#and I think it’s symptomatic of this larger issue that I see a lot in leftist spaces

[luanna801]

In addition to the obvious antisemitism, it used to surprise me how many prison abolitionists were vehemently in favor of vigilante killing as a form of "justice". It made no sense. If you consider even prison too harsh a punishment, let alone the death penalty, how can you support extrajudicial murder where a person isn't even given a trial or any sort of chance to prove their innocence before being killed?

Then I realized that's the part they wouldn't say out loud when people ask "Okay, but what about the really dangerous people? If we can't lock people up, how do we keep people safe from them?" They're actually not against death or violence as a punishment at all, they just think it should be in the hands of random individuals - implicitly in their hands, and the hands of people who think like them. And then they can just get rid of anyone they think is too bad a person, and let the rest go free.

They'll claim to love the idea of restorative justice while celebrating the murder of people they don't like, and they'll claim to love empathy while never showing a drop to anyone they've decided is in a "bad" category of person. And it's surprisingly easy to land in one of those categories.

There are many people who have these ideals and aren't hypocrites about it, of course. I'm not criticizing the ideals themselves. But this is an incredibly common attitude I've seen, and I'm saddened but not surprised to see it turned against Jews. (So many people barely need an excuse to turn against us anyway, even supposedly "progressive" ones.) They've decided that all ""Zionists"" are in the unredeemable category of person whose deaths can be celebrated, and "Zionists", like most of those categories of people, can be defined so broadly that no one is innocent enough for them, even the literal babies who were murdered.

it's interesting how many leftists claim to oppose the death penalty while supporting killing israeli civilians

[rivetgoth]

Today I had an observation and evaluation with a program supervisor at my internship and it went really well!

Most notably though, afterwards during the debrief she made a comment about how I always have a super good attitude. All of my marks on all of my observations and evals have always scored me crazy high for positive environment, good rapport, good attitude, etc. She was like, "Have you always been like this? Like, were you just this bright smiling confident little boy that was friends with everyone?"

And it was just crazy to hear. I honestly kinda laughed and was like... NO. I explained my backstory a little--Truth be told I was one of the shyest people I have ever known as a kid/preteen/teen. I would make up excuses to avoid going to restaurants with friends because I would feel like I was going to throw up from the anxiety imagining ordering something. I couldn't look people in the eye, couldn't shake their hand, I was terrified to meet new people in any context. I heard the phrase "come out of your shell" 50000000000000x from teachers and other Trusted Adults. My parents were always on my case about it. I remember being like, 12 or so and my mom asked me to run into the store and pick up some milk while she stayed in the car and I just couldn't even IMAGINE a world where I would do such a thing. Like, this is such a vivid memory to me, I remember my mom was annoyed and said something like "How are you going to survive one day when you live on your own?" and I legit could. not. imagine. ever being able to buy something at a store and check it out and deal with a grocery store employee face to face. It legit felt impossible.

As an older teen I started making a really, genuine, honest, active effort to change. Slowly. Truth be told I hated how I was. The social anxiety was symptomatic of a kind of larger issue or a bunch of interconnected issues. I was the pickiest eater I knew. I had dealt with genuine psychotic episodes from around age 14. I had trouble maintaining a single friendship. I was having panic attacks so bad I would end up puking. I was extremely dysphoric and didn't want to be perceived by anyone; I knew nobody would see me as anything but a girl but I felt like I was in genuine danger if I said anything, so I just felt like I was lying to everyone, all the time. It was a lot. I wasn't happy. I made a lot of small changes. Some of these were lifestyle-related: I left public school and switched to independent study. I graduated early and started going to my community college. I got involved in clubs that interested me. But honestly a lot of them were more, like... psychological? Personality-based? More intangible things. I feel like I started engaging with some really introspective shit like

Asking myself, what am I so afraid of? What is the worst that could happen? And actually going through the motions of picturing all of those things, and how I would realistically deal with them, and also realizing that none of it was actually that bad, at all. I could manage literally any of the things I was terrified of, and a lot of the time, there was nothing to be terrified of at all.

Reconceptualizing my social anxiety as an extremely selfish, self-destructive mindset. I think this is going to sound controversial but I believe a lot of my social anxiety was born from being too obsessed with myself. Not in a positive way; I HATED myself. But I was too obsessed with how other people viewed me. I was too obsessed with how I was perceived. To the point that I was treating other people cruelly. You know that tweet that's like "I told my husband that sometimes I worry he hates me and secretly gets annoyed by me, and he said that it made him sad and he wished I wouldn't think of him that way"? Yeah. This also meant doing stuff like developing better social skills for conversing with people that centered them instead of me, like learning how to recognize social cues that didn't really come naturally, asking more questions, being more expressive/reactive, allowing other people to talk first... little things.

But also developing conviction in myself! Realizing that if someone DID think I was stupid, or annoying, or was unnecessarily rude or cruel to me, that they were the one in the wrong. Becoming more confident in knowing who I am and what I'm about, so that if someone judges me, that's on them, not on me. I don't exist for other people. I'm doing my thing authentically, and if other people can't see that, that's on THEM, not on ME.

The two nails in the coffin that buried my social anxiety six feet under for good was getting into the goth/dark alt community and transitioning. Both of these were legitimately life saving. I already loved the music, but I found myself actually wanting to be apart of the community surrounding it. I wanted to go to concerts and see my favorite bands, I wanted to go to clubs and hear the music I love played loud and dance to it. I wanted to dress up and appear Cool to the people I found cool. I literally had to get over it--And when I did go to concerts and clubs and interacted with other musicheads, they were the friendliest, most accepting people I had ever met. It wasn't even that I clicked with everyone instantly, I didn't make any long term friends overnight, but they were nice. They were understanding. They didn't judge me for being a baby bat who was literally bringing his mom to shows lmao. Being in the goth community made me love people, honestly.

And obviously transitioning was just... life saving, in every single sense of the phrase. I would not be alive or who I am in any capacity today if it weren't for transitioning, and it lifted a burden so heavy off of me that it's hard to really fully process the person I was before versus who I am today. Honestly, I almost feel like you could delete everything else and just have this post become a rant about how much transitioning and overcoming my social anxiety has a 1:1 correlation and how much dysphoria masks itself as or at least severely worsens other conditions. I'm genuinely happy now. I enjoy meeting other people. I love being seen as the man I am, navigating society and being authentically me. I think my social anxiety was inseparable from dysphoria. I think my dysphoria was genuinely deeply incapacitating in ways even I couldn't articulate or even fathom.

I did not tell my supervisor all this, LMAO. She doesn't even know I'm trans. I'm stealth to everyone in my program except higher-ups or individuals in my cohort who I've spoken with. But it just had me thinking A LOT about how far I've come. What I did tell my supervisor is, and I stand by this, that I think I'm generally considered a Likable Person™ who promotes Positive Environments™ because it's something I had to work my ass off for. It did not come naturally, and I think it's why I'm so, so cognizant of it.

[olderthannetfic]

Sorry in advance for treating this like ‘Dear Abby’ but I am in need of some advice from a Queer Adult TM…

So, I have this friend who I’ve known for about ten years now. We’re seventeen right now, so let’s just say we went through allllll the phases together. We realized we were queer together, we had our first fandom experiences together (they were actually the person who introduced me to fanfic, which I’m really grateful for, because ever since it has been an integral part of my life), we were DeviantArt furry artists together circa 2016, it was a lot of embarrassing but also fun times. We are also both… and quite mentally ill and it was nice to have someone to help me through the worst bits (when I didn’t have access to therapy or meds) and how I could help them in return.

Lately (maybe over the past 2 years?) we’ve been drifting apart. I think it has a lot to do with the fact we don’t have many common interests anymore (they stopped caring about mine, and stopped sharing theirs with me), but we still do a lot together. They’re my coworker, a member of my ttrpg group, etc. etc.. Due to social anxiety they were my only friend for many years but now I have a few more, so I don’t mind not being as close to them (and I dislike putting the burden of me being reliant/clingy on them). However, they’ve recently been making it harder and harder for me to keep that friendship.

They smoke weed, get shitty stick and pokes, binge energy drinks and shoplift. I don’t have any moral issue with any of those things, but it’s concerning to me because I know they are not in the the right headspace to make those decisions about substances (and the rest). We have both struggled with mental illness, self-harm, and eating disorders. Part of the reason I drifted away from them is because they have no filter and “vent” about their problems to the point where it is very triggering to me (especially in terms of sh and ed). I don’t mind lending an ear but I also have boundaries that I put in place for myself… But yeah, even though they have access to treatment it seems not to be working, or there’s something hindering it. It really hurts to see them in such a bad place because we started out in similar places in regards to our mental health and now that I’m in a better place, they’re not.

I genuinely love and care about this person, but it’s so hard to help them when they shut down every form of help I + the rest of our mutual friends can offer. They’re very manipulative, I would like to think without meaning to, to the point where they twist my words around (for example, recently they did something extremely inappropriate and when I told them I was concerned for their well-being, they said they were sorry for making me “uncomfortable”). They’re also one of those people that plays oppression Olympics, and insists their parents are homophobic and tried to send them to conversion therapy— I know their parents very well, they are literal leftists who have pride flags in their front yard, campaign for politicians that support queer and trans rights, and attend one of the only completely gay-friendly and supporting churches in the area. But the way they talk about them causes other people to dislike them and think they’re homophobic, which they have noticed. I think it’s cruel to them, and also symptomatic of a larger problem that my friend has— they don’t seem to understand that their actions and words have consequences for other people.

I guess what I wanted to ask was: is it worth cutting this person off? I have a feeling that we were naturally grow even farther apart as we go to university, because our values are very different… They’re an anti, I’m not, they have a very surface-level views of politics and believe everything they read in Instagram infographics, I don’t. I don’t consider myself very mature, but they look very immature next to me. Besides, being around them often ends up negatively impacting me as well. However, I worry that cutting them off will makes things worse for them. I don’t want to see them get even more hurt. My confrontations haven’t been doing anything, but maybe they’ll come to their senses eventually.

