#just because my experiences were very similar and i was massively in denial about my own ptsd

[lizardson]

one of the things that feels so clear on rereads but so many people miss the first time they read the way of kings is shallans PTSD. I think part of it is the way it gets overshadowed by the constant unending tragedy of kaladin's story, its easy to slot shallan in as the young naive rich girl and not look much deeper. Part of it also is the way shallan drastically understates her own trauma. she says that she's timid, she doesn't like confrontation, she talks about her father's temper, but she was the lucky one because it was never directed at her. There are so many things in her first few chapters alone that are textbook PTSD, the way she freezes and shuts down any thought process that gets too close to her father's death, the flashback when jasnah gets angry at her, how she dissociates when she draws. It's so obvious if you know what you're looking for, but just subtle enough, especially when it's compared to kaladin's trauma, that a lot of people miss it at first. anyway I would defend shallan davar with my life.

[theia-eos]

An Uncanny Resemblance I noticed

While I was playing Three Hopes, I obviously had to do the Golden Deer Route first because of my boy Claude. And I realized he has an uncanny resemblance to another character I truly do love, while also being a wholly separate and distinct character. I love them both as characters for different reasons, so I'm really not trying to say they're interchangeable or anything like that, it's just that the more I realized they had in common writing wise, the more stunned I became.

In order to keep the above the cut text spoiler free, I will get this out of the way: They are both well regarded tacticians who do/can specialize in wind magic.

Absolutely massive spoilers for both characters below the cut. You have been warned.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

So, anyway, just to make it perfectly clear: Claude and Soren are two very distinct and different people. Claude hides behind overt friendliness and jokes to avoid discussing serious issues. Soren hides behind being really cutting and rude to keep people from getting close to him so he doesn't have to hurt again. Soren is practical and methodical above everything else. Claude acts with empathy, but will make the hard decisions if push comes to shove.

But now onto the similarities that staggered me:

The character:

Is stated to be a highly intelligent tactician and strategist

Soren is stated to be a strategist of peerless talent in the lore of the tellius games

Claude is many times stated to be a schemer, a strategy guy

Has a high association with wind magic

Soren comes with a Wind Tome in FE9 and is a Wind Sage in FE10

If Claude is put into a class where he learns Reason, he learns all 3 wind magic spells and 1 Black Magic spell. In Three Hopes, Claude's combos often have wind magic used, even in his standard sniper/barbarossa classes

Would or does use non-lethal poisons to get the edge on their opponent

Soren uses poisoned food to knock out the guards at a fortress so the Gallian army can get in and attack

Claude jokes about wanting to use poison on the other classes in the Battle of the Eagle and Lion that would weaken them, but not kill them (every time he talks about developing poisons, it's non-lethal, stomach-aches and the like)

May or may not be recognized by their parents with the name they use now

Almedha mistakes Pelleas as her son, and has to ask Soren what his name is, implying that either Soren is not the name he was given at birth, or he was not given any name at birth

Claude's birth name is Khalid, and it is unclear if his parents would be aware that he began going by the name Claude Von Reigan in Fódlan

Is often shipped with a mercenary friend they meet along their path, relies on this mercenary friend for help

Soren is often shipped with Ike

Claude is often shipped with Byleth

Is born of the blood of two "warring" peoples/races and is treated poorly in their childhood because of their mixed blood

Soren is a Branded, half black dragon laguz and half beorc, and he experiences a lot of trauma and hardship as a child because he is Branded

"On my way to Crimea, I kept seeing laguz from the beast tribe. They were terrifying, but after a while I realized something. They never attacked me. They all seemed to notice something about me, and then pretend they couldn't see me. That look was burned into my mind, and it was always the same. They'd scowl, then walk away like they'd never noticed me. In a way, that left me feeling colder and more alone than if they'd attacked me. Hate... That I could understand. This was denial. They made me feel like I wasn't supposed to exist at all. That my simply being alive was an affront to the world. That was how the beasts treated me. And I hated them for it. It sat in my heart like a lead bar. Like a glacier."

Claude is half Almyran and half Fódlan, and he is treated as an outsider within Almyra to the point that he flees to Leicester to escape the way he's being treated

"So the young boy was treated horribly by everyone around him. He hadn't done anything wrong. Everyone hated him simply for existing. Yelling, fighting back, explaining himself... Nothing he did could change his situation. When he was finally old enough, he ran far away from home. He escaped."

Spends a lot of time in their youth looking for a place where they belong

Ike is the first person to be nice to Soren and saves Soren from starving to death, so when they're separated as children, Soren spends several years looking for Ike and feels that the only place he belongs is by Ike’s side

Claude goes to Leicester to try and find a place where he won't be treated as an outsider and be accepted for who he is, and once he finds that's not possible, he decides to make a place where he belongs

The character's father is:

King of a nation that often believed to be evil by other countries, and invades the borders of nearby countries often

Soren’s father is King Ashnard of Daein, and Daein invades Crimea to start the Mad King’s War and Ashnard frequently attacked the Begnion border to claim some territory from Begnion for Daein

Claude's father is the king of Almyra, and his people often attacks Fódlan's Throat to prove their strength, viewed as barbaric and cruel by the people of Fódlan (the fantasy racism of Three Houses is not an issue I'm well equipped to discuss, I know how problematic it is, but I'm not saying the king of Almyra is Ashnard, we never meet him. It's just that the king of Almyra would be viewed in a similar light by the people of Fódlan as everyone outside of Daein views Ashnard)

The character's mother:

Is the daughter of the leader of a nation

Soren’s mother is Princess Almedha of Goldoa, daughter of King Dheginsea

Claude's mother is Tiana, daughter of the Duke of Riegan, leader of the Leicester Alliance

Is the second child of the leader of her homeland

Almedha is the middle child of three children of King Dheginsea

Tiana is the youngest of two children of the Duke of Riegan

Has an older brother who is killed

Almedha's older brother Rajaion is turned into a Feral One by Ashnard and dies at the end of the Mad King's War

Tiana's older brother is killed with her father, creating the power vaccum in the Leicester Alliance that Claude eventually fills

Her older brother was killed for the machinations of another

Rajaion was turned into a Feral One so Ashnard could have a strong weapon

Tiana's brother is killed by Mercenaries hired by Count Gloucester to harass merchants

Left her homeland

Almedha left Goldoa because she wanted fight and her father would not allow her to

Tiana left Leicester because she fell in love with the King of Almyra

Is considered to be the wife of the king of the "evil" nation

Almedha is viewed as the dowager queen of Daein and said to be King Ashnard's wife, even though they never married

Tiana is the wife or mistress of the King of Almyra, it is unclear

Is shown to admire the belligerent ways of the king with a taste for battle herself

Almedha is said to have wanted to wage war with her dragon powers and shown to have had some admiration of Ashnard's methods, even if that meant killing 1,000 innocent civilians

Tiana is described by Claude as a warrior goddess, beating a man who had been undefeated in over a hundred battles, and laughs right along with the king of Almyra as he punishes people

If no one's ever gone over the massive list of similarities between Ike and Byleth before, here's a quick and dirty run-down because they are commonly shipped with their close mercenary friend.

The character's mercenary friend:

Has a dead mother who was part of a religious order

Elena was a priestess of Palmeni Temple

Sitri was a member of the Church of Seiros as a priestess/nun

Has a mercenary father who raised them to be a mercenary, and never speaks of the dead mother

Greil runs Greil’s Mercenaries and Ike being allowed to join the mercenary company is the opening of the game. Greil speaks of Elena so little Ike knows something's wrong with Greil whrn he talks about her before dying

Jeralt runs Jeralt's Mercenaries and Byleth joins and earns the name the Ashen Demon. Jeralt speaks of Sitri very little.

Their mother once possessed a "Fire Emblem" and this resulted in her death

Elena took Lehran’s Medallion to hide it from Ashnard and was killed when Greil accidentally touched it

Sitri had the Heart of Sothis which gave her life and passed it to Byleth when Byleth was stillborn, this gives Byleth the Crest of Flames (Fódlan’s “Fire Emblem”), but killed Sitri

Their father is killed by an agent of the villain, and the mercenary seeks revenge against their father's killer

Greil is killed by the Black Knight, and Ike swears vengeance

Jeralt is killed by Kronya, and Byleth immediately searches for and kills Kronya

Is the main character of their game

Ike is the Lord of FE9

Byleth is the avatar character of FE16

Is stated to look a lot like their mother

Ike has blue eyes and blue hair like Elena

Byleth looks a lot like Sitri

The mystery of who their mother is and how she died is a significant plot point of the games

Elena’s death caused by Greil touching Lehran’s Medallion is revealed slowly through many chapters in the final half of the game

Sitri's death is why Jeralt left the Knights of Seiros and isn't revealed until the end of certain playthroughs of FE16

The mercenary struggles to express emotion

Ike's neutral expression looking somewhat angry is frequently commented on by numerous characters throughout the games and he finds himself unable to cry when his father dies

Byleth grew up not expressing emotions because their heart literally does not beat and they are regarded as the "Ashen Demon" as a result, and multiple characters reflect on Byleth's growing repertoire of facial expressions as the game progresses

[mzovjny]

My craziest videogame dream was the Resident Evil 4 Alternate Route. A sequence of dreams I had from 2011 to 2016 when I first got addicted to the RE franchise and its lore.

This post is me trying to tie it up together into one cohesive narrative. I recall most story details because I wrote about them in my childhood diary, and I think it's a story worth telling.

You as the player would be able to find a backdoor on the first house and a hidden key in one of the bushes, and by taking that path you'd enter this alternate route of Resident Evil 4's village that would end the game within significantly less time, albeit with insane difficulty.

There would be a straight up cutscene at the start of the route, locking you into it once you started;

Leon would open the door and look over to see an abyss, seemingly a cave under the house.

The first ganado you killed would get up and run at him, he wouldn't have time to dodge properly and would end up jumping into it. He'd try to catch the ladder and it'd break, forcing you into a QTE of using the grappling hook, similar to when salazar tries to kill him. After landing, Leon would try to make contact with Hunnigan, but the transmission would be hijacked by a black entity with red eyes. It would speak in a strange tongue, but Leon answered it as though it was speaking English, throwing one-liners, saying he's not intimidated by them, etcetera

And this is where one of the most difficult Resident Evil experiences would await you.

The first enemy you find on the alternate route is a Dr. Salvador, albeit he seems to have run out of fuel. He attacks with his hands, punching, while his chainsaw is on his back. You kill him, read a note, and discover these tunnels were used by smugglers, designed for taking "it" from the mines to the village unseen. The doctor mentions he has run out of options, his medicine has run out and he's feeling the effects. Now all he can do is wait, and chop down some of this wood to remain warm.

Heading forward you stumble into more enemies, they're tough, unusually so given you're still using starter gear. Given the cave setting, the player would encounter plagas of all types, including detached versions of the ones you normally find on ganados' heads. The bitey guys would pop up from the walls and instakill you, giving you very little time to react. The tentacle ones were area denial, never letting you stay somewhere. The spiders were there too.

The cutscene would start as normal, but instead of a chainsaw, leon would look out the window to find himself being grabbed through the wall by an El Gigante, and thrown into another house's window. The player would find a striker here.

After the cave, you'd find yourself coming out into another village, much like the first one in the game, this would be a big arena to fight enemies in.

Within a few minutes of combat, the gigante would've torn down the entire small village, and ended up knocking a water tower onto himself, conveniently hiding a rocket launcher. After Leon kills the gigante, the bingo cutscene would play out, but this time the ganados seemingly ran away from Leon, who'd ask if they've gone to bingo, only to turn around and see the creature that radio'd him before move towards him. This would seemingly scare Leon so much he himself would start running, with a similar button mashing segment to the boulder setpiece. Afterwards, Leon would shoot the bridge and be safe for the next few areas.

Around this time things get a bit fuzzy because I didn't dream of there being much connection between these areas, just normal, albeit very hard RE4 gameplay. The maps were notably set at night, so plagas roamed free. All I know is it didn't take too long for Leon to find himself in a tunnel, that led to a church, and collect Ashley.

I recall the Saddler cutscene playing out with him mentioning Leon having made a massive mistake, leaving "the gate" open, before the church would begin to collapse. Leon and Ashley would escape, and Saddler would be killed, but the two protagonists would be swallowed by a sinkhole, ending up back in the alternate route. Leon would get another radio call, and not respond as the creature talked, still not understandable. The only response Leon had is that it'd never get Ashley, which infuriated it.

The next few minutes would be a large combat arena akin to the water hall, with a twist. You had to move FAST or else a super salvador would kill you and Ashley, the level itself was set in this looping circular shaped arena, with a statue in the middle. The strat I'd found was to idle at the top and use explosives to kill the salvador before things got bad.

From here Leon would stumble into an old man, who claimed to understand Leon and Ashley's problem. He would guide them to a lab, and tell them about the parasites.

The route to the lab would have him tag along much like Luis in the cabin fight, killing shit for you. I recall a Sniper segment with an anti material rifle, against waves of that one truck you occasionally take down in the game.

The old man would help get the plaga off the two, but would be killed by the creature. This was too much for Leon, and this time, he wasn't just going to run.

The first fight would be difficult, full of instakills, but taking him down once would allow you to proceed. The enemy looked closer to a fog, taking a human shape, albeit without any bodily features, just a shadow.

Ashley would helpfully note that he doesn't like coming close to the light after being chased once and running near a torch. Leon would distract it, as Ashley swiped a torch onto it, burning bits of it away.

After it was fully disintegrated, Ashley would note that she felt dizzy and fall over, forcing Leon to carry her, the player would have to go unarmed, through a massive gauntlet of enemies.

Reaching the next room, there would be two routes, one would give you the basic ending, where Leon and Ashley run into the wilderness and eventually escape, and another, where Leon would go alone and face whatever was causing this.

