#and the worst part is that i see the same happening with neurodivergent characters too

[lukmarc10]

bye there's a whole ass debate in the aroace community rn about whether or not it's "morally correct" to ship alastor from hazbin hotel with other characters and write smut of him bc he's aroace 💀

MY BROTHER IN CHRIST, HE'S LITERALLY JUST A FICTIONAL CHARACTER. SHIPPING HIM WITH OTHER CHARACTERS ISN'T GONNA CHANGE THE CANON IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. GET SOME REAL PROBLEMS.

– sincerely, a repulsed aroace who's tired of yalls bs

[beevean]

And another thing!!!! (My mind is occupied by this topic a lot this morning lol) The people who put those headcanons on the characters only focus on the Fun UwU Quirky parts of being neurodivergent. The amount of times I've seen stories or art of the tremendous drawbacks having such neurodivergencies brings with it can be counted on one hand. It's always the "omg Sonic is so hyperactive he's totes ADHD he likes running and struggles to sit still!!" in a So Cute So Silly So Relatable way, never the "you cannot get anything done despite mentally SCREAMING at yourself to get up and do your tasks, you think everyone in your life can't stand you, you insert your foot in your mouth every time you speak, you can't finish a task to save your life" way. It truly makes me wonder how people who give every single character a Fun Quirky So Silly neurodivergency think, especially when they only focus on the endearing parts.

"If "neurotypicalness" is associated ... can have a personality too." It's exactly this! Why would I want to go around saying I'm straight if everyone immediately declares me a boring bigot because of that? Why would I tell anyone I'm not sure if I'm neurodivergent or neurotypical if the latter will immediately make me come off as someone with zero interests who is a dick to anyone even slightly off what is considered "the norm"? I wouldn't say people stating these things are directly harmful, especially because in real life people simply do not think and act like on Tumblr, but I do firmly believe that it is simply hurtful for people who fall in the 'bad' categories. (But then again, I am also firmly convinced that Tumblr has a general mindset of "They hurt us first so now we get to hurt them back, for justice!!!", completely ignoring they have no idea who the recipients are in their daily life and what they stand for, so...)

Also I was actually thinking the other day of the Sonic Chest Fur theory, and... Sample size of four people. Good job, y'all! I honestly think that claiming that you can give your Forces Avatar chest fur regardless of gender is a more solid claim about how chest fur is not male-exclusive than stating that Sonic is Totes Trans because he lacks it. And also, that argument has never stopped anyone from headcanoning Shadow and Silver as trans.... I'm curious what would happen if you brought up the Sonic Has No Chest Fur argument to state those two cannot be, were it not that I think it'd be equal to throwing a bomb straight into a hornet's nest.

I don't know what else to add, we're on the same page 😂

There is definitely a tendency to cutesify autism and ADHD here. I have neither, so I'd rather not insist too much and leave others to speak out, but even I know that both come with massive challenges. That's why they're called disorders! They don't have to be life-debilitating ofc, they're not curses, but I can imagine how some ND people might be irritated by others, especially fellow NDs, simply ignoring their struggles because they're not appealing. Ngl I'd find a realistic portrayal of Sonic with ADHD much more refreshing than the usual "hehe he's hyperactive he's just like me fr fr <3"

(at least, when I see people headcanon a character as for example having BPD, they do acknowledge the difficulties that come with the disorder)

And yes, I do realize that Tumblr is not real life. Apparently 90% of people here are both ND and LGBT+, the complete opposite of real life. I get it. I don't want to come off as "wanting to be oppressed so bad" or whatever, at this point I'm too old to care. But still, young people are being shaped on Tumblr and especially on its nastier little sibling Twitter, and I don't want teens to internalize that cishet NT people are boring shells of human beings at best and asshole bigots at worst.

Personally I'd sooner headcanon that Shadow and Silver are a different kind of hedgehog compared to Sonic - they both have fur and eye markings, plus a similar eye shape, it's interesting. I also have... opinions on how generally trans Sonic is portrayed, but eh, I think I'm being problematic enough :V

[viovio]

10, 16, 18, 22 dinoverse?

10. worst part of fanon

You cannot belieeeeeve how much misogyny there is about Vanora that they'd make shit up about her.

You'd think reading her thoughts and input as the player character would make people's insight about her line up with canon but the whole thing is that she grows more and more out of player control and into her own choices as the chapters progress. Do not go into the vtsom fic tag worst mistake of my life but also someone had to be at the devil's sacrament.

Like yea she did. in fact. kill Vincent (deserved but also wooooooo my god... it was bound to happen to either of them and at the rate she's going she's gonna keep climbing bodies to get kicked down by Myers.) and manipulate Draco at the end to do the same but calling her abusive WHILE referring to their relationship before is insane I mean neurodivergent. His fixation and disillusionment of her isn't healthy💔

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Chaser Victor and happy family dads vinvic + son Draco for many reasons.

Mira's said this before but because I like Victor to an unhealthy degree (just like him fr) I'm kinda bummed he doesn't have any character outside of Vincent.

Which sort of makes sense within the context of his character and their til-the-end partnership but he's been having problems ingrained into him before RMU for sure. I'd like to see that it's insane I mean neurodivergent how they know each other better than anyone and are still stuck in the past. They're back at square 1 with never moving forward. (What's he gonna do when revenge goes through? Look at himself? no.)

Anyways I'm getting off-topic it creates conflict for sure which I love. If integrated into canon which is the direction it seems to be getting I'm sure dino will write in more for him but the way people write a chaser Victor just feels very ooc. You mean to tell me he would not tell Vincent?

That parts already gotten long so I'll summarize this stupid family shit + my kind little fucked up homonculi weapon who's also my brother and I make into my butler. I don't think they would make good parents so its so sucks when they turn Draco into a baby in fanart stop this madness

18. there should be more of this type of fic/art

ZALMONAAAAAAA ZALMONAS JOURNEY IN PROVING HER INNOCENCE. PLEASE PLEASE YOU'RE NOTHING SHE TALKS ABOUT A COUPLE OF AMUSING INCIDENTS IMAGINE G4S MOST WANTED CRIMINAL TELEPORTS INTO YOUR BATHHOUSE WITH YOUR COCK OUT PLEASEEEEE.

Honestly like who give a shit about the other districts that's something Dino should be writing about can we PLEASE get speculation on how the watch works. Is there a catch? does she get dizzy? What was her detective work like. I wanna replay chapter 3 because she's only had surface level info about Myers from the news so she had to do a lot of digging pleaseeeeee a parallel of her investigation and Vanora at Myers trying to cover stuff up would be so sweet.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Being in the tranches it's same as above where is.where the fuck is Zalmona where is her meanness her brashness. Where is that that never contradicts her kindness, if you reduce her to the strong dumbass trope I'll kill you. I miss my wife Nini.

I wanna say in that same vein would be Vanora but I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of art she gets, maybe it's bcoz of my mutuals but it's nice. Zalmona gets that too but it's not to the same degree tbh. I dontlike most dinoverse fans honestly

[asterekmess]

So, did anyone else notice that Stiles' ADHD disappeared like....a couple episodes into TW? No one mentioned the ADHD. No one mentioned the Adderall. Sure, he was still a hyperactive dweeb. But no one admitted why? Same thing happened with him admitting he had panic attacks for an indeterminate amount of time after his mom died. And when he told malia he had social anxiety, which had never ever been mentioned before then?

I remember feeling SO seen and understood when I first started the show. Stiles had ADHD and they Admitted it. He took medication for it. He was hyper and loud and he hyperfocused for ages on researching werewolves for Scott. And then...nothing. Or, not nothing. But nothing real. He just turned into the same blurry neurodivergent outline that we get everywhere else on television. All the Blatant expressions (hyper, loud, easily distracted, focuses too much on weird things) but with no explanation or understanding of them.

But Tali! What about his pinboard? What about the way he talks and moves and how emotional he is and the way he stims in classes and does research instead of paying attention?

And I see you! But how much of that was intentional? How much of it was just vestiges of Dylan being told that Stiles fidgets and is hyper as a general character trait? Sure, maybe Dylan had Stiles being ADHD in mind while he was acting! But that doesn't mean Stiles was being written as an ADHD character anymore.

No one ever mentions him taking his meds again. Not when he's super sick and can't sleep is S3B. Not when he is checked into a mental institution. Not when he's been kidnapped by Ghost riders and is spending However long locked in a different dimension. Not when he gets wasted! Multiple times!

If you didn't know: People on Adderall are NOT supposed to drink, let alone chug whiskey all night. And Adderall has BAD withdrawal symptoms; shakes, nausea, extreme anxiety, etc etc etc.

We were told at the start that he was ADHD, and then they decided after a few episodes that they didn't need to do anything else. It's been our job since the parent-teacher conference to find any evidence of him being ADHD. To scan his behavior on-screen for familiar stuff to our experiences, and then infer that it was 'meant' to be a symptom.

And on a related note: The ADHD symptoms we DO see are almost all the worst parts? Sure, the hyperfocus is a pretty neutral thing, since they never bothered to show the bit where you forget to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom. But other stuff?

That joke about how much Adderall he'd taken that day *burns* me, especially now that I DO take Adderall. ADHD kids have to fight tooth and nail to get medicated with stimulants, and when we do, it is HELL to keep our prescriptions and get a new bottle every month. Because it IS a stimulant, and it's a controlled substance. Making a joke about someone abusing a medication that they NEED and that they worked like hell to get (and that is Stupidly expensive if we don't have good insurance), is awful.

Especially because, as I've ranted about before, stimulants Don't affect ADHD people the same as non-ADHD people. Our meds tone us DOWN, not wind us UP. It may not have been their intention, but making that joke when Stiles is hyper implies that he's NOT supposed to be on Adderall. A much more accurate joke would be checking to see if he'd taken his meds AT ALL, because he'd be far more excitable and bouncy without them.

His big emotions were accurate in some ways, and then they abused it. They took the idea and the knowledge that ADHD makes you feel like there is a motor running in your head and pushing your body forward and your mouth to talk, and they made Stiles into an asshole. Now, maybe that's just part of his charm. But having him blurt out Constantly Insulting things ("he smells like death" comes to mind, lovely thing to say to someone dying.) and then just....ignore it? Be completely unapologetic about saying horrible or rude things? It paints a terrible picture of us, because it's not WRONG about the first part. We're Impulsive People. We say things that come to mind, often before we've had the chance to think them through, and sometimes what comes out is fucking MEAN.

But we're not fucking jerks. We're not heartless. We feel BAD when we're mean to people without trying. We apologize and we make up for it, and we don't GLOAT about it. They used Stiles being impulsive as an excuse to have him be the biggest fucking jerk sometimes for a morbid laugh, and it felt like a slap to the face.

I was so excited finding an ADHD kid on screen, and I Still love ADHD Stiles and will write him into Everything. But goddamn TW failed me.

[moonlitdiane]

Hello! I moved from my old blog, @dianethus​ to here, you can probably call this a re-intro!

Diane | 18 | Filipino-Chinese | She/They | Pansexual | Scorpio | xNTP | Neurodivergent | Psychology Major | Graphic Designer | Practicing Wiccan

I’ve been trying to write since I was around 12 years old with silly little k-pop and percy jackson fanfics. Even though I cringe now whenever I think about the things I wrote, I still believe it was a necessary phase that all writers have to go through to become better.

