#I just really don't dig a lot of people is what it is

[pinkkop]

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide:

Spare Me Your Mercy vs. real life

@elimstilnotgarak has got me thinking about Spare Me Your Mercy and specifically euthanasia again so while everyone is talking about how the screenwriter Lux talked about NC scenes in their interview I wanted to talk about something completely different that stood out to me when I read the interview for the first time (other than the NC scene talk), which is this section:

"Euthanasia doesn’t mean you can request an injection to die simply because you’re tired of life. Even in Europe, where euthanasia is legal, there are strict requirements. You must have a certified medical condition specified in the law, endorsed by at least two medical specialists, and the illness must be truly incurable and that you are waiting for death. The purpose of this law is to prevent these individuals from suffering. Instead of suffering for another year, they can die. It's not about being bored with life or lazy to live or not liking yourself when you're old, so you let them inject you with a lethal dose. They don't do that. Many people misunderstand that if you don't want to live, you can go for euthanasia."

The thing is, euthanasia in the form shown and talked about in the show isn't legal in the majority of Europe. Only 5 countries in Europe have legal "Active voluntary euthanasia" which is what Dr. Kan practices and the rest of Europe (except for a couple of micro nations) only have legal "Passive euthanasia" (refusal of treatment / withdrawal of life support)(source: Wikipedia).

I found this particularly interesting because Switzerland is not one of those countries. This made me want to dig further because as long as I can remember media has always been portraying Switzerland as the place where you go if you want to die.

Like in the movie "Me Before You" Sam Claflin's character goes to Switzerland at the end because he doesn't want to live as someone paralyzed from the neck down anymore and even in the BL Every You, Every Me Top's character is going to Switzerland in episode 3, which was the moment I knew episode 4 was going to be really sad because even if they didn't say it explicitly I guessed why he was going to specifically Switzerland.

So why is it that Switzerland seems to have an image of being the place you go if you want to die legally?

It turns out that what IS legal in Switzerland is assisted suicide which has been legal there for over 40 years but even assisted suicide is only legal in 6 countries in Europe in total, if you only count the countries where it's both legal, legislated and regulated (source: Wikipedia).

Switzerland is one of the few places that allow assisted suicide for non-resident foreigners and I'm assuming this is why Switzerland has the mentioned reputation.

If you're curious about the specifics of euthanasia and assisted suicide and how it is enacted in countries like Switzerland I found a really interesting webinar/talk on youtube where a Swiss Palliative Care Doctor talks about her experience with assisted suicide in Switzerland hosted by a Canadian human-rights charity Dying With Dignity Canada in 2022. I found it super insightful and I would highly recommend watching/listening to it because they get into a lot of specifics about how it works in the real world and since the guest is a Swiss doctor and the organization is Canadian you get a broader focus than just what it's like in Switzerland.

One thing I found particularly interesting about the webinar is how Dr. Erika talks about euthanasia (in the form Dr. Kan practices) as if it is not likely to become legal in Switzerland which makes me think that Spare Me Your Mercy and its source book, Euthanasia, should really have been about assisted suicide, but getting into those kinds of details in the book or show would probably not have worked and the book title of Euthanasia is a little cooler than Assisted Suicide 😂

In the small amount of research I've done it also doesn't seem completely clear whether assisted suicide is considered a form of euthanasia but what Dr. Kan does in Spare Me Your Mercy is definitely not helping the patients commit assisted suicide because for that to be the case the patient themselves would need to be administering the lethal dose of medicine.

Hope you found this insightful and I highly recommend doing the dishes while listening to the webinar!

[dewitty1]

Saturday Six (Stuff)

It's super irritating when people don't stay out of your space. I'd rant about what I'm talking about but it's wayyyyyy too long. I just really get annoyed when people get in your designated space.( •̀ω•́ )σ

It's going to be in the 100s°F this weekend. And of course our AC has decided it's going to act up.(;*´Д`)ﾉ

My tomatoes are starting to ripen finally!(ෆ ͒•∘̬• ͒)◞

Got a big work project coming up! It's gonna be really cool.“ψ(｀∇´)ψ

Why is getting recycling done such a pain in some parts (this part of bum f*ck E WA) of the USA so hard?(๑•॒̀ ູ॒•́๑)

If you haven't seen my favorite silleh guy Boots, just check him out. (=^-ω-^=)

[makiswirl]

can i just say. and this is probably a niche hill to die on. that i am so gobsmacked every time someone vaguely hints at the idea that jotaro doesn't care meaningfully for the other crusaders, usually particularly kakyoin and joseph, when those two actually tend to be the ones he reacts to being hurt the hardest

like he cares for his loved ones!!!! that literally plays into his character motives in every single part he shows up in!!! stop lying to me!!!!!!!

