#have some basic fucking empathy for your fellow humans

[anarchypumpkincowboy]

not a single goddamn person in my family wears masks despite me having developed a few autoimmune issues/lots of other health issues, my little cousin who has cancer who they still visit, and my 94yr old grandmother who I live with who has an autoimmune disease and when I say anything about them maybe at least wearing a mask I get chewed out about how “masks are why everyone’s gone crazy” and “we as humans need to see other human faces”and “masks cause depression and violence” and “ masks cause you to have worse immune systems”

And yes they do watch Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and believe Elon musk is a genius who’s going to save humanity

[cilil]

Ok listen. You know I hate to talk about this shit on here. But sometimes I gotta.

I keep hearing various election results and how bigots and actual nazis gained significant ground.

To those who refused to vote because "boohoo everything sucks anyway so I'm just gotta do nothing and keyboard warrior preach morals online at most" - congratulations, you helped them win. You could have helped us stop them, but no. I hope you're proud of yourselves.

To those who actually voted for these people - just... what the fuck is wrong with you. Do you understand that you're just a stupid little pawn in someone else's game of needless hatred? Do you understand that they don't give a fuck about you and actively want to hurt you as soon as you only slightly deviate from what they think an acceptable human being is? Do you lack even the most basic empathy for your fellow human beings? (Apparently yes) (Also get the fuck away from me)

And to those who haven't yet and can still vote for some election somewhere or have elections coming up: Take 5 fucking minutes to inform yourselves about parties, candidates and their goals and then GO VOTE (and ideally not for actual fascists and nazis jfc). We can come online together and cry about the state of things afterwards, but first do what you can do to protect yourself, your fellow human beings and your freedom.

[slickbackdani]

Since Macklemore is officially Back-lemore™️, I want to take the time, before Pride Month draws to a close, to deliver a heartfelt "go fuck yourself" to everyone who called him homophobic years ago.

For those not in the know: 11 years ago, Macklemore released "Same Love", a song in which he voiced his his support of LGBT equality and opposition to the oppression and discrimination we face. It was a very moving, powerful, heartfelt ballad that was one of the early markers that the social justice movement was here to stay…

Or at least, that's what I would say if that same social justice movement didn't gang up on Macklemore and declare him the enemy, smearing him as a homophobe because… he talks about gay rights issues despite not being gay himself.

I've heard all the arguments, and they're all bullshit.

"He talks at length about not being gay, so he's ashamed of associating with us!"

First of all, his explanation of his sexuality is limited to the first half of the first verse. The entire rest of the song is dedicated to the message "homophobia is wrong and LGBT people deserve equal rights." Second, his explanation of his sexuality isn't just some "no homo" clarification, but an illustration of how far-reaching homophobic stereotypes are in our society and how they can give children the wrong idea.

"He used the F-slur!"

Take a look at the context he was using it in, smart one.

Our culture founded from oppression, yet we don't have acceptance for 'em

Call each other f——ts behind the keys of a message board

A word rooted in hate, yet our genre still ignores it

He wasn't calling anyone the F-slur or saying anyone should be called that. He was using it as an example of homophobic language that should never be used because it is bigoted and cruel. DEPICTION IS NOT ENDORSEMENT!

"He's paternalistically trying to speak for a group he doesn't belong to!"

No. No. No the fuck he isn't. If you listen to the actual lyrics, he's just making the basic statement that LGBT people deserve equal rights and that bigotry against us is wrong. Aside from the tiny minority of LGBT conservatives who try to move up in the world by sucking up to their oppressors and throwing their fellow queers under the bus, I can't imagine how the LGBT community as a whole would have any reason to object to any of that! He's not speaking for us; he's standing with us. The only ones trying to "speak for us" is you, doing this whole "I'm offended for you" schtick and thinking you know better than we do who our enemies are.

"He's from the privileged majority, he's never been oppressed before, so he can't really know what it's like and therefore doesn't really care!"

I can't believe I have to say this, but being privileged doesn't automatically make someone an evil bigoted monster who is incapable of basic human empathy or compassion. Since most of the people who slimed Macklemore were themselves straight people claiming to support LGBT rights — looking at you, Cody Johnston — THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT!

I'm genuinely baffled at the cognitive dissonance on display here. "Any straight person claiming to support LGBT Rights is a liar," says a group of straight people who claim to support LGBT rights. Are you honestly expecting me to believe that every single one of you are the exceptions to this rule you're claiming is otherwise immutable? From this, I'm forced to draw one of two conclusions:

You're Projecting. You're accusing Macklemore of not really caring about us and only using us for clout because you don't really care about us and are only using us for clout. I don't want to believe this is true, but look. If you're a straight person, and you see another straight person claiming to support LGBT rights, and your immediate reaction is to call them a liar, and you specifically use their straightness as evidence that they're lying… you're telling on yourself.

You're Fishing for Compliments. You think that, if you publicly flagellate yourself enough with this "all straight people are automatically evil" bullshit, the God Emperor of Gayness will descend from on high to officially declare you "one of the good ones" and ease your straight guilt.

I'll admit the second option isn't nearly as bad as the first, but it's still shitty because — to borrow some words from the Rap Critic — you're essentially clogging up an important conversation about our rights and freedoms just to beg us to confirm that you're not bad people. If you really cared about us, you wouldn't be making it about you in the first place!

And I'm sure there are some gays who were also ganging up on Macklemore and declaring him an oppressor and a bigot just like everyone else, and I have a message for them, too.

Darling. Bro. Baby gays. Listen.

The purpose of Pride isn't to tell all straight people everywhere to fuck off and die. It's to specifically fight back against the bigots and oppressors who have held positions of authority in our society since time immemorial, to undermine their power and create a free, equal society for everyone. I can't remember who first said this, but the struggle of social justice isn't "minorities vs non-minorities", but "minorities and non-minorities vs the system."

Here we had a straight person outspokenly demonstrating how emphatically he supports our fight for freedom and wholeheartedly agrees with us that oppressing us is wrong… so why the fuck were you treating him, personally, as the enemy?

You'd do well to remember the words of George Santayana: "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."

[ilostyou]

I think the girls who talked shit behind your back have no life and nothing of value to contribute to human society. If you can't summon basic empathy for your fellow person then what are we even here for.

Fuck them, they're the problem. Their "If I don't understand it then it's wrong" attitude will come back to bite them sooner or later. You are so much better than them and I hate to think about you being hurt because some rude assholes decided to gossip.

hskdnskd to be fair i am positive they have a lot to contribute!! which is almost why i’m more shocked that they had such a hard time comprehending the Why behind what they were talking about (something a friend was experiencing and feeling) and not being able to empathize with it more - i guess i’m glad they’ve never had to deal with it themselves yknow. i absolutely agree though that they’ve got a lot to work on if this is something they couldn’t wrap their heads around properly

[lets-curse-each-other]

"Money doesn't stink", or analysis of Mei Mei

Mei Mei's second name is "paradox". Almost every scene with her is a mixture of socially accused features and humanly approved virtues. We're getting acquainted with her during the Goodwill Event with Kyoto and our character perception changes within a few seconds:

she praises Maki - positive attitude:

she is actually corrupted - negative attitude:

The "simplicity" of Mei's aims and reasons could seem so petty 'cause they don't inspire, don't raise moral or aren't dramatic after all. She loves money, she works for it and does extra tasks only if she's well paid - nothing more. Similar situation was with Nobara:

I didn't like living in the middle of nowhere so I came to the city! This was the only way for me to move to Tokyo.

In ch. 5 Itadori represents the readers; he awaits to hear about tragic circumstances and grand higher purposes and gets ordinary wishes, human desires. "I'm not a hero, I'm a jujutsu sorcerer", remember? Gege is perhaps mocking (with respect of course) at the great anime titles (you know these guys, Naruto, Bleach, etc.) where the majority of characters are pompous in their achieving goals, usually these goals have dark and tear-jerking bases. It's not very human actually. I don't attempt to say that people in reality can't possess noble motives, however usually (USUALLY!) we're striving for common, necessary (or not), nice trinkets, not for "I WILL SAVE ALL THE PEOPLE BECAUSE I'M THE AMBASSADOR OF THE GOOD". Let's be honest, as well as we, Mei is just a human who is happy as fuck when sees her bank account has been replenished.

Nevertheless, she later helps the students with promotion by her (!) initiative. Mei doesn't take advantage from it, she's just admitted their skills without any prejudices and does them a favor. It could be the action of kindness or pragmatism because it's better for the sorcerers to accomplish missions according to their abilities and not stay on the plateau. Perhaps there was a possibility that Mei felt some kind of solidarity to Maki because their sorcery paths were alike, in a way. However, let's not forget her dogma: service potential is life itself for me. So for her courtesy she probably would expect from Maki reciprocal benefits.

She, surprisingly, isn't arrogant. Mei easily accepts others' suggestions (like with Utahime in Gojo's flashbacks), positively reacts to different plans and ideas, admits achievements and pays compliments:

"The Shibuya Incident" also shows Mei's contradictory character. We're getting used to her practical interests (even in her own family) and view on life as the goldmine of possibilities to get profit from everything and everybody, that observing such sincere empathy of her is really beyond our understanding. It's suspicious and confusing. Nice of Gege to not focus on one bright trait but to extend the personality further. That method helps readers always be a little bit shocked when there's this kind of a sharp transition: from "interested only in money venal person" to "caring, attentive and trustworthy fellow".

As far as concerned her past, Mei is likely from some minor jujutsu clan if taking into account the info from databook that the enrollment method was family lineage and Ui Ui's words about her "using family for employment". Howbeit, she inherited the cursed technique too weak to use alone, that forced her to train her physical abilities and develope skills of enhancing the body with cursed energy. Unfortunately (or luckily), she faced obstacles again: her body had a limit. She found strength to get back to basics, to her worthless at first sight inherited technique. Ironically, the thing that was useless at the beginning helped her to become a grade 1 sorcerer. It is necessary to admit how her highlight, main attack, reflects her life mottos in the best way. Are you ready to imperil yourself for me? Could i gain benefits from your sacrifice? Is your life able to help me in my aims?

Here there is a gist of her sympathy to Maki during the Goodwill Event. She realized how much effort, stubbornness Maki put into her achieving such excellent results without cursed techniques, not talking about mockeries and disrespect that the girl has to endure. In this aspect they are similar.

While on the subject of family and the Goodwill Event, I've been rereading ch. 40 (Mei's first appearance) several times and only now, as an afflatus, i realize that she could mean the connections between relatives/family traditions and its members. For her these formal bounds don't make sense at all. Everything should have its value, everything has a price. The idea is hard-nosed and unsentimental, but, you know, i like it in some way. I think you're familiar with a situation when you're obliged to do something for people just because these people are called your relatives. Mei's credo denies it. No profit, hence no efforts. Fair.

The battle between her and Kenjaku remained behind the scenes. And next time we see Mei (ch.133), her "betrayal" is obvious. I'm using quotation marks because, honestly, she acted logically, didn't change her businesslike habits. Mei Mei and her brother somehow could escape from Kenjaku, survived, and she immediately calculated the situation, grasped the outcomes of the Shibuya Incident and its winner and took the steps. Mei left the battlefield and her comrades fighting, but she and Ui Ui stayed alive. Therewith, her predicting the final, Mei saw no point in endeavors that would put her and her brother on the line.

Despite this, Mei does not avoid tragic consequences, in chapter 190 it is said that Ui Ui (most likely by the order of the elder sister) helps sorcerers in the colonies. I like how Noritoshi describes this type of relationship between Mei and the jujutsu society:

Risk diversification is the process of investing across a range of industries and categories. This ensures that even if some assets perform poorly, other areas can completely or in part cover the loss (source).

Diversification of risk is, therefore, a tactic to balance between maximising returns and minimising risks (source).

