#body literacy

[bookquotesfrombooks]

“Much of the remedial work performed by gastroenterologists is like household plumbing – removing blockages, stopping leaks, and repairing holes!”

Dr. Austin Chiang

Gut: An Owner’s Guide

[nat20dyke]

some dimension 20 fans behave as if they would get mad at looney toons for their lack of nuance in depicting animal cruelty

[dragonsandphoenix]

I feel like some of the disconnect when it comes to Meet You At The Blossom comes from BL watchers not having developed the danmei literacies to engage with it on its terms. Heck, they don't even necessarily have the BL literacies beyond what's there in live action BL. This really good post goes into more detail about it.

On a related note, I recently came across a Youtuber who insisted that it's valid for him to dislike a work of fiction on the basis that the characters are not likable even if that's the point (he was talking about RF Kuang's Yellowface btw). While I understand that sometimes a thing just doesn't vibe with you and it's fine, I wonder why he even made a video about it then. Clearly he had something to say about it, even if what he's saying is basically useless, so my only guess is the point of his video was to get validation from the people who agreed with him (which does appear to be the case judging from the comments). Art is a conversation and if you are unable or refuse to meet it where it's at, then you're better off not saying anything about it on a public platform because I guarantee you will have nothing valuable to add to the conversation.

From the post I just linked, this is my expectation of the narrative progression in MYATB, because it's the type of narrative that the author Shui Qian Cheng specialises in (as can also be seen in Beloved Enemy & the My Stand In novel):

In jado BL that focuses on characters being villains, there are no such expectations. These BL work within the confines of their own worldview which don’t necessarily match with our IRL worldview. Characters are allowed to act in ways that goes against our everyday perception of what is right and what is wrong. Neither the characters nor the audience expect the characters to right their wrong, to apologize or to get punished, through judicial procedure or otherwise. Happy endings are not after reparations and resolution of issues, it would be in spite of those. Bad endings aren’t necessarily punishments for bad actions committed throughout the narrative, that’s just the ending of that story. Unlike with the BL with sweet narrative progression, these BL are not necessarily stories of two or more guys falling in love. Neither is their love (if at all there is love) expected to be healthy and wholesome. (It can be wholesome but it is just as well if it is not.) There are expectations from such narrative progressions too and resolution to most issues aren’t among those expectations. Clearly not everyone’s cup of tea, especially if they expect BL to be didactic like fables.

[frogs-in3-hills]

probably my most toxic fandom trait is that 98% of the time i hear someone describe their ship as “basically canon” i literally get sooo mad about it. i can actually conceive of platonic relationships beyond your wildest dreams. your shounen boys being weirdly committed to each other isn’t proof of anything. i can be weirdly committed to plenty of things in a non romantic way. i can be weirdly committed to hunting you down

[meraarts]

I’ve been seeing people calling Marry my Dead Body (2022) bury your gays and I’m so serious when I say I’m confiscating that term until y’all learn what it means.

In reality it's the exact opposite of bury your gays. Mao-Mao almost dies (his soul is almost destroyed) but then finds unconditional love and lives (is reincarnated). He almost sacrifices himself but is saved and gets his happy ending.

Like... it's truly baseline media comprehension.

[newcronomicon]

whatcha lookin' at

[gece-misin-nesin]

Okay I'll say this, FU HUA IS NOT A MATERNAL/MOTHER FIGURE FOR SENTI you guys are just incapable of seeing women in anything other than a maternal role for other characters.

[monsterfuckermilligan]

i still cannot comprehend how u guys will write or draw or rb something of jack where he is present as a full grown adult and then call him a precious child….

[sidewalkchemistry]

It's so much easier said than lived, I know, but it's my best word of advice. The only way you can peacefully either bring life into this world or enjoy life on this earth is to be at peace with it. Because, like, when I'm in a stressful situation, do you think my intuition is the most trustworthy person? Do you think I run to my intuition when I'm stressed? (*laughs*) No, honey. And if I do, it's not my intuition speaking, it's my anxieties. It's my stress speaking.

Meditating, putting your hand on your womb, feeling that connection, trusting in your ability to form a connection with your womb, even believing there's an energy there to begin with...because when I tell you, being pregnant today at almost 20 weeks vs. 1 to 2 days post-ovulation, it was so strong! It was a ball. I could feel it! There was so much intention and energy there that wasn't mine! And I could sense it because it wasn't there before...because I'm familiar with that place, you know?

