#i need to stop justifing it

[almostvermin]

Hey. People going through worse shit doesn't mean your problem do not matter. You have a right to complain and be unhappy about it. Some of the stuff you've been through really sound BAD bad and I wish nothing but the best for you. I can't do much but remind you that someone is cheering you on. And that someone is me

-a mutual

honestly yall dont know half of it and i really hope yall never do bc i dont want to worry people

[opikiquu]

these 2 gonna drive me insane

[deservedgrace]

one of the more frustrating aspects of ex evangelical/ex cult stuff for me personally is how hard it is to talk about. and part of that is the emotional side of it, yeah it's a shitload of cumulative and compounding trauma and trauma is hard to talk about sometimes. but it's not always hard to talk about, or at least equally hard to talk about, and the thing that's honestly more frustrating to me about that is how... extensive it is, how impossible it is to give an accurate picture of what it was like, especially succinctly. there are so many things that you need context for. there's so much that doesn't really sound that bad unless you have other information. so much was normalized to me that i have a hard time knowing what's actually "normal" and what's "yikes" to other people because i simply don't always have the context for "normal". there's so much that's normalized in society and churches that gets dismissed as "normal" when it really, really shouldn't be. there's so much i just don't remember because it slipped out of my brain the same as "normal" unimportant memories because my brain didn't process it as abuse or traumatic at the time due to that lack of context of what "normal" is; it was normal to me and just what people did and how people acted and what people said. and the thing that happens is all of this compiles into me sounding like i'm exaggerating and whining about a "normal church experience" because it's just so impossible to describe how all-encompassing being in a cult is if you don't have that experience.

[tonyglowheart]

Thinking again (more, lmao) about The Contentious Chapter 45, and my Why It Needed to Happen thesis, so here are some more semi-organized thoughts on this topic:

Why It Needed to Happen: Yan Wushi edition. So, we don't ever really know what specifically Yan Wushi went through/experienced in his life and more specifically his childhood - we get hints here and there that seem to imply or can be interpreted to be that he's gone through some shit as Xie Ling, and that's (partly? mostly?) what led him to reinvent himself as Yan Wushi, and then there's also the New Years Extra that has a line about how he'd (already) witnessed countless evils borne of the human heart - but the text does tell us he has this belief that human nature is wicked, slash humans can be pushed to do wicked things no matter how "good" they may think themselves to be. As far as YWS knew by Chap 45, SQ was no different -- he'd received no proof yet that SQ was different, he just hadn't found SQ's bottom line. This is sort of similar to the abused child or abused dog thing, where they will lash out to try to provoke the abuse they're expecting either to "get it over with" or so they know where the line is with this new person (except these are purposeful tests that YWS is doing and not like a reactionary mechanism). Basically, this needed to happen for YWS to know/believe that Shen Qiao is different from what he's observed of human nature -- he needed this proof of concept that the world isn't just rival(/rival peers) -- the closest to equals he has, and rabble. This needed to happen to show/prove - to him and the reader - that there may be a thousand Chen Gong's in the world, but there is only one Shen Qiao.

Why It Needed to Happen: Shen Qiao edition. Shen Qiao is a good guy, but he WAS very sheltered and naive. He holds his beliefs firmly, but his worldly experience was limited and so his character was untried. It's the "it's easy to be a good person when you're rich" idea -- he doesn't know if he has a bottom line yet if he would snap. It's easy to say that you will stay true to your principles when they're not tested - it's when they're put under the stress test that you can truly say that you know yourself and your character. Yan Wushi threw him into a fire, yes, but in many ways this was a tempering of his character, much as one would temper steel. This whole experience very much was an absolute low for Shen Qiao, and it's easy to see fire (analogy) as only destructive, but fire can also be a creative force -- e.g. the forging/tempering analogy from earlier, fires used to clear out brush and weeds choking up the land so that new growth can germinate in the new fire-enriched soil, that kind of thing. This isn't to say that Shen Qiao doesn't experience agony in this metaphoric fire, but he also very much textually experiences a sort of epiphany and rebirth. This is both a spiritual (character-based) sort of rebirth, as well as a rebirth of his wugong. It's after this and after traveling with Yan Wushi that we see Shen Qiao exhibiting much more wisdom when it comes to people, where he's not just naively believing and expecting the good in everyone (I don't have specific citations but iirc this is textual, there's whole parts where it's like, before he might have thought x, but now having traveled with YWS he knows xyz, etc.) Yes this was "bad," maybe, but it tempered Shen Qiao, catalyzed his recovery/"rebirth," and overall led to the strengthening of his wugong and his character. (The conversation they have in Chapter 124 underscores this point, actually.)