The siblings don't be in a hurry to jump into the deep end, despite the fact how tensed the situation is. They keep the distance, carefully help from comfortable positions, contribute gradually and cautiously. They will venture only when the game is worth the candle. Having such controversial characters on the side of good adds this very side more human features and realness. So I'm looking forward to see these guys' next actions.

[landthatplane-blog]

Late Night/Early Morning. Thoughts on McLaren and Daniel Ricciardo. 

Basically me trying to outlogic all the online haters and their arguments, or at least get them to empathize. Long time lurker, but recent events are causing this verbal vomit essay. Please forgive any newb to Tumblr mistakes.

Of course - this is sport and nobody should get abuse, but we also should be able to call it how we see it. Also, trying to find nuance, empathy and sympathy is what the world really needs. 

Daniel Ricciardo deserves better. He is clearly a respected member of the F1 community and some people are forgetting the ten years he's been a part of the sport. While he had some bad races these past two years, he’s also had good ones and he still deserves a place in F1.

To everyone who says "Daniel wasn't performing, he deserves it..." McLaren absolutely had and has the choice to make a change, if they felt he wasn't performing, but it wasn't for lack of trying and they didn't need to eviscerate Daniel to do so. That's what people are upset about. The lack of integrity Zak Brown has when it came to dealing with this was just astonishing. Dangling an F1 seat that wasn't technically available to so many people. Imagine having a job/contract, and your boss is interviewing people all around the building you work at...for your job! This was clearly happening for months - how can anyone expect someone to perform well? So while DR hasn't been performing with a car that's difficult, add this and is it really a surprise he's been inconsistent? Just imagine what he's had to go through this year. Add world stage, and the pressure becomes something impossible to ignore. 

Also - what's the point of a contract? In my opinion, Zak Brown wanted Daniel to quit so they wouldn't have to pay out his contract. Obviously that didn't happen, guessing due to Oscar/Alpine blow up. How McLaren could negotiate such a terrible contract for themselves? One will never know. Thank goodness Daniel gets paid out - they broke the contract. They're also effectively and potentially leaving him without a drive in F1 for 2023 - so yes, they should be paying him out. That's the point of a contract. 

Ultimately, they could have worked with Daniel to ensure a more honorable and peaceful exit. Who knows maybe if Daniel knew this was going on / they wanted the change - and didn't overtly commit to McLaren - Aston Martin could have been another option. Sigh, what could have been. (Ps. Scotty James/Chloe Stroll/Lance Stroll get papa Stroll to move away from Fernando and sign DR. Based on public personas, sure Lance would rather work with DR anyway. And since contracts don't seem to hold up, why can't this be a reality? Kidding, kind of. Ha)

Ultimately, nobody denies it's a bad fit between Daniel and McLaren and a change should happen - they didn't need to tear the man down to do it. Hate the circumstances, but ultimately happy Daniel is getting out. 

Also, do people really think Oscar Piastri is innocent in this? Or maybe Mark Webber poorly managed this situation. He and Mark Webber went after a seat that wasn't technically available (no matter how McLaren positioned it), one a fellow countryman technically held. It's a sad start to Oscar's F1 career because it's leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth. 

And fuck yes to Seb Vettel for not only supporting Daniel, but pointing out what no one else will. They have failed him - not only in never extracting his potential (aka getting the car closer to Daniel and his strengths), but more monstrously, they failed him as a human. For everyone saying it's a business (even Daniel has admitted that), and it is, but some empathy and kindess could have gone along way.

Now, McLaren is like divorced couple who have to live in the same house for nine more races. 

And through it all, Daniel remains resilient. Class act. He's basically killing them with kindness. I hope he finds what he's looking for next year and beyond. He deserves better. 

And jumble of thoughts over. Anyone share these thoughts? A little nervous to post. Happy to have discourse and disagreement, but please be respectful♥️

[badass-at-fandoming]

Suppose this anon had Beckett brainworms and a growing itch to include him in a piece of writing but lacked the motivation (and time) to track down and read the material in which he appears (except VTMB ofc but that's a given). What would you say are the bullet points of his character? And furthermore, is there anything that would automatically classify as OOC?

Is it my birthday? This asks makes me so happy I feel like it's my birthday. 🥳💜😄

I suppose to start, a pretty standard disclaimer that in the World of Darkness, character consistency is [crashing noise as all previous books are thrown out the window]. That is to say, you can basically do what you want. You're encouraged to mold everything, including meta-plot NPCs, to your taste. Layer that onto the inherent nature of fanfiction and it's god's own country out there, and you're god.

But to not cop out of your question entirely, I do have a preferred interpretation of Beckett. Le bullet points below ~

Snark - "I haven’t as yet had a chance to pore over it with my fine-tooth comb. I think I have one in my bag."

High Humanity - the Single Good Dude in a world of assholes

His ultimate goal is to pursue knowledge - fucking NERD

Good at fighting/surviving - by virtue of being a Gangrel and good friends with Lucita

Annoys people yet...

Wants people to talk to - most of his in-universe friendships are with fellow nerds and good conversationalists with a certain avid zest for life.

Touch-starved - this is like, purely self-indulgent, but I Need It

Shyly cares for others - more shows someone he likes them, rather than tell them

Bisexual Goals - have you seen this list. I'm also fond of trans man!Beckett and aroace!Beckett.

When in doubt, remember what archetype Beckett is. He's Indiana Jones. #WhatWouldIndyDo

For me, the ultimate litmus test for his character is if the work's Beckett would go warn the fledgling in VTMB. Similar to how people test if a Batman writer has earned their salt: "is he good with children? If not, then the writer's just re-creating Punisher."

Beckett flips a lot of stereotypes on their heads. In a Clan all about going feral, he's well-educated and eloquent. In a culture where Elders care little about anything, he practices empathy; in fact, he gets on extremely well with neonates. He loves talking with them about their ideas and experiences. He will drop everything to go save a friend. Hell, he saved his greatest enemy! Has he made mistakes? Of course! Has he committed reprehensible acts in the name of some "greater goal" of acquiring Some Random Book? Yup. But for every mistake, he learns and tries to do better next time. He's kind, in a universe which greatly discourages that behavior.

I could go on, but I don't want to add yet another super long post to people's dashes, hahaha. Best of luck, Nonny! Please post your fic when you finish writing it, because I'd love to read it :D If you have more questions, my ask box remains open.

[tossawary]

wait can we hear more about da ge mbj au I'm very interested

MBJ getting abandoned as a child makes me enjoy imagining him being soft for babies, especially demon babies. Which made me want to see SQH put into a situation with a lost demon child and MBJ getting to see that. 

Which ended in 3,000 words of canon divergence fic.

-

The situation was bad. 

 Airplane’s fellow An Ding disciples were dead. 

 There was a young demon lord unconscious in front of him, probably dying, and Airplane couldn’t bring himself to bring down the rock in his hand. 

 His hand was shaking. He couldn’t make it stop. 

 This System really didn’t give a fuck about the author’s wishes, huh? Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky had been shoved into one of the worst character roles in Proud Immortal Demon Way and left to take the long way around to the plot. Now he was being told that his favorite character was expendable? Irrelevant? Talk about insult to injury! Nothing was sacred here, was it? 

 Airplane put down the rock. 

 Then he picked up the rock again. 

 He looked at it. 

 Then he hurled the rock away and put his head in his hands instead. 

 He came to a decision - a shitty decision for a shitty situation - and got to work saving his future murderer’s life. At least he would know some of what to expect if he kept the storyline mostly the same! Besides, his life wasn’t good enough to be that concerned about it! Maybe the System would put him into a decent role next time! 

 Maybe it was empathy at seeing someone being fucked over by the System! 

 Airplane did his best to slow down Mobei-Jun’s bleeding and loaded the man into the cart. He also did his best to ignore all the dead bodies around them. Gross. 

 That should have been that! He should have then been on his way to continue making a really bad decision in a really bad situation. But as Airplane moved to leave the scene of a massacre behind him, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He startled, snapping around, prepared to defend himself physically or verbally! 

 Instead, he saw a baby. 

 Ah, well, not a baby baby! But a child somewhere between the ages of three and four years old! A chubby one too! The chubby child was crouched halfway behind a tree, looking at Airplane with wide eyes, little hands clawing anxiously into the grass. It was impossible to miss their little pointed ears and the blue mark in the middle of their forehead. How could anyone miss that kind of family resemblance? 

 The demon child froze upon being noticed. 

 Airplane looked between the demon child and the young demon lord in the card, but the similarities only got stronger the longer he looked! 

 Holy shit! 

 HOLY FUCKING SHIT! 

 But he didn’t remember Mobei-Jun having a child! He remembered Mobei-Jun having siblings, sure, but he was pretty sure that... he’d alluded to Mobei-Jun’s uncle doing away with most of them. Did that mean that this child was supposed to… die? 

 This situation had gotten even worse. 

 Leaving a child here to die was… pretty bad. Airplane had done some not very good things to make it in this world and in his sect without losing any sleep over it at all, but the idea of leaving this child to die made Airplane want to be sick! At least, as soon as he realized that if Mobei-Jun had been protecting this demon child and woke up to find this demon child missing, then Airplane would be really, truly, totally fucked no matter how tightly he hugged the man’s thighs! 

 It looked like the demon child had to come too. 

 How the fuck did a person go about catching a demon child?! 

 “Is… this your gege?” Airplane tried carefully. “Is this your gege here?” 

 The demon child didn’t respond. 

 Airplane gestured at Mobei-Jun repeatedly, unsure how to get the message across. “Is this your gege?” he said, louder. “Baba? ...No? Not Baba? Da-Ge? Are you his didi?” 

 That got a blink. 

 “Didi?” Airplane repeated, desperately. “Come here, Didi.” 

 Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky hadn’t handled children since his last life. He’d been one of the younger siblings in Shang Qinghua’s family, so he hadn’t been involved in any of the child-rearing before leaving. But Airplane’s experience wasn’t very good! Some forced babysitting of his father’s do-over children and his mother’s stepchildren’s children didn’t make him an expert! And this was a demon baby! 

 “Didi, your gege needs you,” Airplane wheedled. “Come here! Come on!” 

 Slowly, the demon child began to crawl over towards the cart. 

 “Your gege is hurt and needs help,” Airplane said, in most most soothing and also urgent voice. It was a weird balance! “Come on! Come along! Didi, your gege needs help. He’s hurt. Come here, please, that’s it! That’s right! Good job! You’re doing such a good job coming up here for your gege! We need to get your gege somewhere safe!” 

 The demon child made it to the cart, trying to stay on the far side of it and away from Airplane. Airplane tried not to make himself look too threatening. He also tried not to contemplate his apparent natural talent for kidnapping children, which probably wasn’t something to make a person feel proud. 

 “Didi, can I pick you up? Didi, can I lift you up next to your gege?” 

 Reluctantly, the demon child lifted his chubby arms and let Airplane slowly approach him. Airplane carefully put his hands under their armpits and then hefted them into the cart beside Mobei-Jun. The demon child nearly kicked him in the gut, struggling to get to the unconscious and injured ice demon! 

 “Ah, be careful of the injury-!” Airplane said, trying to move the child back. “OW!” 

 The demon child bit him. 

 Airplane yanked his poor hand back. “You little fucker! Ah, fine! Curl up in your gege’s blood and see if I care,” he muttered. “Let’s just get out of here already.” 

 The demon child curled up against Mobei-Jun’s side and Shang Qinghua got back into the driver’s seat of the cart. Trying to channel his spiritual energy for healing purposes while focusing on driving was hard. Even if he could have managed it properly, he still would have been stuck with an aching hand as it healed, which didn’t make him feel very charitable towards the demons in the back seat. 

 Ungrateful! The both of them! 

 When they finally got to a decent hiding place, unloading Mobei-Jun was nothing less than a pain in the ass. Airplane was forced to negotiate with a two-foot tyrant with needle-sharp teeth who didn’t want to move and didn’t want Airplane to touch his gege. Airplane was forced to wheedle like never before. 

