#just reinforcing my own optimism

[astralibrary]

hi @marykedoesart, this is my gift to you for @natsume-ss' spring exchange!

you said you like tanuma/natsume and heartfelt, emotional themes so i went very symbolic with this, haha. i really love the idea of using imagery from the fish pond in tanuma's backyard to represent these two and their dynamic, so that became the concept i ran with. i'll explain my whole thought process below, but in the meantime i hope you like it! 💖

pls bear with me here bc this is going to be very long and wordy lol

so there's a definite theme of separate worlds here; while the environments are both pretty abstract, the idea was that tanuma is sitting in his house looking out towards his backyard where the pond is, representing the "real world," whereas natsume is in a more fantastical underwater setting, representing the world of youkai. also there's the implication that he's sitting at the bottom of the pond, aka completely immersed in that other world, while tanuma can only perceive hints of it in the reflected light & shadow on the wall.

tanuma's side is lit by the glow of the setting sun, and natsume's by an otherworldly blue light. also, there's their clothes: tanuma is in his regular school uniform while natsume is in a yukata, something that pretty much all humanoid youkai wear.

next, their poses; they're both sitting exactly the same way as a reflection of each other but natsume has his head bowed while tanuma is looking up; this is meant to represent their different approaches to their relationship. natsume is definitely more closed off, both as a defense mechanism and because he wants to protect tanuma & keep him away from the dangers of youkai. tanuma, though, is open and contemplative, maybe even hopeful; he wants to be let in and he wants to help, even if it is dangerous.

the lighting reinforces these conflicting attitudes, with tanuma's side being brighter and warmer while natsume's is darker and colder, representing this sort of "optimism vs pessimism" dynamic.

so now, the fish. the bridge between their different worlds, basically. on natsume's side it's a real fish while on tanuma's it's a shadow cast on the wall, which is obviously the original conceit of the scene in the source material: natsume can literally see the fish, while tanuma can only see its shadow. still, even if it manifests differently, it still exists to both of them, so it's a connection between them concerning youkai.

so they're both in their separate worlds, but because of this connection they affect each other, maybe in small ways at first; as the fish crosses over the barrier it leaves little effects, little disturbances behind. on natsume's side, bubbles drift up towards the surface, little pockets of air like little lifelines showing the way, and on tanuma's side little droplets fall and create ripples in the reflected water, these small things that grow and grow outward until they're not so small anymore. little feelings that bubble up and ripple out, hoping to reach the other in their own way.

the fish brings these feelings across the barrier, endlessly looping around them as they endlessly call out to each other, trying to navigate this relationship they have; it's possible to bridge the gap between them as long as they look and listen and learn to embrace the things that make them different just as much as those that bring them together.

and that's about it! my goal was to make a symbolic piece about their struggle to understand each other but with a hopeful note, so hopefully that comes across! i hope my explanation at least sort of made sense and wasn't too confusing! (to be completely transparent i only had about half of that in mind while i was drawing it, the rest sort of came together as i was writing this. neat!)

and finally, here's a still frame in the original higher resolution so you can see it a bit nicer! 💖

[holetalia]

Have you ever hit your limit? Have you ever flown so close to the sun for so long you almost forgot your wings weren't real? That they could melt?

America, characterized in youth by his rugged tenacity, taking the underdog mentality of doing anything for a chance to win all the way to the top with himself, is scared of his limit. He's never hit it. He's won every battle he's waged and all the other ones the world had (key word lol) picked against him. Challenges are fun, even if they blow up in his face, because they can eventually be overcome. It's the mentality of a winner, of being number one. His optimism and confidence are owed to the fact that they've really never failed him, since he's never failed himself.

I think this is best demonstrated in world stars ch. 527, as Russia pretty much says the same thing. The transition from America crying to England to Russia is not only a good joke to breakup the escalation but reinforces that what bothers America most is his inability to punch everything away. It becomes a source of fear. Ghosts, his own faults, the dark, etc. Failure scares the perfectionist who's always won.

(using @/withnofreetime 's translation of the last two pages of ch. 527)

tfw your coworker is a "genius perfectionist" who's a wolf in sheep's clothing because he'd rather lie than admit weakness (considering he just lied about not having debt)

While they're supposed to be more human here than their normal personifications, America's line of "that's not my story" makes sense both here and in normal canon. Technically, he has, at one point, known and dealt with and worked under people stronger than himself. Endurance isn't strength and strength isn't always the best leverage when you lack in other ways materially (the assets, the tech, the capital) or in pure collective manpower. However I think it says something that a more mortal interpretation of these characters is quick to focus on America's now very human limitations.

If all you have is tenacity, then you gotta have some tactics. What does it mean to win? Well, we can assume in part it's about Total Control. Even if you're losing the material battle, or the intellectual war, you can "win" in the social narrative and thus maintaining your reputation by staying unflappably confident. Bulldozing works in terms of clout, and if power/winning/control is about other people, so long as you have clout, you can do whatever you want forever and ever.

So if you're used to maintaining your narrative, maintaining your social clout - all of which revolve around a sense of "total control" (which incidentally is also an aspect of Being Entertained, something America frequently seeks out) - being hit while you're down is probably the best way to get one over on America. And watch him fall into the ocean under the weight of his own melted metal.

[vasyandii]

Hi there again! I have a few questions regarding AM and his anatomy.

Ok so does he have organs? I’ve read in one of your post that he does have wires within his body but in another post where AM first uses his organic body it said “The air in his lungs hurt.”

So he has lungs??? I don’t know I’m just curious.🧐And if so how does he process food? Is it similar to us or not?? I know he doesn’t need to eat, but since Vernon shares her food with him I just couldn’t help but wonder…😀😄

Also, I promise I’m not stalking you or anything I just really love your art and the way you interpret ihnmaims!!! 🩷Your art makes me want to mediative daydream, it makes me so happy it motivates me!😭

Howdy Dislocatedcat! Thank you for the ask, sorry it took so long to answer, since I got it since it has been keeping me up at night trying to make sense of it in a logical way. I would draw out the Anatomy of AM, but it's kind of...gross? Not innards in of themselves, just his.

AM's Anatomy

A machine will cut things out of its system in order to make sure it works the fastest. AM streamlined his body to optimize efficiency and functionality.

By eliminating non-essential organs like the spleen, kidney, and appendix, he reduced the risk of potential medical issues and minimized maintenance requirements. This allows him to focus his energy and resources on tasks that require higher cognitive functions and physical performance. So yes he has organs and wires combined :)

His Heart

Vernon has made comments about him not having a heartbeat, which is simply not true! He does ,in fact, have a heart, it just beats so slow she can't hear it.

It beats slower than a typical human heart because his body requires less frequent circulation due to enhanced metabolic processes and possibly more efficient oxygenation and nutrient delivery systems (the immortality serum). The heart may also be reinforced or partially mechanical to ensure durability and consistent performance.

His Lungs

AM has lungs, yes, but they are likely designed to be far more efficient than human lungs. These lungs facilitate effective oxygen exchange and are regulated by his AI consciousness to meet the optimized metabolic needs of his body.

His Digestive System/Stomach

AM has taste buds and enjoys flavours just like a normal human. The initial stages of eating—chewing and swallowing—are similar to any other person.

While he might retain essential digestive organs like the stomach and intestines, these organs could be enhanced or partially mechanical. This could involve more efficient enzymes, faster digestion, and improved nutrient absorption mechanisms.

AM’s body has an optimized waste management system, efficiently filtering and expelling waste products. This could involve advanced filtration mechanisms that reduce the need for frequent eliminations.

Waste products are minimized through a highly efficient filtration system. Excess and non-usable components are quickly identified and directed for excretion.

I'm not a medical professional nor deal with organs (other than my own, god forbid) on a daily basis, so some of this is probably inaccurate. But if you made it this far, thank you for reading!

