#if someone can't cope with that that really isn't my problem.

[lith-myathar]

.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Two decades ago, I was part of a group of nerds who got really interested in how each other managed to do what we did. The effort was kicked off by Danny O'Brien, who called it "Lifehacking" and I played a small role in getting that term popularized:

https://craphound.com/lifehacksetcon04.txt

While we were all devoted to sharing tips and tricks from our own lives, many of us converged on an outside expert, David Allen, and his bestselling book "Getting Things Done" (GTD, to those in the know):

https://gettingthingsdone.com/

GTD is a collection of relatively simple tactics for coping with, prioritizing, and organizing the things you want to do. Many of the methods relate to organizing your own projects, using a handful of context-based to-do lists (e.g. a list of things to do at the office, at home, while waiting in line, etc). These lists consist of simple tasks. Those tasks are, in turn, derived from another list, of "projects" – things that require more than one task, which can be anything from planning dinner to writing a novel to helping your kid apply to university.

The point of all this list-making isn't to do everything on the lists. While these lists do help you remember what to do next, what they're really good for is deciding what not to do – at all. The promise of GTD is that it will help you consciously choose not to do some of the things you set out to accomplish. This is in contrast to how most of us operate: we have a bunch of things we want to do, and we end up doing the things that are easiest, or at top of mind, even if they're not the most important things.

GTD recognizes that you can be very "productive" (in the sense of getting many things done) and still not do the things that you really wanted to do. You know what this is like: you finish a Sunday with an organized sock-drawer, all your pennies neatly rolled, the trash-can in your car emptied…and no work at all on that novel you're hoping to write.

You can't do everything, but you can control what you don't do, rather than just defaulting into completing a string of trivial, meaningless tasks and leaving the big stuff on the sidelines. Organizing your own tasks and projects is a hugely powerful habit, and one that's made a world of difference to my personal and professional life.

But while good to-do lists can take you very far in life, they have a hard limit: other people. Almost every ambitious thing you want to do involves someone else's contribution. Even the most solitary of projects can be derailed if your tax accountant misses a key email and you end up getting audited or paying a huge penalty.

That's where the other kind of GTD list comes in: the list of things you're waiting for from other people. I used to be assiduous in maintaining this list, but then the pandemic struck and no one was meeting any of their commitments, and I just gave up on it, and never went back…until about a month ago. Returning to these lists (they're sometimes called "suspense files") made me realize how many of the problems – some hugely consequential – in my life could have been avoided if I'd just gone back to this habit earlier.

My suspense file is literally just some lines partway down a text file that lives on my desktop called todo.txt that has all my to-dos as well. Here's some sample entries from my suspense file:

WAITING EMAIL Sean about ENSHITTIIFCATION manuscript deadline 10/24/24 WAITING EMAIL Russ about missing royalty statement 10/12/24 WAITING EMAIL Alice about Christmas vacation hotel 10/8/24 10/20/24 WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

WAITING CALL LA County about mosquito abatement 10/25/24 WAITING CALL School attendance officer about London trip 10/18/24

WAITING MONEY EFF reimbusement for taxi to staff retreat $34.98 10/7/24

WAITING SHIPMENT New Neal Stephenson novel from Bookshop.org 10/23/24

This is as simple as things could possibly be! I literally just type "WAITING," then a space, then the category of thing I'm waiting for, then a few specifics, then the date. When I follow up on an item, I add the date of the followup to the end of the line. If I get some details that I might need to reference later (say, a tracking code for a shipment, or a date for an event I'm trying to organize), I'll add that, too, as it comes up. Creating a new entry on this list takes 10-25 seconds. When someone gets back to me, I just delete that line.

That is literally it.

Every day, or sometimes a couple of times a day, I will just run my eyes up and down this list and see if there's anything that's unreasonably overdue, and then I'll send a reminder or make a followup call. In the example above, you can see that I've been chasing Ted about Sacramento for months now (this is a fake entry – no plans to go to Sacto at the moment, sorry):

WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

So now I've emailed Ted four times. Maybe my email's going to his spam, and so I could try emailing a friend of Ted and ask them to check whether he's getting my messages. But maybe Ted's trying to send me a message here – he's just not interested in doing the event after all. Or maybe Ted is available, but he's so snowed under that he's in danger of fumbling it, and I need to bring in some help if I want it to happen.

All of these are possibilities, and the fact that I'm tracking this means that I now get to make an active decision: cancel the gig or double down on making sure it happens. Without this list, the gig would just die by default, forgotten by both of us. Maybe that's OK, but I can't tell you how many times I've run into someone who said, "Dammit, I just remembered I was supposed to email you about getting that thing done and I dropped the ball. Shit! I really was looking forward to that. Is it too late now?" Often it is too late. Even if it's not, the work of picking up the pieces and starting over is much more than just following through on the original plan.

Restarting my suspense file made me realize how many of the (often expensive or painful) fumbles I've had since the pandemic were the result of me not noticing that someone else hadn't gotten back to me. In essence, a suspense file is a way for me to manage other people's to-do lists.

Let me unpack that. By "managing other people's to-do lists," I don't mean that I'm deciding for other people what they will and won't do (that would be both weird and gross). I mean that I'm making sure that if someone else fails to do something we were planning together, it's because they decided not to do it, not because they forgot. As GTD teaches us, the real point of a to-do list isn't just helping us remember what to do – it's helping us choose what we're not going to do.

This is not an imposition, it's a kindness. The point of a suspense file isn't to nag others into living up to their commitments, it's to form a network of support among collaborators where we all help one another make those conscious choices about what we're not going to do, rather than having the stuff we really value slip away because we forgot about it.

I have frequent collaborators whom I know to be incapable of juggling too many things at once, and my suspense file has helped me hone my sense of when it would be appropriate to ask them if they want to do something together and when to leave them be. The suspense file helps me dial in how much I rely on each person in my life (relying on someone isn't the same as valuing them – and indeed, one way to value someone is to only rely on them for things they're able to do, rather than putting them in a position of feeling bad for failing you).

Lifehacking gets a bad rap, and justifiably so. Many of the tips that traffick as "lifehacks" are trivial or stupid or both. What's more, too much lifehacking can paint you into a corner where you've hacked any flexibility out of your life:

https://locusmag.com/2017/11/cory-doctorow-how-to-do-everything-lifehacking-considered-harmful/

But ever since Danny coined the term "lifehack," back in 2004, I've been cultivating daily habits that have let me live the life I wanted to live, accomplishing the things I wanted to accomplish. I figured out how to turn daily writing into a habit and now I've written more than 30 books:

https://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

A daily habit of opening a huge, ever-tweaked collection of tabs has made me smarter about the news, helped me keep tabs on my friends, helped me find fraudsters who were trying to steal my identity, and ensured that all those Kickstarter rewards and other long-delayed, erratic shipments didn't slip through the cracks:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/today-in-tabs/#unfucked-rota

Daily habits are superpowers. Once something is a habit, you get it for free. GTD turns on decomposing big, daunting projects into bite-sized, trackable tasks. I have a bunch of spaces around the house – my office, my closet, the junk sheds down the side of the house, our tiki bar – that I used to clean out once or twice a year. Each one was all-day, sweaty, dirty job, and for most of the year, all of those spaces were a dusty, disorganized mess.

A month ago, I added a new daily task: spend five minutes cleaning one space. I did the bar first, and after two weeks, I'd taken down every tchotchke and bottle and polished it, reorganizing the undercounter spaces where things pile up:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=37996580417%40N01&sort=date-taken-desc&text=tiki+bar&view_all=1

Now I'm working through my office. Ever day, I'm dusting a bookshelf and combing through it for discards to stick in our Little Free Library. Takes less than five minutes most day, and I'll be done in about three weeks, when I'll move on to my closet, then the side of the house, and then back to the bar. A daily short break where I get away from my computer and make my living and working environments nicer is a wonderful habit to cultivate.