 “Your gege is hurt, but I can help him,” Airplane insisted soothingly. “See that place? It’s safe in there! Don’t you want your gege to be somewhere nice and safe, where no one can see him and I can heal him? Look at that hiding spot! It’s a good hiding spot. We all need to go into the hiding spot now. We’re all going into the hiding spot. Come on, Didi, help me get your gege into the nice, safe hiding spot. Come on now. Be good.” 

 The demon child bared his teeth as Airplane helped him down from the cart, but thankfully didn’t bite again. The demon child then hugged Airplane’s shins very unhelpfully as Airplane hefted Mobei-Jun into his arms. 

 Airplane was forced to shuffle. 

 He never thought he’d be so grateful for all the carrying that An Ding Peak forced its disciples to do! Sometimes, carrying things around was all Airplane did all day long and now it was paying off! Airplane wasn’t as strong as some of his peers, sure, but he still managed to carry a giant ice demon into the “hiding spot” with a little ice demon attached to his leg. He counted himself grateful there was only one Mobei-Jun to deliver inside, because he couldn’t have handled more. 

 Once inside, the demon child curled up against Mobei-Jun’s side again. Airplane took the opportunity to look after the cart’s beast of burden and unload the supplies from the cart, searching desperately for the medical supplies their mission had been allotted. When he finally found the medicine, returning triumphantly, the demon child was ungratefully unenthusiastic about Airplane’s careful approach. 

 “Ah, Didi, don’t growl at me! See, look! Look! It’s medicine! Medicine for your gege to stop the bleeding and... make sure his organs go back on the inside. Eugh. Ah, anyway, I’m helping. It’s okay because I’m helping. See, look, I’m helping. It’s okay.” 

 Airplane managed to get pretty far before the demon child couldn’t take it anymore and tried to bite him again. Airplane shrieked, but managed to wrestle the demon child off him, and ended up grabbing some of the food supplies as a desperate distraction. 

 “Bite this! Bite this! Didi, look, it’s food! Food for Didi!” 

 The demon child growled, but putting the food directly in front of his face caught his attention. The demon child’s eyes narrowed in on the food in a super predatory way that was unseen in human babies. Airplane gladly made the sacrifice. He threw the food to the demon child, who scrambled to catch it, gave it a sniff, and then started to hesitantly nibble on it before taking bigger bites. 

 “See? Don’t bite your Shang-Gege and he’ll give you food instead,” Airplane muttered, quickly turning his attention to the bigger demon. “You stay there and chew that and let me help your gege. I’m helping. I’m helping. I’m helping. Shang-Gege is helping Didi’s gege. Everything is good. Everything is okay. There’s no need for biting.” 

 Airplane didn’t really know how much the demon child understood of what he was saying. The demon child looked more than old enough to understand basic speech. He at least understood “stay”, Airplane decided, by sitting off to the side and anxiously chewing through dried food supplies while Airplane worked rearranging Mobei-Jun’s guts and then bandaging up the blood mess. 

 Maybe it helped to see that Airplane had no intention of eating the unconscious and vulnerable Mobei-Jun or something. He was pretty sure that was a demon thing. 

 He couldn’t bring himself to think about what he was doing! 

 If he thought about his actions here, he was going to throw up or something! 

 So long as he kept his hands moving here, he didn’t have to think about anything. He was just an An Ding Peak disciples hard at work betraying the sect. Yeah. 

 Eventually, Mobei-Jun was in as good a shape as Airplane could get him. The demon child - Didi, Airplane decided to call him - was curled up into a ball beside where Mobei-Jun was lying. Didi looked like he was forcing himself to stay alert. 

 “It’s all okay now,” Airplane said. “See? I helped. Shang-Gege helped your gege. Your Gege needs to sleep to get better and now you can sleep beside him.” 

 Airplane washed himself as best he could and tried to wash Didi a little, but the demon child was resistant and snapped at him. Airplane, expecting this now, successfully dodged the snap and wiped at Didi’s face. Trying to be nice was too much work! Airplane’s clean-up job ended up being pretty shitty. There was no doing anything about Mobei-Jun’s blood staining Didi’s clothes around the knee and elbow. 

 “Ah, fine, curl up in blood again, you little brat,” Airplane sighed. 

 Didi curled up against Mobei-Jun’s side again and, apparently, immediately fell asleep. 

 Airplane secured their hiding place as best he could, took stock of their pitiful amount of resources, and tried not to panic about what the fuck he was was going to do now. He was exhausted. Saving two ungrateful demons was hard work. He had no idea what was going to happen next. He was pretty sure he had just made the worst mistake of his life, but it was a little late to change things now. 

 Airplane found a good patch of floor to watch over the demons and let himself collapse. He was too tired to think anymore. There were too many things to think about. 

 He hoped that Mobei-Jun didn’t die. Demons were hardy and demon lords were even hardier, but the real world that had been made out of his shitty web-novel was really unpredictable sometimes. For all Airplane knew, Mobei-Jun was going to develop an infection and a fever. Maybe Mobei-Jun would die anyway and Airplane was going to be stuck with a bitey demon brat who hated him. 

 Airplane yawned. Keeping his eyes open was becoming really hard. Fuck. 

 Watching Didi’s back go up and down with his unconscious breaths was pretty mesmerizing. It was really tempting to sneak over there and pinch one of those chubby, chubby cheeks. Or those cute demon ears. But the demon child looked almost as tired as Airplane felt and probably bit in his sleep. 

 Airplane really didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he’d just taken off with Mobei-Jun, not knowing the demon child had been hiding nearby. That might have been the worst possible situation. Didi was dirty and exhausted now, sure, but he looked like one of those babies who should have been spoiled and happy all the time, and not mercilessly abandoned to the human world.  

-

 Airplane woke up with a hand around his throat, squeezing. 

 There was a dark shadow above him and an even darker feeling in the air. The hand at his throat felt freezing cold. The air was burning with hateful demonic energy that felt like acid on his skin. Airplane struggled, but it was all immoveable. 

 “Where is he?” the shadow snarled. 

 Airplane choked. 

 His shadowy attacker belatedly seemed to realize that Airplane couldn’t talk when he was being choked to death! The squeezing let up enough for Airplane to breathe again. His lungs felt like they were burning hot and cold! His throat felt crushed and ruined. 

 “What did you do with him?” the attacker demanded. 

 “...W-wh…?” 

 “The child! Where is the child?!” 

 Airplane realized here that he was looking into the face of his future murderer. It was hard to make out in the darkness when he was being choked! 

 Mobei-Jun looked wild. His eyes looked like lightning. 

 “The ch-child… ch- chi- is-” 

 Mobei-Jun snarled again with impatience. 

 Even though it definitely wasn’t Airplane’s fault he couldn’t talk coherently! 

 “H-here,” Airplane choked out. 

 Mobei-Jun’s grip tightened, but then the man froze. His head snapped to the side. 

 Airplane followed the demon lord’s gaze. 

 Through the darkness, if Airplane squinted, he could see a small figure crouched by the supplies. Didi was frozen, watching them, chubby cheeks stuffed with stolen food. 

 Oh, there weren’t words for what Airplane wanted to say to the brat! Sneaking around like this in the middle of the night! Nearly getting Airplane strangled for no reason! 

 Mobei-Jun released Airplane immediately and flew across the room to the demon child, who threw up his arms immediately. Mobei-Jun took his younger brother into his arms and then collapsed heavily to the floor. By the sound of it, he crushed some of their precious food supplies as he fell! But the man was too busy wrapping his arms around the demon child to care about things like that, letting Didi sob into his chest, glaring at Airplane over the demon child’s head. 

 Airplane kept his distance! He knew better than to get anywhere near that! 

 The silence was very heavy. 

 He was certain that Mobei-Jun had reopened his wounds, if they had managed to close at all! As time trickled by them, he could see red seeping down the man’s side. 

 “...There are more bandages,” Airplane said finally, hoarsely. 

 Mobei-Jun’s scowl deepened, his lip curling. 

 “Ah… if- if you want them.” 

 What an asshole! 

 Airplane stayed put and didn’t make any sudden moves. 

 His throat felt like shit, so he tried to heal it with his spiritual energy. It was hard to focus with the demon lord glaring at him like that, on the other side of the room, but he didn’t really have anything better to do. There were only so many names he could silently call this ungrateful young demon who’d attacked the bro who’d saved his life! 

 At least Mobei-Jun hadn’t bitten him too. 

 Time trickled by and by. Eventually, Mobei-Jun’s eyelids began to droop close. The man’s injury appeared to be pulling him back under, whether he liked it or not. 

 After Mobei-Jun’s eyes had closed without opening for a long time, Airplane finally risked moving again. Mobei-Jun didn’t wake up, but Didi’s eyes fixed on Airplane, which made Airplane fear being bitten as he carefully came closer. 

 “Ahhh, see? Your gege is fine. I’m just… just going to put him back to bed, alright? You- don’t get up… just stay there and don’t bite me. We’re putting gege back to bed.” 

 Airplane dragged Mobei-Jun back to where the man had been before, with Didi staying put on his elder brother’s chest. Airplane was sure that this couldn’t be good for the demon lord’s wounds! But clearly Mobei-Jun didn’t give a shit about his own health! 

 “Didi, can you get off gege’s chest? Keep hugging him, just slide off, please? Gege is hurt, remember? Gege is hurt and we need to help him. See, he’s bleeding. Please let your Shang-Gege help again and don’t bite me. Everyone is fine. Everyone is happy. Everyone is getting along just fine and helping and healing. There’s no need to bite your Shang-Gege who is only helping, okay?” 

 Didi was more cooperative this time, sliding off Mobei-Jun chest to hug his less-injured side, while Airplane poked at the demon lord’s bleeding. The injuries looked… a lot better than Airplane would have expected them to. This healing rate was nothing short of astounding. Was this the power of an OP demon lord? How unfair! 

 Airplane did his best fixing the man up again. 

 He should have just let the man rot! 

 Mobei-Jun had just tried to kill him again! He would totally deserve it! 

 But there was a demon child carefully watching and Airplane didn’t want to end up with custody if his future murderer died here after all. What would he do with a demon child? Take them back to the sect?! His master would love that, he’s sure! 

 “Ah, looks like he’s getting lots better,” Airplane told Didi hoarsely, rubbing at his poor throat. “You’re doing a good job looking after him. Good job helping your gege. Keep helping his sleep, okay? Stay right there and don’t go sneaking off again, okay? Please don’t go sneaking off again, your Shang-Gege won’t be able to take it.” 

 Didi just blinked at him. 

 “Good job,” Airplane said. “Good job. Shang-Gege is… going to make sure that everything is okay outside. You stay here and protect your gege. Good job.” 

 That said, Airplane crept backwards, got up, and went outside. 

 Once outside, he promptly fell to his knees and curled in on himself. 

 “Holy fucking shit,” he said. 

