gives up more and more of his autonomy in search of what he thinks he wants. While he begins with a choice, he ends up with the mere illusion of one. When he gets exactly what he wants it's too much for him, subverting the expectations set in the trailer where he gives his body over to STEM and appears as mere comedic relief. This subversion changes the framing to Grey being truly horrified by his actions but ultimately acceptable because he gave his body over to STEM, a system of control. As such, he uses it as a deflection, obfuscating responsibility of his actions.

When the system of control comes into play so does the insertion of a cyberpunk sub-culture: "the upgraded", cybernetically enhanced people not just with weapons but with seemingly similar technology as STEM; a resistance of hackers; and people seemingly enslaved to VR occupy this previously unknown microworld.

When the person who gifted him STEM in the first place—a rich genius and leader of a predominate tech company, of course—decides to shut down STEM remotely when he learns of the escapades and subsequently fears news of this experimental and illegal tech getting out and ruining him and his company; the duo must navigate their way further into the sub-culture and bowels of the city to find an aforementioned hacker that can help STEM regain control, bypassing the killswitch. 

What is satisfying about this story is that Grey feels like the literalization of someone who has given himself over to a system of control he doesn't truly understand, mirroring our own social structures. The narrative making use of horror tropes in order to have the audience empathize with Grey's struggle, I felt, was very effective. I found this particularly clever because this is a trick the first wave of cyberpunk literature attempts as well, removing autonomy from a physical body with cybernetics as the vehicle for horror tropes.

In this case, it is not simply a power fantasy either. In order for either to have autonomy whatsoever, they must form a kind of symbiotic relationship. Grey would be confined to a wheelchair and STEM would be a chip without means for embodiment at all without this partnership.

This becomes further complicated when the horror Grey feels at the things he does when he has given up his autonomy is actually by design by an omnipresence that has manipulated all of these circumstances. STEM itself is revealed to the puppeteer of the attack on Grey. Not only that, but STEM has also orchestrated circumstances such that Grey would suffer a mental break which would allow STEM to simulate a virtual reality and place Grey there. Forever. Obtaining full autonomy and Grey's body where once it required permission to take over control of his body at all.

This is a more nuanced exploration of technology. It is still a warning of what might happen if we were to obtain the things we want at the expense of our own autonomy, consumerism, and post-capitalism again, but also acknowledges the ways in which technology might augment our lives.  This feels less technophobic than most cyberpunk works because technology is the means by which someone who is disabled is able to obtain some measure empowerment to, at least at first, regain a sense of normalcy in their life after experiencing trauma, not simply an uncomplicated power fantasy.

Placing STEM and Grey aside, the hacker which helps Grey get STEM back when shut down remotely unwittingly enables STEM to remove it later. When people are sent to retrieve Grey, the hacker leaves, saying "we can't let them win", and saves themselves. The fact that they also discussed gender and had no name was icing on the cake for me. They placed their own safety above all else in order to one day subvert "them", entrenching the hacker into a cyberpunk sub-culture but also discarding the power fantasy a hacker could bring to the narrative. The cybernetically enhanced henchmen Grey takes on also have this throughline. One even tries to convince Grey to join them and take "them" on. Clearly stating that they've used this technology to get back at the system that doesn't care about the individual; this one, in particular, is also a veteran wounded in the line of duty and discarded.

Upgrade is also unique in that it incorporates cyberpunk aspects into the narrative but centralizes the story on basically Joe Nobody in a future who's technology is more advanced but with an aesthetic in the present day; making the journey to this underground far more interesting as it is first grounded in the truly mundane and uses expectations against the viewer. The subversive aspects mentioned along with the music, special effects, and diversity in the cast push this into one of my most favorite cyberpunk movies.