#humans don't have to deal with that complication
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I think this is a very useful analysis that helpfully puts into words some of the scattered thoughts I've had, but have not been able to centralize, articulate, or otherwise had the spoons to offer post-election.
The one thing Bernie has not gotten and never gotten, even with all his Champion of the Working Class cosplay crusading (as a wealthy Vermont millionaire who has accomplished very little during his long tenure in office aside from repeatedly fracturing the Democratic party), is that a lot of the American working class see billionaires (as pointed out above) as aspirational role models, not evil parasites. Scholars can and indeed have written many long sociological, political, and analytical papers about the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" problem, wherein working class and poor people vote against their own economic interests in order to elevate grifting xenophobic populists whose policies only benefit the already-rich. For one thing, this presupposes the "rational individual" economic-maximization model of human behavior, which was popularized in the free-market 1970s and 80s, and has never been true in any meaningful sense, but as pointed out above: America is addicted to the "hard work makes you rich and billionaires have clearly worked to earn their wealth" mindset. They are equally addicted to the "temporarily dispossessed millionaire" fallacy, wherein if they too just Pull Themselves Up By The Bootstraps, that is the only thing stopping them from being equally wealthy. It's not, but we're still absolutely throttled by the "Republicans Are Better For The Economy" myth that just played a huge part in Trump's second election win. What's empirically "real" or not matters less and less.
Bernie's brand of faux-leftist populism is so toxic in America precisely because it pairs this apparent destruction of the American Dream (hey why do you want to destroy my chance of becoming a billionaire?!) with virulent anti-American tankie-lite rhetoric spouted by the online left, who see America as the source of all evil in the world despite benefiting enormously from their upbringing in America and access to American privilege. We can (and again, have!) written many, many papers about the founding and continuing social ills embedded in America: its establishment on the back of slavery, racism, genocide, and so on. But when it comes to day-to-day electoral politics, the average mid-to-low-information American voter does not give a shit about complicated historical debates and generational injustices. They just don't. They care about how much things cost at the grocery store and what the vibes "feel" like to them. After a brief upsurge of social acceptance in 2020 with BLM/George Floyd, they've also lost interest in dealing with systemic racism, and are inclined to accept Trump's easy-scapegoating rhetoric. This is not limited to white people either; witness the major gains he made with Hispanics in particular. The ones who are able to vote in presidential elections are US citizens and see themselves as safely insulated from Trump's mass-deportation policies because they're not undocumented (even if they have friends and relatives who are and who are very much NOT safe). They want to preserve their own piece of the pie and are not acting in grand pan-Latino racial solidarity. Nobody says they have to -- they can focus on their own personal interests just as much as white voters -- but they're definitely one of the communities who are in the soonest for a rude wakeup call.
Looking at the election results shows that America is, as ever, an extremely divided country. This election was not a landslide for Trump. The Republicans benefited from an extremely favorable map to pick up WV, OH, MT, PA in the Senate, but added no House seats and still have a tiny majority of about 3 (which may shrink further with special elections and/or unexpected departure). Trump got 49.9% of the vote; Harris got around 48.5%. The American electorate is not left-wing; it is also not immutably right-wing. It is primarily transactional, "what have you done for me lately," and cursed with low information literacy, sophisticated disinformation campaigns, and short-term memory that is worse than a goldfish. Abortion passed everywhere except in FL (where it needed 60% and got 57%). As ever, the public liked Democratic policies, but voted for Republicans to punish Democrats for not implementing them fast enough. That is one of the most maddening paradoxes in all of American politics and it fucked us good this time, but that's the twist of the screw. The Republicans also benefited from the post-COVID anti-incumbency that kicked Trump out in 2020. A lot of the scary things that happened in the last four years -- rising prices, ongoing threats to democracy, Dobbs, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, etc -- were not necessarily Biden's fault, but they happened on his watch and contributed to the sense of visceral fear and threat that is always a better predictor of electoral behavior than the flawed idea of Rational Economic Maximization.
As such, despite the avalanche of "What Democrats Must Do Now" postmortems, we should definitely point out that Bernie instantly threw them under the bus for not being "pro-worker," when the Biden administration was the most pro-worker, pro-labor, and anti-corporate in recent history (and due to the electoral backlash it received as a result, quite possibly for a very long time). Bernie primarily conceives of the American working class as white people, often white men, engaged in customary trade-union pursuits, which is outdated and inadequate and reeks of the rancid "the left wasn't nice enough to fragile insecure white men" takes that are latently or openly misogynist. Biden did a hell of a lot to address their economic interests, and they punished him for it, because what is at stake, in their minds, isn't actually their economic interest (even if that's what is often used to describe it) but their position of unquestioned power as white men. They will happily give up the chance of better economic policies if it means continuing to assert their authority over other marginalized people; their lot might not be great, but at least they're still white. And indeed, still men. Bernie complaining that the Democrats didn't cater enough to White Men is, objectively, bullshit.
As such, I can tell you that one way that the Democrats can get back to electoral relevancy, which is definitely likely in 2026 and 2028 if we can get that far, is not by listening to Bernie. "Destroy the billionaires" paired with toxic tankie rhetoric driven by the online left competing with each other to be more extreme and unpleasant is electoral poison and that's why Bernie's chronic campaigning got him nowhere and fatally splintered the Democratic party in 2016, allowing Trump to win in the first place. It's a dud. The end. There is nothing positive or constructive in that vision, and while riding aggrieved populism can get you decently far, it also has to be a populism that's rooted in some idea of America, however shallow and lip-service. "Make America Great Again," despite how much Trump does to destroy America in every conceivable sense, works because MAGAts wave American flags and feel like a righteous and integral part of their country. The fact that in this election cycle, Democrats actually embraced love-of-country rhetoric, American flags, and appeals to fundamental "American" values, no matter how cringy and schmaltizily-nationalistic it feels to educated liberals, is an important part of getting that ground back. It promotes the idea that you can love America (however defined) and vote Democratic, and we can't give that up. Because then yeah, everyone waving the flag will be a jingoistic MAGA fascist, and people who like and respond to that imagery (which is a decent majority of ordinary Americans) will want to associate with them by default.
Likewise: a lot of online leftist/Bernie Bro rhetoric focuses on the magical revolution fantasy that America will just disappear and/or be Gloriously Overthrown and thus, somehow, all injustice from the tyrannical government will come to an end and we will live in a perfect utopia forevermore! (Uh, ask the Bolsheviks how that worked out for them.) America is an enormously flawed historical and geopolitical entity, but one thing it is not going to do is suddenly disappear overnight because of deranged Moral Purity Posting by so-called leftist keyboard warriors. It still matters how its massive power is used, and as anyone with a brain cell was well aware beforehand, Trump is only going to abuse it ever more egregiously. He will try to stay in office (if he doesn't die beforehand); he will pack SCOTUS with more corrupt toadies; he will do his best to wreck anything and everything that stymied him last time. He will undoubtedly succeed in at least some of that, and that is very scary. However, as I have said before, his total success is neither inevitable nor even very likely. If we are going to continue to hold the line and find victories where they come, we need to do a lot of things, but chief among them is not listen to Bernie F'n Sanders. He can, indeed, take several seats.
Bernie is wrong. He has always been wrong and is still wrong. The flaw in his theory is what he deems the “wealthy elite” versus what everyday Americans consider them to be. Voters don’t see all billionaires as the elites. They see college-educated liberals on the coasts, some of whom are billionaires, as elites.