Why It Needed to Happen: Yanshen edition. Or maybe more like, what does it do for us from a yanshen perspective lol. Cuz imo, it does a lot. I've posted about this elsewhere before lol, but like aside from the above for the YWS side of things, an argument can also be made that this was YWS going "wait. oh shit, I'm experiencing... feelings? for him" (narrator voice: that feeling was friendship, although he had never experienced it before) and like, lashing out at Shen Qiao like "that'll show you for thinking of me as a friend (and maybe making me feel friend-like feelings towards you..)" -- he was already softening before this (him digging that grave for the dead boy unasked, for example), and the way he's like. ....so you think of me as a... friend? before he pulls the rug from under SQ's feet. But this is important because it tells us that YWS *does* care. He's flippant and teasing and gives the impression that he does it for personal amusement and not really out of affection or anything, so really Shen Qiao may be his latest target of amusement, but it could be anyone. But the fact that he reacted like this to Shen Qiao declaring him a friend instead of just dismissing him as not being worthy of being his friend, not being on his level, etc (I mean he does also do that, but it's not the FIRST thing he does, and also I'd argue that when he Declared it contextually he was purposefully trying to hurt Shen Qiao's feelings), or like, just laughing at him and ridiculing SQ for something so preposterous -- this tells us that he IS feeling some kind of way about Shen Qiao already, that something HAS changed and Shen Qiao went from "latest disposable amusement" to at least "point of fascination." We're not in the endgame yet with this, but it does show that for all that Yan Wushi is trying to influence and "experiment" on Shen Qiao, traveling with Shen Qiao/being around him is conversely having an effect on him, too. That he's not just some unchangeable flat "evil" archetype but is also a complex character that responds to stimulus/reacts to his environment and is capable of being influenced by Shen Qiao. Theirs isn't just a one-sided relationship of one influencing the other or one trying to change the other-- it already by this point is a mutual communion between the opposing but complementary worldviews they hold and embody. They're already like if the taijitu were people (sans the dots in each section-- that comes through the course of the story with their mutual temperings). The same or similar actually holds for the SQ side of things too. Actually, the very fact that he feels anguish from this act and finds it a betrayal is also a very huge indication that Shen Qiao also already cares. I mean, yes, he declared YWS his friend, but like YWS said when they were burying the boy - you didn't even cry when your shidi Yu Ai betrayed you - or later when YWS was about to face Hulugu and SQ says if he were to do it, it would seem natural, but if a friend were to do it, he'd worry. and YWS is like, a friend? If LQY were to face Hulugu would you feel the same way? -- Basically, a similar idea holds here. Would you feel the same way if it were someone else? Yu Ai betrayed him, we didn't see him experience this level of individual, personal anguish. Chen Gong betrayed him, he just kind of sighed and moved on. But coming from Yan Wushi... he reflects on how much it hurt, actually. I still hold to my theory that SQ fell first and by this point was already at least kind of in love with YWS, but even that aside, the very fact that this "betrayal" hurt SQ shows that Shen Qiao, like Yan Wushi, despite seeming above worldly/petty matters slash is disconnected from such normal-people-problems like getting your feelings hurt or, godforbid, heartbreak -- are very much not above that, at least, not when it comes to each other. They're not just two ships passing each other in the night -- they're already mutually entangled together, and this growing bond will only grow stronger as they travel more together

[gemini-queen42]

Batb: Other Than Human - Themes stuff (& why I Called It That)

That's right folks, the self-indulgent "throwing any concept I like at the wall and haphazardly mixing together what sticks" au rewrite Thing has Actual Themes! That kind of happened accidentally but they are so real for that so let's get into it.