[magpiemirroring]

I feel like now is a really good time for a Stepford Wives.....not exactly remake.....but like.....reimagining. We won't even call it Stepford Wives.

We've got a lot of influencers preaching very traditional women's roles (while not truly living what they preach a lot of the time) and a lot of grifters preying on very specific ideas of a purer, better kind of Femaleness that you can get in touch with if you just buy into their diet/crystals/tea/supplements/yoga/radical political beliefs.

And certain types of dudes are being very loud and disagreeable about wanting control over women's lives and bodies.

So, instead of "woman moves to Stepford with her husband who joins a Men's Club while she tries to make new friends and retain her identity and watches cool ladies suddenly become weird idealized stereotypes (and also robots)"....Let's start with a woman who is an influencer.

Maybe that's been her goal, maybe it's something she stumbled into with a bit of viral success but friends are encouraging her to network and make it like a Thing. Capitalize on the accidental success. Her particular thing is a little offbeat and quirky and needs all the help she can get to find an audience! So she starts connecting with others and decides to go to a convention or seminar (in stepford maybe, lmao) for influencers and other folks making a career out of an online presence, not only for like advice and networking opportunities but to meet up with some of the folks she's made friends with.

At the same hotel is a convention for developers of next generation AI software. Cue joke about men not even needing women these days because they have their AI girlfriends with their perfect AI generated faces and voices and who can be shaped with prompts into exactly what men want with no real inner lives or needs of their own.

The convention is a little depressing for our MC gal as some of the talks she attends advise leaping on trends and playing it safe to appeal to a wider audience. And like, she doesn't want to be a soft-spoken trad-feminine beauty blogger making "delicious" health food for her family. (She has a cat and maybe she'd prefer a girlfriend.) She just wants to know how to make it easier for people who would like her content to find her.

She goes out for drinks with her pals that night and one of them is acting a little off, different than she did earlier, but she puts that down to the same sort of "authentic identity vs brand" issues she herself is working through.

But when she's back at home struggling with her next update and sees this friend's next post or video, she is shocked to see that her friend has gone very tradwife-y all of a sudden. She reaches out to her friend to be like "oh new direction. kinda a sharp pivot....? you know you don't HAVE to change up what you're doing just because someone at the convention said so, right?" and gets back a chipper note that this friend is just SO HAPPY with her new content. She didn't realize how unhappy....how unconnected to her inner goddess she had been. Plus, like, the stuff she was doing before was hurting her husband's chances at a real political career and she real wants to live in such a way that their lives and values are perfectly aligned, a team!

Okay, a little strange, but this was a new friend and maybe our MC just never really knew the real her. That's a risk with folks you meet online.

But then more and more of her fellow quirkier influencers start shifting their content to the same sort of bland, safe feminine content that reiterates a sort of second-to-your-man (and you DO have a MAN, right?) ideology. Their videos look very polished, but sort of wrong at the same time....and they all have new sponsors.

Desperately digging for info into those sponsorships (she knows how controlling those can be), she discovers they are all linked back to one guy, a venture capitalist whose put a lot of money into shady pyramid scheme type companies and has recently also starting investing in an AI company that sounds familiar. Our MC realizes she saw a lot of their banners at the AI conference sharing the hotel with her influencer conferences and realizes that it's possible someone hacked the hotel's data for the names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards of all the women at the influencer conference and has been using that information to target popular women whose content he doesn't like.

He's also been donating a lot to a campaign for a guy going for a house of reps seat on a platform with a lot of Traditional Values dogwhistles.

Digging further, reaching out to more people (neglecting her update schedule!) she's found worrying signs that the women whose content has suddenly changed haven't been seen out and about in person in awhile and she can't get any of them to agree to going out for a coffee or even an in-person collab for their instas! She even finds some Missing Person reports.

The idea that someone has maybe killed these women and replaced them with AI-generated versions that are increasingly unsubtle shills for a trad-femme/anti-feminist ideology (and a bunch of bogus products) is too ridiculous to be true! But also...increasingly too plausible to deny.