Bernie-style populism didn’t land because billionaires figured out long ago they could undermine it by being socially right-wing, and the working class would forgive their wealth and privilege. That’s why this same demographic is willing to make it rain for grifters like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson. That’s why they worship the wealthiest man on the planet like a God and consider him some real-life Tony Stark. People dismissed Donald Trump as a shameless attention-hungry New York oligarch until he called Mexicans rapists. Then he shot up to the top of the GOP primary polls. The working class didn’t think much of Elon Musk until he said “pronouns suck.” Then he became their hero. A scion of working-class Pennsylvania lost his US Senate seat last week to a hedge fund manager from Connecticut. West Virginia elected their richest man to the Senate after electing him governor – as a Democrat and later a Republican. Ohio tossed out their longtime Democratic senator, known for his strong support of labor rights, for – literally, no joke – a used-car salesman.
You can’t tell me the working class in America thinks being a billionaire alone is what makes one a “wealthy elite.” There are significant factors at play here Bernie is either oblivious to or purposely ignorant of.
In college, a professor once told me that Communism never succeeded in the United States because we are too religious and proud as a country. Religion, traditions, and culture were never widely discredited the way they were in Europe and Asia, where the clergy and nobility kept the bourgeoisie in figurative chains for centuries. The relative ease of social mobility made America unique compared to its Western counterparts. Historically, American progressivism has been focused on expanding social mobility – initially limited to only white men – to identity groups who had been denied it at the start: blacks, women, and immigrants. We have done it, with various amounts of success. While it may seem counterintuitive, Americans pride themselves in being the nation that pioneered the idea that wealth and status can be achieved through ingenuity and hard work and not just based on a lucky roll of the genetic dice, as it was in the Old World. It doesn’t mean we don’t have generational wealth in our country; we do, but since it isn’t the sole way to achieve wealth and power, we don’t care nearly as much about destroying all of it. Further, we will happily endorse it if the oligarchs and the aristocrats vow to promote and protect the social values we care about and the social hierarchy that benefits us.
It’s one of the reasons I believe Bernie could never beat Trump. If you ask working-class people what they want: an anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual billionaire or a Vermont socialist backed by kids from Harvard and UC Berkeley who hate our traditions and customs, the working class will always back the billionaire.
–Nick Rafter, "Bernie Sanders Can Take a Seat"
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wait, what's the difference between hpv and hiv and aids? i thought hiv was just aids and hpv was like. another term for hiv please 😭
okay. before I do this. I do want to remind everyone that this kind of info is incredibly easy to seek for yourself, with the help of simple search times like "what is hpv" or "hiv wikipedia," and I do really encourage doing that! learning how to seek out information is an important skill!
but god I am going to do this anyway, here we go.
HPV is human papillomavirus, an extremely common viral infection that virtually every sexually active person will contract at some point in their life. there are nearly 200 stains of HPV, nearly all of which are harmless, but there are 2 that can (but don't always) cause genital warts and 13 that can (but don't always) cause cancers of the cervix, anus, vagina, vulva, penis, and throat. roughly 90% of cases of HPV clear up and go away on their own within two years of contraction without ever causing any health problems; the majority of people who have it will be asymptomatic the entire time and may never know they have it.
HIV is human immunodeficiency virus, a virus that attacks and drastically weakens the immune system when untreated. it is considered an STI but is not spread exclusively through sexual contact, as it can also be transmitted via unclean syringes shared between people as well as from parents to children via childbirth or breastfeeding. while HIV can be fatal, usually when it develops into AIDS, as I posted about earlier tonight proper medicine and management can allow people with HIV can live full, healthy lives and even completely negate their risk of transmitting HIV.
it's also important to discuss PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), which can be taken by people who do not have HIV to drastically reduce their risk of contracting it, and PEP, which can be taken for 28 days starting up to 72 hours after potential exposure to HIV to greatly reduce the risk of the virus taking hold.
AIDS is acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. AIDS develops when HIV is left untreated and progresses over years, when the immune system has been severely depleted. at this point people are very prone to what are known as "opportunistic" infections and cancers, further health complications that their immune system is unable to fight off as it ordinarily would. people with AIDS often deal with a state of constant fatigue, fever, chills, weakness, inflammation, and weight loss.
so, you know. slightly different things!
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I think it’s interesting, considering how most live-action superhero adaptations kill off the villains after their debut, that both The Batman and The Penguin end with the villains not just living, but set up to return and somehow cause Even Bigger Problems down the line. Is this just because it’s the first Batman film adaptation that’s a capital-F Franchise, so the writers need the villains to stick around long-term, or is something else going on?
Almost entirely comes down to the fact that The Batman was not meant to be Batman's origin story - by Reeves' own admission, it was the origin story of the Rogues Gallery. They got the Cloverfield and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes guy and he did a story about the boots-on-the-ground gritty perspective on larger-than-life terrors emerging from the ruins and failings of human civilization, taking the struggles and wars and laborious processes that others shy away from and putting them front in center. It's just this time, instead of kaijus and parasites attacking and destroying the city, instead of apes emerging as the Mad Max warlords rising from the ashes to fight over the world, we have Batman villains in that role instead.
To me, that was actually the conception - if we weren't going to do a Batman origin story, but we were going to do it in the early years, I thought well, in the comics, the rogues gallery characters often are creating their alter egos in response to the fact that a masked vigilante shows up in Gotham called the Batman.
And so I thought, oh well, what we could do is see all of the rogue's gallery characters in their origins, like Selina Kyle before she's Catwoman, and that we could go into, as we're looking for a suspect, we could go to a nightclub, a nightclub could be the Iceberg Lounge and we could see a pre-kingpin Oz, and we could see, you know, a Riddler who is declaring himself the Riddler sort of because there's a Batman. And so all of that was sort of built into the conception. - Matt Reeves
It's far from the first Batman film adaptation to be a capital-F Franchise, even if that aspect was there - Reeves initially pitched the movie as an HBO series, and throughout production pitched additional show ideas such as an Arkham show or a Gotham PD show, The Penguin being the only one that survived as far as we know. This pulls off an origin from the Rogues Gallery better than every other Batman media ever made, and there's a couple of reasons why it does so and why the villains get to take center stage here:
Part of the difference between the way Nolan tackled realistic Batman, and the way Reeves tackles realistic Batman, is that Nolan needs realism to explain Batman, and Reeves needs realism entirely in the service of making Batman weirder. Pattison Batman is the weirdest Bruce ever put on film almost entirely because he lives in our world while still being Batman in every way that counts - Keaton Bats slept upside down in a cave, but he lived in a Tim Burton world. Adam West Bats is weird, but everybody is like that or even weirder than he is, he is the comedic straightman to everyone else. And where as Nolan needs Batman to be the thing that makes sense, Reeves needs Batman to be the thing that doesn’t make sense.
Nolan wanted weird difficult irreducible villains opposite a logical pragmatically sensible Batman, and Reeves wants exactly the opposite. For Nolan, even besides the Joker who was defined entirely around the lack of a real explanation for him, you have his take on Two-Face, Bane, the Al Ghuls, characters that don't demand that much reasoning or explanation because they can act and exist in ways that defy logic, while Batman's the guy who has to hold the center of logic and reason. Where as here, Pattison Batman is the most interesting and complicated and larger-than-life figure this world is dealing with in much the same way that Ledger Joker was for his movie, and everyone else is in the position of starting out and having to deal with Batman and the paradigm shift he brings - nobody else in the movie is quite the character they were supposed to be, that's something they're all growing into in response to their nightmare city and what this titanic freak in armor represents to them.
