#I am mentally ill and and apparently a woman. that isn’t any better. I’m literally unable to live I have no friends and I am unable to feel

[raubtierfuetterung]

I feel like I feel the way a trans person feels about their biological sex about being a human.

[firelxdykatara]

Hello! I say this in the kindest way possible, but can you please provide evidence that theowelspeaks is a terf? I'm a black zutara shipper and for years have really felt shoved by the fandom and it hasn't been my safe space. But YOUR blog and you made me feel better. I'm not in your discord but you're being accused of racism. I don't follow the owlspeaks and wanna support you but if you're being accused of racism why are you calling someone a terf?

Can you please show where they are a terf? I'm only asking this because I really REALLY love you and I support you. And if they are a terf, you need to provide evidence. It is heavily suspicious when a person of color calls out a white woman on racism and you don't address the accusations but just call them a terf. I want to support you I really do because you made me feel comfortable in the fandom, but I need to see concrete evidence that they're a terf. Never mind, I saw the whole situation and honestly I'm disgusted I ever follow or looked up to you. You're literally no different from other racist white shippers. I think there went my love for zutara.

I'm going to take this at face value--not that, on any real level, I actually believe you were a follower of mine or did anything close to due diligence, because if you were or had then you would know that I never actually called that blogger a terf--and answer as respectfully as I can. Mostly because I want anyone who has genuine issues with anything I've said or done to know that despite whatever's going around about me right now, I am willing to listen to criticism if it comes from a place of good faith.

(You can think whatever you want about my insistence on 'good faith', but the fact is that I have weathered being slammed with accusations of pedophilia and other horrible things over differences in headcanon of shit like character ages or writing a fic set years post-canon because I felt like it, right down to the insistence that I'm a horrible racist because of my url, so no. I'm not going to listen to someone slinging slurs and buzzwords in my inbox just because they claim to be a poc. And before that sets anyone off, the slurs I'm talking about are aimed at my queerness. I do not consider being called racist or a white bitch or whatever slurs, because they aren't.)

First of all, once again, I never called that blogger a terf. You can easily read my post about them for yourself and see that--ctrl+F for the term 'terf', and you will not find it. Why? Because I called them out on peddling radfem rhetoric, (which they are) not for being a terf. All terfs are radfems--it's in the name--but not all radfems are terfs, although all radfem rhetoric is exceptionally harmful to queer people in general, and queer poc more than most, as is the nature of intersectionality.

Anti-kink rhetoric, and the insistence that some kink is inherently harmful and that no one could legitimately have these kinks or fetishes without being mentally ill or traumatized, is radfem rhetoric. That's where it comes from, that's where it leads to, and I'll be honest here, 'radfem' is not an identity label. It's an ideology. You do not get to parrot core tenets of that ideology and then claim to not be a radfem. That simply isn't how this works.

Furthermore, I have no idea who the person behind theowlspeaks blog is. I will take them at their word that they are not white, but that doesn't exactly narrow things down--and considering the fact that they chose to put me on blast for their small but dedicated ring of followers rather than actually coming to me personally first about any of this (their blog is very obviously a burner, and it wouldn't have been that difficult to approach me since I've only ever turned anon off once, for one night to give myself some breathing room, and otherwise my asks and DMs have always been open), I have no reason to actually care about what they're saying. But I point out the lack of knowledge of their identity because a) they didn't even reveal themselves as not white until.... yesterday? or something, when they were directly asked about it, and b) trying to frame this as 'white woman accused of racism calls person of color a terf' is... disingenuous at best given the fact that I have been calling them a radfem (which they are) since well before they posted that screenshot and my name wound up on their blog, so you got the order of events just a little backwards.

I blocked them initially because of the radfem rhetoric they were peddling about kink and fetishes, and I have the right to establish that boundary. This blog is for me, it is my space, and I do not have to expose myself to views I find gross or harmful just because they dress it up in faux-woke terminology and try to pretend they actually care.

If they cared about real people more than the fictional characters they are so adamantly 'protecting', then they wouldn't have brushed off the actual racism (from one of their followers--they're more than happy to blast me without any evidence, but that's hardly out of the ordinary for people like that) that was brought to their attention by refocusing the discussion on the fake people who literally can't be hurt by any of this because they don't exist. They wouldn't be ignoring the two woc who chose to contact them and tell them why they made the choices they did regarding both the discord and the smut week event, while being perfectly happy to platform anons who may or may not be who or what they say they are.

I, for one, am not going to apologize for caring more about real people than fictional characters. I'm not going to apologize for thinking it's absolutely ludicrous to pretend that fiction is somehow harmful just by existing, especially when it's appropriately tagged so that anyone who finds the content harmful can avoid it. I'm not going to back down from these opinions just because a handful of people have apparently decided I'm a horrible person because of it. And I'm certainly not going to apologize for thinking it's despicable that someone who was not involved in the conversation chose to leak out of context screenshots rather than privately contacting any of the people involved or even going to any of the mods, before going right to an anonymous blog. You may not care about me or my mental health, but I had panic attacks because of that leak--not because I said anything untoward in that screenshot, not because I've ever said anything in that discord that I wouldn't happily stand behind on my blog, but because I no longer felt safe. And I am not going to bare my trauma to a complete stranger to justify that lmfao.

So, like, think what you want to. I'm pretty sure that blogger is getting high off of the drama they are creating, none of which would actually have happened or been any real issue if more people were able to think, gee, maybe this work that is tagged with things I don't want to read about is not for me! Maybe I shouldn't read this piece, since it would probably upset me, and there's plenty others around for me to consume! I do not trust that blogger's intentions. I do not trust that they actually give a shit about any real people, or they wouldn't have posted an out of context screenshot of... literally nothing tbh, when they had no right to and are now protecting the identity of the person who leaked them instead of giving a shit about any of the real people in that space who no longer feel safe because we aren't sure who we can't trust.

But you've already made up your mind, and I can't change that. I genuinely hope you have a nice life, and find fandom spaces more suited to your tastes.

[simptasia]

neurodivergence in abc’s lost

i’m gonna be listing off and talking about the canon neurodivergent characters in lost. i won’t be adding characters that i personally headcanon as neurodivergent in some way, what i’m writing here is elaboration upon what has been given to me by the show. please note that none of these people’s conditions or disorders were named in the show, so such diagnoses being named here are me taking that extra step based upon their symptoms

first of all i wanna point out that based on what i’ve seen the show, that the island’s healing powers applies to conditions inflicted upon the mind, not ones inherent to the mind. thats why daniel’s brain damage heals, but people like hurley and locke will always continue to have depression

hugo “hurley” reyes

schizophrenia and depression

our most prominently featured mentally ill character. it might seem bold to label him with schizophrenia when it’s never said that that’s what he has. but during his time on lost, he displays many of the symptoms: paranoia, pathological self loathing, delusions and hallucinations. now, it’s a fictionalized depiction of schizophrenia and that’s probably not even what the writers had in mind but it’s none the less a really, really good and respectful portrayal of it

it would take too long to list off all the times when hurley displays paranoia (heck, it’s easy not to notice how much its a part of his character) and self loathing. delusions? the situations regarding the numbers and his bad luck (canon never ever Proves what hurley believes to be true regarding that stuff)

they did an episode dedicated to hurley having hallucinations. a man named dave who drives him to self destructive behaviour, self hatred and attempted suicide. fun fact: when people with schizophrenia in real life have hallucinations, they tend towards just auditory. hurley gets visual as well as per Rule Of Drama. this is not a bad thing, just a narrative tool

(steering slightly into headcanon for a bit here but i personally ignore the dharma made Hurley Bird they revealed in the epilogue and just take hurley hearing that bird say his name as an auditory hallucination. for two reasons: one, hurley hearing/seeing things that don’t exist is already consistent with his mental state. and two, that bird literally, genuinely did not fucking say hurley)

extra notes

to be clear, in case there's confusion, hurley really does have magical powers. he can talk to dead people. that isn’t a delusion or hallucination. you can understand how confusing and distressing this must be for hurley

he's had a compulsive eating disorder since he was ten due to the pain of his father abandoning him. his struggle with this is well documented

at several points during the show he’s shown to have trouble spelling. he especially confuses his “y(s)” and “ies”. it’s not clear if this is due to poor education or a learning issue. or both, really. it’s safe to assume with him being poor, mexican and mentally ill, that school wasn’t easy for hurley

hurley has unjustifiably lived at mental health institutions on at least two occasions (the first time was against his will, second was volunteer)

john locke

depression

locke suffers from severe self esteem issues, and i know most lost characters do, but i mean to the point of irrational and destructive behaviour. he has an obsession with being deemed special in order to justify his existence. he also suffers jarring mood swings. (he can switch from calm and jovial to angry and defensive at the drop of a hat). when he was wheelchair bound, this threw him into a depression. when he failed to convince anybody to come back to the island, he attempted suicide. he would have gone thru with it too. he will go to extremes to make sure things stay the way he wants them to (killing an innocent woman so they can stay on the island, tying up and drugging boone so he won’t tell anybody about the hatch), and will fall into despair if he fails

also note that the things im saying about locke are not a comment on people with depression. i don’t think all depressed people kill and drug people. those were statements on locke’s character that i believe are a part of his mental state. my point is: he’s emotionally unstable and he tried to kill himself. and i think his extreme need for validation (from people and the universe in general) is especially concerning

to me, this all says to me that locke has clinical depression

locke isn’t as easy as the other people on this list to classify as Canon Neurodivergent but at least to me, i think it’s very obvious. like i feel bad being so vague but like, basically, watch any locke episode

daniel faraday

acquired brain damage, severe memory degradation as well as other neurodivergent behaviours (i’ll go into it)

he’s played by jeremy davies. enough said

okay, jokes aside. at some point in the past daniel and his assistant theresa were involved in some vaguely referred to time based experiments. while she was catatonicized, the accident left daniel severely brain damaged (also daniel spent years doing radioactive experiments without head protection, which would not have helped and indeed that is foreshadowing of this whole debacle)

apparently this left him in a state where he can no longer take care of himself, having been assigned a carer. his most outstanding symptom is that his ability to process short AND long term memory has been impaired

short term: he’s shown to have issues retaining memories from day to day. he wasn’t sure if he had met charles widmore already (he hadn’t). charles lays some exposition on him and when daniel asks why he’s telling him this, charles says, with sureness, that “because by tomorrow you won’t remember this”. counting on that to be an absolute fact seems silly to me but that does seem to the case. again, Rule Of Drama is in play here

long term: he can no longer access memories he formed many years ago, famously the memories he formed with desmond in 1996. all in all, this condition is highly plot convenient. can’t argue with results, really

no, i can keep going, i got more, this is daniel fucking faraday we’re talking about: his ability to remember 3 playing cards has been impaired (note that this is a skill most 4 year olds master), he forgot the secret code the science team were all taught and when he introduces himself to jack there is a long pause, in hindsight implying that daniel forgot his own name

like real life memory conditions, theres varying level to how much he does and doesn’t remember. he’s thankfully not in a 50 first dates situation and doesn’t forget everything day to day. clearly he remembers people if they’re around enough, like during his time on the boat. charlotte, miles, frank, naomi...

upon landing on the island, his memory slowly gets better (considering his condition beforehand, the fact that nobody comments on this is staggering)

when dan is fully healed? i could not say, i could theorize, but such things are nebulous. but still, the times we see dan without his brain damage, he still behaves like a neurodivergent person. just not like he was when he was brain damaged. he stims near constantly, has a tendency to repeat names and words (echolalia) and it’s shown that dan compulsively counts in his head. he counted up to 864 beats, if i remember correctly, which is about 10 minutes of counting in his head. by no stretch of the imagination is that neurotypical behaviour

(im not trying to sound defensive. and i don’t think anybody, anywhere, is arguing that daniel faraday is a neurotypical. unfathomable)

going into headcanon territory again, his ND traits, when not brain damaged, say to me that he’s autistic and/or has OCD and possibly anxiety. thats all theorizing on my part tho. but the fact of the matter is, damage or no, he’s neurodivergent

notes

his apparent need for tactile sensory input is legendary in the lost fandom. in layman’s terms: him pet pet. not just people but objects too. humans, overall, tend to touch things to process input better. many ND people do it more, and it seems daniel is a case of that (i am not making a solid statement on jeremy davies’ neuro state. that’s his business)

he shows an inability to properly process grief

he also shows shocking indifference to his own safety, resulting in reckless behaviour. how much of this is a result of his mental state or his upbringing is up for debate. i think it’s a combo of both

without his brain damage, he appears to have an eidetic memory

danielle rousseau

trauma induced mental illness

pretty self explanatory. the loss of her expedition, husband and daughter, as well as 16 years of loneliness (on THIS island) has resulted in emotional instability for danielle. she’s prone to paranoia, trust issues, irrational behaviour

she’s just not well. she’s right most of the time but she’s not well

libby smith

indeterminate mental state 

libby was institutionalized (the same place hurley was sent to) and placed on medication (which seemed like sedatives to me, based on her expressions). in the show it’s not what clear what put her there, but having just done some research, i’ve discovered that Word Of God says that libby became mentally unstable after the death of her husband dave smith. so this is probably another case of trauma induced mental illness. she must have had a pretty extreme episode to cause her to be sent to a place like that. something to think about

but alas, it’s libby, so not much info. moving on

benjamin linus

anti social behaviour disorder (is my best guess)

oof. depictions of mental illness with characters who are immoral are depictions of mental illness nonetheless. i feel almost silly saying this but: ben is not... okay

ben displays issues (at best) with empathy, compassion and morality. how much he cares about other people is highly debatable but one thing that's certain is that he does genuinely love his daughter. everybody else is ????

but the loving alex thing rules out him being a sociopath or having narcissistic personality disorder. and it is genuine because when he loses it with grief, it’s not a performance, because the only audience is us...

he’s a compulsive liar, lying even when it doesn’t benefit him. lying just because. ben is highly unpredictable, which isn’t inherently a neurodivergent thing, but when a person goes from a calm discussion to strangling somebody, all roads point to Uh Oh (i don’t know the technical terms for Uh Oh). many of his outward emotions are performed (the difference between his fake smiles and few real smiles is noticeable). he’s manipulative, he treats people like objects for his benefit/plans, he’s self absorbed, he has zero issues with murder unless it’s a child. he does have some moral standards. but overall, uh, [just gestures at ben]

also ben is repeatedly offended when other people don’t trust him, which is HILARIOUS, but also shows a cognitive dissonance on his part

hmm i need more here, im gonna break out the big guns

that’s some basic info there and doesn’t that line up with ben?

the article goes on to say that people with this can put on superficial charm. that is, behave friendly and “normal” when they have to. which ben is shown to be able to do

and this

“Serious problems with interpersonal relationships are often seen in those with the disorder. Attachments and emotional bonds are weak, and interpersonal relationships often revolve around the manipulation, exploitation, and abuse of others.”

reminds me of his situation with juliet. and locke. and his “friendships” in general

i snipped the wikipedia article for this because unlike the rest i felt,,, underequipped to talk about this sort of thing

ben being mentally unwell is clear enough in canon and i think this disorder is what lines up best with it. please note that ben is capable of change and growth (like people in real life who have such issues) and like the show i’m not gonna paint him 100% evil or irredeemable. i’m just saying what’s true

notes

ben says at one point that he doesn’t dream anymore. it’s highly probably that this is a lie, but if it isn’t, well that's not good. it’d mean his brain isn’t entering into REM sleep properly, which can lead to emotional problems

ben doesn’t blink as much as most people do, something michael emerson did on purpose. this can apply to some neurodivergent people

it’s shown that he was quite nonverbal as a kid. in the flashbacks in “man behind the curtain” little ben barely speaks

honourable mentions

pretty much all the survivors suffer from PTSD due the trauma of the crash

a great deal of the characters suffer from PTSD from trauma in general due to their awful lifes. like, abusive parents, war, loss of loved ones, etc

and i must note that ben, daniel and locke suffering from parental abuse, ranging from emotional to physical, is something to factor into their cases

claire, similar to danielle, also suffered trauma induced mental illness due to the loss of her baby and feeling like she was abandoned

sayid is depicted as dead inside during season 6 due to The Sickness, so thats like a magical form of depression. and one could argue that he already had regular depression beforehand

boone joked about shannon having bulimia. (whether or not it’s true, boone is an asshole) if it’s true, shannon has an eating disorder, which is considered a form of mental illness. espech one so self image based

self harm

self harm is not an inherent part of mental illness but such concepts are often linked so i felt i should mention some of these, it’ll be quick

hurley’s aforementioned eating disorder

charlie takes heroin as a form of self harm (that isn’t a theory on my part, it’s clear as day that charlie started taking it because his sense of self worth was so low that the drugs felt like the only option)

locke, hurley, (both as mentioned above), jack, desmond, michael and richard have all attempted/nearly commited suicide

so what can we conclude from this? well that's up to you, really. that i love lost a fuck ton? that the actors and writing in lost is amazing? that all the neurodivergent based depth got saved for the boys? yeah

but i wanna conclude with this: a part of what makes lost really special to me is that these people i’ve talked out here? they’ve suffered, and oh boy it was tasty suffering, but all of them, yes even libby, were more than suffering

these people have nuance. one way or another, these people (to varying degrees) were happy at times. silly. funny. angry. opinionated. they loved. they were loved. they lived and breathed as human beings. that means a lot to me

lost is a story of broken people given a second chance. take that as you will

thank you for your time

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

6. Passion Project

“What the hell am I reading?” The woman squealed in his ear, “And why is it ALWAYS something bizarre with you?”

