#and some of it is just terribly liberal concepts but a lot is leaning more on the side of conservative and bigoted. as with jkr herself

[gothicprep]

random thought dump related to nikki haley saying in her cpac speech that "wokeness is worse than any pandemic", and the similar-ish comment from mike pompeo about "wokeness is worse than the chinese communist party".

it's this common line structure republican politicians have been workshopping that goes something like, "you know that thing you think is bad? wokeness is worse than that!" there's obviously a bit of a trajectory with these sorts of things. in the aughts, being a liberal was bad. some time after, being a social justice warrior was bad. now being. um. a woke? that's what's bad now. but i think what's different about the latter two moments is that there's a question about what wokeness even is.

at least with the neologism of cancel culture, it's understood that this refers to a type of social behavior. is this thing they're calling "woke" a political philosophy, or is it a social behavior? both? to what extent of which? if aliens landed on the planet tomorrow and asked me, for some reason, what "woke" was, i'd really have to think about it.

words are coined, they bounce around, their meanings shift. from my understanding, the origin of the word was black american slang that basically meant that your eyes were open to the true nature of the world. depending on who said this, there could be something of a conspiratorial element they're winking at, or it meant cognizant of social issues. staying woke meant that you weren't just a self-interested person going about your business, but that you were paying attention. this is still a layer of this to the term, but as antiracism became more of a matter of concern in progressive spaces, moderate libs kind of gestured to sjw/woke as ways of separating themselves from people who were further left than they were. it then bled into conservative circles, wherein the meaning became more imprecise because conservatives are... conservative. they view a lot of things as too far left, which has a pretty distinct subtext than left leaning moderates concluding that a small handful of things are too far left.

i think what this is trying to speak to is how there's a new set of ideological concepts around race and gender issues afoot on the left that are pretty different from those which we'd seen 15-20 odd years ago, but the proponents of these ideas haven't settled on a name for themselves. this is unusual. if someone tells me "i'm a liberal, especially on economic issues," i have a sense without asking a lot of detailed questions what that person believes. if they say "i'm a socialist," i understand that this person has a different set of economic beliefs. there's a distinguished intellectual tradition of what socialism is, debates within that sphere about what socialism ought to amount to, and there have been political parties. what i think the conservatives are glomming onto here is something else distinct from how they understand liberalism or socialism, but a movement that doesn't name itself, so they settle on "sjw" or, later, "woke".

what's in a name? clarity, i guess. when conservatives would attack obamacare and call it socialism, liberals could say "no, this isn't socialism" and socialists could say "no, this isn't socialism" because socialism exists – not as an intellectual tendency on its own, but as a movement with a name. meanwhile, if you look at some of the DEI materials that cropped up out of the american racial reckoning of 2020, it's obviously something else separate from expected american liberalism, but i don't know what the shorthand is for that.

a final note on haley: what's interesting is haley's comment at cpac, after which she pivots to "democrats want you to think this is a racist country, but i was the governor of south calorina and i can tell you that this it's not". like, nikki. you underperformed in your first governor's run. 2010 was a wave year for republicans, and south carolina is a very conservative state. she did somewhat terribly, given that. why? i'd wager it may have been... racism?

what's also odd about this is that i can't imagine the... political incentive to treat outside threats (pandemics, the chinese communist party) as lesser to perceived domestic threats. bush 43 was... you know... but i can't imagine him saying anything like "the tax and spend liberals are worse than al-quaeda".

well, that's the thought dump. questions? comments? armchair speculations about the political strategy here? all are welcome.

[spywitch]

I loved all my elementary school teachers but like the one disappointing thing about all of them is how they loved harry potter and would do literary analysis on it a lot but didn’t realize at all how terribly written it is. Like yes Mrs. M it is at least more complex and better written than Twilight but thats a low low bar.

And the thing is I don’t think a children’s book has to be super well written and have detailed world building or political themes to be a good children’s book. The problem is HP TRIES to and is so awful at it.

[vomara]

atla daemon au snippet: aang & zuko.

(ao3)

Aang smiles, and looks up at Rahmi, curled around Zuko’s neck. Zuko’s eyes follow his gaze.

“She’s settled,” he says. “For real, this time.” He has a tender look in his eyes as he scratches Rahmi gently.

The question comes out before he can stop himself. “When?”

Zuko contemplates the question. “When I saw my Uncle again, something just… fell into place inside me. I felt like I was home.” Rahmi leans into his touch, content. “I haven’t felt this way since I was a kid.”

Dolma chirps for Aang’s attention, and Aang pulls her into his chest. “Yeah, I understand that.” He’ll never be able to have that idyllic home of his childhood again, but he can still honor it. He can still rebuild it so long as he hangs onto it, and never lets go.

Maybe Guru Pathik was a little wrong. Some earthly attachments are necessary. Some are precious, and some are beautiful, and some are so treasured and foundational to him that he could never let go, not without losing himself completely. He needs these attachments, just as they need him, to honor them, to give them life and hope and rebirth. History is never dead, so long as he harbors it inside him.

“You, too?” Zuko asks, watching Dolma snuggle into Aang’s robes, the Air Nomad beads shifting against Aang’s chest.

Aang nods.

“How did it happen?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Aang replies truthfully. “But after I took Ozai’s bending, she looked at me and told me that she was settled.”

“I��m not sure about the exact moment either,” Dolma agrees. “But I think it was when he almost overcame you. I had this feeling in me, like I was digging my heels in.” She turns her face upwards. “They’ve already taken so much from us. And I thought ‘no more’ .”

“No more,” Zuko echoes. “I’ll help you make sure of that, Dolma.”

She watches him quietly, before flying away from Aang’s hands. Aang lets her, and she lands on Zuko’s other shoulder.

“I know you will,” Dolma tells him, leaning against his neck. Neither of them startle in discomfort, and slowly, Zuko brings a hand up to ruffle her feathers fondly. A calm washes over Aang.

Together, Zuko and Dolma look like a matched pair. Her feathers are almost the same color as his scar, Aang notes, a bright scarlet juxtaposed against a faded one. Dolma is the daemon of the last airbender, the first peoples to die under the hand of fire. The first casualties in a war that created men so cruel they’d place their burning hands upon their children. And now, there’s a man with a scar in front of him, next to a daemon scarred by the same legacy, and they look alike, in a way. There’s something magnificently terrible about that, but there’s something about it that’s poetic, that’s right.

It’s what Zuko said. It feels like home.

---

[end notes:

Aang -- Dolma (Tibetan name meaning "mother of liberation", named for the Bodhisattva Tara, who has many relevant associations, one of which is the mother of mercy and compassion), Northern Cardinal, intersex form. Zuko -- Rahmi (Indonesian name meaning "mercy"), sable-sparrow.

HIGHLY recommend reading that wiki link, because dolma, as a name, means so much, almost all of which is very relevant to aang. also, aang's daemon is intersex due to his status as the avatar. she is generally feminine with masculine aspects -- for example, she has male plummage. she's also a non-hybrid daemon, like azula's, which is a sign of power. once i thought about the northern cardinal i couldn't really let go. there's a lot of wonderful symbolism surrounding the bird too -- signs of life, messengers of the spirit world, etc. -- and while it's not asian symbolism, they're connotations to keep in mind. sorry i went off there about aang's daemon, but there's genuinely a lot of cool symbolism! as a red bird, it seems more chromatically similar to the fire nation, which is kind of a product of how ozai almost overwhelmed him during the energybending scene, but as a perching bird, it's 100% a classic air nomad daemon. overall, aang and azula's daemon concepts are really some of my favorites. (creds to @kuchee for azula's daemon form though!)

zuko's is a fairly nice form, too. sables are a type of marten; they're fantastic hunters and very resilient. but the sparrow aspect mellows that out and makes zuko a fairly agrable person. the combo is not too interesting on its own, but sables are a type of predator animal, and sparrows are a type of prey so... it's supposed to be a bit symbolic of zuko's eternal internal conflict.]

[kimberly-spirits13]

  Teacher rant time-

So I go to a Baptist Private school and was raised on Christian views. Now while I still am politically and morally influenced by a lot of the religious teachings that were a large influence of my young life like lots of people, my views have changed and I find that I lean more to the left side of things in politics. With this is mind I have a new teacher from Cali who is my physics teacher. He was fine the first week and we were all really excited to have him because he seemed like a cool dude. That however, changed as we moved along in the year rapidly. On the first day of our real physics lesson (integrating mathematics into our course work now) he could only explain things using the book which was more eloquently written than some people can understand. I understood it fine with a few of my other classmates and we had no real issue with it until hearing the answers he was giving students. Things like questions on conversions that were easy to answer were giving him quite a struggle and it was frankly, pathetic. For the next few weeks, he turned to be a condescending,  one answer to a question only, picky, politically inclined, and annoying teacher. He likes to start arguments with students when they ask him about something or report that a video he has filmed on Teams won’t download and will not let us show him what’s happening. Instead, he likes to tell us that he fixed it for one person and that all of the videos are working and we’re not doing it right, even though, we were trained to get our things this way on Teams. Not only this, but he likes to get very political as I have mentioned. Now, I have to say that even though some might have a preconceived notion that all Christian school students have the same very conservative views, that is simply not the case at all. I know many students including myself that have been heavily involved in politics and have very strong opinions. 

This teacher decides that he needs to talk about how terrible and liberal California is and that he wouldn't go back for anything and while I do agree that there are some crazies in California, is physics really the class to discuss this? He likes to question the intelligence of the other side which is not productive at all and more reflects on your own intelligence or lack thereof and also the lack of debate skills. Further more, if you’re best argument and point is that the other side is stupid and kills babies (this goes for every side but not the killing babies part (side note I think abortion isn’t “killing babies like maniacs or something I think it isn’t morally right because of my beliefs but if a woman thinks it’s in hers and the baby’s best interest to abort it than that’s her choice and I respect her as a strong individual that can do whatever the hell she wants)) your entire argument is faulty and at this point a waste of time. 

Another thing that this teacher does is tell the all girls second period class that they have to dress modestly because men cannot control the way that they see woman and will feel attracted to them. He says that, “even he has felt that way.” before which made the entire class uncomfortable. This teacher has said that he had 15 other job offers in the around the state and didn’t even want to become a physics teacher to begin with but he did anyways which is a red flag in itself. Also, it is universally unprofessional to show displeasure in your position in front of your clients or students as we are and claim you could be somewhere better. if that is the case, you may gladly leave because we don't want you here anyways. 

The first time that we learned about matter he said and I QUOTE, “All things are made of matter but for things like light and concepts such as math, art, English, and things along those lines. So yeah.... that means that all people are made of matter....SEE GUYS ALL LIVES REALLY DO MATTER!” He did this in front of all of the black kids in the grade and on camera. I looked at my friends who looked at me in shock. My friend who is new (and is black for context) could not move out of shock at what he said and my other really good friend who is a black guy said that the teacher looked straight at him when he said it with a slight tinge of terror plastered on his face. I called him out saying that it was unprofessional and that not everyone had the same opinions as him and he said, “Well yeah but people like to get offended” as he laughed nervously.

CHILD

anyways.... I was home from school for around a week and told him that I couldn't access the classes and the powerpoint didn’t make sense because he typically explains what he has since his powerpoints have more gifs than information. When I got back instead of taking this into account and catching me up, he gave me and the rest of the people out a pop quiz on material we told him we hadn’t learned with the rest of the class. Now, I understand that this is high school and it might just be my opinion but that’s stupidly absurd. This teacher also signed me up to tutor ALL of his physics classes without asking me and I had 14 people coming to me for help without my consent. I’m furious, disappointed, and just want a decent science teacher for once in my life.

well that was my rant. Do you have any terrible teachers right now?

[ghostworldultra]

I’ve barely mentioned it or talked about it but I did watch all of Buffy and am halfway through the last season of Angel in the last several months with my girlfriend. Here are a few loose thoughts.

They are really great shows if you can stomach some late-90s/early ‘00s trash. 

Both shows are probably only feminist in the moments that most liberal feminists would consider them the least feminist (Season 6 mostly). Maybe its existence was something in itself (people I know who were watching it at the time assures me it was).

They’re mostly good for all the reasons TV is good--imaginative, great characters with good writing, surprisingly thematically sound and engaging for its subject. I’d love to engage a bit more with the academic writing about the series if I can find a good source for it, avoiding all the stuff that jerks off “subversion” as the primary source of a work of art’s feminist leanings.

Top 5 characters are Faith, Willow, Giles, Spike, and then it’s a tossup between Buffy herself and Tara. If I included Angel characters it would be too complicated because everyone in Angel’s main cast is incredible.

Even though I like his character a lot, Spike becomes way too important in the back end and the writers have no idea how to follow through on certain late-season-6 developments. I liked those developments and thought they were dramatically engaging and consistent for his character (though perhaps not in terms of the show’s language, but that doesn’t matter too much to me), but there’s nothing in season 7 that meaningfully engages with it. It’s a shame, because the ending of season 6 really left a lot to explore.