Our MC gathers her evidence. She doesn't think she can trust the cops with this. She's not really in the habit of trusting them, though if these women really are missing she'll have to talk to them eventually. But not until she can convince them she's not just some crazy. Not until she's built up some outcry and support for her suspicions. So she sets up her camera and prepares to record a True Crime style video on what she's uncovered.

In the artfully blurred background of her video we see movement. A person dressed in dark clothes. They go off camera while, uneasy, but unaware, the MC continues to narrate her video, gesturing in the air to where she will edit in graphics later. Just as she starts in on her sponsorship bit, a figure in black with surgical-gloved hands steps into the frame and kills her.

Cut to black. Credits roll, interspersed with clips from her new video! Which is a safer, tamer, more male-gaze-y take on whatever she did before. Other clips also play during the credits. Slight glitchy tradfemme videos. A few short reaction video clips to same. Short clip about the politician winning his seat. His wife is so proud of him and would be here by his side if she wasn't recovering from a recent medical procedure. But she'll be back at his side soon! More unsettlingly off clips, ending with a bit from the MC's sponsor moment that just straight up advertises for a perfect AI Assistant who is just like a friend who can help you keep track of all your responsibilities and help you so you have more time for You! (tho "more time for you" is paired with an image of the MC getting a chaste embrace from a handsome man in a soft sweater, as if "you time" is not complete without a man.) We should walk away with the sense that this helpful AI assistant is gonna use a lot of personal info about you to build up a profile of users, ostensibly to personalize your New Friend, but also so it has a base on which to learn and function as a replacement for the female users eventually...

Cottagecore beauty blogger video called "How to get the Stepford Wife aesthetic!" but in between talking about where to find Gunne Saxe dresses online and how to do that 70s mascara look, there's something...off. She keeps jerking and repeating lines, like she's stuck in a loop. By the end of it, she's holding a knife to cut up heirloom tomatoes for a summery afternoon snack, but her hand is twitching and she's turning the tomato into paste with all those slices and even when she's moving on to asking you to like and subscribe she's still making slicing motions on the table.

[gingermintpepper]

As usual I read your tags always and so you said Apollo did not ask for resurrection of Asclepius and Hyacinthus so i just wanted to share this. About Asclepius death I read it on theoi.com, that earlier authors don't make him resurrect as a god but that's a later development mentioned only by Roman authors like Cicero, Hyginus and Ovid. But still Apollo has a role in Ovid's version

Ovid, Fasti 6. 735 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : Clymenus [Haides] and Clotho resent the threads of life respun and death's royal rights diminished. Jove [Zeus] feared the precedent and aimed his thunderbolt at the man who employed excessive art. Phoebus [Apollon], you whined. He is a god; smile at your father, who, for your sake, undoes his prohibitions [i.e. when he obtains immortality for Asklepios].

So here it is actually because of Apollo the decision was taken to resurrect him as god. And with Hyacinthus, I don't think I've read about Artemis playing the primary role. I know in Sparta there was a picture of Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite carrying Hyacinthus and his sister to heaven.

This is not on theoi.com but I saw on Tumblr it's from Dionysiaca by Nonnus

Second, my lord Oiagros wove a winding lay, as the father of Orpheus who has the Muse his boon companion. Only a couple of verses he sang, a ditty of Phoibos, clearspoken in few words after some Amyclaian style: Apollo brought to life again his longhaired Hyacinthos: Staphylos will be made to live for aye by Dionysos.

So since he is singing inspired by amyclean stories it probably means in that place it was believed Apollo was the one to bring back his lover to life.

Apollo as god of order was very important so i think it shows how special these people (and admetus too) were to him that he decided to go against the order for them 🥺

ANON!! Shakes you like a bottle of ramune!! BELOVED ANON!!!!! I'm littering your face with kisses, I'm anointing you with olive oil and honey - you absolutely made my night with this because, not only did I get the pure serotonin shot of having someone interact with my tags (yippee, wahoo!!) I also got to have that wonderful feeling of "oh wow, have I misunderstood something that was integral to my understanding of this myth/figure this whole time or is this a case of interpretational differences?" which is imo vital for my aims and interests as someone who enjoys mythological content and literature.

I'll preface my response with this: Hyacinthus is by far the hardest of these to get accounts for because his revival itself, as you very astutely point out, is generally accounted for in painting/ritual format which muddies the waters on who interceded for what. I wasn't actually familiar with that passage from the Argonautica - and certainly didn't remember it so thank you very much for bringing it to my attention!

