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elfdyke · 2 years ago

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do you have any nica pierce and tiffany valentine headcanons?

letting this ask age like fine wine until i got to the perfect point to answer it which is right now i guess <3

im not sure if you were asking for them separately or as a ship but uhhhh ill just cover all my bases ^_^

when nica was in college she was kind of a heart breaker. she hadn’t dated very much in highschool, probably just some boy for a few months, mainly out of a feeling of obligation, but she really hits her stride in college. it helps because shes finally on her own, she can spread her wings without the burden of feeling like the pitiful disabled girl with the mentally ill mother. in college she gets to be witty and charming and make friends who dont know her dreary backstory. also in college she realizes she is in fact a lesbian.. <3 (insert obligatory changing my major reference thank you kora)

nica’s kind of reveling in the discovery of women and kissing women and being with women and well she is all about that but i fear that she is a huge commitmentphobe is the problem. the list of messy exes and ghosted one night stands is something that honestly embarrasses nica but well you see they were too clingy ! (wanted to sleep over after having sex) they were too pushy and nosey! (asked about her childhood)

basically um. well imagine growing up and your mother drills it into you over and over again that the scariest most dangerous thing you can do is fall in love with someone. that no matter what nica does, dont love another person. dont open yourself up to the hurt, the pain, the loss. and nica rebuffs it because of course she does. she resents her mother for thinking nica cant handle herself, handle possible loss or pain, but she grew up on this, this fear and anguish seeped into her brain and now she herself is terrified of that possible loss. so she simply does not open herself up to that! which is actually what is so funny but also perfect about tiffanica to me. nica so resistent and fearful of commitment and mutual love that it takes another woman literally keeping her in their house like a wounded bird for her to get the kind of exposure therapy she needed to see that maybe being loved is not the terrible thing she grew up thinking it would be

oh also i really believe that sarah pierce has had a few suicide scares in the past, and that was particularly hard when barb was away from home (nica would be 12-18 all by herself with her mother). nica feels extremely responsible for her mothers mental health and keeping her safe. in fact i genuinely believe that the reason nica is at home in curse is not because of her own health reasons but because sarahs mental health took a pretty drastic drip and, of course barb refused to take care of her (she wanted to send her to a care home/or a ward), so nica swallowed her pride and gave up her independence to move back with her mother and keep an eye on her while she got better. i genuinely believe this is canon i wont lie, i feel like its very well supported in the text and implications of the movie.. but im just throwing it in here because i like spreading the good word

so for tiffany its pretty much canon that she meets chucky when shes uhhh 19 if we are being generous. shes very young. and hes in his late 20s </3. so well for tiffany i think she had a very messy time in her teenage years. a lot of intense relationships that were not good for her at all, she wanted to feel something, feel alive and in control but these men dont really wake that feeling up in her. she’s not careful with herself, i wouldnt call her suicidal but shes not very concerned with her life. visiting bars and hooking up with dangerous looking men for a thrill, shes kind of just waiting to get murdered about it the rate shes going. but when she meets chucky the pieces just fall into place. their relationship is so turbulent and exciting and dangerous and everything tiffany thought she wanted. but chucky is on a level above tiffany, hes colder, more calculating, more manipulative and dangerous, despite how badly tiffany wants to be just as despicable as him.

this isnt so much a headcanon but uhhhh. the fact that tiffany and chucky are together for 2 years before he dies. the fact that chucky kills her mother.. ^_^ um well i think that was probably just about the most fucked up thing. you have no one but me. she was holding you back. she wanted to stop you, but i want to set you free. etc etc etc… AGHH. when youre wrapped up so tightly in another person like that, in such a twisted and desperate and unhealthy way, it really does make sense that tiffany is obsessed with chucky ten years later. especially the fact that in that time she had idealized him so severely, i really believe that tiffany had completely twisted their relationship up in her head in the 10 years he was gone. she convinces herself that what they had was magical, that he was the one for her, that he was more loving than he actually was, that he held a certain amount of tenderness for her that shes emphasized in her mind. that she was the villain in their relationship, the desperate jealous bitch who hurt her loving boyfriend, without even giving him a chance. she gets the chucky heart tattoo when she finds out he dies, revels in the pain. she deserves to hurt after what she did. its less of a tattoo and more of a brand

hmmm kind of headcanon but also kind of implied canon due to jennifer and fiona’s machinations.. but i really like the concept of tiffany and nica having a very complicated and interesting dynamic post cult. the first time tiffany meets nica properly, is after chucky has hurt her. maybe he hit her or said something particularly hurtful, but she swings back and hits him across the face and well. out comes nica. this is how they meet the first few times. nica manages to wrangle her anxiety and panic under control, seeing the way that tiffany is so hysterically upset and anguished. and she comforts her. she doesnt know what else to do, she hates tiffany, cant look at her without hearing “she’s dead, miss pierce” ringing in her ears but the longer tiffany spends sobbing in nicas arms, she doesnt feel that burning hatred in the pit of her stomach. the fear kind of subsides a little too, not by much, but its not the overwhelming blind panic she felt the first time this happened. shes realizing that tiffany is not the cold calculating villain that she had believed her to be. that shes broken, hurting and scared, and desperately in love with chucky, someone who cant love her back the way she wants, the way she needs.. nica pities her

also the rest of my tiffanica thoughts lie squarely in the alternate but better reality where nica never gets dismembered and tiffany exorcises chucky from her body, so them living in tiffanys house together is a lot more like. focused on their dynamic and how they learn to care for each other in a way that makes sense to both of them. its kind of everything to me.. ^_^

OH one additional silly headcanon i have is that barb owned a copy of bound, but she left it at home after leaving to college, and a young nica ends up stumbling upon it and well um. it in fact does affect her in ways.

#sorry i dont have as much stuff to say for tiffany um the thing is she is so much better written than nica so i have to do a ton of legwork-#to flesh nica out #while tiffany is already a comprehensive character with motives and feelings that align with her throughout the entire franchise..#SO THERES THAT #also sorry i feel like you probably wanted me to say their favorite mcdonalds orders or something which sure i can do that too but well #when you let me go with a vague prompt im going to be going quite insane unfortunately #i <3 meta posting and thinking so much and fleshing characters out and rolling them aroundin my head #asks #anon #tiffanica #tiffany valentine #nica pierce #childs play #long post #text heavy

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grimaldiapologist · 2 months ago

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Bi-yearly update on how things are going;

fulfilled the absolutely feral need to visit London for the first time in ten years the other week. And while mentally speaking, this was a straight five days of winning nonstop, physically speaking, I guess we're paying for it with our lives.

It's hilarious. Like it's legitimately hilarious. One of the leading reasons why this had to happen now, immediately is that our coping mechanisms have all burned to nothing, and all that remains, somehow, is TMA/TMP and its unholy sidetracking trainwreck, our recently-burgeoned obsession (special interest) with Regency London theatre history. And right now, before I explain how this one trip has both fixed everything and also killed us, I need to bridge the gap between these two interests and how they've become the entire foundation of our life.

I don't need to recap for anybody the world situation. Everybody knows everything is fucked, and that alone is great cause enough to dive as deep into a rabbit hole as you humanely can. (Speaking of rabbit holes, the Royal Ballet's Alice's Adventures in the Wonderland is spectacular and hilarious at the same time. Worth dying over, I guess.)

But on top of that, our first dog, who we adopted as a wee lil slipper-looking thing 13 years ago, died this past winter/spring. His heart gave out basically the day after we'd picked up Joseph Grimaldi's memoirs for, uh, some form of research/intrigue, handed down to us from the TMA lore. This is where the horrible, terrible, all-consuming spiral began. Turns out, Joe was a great guy. Like legitimately just a good person. And you know who really needed a good, solid guy to lean on at that time? We did.

So our dog, whom we've shared our best but mostly the worst with for the entirety of our adulthood, including the entirety of what we consciously can recognise as our lived experience, died. And what we were left with was Joseph Grimaldi. For straight up the rest of this year, we've done nothing but read about Grimaldi, London theatre, gotten way too into ballet and opera, and become such an unrelenting history buff that our mother - the woman who has been dragging us all over Europe to look at ancient ruins and cultivate an appreciation for all things past and cultural since we were 12 years old - has began to audibly groan and tell us to change the subject when we get into talking history.

(She also, somehow, confused our interest with Regency theatre, from the perspective of a literal bastard-son-of-an-immigrant, born-in-a-slum-to-a-teen-mum Clown lingering on the precipice of financial ruin like a solid 60% of his entire life, with becoming a royalist. Nah mate the aristocracy can go suck a lemon for all I care I'm not interested in rich people. Can't even get into the usual Regency gateway drug of Jane Austen for the amount of rich people in the stories. Anyway, she was absolutely devastated when she tried to fire back about our rant over the Kennedy lobotomy case by firing at the British royalty, and like... SHALL WE GET INTO THAT CAN OF WORMS NEXT? SHALL WE?)

SO ANYWAY our coping mechanisms went from absolutely fuck all to theatre! Theatre everywhere! Also London, because why not make an already expensive coping mechanism even more expensive by adding travel into it! We've probably spent more than our yearly loose income so far on theatre, theatre, ballet, travel, and the truckload of related stuff like.... a home library's worth of books?

And if this doesn't sound unhinged enough yet, that's fine, because it isn't. It's fairly normal to have hobbies and god knows we need hobbies and interests as a society right now. Where it gets actually funny is when I/we/someone here managed to tire our mum out enough to get her to agree to the London trip. Being disabled, it's hard for us to take initiative, it's hard for us to feel like we're capable of making things like that happen - travel is a lot of planning for a brain that dries out like a raisin when exposed to the concept of cleaning the house, or reading a regular ass timetable.

So. This fun thing that's going to happen. We get so stressed and nervous about it a week in advance that we first stop eating, and then sleeping. Trying to get through the mandatory prep of setting the house up for the catsitter, packing - which we did the night of travel - while also being wildly out of our minds, and doing things like starting a whole new crafting hobby by buying a printer and sitting down to make 20 000 custom pendants while figuring from scratch how to get all of the bits and pieces to actually work together without the ink blurring or getting bubbles in the glue and whatnot, with an average of two to three hours of sleep a night, in several bits and pieces.

Enter travel day - we haven't eaten more than a couple slices of white bread with butter for three days, haven't slept, and the airport hotel feels like heaven. Sleep a solid five hours that night, then eat a breakfast of things such as egg and egg and egg + some smoked turkey, which is all nutritious, and probably saved our life, for the next two weeks before this inevitable destruction that has followed, but not yet.

Travel takes, what, 6 hours, plus airport wait time? 3 hours flying, can't sleep, for the first time in our life we actually manage to get motion sick from the plane, because it's just flying way too smoothly. Way longer than anticipated in a coach, because our route, bought as a 1 hour trip, is served by National Express and is actually 2,5 hours.

Tis all fine! We are fed, we have slept an unprecedented amount! Arriving in London, we decide to walk from Victoria Station to King's Cross, via the route of mandatory Buckingham Palace to Covent Garden (where the fuck is the entrance to the Royal Opera House?) to Russell Square to there. It's fantastic and the body's natural opioids have kicked in; 17 000 steps later, carrying an 8-kilo backpack, we're at the hotel.

Going to bed pretty much immediately, we get another non-solid three hours of sleep. Our mum has sleep apnea and doesn't travel with her CPAP, so it's a lot of half-consciously listening to her choking and having the wildest mixing-up of reality with dream state going on. Then she gets a panic attack, because we're locked in a basement room, and she's claustrophobic. Two hours of drinking decaf on the beds and trying to talk that one out, she ultimately calms down enough to resume sleep after setting up a room swap for the day after.