I really don’t know what to do in this situation, but I’d appreciate any advice from anyone willing to offer it.

--

Since you're about to go off to college, I'd let the friendship naturally fade.

It's not your job to save this person, and I do think you need to get away from them since they don't seem to be making an effort. But since you're naturally drifting away anyway, I don't think having a big, dramatic friend breakup will help anything.

On another note, everyone should have a moral objection to shoplifting. Not only is it dishonest and a sign that something is fucking wrong with you to shoplift, but shoplifters directly hurt retail peons who will get their pay cut as a result of store losses.

People who do this aren't sticking it to the man. They're parasites who hurt other nobodies.

The fact that a lot of teens (American teens?) think this disgraceful behavior is normal enrages me.

[aquaburst3]

I completely agree. To add on to this, I also think the way that both Honest Fellow and Rollo were handled are symptomatic of a much larger issue—the character stagnation and Yana's utter unwillingness to let them face any consequences for their actions.

It's not even with the one shot villains. You see this play out all the time with the main cast. All of the OB gang get a slap on the wrist for their actions. Everyone instantly forgives them, including people like Kalim and Ruggie who were almost MURDERED. (Kalim I kinda get, because he's a ball of sunshine and is deep in denial about a lot of things. But Ruggie? You think he would be at least upset at Leona for almost Thanos snapping his ass.) It's not even just for OBs either. Malleus faced zero consequences or is even properly called out for his actions during the second Halloween event or deciding to tag along, despite damn well knowing it would make Jamil's life harder and that he couldn't refuse him.

So in that sense, the way that Honest Fellow and Rollo got away scott free is super annoying, but not surprising. It happens all the time with the main boys, so why not them?

However, this problem hampers the writing on all fronts. Unless you are writing a flat arc, characters need to change and grow, especially in a coming of age story like TWST should be. So instead of learning and growing like real people, they always remain the same and never face any repercussions for their actions. It's asinine, since they realistically would, even if they are based on villains. Hell, you think it would make it even more so, since they are based on villains and would be more revengeful and not merciful.

Another factor is that Christianity is a minority religion in Japan to the point where Japanese people view it like how westerners see the ancient Greek pantheon—"exotic" mythologies to explore in fiction. Japan is very humongonist racially. My theory is that Yana or whoever else was in charge of this event was looking at the Christian elements like cool add-ons like what happened in Evangelion. So I think a lot of the choices in regards to that event wasn't done of malice, if anything it's more out of ignorance.

However, that still doesn't excuse Yana or any of the other developer's actions. They knew the game was being distributed internationally, and were walking on a tightrope in regards to adapting Frollo, one of the most terrifying and real villains, to an eventual western audience. Even if it wasn't they should've been more respectful and done a lot more research.

Like you said, people can love the game, but still criticize it, especially for how it handled adapting certain characters and how that means for marginalized communities. If anything, calling out it is another way of showing you love it, because you want it to improve.

Also, it's cool to hate certain characters thanks to the actions of their OG counterparts. I mean, on top of Rollo, I'm not a fan of Honest Fellow (twst Honest John) thanks for Yana slapping on characteristics of the Coachman onto him where he is gleefully in charge of the whole operation (minus a boss at the last second...which is fucking asinine in of itself) when he was forced to do it in the original. You can bet your ass that if I ever write my own take of this event to my own fic there will be some changes in that regard as well. Others might be the same for different ones, and that's fine. Everyone has their own different lines and boundaries. Mine is how it adapted Rollo and Honest Fellow.

So what are your thoughts on feelings in the recent JP event that has two characters are a twisted version of two Pinocchio villains that committed human trafficking and how nobody is giving them a bigger backlash compared to Rollo?

I guess a part of it would come from the tone. I haven’t watched Pinocchio in a long ass time, but I remember those two not actually being a huge threat. I could be completely wrong though. I thought it was some other guy who would traffic the kids and they became donkeys?

Whatever whatever, I should have made it more clear with that post, but I was talking about why I personally do not like Rollo as a Mexican Indigenous person. While not Romani and not having their specific experience, I very much am affected by Frollo’s character. I know what it’s like to have my people villainized and targeted for literally no reason. It’s a matter of personal experiences.

Not to mention that Rollo himself just is objectively a bad person, also villainizing a whole group of people (mages in this case) and tried to get rid of them all. And proceeded to not grow as a person by the end of it. Very yikes when you know about his counterpart.

However, people are allowed to like Rollo, but I also think they should be critical of the decision made of making a TWST version of Frollo in the first place. Both opinions can coexist.

I frankly know nothing about the new characters, I have no idea if they should be hated or not. I don’t interact with new events till they reach the English server cause I personally like playing through the experience myself. But like if you are uncomfortable by the actions of their OG counterpart then it’s fine not liking them.

I mean all of the villains did bad things, it’s why they are villains. Frollo just hits too close to home for a lot of people, and it’s why I think Rollo was very controversial back when he was announced. Like there can be people who hate Trein because his villain is literally an abusive mother. That can also hit too close for some people. (Idk if there are Trein haters, it’s an example).

This is just a long ass way to say: I don’t know yet shdhsges. I don’t even care enough to learn their names yet.

[snarp]

To be clear about the stuff I just posted on PE: I obviously do want to delete Neil Gaiman, but I suspect that the axolotl which you see before you, its handle towards your hand, to be symptomatic of a larger issue that has caused a lot of unintended blog deactivations, so I think it needs to be neutralized. New and sharper weapons shall be forged against Gaiman.

[dear-kumari]

What's your opinion about the recent chapter of akayona?

So, for context, I got this anon after ch. 197, the last chapter of the Yonhi flashback, was released.  For various irl reasons, I haven’t gotten around to answering it until now.  Which is fine, I guess, because my feelings on the chapter are a little more nuanced now than they would’ve been before.  But I’m still not thrilled about the chapter, and I think it’s fair to say that its content might bode ill for the rest of the series.  Let’s get into this.

When it comes to AkaYona, I sometimes have trouble separating how I feel about fan reactions from how I feel about the actual content of the series.  The early fan reactions to ch. 197 — including from some infamously opinionated scanlators — lacked a lot of perspective, imo.  A lot of people were crowing over Il being revealed as … well, “better than Yuhon” was the label, but really it was just that he had more self-awareness than we’d previously thought.  Fans were also taking Yonhi’s understandable but obviously unfair attitude towards her own child from the previous chapter, seeing how 197 took her attitude to the next level, and using it as fuel for the “Suwon is a monstrous little sociopath” fire that’s been building all along in fandom.  Pro-Suwons obviously took offense to the viewpoints this chapter seemed to be promoting and the disk horse broke out in full force in certain corners of the interwebs.  It wasn’t great.

Now, looking back on the chapter with fresh eyes and a newer, more reliable translation to refer to, I can say that some of the fan reactions were a little bit overblown.  This is not The Worst Chapter of Anything Ever, nor is it the worst chapter of AkaYona — heck, it’s not even the worst chapter of this flashback! :D It is, however, rightly criticized for being a flimsy conclusion to an already poorly-constructed arc that had no business being as weak as it was.

[Warning: long post]

There are three major things that I take issue with in ch. 197 that are symptomatic of larger problems within the series: first, the soft retconning of characterization in place of ““nuance,”” second, the biased framing that seems to lack any and all self-awareness, and third, the tangled issue of “betrayal” and loyalty re: Yona and Hiryuu.  (I have some problems with the visual and narrative flow of this chapter as well, but those are secondary, granular issues and I don’t want to bore y’all more than usual.)

To start, the inconsistent characterization is really something throughout this flashback, but this chapter really took the cake in that regard.  The retcon of Il’s character is one of the lamest things I’ve had to witness in a while, and it honestly kinda reads like canon-compliant fix-it fanfic.  Like, no, you guys, Il wasn’t a pathetic backstabbing cultist with an inferiority complex!  He was actually, uh … *checks notes* a pathetic backstabbing cultist with an inferiority complex … who really loved his wife and daughter!  And, um, he accepted that Suwon would kill him some day and didn’t do anything to prevent it because trauma or something.

The bookmark note, which presents a sudden well of self-awareness and understanding from everyone’s favorite cowardly king, feels like an attempted Author’s Saving Throw that is “saving” an element no one was particularly upset about to begin with.  I call it a soft retcon because, while a character can contradict his own words without it being an actual retcon, the framing and specificity of his outbursts in 192 and 196 does nothing to suggest that these are anything but his true feelings.  Kusanagi just takes our most reliable, concrete references for Il’s toxic traits and goes “sike!  Here’s half a chapter of him rationalizing why he made those extremely specific statements full of envy and fanatic obsession that he totally didn’t mean.  One more time, for the people in the back: He totally didn’t mean them.”  I can believe that real people can say messed up things they don’t mean in the heat of the moment, but come on.  This is a story.  Kusanagi didn’t have to jerk the audience around like this, not with Il’s character and not with the flashback in general.  It’s inconsistent and cheap.

Of course, as I’ve made clear before, this soft retconning didn’t actually do Il any favors in my eyes.  If anything, I dislike him even more now; he canonically knew Suwon would kill him if he didn’t straighten up and proceeded to do jack shit for ten years, thereby playing a key role in Hak and Yona’s current trauma.  That’s so much worse than what I’d previously thought, which was that he was something of a Hiryuu cultist and grossly incompetent, but not actively, knowingly awful.  But that brings us to my other hangup with this flashback: the biased framing.

Let me turn this around for a moment to say that, on principle, I don’t necessarily mind Il being self-aware and even sympathetic.  In fact, I think that a character like Il could be really compelling if executed properly.  Going even further than that, I don’t mind that Yonhi thinks her own son is immoral and dispassionate, even evil, or that she spent her last days extending a hand of friendship to his father’s killer rather than asserting herself as his mother.  I don’t necessarily mind that she says she loves Suwon and does absolutely nothing to show it.  And I don’t even mind that Yona takes everything she reads here at face value, including the assumption that Yuhon killed her mother.  None of these things are necessarily bad narrative choices in and of themselves.