The other route was the cool path, Leon would face a few puzzles, and eventually come into a pitch black room, where a giant plaga would attack him. The creature would throw one of the cops from the intro at him, explaining how it got his radio. Leon would say "game on", and the room would receive light again.

The Plaga would be your toughest fight yet, as every time it was weakened, it'd go into hiding, throwing waves of 3 super salvadores at you. In the third one, the old man would show up again, nearly dead, and throw a weapon towards Leon, the PRL 42. The weapon would promptly be used to kill the salvados, and the big plaga, who'd collapse opening a route with its body.

Leon would get Ashley, and the two would run through the path, and at the end, it'd be revealed this all happened in one big tower, with a helicopter picking Leon and Ashley up.

That would be it. The route would not be accessible on NG+, and past the basic gameplay details and that one note, very little is still in my head. I vaguely recall the Super Salvadors had more lines, and I vaguely recall a cutscene of Leon kicking a Chaingunner's gun off his hand then shooting him with a magnum, but I can't for the life of me recall the merchant being there. There would be a total of one regenerator, with big claws.

Other notable facts is that your entire arsenal would be different, the guns were all likely things I'd pulled from Half-Life or other shooters I'd played. I recall the Pistol was certainly the same as the one from HL2.

So that's it. That's my crazy set of random dreams that fit together into one "game". I hope this entertained *someone* at least. And now I'm off to do more stuff.

[system-of-a-feather]

Okay though, Imma say this and risk having their attentions turned on us or whatever, but one of the things I see on r/fakedisordercringe and similar subreddits is the idea that actually acknowledging parts as parts and not forcibly trying to convince yourself that they are "all parts of you" is the healthy way to heal and have DID and everything else is malingering, roleplaying, or harmful at best and just like...

I know the followers on here don't need me to say this but as someone whose been in treatment for 4+ years, been diagnosed and had that diagnosis validated two other times, but.... no???

Like I get where that perspective comes from, from an outsider less experienced person it is easy to assume that people with DID are just delusional and just think they are different people to keep themselves in denial and they just need to "grow up and stop thinking that and embrace all the trauma and heal" and I know a lot of psychiatrists (derogatory, at least in America they are people who are more doctors than mental health professionals and rarely know about non-medical treatment beyond surface level afaik and ime) think that as I've had psychiatrists suggest that and I have to kindly be like "Oh don't worry we have considered that and me and my therapist find that this works better".

I GET why someone might come to that conclusion, but its just NOT how it works. A lot of healing comes from learning to understand, empathize, and communicate with the other parts - and by doing that, learning to accept them for who they are and as they are, and by doing that, being more comfortable co-existing with those parts. Whether or not that results in fusion is case by case and to the individual, but you don't break the intense discomfort, rejection, and fear that CAUSES dissociative barriers and the dissociation of identity, self, etc by just repeating "that is me I don't remember, relate, or understand anything about this but I have to accept that is me" because... no?

A lot of the time when you have DID - especially in early recovery - memory is very splotchy at best. The feeling of othering from parts stems from a discontinuity of experiences, understanding, and feelings of control over behavior, memories, thoughts, and experiences. A lot of knowledge of these differences comes often from word of mouth of those around them, and sometimes through foggy mirrors and windows of things you don't feel like you'd ever do even though you "were there for" but hardly connect or remember.

To look at that and expect someone to insist and fully internally, logically, and emotionally understand that all of that is them, does really nothing more than get them logically on board and emotionally confused as fuck. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but being logically on board does little to nothing in terms of lessening dissociative barriers.

On TOP of that, you are asking someone who had gone through chronic and complex childhood trauma to just accept and trust what other people are reporting on their behavior (their actions they might not remember) and take it on good faith, when said person probably has been abused, manipulated, lied to, and/or may still be in an abusive, manipulative and dangerous environment. Is that not both a heavy ask for someone who likely has massive trust issues as is and honestly a dangerous thing to shove as "the only healthy way"?

The best way to actually heal and make progress is to learn to deeply understand the parts and their subjective experiences and accept what those parts are saying / experiencing / reporting / feeling at a face value and with all the goods and bads that come with it, because the healthier way to heal is to foster independence, love, and strength internally rather than externally.

And how are you to understand and listen to those parts with a genuine and empathetic and understanding ear, if everytime you look at their experiences, reports, feelings, and comments and shout "YOU ARE ME. YOU ARE ME. WE ARENT SEPERATE WE ARE ONE". Yes, of course we are parts of a whole, but a lot of the time, especially in early healing, that factoid does little in actually understanding the individual parts.

Now, this is where its more opinionated, but I don't see it being particularly easy to genuinely understand those parts if you don't allow for a moderate degree of separation and freedom for said parts to express as they like as to properly understand them and what they feel and experience. By letting those parts express themselves as they naturally do and communicating with them (may that be in journal, internally, discord servers, etc) you can learn to understand "where they come from" and why they are the way they are and genuinely understand and accept that part and their existence on an emotional level.

And with that in mind I really look at that "well have you tried insisting and repeating to yourself that these are parts of you?" and go "?????????? Yes and it doesn't work?????????????"

Anyways, thats just a ramble / vent but tldr, its a stupid claim.

[morlock-holmes]

So I have a question about your Bowling Alone discussion: why do you find it hard to arrange a game night? In my experience it's because everyone I'd do it with is already busy a lot of the time! You seem to be saying that everyone is lonely but also unwilling to do fun things for... Some reason?

Okay, Anon, fine, you goaded me into doing actual work instead of just half-remembering things. I hope you’re happy.

The following quotes and screenshots are taken from Bowling Alone chapter 6: Informal Social Connections:

“The bad news is that we are [connecting with each other] less and less every year. Consider some of the startling evidence of change over the last quarter century. In the mid- to late 1970s, according to the DDB Needham Life Style archive, the average American entertained friends at home about fourteen to fifteen times a year. By the late 1990s that figure had fallen to eight times a year, a decline of 45 percent in barely two decades. An entirely independent series of surveys from the Roper Social and Political Trends archive confirms both going out to see friends and having them over to our home declined from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s (See figure 18 for details.) Yet a third archive (that of Yankelovich Partners) reports a decline of nearly one-third between 1985-86 and 1998-99 in the readiness of the average American to make new Friends.”

Then we are referred to Footnote 15, Page 458, which says

“15. The top half of figure 18 is based on DDB Needham Life Style data; the bottom half is based on Roper Social and Political Trends data. Because sampling and wording differ between these two archives, the two halves of figure 18 are not directly comparable, but the fact that two such different archives show similar declines in social visiting is all the more significant. DDB Needham Life Stye surveys also show that dinner parties (given or attended) declined from 7.1 per year in the mid-1970s to 3.7 in the late 1990s. Yankelovich Partners Inc. report that that agreement that “I have very little room in my life for new friends these days” rose from 23 percent in 1985-86 to 32 percent in 1998-99… Mediamark Research annual surveys show a drop of one-fifth between the early 1980s and the late 1990s in the frequency of “entertaining friends or relatives at home.” Finally, eight times between 1938 and 1990 Gallup pollsters asked about one’s “favorite way of spending an evening.” Over the whole period “dancing” and “playing cards and games” dropped sharply, and after the 1970s “visiting with friends” and “dining out” also dropped. “Watching TV” and “home with family” rose over this period, suggesting a cocooning pattern consistent with the Roper and DDB Needham data. On the other hand, because of changes in wording, I am less confident about the Gallup trends. (See George Gallup Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion [Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1986] 104, 130.) According to the General Social Survey, the frequency of spending a social evening with “friends who live outside the neightborhood” more than once a month rose from 40 percent in 1974-76 to 44 percent in 1994-96. Of the six national survey archives that I have discovered with trend data on friendship over the last several decades, this is the only series that does not show significant decline. (Unlike other measures of friendship, this GSS metric is also inexplicably more common among men than women.) See also Robert J. Sampson, “Local Friendship Ties and Community Attachment in Mass Society: A Multilevel Systemic Model,” American Sociological Review 53 (October 1988): 776-779; Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends; Claude S. Fischer, Robert M. Jackson, et al., Networks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting (New York: Free Press, 1977)."

Bolding mine.

Putnam, in Bowling Alone, doesn't address the niche hobby of RPG game playing, but as you can see some of the data he looked at was collected in a way that would be expected to measure time spent on games in general.

There's a left-wing and particularly rat-adj narrative where "atomization" is good, because it represents the triumph of chosen pursuits and chosen friendships over coercive groups such as the church.

But the data Putnam collected shows a decline even in purely voluntary social pursuits. He doesn't see massive increases in the prevalence of dinners with friends, time spent in gaming groups, etc, but rather a decrease in the prevalence of these pursuits.

And I get frustrated because the response is just blanket denial. @self-loving-vampire has sort of responded with "I feel like I do this a lot, which means that there can't be a downward trend."

It's like if I said, I don't know, cable subscription rates were down and a bunch of people said, "But I still have cable!"

Like... Who cares? I didn't say that nobody has cable, I said that rates were declining.

And denial doesn't come with different polling data, it's just a blanket denial. There must be a constant upwards trend in positive, voluntary social engagement because...

I really don't know why; I have yet to be offered any reason why the positive things that "Atomization" is supposed to bring must be actually increasing, there's simply this emphatic, committed declaration that it must be so.

It must be true that found families and voluntary connections have been getting stronger and more prevalent over the last half-century.

Why though? Why must it be true and how would you explain data which seems to suggest exactly the opposite? If we value these kinds of voluntary, found connection for their emotional and material benefits, then shouldn't we want to look at actual data about whether they are really increasing in prevalence and power? Shouldn't we be concerned about data that says that they aren't?

[kylandara]

Quora Time: Do you think GRRM is surprised at how bitter some fans are about Daenerys' end?

link: https://qr.ae/pGq4nV

Kelsey as usual.... bit of a long read, as I also add in two comments people leave and what was her response

Said it before, I’ll say it again: If Daenerys wasn’t incredibly popular, there’s no way that GRRM could use her as a vehicle to make this particular point. Where people erred was in relying on her popularity to guess her outcome — if she’s popular, she must get a happy ending, right? — and not seeing it for what it was — an attempt to answer a question I know probably everyone has asked: How do cult-of-personality despots gain such massive followings?

The bitterness is baked in. I’m sure plenty of dictator-admirers were bitter when their idols crumbled away or were overthrown or revealed for what they truly were or whatever. If people weren’t bitter, the experiment would have failed.

So no, I don’t think GRRM is surprised by the bitterness (and he’d also surely know that at least some bitterness is rooted in the storytelling quality and not the ending itself). What I think might surprise him — and hey, I’m not in his head — is people’s denial regarding Dany’s final intended trajectory and a refusal to look inward to see what it was about her that got them hooked. You might say he did his job with her a little too well. Instead of thoughtful introspection, the result is, “Nah nah nah I can’t hear you, it isn’t actually supposed to be like this, Dany’s actually gonna get a happy ending because I said so!” People use the show’s shitty quality as a crutch to avoid a rather unpleasant reality; that might surprise him, that people so adamantly refuse to believe that the ending (its overall tone and outcome, anyway, if not the process toward it) is actually the ending.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am also adding in two comments she replies to which are fascinating.

Comment 1: The first part is rather unfair. ‘Dictatorship’ in a pre-modern agricultural society is very different to what we suppose is a tyrant today. A king with supreme power did not exist within the same context as such a person in a fully nationalized society.

There is no historical favor done by comparing Louis XIII to Saddam Hussein. Both consolidated power and crushed the aristocracy for ultimate power, but they are not the same. Governing in a disconnected society with minimal ability to project power and where 90% of people live on a subsistence level does not garner the same cost.

Using contemporary associations of a “dictator” to color Daenerys as a tyrant for wanting ultimate power is simply a false assumption and does nothing to comment on the danger of Messianic figures. Augustus was considered divine, but how else does a leader entrench their support without mass media, broadcasting, or literature (most people are illiterate)? The Chinese emperors thought they had a divine mandate, that does not make them the same as Kim Jong-Un.

Daenerys having a hunger for power or wanting to crush the land-owners under her own authority is not Stalinism, we are considering a very different time with very different standards

ANSWER:

The setting may be in a pre-modern time, but the people reading the material are modern and have sensibilities to match. That’s why something like Dany abolishing slavery draws such support; would you argue that that should only be appraised in a purely historical context?

That’s the double standard I see people use quite often with Dany: When she does something moral in a mostly modern sense, it’s great and she should be commended. When she does something immoral in a mostly modern sense, she’s a product of her time and shouldn’t be judged for it in modern terms. I have no particular beef with the “Dany’s just doing what Augustus did, back off” argument, except that it isn’t applied consistently or evenly, in my experience. Mostly I see people use it as an excuse to mitigate her culpability or accountability or flaws. Nor do I see similar arguments used to excuse the brutality of more obviously villainous people like Tywin or Ramsay or Gregor. Gregor and the Brave Companions didn’t do much that the historical Free Companies didn’t or wouldn’t have, but I’ve never seen anyone make that point as a way to wave off criticism of their actions. (Nor do I think it’d play well if anyone did.)

I’d also argue that Dany as a character has quite a lot in common with generic 20th-century dictators in terms of her trajectory and methods, despite her being placed in a medieval setting. To me it’s a very basic concept of, “Don’t root for a tyrant just because you might agree with them politically or find them personally likable.” You may disagree; that’s your prerogative. But a story that has nothing to say to modern audiences about how they perceive morality, leadership, authoritarianism, etc., is … useless, isn’t it? Dany’s not a historical figure; she’s fictional. There’s no reason she can’t also be used as a morality play for a modern audience. If there’s nothing for modern audiences here in terms of analysis, what are we even doing?

