#he's had plenty of time to absorb human social norms personally but he's still not. like. human.

[lesbiankoby]

oh, nice! (i still need to read visions of v. tonight, i swear...)

tho, lol, when your kids can pound each others teeth out and recover before the end of the hour you do have to set down some pretty firm boundaries about "acceptable" and "unacceptable" behaviour...

i think *trish* getting involved in a time travel plot is actually quite fun by virtue of sticking her in a room together with eva lol

[whattaloser]

Why I’m a Leftist

I know I’m probably just some dude who reblogs cool stuff to most of my followers but I’ve got a nice long story/rant about my political beliefs here that I’ve been wanting to write for awhile

I am a leftist first and foremost because I value human life. Everyone matters. No person is inherently more important than another person. Everyone has inherent rights that should not be infringed. People who infringe on other’s rights are morally wrong to do so. In essence my leftism is based on doing what is right. Obviously everyone has their own opinion on what is right but what is vitally important is knowing why your moral code is right. This is why so many people become liberals or conservatives or otherwise rather than leftists. They simply do not know enough about how the world works. There are a lot of reasons they don’t know, not the least of which is intentional covering up history and preventing education. I don’t believe people who aren’t leftists are stupid, but I do believe leftists know more. It’s kinda fucked up but it’s the only way you can explain inconsistencies in other’s values.

My path to leftism was full of cringe. When i was 7 years old Al Gore was running against George Bush for president. I did not know enough to have a real opinion on it but I am happy to say that I wanted Al Gore to win. This thought was based on very little if any logical reason. I basically flipped a coin in my head I think. Or maybe there was some outside influence that I wasn’t aware of, like my older sister who I looked up to might have said she liked Al gore. Either way, from then on I was in favor of democrats and did not like George Bush. When 9/11 happened I remembered thinking how dumb it was that people lined up around the block to get gas. Even as a child I knew that some buildings going down wasn’t going to end the great nation of the United States. In general I thought the United States was a great country. I knew from movies and tv as well as elementary school history that the United States was the most powerful country in the world. 

I recall in Sixth grade my teacher mentioned she liked George Bush because he was against gay marriage. Somehow at the time my opinion was the opposite despite being raised Catholic. I believed in god until I graduated high school and suddenly my desire to be religious slipped away and so did my belief. I do not consider this a great loss. 

Sometime in middle school or early high school I had solidified my opinion that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was pointless and George Bush was a bad president. I was heavily influenced by movies and somewhat by video games that had imparted plenty of anti-war messages. Talks with my dad about nuclear missiles, watching History channel shows about world war 2, and playing Metal Gear Solid which had explicit nuclear disarmament messages, all informed me on the horrors of war. This was not enough to make me totally anti-military. In high school I wanted to join the military because I thought it was an easy way to get life experience and eventually pay for college. I was attracted to the Marines because of how cool movies like The Rock and video games like Call of Duty made it seem to be a Marine. I thought they were the best of the best. I was simultaneously against war, against veteran worship, and very pro-military. I was indoctrinated by years of government propaganda but also disillusioned by all forms of media including the book All Quiet on the Western Front which was about a soldier becoming disillusioned by witnessing horrors of war and the negative impact it had on everyone in his country. I spoke with a recruiter during my senior year and expressed my desire to be a Marine but I told him I wanted to wait a year after high school so I could get physically fit enough. The recruiter did not care that I was underweight and out of shape. He didn’t even care that I was very enthusiastic about joining, he was still putting on his best salesman demeanor which made me incredibly uneasy. The experience is supposed to pressure people into signing up on the spot, I think they even had forms for me to sign (i can’t really remember though) but I was not ready and was aware enough how I was being manipulated although not entirely cognizant. After that I no longer wanted to be in the military.

