#I’ve gatekept this thing long enough

[kadextra]

sniles sneetly. enjoy 👍

[thewitchofbhaal]

THE DARK URGE - MAAKALIZE

Introductory Post for my Durge - SLIGHT CONTENT WARNING LATER - please see my pinned post for more content warnings.

Alright BG3 community – I’ve gatekept my OC long enough, it’s time to show off her bleeding colors. I present to you, the rogue blood sorceress, raised by witches, and made from Bhaal’s unholy blood: 

Maakalize – The Dark Urge

Please note that this outfit is her in-game appearance as well in my head, I just try to match her look the best I can with mods!

Design explanation: She wears sorceress robes that are made from a velvety texture. Her shoulder pads are made of lighter leather – along with her tail glove, atop her shoulder pads are glowing and active eyeballs that give her an advantage to surprise attacks, they often look around and maybe even make eye contact with you. 

She also has boots that instead of a normal rubber outsole – it is a translucent rubber with pickled intestines inside. Her free sleeves are split down the middle, allowing free arm movement when crafting blood weaponry and spells. She wears a black-out veil with clean eye holes cut into it. She also wears robes often to conceal herself throughout the story [mainly to explain why some people in your past won’t recognize you off the bat] and a black headband with tear drops engraved and the medallion of Bhaal in the middle.

She has middle parted long wavy hair – though she doesn’t wash often, so her hair is often weighed down. She wears black and red lipstick interchangeably. As well as, not having traditional origins: not having any infernal scales, she is completely smooth-skinned, aside from her aging wrinkles and the colorless veins protruding throughout her body – a trait that curated within her as the urges manifested. And deep, vacant blood eyes with glowing red pearls inside.

Her color scheme was originally inspired by Power’s manga appearance in Chainsaw Man – Pinkish hair and red horns. I planned to change her color to red or gray, however, I thought the red/pink/black/ and gray color scheme directly symbolized what a murder looks like:

Pink - Flesh

Red - The blood

Gray - Cold dead skin

Black - Death

(I love putting symbolism in things if you can’t tell!) So I stuck with it. Please note I am a beginner artist and do not practice art super often, I enjoy drawing emotions through faces and through clothing designs. So be gentle with me. (However I would pay good money for someone to create this outfit in a mod for me lol Im dead serious.) Her IN-GAME FACE IS HER CANON FACE HOWEVER – what she wears, is not. 

Her character description: [CONTENT WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF M*RDER, N*CROPHILIA, AND **PE.]

Maakalize (MAA-KILL-EEZE) is a brutal, unforgiving blood sorceress. She is the first pure-blooded spawn of Bhaal — making her a proper half-corpse and half-goddess in her own respects. 

Placed on Toril as the avatar of slaughter, her true purpose is to snuff out every last life in existence and leave a baron, empty world for the Gods to grieve for — her Father’s dream everlasting. Maakalize wishes to bring that dream to life, the means to get there are trivial and small, it is all for her dear Father she loves so much and cherishes so dearly.  

She is the ultimate manifestation of murder itself - a tiefling with no infernal ties made with long pink wavy hair, red horns, and bloody eyes — the physical color pallet of gore itself, black small veins pulsing from her smooth, gray skin. Her teeth are slightly crooked, with black gums and grey dirty teeth. And a slayer form that is unique only to her. Her face — familiar only to Bhaal, a haunting beauty for some, a freakish nightmare for others. Depends on one’s preferences. 

Using her Blood manipulation sorcery for her murders, rapes, and necrophilic tendencies, her masked terror has reached far and wide across Baldur’s Gate and the paths beyond. Her formal title is The Dark Urge — an appropriate term for her cruelty and primal power of murder. 

She has the ability to manipulate blood — that ability can heal wounds, steal blood from other wounds, or even put blood into bodies. Blood weapons are her favorite practice, if she is supplied with enough of it she can create larger and more sturdy weapons that last longer. Of course these abilities have their limits as we will explore later. Her favorites are the sickles, the kitchen knife, the garrote, the crowbar, and the hammer. If given enough blood she can even make a blood scythe that is good for one use. A certain mother-mentor and daughter-mentee relationship is to blame for her vast experience with her magics. 

Some rough sketches of her blood armory; [There is also symbolism with what weapons she chooses from - curious to see if any true crimes peeps can catch it]

She always wears a black out velvet veil with the eye holes precisely cut for her eyes to pierce through and hunt. Her gore boots boost her height of 6’0” to 6’1”. Her shoulder pads have red eyes that give her an alertness boost in combat, as well as giving the heebie jeebies when you notice all of the glowing red eyes move on their own. Her black and red gothic robes are made from a velvet texture, infused with magics I will delve more into later! 

In certain sentences depending on her moods, typically her overzealous ones, Maakalize will use phrases such as, “Eh?”, “No?”, “Hath” and even, “Tis”.

Some other names of Maakalize:

The Dark Urge [Duh]

Daughter of Bhaal

The Witch of Bhaal

Bloody Mary/ Mary (A nickname given by someone) 

Red Antler

Kali

-

Her entire interpretation and story is completed - I am still working on the story's execution. A few personal things are coming up which has delayed me and I am nervous as hell to share her. Not sure how people will react. But I hope the durge multiverse accepts her - I've been working on her for almost a year now!

I understand a lot of ppl customize durge - so some will have physical similarities', idc about that but please do not steal her design, my art, or the plotline I carefully curated over time. You will be blocked.

[ochrearia]

Biff and YS sillies.

Shakes these two violently. If anyone gets to be the big brother and little brother dynamic first it's these two and that's me being entirely biased towards my own BF but like IVE ALREADY BEEN WRITING THESE ASSHOLES INTERACTING FOR MONTHS IN POPR SO IT MAKES SENSE

I also almost gatekept this? But then I remember most of you guys here only found me off of Poly Propaganda so like. Why would I gatekeep a BF you guys are familiar with reading about

BFs in this drabble: PoPr!BF (Biff, mine) Yourself (YS)

Perhaps he was just losing his edge. Or maybe the world was starting to be kind enough to let him feel like a person again. Either way there was something so incredibly tempting about pushing buttons when Yourself knew he could get away with it. He was good at getting away with a lot of things. “The incentive is in your reactions, Biff. You want me to stop being obnoxious right back at you? Stop reacting then.” 

“See this is on you, really, because I may not be smart but I can recognize the potential to be the worst little shit imaginable with the information you just gave me.” Biff grinned, flopping over YS’s chest intentionally. “And since we’re the same person it’s very likely that any of the ways my buttons can be pushed are the same ways yours can. As you have already proved by pushing a bunch of mine with no prior knowledge.”

“Ooh, big words from the little man.” YS continued to tease instead. He didn’t want to admit at any point that Biff was possibly his favorite, because that wasn’t fair to the others. They’d just known each other the longest, and while they all had the same potential for it, Biff was really the definition his mind jumped to when he thought of the two words ‘little brother’. He wasn’t saying that out loud for shit.

“Patronizing me is going to be your worst mistake.” Biff threatened, grinning wildly. “I think you need to be knocked down a few pegs, you massive asshole. If my buttons are similar to yours then this isn’t going to keep going well for you. No one knows what pisses me off more than me! Meaning I know how to piss you off too.” The smaller fished his phone from his pocket, pushing his elbows against the silly counterpart’s chest to prop himself up. YS watched with a raised eyebrow as he typed something.

“Oh that better fucking not be the watermelon song.”

“What’s wrong with the watermelon song?” Biff asked innocently as the aforementioned song started blasting from his phone at full volume. “Gee, I don’t know about you, but you know what pisses me off? A strong earworm that I know won’t shut up for at least a few days.”

YS had half a mind to shove this dickhead off of him. That was, at first, something he’d thought was a difference between them- how affectionate Biff was, and how he was keen to show that affection by being touchy. Though in reality it hadn’t been a difference at all, something which having met all these other selves has proven. Apparently he gave really good hugs. Something less known was that he stole away just as much comfort from them as he was intending to give. Contact was nice when your body was always cold for as long as you could remember. Pushing him off would just mean more cold, again.

He settled for roughly ruffling his little brot- Biff’s- hair instead. “You’re- okay what’s a good word that would actually make you mad… I’ve exhausted the punch power of things like ‘dumbass’ and ‘shitter’ by using them too often. They’ve lost their meanings.”

“I have literally done nothing wrong and you’re mean to me for no reason.”

“I’m adding ‘a big fat liar’ to the list by the way.” YS snarked back immediately. “Turn this shit off, I’ve already heard this damn thing several times too many for my lifetime.”

“Mean to me.” Biff repeated, not turning it off and just lowering the volume instead. “Can’t believe you’re such a fucking Battleblock Theater hater.”

“I have literally never played that game and I never want to because of you and this song. Turn it off or I’m shoving you away and you will leave back through the mirror without a hug today.”

“Fuck!” Biff swore, mad that his attempt to push YS’s buttons was instead ending in more of his being pushed. “You’re such an asshole! Big, stupid, dumb fuckin’! Jerk!”

YS burst into laughter, rough with disuse. Low snickering that was prone to snorts as he tried to breathe between them. He wasn’t one to laugh very much, and even when he did it was only for a few seconds at a time. It was incredibly rare for him to go on an actual giggle fit, not even believing he still could after everything. Then again, he’d also believed he would never get to feel warm again either. Or that he’d never get to see the colors of life in anything other than sad, depressed, washed-out hues. Things change. There’d been so much bad change to face in his life. He’d forgotten what good change was like.

It was like the sun. Bright and warm. Life giving.

“I don’t think I’ve gotten to hear you laugh for that long before.” Biff said, turning the playful atmosphere in a more serious direction. “That’s not to make you self-conscious by the way, don’t you dare start thinking that shit. Sorry, I tend to blurt things out before thinking, but like, honestly. The others aren’t fully sure how to be affectionate with you on the same level I do, because it’s kind of weird in a way, acting brotherly when that’s literally just yourself, but I know they think the same thing. It’s kind of… I don’t know, crisis inducing? To look at another version of you and know you’re so… sad. Eh, maybe not crisis inducing. Fuck I don’t know words. It makes us sad. That’s probably the most straight-forward way I can say it.”

YS’s laughs faded, shadowed eyes watching the other carefully. There was a very easy and negative takeaway he could get out of those words alone but he knew that wasn’t what Biff was trying to get at. Making assumptions before having the whole picture only led to more problems. 