I mainly write for the #OwnVoice movement that focuses on the South East Asian experience and especially the experience of being queer in an Asian environment. I aim to give the queers of Asian history whose stories never got to be told a voice. I write to expose the world to Philippine Mythology and the stories passed down from ancestor to ancestor. I also aim to conjure up nostalgic imagery in the readers' minds.

low fantasy. I'm not that really good at world building but I'm in love with the idea of everyday magic.

supernatural.

historical.

angst. I'm SORRY but writing and describing pain is a different kind of joy for me.

found family. I'm gay.

cosmic motifs.

enemies to lovers. oh for someone to see all my worst parts and still fall in love with me. also consider: childhood friends to enemies to lovers.

religious trauma & guilt. I went to a catholic school what did you expect?

The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified.

Evil Is Sexy.

Trapped In Another World. I want to be Isekai-d so bad.

Song Fic. Most of my titles are actually song lyrics or my basic outlines follow the structure of a song.

“Slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl,”

Somewhere In Limasawa Street is a queer historical fiction story set in 1898 when the Philippine-American war is just beyond the horizons and 19 year old mestiza, Lucena Candella is in the middle of a war with herself. Sheltered and painfully aloof, she meets brave but brash, Urduja Kalangitan, who is as emotionally aware as a rock and who happens to be the Revolutionary Army's best gunman—maybe that's what pulled quiet Lucena to her.

Between paper planes, porcelains, and battle scars, Lucena slowly learns to love, and that scared her. It scared her because she wasn't allowed to love that woman with the scarred smile and wild hair.

This is my main WIP and my passion project. I really wanted to write something that I can dedicate to the queers of history, the indigenous and people of color whose queerness is never told.

The title is a reference to Limasawa Street by folk pop band, Ben&Ben, I actually used the album and a few singles as inspiration for the plot. 

WIP Playlist. This story will be unapologetically Filipino.

“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil,”

The Devil’s Choir is a low fantasy story following the adventures of seven unlikely friends who just want to go apeshit and run away from their shitty town. That is until they’re thrown into a you-need-to-save-the-whole-world mess without their written consent. Lucifer and Dionysus show up at their door step, dragging them head first into an abyss that even the Gods refuse to fall into. A war between the golden age and the future, it’s now up to this peculiar gang to save the world from the real threat.

The seven deadly sins but make them moody teenagers. this story has gone through so much revising for years! Found family, enemies to lovers, and unwilling heroes? check.

Unintentionally a copy of American Gods. It was too late until I realized the plot was kind of similar to American Gods. Help. 

WIP Playlist. I smell chaos, don’t you?

“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”

Manila Encounters is a paranormal urban fantasy story unfolding right in the pearl of the orient seas. When the clock strikes 3 AM and the lights of the skyscrapers turn dark—when the city sleeps, the monsters roam free. Deep between the alley ways of Manila city, look out for kids with a certain glow and bite behind their smiles. Look for the ones with sunkissed tans who speak in tongues. Look for the ones whose feet barely dip into murky bay waters and fingertips grazing moonlight. 

A dummy’s guide to Filipino folklore. Manila Encounters was inspired by a hashtag on Twitter of the same name where people wrote their own twist to Filipino urban legends and folk stories.

Oh great, another Percy Jackson rip-off. the main characters are demi-gods or descendants of Gods. Original, I know.

WIP Playlist. driving at midnight sort of vibe.

"You may forget but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us."

And I Love her is a queer romance story about a girl who just recently moved into an old but well maintained cottage in some seaside town in Europe—and she finds in the middle of dusty furniture and underneath cobwebs, a rotary telephone sitting there unused for decades. It rings unexpectedly one day and what greets her is a soft voice belonging to someone who lived 60 years ago.

a dreamnotfound fanfic inspired this. and the South Korean horror film, The Call. 

gay yearning agenda. so much yearning. so much. I’m projecting.

WIP Playlist. My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand, taking mine, but it's been promised to another

A selected list of fics from my AO3 account. It’s gay.

I drowned a long time ago. Sakusa Kiyoomi isn’t in love. He’s devoted. Serial Killer AU.

Maaaring bang magkunwaring akin ka pa? A Tagalog Haikyuu fic based on the movie, Camp Sawi.

Marupok na puso ko. A Tagalog Haikyuu fic where they do the Filipino thing and get drunk.

My good puppy. My first try at writing smut. Jesus Christ.

Be my mistake. Where Kuroo Tetsurou calls up Tsukishima Kei one last time.

Make it hurt. The two times Atsumu Miya saw the entire universe behind Sakusa Kiyoomi’s eyes.

I still have a lot of stories that I hope to finish, I find it hard to discard or erase story ideas. So I hope one day, you can all watch me finish this list.

We Don’t Belong Here / Viva La Filipinas / Luna De Sangre Conspiracy / Lilith and Lysander’s Guide To Immortal Godparents / Lonely Hearts Club / A Lady’s Guide to Princes and Principles / Attack Block / Empty Thrones /  A Double Take / Stupid Cupid / Idle Town / Alice? / The 30 Day Deal / Lost Stars / The Apocalypse Program / Heartstrings  / Disastrously Danae

[transsexualhamlet]

okayokayokay i have like. Q U E S T I O N S because i have *wanted* to read no longer human but have been afraid to SO -

1) what's it like? what do u think of it? im sooo curious 👀

2) do u think that asagiri-sensei based bsd dazai sorta off the book more than off the actual authour? i seem to remember reading that once but i dont remember if it was speculation or not

3) .......just infodump as much as you want, really; im Curious™️ and it looks like ur having fun with the book XD

p.s. - have fun with crime and punishment; thats a book ive DEFINITELY been meaning to read (but i havent had time to yet djfjdjfjf)

AHHHHHHH HI TYSM I WAS HOPING SOMEONE WOULD ASK. I read the entire book in 2 hours before going to bed like four days ago, though it probably wasn't the best time to do it, that shit is nightmare fuel

I'm just gonna preface this with I know basically nothing about the actual author other than what's in the book, also I read the manga version (the junji ito one, yeah) so yeah I'm not sure how much that differs from the original text.

So for how much he based it off of the book vs the actual author, I couldn't really tell you- no longer human is somewhat of an autobiography, so I'd say that those work together. (it's complicated, bc the main character of no longer human is not actually dazai, but dazai is there, and they like??? basically say that that character and dazai are like actually the same person???? and they like, switch places at the end?? its really confusing, but basically, I'm treating the mc of no longer human as dazai himself.) The important stuff about the author that I know of worked into dazai's character is all in no longer human too so,,, yeah. I think saying that it's based more off of that book is probably true, though I don't know what asagiri was thinking.

But about the book itself- Yeah uhhhhhh seriously, I don't really recommend reading no longer human if you have much of a sensitivity to basically anything, especially the graphic novel version because when i say graphic novel i mean Graphic there is so much nudity, sex, s/a, addiction, violence, Mental Illness of all types, religious trauma, obviously suicide, and frankly just visually horrifying stuff

So everything under this is gonna be under a cut just cause Uh Yeah It's A Lot and i do not want to subject everybody to it

But reading it was certainly something I am glad I did, because it did teach me a lot about dazai and how he was created, as well as confirming a lot of theories I had about him that can't be confirmed or denied in bsd canon.

Like me and my friend were just like examining his character and kind of coming up with ideas about him- like we both agreed that he had Motherless Energy TM and that his dad had to have been an absolute fucking piece of shit. Also, we thought that he definitely had to have had A Lot of csa trauma and probably issues having to do with his neurodivergency when he was a child.

Literally all of that ended up being true within the canon of no longer human, so I was kind of impressed that we were so right?? It makes me feel better for thinking a lot of those things, especially since they're just Pretty Fucked Up.

But yeah its. No wonder he turned out that way when he was So Autistic and Masking So Much And So Badly and with absolutely no guidance as how to deal with his neurodivergency other than just fucking let anything anyone wanted happen sooooo he got raped, as a kid, like. A lot. A LOT. And basically ended up thinking that because of this all humans were just horrifying awful monsters and yeahhhhh things pretty much went downhill from there

I don't have a ton of time so you can send me more asks about it lol this is just barely scratching the surface this thing is pretty intense

A lot of other things that I think I can apply to bsd dazai as well, tho they're not gone into that much in the canon:

-This dude is like always fucking drunk or high, cause he just cannot stand being sober that much. He's a serious alcoholic and actually addicted to opioids and I cannot think that much differently about dazai. He's got issues.

but there are a lot of differences between Dazai and the no longer human mc, though there are enough similarities that this is definitely the dude he was based off of.

The main difference is that the no longer human mc is actually just a good guy. He's made a shit ton of stupid fucking mistakes, but he's trying to be a good man and he feels awful for the things he's done, which, I really cannot say Dazai has. Dazai is not a good man, I think everyone knows that. He doesn't really care that much lol

-both of them are like. Weirdly popular with women. Which is hilarious but like, with Dazai he doesn't really take it seriously, and he actually flirts with women. The no longer human guy like. He doesn't hes just like Tragically Attractive and women want to be with him and he has no clue how to say no so he just ends up being a whore bc hes socially useless. It causes a lot of problems bc hes like constantly cheating because of this lol.

-Dazai has a much more poetic view of it all? The no longer human guy is just fucking suffering and hes like why is this happening to me im so awful and i bring misfortune to everyone around me and its not fair and he wants to die and everything but it's not at all in the same way that Dazai does. Dazai acts more like an author than him, in the sense of his "I want a death that is narriatively satisfactory and I want to know the meaning of living by seeing the worst of it and observing how it is to be a human" yeah that's not the same at all. No longer human man really just doesn't understand them and is just. Not having fun

-Also, it's really the thing about Dazai having such an utter lack of religion compared to his original counterpart. Like, the main thing that kept this dude alive for so long was the fact that he had so much religious trauma and was constantly guilty and worried he would go to hell and basically scared of everything. Bsd dazai is like, nearly the opposite, he's the kind of dude who was born and raised atheist, and in the kind of way that he's trying to basically come up with his own meaning of life and religion to follow, whereas the original is struggling to live with one that's been perscribed to him. Both are Very Neurodivergent but it was, handled differently

And yeah i really do have to keep this short, you can totally ask me more and I have a lot more to say but one thing I want to bring attention to is the fact of something they do have in common- their masking. It's a big part of no longer human, about how the mc doesn't understand social customs and what is acceptable or how to talk to people or seriously be happy, so he basically comes up with this "clowning" which is basically, make a fool of himself on purpose all the time so people will never take him seriously or think he's good or smart. That's something dazai completely does, wholeheartedly, and something that fucks him up bad in no longer human. And I think that could be examined a lot more deeply, this dude has issues and so many of them are related to autism. God, I have so many thoughts but aghhhhhhhhhhhhh i hope u enjoy

[agerefandom]

Okay, this is just a silly over-sharing personal post about my experience of kinning and how that feels for me! If I’m going to talk about it on here, I figure I should introduce my… unique experience of it. 

Note: this is a vulnerable post for me, so please don’t make fun of me for my experiences or fandoms! Asking questions is totally okay, and corrections are welcome, but please be patient and give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m doing my best! Also, content warning for passing mentions of depression, insomnia, hallucinations, and flashbacks. The whole thing is a bit of a mental trip, so if you’re prone to unreality problems, I don’t recommend reading this! 

Right! So, what is kinning, or being otherkin or fictionkin?

That’s a really complicated question! The community has expanded a lot in the last few years, and to be honest, the words have kinda lost their meaning. (Some people from the old communities are mad about that, and honestly... I get it.)

I’m not otherkin, so I’m not going to talk about it too much, but it’s the longer-established community (although I’m pretty sure that people have been kinning characters, people, animals, and concepts since the beginning of humans, hit me up for historical examples if you’d like).

Basically, being otherkin is when you identify as something other than human! People have lots of explanations for why this happens: reincarnation, spiritual connections. Others see it as connected to their neurodivergence, and others don’t feel the need to justify their identity as otherkin!