Even The Riddler is ultimately explainable, human, reducible to his tantrums and vulnerabilities, even without you knowing in-depth his character and backstory that would be elaborated for Dano's Year One. Even The Penguin - he may be larger-than-life, he may be unexplainable on some level, but we know all too well all of his failings and feelings and life story and all the cracks in his persona that he killed Victor to try and bury. But Batman? Next to everyone else, he is still an anomaly, he is just Like That, even to his own detriment and that of the city, and he learns that he must apply being Like That to something better.
Reeves is not interested in doing "Batman vs [X]" movies, the movies are going to be focused on Batman's arc first and foremost, which means the villains will never really take them over the way they've usually done - this is a world where it's the villains who react to Batman, not the other way around. This frees them from the burden of having to exist in direct relation to how much they can directly menace Batman, and it makes it so that these are characters that can carry their own spin-offs, which is probably a lot easier for WB to work with because these are spin-offs that they don't really have to get Pattison to show up for, but they can construct in ways that don't even need Batman to be physically there. Even after The Penguin, they might not have to do that Smallville/Gotham song-and-dance of teasing a main character who'll never get to be here, there are a lot of other things happening in Reeves' Gotham besides the existence of Batman, even if the existence of Batman has changed all of them. So structurally speaking this series has a ton of room for reocurring villains, and building it has been one of their top priorities. In fact, this ONLY gets to do so because the movie already laid out the entire groundwork for them and how it all ties together.
See, the way Batman stories do the rise of a Rogues Gallery and how it affects the city and therefore Batman always follows a sort of a 7-step program:
Gotham City is ruled by crime, crime that takes away the Waynes (Falcone / Carl Grissom (89) / Falcone backed by the League (Nolan) / the Falcone-Hill-Wayne triumvirate (Telltale) / Gotham S1 and first-half of S2)
Crime begats Batman, who beats Crime
Crime + Batman = Weird Crime (Jack Napier becomes Joker after an encounter with Batman (89) / "we still haven't picked up Crane and those other Arkham inmates btw check out this weird card" (Nolan) / Black Mask and the international assassins + Joker's rise (Arkham) / Children of Arkham (Telltale) / the Indian Hill experiments and patients (Gotham)
Weird Crime Replaces Crime (The Long Halloween / Joker takes over the mob (89) / the mob is so impressed by the pencil trick they give Joker all the money (Nolan) / Joker literally replaces Black Mask in the process of becoming Batman's main enemy (Arkham) / Penguin assassinates Mayor Hill and the Children enter a war with Mayor Dent (Telltale) / Indian Hill breakout and Maniax cult and etc (Gotham)
Weird Crime is a Rogues Gallery now (Penguin and Catwoman and Max Shreck in the sequel (Burton) / Joker and Two-Face become separate problems, Bane + Talia + Crane + Catwoman in the sequel (Nolan) / after Origins a whole asylum full of them (Arkham) / Riddler + The Pact and John becoming Joker proper (Telltale) / Gotham S3 with Tetch and Riddler and the Legion of Horribles
The city is changed by the new paradigm
Batman responds / expands or retracts in response to this change
(4 and 5 don't necessarily always happen one before the other, mind you, frequently you do have a Weird Crime Rogues Gallery before Weird Crime replaces Crime at the head of the table)
And you can apply this to most other Batman stories that don't automatically start and stay at level 5. But where as all of these have to stretch the process across sequels and continuations, The Batman is the first Batman work that gets to do all 7 of them in one row. It gets 1 and 2 done offscreen before the opening act and shown to us how they happened throughout the movie's reveals, 3-4-5-6 comprise the Riddler's plot + the other United Underworld members roped into it, and it ends with 7. Even the Batmanless spin-offs follow the process: The Riddler: Year One covers Eddie's perspective on 1-2 as he enters stage 3 and prepares it for the movie, and The Penguin covers 4-5-6, leaving us waiting for Bruce's response back to stage 7 where The Batman ended.
And up until The Batman, the process behind the creation of a Rogues Gallery had never really been much of a process - comics that go into the transition like Long Halloween/Dark Victory just show the fall of Carmine Falcone -> the freaks waiting in the wings causing it or happening immediately after. Gotham tries to work that escalation gradually and it starts relatively "normal", but it's always dancing around the premise and the central black hole and the building blocks don't have anything to do with each other - the gang wars and Penguin have nothing to do with Bruce investigating a conspiracy, which has little to do with Gordon and Bullock investigating weird serial killers who keep escalating, and then eventually we get that Hugo Strange was building freaks in his basement at the orders of the Court/Ra's the whole time until they all just escape. You can piece together how Batman works that aren't about this transition ultimately touch on most of those 7 stages and have their own version of it as soon as they introduce Gotham City in a pre-Batman/pre-villain state, but the connections are always rather tenuous and not necessarily connected to each other (and it's fine, y'know, not everything in a story always has to come from the same source).
But everything in The Batman follows a long chain of dominos that had to happen for this system to become the way it needs to be for Batman villains to emerge. Everything started in that one night Thomas Waynes saved Carmine Falcone, everything started from that ensuing connection and Thomas' failures leading to a city ruled by mobsters for 20 years and the sheer level of rot and corruption and human misery that creates and justifies the existence of Batman, and thus The Riddler in his example. Everything we get in The Penguin is the result of this paradigm shift and total civic collapse, showing the destruction of Carmine's empire as well as his legacies torched and mutated by Sofia and Oz respectively. Everything is still connected. The United Underworld guys featured in the movie live and dwell in entirely separate spaces and represent entirely different things, and they're still all connected in the same chain of dominoes, which allows them to expand and cover entirely separate narrative real estate while still giving it all cohesion.
The movie never has to specifically establish a system full of supervillains or made for them, it has to establish a system so utterly fucked and dominated by Falcone, so utterly failed by every institution and body of government and system imaginable, that it creates Batman, and the minute Batman arrives and survives long enough to be a third power / a fifth state, people in his wake trying to respond to him or do the same things he does, as a response to the same afflictions he faced and to his example or influence, are the only logical thing. Without needing to literally show the other rogues waiting in the wings, The Batman established an entire world of possibility just by very smartly using the 4 big ones + Carmine and showing why and how this regular American city becomes a place where supervillains bombing city blocks and running for political office can become a facet of daily life. Joker, Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler - positioned as separate from each other as possible to show the ways in which this is, and maybe always has been, spreading fast out of Batman's control.
And now with The Penguin, reinforcing the chokehold of crime in the city in it's old ways as well as the corrupt mutated new ones brought on by our boy, as well as a new Batman Villain (possibly two, if Eve Karlo ever gets her hands on suspicious make-up) arriving from Penguin's side of things so that it's not just Batman who has a Rogues Gallery to deal with, not just Batman who has terrific enemies waiting in the wings for a chance to enact their own forms of justice and revenge, no, that's just what life is like in Gotham now, forever.