The Main Narratives Themes Trio of the story now all also embody expanded themes about being an "Other", when being a person is not enough to be properly considered human- more specifically of a neurodivergent/queer girlhood type flavor.

Summary is that it's called "Other Than Human" because the prominent theming is about being considered something other than human due to not fitting the mold of the 'norm'.

[This is a long one so details & specific character stuff are under the cut<3]

Amalure has the greatest departure from her original counterparts thematic placing, so we'll start with her. Amalure retains Gaston's social standing, reputation, etc. But it's of course not quite the same- because she is a woman, and she is not revered for being the picture of ideal womanhood/femininity. Instead, she excels in masculinity, but remains firm that she is and always will be a woman. So, to justify the desire & awe people have for her, they dehumanize her: She doesn't need to follow the Rules because she is outside of them. Amalure is not a person: she is a symbol, a figure, an object. A legend, a folksong, a modern myth. Her skills are not skills they are blessings, inherent, a mundane magic or supernatural. Despite having grown up in Villeneuve for her entire life, she is considered exotic, and is practically, if not actually, fetishized. And through all of this, the status quo and social order gets to be retained without question, and she gets to exist as the exception that proves the rule, rather than the Undesirable that she'd be marked as otherwise.

Amalure is fine with this, because this dehumanization is her status quo: She doesn't really view herself as a person either, she is defined by her relationship to other people, by who she is to them. Amalure has never been a person to anybody: Growing up she was never just a girl, never just Amalure: She was a girl with a mans brain, an embodiment of her fathers greatest achievements, an embodiment of her mothers worst mistakes, she is her fathers daughter or her mothers daughter, but not her own. (and she never both, it is either or, mother or father, never both, never parents.)

Princess Eve/The Beast is the other end of this, of operating through her dehumanization. Upon being cursed, she adheres to what societies have oft wanted to happen to their Undesirables: Hide away and never be seen by the public again. It is entirely self-inflicted, as most of her suffering truly is. She operates not through others dehumanizing view of her, but her dehumanizing view of herself and its warping of how she believes others view her. Because, well, the servants still view her as a person. I mean, they're still human- under the new object forms. And the separation of humanity that is easy to slip into on matters of royalty is awfully minimal as well; they watched her grow up, and she grew up among them.

The girl's bratty, spoiled, temperamental, and is a ball of horrid consequences of the shallow views and ideals learned from surrounding nobility. But she's also the girl that fell asleep listening to Cogsworth explain the many technicalities to managing servants; because she was stubborn in asserting her authority as the mistress of the castle, and thus she Must have say over its goings ons. But the majordomo's voice can be awfully soothing when he's not high-strung on anxiety, and it's hard to pay attention when you don't understand what's being discussed, so its all going in one ear and out the other. And She's Lumiere's 'Evie', who was so amused when Lumiere would draw on a little mustache when dancing the male roles so the princess could learn some duo dances, or because she didn't look very "waiter-like" (because Eve wasn't entirely sure what a maître d' did, but it seemed to have something to do with waiters), and who got annoyed every time the dance teacher/maître d' would warn her not to hurt her body in her pursuits, because it seemed so silly, why would anyone do that? And she's the girl who dragged Mrs. Potts to have tea with her, because she made the best tea and as princess she would have only the best; and if you're going to have tea you may as well have a tea party, and you can't really have a party of one, but two isn't much of a party either so she's going to drag Babette away from her duties too, since the maid was so elegant and thus would be perfect.

