#and how radically different they are about how they operate

[queenoftheboard]

I will be slightly adjusting my headcanon post on Eirene's likely canon connections to include Levy there given the fact they're both wealthy business owners from Eastside, but I'm here again to rant about Levy and the details that make him so damn interesting to write opposite Eirene.

Despite the obvious connections, they have somewhat different approaches to how they go about in life. Eirene projects herself the way she wants to be perceived - an upstanding, law-abiding citizen with nothing but DisCity's best interests at heart and a paragon of those who believe in self-made success through hard work (even if in private she doesn't see people as anything more than pawns on her chess board - at least in principle).

Levy, on the other hand, is ridiculously adaptable - he will take on whatever role you expect him to have and perform it with such commitment that he will get defenses dropped and achieve his objectives with less resistance. Instead of pawns (or partners), Levy goes to the trouble of befriending others and using sympathy as his primary weapon instead of the arrogance that Eirene displays.

They have also gone through horrifying things at the hands of their families - in Eirene's case it is detailed in her interrogation while in Levy's it is more subtly alluded, and they have both acted to take revenge (arguably using their sinner abilities) in their own ways. While Eirene's case it led her to become someone obsessed with control and scheming and needing to be in charge of every single detail of her life, with Levy it blossomed into some nihilistic tendency and a rather cynical view of the world that could be almost labeled as 'cruel'.

And yet - in their own dark, distorted ways, they are capable of mercy; Eirene never killed her father (despite being able to); Levy offers his nephew absolute freedom in a soul-crushing way, but something he potentially wished for himself when he was younger and was not in a position to get it.

They're very different in how they operate (and I stand by my original point where Levy infuriates and bothers Eirene immensely given his dramatics and flamboyant persona and how unprofessionally he behaves) but deep down they have shared themes - money is either a weapon or their armor; people are just not to be trusted by default and what matters is how you control them for your ends (Eirene) or how they amuse you (Levy). At the end of the day - they're incredibly lonely, too, but will likely never admit that to themselves.

[wild-at-mind]

I get this but also talk about the trans narrative the media sells is so strange to me. What media? The trans narrative the media sells in the UK is concerned parents who need to be informed by teachers the same second their child asks about using a different name and/or pronoun. No one can hear enough from these parents. A phrase the mainstream media loves here is 'born in the wrong body', which isn't something I've ever heard a trans person say about themselves, but if they did that would be fine. However instead all you hear from the media is 'people are learning online they must be born in the wrong body if they like things associated with the opposite sex!' They fucking love that phrase because it sounds ridiculous to the layperson, it's easy to make fun of. This is the trans narrative the media is selling, and it's not our narrative because it doesn't come from us.

Online spaces are really toxic and full of people correcting each other and I agree with all the messages about people not doing this. We can always tell people to stfu with their 'disagreement' of what we call ourselves, and people should stop engaging others in weird label policing. But I also want to caution against the idea that your identity can be more or less radical than someone else's because of what it is called, or how comfortable you perceive it makes people. We all just are, no matter how well or not well our identity fits with the mainstream narrative (which of course does exist, and is things like 'you always were your gender' and stuff- I get what was meant by that really, I just wanted to remind people, perhaps patronisingly, of the media landscape we actually live in). Maybe we can only support each other if we see that.

don't use "ftm" it's outdated and offensive. it implies that the trans person was their agab, which we never were. i was always a boy, never a girl who became a boy.

i'm 35 years old. i've been IDing as trans or something similar to trans for nearly 20 years. i was probably calling myself FTM while you were playing tag during recess, anon.

i WAS a girl. i IDed as a girl early in my life. i recognized myself as a girl, called myself a girl, lived as a girl, and was a girl. who then IDed as a man. hence, F t M.

spend more time worrying about yourself instead of strangers on the internet, anon.

sorry not sorry if this comes off as needlessly hostile, but i've been getting a lot of shit from a lot of teenage trans kids about the language i use to describe my own goddamn experience, and i'm growing real fuckin weary of it.

i have elder trans friends who call themselves transsexuals and transvestites and trannies. are you going to seriously go to a 60-year-old trans person who survived the reagan years and tell her she's not allowed to use certain language to describe herself because it might offend the delicate sensibilities of some teenager on the internet?

do yourself a favor and log off, find some real-life trans people who are over the age of 20 or 25, and spend time talking to them instead of getting all holier-than-thou at random strangers on tumblr.

[darcylindbergh]

Can't vote for Biden and his vicious and cruel destruction of title ix. Really embarrassing that Dems have mainly left it to the right to try to defend it, and it's not like I can vote for them because they also hate women just in different ways. Shat on by the left, shat on by the right, women are in an awful situation

i'm posting this so we can all deconstruct what a far right psyop ask looks like.

on first read, this looks like someone who wishes they could be confident in voting blue but they're bummed by the democrats in office. targets title ix for their ire but doesn't really explain, perhaps assuming i'm out of touch and will just react instead of doing my due diligence (bad bet: i'm an attorney). uses over the top dramatic language like "vicious." they equate the left and right as being identical and indicates they won't be voting for either, with the implication that i shouldn't either, but goes on to blame the dems specifically for...something.

look at the very specific way they've couched this sentence:

Really embarrassing that Dems have mainly left it to the right to try to defend it,

i'm not meant to fight them on this. i'm meant to be embarrassed to be voting blue in november, i'm meant to blame democrats for abandoning some law, and i'm meant to recognize the right as upholding it.

title ix, if you didn't know, bans sex-based discrimination in schools and education. when someone tells you about democrats destroying title ix, that someone is a TERF.

and TERFs largely have aligned with the conservative hard right. I'll link a few articles at the bottom with detailed explainers, but for right here it's enough to say that TERFs want the far right to win because the far right is voting with them on their single issue, which is the destruction of trans rights and the ouster of trans and gnc women from public spaces. TERFs have marched with the Proud Boys. TERFs have partnered with anti-lgbtq groups to advance their anti-trans agenda. they will throw every other issue under the bus repeatedly if their anti-trans agenda wins.

and, importantly, the far right recognizes that TERFs are a tool they can use to destablize the left. the far right knows that as long as they will align with TERFs on this single issue, which they will because they too want to enforce the gender binary and traditional gender roles, TERFs will vote for and with them regardless of every single other issue. not only that, but the far right knows TERFs are a modern movement that's gained traction in social media spaces over the last several years, and they are relying on TERFs to send asks like this one to infiltrate spaces like tumblr and twitter and tiktok to encourage would-be blue voters not to vote because they want the far right to win.

this is a psyop. this is, whether formalized or not, a psychological operation intended to discourage voting in and among the left.

don't fall prey. vote blue in november.