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For the Find Your Way Home AU, are there any character relationships or connections that you think would be different from canon because the ninja all meet each other at a different point in life/under new circumstances? Like, for example, are they less close with Zane because they only just met him and didn't know him while he still thought he was human? Is bonding with Lloyd easier because they didn't deal with him trying to go all "child villain" on their asses?
ohhhh ohhhhh the Zane dynamic in the group is so fun because he's not human, he knows hes not human, and he's actively keeping it a secret. he's lying to them! for a long time! because of this, hes effectively always keeping the others at arms length. he can't risk anyone getting close because they might find out. this puts a wedge between him and the others until they find out about his secret (which is... seasons down the line. oops.) also they think he's weird ❤️ and all his extensive knowledge, seer abilities, and android nature only add to that. it takes them longer to warm up to him.
bonding with Lloyd is definitely easier because to them he's just some kid signed up for a tournament he should NOT be in. they want to protect him!! and Lloyd also has a lot going on that really helps him relate to the others, and he's more willing to be open about those things. doesn't know his dad, who left when he was a kid? hey Kai! feels he's destined for something greater and feels the pressure to live up to that mysterious bar? Nya! complicated relationship with a parental figure? helloooo Cole! Different in an unexplainable way that sets him apart from others? Zane! has a hard time making friends and uses sarcasm to shield himself? Jayyyyy!
Cole and Jay take a loooong time to trust and rely on the others. they have each other, and that's a crutch they both constantly fall back on. they know where they stand with each other and don't have to worry about guessing games with the others.
Kai is not really into the whole Elemental Masters thing, but he forms a close bond with Lloyd and Nya really pushes him to embrace his destiny so he finally warms up to the idea. part of him is still resistant so that can cause a bit of contention between him and zane especially, who'd fully committed to his role as the White Ninja.
Nya's relationship with kai suffers a lot during this because Nya always KNEW she was destined for greatness!! and then she learns about this amazing prophecy... that her brother is part of. her brother, who wouldn't even have come along if not for her. who wants no part of it. HE'S in the prophecy. and he's still trying to baby her and take care of her. she's bitter towards them all but doesn't show it
feel free to ask about specific relationships!
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I think a lot of Cas's feelings of being lost are because of how recently he kind of "gave up" on heaven and his identity as an angel who could lead the other angels back to their original purpose. Angels are supposed to protect and cherish humanity, and it was much easier in earlier seasons for him to feel righteous in his defiance because he was right that protecting people meant preventing the apocalypse and standing up to angels who disrespected humanity.
But the things that he did between seasons 6-9 in service of that goal were... not great. He always had the best of intentions, but it absolutely decimated heaven. He is directly responsible for a LOT of death. So even though he may still feel that humanity is worth protecting and even though he still adheres to that goal (and sees Dean as the primary embodiment of that), he's lost his perspective on HOW to do that and what his role in that should be. Despite how close he has become to humans and despite taking a human family, he still has a fairly cosmic concept of what protecting humanity should look like. This is what led him to being Lucifer's vessel in season 11, and I think the fact that this plan ultimately failed and that Dean was the one to save them all simply by being his beautifully human and compassionate self was really difficult for Cas to deal with.
It's extremely visible in most of season 12 that Cas is struggling to see his place in the world. He can't find/defeat Lucifer and he also can't seem to fit in with the family and be a hunter. He sees himself failing at everything he set out to do, and the fact that most of the primary antagonists in season 12 are just humans doesn't help. He loves humans, but he still doesn't really get them. He feels useless against the Men of Letters and the government and witnesses to the crimes they investigate, and it is a primary part of Cas's personality that he really needs and wants to feel useful. (Relatable!) I don't think it's a coincidence that there are multiple times in seasons 11 and 12 where someone refers to Cas as the Winchester's dog or pet (and it's also not a coincidence that Rowena's spell that nearly killed him and did kill some angels gets called the "attack dog" spell).
And then... Jack. The idea that protecting humanity means protecting this child is less complicated than the quandries he's been mired in for years now, and more uniquely suited to Cas's skill set. They have the Lily Sunder episode, where he has to question his previous stance on nephilim, not to mention it was killing a nephilim that helped Metratron pull off his spell at the end of season 8, something Cas is surely still beating himself up about, and the fact that Ishim and Metratron both lied and manipulated Castiel into it provides a really strong link between the two incidents. Protecting a nephilim instead of killing one must seem like a chance at a type of redemption. His own status as something caught between human and angel allows a certain feeling of solidarity, and of course there's the simple fact that Cas is one of the few things in the world that is both willing to do this and actually has a chance of standing up against the kind of threats the child might be facing.
There are a lot of implications at the end of the series that Jack wasn't what Cas wanted him to be, that Chuck won, that they never actually got to break out of the narrative and be free or happy. But it still matters that from Cas's perspective, this was his choice and that protecting and guiding Jack was both personally fulfilling (became a father, rediscovered "who he is") and was good for the world (because Jack is good for the world). It wasn't about "serving" Jack in the way he served heaven, because that wasn't how he saw it for himself. He was always the one who was quick to tell Jack that it was okay when the situation had changed and maybe Jack couldn't fulfill his "destiny." That he still loved him no matter what, that he was willing to protect him, even from the rest of their family. He was Jack's father, not his servant.
Cas says this, in 15x02: "Even if we didn't know that all of the challenges that we face were born of Chuck's machinations, how would we describe it all? We'd call it "life". Because that's precisely what life is. It's an obstacle course, and maybe Chuck designed the obstacles, but we ran our own race. We made our own moves. And mostly, we did well with that." Maybe that is hopeless naivete on Cas's part, but it meant he died happy and fulfilled. That's better than what Dean got!
forgive me if this doesn’t make any sense but… if the “one day” that “something changed” is supposed to be jack being born, then idk if i like the implication that, before then, cas had just always felt lost and purposeless. are we talking since he left heaven, all the way back in s4? like idk but i’d always thought it was pretty clear that even when cas is unsure and making mistakes and misguided, even when he feels lost at times, starting in s4 when he began to help dean, cas had chosen his purpose to be protecting humanity and protecting his family. and he never really stopped trying to do that, that desire never really gets lost, even if he takes a wrong turn at times ie s6. so like that quote is confusing to me cause imo cas’s vision from jack should have just reaffirmed his desire to protect humanity, but the quote implies that he had found a new feeling of purpose with jack? what purpose, if not loving and protecting humanity? which imo was always there?!?
sorry for the word jumble, but your comments on that quote, a quote i’d not really paid much attention to in the past tbh lol, got me thinking 😅
this makes complete sense!!! and you definitely got my brain wheels turning so thank you! no yeah absolutely, it's weird, and the more i think about it the weirder it gets. here is the dialogue we're referencing, btw. i'll give the benefit of the doubt here and say: there are a lot of days cas could be referring to. it could be the day of lucifer rising, for example, or the day he was resurrected from purgatory, or the day he was resurrected from the empty. it could be any number of days. i cannot conclusively state that any one day is "the day."
but here's what led me to assume it was a jack-related day: that since jack has been back, cas has been hitting the "jack's destiny" talking points hard, and that he ends the speech with "i found a family, and i became a father. and in that, i rediscovered my faith. i rediscovered who i am."
on jack's destiny: here are the examples i can find from s15, all from 15x12. there aren't any additional discussions involving cas about jack's destiny in 15x11, 15x13, or 15x14.
so this is what immediately sprang to my mind when i heard cas talk about purpose. that in season 15, at this point, cas believes his purpose is to help jack fulfill his destiny. he is connecting his worth to jack's "success" in terms of jack doing what he's "supposed" to do. he has faith in jack. he has faith jack will be good for the world. without jack he is lost.