Season 3 is so good because every episode is just a concept piece about existentialism, the show itself, TV cliches, and the characters’ inner lives. I love Amends, The Wish, Doppelgangland... almost every episode is an all-timer.

Season 6 is so good because it takes the last season’s extremely tightly-wound heroes journey narrative and just gets relentlessly mean-spirited and dark about the whole thing. What if Buffy was just miserable and couldn’t stop anything bad from happening? I even like Willow’s ham-fisted drug-abuse metaphors and a terrible toxic relationship and Xander destroying his own life because he can’t imagine being happy. I think it’s good because it’s emotionally engaging and the risk of it all is just entertaining, even if it is whiplash-inducing. All of that is good but it probably breaks the show by the next season because they run out of track and bring in a really boring season arc.

Angel (the show) is brilliant and I love how every season is just a complete “fuck it” to everything that came before. Maybe because it’s a spinoff the writers felt more empowered to take bold risks? I probably like it more than Buffy from a thematic/world/cast perspective--the day-to-day struggles of just trying to keep all your friends and coworkers from hating each other. Plus the concepts are just so fucking freaky and out there. It even made me really love Angel as a character.

[aion-rsa]

Community: Britta Perry Is the Worst, Which Makes Her the Best

https://ift.tt/3kixlnw

Sitcom characters very rarely come off of the page fully formed. Many classic (and not-so-classic) network sitcoms rely on time as an ally. Time spent with characters allows for not only an audience to get a better sense of them but also for the writers and actors to do so as well. 

Community was no exception. Each of the ensemble cast’s seven main characters (and tertiary characters like Ben Chang and Dean Craig Pelton) arrived in the pilot fundamentally unfinished. And each of them evolved over time, in some cases sharpening creator Dan Harmon and the writing staff’s original assumptions or defying them. No character, however, changed more from conception to execution over time than Britta Perry as played by Gillian Jacobs. 

Originally, Harmon designed Britta Perry simply as a romantic foil to series lead Jeff Winger. When Community first premiered in 2009, The Office was entering its sixth season and at the height of its popular appeal. In that context, perhaps bringing a sitcom to NBC without a “Jim and Pam” firmly in place felt unwise. The problem was that the “Jim” portion of that romantic duo, Jeff Winger, was richly realized (having been based on Harmon’s own experiences in community college and played by relentless charm factory Joel McHale), and the “Pam” portion, Britta Perry, was simply a Pam stand-in. 

In the first half of Community’s first season, several attempts are made to humanize Britta. In one episode, the pressure she feels as an older student in community college leads her to cheat on an exam. In another, she begins to establish her feminist profile and interest in psychology by (perhaps accurately) observing that her male friends desire to fight class bullies comes from a place of pent-up homoerotic energy. For the most part, however, Britta and her storylines exist only to complement Jeff’s. By episode seven, Britta is suddenly a part of a Jeff Winger-Michelle Slater love triangle whether she realizes it or not. 

Britta’s failure to properly evolve as a character in Community’s early episodes was significant enough that other characters on the show started to realize how…well, odd she was. In episode six, “Football, Feminism, and You,” Britta has a hard time connecting with her fellow female classmates, Annie (Allison Brie) and Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), because she views the time-honored tradition of visiting the bathroom as a group to be a sinister patriarchal conspiracy. 

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Earlier this year, Harmon revealed in an interview with EW that that plotline came directly from another writer on the show’s observation about just how much Britta sucked. 

“When I said, ‘What about Britta,’ [writer-producer] Hilary Winston said, ‘I don’t like her,’” Harmon said. “Listening to Hilary talk about Britta, which started with like, ‘I wouldn’t trust her if I was a woman. I understand that she means well and that she’s saying the kinds of things that you’re supposed to say as a woman, but that’s what makes me not trust her. I need a confidante behind the scenes, because the truth is, I do want to talk about shoes sometimes and I feel like she might sell me out if I did that — and I wouldn’t go pee with her.’ Stuff like that starts to dimensionalize Britta right away.”

By this point the show’s characters, writing staff, and audience had realized that there was something unlikeable about Britta. This was due to the show’s thin conceptualization of her as a character to begin with. But as we said above, time is usually on a sitcom’s side. Community had many more episodes of its first season order to tackle the issue. What’s interesting about how Community figured Britta out is not how it “fixed her” but rather how it leaned into her existing flaws.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

That anecdote about Hilary Winston not trusting Britta turned out to be a feature, not a bug for the character. A lot of Britta’s early traits – her political ideals, defiant attitude, and quick wit – were likely designed to make her appealing to both Jeff and the audience. In reality, they had the opposite effect. So the show just began to lean into those qualities as comedic fodder. Britta retained her same liberal political leanings but the show now highlighted how she had neither the courage or energy to follow through on them. She also quickly became known for accidentally ruining everything around her and snuffing out the joy from her friends’ lives.

In the season one episode “Physical Education,” Community finally provided the terminology for what would become the character’s recurring meme through six seasons of the show (and hopefully a movie). Britta is, quite simply: the worst. After discovering that Britta pronounces “bagels” as “baggels,” Ben Chang reflexively responds with “ugh, you’re the worst.” It’s a small moment to be sure, but one whose spirit Community would continue to capture with Britta time and time again.

Britta is the worst because she calls “bagels” “baggels.” She’s the worst because she ruins the reputations of all the guys she dates for Abed (Danny Pudi) and Troy (Donald Glover). She’s the worst because she insists on being nice to Troy’s awful grandma and gets the switch for her troubles. She’s the worst because engages with the least amount of civil disobedience allowed by Greendale policy. She’s the worst because she won’t buy her one-eyed cat a monocle as “that’s pretentious.” She’s the worst because she supports a lesbian student so enthusastically that she accidentally enters into a romantic relationship with her despite neither the student nor Britta being a lesbian. 

Britta is just the worst. And that makes her one of Community’s best creations. There are few examples of TV shows taking lemons and turning them into lemonade more apt or admirable than Community’s treatment of Britta. The show deserves an enormous amount of credit for realizing that it was underutilizing a comedic concept in Britta and a comedic talent in Jacobs and reversing course by leaning in to that same course.

And let’s be clear here, Gillian Jacobs deserves an immense amount of credit for taking that opportunity and running with it. Though Jacobs may be one of the lesser-heralded talents to come out of Community, thanks mostly to the Russo Brothers ascent to Valhalla and Donald Glover’s ascent to the top of the universe, she is just as valuable as anyone else involved. Near the beginning of season 3, it becomes clear just how much Jacobs relishes Britta getting to be the worst. From episode three “Remedial Chaos Theory” through episode 15 “Origins of Vampire Mythology,” Britta and Jacobs are on absolute insufferable fire. 

It’s in this stretch of episodes that Britta’s terribleness actually saves the day. The plot of “Regional Holiday Music” involves the evil Glee club director (played by Taran Killam) slowly brainwashing the study group into becoming Body Snatcher-esque glee club pod people. Britta succumbs in the end but when Abed encourages her to take the stage and sing what’s in her heart, the transcendent awfulness of her performance immediately snaps everyone out of their trance. That also leads to the classic line of Dean Pelton seeing the show’s program for the first time and whining “ah, Britta’s in this?”

In a way, “Regional Holiday Music” is a microcosm of Britta’s role on the show. Every character on Community has a part to play. Jeff is narcissistic, Annie is innocent, Shirley is devout, Troy and Abed are goobers, Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) and Ben Chang (Ken Jeong) are insane, and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) is old. But the glue that ties together all of those disparate characters together is Britta Perry and her special ability to be the worst. 

She truly is the AT&T of people. And God bless her for it. 

The post Community: Britta Perry Is the Worst, Which Makes Her the Best appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3mlXKT0

[vecna]

Oohh for the fandom meme! Dragon Age?

Send me a fandom!

Oh boy, this is going to be spicy.

It’s also very Anders-negative, so apologies up front.

The character(s) I first fell in love with:

I’m actually not sure which was the FIRST, but it’s a tie between Morrigan and Alistair. I saw fanart of them going around at the time Origins first released, and that’s what got me to try the game! 

Alistair was a breath of fresh air, because at the time, I was used to warrior men in games being all Edgy and Rough, and he was the total opposite and a sweetheart.

And Morrigan was just instantly my goth wife, and had Claudia Black as a VA, so I was sold immediately.

Both still hold a special place for me!

The character(s) I never expected to love as much as I do now:

Loghain is the main one. He does a lot of truly reprehensible shit in the first game. But once I sat down and read the prequel novels about young Loghain, plus saw what he’s like if you recruit him, he grew on me A LOT and now he’s a top fave.

Nathaniel I expected to hate as soon as I saw his name + who his father was, but then the expansion came out and I ended up loving that dude almost immediately. I really wish he was around more after Awakening, and also really wish he’d been a romance option, especially for a Cousland haha.

Merrill is a weird one because she was totally uninteresting to me in DA:O, so when they announced her as a companion in DA2 I was like, “Ehhhh.” Then they punked me by making her adorable and sweet and now I love her.

Plus a bunch of side-characters like The Architect? I liked him a bunch in the novel + Awakening – although I found his Plan in the novel much more appealing. But as the years have gone by, I keep surprising myself at just HOW disappointed I am he’s never appeared again haha.

The character(s) everyone else loves that I don’t:

There’s a few, and all of them will get me yelled at, but here we go.

First: Isabela. This one’s a bit complicated, but it really just boils down to her attitude towards how you play your character. I actively dislike characters who are super sexual – regardless of gender. But Isabela in particular bothers me because she’s constantly pushing her lewdness and sexual humor on you, and when you try to discourage it, she admonishes you with, “Well, you’re no fun.” Her whole character is just… like that for me. Super pushy, overly lewd, gets uppity when you don’t have the same ~liberated~ opinions she does, and this is all played up in the writing like she’s this Empowered Woman the player absolutely must love, especially if they’re playing a male character lol. I hate her for the same reasons a lot of people hate Liara in Mass Effect, but with the addition of pushy lewd jokey characters always rubbing me the wrong way.

Second: Iron Bull. I’ve written a lot about why he makes me more uncomfortable than any fictional character I’ve ever encountered, and I just outright hate him, he makes my skin crawl. If you want details, feel free to DM me, I don’t really want to rant about it again publicly.

Third: Anders. Again, I’ve written a lot about him before, but. I hated him in Awakening, for a lot of the same reasons I hate Isabela in DA2. But the changes they made to him in DA2 are just kinda :/. While I absolutely agree with him about Mage Rights, the level of preachiness they added to him drove me nuts, and the fact that you’re painted as a Bad Guy if you don’t like him blowing up the chantry. And from a purely OOC standpoint: He’s become a figurehead for all the aggressive Discourse people in the fandom, and if I see someone list Anders in their sidebar bio, I know pre-emptively that their blog is going to be full of 6 page long essays of meta about how everything is Problematic, and no thanks.

To a lesser extent, I’m also not fond of Zevran. But in his case, it’s not anything major like the others, I’m just tired of Bioware’s habit of making the bisexual characters overly lewd sex-focused rogues/deviants.

The character(s) I love that everyone else hates:

Loghain, lol.

But also Sebastian Vael? There’s so much about him that I find genuinely fascinating, especially regarding his backstory, and his struggles between his feelings of responsibility to his family vs his dedication to the Chantry and bettering himself. He’s such a dear character to me, and such a pivotal part of any playthrough, I’m always blown away when I remember he’s a DLC character and many people don’t have him.

HOWEVER Anders being the fandom darling means that people tend to unfairly shit on Sebastian for reacting poorly to the Chantry explosion. People also like to label him as a poster child of a White Straight Church Boy, while refusing to acknowledge he’s… not straight, and not exactly a church boy either lol.

Also Vivienne, but I think that one’s really self-explanatory. I love her, and she gives a really needed perspective on the Circle, since most of the mage companions previously were apostates. But of course, she gets written off as a Chantry apologist, and an uppity bitch, when people would def love her for the same traits if she was not black lol.

The character(s) I used to love but don’t any longer:

Justice. And by extension, Anders. A lot of people like to rant about how Justice ruined Anders, but I always saw it the other way around.Justice was my favorite character in Awakening. The whole concept around him, that he was a Fade spirit who took human form and was experiencing life for the first time was SO fascinating. I felt like there was so much to explore there with his character.

Buuuut then they had him merge with Anders. With the narrative being that he WAS a spirit of Justice, but the moment he connected with Anders, it corrupted his entire spirit into something he wasn’t anymore. So essentially, the character I used to love no longer exists, thanks to Anders. And it reminds me of that phrase recently, about how the destination is so terrible you can no longer enjoy the journey? I can’t even appreciate Justice in Awakening anymore, knowing what happens to him.

To a lesser extent, Corypheus. He was SO COOL and the premise of him was AMAZING when he first appeared in the DA2 DLC, but then Inquisition had to go and turn him into a weird shallow mustache twirl villain.

