#and it was in fact to make a statement

[spacedustmantis]

there was a pride parade in the city when we went there today. and that's how i found out my dad gave his graduation speech in drag

[lotus-pear]

2/2

[annamationsart]

everyone loves talking about little jon in correlation to mr. spider but no one ever talks about how insufferable this kid was. i wouldn’t wish sitting next to him in class upon my worst enemy

[fridayiminlovemp3]

the fact that this is real is beyond horrifying

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[isogenderskitty]

people who’ve only seen hatchetfield: starkid has like practically no gay characters :/

the avp trilogy which has been sitting right there for probably most of their lives and is the foundation of everything:

plus these less explicit more headcanony (but like, BARELY) examples that i really think are worth mentioning as well, i have receipts don’t tempt me i will literally make an entire video about this stuff (and i might actually):

[scribz-ag24]

i checked the italian blind run that apparently is very popular in the IT community. and. was anyone.

so was anyone. was anyone going to tell me in this version dusknoir asks if his existence had value.

his line about saying with full sincerity that life is marvelous.

why didnt i hear of this until now i crave to know every little difference between translations so i can cry again and again over the same guy.

[ddodol]

reminder that briizes are all that the boys have right now, sm would never push through with their threats of legal action against those hateful people so we have to work extra hard to make sure that the boys hear nothing but words of affection and praise because it's what they deserve ! not just one member but all seven of them deserve love and support!

also just a gentle reminder that the brz community is a mess right now and it might be stressful to read through or deal with. don't feel guilty for taking breaks or not being online for a few days, prioritize yourself!

[iztea]

study hack from yours truly: in order to understand hard/challenging concepts you simply need to think of yourself as delusionally smart. i mean genuis level brains. believe that things simply make sense in your mind, they click and you are just inherently good at [difficult topic] even if that's far cry from the truth you'd be surprised of just how much more you're capable of once you let go of that mental block

[slytherinshua]

slowly realizing more and more that the sm boycott effort is gonna amount to nothing in the end, and this is not the way we should be going about the riize situation.

i loved seunghan when he was in the group, and i am still an ot7 fan. but at a point, i think we need to think of how much of our time and energy we're willing to spend fighting for something that has such a small chance of actually happening. sm is gonna bounce back from any stock lost from the boycott because they are one of the big 3. they have like 4 of the biggest groups in kpop rn: nct, aespa, red velvet, riize. there's just no way either boycotting riize or boycotting all of sm would actually be detrimental enough to get a member who's been terminated from the group back in.

and while i don't agree with the ot6 fans who are being unreasonable, i think some ot7 fans have been just as bad. this fandom is so toxic and rotten, every day it just seems to get worse. and i don't like the narrative that most ot7 fans were spreading about ot6 kfans-- how they were just mad that seunghan was dating pre debut. that isn't why they were mad, they really didn't care about that. it's the fact that he took pictures of him with his possibly/alleged underage girlfriend (it's honestly bad enough with/without her being possible underage, which i don't have confirmation on) at what looks like a hotel and presumably sent it to his friends in a group chat (which was how it got leaked). that's why they wanted him out of the group.

personally, i don't believe that a member should get kicked out of a group or put on hiatus without a proper reason why. and seunghan's hiatus and termination is really messy. but there are valid reasons why kfans weren't too big on him. the problem is there have been many idols kicked out for things they didn't do, and others who have been caught doing really fucked up and nasty things and rightfully kicked out of the group, but it's hard to know which idols are innocent or not when there's no organization. and when we jump on a narrative train and blow something super big out of proportion, the facts and proper investigation of the situation gets lost in the mess of things.

what should have happened was things being properly investigated back in october 2023 before seunghan was ever put on hiatus, and a decision made from there whether to keep him in the group or kick him out based on that.

instead, we have the other 6 members who clearly want seunghan back tired of the state of everything (rightfully so), ot7 and ot6 fans fighting a full blown war every day without logical thinking, and misinformation being spread left and right. there's no organization, there's no firm confirmation on anything, all of this is just such a big mess.

now let me be clear IF it's true that there was anything suspicious going on between seunghan and his girlfriend, then i would obviously no longer support him. as it is, i'm not going to stop supporting him until there's firm evidence. i'm tired of kpop stans making rash decisions based on half truths instead of just being patient and waiting for the facts to come out. staying neutral during unclear situations is a valid stance to take. please let's all stop jumping to conclusions from both sides.