I cannot remember the day after. I do remember being so fucking nauseous we could only barely down half a salad and some bread. I don't know what on earth we did on this day. I know we walked 14 000 steps, because that's in my Samsung Health calendar. Aside from that, I ???? do not know. I do not know. Realistically, this has to be the day we dragged our mum to visit Grimaldi's grave and then got lost on the way to the British Museum. We tripped on a cable laid out across the street at some point, and our mum took a nose dive on the pavement thanks to that, and probably broke her arm, which has made her cranky for the past two weeks. But at this point, like holy shit were the chickens coming home to roost on the whole "haven't eaten have never slept" business.

I cannot remember this day, aside from being sleepdebt-drunk out of my mind in the British Museum, and having nerves I've never experienced outside of conventions about visiting a guy's grave. The Grimaldi Park is, though, a really peaceful place, so at least there was that.

Next day, and here is I think where our fate is sealed, is the ballet at the Opera House. Feeling great on the day, we've slept an unknown amount of time and woke up at 1am, then managed another two hours around 10am after going to shop for food and before walking back to Covent Garden for the show. A fatal error is made; I drink a chocolate milk that has not been refrigerated. I do not know what an enormous, horrible mistake this has been before we're in Covent Garden and the food poisoning hits.

Dear. Fucking. God.

We probably had plans for the three hours we ended up spending touring local bathrooms, but I wouldn't know. All we experienced in that time was the same sleepdebt-drunken stupour mixed with existential panic and, well, food poisoning. Add in that we're severely emetophobic, and there was an actual, very real debate here whether it was worth it to just go cry ourselves to sleep at the hotel instead of trying to face the music and survive the ballet that we'd come there for to begin with. Like, in any other scenario, hotel it would have been. But this fucking ballet cost us over 100 euros on its own, not to mention the flights, the hotel, the travel in general, and the sheer fucking suffering we'd been through to get there. Besides, a food poisoning you get from your own hubris is not contagious, so this was an isolated us-issue, at least until we'd hurl on somebody.

Half an hour of sitting in the corridor outside the auditorium doing breathing exercises later, we're like... solidly able to exist again. Until we actually enter the auditorium, and our seats are ceiling-high, and there's a sheer drop down to the pit that has no railings whatsoever.

I mentioned the emetophobia, but we also do not deal with heights. So it's another, oh shit I am going to fucking throw up holy god oh my sweet jesus my good time pal my rotten soldier. Closing our eyes, trying to stabilise, did not throw up, managed to get to the seat.

And because at least half of this situation is amplified into ridiculous degrees by the panic, we know it'll be so much better once the lights are out and the ballet's actually on. We've been there SO many times before - we stress with our stomach to the point where, honestly, if it wasn't for the next two days, we would have chalked the whole experience not to a food poisoning, but just our IBS gut. And lo and behold, the lights are out and the ballet's on, and our nervous system finds this so pleasant that for the next hour, we're just....... watching with one eye open at a time because we are actually physically inevitably unstoppably falling asleep in the wake of the adrenaline shakes stopping.

It's fucking ridiculous. It's so fucking ridiculous.

One break later, we actually manage to stay awake properly, and enjoy the show. Another break later, the last bit of the show is stellar, nothing to complain about. We're feeling perky and excited again by the time it's over, and have a decent time returning to the hotel after the show, though we take the Tube, because.......... no thanks to another walk back at 11:30pm.

At the hotel, we continue to experience food poisoning. And oh boy how. Oh boy how! The night is spent shaking violently and then drenched with sweat back to back with what I assume are flash-fevers. I can't tell. We are not coherent. Waking up in the morning to dehydration so bad our pulse is like 140, and figure, hey, instead of going to Drury Lane for a tour and then on one last tour of the city with all the places you wanted to see, guess what we're doing today? Waiting in a hospital to get assessed for sepsis or someshit.

Nope. Our mum gives us some magic pills and two hours later, we're able to move again. Spend the day doing exactly and precisely everything we planned and wanted to do, we're out the whole day, I can't remember how much we walked but it's another decent 14-15k steps or so. Dinner consists of a sandwich and a tiny bag of crisps to return at least a hint of minerals and nutrients into the body. If anybody's keeping track, it's been like two weeks not eating a single actual meal at this point. And as a fun throwback to the ballet? It had a lot of kids in the audience, and every single one of the kids was recovering from a cold with a cough. This will be relevant later.

Next morning, getting in on our train to the airport to fly out. This goes great. At Gatwick airport, we determine that even drinking one mouthful of a protein shake makes us so nauseous we become such a bitch of a person that it's just better if we don't, and focus on getting home. Our mum continues feeding us magic pills, and over the flight, we actually manage to drink the rest of the drink.

In Helsinki, we grab two more bottles of protein shake, since this seems to be a safe food, but have very firmly decided against going to our planned Halloween party, and instead head home to rest.

What a decision. A decision for a lifetime, in retrospect. It's Friday.

On Saturday, we eat like kings. I can't remember what that meant exactly but it involved calories and nutrients. On Sunday, we continue to flourish, except that we're developing this dry cough with an itch like, real deep in the chest/lungs.

Oh boy! Oh boy, oh boy.

On Monday, we have a sore throat and a fever of 37,6 degrees Celsius.

On Tuesday, we have a sore throat and a hacking, wheezy cough and a fever of 38,6 degrees Celsius.

It is now Tuesday again. I have given up all hope of ever recovering from this fucking bronchitis. It is what you get when you do ALL OF THAT, WITHOUT EATING OR SLEEPING, IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY, LIKE A FUCKING NOODLE-BRAINED MORON. If gods are with me tonight I will brave the outside again and go get a COVID test just to see how worried I need to be, but I assume this is "just" the worst bronchitis ever, because it matches the symptoms of bronchitis to the T. Google tells me, helpfully, it can take up to three weeks to recover from a bronchitis - more if you picked it up "abroads", but I think London doesn't count as "abroads" for the purposes it's selling, or maybe it does, but I'm not going to a hospital for this even if it's malaria so fuck off with that.

It has been eight days. Eight days with a wheezing cough and feeling like my brain is made of infection juice. The US elections are a fucking mirage, a horrible nightmare entered into my feverish subconsciousness. It has been 12 days since we got back from England and I feel like it's been maybe a day or two, because the rest of the fucking time, we've been sick as dying dogs and oh dear god what the fuck what the hell.

LESSON FOR THE KIDS IN THE BACK: DON'T GO TO A FUCKING BALLET IF YOU HAVE AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE. IDIOTS WHO HAVEN'T SLEPT OR EATEN FOR A WEEK ARE IN THE AUDIENCE WITH YOU. AT LEAST WEAR A MASK OR SOMESHIT HOLY CHRIST.

Was it worth it? Yes. 100000000000/10 would do it again, literally applied for a job for the first time in our life to be able to do it again before the world ends, hopefully without the food poisoning this time though.

But like. In general. At this point. I'm not sure we'll survive long enough to find out whether we get the job or not, much less to do the job, get paid, and fly out again.

This is the most miserable illness we've ever had and we've had COVID before. It's the fucking wheezing. You don't ever think about your lung pipes before they're swollen to the size of shitty clogged straws. It is awful. Everything is awful. I fucking hate tea and there's no more hot chocolate and we're out of milk so no coffee either. I despise the taste of honey. Full offense to everybody who isn't sick and can choose when and what they're drinking, everything is shit and I hate it.

PS. Oh yeah and a shout-out to our boy Grim-All-Day, who had this firm belief that nothing good ever happens without it being followed by something that is either just as bad or worse. It's true. If we'd never gone to London, Harris would have probably won the election, and also we wouldn't be dying of fucking consumption or whatever right now either.

#syspost #the terrible tragedy of what happens when we go out #every. fucking. time #k post

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blue-mint-winter · 6 months ago

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House of the Dragon s2e1 - my thoughts

I liked it, but first some general criticism about the script/direction. The episode felt uneven, very wooden at times. A lot of scenes fell flat. I heard the lack of music in some places. It was a bunch of random scenes following the various members of the big cast around. There just wasn't enough of the connective tissue. I think it needed to go for the theme of sons and commit to it. I'd love to see more Rhaenyra and Jace interaction.

I'm not a fan of the beginning with Jace visiting Cregan at the Wall. Cregan sounds like he's reciting some pre-written speech instead of talking with Jace like a normal person. He also has a very monotonous voice. I hope they will change it when he becomes relevant again, because the first impression of him is very boring. Also, half of the things he said about Stark/Targaryen history sound like lies. Or he slept through his history lessons, who knows, which would mean that Jace did it too. Lol. I suppose he could be not lying and the show is just making its own lore different from the books for some reason.

By the way, I find it so funny that the show completely skipped Jace in Winterfell stuff. He has better things to do, like maybe finally get some character development?

Rhaenyra's scenes were great, her looking for Luke's body, finding it, the call for revenge, the funeral. I really loved when she and Jace hugged. Great scenes.

Rhaenys was another great, the way she put down Daemon was legendary.

Corlys and Alyn scene was just luckluster. So awkward. Alyn: is black and looks like Corlys, saved his life and delivered him a commissioned sword that was a gift for Lucerys. Idk, sounds like he has Corlys' trust. Maybe they were acting like they weren't close because they were in public.

It's honestly so amusing how Aegon II is consistently a terrible king, son, brother, husband and father, but because he's funny and has a pretty smile and wants to give back the sheep to some poor guy, he's suddenly getting popularity? The expectations were so low that he can't lose rep anymore, he can only go up for anything that's slightly positive. It should be clear that he didn't start being a good father, he just wanted to prank the small council.

I laughed at little Jaehearys in the small council scene. It was funny. The kid just wanted to play with the ball, like Grogu.

On the other hand, Aemond became an unbearable jerk. But this ties into a general problem of the Greens - they are just shitty to each other. Talk behind each others backs. Aemond does that to Alicent, doesn't even call her mother anymore. Aegon does that to Aemond behind his back, and he's condescending to Helaena's face. Alicent and Otto meet just to discuss how to control and manipulate Aegon and Aemond. This family lacks real unity.

I liked the Blood and Cheese scene. I liked that two guys just waltzed into the castle, walked right past the throne room, no one stopped them despite the late hour, the one servant girl who saw one of them did nothing. Didn't question, didn't sound the alarm. That seemed suspicious, is she working for Larys? I liked that these guys weren't some trained assassins, they were kind of winging it. Of course, they went after the easy target, the defenseless child, instead of the deadly Aemond who would fight back and probably kill them. I liked that Helaena tried to bribe them, then gave up and saved the one child she could. With her possible disability, she might not even be capable of lying? Maybe? Or she's just that kind of person that can't lie to save her life. And the freaky ending with her coming to Alicent, only to find her in bed with Crispin and just ignoring that completely.

Look, Daemon's action plan was stated - he wants to team up with Rhaenys to take out Aemond. I don't think he really expected Blood and Cheese to succeed in killing Aemond. If they did, that would be extremely lucky. I think Daemon wanted to start the real fighting in this war, draw out Aemond alone and far away from backup. He wanted to provoke Aegon into sending Aemond out for revenge. Daemon probably wants the glory of taking out the biggest threat for Rhaenyra.

Helaena said she was afraid of rats. Rats = Larys Strong. He's scheming something shady again, no doubt. It was suspicious that after he "cleaned house" at the castle, Blood and Cheese happened. The secret passages and even corridors were unguarded.

