#either way it doesn't matter. just that she has the same fucking symptoms as me

[indigosabyss]

the urge to give kamala whatever mental problems i have

[clatterbane]

While I am evidently on a ranting roll tonight, it also really fucking bothered me that the new endocrinologist that I happened to see for a routine yearly diabetes check-in a few weeks back, after the last one moved? She apparently decided that as essentially an ethnic minority of one here, I look weird enough that it might well be pathological.

(I would probably feel a little different about it if she weren't also from anothet ethnic minority--albeit one that is MUCH more common locally and in this country at large. It doesn't hit quite the same that way, but I still found it pretty damned offensive.)

It also didn't help that my basic build helped get me treated like garbage so much under the NHS--with definite racial undertones at times. I would just as soon never hear a single word about my meat form again, which is not very directly relevant to the issue I have come in over, and in a non-fatphobic way.

But yeah, I have ended up looking like a lot of my mother's family in middle age. If one of the thinner versions these days.

Shitty crop of me with my mom, 20 years and at least 50 lbs. ago.

We have big kinda flat faces with barrel chests and big shoulders--and our arms and legs also turn skinnier-looking by comparison to the big old torso as we get older. No matter how much meat is over it (and I am still fairly scrawny now!), you are still gonna be mostly shoulders and a ribcage which is NOT dainty. Mr. C half-laughingly backed me up that half my family is just Like This, and he hasn't even seen all the extended clan together.

And the (very) extended family resemblance kinda goes farther than that. (Thus the ethnic part being very fucking relevant.) I don't always necessarily like it, but that's just how we're made.

So yeah, that new endo decided to send me to be tested for Cushing's Syndrome, entirely based on eyeballing.

Look, it's me! Go off, I guess.

(She also asked some pointed questions like whether my freakishly skinny arms made it difficult to wheel myself around in the chair. Erm, NOPE, not at all. Absolutely no symptoms other than striking her as Wrong Looking. She also recorded in the notes which I can see online, that I was getting less exercise than I said I was--very possibly mentally filtering my actual answer through that Freakish Twig Limb perception.)

What gets me even worse is that I DO totally coincidentally have experience with Cushing's, from when I got that pituitary tumor in my teens. She knew nothing about this when she brought the subject up out of the blue.

As the first medical professional to ever do so over the past 30-odd years, I might add. Nobody who has actually been aware of that history has triggered on it either.

Cushing's is very noticeable and very hard to live with! I got extremely sick, gained like 80 lbs. over a year from it, and developed the actual corticosteroid moonface then! Nobody much wanted to listen to me at the time, likely mostly because AFAB teenager! But, I do know very well what that fucking feels like!

But yeah, that thankfully got fixed and I haven't experienced symptoms for like 30 years. That whole experience was also very freaking traumatic, which is probably not helping my reaction now with it getting brought back up so bizarrely and unexpectedly. (Also, could I somehow be secretly Very Sick now without realizing it?! I do very much rationally doubt it, but doubt still keeps nagging at me.)

I guess I had better play along for now. In a way, it is good to see another demonstration that they don't seem to do the same kind of foolish pennypinching here as under the NHS. They will refer you for whatever testing they think is necessary, even if that sometimes includes a labwork wild goose chase based on some terrible assumptions! I would rather have them be thorough, even when it's dumb as hell and kinda insulting.

I am indeed pretty confident that I just look like a middle-aged $SURNAME from another freaking continent, who is also recovering from malnutrition and still pretty scrawny. (Which the doc was aware of.) I am also still feeling some kind of way about this fact setting off weird alarm bells in some new doctor that I am stuck dealing with for the foreseeable future.

I could easily make some of my own unflattering speculations based on her appearance, which was very different from my own. Sorta Marfanoid, with buggy eyes possibly indicating thyroid issues? (Maybe there's also some wider ethnic thing going on there too, for all I know. I have seen a lot more folks from her part of the world than basically anyone here has from mine!)

But yeah, that really really would not go over too well. And it's not my place either.

[blackjackkent]

Time for more Durge adventures! We've got Gale and Lae'zel so time to head straight for the grove and pick up Wyll to complete Rakha's starting party. (This might adjust over time; realistically Jaheira might be taking Gale's place at some point bc I love Jaheira and also [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS], and it's entirely possible Rakha will surprise me with who else she decides to get along with. But this is the starting plan at least. XD )

This of course means we kick off by spilling some goblin guts, which should make the beast in Rakha's head happy. o.o;

Before that, though, we get the same extra dialogue options with Lae'zel and Gale that we got with Shadowheart, so might as well start getting a gauge on what they think about their new traveling companion.

"My past is a mystery to me. Could the parasite have caused that?"

I find Rakha's relationship with Lae'zel already quite interesting, because Lae'zel's tremendous assertiveness and decisiveness allows her to get shit done while Rakha is going off the rails - but also serves as focus and direction, an anchor point for Rakha's instincts towards rage and violence. If asked who of her current three companions would provide her the most trustworthy advice, Rakha would likely - at least at this moment - answer Lae'zel.

