#but I guess that's a good problem to have overall

[communistkenobi]

ok conclave thots (spoilers)

trying very hard to set aside my feelings on the Catholic Church to evaluate this movie. It’s quite beautiful, everything has a very solid physical presence, big wooden doors thunking, columns of stone and marble, thick robes, luxurious physical sets. Really enjoyed the cinematography. The cast was all really enjoyable aside from Stanley Tucci, not bc he’s a bad actor but I could not be sold on him being a cardinal. he seemed generally out of place. Although he was clearly there to be a bit ‘out of place’ as a figure for liberal Catholics, like definitely the type of guy who would think creating an anime girl avatar for the Catholic Church would be a good move to modernise the church. Actually maybe he was good in that movie I change my mind.

He did also demonstrate the complete failure of liberalism to respond to right wing rhetoric - all he says in response to Tedesco’s islamophobic rant about the need for religious intolerance is “you should be ashamed of yourself!”, just totally unable to address Tedesco’s fixation on conducting religious warfare. The film is centred around the church’s need to manage its public image, making multiple references to the recent international outcry over the church’s systemic sexual abuse problems, its homophobia & anti-abortion views that are increasingly falling out of favour, and the general trouble the church has with the press. There is a clear emerging clash between tradcaths and liberal Catholics that are fighting for dominance in the church. The film ultimately finds synthesis between these two poles in Benitez, a man who conducted missions in ‘war torn’ countries such as the Congo and Afghanistan (thus having a more genuine connection to religious intolerance than privileged, out of touch conservatives like Tedesco) but despite that still desires to promote unity and tolerance, and at the last hour is revealed to be an intersex man who was counselled by the pope to get a hysterectomy (and decided against it), as if literally embodying the tension between these two positions within the church. Not sure how I feel about that lol, intersex characters are so rare and he’s not treated as a punchline, they even do the “born this way” thing with it as like god made him intersex. so like props for that I guess.

overall a very goofy person’s idea of power and politics but it was a fun watch and I had a good time. Kinda soured on how ridiculous it is that Benitez would pull a super-majority from a single speech to Tedesco about him not knowing anything about “real war” and the need for unity - like idk I remember learning about Mehmet Ali Acğa’s assassination attempt of the pope and how virulently Islamophobic the response was from the public & media, the idea that there would be a “Muslim terrorist” bombing (they leave it vague in the movie but that’s clearly what’s being evoked) in Rome that damaged the building or church or wherever the cardinals were, and the cardinals didn't all immediately side with Tedesco is pretty mind boggling lmao. Again trying very hard to set aside my thoughts on history and religious politics and just have a fun time with this one, but it’s hard to distance those things when the history being dealt with is so recent.

Ralph Fiennes owns in this movie though, great job from him and just what I wanted out of a Ralph Fiennes character. I really liked this review of it on Letterboxd

[running-in-the-dark]

I'm super anxious now. I don't usually get very anxious anymore (thank you, meds 💖) so it feels... weird. I mean, it's nice that it's rarer now, but it feels more distressing than it used to.

I've got an appointment with my psychiatrist tomorrow, and I'm getting my conch piercing swapped out for a shorter one. that's gonna be stressful 🙃

[nostalgia-tblr]

.

[quatregats]

Just started thinking about my department and my program and now I'm stressed out again

[anaalnathrakhs]

"people love you uwu people care about you" okay? not my problem. love me less. can we work out a reasonable level of care where it's obviously not cool if horrible things happen to me, a human being, and you won't do any horrible thing to me, but you don't feel obligated to fuss over anything out of the ordinary i do and i have to shut up about it and perform Normal Human Emotions lest i commit an awful social faux pas and hurt your feelings?

[doerot]

I finally got around to watching ready or not, and honestly, it just really cemented that I much prefer more grounded horror. Like I enjoyed it, it was fun but. I think I would have just appreciated it so much more if there wasn't a deal with the devil angle to it. Like worship satan, perform these rituals to appease him, and when you fail. When the girl survives. Nothing happens. You did it all for nothing. You killed your loved ones for nothing. The horror was of your own creation, it was all you. No higher power making you do it. You. And now you have to face the consequences.

Instead they just like. Blew up or whatever

[shekeepsmeworms]

Had some wine feeling good made a really shitty bowl in ceramics class this morning that I’m really worried has a bunch of air holes in it and had a really crappy therapy session where I didn’t talk too much but was honest about some other stuff which is good overall I guess but now I’m doing drunk crochet and watching the Duggar family documentary and probably going to stop watching soon once they start talking about the awful stuff but yeah day in the life of a woman doing her best I guess

[tilia-cacophonous]

WAIT pause pause pause everyoene, I was todays ten thousand to learn that akechis VA robbie daymond is a va for league of legends???????