[mesetacadre]

How do you avoid becoming a doomer with politics? I want to be more politically active but the current political climate makes me feel depressed.

talked more about this here but essentially, nothing is static. Conditions change all the time, the quantity of organized people can fall and rise (with parallel but not necessarily 1:1 development of quality). What today seems like an impassable wall, tomorrow (not literally tomorrow) will more and more began to be seen as a necessary step for an improvement to happen. The fact that there exists a scientific method of analysis of history and capitalism also acts as an accelerant; how much time passed between the first bourgeois state and the first formulation of scientific communism, 50 years? That is unprecedented in the history of modes of production, and it only took another 50-60 years after that before the first relatively permanent instance of the next mode of production.

The way I see this, inaction and pessimism feed into each other, pessimism favors inaction, and inaction reinforces pessimism, by limiting your perception because it limits personal experience. And that cycle can only be broken by first stopping that inaction, since it is possible (not always) to force yourself to act against your general feelings. And then, only by working against that inaction and finding an organization/party or general line of action that works for you, can you begin to sustain an action-optimism cycle (of course, it isn't this simple and I would not call my outlook to be optimistic, but this is the best way I can think of explaining this). This cycle is, in my experience, very fragile, and somewhat often I continue to act through periods of relative pessimism by inertia and by the continuance of the responsibilities that bind me to my party most strongly. I can keep talking about the way society and the economy evolve, but at a personal and more inmediate scale, this is the only way to avoid "doomerism", at some point you're going to have to start acting if you want to avoid it, and rethoric can help, of course, but you'll only start to internalize it once you experience becoming an active part of these mechanisms. For me, it sometimes feels like a hobby, other times like a chore, and most times like the best thing I could ever do with my life. But it's crucial that you're not only driven by blind hope. The amount of effort and time you can contribute as an individual will vary wildly, depending on your own personal circumstances, and in my experience the most common type of organized person you'll encounter is the one that can only really dedicate a few days a week or a couple of hours every few days.

There is some nuance to "you have to end your inaction" too, of course. I'm not saying to join the very first group you encounter and dedicate every minute of free time to it, but you also can't be waiting for the perfect opportunity or org to come along. I contacted my ML party on a Tuesday during a winter academic break, while I was only just beginning to stabilize out of a suicidal episode but still depressed, and while considering myself mostly an ancom (I was very lost in that regard, my beliefs were not truly emergent from any proper anarchist core, but I digress). You don't need to have read x books or need to have encyclopedic knowledge of your local movement to begin to organize yourself, and you also don't need to believe 100% in the emancipation of workers. The best time to begin is the next time you have some free time to research and begin to contact some orgs/parties, that's as best as I think I can put it. I can't assure you that it'll be straightforward, but I can assure you that you can't get out of doomerism just by thinking about it.

If it's too daunting, think about those executive dysfunction "tricks". Joining A Party can sound very big an unapproachable, but you can break it down into looking, for example, for "Communist Party of [your country]". Look at their socials, see what they do and say, maybe you find an offshoot org that looks better, or run into a completely unrelated group. Then you contact them, ask when they're doing something in your area or if they can invite you to some kind of meeting, etc. Be willing to contact them if you find a couple of drawbacks too, sometimes rumors turn into the thing everybody says about x or y org, without really reflecting reality. Have criteria, of course, if some org is talking about immigrants like they're invaders, for example, it is probably not worth your time. Everything depends on what your local scene looks like. Getting experience at a mediocre org is still better than staying at home and looking on at the state of the world like it's hopeless. this isn't a very well-structured post, I've been writing this across a few days when I can, I hope it's helpful

[positivelybeastly]

Beast and Dark Beast

The thing that gets me about the 'Dark Beast is just who Hank is given time' thing I see thrown around every now and then is that it fundamentally misunderstands literal decades age characterisation and the entire narrative point of the evil doppelgänger.

Like, I genuinely think that anyone who writes these characters almost has to be sat down and made to read X-Men Unlimited vol. 1 #10, and that's not an exaggeration, because Dark Beast is NOT Hank if he was evil. What he is, is something more subtle and interesting than that. He is Hank if his socialisation was completely different, and that's a fundamentally different thing.

He grew up in an aggressively social Darwinist society that was obsessed with genetic purity, the superiority of mutantkind, the codification of the idea that some people are just better because of their genes. Literally everyone in that world is different, because how in god's name would they stay the same?

On some level, Dark Beast is aware that his world is fundamentally cruel and without faith and optimism and belief and love. It's a fucking hellpit. It's the worst possible world. And he knows that. He knows, on some level, that there was a time where he wasn't like how he was, that there was a time where he did have faith. He is, on some level, aware that this is not all he could be.

But he also believes that this is all he can be, because to be anything else is to be weak, and thus you get your teeth kicked in and you get your lunch money taken away and you get shanked in the head.

Like, this sequence is so fascinating because this murder is meaningless except as performance - and performance for a world that Dark Beast isn't even in anymore! It's empty.

Someone has to die - why? Because that's just the way the world is. Because if someone doesn't have to die, then my entire worldview is meaningless, I could have made different choices, swam upstream, maybe died as a result, but at least I wouldn't have done all that. Because if someone doesn't have to die, then everything I did was actually just straight up evil and I have to start worrying about morality, and that feels bad. That makes me feel weak and unhappy and angry and ashamed and I don't like that.

If someone doesn't have to die, then I could have made different choices. And I don't like the idea that I made the wrong ones.

Morality is subjective. Science is absolute. I don't have to think about it. Like, Dark Beast criticises Hank for this, but it gets at why Dark Beast has never been half the scientist Hank is, never will be half the scientist Hank is.

Because he is fundamentally incurious. He's asking questions, but they're not the right questions if you ever want to get an answer that fucking means anything.

He'll never be the scientist you are, huh?

Go ahead, loser. Fucking solve it. Best guess.

Oh, you don't have a fucking clue? I'm shocked.

There's a reason that Isaac Newton said that, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Collaboration, peer review, question, counter-question, interrogation, inquiry, the simple act of asking, hey, what if all of this is completely wrong and we're looking in the wrong place? All of this is what science actually is.

It is not the act of pinioning flesh open and poking at what falls out. That's butchery, and it's hackery. There's a reason that pretty much all of the medical research conducted by the Nazis has been discredited, because it's bad science on top of being completely morally abhorrent! You don't learn anything through brutality! You only reinforce your own brutality! You go looking for answers, and you find them, because anything that disagrees with your preconceived notions, you ignore!

And Hank is not like that. It's no coincidence that the exact same issue that dives into Dark Beast's psychology has this scene in it.

And it's just. This is not an aberration in Hank's writing. This is how he's hard coded. This is who he is.

Choice.

Hank was given a choice. Dark Beast wasn't. And the difference between them is that, when given further choices, Hank continued to recognise that he had choices, while Dark Beast refused to admit that he had ever had a choice.

The point. Of the evil twin. Of the doppelganger. Of the shadow. Is to examine what changes, and what doesn't. There is a reason that Dark Beast was chosen to survive the Age of Apocalypse, and persist 30 years past the point where his timeline was truly relevant. There is a reason that he was chosen over AoA Cyclops, or AoA Wolverine, or AoA Jean Grey, or any of them, to come over, and persist, and survive. There is a reason he keeps coming back to life. He has died twice, and come back, for a reason.

Because he is interesting. Because he's fun. Because he's everything that Hank is, twisted one hundred and eighty degrees and made frightening. Because he is such a contrast to Hank. And it's just. It's such a betrayal of long form storytelling and narrative techniques to take one look at the good twin, and go, what if they were secretly always evil, actually? What if the evil twin was actually just foreshadowing?

It's fucking boring.

Evil Hank is 'we have Dark Beast at home.' Evil Hank is dull, and boring, and an edgelord's idea of a mad scientist. He is not curious, he is not funny, he is not interesting. His entire ethos can be summed up in one sentence, the ends justify the means, and that's it. There's nothing more to him. He's a joke of a character. Can you write anything substantive about that version of character that isn't just a summary of his bad choices? No, you can't, because he's a collection of shitty tropes and badly researched continuity pulls. There's no point talking about him.

What happens if you put evil Hank in this situation?

Like, legitimately. If you put X-Force Beast in this situation, is there any real question as to what he'll do? No. And that is boring. It is, quite literally, actually, factually, in the most basic definition of the word, predictable.

