#and my own experience is that it’s cyclical

[girderednerve]

thank you to everyone who voted! explanation/potted history of american money below cut

i think the gold standard is fascinating because it is one of the most straightforward & concrete ideas about money that are still in circulation (ha). there are a lot of conflicting ideas about & approaches to money (is it inert, or active; is it neutral, or political; does it derive naturally, or as the result of state intervention; what gives it value, and how; &c. &c.), but most of these debates are pretty removed from how people think about & talk about money in their day to day lives. based on my own experiences, people mostly are concerned about having enough money, which means that to the extent they're concerned about the dollar, they're worried about inflation. this is a privileged position, naturally; i've never heard a white american express concern about exchange rates, for example. anyway the general consensus i hear is that inflation is bad, and that money is somehow now less real or reliable because we aren't on the gold standard, which made the dollar have concrete value (it was exchangeable for a fixed amount of gold), and prevented us from printing too much money. okay, well, what is the gold standard? there are a couple different things that we might mean by that, and one's opinion of when the united states dollar parted ways from gold will vary depending in part on what one means by 'gold standard.'

the most conventional, robust answers to the gold standard question i asked are a) in 1933, when, among other things, the roosevelt administration ceased to exchange paper currency for gold coinage and b) in 1971, when nixon 'closed the gold window,' and ceased to exchange treasury bills &c. for gold. nixon also fixed wages and prices, but the abrupt shift in the international monetary system set off a global economic shock ('the nixon shock'). the former was an effort to address severe deflation of the dollar, and the latter was an attempt to address stagflation (that is, stagnant economic growth combined with rising inflation, a novel problem at the time).

i am not arguing with people who chose earlier options, though: the early monetary history of the united states could, in my view, be reasonably described as 'chaotic.' generalizing a lot: before the civil war, there were literally hundreds of legal circulating currencies in the united states, including not just federal dollars, but currencies issued by the states and chartered banks. while those issuing agencies were responsible for having reserves (usually in bullion, not strictly in gold) to cover those notes, there were so many issuing agencies and so little consistent enforcement that there was little guarantee; there was also a lot of counterfeiting, to the point that some vendors preferred counterfeit currency from good banks over genuine currency from bad. huge mess! the currency centralized during & after the civil war, but the united states didn't get a permanent central bank, responsible for overseeing the currency, until the federal reserve was chartered 50 years later (on december 23, 1913, a day that lives in infamy to annoying libertarians, who apparently yearn for the days of cyclical bank panics). in 1873, the united states demonetized silver (that is, required all currency to be backed by gold), and in 1875 congress required that the treasury offer gold exchange at a set rate for all dollars; the functional effect was to reduce the amount of circulating currency, which caused problems for people who needed to conduct business but could not get enough physical money to do it, so there was a national movement to return to a bimetallic standard (see the "cross of gold" speech in 1896). then the gold supply increased and people dropped the issue until FDR's reforms in the great depression.

one of the things that interests me is that money can be technical, but it's also, i think, the bread & butter issue, so it stands out that the content & character of money isn't part of the common discussion about it. people who think fondly of the gold standard assume that it imparted stability (demonstrably untrue) or that it gave money a kind of objective value (what makes gold valuable, then?). the libertarian suggestion is that it removes the government from the money supply, because the amount of money will be a straightforward function of the amount of available gold and thus subject to pure market forces (how do we get gold, then? is the government totally uninvolved?), which is why there have been multiple attempts to create cryptocurrencies backed by gold. all of these ideas are funny if you have read about premodern coinage, which had all kinds of value problems & was, generally speaking, a massively involved series of government projects.

this general way of thinking about money completely disregards international exchange, which is ironic because a substantial amount of american policy hinges on the status of the dollar as an international reserve currency, or the money that countries keep to conduct international trade; there's a built-in, reliable demand for dollars which the united states government can take advantage of for cheap finance. the reserve status of the united states is a leftover from the postwar monetary system (bretton woods), which the united states more or less wrote; when nixon unilaterally adjusted it, he did so in part as an attempt to preserve the dollar's reserve status, which had started to slip (it is still slipping, but it's slow).

for my purposes, please consider durable/longterm policy changes, and use whatever definition of the 'gold standard' makes the most sense to you

[cha1cedony]

I hate feeling like I’ve written something inaccurately, or not AS accurate to the idea in my head, or in a way that doesn’t feel accurate to every single reader (even if it does for me), etc etc. BUT I also can’t go back and edit things bc that’s just the nature of publishing fanfic 😭 The fic is already done and people have already read it. Oh well

[mars-ipan]

i have my first infusion tomorrow and the Anxiety is kicking in and i am trying so so hard to keep it calm

[hayatheauthor]

10 Flaws to Give Your Perfect Characters to Make Them Human

If you're tired of the usual vices like arrogance or impatience, here are some unique (or at least less basic) character flaws to give your perfect characters: 

Pathological Altruism

A character so obsessed with helping others that they end up doing more harm than good. Their inability to let others grow or face consequences creates tension.

2. Moral Narcissism

A character who sees themselves as morally superior to others, constantly justifying selfish or harmful actions because they believe they have the moral high ground.

3. Chronic Self-Sabotage

A character who intentionally undermines their own success, perhaps due to deep-seated feelings of unworthiness, pushing them into frustrating, cyclical failures.