[lavenderjewels]

maybe im just very hard to please when it comes to media lately but I didn’t really like this bsd episode

[devildairymilkfairy]

.

[crehador]

MOMOKI MY GUY GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW

[orcelito]

ok i watched episode 16 of trigun 98 and i have a Few Thoughts, but the biggest ones are:

HE PISSSED ON THE MOOOOOON

&

Is This Some Sort Of Twisted Christian Science?

no joke i had to pause the video for the twisted christian science thing bc i was laughing so fucking hard i was nearly choking. thanks, rai-dei

& of course the Moon Beam which was expected. what WASNT expected was the fact that Legato caused it instead of Knives. but knowing what happened in chapter 32 of trimax, it's not entirely out of the realm of the manga's canon either. but i Am sad about how we didnt get to see the #Looks both Vash and Knives served in the fifth moon incident in the manga. man.

interesting implications all around. im wondering where the Fuck knives is, bc we saw in the manga that he was regenerating, but now it's like. where tf is he, actually? we've only gotten snapshots of him so far. the briefest of thoughts. episode 16 and we're only just now getting direct confirmation that Vash is VERY not human (plus a confirmation that July was set 23 years ago in the anime, which is an added weirdness for new watchers who dont know about him being functionally immortal)

preview of the next episode shows that it's Backstory Episode. im done watching for today but im looking forward to seeing what the anime sets for that

[sneepity-snoop-snorpity-sneep]

I HAVE SOME THOUGHTS ON HOW AMERICAN SOCIETY HANDLES MENTAL DISABILITY AND I HAVE DECIDED TO talk about it to myself on my blog at moderate volume

THOUGHT NUMBER 1!!

OK so i’m pretty sure anyone who’s thought about it knows that the medical community (and other industries connected to it, like the insurance dudes), don’t consider brain-malfunction conditions to be on the same tier as other forms of healthcare, and give less priority to funding those departments, which means even if you HAVE got a bunch of medical professionals in those disciplines who DO take that ish seriously, they’ve got immediate barriers between them and the folks needing their services. which sucks.

that one i don’t have an immediate fix for, cuz i don’t think there IS an immediate fix, especially with how many more people are needing mental health treatments/evaluations these days. but you know what COULD have a nice big drastic impact on how people as a whole see mental health AND ALSO how large of a burden untreated mental health problems put on american society??

MAKE. ANNUAL. MENTAL HEALTH. EVALUATIONS. A. NORMAL. THING!!

like what parents are supposed to do with their kids and dr appointments is at least once a year, hop in the car or on the bus, and take their kid to get a physical! thats a totally normal thing people do, the idea being “even if there wasn’t anything obviously wrong before the appointment, its just a good way to keep an eye on our children’s health and catch problems sooner if a serious one does turn up!

well folks, that idea of monitoring one’s health preventing a lot of problems from becoming problems in the first place would also work with any and all forms of neurodivergency!! like how many people who struggle with a brain illness struggle mostly due to the fact that they weren’t prepared for it!? i’m totally projecting here btw, cuz guess what happened to me even though i WAS tested as a kid!! this exact issue right here!

obviously, a lot of mental illnesses specifically can’t be counted on to show up when you're still in childhood, where once a problem is revealed its the adults around you who are supposed to take care of you and make sure you’re getting what you need. BUT!!! but but but but BUT

if you DID come down with a condition as an adult, but you’d already been somewhat familiarized with what symptoms WERE IN FACT symptoms, and common treatments/solutions for said symptoms, due to having regular psychiatric checkups with a dr throughout childhood?

well, odds seems pretty good that you’d be much better prepared for that condition if/when it did come along, and it would probably take less time to notice it too!

say nothing of the fact that this would do a lot to de-stigmatize mental health, cuz if u arrange ur healthcare system so it is No Longer Assuming That Neurotypicality Is The Norm, then EVERYONE’S got that knowledge too, and even for the people who haven’t got a form of neurodivergence and never will -  them having a similar stockpile of background knowledge and awareness of mental health as those who do have a condition will do a ton to remove the obstacles in the way of effective society-wide treatment of brain illnesses (both on the stigma side of things, and on the practical symptom-treating side)

THOUGHT NUMBER 2!!

so this party-popper of thought was specifically inspired by a post i saw but can’t find (NVM I FOUND IT :D) that listed neurotypical traits in a similar manner as autistic traits tend to be talked about - i chuckled at it and then went like hey, what if tho, what if that could actually have some practical applications?

specifically, what if that exact premise was used as a the foundation of a unit in health classes in public schools?

