#but I get the distinct feeling that for most people that is not what is happening

[dreamerdrop]

[Image of tags from @k-ru-h reading: #and what if I said. This plays into his autism coding.]

It absolutely does and you should say it.

I wrote a short essay a while back (years back) on another fictional character who has similar incongruous traits, in her case, the fact that she came across as both being a wide eyed naive child younger than she was and then at other times seemed like a world-weary old lady who had experienced and accepted things no child should have even a comprehension of.

Julian is kind of (very, very) similar. I’m also autistic and I feel like most characters who get given two wildly contradictory traits that then exist simultaneously in some kind of harmony end up reading as autistic by default, because it’s just… a thing for autistic folk, especially when you start mixing in trauma.

(Are there autistic people without trauma? I have yet to meet any. Being autistic in a world that wasn't built for folks like us is traumatic in and of itself even without adding anything extra on top, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t get something extra on top.)

I’m sure there’s more eloquent people than I who could write coherently about why autism often manifests and displays symptoms as being akin to two completely distinct individuals crammed together into one semi-functional human being who is left in a state of constant turmoil because their brain is constantly telling them completely contradictory things about themselves, but I am certainly not eloquent enough to manage it myself.

I’d guess it might be related to existing in a world where you are constantly told your default state is incorrect and needs to be changed or fixed, that your natural responses are wrong, that you are constantly both overthinking or underthinking, and you just end up internalizing ideas that make no rational sense because you’ve been taught you can never trust your gut on anything ever, so you end up feeling like a shoddily constructed entity who can never be quite right no matter what you do.

Anyway I think Julian should have someone who wakes him up every morning by telling him how wonderful he is and then ends every day by reminding him that it wasn't his fault.

Julian Bashir walks a very fine, maddening line between “self-loathing imposter syndrome who knows almost everyone who speaks to him for more than a minute finds him insufferable” and “incredibly self assured and annoyingly arrogant to the point of a minor god complex”.

He knows he’s attractive, he thinks he’s charming as all hell, he knows he’s the smartest person in the room (while also being acutely aware he’s going to put his foot in his mouth any second now), and he just swings wildly between “I don’t deserve anything I have, none of this is mine, my life is not my own, I am a monster” and “HELL YEAH LOOK HOW COOL AND SMART I AM GUYS ARE YOU LOOKING ARE YOU LOOKING”.

And then there’s episodes that reveal that underneath that annoying arrogance, at the very core of who he is, he really, really just wants to help people, and if he fucks that up he WILL take it personally and hold himself responsible even if there’s no way he could have known and like. Can you imagine what his first patient death was like for him. Can you imagine what a fucking nightmare his brain must be 24/7.

He is somehow as inherently self assured as he is in need of constant validation for his ego because you can SEE him break a little when that ego fails him, even a little, and it’s just.

He’s very fun to write. I hate him. (I love him so much, but oh my god.)

[caitas-cooing]

Yes, not all aces and aros and not all aros are ace. Yes, there are ace people who still have sex and there are aros that still date. Yes, some aspec people will enter QPRs. All these things are true, but if I tell you that canonically a character is aspec and you say these things a lot of the time it doesn't feel like you actually want to explore the complexities of aspec identities and the relationships they form with other people, you just want to be able to write shipping and smut fics or fanart without getting accused of erasing a characters Identity. And it's hollow justification because again you don't really care about learning about our identities. And like I'm not gonna harass people for writing or drawing things regardless because frankly I have better things to do, but I do wish some people would be more honest about their intentions with certain things. Idk if any of this makes sense, I'm just writing down my almost 3am thoughts about things

[femme-dyke-lesbian]

I have major depressive disorder with psychotic features, though I’m recently questioning the accuracy of the diagnosis. I know I have MDD mildly to moderately most of the year, and severely in the winter, but I have psychotic symptoms throughout the year that seem to be triggered by stress. And of course, I have panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

I had visual hallucinations before I was on my anti psychotic. I used to see fire, smoke, and pentagrams everywhere and 666 in writing. Coolly enough, resolving my fears of hell and death helped decrease those instances before I started on medication. I still sometimes get visual hallucinations, but only when I get a panic attack or are on the verge of having one. Usually I see figures out of the corner of my eye or creatures running on the floor. I also get flashes of disturbing images in my line of sight, triggered by different things.