Being fictionkin is really blowing up on the internet right now, and it’s when you identify as a fictional character (ie. Sherlock Holmes). It’s a nebulous concept, and some people are now using ‘kinning’ as a way to say that they just relate to a character, or they find a part of themself expressed in a character. Others identify fully with the character, or have memories from what they believe is a past life or alternate universe where they were that character.

I’m not gonna say that one definition of ‘kinning’ is right and others are wrong, because language is made to evolve, and my own experience is so complicated that I hardly know which side my own experiences fall on! But it’s important to know that both communities exist, and it’s currently hard to tell what a person means by having a character on their ‘kinlist’ (list of characters/things they kin).

My story with kinning, under the ‘read more’. 

When I was a kid, it took me a long time to figure out that other people don’t experience media the same way that I do. They don’t feel sharp pain in their leg when someone on-screen hurts a leg, for example.  

I have over-active empathy: I can tell when someone on the train is feeling anxious, because I start feeling my heart racing. I share this quirk with my mother, who’s a lot better at regulating it. It might be an autism thing, it might be a spiritual thing, lots of people have given theories. But it’s a thing that I experience, and that’s all that matters for the moment.

As one consequence of this hyperempathy, ever since I was a child, I have a tendency to ‘pick up’ characters: the lines between myself and them blur while I watch a movie or read a book, and then I can’t quite unblur those lines when I’m done.

(I jumped off the garage roof when I was six, insisting I was Peter Parker. I sprained an ankle and was banned from Spider-Man content until I was eleven.)

I don’t pick up characters as often anymore: I can go anywhere from four months to two years without the lines of my selfhood getting blurry. When I was a young teen, though, it felt like my head was just full of people who wanted different things, and I couldn’t tell which of them were me, which of them were my parents, and which of them were fictional.

Thank god high school is over.

Anyways, ‘picking up’ characters has always been a struggle for me. It challenges my fashion choices, my favourite activities, my gender identity, and sometimes even my taste in food. It lasts for two weeks to six months, and then I subside back into my ‘natural’ state (which was rapidly changing in my teen years, adding to my confusion).

It made me feel really crazy, because none of my friends had this experience, and I’d never heard anyone else talking about it!

It turns out there is a term for this, it’s called ‘fictionflickers.’ It’s a term for a wide range of experiences, but one of the things it covers is briefly switching to the viewpoint of a fictional character, or a temporary ‘taking on’ of a character. Exactly what I experience! It’s temporary, and kin-adjacent, but it doesn’t technically fall under the umbrella of being fictionkin or otherkin, which are more fixed identities (although some people would argue that).

I am so happy to have a word for this. It makes me feel validated, and like I can actually talk to people about it. And it helps me to deal with it without fear, knowing that I’m not alone in the experience.

But then there’s another category of characters, which only showed up when I read a series called All For The Game (or The Foxhole Court) at age 18.

There’s a character in this series named Andrew Minyard. Immediately, I knew he was ‘mine’ (in a way I often connect to characters that become fictionflickers). His name leapt out at me from the page, I could feel his actions in my body more strongly than the other characters, it almost felt like I could predict his actions.

Anyways, bad things happen to that character. Well, bad things happen to most characters in that series. But Andrew’s plotline hit me hard, twisting my empathy into one big bundle of terribleness. I had nightmares for months, always in his body, and all throughout it, there was this terrible feeling that I was forgetting something.

I put it down to being a really bad fictionflicker (although I didn’t have the term yet, I called it ‘picking up characters,’ and I knew it was a reoccurring experience). But it was weird: there was no real shift in my personality or tastes, aside from a severe drop in mood because of the nightmares and insomnia. It wasn’t like a fictionflicker at all, aside from the fact that I couldn’t get this character out of my head.

Eventually, the nightmares started bleeding over into my days in the form of vivid flashbacks and… I stopped fighting what I’d been too scared to admit to myself. They were memories. They weren’t my memories, they were Andrew’s memories, but they were in my head, and I was dealing with the consequences.

Everything got easier when I recognized that. It felt right to process them as memories, rather than hallucinations, which I had been thinking of them as. This change in thinking made a huge difference, although I couldn’t tell you why, and the nightmares finally stopped.

But still, what were someone else’s memories doing in my head? Surely that was weirder than hallucinations?

And that’s when I found the kin community, and threw myself in headfirst.

Memories are one of the key differences between ‘I relate to a character’ kinning and ‘I am this character’ kinning. There are tons of other people with character-memories!!! I’ve quizzed dozens of (very patient and kind) people who share this experience, and heard dozens of theories about why it happens.

I don’t really have a personal theory, to be honest. It’s weird, and it’s happening, and I’m still not quite sure what to do about it, if anything. Mostly, I just try and be more open about it, when I can be. It’s still such a strange and unusual experience, and I get nervous explaining it to people, but it helps to talk about it. Especially when memories or new characters are bothering me, and I need help to separate myself from them.

Sometimes the line between ‘fictionflicker’ and ‘kinning’ is hard for me to find. The vivid thoughts and cravings that come with my fictionflickers occasionally cross into memories, and it’s really only time that will tell whether a character is a permanent part of me, or a temporary identification.

Anyways, here’s a list of my permanent kins, and my more recent or significant fictionflickers! I would never tell anyone about these without all the context you just read, but I think you can understand me well enough not to judge them too harshly now. 

Here’s the picrew I used to make most of the images! 

--

Kins (and memories)

Andrew Minyard (Foxhole Court: mainly childhood memories: no memories of the book era, some pre-novel Palmetto memories)

Dirk Strider (Homestuck: non-game universe: caregiver splinter in a mess of a headspace with lots of folks around)

Holden Caulfield (Catcher In The Rye: hospital memories, and not much else)

Spiral (Magnus Archives: pre-Michael era, blurry memories, how it felt to be a labyrinth)

--

Fictionflickers (age 16-22, not in chronological order)

Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls: two months: had some very confusing times thinking I had one eye. Enjoyed the music taste.)

Wade Wilson (Marvel: twelve months: helped me get all the voices in line when I was a teen. Also, made me feel better about the eczema that used to cover my face and shoulders. A reoccurring fictionflicker every few years.)

Mae Borowski (Night In The Woods: one month: on the line of kin and fictionflicker. I miss her mother terribly. Doesn’t mix well with my fear of heights, since I want to climb everything. I get weird dreams as Mae, but I often get weird dreams.)

Alexander Hamilton (Hamilton: six months: worst fictionflicker ever, I didn’t sleep a solid night for months but I did get straight As and met the Prime Minister. Long story.)

Rick Sanchez (Rick and Morty: two months: absolutely terrible person to have in your head. I wrote some songs, stayed up late, and dressed defensively feminine. I usually refuse to admit that I have memories from a version of him, because I’m not putting that name on my proper kinlist.)

Kevin (Welcome To Night Vale: ?one month?: another kin/fictionflicker blurry line. He makes my mouth hurt when I listen to his episodes. He was bringing up my Spiral memories before The Magnus Archives ever came out.)

Courfeyrac (Les Miserables: four months: brilliant era. Had so much energy. Joined a political group on campus, made donuts for people, and generally had a good time. Dated too many of my friends, though.)

[comicreliefmorlock]

A Reader’s Guide to Writing: Lesson #2

I... expect to get shot for this. 

-sighs and puts on a helmet- Body shots, fine, but I’m trying to avoid taking a headshot for what I’m about to say. 

The Constant Reader... does not give a fuck about flat, cardboard-cutout “representation.” We just don’t. In fact, it’s downright insulting to your Readers to assume that labeling your character “insert woke points here” will automatically endear them to us. 

(...god I’m going to get in so much trouble for this...)

When I see a book described as “it has two lesbians in it!” or “these characters are transgender!” my immediate and automatic thought is “...okay, but what is the story about? will I give a fuck about these characters?”

And that, right there, is something that can actually carry a weak plot (to a Reader’s mind) or absolutely drag a good plot into “well, I might as well finish reading it.”

Do I give a fuck about your characters?

Now this does not mean your character has to be Wholly Unproblematic or an Adorable Cinnamon Roll, Too Good, Too Pure for This World. 

What it means is “do I respond to your character like they’re fleshed out well enough for my brain to read them as a person?”

For Comparison-- Two Characters:

Here’s an example of what is honestly a really well-written character (in a... very... ugh, look, the pervasive racism makes it terrible to read now and I just kind of wince and groan at it and wince even harder knowing how well it was received) because the character has caused Emotion in a Reader.

Scarlett Fucking O’Hara.

I hate her. I’m not even kidding, I just hate this self-absorbed bitch. She drives me nuts. I’d love to yeet her off a literary cliff and watch her drown. 

...but I consider her a well-written character because she inspires emotion. I react to her. I legitimately read a page of “Gone With the Wind” (*again, I know, I’m sorry, the book’s slimy feel of ‘but... slavery was good!’ is just... horrific) and I want to grab the nearest heavy object and slam it onto her empty skull. She has obvious flaws--and they’re explicitly spelled out in the text--and those flaws totally fuck up her life. Scarlett doesn’t get what she wants because she is her own worst enemy in a lot of ways. And watching her make decisions based on what She Wants and then dealing with the aftermath feels legitimate. It feels pretty real to watch someone make a decision based on a want only to see them struggle with the result OF that decision. Not to mention the moment of realization that came too late, as let’s be fair, hindsight is 20/20 and a lot of us have had that ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhh...’ moment ourselves. 

What Scarlett has a lot of, however, is Emotion. And I don’t mean she has a lot of emotionally wrenching scenes. What I mean is Scarlett is actively driven by or affected by An Emotion at nearly every part of her story, even when that Emotion is just some self-absorbed Glee at how she’s gonna one-up this whole town.

Let me compare my reactions to Miss “I’m So Self-Absorbed I Should Be Taxonomically Classified As A Sponge” O’Hara to a character that I... honestly couldn’t give less than a fuck about, despite having read six whole books she’s the main protagonist of. 

Ayla of “Clan of the Cave Bears” Jean Auel fame. 

In the first novel, Ayla is... actually kind of interesting. A Homo Sapien child found by Neanderthals and raised in their society, there’s a bit that can be read into just how hard it is to fit into a culture and how sometimes that involves more self-repression than is mentally healthy. And in the second novel, “Valley of the Horses,” all the parts with Ayla before her Male Perfection Love Interest shows up are also fairly interesting.

She’s alone, she’s fighting to survive with only her hard-earned skills to carry her. It’s great!

And then... Jondalar arrives and we see her through His Eyes. 

I’m not sure exactly what happened here other than the novels (and Ayla) turn into a constant Display Of How Amazing Ayla Is. Everyone loves her! (And the people that don’t are Obviously Flawed and So Empty Inside.) She can do anything! She invents the needle! Horseback riding! Domesticating dogs! The travois! She’s drop-dead gorgeous, an accomplished healer, wants only to be a Good Wife (it’s a little icky, but considering the time period these books are set in, I give it a pass on that) and is always so confused as to why people seem amazed by her. 

She becomes basically a Perfect Woman and to be honest, all her struggles after that just feel like they’re directly tied to how Perfect She Is. Ayla suddenly doesn’t have An Emotion behind her. She’s just a vessel for everyone’s awe that such a “perfect woman” exists. And it just... turns her completely fuckin’ flat.

What I’ve found after doing a LOT of reading is that a Writer should keep one big thing in mind.

(And this goes triple for stories that tote themselves on the representation platform.)

Emotion--the experience of it, the sharing of it, the looking for validation of it--is one of those defining things that make what we’d call the Human Experience.