and this actually echoes 12x19 the future. this is from the production draft shared by @spnscripthunt-inactive. notice the themes of feeling no longer lost, of having faith, of feeling "normal" "for the firt time in a long, long time." it may be worth mentioning that both 12x19 and 15x12 (where the above quotes come from) were written by meredith glynn and robert berens.
all of this together reads to me as: cas is defining himself and his own success by jack's success. and that changed on the day jack showed cas a vision of the future, a vision of "paradise" (according to cas). cas needs to believe his faith and trust in jack are correctly placed, that he is doing the right thing. he needs to believe he has a purpose, and he has decided his purpose is helping jack fulfill his (jack's) purpose.
and to thing #2 that made me believe the speech was about the day cas decided he was tied to jack: the way he closes the speech. "i found a family, and i became a father. and in that, i rediscovered my faith. i rediscovered who i am." finding a family and becoming a father are two separate things. finding a family happened much earlier. becoming a father is necessarily tied to jack (i'm not inclined to count claire here - not because she doesn't matter, but because i don't believe cas OR claire view cas as her father). and the way it reads to me is that when cas says "in that," he's talking about "in becoming a father." because it came later. i read it as "finding a family helped, but what really made me rediscover my faith and who i am was becoming a father." and that aligns pretty closely with what is said in 12x19!
so to your point (oh wow that was a long tangent, sorry). literally everything you're saying is spot-on to me. i think we can trace the roots of cas feeling lost and seeking a purpose all the way back to s4 - definitely! i think it's a huge struggle for him because he wants to have a purpose, he wants to feel like what he does matters, but it is difficult for him because he feels like he doesn't know what's right. prior to season 4 his purpose had been clearly spelled out for him (he's an angel, he does god's will). and while he no longer accepts that purpose as his own, i think he craves something as simple and straightforward as that purpose. it's really difficult for him in those s5-s12 years when he's bouncing around, trying to figure out what he should be doing! but i think you're absolutely right that the underlying theme, the underlying purpose is always protecting humanity, protecting his family. i'd add an element of "doing what's right/stopping evil" too. but yeah, cas DOES care about humanity. he DOES care about the little guy. he DOES want to prevent human suffering and misery, and to help relieve it wherever he can. it matters to me that cas cares about humanity because that's one of the things that makes him so different from the other angels. i think over time his tactics change to achieve the goal of protecting humanity, but the goal itself does not change.
so does being jack's father = protecting humanity? kind of. if we believe that jack will successfully usher in paradise, then yes, cas helping jack fulfill his destiny would make things better for humanity and arguably protect them (or reduce the amount of protection they need). but i don't think this has the same level of attention/care towards humans that cas has previously shown. it's about making sure jack succeeds so he can fix everything. it's not about making things better right now.
and this is where i get into opinion territory: i, like you, don't like the implication that cas has always felt lost and purposeless! lost, yes. unsure of his purpose, yes. but i feel like the framing here is that cas has just been aimlessly drifting about for all these years, totally incapable of finding a purpose. i do not think jack and god are the same but i don't see much of a difference between "i am an angel, i serve god's will" and "i am a father, i serve jack's will." especially because there is a chance, however slight, that jack was manipulating cas. that the vision jack showed cas was not a guarantee.
it feels to me like jack hands cas a purpose the same way god handed cas a purpose. and i thought the beauty of cas choosing free will was that he got to choose his purpose himself. this feels like it was chosen for him and he went along with it because it was easier to have a purpose selected for you by a being of unfathomable power. and i sympathize with that immensely! and i also think there was profound beauty in cas discovering his purpose on his own, even when it was a struggle.
#spn#son boy#I love this gay angel a lot#spn meta#can't stop won't stop with the spn meta today. gotta get it all out of my system.
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Hi Pia!
I was rereading the first Ice Plague story the other say and got to the bit where Eran pimps out Mosk (oof) and has that horrible encounter with that one fae that forces him to watch.
Was that fae one of the ones that fed on sexual violence/rape? He seemed to get a lot out of violating Eran at the same time as Mosk.
Also in the fae realm I take it that there's less safety net / social or cultural morality around sexually exploiting someone for money? Most of the fae that came across Eren and Mosk seemed to realise that Mosk wasn't a willing participant but they didn't seem to care or mind much. And this was in public establishments.
And yeah I know this sort of stuff happens in the human realm too but it seems more acceptable in the fae realm?
Like... most human hotels have policies in place that require staff to call the authorities if they witness anything untoward because raoe and sexual exploitation in the human realm is mostly illegal. But that doesn't seem to be the case in the fae realm? Like there's no police force or social safety net or a fae equivalent to human rights organisations or shelters.
I suppose Ash would consider the human realm superior to the fae realm in that regard right? I think I remember him stating that the human realm was better morally because abusing kids was illegal in most places and also that education in the human realm was better because is was more accessible and less based on class ect. Unless I'm misremembering .
Sorry for the wall of text lol. I'm just really curious and have a lot of questions. Thanks for taking the time to read/answer
Was that fae one of the ones that fed on sexual violence/rape? He seemed to get a lot out of violating Eran at the same time as Mosk.
He was!
Also in the fae realm I take it that there's less safety net / social or cultural morality around sexually exploiting someone for money?
Generally speaking, it just depends. Among most fae, there's less legal protections. Like, there's no one Eran could go to, in order to report what happened. There's no one Mosk could go to either. But if they were in a city of common fae, there might be police-style force of people they could go to.
But you couldn't, say, go to the Unseelie King and be like 'I was raped by this fae' because the response is going to be 'that fae needs to rape to survive, but if they're doing it for any other reason, let me know.'
It's a world that simultaneously understands these things really suck to experience, but in many cases (with the exception of child sexual assault) treats them like many other things that suck to experience. It doesn't make them easier to deal with, but it does give many a different perspective.
Most of the fae that came across Eren and Mosk seemed to realise that Mosk wasn't a willing participant but they didn't seem to care or mind much. And this was in public establishments.
And yeah I know this sort of stuff happens in the human realm too but it seems more acceptable in the fae realm?
It is, especially in certain cities, or in desperate times (it was definitely desperate times during The Ice Plague). It mostly depends on who runs the bar/pub/establishment, honestly. Some will allow that stuff, some won't. Some will kill you for it without blinking.
I suppose Ash would consider the human realm superior to the fae realm in that regard right?
He maybe thought that way once, but I don't think he does anymore. Like, we can see in The Nascent Diplomat that almost all fae (including Augus and the Raven Prince) have extremely strong and visceral reactions to child sexual abuse. It's clearly very frowned upon and if anything, more decisive action is taken in the fae realm than in the human realm (where most child rapists never get sentenced or see any consequences for their actions - Oxcillian was killed without a trial lol).
Something being illegal doesn't actually mean the people committing the act are seeing consequences for that act in any consistent or meaningful way.
Stertes attempted to rape Eran, and Mosk murdered him. It really just depends on the fae that are around at the time.
I would say the system is uglier in some ways, and cleaner in others. It highlights the power differential and class structures in a more stark way, but our human world has those too, and they're often more hidden, insidious, and sometimes even more damaging.
I find that really interesting to think about. I don't think Ash thinks the human realm is better anymore.