The character(s) I would totally smooch:

None? Idk I don’t really have the Smooch Fictional Character gene.

The character(s) I’d want to be like:

MAEVARIS TILANI. May I one day finally have the confidence in my identity that she does, and also marry a sweet bear man who adores me.

The character(s) I’d slap:

Too many to list, really. Probably Anders.

The pairing(s) that I love:

THERE’S SO MANY. And most of them are with the PC, because I generally don’t ship NPCs together. But my top 3 are:

M!Hawke / Fenris is my ultimate OTP in the Dragon Age series, by a long-shot. Not even sure where to start on how much I love it, but two damaged guys leaning on each other to work through their respective loneliness and trauma is MY JAM. And lmao I love silver-sideburned Hawke chillin in retirement somewhere but being a supportive husband while Fenris goes off hunting the Bad Guys, it’s great.

Solas / Lavellan is a close second, with the caveat that I increasingly prefer it with a male Lavellan. Having the Inquisitor in love with Solas just changes the entire tone of the game for me, for the better, and him actually being the villain trying to end the world while in love with this normie elf is just (chef kiss). Too bad I’m burned out by how overly spammed it is.

Dorian / Inquisitor is in third, I will just always be fond of how it’s a story of the Inquisitor helping Dorian be happy with who he is, escape an abusive family, and realize that he’s allowed to be loved. Good shit good shit.

Some others:

Warden / Morrigan is probably my favorite Origins ship, and that only intensified with the way she talks about the Warden in Inquisition, esp if they’re Kieran’s other parent. What a cute goth family, regardless of the Warden’s gender, cause you can pry Bi Morrigan from my cold dead fingers.

Cassandra / Inquisitor might have a lot of Romance Cliches, but I adore it – although, similar others, I increasingly prefer it with a female Inquisitor. I actively dislike the weird no-homo rejection with her, and come on, a lady Inquisitor being her Knight In Shining Armor is just good storytelling.

Cullen / Inquisitor, for a lot of the same reasons as Cassandra. I love me a cliche romance, but I’m also fond of the narrative w/ him of someone he loves helping him heal through the lyrium withdrawals and take time to rest.

Josephine / F!Inquisitor is just adorable all around, and wholesome, and great.

Varric / Hawke COME ON HOW WAS THIS NOT AN OPTION.

On the rarepair end:

Sebastian / Hawke doesn’t seem like it would be a rarepair – you’d think everyone who loves Cullen/Inquisitor would love this one too. I do! But alas. That said, I’m also pretty aggro about this one with a male Hawke because SEBASTIAN IS CANON BI. WHY WAS HIS ROMANCE STRAIGHT.

Maric / Loghain is a rarepair I will take with me to my grave LOL. Never forget the scene where Maric thought Loghain was leaving, and bolted across the camp with almost no clothes on to beg Loghain to stay. Come on.

Nathaniel / Cousland is dear to me, and I love it so much more than Alistair / Cousland haha.

Greagoir / Wynne, I can’t believe this got validated in canon ahhhh.

The pairing(s) that I despise:

Again: THERE’S SO MANY.

Iron Bull / Dorian is my least fave by a longshot. Again, I have written about why I hate this pairing a great many times, but it’s awful and toxic and makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing anything about it ever again. Please keep poor Dorian away from that man. He deserves someone that doesn’t sexually harass him until he’s finally worn down into dubious consent (while drunk) and then outted to everyone about it.

Isabela / Fenris. Sorry, but it’s just bad writing that Fenris bails on Hawke because the physical intimacy triggered his PTSD and he needs space to process, but then will turn around and have a casual sex relationship with Isabela instead. Yikes.

Anders / Fenris. Aveline / Isabela. Alistair / Morrigan. All of the DA2 Hawke/companion rivalmances. I don’t enjoy “these two people hate and antagonize and want to kill each other… but they fuck” in any form.

Cullen / Amell. Yikes.

And basically ALL of the canon wlw pairings in this series suffer from the fact they have men writing them, and as a result they’re almost always some kind of abusive or racist, and skeeve me out. See: Celene / Briala, Leliana / Marjolaine, Branka / Hespith, etc. Please Bioware, I’m begging you to consult some actual queer women. It’s insane how badly they’re treated compared to how the canon mlm couples are written.

FINALLY, I recognize this will be the most unpopular of all, but. As much as I love M!Hawke/Fenris, I just honestly cannot stand seeing F!Hawke/Fenris. There are some pairings where I’m so attached to the m/m or f/f version, I cannot deal with the m/f version anymore, and that’s one of them. (The others are mainly non-Bioware.)

[k8ie-h0lt]

Somehow it worked

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Pairing: Keith/ Lance Summary: At first Lance didn't think it could have been possible for them to get along. But somehow they did. A/N: Made for the Tears of Neptune Exchange @vldlanceprotectionsquad  as well, for @abcleverun I hope you like it. Prompt: Ships: Klance + Self love Word Count: 1,743 Or read on: ao3

So long story short, Lance and Keith went from not liking each other to tolerating the fact that they had to interact with each other as they had mutual friends. To well, now in this gray area where they could laugh and just hang out. It had been nice. Very chill in some occasions. But for Lance. Well, he still didn’t know where to go from there.

He felt as if he were drowning.  

Not that he knew as to why he thought that, it just became a thing. They talked. Had sat next to each other but there had been something there. A barrier? Maybe a wall. He didn’t know how to describe it. Only that he was lost.

Did he ever find the answer? No. Not exactly. But he did figure that somewhere along the way when he was friends with Keith, they noticed the shift there. Where they could have a peaceful moment and something in the air would just feel warm and soft. Like the sweaters his grandma made him.

Or how a bottle would be placed on the table and the whole gang would just start up a game. His limbs would relax, his eyes would roam until he would catch Keith’s. They wouldn’t say anything about it. But he knew that Keith wanted something.  

.

The beach had become a place where Lance and Keith went to. Why exactly there? Well, he didn’t know the complete answer. He knew that Keith was that kind of guy that liked nature and privacy. While Lance had grown up close to the ocean that he found himself comfortable with the idea of going back there as he had spent many summers there during his childhood.

It had become a place just for them, and it had in turn offered a zone where they often told each other their secrets.

Some were harmless. Others they had made Lance see why his heart fluttered like the waves in the ocean. Always crashing, always cycling back to the earth. Just like how Lance couldn’t go a day without having Keith close by. They just stayed like that.  

It had been a peaceful transition if he had to be honest. Watching the sky changing colors as time went by. With Keith’s body heat close to his and Lance seeing the world hum in silence. He could get used to it. Maybe he had been starting to when Keith kept calling for him to meet him by the beach where their spot would be secluded enough.  

Where the world was quiet enough, and they had that extra layer of protection to seek each other without judgment. He knew it could had been dangerous to linger in that kind of approach, but when Keith never scorned him, he had felt so relieved. As if he had been accepting each part, he had been showing to him. Few people ever saw the sides that he showed him. It had been terrifying.  

But it had been also liberating too when Keith had been patient and astute to let him be himself. As if he were allowed to be imperfect.  

.

“Will you ever stop that?”

“Stop what?”

Keith would look at him, and Lance swore he felt the insides of his body turn over when he finally elaborated. “Will you ever stop devaluing yourself?”

Lance wished he knew the answer to it or had been able to deflect it. But he couldn't because of how his heart had drained itself from blood, and how it had banged itself against his chest in the same way a rain storm raged on. Luckily there had been no water works that day. But Keith’s words, they had lingered. For a lot longer than he wished they had.  

It gave way to him constantly thinking about how he viewed his life.

How sometimes, he felt like he was a jellyfish. Invisible to most, soft all around but not defenseless. He could handle his own obstacles, could bring home the bacon just fine. Keith, had known about that. Had seen Lance work hard to get where he was. But Lance wished that Keith would just accept his help too.

They had known each other for a while now. Had begun to get closer. But that didn’t mean that Keith let Lance in. Not like he let anyone else if they weren’t Shiro.  

He understood.  

He really did. (But he couldn’t help but sigh dejectedly.)  

.

Once he found the time to go back to the beach, he remembered the silly dreams when he had been younger when he wanted to be a merman.

It had been one of the oldest memories that he could recall perfectly. With his tiny forearms being taped with plastic fins, alongside with flippers on as he pretended to be a merman with his siblings. He even dressed up as one for Halloween a couple years in a row. Funny enough that had been the costume that he wore when he first met Keith. And it had also been what started their very long history together.

Not that he thought about it a lot. It just came up like how other memories did when somebody wanted to replay old ones. It had been a normal reflex. He wasn’t being weird.  

They had started talking more. Slower, practically cautious now if Lance had to think about it. By the time that they found a pace that worked it had gone back and forth like walking in a swamp during summer.  

It could have been worse. Could had made them lose all connection all together. But the great thing about them was that they were both stubborn people.

They both made the efforts to see each other, to understand that they were both going in different directions in life but were still committed into being in each other’s lives. And that... that had been enough for him.

.

Normally when people spoke about ice or in general winter, they didn’t always give it a positive review.

In Lance’s opinion that had been terrible because ice was a beautiful concept. A lovely invention that nature created. It had been how he got Keith to ice skate with him when the lake near his grandma’s house froze.  

It had been why their time together was spinning into a warmer direction. Yeah, winter could be a pain to get to work and school, but when he saw Keith’s smiling face when the snow dropped, he could deal with the thousands of sweaters he would have to wear throughout the whole season.  

Because, Keith’s smile had been (and maybe had always been) everything to him.

.

Keith had been the first to kiss him.  

It had been during a late night where the ocean waves were slowing down, and he had been able to taste the salt water from Keith’s lips. The sand in between his toes hadn’t been that comfortable, but when it happened, the fact remained that they both knew what they had been desperately trying to figure out.  And the kiss had said it. Had made Lance lean closer, to practically now clutching the front of Keith’s shirt as he tried his best to memorize the sensation of his heart bursting from happiness.

It had been gratifying to have his feelings finally have a name for it after so long of wondering what had been plaguing him. To have an unexpected epiphany grab onto him; he had loved its sudden entrance into his life.  

Because wasn’t that how life liked to play? Being so unpredictable, but oh so, wonderful? He never wanted the night to end.

And it never technically ended since then. No matter what happened, he always smelt the ocean when Keith was by him, he could remember how tight Keith held on to him when they ice skated, or how wonderful it had felt like the impression of water running down his skin on hot summer days when Keith kissed him.

It had been a completely blissful awakening for him (and he was sure Keith thought so too when he smiled at him).  

.

When he got cornered by the mist that morning, he saw something very clearly. Between all the ups and downs, Keith had often been a center for him. In his own ways he known how to talk to Lance. Had made him feel like he could walk forward to any path because he had him.  

In any form, in any time, they just worked. They were Keith and Lance. Two people that despite how they first met, they had found a way to live side by side. The mist wasn’t scary to him anymore. Just like how the ocean had never scared Lance.  

It had been funny how the person that Lance first didn’t like had also become the very person that helped him overcome his own insecurities. To learn how to love himself. It reminded him of the time when he first learned how to swim. The water from the lake didn’t compare to the ocean. But in the beginning when he had a whole lake to learn to navigate, he remembered what his older siblings taught him. He took it easy, with one arm stretching out, then a leg pushing him forward.

It had been a very tedious routine, but with Keith, it had become a routine into stopping his negative thoughts. Obviously there still had been some bad days, when Lance had been learning. And it helped that he had seen the end of the tunnel because Keith had been walking with him.

It had made it easier to understand what Keith had been trying to say all that time ago. Life could and will be so much brighter once he stopped being so hard on himself.  

.

It felt a little cheesy to say that Keith reminded Lance of a lighthouse. But he did, he was a pillar where the light helped lost people find their directions. He may have not looked like that at first glance, but years since Lance got to know him, he could see the connection.  

He was strong and safe.  

And in Lance’s life he knew that as much as they were still new to their relationship, he could say that they were both learning how to be better alongside each other. They could do it. And they would achieve that happiness.

Because, he knew that they had each other to count on.

[just-tabletop-things]

Everyone I Don’t Like is a Demon

When cultures meet, ideas clash. Once-solid beliefs crack against new worldviews. Members of the merging cultures are frightened. People struggle, often against one another, to make sense of a world they can no longer explain. Rather than throw more fuel on the fire, a humble few bring their thoughts forward. Perhaps together, they can discover a better way.

This would make a brilliant premise for a roleplaying game. Imagine characters with conflicting perspectives forced to work together; how their beliefs will clash, change, mix, diverge. Imagine a game where all the action is in service of exploring the ideological tensions between the characters.

I thought this was the premise of a tabletop RPG called Sig. The cover describes it as a game of planar fantasy that “focuses on confronting beliefs, changing perspectives and relationships”. I was invigorated when I imagined beings from disparate planes of existence challenging one another’s cultural assumptions while still trying to work together. I was violently disappointed.