4. Emotional Numbness

Rather than feeling too much, this character feels too little. Their lack of emotional response to critical moments creates isolation and makes it difficult for them to connect with others.

5. Fixation on Legacy

This character is obsessed with how they’ll be remembered after death, often sacrificing present relationships and happiness for a future that’s uncertain.

6. Fear of Irrelevance

A character-driven by the fear that they no longer matter, constantly seeking validation or pursuing extreme measures to stay important in their social or professional circles.

7. Addiction to Novelty

Someone who needs constant newness in their life, whether it’s experiences, relationships, or goals. They may abandon projects, people, or causes once the excitement fades, leaving destruction in their wake.

8. Compulsive Truth-Telling

A character who refuses to lie, even in situations where a lie or omission would be the kinder or more pragmatic choice. This flaw causes unnecessary conflict and social alienation.

9. Over-Identification with Others' Pain

Instead of empathy, this character feels others' pain too intensely, to the point that they can’t function properly in their own life. They’re paralyzed by the suffering of others and fail to act effectively.

10. Reluctant Power

A character who fears their own strength, talent, or influence and is constantly trying to shrink themselves to avoid the responsibility or consequences of wielding it.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Looking for writing tips and tricks to better your manuscript? Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors! Instagram Tiktok

PS: This is my first short-form blog post! Lmk if you liked it and want to see more (I already have them scheduled you don't have a choice)

[shiftinglea]

This Helped Me a Lot to Maintain the State of Wish Fulfilled

When I started applying the principles of manifestation, I always struggled with emotions. I could feel very good about my desires and genuinely feel confident that my desires were mine. This great feeling of peace and happiness wouldn’t last long, though.

One day, I would wake up and, for some reason, not feel so optimistic, but rather frustrated and moody. I thought that since I was feeling that way, I was no longer in the state of wish fulfilled and that I had “ruined” my progress. Then I would get back to this state (after some time) and the cycle would repeat itself.

Until it dawned on me that my emotions don’t have to be connected to my desires.

The truth is, life is cyclical. It’s normal to feel great one day and then have that change the next day, especially for women who have hormonal changes throughout the month. So, I just gave myself permission to feel whatever I wanted to feel and STILL be in the state of wish fulfilled.

The state of wish fulfilled is not about always feeling joy and ecstasy from the fact that you have your desire. Sometimes you are calm and unbothered. Sometimes you might even get angry because of external factors. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t have your desire anymore. You have your desire until you assume otherwise. Nothing can change this fact except your own decision.

It felt quite freeing, actually, to allow myself to feel whatever I was feeling and still know that I have my desires. What’s interesting is that after this change of perspective, my moody and “negative” feelings are so rare now. If it happens, it goes away very quickly because I don’t suppress it and don’t get stuck in it. Most of all, I feel peace and calm every day.

So, the moral of this story is to stop worrying about “ruining your progress” because you are feeling bad. You still have your desires, no matter what you are feeling. It’s just a decision to have whatever you want. It’s that simple. Some people struggle with manifesting simply because they can’t accept how easy it is. You don’t have to do anything for it or experience certain feelings, or think certain thoughts. You just accept the fact that whatever you desire is already yours. Walk in this truth. Persist in being a person who has your desires.

[patronsaintofelsewhere]

Thoughts on Angel Crowley & Healing from Trauma

(Minor Good Omens S2 Spoilers)

As someone who’s endured my own Trauma and dealt with the resulting PTSD, watching Crowley’s journey from a joyful, silly, and entirely innocent angel to a withdrawn, lonely, hyper-vigilant demon as a result of the Fall both shattered my heart and confronted me with the fact of myself, and I’d like to talk about it. 

When you* experience Trauma, you experience an existential disorientation and a profound sense of grief over the world you thought you knew–one where you were safe and nothing bad had ever happened to you. “Innocence died screaming,” and all that.

You're also therefore mourning the loss of who you were, and struggling to make sense of who you are now. Which is why this conversation is so gut-wrenching:

“I know you.” “You do not know me.” “I knew the angel you were.” “The angel you knew is not me.” 

This dialogue admittedly still makes my eyes swim. It’s reminiscent of the many conversations I’ve had with people close to me who knew me Before and After. Not only are you grieving the loss of your own innocence, so are those around you, and it feels like you’re wearing their loved one’s face like a mask.

And then underneath the grief, there’s a river of–what you’ll later discover is misplaced–guilt. They want you to be who you were. Fuck, you also want to be who you were -- to not have experienced what you did -- but you can’t.

And when they catch a glimpse of something that reminds them of Before-You -- because it's not like that you has just up and vanished, you've just changed -- they say things like, “I feel like I have you back!” Like the After-You is a consolation prize, something to be tolerated while they wait for the Before-You to return.

It’s not malicious. They love you. They want you to be happy. But it just serves as a reminder of your loss and suddenly you’re acutely aware of how alone you are with the Thing that hurt you.

After trauma, you’re lonely and you're afraid. But those emotions make you feel quite naked, because both of those things would require you to depend on other people to feel better and, at this point, the thought of doing that is far too scary, so to the world, you’re angry. Thus begins the cyclical self-fulfilling prophecy.