“You’re smart. Surely you caught on to that by now. You’re seeking us out with the intent to help because it’s the next best thing when you’re so clammed up on your own self that you can’t give everything you give to us, to yourself instead. You’re not going to get away with that without us giving back. So of course seeing you so sad makes us sad. But it’s okay! We’re going to help fix that.” He said matter-of-factly. How confident.

YS huffed out one last chuckle. “All of you are so confident about solving problems you’ve never actually faced. Somewhere along the line I suppose it’s endearing but you’re all incredibly dumb and misguided.”

“I’ve faced them.” Biff reminded. “Not physically. But I have… faced them. Seen everything you lock in your head because you think you have to contain it alone. And I know you’re still mad at me for doing that. You just never fucking talk, man. All of us dumbasses come to you all vulnerable and you fix that but you don’t let yourself get vulnerable. What are you afraid of?”

Don’t you know? Though he never really did say it out loud. There were a lot of things he didn’t say out loud. He was scared of hurting them. They knew that. He was scared to lose them too. Something about the double meaning of losing himself made him uncomfortable.

“...Are we okay?” Biff continued suddenly, voice softer and more nervous. “It’s been weeks since I, I guess, betrayed you in a way. Took your magic and used it against you. I knew it wasn’t what you wanted and did it anyway.”

A flash of him, pounding against the glass of a mirror he couldn’t walk in, because Biff had purposefully avoided anything reflective. His face, always so pale and sad, shadowed out and hung low, but rolling tears still visible, kept company by a panicked and upset grimace, teeth clenched so tight they could shatter.

Had it all been a mistake?

“You disappeared on me for a while after. Scared me. I knew I deserved it, you were so angry when you came to take your baggage back. You stopped showing up in my dreams even. I deserved it but it still scared me. I wondered if we’d ever talk again after a few days.”

Biff was right about one thing. He had been angry. Furious, really, though it wasn’t all directed at him. They hadn’t really talked about it either. The days he had been avoiding Biff were the days he decided to reach out to even more selves- he didn’t need to know that though. That would probably just make him feel some sort of venom towards the others. YS didn’t want that. All of them getting along was important too.

“But… are we okay?” Biff repeated, lips stuck in a frown. “I guess I can’t really ask for forgiveness if you really don’t want to do that. But I need to… know where we stand so I don’t overstep. Hell, I’ve probably been overstepping this whole time…”

This dude worried too much.

“You are annoying.” YS started, almost laughing at the look of shock that caused. “You are. But I’m not saying that as a bad thing. You’re annoying that you care so damn much about my opinion of you. We’ve had this conversation before about your GF and Pico. You lost all your confidence in the face of them not thinking highly of you, in a dream. You know what that’s telling me? That you somehow care about my opinion as much as theirs. Don’t you think that’s a bit overdramatic?”

“Not if it’s the opinion of my big brother…” Biff mumbled. He hadn’t meant it to be loud enough for the other to hear, a reply to himself born from a need to say something in rebuttal. The other had definitely heard though.

YS didn’t think the grin on his face could get any wider without his head splitting. “We’re okay, you fucking idiot.” Big brother huh? Guess that whole changing my nickname in the groupchat thing wasn’t just a joke. I’m not entirely sure if that should make me this damn happy. I think I’d be even happier if the rest started calling me that too… “If everything ended after one shit choice then none of us would be here. None of us, because all of us are prone to shit choices with the small amount of brain cells we have collectively. So yes, we're okay. Just don’t fucking do that again.”

“You got it, bossman.” Biff teased, steering the atmosphere back to silly. “Good to know I’ll still be getting my hug before I leave.”

“So long as you don’t push any more of my buttons before then.”

“No promises!”

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Ok cue my memory loss moment part 5 I can’t tell if I sent this reply in or not before so if this is a dupe I SINCERELY APOLOGIZE hsvshshs but anyways

OMG EVERYONE CHEER!!! Guys the moment is finally upon us…another mira banger about to drop….

LMAOO fwtkac was the gateway…once you start you can’t stop its just how the Karasu rabbit hole works! Bro hollyhock is actually so good…I can’t even put it into words properly but just the whole setting giving a new depth to a diff side of otoyas characters ugh so good

True!!! I’m ngl I’m a little surprised that for marketing sake they didn’t try to throw in some like popular character bait…maybe it’s because most of the actually popular bllkers are already out and as opposed to merch I guess book sales would be a bit diff? Like fans would buy to read even if their absolute faves aren’t in but yeah…the stories were fire though LMAO new appreciation for Barou fr

And IM ON IT o7 very happy to serve the miraverse and honestly it’s good for me too because if I wanna reference something quickly I can just go command f it or if I wanna read something fast I can just read my tl LMAO I also just like having my own TL/interpretations written down just for my reference too…which is part of the reason why I also ended up TLing Hioris too even though there was a TL already out! I remember reading the TLd version that got posted and some wording kinda threw me off so I was like let me just look at this myself…LOL Also I’m kinda a lore nerd so I wanna make sure I get to see any intricacies or in between the line messages that can get lost in translation! So yeah TLDR I will most definitely be here for tabieita LNs!!!

IM CRYING they’re gonna have to scroll through our manifestations and convos just to get to the chapter like imagine the link gets passed around and the first thing people read is us screaming about mariokart in yuki’s novel or anri getting done dirty (I clicked on the links just to see what they’d have to go through and oh my god chapter 2 LMFAOOO there’s like a whole minute of scrolling worth of convo before you even reach the LN part it’s so funny)

We’re truly just built different sorry this is exclusive content gatekept by the insanely long convos we have

-Karasu anon

HAHAH this time you did in fact send this in already 😭 but it’s okay i will delete the copy!! but no worries 😋

FINISHED ROUND ONE OF PROOFREADING!! heading to monaco for my mother’s birthday dinner soon hehe but once i’m back tn i will get on round two and hopefully i’ll be able to post it by tmrw!! lowkey idk how i feel about it but at least it’ll be out in the world after i’ve been talking abt it sm 😭

you came to my inbox and showed me the ways of karasuism and i’ve never looked back since 🙏🏻 jkjk but fr though i love writing him sm now he’s so good at the one sided pining thing which i loveee in a male lead 🤩 like YESSS be absolutely sick over this girl who doesn’t even know she likes you yet YESSS 🤤💖

hollyhock otoya is so fun i love him and i cannot WAIT to write more of him and y/n…idk if you’ve heard that one tik tok sound that’s like “you belong with me” from taylor swift and then it transitions into “you belong to me” from house of balloons / glass table girls from the weeknd but that’s literally hollyhock y/n + karasu’s dynamic vs her dynamic with otoya 😭😭😭 like with karasu it’s all sweet innocent besties (they are platonic soulmates coded eventually like they end up loving each other SOO MUCH but not romantically??) vs with otoya she’s literally like “i want you to belong to me” (exact quote from chapter 2: “you wanted this ninja to belong to you”) FHDKSJSJ man atp free otoya 😰🙏🏻 but he matches y/n’s freak so well he probably doesn’t even WANT to be freed

i feel like the people who would buy light novels would buy them no matter what + they probably thought barou would be popular enough to carry it?? who knows…agreed though the stories were all rlly good (well aryu’s was a little goofy but wtvr)

LMAOOO THAT’S WHAT I WAS THINKING people will be like “why are they freaking out over mario kart??” FJSJDJS but ykw if you want to read you have to go through the trials and tribulations of our massive convos 🤩 we are elite though…carrying the bllk fandom with our translations + fics 😋

[tyrramint]

This is just a small thing, but you know? I think two-years-ago me would be really proud of me if she could see me drawing now. I’ve mentioned this a couple times, but I never drew except for like assignments for art classes up until about two years ago because I wasn’t one of the kids who drew every day, and wasn’t like an ‘art kid’, and drawing fanart? Forget it. I just like resigned myself that I was never going to draw, and never going to make fanart of anything ever; I loved looking at fanart so much, I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but I was terrified at the thought of creating it myself.

Because I have ADHD, there are a lot of things that I discourage myself from doing because I’m scared of failure; I know that I’m not going to automatically be great at it (which is of course a super unrealistic expectation to uphold myself to, but unfortunately it nonetheless still happens more often than I would like,) and that scares me, so I don’t do it. Art was one of those things. But two years ago I got so deep into my hyperfixation that I found that I desperately needed an outlet for that mental energy, and so that mixed with it being much too late at night and I pulled out an ancient sketchbook I had squirreled away and ended up drawing.

Since then I’ve drawn so much more than I have in my entire life; it’s certainly still not a ton, or consistently, but it’s still so much more. It’s nowhere near perfect and I haven’t improved a ton due to the fact that I still only draw when I happen to be possessed by the drawing gods, but honestly? I don’t mind that. I draw as a creative outlet, and creating something from my mind and my work is enough to satisfy that. It is so refreshing to be able to just sit down and draw something, just because I want to. I gatekept drawing from myself for *so long*, and being free of that and being able to do something that I admired other people doing my whole life is so cool.

The metric of other people’s reception of your work is by no means the most important one, or one that someone should be overly focused on, but I will say; notes on my art truly mean *the world* to me. Like, I just made this little thing because I wanted to, but other people are enjoying it?? Some of my art now has over 50—over 100, even—notes on it, and while that is nowhere near so many other artists’ work, every time I realize that other people encountered it and liked it enough to just press the like button, or *especially* when they reblog it? Or reblog it with a comment? I could legitimately cry.

If you’ve ever interacted with my art in any capacity, truly thank you so much.

[tadcooper-dragon]

Ok, so quick rant about the term “queerbaiting”.

I feel like the term is really overused which can actually be quite harmful. Do I believe that there should be more explicitly queer content? Absolutely. As a queer person, seeing shows like Sex Education and Our Flag Means Death genuinely make me a happier person. Shows that showcase the spectrum of queerness without tokenizing it or making it trauma porn. And while I definitely agree that so many shows are lacking in representation, overusing the term queerbaiting can feel like gatekeeping.

I often see people using the term queerbaiting as a way to express displeasure that the story they wanted never happened. Two characters being physically affectionate with each other, emotionally vulnerable, or hell even making eye contact too long is suddenly explicitly sexual/romantic behavior. I can’t help but relate this to so many stories of men saying that a woman’s behavior toward him was misleading when she was often just being friendly. It especially feels like reinforcing the patriarchal belief that men cannot be vulnerable with each other which is one of the main things attributing to toxic masculinity. Physical and emotional affection should not be explicit to sexual or romantic relationships.