I primarily have auditory hallucinations. They’re the most active when I’m having any level of anxiety or when I’m tired/falling asleep at night. At lower levels, they’re mutterings that I can’t quite understand. They talk to me sometimes during the day, but mainly when I’m feeling stressed or low. They also encourage me to make risky decisions like spend a lot of money or do sexual things.

When I’m falling asleep at night, it’s so loud in my head. There’s so many people talking to me at once wanting me to talk to them or do different things for them. There’s primarily 3 different people that have given themselves names (but not distinct personalities to my knowledge, I don’t switch to these personalities to my knowledge) plus a few others. One is an elderly woman named Iris, one is named Miranda and is the only voice who is calming and tells me to take care of myself when I’m mentally unwell, and the last is named Lily, who is a child. Lily is relatively harmless and comes around the most during the day, and Iris comes around at night. Iris can be hit or miss depending on if I do what she wants.

I’m currently working on coping skills for night time hallucinations. It’s been hard to sleep lately, actually. I see my doctor soon, though.

Let's fight some of the misconceptions about hallucinations. If you have audio or visual hallucinations, either frequently or only under stress or what have you, tell me what they're like and how you deal with them.

I'll start.

My audio ones are music, or murmuring. The music is like a lively adventure 8bit tune, like old Zelda music, or a tasty guitar or bassline from another room to some rock song i can never really put together into a whole thing. The murmuring is like hearing a party in another room, people talking. Sometimes, lately more often, I'll have clips of things stuck on repeat in my head over and over. Tom Cardy's voice has been particularly invasive the last several weeks, but it's always weird because it's not accompanied by the music, it's acapella. It's just his voice.

Visual most often when it's in full swing I'll see little borrower sized shadows darting around my room or on tabletops, just fast enough I can't get a solid look at them. Other times I'll see things form out of the corner of my eye like shadows, especially in corners. If I'm in low light or have my glasses off it's more oppressive and scary feeling because I can feel and see something but not see details no matter how close it gets.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned these all before on this blog a few times. But I can't help but feel like it's important to bring them up now and then, and to invite others to talk about theirs, so there's less stigma around it. Stigma exists because of misunderstandings and fear, and if we can erase those components then the world will be a slightly better place I think.

[repurposedmeatlocker]

On one hand, I agree that there should be a more diverse field of subject matter utilized in "adult animation". Not all "adult animation" should be used as an excuse to revolve around shock content and gratuitous potty humor. At this point in time, stuff like this being seen on prime-time television is no longer out of the ordinary. And, from my observation, is done well even less frequently. There should be more films that treat themselves seriously and explore an array of topics rather than just comedy with a middle-school idea of mature subject matter.

ON THE OTHER HAND. I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with animated movies and shows with lots of drugs and boobies and sex and gross jokes. I think cartoon characters having freaky sex is funny af. Both have the right to exist together. Art should not be pigeon-holed through a lens of "respectability" in order to be taken seriously. Demanding adult animation be "palatable" for an "adult" audience ultimately strips it completely of what makes it a unique medium for expression in the first place.

[asklesbianonceler]

I have not posted any of my analysis to reddit yet and I think I might just post it and ghost it. I've already spent too much time looking at other people's threads on there to feel any way good about interacting with folks.

I already went in an added the "I know you're going to bring this up let me save you the time" section which is exclusively touching on the frequent topics of:

"well what about the fingerprint nostrum and finger mimics? He is clearly just a crackpot"

And

"it's definitely some weird elaborate sacrifice to Metyr thing"

[age-of-moonknight]

“Soldier,” Vengeance of the Moon Knight (Vol. 2/2024), #3.