And that cycle goes a bit like this: People see the mistrust and the bitterness and the volatility (the shield that keeps people at an arm's length and helps you feel safe). They don't see the profound sustained fear underneath, the desperate need to feel seen and accepted. And so people pull away.

And that real or perceived abandonment feeds the monster that’s taken up permanent residence in your ribcage and screams at all hours that you’re not worthy of love, that you’re irreparably broken, and you’ll always be alone. And you pull away from the people that love you. And the cycle repeats. And you start to believe all of the bad things about yourself that the monster tells you.

Being confronted with a character who you adore and who you also relate to closely is bittersweet in that it’s both immensely painful, but also offers you an opportunity to interrupt that cycle, to explore a different -- perhaps more forgiving -- lens through which to view yourself. To practice self-compassion by proxy, if you will. After all, we tend to extend far greater empathy and forgiveness to others than we do to ourselves.

Angel Crowley, "who squeaked and squealed when he was happy; who flailed his arms around and made explosion noises with his mouth to explain nebulas; who preened when told his stars were pretty,” (joycrispy) reminded me a lot of “Angel T,” or rather myself before Trauma.

And Crowley's story is tragic. I was heartbroken and angry for him; I felt the depth of the betrayal he experienced at the hands of someone he loved who he'd believed loved him; I found myself wanting to protect him, to comfort him. Crowley did not deserve what happened to him.

And, over a decade later, I realized that I’d finally accepted that I’d been an innocent, just like Crowley had, and I didn't deserve what happened to me, either.

And -- if you find yourself relating to this post -- neither did you.

Once we can tell ourselves that and actually believe it, we can start to lower the shield. We can allow people closer, including ourselves. We can bring the parts of ourselves we may have hidden away back to the surface. We can soften again. We can truly start to heal.

Crowley, at his core, remains the same. He is still kind, deeply loving, playful, silly, and – against all odds – hopeful. But his trauma has changed him; his innocence is gone.

He struggles to trust others; fears abandonment; engages in unhealthy coping mechanisms; finds it easier to prioritize and tend to Aziraphale's needs and desires than his own; and has difficulty expressing his emotions.

But he also gained an abundance of empathy, a deep love for humanity, and a strong sense of justice.

We adore Crowley exactly as he is now; we don't wish for him to be who he was before the Fall. And neither does Aziraphale.

In kind, we won’t be who we were — nor should we try to be — but we can be something new, a different version of ourselves that is equally good, equally worthy, and equally deserving of love. 

After over a decade, I think my Trauma wound has mostly healed, as much as Trauma wounds can, anyway; it’s a dull ache rather than an acute pain. Yet Crowley's story assuaged that remaining hurt like a salve I hadn’t realized I needed.

So thank you to @neil-gaiman for giving us such a beautiful story, and to David Tennant, Michael Sheen, and the rest of the cast and crew who bring the characters we love to life on screen.

Good Omens truly is a gift. May it continue to inspire us to offer kindness and love to ourselves and one another. 🖤

* I am aware that I say “you” when I should use the singular first-person “I,” but I still struggle with this when talking about my own trauma. So I’m using “you” and you, reader, will deal with it x

[goddess-of-frot]

I generally keep my writing on transmisogyny separate from this blog, but given that I’ve now seen the same Mutuals banned four our five times I think it’d be a good time to explain how this is a feature of transmisogynistic social murder itself. After everything has died down, after the ones leading the whisper network or the mob have satisfied themselves in causing enough damage to your life to feel you’ve learned your place, you begin to rebuild. You find new social circles, you recover what you can from old ones without risking exposure to the ones who participates in your own social murder, if you even now which. You try to create a new space for yourself, cultivate new support networks after the old ones were torched and cut ties with you, and you live in fear that it will all burn away again if anyone who participated in your social murder finds you. The unique thing on Tumblr is that while a lot of sites will passively enable social murder, Tumblr’s gone over the deep end. It’s common enough on most sites that auto moderation can be flooded with false reports (or even true reports that wouldn’t have happened without organized groups in places like Kiwi Farm), but on Tumblr you don’t get to know what it was or challenge it. The only cases I’ve seen of successfully challenging mass report campaigns and returning to original blogs took months, and only in the case of some of the most popular TME blogs.

In real life you fear meeting these people again because you know that they learned that social murder works, and now they’ve got experience. Here, every time tumblr refuses to step in or has their CEO harass outspoken victims, the same people perpetrating the abuse of shitty auto moderation learn that it works and is allowed because they won’t do anything, not only that but Tumblr moderation will go out of its way to scrub clean complaints of this and perpetually enforce the social murders that they allowed. Social Murder is a cyclical process meant to cultivate fear, despair, and obedience in the victim, and once it’s happened once you are marked as a target. What Tumblr has done is formalize that targeting and the fear that accompanies it by repeatedly banning the same people for being victims of social murder.

[waltricia]

Bridgerton season 2 episode 3, “A Bee in Your Bonnet” is ✨magic✨ and let me tell you why.

For those of us who didn’t read the book and knew nothing of what was going to happen, we truly went on an incredible and surprising roller coaster of an experience.

We start the episode with seeing the guy from Hellboy and being like ‘oh yay, it’s the guy from Hellboy!’

