#i know there's a lot of self hatred in this

[ahappydnp]

Hey so I hope this is okay to ask as i’m a bit confused and crazy atm. In the WIQYT screenshots going around again about the doc, the last one talks about Dan having self image issues. I was curious if you could possibly help spread some light on the subject maybe? I remember always seeing him posted on the proana blogs back in the day frequently, and even in Dan and Depression he says his lexapro made him “gain loads of weight” but it never seemed like anything visually changed. I know you’re not a mind reader and trying to understand another persons self image is impossible, I guess I just maybe don’t understand where this comes from. I know he used to rag on himself in videos by putting pillows down his shirt to signify that he was chubby as a kid even tho he never was from the pictures available. I’m aware this is very parasocial but I’ve been going through a lot self image wise and he never got to make his documentary where he talks about it and idk. To me, Daniel is lowkey a philosopher and i’m so desperate to hear what he has to say on the subject. Can you think of any times he’s talked about this kind of stuff? (Sorry for this being such a downer anon i just kinda feel like i need to hear about it rn and i don’t know where to look)

I hope your weekend is amazing and filled with joy and laughter!

like you said, no one knows what goes on inside someones mind especially things like insecurities. but i do think it's two seperate issues that dan has talked about (under the cut for sensitive topics)

i think it's important to remember how society treated weight in the early 00s, obviously it was muuuuch worse for women but boys would also get ridiculed for their weight regardless of their size. i assume that dan did get picked on for being bigger (more than likely he was probably just taller than his classmates but kids just really like generalizing words like "fat" and that sticks in your brain). it was such a shitty time for body acceptance as a whole and he was bullied so much i'm sure people did throw in weight comments just to add to the blow.

and like everything else that's going to stick and then when you're a little older you just repeat this truth that other people told you that "i was a fat kid and fat=bad just like gay=bad so i'm going to agree with them" of course that was suuuuuuper toxic and unhealthy and dan definitely did even more damage peddling casual fatphobia and making insensitive jokes online. but he was pretty openly struggling with his body image from the get go (all the ED comments he made in 2009) and as we know, there's generally another root cause. dan's talked about his self hatred when he was younger (particularly stemming from the bullying and his internalized homophobia) at length and it makes sense that manifested into body dysmorphia the second part is in that screenshot from WIQY he was specifically talking about gay men's beauty standards which is a whole different issue altogether. he's talked a lot about his baby face and how he's felt insecure about his lack of "masculine" features and build. he's talked about how people don't take him seriously because he doesn't look like "a man". there's also the added layer of him being the poster child for ~pretty boy twink~ who's now getting older and aging out of those very rigid beauty standards solely because he's no longer 21. but gay men can be incredibly toxic when it comes to labels and what's attractive (i mean think about the fact that grindr literally has a body type filter so you can exclude whole subsets of people). so he's not saying that he's not attractive or not the general beauty standard, it's that he came out and fell face first into gay standards discourse because he was actively engaging and consuming queer community in a new light

allll of this to say i COMPLETELY get how it can instinctively rub people the wrong way when dan howell, who was famously coined "the hot one" for years and has had people drooling over him his entire adult life, says he's insecure. it can feel like a slap in the face if you don't consider his own struggles but i do think he's self aware and healed enough to know that he's very much within societal beauty standards (tall, straight sized, white, eurocentric features) and has actually benefited greatly in his career because of his looks. and he's unpacked a lot of his fatphobia and has made a point to be vocally body positive even going back to like 2016/2017

[golden-witch]

Years later, I still think about how Jessica laughs while telling her cousins that Kinzo slaps Krauss at the dinner table when he's displeased, up until the day he dies.