This is partly interesting because, as we know, Lae'zel is actually young as fuck and perhaps has more confidence and training than actual wisdom of experience.

She doesn't really have any good answers regarding Rakha's past, though.

"Ceremorphosis takes all of you - mind, body, soul. An ordinary tadpole would eat at your memories until they were lost to the void. But our tadpoles are far from ordinary. I wonder if another factor's in play."

(A side note: Lae'zel was not present when Gale popped the word ceremorphosis, which means that she knows this word in Common, which is actually pretty impressive. I love that there is more than one subtle hint in the way she is written indicating that Lae'zel is actually pretty fucking smart despite her 10INT on paper. This was one of the things Hector liked about her too.)

"I've had these urges. I want to kill. I want blood." Just as she was with Shadowheart, Rakha is matter-of-fact here. Little point in hiding the matter.

Lae'zel seemed unbothered by Rakha's burst of chaotic violence against the tieflings, and is no more phased by this admission either. "Many a good warrior savors the scent of blood in the air. There's no shame in a capricious murder now and again. Too many, though, and you waste energy and dull your weapon. My suggestion: attack with purpose and savor your kills. And if the urge proves too much... well, I'm sure we can find you a goblin or two to carve up."

This is not, strictly speaking, healthy advice from an outside perspective; however, Rakha listens with surprisingly rapt attention.

Attack with purpose. She carves the words on the inside of her own skull. Yes. This is what troubles her about what she has come to term "the beast" - the blinding gleeful destruction that takes over and relishes death for its own sake. Her own rage has its place; it will keep her alive, and those who seek to stand in her way will do her world no harm by leaving it. But the beast silences what little is left of her own mind. It controls her and uses her and seeks only blood, and blood, and blood, and blood, and blood...

Lae'zel's words carry the first truth she has been certain of since she woke up. Attack with purpose, and savor your kills.

Yes.

-----

Her similar conversation with Gale is a bit more of a mixed bag.

"My memories before the nautiloid are shrouded in darkness."

"Memory loss isn't usually a symptom of ceremorphosis. If it is, they've forgotten to write it down in any text I've read on the subject. Then again, our case isn't exactly usual. Perhaps whatever's causing our tadpoles to remain in stasis has also affected your mind. If ceremorphosis takes place, all trace of your former self will be subsumed into the mind flayer's hive. So to still be here, if a mite forgetful? Still a win in my book."

An optimistic outlook, under the circumstances. On some level, Rakha was hoping that Gale might have a more specific answer to what happened to her, and that he doesn't is disappointing. But as she doesn't have any other better explanation, she still assumes this whole mess is the tadpole's fault until she figures something else out.

"I have violent thoughts. Depraved thoughts. Ones that refuse to go away..."

"We all have those from time to time! I once wished a most impure demise on a colleague of mine who bought the last remaining copy of Etheril's Enchiridion of Enchanting Easements. First edition, too. As regards your own morbid little fantasies, I'm sure they're nothing to worry about - so long as they remain fantasies."

Rakha lost track of everything he was saying somewhere in the middle of this paragraph, but she picks it up again near the end, and frowns. She remembers the intellect devourer, newborn, crunching between her fingertips. That was no fantasy, whatever Gale might think she meant.

[papirouge]

Your position on abortion is interesting to me because I have never heard or seen someone be pro life and be anti gun ownership. Or call themselves pro woman. My experience has been the opposite

Usually if not all pro life activists have been hostile and misogynistic. When I got pregnant as a teenager, it was the pro life group in my small town that harassed me and humiliated me constantly. My ex left because he wanted nothing to do with us. And I didn’t even have that option to terminate because I hardly showed and had just no symptoms until much later. It was the pro life Christians that tried their best to make me feel so terrible and insignificant. They called me a whore and slut when I was in my first relationship that was really long term. But they still thought that I shouldn’t be cared for by my doctor because I didn’t deserve the help for being “loose”. There weren’t any strong social programs since where I lived it was small. Everyone knows everyone else, your business becomes drama and not secretive. There was one time a woman from that church tried to convince me to give her my baby to her and her husband that couldn’t conceive. I think it’s fucked up because I never once said anything about adoption to anyone. And I felt used. Thankfully I moved and doing so much better and most of those people have stayed and rotted there as that town is practically dead.

These people were the same people who really believes in the death penalty and being very pro gun ownership. I used to be neutral and considered owning one because it would make me feel safe as guys around me would love to taunt women about how no matter how hard we train in the gym, they can easily overpower us. So when i started looking at guns they got hostile and called me dramatic and crazy for being so paranoid.

But yeah, sorry for this rambling message. It’s just odd to me that you’re pro life but you also want more socialized care for women because I have never ever seen anyone say that. Maybe it’s a region thing

I mean, I'm Christian and every person who actually read the Bible, and more precisely the passage where Jesus rebukes Peter who harmed one of the guy who came to arrest him with a knife (and went as far as to HEAL him) can easily understand Christianity is against violence in any shape or form. Any Christian still advocating for gun violence is either uneducated about biblical theology, dishonest, an idiot, or a USAmerican evangelical which basically lumps all of those attributes.