What bothers me is how these things are framed.  Ch. 197 is framed as a tragic sendoff to two well-meaning, sympathetic characters who made peace with their own flaws and placed themselves on the right side of history with their words, when that is obviously not the case.  Yonhi dies without ever recognizing her true flaws as a mother, as her final act is clearly indicative of those flaws.  Il here sounds like the gentlest of souls, but we know he died conveying his utmost contempt for Suwon after Yonhi begged him to make peace with her son.  Neither of them helped their children in any way that mattered, and this obvious truth is just … not addressed.  Nothing about the visuals, the framing, or Yona’s reaction speak to the hypocrisy and muddied morality of these two characters.

Furthermore, the way bitty Suwon is framed in this chapter is pretty damning, to the point that it’s unintentionally quite funny.  The cold, calculating, Evul look on his little baby face next to Il’s narration about how he’ll kill him some day is literally so — like, I can’t.  He’s a baby, Il.  You were too much of a little bitch to face a nine-year-old?  Even Yonhi’s portion gives him the sinister side-eye and the “two-faced” treatment.  This is a child we’re talking about here.  The fact that a precocious child is capable of contemplating murder should shock no one, but everyone acts like it’s indicative of some deeper darkness within him.  It’s weird, and it makes me wonder whether Kusanagi legitimately thinks that the “psycho child” schtick is genuinely scary or if she’s just laying it on thick here to subvert it in a big way later.  I sincerely hope it’s the latter, as much as her flip-flopping is starting to annoy me, because the former is just too ridiculous.

And if this still needs to be said, no, Suwon isn’t evil just because he won’t “put Yona first.”  Which leads me to the third and final sticking point — that being, hey, are we ever gonna address the whole “betrayal” thing and how it’s holding this story back thematically?  And I’m not just talking about how Suwon’s betrayal was actually totally avoidable because Il had all of the information he needed in order to prevent it; no, I’m actually more concerned about the continued emphasis on surrounding Yona/Hiryuu with people who will “never betray” them.

Il’s final wish for Yona is that, rather than attach herself to a boy who won’t necessarily put her above the kingdom, she will somehow end up with someone who will protect her at all costs.  Which, ya know, fine.  He did a terrible job of trying to make that wish come true, and it’s pretty messed up that he puts that condition above whether she even likes the guy and what ethical lines the guy might cross to protect her (which you think he’d care about more given, ya know, Yuhon), but it’s whatever.  I understand why he’d prioritize that given his trauma over losing Kashi.

Buuuut.  But.  The thing that’s bothering me is that this is yet another echo of the “protect and never betray him” blood pact of the dragons.  This keeps coming up and is never once examined critically, and it’s starting to feel weird.  The “never betray” stipulation on Yona’s personal relationships is so obviously, terribly wrongheaded considering Hiryuu’s values and beliefs that I can’t believe no one ever talks about it.  Because this has been bothering me from the beginning, or at least from the moment we learned about Hiryuu and his motivations.  And depending on how Kusanagi handles it, it could be a “problem” as in “something the story is building up to address in a meaningful way” or a “problem” as in “a final nail in the coffin of this story’s self-awareness and potential,” which is what I’m afraid of.

Let’s talk about Hiryuu, then.  Hiryuu’s defining trait, the thing that made him “Hiryuu,” wasn’t that he was a god among men, or that he was a warrior king, or that he used badass glares or magic dragon servants to get what he wanted.  He was defined by his love for humans — specifically, that he loved humans even though they despised and betrayed him.  This, to me, is Hiryuu’s redeeming quality.  Considering the fact that the gods in this universe aren’t inherently morally superior to the humans, I think Hiryuu understood that he wasn’t necessarily justified in smiting those who stood against him.  He knew that the people would naturally come into conflict with him and with each other, and that that’s okay.  And I really think the thing that depressed him was that the other gods didn’t get that and threw him a super special task force that was totally devoted to him instead.

So, if Yona is Hiryuu in the sense of having his soul, his Hiryuu Essence™, then shouldn’t she also share Hiryuu’s greatest quality?  If she really is Hiryuu, she must love humans, and love them even though they hate and/or betray her.  And who is the most “human” character of the whole series, the one who despises the gods and betrayed Yona?  Yuppp … that’s Suwon …

(To be clear, I don’t mean this in an endgame SuYona way, though I’m sure it would’ve made sense at some point before the HakYona took hold.  We’re just talking familial love and agape here, maybe even friendship.)  To bring this narrative full-circle, Yona must be “Hiryuu” and Suwon must be a stand-in for “humans”; so, she’ll love him despite what he did to her because love is more than an unconditional transaction of loyalty and mutual protection.  Seems simple enough, right?

The problem is that this narrative of love in spite of betrayal is at cross-purposes with the Strong Independent Kween narrative and the Found Family narrative we’ve been building for a while, arguably since the very first arc.  Because … well, Yona let go of the hairpin.  She let go of Suwon, and this letting go was framed as the hard-earned culmination of her character growth.  She’ll help him out when he’s sick, sure — as ch. 199 proves, she’ll help out anyone who’s sick because that’s just how she is.  But it’s pretty clear, at least in my eyes, that she doesn’t love Suwon anymore.  And if anything, this flashback reinforced all the reasons that she shouldn’t love him, from leveling Yuhon’s War Crimes™ up from exile to genocide, making Suwon aware that Yuhon might have killed Kashi, coating Suwon with the Creepy Child brush, and peppering in the HakYona teases apropos of nothing.

Like … I’m sorry, but what is the point of that?  What is the point of this narrative?  Yona didn’t need a memoir to fall into her hands to tell her that the HHB, the family she chose, was better for her than the family she was born into.  Nobody needed to tell her that Yuhon sucked, since she’d well enough made up her mind about that.  Nobody needed to tell her that Suwon wasn’t the guy for her because he wasn’t going to put her first — that was pretty fucken obvious from chapter one, yes?

When the sendoff chapter of a vital flashback arc doesn’t clarify what we’re supposed to take away from it and mostly reinforces things we already knew, that doesn’t bode well for the rest of the story.  If the purpose of this flashback was to give Yona the information she needed to choose what to do, then what does she even want to do?  We’re no clearer on that now than we were several chapters ago, though there is a vague sense that she is taking responsibility for the power she’s been given (good!) and possibly asserting her righteousness and divine position above Suwon as Hiryuu like her father intended (bad!).  We still haven’t seen her talk to Suwon about the memoir, so I guess I can hold off some of my judgment until then.  Her interactions with him thus far don’t give me much hope, though.

The sticking point for me is this: We already know that Yona is and was loved.  We know that her found family would lay down their lives for her and that she would do the same for them.  This “protect and never betray” stipulation on all her relationships just … doesn’t build to anything.  There’s no change, no catharsis, no drama.  I know people will whine about how Yona doesn’t owe Suwon anything, let alone forgiveness, and … yeah, you think?  Forgiveness and love are powerful because they are given and given unconditionally.  (Also, considering the only status quo shift this flashback established is that she might actually owe him something as Hiryuu’s reincarnation, idk where “she doesn’t owe him shit!!1!” even fits in anymore.)

I’m gonna be bold and go so far as to say that there’s no point to the story, period, if Yona doesn’t love and make up with Suwon in the end.  Taking her previous incarnation’s greatest virtue and treating it like a weakness to overcome would be nothing more than a slap in the face, and at this point I feel like I’m standing transfixed as the Backhand of God approaches me at 270000fps.  It’s not a great feeling.

So … yeah.  I’ll be fair to Kusanagi for a sec and say that maybe, just maybe, she’s laying into Suwon’s character like this to make the reversal more dramatic later on.  But idk, the Yas Queen buildup?  The biased framing?  The fanservice?  The tepid last-ditch attempts to make Il likable, to justify Yonhi’s unkindness towards her own son?  Forgive me if I don’t have much faith in the mangaka’s abilities at this point.  Idk what her endgoal is for this story or whether it’s changed with the manga’s explosion in popularity.  I just know that I’m still invested, for some reason, and that this chapter somehow didn’t change that.

And that’s all for my ch. 197 thoughts, anon!  As far as where the story is going now with the Kai conflict, I’ll just say that it’s fine.  I’m annoyed by this pattern of introducing something sus about Hiryuu/Il/the gods and then immediately getting distracted by a big existential threat, but it’s fine.  At least South Kai is an interesting threat.  For now, I’m just gonna continue to cross my fingers for some Snapped Suwon content, get disappointed when there isn’t any, and continue to bitch about this series until it’s over.  Stay tuned! :D

[funkymbtifiction]

I've read your post about you being a Fi. I have had to learn, when I feel a swell of Fi-ish judgment rising within me, to stop and ask myself why I care what other people ... Because my instinctive response is “if you don’t agree with my opinion, you’re wrong. :P” … and go away mad." How to deal with it? My Fi kills me when I read posts or fanfics of people, f.ex. where they bash chars I care about. I want to argue, I want to rip them apart. I usually don't. But it is HARD!!!

I agree that feeling angry about people bashing characters you care about is hard – because you value that character, admire them, relate to them, or just plain like them – but it’s symptomatic of a much larger Fi ‘tendency’ which is to judge things stridently on moral terms.

Fi’s have their own internal census of what they consider to be good / bad, and it is often black and white. The younger the Fi, the more moralizing and rigid these moral judgments can be – but they usually soften as they get older, gain more life experience, and see that people all have much different experiences than they do. They broaden their understanding of what certain situations demand of people, and that enables them to find greater compassion for ‘where others are coming from.’