(I also don’t see Augustus, the Yongle Emperor or Louis XIV defended with the frankly frightening at times intensity that Daenerys is. If the point is that she isn’t the focus of a cult of personality, insofar as it’s possible for a fictional character, then some of her fans never got that memo. If anyone’s ever gotten rape threats writing about Augustus on Quora, it’s news to me.)

“Augustus was considered divine”

Ah, but how many people actually believed that he was divine, and how many people went along with it for the cause of political expediency? (I’m noting the passive voice, here.) Caligula supposedly rewarded the guy who claimed to see Julia Drusilla ascending to heaven as a goddess — did the guy actually see this, or recognize an easy payday?

How much do we really know what Joe Pleb thought of Augustus? Or about Louis XIV, or Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and so on? Caesar’s campaign in Gaul may have killed and enslaved millions — did anyone ask those people what they thought of him? When making the “historical figures played by different rules” argument, aren’t we relying on historical analysis and documents that come down on the side of power, i.e. what the king/emperor and his retainers say and do will be recorded, not so much for everyone else? Wouldn’t that surviving documentation be more likely to put the autocrat in the best possible light (because it was written by people who worked for said autocrat, or the autocrat himself)? Is there that big of a difference between historical tyrants and more modern ones, or is it a matter of documentation, bias in the surviving record, and who does or doesn’t have newsreel footage? If Saddam Hussein lived in the 13th century and most of what you knew about him came from a history book based on Baghdad court documents and letters, would you evaluate him in the same way? You mention a lack of mass media, broadcasting, etc. — that goes both ways. Nor do I think that “Augustus could get away with it, Saddam couldn’t” makes any difference in the morality of what they did or whether we should or shouldn’t now approve of what they did. It means just that — one got away with it, the other didn’t — no more, no less (and I think a big part of the problem is the Great Men approach to history, but that’s for another day).

Comment 2:

If what you're saying is actually GRRM's intention, I'd hate him for it. Save yourself reminding me that George can write what he wants. I know that. And I can hate who and what I want.

Rather, the question was aimed at whether GRRM is surprised that some fans find a story in which Dany is the bad guy is completely unacceptable. That someone is only a fan of ASoIaF as long as Dany is the heroine. The character that exists in the mind of the reader is more real to them than what the author actually has in his mind. If the difference is too big, then at some point the reader realizes that the story he was a fan of actually doesn't exist and turns away bitterly.

GRRM's idol is Tolkien and his declared goal is to give the end of ASoIaF the same "tone" as LotR. Assuming GRRM intends what you say, my judgment is that he failed. Tolkien did not end any of his heroes as bitterly as Daenerys and therefore no reader of LotR is as unhappy as the Dany-focused readers of ASoiF.

Answer:

I think couching it in terms of “unacceptable” or not misses the point and is useless as far as discourse. There will ALWAYS be SOMEONE for whom the story was “unacceptable,” no matter how it ended. SOMEONE was always going to be disappointed, maybe severely so. You seem to be arguing that Daenerys fans have the monopoly — God knows why — on getting the ending that they want. To which I’d reply, bullshit, for multiple reasons. This isn’t fan service based on a character’s popularity, and Dany having a happy ending misses the point of her arc.

I also don’t see how it’s GRRM’s problem that certain people misled themselves into thinking or misinterpreted the story to mean that Daenerys was the sole center of gravity and ultimate final hero. You thought you were reading The Daenerys Targaryen Story, and you weren’t, and, what, that’s GRRM’s fault? He should have foreseen that a subset of fans would have a frankly unhealthy-as-fuck fixation on Dany, to the point where it affects their mental and emotional well-being (seriously, therapy), and thrown out his own road map just to keep them happy?

The sense of self-entitlement is mind-blowing. “Wah, give me the ending I want or I’ll toss my toys out of the pram!” Do you have any idea how you look with this? It’s embarrassing, or it should be.

And, yes, GRRM admires Tolkien. That doesn’t mean he set out to recreate LOTR from whole cloth or just update the same basic story to make it gritty. He’s been pretty open about his issues with it (e.g. Gandalf’s resurrection). One area of critique was the “Aragorn tax problem,” i.e. we don’t really know what Aragorn did on an administrative level as a ruler after he became king. That’s part of what ASOIAF is looking at — winning the throne is the easy part, and it’s the beginning, not the end. GRRM seems very interested in how people do as “bean counters,” doing the boring stuff, which is actually the bulk of what governing really is. It’s not glamorous or high-profile, and it’s boring, but that’s the work. And Dany sucks at it. It’s not just that she’s a tyrant; even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t be cut out, in terms of skill set, to actually govern a place in the long term after she’d conquered it. That’s also the point: Being a good conqueror doesn’t make you a good governor, and if you can’t govern, you’re not going to be queen.

Comment Again from same person

That's all well and good, but then George is lying to himself when he talks about trying to achieve the same "tone" as the LotR end. Because he can't do this and at the same time set his little trap with Dany. One excludes the other.

Answer:

Fair enough, but as you say, that’s your judgment, which is pertinent to you and only you. (For one thing, not everyone would agree that GRRM would miss LOTR’s tone entirely based on what he did with one single character.) And he might have set “his little trap,” but you walked into it all on your own. At some point, you maybe need to accept your own free will and accountability and stop blaming the author. He didn’t force you to root for Dany at knifepoint.

[cynicalundead]

Hoe blocked me so I'm gonna correct them like this

1) I'm psychotic, and use the word "deluded" how I did because that's how I've been taught to use it. Cry harder. Calling me ableist to myself does nothing for anybody, and calling out my specific wording as a result of my toxic upbringing and my autistic way of thinking as a way to demonize me is arguably more ableist than that.

2) idk where you're getting the idea that I'm forcing trauma survivors to face their trauma prematurely because I never said anything of the sort. Please please take your time in facing your trauma.

3) being in denial is more than okay. Hell, I'M still in denial lmao. MOST systems experience massive amounts of denial. What I'm saying ISNT okay is encouraging denial through Endo rhetoric such as

a) there's an amount of trauma that IS DID worthy, and an amount that is traumaendo worthy (as someone who identified as Endo 4 months ago for this reason, don't say u hoes don't say this cuz ya do with genics like isolgenic and neurogenic which downplay certain trauma types)

b) there is more fun, safety, happiness and whimsy in being an Endo than in being OSDDID. Being OSDDID is medical and miserable, so of course systems who aren't miserable or don't want to be will gravitate to claiming being Endo (can confirm, I did once.)

c) that endogenic plurality and OSDDID systems can be very similar in presentation, allowing OSDDID systems to fall back on Endo plurality for reasons a and b

d) that thinking about whether or not you have trauma/accepting your trauma on your own time is bad or negative in some way, or that accepting OSDDID means you have to know about ALL of your trauma and EXPLAIN yourself (endos spread this by falsely claiming this is what anti-endos demand of you, which is very far from the truth)

e) that certain experiences are ENDO EXCLUSIVE, or require a certain label which is an endo label. Such as certain headspace experiences, certain types of alters, etc. (Again, personal experience ✨)

f) demedicalizing systemhood, and demonizing the psychologists and psychiatrists who offer help, research, and understanding for traumagenic systems who feel lost

IN OUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, AND THE EXPERIENCES OF MANY OF OUR FRIENDS, being part of the Endo community while we were in denial of our trauma very harshly affected us. It made us question our validity, it made it harder for us to see ourselves as disordered, traumatized, or OSDDID EVEN WHEN WE WERE READY, and it terrified us of resources and communities that are in place to help us.

THAT was what my original post was about . Not about violating your own boundaries as a traumagenic system, not about self harm or suicide, not about whatever the fuck else you said in ur long ass post. THAT. the HARM that the Endo community has done to me and my friends, and the RIGHTEOUSNESS that is sticking up against that harm no matter the cost, and the OBJECTIVE FACT that YOU ALL are VIOLATING MY DNI just to COME ON MY BLOG and tell me what I can and can't post in tags that aren't even urs.

Also, to QAs earlier point, if you don't like seeing anti Endo posts in the traumagenic tags, BLOCK THE FUCKING ANTI ENDO TAG. PLS. IT IS NOT MY FAULT U REFUSE TO USE UR RESOURCES

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Five years ago, the women on this site who treated me like trash over loving Labyrinth and shipping Jareth/Sarah were almost always obliviously consuming Radfem propaganda, or were out and out Radfems/Terfs themselves.

They were the types of people who casually threw the word “pedophile” around against grown women who shipped an adult Sarah with Jareth, aka literally one of the most popular ships for women in fandom for 30 years.

Pretty much invariably, these women had serious sex-negative anxieties, which included a severe paranoia about any and all kink and fetish, and porn in general. I saw a lot of shocking, fear-mongering propaganda surrounding sexual expression. Pretty much invariably, their method of approach involved immediate personal shock-value attacks on anyone they perceived to be “bad.”

Today, you can look at the way some people react to other popular so-called “problematic” ships and recognize the same toxic, fear-mongering rhetoric coming from women who consider themselves regular, trans-inclusive feminists. Sometimes it even manifests in the words of very well-meaning people (including myself here), who feel the need to talk about specific issues that pertain to their own experiences of trauma and oppression.

The people who shit on Labyrinth often seem to not really be able to comprehend that the Goblin King, like the film itself, is canonically a representation of a teen girl’s psyche, a soup of fears and anxieties and desires and dreams. He’s not a literal human adult preying on a literal child, and to read the film that way seriously undermines the entire point of the film. 

When I (and people of many fandoms) say “This is fiction, calm down,” I’m not just saying it’s not real so it cant hurt you and you can’t criticize me. I’m trying to call attention to what fiction actually is - artistic representations of feelings and experiences. The Goblin King is Sarah’s fiction. Therefore, he can be anything she or any woman who identifies with her wants him to be, including her lover when she’s grown and ready for such a thing.

I once took an alarming dive into Beetlejuice fandom to see what content was there (the cartoon was a favorite when I was little). Chillingly, what you’ll find is an extremely wounded fanbase, with a sharp divide between the older women who had long been shipping BJ/Lydia because of their love for the cartoon series (and whom were previously the vast majority of the Beetlejuice fandom), and a massive amount of young people riding the wave of the musical fad who had decided that the entire old school Beetlejuice fandom was populated by literal pedophiles. 

I saw death threats. Suicide baiting. Constant, constant toxic discourse. It did not matter how the BJ/Lydia fandom dealt with any particular issues that would exist in their ship, in fact I’m certain that the people abusing them cared very little to even consider if they were trying to handle it at all. The only thing that mattered was that they were disgusting subhuman scum asking for abuse. If you have at any time reblogged recent Beetlejuice fan art or content from fans of the musical, you have more than likely been engaging positively with the content of someone participating in toxic fandom behavior.

Nobody is really sticking up for them, either, as far as I saw. It’s really hard to imagine how painful it must be to have such a large group of people explode into into your relatively private fandom space to tell you that you are evil, vile, and deserve constant abuse, and also you are no longer allowed into the fandom space to engage in it’s content. But I think there’s something very alarming indeed about this happening specifically to the BJ fandom, and I’ll explain why. 

The pop-culture characterization of Beetlejuice, which is heavily influenced by the cartoon series to be clear, has always in my mind been a vaguely ageless being who matches with the psychological maturity of whatever age Lydia is supposed to be. He’s more or less like an imaginary friend, a manifestation of Lydia’s psyche. In fact, I would argue that i think most of us who grew up with the cartoon or it’s subsequent merchandizing before the musical ever existed probably internalized the idea as BJ and Lydia as this ageless, salt-and-pepper-shaker couple beloved by the goth community, similar to Gomez and Morticia. In each version of canon he may be a creepy ghost in the literal sense, but any adult who is capable of identifying literary tropes (even just subconciously) would read cartoon!BJ as an artistic representation of a socially awkward outcast girl’s inner world. Lydia’s darker dispositions and interests, which alienate her from most others, are freely accepted and embraced by her spooky magical friend. BJ/Lydia in the cartoon were depicted as best friends, but to my memory there was always an underlying sense that they had secret feelings for each other, which I identified easily even as a small child. In fact, their dynamic and behavior perfectly reflected the psychological development of the show’s target demographic. They are best friends who get into adventures and learning experiences together, who have delicate feelings for each other but lack any true adult romantic/sexual understanding to acknowledge those feelings, let alone pursue them.

Though I haven’t seen the Musical yet, I’ve read the wiki and I would argue that it embodies this exact same concept even more so for it’s own version of the characters, in that Beetlejuice specifically exists to help Lydia process her mother’s death.

This is not a complicated thing to recognize and comprehend whatsoever. In fact, it looks downright blatant. It’s also a clear indicator of what BJ/Lydia means to the women who have long loved it. It was a story about a spooky wierd girl being loved and accepted and understood for who she was, and it gave them a sense of solidarity. It makes perfect sense why those women would stick with those characters, and create a safe little space for themselves to and imagine their beloved characters growing and having adult lives and experiencing adult drama, in just the same ways that the women of the Labyrinth fandom do. That’s all these women were doing. And now, they can’t do it without facing intense verbal violence. That safe space is poisoned now.

Having grown up with the cartoon as one of my favorites and been around goth subculture stuff for decades, I was actually shocked and squicked at the original Beetlejuice film’s narrative once I actually saw it, because it was extremely divorced from what these two characters had evolved into for goth subculture and what they meant to me. It’s not telling the same story, and is in fact about the Maitland's specifically. In pretty much exactly the same way two different versions of Little Red Riding Hood can be extremely different from each other, the film is a different animal. While I imagine that the film version has been at the heart of a lot of this confused fear-mongering around all other versions of the characters, I would no more judge different adaptations of these characters any more than I would condemn a version of Little Red in which Red and the Wolf are best friends or lovers just because the very first iteration of LRRH was about protecting yourself from predators.