If you're Christian you're not supposed to fear physical harm to the point of sinning. I've heard countless stories of Christians being saved from imminent death (being hunted by murderer, assaulted, etc.) by prayer. And if we die we die. It's no big deal. Every Christian should long to rejoin our God. The fact so many Christians are hellbent surviving on this hellscape, even if it means by sinning (killing our assaulter) is very strange, and I can't believe I'm the only person to point this inconsistency out.

Experiences with pro life group seem to vary a lot from one person to another, and I'm sorry you had to deal with the awful side of that movement. But a few days ago on TikTok there a girl who shared her positive experience with pro life group that helped her all throughout her pregnancy and even after.

But the thing is : even if every prolifer was a piece of shit, I would still be pro life, because my stance doesn't rely on prolifers likeability. I am pro life because I defend the right to exist of the unborn, and the behavior of people fighting for them is absolutely irrelevant to whether the unborn deserve to live or not. The same way the mother opinion on whether she wants this baby or not is irrelevant to the fact this baby has the right to live. A fetus right to live is not correlated to anybody else behavior or willingness to see them live.

I think outside the US you'll more prolifers open to socialized system for future mom. Don't forget that the US is only 4% of the world population. You'd be surprised to realize the world is much more "socialist" than you imagine - less financially liberal too. Like, in my country it's absolutely normal to say "yeah mom should have welfare and free stuff" because that's our culture. My opinion is not an oddity here. However I'd be burnt at the stake if I openly say I'm against abortion.

The only people seething on my dash about big bad government are north American. It's great to have state controlled stuff, like medicine prices. That's how for example some medicine is cheaper her (in Europe/France) than the US. Like, I got my 4 wisdom tooth removed + 5 ceramics installed in my mouth (yeah that's a lot LOL) and I only paid 200€ while the total cost of those procedures was around 3000€. Anti government USAmerican will use big words to act like universal healthcare is a threat for freedom but objectively speaking it really removes a weight on the shoulder of many people on a day to day basis - especially moms. That's also why in my country at least, fertility rates managed to be stable (though it started to decrease bc of covid + inflation). If you financially help mothers, they'll be more likely to have kids, who would've thought? Someone tell that to the moids seething against childless women while advocating to remove any sort of welfare for them.

[utilitycaster]

Hi there! Thanks for writing so much great commentary on CR; I always look forwards to reading your takes and seeing your arguments. If you're ok with doing so, would you mind going into what overbalanced encounters you think weren't signalled well in the game and why? Just curious, no pressure though!

Hey anon! Thank you, and absolutely.

Honestly, there are only two that really stand out. Everything else is either too speculative on my part, or ended up okay in the end.

They are the fight in 2x26 where Molly dies, and the fight against Otohan in 3x33, and while they do both have character death, that's really a symptom, not the problem; assume character death or even a TPK is fine by me.

The things these fights share:

really low-level or drained party with no healing/very little healing left

Intended BBEG about whom the party knows very little

Enemy who will deliberately take death saves

Most of the signals are either subtle or directed towards a specific party member and are in the thick of combat when people aren't focusing on interpretation, especially when it's not a death spiral

Not a super clear "out" for the party nor the BBEG.

Like, it's very normal to set up an unwinnable or at least incredibly difficult encounter with an intended BBEG that does go well and is read accurately by the party but still isn't really a win. Some good examples are the initial Chroma Conclave attacks (fend off the dragons long enough, but the "19 MISSES?" line is truly all you need, they pick up on the need to run right away), the initial Briarwoods fight, the initial Vecna fight (which is, canonically, lethal), and the Tombtakers fight on the same day the Nein had fought Gelidon.

In all those cases, the situation is really clearly outlined, the party is either powerful enough to have tons of tricks up their sleeve or the enemy genuinely doesn't care enough to go for the kill shot, and there's no special tricks or traps.

The issue with the Iron Shepherds fight is that the signals that the Nein didn't have complete information were fairly subtle and relied on remembering pretty fine details from Keg's intel; by the time they realized how truly inaccurate it was, it was too late.

The issue with the Otohan fight is that honestly, it's...still not entirely clear how Otohan goading Imogen ties into the mechanics of the fight (larger plot, sure, kinda, although I still think Otohan is perhaps one of the least successful villains CR has ever had in terms of "do I give a shit"; it's just that Ludinus and Liliana are fantastic villains so it's fine; but it really wasn't clear what she wanted Imogen to do or why that mattered), and the switch in strategy mid-way through to taking death saves also threw people off, and all the party really knew going in was "head of organization we're infiltrating, kind of a badass, has a weird backpack". They really had no reason to understand how powerful she was; all the dream lore relating to Ruidusborn showed up later.

With both of these, also, the party were following like...pretty heavily dropped hints and signaled signposts and a general ambience of "here be The Plot/MacGuffin" and then it was a huge trap.