I also have to point out that I grew up in an unstable household. My parents were both loving but they were flawed and made mistakes and had problems. My dad was a typical Gen x man’s man. A little bit too emotionally repressed, but actually really good with kids when it came to play time and still is. He worked a lot because my mother couldn’t. My mother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as long as I can remember. Her medical bills related to her problems combined with other financially bad decisions by my parents caused my home life to be fraught. I lived in varying degrees of poverty until my parents separated and me and my siblings moved with my mother to her parents’ house away from my father. Prior to moving though, we endured great financial difficulty. We were unable to afford school lunches but could not apply for free or reduced lunches because technically my father made a lot of money, however it was all garnished for medical bills. My father always tells about how he bought a car that had hidden frame damage and when he attempted to sue the dealership for selling a bad car he lost and was garnished for that as well. Despite making over 25 dollars an hour in 1999, my father could not afford school lunches for three kids and couldn’t afford to pay the gas bill. Without going into too much more detail, life sucked and continued to suck until I graduated, at least financially. I still found plenty of joy and it wasn’t always that bad. We still found ways to have good things like video games and we could always rewatch old movies but there’s a lot of psychic weight that comes with being that poor as a child and I’m sure it affects me and my ability to empathize with others who in bad conditions. 

So i watched a lot of movies and documentaries, read a lot of books growing up, discovered internet forums at the age of 11, played video games, moved to a town that had a very large Hispanic population, and I even grew up poor. All of this life experience turned me into a very average liberal upon graduating high school. I was a very optimistic 18 year old. I thought science could save the world. If I was 18 today I would be an average redditor stereotype probably. The point here though is I still wasn’t a leftist. Only vaguely progressive and full of optimism. This is when I got sucked into the anti-feminist pipeline.

I can’t remember what exactly what I had going on in my life but I remember it was around the time of Gamergate. Everyone on the internet, celebrities, and pop culture were saying “if you believe in equality between genders you’re a feminist” an did not like that. And there was a ton of people online to tell me I was right in not liking that. They all said feminism was not necessary anymore because legally you couldn’t discriminate against women and I agreed. Gamergate made it worse for reasons too complicated to get into in this already long post but suffice it say I was “pro Gamergate.” This put me at odds with my closes friends who thought feminism was great and had no qualms with it, and were already embracing the idea of being a “social justice warrior.” Despite reading all kinds of anti-feminist think pieces and reveling in the discourse, I was still very progressive and liberal minded person. Still thought the military was bad, that black people were discriminated against etc. But so many aspects of anti-feminism were appealing to me as a white guy who tried their hardest to do what they’re told is right, had low self esteem, undiagnosed adhd and depression, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what feminism was. Two things got me out of anti-feminism though. The first and most important thing was having friends who were patient with me about it. I didn’t reveal how into anti-feminism I was because I was ashamed but they could sense it and pushed back when they could. The second thing that got me out of it was actually finding feminists online and reading what they had to say, staying away from poorly written clickbait articles that fueled misogynist tirades against feminism. After reading and learning from feminists it finally clicked. Our society is patriarchal and that affects how people interact with each other regardless of what is legal. Many of the complaints of anti-feminism talk about how men have it in society, so how can society be patriarchal. It’s because of patriarchy that men are put in bad positions. Some of the more self aware anti-feminists had retorts against these ideas but they were emotionally charged. There’s still some anti-feminists I have respect for because of how well prepared and logical they were when it came to disputing feminism. But when it came down to the fundamental tenants of feminsim all they could respond with was anger or outright denial of reality. (If you’re like I was and don’t understand how anyone can thing modern feminism is good please feel free to ask me more, I just can’t get into specifics in this long ass post) Anyways, once you understand patriarchy and how it affects an individuals actions then you can start seeing how other institutions and cultural norms can affect an individual. This is basically fundamentals of leftism. I’d say about 90% of my path to leftism was just naturally absorbing cultural and historical information through consumption of media. The most conservative people I know are people who haven’t read very many books or seen very many movies. I’m not saying watching Austin Powers at the age of 10 will make everyone a leftist but constantly recontextualizing the world by learning something new, even if you learned it from some dumb comedy movie, can give you better grounding in a shared reality.  Don’t know how to end this but I want to say when I was a teenager I thought “communism is good in theory but it doesn’t work in practice” and I had almost no historical basis for it other than the vague notion that USSR = bad despite having consumed a massive amount of media. None of it taught me what communism actually was, I didn’t know who Karl Marx was, and I had no clue why communism in the USSR failed. You can know a lot without knowing the truth so if you’re struggling with a loved one who is mind poisoned by conservative keep in mind that they know a lot but they’re missing something important to give clarity. 