#asks and answers#fae tales verse#fae tales#game theory#the ice plague#the nascent diplomat#it's very much just a lot more situational#there are no really overdone structured justice systems outside of very specific cities#but the cities that have them adhere to them strongly#like some of the cities visited in book 3 of The Ice Plague would definitely have had#laws against rape and cold-blooded murder#with the *exception* of fae who need to do those things to survive#fae just understand that different fae need different things to live#humans don't have to deal with that complication#administrator gwyn wants this in the queue
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Naruto Modern Fantasy AU - Bijuu & Patrons
Order and Chaos are two of the oldest divinities and are responsible for the creation of the systems that exist within the Nexus (my world). Respectively, they're famously known for the creation of the Order of Angels & Life (Order) and Hell & Death (Chaos). Other achievements include the Seven Heavenly Virtues and the Seven Sins (Partially out of commission).
At an early part in their life, Order and Chaos formed an understanding relationship that developed into romantic feelings. The result of that romance and their union were the bijuu, their nine (related) children. Very soon after Shukaku was created, they separated and began their long-standing and bitter feud. In addition to their together children, they each have their own offspring, the Goddess of Life and Creation & the God of the Dead (prev the God of the Dead, Death and Decay; alt title as King of the Dead).
In the older days, each Bijuu was worshipped and had devoted followers because they were so important, and at the time were the only minor gods around. Eventually, after the creation of the New Gods, the Bijuu lost relevance and were in danger of fading away. A deal was struck so that they could maintain their form and power but they had to have a patron that they fused their soul with. In rare cases, the patrons are willing participants who offer themselves in exchange for help. In most cases, the patron is an unwilling sacrifice, pushed by devoted followers (or power-hungry men) who want to keep their god alive. In the very special case of Mito Uzumaki who offers herself to keep Kurama alive by making a deal that she'll honor his wishes in exchange for power and safety,,, she absolutely does not follow through. This builds up decades of resentment, especially when he is passed down to Kushina who does the same, which starts off his rocky relationship with Naruto.
In another very special case, Rin, who is forcibly made a patron to Isobu, dies within the early stages of his soul intertwining with hers. Later she is resurrected, as the initial soul intertwining process was botched, and Isobu and Rin's souls are now one in the same. Meaning that instead of switching out consciousnesses like a regular patron and god can do, they share it. After the resurrection, Rin also displays physical features of Isobu such as red sclera and protruding spikes.
Patrons receive their patron god's powers and abilities in exchange for either sacrifices or completing quests/tasks, often they're centered around the patron god's title. For example, Matatabi requires Yugito to exorcise and guide spirits/ghosts to the afterlife. In Killer B's case, him and Gyuuki are just vibing. Gyuuki has a historically good relationship with B's family and all of his patrons volunteered willingly, so he freely exchanges his power. Fuu was unwilling sacrificed, but thankfully Chomei adores her enough to provide her power for protection, even helping her leave her followers.
Kurama - God of Vengence
Gyuuki - God of Persistence and Adaptability
Chomei - Goddess of Luck
Saiken - God of Patience
Kokou - God of Determination & Freedom
Son Goku - God of Courage & Strength
Isobu - God of Still Waters and light rain showers
Matatabi - Goddess of Exocisim and Safe Passage to the Afterlife
Shukaku - God of Overindulgence and Partying
#naruto au#naruto#nexus#moon posts#Nexus is basically a system of pocket dimensions that can sometimes bleed into the human realm#lemme tell u rn they were NAWT raising those children#using offspring instead of children b/c they're not bio related??? idk how to explain#very complicated relationship as they're considered creations but have been raised and taught by them (more or less)#Life considers the bijuu as her siblings#Dead does not (which is funny b/c Order favors him the most even though he's not hers lol)#Rin and Isobu are basically the same person instead of her just being a host#long story short: Life went behind some ppl's backs b/c resurrection via patron was NAWT the deal#the akatsuki are not going after the patrons or bijuu like....they could but i don't rly wanna write that#i thought about keeping kushina and minato alive b/c kurama would'nt rly form properly with his patron dying saurrr....yeah#i did say minato died though already and i gotta stand on business#kushina however#if im bringing rin back im gonna bring her back too omg#but instead of resurrection its stubbornness that keeps her alive through the extraction process and extensive therapy omg#like her soul got ripped in half and she's essentially comatose for 12 years which they keep a secret ofc#hiruzen hides her from naruto and ofc that bitch is dead when she wakes up#Rin helps with the recovery process even before she wakes up#instead of naruto and sasuke going with jiraya to get tsunade rin goes b/c no one else can heal kushina atp#soul recreation veers into black magic and the creation of life#tsunade doesn't wanna do it but does it anyone b/c shes family#tsunade ends up binding her soul to the goddess of the ocean and seas b/c of their heritage#i forgot to mention that kushina's a witch. Uzumaki is a witch coven surname#ummm idk that was it i think
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does anyone else want to not get married but just have like... a lifelong partner, or however long is appropriate
#like that's been how i've felt for a few years now#ok xavery#i wish marriage as an institution didn't exist i want women to have as few barriers to exiting a relationship as possible#i'm sure others feel the same#like if you're serious about someone that's between you and your partner... why get the legal system involved...#i know there are barriers in place to make it difficult to be partnered and living together without being married but#it just shouldn't be that way imo#like animals don't gotta deal with all this complicated shit to have lifelong monogamy... but humans are forced to be different#not to mention marriage was literally created to transfer ownership of a woman from father to husband aka treating her as male property#like i get how marriage can be helpful i.e. gay marriage#i just wish there was a way to go without it as well
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.
#the thing is. you should believe survivors#also my ex after we broke up tried to go to half of our mutual friend and tell them horrifying stories of abuse he was dealing with#it wasn't even planned smearing campain (I don't think it's his style). he was truly hurt. some things really di happened. some even#happened the way he told it. and some were blowed to 'I went to work with bruises every day' (he was grabbed by hand by other partner once#and had bruises because he was so white-skinned he bruised like from touch)#or how I forced him to live with other man that hated him and turned his life to hell (he forgot to mention that it was my disabled brother#he flew away from our abusive mother as soon as he turned 18 and I gave him shelter. after asking partners to consider this seriously#because it's big commitment. I also stated several times that I'm willing to move out with him if it's unpleasant. also this 'living hell'#was him ignoring my partner completely after he yelled on him several times because as he said he didn't ran away from home#to suffer yelling again)#so yeah. it didn't work that time because my friend actually know everything from me long before my ex came to them#they nodded politely and never talked to him again#but it lingers. and it majes me look really critically at any call out or accusation.#person could be really hurt. really harmed even. and still there could be biases or misunderstanding or any human messiness#it sounds like girl had a horrifying experience. it also looks like she kept illusion of being fully on board and loving it.#was it believably? or he just didn't care#did he pick her because she was young and inexperienced? or because she told him she's interested in bdsm?#did he tried to help her when she was in bad place? or was he calculatingly buying her silence?#was he creepy or was he awkward?#honestly I don't know even... what kind of proofs you can get there#like we have her statement. we have objective thing — texts and vids. we can have Gaiman own statement#so what if he will repeat what stated in messages: it was consensual she literally wrote what she want me to do etc#believe survivors. what if everything she told is true too. but also what in messages are true too#what if she was scared and hurt and also told him yes and more and please master. because people are complicated#would he accused of not reading her mind? would there be charges on not checking enough. HOW WRAP MY MIND AROUND IT#like it's all is ne genuinely trying to understand what's next and how it could be wrapped at all#for the record: even if it was absolutely 💯 consensual and girl like completely lying about everything etc#he's still clearly fucked up and things were messy for a lot of reasons. it's bad!#but there's difference between 'it was rape or coercion' and 'it was poorly planned affair and he should've be more considerate of partners#feelings'. and in any way. hope that girl gets help
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alright, but... it seems like i am in a mood for angst this morning because just imagine this: misao meeting someone that reminds her so much of ryu and having all of her childhood memories just rush back to her in one foul swoop despite the fact that she's tried really hard to bury them. because if misao allowed herself to think about them for a second, i have a feeling she would just completely breakdown because misao doesn't even have a picture of him or anything, so she forgot what he looks like and what his voice sounds like. so even if she saw him on the streets of gotham... misao wouldn't even recognize him because it's been so long.