People who are looking for representation in media are looking for actual representation. For a Person like them on the screen or page. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager struggling with a realization of sexuality, but you can ask people who do. And you can relate YOURSELF to that on some level. 

Everyone in the world has had a moment where they’re trying to reconcile something about themselves with what the world expects or with what they expect from themselves. You can take that seed, that memory of sitting in your bedroom and listening to the same song on repeat while thinking wistful thoughts of what life could be like if This Was Different or imagining a future where What You Want is accessible, acceptable and within reach. You can find the Emotion and appeal to it.

I know that the experience of being gay or disabled or neurodivergent or trans or a minority is not universal; everyone has a different life, different experiences, different fears, worries, hopes, dreams. 

And I say this in full awareness that someone could very rightly be angry at me for paring off societal issues and cultural problems to make this accessible to writers who may want to write a specific character FIRST and THEN find sensitivity readers to help them refine it*. 

There’s a “but” to the whole “different life” thing. 

Humans have felt the basic range of emotion across the board, across the world, across time, regardless of where or when or who they are. And a Character that makes you Feel is a character that you can give a fuck about. Pare off the labels and start with the tinest, most concentrated idea of who this person is so you can find their emotions to use in the story. Are they a dreamer? A fighter? A creator? An explorer? What Emotion drives them? Hope? Curiosity? Anger? Sorrow? 

Because I personally have seen myself in characters that I have absolutely no surface experience in common with whatsoever, but I responded to the Emotion that drove them because I recognized it. I’d felt it. Maybe what created the Emotion was different (wildly so!) from what created it for me, but I had the Emotion. The character is having the Emotion. 

And that makes me give a fuck about the outcome of their story, whether the personality carrying the Emotion makes me want to cut a bitch (fuck you Scarlett) or see them succeed in every aspect of life.

[*You will want sensitivity readers to refine the character because representation should actually represent and not be A Writer Getting Woke Points.]

[wolfenm]

Death of the Endless + Dia de los Muertos?

First, some explanation. I am pagan and celebrate Samhain, a Celtic festival where the final harvest was brought in, with remnants left in the fields for the Faer Folk. It was believed that veil between the mortal world and that of the supernatural is thinnest at this time of year. People would set places for their dead family at their dinner table, carve turnips to ward off evil, and dress as monsters and spirits when travelling at night, in the hopes of tricking the true monsters and spirits. Later, the Catholic Church created Allhallow's Eve, with November 1st being All Saints' Day, and November 2nd being All Souls' Day. At one point, people would go door to door dressed up, begging for food and wine in exchange for performances -- tricks -- and blessings (a practice known as "going a-souling" / "performing souling plays"). Obviously these are all predecessors of Hallowe'en. When the Spanish came to the Americas, they brought All Saints Day / All Souls Day with them, and these traditions got merged with the death-related traditions of the indigenous peoples, into something new: Dia de Los Muertos.

I am not Hispanic, but I have a deep love of Dia de Los Muertos (which admittedly started with the game Grim Fandango, my first exposure to the holiday, about 20 years ago; it was leant to me by a Latinx friend). I understand that it is not "Mexican Hallowe'en", but it does seem to have at least a little roots in Samhain, and both holidays involve being reunited with loved ones that have passed on. And really, while I do still love Samhain, I find Dia de Los Muertos to be a better celebration of that nature, so bright and colourful and VIBRANT, and better at expressing the lesson of keeping the dead alive through memory. This year, both holidays are extra-important to me, as I lost my mother this April, which is the worst thing that's ever happened to me; six months later, I feel as lost as I did that day. (Thing is, my mom seemed to be neurodivergent, and people even remarked that it was like I was the mom and she was the daughter, so in some ways, I feel kinda more like I lost a child more than that I lost a parent. Either way, it still doesn't seem real)

Full disclosure, yes, I have Dia de los Muertos-themed art in my home, next to my Samhain / Hallowe'en display. Coco and The Book of Life are amongst my favorite movies, Grim Fandango is still one of my fave games, and I love the book Cemetery Boys (which takes place during the holiday and strongly involves it; it's also a great queer narrative, by the by).

So for years now, I have wanted to do Sugar Skull makeup inspired by Death, of The Endless, a character in @neil-gaiman 's comic book series The Sandman who is, to me, a pretty perfect personification of the concept of Death. (And writing a fanfic about her led to my work with Sequential Tart, so she's important to me in that way, too.) She and La Catrina are both positive associations with Death; they are both guides and protectors for those taking the next step in one's existence, rather than depicted as scary.

But being a white person, and seeing many Latinx people speak of their hurt at seeing white people indulge in the same culture they've been harassed for, and knowing the ugly treatment my country has inflicted upon Latinx people (particularly in recent years), I have ignored the impulse. Regardless of where my intent falls on the spectrum of cultural sharing vs cultural appropriation (I'd mean it out of respect, and don't see it as a costume, but I can certainly see how others would feel otherwise), or of the fact that the holiday is very likely linked to another one that IS part of my culture, or of the fact that other Latinx people have said they actually welcome seeing non-Latinx people in such make-up (no culture is a monolith of feeling or perception) ... I decided that only when and if I am ever invited to a celebration held by a Latinx person who has expressly said to come in Sugar Skull make-up, will I do so. (This is a personal decision; I'm not trying to suggest otherwise is wrong. I might even do it for my personal satisfaction at some point -- just not for public consumption.) I've been tempted to DRAW her, but I'm not sure that would welcome / not hurtful either.

So what is this post for? Well, maybe I will never GET such an invitation, so I'm putting the idea out there into the universe: perhaps some Latinx person would like to do -- or already has done -- Death of the Endless Sugar Skull make-up or art? I would dearly love to see it!!!

In the meantime, I want to say that the holiday and the character have been helping me through a very difficult time, and I am all the more thankful for having been introduced to both.

(Please note, this is not mean to start a debate on what is and isn't cultural appropriation. I have made my choice, after careful deliberation of arguments on both sides. You do you.)

[leonawriter]

Dazai, Surprises, and things Not Going To Plan

Aight I’m gonna do this. I’ve seen a lot of times people go “I think Dazai should fail at least once and know what it’s like to not have his plans succeed, because he’s way to headstrong and cocky about all that.”

Thing is, there’s two major points against this hot take:

One - what we can see from looking at the series as a whole, is that Dazai has had plans fall through more times than we’re probably aware of. This includes times when he has been able to fix the plan to make the situation succeed anyway, as well as times when he has failed entirely and completely.

Two - what we know of Dazai as a character, both by looking at the series as evidence, as well as looking at things Asagiri has said, and things that come up in the light novels. As well, an important source is the original, real life author “Dazai Osamu” himself, as the BSD character was based on him.

Both of these points feed into each other.

Okay. So. With that in mind, I’m going to start off with an easy one, which appeared first in manga chapter 24. And yes, for most main series things, I will be referring to the manga rather than the anime, since to me the manga is a more accurate portrayal of the characters and events.

[img: Atsushi saying “Oh no... then, is there any way to turn the tide, Dazai-san?” and Dazai responding, his mouth full, with three fingers up, “Sure, about this many, I think.”]

[img: Atsushi saying  “Three?” while looking shocked. Dazai says “No? I meant three hundred.” while having a peculiar expression caught somewhere between very intense and staring into the middle distance. Atsushi’s reaction to this is very shocked, exclaiming “Three hundred?!” inset into the same panel.]

See, what I mean by sharing this specifically is that Dazai doesn’t just predict one scenario and assume things are all going to go according to plan. He looks at the information available to him and thinks something along the lines of “what are the many various things that people might do, in these sorts of situations? Knowing these people as I do, what should I expect of them?” and because he’s just so damn smart, and people tend to act in specific types of patterns, he’s usually correct and one of of his plans works, whether that’s plan number one or plan number two hundred and thirteen.

This tells us several things, and not just that Dazai is smart.

It tells us that Dazai plans for all possibilities, accepting that things are going to happen that would be out of his control.

It tells us that Dazai isn’t a perfect plan-and-manipulate kind of person; if he was, he’d only have one plan and people would fall in line with it.

It also suggests something else - something we see both in the real life author, and in various other times during the series. It suggests that Dazai has anxiety issues, because “plans out the same thing over and over and over again” isn’t  the sort of thing that someone who’s confident in their planning skills would do. It’s something you tend to do more if you’re anxious (and/or bored, which Dazai is too).

We can see him having anxiety issues easily when we know that the real life Dazai’s life was full of references to this. I also have read about the man and read some of his works and as an autistic/adhd individual who was undiagnosed for over twenty years, a lot of the way he talks about himself feels familiar, so yes, I do see him as having that to contend with as well, and find it easy to believe that BSD Dazai is at the very least ADHD. The specifics are for individual research or another post, but in short: rejection sensitive dysphoria, hyperfocus or no focus, sense of time is out of whack, inability to regulate serotonin (the happy stuff). A lot of that results in - especially due to how society treats neurodivergent people - anxiety and depression. Given I see both Dazai as having the same thing at least in this case? And every time I’ve read a new thing about ADHD I go “oh, hey, that’s both me and (BSD) Dazai”? I’d say it’s relevant.

This neatly leads in to the next point-

Dazai has had plans completely fail in the past. In fact, one could say that they fuzzed up. (See what I did there?)

Dazai has also been surprised and undermined and people have acted against his assumptions since he was fifteen or even younger than that. He also hasn’t always had this in any of his plans.

When in the start of the Fifteen novel, he asks Mori why he hadn’t just killed him when he had the chance, and why he doesn’t still do so. Why he won’t just let Dazai commit suicide. As we see Dazai through Mori, we know that the reason for this is because Mori is a lonely person, and currently at this point feels that the only person who is fully in the same boat as him and who can understand him is Dazai - but for Dazai himself, this is something he hadn’t planned for! It doesn’t make sense to him!

We also see him surprised again later in the same storyline, when Chuuya says “Arahabaki is me.” Dazai had anticipated many things, but that was not one of them.

Likewise, when he was sixteen, I believe that when Dazai went out to get captured on purpose, he anticipated that he would be - but not exactly how. In the prologue to the movie we see him being shocked at the extent of the damage used to cover up what would end up being his capture.

And in the Dark Era novel... there are things that he anticipates (Ango’s status as a spy, from the moment he saw the wet/not wet things in his bag), and things he really doesn’t.

At this point, I find it important to point out that whenever I think of that series of events, a key moment that was changed in the anime was how in the novel, Dazai was the one who put Odasaku’s kids in the mafia’s protection. Think about that. Dazai trusted that his authority as an executive would be enough to ensure that these children would be safe. He never once predicted that Mori might sell them out in order to use Odasaku. I still believe that it wasn’t just the way Mori used Odasaku himself as a chess piece, but also broke Dazai’s trust, that caused him to hate Mori in the present day. 

Because if you think about it in these terms, and this is very relevant to the topic here, Dazai would see things in this way: “If I had protected those kids better, or handed them over to someone who had no connections to the mafia at all, then they might still be alive, and so might Odasaku.”

Thought about that way, the idea of “Dazai needs one of his plans to fail in order to be made humble/to be able to see himself as part of the group” seems unnecessary and actually quite cruel. 

He HAS had his plans fail in the past. Plans failing means people close to him dying, and him being the one responsible, because he orchestrated at least some of the events that led to their death/s.

Dazai’s reaction to his plans failing and to losing someone back then was to lose his cool and to admit that he doesn’t know what to do. Perhaps it’s necessary to point out that he may have grown older by four years, but he most likely doesn't know what he’s doing now all that much more than he did at eighteen. It’s by going through the events of canon that he starts to understand himself more.