I'm 53 years old now. I was 33 when I started following Getting Things Done. In that time, I've gotten a lot done, but what's even more relevant is that I didn't get a ton of things done – things that I consciously chose not to abandon. Figuring out what you want to do, and then keeping it on track – in manageable, healthy, daily rhythms that bring along the other people you rely on – may not be the whole secret to a fulfilled life, but it's certainly a part of it.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo.txt

[bunkerjking]

The emotional breakdown later in the chapter will get most of the attention, but for my money, this is the most revealing moment in this week's chapter. A teenager so disconnected from his real emotions that he desperately rationalizes his hypersexuality not as a coping mechanism, but as 'this is what guys are like.'

It's easy to make fun of men for burying their emotions and then asking, 'why doesn't anyone know who I really am' - hell, Denji literally does that during the Bomb Girl arc - but Denji is a pretty direct criticism of both the way boys can get forced into unhealthy gender roles, and the way men self-regulate themselves and others into them.

The other boys Denji is with don't have the problem of being horny at inappropriate times. They have WAY bigger problems.

But Denji can't think properly when someone dangles the idea of sex in front of him. It's like a switch flips and he becomes a completely different person.

He shuts down and reverts to trying to embody masculine stereotypes he's been ingrained with, both through the social conditioning of growing up male in the 90s and the psychological conditioning Makima put him through to strengthen 'Chainsaw Man' - itself a hyper-masculine ideal that a human being physically cannot measure up to - and emotionally cripple Denji.

Denji is at his happiest when he's at rest with the people he loves. Power and Aki were not always easy to be around, but they loved him back and they wanted him to be happy. Nayuta is a child who doesn't understand her place in the world - how could she - but she earnestly wants to help her big brother as best as she can.

He isn't some cock-swinging alpha badass constantly on the prowl to crush puss, but for a lot of people - especially a teenager who was groomed to be an expendable child soldier - this unhealthy masculine 'ideal' isn't just something to live up to, it's the expected norm for men to be.

Being Chainsaw Man doesn't make Denji mentally stronger. As shown in the Falling Devil fight, he literally chops up his brain with his chainsaws to avoid confronting his trauma. Whenever he has to think about what he's lost and what's still left to lose, he runs toward something he isn't and away from a 'normal,' healthy response to the issues at hand.

"You stupid boy."

You'll notice that Katana Man, a perfect embodiment of an overly masculine dickhead, a misogynistic moron who refuses to grow in character or even basic combat skills, is totally on board for throwing Denji in a brothel and letting what happens happens. Katana Man perfectly represents the bad ending where 'traditional masculinity' wins the war for Denji's soul.

Denji needs help. Not some quick gratification. Not a meal and a nut and a nap. He needs genuine help, and a better male role model than the ones he's got. Even Kishibe, the only adult in his life other than Aki who actually did more good than harm, is an alcoholic recluse.

God help the boy.

[gravegroves]

Something I haven't seen in a lot of fics, but I wish I saw more of for Billy, is the scorched-earth reaction to being betrayed or feeling attacked.

Abuse survivors tend to go one of two ways when it comes to upsets in relationships:

One is overly forgiving, putting their own needs last, worried that they'll lose the other person if they push back or stand up for themself. They'll sacrifice their own comfort to avoid confrontation.

But the other one? (The one I'm 100% sure that Billy is) Is scorched earth, motherfucker. You betray his trust? He'll never forgive you. You apologize? It means nothing, because if you were really sorry you wouldn't have done it in the first place. You work on yourself and promise to never do it again? Good for you, now go do that for someone else, because you're never getting close to Billy again if he has anything to say about it.

How do I know Billy for sure is like this? Because I was like that for a long time and I needed to unlearn a lot of the unhealthy coping mechanisms that I used to deal with my anger and the way I reacted to people who let me down or triggered a response in me post-abusive situation.

I would essentially erase them from my life. You told someone else a piece of information I had revealed to you in confindence? Welcome to me never speaking another word to you ever again and pretending you don't exist in situations where I can't avoid you. You raise your voice at me? Welcome to me kicking you out of my house and never letting you within 10 feet of me ever again, even to apologise.

Because once you're out of that bad situation you can become hypervigilant about how people treat you and you promise yourself that you'll never be treated that way again. Problem is you don't have a good gauge on what is and what isn't an attack on you, so you often just go ham on people who are genuinely making mistakes. I lost out on a job opportunity once because the person who I was doing volunteer work for wrote me an email that was pretty rude in which he tried to rush me. My reaction? To immediately tell him to go fuck himself before walking out of the office and never returning.

I had to learn what things were healthy to react to and to what extent, because in the beginning, anything that caused a spike of adrenalin was taken as an attack and so I defended myself in any way I could, be that verbally, with evasive manoeuvres or even physically, once.

Just, yeah. Billy who is so hypervigilant about how he's being treated that he's fucking up his life and relationships because of it and maybe Steve who fucked up and is the only person stubborn enough to claw his way back into Billy's life and maybe Billy, for the first time, lets someone try to prove him wrong.

[marshemillow]

You know what? I'm talking about "phone addiction" again because I'm not done.

Do you know what an addiction is? Addiction isn't "you do it just out of habit because you don't think about it" addiction is "if you stop you will literally be in agony and that's why you keep turning to the thing."

We have this baked-in idea that addiction is a moral failing, that if you have a phone addiction, it really just means you need to get off your phone. Yeah, addicted to alcohol? Just stop! Don't drink it anymore! Withdrawl? What's that? If you drink alcohol, it obviously means you just don't have enough willpower! If you can't stop drinking alcohol, it means you're a bad person. You basically deserve to have liver failure at that point!

Yes some people actually believe this! They don't know that paramedics carry alcohol with them specifically because it saves the lives of people going through alcohol withdrawl, they don't care! It's something they cheer themselves up with because they aren't addicted to alcohol, and that means they're a good person.

I am so sick and fucking tired of people pathologizing and moralizing non-moral issues. Addiction, or Substance Abuse Disorder, is an actual physical health condition. It's a disease. You can't stop it with enough willpower, it's something that needs actual medical treatment. Just looking at coping mechanisms or even just things that make you feel good because they release dopamine in your brain and calling that an "addiction" does so much damage to people's understanding of real addiction and makes addicts look like evil weak cowards instead of people with a disease that needs treatment. That's fucking evil. Imagine telling someone with cancer that they just didn't have enough willpower to stop it. Disgusting.

And it's extra ironic coming from these people who think they're addicted to their phone saying "you just need to stop" and then not stopping, meanwhile I have often just forgotten I don't have my phone with me and then get confused when I don't have it. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why is the person who "knows" it's an "addiction" (in the moral failing way) still not have enough willpower to stop whereas I have to consciously remind myself to go find my phone because I just forget it exists when I don't believe in phone addiction? Literally half the time I take my phone out of my pocket, it's just to check the time.

It's almost like "phone addiction" is just another way to make people feel guilty for doing things they like doing. It doesn't make them stop, they just feel worse about it. They don't think about it as a coping strategy that fades as their life circumstances get better.

And every single time, when you find these people who feel bad for doing things that make them happy, they grew up christian. Every fucking time. "Struggle with addiction" and it's just guilt applied to something normal.