#hotd #my thoughts

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thesketchyheartist · 10 months ago

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03/08

Dororo (S1E1, E3, E5, E7)

First off, I believe I heard of the show, but I can't remember where. Also, I didn't know Mappa used to have a scene for their logo. Pretty cool, but I guess it took too much time and money maybe to add that to all the shows.

So, the main character of Dororo is not actually Dororo himself, but his traveling companion Hyakkimaru. I suspect the reason the show is called Dororo is because it focuses on Dororo's journey and how his journey helps shape Hyakkimaru's journey as well. Because of Hyakkimaru's disabilities, the show would not have a voice or narrator without outsiders or an omniscient third-person voice. Even after Hyakkimaru receives his voice, Dororo continues to speak for them, even guiding Hyakkimaru's actions like the cricket in Pinocchio. Hyakkimaru is without his 5 senses (I don't know if he has a tongue to taste, but given how he had to fight to have skin and his sensation of touch and pain, I will assume he has no tongue or taste sensations), so he doesn't have any way to communicate except to move his prosthetics. I am curious how Dororo knew his name. I think the Priest followed Hyakkimaru and learned, or Hyakkimaru learned to write in the dirt and the Priest maybe felt it or something.

The Sacrifice: We know Hyakkimaru's life is the result of a deity statue in the mother's shrine that lost its head. I assume that means either a literal (as in the death or weakening of the god) or metaphorical (just as Hyakkimaru has a head and heart to live, this god is alive but lost their head) death. I wonder if it's the god's scheme to rid the world of the most evil demons or even the most powerful foes that plague the world. And looking at the demons defeated, they don't really show that having a part of a person's body gave them strength in correspondence to the part they took (skin from mud monster). Even Dororo pondered that for demons feeding on human bodies, a piece of just one couldn't be that nourishing for them. Either way, if the god's believe giving him a god's essence to just be alive will give him holy strength as he keeps fighting for them and defeat the demons will help them, or if the god who lost their head had to make a deal with the demons. Alternatively, the demons were just that close to taking over the world, and the gods intervened before they could do that.

How many demons took Hyakkimaru's body? He lost a lot of parts of himself from his birth, but I find it hard to believe he fights off a demon that easily (of course I could be underestimating his powerful will to live outranks any trivial skill or strength he has).

I do find that Hyakkimaru retrieving his lost body is a symbolic journey to learning to live. If you want to stretch it, it can be the more religious perspective of Journey to the West, though the characters do not show any resemblance to the Pilgrims. Essentially, JTTW is a journey towards enlightenment, and this show does imply the presence of Buddhist deities. Alternatively, you could be analytical and say it's a journey or rather the story of life (life is a journey) as this journey is how Hyakkimaru learns to live and therefore lives. He learns to experience human sensations, and I'm sure he learns to live with human emotions, including pain from losing his foot. I suspect as he grows more of himself back, he might start to lose his fighting strength, to the point where even if he has muscle mass, he won't be as fast or as strong to fight.

Back to enlightenment, Dororo serves as Hyakkimaru's guide (not necessarily his voice because even the audience doesn't know what he actually thinks), but it's funny because Dororo isn't an "expert on living" considering he is just a young kid. Like he doesn't understand a lot of adult things (literally picks a fight with 3 grown men as if he were any stronger than a supernatural being), but he still understands that Hyakkimaru needed time to adjust to sounds, and he knows the girl's singing helped him adjust to the environment. It goes to show in the journey, Dororo learns to grow up, with seeing the demons show up, and in turn, Hyakkimaru learns from a kid how to be a young person and enjoy life. We even hear him make a tiny laugh after a supposedly substantial amount of time he already got his voice back. I wonder how we will communicate given how he couldn't hear, couldn't see, and can't move his fingers (no speaking, no signing, no writing).

Not to blab about my life, but I just came from an organic chemistry midterm.

-03/08/24

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ghooostbaby · 3 years ago

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deeeep dive into why and how wei wuxian and lan wangji love each other, complete each other, are the inverse reflection of each other’s deeply hidden internal selves mirrored through the other’s external self, lan wangji’s inner wildness that he has to conceal and protect recognizing and loving wei wuxian’s outer wildness, wei wuxian’s deep, fuddy-duddy morality and values that he conceals with an elaborate subterfuge of jokes, mischief, and bravado, seeing and loving in lan wangji the ability to say no that it was never safe for him to express directly, “between you and me there is no need for thank you and sorry”

oh and a slight diversion midway through into a manifesto on WEI WUXIAN IS NOT INSECURE the whole story is about a society where being liked is ESSENTIAL for survival and it is actually completely perilous not to be liked, and his “people pleasing�� is a skill and tool for his survival especially as an orphan and proven to be a necessary one when he stops doing it and STOPS SURVIVING

after the cut discussing the very interesting dynamics of consent in general in the novel, but not going into the consensual non-consent kink stuff till the last paragraph if you need to avoid for any reason.

I've been thinking about how Lan WangJi sees in Wei WuXian the exterior, unfettered expression of the wildness Lan WangJi holds in him and protects with rigid codes of conduct, propriety and outward dignity.

I have had this sense that these two are mirrors, either one reflecting the hidden, interior (and unallowed) self of the other. but it seemed more clear from Lan WangJi's side, especially knowing about his history with his mother and the spicy side that emerges when he drinks and in the extras.

I also - just... the way this whole story shows how romantic love is truly this longing for your self, to become yourself, to become the thing you're not allowed to be, seeing in that person the expression of whatever it is you can't become and longing for it, protecting it, joining with it as closely as you can without ever being able to let it live inside your own body.

On the surface it seems a lot more difficult for Wei WuXian to find a piece of his soul in Lan Wangji. I think its a bit too simplistic to see whatever draws Wei WuXian to Lan Wangji as a reverse-psychology sort of craving of acceptance from the only one who won't give it, pushing and pushing against this impenetrable boundary that he needs to break to feel assurance that no matter what he can make anyone accept him.

And he is SO drawn - in a mind boggling way, in the teenage flashbacks Lan WangJi rudely and aggressively throws him off over and over and Wei WuXian cannot keep away! Even when he talks about how boring Lan WangJi is, he never stops trying to be around him and talk to him.

I've seen discussions of the way Wei WuXian has always relied on the goodwill of others to survive, and that his placating of others to survive is a character flaw. Although that seems only halfway true.

As a young child he didn't have anyone's goodwill for a while and he survived, and it seems like he can always find a way to survive from whatever means and sometimes very limited resources he has at his disposal. Doing what he has to do to become powerful enough to survive losing his core and being thrown into the burial mounds slowly costs him the goodwill of everyone around him - and what happens to him as a result shows how much placation was a truly necessary for someone without the protection of biological/hereditary family bonds.

(Don’t get me started on how his loss of his golden core and his development of demonic cultivation to give himself power by ‘unnatural methods’ through the use of a musical instrument is a metaphor for disability and the way ableist society sees the use of accessibility devices and tools. Actually please DO get my started haha.)

Wei WuXian is so charismatic and seems very used to getting what he wants and needs on the strength of that. He pushes a lot of boundaries and seems pretty confident and flexibly prepared to handle the consequences, whether beatings or harsh words. But he does work so hard to make others feel good, good with him, good with themselves.

When he is in the cave with Lan WangJi, Wei WuXian is described as "like one who forgets all past pain as soon as the wound heals". He can't resist coming up beside Lan WangJi and talking to him again and again after every time Lan WangJi pushes him off, only finally staying away when Lan WangJi bites him (and he still keeps trying to talk to him after a little bit!) and then calls him an awful person (!!! Bad Wangji! :(((( ). In the end, when Lan WangJi (very minimally) discloses what happened to his sect and his father, and even cries, because of all the defences/assaults Lan WangJi has put up Wei WuXian can't do anything or say anything to help and feels miserable.

Lan WangJi just absolutely refuses to allow Wei WuXian to take care of him - and I began to wonder maybe that’s what Wei WuXian actually really likes about him? Why he is unable to resist coming up to Lan WangJi again and again? Maybe because Lan WangJi refuses to let Wei WuXian appease him. He’s not trying to crack Lan WangJi to get to this impenetrable place of approval and acceptance. In a way he can’t quite understand, Lan WangJi is a respite for Wei WuXian from the constant work to be the one who pleases.

And how different this is to how Wei WuXian is (or has to be) with Jiang Cheng when he wakes up in Lotus Pier after the cave. Jiang Cheng gets so down and really really needs Wei WuXian to do what he does so well (and wasn’t allowed to do with Lan WangJi) - chasing Jiang Cheng down while being injured and reassuring him about all his insecurities about his father's acceptance and becoming a sect leader and Wei WuXian's own abilities excelling his - and at first Jiang Cheng is pushing him away, but he really does need Wei WuXian to do all this to feel better.

Wei WuXian is described as not wanting to be lonely, and not wanting to see other people unhappy, and he keeps trying to push and pull with whatever he has to not be lonely and lift the mood for those around him. I don't think it's a kind of codependency or insecurity. It’s not that Wei WuXian is afraid to say no, in fact I would say he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do, but he must always do it creatively, with humour. Similarly to Nie Huaisang, he uses a persona of foolishness to give himself a covert agency.

I also think I'm writing this because I don't like seeing this discussed as a sad bean character flaw for him to always need to be liked - its a strategy, its a tool, its how he survives and excels. Doesn’t the whole story prove how essential being liked is to a human’s survival? And he is so so good at being liked, in making others happy, even when he is refusing to do what others want from him that he doesn't want to do, he does it in a way that deflects criticism, with a smiling bravado that never says what it truly means and has people writing him off as shameless or foolish or just endearing himself toward them despite themselves.

He is always at work really, with jokes and flattery or mischief and teasing, to get the resources he wants and needs. Case and point, when he makes a big coquettish show for mianmian, definitely not being "people pleasing" for her, but the group of girls around them all find it funny and cute and in the end she gives him a perfume sachet which ends up being a valuable resource for later. Or the time he outright tells Jiang Cheng that if you give the girls some lotus seeds they'll remember you and return the favour in the future. (Also notice how his interactions with girls seen as flirtatious are actually strategic resource-gathering acts.) These are the skills he has developed to meet his own needs. (THIS IS NOT A CHARACTER FLAW. I REPEAT.) He takes what he needs and steals from the Lotus Pier markets knowing it'll be paid for, he lives like he never know when his next windfall will come from so he'll take what he can when he can find it. Like Jiang Fengmian said, if there is no guarantee of a meal in the future then today's meal should still be enjoyed. It’s how Wei WuXian said to Nie Huaisang at Cloud Recesses, you have to find ways to make your own fun out of whatever you have. So he gets kicked out of class, goes fishing, gets alcohol, he pursues his own pleasure. He actually is quite insistent of his own agency and right to choose, he just can never directly say no.

And that little detail that Wei WuXian always tucks coins into his clothes just in case, that makes him able to buy food when he and Jiang Cheng are on the run... breaks my heart and reveals so much about the way Wei WuXian is constantly at work on ensuring his own survival and never takes for granted whether he is safe (he knows he never is).

