#but what about the people who aren't self aware enough to advocate for themselves?

[slippery-minghus]

many many years ago when i was in college, i went to the student disabilities office. that was where you went if you needed accommodations. i was struggling a lot, having difficulties managing my mental health and my coursework. i finally reached a breaking point and went to ask for help.

but i didn't receive it. the disabilities office was not there to help disabled students who didn't know, down to the letter, precisely what accommodations they needed. and even then, if it was something more than "extend these deadlines" and "allow a laptop in class for note taking", it probably would have been denied.

the man i spoke to was incredibly condescending, and gave off an impression that if you were not as visibly disabled as he was, you didn't actually need help. i don't know much of that was projection or actually his intent, but i do remember being told something to the effect of "we can't help you."

so i continued to struggle in my classes. continued to watch my grades (and mental health) suffer.

you know what would have helped me? instead of that man blithely asking me that he couldn't know what accommodations i needed, and that i had to come up with some and tell him? he could have asked. one simple question.

"what part of your classes are hardest for you?"

and i'd like to hope that at that age i had at least the sense enough to push down the shame and tell him: doing any of the reading for my classes.

and a world of possibilities could have opened up. you know what would have helped me? what would have been a simple, reasonable accommodation that would have made a night and day difference in my ability to participate in my own education?

audiobooks. fucking audiobooks.

it was so damn simple.

[originalleftist]

Lol, I just had some loser (maybe paid troll) tell me that supporting a two state solution means you want to genocide Palestinians.

Like, they do know that one of those states would be a Palestinian state, right?

Except its pretty clear that most such people (when they aren't flat-out fascist bots or paid trolls) don't really care about Palestinian lives, and I increasingly doubt that they actually want a Palestinian state either. The point is that in their narrative, the only way to oppose Palestinian genocide is to support the genocide of Israelis/Jews. Therefore, they can advocate for the war to continue, sacrificing ever-more Palestinian lives in the cause of destroying Israel and murdering Jews, while still self-righteously calling themselves "pro-Palestinian", and anyone who opposes them a genocidal fascist- when of course that's exactly what they themselves are.

The only question with any individual dipshit is the degree to which they are aware that this is what they're doing, as opposed to being Useful Idiots led by the nose by those who are.

I replied by quoting Orwell's "War is peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is strength." from 1984 at them, but I doubt they were either well-educated enough to know the reference, or intelligent enough to grasp its meaning, either in isolation or in relation to their narrative.

[archivalofsins]

Gonna be real, and it may seem hypocritical to some folks.

People who try to speak for everyone are kind of annoying. The types who are just so committed to their way of seeing things that they're like everyone should do things this way. It would just work if everyone just behaved this way and end up falling into black and white thinking. Putting people into camps of right and wrong. Then creating rule books on how to treat certain things or people.

That they then frame as common sense advice on how to engage with things. It just comes off conscending and full of oneself. It feels deeply rooted in this hollow idea that no one is different from I am. So, of course, this will work. This is what I want so everyone else will, too. Like I didn't start writing about Milgram because I thought anyone would agree with me or I wanted to be right/prove myself right. I did it because I wanted to talk about something I enjoyed.

Not to win some imaginary debate. A lot of the ways people talk about anything these days is to just win that imagined debate. To shoe I'm a good person, I'm a civil person, I'm a progressive person, I know how to treat marginalized individuals amd am a safe space for them. Yet people like that are usually the unsafest. They usually have this narrow idea of what a marginalized looks like and it's usually conveniently framed as someone beneath them in every way.

An individual who they can speak over, white knight for but never really have to take seriously. If they start advocating for themselves or disagreeing with what they're saying they're suddenly stripped pf marginalized status. They aren't the sort of person they're making a safe space for anymore. They got uppity when they should've have just shut up and let the people who know better protect them.

I've experienced it a lot this sort.of mindset it's the same one that makes it easy for cops to turn a black person from the person who called them to a threat. The same one that makes people look at the person who was attacked as the aggressor. It's in every if you didn't want that to happen you shouldn't have talked back, you shouldn't have been combative, you shouldn't have been hostile, you shouldn't have done anything or vocalized an opinion in the slightest.

Just let the people who know better tell others how to treat you. Just let the people who have told everyone how you should be treated all your life keep telling people how to treat you. It's easy to see as a black woman because that's mostly all of life for a black woman. Having a lot of people who claim they no better telling people how to treat you and as soon as you say well actually I'd like you to ask me how I'd want to be treated being laughed at, actively harrassed, or told you aren't black enough to be able to contribute to that conversation.