Like, how do you know something that you don't even know exists? How do you see something that you don't even pay attention to? When you want a new car, and you finally pick the model you want or are interested in getting, you see that car everywhere. It's because you're aware of it. It's not because the universe is sending people to you with the car. Those cars would've been driving by regardless of the day. Statistically speaking, you'll see the car you like at least daily, if you're driving daily. It just increases your odds of seeing it because you're consciously aware of it.

I've lived it. I've said it to you guys multiple times, and I've said it to my husband multiple times. I have a connection with my womb. The biggest battery, the biggest power supply to that connection is what I said — the affirmative statement I just said:

I have a strong connection to my womb.

And the last thing I want to say is that when I look at my womb or when I connect with my womb, it's with the utmost respect. It's never like, "Bitch, you work for me!" You know, it's always, "How can I service you? What do you need? How can I cultivate a relationship with you?" She's like the mother. And you can't be disappointed with her. You have to learn from her. You have to be humble to her. You have to be willing to let her do her thing. Because at the end of the day, regardless of if you follow my advice or not, you're still gonna go through what you go through with your womb.

- Nagad on Womb Connection & Anxieties around Pregnancy and Motherhood

[aeroblossom]

narcissus without water; sou hiyori

i wasn't gonna post this here because i really reaaally hate it but ehhh fuck it we ball. 3-1 unused intro spoilers. does that even count. kanna route implied.

In the aftermath is cold. Icy, chilling cold. The immense rush of the impact lasted but a moment. Time is a fleeting thing for all who live, whether the hearts beating in their chests are made of muscle, or of metal; whether the circuits powering them and every moment of madness, every second of passion, every victory and every mistake, are made of grey matter, or of a network of microscopic transistors.

The merciless weapon, which had moments ago pierced through his torso, now meets him eye to eye. As if a deeply loyal animal that was too loved to know when to retract its claws, destroying everything in its path to be close to the one it owes its devotion to. Through flickering sparks in one eye, and slowly blurring vision in the other, he stares. He smells blood. The sight of it would not bother him in the slightest had it been someone else it was coming out of. But when you've lived as he has, blood seeping from a wound feels unnatural. And he'd started to believe he was finally rid of the last vestiges of his humanity. Red drips down the side of his face, from the grey matter in his skull that still held proof of something human. The emotion centers of his brain were dysfunctional since he came into the world. So really, it matters little to him. He can barely even feel the pain.

The thing that upsets him more is the red on his chest. It doesn't trickle down from his crown, but spurts from the gaping wound in his center. Sparks fire in all directions, somewhere in his ears he hears a low ringing of both his organic bodily systems as well as mechanical ones. The gears cry emergency, the cells cry of death. A realization supplied by his mechanical logic center creeps slowly into the back of his head, surrounding him fully until he submerges in acceptance. He has little time left.

Eyes the color of sea glass stare at nothing in particular, yet keep darting about, aimless, anxious perhaps, but with unmistakable defeat in them. Little light penetrates the coffin, brought in only by the gaping hole created by the drill. It illuminates a straight stripe across his now ruined body, one bright seafoam gaze and tousled mess of green last in the light's path. Dust particles shimmer like gold specks, his contemplative eyes fixating on their fluttering dance.

He hears distant voices, he thinks, if his audio faculties are even functioning by now. Crying - pained voices, happy voices. Meister's scrawny tone, and determined words from the young girl with copper hair. They must be huddling together right now. Allies. Cooperates. A team spirit reignited.

Petty emotion lurches inside him, wanting to shatter that nonsensical resolve with his own hands. He knows how to. Even now, it would not take much -

No.

It's over.

Defeat weighs heavier than how it first felt to have your flesh replaced by porcelain. It's heavier than the volume of crimson flowing from the wound in his chest. Not that he has needed to breathe in a long time, but here, now, he suddenly feels breathless.

Silence is the mind's curtain call. Contemplation weaves its way through his thoughts, thoughts that will soon fade. Thoughts that are firing wildly due to the vast amount of information being processed in these final moments, alongside a slow system shutdown.

It's a bit like he's dreaming with his eyes open, if you think about it like that.

Ah. He's wasted so much energy in meaningless thoughts. Not that it truly mattered at this point. Right... where had he gone wrong?

Hiyori, Sou. Assumed age, twenty. An easily recognizable mop of green hair, tied down at the ends into a neat rattail that didn't match how the rest of his hair looked. The nickname they gave him was his namesake hair. Tall, fairly lithe. Eyes a deeper colour than the hair, like pure, vibrant jade. Plainly, more than half of him was doll, and the vestiges human. What were once the tender hands of a real human are now porcelain and alabaster. Gears tick inside the system, rhythmic, he was a mechanical harmony. Occasionally interrupted by remnant humanity.