STOP MAKING YOUR CATHOLIC GUILT EVERYONE ELSE'S PROBLEM!!! IF YOU CARED ABOUT "PHONE ADDICTION" YOU WOULD BE TAKING ACTUAL STEPS TO MINIMIZE HARM, NOT THROWING GUILT AT PEOPLE JUST FOR ITS OWN SAKE!!!

[neversetyoufree]

Since writing my last post about how Vanitas understands "salvation" as the preservation of one's self, even at the price of death, I've been thinking about how that plays into Vanitas's thoughts on resurrection. It's only two short lines, but I find the view he expresses in this scene absolutely fascinating.

Vanitas tells Misha that the dead "don't come back," and the fact that he phrases it that way stands out to me. He doesn't say that resurrection is impossible on a physical level; he implicitly concedes that maybe Misha could "bring back" something that looks and acts like Luna. He doesn't quibble about the practicalities of reanimating someone whose body turned to ashes or bring up whatever concept of the afterlife he may have.

Instead, Vanitas says that a resurrected Luna would simply be "something else that looked like her." A resurrected Luna would lack some fundamental part of whatever it was that made Luna who they were in their first life.

But what would they lack? I don't think he's implying that a resurrected Luna would lack their soul—not really. Setting aside the absence of souls as a conceptual presence in VnC, I think that would be too concrete and specific for what Vanitas is gesturing toward. Rather, he's conceiving of the Self in a somewhat ineffable way. On a metaphysical level, a version of Luna brought back from the dead simply Wouldn't Be Her, and he can't put it in more concrete terms than that.

So why does he think this way?

I think the concept of resurrection is awful enough to Vanitas that he has to reject it outright for his own stability. He cannot even slightly entertain the notion that resurrection might be possible, because that would destroy one of his main coping mechanisms.

Resurrection is nightmarish to a man that relies on death as an escape. Vanitas is suicidal, but beyond his self-hatred, his relationship to death is very particular. He's someone whose body and being has been corrupted and violated several times—through violence, through experiments, and through Luna's bite, and he's desperate to retain control of himself in the aftermath. He's desperate for control in regards to everything in his life, but especially his body and his death.

Vanitas is being slowly transformed into something inhuman, and he plans to die someday to escape that fate. The idea that after he's gone, someone could override that decision and force him back into living a life he doesn't want must be unacceptably horrific to him. He dismisses it out of hand because he has to.

Vanitas says a resurrected Luna would, on some level, not really be Luna. Whatever comes back might look like them, but it would lack some fundamental self that makes Luna "Luna." Thus, if Vanitas himself were ever "resurrected" after his death, it would be the same. Death remains an absolute escape for him, and even if someone contrives to bring back something that looks like him after he's gone, it won't be him. That life won't be his problem.

In addition to whatever beliefs Vanitas might have about death and afterlives the feasibility of resurrection, I think this is a key part of his relationship to the concept. He lives his life knowing that death waits for him as an escape valve. He needs that looming death as his salvation. Thus, faced with the concept of resurrection, his argument basically boils down to "nuh-uh." He shoots down the concept and declares that a resurrected person wouldn't be themselves in some nonspecific way, because the possibility of anything otherwise isn't something safe for him to consider.

[ditizygirl]

Editblr is a breeding ground for idolatry, ableism, racism and so much more all for a community about putting images together.

I've been here for only a year but I feel like I've seen it all, and the excuses oh my god the excuses. You are all 15-19, you should not have the mental capacity of a 8 year old. Your common sense is non existent and almost all of you guys are so fucking stupid it's pissing me off more than any god can understand. You are old enough to have logical thinking skills, you may have a disorder and it may be a reason but not an excuse.

Alot of you have forgotten the saying "Think Before You Talk" and I've sure as hell done alot of thinking. This is my deep dive into editblr.

Ableism

Typing quirks are a way of personal expression but why do so much of you hate to add plain text. I can understand to extent because plain text hates my head because of how long it can be but I'm not gonna act like a little bitch about it. I'm gonna add my typing quirk or even fonts itself to it.

I'm gonna ask someone to help me, or to do it for me. Stopping making excuses for ableism. Alongside with the typing quirks, your psds are ugly and eyestrainy. Psds also fall under racism because I have no idea why you guys are ignoring the fact some make dark skin characters lighter but in the case of ableism most of them are really bright and makes it hard to see.

Orange and brown? Green and yellow? Blue and brown? Why are you putting colours that can be so much eyesore together? And won't even tag as eyestrain and when someone does ask you only do it for one post.

Romanticization

This one is weird as fuck and I see no one mentioning it. Editblr highkey has a ddlg problem, this "little girl" aesthetic you guys have going on borderlines ddlg alot and its icky. The baby talk typing quirk is disgusting, stop it.

I'm not one to judge how someone copes with their trauma but what I DO judge is how you act when majority says its uncomfortable. Now this section I'm a bit unsure how to phrase it, gotta love dyslexia, but that isn't going to stop me.

There's alot of very uncomfortable romanticization of stalking which I've seen so much of alongside abusive relationships and the justification of these things.

Racism

Really can't escape this one unfortunately. Many of you are like kpop idols, you're too dyslexic towards the difference between appropriation and appreciation. Incase you forgot let me remind you.

You can not gift japanese names. Gifting names is a native practice therefore you can only gift native names. Also I've noticed you weirdos befriending people just to use their cultural names. I can't even say it east asian fetishization because its only Japanese.

Also for the love of God can you guys stop saying nonmem and non women especially when referring to sexualities. It's not hard to simply say "queer attraction to women" and "queer attraction to men".

Coming back to the "gifting" names thing, I think it's interesting how all of you conveniently have a Japanese friend who "gifted" you the name of a cute pink anime girl. Maybe I'll do a post later on how much of a bad liar you guys are.

Closed symbols is also another big problem you all have. No matter how much times you're told you can't use something you always cry "but my friend from xyz culture said it was ok!" One person can't speak for a whole culture. You're nothing but a coloinzer in disguise hiding behind the idea of aesthetic. If you want to know if a symbol is closed just use this site.

Goddess Personas

Yea this one is getting a whole section of its own. Like any people I am uncomfortable with goddess personas, especially being someone with biblical sources. Now the idea that a teenager on the internet is making people call them a goddess is strange isn't it?

In my opinion, they're all annoying, copy and paste, and I think not a lot of people talk about how the really bad ones get. You all love to indulge them, make them think they have power over them. You put them on a pedestal and praise them and get surprised when it all goes to their head?

Stop giving 14 years old power, stop indulging in their habits and letting it go their head. Forcing people to refer to you as their goddess? Their Lord and saviour? Their idol? Someone they must listen to? It creates a power inbalance which always leads to the weirdest of manipulation. Also all the engagekiss copiers are so obvious why would you want to copy the identity of a groomer? It says alot of about yourself if that's what you think is ideal.

Callout Posts

Now, personally, I believe that the only reason a callout post happens is because someone was affected, does it not? Very rarely would a callout post would be a fake one, especially if someone has more then one. If you defend someone who has more than one call out post that's on you and you're gonna end up making one some day I can genuine you that. People don't make them for no reason.

This is all I have to say for now. I hope you guys really consider what I have written here, or not, considering the fact you guys have shown multiple times you lack reading comprehension

@starriesse @dollicous @doveinne @firstgf @kiochisato @lamboll @cherryshh @narcbf @lavendergalactic @npditary @sprinkleoverdose @necroangelz @eskeys

[thelunastusco]

Oh my fucking GOD.

The ISSTD information about CDDs is NOT about system accountability. It is NOT about "well you have to make sure that a demon system member knows they're in a human body and anything they do will also hurt them too". The ISSTD isn't supporting the personhood of system members.