Going back to the canon references in the manga, the continuation of that scene above has Dazai accept that things always change, and don’t stay static;

“Bu then, Atsushi-kun, the situation in war is never fixed. Even a sure-win strategy could turn into a bad move due to a slight change in situation. That’s why having intelligence is so important.”

So, as said before - he takes what he knows, compiles the data, and comes out with scenarios that could work, but doesn’t stake everything on any one plan. 

In short, one of my ideas is that one of his superpowers is being able to bluff and make things up on the fly, but make people believe he wanted things to go that way all along.

Following on from that, we have a couple more moments in the following chapters that also have “shocked Dazai, experiencing something unexpected.”

This is right when Higuchi is reciting Mori’s offer of allowing him back to his old position. He had previously just stated that there were “too many possibilities” for what Mori might want to say to him - none were the suggestion of taking him back.

I’ve seen a few fics and meta go with the idea that Dazai truly doesn’t care which side he’s on, aside from the promise he made to his friend. That nothing is keeping him from “going back.”

I don’t think that’s true, because just looking at this face, where he’s had no opportunity to prepare himself for what is about to be said, Dazai looks distressed. 

The mafia was where he spent the worst years of his life - and I’m not saying it’s the worst place for absolutely everyone (hot take: I feel like it’s the best place for some people, like Chuuya) but that it’s where Dazai was at his worst. Even if they had tried - and been able - to help him more, it’s likely that having moved on from that point, certain things from his past might even be triggers for flashbacks and bad depressive periods, and periods of self-doubt. This would also explain why he would have actively avoided people who he would otherwise have had nothing against.

He goes from this, to then being told that Q - who is an entire flashback in himself - is released.

[img: Dazai’s shocked face with Higuchi stating “The Boss.. has released “Q” from [their] confinement.”]

Tellingly, Dazai’s immediate response after this? Is to say “As if he’d do that.” He disbelieves what he’s just heard because it makes no sense to him. It doesn’t seem like the logical kind of thing that the Mori he knew would do.

This is important for the entire point of this post - the entire several chapters here, the episode, the conversation Dazai has here. It’s full of him explaining himself, how he works, and being surprised. Of people doing things that Dazai doesn’t expect. Things happening that take his 300 plans he’d had and make him later go for one of the riskier ones.

Because he then, after being assured that this is no joke, explains what Q is capable of. And only once he says that since they’ve been warned, they [the ADA] can plan accordingly, does he realise that when they’d said they’d come “for his protection” that this is what they meant. That he was already too late.

Again: think on that. 

Another time that Dazai’s plans have been interrupted with something so entirely dangerous and unexpected, and he nearly loses people again. 

I’m not joking - re-read or re-watch these scenes, and you’ll see that Dazai absolutely freaks out, going wide-eyed and running straight back to where Atsushi is, and I think I’m right in saying that it’s one of the few times in the entire series that we actually see him shout.

[img: Dazai, panicked and shouting for Atsushi, saying “Stop it, Atsushi-kun! Look carefully!”, the actual speech bubble cropped out.]

If Dazai hadn’t realised that Q was already there by that point, then the girls might have died. Atsushi would have been lost to his own despair of having killed his new coworkers, and feeling like he would never be forgiven, could never be. 

We see how he places so much faith and potential on Atsushi, no just seeing him in a way as an extension of some of what Odasaku told him, but also for how Atsushi might help and change Akutagawa, who he had been unable to (another person’s meta points out the whys of this quite well). Losing Atsushi like this would have been heartbreaking for him, even if he didn’t die.

For someone who can make three hundred different plans with what information is available at least, coming that close to losing someone who is important to him is almost as bad as having lost them. The scenarios might as well go through his head when he’s trying to sleep, telling him if you hadn’t been there in time, then he would be dead. Or worse.

Another point to make her in relation to this is actually not coming from Dazai himself, but someone who I think is meant as a foil to him, in terms of intelligence and how they deal with it: Ranpo.

In chapter 56, which hasn’t been animated yet, in order to catch the criminal Ranpo uses underhanded tactics, as his own people (for him, his family) are at stake. In one page he states; 

“I knew it from the start. A regular person can’t beat a special ability. Nevertheless, I will defeat you. Because - my comrades think I’m invincible.”

We then see him go from being surrounded by his friends and family in the ADA, to being alone, with the others being silhouettes behind him, out of focus.

I firmly believe that this is the same - or similar enough - for Dazai. He is, outside of his ability nullification, using his intelligence in the same way Ranpo is. He won’t let himself lose to anyone, not because he’s always so powerful that it’s easy for him, but because he can’t afford to.

The end of the chapter with him facing off against Q after Q had affected Atsushi has Dazai say “even I can’t afford not to play dirty” and in dealing with this particular criminal, Ranpo himself says something very similar, that he will let himself become like a demon if it means protecting the Agency. In this, I think that they’re very similar people.

In short: 

Dazai needs to be brought closer to the people he should be able to trust (the ADA, Chuuya, Ango) by allowing himself to believe that they won’t judge him. Every time that he relies on someone else is a step forward with this. Every time his plans fail, he falls further into anxiety and the fear of being responsible for things going wrong, and people placing the blame on him, as he was the one to make the plans in the first place.

Perhaps to other people it might seem strange to see me say this, but I believe that Dazai needs to be weaned into the idea that people appreciate his presence before he can allow himself to fail in small ways. He needs to be able to accept that people like him before he can see failure as anything other than potentially catastrophic. And he needs to accept that people won’t blame him. Which will take a long time - both because of his past, and because if I’m right and he’s got ADHD, then the rejection sensitive dysphoria is always going to be there.

[cosmicaces]

it’s. it’s something when the game you’ve sunk almost 1900 hours has one more surprise for you. i’ve replayed the prologue so many times, and, on the game’s final day, only just now have i discovered that you could interact with this poster

i may be a writer, but i’m not necessarily good with words. battleborn has had a significant impact on my life, for better and for worse. while gigantic is my special interest as well as the way i met my partner, battleborn was, well, the start, i suppose you could say.

when this game came out on may 3rd, 2016, i was in a real bad spot. my parents relationship had, well, gone south. the process of divorce began in november 2015, and my dad was using me to vent, spouting horrible, awful things to me, lies, blames, contradictions, those sorts of things. i started off 2016 feeling pretty suicidal because of it, leading into a downspiral of self-deprecation that worsened in april. see, my dad had decided to move us back into our shitty down, back on our shitty street, into a shitty house down the street that was small, cramped, and infested with centipedes. my sisters and i, we didn’t want to move, but we had no choice in the matter.

it was at the start of may, the start of going back into that school i despised that i learned about battleborn. i saw the opening cinematic on twitter, and i was in awe, starstruck. this game was a light in the darkness that had made itself so prominent, and when the game had gone on sale, where others laughed and pointed fingers i was ecstatic because that meant i could get it.

my laptop ran this game on the barest of minimum requirements, but it ran. low graphics? bad frames? it didn’t matter to me so long as i could play. i started with orendi. of the starter characters, i thought she was the most interesting, both visual and kit-wise. i played her until the renegade, where i got stuck. it’s embarrassing to admit, honestly, but because of my failures i unlocked shayne and aurox, who i immediately adored. they were witty, snappy, playful, and i loved the energy they brought. as a matter of fact, i played them throughout the rest of story. there’s a simple reason for that though: i just wanted to play mellka.

mellka stood out to me the moment i saw her in the cinematic. looking back on it now, i realize that it was the first step to me realizing that i wasn’t aromantic, but a lesbian (it wouldn’t be until 2020 that i realize that i was demiromantic as well, but nevermind that). she was really cool, to say the least, and god was she pretty! i wanted to play her immediately, but to unlock her you had to beat the heliophage on normal. this meant that i wanted to get through the story as soon as possible. the moment i completed that final mission, well, the rest was history.

i played mellka nonstop, constantly replaying the story and working on her lore challenges. i had almost finished them...until i ran into a bit of a hurdle. see, to get the last challenge, i needed to play with a ghalt. problem was...i didn’t have any friends with the game, hell, i hardly had friends at all. i was terribly shy, and the thought of having to ask strangers for help was terrifying. desperation to complete the challenge won, though, and that ask for help genuinely changed my life forever.

for the first time, i had sought out a discord server and joined a discord server, joined a place with complete strangers and battled through discomfort and fear and soon found my place, feeling comfortable and excited. i was socializing, and my energy knew no bounds. of course, being an 15-16 yr old with unrealized neurodivergency who had minimal knowledge of talking to people would later come back to bite, and now, haunt me, but social consequences had no thought in my mind at the time. i had done what i thought was impossible for me, and that did lead to a positive change. and, y’know, that energy did lead to some good things.

my memories of battleborn are very fond. some of them are tainted now, but stains can only cover so many feelings. feelings of fun, of bonding, of just...not being alone. i never realized how alone i was. as i was playing through each mission, i was just...catapulted with emotions. so many flashbacks of playing through missions, various divergencies of which characters we were, of who was there, of laughs, jokes, frustrations, all of these things. it made me want to smile. it almost made me burst into tears.

it’s not something i’ve talked about publicly, and i’ll scarcely go into detail about what happened, but...man, it’s hard to admit but it’s also because of battleborn that i’ve developed some pretty bad social trauma. it’s...hard, and weird, y’know? like...i wasn’t able to play the game for months after it happened. looking at the game just wanted to make me cry. that situation left me with...so much anger, sadness, and anxiety. hell, i still get angry about it, thinking about the way i was treated, about how i was the youngest person involved but i tried to make things right. i used to think i didn’t handle it in the right way, but i’m older now, and i can say that yeah, i did my fucking best. i think about those people, of course i still think about them. i can’t help but wonder, do they think about me too? do they have any idea how it’s permanently affected the way i grow with people? that i’m so fearful of being annoying, overstepping a boundary, of being lied to, of asking for honestly and being met with 0 response, given no chance to try and make things better? the answers clearly no. i know i’m the only one who still dwells on it, and i feel like they’d laugh at me for it. if they somehow read this, well...cool. won’t bring me any peace. please don’t ask me about it, either

its...not something that feels right to include with a post that’s essentially a memento, but...it’s important, and it did affect how i felt towards the community. i’d see people refer to the battlefam, but...i never felt apart of it anymore. i became all too aware of how my youth affected being apart of a community with adults, and it felt so...less welcoming after that. it’s a shame, really

thanks to that situation, though, i was able to grow closer with two people, my friends viv (@/brokenandazure) and ghost (ghostbones). viv really helped me come to terms with some of my emotions, and i’ll forever be grateful for that. they helped me be outgoing, helped me feel more confident in playing pvp, and is still an inspiration to me with how they can play games and just...be fine and not get frustrated.

i’ve a bit to say about ghost. so, remember how i said how that energy did lead to some good things? well, ghost is one of those good things. i met them through youtube. there had been a link shared on tumblr to their video about alani, and being the only channel who was posting about battleborn, i gave them a follow. still riding off that socialization high, i found myself commenting on all of their videos. they were enjoyable to watch! they’re funny, kind, and they say some pretty insightful stuff! honestly, seeing them upload anything new was a highlight of my day. battleborn brought us closer, and, y’know, they’re kinda like an older sibling to me. they were there for me in some REALLY rough times, and when i say rough i mean rough, and i’ll forever be grateful for that. sometimes i look at payday 2 and wonder if i should reinstall it, just to have another thing to do with them. we’re still pretty close, and we play apex together! they do have to deal with me being a complete sap towards pin though ehehe <3

speaking of pin, well...honestly, while we met through gig, it really is thanks to battleborn that i met her. battleborn helped me learn how to socialize, and it’s through socializing and wanting to find people to talk to about the same interests is how i met pin. i’m...really appreciative of that. my relationship with pin is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. if you read this, dear, i love you <3

as abrupt as it feels, this post does need to have an ending. replaying through the story felt so...nice. i went from playing it in 2016 with the lowest settings possible to playing it in 2021 with the best settings possible. i never thought id actually be able to see the game in its best form but...i did! and it was like playing it for the first time all over again. sort of. close enough. i think the best part of it was playing through the heliophage without any lag. y’know, i didn’t skip that ending cutscene this time, and, let me tell you, it hit a helluva lot different. i mean, asides from the “game is being permanently shutdown” thing, but the line “may our battle never end”. now, that’s a line that just sticks with you. for the worst thing about my final playthrough, well...it hurt, talking about the dumb shit i’d do. about breaking the map with mellka, of lore squads, of gags, and just...not being able to do anything like that again. it really hurts, but...i’ve found my peace with it. i think. well, it’ll have to do.

in the end, it is because of battleborn that i love, that i know im loved. this game really was something special, and it’s a shame that people never gave it a chance. i’m glad i did. and, in the end, it gave me one final surprise.

thank you, battleborn, for everything <3

[xianglingslesbian]

okay so since it’s izuki’s birthday let’s... analyse his character songs and what they say about him! i’ve been wanting to do this post for awhile, and what better day than today?