A lot of the ways people talk about issues online is similar to that. It's not different or more progressive it's the same slop where someone is trying to dominate the conversation on how marginalized individuals should be treated. They try to create cheat sheets or checklists for people to try out on their resident marginalized test subject. Something that feels gross, annoying, and no different from anything from the past to me.

That's why I tend to be rather antisocial in online settings. One of the things getting into Milgram made me acutely aware of is hoe this mindset continues to be applied in concersations around mental health in online circles. At my kindest I'd describe conversations regarding mental health online as presumptuous and downright displays of self-centered indifference at my worst.

Where people literally just say stuff that has only ever worked for them or would be nice for them but would actually make me want to drop kick a mother fucker into the ground if done to me. Then, in response to criticism of said points, will more than likely go,

"Well, has anyone considered it wasn't referring to everyone. Maybe this person doesn't even have x or it's less severe for them than others. I was talking to soecific people not everyone."

I believe the phrase some may be looking for is in my experience, from my perspective, or any variation. They all go a long way. Mostly people who phrase things in that fashion aren't talking for everyone or even attempting to. They're trying to illustrate something that they believe would be helpful for others because it helped them. They're just expressing that in an overheneralized sometimes inflamatory manner because thats what gets attention.

Because that's what people pay attention to. Everyone wants a short cut for communicating with others who may think in ways different from theirselves. Yet, communicating isn't meant to be easy. Sometimes a person is going to have to do heavy lifting and mess up to get it right.

Sometimes, there's no convenient article that will lay out how to talk to the neurodivergent people in ones life or any particular individual who deviates from what is considered the societal norm where they are. There isn't supposed to be sometime the only way to properly communicate with someone is to just straightforwardly do that eye to eye or on an even level. No bullshit or gimmicks.

The only thing trying to create a one size fits all solution does is exclude the people that size ends up not fitting. It further divides and isolates marginalized individuals from community and creates unwarranted scrutiny when that advice doesn't work. It makes people once again question if that person is really what they are because if they were, then that would have helped, right?

It makes people more comfortable with pushing through on their own because no one ekse will understand. It becomes easy to go, "I'm fine with living in ambiguity if it means I don't have to affiliate myself with people like that." Or "I dont do x so I definitely can't be y."

That's the price of presenting things as monoliths. It becomes less about helping all people and more about helping certain types of people.

Then the most wild thing is how easy it becomes for the people who need the most help to not bother with seeking it out. For them to stop caring people or groups consecutively portray the things that impact them as monoliths that only work one way. It becomes easy because those people are already used to being overlooked, systems failing them, and being excluded.

So it's easier to just go, closed minded doesn't even cut it. We might as well start calling some people's brains Fort Knox because nothing is getting in there. Or not bothering saying anything at all. Because it's not like anything is going to change if one does. This is pretty much what Yuno's mindset in her second interrogation feels like to me.

It's frustration in k owing that regardless of what you say you won't be heard because everyone around you thinks they know more about you than you do. It was.impressive how it embodied that feeling.

[nanakah]

about Ishigami, his growth and Miko's role

most people, myself included, thought at some point that Tsubame's rejection (or acceptance) could wrap up Ishigami's arc and even his past's flashbacks neatly, but Osaragi's arc suddenly revealing there was more to his relationship with Miko made me reflect more and think nah...if anything we're halfway there. It also showed glimpses of him already struggling to find his place in the world by quitting his clubs, even though he was successful at them and there was no Ootomo incident yet to undermine his self-image.

It seemed odd that despite everything he went through he still has his "hair=shield/averting eyes" theme going strong, but it makes sense if you consider even though Tsubame helped him see the way to be more accepting of people and cleared his name, his self-esteem still is super low. I spoke of this in my "sutera" meta, but to Ishigami, his life still has been a sucession of failures and almosts. At his core, he still hasn't fully opened up to people or learned to use his vulnerabilities to his advantage.

If I have grabbed your interest thus far, keep reading for more considerations!

Tsubame is kind to anyone and attempted to do good for him, but ultimately he was never fully himself around her, nor she tried/he alllowed her reaching out to the deepest parts of his insecurities. She doesn't show her own flaws to him either and to this day we get the feeling we don't know her well, just the best parts that Ishigami wanted to see. Kaguya, Miyuki and Chika contribute a lot in a sibling-like way, but there's a limit to how much Kaguya in particular can inspire him. Miko however, has scratched a little beneath the surface and has expressed an interest in helping him with that, even if he himself is still avoiding the topic. She's also more relatable to him in the sense that the rest of the stuco has a history of successes in their lives, while he was able to watch Miko's hardships and failures closely. Their panic attacks even look similar and they're always watching the other to provide backup (in a very roundabout way, at least before) when they happen.

