#if you are a white individual who is trying to compare my experiences as a poc to yours

[saetoru]

no bcs youre a racist. if i say that shit abt you, i would be cancelled before i even hit send

yeah as u should be tbh

if u think me, a poc, saying white ppl are annoying is racist ?? then you are the racist one bc u have pretty much just admitted to me u do not care about my experience or feelings of being continuously pushed to the bottom by a society / system that ensures i stay there while keeping white people privileged and at the top. if you compare my bitterness to white people’s historical and continuous system of oppression that keeps them high and mighty to you “saying the same thing” about poc, you are racist and you do not care to see or hear the issues of poc individuals and the daily / lifelong struggle they have to face

so yeah if you sent me an ask saying that about poc ppl u would be racist and ppl cancelling you would be your problem not mine

me though ?? imma stay mad at white folks thanks 🫶🏽

[peonycats]

RACEBENDING NATIONAL PERSONIFICATIONS: A TREATISE

DISCLAIMERS:

I AM NOT WHITE, I AM A POC. I am not writing this because I’m a butthurt white person who gets pissy when someone makes my white faves nonwhite and thus unrelatable to me for ‘some’ reason.

I AM NOT PERSONALLY ATTACKING ANY INDIVIDUALS WHO RACEBEND OR IMAGINE THEIR NATIONS TO HAVE A DIFFERENT ETHNICITY THAN WHAT THEY DO IN CANON; ON A SIMILAR NOTE, DO NOT ATTACK SUCH INDIVIDUALS FOR ME. This is a discussion of general fandom trends and a larger phenomenon, the issue I am talking about cannot be solved on an individual to individual basis.

I AM NOT TRYING TO STOP FIRST NATIONS PEOPLE FROM RECLAIMING THEIR NATIONS. As I am not First Nations myself, I would not wish to deny what these individuals emotionally and mentally reap from reclaiming their nations.

I AM NOT THE “POC AREN’T ALLOWED TO HAVE FUN AND SEE THEMSELVES IN THEIR FAVES” POLICE; I AM NOT YOUR MOM, DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. Again, this is a discussion of fandom trends and a larger phenomenon. I think it’s almost always worth examining why we do the things we do and the reasons behind a trend.

I AM NOT AGAINST RACEBENDING IN GENERAL. This is specifically an essay on racebending in nationverse Hetalia and other personified nations fandoms.

PREFACE

As stated before in my disclaimers, this essay is not intended to be a condemnation of individuals who participate in racebending. Rather, I intend to make a macro-critique of wider structures and patterns. For this reason, this essay is not accusing anyone engaging in racebending of holding any specific belief. I cannot stress enough how much I do not know you, the hypothetical reader who engages in racebending. 

Again, my intent is to critique wider structures and patterns.

This essay is a conversation I would like to have with other POC and other marginalized groups, especially POC based in white, Western countries. Thus, I ask people not included in the above groups to refrain from weighing in on this.

ALTERNATIVE GOOGLE DOC LINK HERE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Difference in Reception for Racebent versus Non-Racebent Characters

The Inherent Politicism of Personifying Nations

The State of POC Representation in Hetalia

The Assumption of Interchangeability in POC Experience

The Myth of Multiculturalism

“It’s Just Fandom, Why Are You Trying to Control POC Who Just Want to Have Fun and Want to Represent Themselves?"

Conclusion

The Difference in Reception for Racebent versus Non-Racebent Characters

I will start this essay off with an acknowledgement of my station in the Hetalia fandom and how it uniquely equips me to talk about this topic – I am very fortunate to enjoy a follower base that primarily follows me for non-Western characters, whether they be canonical or my own original characters. As someone who mostly posts non-Western characters, I can confirm that there is a wider disparity in reception between drawings of my white characters and non-white characters. The following example is not from myself, but from the artist miyuecakes who similarly focuses on predominantly non-white, non-Western countries. You can see there is a drastic gap in the amount of notes that post focused on five nations considered to be non-Western versus a drawing of Female America.

Stating this fact of the fandom is fairly noncontroversial. I would also assert that the following statement is equally true, however given recent reception, is far more controversial: “There are far more instances of racebent canonically white/Western characters, which receive far more traction than their non-racebent counterparts, whether canonical or not.”

I want to make clear what my statement is not saying:

Racebending is only done by white people seeking to score clout and diversity points without having to care about canon non-white characters. In fact, the vast majority of racebending in the fandom is done by POC looking for representation; given the amount of white canon nations compared to any other nation, POC who engage in racebending see it as a way of “evening” the disproportionate overrepresentation of white countries.

POC who engage in racebending are doing so to score clout and diversity points with a white audience. Refer to my above point.

Racebent canonically white characters are met with no controversy or racist/bigoted vitriol. It is fairly well known that there have been multiple harassment campaigns, particularly on Twitter, against artists and editors who’ve engaged in racebending even outside of the Hetalia fandom: see the Black Anya edit, Thumin’s artwork and resulting hate. POC being visibly POC in online spaces will always garner backlash.

On a similar note, I am not including POC cosplayers cosplaying white or light-skinned characters in my definition of racebending. Being angered by POC who cosplay characters of a different complexion is blatantly racist; anyone who is angered by this has nothing of value to add and not worth arguing with.

I am a bitter artist who is mad that I don’t receive enough notes on my posts with non-racebent characters compared to posts about racebent white characters. As stated earlier, I am grateful for the audience I’ve cultivated who specifically follow me for non-racebent non-Western content; I am also more than aware that my content is not what people who seek out racebent content are looking for, and have no interest in changing either my content or their tastes. The last thing I would wish to do is to label POC creators who engage in racebending as “the enemy” and POC creators who don’t as “my side.”

With that out of the way, I bring up this observation because I think it’s worth asking ourselves, POC specifically, the following questions: Why? Why is there this discrepancy in frequency and reception between these kinds of characters and content? Why do people racebend in lieu of focusing on existing POC and creating their own non-white characters?

The easy answer most would give is because white characters are over-represented and given more screen time and attention in the canon, so people, especially POC, will become attached to them and create variations of them that hit closer to home for them; this is especially the case if you are a POC who has had experiences living as a minority in a Western country. Some POC may also use racebending as a way to subvert national myths that have historically excluded people of color for a variety of racist, imperialist reasons. I know I used to subscribe towards a depiction of non-white passing America and Canada for this very reason.

In the rest of this essay I would like to examine and critique the practice of racebending national anthropomorphisms traditionally and typically depicted as white in the context of Hetalia and by extension other media involving similar premises. This essay argues that while racebending may be harmless for most other anime, Hetalia – by virtue of its content centering real life nations – carries political implications that are not necessarily appropriate.

I stress again that I can’t stop you or what anybody in the Hetalia fandom does. I do not have that kind of power nor the will to do such a thing. All I ask is for you to listen to the following with an open mind, and if there’s only one thing you take away from this, I hope it’s to realize that POC in particular have valid reasons to dislike racebent depictions of white nations; holding such a stance does not make them anti-POC representation and somehow no longer POC and instead, a member of the white oppressor class.

The Inherent Politicism of Personifying Nations

Firstly, I repeat that a series about personified nations is deeply political and every creative choice carries political and socio-cultural ramifications, whether intentional or not and made by the creator or the fan. Even if you mostly interact with Hetalia in a depoliticized context, others may not, and given that nationverse Hetalia is about personified nations, this is perfectly reasonable. 

Let us look into the canon material of Hetalia- It is shown that nations on average have close ties to their governments, viewing them as their bosses and carrying out actions for them. We are shown that there are nations who go against the orders of their governments, such as Germany; this does not mean all nations follow in that pattern, however, and there are many who are in lockstep with their governments and their actions.

Therefore, for individuals whose ethnic groups and nations have suffered great harm from oppressor nation-states (Philippines v. United States, Indonesia v. Netherlands, India v. England), it is not irrational for them to be unsettled by their oppressor being racebent- especially when said oppressor nation-state is depicted as being the same ethnicity as the very group(s) they marginalized. This is uncomfortable for multiple reasons: 

There is an implication that a member of a marginalized group possibly chose to take part in atrocities and misdeeds that the said marginalized group historically not the major perpetrator behind. In more egregious cases, a member of a marginalized group willingly chose to commit atrocities and misdeeds on a large scale against their own group.

The oppressor state personification was forced by their government to commit these grievous acts of harm against members of other marginalized groups/their own marginalized groups; thus, the personification of the nation-state, the people, has little to no culpability as an oppressor, and is instead made into a fellow victim of their own government. 

This deflects blame from the embodiment of the state of being an oppressor. The suggestion here is that the state is somehow completely separate yet intertwined with the government – it was simply the government who perpetrated the crimes… the people were just unwillingly complicit. This can come across as an erasure/rosewashing of the very purposeful policies used to harm and disadvantage colonized/oppressed groups.

This can also erase the fact that in many cases, the people gave the government’s actions their tacit approval whether it was through whole-hearted enthusiasm or apathy towards the suffering of others. 

In the case that the racebent nation’s minority ethnicity was historically involved in such acts, this involves highly sensitive conversations about minorities’ complicity in crimes and assimilation into the white/majority order (e.g. Chinese and East Asian settlers in Hawaii after America’s illegal annexation, Korean collaborators with the Japanese annexation of Korea, African American soldiers in the Philippines); these are extremely touchy subjects that should be had within the relevant ethnic groups, and should not be appropriated by outsiders, particularly white people, especially for fandom purposes.

(I will discuss insiders racebending nation-states to their ethnic group that have suffered mistreatment and oppressed by said nation-states in “The Myth of Multiculturalism.”)

Additionally, racebending may end up justifying those very same crimes, especially in the case of settler colonialism. For example, during French rule of Algeria, the French government began a program of confiscating Algerian land from indigenous Algerians and giving them to French and European settlers. Over the course of two centuries, more and more land was taken away from indigenous Algerians, forcing them to move to the margins of society, where they were barred from accessing employment, higher education, and the other societal amenities. 

Many would be able to identify how personifying Algeria as a white, French individual would be erasing indigenous Algerians and implying that the French settlers represent all of Algeria. However, conversely, making France an Algerian man is also playing into colonial French propaganda. The French viewed Algeria as part of France and the French homeland itself, unique even among other French African colonies, and made plans to make Algeria a full-fledged French province, or department. To make the national personification of France Algerian then, is to suggest that this belief was and is correct, that the Algerians are a part of the colonial core of France, even if the intention is to represent the modern day Algerian diaspora in France.

IMPORTANT: I will expand on the politics of representing diaspora populations in the section “The Myth of Multiculturalism.”

Given all of these reasons for why POC may justifiably react negatively to a racebent white nation personification, some may argue against these with:

“Why is it that when the nation is white, they never have to deal with any of these heavy discussions of imperialism, bigotry, oppression, etc, but when they’re racebent they suddenly have to? Why are they suddenly politicized when they’re racebent?”

My response to that is that they were politicized, even when they were white because the act of personifying a nation is inherently political; to ignore a white nation’s history of oppression is a politically charged move in of itself. Are we really depoliticizing POC when we racebend a white nation and try to maintain that same ‘depoliticization’ and omission of historical oppression but this time for a POC face? To racebend a white nation is to refuse to contend with the contradiction of transforming an oppressor class to the very group they marginalize - making racebending an inherently political act. It is not necessarily that whiteness is unpolitical but rather that an active refusal to deal with this contradiction makes the political implications much more obvious.

Additionally, this rebuttal raises another question- Were we to completely forget about a character’s background as the personification of an oppressor state and the political weight of that, would that truly solve the problem of POC being politicized? I don’t think so- In the current world we live in, POC are always political. But exclusively racebending oppressor states makes no attempt to depoliticize non-Western POC states, creating a divide between POC that get to be “depoliticized” and POC who don’t based on their proximity to the West.

The State of POC Representation in Hetalia

Some would argue with the points of my last paragraph saying that I am not including POC who both engage in racebending but also create non-Western POC OCs; if equal attention is given to both, there would be no division between racebent Western POC who get to be humanized and non-Western POC who don’t, right?

To answer this we must acknowledge wider trends in racebending in Hetalia. Consider the following: When somebody has a North African! Romano, how many other North African nations (canon or non-canon) do they show appreciation for? Create content for? Expound the same amount of mental and creative energy for? Furthermore: If they do have another North African nation(s) they create content for, are they allowed to exist as their own separate beings, and not purely exist to be North African! Romano’s tie to North Africa?

Chances are, Romano is reduced to being the token brown character in a largely white cast and isn’t allowed to ever exist without whiteness surrounding him. This is a very diaspora experience, but I find it unfortunate that in a piece of media that enables us to explore any number of cultures and experiences over all of time and history, we (and I’m including myself as another POC who grew up in a primarily white environment) are unable to imagine ourselves outside of this setting and celebrate ourselves without having to exist against a white mainstream. Stories about white engulfment are allowed to exist and should be told, but why is this so common? Why do these stories disproportionately outnumber POC stories where whiteness is minute or absent?

As my audience is intended to be mostly POC, I will not elaborate on the following scenario too much, but I will ask us to scrutinize the ethics of it. What about cases where white individuals racebend some of their white favorite characters and position them as POC representation in lieu of actually focusing on POC, non-Western nations, canon or not? Does this not have implications about what kinds of POC and diversity are considered more palatable and appealing?

Furthermore, when another North African nation does exist alongside racebent Romano, their character and depiction is almost always heavily dependent on their relationship to Romano, a Western nation. This still perpetuates the same inequality I was talking about earlier where POC nations are humanized based on their proximity to the West, whether because they personify a Western nation or happen to have a relationship with a Western nation.