… only for him to die three minutes later. And that scene is rough. It’s sudden and abrasive. And the sounds are jarring. The death is scored by tense strings. Then a moment of quiet. Then the AMAZING Ruth Gemmell begins taking us on Violet’s traumatic grief journey, which starts with her jolting Anthony (and us) out of the quiet.

And a thunderous heartbeat threatens him as he walks toward this entirely altered, unwanted life path. And that’s obviously the beginning of his PTSD.

In the other flashbacks throughout the episode, we continue to hear horrific, heart-rending pain radiate out of Violet while Anthony must not only attempt to endure it, but cover his own grief. Anthony and his siblings (and again, we the audience) all have to listen to Violet grieve while she’s giving birth! Screams on top of screams.

And the last flashback is technically quiet, but just as devastating because, like the moment of Edmund’s death, the quiet is weaponized. It signifies the death inside Violet.

It should go without saying that Jonathan Bailey is also a brilliant actor, but I’ll say it now anyway. Damn, he good! He and Ruth partnered perfectly in this grief journey. Serious props to them both because I felt this shit.

And then finally we come to the end. We had been immersed in the horrible aftermath of that striking tragedy. Between the flashbacks- in the present day- we had followed Anthony through the rooms and grounds where he had suffered silently. We had seen Edmund’s grave. We had learned that Anthony’s greatest fears and insecurities all stemmed from that tragic event ten years prior.

And then another fucking bee comes along.

And I swear to god, the first time I watched this, when Kate got stung, my heart was pounding, I was terrified, and my instinctive reaction was “oh my god, is she going to die?!” In hindsight, it’s obviously insane to think that she would be killed off at all, let alone in this scene. But the very fact that, for a moment, that was a legitimate fear I had is exactly why this episode is so god damn brilliant. I felt what Anthony felt. And I’m not the only one! I’ve seen other people’s similar reactions to this scene. The episode really is a roller coaster; easy, lighthearted moments (pall mall, drug tea), interspersed with the terrifying drops and loops that are Anthony’s painful memories which constantly haunt him. And then it brought us right back to that first traumatic moment. Because Anthony has PTSD! And that’s what PTSD does. Anthony is right back where he was, literally not far from the same spot outside Aubrey Hall, standing in front of a person he loves, watching them get stung by a bee on almost the same spot on their body. The tense string scoring comes back and Anthony panics because he’s completely helpless again.

And all of those elements- the setting, the scoring, the acting- combined to terrify us and make us forget something critical: most people don’t die from beestings.

And here’s where it gets really profound for me. Because it’s not just about how we feel Anthony’s fear. It’s also about how Kate completely obliterates it. Without knowing that history and without realizing the full extent of what her actions would mean, she does exactly the right thing. Rather than die and rather than also panic or shy away from his vulnerability, she meets it with her own in the form of care and steady assurance, which is true strength. And in so doing, she stops this cyclical moment in its tracks and completely alters the trauma. She puts his hand on her heart, and the heartbeat comes back. But this time, it’s not threatening. It’s inviting.

And just like in the first scene, the moment is over all too quickly. Just like in that scene, Anthony is thrust onto a new path. But where that moment was damaging, this one is healing. And we feel that too. And it’s the greatest experience that art can give us.

It’s catharsis.

And that’s why this episode is magic. 🐝✨

[heavyweightheart]

Okay so you’re reading one of my many posts saying that if you feel sugar or any other food item is “like a drug”, you’re not eating enough, and you think to yourself and then write it my notes “but I’ve tried eating more and that doesn’t help.” Welcome to the most frequent reaction to these claims! Not only are you not the exception, you’re giving the textbook disordered response.

These are our next steps when we’re here with disordered eaters: first, we want some 24-hour recalls of what gets eaten on average days, so we can assess where they are roughly in terms of adequacy and consistency. I can tell you that when people are tending to binge or experience what they call “food addiction”, I rarely find the 24-hr recalls to show adequacy and consistency. There’s usually an overall deficiency in calories as well as too much time between meals and snacks (breakfast is a common culprit). Restrict-binge cycling is ofc very common as well.

Another issue is that people think rectifying an energy deficit is a short-term effort, and anyone who’s recovered from an ED can tell you how laughably and cry-ably wrong this is. In the most aggressive clinical refeeding, I have never seen the process take less than several months… and that’s closely monitored high-calorie intake day in and day out with no lapses. Most people who are doing this on their own are extremely inconsistent when trying to refeed. Consistent refeeding can actually feel quite brutal when you’re used to restrictive patterns. If you’re doing it casually, you may not be doing it at all.

You’re not uniquely broken when it comes to food—that’s a lie of diet culture and eating disorders. But coming out of your inadequate, inconsistent, or cyclical eating patterns takes work and commitment. It’s hard. If you’re still in the “food is a drug” mode after you made an effort to eat more, your restriction may be too serious for you to address alone, or without educated and sustained effort at the very least.

[lazyyogi]

Essentially everyone is walking around with some form of trauma lodged within them.

These traumas, these wounds, are our triggers, sore spots, cringy insecurities, or deepset fears.

The majority of us have found ways to cope. Ways to compensate for, avoid, or otherwise circumvent our hidden wounds. That way we remain functional despite our hidden damage.

But coping is not thriving, nor is it healing. It is just easier than doing the self-work.