I know that Genji's character is largely panned because he and Kumasawa hid Yasu away as a maid, but I'm starting to think that it was tragically her best option. Genji and Kumasawa want Yasu to inherit Kinzo's money. They don't want to send a baby into the Japanese fostercare system-- who knows what awaits her there. Ryukishi does a very good job outlining in Higurashi book 3 why people can be hesitant to trust that system as even if it's for selfish reasons, once that child is gone, they're gone. You can't help them.

Umineko has a central theme that child abuse is projected self hatred at its most extreme. The child comes from you, actually or metaphorically. You shape them in your image. Harming them is like self harm. it's partially about the self-perpetuated agony of hurting an innocent thing, of making a bad situation worse for yourself and actualizing yourself as an unlovable monster.

Eva becomes an abuser to Ange at her lowest point, convinced she's responsible for the massacre itself. It's maybe too painful for Ange to love her. Natsuhi is abusive to Yasu because she feels unworthy of a child, it's how she's been made to feel. She becomes a reformed abuser, not rly when she has a baby, but when she learns how to self-soothe (represented with her self-talks with Beatrice). Rosa is the closest to Kinzo. In a way, maybe she mirrors Kinzo's former position as the inconsequential child with no expectations, overlooked and constantly seething at her lot in life, unable to move on from her lost love, someone who craves freedom and loathes responsibility. Paradoxically, she is the kindest adult relative even when she's tormenting the person she's responsible for.

Kinzo wouldn't treat Yasu better if he knew about her parentage. The Lion scenario is probably a big farce. It was unfortunately always within Yasu's best interest to be not far but not close to him either, so he could see her as just a child, not someone that resembled him or represented his failures as a human.

[tuituipupu]

one thing that genuinely made me feel so profoundly sad the other night scrolling my dash was how common it was to find posts of ppl just saying how much they hate themseleves in so many different forms.

often actually using the word hate.

this is such an overused word nowadays that i genuinely feel like people have forgotten what a strong word that is. it’s not normal to say you hate yourself THAT often.

i don’t like using the word ‘normalised’ bc again, this word has been overused to extreme levels but it’s become way too normalised to just throw out there publicly how much u hate yourself.

[pearlofthewoods]

obviously he'd fucking hate how whiny and pathetic the twilight vampires could be sometimes, but putting that aside for a second...

if spike was a twilight-vampire™, what do u think his special vampire gift would be?

[littleoddwriter]

So many people -- especially cis men -- not understanding why Elisabeth takes the Substance in the first place, and then continues to take it, despite Sue destroying her/them, is really frustrating for me to see.

Listen. If you make a video essay or write an analysis or whatever, but you don't understand possibly the most important theme of the entire movie, then maybe... do more research first and don't just continue to say everything about said theme is "stupid" because you fail to understand it. That is stupid.

Elisabeth is plagued by intense self-hatred that's been fuelled and made worse by outside forces; i.e. comments made about her age, body, importance, and worth -- and how all of that depends on her being young and sexy; but also just the general misogyny in our society and the industry she works in. People, who have been assigned female at birth, are confronted with that kind of misogyny from day one, essentially.

And Elisabeth is so desparate in the movie, so full of raging hatred toward her own ageing body that she'd do absolutely anything to "go back" and continue to live the life she's known best and felt "most comfortable (worthy)" with. Thus, the Substance is the very real chance she gets to do that with. It works well at first, until "Sue" becomes too greedy, for the lack of a better word.

Here's the thing where most people get confused, despite how much the movie emphasises it.

Elisabeth and Sue are one. They are still the same person, simply split into two bodies, but with one singular consciousness, which basically goes from one body to the other week after week. They both experience the same things every week, but are so dissociated from the "other self" that to some people it may seem like they aren't actually the same person, because Sue often doesn't seem to remember exactly what Elisabeth did during her week, and vice versa.

To me, that's not as confusing because I deal with dissociation myself, and my understanding of it here would be that Elisabeth's self-hatred forces this kind of dissociation between her true self and Sue, who is the perfect version of herself. She's so focused on Sue being perfect and better than her "true self" that they've become different people in her mind.