I like this one because they have this great graph that specifically points out the link between TERFism, the far right, and disinformation attempts like the ask above.

[thelonelyjew]

Pride banned Jews?!?

So it's that time of year again that I see people circulating stuff that is completely fabricated about what they imagine happened at Chicago Dyke March in 2017.

First, Dyke March is not Pride. It is not meant to be apolitical or single-issue. It is explicitly anti-imperialist, anticapitalist, and, yes, antizionist. It's not the big mainstream pride Parade that has corporate sponsors (and ads for gay tourism in Israel), it's a small radical grassroots demonstration.

Ok now that that's out of the way, they did not "ban Jews". I was there. They did not "ban Jewish symbols". They did not ask anyone to leave because of their Jewish pride flag.

What actually happened was three women who turned out to be employed by Israeli pinkwashing operation A Wider Bridge participated in the march with a rainbow flag that featured a blue star of david in the center. I remember seeing it and disliking it bc it gave me Zionist vibes but neither I nor anyone else bothered them about it.

After the march there was a cookout in the park. The women were asked to leave by a Jewish member of the Dyke March Collective after several hours of hanging out at the cookout because they were harassing other marchgoers.

Immediately publications like Forward, Tablet, JTA, as well as more mainstream publications started running stories making wild untrue claims which you can still read if you Google it because none of these were ever corrected or retracted. It's clear that these AWB agents had press releases pre-written and ready to fire as soon as they managed to provoke any reaction that they could spin into a controversy.

The photos that ran along with these headlines were also misleading. One of them showed a photo of a rainbow flag with a white star in the center. The star on the flag I saw was blue, and the shade of the star has specific political connotations. Showing a different flag with the politically significant color removed is extremely misleading. The one that was carried in the march (and which, again, wasn't banned!) looked like this:

Another banner image, this one in a New York Times article, showed a young woman with dark curly hair holding a sign that says "this is who we are". She was clearly chosen to feature because of her stereotypically Jewish features. The article implies that she is one of the supposedly banned Jews. This is false. You know how I know? Bc that was the friend I was there with that day! She does not identify as Jewish, she looks like that bc she is Italian, and she had no idea she was being photographed!

I had a hat decorated with red and black stars of David, and the following year a bunch of us wore Workers Circle sashes with Yiddish text (which uses the Hebrew alphabet) as well. No one who wasn't employed by a Zionist organization was asked to leave or even questioned about anything related to Zionism or Jewish identity.

I'm resigning myself to the fact that this is going to get dug up and passed around every year and people will believe what they want to believe, but if you hear claims that some queer group "banned Jews" or something similar, please look at the source for the information and if possible try to talk to actual Jewish people who participate in the community events being discussed. And if you hear this about Chicago Dyke March in specific, please correct people. I feel like I'm going insane when this many people are insisting that what I saw and experienced wasn't real and pointing to the barrage of misleading articles as what I should believe over my own experiences.

[velvetvexations]

I'm a trans woman. You need to stop being weird about men.

The idea that trans women should be allowed in single sex spaces for cis women is completely contradicted by the man vs. bear discourse. Ignore that I keep going back to the meme - maybe it's still doing numbers, I don't know, but it's good shorthand either way. If you think men are inherently suspicious and dangerous, ask yourself: why does that not apply to trans women?

What, exactly, does a trans woman do to make herself different from cis men? How are you not advocating a belief in people being tainted by the way they were raised* which can only logically apply to trans women as much as it does cis men? It boggles the mind how, if that's a true concept, one could simply self-identify out it. Yet, the way transradfems talk, literally the only thing that distinguishes an AMAB better-than-bear from an AMAB worse-than-bear is that the former says they're totally better than a bear and you should take their word for it, which if men are really Like That should be of little comfort or security.

Some, even, will make impassioned defenses of butch trans women, which as a butch trans woman is great. But then they'll go on about how evil men are, and how innocent and victimized trans women are, and I wonder, what, exactly, differs an especially butch trans woman from a man to them? If, like me, a trans butch woman doesn't always wear clearly feminine clothes, has body hair, maybe even a shade of facial hair, and doesn't at all try to train her voice, are you going to be uncomfortable with her right up until she realizes she forgot to put their pin on and you see the she/her? Apparently that flips the switch from someone you desperately don't want to be alone with to someone you're totally fine undressing in front of?

All that sounds like TERFism, which is exactly the problem. The transradfem version of reality is one where TERF talking points are completely logical, because they're both based in the same radfem reality. That's not my reality, YOU have constructed a system perfect for them to operate in, that their ideology is fantastic for pointing out errors of reasoning in, as if it was deliberately crafted by them to be deconstructed. I would not at all be surprised if that's the origin of a lot of trans radical feminism, a psyop to make the trans community weaker with logic twists that TERFism can swing through like the Gordian Knot.

If you accept man vs. bear, TERFism is the only logical conclusion. If you don't, as I don't, then it isn't.

The only alternative is that you think being a woman is the only thing anyone should be and "choosing" to be a man is morally inferior. Which I shouldn't have to tell you is horrifying. It's also again incongruous with at least your defense of butch trans women - what exactly defines a "man" and a "woman" when a butch trans woman doesn't have to try to pass at all? You are literally saying all of this, gender, transmisogyny, misogyny, hinges entirely on pronouns and a difference of two letters in the name of what they call themselves, someone is dangerous or not depending on if they go by he/him.

TERFs will see this and be like "yeah! exactly!" BUT MY POINT IS USING THAT TO SHOW YOU SHARE THE SAME FOUNDATIONAL LOGIC AS THEM. If you don't want TERFs to have a point then you can stop accepting their worldview any day now! Come join me and frolic freely where we think TERFs are wrong!