Honestly, the girl probably would've turned out fine if she was raised by just the servants. But they weren't the only forces in her life: she's a princess, so she's got to host and interact with important people and learn how to Be noble which isn't something any of the servants can teach her. And it is under the pressures and eyes of nobility, is in mixing and learning their social rules, that learns the lessons that will lead to her curse: That to be considered human and treated as such, one must look human. And to be such as a woman meant to look beautiful, like the ideal. As a woman, to be worthy is to be beautiful and vice versa. And even if she does not, she must have some way to serve men. Otherwise, she is nothing. Eve met these requirements well, and where she did not yet her authority as princess covered. So when a beggar woman is at her doorstep, the princess turns her away: because she is old, ugly, so long past her 'prime'- there is no worth to her anymore. There is no point caring for her future.

Helene stands as both the middle ground and inverse to the other two. She is an Other by virtue of her mind, she is Objectifiable by virtue of her beauty. She sits on the precipice between Undesirable and Desired, seeming nearly apathetic to where she lands despite popular encouragement to embrace or smother aspects of herself. Helene is quite sure she's a person like anyone else, thank you, and is frankly frustrated and a bit weirded out that others seem to have a hard time getting the memo- she doesn't like or want to assume the worst, though, so maybe she just missed another confusing untold social rule or something. I mean, the local triplets really do seem to be advising in good faith- they really do think of her as one of them to an extent (for reasons Helene is yet to know); they just don't understand her.

When Amalure pursues her, there's an unspoken aspect to the deal of marriage she proposes: Helene will get a secured place on the in of the community, a secure standing the promises people no longer questioning or trying to encourage her to no longer be herself. But Helene just isn't interested in Amalure like that, and she also sees what the real trade-off of that security is; that uncomfortable dehumanization that is exactly what Helene doesn't want to deal with anymore. If Amalure is fine living with it than she is free to do as she pleases, but the huntress doesn't seem to understand what Helene could possibly have a problem with- and it's not like they can discuss it, because it's unspoken, and you're not supposed to speak the unspoken things, because they're unspoken for a reason- even if you don't know what that reason is. Helene knows that rule, at least.

When Helene meets the Beast, she regards her as she does any other. It's plain as day that the Beast has a humanity to her, whether she's really "human" or not- she thinks and she feels, and that's enough for Helene.

Because Helene grew up raised by a single dad who she got most of her brain workings from, and he is a man of compassion and science. Off he'd send his beloved daughter to go and question and figure out the world for herself, to experiment and learn and become whatever she desires. Off to bed he'd send her to tell her fairy tales and have their lessons of love and compassion and humanity understood as she drifted off to sleep. Helene was never Odd with her father, never Other, in fact they were so easily two of a kind. It was so jarring, hearing people imply Tyndare less than sane; his logic paths were so easy to follow- but apparently his voice gruffs enough that others have a hard time understanding what he's saying sometimes, so that's where things seem to get lost in translation she guesses. People became jarring in other ways as she grew up too, because suddenly there seemed to be lots of social things she was supposed to know or be but didn't and wasn't, and it became very apparent very quickly that she was an Other among her village.

Overall: Eve & Helene get to go through these themes through the main plot, and post curse-breaking is when Eve gets to properly deal with the internalized issues and whatnot. Like she's learned beauty doesn't matter when it comes to love, and shouldn't decide whether or not someone should be cared about, and Helene loves her despite her having been beastly and despite her being a failure of a woman- (because she no longer fits the feminine ideal after the curse is broken, and frankly she never will again.) But she's still a Failure Of A Woman and Helene deserves Better Than That! So there's still work to do.

Amalure remains static on this aspect of the narrative until after the battle at the castle, where she does survive! .. barely. and it's later, in an argument with her mother that same night, bleeding out on the kitchen floor, when she asserts that she's her daughter too, not just her fathers. she has always been her daughter, always will be, she is the daughter of both of them, because that's not something that just switches or turns on and off- and it's an entire rant that I will not recite here, but the important part is the assertion that she is, always has been, always will be, the daughter of both her parents at once- that's the first little step for her arc of recognizing her own individual personhood and whatnot.