Writer: Jed MacKay; Penciler and Inker: Alessandro Cappuccio; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[blackvahana]

Yeah. Man. I'm just sitting here remembering I've been doing this my entire life. I feel like there was a patch I wasn't, part of the teen years, and that's either I've forgotten because trauma orrrr something else but

No wonder I've never felt anchored on this plane. But it doesn't matter, well, no, it matters a lot, but this life is just constantly isolating in how it works so I will keep the talk of not fitting in here and what being weirdly one got in one foot out has done to talking to myself lmfao but... I remember. I remember being in the garden as a really young child and I'm not a young child. I'm this chimaeric fairy-type thing of swirling and bulging colours like a psychedelic faceted-insect-eye's led trip, four or more wings of different types that are again, so ungrounded, so psychedelic, vivid. Not uncertain. Not half-formed. Fully formed, the starbeing in me just barely contained in the shape of the human-pretending-to-be-a-fae it's pretending to be

I remember so much, actually, and it's. it's just weirdly melancholic....? Maybe not melancholic, but it's so sad and I don't know why. Actually. I mean I've been trying to piece it together for like twenty minutes now but... People get a little irritated at me for being very "you don't understand and no one sees me" but like. I have lived an entire life walkinv streets where no one sees me. It's very complicated, there's. mental health stuff in there because of course I've come across a lot of spirits but I have bad issues seeing people as real but like. Man yeah no I am a snail and one part of me can be physically seen but the other has always been on the other side

[blujayonthewing]

more dnd and adjacent media should be run and written by people who think dwarves and elves are boring but care very sincerely about halflings and gnomes

[polyamoryprincess]

I truly do understand the fear people have regarding people doing “fanfiction commissions” and making money off fanfics after the Anne Rice debacle, but we don’t have to act like it’s an inherent moral failing and like you’re a Fake Fan tainting fan spaces if you want to be paid for your work the same way fan artists do.

Anne Rice is a dick head for what she did and should be treated as such, treating the fear she’s wrought as some holy thing is fucking weird.

[coquelicoq]

i finally wrote an xword that i think might be nyt-submittable...i originally wrote it for the local paper though so i now have to go back through and rework the clues to take out the specific local ones and make some of the others harder. i know exactly which day of the week this would run in the nyt (if it gets accepted) because this type of theme always runs on the same day, so at least i know which clue difficulty to aim for, but i'm still finding it difficult to hit that precise level! i'm used to just making the clues as easy as possible because my local paper's audience is mostly people who aren't xword aficionados. i already reworked this puzzle a couple times based on feedback from friends and family but that was all still when i thought i'd be running it in my local paper. i kinda just want to be done with it but i've never had a theme and fill i thought were completely nyt-worthy before!

[perenlop]

hoopa is so unfortunate because despite being connected to oras and masters, there isnt a ton of content where it’s actually there and relevant besides the hoopa movie, which is considered the worst pokemon movie and kinda does hoopa dirty anyways by giving it a bad storyline and making it a frustrating character

[mystery-moose]

Reading more and more Gonchposts (and enjoying the vast majority of them) and it’s starting to pull together a lot of feelings in my head about art and experience and analysis and stuff, and the big one is that I wish that the collection of ideas the collective tumblr consciousness was pulling from to create Goncharov was based more in… like, actual knowledge and experience and history and critical thought of the thing they’re building, rather than the vaguely defined and perpetually regurgitated cultural assumptions of what that thing is.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fascinating to watch all this bubble up and sort of collect into a meaningful “canon.” It’s especially wild seeing tropes and ideas pop up that are absolutely based in trends within the genre and even from within Scorsese’s own filmography, knowing that most people aren’t even aware that they’re being that insightful! All that kind of shit is incredible and creative and cool and probably needs at least one good academic treatise written about it.

But at the same time, I can’t help but keep coming back to the thought that people should experience art itself and not be satisfied with vagueries and preconceptions about that art.