*socialization is real and the idea pre-dates TERFs who incorrectly use the idea that to say that because a trans woman may or may not** have been pressured by external forces to play sportsball she must be hardcoded to be a sex offender, which is completely ridiculous

**no one can be said to have the same experiences, it's a generalization

[eatmangoesnekkid]

THE WOMB REQUIRES US TO LIVE NON-VIOLENTLY Most of what I see going on with those of us with wombs is that we are still looking at the world as 15 year old girls. We are looking at the world through old timelines, archaic imprints or predictive religious programming. The latter is lovely if you are religious, but most of us are unconscious that what we actually believe is true has been adopted from religious teachings taught by people who are no longer alive. Women have been taught to assume that anything related to their arousal is about sex and men because we don't have the proper perspective on how our female bodies truly operate. These deep foundational misalignments are subtle forms of violence internalized from patriarchy that hold us back from thriving in our magical female bodies in this 3D reality, elevating our consciousness and mitochondria, regenerating our cells, and transforming this world into the brighter—other women, men, children, all people, nature, and the like. It is your birthright to have ease, to feel safe, and experience heaven on earth. But so many women are doing the same thing year after year, lifetime after lifetime, and do not do anything differently in a radical way in order to create a new imprint. We must go deeper into what it is actually required in order to come fully alive in our bodies and transform our health, lives and this world's reflection. Principles, values, and rituals are essential and I will share an example of one of mine. Before I fly, I stretch a few times a day and fast on juices, water, and teas a week before to raise the quality of my light body, that internal halo, the mystical sacred lubrication which I know has contributed to me having beautiful easeful travel experiences. And what would register to another person as “annoying” or “messed up” resonates to my tissues as gratitude or a blessing. When your divine energy is flowing, you naturally integrate well into a new climate and culture and won't have to worry about getting sick so easily. I also pack early so that my tissues can be relaxed and thereby energy flowing even more. I cover my head with fabric or a divinely prayed over ribbon or scarf before boarding the flight. I stretch during long flights to keep my energy flowing. In other words, I am mindful not to live in my body violently-rushing here and there, staying up late, and packing at the last second. All the qualities and actions that make us come fully alive in our bodies and be more naturally radiant and beautiful have been dismissed and downgraded for the quick, fast, and convenient. The rise of health issues in the female line is devastating. What we have done to the female body is a tragedy and we have have to be better, less violent to ourselves by moving lower, taking our time, and being gentle with the discomfort that comes up as the universe catches up to our new frequency and brings more harmony. We need real philosophies, belief systems, and practical actions that actually work for our bodies and not against them. I mentioned recently how "lubrication" is my #1 core value. I didn't say that for giggles; I really meant that! I am deeply feminine woman but I'm also a strategist who knows that the female body works most magically and optimally when our energy is flowing -which naturally means that our tissues will be lubricated. Lubrication, libido, or the flow of fluids are certainly more than about sex, as lovely as sex can be. First and foremost, they are about strength, health, wellness, longevity, and mental clarity. How can you be a little more attention to your body? What are your core values? What are your principles for living in your body? What violent belief systems do you need to let go of? As we continue to wake up to the fact that the world is not what we've been programmed to believe it to be and the divine feminine continues to break through the ashes, messages like what I am saying will become more popular and less radical and jarring. If you are reading this, you are already ahead of the game.-India Ame'ye, Author

Tumblr won't let me edit post but should read: "Women are generally exhausted and bored which is why constantly consuming/taking information and shopping all the time is so attractive. The qualities and actions that make us fully alive in our bodies and more naturally radiant and beautiful have been dismissed and downgraded for the quick, fast, popular or convenient. "

[ceilidhtransing]

I feel like so much shitty discourse could be avoided if people more consciously bore in mind the fact that Mainstream Society and The Queer Community are, you know, meaningfully different spaces that often have different social phenomena and different issues.

Random example, there'll be a discussion about femininity often being prized over masculinity, especially transmasculinity, in some queer spaces. And there'll be a bunch of transmasculine people talking about being made to feel unwelcome once they came out, feeling pressured to identify as nonbinary rather than as a binary man as that receive less hostility, being increasingly isolated and othered once they started T, feeling pressured to act more feminine and GNC, being told that their presence as a man makes others in the space uncomfortable, etc.

And then inevitably someone will respond with something like “OP what fucking planet are you on. You're fucking insane if you think femininity is prized over masculinity in society. And the idea that nonbinary people have privilege over binary trans people - what is this fucking enbyphobic bullshit? God, some people are so stuck in an echo chamber of terminally online tumblr queers with their invented problems that they've forgotten what it's like in the real world.”

But was the discussion about wider mainstream society? Or was it very particularly about the queer community and issues that these people have faced specifically within that community?

The queer community is a subculture (arguably many subcultures but let's try to keep it simple), and it's totally, utterly standard for subcultures to - even deliberately, as an act of pushback - value different things from the mainstream culture. Aesthetics thought of as “weird” or “[insert slur here]” by the mainstream can be highly prized in the queer community. Identities that are all thought of as equally “fucked-up” and “cringe” by the mainstream can find themselves organised into some weird hierarchy of validity and oppressed-ness within the community. Politics which are considered extremely fringe and radical by the mainstream can be considered the default norm, even a necessity, in the queer community. Gender expressions that are seen as the most basic “normal” thing ever in the mainstream can be devalued by the queer community for “not looking queer enough” or “being straight-passing”. And none of this is a contradiction because this is pretty much how subcultures operate! They assert different values and cultural norms from the culture they exist within and that's partly what makes them subcultures.

So if someone's pointing out “I face this issue specifically when I'm interacting with queer spaces”, it doesn't do the conversation any good to assume that they're talking about mainstream society and attack them for “being deluded about how the real world works” or “inventing fake problems to sound more oppressed” or something. (And the inverse - someone pointing out “I face this issue when I'm interacting with the mainstream” and someone else responding with “I don't know what you're talking about; I never face that issue at all [in my exclusively queer friend group and support network]” - is far rarer, but it does still happen, and it's just as unhealthy for the discussion. Probably the most common example of this I can think of is when cis gay and lesbian people discuss homophobia they've faced, for instance to do with their gender expression, and someone goes “but that doesn't happen, because actually cis gays are a privileged group and I've never seen anyone attack their presentations” - yes, because the frame of reference you're using is the queer community, where being gay is pretty much the expected default, and you're forgetting that in mainstream society, even cisgender gays and lesbians are by no means “a privileged group” that experiences no oppression ever.)

People need to be able to discuss issues in the specific social contexts they're talking about without it being basically guaranteed that someone will misinterpret them and start jumping down their throat in anger at something that wasn't even said or implied. It is so bad for the community when people seemingly can't fathom that the dynamics at play might be different within queer spaces versus out in mainstream society and it leads to so much pointless toxicity and aggressive misunderstanding.