That said, what I've come to understand, both about Hyacinthus and about Asclepius is that in the accounts of their deaths, Apollo's position is startlingly clear.

For Hyacinthus, it is established time and again that Apollo would have sacrificed everything for him - his status, his power, his very own immortality and divinity. Ovid writes that Apollo would have installed him as a god if only he had the time:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses. Book X. trans. Johnston)

Many other writers too speak of how Apollo abandoned his lyre and his seat at Delphi to spend his days with Hyacinthus, but they also all agree that when it came to his death - he was powerless. Ovid gives that graphic account of Apollo's desperation as he tries all his healing arts to save him to no avail:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book X. Apollo me boy, methinks him dead. trans Johnston)

Bion, in one of his fragments, writes that Apollo was "dumb" upon seeing Hyacinthus' agony:

(Bion, The Bucolic Poets. Fragment XI. trans Edmonds)

Even Nonnus in the Dionysiaca speaks constantly of Apollo's helplessness in the face of Hyacinthus' fate where he writes that the god still shivers if a westward wind blows upon an iris:

and when Zephyros breathed through the flowery garden, Apollo turned a quick eye upon his young darling, his yearning never satisfied; if he saw the plant beaten by the breezes, he remembered the quoit, and trembled for fear the wind, so jealous once about the boy, might hate him even in a leaf...

(Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book 3. trans Rouse)

And the point here is just that - Apollo, at least as far as I've read, cannot avert someone's death. He simply can't. Once they're already dead - once Fate has cut their string - all Apollo's power is gone and he can do nothing no matter how much he wants to. And this is, as far as I know, supported with the accounts of Asclepius as well!

Since you specifically brought up Ovid's account, I'll also stick only to Ovid's account but in Metamorphoses when we get Ovid's version of Coronis' demise, he writes that Apollo intensely and immediately regrets slaughtering Coronis. He regrets it so intensely that he, like he does with Hyacinthus, does his best to resuscitate her:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo's regret)

And like Hyacinthus, when it becomes clear that what has happened cannot be undone, Apollo wails:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo wept.)

Unlike his mother, Asclepius in her womb had not yet died and so, with the last of Apollo's strength, he does manage, at least, to save him.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo puts the 'tearing out' in Asclepius.)

But it goes further than even that because Ocyrhoe, Chiron's daughter, a prophetess who unduly gained the ability to directly proclaim the secrets of the Fates, upon seeing the baby Asclepius, immediately prophesies his glory, his inevitable death and then his fated ascension:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses, Book Two. Ocyrhoe's prophecy. trans Johnston)

Before she too succumbs to her hubris and is transformed by the Fates into a horse so she can no longer speak secrets that aren't hers to share.

These things ultimately are important because it establishes two very important things: 1) Apollo can't do anything in the face of the ultimate Fate of mortals, which is, of course, death and 2) even when Apollo is Actively Devastated, regretful, yearning, mournful, guilty or some unholy combination of all of the above, when someone is dead, he accepts that they are gone. Even if he is devastated by it, even if he'll cry all the rest of his days about it - if they're dead? Apollo lets them go. In Fasti, when Zeus brings Asclepius back, he does not say Apollo asked him to - Zeus, or well, in this case Jove, brings Asclepius back because he wants Apollo to stop being mad at him.

(Ovid, Fasti VI. Apollo please come home your father misses you. trans. A.S Kline)

Even Boyle's translation which you used above in your findings hints that Zeus made Asclepius a god because he wanted Apollo to stop grieving. (i.e 'smile at your father', 'for your sake [he] undoes his prohibitions')

And like, Apollo was deeply upset by Asclepius' death - apart from killing the Cyclops in anger, in book 4 of the Argonautica, Apollonius writes that the Celts believe the stream of Eridanus to be the tears Apollo shed over the death of Asclepius when he left for Hyperborea after being chastised by Zeus for killing his Cyclops:

But the Celts have attached this story to them, that these are the tears of Leto's son, Apollo, that are borne along by the eddies, the countless tears that he shed aforetime when he came to the sacred race of the Hyperboreans and left shining heaven at the chiding of his father, being in wrath concerning his son whom divine Coronis bare in bright Lacereia at the mouth of Amyrus.