I would even argue that the people who have engaged in Anti-shipper behavior over BJ/Lydia are in intense denial over the fact that BJ being interested in Lydia, either as blatant predatory behavior a la the film or on a peer level as in the cartoon (and musical?) is an inextricable part of canon. Beetlejuice was always attracted to Lydia, and it was not always cute or amusing. Beetlejuice was not always a beloved buddy character, an in fact was originally written as a gross scumbag. That’s just what he was. Even people engaging with him now by writing OC girlfriends for him (as stand-ins for the salt-and-pepper-shaker space Lydia used to take up, because obviously that was part of the core fun of the characters), or just loving him as a character, are erasing parts of his character’s history in order to do so. They are actively refusing to be held responsible for being fans of new version of him despite the fact that he engaged in overt predatory behavior in the original film. In fact, I would venture to say that they are actively erasing the fact that Musical Beetliejuice tried to marry a teenager and as far as I’m aware, seemed to like the idea (because he’s probably a fucking figment of her imagination but go off I guess). The only reason they can have a version of this character who could be perceived as “buddy” material is because...the cartoon had an impact on our pop cultural perception of what the character and his dynamic with Lydia is. 

We can have a version of the Big Bad Wolf who’s a creepy monster. We can have a version who’s sweet and lovable. We can have a version that lives in the middle. We can have a version who’s a hybrid between Red and the Wolf (a la Ruby in OUAT). All of these things can exist in the same world, and can even be loved for different reasons by the same people.

I’ve been using Beetlejuice as an example here because it’s kind of perfect for my overall point regarding the toxic ideologies in fandom right now across many different spaces, including ones for progressive and queer media, and how much so many people don’t recognize how deeply they’ve been radicalized into literalist and sex-negative radfem rhetoric, to the point where we aren’t allowed to have difficult, messy explorations of imperfect, flawed humans, and that art is never going to be 100% pure and without flaw in it’s ability to convey what it wants to convey.

This includes the rhetoric I’ve seen across the board, from She-Ra to A:TLA to Star Wars to Lovecraft Country. We don’t talk about the inherent malleable, subjective, or charmingly imperfect nature of fiction any more. Transformation and reclamation are myths in this space. Everything is in rigid categories. It is seemingly very difficult for some of these people to engage with anything that is not able to be clearly labeled as one thing or another (see the inherent transphobic and biphobic elements of the most intense rhetoric). They destroy anything they cannot filter through their ideology. When women act in a way that breaks from their narrative of womanhood (like...not having a vagina), then those women must be condemned instead of understood. Anything that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable is a mortal sin. There is an extraordinary level of both hypocrisy and repressive denial that is underlying the behavior I’m seeing now. Much like toxic Christian conservatism, these people often are discovered engaging in the same behaviors and interests that they condemn behind closed doors (or just out of sheer cognitive dissonance). As an example, one of the people who talked shit to me about Labyrinth was a huge fan of Kill La Kill, which to my knowledge was an anime about a teenage girl in like, superpowered lingere (hence why I stayed the fuck away from that shit myself). Indeed, they even allow themselves plenty of leeway for behavior far worse than they condemn others for, and create support systems for the worst of their own abusers. 

Quite frankly, I’m tired. Instead of talking about theoretical problematic shit, we need to start talking about quantifiable harm. Because as far as I can tell, the most real, immediate, and quantifiable harm done because of anybody’s favorite ships or pieces of media seems to consistently be the kind that’s done to the people who experience verbal violence and abuse and manipulation and suicide baiting and death threats from the people who have a problem.

[bisexual-horror-fan]

Sam Wescott NSFW Alphabet.

Sooo after doing Buddy Swanson alphabet of course I had to do one for Sam. Similar to Buddy I consider myself the Sam Wescott expert, again I started his tag on Ao3 and have written him the most so far so fucking here we are! I love him, the sweetest and softest slasher I am into, here we go!

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

The best word I have to describe Sam Wescott is concerned. He is so concerned about you and your comfort, always. He will do anything you need on your come down. He would run a bath, would get you anything you wanted to eat, change the sheets if you so requested, he doesn't want you to do anything, he's got it under control and he would INSIST. Seriously you want something just name it and it is happening. Would love to have a shower with you post sex.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

His hands for sure, no doubt about it. So much experience working outdoors, very skilled with them, rough and well worked, he isn’t the most confident guy but when it comes to his hands he is. They make him feel capable. Loves to touch you, run his hands over you, loves to feel you up with them and let’s be real the man is great at fingering.

Now for you he loves your lips, man is WEAK for kissing, will sometimes find himself staring at them while talking with you, loves the taste of you, just cannot get enough of kissing you or of you kissing him well basically anywhere. The sweet things you can say with them and listen he can’t help it if he is obsessed with how they look and feel wrapped around his cock.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Okay so I totally have this idea that a big unexpected fave of his that he never anticipated liking so much until it happened is having you make a mess of him. Like blow and jerk him off and make him cum on his own stomach and then lick it up and then his refractory period is basically non-existent.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Okay so one of the hottest things or ideas to him is you forgoing underwear in public and letting him know in some way that you have. Whether taking his hand and letting him feel or maybe a racy picture sent or flashing him with no one around at that moment and holy shit he is achingly hard.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

More than you would think! For a guy who seems so nervous and unassuming you’d think he wouldn’t have much experience but Sam has been around a bit. Much more down for a casual hook-up than you would think. Typically parties and get together where he has had some drinks to help settle some of those nerves. But more importantly he is so enthusiastic and willing to please.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

You on top. He loves it so much, to have you over him, being able to feel you up and help pull you down onto him, he loves you being able to take it at your own pace and use him however you want to find your release. Totally in awe of you riding him, put your hands on his chest as you do, lean down and kiss him or whisper things to him and fuck he won’t be able to hold back from bucking up into you.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Oh the boy can do both, when he gets all flustered he is much more prone to laughing and making some jokes, but take my word for it, Sam can be so insanely sensual, surprisingly can be great at maintaining the mood. Doesn’t take himself too seriously thankfully.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Yeah totally matches, light and soft curls, doesn’t let it grow out much, trims it semi often, has never shaved and certainly never waxed and has no intention of it. Might try shaving it if you wanted him to but he wouldn’t do it unprompted. Overall great personal hygiene.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Ugh romance thy name is Sam Wescott. Like hot damn he can be the most romantic fucker you have ever come across. It is ridiculous. Would touch you with such care and reverence and would say some of the sweetest things. Wouldn’t be every time but you’d never, ever have to ask for romance from Sam.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Totally think that he has a hard time keeping quiet when he does. He just gets so into it. Also totally uses lube, like not lotion, nice lube, totally amps it up for him and I also think he edges himself, not super hard but a few soft edges he’s learned can make his eventual orgasm so much better. Legit just picture poor Sam, one hand over his mouth, eyes shut tight, moaning into his palm as his other hand is slick with lube, fisting his cock, already edged a few times and getting so close he can’t stop the sounds from spilling out? Hot.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Has a few kinks, not all but have some of the biggest.

PRAISE! This man has the biggest fucking praise kink around, both ways. Loves to talk you up so much. Please praise him, tell him what is working and what feels good, nothing gets to him more than you encouraging him vocally.

Body worship. Sam will literally worship every fucking sqaure inch of your body, hands and mouth working in tandem, just positively everywhere until you are a complete puddle. Getting you off gets him off hard.

Denial. Can’t help it, delayed gratification, and you teasing him, frustrating him, gets to him badly, makes him unbelievably hard, and after some good edging he is a total flustered mess and is leaking massive amounts of pre-cum. Is a bit embarrassed he is so into it.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Outdoors! Not like he is a huge exhibtioinist just loves being outside, some of his favorite things have happened outside. I headcanon there is this hill at Camp Clear Vista that Sam likes to sit on, can see most of the camp from there, loves to sit there and clear his head, it’s his favorite place. Late at night under the stars, just being out at camp in general, in a tent or a cabin, the forest. Also totally a fan of shower sex.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

You wanting him. Showing clear desire and intent, especially if it is some place that you can’t right away. Like you whispering something dirty to him, or feeling him up, a particular look. Oof. He really wants to be wanted and desired so that gets him going like nothing else. Like you being almost desperate for him is perfection. The idea of you clinging to him, tugging on his clothes and almost grinding on him, begging him to just touch you let alone fuck you? He is on you so fast.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Degradation. Like I could not see him having it in him, does not have the heart to engage in extreme degradation. A casual flippant comment in the heat of the moment during a rougher session? Maybe. But you aren’t gonna have him doing some hardcore degrading, sorry he just isn’t that guy. Also any hard pain play either. Making you cry because it feels so good? Yes. Crying from pain? Hard no.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Oh my fucking God! So don’t ask me how or why this got started but this is my strongest held Sam headcanon. I believe that Sam Wescott is GOD-TIER at giving oral. Eating pussy or sucking dick he is too fucking good and why? How?! Not sure. He just is. Maybe it is him being so enthusiastic and willing to please but he is. I think that is what he has the most experience in. Man will stay down there all night for real if that is what you want. Also turns him on a lot, can totally catch him not so subtly grinding against the bed or palming himself while doing it. Has totally just gone down on you and jerked himself off more than once.

So much bigger giver than a receiver, but still loves, loves, loves when you give. Total mess when you do it, barely knows what to do with himself, totally lets you take the lead on that, he is big and knows it but will appreciate however much you try and take. Won’t say it but loves when you gag on it, doesn’t have to say it because it is obvious he loves it from the way his thighs tense and the strained sounds that leave him as he tries to resist fucking into your mouth.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Slow and sensual for fucking sure. Can go faster, a more steady pace but still doesn’t jump to being rough. Work him up enough and beg for it and you can totally get that from him. Can totally get caught up in the heat of the moment and really fuck you. Again a decent mix but typically slower and more sensual.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Usually likes a mid-length session, loves a longer one and is down for quickies but they aren’t his favorite. Most of his interests and kinks lend themselves better to longer sessions. Quickies are great after a healthy and hearty amount of teasing, you tease him for a few hours where he can’t do anything about it when you do get alone it isn’t gonna last super long, he won’t be able to hold himself back.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Again name of the game for Sam is pleasing you so he is totally down to try what you want, open to experiment and risk for you but isn’t gonna suggest it super openly. He does have some spicier interests and leanings but would be worried about opening up about them at the start, it takes a while for him to get comfortable with that.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Depends on how much work you put in beforehand, how much foreplay and how in need he is, how long it has been since you last were together. Can go for three or four with little issue but can be satisfied with just one. The man is fit, young and healthy, what else do you expect?

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Does not own a single toy himself, but would be down to use some with you! I could see his favorite being a bullet vibe, something small yet powerful and precise and using it to great effect on you. Also even though he wouldn’t readily admit it, if you are into it and get into it he could be down with using a paddle.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Oooo he likes it a little too much. Typically loves and prefers to be on the receiving end of it but loves to return it. Once he figures out just what gets to you he will use it to his advantage. Likes to see you being flustered in public as opposed to him for once, loves to get you to the point of begging.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Yes dear God, part of why a semi-public hook up is extra risky with him is because he has the hardest time shutting himself up. Again loves to praise and be praised, can’t help saying such sweet things to you, moaning, cursing, grunts of effort just on and on, like damn Sam can you calm down for like a sec? Cover his mouth or gag him for crying out loud, or don’t because he sounds amazing. Will still try to talk when close or cumming but it just ends up breaking apart with his moans. So good.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Oh okay so this is a fun one. I totally think his ears and neck are weirdly sensitive. You wanna see him flushed and flustered as hell and unable to stop himself from grinding against you mid-make out? That is the best way to get it to happen! The thought of it though, you initiate like that. He is sitting at the couch and you come up behind him, wrap your arms around his neck and lean in close, lips brush the shell of his ear and you whisper to him, “Hey Sammy. You busy?” and then you start to kiss his neck and he tenses so quickly. Let your hands start to roam, reach down and palm him through his jeans and ask, “Well?” and feel him up and his eyes would flutter closed and he would arch up into you, a shaky exhale and a laugh as he says “No-I uh, I’m not busy at all.”

And then it is on.

Also he is bi, it took him a long time to accept that about himself and get comfortable with it but he gets there eventually.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Oof so from all the working outside and general working out he is firm, cut, very fucking strong, the view with his shirt off is so good. Okay so for his dick, man is packing heat. I am talking eight point five to nine inches, you wouldn’t guess by looking at him. Totally not the type to brag about it and is aware extra foreplay and prep is usually needed but he loves that so it is all good. Average thickness, circumsized, pretty full balls, a good handful, you know? The sheer amount of pre-cum this man can produce is impressive, actual loads fairly regular, little thin, slightly above average amount, he has a great diet and tastes good.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Down for nearly every single day, fine with around three times a week because the sessions are longer. Would love to wake you up with oral, no better way to start his day, loves a good morning session while you are still in bed together, also quite the fan of some afternoon delight. Can be quite insatiable when prompted right and that side is pulled out of him.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Boy he makes sure you are all good but after a really, really long session the boy does get sleepy. Him checking in and making sure you are all good and don’t need anything even with his eyes slipping closed and voice all tired, adorable, endearing, loves to curl up with you to sleep. He can spoon you but loves to be the little spoon, is anyone surprised?

[thedreadvampy]

On the other hand, and moving away from direct Mechanisms Discourse (which I prefer to not get over involved in tbh but also this ISN'T about that it's just jumping off it) - it absolutely is deeply classist to assume that somebody is illiterate or ignorant because of poverty/assumed poverty, and that's a huge problem. but also I think on a broader social level (at least in the UK) there is an idea in the left that it's classist to acknowledge the connection between poverty and illiteracy, while the truth is that illiteracy is a problem of poverty (poverty not in the sense of just Not Having Money but in the sense of system denial of adequate resources). Poverty doesn't = illiteracy but illiteracy is very much a problem of poverty - not a failure of a marginalised individual but a failure of the system marginalising them.

