#don't at me there are several examples for all of these

[concenecxere]

this is so beautifully put. i mean gorgeous. i am not caught up so i am effectively spoiling myself but funnily enough i actually tried to talk to my mother about this while watching s1 bc at the same time i'd been reading a chapter of this book about compulsory sexuality (refusing compulsory sexuality: a black asexual lens on our sex-obsessed culture by sherronda j brown) which really encouraged this exploration for me. like so much of what stood out to me was the direct comparison of innie marks interrogation of his own creation being spurred on whilst dealing with integrating helly into the severed floor (and the loss of petey) vs his sister on the outside having her first child. helly r is almost a petulant child to him at first, an inconvenience to the order of things although necessary for their workplace function at lumon (like ops gf said, just like helena mark as her boss almost resents the freedom with which helly is defiant), until of course he really reconciles the severity and the lengths she goes to and turns inward and wonders why he never stopped to question it all himself. so we see these motivations for reproduction in direct contrast -- in the story of mark the final goal of his reproduction is productivity (by separating himself from his trauma), versus devon and rickan taking an approach to reproduction "more virtuously" by comparison (like excited for the journey of raising a unique human being). now this is the point where i realized i was talking to my mother and didnt really have my thoughts wrapped around it and wanted to begin that type of conversation with more nuance and the conversation naturally returned back to the show.

but! back to the book by sherronda j brown -- it has a whole chapter on productivity, partially tackling how capitalism incorporates productivity into nuclear family making which kind of effectively pulls the magic out of the point of a family. a child is not something that you can utilize/form for some present/later convenience, they're a human being with their own unique ambitions and the beauty of parenthood is often watching them discover that etc etc. but capitalism looks to control family making as it is a method of economic stimulation. again this requires a lot of nuance, because since we are so embedded in capitalism in some ways you have no choice but to be implicit even if you are aware, and you can be doing this wether you realize it or not. i also want to be sure i acknowledge that i am by no means an expert on this i just felt emboldened to get into it here. alongside those examples given by the amazing prev posts/tags this is illustrated in real life by how so many people are realizing using children as a contingency plan for who'll take care of you when you age or like expecting grandchildren from your own children. like its absolutely not a bad thing to want these things but assuming no matter how you treat your children that its their responsibility to fulfill that for you is bull -- and objectively to expect this is not even always guaranteed biologically for several reasons but i digress. a child is their own person worthy of respect and if you don't give it to them they don't/shouldn't owe you present or future compliance (again theres nuance, even in severance given the outies varying levels of awareness of/care about their innies treatment) but capitalism is a part of perpetuating this. as so many now realize if you are surrounded by real true community confirmed elder care and the opportunity to be a grandparent-like mentor is/should be available without nuclear family to fulfill it. the power of found family and all that beautiful stuff! particularly when imagined with a queer lens. but capitalism has taught us intentionally that all of this should come from the heteronormative nuclear family and is only valid when derived from a heteronormative nuclear family in order to isolate us from one another and sell us these opportunities in other ways for their own gain. anyways i've danced all around it myself but brown says the following far more concisely in their amazing book (which i look forward to finishing).

"anxiety about the sex recession among young people is also anxiety about an accompanying decrease in marriage, nuclear family making, and home ownership. all of these things are intimately related and impact our economy, especially because they are so easily capitalized on. those invested in the capitalist system work to convince us that these are necessary parts of life and that participation in them makes us more mature adults and 'productive' members of society... therefore, cisheterosexual sex itself becomes a means of productivity because it is understood to ultimately lead to marriage, procreation, and nuclear families, all of which are integral to patriarchal and white supremactist capitalist systems."

its so remarkably layered i would love to pick the brains of the writers about it all!! lumon offering severance and the creation of an innie as this amazing way to free themselves from the monotony of a job or like the weight of the outside world on their work. but of course this job is necessitated by the capitalist society they exist within and the thing that drives them all to severance is what capitalism forces them to believe they have wrong with themselves or have to achieve to be successful. so then when they create their innie, or "have their child" as it were, and the child demands more love than you ever thought you were allowed the capitalism worm in your brain has already prepped you to place the blame on the child and not realize the system is what has it all wrong. and even if you do understand the systems driven you to this point the cost that you've paid for being compliant all this time is this life you now get to watch your child live.