It all paints a very clear picture to me. Apollo did not ask for either of them to be brought back. Though bringing them back certainly pleased and delighted him, they are actions of other gods who are moved by Apollo's grief and mourning and seek to mollify him. Him not asking doesn't mean he didn't want them back which I think is a very important distinction by the by, but it simply means that Apollo knows the natural order of things and, even if it hurts, he isn't going to press his luck about it.

Which, of course, brings us to Admetus. And I'm really not going to overcomplicate this, Admetus is different because, very vitally, Admetus is not dead. Apollo can't do a thing once Fate has been carried out and Death has claimed a mortal but you know what he absolutely can do? Bargain like hell with the Fates before that point of inevitability. And that's what he does, ultimately for Admetus and Alcestis. He sought to prolong Admetus' life, not revive him from death or absolve him from death altogether and even after getting the Fates drunk, he's still only able to organise a sacrifice - a life for a life - something completely contingent on whether some other mortal would be willing to die in Admetus' place and not at all controllable by Apollo's own power.

All of these things, I think come back to that point you made - that Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore these people are very special to him if it means he's willing to go against that order but, I also wish to challenge that opinion if you'd let me. Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore, I would argue, that it is even more important that it is shown that he does not break the divine order, especially for the people that mean the most to him. The original context of my comments which started this conversation were on this lovely, lovely post by @hyacinthusmemorial which contemplated upon Asclepius from the perspective of an Emergency Medical personnel and included, in their tags, the very poignant lines "there's something about Apollo letting go when Asclepius couldn't that eats my heart away" and "you do what you can, you do your best, but you don't ever reach too far" and I think that's perfectly embodied with the Apollo-Asclepius dichotomy. Apollo grieves. He wails, he cries, he does his best each and every time to save that which is precious to him but he does not curse their nature, he does not resent that they are human and ultimately, he accepts that that which is mortal must inevitably die. There is nothing that so saliently proves that those who uphold rules are also their most staunch followers - if Apollo wants to delight in his place as Fate's mouthpiece, he cannot undo Fate. And, if even the god of healing and order himself cannot undo death, what right does Asclepius, mortal as he is, talented as he is, have to disrespect it?

The beauty of these stories isn't that Apollo loved them enough to bring them back. The beauty is that Apollo loved them enough to let them go.

[mantisgodsdomain]

We ought to write more Pokemon fic some time. We want to recreate the Pokemon Manners/Human Manners cheat sheet that we made a few years ago we think that this site would like the Sliding Scale Of Politeness When Greeting A New Pokemon You've Never Met Before.

[rimouskis]

sigh someone on twitter extolled the virtues of furiosa and said it was better than fury road. I just saw furiosa. they are wrong.

[invinciblerodent]

I'm actually not mad at this "unwashed hobo apostate" look on Marcus at all. It goes surprisingly well with his "romantic lead in a K-drama, some kingdom's lost prince perhaps" face that he's got going on.

look at this guy, he always looks a little like he's about to break into a breathy-voiced, heartfelt monologue about the illimitable vastness of love and longing in the soul

...... also, this was entirely unintentional (his tattoo was just something I figured he kept drawing on the back of his hand and then eventually just got tattooed, kind of serving as a non-magical spellcasting focus, there to remind him to watch where his hand was aiming) but I LOVE how this consistency in shape language ended up working out-

Nevarra and the Dalish are both kind of the triangle-people, I guess

[rahabs]

It's just amazing to me that all the people who were having complete meltdowns in February over a video game are now on this website spitting some of the most vile, heinous, antisemitic rhetoric, is all.

[trans-leek-cookie]

In my mind yhe reason Satoru Shoko and Suguru work so well together but also are doomed is because they're three different variants of depression. Satoru reads to me as "I'm not suicidal I just don't really want to exist" and "I'm not depressed bc I'm not sad. I just don't really feel things" y'know where it's teetering between denial and just being straight up oblivious. Shoko is well aware of her depression and kinda doing stuff about it (substance abuse which is. Uhh y'know complicated) but also is clearly intensely fatigued (in my mind it's a mix of her shitty job her depression and also some form of chronic illness) so like. She doesn't have many great opportunities to do things about that. And Suguru is a danger to himself and others.