We should not just be talking about having “more” non-white representation, but also the quality of it. It is completely understandable why some POC may not be satisfied with the representation most racebent content provides, even beyond the reasons outlined previously; this type of representation excludes POC who do not have a relationship to the West, and is still largely focused on the West. 

IMPORTANT: I am not saying that contact with or influence from the West makes POC somehow “less POC” or that stories from Western-based diaspora are a “diluted” form of representation. I will expand on this in the section “The Myth of Multiculturalism.”

“Well if it’s not good enough for those POC, then they should just mind their business and make their own representation! There’s plenty of non-racebent content out there!”

Many POC do exactly that- creating their own representation without racebending. However, as established earlier, racebent white characters receive far more attention and feedback compared to canonical non-white characters, despite the fact that both depictions fulfill the purpose of “representation.” This can be especially disheartening in a fandom that already heavily tokenizes canon POC nations, whether it’s India being presented as the “nanny”/surrogate parent in Commonwealth group art or Seychelles as the “adopted child of color” in FACES family. To POC content creators, it feels insulting that the wider fandom, rather than developing POC canon characters (or taking advantage of the source material’s potential by making OCs) and viewing them as representation, the fandom chooses to racebend Western nations and celebrates them instead.

I want to make clear again what I am not saying with that statement:

POC who engage in racebending are doing so to score clout and diversity points with a white audience. Again, it’s a fact that the vast majority of racebending is done by POC looking to create their own representation.

POC who engage in racebending should all go stan Seychelles and Cuba instead. This is an extremely individualist solution to what is a wider phenomenon. I do not blame POC based in Western countries for feeling disconnected to the few POC nations we have in canon.

Racebent POC content is more popular than content of non-racebent white characters.

What I am describing here is how an audience (the Hetalia fandom) receives two creations, both made by POC in the pursuit of creating more representation, and the difference in reception. The difference, it seems, is that the wider fandom deems certain kinds of POC representation more appealing, and thus, certain kinds of POC worth focusing on.

The Assumption of Interchangeability in POC Experience

Earlier, I mentioned that one of the possible reasons for POC to engage in racebending is the desire to see an iteration of their favorite character that is closer to their own reality and lived experience. Therefore, some may choose to racebend a white character to embody a marginalized minority in the country instead so they can share more experiences with the formerly white characters. 

Here, I will not be dealing with the practice of POC racebending their own country to their own ethnicity, which is the focus of the next section. Instead, I will be delving into the practice of POC racebending another nation to embody a minority (one which they do not belong to) for the purposes of ‘putting themselves in their interpretations.’ I argue that to do this requires assuming a certain level of interchangeability between POC experiences.

First and foremost, POC are not a monolith- we lead drastically different lives depending on our ethnic backgrounds, where we live, our socioeconomic class, our political and racial context, and etc. Therefore, we cannot presume that our experiences of marginalization mean we’ll always succeed in properly representing other minority groups elsewhere; in fact, the goal of projecting our own life experiences onto them means that there will be an obstacle to properly representing these minority groups.

Take the following example: Imagine a Chinese-Malaysian individual greatly enjoys the character of Spain. Wishing to better relate to him, the individual racebends him to be also Chinese. However, a great deal of historical, cultural determinants and nuances separate the experiences of Chinese people in Spain and Chinese people in Malaysia. There are similarities, yes, but this Chinese Malaysian cannot hope to properly represent the Chinese population in Spain if their primary goal remains self-projection. Now imagine that our Chinese-Malaysian individual wished to racebend England to be Indian; an even wider gap separates the experiences and history of Chinese people in Malaysia and Indian people in England, making it even less likely that our individual will succeed in representing the experiences of Indian people in England.

Another point to consider is that attempts at racebending certain national personifications to represent minorities in the country end up erasing representation for the majority population of the country. For example, there has been a historical Japanese community in Peru that dates back to the 1800s and made a large impact on Peruvian culture. However, it would still be inappropriate to make a Peru OC that is mostly Japanese in race, because besides just being not representative of the 99.9% of non-Japanese Peruvians, it would also be taking representation from Peruvian mestizo and indigenous peoples, who make up over 80% of Peru’s population.

This isn’t even taking into consideration cases where nations are racebent to personify ethnic groups that do not have a numerically significant or historically significant population.

“So what if it’s inaccurate? I just want to self-project onto my favorite character!”

If that’s your response, then I encourage you to read the section “It’s Just Fandom, Why Are You Trying to Control POC Who Just Want to Have Fun and Want to Represent Themselves?” where I address assertions of "fandom is not activism" and similar points.

For now, I will ask you to consider the feelings of those very minorities you are ostensibly representing, even if your primary intention is to project your own experiences onto a character. Chances are, they also suffer from little to no representation that depicts them in inaccurate and unflattering ways.

Hetalia is a media property supposedly centered around exploring and learning about other cultures, but so often fails to accurately and sensitively depict many cultures and nations. Should we not show them the grace that canon Hetalia fails to provide?

The Myth of Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is typically defined as a celebration of a nation’s ethnic diversity. This is generally considered to be a good and progressive value to have, but a closer and more critical look at multiculturalism in practice suggests that not even a value directed at xenophobia is immune to in-group out-group biases. When enacted by the state, multiculturalism is less an acceptance of diversity as it currently exists (especially in regards to non-indigenous ethnicities) and more an assimilation of these “foreign cultures” into the dominant national one.

For example, Singapore has built much of its national identity as a “multicultural” society. This is shown through government policies in language and education, where the languages of the 3 ethnic groups (Chinese, Tamil Indians, Malays) are all officialized and the government promotes education for ethnic minorities in their mother tongues. However, the label of “multicultural” hides the reality of power inequality between the various ethnic groups. Minorities face pressure to display literacy in the language and culture of the Chinese majority for greater societal acceptance and inclusion. In fact, the assertion that Singapore is a multicultural society that treats its ethnic groups all equally, is often used as a cudgel to shut down any allegations that Singapore fails to live up to this national identity. As my audience is intended to be predominantly POC, especially those living as minorities in Western nations, members of my audience are of course familiar with insistences of “But Canada/United States/etc is a melting pot society! Racism isn’t a serious issue, POC can’t be treated poorly in those countries.”

By racebending a national personification to be part of a marginalized population, this is making a political statement by asserting that the marginalized population is in fact a part of that nation, and has always been, despite historical exclusion. The act of racebending is an overly idealistic and uncritical agreement with multiculturalism, without considering how the value actually applies in practice. It rosewashes the reality and existence of cultural imperialism enacted on immigrant/outsider groups. 

Racebending can therefore accidentally act as multicultural propaganda, especially when the invokement of multiculturalism is used to stamp out valid critiques of othering and racialization by ethnic minorities. (E.g. “Singapore can’t have problems with racism against Malays! Singapore himself is Malay!”)

IMPORTANT: If you want to argue that nation personifications are not inherently representative of their government, refer to the section, “The Inherent Politicism of Personifying Nations.”

“Well, POC based in Western countries will naturally feel more connected to their Western countries than their homelands, often because of those policies intended to break their connections to their homelands. Why can’t they racebend to reclaim? To feel connected to their Western countries in contrast to their realities of ostracization and othering?”

I have already discussed why other POC (those affected by a white regime’s actions) would be uncomfortable with the implications of tying a POC/marginalized group with said white regime’s misdeeds in the section “The Inherent Politicism of Personifying Nations” so I will not discuss it here beyond mentioning it.

Firstly, I must acknowledge that this argument is fundamentally an emotional one. I do not want to deny what POC in Western countries emotionally derive from racebending the nation-state, even as a fellow POC based in a Western country. Instead, I will approach this argument from another angle.

I ask the following: When trying to represent our experiences as diaspora and minorities, why is personifying a diaspora/minority community not a popular option? The act of choosing to personify a community is inherently political, and we can use it to empower ourselves as diaspora or minorities. For example, by personifying diaspora communities, we can acknowledge that diaspora experiences are different enough from those in the ‘homeland’ to warrant another personification, and also avoid accidentally justifying colonial possession of those ‘homeland’ states. 

Additionally, by personifying diaspora/minority communities, we can 1) better reflect our unique day-to-day experiences of being racialized and separated from the mainstream, 2) avoid many of the earlier uncomfortable implications of minority collaboration in majority perpetrated acts and condoning colonialism, and 3) stress our independence and autonomy despite the efforts of the state and majority population to take that away.

To put it another way, why are there so many stories of minorities striving towards being included, or from another angle, subsumed, into the white nation-state despite its frequent rejection of them? Again, what does it say that these narratives of “inclusion into a historically white nation-state” disproportionately outnumber POC narratives where whiteness is minute or absent?

IMPORTANT: I am not singling you, the hypothetical POC diaspora individual who engages in racebending, out. I am asking about wider patterns of representation in media.

“But by personifying diaspora and minority communities separately from the personification of the nation-state, isn’t that basically saying that minorities will never be seen as part of the nation-state? That we will never be included when people think of our nation state?”

I believe this response takes too narrow a perspective on what multiculturalism is and “being part of a nation-state means,” and thus views having separate personifications as ‘justifying’ or ‘promoting’ our exclusion from the nation-state when it may not be the case.

Look at it from this way- Is it not also problematic to have only one avatar for, say, America, and thus imply that there is one true way of being “American?” Having multiple American personifications, in contrast, is a more true depiction of the realities of being American, and more true to the values of multiculturalism; it instead suggests that there are many ways to be American, that we don’t have to be subsumed into the mainstream to be considered “American.”

“Isn’t that functionally the same as different interpretations of the same nation-state coexisting? Why can’t fans just all have a different Alfred/America specific to their own experience who are all equally considered American?”

Once more: I am not trying to stop anyone from doing anything. That’s not within my power to do so. I agree with this statement that largely, having multiple American personifications and multiple America/Alfred fulfills the same purpose of showing that to be American means something different to everyone. However, the reason I advocated for the former approach is because it achieves the same goal with a lot less uncomfortable questions and unique benefits (minority autonomy), as detailed above.

“It’s Just Fandom, Why Are You Trying to Control POC Who Just Want to Have Fun and Want to Represent Themselves?”

First off, I am presenting this essay as a conversation with other POC because I want to make it explicitly known that my position here is not that of a white person seeking to silence POC and lecture them about what is and is not good for them. Secondly, it's because I want to talk about racebending as it currently exists in the Hetalia fandom, something mostly done by POC who wish to represent themselves and create the diversity missing in the source material. I believe pointing out that white people who are uncomfortable with POC characters or only racebend for self-centered reasons likely have a racial bias is obvious, especially to other POC, and wish to progress the conversation beyond this. This is why my discussion on racebending is moving beyond white bias.

As part of centering this as a discussion among POC, I am also assuming good faith from my interlocutors, that their desires for representation and diversity are sincere, and that I don’t look down on them. I hope then, that this assumption of good faith can be afforded to me as well- that my interlocutors believe me when I say that the last thing I want to do is control POC, as a fellow POC.

Having gotten all of that out of the way, let's address some rebuttals to the arguments I've made thus far.

"Who are you to decide what kind of representation resonates with POC?"

You're right. I can't decide what kind of representation resonates with POC. Again, I am not intent on controlling POC, and again, I recognize that many of the arguments in favor of racebending white nations come from an emotional place; I can’t control how POC feel, even if I wanted to do that.

However, it's precisely because of this that I've made my arguments based on  factors other than emotional ones, such as the political implications and questioning the inclusivity racebending provides us with. POC joy and happiness is crucial in the face of a system that seeks to crush and suppress us. But from one POC to another, it's not much of a discussion if your response to my points is simply, "Well, it makes me feel represented and happy, and that's what matters most." If we argued based on that, we could go all day. Am I not a POC myself? Do the feelings and happiness of POC who are uncomfortable with racebending not matter? For that matter, who are you to tell the people whose families and people have been historically affected by white imperialist states to stop disliking racebent versions of those imperialist states?

For white people, it is easy for them to shut down racebending, because they don't understand the experience of never seeing yourself in any form of media. I have asked white/non-marginalized people to refrain from this discussion for that very reason. But in exchange for that, we should be able to discuss the ramifications of racebending national personifications, and look deeper at the arguments for and against racebending.

"You're taking this too seriously. People giving more attention to racebent versions of Western countries versus non-racebent POC countries doesn't say anything deeper about someone's political beliefs. People just like the silly anime about personified countries, and that silly anime happens to give more attention to the canonically white countries."

To a certain extent, I get this rebuttal. We cannot solve racism or the privileging of the global north by reblogging Hetalia fanart of Seychelles and Cameroon. Everything I have described here is symptomatic of much, much larger issues that affect billions. But it's symptomatic: fandom is not immune to the ills of wider society. We do not shed our innate biases and prejudices when we enter supposedly apolitical spaces like fandom. In a series about personified nations, our prejudices and biases are naturally magnified because the source material’s nature is deeply political, dealing with history and personified nations and states.

Again I ask: What does it mean that the POC representation made by POCs is so often limited to racebending canonically white characters, in the context of the world order we live in where proximity to the West automatically confers certain privileges?

IMPORTANT: Refer to the section “The Myth of Multiculturalism” if you respond to this with “Are you saying depictions of Western-influenced POC experiences are a lesser form of representation?”

If that fails to convince you, and you still believe the inequality in reception between racebent and non-racebent nations doesn’t say anything deeper, I respond with the following- Isn’t it still worth it to try and show the same support and energy to the non-racebent, non-Western countries and their creators, regardless of whether that content speaks to you or not?