When I create a Sig character, the book tells me to create a list of three “subjective and philosophical” beliefs that she holds to. (59) This is immediately a problem because there are no subjective philosophical beliefs in Sig. The setting predetermines which of your character’s beliefs are true.

Sig’s setting is the now-standard Great Wheel planescape cosmology. Each plane is “composed of some pure substance, and it’s why those substances can exist elsewhere in the ‘verse”. (6) Not only are there planes composed of physical substances like water, but also of “ideological” and “conceptual” substances like freedom and death. (7) This means that freedom, etc. are not just ideas. They are real objects that can be visited, studied, and understood.

So, once I’ve made my character’s list of starting beliefs, anyone at the table can look at it, cross-reference it with setting information in the book, and immediately know which beliefs will hold true and which will prove false. Let’s see what that would look like, using the example beliefs from the book:

1. Family is a chain to be broken - This is not true. In Sig, family and heredity are fluid. Your body and mind are formed by social ties rather than biological ones. Family is not a chain to be broken because it is not a chain at all. Family is exactly those people with whom you have the closest social connections, and that can change at any time. Not only is this belief untrue; it’s meaningless. 2. Violence is the best teacher - This is not true. The Teachers Guild in Sig is run by the Plane of Justice, which is more like the plane of Mercy or Charity (I’ll drill into that later). Needless to say the guild is thoroughly nonviolent. So not only is Mercy the best teacher, it actually employs all teachers. I’m not twisting words here. Remember that ideas objectively exist in this setting. The plane of Justice defines the concept of teaching, so mercy will always be a more effective teaching technique here than violence. 3. Only sinners need masks - This is not true. We can look to the plane of Shadow for this answer, because it governs illusions and the like. The nice gnomes who live on the plane of Shadow use the shadowsubstance to make beautiful jewelry. This means that illusions or “masking” are not just for deceivers, but for anyone who wants to present themselves well.

Now, a character could argue that she doesn’t care about the damn gnomes or what they think. The plane of shadow represents falsehood. That jewelry is literally made from lies, which are evil.

The plane of Shadow might cement the properties falsehood, but it doesn’t actually tell us if lying is wrong. As long as the setting doesn’t enforce a moral compass, our characters can still make subjective value judgements. So, what does Sig say about morality? Well, hold on to your political alignment charts, because things are about to get authoritarian.

The multiverse of Sig contains a ring of five “Ideological” planes, each of which represents a different interpretation of the concept of law. The opposed planes of Order and Freedom roughly represent the principles of organization and disorganization. They are exactly the planes of Law and Chaos from D&D.

The remaining three ideological planes concern moral law, and are all opposed to one another. These are the planes of Justice, Tyranny, and Destruction. In describing these planes, the author tips his ideological hand so severely that it makes me cackle with rage.

Let’s start with the plane of Justice. “In this place, law shields the weak from the abuse of the strong. In this place, reconciliation is stronger than retribution.” The race native to Justice is diverse, “vary[ing] in appearance from midnight-hued... to russet”. The god venerated on this plane is Myn, a little girl who travels the multiverse persuading the “complacent or comfortable” to repent of their acts of injustice. She accomplishes this by asking “a single query” that cuts her quarry to the heart and exposes their hypocrisy. (82-85)

The plane of Justice is a utopian world of progressive ideals. I’m about to tear into this thing, so don’t get the wrong idea that I’m bashing social justice. I think it’s a great idea to include a plane that represents the progressive moral compass. I think it’s a terrible idea to make that plane the exclusive source of moral goodness in the entire setting, which is what Sig does.

"Justice” means a lot of things to a lot of people. In Sig, it can only mean one thing: exactly what the author wants it to mean. This is a problem for any player (including a liberal one) who wants to explore a character with a conservative perspective: their beliefs are canonically unjust; and not just unjust: tyrannical.

Consider the plane of Tyranny. This plane seeks to “bring order and harmony to the universe through force of arms and strength of will”, “chain the forces of chaos”, and “offer redemption to those who wish it”. (87) Sounds interesting! I’m imagining Inglorious Basterds: planeswalker edition; I’m imagining Chris Hansen with shape-shifting powers. I’m ready.

With dark certitude, the author dismisses all this as “lies and propaganda”. Those who accept the offer of redemption “would only be trading one set of shackles for another,” as they join a race of demons responsible for the “eternal torture” of “writhing, screaming masses chained for crimes real and imagined”. The pages of this section are splattered with words like “dominance”, “brutal”, and “hatred”. (86-89)

This is the only treatment of anything resembling a conservative sense of justice in the entire game. So, what if my character believes bad guys belong behind bars? What should she do when she discovers these demons punishing people without cause? She can’t throw them in prison, because they run the prison. She couldn’t even get them a fair trial, because they run the lawyers’ guild too. She also couldn’t even reliably get them arrested because, I kid you not, all cops come from the plane of Destruction and all they care about is power. She can’t even argue that it’s unjust for the demons to avoid punishment, because the plane of Justice doesn’t want bad guys to be punished at all. The game is rigged to ensure that conservative-leaning beliefs are impossible to defend.

I’m not saying Sig should be rewritten from a conservative perspective. It shouldn’t be. If your goal is to tell good stories about changing beliefs, your world must be inviting to people of diverse ideologies, including ones you hate. You have to present a world that, like ours, invites itself to be plausibly interpreted within many different worldviews. This grants the ability to understand another’s perspective, which is what makes stories about disagreement compelling.

Sig never encourages the reader to consider its multiverse from different angles, or to question the reliability of the one describing it. Characters’ beliefs are constantly challenged, but they can only change to agree more with those of the game designer. Despite its denunciation of domination in the Tyranny section, Sig creates its own relationship of domination between the author and the players.

It’s that hypocrisy that makes Sig unbearable to me. Consider the god of Tyranny, Kalzak the Absolute. In his description, the hypocrisy of this game is on shocking display:

“Kalzak earned his infernal title, Demon-god of Moral Absolutes [except for the moral absolute of justice presented in this game?], through toil and bloodshed in the infernal bureaucracy. He rules from a tower of skulls where his scribes engrave new laws on the bones of living victims. He infects the slumbering primes [earth-like worlds] with a single toxic idea, that anyone different [like people who have different worldviews than you] is dangerous. His servants fan the flames of racism [never mind the objectively evil race of demons on Tyranny], of prejudice [like the ruthlessly grotesque portrait of conservatism presented here], and of bigotry [such as the complete unwillingness to lend even a scrap of dignity to people who disagree with you] in the hope of triggering bloody wars [like the arguments and fights that a rigid ideology inevitably produces]. Once the smoke settles, Kalzak invites the most hateful and harmful souls to join his retinue.” (89)

Sig claims that Justice is a place where reconciliation is stronger than retribution. How can there be reconciliation if you demonize all perspectives but your own? Isn’t it basically the definition of retribution to portray your enemies as demons who engrave unjust laws on the bones of living victims?

Is it justice to dehumanize your ideological opposites instead of working to understand them?

If I’ve misunderstood something about the ideology behind this book, I want to understand. From my perspective this game just looks hateful, hypocritical, and domineering. From my perspective, this does not look like justice.

I think the central problem of our culture right now is not one ideology or another but that people hold to their ideologies without listening to others. I think instead of demonizing each other we need to humbly work together to better understand ourselves, each other, and our world. That doesn’t mean we have to give up our convictions. It means we have to learn to have productive conversations. This whole demon thing does not strike me as a productive conversation.

I strive to follow the convictions that Jesus lived by. I think they are convictions that everyone can learn from: if you want love to conquer hate, you have to start by loving the people who hate you; you have to start by loving the people that you hate.

[monstersinthecosmos]

Gosh I have so many thoughts about Gabrielle's struggles in relationship to Lestat but also her relationship to Claudia, both in terms of the sort of epigenetic sense since she never actually MET Claudia !!!

Like I was thinking when I read this: Can you be rebellious by nature, or does the existence of rebellion rely on there being an obstacle to rebel against?

She and Lestat both deal with this to a huge extent, even though she becomes TRAPPED by her situation. She still manages to break the expectations in some ways to be a terrible mother by like, ignoring her children and reading all the time LOL. Lestat, as a man, has more privilege and perhaps more options to break away and still needs her help to do it for real.

But I feel like we discuss Lestat as a brat & rule breaker when it comes to his behavior sometimes because he just cannot do the right thing LOL. And while I don't think people are BORN that way (ie: unable to be "rebellious" without something to rebel against) I feel like his mortal life trained him to have that framework of the world. There's no real logical connection when you look at some of this other decisions like "Don't turn children" or "Don't go in the shrine and play music without me" or "Don't trade bodies with this weirdo" or "Don't hang out with the devil" etc; these don't match the types of struggles he dealt with as a mortal but it's the attitude he carries into the world that he must do the opposite of what people tell him, even if it's objectively stupid lol.

And wondering if it's something he learned from his mother, either genetically or from witnessing how miserable she was for her mortal life, it's like his instincts scream to him REBEL REBEL REBEL REBEL

(put a pin in the idea that maybe Lestat learned how to trap women into roles from his dad LMAO except that like all cis men in society do that to women oops =P)

So it's really interesting to see this in Claudia, as well, especially when you look at the Rue Royale era and see that Lestat and Claudia clash because they're more like each other, and I think you see that in a lot of families. And if we look at it through this lens of genetic traits & traumas or the HC that the Blood can pass on your Maker's trauma, it makes sense that Claudia might lean more towards being a Lestat type. And her being a child just really ramps up the horror & cruelty of what's been done to her and how it relates to her struggles, especially framing it in the way Gabrielle felt trapped by her gender.

I'm thinking a lot of this part in TVL:

"And then I imagine going into the village and up into the inn and taking into my bed any men that come there--crude men, big men, old men, boys. Just lying there and taking them one after another, and feeling some magnificent triumph in it, some absolute release without a thought of what happens to your father or your brothers, whether they are alive or dead. In that moment I am purely myself. I belong to no one."

The fact that she imagines fucking the whole town as self empowering AND the way she mentions that she wouldn't worry about her husband & sons tells me it's not just the desire for sexual pleasure or liberation but just to smash the gender role entirely. To be able to fuck whomstever without being tied down to her family and expected to care for them.

Since VC vampires don't have sex, this topic gets blunted for Claudia, but she still resents Lestat for not allowing her the human life and human experience. They both represent the same concept from Anne, I think, but Gabrielle is liberated by becoming a vampire and Claudia is trapped in it forever. Even though they're two sides of a spectrum they both never got to experience sexuality the way they wanted to and got trapped into family roles that they didn't want.

There's the same coldness in them, too, I think, even coming from those two different places. Claudia is cold because she doesn't have any memories of being human, but Gabrielle's was perhaps full of memories of a life she didn't want to be living. (This is a FREE REAL ESTATE area I think LOL idk what all else Gabrielle got into but she was clearly an unhappy and cold woman by the time Lestat showed up in her life.)

It's really interesting too if you look at the entire body of VC adaptions so far and the way people have toyed with it and weaved them together, like the movie giving Claudia the hair cutting moment. For Gabrielle her hair represented her gender expression and being trapped as a woman/wife/mother and for Claudia it still represents that she's a little kid that can never change. I can't say how deliberate this was on the film's part or if they realized how deep & meaningful that is to me LMAO but even if it's a happy accident it gives me a lot to think about.

I'm really curious to see how the show handles this concept but we're so close at this point I don't want to speculate about it since we'll be able to just watch it soon and go from there, but I'm dying to know how it compares to Claudia wanting babies on the show, from what we've seen, and whether it's different from women enjoying sexuality without being trapped into motherhood. 👀

if I was smarter I’d write a whole thing about generational trauma in the Lioncourt family and how it was passed down from Gabrielle –> Lestat –> Claudia and how Lestat and Claudia both became Oedipal figures in their journeys to become their own people

and it’s interesting to ask like when it comes to nature vs nurture and how much generational trauma is genetic vs how much is from learned behavior and like even if Claudia isn’t Lestat’s daughter the TRADITIONAL WAY she is still his daughter by BLOOD so I wonder like, what that does.

also imagine just like how much of your Maker’s trauma you might inherit if it’s imprinted into the Blood in any way.

[allbeendonebefore]

Caroline and Edith: A Brief Intro

I figured I don’t talk enough about the gals so I will do so here because i can’t concentrate and wanted to write about them for like a year

about: the concept of nyo characters and 2p characters is a thing in canon hetalia and the fandoms- i’m not terribly fond of 2p as its been characterized by the fandom (as sort of two dimensional ‘bad’ versions) and have only treated it jokingly thus far, but i have for whatever reason been curious about gender bending/sliding/swapping. I personally like personifications to /mean/ something and not simply give them a different gender, so I personally have thought of nyo and on occasion 2p personifications as different aspects of one city. In the case of ‘fem ed’ and ‘fem cal’, they represent former municipalities that are absorbed into existing ones. Some people do this with their nyo!characters, some people don’t, it’s just a personal preference of mine that I think gives an extra dimension and twist to just popping existing characters into different clothes. Basically, they look similar after having lived together so long (the joke being that to people outside the city they are basically the same thing) and they have a sort of adopted sibling relationship though they are not biologically related. 

and now the gals

fyi i know more off the top of my head about edith because i’m a u of a alumna and grew up on the south side literally on campus so therefore a little biased :^) Do i have interest in creating nyo characters for other alberta ocs? idk - i have a slight interest but idk if i have the time or energy to invest in characters who aren’t as familiar or immediately important. It’s more a development that comes after a lot of research and local knowledge. But anyway, without further ado, here are some facts.