With something like, say, the Chroma Conclave, the party knew absolutely nothing - they just showed up to a political speech and dragons attacked. That matters! They knew in and out of game that it was a complete surprise and could act accordingly. Which I think brings me to the point: there is a metagaming element here, not in the sense of specific knowledge your character wouldn't know, but in terms of vibes your character could not technically pick up on. A non-combat example is Allura showing up in C2. Allura showing up says "this is the right path" to the players, even if the Mighty Nein do not know Allura. Beau and Caleb being kind of wary about what's going on? That's a huge sign that this is really fucking dangerous, and so Bells Hells was able to make smart choices and infiltrate slowly, which also gave them less high-pressure moments in which to, for example, notice how deeply entrenched Liliana was, or how brutal and unforgiving the Call and Vanguard are (all those bodies).

I think on the most basic level? If the party only realizes through extended combat how fucked they are, you have failed - and that's fine, DM's are human and fallible, but it should really be like, a 19 MISSES! moment if you need the reveal to be during combat, not something that happens a full initiative round in or requires any deeper analysis.

Also: a lot of these bets are off once parties hit like...L11 or so because at that point you should have enough resources to deal. Like, if you want to spring a nasty trap on a L17 party, do it. They should be able to deal.

[titanicfreija]

raving about my OC

Tl;Dr- I learned a new word for Freija's phobia

so, Freija is afraid of water she has to swim in, which is perfect. Better yet, I made that up without her fire in mind at the very least --I was running strand for most of the activity that inspired the phobia.

Cos what happened, I ran off an edge in Ghosts of the Deep and almost missed the platform on the way down, and almost crunched before I got back in.

Destiny does a great thing where they can "flavor" your deaths, right? We all have different ones we hate. Drop Pods and other sudden deaths are the bane of some, others hate the inevitable slow deaths with countdowns, and I hate those suspenseful shits where I COULD die and only have some influence over this, and it's probably not enough.

Tr3vr, for instance. Odds that I'll escape when I hear him coming for me are about half. That's... Fucking terrifying. I hate that shit. Certain, inevitable death. Maybe.

That crushing in the Methane ocean of Titan? *Shudder* same shit.

Sunny defaulted to hydrophobia for lack of a better term, Freija has insisted that it doesn't count because her idea of the word is the Rabies Symptom kind, and she doesn't know "thalassophobia" because that's a pretty weird word and I don't think she would have had reason to come across it, especially since I didn't give the phobia to Sarah-- just an aversion.

(I have excuses for this, but it's just fun. The excuse is Sarah had good memories of swimming as well as a visceral reaction to bodies of water deep enough to swim in. Freija only ever got "get the fuck away from it".)

Only that doesn't matter either, because that's not what it is. Thalassophobia is more about the deeps, the infinite, the fact that a creature like Ahsa can live in it with a billion more of her kind and still have so much empty space that you can't see any of them.

Freija's line of 'fuck that' is about eight feet/two and a half meters deep. Being able to see the bottom of it doesn't help, and she would rather be at the bottom than the top.

So I've never had a good word for it, even as I've had them argue about it. And it turns out there's a word! Aquaphobia! Yay!

So now someone gets to correct both of them, only for both of them to start arguing about whether or not Freija counts because she likes baths.

[rubsjuice]

The Mayor Rant

no need to say it twice my friend

This is my unadultered rant on the character of Wayward Vagabond, The Mayor, and how he was robbed by everyone who ever had creative control over him

Okay, so let me start with a simple "Who is WV". WV, the Mayor. He was a simple farmer in Skaia, he's seen the horrific consequences of monarchy and war and he thinks he and his friends could do a better job at organizing society. He has a very black and white (pun intended) way of thinking and he often punishes himself for silly thoughts. Remember when he calls himself stupid over and over and hits himself over the head for thinking of a silly thing to do?

Over the course of homestuck, he develops a set of traits that we can very easily consider PTSD after he sees Jack Noir slaughter countless brothers-in-arms without regard for shell color, shape or alignment; he has night terrors about it, and very specifically about becoming just the same if he ever puts the ring of whatever four-fold to transform into a powerful beast to hunt down Jack Noir for it. He's afraid of becoming just the same as the people he swore to destroy, and this is so. important. for his characterization. He's a kind, gentle, and stern leader who isn't afraid of gathering troops or guerilla fighting of course, but he shies away from mindless violence and death, and he'd rather not send troops to be slaughtered like they're nothing. This is the Mayor. A man with simple roots, a dream, and overwhelming trauma.

(ngl same)

So what did Hussie do with this incredible backstory and development, a couple thousand pages down the line? When WV was stuck in the meteor with a bunch of teenagers and confused out of his fucking mind?

He turned him into davekat's little pet

Like seriously the flaunderization of WV is something no other character experiences in the entirety of the webomic, how the fuck do you go from "revolutionary democratic leader" to "two teen's bug puppy"? Dave flat out talks to and about WV as if he was a pet, or at the very least a creature with less sapience than he does

Karkat sorta has a conversation with him? But it's mostly framed as a joke, so the narrative wasn't treating him seriously anyway

That's a really big problem, because if the narrative doesn't treat him like a person, the fans don't have any incentive to do so either. I've seen more fanart that treats him like he's an irrational animal than I've seen art treating him as the real complex character that he is. I've seen humanstuck AU fanfics that write him as davekat's old golden retriever. I can tell whether an artist treats WV seriously or not by looking at how they draw him (it's always something in the eyes). Paired with the fact that a lot of his "silly behaviors" are either symptoms of mental illness or externalizations of neurodivergence, it all gives me a very sour taste in my mouth.