One last time, I’ll clarify what I’m not saying with that:

Stop liking America and Russia and England. I repeat, I cannot control what POC like or feel or do, and I repeat, what characters you personally like is a very individualistic view on a wider, systemic issue.

In the section “The State of POC Representation in Hetalia,” I discussed how disproportionately giving to racebent countries versus non-racebent non-Western countries is not an intersectional form of POC representation, and fails to address the underrepresentation of non-Western countries and cultures given the global colonial hierarchy. My above statement is therefore saying that if we POC want to achieve a more intersectional form of solidarity and representation, to create a fandom that’s more non-Western friendly, to generally support all types of POC creators, we should not neglect certain kinds of POC content just because it doesn’t personally resonate with us.

You don’t have to. Fandom is not activism. For many, fandom is an escape from the grim realities of the outside world. But in a media property all about exploring other countries’ cultures and histories, can we not strive for the spirit of the source material, and be a little more open-minded in exploring other countries and other forms of POC representation? Even in this miniscule way?

CONCLUSION

I would like to conclude this essay on the matter of irithnova, and the recent controversy she’s been embroiled in for stating many of the points I have made. Yes, our tones were different. But no amount of harsh tone warrants the outrage and rather racist backlash her post received. irithnova has been one of the most active voices in the Hetalia fandom speaking out against racism, from the exclusion of POC in j-ellyfish’s character polls to myrddin’s behavior. However, as soon as she, a Filipino, expresses personal discomfort with certain depictions of a nation that’s caused great harm to her people, other POC were the first to get mad at her for seeing the political implications of a POC personified America, to the point of trying to deny her reality as a feminized and racialized member of the diaspora living in a colonial European country and calling her functionally white.

POC solidarity doesn’t mean we have to all agree with each other, or even like every other POC. But I want to note the irony here of people committing the very act they accused irithnova of doing- telling her, a Filipino, that she wasn’t allowed to criticize racebent depictions of America, thereby trying to control POC.

If your response to this is “Well, sure irithnova didn’t deserve the harassment, but she was still wrong to criticize racebending because it wasn’t her place!” I would like to remind you of the following points:

Scroll up to the top and read this essay again. Regardless of tone used, there are valid reasons for POC to dislike and criticize depictions of racebent countries.

irithnova, as a Filipino living in the West and has Filipino relatives in the USA, is intimately aware of the nature of American imperialism and racism against POC. The United States promised to help the Philippines achieve independence but instead robbed it of its sovereignty, putting down resistance to its takeover and instituting American rule because they viewed Filipinos as “lesser” and incapable of governing themselves because of their race. If it isn’t irithnova’s place to feel uncomfortable (and thus criticize) racebent America, then whose is it?

Finally, I want to emphasize one more thing- First Nations/Indigenous individuals have a unique relationship to the colonial settler states that occupy their land. Like I’ve said so many times, I cannot tell any POC how to feel or what to do, and even more so in this case because I myself am not First Nations/Indigenous; I’ve only provided arguments about the pitfalls of racebending and the merits of other forms of representation. But just as how I cannot tell you what to feel or do, nobody can stop other POC feeling put off by a racebent America.

At the end of the day, despite the who-knows-how-many paragraphs I’ve spent articulating the reasons against racebending canonically white nations, I cannot stop anyone from racebending nations if they wish to. But I do hope readers come away with a better understanding of the flaws of racebending, and the benefits of looking away from the Western mainstream and looking elsewhere to represent our experiences as diaspora and minorities. If you’re someone who engages in racebending, but still chose to read this 6K word long essay on the Hetalia fandom, I can’t express my gratitude enough for hearing me out. Honestly, anybody who read through this entire post deserves an award- Thanks for reading 💖

[creatingblackcharacters]

Hi there, I hope your day is going well! I have a question regarding the race of a character I'm hoping to use in a story I'm making, and would love to get your insights.

The story is a post-nuclear-fallout setting following two characters who are researching a cure for aggressive radiation poisoning and fighting the will of a malevolent and sentient slime-mold.  The characters dont have official names yet so I'll nickname them as Vessel and Scientist, and I'd like to focus on Vessel for this question specifically. 

Vessel is a Black woman who was originally working as a scientist on a team tasked with experimentation on slime mold growing in radiated zones, which became sentient during her time working on it. She was ordered to kill it and was unsuccessful, and as a result died on-site. Her death was downplayed to keep the lab running, and she wakes up post-mortem very much not in the same zip code or in the same time. (The reason her nickname is Vessel is because the slime mold she attempted to kill resurrects her and is using her to try and return to the lab it's from to rejoin the mother culture (the slime mold is like a combo of the aliens from the movies Life(2017) and Venom(2018))).

The story itself is dealing with some themes like the exploitation of marginalized groups by wealthy militaristic powers, the idolization of western sciences and the consequences of doing so, destruction of the land for profit, the struggle of individual vs collective (man vs man), and the challenge of building community. Based on these themes and the setting, I'm drawn more-so to portraying BIPOC as my protagonists, as opposed to white characters, because BIPOC have largely been the driving force of any dramatic and radical change in our present society, and I'd like to spotlight them in my work as protagonists and not just Important Side Characters. 

THE REASON I'm hesitant to commit to Vessel being Black has three branches,

1) the plot line i've designed would deal very heavily with depersonalization, the state-sanctioned poisoning and death of a Black woman, being used by a force beyond the characters will, and the internal/external struggle of essentially fighting yourself to maintain control of your Self/Body; 

2) I'm not a Black person, and the plot for this character would deal with a lot of very heavy stuff that Black people experience every day, 

3) and it feels very thematically/contextually similar to Haitian Zombi's, which I've been researching since seeing your responses discussing them compared to western zombies, which makes me hesitant to explore if it's getting into territory I shouldn't be interacting with, y'know? (The concept for this story was initially 'radiation zombies', so that's the background I'm pulling from as I'm making the story.)

I think she's a compelling character, intelligent, brave, resilient beyond belief (with a love interest in the Scientist as the story progresses), but if my concepts for her are crossing boundaries and perpetuating stereotypes (like stoic Black woman, not allowed to be soft, etc) I'd rather have a second pair of knowledgable eyes look it over before I commit with my whole chest. 

I deeply appreciate any insights you may have, thank you for your time!

Hello! This does seem like a very intriguing story, and at least you caught where the problem points could be. So that's good!

I definitely say that if you want to get into symbolism similar to, but not OF, Haitian Zombis, you absolutely ABSOLUTELY need to do your research. Specifically on what things might be tied into closed practices, just so you know to avoid them. Research in general involving medical racism too, if you want to know how deep the rabbit hole gets with Black bodies and western experimentation, because there's plenty there too.

I would say since you sound aware of your intention and some of the concerns, go ahead, and I would highly, HIGHLY suggest a Black sensitivity reader. Someone needs to tell you if you've (literally) lost the plot, preferably before you release anything.

[mysteria157]

hello hello mystie 🩷 bon has decided to visit you once again.

i am recently going through quite some turbulence with my writing. i have been working on a aot reiner piece for quite some time but it's been feeling rather... unfulfilling? i guess i just want to open up a bit.

as a black woman, i've seen a number of posts on here of other woc having takes about how we should 'embrace our blackness' and write our fics in a way that reflects that. i always understood that this is a valid opinion, as we are often pushed by society to 'calm' ourselves down and water down our personalities and our way of speaking (often not to fall subject to a number of disheartening stereotypes.)

but i've come to a more different, personal conclusion over the past few months. i am a black south african girl who grew up watching british cartoons in order to learn english. my mother took me to a catholic school where english was the language of instruction and we had a similar education system as most british schools (colonisation has a role in this system but that's a discussion for another day.)

i've always been called 'whitewashed' as i am fluent in the language. there's still heavy racial tension where i'm from, so ever since i was little i was compared to speaking as a white person. a 'coconut' if we want to go that far, lol.

besides this, we've become more westernised and my peers around me began to see the struggle of african americans as our own (since we're all experiencing the same biases and discrimination as poc.) now for some reason, seeing the takes of other woc made me feel as if the way i write and speak was incorrect. i felt like a phony, like someone who was dodging away from racism by writing like a 'white person' to stay unattacked.

to cut this short (as this has already been quite long), your writing put things into perspective for me. it might not be 'that deep' but seeing another black woman write and speak similar to myself has healed a small part of me. not only is your writing excellent, but it makes me feel as if that i don't have to pretend to be the stereotypical black writer all the time.

that my way of writing does not make me any less 'black'. i now know exactly how i want to create stories and write them down, as i always could've done.

thank you for being the talented individual that you are. love you lots.

-Bonnie 🩷

Hello my beautiful, Bonnie 💕

I apologize for the delay, I’ve been traveling for work so my activity on Tumblr has been low recently.

It’s a weird sensation of fate to read your post, because I resonate with your thoughts deeply. Growing up as a military child, I moved frequently, so I never really had a “home” like others. The friends that I had were all military children too and made up a melting pot of race, diversity, and background. I did not have a primarily black friend group and because of this, others often made fun of me for not being “black” enough. The way I spoke, wrote, dressed, and my mannerisms were all representative of a “whitewashed” version of a black woman. The concept of whitewashed is a topic for another day 😒

I’ve dealt with being called an “inside out Oreo”and constantly heard the annoying micro-aggression of “talking really well for someone like myself.” And for years it bothered me more that I wanted to feel and act like others, instead of embracing myself. Thankfully, I got over that.

Joining Tumblr and finding a community of black writers has been a great experience, and I definitely agree that we should ‘embrace our blackness’, but embrace it in a way that represents YOU. Not everyone else.

For myself, I embrace with what I write about, not necessarily how I write. Because I write how I think and talk, but I try to share plot and experiences that normally resonate with who I am as a black woman. Cookouts, extended family mannerisms and traditions, how I do my hair and take care of my skin, etc.

You are not a phony and you are not ‘whitewashed’. You’re Bonnie, and Bonnie writes how Bonnie speaks, acts, and feels. Period.

In my opinion, trying to write a certain way to appeal to someone else only takes away from your own authenticity. This isn’t to invalidate someone else’s experience, but you shouldn’t have to pretend to embrace your ‘blackness’. Being able to overcome this feeling is such a strength that you should continue to hold close 💕

Girl, look at me rambling LMFAO. THE POINT IS, I’m so happy that I was able to help you embrace more of who you are. I’m happy that you enjoy my words. I’m happy that you have the strength to create how you want. And I’m just…really happy for meeting you 🥹

Create your stories however you want. As long as Bonnie is happy and Bonnie is enjoying it and Bonnie is not intentionally hurting others, that’s all that should matter.

Love you lots as well. Thank you for being the beautiful mootie that you are 💕😘

[ummick]

Mick Schumacher On Fashion, Le Mans and Fronting Tommy Hilfiger's New Campaign

It's a big year for sports, as the Paris Olympics near, tennis champs prep for Wimbledon, and the Euros inch closer. In the midst of it all Tommy Hilfiger is getting in on the action with the release of an International Games collection. Refashioning timeless icons for the new generation, the collection is a modern interpretation of the brand's 1996 capsule collection released to celebrate the Olympics arriving in Atlanta, reworking track-ready styles including archival varsity jackets, rugby jerseys and basketball vests in Tommy's signature red, white and blue. Speaking on the new collection, Hilfiger says: "The sporting calendar sets the cultural pulse for the year, and 2024's shaping up to be amazing. We're building on our legacy of working with pioneers in sport and reimagining timeless American icons through an archival lens." To front the campaign, the US house has turned to the global sporting stage to curate a team of athletes who embody the brand's spirit, including All-Pro NFL wide receiver Stefon Diggs, college basketball guard Deja Kelly, star of the all-Japan skateboarding association Aori Nishimura, and Formula 1 driver and current member of Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, Mick Schumacher. Ahead of the collection drop, in the conversation below we speak to Schumacher about his first memories of Tommy Hilfiger, his personal style, and prepping for Le Mans.

Ella Joyce: "What was it like working with Tommy Hilfiger? Do you have personal memories of the brand?" Mick: "It was great! Not only is it exciting to wear Tommy and to have attended the NYFW show with all the exceptional details, but to be a part of the campaign and the bigger brand story is just incredible. A personal memory for me is when the brand worked with Ferrari back in the day, before their current partnership with the Mercedes-AMG F1 Team. My dad used to bring back so much kit and, honestly, I was just running around as the best-dressed kid in school!" EJ: "How does the campaign resonate with you?" Mick: "I really believe Tommy was able to create something that brings both sport and style to the table. I'm sporty, I love to do my workouts and be active outdoors, and to be able to do that fashionably is so important. I was so happy to be part of this campaign with other athletes, too. It was amazing to get to know them better and see how their sport and personalities impact their individual styles." EJ: "Off the track, how would you describe your personal style?" Mick: "I think the best word would be 'changeable.' I love to experiment and try new things with my style. I think you can see this across my social media, but I would probably look different if you saw me on the street two days in a row. From a classic look to a more casual or baggy streetwear look, I love the creativity that comes with personal style. It's so fun."

EJ: "You're currently competing in the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship. How's it going? What's coming up next for you?" Mick: "Yes, we just had our first race in Qatar, a ten-hour race! It was the first time I had to be on for that amount of time while learning and experiencing that type of race, but it was an interesting run. We learned a lot as a team. One of the cars even scored points, so it proves that we're on pace and the project is moving in the right direction, especially as everyone is gearing up for Le Mans." EJ: "Do you have any pre-race rituals?" Mick: "I don't, actually. It depends on how I'm feeling in the moment. If I'm nervous or stressed, or whatever it is, I'll always try to adapt to what's happening. Maybe one day I'm nervous so I have to work on calming down, and another day I'm too calm so I have to pump myself up. It all depends on the day."