So basically how I see it is they understand each other on something of an instinctual level and know that they Aren't Completely Alone, but also they're all Really Bad at actually communicating (I think there's multiple reasons but mainly Because Jujutsu Society Is A Nightmare And Also They Are Pretty Much Eachother's Only Friends) so they can't meaningfully help eachother when they start getting worse so that's part of why everything went to shit (most of it is Suguru but alos he clearly doesnt have like. Any actual models for Maturity and Dealing With Problems Without Violence. So most of the jujutsu adults were just kinda letting that fucking Ticking Timebomb tick away y'know)

[aeide-thea]

i'm never knowingly going to reblog a post that includes the phrase 'touch grass,' and that's not because i don't think it can be psychologically beneficial to get in some outdoor time if possible—i went for a walk earlier! it was great!—or to take a break from conversations that are getting you wound up, but because i think that particular wording generally reveals two things:

first, that the writer is speaking not from a place of genuine concern and sympathy, but from judgmental impatience à la 'get therapy,' which—i too have felt judgmental and impatient in my time, god knows! but when i feel that way i try to go unpack those feelings in private with a thoughtful friend, instead of pretending they constitute a source of wisdom or a helpful sort of energy to direct at people, you know? and i'm definitely not particularly interested in boosting a ventpost from someone else—who pretty clearly hasn't bothered to take the breather they're urging on others, if they're making little digs like that—as if it were actually sincere, carefully-reasoned advice.

and second, that the writer's argument embraces some seriously sloppy assumptions, which pretty immediately undermines my trust in the rest of their analysis—i mean, there's absolutely no guarantee someone's local scene will be any less parochial, just because it's playing out irl! there's also not actually a clean divide between 'people who spend time in the Real World' and 'people who spend time on the internet, which is for porn losers,' as demonstrated by a number of phenomena including, again, the aforementioned grass-recommenders' own presence right here on tumblr…

anyway. obviously we all have our own particular lines we draw around particular rhetoric that bugs us! these are just some reasons why that particular phrasing bugs me.

[numetaljackdog]

Don't know if the Gospel callout is from racism but calling gospel the worst genre is pretty delusional. It's probably the only worthwhile Christian music I can think of. Also worst genre had to be skrillex era dubstep.

i'm sorry but WHEN are you guys gonna learn that there IS no "worst genre"??? that should be the moral of all this discourse. no worst genre. no, not that one. not even that one. now obviously "no worst genre" includes the hugely culturally significant and artistically rich juggernauts that we've covered already like rap, country, jazz, gospel, and so on, but it ALSO includes more generally maligned genres like dubstep, all forms of edm, crunkcore, harsh noise, and every other unpalatable or inaccessible genre that sneering geniuses have put in my notes!!

ALL genres, of ANY medium, are deserving of basic respect and acknowledgement as something that has worth to the people creating it and the people who appreciate it, and every genre has the potential to yield great art that achieves its custom purpose, just as much as it has the potential to yield shit art that fails entirely! if you don't like dubstep, or that specific era of dubstep, that's fine! if you want to criticize skrillex and other artists who pushed the genre into the mainstream, i think that's a valuable conversation to have! but that era doesn't represent the entire genre, and even during that era the potential for great dubstep to be created was equal to any other point in time since the genre's inception. the same goes for jazz, the same goes for gospel and other forms of christian music that anon deems to not be "worthwhile," the same goes for EVERYTHING. your personal preferences are perfectly acceptable on their own merits, as well as being none of my business, but i wish you would all stop trying to moralize them through this narrow lens of "good" and "bad" as if that somehow has any meaning in a vacuum, often recklessly reducing complex social issues of race, class, sexual identity, et cetera into incomplete two-dimensional concepts in the process!! enough already!!!!

[faggotry-enjoyer]

there is SO MUCH bullshit going on at this university and i want to talk about it on here so bad but it's too specific to do so without coming dangerously close to full on doxxing myself

[blujayonthewing]

insane to me that we introduced autumn olive to be decorative and now they're fucking everywhere and choking out native ecosystems and people don't even know you can eat them

[anneapocalypse]

On the upside Fallout 3 is making me nostalgic for when I first got into Fallout and on the other hand it's making me think about my early fandom days. 😬

[beinfriends]

Although Tazmily has fully recovered their memories and have had one to two full years (depending on when each villager in particular recovered their memories) to work through it, I think it's still really hard for a lot of them. The villagers are doing much better than they were at the initial point of remembering. Whether they allowed the memories to recover naturally or opted to recover them all in one sitting with the Egg of Light, it was extremely hard for people to cope with this rush of memories and all the trauma that came with it.