[responsivethoughts]

The Grumman X-29 Experimental Aircraft

The Grumman X-29 was an experimental aircraft developed by the United States in the 1980s, aimed at testing advanced aviation technologies. One of its most unique features was its forward-swept wings, which improved maneuverability and reduced drag. However, this design introduced significant aerodynamic challenges, such as the tendency of the wings to twist under stress. To address this, the X-29 utilized advanced composite materials, which provided the necessary strength without adding excess weight.

The X-29 was inherently unstable due to its forward-swept wings, necessitating a sophisticated digital fly-by-wire control system. This system allowed a computer to continuously make adjustments to keep the aircraft stable during flight. Additionally, the aircraft featured canard control surfaces, located in front of the main wings, which enhanced control and maneuverability, particularly at high angles of attack.

Another key feature of the X-29 was its variable-geometry engine inlets, designed to optimize airflow into the engine across different flight conditions. This design allowed the aircraft to maintain efficiency at various speeds and altitudes. Together, these innovative design elements made the X-29 a complex and advanced aircraft for its time.

The X-29 first flew on December 14, 1984, under the management of NASA and the United States Air Force. Two X-29 aircraft were constructed, and they accumulated over 400 test flights. These tests focused on exploring the aircraft's unique aerodynamic and flight control characteristics, providing valuable data on how forward-swept wings performed under various conditions.

The primary objective of the X-29 program was to investigate technologies that could be used in future fighter aircraft, with a particular focus on improving maneuverability and control at high angles of attack. Although the X-29 was never intended to enter production, the insights gained from its development contributed to future advancements in aircraft design.

While the X-29 did not see operational service, its legacy is significant. The technologies it explored, including forward-swept wings, composite materials, and digital flight controls, paved the way for innovations in fighter aircraft. Today, the X-29 is remembered as an important milestone in the study of unconventional aircraft designs and aerodynamics.

An interesting and lesser-known fact about the Grumman X-29 is that, despite its radical design, the aircraft reused components from existing fighter jets to save on development costs. Specifically, the fuselage of the X-29 was derived from the Northrop F-5A Freedom Fighter, and its landing gear was taken from the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon. This blending of cutting-edge technology with proven components from earlier aircraft helped keep the project within a more manageable budget, demonstrating a creative approach to experimental aircraft design during that era.

[mortalityplays]

I've been reading a lot about the evolution of city infrastructures recently, and imo something we have really really lost in our collective conception of urban efficiency is the use of space throughout time.

patterns of urban activity changed radically with the industrial revolution & the normalisation of centralised work opportunities and the daily commute, office culture carried us even further down that path, and even the moderate shift toward mobile and home working since 2019 is massively class stratified. we've become accustomed to the idea that there are 'work spaces', 'living spaces' and 'leisure spaces', that these are qualitatively completely different things, and that the aspirational ideal is a total lack of overlap.

e.g. say an office complex opens at 6am, closes at 6pm, and is closed on sundays. This enormous facility sits unused for nearly 60% of the working week. Sure, maybe cleaners come in overnight, but is that an efficient use of space? Could the building open to the public on Sundays, for students or remote workers? Could it be used in the evenings for public meetings, social groups, studio space? Could it be used overnight by businesses that operate outside 9-5 work patterns?

This is the cleanest, bougiest, least challenging example I can think of, and there is still so much opportunity to rethink how space is occupied. What time of day is a space in use? What else could it be the rest of the time? Is there a good reason occupants can't share the facility throughout the day? We should be much much more bolder about demanding that urban space is used equitably imo.

[flyingfishtailoutpost1]

Please, I need people to do something in the coming days- be kind to kids.

We’ll be operating under a political regime that throws “FUCK YOUR FEELINGS” and “NO SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES” as slogans and mocks Sesame Street, that’s going to enshrine macho toughness and spite as ideals. Kids are ground zero for social indoctrination, and these people will be doing everything in their power to get in at ground zero and indoctrinate and radicalize.

Please be kind to kids. Go out of your way to show children what kindness and compassion looks like. Talk to children about what kindness and compassion looks like. I don’t care if you want them or don’t want them. Yes, being around kids can be a challenge sometimes, but they are humans. Children are humans at the beginning stages of life experience. Every type of human has a different life experience from you—disabled people, people from other countries, elderly people, people of different races. I know a lot of folks who will show kindness and compassion to adults who are operating out of different life experiences, but not children. Now more than ever we need to try to unpack that a little fucking bit.

Please, if you’re at a loss and looking for a somewhere to start fighting back, consider starting with this—finding ways to remind children what kindness and compassion to others looks like, and how to choose it.

[steveyockey]

Some would rebut that “Oppenheimer,” being a Hollywood blockbuster with serious global reach (whether it will play Japanese theaters remains uncertain), will be many audiences’ only exposure to the events in question and thus might “create a limit on public consciousness and concern,” as the poet, writer and professor Brandon Shimoda told The Times. A corollary of this argument: The crimes committed against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so unspeakable, so outsized in their impact, that Oppenheimer’s perspective does and should dwindle into insignificance by comparison. For Nolan to focus so exclusively on an American physicist’s story, some insist, ultimately diminishes history and humanity, even as it reinforces the Hollywood hegemony of the great-man biopic and of white men’s narratives in general.

I get those complaints. I also think they betray an inherent disrespect for the audience’s intelligence and curiosity, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of how movies operate. It’s telling that few of these criticisms of perspective were leveled at “American Prometheus” when it was published in 2005, that no one begrudged Bird and Sherwin for offering a meticulously researched, morally ambivalent portrait of their subject’s life and consigning the destruction of two Japanese cities to a few pages. That’s because books are books, the argument goes, and movies are movies — and this perceived difference, it must be said, reveals a pernicious double standard.

Because they seldom achieve the narrative penetration and richness of detail of, say, a 700-page biography, movies, especially those about history, often are hailed as achievements of breadth over depth, emotion over intellect. They are assumed to be fundamentally shallow experiences, distillations of real life rather than sharply angled explorations of it, propelled by broad brushstrokes and easy expository shortcuts, and beholden to the audience’s presumably voracious appetite for thrilling, traumatizing spectacle. And because movies offer a visual immediacy and narrative immersion that books don’t, they are expected to be sweeping if not omniscient in their narrative scope, to reach for a comprehensive, even definitive vantage.