I've seen some people talking about Wei WuXian sacrificing so much for his brother and sister out of a need to be accepted out of a chronic sense of insecurity. But isn’t this just true? Doesn't he live in a world where being accepted is absolutely essential for survival? Doesn’t this whole story show the cruelty of a social system based on networks of hereditary/biological family that closes out and scapegoats any outsiders, and that without biological family connections that can enclose around you, you can never truly be safe if not constantly working to earn acceptance? (And then beautifully ends with the way a gay romantic relationship that queers marriage/family/etc disrupts all this and creates safety and inclusion for Wei WuXian without needing a normative family.) (AKA romantic love does not resolve some internal personal problem in Wei WuXian but disrupts and refuses and rebels against the problem of SOCIETY.) (*breathes heavily*)

And that’s why Lan WangJi is magnetizing to Wei WuXian. Lan WangJi is always saying no. Although what Lan WangJi sees in Wei WuXian is an exterior wildness, Wei WuXian is not really out of control so much as he is playing and caring and supplicating and showing off and pleasing people to get the resources and the acceptance he needs to live his life. He has firm values and desires that he can never outwardly state, only creatively spinning plates to distract and deflect while he refuses what goes against his values, protects who he cares for, or takes what he needs to in order to survive/thrive. Lan WangJi embodies an exterior of resoluteness and direct agency that Wei WuXian doesn't have the luxury of. And he's so drawn to him for his ability to repeatedly say no, to refuse to get along, or make others laugh, make other people happy, but just simply follow what he thinks is right.

Wei WuXian’s outward wild movement protects an inward stillness. He is an exterior of people-pleasing around an interior of refusal. He is an exterior of youthful rebellion around an interior of unflinching morality. He sees in Lan WangJi the outward expression of his stillness, his morality, his resistance that he can't express, that he's had to protect.

FYI after the cut gets more into the dynamics of consent in the story, and the last paragraph directly talks about consensual non-consent kink play in wangxian’s relationship.

When Wei WuXian is with Lan WangJi, there is no work to be done. Lan WangJi cannot be swayed by him, and so there's no point vying for resources or favors. Lan WangJi will either give him everything or refuse him everything based on who he is, it does not matter what Wei WuXian does and he can't do anything that will change Lan WangJi’s mind. Someone he literally can't win over. After the resurrection, they are often in an adorable tug of war, where Wei WuXian tries to take care of Lan WangJi, while Lan WangJi won't allow him to but demands to care of Wei WuXian right back. Actually, Lan WangJi insists that Wei WuXian take everything he wants or needs from him and is even angry when he doesn't take or when Wei WuXian tries to offer a gesture in return, even something as simple as a thank you Lan WangJi won't accept. It’s kind of adorable how frustrated Wei WuXian is in doing this thing he's learned that he needs to do, and just... so confused by Lan WangJi, and has to find a way to please this person who aggressively refuses to be pleased and is ONLY pleased by Wei WuXian being pleased.

(Not to mention the way Wei WuXian delights in finding that Lan WangJi can’t say what he wants, and they have sort of these chaotic cohesive both-being-so-pleased-by-working-hard-to-please each-other moments where Wei WuXian is letting Lan WangJi please him by finding out what pleases Lan WangJi and giving it to him.)

The wildness Lan WangJi had always hidden within himself is something he sees as just as dangerous as Wei WuXian thinks of his desire to refuse. He saw his mother be socially alienated, shunned, and eventually die because of her wildness. His ability to survive in the world, aka to be accepted by his family, is contingent on him being able to control this inner wildness. From a young age (re: Phoenix Mountain kiss) he could only understand his sexual desires for Wei WuXian as something repulsive or dangerous that had to be repressed and controlled, and that the only way he could imagine his desires as possible was as non-consensual. His secret gay desires were never available to him as anything but something monstrous.

Importantly, it’s not like everyone else other than Lan WangJi are all vampires cruelly demanding Wei WuXian’s constant sacrifice. Wei WuXian is always vibrantly, charismatically offering so much, before anyone has asked. It’s Wei WuXian who creates this kind of relationship for himself again and again. It’s Lan WangJi who simply refuses - he refuses to charmed, to be cared for. And so in the end Lan WangJi becomes the one person who Wei WuXian feels doesn't need anything from him. When he says he's eating the corpse's fruit to save Lan WangJi money and Lan WangJi says that will never be necessary. Or when Wei WuXian asks what toy he should win for Lan WangJi at the market game, and Lan WangJi says anything Wei WuXian gets will be the one he wants. (XD stahhhhp it’s too sweet !!!) He really just wants Wei WuXian to be, to exist, to spend his life discovering his own desires and allow Lan WangJi to help satisfy them, he doesn't want anything from Wei WuXian other than him living - happy and safe.

It takes someone like Lan WangJi to refuse Wei WuXian’s aggressive generosity, it’s definitely not an easy thing to say no to Wei WuXian, dazzling or annoying people so chaotically before they even realize there’s something to say no to. The sacrifice he gives to Jiang Cheng, he never even offers a choice - and perhaps it would have been too much for Jiang Cheng to accept if he had the chance.

Lan WangJi’s statement "Between us there is no need for thank you and sorry" seems like one of the most important sentences in the novel, and you can’t help but noticed the way “sorry” and “thank you” is littered meaningfully through the book. What is owed, what the characters owe to each other, the give and take, touches every part of the story (down to wangxian's erotic explorations!).

When Jiang Cheng talks to Wei WuXian at the Guanyin temple he makes a lot of contradictory statements about what Wei WuXian owes, what he was given, what he took, what he (Wei WuXian still) is owed in return. Wei WuXian, according to Jiang Cheng, took everything from the Jiang clan, and paid them back with their deaths. The Jiang clan give him his life when they took him in, and he owed Jiang Cheng service for the rest of his life as the right hand to the sect leader, that’s what Wei WuXian had promised anyway. At the same time, Wei WuXian sacrificed everything (his golden core) to Jiang Cheng, by giving everything he was taking one more thing - Jiang Cheng’s right to even be angry at him. Jiang Cheng had taken everything from Wei WuXian. Everything that happened around Wei WuXian after could be said to be because of the loss of his golden core, which Jiang Cheng might be said to be responsible for. But he never asked for it, maybe he never would have wanted it. He wishes Wei WuXian told him, but Jiang Cheng never told Wei WuXian his golden core was melted while he was sacrificing himself to save Wei WuXian. He wants Wei wuxian to say sorry, but that makes him feel pathetic. And Jiang Cheng says sorry too. It’s a mess of paradoxes, and in the end somehow it seems like the scales are balanced in the most hollow, dismal way.

What is owed, what is given, what is taken ... Wei WuXian has never been part of a family. He has always had to say thank you and sorry for everything he's taken. Wei WuXian himself admits that he used "thank you" as a way to enforce distance between himself and Lan WangJi. Lan WangJi's point i think is that they belong to each other, Wei WuXian is his, and he is Wei WuXian's, unconditionally. The way that Jiang Cheng speaks of him in the Guanyin temple (admittedly I read a fan translation and this is very nuanced, related to slight variations of grammar), even when Jiang Cheng clearly is so broken by the loss of Wei WuXian from his life, he talks about Wei WuXian as an outsider. It is what MY family gave to YOU, never what you took from our family. But at one point Wei WuXian was part of their family - but he takes too much, and becomes an ex-disciple, not a brother. Wei WuXian’s inclusion as a Jiang was always conditional.

Even when Wen Qing and Wen Ning leave him to go take the blame for qiongqing path they tell him "thank you and sorry", drawing a line between them and him, so he doesn’t even belong to these people who he sacrificed everything for. The way Wei WuXian acted when he was younger, he was always keenly aware of this - he always knew that he didn’t belong to anyone, no one is going to protect him unconditionally. And after first escaping the Burial Mounds, he is done pretending. When Lan WangJi warns him about what a demonic cultivation path will do to his heart, Wei WuXian replies: “After all, on the topic of how my heart is, what could other people know about it? Why should other people care about it?” He is done pleasing. Nothing has changed really, he still belongs to no one and is alone, but now he is angry about it, and instead of saying thank you and sorry he is going to become too powerful to be at anyone's mercy. And then we see in the story afterward what happens to people who don't say thank you and sorry.

The whole point I think is the impossibility of choice, the impossibility of consent in this society. If he didn't forgo the behaviour his social acceptance was conditional on, he wouldn't have survived the burial mounds. But once he becomes powerful enough to survive and get revenge on the Wens, he is socially outcast. Except he was already outcast from the beginning.

And so how do Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi find a way through all that to a life together where all their desires are possible, where Wei WuXian can say no while also being pleasing (safe) to others, and Lan WangJi can indulge in his wild desires while still being good? The answer is kinky sex!

It is kind of miraculous and beautiful how Wei WuXian finds a way to say no, while simultaneously pleasing Lan WangJi, giving pleasure, while taking it, saying no, and knowing his refusal is not just tolerated, but gives Lan WangJi pleasure, knowing Lan wangji and knowing the painful belief Lan WangJi holds within that his desires are unacceptable and unspeakable, and that Wei WuXian can take care of Lan Wangji in a secret little way and please him and give everything to him by craving this wildness in Lan WangJi while at the same time he gets to say no again and again , and it won't push Lan WangJi away, he can refuse everything while at the same time be totally pleasing and thus safe, and also for Lan WangJi, Wei WuXian's pleasure at saying "no" while still being held onto, that he genuinely wants to be fucked even while begging Lan WangJi to stop (and the many ways he does give his consent for this throughout, especially their first time), allows Lan WangJi the ecstatic feeling that this idea that his sexual desires are only possible through force are not just something his lover forgives him for but something his lover is SO turned on by, and that he has consent for his fantasies of non-consent, Wei WuXian has the same fantasies from the other side, he is doing what he is supposed to while doing what he shouldn't, and actually these monstrous feelings in him allow him to take care of Wei WuXian in a way that he needs - that they both need - and all these impulses that are so wrong with Wei WuXian become very right and a way to do good. And they are just both so perfect and perfect for each other and I love them and I am so happy for them to have a long kinky life together.

#wangxian #mdzs #mdzs meta #holds wei wuxian close and murmurs into his hair 'no one knows you like i know you baby'

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anniethelen · 3 years ago

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Alright I’m writing this after little sleep and a long day at work, so I’ll try to be as coherent as possible.

The First Avenger really gave us a sanitized version of the 1940s. Like others have pointed out racism was barely acknowledged. The Great Depression seems to not have happened. How did Steve afford art school? Both his parents were dead, he was a poor Irish American, he had several health issues that were probably a money drain, its highly likely had had to drop out of high school to go to work. Did Bucky pay for it? (If anyone needs even more ship material) What did Steve do for a job and where could he get hired with all his health issues?

People drank a lot in those days because times were tough. It would not be a stretch to headcanon that Sarah Rogers had a drink every night after work because she is a single mother to a sickly boy and likely thinks she may outlive him and be left alone. She also never remarried. Did her son and his health issues scare off any potential men? Did people suspect that she became a mother out of wedlock? Because it would have been very hard to be a single mother in those days. There was also much more smoking back then. There were cigarettes Doctors recommended for asthmatics and pregnant women. But both of these could because of Disney not allowing either on screen no matter how much it would make sense.

His dog tag listed that he was protestant which, him being Irish, its highly likely he was Catholic. Maybe the writers didn’t know this, but did Marvel demand that he be protestant? This seems very outdated because only Evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists have an issue with Catholics today? But we know they’ve erased Jewish characters (the twins). We know the MCU tries to appeal more to the Christian audience but isn’t Catholic close enough? Its not pre 1970s anymore. I guess they want people to think all their characters are protestant despite never even mentioning religion anyway? (Is this why Thor is an alien?)

With ableism, there is still remnants of the eugenics movement today. When I go over to reddit comments like (TRIGGER WARNING!) “I think people with x disability should all be euthanized” and “I’d rather have a dead child than an autistic child.” get thousands of upvotes. People will argue that the compassionate thing to do is to euthanize people with certain disabilities. Downs Syndrome is one that gets brought up a lot.

