#but i got so emotional thinking about how much they overlap and intersect

[legendoftherisingtide]

im sure someone’s said it but i love when crowley and aziraphale blend and mix and become those shades of grey.

like obviously the famous switch in s1 gave aziraphale the freedom to go feral and he was fully gonna kill a kid that one time (and also prepared to let kids die in s2 but i will just believe that was just his faith in crowley).

but i love the subtler times. when they were raising adam, they switched roles in a way. you would expect aziraphale to take the nurturing nanny role and we see that crowley loves plants and is the only thing he has with him wherever he lives. but they chose to be the other.

i just love the influence they have on each other. crowley is so blatant with his influence across their history: pushing aziraphale to think critically and challenge his views. but aziraphale’s kindness and understanding allows crowley to be more open and vulnerable.

they have spent their whole existences pretending like they aren’t all the other has. but in reality, it is hard to see where one ends and the other begins.

[random-thought-depository]

The way I understood this concept is that "boy (young but adult version)" and "man" are overlapping but different social roles/categories and the former provides substantially more room to be cute and neotenous and eccentric and gender nonconforming/feminine and vulnerable without being considered a pathetic gross creepy freak for it.

I mean, also, there are some significant physical differences between how men and women age, e.g. men are much more likely to go bald (I can empathize very easily with terror of going bald, I am so glad I seem to have genes conducive to keeping my hair). But I want to talk about the social side some more.

Too lazy to look it up right now, but some years back I found a post discussing the concept that "gender is a mating strategy" and I'd say, yeah, "gender is a social role and a social strategy and a mating strategy" is the model that feels right for how I relate to mine, and I very much empathize what I think that "twink who transitions when they hit 30 cause being a guy is only tolerable to them when they're a young guy" is getting at, because the mating strategy that's most comfortable for me and would play best to my strengths and natural personality would be to lean into being appealing in a cute "Born Sexy Yesterday" kind of way (I am still salty about how intensely neurotypical feminist that "Born Sexy Yesterday" video was), and older men are the people to whom the "Born Sexy Yesterday" kind of appeal/sexiness is least accessible. Being a middle-aged man legit gives me something that I suspect feels a lot like gender dysphoria - I think it is gender dysphoria, of the bilateral dysphoria kind:

"I had escaped the dysphoria of being a woman so totally that now I could recognize there was also a dysphoria to being a man. I was suffering from something my friend Jess White had once named bilateral dysphoria, the confusing push-and-pull of being some kind of nonbinary gender in a world with mostly-binary embodiment and presentation options, and almost exclusively binary social scripts."

And, like, yeah, some of the stuff in that essay makes a pretty good illustration of what I'm talking about:

"I didn't emote. I didn't approach people. I took care not to even glance in the direction of a woman or a child on the bus. Or a straight man. Or a gay one. I didn't want anybody to feel preyed upon. Didn't want my attention to linger. It seemed manhood was a task of performing disinterest and detachment nearly all the time. I didn't want to be too flouncy and sensitive, lest I ruin the illusion that I was a man. At the same time, I feared that my gruff. withdrawn seriousness also made me terrifying."

"When I traveled to the blood bank, I pretended I was a straight, cisgender man. They wouldn’t have accepted my donation otherwise. It was a role I’d perfected a while back: I simply had to make myself more depressed, less verbally and emotionally responsive, permanently bored and sloppily dressed. You learn to play this role when you start going to the men’s restroom; the more tired and unsocial that you look, the less likely it is any other guy will give you a problem." ... "I got a packet of Oreos and a miniature water bottle after. I couldn’t be happy at the little treat. That is not what Straight Devon would possibly do. I couldn’t wriggle in my seat with relief, or pride at having braved a tough situation and done a good deed. I was a man now and that meant feeling nothing, connecting with nobody, giving nothing up."

I think there's a definite intersection with age ranges as social roles here, the kind of expectations talked about in the two quotes immediately above also apply very much to the behavior people are expected to perform to appear "grown up." I have experiences like the ones described in those quotes, but when I do what I'm thinking isn't "I need to act more like a sullen low-energy grump or people will think I look effeminate and target me for homophobia/gender policing," it's "I need to act more like a sullen low-energy grump or people will think I'm acting child-like and target me with some combination of ableism and adultism and whatever you want to call that thing where a man who deviates from normative behavior is suspected of being evil and dangerous," when I think about ways I experience normative behavior standards as alienating and oppressive I think (among other things) about things like "some years back I went to a beach and found this weird bone in the sand and was interested in it and picked it up and examined it, I'm pretty sure that wasn't a normal adult thing to do, that's the sort of thing a kid would do, adults aren't normatively supposed to have that kind of playful curiosity, man normative adulthood sounds bleak"; I suspect this is an autism thing; retaining of child-like playfulness in adulthood seems to me like a signature trait of the autistic personality.

It feels like young men get more allowance to deviate from that "gotta act like a movie tough guy, can't show much playfulness, intense emotions other than anger, or vulnerability" masculinity script. Young men get more social allowance to be happy about the Oreos, because they get a little of the same allowances that children get.

Being cute and neotenous and vulnerable is substantially more socially acceptable for women, being cute is kind of socially encouraged and rewarded for at least young women, and being feminine is strongly socially encouraged for women in an almost tautological sense (femininity is constitutive of women's normative gender presentation, if it was anything else it wouldn't be called femininity), so, yeah, if you're male and being able to do that is important to you gender transition is one possible escape route from the social tolerance for you being that way decreasing the more you visibly age. It's a bit more complicated with vulnerability cause actually old people are vulnerable cause of aging-related disabilities and inevitably recognized as such, but, like, I remember reading a post a while back about how the people with most consistent age-related privilege are middle-aged people, and, yeah, if you're a middle aged man you're normatively supposed to be a competent confident mature 9-5-job-having husband and father who provides for his family and the closer to middle age you get as a guy the more people think there must be something wrong with you if you're not that.

Relevantly, re: "impermissibility of aging to women" that post was talking about how disabled people often don't really get a middle age and go straight from being talked about as if they're children to being talked about as if they're old and dying and how that enables the social murder of disabled people by framing them as naturally decrepit and dying if they're older than, like, 40, and one immediate thought I had about it was "Oh, hey, you know what other type of person often experiences this thing of not really getting a middle age and going straight from being thought of as presumed-inexperienced youngsters to being thought of as over the hill? Women!" Definitely made me see the Tumblr culture of talking about people older than 30 and sometimes even older 20-somethings as if they're old when I put that thought together with "Tumblr is a website with lots of women and disabled people, how much of that is internalization of that straight from being thought of as a child-like youngster to being thought of as a declining old person experience women and disabled people often get?"

what i don't understand about the egg cracking/prime directive/let feminine men be feminine men stuff is what do you think the femboy is gonna do when he notices he's aging as a man

[a-queer-seminarian]

so ya wanna know about autism: masterpost

I give this google doc link out to individuals a lot, and realized it might be useful for a lot of people if i shared it more widely. It’s a masterpost of a whole bunch of Autistic Stuff -- here’s the link to the actual doc, but i’ll also post it all here on tumblr (under a readmore after the table of contents).

(edit: if the hyperlinks aren’t working for you, here’s the google doc url that you can copy and paste into an internet browser to access everything: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16BqhRv4IlZ6KcElGAEZOx8sFYwRs4W1jF-ddY_XKYnE/edit?usp=sharing )

Please spread it around (including sharing the google doc link outside of tumblr wherever you want). Feel free to comment with more resources, tumblr posts, articles, etc. that you find helpful! And if any links are broken, let me know.

It can be a major challenge for adult autistic folks to find content for us and by us, because so much “official” content is 1) ableist and harmful and 2) geared towards parents of autistic children. So I’ve compiled just about every resource I’ve got that discusses autism by and for #actuallyautistic folks.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- ORGANIZATIONS AND SELF ADVOCATES

- DEFINING AND DESCRIBING AUTISM

misc.

Metaphors and images for autism

Disability models

Issues with Functioning Labels, ideas of “Mild” - “Severe” autism

- AUTISM AND INTERSECTIONALITY

misc.

Autism among women

Autism and race

Autism and LGBTQ

- STUFF ON SELF DIAGNOSIS

misc.

Is it ADHD or Autism??

Tests / checklists

- STUFF ON PROFESSIONAL DIAGNOSIS

- AUTISTIC PRIDE / CULTURE AND HISTORY!

misc.

Autism / disability history and culture

The Neurodiversity Movement

Person first vs. identity first language

Cureism

- AUSTITIC TRAITS (BEYOND THE ONES COMMONLY DISCUSSED!)

Misc. - samefoods, lists, needing to know what to expect, etc.

Stimming

Communication stuff - misc. - Verbal/nonverbal - Infodumping - echolalia - Prosopagnosia - Aphasia - Eye contact

Special interests / hyperfixations

Auditory Processing Disorder

Sensory issues / Sensory Processing Disorder

Meltdowns and Shutdowns and Burnout

Executive function

Emotion stuff

- MASKING / PASSING / SCRIPTING

- WHY AUTISM SPEAKS AND ABA ARE SO BAD

- MISCELLANEOUS

Suicide

Allyship / for allistics - For parents of autistic persons

More non-speaking autistic self-advocates

misc.

_________________

SOME ORGANIZATIONS AND SELF ADVOCATES

ASAN!!

The Autistic Woman and Nonbinary Network

Amethyst Schaber’s “Ask and Autistic” YouTube full of videos on various autistic stuff

Lydia X.Z. Brown / Autistic Hoya 

Dr. Nick Walker

Mrs. Kerima Çevik

“Non-Speaking Autistic Speaking” - Amy Sequnzia’s blog

“The thinking person’s guide to autism”

The How-To Wiki for autism is actually really helpful! 

Ollibean blog .

DEFINING AND DESCRIBING AUTISM

Video: “What is autism?”

“About autism”

“What being autistic means to me”

Myths about autism .

Metaphors and images for autism - “Autism is a sundae bar” - “Autism is purple” - “Understanding the spectrum” comic - Another visual on the idea of a spectrum - And another visual on the spectrum - not an on-off switch .

Disability models - Understanding disability models - Video: models of disability discourse .

Functioning Labels, “Mild” or “Severe” autism - Article on functioning labels - “What’s wrong with functioning labels? A masterpost” - Another article on problems with functioning labels - “I don’t experience my autism mildly; you experience my autism mildly” - A non-speaking autistic who is labeled non-functioning discusses labels - “Most people would consider me low-functioning, but I hate that word” - Tweets from actual autistics on functioning labels - How the same person may be labeled low or high functioning at different times - “Mental Age Theory hurts people with disabilities” .

AUTISM AND INTERSECTIONALITY

Article on autism in communities of color + in the LGBTQ community

Autism, intersectionality, and STEM college outcomes

Articles on intersectionality on The Art of Autism .

Autism among women - A reminder about talking about differences in autism in “females” - “I thought I was lazy: the invisible struggle for autistic women” - “The women who don’t know they’re autistic” - “The gas-lighting of women and girls on the autism spectrum” .

Autism and race - “Being Autistic, Black, and Femme” - “Black and Autistic: Is there room at the advocacy table?” - “Autistic, Gifted, and Black” - “I, too, am Racialized” - Autistic Hoya on being Chinese & a transracial adoptee - Video: “Growing up BLACK in a neurotypical legal system” - The Autism Wars: Mrs. Kerima Çevik’s blog .

Autism and LGBTQ - “Autism and gender variance - is there a cause for the correlation?” - “The intersection of autism and gender” - Issues being transmasc and autistic - “Gendervague: At the intersection of Autistic and trans experiences” - “I’m an autistic lesbian and no, I don’t wish I were ‘normal’” .

STUFF ON SELF DIAGNOSIS:

A self-diagnosis masterpost!

Autistic self-dx is valid

“Reasons why self-dx is good from the pov of a professional” 

Some reasons why autism may go undiagnosed 

“Five reasons I am self identified as autistic”

“Beware of gatekeeping”

A masterpost of “resources for women who believe they might be autistic”

A therapist who’s never met an incorrect self-dx-er .

Is it ADHD or Autism?? - Links to information on the intersections between autism and ADHD - A list of things that are more ADHD, things that are more autism, and things that are both - Science: decoding the overlap between ADHD and autism - The concept of neurodivergent “cousins” .

Various tests / checklists: - ASD Checklist - List of inclusive autistic traits - Book: I Think I Might Be Autistic: A Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis and Self-Discovery for Adults .

STUFF ON PROFESSIONAL DIAGNOSIS:

Privilege in being able to get a diagnosis

Pros and cons of getting one

Someone answers the question “Was it worth it for you to get diagnosed as an adult?”

Professional diagnosis can get some people deported :/

This person’s journey from self-dx to pro-dx .

AUTISTIC PRIDE / CULTURE AND HISTORY!

The wiki how-to on accepting your autism

The wiki how-to on autistic strengths 

“7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture”

“I’m autistic and proud of it”

“You are not a burden” 

“What is self advocacy?” .

Autism / disability history and culture - Video: “Is autism a disability?” - A google drive “disability library” full of amazing content - A tumblr tag full of posts with autistic history - Book - Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking includes essays that explore the history of autism and of autistic self-advocacy - Book - Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity .

The Neurodiversity movement - The neurodiversity paradigm - Video: basic terms and definitions - Video: what is neurodiversity? - Liberating ourselves from the pathology paradigm .

Person first vs. identity first language (“person with autism” vs. “autistic person”) - ASAN on identity first language - Why it matters - Video: Autism ACTUALLY Speaking - Science: a study on what labels actual autistic persons prefer - An image showing the difference between person first and identity first language .

Cureism & seeking causes of autism - Video: “Autism and the disability community: the politics of neurodiversity, causation, and cure” - Video: Self advocacy in a culture of cure - An analogy against cureism - It’s okay that some autistics do want a cure - Quotes on Truth Is by Julia Bascom about not needing a cure - Cureism is eugenics - “If a cure is found, no one will force you to take it” .

AUTISTIC TRAITS (BEYOND THE ONES COMMONLY DISCUSSED!)

“Thinking about patterns of opposite extremes among autistic people” (e.g. how we tend to be sensory avoidant or sensory seeking, extremely gender conforming or extremely gender nonconforming, hyper-empathetic or hypo-empathetic)

An essay on inclusive autistic traits

This tumblr is dedicated to answering people asking about whether various things are autistic traits!

This person lists the reasons they think (know) they’re autistic; the list includes a lot of traits that often aren’t talked about 

“Some autism things” .

“What are samefoods?” - “Why do autistic people tend to samefood?”

It’s okay if you don’t like certain things / avoid certain things because of your autism

Wanting/needing to know how long something will last, what to expect .

Stimming! - Video: what is stimming? - Video on self-injurious stims - Video: autobiographical look at stimming and its role - More than a coping mechanism - A masterpost of examples of various types of stimming - Video on vocal / verbal stimming - Examples of vocal stimming as communication - A tumblr blog with a tag full of examples of body stims .

Communication stuff - Trouble with volume modulation; repetition; inconsistent talking habits - Autistic idiolects - Autistic dialect? - Autistics communicate differently amongst each other! . - Verbal/nonverbal - - Selective mutism - - Semiverbal communication - - Different amounts of access to speech - - A person on being non-verbal and using AAC - - People who are nonverbal still deserve to be listened to .

Infodumping - What is infodumping?

Echolalia - “Autism and Echolalia: what you need to know” - What is echolalia? - A tumblr blog’s tag featuring examples of echolalia

Aphasia and autism

Prosopagnosia (Face blindness) - Science: a study confirming that some 67% of autistic persons have some degree of facial recognition difficulties - Science: a study offering theories for why this is!

Video: Autistics and eye contact - Science: Researchers explore why autistic people avoid eye contact

Tendency to overexplain .

Special interests / hyperfixations - Some info on hyperfixations - Video on special interests - Emphasizing the intensity of these things - “What’s so special about a special interest?” - “Why we love what we love and why it should matter to you” - Not every autistic person knows everything there is to know about their special interest - “Interest hopping” - Dividing our life into “eras” of special interests .

Auditory Processing Disorder - Examples of APD - “You might struggle with auditory processing if…” .