EJ: "You're photographed alongside a host of other athletes for the campaign. How do you think your generation of athletes compares to generations which have come before?" Mick: "I think we are really different to athletes from the previous generation. Of course, social media and phones have made an impact, but it's also because we're so precise about what we're doing. We have strict training and a solid laid-out plan in front of us on how to achieve our desired results. We have so much research and information which leads our way, while back in the day it was more experimental." EJ: "America and collegiate heritage heavily inspire Tommy Hilfiger. Is there a specific place which inspires you?" Mick: "The racetrack. I've always been a part of it, from doing laps in a car to just being on the track. In terms of style, I've always been interested in fashion, most likely inspired by my dad at a young age; however, my girlfriend is heavily involved in the fashion world, so it's helpful when I need to know what looks good and what doesn't. Inspiration is all around, so it depends on where I look!"

[dropintomanga]

Sometimes, Mental Health Pros Suck - On ANN's Pulled Nagata Kabi Review

So I heard something controversial happened in the world of manga reviews. And it quite happens to revolve around a manga figure a lot of people know too well - Nagata Kabi.

Nagata's latest release in the U.S., My Pancreas Broke, But My Life Got Better, was reviewed by Anime News Network. While I normally find their reviews of manga to be fine, something about this one ticked off A LOT of people on social media. Then I heard it got pulled off the website a few days after it was published, but I later found it via Archive.org.

So I read what the review was like and there's a few points that came to my mind.

First, I can see why people were saying the reviewer, who is an actual mental health professional, was condescending towards Nagata's experiences. Throughout all of her works, Nagata always seems to be going through something. It can make someone think that she's not trying hard enough, especially if you're a professional whose job is to help people like Nagata.

Second, the reviewer expressed frustration over Nagata not getting better. Maybe some of the frustration is warranted, but the thing is the reviewer doesn't really know, know Nagata. They're only getting a glimpse of Nagata's personality through her works. While the works do provide a clear and often heavy picture of her life so far, I don't think they tell the whole story. I remember Nagata saying she struggles with how she portrays herself in her memoir manga compared to how she is in person. There's always multiple layers to a person.

Lastly, I know people are saying "How dare they call themselves a mental health pro if they are acting like an insensitive prick." My response to that is because psychiatry/psychology has become a conflict-riddled field where some professionals turn out to be pricks. They are taught a very Western way of thinking in that the individual has no one to blame but themselves for whatever mental health disorder they have. All of the solutions should be placed in the hands of the individual. A lot of mental health professionals aren't trained well enough to strongly consider factors (i.e. cultural/socioeconomic) outside of the individual that cause people to have mental distress.

While it does suck that Nagata seems to have something going on most of the time, I do want her to be okay. I don't want her to force herself to be happy for the sake of other people. I have a lot of compassion for Nagata. While the reviewer says that she should get the professional help she needs and considering the reviewer's earlier comments, I honestly don't know if it might be the best idea for Nagata.

A long while back, when I was in therapy, my social worker switched me to a different psychiatrist than the one I was seeing at the time. I was originally under a Chinese psychiatrist, but my social worker said the new one fitted my schedule more. So I said alright. The new psychiatrist was a really old white male in his '60s-'70s with glasses. When I saw them for the first time, one of the first questions he asked was "How is my sex life?" I was aghast and questioned why he asked that. Then he went on to say "Maybe you should get a girlfriend. It can help your depression." Over the next few sessions, that psychiatrist's line of questioning about my well-being became a bit too personal to my liking. I told him to stop asking those questions and he apologized. I later told my social worker that I don't want to see him anymore despite her saying that he's a funny guy.

Seeing that review made me think about that awful psychiatrist experience I had and I do not want Nagata to go through moments like that because there's a good amount of bad apples in the mental health industry.

I'm glad ANN took down that review because they're not mental health professionals. And people like that reviewer are one of the big reasons why I got rid of the Manga Therapy name. I don't think professionals have all the answers to life's problems.

Going forward, there was a good question asked on social media - how do you make mental illness relatable to those who don’t have it? That's hard because mental illness is always portrayed as "crazy", "sick", "mad", etc. While it's clear that extreme forms of mental illness can be problematic, I feel that depression and anxiety are normal signs that the world is messed up. You think that people in power want to admit that they're the ones causing a lot of mental health problems?

You know, I think all people living with mental illness want is to not just be relatable - they want compassion, that's it.

And in a way that doesn't come off as something that sounds too much like a professional/expert, but more from an actual human being that doesn't have to act like one.

[ssarkosghost]

A Penny Ahead

Alright well here is my gift to @golddragon387 for @remnants-of-rwby-exchange day. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this and hope you enjoy it to. It was a blast to write again on here and I look forward to putting more out😊. Here we get Penny dealing with knowledge from the future since she was awoken and trying to keep it all on track, as she attends the Beacon Dance for the Vytal Tournament. Wish her luck.

Bright lights and the upbeat tunes of music flowed throughout the converted hall, as the students of all four academies mingled with one another. Jokes and stories were traded, as the various refreshments were consumed. It was a joyous occasion as many enjoyed the party atmosphere, with several busting some moves on the dance floor.

Well except for one party-goer. Penny Polendina, who though outwardly was having her systems do a little jig, was inwardly barely holding it together. Ever since she had…awakened, her mind was flooded with memories of the future, past? Never mind that, whenever she thought and tried to rationalize what had happened to her, well that was no longer a major issue for her.

No, instead it was trying to implement her new, past, knowledge. She had so many conflicting points, her father, General Ironwood, and all of Atlas were in danger. Originally her focus had been trying to prep for the oncoming storm, but her status as an experiment left her few options. Anything too hard and she could see the worry on her father’s face, too soft was simply brushed aside by General Ironwood. She was trapped between being a daughter and a weapon, a fact that hindered her in other ways in Atlas too.

She couldn’t get close to anyone; she couldn’t make a friend that deep down she so desperately needed. The loneliness she now experienced was overwhelming, especially as she tried to keep up her façade of being the obedient girl. Sure, she could reach out to her father, but he would just keep pulling her back, to the false safety of his home. No, she needed someone to be willing to listen to her, to let her say what she needed to say.

Her new memories had pointed to one such individual, a person who prompted her to stick to the old/normal routine. A person that caused her to freeze over and over again. Someone that she had to see in this life to see just what these memories of her were about.

Ruby Rose, a name, and face that did the worst torment to Penny as she processed everything she had in her head. Sure, the deaths she saw came with their feelings of pain and terror, however, those paled compared to the fact that the fair-faced dark-haired girl in her new memories always made her soul yearn. At first, she only had a vague idea. The memories explained much but there was no way she had these feelings, at least until she met her again.

Penny had tried to model the first encounter as close as possible; she still froze when she gazed into the silver eyes of Ruby.  Even with the awkward first words, Penny could see why her past/present self had fallen for the young huntress. Ruby was just so kind, and she saw her as someone to talk with. The following evening had Penny trying to cope with her own feelings for Ruby and detangle the ones coming from her own memories. After all this Ruby wasn’t that Ruby right, it would be unfair…right?

So, she had continued just following the steps her memories laid down, except when they found the criminal Roman Torchwick. Penny would not distract Ruby from that man and instead had moved to deflect Roman’s sneak attack. The rest of the night was a blur as Penny ripped through the White Fang’s airships without even a glance. Instead, her mind had focused on how Ruby looked at her, in wonder and excitement. Sadly, before she could move to talk, the security detail from Atlas bundled her off the scene at the docks.

For weeks she was kept within the hotel as the head of her detail, her father, and General Ironwood berated her for engaging in such a public space. It was grating, and yet she knew she had to take it less they send her back. That was something she couldn’t risk, not when she was so close. Still, she did have to sneak out once, if only to meet Ruby again, to give her side of the incident of course.

However, unlike the time in her memories, Penny was much more careful, staying away from the potential patrols of Atlas personnel. She really didn’t want to cause any issues for Ruby, especially since she didn’t have much information for her. Instead of a harrowing chase and reveal, Penny instead got to listen to Ruby for a while. It was sweet, a nice calming moment that just felt right.

It was a moment that Penny wanted to keep going on forever, but she knew she had to get back. For a moment she almost asked if Ruby would save a dance with her, but she hesitated. She wasn’t sure if it was right, as due to her caution, there was no need to run, no incident with a truck almost hitting Ruby, and thus no reveal that she, Penny Polendina was…was built instead of born.

So, Penny packed it away and waited patiently for the dance to arrive, there she would ask Ruby. Or at least that was the plan. However General Ironwood was still concerned about her movements, and as such Penny found her protection detail being doubled for the night. Sure, she was annoyed, but the greater issue was that things were changing, becoming different from what her memories had shown her. She had accounted for slight variations at this stage, but these drastic measures by General Ironwood worried her. If too much changed, she couldn’t strike Cinder Fall’s plans at the exact—!

Cinder Fall, she would strike tonight targeting the CTTS Tower, and more dangerously confront Ruby. Her mind was a wash of the probabilities, with too many being unacceptable. A shift in priorities was needed. So, she made her opening.

“Excuse me, may I be escorted to the restroom?” she asked the corporal in charge of her detail, giving the man a brilliant smile. She knew they didn’t want to be here, guarding what they assumed was someone’s kid. As such it was easy for her to get reasonable requests, especially since she had stayed in her hotel room for the past few weeks. The corporal nodded and, in a few minutes, Penny found herself alone in a nearby girls’ restroom. Quickly she located a vent and scrambled into it. The blueprints of Beacon Academy were relatively easy to acquire for her. With a path selected, she hustled toward the tower.

The next few minutes were the most harrowing for Penny as she tried not to over-analyze what she knew of this incident. Time frames, potential attacks, and disastrous outcomes all rushed through her head. No matter how hard she tried to focus on her task her thoughts always seemed to track back to the fact that she was racing against time. If she was too late—

Penny shook her head as she finally managed to find an exit. Slipping out she hit the ground running, regretting not pressing her father for the jet boots her previous/future self had. Still, she filed that complaint for later, as she deployed her blades. She knew Cinder Fall was not someone to hold back on. A first strike would—

“Penny?” a familiar voice stopped her as she reached the entrance, and she turned to meet the concerned and armed form of Ruby Rose. “What are doing here?”

“Ruby it's fine, please return to the party, there is no need to worr—hic!!” Penny felt her eyes go wide at the startled hiccup that came out of her mouth. Ruby’s eyes narrowed in concern as she stepped closer.

“Penny is something wrong, I saw someone sneaking—”

“It's nothing—Hic!! No, it is just a HIC!!” Penny was not prepared for the rush of emotions as she tried to assuage Ruby that she didn’t need to get involved just yet, she didn’t need to be a target of Cinder. It would just be her Penny that would earn Cinder’s wrath, it is what she was designed for it was her purpose for being built. She—!

Her panicked thoughts stopped when Ruby stepped forward holstering Crescent Rose and brought Penny into a quick hug.

“Penny breath it's fine whomever she is we can—”

“No!” Penny quickly jerked back, wide-eyed, “I mean Ruby please you can’t she’s dangerous.” She pleaded as she stepped closer to the main entrance.

“If she is that dangerous then I can’t let you go alone Penny,” Ruby pressed, subtly swearing as her heels caused her to stumble on the bottom steps.

“I…I’ll be fine, this, this is what…” Penny felt her words stop in her non-existent throat, as her internal computers churned through vague explanation after vague explanation.

“How Penny what possible could, make you…fine,” Ruby trailed off as Penny turned her back to her, and the light shimmers of the thin lines that connected her blades revealed to be going directly into her. “Penny, what—!?” Ruby’s question was stopped as Penny had an auxiliary charge port at the base of her neck.

“I, I was built Ruby, I, can be rebuilt,” Penny answered as she turned back around, with a sad smile. “I can sustain more damage than a person and still fight,”

“What, but that just doesn’t mean you can do this alone, who knows just what that person is—”

“I am well aware of her combat capabilities Ruby,” Penny declared, as she interrupted Ruby’s questions before she gave her friend a small smile.

“How!? There’s no way that…” Ruby trailed off as her face scrunched in thought, which she quickly shook off. “No matter I’m still coming with you.” Ruby declared as Penny began to fidget. She knew it was a long shot, her memories told her as much, but perhaps there was a way.

“Ruby please,” Penny started again as she entered to door frame of the CTTS Tower’s entrance, in the attempt to block Ruby’s access as she tried to push forward.

“No Penny, it doesn’t matter that you're mechanical, you are still my friend, and I won’t just stand by and let you do this alone, now we can stand here arguing till whomever this woman is leaves or you can let me follow you.” Ruby promptly declared.

“You are my friend, Ruby,” Penny started, “but I—”

And with an impulse she never expected Penny bent down and gave a quick peck on Ruby’s cheek shocking said girl. In a flash, Penny had stepped back into the tower proper and immediately locked the entire building down. She knew Cinder would have already dispatched the guards, and most likely had one of Dr. Watts’ viruses in the computer systems. However, the lock-down protocols were easy for her to find and set to maximum. Penny then hustled toward the stairs. There would be questions, but it would all be worth it, as long as Cinder Fall did not leave this building alive.

“I promise you Ruby,” Penny whispered to herself, “I will ease your burden.”

[bohemian-nights]

I've been in both TB and TG fandoms and in my experience TG fans are more sane and have a better sense of humor, Targ nation and their crazy takes almost ruined HOTD fandom for me. A lot of TG fans treat most TB characters normally and like some of them, and TB fans seem to hate everything green and prefer a very one sided story where their characters are the heroes and another side is full of cartoonish villains. Also I don't remember seeing TG fans hating Rhaena and Baela for the fight or calling them bullies, usually, they get sympathy and their emotions are understandable. Although some may get carried away in their defense because TB fans love treating little Aemond as the satan incarnate who deserved everything that happened to him.