"This translates to--"

Stop.

Y'all are literally jumping through hoops to convince yourself and others that the ISSTD sees systems as different people sharing one body if-that-is-how-someone-identifies when that is flat out not the case. Will some providers be good about it? Sure! There are definitely providers who accept systems as different people if that's what they say they are, but that is ABSOLUTELY NOT what the ISSTD suggests.

The DID patient is a single person who experiences himself or herself as having separate alternate identities

It can be helpful to use the terms that patients use to refer to their identities unless the use of these terms ... would reinforce a belief that the alternate identities are separate people or persons rather than a single human being with subjectively divided self-aspects

the patient is not a collection of separate people sharing the same body

patient should be seen as a whole adult person

You can't "translate" these quotes away as being "actually they mean--" because no, no they don't mean anything else. They mean exactly what they say: that plural folks coming in are not separate people even if they say they are, but one person with fractured aspects of their singular psyche.

Yes, you can agree to call them "people" or "individuals" if that's what the patient (singular) calls them, but they are ONLY alternate identities of ONE SINGULAR person, not their own people, and if calling them "people" makes the patient see them as separate people different from the One True Singular Person you're talking to, you are NOT to call them "people". The idea that a system is actually different people in one body is a false belief.

You are not a collective. You are, in their eyes, One Person. Period.

Yes, parts of the ISSTD sound really close to what the plural community would call system accountability-- the idea that "clinicians must hold the patient accountable for the behavior of any or all of the constituent identities", for example. But that is not system accountability. That is "you are one whole adult person, not separate people, and so accountability must be maintained as if you were one whole adult person regardless of what you believe or circumstances".

Yes, parts of the ISSTD sound close to accepting system members as separate people-- specifically the passage of "countertherapeutic for the therapist to treat any alternate identity as if it were more “real” or more important than any other". But again, that isn't because they see individual system members as their own, separate, whole people sharing a body. It's because "all alternate identities represent adaptive attempts to cope or to master problems that the patient has faced". Meaning, they are pieces of the One True Singular Person that have formed to cope or deal with problems, but are still that One True Singular Person nonetheless. So, sure, they're all "real" because they're all actually that One Person.

And for some systems, that might be how it is! For some plural folks who aren't systems, that might be how it is! But under no circumstance should the plural community allow themselves to be fooled into thinking that the ISSTD actually allows for the plural community to ever see themselves, in any way, as separate people sharing one body. It doesn't, and too many providers do not and will not see their plural patients in that way. Even if they mirror your language and play along. They can and will stop doing so, if they think that your system ACTUALLY considers themselves separate, unique individuals instead of "self-aspects" of One Person.

You can "translate" the passages into anything you want, but that doesn't change what is actually meant. Glossing over the fact that it flat out denies personhood because some other lines sound almost like community rhetoric changes nothing. We can't believe systems are literally talking themselves (and others) into thinking that the ISSTD sees systems as fully realized individuals when it says in plain language it doesn't.

We knew reading comprehension was dead, but c'mon.

What horrifies us is the potential that younger or less savvy systems will see that shit, accept it, and then walk into a therapist's office thinking "oh the ISSTD says to accept us as different people if that's what we say we are so it'll be okay". When that sort of thing USED to get plural folks put into mental hospitals against their will. When that sort of thing STILL winds up with systems being discriminated against, and in some cases denied treatment like trans health care.

Most singlets in the psych field DO NOT see you, a system, as different people sharing the same body-- even if they use your language. You HAVE to be careful and screen potential therapists. You HAVE to interview people to make sure that they will respect your system, and treat you/you all as you want to be treated. The ISSTD is NOT your friend, and providers who follow it will by and large NOT be the people you want to see, unless you're the sort of plural/plural system who sees themselves as "subjectively divided self-aspects" of One Singular Person.

The plural community has been fighting this bigotry for DECADES.

It has NOT stopped.

[gremlingottoosilly]

krueger mentioned!! i was so excited to see his name in IYNTBM! do you have any silly/dark hcs or plans to write about him?

Yes!! Krueger my beloved!! I feel like the only reason he isn't as popular as Konig is because he has a canon height that is shorter than 180, so people literally don't see him hehe. Hc and my plans under the cut!

I imagine him like a childhood best friend of Konig - probably around the same age, maybe Krueger is 2 years younger. He is a lieutenant in rank(idk about the mercenary ranks bear with me here, Konig is a colonel) and he wasn't promoted as much specifically because of his violent tendencies. PMC doesn't really care about war crimes as long as it's not a public spectacle, but even the companies he was working in were quite weirded out by the shit he was pulling. yes, he is the best man if you want to torture someone - and then again, he is the best torturer out here, and he sleeps next to you, drinks next to you, hits on the same girls as you etc... He is a nasty, nasty gremlin. The type to hit on the waitresses in a very sleazy manner, the type to say "Hey guys, let's protect this one" in a creepy manner if he sees a woman agreeing with him on his very controversial statements. Currently, in the timeline of IfYouNeedToBeMean, he is sitting home because of his arm injury(got stuck in the burning car, and had to break his arms to get out) and is very angsty and bored about it. Like Konig, he can't really enjoy civilian life, medical discharge is literally his worst days, and he actually has a history of depressive episodes. He DOES NOT cope well with civilian life, and his preferred hobby at home is drinking and ignoring his therapist's messages. Konig helped him quite a bit in his habit - gave the number of his therapist, bless this poor human, trying to support him as much as he can. Konig asks him to babysit his darling because he knows that more than one month at home would probably make Krueger consider killing himself, and he also trusts the man with his life - and his wife. Sebastian has a very perverted sense of morality, but he recognizes the reader as Konig's girl, and he would not touch the stuff that belongs to him. Yeah, we are "Konig's stuff" for him. If I was writing a different story and if Konig and Krueger met the reader at the same time, I would actually see them sharing her - they are not attracted to each other, but they feel like brothers sometimes and could have this mentality of sharing everything between them. Darling stuck with two nasty perverts...yeah, not the best scenario. Unlike Korangi x Reader, Konig and Krueger wouldn't sleep with each other - so you'd have to be their release every time, each time, giving him equal attention because Konig is insecure and Krueger just loves causing problems on purpose.

[ourhomealien]

Don't gatekeep feelings, please.

TLDR

I'm autistic and so I have a unique vocabulary, so bare with me please.

Hermitcraft to me is a community for all ages, that's what I expect of it. In the same way a child deserves and expects to be able to trust and learn from their parents without abuse or them being literal criminals. People are as bad as they want to be, and you can 100% grieve your expectations of them. Disappointment can hurt anyone. In the same way you invest your feelings into pets knowing they will die, and then grieving when they're gone, you can invest feelings and expectations into people you know about and that isn't childish or naive, it's human. Hermitcraft is in no way culpable for an individual's actions. The amount of distress caused by this VC's actions is widespread and not limited, in the same way an earthquake has aftershocks.

I'm genuinely grieving over iskall, The character and the community they built and the stims and autistic scripts I've built into myself because of them. I was shocked on Saturday, but at the same time, after reading that first line it didn't make sense to be any other hermit (I did not in any way predict this) at the time of reading nothing was confirmed so I felt that, innocent until proven guilty, was the way to go. My heart sank, I felt sick and I wanted to cry, I was on my way home from a long day at work and it was the first day of my hormone cycle at it's worst. The first thoughts I had were, 'no no please, it's not true, it's true, maybe it's the bullies again and he can't cope anymore'. Then the hermits started acting and I thought maybe he doesn't want to be affiliated anymore. But that didn't 100% add up. <33 to the good hermits for being amazing.