This has been my Ted Talk

[tr1sm4tical]

Being Yourself with Everyone Else

Even the most zealous, and dedicated solipsist can’t deny that other people exist. Even if someone could be so self absorbed, detached, and callous to function as if they were the only real person that existed, they still have to rely on the systems of people they roughly engage with.  It doesn’t matter how rebellious, radical, or exploitative, even vicious; that a person gets when they’re alone in a forest of pine trees. We’re hardwired as human beings to live a social life. No matter how far out into the world, no matter how remote; it’s rare to find any person who lives entirely alone. Now of course, plenty of people go through periods in their life when they have lost a friend or maybe even their last one, but the bitterness of being alone is something that seeps out from the core of our psyche. Is it a lack of individualism to associate with and necessarily be influenced by other people? That would kind of impractical, in my opinion.  The stress underlying loneliness can be harder on you than a regular cigarette habit. Having a regular connection to other people is a basic human need, and it necessarily plays a role in who we become throughout life. The people around us influence us before we are decoupled from our mothers, and onward from there. Before we even solidify, all of us are woven into the environment on several levels.  All of our ideas of individualism, being yourself, or even just being a little bit self centered are all in reference to whats the unspoken norm of group cohesion and assimilation. This isn’t trying to say the idea of ‘being yourself’ is a fraud, but it’s in reference to the basic fact that people rely on other people. To go a little further, there’s an idea called ‘collective unconscious’ which essentially brings up the collective human experiences that we all largely relate to as the basic animal we are. It’s not something spooky like a giant cloud file for all of humanities mind, of some Indiana Jonesy hulabaloo.  Here, Carl Jung explains it well. “The existence of the collective unconscious means that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment.” -Jung, 1929.

 Without going in the Jung-hole, it’s suffice to say that he put forth a neat idea that merely as humans we all come into the world with a range of crucial and constraining instincts and other features. In many ways, the worldwide influence humans have had was defined by natural human shortcomings. It didn’t take years of study for humans to understand that we weren’t the most capable out of the box, even today people still are attacked by fanged and clawed animals [cats included]. Even so, it took just what we consider ‘human beings’ a bit over a million years of winding but determined steps to get us to where we are today.      Obviously, the software has a few issues, but all in all it’s usually pretty reliable. That ‘software’ is essentially where the collective unconscious exists, it’s the implicit aspects of being both a human and also an individual. Again, we are necessarily woven into the tapestry of life in the human community merely by being a participant in the human experience.   We are embedded in humanity before our lives even begin. From then on every experience we have influences the way we approach life and the decisions we have to make, the habits we rely on, and the person we live as. Some of this is in your control, some of it isn’t.  Back to being yourself though....being yourself involves knowing yourself as a person. There’s a difference between gliding through life in a shallow bliss and taking the time to see who you are and who you want be realized. One isn’t better or worse than the other, everyone has their own style, but being yourself kind of requires the ‘yourself’ part. Knowing who you are, what you are like, what your values and desires are, having insight and an awareness of how others see you: All of this is part of self- awareness.  You don’t have to agree with or support any sort of custom to recognize that the local social norms are a real force. Knowing the way that others react to the superficial layers at a glance, and how your behavior and presence affects others is a key part of being yourself. Seeing yourself outside of the ego is important to maximize self guidance. Being able to accurately perceive the world around us is essential to being able to be what you want to be. Everyone has their own right way to live, and everyone generally tries to navigate their own path toward that.   Being yourself involves taking command of your own life to shape it in the way that you choose, including changes you want to see that are needed to have a new way of life that is desirable. It’s a fluid process that’s automatically interdependent with the world at large one is becoming individuated in. Even in the most romantic visions of the phrase ‘Be Yourself’ evokes, one theme is always apparent: A person wants to become what they see as a better version of themselves. That measure, better [or worse] is relative to the human society that person perceives themselves in, so essentially being yourself relies on everyone and everything else.  