I’ll give you a serious real-life example. I was adamantly against legislation that would allow ‘assisted suicide’ on moral principle, until I watched my grandfather slowly die over two weeks – in tremendous physical pain, while I watched it wreak devastating emotional pain on my entire extended family. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, both for my own hatred of seeing someone in pain and the anguish of wishing he could just ‘go’ to avoid it, and because of the great suffering it caused. He could have chosen to overdose on his morphine – but he did not. That was his choice. I admire him for that. I would not ‘take away’ his choice. But it made me realize that a lot of my pre-set views… are not formed through actual personal experience, and when I go through it, many of them may change and others might not. A Fi who had never gone through that, never seen or felt or known what it is like, might hold a view strongly in one or another direction on that issue and argue fiercely for it. But it comes from a place of internal abstract ethics and not from literal experience.

Whenever I meet anyone I disagree with, I have to:

remind myself that they have their own life experiences, they have reasons for the views they hold, and there is a human being behind that opinion – whether it is something that is, in the long term, meaningless (like which two characters are going to wind up together) or life-altering like a political or religious belief.

ask myself why I am so upset about their opinion, and why it feels like a personal attack? If someone holds a view, why do I Fi-ishly have to make it all about me, and my reaction to it, rather than just being ‘okay’ with someone else not liking something or sharing an opinion that I hold? I then ask myself why I am feeling this way and why that thing matters to me?

whether this is something important enough to discuss with them or not? Many opinions are just opinions, and however much I might not like them, they are not actually hurting me or anyone else in any real way. Name-calling is not life-threatening. Someone not liking my favorite ship from my favorite show isn’t going to hurt me beyond feelings of mild resentment.

find out more about this person, and ask non-offensive questions to ‘feel them out’ more. Oftentimes, someone you disagree with can become a friend in time, or at least someone whose opinion you ‘understand’ from having talked to them more about why they hold the views that they do. 10 years ago, I would never have tolerated some of the friends I have now in the sense that we are very different politically and religiously – but in spending time talking to them, hearing them out, listening and not feeling threatened by their opinions even when I don’t agree with them, it has helped me ‘grow up’ my Fi into realizing that I don’t have to have everyone agree with my stance all the time to feel ‘okay.’

Something I encourage doing is that you allow yourself to feel angry, upset, or whatever, because you have every right to be hurt when people, especially those you love most, cannot see things your way. Do not invalidate your own opinions or feelings or think you are not allowed to have them, but DO calm down, take some deep breaths, and ask them questions to determine how they reached their conclusions and what drives their passionate response.

I ask myself if this were my post, how would I feel about that comment / getting that response? That diffuses my frustration a little bit, since it brings the focus back to reminding me that on the other side of that opinion is a PERSON with FEELINGS. Who has insecurities, anxieties, and life experiences that are not mine, and who is on a journey just like I am, toward ‘being themselves.’ In time, their views may change. They may not. It’s really none of my business. The only thing I have to live with right now is whether I intend to bring misery into their life by being ‘that jackass who responded to me online today.’ I believe in treating others as you would want to be treated, and for me, that means being kind. When I am unkind, I feel like crap about myself. I would rather not deal with that. So… I try to be nice / kind to others, for their sake and mine.

I remind myself that however I feel about it, the world is not a black and white place and not everyone has to live in accordance to my beliefs. This is important. I have a legitimate reason to feel offended, to hold my own views, and to stand by my morals – but zero right to impose my morality, views, or opinions on anyone else against their will. That is not the way to live or the person I want to be. It’s hard, but I remind myself that I am only in charge of, and responsible for, myself. I am the only person who has to ‘live’ with myself forever, therefore I should always act in accordance to what I know is right.

Above all, be kind to yourself. You are not going to change overnight. And being upset, for example, because someone hates Ben Solo or thinks he’s a crap villain  / the worst thing to happen to Star Wars doesn’t make you immature, it makes you human. It’s fine to vent to a friend who shares your opinion. ;)

- ENFP Mod

[scripttorture]

There is a Star Trek episode (Deep Space Nine, s3e21) where it is described how one character, who used to work for the secret police of a totalitarian government, "got a confession" out of a dissident. " You just sat there [- - -] And after four hours of watching you stare at him, he confessed.[- - -] Afterwards, he just kept saying, 'His eyes his eyes.'" (There is a one-minute clip of the scene on youtube entitled “DS9 3x21 - The Die is Cast - The Good Old Times”.) 1/3

Considering other things we see of this culture, it seems likely the victim is restrained and he might well have been beaten or otherwise tortured before the staring described above. Furthermore, there are implications elsewhere that the torturer and the dissident knew each other, possibly very well, before these events. 2/3I’d be interested to hear your take on this, its plausibility and anything that might ‘salvage’ it if it seems very unrealistic. How common is the use of intimidation tactics such as long stretches of silence? What is known of the difference between being tortured by a stranger and by someone you know and possibly trusted? P.S. Thank you for this excellent blog! 3/3

Youknow I think I’ve seen part of this episode.

Fromwhat I can remember there’s a heavy implication throughout that thetorturer-character is an unreliable narrator. Part of that seemed (tome at least) explicitly tied to his role as a torturer.

Andwell, that isrealistic. Torturers are often incredibly unreliable sources when itcomes to both the effectiveness of torture and what they actually didor why something they did was harmful.

Whatthis reminds me of is the way American torturers described usingheavy metal or other Western music against non-Western prisoners.They seemed to consistently put the distress down to the formof music that was being repeatedly played. Rather than the fact itwas constant and at top volume, preventing the prisoners fromsleeping.

Silencecanencourage people to speak but it doesn’t necessarily encourage themtowards confessing or speaking about anything relevant. And I don’tthink staring at someone would have this effect. It’s the ‘HISEYES!’ that underlines the disconnect from reality for me, it justseems so melodramatically implausible if staring was genuinely theonly factor at play here.

It’sone of those strange depictions that can be read as either veryrealistic or hugely unrealistic depending on how much weight you givethe torturer’s account.

Becausethis does seem like a realistic thing fora torturer to claim.But it isn’t a realistic thing to happen.

Whichis another reason why nuance is so important in these stories. We’redealing with unreliable narrators throughout. Torturers, survivorsand even witnesses are all compromised at a neurological level; theirmemories are suspect.

Andtorturers are additionally heavily biased in their accounts. Theytake credit for things that are beyond their control, don’t mentionthings that go against their accounts (sometimes they don’t seem toeven make the connection between them) and bend over backwards tojustify their actions after the fact.

Ican give you an idea of the kind of thing that a torturer mightreport in this way.

Aprisoner is brought in. They’re restrained. They might be beaten.And then they’re ‘sweated’.

Thisis something that used to be common among police forces across quitea few countries. It basically means the victim was tied to a chairwith a bright light shining in their eyes and interrogated for aprolonged period of time. Rooms were usually cramped, so the lightwould make the room unbearably hot. There’s an element of restrainttorture, keeping the victim for a long time in one position. There’ssleep deprivation (because this often went on for over 12 hours).There’s dehydration, because the victim usually wasn’t given foodor water. And they generally weren’t allowed to go to the bathroomeither.

InRussia (and some other countries) they combined this with somethingRejali calls ‘relay interrogation’. Which means they basicallykept switching the torturers. This meant that the torturers wouldalways be pretty well rested but the victim could be kept awake forliterally days at a time.

I’dsuggest that was what happened here.

Ratherthan the victim confessing after ‘four hours’, I’d suggest itwas much more likely he’d been brought in 36-48 hours before andconsistently deprived of water and sleep.

Overthat time frame humans (we shall pretend that aliens work in the sameway) become delirious and often start to hallucinate. Which couldexplain saying something like ‘THE EYES!!!’ It might also explainthe ‘confession’ because in this state some victims aredisconnected from reality to the point that they don’t reallyunderstand they’re confessing.

Torturersare competitive. In a situation like this, with relay interrogation,the firsttorturer gets absolutely no ‘credit’ for a forced confession thathappens five torturers later. All of the ‘credit’, all of thepraise, goes to the last person in the room.

Giventhat there is considerable encouragement for that last torturer toact as though the entire thing was down to them and theirunique/unusual tactics.

Andas torturers are prone to exactlythe same memory problems as survivors,it’s also possible that a torturer in this situation could havegenuinely forgotten that that particular prisoner was brought inseveral days before and had been tortured for that time.

I’venot heard of the use of silence as a tactic by torturers.Intimidation, yes. But it generally seems to come in the form ofthreats.

Howeversilence is commonly used as a tactic by people being interrogated. Atthe very least I know the IRA used this as a consistent organisationwide tactic that members were told to employ if arrested. They wouldturn their back on the interrogators and remain silent. It’sincredibly disquieting and does prompt some people to talk. I thinkthere’s a link to a more detailed discussion of this in the EffectiveInvestigation masterpost.I’m not sure if the Alisons have written any papers on it: their worktends to focus on tactics for interrogators rather than people whoare being interrogated. They’d be a good place to check though.

Fromwhat I know, silence could be an effective tactic in genuineinterrogation but it would have to be part of a broader strategy. Idon’t think it would be effective without the use of other tactics orif it was applied randomly.

Itcould help to get a person to start talking but it couldn’t replacebuilding up a rapport or the ability to steer a conversation to thetopic of interest.

Asfor the last question- I’m afraid I genuinely have no idea. Therereally aren’t enough studies on torturers and the studies I am awareof use a very small sample size. Studies with survivors tend to be alot larger but I’ve never come across a study that talked aboutsurvivors and torturers having a prior relationship of any kind.

Anecdotalaccounts aren’t much better on this front. I’m aware of cases wheresurvivors and torturers came from the same village or small town. I’maware of cases where they knew each other as acquaintances prior tothe victim being tortured. But none of the cases I’m aware ofshowed any indication that the relationship was close. It’s- peoplewho knew each others names, passed on the street, perhapsoccasionally lent the other person a cup of flour. There’s noindication of anything as close as a working or colleaguerelationship in the accounts I’ve seen.

Theaccount Fanon records of a torturer’s daughter who came to him forcounselling doesdescribe a closer relationship with victims. But that’s atorturer’s family member and victims, rather than the torturerhimself.