To seek out and heal your traumas is a deeply uncomfortable and unpleasant experience. It can be so uncomfortable and so scary that sometimes we prefer to keep our traumas over healing from them. And we learn to justify this by assimilating those traumas into our identity. This only makes things more difficult, because any suggestion of healing that trauma becomes an affront to your very sense of self.

Needless to say, although the result is powerfully liberating and an immense relief, the process of healing can be a rough time.

Which is why I notice that the people who tend to actually heal their own traumas are the ones who at some point had been rendered non-functional by them. They had no choice but to find a way to heal.

Once you've healed from an internalized trauma, you're more likely to do so again for other traumas. You understand through your own direct experience that the temporary suffering of the healing process is worthwhile to endure over the cyclical suffering of the unhealed wound.

My challenge to you is this: Become aware of the ways in which you cope. Discern what internalized trauma is causing you to rely on coping. And then observe the ways in which your coping mechanisms are selling you short. Observe the things--the freedoms--you give up in order to continue coping.

Eventually through repeated observation and contemplation, you may become intolerant of just coping. You may develop the urge for freedom.

Healing from a deep trauma will only ever happen in its own time. Sometimes we have so much going on that it needs to be addressed at a later point, from a position of greater strength and groundedness. But that doesn't mean we cannot start preparing ourselves for that moment now. Today.

Otherwise, we will live the rest of our lives resigned to a tolerable form of suffering because we refuse to tolerate the temporary discomfort of healing.

And we will also be inflicting our suffering on others, because at some point people will invariably activate our triggers--whether intentionally or accidentally.

A book I always recommend is The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron. It is a pragmatic and insightful text that guides the reader through the practice and process of looking within at all the things inside us that make us feel squeamish and uncomfortable. This will gift you with an incredible power.

May all beings be free. May all beings be healed.

LY

[on-a-lucky-tide]

your nikprice writings give me life. you write their dynamic so well... and in character .... thank u for writing them they're very very beautiful 🙏

Non, thank you so much for alleviating some of my imposter syndrome. You have no idea how much this has helped. Here, a little short before bedtime:

Nik gives John some... flying lessons.

cw: making out.

"Main and auxiliary fuel tanks, altimeter, airspeed indicator..." Price tapped each in turn from his vantage point on Nik's lap, because, naturally, that was where Nik had insisted he sit for the full piloting experience. "What's this?"

"Engine and rotor tachometer, there is a second here," Nik tapped it, "to..."

"...keep the main and tail rotor blades in sync, that makes sense."

"Da, captain," Nik said, and Price didn't miss the fond admiration. It made him want to bloody preen.

"And this?"

"It is uh... the English is... friction control for cyclic pitch. It stops me from accidentally moving the cyclic pitch control."

Price nodded. "Cyclic control changes the pitch of each main rotor blade, which changes the lift and drag on the blade; speed and altitude changes."

"I will make a pilot out of you yet." Nik slipped his hands around Price's waist, kneading him appreciatively as he pressed his nose into the centre of his back. Price could practically feel Nik vibrating with barely contained pride

"I think I'll stick to jumpin' out of 'em, Nik, but yer faith's appreciated... Mm."

"Your back, it is still sore." Nik returned his thumbs to the spot that had made Price coil up, rubbing in gentle circles.

"S'nothin, physio gave me a beatin' yesterday. Said I needed to take up yoga."

"Yoga," Nik repeated, amused. "I can think of some better ways to help with your flexibility."

"Bet ya can, filthy bastard."

Price shuffled, knocking a few controls with his boot as he swung his leg over, and returned to Nik's lap so they were chest to chest and Nik's mouth was well within reach.

Nik's arms slipped tightly around his waist as they kissed, hands rubbing up his back to stroke and squeeze his neck and shoulders, holding him close. It didn't take long for Nik's hands to begin wandering elsewhere, Price's own palms sliding inside Nik's jacket and beneath the white cotton of his t-shirt.

As a young man Price had made out in his share of cars; there was something exciting and illicit about getting hot and heavy in the back seat, where you weren't supposed to, and Price was an adrenalin junkie to his core.

But snogging an internationally infamous arms dealer in the cockpit of his Black Hawk while it was parked in an off grid American base? That would be a hard one to beat.

[meanbossart]

do you have any thoughts on cazador as a character? personally i really loved the parallels between him and astarion & the way that the master/spawn relationship is used as an allegory for cyclical abuse. the scene with cazador’s master’s skull where you find out that he was once victimized in the exact same way that he later victimized astarion was really a lightbulb moment for me re: what vampirism represents in this game.

BOY DO I, i don't think much of it hasn't already been said, though. He's a tragic character in his own right of course, not that that takes away from the awful man he is.

Me and my boyfriend make fun of him a lot, we call him "the best BG3 character" as a little inside joke between us and come up with ridiculous scenarios of things that might have occurred throughout those 200 miserable years the spawn had under his command lol. Maybe he had a month where he was really specific about the shoes everyone wore, maybe once every other decade he had a weird week where he tried to be "nice" only to become frustrated when his efforts weren't immediately met in kind by the rightfully-terrified spawn, maybe between all the torture and horrific-ness he just did some plain weird shit like making someone crouch by in his fainting couch and wait by open-handed for grapes that he dramatically chewed on and then spat right out since he can't actually eat them lmao

And that's hysterical but I think we also started doing that because when you meet Cazador, when you first hear his voice and see his demeanor in person your immediate reaction is probably somewhere along the lines of "THIS is the clown you were so scared of, Astarion?"