like i know that even if you get a health curriculum and teacher that does a fairly good job of talking about what they’re required/allowed to talk about, there just isn’t enough time given to go into detail about a lot of important shit, and in the classes i got at least, neurodivergency vs. neurotypical-ness was one of the things not discussed (most of the ones i got focused on healthy relationships, which they did a good-but-not-great job on)

but if you had even just a couple lectures where the teachers first explain what each one is, give a few examples of neurodivergent conditions, and then follow it up with a talk outlining the neurotypical traits and explaining why/how they’re neurotypical traits?? it could definitely have a similar effect as the theoretical benefits to Thought #1

it would potentially re-frame the lack-of-condition that is being neurotypical - like i feel like the way people see it as ‘normal’ and while i get how that’s the impression people end up with, i think that’s a bad way to try and categorize the different ways the human brain functions - cuz what does normal even mean??? it doesn’t really describe anything except that ‘this person doesn’t seem to have anything going on with their behavior, they must be normal’ which. uh. hi there high-functioning folks, how y’all doing on this fine fall afternoon?

like if i’d been made aware that a lot of the stuff i did that i knew was what made me ‘weird’ were actually full-on SYMPTOMS that i actually shared with a ton of other people!? lemme tell you, it would’ve made a BIG difference in how much i measured the scope my problems based on ‘i’m weird though, so this is to be expected’

 Even (or maybe especially) though i didn’t actually know anybody personally with the same conditions, because hey! i didn’t know many people personally who also had asthma, but i never developed any hangups around how that affected my physical needs. why would I??! i’d already met a bunch of doctors about it, gotten an inhalor for it, and knew it was a Condition and that i was far from the only kid who had it. there wasn’t any empty space in my knowledge that i was left to fill with my own assumptions, that if i was so perpetually inadequate it must just be a trait i had and there wasn’t any point in trying to logic my way out of that burden

it doesn’t seem like it would be particularly difficult to close that knowledge gap when it comes to how people look at mental illness and neurodivergency, even just by explaining what’s really going into being allistic, neurotypical, or ‘normal’ would go a long way towards dispelling the idea that people have absolute control over their brains and behavior, as well as just being a great way to get folks with undiagnosed going-ons in their grey matter to shake off any assumptions they’ve made about how they should look at themselves for not being normal

ok yeah, having lectures where u explain how a person is neurotypical the same way you’d explain how someone is neurodivergent won’t help people with brain conditions know which one they’ve got or what to do about it - but i feel like the greater gain here is disrupting the idea that being neurotypical or ‘normal’ is something that awards merit or pride.

no one who’s not-neurodivergent got that way because of something they personally achieved or did. it wasn’t a reward they received from the universe for being a Certified Good Boi, they got lucky! they didn’t do anything to personally earn a brain that functions and on the flip side of that, starting out with a brain that functions isn’t actually some form of magical protection from losing that functionality if ur good luck runs out - a lot of forms of neurodivergence aren’t ones you’re born with after all.

and even the ones that ARE, same logic applies!! autism, adhd, and other conditions aren’t metaphorical coal in ur stocking for being naughty, they just are. nobody gets a say in what stats they have at birth!! (honestly the control we have even under our own agency and mobility isn’t that influential on our circumstances a lot of the time)

basically i feel like u want to start regularly introducing the idea that the perception of ‘normal’ is coming out of very measurable things in people’s brains. A perception which really just seems like another lazy way of assuming that those who have a functioning brain won’t ever have to worry about losing that, like it’s an inherent trait to you as a person or something - newflash! it ain’t. your mind, personality, and behavior are not magical airy-fairy things detached from measurable factors, their roots are all held within your brain, and your brain is an organ which can get sick or damaged. Not only that, but since its a very complex organ to boot, it doesn’t take a very big change to cause big differences in functionality!!

like yeah in theory it would be great if you could explain the difficulties people with disabilities face to those with no personal stake in that, and have them have sufficient empathy to consider that as something that matters. And although I’m sure there ARE folks out there capable of that, there’s also a lot of folks out there who will let you down BIG TIME on that front, so i think another tactic to use when trying to combat ableism would be to start requiring curriculums that gives all the folks across the board a nice big sip of

[roz-ani]

I hereby declare the 1995 "Pride and Prejudice" TV series to be the superior adaptation. Thank you. You are dismissed. Have a nice day ❤️

(rambling in the tags)

[ocpdzim]

always happy to field asks about my ocs btw. if there’s more than 3 total posts about any given OC on my blog you can be reasonably sure that i have essays locked and loaded for anything you may be wondering about

[little-eye-guy]

laid down n the ulcers immediately started gurgling. didn’t have a problem just before this so what’s the big idea guys 🤨