I’ve also seen people use queerbaiting in a way that feels as though it’s gatekeeping sexual and gender identity. You rarely see stories of people experimenting with their sexuality, which can be integral to any person’s life experience. Sexual experience does not dictate sexuality. We are so eager to label things we can put pressure on people to identify themselves when they may not be ready. Sexuality is a spectrum, and insinuating that a character is not queer enough for your expectations is harmful.

Billie Eilish was accused of queerbaiting for a couple of statements she made about women even though she has explicitly stated that she is straight. While a number of things there bothered me, the thing that bothered me the most was that her sexuality (or anyones) is quite frankly nobody’s business.

Harry Styles was accused of queerbaiting because he often wears what society has defined as female clothing. People were split between arguing that clearly this means he’s queer (again, not anyones business) and arguing that straight people shouldn’t express themselves that way. Gender expression should not be gatekept because while dressing a certain way might mean everything to one persons gender identity, it might just be fashion for someone else. Both things can be true, but nobody gets to dictate that for someone else.

To conclude, I do believe that there have been a few cases of queerbaiting, but I often find myself more concerned with a lack of representation in media. So many on the gender and sexuality spectrum (especially BIPOC) don’t see themselves represented and that is what needs to change. There is no wrong or right way to identify or express oneself, and everyone needs to stop defining that experience for someone else. We just need to see people/characters living as themselves in the way that makes them happiest.

I’m also gonna try to tag some shows that I feel like have some good LGBTQ+ rep and if anybody reads this and wants to add, we love to see it

[soulvomit]

I am not even sure I’ve ever been in any space that was truly normie. The closest I’ve ever been to that, is my various paramours’/partners’ families/friend groups. The kinds of “normie” spaces that are the closest I’ve ever come to being in normie culture, on my own (rather than as someone else’s +1), tend not to be truly “Full Normie.” They tend to be spaces that will be multicultural and mixed social class, where there will be a variety of human experiences. Often there are people who are open about being recovering addicts. 

Certain types of people just “stick” to me whenever I’m in a group. Usually it’s a lonely person. But most often, it’s the one visible ND present. I don’t even get to be in the rooms where they’re already gatekept out. I somehow manage to meet other autistics wherever I go. Being in nerd culture and artist spaces just gave me control over 1) meeting ND people who were ego-syntonic about it and 2) who were less likely to be heavily codependent/needy/insecure.

For me to “pass” NT-presenting per the *actual* rules of social normiehood, it’s not just enough to be accommodated to the point that my being ND becomes invisible (which is a big reason why my autism is so invisible in some spaces and I start to just seem shy/reserved); I’d have to actually openly participate in the gatekeeping, I’d have to know who and what is being gatekept out, I’d have to know who the power players in the setting were. 

I’d also have to make sure that I’m a big giant bitch to any and all “odd” or “lower status” people in the group and I must participate in the gossip about those people. This is required of you.

Like, literally, there is no version of trying to be Normie that doesn’t require me to be a bitch, while also pretending not to be a bitch. 

One thing I learned in the Social Jockeying 101/How To Be Normal spaces I was in between 2007-2012, was that not only was it fairly average for many women to subject people to shit tests, but if I wanted to be accepted by those same women, I would have to participate in this, myself. 

I would have to recognize this as an inclusion signal and dive right in; it’s what you’re required to do to join the protection racket. And if I wasn’t a giant bitch to the people I was told to be a bitch to, then I would be considered “unsafe.” 

These shit tests were going on all around me and they’re the biggest reason I don’t want to work outside the house anymore, because especially with being back in tech, I’m likely to make friends with the weird male autistic programmer in the other department or someone else that the one other woman in my department, decides other women are not allowed to talk to. Then I’ll get fucking GASLIT about my own observations and experiences if I ever try to explain these dynamics to a giant chunk of people. But at least in tech the dynamic wasn’t actually as bad as it was in other spaces. 

Being out as a lesbian used to give me a certain “out” when it came to this stuff with other women in organizational spaces, as long as I was in a “tolerant” organizational space. But - 1) I am in a hetero relationship now and 2) being openly queer in any way is NOT the protection it was in those same spaces; I feel like the dynamics of LGBT culture, especially as far as concerns anyone with proximity to *either* assigned femaleness or female identity, have shifted a lot. I feel like I’m expected to perform female-normative social behavior even as a gender nonconformer now. Like, the only way I actually get to be One Of The Guys now is actually becoming a guy, and even then I don’t get to. Whereas in the 90s, I was able to just hide out in geek culture and be one of those androgynous geeks that said “geek is a gender.”

[of-another-broken-heart]

I’m just going to copy/paste this because it took me hours and I’m drained. 

I guess I have to format it again if I want it to show up at all... 

I couldn't even make it back home before breaking down crying again.

Driving while chronically sleep deprived, exhausted, fatigued, and dissociating is bad enough. Doing it with all that AND without being able to see? How special. 

I barely had time to sit down, my phone rang. I answered it, begging for someone to hear me. For thirty straight seconds. "Hello? Hello? Hello???" Finally someone spoke, but they couldn't hear me. I'm sobbing. They hung up. I scrambled to call back, from my computer, because at least then I'm not fighting a lack of reception as well as my anxiety. They called again. I didn't answer. I waited for my computer to ring through instead. I'm put on hold.  I'm sobbing. It was just to ask what my pharmacy is. Which I already answered on my paperwork. Which I answered, again, at check-out. And I was forced into a third confirmation via a pointless, needless, anxiety-attack inducing phone call hazing. For something I already answered. 

It's not fucking fun. People don't choose this. I didn't choose this. But does it matter? "Call," the command comes. "Just call." "Call to confirm." "Call to ask." "Call." "Call." "Call." 

I want you to think of something that takes physical hold of your body and brings to you to tears. I want you to hold that and sit with it until it does those things. I want you to choose to reduce yourself to a sobbing mess, struggling to breathe, alone. And I want you to picture a world where you are commanded, demanded, required to do this. For virtually everything. Imagine needing help - but you must first re-traumatize yourself with your most painful memories until your nose is running and your eyes burn from crying. And you're exhausted for the rest of the day, too. Maybe multiple days. Absolutely exhausted. So fucking depleted that taking yourself to the bathroom is almost impossible. Feeding yourself - even eating something out of a can, or microwaved - is a herculean effort. Does that sound fun? Of course not. 

As for the appointment itself: It's the same. Much better bedside manner. But it's the same underlying capitalism-serving "care" system. It's my fault. I'm not trying hard enough. I'm not blacking out alone on the side of the road enough. I haven't dissociated hard enough and/or blacked out while driving yet, so it can't be that bad, right? Not until I'm maimed or dead, right? Why address the root of a problem when we can just plaster on endless band-aids instead? When we can blame you for hurting, instead of the environment that's poisoning you? I'm not medically sedating myself into an obedient little wage slave, and that's the real problem. I should aspire to produce capital for someone with most of the remaining hours of my life. That's the purpose of living, that's the reason for "health"care - not to care about health, no, just to keep the wheels of capitalism well-oiled with wasted human life. Inherent human value? Quality of life? Nah. 

They refused my medical history. I brought the 72-page pdf on a flash drive. Because that's how I was given it. Because I can't afford to buy and operate a personal fax machine and/or print out a chapter book's worth of pages of medical records. I went through the trouble of getting the files, and it took over a month - only to be told "we can't take anything but paper or fax." I filled out a file release form as best I could. But I didn't have the phone number or address memorized. Not even before that place became synonymous with medical neglect and trauma for me. So now they're going to go through the ancient months-long ritual of requesting the self-fucking-same documents from LISH, either by mail or fax, because they "can't" access a flash drive or a pdf or use email. Welcome to 2021. We're back to "normal" and teleheath never existed and the internet is fake and technology is a myth and why do anything efficiently when you can waste time and do damage to people instead? My Aunt called to check in on me during her lunch break. (Thank you again) She offered to get the file printed and try to hand it in for me. I'm too tired to hope. I'm too exhausted to think they'll accept it without fuss. Anything and everything to make things harder.

Top priority order of business is the whole "diseased for life" thing. Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Hypothyroidism. Daily hormones for every day of the rest of forever, gatekept behind eternal doctor visits and prescriptions and pharmacies and copays and and and and did I mention this is forever? I've got a referral to have a thyroid sonogram done. Haven't ever had one of those before. Need to make that appointment. I was able to have my blood drawn for the thyroid testing without needing an additional appointment, which was a nice change of pace. Normally you're supposed to fast for that, but I wasn't expecting that could be done during the visit. Three years of having to make additional trips to the lab for blood work. I ate immediately before getting there, so hopefully nothing had a chance to metabolize and skew the results. Even though it was great not to have to juggle yet another appointment for health shit, it was stressful. The nurse took three tries before she had all the supplies she needed in the room. I already have anxiety spikes (which also raise my blood pressure and heart rate) for all doctor visits now. (White Coat Syndrome, I learned, it's called) I didn't need to have a rubber cable tied around my arm, popped off, tied again, popped off, and tied a third and final time to make it worse. A pro to that con: she was incredibly accurate and gentle. I normally have sub-dermal bleeding and some bruising after having blood drawn, and keep the bandage on for a day or two. The bandage didn't last even an hour after I got home - but there wasn't a single spot of trapped blood, and I almost couldn't even tell where she stuck me.

I have another new diagnosis to add to my growing collection. Hypertension. High blood pressure. I used to have slightly low blood pressure. It stunned the first doctor I ever saw (you know, because I'm fat, so that sort of thing is supposed to be ~impossible~) and it frustrated my last doctor at first, too. But now, with years of building stress and anxiety? It's almost like living with your most basic human needs barely provided (food, shelter, healthcare - let's not bring up social needs LMAO those don't count anyway, right?), and at constant risk of being taken away, for months (years, in some cases) on end, is some form of stress. It's almost like being constantly dismissed and told "you're just not trying hard enough" (WHILE TRYING YOUR BEST JUST TO SURVIVE EACH DAY) is some form of stress!It's almost like perpetual, ongoing, worsening stress has a negative impact on your heart! It's almost like there are decades of data that spell this out, plain as day!It's almost like I noticed my elevated heart rate back in NOVEMBER and mentioned it out of concern to my last doctor - who dismissed it outright because my reading in-office wasn't *that* bad, and also shouldn't I be on 5487 psych meds instead? If I was sedated out of my mind, I wouldn't be physically capable of feeling stress in my body despite the presence of real-world stress factors. That's healthy, right? Don't bother to solve the stressors, just neuter the body's response to them. Super healthy response. (Not) My GYN took note of my concern in December, when my vitals DID show as high in-office. Not that my GYN had the jurisdiction to do anything about it. I'm being put on another medication to try to mitigate this, and potentially also address some anxiety. I haven't picked it up yet. I don't know the name. I don't know if I'll be able to afford it. "Your copay is only a dollar!" Yes well, when you don't have a dollar, you can't afford a dollar, can you?