(shut up, i am not obsessed)

(okay maybe i’m a little obsessed but i mean LOOK AT HIM)

first up is kitakore which you can listen to here!! kitakore is really just a fun hammy song with tons of puns (literally. every line is a pun. it can feel like a punch to the gut. kitakore!). BUT there are still a couple of impactful lines!

Uzagararete mo yamerarenai (English: Even if I get on your nerves, I can’t stop)

i honestly think that this line attests to izuki being neurodivergent in some way. as the amazing Timb @natureismynature​ expanded on in her fic (which you can read here), izuki’s puns could be a form of verbal stimming that helps calm him down. it’s one of my favourite headcanons that he’s autistic and/or ADHD (the latter being projection, tbh), because yay for neurodivergent characters~

kitakore is sung with a quick tempo and a peppy beat, which adds to the whole relaxed vibe of the song. this is something you could sit and listen to while chilling on the beach, or while scrolling through memes on your phone. it also showcases the VA’s ability to bring out the light edge that’s ever-present in dear izuki’s voice!! nojima’s voice is strong and clear throughout, never faltering as he rattles off pun after pun in time with the music. really perfect for izuki and his love of dajare!

next we have tatta hitotsu no hibi which you can listen to here and. oh. this song really hits you in the meow meow after the playful 2010s boy band sound of kitakore. GOD it just says so much about the kind of person izuki is???

Betsu ni fukan shitai wake ja nai sa / yoyuu mo nai Onaji kurai tomadou kedo / Aah~ (English: It’s not that I want a bird’s-eye view / I don’t have any time to spare But that means I might lose my way in equal measure / Aah~)

izuki’s eyes see too much, sometimes. but if he didn’t have them, he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rest - even with how much he practices - and that HURTS. 

Hagayusa ha tokidoki / mawari mo makikonde Atarashii chikara wo umidasu (English: There were times I got everyone else caught up in my impatience As I tried to invent new strength in myself)

he’s constantly trying to find something, anything, just to stay on the others’ level. and sometimes he pushes too hard and goes too far but... to him, in the end, all that matters is flying to the top with seirin. he doesn’t want to be a burden - in izuki’s eyes, to be a burden to seirin is the worst imaginable thing.

Itsuka nanimokamo ga omoidebanashi ni natte Natsukashii oretachi ga iru ne Ureshikatta koto bakari ja naku tatte Hoka ni ha kangaerarenai / tatta hitotsu no hibi datta Sou omoeru ki ga suru / ima no zutto mirai de (English: Someday, all of this will be nothing but memories And there we’ll be, fondly reminiscing about them They might not all be happy memories But I can’t imagine them any other way / those irreplaceable days I have a feeling that’s what I’ll think, someday way off in the future)  

this. just... the sheer fucking wisdom of this...??? keep in mind this kid is literally 17. but these lines so highlight the aspects of izuki’s personality that i love most - his unerring resilience and his ability to look towards the future without wanting to be stuck in the past or present - something i struggle a LOT with. izuki’s always got his head raised, never down, and that’s gorgeous.

tatta hitotsu is very different from kitakore in terms of sound, tempo and range. it’s sung at a lower, softer tone, and is much slower. the background music, while itself soothing and beautiful, truly only serves to accentuate the VA’s voice as he guides you through izuki’s character. the song is smooth, and its more sober tone is perfect for the wisdom izuki’s dropping! nojima’s voice is low but firm; he effortlessly dances across every note, stringing together something that’s heartfelt and gorgeous. the lower pitch really brings out what izuki’s like when he gets serious - calm, but firm and unwavering.

last but not least, challenger spirit (the hyuuizu duet), which you can listen to here!! i love this song so much because tbh it reminds me of everything i love about hyuuizu. 

Dual: Oretachi ha chousensha datte / nando demo omoishirou Sonotabi tsuyoku natte kita kara (English: We are the challengers / Let’s never forget that Remembering that fact has helped us grow stronger)

both of them are always pushing each other. they remind each other what it is that they’ve come this far. they have a unique connection, and don’t need to say half the things that others would have to, in order to understand each other!

H: Kuyashisa nara norikoeta / senpai no iji darou I: Shimeshita ijou ni kurai tsuite kureta yo na (English: H: Our regrets? We’ve overcome them / That’s our will as senpai I: They’ve exceeded our expectations and risen to the challenge)

Yume mitaku tookatta yo na Demo naze ka shinjirareta n da Kono chiimu de miru mirai wo Okujou de chikatta mirai wo (English: Dual: Just like a dream, it seemed so distant But somehow, we could believe In the future we see with this team In the future we swore on the roof)

here we see how they both are consistently on the same wavelength. that’s why that final pass happened so perfectly - because it was hyuuga, who izuki had known for so long, loved for so long (read that however you want). because it was hyuuga, and their effortless chemistry made it possible. perhaps i’m overreaching, but... i love them so much.

coming to the song itself - it has a strong beat, but also melodic. like the perfect blend of kitakore and tatta hitotsu! the drum work in the background is truly fantastic. re: the singing, the gentleness within hosoya’s voice jumps out here, whereas nojima dominates the duet. nojima’s voice comes out firmer and stronger, and hosoya is more melodic and goes with the flow. i think their voices blend beautifully - the juxtaposition of izuki’s clear, powerful voice with hyuuga’s gentler, smoother one is just perfect! it also embodies their friendship: though hyuuga seems to be the overpowering presence, they share equal parts, and there are areas where izuki takes charge as seen in this song.

(okay maybe i’m reading too much into it but can you blame me i love them)

and with that we come to the end of this little rant!! hope it made sense haha

[kdramafeminist]

|| Flower of Evil || Midway Thoughts

So. My theory about Hae Soo being the final big bad was wrong. Well - half wrong. She did kill the villager but I can’t congratulate myself for that because it was pretty obvious lmfao.

I have to say though. Hae Soo is really the biggest downside of the drama for me at the moment. Partly that’s on me because I built up this idea of a compelling female villain and so can’t help but be disappointed that isn’t what we’re getting. But I will also blame the drama because Hae Soo is clearly the weakest character here. She’s just that same tragic sister (apply any female family member here, as long as she’s sad and tragic!) I feel I’ve seen a hundred times over in so many stories. The one who loves their family more than themselves and live a miserable existence because of it. Sure she killed a man. But there’s no nuance or depth to her character beyond that. 

Oth I am VINDICATED because I was right about Hyun Soo’s fake family having deep connections to his father! So the son is the killer & the dad covered it up for him I guess?

Hyun Soo’s outlook on life being a failure of the adults who should have helped him better when they discovered he was neurodivergent is the most tragic thing. He obviously loves his wife, daughter and sister but he thinks he doesn’t because he cannot feel the same way as most people but wasn’t given the tools to figure himself out. Let Hyun Soo find his happiness 2k20!

I think whilst Hyun Soo is my favourite character, Ji Won is the one who I find most compelling and am most drawn to. Her entire life has literally fallen apart around her but she’s carrying on despite it, figuring her way through it best she can, not letting anyone or anything cloud her judgement at any moment - SO IMPRESSIVE. 

Also my heart breaks for her because her life has been shit since she discovered the truth about Hyun Soo and I already know it’s only going to be more downhill from here. Poor baby. Give Ji Won her happiness 2k20!

Moon Chae Won is also impressing me hugely. I never liked her as an actress before but clearly she was just in poor roles bc holy shit she’s really leading the charge here as the true highlight of the drama for me, doing basically the most heavy-lifting and playing off so well opposite Lee Joong Gi. She was the part of this drama I was least looking forward to & thought would be its worst part so to have done a total 180 and enjoying her the most? Never been more happy to be proved wrong!

Future thoughts...

Hyun Soo cannot live a fake life forever. But I have total faith that he and Ji Won will solve this case & find their happy ending.

HS’s fake mum is just another tragic character to add to this list huh?

Unexpectedly wholesome moments with our resident long-suffering journo are unexpectedly wholesome. Is he gonna make it to the end alive though? 

Hae Soo is going to die. She serves no real purpose in the story and I can’t see her being in prison? Like I said above she seems to be a character made to exist solely for the male lead (a trope I cannot stand) and so I have a bad feeling she’ll be fridged for him too. That would definitely make the drama a little worse in my eyes so lets hope that doesn’t happen and she finds her own identity by the end!

Hyun Soo’s dad quite obviously was murdered. But who did it? The father or the son? I’ll vote... father. He’s shown he doesn’t mind straight up killing obstacles & the dad would have been an obstacle to his son’s perfect life.

[sneakerdoodle]

On Second Citadel and unity

It was interesting to me that, after making Junoverse a very poignant gender utopia (and general lgbt-utopia, too), Kabert went ahead and made their second storyline so heavily centered around bigotry and discrimination (dealing with topics of ableism, mysogyny, homophobia). now, obviosuly, Junoverse is not even remotely free of inequality, and as far as the mentioned topics are handled this utopia is not disability-friendly, with prosthetics not being readily available with no charge, which, like many other things, strips people of their autonomy, turns them into a rich man’s plaything. But here inequality is arguably explored from the point of exploitation of one human being by another, of abuse of power (interpersonal and social-scale). Whereas Second Citadel opens with an episode about two knights - a disabled one and a woman one - both of whom struggled for similar reasons, so there is supposedly little power imbalance here. And yet they do not see eye to eye, even more so, one of them furthers the other’s discrimination. We can speculate that that’s Sir Caroline’s effort to fit in - strengthen the sense of her hard-earned belonging by othering someone who never got that right to belong. Which doesn’t make it any less infuriating and damaging, but sets the tone of the story very well. There is no strong thriving off the weak. There are just people infinitely rejecting one another on the basis of their differences, often under the weight of their own rejection.

The topic of ostracization and discrimination is tackled in almost every arc of SC, but the idea of othering extends beyond it. The central conflict, the ongoing war is between monsters and humans - and while we’re more familiar with the human side of it, while we may learn more about the history of their conflict and who wronged whom first and worst, for now we’ve seen both humans and monsters express deep disgust for each other and one another’s way of living. And then the same happens on a smaller scale, within one species: we see the mutual disdain between Northerners and Southerners. Sir Caroline is different not only as a woman but as a foreigner; the Cinderclasp episode made it far too clear that the attitude to foreigners in the South is no better. 