Adult illiteracy is a surprisingly large issue in eg both rural and urban Scotland, but it's not because poor people are stupid, ignorant or unwilling to learn - it's because schools are inadequate or inaccessible, classes are managed not taught, teachers are stretched thin and schools are underfunded so don't have resources to help struggling students, if you get to secondary school still unable to read and write you're completely locked out of the educational system unless you can access a school with the resources to teach you individually, and because of this, classism and a lack of support, poorer kids are more likely to switch off school as early as possible.

Social geography is also a big issue. In urban areas, schools in poorer areas get bad reputations, so they're underfunded, so they do worse, so they're funded less, etc, until they're a bare minimum of staff just trying to get through the day in collapsing buildings with no resources and five textbooks. Where better-funded schools can afford teaching assistants, 1:1 support for struggling students, decent food provision for kids, follow-up on children in need of support at home, more teachers for smaller classes, maybe counseling and psychological support, maybe Special Educational Needs classes for older kids to work on basic literacy and numeracy to catch up, worse-funded schools have one underpaid unsupported teacher trying to manage a class of 35 kids with wildly different needs. They don't have the resources to help support kids with issues that might affect their schooling, like parental abuse or neglect, trauma, a parent in prison, care responsibilities, hunger, homelessness, neurodiversities that affect their ability to learn in the prescribed way, learning disabilities like dyslexia, physical health issues including visual or auditory impairments...all things that when supported are highly surmountable but when unsupported often end up with children being perceived and treated as stupid, disruptive or evil. The problem then compounds itself because the kids are badly treated which makes them more disruptive and less able to learn, and more and more work is needed to help them which teachers continue to not have any capacity or resources for.

Rural poverty comes with its own schooling issues as well, in that poverty is generally correlated with remoteness. Poor rural communities are often hours away from population centres, so either you have tiny highly local schools serving a handful of families where a single teacher needs to invent lesson plans that somehow balance the needs of 11 year olds and 4 year olds of all abilities, or your kids need to somehow get into town every morning before you get to work, which may mean dropping them off at 6am, having to part pay for buses, taxis or ferries, sending them on their own, or leaving them with friends and family, and realistically the way that often shakes down is that they don't go. You teach them at home, and they may not even exist for the truancy office to know about.

Literacy is also connected to family culture. Both my parents were people with degrees from educated families, and my mum was a full time parent, and the result is that school didn't teach me to read - I was already a confident and enthusiastic reader. Even richer families may hire tutors for small children, pay for extracurricular learning, etc. The poorer a family is, the more likely neither parent is available to spend time reading with their kids, because they're working full time - at that economic level a single income household is almost entirely unviable so either both parents work or there's a single parent working extra hours or they're just exhausted from worrying about the bills and what's sold to them as a personal failure to look after their family.

One thing it's easy to forget is that while people in the UK still do drop out of school in their teens to work, a generation ago it was almost the norm for a lot of communities (especially the children of farmers, miners and factory workers) to have left school well before the end of compulsory education, both because of school being a hostile space and because of the need for an additional income. Now as well as then, a lot of kids drop out to work as unpaid carers, disproportionately in poorer families that can't afford private care or therapeutic support. Literacy aside, generations of leaving school with no qualifications doesn't tend to teach you that formal learning is as important as experience and vocational learning, and you don't expect to finish anyway so why put yourself through misery trying to do well? But it includes literacy. I grew up in a former mining area and a lot of people my dad's age and older were literate enough to read signs and football results, but took adult classes in middle age or later to get past the pointing finger and moving lips. and if you're parents don't or can't read, it's a lot harder for you to learn.

There's a lot of classism and shame tied up in the roots of illiteracy. Teachers and governments and schoolmates will often have vocally expressed low expectations of poorer students; a rich child who does poorly at school has problems, a poor child who does poorly at school is a problem child. They're often treated with hostility and aggression from infancy and any anger or disinterest in school is often treated not as a problem to be solved but as proof that you were right to deem them a write-off. Poorer or more neglected children (or children for whom English is a second language) will often be deemed "stupid" by their peers, and start at a disadvantage because of the issues around early childhood learning in families where parents are overstretched.

Kids learn not to admit that they don't know or understand something, because if you start school unable to read and write and do basic maths when a lot of kids your age are already confident, you get mocked and called stupid and lazy by your peers, and treated with frustration by your teachers. So kids learn to avoid people noticing that they need help. That means that school, which could help a lot, isn't somewhere you can go for help but a source of huge anxiety and pain - more so when you factor in the background radiation of classism that only grows as you get older around not having the right clothes, the right toys, the right experiences, my mum says your mum's a ragger, my mum says I shouldn't hang out with you because you're a bad lot - so again kids switch off very early and see education as something to survive not something helpful.

The same is very much true of adult literacy. A lot of adults are very shamed and embarrassed to admit that they struggle with reading and writing - a lot of parents particularly want to be able to teach their kids to read, but aren't confident readers themselves, and feel too stupid and embarrassed to admit out loud that they can't read well, let alone to seek out and endure adult literacy classes that are a constant reminder of their perceived failure and ignorance (and can also be excruciating. Books for adult literacy learning are not nearly widespread enough and a lot of intelligent experienced adults are subjected to reading Spot the Dog and similar books targeted at small children's interests). Adult literacy classes also cost time and also money, so a lot of people only have the space for them after retirement, if at all.

And increasingly, illiteracy (or lack of fluency in English) increases poverty and marginalisation, and thus the chances of inherited literacy problems. Reading information, filling out forms and accessing the internet in a meaningful way are all massively limited by illiteracy, and you need those skills to access welfare, to access medical care, to avoid exploitative loans, to deal with any service providers, etc. Most jobs above minimum wage and a lot below require a fairly high level of literacy, whether it's office work or reading an instructional memo on a building site or reading drink instructions in McDonalds. Illiteracy is a huge barrier between somebody and the rest of the world, especially in a modern world that just assumes universal literacy, and especially especially as more and more of life involves the internet, texting, WhatsApp, email, and so on - it's becoming harder and harder for people with limited literacy to be fully involved in society. And that means the only mobility is downwards, and that exacerbates all the problems that lead to adult illiteracy.

People who can't read after the age of 6 or so are treated as stupid. People who can't read fluently when they're adults are seen as stupid and almost subhuman. There's so much shame and personal judgement attached to difficulty reading, but the fact that illiteracy is almost exclusively linked to poverty and deprivation is pretty conclusive. Illiteracy isn't about the failure or stupidity of the individual, it's about the lack of support, care and respect afforded to poor people at all stages of their life. Being illiterate doesn't make you stupid - many people are highly intelligent, creative, capable, thoughtful, and illiterate. I know people who can immediately solve complex engineering problems on the fly but take ten minutes to write down a sentence of instruction. It isn't classist to say that illiteracy is caused by poverty - it's both classist and inaccurate to say that illiteracy says anything about the worth, intelligence or personhood of the poor, that it's a result of a desire to be ignorant, or that it's evidence that people are poor because they're stupid, incapable, ignorant or bad parents. The link between poverty and illiteracy is the problem of classism and bigotry, no more no less, and we deal with it by working against the ideas that both poverty and lack of education are a reflection of individual worth.

Illiteracy isn't a problem of intelligence, it's a problem of education, and that matters because education is not inherent. it's something that has to be provided and maintained by parents, by the state, by the community. you're not born educated. you are educated. except more than a quarter of the Scottish population isn't educated, because the system doesn't give a fuck about them and actively excludes them or accidentally leaves them behind.

[backofthebookshelf]

One of the nice things about the way the TMA fandom has reached full large-fandom levels of toxicity is that I no longer care if people get mad at me for my opinions on characters! So, some Georgie meta.

(Because fandom is and always has been Like That, I do feel the need to clarify here that I love Georgie, she's one of my favorite characters, characters are more interesting because of their flaws, and I have no investment in the idea that women or female characters are inherently better or more emotionally competent than men or male characters. If I talk a lot about her relationship with Jon, it's because Jon is our point of view character and also the person she interacts with the most. Also, this rambles, sorry.)

I've been thinking about the Season 4 Jon Trauma post and how much I liked the way it talked about Georgie, and it's convinced me that if Georgie could feel fear, she's the one who'd be most afraid of Jon out of all of them. She's the one protagonist we have whose only interaction with the powers has been as a direct victim of them. She doesn't know what they feel like from the inside, like Jon and Melanie; she doesn't know what they're like when they're someone you love, like Basira; she doesn't even know what they're like as petty middle management, like Martin and Tim. What she knows is that one time a monster ate her (only) friend and traumatized her so badly she spent a year in a suicidal depression.

And now her ex - and yes, Jon and Georgie have a remarkably comfortable relationship in the beginning of season three, but they're still exes and they broke up for reasons, even if we don't know exactly what they are - has turned up on her doorstep, shaking and possibly bloody, with nowhere else to go and no access to his home. He's clearly lying about what's going on. He repeatedly violates her house rules. And then he tells her that he's turning into one of those same kinds of monsters that traumatized her and ate her friend. It's clearly enough to override any remaining affection she had for him, and by any definition he has now positioned himself as a trigger.

(Through no fault of his own: the only real response he has to Georgie's statement is "I can't believe you didn't tell me." She's the one who assumes that he Knew, somehow, that she also had a statement; she's the one who suggests he had alternatives. Both suggestions are plausible but we don't actually know for certain that either are true.)

But Georgie isn't afraid of Jon because Georgie can't be afraid -at least, according to her. I'm not sure how much I believe this in the grand scheme of things; it seems like an extremely unlikely mechanism for one of the fears to have. It seems much more likely to me that she's just never met anything as terrifying as that encounter was, and her subjective sense of fear has been massively recalibrated. In which case not only meeting but having hosted in your home another monster who self-describes as similar to the one that was so terrifying that literal threats to your life are no longer distressing would...probably ping. But she's conceptualized herself as a person who doesn't feel fear; it's even possible that was part of her recovery, identifying this as a possible benefit of what would otherwise have been a universally terrible, soul-breaking experience. She looked existential terror in the face and survived, and came out of it a person who cannot be afraid of anything left on this earth. That's kind of a superhero origin story, and I can't blame her for it. I think anyone with a mental illness has at least tried to find ways in which their suffering has made them a better, stronger person.

But whether she's suppressing and rationalizing away any fear she feels or she genuinely doesn't feel any of it, she does frequently behave as though her lack of fear gives her a more objective view of the situation than anyone else. I don't believe she actually uses the word "just," but it drips from her every interaction with Jon after Dead Woman Walking. Why doesn't he just stop reading the statements? Why doesn't he just quit? And, in Zombie, I honestly can't interpret her reaction to Jon when he wakes up from his coma as anything other than, Why doesn't he just die? If he hates being this so much, if he really doesn't want to be a monster, why doesn't he just die?

I really would like to think that it goes without saying that this is, at the very least, a massive failure of empathy, but she's so explicit about it and fandom spent so much time basically agreeing with her that apparently it doesn't. Not only is Georgie not afraid of the situation, but (and this is the part that makes me wonder if she's not rationalizing, rather than being supernaturally unable to feel fear) she can't possibly fathom how afraid everyone else is, and she never tries. She persists in treating the whole awful situation, as @findingfeather's post says, like this is a mundane problem with people who are refusing to help themselves, rather than a supernatural trap that has been specifically built to be inescapable.

Now, let me be clear, even if she were talking to, say, a drug addict who nearly killed themselves because they were in denial about how much of a problem they had, her attitude would be unforgivable. But in this case Jon had no choice in whether or not to become addicted to statements; it was done to him in such a way that he didn't notice it was happening until withdrawal was already incapacitating. He also didn't have the option to leave, as Tim's extended vacation made clear. And, on top of all of that, the whole reason he was in a coma in the first place was that he was trying to save the world. (Neither he nor she knows at this point that he was doing nothing of the kind, so that's really not relevant.) And - look, when Jon came to her after the end of season two, he was asking for help. When he rejected the kind of help that she offered it was because he knew it didn't apply to the problems he actually had, but she treats that like it's his problem, which is something like offering a leg splint to a person bleeding out from a gunshot wound and getting offended when they tell you that won't work. He was very clear that what was happening scared him and he didn't know what to do about it, and her only suggestion was "walk away," which he literally could not do, for multiple reasons.

She's lucky Jon has pretty much precisely zero self-worth at this point, because anyone else would have cut her off completely for behaving like a fucking asshole.

I say "she's lucky" because frankly, even though she says that she wants nothing more to do with him, she turns up at least twice in the Institute after that, with the excuse that she's picking up Melanie to take her to therapy. I don't know about you, but I have never once gone to someone's workplace to pick them up and gone snooping around inside, and no matter how fascinatingly weird that workplace is, I definitely can't imagine doing so when I know that workplace also contains a person I have definitely decided I never want to speak to again. She goes into the Archives, for Christ's sake, and she listens outside Jon's office door for long enough to catch a bit of the recording before letting herself in (so it's very clear she knows who's in there).

Now I'm not trying to paint her as a monster here; Georgie would hardly be the first person to have second thoughts about cutting off someone they still care about, or to break that boundary that they set themselves when they realize they do still want to know how that person is doing. But the fact is that she positions herself as having the moral high ground in every single discussion they have and that's just not true. She is not literally a supernatural monster, true, but if season four did anything with the concept of monsters it was breaking down the difference between "supernaturally driven no-longer-human" and "person capable of caring and empathy." (That's a whole different meta, though, one that I will get around to someday.) Not that Jon is any better, in that encounter specifically, at dealing with a complicated and contentious relationship - he deliberately goads her, even if he doesn't use compulsion. But that's the thing, they're both exes who have had a falling out and aren't handling it very well. Neither of them is in the right.