While their personalities are fundamentally different, his arc and struggles remind me a lot of Miyamura from Horimiya and today, as I was musing on what is so different about them as of now, I believe it's how Miyamura didn't have a single *traumatic* mistake to get over, so he goes down his development road much faster. Putting it another way, it's ultimately that Ishigami hasn't yet learned to be kind to himself like Miyamura has through Hori. Like Shirogane and Kaguya are through themselves. In Miyamura's case, sympathizing with how Hori despite her strong exterior can be very fragile inside but still support him (fight for him, defend him, accept his true self, not judge him, hear him, make him feel good enough) made him feel compelled to grow stronger to protect her back.

Miko as she was at the beggining of the story couldn't provide Ishigami this sort of stability (and that's where Osaragi's "prettier story"/"you weren't there for him" reasoning fails) even if deep down she wanted to, but now after making many mistakes, learning from them and becoming more flexible, she absolutely can. Both Ishigami and Miko have deeply rooted issues that took them more than just each other to flesh out and develop, but they're very much the missing puzzle piece the other needs.

Miko still very much has room for growth as well, mainly concerning finding a middle ground between her "bad girl" and "good girl" personas that Ishigami can easily see through, as demonstrated by the consolation chapter. She tried being "bad", she attempted lying but was still saying half-truths, because her love of justice isn't just out of parental abandonment issues or loneliness - she does believe them sincerely. The moment Ishigami headpated her and shared genuine, spot-on words of concern and admiration (thus a hint of fondness), it was all over for her trying to keep up the love-warfare upper hand.

That's not actually new - Ishigami has always demonstrated he was able to see glimpses of her true self, be it teasing how she's an otaku or a closet pervert and such, he never fully bought the strait-laced image she aspired to make real. But it did take him being around her more to see she could be sweet to him and as he puts it, that smiling more is not a bad look on her. Miko says to Osaragi your true self only comes through interacting with others, so given how lonely she has always been (and how the one person close to her - Osaragi - was actually keeping things between them superficial because of her own problems), it's no surprise she's only finding out now who she is. Ishigami can help Miko find a better compromise of good/bad after both not following any rules at all for so long and recently learning that hard work can pay off. Miko immersing herself in his hobby will clash with her rigid study schedule sooner or later, and he'll know how to help her with that better than anyone else.

On the other hand, Ishigami's moral compass, romanticism (love for flowers, planing dates etc) and idealism aren't things he is proud of...yet. He protects himself with layers of cynism, especially in his first appearances, but he is always being contradictory and letting it slip how idealistic/pure he is at heart. He also is only now learning to like his outward image with things like fitness/studying and finding out it's not like he never cared about it - it's just that he was scared shitless of failure, thus never even tried hard in the first place to avoid being hurt. And as I have advocated for in the Sutera post, I expect Miko in some level to help him come to terms with seeing good in himself. Heck, even being able to game with her now and showing off how good he is and having her appreciate it is gonna do wonders to make him feel more "adequate". Tsubame's arc had a lot of him changing himself to become "better", but Miko on the other hand is trying to put herself in HIS shoes to maybe go "hey, I like you as you are. I'm trying to understand you more and put effort in for you".

Ishigami and Miko start out watching out for each other behind their backs - which instead of helping their relationship, drives them further apart because they think the other side is showing no appreciation. As the story progresses, they're slowly learning to make each other more aware of their support, and it is making them open up more in general.

They have a strong belief the other wants to be rescued and there is truth in that. Both want help and to be recognized for their efforts, but won't cry out for it. In the unplugged earbuds chapter Ishigami takes it upon himself to protect Miko's reputation in spite of himself, the election arc has him actually putting effort into the campaign just for the sake of protecting her and at first posing as a rival of hers to Shirogane only to reveal he's trying to "make Miko smile", he is constantly fending off men from interacting with her as protection (while also sounding jealous), he was way more protective of her when she was wearing that cast than needed and is now being able to openly headpat her and sounds almost like her "soothing sounds" from the days of yore lol Sure Tsubame seems like his start to becoming "a better man", but all the way back on the election, it was for Miko's sake that we first SEE him putting effort into *anything* without being coerced by anyone to take action.

And while it's more discreet compared to Ishigami's "white knight" attitude, Miko also tries hard to protect him - cheering him on during the sports festival race and wanting to console him before the stuco intervened, telling him he should study (but he thinks it's just nagging), christmas (which I'll elaborate bellow), making sure he was able to graduate middle school by actually confronting school staff and, of course, their very first meeting as recently revealed.