Back in the 30s and 40s, those with certain disabilities either got institutionalized or, if the family didn’t have money, they were hidden inside. My mother (born in 1948 for reference) had a friend that lived on her street growing up. A few years ago she heard that her sister with Downs Syndrome died. My mom never knew her sister existed until she heard that news. The family did not have money so that girl was kept inside. My mother also had an older sister with Downs Syndrome who my grandparents did not hide and the community knew about her. They still didn’t know about the other girl. (You’d think the other girl’s mother would bring her daughter out to play with my mother’s sister.)

Machismo was also very big in those days. Steve could not have lived up to those standards of masculinity preserum.

I don’t know how much the writers researched the 1940s or if they just wanted to go with the aesthetics. Because the eugenics movement really should have informed Steve and Bucky’s characters. (This is why I hate when they said that Bucky can now become someone great at the end of TFATWS. He already was before he went to war. Also why him being complicit with Hydra as TFATWS wants us to believe makes no sense as far as a character arc. Or why trying to tell us that Bucky had a dark side in TFA makes no sesne. If that were truly the case, this is something you have to show not just tell. His story should have been treated as tragic.)

Eugenics in the 1930s

Okay wow reading the Eugenics in United States was a trip and a half.

I'm sure other people have done metas of this, so this is more a record for myself for future fic writing.

In summary, because there's a lot of history, the eugenics movement was pretty much the precursor to the Nazi eugenics movement. Unconsented and coerced sterilisations of Black women continued into the 70s.

Just some relevant tidbits to Steve and Bucky's experience:

The 3rd International Eugenics Congress was held in NYC in August 1932, and elected Ernst Rudin as its president - a Swiss-born German psychiatrist who became a strong influence on forced euthanasia programs of the disabled and mentally ill under the Nazi regime.

The movement successfully lobbied for increasingly strict immigration restrictions. The Immigration Act of 1907 added an exclusion for: (Presumably when Sarah immigrated she was negative for TB)

All idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons, and persons who have been insane within five years previous; persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; paupers; persons likely to become a public charge; professional beggars; persons afflicted with tuberculosis or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such mental or physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living…

30 states passed laws allowing for compulsory sterilisation of criminals or the disabled.

A 1937 Fortune magazine poll found ~60% of people supported sterilisation of "mental defectives" and criminals, while only 15% opposed both, suggesting this is not an unpopular view at the time.

Because I wanted to understand exactly what views Steve would have been living with at the time, I did some digging and found the published papers from the Congress and I'm going to keep it under cut because it's vile ableism of the extreme kind and needs a trigger warning.

To get a sense of truly how arrogant and dehumanising these views were, here's the opening address to the Congress by Charles Davenport:

Research on human genetics, as the foundation of eugenics, should be continued. ... We need to know the genetical factors present that favor self control -- inhibition -- or the lack of it. We need to know more about the genetical factor that favors output in music, mathematics, invention, organization and the rest. By a knowledge of the laws of inheritance of these special capacities the chance of breeding them can be increased.

It is probably well that the principles has been established in this country that the fertile marriages of the feeble-minded, and the inheritably insane should be reduced to a minimum.

Eugenics is not interested in death rates any more than it is in birth rates. It is interested only in quality. One may even view with satisfaction the high death rate in an institution for low grade feeble-minded, while one regards as a national disaster the loss of a bold and successful aviator, or even the infant child of exceptional parents.

Any nation will, in the long run, be what the quality of its breeding stock permits it to be (...) Every nation wants to secure for itself its ideals of high quality of manhood. (...) The immigration problem has indeed two aspects on the biological side. (...) Possible biological disharmony arising in the hybrid offspring of people widely unlike genetically; (...) the other aspect of immigration is that of a clash of instincts in groups with unlike temperaments and mores. (...) While there are apparent dangers in the free mixture of very dissimilar races, we have reason to look for certain advantageous consequences of out-breeding, providing the breeds be not extreme.

Can we by eugenical studies point the way to produce the superman and the superstate? Progress will come slowly. (...) But I think we are justified in having faith that the future will bring precise knowledge in human biology, and education will establish the desired mores.

The load of nauseating drivel encapsulates the astounding narcissism of a group of people believing it entirely within their rights to dictate what kind of people are worthy of living and "breeding", dressed up with very faulty science. The super soldier experiment was an extension of these views and it's actually disappointing how much the franchise minimised the role of the eugenics movement.

If Steve spent most of his childhood with the poorer and ethnically diverse group, these views are probably less prevalent, but there's likely to be a lot of prejudice once he mingles outside of his social class. His experiences with the medical profession was likely quite negative if this is the dominant belief at the time. In fact, one of the speakers (Madge Macklin) urged to include the teaching of eugenics in the medical curriculum.

The whole-hearted cooperation of the genetically trained medical practitioner is an essential to the success of the eugenic program for the following reasons. (1) He is necessary to determine who are physically and mentally qualified to be parents of the next generation (...) (2) He is the authority who must decide as to what persons have inherited diseases. (3 - summarised) He is depended upon to accurately record observations of disease, especially in those of more than one member of family. (4) He is a vital part in the education of the public as to the value of and necessity for eugenics. (...) He is indispensable in the program of sterilisation, both as the actual operator, and in large part as the initiator of recommendations for patients to be sterilised.

The medical profession, the one you hoped would value doing no harm and autonomy and justice, was being asked to judge the worthiness of people to pass on their genes.

As for exactly how they viewed people with disability and their value, there was this nasty rant by Lena Sadler, an obstetrician - what is exceedingly fascinating is that her Wikipedia page has no mention of her very avid support for eugenics (legit it's the stuff of alt-right crazies and it was about 8 pages long)

The menace of feeblemindedness, insanity, and delinquency is a rising tide, constantly growing in volume, because these enemies of society pass on their faulty mental and moral taints to their rapidly increasing progeny. (...) Here we are coddling, feeding, training, and protecting this viper of degeneracy in our midst (...) all the while seemingly ignorant and unmindful of the fact (...) that the future descendants of the army of the unfit will increase to such numbers that they will overwhelm the posterity of superior humans and eventually wipe out the civilisation (...)

[In an example of an intellectually disabled child] we maintain that society owes it (...) to say to this child: "We will continue to do the very best for you; you shall be educated or trained to your fullest capacity--and then you shall be either segregated or sterilised--we will do our full duty by you, but there must be no more like you."

She had included in her list of unfit people not only the "insane, idiots, criminals and paupers" but also people who were deaf, blind, epileptics, alcoholics, and "abnormal sexuality"...and Steve and Steve's parents would have ticked several boxes.

I feel like I need some time to digest all this. I get the sense that there is pervasive scorn against people who are poor, non-white (*and by this it's Nordic white not just any garden variety white), disabled or has visibly "undesirable genes", and this is a majority view amongst a lot of the educated class, including the medical profession - with whom Steve would have had a lot of contact.

It was...sneaky? Disappointing? That they removed the eugenics movement from the background of CATFA, because I think it informs a lot of Steve's choices. It wasn't that he wanted to kill Nazis, but he knew if the eugenics movement won, there would be no place for him or many millions of people like him, or for the many more who did not fit with the movement's narrow racial and class profile.

And in a way, I think even without Erskine, some part of Steve knew he was the better volunteer, because more than all the other able-bodied soldiers (even including Bucky) he understood the disabled experience, and he knew no one else would be willing to fight as hard for them, because they had been devalued so thoroughly by society.

I feel like with this context in mind, it's also much harder to be feeling sympathetic towards Peggy, who treated pre-serum Steve with at best detached courtesy, with a 180 change as soon as he gained desirable breeding characteristics. I really cannot see Steve carrying all this social context and still finding Peggy a morally attractive character.

#The dark side refers to sources saying that Bucky did the dirty work during TFA #like killing Nazis #um hello why is that implied to be a bad thing?#its war what did they think soldiers did?#and again these were Nazis #this wasn't Vietnam or the middle east where the US was 100% in the wrong #these were Nazis #But yeah a man who befriends takes care of a sickly man in the 1930s and 40s #who tells him he as nothing to prove as his friend tries to go to war #it makes no sense that he would join an evil organization as the MCU now wants us to believe #espcially one that was a Nazi organization in the comics #it makes absolutely no snese #Bucky was tortured brainwashed and brain damaged to comply with Hydra #none of it is his fault #his story is actually very sad #also we can let Sarah Rogers and Steve be human #Sarah can get into heavy drinking and still be a good person #times were rough she was poor and a single mother #and may have needed some relief #Steve can defend others from bullies but still choose to get into a physical fight with them because he is constantly emasculated and #probably told he is broken #These two characters don't need to be the perfect version of American morals #Sarah Rogers doesn't need to be a model poor person in order to deserve sympathy or to be a good person #anyway I hate that the MCU completely ignored the eugenics movement #which should have highly informed STeve's character #and why he wants to stick up for those who are bullied #also fans of CC make gross ableist jokes and Steve and his relationship with Peggy #I am so sick of the male wife and girl boss meme with them #given both their backgrounds it is disgusting and not funny #an upper class British woman dominating a poor disabled Irish American in the 1940s?

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praisetheaxolotl · 2 years ago

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Sometimes I think about the post that started this whole blog in the first place. It was a metapost about why I headcanoned Bill to be an abuse victim. Before I made the post, people I knew HATED the idea- it's important to mention that "people I knew" were antishippers with dedicated discourse blogs, by the way. But when I wrote the meta up and posted it to my main blog, people really liked it! Because of rhe positive reception, I decided to make a blog dedicated to Bill meta, and here we are!

The point of this post is, I think a lot of people were unreceptive to it because nobody really wants to acknowledge that abuse victims can be abusive. Certain kinds of people like to tout their status as a trauma victim around and use it to mean they can do no wrong, so they don't like to be reminded of the cycle of abuse. They think that just because they were abused, they're absolved.

Funny enough, that's what my mother thought, too. She told me stories on how she was neglected, how she had to fend for herself as a child, how her parents didn't believe in her ability to successfully immigrate, and how her father locked her in a closet if she played too loudly as a child. She also, in turn, abused me, and medically neglected me for so long that the pain got bad enough that I am now in a wheelchair. She also groped me, which is a whole nother bag of worms on its own. What happened to her as a child objectively sucks, but her status as an abuse victim did not save her from being abusive towards me. She got up in arms about how cruel it is to play mean pranks on your kids, and repeatedly called me lazy for not cleaning my room while I had an untreated physical disability that made it extremely painful to do so. She got so mad over a man ignoring his son's suicidal tendncies, but got quiet when I brought up that she did exactly the same thing to me.

This isn't really a meta about Bill; I'm just thinking about people in general. This kind of stuff is also why "narcissistic abuse" is such a big term- it's easy to say that abusive people are abusive because they're narcissists- because they have Bad Trait that Makes Them Abusive; a trait that you do not have. You are the gentle victim to their evil abuser. You could never be abusive; you're not a narcissist! And fuck people with NPD who are abuse victims, they probably deserved it anyway. And even if they didn't, they don't deserve help. Have they tried being a better person??

Anyway yeah. I'm just having a think about things. How unfair it is to survive abuse and then be told you're just as bad, if not worse, than your abuser. Gaslit by society forever, after escaping gaslighting.

It's not fair.

#fun facts idk if i have aspd or npd cuz different people have said different things #and my current therapist hasnt diagnosed me with either yet #so. thats great #i probably have one w traits of the other but idk which one with traits of which other #or worse: im getting piledrived by both #anyway!!