[shinydixon]

Hi, not sure how to identify myself so I’m just gonna say I’m the first angry anon you responded to about all this! Thank you for reading my message! Just wanted to say absolutely no disrespect, ill-intent or malice towards your country or the people of your country whatsoever ♥️. I don’t think you took it as such but just in case. I know this could, unfortunately, happen just about anywhere and I think it already has. Also I was unaware it was largely 14-15 year olds doing this. I’m sure there are adults that are just as complicit in this so I’ll just go ahead and say my message is largely for them even though, like you said, I don’t think it’s an excuse. I certainly would’ve never thought this was okay even as a child nor would I have ever used that as an excuse. But if any of those minors, by some odd chance, happen to read that message I really, really hope it sends the message that this behavior is incredibly shameful and disturbing. It’s absolutely no way to treat a person. I hope they learn that and I hope they learn it fast. And if they happen to find this one too please, please just think for one second thing outside of your own selfish existence and understand how this man must be feeling. He’s probably so, so incredibly petrified and exhausted and you’re actively taking part in that. Then bragging about it and acting as if it’s funny. How can you ever expect anyone to see you as even deserving of respect after that? Seriously. Please, I am actually begging, learn to have some empathy. That’s not how you treat a person. Not in the slightest. As for any adults complicit in this or taking part every bit of what I said before still stands. It makes you a fucking loser to treat someone this way, I hope you grow tf up real soon. As sad as it may sound, I hope with every ounce of my being Joseph finds a way to disappear after all this. As much as he can afford to at least. And I hope every single person that took part in any of this never has the chance to interact with him. I hope they never even see him again. He deserves privacy and at least some semblance of anonymity. Something we all as humans deserve. Anyway, sorry again for such a long message but thank you again for reading my message. Sending you all the peace and love in the world! ♥️♥️♥️

Hey! In case you'd like to be recognised without exposing yourself, you can sign your message with an emoji :)

Anyway I'm afraid none of them will learn, and I'm saying this based on their answers on the matter.

The girl who posted the video after saying Joe asked her to not take a picture, still say she did nothing wrong because, in her opinion, taking a video is different than taking a picture.

Then she posted a twit where she wrote "non abbiamo fatto le foto perché era col fratello che rompeva", i don't know how to translate the slang "che rompeva" but it's used when someone does something that annoys you, so she basically says that Joe's brother insisted on not taking pictures and this girl was annoyed by that...wtf

Joe was literally with his brother in a bar and you're annoyed because his brother and Joe kindly told you to not take a picture?

And this girl is 20+ years old, she should know better.

About the 14/15yo, those are the ones that stood outside his hotel forcing him to stay inside.

Some of them answered to people calling them out, with jokes, showing that they didn't care about what they were doing while others suggested to create a new gc because the old one was busted.

Honestly I don't have hope with people that behave like this.

Anyway don't worry, I took no offense about your message, I felt the urge to apologize because these are my fellow citizens, and since they won't ever apologize because they don't understand the gravity of the situation, I'll do that for them...kinda.

[trash-side-of-nox]

fic writer interview

tagged by @meikuree, thanks for having me in mind! It’s been a while since I did one of these. 

name: NoxCounterspell

fandoms: Currently writing for Kakegurui and Shingeki no Kyojin.

two-shot: The Beginning and the End (or Knocking on Heaven's door), a Kirasaya (KKG) Fic. This was intended to be a one-shot, however ended up being posted in two chapters because it was too long (insert here cynical laughter when I'm currently posting 14k chapters). The project was conceived by a very creative mind and acquaintance that came to me with a very fucking good outline. Together, we managed to create a very immersing post-canon AU, even if I say so myself. This touched a lot of different subjects, everything revolving around the concepts of family and freedom, right versus wrong, the lack of understanding, psychological projection. One of my favorite parts is the tag Meeting the Parents, and how that can play in how the story is perceived.

most popular multi-chapter: To you, the girls lost in Hell (SnK, Mikannie). An absolute whim of mine, taking Yams story and twisting it and shaping it into a narrative that fits snippets of my own imagination, regarding Annie and Mikasa's relationship (this is basically going to be an enemies, to lovers, to enemies, to friends, to lovers). Really, this is a fic entirely about them, for them and how their basic symbiotic relationship: clashing and attraction impacted everything happening on SnK. This is an excuse to study two characters in canon-verse, getting and providing a humble glimpse of how these characters, in the context they are being written, work. Vomiting a heck ton of my own headcanons, I'm trying to add angst, action, psychology and others to the table, following the overall outline Yams created, but redrawing the entire canvas. Honestly, I'm deeply surprised by how well received the story has been. This will try to keep up the intensity, overall, the outline is designed to play with emotions for the whole ride: we know where we begin and where we are going, but the how it's the sting.

actual worst part of writing: Writer's block. Obsessively researching something to realize it just won't fit the story. Self-doubt. Isolating oneself while writing non-stop. The built-in expectations one may have about their writing that might not be met by the end result.

how you choose your titles: One of my favorite parts of writing it's designing titles. Most of them respond to the question of what does the fic need, how can I guide the reader as to why this has been written? So say, To you, the girls lost in Hell is a direct nod to SnK's first manga chapter and the Light Novel: Lost Girls. This story is for Annie and Mikasa, two girls/women left to their own devices, surviving, searching, trying. A message I hope gets delivered. The Time series (Kirasaya, Meariri, Kakegurui) needs definition. Words are concepts we never really stop to decipher, as much as we ignore human behavior. Defining an entire character study by just one word, the context is easily guided: perhaps Fall is the clearest one, how can a character fall and break without them meaning to? I can rant for days as to what's the process I prefer for title creation, but I can summarize in: how can a whole story be told from the very beginning?

do you outline: Yes. My outlines give me an overall idea of how to get from A to Z, without closing the doors to letters from other alphabets. Pretty much every story I start comes from a dialog that won't leave my mind or a very vivid scene I pictured. Building around it - how the narrative goes and comes, rises and falls - is what outlining comes to do in my case. I outline in two stages: overall skeleton (indents, phrases), then, general paragraphs describing each scene. To this, add specific dialogs and phrases that are non negotiable. If I can’t fit them in, then the scene is not working. I like highlighting bits and pieces of the prose. Phrases that will get stuck with the reader and myself. 

ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: PACIFIC RIM MIKANNIE. There, I said it. This has been running around my mind for a while but I think it's mostly for the lols and for how much of a nerd I am. I don't think I would write it but there are snippets in my head of what that might look like. There is also an ExMilitary!Annie and Cop!Mikasa Modern AU running around in my head, with them getting into a relationship with twists and turns to pertain to what they've lived, boundaries, psychological walls, PTSD... etc.  For Kakegurui: BLADE RUNNER + ALTERED CARBON AU.  Yes, I like SciFi. I have a heck ton of wips, some might see the light, some might not. We'll see.

callouts @ me: I don’t know what a omniscient, general narrator is. For the love of Dio I can’t wrap myself around how to narrate something without siding with a character. I’ve read examples, designed scenes... and still there is always one character I get introspective with or predominates in the scene and everything, then, sides with them. So I’m faulty of jumping from POV to POV by scenes. Or I write an entire fic based in once character’s perspective. In both instances, I always hope it’s not confusing.  Long sentences without breaks or very stuffy wording is another fault of mine. Probably from the fact that I like to write from thoughts and actions in depth than leaving things to the reader’s imagination. I want readers to see what I see, to feel what I feel. I try to write from a place of empathy, channeling the character and their psyche, and the impact that creates is what I want to reflect. So overdetailing is a dear friend of mine. A very talented fellow fic writer told me that I build until people can’t escape what I wrote. I think that’s both good and bad, as I’m taking the freedom people get when picturing their own version.

best writing traits: Based on comments, narrative and characterization. Again, I try to write from a place of empathy, and I undust my psychology classes each time I’m trying to write a character. I like character studies, dissecting something until it’s raw, how can I make or break a persona that’s already been written, that already has a defined mind/soul. That’s why I love angst and currently, thriller/horror.  I’m, also, obsessive with details. Everything has to be accurate and clock work. Does anyone care if the bus I’m describing actually exists? Not really, but I need to have a model in mind. Is it really necessary to open google maps and calculate how long it would take X character to walk from Tokyo’s University to a fictional apartment building? Certainly not. However I need to know in order to sell it. If it makes sense to me, then I’m comfortable enough to write it. It’s not practical, but allows to create tangible actions/places.

spicy tangential opinion: Very snob of me... but mind your text’s visual presentation. If the text is unappealing to the eye, it can be uncomfortable to read. I like fics (and books as well) that are mindful of the aesthetic in lines of words. Having adequate spacing in between paragraphs, balancing length of sentences, using defined styles for dialogs... Gives a very professional feel to it. I’m all for AUs and canon divergence, but fanfiction has a very fragile requirement that is to respect the character. Do with them whatever you like, have them tap dance or bungee jump, alter their canon-verse or send them to Hogwarts, but keep the essence. How and why is a character acting the way they do is key while writing fanfiction. I’ve read great stories that would have worked best as original fiction, because I can’t feel the characters. Again, a very snob thought. 

tagging (no pressure): @ladyjay1616 @askboxangel @blankiebandit and anyone else that may want to join

[werevulvi]

This is a very long, ranty post that's only lightly edited. It's about me deciding to basically leave radfem, so I wanted to be thorough about explaining how and why. And this is mainly because my blog ended up existing in a radblr bubble, deemed as hostile by other ideologies/groups of people, and I need to break out of that bubble, because I feel trapped in it. I'm not sure how, as I may have to start over with a new blog entirely, but I'd hope to avoid that if at all possible (my blog is my baby.) So I'm thinking that making this kinda post is a good start in trying to change how my blog vibes and what kinda blogs I can interact with in a non-debate kinda sense. Basically, damage control.

A while ago, I made some post about how I wanted to move away from the worst rudefem stuff of radfem, for the sake of my mental health. Well, I've now hit a point of wanting to take further steps away from radfem, pretty much altogether. The main reason for this is that there's still too much focus on ragging on trans women, and trans people in general. It's suffocating me, because I'm not all that detrans and I'm not anti-male. I miss connecting with other trans people, and I miss being part of that community. Truth is I've become really fucking hateful towards my own kind and I've been in denial of it. This has been carving a hole in my heart that my radfem views have carved even deeper, and it has led me to become a quite lost soul.

Do I hate trans women? No, but I clearly act as if I do, and I don't feel comfortable with my own actions and thoughts towards/about them anymore. Are some of them cumbrains fetishising my oppression (misogyny) and/or predators? Yes, undoubtedly. But I am not a collectivist and I can't view all trans women like that. Nor does it sit right with me to treat them all as potential predators. I care about trans women in general, ultimately because I am trans too and their struggles reflect my own. I cannot shit on them without shitting on myself. But it's not just about me. I feel empathy for them, and I want to extend kindness and care towards them. I cannot with any goodness in my heart view them as men. Males, yes, but not men. More on that diffentiation later in this post.

I do not want to politisise their gender identities as women, because I don't want my own gender politisised, regardless if that is man, woman, or otherwise. (More on that later too.) I don't want to trap them in the category of "man" because I do not want to be trapped in the category of "woman" as if our transitions and gender incongruence meant nothing at all. Do our transitions change bio sex? No, and I'm not arguing that. I'm saying transition changes SOMETHING and that that something matters. And in a lot of contexts, it even matters more than bio sex.

But isn't that just an emotional argument, like boohoo, my/their feefees? YES, it's an emotional argument. But you know what: I believe that feelings matter, about as equally much as facts and logic matters. An argument being emotional does not make it necessarily useless or invalid. Grave robbery and necrophilia is illegal due to purely emotional arguments. Perhaps think about if that's useless.

I care about trans women's feelings and comfort, not just their rights, and I care about men's feelings and comfort too, because I do not think individual males' oppression being patriarchy's fault even remotely means that "men cause their own problems" because one male suffering at the hands of other men (patriarchy) is NOT his own fault. And him reaching out to women for help when other men fail him AGAIN shouldn't be hard to understand. Of course it's optional to help him or not then, but I feel like it is truly heartless not to, unless he is some kinda raging misogynist. I see that kinda vibe a lot in radfem circles and it honestly churns my stomach. That kinda man-hating is to me absolutely repugnant. You do you, but I will not support it.

Why do I care about males? Because they're human. They're the same species as me, and I care about them as one human to another. Because I don't believe there's any difference between males and females beyond the physical biology stuff. Socialisation varies from person to person. I've always been a person of principles, so I can't sit around and say I only care about fellow females and all females, because no one choses to be born female - and then in the same breath hate males for essentially having been born male, which they also did not choose. If I had been born male, I'd probably hate radfem, and that says something. It's very fucking lopsided, and barely even to my favour.