my gf said something sooo insane about helly the other day and i cannot stop thinking about it. she was like. helena and helly’s relationship is almost maternal. the way helena created helly as an extension of herself, to serve her interests, to try and impress her own family. she scolds helly, talks down to her like a child. “i understand you’re unhappy with the life you’ve been given” “i am a person, you are not”. the way she envies and resents helly’s freedom. the way she feels entitled to helly’s life and is now living vicariously through her in the most literal sense. what if you created life and now they’re experiencing the things you’ve always wanted for yourself. what if you created life and they were flawed and loud and demanding and they were loved more than you’ve ever been. and you hated them for it. the mother/daughterisms are insane my girlfriend is insane

[the-real-timeloop-tourney]

Just realized that since, unlike the other timeloop blog, I have no qualms about posting things that aren't polls here. So I can finally talk about all the references on that blog that almost no one pointed out!

This is the one where most people actually got it since I reblogged it to the blog it was referencing, but the both neither button is obviously a reference to my other blog @who-do-i-know-this-man

The self reference that I think almost no one got was a reference was this one:

This is option-for-option, the same as the example post used for @blorbo-gerrymandering (which the characters swapped, obviously). Go check for yourself, it's still in the pinned of that blog.

^this one is a reference to my buddy @do-you-ship-it-polls. I even went through and made sure I got the capitalization and punctuation correct for the options. Unfortunately the mod of the blog did not see it before voting was done, which is a shame cause I feel like a reblog to there could have brought in some funny reactions.

Last one that was a specific reference was this one that is too long to screenshot. Which is a reference to @ultimate-character-design . Even more so than the previous I had to made sure to get all the details of the poll's format. Like did you notice that the names of the characters are bolded? I did. If I didn't the joke would have been ruined.

And thus concludes several paragraphs of me explaining my own jokes cause I get sad when people don't go "I know the thing" when I reference a thing.

Oh one last thing! I saw one other poll blog run a poll with Siffrin and Arimnaes. I think that is comedic gold and very much encourage any poll runners that see this to do the same. It doesn't even matter if 2 characters fit the format, if anything that makes it funnier.

[kingofterrors]

Severance - two in one

With the developments in the Mark S / Helena relationship in 204 we've seen the debate begin to really hot up regarding the ethical questions of having two people inhabiting one body - what that means for bodily autonomy, consent and freedom. All of which are nuanced and complex, and despite how hard we might want to boil them down to a binary good/bad explanation, I don't think it's actually possible. These questions are way too big for that.

But one reflection I wanted to offer is around the conscious / subconscious dichotomy presented in the show. Ben Stiller, Dan Erikson, and all of our actors talk about how both the Innies and Outies share a subsconscious. That this is where things bleed through - and Irving B's dreams are the key example of that. When he falls asleep in the office, these are the moments when elements from his Outie life bleed through - most catastrophically (or wonderfully depending on your perspective) in 204 following a full night of sleep and that incredible nightmare that pushes him into action. The subconscious could also be understood as the seat of instinct, personality, and drive - and again, we see this reflected in the behaviour of both Innies and Outies.

However, alongside this conscious / subconscious separation (in which we might better describe the status of the severance procedure as creating two consciousnesses in one person), we also have an memory / emotion separation. Petey talks about Mark S coming into the office with red eyes. He describes the process as "you carry the hurt with you, you feel it down there too. You just don't know what it is." So the concept is that severance cuts out memories - specific ones to the person, not the memory of which US states are which, or how to tie their shoelaces - but not emotions. So emotional hurt is carried from Outie to Innie and vice versa. But this also will extend to other emotions - love, fulfillment, satisfaction.

This rings extremely true to me as someone who works with elderly people, and often people with dementia. This is only a very superficial description of how some dementias can work, but in general terms these people are increasingly cut off from their memories, firstly short term memory, and then those longer term memories all the way back to forgetting how to die their shoelaces. This is why you might speak to a person who can't remember what they had for breakfast, and yet can remember in crystal clarity the picnic they had with their brother when they were seven. For these people, similarly to our fictional Innies and Outies, emotional memory isn't similarly cut off. These two parts of the brain are separated already. The hippocampus (memory) is separate from the amygdala (emotion), and feelings can be retained while the source of those feelings are forgotten.

This is one (of many) reasons why it's so important to continue to support, visit and love those we know who have dementia. Because although the source memory may immediately fade, the love remains. The feeling of safety and stability stays.