Movies that attempt something different, that recognize that less can indeed be more, are thus easily taken to task. “It’s so subjective!” and “It omits a crucial P.O.V.!” are assumed to be substantive criticisms rather than essentially value-neutral statements. We are sometimes told, in matters of art and storytelling, that depiction is not endorsement; we are not reminded nearly as often that omission is not erasure. But because viewers of course cannot be trusted to know any history or muster any empathy on their own — and if anything unites those who criticize “Oppenheimer” on representational grounds, it’s their reflexive assumption of the audience’s stupidity — anything that isn’t explicitly shown onscreen is denigrated as a dodge or an oversight, rather than a carefully considered decision.

A film like “Oppenheimer” offers a welcome challenge to these assumptions. Like nearly all Nolan’s movies, from “Memento” to “Dunkirk,” it’s a crafty exercise in radical subjectivity and narrative misdirection, in which the most significant subjects — lost memories, lost time, lost loves — often are invisible and all the more powerful for it. We can certainly imagine a version of “Oppenheimer” that tossed in a few startling but desultory minutes of Japanese destruction footage. Such a version might have flirted with kitsch, but it might well have satisfied the representational completists in the audience. It also would have reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a piddling afterthought; Nolan treats them instead as a profound absence, an indictment by silence.

That’s true even in one of the movie’s most powerful and contested sequences. Not long after news of Hiroshima’s destruction arrives, Oppenheimer gives a would-be-triumphant speech to a euphoric Los Alamos crowd, only for his words to turn to dust in his mouth. For a moment, Nolan abandons realism altogether — but not, crucially, Oppenheimer’s perspective — to embrace a hallucinatory horror-movie expressionism. A piercing scream erupts in the crowd; a woman’s face crumples and flutters, like a paper mask about to disintegrate. The crowd is there and then suddenly, with much sonic rumbling, image blurring and an obliterating flash of white light, it is not.

For “Oppenheimer’s” detractors, this sequence constitutes its most grievous act of erasure: Even in the movie’s one evocation of nuclear disaster, the true victims have been obscured and whitewashed. The absence of Japanese faces and bodies in these visions is indeed striking. It’s also consistent with Nolan’s strict representational parameters, and it produces a tension, even a contradiction, that the movie wants us to recognize and wrestle with. Is Oppenheimer trying (and failing) to imagine the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians murdered by the weapon he devised? Or is he envisioning some hypothetical doomsday scenario still to come?

I think the answer is a blur of both, and also something more: In this moment, one of the movie’s most abstract, Nolan advances a longer view of his protagonist’s history and his future. Oppenheimer’s blindness to Japanese victims and survivors foreshadows his own stubborn inability to confront the consequences of his actions in years to come. He will speak out against nuclear weaponry, but he will never apologize for the atomic bombings of Japan — not even when he visits Tokyo and Osaka in 1960 and is questioned by a reporter about his perspective now. “I do not think coming to Japan changed my sense of anguish about my part in this whole piece of history,” he will respond. “Nor has it fully made me regret my responsibility for the technical success of the enterprise.”

Talk about compartmentalization. That episode, by the way, doesn’t find its way into “Oppenheimer,” which knows better than to offer itself up as the last word on anything. To the end, Nolan trusts us to seek out and think about history for ourselves. If we elect not to, that’s on us.

[haggishlyhagging]

There is something inherent in writing that is very solitary and I think that writers come to such awful ends in life because it's almost a total abuse of the human system to use the mind the way you use your mind when you're a writer. But at the time I was writing Pornography which was from about 1977 through 1980, there wasn't the support that there would be now. It wasn't just lonely because writing is lonely. It was lonely because feminists did not want to deal with pornography. They wouldn't even consider that this was something that had to be done and that made it much worse. And, basically, I almost died from writing Pornography. I couldn't make a living. The book that I published is only one-third of the book that I planned to write, because there was no way that I could keep working on it. I often wonder what would have happened if I could have written more of it, because the next part of the book, the second third of the book, was specifically about how pornography socialises female sexuality. Since so much of the subsequent articles have been around that, it has always felt to me as if I have been operating sort of with an amputated leg. You know, where is that other leg I wanted this book to stand on? But I couldn't survive and continue writing this book. In that way I feel that the Women's Movement has failed many writers and many women and, yes, it could have been different.

-Andrea Dworkin, “Dworkin on Dworkin” in Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed

[naamahdarling]

Revelations during tonight's dinner conversation with my dad:

His father was a top secret class engineer at a big aerospace company who worked on the Echo satellite program. He was highly placed enough that several times during the cold war, the infamous "men in black" came and removed him from the house to (presumably) Cheyenne Mountain in case of nuclear strike. They were fine leaving my grandma, uncle, and dad to die, though. 😨

The "men in black" came to talk to my dad's teen brother one day out of the blue and demanded all correspondence from his stamp-collecting Norwegian pen pal with whom he had been trading stamps and boys' magazines. His pen pal was a 58-year-old Russian spy. 😧

My dad was a courier in the Vietnam War with top secret clearance, running communications through active combat zones. I did not know this. He once risked his life to deliver a mislabeled order past a firefight - an utterly trivial order for flags on the base to be flown half-mast that had been labeled top secret. Heads rolled for that. 😬

The park across the street from the house I lived in my whole life and he lives in still was at one time partially a cemetery containing about 30 gravesites. They were supposedly all moved, but you know how it is. You can't be sure they found or bothered to remove everything. This explains why the park was so creepy, why the perfectly ordinary 50s-era ranch house had vibes so septic and haunted even my dad could sense it, and why I felt watched, always, from every window in the house that faced that park. 😱

None of this is touching the time he and his group of coworkers were mistaken for bank robbers and almost killed by small-town cops, the time his twin prop plane lost an engine and almost crashed over the Sea of Japan, the time he caught a several million dollar accounting mistake for his company before it tanked their international branch, or why he is partially responsible for why swipe-to-pay credit card machines were for a short while RADICALLY different, not standardized, and very frustrating to operate (but he saved thousands of regular people from potential fraud).