[thevaelguard]

I may just have missed dialogue, but. Is Sebastian still a part of the Chantry ??

Him talking about the chaste marriage that involves Hawke being sworn into the Chantry too and how that marriage seemingly did happen given his banter with Carver and Varric in the DLCs, but

His dialogue with Elthina throughout even Act 3 makes it sound like she's been denying his asks to rejoin. That she won't let him swear in since she thinks he'll just leave again if another passion overtakes him.

I'm just so confused.

[idolbound]

if anders is a terrorist, so is meredith send tweet.

[lovelyisadora]

oh I am going to actually kill my mother

[unproduciblesmackdown]

among the boundless billions zaniness like laugh track as it definitely has that moment of expressing "rolling my eyes as The Left makes a kerfuffle of Acting like they have a stance as a veneer over the true belief that [xyz] is cool & chill actually" like what, approximate 0.000% chance wendy isn't, as usual, given the Objective Stance of "yeah yeah ohh we are cancelling involved parties talking about how we Don't watch this But. we all love this damn epic movie & already have it memorized so shut the fuck up, kids today" like. don't wanna really delve into how much billions thinks taylor or anyone is "really" trans / nonbinary like not too much benefit of the doubt in this material including what does provide info abt that specifically

& the general like [head in hands. what do you think any of this could possibly be about (you're the one that made your show at all about Power)] of "yes, it's bad/wrong to be someone that someone has done something to / victim of something" like that to be anti misogyny All Women Must Be Epic Winners b/c there's something to be proved: that they don't Deserve to be victims (of misogyny), not taken as a Given. while when we see some epic winner men stepping on other men (who need not all be guaranteed Winners so as to say misogyny is wrong), that's often Good, well beyond any assumption that various forms of basic disrespect / violation / patterns of emergent/entrenched power difference as Bad (for being things done to people, not for there being people they're being done to), & generally billions has to take an extra step when ppl get shitted on & tell us the Specific Cases when it was undeserved actually & someone was being mean to a specific person who didn't deserve that. & the specific cases when hey guess it wasn't that bad(tm) or when hey It's Okay that you're someone something was done to, in this case. & tell us what we were supposed to know all along like when someone who something was being done to (wrong Of Them, whether b/c they inherently deserve it no matter what, &/or b/c they failed to be someone who could make it Impossible to do anything to them, which, how do you do that besides being The Authority / Superior yourself, exactly? nonrhetorically? what if the in group vs out group / fascism / authoritarianism protected Me?) was actually being treated Too Well b/c ah well the abuse meant you were getting any attention, maybe it meant you were claimed as any superior's property, maybe it meant you weren't Already disposed of, as all Losers were in the end, You're Welcome.