[scornfulsilverlining-blog]

Human After All - Human Verse

Name: Arturo Plateado Nickname: His parents call him kiwi, fern, seaweed, cucumber, and grass after he dyes his hair Gender: Male Sexuality: Pansexual Age: 19 Birthday: January 6th, 1998 Zodiac: Capricorn Location: City Occupation: Full-time student studying to be a historian Relationship Status: None for now Hair Color: Green/Seafoam Eye Color: Amber FC: Christian Camargo

Physical Appearance

Arturo’s hair is green, more like a seafoam green, and parted more to the left side. His hair is short, only reaching down to his chin. His eyes are amber, sharp, and calculating. He is six feet. He is lightweight. His skin is a pale tan color. Arturo usually wears very bland clothing, nothing with bright colors or unique designs. He tends to dress more professionally in dress shirts and pants though he can be seen wearing T-shirts when he feels like being more casual. Sometimes he will wear something green instead of the usual white and black because green is his favorite color. No matter what he always wears a red belt with any outfit. When it’s cold out Arturo will wear a very puffy black jacket with fur around the collar.  

Backstory

Arturo Plateado was born on the cold night of January 6th, 1998 in a bustling city to two loving parents, Galtero and Hisaka Plateado. He was a healthy though somewhat pale baby. Galtero and Hisaka were overjoyed. They had been together for two years and finally had a child to call their own.

Galtero and Hisaka met at the respective ages of 32 and 28 at Hisaka’s family dojo. Galtero lived in Spain for the first five years of his life, but his family soon migrated to the United States in order to pursue a better life for their son. Galtero remembered enough Spanish to hold a conversation and continued to learn Spanish even after migrating to keep his heritage alive. He speaks with a heavy Spanish accent. Galtero did not have the best life growing up. His family had enough money to live off of, but not much else. Sometimes they struggled to pay the bills or put food on the table, but they would always work it out in the end. Galtero saw his family’s struggles and strived to make a better life for himself just as his family wanted. However, Galtero was not the smartest person and did okay in school, average. He went to college to become an engineer since he was much better with his hands than his mind. He quickly found his passion in life and loved his job, but he was missing one thing: a wife. Being a bachelor was a lonely existence and he often visited his own parents. They encouraged him, his mother in particular, to find a wife, but life was not kind to Galtero. All the girls he met just did not click with him and after spending an entire year dating, he gave up. He would let whatever happened happen.

Seven years later, Galtero forgot all about his desire to be married. He filled up his time with plenty of hobbies such as baseball and tinkering and often volunteered to construct houses for the needy or at soup kitchens. With all the good fortune he was spreading, it was only a matter of time before some hit him as well. One spring he found himself with some extra time on his hands since his casual baseball league disbanded. While looking up different teams across the city he stumbled across the Watanabe Dojo in downtown. He had always been interested in learning martial arts and felt like his lithe athletic build would be perfect for it. He signed up for lessons at the dojo to fill up his free time. The very first time he walked into the Watanabe Dojo he laid eyes upon Hisaka Watanabe, his instructor, and fell in love at first sight.

Hisaka Watanabe was born in the United States after her family immigrated from Japan. She is a second generation Japanese American. She does not speak any Japanese and considers America to be her home. Hisaka’s parents moved to the United States to teach martial arts with the help of a sponsor. They established the Watanabe Dojo and have been successful ever since. Hisaka had a normal childhood and is a part of the middle-class. Her family has always worked in the dojo, and Hisaka grew up learning martial arts. She is an excellent fighter and loves what she does, happy to maintain the family tradition. Her two younger brothers work alongside her in the dojo. She went to school for business in order to learn how to support the dojo and improve it many years down the road. Incredibly busy with teaching hundreds of pupils each week and going on field trips, she never had the time to find a husband. She longed for one at night when she laid in bed alone, but otherwise never thought anything of it. Her work was much more important.