Like I’m becoming a broken record about this but… please watch great movies! Please engage with great art! I’m not saying you have to love it, I’m not even saying it’s by necessity “great,” really (I got some thoughts about a lot of so-called classics in a lot of mediums) but I am saying there’s value in seeing it and forming your own opinion on it. Not just ignoring it because you think it’s dumb, or boring, or ugly, or ignorant, or overrated. If you are way into Goncharov right now, and I know we all are, I am begging you to watch The Irishman! Or Gomorrah! Or Heat or The Sting or Goodfellas or The Godfather or… whatever you want, really!

And I know, I KNOW what the culture around those sorts of movies has been like, I’ve been on fuckin’ Letterboxd, the film bro is real and exists. But the unfortunate part is that sometimes he’s onto something! And if you let him stop you from enriching your life, if you let him gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss you from watching great movies? Then the film bro has truly defeated you.

None of this is to say that “important” art isn’t often problematic, for the record! Or that “important” art should distract you from art that is, by some circumstance or another, ignored and marginalized but no less meaningful. But I think we must be mature enough to admit that, sometimes, the cultural consensus (however warped and twisted by systemic and historical forces it may be) can highlight some pretty extraordinary works. And taking the time to experience these things, to examine them and think critically about them, is an incredibly valuable experience that more people should have! Even if that ends with you deciding you hate it, that it’s not that important, or that the things it is important to are totally worthy of your dismissal.

To be perfectly honest I think the reason this is frustrating me is that the core idea of “Goncharov” as a bit? It’s really very simple: it’s a great mafia movie by a great filmmaker with themes and symbolism and nuanced performances and memorable sequences and artful composition and much to think about, that no one has seen because it’s so obscure. But that movie exists! It exists a thousand times over! If the joke for you is that you would ever take an interest in such a thing, like “imagine me watching a three hour long Scorsese movie with a focus on male relationships and tons of lapsed Catholic themes, ha ha couldn’t be me”, then I encourage you to think of it as more than a joke. Who knows, you might find something that strikes you, challenges you, makes you reconsider your preconceptions, changes your mind in some tiny but meaningful way! Or maybe it won’t and your preconceptions will be reinforced. But even then, those ideas will be more meaningful to you, more solid, because you have genuine experience and analysis and thought to buttress them!

I don’t know, I’m rambling, it’s late, I’m tired and hungry and worn out after a long day. Maybe none of this bothers anyone but my dumb ass. Maybe I’m frustrated over nothing, or picking up on vibes that aren’t really there. But I gotta vent my guts out somewhere and it sure as shit can’t be twitter anymore, y’know?

[todayisafridaynight]

Is there a character that’s like a Vegeta to you as in there’s so many interesting characters, but fans love this douche so we got to make him the center focus now!

there's like. legally only one answer to this question but i feel ???? saying it

[phagodyke]

whenever ppl ask me what my type is (or even like. what celebrities I find attractive) I have a rly hard time pinning it down for them bc things like familiarity actually factor in a LOT for me so I don't tend to immediately recognise whether someone I've never seen before irl is hot or not. actually if we wanna get properly into it the reality of how attraction works for me is that I fall in world-rearrangingly devastating love with someone and my "type" then redefines itself accordingly as a category of ppl who remind me of them in specific subtle/less-than-subtle ways and the imprint of that sticks with me forever so whenever I find someone instinctively beautiful I'm always just seeing the ghost of past loves in their face or the way they hold themselves. but I can't explain that to ppl bc I feel like it comes across weird and a little creepy so I just laugh and tell them "well its arbitrary, I'm just attracted to ppl on an individual basis! um and also ayo edebiri is sooo gorgeous" which is true

[finalrestingplace]

discord really is good for talking but it exacerbates my anxiety to debilitating levels- any kind of instant messaging does, with anyone '~' why am i like this

[king-sassy08]

I'm back at it again, unfortunately