Becauseit is, by definition, institutional torture doesn’t seem to involvethose sorts of previously strong relationships often.

Nowabusedefinitely does and I suspect that if a prior strong relationshipmakes a difference then you could find that difference by comparingsurvivors of abuse with survivors of torture.  Which is a doctoralthesis I’d very much like to see funded but it’s rather beyondthe scope of the blog.

Inthis case I don’t think I’d advise going through anecdotalaccounts and trying to make the comparison yourself. In order forsomething like that to be significant you’ve got to control for alot of factors, which might not be reported in anecdotal accounts andyou need to go through a lotof accounts. I think it would be very easy to leap to an incorrectconclusion, especially when you don’t have direct access to thesurvivors themselves and can’t ask them.

Forthe purposes of the story I’d suggest assuming that there isn’t asymptomatic difference. Assume the symptoms would be the same whetherthe relationship with the torturer was close before or not.

Butadd to that particular issues around relationships and trust.

Thesecan show up as a normal part of the mental illnesses torture causesbut they don’t always. I think tying this kind of… element ofself-isolation and difficulty around personal interaction to thecharacter would add to a story with this kind of relationship.

Accountsfrom survivors of abuse (especially spousal or familial abuse) cangive you an idea how these sorts of difficulties with trust andrelationships manifest. I’d suggest asking @scripttraumasurvivorsfor a source recommendation there though, it’s outside of my area.

Ihope that helps. :)

Disclaimer

[chaosd1]

You know, when I reblogged that, it was mostly to showcase an issue that’s been present for YEARS, but keeps cropping up every now and then because most of Channel Awesome’s fans still think it’s 2010. If I had a Patreon dollar for every person who asked me something about “____ DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!” despite that not being a thing I’ve done for over half a decade, I would probably not have to worry about paying off that damaged tire, or any future repairs to my car and/or PC. Long story short, they aren’t very good at letting things go.

I know people who want me to share my story are hoping for the same level of juicy gossip or levels of hypocrisy or betrayal that have accompanied so many of these other stories but I’m sorry to say it’s not quite that interesting, or even remotely “gotcha” in any sense of the word. If anything it’s more a reveal of how the company feels about its low-tier producers, and symptomatic of the larger issue that they clearly DON’T want anyone but the Chicago crew, or anyone that’s possibly bringing in their own audience. Remember when JonTron and PBG posted on Blistered Thumbs? I’m pretty sure they’re still kicking themselves over that one. As a bit of background, I always wanted to be on the CA site in some form, and by the time I had a show to offer up, I was already pretty close friends with a lot of the producers. In fact, it was Julien (Sad Panda) who decided to post up one of my videos in his schedule slot as a way to offer me a test spot. It was well recieved enough, but video games were almost always relegated to BT at the point, so off I went.

Despite being the more “respected” site by some audiences, all snafu’s aside, I felt that Channel Awesome treated Blistered Thumbs producers as second class citizens. Posting on there was like the Wild West. You put up whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, and as often as you wanted, and hoped someone with a show that consisted of a three-hour long livestream split up into 15 minute increments wouldn’t end up pushing your video off the main page slider within the next few hours. It was very much for that reason I pursued some means to get myself listed on the main site by cleaning up the YEARS worth of spam and reported comments. After bringing it to the right people, I was permitted to post videos on the main site as well. It went well enough... for a while.

Once BT was shut down, a few of my friends (specifically MegaGWolf) were unceremoniously let go without an ounce of communication. (Most everyone on BT who wasn’t brought on to the CA “merger” had to find out via friends, as Michaud didn’t directly inform them.) Despite the promise of rebranding and stronger promotion, the BT audience didn’t really follow over to CA as the site didn’t really fit their desires, and the core CA audience was basically “NC, Linkara,and that’s it.” Views tanked and it was around the time I decided to move over to Youtube as the Blip waters were already pretty troubled.

At some point I started doing relatively well on Youtube, to the point CA felt like an annoying afterthought. I had to make special titlecards for CA as they had a ridiculous format I’d purposefully ignore later on just to see if they were paying attention. For example, the images were all supposed to be JPGS, though I always made them PNG, and since they were hotlinking them from my site anyway, WHY DID IT FUCKING MATTER?! It most felt like this ridiculous push for control and a power play that no one bothered to enforce anyway. Each time we scheduled we had to provide a link, a title, and a link to a special made titlecard. Did you have a special instruction or link you wanted to include when posting on CA? Good fucking luck they would ever include it, or spell half that shit correctly. Hell after a while, I figured it was pretty non-coincidental that after changing the title format from “MMO Grinder: Name of Game” to “Name of Game - ChaosD1,” views coming from CA were barely a percentile of the overall views I’d get from every other source. It wasn’t worth making them a stupid special title card and hopping onto a painfully broken scheduling site (a site that, by the way was designed for Sporting Events, and was so filled with non-updated dead links I occasionally would troll them by posting my category as “Blistered Thumbs” and “The Inebriati” both still available in the category dropdown menu. I’ll bet you they are still there to this day.

My issue didn’t come about until a sudden rule change. A rule I didn’t really have an issue with until the market started dying down, and my constant crushing depression over winter and my wife’s illness kicked in. Basically, “Post one video a month, or you’re stricken from the site.” later on that was changed to TWO videos per month and my show was almost always a ONCE per month deal. Seemed a bit suspect and draconian. There were people who didn’t post videos for several MONTHS that were still listed on the site, but they suspiciously had pretty strong followings elsewhere. Still I figured some form of warning or amnesty would take place to some extent. So in April of 2017 it was a pretty shitty month. Most of it was spent working on Eternal Crusade which was such a miserable slog none of us felt like doing much of anything else, there were no games to Sidequest for the suddenly required 2nd video per month, and I was pretty sure I was going to get some flak for it.Keep this in mind, I was WELL AWARE of the risk I was taking by not posting a second video, despite me rather often saying my show was monthly at the most. I figured they might know this, I’d get a warning, and that’d be the end of it. However, I was able to get out Eternal Crusade at the very end of April, but didn’t get around to posting it on the schedule until May 1st. May 1st rolls around, I check the site for any feedback and comments, and notice the video isn’t posted at all.... and I can’t access the scheduler anymore. One day late of posting consistently for 5 fucking years, and I’m locked out of the site like I stole a laptop from the studio. So I hopped on Twitter. Partially to express dismay, and partially because... I noticed I didn’t really have an audience on Channel Awesome anymore. I asked this very specific question and joked with some of the replies, most of whom confirmed my suspicion. They really only watched me on my site or my YT channel.

Still in talking with the CA chat in Skype, (I’d be on that Producer’s chat more often if I didn’t basically swear off Skype after Discord included screenshare. The producers and former producers really should make a Discord channel already.) they informed me that they’d probably reverse their decision if I just contacted Greg. While I didn’t think it was likely worth the effort, I figured I would anyway. Maybe pipe dreams of being included in an anniversary special some day. I just couldn’t wait to be the guy sitting slightly out of camera range in every shot with the one exception of getting to say “What should we do now, Critic?” for my first and only line in the movie. So I contacted Greg. It went a little something like this (for the Skype uninitiated, my words in Blue, Greg’s in grey):

So yeah, always fun to have to wait several days for a sentencing to the crime of being a day late on a post.

Of course, I cropped out the rest of the image, because the response without any contact in-between immediately afterward was this:

Yes I was being a sarcast there. I’m a sarcast... but when I’m last told “we’ll go through everything” and that is immediately followed up by “Sorry I took so long to get back, but... get lost scrub” I’m probably going to be a bit miffed about it. Of course this is CA and you can’t talk bad about them... or post something on Twitter they presume is talking bad about them, as this was the response to my sarcastic reply:

So yeah, Greg not quite understanding the concept of linear time (again I posted the tweet BEFORE I sent him the Skype message, not after) apparently you can’t even ask your audience where they still watch your videos most. They take it as a personal insult, like I didn’t enough appreciate those generous table scraps us low-tier producers had to fight over.

All things considered though, I knew the risk of not posting a second video in that month, and I valued my sanity over tossing out content for the sake of a suddenly imposed deadline. Could I have contacted Greg? Yeah, I suppose so, but why should I even have to? To be only a day late and have everything stricken without warning, like a robot looked over the feed and said “Well a month has passed, and there was only one so fired lel” without considering why, or even checking in on the employee in question, is the kind of corporate "numbers-only” bullshit that I swore off retail for. It’s fitting so many people in charge of Channel Awesome used to work at Circuit City is all I’m saying.

So that’s it. Nothing major, something I basically brought on myself, but still a fairly telling story of how you’d be treated as a content producer on that site.

And to all the current and remaining producers that aren’t showing up to the studio every day, or have a sizable enough audience to make a dent if you were to leave... they don’t WANT you there. They do not care about you. You are a liability. The very second they have a logical-to-them reason to cut your ass from the site, they will. Why put yourself through all that stress for a job that makes demands of you, without even paying you, promoting you, or benefiting you in any way? You know they don’t care about that site now that they are where they are with their YouTube channel. (Currently there are two producers that haven’t posted since December, that are still listed on the site. I must have been a special exception, or maybe it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a video as long as you keep telling them you don’t.) You’re white noise to them. Stay or go. As much as you think it might, it probably won’t make a difference to you... 

...but it definitely won’t make a difference to them.

[rahabs]

It‘s not that I don’t love Hux as a character, let’s get that out of the way.  I love Hux, I do, he’s very interesting and as we all know I tend to favour villains more than heroes in non-RPG video game settings, and I love kylux; it’s one of my few ride-or-die ships up there with spaus and pruaus (both of whom I’ve shipped for almost ten years now).  But at the same time I guess I don’t really understand why the kylux fandom is so Hux-centric these days, and why it’s so hostile towards people who like or favour Kylo?  I know it’s probably Unwise to voice this because lbr I have Seen how savage the Hux-centric portions of the fandom have been towards anyone who has voiced this, but I guess I’m just getting a little tired of all the, as I’ve seen it put by others, “poor abused twink sub bottom Hux” fics, esp since those fics tend to go hand-in-hand with “rapist monster Kylo” which is something that baffles me a bit because I suppose, at a crux of the issue for me is this sense I’m getting that a lot of kylux shippers don’t even like Kylo, judging not just from fics but also from all the tumblr posts I’ve seen from mutuals and former mutuals and just blogs I follow(ed) in general which just.