This is the single most intriguing panel that Dark Beast has ever been in, because I genuinely don't know what he's thinking. I don't know what he's going to do. Because I don't think he knows what he's thinking, or what he's going to do. He's overwhelmed. He's emotional. He's possessed by something, but he doesn't have words for it. It's not absolute, it's subjective. It doesn't make sense. It's illogical. Irrational. It infuriates him. It fascinates me.

That, is the narrative point of the evil doppelganger. To put a version of a character you know in a situation where you know what the good version would do, and see what they would do. To see what changes, and what doesn't. So that you can be surprised at what is the same and what is different.

Saying, well, actually, they've always been exactly the same person, is fucking stupid. It betrays a belief in, fuckin', in fuckin' genetic essentialism! That all we ever are is a product of our genes and that we're never destined to be anything than what a string in our genes says we are. And it completely misunderstands why Dark Beast is the way that he is!

Dark Beast did not come into the world a monster. The world he lived in made him a monster. If you want to say that Hank is Dark Beast, just given time, then what the fuck are you saying about the world that mutants live in? That the X-Men have created? About Earth-616?

Do you really want to imply that the Marvel Universe is such a fucking hellscape for mutants that it literally has the exact same effect on Hank McCoy as the Age of fucking Apocalypse? Because why in the fuck should I even read about the X-Men, if that's what they've managed to accomplish in their 60 years of publication? What great fuckin' heroes.

Like, just. What actually happens to Hank, given time? What's more common for him to experience? Across the multiverse?

Mutation.

Misery.

Betrayal.

Death.

Seriously, go back and read old What If comics, and you'll notice that almost any time that things go bad for the X-Men, Beast dies, almost immediately, because it's an immediate sign that things have gone wrong. It is way more common for Hank to be the one who suffers rather than inflicting suffering, canonically. Just because Dark Beast is the only one people know about doesn't mean that he's the only one who exists.

Dark Beast is not an inevitability. He's an eventuality. He's a case study in nature vs. nurture. He's the worst case scenario. He's the shadow cast by Hank's light. There's a reason Hank persists, even damaged by bad writing as he is - because he's worth reading about.

Because he's interesting. Because, despite being 61 years old, there are still stories worth telling about him.

Because fundamentally, funny blue man who looks like a monster but is actually a good guy, is a better concept than, blue monster man that is evil and only evil. And the fact that people don't seem to grasp that idea in 2024 is. Baffling, to me. The fact that people would rather the boring answer, because it appeals to the edgelord in them, just makes me want to roll my goddamn eyes.

Bleh. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Ask for better, more complex stories, please.

[inbarfink]

I already talked about, like, the Obvious Symbolism of Simon reaching his lowest point literally dressed like the Ice King and then gradually gets back to his old outfit as he starts climbing out of his depressive spiral, at least somewhat.

But it’s also really interesting, maybe even more interesting, how Fionna’s outfit has been gradually shifting and changing with basically every adventure.

My first thought was that it really shows Fionna coming into her own as a character. The more she grows and also the more character development she gets - the more the audience learns to see her as more than just Girl Finn - the more her outfit moves away from just being a slightly girlier version of Finn’s classic look and into being its own thing. 

Because Fionna is her own character. 

But my second thought was more about the first time Fionna’s classic outfit got an update in this series.

This wouldn’t really relate to my first reading, since it just kinda makes her outfit closer to Finn. But it does relate to the most important Theme that her character arc revolves around - Fantasy versus Reality.

Fionna starts out the story interacting with the idea of magical adventure and heroism via the lens of fantasy. She compares everything to video games and just thinks about everything in terms of it being cool and fun and she literally tries to chase down a person from her dreams.

And her mindset was probably only reinforced by discovering she was literally created to be the Main Character in God’s little fantasy universe literally created out of self-indulgence for his silly little stories.

And because of that, she starts out the story with a huge Protagonist-Centered-Morality blind spot where she can’t recognize when she and Cake are in the wrong

And she rushes into action and violence just thinking it’s ‘cool’

And, like, in general acting without thinking of the consequences.

And at basically every step of this adventure, these kinda actions clashed against the reality of her situation. And it all started when she pointed out to her own creator that the outfit he designed for her is cute - but extremely unrealistic for an adventurer like herself

And from there we move to Fionna experiencing more and more of the harsh consequences of assuming everything should fit into her fantasies of heroes and villains 

And that she should punch first and ask questions later 

And in general that it’s always better to trust her guts over her head. 

And with every one of her experiences, the bright and adorable outfit that is a reminder of her origin as God’s Most Self-Indulgent OC gets tweaked in more way - turning it into something that looks a lot more, for the lack of a better word, gritty. And also turning it further and further away from the outfit of her own literal fantasies.

And all of these horrible traumatic experiences and the general dangers of the magical and very different world she’s in have all weathered down Fionna’s original optimism and eagerness and brashness that originally defined her and turned her terribly overprotective and scared instead. And it really reminds of how Simon’s own trauma weathered him down. 

Turning him from a kind man with a passion for adventure and the fantastical and a powerful parental instinct to a miserable jerk who aches for mundanity and made a little girl cry

Until he got to his very lowest point.

So I’m guessing next up for Fionna is getting to see her regain some of her old identity that the Trauma has been tearing away at - getting back some of that cheerfulness and brash attitude and adventurous spirit. Because while it has put herself and her teammates and others in serious troubles - it’s also been a huge help at other times (especially as she's a good counterbalance to Simon ‘slow but dependable’ Petrikov)

She needs to find the balance, learning the lessons from her multiverse adventure without losing all the things that made her Fionna Campbell in the first place.

And I wonder if this development is gonna be paralleled with a return of some of the more ‘classic’ elements of her look - or if her outfit is instead going to diverge farther?

[collapsedsquid]

My sense is that Silicon Valley has developed in just the opposite direction. My dearly missed friend, Aaron Swartz, was arguably the most genuinely open-ended intellectual to come out of modern tech. And he hated living in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s. He used to complain (sample here - he would expound on this at great length if you prompted him) about how intellectually dull Silicon Valley was, how disinclined people there were to talk about ideas, and how much happier he was after he moved to Boston, a place where people actually cared about books. Aaron was a member of the first class at Y Combinator. However, his broader intellectual interests were not only irrelevant to founder culture as it was back then but made him an actively bad fit, so that he ended up wandering off in a very different direction. In fairness, he was an awkward customer in all the right ways, and might very likely have lit out for other places no matter what. Silicon Valley has changed remarkably in the intervening two decades. Its culture now centers not simply on technology but the exercise of power. Powerful founders and funders not only aspire to make lots of money, but to reshape the world along better lines. They see themselves as a political elite as well as a financial one, and they are looking to educate themselves, often in ways that reinforce their own values and understanding of their own benevolent role. They want to be formed, and accidentally or consciously form others too. Tanner talks a lot about the classic Greek concept of paideia (education/formation). Its most prominent elucidation, the Cyropaedia, was written by Xenophon to support Athenian conservatives, who favored the rule of the few, in their struggles with the democratic faction. Xenophon’s notion of elite education was the model for the “mirror of princes,” a genre of mediaeval texts providing guidance for the education of rulers.Latin texts were similarly bastardized in the nineteenth century to mould the young gentlemen who would rule the British Empire, and through them influenced the anglophile East Coast elites who populated the State Department and the OSS. And that helps explain the creation of a canon. Founders who model themselves on Augustus Caesar, and engineers who aspire to reshape the world in their image, will not find what they need to know in textbooks on optimization. Nor, however, will they find it in the cultural precepts of the mid twentieth century WASP ruling class. Those were different times, and different values. Hence, they’re crafting their own mirrors from found materials - science fiction, biographies of great men, rationalist and libertarian tracts, and books about themselves. And there are lots of the latter, reflecting and refracting their own culture right back at them.

[kyouka-supremacy]

A little, not very polished ramble on Fukuchi and political theory, initially meant to be the answer to an ask questioning what I thought of the last chapter but posting separately because it ended up having little to do with the actual chapter.