Although, Hisaka instantly took notice of Galtero with his arrogant smirk and sharp gaze. Hisaka is extremely flirtatious and found Galtero liked to play her games. Their fights were often said to be intricate dances of courtship. They both instantly fell madly in love with each other. They believed they had found their soulmate after all this time since both of them were older than the norm of dating. They truly believe in this little cliche and they are helplessly romantic around each other. Both of them are considered deadly apart, but put them together and they each become a cooing mess. After only a year together, they were married. They found a house together in the city, close to the dojo and Galtero’s parents. A few months after being together they were trying for their first child. They did not have to try for long and soon Hisaka was pregnant with Arturo.

Arturo’s childhood was better than most people could ever hope for. His parents were truly soulmates in that the relationship worked out. Even after having Arturo, they never seemed to leave that “honeymoon” phase. They continued to have date nights and were still mushy around each other. They had always wanted someone to cherish, so they were not going to waste that opportunity. When they did have their occasional quarrel they would make sure it was out of Arturo’s earshot, but they usually made up within a few days time since they could not possibly live without the other. They still made passionate love as much as they could and some of Arturo’s first memories were of stumbling into their bedroom to find his father on top of his mother “playing a game” under the covers. His parents’ lovey-dovey behavior began to embarrass him around the age of 8 and it continues to embarrass him to this day. But, his parents’ love for each other extended down to Arturo. They honestly loved him unconditionally and with everything they had. They would do anything for their son.

Not only did Arturo have loving and doting parents, but their financial situation was nothing to frown about. They were considered upper middle-class since Galtero still worked as an engineer and Hisaka at the dojo. They had plenty of money to spare after paying the bills, which they often used to spoil Arturo with anything he wanted and they often took luxurious family vacations; Arturo vividly remembers the trips they took to Spain and Japan since that was where his parents were from. Arturo may come across as a spoiled brat only because that was all he has ever known. He understands that he was lucky to have such a good upbringing. He understands that most people have to work much harder than he does to get what they want, but when it comes down to it he often takes things for granted like the clothes on his back, the food on his plate, and the roof over his head.

Another support system Arturo has are his grandparents on both sides and his two uncles. He is close with both sides of his family and he basks in their love and advice as well.

However, Arturo was a timid child who did not make friends easily. Arturo is highly intelligent, a trait he got from his mother, and this showed from a very early age. Arturo was able to talk and read faster than most children. By the time he entered Pre-K, he was much more reserved and observant than the other children. At first, the teachers thought it was a sign of abuse, but quickly came to find out it was simply his personality. Arturo was able to absorb information like a sponge and retain it well. Yet, Arturo’s social skills were lacking. He is not an empathetic person and emotions confuse him greatly. He is not good at reading people. He understands the basic emotions like happy or sad or angry, but anything beyond that is usually a mystery to him. He is blunt and straightforward. He is not an overly emotional person like his parents, but he is prone to outbursts since he likes to bottle everything up inside. His intelligence and somewhat odd behavior made him unapproachable, and Arturo never really made the effort to get to know the other children, fine all by himself as he preferred solitude. At home, Arturo was a bit different seeing as he was comfortable around his parents, but he still exhibited an introverted personality.