In my experience being autistic means 75% of my existence is made up of scripts I've adopted and will continue to adopt, from other people around me locally like my family, from movies, shows, and books growing up, to everything I've consumed information wise, this includes so many people, some that at one time were my hyperfixation, these scripts can be unlearnt, and I have another script that helps ('we don't do that here') but it's still a process and It's stressful and unpleasant.

VC was one of the only people I've subscribed to on twitch, I didn't even watch his live stream (they were way too stressful for me, the pay to win quality of his streams was really frustrating) I just subbed to support him. At least to me he had a 'victim' persona especially when it came to the other hermits and their success in comparison, and this translated to me the need to support him more. (He was a hermit for crying out loud, he was fine, I tell myself now), then I read the truth and the pay to win made sense because he Was showing favouritism, after reading K's statement before I was finished I knew M would be involved too and I just felt incredibly sad and heartbroken for them, no one deserves to be treated like that, and people except a certain level of human decency. I'm sorry that this happens and I'm so sad that it has.

He made me feel Grian was a bad sport and that Grian was wrong to be in videos with his friends because he was more popular, that Grian couldn't be sincere in his joy 'because he was always stealing the limelight' (I was 15 at the time and irl was tough and I had bigger problems going on, I loved C! Grian a lot) and didn't trust anyone, so I started to dislike CC! Grian a lot. (Again young n Major trust issues); I like Grian again now but felt uneasy for a long while.

VC always pops at the end of his videos when he says bye and I always watched to the end just because of it, and at a certain point I started associating popping with saying 'I love you' I did it to my family and it's been a part of my autistic script since late 2018. Others include (Hallo, Omega, of doom)

Iskall's Minecraft character is canonically non-binary/agender and in fanworks they use they/them pronouns and as someone who's a fan of mcyt, Minecraft and is gender q, that was a big deal for me to be canonically represented. They also inspired me to write incredibly niche and rare minecraft lore and head canon's for them (them being a villager/player hybrid); iskall's character is a separate entity but the association is horrifying now and that is extremely disappointing, it was the same with William Gold.

VC has made fun of people's differences and difficulties and has been generally rude at times under the guise of humour. He has laughed at people's trust in the creepest way, that even though I liked him I was scared and put off for days, I was so genuinely angry at him, because I felt humiliated. He knew who he was and laughed at our trust in him. That hurts and angers me even more now.

[faerise-fae]

Not really a marauders character but: Tom Riddle #20!

YAPPING WARNING ABOUT ASPD TOM RIDDLE AGAIN

Ok so sorry for taking so long to do this, but my brain crashes every time i try to think about something that isn't obvious or just fucking boring. BUT I REALLY WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT WITH YALL SO GIVE ME YOUR THOUGHTS

The hill I'll die on is that he is an ASPD baddie, tho I bet he would prefer thinking about himself as sociopath, as edgy teens do. It doesn't mean I think he is totally emotionless, i think he is very emotional. Just not empathetic? This man is purely driven by his emotions from the start. Be it fear of death, resentment, and hatred towards Dumbledore or just general anger directed at the stupidity of the wizarding nation. In ASPD it's just that the intensity of expression of those emotions is different. He can look totally put together and like an oasis of peace, but inside planning whatever insanities only he can think of.

Because the thing is, anger issues are not rare in ASPD. ASPD is associated with impulsiveness and violent or risky behaviours, which can result in lashing out in anger. It's just that when you don't have many emotions to begin with, controlling the stronger ones can be difficult.

People have very different headcanons about him in that matter, i see a lot of totally stoic, calculating tom riddle who doesn't have absolutely any emotions and stuff like this, but I really can't see it. My man is a dramatic, cruel, entitled and IMPULSIVE edgelord BUT:

HOT TAKE #1:

Canon Tom Riddle headcanonned himself as fanon Tom Riddle.

He might have thought of himself as emotionless, but he just didn't acknowledge it. Growing up in an unstable environment, he hadn't learned how to stabilize himself.

Because ASPD is partialy caused by genetics, yes. But a very big factor in developing it is childhood and home life. We can agree his was very unstable, he has probably witnessed violence and definitely experienced emotional neglect. ASPD is all about lack of security. Its defence mechanism. That means:

My man just doesn't know how to cope, LMAO. When it was too much even for him to stuff into the back of his brain, he just lashed out. Acting on impulses was his relief from it. Adrenaline from it also helped to mute his feelings.

But at the same time, he just didn't think of himself as unreasonable. "It was never his fault, he was just provoked!" He also didn't feel guilty about causing harm to others because he didn't have any empathetic feelings towards anyone. How can you feel bad about idk, cursing someone if you don't see them as an individual with feelings of their own. Because how could he think about their feelings when he didn't have much of his own to compare and to even comprehend what they feel beside some very shallow understanding. AND BY THAT I DONT MEAN HE DIDNT KNOW HE WAS HURTING PEOPLE AROUND HIM HE WASNT A POOR LITTLE MEOW MEOW. HE KNEW, HE JUST DIDNT GET IT SO HE DIDNT CARE. But he obviously knew. So no empathy but more like an educated guess. Masking king. He learnt how emotions worked for other people and used it whenever he saw fit. Pure manipulation.

Because again neglectful caregiving = problems with attachment to people and forming relationships. In the end it's all about him in that aspect. His feelings are always about himself and making himself feel comfortable and stable. He was fond of his friends till they were useful and till he felt good with having them around. He took pride* in gaining their respect and loyalty. He was using them to stroke his ego basically. And was using them in general. For stuff and things.

*HOT TAKE #2:

And here i have my latest hot take: his similarity with Harry in that matter. Harry is a gryffindor with some slytherin traits. And imo Tom, with him being the most slytherin to ever slytherin, his crazy pride and impulsivity is so gryffindor.

So there's that beside how we can all agree he was a liar and manipulator.

[proshippers-against-censorship]

Long ask incoming so i really apologise for that lol.

in my honest opinion yaelokre is going about this incredibly wrong. but the way people have been talking about not only their characters (to be clear im not saying this because of "blah blah they're children" fake morality stuff or whatever lmao im a proshipper myself—but one of the main characters is quite literally meant to represent/be keath themself) but about them themself (sending them rape threats, threatening to draw them having sex with their characters?? I've seen a lot on the internet these past couple days, especially in proship spaces, which is so upsetting to me because I had so much more faith in our community 😭)... All this is incredibly disgusting to watch. and disheartening.

Are they going about this incredibly irresponsibly? Yes! Is it naive for them to expect that no rule 34 is created whatsoever? Yeah, probably! But they did explicitly say they dont want the characters directly representing their own childhood (including one who's basically their own persona) sexualised, much less have it sent directly to them (which it was—that's how we even got to this point, anyway) and going ahead and mocking this boundary directly, and then encouraging people to do it out of spite feels... off to me. dunno. (To be clear i think, once again, their actions are incredibly dumb and irresponsible. They're not justified in doing any of that and im not trying to say they are lol.)

(And, while we're here, there's a difference between gigantic heavily funded capitalist projects like disney, and Some Guy working on one deeply personal thing all by themself for free. Do whatever you want with like. Thousand dollar franchises with no specific human faces behind them, but it feels so weird to tear into someone's passion project theyre making out of love for free. Idk where else in my message this point fits so I'm leaving it here.)