Living, breathing red pumped from his heart, no matter how much he'd separated himself from flesh and blood. The proximity of that living heart to electrical equipment gave him a quicker heartbeat than most. The proof of this regnant humanness now bled and ripped itself apart. He thinks he feels a bit of pain. This is probably the only physical pain he's felt since the last time he had real hands.

But it's not what he'd thought it'd be like. It does hurt, it hurts so much. Yet something else hurts a little more, something that rises from a faulty limbic system and creeps down in physical form to become surging pain in his core.

He observes, silently, the ache surge in intensity as the voices continue to speak. Words, thoughts, emotion, memory rapid fires in his mind. He tries to recall the path he'd taken so far, wanting to make out what error he had made to make him up end like this. This would not do, after all.

But no matter how he tries to focus on this endeavor, a recurring feeling scratches inside him. A sharp pain, tearing him into two. He feels he recognizes it as something from impossibly long ago. Suddenly, he realizes, in that silent grave of his, that he was entirely alone in this death. His heartbeat begins to ring into his ears alongside the periodic beeping of his system going into overdrive.

System warnings, words ringing in his head, and the wildly pounding heart, all converge like oil and paint into a wretched musica humana.

It's really stupid. Hilarious, in fact.

He wasn't human. He hadn't been so for a considerably long time, as far as himself was concerned. Death... to him, wasn't it trivial? An infinite amount of copies of himself can be made. It's meaningless, however many times he dies.

...And yet, here he was.

Does Hiyori Sou feel? Does he regret? Does he hurt?

Does this largely doll, barely human, ever find himself lonely?

In the moments that follow, the emotion that grips him next is sheer horror. At not just these intrusive questions, but his body's physical reaction to it.

Something clouds his vision much more heavily than before. What little he could see before him twists into an oil painting, unrecognizable, an intense pain radiates inside his neck, like strangulation. And then he heaves a sigh as a singular, pearlescent tear streams down his face.

He can hear Meister's scratchy voice from a while ago, before any of this. Before all of this.

So you can cry too.

He had said, as Hiyori leaned against his screen and shed tears at the sight before him. Him, of all people, mourning - it was, of course, an unbelievable sight. At the time, he had found it jestly insulting that Meister would imply he couldn't cry or feel such emotion. So what makes this different? Why does it feel so different?

Ah, it really does feel like the entire world is making a mockery out of him. But perhaps this is a fitting end for himself. Villain he was born, villain he will die.

Death holds little meaning to someone like him.

It's almost time. His thoughts begin to slow down to a grinding halt.

He faintly registers some shifting sounds. The coffin he resided in is being laid flat on the ground. Will it be opened next? Will they see him like this?

A light slam signals to him that the coffin has been taken down. The drill carefully withdraws, now leaving only his mauled body behind. The sound of dust and rocks crumbling, and then light filters into the depths. Though it gets brighter and brighter, he finds his world only becoming darker.

Meister is the one lifting the lid. He has it propped up with one hand, the other on his knee as he knelt down, chewing on a cigarette, inspecting what he was seeing with a careful, suspicious, and yet rather surprised expression. Tia Safalin stands beside him, one hand on her chest and the other seemingly reaching out to touch him in the coffin. He knows hearing is beyond him when he sees the anxious woman mouth his name, when he watches them talk amongst themselves, and can't make out any of it. It's probably too late to worry about what it could be.

The crying doll leans down, placing one hand to his face. As if the plaster skin wasn't stiff enough, he finds himself turning into what may as well be stone. She inspects his head wound. He can't move his eyes anymore to follow her actions, but he can still vaguely feel them. The small hand moves down slowly, tracing a line across his face and down his chest, analytic. She shakes her head with a sigh upon the damage to his torso.

It's really over for him, isn't it?

Her finger ghosts its way back up, this time lingering on his face. He notices the slight dumbfoundedness in her expression, pressing slightly to make sure she was seeing right - the tear stains on his cheek. He wants to smile, all of a sudden, but he no longer can.

As she concludes her inspection and stands up, hiding her expression with that stupendous hat, he faintly wonders if she's crying too. Is she crying for him? No... that would be ridiculous. There wasn't anyone left who could cry for him. In death as he was in life, alone.

Mere moments remain for him, and he wonders, for the final time - should he have led a different life, would there be comrades by his side? Does there exist a world in which Hiyori Sou, too, has allies?

Vibrant seafoam eyes darken like a wilting flower, unable to make out anything clearly, shedding one final tear.