Sensory Processing Disorder - Video: What is sensory processing disorder? - Video: a virtual experience of what it’s like to be at a party as someone with SPD - A post about some of the weird sensory stuff that many autistics experience (such as feeling nauseated when your real issue is a headache) - Many sensory issues aren’t just annoying, but physically painful - Difficulty in explaining autistic hypersensitivities - Auditory sensory musings - Trying to describe sensory overload - Not noticing when we’re hungry - Weird tolerance for big pain, intolerance for small pain - Science: “Unseen Agony: Dismantling Autism’s house of pain” - Tumblr blog with a tag of other posts about sensory issues .

Meltdowns and Shutdowns and burnout: - Meltdowns vs. shutdowns - Video: “What are autistic meltdowns?” - Video: “What are autistic shutdowns?” - A description of meltdowns - Signs of a shutdown in autistic people - How to support someone having a shutdown - Science: “Autistic shutdown alters brain function” - How to avoid meltdowns - “Dealing with meltdowns” - “The protective gift of meltdowns” - Video on autistic burnout - Article on burnout - Science: Autistic burnout described by a researcher - An article on autistic regression (burnout) - “Help! I seem to be getting more autistic” - talks about how things like burnout, aging, new environment, being around other autistics, and more can cause this .

Executive function - Video: “What is executive functioning?” - A chart describing the different aspects of executive function - “Executive functioning problems - a frustrating aspect of being autistic” - Autistic inertia .

Emotion stuff (including empathy) - Our emotional regulation is different - Article: (some) people with autism can read emotions, feel empathy - Video on misconceptions around autism and empathy - “Double standards: The irony of empathy and autism” - Science on the “double empathy problem” involving relationships between autistics and non-autistics - Not a bad person for not having empathy - More musings on autism and empathy - “Autistic grief is not like neurotypical grief” .

Alexithymia: - Science: Overlap between autism and alexithymia - Video: what is alexithymia? - “I don’t know how I feel”

MASKING / PASSING 

Video on passing

An infographic on autistic masking

Another video on masking / “hiding” in a neurotypical world

We are not obligated to mask or “act less autistic”

When you mask less and get told “you’ve been acting more autistic”

Getting called high-functioning because you mask/pass well

Scripting: - Video: what is scripting? 

WHY AUTISM SPEAKS AND ABA ARE SO BAD

A guide to identifying good autism organizations (and how they can improve!)

Autism Speaks:

Some facts and statistics 

An AS masterpost

Another AS masterpost

Video: What’s wrong with AS?

Video: a non-speaking autistic’s response to discussions between Autism Speaks and GRASP

“Enough with the puzzle pieces”

“I resign my roles at Autism Speaks”

“Responding to Autism Speaks” .

ABA:

Video: what’s ABA? 

“Studies find thin evidence for early autism therapies” 

Masterpost of why ABA is harmful

More on how ABA is abusive even if a kid “seems to like it”

An autistic describes ABA’s “quiet hands” method

And another post on how ABA is harmful

Trauma and autism

Alternatives to ABA

MISCELLANEOUS 

Suicide - Video: Speaking to suicidal autistics - Science linking autism and increased suicidality - Video: “diagnosis saved my life” .

Allyship / for allistics - Video: How to be an ally - Resources for supporting autistics during Autism Acceptance month and year-round! - Autistic accessibility needs - “How to be a friend to autistic people” - 15 things you never say to an autistic person - What to say / not to say to an autistic adult - Video: what shouldn’t I say to autistic people? - Video: Things not to say to an autistic person - Video: “Isn’t everyone a bit autistic?” - Don’t talk about “mental age” - “To those who tell autistic persons ‘everyone experiences that’” - Why it’s not helpful to say “well I don’t think of you as disabled / as autistic” - How to support a loved one who’s gone temporarily nonverbal - How to support someone having a shutdown - Help reduce meltdowns in a loved one - Don’t restrain an autistic person having a meltdown - Understanding why autistics seem “so picky” - Making communication easier for your autistic friend - Avoiding ableism against AAC users - How to protect your autistic employees from ‘no script found’ situations” .

For parents of autistic persons - “Don’t Mourn for Us” - “You don’t ‘lose a child to autism’” - Advice from autistic adults on treating your autistic children with respect - A masterpost of advice for “autism parents” - It’s okay if your kid doesn’t hug you or say “I love you” - “They keep publishing these violent articles” - “When you’re autistic, abuse is considered love” - You don’t have to tell everyone who comes across you and your kid in public that your kid is autistic / you don’t have to constantly apologize for your kid! - Your kid isn’t bad / uncooperative just because they have certain differences - Don’t tell autistic adults we are “nothing like your child” - A tag full of more tumblr posts about / for “autism parents”

More non-speaking autistic self-advocates - Video: “In My Language” by Mel Baggs - Mel Baggs: “Don’t ever assume autism researchers know what they’re doing” - Lysik’an: “You don’t speak for low-functioning autistics” - Film: Deej

Autistics and the idea of “getting out of your comfort zone”

Autistics accommodate allistics far more than the other way around 

It is icky when autistic persons are only valued when we’re “productive” 

Parents who are themselves autistic

Autism as genetic? - Science: “Autism Genetics, Explained”

Science: links to some studies on autism and gastro-intestinal issues, autism and caffeine, autism and sleep, autism and stimming, autism and queerness, autistic strengths, and more

[miekasa]

speaking of college boys, what do the college au aot babies study??

Okay, okay, I think I’ve talked about this in an ask before but I can’t find it 😭😭 but it’s okay, I love college aus, so I’ll talk about it again! Plus, now I’ve got more thoughts for more characters, so here we go

Levi — neuroscience and psychology of human behavior

He started out on track to do a bachelor of arts in psychology, but when they touched on the anatomy and biological parts of it during his first year lecture, he switched to a bachelor of science.

The focus is still psychology, but through a more clinical lens. Essentially, he gets the best of both worlds this way. He’s intuitive and analytical, so clinical and mental diagnosis is easy to dissect for him. He’s also canonically good at math, so the calculus and stats parts aren’t too bad, either.

This major also leaves him with a few options post-grad, which is a nice bonus for him. He’s likely going to medical school, but that’s not the only route open to him: law school, therapy, lab work, medicine and pharmacy, even teaching are all viable options without going to grad school.

Do not talk to him about Freud unless you wanna get punted off a building.

Be careful with him, because with a single glance he’s already got scarily accurate predictions about your parental and emotional attachment styles, your behavior in social settings, and the onset (or seemingly lack thereof) of your frontal lobe development.

He thinks he’s so smart making comments like, “I see those synaptic connections aren’t working so well for you today,” like mf come here let me lobotomize you and see how well your synaptic connects are working after that🙄

Eren — general health sciences

He’s interested in science and the discovery aspects of it, but picking a specific field of focus right now feels too final. He likes it this way, because his schedule and requirements are less restrictive, and he has more room to find out what really interests him.

He does best when he’s doing something he loves, so picking a major with a bunch of reqs that he couldn’t care less about would have sucked big time for him. It also would have affected his grades. There are still some classes he has to take that he’s not fond of (see: chemistry), but that’s to be expected. Science in general is cool to him and he hopes to make his own discovery some day, even if it’s microscopic.

He also plays a lot of sports, keeping his schedule flexible is important. The sports end up helping him excel academically, which is a nice bonus. Honestly, Eren uses his time at university to learn more about himself than anything, so having control and freedom to do what he likes the majority of the time was important to him. 

He uses his elective credits to take philosophy or history courses of his interest, or maybe even a course that you’re in just to spend time with you. He also uses you as a live model for his homework bye, congrats on being patient number one to him.

Armin — astronomy and physics

He’s still interested in marine biology, but unless he attended a school near a coast, or with a specialized integrated program for that, it’s unlikely he’d major in it during undergrad.

Space and ocean exploration aren’t all that different. Both are vast, largely unexplored domains that reel-in Armin’s interest for discovery. So, while studying astronomy, he still gets to study evolution and make his own predictions about what could be out there because there’s so much to know.

Physics comes with the territory of learning about planetary science, and he’s mathematically inclined, so it works out for him. Learning about the different physical properties of other planets and space masses is honestly pretty sick to him. Because math isn’t a struggle, he actually considered aeronautical engineering, but he didn’t want to be a part of the college to military pipeline; that is, he didn’t want any potential design of his to be weaponized. 

He still gets to study animal biology through his elective courses, and might even find a few focused on marine animals to satiate him. Plant and cell biology are also of interest to him, and are just further applications of his primary study anyway, so he’s got plenty of room to work with.

This boy is interning at NASA and still, with his whole chest out is like, “I don’t need to discover a new planet, you’re my whole world.” Armin, go check on the Mars rover or something please.

Mikasa — anthropology + minor in japanese language studies

Anthropology is virtually interdisciplinary in nature, and Mikasa is a pretty well rounded student, so she’s able to excel in a program like this. She gets to study history, science, cultural studies, and even a bit of art all at once.

She’s still debating between going to law school vs med school, so anthro this is a good in-betweener. She gets a taste of science through her anatomy and kin courses; and lots of practice with reading and dissecting texts through the historical and cultural lectures. So, when the time comes to decide, she’ll have some experience with both.

Don’t know whether it’s confirmed that she’s (part) Japanese or not, but either way I headcanon that she speaks/spoke some second language at home. She wanted to delve more into it, and courses were offered at the university so why not?

Cultural studies courses end up being her favorite. She likes learning about the history of people and their cultures, and it encourages her to learn more about her own family history and culture. It also propels her to apply for a study abroad opportunity, so she spends at least one semester doing an exchange program and absolutely loves it.

She would also encourage you to apply and go, too. You guys might not be in the same program, but if there’s an applicable program in the same country she’s going to, then she’d definitely want you to apply. Spending the semester away with you would be a dream come true.

Hange — bioengineering + minor in political philosophy and law

It’s almost self-sabotage to be in an engineering program and have a minor; the coursework for engineering alone is backbreaking, and bioengineering has the added weight of human intricacies, but of course Hange makes it possible. 

They’re nothing short of a genius, so of course they have time to work a completely unrelated minor into their schedule. It doesn’t surprise anyone that they go on to complete an MD-PhD after undergrad. Insane. 

Bioengineering is essentially the synthesis of chemical engineering and health sciences; Hange spends their time exploring biological sciences and applies the engineering aspects of their coursework to their understanding of (and interest in creating) medicine. Truly a one of a kind mind. 

They also have an interest in philosophy and justice, so when they found out they only needed a measly nine or ten courses to minor in, they went for it, of course. In honesty, they don’t find the studies all that opposing: both law making and medicine making both have some kind of philosophy or method to them in their eyes. 

Hange has... little to no free time pls. They don’t mind it, because they love their coursework, but this means you are essentially ducking into their labs or scrambling to find them in-between their classes during your time in undergrad. They appreciate every second spent with you tho, and will gladly rope you into long discussions about their work. 

Jean — biochemistry + minor in art sustainability

He was undeclared his first year, and took a little bit of everything: art, science, history, anthropology, english. Basically, anything that fit into his schedule. It was hard for him to pick one thing—he liked the science and lab applications of STEM courses, but not the math; and the obvious painting and creativity of art, but hated the pretentious air about art history.

What he wants to do is make a difference, which is how he ends up knowing that he wants to go to med school after, so he picks a science-heavy major, but uses his elective spaces to take art courses. When he mixes the two, he ends up on sustainability—and the complexities about it that are applicable to both science and art are what really reels him in.

Interdisciplinary studies end up being his forte. He can approach sustainability from a science perspective which impacts his art style and materials; and tuning into his creative side allows him to think about science not just from a purely clinical perspective, but from a human one, too—patients are people after all.

He believes that everything is connected somehow, even things as seemingly opposite as art and biochemistry. And he works towards finding the unique intersection where everything overlaps. His studies are pretty cool, and he’s very passionate about them, so ask him about it 😌

The art he makes is pretty sick, too, and often commentary about science; he’s proving they’re not so opposite. You also heavily influence his studies in both areas: caring about you so much inspires him to take the healthcare focus seriously, and your very nature is inspiration to his art. 

Sasha — nursing

She’s friendly and good at working with people, so nursing was an easy choice for her. She accredits most of her motivation to being around her younger family members, and learns that she finds a simple kind of joy in helping to take care of others.

She struggles a bit her first year when it’s mostly all grades and standardized testing, but when she starts getting clinical experience and working in the hospital on campus, things round out for her.

Patient care is her strongest point. A lot of people often forget that knowing everything isn’t everything; if you don’t know how to calm or even just talk to your patient, you’re not that great of a healthcare professional.

Pretty certain that she wants to work with kids in the future, but she’s open to public health and even being a travel nurse if she finds opportunity there!

Of course, she’s pretty doting when it comes to you and all her friends. She might want to go into pediatrics, but the basics of nursing and health care extend to everyone, so you’re guaranteed to be well taken care of with Sasha around. You might even have to switch roles and take care of her sometimes, because her coursework can get pretty out of hand.

Connie — computer engineering with a focus on game design

He might not look it, but Connie has a brain under that shaved head of his. Computer engineering is cool to him because he basically learns about how simple things he uses every day (ie: phone, computer, microwave) works.

Systems and coding are actually the easy part for him, especially when they get into the application of it and aren’t just stuck looking at examples. That’s how he gets into game design.

The part about math and electricity and magnetic fields… well let’s just say he needed to make friends with someone who likes math and hardware his first year to get through it. But the struggle was worth it, because by his junior year he’s found a professor willing to mentor/supervise him as he works on his game and other projects, so life is good.

His school work is definitely hard, which is why the lives by the mantra of “work hard, party harder.” It’s only fair. 

He makes you a little avatar so you can test out his games for him <33 best boyfriend things <33 He’d also… build a game about your relationship. Every level is a different date you guys went on, and he definitely includes something cheesy, like “There are unlimited lives because I love you forever babe <3”

Porco — kinesiology + maybe mechanical engineering

He’s pretty into athletics and working out, but didn’t wanna go down the sports psychology route; he wanted something that left him with a few more options, so he ended up in kinesiology.

He was surprisingly pretty good at biology in high school, so something stem-oriented works out in his favor, and it turns out he’s pretty damn good at anatomy, too. He’ll probably end up in physical therapy after graduation.

He’s also got a knack for cars, which is where the engineering comes in, but he doesn’t care so much for the math part of it (he doesn’t care for it at all actually, fuck that); he just wants the hands on experience of building/fixing things and working with his hands. So, if he can get a minor in it and not struggle through 4 years of math, then he’d do that. If not, he’d take a few workshop-like classes.

Because he wants to go into physical therapy, you are essentially his practice patient. Your back hurts? Not a problem, he’s basically a professional masseuse. Muscle aches? He’s got a remedy and understanding of why it’s happening. Don’t let him catch you hunting over your desk grinding away at your homework, because he will poke your neck and correct your posture (he’ll also massage your shoulders, but after the scolding).

Pieck — classics + minor in philosophy

Ancient studies interest her, but more than that, the language of ancient Greek and Roman culture fascinates her, so classics is the way to go.

Because her focus within Classics ends up being Greek and Latin language studies, she is essentially learning both languages at the same time. She gets farther with Latin that she does with Greek. For whatever reason, the former comes almost naturally to her, so her written and translated work is more complex in Latin.

However, she finds cultural studies relation to Greece more interesting than that of Rome, so it’s a give and take with both; better at languages for Roman studies, better at culture and history for Greek studies.

Her minor is a natural evolution from her primary coursework. Ancient Romans and Greeks set the foundation for a lot of modern day philosophy, so it comes up in her major classes, but she wanted to delve further into the philosophy, and not just look at it historically, so she takes more courses to fulfill the minor.

Can be found laying on a blanket in the quad on a hot day, with her books spread out all around her, highlighter in hand as she works through her reading. You’re always invited to sit with her, and more often than not, it ends up with Pieck’s head in your lap, a book in her hands, and your own schoolwork in yours as you both read in each other’s company.

Bertholdt — computer science and coding

He’s level headed, good at planning, and above all, patient, so he’s cut out for this. He doesn’t consider himself to be particularly creative, which is why he doesn’t pick a speciality with lots of design; but he’s good at streamlining and ideas to life.

The patience really comes in when his code doesn’t run. It’s frustrating to scroll for two hours just to find out that the issue is a missing semi-colon in line 273 that he overlooked, but Berty will sit there until he finds it.

He’s also good at fixing issues. That’s not limited to issues in the code itself; it can mean finding shorter ways to produce the same function or loop, or integrating new aspects into existing code.