“Did my favorite perennial flower get my emails?”

“Simon… you do know that I have both college AND a job to do, right? That not all of us achieve our dreams the first try?”

“I pay you good money for the work that I ask you to do!” Simon complained. “Unlike your day job that both pays you less than your male counterparts and less than you deserve in general.”

“Yeah, well… I live in the real world. Not like there’s some magical train to take me away from society and all it's problems. But, seriously… researching is one thing, but this feels oddly like stalking. First of all… I had to do some very illegal things to get this information - which, yes, I went ahead and did it, because by the time I got to that point I was feeling a little bit insulted by the thought of failing. Secondly… who IS this woman, Simon? How do you even know about her and what are you going to do with this information?”

“I met her in my everyday life and was interested in her, but found a simple background check difficult. I was people watching for a new story, but it’s become more like a passion project, now. But, I feel like you’ve got a lot to tell me about her!” He was teeming with excitement.

“I… found out things, things that I never would have wanted to ever know about anybody and am now honestly considering charging you for the therapy it’s gonna take me to get over this information… Where in your everyday life did you meet this person?”

“Why… what’s… what’s wrong with her?” Simon asked.

“A LOT. But… I don’t know… I guess she’s doing better, if you’re just seeing her out and about, but… I just…” Tulip yelped.

“Tools???” Simon called out.

Deep breathing. Then, she was back. “Sorry. Mikayla’s out, so I’m by myself and EVERYTHING is startling me. I’m gonna send you everything I found and my charges for this information. And Simon… please don’t ever send me anything like this again, and I mean it.”

“I only wanted to find out if she changed her name and why. How difficult could the information have been?”

“Most people don’t just change their names out of boredom, Simon. Also… it isn’t right to look into somebody this way. I’m only giving it to you because I don’t deserve to be the only person who has had to look at this.”

“That bad?” He heard sniffling. “Tools…”

“No, Simon! This is messed up! Don’t ask me for another favor again if you don’t know ANYTHING about the situation!”

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, I promise.” 

She let out a deep breath. “Is your mom going to the retreat or whatever this year?”

“Yeah. She’s super excited about it. She says that she hasn’t seen yours in too long. Is she going?”

“Yeah, she was able to scrape up this year to reserve her spot.”

“Mom’s already pulling out all of her Single Mom Squad shit.”

Tulip groaned. “I’m really glad that they had a support group and stuff, but honestly. Why did it become their entire personality for so long?”

“Because it was their little escape from having smartasses like us at home.” Tulip laughed and Simon reiterated, “Really sorry about whatever you read about Grace.”

“I… Is this somebody that you think that you could care about, Simon?”

“Yeah?”

“Okay. Just… be careful. I don’t see how they’re even still standing, much less how they’re in a position to care for someone else. I don’t know if I’m more afraid that you might get hurt if you get attached or that she might, but… it just looks like it’d be super hard to build with this person. They’ve got… a lot of... history.”

“She’s tried to warn me of that and I ignored her and will most likely ignore you.”

“Well, I did my part, anyway.”

.

Her name was not Grace St. Catherine… Well, it was, because she had it legally changed four years ago. But it had been Grace Monroe when she was born… up until when she was 10.

She was kidnapped when she was 10. Apparently there was a ransom requested, and whenever it was set to happen, the kidnappers took the money and did not return the child. Nobody who knew her before saw her again for 8 years.

When she was 18, she was arrested for assault and when giving her name to arresting officers, said 148, but eventually Grace Monroe. From there, she was discovered to have been missing for 8 years and her parents were contacted.

The Monroes conducted every possible test available to check the well being of their now 18 year old daughter. She was treated for several illnesses, including STDs and a number of mental issues...

She was committed at age 18, and declared a ward of her parents, instead of convicted, and spent the next three years recovering. At age 21, she was allowed to be classified as an adult. She changed her name, and lived with her parents until 2 years ago...

When she began working at the bookstore...

Tulip had even been able to find court documents, police records, and psychiatric files. So… yeah. He owed her big time, even beyond payment for having read even a portion of this stuff. Some of it was simply things Grace had reported to her doctors. Some were things that she had not spoken of, but there was physical evidence enough to grant some ideas. 

Years of damage to her uterus… Bruises and scars on her back, knees, thighs, wrists… A symbol carved into the back of her neck… He clicked on the images given from medical reports and saw the same A that had been spray painted on targets’ doors. He now knew who these people were, and why they deserved whatever Grace and her friends were doing to them. He looked at the photos of the girl before her disappearance vs the teenager in the mugshot. That didn’t even look like HIS Grace. She was the same person. He saw familiar features - her perfect round nose and beautiful full lips, the shape of her face a little more shapely there - probably wasn’t eating as well… but… that was a stranger. Only her eyes looked the same. Passionate but filled with pain. Beautiful and wide enough to get lost in, but dark, cold, and freakishly mysterious. 

He quickly called her and she picked up, “Did I not just see you a few hours ago?” she teased.

“I was just thinking about you… hoping that you’re okay tonight. Are you okay?”

She laughed, “Are you?”

“I just… want you to know… whatever happens, I’ll always be here for you.”

She was quiet for a long time. He wondered what she was doing on the other end of the line. She was looking at a selection of masks and knee pads, but her mind was no longer on the outfit for her Date Night, but the man on the other side of this phone conversation.

“Thanks, Simon… Um… Are… you sick? Is something happening to you? This just really feels out of nowhere and quite frankly, I’m a little worried.”

“There’s nothing to worry about! I’m fine. I just… really care about you, and had to tell you that.” 

Grace could’ve sworn that she saw a chorus of red flags being twirled around before her. Dancers, circling her and performing tricks with them. She was never one for rose colored glasses. She learned a long time ago that those weren’t for her… so these were red flags. She also knew that she often saw red flags where there were white ones. Because she didn’t believe in surrender, only blood for blood. She was angry in general, and usually seeing red. Simon’s red flags were probably no more red than any other poor guy that tried to simply make her smile over the past few years. But then he said,  “Grace, I lo…”

“Simon, I really can’t do this right now. I’ve got something I’m in the middle of. So, like… Just… I’ll talk to you another time.” She hung up and snatched a mask that looked like it was crying blood and a pair of purple knee pads. “Not L words, Simon. For fuck’s sake…”

.

Simon had learned so much, then she was just gone. She wasn’t at the bookstore in days and whenever he finally asked her coworker, they said that she had a no call, no show and they hadn’t heard from her since. She didn’t respond to any of his texts. She seemingly deactivated social media (or worse, blocked him), and she wasn’t even staying at home, because he drove by several times for two days, then literally camped outside for another two. If she was inside, she hadn’t answered, and he hoped that she wasn’t just ignoring him pining through the door. He hoped that she just wasn’t there to hear him beg her to please at least tell him what he did wrong.

He went into the flower shop and the guy that he had become super familiar with as “152” online, even though his nametag said “Heath,” asked him what he could help him with. Simon ordered a bouquet and wrote out a card for Grace, apologizing for whatever he did wrong and asking her to come back, He sighed and asked Heath, “Could you make sure that Grace gets this, please?”

“Grace?” the guy repeated, eyeing Simon suspiciously. “I don’t know any Grace, Mister.”

“148, maybe?” 

Now, the guy looked downright ready to fight. “I don’t know what you mean, but you’re making me uncomfortable, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave, now.” He even tried to refund him for the flowers.

“No, no… Please, just… tell her that I’ll be waiting, if she ever feels better…” He left and Heath followed him out of the door, watched him get into his car and drive off before he went back in to call Grace, panicked about that visit.

“Who the hell is this person and how does he know where I work?” Heath asked. 

“Let me guess, a little taller than me, skinny, blond with gray eyes and something on his head trying desperately to be a ponytail? That was Simon. I must’ve mentioned the flower shop, or something.” She knew that she never had, but to tell her friend that this person had potentially stalked her and learned about him in the process just seemed like it would cause more harm than taking the blame.

“You must’ve mentioned it? Grace. Either you mentioned it, or you didn’t, and YOU would know. It isn’t like you to be careless about our personal information!”

“I know, I know, but maybe I said that it was my favorite flower shop or something. Heath. You know that if you want, I can get you a job at basically anywhere else that I own.”

“I like flowers!”

“Then, I’ll buy another flower shop you can work at, if he made you feel threatened.” 

“Are you safe? He seems a little attached. He bought a really expensive bouquet and left a card. It’s sealed but I can read it to you.”

“No, I’ll stop by. I’ve got some job hunting to do, but…”

“Why don’t you just work somewhere that you’re familiar with, or somewhere that you own?”

“I don’t know. Because, I’m suddenly hyper aware of how messed up I am again, and I wanna feel like a normal person.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but normal people don’t get to just start over when life seems to be too much. We’ve gotta just continue to live it out, and change only ourselves, and maybe eventually our circumstances. Normal people would have called out of work (if they could even afford to) and came back, whether or not they were better and pushed through being miserable.”

“Are you suggesting that I return to the bookstore and ask for my job back?”

“Yeah. If it’s normal that you’re shooting for. But… I’ve got the feeling that you’re avoiding this creep.”

“I think things are moving way too fast. That’s terrifying.”

“Good news… that’s terrifying for normal people, too. Not everything that we do and feel is because of what the Apex did to us. If your manager likes you and values you, you can probably coax them into forgiving you for vanishing, with a good sob story.”

“Gonna go with dead homie,” she said. “Meds, etc. The whole works. If that doesn’t work, guess I’ll buy the bookstore. I really don’t feel like looking for another job, anyway… And I guess I can’t avoid him forever.”

.

She was back at work the next week. She noticed Simon sitting in the coffee shop whenever she came in. She skipped going for her old routine, to clock back in and get to work. She had to take down the Read Across America stuff and make sure to have all the Easter and Earth Day stuff situated… When was Easter this year? She checked her calendar as she grabbed her legal pad to start planning displays whenever she almost ran into Simon. He’d come over when he saw her return to the floor. She was startled. Then annoyed. “Simon. Please…”

“What did I do?”

“You’re… getting a little bit too… familiar. You didn’t do anything, I just don’t know how to handle having somebody else in my space this much. I just… need some space.”

He frowned and nodded his head, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Okay. You’re the boss.” She wanted to say something… explain why she was like this… why she could only trust her friends, who were more like her immediate family than her parents… even that she desperately wanted Simon to be in her space and to wait for her to be comfortable with having him there…

But, she couldn’t find any of those words. Even if she had, what if she were wrong? What if Simon catching feelings would be the worst thing to ever happen to her, or to HIM, for that matter. She watched him go, and hoped that after she had some time to chill out a little bit, she might be able to contact him again, and get another chance. So, she watched him leave the bookstore and get into his car. He peeled off, and she didn’t know if that meant he was angry or if there was a fluke with the car. She just hoped that he didn’t just show up at her friend’s job or anything else like that. Or something worse. The last thing he wanted while sad was to get on her friends’ bad side. The last thing she wanted was for him to learn that the hard way.

Simon overthrew every piece of furniture in his home. Samantha rushed into her room and hid, terrified of the noise. He cried, shook, paced…. How could he show her that he was on her side? Why did she want space?? Was she afraid of him??? DID SHE HATE HIM???? He flopped onto the floor, holding his head and shivering with tears, trying to catch his breath. 

He needed some place else to handle dealing with her, he realized as he glanced around his demolished home. A storage unit, maybe… He collected all of his stuff pertaining to her and put it all together. He stuffed it into one of his bags and put it into his trunk. He could clean up his house whenever he stored things away safely. He needed a big storage unit. He had a feeling that he was going to be collecting more while giving her some “space.”

This was how he might cope. He turned on the light in the new storage space and set down a few boxes. He hadn’t been back into the bookstore. There was no need. He wasn’t writing right now, anyway. He had more important things to do. He’d printed out  everything Tulip had researched for him and made plans to visit places he highlighted from all of the files. He got some photos professionally printed up - some poster size, some not as big, and some he simply just had various photo sizes. He just thought they would make nice decor for his new space. Grace had deactivated, but he still had just about every photo of her saved to his phone or computer, and they had taken a few as well…

He also… was starting to take them of her whenever he watched her… He just really missed her. It was only a couple of months in her presence, but that was longer than he had been interested in another person in a while, and he had never been this interested in anyone before. Any time he ever thought that he might be going too far, he reminded himself that she had both done and been through much worse than anything that he was up to at the moment, and that became his truth up until the very last time that he ever had to tell himself anything. 

That was May. By May… he didn’t think. It was simply part of his lifestyle. Following, watching, studying, photographing, sometimes recording. But, she still hadn’t reached out to him, and he wasn’t sure if she wanted him to reach out to her. He tried to test it, by leaving her a bouquet of those red poppies that he’d seen her and her friends put on their friend’s grave. He watched, recording her reaction whenever she got home and saw them on her doorstop. She looked around, startled, kneeled to check the card. “Missing you. - S” She looked… relieved. He wasn’t sure who she thought they were from, but she grabbed them, went inside, and moments later, came out with an overnight bag and her turtle. She didn’t come home for days.

Next, he texted and said, “Hey. Sent you flowers. My mom asked about you. Hope you’re okay.” He watched her check the text before she went into the train station, but she didn’t reply. So… she still wasn’t ready, but he was letting her know that he was still waiting. By that time, nothing felt unreasonable to him. He was simply waiting for her to realize that she’d had enough space. He was curious about where she went to when she’d leave for days. The next time he scared her into not staying home alone, he’d follow. It was all that he could do at the moment.

07. Things Went Wrong

[anxietycalling]

how i spent my summer vacation

Or, where the fuck have I been these literal years? (I can’t believe it’s been years.)

I feel like I need to, at some point, talk about everything that happened between now and the point where I dropped off the face of the earth. And, like, actually talk, not that thing I do where I make a joke out of everything. So... I’m doing this up front, so if anyone actually still follows my shitshow of a life, you know what you’re getting yourself into before it’s too late.

Okay. Where to start.

Um, obviously, after the 2016 election I gtfo’d the US. Because I couldn’t legally work in the US at that point, I had pretty much no savings and no money because every dollar I did get went to supporting me and Dash because of the absolute nightmare that happened there. I’m not... mad at her anymore, not quite - I recognize that a lot of actions on both sides were the result of severe, untreated trauma and mental illness, so it’s hard to look at either of us and say that someone was the villain there. It’s hard to recognize when you’re in survival mode that your actions are self-destructive. But, anyway, because of that, I had no choice other than to move in with my parents. Which many of you are aware is not the healthiest choice for me mentally or physically.

And, again, it’s not that my parents are bad people. They’re good people who are trying their best, but there are two factors that lead to me living with them being a terrible idea. 1) My mother has a lot of unprocessed intergenerational trauma due to mental illness that she is still dealing with, and 2) Neither of my parents have ever lived in an urban center, which lends itself to a specific mindset when it comes to dealing with mental illness and LGBTQ+ issues. Which is to say, it’s hard to have a regular dating or sex life when everyone knows your business while your parents are simultaneously trying to pretend you don’t have genitals that they’re uncomfortable with. Also, I didn’t have my license at the time because I let it expire before getting my permanent one, so I was pretty much at the mercy of whoever could drive me places. (I lived in cities before that, so not driving was never much of an issue. I am highly proficient in public transit.)

So living with my parents was this precarious balancing act of trying to do everything they wanted me to do, because they were letting me live there for free, and meeting the demands of my bosses (who immediately demoted me once they found out I wasn’t planning on living there forever), and trying to have a social life outside of my family. And, like, I had just come out of the closet, so I was also trying to date without my parents finding out, because, like? It gets exhausting trying to explain why you have a right to exist and love who you want to love and I tend to get defensive when I feel like I have to justify myself. But all that secrecy really wears on you. I think in the worst of it I was probably sleeping 3-5 hours a night between the anxiety, having to walk or wait for rides everywhere, and staying up late enough after my parents went to sleep to try to meet guys on dating apps. 