And the answer is, of course, yes. This embarrassing little man stuck in a cage of his making instills fear beyond comprehension in Astarion and all his siblings. This man who undoubtedly showed all these spawn, inadvertently, the strangest, most arguably "human" aspects of himself at some point or another during these two centuries they had together is also an absolute monster. And i really like that! I think its far more effective and fitting for his story than if he was, lets say, a Ketheric type.

(this got very long so, more under the cut)

Look at Ascended Astarion in the epilogue now, for example. Everyone agrees that he's an absolute fucking dork - and I think we all also agree that he will go on to destroy the lives of many people beyond repair, especially his own, until the day he is killed.

In the topic of vampirism as an allegory for abuse, I both agree and also don't, at least not exactly - i just think it's deeper than that. I've spoken about this in another post but i find it incredibly refreshing how, to me, it seems like Baldur's Gate 3 has no interest in painting vampirism as sexy or fun past a surface level. It's a curse that nobody asks for unless put in a situation where they feel as if they have no other way out, and it shapes and haunts you for the rest of your undead existence.

Even if you enjoy its benefits at first, that has a time limit. You will see your family and loved ones die, you will see culture evolve while you stay perpetually the same. You will experience so much hurt and pain because the only thing that makes life truly sweet is knowing that it is finite, and eventually it will wear down all of your humanity. And since you can't die unless you are scorched by the sun, staked, or dismembered, you must live with the knowledge that you will never have a peaceful death - and since you won't have a peaceful death, you better not die - and if you don't want to die, you better not be weak - and if you don't want to be weak, you must seek out power at all cost and slash things like love and friendship out of your life.

And what is funny, is that in his attempt to be more like a mortal - to eat, drink, walk the sun, such incredibly simple desires - Cazador (and Astarion, if he ascends) is accidentally only drawing further away from the person he supposedly once was, because that fear of weakness has already utterly corrupted his soul.

That's quite a grim way to look at it, of course. But I genuinely think that it is the natural conclusion of something like immortality.

That's why I quite like that, even after Astarion has found happiness, even after he finds his peace, he still doesn't exactly embrace being a vampire - because It's not something he should be expected to embrace. I think it's a very unique take on the trope.

I also want to leave here this message written by his character writer, which really got me thinking about him on a deeper level since i saw it months ago. It is specifically about the sexual aspect, but I think it branches beyond it too, when you think about it.

[trans-axolotl2]

Fuck the DSM. Seriously, fuck the DSM.

The DSM is and always has been used primarily as a method of rationalizing mistreatment of the people it labels as "deviant." When you look at the history of psychiatry, it becomes clear that things like drapetomania, protest psychosis, hysteria, and homosexuality as a disorder were not just thrown into there randomly. Rather, it showcases the power of the DSM: labeling and categorizing ways of being as mental illness opens up new paths of incarceration, social control, and curative violence. I need people to understand that the modern DSM still works like this: these classifications of madness/mental distress/neurodivergence into psychiatric labels encourage society to treat madness/mental distress/neurodivergence with the apparatuses used to eradicate "deviance." Diagnosis is not neutral.

As mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, we deserve access to more explanatory models of madness/mental illness/ neurodivergence than what the psychiatric language of normalcy and disorder offers us. Whether this looks like rejecting diagnosis, embracing varying cultural understandings of mental experience, or any million different ways of interpreting our bodymind, we deserve the option to move beyond clinical language that tries to convince us not to trust ourselves. We deserve to view ourselves wholly, leaving room for all our experiences of madness/mental illness/neurodivergence--the meaningful, the terrifying, the joyful, the exhausting. We deserve to have our own relationship with our madness, instead of being pushed to view ourselves as an inherent "danger to self or others" simply by existing as crazy.

Here's another truth: I hate the DSM, and I still call myself bipolar, a diagnosis that came to me through psych incarceration. While I wholeheartedly reject the DSM and the system intertwined with it, I simultaneously acknowledge and believe that many of the collections of symptoms that the DSM describes are very, very real ways of living in the world, and that the distress that they can cause are very very real. When I say fuck the DSM, I don't mean "Mental distress, disability, and neurodivergence aren't real." Rather, I mean that the DSM can never hold my experience of what it is like to be bipolar, the meaning I derive from experiencing life with cyclical moods. The DSM can't hold within its pages what it's like to see my mood cycle not as a tragedy or disaster, but instead as an opportunity, a gift, to grow and shift and go back to the same place over and over again, dying in winter and blooming again in spring. The DSM can't hold the fact that even though I experience very, very real distress due to those mood cycles--they're still mine and I claim that as something that matters to me. I call myself bipolar as a shorthand to tell people that I experience many things both extreme high and low, but I do not mean the same thing when I say "bipolar" as a psychiatrist does.