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

"i actually like that Alastor is an aroace serial killer in hell bc it helps people not infantilize him :)"

Spoken like a truly privileged able-bodied person who's never had to just sit and watch their entire community actively trying to boycott and cancel Guillermo Del Toro for having a mute woman fuck a fish in a Period Piece because.... "Well u kno that actress isn't actually disabled n the sign language they use is all wrong! :/ She's infantilized and overly sexualized and dehumanized Ariel from Little Mermaid is so much better she could kick that woman's ass if she wanted too! We wanna be where the PEOPLE are because disabled people AREN'T MONSTERS! :/ What's that 'incomplete' garbage about that level self hatred is sooo disgustingly ablest on top the abled actress not knowing how to Sign It! :/ This mute woman from the 60's that she shouldn't even be playing needs to just go 2 therapy n' learn 2 love herself more! :/ Like why exactly does she hate herself sooooo much she needs to end up with some stinky fish man instead of the racist dude who rapes his wife that would've been soooooooo much better because at least HE'S A NICE HUMAN and NOT A MONSTER! ;/ All those dirty masturbation and sex scenes were disgusting and infantilizing and dehumanizing! #NothingABOUTUsWITHOUTUs, DEL TORO! :/ Anyway, now that thats over im gonna go harass and bully a trans woman off the internet for publishing some very hurtful and harmful body horror erotica that made ME personally unfomfy! >.<"

..... I really think identifying as a Disabled Monster Fucker is on par if not worse than Catholic Guilt y'all like I just need Nun Alastor to come and spank my ass or something.....Not sorry.

[faelapis]

elemental has turned around at the box office and gone from flop to doing well. it seems this is pretty much entirely because of word of mouth. maybe theres other factors im not considering, but thats pretty fucking impressive.

and i think it deserves it tbh. it is far from perfect, but it might be my favorite pixar film of the 20s so far. granted, the bar isn't as high as the 10s or 00s, but hey, the decade is young. its pretty good!

i think what i liked about it was mainly that it was really emotionally sincere. like. its not too snide or self-aware, it just deeply cares about its characters and is totally committed to the world.

so many newer pixar flicks have this "popcorn filler" middle where there's zany antics that barely connect to the emotional journey. this movie doesn't. its all about these two main characters bonding in a way i found organic and compelling. and there's very little cringe humor. that one annoying tree guy is basically just in it for two seconds. idk why disney marketing still (wrongly) believes that kind of eyebrow wiggle humor is popular, because that made the movie look WAY worse.

anyway. its definitely good for a movie that was written off en-masse as cringey and generic and a lazy race metaphor. i don't think its any of these things. i think the main creative voice speaking about their own immigrant experiences does the job in a decent way.

also, that one clip of "fire girl being racist" is ignoring the crucial context that SHES the immigrant whos discriminated against, not some white-coded karen who needs to learn to be less racist. shes aware that shes less privileged and doesnt want to rock the boat.

also-also, i'm not even going reason with the badfaith twitter take that "she doesn't wanna date the tree boy because she's RACIST instead of it being because he's a CHILD?? #groomer alert!1!!"

like. come on. she's clearly not interested in him, she doesn't need to Spell Out that its because he's a child. that's not the point of the movie. thats just the most lazy twitter hot take for the sake of morally justifying that you found a thing cringe. don't be that person.

if you don't wanna see it, hey, don't. its fine. i'm not gonna go to bat like its the most important movie ever or anything... but its nice seeing pixar have more well-rounded, developed girl characters, after decades of being the emotionally sincere boys club. about time.

also, the romance is cute. i totally get why the aroace community in particular relate. like. its a romance where they Literally cannot touch each other, so its a relationship that actually develops because of their personalities rather than anything physical. its nice :)

[corpsedisturbed]

heartbreaking: the most stupid cunt you know is part of the same fandom as you

[serenpedac]

One of the things that has been on my mind as of late is The Three-Body Problem, both the recent Netflix series and Cixin Liu’s book.

This is not about some of the major things that people are probably discussing elsewhere, but just a few of my own thoughts on some details. I’m writing this down mainly for myself, but still wanted to share it somewhere, in case anyone is interested in my ramblings about astronomy and particle physics ^^

One of the things I love is the human-computer they make in the game. I'm not a computer scientist and can't comment on how realistic it is, but since computing is 1s and 0s, I can see the basics work. 

It also reminds me of an early simulation of cosmological structure formation in which they used people to act as particles. They were spread out and then given instructions about where to move, I assume based on which other person was closest, while also taking into account clusters of people would have a stronger effect than a single person. I tried to look up more details, but couldn't find anything, unfortunately, but it’s something that was briefly mentioned during a cosmology course.

The idea is similar to modern simulations, although it’s extremely simplified of course (see here for a beautiful example).