Many people hated the entirety of Osaragi's arc, but 232 gave very juicy info indeed. Ishigami's reason for supporting Miko from the shadows comes from admiration AND part gratitude for her attempting to talk to him and listen to what troubles him, and seeing they actually had a "falling out" argument was game changing.

He looks sad and troubled to have shut her down there, not simply angry, and so does she (there's tears in her eyes when her face is shown in the next page) - despite her black and white sense of justice at this point of the story, she still wanted to listen to him. And even after that outburst she still believed the rumors weren't real, unlike Osaragi sees it - otherwise she wouldn't have made the effort for him to be able to move on to high school. Why would she care, if she truly hated him and thought he was in the wrong?

If any further proof was needed at all that this info is important, I'm happy to say we have more. I noticed the Christmas stairs scene mirrors this exact falling out moment: "Go away"/"Suit yourself"

But this time Miko had already decided to change, had already seen the mess their relationship became the last time she did not reach out to him and thus already had their previous falling out in mind - meaning she decides to chase after him.

I don't like how the scanlations handled this scene because reading the japanese raws, my interpretation was that Miko was sounding "annoying" because she was still kinda drunk/unfiltered and freaking out when talking to Ishigami, not outright berating him like the Jaimini's box translation made it look like. She also sounds too angry after the fall, so I generally thought Viz's version (the panel shown above) was closer to the original.

"I always have to take care of you! You keep putting youself in danger. You can't make it on your own." is a better translation than Jaimini's, and also parallels better what Ishigami is often telling Miko as well (That she keeps putting herself in danger and that he has to be around to keep her in check). But with 232 in mind, I think it misses a nuance of the original line: "ほんとあんたは 私が居ないと危なっかしく駄目ね" - "Honto anta wa watashi ga inaito abunakkashiku dame ne" - while I'm a novice at japanese studies, gathering from what I can read and trying to get a feel of the whole sentence, it's closer to "So it really is dangerous to you if I'm not there/ It's no good if I'm not around you". You can take that as her being full of herself, which is the route Jaimini's goes ("You'd be screwed without me") but that's too hostile - Viz's got the spirit of wanting to protect him better, but the original has an implication that she has "tested not being there"/failed being there before (due to not fully siding with him in middle school) that's absent elsewhere.

IMO the reason Ishigami's "closed his eyes" arc is not over yet is because he hasn't accepted or gotten over or fully learned from his past yet, he simply shut it down. That's why briefly during the sports festival his eyes are in plain view, then go back to their usual for the balloon gag. I'm not sure if Ootomo herself will make a comeback, may or may not - regrets are regrets and sometimes the only solution to them is letting them stay in the past. But the topic of how he saw Miko in middle school and the letter certainly are being set up to still show up in the story.

If I compare him to Miyamura again, he'd still be at the point before Miyamura's haircut - not wanting to face the parts of himself he doesn't like, not quite ready to change. Not quite ready to patch up his own wounds yet and instead silencing everything from his past.

In this sense, Miko does wonders to make him feel more confident even if he hasn't realized it yet, and she's always dropping little hints she'd like him to worry about his future not in a naggy way, but because she genuinely prays for his success. He unconsciously wants Miko to think well of him and it fills him with confidence and a more prideful image of himself he doesn't really display to anyone else, not even Tsubame - like his usages of "ore" (a more manly/confident way of addressing himself) around her (AND HER ALONE):

( I don't like the available translations to the staircase scene either, lol. Zaibatsu has conveyed the tone of the second scene up there perfectly. For the staircase line, I've seen "I'll be there to catch you" and "I'll save you" which are contextually correct, but to me the original "俺が絶対守る" - "I (ore) will absolutely protect you" carries a much more romantic nuance or ambiguity, regardless of him realizing it at that point. It's like, the title to one of the most romantic moments/songs in the CCS Clear card anime ost, for instance. OF COURSE MIKO LOVES HIM. The narrator doesn't overexplain or take apart Ishimiko's interactions like for Prezguya, but all the evidence needed is there. And I gotta add the very next chapter to the staircase one is the "eternal love" x "real love" I'm super fond of that says fate is irrelevant and to find real love you must use your head to realize/understand things, so makes the romantic subtext even greater.)