All of which makes me really wonder what her relationship with Melanie is actually like. We don't actually see hardly any of it directly, and of what we do, well, Melanie sounds like she's still high on painkillers, so it's hard to take that as an indication of anything. But given that people (who are not intentionally trying to manipulate those around them) tend to, y'know, be fundamentally the same person in their various relationships, though it may manifest in different ways, we can probably make some guesses.

I have always been bothered by, and I really can't ignore, the fact that they were getting together at the same time that Melanie was doing what Georgie has been demanding of Jon since season three: she did whatever it took to get out. I have to wonder if Georgie knows about the nonconsensual surgery part of Melanie's process of getting out, and if she does, if she understands how vital it was. I certainly wouldn't be surprised, if she does know, that she's managed to compartmentalize it: Jon inflicted this terrible trauma on Melanie, Melanie escaped the entity that took her over. (Subconscious implication: Jon is a monster; Melanie is better than him.) I would be very surprised if Georgie is interested at all in the fine distinctions between entities; she's shown no interest in learning what is actually happening to anyone in this situation beyond "it's bad and they should get out of it." But it's relevant, because by the time Melanie makes the decision to blind herself, she's in a much different position than Jon, enslaved by an entity but not consumed by one. She herself admitted to Jon that she would never have voluntarily escaped from the Slaughter.

And given how difficult Melanie finds it to talk about any of this - you can hear her dragging the words out from behind her teeth in her conversation with Jon in Flesh, truly incredible acting by Lydia Nicholas, my god - if Georgie doesn't want to hear it? I can't imagine Melanie insisting. Yes, Melanie is going to therapy, but let me tell you, I've been going to therapy for twelve years now and I have yet to have several of the important conversations my therapists have insisted I have. That shit is hard. But I can imagine a scenario where, having been told by her therapist (who, remember, doesn't have the first idea what Melanie is actually going through, because Melanie isn't telling her about the supernatural so she has to leave out a lot of really relevant details) that she ought to tell her friend/potential girlfriend/new girlfriend about these things, Melanie attempts to bring it up, Georgie says kind and reassuring things and refuses to let her clarify any of the details, and Melanie gives up in relief, thinking, well, I tried. Super valid all around, but it doesn't mean that Georgie has any clearer picture of what Melanie's traumas actually look like, never mind Jon's. There's no world in which I can imagine Georgie actually internalizing the idea that Melanie loved the Slaughter when it had her, and she would gladly have stayed with it if Jon and Basira hadn't intervened.

In Georgie's eyes, Melanie is being a Good Victim. She was hurt but she was strong; she fought it until she won; now she's going to therapy and setting boundaries and trying to heal. She got away.

(Except, of course, she didn't, because as of The Eye Opens no one has gotten away, because this is the entire world now. We have no idea how this has affected Melanie. Presumably she's out of reach of the Eye, given that Jon can't see her or Georgie (and there's some evidence on the side of Georgie's encounter genuinely having stripped her of fear, if she's also invisible to the Eye), but she spent a long time under the influence of the Slaughter. It had her firmly enough that her attacking Jon was enough to give him his Slaughter scar. If nothing else, Melanie certainly hasn't had her fear removed, and talk about a situation bound to retraumatize someone who had such a visceral revulsion to being trapped that Elias chose it as his mechanism of control over her. Melanie probably doesn't look like a Good Victim any more, and I'd bet her relationship with Georgie is suffering some serious strain because of it.)

We don't know when exactly Melanie and Georgie got together; the last time one of them mentions the other is, I'm pretty sure, when Georgie tells Jon that Melanie is back from India. So we know that Georgie and Melanie were friends; that's good, that's a good foundation for a romantic relationship. At the very least they know each other, they have some idea of what to expect. I'd be surprised if they were dating during that season 3/4 hiatus period, though, or frankly any time before Melanie's surgery, just because Melanie seems much too consumed with rage to have room for any other emotions, and I can't imagine Georgie putting up with that.

What seems way more likely to me is this: Melanie comes back from India, arranges to meet Georgie for drinks. Probably they don't talk about anything serious; possibly they talk about Jon, honestly, since we know Melanie was looking for him and Georgie talked to him about Melanie, but very likely in the same "stuck-up pompous ass" way that Melanie talks about Jon in early seasons. (I bet Melanie's roasts are amazing.) Shortly after that Melanie joins the Magnus Institute and then, very likely, either she never tells Georgie about it and therefore they don't talk much or she does tell Georgie about it and Georgie tells her that place is bad news and she won't have anything to do with it and they don't talk at all, until, whichever way that went, the Unknowing happens and Tim dies and Jon winds up in a coma and everything goes to shit. We know Georgie visits Jon in the hospital; we don't know if Melanie does, but frankly it seems unlikely. If they did cross paths during this time, it was probably very brief and superficial. Then: the surgery, and Melanie's recovery.

I'll be honest, I have a hard time imagining Melanie deciding on her own that she should go to therapy. It's possible Basira suggested it, but it really does sound like a Georgie thing to do. So I picture something like this: from the way Basira talks it sounds like they've all been pretty much living in the Archives for a while, and on top of that everyone in the Archives has just badly violated Melanie's trust, so Melanie pulls up her Facebook DMs and talks to the only other person she has. You were right, she says, this place is terrible, I can't handle it, there's no one here I can trust and I'm so alone. And Georgie, who is generous with help and advice (so long as it's accepted) and (like anyone) weak to being told she was right about something, starts talking to her. We know Georgie's got good boundaries, and we know she doesn't want to hear details about what's going on in the Institute, so I can see her saying, I can talk to you, I would love to talk to you, but not about this. For that you need a therapist.

So Melanie gets a therapist, and the prospect of going out amongst the monsters they know are stalking the Institute without that protective shield of rage (never mind the emotional vulnerability of going to therapy in the first place) makes public transit an unthinkable option, so she asks Georgie to take her, and she does, and she keeps taking her to therapy, which is, as far as we know, the only time Melanie leaves the Archives in season four, until she blinds herself and escapes it completely.

And so they have this relationship that's built up almost entirely around Melanie's trauma - with a foundation of friendship, certainly, so I do think that if they are willing to work through it they could make it a working, healthy relationship, but (and again this isn't stated in canon but is my speculation based on what we know about these characters) it is a romantic relationship that's built around the process of Melanie recovering from multiple traumas. Ones that we know that Georgie a) doesn't know many details about, and b) more importantly, refuses to know any details about. Now, I have no experience with romantic relationships and serious trauma; I might be wildly off base here. But. I know that boundaries are important and I know that trust is also important. And if Georgie is holding similar boundaries with Melanie that she has with Jon (and, as I went into excruciating detail about earlier, she has very solid emotional reasons to protect herself with those boundaries), that's drawing a hard line around what's basically the past two to three years of Melanie's life, and undeniably both the worst and most important things that have ever happened to her. That seems...difficult to manage in the long term.

(This is a bit more of a stretch, more of the germ of a fic idea than an argument I'm prepared to defend, but I also would not be surprised if Georgie told Melanie that she wouldn't date her while she was still working at the Institute. That's a very reasonable boundary, and it's good motivation - and probably healthy motivation, I do like the idea that Melanie had something to reach toward in escaping the Institute, not just the desperate flight from - but it's also something of an ultimatum. Which is not inherently bad, but it is the kind of thing that can fester, given other problems.)

Now it's entirely possible that Georgie isn't that internally consistent. People aren't! (See: Basira's attitude toward Daisy vs her attitude toward Jon in season four.) Maybe she's more flexible about being willing to listen to Melanie, maybe she's starting to understand some of what was happening and how genuinely impossible a situation it really was. But that has to be a struggle for her, too; it's not a perfect, sweet, unconditionally good situation that teaches you that you've been unfair to the point of cruelty to someone you used to care about. And by the time the apocalypse rolls around, Melanie is, if she's lucky, just barely able to say she's healed from the plain physical trauma of blinding, never mind all the other baggage. They've got to be having a rough fucking time of it, at the very least, even if you assume that they're suddenly both the kind of people who will sit still and listen supportively and talk honestly about their own messy and complicated emotions, when neither of them have been that kind of person before.

(Another disclaimer because Fandom Is Like That: This is in no way a condemnation of or argument against fluffy What the Girlfriends fic; fic is for making fluffy things that you want to happen to your faves, or building fluffy content that you desperately need for whatever reason. Gods know there are plenty of unhealthy parts of Jon and Martin's relationship that I ignore in most of my fluffy fic. This is me attempting to work through my thoughts and feelings about the relationship I see in canon in the hopes of actually being able to write some fic about these girls myself someday, because I personally can't write fic until I understand canon, and so much of them happens offscreen because they're not main characters, and they're written with such depth and complexity that you can't just slap a stereotype on them and call it good. Which is awesome! But it means I gotta do the work, and I post it because a) it's work, and this is fandom, and I want validation; and b) I'm hoping other people have insights that might also help me clarify my thinking.)

[remusloopy]

how did you know you were lesbian? i'm kinda questioning wether i'm pansexual or lesbian. i've been pansexual since 2018 btw

sure, i’ll explain a few signs that i think made me realise i was a lesbian :) (for context, i thought i was bi for about 2 years before i figured out i was lesbian a few months ago)

i’m so sorry this got quite long!

ok so first of all every guy i talked to that was conventionally attractive i developed a crush on and i thought that was normal BUT i figured out later on that my brain was just tricking me into thinking i was attracted to them

also i’d always want them to like me back and want them to ask me out but i knew i’d say no because i didn’t actually want to date any of them

another massive thing was fictional characters and celebrities. i thought cus i found harry styles and remus lupin (or any unattainable men) attractive that meant i was attracted to men generally when in reality i just wanted to be friends with them, not date them!

also i had this idea that i was waiting for the perfect man to come along and then i wouldn’t have to question anymore. it took me a while to realise my brain was making that up and if a man that i thought was perfect did come along i wouldn’t actually want to date him and think it was just ‘the wrong time’ or ‘not right now’ when i just never wanted to be with a man

another thing was i was questioning if i was bi or not for so long because i never truly felt comfortable with that label, i just stuck with it because i just knew i wasn’t straight

i’ve also dealt with comphet and for years because people would just casually say ‘when you have a husband’ or ‘when you have a boyfriend’ which skewed the way i though about my sexuality a lot so that’s definitely something to think about

and for ages thinking i was just attention seeking because of my sexuality (even though i had no plans of coming out anytime soon)

another thing was when i was still ‘questioning’ i already knew i was a lesbian, i just didn’t want to admit it. i found it really scary to come to terms with so for weeks after, i was just in denial even tho i secretly knew what my label was (sorry if this makes no sense whatsoever i am very sleep deprived lmao)

so i know figuring out your sexuality is quite an exclusive experience, and no two people’s are going to be the same, but i’ve heard from a lot of other lesbians that they went through similar things when they discovered

i hope this helped a bit, if you have any other questions please don’t be afraid to ask! :)

[paragonrobits]

A friend asked me to give a stab at a Tierlist Maker for Video Games Not Yet In the Video Game Hall of Fame Tier List Maker, so here's my list for it!

This is based primarily on what I considered to be overall value to gaming history as a whole, with games with greater influence or impact ranking higher than those that had less impact on those to follow, or on culture. All the entries are those that have been nominated to the Hall of Fame, but not actually inducted as of this post's writing. Games that I personally like are generally rated higher, though mostly because I'm more familiar with them and thus can judge their impact from a personal POV.

(Tier List explainations, below!)

SHOULD BE IN ALREADY

Final Fantasy: I mean seriously. How is this one not already in yet?? It is not, as my research suggests, the first true RPG; that likely goes to games like Ultima. It is certainly an incredibly influential one; FF is a name closely associated with JRPGs in general, and its diverse class system is one of the strongest things to do with it, as noted by challenges like beating the game with a party of Black Belts. FF is THE name of RPGs in general and I'm startled it hasn't made it in, though I suppose that's owing to more notable entries (Hard as that is to imagine). It doesn't hurt that the majority of my favorite FF titles are those most similar to this one, such as FF6 and FF9, in terms of approaching the general world setting and class systems. Most significantly is that this game popularized RPGs and made them accessible, in ways that previous games such as Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest did not; the field of gaming would be VERY different without it; RPGs became VERY popular, to the extent of RPG elements being almost universal among other games in the modern day. (I am also pleased and amused to see 8-Bit Theater mentioned on the actual Wikipedia page. Now THAT'S notability!)

Sid Meir's Civilization: HEY NOW HALL OF FAME JUDGES, DON'T YOU BE MOCKING CIV, ALRIGHT. CIV IS FUCKING AWESOME. Okay, jokes aside, I'm genuinely astonished as the Civ series is considered the first true main game of the 4x series, and it shows; the entire genre centers around expansion, resource usage and diplomacying or conquering your enemies, and considering the impact of this game and its sheer popularity, to the extent of the meme of the game getting people to play for Just One More Turn, I'm a bit disappointed that it's not already in the hall of fame. I also note that I am personally more familiar with the spin off Alpha Centauri, a sci fi variant, which is still one of my all time favorite games.

Half-Life: Given this game's popularity, to the point of its release alone consigning the likes of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines to cult classic status and its engine spawning a whole THING with GMod and the usage of physics mechanics in FPS games, one thing of note is its use of scripted sequences; at the time, an unknown in most games of the time. There may be something to be said for how the entire game is spent as Gordon Freeman, behind his eyes, possibly engendering a lack of separation between self and character that would be later emphasized in games like Bioshock. It's influence on games cannot be denied, with publications using it as a bookend between eras of gaming. One consistent element of what seems to make this game so distinctive is its approach to storytelling, without simply imitating film techniques which don't always work well with gameplay.