Also, he’d just be so cute, coding away on his computer. Just imagine: Berty working on his homework in the library, he’s got his signature crewneck + collared shirt look going for him, his blue-light glasses, a cup of coffee nearly as tall as him sitting at the corner of his desk. Adorable.

He’d make little codes/programs for you, too, even if it’s silly. A simple code that helps you decide what to eat for dinner or where to go on a date, one that shuffles different reminders for you, hell he’ll even forgo the torture of design engineering just to build you a little robot that says “I love you” to you.

Reiner — english + minor in justice & political philosophy

Everyone expects Reiner, star quarterback of the university’s rugby team, to be a business student or communications student; but no, he’s an English major, and he loves it.

Just imagine a guy as huge as Reiner absolutely manhandling someone on the field, just to show up in his lectures with a tiny paperback of The Great Gatsby tucked between his fingers with his reading glasses on. It’s so precious.

He’s always running a bit late to class—either coming from the gym, or practice, or oversleeping from exhaustion—but he’s so sweet to his professors and genuinely interested in the literature that they don’t give him a hard time about it. They can tell that balancing school and sports is difficult, and they just appreciate that he takes his studies seriously.

Yeah he’s in a book club and he dog-ears his books. What about it. They’re doing poetry this month and Reiner actually likes Edgar Allen Poe. Who said jocks can’t be sentimental.

He also reads a lot outside of his classes, and has a soft spot for coming of age stories. He usually empathizes with the main character somehow. His ideal weekend plans after a week of grueling games and essays is taking a long, relaxing shower at your place, while you both share a bottle of wine, and maybe even get you to read a chapter or two of his current book out loud to him.

Annie — clinical psychology/neuroscience

Almost scarily analytical and methodic, so this major was calling her name. Localizing brain legions is… insanely intuitive to her it’s incredible. She’ll be an insanely impressive doctor someday, even if she doesn’t end up working with patients directly. 

She doesn’t care too much for the more philosophical/reading heavy parts of psychology. Even experiments and research closer to the social end of the spectrum aren’t all that interesting to her; but the brain science behind it it.

Nobody should be good at cellular biology. Nobody should be able to ace cell bio and neuro and calc and work towards their thesis proposal in the same semester, but Annie proves it’s possible.

Ends up working in one of her professor’s labs by her junior year. She was offered three TA positions working with first year students, but she swiftly turned them down. Teaching isn’t her thing.

She doesn’t bring up her studies to you unprompted, but if you ask her about them she’ll explain it to you. Her notes are color coded and it’s super neat, and very cute; coloring them is somewhat relaxing for her. She usually saves the coloring part for when you guys study together; there’s extra comfort in doing it with you around.

[indigofoxpaws]

on "gifted"

I think part of the reason that conversations about "gifted kids" on here get all weird is that some people are using "gifted" to 1) describe a type of neurodivergence/atypical development, while others are using it to 2) refer to people who were placed in gifted programs in schools, and 3) not everyone realizes that these are two overlapping circles in a venn diagram.

(lots of rambling below the cut)

1) "Gifted" as neurodivergence

As I understand it, the essence of "gifted" as a diagnostic label is "being able to perceive more than you can emotionally process." This can look like some of the following traits:

love of + affinity for complex systems and patterns

anxiety, emotional dysregulation

difficulty communicating with others

but able to form deep connections with people on the same wavelength

heightened sensory/environmental awareness

desire for routine and order

slow reaction time

intense focus on topics of interest

This flavor of brainweird can make it possible to thrive in certain environments, but can also make other environments hostile. (Good test scores don't really do much when you're trying to avoid having a meltdown at a party or in the grocery store, yknow?). These traits do not make a person "worse" or "better" than anyone else, but they might be praised or pathologized depending on one's intersecting identities ("bright and sensitive" vs. "savant" vs. "problem child" and so on). You might be thinking, "hey, these sound a lot like autistic traits..." They sure do, don't they?

2) ~Gifted and talented~ programs

From the beginning—aka when Thomas Jefferson was like 'hey guys, I think we should have public education (but only for white men though)—one of the roles of schools in the US has been to sort and filter students to create an alleged meritocracy where the best rise to the top while the rest are left behind.

yes, this is incredibly discriminatory (and Jefferson would agree! but my point is that's a bad thing)

yes, it's fucked up

and it's part of the DNA of the American public school system.

this was the foundation that the "administrative progressive" movement built on in the early 20th century when they further stratified the system into a multitude of tracks (G&T, AP, vocational, etc.)

I don't know what the day-to-day experience of being in one of these programs is, so I can't speak to that. That's actually my point: not all gifted-as-in-ND children get tracked into gifted-as-in-gets-good-grades programs in school.

3) So what?

basically, the entanglement of the two "gifted" terms causes a lot of problems. I think:

"gifted" as diagnostic label gives a misleading impression

I see it as a flawed descriptor for a real experience

I think it's important for people with this experience to be able to find community

believing the type of brainweird often labeled "gifted" is a form of neurodivergence does not mean approving of "gifted and talented" tracking

criticizing "gifted and talented" tracking does not mean people who have been labeled "gifted" are lying/delusional

"gifted"ness (in either sense) does not make a person superior to others

I believe everyone deserves to have their strengths recognized AND their difficulties supported

I have a lot of thoughts about what an education system that enables all students to thrive might look like, but the relevant part here is that the culture of testing + tracking in traditional American schools right now is not it.

tl;dr: I suspect when people discuss "gifted kids," many don't realize that people use that term to describe different things. If we can move past fighting over language, we can focus on changing unjust systems and building new ones where everyone's needs are met.

signed,

someone who got labeled "gifted" in a "what is wrong with this kid, how does so much anxiety even fit in a 40lb kindergartener" psych eval (but was never in a gifted program or AP class)

(aka, not an expert on psychology or sociology. please take everything i say with a whole teaspoon of salt. if you're interested in the history of US education you can check out the source linked in that section.)

[chilling-seavey]

Anything But Mine - Penelope’s Meltdowns

A/N Penelope is quite a complex character and there’s a lot that even Florence and Daniel had to discover about her as she grew up; her sudden meltdowns being one of them. 

Saturday, December 2, 2023

The mall was busy with Christmas shoppers, bustling through the stores and wide hallways decked out in tinsel and garlands and the speakers playing light Christmas music. It was a Saturday afternoon so was it was busier than normal, not to mention the additional chaos of the Christmas season. Regardless of the crowds, the mall was always so nicely decorated for the holidays, down to the four-storey tall tree that was absolutely covered in twinkling lights. The girls always loved the Christmas lights and Florence and Clementine stood at the side of the railing overlooking the huge tree.

Usually, Penelope would be right up there with them but she had been in a bit of a mood all day, refusing to wear her coat and then crying the whole time to the mall after they forced her in it. So she stood holding Daniel’s hand with tear-stained cheeks as he held her coat and they watched Florence and Clementine admire the decorations a few steps away.

They had spent a good bit of the afternoon in the mall, picking up their last few gifts for the family in good time before the mad rush would start closer to the holidays. Penelope refused to be more than an arm length away from Daniel the whole time, making him carry her until his arms were nearly ready to give out and when he set her down she wouldn’t leave him alone until he picked her back up again. Her crying was constant and she was clingy and it was putting sort of a damper on their little trip.

They had planned to go home for dinner when they finished shopping since they had just bought groceries not long before but as they made their way to the exit, Daniel suggested finding a restaurant as a treat. Clementine gladly agreed, jumping off the top of the escalator with a thud from her pink winter boots, her hand still held tightly by Florence as they made it to the foyer of the mall nearest the main downtown intersection. Daniel set Penelope back on her feet with a tired sigh as they reached the top of the escalator and she whimpered right away and reached back up for him.

“I’ve been carrying you all day, bug. You’re gonna have to walk for a bit.” he said, taking her hand without another word.

“So we’ll go to a restaurant instead then.” Florence confirmed, stopping by the wall out of the way of the crowds to slip Clementine’s coat back on her and zipped it up.

“I wanna go home.” Penelope pouted softly.

“We’re going out for a treat instead.” Daniel said with a small smile, crouching down in front of her to put her coat on.

“No.” Penelope turned away from him at the sight of her winter jacket and leaned into the wall.

“Come on, bug. It won’t be on for long.” Daniel grabbed her arm gently and turned her to face him again, trying to wiggle her arm in the sleeve.

“No!” Penelope cried, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “Go home now!”

“Even if we go home you need to wear your coat.” Florence said.

“I don’t wanna go home yet!” Clementine protested, looking between her parents, her voice loud over the music playing through the mall speakers.

“I know.” Florence assured her softly.

Daniel reached for Penelope again, finally managing to wiggle her into her coat despite her blubbery sobs and small cries in protest. He zipped it up and buttoned it up so she was basically locked in there and then he stood again to turn to his wife with a tired sigh.

“Can you manage a dinner out?” Florence asked him quietly.

“Yeah. Might trade kids with you though.” Daniel whispered.

“That’s fine.” Florence nodded, leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek.

To anyone else, the situation was generally calm. To Penelope, it felt like the end of the world. The sudden change in plans of going out to eat instead of home was one thing but then there was also the Christmas music that had been playing loudly all day – a lot of the songs repeating enough to drive anyone mad really – right with the noise of the crowds and the traffic now that was honking loudly from just outside the glass doors a few metres away. The lights from the city square were flashing brightly and all the noises were overlapping from inside and outside and the contrast between the loud talking of the crowd and her parents’ soft whispers made her skin crawl and her coat itched her neck like crazy and Penelope just…lost it.

She threw herself on the dirty floor of the mall with a loud scream, making a few passersby look over as well as her parents and sister as she flopped backwards onto the floor and clawed at her coat as she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Oh my God.” Daniel crouched in front of her, grabbing her arm to get her up. “Penelope, stop it. We don’t act like this when we’re upset.”

That only made her cry louder, flailing on the floor as she tried to kick him away, clawing at her coat until a few of the buttons popped open.

“You are not taking your coat off.” Daniel said sternly, trying to ignore the stares of strangers as they passed and he tried to button them back up.

The three-year-old only screamed, hot tears pouring down her cheeks through wracking sobs, tugging at her coat until it looked like she was going to claw right through the fabric.

“Penelope. Stop it.” Daniel grabbed her arm to try and pull her to her feet but she flailed harder, shoving his hands away and kicking at his chest. “Penelope Magnolia! No kicking. Stand up like a big girl.”

She only cried louder, her pouted lips shining in spit with how dramatic her meltdown was as her screams echoed through the mall. Daniel was trying to stand her up but she kept making herself go limp in his arms to flop back on the floor.

“Just take it off her. It’s not worth it right now.” Florence whispered shakily to her husband as Clementine hid behind her leg.

Daniel sighed in frustration at his daughter throwing a fit in the middle of the mall, carefully reaching to start to unbutton her coat and unzip it, offering her a shaky, “Okay, okay, it’s coming off.”

Penelope visibly took a deep shaky inhale once the coat was off as if having it on was physically restricting but she still screamed, rolling over onto her stomach and curled up in a ball with her hands over her ears. Every time Daniel went to touch her she screamed louder and he looked up at his wife helplessly.

“What the hell do I do?” he breathed.

Florence directed Clementine to sit a bit of a ways away with their bags, still within arms reach but giving them and their emotional youngest some space. Florence crouched down with him on the floor, setting a hand on Penelope’s back,

“Penny, baby, it’s Mommy.” she spoke softly. “What’s wrong?”

Penelope just kept crying, hands clamped over her ears and she shrieked against the tile floors. Daniel sat back a moment and ran his hands over his face with a stressed sigh, glancing around at the onlookers that passed by staring like they were a storefront window or street performers.

“Oh my God, Dani, what do we do?” Florence breathed.

“I-I don’t know.” Daniel stammered, feeling completely hopeless as their three-year-old was having a full meltdown, feeling near tears himself.

“Should we just take her home like this?”

“Yeah.” Daniel sighed, standing up so he could bend down to pick up the three-year-old who screamed louder in his arms, earning more stares from strangers in the mall. He tucked her coat around her shoulders despite her wiggling to try and get it away from her as Florence took Clementine by the hand and gathered their bags.

Penelope screamed the whole way into the parking garage, wiggling enough that it was almost a struggle for Daniel to hold her, her hands digging her nails into his shoulder only making it more difficult for him. Florence unlocked the car and opened the back door for him and he got Penelope in her car seat, the toddler shrieking at the top of her lungs as he put her down and started to buckle her up.

Clementine was gaping over at her sister as Florence buckled her into her own car seat on the other side, confused as to what the heck was going on. It wasn’t unusual for Penelope to cry or scream when she was upset but this seemingly sudden outburst…this meltdown was completely out of left field. She cried and screamed and tried to get out of her seatbelt and smacked her hand against the window almost the whole way home, the rest of their small family sitting in tense silence. She tired herself out by the time they got to their building, wailing herself into a sleep stemmed from exhaustion.

Daniel carried her upstairs, Florence and Clementine following quietly after with their bags, taking the elevator silently together. Penelope was completely clocked out on Daniel’s shoulder, red cheeks stained in tears squished against his shoulder and her arms hanging limply around his neck. No one spoke as he carried her into the apartment and right to her room, carefully and silently undressing her and putting her into her pyjamas. It was a miracle she didn’t wake up. He stayed in her room a moment longer after he tucked her into bed, sitting at the side of her bed and watched her sleep, biting anxiously on his fingernail. Something wasn’t right with his little girl and it nearly broke his heart to think of what could be going on in that sweet little head of hers.

~~

Saturday, November 28, 2026

After a few years of doctors appointments and specialists and finally a diagnosis, Penelope’s meltdowns and seemingly constant discomfort had a name to it. Daniel and Florence went out of their way to buy every single possible book or article on autism in girls to figure out how to make life easier for their second daughter and especially for themselves too. So, by the time three years had passed and they found themselves in a similar situation during Christmas shopping, they had a much better understanding on how to handle it.

The coat was no longer an issue since Penelope was old enough to choose her own winter coat and what she felt comfortable in but it was again, the full day of a crowded mall and overlapping noises and sensory overload to the max. She was still young at only six so she had yet to understand what she was even feeling when she felt it but the second she ripped her hand out of Daniel’s, the parents knew what was coming.

They were in the middle of the crowded hallway, like right in the middle of the crowd, when Penelope dropped to the floor with a strained sob.

The crowd moved around her, staring at her as she broke into loud tears, nearly screaming as she curled up on the dirty floor. Florence and Daniel exchanged knowing glances, having a plan already in the back of their minds from late night practice over medical articles. So Florence passed Daniel the favourite stuffed puppy she had tucked in her purse before she took Clementine and Lucy down one of the side hallways and out of the crowd as Daniel crouched down beside Penelope.

“Hey, honey. It’s okay. I’m right here.” Daniel said softly, tucking the puppy in her arms. “Puppy’s right here too.”

Penelope only cried harder, curling into herself on the floor. Her screams nearly echoed through the mall, earning dozens of stares from strangers but Daniel kept his eyes on his daughter, even as she kicked at him.

“Okay, bug, Daddy’s gonna take you somewhere quiet, okay?” Daniel carefully scooped her up, making sure she wasn’t thrashing too hard because he didn’t want to scare her but he managed to carry her slowly out of the crowd and down the side aisle after Florence and the other two girls.

Penelope’s wails echoed more in the emptiness and he slid down to the floor against the wall with the six-year-old on his lap. He set a hand over her opposite ear and pulled her head against his chest to block out any noise for her and then stayed absolutely still. No loving back rubs or soft hums that he was so familiar with doing as those would just trigger her more. Just silence.

Florence sat with Clementine and Lucy only a couple feet away, watching him nervously as Penelope still cried in his arms. Daniel held her snugly, the slightly weighted stuffed puppy resting on her lap and the secure hold of his arms around her already started to calm her crying a little. When her wails turned into soft cries, Daniel and Florence exchanged wide eyed glances from where they sat apart, watching their daughter start to calm herself down.

Penelope soon quieted down into soft sniffles and she picked up her puppy to cuddle into her chest. Daniel carefully took his hand from over her ear, running his thumb softly over her cheek before tucking his arm around her.

“There you go.” Daniel whispered, kissing her head as he held her against his chest. “Daddy’s got you. You’re okay.”