and the fact that she has become like a ' human ' in that aspect somewhat enrages her because misao secretly HATES having to pretend like she is anything but who she is + like i believe i have talked about once but didn't get super deep into talking about, is that she may or may not distrust humans automatically upon meeting them. though this sense has lessened over the years, it is still slightly there due to her mother's death haunting her. and being forced to face her past like this where misao is not prepared for it mentally would be kind of devastating for her, NGL. (but y'all should totally give misao someone who reminds her of ryu anyhow, and i'm not saying that to be evil or anything. i'm just saying it because there has to be some way that she works through her issues eventually and with the way she is now... i don't think that misao would be willing to open up to someone else about them. so something has to act on her externally. )
#ALL POWER DEMANDS PAIN AND SACRIFICE: musings.#NO SLEEP OF THE INNOCENT. NOT FOR YOU: character study.#ahh don't we just love being greeted eith angst at 10:51 on a monday / j AHH i'm just kidding y'all but... yeah.#i am out to metaphorically grab my poor oc's by the throat this morning for whatever reason JSJSJ#but just to expand on this idea a little bit: i feel like the kind of person that would remind her of ryu would be a selflessly kind-#and courageous person because that's exactly what misao saw him as as a child. like although he was younger than her misao saw him-#as the 'stronger one' of them both and she was always kind of jealous of him for this because whenever something bothered him he would just-#simply keep on trucking along and take the difficulty of whatever he might've been dealing with in stride. but misao in her own mind has-#never been like that. she has always been hung up over things for too long and wanted to run away from thing's whenever she's faced-#challenges rather than face them head on because she would rather DIE than be vulnerable and someone who has humanity when she is supposed-#to be 'above them' and thus sometimes misao just wishes that she could physically carve out her heart sometimes because she-#cannot take all of the pain that has been stored within it over the years. like the pain of denying yourself intimate connection with-#other's and always being rough on yourself because you HAVE to be perfect or people are going to think you're weak. though being vulnerable-#certainly doesn't make you weak. misao just has a rather unhealthy view of her own vulnerability although she can see that in other's it is-#something that is necessary because of everything she'd been taught in her time becoming a psychiatrist. misao is just sooo-#complicated under the surface and that's why i love her y'all
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11. what would your muse consider their worst failing?
hello, @absensia, and happy sunday! thank you so much for the ask :D i just want y'all know that i appreciate every single one of these!! but alright, well... to tell you why barton views this particular thing as being his worst failing, i'm going to have to give you some backstory first. so please bear with me while i explain! so, as you may or may not know, barton currently has four kids. two of which are biologically related to him and the other two being adopted. though, back whenever he was first starting off as the dollmaker, barton actually had five kids. and this fifth child he had was named julien.
julien was different from the rest of his siblings, like jack is, in the way that he seemed to have experienced some form of trauma before barton had even adopted him that caused him to be very sensitive in relation to other people's emotions and actually made him act a bit jumpy. but this didn't change the fact that julien was kind of affectionately regarded as ' the best of all of them ' by barton's other kids whenever he was still around; and that was because julien would often try to protect his siblings, even in situations where he could get severely hurt, and he seemed to have this sort - of mellowing affect on barton because of just how likeable of a person he was.
the best way that i could describe what made him so special is that he was SUCH a good listener and had a way of making people feel welcome around him, which may be a bit surprising to hear considering the often dark + terribly gory reputation of the mathis family, but julien also really didn't like what he had to do while he was a part of their family sometimes. so you can imagine that whenever barton lost him to someone as sadistic as the joker... he was beyond devastated. not only because julien was like a figure of light in a family that could be the epitome of overwhelming despair, but because barton was the one who told him to go assist the joker with one of his ' schemes, ' as the man had contracted his help to do a rather grisly act to him — which would be to cut off his face — and julien had never come back from that meeting with him.
and although one could make the argument that barton couldn't have possibly known that that would happen, especially considering that he didn't know the full extent of just how bad the joker was at the time, he still very much blames himself for it. because barton believed that he should've known better in the end and gone there himself instead of treating this job like it'd be like any other one that they'd done, when it really wasn't. now just to give you some more context before i go on; if there's one thing you should know about barton, it's that his relationship with his children are probably his most complicated, so i do believe he does hold some kind of genuine love for them... but it's not a love that anyone can easily understand and one that likely isn't healthy at least half the time either.
but he felt legitimately torn up inside about it even a year later, and today, it's still isn't something that he likes to talk about. it was by far his greatest failure both as a father and as a person in his eyes. plus, knowing the fact that julien died alone and probably in a lot of pain, too? it was so painful for him that barton would swear up and down that it felt akin to someone shooting him right through the heart. so, if you were to ask him what he would do if he could go back in time and change one thing about his past, barton's answer wouldn't be that he would save himself from the cruelty of having to grow up under wesley's roof, or to make it so that his mom didn't have to leave him and he'd actually get to know her, or even to spend more a little more time with marcy... though, trust me, he has thought about all of those things.
it would be that he'd save julien. because he deserved so much better, in his eyes, than to be killed at the age of seventeen whenever he still had his whole life ahead of him and to have his comments about him being scared to go confront the joker completely dismissed. and this is also something that barton hates himself for. how to feels to have your feelings disregarded is something that barton is shocking familiar with, after all, and it's not a good feeling at all. but the fact remains that he can't do anything about his death now. all barton can do is grieve him at night, whenever he has no choice but to be alone with his thoughts, and he looks at past photographs of their entire family that have long since faded. of julien.