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reikiajakoiranruohoja · 3 years ago

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I'm not usually the type to say "Look at these people who knew better BEFORE it was well known." But I have to say, ElfQuest has to be one the most progressive comics of its era. It might not have much queer content (but it has it), but there are some actual landmark choices that you rarely get in modern works. (Also, spoilers for ElfQuest.) For one, Ekuar. Ekuar was SEVERLY tortured and maimed by trolls, to the point he is prematurely aged and bald, missing an arm, a leg, and one finger. His treatment is treated with the horror it deserves, but Ekuar's story does not end there. He is rescued and healed, though his physical disabilities remain. Despite his scars and his trauma, Ekuar is not pitied and not excluded from the group. Heck, we even see him getting some action in the orgy scene. What makes Ekuar stand out for me, is that he is allowed to be scarred and disabled. He is allowed to look aged and lack hair. No one is offering to 'fix' his scars, no one is treating him as ugly or 'lesser' due to his disabilities. He is not desexualized, despite his looks. Ekuar is a person as much as every other character and he is afforded the same respect as Rayek and Cutter. This is rare in fiction to this day. A character who is truly maimed and forever disabled is often the target of pity or a feel-good moment. They aren't really seen as people, especially not sexual people. If they aren't magically fixed by the end of the story. Another great character is Two-Edge. A half-breed of elf and troll origin, Two-Edge seems just another 'hilariously' crazy with his rhymes and schemes. Only, as the story goes on, we get to see exactly how Two-Edge was traumatized, and it isn't pretty. There is nothing 'wacky' about Two-Edge, he truly is heavily traumatized and abused and he is trying to make sense of himself with what wits he has left. What makes Two-Edge's story so painful to read, is that he was abused by his mother to this point. Heck, he only exists because his mother assaulted a troll. Only to essentially use Two-Edge as an experiment and lackey. It is not funny or treated as an excuse for what Two-Edge did, but it shows how he became so twisted. I highly recommend checking out ElfQuest. These two are only some of the stories there.

#elfquest #rape mention //#abuse mention //#torture //#two-edge #ekuar

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azuryuu · 2 years ago

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twst yuusona profile - yuu h.

« isn’t it funny, how you can live so near and never notice. »

yuu h. is a first-year and the one (out of the two human students in his dorm) who holds the position of dorm head of ramshackle. he is generally well-liked by both peers and professors alike due to his cordial and obliging nature. it is intelligent and mild-mannered, but tends to keep to himself, so it is easily forgettable.

technical information

name: “yuu”

japanese: ユウ

other names:

herbivore (leona)

ghostie (moon)

shrimp/y (floyd)

monsieur rusé (rook)

child of man (malleus)

prefect/class pres[ident] (by most students)

dorm leader/dorm leader yuu (kat, only to tease/taunt)

voice claim: vy2 yuuma [sample 1] [sample 2]

biographical information

gender: gender apathetic

pronouns: he refers to itself using he/it pronouns. it doesn’t particularly care what others call him.

sexual orientation: greyromantic asexual

age: 19

birthday: 28th of august (chosen by ace and deuce since he cannot remember his real birthdate)

starsign: virgo

height: 160cm/5′3 (?) [i am not american]

eye colour: umber brown almost black

hair colour: soot black

homeland: P███, F��███

family: unnamed father, unnamed mother, unnamed older step-sister, unnamed older step-brother

professional status

dorm: ramshackle

school year: first

class: 1-A | student no.14

occupation: student | prefect/dorm leader | class president/representative

club: equestrian club

best subject: magic analytics/enigmics | potions/potionology | flying

worst subjects: none

disability accommodations: modified PE grading due to health reasons

fun facts

dominant hand: right

favourite food: spicy stir-fried octopus (nakji-bokkeum)

least favourite food: raw red onions

dislikes: complacency | oversleeping | going too far behind schedule | being ignored

hobby: playing the piano | reading | learning new things, studying

talents: lockpicking | going unnoticed

appearance

yuu has short straight dark brown hair, with the fringe being parted to the right. the fringe is slanted to the point that the hair on the left side is noticeably much longer than the right, ending just barely past his left eye, only just grazing the bottom of it. because of this, its left eye is usually obscured.

his eyes are a much darker brown than his hair, so dark that it almost appears fully black, the pupil blending in and indistinguishable from the iris, even from up-close. sometimes, they are able to take a lighter quality, glinting almost ivory. it usually wears rimless oval glasses that he removes when appropriate (completely removed during PE uniform & suitor suit, or when wearing goggles in his labwear & beans day outfit).

he has a beauty mark below his lip on the left side of his face and below his right eye on the bottom-left corner. under his typical night raven college uniform wear, yuu has a rather lanky and almost frail-looking body. despite his tan skin, it’s marked with such sickly pallor that he almost looks like he could drop dead at any moment.

its outfit consists of a white short-sleeved dress shirt and grey waistcoat under the typical nrc black suit jacket with golden accents which it leaves unbuttoned, and a striped bow around his neck, which he seems to always tie crooked. tied around his left arm is a white ribbon with a black stripe running down its length, fastened in place by the golden dorm crest. it also wears a pair of black slacks and light grey socks accompanied by black oxfords.

personality

yuu is rather well known on campus, for not only being only one of two magicless student who ended up in a prestigious private school for highly talented magical practitioners, but also for being incredibly highly accomplished despite its lack of magical affinity. its professors enjoy its presence for yuu is very diligent and industrious, excelling in all classes; its peers enjoys its presence for yuu is very pleasant to speak to and overall, very helpful (even if the more opportunistic students ends up trying to take advantage of yuu’s generosity - they quickly learn that yuu can quickly become very unsympathetic and stern, however).

regardless if it’s about classes, note revisions, tutoring, or even mediating conflict between students or student & professor, yuu proves itself to being a very capable class representative, unfaltering and unintimidated by anything. naturally, he is very polite and composed, but also affable, always speaking demurely with a small smile that makes him look friendly and approachable. it is very clever and always chooses its words so that the person he is speaking to feels as though they are listened to, makes them think that they are smart and are the one controlling the conversation.

but under his surface level geniality, yuu has the emotional range and reactivity of a dead fish. he is someone that is easy to be acquaintances with, but hard to be friends with. he is someone you don’t hate, but you don’t particularly like either. it is very hard to get close to it as it rarely speaks about itself, nor does it start conversations or reach out to others, always passively responding to questions, only speaking when spoken to. it is distant and indifferent to most, and tends to be aloof and keep to itself. because of this, it is very good at being boring and being ignored

in that end, it is very good at being forgettable. all it needs to do is stick its nose in a book, and it is like he has disappeared into thin air; yuu is someone that puts forwards the image of someone dull and unremarkable: ‘he is a good student, but not much else beyond that’. yuu is an uninteresting person and doesn’t try to associate with the other students beyond pleasantries and favours.

yuu is a stranger, and its cordial demeanour and unassuming disposition belies a more cunning streak.

skills and abilities

despite being magicless, yuu is able to thrive by being a jack of all trades.

social butterfly yuu has the ability to adapt to and work with just about anyone, able to endear itself and integrate into any group. not many people can say that they dislike him, and many people can vouch for his convivial and considerate nature. this works to his advantage as people seldom suspect him or believe accusations towards him, even when he is actually the culprit behind something.

↳ “captain of köpenick” yuu is very good at pretending: he can ‘fit in’ in any situation or environment, able to do whatever he wants to achieve by acting as if he already has the authority to do so in the first place; his act is so organic that no one really questions it, despite nrc not being in any shortage of sceptics - even if someone does suspect him, they’re not quite able to tell what yuu’s motives are.

notable example includes the time yuu began regularly attending dorm leader meetings despite never being invited in the first place, due to ramshackle’s (and therefore his title’s) provisionary status.

↳ negotiator owing to his familiarity with psychology and social engineering, along with being raised around his politician father, yuu is adept at navigating social situations, knowing the precise words and phrases to get or hear exactly what he wants, to make others think and feel how he wants them to, to project a specific image of himself that is tailored for the other’s consumption.

on the flipside, this skill has become very useful in helping him peacefully resolve any conflicts or disagreements, and defusing arguments from becoming fights. talking one’s way out of trouble comes in handy as yuu possesses no magic to defend himself with, and it’s very good for his (and his dorm’s, including the other one student in it) reputation.

↳ grey rock his amiable personality can easily be switched on and off at yuu’s convenience. when it has no need to garner attention, yuu easily shuts himself off and makes itself as dull and boring as possible, becoming uninteresting and unremarkable. indeed, outside of being helpful and being a good student, his peers don’t know much about it as a person.

sometimes, the best defence is simply to be underestimated and unnoticed.

sure-footed despite the usual drag of his feet, it’s really only a habit he enforces when he wants others to hear him. yuu actually has naturally good balance and silent steps, as proven by how agile and light-footed he is, taking full advantage of his smaller stature. ergo, yuu is very good at running away, dodging, and avoiding. its good balance has led to him quickly picking up flying and becoming rather skilled, albeit still green.

↳ regal he has a very prideful, dignified way of carrying himself that almost demands respect and attention, which he tones down unless he’s at a formal function where he needs to appear noble. this was a disposition he had been groomed into from a young age by his parents, and becomes something akin to second nature to him, much like the honeyed empty flattery that he spits out easily.

↳ scrappy when running away and becoming avoidant, his usual m.o., is no longer viable, yuu is capable of holding his own in a fight. landing a hit on him is actually rather difficult as it is a small, nimble target. but due to its lack of formal self-defense or martial arts training, yuu’s way of fighting is erratic and unpredictable, but inefficient. nevertheless, he makes up for his lack of technique with sheer violence and abject refusal at admitting defeat.

quick study yuu has a very strong memory and is naturally clever, able to quickly pick a subject up, whether it be humanities or sciences, even something it has never seen before, very quickly when interested or obliged to. as such, he can learn the essentials of new material he was introduced to in twisted wonderland with remarkable speed and ease. coupled with his passion to learn and irreproachable studiousness, it would be hard to imagine yuu anywhere but at the top of his grade’s ranking board.

↳ investigative when something has piqued yuu’s interest, it is skilled at sleuthing out clues and can competently gather information from others. on top of having very good memory that allows it to recall minute details that was mentioned months prior, yuu is highly capable of parsing through its thoughts and findings to come to a(n often) correct conclusion.

notably, yuu was capable of deducing fairly early on that scarabia’s vice leader’s UM has to do with manipulation by using the dorm leader’s slip up, and has therefore quickly grown distrusting and wary around him.

↳ artful yuu is someone who can craft a way out of any situation, his perceptive and calculating nature coming together into a fearsome cunning. he is not someone who acts on impulse: he plans and deliberates before speaking, before making his move, and with it, he has already thought of a plan B, and a backup plan for that plan B to go with it. this way, it ensures it will always come out the victor and have the last laugh by outsmarting the other.

it is a facet of yuu that people seldom think he possesses due to his unassuming and guileless disposition, causing others to underestimate him and believe him to be naïve, which works to its favour.