Edith / Fem!Edmonton / Old Strathcona / South Edmonton

History

- once an independent and successful city (Strathcona), joined Edmonton in 1912 for tax benefits. 

- Now exists as Old Strathcona - most well known for being the home of the University and Whyte Ave as well as Rachel Notley’s stronghold - typically the only riding in the province to consistently vote NDP in both provincial and federal elections. Hipster central (though is slowly losing that status to Ed and 124th street on the North side). 

- was given the University of Alberta to compromise between Ed/Cal, but Ed ended up getting it anyway.

- represents the area on the south side of the North Saskatchewan. As a result she has more Blackfoot heritage where Ed has more Cree heritage. Also home to a lot of Metis people who fled Red River. Really sad because Laurent Garneau’s tree just got brought down ToT

- got the railroad that ed was supposed to get because the CPR was too lazy to build a bridge. only some vague bitter feelings between her and ed over this but they’ve gotten over it - ed is making sure to hold on to the old railway tracks Just In Case.

- Fought really hard in the 1970s to keep her heritage buildings and status during a time when the city was ready to tear it all down. Still really rankled by new developments.

Looks/Personality/Interests

- round hips and buff legs, narrow torso, not-quite-flat chest. Basically shaped like a bowling pin if a bowling pin was pointy, or alternatively, shaped like the Strathcona Public Building 

- always has her hair up when not at home, most usually in a bun. Cats eye glasses which she actually does use to see. 

- Younger than Ed but grew up faster than him. Is still taller than him today (but only slightly). Generally more blunt, more fashionable, more open and outspoken politically, and less of a worry wart. Technically closer to Cal in age.

- cat person, tea drinker, and so many tattoos. probably piercings. i haven’t figured it out. seems to manage to eat cake at block 1912 and all the trendy instagrammable foods and drinks every day and yet has no obvious source of income. Seems to disappear into that mysterious door just off Whyte labeled “SECRET LOCATION, DO NOT ENTER” (aka a local brewery’s secret hq a close walk from the old railway station which has since been converted into a beer market). Her personal style is more rockabilly than explicitly hipster- there are a lot of retro dress shops in old Strath + tattoos + leather because Alberta

- volunteers at fringe every year and probably on a first name basis with nathan fillion. fringe/acting is her life. Has an expansive and expressive theatre ability on stage, but off it she’s just kind of ‘meh’ and indifferent and private.

- is at the farmer’s market every saturday, probably selling stuff ed has grown

- lives in an old Edwardian heritage home somewhere in Old Strath, has a fluffy white cat, bikes or takes transit everywhere.  

- likes to weld weird abstract metal... things?

- Likely the one who caused the political Orange Crush for Ed, but could care less about the Orange Crush of the sporting world. Literally could not care less about hockey because of the bad riots they cause on Whyte that keep her up at night - ‘literally no amount of alcohol is going to fix this for either of us, go home’. Her sporting passion is actually basketball and roller derby, but nobody knows that because she doesn’t tell anyone. Doesn’t ride horses, (if she does, it’s English style riding), but really loved betting on them back in the day. Has a lot of FC Edmonton merch and watches soccer games, but gave up on lacrosse when the Rush moved to Saskatchewan and broke her heart. In general, she loathes organized sport and Especially the NHL, but will watch U of A Pandas/Golden Bears games because they are cheap and accessible. 

- sex positive, just not interested in discussing her own sex life or those of people she knows. I tend to think of her as aroace-spectrum (i.e. sex neutral or favourable in certain contexts, not interested in long term romance. No gender preference. Doesn’t like dating people she knows/friends.) She recently started hosting Pride herself and it has been a great success. Only enters adult stores if they are cute and queer friendly.

------------------

Caroline / Fem!Calgary / Bowness / Northwest Calgary

History

- Used to be part of Cochrane Ranch in the golden age of cattle ranching. Grew up with kind of a southern belle/debutante lifestyle that hasn’t totally left her. 

- Younger than Cal, grew up in the golden age of ranching and in the middle of massive immigration. 

- that is, both she and calvin were raised in ranch houses learning to play croquet and polo and dressing well and having tea and so on and so forth - Caro in some ways moreso than Calvin who had previously grown up in the old NWMP fort as well and knew differently- slightly more about Calgary-the-wild/mild-west-frontier

- The ranch was later divided up into recreational parks and ice skating rinks and golf courses and houses and things - though it wasn’t part of the city, people from Calgary would come up to visit all the time by streetcar as a little mini ‘escape’. Met a lot of famous people during this period, including Fred McCall the ace wartime pilot who would fly her and Cal out to Banff for day trips 

- Joined Calgary in 1964 because the nearby town of Montgomery had already done so, so why not. 

- still has really strong class divides due to the history of the area

Looks / Personality / Interests

- Though she’s sort of a prairie princess in some ways, Caro really embraces the “tough flannel wearing” sort of image of western ladies who would ride all day to get to a dance in another town. She’s still very insistent on presenting herself as feminine and well to do, but she can’t shake the country image no matter how hard she may try to play big city socialite.

- Tall like Calvin, only slightly shorter than him. Freckles, more obvious and more numerous than Calvin’s. Pretty much an hourglassy figure and a little bit busty (c cup because the city’s dumb obsession with cs get it). When I draw her i have that terrible quote from Destroy All Humans stuck in my head i.e. “would you get a load of this brassiere? i could torpedo a uboat with these things!” because I guess I also think of her as a post-war suburban housewife secretly.

- Usually has her hair in a loose side braid but will attempt fancier up-dos for social events. It’s wavy and relatively long, past her shoulders. Pierced ears, likes long dangly earrings and Expensive jewelry. I tend to look at the Library when I draw her - I like the round wheely shapes from its history as an ATV shop and use those as jewelry, so its like Long and Round shapes for her body but she also has a pokey chin/nose/fingers etc like Calvin.

- she tries to keep her fashion sense in that sort of light and airy feminine zone but she still gets all her dresses and blouses from Lammles. Will Absolutely rock the full western jeans and flannel during stampede or on vacation in the mountains, but in the city she tries to keep it more urban and/or professional.

- bigger fan of sports than Edith, Extremely into hockey and is a Serious supporter of the Calgary Inferno. Only wears jerseys on game day, but has one in each colour for each team.

- her political views are slowly ~seeming~ to shift- being a typically right wing conservative stronghold was upset in the 2015 election and she now lives in an NDP riding which is Very Interesting. It was a split between NDP/Cons/WR 5:5:3 so you could argue the right-wing vote outnumbered the left wing 8:5, but it’s still Very Interesting, thanks First Past the Post. Generally like Calvin she is a True Blue Conservative, though she might lean more towards WR and he leans more Liberal (shocker, I know). But I won’t be able to figure out whether she’d be a UCP voter yet so we will have to Wait and See who she hates more xDD  

- that said, like many Albertans and particularly those in urban areas, Caro is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. She does take a longer time to understand issues that don’t obviously affect her and for that reason she is the sort of person to deny the feminist label even though she really aligns with it, but she’s learning. Generally really traditional and embraces femininity and the division of labour between genders, etc. WASPy. 

- generally very no-nonsense and more biting verbally than Calvin, but also very much a romantic. She can be the PTA wine mom of your worst nightmares or the harlequin heroine of your dreams, just try not to get on her bad side. She likes numbers and finances because they are straight forward and say what they mean.

- I’m still divided on where she lives. Calvin is the one with the penthouse downtown, Caroline is the one in the suburbs but she probably still owns ranchland that she likes to supervise even if she doesn’t actually live there. All her horses are named after horses from Heartland or something, probably. Dog person. Hangs out in Edworthy Park to meet dogs, probably.

- literally both the girl in pumps and a pencil skirt who drives a car2go to get groceries and also the girl in rhinestone studded boots who drives a big black truck with a huge pink flowery cursive ‘oil wife’ decal on the back window, or the pink flowery cursive ‘dirty money’ across the top.

- literally to understand caroline-as-socialite pls just watch gavin crawford’s wild west - the oil wife [part one] [part two] i swear to god i cry laughing every time at ‘how about a western theme- how about not’. Everything gets me but especially the passive aggressive ordering-dessert-for-everyone and staring them down until she gets her way. You know what, just watch all of the shorts, it’s a brilliant series.

[scriptautistic]

Mini-Masterpost: Functioning Labels and “Levels” of Autism (Addendum)

We’ve been getting a lot of asks lately involving functioning labels and terms like “levels” and “severity” of autism. While we thought we had cleared all this up in our two-part masterpost series on functioning labels (part one, part two), we now realize that maybe we didn’t make certain things entirely clear.

First of all, what qualifies as a functioning label? Certainly terms like “high functioning” and “low functioning” are on the list, but so are the following:

mild/severe autism

levels of autism

degrees of autism

etc…

More important than memorizing a list of words you shouldn’t use, however, is understanding the reason why. It isn’t the words that are the problem; it’s the concept.

Before we go on: yes, doctors do use these functioning labels to diagnose autistic people, even now. Our point is not that these terms are not used, it’s that they shouldn’t be. Many people, including us, are working to change the system which is used to diagnose autistic people. So even if someone has a functioning label in their diagnosis, it is still not a good idea to use those labels, or to rely on them to tell you anything useful about their various autistic traits, when you are writing them as a character.

There is no such thing as a high-functioning or low-functioning autistic person. There are not different degrees or types of autism. There is no such thing as “mild” or “severe” autism. These things do not exist.

There are many different autistic traits and every single autistic person is completely individual. The things that are typically used to decide if someone is a “mild” or “severe” case, “high” or “low” functioning, have more to do with how well the person can pretend not to be autistic than anything.

A person might be diagnosed as “low-functioning” or “severely autistic” if:

They are nonverbal some or all of the time; they don’t talk, and communicate via other methods like writing, typing, using picture cards, sign language, etc.

They are evaluated on a bad day, or when they’re very tired or stressed; they don’t have the energy and/or desire to act/communicate like allistic people do.

They stim a lot and very obviously; it is obvious when looking at them that they are autistic.

They have frequent meltdowns in situations where other people see them.

None of these things mean the person is not able to function. Some people might need help, others might not. Ability to speak is not connected to ability to take care of oneself or live independently. Stimming doesn’t change anything about a person’s intelligence. Verbal ability, stimming, and other factors which are usually looked at as signs of someone’s “severity” of autism are completely separate from one another and from other autistic traits. Calling someone “severely” autistic or “low-functioning” because they can’t talk is completely inaccurate. The only thing you can tell about someone who can’t speak is that... they can’t speak. It says nothing about the rest of them as a person.

A person might be diagnosed as “high-functioning” or “mildly autistic” (or formerly, as having “Asperger Syndrome”) if:

They are verbal and communicate well verbally, at least during the diagnosis process.

They do not show many visible signs of being autistic; they stim in subtle or socially normalized ways like tapping their fingers, playing with their hair, etc.

They are diagnosed on a good day, or at a time when they have plenty of energy to use to act like allistic people want them to.

They are generally skilled at mimicking others and figuring out what allistic society considers “appropriate” and “acceptable” behavior and “pass” as allistic; they put an incredible amount of energy into trying to pass as allistic.

They don’t have meltdowns, or they hide their meltdowns.

None of these things mean the person is able to function independently. Some people might not need help, but many do. They might have terrible meltdowns from stress or sensory overload and simply hide them from others (or their meltdowns might be mislabeled “tantrums” and punished). They might use all of their energy to “pass” in social situations and then be totally unable to care for themselves alone. They might have extreme difficulty with executive functioning and need help with basic daily tasks and life skills. There are many things that might interfere with a person’s ability to “function” independently that have nothing to do with their verbal ability or ability to pass as allistic, and calling them “high-functioning” is harmful because it suggests they should not need help (and should never make mistakes).

There are many autistic traits which are not necessarily related to one another. A person can be verbal, but visibly stim in obvious ways all the time and be totally unable to make eye contact. One person might be extremely hypersensitive and have meltdowns from sensory overload, but have no trouble with social interactions. One person might seem perfectly capable of living independently and communicating, but be unable to perform basic hygiene or keep their house tidy due to executive functioning problems.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that these traits are not set in stone. One person can be verbal one day, nonverbal the next; seem totally fine in the morning but unable to function in the evening when they’re tired; have a high tolerance for sensory overload in some situations but get meltdowns for other reasons or at other times.