Penelope, now embarrassed as she was coming down from her uncontrollable meltdown, shifted to wrap her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his neck. Daniel tucked her legs around his waist and held her close, looking over at Florence again with a small sigh.

“How about we go get some ice cream?” Florence suggested. Clementine and Lucy cheered with agreement and Penelope lifted her head up long enough to share a cheeky smile with Daniel.

“Yeah! Let’s go get you a big scoop of chocolate ice cream, okay?” he smiled at her, pressing a sweet kiss to her tear stained cheek.

[ultranos]

for the get to know your author game: 19 (in case you have any methods I want to steal lol) and 24

@hellcheckers also asked for 19.

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.? 

Okay, here’s where I have the awkward confessional: you know those writing tools that people swear by that makes things like this SO MUCH EASIER like Scrivener?

Literally has never worked for me.

I have a single document. It used to be a text file (really). These days I’ve gotten better and it’s an actual separate gdoc. I’ll divide it into sections for Characters, Places, Outline, Notes, Scratch, etc. (where Scratch is “fic bits I don’t know what to do with but don’t want to get rid of just yet”) And then just keep honestly-fairly-light notes in those sections. My outlines are never detailed, just broad strokes of major and semi-major plot points. The key point is that I’ll add to it as I write, so if I suddenly realize I have a good plot plot point as I’m writing, I’ll note it in there then. I treat the outline as a living document.

The other secret is probably from when I was writing 50+ person LARPs that ran 10 consecutive days, where GMs had to design characters from the ground-up for players. That’s a lot of plots to juggle and keep track of! But it helps if you think that every major character really only has 3 main “plotlines”: the public plot, the secret plot, and their personal plot.

This can translate into writing fairly easily. Personal plot is their emotional arc. “Public plot” is what the major actions the world sees are. The secret plot is what a character is doing with their close associates.

Or basically, every character’s A Plot, B Plot, and Emotional Plot. And of the A and B plots, a lot of those will overlap and intersect.

But it’s really mostly a matter of keeping track in the outline as I go of what the current state of the world and character is at any given moment.

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

Expert, no. I won’t claim expertise in something I only researched for a story. :) I’ve got waay to much reverse Dunning-Krueger for that. Have I researched topics to an absolutely absurd extent that I literally need actual reference managers to keep track of things? Yep.

[impalementation]

i think one of the reasons that spike is so compelling to me, and one of the reasons that i’m really glad he’s part of the show, is that he’s pretty much the only character that has a consistently poetic command of language. and by that i don’t mean that he speaks in a pretty or heightened way, exactly. he speaks frankly and irreverently as much as he speaks evocatively. i’m not talking about his insight either, given that i think we’re supposed to see his insight as unreliable or flawed or accurate-but-malicious about half of the time.

what i mean is that he phrases things interestingly, in a way that links unexpected concepts together. things like:

XANDER: Why blood? Why Dawn's blood? I mean, why couldn't it be like a, a lymph ritual?

SPIKE: 'Cause it's always got to be blood.

XANDER: We're not actually discussing dinner right now.

SPIKE: Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead. (quietly) Course it's her blood.

that repetition of “makes you…” is a poetic sort of conceit. it’s got rhythm. it links “warm” which can mean either physical warmth or emotional warmth,  and “hard” which suggests sexuality and more animal parts of living, and “other than dead.” it makes you intuit this more abstract notion of what it means to be “alive” and even: why the show is a vampire show in the first place. (there’s a whole other post to write about buffy’s obsession with the concepts of “dead” and “alive” and the way it uses spike in particular to express and explore that obsession).

he does this sort of parallelism again in the gift: “i know you’ll never love me. i know that i’m a monster. but you treat me like a man, and that’s…” that’s some cool overlapping repetition, where the “i know” parallel intersects with the “man/monster” parallel.

or go back to lovers walk. where he talks about “beautiful dresses with beautiful girls in them.” the show loves using demons to play on expected words and idioms like that. angelus talking about finding a heart “in a quaint little shopgirl” or dru saying “i didn’t like him. he got stuck in my teeth.” but spike is one of the few characters where it would make sense to use a repetition of “beautiful” as part of a “demons live in moral and linguistic opposite land” joke.

(actually one of the reasons i always thought spike and dru made perfect sense as a character combination is because drusilla also phrases things poetically. she says things that don’t make sense but actually do, and what’s more poetic than that? “you taste like ashes” etc. of course spike would be in love with her.)

or take his death wish speech in fool for love. that speech could never come out of any other buffyverse character’s mouth, and i love that he gives the show an excuse to use language in that way. “death is your art” is some intense phrasing. and like in his other speeches, the way he links death as art, death as a dance, and death as “on your heels” makes you intuit something complicated. the repetition paints death as this simultaneously constructive and destructive thing. something both kind of sexy and kind of terrible. it’s not an authoritative outlook on death by any means, but it is a poetic one. and i love that it exists in the show because it can stand in contrast to the stark, awful version of death in “the body” or the loving, sacrificial version of death in “the gift.”

because spike talks this way, he has this ability to bring things out in characters and scenes that wouldn’t be there otherwise. the beneath you church scene would probably have been unbearably overwrought if it had featured anyone other than spike. but because it does feature him, it allows the show to use unusual words and dramatic symbolism. or in episodes like smashed, as the tension mounts between buffy and spike, buffy starts speaking with an interestingly spike-like sense of repetition:

SPIKE: Oh, poor little lost girl. She doesn't fit in anywhere. She's got no one to love.

BUFFY: Me? I'm lost? Look at you, you idiot! Poor Spikey. Can't be a human, can't be a vampire. Where the hell do you fit in?

She throws him across the room.

BUFFY: Your job is to kill the slayer. But all you can do is follow me around making moon eyes.

SPIKE: I'm in love with you.

BUFFY: You're in love with pain.

he also gives the show an ability to talk about the poetic instinct itself. that is, the way that putting things poetically can allow you to say unusually true stuff, but also can allow you to say false stuff in a dangerously seductive manner. it’s awfully pretty for spike to tell buffy “i don’t hurt you”...but we see not an episode later that that isn’t true. it makes sense to me that in season six, a season that is obsessed with the foolish and harmful parts of fantasy, spike starts out seeming gentle and attractive, but becomes an increasingly toxic figure. and basically finishes the season with all of his romantic images of himself destroyed.

(there’s something to probably say about his speech in touched and how it’s him speaking poetically in a way that is not about him, and not about finding a chink in someone’s armor, and this being a resolution of his season six role)

fiction is full of bad-boy foils. characters who can speak freely because they aren’t bound by kindness or propriety. but what i like about spike is the way that the show is basically aware that he is that kind of character and complicates him accordingly. not always elegantly or anything. but fool for love for example works hard to reframe him as a Poet and a Lover (and also importantly...a fraud), to the extent of ret-conning his past, and that colors how we see the way he speaks going forward. i never feel like spike is just “saying cool stuff.” instead, i feel like his character captures both the yearning to say things that sound good, to pursue to grand notions, and also the need to deflate that instinct. and that tension is compelling.

[villanevest]

"I Can Help You": the Build-Up to & Significance of 2x07's Villaneve Sex[ish] Scene

of COURSE i am going to write about this. before we get started though, i wanted to tell you all that while @villainever is still running, i will be mostly posting from my brand-new primary, @villanevest (this blog). so follow me for the same stupid memes, and check the "villanevest writes" tag if you're interested in more of these essays :D alright. now let's get going. killing eve is an extremely versatile show, and that's absolutely a credit to the writers being willing to follow the characters and their relationships, which allows the narrative to develop in a simultaneously organic and deeply compelling way. the greatest complexity of the series is also its primary draw: the dynamic between villanelle and eve, and its evolution. in this mini-essay, we're going to step through why -- I believe -- the construction of the sex scene as two separate but synchronised encounters is the best choice for killing eve right now, and how they've accelerated towards it since the pilot. from the beginning, villanelle and eve have been all about parallels. the first time we see villanelle in the ice-cream shop, she's spaced-out, bored, a vacant observer. the first time we see eve, she's asleep. these scenes are very deliberately presented to us, one after another: here, we have two women who feel displaced and alienated. neither of them is lonely, not exactly; they have people in their lives. what they lack is real, significant passion, something beyond the routine -- for villanelle, that "routine" is a lot more dramatic, certainly, but nonetheless, they're both numbed out, but until they meet each other, they're not really aware of that.

and then we have that moment in the hospital bathroom. it's not a coincidence that they're standing in front of a mirror, confronted with each other, and themselves. the composition of this visual directly implies that villanelle and eve are not just alike, but inherently complementary. in many ways, eve is a reflection of villanelle, and villanelle is a reflection of eve -- that is, opposite, but also identical. it's not until later that they really understand the importance of this two-second conversation, but  it's the first breath of an obsession that will span continents and become literally life and death. 

eve and villanelle discover each others' real identities at the same time, in a montage that draws focus again to these similarities between them and their experiences. but this is when their respective trajectories towards each other begin to progress separately and distinctly. the reason for this is that while villanelle is unquestionably the "cat" in this cat-and-mouse equation, at this point, she is also the one being chased, and eve is in pursuit. for most of the first season, villanelle has more information about and power over eve than vice-versa. for eve, who still has niko, she is seduced into the thrill of villanelle through that prescribed pursuit, and for a little while, that's enough for her. but villanelle doesn’t have such a set structure, and -- once she knows eve's name and eve's face -- almost immediately begins seeking out copies.

the first copy she constructs is herself, signing in as "eve polastri" while working in berlin. this is mostly a stunt to get eve's attention -- the first of many (amsterdam, anyone?) -- but it compounds on 1x01's thematic suggestion of their compatibility. the second copy, however, is perhaps the most blatant example of this: the woman from the tour group who sleeps with villanelle in 2x03. villanelle tells her she "loves her [American] accent", and gets her to take her hair down, and then goes on to actually call her eve.

villanelle's interest in superficially recreating eve fades fairly early, after eve gets out of the car to confront villanelle when villanelle is absolutely armed and definitely dangerous, for no apparent reason other than she wants to. villanelle scares her off with a warning shot (even though she could've very easily killed her at this point), but then doubles back the next episode, with the kitchen sequence from 1x05. villanelle says she "just wants to have dinner with [eve]", but i think this evening really exceeds her expectations. prior to this, she was very interested in eve, obviously, but after it, villanelle's infatuation becomes both more significant and more mature, and so does eve's. they've got chemistry when they're together, not just in the tension of being apart. BUT. so, so much of their story is spent apart. season one is a blur of glimpsed profiles and silhouettes, with only the bathroom, the kitchen, and finally villanelle's apartment providing them sites to briefly interact. at the end of 1x08, villanelle tells eve, "i masturbate about you a lot", but eve denies doing the same, which is probably true, in the sense that eve still believes she doesn’t (actively, at least) consider villanelle in a sexual way. then season two picks up, and they're apart again. only they're less apart than they were before. villanelle is right when she assures gabriel that eve stabbed her to "show [her] how much she cares about [her]". while it was barely premediated, and i don't think eve necessarily viewed it as a confession, it absolutely is; a confession of who she really is, and that that person is irrevocably linked to villanelle. in stabbing villanelle, eve puts the first truly irreversible crack in her façade of normality; she can't go back now, not all the way. the show doesn't really linger on this, though, because it's so obvious that eve doesn't WANT to go back. as reticent as i am to quote shakespeare, i will make an exception for this case, and take utterly out of context the line, "these violent delights have violent ends". for eve and villanelle, they need the violent delights and violent ends alike; sex and destruction and obsession and pain are integral to their characters. why? because i think such extreme emotions and acts break through that nothingness, that fugue villanelle talks about in 2x06. 

and so the stab wound -- which villanelle proudly shows off to niko in 2x05 -- becomes something of a pact between them. to eve, it means villanelle affects her strongly enough to push her out of herself (except really, into herself), and to villanelle, it means eve can exist in her world, can challenge and surprise her, can interrupt the boredom with these bright spots of total involvement and utter fascination. and since we’ll be talking about parallels later -- in 2x02, villanelle caressing her wound in the bathtub is juxtaposed with eve tracing the heart carved into the train table. i think a “carved heart” is pretty much the wound is, too. from the pilot, villanelle and eve's relationship is an intricate dance of towards/away, together/apart. over the story, over each direct and indirect crossing of their paths, they become more towards, less away; more together, less apart. after season one, particularly 1x08, they have this permanent and indelible connection. but they're still consistently positioned as unable to reach one another. villanelle calls MI6, but they won't send her through to eve. eve arrives, but misses villanelle, and villanelle watches through the transparent but very real barrier of the car window, literally passing her by. then we have them separated by only a door in 2x03, and so many other instances of close-but-not quite.

it's worth bringing up at this juncture that while the villaneve plotline is happening, villanelle and eve each have their own individual character arcs, so while they keep glancing off each other and being torn apart in practice, they are steadily gravitating to a middle ground mentally and emotionally. i'll come back to this idea. in 2x05, we have yet another mirror/reflection, as the kitchen scene is revisited. having this reunion in the same setting as their first foregrounds how their relationship has changed. eve isn't anxious or fearful or on the back foot. she's the one who brings villanelle to her home, not the other way around, as it was last time. she reaches out to villanelle, she's confident enough to take the pills, and she doesn't hesitate before saying "yes" when villanelle asks if eve will give her everything she wants. the "yes" is easy, because whether eve is quite ready to admit it or not, what villanelle wants is what eve wants. 

then villanelle helps eve with the ghost, and going forward, they're able to regularly collaborate, in their own off-beat fashion. so after 2x05, villanelle and eve are more or less settled as fixtures in their respective lives. there's still the dance, but there's no real chase. they've drawn abreast of one another. they've caught up. and this is where we circle back to the idea of copies. like i said, ever since eve has been real to villanelle, copies have been insufficient. but she still can't have eve, not entirely, and not exactly how she wants, so she escalates to proxies. in 2x06, villanelle mouths, "ready?" to eve, right before pushing amber's bodyguard in front of the truck. i'm not trying to imply that villanelle wants to push eve in front of a truck -- but as i said earlier, villanelle and eve intersect at this overlap of violent delights/violent ends. sex and death. she asks her Copy Eve in 2x03 "ready?" in just the same way. villanelle is demonstrating her faith in the depth of their connection in the extremity of her actions. she's proving to eve that they're for-better-or-worse now. she's not afraid that killing someone right in front of eve will drive her away; she knows it'll suck her in. 

so what's the significance of the shift from copies to proxies? the copies were for villanelle -- a stand-in so that she could act out her desires. it's much more reflective of the "i / it": if someone looked like eve, then it was almost as if she had the real thing, right? but her affection for eve mutates into something much harder for her to manage, and "it" very quickly becomes "eve", and she can't produce a facsimile that can hold a candle to "me / eve". but the proxies aren't for villanelle, they're for eve. if villanelle's not allowed to touch eve yet, then she's using the proxies to say, "this is how much i care. this is how much i want you." and on a subliminal level at least, if not a conscious one, i think eve interprets it that as such. then, finally, we get to 2x07. we have a repetition of the phone call from 2x02, and just as carolyn played eve the recording of villanelle's MI6 call, villanelle listens to eve's voicemails. in this instance, they haven't missed each other. they're already together. the "9 missed calls, 3 voicemails" are an overture across space, but not across distance. this is about breaching an emotional gap, not a physical one. eve and villanelle are around each other often now, but it takes their being apart again to highlight just how much that proximity has allowed them to evolve.

in the restaurant in rome, we again have the visual of eve reaching out, villanelle catching her hand, and them meeting in the middle. which brings us to The Scene. it follows villanelle's crucial conversation with aaron (which I wrote about here), and that gives her a last little push. note: we have to remember that the bug that eve is listening through is only one way. while this might seem like a let-down, in that villanelle couldn't hear eve, i think it's actually really significant. because it shows how well villanelle knows eve, how much effort she puts into understanding her, and how easily she remembers things about her. in 2x06, eve was interjecting via the comms throughout almost the entirety of the aaron-villanelle-amber dinner conversation. that and the voicemails exemplify eve's involvement and propensity to hover, which is a result of her natural controlling tendencies, and how consumed she is with villanelle. so even though villanelle had no way of knowing that eve was listening, she knew anyway. she was sure with no feedback or guarantee. i love how they set this eve/hugo encounter up during previous episodes. it's something of a checkov's gun situation -- that is, the principle that if you introduce an idea (e.g. hugo's sexual interest in eve), then you need to bring it to fruition. what the writers did so well, though, is that we thought hugo had already served his purpose as a romantic/sexual option -- when he leans in to kiss eve in 2x04 and she doesn't lean away, we have evidence of how little commitment she still has to her marriage. but now he becomes eve's proxy.

so why have eve hookup with hugo, and not villanelle? well, there are a lot of reasons. firstly, eve and villanelle having sex, or even kissing, would be a very significant development for the show, and have massive implications for the narrative. as a result, it would need a lot of build-up. the circumstances would need to be perfect. while eve is no longer shying from her attraction to villanelle, i think a mixture of adrenaline and tension would have to reach terminal velocity (probably by introducing an external stressor, like a fight or escape) for eve to actually step over that line. i don't think that, at this point, it's something she'd do with a perfectly clear head. she's too aware of how precarious the current balance is, and probably (quietly) also too afraid that giving in would mean villanelle's obsession would have closure, and thus die off. the episode just didn't have the minutes to generate that situation, and the plot didn't give an avenue for it.

secondly, it gives the writers a lot more room to play with the respective aftermaths. this way, they get to bring in 

1) a fallout of some kind between hugo and eve. hugo's been very laissez-faire all season about sex, about boredom, etc., going on about how he understands why eve took the job at MI6, and her interest in villanelle. but until this point, it's been pretty much all fun and games, all james bond for hugo. and then he's going to have this moment where he realises he and eve AREN'T alike. he's a good-time guy, a bit selfish, and smart enough to need an entertaining career to keep stimulated. eve? it goes SO much further than that for eve. she really is on that sociopathy/psychopathy spectrum, and she needs this to feel awake, to feel anything. in their sex scene, their dynamic flickered into an "i / it" for eve, because hugo as a person didn't really matter at all. he's going to see the exact scope and depth of eve's obsession, and he'll realise she's gone beyond where he can follow. first niko, then hugo -- they're both ferrymen who tag along for a piece of eve's journey, but ultimately stay behind. they give an important reference point for the audience; they act as thresholds we see eve pass -- here, something niko can't condone; now, something hugo won't do.