This arc is good. I mean, the politics dilemmas it tackles are real and relevant (or maybe it's just me and loving politics discussion, that's a real chance too). Themes and interrogatives such as whether the eradication of states is possible; the critic to democracy in favour of a single authoritarian leader as the optimal solution for citizens' wellbeing; the utilitarian reasoning behind the justification of sacrificing a few in order ensure the greatest good to the most; the trolley problem– would you be willing to sacrifice five hundred in order to save two-hundred and ten million; the general interrogatives on why war happens; those are all real questions that political scientists try to give an answer to. I feel like bsd still hasn't cleared up where it stands in relation to these interrogatives– a lot of it is going to be determined on what Fukuzawa is going to do with his role of Army of Mankind's leader, whether he's going to accept it or something else. But I'm EXTREMELY curious to find out how the author will answer them and the worldview bsd is going to propose accordingly.

So far, bsd has seemed to me to propose a nihilistic-political realist-nationalist worldview: good and evil are meaningless binomials (Oda in his last speech to Dazai), every man acts in their own interest and the strongest prevails (Teruko in chapter 76), a strong sentiment of pride for own country that often translates in denigration of foreigners (the way all characters from other countries are villains, a somewhat reverence for military police (though other people have interpreted it being exactly the opposite))¹. Such reading of bsd is reinforced by Fukuchi's speech in chapter 85, with Fukuchi's character being made overall unsympathetic to the reader. At that point, I was like “Ah! Of course! The nationalist-realist manga makes of the anarchist an unsympathetic terrorist!” (and I'm quite confident I'm not misinterpreting by saying he was framed unsympathetically, at least as far as his ideals go. A lot of emphasis is put on his role of torturer, and the story protagonist looks very upset by it, which feels like inducing the reader to be as well).

But perhaps I was mistaken? Maybe I really jumped to the conclusion by believing this arc would have turned in one anti-anarchism morale. And even though it's still too soon to say it won't, in the arc conclusion we saw so far anarchism was at least framed in much more favourable lenses. Episode 5x11 and the last chapters have vastly subverted the lenses the reader is called to see Fukuchi under, and it's been SO interesting to see. Because Fukuchi isn't made unsympathetic, and as consequence his anarchist ideals aren't being framed as the senseless ravings of the villain anymore. Which I didn't see coming, and was pleasantly surprised by!! Fukuchi's desire to stop war by erasing all states, if not feasible, is now at least being framed as sensate and even noble; which is quite silly given that it's the same ideals he was carrying on in chapter 85, just with more details on political theory and positive lenses. Moreover, the world integration and creation of an single-state is framed as being a natural and unavoidable progression of history, which is CRAZY to me. I mean, it's crazy because it wholly contradicts the nationalist worldviews I found previously quite solidly established in this manga (which, again, might be just a big misreading on my side but. Wow.). Double crazy because there's about one million political scientists who would disagree with it… I don't think it's that much of an affirmed theory anywhere? If anything, because it's got some pretty strong historical negations: I'd like to ask Fukuchi how the gradual disgregation of states reconciles with the dissolution of the ussr and the objective difficulty to maintain wide pieces of land unified, the equally objective difficulty to concretize the goal of European integration, the new wave of nationalism in the world and new countries actively seeking independence rather than cohesion. In the end, Fukuchi seems to propose this insane hybrid of anarchism and authoritarianism with the denial of all states and one single leader detaining all the power (aka no separation of powers, the most rudimental basis to democracy), which sounds absolutely insane to any sensate person but I suppose can even make sense in the bsd world where there's no end to craziness.

I'm very very curious to see how the army of mankind's leader thing is going to be solved. Because if Fukuzawa accepts it, that's quite affirming that the best outcome for society is an authoritarian, antidemocratic regime. And although Fukuzawa himself was shown to be critic of that much (“Even if war did cease to exist, what would remain in that world is a single leader– a dictator. History has shown time and time again that dictatorships only rot.”, chapter 112), him being cornered to ultimately accept the role would seem to suggest that THAT is the only possible answer. Which is an odd subtly not-so-subtly authoritarian agenda which would be… Interesting to see affirmed? but at least that one *is* coherent with the previous signs of nationalism. That said, again, Fukuzawa was critical of it, so I'm not sure he will be willing to follow through (and I find it hard to image a new bsd where world order has been changed. And with Fukuzawa on top of the world, for the matter.) But Fukuzawa did not crush One Order… And overall the narrative seems to have trapped him into yielding to take on the role… Aaaahh, I'm just very curious from a political theory standpoint to see how the author is going to untangle the dilemma!!!

¹ In parenthesis I'm only bringing up the most notable indicators, but those doctrines are an underlying pattern of the whole manga and several events can lead back to these beliefs; for example, how Atsushi's abuse by the hand of the orphanage director is not morally condamned and even implied to have made him stronger, the emphasis on the great power of Japan (here emblematically represented by Yokohama) as a small country / city able to stand up against several evil foreign powers that make repeated attempts to destroy it, and more.

[talk-danmei-to-me]

Hey hey

Just wanted to send a m/m beefleaf prompt over with a modern AU coffee shop theme. Maybe there could be some little struggles and if you want to add smut, just go as you like ;3

#danmei fanfic club

He Xuan glances at the clock above the coffee machine and counts down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. As certain as the sun rising in the east, Shi Qingxuan bursts into Caffeine at 12:01 exactly. The nepo baby who stole his job and the sole reason he'd condemned himself to work as a barista after five years of business school. Other companies were available, but He Xuan knows he will never be satisfied until Shi Wudu is destitute, or potentially cursed to work in a fast food restaurant.

Still when he sees Shi Qingxuan's bright smile and is surrounded by his boundless optimism, it is hard to remain focused on the plan.

'Ming-xiong I am having the worst day. The worst day!' Shi Qingxuan slams his hand on the counter to reinforce just how bad his day is.

In spite of himself, whilst making Shi Qingxuan's order, He Xuan asks, 'What happened?'

'What didn't happen! Pei Ming slept with the client again. Obviously he didn't call back and now, now the client wants nothing to do with us. My brother has just been screaming at me for an hour. I said to him, it's not my fault, I didn't sleep with anyone important. Then he looked at me really accusingly. I'm not sure why.'

He Xuan hands him his order, a caramel latte.

'It's a carp today!'

He Xuan nods as he turns away to wipe up the sides.

'You really like fish.'

He Xuan hears the smile in his voice and says, 'I find them calming.'

'Maybe I should get some fish for the office? Are you on dinner soon? Come sit with me!' Shi Qingxuan says, pointing to a nearby table, he sits and waits for He Xuan to join him.

Reluctantly, or enthusiastically, He Xuan can never quite trust his own emotions when Shi Qingxuan is involved, he takes the opposite seat.

'Ming-xiong, you're so smart, you really are wasted here.'

If anyone else said such things to him, He Xuan would know it as a slight. When Shi Qingxuan says it, it hurts his heart. Yes he is clever, but he is also using that cleverness to sabotage the man across from him at every turn.

'What do you want?'

'We need to get Pei Ming!' Shi Qingxuan sounds so serious, a grown man making promises most hadn't heard outside of primary school. It's sickeningly endearing.

'What's in it for me?'

Shi Qingxuan replied, with all sincerity, 'I'll buy you a fish!'

He Xuan pauses, contorts his features to make it seem he is truly pondering such a request, after a sip of Shi Qingxuan's overly sweet drink, he replies, make it 2.