And I've been asking myself that a lot lately: Is radfem even to my (a bio female's) favour - or is it only the the favour of some kinda statistic average of a general female who doesn't even exist? I dunno, but it's an important question to ask.

This is getting ranty already, but hey I'm trying.

Trans women and males aside, radfem often has a kinda negative view of trans men (and any variety of dysphoric females) that I've always felt iffy about, but first thought I had been mistaken about. It seemed for a long while that radfem is totally supportive of transmascs/dysphoric females, but..... upon closer look, it appears a little bit rotten, sorry to say. Because lately I've come to realise maybe I was kinda right from the start that radfem really is not as supportive of transmascs/dysphoric females as it claims to be. This is probably not intentionally unsupportive, I'm aware, but some of the things that really stand out to me like sore thumbs:

1.) The idea that if gender abolishion happened, no one would be dysphoric or wish to transition medically, is frankly incredibly unfounded. Do you have ANY evidence for that dysphoria is ENTIRELY social, because I've yet to see any reliable study on this. As far as I'm concerned this is just a theory based on essentially the exclusion method that all the biology-based theories are incomplete. So this strong assertion that a genderless society would have no trans people (with sex dysphoria only) gives me this unsettling vibe that radfem is not at all supportive of transition, but would prooobably prefer it if no one was trans - even in a world where gender is abolished and transitioned females are masculine women who just like looking like males, and transitioned males are feminine men who just like looking like females, and I dunno dysphoric nonbinary people would just be men and women who transition in a variety of atypical ways.

Which was always what I envisioned. That no one would be FORCED to be feminine or masculine or anything, because of their sex - NOT that trans people would be forced or expected to accept their physical sex characteristics. Because I don't know about you, but I've personally never based my sex dysphoria on that it's too hard to live as a masculine woman, and I've met tons of other trans people who feel the same way about that. It's a myth about dysphoric trans people, and I think perpetuating it does more harm than good.

Feminism, gender abolishion, etc, probably can't cure anyone's sex dysphoria. And even just striving towards that is a little iffy. How about leave it up to the dysphorics if we wanna be cured? Because I bet most radfems would not wanna enforce a cure for autism if that became a thing, or strive towards curing the world of autism. So why do it with sex/gender dysphoria? Point is I'm just noticing these uncomfortable, kinda hidden anti-trans sentiments behind the gender abolishion idea. I'm FOR gender abolishion, but only if transition would still be available in such a future. But I'm sensing that's not what radfem is actually about, and I've been properly fucking fooled. If so... fuck you for that.

2.) Some of you operate on the false assumption that trans people never pass as the opposite sex. This level of intellectual dishonesty is skewing radfem certain arguments really badly, and makes them appear poorly thought-out at best, and impossible to implement in real life at worst.

3.) The idea that sex segregated spaces can be upheld in a world where some people pass as the opposite sex, is frankly ludicrous to me, if you think of how it would actually pan out in practice. If women's spaces became only ever available for bio women, and males spaces only available for bio men, I'd be banned from both, due to my own transition. (And why the flying fuck would I promote that? I'm not insane.) Because there is no way I can prove that my sex is female, most people do not even believe that my sex is female when I tell them, and I already get tossed out from women's spaces due to that I just look like a man.

People's failure to believe I'm THAT passable irl, is about as frustrating as people's failure to believe I'm actually female, and both those people's arguments on where I "should" go is entirely useless garbage. This doesn't only affect me, but a lot of trans people out there in the world. And then I'm probably more accommodating to this kinda drama, than what most trans people would even be willing to pretend to put up with. I am your faithful lapdog, yet I still get my teeth kicked in for being annoying. To which I have to ask myself: is this kinda martyrdom really worth it? Other trans people often see me as self-hating for being a radfem, and I'm sadly starting to see why.

And to then claim I could just use gender neutral spaces is frankly robbing me of MY female rights. To treat me as a threat to other women is very uncalled for, and yes... misogynistic. And to assume that male-passing females would be welcome in women's spaces in such a world is frankly laughable. Masculine women who have not even touched a vial of testosterone in their lives already have trouble being allowed in women only spaces that have harder rules on "no trans women allowed." This is anti-trans in a way which I cannot support.

If I am to be barred from women's spaces (which I am) because I look like a man, then I WILL use men's spaces. Because I refuse to be dehumanised and stuffed into a "trans toilet/locker room" for other people's convenience. The majority's comfort does NOT get to override my personal comfort. Especially considering men (in general) are not actually uncomfortable with my presense in their spaces, because I look like I belong there. So there is not even any damn argument to be made against me using male only space. This is not because of me wanting some kinda validation for how much of a "man" I "identify" as or whatever. This is about me not wanting to be dehumanised for my medical condition or for how I choose to treat it. Because yes, barring me from both men's and women's spaces does feel a lot like considering me sub-human, because my physical body is frightening, unsettling, gross, or otherwise inconvenient for "normal" men and women to be subjected to. Fuck that noise. I am just as much human and I deserve the same level of basic respect, and that should not be asking for too much. I will not sink below that bar. That's like telling a disabled person that they "have to" use the disabled space because their amputation (or whatever is their ailment) freaks people out, even if they're capable of using the regular men's/women's space despite their condition. So, I'd say barring trans people from both men's and women's spaces is actually rather ableist.

So how do I think that issue should be solved then? Honestly I do not have a solution. So I'd say skip the sex segregation of stuff like bathrooms and locker rooms completely (but keep it for stuff like sports and rape relief shelters) and let trans people themselves figure out which space suits them best, and only intervene in cases when they make a really poor judgement. The only other option would be allowing ALL females in women's spaces (yes, including fully passing trans men) and vice versa all males into men's spaces, but I'm extremely worried about how exactly passing trans people would be expected to go about proving they're going to the right spaces. So I'd say don't do shit until we have found a better (actually better) solution.

Because I can't sit here and say that trans women should never use the women's locker rooms, while I go showering butt naked in the men's locker room. That would be a very hypocritical double standard. Yes, I think passable and/or post-op trans women can and should be allowed to use women only spaces. Based on that I think passable and/or post-op trans men can and should be allowed to use men only spaces, but I do not think that is a perfect or ideal solution.

3.) There's just in general a lot of negativity towards medical transition and how trans people look; our desires, hopes, goals and our dysphoria. This feeds my self-hatred like fuck. Yeah I'd consider myself a rather strong person in general, but I'm not made of concrete, and I think radfem and gender critical thought has broken me down a lot, which took me a while to notice. I don't even know if the real reason I'm calling myself a woman nowadays is because my dream of being a man in ANY sorta sense (be it fantasy or reality) has become completely crushed. Yet I'm unable to truly be okay with being a woman.

Yes, I truly love my pussy, I'm fine with my reproductive ability (producing ova, chance at pregnancy) and in general I like that I started off on a female ground. I love that I have small hands and feet, and a relatively small frame. I really like my height, that I'm not very tall, but do tower most other females. So there's a lot I like about being bio female, and it's mostly things I can't change about my physique anyway. As for my curves, I seem to sometimes like it and sometimes not. I'm also okay with having cellulites and stretch marks. But what I'm NOT fine with about being female is being driven by estrogen, my body's natural gravitation and persistense towards re-feminising itself as soon as I went off of testosterone, having breasts, having less muscle mass than males, having a higher voice, having little to no body/facial hair, etc. I am not fine with being recognised as a woman, or having most female secondary sex characteristics, or lacking male secondary sex characteristics.

This does make me feel like although I'm actually fine with simply being bio female, I'm only fine with it on the condition that I get to look/sound/appear as close to male as medically possible. And does that make me a man in the bio male sorta sense? No, obviously not, but I'm starting to ask myself: Why the FUCK does it matter so goddamn much?! I am sick and tired of being a political pawn no matter where I go. I just wanna live my life.

And radfem discourse (as well as TRA discourse) is so goddamn far from real life it's honestly pathetic and destructive. Most people really don't give a fuck if I'm male or female, or if I have a dick or pussy. It's only really relevant for my doctors and my sex partners. But outside of those very specific contexts, I do like being open about my bio sex, because it just makes it easier to be open about my life, and I feel like that's a good reason to be open about it. However, being open about it solely because some people on the internet think people's bio sex is absolutely crucial info (outside of the context of sex/dating and docs) does not feel good.

I shouldn't feel pressured to be so open about myself, just to not feel guilty for how I choose to treat my dysphoria. I should not have to feel this guilty.

I think my opinions on gender are actually unhealthy for me. I understand more and more that people's opinions on gender are largely just based on their own personal experiences with whatever trans people they've stumbled across. There is no objective facts on what gender is and what it is not. If it's an internal identity or just social roles and clothing. If it's somewhat biological or entirely socially constructed. I feel like I've been arguing bullshit semantics that don't even hold water. I'm not saying that bio sex is changable or a spectrum or completely unimportant, or anything like that. When I say gender I don't mean biological sex.

I'm not saying that I'm not biogically female. I'm saying that just because I'm a female, doesn't mean I cannot also be a man - under, not another, but just slightly looser definition of man which is still connected to physical maleness - in contexts where it simply does not, and should not, matter if I do not fit someone else's definition of what a man or woman is. Because maybe semantics are killing discourse more than it's killing real life issues like human rights. Just saying.

But I dunno what I want with my gender or my label. But I think my realisation that I need to scrap my views and values in regards to gender altogether, and rebuild them from scratch... might actually quite likely change my sense of my gendered self (again.) Because you know what? My gender identity seems very highly influenced by my opinions of gender as a whole, and not just by my dysphoria. If I go by just my dysphoria, I think I would consider myself a trans man, which is why I guess I never truly stopped considering that... but my opinions on gender as a whole (women's rights, female liberation, gender abolishion, trans stuff, bio sex, etc) intervene and conflict with that, and makes me wanna be both a woman and a trans man at the same time, which I can't. So I end up being pulled in two opposing directions.

It's just that up until recently my opinions on gender used to matter more to me than tending to my dysphoria. And now I've come to a point where I don't think I wanna have that sorta prioritisation anymore, because it's having real bad effect on my mental health.

And I need to get very real with myself and ask myself if this really is the life I want. Upon knowing that I'm not actually comfortable with my own opinions, and their affects on my mental health is not actually worth advocating for female liberation, which I already know by now. Then my next step is to take a step back and try to consume less media from any and all sides of the discourse, and listen to my intuition again. Hear myself out. This might take a while, and in the meantime I'm just gonna have to say that my stance on feminism, trans stuff, women's rights, etc, is "under construction."

And as for my goddamn gender label... I'm half okay with pretty much anything right now. Transmasc, woman, ftm, trans man, dysphoric female, masculine/gnc/male-passing woman, etc, is all fine. It's not really about how other people label me anyway. How I label myself is the only thing that truly matters to me in that regard. That it's with self-respect, love and care... and not for political reasons.

I think that's just the thing. That I need to stop doing shit I'm not comfortable with just for political reasons.

With that said, I also wanna briefly touch upon other aspects of radfem that I find myself either no longer agreeing with, or just no longer caring about.

The sex work industry: I know it's bad. But I no longer care and I still might wanna become a sex worker one day. At least I wanna try it. Because no I don't want for sex to be personal, private or hidden. I feel like that's just not how I wanna express my sexuality. And sex is the ONLY of my passions I can in any way imagine turning into a job. Because it's the only one of my passions I never get tired of, and also never truly get obsessed with either. Sorry if the sex industry hurt you personally, but I kinda fail to see how that's my problem, or my responsibility, or how it would seal my fate. I don't wanna live my life after other people's problems, and I cannot learn from other people's mistakes (for those who chose it but still got burned.)