Another thing that stood out to me was the mention of Chien-Shiung Wu*. It’s a very brief mention and mainly in the context of being a woman in STEM, but I think she ties into the scientific side of the story as well.

[For this part, please bear with me and apologies if anything is not clear or incorrect. I’m not the best person to explain this as I really, really wanted to love (astro)particle physics, but that intention was rather one-sided. The few courses I took that dealt with it were a struggle.]

Early on in the story, the point is made that the results the scientists get from experiments are chaotic, they keep getting different results for their monitored particles despite having the same initial conditions. This means that “[...] the laws of physics are not invariant across time and space.”

This immediately reminded me of the breaking of symmetries in particle physics, because that also deals with particles behaving differently from what was expected according to the laws of nature known at the time. In particular the breaking of parity and time symmetry came to mind, as they are about place and time, respectively. And guess what? Wu discovered the breaking of so-called parity symmetry. Let me explain it a bit more ^^ 

Parity transformations are about flipping the sign of the coordinates (of, for example, the location of a particle). You can flip all three the coordinates (x,y,z) → (-x,-y,-z), but you can also just flip one. This ties into “mirroring”, for which you can imagine a mirror being placed on the y-axis, so that the particle’s x coordinate would be -x, as seen in the image below.

If parity symmetry holds for a particle interaction, that interaction would give the same result in a mirrored universe as it does in the “regular” universe.

Experiments showed that this symmetry held for the electromagnetic and the strong nuclear force, and it was expected to hold for all fundamental forces. Wu, however, found that this is not true for the electroweak force. She looked at radioactive decay for a form of cobalt and found that emitted electrons had a very specific preferred direction, which they wouldn't have had if parity symmetry would have held (I'm summarising and simplifying here).

Her result gave us a way of distinguishing left from right, scientifically, but also contradicted what was expected to be a general rule of physics: parity symmetry.

This had large implications for the world of particle physics and eventually led to the development of the Standard Model: a new theory that aims to describe the elementary particles and fundamental forces. (As happens so often with women who make significant contributions to science, her two male colleagues got a Nobel prize for this, while she was overlooked)

Obviously, these results are not the same as the circumstances in The Three-Body Problem—here, a new theory could explain the observed behaviour, whereas the story has unpredictable results—but both have particles that don’t follow the laws of physics that had been established before then.

So, my theory is that the mention of Wu is a nod to this breaking of a scientific paradigm. (I might be way overthinking this)

Finally, something that disappointed me was how in the chapter about the cosmic microwave background (CMB), there's this sentence "The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked." This is incorrect.

Right after the Big Bang, the universe consisted as a hot plasma, which was opaque. Photons were unable to get out, because the particle density was so high. They would basically be bouncing between particles all the time, never able to travel an extended distance. It is only as this plasma cools down and electrons combine with protons to form hydrogen that photons are able to escape, and these photons are what forms the CMB.

Because you look back in time as you look deeper into the universe, you would eventually encounter this "surface of last scattering", from which the CMB emerges. Beyond this point, you cannot see.

Normally, I wouldn't mind seeing the universe being called transparent for the sake of the storytelling, but to see this mistake in the same chapter that explains the CMB, when the two are tied together, irked me.

But overall, I am loving the book, although I haven't finished it yet (and there are 2 more). I prefer the way it sets up the story and how it feels more grounded than the series. Although I do like the characters from the series more than those in the book (Jin <3333 Auggie! Saul! Will!)

Kudos to anyone who has read all this!

*~*~*~*

Also, here’s a cool article that goes into finding solutions for the three-body problem. It’s by the one of the authors of a solution that is mentioned in the book.

*A confession: when reading her name, I would not have realised that Chien-Shiung Wu was the person behind the Wu experiment, but the translator’s note by Ken Liu mentioned that her work disproved the holding of parity symmetry.

All quotes are from this translation.

[elemom]

i reread Night of the Nindroids and I’m confused on why people say Zane actually TRIED to drown Kai. Weren’t all the fights against the ninja staged? explain pls 😭

[bonebrokebuddy]

@stealingyourbones has been talking my ear off for the past two days about Lancer/Clark so here’s a very messy sketch of the two vigorously making out because she jokingly asked me to and I said “bet.”

Anyways, their shared passion for literature and correcting other’s grammar (in Clark’s case, it’s Lois. In Lancer’s case it’s his students.) causes them to swiftly and sharply fall in love with each other ig.

(My bad about not having Clark wear his glasses but I couldn’t make the angle work for whatever reason. Just assume Lancer knocked them off sometime earlier in their make-out session.)