Dating apps when you live in a rural area are the worst. Not only is there a limited dating pool to begin with, it sucks when someone ghosts you and then re-signs up for the same dating app using a fake name and you catch them at it. I get it to some extent; people are afraid of being outed, even if on paper we’re one of the premier retirement destination for gay couples near Toronto. (Read: affluent, white, cis gay men.) It’s gotten better in the last couple of years, but... Yeah, there just was nothing for me there. 

Obviously I had to widen my perimeter for who I was willing to date, and that’s how I met Husband. Completely by accident. My phone provider was out one day, so I didn’t get any messages from anyone for almost 24 hours while I was figuring that out. His message to me was one of the ones that got pushed through when my phone service restored itself. (I still, to this day, don’t know why or how this happened.) And there was nothing there that was inherently like, “Hey, you’re going to date and then marry this guy,” other than the fact that he actually put effort into his message instead of sending “hey” over and over again to get a response. But he was funny, and he was charming, and we fell for each other really quickly. Pretty soon all my money (which, again, limited, because the awful ladies I worked for decided I wasn’t leadership material even though they gave me no training or direction, ever) was going to taking the train here pretty much every time I had a day off from work. And I was lying to my parents about it, because they decidedly do not like or approve of dating apps or internet friendships in general.

Something happens in relationships where one or both of you are chronically ill. There comes a sink-or-swim moment in the relationship where you either step up and deal with the shit that happens, or you realize you can’t handle the intensity or uncertainty of it, and you gtfo. And... obviously, I chose the first option. Pretty much immediately after my first visit (as in, I was still on the train) Husband calls me, because his doctors are afraid that he has cancer. I go home, work exactly one day and turn the fuck around and go back so we can meet with the hematologist and find out whether he has bone cancer, Jesus fuck. Thankfully, it turned out that he didn’t; it’s something that comes up a lot because he doesn’t have a spleen and that, apparently, makes it look like you’re dying a whole lot. We ended up moving in together a month later because living at my parents was making me suicidal, which isn’t the greatest love story of all time, I know, but I had wanted to move out anyway and living with him was a much better option than random roommates.

I didn’t talk to my mother for... a month and a half, after I moved out. She kept trying to contact my friends on Facebook one day and I was ready to freak out on her for being controlling or something. Turns out, my biological father died. At the time, I was calm. Like, I wasn’t surprised - he had nearly died of alcohol-induced cardiac failure before I moved to the US, and it’s not like he had done anything to make his situation better - but it turns out I was actually in shock, I guess. The whole situation was fucking terrible; not because he died but because it kind of cemented that my only value to his side of the family was being “the only granddaughter” and not that they gave a shit about me as a person. They misgendered me in his obituary; they spelled my brother’s girlfriend’s name wrong.

I think the worst part is that they tried to make his celebration of life thing about how great he was as a person, though. And, like, I’m sorry, but great people don’t molest their children, or their children’s girlfriend. They don’t have sex in front of their children with their children’s physical abuser. They don’t make their teenage child in charge of being the sober adult when they want to go drinking. They don’t let their partner physically abuse their child when that child tries to get them both help for their drinking. They don’t trap their kid on a boat for a week with a creepy adult male stranger and freak the fuck out when that child has their first anaphylactic reaction to a novel food 20 kilometers from land or the nearest hospital. They don’t call that child on their birthday every year to remind them what a woman they are and always will be when they were the first fucking parent I came out to. 

Actually, no - the worst part of him dying was that I had to deal with his hellbeast girlfriend afterward, because apparently there was money for me in an RESP that he had never cashed, but all that got me was a shady financial representative who repeatedly wanted my mother and me to break the law over it. Like, my mom got her lawyer involved and everything, and once the legal letterhead came out the financial dude dropped off the face of the earth, stopped answering my calls and I never got my thousand pity dollars. 

And, like, things were okay for a little while after that because Husband and I were close with our roommates up until the point where it became clear that one of them had severe, untreated borderline personality disorder. I’ve lived with someone with BPD before; I’ve lived with a hoarder before. I was not prepared for the level of hoarding that this woman could produce. Or just, like, generally weird and shitty behavior and refusal to seek treatment for her condition. We tried everything we could think of, but ultimately we had to have secret meetings outside our house with our other roommate (who was dating her at the time) to figure out what to do with her. The things we found out... I’ve never wanted to genuinely harm a person before. Because she had been r*ping our roommate for months, and convincing them we didn’t want to be their friend, and using all their money because she wouldn’t go to work or apply for welfare or do the bare minimum required to be a human being. We had to get her removed by the police (who I do not advise contacting unless there is genuinely no other options) and the police acted like it was a typical roommate squabble even though we had fucking proof. So, anyway, we had to contact hell roommate’s parents and sister, and do all the packing to get her shit out of our house.

I will add that there were a few golden months right after hell roommate moved out. We got very close with remaining roommate, and it was nice, but then they started dating their current boyfriend and it just got... uncomfy for everyone somehow? They never outright said they were dating him, it was weird, one day they were like “Hey, I have a friend coming over!” and then he was just... there all the time? And they never told us they were dating? And, like, I’m happy for them, they’re great together and genuinely like each other, but it was weird. It was uncomfortable when we had to have the “We want to move out” conversation, too, because originally we had wanted to move to a bigger place with all of us, but ultimately we ended up keeping the apartment.

So that should have been fine, right? Especially since they moved in with one of Husband’s friends. Except that that friend turned out to be secretly awful and took advantage of everyone around them, and accused good roommate of being secretly racist and a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t true. (Trust me, good roommate would rather sever their left leg than do something that would hurt someone’s feelings.) And, like, I’m sorry, but you can’t use your master’s degree in social work to push around people who you know freeze during confrontations and have memory issues due to trauma, and then turn around and lead healing from trauma workshops. No. You’re a garbage human being who deserves to step on a thousand Lego. (Legos? Anyway.)

OH. Right. Before that, I had surgery. I had surgery and then pretty much the day we got home from that, the pandemic happened. At the beginning of it, good roommate and a woman who would later become one of our best friends came to stay with us because, again, horrific garbage pile of a human being in their house. Recovering from surgery took forever - I still don’t have feeling back 100% in my chest - but thankfully I was better enough by the time they moved to be somewhat helpful there. (They were incredibly smart and hired movers. We were pretty much there because we had just bought a car and could move breakable stuff.) 

Ugh. God. Sorry, I have to jump back to 2018 for a second, which is when I was diagnosed with OCD. Like, officially, I mean. It was probably pretty obvious to everyone who wasn’t me, but I always kind of thought that since I wasn’t on My Mom-level germophobic, there was no way I could have it. Uh! Turns out! Normal people don’t cry when a garbage bag that is clearly about to be taken outside touches the floor while they are putting their shoes on to take said garbage bag outside. So... I take pills now. And go to therapy. Which is very expensive. But, yeah, my symptoms were pretty fuckin’ bad then. And continued to be bad - like, bad enough that I had to quit my job in 2019 because my bosses weren’t taking it seriously enough or even listening to me. (It’s Mcdonald’s, it’s chill, they ruin or fire all their best employees.) 

Okay. Back to now. Pandemic! School! Suffering through all my pre-requisites so I can take actual interesting classes! Somewhere in there we started watching Twitch streams - I think it was because Husband found out Felicia Day streamed, and he loves her, and it kind of spiraled from there? But anyway, I somehow ended up part of this weird, delightful community that’s genuinely nice and non-trollish, and now I stream sometimes. Or attempt to stream. Or attempt to keep a regular schedule. It’s nice, though, to feel like there’s someone to hang out with when you pretty much can’t leave your house. There’s a sense of normality to being in a place at a specific time and seeing specific people. And Twitch has given me a lot of ideas on research topics I’d like to pursue in grad school. 

Like I said, it’s been a pretty mixed bag. There have been some really bad parts, but there’s a lot of good stuff that happened too. I just. I miss Old Me a lot, lately. I miss who I was before all the trauma. (I mean, obviously not all the trauma, because I don’t miss being a literal child, but like... 18-23 or so.) 

I think this might be the most I’ve written outside of a school context in actual years. Part of me keeps thinking about adding in APA formatting, but uh. You can’t really cite something when it’s just memories inside your own head. Anyway. I need to work on liking myself more, and working through some of the baggage that goes with trauma, and... I don’t know. It’s nice to have an outlet that’s not my husband or my cats. (Again, Husband is awesome, Husband is amazing, but we’re around each other 24/7 right now. I think he deserves a break sometimes.) 

So... Yep. Thanks, if you made it this far. I promise not all my posts are going to be like this. I just figured, if you were going to stick around, you probably deserved to know what happened while I was gone. 

[acrosstheskyandstars]

Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Where to start with this book. I was definitely not a fan. This book was recommended to me by my best friend and my favorite Youtuber. I was convinced that I, too, would love this book. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to my expectations.

The premise of this book is that Eleanor is a 30 year old administrative assistant who lives the most basic boring life in existence. She eats the same thing for dinner every day (cold pasta with pesto), has the same weekly commute (stopping by Tesco every Friday to buy vodka), and doesn’t understand any attempt at non-literal speech. You may, at this point, be wondering if Eleanor was written to be some sort of neuroatypical representation. I certainly was. I paused reading to google it, only to find out that the author did not intend Eleanor to be neuroatypical at all. She has explicitly rejected the idea that Eleanor was written to be autistic. So now we’re left with a main character who is confusing and we have no reason for it. Yes, Eleanor has experienced childhood trauma (SPOILER: her mother set fire to the house killing herself and Eleanor’s sister when Eleanor was only 10), however her behavior seems unexplained by that. I can excuse the trauma blocking of her sister and the fact that she doesn’t remember that her mother is dead. Her depressive episode and suicidal ideation certainly make sense with a traumatic childhood. Trauma can do some very odd things to the brain. However, trauma does not make a previously neurotypical person behave as though they are autistic (the condition that is most speculated about in relation to Eleanor). If the author intended Eleanor to have some sort of mental health condition, like PTSD, she did not convey this through her writing. In fact, Eleanor seems to become pretty “normal” by the end of the book. Suddenly her coworkers care about her, she has friends, and she is mentally healthy. While these are all good things, the process of how one begins to unpack and process their trauma isn’t shown in very much detail. This leaves the reader with the impression that Eleanor was able to work through her issues on her own the whole time. She quits drinking after roughly one therapy session. The woman was binging 2 bottles of vodka by herself every weekend and admits that she was not sober at all from Friday evening to Monday morning for the past decade.

The thing that irritated me the most about this book was that every interaction Eleanor has with another character comes off as very stilted and painful. At no point do these interactions become charming, though she does become more tolerable after her mental breakdown. The breakdown in question is of course caused by the fact that she has convinced herself she is in love with a local pub musician that she saw precisely one time. Please note: she has never interacted with this man and he does not know who she is. She decides to get a bikini wax to impress this man that she has never met. Please tell me any other instance of a person doing this. Which brings me to the most painful interaction I’ve witnessed. Apparently some readers find this funny or charming. I found it painful because of how socially unaware she is. The idea that some may find her cluelessness funny is odd to me, particularly if they are reading her character as autistic. I’ll transcribe it here so that you can all feel the pain with me:

“‘Now then,’ she said, ‘what are we doing today?’ ‘As I said, a bikini wax, please.’ She laughed. ‘Yes, sorry, I meant what kind of wax would you like?’I thought about this. ‘Just the usual kind . . . the candle kind?’ I said.‘What shape?’ she said tersely, then noticed my expression. ‘So,’ she said patiently, counting them off on her fingers, ‘you’ve got your French, your Brazilian or your Hollywood.’I pondered. I ran the words through my mind again, over and over, the same technique I used for solving crossword anagrams, waiting for the letters to settle into a pattern. French, Brazilian, Hollywood . . . French, Brazilian, Hollywood . . . ‘Hollywood,’ I said, finally. ‘Holly would, and so would Eleanor,’…‘There,’ she said, removing the gloves and wiping her brow with the back of her hand, ‘now doesn’t that look so much better!’ She passed me a hand mirror so I could look at myself. ‘But I’m completely bare!’ I said, horrified.‘That’s right, a Hollywood,’ she said. ‘That’s what you asked for.’I felt my fists clench tight, and shook my head in disbelief. I had come here to start to become a normal woman, and instead she’d made me look like a child.‘Kayla,’ I said, unable to believe the situation I now found myself in, ‘the man in whom I am interested is a normal adult man. He will enjoy sexual relations with a normal adult woman. Are you trying to imply that he’s some sort of paedophile? How dare you!’She stared at me, horrified. I had had enough of this.‘Please, leave me to get dressed now,’ I said, turning my face to the wall.She left and I climbed down from the couch. I pulled my trousers on, consoled by the thought that the hair would surely grow back before our first intimate encounter. I didn’t tip Kayla on the way out.”

Every time Eleanor interacted with another person, it was this painful. Perhaps the height of her outlandishly bad social awareness was the scene where an old man collapses on the street and her coworker rushes to help. She is taken aback that her coworker wanted to help the elderly man who was unconscious on the sidewalk, and then also is frustrated that calling an ambulance throws off her evening plans (going to Tesco to buy two bottles of vodka to drink herself silly through the weekend).

Eleanor definitely needed help, and I’m glad she got it. Post-breakdown Eleanor was the best she got in the book. My main problem with the book is squarely placed on the character of Eleanor. She is unlikable, unrelatable, and frankly unrealistic. I think the moral of this story is that everyone can have different tastes, given how many people liked this book.

I’d also like to link to a post that goes into a more in-depth discussion of Eleanor’s possible autism and possible mental illnesses: https://penchant.blog/2019/08/19/eleanor-oliphants-story-and-why-it-doesnt-belong-to-the-author-who-wrote-it/

Check out my blog: https://acrosstheskyinstars818513457.wordpress.com

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 2

Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 1

Master Post

There were several points a bit more tangentially connected to my arguments in part 1. As a result I decided to leave them until now and hit them up in bullet points.

These are arguments against the superhero genre chiefly perpetuated by the tryhard trinity of Osvaldo Oyola , J. Lamb and Noah Berlatsky.

On the topic of the genre portraying ‘might making right’, the truth is this is part of the ancient inspirational aspect of these figures and can be found in stories like Rama and Sita, Rama of course ultimately never giving up his quest to be reunited with his lover. Which was not a Western influenced story.

Yes the genre involves ‘punching as conflict resolution’. I’m sorry, but that is part and parcel of the genre and the wish fulfilment/fantasy/narrative entertainment value of the stories. If you DON’T like that then frankly it’s like complaining that a romance story involves kissing.

It has been claimed that a black hero wouldn’t punch someone but again, the genre is entirely about people with powers using them to help people by preserving their life. And if they have no other choice but to K.O. a mugger who’s going to stab someone then a black person, or any decent person, would/should do it. But examining the meaning and repercussions of that realistically given the fact that they aren’t white in a white society is something that could benefit the genre.

A common critique of the genre is that crime happens sometimes because of a racist system, therefore fighting crime innately supports racism. Look, obviously we should remove institutionalised racism from the law. At the end of the day though if someone of any race is committing a crime which HURTS people they should be stopped, the reasons which drove them to that should be taken into consideration, but Spider-Man shouldn’t NOT stop a mugger because they’ve been driven to do that through desperation. There is often no time for that and without being able to talk to or trust strangers he or other heroes need to act in the moment.

Superhero fiction on one level is childish, but on a deeper level they’re representative of universal truths and desires which are often boiled down to fairy tales or simple stories. The above shitheads also claims that superhero fiction is written and consumed by children, when the truth is that in the last 20-30 years the opposite has been more true. THAT is partially why sales have been dwindling over the years.

Superman’s values are innate to the heroic and altruistic desires and ideals ALL humanity has expressed throughout its history. They are not inherently ‘white’

Apparently superheroes are white constructs because they reinforce the ‘status quo’. To quote the Atlantic article (see part 1) again:

“What status quo do superheroes reinforce? These heroes fight because everyone is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The only fascists here are the supervillains who disagree.”

Also Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were created specifically to change the status quo of the fictional worlds they were created in. At the same time the entire Marvel pantheon were about changing the status quo of the genre by introducing people who were flawed and different and more human than the DC heroes

Superheroes, despite the assertions by the above fuckwits have at times interrogated the justice system. But generally their lack of interrogation is I think for the same reason their science is so wonky. They don’t know better. They just boil it down to the simplest terms. Muggings and villain threats abound. Hero prevents those. They don’t know enough to tackle something much deeper than that. This ties into the fundamentally flawed aspect of most critiques wherein they are looking to superheroes as intellectual pieces of academic and critical study when...that’s not what they are...at all…

One of the above douchebags once said:

An African American Superman, with kinky, close-cropped black hair, thick, half-reddened lips, high cheekbones, and wide nostrils all bathed in dark Lindt chocolate, resists White supremacist logic, negates Black inferiority mythology, and threatens the established order. Superman’s disconcerting physicality, tempered by his omnipresent cheerfulness calmed and invited White comic readers to imagine themselves as gaudy Caucasian perfection, the Anglo-Saxon ideal. Static in panel, without speech bubbles or thought balloons, Superman Black warps the absurdly developed skeletal striated muscle and eternal hopefulness fans rejoice into a clear and present danger to the American experiment, an unholy figure derived from Tea Party paranoia, Barack Obama’s calculation and Terry Crews’ musculature. Public Enemy’s prescience abounds – were Superman Black introduced on the game-changing Action Comics’ cover, White America would have yet another reason to fear a Black planet.