After all that and Collide, WV gets his happy ending, building a town and community in Earth C

Or did he?

I present to you: the credits

In which is established the existence of a, and I quote "carapacian kingdom" in Earth C

Based on my exposé you probably figured out that WV would be at the very least be reticent about naming anything in the new world a "kingdom" even if post-canon implies it's not actually a kingdom, what matters here is the presentation; as someone who believes strongly in the representative democratic system, the way things are worded would be incredibly important to WV, so why would they think that's acceptable at all for him?

The credits showing Callie and Roxy as like the leaders also boiled my blood a little bit because of how chess racist roxy is i mean really those guys raised her from infancy and she thinks they're lesser than her, never bothered to learn their language and thinks they're helpless without her bringing them pumpkins like ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS

All that just left me with the unwishful thinking that Earth C was a paradise for trolls and humans but if you weren't one or the other you were treated with indifference because you were just "a silly salamander" or "a little chess guy"

And I know that the epilogues and Homestuck 2 explicitly made the credits not canon, but they follow the same baselines and the same attitude about the aliens that we can call "game constructs", so really how non-canon could it be

I was blissfully thinking about ways to explore that when the bonus updates dropped, and in one of them there's a long block of purple prose basically outlining the authors' perfect democratic system (which kind of really sucks if you know anything about politics besides twitter buzz words but that's besides the point) and attributing that "marvelous feat of democracy" to WV as if he would ever think separating representation by race was a good idea

He's been part of a race war before! he knows how things like that start!!

And in the end they even write some bullshit about WV thinking "ooooh maybe it won't work out i'm scared of it happening oooo" because deep down they know they're full of shit and they know this is a disservice to the character but they don't care about it enough to make something decent. He might be a simple farmer but he's not incompetent

Anyway, this doesn't really matter at all anymore because of intricate twitter drama i don't have time nor energy to type out, i'm just really really passionate about this guy

This was WV, he lived, he served cunt, died twice and was grossly mischaracterized in two completely different directions by anyone who had any creative liberty over him

[early20sfailingplenty]

vent under cut lmao 😭💔

I am... breaking my own heart tonight. I do it every night.

Not on purpose, obviously, but I can feel it coming on me every day; feeling a bit "off" in the morning and it worsens as the day goes on. Whether I drink coffee or not, whether I drink water or not, whether I study or not, whether I'm at work or not. Whether I'm productive or not. Doesn't matter how I do things, I will always feel the same way come night time; when there's nothing for me to keep busy with. By bed time each day, I'm relieved to sleep not only because I'm so tired I have to hold the sink while I brush my hair and teeth to keep from swaying on my feet too much, but also because it means the thoughts go away until I get up in the morning... though most nights I have to have a film on or something to give me something to focus on so I don't rip myself to shreds more than I already do.

I can handle myself most of the time; I've picked myself up off the floor more times than I want to admit to, but tonight, I just... there's an added heaviness to that ache I know so well. Tonight, I'm not just breaking my own heart, because there's a part of me that's enjoying the hurt I'm causing to myself without even trying to. It's a self-destructive spiral symptom, I think, but I'm not sure it's a spiral anymore, I think it's just me being self-destructive in general.

I don't study enough. I'm not saying that out of high self-expectations, though that's also probably true, but I 'studied' - as in, had my materials out - from 6am - 6pm today and I ticked off one thing. One. Thing. Which wasn't even set work but I did it out of curiosity, knowing it could help me later. So I'm a day behind. Again. I don't do enough chores. I buy my own food, I cook my own meals, do my own laundry, I pay rent to my parents, I hold down my job with my studies, I buy in other groceries for them when I get my own if I remember to, but I just... I don't do enough. Mum and dad say I do, but I feel like... I can't trust what they say? In my mind I can always be doing more. I have asks and such which are just sitting there and I've had all day to do all this stuff and I just haven't. I sit there just staring at the screen, doom-scrolling, screaming at myself in my head to do something, eyes watching the clock tick life away, and most times, I do get shit done. Get me in the right mindset and I can do a twelve hour session with little trouble. But most days I have to fight, all the time aware of what I could be doing, counting everything I have yet to do and maybe ignoring what I've already done because it isn't enough.

If I'm not enough for me then how the fuck can I ever be enough for others?

But the stuff really breaking my heart tonight (the above is a constant waking thought; I'm not even out of bed in the mornings before that thought process starts and it doesn't finish until I go to sleep, no matter what I think or go against it or fight it) are the thoughts that my parents don't love me.