[allfattenedup]

I'm a huge fan of your content, but I need to take a minute to talk about something you do that drives me absolutely wild:

I love when gainers tag their stuff as "ex-jock". Because, in the "real world" when someone uses terms like that, it's typically to describe a specific body type. An "ex-jock" is someone who works out, or at least used to. Sure they've gone a bit to seed, and they have a nice little pot belly going on, but their strong muscles, the developed upper body or the muscled glutes are all still present and noticeable. Any fat they have doesn't really jiggle all that much, because at the end of the day, there's still, you know, muscle supporting it.

But you gainers have created a second meaning for the term. When gainers like you use "ex-jock", it's not helpful shorthand to describe a specific body type, it's something used to remember a person who doesn't exist anymore. Because no one looks at a developed, established fatty, gut hanging and jiggling, ass and thighs plush and dimpled with cellulite, two chins and chubby cheeks grown plump with gorging on thousands of calories of chocolates and junk food, and thinks "oh yeah, he ran track in high school". Once you hit a certain threshold of weight gained, that history disappears. No one can see the hours in the gym. No one respects the team captain anymore. No one sees you as anything other then a lifetime fatty, because how could someone that fat ever have been anything else?

But that's not how gainers like you like to operate. Destroying the athlete you used to be, rendering them invisible, is only half the objective. Sure, you're fat now, probably fatter then you ever wanted to be (not that something like a weight limit, or goal, could ever stop you), but that alone doesn't give you the perverse thrill you crave. So what can you do? "ex-jock". A word that works like a brand. Now, no matter how fat you get, no matter how hungry you are or how much muscle mass you replace with soft, jiggling fat, the world will know that you made yourself this way. Like a bat signal in the sky, calling everyone to see an athlete that was conventionally attractive, fit and energetic, and who gave it all away. All so you could be what you see before you now.

And you're still hungry for more.

I don’t know what I can add to this because it’s perfection 😩👌🏼🐷🥵 And you nailed it. To me, I use ex-jock so that when people look at me they try to imagine what I must have looked like before I ruined my body with fat.

When they see my belly wobble against my heavy thighs, I want them to know the feeling is still strange to me, still new, still a bit frightening. Very exciting.

That the face I see in the mirror was once radically different. You’d have thought so differently of me if you’d known me before I got fat. But if I use ex-jock, at least you know when you see me like this that once I was the complete opposite of what I've now become.

That I’ve changed. I’m not making the best of the body I have, I’m making the worst body I can possibly bear, and then a little bit worse than that. Maybe a lot worse if things get out of hand. Methodically, intentionally, fatter and fatter, loving how hard it is to see myself like this. Relishing the constant, gentle horror as my fat arms wobble while I eat. Delighting in the dreadful embarrassment of a new double chin.

And you're right. I am hungry for more. Desperate, even.

[thebardostate]

Is the Brain a Driver or a Steering Wheel?

This three part series summarizes what science knows, or thinks it knows, about consciousness. In Part 1 What Does Quantum Physics Imply About Consciousness? we looked at why several giants in quantum physics - Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Von Neumann and others - believed consciousness is fundamental to reality. In Part 2 Where Does Consciousness Come From? we learned the "dirty little secret" of neuroscience: it still hasn't got a clue how electrical activity in the brain results in consciousness.

In this concluding part of the series we will look at how a person can have a vivid conscious experience even when their brain is highly dysfunctional. These medically documented oddities challenge the materialist view that the brain produces consciousness.

Before proceeding, let's be clear what what is meant by "consciousness". For brevity, we'll keep things simple. One way of looking at consciousness is from the perspective of an outside observer (e.g., "conscious organisms use their senses to notice differences in their environment and act on their goals.") This outside-looking-in view is called behavioral consciousness (aka psychological consciousness). The other way of looking at it is the familiar first-person perspective of what it feels like to exist; this inside-looking-out view is called phenomenal consciousness (Barušs, 2023). This series is only discussing phenomenal consciousness.

Ready? Let’s go!

Source: Caltech Brain Imaging Center

A Hole in the Head

Epilepsy is a terrible disease in which electrical storms in the brain trigger seizures. For some people these seizures are so prolonged and frequent that drastic action is needed to save their lives. One such procedure is called a hemispherectomy, the removal or disconnection of half the brain. Above is an MRI image of a child who has undergone the procedure.

You might think that such radical surgery would profoundly alter the memory, personality, and cognitive abilities of the patient.

You would be wrong. One child who underwent the procedure at age 5 went on to attend college and graduate school, demonstrating above average intelligence and language abilities despite removal of the left hemisphere (the zone of the brain typically identified with language.) A study of 58 children from 1968 to 1996 found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality or humor, and minimal changes in cognitive function after hemispherectomy.

You might think that, at best, only a child could successfully undergo this procedure. Surely such surgery would kill an adult?

You would be wrong again. Consider the case of Ahad Israfil, an adult who suffered an accidental gunshot to the head and successfully underwent the procedure to remove his right cerebral hemisphere. Amazingly, after the five hour operation he tried to speak and went on to regain a large measure of functionality - and even earn a degree - although he did require use of a wheelchair afterwards.

Another radical epilepsy procedure, a corpus collosotomy, leaves the hemispheres intact but severs the connections between them. For decades it was believed that these split-brain patients developed divided consciousness, but more recent research disputes this notion. Researchers found that, despite physically blocking all neuronal communication between the two hemispheres, the brain somehow still maintains a single unified consciousness. How it manages this feat remains a complete mystery. Recent research on how psychedelic drugs affect the brain hints that the brain might have methods other than biochemical agents for internal communication, although as yet we haven't an inkling as to what those might be.

So what's the smallest scrape of brain you need to live? Consider the case of a 44-year-old white collar worker, married with two children and with an IQ of 75. Two weeks after noticing some mild weakness in one leg the man went to see his doctor. The doc ordered a routine MRI scan of the man's cranium, and this is what it showed.

Source: The Lancet

What you are seeing here is a giant empty cavity where most of the patient's brain should be. Fully three quarters of his brain volume is missing, most likely due to a bout of hydrocephalus he experienced when he was six months old.

Artist: Tom Wright

Last Words

Many unusual phenomena have been observed as life draws to an end. We're going to look at two deathbed anomalies that have neurological implications.

The first is terminal lucidity, sometimes called paradoxical lucidity. First studied in 2009, terminal lucidity refers to the spontaneous return of lucid communication in patients who were no longer thought to be medically capable of normal verbal communication due to irreversible neurological deterioration (e.g., Alzheimers, meningitis, Parkinson's, strokes.) Here are three examples:

A 78-year-old woman, left severely disabled and unable to speak by a stroke, spoke coherently for the first time in two years by asking her daughter and caregiver to take her home. She died later that evening.