This whole affair is also making me open my eyes that I should try to study japanese more...of course I'm happy to have translations and scanlators working hard, but there is something inherently lost in adaptations because it robs you of connecting with the author's intentions unless it was the author who wrote the translation in the first place

Thinking back on Ishigami's early "i wanna die/i'm going home/don't look at me" role, it seems unbelievable we're at the point he's now able to directly confront a "stranger" (lololol) or make serious promises with so much confidence.

PLEASE DON'T END SO SOON MANGA, I NEED MORE.

( off-topic kind of, but i'm lazy to make a separate post just for it: Since I mentioned things lost in translation, I saw something on Discord about Ishigami having an unreliable narrator moment in the "compliments" chapter/Iino Miko cannot love part 4 and holy molly, it is true. He first says something akin to "You're just too beautiful" out of context, Miko HEARS IT - and that's why she looks so shocked before asking for clarification - and he DID SAY IT in the speech bubble, but after she's nice to him and he thinks back to what he said he adds a "Your handwriting is just too beautiful" to his flashback. I'm ONTO HIM. ONTO HIM I SAY. It is what he meant, but it's like his mouth betrayed him. Whether it's unconscious or denial...it totally is something. The scanlation completely skips this and had the same line both times it's mentioned.)

[no0dlru]

I dunno if anyone needs to hear this, maybe especially my younger followers, but

You're not obligated to be polite when someone doesn't extend you the same courtesy, especially if they're disrespecting your boundaries.

A friend of mine had a neighbour over yesterday cause she's had a lot going on recently, including a breakup, and she'd appreciate some company. While they were hanging out, the guy started coming onto her, and pressuring her for sex (despite everything).

Now I know there's a lot of awareness spreading about consent, but something I don't think gets addressed enough is tone. It's all well and good knowing that your consent should be required, but sometimes even if the pushy person knows that too (which, to be clear, not everyone does), they can still do some bs mental gymnastics around it and try to coerce or pressure you.

If someone ever makes you feel like your consent is being disregarded, if you say you don't want sex and they start pushing for just hands, or just kissing or whatever, YOU DO NOT OWE THEM POLITENESS. If someone believes "everyone" deserves consent, then starts waring down their perception of yours, they're pushing you outside of their definition of "anyone", and you shouldn't put yourself below someone who's dehumanising you for their own sexual gratification. My friend thought she was pretty transparent by saying she didn't want sex, but this guy - a self purported "champion of consent" - thought she was "playing hard to get".

Now, the entire concept of playing hard to get, especially when it's a complete presumption (as it usually is) is transparently disrespectful of boundaries. Hell, I was watching Beavis and Butthead yesterday and Butthead said it - it's something we've been characterising as aggressively misogynist, sexually predatory & antithetical to consent for decades. If someone views you in the way Butthead views women, please have enough self respect to not humour them, if nothing else just to prevent this happening to more ppl in the future and to get it through to them that it doesn't work.

To be completely clear, I'm not implying any of the onus is on the victim here, I'm just trying to clarify how things are purposefully misread by abusers, wether that's a conscious decision or a deep rooted societal sense of entitlement. When people get this expectant and insensitive, trying to politely back out of the situation gives them enough slack to write it off as playing hard to get. When someone continues to sexualise a situation beyond what makes you comfortable, especially after you've declined them, you need to shift the tone as recognisably for them as it's shifted for you.

A lot of the time if you've been raised to be polite in absolutely all circumstances (as is the case with my friend) or if you're in a situation that makes you feel unsafe or with a particular power imbalance, shifting the tone is intimidating, but sometimes you need to be your own friend /defence / support /advocate; a lot of the time these people will use your friendly manner as an excuse for themselves to believe on some level that actually, why would you be so friendly unless.... ____? Predatory people often don't understand that feeling of being on the receiving end of coercion and the forced politeness that comes with trying to protect yourself from their aggression because, as an assertive and agressive person, whenever they've been in a situation they don't like they don't have that forced politeness. They don't factor it; they'll always default to assuming you want more than you're letting on, rather than thinking you're being more friendly than you'd like for safety, cause that's an alien concept to them. For these people, "NO" has usually been enough, and if it isn't they assert themselves and, through their logic, you'd behave the same, right?

I'm speaking mostly for situations that aren't immediately dangerous here, as some people will not take no for an answer, but when someone's being pushy and you feel like you could safely turn them down,

Don't laugh it off at your own expense, don't humour them and politely skim over it - mark a change in atmosphere. Bring it up outright if you can, if you're sitting by them and they touch you try to stand up rather than scoot, if they make a joke that makes you feel uncomfortable call them out irrefutably; make them uncomfortable with the consequence of their actions, and make it clear that they shouldn't expect anything of you.