To be fair, it isn’t exactly hard to look more sane than Team Black.

From the “legally biracial” fiasco, calling characters half-breeds, comparing Black people to animals, the racial slurs, thinking Black-ish people are interchangeable, straight up admitting they don't want Daemon with a Black woman, labeling anybody who doesn’t support a tyrannical racist white woman a hater of women, calling other women c*nts but still labeling themselves feminists, making up bullcrap and trying to badger people into believing it's true, and upholding eugentic ideals about race and blood purity then getting mad when they are called out about it, at least half of them are certifiably deranged.

By default, Team Green does win because for the most part, people are at least smart enough to not take it to that level, and give the appearance that they are willing to have a dialogue without trying to beat you into submission, but they do have their moments.

I have seen people put down Baela and Rhaena for no good reason(they were well within their rights to be upset with Aemond’s actions and more importantly they did not even know the Weak Boys had a knife). Daenaera is attacked constantly(she doesn’t do anything to deserve the hate).

And TG is almost always trying to label Daemon and Nettles’ relationship as problematic. This would be fine if the ones doing this labeling were not also cheering on a teenage prince getting with a 40-something-year-old bastard servant without a penny to her name after killing nearly every man in said woman’s family.

If you want to protect Nettles’ from the evil pedo you should also want to protect Alys from the murderous psycho who made her into his concubine ☺️

I’ll keep it cute and leave it there because every time I open my mouth people don’t seem to like it, but both teams honestly suck which is why I'm team individual characters.

[ladyantiheroine]

Hi...It's me...again. Sorry for bothering you. But I was looking through the Fables comics and noticed the similarities and differences between Snow White in The Wolf Among Us game vs the comics. So I was wondering, what is your personal opinion about the character and she is handled the different media's?

Hello! You’re not a bother at all! I love having an excuse to ramble about this franchise.

I confess, I haven’t finished reading all of the comics so this is an imperfect opinion based on incomplete information.

Short answer: Similarly to Bigby, I like Snow in the game better than in the comics. She feels like a more fleshed-out and well-rounded character in the game.

Long answer:

All the characters in the game, including Snow, feel like they have more depth than in the comics. Despite the comics being longer, the characters feel static and don’t change much. In the game, the characters feel like they’ve been impacted and changed by the story’s events.

I definitely think Snow’s personality was softened in the game compared to the comics. Bother versions are assertive, both call Bigby out on his shit, and both genuinely want to help Fabletown but are privileged in a way that limits that goal because they don’t entirely understand how to help underprivileged Fables. But Snow doesn’t have the same Ice Queen energy as she does the comics.

I don’t dislike Snow in the comics the way other fans do. I have a soft spot for unlikable female characters and I don’t think all female characters are obligated to be warm balls of sunshine (especially considering the traumatic shit Snow has gone through). But in the game we see glimpses past that strictness that give her more layers and dimensionality than she does in the comics.

Like I said in my post on Bigby, the characters in TWAU just feel like they have more depth than in the comics because the scale is smaller and the struggles more internal. Snow is not just a one-note ice queen but instead a woman whose business-like demeanor hides someone who is desperately trying to maintain order in a very chaotic situation. 

Part of this is because Bill Willingham just doesn’t seem interested in the internal lives of the characters like Telltale is. I know Fables is an ensemble story and is more interested in the bigger scope politics of the world rather than individual character journeys. But the result is that characters go through horrible things and the story weirdly just keeps going. It glosses over how these events would actually affect them and it feels so weird.

(Potential spoilers in this paragraph)

Snow goes through SO MUCH traumatic shit in the first few volumes alone. She thinks her sister is murdered, she’s ruthlessly pursued in volume two by Fables who want her blood, she’s drugged and almost assassinated by Bluebeard and Goldilocks, she has sex with a man she’s only just now warming up to while under the drugs and gets pregnant, survives the battle of Fabletown while pregnant, goes through an extremely painful birthing process delivering six werewolf children, and then had to quit her job as mayor and move away from Fabletown to raise them away from their father who has fucked off to somewhere unknown. ALL WITHIN THE FIRST FEW VOLUMES.

Like, kudos to Snow for having the strength to survive all that but I’m reading all this thinking, “Damn, girl, ARE YOU OKAY???”

But the story never pauses to really sit with Snow and consider how all this is affecting her. Which is weird given how much time we spend with her and how she’s one the closest characters that Fables has to a protagonist. She just experiences horrible things and then just carries on with business as usual. Because Willingham just doesn’t seem to care.

Compare this to the TellTale game, where we see how things affect Snow. She’s shaken when she sees Lily’s dead body glamoured to look like her and even worries Lily’s death was her fault somehow. She’s unnerved when she finds out her boss has been creeping on her and glamouring sex workers to look like her. She gives Bigby a lot of shit because she’s worried he’ll get hurt. We see moments where her professional front slips and we see someone who is rightfully terrified of this whole situation. 

The comics rarely stop to do the same. How does she feel about having to quit her job to raise her kids far away without Bigby? How does she feel after being drugged and impregnated without her consent? How does she feel about GETTING HER FUCKING HEAD BLOWN OFF by Goldilocks? All this has to be taking a psychological toll on her, right??

TellTale Snow reacts to things, comics Snow doesn’t because Willingham doesn’t seem to care all that much.

Plus, sometimes Snow’s characterization in the comics feels like a conservative man’s uncharitable idea of a “strong female character.” Like he thinks if a woman is strong and assertive, that means she’s just a mean old bitch. He can’t imagine an assertive woman would actually give a shit about anyone or be properly affected by anything. And later she becomes this weepier version of herself around Bigby, but it feels out of nowhere and contrasts with what we’ve seen of her so far. It doesn’t feel like a gradual character arc.

It feels a little Taming of the Shrew, like Willingham created this assertive female character and wanted to “take her down a peg” and domesticate her. This change feels out of nowhere because, again, because Willingham isn’t interested in looking inward at his characters enough to connect any dots.

And I won’t get into Snow’s romance with Bigby because…Willingham just can’t write romance like TellTale can. The few glimpses of romantic potential we see between them in the game is way more convincing and makes me way more invested than any of the explicitly romantic moments in Fables. I just wish the TellTale games would cut off from the comics entirely and give Bigby and Snow the better love story they deserve.

So yeah, in short: I appreciate both versions but TellTale Snow is given more depth and more time to respond to things than her comic book counterpart. TellTale simply cares more about Snow’s internal life than Willingham does.

Sorry for another long response, but I hope this makes sense. I love Snow White as a character.  When I went to read the comics after I finished the game, I was excited to see her as mayor and get a proper love story with Bigby. Unfortunately, I just don’t think Willingham is as good at character-driven storytelling as TellTale is.

Thank you for the question!

[cham-chammity]

I’m..very confused about Viv’s tweet, not gonna lie. Perhaps because I’ve never really been interested in Striker’s character before the current drama caught my attention so I might have missed something?

First off..how is Striker bigoted? Did I miss something? Admittedly, it’s been a very long time since I watched the first episode he was featured in. Is it because he hates Stolas and the ruling class or whatever? Because if that’s the reason, that’d be..incredibly shitty lmao. There’s this trend of white people exploring oppression in their shows where they try to ‘define’ the valid ways for oppressed minorities to react to their oppression - and if they stray even slightly and their reaction to said oppression deviates from the ‘acceptable’ ways defined by the white creators, then they are defined as “bigoted” “reverse racists” “just as bad as their oppressors” etc. And usually the “accepted” is for the minority to either want to prove themselves to their oppressor, showing that “not all minorities are bad!” and they are “just as capable” OR be willing and enthusiastic to create bonds, relationships and friendships with the oppressor class with little to no hesitance. Now, if they are actually angry about their situation, wrathful, if they show any intense rage, or are got forbid vengeful about the way they have been treated, they are labelled as “just as bigoted”, “just as ignorant”, “just as evil” and so on which is just..extremely ignorant. Neither is good but they are not equal and not comparable because the situations are inherently different - lashing out in anger or rage at everyone from the oppressor class because of the way you and everyone around y has been mistreated, abused and stolen from is different from oppressing a class of people because you perceive them as less deserving, or as subhuman who deserve little to no rights and respect. One of those things is reactionary. Pretending that they are the same or equally as bad erases all societal context around the issues but white authors LOVE pretending that they are the absolutely same thing, just in opposite directions from one other. Thing is, wanting to prove yourself is not the only valid way to react to oppression. Minorities and oppressed individuals do not owe it to anyone. They shouldn’t have to “prove” themselves to their oppressors, they shouldn’t have to “prove” that they are worthy of rights and respect and the like - because that’s something they are inherently entitled to but was STOLEN from them. In that context, experiencing rage and even hatred is in no way shape or form morally bankrupt or “bigoted”. Minorities and oppressed individuals are allowed to experience rage for being mistreated & the idea that they have to go out of their way to prove how worthy and “deserving” they are is extremely harmful because again, they simply have NOTHING to prove. And how is Blitz a champion of the working class? He is very opportunistic and simply wants a good living for himself, doesn’t seem to be overly concerned with imp oppression or whatever? And doesn’t seem to be doing what he is doing with the idea of “I’m going to show them that we, as a class, are just as capable and worthy of respect!”. He is just. Doing his own thing. Which is valid, ofc, not every oppressed person needs to be a “hero” or a “champion” for their class.

I’m also confused about the toxic masculinity aspect. Is it because Striker exhibits stereotypically more masculine traits? Because being masculine doesn’t necessarily mean that you have toxic masculinity. Or is it perhaps because of his beef with Moxxie? Because being competitive and looking down on someone you see as less capable than you, though shitty, is not necessarily indicative of toxic masculinity either. Toxic masculinity cannot exist without misogyny and hatred for the feminine and I don’t recall Striker being misogynistic? Or at least not any more misogynistic than Blitz who, in the new episode alone, referred to the lady in the vet office as “tiddy haver” as an insult which absolutely can be read as misogynistic. And I won’t even start at how misogynistic the writing has been when it comes to any episode concerning Verosika & how the episode could be basically summarised as Blitzo’s character being written to make every single misogynistic joke at her expensive. I mean, “I could smell fish for miles”? “Pussy wagon”? Be for real now. And I know that Viv’s intentions probably weren’t to write Blitzo’s character as misogynistic and that the show is supposed to be over the top but it’s weird to try to hold it against another character, when your main character’s shtick is making Family Guy-esque jokes at almost any female/female presenting character on screen. Idk, maybe I should rewatch Striker’s first appearance, perhaps there is something I’m missing.

And the homophobic allegations are super strange to me too cuz like. He didn’t seem to have a problem when Blitzo low-key flirted with him in the first episode, from what I recall? Their fight kinda had a lot of tension and lowkey homoerotic vibes and Striker didn't seem to mind lmao. And like, reacting with disgust when someone you are not attracted to starts describing detailed sexual acts or saying "choke me", is..a pretty regular reaction. Like, Stolas going in detail about how Blitzo fucks him sometimes makes me uncomfortable because of how explicit the descriptions are lmao. And Striker's reactions weren't even that extreme, I feel? idk, man, the whole thing is super weird.

am i missing something or is the writing a bit weird?

Sorry for the late response Anon, your ask was long! But that's okay!

First off..how is Striker bigoted? Did I miss something?

No, you didn't miss a thing. I am just as confused about the tweet as you are. Striker did absolutely nothing bigoted. From what I have gathered, Vivzie is trying to make Striker seem like a "big bad villain" that everyone hates to save the little ship she has going on between Blitzo and Stolas. And so, calling him "bigoted" creates the idea that he is a morally or just overall "bad" character (when he's really not). As far as your note on creators trying to represent oppressed minorities, hell--I don't even know. I think, as I said before, Viv is kinda grasping at straws to try and make Striker an all-round hated character.

Now, if they are actually angry about their situation, wrathful, if they show any intense rage, or are got forbid vengeful about the way they have been treated, they are labelled as “just as bigoted”, “just as ignorant”, “just as evil” and so on which is just..extremely ignorant.

Minorities and oppressed individuals are allowed to experience rage for being mistreated & the idea that they have to go out of their way to prove how worthy and “deserving” they are is extremely harmful because again, they simply have NOTHING to prove.

There is absolutely nothing bigoted about hating the upper rich class when you have trauma or beef with that group of people, especially as the oppressed, as Striker is obviously faced with in this episode. Striker clearly shows anger and overall being upset at Stolas, because he resembles and reminds him of a person in his past that caused a very deep scar. This part of him saying "you don't get to talk over me" is paired with the B plot when Blitzo is shown fighting that other demon while waiting for Loona's shot. the point of those two scenes being juxtaposed (or contrasted, in other words,) together is to show that imps/demons like Blitzo and Striker face racism/classism-- specifically classism--as the female imp in sloth mentions Blitzo being "jobless" (or something like that I can't remember). Because of this, the messaged I gathered is that both Blitzo and Striker were standing up for themselves against that classism they were both facing simultaneously (at least, that is how Striker interpreted it when Stolas commented on his cave). Which brings me to the point of--yes, Striker jumped to conclusions on what Stolas was saying, but Striker's reaction makes sense. He is not being ignorant or bigoted. He is expressing anger against Stolas and his upper class because he wants to feel heard, he wants Stolas to see what it is like for hellborn like him, finally has a chance to talk and have the upper hand. While yes, Striker's reaction might have been a bit ignorant, it doesn't make him ignorant--or bigoted, at least as a character overall, since he did jump to conclusions on Stolas's comments. (which I do not think is enough evidence to call him a bigot).