A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them, recalling everyone’s name. She was even aware of her own age and where she’d been living all this time.

A young man suffering from AIDS-related dementia and blinded by the disease who regained both his lucidity and apparently his eyesight as well to say farewell to his boyfriend and caregiver the day before his death.

Terminal lucidity has been reported for centuries. A historical review found 83 case reports spanning the past 250 years. It was much more commonly reported in the 19th Century (as a sign that death was near, not as a phenomenon in its own right) before the materialist bias in the medical profession caused a chilling effect during the 20th Century. Only during the past 15 years has any systematic effort been made to study this medical anomaly. As a data point on its possible prevalence a survey of 45 Canadian palliative caregivers found that 33% of them had witnessed at least one case of terminal lucidity within the past year. Other surveys found have that the rate of prevalence is higher if measured over a longer time window than one year, suggesting that, while uncommon, terminal lucidity isn't particularly rare.

Terminal lucidity is difficult to study, in part because of ethical challenges in obtaining consent from neurocompromised individuals, and in part because its recent identification as a research topic presents delineation problems. However, the promise of identifying new neurological pathways in the brains of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients has gotten a lot of attention. In 2018 the US National Institute on Aging (NIA) announced two funding opportunites to advance this nascent science.

Due to the newness of this topic there will continue be challenges with the data for some time to come. However, its impact on eyewitnesses is indisputably profound.

Artist: Tom Wright

Near Death Experiences

The second deathbed anomaly we will take a look at are Near-Death Experiences (NDEs.) These are extraordinary and deeply personal psychological experiences that typically (but not always) occur during life-threatening emergencies such as cardiac arrest, falls, automobile accidents, or other traumatic events; they are also occasionally reported during general anesthesia. Much of the research in this area has focused on cardiac arrest cases because these patients are unconscious and have little to no EEG brain wave activity, making it difficult to account for how the brain could sustain the electrical activity needed to perceive and remember the NDE. This makes NDEs an important edge case for consciousness science.

NDEs are surprisingly common. A 2011 study published by the New York Academy of Sciences estimated that over 9 million people in the United States have experienced an NDE. Multiple studies have found that around 17% of cardiac arrest survivors report an NDE.

There is a remarkable consistency across NDE cases, with experiencers typically reporting one or more of the following:

The sensation of floating above their bodies watching resuscitation efforts, sometimes able to recall details of medical procedures and ER/hallway conversations they should not have been aware of;

Heightened sensations, including cases of blind people who report the ability to "see" during the NDE;

Extremely rapid mental processing;

The perception of passing through something like a tunnel;

A hyper-vivid life review, described by many experiencers as "more real than real";

Transcendent visions of an afterlife;

Encounters with deceased loved ones, sometimes including people the experiencer didn’t know were dead; and

Encounters with spiritual entities, sometimes in contradiction to their personal belief systems.

Of particular interest is a type of NDE called a veridical NDE. These are NDEs in which the experiencer describes independently verifiable events occurring during the period when they had minimal or no brain activity and should not have been perceived, let alone remembered, if the brain were the source of phenomenal consciousness. These represent about 48% of all NDE accounts (Greyson 2010). Here are a few first-hand NDE reports.

A 62-year-old aircraft mechanic during a cardiac arrest (from Sabom 1982, pp. 35, 37)

A 23-year-old crash-rescue firefighter in the USAF caught by a powerful explosion from a crashed B-52 (from Greyson 2021, pg. 27-29)

An 18-year-old boy describes what it was like to nearly drown (from the IANDS website)

There are thousands more first person NDE accounts published by the International Association for Near-Death Studies and at the NDE Research Foundation. The reason so many NDE accounts exist is because the experience is so profound that survivors often feel compelled to write as a coping method. Multiple studies have found that NDEs are more often than not life-changing events.

A full discussion of NDEs is beyond the scope of this post. For a good general introduction, I highly recommend After: What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond by Bruce Greyson, MD (2021).

The Materialist Response

Materialists have offered up a number of psychological and physiological models for NDEs, but none of them fits all the data. These include:

People's overactive imaginations. Sabom (1982) was a skeptical cardiologist who set out to prove this hypothesis by asking cardiac arrest survivors who did not experience NDEs to imagine how the resuscitation process worked, then comparing those accounts with the veridical NDE accounts. He found that the veridical NDE accounts were highly accurate (0% errors), whereas 87% of the imagined resuscitation procedures contained at least one major error. Sabom became convinced that NDEs are real. His findings were replicated by Holden and Joesten (1990) and Sartori (2008) who reviewed veridical NDE accounts in hospital settings (n = 93) and found them to be 92% completely accurate, 6% partially accurate, and 1% completely inaccurate.

NDEs are just hallucinations or seizures. The problem here is that hallucinations and seizures are phenomena with well-defined clinical features that do not match those of NDEs. Hallucinations are not accurate descriptions of verifiable events, but veridical NDEs are. Also, it would be extraordinary to say the least that so many people would be hallucinating in similar ways.

NDEs are the result of electrical activity in the dying brain. The EEGs of experiencers in cardiac arrest show that no well-defined electrical activity was occurring that could have supported the formation or retention of memories during the NDE. These people were unconscious and should not have remembered anything.

NDEs are the product of dream-like or REM activity. Problem: many NDEs occur under general anesthesia, which suppresses dreams and REM activity. So this explanation cannot be correct.

NDEs result from decreased oxygen levels in the brain. Two problems here: 1) The medical effects of oxygen deprivation are well known, and they do not match the clinical presentation of NDEs. 2) The oxygen levels of people in NDEs (e.g., during general anesthesia) has been shown to be the same or greater than people who didn’t experience NDEs.

NDEs are the side effects of medications or chemicals produced in the brain (e.g. ketamine or DMT). The problem here is that people who are given medications in hospital settings tend to report fewer NDEs, not more; and drugs like ketamine have known effects that are not observed in NDEs. The leading advocate for the ketamine model conceded after years of research that ketamine does not produce NDEs (Greyson 2021, pg. 110).

Summing Up

In coming to the end of this series, let's sum up what we discussed.