Candy Crush: This is an example of something I don't personally play myself, or even like very much, but I'd be remiss to dismiss it out of hand. There's no denial that phone games are one of, if not THE biggest market of games in the here in now; if now in scale, certainly in quantity. You might call it the TF2 Hat Economy theory; people aren't spending BIG bucks, but they are spending a LOT of little bucks all the time. It proves that highly accessible games that are generally free to play, with optional purchases, are a legitimate means of game business, and this certainly revolutionized how games were seen by the money-makers.

Super Smash Bros Melee: I loved this game as a kid, but truth be told i have a bit of a love-hate relationship; i REALLY dislike the competitive community that has fixated hard on this game, so any thoughts on it will have a slight element of pause beforehand. Even so, I can't forget the thrilled delight I felt watching the trailer for this game in supermarkets for the first time as a kid. at a time when getting any new games at all was a HUGE deal in my family. So, there is a lot of feeling behind this one! Ultimately, I have to concede that while i have complicated feelings about this game, its worth noting that the vast majority of things that made Smash iconic, and influenced the competitive scene AND the games inspired by Smash AND shaped the course of the series going forwards, largely owe themselves to Melee in particular. 64 was far more slow paced, while Melee began the trend towards much more fast paced action (and while I doubt it's SPECIFIC to melee as a whole, it may have been a trend for the genre from then). Melee is STILL widely played, especially on the competitive scene, and this sort of longevity always bears evidence of notability.

Goldeneye 007: I have to admit that despite being a kid in the 90s, despite someone who put most of their time into gaming, and despite being someone whose favorite system at the time was the Nintendo 64, I mostly missed out on the trend of history by honestly not being that much into this game. I have to say that I DID play it, however; I just never managed to get past the first level or so. I have strong memories of triyng and failing to sneak around a snowy lair of some description; it wouldn't be until the mid-2000s, playing Deus Ex Human Revolution, that I got the hang of stealth. All the same, personal indifference really doesn't matter much because HOLY SHIT THIS GAME HAS SOME STAYING POWER. IT HAS INFLUENCE, FRIENDORITOS. Perhaps chiefly, at the time it was made, consoles were not considered viable platforms for first person shooters; Goldeneye revised that notion, and created a whole revolution in multiplayer and shooter games. We would later see the ultimate consequence of this in games like Halo, which further revolutionized the whole genre. Ironically, the stealth attributes I was so bad at were part of what made the game so unique! It's one of those games that may not have aged well, by modern standards, but its import to gaming as a whole goes a long, long way.

Guitar Hero: I expect this one might be a bit hard to justify, but on its own, this game is INCREDIBLY innovative, though its not entirely the first of its kind, having mechanics based on earlier games. The very first entry has a respectable library of 30 songs, which is impressive considered at the time it was made, its not likely people expected it to get as far as it did; bear in mind that the massive libraries of later games were the result of years of this game series being a massive steamroller of a franchise! At the time, this one was an unknown. It has an interesting history as being a successor of sorts to an arcade exclusive, and inspiring a genre of imitators and spiritual successors on its own; of great note is the sheer impact this game had. With so many of those successors, the increased value of liscened soundtracks, and the way the game's concept became so influential, its astounding this one isn't already on the hall of fame. (It's also very fun, but fun alone doesn't make for memorability, sad to say.)

DESERVES IT AT SOME POINT

Myst - an iconic and incredibly atmospheric puzzle game, I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't heard talk about this one in some respect; it bears note as a rare game with absolutely no conflict whatsoever. I actually rank this one on par with the 7th Guest in terms of atmospheric games, though their tones could not be more different. So why do I think this game deserves it at some point? It was an incredibly immersive and beautiful game, lacking in genuine danger or threat, encouraging the player to explore and tackle the puzzles of the game. This sort of open-ended lack of peril makes it an interesting precursor towards certain flavors of sandbox games around now. It's worth noting that it was a tremendous achievement, given technical limitations of things such as the CD-Rom it was stored on, maintaining a consistent experience, as well as tying narrative reasons into those very constraints. It has been compared to an art film; if so, it certainly is the sort that invited imitators and proved to be a great technical achievement.

Portal: PORTAL! What can I honestly say that hasn't already been said by other people? The amazing integration of a physics engine into innovative puzzle solving, combined with a slow burn sort of minimalist plot reveal concerning the AI proving itself to be a kind of reverse HAL 9000? This game got a HUGE number of memes back in the day, and I expect anyone reading this can probably reference a few. The cake thing, certainly, and its relevance to matters of deception. There is much discussion over the game's utility in academic circles, which is certainly quite notable, and for my part, I'm interested by the point that at first the game gives you a lot of hints towards what you're supposed to do, gradually making it less obvious for the player you're on your own entirely, using your experience with the game to get past the puzzles from there, and its excellent game design. Ultimately though, I place this below Half Life in hall of fame urgency, because while I probably like this one more, it doesn't have the same impact on other games, per say. (That's a lot of awards for it, though. Wowza.)

Resident Evil: Is it fair to call this one the major survival horror game of its era? No, because it's apparently the FIRST, or at least the first to be called such. It's certainly up there with shaping the genre as a whole, both its immediate predecessors and modern games. The flavor of a survival horror can even be judged about whether its close to Resident Evil's style of defending yourself with limited resources vs controlled helplessness. It's also worth pointing out that I quite like the restricted, cramped setting of the mansion, rather than an expansive city; Biohazard was a real return to form, even if its something I mostly watched through funny lets plays because OH NO ITS TOO SCARY I CANT WATCH.

Asteroids: It's called the first major hit of the golden age of the arcade. I'm forced to say... yeah, it absolutely deserves it. The actual implementation and hardware of the game makes for interesting reading, and so its innovative nature ought to be noted: it lacked a soundchip at all, making use of handmade circuits wired to the board. It's reception was great, beating out Space Invaders and needing larger boxes just to hold all the money people spent on it. It also invented the notion of tracking initials on the top ten score, which has implications for arcade challenges.

Ms. Pac Man: This one consistently ranks HIGH in gaming records of its time, though there is admittedly some confusion to whether it or Donkey Kong was a better seller. Interestingly it appears to shape most of the gameplay mechanics people remember most for Pac-Man, such as the improved AI of the ghosts. It's more highly regarded than the original game, and on a personal note, I remember being a kid and seeing this arcade machine at ALL the laundry places my family usually wound up going to.

Frogger: It's placing on this list is not solely because CUTE FROG. The accessibility and wide appeal of the game bears a great deal of consideration, the flexibility of its formula, and just how many dang times it's been ported in one form or another. (And also, cute frog.) It also gets points for the creator being inspired for the game when he saw a frog trying to cross a road, hampered by the vehicles in the way, and he got out of his car and carried the frog across the street. The game is also evident of broad appeal, and some money-makers resisting it, goes back a long way; it was apparently dismissed as a kid's game by some, which just goes to show that some problems are older than quite a lot of gamers alive today.

Uncharted 2: this is one of those games where I cannot honestly say I have personal experience to draw from. Of the playstation's big games, I remember the Jak and Daxter series; I remember Kingdom Hearts, and I remember Ratchet and Clank, and I remember Infamous, but the Uncharted series remains

something of a 'I don't go here?' obscurity in my personal playbook. It does look memorable and charming from what I've seen, and one consistent element I've seen in comments about it is the cinematic nature of the game; it feels very much like a fun heist movie, based on what I have seen of it, and the notable thing is how the game FEELS cinematic.. in a literal way. As in, it combined elements of cinematography with game design, and that's no mean feat: what works for movies are unlikely to translate well to the interactive side, and it shows how that can be done for other games. The extensive praise does the game a LOT of credit!

WORTH NOMINATION AT LEAST

Angry Birds: As noted before, I'm not the biggest fan of most phone games, given that i prefer a more passive experience than most provide. As such, Angry Birds isn't something I've played as of this writing, but I have to appreciate the straightforward and simple gameplay; it reminds me a bit of the Burrito Bison game series, which I HAVE played, and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it's because Angry Birds is probably the innovation that coined that particular style of gameplay. It's an example of what made phone games profitable and worth the time of developers to work at them; its easy for casual players to get into, and there's a fun sort of impact involved. Given the popularity of phone games, this one has a LOT of influence in getting that rolling, similar to candy crush, if not as much.

FIFA International Soccer: Simulation games are a tricky business; it can be really difficult to get them right, and this game provides an example of it being done in a way that a lot of people REALLY loved, set up an entire game series, and revived the 3DO system after a very bad year. Of note, apparently it was commented that it was more of a simulator than a console game, and this is rather funny considering how simulator is its own genre nowadays! Such do things change. It seems to have been a revolutionary game and simulation; setting the shape for modern sport games of its type, and tending more towards realism (accounting for acceptable breaks in reality) than was typical of the time. This one's position is thus picked for its impact as a whole; while it may not necessarily be a household name now, the series continues on, and is popular enough that even after 20 years, it's still been going.

Elite: I nominate this game in this position for being a startlingly early entry into what we would now consider open-ended games, even with an element of exploration and trading; if one stretches definitions a bit, a precursor towards gameplay of the like scene in 4X players who strive to avoid conflict, if possible. Its technical breakthroughs are some very interesting reading and make for good game history; a vast and complex game (not just by the standards of the era, either), and opening the door for persistent world games such as World of Warcraft.

Wii Sports: A significant game, and much as how other titles mentioned above were famed for gateway entries into gaming for an unfamiliar audience, or those that would want o play on a more casual basis. It seems notable to me for being most suited as a family game, or a more casual experience of multiplayer than usually associated with games like this; this has greatly influenced Nintendo's design philosophy, and one can see elements of this all the way through the Wii U onwards. It's essentially a fliparound from Mario Party; less competitiveness, but definitely meant as a group thing. Controversy is evident, because like with Mario Party, injuries did result from it.

Call of Duty: I place this one here because, while it DOES hold a very significant role in gaming history, with countless imitators, spiritual successors, being a game-changer in ways that its modern reputation might surprise you with, ultimately it is less so than other games such as Goldeneye, Halo or Half-Life. It's development in AI pathfinding and tactics is incredibly noteworthy from a mechanical perpsective, and the sheer level of awards it won is notable. In the end this game's popularity and continuing influence means that it shouldn't be overlooked.

Metroid: You can't spell 'Metroidvania' without this game! A relatively open ended exploration-based game with further options opening as new tools were found give it an interesting vibe, and the oppressive atmosphere distinctive to the game says great things about its sound and level designs. It wasn't the first open world game, or explorer, or even the first to open new aereas based on equipment, but it had ALL of these elements in a very memorable package. (Samus Aran as a female protagonist is something I'm a bit reluctant to give it credit for, as her identity was obfuscated for most of the game, and only revealed in a fanservicey way in a secret ending. All the same, credit where it is due, I suppose!) It's music seems to endure as a mood setter, too!

Pole Position: Perhaps not the FIRST racing game, but still considered one of the most important from the golden age of gaming, and the one to codify many of the firm rules of the game series. It's three dimensional gameplay is incredibly innovative for its time, and having played it and games like it in the past, I'm struck by how smooth the whole thing feels. No wonder it was popular! It is notable for having been designed specifically as a 3d Experience, meant to execute techniques like real drivers might attempt, which makes it a different sort of beast in that it tried to do more realistic actions; in some ways, a precursor to modern trends of realism in many games, for ill or best. Ultimately I think this one is worth a nomination because of its influence towards racing games (a popular and long lived genre, to say the least) as a whole.

OUTSIDE CHANCE

Nurburgring 1: On the one hand, I feel a bit guilty putting this one so low; it is recognized as likely being the earliest racing game in history, and given that I just finished noting Pole Position's influence, it feels a bit mean to rate this one as relatively insignificant all the same. However, in terms of notability, I never even heard of this one, and it was tricky finding information about it. Accordingly, that may say something about its influence, though this position DOES make it noteworthy as the first of its kind, albeit with Pole Position refining and introducing elements that shaped the genre.

Dance Dance Revolution: It feels a bit strange, putting this one fairly low. This thing was a MONSTER back in the day; entire arcades were built around the dancing control peripherals it required, rhythm based games or mechanics specifically invoked it by name, and it was an absolute cultural touchstone for years and years. So, why place it low? Partly, its because I can't just shove EVERYTHING into the 'deserves a nomination' folder; I do think it's fairly reasonable for this one to at some point get a nomination in the future, though ultimately there's games more noteworthy on the whole. It's specific rhythm qualities continue outside of its genre, and are quite influential to gaming as a whole, though unfortunately the series seems to have lost something in notability over time; popularity is a factor, but so is the impact on other games.

NBA 2K and NBA Jam: I put these two together because they touch on similar touchstones for me, and they really did popularize basketball games back in the day. Jam in particular seems to be invoking the Big Head mode that were a big thing in games at the time, at least going from the screenshot. They were very popular and highly beloved games back in the day, though I don't know if they have much influence on later games. I note that interestingly, they take opposite approaches; 2k focuses on AI and realistic experiences, while Jam was deliberately less realistic and more actiony in its over the top gameplay.

Nokia Snake: This one really impresses me for the sheer number of releases, in various forms, it's had! Interestingly, there seems to be little consensus on the name of this game; most just call it Snake or something on that theme. I went with Nokia Snake because... mostly, it sounds funny, and that's how its done on the list. This one is fairly low, but I Have to give it credit for having hundreds of releases!

Farmville: My mom liked Facebook games, a lot. And I am certain this one was one of her main ones! I rate it fairly low, and no doubt her spirit is yelling imprecations at me across the void of time, space, and abandoned socks; all the same, this one is ranked low because of the sheer number of displeasure aimed this one's way. (And to be fair, she complained about it. A LOT.) It is thus notable for unusually negative reasons; an example of exploitation, pressuring players to pester their friends to play it in an equivalent to electronic chain mail, and microtranscations.

Tron: I'm inclined to give any game that takes place in a computer land and uses programming or mechanical terminology a free pass! Interestingly, this has some association with the Snake game, as they have similar gameplay and Snake games are sometimes called Light Cylce games, after this one. It has an interesting history; the graphical system was chosen largely because it was believed it was more likely to be achieved before the deadline.