And how is Blitz a champion of the working class? He is very opportunistic and simply wants a good living for himself, doesn’t seem to be overly concerned with imp oppression or whatever? And doesn’t seem to be doing what he is doing with the idea of “I’m going to show them that we, as a class, are just as capable and worthy of respect!”.

not every oppressed person needs to be a “hero” or a “champion” for their class.

Yes, these are very good points. The idea that Striker is going out of his way to prove himself doesn't change that he and Blitzo face the same struggles with classism. However, Striker's behavior is very personality-based. He's shown to have more of a fragile ego. That can go a lot into how Striker treated Stolas this episode--which plays into my disappointment of the inconsistency of his character. He gets angry too easily and seems to care a lot about being compared to others, whereas in the other episode, it seemed as though he would brush that kind of thing off easier. Part of overcoming classism is learning to not care about others' personal thoughts and opinions, and Striker seems way more obsessed with that than he should be, which kind of feeds in to his whole "hero" or "champion" mindset you mentioned he has of himself. I think part of this is a matter of Striker believing he will be the overall hero of the lower imp class, which leads me to this point:

Striker might be enraged of Blitz's success, being that Stolas is a big reason for that success, which further feeds into Striker's anger. Which makes sense, being that the oppressed class can't advance without the help of the rich, which gives Striker the idea that he is a hero (for Blitzo?) for the imps that have a hard time making a living.

I’m also confused about the toxic masculinity aspect. Is it because Striker exhibits stereotypically more masculine traits? Because being masculine doesn’t necessarily mean that you have toxic masculinity.

This one I literally have no idea how to dissect because there is absolutely no evidence, that I have gathered so far, of Striker being masculine in a toxic way. I think Viv was, again, grasping at straws when she said this, and I think the fact people (or even Viv) are assuming he is clouded by "toxic masculinity" because he has a lower voice and is stronger and appears more masculine is actually toxic masculinity in itself. (hmmmmm, so weird!!)

And I won’t even start at how misogynistic the writing has been when it comes to any episode concerning Verosika & how the episode could be basically summarised as Blitzo’s character being written to make every single misogynistic joke at her expensive.

Holy shit you are right. I didn't even notice that. Which even FURTHER adds to my point of Vivzie just trying to make Striker look bad so we don't hate on Blitzo and Stolas. One thing I have noticed about Viv, is she will only point out the bad in characters she wants us to hate, and only points out the good in characters she wants us to like. I feel a good storyteller/writer would give us points on any and all characters so we can decide as an audience what we think, based off of the writing AND their comments outside of the content istelf. What she puts in her shows v.s. her tweets are super inconsistent and does NOT align with the claim I made about good storytellers.

And the homophobic allegations are super strange to me too cuz like. He didn’t seem to have a problem when Blitzo low-key flirted with him in the first episode, from what I recall? Their fight kinda had a lot of tension and lowkey homoerotic vibes and Striker didn't seem to mind lmao.

I agree with you on this as well. I think people are just misinterpreting some stuff. Which, there is nothing wrong with that, I just think the reasons behind it don't make sense because as you said, the flirting in the first episode did not run by as weird or uncomfortable to Striker at all. I think he was just caught off guard because sex talk is the last thing you'd expect when trying to kill someone.

-----

In conclusion, I believe Striker is a hella complex character with lots of anger and unresolved trauma. I think he most definitely has flaws, but I refuse to listen to what Viv's idea of "flaw" is until she decides to finally come out and say that Stolas's character himself is bigoted towards the lower class and that Blitzo is very misogynistic towards women. ESPECIALLY Verosika. Cause holy shit that exchange in Spring Break was AWFUL. Thanks for pointing out cause my dumbass didn't think about that lol. (and don't even get me started on the flaw of Andrealphus).

-----

Anon, bro, you didn't miss anything. Vivzie is the one lacking here. Thanks for the ask! I had fun answering it. Shoot me another ask if I missed anything you want me to touch on.

(P.S. This goes to everyone--please don't spam me with "I am wrong and bad and being rude or overly critical" because oh my hell guys let me be critical. I would love to hear everyone's points and counterpoints and I want to be corrected if I am wrong on anything but please don't be rude or I will not answer you.)

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

like im personally not fond of organized religion as a concept but being an asshole to people who are a part of it is icky

like yes some of these people definitely do come from a Christian background and definitely don’t understand the complexities of other stuff I’m not denying that. Ppl need to talk to others with lived experience

But like. People are allowed to be critical of things. It’s research and talking to people about it. Like there are far too many “progressives” who will flip out over say, a conservative Christian republican saying something mild about traditional family values because of their religion but then turn around and be like “this is okay actually because of culture and religion” upon being presented with something horrific from a Shariah country. Like if you’ve read the hadiths you’d know that they endorse killing Non/ex muslims and straight up said women have half the mind of a man and encourage killing and lashing homosexuals. Like organized religion like that is the reason queer people are “illegal in 72 countries” as Americans far too often joke about. My partner used to live in Saudi and was told by teachers not to write about certain things in essays because it was dangerous. One of my mutuals who lives there is trying to escape but is in danger of being forced into an arranged marriage and also can literally legally be killed for apostasy and lives in fear of that. Also a huge amount of women there have potentially deadly vitamin D deficiency despite being in an extremely sunny place… hmm i wonder why. Also just look at what’s happening in iran. I’m not gonna go into all the shit to unpack w that stuff, but there’s a lot. but then you get progressive people from other countries. And a lot of them have either been convinced that stuff like that is okay because “ueuuee its a different religion and culture” or recognize the issues but won’t speak up about it because they’re scared it makes them islamophobic. (criticizing a set of beliefs [especially ones used to design governments] is 100% fine, being an asshole to harmless individuals is not). And that seems really frustrating for activists who live in shariah countries. Making it sound like people aren’t allowed to criticize things isn’t helpful to the people who actually live in oppressive environments due to organized religion.

spiritual beliefs n stuff are chill but once you get into organized religion with rules it can become dangerous. But like if someone is being a dickhead to someone else on a bus about having a religious garment I’d help them get out of that situation. Like. it’s possible to dislike organized religion and be an activist against the ways religion can harm people without being an ass about it to individuals hehfhs. Telling people that they shouldn’t think critical thoughts isn’t helpful though and it helps perpetuate oppression

When your takeaway is that “Islam is violent and bad” and not “this region was victimized severely by western imperialists who like to sew dissonance, firebomb cities, and elect dictators in order to keep these countries in a state of disarray and war at all times to justify western troops stationing there to protect and seize western assets (oil and other resources) and use the desperate for cheap labor”

You cannot compare oppression under Islam in the Middle East to oppression under Christianity in the west because it was the Christian nations that did that to the Middle East. And they do the same thing in Latin America, east Asia, and Africa because if imperialists and capitalists can ensure that non-westernized countries at least LOOK less developed to westerners, they can get away with so much out of a self-aggrandizing perceived superiority complex that keeps the people from perceiving the constant US military presence in these countries as the act of imperialistic ethnocide that it is.

This isn’t as black and white as you think it is.

[blubushie]

I can only talk from my own experience but seeing people's opinions on the distinction between "human" and "person" has always been interesting to me cause (outside of normal relationship labels -friend, lover, discord kitten-)

"Human" is like basic respect, probably wouldn't put myself in harms way to help you but I'd do my best to make sure you got help, you're not really an individual but another blank face in a crowd

"Person" is go out of my way a little to make sure you're good, I'll recognise your name when it pops up, might shank one or two chavs for you depending on the occasion

And then there's a secret third thing

And I think part of the issue is people don't look outside their own definitions of "human" and "person", some may have never even thought about there being a distinction between the two labels until that moment, and thus they jump to outrageous conclusions because they refuse to recognise that the human mind is complex and confusing and every single fucking thing you do has layers and nuances. The world is not black and white, it never will be, and every strict example of morality or ethics you have will be some shade of grey to someone else, whether you like it or not.

Which seems to be an issue to them I guess because it means they can't cast sweeping judgements that everyone will agree with 😚

Nah yeah that's exactly how I feel.

"Human" level is basic respect. I will go out of my way to help you, same as I would any other animal, but I don't care about you or who you are, I don't care about what your name is or what your life story is, you are a thing to me equal to any other animal. You are just another one of the dogs in this dog-eat-dog world. When I'm kind to you I'm doing it for kindness' sake, because the world needs a little more kindness. I'm not doing it because I care about you as a person, because you aren't one to me. You're simply something I don't want to see suffer because suffering sucks.

"Person" is a step beyond. I care about you beyond you simply being another organism that I would help simply because it's the right thing to do. I'd help you because I want to help you. If something were to happen to you, I'd be distraught. I would fight for you. If you're high enough on the pole I'd even die for you. I'd go scorched earth, even, should something happen to you. If you're a person to me, I care about your name, I'll give you one from me personally, I'll learn about the things you like and memorise them and try to curate myself and my behaviour to things you like so that you're content with my presence. I will give you gifts or cross my own boundaries for your sake if it would make you happy. I will show you a better more personable side of myself because you'd earnt the right to see the man I actually am compared to the mask I wear so people like anon won't fucking yell at me for being mentally ill in a way I can't change.

[shegoesbyjoy]

i've been thinking a lot about why Disco Elysium in particular has touched the core of my being in a way no other piece of media has and i think there are several factors at play here. this is half a review and half me dumping my various thoughts on this game ever since i finished it a couple months ago.

AS A VIDEO GAME ITSELF—i've been trying to identify what exactly it is about certain games that causes them to rise above all the rest that i've played, and i have come to the realization that in all of them, combat is usually one of the least consequential things on that list. i love Hades, have dumped 160+ hrs into it, but despite it being a very combat-heavy game with extremely tight controls that i do find truly satisfying, that is not what kept me playing. it's the characters, the art, the story, the world-building, the music...

similarly, while the combat in Horizon Zero Dawn is really quite fun, what really charmed me about it was its spunky, badass protagonist and fascinating mechanical creature designs, in addition to the story set in a world that captivated me from beginning to end. Night in the Woods took my breath away with its emotional & poignant writing told through a unique & delightful art style. i didn't even finish The Last of Us, but Ellie's moment with the giraffes is ingrained in my brain—and of course i went ahead and watched someone else play through to the end so i could enjoy the rest of the story without having to slog through zombie fights myself. so while i always appreciate well-executed combat in games (and have given up on games that do it too poorly), it's never what keeps my interest.

SO. what happens when you take combat out of a game entirely, and absolutely excel at everything else? you see where this is going.

THE CHOICE OF MEDIUM—the fact that DE's story was told through a video game (as opposed to a book, a show, a movie, etc.) is absolutely crucial, because of your active role in the consumption of said story. i think that's what gives some of its scenes such devastating emotional impact. watching this train wreck of a character that you happen to be playing blurt out the most unhinged responses despite your best attempt to salvage the situation, coming to terms with the awful reality of what's in front of you at the same time Harry does, seeing the immediate results of your choices as well as slowly realizing how your choices affect the story long-term as the pieces start coming together... all of this creates an immersive experience that is unparalleled. the game doesn't take self-insert so seriously that the protagonist ~can be anyone~ (Harry's characterization is, in fact, very strong and well-established) but there's absolutely no way a Disco Elysium book or show would have the same impact as me having to progress the story by fucking around and finding out.

GAME SPOILERS AHEAD—combining these two aspects of DE helps to explain what made the tribunal the MOST TENSE i've ever felt playing a video game. this is essentially as close to combat as you'll get in this game. you've just spent the last 20-30 hours becoming very familiar with the mechanics of the game with regards to the dice rolls. you become accustomed to the fact that most skill checks are white so you can come back to them, and that red checks are comparatively rare. enter the tribunal: suddenly you have several very high stakes red checks in a row. you can't leave. you can't try an individual check again if you fail. the story itself has been alluding to this very moment throughout the game. people are DYING, and the lives of those that remain, including your own, are on the line. your earlier decisions have come to a head.

it was 3 am when i got to this point in the game, and the reality of the situation i found myself in shook off every bit of sleepiness i'd been feeling up to this point—my eyes were wide open and my heart was pounding.

i know many people who play video games derive a lot of satisfaction from perfecting mechanics, learning patterns, or deducing the weaknesses of a difficult boss. for me, this satisfaction gets dwarfed by the frustration of having to spend far too long dealing with it in the first place. triggering a boss battle oddly takes me out of the story, because it feels like a very marked switch from "being the protagonist in the game's world" to "sitting on my couch playing a Video Game", where the same repetitive action of "killing the enemy" becomes my goal, no matter what the game is.

by contrast, the tribunal was very much a continuation of the story with each skill check having immediate results on how that story plays out. no other moment in the game was quite like it, and i had no idea how this sequence of events was going to go, so every action felt extremely fraught. i was on the edge of my seat in a way no other game has gotten me to feel, because the weight of this encounter felt monumental in DE. and of course, this is where you come across an iconic skill check where you find out exactly how much your previous choices matter...

i was so damn nervous during this check i probably would've cried if i failed it lmao

FUCK YOUR EXPECTATIONS—this leads me to the other thing that's got me smitten with this game: the subversion of expectations. dialogue options are never written so transparently as to have a "correct" answer, and trying to stay neutral with my answers got me a well-deserved smack in the head in the form of a brutal burn about the dangers of centrism. we have 3-dimensional characters that make you growl in frustration one moment and your heart swell in the next, descriptions that make you marvel at both the beauty and ugliness of humanity, situations where you feel crushed by sadness and dread then want to cry tears of happiness because despite all of it, there is still magic left in the world. it's also so goddamn funny. this game is fucking hilarious—and what is comedy, what is a punch line but the subversion of an audience's expectations established during the setup?