I just love that we have a show out there right now doing what Science Fiction can do best, exploring a real world concept in a fictional world that allows a new perspective on that exploration.

So severance might be:

Two identities / one person

Two consciousnesses / one subconscious

Two memory stores / one emotional core

Or an interesting combtination of all three. And the core question remains of course, as it always has, 'what makes a person'?

Bring on the nuance.

[legalandnotease]

Tony Stans have a severe logical deficit.

Steve forced Clint to do nothing. All of the members of Team Cap aided him voluntarily, despite knowing what they were getting into.

There's absolutely zero evidence Clint had any opinion either way on the Accords- because he wasn't asked. He wasn't invited to Tony's little discussion: more like blackmaiing session.

Neither was Hank Pym- who was directly impacted by them. Neither was Strange, neither was Spidey. Or any other enhanced person.

Tony arbitrarily made the desision to hand over power of all enhanced people to Ross- ROSS of all people- without asking any of them. (And don't get me started how Tony fans pretend Ross is suddenly the good guy in CW after his whole history in the MCU being that of an antagonist at best...)

And those who said no? Well.. he was happy to let Ross lock them in Gauntanamo Bay for their trouble.

Further, and her's the real crux: Steve had already made up his mind to not sign before everything with Bucky. He was *already* prepared to retire before that point.

He was effectively acting as a private citizen after that point and picked other private citiizens who had not signed the Accords on his team specifically so they would not fall afoul of them.

He was never using public money or resources to help Bucky- but Tony was doing that to try and murder an American Citizen on foreign soil without any semblance of a trial or due process.

Look at the makeup of his Team: T'Challa. Literally a living breathng Accords breaker. Using his catsuit and enhanced powers to break stuff and try and kill a guy.

Spidey- a kid Tony blackmailed and manipuated into helping him

Vision: A synth created without any kind of official permission to stop Tony's genocidal murderbot.

Natasha: A former Red Room assassin (what was that you were complaining about assassins???) whose record SHIELD hid for years.

And two of them switch sides before the end of the movie.

Even Tony ignores the Accords as soon as they become inconvenient. When Ross is yelling at him be decides to go after Zemo himself without any offiical permission because he thinks if he gives Zemo to Ross he might get off his back.

Tony's actions and stance are selfish from start to finish. He's guilt-tripped into supporting them by the mom of the singular American legal adult who his murderbot killed.

He never even thinks about or mentioned the thousands of innocent Sokovians who died. Who he was happy to allow to die- he was the guy who immediately proposed blowing up Novi Grad as a solution. It was the others who had to evacuate as many civilians as they could.

And it was precisely because Tony didn't give a fuck that Zemo did what he did. His whole speech in Siberia is very much "remember thier names". Had Tony given a fuck about dead Sokovians Zemo's family would have been well-known (he was aristocracy there for goodness sake..) and something would have been done. Some aid or relief or something.

Tony then straight out admits he's only getting on board so Pepper will come back, and then as mentioned he ignores them as soon as humanly possible because he wants to be the one to get the sole credit of saving the day but apprehending the real villian (the one Steve had been telling him was the real villian for days...)

He even admits that he should be arresting himself over going to Siberia. Where is was neither wanted, invited, nor welcome.

Steve's stance is based on real principles: you cannot allow governments who have a history of weaponizing enhanced people to have control of enhanced people because they *will* do it again. Its not a matter of if but when. ...and when they do, inncents will die because they will use enhanced people as their private army. Just like Ross always wanted to do.

Bucky is just one example of what governments will do when they get hold of an enhanced person. Natasha is another. Hulk is another (he would have been Team Cap because of his history with Ross).

Tony fans were just too dense and too much in love with him to understand what the movie as telling them.

Tony Stark in CA:CW + the values of Captain America

[firestorm09890]

Penny stardewvalley makes me so sad because she's SO sensitive to, like, basically everything you tell her (telling her that you can't stand children while two children are nearby is a pretty lousy move but -1500 friendship?? being a jerk to other characters' faces typically loses you about 50 points, and if you choose the option labeled "creepy" and ask Leah for a kiss in her 2 heart event she physically hits you and kicks you out of her house but that's only -100 friendship…) and so if you want to befriend her it's a whole lot of lying and tiptoeing around her feelings (2 hearts: George was right but saying that makes her feel bad. 6 hearts: her food sucks but even if you try to be polite about it she feels like a failure; only a bald-faced lie pleases her. 8 hearts: saying you don't want to be tied down with a family loses you a little bit of friendship and she's only happy if you say you want kids) and I can't help but think she's a product of her environment. She lives in a trailer with only her mother, who gets drunk every night and has something of a temper. Penny's like a skittish rescue animal who won’t even come out from hiding under something unless you leave her lots of treats

[naamahdarling]

You know what? You know what I think?