NO BUSINESS IN THE HALL OF FAME

Mattel Football: I do feel a little mean putting anything in this category; firstly because I don't want to make actual fans of something sad, and secondly because I believe you can probably find notability anywhere you look, if you are inclined. And here is the chief difficulty with this one: I could not find any real information in this one. It has no Wikipedia page, a google search only led to undescriptive links of SALES for the game, but not any information on the game itself. Notability is my main resource for sorting these entries, and honestly? If google has nothing on you, that's a pretty poor sign. Sorry, Mattel Football, but you look like a poor man's Game And Watch. You're no Portal, Myst or Pole Position.

[melforbes]

seaglass blue annotations

hello! i just posted the last chapter and thought i’d put together some ~fun context~ for that fic. it got way way more attention than i ever expected and for something i feel i didn’t put that much effort into i think i did in the end put a lot of effort into it so i might as well talk about it and answer some potential questions.

my favorite book of all time is the sunlit night by rebecca dinerstein (yes, that one) and something i find really compelling about that book is how sparing the prose is, forcing the reader to fill in certain gaps, and i think having to fill in those gaps makes the book a really acquired taste with which either you love it or hate it and there’s not really an in-between

i also really adore how in that book the natural world backdrop comes to life, something i find really challenging to write. recently i even read into thin air, the book about the 1996 mount everest disaster, and even though the writing was superb, i still had to google what the hillary step was because i couldn’t picture it on my own. i don’t know how people write nature because to me it feels damn near impossible, but this sparing approach really worked, so i thought i might try it out. i tend to be longwinded (gestures vaguely at this post) and wanted to have certain parts of this be a lot smaller and more contained without negating impact. whether or not i made it work is anyone’s guess. definitely not my normal style, so to speak

based on the comments i’ve received i think this might be everyone’s favorite part. in my mind age of consent by new order was playing in the background. in pretty much every fic i have a scene like this one and all of them are based on the poem first base gold by rh*annon mcg*vin from her book branches (censored because she has a tumblr and i don’t want her seeing this haha)

i absolutely can’t do the poem justice by describing what it’s about, but the simplest, most basic interpretation of the poem is that there is no better place to kiss than right here, right now, because of the past. i really like that imagery and tend to use it a lot. she as a writer has been a big inspiration for me and if you’ve read my fic true minds i should add that the nonfiction inspiration for that was directly as a result of one of her youtube videos. i particularly love how the last paragraph (stanza? im not a poet) is one big run-on sentence that’s jovial and tongue-in-cheek and colloquial and straightforward. it feels triumphant in a quiet way to me and i love how it’s done. obviously my attempts at something similar are nowhere near as insightful, but still, the most basic image of this is that there is no better place to kiss, and that’s how i felt about the two of them finding pudding in the supermarket

this part is autobiographical; while writing this last year, i went through six months of intravenous drug treatment, a month and a half of which involved long days of doctor visits on every weekday. when you’re on stuff like that for a long time you end up with a central line for better access (potential plot hole in all of this: scully never had one) but for a month and a half i got poked almost every day and strangely enough it got harder over time. the first couple you never feel, but a week or two later you start flinching, and if the needle goes in the same vein each time, it hurts the more it gets prodded. i reached a point toward the end of the in-office visits in which i would bleed a lot every time i got poked, and i can’t watch anything like that happen to me so i was looking away each time, and when i felt that the nurse was done, i would look back over, and sometimes i would be looking down at a pool of blood that i hadn’t expected to see. it’s weird, you don’t actually feel yourself bleeding, i would’ve expected a hot bloody feeling but instead it felt like nothing. and when i say a pool i mean that it would drip down beneath my elbow, stain the sheet they’d put underneath, and i wouldn’t get all of it off until i showered. i didn’t necessarily find it scary, but it was surreal and kind of pulled me out of normalizing the experience i was having. for a very long time needing iv drugs was my greatest fear and i was surrounded by that then and fine, and then, there was blood all over my arm, and like, haha, this is actually not fine. you’d think something else would’ve been scarier, but it wasn’t. and now looking back at this paragraph i wish i’d edited it differently but hey that’s life

i’d never really understood the purpose of religion as a self-driven part of life until i took anatomy in college. i was raised catholic and though culturally i understand having a religion and being raised with one, i’ve never really reached for religion when i wanted answers, and i haven’t personally understood why that’s someone’s first option. and i know there’s been plenty of commentary on the hypocrisy of dana scully as a catholic who believes in science, yada yada yada, i think everyone has read all of that by now. but what struck me while learning anatomy is that there is a kind of neuron we don’t know the function of. there are four kinds of neurons, and one of them is still a mystery to us. and then, there’s all of these different parts of human bodies that exist in a certain perfect way, but why do they exist like that? to support life, yes, but why is it that we can make comparisons? why were irises not the same color? and we name valves of the heart after religious figures. we are so hell-bent on meaning that something literal will never be enough. and all of that made me think that dana scully has god to fill in what science won’t answer, at least not yet. and there’s definitely a bigger conversation about science as denial of indigenous cultures that i am nowhere near qualified to start. after taking those classes, i think i would be more shocked if she wasn’t religious. you can ignore pretty much all of the paragraph above but it was important to me that at some point in this fic she willingly conceded that she didn’t know what would happen and that she didn’t have answers. with illness, there is no logic, there’s no thinking your way out of it, and i think that would plague her for a long time. to me, she only would accept her death when she could say she had no idea what would happen, she has no answers, there’s nothing filling in her gaps anymore, and she’s comfortable with that. and i put all of that in a paragraph about my thoughts on god because it made sense to me. there are times that just feel like you’re in a movie and there’s no one else you can say caused them. it’s not enough to build belief on but it’s enough to bring a certain kind of wonder. also one time my parents insisted on watching stripes because it was so funny and when watching it none of us found it funny at all and my parents grimaced and were like what were we on that made that good back in the day so that’s in here now haha

and now, the biggest question: does she die at the end? when i came up with the idea for this fic, i knew the beginning and ending but not the middle, and i posted this as a smaller project (ie: chapters below 3,000 words) while illness made my bigger projects harder to work on and essentially flew by the seat of my pants the whole time. i wrote the last line a long long time ago and have always seen the ending as written as the concrete ending. when i started writing this, i never intended for there to be a definitive answer to whether or not she dies. i like premature endings (the ending of girls burn brighter comes to mind) and i think that this works better without saying whether or not she lives. and i also have a hard time with giving a definitive answer because this fic very much is about death and having her die would, of course, be traumatic, but showing her living instead i think ruins any takeaways people could have. i’ve never had cancer but as a chronically ill person i think i can speak to how you never actually win with illness; the best you can do is tie, and sometimes, no matter how much effort you put in, you “lose” anyway, you lose spectacularly, and all of your effort was for nothing. i wholeheartedly believe that humans can’t emotionally or logically process natural disasters or illness, hence why much of the talk about illness in this is from mulder’s perspective as he experiences her terminal illness secondhand; that way, he doesn’t need to (but still likely will) find logic or reason or meaning for death from a terminal illness, so his discoveries and his coping mechanisms aren’t as urgently needed. had i written a chapter that describes how she lives, i think that the discussion of death in this would be voided altogether. and i also don’t believe the ending would be much different whether she lives or dies; there’s still the need for death acceptance and talking about dying, whether or not she lives, and none of the story in this fic would have happened had the characters known she would live. the whole point is not knowing.

for a little while i toyed with writing an unofficial sequel of sorts in which i spelled out what i think happens after the ending, but after realizing that that would end up being longer than the original fic and would also have some massive plot holes, i decided against it. i do have my own version and i don’t want to share that version because i never really intended for my version to be some kind of genuine sequel in which every question gets answered and everything is wrapped up and happy ever after and whatnot. it was just where my brain wandered in the same way it wanders when i watch an open-ended movie. all of that to say, if you think she lives, then she lives. if you think she dies, then she dies. it’s your decision. i’d much rather you choose than me. i never marked this as “major character” death on ao3 because, well, she doesn’t die in this fic. whether or not she dies after the fic ends, that’s for you to decide. 

thank you for taking the time to read my writing. i never expected this to blow up (it blew up for me at least, for a while it was my most popular fic ever, with i think thousands more hits than anything else i’d written) and the response has been mind-boggling and wonderful. i don’t respond to comments often because it makes me feel like a pompous jerk (”thank you for enjoying this! i, too, enjoy this thing i have written! oh ho ho!” is how it sounds to me in my head, whereas when other writers respond to comments to me it just looks like thanks man have a good day, feel free to call me a weenie) but i’ve appreciated all of them very much. THANK YOU! i hope your new year is a Whole Lot Less Shit than 2020. i don’t plan on writing more msr because i don’t really have any ideas for them. thank you for making my last time special <3

[inkbloodwool]

In response to the post on detransitioning: https://coffeedrinkingpigeon.tumblr.com/post/636777543874347008/if-youre-transnonbinary-now-but-are-wondering

(I'm speaking for myself alone, I know my experience and no one else's, & no one entirely knows mine. Yes I still am supportive of all LGBT folks, very much including trans people of all varieties, I just don't see myself as trans anymore.)

yeah this is actually a super important issue to me. I stopped taking T at the start of July 2020, and I'd only been on it for six months, but I'd IDed as transmasc for so long before that. Almost six or seven years, and I'm only 22, so most people in my life at this point have only known me as such or only by my chosen name at that time (Leo). It's been.... extremely awkward at best. I just don't feel like HRT was for me at all, I was so miserable on it and would skip weeks of shots at a time because I was so neurotically anxious about it. I feel like I was in massive denial about who I am, and I think there is reason to believe that past abuse for me (I have c-ptsd) has led to me somehow feeling like I was better off not a woman at all, or in any way feminine even. It's like my subconscious came to the idea that it was safer to be as masculinely appearing as possible, even though I absolutely dreaded being called he or sir or anything similar, I hate the idea of being grouped in with men (especially cis and/or het men) and literally have never seen myself as a guy, not even close. The whole time I was taking T I kept trying to convince myself that it was just anxiety getting to me over other's opinions (true, but also not), and that I would eventually be comfortable enough to feel ok in my own skin.

Like I said I was absolutely fucking miserable. I don't even think I've ever actually experienced gender dysphoria, either. I have learned there is a difference between that and feeling uncomfortable being sexualized on a daily basis without asking. I really feel like the extreme discomfort I felt in my own body was a result of my own past traumas and just wanting to escape, constantly. And I really thought hormones and binding and all of these "right" ways to be trans were the answer. I don't even ID as trans anymore. These past five or six months I've stopped asking myself things like "what am i /what labels fit me?" and just focused on what is actually comfortable for my mind and body.

So...yeah. I was really lying to myself for a very long time and not acknowledging the ways I have been hurt (and how those have has ugly long term effects). I know better now where I find solace and community and relatability, and yeah I still consider myself relatively agender/genderless but I identify pretty solidly with gay women in particular and accepting myself as such. Internalized homophobia is stronger than you think lol. I'm just trying not to have massive regrets about things I can't change now, like permanent hormone effects (mainly that my voice is way deeper now lol, but it's cool) and that I'd legally changed my name (kind of sucks for now but I'm going to change it again, once I have decided on an actually fitting name).

[schmergo]

Signature Theatre has been sharing some video clips of past productions and today it was this one. I went to see TITANIC alone in early 2017, getting spur-of-the-moment partial view tickets and not expecting anything in particular. I was just really curious about what the heck a musical about the Titanic would be like (no, it's not based on the movie). It ended up being one of the most emotionally moving shows I've ever seen-- actually, amend that to 'emotionally devastating.'

After the show, I ended up sitting at a table in the lobby crying with my head down until an usher came and asked if I was okay and I explained that the show just really got me in my feels and he said, "Oh, I was worried you got a text that your cat died or something." It did hit me a little differently because the wreck of the Titanic occurred on my birthday, so I've always felt a weird connection to that historical event (as well as the Lincoln Assassination, which also occurred on my birthday).

Looking back, I think one thing about the Titanic that haunts people so much is that this was a tragedy that affected people of all social classes, from ultra-wealthy luxury passengers to the workers below deck-- but didn't necessarily affect them equally. Watching the musical, you don't know which of the characters you'll meet at the beginning of the show will make it to safety. It may not be those you expect. That said, like most tragedies, the very rich and famous were much more likely to survive, while the lower-class passengers were denied lifeboats and made up the majority of the casualties.

The Titanic has been seen as a symbol of hubris, an ostentatiously luxurious vessel created as a playground for the wealthy, but it also carried a huge number of 2nd and 3rd class passengers as well as a massive crew required to keep the ship running. The idea of a rich family's dream vacation instantly turning into a desperate fight for survival is intriguing-- imagining people who've never struggled before in their lives having to endure extreme conditions-- but as difficult and harrowing as that experience was for the wealthy, the musical TITANIC really shows how the odds are stacked against the less-illustrious passengers. The musical also builds suspense by contrasting the desperation of the crew with the first-class passengers' blissful ignorance, followed by denial that anything could be wrong with the ship and irritation at the inconveniences of being woken in the middle of the night and rushed around by the crew. We, the audience, know it's an emergency, as do some of the characters onstage, but most haven't realized it yet.

This current pandemic is another example of a tragedy that befalls all levels of society-- this time on a MUCH larger scale than one sinking ocean liner. We're seeing the collapse of a lot of things that we thought were unsinkable. There are limited 'lifeboats'-- in terms of ventilators and other medical equipment-- and even those with access to them still have a perilous journey ahead. And many experts predict that cases of COVID-19 will "hit a peak" right around my birthday. The similarities are already clear to see. Let's hope we see some big, big differences in the coming days and weeks.