Even beyond escaping the end of the world and knowing that their families and friends are all dead, the world before Nowhere was a deeply broken one. A lot of Tazmilians probably had experienced some form of trauma even prior to the war breaking out and everything going to hell in a handbasket, and that was trauma they never got to process, let alone the fresher trauma of, again, losing everyone they knew and loved, save for if they made it with you to Nowhere-- and quite a few made it to the White Ship, but then perished there due to illness or injuries, leaving behind single family members to pick up the pieces upon reaching Nowhere.

The one solace the town generally had was knowing that everyone else was dealing with the same thing to some degree. They'd all faced similar traumas and losses, but there was a lot of shame attached to people, which made it harder for many to cope with. Tazmily isn't good at dealing with negative emotions, never was, though a lot of villagers have gotten better about it. But they came from a world that did not value human life at all, let alone someone as an individual, their thoughts, feelings, and desires; people didn't have the tools to process emotions all that well unless they were lucky enough to have a good family or good friends. Even then, it was hard.

So, returning to their horrible memories, ones they were never allowed to process-- or never allowed themselves to process-- was extremely hard. People could at least typically turn to their loved ones, usually spouses, but it wasn't easy to discuss. It still isn't for many of them. The only person people felt comfortable fully venting to most of the time was Leder. Leder was the one who remembered it all for them, and had promised to guide them through this process of recovering their memories. And he did, he kept his promise. Leder is someone who is so easy to talk to, and many turned to him for advice when they didn't know how to process the losses that were now fresh in their minds.

Leder kept a lot of people sane during that hard year. Eventually, the depression, rage, anxiety, guilt, and everything else started to fade. They returned to a more normal life as they finally were allowed to address what was there, to whatever degree that may be. But I think the trauma is going to be hard for them to deal with forever-- understandably so. That shit doesn't leave, especially because it's arguable that most, if not essentially everyone who came to Nowhere on the White Ship likely has some form of PTSD.

People have gotten back to normal, but have they fully processed? Can they think about people in their past without crying or having a meltdown about it? Is every memory not tinged with sadness and pain? I'm not so sure about that. Tazmily's trauma is a work in progress to this day. People try to live in the moment, they've accepted the horrible and strange way they all came together, but it won't ever be the same again. I think they're ultimately better off having learned, however. That is why Leder revealed the truth to them-- because he knew that it was necessary for Tazmily to grow and to learn from their past mistakes more fully.

It wouldn't solve things, but I feel like Tazmily needs one good day where they all allow themselves to speak openly what happened to them, to cry together, to commiserate and understand what connects them all. Tazmily, as Leder said, is the town many of them wished they could've grown up in. Many of them were born into some form of the cycle of abuse, and Tazmily was their ticket out, their one shot at removing that cycle.

A lot of people are uncomfortable reckoning with the sort of people they became during the Pigmask occupation. A lot of them came to cruelty easily, returning to the cycle of cruelty and hatred for the Other that Eagleland and other nations had. That same cruelty many of them had been the victims of. Tazmilians overwhelmingly worked hard to move past that and do better after the cataclysm, and those efforts genuinely paid off. People really, really tried to be better, and Tazmily became kinder again. But I can't imagine, having worked on yourself in that way, suddenly being reminded of the world you came from that acted just like you did, albeit on a much, much larger and harsher scale.

But it must hurt so much, knowing that you senselessly perpetuated the persecution that poisoned the world before. I don't know how many of the villagers have actually thought about that, but if some have-- I could see people like maybe Ollie, Abbot and Abbey, Paul and Lin, so on realizing that-- and being crushed. Even if they themselves had not directly been harsh, even if they only had allowed it to slide, it still hurts.

Recovering the memories of the past has reinvigorated people's need to break the cycles of cruelty, abuse, and hatred, though. I think all of these things can turn into something good, ultimately. Humanity is not inherently evil. The Tazmily villagers are not inherently bad, or cruel, nor are they doomed to be that way forever. They've already proven themselves to be people who can learn, and these hard lessons, the ones of the White Ship and the ones of the Pigmasks, will stay with them. But, God, it'll never be fully solved if people can't allow themselves to be vulnerable and to fully unpack everything they've gone through.

Tazmily is trying so, so hard. And that counts for a lot. They've done a lot of work already, but I don't think most of them have ever felt fully comfortable being vulnerable or open about everything they went through. There's so much potential love and understanding in Tazmily, if only they'd allow themselves to have that. One can only hope they can continue processing and reckoning with the aftermath of all that's happened, and for the better. I think that's deserved.