When we build community as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, I want us to have room to share, relate, and care for each other in ways that isn't calling to the authority of a fucked up system with strictly defined categories. I don't want us to take those same ways of thinking and rebrand it into advocacy that claims to fight stigma, but really just ends up reinforcing these same ideas about deviance, cure, control, and danger. I dream of the day when psychiatry doesn't loom as a threat in all of our lives, and I think part of that work requires us as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people to really grapple with and untangle the ways we label and make meaning of our minds.

ok to reblog, if you want to learn more about antipsychiatry/mad studies check out this reading list.

[archie-sunshine]

ARCHIE'S CAPTAIN'S BLOG (Aug. 19th, 2024)

Hey folks! its been a while since I've had a proper captain's blog huh? Well, there are some updates i want to make regarding my work and my blog.

I'm not going to mince words or waste your time- I'm closing requests. Not forever! don't worry, but for a while. I feel like my art has kind of felt cyclical. I'm not making anything necessarily new, or exciting. and i want to remedy that by exploring some of my own thoughts and projects.

Don't worry, the inbox will still be open to questions, comments, ideas, or feedback, in fact I encourage you to ask about my aus, my own personal characters and world, and my headcanons surrounding transformers. Or heck, just ask about me if the spirit moves you!

Its for this express purpose that I'm straying away from requests. I want to improve my art this fall, as i'm taking another semester away from school to focus on my budding freelancer career heheh.

I'm going to be drawing more completed pieces, trying to experiment with my style more, work on more complex poses, try to colour more, and work on more merch designs to expand my merch store

and speaking of business ventures-

I'm planning on scripting and drawing a transformers NSFW comic to put on digital sale on itch.io!

There's no ETA for when or how long this will take, but I've always wanted to make comics, so I think it's about time i put my money where my mouth is.

And finally and least importantly-

I think it's about time for a new blog theme. thats what i'll be doing tonight fellas!

Thanks again for all your continued support. Please, feel free to chat in the inbox or send me questions or comments whenever you like. I sincerely hope that even though requests are closed, you'll still feel free to interact with me and let me know when you're enjoying my work. :]

[copperbadge]

would you mind talking a little about enjoying traveling solo? I've always wanted to explore, but so many people paint traveling as this group activity, and I've always felt bad not having friends to do it with

My god, how much time do we have?

So, I could indulge in a little free therapy here and talk about some fucked-up experiences of travel I had as a child, but that's not really applicable, so...let's leave it at the fact that until I was out on my own, I didn't get to pick what happened to me on trips. I do often travel with my friends, who are always up to do the dumb shit I concoct for us, but any travel with another person involves compromise, and sometimes I just don't want to compromise, or to irritate my friends. Even though I know they probably won't be, I still worry they will, and sometimes I don't want to worry.

I also never internalized the idea that doing things alone was sad or weird. It's a social cue that I completely missed. The first time a friend of mine randomly came across me eating alone in a restaurant in college, she said, "Sam, why are you eating alone?" and I said, baffled, "Because I wanted dinner?"

I was twenty years old before it occurred to me that other people would feel strange eating alone in a restaurant, and then only because she told me she'd be too self-conscious. I was thirty before I realized most people would be self-conscious traveling alone, something I'd been doing since I was seventeen. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be with other people -- some people love company or are nervous traveling alone or just plain don't get the appeal, and that's entirely fine.

But I love knowing that everything I do is for me alone. I can go to the weird museum or check out the odd store or do strange secret things to delight myself and never worry that I'm making life unpleasant for someone. I can be as selfish as I want. That's very rare for me and very precious. Also why I will probably never have a permanent romantic partner, but that's also free therapy for some other time.

The truth is, when you are alone, nobody actually knows that. Yes, if you're the only person at your table in a restaurant you're obviously alone, but nobody knows you aren't just getting a bite to eat before meeting up with your many cool friends. I don't look at anyone I see out in the world and go "Oh sad sack, look at them without anyone to hang out with." I think most of us worry everyone is saying that, and none of us actually are saying that.

And when I have been asked if I'm with someone and said, "Oh, I'm traveling on my own", people universally react with envy. "That must be amazing. I couldn't do it," or "I've never gone on a trip by myself, is it fun?" I've never had anyone say or imply that I'm a loser who couldn't find someone else to travel with. Quite the reverse.

Recently I had the thought that if I was more afraid of being alone I would probably have more intimate friendships or at any rate a much wider social circle, because I would need someone else to go with me on adventures and I would have to internalize the idea that it's okay to inconvenience or bore someone else at times, which I never really have. But that's kind of a tautology; "if I was less okay being alone I'd be less alone" is cyclical reasoning, when the truth is I'm someone who is a little fucked up about other people but also just genuinely enjoys solitude.

I love my friends, and I try very hard to form strong bonds with them despite that being really hard for me. I do get lonely, and I spend more time alone than is probably good for me. I get very anxious before solo trips. But I will also always need times when I am alone and only ever have to worry about myself. And once I'm launched on the trip I fucking love it. There are very few joys to rival walking out early in the morning into a strange city and knowing that the day and the city are both yours and yours alone.

Also sometimes I pretend I'm a spy, or an art historian on the trail of a stolen painting, or an academic writing a very important book. That's fun as hell.

Anyway, even when I do travel alone my friends are only a text message away, and I get to see cool stuff that I bring back to my room at night and share with all of you. I love sharing my adventures with you guys.