Disco Elysium is a game that far exceeds the sum of its parts. it excels in its storytelling, its voice acting brings incredible life to said phenomenal writing, its gorgeous painterly art style is visually compelling, its music is flawlessly incorporated to full effect, it's intellectually stimulating and fascinating philosophically, and as a murder mystery (oh yeah that's what this game's premise is, right?) it's just plain fun to reveal clue after clue while pondering theories as to what the heck is going on. these individual components come together to create a multi-dimensional piece of media that's deeply human, yet fantastical and absurd. it's uncomfortably relatable while inspiring empathy for even the most unfamiliar of experiences.

for instance, i have no personal experience with alcoholism or addiction, but boy do i sure know what it's like to have a compulsion to apologize at every opportunity for simply existing—to want to cease existing, period. i don't know what it's like to grow up and live in a post-soviet country yet the experience in-game felt as vivid as ever, inextricable from the story's identity. i felt a pang of pained recognition in Kim's complicated relationship with his race as diaspora, and found myself wishing i had the ability to respond even half as effectively as he did with the Racist Lorry Driver during my own past run-ins with racist assholes. this game has caused me to think more deeply about my own politics, my relationships, the world around me, the power of art, the role of capitalism, beauty, hope... even what it means to be alive.

A CHANGED PERSON—a realization i came to a while ago while talking to a friend was that almost all of the media i had enjoyed up to that point shared a theme of escapism in one way or another. there have been many moments in my life where i wished to be somewhere else. to be someone else. i immersed myself in stories where the fantasy of it seemed so much better than the reality of my own life. this game forced me to reckon with where i am, who i am. and not only that, it encouraged me to be accepting and loving of the here and now, despite every single flaw i seemed to be obsessed with pointing out. it made it abundantly clear that constantly running away was not a viable way of living, and that flaws were not a reason to give up. "something beautiful is going to happen"—i should very damn well let it.

it's not an exaggeration to say this game has changed me irrevocably, and the fact that this impossible piece of art even exists in this world feels like a miracle. i'm so grateful that i got to experience it.

[theschizophrenicchristmasgoblin]

The Bin Chronicles

The first thing you need to know about me is that I will not be - in any sense of the word - a reliable narrator.

In fact, being an unreliable narrator is exactly what makes me so uncomfortably authentic. I’m a person who struggles with mental illness writing about having a mentally ill experience in multiple mental facilities with other mentally ill individuals.

If you resonate with what you’re about to hear, I’m deeply sorry and hope you’re getting the care and support you need. If you don’t resonate with my story and are simply reading for entertainment, welcome.

Disclaimer about the word bin*

In case you’re wondering what “bin” means in the title of the book, The Bin Chronicles, let me tell you. It is shorthand for the term “looney bin”. It’s an affectionate joking term that some people use to refer to the psych ward. If anyone asks, I made it up.

Chapter 1 - The Drive

Clutching my bleeding forearm to my chest, I tried to wade through my sandbag heavy thoughts. Were the handfuls of ibuprofen I downed ever going to kick in? Would I get charged extra if I bled out in the Uber I impulsively scheduled? Should I have texted all those friends to see if they were awake enough to convince me to go to the ER? Did I even deserve to go to the hospital for something like this?

The piercing headlights of the approaching white sedan broke through my worrying. It was decided. At 1:39 AM on August 20th, 2023, I was going to head to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room for severe self-harm.

I’d like to say something inspiring such as “getting in the backseat of that Uber was one of the bravest choices I’ve ever made”. But I’d be lying. It didn’t feel like a brave choice. I didn’t even really want to get help. I just knew that the voice in my head telling me that I needed to cut deep enough to require stitches needed to be taken seriously.

The only memory my increasingly painkiller sedated brain encoded was the irony of being in this particular car. Never in my life have I had a kinder driver. He went above and beyond and offered me a phone charger and water. That had never happened to me before. Meanwhile, I was having one of the worst nights of my life. His warmth made the hot tears roll down my cheeks even harder, as the juxtaposition of a stranger’s kindness compared to my own deadly self-hatred felt like too much to bear. It would have looked like a completely normal ride had I not been holding my injured arm to my chest.

Now that the anxiety of whether or not I should get into the Uber subsided, a new worry popped up. Was the cut deep enough? If not, would they turn me away? I was determined to finally go inpatient and in my deranged mind I thought the only way to get there was to have a medical emergency. As these thoughts multiplied, I remember trying to take in the city and its beautiful florescent lights. For a split second, I felt true serenity being one of the only cars on the highway. With my arm starting to throb and soak through the gauze, the tranquility didn’t last.

Suddenly, everything looked familiar. I had worked at Massachusetts General Hospital for a year as a research coordinator. I recognized Flour Bakery + Cafe, the little coffee shop with the best butter chicken sandwich around, and the old watering hole where we used to drink after work, Harvard Gardens. I got to retrace my daily commute on Staniford Street passing a Domino’s pizza that made me salivate (yes I like Domino’s, don’t turn your nose up at me!) and a sub shop I never got to try, turning right onto Cambridge Street where I could never resist the Whole Foods next to my work at lunch time. Streets usually jampacked and bustling with cars and pedestrians commuting to and from work were eerily empty. No babies crying, dogs barking, no full hands with lunches and coffee or music blaring while bicyclists rode past. As I finally reached the main entrance of Mass General, a feeling of dread set in. I knew that I wouldn’t be going home that night.

I got out of the car. Part of me thought about getting right back in. I guess in that moment I did two things: I fulfilled my mission of taking myself to the ER and I not only admitted I needed help but brought myself to the place that could keep me safe. Once inside, I talked with the woman at the front desk. Everyone there was incredibly calm and kind and I immediately felt a sense of relief. They asked me some basic demographic intake questions like my age, DOB, the nature of the visit, whether or not I had current suicidal thoughts. Unlike my previous ER visit earlier that week, the first thing they did when they saw me was stitch me up. I’ll never forget that the provider doing them said it was almost too superficial to require stitches. While many people might feel comforted by that fact, I felt discouraged. I felt like I hadn’t made the cut deep enough which in turn made me believe I didn’t deserve to be at the hospital. I didn’t see the psych triage team that morning, but I finally fell asleep in a recliner.

Before I explain any further, let me tell you how I put myself in this minacious situation.

…

The weeks leading up to Mass General and eventually McLean Hospital were not pretty. I had been going through a depressive episode for the past 6 months if not longer, but during those last two weeks things had gotten much worse. One of the things I struggle with when I’m depressed is hygiene. Usually that takes the form of not taking my prescribed pills or brushing my teeth. Graphic, I know. Sometimes it involves not brushing my hair or taking showers too infrequently. This time it was all of the above. I felt hopeless consistently and I stopped enjoying things that had otherwise brought me joy.

At that time, I really enjoyed smoking weed and drinking daily. I stopped them both cold turkey. Another source of enjoyment for me was watching TV with my partner every day. During this period, I stopped being able to pay attention to our shows. Instead, I spent most of my time watching myself from outside and above my body. I couldn’t watch TV or hold a conversation without dissociating. Dissociation is a break in how your mind processes information. Dissociation can cause feelings of disconnectedness from your thoughts, feelings, memories, or surroundings. It can also mess with identity and sense of time. It can be a natural response to trauma, a way to cope with stressful experiences, or a symptom of mental illnesses like PTSD, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder to name a few. Alternatively, it is sometimes a side effect of alcohol or taking or coming off of medications. For me, I either view myself from outside my body or stare blankly while being bombarded with anxious thoughts or none at all until someone snaps me out of it.

As soon as I lost interest in those aforementioned activities, I couldn’t bring myself to go back to them. I stopped eating. I struggle with a self-diagnosed weed-induced binge eating disorder where most of the time I restrict my food intake except for when I’m high. Once I stopped smoking, I lost my appetite completely. I wasn’t even restricting; I just had no energy to eat. I didn’t see the point in it anymore.

 I couldn’t keep myself up past 8:30 at night. I’d blame it on the medications I was taking, but I can’t even do that because my psychiatrist and I took the one medication that was impacting my sleep, Abilify, out of the mix. Abilify is an antipsychotic that treats many different mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar I, autism spectrum disorder, and Tourette syndrome. What it does is balance the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain to help regulate moods, behaviors, and thoughts. We decided to stop the medication because I wasn’t feeling any positive or negative effects and I didn’t feel like it was contributing to our goal of getting me out of my depressed funk.

Now I had nothing to blame for my change in sleep but my depression. I would later learn from McLean how important it is to change the narrative from “my depression made me do this” to “my experience with depression made me feel this way”. It might sound like a small change, but what it does is stop you from making your illness your whole identity. Personifying depression can give it a life of its own, and it can be empowering to separate yourself from it by making these small linguistic changes. Now that I have that information, I can reframe the narrative to recognize that one of the symptoms of depression is sleep disturbance and that I was at the time experiencing that symptom rather than blame my depression as a whole for the situation.

I started moving slowly. I felt like I was wading through water any time I had to stand. My energy was at an all-time low. I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed on the weekends and went right to bed when I got home from work. My bones ached. I felt tired all the time. I felt worthless. I felt like my life had no meaning, like I was merely a husk of my former self. I didn’t feel like I had any value to offer or bring to the world anymore.

I stopped paying attention at work because I couldn’t focus. I cried constantly and isolated myself from the rest of my coworkers. I had to step away from meetings because I couldn’t stop crying.  I wasn’t able to keep up with my social life. I stopped calling my friends and didn’t return their calls when they reached to check in. This may sound like I’m beating a dead horse, and it most definitely is redundant, but I want to highlight what the signs of depression were for me. I hope this helps you to identify it in yourself or in someone else.[MOU1] 

I felt like there was no reason for me to live and I fantasized about ending my life. I thought about all the ways in which I could kill myself and how to make it as painless as possible  for my loved ones. I had recurring dreams about overdosing on painkillers. To make matters worse, I promised myself that I wouldn’t fail. I knew I didn’t want to end up fucking it up like I did the last time I attempted in 2020. I didn’t want to end up in the hospital or disfigured in some way. I just wanted it all to end. 

On August 16th I cut so deeply that I needed stitches. I was on the phone with my partner Beau as he was driving home from work, and I just started cutting and couldn’t stop. The cut was actually a few days old, and it was already relatively deep. I’ve started doing this new thing where I cut in the same spot over and over again. I’m not sure why I switched from hurting myself in multiple places to the same one, but I know that this change is dangerous. It’s dangerous because it deepens the cut which can lead to needing hospital-level care.

Completely on brand, I decided to reopen this old wound and make it deep enough to require stitches. I think the reason I did this was because the other day when I made the initial cut, I called my ex roommate who is studying to be a doctor and she said that it might need stitches. Upon further inspection, she said it should heal on its own. I absolutely hated that she was right, and I wanted to prove her wrong. Welcome to my fucked up brain.

So on August 16th I reopened the wound and slashed at it until my partner came home from work. I couldn’t feel anything while it was happening, and I dissociate[MOU2] d as I watched myself deepen the cut from above my body. Before my partner got home I started rehearsing my smile and my coyness. But as soon as he opened the door, I caved. My cut was bleeding through the gauze, and it was having trouble clotting which was unsurprisingly really hard to hide.

I told him I thought I needed to go to the hospital. So off we went to Newton Wellesley Hospital. It was a surreal experience driving to the emergency room. I wasn’t in an ambulance, just a regular car. And there was that damn irony again, we could have been going anywhere. [MOU3] [MOU4] There I was, bleeding in the passenger seat, but there was no indication to the rest of the world that there was an emergent situation. No one knew I was hurting, inside and out, or that there was a wound acute enough to require stitches.

When we got to the hospital, Beau had me get out of the car so he could park. Upon entering the hospital, I was dismayed at how long the line was. I went all the way to the back and tried not to listen to other people’s conversations. I could smell the hospital: the pungent soapy yet flat geriatric scent that stops you from wanting to take a full deep breath in, the eye-watering bleach that they had used for God knows what, and the stench of stale discomfort and worry. I finally reached the front of the line and it was my turn to tell them why I was there. I strained to get the words out. “I’m here for self-harm”.

Suddenly, I’m treated like VIP. I don’t have to go back to the waiting room like everybody else. I now get to stay at the front of the line, and someone comes to check on me every 5 minutes. Finally, I’m brought back to a different part of the hospital along with a middle aged man who drank too much and took a spill. He keeps insisting that he’s not an alcoholic, and it becomes clear to me why they put us on the same unit: we were both there in a special part of the ER for those who purposefully harmed ourselves in some way. Or maybe it was that we were all dangers to ourselves. [MOU5] I was put on a bed in the hallway but I wasn’t there for long because someone from the psych[MOU6]  team came to get me before offering me medical attention. The Psychiatry Triage team at Newton-Wellesley consists of independently licensed social workers. The way it works is people coming through the ER are first evaluated by the Emergency Department clinical team to ensure they are medically cleared. Then the social workers psychiatrically assess the patient to decide what the best level of care is for them. Looking back on this, it’s definitely weird that I wasn’t medically cleared first. Anyways, a nurse came to get me to help me put on scrubs. From there, the social worker and I went into an empty room and I was told to take any seat. I picked one and then was told to find another one, which to delirious me was the first sign that something wasn’t quite right.