I was given a list of psychiatrists. To "Call!!"Precisely none of them are a reasonable distance away. Nearly half aren't even in my insurance network. Some explicitly exclude Medicaid. Others are exclusively for children. I was suggested a medication for depression and anxiety. I can't remember which one. Either Abilify or Lexapro? I declined it for now, either way. I wanted to be able to research it. Lexapro is just another SSRI and I already know those don't work for me. Adding a chemical bouncer to my brain to make sure the happy chemicals stay out to play doesn't help when there are no happy chemicals in the first place. A quick search for Abilify doesn't address anxiety at all so it was probably Lexapro. In which case, I am not interested in repeating a different-flavor-Prozac experience. It was not good. I didn't get any notes with that medication, regardless. I got a sticky note with "Valerian Root Extract (tea or tincture)" and "Magnesium Glycinate 2 capsules" scribbled on it, instead. Out-of-pocket home rem-maybes. I can't afford to experiment with snake oils, so mostly I'll probably just spend a bunch of time looking for data and research and studies for those substances, and that's it. If I get around to psychiatric care, I will have to start from scratch in my insurance's shoddy search tool, again. And, frankly, it's not a priority. My mental health struggles are the result of a lot of physical factors and external/social factors, and no amount of artificial chemicals bullying my brain is going to solve any of it. When your car starts leaking oil, you don't just commit to buying more oil forever and dribbling it all over, wherever you go. You fix the fucking leak. If your house has a gas leak, you don't invest in gas masks. You fix the fucking leak. If you end up with a burst pipe, you don't commit to wasting water and money and damaging your environment. You fix. The fucking. Leak. But in these comparisons, I'm getting prescribed oil and gas masks and infinite water damage/waste/bills as long-term care.

I mentioned my fatigue. It was the final straw that made me give up with the last doctor. It just keeps getting worse. It's been getting worse for over 3 years. And I'm so, so fucking tired of it getting pinned fully on the fact that I'm not on psych meds. I WAS on psych meds during part of those 3 years with my last doctor. And it didn't fucking make any difference! A daily chemical lobotomy does not address or restore my lack of physical energy. My decades-old medication-resistant insomnia has never vanished with psych meds before, and it's not likely to do it now. Especially not with yet another of the same family of chemicals that I already know don't work. I want my concern to be taken seriously. I don't want it just brushed into the mental health corner, again. Being too tired to even do the things you used to enjoy - no one fucking wants this! I don't want this! I miss being able to go for walks. I miss going to the gym. I miss seeing how much I could do, and feeling good, and feeling strong. And I can't do any of that now. Not without risking harming myself in the process. 

No one wants this. I keep talking, but it feels like no one listens. At the earliest opportunity, we're back to repeating the same tired old shit that doesn't work. I try to come prepared, and the stress and time and system make sure I fail to stand up for myself anyway. I didn't get to document my disordered eating history. The relapse this year. Restricting, sometimes to the point of not eating at all. I declined to be weighed, because I want my care to be based on relevant data, vitals, blood results - not the shape and size of my body. But I was too tired to realize I needed to dodge a verbal ask for the same information. Which, it turns out, is nearly as bad a trigger as having the scale spit it out for me. Being your own advocate for equal care, when you're already tapped out? I'm not winning that challenge. 

I'm frustrated. I'm not giving up, but I am frustrated and beyond tired. I don't really expect anyone to read this mess. But it's here.

[hillbillyoracle]

Witchblr (for the Most Part) Doesn't Have the Gatekeeping Problem It Thinks It Does

I've been seeing this crop up in more and more posts, bios even - anti-gatekeeping statements. And I've tried to keep an open mind about it, to go "well maybe I'm just not seeing what they're talking about" but as I run into actual posts where gatekeeping is claimed, I'm really starting to think that Witchblr might not fully understand what the term means and why it's essential we don't adopt it from the groups who need it to articulate a very specific experience, one that Witchblr isn't capable of having just within itself as far as I can tell.

I don't know for a fact where the term originates but my first introduction to the term gatekeeping was through the trans community. A friend of mine was having to see a therapist, weekly, for 6 months, before she could get her therapist to write a letter that would enable a doctor to prescribe her the hormones she wanted to take. She'd researched them thoroughly, knew the risks and benefits very well, was fully consenting - but was being denied a substance vitally necessary to her mental, physical, social, and emotional well being.

Gatekeeping usually best describes folks who are not a part of a group getting to decide who is a part of said group. In this example, cis doctors and therapists getting to decide who is trans enough to access medical care they need. This is especially potent when other folks outside the group have easier access to the means than the group being gatekept. Such as when cis women have an easier time accessing HRT than trans women. That doesn't seem to mirror what I'm seeing in Witchblr posts where the word is used.

The power behind gatekeeping requires a level of organization that Witchblr as a community doesn't seem to have. And what's being denied are not things that are vital to folks' material well being but rather recognition and validation. I understand the confusion on some level. When forces with organized power deny folks validation and recognition, it often comes with the denial of material and social goods they need to survive. But the individuals out here writing their blogs largely cannot withhold what is vital and necessary to your continued existence. While we all do better with support, not everyone owes us that support and it requires an exchange to make it sustainable. Reading someone's work, even regularly, doesn't fit the bill. In my book, if you're in need of validation and support, you go to those people who already do or cultivate new reciprocal relationships with people who will.

The few cases where I've seen gatekeeping used to describe intracommunal affairs is in cases where the community is not equally privileged. And while there are a mix of privileged and marginalized folks in the Witchblr community, as far I can tell there's not a cohesive group that is considered more acceptable by folks outside of Witchblr who, through that acceptability, are shielded from the full weight of community specific oppression and ostracize less acceptable folks from collective resources to maintain that sheild. The closest I've seen to this (that isn't rooted in other intersections of identity) is that folks who who maintain a psychological view - "It's all in our heads but isn't that still real?" - of deities, magic, and divination seem to get a better reception than those who believe in other models and sometimes distance themselves from folks who believe otherwise but even then...doesn't quite fit the bill.

For internet communities in particular, I have a very hard time seeing the structures in place needed to enforce gatekeeping. Someone doesn't agree that you are [insert term]y enough for the [insert term] group they're personally a part of? Well there are likely a bunch more groups already established who would accept you. You also have the power to create, grow, and maintain your own. You have both resources and agency.

What I think Witchblr's usage of gatekeeping more often speaks to is many folks crave the validation of other people. They stake their worth and well being on disproving people. When someone says "you're not a witch if you don't do xyz" = they don't stop to think about what power that person has over their power or their practice. They just react. Someone is wrong on the internet and it's perceived as a threat.

Part of the issue is that Witchblr has a tendency toward projecting a practice rather than actually practicing. It's been my experience that when you spend more of your time doing your practice and you have a deep sense of your foundations - whether someone agrees with you or not quickly becomes irrelevant. What so many of the conversations on gatekeeping show me is that many folks do not have a strong enough foundation in what they believe and what they practice to understand who they are and what's relevant to them. They're filling that void with external validation.

Where Witchblr's "gatekeeping" usage becomes outright destructive or even dangerous is with it's continual insistence that people articulating positions well grounded in research and primary records are some how gatekeeping other people they don't agree with. Previous education does help but acting like every person who can defend their positions with source texts automatically has a degree or several is weirdly classist to me.

I went to rural schools the vast majority of my life. I have multiple learning disabilities, struggled hard, and never completed a college degree despite attempting twice. Money and my health stopped me. I was working class and now unemployed. I did not have internet at home for most of my adult life (and only part of my childhood). Like I am so close to the examples I see thrown around in these conversations and yet I have been told that by citing reliable sources that I'm elitist and classist.

Something we don't talk enough about as a community is that expertise has a lot less to do with privilege and a lot more to do with sacrifice. I chose to spend what free time I could practicing and researching. I could have spent that time watching Netflix, hanging out with friends, going hiking, etc. While it was also out of poverty, I chose not to accumulate things in my home that would take a lot of time to care for. I had a second hand hospital mattress on the floor and that was it - that was a sacrifice of comfort. I did not have a pet for the majority of the time I did my most intense studying so I could focus on my work - that was sacrifice. I did not have internet at home, largely because I couldn't afford it, but I embraced it as it created the ability to download a work at a public connection and take it home and sit with it deeply so that I couldn't reach out for other people's comments to filter it through. I only maintained romantic relationships that were low energy input and were thus less satisfying or close so that I could focus on my work - that was a sacrifice.

All this is to say - you don't see half the sacrifices people who have a level of expertise make. There's an assumption of ease where there absolutely should not be one. No one is asking you to sacrifice like that. No one is saying you're lesser for not making that sacrifice. What folks are saying is respect the sacrifices they made to get the knowledge they're trying to share with you. They're often trying to give you what they had to pay with a good chunk of their lives for. Take it or leave it, don't attack them. It is not gatekeeping to recognize that, where spirituality overlaps with history and other topics, there are correct answers that can be found if you look. That's just reality.

Also learning on your own is not the same as having access to an education or to the internet even. Our ancestors did not always have people to study from. Practices like spirit work, divination, and magic developed independently all over the world. There were plenty of interrupted lineages in there too. I think people forget that you can learn these skills through experimentation and observation. People literally can't keep you from this path of learning. Whether you choose to take it is up to you. Whether it's worth the sacrifice - only you can say.

So vast majority of ways I’m seeing people use the word gatekeeping just do not meet the criteria. Watering that word down robs it of it’s ability to name a very specific threat which is especially damaging to use trans folks who use it to call out medical discrimination. The vast majority of instances I see it used in are where someone is expressing an opinion. They may be wildly off base but as long as they’re not spreading truly harmful ideologies, they're entitled to it. Different opinions are not gatekeeping - they’re a natural part of any community and we have to have a level of tolerance for that. That discomfort you feel is an invitation to meet your shadow, understand your discomfort, and prioritize what actually moves your practice forward.