This entirely depends upon who is doing the perceiving. To someone of a different mindset a Black Superman could be just that. The same thing Superman is except he happens to have black skin.

Also, the author needs to take a major chill pill, Jesus Christ.

Here is another quote from one of them:

Only in White male power fantasies can people blessed with skin privilege and bodies carved from living marble wield heat vision or super speed or unbreakable claws against indigent criminals from broken homes who lack high school educations.

This is again grossly incorrect because the idea of individuals having superhuman abilities and using them to fight criminals predates American society, and if one accepts figures like the Hydra to be stand-ins for threats to human life then the superhumans have been fighting what the criminals represent for eons before the advent of American society. The criminals they use their abilities against are rarely stated to lack education or come from broken homes, but yes okay let’s say that they are that.

Having super humans go up against them and defeat them isn’t a white male power fantasy because their abilities are used to subdue and NOT kill. Injure perhaps but in real life sometimes force is sadly necessary and if someone is robbing a bank or holding a gun to someone in an alley it is justified no matter what skin colour anyone involved in is, or what society you find yourself in, for the perpetrator to be stopped in order to safeguard life. Just because the perp resorted to what they did due to social ills beyond their control, that doesn’t justify their actions at that moment. Stealing someone’s money or trying to murder them is never ever going to be acceptable no matter if we live in a white society or not.

Only in White male power fantasies would women display abundant porcelain cleavage or don starry microskirts to fight crime.

Yeah um, preeeeeeetty sure that actually that’s more of a male SEXUAL fantasy and less than a WHITE male POWER fantasy. That was never the topic of conversation.

Shuttle diplomacy or natural resource husbandry rarely bring metal-faced technological sorcerers to heel in superhero comics; superheroes often save planet Earth through fantastic violence judiciously applied.

Yeah, that’s part of the narrative FANTASY element of the genre that is intended to be escapist. Condemning it for being otherwise is asinine.

More than this, guess what, there are people whom Dr. Doom is a metaphorical stand-in for. And an awful lot of them legitimately can’t be negotiated with. I am of the belief that in the REAL world we should negotiate and use force when there is no other choice and even then only use what is necessary. But the Dr. Dooms and Lex Luthors of the comic book world represent grander themes of evil and social ills, whilst at the same time existing to challenge the heroes physically and mentally. They represent the unmovable types of evil that legitimately can only be dealt with via physical means.

This was the type of circular logic I talked about before. It is looking at the villains as stand ins for EVERY type of situation and therefore the super hero’s use of violence as ‘problematic’, when in reality the superheroes’ use of violence isn’t problematic because it is justified by the extreme circumstances they find themselves in.

Because those situations don’t exist in real life...like in World War II...which was literally about people using force in the face of failed negotiation to halt the advance of fascism…

I submit that the superheroic reflex to subdue evil with violence directly descends from Thucydides and Alexander, from Richard the Lionheart and Dwight Eisenhower.

Yeah...except it isn’t. Again...it came from the same place as Hercules and Sun Wukong, and those came from the natural human biological imperatives to survive.

Superheroic morality requires Western Civilization’s literary canon and political history to justify its callous disregard toward collateral damage. To be clear, superheroes routinely consider innocent noncombatants’ lives (if not their property) when they confront cosmic despots or sociopathic steroid abusers, but comics document the never-ending battle in colorful tomes largely sold after Nagasaki and My Lai, after the time when total ignorance of American military supremacy was vogue. When Wally West as the Flash pulls a hysterical single mother out of her overturned silver 2001 Honda Civic and carries her to safety from Apokoliptian cannons at breakneck speed, comic fans favorably regard his heroism; any dialogue from the frazzled thirty-something file clerk will remind readers how grateful she is to escape otherworldly horror with her life. Superhero comics don’t care about the destruction of this woman’s sole transport; when the gas tank explodes behind the Flash’s blurred strobe, this woman loses her credit cards, her driver’s license, her insurance documents, her six-year-old daughter’s vanilla birthday cake with its beloved artificially flavored strawberry icing. The comics don’t recognize the heroism of this brave woman’s seven-month struggle to rebuild her finances and maintain her identity following Darkseid’s incursion; all we know is for that poor woman, the Flash saved the day. He’s a superhero. Isn’t she grateful?”

Collateral damage and the disregard for it IS regarded. Hence the existence of Damage Control. Furthermore, that is AGAIN part of the escapism and fantasy element of it. THAT is the suspension of disbelief element of superheroes and taking it THAT realistically and criticising it for it is frankly just mean spirited and simply looking for an excuse to hate it.

Furthermore the reason the rescued woman isn’t focussed upon is because it’s not HER story. If you write a story about a protagonist THEY are your focus. Everything is for their benefit. That’s true of older non-white folktales as well.

And yeah readers are supposed to regard the Flash as heroic and the woman grateful because her kid’s birthday cake isn’t realistically as important as her life!!!!!!

This is criticising superhero fiction for being unrealistic even when it is being actively so The woman WOULD probably be grateful that she’s not fucking dead!

I wouldn’t mind seeing the survivors of something like this try to rebuild their lives. And superhero fiction has focussed upon that from time to time, but again...that’s not the point of the story. Criticising the genre fro this is like criticising Harry Potter for having the audacity to focus more upon Harry’s trauma in the wake of Cedric Diggory’s death than his parents’. Harry is the star. He gets the focus.

Superman is a White boy. Superheroes are White people. Superhero morality exacts the Melian Dialogue’s ‘might makes right’ overwhelming force realpolitik with every onomatopoetic Biff! Bam! Pow! gut punch and karate chop combo.

See what I’ve said before about how superheroes are not fascists and how force is often necessary

There exists no genetic propensity for group violence in the human genome. None.”

Er....yeah...there kinda is...that’s part of why wars happen.

racially-informed vigilantism.

This phrase in one of the articles itself sums up it’s own contradictions. Racially informed vigilantism is just one type of vigilantism, a type the superhero doesn’t subscribe to. A superhero would sooner join the likes of the Joker than the KKK style vigilantes and would be all too happy to apprehend them.

One of the articles seems to be conflating basically ALL criminals super heroes fight with people who’re labelled criminals due to racial profiling. Yes superheroes operate to an extent like police officers but you can’t truly complete the analogy whatsoever.

Few of them have legal sanction, which is partially why so many refrain from actually killing anyone as officer’s are allowed to do under certain circumstances. More than this when they take down criminals their methods are entirely different from regular cops. Apart from very loud and overt super villains who may or may not be on a rampage, most of the time when they tackle regular criminals it’s due to them either being informed of a crime that is going to happen (like a hijacking or something) or they literally see something happening whilst on patrol. They don’t profile people beyond what their super sensory abilities or logical observations tell them. Which is to say if someone is following someone else a little too closely then maybe, just maybe they are planning something. If their Spider-Sense or super hearing or something alerts them to something they will act.

Taking that, ignoring it, and then supplanting the superhero for a regular cop who would racially profile people and/or supplanting the criminals they tackle for racial minorities because those are the people who (stereotypically in the real world) would be targeted as criminals is very inappropriate. Not least of all since superhero comics obviously don’t present a wholesale realistic depiction of the real world so what they present isn’t entirely interchangeable with that. And what is more, erasure of minorities was so prevalent that overwhelming majority of all the criminals they ever encountered were themselves white, so again exchanging those for racial minorities who’re profiled as criminals is highly questionable.

It’s all just such a MASSIVE reach!

But I think the panels also work to point out that Miles himself “does not belong” in the superhero tradition. He, like most black and brown superhero characters in mainstream comics, is an outlier. In other words, people like Miles or Trayvon are unfortunately more likely to be victim of a “heroic” vigilante than to be one.

This is conflating the superhero vigilante with the majority of real world vigilantes who are overly violent (and frequently hard conservative) individuals who do take overly simplistic views of the law and use those to profile people. And it’s doing so whilst taking superheroes too literally, bringing their own personal interpretations to the mix and then overlaying them onto the superhero concept before finally accepting it as fact.

Police officers use violence against racially profiled people who exhibit unrest due to a societal system stacked against them. Well shit, Batman punches the Joker. It must be the same thing obviously!!!!!

Look. Without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as people of color, nothing about fanboy and fangirl culture makes sense. What I mean by that is, if it wasn’t for race, X-Men doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the history of breeding human beings through chattel slavery, Dune doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the extermination of so many indigenous nations, most of what we call “first contact” stories don’t make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understand that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible. We are… in the Green Lantern Corps? We are the Oath. We are all of those things. Erased, and yet without us? We’re essential. This is an incredibly important project, because it puts front and center, not only a community that has long consumed and given power to these practices and consumer categories, but it’s a community without whose suffering and struggles, none of [these narratives] would make sense.

I agree with a lot of this but there are some problems with it.

a)     X-Men makes sense also because they are a stand in for almost ALL marginalised groups. Racial minorities, disabled people, queer people etc.

b)     Actually Star Wars makes complete sense with or without colonialism or imperialism, at least the kind which directly relates to the issues of racism. Imperialism, conquest, these are things which are much older than American society, dating back to even before Ancient Rome. It’s about freedom fundamentally and freedom is a desire shared by ALL human beings innately because at the end of the day we are animals who wish to be free and not caged. Being caged metaphorically within a tyranny is thus something we abhor

c)     The Star Wars universe doesn’t begin and end with the story of imperialism. It’s about how Democracy can be turned into an dictatorship and how that has to be prevented, or re-addressed once it happens

d

When white comics readers claim that they did not need white characters to relate to and enjoy comics (as a way to argue against positive race-bending), that point to their love of Luke Cage or Spawn as evidence of their ability to enjoy characters across race, what they are failing to note is how black, Latin@, etc… identities in the superhero genre are framed by a system of white supremacy.

Again I don’t understand this one. I as a white reader can enjoy Luke Cage rescuing someone from a burning building because doing that is part of white supremacy????

It presumes a white power fantasy is inherently different to a black one. But the power fantasy element of the superhero relates to them having powers and using them to help others and defeat villains. A power fantasy by another race would still have that because it is inherent to the human power fantasy. Non-white power fantasies would logically have all that and more!

Much like Noah Berlatsky explains in his book Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948, part of what made Marston’s original Wonder Woman stories so wonderful, was his expectation that girls and boys would identify with the heroine, to value and idealize her compassionate strength and victory through submission, rather than through cyclical and ultimately futile fisticuffs of male dominion.

Many female readers enjoy the action scenes. Action scenes are good because it enables us to have a healthy outlet for aggression without taking it out into the real world. It is also NOT an inherently male dominion thing. Again this is THEIR projection. Fighting and violence is innate to human beings because we are animals biologically programmed towards it for the sake of survival. That goes for males and females. Furthermore far from fisticuffs just being about male ‘dominion’ the Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman comics were a reflection of impending war. A war that sadly required violence to be solved.  That’s what the superhero typifies. Wish fulfilment action in situations where violence was (usually) a necessity. Diplomacy is good and should be our first resort. In life though sometimes things do come down to necessary violence.

There are many ways to craft a racial minority superhero, but if we consider racial authenticity as a foremost concern, today’s Hollywood is simply not prepared for that intellectual labor. The real diversity conundrum isn’t how to include the minority metahuman in the existing comic framework; that’s an art project, a casting decision solved by calling Michael B. Jordan’s agent. The real question is how to write that superhero in a way that moves the medium forward, past the Reaganomics antiheroes of Alan Moore and Frank Miller and past the hyper-emotive Silver Age redux of Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis. Respectable, authentic diversity in superhero comics should redefine the nature of the meta-protagonist to his powers and his audience, with exhaustive attention to cultural detail. I’m not convinced that a Black superhero would wear tights. I strongly doubt that a Black superhero would solve conflicts with his fists. The Black superhero knows that his community watches him religiously, and that any false move will have public repercussions he cannot expect or control.  If anything, the Black superhero template plays out on our nation’s cable news channels at all hours. President Barack Obama, with all his clipped vocal inflections and measured language and natural equivocation and faulty dealmaking and perfect family and limitless patience is the closest public figure to a Black superhero America has yet experienced, an international celebrity unthinkable before his ascent. Watching President Obama today, one feels expectation crush into his bones like a gravity well. No matter the political stimuli, Republicans oppose him. The concept of the Obama Presidency struck American conservatives like a Bernard Hopkins’ kidney punch, and in return, President Obama absorbs the vitriol of our coarse public debates more than any President to date (and progressives never tired of calling his predecessor a National Socialist). The agony and the ecstasy of Grant Park has given way for many Americans to the sobering fact that American authority, her global military supremacy and international economic primacy, is controlled and represented by a Black man. Disliked, hated, or worse, the Establishment is Black.  I need the Black superhero in print and/or on-screen to reflect that paradigm shift. Superheroes in the popular imagination are Establishment figures; if the Black superhero I’m presented can’t interrogate what it means when the Establishment is Black, of what utility is her story?  

A minority hero wouldn’t wear tights or punch people...why?

What do tights have to do with anything? As for solving problems with his fists this is conflating the threats superheroes face with ANY threat, when they are almost always situations which legitimately do require necessary physical force to resolve. If the black superhero patrols an area and sees someone about to stab someone else, yeah he should punch the stabber to save the innocent person if there is no time for anything else.

This is basically asking for the core foundation of superheroes (which transcends racial constructs and is innate to human wish fulfilment and mythic tradition) to be scrapped in favour of something else entirely. Barrack Obama isn’t a superhero. He is many, many things but what Mr. Lamb here is asking isn’t so much for a different template but for something just wholesale different. He doesn’t actually WANT a superhero story in the first place!

Super heroes aren’t establishment figures. Superheroes don’t uphold the law regardless. They uphold the law in so far as a greater need to safeguard innocent lives. Conflating them as inherently establishment figures ignores their origins and over literalises what they do.

At the same time the utility of their story is first and foremost as a story: to entertain and inspire.

It is inherently worthwhile for a little black kid to sit down and open up a comic book where someone who looks like them is being a good person, is helping people, is defending the weak. I agree that minority heroes shouldn’t just be white heroes who happen to have different skin colours. I think they need to reflect the realities of what it means to be black or Asian or Pakistani in white society is necessary and a superhero should do that and should have that inform how they interact with their powers.  It doesn’t mean the whole genre needs to abandon what it fundamentally is or that those minority heroes should not do the things a superhero fundamentally do.

Ultimately, yeah these characters were created within a white context, but my point is fundamentally the same thing was created in non-white contexts as well throughout history.

Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 1

Master Post

[psychomoxxie]

Don’t Say You Love Me (Falling For A Psycho Girl)

So if you read the last post, you know i’m just dragging myself by the teeth and unkempt nails out of the dumpster fire that is my so-called “heart”;

I.e., yet another relationship bit the dust. The first one in 4 years. It was new, but i fell hard, because he was different and not an abusive fuck, was super-sweet, and had the brain-cooties too (not like mine, but still), so i could relate to him on a deeper level than most. But turns out, he’s already into someone else, if his FaceBook memes are any indication (which they almost certainly are), which makes me feel incredibly stupid and naive that i didn’t see it coming. He was probably talking to this girl romantically before things ended with us. Which puts things in a whole new light.

 That light being — i am, and i reiterate, incredibly stupid and naive.

 Which brings me to the next bit.

The very next day after things imploded in my face with this guy, a friend – a male friend – talked to me for three hours on the phone to cheer me up, make me feel better about my stupid little heart; and after we hung up, he messages me to confess to me that he’s in love with me.

 Here’s the thing. It’s not that I don’t “love” this guy friend. In as much as I can feel love for him or anybody else. That sort of thing is reserved for a very small pool of people, and I’m not very good at it. Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you. I will disappear off the face of the earth for weeks at a time, and expect you to be ok with that. I have a hard time being emotionally available for most people.

 My capacity for being In Love with a capital “L” is severely limited, and probably not defined in the way most people think of the word. I’ve experienced real, actual, true Being In Love probably twice in my life. Where it hit me hard, and i was both viscerally and emotionally affected by it, and wanted to put that person’s needs before my own and all that sort of thing, where i felt that gut-wrenching emotion when it ended for whatever reason. Where i felt emotions that had to do with THEM, and not just ME. Not just the selfishness of “romantic love”, which mostly has to do with how that person makes you feel, and less to do with the actual person. But when I did feel it, I felt it all the way. And crawling out of it is certainly no easy feat. In fact, I still love my first True Love — but he died many years ago, so there’s not much I can do about that.