Watching porn, engaging in bdsm, etc: After having tried for a couple of years to heal my broken sexuality and to enjoy vanilla sex, I'm frankly giving up. Some say I'd have to go celibate and work really hard on my trauma for it to have effect, which... honestly I'd rather eat a bullet than do that. I saw a sexologist once last summer and oooooh BOY did that go badly! She basically told me I'm just kinky and need to work on accepting myself. That hurt a lot, and made me give up extra hard on psychiatry again (like it was the last drop again) but it made me realise that there just isn't any help for me out there. And that I'm also not willing to do anything drastic to change it on my own.

That what I want is to have a sex life that I enjoy. So... I'll go back to what simply works for me: bdsm sex. That's not entirely without some reluctance and hesitation, and I do plan on going about it in safer ways than I previously did. Like for example only doing it with people I trust and know well, use safety words, etc, as a bare minimum. I'm learning everything I can about safer bdsm practices, well before actually diving into it. But thing is that I like such extreme "kinks" that it's never gonna be entirely safe, and.... I guess I can't be fucked to care anymore, and I'm tired of even just hearing about the preachings of how bad hardcore bdsm is. Like yeah, I know it's bad, now shut up now and leave me the fuck alone to live/ruin my own damn life.

And as for porn: I never quite quit it, just reduced it by a lot. Again, not denying the harms about it, just not caring enough to change my habits.

Conclusions and wrapping it up: Basically, I've always been a Trauma Queen and I just wanna be myself again. I don't think my former views (more egalitarian/equality based rather than female liberation, and neither individualist nor collectivist) were bad or wrong, but rather that how I implemented them into my life and disregarded danger which was bad. Bio sex matters, but I think gender matters too, and the world is what it is. I have to accept that if I'm gonna have the slightest chance of living a happy life. I can't force myself to live according to feminist ideals for the sake of women in general, when those ideals smother my flame.

I cannot claim that either of the things radfem stand against are all inherently bad. I cannot claim that transitioning shouldn't be a thing, even in a perfect world, because I wanna bring my testosterone with me everywhere I go. I cannot claim that there's any "one road fits all" to happiness for all people, or all women. I cannot be a hypocrite who only values female lives when male lives are at core equally valuable. That has nothing to do with pandering to men. All it means is that I want a world where men and women can live in peace together, and if that's not possible, then at least I wanna live my own life in peace with myself, making whichever decisions I see fit for myself, and surround myself with both men and women who are respectful and decent people. I do not want to try to force my life to fit an ultimately flawed ideology. And all ideologies are flawed.

I'm flawed. We all are, and that is okay. Yes, I wanna strive towards happiness and some health and safety, but not ultimate health or 100% secure safety. Health and safety should not come at the expense of fun and happiness, if at all possible. Because I still need some amount of danger to find enjoyment in things, and I think having fun and getting bitter lessons is more important, than being healthy and safe. I've always thought that. It might just even be a core value of mine, and it does conflict with radfem values. What matters to me in life is in conflict with radfem values. I need to learn moderation and to balance fun with health, happiness with safety, and transitioning with reality. But what I do not need is to wingclip myself because of what matters to other people.

Radfem has taught me a lot of good stuff, it has made me aware of a lot of shit I didn't wanna know, but now it's time to move on and leave it behind me.

Please note that I do not mean to demonise radfem as inherently bad, fearmongering, transphobic, etc. It still has a lot of good points that I agree with. And I may still likely reblog and interact with radfem posts that I do feel are good and/or interesting. I just don't wanna lock myself to radfem as an ideology anymore. I do not think radfem is the ultimate truth, and I do not think there even is ANY ultimate truth to such things as gender.

I'm saying that I declare myself no longer a radical feminist because I am no longer dedicated to the cause as a whole. Not that it's suddenly all bad.

I wanna spread my wings and just be my problematic, true self... this sex-crazed, kinky tranny who deep down loves being a transitioned female, but also don't want for any female to suffer oppression simply because of how they were born, but also sees trans women as "women enough", values male lives and their opinions, etc! Whatever else I might think and feel which I haven't figured out yet. Instead of a forcing myself to become a perfect pawn for completely sex-based feminism.

I may adopt some of my old TRA views back, as well as some of my old libfem views. I will not limit myself to only one school of thought, ANY one school of thought. Please remember that if you're thinking I'm gonna go back to be a TRA libfem entirely, because that is NOT the case. What I'm breaking out of is the tribalism and extremism of radfem: the radical part of feminism. Because ultimately, that radical part of feminism, what I've been describing (perhaps poorly) throughout this post, is what's become suffocating for me.

I need to find myself again, beyond EVERY ideology that's telling me how I should think, feel and live my life. I've had enough of that shit. I need to think and feel freely, and live my life for myself.

Thank you all for your patience with me.

[dkettchen]

Today we’re having our first Ally Book Club! This fortnight we watched Disclosure (2020), the new documentary about trans representation in Hollywood starring Laverne Cox, among many others.

I’ll ask you all to focus primarily on the black trans representation discussed (and other links between how trans/gender diverse people as well as black people were othered since the dawn of cinema f.e.) rather than the trans aspects primarily, as we are focused on black lives matter and anti-racism at the moment. (And also cause I’m trans and nonbinary and I had a lot of feelings abt that whole aspect of it and this is not the place to discuss that (this is for allyship only and I will not be an educator about my own stuff today), I already made a post about that if any fellow nonbinaries would like to go vent about it over there lol) However if you are cis and would also like to share some trans stuff you learnt, you are welcome to ;)

This post is a space to share what you learnt from the media we watch, stuff it’s made you think about, and any progress you feel you’ve made in your own personal allyship journey following it. 

It is meant to be a positive space for allies to support each other in their learning, so trolling, harassment, hate/discriminatory behaviour (related to our subject’s group(s) or otherwise) or shaming will not be tolerated. (Read: I am not afraid to ban anyone from my blog who doesn’t follow these rules)  This doesn’t mean you can’t discuss the demons and biases you’re fighting with on this journey, it merely means ‘don’t be a dick about it.’ I know it’s the internet, but there’s other ppl with feelings and deserving of empathy behind those screennames and this is an exercise in empathy to begin with, so be a decent human being, please. (This also goes for the defenders of the innocent out there, there’s two sides to any argument gotten out of hand.) We’re here to encourage and learn, not to argue and alienate.

I’ll go first! 

The thing with documentaries (and video essays (I would know lol)) is they love to present themselves as factual and unbiased, when, really, anything is biased always. And in a society where they’re usually made by the people with privilege/the majority, it’s always the same status quo POV and we stop questionning it at some point, until a documentary made by disadvantaged/minority voices comes along and scews it in a new direction that we’re not used to.

Because I was paying Extra Attention to the black representation, and because I work in several London trans spaces, I noticed the disparity between numbers of black trans folks I saw on screen vs the ones I know irl (not as many as there were in this doc), and like- my numbers might be scewed by my own experience too, ya know, I prolly know less trans POC than a trans POC would, just like I prolly know more nonbinaries than a trans binary would (also idk what differences in ethnicity groups’ percentages there are between the US & UK population in the first place). But because the documentary presented itself as talking about representation in media at large, I was expecting a similar lack of black voices that I know happens irl in a lot of the world and that I know happens in media, and like- they talked about the lack of representation, but at the same time, they made sure to HAVE representation in their actual film.

I already think way too much about representation in media in general, but basically there’s a few different schools of thought on how you can approach it in any given media: 

-you can represent reality by representing the percentages of different groups among the population, so f.e. in this case you would try and match the percentage of POC and binaries/nonbinaries in the real life trans community to represent it (the BFI’s current diversity goals follow this principle f.e.). In practice though, this tends to lend itself to tokenism and ultimately minorities still end up with less or lesser-quality rep than the majorities, because we are minorities.

-alternatively you can represent reality by the clusters that happen irl. People of a given minority group tend to flock together so if you have one of them it’s highly likely that there’ll be more of the same group in their immediate social circle, so representing a bunch of them together makes sense and accurately represents reality. 

The issue my brain ran into here was that I was expecting the former and it ended up being the latter. Representing the way trans people are portrayed in Hollywood would’ve implied the population overview approach, but Laverne (as one of the producers) and the bunch, instead of kind of- rehashing the depressing statistical reality of how little rep trans people of colour get, they focused on their own experience as trans people of colour, and how they experience representation, whether it’s black rep or otherwise. They left out a lot of white trans rep that is around, because it’s not much different from the examples they used (you can have an argument about also leaving out a lot of what little nonbinary and other genderqueer rep we have in the process, and the unexplored stereotypes associated with that rather than trans binaries, as well as the generational thing where The Youth today prolly would pick different examples of media that impacted them, but still). It is very interesting and refreshing to see a format that is usually very white-cishet-normatively scewed instead being scewed toward the experience of a middle-aged black trans woman. (wow I didn’t know she was in her 40s, I thought she was like a good 10 years younger, good on you Laverne (@cis ppl: yes, even me, who literally works with trans ppl can’t fucking tell what age anyone is, it’s like a 20 year gap of a guess usually x’D))

Please write your own thoughts & stuff you learnt from the doc in the replies! (note: you don’t all have to write half an essay like this lol)  Be nice to one another, my banning hammer and I will check in on the responses later :P

Last post <<<>>> Next post

The next piece of media we’ll watch is the first season (or as many episodes you can manage, but we’ll suppose the whole first season so spoiler alert! :)) of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, a fun cartoon show with an all-POC (and mostly black) main cast (characters as well as their voice actors)!

[lux-i-fer]

Can you explain why you view Cain’s emotions as being frozen by the passage of time? I’ve read a very convincing theory that he’s a psychopath so it’d be interesting to see your take ( on why he isn’t??)

Yeah I sure can! So the basic story of Cain is  that he was condemned by God to live an eternal punishment on Earth right? So he’s been alive for a pretty long time. And over that long span of time he’s become quite jaded to the world around him. Think of how Lilith or s1 Amenadiel act. Neither of them care all that much about humanity or their happenings because what is a decade in the face of someone who has lived through millennia? More importantly, why should an immortal enjoy the ‘small things’ so to speak if they have infinite time to enjoy them? Writers often wax poetic about how humans burn so bright because they never know when their flame will be snuffed out, and I think there’s some truth to that. An immortal like Cain would eventually grow tired of seizing every day like his fellow humans do. He has an infinite amount of days, what’s the rush? Eventually that mindset morphs into what’s the use? Why should I go out and do things when time doesn’t matter to me? Why should I form bonds with people I know will perish? Why should I participate in this life, knowing full well that it’ll just pass me by? Cain himself is quoted as saying this: 

“I have walked this Earth for thousands of years. I have seen everything, I have done everything. I have watched everything I have ever known turn into ashes over and over again. And I’ve been searching for a way out forever.”

This type of thinking is a slippery slope. I will say that Cain was never quite “good” to begin with, he kills his brother with a rock because he felt like Abel was taking up too much spotlight I mean who does that? Cain is a selfish and manipulative person who uses others as if they were mere chess pieces to get what he wants, there’s really no way around that. However, I would not classify him as a psychopath. An absolute asshole, yes perhaps, but not a psychopath. Like I said, he’s become impassive to the world at large. He’s a human with the world view of a celestial/infernal being. Momlotte had a similar world view (oh what’s another human death, they’ll just make more. He was getting annoying anyways) yet no one ever categorized her as a psychopath. While I admit Mom is not the best comparison, we cannot deny that she and Cain share that aspect of themselves. Because like Mom, Cain does show moments of true emotion. Tom 2.0 might not have done the best job showing that (sorry Tom :/ ) but there were still traces of it. 