I can't help but be reminded of antis tearing into my own work to "fix" it simply because i was a proshipper. On paper people can do whatever they want with fiction, can't they? Of course—but taking a story i made to cope with my trauma and spitefully twisting it to their own wants for no reason other than because I was a proshipper is still harrassment, still done with malice, and—proship/anti stuff removed—an objectively fucked up and mean fucking thing to do. Artists making shit for free do not owe you anything and that includes not owing you their comfortability with people interacting with their personal projects they are sharing with others (for free!! When they don't have to!!!) in certain ways. The same way they also don't owe you being comfortable with unprompted criticism and whatever else.

The "fiction is fiction" argument doesn't hold up when it starts to hurt real people. They aren't a bad person simply for not wanting their personal project sexualised (which—you could argue "that's not the problem, the problem is how theyre going about handling it it," which i agree with; but there are several posts on this very blog and countless others mocking them entirely for simply wanting their work not sexualised, and several posts encouraging others to make sexual content of their characters out of spite. Im not saying it's sexual harrassment but god it does start to feel like it's somewhere in that realm.) This isn't the first time anything like this has happened in their community, ive been here since the beginning, and in the beginning they were so unbelievably calm and polite about their boundaries and then people started directly dming them nsfw and things spiraled and here we are.

I've used the pottery analogy to explain this before—imagine someone puts a ceramic sculpture down on a table. It belongs to them, and they're very clearly proud of it. You could push it off the table and break it if it makes you happy, you won't even face any real consequences if you do. They'll just be really upset, rightfully so—it's their thing that they physically made. Maybe they even made it as a coping mechanism, only they know for sure. And they ask you to handle it gently if you decide pick it up. There's a billion things you theoretically could do, having now been made aware of this clear boundary, but only two are right—either handling it gently, or simply not picking it up in the first place.

You're a shitty person if you push it off the table. Using excuses like "there are lots of people in this room, someone was going to decide to break it eventually" doesn't suddenly absolve you morally because you are a sentient being, not a mindless robot slaving to statistics. Maybe statistically it was going to get broken eventually, it still doesn't make it right because you chose to break it yourself, directly going against what they asked you to do when handling their property, simply because it made you happy. I know full well you would not purposely damage or otherwise ignore clear boundaries or guidelines when it comes to someone's physical shit in real life. The concept of having boundaries about your own things that you made and own is not new and having to follow others' boundaries is not you being oppressed it's just being a decent human being.

Fictional characters' feelings don't matter more than real peoples'. But your own real person feelings of Mild Disappointment at not being to make porn for something you (evidently) don't even like that much ALSO don't matter more than the creator's massive upset and discomfort at direct representations of them (real person!!!) being sexualised.

TL;DR: yeah it's stupid of them to try to Anne Rice this whole situation. And yes they deserve to be called out for it and face the consequences for their actions. But let's... not treat them like it's so bafflingly unreasonable and evil of them for simply not wanting people to sexualise characters who are meant to be a direct representation of them (real person!!!!) as a child and let's EXTRA not break their boundaries even further. Their actions are stupid, yes. But their desires are like. A perfectly normal thing to want, if a little naive. harrassment is still harrassment. Being spiteful and vicious isn't suddenly okay when you're on the "right side" with the Right Opinions doing it. Being anti-harrassment doesn't only apply to people you like.

This ask isn't meant to come off as hostile or mean or anything so I sincerely apologise if it does. Wishing you the best. I also apologise if anything in this ask reads wrong it's late at night and im recovering from a concussion lol.

Fair enough.

I'm team 'break rules, not boundaries'.

By all means, show their Anne Rice approach is stupid by creating nsfw and properly tagging it and posting it to proper spaces. Fill R34 with that. Create nsfw fanworks on AO3 with proper tags. Go ham. But they clearly don't want to see it, so don't send it to them.

You wouldn't send porn of characters to any other creator without them asking. And you shouldn't be sending rape threats either. That's fucked up.

There's a difference between acting out of spite and acting out of malice, and I won't dispute the fact that some people are taking things quite far and doing the latter.

You can say a rule is dumb without taking steps to directly harm.

[coeluvr]

You're so wonderfully devious. Your IF is so well written. I've played through it once several months ago, lost track of it, then found it again 🤗 but seriously, the complex emotions you pull out of me is what makes me keep coming back.

There's no time to not grieve for the MC. And your time jumps make it so no matter how much time has passed for MC, we don't get that relief. It makes me wonder if the MC feels that way all the time for the last 9 years if the grief we experience is just as intense. So I absolutely adore how you give MCs the ability to name a journal Alistair and to have a tattoo to keep them with you.

I don't know what to do with Rosea. I think the only way to hurt Luceris is by hurting the ones they love, Lancelot and Helios. But then this cycle of revenge continues and warps, and it's this massive spiders web because when you hurt Lancelot and Helios, then you hurt Farah, Vincent, and Hunter. It makes even more people want to put a stop to MC's machinations.

I know we're going to see it in writing, but the generational guilt on these kids [cause fuck they are basically still kids] heads is crushing.

The adults trying to alleviate guilt by saying "Mc is protected as consort" and has the "freedom to do what they want" is a poor consolation prize. They can't get rid of how they were complicit in MCs trauma.

Somehow, you have me litterally insane, tinfoil hat and all, do you play a kind MC so everyone can see how unhinged Luceris idea was? Because I'd love to play this game as quiet and kind MC, one who's forgive and try to move on, but when MCs twin died, I became just as crazy as Luceris. Now I have to be okay with the fact that I'm playing the long game of revenge and whatever that looks like.

Anyway, thank you for your work. It's amazing and I can't wait to see what happens next.

My toxic trait is I like being called evil or devious or anything insane. 🥰 Thank you for your kind words! 💗

Honestly, the time jumps do serve that purpose. Mainly because I think MC gets a little better each time jump but then something happens and it brings back what they felt that night in Vesphire.

For example, the time jump to meeting Fadiya is kind of supposed to be like "well at least someone wants to be friends with our baby" and that feeling is kind of hopeful, at least to me. With the 1st short story, I wanted to cement that feeling since it's like "world against MC but this little kid is here!!" and again it's hopeful. Chapter 2 is softer too with Fadiya, there isn't much angst until the very end where it's like "ah right, shit still sucks." and a part of the healing that the player might have felt just dies lol.

Chapter 3 is kind of different but technically MC is doing "better" or well coping better so there has been some progress on their part albeit it can be unhealthy.

I've gotten the "Oh this is kinda rushed" comment a few times but I don't think I could've taken these first few chapters more slowly since it is supposed to be kind of like a blur to MC. In my head, chapter 3 is when things are more slow for them but now they're leaving on a trip so...

I think revenge (that isn't like "get power throw him into jail") will always come with the loss of people. The only reason Luceris didn't lose people is because he didn't really have anyone to lose except for Lancelot and we all know how that's going. (Ikram doesn't count, if she refused he could just get another military general and been like okay. Don't be friends with your boss people. /j)

A Luceris that had Farah wouldn't have done that ever because she would have left him so yeah! It's normal to be stuck between what to do when you have people you care about who actually have somewhat of a normal moral compass.

Easiest way is to simply not have anyone (unless they're 100% in love with you and would throw away all their morals just for you ofc) and well maybe I can help with that! 🤭

The adults are insane and the kids are burdened with the problems that their parents are to blame for. I love the whole "burdened by the sins of your parents" trope. ✨️

God this got a bit too long lmao 😭 it was fun discussing some of the points. 🤝

[jamiesfootball]

Whumptober Day 4

Prompt: Hallucinations

Jamie goes back to City, but never leaves to go on LCA. Instead he grits his teeth and bears the renewed pressure from his dad, his reduced minutes, all of it. And along the way, he develops an unhealthy coping mechanism, one that seems harmless at first but then quickly spirals out of his control

He starts talking to the toy soldier that Ted gave him.