I'm watching a comfort show which has a really tight-knit family in it; they all fight and have their moments - big ones - but they love each other hard; it's all just confetti (if you're thinking what I'm thinking, then yes that's the show I'm watching, but if not, then I'm watching The Haunting of Hill House; a very big very important comfort show to me). And it's making me cry because I wish my parents loved me like that. I don't have an especially good relationship with either of them, though I'm definitely much closer to mum than I am to dad, but the way the lead dad looks at his kids, the way the mum lights up when she sees her youngest children, it makes me cry because I've never seen my parents look at me like that. And if they have, I've missed it. I wish I could say with 100% that I'm loved in this house. I feel most times like I'm just... tolerated. I'm just here and if I wasn't, their world would go on not missing a beat. Too small to matter, I just feel sick tonight. Of myself. Of my life. Stuck in my childhood bedroom itching to get out but unable to do so because I can't afford it. Unless I drop my degree and move to full time working at my job. But I don't want that. I don't. So I stay here in this house, feeling like I'm 15 and 24 at the same time, stagnant but wanting so desperately to grow. I want so much to be independent, and I am already, as much as I can be, but I want to be even more so.

I'm just... I hate myself. I have no grace or kindness to give myself right now. I feel sick and gross and like I've fucked everything up and idk if I should keep doing this or just fuck it all and start again... for the third time in the row. I'm... I just. I'm sick of crying alone in my room, I'm sick of pretending I'm fine and laughing with my parents and the second their backs are turned, the smile is gone from my face like it was never even there. My fault for not communicating my feelings to them? For sure, oh yeah, I should be telling them these things. But I don't feel like I can for multiple reasons, one of the biggest ones being that their other two kids are causing them issues and I'm the "only one not giving them any trouble or causing any drama" (to be fair, my other two siblings are MAJORLY messing around, it's really serious with both of them), and I can't and won't add to that. If they think I'm fine, then I'm fine. I'll take care of myself alone. These thoughts etc. all started when I was fifteen and they've been with me that whole time and I'm basically my own therapist. It's a weird feeling, studying a psychology with counselling degree, knowing there's something horribly wrong which I need - actively need - therapy for but knowing that a) all previous doctors have said "you're not sick enough for the free programmes" or "you're functioning on your own so you're fine" and b) that I can't afford the luxury of therapy and c) that I can't even use my own degree to help myself so how the fuck can I ever hope to help someone else in the future?

I'm just sick of it all and idk how much longer I should expect myself to do this... this whole thing is a second attempt to make my life what I want and I love my degree and I love my job but I hate the fact of everything else and I wanna get out and I wanna go away and I wanna be someone else because Erika is not it. She's not, no matter how hard she tries. So fuck it.

I'll go to bed soon and wake up in the morning and feel a bit better but not really and it'll all begin again.

Sigh... what the fuck is the point?

[mellometal]

Hey, everyone.

If you saw the post from earlier, I had to delete it. There were things I forgot to discuss and things that didn't get saved into my drafts. Sorry if you have to see this again.

I've been WAITING to talk about Glee. Not in the good way either. There's so much wrong with the show, and it's sickening. Yes, I've watched the show last year. Against my will, but that's because of other people refusing to put on anything else besides Glee. I can say that I hate Glee with my entire being. (My initial reason for hating it was because they covered "SING" by My Chemical Romance and turned it into a slow, patriotic song when it's a song about rebellion. NOTHING about "SING" is patriotic. I hated the show since I first heard about it...for that very reason. I was like thirteen or so at the time when I first heard about Glee? Despite it being out since 2009.

Though it's been over for several years now, it's a show that many people have mixed feelings about. From what I've seen, you either love Glee or you absolutely hate it. There's no in-between that I've seen. (If you can't already tell, I hate the show.)

The show is a literal dumpster fire, the characters are all fucking awful people and all of them are poorly written, the script pisses me off, it literally makes me feel disgusting, and don't even get me started on the covers. Most of the covers aren't that good. A lot of them sound like nails on a chalkboard to me. The pacing of the show makes NO sense in certain areas (like when Blaine was initially made to be a grade above Kurt, but was then changed to be like the same grade as him so he'd stay). It just feels like everyone in the show is either a Mary Sue, a Gary Stu, their whole personality is just that they're from a minority group or they're EDGY AND HARDCORE DELINQUENTS BLEEEEHHHHH, creepy as fuck, bigoted as all hell, or they're just background characters who occasionally have the spotlight.

TW: The following post and any other posts that I'll make about this show contains subject matter that may be triggering for some audiences. It will go into subjects like racism, homophobia, ableism, outing of a person in the LGBT community, bigotry in general, statutory r@pe (between teachers and students), teachers being creepy towards students, mentioned past child m0l3stati0n and invalidation of the victim's trauma, making fun of su1c1d3, making fun of overdose, making fun of drug addiction....a lot of fucked up things.

If anything mentioned above is triggering for you, please feel free to scroll and consume safe media instead. I'd rather have you be safe than to be triggered by anything I'm gonna talk about.

Let's start off easy. The characters. It's easy to tear them apart. At least the most problematic ones.