 I’ve certainly developed feelings, even felt love for a couple people I’ve dated — which evolved into true friendships, which I consider to be a type of love that’s different from being In Love, though still very worthy and much more likely to occur in a person’s life multiple times. Those instances of love are the people that i still speak to, despite whatever pain it cost to get us here, because we still actually had a real connection after the romantic bit ended. (The guy in the photo being one of those).

 Of course, the question is, was it genuine Love ™ i felt for the Guy I Fell For if it wasn’t actually reciprocated? If he’s already moved on to someone else, then clearly it was one-sided on my part since i still have feelings, and he clearly does not.

I don’t know. The thing is, I can’t transfer my feelings from one person to the other so quickly. Or at all. Because for me, I rarely feel them to begin with.

 Oh, in the past i’ve felt serious infatuation. When i was younger and unmedicated, i was capable of obsessive infatuation. Of course that ended when that person’s flaws came to the light, or they disappointed me. I see this one’s flaws quite clearly and still have the feelings. I hate it, but there it is. Maybe that’s the problem. For him, it was just infatuation.

 Part of the problem of being a Psycho bitch — like, literally, I have ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder, my secondary diagnosis, and it’s not severe, but it’s significant enough to be problematic. This is the first time I’ve talked about it, because the stigma surrounding it is so fucked up) — is that it’s not easy for me to connect with other people. Not in any genuine way. It’s considered to be, in my and many cases, the result of certain childhood experiences. It’s a fairly common reason for this fairly uncommon disorder. A protection that the brain constructs as a result of physical and psychological trauma. I recognize it, and i try to work on it. It’s not easy.

 Here’s where the Mental Illness Education Bit comes in, folks. Because yeah, we’re doing that now. ASPD is a relatively new diagnosis – or rather, TERM for a diagnosis (in general, and also for Yours Truly), and it’s often interchanged with Sociopathy, which is often interchanged with Psychopathy. It’s not a Mental Illness, per se, but a Personality Disorder. Which might be wrong, for me, since it’s co-morbid with Schizoaffective Disorder which has some symptoms in common, and they gave me my ASPD diagnosis several years ago for what they thought previously was Bipolar – which is fairly obviously not my problem. I don’t have mood swings, per se, but i do have impulsivity, and lack of empathy, and other things that jive with the ASPD diagnosis. Apparently, my being slightly Sociopathic makes more sense. Honestly, i sometimes think they just liked slapping the label on a woman because it’s so rare.

 On the other hand, it does kind of fit, if i’m going to be honest. I’m very good at the whole social mask thing. And i don’t feel things normally – haven’t ever, really.

 I’ve never murdered anyone (yet), but i will certainly admit to having a lack of conscience or empathy where many things are concerned. Or, perhaps just a lack of emotion in general. My psychiatrists say it’s due to severe PTSD and trauma. As is true for many people with the disorder, as i mentioned.

The misapprehension people have, however, is that people with the disorder NEVER connect, or are incapable of it. This isn’t true. When we do connect, it’s definitely genuine and deep. We just don’t do it with many people at all. Mainly this is because we’re basically self-centered and pretty selfish. And not very “nice”. We have to work at it. We aren’t “empaths” or any of that new age crap. We don’t connect with the outside world very easily, or well. We can be manipulative. And in some cases, fairly narcissistic. Definitely overly-logical when being emotionally sympathetic is clearly called for.

 But every once in a while, i really connect with somebody. And when that happens, it’s really not easy to let go. But when i finally decide it’s time that i do, it’s like that person never existed. It’s very black and white. Again, a protective thing my brain does, i suppose.

 And God knows what I did to fuck things up with The Guy I Fell For, because that’s just it — i will do things out of my inability to be empathetic sometimes. Or patient. People will tell me that I’m sweet and kind, but really I admire those qualities in others, and try very hard to emulate them. I think I have those qualities in me sometimes, but I have to work at them. The very few people I do love bring them out in me. But even so, I fuck it up. Often. I didn’t have anything to model it after growing up, you see. So my version of compassion and normal love and affection looks rather like Helen Keller’s version of trying to describe the color blue, I rather suspect, sometimes.

 But, i digress.

So, this friend – we’ll call him The Limey (because oddly enough, he’s also living way the fuck in another country) confesses his love for me, and i realize off the bat that my emotional response is all wrong. The wheels in my head are turning in all the wrong directions. It’s a welcome distraction, and an ego boost, and i latch onto it like a drowning woman for about a day. In some ways, he’s a perfect match for me. We’re good friends. He’s single, a talented musician, whipsmart, witty, kind of an asshole in all the right ways; he’s willing to come right out and tell me how he feels. He’s incredibly attractive, and sexy as Hell. He wants me to leave the damn country with him, for fuck’s sake. All the things i so desperately want. And, yes, i do like him, a lot.

 But do i Love ™ him? No. Which comes into stark relief when he pisses me off by being a jerk to one of my friends – someone i do love (not romantically, but definitely love) and my first reaction is FUCK this Limey. I don’t even give him the benefit of the doubt.

 My emotions are so shut down at this point that i can’t even conceive of giving the Limey a chance. Him, or anyone else for that matter. Because i’m done. I’m done connecting with people for a good while. I have the very few people in my little Universe of Discourse, and that’s all i need.

 Clearly, the point here is that i’m damaged, but i’ve always been. I don’t think it means i need “help”, and i certainly am not asking for sympathy. I’m perfectly aware that i am fucked up. In fact, on one level, i’m happy to know that i’m still capable of falling for someone, as misguided as it may have been, and as hurt as i am from the way it all ended. It shows me that i do, in fact, still have a soul. That i’m capable of actually feeling something real, as opposed to my usual screwing around with abusive men — which is not love, but some weird head game i put myself through out of some need to torture myself.

 Soooo, this post digressed wildly.

 The point IS, i was flattered and moved by this friend’s declaration of love for about 48 hours before he pulled some crap that made me want to beat him over the head with a tire iron, and then i responded in my usual unsympathetic and offhand fashion because that is my default.

I’m fairly convinced at this point that i should just avoid romance altogether. I’m obviously bad at it, i pick the absolute wrong person nearly every single time, and then wonder why i’m miserable. Then i spend the next 3-4 years perfectly happy all by myself, which is just long enough to forget how miserable relationships make me. Rinse, repeat.

 Plus there’s that whole thing where i have to explain that i’ve got the Brain Cooties…or Brain Worms (thanks, Jay, for that new term), which is never a fun conversation; like, “No, dear, i’m not going to knife you in your sleep, and no, i don’t hear voices telling me to roast your spleen with a nice Chianti. At least, not usually. NO, BABE. THAT WAS A JOKE…”

 I just…i can’t.

 If i end up like one of those old ladies with her cats living with her female roommate in the boondocks collecting furballs and molding them into puppets and selling them on Etsy, then so be it. Right now, it seems like the sane choice.

 *photo of me and The Samurai – dear friend and fellow artist

[wolfenm-marveling]

There are three big reasons I have not and don’t want to see Endgame ....

For one, I wrote a lengthy article about that will run in June at Sequential Tart (I'll update this post with the link when it goes live *EDIT* Here it is: The Subject of Character Death, Revisited - http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=3362 ). The other two, I'll talk about here; they involve Steve and Bucky.

I know what you’re thinking: Wolfie, how can you form an opinion on a movie you haven't seen? Well, I do have mental health issues (undiagnosed and untreated because I have no insurance or job, yay), so when the film was released in China, I found someone to spoil me so that I might make an informed decision as to whether or not I could *handle* seeing it, given some worries I had (and especially since 3 hours without a bathroom break was not going to work for me or my companion). I determined from that convo that it would be a Very Bad Idea for me to see the film.

Even seeing the constant posts about it  -- especially ones that called it a  “beautiful” or “perfect” end, etc. -- was triggering anxiety and mental anguish / circular thoughts (admittedly in part because there were similarly “bad” things happening in other fandoms of mine -- it was too much at once). And I'm STILL having massive issues with circular thoughts about it.

This essay isn't meant to tell anyone they’re wrong about how they perceive / feel about the film, BUT, while I know I shouldn't care what other people think, the sitch still makes me feel how I feel: frankly, a bit disturbed that people are loving things that are making me so awful. I feel like I've stepped into some sort of Bizarro world -- like I'm somehow in the wrong universe. It’s very distressing. (I mean ... they call it mental *illness* for as reason, right?)

In this franchise where I once found such great joy, I now find little more than anguish. It’s actually been making me physically ill to see the posts -- or to look on my massive Marvel collection; I've had to box much of it away for now. Hopefully some day I can enjoy it again. (I can't exactly stop using my $60 Captain America backpack I begged for, for my birthday, though. :/)

I find that when my thoughts get like this (like I'm on a runaway train that keeps revisiting the same stations), the only thing that helps even a little is to sort out my thoughts on the page -- even if I’ve done it before, as I have with this in the comments section of friends posts. (You may have seen other people express similar thoughts, too.)  And really, I don't want to rain on my friend’s parades, so I figure I’ll post it in my own space, and then if people ask me my thoughts, I can just point them here. And hopefully this post will help others who are similarly struggling (I know there are at least a few).

As for the old chestnut “It’s just a story/ a fictional character”, well, for one thing, let me repeat: mentally ill here. If I could control how I feel, I wouldn’t BE mentally ill. But also, I'm a writer who feels writing is a sacred calling, so when I feel a story is badly told, I tend to take it personally. Yes, I know my opinion is not the be-all, end all -- if you think it’s a good story, yay for you. Me, I feel betrayed by this story in a way I have rarely felt before (the other biggest instance having happened the week before the film's release, so double-whammy, yay).

Warning: if you read any further, I assume you either saw Endgame or don’t care about Spoilers.

(*edited to add* If you need some solace too, check out @antiendgame to find other people who are upset.)

The first upsetting points for me were the Noble Deaths (and, in Loki’s case, lack of resurrection) -- I hate that trope with the fire of a thousand suns. But that’s what I wrote the article on (including how 2012 Loki’s escape doesn't make me feel any better), so no more on that here.

Now, let me preface the rest of this by saying no, I wasn’t expecting a romantic presentation of Stucky. And as hard as I ship them fanon-wise, I don’t actually hate Steggy -- I adore Peggy in her own right (and like the idea of them  being a threesome with Bucky).

What I DO hate is that Steve abandoned Bucky for her.

Aside from Steve’s moral compass, Bucky was the impetus behind pretty much *everything* Steve did in his trilogy. He found the missing soldiers because Bucky was amongst them. Bucky’s death broke him -- and finding him again in Winter Soldier seemed to give Steve, who was clearly depressed, new life. Despite Sam insisting Bucky was Gone, Steve wouldn't kill Bucky to save the world. And in Civil War, Steve fought other dear friends, and was willing to throw away his own freedom, to protect his best friend. So how the FUCK is them being *separated pretty much forevermore* a satisfactory end to that story???????

TL;DR, the Captain America movies were about the repeated separation and reunion of Steve and Bucky … and yet we barely got to SEE them together before Steve said sayonara to the man he’d been best friends with for over a for over a decade, to go be with a woman he’d known for about a year. 

A woman who’d already had a family without him.

Yeah, we can say her family still exists in the original timeline -- but I have seen soooo many different explanations of how the time sitch works out, it’s not even funny.

Really, that’s the third reason I don't want to see the movie: I HATE time paradox, and this movie sounds riddled with it. Also, as I understand it, the writers and the Russos are saying different things, with the Russos saying it’s a different timeline (which apparently Steve would be going *back* to after the shield pass, for some reason, and yeah, that bothered me, that he didnl't even give his best friend that momento, and sent their last onscreen moments together talking to SAM), and the writers saying no, the alternate timelines were only a thing when the Stones were in play. So yeah, Steve could spend the rest of his life with Bucky then ... but that means he also would have erased Peggy’s family (and maybe her work). Unless he was the man she married all along.

Either way, it would mean that Steve let Bucky suffer, and let HYDRA infiltrate SHIELD, neither being things I could see him doing.

And if it IS a branched-off timeline, I LOATHE that time theory, because it means NOTHING WE DO MATTERS. There’s always a version of us that’s our worst selves, and people who suffer because of it. That’s hella depressing. (Even if it would explain why I feel like I'm in the wrong world.)

At any rate, the ONLY end I really wanted was to see Steve and Bucky get to be together, no matter how -- “just friends” would have been fine. It was literally the thing I wanted most in the whole damn MCU franchise (aside from seeing Loki be redeemed and then fight alongside the Avengers. *sigh* At least I didn't have high hopes there ...). I would rather Steve had taken Bucky back in time WITH him, even if Steve still married Peggy; time paradox issues aside, I could have lived with that -- yes, even if it meant we didn’t get The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. (And honestly, how much am I supposed to look forward to that anyway, when Sam has been such an *inexplicably* uncompassionate asshole to Bucky in WS and CW? A guy who runs meetings for people with PTSD holds a grudge against a guy who was brutally mind-raped? It's like they made him OOC for the lolz!)

As for “Oh, but Bucky knew and he was okay with it!”

Uh, if he was okay with it, it's just because the writers *wrote* him that way for their own convenience, so they could do this ending. I have been besties with someone most of our lives. We broke up a few times, but we managed to keep finding our way back to each other. We don't live in the same state, so we rarely see each other, but at least we DO sometimes, and we write each other. If this person said they were going to go live somewhere with no way to communicate with me ever again, so they could be with someone they loved, of course I wouldn't want to say don't leave, because I'd want them to be happy, and wouldn't want to stand in the way … but that doesn't mean I'd be “okay”. in the slightest. And I wouldn't WANT other people I care about to go through such pain, much less think it beautiful to watch.

Plus, as I always say, this is fiction -- I don't need *that much* “reality” in my escapism. Temporary angst is my bread-and-butter -- it’s cathartic -- but I need a happy ending to be the payoff. To me, A TRULY happy ending for Steve -- and the one that would have been the best payoff for the narrative we’ve spent a decade watching -- would have been for him to not have to choose between the two people he loved most.

Edited 5/11/19 to add: For all those who are all “Oh, they’re just friends, they aren't gay”, I am more or less fine with sexual Stucky staying fanon; they still love each other platonically, are SOULMATES, ACCORDING TO THE SCREENWRITERS THEMSELVES (Christopher Markus and Steve McFeely), who wrote this as part of the intro to the graphic novel Captain America: White - “…Of course, this is still a rollicking adventure tale, and no adventure is complete without a love story. And yes, these books have one – the longest, most tortured one in Marvel history, in fact. We’re talking about Steve and Bucky, without smirking or innuendo or raised eyebrows. Platonic though the relationship may be, from the meet cute to the tragic separation, their bond has all the elements of a classic romance.  These two men love each other – as any pair of friends who faced exclusion, combat, inhumanity, and death would. Their bond stretches across half the twentieth century. The loss of it gnaws at Steve throughout the modern day, and it slices his heart in half when the Winter Soldier rears his tormented, homicidal head. Just as Jeph and Tim’s earlier Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, and Hulk: Gray all dealt with the major love interests in the heroes’ lives, so too does Captain America: White. Steve and Bucky are each others’ soulmate, if you will, because no one on Earth understands what either of them has been through as well as the other does. The book deals deftly with the strengths and weaknesses that relationship engenders. As the Red Skull himself says to Bucky, “The captain has a … ‘soft spot’ for you. A spot I intend to put a bullet through this very evening.” Soldiers fight for their country. They fight for themselves. They fight for each other. And sometimes they die for these things, too.  The ones who don’t carry the memory of the ones who did for the rest of their days. Steve Rogers is no different.”

So he's gonna leave his soulmate (no matter the nature of their love) behind forever? FUCK THAT NOISE. I am completely baffled ow two writers who see Steve and Bucky that way would go on to give them that ending.

And retouching the whole for Bucky “knows and is okay” thing, the Russos also said that Bucky is too damaged still to be Captain America. Uh, THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE THEY REALLY THINK HE’S OKAY.