[edwardsissyhandsthtdanceslikeabb]

i feel like i'm slowly linking pretty much all of my banger shows to generational trauma (i.e bojack, succession, invincible) or some otherwise maladaptive response to the often totalitarian shaping that children who have been parasitized by vicarious idealizations suffer — however, as i've come to realize that the bear (a show i made a previous meta on when i sort of scented this notion but couldn't really articulate it), embodies this in a completely transformative way.

the bear may be about generational trauma, and though this initially sounds counterintuitive, it's not a show about carmy's generational trauma, its a show of camy's generational trauma.

the show doesn't explore the ways carmy's been wrecked, it moreso uses them to give character to his dysfunctions, to help the viewer see corporeal manifestations of the chaos brewing inside of him. the fanfare of carmy's life is the bear, its all the bombast and theatre of life's torture porn tendencies looming over his shoulder and rotting the floorboords and having its poison drip through, it's all the regrets and flashes of shame and brokenness slowly clawing through anything good in his life bc good things are brittle and unpredictable and detract from his value as a person, the utility he's found in being untouchable and cold and practically mechanical, and the way that makes one feel like all of the suffering was worth it.

it's carmy letting his internalizations of imperfection, from his family, his relationships, himself, his life, dictate what should define him. carmy circumventing feelings of helplessness with compulsive, neurotic control, aiming to undo the damage that chaos wrought through obsessive perfection.

its him eviscerating the [personal] value of his deep need and capacity for autonomy and forgiveness and peace, by reinforcing the same parasitic paternalisms he was fleeing from in the first place.

its him going from his mom to his mentor chef.

its him becoming what destroyed his chances to be human, destroyed his chances to be him. his own person, with individual purpose and intrinsic meaning and happiness.

that sort of self-dehumanization is what carmy is dripping into syd. like yes they have similarities, i'm not trying to deny that, but i feel like the 3rd season, especially the last episode, highlighted why syd x carm wouldn't be an optimal or even relevant consideration for their current dynamic, and that's bc carmen sees sydney as an extension of himself. she's all the things that validate his: maybe this is worth it, maybe i'm supposed to be a chef, its actually okay that i'm not functional bc now i get to be useful and revered and mean smth in the world and i'm no longer weak and useless deadweight.

now, now, i've proved myself, i've embodied the predetermined mould, i've surpassed it. i've become real, finally claimed autonomy.

its him seeing their similarities as reason to mould her in turn, as the only thing she needs. carmen reducing himself to apparatus and so reducing her in turn.

its a perversion of empowerment, accessing control through wielding it against others.

with syd exhibiting certain tendencies bc carmy spurs them from her. like sydcarm both having panic attacks, both being hyperfocused on stains, carmy wanting a star, not just bc syd acts as the northstar of his craft but bc he wants to prove himself. he wants to be excellent too. or them both snapping at softer, caring figures like tina when frustrated. its sydcarm degrading others under stress, sharing memories of hostile bosses, bosses who didn't appreciate them, whose mentorship was selfish with care and dignification and belief — made them feel small and claustrophobic and marginalized by one's own worst traits - by dysfunction willingly embraced.

and now you want out but you're also ambitious like syd, or proud like carmy, and its your pull to chaos vs your pull to happiness splintering you. now anything good is just a cruel fleeting thing that reminds you of what you won't let yourself have. now, people can only try reach out to the bear, coax it.

enter claire, who often gets flack for being a manic pixie dream girl and unrealistic, but when dealing with carmy, she revealed smth very primal in him, was palliating wounds he's let fester into core beliefs. like think abt it, claire is gentle, and claire treats carmen like he is gentle, fragile, she affirms his worth constantly and perpetually reassures him, whether intentional or not, claire aims to soften his wounds, aims to coax him out of his armor. she recognizes the depth residing in carmy, that the bear is equally damaged as it is brilliant, yet senses that a lot of that was mangled by malignance and flagellation. she attempts to let the bear shed his skin, remember who he is again. that someone cares abt him, both the chef and the boyfriend, the professional and the life of the party, he's allowed to have both. him the prodigy, the baby lamb. but claire spent so much time nursing the deer, by the time her own interiority could have room for growth, carmy had already cut her off, the sheep back in bear's clothing.

claire is the desperate attempt to reach someone backfiring completely, the incongruence between want and need, and how this can destroy you from the inside.

and the funny thing is that, neither claire nor the bear are carmy's actual need, when — beyond a gf not being able to fix carmy — he still kicks and screams at love and care despite desperately needing them. he's still the one who overindulged in the perfect patience of claire's love and validation, yet spurned it over how incapable and human it made him feel, still didn't want to lose control of himself, his personhood, his value.

he's still trying to imbue this same perfection into those closest to him in the kitchen, still insulating himself in that headspace, a wounded animal ensnared by a deathtrap, the bear stuck in his own freezer on his debut day.

its a trap that kills, and as carm embraces his confines, they throttle harder in turn, capturing those reaching for him in their rot.

it started with donna and passed down to carmen (who sought it in his mentor) and is dripping into syd. into richie, into claire, its carmen cultivating dysfunctions in all those beholden to him, dependent on his guidance, support or love.

its beyond generational, its a malignance, a pathogen, and although carmen may not realize how his conflation of perfection and value are lethal to him, its smth slowly killing nonetheless, mauling the warmth and love and soul of the kitchen, just as it slowly kills it in him. the bear killing the bear.

[carrythatwayt]

Before The Beginning ✨️Color Theory✨️

Okay, this will be pretty long, tldr: everything is a mirror of everything. All opinions are my own after I was caught between the twin forces of memories from my art and film theory classes. All screenshots thanks to the great folks at cap-that.com

I'm going to start after "Let there be light" for obvious reasons, up until that point the lighting is bright but cold and white. The nebula gives us a diegetic (in scene) reason for the shifting and intense colors but I think it's really interesting to see how it was used to reinforce this universe-changing conversation.

"Look at you, you're gorgeous!"

The nebula is only beginning to throw off color, and what's the first thing that happens? Makes it appear like Aziraphale's wings are blushing when he realizes the compliment was not meant for him (and seriously, how adorable is he).

As the conversation winds on and Crowley excitedly decribes the nebula, colorful light is increasingly projected onto the angels, but not the background. This visually ties them together and the intensity of colors seems purposeful as well, since they immediately begins to cool and dim as Aziraphale explains the less-than-stellar purpose behind the star factory.

"What's the point in creating an infinite universe.... if you're only going to let it run a few thousand years?"

Two really interesting things happen here. A star-burst reminiscent of a halo explodes and dissipates behind Angel Crowley's head, and when his wings droop in disappointment, a small cloud of red can be seen appearing behind his left wing.

As Aziraphale attempts to explain the ineffable but all-important Earth and humans, he begins to gather an aura of gold, baby pink, and baby blue. Crowley's red cloud of confusion also continues to intensify as he listens.

"But that's idiocy!"

The reddish clouds of confusion and doubt really begin to pick up speed now as Angel Crowley vents his frustration and beats his wings hard in agitation (also, shout out to how ruffled his feathers become because it's a whole mood in itself).

Here's where things get dangerous.

"Someone has to say "Look Boss, this is a really terrible idea..."

The red cloud has become a roiling crimson storm filling half the frame beyond Crowley and casting dark red light on his face. Meanwhile Aziraphale's background stubbornly hangs onto its cool colors, now opal and turquoise.

"I don't suppose anyone could object to me putting a note in the suggestion box..."

The nebula's red gas has now completely filled Crowley's frames, surrounding him on all sides. The next interesting thing occurs behind Aziraphale.

"I don't think it's our place to start suggesting...!"

In contrast to Crowley's red cloud of doubt, I've been calling this Aziraphale's red ball of anxiety (hello my old friend). He is deeply perturbed by this line of conversation and as he is explaining that the Almighty doesn't have, and likely wouldnt appreciate a suggestion box, this red light floats from behind his wing to behind his head (again, mood).

"If I was the one running it all..."

The saturation of Crowley's red background has lessened a bit, but Aziraphale's Red Ball of Anxiety reaches its peak intensity at this statement as Aziraphale nervously casts his gaze around to see if any other angels heard this borderline blasphemy.

"How much trouble could I get into just for asking a few questions?"

While Angel Crowley is still firmly framed by the red cloud, its disrupted by pale light cast by baby stars or proto-planets, as if it was being leavened by his irrepressible optimism.

For his part, we leave Aziraphale in a riot of both warm and cool colors: golds, greens, pinks, purples... This makes absolute sense to me, seing as it highlights the riot of emotions Aziraphale goes through, beginning with raw concern for Crowley's safety but resolving to a frankly breathtaking amount of affection and admiration. Seriously, zoom in and become unwell with me.