[kontextmaschine]

Your Granddad On The Internet

I’ve been thinking, as I always am, about the 90s and how we got here from there

And one thing I thought about was the figure we used to have of Your Granddad On The Internet - who would include you and all your brothers and sisters and parents on long e-mail FWD: chains about things that were transparently false on their face, frequently conservative-themed, frequently in ALL CAPS

Because apparently such a critical mass of people on the internet had that exact experience with their exact grandfather that it was a trope. Which brings up two points:

1) “People circulating viral conservative misinformation to their family and friends on the internet” is not a phenomenon of social media, it was there well before

2) Though these people were on the internet, ubiquitous on the internet even, they weren’t of the internet. Little or none of it was made for them and there was a hegemonic Internet Culture that recognized them as outside it.

So what was really going on? Well, let’s try to define the issue by subtraction.

It wasn’t just that he was a granddad - there were STEM professor wizards who’d been on USENET since the early ‘80s, or grey ponytail hippies from The WELL or whatever, and not only were they part of The True Internet, they were its founders.

It wasn’t just that he was out of it, on a tech or social level. Maybe your dad was wasting your inheritance chasing his brilliant day trading hunches, maybe your mom was going on Focus on the Family forums to complain about TV shows treating homosexuality as just another way to live. Probably they were both Eternal September AOLers who would ask you troubleshooting questions revealing an astounding ignorance of how computers work and somehow expect a useful answer that respected that absurd model.

But if they weren’t part of The True Internet they weren’t really rogues against it, at some level they got how you were supposed to interact with the internet - you found the site or community that corresponded to your interest and pursued it there. If anything their posts and e-mails too formally followed letter-writing structure, and they may have made dumb or tautological arguments in support of their points but they had the sense they were supposed to make arguments.

It wasn’t just that he was obnoxious - the notion of the “troll” dates to USENET at least, as someone who says things to get a rise out of people, or to bait them into wasting time rebutting something. To “own” them, basically. And annoying or not, this was accepted as part of what the Internet is, one of the signal features of its culture, really. But even when you weren’t sure if Your Granddad On The Internet actually believed something he sent you or just passed it on to signal what side he was on and how fiercely, he wasn’t trying to “own” you, he REALLY WAS on that side, he wanted you to associate him with that position, and ideally join him.

It was probably at least in part being retired and having spare time and no other social outlet, back in the day going online meant going to a specific piece of furniture in a specific room of your home when no one else was using the computer and spending maybe 3 minutes just getting online, it was something you blocked off time to do. The young generation could just come home from school to the cul-de-sac and get online for lack of anything else to do, the parents’ generation was too busy to have enough uninterrupted time to become Extremely Online?

The thing I’m really wondering about is class. What was the cost of being Online back then? Say a new computer and modem every 4 years at around $2400 (Grandpa sure wasn’t building his own, but then he didn’t have to keep upgrading video cards either), $40 for an ISP, ideally $10 for another phone line? That’s $100/month, or alternately $50/mo and the ability to make $2.5k purchases on demand. And the kind of senior citizen who, in 1998, lived separately from his children, could swing this, would think to swing this, has multiple agemate peers and children’s households who did swing this, was a particular group. “Middle-middle” class AT LEAST and probably higher, probably went to college back when only 10% of people did.

BUT that doesn’t make sense. My theory is that this used to be a more marginal behavior on the internet, but if it’s gotten more common since the late ‘90s I don’t think it’s because the Internet has grown more full of wealthy old patriarchs since.

So instead how about this theory: the internet in general was pretty wealth-marked in 1998 (far more than we realized, with our American mythology of universal white suburban middle-classness and “global village” Internet mythology) BUT, of people who were more wealthy in 1998, the most likely to NOT have internalized upper-class practices were the grandfathers from the “Silent” or “Greatest” generations before the postwar “mass middle class”. Our parents were beavery professionals who settled into the suburban cocoon, we knew we were destined for glory (or at least selective colleges) from birth, but THEY were socialized into some pool hall, street gang, farmhand, enlisted man kinda culture where boldness of assertion counted more than patient derivation from shared principles.

And if the Anglophone internet is ::gestures:: like this now maybe it’s cause it’s less of a professional-class preserve? The dividing line maybe being smartphones where “people on the internet” went from “people who specifically spend $X/mo on it as luxury” to “people with telephone service”? That’s a real possibility, that for all the “Global Village” stuff the wondrous effect of the ‘90s internet was to create a cultural space that was MORE gatekept by wealth and education.

That’s… kind of depressing, though. “Haha you thought the world was getting better because you were eliminating elitist barriers but actually it’s cause you were making them higher, which is good because the poor and non-elite are disproportionately idiots with worthless ideas and to the extent they’re on top of things the thing they’re on top of is undermining the basis of a good society, and anyway those times were a phenomenon of a narrow early adopter base and you’ll never ever get them back unless you make the non-elite economically and politically irrelevant.”

Depressing but very well precedented, that’s exactly the arc newsprint, radio, and TV followed before.

[reimenaashelyee]

History for Granted, or When a Marginal Voice Tackles The Main Text

My thoughts about being a marginalised creator who chose to make a graphic novel on a historical figure in the dominant Western canon. About why I didn't choose a lesser-known history instead. About why, either way, it is not a loss to POC representation

Reposted from my official blog, where I keep all my long-form thoughts.

Some of you may know I write historical fiction. Some of you may also know I’ve been chipping away on an Alexander the Great graphic novel.

My role as a historical graphic novelist has been stewing in the back of my mind for a while now. Actually, the stewing began when I first thought of The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, but I already know my insights from that project. Be actively thoughtful. Be self aware of how your own biases and societal context influence your storytelling. Recognise the people before and around you. Use your power to bring up voices. Understand that the work of being a responsible author lasts beyond the final page of your story.

Such is the case for Alexander, The Servant and The Water of Life. What I have learnt from TCM still carries over, thank goodness.

However, since last November, I realised that Alexander is a different kettle of fish. I already knew this early on: the mindboggling breadth and scope of research material, the baggage carried by the subject, and the newness of everything. While TCM focused on a narrow historical context (Ottoman era Istanbulite migrates to Georgian era England), and had the advantage of me knowing the lead character for years prior (Zeynel, my precious nerd son…), Alexander was from scratch. I didn’t know just how many Alexander Romances I really needed to read. I didn’t know much about ancient Greek anything. I didn’t know an atom about Alexander the Great himself – really, it was zilch.

Which means my responsibilities this time have a somewhat different character. A different edge.

I don’t write historical fiction about royalties or the elite. The most I have ever been interested in is a well-to-do merchant. Even then, my merchant would have an uncommon edge; he is with the common people. That’s where my interests lie: in the common people. The ordinary people outside of the court who go about their daily ordinary lives and daily ordinary struggles. The ups and downs and ins and outs of aristocrats and royals don’t excite me as much.

Then why Alexander? Honestly, he’s an exception.

Not because he’s suddenly a royal that interests me. Seriously, no royal will ever interest me enough to make a GN out of their life, based on their biography alone. (Though King James of the King James Bible and the secret tunnel to his boyfriend make a convincing petition) Alexander came to me in a roundabout way. A trick. He fooled me to exception by showing me his resume: Macedonian king, prophecised Egyptian pharoah, Persian king, son of a god, Jewish convert, Christian hero, Muslim prophet. And he showed me how many different cultures have absorbed him into their folk mythology over 2000 years. Even as the world changed and his body laid somewhere in Egypt, his shade travelled the world. He’s the only secular figure with similar cultural-legendary reach as Jesus. King Arthur can’t claim that. Heck, even Odysseus can’t claim that. Oh, how could I have resisted? This is exactly what I am all about.

This is all Alexander by the way.

The common people’s Alexander. The story of how different places have appropriated and localised him over time. Gave him different faces. Gave him slightly different names. Gave him quests and adventures and stories that had absolutely nothing to do with ancient Greece. Made him the believer of a pantheon into a believer of a singular God.

What brought me here is this literal embodiment of world literature. But he’s not an epic. He’s popular legend. And he doesn’t belong to any one culture or time or place. He’s everywhere.

But like I said, this kettle of fish is different.

Alexander the Great is not exactly the most obscure of histories. He’s a military idol. A national figurehead. He was a man. He was from ancient Greece. He’s claimed as a “heritage of the Western (read: white) world”, an excuse for why conquest is the legacy of the white, Western man. This is Alexander’s baggage, as I call it.

As a woman of colour (WOC) author from the global south, I’m aware of my (small, individual amount of) power to bring up unheard of histories. Unseen biographies of little known people. A glimpse into outside cultures and voices that Western-dominated media and education gloss over like wallpaper. I could have written about Puteri Gunung Ledang, or May 13th 1969, or the history of how my family came to Malaysia sometime during the Xinhai Revolution. I have no obligation to write about Alexander, because until last November, he was seriously a cultural nobody to me. I have no stake in the furthering the hegemony of Western history.

And I think, maybe not owning that stake is why it’s necessary.

Just as important as minorities writing about little known histories, minorities should write about the histories that are taken for granted. Because of our unique experiences with the consequences of colonialism, slavery, violence, discrimination, dehumanisation, etc, we look at history differently. It’s not about who wins or who loses. It’s about who is missing, who is harmed, what is lost…the gaps made by what was edited out.

With those glasses on, history taken for granted – if not already thoroughly given a critical cleansing – is shown to be what it really is: a history that isn’t as well-known as we thought. (and that’s okay)

I won’t be alone in saying I had no clue Alexander belonged to nobody and everybody (because everyone in the old world has an Alexander). For a long time, Western white history was gatekept, using the reasoning that whatever they claimed had an easy connect-the-dots relationship to their present day (even though I always knew that claim was oversimplified, anti-intellectual thinking). But, all of these things are simply whitewashed facades. The truth is that, like Greco-Roman everything, like Norse history, like Christian destiny, they are more complex, more diverse, more ambiguous, than what these facades can contain.

Just working with Alexander through the framework of the Alexander Romance already blows up general misconceptions about history: that history was a bubble, homogenous and separated from each other (“Egyptian history” “Chinese history” “Roman history”, “Christian world”, “Muslim world” “East”, “West”), rarely interacting and influencing.

And looking at Alexander’s actual biography says a lot about how open the world already was in his time. He was king of three empires. His pre-Hellenistic world was multicultural and diverse. It wasn’t all white marble statues. It was, like what reality is, painted technicolour marble statues.

The Victorian era archeologists who whitewashed those statues stripped off more than just the colour. They took off knowledge.

After a lot of thinking, I feel like I’m in a good place to make a GN about Alexander and the Alexander Romance.

It’s not a confidence thing, though tbh, I believe that as a WOC creator from the global south I cannot afford to doubt myself. It’s more about the position I am in and the new perspective I can offer about a historical-legendary figure taken for granted. And there’s my endless well of passion for multicolour histories. Alongside my desire to decolonialise everything.