#YOUR NEED GREW TEETH: character study.#ANGER'S HELPED ME STAY ALIVE: headcanons.#uhh okay... who put the onion slices in here y'all ;;#i honestly don't know whether this one or the past one was more sad but i suppose it isn't a competition JSJSJ#i just love torturing poor ol' barton don't i? / j nahhh nah he's anything but poor.#though i do feel like barton's story can be somewhat sympathetic sometimes. from how he had to deal with having a c*nnibalistic serial-#killer for a father + having his mom be forced to leave him as well as julien dying and barton feeling an IMMENSE amount of guilt bc of it.#and i feel like that might not even be all but i don't wanna bum anyone here out any further so JSJSJ let's just put a pen in it for now#i hope you liked my response though and that you're having a great day!!#tw: mentions of a child's death.#tw: guilt.#tw: mentions of unhealthy family dynamics.#and i thought that i should add that that of course doesn’t EXCUSE his horrific actions... i just want to explain the way in which barton-#demonstrates his humanity ( or what's left of it at least (': ) and how things may be more complicated than they appear on the surface.#because barton is not entirely evil but he's also VERY MUCH not a good person. so yeahhh
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adding "what accountability actually looks like" and "managing expectations" on top of "resilience" to what I am having to learn this year
#this experience is so multi-faceted and honestly i am irritated with it right now#i don't like myself that much right now because this is unlike me and this feeling is kind of ugly#i know this makes no sense but it just sucks being a human sometimes and having to deal with complicated emotions lol#i also feel so selfish idk man#personal
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I hate it when a book is fascinating and I have to stop reading to do things like being a reasonable adult who work 🙄
#misc#I'm reading the dark forest#second book of the remembrance of earth's past trilogy by liu cixin#and it's crazyyyyyyyyy#it's so much better than the first one#i mean i loved the first one but the real suspense only start once you know what's gonna happen#and it's such an interesting way to narrate something that is in fact one of the main trope of sci-fi#but instead of having the thing happening and dealing with the aftermath#you have the whole humanity getting ready and evolving precisely cause they know what's gonna happen#sorry don't want to say what is the thing in case somebody wants to read the three body problem#and it's worth all the complicated science stuff honestly#only downside of this book is that it is written... by a man#and it shows#and i want to punch the hell out of Luo Ji lmfao#but the story is so good#i really live for anticipation#must be why i don't watch any tv shows anymore with their drop all season#it killed what i love most about story#waiting and internally screaming w#anyway this trilogy so far is really good#from where i am#if i had to resume I'd say it's a timeless scifi plot with a totally unconditional way to approach it#the write like a man is worth being ignored (or like tried)#also the writer is chinese#and sometimes i can see how the approach of some stuff would have been different if it was written by an American author#anyway gotta cook#more reading before bed
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to every medical professional ever who complains about how working with fat patients is "harder":
why the hell did you go into medicine thinking it would be easy? for anyone, in any case? why the hell did you go into medicine thinking it would be an "Easy" career choice?
you're literally there to prevent people from dying, falling sick, or becoming permanently injured. that's an extremely difficult job no matter who you're working with. someone who can't keep on enough weight to survive is just as "hard" to deal with as someone whose weight genuinely impacts their health. all health issues are complicated and thus "hard"
even treating a cold can be difficult when someone has autoimmune issues. people literally die from the flu every single year due to complications. medicine is not and will never be "easy". claiming that fat people are "harder" to work with is a bullshit excuse that isn't even true. there are "average" weight people out there who struggle with extremely intense health issues that are not "easy" to deal with.
skinny and "average" weight people still can deal with horrific and difficult health issues. skinny and "average" weight people can develop cancer. they can have diseased organs. they can have issues with their red and white blood cell count. they can have life threatening allergies. they can frequently need surgery for a variety of reasons
surgery will never be "easy" no matter who you're operating on. a simple or "easy" surgery is still difficult. blaming fat people for medicine being difficult is taking the coward's way out. fat people do not make practicing medicine any more difficult- it's an inherently difficult field to get into
if you seriously get into the medical field because you believe it will be "easy" you're an idiot. it doesn't matter if your patients are critically thin, average weight, or fat- all of their problems will be "hard" to deal with because human health is scary. even if someone is dealing with a less "difficult" issue it's still going to be hard. don't go into medicine if you want a free ride through life: you're the one who's wrong if you seriously thought medicine would be easy.
#cripple punk#crip punk#cpunk#cripplepunk#actually disabled#disabled#disability#chronically ill#chronic illness#chronically chill#our writing#about us#fat lib#fat liberation#medical fatphobia#fatphobia
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have you tried being kind in the face of pain? maybe that'll get you more bitches
Misanthropists... you are not evil for your thoughts on humanity being negative... I don't share the same beliefs or sentiment about humanity, but your experiences are valid, and you don't owe anybody love for the human race. Nobody owes anyone positive feelings, especially if there's a justified reason for those negative feelings.
Shoutout to the misanthropists who are nonhuman because of their misanthropy, by the way. As well as misanthropists who are misanthropic due to being disabled and were often mistreated by humans due to their disability.
As long as you aren't harming anyone else based on them being human, you're fine, and I don't think you're evil... I see it almost the same way humans hate mosquitoes with a passion. You have every right to feel the way you do, and you don't owe anybody an explanation for your feelings.
#being aggressively kind is likeable.#being hateful at hate gets you more hate#'oh but ur not being kind to prev' because i dont want to be kind to them#but i think if i WAS kind to them i could fix them#but also i don't care they sound like a 12 year old who's having issues on the internet#one day they'll grow up and go “oh god i was so cringe and terrible” while sitting outside as a bee flies to them and they feel no fear#and they are calm and safe and they can see the flowers dancing in the wind#and they'll be eating their favorite food while the river nearby splashes happy bubbly sounds#and they'll have nearly forgotten all about their hatred towards others#and they'll find good in this world#or they might end up running themselves into a ditch of despair but i am not here to babysit them and care for them.#i have my own issues to deal with#i'm just waiting on something and it's taking its time so im on tumblr on a random syscourse blog#giving prev a nice idea to contemplate or smth idk#touch grass maybe? that would be good. pick a flower. watch the clouds.#anyway this is too long a tag ramble for op's post i apologize op#also people's feelings on the human race can be very complicated#i hate a lot of humans but i love that humans exist so.
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Leo just came back from his "trip" across the universe, all beaten up and tired, only to find out that Splinter already passed away.
But, honestly, this comic spoke to me a little more personally. I'm going to leave some of my thoughts under the cut.
Uh, I guess trigger warning on mentions of death? And some personal experience.
So, I basically went through the same as Leo, and less than a year ago found out that my father passed away. My situation is more complicated, but I still know the feelings your going through in this situation, when the realization strikes you, when you feel grief, regret, when you blame yourself for not being with your parent, when you're denied from being able to say goodbye and have to live with this feeling. And, in my case, I even blamed my father at some point.
I won't go into much details, just will say that I haven't been in touch with my father in years. He wasn't a bad person, he wasn't a drunk, he never did anything bad to anyone, he was... Complicated. And this all lead to one episode after which he stopped communicating with me.
In short, his pride was more important to him than me (at least, this is how it felt), he wanted to teach me a lesson. And years after, after he probably realized the mistake he made, he wasn't able to make himself to finally talk to me again because it was too late.
And I was... Angry? Hurt? Because I felt like I was left to deal with my mother and other things alone. I felt like I didn't matter to him, despite the good moments. I still live with these feelings and thoughts of guilt, and will live with them till the end of my life, knowing he passed away with no one around him.
I'm not angry at him, I mean, it's pointless? It won't change anything. Time's already lost. I only feel this grief over us both not being able to make the first move and try to fix everything between us.
Despite how things turned out I still remember those good episodes with him when I was a kid, when he would come from work late and despite my mother's complaining, we would spend at least an hour together watching a TV in my room.
Why am I writing all this? Not sure, maybe to leave a little message about not loosing the moment? Because human life is short, and you have only one chance.
You don't have Mystic Mikey to send you back in time and fix everything.
And I just think about how Rise makes me relate to a character more and more...
#rottmnt spoilers#rottmnt comic#tmnt 40th anniversary#rottmnt#my art#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#riseofthetmnt#rise of the tmnt#sketch#rise leo#rottmnt leo#rottmnt fanart#tmnt leonardo#tmnt#tmnt2018#tmnt 2018#rise of teenage mutant ninja turtles#save rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#teenage mutant ninja turtles#rottmnt leonardo#leonardo hamato#vent
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