You know, whatever, if you don’t like him that’s fine but then I suppose I don’t understand the point behind shipping kylux in the first place?  I’m not saying you shouldn’t ship it, and I’m vexed that I have to state that because lmao this fucking piece of shit hellsite boasts an exhausting amount of people who take any criticism as orders, but it does confuse me a little, maybe because for me to actually get invested in a ship I have to be interested in/like both of the characters.  I suppose I just don’t understand the use of kylux to bolster Hux as some poor abused victim who’s never done anything wrong ever and who needs to be protected.  You can validate your character without shipping a ship that contains a character you hate so much that you have to talk about how much you don’t like him all the time.

I suppose the recent trends in the kylux fandom are just exhausting me in general though.  I, personally, am not a huge fan of the pervading trends to the point where I only check the archive every so often because whenever I do it’s a flood of these “poor abused twink sub bottom Hux” fics which whatever, write what you want, I’m not here to say that you should or shouldn’t, but as I know other people have voiced this trend is very pervasive?  And a common shutdown tactic I see from the Hux-centric people whenever people criticise this trend is a mocking and condescending “we had to deal with all the poor abused Kylo fics after TFA!!!!!  stop acting like victims!!!  if you don’t like it then you can just fuck off no one’s telling you to read them!!!  suck it up!!” which in my opinion is missing the point of the criticisms people are levying at the trend.

And not only that but as someone who’s been into kylux pretty much since it’s inception, even when the abused Kylo fics were at their zenith there were always plenty of alternatives, whereas now, for me, it seems there aren’t for the current Hux-centric trends, because the Hux-centric people are getting so fanatic that it’s driving people with dissenting views away from the fandom.  I’ve lost count of how many friends and mutuals et al have stopped posting about kylux outside of personal conversations because they’re tired of the Hux-centric trends and being attacked for not liking them.  We aren’t trying to say not to write these fics, just that we wish there were alternatives, which is our right, and it’s kind of disheartening seeing the Hux-centric people shouting down anyone who’s spoken up about this.  It is, in my opinion, grossly unprofessional and unneeded, like children lashing because they feel threatened.  We can have different opinions in the fandom, guys.  It’s all right.  Nowhere are people saying you cannot enjoy these Hux-centric trends and tropes, but for people who don’t like them it seems that there is less and less content because we’re all just getting so tired, and people are leaving because they’re tired of the Hux-centric trends and the increase in bullying levied towards anyone who disagrees with what’s currently popular, and I think that’s a really sad thing.  Not only that but I think it’s symptomatic of a larger fandom issue, which is the frankly insane amounts of irrational hatred directed at Kylo Ren (and Adam Driver).  And I’m not going to get into that here, or point out that the reasons many people use to hate Kylo they conveniently ignore when it comes to the much-beloved character of Vader who has factually done far, far worse, but the irrational hatred towards Kylo is a problem, and I guess I’m a bit disturbed that it’s crept into the kylux fandom as well.

[your-dietician]

As China’s Communist Party turns 100, economic challenges loom | Business and Economy News

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/economy/as-chinas-communist-party-turns-100-economic-challenges-loom-business-and-economy-news/

As China’s Communist Party turns 100, economic challenges loom | Business and Economy News

Shenzhen, China –  Private education companies that provide extracurricular lessons to legions of Chinese children are in the crosshairs of the government, as officials seek to ease pressure on students and the financial burden on families.

Though aimed at private tutoring firms, the crackdown is symptomatic of wider systemic problems facing China as the ruling Communist Party celebrates its 100th anniversary this week.

Falling birth rates and a rapidly ageing population spell trouble for China’s future economic growth.

Income inequality, regional economic divides, and wide gaps in opportunity between rural and urban citizens were issues highlighted by China’s President Xi Jinping in a late January speech as pressing matters the nation must tackle to reach what he called an era of “common prosperity” in the coming years.

China’s leaders steer clear of the phrase “middle-income trap” – a condition where a country fails to reach a higher, more developed status – but that’s where the country could end up if leaders fail to address those fissures.

Xi’s remedies – better income distribution, education, social security, affordable medical care, housing, elderly care, child support, and quality employment; also mentioned in the same speech – are many of the same wants as most working families and youths.

Current structural and political barriers, however, may be too formidable to deliver those policies unless deeper reforms are implemented beyond piecemeal efforts such as lifting restrictions on the number of children families can have or trying to mandate less homework for school-age children.

They will be expensive and will likely need the country’s most wealthy to pay heavier tax rates, either through property taxes or capital gains taxes. But implementing such policies is fraught with peril. Do it too fast and could lead to capital flight, problems in the white-hot property market and financial system disturbances that do more harm than good.

Income inequality, regional economic divides, and wide gaps in opportunity between rural and urban citizens were issues highlighted by China’s President Xi Jinping in a late January speech  [File: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg]

And there are other structural barriers. The country’s hukou system ties social benefits to a family’s rural or urban hometown, and the overemphasis on the gaokao – standardised exams – determine whether students can advance to university and achieve higher rates of economic success.

Growing pressures on parents and students over the past decade have increased the necessity to reform these systems as incomes have stagnated and social mobility has ossified.

That shift has given rise to much-discussed social conditions in recent months: tangping – or lying flat  – an action of making as little effort as possible to get by, and its partner philosophy of “involution” – a feeling of despair or burnout, particularly among those involved in the 996 working culture, working from 9am to 9pm six days a week.

Sun Liping, a professor of sociology at Tsinghua University, recently wrote on his WeChat account that these conditions are affecting mostly younger middle-class and white-collar workers whose hopes have plateaued. Even after all their efforts to study hard and work hard, they feel they’ve reached a point where there’s no possibility to advance higher and more danger of falling back down.

So there’s little desire for more, or even any children, with housing prices so high in many cities, and with parents who are retiring much earlier than most workers around the world to support. Any extra cost has the potential of knocking them off that plateau.

After the government announced that married couples would be allowed to have up to three children, in an effort to boost birth rates, remarks appeared on social media highlighting that the policy shift did nothing to address the soaring costs of raising kids [File: Aly Song/Reuters]

This is a great change from the years following the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s, and China’s reform and opening-up period, when the opportunities for families to change their social status through hard work and education were much greater, primarily since the starting point was so low for nearly everyone.

“Over time, a new elite formed and developed vested interests,” Imogen Page-Jarrett, a research analyst based in Beijing for The Economist Intelligence Unit, told Al Jazeera. “The threshold for people from lower-income backgrounds to move up in society became much higher.”

Liang Jianzhang, chairman and co-founder of the booking site Trip.com, has recently argued that China needs to deeply reform the gaokao system, vastly increase education expenditures and attempt to achieve universal college education for all of its youth to meet the needs of a more complex, innovative economy of the future.

Potential fixes creating more problems

The latest efforts to address some of the pressures facing China’s parents and youth have met with lacklustre response and sometimes satirical backlash.

After the government announced that married couples would be allowed to have up to three children, in an effort to boost birth rates, remarks appeared on social media highlighting that the policy shift did nothing to address the soaring costs of raising kids, or the financial burden of taking care of elderly parents.

Other government policies in the pipeline, like proposals for potentially banning online and offline courses during summer holidays, weekends and other non-school periods in places like Beijing and Shanghai, only set in motion other potential problems.

The idea, in theory, is to release pressure on kids and give them a real break from school so they do not end up burned out by the time they reach adulthood.

“I think one of the interesting things about a lot of these changes at the moment is that every force has an equal and opposite reaction,” said Julian Fisher, co-founder of consultancy Venture Education in Beijing. “When you’re pushing on learning centres, you’re pushing on a multibillion-dollar industry, and that impacts human resources and society in the sense that people are hired [for these tutoring jobs].”

Falling birth rates and a rapidly ageing population spell trouble for China’s future economic growth [File: Yan Cong/Bloomberg]

Fisher noted that this could also leave many families in the lurch, particularly when both parents work and may not have access to childcare other than education centres. “What are they going to do with their kids during the summer?” he asked, questioning what would happen if the government bans online and offline courses.

“Layoffs of tutors and teachers are likely if the new rules prohibit training on weekends and in summer and winter holidays as training institutions could see a significant drop in revenue, so they may lay off staff and teachers to cut costs,” Flora Zhu, director of corporate research at Fitch Ratings in Beijing, told Al Jazeera.  

“In fact, online training institutions, which rely heavily on marketing to attract students, have already [been laying off staff] following the government’s stricter regulations on [allowable advertising for] training institutions.”

As China’s leadership becomes more nationalistic, increased restrictions on foreign involvement, ownership and teaching materials aimed at preschool to secondary school students in the past few months have also had an impact.

“Due to the political importance that Chinese leaders place on education, however, there are risks that these regulations foreshadow further restrictions on foreign participation in China’s education sector,” Alexander Chipman Koty, an analyst for consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates, told Al Jazeera.

Some of this is the opposite of reforms needed in the education sector, and what parents actually desire for children in terms of greater opportunity, which has led many of them to tap into online and offline courses outside of regular class time.

According to Page-Jarrett, China needs more private sector and foreign involvement that would push schools to improve and innovate and provide schooling for the more complex economy of the future, not less.

“Rote learning still features heavily in the education system and that for a time kind of worked when China needed a generation of engineers,” Page-Jarrett said. “Now what China needs is a workforce that can innovate. The education system needs to develop students’ crucial thinking skills.”

No lying flat when you’re already below …

The need for education expenditures and reforms is even more apparent for rural students and parents in China, who are fast falling behind their urban peers who have more opportunities and benefits just because of their urban residency status.