[habitual-truant]

as a persona fan. i HATE atlus. like, theyre always SOOOO close to having really good social commentary on like, pretty much anything in general i guess. but. they pussy out and it has the opposite effect!! like, biggest example that i actually have well formulated thoughts over is persona 4.. i wrote a long ass essay type thing that id honestly like to rewrite now that my thoughts are more solidified on this but, tl;dr… :

kanji isnt gay and naoto isnt trans. kanji’s story is about accepting that hes got feminine traits and learning to stop internalizing what everyone says about him to be true. naoto’s is about accepting that she is a girl, and she IS everything that people look down on her for, and learning to stop rejecting herself just so she isnt disrespected and dismissed by others.

kanji isnt gay and naoto isnt trans, but they should have been. being queer is very obviously a theme in their stories, and without looking deeper into the characters and their arcs, on the surface level, the story is saying that they’re learning to accept that they ARENT queer. which is pretty clearly homophobic and transphobic.

the entire game is about accepting yourself for who you truly are. for the character that is EXPLICITLY stated to be gay and for the character who EXPLICITLY lives socially as a male despite being born a girl to both have their true selves actually be “normal” is… counterintuitive. while it does fit within the theme of accepting yourself, it’s saying to accept yourself as “normal” and “correct”, not as someone who doesnt fit into societal norms. it undermines the idea of being true to yourself. it’s SO close to being a great message that anyone, no matter who they are, can relate to, but it singles out the unusuals, the people who really need to hear that it’s ok to be whoever you are. i could go on and on about how it’s honestly impressive that the writers managed to miss the mark by such a small amount that it ends up completely undermining the entire thing, but it would be redundant (just like my use of the word ‘undermine’ within two run-on sentences..), and i want to take this back to my original point

the writers at atlus are very, very skilled. its amazing, i really really respect them. but at the same time, i think that their ability to write amazing characters and themes and weave them together into a universe with such inconsistent rules is exactly what makes this so infuriating. i KNOW they’re 100% capable of not being misogynistic in their portrayal of women, i KNOW they’re capable of not being homophobic, i KNOW they can take topics like misogyny and homophobia and transphobia and explore the reasoning behind why people are close minded and hateful, and how it affects people who are at the receiving end of the hatred.

but they dont, because either the writers themselves are prejudiced, or what i think is faaaarrr more likely, the executives think it’s too “risky” to talk about and criticize bigotry, and that they want it to be as palatable to everyone as possible. unfortunately that means no gay people, no trans people, no “controversial” minorities in general.. sure, we can have a few complex and well written women as a treat, but they either have to be fanservice or largely irrelevant to the rest of the plot.

no conclusion paragraph this isnt english class

thanks if u read my 11:00 pm hyperfocus fueled rant i am sending you joy and happiness and good things

[shelleysmary]

gotta laugh at everyone who has ever said that "~unLiKE tHe pEtEr jACkSoN fILmS~ the trop people don't care about tolkien, don't care about middle-earth, it's a soulless adaptation for the money just because amazon is behind it" because (and i say this while also saying fuck amazon, fuck jeff bezos. it goes without saying - two things can be true at the same time, i can't believe it bears repeating)

how do you think films and television get made?? hate to break it to you, but it's all for the money. new line cinema didn't say "we love tolkien, pj, let's do this for free!" they were literally looking for a franchise hit when they decided to take the films over from miramax - which is exactly what every studio and their mom is trying to do now!!! it's movie business, baby! to say the people behind trop - the actors, the casting directors, the production designers, the vfx artists, the art directors, the armorers, the costume designers, the set decorators, the makeup artists, the ADs, the carpenters, painters, prop-makers, steelworkers, laborers, animal handlers, sound editors, miniature builders, stuntpeople, craftspeople, movement and dialect coaches, trainers, lighting techs, jewelers, etc. - don't care about the story they're telling???? is a wild reach. obviously they work for the showrunners who work for amazon who care the most about making a profit, but so did peter jackson and new line!! wanting your project to be financially and critically successful is not an inherently evil thing, come on guys, are you still buying into the starving artist fallacy 😭

there are tons of little nods to the silmarillion and other parts of the legendarium in the rings of power. yes, there are also changes and goofs, but lotr and the hobbit film trilogies also had their fair share of changes and goofs. i just think that "these people didn't read the books/this is just a money grab/pj & co. cared about the source material while these losers clearly don't" are tired arguments used to justify subjective opinions, not to mention the way it reeks of revisionist history considering the way tolkien purists initially took great issue with deviations made in lotr and especially the hobbit.

it's almost like...the most hated tolkien adaptation is ever the current one.

[lotus-pear]

rewatched madoka magica again today bc i fucking hate myself and to absolutely no one’s surprise i went through all five stages of grief in a single evening

[houseshousewife]

Watching House, you just have to accept that sometimes the writers will make him act gross and slightly out of character.

1; because of the times, and 2; likely because the writers have their own weird fetish about it 🙄🙄

[koolaidashley]

@bettertwin9000 is the cutest and funniest and most awesome kindest person I’ve ever spoken to in my whole life and they gonna have the best bday party known to man ! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🩷✨

[leaflingsound]

they really did put izzy down like a three-legged elderly dog, huh. diagnosed him with narrative arthritis and then didn't even bother trying him on pain management before picking up the gun and walking him out back.