It’s not a loss that I have chosen to work on a history taken for granted. Historical GNs are still dominated by the white Western cis-male perspective, both in subject and authorship. To be clear, I wouldn’t consider that particular perspective wrong or lesser on its own. My only qualm is when that perspective becomes the majority perspective, or worst the only perspective, which is given to an audience. I always think about this TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie, about the Danger of a Single Story:

Me being here, telling an entirely different story, is a statement by itself.

Even then, I shouldn’t need to justify my choice. Whether it’s to a person who tells me I shouldn’t pursue Alexander because he’s a part of the dominant narrative, or to another person who tells me that as a minority creator I must adhere to my social responsibility (responsibility demanded by whom?) to tell little known histories or stories. Again, in my case, I think it’s not a loss which way I go, Alexander or not, because whatever I write is going to be a different story.

I think the only loss is when there aren’t still yet more marginalised authors to take on both the little known histories and histories taken for granted. The project of diversifying storytelling is not demanding the few marginalised voices to choose the correct, exotic, culturally-representative dish they had to bring to the potluck, but making the table wider, inviting more voices, so that, by author’s choice, any dish can be present and enjoyed by everyone.

My choice in whatever story I desire to write, as long as it doesn’t bring harm and intolerance and it undergoes the necessary self-interrogation, should be a choice that is already given. If white, Western authors can have this freedom, why not everyone else? Why must minority voices be defaulted to never having this good faith at the start?

Is it not enough that we already suffer from a lack of representation and a lack of self-esteem? Must our hands be tied even tighter, to be told that even our own voice cannot be trusted, because that trust has been abused over and over by the dominant voice?

Every new voice that is encouraged to speak is one more step towards making the table bigger.

This is one of my responsibilities of being a (historical) graphic novelist. I am here to encourage, and to make the table bigger. I am here to say, oh look, this particular history is exciting too, see how weird and creative and large the world already was.

And for Alexander GN in particular, it’s about showing that we have shared a historical-literary figure. That Alexander (and his baggage) isn’t immune to criticism. That by bringing him back the way I’m planning to, I’m no longer just talking about Alexander of Macedon. I am talking about Sikandar. I am talking about Alisaunder. I am talking about the Alexander conceptualised by Nizami, by Arrian, by Joseph Flavius, by every hand who has ever written and drew their own Alexander.*

Already, is that not a hundred different stories? * despite the fact all of these voices were male…well that’s gonna change

There will be time for me to write of lesser-known histories, if I feel the calling. Maybe I won’t ever. (I did tell myself The Carpet Merchant was the last historical GN I’ll ever do in forever…here I am. Nothing is predicted.) And if I’m not compelled, again, that is not a loss.

I am not the only one with a voice.

[this-lioness]

Quaranmemes for Quarantines

Tagged by @reallyginnyf​ <3  Putting this under a cut since it’s pretty much doubling as my weekend wrap-up as well.

when was the last time you left your home? On Thursday I had to run a few quick no-contact errands -- dropped a bulk mailing off on the rear platform at the post office, deposited a Fedex envelope into one of their pickup boxes, and then ran some miscellaneous groceries over to my Mom’s house.  Today I went for a run, but only around the neighborhood, so that doesn’t feel like it counts. 

what was the last thing you bought? I’ve actually been doing a bit of online shopping lately -- bought a sewing machine (still need to sit down and set it up), a gas-powered pressure washer (arrived today), a new bathroom scale and a vacuum sealer.  Last thing we bought in-store were some small necessities from Walmart.

is quarantine driving you insane or are you finally relaxed? This is tough to answer, because I’m never actually relaxed.

I worry about someone in my immediate family getting sick, but beyond that the quarantine doesn’t really trouble me.  I’m largely a homebody, and honestly this has kept us from a lot of unnecessary spending, so all the places I’d probably be going would just be buying shit that we really don’t need. I think my anxiety only ramps up when we have to go somewhere, like when my parents need groceries, and we have to go through the whole process of masks and gloves and fully decontaminating everything once we get home.  We have it down to a science, but it’s still a whole process.

But I’m frankly enjoying the time at home.  I’m a very “routine” person -- I’m comforted by having lists of things I need to do, and places to put things, and then doing it all by rote.  We worked very hard to make our house be a place where we enjoy being, creating, relaxing and working, and now we’re reaping the benefit of all those things.

who are you spending quarantine with? My husband Marc and all the cats.  I only see my parents long enough to drop things off at their house.

do you have pets to keep you company? We have three of our own -- Bones, Spencer and Rosie -- plus two fosters, Baby and Blue.  There is also a semi-feral cat, Fidget, that we feed and care for, and he occasionally spends a night inside if it’s particularly cold or wet out.

what are your current responsibilities? We’re both very fortunate in that we are fully capable of working from home, and both our employers are in full gear.  Mine is actually busy enough to need to hire new people for the sudden influx of work, apparently. So I work my “day job” during the day, and when I’m not working I’m cleaning and doing laundry, trying to keep our chest freezer topped up with ready-to-prepare meals, a lot of organizing and a bit of gardening.  I really need to sit down and do something creative, although my muse has been completely dead for... longer than I’d care to admit.  I’m going to give it a bit of a try tonight, though, so we’ll see.

Just lately I’ve been on a purging spree.  Thursday, Friday and yesterday I cleaned out every corner of the art room / office and made three piles of craft supplies to give away.  I also gathered together two enormous bags of various clothes and gave that away as well.  My next step is probably to switch out my winter wardrobe for the summer stuff, although we’re expecting a good week of cold, rainy weather so... maybe not quite yet.

do you have a room to yourself? Well, if I ever needed time to myself I could certainly find it.  The art room / office is unoccupied when we’re not working, and when we are I can always come down to the living room or go into the bedroom with my laptop, or I’ve got a little “writing chair” in the dining room, by the back patio, that’s nice to sit in.  I can be content anywhere in the house, basically.

are you exercising? I wasn’t, but a few days ago I decided to change that.  I need to get better control over my physical well-being (and self-image), so I made myself a little weight / diet log, included columns for water intake and exercise, and signed up for a “virtual 5k”.  Today it was just warm enough to get outside, so I went for a run.  Technically we went for a run, but Marc got winded not too far into it and had to head home again.  I grabbed my earbuds and went back out.

Got in 2.27 miles before deciding to head back home.  Because the weather is going to be shitty I plan to kick the fosters out of their room for at least 45 minutes every day so that I can get some treadmill time in.  With any luck we’ll shortly have space cleared in the attic so that we can do yoga and maybe barre as well.  

town, country, city? We’re in a semi-rural suburb in Bucks County, PA.  It’s... suburban, but very very blue collar, and there’s plenty of farms around, large and small.

how’s your toilet paper supply? We seem to be OK.  I am a prepper by nature, and I made sure to stock up before things started to get bad.  I’m also being very mindful of how much I use, which helps.  I’m more worried about my folks, who blow through resources like crazy, but I don’t think it’s terribly hard to come by as long as you can get to a store.

what’s the worst thing that you had to cancel? I was a bit bummed about the Colin Firth concert being cancelled in the early part of this month.  That was going to be a nice night out.

To be very honest, my biggest regret is that we took on the fosters when we did.  No one in this area is in a position to adopt two cats, and to be honest... they’re not very good fosters.  Blue is friendly and outgoing, she likes to play, but she’s not cuddly -- she’s not really interested in being petted or held and doesn’t seem to want to sit in your lap for very long.

Baby likes Marc well enough, but she continues to run from me whenever she sees me, and forget about coming up for a cuddle.  She’s just... fucking miserable.

We’re also giving up on trying to integrate them with our cats.  They don’t have very good “cat manners” (they have no sense of personal space and will get right up in the other cats’ business), and the two of them have twice now gone after Rosie in what was a semi-playful, semi-aggressive manner that she definitely did not appreciate, so that’s the end of that.

It would be different if they got along with our cats, or if they were cuddly, but Blue is the only one that I’d consider truly adoptable.  Baby is fucking miserable and I have no idea how the fuck we’re going to adopt them out.  I’m desperately trying to find someone that can take them, but I don’t have a good feeling, and I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do long term.  It was a mistake taking them in, and I regret it, but I’ve got to find a way to deal with it now.

what’s the best thing you’ve had to cancel? This is going to sound terrible but... we were planning on going to a “Return of the Living Dead” convention in June.  Had tickets, a hotel, everything.  Technically it’s still on -- they haven’t cancelled the event yet -- but we’ve agreed we won’t be going, even if it’s still on in June.  Too much of a risk.

In theory this was going to be super fun, and I actually was excited about it, but... honestly, going to so many comic cons has really burned me out on other people who attend conventions, and the idea of being around mobs of people acting like smelly, poorly socialized assholes about something that I genuinely love was kind of stressing me out.

I didn’t want to see something that I love gatekept, I didn’t want to be “fake geek girled” about it by somebody with B.O. and no social awareness.  It was starting to stress me out. So I’m sad that we won’t be going, but glad that I don’t have to stress out about it.

who do you miss the most? My boss, I guess?  He was fun to hang out with and bullshit with, and we can’t really do that the same way that we did when we were in the office together.  I’m pretty lukewarm on everybody else I used to see in person day to day.

do you have any new hobbies? Ugh, please, I already have so many fucking hobbies.   Uh. Well, I did buy the sewing machine, so... :/  Let me get it set up and actually sew something before I start calling it a hobby, though.

what are you watching the most? Marc and I have been binge-watching Ozark and a show called Futureman, which are both compelling and extremely difficult to watch in different ways.  I’m still waiting on new content from the lady that lives in Japan, haha... this is probably a good opportunity to go back and watch whatever videos I haven’t seen yet.

are you still going to work? Remotely, yes, every day.  I’m actually using the time to try and get myself better organized and establish good work habits and routines that I can carry through to when things start to normalize.

what are you out of? Mmm... nothing, I don’t think?  I’m getting low-ish on yeast, since I’ve been baking so much, but I’m not even really low on that yet.  I’ve tried to do a “dried cranberry yeast starter” but I’m not convinced it took... I need to drain off the yeast liquid and add some flour tonight, see if it grows or if it’s a dud.  

have you made any changes to your hair during quarantine? I trimmed my bangs about a week ago, I think, because they were getting frustratingly long.  Fortunately I didn’t butcher them too badly.  Today I helped Marc give himself a trim, and he’s looking quite dapper again, so I guess we’re not in too bad of a shape.  I chopped my hair to the shoulders back before the quarantine so it would have to get much, much longer before it became problematic for me, and even then.  I’m still debating if I even want to color my grays at all, so I’m not concerned about “touching up roots” or anything like that.  I am what I am. 