Well, that's all folks! Cheers to you if you stuck it out this far, hope literally any of my rambling and possible derangement was interesting to literally any one else 😅

[ohyespotatous]

Weekly study reflection (June 1-7) 💗🧠

Goals: Study at least 7 hours or revise 4 chapters a day Goals achieved: 3/7 (June 1, 3, 5) 

💌 - When I told you I'm a potato, I meant it, guys. My biggest blunder this semester? Being lazy for an entire month in April, which left me binge-studying 23 days before exams. I ambitiously aimed for 7-10 hours of daily study and promptly burned out in the first week, lol. Well, it's embarrassing. It's okay guys… Feel free to use me as a bad example. That way I won't be that useless. Haha, just kidding! We either win or learn :) Now that I made the decision to not fail this semester, I’ll make the most of my time, even if it's not perfect. So… here's my evaluation of the first exams prep week :v

Goals & objective 🎯

🧐>

The goals I set could be more attainable and specific.

Studying for 7 hours doesn’t mean I am effectively learning something. I could learn more or less in the same amount of time.

Revising based on the chapters isn’t practical for exam preparations. I don’t need to relearn everything, and it gets boring for my rebellious mind.

💡>

I need to set different goals for each subject & topic.

Outcome-based objectives rather than time-based ones.

Time, energy, and focus management ⚡

🧐>

Boring study schedule. As I set my goals based on study duration, I made a fixed study schedule with a fixed study interval. I got knocked out really fast. 

I tend to get burnt out every other day when I study for more than 5 hours.

Long sessions lead to diminishing returns. My study time keeps decreasing throughout the week.

I’m not too fond of Pomodoro because it breaks my flow. Still, it is helpful when I have difficulty focusing or don’t feel like studying.

Coffee doesn’t necessarily enhance my focus. Drinking enough water works just as well. Morning coffee causes me anxiety during noon study sessions.

My brain works best in predawn hours until early morning.

💡>

Add a big buffer to the study time, so you can start when you’re physically & mentally ready and don’t feel guilty when you start late.

Break the study time into shorter intervals with breaks.

Use a variable-interval/variable-ratio reinforcement schedule. Stop when you’ve learned/done enough or are tired. Give yourself a little reward.

Optimize study environment and various learning methods for sustained focus. Keep it interesting!

Adjust caffeine intake and timing. Drink enough water.

Learning Techniques 🧠

🧐>

Since I have only studied Statistics and Economics until now, my biggest challenge is the numbers 💀 My biggest weakness. The only way out is to practice and practice more.

I think the theory part went pretty well. 

Unless the book is ‘poorly written’ or hard to understand, I don’t really need pretty notes. Scribbling the book and writing side notes work better for me. 

Flash cards for key concepts and terminologies.

I use the Feynman method and mindmaps to review my understanding of the information. I usually explain the concepts to the walls or my cats, lol.

I still need to make time for the practice tests.

💡>

Make card decks for Statistics and Economics equations.

Convert charts and diagrams into your own words.

Schedule a time for the practice tests.

╰⁠(⁠*⁠´⁠︶⁠`⁠*⁠)⁠╯

[neragufetta]

What now MHA?

I don't feel comfortable commenting on MHA chapters, since 1. I don't know Japanese 2. my ability to express myself in any other language is not that great either and 3. I'm all too aware that my approach to reading is generally superficial, missing the flavours and nuances of the story most of the time; however, this time, I feel the need to write down my confused thoughts on chapter #424 because it was amazing and I'm still overwhelmed.

So let's begin.

This chapter begins with Meryl's comment about the weather and how perfect is this detail already? Both for narrative coherence, since in the past All Might's blows managed to change the weather and Izuku has just managed to do the same, and above all for symbolic meaning, since the wind in MHA represents the will to change. With the sentence "We are expecting strong winds" Horikoshi suggests that society is undergoing a profound change and I love this method to build the lore.

Next scene, we witness the rapid reconstruction of the town, a moment full of optimism for everything will soon return as before…except Bakugo's physician brutally cut in telling us the exact opposite. This is another skilfully orchestrated, almost cinematic passage, and clarifies what Horikoshi's intentions are as he uses Bakugo's arm as a symbol of society. Bravo.

Another scene, we find Izuku regretting not being able to save Tenko, and I don't know about you but I love this aspect of Izuku, he knows that he has killed and, more importantly, has failed to save someone who, before being a villain, was a victim. How often does it happen that the protagonist of a shonen manga feels empathy for the main antagonist of the story? Izuku's regret once again reveals an emotional depth that we have come to know in MHA, one of the main reasons why I love this manga.

Although I didn't appreciate the many flash backs used by Horikoshi in the past, in this case I found it apt: Tenko's smile and “do your best” suggest forgiveness but also a warning: although Izuku failed to save Tenko, he still has a chance to save at least part of his ideal, which is to build a society in which LOV members are accepted and included, and Izuku has to work hard to succeed.

I will quickly skip to the final panels, where Shoto and Ochako appear, because in my opinion they reinforce the same concept: the death of AFO, Tenko and who knows how many other villains should not be considered the solution to the problem but should make us look with different eyes at the society that has embedded them in this role, to prevent something similar from happening in the future. We don't know who survived between Toga, Toya and Spinner but I fear that there will be more casualties, "perfect victory" does not exist in a war.

And now let's talk about the confrontation between Katsuki and Izuku, a confrontation that, if you happened to have come across one of my lists, you know how essential and awaited it was for me.

Well, it was totally different from what I expected, and far better in many ways. In Katsuki's crying there is everything, sorrow for his friend, who lost the dream of a lifetime, but also for his own (old? new?) dream of competing with each other. There is the regret of rejecting Izuku for so long and losing the chance to make up for it.

Izuku's reaction is no less poignant: first an attempt to defuse the situation (with the “Nacchan” panel) that has the opposite effect of reinforcing the seriousness of Katsuki's crying, then his confusion (“this is not like you”) and perhaps even panic that leads to his typical mumbling, attempting to analyze the situation and failing, in my opinion.

Although I appreciated All Might's words, we did not see Izuku fully grasp the meaning behind Katsuki's crying, also because it has now been more than a hundred chapters that Katsuki keeps opening up to Izuku, while the opposite has not happened yet and I am beginning to fear that it will not happen anymore.

Now what?

I suppose we will see people grappling with the aftermath of the war, trying to accept what has happened and possibly initiate a change.

Izuku, Ochako, and perhaps Shoto might share their regrets about their opponents, although I think we will rather see Shoto with his family.

I can imagine a final confrontation between Aizawa and Yamada regarding Shirakumo.

Then, if you allow me to dream wildly, I hope there is more left in Izuku than just the embers of the One For All: the importance of his sacrifice is paramount but, by now, there have been so many occasions where OFA went wild with nonsense that once more would not hurt and Izuku deserves a quirk.

Although it's totally unnecessary, I'm still hoping to finally find out about Deku's father (if only to rule out the “Dad for one” theory) just because Horikoshi once stated that we would see him and he don’t see him going back on his word.

Finally, I really hope to see Izuku and Katsuki holding hands, preceded perhaps by Izuku's response to everything that has happened between them. Their relationship has been an important element throughout the narrative, and I hope for a meaningful conclusion.

TLDR: This chapter was awesome, heartwarming and yet bittersweet, I can't wait to read the next one.