At first, it's just venting. His anger with Ted, his frustration with his spot at City, how much it stung to get kicked off a team like Richmond. His dad.

Before long, Ted soldier in his head may as well be a real person. A sympathetic presence at his side, someone to witness his struggles and offer Lasso-esque platitudes. He'd never realized how lonely Manchester could be. He just needs someone to talk to.

The only problem is that Ted in his head knows way more about what’s going on in Jamie’s life than real life Ted does, and the last time Jamie saw real-life Ted was when Ted turned away from seeing Jamie in his dad in the treatment room. Hell, that was when Ted gave him the toy soldier in the first place. All of this combined means that sometimes when Ted Soldier sees things, some of Ted's reactions are, well-

“I told you it wasn’t a good idea to talk back.”

They sound like Ted. “Come on, sport. I know your ribs hurt, but if you don’t get up now, you’re gonna be late for practice. We don’t want that, do we?” “No, Coach.”

When his dad’s just stormed out, leaving Jamie to sweep up the glass, and his hands are shaking and his eyes burn even though it was just words this time. Just words and a thrown bottle for emphasis. Nothing really. And it feels like Ted’s there too, standing comfortingly in the corner while Jamie kneels down with the dustpan. “You got this son. Just be a goldfish.” They're Ted's words, wrapped in an accent that's become a comfort, and paired with a smile that's patient and only occasionally disappointed in him.

Jamie can't hear the similarity for what it is.

"Didn't I say you'd regret talking back?"

"Walk it off. You've got training, and my son isn't meant to warm the bench.

"What are you crying over a little love tap? Move on, junior! Christ, I barely hit you." it's just different when it's Ted. When it's Ted, the word 'son' sounds like a warm promise. It doesn't sound like a threat. It doesn't sound like 'I own you.'

Months pass.

The day finally comes for City to play Richmond at Wembley. Ted hasn't seen or spoken to Jamie since the relegation match the season prior. Ted finds Jamie before the match. He's been keeping tabs on Jamie, and he just wanted to say how impressed he is with Jamie's performance the past few months. Not only has he become a better player at City, a less selfish player, but he's also absolutely crushing all the parts he was already good at.

He worries, though. The Jamie of Richmond might not have been the easiest guy to get along with, but you could always see what people might stick around for, what with the self-confidence and the charisma. Some of his recent interviews, though, those had shown a different side to Jamie, one that was sunken in on himself. Quiet, in a way that made the corners of Ted's vision start to grey out and his breathing come fast.

He needed to talk to Jamie. He'd already let him slip past him once, and the longer Ted put it off the more it felt like he was running out of time. At this point, he'd even welcome the kid's attitude making a reappearance, so long as it were a sign of life that Jamie hadn't been replaced with an equally handsome automaton.

But Jamie doesn't need to be bogged down by any of that.

He's not sure what's changed, but Jamie has become a hell of a player, and however the match falls out, whoever wins, there won't be any hard feelings. He's just come over to shake Jamie's hand and tell him as much.

He's entirely unprepared for the way Jamie flinches back.

[sunshades]

grief in the city, or "how many days off will i get when my lover dies of consumption next march"

Expanding from this post (@puffles HI) or mostly just trying to write it out in a readable fashion. (lor spoilers ahead yeehaw 📚)

Just been thinking. Death in the pmverse city. It's not something you're really allowed to get personal with. But some people just can't help it.

In lobocorp we get a look at what it's like from the inside of a corporation, and like yeah the entire story is about it, but to me Yesod's parts more than anyone else's showcase this feeling.

(Yesod core suppression dialogue)

The question of detachment comes up pretty often, and he points out Malkuth's as the ideal behavior to cope with it- forgetting you're dealing with humans as much as you can. Through his arc in lobocorp he struggles with it, this idea that it can all be fine if he stops thinking of the others as having a face, a name, and most importantly (for him) a body. Of course a strategy like that stops working as soon as one remembers, as one gets closer. That is one of the main themes of lor.

We're introduced to Xiao midway through the game, and her story unfolds as we start to learn about Roland's. The way she describes herself is similar to how A talks about Yesod, though Xiao doesn't feel special for it. The softness of her (at the time) coworker Lowell confounds her.

(Xiao's key page)

Then the invitation reaches her, and therefore the news of Lowell's death, and this changes. Her reaction is intense, she describes it vividly. And it feels... kind of natural considering the martial culture of her workplace? Specifically for an Association whose mechanics literally run off emotion levels.

(Liu S1 reception)

But we immediately see that no, to everyone else this seems like an overreaction to losing a partner. We see it from Chun's reaction, then Angela's, who suggests she simply finds a substitute for Lowell, and Roland himself is surprised by it: he muses about the Light influencing the people of the City: this is such a strange thing it gets compared to the goddamn Distortion! When we take a look at Lowell's own book it seems to confirm that out of the two he's always been the one with the more unconventional mindset.

(Lowell's key page)

It's not groundbreaking to say one should care about their partner, but it feels like in the City this isn't really the case? It feels like having someone you cherish becomes something of a nuisance as it can interfere with a Fixer's ability to... well, work. Roland, though affected for obvious reasons, tells Angela about it briefly enough, and it seems it's not particularly noteworthy, having romantic entanglements but also losing them pretty quickly. It's something that happens, that you're supposed to deal with easily enough, and go back to work.

(Liu S2 second reception)

Instead Xiao's feelings lead her to do the direct opposite; it's noteworthy that before her reception she resigns from the Association, and immediately justifies herself to her subordinates by letting them know this shouldn't affect their careers. It's worth noting that Roland's story is marked by a similar situation, once he's exposed in his revenge quest, he loses his Color title as well as his Fixer grade. In both situations we find that the question of how to deal with Survival (being a survivor to the person you love) can't escape from the problem of Survival (how to make a living). The death of another puts you in actual danger if you actually care about them.

In light of this, Lowell's hopes and promises for Xiao read differently. His apparent softness and sensitivity reveals itself as something he can handle very rationally; aware of how deeply their feelings run, he asks her to vow to always watch over herself.

(Liu S1 reception)

Instead Xiao, and we later learn about Roland, embrace the horror of what's happened to them, and show us what it's like to go into the deep end of this grief; it's a deviation from what we might consider normal or #HEALTHY, but it's also a display of feeling that usually people of the City just... don't allow themselves to have. I don't wanna ramble about this too long, but since limbus vaguely uses the Divine Comedy as a source, in Dante terms I would say: while Xiao and Roland commit sins of excess of love, letting their anger over their loved ones take them over, the people of the City in general commit the sin of sloth, "laziness of the heart", it's people who refuse to let any kind of attachment in their heart, because it's simply easier not to deal with them. Roland's arc touches on it quite often.

(Natural Sciences realization)

Though Roland does eventually turn out to be, well. A big deal, a lot of his behavior in the library is supposed to show him as a kind of everyman of the City. In moments where he talks like this, he's expressing what it actually feels like for most people to live in there. This heavily contrasts with Xiao's own beliefs, the ones she develops through her love, and that leads to her EGO manifestation.

(Liu S1 reception)

By the end we also know that the truth is Roland's own mindset isn't quite the one he tries to preach ("that's that and this is this"), but the grief over the loss of Angelica, and more generally the pain for the life he's always had, still weighs so heavy on him he isn't able to just start again- he doesn't want to! As the stories goes on and he faces the horrors of the City together with Angela, even this facade of "sloth" fades away, and his actual feelings start to show, the love and the anger and all of the grief- he starts to resonate with the abnos as Angela did, a similar experience to distorting.