Not tagging anyone because A) I’m terrible at tagging, B) Most of the people I follow that are “real people” and not just content-posting accounts are mutuals of one another.  If you want to participate, please consider yourself tagged.

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

 A Note to the Turmeric and Yoga Crowd. TL;DR. You Aren't That Sick.

Cannabis Refugee, Esq.

December 9, 2019

Let me preface this note by saying that I was able to somewhat control my Crohn’s symptoms for 30 fucking years before I got sick.  And when I say “sick” I mean sick-sick.  The kind that is undeniably disabling, mostly doesn’t respond to treatment and never goes away.

Because I have explored and/or experienced these things firsthand, I know all about prescription and over the counter medication including oral, topical and other traditional medications, as well as Chinese medicine; homeopathy; reflexology; chiropractic; Ayurveda; herbal remedies and tonics; restrictive diets; probiotics and fermented foods; vitamins, minerals and other supplements; trendy exercise programs and basic ones too; every form of detox, cleanse, fast and purge imaginable (and then some); acupuncture/acupressure/cupping/spooning; aromatherapy; crystal therapy; therapeutic massage; meditation and relaxation practices; binaural beats and sound therapy; infrared therapy; Reiki and other energy work; atheist-prayer; talk therapy and otherwise working out your issues; knock-you-down-to-build-you-back-up emotional bootcamps; cutting “toxic people” and things out of your life; letting go and letting God; and thinking about something else for awhile.  Did I miss anything?  Jesus.

I’ve done it all and I’ve been doing it all for a very long time.  This is not my first day, or year, or decade with alternative therapies: I was avoiding nightshades while some of you were still eating French fries with your Happy Meals.  Think about that shit a minute.  I’ve been doing every alternative therapy imaginable since before many of you were even born.  And certainly before any of this shit became cool, or easily accessible, or at all normalized and/or mainstream.  

Potatoes (and therefore French fries) are a nightshade BTW, for anyone who doesn’t know.  And nightshades are known to be inflammatory.  I recently had an old family friend clue me into the harm nightshades can cause.  I recall trying to clue people into that in 1992 when I first learned about it but whatever right?  He figured it out 30 years later, after being in pain for decades and after having both knees replaced.  Good job dude.  Seriously, well fucking done.  These are the people, and the kinds of people, who are giving me advice.  It is, in a word, maddening.

I’ve also been keeping up with the research.  I research Crohn’s and other medical conditions weekly if not daily because I am interested in it and interested in the social commentary around it.  Where there is none, or nothing interesting, I create social commentary about it on this blog.  I know about fecal transplants and have written about it here, I know about so-called “Functional Medicine” and have written about that here, I know about stem-cell therapy (shudder) and Ketamine therapy.  I know that there is a potential gene therapy in the pipeline which I will probably never get to try.  Because these things cost money and are gatekept and are otherwise inaccessible and/or unsustainable over time.  We have been over this.  Even if these things work, there are reasons besides not knowing about it that prevent people from accessing them long term or at all.  Have you heard of?  Have you tried?  Yes.  Probably.  Seriously, stop wasting my fucking time.*

And don’t get me wrong.  Some of these alternative remedies “worked” or worked well enough that I was able to mostly do what I needed to do for a reasonably long time.  I was able to finish school, and have something of a career, and maintain some semblance of a life through my thirties with the crutch these various pain relievers and anti-inflammatories provided me and they worked.   Kind of.  Until they stopped.  When I finally gave in and saw a doctor for what had finally become unmanageable gut pain and symptoms — what turned out to be severe Crohn’s disease — I was 38 years old and absolutely everything I ate was making me sick.  The supplements, diets and practices I had relied on for decades, and on which I spent all my discretionary resources for decades, no longer worked.  Get it?  They worked once, to some degree, but they didn’t work forever.

Please.  Please hear and understand.  Regarding alternative therapies, I have tried them all, or a goodly portion of them, and I know a lot of them work.  They do!  Kind of.  Unfortunately, I also know that the relief they provide is temporary only.  It’s temporary guys.  And if these things are currently working for you, and if you are still functional and able to mostly do what you want and need to do because turmeric and yoga or whatever, it can only be because either your illness isn’t that serious, or it’s not progressive, or it’s both serious and progressive but you aren’t that sick yet. If you yourself are sick and you say you feel like hell and that this stuff helps you, I believe you, but you likely ain’t seen nothing yet: if you have an incurable, progressive chronic disease, things are going to get much, much worse for you, and eventually there won’t be a fucking thing you can do about it.  And I am so, so sorry about that.

Here is how my 30 years’ journey with various alternative treatments turned out: eventually, my meager and last-ditch anti-inflammatory diet of unseasoned chicken, cauliflower, water and a bevy of supplements and practices no longer worked and I could no longer eat no matter what I did or didn’t do.  I had reached the end of that road — what I am calling the yoga and turmeric road — and I was extremely, extremely ill.  And it wasn’t because I was cheating on my diet(s), or being surreptitiously glutened, or that I hadn’t tried long or hard enough.

I can only conclude that these practices stopped working because turmeric and yoga and things of that caliber might work in the beginning, but they do not work long term, and they will not, because they cannot, work forever on serious, incurable and progressive disease.  Crohn’s disease is a serious, incurable and progressive disease and the whole time I was doing absolutely everything I could to treat my pain and symptoms, my Crohn’s was doing exactly what it was supposed to: getting worse over time.  What a shock, a disease that’s known to be progressive, progressed.  It’s in the name innit.

*This might’ve been my favorite suggestion though.

Q: Have you tried therapeutic fasting???

A: Well, I almost starved to death a couple of times.  Because Crohn’s.  

Comments Open on Blog

[verysmallaminal]

just read “In an era when we’re having massive problems with people choosing to fuck with wildlife because they feel entitled to those personal, free / close contact experiences” in a wad....t..t post and it triggered a thought

the word “entitled” is really heavily loaded. it implies someone thinking they deserve a thing/experience without having earned it, just by virtue of wanting it. the idea feels like, this is something that some people can do/have because they have done what is required to do it correctly. in this case, that “some people” is “professionals”, people who have the right kind of experience, adhere to the right kind of accreditation, have gone through the right kind of training/education, in line with “objective” scientific findings regarding animal behavior and welfare. they aren’t going to encourage free-contact interactions with wild animals (though they may distribute promotional material romanticizing such interactions which are infinitely more influential than warnings against such behavior), although their work may require them in some capacity to do so. i’ve talked before i think about wildlife as some kind of sacred relic that only a privileged few can experience through touch and intimate interactions, and that access to these experiences is gatekept to varying intensities depending on the charisma of the species in question. this is all for the welfare of the animal, ultimately; you only want people in these positions who will consistently treat the animal “well”, and you want as few of them as possible because ultimately human interaction is a stressful thing for wildlife.

but like, this is a crusading issue among wildlife professionals. it’s rooted in a very culturally constructed idea of what animals are and what is best for them; it depends on the idea that we can determine objectively how to treat animals well, because our methods are scientific and the scientific method and body of knowledge is a privileged ontology (i have an understanding of this word roughly equivalent to that of a hagfish’s so bear with me). the problem i kind of have with this is that expertise regarding how to treat animals right (i think i’ll call this animal knowing) is itself a commodity you have to buy--there aren’t many paid apprenticeship situations in animal work that i know of, and i would venture to say that most labor in animal work is unpaid or underpaid. to get animal knowing, you have to have some kind of economic privilege such that you can invest your time in that work without enough compensation to keep yourself afloat with just that work. the public education programs by wildlife professionals, the tv shows and articles and interviews and talks, that isn’t enough to engage with wildlife in any way that isn’t deemed safe for the layman--by wildlife professionals.

this is all for animal welfare and ecosystem health. i’m not disputing that. wildlife professionals genuinely want to both protect animals and the environment, and promote public understanding and appreciation of these things. but i kinda want to argue that the way this is done is anthropocentric by not treating animals as agents--access to them is hoarded. it is only right to handle an animal if you are licensed to do so, loosely speaking. i think the animal knowing advocated by ppl like the blog i mentioned way above is valid, don’t feed wildlife, don’t harass wildlife, we have research suggesting that wildlife is harmed by these interactions--but it also dichotomizes man and nature in ways that marginalized worldviews do not, and given the privileging of this scientific animal knowing by colonial power structures, it’s kind of uneasy that this knowing is so rigidly proposed and universalized. people have been keeping monkeys orphaned by hunters as pets long before we had “primate” as a concept, i hate the idea of pet monkeys but to privilege an ontology that illegitimizes this over one that doesn’t when the second is older, longer-lived, and produced by a decidedly healthier society re: the environment is kind of head-in-ass

also even within one country like america, indigenous animal knowings that i’m not even familiar with may not align well with institutional animal knowing, and are settlers really going to pretend that they make better authorities on wildlife interactions when we’ve only known about raccoons for a couple centuries

i’ve literally never seen w.a.dtt talk about non-american human/nature interfaces before, this isn’t her stance that i’m critiquing or whatever, it’s just. i guess my perception of professional animal culture. generally i consider myself part of this culture, given my chosen profession and all, but also i’m invested in genuine, organic interactions between societies and ecosystems, and i don’t buy into borders between humans and nature, and i don’t think people and animals can experience each other on either side of a metaphorical moat--that just isn’t our history

[divagonzo]

Hello ! I wanted to thank you for all the information you provide about Ace people, because not so much is said about them - and I didn't even know it existed before I came on Tumblr ! Well, I hesitate, but I wanted to ask you something (but I don't want to be rude, so you can tell me to piss off). You write a lot of stories that include sex, and I know you can talk about it... Isn't it uncomfortable ?Don't Ace people not feel sexual attraction ? *blush and hide*

Evenin’ other Nonnie. I’m glad that my experiences are of help.

Secondly, I’d never tell anyone to piss off, not unless they’ve been a complete berk towards me first.

Now…. to answer your question…. it’s under a cut since other aces that follow me might be uncomfortable with what I will explain under the read-more.