↳ polyglot yuu is fluent in at least 12 languages, 10 of which are languages spoken in his original world (including french). the rest are the languages he has since picked up in twisted wonderland, which includes the “universal language” spoken in that world and the different tongues he has learnt in animal languages class.

it enjoys learning different languages as a way to challenge itself, but also because the connection between languages fascinates it, loving how the more languages he knows, the easier learning the next one becomes.

lockpicking a skill that yuu actually picked up on a whim. he had started watching videos about lockpicking once on youtube and got hooked, wanting to try his hand at it. after ordering the proper tools and practicing, it came to learn that it was rather talented at the act. it’s now incredibly proficient at the trade, capable of breaking into complex locks within seconds. for the most part, it continues to practice to keep its fingers occupied and dexterous, not to mention that it also enjoys finding out what mechanisms makes up a new lock he hasn’t encountered before, applying past experiences to deduce how to unlock this one.

trivia

yuu is not his real original name. he made it up on the spot when crowley asked for his name;

yuu’s second home is the campus library, almost always found there studying, to the point that yuu has become highly acquainted with the library’s collection. if someone needs to find a certain book or wants a complimentary reading for a class, yuu would be able to provide guidance;

being an avid reader, yuu devours books at a shockingly rapid pace. he can get through 3 books a day and over 100 books a year. his room in ramshackle is a mess of book piles as he has run out of space in his bookshelf and has begun stacking books on the floor, which grim takes great glee in knocking down;

it always wakes up at 5am every morning;

in book 3, yuu reveals he has self-diagnosed thalassophobia - the fear of large bodies of water;

a nautilus shell is tied to his messenger bag for decoration. yuu likes to bring it up to its ear because it can hear the sound of the sea from within;

after the events of book 6, yuu starts wearing a plain silver ring on his right index finger;

if yuu had magic, he would probably be sorted into octavinelle or pomefiore;

#twisted wonderland oc #twisted wonderland mc #twst oc #twst mc #twst yuu #-; yuu stranger lore #-; my writing #the skill part was a stupid amount of fun to write #it was like making a skill tree

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riphimopen · 3 years ago

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so i love your interpretation of michael's character and i had a blast reading your thoughts about him and it made me wonder if you have any nice hot takes about the other slashers?

!!!!! aw THANK u im glad u like my takes!! other slashers hmmmmmm................ well. as far as jason goes i think we gotta stop acting like this man isnt smart as hell and also mean as hell. like yeas its the ableism and infantilization rampant in the horror community obv lol but jason has SO much potential outside of the camp comedy vibes of the f13 franchise to like. really explore themes of dedication, family, loyalty, trauma+grief processing, and vengeance. NOT THAT I DONT LOVE THE CAMP COMEDY OF THE F13 FRANCHISE OFC but if they ever do a more serious take, i think we could dive a lot deeper than "he kills for his mom" and get into "he was a traumatized + disabled child who was isolated for decades and returned upon the death of the only person who had ever treated him like a human being" without exploiting his hydrocephalus for shock value, and even then we have to explore the parent/child dynamic of any mother and disabled kid like. on the one hand obv pamela was his world and he was hers, and she loved him more than life itself, but on the other hand theres a very bitter story to be told abt "disability parents" (autism moms i.e.) and overbearingness vs actual love and care, if we choose to take that route. BEYOND THAT, moving back to adult jason, his story is really one of like i said grief and trauma processing and the lengths to which we'll avenge those we love; would love to see ppl discuss his mentality as much as michael myers, for ex, and get into the nitty gritty of - how much violence is too much violence. how much of him is a righteous force of nature and how much is a son lashing out in the name of the only warmth he ever knew. when did it stop being about pamela - did it ever? was he still thinking of her in new york, in space, etc, and when we say that he was, was he thinking of her and avenging her in terms of operating on his own free will or by her order as a voice in his head (which, again, is definitely a method of processing trauma)?

jason being an emotionally complex killing machine instead of just a mama's boy gives us SO much for discussion but ALSO: on the flip side, we need to acknowledge that just bc hes more sympathetic than lots of other villains doesnt make him any less of a murderer. he's still very much a nasty and ruthless guy, no amount of trauma can excuse that lmao, and i'd love to see more content for him being like. fucked up and insane in da brain and straight up brutal yknow? like at the end of the day as much as it IS abt pam, it's also just abt corpses in the woods and being stalked through the trees and axes at night when the phone lines are cut! it's abt HORROR as much as it is abt family and if we're moving away from the nigh-parody takes we've come to expect, then we should go scary just as much as we go emotionally complex. THATS the equilibrium we gotta maintain: only make jason as deep as he is frightening, and vice versa, because these two aspects of his character contribute to one another so fundamentally!! if you are going to explore his character as a vessel for trauma (which u should!!), then emphasize the fact that hes gone batshit with it and is completely no holds barred!!

ultimately i think jasons not just a big gentle giant like fans like to think and NEITHER is he a mindless killing machine; f13 content should be abt exploring his grief as it relates to the extreme violence he inflicts and if anything should strive for a core theme of catharsis, bc when it boils down to it, what is catharsis in this case but violence for the sake of grief?

also i think freddy krueger is a funny guy and his character needs no expanding on whatsoever lol

#asks #thank u sm for asking!! this is me typing as i think so its a little unorganized but u get tha gist lmao #if theres any other specific guys u wanna hear abt feel free 2 ask jason just came to mind first lol <3333 #friday the thirteenth #jason voorhees #yeah ill maintag that

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faerynova · 3 years ago

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I read some of your stuff about the clementine au you came up with and I keep going back and forth on it but it's actually a really sweet concept and I like how you think into the different ways that would affect Tommy's healing process, plus I love that clem would be an absolute hell rat, good for her. (Plus-plus just any funny scenes of parents having no idea what they're doing and being about as chaotic as their child is my cup of tea, it's great) But as someone who has PTSD themself as well as watched their mother deal with it as they grew up, it definitely changes a lot of how the healing process goes. For some ppl it puts it on hold cause they got a wild child to take care of and others it gives motivation to keep working on it. It's interesting to explore the different outcomes. Regardless, you have given me something to overthink for the next week so :'D

TLDR: I have family issues and fiction is my lifeline, and you can keep this ask for whenever you wanna info-dump about it cause I like hearing all your ideas <3

yeah! yeah it really DOES change things. ptsd, grief, and disabilities are things i all focus on heavily in my writing and it really feels like im doing something right when people feel seen/drawn to it, it always makes me happy. (also im just happy in general that you like the idea aaa)

(also! her name is wilma now! originally it was clem because thats kind of the generic name most people use when they make a fankid for tommy. but after a bit of talking about her with a friend i decided to just go full on unique with her)

time for a little infodumping then <3

wilma is a difficult child regardless of who her parent(s) would be, which also adds to the fun. shes gives tommy a run for his money, and definitely forces him to confront a lot of his own issues because it would go south for both of them very fast if tommy tried to push aside his emotions and healing. her autism means she has a lot of emotional issues-- and while we see tommy continues to grow more emotionally mature over the series, hes not stable when hes fresh out of exile so hes gotta get his shit together for her sake.

tommy encourages (on purpose and accidentally) her, as you say hell rat nature. her first word is “fuck”. if she eats mud, eh, its probably good for her or something. when she does talk she matches his volume. she does not understand personal boundaries. she bites people (this one he encouraged on purpose for self defense). among many other things.

but for all that they can be alike, they do clash pretty hard on certain things. the primary one is that, like most autistics, wilma thrives when she has a routine because change is Scary and Bad. and tommy is in contrast a very impulsive person. having a kid in general forces you to settle down a bit but hes gotta take a hard left to figure out how to be... a bit more boring. just a little bit. no springing things without warning. theres more i could get into but this is getting long for an ask and my brain is mush

much appreciated tho for the ask about wilma, this encouraged me to finish up some art of her and ive queued it to post tomorrow :D

#long post #ask #wilma innit #dadinnit au

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mostlymovieswithmax · 4 years ago

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Movies I watched in May

Sadly, I kind of skipped writing a post for April. It was a mad month with so much going on: lots of emails sent and lots of stress. I started a new job so I’m getting to grips with that... and even then, I still watched a bunch of movies. But this is about what I watched in May and, yeah… still a bunch. So if you’re looking to get into some other movies - possibly some you’ve thought about watching but didn’t know what they were like, or maybe like the look of something you’ve never heard of - then this may help! So here’s every film I watched from the 1st to the 31st of May 2021 Tenet (2020) - 8/10 This was my third time watching Christopher Nolan’s most Christopher Nolan movie ever and it makes no sense but I still love it. The spectacle of it all is truly like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had also watched it four days prior to this watch also, only this time I had enabled audio description for the visually impaired, thinking it would make it funny… It didn’t.

Nomadland (2020) - 6/10 Chloé Zhao’s new movie got a lot of awards attention. Everyone was hyped for this and when it got put out on Disney+ I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. Seeing these real nomads certainly gave the film an authenticity, along with McDormand’s ever-praisable acting. But generally I found it quite underwhelming and lacking a lot in its pacing. Nomadland surely has its moments of captivating cinematography and enticing commentary on the culture of these people, but it felt like it went on forever without any kind of forward direction or goal. The Prince of Egypt (1998) - 6/10 I reviewed this on my podcast, The Sunday Movie Marathon. For what it is, it’s pretty fun but nowhere near as good as some of the best DreamWorks movies.

Chinatown (1974) - 8/10 What a fantastic and wonderfully unpredictable mystery crime film! I regret to say I’ve not seen many Jack Nicholson performances but he steals the show. Despite Polanski’s infamy, it’d be a lie to claim this wasn’t truly masterful. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - 8/10 Admittedly I was half asleep as I curled up on the sofa to watch this again on a whim. I watched this with someone who demanded the dubbed version over the subtitled version and while I objected heavily, I knew I’d seen the movie before so it didn’t matter too much. That person also fell asleep about 20 minutes in, so how pointless an argument it was. Howl’s Moving Castle boasts superb animation, the likes of which I’ve only come to expect of Miyazaki. The story is so unique and the colours are absolutely gorgeous. This may not be my favourite from the legendary director but there’s no denying its splendour.