[murdocsmacattack]

the reason im not afraid of 3x10/3x11 and the reason 3x10/3x11 needs to happen

so ,the name at the very least ,for what will ether be ep 310 or 311 has been revealed "mac+fallout+jack" and for pretty understandable and obvious reasons its left 99.9% of the fandom with a seance of foreboding especially given mac and jacks interactions resent episodes ,

however im not afraid , and, i may be giving the writers to much credit with what we've been getting and all, but last time in season 2 when i gave the writers some credit , we actually  came pretty cloes to what i was thinking , so im going out on this limb again , and i hope you'll hear me out , because were dealing with the bromance slash surrogate father relationship of jack and mac , and this area at least the writers have always gotten 99.9% right ..with ..a few hiccups here and there but you get what i mean , so what am i getting at?    

the offness were apparently ALL picking up when it comes to mac and jack..is being done on purpose.

why do i think this ? well its a bit long and briefly personal , but art imitates life and there is a point so i hope you bear with me,a little while back around 302 i did a post about the reaction of the fandome to mac leaving, coming back , and still wanting to leave again , where i basically stated the former

"i think the problem is a lot of people are looking at the situation through “mac” colored glasses so to speak like “oh macs so sweet and so strong , so clearly this isn’t him , this is childish ,his friends are going to easy on him , hes a compartmentalize mac would never do this , hes not allowed to act like this!”"

and im not saying everyone whose coming to the “macs being a dick ” conclusion is completely wrong , but i truly still stand by the believe that his actions are more of a gray area then were giving it credit for , and ill get into that and why its important in a sec but first , lets look at jack  

the thing is , after reading a lot of my fellow fans feelings and reactions and mulling over my own thoughts , i think people are seeing jack through jack colored glasses as well, see jack discovered something about himself in 301  when it comes to mac , something i just assumed everyone else saw even tho it was subtle, and its something about himself that knowing jacks character he doesn’t much care for      

in 301 it was ether riley or bozer who stated "jack didnt care where you were , as long as he knew you were happy " witch as far as there relationship has gone thus far , has been the assumed status quo between them and towards each other, but then we see jacks actions, and hear his own words when he finally comes face to face with mac after there months apart

"I was gonna hunt down and capture Walsh.Yeah, I kind of figured if I collared your old man's ex-partner, I don't know, he'd just retire.And-and then you could return to the Phoenix."

"You know, you did save my life, pal, but I could argue that I'm saving yours as well.Rescued you from a life of misery, - wasting your talents. '

" the world needs you, Mac.And you owe it to the world to work for the Phoenix."

jack goes on to tell mac his main reason along with the ones stated above was jack was doing what he always does , protecting him , but having had this short conversation and hearing his thoughts out loud AND judging from jakcs reaction to mac coming to find him at the airstrip in the next episode , jack realized somethings after having time to mull over his own words

1 that mac being happy , alone, isn't enough

like riley said ,jack knew mac was relatively happy, he had his first steady girlfriend that hasn't tried to kill him , and tho not in any war zones , was still using his gifts to help people , he was healing and happy to the point he was considering not coming back , and i honesty don't believe this was an easy choice or taken lightly on macs part, whose the type of person who wont leave a house he loves despite the fact its literally unsafe, mac had to be happy in a real kinda way to come to this decision , and jack must have known that

but jack still cant fully accept that , hed rather have mac happy AND be with him , then only the former , jack assumes mac is "living a life of misery " because jack is miserable without him , and in that dialog jack admits this to mac and himself out loud for what is probably the first time  

this revelation is so hard on jack , because knowing jack he no doubt thinks this is very wrong of him to feel , jack views riles and mac as his children , but because he hasn't had biological kids of his own for a long and continues amount of time , jack doesn’t understand that theses feeling of a parent in relation to there child are completely normal ,every parent struggles with the balancing act of wanting there child to be happy , and also wanting the child they've raised to be near them

in jakcs mind hes come to the unwanted conclusion that when it comes to mac , he can be greedy and even a little selfish , even if that isn't entirely true and even if mac himslef may not actually feel that way , its how jack is seeing himself now and its put him on edge in concerns to mac

2 jack thinks macs dads physical presence is the only problem

jack and his own father had a completely different relationship in comparison to mac and his dad , but its influencing a lot of jakcs actions , jakcs convinced if big mac is out the building mac will have no problem walking back in , but that's not the real issue ,witch brings us to mac himself and the main problem when it comes to him and his relation to the people around him ,witch is ?

mac is emotionally distancing himself..because his emotions are being disregarded .

macs life was truly torn apart last season after what his father did, hes left  feeling the crushing weight of looking at any and i mean any aspect of his life , and feeling like it doesn’t belong to him ,most likely to the point were doing anything that reminds him of those feelings may even be physically painful , no really , i want you all to imagine building something real that you thought was amazing for years and then having someone tell you “no you didnt do any of that , none of that’s real , you’d have nothing without me ”

god guys its..skin crawling ,and mac was crawling in his own to the point he felt he had to leave the continent to get away from it,of cores macs not acting like who he is , he suddenly has to question every aspect of what that is, mac was faced with a real identity crisis ,and i know for people who haven’t run this kinda race that’s a hard thing to understand , to understand having such a great support system to fall back on ,and not being able to reach out to it , but its a real thing ,and its actually a pretty accurate picture of someone not being able to see past it when there in that much pain , because that’s what this is its pain ,and quite frankly macs handling it better then i did      

i did what mac did to the people around me ,only i didnt have to leave my room to do it, but i was given that space and all the time i needed  to mentally and emotionally heal, the problem is, mac wasn't, not really , mac thought hed found a woman and a purpose, and that was it, hes good , but that's not who mental health works , and it really doesn’t help , that macs kind of the martyr of the group , thanks to his dad mac was pretty much a parentified child from the time he was 10 hes been putting everyone else’s feelings and well-being before himslef for a looong time

and because that was his default setting within the group , it became a shock when mac did something drastic for his own good that put himself first , and weather we or the characters like it or not , that distance was needed, and the slow healing that was happening was cut short, and then he comes back and jack tells him in his own words that he wants him with him to the point of putting him self in harms way , because he knows mac will turn around and put himslef last to save him ,and mac doesn't know what emotionally to do with this , because macs not used to being so wanted , but hes still not healed and being around his father is still hard so he goes to leave again , but then murdoc happens  and mac puts himslef to the back again because someone died , witch brings us to the big point of why "mac+fallout+jack" needs to happen

mac and jack still arn’t right with themselves..and there not talking about it 

mac tries , weakly , at the end of 302 , but jack cuts it down and says there fine , and mac in turn says the same , becaues both of them don't want to acknowledge that something no matter how tiny between them has fractured , but this moment where they both chose not to talk is what sets the tone going forward , jack doesn't let himslef be as close to or open with mac as he was before , and macs feelings, especially when it comes to his father , continue to be pushed aside or misinterpreted ,so mac emotionally distances himslef from everyone and everything and says nothing ,and why would he , mac put his own feeling first , for the first time ..and it was met with a very negative reaction

but they need to have this conversation , and the only thing that may very well bring that about at this point with them playing pretend ,is that mac needs to have an emotional blow up ,hes been pushing all this shit down from all sides and its really been fucking with him , its been a long time coming and there needs to be screaming and crying and yelling , and it may be painful to watch and painful to hear , they may not talk for a day or 2 , but this needs to happen , they need to lay it all out and get themselves right so they can be right together  

mac and jack have both been disillusioned with there seance of self , even if the things they now believe about themselves arnt exactly true , its made them loose the equilibrium within there relationship that has been there constant , their off ,and they need to find each other again.

[nylonsandlipstick]

lala my babe what are your unpopular opinions about the harry potter fandom?

omg. what aren’t they? nina, you know the right questions to ask. i’m literally so salty about everything in the books. tbh this is gonna turn more into an anti jkr post so if anyone is sensitive about rowling hate, scroll down.

jkr is such a terrible “feminist” as she calls herself, because she treats her female characters so poorly.

cho is just basically treated like shit because she’s soft and gentle? like, way to be a hypocrite, rowling (she called lewis a sexist for his treatment of susan and hasn’t even read the books and she’s literally doing the same exact shit).

she didn’t bat an eyelash when lavender brown, a explicitly described as black, was whitewashed in the films, it’s not like she treated lavender any better as she killed lavender off in the battle of hogwarts but there you go.

she hated and mistreated pansy just because she’s a nasty slytherin girl, like, that’s a child, have her grow up, have her learn from her mistakes, have her develop, who the hell hurt you so much that you can’t give a girl like pansy a redemption arc???

tonks deserved so much better but the fuck with that incest shit with her crushing on her cousin (in a pottermore story)?? like, damn, guess i know now where cc came up with her incest obsession.

the patil twins are basically ignored by rowling. they’re kind of there for woc brownie points but rowling couldn’t even be bothered to confirm whether the twins died or not at the end of the battle of hogwarts.

hermione is literally the worst. i hate hermione so much. she’s just so annoying and so high and mighty and it’s like, fuck off, nobody cares.

in the entire series there are about 15 poc characters (angelina johnson, alicia spinnet, bane the centaur, blaise zabini, cho, dean, duncan inglebee, fred weasley ii, gweong jones, kingsley shacklebolt, lavender brown, lee jordan, padma and parvati patil, and roxanne) and only a handful of them even have speaking lines. there are a total of 772 characters. only 15 have been worth being mentioned as poc, even less than that even have speaking roles. gonna let that speak for itself.

rowling literally fucking apologized for snape’s death and i’m like, the death of a white supremacist parallel, bullying, prejudiced, narrow-minded man who fucking hated kids that he worked with and didn’t give a damn about the child of the woman that he was fucking obsessed over (do not give me that “but he was james’s son so snape wasn’t obligated to like harry” bullshit, snape could totally have had harry close to him as his last tie to lily and could have tried to protect harry as that would have been lily’s wish). i understand that it’s tradition to apologize for some death on the anniversary of the war or whatever but maybe you should apologize for deaths of characters that weren’t such assholes???

also, the fact that rowling could give such a shitty guy a redemption arc (that a lot of people in the fandom fawn over!!!) yet draco, a child, was mistreated and straight up hated by rowling just because he grew up in a bigoted, close-minded household and didn’t know any better and ended up in slytherin and only continued to follow voldemort out of fear for voldie and his father and he’s such a great and three-dimensional character yet rowling constantly hates him for ????? being a slytherin???

which, like, what the fuck is up with rowling and hating on slytherins?? she acts like they’re terrible people yet gave us some pretty complex characters coming out of that house and it’s like, if your intent was to make us hate slytherin just because you do, it didn’t work.

the goblins are heavily coded as jewish and just the fact that literally the only jewish rep in the entire series are a bunch of goblins that work in banks just blows. my. fucking. mind. wow. as if jewish people haven’t experienced enough antisemitism in europe as it is now they’re gross and greedy goblins. yup. rowling is great.

how is it that draco, a child who is so very obviously suffering from depression, is seen as evil and terrible because of his mental illness (because his depression is what makes him “go crazy” and paranoia is a punchline to rowling) yet everyone who had to spend 12 years in azkaban (who all happen to be her favorite characters) and had to go through a shit ton of terrible crap somehow come out perfect and unaffected. like, not only is that a gross display of ableism but an insane lack of understanding of anything psychological. and, sirius, the only person who even displayed a small amount of mental instability was killed off so. ableism.

i am so mad about dumbledore. what the fuck, rowling, what the fuck? rowling is nowhere near being an ally as literally her only hp books character (i’ll talk about fantastic beasts in a mo) that’s confirmed as gay was confirmed so several years later in an interview (as if rita skeeter wouldn’t have figured that shit out asap??) and he’s an evil dude because of the fact that he’s gay and rowling explains his rejection of his homosexuality as being asexual and like, that’s not how it fucking works, rowling. first, you can’t turn off your sexuality like that, and second, asexuality isn’t just what you call being celibate or whatever.

the fact that werewolves are supposed to represent hiv+ gays. oh. my. g o d. wha t  t h e  f u ck???? what the fuck is that? oh my g o d. i can’t even handle this. i’m going to the next bullet point because the homophobia is destroying my soul.

gonna continue with the homophobia with the fact that rowling has a gay character in fantastic beasts that’s a fucking piece of shit and a total abuser and oh, look at that, played by an abuser. and little miss “i don’t support aggressors” literally supported an abuser playing the character. like. oh my god. look, i never gave a rat’s patootie about johnny depp or amber heard before the abuse allegations came out but olivia benson taught me better than to veer on the side of the alleged abuser just because he’s famous and the victim is bisexual and settled the court case with money.

eurocentrism is a real thing and rowling just seems to love to show that off. how the fuck are you gonna tell me that in the entire world there would be 11 wizarding schools and 3 of them would be in europe?? you know what, how the fuck are you gonna tell me that europe itself would have only 3 schools??? do you not understand that europe, the home of nationalism, would have almost one school per fucking country?? do you not understand that most of the european countries turn their nose in the air to each other because they all think that they’re better than each other and that they wouldn’t all totally have their own schools??? maybe benelux would share their own school, the uk would share their own school (although don’t doubt that the scottish would say a big fuck you to england and block all of the non-scottish kids out of hogwarts and force the rest of the uk to make their own new school at some point), and a few other places would share but literally do not tell me that spain, who cannot stand france, would share a fucking school with the french. like, i know a lot of hp fans are american but xenophobia in europe is a big thing.

but, on to the other wizarding schools. don’t tell me that latin america would have one fucking school for all of latin america. like, do you not understand that latin america is a mix of spanish, indigenous, african, and asian with different forms of ancient practices and brujeria that wouldn’t mix well with each other??? brazil doesn’t even fucking speak spanish!!!!!! brazil, with it’s large ass population of portuguese-speakers would need their own school while the caribbean would need their own school (if not two, because don’t tell me that a school full of cubans, puerto ricans, and dominicans wouldn’t be fucking insane and need to be divided), mexico would probably need their own school, and central and south american would need at least two other schools. and that’s just latin america. you can imagine how many schools asia would need what with most of southeast asia not being able to share a school (china and north korea would definitely have their own schools, don’t fight me), south asia having completely different practices than southeast, and the middle east would have to divide several schools between each other. and africa would need several schools. and australians??? jk never even mentioned them if i remember correctly????

eurocentrism mixed in with cultural appropriation and straight up racism is what i call ilvermorny. how the fuck are you gonna tell me that white racists are gonna be okay with sending their kids over to a school of native american magic. no, actually, how the fuck are you gonna tell me that native americans are gonna be okay with sharing their magic? magic that is so sacred and has so many rules and isn’t some fucking fictional fantasy to actual native americans but is complete reality to them??? and they’re going to be totally okay with a bunch of white people (people who’s ancestors committed mass genocides full of native americans because they wanted fucking land and power and gold and gave no fucks for the real human beings that were the natives because they weren’t apparently civilized and therefor weren’t real human beings) coming and putting a school where sacred native magic is taught in boston of all places??? rowling, you didn’t even try to research this shit.

boston wouldn’t even be where the new england wizarding school would be in. it would be in fucking salem, massachusetts. fight me if you disagree but i will fight back so hard on that shit. midwest would have its own school. the south would have one. texas would have its own school because fuck texas, nobody wants them. and florida would have its own school because where the fuck are we in?? the south?? north cuba?? who fucking knows. and let’s not forget louisianna would have its own school and the african americans in the north would have their own school too and asians in the u.s.??? their own schools. and the native americans would have a shit ton of smaller schools because there are different tribes with different histories and some wouldn’t be able to share a school because of those differences like in asia.

and canada would have two schools because fuck you if you think that french canadians (read: quebec) would willingly share a school with english canadians and don’t tell me that canada wouldn’t have tried pushing everyone into one school where the question of “what about french-speakers? what about us catholics? we’re magicians but we’re still good french catholics and we’re sure as hell not practicing protestantism”. and actually, i’m wrong. it would be three schools as indigenous people in canada fucking exist.

i’m done with the school shit (not done but at least on this post). like, okay, tell me how the fuck fantastic beasts takes place in harlem yet even the fucking extras are a bunch of crackers? i’m sorry jk, i didn’t realize that the jazz age wasn’t led by black people and that harlem hasn’t been hsitorically black. thank you, a white english woman, for teaching me that. thank you very much.

how the fuck is it that we have native american-based magic being used and yet not one single fucking native american in the entire movie? tell me. i want a good ass explanation for that shit because so far the only one i’m thinking of is that rowling just supports cultural appropriation.

how the fuck is it that newt schammander is seen as an angel when he literally was the one to begin werewolf oppression? oppression of the people that are supposed to be hiv+ gays??

an abuse victim is literally turned into a fucking monster and then killed. i cannot fathom this shit.

the film is supposed to be a parallel to racism yet cracker cast.

i think i’m done for now. now excuse me as i go scream because i just can’t. fight me on anything but i swear to god i am pissed and i will not be kind. i am done with jk rowling’s horseshit. absolute horseshit.

[i-surviv3d-bitchh]

My father has been a total dick to me for basically my whole life, but recently, realizing how pissed I am at him, he’s backed off a lot. And he’s been actually really helpful with my anxiety--I’m constantly freaking out about my bills, and how I’m being crushed under debt. But he told me, for one thing, that I’m not going to die. Our family would never let me be homeless. His girlfriend only paid off her student debt a year or two back, and she’s in her fifties. If I hurt my credit, I hurt my credit, whatever! It’s going to be okay.