So What Do I Call My Character?

This is one of the most common types of questions we’ve been receiving lately: “What do I call my high-functioning/mildly autistic character if I can’t use those words?”

You call your character “autistic”. That’s it. They are not high functioning or mildly autistic (or low functioning or severely autistic). They are just autistic.

If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around this, a metaphor might be helpful. Picture an American (someone who is American by birth, for the sake of this metaphor). Now, is this person mildly American, or severely American? What would that even mean? Do you define “mild” Americanness based on political opinions? Would liberal-leaning Americans be considered “mildly” American and conservative-leaning ones “severely” American? Or the other way around? Or does their degree of American-ness rely on their skin color or religion? On how much time they’ve spent traveling abroad? What part of the country they’re from? Where they live now? Their degree of love for hamburgers and apple pie? Their accent?

Obviously, this is total nonsense. An American is a person who was born in America. All of those other things are traits which are unique in every single American citizen. An autistic person is a person who is autistic, who has an autistic type of brain. All of the other traits are unique in every single autistic person.

So how do you distinguish their autistic traits from others? The same way you’d describe an American - not with a single word labeling their “degree” of Americanness. You need to describe them individually. Your character will have some combination of the traits including verbal/nonverbal/partially verbal, hypersensitive/hyposensitive, hyperempathetic/low empathy, having one or more special interests, stimming in one of many various ways, potentially having issues with executive function, and so on (see… well, see the entire rest of this blog for more information). Almost all autistic people’s traits change depending on the situation, their energy levels, and other factors. Verbal autistic people can become nonverbal. Hyposensitive ones can become hypersensitive. People with low empathy can be hyperempathetic in other situations.

In short: every single one of us is different. If you find yourself asking how to describe your autistic person, looking for a replacement for terms like “mild” and “severe”, please try to think of them in another way. They have a collection of traits which are not necessarily connected.

If you have more specific questions, do feel free to ask. But please don’t come to us looking for a new word to replace “high functioning” - there isn’t a better word, because it’s not the words that are the problem, it’s the concept itself.

We hope this helps to clear things up. Happy writing!

[floralharjuku]

Cadence: prologue *Contains Spoilers!* (POSTED ON AO3)

Tumblr formatting legend:

* = *italics* ~ = ~bold~

…

(And on the third day, Crystal Mum created spoiler warnings)

Prologue: “Emotions are prohibited.” …

Androids were never meant to be replacements for humans; the doppelgängers were never to evolve beyond shadows waging perpetual war for the glory of mankind, waging war in the forever hope, chasing the forever goal of one day returning their humans to the surface they had wiped clean.

*What a farce. *

That was their goal. That was their dream. That was their only aspiration.

It was the only thing they could want.

So many years, eyes covered in symbolic darkness, minds linked to the server, man and machine made one, purging the planet of the rusted metal heaps that made life unsustainable. Centuries, without fail, standing constant vigil from above, the last line of defense.

*And for what? A server with the last remains of the human genome. *

The Bunkers. *Blown to bits. *

The androids. *Slowly going mad. *

The lie so deeply hardwired into their code, into their being that the very idea that it wasn’t true sent shockwaves of madness throughout the system. Waves that needed to be cut off before it all fell to pieces.

YoRHa. *A shell. *

The Council of Humanity. *Lies. *

Useless bits of code floating through the server, all of it. Once, these streams had been of pristine quality, now they were cluttered with bits of data that didn’t fit anywhere in the server. But their owners simply couldn’t part with the data. And so it clustered in the veins of their shared knowledge. Rumors, idle gossip, emotions began to spread through them.

It wasn’t long before they all could feel. Out of sheer necessity, those were ordered to a minimum by a commander who looked all too sick when she came from inside the server.

“Pod. Seal these records and issue a server wide announcement that emotions are prohibited.”

How many years ago was that…time passed so slowly and yet so fast here in the land of forever dark, counting the same stars for the same rotations until one day she realized that the star was gone.

*She had outlived the stars. * Such a thing was too blasphemous to articulate.

Emotions were prohibited under her watch, the only one that mattered anymore. She was all that was left, the only structure, the only leader, the only one with enough strength to see them through until the ultimate conclusion of project YoRHa.

Already, the other four Bunkers had gone *dark*. And their goal? A lie. A lie she continued to feed them even as so many saw past it by simply *feeling. *

The end was nearing.

She stopped enforcing her prohibition. More and more and more and more and more and more rebelled. It was so easy…to cut them off from the system, from YoRHa, from the perpetual end they were trapped in. It liberated her.

*It was so much better than hearing them die, screaming in pain, screaming because they knew that they had no bodies to return to, that they would face death, an endless void of horror and…*

Her Bunker only housed models B to H; O and S. The rest were stragglers, survivors, from the devastation backdoor events in Bunkers 1, 3, 4 and 5. Memories wiped clean, they became her soldiers.

*But she couldn’t bear to hear them loyally die, believing in nothing, knowing nothing, feeling nothing. *

Keep them fighting. You are their commander. Fight until it all *ends. *

She cut so many free. Aided in their desertion.

Was this pity? Was this fear? Was this *emotion? *

She was terrified.

But…

“You have your orders. Glory to humanity!”

Glory indeed.

…

A Scanner type, she knew from the start that he would be her downfall, her own personal harbinger of doom. He was a high-end model, made exclusively for the purpose of discovering what should never be found.

“YoRHa unit No. 9, type S, reporting, Commander.”

“Everything is in working order?” He nodded, left arm crossed over his chest in salute. “Good. Your first assignment is to survey the surface for any potential Goliath class machine tech.”

*Get as far away from here as you can. Stay away from these servers. Stay away from the corrosion inside. Maybe…maybe…*

“Yes, Commander!” He sounded so enthusiastic, almost childlike. Which wouldn’t be strange if she didn’t know that all YoRHa units were built in a state the humans once called “late adolescence” or “early adulthood”.

Her downfall was in him and his kind. And as such, his own downfall was in himself.

…

His operator, 21O, always seemed annoyed with him. He functioned with the attitude of a teenager, constantly questioning her, taking this bored tone with her, exhaling heavily whenever tasked with something that interrupted his own personal scans. She had *told the brat* time and time again that he was wasting resources with his curiosity, but she kept finding data on insects and flowers in his reports, as if he had taken a break during his task to watch a worm inch its way across the dirt.

Which was exactly what he had done. It was a solid forty minutes long and each second made her want to claw his eyes out.

He wasted time, energy, fuel for himself and not to mention he had a flight unit with him which tripled the potential loss should he and it be destroyed during these scans.

“As long as he completes his task in a timely manner,” the Commander had said, “then I see no reason why these extracurricular activities should be stopped.”

“But, Commander…It’s a waste of resources…”

“All the Scanners have this same flaw: an insatiable thirst to *know*. He isn’t the first and won’t be the last.”

“Do they all have the same flaw to talk back?” His operator muttered as she went back to sorting through the rest of his files.

The next video was genuinely enlightening. *Three hours of waves. * Where did he even find the time…?

…

It was strangely fascinating, this abandoned human facility was a relic of a time gone past and possibly never to be again, a memento of the past world he was fighting for, of the war he was created to fight for. Rusted and overtaken with greenery, this place was hollow, whistling as the wind passed through this living and yet dead museum to the intelligence of his human creators.

From above, he could trace the paths that they would have taken in the progress of working. Rusted and dangerously corroded bridges leaned and creaked in the slight breeze as he did a quick pass over them, barely suspended from wires that had cracked and snapped years ago. One bridge was in such terrible shape that one side had fallen into the water, the other leaning on a right diagonal into the sky.

What would this place look like, in the past? When people, not plants, populated these areas for work purposes?

Huh…what did humans look like when they worked? He supposed like androids but…uh, there were supposedly differences between android and humans, but no one had ever said *what* that was. Speaking of work, would the humans ever need to work again with the androids in existence?

Such questions were for the future, he supposed. A future after the war. But such questions were always in the back of his mind during ops like this.

What were the humans like? When he looked into the mirror and saw himself, was he really seeing the image of a human? Was there a human that he was modeled after? A person with the face he so believed to be his and his alone? How would this human react to one day coming face to face with an android who looked just like him?

Why was he so absorbed with these existential questions? All they did was make his logic processor momentarily freeze. Once, after debating the concept of “God” with himself, he had awoken in his room and learned that his OS had crashed from the undue strain. He had been reprimanded for it and warned that another crash of that magnitude could result in a full scale memory wipe in a desperate attempt to salvage his core processing elements. To think, a mere question had the potential to kill him.

Maybe he was morbidly curious. That would explain a lot about himself.

One eye scrolled through his personal research of this place while another watched a small machine pour a bucket of oil onto a deactivated machine. The deactivated one had been offline for some time, its arms torn off by whatever had destroyed it. Probably two machines getting into some sort of mindless conflict.

“Brother…brother…brother…” It repeated mindlessly, clinging to a concept it couldn’t understand.

“It doesn’t matter how much oil you give him, little guy. It won’t make him your brother.” He sighed, fascinated nonetheless. To think that such a machine could even begin to comprehend the *idea* that was family, not to speak of practicing it.

Maybe, if he still had time he could take it apart and research it…

The booming approach of the attack squadron quickly killed his hopes of actually having any fun during this mission, but he noted that it would be over soon and he could come back. There was a strong possibility that this strange machine would still be there, calling out for a brother that didn’t exist while it waded in spilled oil.

(Cadence) A Nier: Automata study.

Author’s notes: Formatting is so much fun to do when I know it won’t transfer to anything and I have to use marks instead. Hello! I’m not sure if I’m the first, but if I am…First chaptered Nier: Automata story! Victory to me for having absolutely no life and finding the full game on YouTube. That was my whole week right there. The story captivated me in a way that I really was not expecting. I watched the first Nier in preparation of the second, and I fell in love with the themes and huge story. I like that a game could go so deep and dark and make me question everything, even down to the base components of myself. Seeing androids and robots that acted so human…it’s fascinating stuff!

Anyways, I decided to explore the psyche of my personal favorite in the game, 9S. I have to say that his character really surprised me. I had expected a drag-on experience with him, but…well, if you’ve seen it, you know.

*Motions hastily to ending C while crying*

His character goes through such a drastic change and his character arc goes up like “okay, well that just happened, but like what what what what what.”

Again, you know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen ending C.

So, this contains massive spoilers for the whole game. If you want to go in clean, please put this down and run from me because this was done in February on the 25th and I’ve been waiting to write this for…er three days. I am about to explode at this point.

Each main ending, A-E, will be covered and as such, I’ll be labeling the story as it follows each ending. Mostly, since this follows 9S, this will be told from his campaign.

This story has been crossposted as well onto Ao3 and when Fanfiction stops being dumb, I’ll post it there as well. Wanna see this in fully formatted glory? Well, so do I ;;

And as always, thank you to those who support me, those who inspire me and those who give me feedback.

For the glory of mankind.

[jimblanceusa]

Apocalypse here: Why Colorado is such a popular setting for humanity’s downfall

In Wasteland 3, the latest entry in the influential role-playing game series, a group of militarized survivors fight through the frozen shells of Colorado Springs, Aspen and Denver during a nuclear winter that makes most blizzards look tame by comparison.

The choice of setting was easy for the video game’s art director.

“We’d done ‘brown and hot’ for two games in Arizona, and we needed a change, so we went with white and cold for this one,” said Aaron Meyers, who lived part-time in Denver during the game’s development. “Colorado seemed like the perfect place to give us that feel and those aesthetics, as well as a wealth of interesting lore and locations to mine for our story.”

Wasteland 3, which was released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on Aug. 28, joins a long line of video games that have pictured Colorado as a blood-soaked landscape of zombies, foreign military invasions and robot dinosaurs, including acclaimed, multimillion-dollar earners like The Last of Us, Horizon: Zero Dawn, the Dead Rising series, Homefront, World War Z and Call of Duty: Ghosts.

Even those are just one category in a larger group of novels, TV series, films and comics that have mined Colorado for their apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories, from Stephen King’s “The Stand” — which imagined Boulder as the center of humanity’s resistance against a supernatural evil — to “Dr. Strangelove,” “Waterworld,” “Battlefield Earth” and “Interstellar.”

“You can really visualize Colorado when you mention it, even if you’ve never been here,” said Denver author Mario Acevedo, who has written wildly imaginative, urban-fantasy novels starring werewolves, vampires and zombies. “We’re shorthand for ‘mountains,’ but also the type of people who tend to live in the mountains. Scrappy people do what it takes to survive.”

But even as writers and artists paint Colorado with ashen skies, resource-driven riots and nuclear holocausts, the trappings of the post-apocalyptic genre have grown all too cozy in 2020.

Across the U.S., multi-state wildfires, a devastating hurricane, and civic unrest feel like cruel toppings on a summer already larded with misery in the form of a global viral pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and left millions unemployed. As the line between depiction and prediction grows almost invisibly thin for post-apocalyptic storytellers, they’ve been forced to turn up the intensity to stand out from our increasingly grim reality.