In her own mind, she can't associate Sue with herself, with Elisabeth, because she -- as Elisabeth -- is nothing like Sue (anymore) and could never be her. Elisabeth, now, only exists to further Sue. To keep Sue alive and successful and living her dream, Elisabeth needs to exist. But that's all the purpose she really has now. Of course, yes, she tried to actually live a normal life as Elisabeth in the beginning, but she was unhappy and couldn't do it because this self-hatred had gotten the best of her. All the time, she could only anticipate to be Sue again and continue to live her "true life".

This kind of self-hatred is incredibly vicious. Every chance Elisabeth had to go back to being just her, she couldn't take it. Even when she ended up terminating Sue, she regretted it and tried to reverse it, which ended in her death.

Self-hatred is not logical, and it can and does alter somebody's perception of themselves and the world around them so much that it can and does result in that person's death, be that figurative or literal. Unless, of course, that person gets the help they need. But for that, they'd have to actually admit that something is "wrong", and also be ready to change things.

I think it says a lot about how necessary a movie like this is when so many people misunderstand it, despite being so obvious with everything it's trying to say. A lot of people have complained about The Substance not being a subtle movie, yet at the same time, those people are most often the ones, who question Elisabeth's motivations and don't understand the most important theme of the movie -- self-hatred.

[thefastestclockintheuniverse]

I am obsessed with this reaction from Vriska. This girl (acts as if she) has no shame. She's killed people and stands by it, aired out her whole getting-rejected-by-Tavros biz in a public forum, and it's making a typing quirk error that makes her blush? Incredible.

The other consideration, that maybe making a typing-quirk error is a huge faux-pas on Alternia is also fun to entertain.

[leguin]

i did think about richard siken saying there's no such thing as unrequited love, just unrequited desire for probably longer than i should've, but idk. feelings are complicated. 'unrequited' is complicated. i've never felt so consistently failed by language before...

[dangerousdan-dan]

I'm sorry, I really tried, but I'm afraid I'm allergic to DC's John Constantine. Every time I encounter that man I can't help but sigh in disappointment and think "Damn, when will Vertigo John Constantine come back from the war?"

[starbuck]

talking with self-hating, closeted trans-curious people who are confiding in you about their repressed gender feelings is really something… like. well, in MY opinion, gender is just some shit we made up so you should go wild with it and do whatever the hell you want, but you’re still out here calling transness abnormal, so i don’t think we’re ready for that conversation yet.

[gay--dog]

aauh \why have i been so fucked up today

[not-another-robin]

My opinion does not hold any weight bc I am literally delusional about these fuckers

[royalreef]

(( Honestly, it's hard to tell if Miranda's gotten better or worse. Better in some ways, certainly, especially in regards to things that I might just make canon to all her interactions. Worse in plenty of others, which, to be fair, is to be expected. Improvement isn't a linear process, after all, and she requires a lot of care.

[lesbiansanemi]

Scrolling through older posts on my blog is so funny cuz like goddamn the almost instantaneous decline of public mental breakdowns and freak outs that stopped when I started these new meds is genuinely hilarious

[microwavetoaster-selfships]

Same ass person. I keep staring at these and wanting to say things and then nothing. Static silence. You open the tab on your computer and it gets stuck on loading and a pop-up appears saying it can't load and you should close it. That. Do not be surprised if I wave these around again in future occasions.

[nemmet]

question: who is your favourite scooby doo character and why?

in a similar vein to my how did you get into scooby doo post from last month, i'm now interested in hearing who your favourite character from the franchise is! are they a member of the core gang or a side character? which iteration/version of theirs do you like best? do you have any specific memories associated with them? do they mean a lot to you personally, or do you just think they're neat? it's time to gush about them in the tags/replies!!

[nobodieshero-main]

NOBODY MOVE I'M HAVING POSITIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT MORDRED AND ATLAS.