“The gap in the quality of education in rural areas became larger, not necessarily because education became worse in rural areas, but because it became better and more competitive in urban areas,” Page-Jarrett said. “For a low-income family it’s extremely difficult to get into a top-tier university and they might only be able to get into second- or third-tier one.”

For Scott Rozelle, a development economist and a co-director of the Rural Education Action Program at Stanford University, the whole “lying flat” issue is fully an urban problem.

“When you have a rural hukou, nobody ‘lies flat’,” he told Al Jazeera. “It is the exact opposite problem. There is no money for weekend or night classes. No one can afford to take anything for granted. Life and living is day to day. There are no opportunities with such poor schooling and healthcare.”

China has big plans for rural areas with a rural revitalisation programme, but so far this has mainly focused on rural infrastructure and agriculture improvements, and not tackled schools or rural social mobility.

While there has been some relaxation of hukou policies that allow for greater movement between rural and urban areas in some parts of the country, most of these efforts are tied to “talent acquisition” programmes – urban areas that want to attract the best and brightest, leaving the least educated on the outside looking in.

What is at stake in the failure to address these systemic challenges could become China’s Achilles heel. Social immobility and income inequality will increase social frictions, economic stagnation, and an eventual settling into the middle-income trap that China’s leaders would like to avoid, but usually fail to mention in words.

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[cat-named-virtute]

“It would’ve been entirely justified to use Phil Fish to have a conversation about tokenism and cultural insensitivity.  But instead, people used tokenism and cultural insensitivity to talk about Phil Fish.”

- Ian Danskin, “This Is Phil Fish”

I think that quote says a lot about how large portions of the internet treat celebrities when they do problematic things - specifically right now, I’m thinking of Scarlett Johansson taking a role as a trans man.  The important things to talk about in a case like this include why it’s bad for cis actors to play trans roles, why Hollywood continuously does this, and how cis audiences react to it compared to how they might react if a trans actor was playing that character.  And I’m not saying that didn’t happen at all in the wake of that announcement.  But what I saw a lot more of was people using this as an opportunity not to talk about the dire state of trans representation in Hollywood, but as an opportunity to talk about how awful Scarlett Johansson is.  And I’m not saying that discussion is totally devoid of value - I think she should be held responsible for the bad decision she made, and I’m glad she faced some degree of consequence for it.  But I think when that’s the primary discussion, it not only doesn’t do much to improve trans representation in Hollywood, it actually does some degree of harm to that goal.  Two reasons for this:

1.) Scarlett Johansson is only one person, and while her actions are symptomatic of a larger problem in Hollywood, she only has a marginal impact on Hollywood as a whole.  Suppose she does learn her lesson from this controversy, and she never takes another trans (or, while we’re at it, POC) role again.  We still haven’t directly done anything about the vast number of other actors who might take these roles, or the other directors who think it’s okay to give trans roles to cis actors.  I suppose we’ve sort of made an example out of Johansson that others might want to avoid, but the thing is, when the primary discussion is ‘here’s why Johansson is awful’, a lot of people aren’t going to engage anymore when the discussion isn’t about a celebrity they already hate.  You cultivate a group of people who care primarily about slamming Johansson, with trans representation just a means to that end.  That doesn’t leave us well-equipped to deal with the next time this happens with an actor or director that isn’t as famous, isn’t as fun to hate.  The ultimate takeaway needs to be that it’s wrong for cis actors to play trans characters - that’s a sustainable long-term message to get people behind good representation.  If the ultimate takeaway is that Johansson is awful - which I think it often is when people react to the news of this role with ‘Scarlett Johansson is trash’ and ‘Just what we’d expect from her’, a lot of the engagement with good representation is shallow and apathetic.  To focus on how Johansson is a bad person, rather than how trans people are routinely ignored and misrepresented by Hollywood, does a disservice to trans people who desperately need greater awareness of their dehumanization, not just people hating a celebrity on their behalf.

2.) People like Scarlett Johansson, and when her fans who don’t know much about this issue associate criticism of bad representation with criticism of their favorite actress, they’re likely to conflate the two, and the discussion of representation will get a lot of baggage it doesn’t need and suddenly become a much harder sell.  Yes, caring about good representation sometimes means criticizing celebrities you like, but it takes a lot of people a while to get to the point where that feels comfortable and natural, and it’s not a good recruitment point.  I’m not arguing here that we shouldn’t hold Johansson responsible for her actions, or criticize her directly - I think that she deserves consequences, and that showing actors that this has consequences for anyone who does it makes actors less likely to take these roles in the future.  But when her fans see people criticizing her over an issue they don’t care about, they’re going to be skeptical about the validity of that issue.  That’s not a problem if the response to what she did is a discussion of trans representation in which Johansson is relevant but not central - this is relatively palatable to outsiders.  But when the criticism of bad representation is essentially an excuse for an attack on Johansson, people who might otherwise be open to the idea of criticizing how Hollywood portrays trans people are put on the defensive by what they’re not even wrong to perceive as an attack on their favorite celebrity.  Defending Johansson becomes equivalent with approval of cis people playing trans roles.  When Johansson’s awfulness is emphasized over any reason that trans representation needs improvement, outsiders who don’t already see a problem are unlikely to pick up on it.  People often react emotionally to attacks on their favorite celebrities, and that emotional reaction is a lot less likely when the celebrity’s actions are framed as inexcusable but relatively insignificant in the face of the trend they’re a part of.  ‘Johansson did something wrong’ is much less likely to generate needless hostility than ‘Johansson is a terrible person’.

I opened this post with the above quote because, of course, this goes way beyond this one example.  It’s easy and fun to hate celebrities, and when the reason is justified, as it is here, there’s nothing wrong with doing so.  But the actual issue at hand shouldn’t get swept up as just a part of that hatred - that not only ignores the bigger problem at hand, it indirectly adds to it.  I don’t think this is something people are doing intentionally - I think it comes from the natural instinct toward individualism, where blaming one person feels more natural than noticing systemic problems.  But we have to keep focus on what the real problem is, or the important issues will never see any redress.

Use Scarlett Johansson to talk about trans representation.  Don’t use trans representation to talk about Scarlett Johansson.

[frankendykes-monster]

@bigprettygothgf hmmm...when you phrase it like that I guess it's just symptomatic of the much larger issue wherein films (or just any entertainment) are now considered reducible to "content" to be consumed; ergo there's thus a prevailing need that everything you watch has to be easily and readily digestible, and you can see that manifest in a lot of different ways, not just with the rapid influx of [x ending] DECODED videos but also the sheer volume of people who still exclusively watch children's media or the people who agreed with Martin Scorsese's criticisms of the MCU on the grounds that they also hate the MCU, but fundamentally share the same mindset with his detractors ("not EVERYTHING has to be high art 🙄🙄🙄 the most important thing a movie needs to be is entertaining 😠😠😠"). Just recently I saw a list of "movies with no plot" that included the likes of 8 1/2 (1963), Eraserhead (1977), Stalker (1979), In The Mood For Love (2000), basically anything you could fucking think of that doesnt use the hero's journey as a template.

9/10 times when someone says a given film is total indecipherable nonsense (e.x. almost anything by Lynch or Obayashi), they're just being willfully obtuse and ignorant. It's okay not to understand something especially after a first viewing but that doesnt correlate to it not making any sense.

[krieservalentine]

Bacterial Vaginosis Gram Stain Nugent Score Easy And Cheap Cool Ideas

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How Long Does It Take To Cure Bacterial Vaginosis

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Bacterial Vaginosis Gummies Of Life

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[donnerpartyofone]

ramblings

honestly i hate it when people use this word in their content or URLs. i hate it as much and in the same way that i hate the overuse of the word “random”. both represent tactics designed to absolve the user of any obligation to communicate clearly, stand by their opinions, or otherwise allow that the things they choose to do and say and support are symptomatic of who they really are as an individual--as if the things that you engage with are just “something that happened”, like the weather, and there’s some separate secret “you” that has nothing to do with the waves of activity that appear to emanate from your person. not that everything has to be a manifesto, but constantly qualifying your every action or feeling as chaotic and indeterminate is insecure at best and fraudulent at worst. at any degree of severity, it is at the very least just fucking annoying.

but, i’m thinking about quitting tumblr again, and this line of thought could probably be safely categorized as a ramble. i mean i’ve been thinking about it for years, as much as anybody of my vintage does, although my ordinary complaints have just had to do with obnoxious technical and community issues. this net neutrality disaster is really pushing my buttons. can i really afford, mentally, to keep using a yahoo product? but the thing is, as soon as i think this, i’m assailed by internal synthetic echoes of the kinds of radical voices i’ve absorbed from tumblr itself. this is one of my worst personal problems, that i internalize other people’s voices with extreme success. so, as soon as i think about boycotting yahoo by leaving tumblr, i involuntarily imagine someone telling me that i’m an elitist pig for theatrically divorcing myself from a major corporation when many people, who are perhaps the most victimized by corporate behavior, can’t even choose to remove toxic corporate material from their lives, and that my empty gesture is even less than symbolic when i don’t know who picked the orange sitting on my desk and i’m typing this out using a slave-manufactured Apple product furnished by my employer who rather famously tortures its blue collar employees. this morning i was feeling good about using up leftovers for my lunch instead of letting them turn into climate-destroying food waste, until i thought about where the stray mayo packet i just used was going to wind up, and moreover where the plastic bag i used to tie up that trash was going to wind up, and what an asshole i was for thinking about how i can recycle the tin foil i wrapped my sandwich in when in fact recycling plants have been linked to cancer in their employees. i may have congratulated myself this morning for repairing my thrifted shoes with glue instead of throwing them out and replacing them, but the fact that they’re under my feet right now and for as long as i can keep them doesn’t affect the fact that some animal is going to be choking on them when i can no longer make use of them. so, the same internalized radical voice that calls me a huge piece of shit for participating in this or that march or protest, even though i do vote and i do put money toward needs and causes when i can, that voice is definitely here to tell me that dramatically leaving tumblr after seven years makes me at least as much of an asshole as does continuing to use it.