Am I uncomfortable discussing such? No, and that’s because it took a few decades to realize who I truly am, how I perceive things, and I will not be silenced from speaking up and out on the issue - not when people are gatekept from the Community, not when people are called Prudes (and not as a virtue!), called Cold Fish, called Potatoes, subjected to intense negative peer pressure to act out in ways that are highly uncomfortable, or in some regards, doing performative heteronormative behaviors when that is of zero interest to them. As long as society considers those who don’t feel those things as broken, as long as society forces behaviors that have long-term negative consequences just to fit in, causing even more emotional damage long-term then I will speak up and out on it - and leave my box open and on Anonymous for anyone who needs some wisdom or to make their first time coming out (whether it’s Pan, Bi, Gay, Ace, Trans - whatever. I have no judgments when it comes to the orientation of others.)

I am a subset of the Ace spectrum, in that for me to feel that way requires someone putting together a 3000 piece puzzle - or making a Rube Goldberg machine actually work. There are so many bits and levers and timing that have to just fall into place for me to feel that way towards someone. In this case, it’s been a very small handful in my (almost) 45 years.

In fact, I can count it all on one hand - with fingers left over. And not all of them were men, either. (More on that later.) The only crushes I had (where it was an actual crush) one treated me cruelly for finding out and the other? His wife knows how I felt then - but not now. (And his wife and I are good friends.)

I’ll freely admit that I have significant trust issues (which I work on daily with the tools at my disposal) along with a temper (which doesn’t get fed enough thankfully.) So for me to learn to trust someone takes a very, very long time to get there. In fact, the only one who didn’t take forever and a day was my Hubs. (We joke that it’s his pheromones.)

The one that wasn’t a man? I’ve known them over 25 years now, going on almost 30 now. (Have I mentioned I’m old? Well, I am.) We’ve been through so much that it’s not funny. I know things that no one else knows and I cherish that trust they have in me. And they, bless their beautiful empathetic heart and soul, waited on me to figure it all out. (And that took about 15 years!)

Thing is, everyone knew. I just had to admit it. I thought I was being circumspect. Nope. Their partner said it was like I had a flashing blinking light above my head.

D’oh!

But the other issue is… I never acted upon it. Ever.

And by not acting upon it (and causing untold drama and problems x 100) and waiting to figure things out brought me to a major epiphany:

It wasn’t physical what I was needing. It was emotional and mental (and spiritual) intimacy.

That’s the big thing about being Ace (at least for me): The outer meat bag means very little to me. It’s about that heart, soul, mind, and brilliance.

By not acting on such, I am incredibly privileged in having some of the best friends that money can’t buy - and a husband who I adore and trusts me completely. I have that emotional intimacy with the Hubs and the other one (along with the others in my very, very close circle of friends who I trust with my life.)

So, for me to have found the Unicorn (or in this case, a herd of Unicorns), I’ve learned how I can show affection to those whom I hold closest and dearest - and not wonder if “Do they think I’m crossing a line” or “Am I crossing my own line and gonna regret such?”

(It went so far as to be stand-offish with most women, ‘cept for the very, very few I trust. That’s only relented in the last couple of years.)

So for me writing s*x and things of a s*xual nature is a celebration, a joy, an intimacy that transcends the physical into the emotional, mental, and spiritual.

But I also derive great joy writing scenes where girlfriends are sharing those moments, being vulnerable and knowing that the others are ride or die (even if there were tossers who said that it was cheating on their male partners. Bollocks and bullshit.)

So… if you found your Unicorn, you’d do anything and everything asked to tend it daily, cherish it, and love it, even if some feelings took a very long time to get there, and that there’s no one else that you’ve really felt that way with anyone else.

One of the things that I did learn from one of my nearest and dearest is that even though they might not feel that particular attraction, the love is there by the gross - even if they don’t want to bang on their partner. They are the rock their partner depends on so they can spread their wings, and reach for goals that make them happy.

It’s absolutely incredible to have more than one who makes up my heart, as cold, stringy, black, and withered as it is.

[thedogsled]

Who Tube (Doctor Who YouTube) is hilariously terrible at the moment. You’ve got new fans being gatekept by old fans and then yelling at the old fans and then the old fans yelling back, people subtweeting each other on their channels “Some YouTubers, they know who they are”, people posting vicious rants as soon as episodes end--lots of really really toxic shit on both sides. Like. It’s hilarious--if you enjoy VERY thinly veiled misogyny on one side and blind adoration for progressiveness at the expense of decent writing on the other. If you listen to these people, it’s not very difficult to see where the canon schism between straight white “geek culture” males and anyone with a so labeled by said people SJW motivation come to blows. They both think the other side is just ignorant, and the constant lashing out is just. Wow. It’s really. Wow.

Saltiness ahead.

It frustrates me a lot, because I feel the show has been really hit and miss this season and the warring on YouTube is just another example of how you just can’t discuss this reasonably. It’s not all bad, but it’s certainly been far from all good. Some of it REALLY works, like for example Ryan’s dyspraxia and the decision to explore Yasmin’s character through her grandmother’s story, but some of it doesn’t. I was particularly dismayed today, spoilers, by James I being played through the lens of modern campness by Alan Cumming this week, turning the former monarch into a queer caricature (I know the guy most from his role in Spy Kids, Fegan Floop, which replays ENDLESSLY on british TV). I feel like a lot of the episodes of this season have been simply the characters thrown into chaos, bad guy is revealed to be an alien, then the Doctor gives a shockingly profound, emotional speech that makes you forget how awful some of the other parts were and you go away with ~feels~ and not much else, because all the endings are pulled out of the writer’s ass anyway. Just. That’s how I personally saltily feel about this show this season, like it’s been platforming for a bunch of different writers saying what they want to say about humanity through the Doctor’s mouth. Like she’s ceased to exist beyond her existence as that mouthpiece, and that in some ways the show has too. (just my opinion. anyway.)

But you can’t talk about this stuff. I find myself reading reviews and watching people who like the show and place no accountability on the show beyond being politically bold, and it drives me nuts. It doesn’t matter what form it comes in, so long as it’s pro-feminist, or it exposes people to history they might not have learned in class, or there’s a dude giving birth for 50% of the airtime. If I want to hear or discuss any challenge to those things, I find myself listening to purely negative reviews instead, and noping out when the person suddenly reveals halfway through that they believe that because men aged 18-40 is a big demographic, it only makes sense that they’re the group that are kowtowed to at every opportunity. Like wtf dudes, sorry you can’t hack that other people exist in the world and you aren’t being catered to 24/7 any more. Fuck off. So it’s no wonder the antis feel Doctor Who lovers are all SJWs and the pos!Who people are convinced that the antis are all racist misogynist fucks. (The showrunners do too afaik, and that isn’t helped at all by Chibnall and Jodie both being SO resistant to negativity that neither of them seem to be soliciting fan feedback that isn’t positive.) Is it hard to ask for objectivity, though? For something that comes down the middle? That isn’t racist and misogynistic, but maybe still cares about how the things we’re looking for in terms of representation are being handed to us? How about, at least, not having to listen to some people who are so entitled that they literally think that Jodie Whitaker shouldn’t have shot out any babies so that she can instead devote her entire life to making TV shows? (Seriously, I listened to one girl who thought that, and you could hear her contempt for people who have kids in every syllable.)

I’ve liked episodes of this season. The Kablam! episode was great, I only had minor complaints with the ep that I handwaved away because I felt like there was actually some dramatic tension. I liked episode 2 because it was idk. A fun adventurous romp and the characters all had flaws. I quite liked Rosa because it had the bones of something better, and that showed through in all the scenes where Rosa’s actress (Vinette Robinson, who was also in the Chibnall episode ‘42′, btw what nepotism how many british actors do you think there are?) interacted with the other characters. 

But they weren’t all perfect, at least to me. Maybe I’m a negative nelly, because everyone seems to be tripping over themselves to scream positivity about the show in their reviews, but I, personally, feel like much of it has fallen flat. When they did finally drop - as they’ve been avoiding for much of this season - the ‘If I was a bloke this wouldn’t have been a problem’ thing, it wasn’t even delivered with a great deal of gravity or purpose. Maybe some people think that was a good thing, I don’t know, but looking at the way sexism was handled in Timeless, for example, and hell, Sliders (which was a trashy 90s show about jumping between alternate realities; or Quantum Leap for that matter, which had Sam jump into the lives of women in the past and experience days in their lifetimes), it’s way past the era of TV to deliver that kind of line like it’s inconsequentially drawing attention to something nobody noticed before, you know? Why is the BBC always 100 years behind, despite playing like it’s the most progressive thing ever? Why do we let it, and say “Sure we’ll take it, that’s enough” instead of also insisting they tell GOOD stories, and not wave their hand and say aliens did it at the end of every episode? I get it’s a time traveling series but the aliens show up and then the doctor waves her magic wand and ~science~ and yes she quoted Arthur C Clarke but she can do that and be powerful and tell powerful stories that aren’t completely...halfhearted, and if you don’t have trumped up stupid bad guys you don’t have to have flimsy solutions for beating them at the end.

We SHOULD be seeing ourselves in the media we’re absorbing. I firmly believe that. I also think, though, that we’re entitled to be respected by that media as well, in that the stories we’re seeing that show US should be good stories. They shouldn’t be concentrating on making as many nods as possible to as many corners of culture as possible that it stops caring about the story it’s telling, because whatever politically correct points it scores will ensure people overlook its flaws. It’s disrespectul, and we shouldn’t allow it, because it means we’re nothing but a commodity, an unquestioning storyblind audience that just doesn’t care so long as our representation needs are getting catered to. That means we’ll keep getting more representation, but a lot of it will be shit, because no matter what we’ll throw up our hands and give it ten out of ten and rigorously defend it no matter what caricatures it throws in front of us.

We should demand better stories alongside our representation. Fandom is so powerful now that we’re being written for, because as a whole we aren’t objective. We engage in mass squeeing, we’re GREAT at giving positive feedback and high ratings like it’s our job to do it even if it’s undeserved (and arguably Who NEEDED that positive feedback this year) and best of all anyone who doesn’t agree can be written off as an angry white dude, or racist, or just ignorant. That’s good for ratings and good for clicks, and networks eat that stuff up because it makes them money. But that isn’t respect, and we shouldn’t be selling ourselves out for a bargain basement price.

That’s my last word on it for now. I’ll probably complain again next week, and I know I KNOW this isn’t a popular pov for people, but I’ve made my bed with that. For those of you who loved it, I’m glad for you. I’m mostly disappointed for myself. And I still think camp James I was fucking terrible but I already know people love him, so what do I know?

P.S. my tags are for my flist so they can blacklist properly, not to force my saltiness down the throats of other Who fans. You don’t have to agree with me. I just needed to vent.