“Over 40 years of popular culture, a lot of people have looked at what’s happening on a global scale and extrapolated these disasters that end up mirroring reality,” said Boulder novelist Carrie Vaughn, whose 2017 book “Bannerless” won sci-fi’s coveted Philip K. Dick award.

They just didn’t think it would arrive so soon — or all at the same time.

“The only thing that hasn’t happened yet is zombies,” Vaughn said with a laugh. “And I’m not going to make any bets against that.”

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For centuries, apocalypse stories centered around humanity’s punishment from angry gods. That changed after World War II as people woke up to the possibility of global nuclear annihilation. Since then, post-apocalyptic stories and dystopian sci-fi have spread out into every facet of popular culture.

But with the events of 2020, the genre seems to be eating itself from the inside out, particularly as the tropes and clichés of the genre continue to pile up. Is there anywhere else to go?

A perfectly terrible place

Yes, things are messed up everywhere. Few people are immune to the “historic convergence of health, economic, environmental and social emergencies,” as the Associated Press called our “turbulent reality” last week.

But even during good times, popular narratives did not usually depict Colorado as a fun, happy place. Westerns and horror were two of the first genres to capitalize on the state’s isolated, hardscrabble reputation in the 20th century through both novels and films. Harsh winters, brutal landscapes, cabin fever and cannibalism are built into the state’s history — and thus the way people continue to perceive Colorado.

“People who aren’t from here view it as a frontier because it still has this kind of Old West-aura to it,” Vaughn said. “Montana feels remote, but somehow, Colorado is very accessible. You’ve got mountains, prairies and lots of pioneer credibility.”

In fact, the rugged lawlessness and individualism of Westerns, as well as tales like “The Shining,” helped set the stage for today’s post-apocalyptic Colorado narratives, which found their lasting visualization in 1979’s ”Mad Max” and its 1981 sequel, “The Road Warrior.”

But movies such as 1984’s ”Red Dawn” — which imagines Calumet (a former mining town north of Walsenburg) as ground zero for a military invasion by the Soviet Union — also influenced a generation of storytellers.

“I was 11 or 12 when that came out and it was a big favorite of mine,” Vaughn said. “It’s just ridiculous, though. How realistic is an army coming in and trying to occupy the Rocky Mountains? And yet the movie was so iconic that it imprinted on a lot of people.”

Vaughn is a self-described military brat who first came to Colorado when her father was stationed in Colorado Springs. She believes our concentration of military bases plays a big role in the casting of the state. For decades, storytellers have returned to Colorado to visit the command center inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, which has been imagined as both a catalyst for a global nuclear disaster and the last refuge in an irradiated world (see “Dr. Strangelove,” the “Terminator” series, “Jeremiah,” “Interstellar,” etc.).

“I love it because of ‘WarGames’ and ‘Stargate SG-1,’ ” Vaughn said of Cheyenne Mountain’s recurring role in science fiction. “But I got to tour NORAD in high school through my Girl Scouts troop, and again in my current events class, and of course it looks nothing like the underground city you see in most movies. The big blast door, at least, is accurate.”

Some storytellers, such as Wasteland 3 art director Meyers, lean into their artistic license.

“We tend to parody cliché rather than avoiding it entirely, so a few of Colorado’s pop culture connections get a nod and a wink,” he said. “But we didn’t go out of our way to include or exclude any trope based on whether it was well known. If it worked for the story or added to the atmosphere, we put our own twist on it and used it.”

Like Meyers, Wasteland 3 senior concept artist Dan Glasl has lived in Colorado (in the latter’s case, growing up just west of Colorado Springs) and visited most of the iconic areas depicted in the game, from Garden of the Gods to downtown Denver’s Union Station, the Colorado State Capitol and even the former Stapleton Airport.

“We did try to pick locations and landmarks that would be iconic to Coloradans and interesting and visually appealing to outsiders,” Meyers said. “So you can visit places like the Garden of the Gods and the Denver (International) Airport, and see our takes on them, as well as lesser-known places like Peterson Air Force base, and then sillier places like Santa’s Workshop — which is in fact a front for a drug operation.”

Whose apocalypse?

While outsiders may see us a mono-culture, Coloradans know how radically different the conservative Eastern Plains or Western Slope are from ritzy ski-resort towns and liberal Front Range cities. Like Stephen King’s Maine, Colorado is diverse enough in geography and culture to welcome a variety of fictional interpretations.

But that doesn’t mean they’re accurate.

“If you say ‘Colorado’ to someone in the Midwest, they’ll have certain stereotypes about us,” Acevedo said. “And storytellers use that to their advantage. We’re remote enough that they can fill in the blanks and people will buy it.”

Most of these stories don’t reach beyond the history of European settlers as their implied starting points, whereas Colorado’s Native American, Spanish and Mexican history runs much deeper. Until the last century, birth rates in the mountain west were persistently low, Acevedo said, due to the persistently harsh conditions.

That led to constant, life-or-death clashes between indigenous tribes that were, for all intents and purposes, their own versions of the apocalypse. (And that’s not even considering the arrival of European settlers.)

“The Arapaho, Comanche and Utes all had low survival rates,” Acevedo said. “You can’t go to any one part of this land and say, ‘Well, this is the pure, original history of it,’ because everything is folded over everything else. When each previous civilization or society ended, it was truly their apocalypse. You have to look at the history of a people, not just the history of a region.”

For example, few Colorado stories — apocalyptic, western or otherwise — dig back to the Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde, whose civilization collapsed near the end of the 13th century due to drought. Despite their essentially Stone Age technology, the Ancestral Puebloans traded with travelers from all over the region and left spectacular marks on their environment.

“The people living in Colorado 1,000 years ago were a lot more aware of what was going on around them than we give them credit for,” Acevedo said. “But with oral history and no written language, it was harder to keep track of things. You could go back however far you want and find an interesting story about some of the early Cro-Magnons coming across the land bridge, and the onset of the Ice Age — that being an appropriately apocalyptic event for them.”

As in reality, not every fictional character is affected the same way by disasters. People with money and privilege tend to see the effects last, insulated as they are from the rusty clockwork of everyday life.

But when a story involves disasters that affect us all — climate change, water shortages, viral pandemics and zombie/alien invasions — there’s opportunity for pointed social commentary and personal reflection, authors say.

“There are 10 million stories about how computing is going to change our lives,” said Paonia-born Paolo Bacigalupi, a bestselling sci-fi author and Hugo award winner, in a 2015 interview. “I think we can have a few more about climate change, drought, water rights, the loss of biodiversity and how we adapt to a changing environment.”

Bacigalupi’s acclaimed sci-fi novel “The Water Knife” imagines a near future in which the Southwest is dramatically remade by clashes over water resources. Bacigalupi was inspired, in part, by watching the fortunes of the rural area he grew up in rise and fall over dwindling water resources.

“I’m constantly looking over my shoulder,” he said shortly before “The Water Knife” was published, “because it seems so glaringly obvious that someone else would be writing about this exact same thing.”

Too real?

Before the title screen for Wasteland 3 appears, players are shown a disclaimer: “Wasteland 3 is a work of fiction. Ideas, dialog (sic) and stories we created early in development have in some cases been mirrored by our current reality. Our goal is to present a game of fictional entertainment, and any correlation to real-world events is purely coincidental.”

The game’s art director, Meyers, declined to answer questions about the reasoning behind the disclaimer, but that’s understandable. Games like Wasteland 3 typically take several years, hundreds of people and millions of dollars to produce. Appearing too topical, or turning off potential players with real-world, political overtones, can limit a game’s all-important appeal and profits.

Legal concerns also trail post-apocalyptic games set in real locations. When the PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn launched to critical acclaim and massive sales in 2017, its publicists pitched The Denver Post on an article exploring their high-tech location scouting, which resulted in stunningly detailed Colorado foliage, weather patterns and simulated geography.

However, game developers would only agree to an interview if trademarked names were not mentioned, given that the studio had apparently not cleared their usage. While The Denver Post declined to write about it at the time, other media outlets ran photos of the game’s bombed-out, overgrown takes on Red Rocks Amphitheatre and what would become Empower Field at Mile High, as well as various natural formations and instantly recognizable statues in downtown Colorado Springs.

That gives Wasteland 3 — which uses elements of parody — some leeway, in the same way that TV’s “South Park” has mocked local celebrities like Jake Jabs, Ron Zappolo and John Elway without getting sued.

“We did have to change a few things here and there, but the references should still be clear to those who know,” Meyers said of Wasteland 3 items like Boors Beer (take a wild guess). “We’re part of the Xbox Game Studios, so there are teams of folks involved in ensuring we have things like proper rights clearances for names.”

Of course, that’s part of the problem in 2020: Bit by bit, it’s beginning to resemble any number of fictional, worst-case scenarios for the collapse of modern society. Competing political factions often label each other as violent cults. People who don’t wear masks have been described as zombies. Police violence and gun-toting civilians are everywhere.

In that way, it’s getting harder for writers and artists of post-apocalyptic stories to stay one step ahead of the news. There’s a creeping feeling that we’ve seen it all before — even if only in our heads. But good writing can be its own virtue, regardless of subject matter, and the post-apocalyptic genre has always stood proudly on the wobbly, irradiated shoulders of others.

“We’re obviously inspired by others and we wouldn’t even be the first post-apocalyptic game set in Colorado, but we have pretty unique sensibilities,” Meyers said of Wasteland 3. “It’s a very serious and dark world, but we put a unique twist on just about everything, and we really enjoy dark humor. You’re going to have brutal ethical decisions to make about life and death, but there’s a lot of humor throughout as well.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

from Latest Information https://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/02/apocalypse-here-why-colorado-is-such-a-popular-setting-for-humanitys-downfall/

[laurendzim]

Apocalypse here: Why Colorado is such a popular setting for humanity’s downfall

In Wasteland 3, the latest entry in the influential role-playing game series, a group of militarized survivors fight through the frozen shells of Colorado Springs, Aspen and Denver during a nuclear winter that makes most blizzards look tame by comparison.

The choice of setting was easy for the video game’s art director.

“We’d done ‘brown and hot’ for two games in Arizona, and we needed a change, so we went with white and cold for this one,” said Aaron Meyers, who lived part-time in Denver during the game’s development. “Colorado seemed like the perfect place to give us that feel and those aesthetics, as well as a wealth of interesting lore and locations to mine for our story.”

Wasteland 3, which was released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on Aug. 28, joins a long line of video games that have pictured Colorado as a blood-soaked landscape of zombies, foreign military invasions and robot dinosaurs, including acclaimed, multimillion-dollar earners like The Last of Us, Horizon: Zero Dawn, the Dead Rising series, Homefront, World War Z and Call of Duty: Ghosts.

Even those are just one category in a larger group of novels, TV series, films and comics that have mined Colorado for their apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories, from Stephen King’s “The Stand” — which imagined Boulder as the center of humanity’s resistance against a supernatural evil — to “Dr. Strangelove,” “Waterworld,” “Battlefield Earth” and “Interstellar.”

“You can really visualize Colorado when you mention it, even if you’ve never been here,” said Denver author Mario Acevedo, who has written wildly imaginative, urban-fantasy novels starring werewolves, vampires and zombies. “We’re shorthand for ‘mountains,’ but also the type of people who tend to live in the mountains. Scrappy people do what it takes to survive.”

But even as writers and artists paint Colorado with ashen skies, resource-driven riots and nuclear holocausts, the trappings of the post-apocalyptic genre have grown all too cozy in 2020.

Across the U.S., multi-state wildfires, a devastating hurricane, and civic unrest feel like cruel toppings on a summer already larded with misery in the form of a global viral pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and left millions unemployed. As the line between depiction and prediction grows almost invisibly thin for post-apocalyptic storytellers, they’ve been forced to turn up the intensity to stand out from our increasingly grim reality.

“Over 40 years of popular culture, a lot of people have looked at what’s happening on a global scale and extrapolated these disasters that end up mirroring reality,” said Boulder novelist Carrie Vaughn, whose 2017 book “Bannerless” won sci-fi’s coveted Philip K. Dick award.

They just didn’t think it would arrive so soon — or all at the same time.

“The only thing that hasn’t happened yet is zombies,” Vaughn said with a laugh. “And I’m not going to make any bets against that.”

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For centuries, apocalypse stories centered around humanity’s punishment from angry gods. That changed after World War II as people woke up to the possibility of global nuclear annihilation. Since then, post-apocalyptic stories and dystopian sci-fi have spread out into every facet of popular culture.

But with the events of 2020, the genre seems to be eating itself from the inside out, particularly as the tropes and clichés of the genre continue to pile up. Is there anywhere else to go?

A perfectly terrible place

Yes, things are messed up everywhere. Few people are immune to the “historic convergence of health, economic, environmental and social emergencies,” as the Associated Press called our “turbulent reality” last week.