Consciousness might be wired into the physical universe at fundamental level, as an integral part of quantum mechanics. Certainly several leading figures in physics thought so - Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Von Neumann, and more recently Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose and Henry Stapp.

Materialist propaganda notwithstanding, neuroscience is no closer to identifying Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCCs) than it was when it started. The source of consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries in science.

Meanwhile, medical evidence continues to pile up that there is something deeply amiss with the materialist assumption that consciousness is produced by the brain. In a sense, the challenge that NDEs and Terminal Lucidity pose to consciousness science is analogous to the challenge that Dark Matter poses to physics, in that they suggest that the mind-brain identity model of classic materialist psychology may need to be rethought to adequately explain these phenomena.

Ever since the Greeks, science has sought to explain nature entirely in physical terms, without invoking theism. It has been spectacularly successful - particularly in the physical sciences - but at the cost of excluding consciousness along with the gods (Nagel, 2012). What I have tried to do in this series is to show that a very credible argument can be made that materialism has the arrow of causality backwards: the brain is not the driver of consciousness, it's the steering wheel.

I don't think we are yet ready to say what consciousness is. Much more research is needed. I'm not making the case for panpsychism, for instance - but I do think consciousness researchers need to throw off the assumption drag of materialism before they're going to make any real progress.

It will be up to you, the scientists of tomorrow, to make those discoveries. That's why I'm posting this to Tumblr rather than an academic journal; young people need to hear what's being discovered, and the opportunities that these discoveries represent for up and coming scientists.

Never has Planck's Principle been more apt: science advances one funeral at a time.

Good luck.

For Further Reading

Barušs, Imants & Mossbridge, Julia (2017). Transcendent Mind: Rethinking the Science of Consciousness. American Psychological Association, Washington DC.

Barušs, Imants (2023). Death as an Altered State of Consciousness: A Scientific Approach. American Psychological Association, Washington DC.

Batthyány, Alexander (2023). Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border of Life and Death. St. Martin's Essentials, New York.

Becker, Carl B. (1993). Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death. State University of New York Press, Albany NY.

Greyson, Bruce (2021). After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond. St. Martin's Essentials, New York.

Kelly, Edward F.; Kelly, Emily Williams; Crabtree, Adam; Gauld, Alan; Grosso, Michael; & Greyson, Bruce (2007). Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Rowman & Littlefield, New York.

Moody, Raymond (1975). Life After Life. Bantam/Mockingbird, Covington GA.

Moreira-Almeida, Alexander; de Abreu Costa, Marianna; & Coelho, Humberto S. (2022). Science of Life After Death. Springer Briefs in Psychology, Cham Switzerland.

Penfield, Wilder (1975). Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain. Princeton Legacy Library, Princeton NJ.

Sabom, Michael (1982). Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. Harper and Row Publishers, New York.

van Lommel, Pim (2010). Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience. HarperCollins, New York.

[smytherines]

Fuck it, here's an Owen Carvour dissertation

We don't have canon ages for Curt & Owen, but personally I headcanon Owen as being born in 1928, making him 29 when the banana incident happens. This leads to a lot of thoughts that are fascinating to me, because growing up in London during WWII could inform so much of his character.

Personally, I believe DMA's accent is much closer to Owen's natural accent. I think the Owen Carvour accent is something he puts on to make himself sound neutrally British while working abroad, because he grew up working class. RP is how most people (at least in the US) assume British people speak. This also works with the Texan agent mega headcanon, like they both have to put on an act to be spies, just like they have to put on an act with their relationship.

And class is really really important to how you conceptualize this character, because your experience of the war could be radically different depending on how much money you had. Food rationing began in 1940, which in this case would make Owen 12. Rationing isn't fully lifted until 1954.

At Elizabeth II's wedding in 1947, the palace made a big deal about how she was saving ration coupons for the material for her wedding- a full two years after WWII ended.

Here's WWII London:

This is the city Owen would've grown up in. This is a war zone. A city where food is tightly rationed, where sirens were constantly going off and you had to draw down the blackout curtains and go sleep in the tube station with bombs dropping constantly overhead:

If Owen were upper middle class, he might have had a shelter at home, some people did. But I imagine him sleeping in dark, cramped, noisy stations. And he learns to keep his cool. He starts to enjoy the danger because he has to to survive it.

Maybe he has lost loved ones to the bombings. Maybe one morning he comes home from the tube station and half of his house is in rubble on the ground. Maybe he's used to hand me down clothes and simple homemade toys and not having enough to eat. He's used to having nothing, having nobody. That's a headcanon a lot of folks have, and I think it makes a lot of sense for his character.

Even if Owen were one of the kids evacuated to the countryside, maybe that happens when he's 15 or so, it wasn't a Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe situation. For a lot of those kids they were leaving their parents behind in a war zone, sleeping in barns or basements, and most importantly working almost non-stop on British farms because all the regular farmhands were fighting.

I think, if this happened, Owen would be itching to go off and fight in the war. My personal headcanon is that he's an intelligent guy, and he figures out how to forge some basic paperwork to claim he is older than he actually is, so he can go fight in WWII.

But by some fluke he couldn't account for, he gets discovered. And because of his skill and his ability to keep his cool under interrogation, he gets recruited to MI6. A lot of MI6 operatives are upper class men, recruited young from the top schools. He mimicks them.

I think many years later, when he and Curt are escaping a Russian weapons facility, Owen loves Curt and trusts in his capabilities (maybe a bit too much- especially when he's been drinking), but he also feels frustrated that Curt is impulsive and cocky and thinks he is untouchable.

Because Curt didn't grow up the way Owen did. He didn't grow up waiting for the bottom to fall out over and over again. He's certainly got his own shit from adolescence, but he doesn't have that survival impulse hardwired into him the way Owen does. So Owen is careful and cautious for the both of them, trying to keep them both safe and alive.

I think about Owen being trapped in the rubble a lot. He would almost certainly be critically injured. Maybe he has PTSD from the WWII bombings, and he's just trapped in an exploded building, trapped with his own memories of childhood until he's almost feral from it.

This also, btw, is why the AU of Owen as Eurydice from Hadestown is so so poignant to me. Someone who grew up cold and hungry and turned their collar to the world, and then suddenly they fall in love and everything is sunlight all around them. All I've Ever Known is such an important owen!Eurydice song to me

I could keep going from here, but I'll stop for now. This isn't as neat and concise as I wanted to present these thoughts, but I can't stop thinking them