I think the most notable example of this is in 3x12 when Cain tells Lucifer he wants to die. Like I said before, Cain isn’t a very expressive character but we do see some indication of emotion when Lucifer pries his desire out. I think where a lot of people get hung up is on Cain’s lack of empathy for other people--and that’s valid--but again we forgot that he has the mentality of an immortal. He just does not care about other people, and yeah that’s a dick move but it is what it is. Sometimes people just really are assholes and that’s just who they are. Forgive my forwardness, but not every prick on the street is a psychopath just because they didn’t help you pick up your groceries when the bottom of your bag gave out or because they said they loved you and then fucked off with a hooker. People can just be assholes for no reason sometimes, and that’s just what Cain is. 

But like most assholes, Cain still cares about things. Usually those things pertain to only one subject, himself, but he still values them. And like I said before, this is most visible in his quest to die. Cain truly wants to end his life and I feel as though he has very genuine emotions for why. Think about it: you’re an immortal. The first few years seem alright, but then your friends and family start to die off, one by one. Over the next few years you make more friends and acquaintances. They also die. You have to move houses because your neighbors are suspicious of your eternal youth. You now have to move every fifty years and cut all contact with the life attached to that identity. You continue this cycle for hundreds of years with no end. Doesn’t that sound depressing? Doesn’t just thinking about that grate on your very bones? Of course it does, you’re human. And so is Cain. (We could almost draw a Lilith comparison here, no?) Humans were born knowing that eventually this will all just end. In a twisted way that’s what makes living so great; it won’t last forever. Cain knows that ultimately death is where he belongs, yet it is the one thing he will never be able to do. Can you imagine that? You have the power to do anything you could ever want, but you have no power to achieve what you truly desire. I think it’s safe to say that that would do a number on anyone. 

Now I have not addressed his manipulative side in detail yet so lets carve out some time for that. Did Cain manipulate Chloe, Maze, and pretty much everyone else to get what he wants? Yes. Did he feign emotion in that process? Yes. But then again, who hasn’t? I’m not trying to justify his actions, because he did some truly horrific things, but I’m just putting it out there. How many times do we put on fronts in our own lives just to get what we want? We see it all the time. Someone flirts their way out of a situation, serial cheaters tell their spouses they love them while stringing along three other people behind their backs, or we say something we know will set someone off just to see their reaction. If we diagnose psychopaths using this logic, do we not all contain some hint of psychopathy? Well yes, we do. Humans aren’t perfect creatures. Some are better than others and some are worse. Like I said, I’m not saying that Cain was justified in his actions, but I do not think we can slap a psychopath label on him just because he’s a dick. 

I believe the psychopath theory does not take Cain’s situation into account. I believe it neglects to recognize the warped way in which he views both humanity and the world at large. Cain is a human condemned to live an immortal’s life and I don’t think that’s something to shrug at.

[phoebehalliwell]

i brought up cole/phole in my ask and i'm curious what your thoughts are on the whole cole becomes the source situation. because it really rubbed me the wrong way that after that this whole bullshit narrative of cole was always about power and being evil and all his efforts since he met phoebe and him wanting to rid himself of his powers several times was all him pretending

i always felt like that was just unfair to the character and it's one of those points in the show when i was really over the whole black and white morals and you're either evil or you're goodness incarnate. especially considering that cole became the source to save the sisters and that he was possessed not by any demon but the source of all evil. i have the same issue with the christy storyline in season 8. you've got a girl who has been abducted when she was a child and basically brainwashed and whether that's within verse or in the fandom no one has empathy for christy. i absolutely hated billie for turning on the sisters after they mentored her and took her in but christy was basically raised with the goal to destroy them. it's another black and white morality situation that really doesn't work for me

look, cole becoming the source was literally such a shift in character that they had to treat it like a possession. it’s one of those moments where you have to chose between character development or drama to drive the season forward and one brad kern went on ahead and said Fuck Character Development Cole’s Evil Now. and just. :/. like. it was completely ooc and a bad move imo and honestly? maybe if that didn’t happen i would actual like cole as a character / phole as a couple. but that was really just a death sentence. and then bringing him back in season 5 after you’ve already completely assassinated his character i just don’t understand man. i get he was a fan favorite, but if you’re doing all this bc he’s a fan favorite uhhhhh maybe don’t make him The Source Of All Evil????? i really just everything about cole’s s4 arcs were like horrible imo not well done at all.

in regards to christy, as i’m assuming we all know, billie was supposed to be the one to carry a spin off show after charmed. i’m assuming the “missing sister” plot was being peppered in to then drive season one of her show, with the ultimate power going to become billie vs. the world’s variant of the power of three. this of course Didn’t Work as everyone Hated Billie (rightfully so imo she wasn’t like a good / likable character at all i think she was specifically modeled after buffy but like The Epitome of mom: we have buffy at home buffy at home: y’know??) so now they’re like okay we’ll make billie a villain. but like we’ve already sorta gotten to know billie how are we going to swing this Right We Have Her Sister Who Was Kidnapped By Demons. i feel like the majority of people have no empathy for christy specifically because she was written so that we have no empathy for her. like, from the first episode we got her, she was already designed to be “othered.” she didn’t know how to function in human society, she barely spoke, and we were led to be fearful of her due to her panic-attack-to-completely-calm-with-a-bad-omen deal and her fire power and lack of ability to control it. and then, at the end of the episode, it’s basically confirmed that she’s working with the triad. the writers really Really did not want the audience to like christy. so i get what you’re saying and if christy wasn’t designed to be the big bad of s8 maybe we actually could have gotten a complex look into her as a character and her skewed viewpoint and this that and the other. but i don’t think that was ever gonna happen. i also just wanna state for the record i think it’s like Beyond Incredibly Fucked Up that billie straight up incinerated her sister. like they try to write it so billie doesn’t shoulder the blame but it doesn’t change the fact she Incinerated Her Sister. her last living relative. a fellow human being, not some inherently evil demon. And She Was FUCKING INCINERATED Like Holy Shit????? and then the charmed ones said deuces and went home to like hug and celebrate and live happily ever after like billie didn’t just sear the flesh off her Only Sister. i don’t think i’ll ever be over that. that was fuckin wild. my god.

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Real Monsters

Two empty bottles of cheap shoddy beer stood on the bar counter, right next to a cup with a finger’s width of whiskey resting in it. Emily blew a strand of fire-red hair out of her face and, for no apparent reason, glared at the bartender as he collected and removed the empty glass containers from in front of her.

Over the course of the hour she had spent there, she slumped more and more over the bar counter where she sat. Every now and then, she glanced at the flat screen TV hanging over the bar, watching the news flashing across the screen with mild disinterest. The lights of cars on the city’s street outside the bar’s windows drearily passed by. The more she drank that night away, the more those lights outside turned into hazy blurs, contrasted by the soft illumination in this quaint pub.

Emily’s willowy frame and symmetrical features would lead to anybody describing her as an attractive woman in her late twenties—if you could stomach the strong stench of cigarette smoke clinging to her like a dark miasma—so it was nothing unusual for her to have some guy sidle up next to her with a warm and friendly smile. He even did a decent job at holding back from cringing, once he inhaled some of the air in Emily’s vicinity.

“Hey, I was just—”

“Fuck off,” she told him without looking up from the glass of whiskey she was nursing, swirling the liquid inside her glass in one hand. She trained her eyes on the TV screen even though the lines and text on it were getting blurry for her.

The young man’s face turned sour in an instant and he uttered a string of profanities at Emily while leaving her to herself, causing the bar stool next to him to scrape over the floor with a loud noise and prompt some other patrons to turn their heads.

The regular murmurs and conversations and clinking of glasses continued without incident though, as this sort of thing was a common scene in a bar like this.

Emily sighed when she saw a familiar segment rearing to come up on the TV. While some advertisements fired up with obnoxious lettering and white-washed imagery on the screen, she waved the bartender over.

“Can we change the channel? Isn’t there, like, a fucking game on, or something?” she asked him, clearing her throat in between the sentence fragments, taking her voice from raspy to gravelly. She pointed her index finger past the glass of whiskey she was holding.

The bartender, seemingly nice enough all evening, slung a small towel over his shoulder and leaned in over the counter to her. He seemed to register her request with a bit of a delay, then forced himself to smile. He nodded, then pointed to someone at the opposite end of the counter.

“I’ll get right on it after taking care of the gentleman over there,” he said.

She watched him saunter over yonder, taking his sweet time. Stifling a groan with a sigh, Emily muttered to herself, “Happy fuckin’ birthday to me, I guess.”

Right about when the bartender returned to her end of the counter, the ads ended and the segment started. Some shaky, grainy pictures flashed across the screen, commented on by a lady with one of those perms that looked like it was made of plastic. The graphics heralded an exposé about human trafficking discovered on the Canadian border between Vancouver and Seattle.

With a rosy color flushing her pale cheeks, Emily emptied the glass and covered half her face with a hand as if to bury it there, though all she wanted to do was hide.

The bartender leaned down and grabbed something from behind the counter, then froze mid motion of aiming the remote control at the TV set. He blinked as he saw a red-haired reporter with a mean green-eyed glare on the screen—one who happened to look a lot like Emily. Or rather—exactly like her, if you could tell the change in outfits apart. His head went on swivel between the Emily at the bar and the Emily on screen until he lowered the remote and casually leaned against the counter.

“Holy shit, is that you? You some kinda reporter, huh?”

“Fuck,” Emily hissed under her breath, managing to eke out a smile that refused to reach her eyes. She hunched even deeper over the counter towards the bartender and then hushed him with the words, “Yep, that’s me, Sherlock. Let’s not make a big deal out of it, ‘kay? I’m trying to unwind tonight.”

The bartender scanned her face with what was growing interest, but he turned to look back up at the screen again, giving her a curt nod in response.

“Gotcha,” he whispered. Watching the footage fly through, inter-cut with pieces of interviews and Emily being followed by a shaky camera switched into night mode, the bartender still couldn’t help but emit a short little whistle between his teeth.

“Damn, I’m not gonna turn the audio up, but that looks like some rough stuff,” he said.

His features softened as he could spot Emily’s mien darkening. He slid to lean over the counter and keep his voice down as he asked, “You okay? No offense, but you’ve been lookin’ down in the dumps all evenin’.”

“No offense, but whenever anybody starts anything with 'no offense’, it’s gonna offend, buddy,” she said, glaring at him.

“Jeeze, okay, I get it. You’re not here to talk. But I feel like I’d be an asshole for not asking,” he said, absentmindedly scratching the fashionable stubble on his chin.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Brian.”

Emily smirked and said, “Okay, Brian? You keep the drinks coming, we both mind our own business, and I’ll make like a tree soon enough.”

Something sparkled in Brian’s eyes and he shook his head with a strange slowness. Emily struggled to read what it meant or where it was coming from. A couple of drinks earlier and she would have had him figured out easily, but the meds mixing with the booze were doing her signature skills no favor. Her gut instinct swung wildly between him either feeling pity or genuine care for a fellow human being.

“I do have some responsibility here. I wouldn’t let you walk outta here knowing you had to drive after all the drinks you’ve been pounding down on, and I sure as hell am not gonna just pretend you can see that kinda—”

He cast a sidelong glance up at the TV screen, then continued, “That kinda shit doesn’t just bounce off o’ ya. Just seeing something like that on the news is enough to upset me. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be there, and talk to the monsters who do shit like that. Or, y'know, the victims of those monsters.”

The sparkle in his eyes turned wet, glistening with empathy. Brian was good, Emily thought.

“C'mon, humor me. I bet it’ll be a load off o’ your shoulders to talk about it. I hear plenty o’ sob stories and have to pretend that they’re oh-so-tragic, but even all that petty bullshit eventually gets to me.”

Emily said nothing. Continued studying his face.

“Costs you sleep, leads to drinking to sleep more, which leads to—eh, you know where I’m going with this.”

He shrugged and bit his lip, awaiting a response from her after all his rambling. The other people in the bar never turned silent, but the silence that welled up between Emily and Brian became so thick that you could have cut it with a knife.