Rachel, the Main Character™️, is textbook definition of a Mary Sue. Instead of calling her Rachel, I'm gonna call her Mary Sue for the whole post. She's almost completely perfect (like too perfect), her flaws are minor if anything, she gets all the special treatment....you get the picture. When Mary Sue does anything fucked up or she says anything fucked up, it either goes unnoticed, people make up excuses for her being a shitty person, or it gets twisted so it looks like Mary Sue is the hero! (I hate her. So much. I cannot stand her.)

Aaawwww, Mary Sue didn't want some OTHER GIRL (Sunshine) to steal HER spotlight, so she SENT THIS GIRL TO A CRACK HOUSE. A FUCKING CRACK HOUSE, OF ALL PLACES. A PLACE WHERE THIS GIRL COULD HAVE BEEN PUT IN SERIOUS DANGER. THIS GIRL COULD HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED AT BEST AND KILLED AT WORST. Yes, I'm aware not all drug houses are the same, but still. It doesn't matter what this girl did. What Sunshine did is irrelevant. It's not okay to send people to strange places where they don't know anyone, and are put in danger, even to the point of either getting injured or killed. But it's okay, because at least it's not an "active" crack house you sent Sunshine to, RIGHT, Mary Sue? You still sent some poor girl to a place where she could have been put in serious danger, even to possibly get injured or killed, all because you didn't want her to steal YOUR spotlight. You fucking disgusting, entitled, bratty cunt. You don't need the spotlight all the time anyway. THAT'S HOW THEATRE WORKS. YOU DON'T ALWAYS GET THE LEAD ROLE. YOU DON'T ALWAYS GET THE ROLE YOU WANT. AND THAT'S OKAY. YOU WORK WITH WHAT YOU GOT. Sincerely, a theatre kid.

There are other fucked up things Mary Sue has done, but this is the one thing I could find anyone talking about. If I remember correctly, she hurt her Gay Best Friend™️ Kurt in some way. All I remember is that Kurt was mad at Mary Sue about something. Mary Sue is annoying as fuck. What else can I say about her?

Next, we have Finn, who's textbook definition of a Gary Stu. I'll call him Gary Stu throughout this post. I hate this fucker too. He's the Main Character's Boyfriend™️, the Hot Quarterback™️, and The Good Guy™️. Yet....he's not a good person. He's treated like he's a good person, but he's really not. His flaws are fairly minor and excused (and any major flaws aren't even talked about much), he's almost completely perfect, and every fucked up thing he does is ignored or is justified in some way. Like how he outed Santana as lesbian in the hallway WITHIN EARSHOT OF EVERYONE. HE DIDN'T EVEN APOLOGIZE FOR THIS.

As a woman who has struggled with her sexuality growing up, this really brought back shit I went through. I "dated" boys when I was younger to cover up the fact that I'm only attracted to other women. I wasn't happy with these guys at all. I acted like I did so nobody would suspect anything. I felt nothing for them, except for in a platonic way. I've been outed twice. Once when I thought I was bisexual with a strong preference for other women (by my dad's girlfriend at the time), and when I came out as lesbian (by my brother). It sucks to be outed. The people who outed me in real life could have put me in danger. They could have made it so I had no place to go back to. They could have had me get hurt. It's a scary feeling. Like, it doesn't matter if you're supportive or if you're in the LGBT community. You don't fucking out people without their explicit permission. You especially don't out people to their abusers or to people they don't trust, let alone out them publicly. That's what happened to me. I don't wish this on anyone.

***By the way, for anyone who's closeted, you're valid, I love you, and I know how it feels to be stuck in the closet. You don't have to come out right now. Come out whenever you're ready to. Whenever it's safe for you to do so.***

Or how about the fact that Gary Stu made fun of Kurt's voice because he's gay? Gary Stu apparently has ✨anger issues✨ and that's pretty much the excuse they use to justify him doing fucked up shit to people.

They treat the characters who are from minority groups (i.e., BIPOC, AAPI, LGBT community, disabled people) like absolute garbage, put them through all this horrific shit, or they put them on a pedestal simply for being in a minority group. The teachers and other school staff are either written to be total bigots (Sue), or they're total pr3dators (Mr. Schue, the school nurse, and another teacher who I can't remember her name off the top of my head).

Sue pretty much only exists to be a poorly written villain who's a bigoted bitch just to be a bigoted bitch. Yes, there were some things she WAS right about (like how "Blurred Lines" wasn't an appropriate song choice for the Glee Club™️, but Mr. Schue The Pr3dator™️ downplayed it). Other than that...that's all I can think of. Because everything else that came out of her mouth was bigoted bullshit. Like these right here, for example:

Or how she drugged the principal, date r@ped him, and blackmailed him?

How about them making a tasteless joke about Sue committing su1c1d3 and having her "overdose" on multivitamin gummies?