And all of that unravels against the backdrop of pretty phrases about unity that get repeated over and over. “Strength in Unity”. “Two in unity, simple, strong”. I believe those are not instruments of irony, however, but keys to the central message, echoes of this societies’ past and - hopefully - foreshadowing of their future.

Sir Caroline twists the meaning of that unity in order to keep her authority:

ANGELO: Sir Caroline, I really don't think-- CAROLINE: What is the primary edict of our Citadel, Sir Angelo? ANGELO: Strength in unity. Of course. CAROLINE: And the sooner you all remember that, the safer humanity will be in these Northern Wilds. Hypocrites. The lot of you. Unified only when it’s convenient. No better than monsters in that way: greed governs all, and everyone just does what they want to get what they want. If you just listened to authority, real authority, you might actually be safe.

And that happens to highlight what unity is not: giving up one’s autonomy and approach and unique competence to fit into someone else’s model of desired reality. 

Here Damien’s words about perspectives come into play. However labored and uncomfortable they were, showing his inability to not fixate on what separates others from him, they are important as a piece of the meta puzzle: they make us think of inherent value of different experiences.

DAMIEN: My kind, kind friend. I agree that it is a shame that we cannot trust these men. They would be valuable allies, as Sir Caroline was – for moving through the world as she has, in a life quite different from ours, has clearly gifted her with ways of thinking that you and I would never come to. ANGELO: Very true, very true. DAMIEN: And so I am certain that given Marc’s...situation, he too must have a perspective of great value in our mission. But the simple fact is that he cannot be trusted.

The importance of these lines is backed up in Lady of the Lake, when Caroline is instructed to use specific characteristics of her subordinates and turn them into strength that would aid the mission. We are told over and over that true unity is in embracing our differences, valuing them and working together to make these differences work in everyone’s favour. 

There is something to be said about quite careless exploitation of Damien’s neurodivergency of course, but that is once again the warped verison of true unity, showing what unity is not, but also simultaneously giving us some idea of its potential. At the core, behind Sir Caroline’s personal errors, the message is kinder, broader. We are told again and again that the importance of the unqiue approach, unique way of thought, unique operation of our minds can enrich our shared experience and cooperation beyond measure.

So when later on Sir Caroline instead tries to suffocate any challenge to her authority, any alternative point of view, it comes as the biggest whiplash.

And of course, when discussing the monster-human antagonism in this vein, the Moonlit Hermit arc gives some truly invaluable material. Rilla and Arum’s interactions are strongly based on the differences of their approach to the world, with Rilla’s being a rational one and Arum operating on what can be called intuition, spiritual sense and probably instinct. He despises attempts to rationalize the free broad flow of the universal energy.

And what we see is two of them coming together, sharing their views of the world and finding something useful, fascinating, beautiful in the point of view that seemed so unthinkable before. That culminates in the truly breathtaking scene of their discussion of the nature of music, whether it’s magic or math:

RILLA: I mean..why can’t it be both? ARUM: Nonsense. RILLA: No, I mean...maybe that’s what makes music special. It uses these predictable scales and measures and combines them with some unpredictable, something-- ARUM: Magic. And what comes out isn’t really either. It’s...more.

“It’s more”. Can’t overstate how hard this hits. And the parallel between this theory and Rilla and Arum’s relationship is more than on the nose, proving to us once again that the idea of unifying our different experiences and perspectives as something incredibly valuable, something that creates something new, rich, priceless, that is more than just a sum of the two, is central to the narrative.

What is interesting to me in the Moonlit Hermit arc is the distinction that is made between the monsters and the humans. Humans are supposedly rational while monsters speak of magic and the Universe - what a fun narrative is that! Monstrous spirituality... And then later on we have Damien raging at his saint, yelling “It is only monsters who listen to their heart above all!” - but apparently it is not. 

The new season offered some helpful context to that, specifically - the Thought Stream. Obviously referencing the Tarot, it has four suites resembling the Minor Arcana while what can be called the Major Arcana is not a part of the deck usually but something that appears unpredictably (specifically: Olala’s card that does not belong to the Wilds, Wastes, Frosts or Mirrors suit). 

The four Tarot suits (Swords, Cups, Wands and Pentacles) represent different areas of our life, separated: Intellect, Emotion, Spirituality/Creativity and the Material. Mind, Heart, Spirit and Body.

The four suits also correspond with the four elements. And Water is the one corresponding with Heart, with our emotions. I do not think it to be a coincidence that Saint Damien - the one encouraging his follower to listen to his heart, teaching him tranquility i.e. not losing oneself in the stream of emotion, the one teaching how to let one’s heart guide not stir - has water and the waves as his symbol.

So if Damien is Heart, Rilla is definitely Mind: she is analytical, a determined problem solver. I believe Arum represents the Wands: the Spirit and the fire - and that it is a symbol connected to monsters’ society in general. 

Wands suit deals with passionate creation, with realizing one’s vision, bringing something into the world. That seems in line with the monstrous philosophy in general. They talk of one’s place decided by the Universe, they say one is justified in their actions as long as they truly do what they want, follow where their passion guides them. There is quite a bit of hypocrisy there as we can see in the Spiral Sage arc, the monster society may just be keeping the platitudes while giving in to the power of the strongest no matter the Universe’s place for the weak - but the ideal is still there, and it is one Arum seems to follow wholeheartedly. (Hence his interpretation of Damien seemingly abandoning his path as a lack of character.)

The same idea - one’s place in the Universe - is brought up again in the first part of “The Fool in the Garden of Death”, showing this belief spreads beyond monsters’ society, into the Western Wastes. None of the elements, be it Heart or Spirit, are strictly one species’; however, we’re dealing with different cultures and ways of life people are most accustomed to, prioritizing different aspects of life. And we’re being shown that maybe engaging with each other is what those cultures are supposed to do.

The Thought Stream’s deck is made up of four suits corresponding with four ends of the world, four parts of it. Where in Tarot we have aspects in Thought Stream we have places. This reinforces the concept of different aspects of life, different ways of approaching it, corresponding with specific societies. 

Each of the suits is given an identity, but all of them make up one deck.

After all, what’s one aspect of a being without all the rest? Reign of just one’s Mind, Heart, Spirit or Body - how long can it last before turning destructive?

True strength is in balance of different elements - in unity that recognizes the value of each of them.

I have a theory that the ideals of the Second Citadel are the forgotten and revamped mottos of the beings of Fort Terminus: “two in unity” being not two partners but two worlds, monster and human, coming together to create something that is more, something new and powerful and full of potential. Capable of building something as impressive as the Bridge. I also have a theory that the Bridge is a parallel to the Tower of Babel. Which brings us to the idea of a divided world unable to see past the differences between societies, and through that losing the power that unity used to give it.

Showing the world where difference is shunned and leads to ostracism, where people that come from different places fail to acknowledge each other’s humanity and refuse to embrace their differences, where two species fail to accept the other’s way of living and deny the enemy their humanity/monstrosity, the Second Citadel storyline is offering a greater value as an endgoal: embracing difference and diversity, seeing strength in what sets us apart from each other, and recognizing that we all complete one another, like the four aspects of our own being, like four pillars upon which the sky rests. Deny one single pillar’s importance and wait for it to come crashing down on you. It says: to know true strength, we should welcome any and all experience, all of the unique perspectives, celebrate the differences that make our shared existence so much richer and make us so much more capable to deal with challenges of life. Strength in unity - not in uniformity.

[scientistowengottlieb-newtkelly]

Thoughts and feelings about Pacific Rim 2?

you sure you wanna open up that particular can of worms?

movie review time! be warned i'm not in a good mood as i am shaking in pain, however this review would have been scathing regardless. and none of this is to say pacific rim is perfect, it's not, but... aye, i have no words for the world of difference there. oh wait! i do:

so. first and foremost, i hate it. as both a movie and a sequel. did i find it entertaining? yes, mildly, so i suppose it did its job, however the only thing that keeps me watching it is because, simply, it's part of the pacific rim franchise whether we like it or not. therefore, i squeeze as much salvageable content from it as i can, such as how one might analyze the precursors, how we are to view hermann and newt as characters pre-, during, and post-uprising, what we are to expect from drifting (though this one i take with a grain of salt, there is a whole other rant preserved for the joke of an attempt to develop that shit within the movie)

one of my biggest issues with pacific rim is really simple: it plays out like DeKnight did not watch the first fucking movie or was scrolling through twitter while doing it and decided he'd make a cash grab since the first one was relatively popular. "haha the kaiju were going for mount fuji the whole time!!" bitch no they weren't!!! why the fuck did they end up anywhere near sydney, australia, then!!! why did they turn tail on places like manila and san fran instead of heading straight for japan!!! WHY DID THE ONE THAT WAS IN JAPAN NOT SUCCEED, THERE'S NO WAY WITH THOSE MARK 1 JAEGERS THEY'D HAVE BEEN ABLE TO REASONABLY FIGURE OUT THEIR PLAN AND WHERE THEY WERE GOING IN TIME TO STOP THEM!!! newt literally lays out what they are doing in the first movie and they completely ignored that!!! not to mention, if the destruction from elements found in mount fuji would have been enough to terraform the earth, WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST FUCKING DO THAT WHEN THEY WERE SUPPOSEDLY ON EARTH AGES AGO??? THERE WERE VOLCANOES WITH THOSE SAME ELEMENTS BEFORE RIGHT NOW, VOLCANOES ARE NOT A RELATIVELY NEW THING EARTH CREATED SUDDENLY AND I WOULD IMAGINE NEITHER ARE THOSE ELEMENTS!!! IT MAKES NO SENSE!!! and.... okay the fucking drones. how did those bitches make breaches??? we know the breach is some result of precursor/kaiju technology, apparently they know the breach's atomic structure as hermann said in the first movie, but how tf some kaiju organs and tech from earth only is ALL it takes to open a breach... illudes and confuses me... why were no more breaches made by the precursors once they realized how long and how many resources it was taking to kill the humans off??? if it's??? shit they could do with simple earth materials + their own biology??? they could have ended things much faster??? shit just doesn't add up, idk, that was Vague and Annoyed Me

and the jaegers.... were....... strange? the fight scenes were so underwhelming, i could count on one hand the number of maneuvers—NOT SCENES, MANEUVERS—i thought were badass and moved well. their fighting was confusing and paced really weird and some of the moves they pulled... don't... work like that... like some of those scenes were just hand-to-hand combat but in big robot form and they didn't sit right with me at all.