obviously referring to winston where it's spelled out all the abuse towards him was deserved, & More than he deserved in the case of rian having more access & taking advantage of that, all for billions' enjoying its own sendoff there of, again, maximizing violation & violence short of [real violence is physical & leaves bruises / draws blood / Literally kills] which would be distasteful in general But doesn't it make wags look like the winner & winston the loser is that the former's completely unrelated completely impersonal ego blow gets way amplified taken out on winston, the most vulnerable recurring character when spyros as [first & ultimate Everyone Hates Him role] is more entrenched in there & billions still magnanimously pities tuk, as it does winston too, just not quite as much. again that like completely surface level realized power fantasy of forcing the mirror up to the Inferior so they're like nooo my inferiorityyyy & in doing so like, the projection in that lmao, we get it re: the valuing of & need(tm) for such Power Tripping & Reaffirming My Superiority & My Ego Restored; Everyone Claps like good god. & then for all ben & tuk are the slightly softer Two Too Nice Boys duo to the rian & winston quant duo, also like too nice i guess but not as much, ben is in charge of tuk but Any instance of rian being in charge of winston outstrips them in that "yay interpersonal abuse" dynamic, like then in the end billions may be like "yeah it's possible to be mean to them unlike how being mean to winston is actually Nice b/c he deserves everything he gets, we only vicariously enjoy it vs Feeling Bad for tuk & ben sometimes (still magnanimously & it's Not That Bad / just goofin)" like ben & tuk still Fail by not being people it's impossible to do anything to. & not Exceptions who anyone is really being Too Mean to. like if they were women, in which case, no problem surely with a "positive" kind of victim blaming where there is something Inherent that Will be victimized so hey how about to cancel that out there's this special Paternal Protection you Need always, Or Else? :) but instead they are men who are asian & is ben gay & w/tuk & winston nobody mentions glasses or fatness but billions doesn't really do much or very in depth textual mentioning of Anything, even w/nonzero mention that there may be gender & race in this world. a gay man, once. no disability. we just Know who are the inferiors who deserve it when they're treated inferiorly, or if they don't, they start deserving it when they fail to stop/avoid it, but if you start mentioning the factors behind who we all totally agree is inferior like whoa nobody was Saying any of that? being the real agent of oppression on the basis of the factors only You spelled out, much? nonbinary? i never say anything about the Gender Binary when i'm subscribing to it, sounds like You've created & enforced it. obfuscation & deflection onto [so Just Normal nobody has to label, explain, or argue it] couldn't serve a purpose & protect the existing power differences as they are. maybe You're the problem? perhaps you brought it upon yourself & now you're causing too much trouble standing up for yourself while everyone else's criticism is laser focused on you as the prior & continuing negative actions done to you are taken as a given / unquestioned / covertly protected to overtly encouraged?

anyway so wild if the Completely Normal(tm) Victim Blaming is uncritically recreated & oft embraced for "if you're watching this & don't wish you were axe / find him appealing" [billions as a sequence of vicarious power trips] purposes in this series....but a bit wild considering like this is your multiseason show that wasn't just purporting to be those power trips for [enough demographic & apparently specific personal tastes overlap w/creators] & was at all purporting to question the matters of power at play in the material, or yknow, at least to not be completely superficial material while said material is textually & thematically all about power difference being leveraged, how, the consequences, & so on. thus i will have to intermittently talk about it forever like this like lord unbelievable. & the funny little & sometimes less funny less little characters it has trapped in there so that those of us who were never meant to be in the audience can be cursed with this knowledge. like i have some feedback. "imagine not victim blaming" & "imagine adjusting your perspective can go beyond superficial layers added to politely defer to some other ppl while they're present but really like cmon do they deserve that. am i not just saying what we're allll thinking"

[realrogerhours]

This post burns if I remember it

[docholligay]

Oh Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin. I know you're not a dumb man, but you are certainly exhibiting dumb behavior here. They aren't afraid of the fucking Dominion. By the time this thing is over, the victor is going to have no further appetite for war. They can be as pissy as they want to be, but they don't want to open on another front after an exhausting and expensive war. And if they do, we'll probably pummel them. We are the fucking Romulans.

basic notes on my familiarity with ds9

[kaisollisto]

[aroacettorney]

loving ludger cherish cuz he's an interesting and complex character is good and well but seeing people claiming that he's literally done nothing wrong and that casey is completely at fault is so insane

[flockofdoves]

i get that there are many things in the world that are all pretty foundational to living on earth/humanity/etc that i don't necessarily know the basics of despite thinking it would be good to so its hypocritical of me to expect that of people with whichever of those sorts of topics that i do have a decent knowledge base in. but nonetheless it makes me go crazy a lot of the time seeing the types of things people say about language online

[ms-newvegas]

Psychically attacking the self centered idiot that decided smoking in the pharmacy drive thru line was cool and acceptable

[countess-of-edessa]

you're supposed to be boycotting starbucks. or do you not care about Palestinians

do you follow me or do you just search for everyone who mentions starbucks and chastise them lol? girl, this is a pro-crusades blog. you do not want to know my opinions on the middle east lmao