[crippleprophet]

i want to thank you for your post from a few months ago about abandoning the idea that health is good. it's helped me process and unpack just how much the health framework has damaged me (and everyone; you could get multiple phds exploring how the concept of health categorizes and controls bodies!). and those ideas have extended beyond my personal life to my academic and professional writing and my interactions with loved ones - they've reached and impacted a lot of people.

i was a disabled child in a family of career athletes; the health paradigm was deeply engrained at an early age. now that i'm finally shaking those teachings, i've gotten a lot out of reanalyzing ideas i've always framed through a health lens. if it doesn't matter if i "eat healthily," since that's a meaningless concept, then how and why do i choose what i eat? why do i want to stretch regularly, if not because it's healthy and my doctors said it will improve my disability? how does my relationship with substance use change when health is taken out of the equation?

in these questions, i often find there's deeper and more satisfying reasons for my feelings and actions. this process reminds me of my experience with transness, in a way. reconsidering the concepts and assumptions underpinning a framework, deciding the whole framework is useless to you, and exploring what lies beyond it. thank you for opening such a freeing and fascinating door :-)

oh, woah, this absolutely made me cry, i truly can’t express how meaningful this is for me. (as you might know from following my blog lol) i’m homebound & only see two people in person unless i’m at the doctor, so this feeling of connection to other folks in my community is so deeply valuable, i really can’t thank you enough 💓💓

i definitely relate to the sense of rejecting health leading to a changed perspective on, like, everything in my life + prompting more intentional ways of engaging with my choices, routines, etc. following that theme of community, lineage, & ideas that ripple out, i’d love to take the time to mention just a few of the scholars, ancestors, comrades, & friends who have been life-changing for me in this area!

while there is a lot of transformative & vital work within disability studies, there’s still a lot of structural barriers against sick people’s contributions to formal theory + a lot of direct & indirect reinforcement of health as a good thing in the field. so i’ve found in many cases more resonant work in trans studies, mad studies, & postcolonial studies, by people affirming the pathology of their own identities & positions. just a few favorites of mine from within, across, & outside of these fields, in no particular order:

Sandoval-Sánchez, A. 2005. Politicizing abjection: in the manner of a prologue for the articulation of AIDS Latino queer identities. American Literary History. 17(3), pp.542-549.

Fritsch, K. 2013. On the negative possibility of suffering: Adorno, feminist philosophy, and the transfigured crip to come. Disability Studies Quarterly. 33(4).

Barounis, C. 2013. “Why so serious?” Cripping camp performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 7(3), pp.305-320.

Abrams, T. and Adkins, B. 2020. Tragic affirmation: disability beyond optimism and pessimism. Journal of Medical Humanities.

Stryker, S. 1994. My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: performing transgender rage. GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies. 1(3), pp.237-254.

Sexton, J. 2011. The social life of social death: on Afro-pessimism and black optimism. InTensions Journal. (5).

these were all immensely profound to me, but this last work, following Fanon, was such a complete & total frame shift for me that i feel the need to include some of it here (emphasis added):

This is precisely what Gordon argues is the value and insight of Fanon: he fully accepts the definition of himself as pathological as it is imposed by a world that knows itself through that imposition, rather than remaining in a reactive stance that insists on the (temporal, moral, etc.) heterogeneity between a self and an imago originating in culture. Though it may appear counterintuitive, or rather because it is counterintuitive, this acceptance or affirmation is active; it is a willing or willingness, in other words, to pay whatever social costs accrue to being black, to inhabiting blackness, to living a black social life under the shadow of social death.

This is not an accommodation to the dictates of the antiblack world. The affirmation of blackness, which is to say an affirmation of pathological being, is a refusal to distance oneself from blackness in a valorization of minor differences that bring one closer to health, to life, or to sociality.

[…] In a world structured by the twin axioms of white superiority and black inferiority, of white existence and black nonexistence, a world structured by a negative categorical imperative— “above all, don’t be black” (Gordon 1997: 63)—in this world, the zero degree of transformation is the turn toward blackness, a turn toward the shame, as it were, that “resides in the idea that ‘I am thought of as less than human’” (Nyong’o 2002: 389). In this we might create a transvaluation of pathology itself, something like an embrace of pathology without pathos.

To speak of black social life and black social death, black social life against black social death, black social life as black social death, black social life in black social death—all of this is to find oneself in the midst of an argument that is also a profound agreement, an agreement that takes shape in (between) meconnaissance and (dis)belief. Black optimism is not the negation of the negation that is afro-pessimism, just as black social life does not negate black social death by inhabiting it and vitalizing it. A living death is as much a death as it is a living.

if you want a pdf of any of these & are unable to find one feel free to hmu (although they will likely come with my annotations lol). this was a major topic of my master’s thesis for my disability studies degree (which was actually about disabled trans people, so i love that you connected this process of rejecting normality to transness in your own experience – i relate to that a lot) & i’m also happy to share that research with anyone who’s interested :)

i also have relevant thoughts & reblogs in my “stay sick” tag here (which i’ll add to this post) & my “embracing abjection” tag here + more broadly on my main.

& just a few of the many folks whose work + lives have shaped mine: @kelpforestdwellers @heavyweightheart @librarycards @crutchbutch @gatheringbones

i would also (always) absolutely love to hear more about your thoughts + writing if you would like to share! thank you again for taking the time to share this with me, i appreciate it more than i can say 💓💓

[bigskydreaming]

Last reblog - I’ll never forget one of my first interactions when getting into Batfandom again online around 2018 or 2019 or whenever I started being active in Batfandom on this blog.....I was reading a very popular prompt-response fic on Ao3, where one chapter was the author responding to a prompt to do a more cathartic take on Dick reuniting with his brothers post-Spyral.

For whatever reason, this author’s idea of a better version of this still had Dick getting punched by Jason, just then immediately make up with him afterwards, so I guess a speedrun from punch to ‘glad you’re alive’ is better, as long as the important part is Dick still gets punched? LMAO. Yeah, no. I don’t know about the person who gave the initial prompt, but I sure as hell didn’t find anything cathartic about a writer doubling down on the idea that Dick still ‘deserved’ to be greeted with violence because he’d emotionally hurt his brothers and so physical and emotional payback is necessary to balance the scales.

And I didn’t even leave a comment on the fic where it might start something publicly, I VERY politely just private messaged asking them if they’d CONSIDER posting some kind of headsup on that chapter, that it still contained Dick getting punched out on his return from Spyral by one of his siblings....because that’s not something people interested in the specific prompt of ‘cathartic take on Dick reuniting more happily with his brothers post-Spyral’ are likely expecting y’know? 

And look, for as much as Batfandom - ESPECIALLY Jason stans, which I’m pretty sure this particular writer was, primarily a Jason and Tim fan even if they did write fic for the whole Batfam - likes to go on about the tragedy and trauma of physical abuse, there is VERY little consideration in this fandom for the fact that abuse....and in specific, mentalities ABOUT abuse - can be triggering as well! Its not just stuff like sexual assault that can trigger people who are abuse AND/OR rape survivors. So I very politely and civilly, without making insinuations, accusations, attacks, etc, tried to point out that for some fans who’re abuse survivors who are disturbed by how casual and even outright permissive DC canon tends to be about physical abuse between family members, reinforcing the idea that Dick was OWED physical harm by his family to make up for his perceived crimes against them in the Forever Evil/Spyral stuff could legitimately be triggering.....

b/c it feeds into and even validates a lot of the exact same bullshit we were fed by family members justifying their own acts of harm or violence against us ‘because we deserved it.’

And I fucking AGONIZED over this message before sending it, FYI. It was before any of my overly aggressive or antagonistic tumblr posts on these topics, with a lot of my ire in those posts born FROM how all this (and other similar events) played out, but I pored over it before sending it, making sure I was being as diplomatic as possible, because I don’t know this author other than her work, I don’t know her experiences, who she is as a person, nor did I particularly CARE....I wasn’t trying to say or presume ANYTHING about that person, I was strictly interested in just getting some kind of optimal outcome from messaging them, ie getting them to reconsider their viewpoint there or at least include some kind of tag or message clarifying what the author meant by cathartic with that chapter & that it might not be as different from canon as readers might assume or hope.

Because literally my only endgoal in sending that message was so hopefully other abuse survivors didnt stumble into the exact sort of fic they - like I - might be coming to because they were seeking catharsis to MAKE UP FOR the fucked up view canon expressed about how Dick’s first encounter with his brothers post-Forever Evil should play out. 

Instead of just getting more of the same, with FURTHER validation of how he deserved that.

Of course, no matter how much I tried to ensure my message was received in the spirit it was intended....that’s not the outcome I got.

No, instead this author UNLOADED on me in her response, putting me on blast for daring to call her an abuse apologist and being a toxic stan who would make insinuations and attacks and basically call her a bad person just because I didn’t like how she treated my fave. And she definitely shared this and vented about me to all her friends, despite me making a point to message her in private rather than leave this in the comments for everyone to see, because for WEEKS afterwards I was seeing vagueblogs that were very clearly about my message, even including references to specific phrases I’d included in my message, and I heard from others that there were similar jokes and shit made about me in discord servers, etc.