if you exist anywhere left of center lately, your available political energy is pretty routinely sapped by infighting that seems to insist that if your intentions as well as your strategies are not absolutely virginally pure, then you need to just shut the fuck up and pull on your hair shirt and bury yourself alive until a real rain comes to wash all the scum off the streets. it’s like, no progress shall be made until a progress arrives that simultaneously and equally improves all areas of life, leaving no remote potential for debate in its glistening wake. nothing you do matters because everything you do is evil and there is no shortage of people who can prove it to you. the cultural climate i live in has made me really adept at proving it to myself. like the second you think even of certain A list celebrities who use the rewards of their meteoric careers in order to give back to their communities, you can say, well, what’s the carbon footprint of one of their concerts? what’s the point of doing anything at all? it feels like there are really just two ways you can live your life: you can aim for self-actualization, which may do wonders for your personal identity but which seems to require constant material sacrifice on the part of everything around you, OR you can relegate yourself to some sort of extreme jainist existence in which you deprive yourself of every personal indulgence to the point that your individuality is so degraded that the question of the meaning of your life looms larger than ever in relief.

there’s also the question, as evidenced by all this leftist infighting, of who is even smart enough to think of as much as one thing to do that’s actually a good thing to do. even if i were to let go of my entire life as it is to commit myself puritanically to some cause, it seems like a sure thing that i’d pick the wrong cause, with a world of negative side effects for other causes. and on the general matter of choosing sides, i don’t even think i know what, like, anything is anymore. i saw this post float by the other day that said something about how sick the OP was of the fierce leftist protection of sexual predators, as if defending rapists were a popular tenant in left-of-center parties, and the post had tens of thousands of notes and i just couldn’t figure out what the fuck it was even referring to from real life. i understand that there’s a lot of talk about how, speaking in very limited terms, “democrats are as bad as republicans”, and i understand what that’s about structurally speaking, but as far as “left” and “right” goes it seems like the language has completely broken down to the point that it doesn’t even refer to anything anymore other than some almost facelessly broad ideas about whether you think the government should help you or leave you alone about X. maybe what i’m really trying to say here is just that i have no idea what the fuck anyone is talking about to the point that just being alive is like being permanently trapped in some foreign country without a single cent of local currency.

so anyway, once i’ve achieved a subterranean level of depression over the fucked up shit that happens as a direct result of every minute that i even exist on the planet earth, i ALSO start to collapse under the slings and arrows of another internalized voice, that of a shitheaded rightwing alpha dog who sees guilt as a symptom of extreme weakness, of useless fragility. and to some degree that’s true, if my main state of being is this dissolving soreness, then how could i possibly be effective even at something that appears to be “the right thing to do”? and moreover it’s like if every single thing i could conceivably do with my life is categorizable as “evil”, then “evil” ceases to be a worthwhile judgment to make and abide by. everything is nothing and nothing is everything so you might as well just do whatever you want, right? but of course that’s not acceptable because in doing whatever i want, with no regard for the worldly consequences, i still feel terrible. so to try to treat that condition, i for-just-one-instance choose to go to the tiny neighborhood grocer next door to the constantly-expanding chain store right next to him, and i remember to bring cloth reusable grocery bags, which of course i know will just be choking out flora and fauna after i’m dead or stopped using them, and then the radical leftist voice in my head berates me for just “doing good” as a hollow gesture designed to make myself feel and look better, and we’re back to everything is nothing and nothing is everything all over again.

and why even worry about this, or literally anything, when at any moment we’re all going to be bombed off the face of the planet because we’ve elected, seemingly for entertainment’s sake, this scandalous id monster who isn’t even a real politician? i’m running out of these daily pills that i need for some real dumbass reasons, and i need to make an appointment for my annual medical humiliation in order to get more of them, but it’s so hard to care. over the last several years i built up a certain amount of personal pride by “being brave” and submitting myself to normal adult maintenance routines, but the more of them i’ve been through, the more they just feel like some sort of kafkaesque ritual whose only result is its own existence. and if i’m just going to boil to death in the rising oceans anyway, why bother?

the most rational idea that my tiny shitty brain is able to come up with is that the best most of us can do is to just do what feels “right”, as often as is practically feasible. so i think, well, leaving tumblr would be a thing, even if it doesn’t make a real difference in real life, it would be something i did based on a feeling of at-least-vague altruism. but then i think of all my friends here, people who are remote and in bad spots in their lives who i can at monitor in some well-meaning way, and i think about my family members here and their excellent art projects that are facilitated by this place, and like doesn’t my thought process indicate that i think all of THOSE people are evil parasites too? i mean what is the ultimate extension of the logic i’m trying to employ here? when i think about that i feel like a bigger sack of shit than ever before. then i kind of start thinking about all the people in the history of my life who have openly categorized my depression, whatever its sources and symptoms at the time, as just me being a pill, being difficult, being negative, being counterproductive, looking for attention: the explicit or tacit response being, “why don’t you just _______?” but i don’t know what this ________ is that’s supposed to replace all my feelings and behavior. i guess that’s kind of the point of this whole thing, that i have no idea what the alternative is supposed to be, to all this, and how i can “just” do that instead.

so, maybe just because it’s something to do, i’m thinking of moving over to blogspot or something that makes me feel even slightly less complicit in the actions of these cartoon villains that run everything. i understand that if i do that, then i’ll be lucky to maintain relationships with even like ten of the people whose presence here i know and love. i assume i would just continue on as normal, although without the benefit of this often-amazing kaleidoscopic font of images and ideas, and the ability to glibly inject some “hilarious” thought of mine into other people’s uptake streams, and the surprise discovery of new and exciting people via the entropy that rules my dash. or maybe i won’t risk all that, and i’ll just sit tight right here, because what really would be the actual result of my bailing? maybe i’ll just delete this later today, when i’m feeling sufficiently embarrassed and overexposed about it. i guess i’m going to go spend money i don’t deserve to make on some stuff that i don’t need to have, in a place that damages the world when i have to live in both obvious and invisible ways, while i think it over, for the rest of my natural life. 

[i-surviv3d-bitchh]

When I was seven, my father broke my arm.

Not directly. But I accidentally spilled some Coca-Cola all over my brother’s video games, and he started bawling. And my father came and yelled at me, and shoved me so hard onto a concrete floor covered in thin carpet, that my arm broke. He’d only ever slapped me a few times before this and yelled at me, so it wasn’t a chain of intense abuse. Just one incident that went too far.

And for years I thought nothing of it. In fact, I was confused--I came back home, with my arm in a cast, and discovered that my father had been taken away. My parents were divorcing. I couldn’t see my father unless there was a lawyer present. And my father was very sorry...he hadn’t intended for it to go that far.

My father has been horrible to me in a lot of other ways. I am very upset at him for those things. He thought my mother was going to spoil me, so he purposefully treated my brothers better than me from the day I was born. I hated him as a kid. None of my problems were ever worth anything--my life was supposedly perfect, and any grievance I had, I was being melodramatic about. He never believed I had a right to any feeling, or a right to anyTHING--I was apparently spoiled rotten and didn’t deserve what I had...

But the physical abuse didn’t bother me. At least not consciously. And I’m starting to rethink it now. Unfortunately, I was so young at the time, that I didn’t have the mind or skills to process it and understand it. Everyone else had that luxury. Everyone else got to be shocked by what he did, then realize he didn’t mean to, and then forgive him. And today, it’s a non-issue. It was an accident. He didn’t mean to. Therefore, no harm done, right?

But I very much resent not being able to have my own opinion on the issue without most of my family telling me that I need to forgive him, and be fine with it, because he didn’t mean to. My mother’s boyfriend says that it was an accident, so I should feel no ill will toward him. And honestly, it wouldn’t bother me so much today if he had been a better father afterward. If it had really been a one-time incident, and not symptomatic of something larger: the disdain he’s had for me my whole life. If he listened to me, and cared about my feelings, and accepted and loved me for who I am, then I don’t think the arm-breaking would bother me as much as it has been recently.

My mother’s boyfriend has grandchildren. One of his daughters has a seven-year-old daughter. And I imagined her father becoming enraged at her, yelling in her face, and then shoving her so hard that she breaks a bone. He wouldn’t have meant to break her arm. But he would have still been disciplining her so harshly that it broke. Is that okay? Is that something that I should think nothing of? Have I no right to feel upset about it? Everyone automatically forgives him. Everyone in my family responds to my questioning of the incident with...basically, admonishments. “He didn’t mean to, Colette. It was an accident.” Forgiveness is default. 

But this is how it’s always been. I have never had the right to feel my own feelings about things--everyone knows better than me. And you know, abuse doesn’t have to be intentional. It’s still abuse if you’re disciplining your child and they become more hurt than you intended. But no one in the family calls it abuse. My father was charged with a misdemeanor. I imagine the charge was of child abuse. It was abuse. Even if he’d gotten off scot-free, the law doesn’t determine whether or not it was abuse--it’s a philosophical issue. 

All I want is to be asked for forgiveness again. My father asked my forgiveness when I was seven, and I automatically supplied it. But I knew nothing back then, because I was used to a dysfunctional household and didn’t know better. I didn’t know that that was an extremely unusual and unacceptable thing to occur. I want to be given the opportunity to discuss it, and come to terms with it, as an adult. I want to be asked for forgiveness. I want him to say that it was abuse, for everyone to know that it was abuse, and that I have the right to be upset about it, and that I have the right not to forgive him. I know it was an accident, and I know that he’s sorry, and I’ve really basically forgiven him as it is. But I hate that it’s expected of me. I hate that my realization of how fucked up it really is is met with admonishment from my family. This didn’t happen to you, it happened to me. And you were older than me when it occurred and could process it. I wasn’t. I was just a kid. An innocent seven-year-old kid who was abused. And I want that to be acknowledged today. I want another chance to process it with an adult mind. And not be met with such judgement for it.