DO I NEED TO EXPLAIN HOW FUCKED UP ALL OF THIS IS? I do? Well, first of all, she called people racist, homophobic, ableist, and otherwise disgusting names. She boiled them down to their race, sexual orientation, their disability, and their appearance in general. Second, SHE DRUGGED, BLACKMAILED, AND DATE R@PED SOMEBODY. I don't think I need to explain how that's bad. The evidence is right there. Third, she said she was committing "sue-icide" by overdosing on multivitamin gummies. (Yes, you actually can OD on vitamins in supplement form, and it can cause serious symptoms and even death. Specifically with vitamins A, D, E, and K, and Iron. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble. They're a lot harder to remove from the body. The B vitamins and vitamin C aren't as severe if you do OD on them because they're water-soluble, but still be careful. You can't OD on vitamins and minerals you find in food. If you take supplements, vitamins, etc., only take what's on the bottle.) As someone who has su1c1d@l thoughts on and off, this is extremely insulting. Yes, I do use humor and I joke about my own experiences to cope, but this? Nah. Nothing about this is funny or cute in the slightest. Enough said.

Do I need to explain how fucking terrible it is to make light of a serious topic like this? It was never funny to see Britney Spears' mental health be at that low of a point in 2007. It was never funny to see the abuse the paparazzi inflicted on her. How the fuck was this ever okay? You can dislike Britney Spears all you want, but this was never it.

This is all I have for now. I'll probably make a part two because there are way too many things to talk about.

[nothorses]

Thanks for missing the point entirely!

Here's a question:

If transfems do not adopt "male socialization" because they are incapable of internalizing messages given to them, about them, as long as those messages come with the word "man" attached to them, what about transfems who don't realize they're transfem until later in life? What about transfems who feel very strongly that they were men who became women/transfem?

Either you invalidate their experiences and tell them that they're wrong about themselves, actually, they were never men and if they feel another way they're deluding themselves; you pretend that the moment they realize they're not men their whole psyche and everything they believed about themselves prior to that dissolves and morphs into that of a True Woman; or you accept that people are more complex than that, and may have experiences different from your own.

I can tell you from my own experience that I did not grow up thinking of myself as a man. In fact, I didn't allow myself that word until I was 22, and even now I struggle to internally validate that I am not "just a straight girl fetishizing gay men".

My belief that I was a girl shaped my own decisions about my life: I went into childcare and education because, originally, I believed I was Nurturing and it was My Duty (and I'm still unlearning the idea that I need to be Nurturing first, and care about education itself as an afterthought).

I never learned to drive a boat because I was a Girl and my family believes Girls Can't Drive. I never got involved in sports, even the ones I wanted to. My dad didn't teach me to drive or work on my own car. I watched my brother do all of these things, knowing I wasn't allowed them.

Hell, I wasn't even tested for ADHD- despite the fact that my entire immediate family has it, my brother was diagnosed at 4 years old, and I spent my entire teenage years in shouting matches with my mom over classic and obvious ADHD symptoms (homework, chores, forgetting things, not paying attention in conversations), and my brother's therapist recommended I be tested for it.

So for 22 years, I experienced extremely classic misogyny. Then I finally allowed myself the word "man".

What then? The "misdirected misogyny" argument doesn't really make sense here, does it? I internalized that misogyny (almost) exactly the way a girl would have, because I believed I was one and that it was meant for me. It impacted me the way it would have impacted any girl.

I know that's uncomfortable to think about, but here's the thing: none of it means anything about you! At all!!

We can actually have different experiences, which are not the direct inverse of each other. We can even have different experiences from people who are trans the same way we are.

You didn't internalize the idea that You Have Power And Matter More the way a man would have. That's a valid and real experience, and many people have it. Those who do internalize those messages, however, are no less transfemme than you are. They don't need to have been transfemme- or known they were- for their entire lives, in order to still be transfemme now.

I did internalize that I was worth less, capable of less, obligated to do certain things and fill certain roles- even though I was fucking raised by a single mother who regularly said she wanted to empower me as a woman- and that's also a valid experience. That also impacted my life and who I am today. That didn't disappear from my life and memories and who I am when I realized I wasn't a woman at all.

And y'know, I also grew up in a household where men were dangerous, and cruel, and predatory, and the enemy. And surprise surprise, I internalized that too! Take one guess as to what prevented me from allowing myself the word "man" for so long. Transphobia was part of it, sure, but I called myself trans at 18. It took four more years for me to realize that I could be a man without being a danger to everyone I love.

I know this is long as hell, but look: what I'm saying is that while yes, society does try to teach us things and socialize us a certain way, gender is more complicated than that. Different people internalize things differently, and are even exposed to different messages, depending on their environment.

Gender essentialism is the belief that you can make certain assumptions about someone based on the words they use to describe their gender. It's a binary. It's transphobic thinking, yes, even if you are trans. Even if you say trans men are horrible monsters because we're men, not because we're trans.

It doesn't fucking help anyone, it actively hurts transmascs (and men of color! A group already targeted for Being Inherently Dangerous!!) and it's forcing you and other transfemmes into binary boxes in order to beg for validation from people you don't actually need it from in order to be valid as the people you are. You don't have to be Socialized Female to be a woman. Stop playing their game. You are the person you say you are, and you don't have to prove it to anyone in order for that to be true.

"men are bad and evil because testosterone/penises/The Male Brain makes them so"

and

"men are bad and evil because patriarchy teaches them to be, and this is both universal to Every Single Man and irreversible"

are equally toxic and fucked up ideas.