But even during good times, popular narratives did not usually depict Colorado as a fun, happy place. Westerns and horror were two of the first genres to capitalize on the state’s isolated, hardscrabble reputation in the 20th century through both novels and films. Harsh winters, brutal landscapes, cabin fever and cannibalism are built into the state’s history — and thus the way people continue to perceive Colorado.

“People who aren’t from here view it as a frontier because it still has this kind of Old West-aura to it,” Vaughn said. “Montana feels remote, but somehow, Colorado is very accessible. You’ve got mountains, prairies and lots of pioneer credibility.”

In fact, the rugged lawlessness and individualism of Westerns, as well as tales like “The Shining,” helped set the stage for today’s post-apocalyptic Colorado narratives, which found their lasting visualization in 1979’s ”Mad Max” and its 1981 sequel, “The Road Warrior.”

But movies such as 1984’s ”Red Dawn” — which imagines Calumet (a former mining town north of Walsenburg) as ground zero for a military invasion by the Soviet Union — also influenced a generation of storytellers.

“I was 11 or 12 when that came out and it was a big favorite of mine,” Vaughn said. “It’s just ridiculous, though. How realistic is an army coming in and trying to occupy the Rocky Mountains? And yet the movie was so iconic that it imprinted on a lot of people.”

Vaughn is a self-described military brat who first came to Colorado when her father was stationed in Colorado Springs. She believes our concentration of military bases plays a big role in the casting of the state. For decades, storytellers have returned to Colorado to visit the command center inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, which has been imagined as both a catalyst for a global nuclear disaster and the last refuge in an irradiated world (see “Dr. Strangelove,” the “Terminator” series, “Jeremiah,” “Interstellar,” etc.).

“I love it because of ‘WarGames’ and ‘Stargate SG-1,’ ” Vaughn said of Cheyenne Mountain’s recurring role in science fiction. “But I got to tour NORAD in high school through my Girl Scouts troop, and again in my current events class, and of course it looks nothing like the underground city you see in most movies. The big blast door, at least, is accurate.”

Some storytellers, such as Wasteland 3 art director Meyers, lean into their artistic license.

“We tend to parody cliché rather than avoiding it entirely, so a few of Colorado’s pop culture connections get a nod and a wink,” he said. “But we didn’t go out of our way to include or exclude any trope based on whether it was well known. If it worked for the story or added to the atmosphere, we put our own twist on it and used it.”

Like Meyers, Wasteland 3 senior concept artist Dan Glasl has lived in Colorado (in the latter’s case, growing up just west of Colorado Springs) and visited most of the iconic areas depicted in the game, from Garden of the Gods to downtown Denver’s Union Station, the Colorado State Capitol and even the former Stapleton Airport.

“We did try to pick locations and landmarks that would be iconic to Coloradans and interesting and visually appealing to outsiders,” Meyers said. “So you can visit places like the Garden of the Gods and the Denver (International) Airport, and see our takes on them, as well as lesser-known places like Peterson Air Force base, and then sillier places like Santa’s Workshop — which is in fact a front for a drug operation.”

Whose apocalypse?

While outsiders may see us a mono-culture, Coloradans know how radically different the conservative Eastern Plains or Western Slope are from ritzy ski-resort towns and liberal Front Range cities. Like Stephen King’s Maine, Colorado is diverse enough in geography and culture to welcome a variety of fictional interpretations.

But that doesn’t mean they’re accurate.

“If you say ‘Colorado’ to someone in the Midwest, they’ll have certain stereotypes about us,” Acevedo said. “And storytellers use that to their advantage. We’re remote enough that they can fill in the blanks and people will buy it.”

Most of these stories don’t reach beyond the history of European settlers as their implied starting points, whereas Colorado’s Native American, Spanish and Mexican history runs much deeper. Until the last century, birth rates in the mountain west were persistently low, Acevedo said, due to the persistently harsh conditions.

That led to constant, life-or-death clashes between indigenous tribes that were, for all intents and purposes, their own versions of the apocalypse. (And that’s not even considering the arrival of European settlers.)

“The Arapaho, Comanche and Utes all had low survival rates,” Acevedo said. “You can’t go to any one part of this land and say, ‘Well, this is the pure, original history of it,’ because everything is folded over everything else. When each previous civilization or society ended, it was truly their apocalypse. You have to look at the history of a people, not just the history of a region.”

For example, few Colorado stories — apocalyptic, western or otherwise — dig back to the Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde, whose civilization collapsed near the end of the 13th century due to drought. Despite their essentially Stone Age technology, the Ancestral Puebloans traded with travelers from all over the region and left spectacular marks on their environment.

“The people living in Colorado 1,000 years ago were a lot more aware of what was going on around them than we give them credit for,” Acevedo said. “But with oral history and no written language, it was harder to keep track of things. You could go back however far you want and find an interesting story about some of the early Cro-Magnons coming across the land bridge, and the onset of the Ice Age — that being an appropriately apocalyptic event for them.”

As in reality, not every fictional character is affected the same way by disasters. People with money and privilege tend to see the effects last, insulated as they are from the rusty clockwork of everyday life.

But when a story involves disasters that affect us all — climate change, water shortages, viral pandemics and zombie/alien invasions — there’s opportunity for pointed social commentary and personal reflection, authors say.

“There are 10 million stories about how computing is going to change our lives,” said Paonia-born Paolo Bacigalupi, a bestselling sci-fi author and Hugo award winner, in a 2015 interview. “I think we can have a few more about climate change, drought, water rights, the loss of biodiversity and how we adapt to a changing environment.”

Bacigalupi’s acclaimed sci-fi novel “The Water Knife” imagines a near future in which the Southwest is dramatically remade by clashes over water resources. Bacigalupi was inspired, in part, by watching the fortunes of the rural area he grew up in rise and fall over dwindling water resources.

“I’m constantly looking over my shoulder,” he said shortly before “The Water Knife” was published, “because it seems so glaringly obvious that someone else would be writing about this exact same thing.”

Too real?

Before the title screen for Wasteland 3 appears, players are shown a disclaimer: “Wasteland 3 is a work of fiction. Ideas, dialog (sic) and stories we created early in development have in some cases been mirrored by our current reality. Our goal is to present a game of fictional entertainment, and any correlation to real-world events is purely coincidental.”

The game’s art director, Meyers, declined to answer questions about the reasoning behind the disclaimer, but that’s understandable. Games like Wasteland 3 typically take several years, hundreds of people and millions of dollars to produce. Appearing too topical, or turning off potential players with real-world, political overtones, can limit a game’s all-important appeal and profits.

Legal concerns also trail post-apocalyptic games set in real locations. When the PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn launched to critical acclaim and massive sales in 2017, its publicists pitched The Denver Post on an article exploring their high-tech location scouting, which resulted in stunningly detailed Colorado foliage, weather patterns and simulated geography.

However, game developers would only agree to an interview if trademarked names were not mentioned, given that the studio had apparently not cleared their usage. While The Denver Post declined to write about it at the time, other media outlets ran photos of the game’s bombed-out, overgrown takes on Red Rocks Amphitheatre and what would become Empower Field at Mile High, as well as various natural formations and instantly recognizable statues in downtown Colorado Springs.

That gives Wasteland 3 — which uses elements of parody — some leeway, in the same way that TV’s “South Park” has mocked local celebrities like Jake Jabs, Ron Zappolo and John Elway without getting sued.

“We did have to change a few things here and there, but the references should still be clear to those who know,” Meyers said of Wasteland 3 items like Boors Beer (take a wild guess). “We’re part of the Xbox Game Studios, so there are teams of folks involved in ensuring we have things like proper rights clearances for names.”

Of course, that’s part of the problem in 2020: Bit by bit, it’s beginning to resemble any number of fictional, worst-case scenarios for the collapse of modern society. Competing political factions often label each other as violent cults. People who don’t wear masks have been described as zombies. Police violence and gun-toting civilians are everywhere.

In that way, it’s getting harder for writers and artists of post-apocalyptic stories to stay one step ahead of the news. There’s a creeping feeling that we’ve seen it all before — even if only in our heads. But good writing can be its own virtue, regardless of subject matter, and the post-apocalyptic genre has always stood proudly on the wobbly, irradiated shoulders of others.

“We’re obviously inspired by others and we wouldn’t even be the first post-apocalyptic game set in Colorado, but we have pretty unique sensibilities,” Meyers said of Wasteland 3. “It’s a very serious and dark world, but we put a unique twist on just about everything, and we really enjoy dark humor. You’re going to have brutal ethical decisions to make about life and death, but there’s a lot of humor throughout as well.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

from News And Updates https://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/02/apocalypse-here-why-colorado-is-such-a-popular-setting-for-humanitys-downfall/

[publicnym]

Preliminary: examine avoidance

Going through random preliminary practices that appeal to me as outlined in this post: https://publicnym.tumblr.com/post/622844745367076864/preliminaries

Today’s is “examine avoidance”: thinking about what I’m running away from.  Would it be good to not do so? Can I not do so? is it safe to not do so?

---

So, yes, there are a lot of things I’m running away from, all the time. It’s the reason I don’t really talk to very many people. I pretty much only socialize with my husband and people from work - I see those as “safe” interactions and feel that I can let go and be my most true self. I don’t really talk much with my family or old friends from the city in which I grew up.

1. I’m running away from having honest, hard conversations over ideological disagreements I have with people. I come from a place where most people slant conservative and am working in a place where most people are quite liberal, maybe sometimes a bit more liberal than I am (I lean left for sure, but I’m not for cancelling people saying things that seem wrong - I would never have escaped where I was if not for questioning my beliefs, and I would never have felt comfortable continuing to believe the things I believe without questioning them. I think challenging ideas makes for better, cleaner ideas). So I’m in a very middle ground and I don’t feel comfortable voicing my thoughts from where I am. I don’t want to be misconstrued as hating others, and I don’t want to do unnecessary harm with my words.

2. I’m running away from expressing the discomfort I have in my body. I’m really embarrassed about this one. I’m pretty thin, just naturally, but... I’m most comfortable when I’m thinner than one might consider normal-range. I don’t know. That’s pretty gross to admit. I’d only be safe expressing that in certain disordered corners of the internet, which tells me some pretty terrible things about this. I’m running away from this being exposed to the people I care about, like my husband.

3. I’m running away from my nebulous, terrifying concept of “womanhood.” Superficiality, fragility, softness, subtlety, yet expressiveness, quick-changing moods, “specialness.” #2 feeds this one, too. I look up to my nebulous concept of “manhood” as being superior in a lot of gross ways (straightforward communication, lack of tone modulation, harsh rationality). Why does this have an effect on my life? It seems to be pretty mythical, yet I sense myself trying/rejecting/failing the “feminine” mold, and in the ways I succeed with fitting it, I’m not even happy. These are generalizations... I should probably try to get more specific with this.

4. I’m running away from interacting with uncertain outcomes where I might seem foolish. I love domains where I come off like I know what I’m doing and avoid LIKE THE PLAGUE anything else. This includes interacting with customer support to ask for help or ask for refunds, calling people I don’t know, games with multiplayer. I’ve gotten a little bit better about this over the years, but it’s still a problem.

5. I’m running away from having to be there for people, because I know I will let them down and not be enough for them.

6. I’m running away from working long hours at work, because I am tired of work, to be honest.

7. I’m running away from getting too close with my female coworkers because I think they put me to shame, They’re, like... real women, and I don’t feel like I am. I’m a mess. I stink, I curse, I write crappy code and push it straight to production like a dang cowboy. I don’t even try to wear makeup these days.

I just want to be a damn person, you guys. I don’t want to be a woman. I don’t want to be a man. And I don’t want to be a curiosity. I just want to be a cog in a wheel. I want to be an uninteresting old person, loved by one person in the entire world, near death. I don’t want to hurt people.

Ugh... I thought about erasing that, but I’m keeping it, and I will 100% regret it.

What else am I running away from? I mentioned my parents, right?

8. I’m running away from my parents. I love them, but if I’m anywhere near them, I will disappoint them even more than I disappoint them now and they will try to control me again. I think this is a rational fear (mostly).

9. I’m running away from knowing what other people think of me. Which is why the public nature of this blog seems like a really important dimension to me, even though I’m pretty sure just about no one will read it.

10. I’m running away from... responsibility. I have the mistaken idea that it’s better to reject responsibility than to take ownership of something and do it wrong. I think this is occasionally true. I need to sort out in my brain where it is not true.

---

That mostly enumerates what I’m running from, I think? I can probably squish this into fewer bullet points.

a. failing others/judgement/failed responsibility (you can see this in lit’rally every fear I enumerated above) b. figuring out who I am (2, 3)

Well, okay, it’s pretty clear what I have to figure out here. “I don’t want to hurt people” is my big takeaway here. Next session, I really need to explore some worst-case scenarios in which I really hurt people, put myself in their shoes, and maybe... work on that fear so I can be a more open, happy, productive person.