The social worker sat far away from me and constantly had to lean in to hear me better. I told her what was going on, and that I wanted to do an outpatient program for Borderline Personality Disorder at McLean Hospital. This is a diagnosis I received in 2021. She laughed in my face and said it would take way too long to get off that waitlist. She asked me once if I wanted to go inpatient[MOU7] , but didn’t give me any information about the process. I declined, and she asked me why I had come to the hospital in the first place. I gestured toward my arm.

What is inpatient treatment you may ask? Here’s what I wish I knew when I was asked if I wanted to go…inpatient treatment is meant to be a short time in a psychiatric hospital to keep people safe during a mental health crisis. This is the most intensive treatment option for mental health, otherwise known as the highest level of care. What this term describes is different types of mental health treatment. This level of care includes hospitalization, whereas the lowest level of care refers to weekly or less often outpatient therapy sessions. Outpatient refers to a level of care in a non-residential setting where patients can live at home while participating in treatment. There are two main types of inpatient care: hospitalization and residential treatment. Hospitalizations are designed to be short term, often an overnight stay up to a few weeks long, and residential treatment often lasts 30 days or more. The focus of inpatient care is stabilization of the patient and developing a treatment plan for continuing their care once they are discharged. Hospitalizations are often thought of as a necessary safe place for those who are experiencing crisis, while residential treatment can help someone avoid a crisis before it escalates to that level. Inpatient can be voluntary which means you agree to seeking intensive care, or it can be involuntary which is referred to as involuntary or compulsory hospitalization where the person does not want to be at this level of care[MOU8] .

For context, inpatient units often look more like a college dorm than a hospital floor. There are both single and double rooms that often have their own bathroom that is shared with the adjacent room. There are also both group therapy and individual therapy rooms where you meet with psychiatrists, therapists, and group facilitators daily. There are common areas for eating, family visits, relaxing in places such as sensory rooms where there are comfortable chairs, fidget toys, and more, there’s always a nurses station where you take your meds, and there are offices for the staff and clinicians who you meet with on a weekly if not more frequent basis. This depends on if you are in a residential or hospital setting. These units are locked or secured environments, meaning that you cannot leave the unit without supervision. On the floor are a team of professionals including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, case workers, nurses, nutritionists, recreational therapists, occupational therapists, and mental health technicians to name a few.

After this awful interaction with the social worker, I was brought back to my hallway bed and was told to sit tight. A doctor came over and questioned if I even needed stitches, so I showed him my arm and he quickly covered it back up and agreed. To give you a visual, puffy fat [MOU9] was visible from my open wound[MOU10] . At first the deep groove filled up with dark red blood and you couldn’t see anything underneath. When they finally removed the rudimentary bandage I had made, that’s when you could see the true damage. According to my boyfriend the cut was about 3 inches long by an inch wide. While the left side of it was thinner, the right side of the wound was gaping. Yellow fat was visible almost in the shape of a bubble drawn flower and it was protruding a tiny bit past the wound. I could see a small black spot that I later learned was a vein. The fat looked bumpy and textured. No butterfly bandage could hold together what I had done to myself.

Hospital staff came over with an EKG and then they finally put me in my own room where x ray came over to look at my arm. Then the doctor entered the room with a huge syringe. He squirted it into my open wound with no regard for my pain tolerance. Then he began sewing the skin on my upper arm back together. Oddly enough, he never asked if the numbing medicine had kicked in. I can’t quite describe the feeling of the needle, but it was strange, dull, and felt far away due to the numbness. It looked exactly like stitching clothing, a long needle with a thin piece of string except there was a hook for the stitch which entered my arm on either side of the wound. This created small holes that filled with blood too.  He told me not to look but I couldn’t help myself. I was grotesquely in awe. As he dabbed at the blood flowing from my open wound I thought I might be sick. When he was done, I had 7 blue stitches on my left arm. The doctor left as quickly as he came.

Then the nurse who had helped me undress and put on scrubs came back in. I told her that I had had an awful experience talking to the social worker. She said, “I’m sorry” and then walked out. Anothernurse overheard the conversation and said she could talk to the social worker for me. I almost let her advocate for me, but I was too scared that the social worker would come in and try to talk to me again, so I said no. She said she could look in the nurses station to see if another social worker was available. I thanked her. She came back with a list of crisis hotline numbers. I left disappointed with no aftercare plan in place. I texted my therapist about it, and she said that particular social worker was known to be a bitch. It’s still insane to me that the last thing I got that night was stitches when that’s all I went in for. It would be understandable to delay my stitches if they had properly gotten me set up with inpatient or outpatient care, but as you can tell that was not the case. I vowed to not go back to Newton Wellesley in the event of another mental health crisis.

…

When I returned home, my therapist made it clear that if I self-harmed again I needed to go directly to the hospital. Her and my psychiatrist both thought I needed to go back to the hospital regardless, but I didn’t want to leave work. I thought that leaving work for a medical emergency meant I wasn’t a good employee. That I wasn’t dedicated enough. To this day, I still feel that way.

Alas, I hung in there. For those of you who don’t go to therapy, therapists often use the phrase “hang in there” when the session is over and you’ve just unloaded five years’ worth of trauma into a fifty-five minute slot. I have always hated the phrase because I feel like it is minimizing. You’re contemplating ending your life? Just hang in there[MOU11] . Anyways, I “hung in there” for three more days.

I don’t remember what time it was on August 19th that I made my decision. In my head I suddenly had a plan. I would pretend for the rest of the day that everything was fine, that I was in a positive mood, and then at night I would cut to the degree of needing stitches again and take myself to the ER. I was actually really nice and generous that day. I bought my roommate and partner dinner and drinks. I kept up appearances. My partner commented on how good of a mood I was in and I cheerily agreed, suggesting that my depression must have finally gone away. On the inside, I was on a mission. All I wanted was for my boyfriend to go to sleep that night. I didn’t want him to take me to the ER because he had already helped me get to the ER for self-harm three days prior. It didn’t feel fair to have him take me for a second time in the matter of one week.

Somehow, I forced myself to watch part of a movie with him. As soon as he started to doze off, I got to work on my plan. I located my scissors. I went into the bathroom. I normally cut horizontally on my left arm. In perfect dissonance, I decided to cut vertically on my right arm. The pair of scissors I was using had gotten dull from years of use. I could barely cut my skin. It was also awkward because I’m a righty, so using my left hand to cut vertically was a challenge. I was listening to Call Your Mom by Noah Kahan [MOU12] on repeat. The pre chorus and chorus really haunt me.

“Stayed on the line with you the entire night

‘Til you let it out and let it in

Don’t let this darkness fool you

All lights turned off can be turned on

I’ll drive, I’ll drive all night

I’ll call your mom”

At the time I didn’t realize how much I was contemplating suicide. The idea of having someone on the phone with me who I could talk to about these feelings rather than acton them would have changed the course of my life. Having someone remind me that the darkness that I was feeling was temporary might have made me make a different decision. That night, I really needed someone to call my mom.

I took one earbud out of my ear so I could hear if my partner woke up. In the bathroom I felt too far away from my room, so I moved to the couch. I used my flashlight on my phone to see what I was doing. He stirred. I freaked out. He got up to use the bathroom and I quickly shut off the flashlight and put a blanket over the bloody scissors and blood-soaked napkins. Somehow he didn’t get suspicious and went back to bed. I started thinking about what I would take with me to the ER. Underwear is a must. Computer, computer charger. Piece of paper from work about FMLA resources. Phone charger. Scrub pants. Comfy clothes.

I got a plastic bag for my dirty supplies. While cutting didn’t hurt on the 16th, it hurt every second on the early morning of the 20th. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I packed my bag, took one last look at my room, and left my apartment. As soon as I got outside I started hyperventilating. In a very unlike me fashion, I proceeded to text a bunch of my friends to ask if they were up. 2 responded, 1 was busy. I called my friend from home and told her I needed to go to the hospital. She stayed on the phone with me until I got in the Uber.

[galene-gothic]

- PAID READING FEEDBACK -

First of all, I'd like to thank you for the detailed reading you sent to me. It is deeply appreciated. Second, I have to admit I wasn't expecting that kind of first meeting with my future spouse. To be completely honest, I actually thought it would be lighter - like both of us in good places of our lives and something. To also give you a little background, I experienced my spiritual awakening last 2022 and had a lot of up and downs in my life. From my awakening, I strongly and continuously try changing myself for the better for me and important people in my life. I genuinely believe I've changed a lot since then, however i also believe I still have a long way to go. By this time, I'm sure my future spouse is someone who seems to be more stable minded than me. I also feel like he's someone more knowledgeable in terms of life experiences than me at this point. That's a good thing for me, since knowledge is knowledge and it's always a blessing to learn more through other people.

However, I think my initial concern when I read my reading was that I looked inferior compared to him. Kind of felt like someone who constantly self-pities or is into self-sabotaging. That made me think if I actually did improve at all for a moment. And I realized you mentioned that could be the current energy of our meeting, so it may probably be that for that time I will be experiencing something that will make me feel down. I realized then that I could work more on myself and that could be another transformation moment for me for the better.

Also, can I just say I'm happy you mentioned our first communication having something to do with the community and charity? I might not exactly know what it is about but I'm someone who holds a lot of opinions and consider myself as a person who likes to keep myself aware of societal issues. It just makes me feel good knowing our first communication would have something connected to being kind and having/showing gratitude.

Funny you mentioned about seeing 111/1111 all the time because I am seeing it more constantly now. Not just 111 though, just like angel numbers in general. Sometimes, 222 or 444 or just any mirroring numbers in general these past few months.

And when you described how we would feel about each other, like both of us may be having a disorganized attachment style at the moment, I really hope that would be something we both individually work on from the start. Also, it's amazing how you mentioned me being attracted to people who add to my wisdom or who are calm and feel like home because you're actually right. I'm someone who is greatly attracted to knowledgeable and experienced people (not necessarily specified to academics alone). It also takes a lot of time for me to warm up to someone. I believe I'm the type of person who someone needs to earnestly earn their place and trust in my life. Everyone's life is a privacy not everyone deserves to know and have, therefore I believe that's why I appear as off-putting or intimidating to converse at by other people. Though I understand I have the tendency to be extreme about shutting people out of my life and that's something I'm still working on.

Also just a freaky happening, just before I saw this message I was trying my only white (kind of) mesh top earlier??? AND WHEN I TYPED THAT IT WAS EXACTLY 11:11???? It might just be a coincidence but omg, that really shocked me HAHAHAHA

Along with the other signs you mentioned, it made me happy to see cats as part of the signs. I have cats so it just makes me feel delighted to know about it. I'm thinking he might be the one wearing a watch though since I'm not really the type to wear watches (and if I do, the only watch I have is color white haha).

Safe to say, this reading gave me a lot of insight and it's been a pleasure to finally have a reading from you. Expect me to order more in the future 🥰

Thank you once again!

[imaginarianisms]

i& was actually talking about this w/ els last night but sansa would be treated differently in king's landing not just bc she's a northerner or her family's at war with the Crown or a girl but also Because she's an indigenous woman, even if she has lighter skin compared to arya & jon and has red hair and blue eyes ( & this is why she would find solidarity with aurane waters & really anyone who's dornish or is seen as more of an outcast ). sansa is repeatedly abused by a white blonde haired green eyed boy king & his mother & no one bats an eye. sansa is held under the iron grip of the lannisters who keep her in their custody; one could theoretically make a comparison of this to white people adopting or straight up kidnapping n.ative c.hildren with nefarious intentions during the 6.0's S.coop to the M.illennial's S.coop in the hopes of "killing the i.ndian in the child" where they would be subject to abuse and told to forget about their culture and assimilate into the predominantly european culture & is eventually forced to marry tyrion while other individuals use sansa, oversexualize her and/or objectify her for their own gain & treat her like she's not even a person by many male figures in her life, particularly with baelish even after joffrey's death & on top of that the northerners are canonically called "savages" both publicly and in private (sound familiar? lmao); this is also not a coincidence. some of the abuse sansa is subjected to is inherently attributed to sexism, misogyny & particular antinative misogyny based upon her gender & her race & the racism she's faced is a key part of her life & is still very present in her life & that doesn't go away even if she does become lady of winterfell & the lady of the vale or perhaps even queen of the north depending on the verse.

lyanna has also faced this, too, on a much larger scale, in the sense that most are still Obsessed with lyanna to this day, particularly robert baratheon who she never particularly liked and he literally started a war simply because she rejected him & most don't even see her as a person but rather as an idea, ned even says this "you saw her beauty but not the iron underneath"; her father, rickard and her brother, brandon, try to save her after they hear the news and they are both burned alive in court of the red keep and once again, no one bats an eye and everyone watched while indigenous men are murdered in the most gruesome way possible; the same applies to eddard stark years later before the sept of baelor, another indigenous man dead and everyone in the crowd cheers as arya and sansa watch on in horror.

it's the same thing with katniss, in both her canon thg verses & other aus. katniss is treated differently than peeta is, particularly because she's brown skinned, has dark eyes and is undoubtedly a visible indigenous woman with traditional native features; this is even touched on in the books that the movies don't even talk about.

clementine experiences this too on top of mysogynoir — misogyny against black women based on race & gender; she's been parentified for literally as long as she can remember and she's expected to be that way and be strong 24/7 bc she's a Strong Black Woman™ & unfortunately whether subconsciously or not black girls are usually subjected to being more adultified than their white peers all the while that's slowly crushing her bc at the end of the day she need someone to take care of HER for a change.

these are all things i& write about & address On Purpose. make no mistake: this blog incorporates themes of racism & sexism towards woc, especially towards native women, femmes & two spirits & i won't be ignoring these issues nor disrespect my past & my communities by ignoring these issues.