So yeah. My thesis is that nobody will even notice you're alone and if they do they'll probably think you're fucking cool for doing it, and meanwhile you get to do exactly what you want and nothing you don't. I think everyone should at least try it. You don't have to do a four-country trip through Europe for your first time out; you can just find something in another city that you want to see -- a museum or a zoo or a play or a cool burger joint -- book a trip, arrive Friday night and leave Sunday afternoon. And if it turns out you don't like traveling alone, that's okay too. There's no inherent moral virtue in being alone any more than there is in not wanting to be.

I just think it's super cool to sometimes go haring off on my own and do dumb shit. :D

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: I should make a fucking...(food) web of connected concepts with panels that connect them...

I love how Kabru is just part of this friend group, now. He invited himself and no one's questioning it. Laios invited him to lunch later, and that counts.

.

I love how everyone is varying levels of "oh fuck" until we get to The Current Party, where it's:

Senshi: thinking intently, a little grimly, about how he could butcher and cook this

Marcille: a dash of 'oh fuck', but also sad, in the way of watching a friend slide down a slippery slope

Chilchuck: incredible dad energy on this line, honestly.

.

don't you give my son orders, you piece of shit. you aren't worthy of being lord of anything. you protect nothing, wish to help no one, except your own desires. (The Demon never should've been alive at all. It's not suited to it.)

.

This is gonna look sooo cool animated in color.

.

I might actually be more offended by the demon wearing Kensuke like normal than by the whole wearing of Laios's body? It's so symbolic.

.

I want to know how the ancients achieved that - binding the demon such that, while underground, it could only warp reality in service to a living being's desires. Though really, that seems to be how it's always operated - the only desire it ever expressed for itself was to eat the desires of others. Otherwise, it's only shown fulfilling wishes, before it's locked in the dungeon as well as after.

But I wonder if having a physical form gives it the ability to want more? Does it hunger and third and want to rest, now? DOes it really feel a yearning not just for the completion of its plan, but for the open sky and sight of the world which it hasn't seen in so long?

.

Needless to say, we love a visual parallel.

.

yep, this sure is the Eating Each Other Cyclically chapter! (This is the Eating Each Other Cyclically story, actually. It's called the ecosystem!)

.

oh I hate this actually. It's scary in a real way. I do not like being forced to acknowledge that Chilchuck is much, much smaller, weaker and more fragile than Laios. I do not like seeing him curled up and helpless and unable to ever reconnect with his family.

.

Freak cubed! Actually, how many times has it gone back and forth, now...?

the lion swallowed all of them

Laios ate hte lion in order to swap bodies (ish)

honestly I feel like the demon being counts as eating him in turn. Making Laios's body part of itself, you know? That's eating.

(monster!)Laios ate demon(!Laios)

demon(!Laios) is now eating (monster!)Laios

...so, Freak^5

.

The parallel to Marcille snapping at Laios to drop the plant seeds in Chapter 2... Love how every now and then people resort to yelling at this man like he's a dog. Truly, he is a beagle of all time (eats Things) ('Things' is an unlimited category of which the details are best left unknown)

.

THIS IS IT, BITCHES! THESIS TIME!! I'M GONNA USE "IF AND ONLY IF LIKE IT'S A GODDAMN MATHEMATICAL PROOF, BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THIS HAS BEEN PRESENTED THROUGHOUT!

LIVING IFF EATING IFF HUNGERING IFF WANTING.

TO DO ONE IS TO DO THEM ALL, FOR EVERY ENTITY IN EXISTENCE: EVERY RACE, EVERY CREATURE.

LIVING AND DYING, EATING AND KILLING AND BEING KILLED AND BEING EATEN, ARE ALL SIDES OF THE SAME COIN. YOU WILL DO BOTH.

IT'S CALLED THE ECOSYSTEM.

And it applies to social structures as well as biomes btw.

YOU WILL ALWAYS EAT, AND THEN YOU WILL ALWAYS HUNGER FOR THE NEXT MEAL. BECAUSE YOU ARE STILL ALIVE.

Which is why hunger(/living) is poisonous to this infinite being, btw: the cycle is infinite, sure, but specifically because any single creature within the cycle is finite. To exist as part of the cycle, the world, breaks the infinite being, even as the infinite being inevitably destroys the world.)

But most of all:

EATING (IFF BEING EATEN IFF LIVING IFF WANTING) IFF UNDERSTANDING IFF BEING CONNECTED/BEING PART OF

THE FUNDAMENTAL [DESIRE/HUNGER/LIFE EXPERIENCE/CONNECTION/SHARED UNDERSTANDING] OF BEING ALIVE IN THIS WORLD IS [EATING/LIVING/DYING/KILLING/WANTING/HUNGERING/BEING CONNECTED/UNDERSTANDING OTHERS/BEING UNDERSTOOD/WANTING TO BE UNDERSTOOD/WANTING TO UNDERSTAND/WANTING TO BE CONNECTED]

...WHICH DOES ALSO INCLUDE (MONSTERFUCKER) VORE

(This is the fucking...Theseus wrestling the Minotaur statue...of this world... People are going to make this statue of King Laios Eating the Demon... It's going to be in museums...and in the palace... The true curse here is that Marcille is going to have to see versions of this motif for her entire excruciatingly long life...)