2) the no-morning-after for villaneve. this doesn't relieve any of the sexual tension, it ratchets it up. like the stab wound, this connects them, but it doesn't resolve anything. the writers now have so many options: maybe a little awkwardness from eve (unlikely), intensifying chemistry (very likely), perhaps denial, or a desperation to get alone and take things to the next level. this didn't close a door, it opened several. they'll be able to draw villaneve out even more, and they'll neatly sidestep both audience expectation and television tradition. it's their game now.

here, hugo also has metaphorical signifiance -- he's the human cost of villaneve. over the course of the show, bodies, careers, and relationships have all imploded to get villaneve even just close enough to touch. villanelle and eve are using hugo directly just as they've indirectly used many others. note: symbolically, as well, villanelle is in eve's head. this feeds into the notion of obsession -- since the pilot, villanelle has consumed eve's thoughts, and now she's actually there. finally, above all, i believe this encounter perfectly fits the current phase of their relationship, and its evolution. it's the culmination of copies and proxies and distance. like i said, that apartness is just as critical to villaneve as the togetherness. they are as made of their negative space as they are of their lines and colours. and here they are: after pretending different people are each other, after being pressed together but stepping away again, after using others as mediums to express themselves, after being chased and caught, lost and found. here they are: together and apart at once. 

not only is this thematic, it's romantic, in its own twisted way. fifteen episodes later, they are even sharper reflections of each other than they were when they met. they're in sync even with such little communication, and that stands in contrast to their additional relationships. niko and eve could be in the same room, talking directly, and be less connected. and that's kind of tragic -- that eve went through so much of her life NOT wide awake, that niko spent years with someone who wasn't really WITH him. villanelle and eve are all hot and cold, entirely comprised of extremes, because that's what they NEED to feel alive. villanelle says in 2x06, "like us, you mean". and that's exactly it: fundamentally, villanelle and eve are the same kind, and that's why they are so good together. it's how they stay so good apart.

will these violent delights have violent ends? unquestionably. but those ends will be new beginnings. eve won't go back to sleep. villanelle could never cope with being bored again. they'll push and pull, fight and fuck, get mad and get in deeper, inextricable. they'll keep chasing the delights and weathering the consequences, getting wilder and wilder until something happens that they can't shake off or walk away from. but that's how they are, that's how they're happy, and that's the only way they can be. 

i hope all this held together! I had a lot of thoughts and it was hard to compress into one short essay, so I know it seems like a lot of disconnected threads rip. as always, reply/ask/message me with ideas/requests if you have something you want me to talk about! thank you to everyone who has commented nice things on my previous posts; it makes me want to write more and it’s nice to know someone’s reading :D

[scripttorture]

My character was born in a Christian cult, the child of the "prophet." Due to being both mute and intersex, they and their mother were confined to a small damp room for the next 15 years, to be prevented from "corrupting" the rest of the faithful. Other than their mother, no one showed them any physical or emotional affection growing up and they weren't allowed to learn how to read or write. They weren't fed enough or allowed outside. What would their mental state be like after escaping at 16?

I think we should start with the character’s physical state because this kind of abuse starting at a young age causes lasting problems.

 Starvation or lack of proper nutrition at a young age can be deadly. But more often poor nutrition for young children results in developmental set backs, life long health problems and lower intelligence.

 There’s an example of a recent case that made the news here. The WHO statistics on child malnutrition can be found here. The WHO’s guide to identifying malnutrition in infants and children is here and their guide to treating it can be found here.

 Children who are not fed properly in their early years are shorter, weaker, more prone to disease and less intelligent then their well fed peers.

 This holds true for relatively short periods of malnutrition in infancy (6 months to a year), even when children are well fed later in life. You’re talking about a character being malnourished for pretty much their whole childhood.

 I don’t think they’d die but depending on the degree of malnutrition I’d expect to see some pretty severe disability. This would typically include being behind in all developmental milestones, significantly lower intelligence, being prone to disease and infection, weak bones and being short.

 It might also include putting on a lot of weight later when their food isn’t restricted. Stress, abuse and lack of food early in life can lead to obesity. This has generally been explained to me as the body compensating for lack of food by storing as much energy as possible; it thinks another famine’s coming.

 The dampness in the room is likely to encourage infections and disease. Combined with a lack of food I think this character would be seriously ill most of their childhood and that a lot of these infections would recur on release.

 An idea of how small the room would have been helpful in this scenario because- well askers have used that term to refer to anything from a box to a good sized cell and there’s a considerable difference in outcome in those cases.

 If the character can’t stand or pace they might never learn to walk. If the room is so small they can’t lie flat then they wouldn’t survive to reach 16.

 Assuming it is a room- they’d likely be much weaker then expected for their age, even accounting for their lack of food. I’d expect lasting joint problems, coordination problems and possibly problems involved with response times.

 Also poor eyesight.

 I haven’t even started on the problems caused by isolation and an inability to communicate caused by severe neglect. Or the long term psychological effects.

 At this point I think it’s worth asking if this is the kind of character you want to write.

 I think it’s important to include disabled characters in our stories, they’re one of the most under represented groups in fiction. But I also believe that we should try to make sure that representation is good. That it reflects the people it portrays.

 And when you’re talking about so many intersecting complex disabilities and conditions that’s a big ask.

 Each of these conditions individually asks for its own research. They effect each other. And finding sensitivity readers or just people with all these conditions talking about their lives- that’s a big task.

 And the way readers interpret the character will also be effected by the fact most of these disabilities are deliberately inflicted.

 How much are you prepared to read about how society treats people with intellectual disabilities and how those people feel about the way they’re portrayed? Do you feel confident tackling the way they’re almost universally portrayed as victims in fiction when you’re writing a character who is victimised?

 I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t write this character. What I’m saying is that the lasting effects of the abuse you’re putting this character through are complicated. I think you’d have a much easier time writing the character realistically (and in a way that’s respectful to people who have all these conditions or disabilities) if you cut down on the abuse.

 If you do really want to go through with this I have a post on the effects of solitary confinement here. I’m including it because it’s not clear from the context of the question that this character has more then two hours of daily, positive and enriching human contact.

 At the ages you’re talking about isolation, even for short periods of a week or two, would have a severe impact. I can’t tell you exactly what that impact would be. Thankfully the experiment has not been performed. But I would expect another hit to the character’s ability to learn, lower intelligence, less ability to interact with others and serious mental health issues lasting the rest of their life.

 Those mental health issues would be compounded by the mental health issues they’d develop because they’re being abused.

 I’ve got a post on the common symptoms of torture here.

 Given the extent of the abuse and the really really long period it’s occurring over- I’d suggest picking out more symptoms then usual.

 Given the way you’ve described the cell conditions and the overlap with starvation and solitary confinement symptoms I’d strongly suggest including chronic pain, significant difficulty learning new skills, significant difficulty interacting with others and memory problems (which you can read more about here). I’d then suggest picking at least 3-5 more symptoms from the list of common symptoms.

 Remember you need to balance these with the physical problems I described earlier.

 If this sounds like too much then I’d suggest cutting back on the abuse the character is put through.

 Give them enough to eat. Give them space to run. Give them natural light. Don’t make their cell damp, too hot or too cold.

 Let them be taught some form of communication, home-signs would do. Show that they had enough positive interaction growing up to learn and develop, even if it’s only coming from their mother.

 The isolation alone at this age, for this time period is enough to have serious, lasting mental health effects. It’s also likely to cause eye problems and general muscular weakness.

 In that scenario, I think you’d be alright picking 3-5 mental health symptoms from the list of solitary confinement symptoms. Rather then the 7-9 symptoms I think would be reasonable with your original scenario.

 It’s up to you. And I think a lot of it comes down to how much time you want to spend researching. Because you can write about all of these conditions without putting them all in the same character.

 I hope that helps. :)

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[abundantchewtoys]

Homestuck Epilogues Prologue, Page 2 reaction

The next part of the epilogue prologue. :P I wonder if Andrew has committed to this format for the entire piece, or if we'll shift to something else. I'd like at least one panel showing the author avatar typing this, but then again, he's dead like everyone else, and so, stuck in the bubbles. Speaking of, how could Aranea, Meenah and the other A2 trolls survive this? Will Jane use her revive powers on them to spare them a double death? As an aside, I'm glad the ==> arrows remain a thing even after the end of the story. Even though they're now mixed with simple >'s in the in-line commands. (We're mixing the story format up from the get-go, here.) I hope Rose's new apartment gets a detailed described. I'm expecting a lot of knitted ware lying around, for one. I also wonder how long it'll be until an OC is mentioned, and how much longer after until they get some sort of dialogue. Presumably it'll be the intermission-like dialogue, I mean us being shown what they say by John's or another's inner narration.

---

==>

"When you arrive at Rose’s apartment, you find her asleep on the couch. You slide the balcony door open, quietly."

If this was a fairy tale, John would kiss her awake. :P

But I fear the migraines might be exhausting her.

"Her eyes flutter open. She looks like a ghost, and not the kind of ghost that looks and acts exactly like an alive person."

Grim implications not withstanding, I'm reminded of Kanaya's first assessment of seeing her. "Skin as pale as a ghost!"

Wow, okay, so her condition is really nothing to sneeze at.

"All I’m trying to say is, I’m not backsliding, if that’s what you’re wondering."

So I guess the substance abuse, post-retcon, was still a thing, not just nipped in the bud by Vriska.

Well, it WAS a way for her to cope with her mom's death, that isn't something that just goes away by a slap on the wrist, even if it was on date night.

"ROSE: I struggled with substance abuse for a while, years ago. Remember?

JOHN: rose, jesus. i wasn’t going to accuse you of being a drug addict, and i didn’t fly over here to give you an intervention.

JOHN: it sounded like you had some important stuff to tell me, and the fact that you also seem to be sick is more than a little alarming!

ROSE: I wouldn’t say I’m sick.

ROSE: Just having spectacularly debilitating headaches as a result of my visions becoming more frequent.

JOHN: oh yeah.

JOHN: what are these visions you’re having?

ROSE: I’m a Seer of Light, John.

JOHN: i know."

I'm happy to see how mature John is being about all this. He's really grown into a proper adult.

Also, that they can still exchange sarcastic remarks shows the base of their friendship hasn't changed over the years.

"What are these visions you're having?", it's like John just became Rose's therapist. :P

"JOHN: so you mean like, your standard psychic visions about the future and stuff?

JOHN: what’s going to happen? should we be worried?

ROSE: It doesn’t technically pertain to the future. Well, not our future."

A potential future then? Or the future of the dead ghosts, their doubledeath?

I mean, I thought Rose's powers were meant to show the best possible future and how to get there.

That hopefully isn't implying that they're not... the main timeline anymore.

"ROSE: My abilities have broadened considerably beyond their previous horizon. They shed light on many unseen events. Past, present, future, in realities and frames of reference that have no intersection with ours at all."

And then Rose could see us, and all the fiction our universe has spawned. Including stuff about their clique! :P

"ROSE: It seems to be an unfortunate side effect of god tier abilities. They can advance at a rate beyond one’s physical ability to keep up with.

ROSE: Fortunately it doesn’t seem to be happening to anyone other than me."

So... what, could that mean Sollux & Mituna's psychic problems were explainable by a surplus of Doom powers, even though they weren't god tier?

... In other news, can they overload Lord English with Time?

"JOHN: yeah, can’t say i’ve noticed anything like that.

JOHN: or improvement in my powers for that matter."

He hasn't been practicing them either, I suppose. Then again, after you've drilled a hole to a planet core and moved an entire different planet to another dimension, as well as rewrote your own timeline, there's few plateaus left to grow towards.

"ROSE: It’s not about gaining additional power, so much as the gradual dissolving of the boundaries between your own awareness and that of your many doomed selves who perished in other timelines."

D'aaaahhhhh, that sounds a lot like what the sprites^2 experienced!

Actually, Davepeta mentioned something about this, didn't they? Something about become their best version through this process?

Didn't it have something to do with the Ultimate Riddle as well? Well, that would certainly quantify as something to know about "to learn what it all means".

But, I got to say, why would John be any less affected? He had doomed selves too, and this isn't just a Light thing, just because it has similarities to Rose's powers.

"ROSE: It’s a slow and apparently rather uncomfortable accretion of knowledge. Perhaps I’m the only one to notice any change, since my aspect explicitly relates to knowledge."

Mulling it over, I think the reasoning here is that, since there's so much knowledge to go around between the Roses of all timelines, she's getting more crammed inside her than anyone else.

So even if they don't just 'merge' into her, just increase the knowledge she can fall back on, and one point she'll reach a limit.

Sounds really painful and I don't want to imagine the migraines now.

Way to get screwed over by an otherwise very useful skill to have. That's Paradox Space for ya!

"ROSE: But in totality, I have pieced together a greater understanding of our present situation and all the events that led us here."

She has become self aware to an extent then. Useful, if they're going to have to fight English.

"ROSE: There’s a different scale I’ve come to understand. Another dichotomy that’s less... emotional, I guess?

ROSE: Consider, instead of the word “good,” using the word “essential.”

ROSE: And what exists at the opposite polarity from essential is...

ROSE: Something that is best not to contemplate."

Yeah, Paradox Space is much more impersonal than is 'good' for anyone.

The Horrorterrors are a good example, their game is a long and incomprehensible one.

And, if you don't fulfill your role in the timeline, you're basically fodder to use against LE. :/

It sounds to me, Paradox Space might be forcing them to join the cause or become doomed.

"ROSE: I really should cut it out, and just start from the beginning."

Once upon a time, in Paradox Space...

Blaperile has a theory she may know LE's backstory now, that would be a good story to tell here, but John already knows parts of it.

So maybe there's something new we'll learn.

"She points with purpose, as if to say, there. Right there, precisely, is where the green sun would be, if it still existed.

ROSE: The green sun is gone.

JOHN: what??"

Last time Rose pointed in a context with the Green Sun, she pointed away from it.

Oh yeah, they couldn't have known about Alternate Calliope changing the Green Sun into the Black Hole!!!

"ROSE: It has been destroyed. At least, from the current frame of reference it has.

ROSE: It still existed, and therefore in a way that’s hard to explain, currently exists, over a nearly infinite span of time, presiding over the birth and death of countless universes."