I think that if we lived as we were meant to, in larger intimate ("extended family") groups and with more shared labor and time to do it (UBI NOW) people like me would not feel so useless and burdensome because there would be people around to help and to do what neurodivergent people can't while making valuable space for the neurodivergent to do what they ARE good at.

The way we live right now, all right, the way we live right now forces units of two adults to be able to do EVERYTHING or PAY to have someone come do it for them. I have to do the housework. I have to do it! But I am having to do a million different things and most of them I am not good at. I suck at them.

I wouldn't feel like shit, okay, if I had more than one other person around who was not a child and who could do the things I can't, like do the yard and cook and do repairs and basic maintenance; and someone else to split everything else that I like but is too much for me. It would free me to do what I am good at and enjoy. Cleaning, as in the sink and toilet, the windows, the blinds. Taking out trash. Folding, hanging, and sorting laundry.

But because all the shit I can do often relies on other shit being done first, and I can't do or have trouble doing those things, the shit I can do often can't be done. And even the shit I can do, I can't do ALL of it. So I can't keep up, and things get very bad.

We aren't meant to live like this. We are not meant to live like this.

That thought hurts so much because being able to flee the birth family is integral to survival for so many people. I'm so afraid that living in larger family groups would create more opportunities for, say, queer kids to be isolated, rejected, bullied, and abused. But if we gave people enough money to survive, and stopped considering children the property of their parents with no system in place to help them escape bad situations except a system that is often just as bad, just different.

I'm aware that communes and collectives aren't all that successful and are kind of a joke. I don't mean that. I mean a fundamental shift to multigenerational families where taking in "strays" (which my family did) is also normalized so people escaping abuse into existing households was accepted, with these families centered in maybe a couple of different larger residences so not everyone has to buy and maintain their own fucking washing machine and vacuum cleaner, and so people can benefit from large group meals that yield leftovers, and so child and elder care can also be centralized.

Then disabled people and the neurodivergent and sick and injured people, and pregnant people, and grieving people, would not have to either labor through all those stressors or consign themselves to living off an unlivable pittance or being put under legal guardianship.

I'm not saying anything new. People live like this in other parts of the world and maybe it sucks and I am wrong. But I'm just really mad right now because I can either do laundry or clean the sink but not both, and I really think we could improve society somewhat by making it so I did not have to choose one without sacrificing the other.

[featherymainffins]

*remembers Dungeon Meshi* The Winged Lion

[uncanny-tranny]

You know, I think many people understand the idea that disability can be a social problem, even construct, in that as more visibility man lead to more accommodations and even educate (regardless of accuracy), but not that disability can still disable regardless of society. Many people understand the idea of a social construct so long as there is still a consise understanding of the social construct, with little wriggle room for nuance and discussion.

[hearts401]

We need to start treating bad writing like bad art and im not kidding

[musical-chick-13]

I hate when something looks like it would be RIGHT up your alley and the cast is pretty stacked, but there's one person in said cast who is just. Genuinely a horrible human being.

[lilac-nites]

.

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[longagoitwastuesday]

Gushing about Gojo and Megumi and how they are or could have been everything to me I forgot to mention that I really really really love Yuuji. Like, a lot

[alltimefail-sims]

Getting online when T Sw**t does literally anything...

Every tag. Every fandom. Fanfic titles. Retconned characters (this character is a sw***ie, this character is this song coded, this ship is so that song coded and so on). Fan Edits out the ass. Audio clips, lyric quotes, hot takes on Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/YouTube/TikTok. A cruel, unending slew of exposure you did not ask for lmfao

[thedreadpoetroberts]

You can be really smart and still have a learning disability.

You can be really smart and still have a learning disability.

You can be really smart and still have a learning disability.

[disabled-battlekukku]

Caught myself thinking about how much Post-SGW Archie and Sonic Forces had affected Sonic character design for the worst