So my fears of financial ruin are largely mitigated. But that’s just half the problem--the other half is the SHAME I feel for not being completely independent and self-sustaining.

I just graduated college six months ago. I’m still figuring out how to function in the adult world. I have ADHD, and that has impacted my ability to work enough to live above basic survival. I’m moving forward, but it’s not instantaneous or easy.

And my family...oh, shit, you know what, actually, it’s my mom. It’s just my mom. Her boyfriend bothers me a bit, but not really much at all--it’s just my mom.

As background, my mom has lived off of men for 95% of her life. She had a rough childhood and was taught, as a baby boomer, that she SHOULD rely on men, and thus never developed any real skills. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s a shopaholic and criticizes everyone else in the world for not making money, despite her own failed efforts to make anything.

I’m making about $150 dollars a week right now. It’s total shit. I’m scraping by. When I go to my mom’s house for a day or two, I have to eat out--I’m an extremely picky eater, like, I have psychological problems with eating, and I’ll starve if I can’t find something I can stomach, because everything else makes me nauseous. I spend one to three bucks on a meal, one or two times a day, but JUST when I’m staying at my mom’s house. Back at my place, I could go a whole week without eating out; though most weeks, I eat out just once or twice. But again, less than $5. 

And she blames this apparent flippancy with my money for my not having health insurance, and now, for having trouble affording first month’s rent at a new place since I’m being kicked out next month. I need to see a doctor for one or two things, but they’re not life-threatening or causing me any daily inconvenience, so I just told her I’m going to go within the next six months, but I just can’t right now. And she flipped out that I need a pap smear because I might have fucking cervical cancer. Which freaked me out, with my anxiety, but I talked to my dad about my symptoms and realized they could all be attributed to other, more likely sources (stress, trauma, yeast infection, etc). So, the fuck, Mom?

As for rent, my friend’s family is planning to give me a pretty nice discount for a bedroom in a townhouse they own, though the price will probably increase within the next few months as I get on my feet. It’s Christmastime, and I don’t think that, between my successful 30-year-old brother (who owns 2 pawn shops), my decently-employed father, my mother’s boyfriend (maybe) and my grandparents (and maybe uncle) that I couldn’t round up 300-400 bucks for rent as a Christmas present. But my mom flips out, accusing me of spending my money willy-nilly, and having to rely on others because of it.

This coming from the woman who blatantly lied, telling me her boyfriend would pay me back, in order to get me to buy a $340 bus ticket for my bum brother to come home--with my graduation money. Her boyfriend, out of pity and not obligation, waived a $140 debt I owed him, but I’m still out $200. Permanently, essentially. Speaking of my 27-year-old homeless brother, he has basically been living off of the family for ten years. He’s utterly aimless and a pathological liar, saying whatever he has to in order to scrape by. He’s “spiritual”--“I don’t understand why everyone is so concerned with money,” he tells me. “They get so worked up, they should learn to let go. *I* don’t worry about money.” Fuck you, dude, you don’t worry about money because you’re using everyone else’s money to live. Both my father and my mother’s boyfriend have squandered thousands of dollars trying to get him on his feet, but he’s a lost cause. I love my brother, and he’s not a mean or angry person; he’s actually really nice and has a warm personality--but he manipulates so he can live as he pleases, and he lies about feeling bad about it. However, I’m pretty damn sure he has some mental illness (but he refuses to see a psychiatrist) so I give him a bit of a pass.

I bring this up, though, because I’m fucking 22 years old. I JUST graduated college. And I’m struggling. Is that a fucking sin? I have mental illness; they KNOW this. And I’ve gotten SO much better and I’m SO much more successful than I was even a year ago, but it’s never enough. I’ve always been recovering, I’ve gotten worse at times but it’s been a general climb; but I’m not superwoman. Yes, my other brother, a year older than me, is sustaining himself out of pure willpower, working 40+ hours a week. But we are not the same, everyone has different abilities and disabilities, and I cannot do what he does, at least not right now.

But how dare I need help? This from the woman who conned me out of money; promised me graduation money that never appeared; convinced her boyfriend to buy her a $5,000 porcelain doll; collected $800 a month in child support for both my brother and I even though he had his own place and I was off at college, and for a whole semester, never sent me the $200 a month she promised; told me, a month out of college when I’d just gotten a decent job, that I shouldn’t go asking for that $340 back because I didn’t “need” it; and on and on and on. No, she’s not a completely horrible person, yes, she’s done a lot for me, but no, that doesn’t erase this character flaw of hers or her fault for treating me this way. 

She’s literally the worst person I know with money, she makes barely anything herself and relies on her boyfriend, and sometimes lies and cheats to get what she wants. But she is so quick to point fingers and shame you for getting a fucking burger. 

Writing this has been very cathartic. I’m trying to be less ashamed, and it makes me feel better to realize that the person shaming me the most is the one who has the least right to do so. Americans owe over $1.45 trillion in student debt; I should feel no shame for having any, because it’s basically just what you have to do to get an education and a job people like me are fit for (I would die of exhaustion doing any manual labor); just about every college student has some; it’s going to end up hurting the economy and private loan servicers more than us when we inevitably start defaulting and I kind of like watching capitalism--I mean, the world--burn. ADHD is a genuine disability that I accept that I have and will overcome, but it will take time, and I’m not going to rush myself because that’ll just make shit worse. I’m twenty fucking two, and most of my age group is floundering right now; I’m not alone and my lack of success isn’t because of any more or worse character flaws than the next person. I don’t deserve to feel ashamed for my financial woes, considering the state of US business practices and politics, as well as the simple reality that very few people are comfortable by 22. I’m just going to try to...take a fucking chill pill. 

[wiltedeyesandtwistedlies]

This topic is very important to me. Speaking as someone who has had disordered eating for years and only just started recovering, starting this medication hasn’t helped. I’m falling back into old habits and I don’t know how to stop it. I find myself thinking this is a good thing, I can finally starve for more than three days at a time. And I have. With no appetite, it’s so easy to slip right back into this toxic mindset.

I’m not nearly as bad as I used to be, but I’m getting there fast. I thought that I was healthy enough that I could handle it. That I was in such a good mindset and knew how to reason with myself whenever the urge hit—and I hadn’t had an urge in so long!—that I could be strong enough to overcome what was bound to trigger a setback. I was wrong.

It didn’t help that when I told my mom that I was going to talk to my doctor about maybe having adhd, she squealed she was so excited. She said, “That’s great! You’ll lose so much weight if they give you a prescription!!” Not that I would finally be able to think straight, not that it might lessen the severity of my anxiety and depression, but that I would lose so much weight. Coming from the woman who knew I was anorexic and should have realized how badly that statement would affect me.

Then she proceeded to tell me about Emily, a girl I knew from before I went to college. Apparently she had just been diagnosed with adhd a month before and was taking Adderall for it. She had already been so skinny. She literally had the body type of my dreams. I based my goal weight off of her. But because of this medication, she’s lost a fuck ton of weight to a very unhealthy point. And my mom praises her for it, encouraging her to lose more and more. And encouraging me to be like her. Because losing weight will solve all my problems right? NO. It’s important I remember that it won’t. That mentality is why I starve, why I obsess over calories and carbs, why I can’t eat a single meal without feeling guilt that I’m not fasting but feel guilty that I can’t be normal when I am fasting. That mentality makes my anxiety and depression so much fucking worse and I can’t live like that again.

After I was prescribed the same medication, all my parents have talked about is how good this will be for me. My dad is hoping I’ll be less depressed but my mom is obsessed with the idea that I’ll lose weight. She’s said on many occasions that she should see if she can get on it too so that she can lose weight the “easy way.”

The thing is, I’m really not losing any weight. My body has gotten so used to the horrible way I’ve treated it, that even after fasting for days, eating only one small meal—more like a snack—on the days I do eat, I haven’t lost a single pound. In fact, I’ve gained. So my doctor isn’t concerned because there are no obvious signs. And my mom can’t believe it’s “not working.” Because that was the real point of getting this diagnosis right? Only to starve easier and finally lose that awful weight. Not to help my brain function, not to maybe improve the severity of my mental illnesses she was SO worried about, and damn sure not to allow me some peace of mind knowing I’m working to help myself not flunk out of fucking college.

I started to love my body. To genuinely feel happy about it instead of being disgusted and loathing myself for it. I used to avoid all reflective surfaces for fear of seeing my body. I used to be so revolted every time I accidently caught the barest glimpse, that my stomach would heave violently and I couldn’t stop myself from throwing up. Just thinking about it would cause the same reaction. But I got better. I was recovering. I didn’t think that was possible. And this has sent me back so far, ruined so much hard work and progress to accept myself. I am disgusted with how so many people treat this. As if it’s a good thing to praise when it’s really horribly dangerous and something to fear. Adhd medications aren’t a weight loss method, they aren’t an easy diet pill. They are to help people with adhd deal with their symptoms. Treating them otherwise only strengthens the eating disorder mentality. Our culture to harm ourselves to reach impossible beauty standards is already so toxic. Necessary medical help shouldn’t be treated the same.

I’m sorry that this is so personal. But I feel more people should know the risks. Adhd meds can cause you to start disordered eating habits. And if you already have an eating disorder, it will make it significantly worse. It’s so important people understand the risks before they are too far in to get back out. If I have to bare myself so that more people get it through their heads that it isn’t something to fucking encourage, then so be it.

To make a very complex question short, what are your thoughts on appetite/weight loss caused by adhd meds (as a genuine side effect of actually necessary medicine)?

Two members of my immediate family have ADHD, one adult and one child, and we have had many conversations about this topic. I’ll be honest and say that this side effect makes me very nervous, especially for young people, because the negative effects of disordered eating and eating less than the body requires to function are so harmful to young people’s health. At the end of the day, semi-starvation is semi-starvation to the body, no matter whether its caused by food insecurity, dieting, or medication side effects, so this is absolutely something that I think needs careful attention in the medical and ADHD advocacy communities.

Doctors do monitor people for weight loss when they are on this medication, but as we all know, some bodies lose weight more easily that others. So someone could be suffering the effects of under-nourishment without losing weight, and those negative effects would likely be overlooked by most people.

I also worry about fat phobia and how it might influence people’s reactions to under-eating or weight loss. I suspect that some people are prescribed these medications specifically because weight loss is seen as a beneficial side effect.

Obviously this doesn’t mean people shouldn’t take ADHD meds. As with most medications, each person has to weigh the pros and cons. And if people are taking these medications, I think it is worth developing plans and supports to ensure that they are eating regularly and adequately.

[snarktheater]

Could you not say qu**r so often, please? Or at least tag it? Alternatives could be SGA or trans (depending on which part you're referring to) or LGBT? It's uncomfortable to quite a lot of people if it's used as an umbrella term too. Thank you

While I’m not interested in delving into that discourse on this blog…well, I guess it was gonna happen sooner or later. 

So just to be clear, before I say anything else, let me preface this post by saying that I’m going to state my position on this, but I will not admit any further discussion on the subject on this blog. You’re free to talk to me @talysalankil​ if you feel like having further discussion, but this blog isn’t the right place to do so. Also I’m going to use links from my personal blog because it’s just easier. But frankly if you want better sources on the subject, they’re out there.

Warning for massive wall of text. I tried to structure it, but there you go.

“Queer” has been reclaimed for decades. Many people who are much more knowledgeable than myself have pointed out that it’s been used at least as long as LGBT as an umbrella term (and that it was reclaimed before SGA was even invented), and it has the benefit of being inclusionary. The fact that is a historical slur cannot and should not be ignored, but the thing is, there is literally not a single word in use to refer to people who aren’t cis and straight that hasn’t been used as a slur at one point or another. Fuck’s sake, people still use “gay” today as a derogatory term, even when discussing things that have nothing to do with sexuality.

Meanwhile, SGA is an acronym that takes its root from conversion therapy (yes, really; SGA discoursers have claimed otherwise but survivors of conversion therapy attest to it), so I’m pretty sure it is equally trigger or even more triggering that queer to people.

SGL (same-gender loving) is a less historically charged acronym that I feel less strongly about for that reason, but it also comes from AAVE and I feel like there’s an element of cultural appropriation for me to use it as a white person, just like I wouldn’t use two-spirits because it’s a native american term. 

But that’s not my only issue with either acronym. See, the issue I have with SGA/SGL are multiple, and I’m going to put a cut here because this is getting out of hand:

It is an inherently binarist concept. Meaning, it either excludes nonbinary people entirely, since for many of them, the concept of “same gender” is compeltely irrelevant; or it partially erases nonbinary identities by grouping them together as “male-aligned” or “female-aligned”, i.e. implying they’re “basically a man” or “basically a woman”. Which, even if that is something some nonbinary people do identify with, is not something anyone should be entitled to force on people. Plus, you know, I guess people who aren’t on the male/female spectrum or agender people don’t exist at all and/or don’t belong in the community according to those people?

Bisexuality and polysexuality does not necessarily include “SGA”, even for cis male/female people. Implying that a bi person is straight if they experience attraction for the opposite binary gender and for nonbinary people is, once again, erasing those nonbinary people’s identities.

Because of these two points, the concept of SGA is inherently transphobic, since you cannot use it without assuming people’s gender.

This also adds a shade of exclusion of intersex people, whose status with regards to the community has always been complicated. Some intersex people don’t want to be included, some do. But “SGA and trans” doesn’t leave room for those who do, but don’t identify as trans (and those people exist), to join the community, even though they deserve a place.

Bisexual and polysexual people are constantly erased, and reducing their right to belong to the community as their attraction to their own gender is harmful rhetoric even for those who do experience that attraction (such as myself). It is the kind of thinking that leads to saying they’re “basically gay and using bisexual to ease into it” or that they’re “basically straight and just experimenting/lying” (the latter is particularly directed at women, especially if they are in a committed relationship with men, while the former is particularly directed at men, including myself). I am not “basically gay” and I don’t want to use an umbrella term for my community that reduces me to that in all but name.

More biphobia: it assumes that there’s such a thing as “straight passing privilege” and that anyone who’s not presently dating someone from their own gender is benefitting from that. That line of thought literally started off as biphobic rhetoric. Oh, and, you know, “straight passing privilege” is just being in the closet. Kind of like how TERFS say that trans women experience male privilege instead of being trans women in the closet. Apparently the closet only applies to you if you’re gay.

The unifying experience of the community is not homophobia. I mean, the fact that you have to use “SGA and/or trans” should be proof enough that you’re already adding trans people as an afterthought. But beyond that, biphobia is a different beast from homophobia, as is transphobia, as is aphobia. They stem from a similar form of societal bigotry, and there is intersection (a bi person dating someone of the same gender will probably experience similar issues as a gay couple, corrective rape which lesbians and ace people are both targeted by), but there are also differences of specificities (I already mentioned bi erasure; ace/aro people are targeted for being “mentally ill”; and I don’t think I have to explain the specificities of transphobia in a world where “bathroom bills” is a phrase that exists)

As others have pointed out, the phrasing makes it sound like the community started with “SGA people” and then was gracious enough to include trans people, which is historical revisionism.

The queer label offers grey areas for people who need time to figure out their own identity or just cannot place their identity on the existing, mainstream labels. SGA does the exact opposite of that by forcing people to place themselves on one side or another of a pretty ill-defined line.

Even if it weren’t for any of these points, the term has now been claimed as the rallying cry for exclusionary LGBT+ people, particularly to target ace and aro people. And by that I mean it started of as that, but let’s pretend it was already around and was claimed by those people.  Well, I will not stand for that, just like I’m not standing by TERF rhetorics. Interestingly enough, “queer is a slur” only emerged as discourse at the same time (and usually from the same people) who tried to enforce that exclusion.

LGBT+ aphobes have time and again shown that they were recycling biphobic and transphobic rhetorics (as I’ve shown myself earlier in this list), and in many cases, have proven to be the same people who used biphobic and transphobic rhetorics a few years ago, and that they haven’t given up on those views, merely grown more careful about where and how they advertise them.

If you want more I suggest you run a search for “SGA” on my main blog. It’ll be a lot of the same idea as what I just summarized here, just with more details.

So…yeah. If anything, I do not want to be included under the SGA umbrella, even though I am a bisexual man who so far has only ever dated other men. Well, one other man, but my dating history is kind of irrelevant anyway. Point is, I’m not using that umbrella. And I have every right to reclaim queer since…well, I just said I’m a bi man, which I’m pretty sure that should be enough.

I don’t have as many issues with LGBT, but at the same time, the acronym has also been pushed as “it’s LGBT and only LGBT therefore anyone who’s not lesbian, gay, bi or trans doesn’t belong” by the same people, enough that it feels sour in my mouth. I still use it liberally, although I try to use LGBT+ or other variations, such as LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIA+, LGBTQIAP+, etc, but ultimately, queer is just easier and has the benefit of being more inclusive than any of the above.