It's interesting how Universe C's timeline overlaps with the death of the Green Sun.

Does that mean Jade lost her First Guardian powers? (And GCATavrosprite too, I guess.)

Would she regain them, if she were to travel back to an earlier point in the timeline?

"ROSE: But this universe, our universe, is not one of them."

Oh, if Jade didn't have her FG powers, she would've noticed so, by now.

Unless the Green Sun's influence does something else. Well, for one, Earth C won't have its own First Guardian.

"JOHN: you saw this in a vision?

ROSE: No. Jade told me.

JOHN: she did?

JOHN: how does she know?

ROSE: She can’t draw from its power anymore. She no longer has the ability of a First Guardian.

ROSE: It has been this way for several years. I suspect she has kept this fact on the downlow, however."

... Oh, so she kept it secret for seven years. That's... huh.

Well, you know, they are friends, but even between friends secrets can exist.

She might not have wanted distress to grow, since the others wouldn't enjoy their Ultime Reward otherwise.

"JOHN: that’s...

JOHN: surprising, i guess?

JOHN: or maybe not. i dunno, it’s not like she tells me a whole lot these days."

Adults don't share as much as children... That's a sad fact for many.

"ROSE: It’s also not like she’s had any particular need to unleash the full fury of the green sun, not while she’s been gallivanting around with Dave and Karkat under whatever perplexing social arrangement they have settled on."

Heheh, confirmed for opacity! Just like how Dave & Karkat's initial "thing" never got assigned to a quadrant.

"JOHN: how did that happen?

ROSE: It doesn’t matter much, for our purposes."

Alternate Calliope confirmed for not appearing in this epilogue.

"ROSE: There was a cataclysmic event. A suicide strike by a very powerful being. Much like the one Dave and I attempted, once upon a time."

Remember that time, John? Can't believe Cascade could ever qualify for "simpler times", but here we are.

"ROSE: The entire sun was swallowed by a supermassive black hole.

ROSE: I digress though.

You press your eyes shut, just for a moment. Behind them you see a black hole so supermassive that it spans the width of eternity."

John is adding things up faster than usual!

I have to wonder whether his 'dream' was actually the memory of a doomed John, being swallowed by the black hole.

"ROSE: There’s really no route through this expository garden path that will adequately cushion you from the bottom line, John.

ROSE: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English."

'canon', pfffffff. I guess you could say, canon is everything inside the Green Sun's reach.

But oh boy, the implications of someone travelling back from beyond the end of the story!

I mean, I know we've been shown the path this'll probably take, ending with the kids inside the plot hole, and then Vriska using it on LE, after which... Something something.

But still, I can now imagine John travelling back to other places in canon.

Probably this time around, the panels in question won't be altered. I guess?

"> Shrug and try to look casual.

You pull off the most casual shrug that a guy has ever shrugged when being presented with the inevitability of his own fate. If Rose were looking at you right now, she would be totally convinced that you are approaching this topic with a level of nonchalance that is entirely plausible and genuine. You’re sure of it.

JOHN: yeah, i had a feeling that was going to come up again someday."

Classic John. Perfect response.

Can you imagine Frodo giving Gandalf the shrug like this?

... It's like Young K in MiB3. "M'Okay."

You know, if they were travelling back into canon, you could wonder how they ended up fighting Caliborn, since that was in a timeline outside the Green Sun's reach.

At least, I figure, since Universe C begetted the cherub session.

But then I thought of this: when Caliborn took over the narration, he made those things canon, and thus also the 'future scene' rendered with clay figurines where he defeats the kids!

"JOHN: when exactly is the point of no return?

ROSE: Today."

... Way to postpone this, Rose. I guess after today, the Black Hole swallows Universe C???

I can understand John trying his best not to think about having to fight LE, since semi-forced obliviousness is his forté, though.

"JOHN: why?

ROSE: Why what?

JOHN: why do i need to go back and beat him?

JOHN: i mean, sorry if this is a stupid question. i guess he’s a huge awful monster, and that’s just what you’re supposed to do with huge awful monsters. take them down for their crimes, and such.

JOHN: but why does he actually need to be defeated at all?"

Valid question, since LE made himself a staple of spacetime and all.

"to be honest, it’s been years since we’ve even bothered thinking about any of this, and everything seems...

> Take a look around and survey the current status of all life on Earth, which is totally possible to do from the vantage point of a single apartment balcony."

Ah, impossible command prompts, how I missed you.

Everything seems fine, until the black hole opens up in the sky and eats a frog that is your universe.

"JOHN: fine?

ROSE: Of course everything is fine here.

ROSE: We’re outside of canon now.

JOHN: yeah, i know. what does that actually MEAN though?

JOHN: are you saying this isn’t really happening?

ROSE: Of course it’s happening.

ROSE: Just because certain events take place outside of canon, it doesn’t mean those events are non-canon.

JOHN: oh."

I guess this is a way of saying: little is ever going to happen in Universe C that has effects in the parts of the multiverse that the Green Sun touches.

And vice versa.

Also, in a meta sense, for people not enamoured with Homestuck ending and writing their own endings, those efforts are not being discredited here.

"ROSE: In other words, there is an important distinction between events which can be considered to occur inside canon, outside canon, and those which are not canon at all.

ROSE: The day we went through that door and claimed our reward, we passed a threshold between continua marked by differing degrees of relevance, truth, and essentiality.

ROSE: Those are the three pillars of canon.

JOHN: what?"

Ah yes, a scientific exposition on the nature of fanfiction seems in good order right about now. :P

I'm taking a guess that the epilogues are "essential" to wrap up the huge dangling plotline about LE, but that doesn't mean they are THE truth about post-ending Homestuck.

Or even that the events in this story are really relevant to enjoy Homestuck proper.

"ROSE: Any event said to take place inside canon will have nonzero values of relevance and essentiality, while maintaining an absolute foundation in truth, by definition.

ROSE: Whereas events outside canon have diminished values of relevance and essentiality. Or, for the most part, can be considered neither relevant nor essential at all.

ROSE: But such events can’t be said to be untrue either. Instead, it’s better to regard their truth value as highly conditional.

ROSE: Are you still following?

> Say “oh, yeah. totally.”"

This is Andrew's version of the M3KYT mantra. "Just enjoy this story, folks!"

"JOHN: oh, yeah. totally.

ROSE: So to be clear, everything that’s taken place here on Earth C since we exited canon can be considered completely irrelevant, and for the most part, absolutely inessential. Yet none of it can be called untrue.

ROSE: At least, up until precisely today. "

So, yeah, they're going to become relevant to the story again, but that doesn't have to mean that Jane having usurped the Felt, as well as other events from the snaps and things we haven't even seen happen, are going to be given even a passing mention, hahah.

"ROSE: Events that are formally non-canon have no truth whatsoever, by definition.

ROSE: They may have relevance and essentiality values that are nonzero, or even quite high, but only as projections along an imaginary axis, resulting from highly subjective frames of reference.

ROSE: But due to those events having no truth, and thus carrying no real weight, the other properties are basically rendered meaningless."

Aka, fan fiction is not something to dismiss out of hand, but it isn't, like, a holy text.

"You can feel your eyes go wide as the gears in your head slow to a stop. The implications of what Rose is saying are as vast as they are completely incomprehensible. Your mind has just been BLOWN.

ROSE: John?

ROSE: Are you okay? Your pupils have gone quite wide, thereby facilitating the appearance that your mind has just been blown."

Ah John, he hasn't changed.

"JOHN: i just wouldn’t have thought to put all of this in such a jargony way.

ROSE: Sorry. That’s kind of what I do.

JOHN: it’s fine. i’m just a bit rusty is all.

JOHN: it feels like it’s been so long since i did, or even thought about... anything that mattered at all.

ROSE: Yes, the longer we live outside of canon, the more tenuous our relationship with canon becomes."

Aka, the fans are growing up and moving on, so additional stories in the same universe become less likely to be accepted as canon as time goes by. :D

"ROSE: As long as we live outside canon, everything that happens will technically be “real,” but only conditionally.

ROSE: There are certain crucial events inside canon which must happen in order to continue to prop up the legitimacy of events here on Earth C. "

Ooooooh, so Rose's saying they need to go back and fill up some plotholes, hahahahahahah. Glorious.

"ROSE: And you specifically, John, have a responsibility to make sure those events take place.

JOHN: and i take it that means going back and killing lord english?

ROSE: Yes.

ROSE: His defeat is the keystone to this entire continuity.

ROSE: Much like his life, in some sick way, governed the overall design of the bridge which that keystone was holding up.

ROSE: But without it, all of this falls apart. Every thing we’ve been through, in a way that’s impossible for a single mind to fully comprehend, becomes retroactively discredited."

They can't both have entered the Universe AND not have gone back to fight Caliborn at some point. Otherwise, their nature as being "the alpha selves" is cast into doubt.

Especially since John led them to Caliborn with retcon powers.

Of course there could be space retJohns flying about, but that's speculation, not (yet) truth.

"JOHN: so... reality will be destroyed, or something?

JOHN: hasn’t that already sort of happened?

JOHN: i mean, when all the black space started cracking?

ROSE: No, this consequence isn’t physical, or even a disruption of the timeline. It’s more of a conceptual unraveling.

ROSE: If you miss the chance to authenticate canon events, something will take place that’s a bit difficult to describe, but I’ve encountered a term for it.

ROSE: It’s called “dissipation.”

ROSE: Like, a notional fading. As if something, somewhere, is undergoing a process of “forgetting,” and we are what is being forgotten."

So I am definitely thinking this refers to the fandom, in subtext.

But does Rose refer to what happens in doomed timelines, to the folks that don't die but are erased with the timeline ending?

... "Dissipation Island" would suck as a reality tv concept.

"

ROSE: All ideas, people and their full potentialities, possible outcomes and their specific unfolding, all these things live inside conscious frameworks.

ROSE: The further removed we get from authentication of canon events, the less relevant they become, and they slowly fade from the conscious frameworks which kept them stable."

DEFINITELY a reference to the fandom.

"JOHN: so i just retcon-poof back to english and start like...

JOHN: brawling with the dude?

ROSE: Don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t last a second."

You're not the fisticuffs kind of guy, John, those genes went to Jade.

"ROSE: You’ll need a team.

ROSE: Also, you don’t want to just dive headlong into a battle with his hulking adult form. That would be tactically foolish, and furthermore, would skip over some very important steps needed to authenticate canon."

So yeah, Rose is definitely in the process of skimming important details, like she did during the session.

She definitely seems to have a grasp on the requirements for success, but people being in the know hardly ever seems to be one of them.

"JOHN: like what?

ROSE: I mentioned that English’s defeat was the keystone to the continuity. But this is an oversimplification.

JOHN: yikes. well, we sure as fuck wouldn’t want to simplify anything."

Insta-Classic.

"ROSE: The true keystone, which is a necessary component of his defeat, is the juju."

Cal then? Blaperile thinks the Plot Hole. Or is it the sucker perhaps?

Cal needs to be filled with Caliborn's essence for LE to even exist in the first place, so...

"ROSE: The house-shaped object you stuck your hand in to gain your retcon powers.

JOHN: oh yeah.

ROSE: While empty, it resembles a gap. Like a hole in canon, whose only purpose is to be filled."

Oh. I stand corrected.

"ROSE: In serving that purpose, it grants one with the radical canon-altering powers that would be needed to fill it.

ROSE: Once filled, it becomes solid. No longer a gap, but a serviceable, load-bearing wedge in our continuity.

ROSE: Like a keystone."

So, nice term, but a house-shaped keystone isn't that servicable. :P Neither is a mousepointer-shaped one, and the Sburb logo is both.

"ROSE: And once delivered to English and directed his way, it empties itself again, releasing its narrative-bridging payload."

Aww yeah, so they WILL be set free. Glad to have that out of the way.

"It functions as a weapon, and in some manner will bring about his demise.

JOHN: in some manner?

ROSE: It’s a complicated artifact. As old and unfathomable as anything else in Paradox Space, like the green sun, or English himself. Don’t worry about it for now.

ROSE: The important thing is that, in the due course of your travels, you end up loading and unloading this weapon."

So, will nothing be done with Scratch's gun anymore then, & the cueball analogy that might have been able to defeat Lord English?

Are all other items rumored to be able to kill him real red herrings... Or will John need to travel back to the places we last saw them & collect them?

"JOHN: how am i going to do that?

ROSE: Once you set things in motion, it should just happen naturally through the narrative momentum of your journey. I’m really just warning you about it, rather than instructing you.

JOHN: ok. thanks??

ROSE: You’re welcome."

He won't be thankful after the fact, that's for sure. :P

"Rose looks at her phone. You recognize Kanaya’s distinct typing style in the window. Rose’s thumbs begin to fly across the keypad. She continues to text as she talks."

I'm guessing Kanaya is at work at this time, at the Mother Grub's cavern.

"JOHN: so if we’re going to go back and kill him in time to “authenticate canon,” i guess we have to get going soon.

JOHN: like today?

ROSE: Yes.

JOHN: are you sure you’re actually up for a fight though? no offense, but you’re looking a little worse for the wear.

ROSE: I’m not going."

I don't think that's possible, since Rose should be there for the fight.

They can't very well replace with Jasprosesprite^2, that's for sure!

"JOHN: oh.

ROSE: None of us are. Only you.

JOHN: what?? but you said... "

Uuuuhhhmm, but where could John even pick up living versions of his friends!

... Also, it would be rather awkward for a 23-year-old John to meet up with 8-to-10-years younger versions of his friends alone, wouldn't it?

"ROSE: John, this is the victory state.

JOHN: what the hell does that even mean."

Pfff, she means this is the 'good ending'.

"ROSE: When we went through the door, and passed beyond the threshold of canon, we effectively retired from bearing any responsibility for influencing canon events. We’ve all been sort of decommissioned as active players on the cosmic stage, with severely diminished relevance attributes."

Hah, so none except for John with his retcon powers can be expected to hold relevance to canon?

... Blaperile has a good point that this doesn't hold true for Terezi then.

Neither does it for Aranea, Meenah and Vriska!

But still, Vriska immediately went after LE... Even if Terezi has aged as much as John, that is just... Is John going to find 23-year-old doomed versions of his human friends somewhere?

"JOHN: but... couldn’t you all just come along anyway?

ROSE: We could. But it wouldn’t serve any purpose.

ROSE: It wouldn’t plug up the remaining dark spots in canon."

Yes, but, the commentary. Rose, think of all the things Dave could be commenting on!! Don't deprive us of that!

"ROSE: You’ll need a group of active players. Those still stuck inside the stream of canonic karma."

Like OCs? I mean, or the people I mentioned earlier.

Though Blaperile has a point, maybe he'll revisit LOMAX and pick his friends up there. Still, age difference!

"ROSE: Nothing too extravagant. Just different versions of us.

ROSE: Younger versions, from a particularly dysfunctional impasse in our journey.

ROSE: I can point out the exact moment in canon you should be disrupting, and how you should disrupt it.

ROSE: In fact, I’ve already written it down to spare you the trouble of remembering."

... I don't think he'll go and 'save' the people from the Game Over timeline, but then again...

Hah, Blaperile points out how this must be like Terezi's scarf, all over again. :P Nice.

... Wait just a goddamned minute. If he goes back and changes the Game Over timeline, there's an errant Aranea Serket he'll surely encounter!

Wow.

That.

Hah, that's actually very fitting, since it's John's native timeline.

Roxy's too, though. So he might just have her tagging along! :D

Blaperile's right, Game Over went as it did because of the absence of John!

I think that, if he can return and re-relevant all those doomed selves, a lot of people would really, REALLY like that development!

"

JOHN: huh.

ROSE: Is anything confusing about my instructions?

JOHN: no, i remember all this. it shouldn’t be a problem.

JOHN: it’s just weird to think about revisiting this. it seems like an eternity. like... we were all completely different people back then.

ROSE: I assure you we are all still fundamentally the same bunch of losers."

Heheheheh, that you are.

"Rose is ultimately right about that, the way she is about most things. You continue to scan the letter, and grimace slightly.

JOHN: should i really punch her in the face?"

That would be just so sweet, for Rose to get that kind of comeuppance through John. After all, she might have Jasprosesprite^2's memories from when she still lived now, too.

And Aranea killed her.

That would be the second time John comes in retconning a timeline, punching a Serket.

"JOHN: i felt kinda bad about it, last time i did that to someone.