While Roland has a lot of interesting dialogue, it'd take a whole other post to talk about it (I'm sure someone smarter has done it already) so for the purposes of this and to keep on topic I only wanna talk about a little bit that Xiao doesn't touch on, and that feels relevant with the perspective of canto VI.

(Black Silence "soulmates" reception)

In one of the darkest moments, we get a (can I say it now?) ⛈ HEARTBREAKING ⛈ confession straight from the inside of Roland's mind, the fear that in choosing to move on he'll have abandoned Angelica and all they meant for each other. The "pair of linked souls" is tied on a mechanical level, to beat them you need to disrupt their soul link, a buff they give each other that makes them basically unbeatable- they keep each other alive. Roland's fear, after years of Fixer work, after seeing how little value a person's life has in the eyes of the City, is this: that the second he looks away from Angelica's death and his attempt to avenge it, he'll have forsaken her forever, that their love and life together will lose its meaning.

Only with the help of the librarians and particularly Angela he's able to accept that's not the case, and in the final reception he once again wields her name and her gloves, carrying on her legacy and memory for the sake of the future and the new people he wants to protect.

Finally, I wanna show an incredibly interesting piece of dialogue from Leviathan, between Vergilius and Carmen.

(Leviathan chapter 18, translation by @/SnakeskinFS on twitter)

Now, Carmen's take on love is... something. Love as she means it is what we know to bring to Distortion, but it is interesting that the actual implication in the world she draws up is what the people of the City need back is contact with one another, understanding. It's also interesting Vergilius calls it a word he's unaccustomed to. Obviously here it doesn't apply strictly to romantic love, but this does check out with how little we get to see City residents... well, loving each other.

Xiao for Lowell, Roland for Angelica, as well as honestly Carmen for herself, her vision for the future, stand out in crowds of cordial coworkers and friends of circumstances, for the strength of their feelings, love in its danger and beauty. The paths they end up following are messy, some very bloody, and done in remembrance of the people they valued above all else. It's the theme of love that entwines so closely with that of death, the question of what you do when you're the one surviving and left behind.

So here's where I think of canto VI- WH is so heavily defined by grief. This is partially tied to its literary influences, partially to the author's own experience, but the story is scarred by the various funerals, each of which changes someone's life, mostly for the worse.

Is this malicious? A little. A little... not? Like in the City, the feeling is that the dead, the memory of them, follow because they love the living. When we get to Cathy's death, she and Heathcliff curse each other back and forth before making peace again, but in the end more than their harshness, what hits the most is the connection, the yearning to be reunited- "I care nothing of your sufferings" is soon followed by "I'm not wishing you greater torment than I have", which leads into the Heartbreaking speech, that we already know will be very relevant in the canto, in which Heathcliff takes her pain as his.

NOW I see readings/speculation around that this will be portrayed as lcb Cathy trying to tie Heathcliff to his past forever/them needing to Kill Her, and metaphorically his affection for her in order for him to move on and become his own person, to which I say: meh? I think that misses part of the point, makes her out to be a plot device instead of a character that, like him, has grown in an awful abusive household, and laments in her deathbed that she wishes things had been different, and that the person she loves could stay with her longer, after circumstances beyond their control have forced them apart.

By the end of it, though we know that in the book it doesn't really turn out like she'd like, Cathy claims she'd rather him remember her words, and her, as harsh and cruel than nurse anger while he lives on, she hates the thought that he should suffer more when she's gone, because she, too, feels his suffering as hers.

To me this last wish she expresses is most reminiscent of what we see of Lowell's request to Xiao, the way it's not fulfilled until the last minute. Xiao doesn't listen and she goes on, fully aware she's betraying the trust he put in her, and that she might be the next to die. Because of this betrayal, her feelings, this excess of love threatens to have the best of her, to make her forget about Lowell and focus only on herself and her anger- the "love of the self" that is the Distortion. Her final reception has her talking back to Carmen's proposal and worldview, detailing the way her bond with Lowell, but also Miris, Chun and all of her men, have been keeping her strong to this point.

(Xiao reception)

With the awareness her lover is dead and gone, she manages to work through her feelings and gain strength from them, deciding that these bonds, and her memory will keep all of them alive through each other.

SO am I saying this is totally happening to Heathcliff in canto VI. I mean, nah, not necessarily. But considering the similarities he shares with these other stories, and how we've already seen these examples of the theme of grief over a loved one being handled before in the previous games and resulting in these genuinely amazing characters, it's something I think about.

As we're talking about a game adaptation that obviously can't adapt 20 more years of story (and let's be real, shouldn't either. If you want to read WH you can just read WH,) I think that would be a reasonable way for the canto to play out: getting to see one of the sinners genuinely lose it over someone's death in a way none of the others really did, explicitly showing the uniqueness of such intense affection in a place like the City, and then slowly beginning the road to recovery. Much like for Xiao and Roland, this being done not as a result of leaving the past behind, but as a direct result of their love for another, and that of their lover as well as everyone else who cherishes them (Miris, Angela and the librarians- I think we'll soon add the sinners to the list).

(post core suppression dialogue)

To quote another bit from our bestie Yesod, the hope that grows out of the rot, as the death of another, but as your own wounded self as well.

So to conclude. I think in general, in the context of how we've seen major characters work around their grief in previous games it'd make sense for canto VI to reach a similar conclusion, the death being something that weighs heavily, but doesn't obscure the possibility of a future. Still. Love as something dangerous that has extreme power over us, but as something that lives in us and can't be taken away.

[heretherebedork]

Teena and Zouey really are more similar than you'd think they were, frankly. But also the way Soong smiled when he got the text from First? Aw.

Giddiest. boy. ever. Just... damn. Falling in love is complicated and it's even more complicated when you've been taught to never be in love

And even harder when he goes from being giddy to being told not to be in love and to First only hearing the most hurtful part and not the parts that lead to it... because it's about how complicated love can be and how much it can hurt and how do you find love when you're always been told that love isn't for someone like you.

How do you learn to trust and love when everyone around you tells you that isn't what you're meant for because of what you've been doing to survive? (Soong can't even argue, he can't say a word, because he doesn't believe in any of it, not a bit of it.)

Really, the exploration of the love that Soong is experiencing tempered with the reality of his life and First's own innocence coming up but also his own love as well, his own pain only making everything worse and knowing that Teena believe in love because of Zouey and knowing how fine of a line the trust exists on and how easily broken it is if you don't know how to trust, well, trust.

Because this is basically the exact opposite of the problem that First and Soong have. The misunderstanding comes from a totally different place but also serves a different purpose. This is about what sex means and what being a virgin means and the different weights placed on either having or being denied sex but also how important sex can be to people...

Teena accusing Zouey of having sex with other people and just refusing to sleep with him, Teena throwing out the word whore for Zouey because he feels betrayed by his refusal to have sex, Teena already heartbroken before Zouey ever shows up rather than giddy until he realizes something, Zouey desperately trying to talk and explain only to be shot down...

And Zouey still arguing, still trying to point out that they were something more, that none of this is true, that he wants to talk about what's wrong... ugh. But also, yeah, Teena deserved to get slapped for that. Absolutely. But they're both falling apart because they care about someone that they can't communicate with and don't know how to trust or believe in or even just love because the very things that brought them together so easily tear them apart because differences can both bond and fracture.

(But also damn Teena calling Zouey a whore as the biggest insult he can find is wild and painful and so big, the fact that Zouey was still trying to fight for him to listen after that... oof, their love is rough but it's also just so damn there.)

My two sad little rich boys getting drunk to recover from their first forays into love. But also the very sad and much more lonely whores that fell for them who are much more alone and finding very different ways to cope.