and the characters......... oh my word, the characters. look: i love jake pentecost with all of my heart and soul and john boyega's beautiful acting just barely saves the movie from its poor writing. i do love him as a character. but can someone explain to me why in the world they thought it was a good idea to make the only black guy a black market thief/runner, deep-record criminal with daddy and authority issues, and who they dare try to play off as some kind of lazy??? they made him every stereotype they could and said "yeah let's go with that". i'm- aaaaaaaaaaaaaa and what was with the child soldiers??? ROBOCOPS?????? mako....... character assassination at its worst........ my baby......... but the movie was paced so GOD DAMN POORLY I GOT BORED AND LITERALLY MISSED HER DYING THE FIRST TIME I WATCHED IT. and i couldn't tell you the names of half of those poor damn kids, i really couldn't. and can i also say they killed off one of the only two darker skinned kids?? like y'all???? the other darker skinned kids (one of the children i can't remember the names of because it was uttered ONCE in the entire movie or some shit) didn't even GET characterization. my whole heart goes out to her and those other underdeveloped fucks. speaking of...... i am ashamed about jules. from the movie that brought us the mako mori test, they threw in a girl simply for the sake of some shitty, awkward, and unexplained love triangle between jake and White Angst without much else to put to her name. she deserved better. amara was... a decent shot, but very hit or miss because of the writing. i, personally, am very neutral about her leaning towards liking her, but i know people who swing love and who swing hate. liwen was like,,,, they tried really hard to make her unlikable at the beginning because "oh no, she must be the villain! GOTTEM plot twist!!!" and then suddenly she's no longer. threatening everyone except newt. idk i feel like they leaned to heavily one way and i got whiplash when she's actually another but there was nothing to... portray that. at all. i do like her character, and that says a lot because they got me to sympathize with a capitalist without actually regretting it later, but there could/should have been More there. she was powerful, though, in multiple different aspects, and we saw that from her CONSISTENTLY and i 😳🥵👀💕 mako mori test pass for her

now, let's talk about hermann (and by extention, newton, however he'll be getting a section all his own the rat bastard). that man is one of the single instances of decent cross-movie characterization i saw in the whole god damn film. the idea that he takes on newton's roles, that he is more outspoken for himself, that he is just slightly more unhinged after his drift with newton: THAT is on point. he's himself, you can see it, you still know that he's hermann with ever step, but there's something that has shifted in him in those 10 years and it's good without being too much. the "i still get nightmares" scene, the way he presents himself, that scene gives me chills because god bless burn gorman and his acting ability. every face and intonation of his voice is just wonderful and i think his performance was great for what he was given. king shit.

the biggest disappointment of my life came in the form of a kaiju vest wearing bitch at work. at his corporate job. as a boss. for a tech company that undermines all of his and, frankly, hermann's work over their lifetimes. 10 years older and exaggerated to the teeth. newton "move you fascist" geiszler. let me preface this by stating for all to see that i do not hate the idea of newton being the villain. story wise it was a bold move and there was something possible there. BUT THE IMPLICATION THAT ONE OF THE MOST OBVIOUSLY NEURODIVERGENT CHARACTERS IN THE WHOLE FUCKING FRANCHISE, ESPECIALLY GIVEN THAT HE HAS BEEN CHARACTERIZED AS HAVING A "BORDERLINE MANIC PERSONALITY" AKA HAVING ONE OF THE MOST DEMONIZED MENTAL ILLNESSES OUT THERE, ENDS UP ACTING AS THE GOD DAMN VILLAIN OF THE STORY IS A HOT GARBAGE TAKE WHEN YOU FACTOR IN THINGS LIKE POOR WRITING NOT MAKING IT CLEAR WHETHER OR NOT NEWTON IS EVEN IN CONTROL OF HIS OWN FACULTIES AND THE VAGUENESS OF "WILL HE BE 'REDEEMED' OR NOT" BEING UP IN THE AIR LIKELY NEVER TO BE CANONICALLY FUCKING ANSWERED BECAUSE BECKHAM AND DEKNIGHT SHAT OUT A MOVIE THAT BOMBED IN THE BOX OFFICE. we aren't even gonna TALK about the fact that this bitch got AWAY with it despite not even acting in a remotely stable way comparable to himself in the first movie in the 10 years he supposedly dropped off the map from all of his friends because, clearly, hermann hadn't seen him or he wouldn't be so excited with a picture of the two of them on his desk, nor would he have to tell newton about his idea for rocket thrusters with kaiju blood fuel because he would have simply written to him about it. for some strange reason people see his ass show up decked out in a suit he wouldn't even wear for Stacker Fucking Pentecost and a behavior of "Haha Gotta Listen To The Boss" and think "ah, yes, well, time changes a person. THIS BITCH HAS APPARENTLY BEEN LIKE THIS THE WHOLE TIME, YOU THINK HE GOT A JOB WITH LIWEN LOOKING AND ACTING LIKE HE DID BEFORE AND THERE WAS A SHIFT OVER TIME? NO, HE HAD TO HAVE CHANGED IN A SPLIT DECISION AND LIED ABOUT HIMSELF THROUGH HIS TEETH AND NO ONE CONTACTED HIM, OR WAS WORRIED ABOUT HIM, OR DECIDEDLY THOUGHT "YOU KNOW, HE MAY BE EMBOLDENED THAT HE SAVED THE WORLD, BUT I THINK SOMETHING LIKE THAT WOULD HAVE THE EXACT OPPOSITE EFFECT ON HIM AND HE WOULD DO HIS BEST TO AMPLIFY HIS CURRENT STANDING TRAITS. LISTENING TO AND KISSING THE BOOT OF AUTHORITY FIGURES? DIVORCING HIMSELF FROM HIS WORK WITH KAIJU XENOBIOLOGY THAT EVEN HERMANN PICKED UP? TO BECOME THE THING HE HATES? AND FOR WHAT? MONEY? FAME? BITCH WHO ARE YOU?" unreasonable. ridiculous attempt to do this just for a plot twist that was underwhelming at best. i've decided to stick to the fan theory that he was not in control 99% of the time but literally that movie causes such a hellfire path to appear in my wake as i think about it because i know people who don't take it like that and think newt wants what's happening because "haha horny kaiju man" and i wish to scream at the top of my lungs because this is exactly WHY you CANNOT spare ANY EXPENSE to the GOOD, PROPER, INTRICATE directing and writing of a character who is neurodivergent and also ONE OF THE CENTERS OF NOT JUST THE MOVIE YOU'RE WRITING, BUT THE FUCKING MOVIE AFTER THAT. i could go on but i sincerely don't fucking want to, despite how long i've been waiting for someone to willingly hear me out on all of this. all i'll say is if by some miracle they are greenlit for a third film and deknight's working on it and i see ANY sign of a bury your gays end for newt, i'm going to commit the first hate crime against a cishet white male.

to end, the only valid kaiju in that movie was the mega-kaiju, i don't remember the appearance or the names of the three that got through the breaches but the mega-kaiju could kill me and i'd die happy 🥰 beautiful design, that scale comparison when it came face to face with newt? amazing, chills, *chef's kiss* there are exactly two things i liked about uprising and that bitch is one of them.

sorry if this isn't what you wanted, but as i said i am in a bit of a bad mood and have been curled up in bed trying not to think that i'm dying and i've repressed all of this for a couple months now and very few people have actually heard PORTIONS of my frustration so. here it is.

[libra-araelty]

Hello!

My name is Neo. I am a neurodivergent young adult from the United States.

Neurodivergent, you say?

Yes! Neurodivergent means my brain does not function the same way that a typical human does. However that does not stop me from living a normal, everyday life just like everyone else!

I have Asperger’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder (MaDD), and Dyscalculia, all diagnosed. It is also highly suspected that i have Bipolar Disorder and Trichotillomania (TTM), suggested to me by people who have either condition.

Being subject to these conditions, I have quite a few struggles in my daily life. I have sensory issues, so things like uncomfortable clothes and strong scents can make it so I’m unable to function at full capacity. If these sensory issues are pushed further and further, I am at risk of going into a sensory overload or a meltdown. That only happens very rarely for me, though.

My attention span is very flaky, and I have a difficult time staying on one topic for long periods of time. I need constant changing stimuli for me to not burn out while on a task. This ironically contributes to hyperfixation, an intense focus on one particular thing for a period of time. I know, that seems like the opposite of what I said before, but they are linked. See, hyperfixation isn’t exactly something that can be forced. When hyperfocusing, I may not be able to take myself out of that particular focus, and it consumes all my thoughts for however long my brain decides to hyperfixate on it. This contributes to my flaky attention span because instead of being able to force myself to focus on something im supposed to be doing, instead the brain goes “no, you’re going to think about this one thing and we’re going to make it very hard for you to focus on anything BUT this one thing. Special Interests (SI’s) follow a similar, yet more intense pattern. SI’s last much longer, if not lifelong for me. Theyre more prominent and effective on my life than my hyperfixations.

This is where MaDD comes into play. MaDD is a condition that can be adopted and unlearned. The DSM doesn’t recognize it as an official disorder, but it is a condition that exists in many people, especially people with attention or anxiety related contitions. MaDD shares a lot of traits with cases of addiction too, however this one is much easier to take control of and is not exactly harmful. The first word, maladaptive, can be broken in half: Mal and Adaptive. Mal means bad or poor, and adaptive means the ability to adapt. Maladaptive Daydreaming basically means daydreaming that causes poor adaptation skills. MaDDers are typically those who have conditions like Autism, AD(H)D, OCD, General Anxiety, and Dyslexia. Most people adopt the technique of Maladaptive Daydreaming in their childhood or early teens and if not caught early on, can last their entire lives. However, MaDD isn’t essentially a harmful thing. Like I said, it’s easily controlled. You may be asking, “what exactly is it about MaDD that causes poor adaptation? its just daydreaming.” MaDDers daydream at an average of 6 hours minimum a day. These daydreams are intense and easily triggered by everyday things like music, art, friends, even normal emotional events. MaDDers tend to use these dreams as an escape from reality but also a reality of their own, like a lucid dream but for your waking self. The daydreams tend to have intricately woven worlds, stories, chracters, and plots, all feeling just as real to the dreamer as the rest of life itself. MaDDers tend to daydream to escape real situations they may not want to be a part of and sometimes even cancel plans just to continue to daydream.

Why are you telling me all of this? This all seems so personal and insignificant to me.

This is FAR from insignificant to anyone. You may not be Autistic or a MaDDer or even neurodivergent, but I know that as a human being you still have lots of struggles, just like me. Ive told you all about my struggles and you’re probably thinking “wow how pathetic, they cant control their own brain.” Yeah actually, I can. Even if you weren’t thinking that, (which I actually highly doubt anyone was thinking that I just wanted to put an example of worst case scenario) what if I told you that no matter what, no matter who you were or what you were going through, you can still grab hold of yourself and make your life yours? You better believe it, because despite all the conditions I just told you I have, I have taught myself to make my own path in life and not let my struggles decide what my fate is. I believe anything is possible with a little patience and elbow grease, so thats why I have made this blog. It is sorta a combination of a journal, an advice blog, and an inspirational quote blog. I want to be able to share my knowledge of my identity and experiences in order to hopefully inspire someone to get up out of the hole theyre stuck in and make their life their own again! I love the conditions I have, and I use their benefits as my superpowers and dont let the negative aspects of them hold me back. They are a part of me and who I am and I will treat them with just as much love and care as I should treat myself, and hopefully you can treat yourself with the same amount of love too <3

With love,

Neo

P.S.

Heres a couple more fun facts about me!

My biggest special interests are Homestuck, Dragons, and literally just identity in general and have been special to me for almost 5 years now

I love music and my favorite artists are Imagine Dragons, Fall Out Boy, OneRepublic, Vance Joy, hi i’m Case, Of Monsters and Men, and Watsky!

I love to draw and play D&D! I love the character creation and I’m currently working on my own campaign

My personality labels are Sun Libra, Moon Sagittarius, Rising Taurus, INTP-T, 5w4, 541, Ravenclaw, Thunderbird, Seer of Heart, Dersian, True Neutral, Blue-Green Paladin, Firebender, and Skywing Elf

If I were a D&D character I’d be a true neutral forest gnome sorcerer sage who wields a katana and raises dragons

My favorite movies are How To Train Your Dragon (1&2), It, Star Wars, and Pete’s Dragon (2016). My favorite shows are The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, The Dragon Prince, Camp Camp, Gravity Falls, Twelve Forever and The Mandalorian

I love making aesthetics and stimboards, my favorite colors are blue violet, cornflower, sapphire, teal, spring green, and bubblegum pink. I love pastel kawaii fashion because of these colors

I either want to become a cartoonist or a counselor as a career, or both and be able to use one to help the other