ROSE: Yes. You absolutely should, and must, punch her in the face."

Oh yes, so essential. I'm just casually going to ignore John punching a younger woman. For one, she was at least 1 sweep older than the A2 trolls, and a millenia-old ghost besides.

"You exhale and turn the paper over in your hands. The other side is blank. You flip it back over, having fully processed the instructions drafted in the polished purple handwriting. You like how Rose still writes in purple, after all these years. Some things never change."

Awww.

"JOHN: alright. this seems straightforward enough.

JOHN: i mean, aside from the part where we all have to fight an invincible monster.

ROSE: He isn’t entirely invincible. He will be vulnerable to Dave’s weapon. I believe other gambits should present themselves as well."

Return of the eggsword! Nice!

And okay, the other supposedly "ultimate" weapons to kill LE with will still play a part too, cool!

(Spades Slick has dips.)

"ROSE: I don’t think it would serve the mission well for me to tell you exactly how it will go.

ROSE: But at least I can offer this bit of encouragement.

ROSE: If you follow my instructions, English will be defeated.

ROSE: It is an absolutely essential outcome.

ROSE: And essential, if you’ll remember, is the word we should be using instead of good."

So... What, LE won't really make a heel face turn, but does that mean that... :/ The fate of the other kids might not be pretty, is what I'm getting from this.

Quick John, engage your Dad mode! Protect them!

"JOHN: i see you’re advising we go after him when he’s young...

JOHN: i guess that makes sense.

JOHN: go get him before he gets all big and strong.

JOHN: like, kind of a surprise attack?

ROSE: Sure."

Let's go with that, says Rose.

"JOHN: that dude sucks.

JOHN: he was taunting me a while back.

JOHN: like, i think he WANTS me to come fight him?

JOHN: anyway, i just ignored him obviously, because i’m not a stupid idiot.

JOHN: but i guess today will be his lucky day."

So, if we assume Caliborn spent the same amount of time waiting for John, he's already an adult, but a scrawny one.

"Her eyes are closed and her hands are folded in her lap. She’s not asleep, but she looks wasted—like all the life in her has been sucked out through a straw. Like she’s insubstantial."

"You can’t believe how sick she looks. How did this happen to her?"

I'm... getting some very worrying signals here.

"JOHN: i should probably get going and let you rest.

JOHN: we can talk all about it when i get back. i’ll fill you in on how it went, hopefully you’ll be feeling better by then.

ROSE: Oh. Um."

:/ I hope she isn't going to die on him now, this is supposed to be the victory state!

Blaperile thinks John might not come back, but that would be a dick move for Rose to pull on him. Even if he can force another victory state from all this!

"ROSE: Yeah.

JOHN: is something wrong?

Rose opens her eyes and looks at you, but she says nothing. Just looks.

JOHN: i’m not scared, if that’s what you’re worried about.

JOHN: you already said we’re going to defeat him. so, nothing to fret over, right?

ROSE: Yes. You...

Something flickers through her eyes, almost too quick to catch. When she smiles at you, it’s warm and sincere.

ROSE: You’re going to do great.

Rose slides her arms around you. After a while, she releases you from the embrace and gets up to fetch her bottle of pills. She pauses at the bedroom door to look at you one more time.

ROSE: Goodbye, John.

She closes the door behind her."

... That is REALLY not comforting.

Bathrooms & pills are NOT a good combination in any type of fiction.

"> Look at the letter.

Your run your thumbs along the edge of the paper. Is this really it? One hug from Rose and you’re off to face your destiny? The instructions in the letter are clear, but you aren’t sure precisely what to do next. Inertia and indecision keep your feet planted firmly on the carpet.

Then, as if directly answering your quandary, your phone buzzes in your pocket. It’s a text from Roxy."

So, I'm going to park how I feel about Rose's... condition, and what she might think to do with it.

And I'm going to go and be glad that Roxy texts John at this time, as I hope that she, at least, will join him on the journey.

"> Read text.

It sounds important. You get up to go without even thinking about it. You exit through the sliding glass door and leave it open behind you."

Eep, so the situation at her end is dangerous to? ... Don't tell me that it has only now just happened that Jane was kidnapped by the Felt, and Roxy & Calliope went out to get her.

---

So, this chapter definitely wasn't all shits 'n giggles, that's for sure.

I'm going to have to process this a little.

At least it was great to have Rose & John interact again.

[aroworlds]

"own subjects where my activism is far more emotional. (Like the word “a-spec”, for example) "? You caught my curiosity

Lines like that, anon, are dangerous in giving me free rein to ramble on at you all!

I’m not sure if you’re asking me why I feel the subject be emotional or my feelings about the word, so I’ll assume the first but provide a quick explanation of the second: I was making an oblique reference to the idea that “a-spec” is an autistic-only term that shouldn’t be used by ace-specs and aro-specs, something I cannot abide as an autistic a-spec and discussed (angrily) last week. I have no problem with the word “a-spec” as I use it on all my blogs (you can take it out of my cold, dead hands!), just the idea that it is a thing in need of debating.

(I’ve a less-angry discussion about the angry post here, too, that adds a little more detail.)

In summary, I think the idea that “a-spec” is an autistic term, promoted by allistics, is the act of using autistics as pawns in exclusionist hands to silence a-specs from a unifying term we need and autistics don’t. In claiming the word is an autistic one and shouldn’t be used, allistic exclusionists are ignoring the autistic language and culture that does exist (based around reclaiming identity-first terms) while simultaneously denying a-specs a-spec language and culture.

In using one of my identities against the other, they’re erasing both.

It angers me so much because it’s still treated as a debate, as though the pain it causes me as an autistic aro is abstract–and this is tied so much to my experiences with other intersections of ableism and amatonormativity. Both these things provoke emotional responses in me, and when they overlap, I am very much not calm about it. It’s not something I can reframe as absurdity; I am my emotions and they’re that muddled space of anger and hurt.

I don’t feel more supported as a trans/NB/pansexual person–it does a disservice to the harm wrought by cissexist, exorsexist and monosexist people and “discourse” in LGBTQIA+ spaces, and I won’t minimalise that. I do feel, though, that amongst many reasonable and progressive people (on Tumblr at least), those attitudes are regarded as hateful, and while plenty of exorsexism still reaches me, it’s more often answered. The hate I get on these points is more often directly, horrifically, dangerously vile, but I feel more of an acknowledgement from my broader communities that such attitudes are vile, and often that’s just enough to keep going.

Ableism, though, even in spaces otherwise progressive, feels to me like amatonormativity and a-spec antagonism (especially aro antagonism) in something that is so unquestioned and overlooked. When it’s mentioned, people seem to regard responding to it as an inconvenience, irrelevant. Ableism is so often reduced to readily-understood concepts like maybe not using the R-slur and sometimes things like image descriptions, but the many, subtle ways one can be ableist for so many shapes of disability, never mind struggles like competing/conflicting access needs, are so often dismissed. No hatred is meant so it doesn’t matter.

I don’t think I need to lecture you all on the subtlety of amatonormativity and aro erasure; we’ve all endured it, this feeling that the things that hurt and diminish us aren’t worth bothering about–just as so many shapes of ableism aren’t deemed worth bothering about. Just as folks are so unwilling to provide fully accessible content or reframe their language, folks are unwilling to support aro-specs in any access needs we have with regards romance and erasure.

Ableism and amatonormativity make me feel the most dehumanised and erased, because here I feel that people who should be my own still don’t want to see or support me. Ableism and amatonormativity feel to me like things even otherwise-progressive people don’t want to acknowledge or explore. My disabilities aren’t always invisible, but they’re not always visible either, and so much of ableism and amatonormativity both is not as simply-understood or obvious as not using certain slurs. For me, trying to explain why “-phobia” causes harm when nobody uses the word to intentionally hurt me feels like trying to explain why the truth of most works ending in a romantically happy-ever-after causes harm.

(I’ve seen posts about aromantics and polyamorous folks supporting each other based on our being targets of amatonormativity, but I think aromantics and neurodiverse folks, especially on subjects like dehumanisation and the way love and empathy are treated as normal, have a natural kinship in how what we don’t feel is used to diminish us, and I’d love to see more discussion about this. I do wonder if this is why the best conversations I’ve had about not using -phobia have been in the aro-spec community. Certainly I’ve found more willingness to consider and understand than I have elsewhere, and I think that speaks to that kinship.)

I think part of this anger happens because people tend to explain at me in response–explain why “-phobia” isn’t a problem, explain why “a-spec” is an autistic word, even though I have discussed both from the position of an autistic with phobias. Because these fine points of language are less understood as being based in explicit, intentional ableism or antagonism (hatred), I believe others read them as acceptable, good-faith debate points in a way “trans people are their AGAB” is only “debated” by someone a world away from good faith. I’ve seen people respond to soulmates being amatonormative in the same way–it’s as though they’re archived in some abstract section of people’s understanding, that these aren’t our lives and experiences and pain being dissected.

Our pain is ignored as relevant because it isn’t seen as real.

The people we’re so often fighting are good, progressive people, with no intent to cause harm or deliberate hatred, operating from legitimate good faith. And they’re breaking us. Ableism and amatonormativity are so unacknowledged that there’s no widespread understanding that our pain isn’t an interesting debate point, that a lot of what we’re fighting isn’t direct, intentional or obvious antagonism–and it is ableism and amatonormativity that tells people, ourselves included, that these things are not worth acknowledging.

I have to fight my own internalisation of ableism and amatonormativity to fight someone else’s ableism and amatonormativity of considering ableism and amatonormativity a simple debate topic.

The last ask I got that told me -phobia constructions was fine to use made me cry. I was wrecked by it, because I’d explained my reasoning several times that week, and while there was nothing rude in the ask itself, debating the merits of something I said hurt me was horrible–especially when I had to keep on saying the words, also rendered difficult by my chronic pain. And while I’ve had too few spoons to comment as I should and wish to, @herefortheacenaro has been fighting wonderfully against more ableism on the subject of not using -phobia this past fortnight, and I can only imagine the exhaustion felt now, knowing how much it broke me.

So, anon, while I can handle direct antagonism with much more confidence, because I have enough certitude to dismiss it as hatred, the calm, quiet, polite-seeming ways of turning the unseen pains of my life into a debate topic, particularly if it comes with able-splaining or allo-splaining (and they often do) are the acts of ableism and amatonormativity that break me.

And when they come together, I’m scrambling to know how handle it.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Hi! I really appreciate your posts and found I connected with what you said about being aromantic and wanting committed emotional and sexual intimacy (though I'm still working out my feelings on the sexual bit). I was wondering if you could perhaps talk about your thoughts on being aromantic and polyamorous?

Thank you so much.  I’m still really shocked that people relate to what I’m writing, even though rationally that’s the reason why I started this blog.  It means a lot to me that people connect with my experiences.

Honestly, the overlap of my aromantic and polyamorous experiences is a complicated topic that I’m still struggling to understand.  So, good job picking perhaps the most difficult and confusing intersection of my blog topics for my first ever ask.  But the more I examine my experiences in these two areas, the more I realize they are deeply interconnected.

Before I continue, I want to say that there’s some debate over whether polyamory is an orientation or not.  Some polyamorists call it a relational orientation.  Having been involved in a local polyamory community for a decade now and having listened to many personal stories, I believe it is true that some people (maybe most?) do experience it that way.  I fully support them in their assertion that polyamory is an identity they did not choose, but an identity they need to acknowledge and be free to explore in order to be fully actualized people.  That said, this is not how I experience polyamory.  For me, engaging in polyamorous relationships is a rational choice, not something inherent to my being like my queer orientations.  Maybe it’s because I’m aromantic, so there’s a larger element of rational choice in my decisions to engage in romantic relationships in the first place.  But engaging in polyamorous relationships is a choice that has improved my quality of life repeatedly.  I’m not here to debate anyone else’s experience.  Others experience polyamory as an orientation and I stand by them in solidarity.  Normally I wouldn’t even bother saying this since we should all bear witness by default to each other’s personal experiences, but my experience of polyamory as a personal choice is relevant to what I’m going to share.

For me, initially, polyamory was just the most convenient solution to a set of problems that kept popping up in my romantic relationships.  But once I connected with a polyamory community, I stayed invested in it because of the way the community challenged my views and kept me thinking about the nuances of identity and intimacy.

The most striking thing to me in my earliest open relationships was how much freer I felt, and I don’t mean free to date around.  That was never what I wanted.  Romantic relationships are profoundly uncomfortable for me because of the expectations most heterosexual alloromantics havefor particular behavior and specific experiences, both in terms of romantic-coded activities that trigger my repulsion, and heteronormative behavior that makes me feel dysphoric.  But also, romantic relationships were the only tolerable situation I could think of in which I could explore the kinds of intimacy that I want when I love someone.

My first two open relationships started as monogamous relationships, so I had simply accepted that I would have to endure a certain amount of discomfort and repulsion.  Changing those relationships to nonmonogamous helped me feel some relief from that pressure, and helped my partners feel free to seek satisfaction elsewhere that I was not capable of giving them.  They were able to focus more on what they liked about intimacy with me, so the time we did spend together felt much more satisfying to both of us.  I also felt relief from the guilt of being in monogamous relationships and not being able to reciprocate my partner’s romantic feelings.  But I didn’t understand this with any kind of nuance, since the aromantic community didn’t exist yet, and I was still in deep denial about my queer identity. All I knew was that, even though I never pursued more than one intimate relationship at a time, open relationships felt better and I didn’t really know why.

My first two open relationships had already ended before I even heard the word “polyamory”.  After this, I decided to seek out other people who had similar experiences.  I found a local polyamory community and I was immediately drawn in by their discussion groups, how much they focused on open and honest communication, how many of them had practiced self-awareness skills, how they could communicate about emotions and intimacy with a nuance many monogamous people never learn.  I didn’t date again for years, but I kept going to events held by the polyamory community, participating in the discussion groups, and making friends.

Eventually, I did date again, and it was a similar experience.  I had hoped that if I was getting into relationships that were open from the beginning, there would be even less pressure on me to perform a particular way, but polyamorists do focus a lot on the romantic aspect of intimacy.  There were still a lot of heteronormative gender role expectations, so I was much more uncomfortable than I would have cared to be.  So my polyamorous relationships were short-lived, but by this point I had become an organizer in the polyamory community and still found a lot of satisfaction and meaning in our conversations about intimacy.

It was around this time that I began coming out as queer, and honestly that threw me into a crisis regarding polyamory.  Once I began exploring my identity and deeply examining my intimate experiences, I noticed that my experiences of attraction didn’t match the descriptions of the people around me.  I was facilitating a polyamory discussion group one day, listening to people describe in detail the arc of infatuation, and I realized I had never once experienced that.  This experience is directly what led to me looking up “aromantic” to see if it was a real thing.  And then I found the Tumblr aromantic blogosphere and Arocalypse, and it all made sense.  But I started to wonder if I should leave the polyamory community.  Discovering that I’m aro made me feel like a fake polyamorist, if that makes any sense.

But I still think polyamory can work for aros.  After all, one of the most common sayings I hear from polyamorists is “you have more than one friend, so why only one partner?”  I think this can resonate for aros more than they realize.  Honestly I think an open relationship is the only way I could be intimate with an alloromantic at this point, otherwise the pressure to satisfy their romantic needs would just be stifling to me.  And a lot of sexually active aromantics I’ve talked to so far seem to think that monogamy just isn’t particularly practical.  So while polyamory specifically might not be the best choice for every aro, I think nonmonogamy in general is probably a good option.  But there are still monogamous aros, and I have great respect for them.  We’ve all got to figure out our own comfort zones, and sometimes being a marginal queer makes that hard to explore, since we lack any collective narratives at all.  But that just means we need to write our own narratives.

[polyrolemodels]

Lucy / @PolyThought

1. How long have you been polyamorous or been practicing polyamory?

Just about five years now!