Throughout his school years, Arturo was always at the top of his class. School was easy for him. It did not challenge him at all, so he sought out ways to challenge himself at home. He studied languages and found out he was a polyglot. He began with Spanish seeing as his father was heavily influenced by it and spoke a bit at home. Galtero was more than happy to teach his son his native tongue. From there, Arturo began to study Japanese for his mother even if she did not know it herself. They learned together and with the help of his maternal grandparents. Arturo continued to study more and more languages as he grew up. He speaks Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Polish, German, Italian, French, and of course English. Arturo enjoys history and can spew out world history facts like there was no tomorrow. It is his favorite subject seeing as he loves learning about different cultures and he can easily remember important events and dates. He took a particular interest in ancient history and longed to be a historian. His dream was to discover something entirely new and have his name recorded in all the history books. Arturo is prideful of what he accomplishes and is arrogant. But, his father attempted to get him out of the habit of looking down on people who were not as smart as him since Galtero in no way matched his son’s intellect. Galtero was able to instill some empathy into Arturo, and Arturo often hears his scolding voice in his head telling him to be considerate. Though, Arturo still feels like an outcast and like he does not fit in thanks to his intelligence and his arrogance is his way of coping with this, making him feel special and not weird.

Although Arturo was always at the top of his class, he sometimes struggled especially with math. It is his most hated subject. But, struggling to Arturo is different than struggling to someone else. Math is the only class Arturo makes B’s in, failure to him. His parents assured him plenty of times that they did not care about his grades as long as he was trying his best, but Arturo worried about disappointing them or worse not being as smart as he thought he was. Arturo’s intellect was his pride, and without it, he was lost. Arturo developed anxiety when he was 10, a combination of bottling up his emotions, over thinking, becoming too stressed out, and a lack of social interaction. Occasionally, he will have panic attacks. His parents sent him to therapy as they did not want their son to suffer. Arturo has better control over his anxiety, but he is still prone to uncontrollable fits and panic attacks especially when he thinks too much.

Arturo’s natural hair color is a light blond, but he decided to dye it when he was 13 in order to be just like his parents. Galtero’s natural hair is the same as Arturo’s while Hisaka’s natural hair color is a light auburn. Galtero chose to dye his hair a light blue in college as a dare, but ended up loving it so much that he continues to dye it to this day. Hisaka had always wanted to dye her own boring hair and after meeting Galtero she found the courage to. Sticking with the soulmate cliche, she dyed hers a pinkish red to match Galtero’s and continues to dye it as well. Arturo dyed his hair a light green or seafoam color seeing as he was the mixture of his parents. People often correct him and tell him he should have dyed his hair purple to which his response is that the values would not necessarily blend perfectly to create purple due to genetics, but would more likely mesh into a light green. After dying his hair, his parents began to call him “kiwi”, “fern”, “seaweed”, “cucumber”, and even “grass”.

Arturo has always studied at the dojo alongside his mother and his father when his father is not working. As such, he is also an excellent martial artist, though he has never had to truly use his skills.

During his teenage years, another thing to add to Arturo’s anxiety was his parents’ soulmate love. They always talked about how they were destined to find each other and how they were meant to be. It made Arturo worry about his own future and finding “the one”. He believed he needed to be like his parents and find that special someone who he would instantly click with. He knew his parents were older when they finally found one another, but Arturo figured he needed to start looking now before it was really too late. He was not as introverted as before and had made a few friends, but he was still a bit of loner and still preferred his isolation. Essentially, he had learned how to function in a social setting, but there are still many things he needs to learn. Arturo began looking for his soulmate despite this, but had no such luck. He has never even been on a date, unable to calculate how to go about asking such a thing. He is not just sticking to girls either. Arturo is pansexual, willing to be with anyone as long as he believes them to be his soulmate. His parents are also very open-minded people and he knows they would not care about who he chooses to love. The only problem is finding that someone.

Arturo managed to graduate as Valedictorian from his high school. His impressive grades and volunteer work that he does with his father were enough to get him a full scholarship into the college of his dreams, a local private university. He can live at home and still attend college, which was the most important thing to him since he loves his family so much. He is going for his Master’s degree in History in order to pursue his dream of being a historian. Arturo is turning a new leaf in his life as he begins university and with his nineteenth birthday right around the corner. But, there are still many things Arturo needs to learn about life and the real world. He has been sheltered and now he needs someone to come along and show him what life is truly like. He is also still desperately searching for “the one” and hopes to find them before his time at university is over.