“Okay,” she said. She put the glass down and repeated herself with another smirk, this one far less convincing and with far less confidence than any other expression she had brandished that night. “Okay. Brian? You might wanna buckle up, because this is a wild ride. Fuck, I don’t even know where to start. Much easier to write these things than to present them.”

She shot a glance up at the TV, conveniently presenting one of the monsters Brian had unwittingly mentioned.

“See that schmuck right there? Married, three children, successful business owner, respected in his community, loves walkin’ his dog in the park, probably tips generously, and also responsible for making twelve Vietnamese women live in a filthy fucking dungeon of a basement for ten years—forced into sex work, allowed out only to assemble and package counterfeit watches. Real piece o’ shit, sub-human, scum-sucking trash with a heart so fucking rotten that it might as well be a black hole. And he wasn’t even the mastermind or anything, he was basically middle management in this outfit of human-shaped turds.”

Emily kept getting more worked up as she swore up a storm and recounted the discoveries from her research. Brian visibly swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat and she could tell he was only moments away from breaking out into a cold sweat just from hearing the fury in her account.

“Her name was Tran. These dirt-bags trafficked her across the ocean to America, together with other girls, in containers that must have reeked to the high heavens of human shit and piss, subsisting on nothing but scraps of rotten fucking food. She was separated from her 5-year-old kid when they took her after promising her a better life for her family, and then these rat bastards on our side of the drink tried to ferry her over the border to Vancouver with some others by sticking her in a fucking refrigerator truck where she froze to death behind some pallets stacked with meat. With fucking meat,” she said with some spittle frothing on her lip. “Because that’s all she was to these monsters.”

Emily crammed a fist into her jacket pocket and produced a crumpled up pack of cheap cigarettes from it. She dumped it on the counter in front of her, together with a smartphone with a display so cracked that it would be close to impossible to read anything on it, and a plastic lighter clattering out onto the counter next to it.

“I don’t even know if they deserve to be called monsters. Because a monster at least acts upon instinct, like a fucking animal. Eat, fuck, shit, sleep, rinse repeat. But these motherfuckers, I swear,” she dug a cigarette out of the pack and swiftly lit it up.

Brian’s face had long fallen into a twisted visage of disgust and despair, paralyzed and incapable of escaping her cutting monologue, and his speechlessness extended into his inability to tell Emily she wasn’t allowed to smoke inside the pub. He feebly pointed at the cigarette she now took a long drag from and then rubbed his face instead.

With the force of frustration, she blew out some smoke before continuing her furious rant. She pointed at the TV screen with the burning cigarette clamped between her fingers. Some heads at the other end of the dive now turned to look at her again, the murmurs likely questioning what was going on there.

“They go home, they go shopping in a grocery store like you and me, they go to barbecue parties, they tuck their kids in at night, and they probably play poker or some shit. All the while they are quietly committing passionless murders; just cold calculated without any remorse. Enriching themselves with the suffering of the human beings they treat like fucking meat.”

More smoke billowed out of her nostrils like a dragon breathing fire when she picked up again, not missing a beat, “By the time Tran was twenty-seven and they recovered her body from the back of that truck, the autopsy showed that all the slave labor and all sex work had given her permanent spine damage. So, she was in constant crippling pain for the final fuckin’ years of her life before she died an undignified death without a single fucking soul to mourn her passing. And don’t you fucking give me that bunch of rotten, disingenuous politicians farcically conveying their condolences while scampering around to cover up for anybody in the police or border control who were in on this whole operation before we popped the lid on the entire stinking cess pool. Allegedly,” she said, letting the final word ooze out with bitter contempt.

Emily stopped herself, arched her head back and released an almost satisfied groan. It did feel good, at least somewhat. Sweet, sweet release.

She looked at Brian the bartender, now staring at her with eyes as wide as saucers, rendered speechless by her outburst of pent-up rage and verbal diarrhea that came from a festering disease that was what Emily’s view of humanity had become.

Her heart raced, but the frayed ends of her nerves had stopped screaming. For now.

After taking a long drag from her cigarette and savoring the next cloud of smoke she exhaled, she dug around in her pocket to get out some cash, spilling it out onto the counter in form of crinkled dollar bills and coins and leaving a pathetic tip because that was all she had on her.

Her voice dropped in volume, “Thanks, Bri. Good talk.”

She patted the money she was leaving on the counter and stood up straight. Or as straight as she could manage, because she drunkenly swayed a bit—which she elegantly masked with her years of drinking experience by slinging her jacket on.

One of the other patrons whose stare lingered on her for too long drew another deadly glare from Emily.

“The fuck are you lookin’ at?” her words muffled as she kept the cigarette clamped in between her lips. His eyes widened and he lowered himself over his drink while the other people at his table went silent with him.

Brian stammered out something, but Emily was too wasted already to really make out the precise words, and too far gone for that night to give a damn. He was probably going to check in on her and see if she was alright, yet again. Bless his soul.

She pushed open the front door. The jingle of a bell overhead caused her to flinch when she staggered out into the drizzle of rain outside the bar and she let the door slam shut behind her. Emily popped the collar of her jacket and wandered off into the city’s night.

After taking a final angry drag from her cigarette, she tossed the butt into a gutter and buried her hands in her jacket pockets while she stumbled on her way home, in the rough direction of her dingy downtown apartment.

She came upon a homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign right next to him, but the letters written on it blurred into something incomprehensible to Emily’s drunken stare. He was wrapped up in layers of sweaters and jackets and had a hood up over his head, with some newspapers spread out on top to shield him from the rain. But the sheets of paper were turning dark quickly, soaking up the raindrops as they grew in size and frequency.

With the rustling of the newspapers, the homeless man looked up at her, but the darkness concealed most of his features beyond a gray beard and skin that looked like a roadmap of sunburnt wrinkles.

“You should get outta the rain, buddy, s'gonna be a downpour tonight,” she told him.

He just stared at her. Shadows cloaked his eyes and a pit formed in Emily’s stomach.

“I ain’t got any change. Just pissed it all away just now. Sorry, man.”

She tried to lock eyes with him, but found no eyes underneath that veil of darkness over his own. The lack of a reaction began to creep her out. She gave him a bowing nod and walked on with a clipped, “Night.”

A few steps further down the sidewalk, she figured she might regret it, but considered inviting him home. The poor bastard might freeze to death on a late autumn night like this.

“When the world is a prison, there are those who are the prisoners cursed with unknowing, and the jailers who hold the keys to their unseen cells. Which are you?”

Those words rolled out with a fluid clarity and a gravity to rival the weight of the world. There was something about them—a sense of finality—that lent them a sinister air. They came from behind Emily—from that homeless man.

She turned slowly. Her heart raced, this time not with anger, but a growing sense of dread. She feared to see what this homeless man had turned into. His voice was as voluminous as that of a giant, as imposing as a king.

But there was nobody there. Emily looked around in disbelief. There was nobody else in this narrow street. The drizzle intensified until it turned into full-blown rain.

A cold shudder ran down her spine and Emily shivered. She suddenly remembered the pictures of Tran from the autopsy report, pale and lifeless, with eyes closed. An innocence destroyed by the monsters of this world. A horrible truth that Emily had helped unearth.

Emily went home and locked all three locks of her apartment door, shooing her three cats off her bed and crashing onto the covers without undressing.

The dark void of a dreamless sleep enveloped her within seconds and the next day, nothing would be the same, ever again.

This was the final night before her awakening.

—Submitted by Wratts

[letterboxd]

The Curve.

Letterboxd members are gathering around Steven Soderbergh’s fictional pandemic drama Contagion, as a real disease has us keeping our distance from each other.

“Rewatched this with a friend quarantine-style over Netflix Party tonight and it was really fun until it really wasn’t.” —Patrick

Whether coming to Contagion for the first time, or rewatching it in light of the global Covid-19 pandemic, Steve Soderbergh’s 2011 drama, written by Scott Z. Burns, has been floating near the top of Letterboxd’s ‘Popular This Week’ list for the past couple of months. This week, with infection rates soaring and borders closing, it took the top spot.

The number of diary entries logged for ‘Contagion’ between January 1 and March 19, showing a steep rise as major parts of the US, UK and Europe entered lock-down mode.

Contagion was a solid, fairly well-received film that made decent box-office when it was released a decade ago. Critics noted its focus on the public servants working to identify and lock down the mystery virus, rather than sensational dramatics. (“Feels more like a PSA than a narrative,” observes Jeremiah.)

Jude Law’s Australian accent aside, the Contagion scenario represented a reality that experts had told Soderbergh and Burns the world should expect from a major new virus. Speaking to journalist Mike Ryan at the time of the film’s release, Soderbergh—who hasn’t so far commented on Contagion’s revival—said the most disturbing thing in researching the film was that “everyone you spoke to said ‘we’re due for a big one’.”

And here we are.

“Last year I reviewed Contagion and said the scariest part of watching it was that in the back of your head, you know that this could really happen. Well… fuck me.” —Brett

Steven Soderbergh on the set of ‘Contagion’.

Contagion’s resurgent popularity can be seen as a compliment to Burns’ and Soderbergh’s diligent foot-work. As Burns told Vulture last week: “There’s been some strange shit going on in my social media, where people I’ve never met have done everything from accuse me of being able to travel to the future, to having access to God, to being a member of the Illuminati.”

Burns has none of those gifts. What he does have, he told Vulture, is relationships with well-respected scientists, including epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant (who was on the team that managed to defeat smallpox) and Columbia University’s Dr. Ian Lipkin, who refused to take part “unless what we did was scientifically authentic and verifiable. So from the beginning, I knew that I had to stay within the lines of what was possible.”

“Contagion makes real life less scary in the sense that Covid-19 is way less dangerous than the fictional virus. But it makes life more scary because Jude Law’s character is basically the President now.” —Brian

Reading recent Letterboxd reviews, it’s easy to understand why we’re all watching Contagion right now: to figure out our current reality; to understand how Covid-19 has spread; to learn what our responsibilities are; to marvel at the sight of comedian Demetri Martin in a hazmat suit; and to put faces to the many thousands of health workers, scientists and government officials who will help us out of this crisis. (“It’s like competence porn,” says Iana.)

Jennifer Ehle puts herself in harm’s way in order to save humankind.

What’s interesting in more recent reviews is the shift in attitudes towards the film’s style and structure. When Contagion was first released, audiences and critics often pushed against the clinical plotting, not to mention Soderbergh’s plainly brutal camera technique—isolating characters in the frame; jump-cuts to quickly advance a character’s fate. Whereas now, it’s exactly this hyper-realism that’s giving us, if not comfort, then at least the dose of frankness we need to be able to stick to our necessarily isolated lifestyles, and avoid the mistakes made in the movie (there’s plenty of food to go round, yo—no need to ransack the local grocery store).

“How this movie has a 3.3 here baffles me. This is a 4.1—a non-stop, ‘who’s-who-of-Hollywood’ pulse-pounder that worked even before every scene became highly relevant to our pandemic. Its filmmaking feels like a virus; it moves fast and exponentially—without empathy or hand-holding. Characters appear and disappear like tweets—here one moment, dead the next. Wash your hands.” —Aneesh Chaganty

Indeed, Burns told Slate last week, “one of the beautiful things I learned while doing my research is what public health really means. What I came to understand it to be was an obligation we have to each other.

Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle compare Letterboxd diaries.

“Until we have a pharmaceutically generated or a scientifically generated cure, we are the cure. We can be the cure. It means listening to public health officials and being conscious of your obligation to your fellow humans.”

But Letterboxd reviewer Jordan needs Contagion’s popularity to settle down now. “I need people to stop reviewing this movie. This is the social media platform I’m using to escape thinking about the coronavirus.”

For anyone else feeling like Jordan, our latest Letterboxd Showdown focuses on feel-good films. Submit your list of ten favorite uplifting movies by tagging it showdown:feelgood and we’ll meet you in a fortnight for a synchronized viewing of the most-mentioned film.