2. What does your relationship dynamic look like?

I'm in a partnership of almost five years that has been an open relationship from the start. C and I first met as co-workers 10 years ago and had overlapping social circles but hadn't spent any time together one-on-one until our first date five years later. I decided the last time I was single that I only wanted non-monogamous relationships going forward, and he was completely comfortable with that, having had experience in open relationships before. I'm grateful to him for the perspective he offered me (when I was a brand-new polyamorous person) and his comfortable, positive attitude towards freedom in relationships. Our relationship has grown ever-stronger and closer over the years, and we just had a commitment ceremony last month to share with our loved ones our intention to remain in a loving and supportive relationship for the rest of our lives. Sometimes people don't understand why we didn't get legally married. Our relationship is unconventional beyond just being non-monogamous: we also don't live together, we don't share finances, and we both live very independent lives. At least at this point, it wouldn't benefit us much to legally merge in the ways that marriage involves. But we love each other deeply and are very committed to our relationship, and we had our ceremony to commemorate and celebrate that.

W is an important person in my life who I'm in a changing relationship with. We started dating shortly after we met nearly two years ago. My worldview has expanded so much as a result of knowing them, particularly in all that I've learned about aromanticism, but also in many other ways. Our relationship is currently transitioning from a partnership to something different, by mutual agreement. Although change is hard, we're both on board with finding out what's next, and it's reassuring to know that we love each other. I'm thinking of this in the framework of "find spaces for the people in your life, not people for the spaces in your life," and I'm confident that we will find the right spaces for each other.

Overall, I'd say my relationship philosophy is "non-hierarchical polyamory." Although it is important to me to honor the commitments and plans I've made in existing relationships, it's also important to me that I (and anyone I'm with) can make similar commitments and plans in new relationships, too, if we want to. To me, being non-hierarchical means that every relationship has equal opportunity for growth into its own best-fitting format.

3. What aspect of polyamory do you excel at?

I'm good at communicating, even about the hard stuff, and I think I'm generally good at helping others feel comfortable communicating with me. I do well at analyzing relationships and introspecting about my motivations, feelings, needs, and boundaries. I'm good at seeking compromise in ways that honor my boundaries while keeping an open ear and heart to what my loved ones' boundaries are, too.

4. What aspect of polyamory do you struggle with?

Jealousy! It sometimes comes up when I least expect it. My self-confidence is pretty good these days, but sometimes, something seemingly small will just set me on a downward spiral in my head. I think I have a pretty good process for dealing with it, though.

5. How do you address and/or overcome those struggles?

Ideally, I give myself space to process my feelings when I'm first dealing with them. I know that my immediate, knock-me-upside-the-head jealous feelings will rarely lead to productive, compassionate discussion if I bring them up with the jealousy-target in that moment. Sometimes, that's been unavoidable, because the feelings start while I'm physically near the person/people. But if the feelings come up while I'm alone, I generally let myself sit with them long enough to feel them, and then for reason to start to creep back in. That usually involves some thought-challenging: for example, remembering that when I am enamored of someone, that doesn't change how I feel about anyone else. Or, remembering the things the person loves about me, or remembering evidence that they're attracted to me, or whatever else I need. Sometimes, that doesn't fully resolve my jealous feelings, and I realize I do need to talk to the person. My next step is to dig for a need I can name. Sometimes that need is just "verbal reassurance." Sometimes it's a request for extra attention or time. Sometimes it's a request for a change in communication -- for more or less of it, either in general or in specific circumstances, possibly on certain topics.

6. In terms of risk-aware/safer sex, what do you and your partners do to protect one another?

Get tested regularly (at least every 6 months for anyone seeing multiple people). Use agreed-upon protection. Communicate proactively about anything at all that might affect a partner's decision about whether to partake in a certain activity.

7. What is the worst mistake you've ever made in your polyamorous history and how did you rebound from that?

Specifically related to polyamory, I think the biggest mistake I made was thinking I should just be cool with everything. I wanted so badly to be chill. This led to some emotional challenges, but I've got a strategy now that works well. Something I learned over time was that although I don't want anyone to feel like they're keeping secrets, I also am not comfortable with hearing every last detail about a partner's relationship with someone else. I know some of my jealousy triggers by now. And although I have my ways of coping with jealousy, I've also now learned that there are ways to set myself up for success. And so, I've made peace with the fact that "chillness with everything" isn't, in fact, everything, and that having boundaries around the kinds of things I do and don't want to hear about is totally reasonable.

8. What self-identities are important to you? How do you feel like being polyamorous intersects with or affects these identities?

I am queer -- I am attracted to and date people of various genders. As a bisexual person, I had to get over some internalized polyphobia: bisexual people are culturally trained that the way to be a "good bisexual" is to be monogamous. You know, to combat the stereotype of the greedy bisexual. Well, I'm not monogamous, but I refuse to believe that this means I'm letting down the bisexual community. I learned about the concept of respectability politics recently, which really casts things like this in a helpful light. I don't need to model myself into the kind of bi person who is deemed acceptable to straight (or gay, or even bi) culture: I just need to treat others well. And I do my very best to do that.

Bonus: Do you have any groups, projects, websites, blogs, etc. that you are involved with that you would like to promote? I'm on tumblr as @polythought. 

—

Support Inclusive Polyamorous Representation at  https://www.patreon.com/PolyRoleModels

[oscopelabs]

Unready Player One: Why Movies and Video Games Don’t Mix by Daniel Carlson

There’s a concept in video game theory called “ludonarrative dissonance.” At its core, it’s about the interaction between a game’s themes (what it wants you to feel) and its mechanics (what it wants you to do), as well as any conflicts that might result when those two things intersect. An example of this would be a game that promotes themes of individuality and freedom while locking the player into a single, uncontrollable plot-line that doesn’t let them choose how the story will unfold. Or, say, a war-themed, combat-heavy game that purports to discuss the value of life while simultaneously tasking you with slaughtering hundreds of digital representatives of a foreign enemy.

The concept isn’t a law or anything, and millennia of tabletop games have proven that superficially contradictory ideas like competition and collegiality can peacefully co-exist, but it’s a helpful way to get the ball rolling when thinking about games as discrete pieces of entertainment media. What’s the goal of the game? What do you have to do when you’re playing it? On a broader level, how does it make you feel? Why do you keep playing it?

And, for the purposes of today’s discussion: Why do so many people keep trying to make movies out of video games, despite decades of evidence that this is a very, very bad idea?

***

Many movies—maybe even most of them—aren’t original. They’re adapted from other media. Books, stage plays, short stories, magazine articles, songs, older movies, foreign movies, television shows, you name it: Hollywood does not care. If you think the idea will sell tickets, then provenance is not an issue. Of the most popular American movies ever made (adjusted for inflation), seven of the top ten, and 15 of the top 20, are based on stories that started somewhere else.

It makes sense, then, that Hollywood would want to mine video games for film ideas. It’s easy now to forget that video games were initially dismissed as a fad, and that the industry was almost wiped out in a crash in 1983. By 1990, though, just five years after the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America, 30% of U.S. households had an NES; by comparison, all home computers combined had only penetrated 23% of the market by then. It’s been pretty much non-stop ever since. In 2016, while the North American box office grossed $11.3 billion, the U.S. video game industry brought in $30.4 billion. You’d have to be crazy to not want a piece of that.

As a result, since the early 1990s, movies based on games have shown up every year or two. Early adaptations were based on games that had achieved almost total pop-cultural saturation—Super Mario Bros. (1993), Street Fighter (1994), Mortal Kombat (1995)—while more recent entries have been inspired by titles that some viewers might not even recognize as games, like 2014’s Need for Speed or 2016’s Assassin’s Creed. Yet despite that variance, pretty much all movies based on games generate the same reaction: audiences ignore them, critics don’t like them, and studios almost always lose money. For every little windfall, like Mortal Kombat grossing $70 million domestically (and another $51 million overseas) on a $20 million budget, there are at least a dozen adaptations that struggle to make their money back, either barely breaking even or flat-out failing.

This is where the dissonance comes into play: a tension between what the industry wants (money) and how it acts (makes movies that don’t earn money). A conflict between how something can succeed in one medium (games) while dying in another (film). A tantalizing but apparently unsolvable proposition to turn one kind of visual entertainment into another. People do it all the time with books, or stories, or really anything they can get their hands on. Why should games be any different—and harder?

There are three reasons, and they’re all about the same thing: us.

***

Start with the written word. A novel (or short story, or novella; you get the idea) is rooted in psychology. The reader is taken as deep into the characters’ conscious and subconscious feelings as the author wants to take them. Thousands upon thousands of words in a given book don’t have anything to do with “what’s happening,” but are instead just about the emotions, history, and family drama that got us to this point. That psychology then flows outward to trigger action.

Movies, which survive on action, need that psychological background to explain character motivation, so a good adaptation of a book will find a way to condense and explain that psychology through images, acts, and dialogue. Their formats are different, but their goals are the same: to start from a place of character and build outward to see how that character confronts the world.

(Even here, things start to get potentially dicey. In a book, it feels totally natural to move from inner monologue to dialogue to physical action in the space of a paragraph, but because a film needs an image or sound to communicate, the poetic emotional reflections of a novel are often turned into clumsy exposition for the screen. When we talk about a book as “unfilmable,” we’re saying that it relies so much on the invisible emotional connections created by its authors psychological exploration of the characters that there’s no easy to way to transform those moments into concrete, physical actions in the real world.)

Games, though, start with action. As the player, you are immediately in control. Super Mario Bros. doesn’t explain a single thing; it just shoves you into the game world and lets you figure out what’s happening. Even modern games like Grand Theft Auto V, which are built on complicated narrative systems of nested choices that the player can make over the course of dozens of hours, only give you a few seconds of animated storytelling before handing over the reigns. Information about the story is parceled out over time, but it’s done in tandem with action that you are asked to execute. In short: there’s a lot less build-up. There’s nowhere to go because you’re already there, experiencing and creating the action. A film’s story is designed to pull you along and explain the motivations of its characters in a way that you can understand, but a game wants you to insert yourself into the story and determine your own justifications for its existence.

Those are two separate and equally valid ways to make and consume entertainment, but they don’t cross-pollinate. A movie based on a game has to invent all manner of backstory and motivations, so much so that you wind up with something so fundamentally different from the source material that it’s hard to remember why you made it in the first place. (Again, I present Super Mario Bros.) The use and structure of a game’s narrative is worlds apart from a book, or a movie. There’s no overlap, and forcing one just makes things worse.

***

Crucially, too, movies based on games misunderstand one of the key appeals of the medium: the ability to interact with and manipulate the environment. As the player, you decide how to move through the game’s world. Do you want to spend an hour just walking from one end of the map to the other? Knock yourself out.

That interactive, three-dimensional space becomes something you can mentally reference throughout the game, and even recall after you’re done playing. The spatial reasoning you’re doing while playing games doesn’t just improve your cognition or memory, but actually renders for you a space that you can revisit in your mind’s eye.

Here’s an experiment: Think about your childhood home, or your first office job, or the street where you live. Close your eyes and picture that place. Now imagine your perspective moving through that space, turning from side to side, taking in everything. Even though that place exists in the real world, and a game’s digital environment doesn’t, there’s no difference between the experience of visualizing your navigation through them.

You can probably see the problem here. Movies, for all their spectacle, are flat. You see only and always what the frame is showing you. You have to make sense of the film’s world by processing the shots and building your own mental map, only without the benefit of being able to do so at your own pace. This is why good directing, especially in action films, does everything it can to create a clear, understandable geography of the scene. If you know where the characters are in relation to each other, you’ll be able to follow the story. But if you can’t make sense of it, it will all start to blur together. Films and games are both visual media, but their presentation of those visuals, and the ways you can interact with them, are so completely separate that they’re almost using different languages. A game’s three-dimensional space is rendered flat on-screen, turning from something special into something predictable.

For instance, the open-world adventure games in the Assassin’s Creed series are all built around the idea of giving the player as much control as possible to achieve an objective. You can run up walls, leap from roof to roof, hide in crowds, send others to do your dirty work, and more. The concepts that drove the games proved so popular that they showed up in others, and “playing an Assassin’s Creed game” now means something very specific, mechanically and structurally. The 2016 film version, though, was a lifeless dud that didn’t fare well with critics or audiences and that squandered the reunion of Macbeth star Michael Fassbender and director Justin Kurzel. It was a generic blockbuster designed to look like everything else at the multiplex. There’s no sense of purpose, wonder, or power in the final product. It doesn’t—can’t—have anything that made the source special, and it doesn’t do anything to stand out in its new medium, either. It doesn’t belong anywhere.

***

Maybe the biggest obstacle, though, is the dissonance at the center of it all: Games are about control. Movies are about surrender.

In games, you hold the controller (or sit at the keyboard) and dictate the action. You navigate the space. You make the decisions that trigger the events that lead to winning or losing. It’s a personal experience built on direct engagement with the medium. If you stop playing, the game doesn’t continue. It can’t. At the movies (or at home), you sit back, focused on the screen. You don’t control the speed of the story, or the plot decisions, or who says what. You are watching the movie to be told a story, to be wrapped up in a narrative controlled by someone else. Your engagement is based on attention, not decision-making.

There are even different degrees of involvement you can have with them, as anyone who’s ever idly checked Facebook on their phone while “watching a movie” can tell you. Some games aim for a different kind of engagement, though, built solely on repetitive feedback loops instead of complicated or lengthy narratives. When it debuted on smartphones at the end of 2009, Angry Birds was an instant success because it was a focused, incredibly compelling game experience that was ideal for killing time. The Angry Birds Movie, though, released in 2016, was a generic cartoon that was only made as a way to capitalize on the existing brand recognition of the mobile game series. The movie misunderstood what we liked about the game in the first place. We didn’t want a story. We just wanted something fun to do for a few minutes.

Ultimately, we want different things from each medium. The only similarity between the two is that they’re leisure experiences, but the fact that they’re both so often presented on home TV screens has persuaded many stubborn writers, producers, and directors over the years that they’re related. It’s not that one is inherently better or worse than the other; it’s that they occupy different spheres. We go to them for different reasons and different experiences. We don’t like movies based on games because, deep down, they don’t even feel like movies. They’re ungainly, bastardized things that try to please two masters and only disappoint them. Even the words that define the audiences bear this out: you can be a player or a viewer, but not both.

[skeppsbrott]

You already got some other good responses to this but let me also posit: lace and other sheer materials commonly found in conventional lingerie is material kink. Most hetero men have a breast fetish. Preference for full-body hairlessness is such a strong kink for many that the presence of hair is a direct turn-off. Many men take pleasure in wearing well-cut ordinary suits in the same way many other men take pleasure in dressing in leather boots, gloves and jackets.

The difference is that some of these are 1) so commonly present in societal ideas of sexuality that they are not considered kinky and 2) re-fed to society as normal sexual behaviour which in turn conditions us to find them attractive. Hairlessness is a good example of this. I've read excerpts of eroric novels from the 1960s and 1970s which specifically zone in on female pubic hair as erotic, mostly as a symbol of sexual availability or potential, but also just for its own sake.

I also think this raises a deeper question about how we imagine our bodies. We tend to prefer to separate our minds from the fleshy, squishy stuff our bodies are made out of, which is part of why so many taboos are rooted in bodily behaviour. Sex is an interaction people seek out and enjoy for its bodily aspects as well as its social, emotional or cultural ones, making it more difficult to navigate than many of the other bodily disciplines we engage in and accept at face value.

A lot of the time this issue is solved by imagining sex as a bodily and by extension social need, historically through procreation but today we also include physical pleasure under this idea of need, or sexual libido. The institutions of kink and BDSM, however, blur this line further. As you say, many of these ideas are engaging in a way which is specifically bodily (control over one's facial muscles, tactile sensory experience) and potentially but not inherently sexual.

I am pretty much thinking as I type here but as a person who struggles to navigate the intersections of autism, romantic, platonic and sexual interest, it is something I've been thinking about a lot. The traits autists are shamed for the most seem to be the ones where we are not correctly disciplining our bodies so I imagine there's a very substantial overlap of interest between these groups.

I just stumbled upon a post with a picture of boots that are hooves with horseshoes, and I was like "wow that's so cool" so i looked at the blog and apparently horse costumes are an entire fetish???

???

I mean, Ive HEARD of this. But I was expecting something...more overtly sexual?

I just wanna know. Is this stuff really all for sexual reasons exclusively? Do you even get direct sexual gratification out of wearing a corset with a fluffy tail and boots with hooves on them? There were a number of very aesthetically pleasing and slightly uncanny horse masks. I never would have guessed that there was anything sexual about a good 60% of the posts on that blog. It looked like just cosplay stuff.

I'm a little bit baffled that people "know" to see this as some kind of like, "pervy" thing, instead of being like huh, that looks cool and super autistic