I understand that it’ll make some people uncomfortable, but until someone comes up with a word that makes no one uncomfortable (which, again, does not exist yet—the closest we got was MOGAI, but that one was targeted by a smear campaign from, you guessed it, exclusionists who didn’t like that it included ace/aro or trans people and now people can’t use it without starting a similar debate as this), I’m gonna have to settle for one, and I’ll pick the one that makes me the most comfortable, because I am a member of this community too and I have the right to do that. Just like you have the right to use SGA and it’ll make me uncomfortable, but I won’t come to your blog sending you an anon message asking you to stop, because I understand that no umbrella exists that satisfies everyone at the moment, and I have more pressing issues to deal with.

If that’s an issue, feel free to unfollow or whatever else it is you feel like doing. But I will not budge on this.

[christopherokamoto]

"My dearest gays and lesbians —

I’ve loved you since before I even knew you. From a young age, I was drawn to your transgressive sexuality and gender expression, your courage to be yourselves in the face of oppression, your fabulous rainbows and your sensible shoes.

I’ve marched in your parades, joined and organized protests for your rights, volunteered with your local groups and worked for your most prominent national organization.

I’ve loved you fiercely and advocated for you tirelessly. But I’ve finally accepted the fact that you will never love me back because I’m a bisexual woman, and you have shown me time and again that you are not here for me or my community, despite the numerous disparities we face in comparison to you and the non-LGBTQ community.

You have shown me time and again that you are not here for me or my community.

When I was a newly out baby bi, I co-founded the first ever LGBT student organization at my Southern Baptist university with this beautiful and charming lesbian classmate with whom I fell madly and angstily in love. She was the first of many who told me I should just “choose” to be a lesbian.

Then there was the time I was at a drag show and the performer came up to me and asked me why I was at a gay bar. I said “I’m bisexual” into her microphone, and she cackled wildly and said, “Oh honey, we all know that’s just a stop on the way to gay town.”

In grad school, a “straight” female friend repeatedly called me greedy and suggested I was promiscuous whenever I mentioned my bisexuality, even though we slept together several times. But she wasn’t gay, and apparently bisexuality wasn’t a valid option.

Then there were the countless times one of you told me my identity wasn’t real, was just a phase, or that I wasn’t committed to the cause because I could choose to pass as straight.

There were the countless times one of you told me my identity wasn’t real.

Too many times, I thought you might be right, that my identity was something strange, that maybe I was fooling myself about my lifetime of attraction to people across the gender spectrum. And I sincerely thought if I just kept fighting for you, for all of us, that I would prove myself worthy of your love and acceptance.

Then I took a two-year fellowship working at the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights nonprofit. I knew going in that, like any large movement organization, they had a rocky past with both trans and bi communities, and a tendency toward centrist politics. But I thought maybe I could effect change from within. What a silly, naive bisexual I was.

By far, the most pervasive biphobia I have ever experienced was during my two years working at the Human Rights Campaign. When I started in 2014, the Human Rights Campaign website didn’t have a single bi-specific resource, much less a topics page about one of the four identities it claimed to represent.

The staff who identified as bisexual were rarely empowered or allowed to do bi-specific programmatic work, if they were even out to their gay and lesbian colleagues.

I met bi community leaders, and tried desperately to heal the deep rifts and end the organization’s longstanding neglect. I believed HRC could do better for a group that constituted half of the LGBTQ community.

In my two-year tenure, with the support and feedback of a small crew of wonderful coworkers, I created the content for a bisexual page on the HRC website, wrote three of the five publications for the page and edited a fourth, all co-branded with national bi advocacy organizations, wrote nearly all of the bi-related blog content and op-eds, organized an employee resource group for bi, queer, pansexual and fluid (bi+) coworkers, worked with the diversity staff to bring in bi community leaders to do trainings, developed and conducted my own bi community cultural competency trainings for board members, staff, and volunteers and coordinated all of HRC’s programming for Bisexual Awareness Week.

When bi community leader Robyn Ochs came to do a training with HRC staff, a cis white gay man who directed the organization’s entire field operation said, “You know, I just never think about bisexual people.” No shit you don’t.

Six months have passed since I left HRC, and it seems that a handful of blog and social media posts during Bisexual Awareness Week last September is the only thing the organization could muster in my absence. Half of my out bi+ coworkers (love y’all!) have left and the others don’t have positions that allow them to do the kind of work I was able to do.

It seems clear that what started with one angry bisexual attempting to effect change from within also ended when that same angry bisexual left.

To be fair, HRC isn’t by any means the only national LGBTQ organization with this problem. Several national groups have a habit of using “gay and transgender” as shorthand for the LGBTQ community, completely erasing us. Although a few of our national LGBTQ organizations have openly bi+ staff who are doing amazing bi-specific advocacy, our numbers are dwindling and virtually no one else is doing bi work in these organizations except for those few brave souls.

To put it bluntly, when bisexual people aren’t around to advocate for ourselves and push for change from within, that work simply doesn’t get done, because the vast majority of y’all lesbians and gay men don’t give a shit about us. And yet, we still fight for you and with you.

When Amber Heard got the shit beat out of her by Johnny Depp and the media blamed her bisexuality, you were silent. When right-wing weirdos launched a public attack on a native bi+ leader who spoke at a White House event, more silence. When gay icon Boy George went on a blatantly biphobic Twitter rant, still nothing.

In the words of esteemed and dedicated bi+ leader Faith Cheltenham, former president of BiNet USA and a personal mentor:

Until bisexuals stop being the unmentionables of the LGBTQIA community we will continue to be the punching bags of both gay and straight, with respite nowhere to be found. If bisexuals believe there are circles of influence that they are systematically prevented from accessing to their detriment, they believe correctly.

Until bisexuals find equitable representations of their organizations in litigator roundtables, national and state policy roundtables, legal policy teams, national and state transgender policy roundtables, rapid response communications groups or faith working groups, we should protest our exclusion.

Lesbians and gay men, this angry bisexual is tired of being your afterthought. I’m exhausted by showing up for you, time and again, with no reciprocity. I’m tired of facing more biphobia from organizations that claim to represent bi+ people than I do in the straight cis world.

Lesbians and gay men, this angry bisexual is tired of being your afterthought.

I’m tired of trying to prove that I’m worthy of your love while you seem to forget or deny that I exist.

Bisexual people are tired of being told that our voices, our needs, our lives are a distraction from the “real” issues, when we constitute half of what you claim as your LGBT community.

And more than anything, I am tired of watching my fellow bi+ advocates — beautiful, talented and resilient people — burn out, break down, get fired for standing our ground and take our own lives because you make it so fucking hard for us to feel safe and affirmed.

Even after 15 years of being out, my voice still shakes sometimes when I say the word “bisexual” aloud to one of you, and I get a little jolt of adrenaline, bracing for the snarky comment, the rolled eyes, the dismissal of my existence.

I’m exhausted by showing up for you, time and again, with no reciprocity.

Let me be clear about what is at stake here, lesbians and gays. Bisexual people are literally dying because of your neglect, erasure and exclusion. We are sicker, both physically and mentally, than you are because more of us are closeted from our communities and our healthcare providers.

Our youth face more bullying and harassment and higher risk of suicide than their gay and lesbian peers do, and we all have less social support.

Sixty-one percent of bisexual women such as myself will be raped, beaten or stalked by our intimate partners — and as Heard’s experience shows, our identities will likely be blamed for our own abuse. For the numerous bi+ community members who are also transgender, disabled and/or people of color, these staggering disparities are compounded.

I watched HRC make its own bed in 2016, once again ignoring the voices of the LGBTQ community’s most marginalized members, and dumping its resources into mind bogglingly ill-conceived endorsements, most notably the political campaign of a candidate who waited until the last possible moment to “evolve” on marriage equality (sorry that job didn’t pan out for you, Chad).

I knew the time was coming when bisexuals, queers, transgender people, people of color, undocumented and other marginalized groups within the LGBTQ community would be asked to once again push aside our needs, close ranks with white cis gays and lesbians, and overlook our differences — you know, for the sake of preserving marriage equality.

And sure enough, here we are, fighting for scraps from a table at which we have never been welcome, and once again being told that our needs — our very survival — don’t warrant attention, visibility, funding or resources.

As the LGBTQ community faces an uncertain future under Donald Trump’s presidency, I’m giving up on you, gays and lesbians. I don’t love you the same way anymore. You broke my heart too many times. I will no longer fight for the liberation of people who actively perpetuate my community’s oppression.

I’m too busy just trying to survive."

[gryffon]

gonna post that thing i wrote about my abusive ex, this isnt a callout but its just like, all the shit ive been wanting to say and havent felt like i could. gonna namedrop people, gonna not give a fuck, i cant cw for everything but there are rape mentions, physical assault mentions and like. general feelings that happen the wake of emotional abuse.

i dont check often but my ex has deleted the blog she was currently using, (@windowpainter or somethng. she was @hamgubber before, previously @miniaturehorse if anybody remembers from when we were totgether and would post on each others blogs nonstop lol) she has a history of lurking around and worming her way into befriending popular people in online subcommunities i am part of or adjacent to. i have not spoken to her since i realized she was abusive and started to try to pull out of our codependent dynamic. she panicked when i realized actions speak louder than words and her long winded apologies, excuses, and textbookish tripe about DBT and getting better or whatever meant nothing in the face of months of repeated lying, breaking of promises, degradation, disrespect to me as a person, disregard of my physical disabilities, insults, patronization, manipulation, multiple instances of cheating, antagonization, neglect, extortion and overall emotional abuse. when she caught wind that i was going to leave her she wrote me a series of emails totaling over 30,000 words, all varying from "i love you please dont leave me we can work this out. breaking up with me is weak." to "you are not a victim. you are not a victim. here is a categorized list of the ways in which you are abusive while i downplay my own behaviors and patronize you. here's an ultimatum and you are not allowed to respond with more than one sentence." to which i disregarded and wrote up a long, thoughtful reply and chose to never send, ending contact with her for good. this was like, 2013 or 2014.

she never called me out, and i never called her out despite giving very serious consideration to it. i was listening to the advice of my therapist at the time, who told me that she thrives on drama and spends her life constantly creating it, and to give her that kind of attention was exactly what she wanted and would only engage her more in my life and be more degrading to my mental health. the best course of action was to give her nothing, and not give her any more power or influence over me, any footholds or any more of my time, consideration, energy or thought. if anybody reading this has endured emotional abuse from somebody you love, you know it is extremely difficult to totally ignore somebody like this, especially when that person has isolated you from the majority of your support system and friends and you have shaped your entire identity around your relationship with your abuser. but i have followed my therapists advice. i have been working on moving on.

still, over the past few years ive had my mutuals contacted by her friends and told to stop talking to me. ive had people i follow put her and her friends on my dash, which up until recently would send me into a panic that lasted several hours. i have a lot of people in the lesbian/commie/leftist/trans/etc/whatever circles on tumblr who just like randomly have me blocked for no reason (since i dont give a fuck and im going for a spirit of total honesty here, ill name drop @butchcommunist, who she dated for a period of time iirc. a lot of my followeds and mutuals reblog from her. i made a point not to check either of their blogs after finding out but it was upsetting since i would see julia all over my dash. that connection still exists in my mind and its pretty upsetting.). ultimately, and rationally i know that these things do not matter that much. i have a vibrant, healthy and loving circle of friends outside of the internet/tumblr and some randos on the internet having me blocked doesn't really mean anything in the scheme of things. still, when this shit happened it felt terrifying and i was horrified, my emotions magnified by the effects of emotional abuse. despite my VERY intense urge for closure, i try to keep as far away from her as possible.

i gave this woman a year of my life that in my memory is defined by her. i was very madly in love and i spent countless hours at her beck and call, countless hours in calls and in text conversations with her, countless hours supporting her through breakdowns, countless hours talking through her fears and worries, countless hours defending her when she stirred up drama, countless hours defending her horrible behavior to my friends, countless hours rationalizing her abuse to myself and people who approached me with worry, countless hours loving her and wondering why it felt so horrifically painful to be with somebody who told you they wanted to spend the rest of their life with you. almost all the money i was making at the time was spent on her. i helped her move across the continent. i had her at my house for weeks. she fucking took out a loan from my mom. despite how big a role she played in my life, over the past 3 years since our falling out i have only checked her blog less times than i can count on my fingers, usually in moments of distress and in the spirit of self-destruction.

i know for a fact she has convinced her friends to check my blog for her god knows how many times, telling them about her fear of me as a 'dangerous person', that i’m going to call her out, her "fear" that im obsessing over her and am quietly plotting to ruin her life. she's scared for a good reason, but not because i'm an abusive bitter ex out on a smear campaign to slander her innocent name and ruin her life in the name of revenge. she's scared because she knows i have some undeniably serious receipts on her. i have receipts of her sending me a horrifying letter her ex had written her describing a graphic instance of a time my ex had raped her, and of her admitting outright to the rape. i have logs of her checking her rape victim's blog and telling me how exasperated she was her victim was still angry with her even after she apologized, and couldn't understand why her victim was stuck on her and wouldnt move on, going on to blame modern feminism and its tendency to portray abusers and rapists as incorrigible. i have receipts of her admitting to perpetrating emotional and physical abuse in her previous relationships, like an instance where she describes losing control of herself and beating her ex senselessly. i have talked with exes, who confirm stories she had told me where she would cut her arms in her presence, deep enough that her life was at risk, and then refuse to go to the hospital, leaving her girlfriend to either bandage and tend to her wounds or else my ex would bleed out and die. those are just the more horrific ones. i have many receipts that document her emotional abuse towards me as well, which im barely even getting into here. i know plenty of other people have experiences with her and accounts of interacting with her that undeniably portrays her as a serial abuser, rapist, and extortionist and exposes the falsehood of her charming and intelligent persona.

several times i have considered calling her out because she has proven herself beyond a doubt that she is a serial abuser who leaves a trail of burning bridges in her wake. i have no doubts that the evidence i have against her is completely solid, and her claims of my status as an abuser that she perpetuates to her friends are built on pillars of sand. i am not afraid of anything she could bring to the table anymore. i have spoken quite a bit with exes and ex friends (some of which sided with her during our breakup and who eventually ended up cutting off, and we reconnected with years after), and they all suggest the same shit. she is manipulative to her very core and will not stop hurting and using people until she dies.

these are big claims and again, this isn't a callout and the reason im not providing the logs is because im just trying to get out my thoughts in an honest way and im not trying to make a case about anything. this is cathartic. im so fucking tired of feeling like its a secret. i dont even know what blog shes using or whatever and while that scares me, i don't care anymore. people who are still semi-big names in the online communities i drift around in still have me blocked and a lot of times i wish i could message them and tell them "hey, you know she's wrong, and i have absolute proof." but my self worth is high enough that i dont need to go around convincing every single rando who doesn't like me that im a good person, not to mention the risk of indirect contact through those who's lives she is still present in.

for a long time the way i coped was by holding onto the idea that she would apologize to me, and i could finally have closure. she apologized to the ex i mentioned earlier, and because of that i hoped she would grow enough as a person to realize that there is literally no way any rational being could look at our relationship and say that, yeah, i was the one hurting her. apparently thats too much credit to give her, and i realize she only apologized to her ex because she wanted me to think she was changing, growing and a good person at heart who just had a rough past. after enough time, enough conversations with people who she was previously close to, i have accepted that she will never truly dedicate herself to getting better. she will always be using people, always be hurting people, always lying, always hypocritical, always disingenuous and always covering her ass by hiding under the language of victimhood, trauma, recovery, self-improvment, DBT, and therapy to convince her victims that her offences are missteps in her journey to improvement. 

this isn't a callout, this isn't meant to be circulated as a warning, this isn't meant to be any sort of vengeance or crusade. i dont even think shes fuckin on tumblr anymore lol. i don't care anymore. i dont care what people take this as. this is me writing an honest, open, reflective, cathartic processing of the scenario that impacted my teenage years so severely.  this isnt concise or well written and i dont need it to be. i've spent too many years wanting to talk about this, needing to process it more openly, but being riddled with horrific anxiety and fear, worrying about her and her social influence and her ability to impact my life. but its been a long time. ive worked hard at this. ive worked hard to get past this. ive worked hard to learn how to be with people who will treat me with kindness. i needed to write this and i needed to post this without editing every sentence a thousand times. this is largely unedited. i dont care if this makes me look pathetic or obsessed with her ive been letting these feelings stir for years and im just ready to breathe again.

if you want to talk about this post DM me or whatever. if you know her and think its all bullshit and you want logs, sure. i dont have anything to hide anymore. her name is viv and she is the worst person i have ever met and i feel sorry that i gave her so much of my love. thanks.