Bāhubali: The Beginning (2015) - 3/10 The next morning I watched some absolute trash. This crazy, over the top Indian movie is hilarious and I could perhaps recommend it if it weren’t so long. That being said, Bāhubali was not a dumpster fire; it has a lot of good-looking visual effects and it’s easy to see the ambition for this epic story, it just doesn’t come together. There’s fun to be had with how the main character is basically the strongest man in the world and yet still comes across as just a lucky dumbass, along with all the dancing that makes no sense but is still entertaining to watch. Seven Samurai (1954) - 10/10 If it wasn’t obvious already, Seven Samurai is a masterpiece. I reviewed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, so more thoughts can be found there. Red Road (2006) - 6/10 Another recommendation on episode 30 of the podcast. Red Road really captures the authentic British working class experience. Before Sunrise (1995) - 10/10 One of the best romances put to film. The first in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is undoubtedly my favourite, despite its counterparts being almost equally as good. It tells the story of a young couple travelling through Europe, who happen to meet on a train and spend the day together. It is gloriously shot on location in Vienna and features some of the most interesting dialogue I’ve ever seen put to film. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Tokyo Story (1953) - 9/10 This Japanese classic - along with being visually and sonically masterful - is a lot about appreciating the people in your life and taking the time to show them that you love them. It’s about knowing it’s never too late to rekindle old relationships if you truly want to, which is something I’ve been able to relate to in recent years. It broke my heart in two. Tokyo Story will make you want to call your mother. Before Sunset (2004) - 10/10 Almost a decade after Sunrise, Sunset carries a sombre yet relieving feeling. Again, the performances from Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke take me away, evoking nostalgic feelings as they stroll through the contemporary Parisian streets. There is no regret in me for buying the Criterion blu-ray boxset for this trilogy. Before Midnight (2013) - 10/10 Here, Linklater cements this trilogy as one of the best in film history. It’s certainly not the ending I expected, yet it’s an ending I appreciate endlessly. Because it doesn’t really end. Midnight shows the troubling times of a strained relationship; one that has endured so long and despite initially feeling almost dreamlike in how idealistically that first encounter was portrayed, the cracks appear as the film forces you to come to terms with the fact that fairy-tale romances just don’t exist. Relationships require effort and sacrifice and sometimes the ones that truly work are those that endure through all the rough patches to emerge stronger. The Holy Mountain (1973) - 10/10 Jodorowsky’s masterpiece is absolute insanity. I talked more about it on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - 10/10 Another watch for Grand Budapest because I bought the Criterion blu-ray. As unalterably perfect as ever. Blue Jay (2016) - 6/10 Rather good up to a point. My co-hosts and I did not agree on how good this movie was, which is a discussion you can listen to on my podcast. Shadow and Bone: The Afterparty (2021) - 3/10 For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed the first season of Shadow and Bone, which is why I wanted to see what ‘The Afterparty’ was about. This could have been a lot better and much less annoying if all those terrible comedians weren’t hosting and telling bad jokes. I don’t want to see Fortune Feimster attempt to tell a joke about oiling her body as the cast of the show sit awkwardly in their homes over Zoom. If it had simply been a half hour, 45 minute chat with the cast and crew about how they made the show and their thoughts on it, a lot of embarrassment and time-wasting could have been spared. Wadjda (2012) - 6/10 Another recommendation discussed at length on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Wadjda was pretty interesting from a cultural perspective but largely familiar in terms of story structure.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) - 2/10 A truly terrible movie with maybe one or two scenes that stop it from being a complete catastrophe. Tom Green tried to create something that almost holds a middle finger to everyone who watches it and to some that could be a fun experience, but to me it just came across as utterly irritating. It’s simply a bunch of scenes threaded together with an incredibly loose plot. He wears the skin of a dead deer, smacks a disabled woman over and over again on the legs to turn her on, and he swings a newborn baby around a hospital room by its umbilical cord (that part was actually pretty funny). I cannot believe I watched this again, although I think I repressed a lot of it since having seen it for the first time around five years ago. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 - (2011) I have to say, these movies seem to get better with each instalment. They’re still not very good though. That being said, I’m amazed at how many times I’ve watched each of the Twilight movies at this point. This time around, I watched Breaking Dawn - Part 1 with a YMS commentary track on YouTube and that made the experience a lot more entertaining. Otherwise, this film is super dumb but pretty entertaining. I would recommend watching these movies with friends. Solaris (1972) - 8/10 Andrei Tarkovsky’s grand sci-fi epic about the emotional crises of a crew on the space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris is much as strange and creepy as you might expect from the master Russian auter. I had wanted to watch this for a while so I bought the Criterion blu-ray and it’s just stunning. It’s clear to see the 2001: A Space Odyssey inspiration but Solaris is quite a different beast entirely. Jaws (1975) - 4/10 I really tried to get into this classic movie, but Jaws exhibits basically everything I don’t like about Steven Spielberg’s directing. For sure, the effects are crazily good but the story itself is poorly handled and largely uninteresting. It was just a massive slog to get through.

Darkman (1990) - 6/10 Sam Raimi’s superhero movie is so much fun, albeit massively stupid. Further discussion on Darkman can be found on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995) - 1/10 Abysmal. I forgot the movie as I watched it. This was part of a marathon my friends and I did for episode 32 of our podcast. Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996) - 1/10 Perhaps this trilogy is not so great after all. Only marginally better than Darkman II but still pretty terrible. More thoughts on episode 32 of my podcast. F For Fake (1973) - 8/10 Rewatching this proved to be a worthwhile decision. Albeit slightly boring, there’s no denying how crazy the story of this documentary about art forgers is. The standout however, is the director himself. Orson Welles makes a lot of this film about himself and how hot his girlfriend is and it is hilarious.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021) - 4/10 More style over substance, Sony’s new animated adventure wants so much to be in trend with the current internet culture but it simply doesn’t understand what it’s emulating. There’s a nyan cat reference, for crying out loud. For every joke that works, there are about ten more that do not and were it not for the wonderful animation, it simply wouldn’t be getting so much praise. Taxi Driver (1976) - 10/10 The first movie I’ve seen in a cinema since 2020 and damn it was good to be back! I’ve already reviewed Taxi Driver in my March wrap-up but seeing it in the cinema was a real treat. Irreversible (2002) - 8/10 One of the most viscerally horrendous experiences I’ve ever had while watching a movie. I cannot believe a friend of mine gave me the DVD to watch. More thoughts on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Don’t watch it with the family. The Golden Compass (2007) - 1/10 I had no recollection of this being as bad as it is. The Golden Compass is the definition of a factory mandated movie. Nothing it does on its own is worth any kind of merit. I would say, if you wanted an experience like what this tries to communicate, a better option by far is the BBC series, His Dark Materials. More of my thoughts can be found in the review I wrote on Letterboxd.

Antichrist (2009) - 8/10 Lars von Trier is nothing if not provocative and I can understand why someone would not like Antichrist, but I enjoyed it quite a lot. After watching it, I wrote a slightly disjointed summary of my interpretations of this highly metaphorical movie in the group chat, so fair warning for a bit of spoilers and graphic descriptions: It's like, the patriarchy, man! Oppression! Men are the rational thinkers with big brains and the women just cry and be emotional. So she's seen as crazy when she's smashing his cock and driving a drill through his leg to keep him weighted down. Like, how does he like it, ya know? So then she mutilates herself like she did with him and now they're both wounded, but the animals crowd around her (and the crow that he couldn't kill because it's Mother nature, not Father nature, duh). Then he kills her, even though she could've killed him loads of times but didn't. So it's like "haha big win for the man who was subjected to such horrific torture. Victory!" And then all the women with no faces come out of the woods because it's like a constant cycle. Manchester By The Sea (2016) - 6/10 Great performances in this super sad movie. I can’t say I got too much out of it though. Roar (1981) - 9/10 Watching Roar again was still as terrifying an experience as the first time. If you want to watch something that’s loose on plot with poor acting but with real big cats getting in the way of production and physically attacking people, look no further. This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen because it’s all basically real. Cannot recommend it enough. Eyes Without A Face (1960) - 8/10 I’m glad I checked this old French movie out again. There’s a lot to marvel at in so many aspects, what with the premise itself - a mad surgeon taking the faces from unsuspecting women and transplanting them onto another - being incredibly unique for the time. Short, sweet and entertaining!

Se7en (1995) - 10/10 The first in a David Fincher marathon we did for The Sunday Movie Marathon, episode 33. Zodiac (2007) - 10/10 Second in the marathon, as it was getting late, we decided to watch half that evening and the last half on the following evening. Zodiac is a brilliant movie and you can hear more of my thoughts on the podcast (though I apologise; my audio is not the best in this episode). Gone Girl (2014) - 10/10 My favourite Fincher movie. More insights into this masterpiece in episode 33 of the podcast. Friends: The Reunion (2021) - 6/10 It was heartwarming to see the old actors for this great show together again. I talked about the Friends reunion film at length in episode 33 of my podcast.

Wolfwalkers (2020) - 10/10 I reviewed this in an earlier post but would like to reiterate just how wonderful Wolfwalkers is. If you get the chance, please see it in the cinema. I couldn’t stop crying from how beautiful it was. Raya and The Last Dragon (2021) - 6/10 After watching Wolfwalkers, I decided I didn’t want to go home. So I had lunch in town and booked a ticket for Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon. A child was coughing directly behind me the entire time. Again, I reviewed this in an earlier post but generally it was decent but I have so many problems with the execution. The Princess Bride (1987) - 9/10 Clearly I underrated this the last time I watched it. The Princess Bride is warm and hilarious with some delightfully memorable characters. A real classic!

The Invisible Kid (1988) - 1/10 About as good as you’d expect a movie with that name to be, The Invisible Kid was a pick for The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, the discussion for which you can listen to in episode 34. Babel (2006) - 9/10 The same night that I watched The Invisible Kid, I watched a masterful and dour drama from the director of Birdman and The Revenant. Babel calls back to an earlier movie of Iñárritu’s, called Amores Perros and as I was informed while we watched this for the podcast, it turns out Babel is part of a trilogy alongside the aforementioned film. More thoughts in episode 34 of the podcast. Snake Eyes (1998) - 1/10 After feeling thoroughly emotionally wiped out after Babel, we immediately watched another recommendation for the podcast: Snake Eyes, starring Nicolas Cage. This was a truly underwhelming experience and for more of a breakdown into what makes this movie so bad, you can listen to us talk about it on the podcast.

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sjweminem · 3 years ago

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do you miss your dad in a quantitive way? ive recently lost someone close to me and it hurts but you seem to be coping so well even tho its been years

i think a whole lot of it has to do with some of my own illnesses/disabilities (especially autism and SZPD), actually, as well as a severely trauma-ridden life..so i guess the """""""short"""""""" version (literally this fucking essay IS a short rundown) of the deal is this:

not only was i born with a predisposition for emotional scarcity, but also live the damage done by a life so harsh it just drains you of the more basic human emotions. i think that's why i'm so obsessed with math? everything is an equation to me. now, i loved my dad more than anybody on earth, but i don't know what "grief" means since i wasn't equipped with it, i don't think i know what it means to be "sad" (i'm recalling this old journal entry in which i said i was jealous of people who got sad, cuz like their mom died or they had a breakup or put their dog down etc. because my definition of the word "sadness" portrays it as a state of being with an inherent end-point, and good god did i wish i could be sad for that fact alone (i still have that journal, i can post that page or others if anybody wants, it's probably explained better there). the last time i cried was in drug detox like 3 years ago and that was due simply to the physical pain of opiate withdrawal. otherwise i straight up CANNOT cry, it's like i'm physically incapable of it. i think the ability has been taken.

it would make sense to cry over my dad, that exact moment while i was talking to him and felt life exit and soften the hand i was holding; at the moment we were looking each other in the eye and then suddenly..weren't. no tears; the mathematical equation had just been completed- when you become an adult it is the natural progression of things and has been for millennia. it made sense, it added up.

maybe, for weeks to come, it looked to others like i was repressing my Sadness (my WHAT?), that i wasn't letting myself Mourn (umm i don't think anyone ever taught me that ability?) but i'm still like that to this day. personally i just appreciate that i had him as a father, that he cared for me while my mother worked, taking me out for fun little adventures. i love that i had a father who so openly showed his love for me, was affectionate and never closed-off, and also he was brilliant and hilarious. moving on, i appreciate that the remainder of his life post-diagnosis was bright, that he moved in with us, that he and i got to be close again, that he continued with his passions. i hope you can gather past memories/positive facts to be seen through this kind of lens that eases your hurt.

i'm proud that i was the one to take care of him, driving him to and staying around for every single chemo session, sitting up next to his bed where he'd watch me draw in amazement. i'm delighted that the very last thing he felt while still a living human was my hand on his, that the very last thing he ever saw was my smiling face, that the last thing he ever heard was my voice. that's enough for me. i don't understand why i should feel hurt. i have plenty of "oh man i wish my dad could see this drawing!/hear about this stupid thing i did today!/etc but i mean..hey, i wish a lot of things! i wish i lived with mobius in a little house in maine! i wish there weren't so many dirty dishes in the sink right now! i wish my skin didn't get so dry no matter what i do why is it so fucking dry! i don't dwell. maybe the fact that i can't feel sadness and loss and whatever but am still able to feel love and affection work out in this case.

all that being said though, i wouldn't call any of this "coping well"- i just never HAD to cope. and i wanna make sure this doesn't come off as braggy abt how Strong i am or make you feel jealous for how i handled this loss!! like i come on here for people and content and i cuz i think i'm funny but the downside is it can project an inaccurate picture. like even if you've read the worst of the worst about my life and self i've cared to mention here over the years you've still only read the children's edition. if anybody ASKED for a real rundown i'd be totally fine writing that dissertation and pop some pics in for extra fun but i'm not the kind of person who whines all woe is me on their social media as if everyone cares lmao

#anonymous #correspondence

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