All because I’d dared ask a writer to give people a headsup that they were doubling down on what some fans felt there was reason to view as validating a potentially abusive instance - ie a character accepting physical violence as penance for how he made his brothers feel.

And this, like that last reblog also said in its own examples - is EXACTLY why don’t like don’t read and curating your own content is BULLSHIT. Because it presumes that people KNOW when they’re endorsing or validating or justifying stuff that other people have ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIED REASONS for viewing as harmful or toxic....and that they tag or warn appropriately.

And it further presumes that when informed that they might even UNINTENTIONALLY be perpetuating harm with a specific viewpoint or depiction of something.....that there is ever any kind of guarantee that they will accept this information or perspective gracefully, instead of perceiving it as an attack on their PERSON and innate goodness or whatever.

No matter HOW someone goes about trying to convey this perspective, either aggressively or with the utmost attempt at civility and diplomacy.

And nine out of ten times this escalates. Again, no matter HOW a person went about asking for a specific tag or to consider a specific viewpoint - which, y’know, when politeness only earns you escalation from people who won’t let shit go because they feel PERSONALLY ATTACKED by you saying hey maybe you’re not actually unproblematic in every view you’ve ever had....MAYBE there’s a reason why after YEARS of trying politeness or civility, people stop bothering with it and just say hey fuck you for this shitty viewpoint or depiction.....

But from my experience, nine out of ten times even a completely conciliatory approach only earns you vitriol and escalation from people who will absolutely go on the attack, grab all their friends, and freaking dogpile even on self-acknowledged survivors just asking you to consider adding some freaking TAGS....

Because some of you would rather throw survivors under the bus WHILE exploiting the hell out of knowing one who agrees with you (despite our experiences not being monolithic, sure is funny how the ones you agree with have in YOUR eyes the universally acceptable stance on stuff)....

Rather than just....

Sit with the idea that maybe you at some point in your life have unintentionally perpetuated a toxic or harmful mindset that you inherited or learned from previous generations, the media, or other people in your life, and didn’t think to question it because you personally had never experienced a reason TO question it before now.

LOL its funny, and I say its funny when its really not but lol you laugh so you dont scream am I right? Iykyk. But its funny how years later even just THINKING about this one fucking message I sent and what it got me in return has my hands shaking so bad its taking me three times longer than it should to write this post. I’ve had to get up and walk around at least twice to get my thoughts in order so I could finish it.

And here’s the part so many smug assholes over the years just willfully refuse to understand. I’m not TRIGGERED thinking about this cuz I’m oh so fragile. And frankly, it’d be fine if I WAS, whatever that happens to mean in your eyes, I’m just clarifying, its not the case here. LMAO. I didn’t survive a childhood of physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse, I didn’t survive being gaybashed and assaulted in college, I didn’t survive years of shitty experiences as a sex worker, my fucking jaw collapsing because of longterm physical consequences of being attacked.....

By being nearly as fucking fragile as some people on this site like to convince themselves I am when I get worked up about stuff like this.

My hands aren’t shaking because I can’t handle reminders of what I’ve been through or whatever people convince themselves of while telling each other in their discord server that I really should just stay away from content I can’t deal with.

I’m fucking vibrating like I’m Wally West because years after this stupid, should have been nothing message I tried so hard to make informative and personal instead of aggressive and accusatory......

I’m still PISSED.

At how STUPID all of this is. At how HYPOCRITICAL some of you are. At how I’ve made a point practically my entire time in fandom, to be open and forthcoming about my past and traumas because if I’m going to be in fandoms obsessed with male rape survivor characters and abuse I’d rather at least let my perspective be available as a RESOURCE if anyone wants it than just stew in how I feel every time I come across a post or fic I don’t think has the slightest awareness of how its coming across.....

And the sheer volume of times I’ve had people coo at me and ooh and aww about how sorry they are for what I’ve been through like that’s REMOTELY why I talk about these topics or what I’m looking for.....

Only to see those exact same people turn around and mock me behind my back, spread lies about me, attempt to gaslight me at every possible turn into thinking I’M the problem, if I would just quietly and passively accept that people are going to reinforce and validate the very mindsets that led people to do certain shit to me in the past, that some people are interested in GETTING OFF to these mindsets, well then everyone would just be so much happier....

And meanwhile, I’ve made post after post after post about my experiences or perspectives as a male survivor that I can’t even hit double digits on, note wise, even as the stupidest of my shitposts hit triple digits and more....

When the ONLY reason I post about those topics is not because I’m interested in being any kind of authority on male rape, childhood abuse, incest, etc, or think I ever possibly COULD be just because I’m one person these things happened to, but merely because if the conversations about them are going to CONSTANTLY be happening around me whether I want them to or not, I’d at least rather have my voice be INCLUDED and CONSIDERED in those conversations instead of just having to sit there LISTENING to people offer up uninformed opinions with complete certainty they know everything that’s ever been worth THINKING about in terms of that topic and if there’s anything else, well its obviously not important or else their enlightened asses would have already instinctively known it, wouldn’t they.....

My god. Its infuriating.

And hell, I’m KEENLY aware that even with all that, I’d still loaded to the brim with cis white male privilege, so trust me when I say I TRULY do not understand how some of my friends who have to deal with shithead hypocrisy on axes I don’t have any experience on, on a DAILY basis on this site and others, put up with some of you. And its why I will ALWAYS side with them no matter how ‘aggressive’ they’re being in the face of some faux-civil asshat crying fake tears about how they’ve been accused of being a heinous person which of course justifies anything and everything they say and do in response now.

But yeah. The hypocrisy of people. The fake ‘I care so much about survivors that I’m going to make this one a running joke on my blog because he dared make me THINK about the content I churn out every week to entertain myself and my friends, the GALL.’

That’s the shit that gets me. That keeps me from joining servers myself, that has me wary of even DMing with people I only know from their notifications on my posts, because I’ve got zero interest in having a fun headcanon chat session with someone who will two days later be faux-sympathetically vagueblogging with a friend how its so sad how I can’t move past certain things or let them go even though they’re part of the reason I’m constantly re-exposed to stuff even just in the tags people add TO MY OWN POSTS.

All because some people on here are so fucking TERRIFIED of what they might find if they ever tried a little serious self-examination, they’d rather reduce self-professed survivors to tragic victims while being fully prepared to vilify them the SECOND they say something a little too real or paint a picture someone doesn’t want to see themselves in.

Because god forbid some of you figure out how to just say....

”I’m sorry. What you brought up made me insecure and nervous when I thought about how many people I might have unintentionally hurt over the years while thinking I was just having fun with my friends, so I lashed out.”

Or “I didn’t know how to handle not being as thoughtful or informed as I like to think I am, so I made you the enemy instead.”

Or “I didn’t want you to be right so I made sure I believed you were wrong.”

Or “I was immature and not ready to tackle the work this might mean I needed to do on myself, so I pretended I couldn’t see it.”

I mean, after all, the ONLY thing I ever expected or hoped for - or hell, NEEDED - from that one writer I raised as an example, from years ago - was just a simple:

“I’m sorry, I literally just never thought about it that way before but I’ll add a note so people know that’ll be in the fic.”

That’s it. That’s all that was ever needed. I didn’t need or want their life story, their penance, them to fall over themselves making it about me or my trauma just because I brought it up, I didn’t expect them to shift their whole worldview from a single message.

Just a simple acknowledgment that I and my viewpoint were not unreasonable, and hey, maybe they’re not perfect and there’s still more work to be done on some mindsets or viewpoints they’ve always taken for granted.

The end.

(Or at least, it could’ve been).

[rhinozilla]

Detroit: Become Family 2022 - Prompt 8: Real

@dbh-found-family

Hank was okay.

He wasn’t okay, but he was going TO BE okay. It could have been so much worse. This was…This was the optimal result.

The doctor had explained that the bullet had passed cleanly through Hank’s left shoulder. Clear entry and exit wounds. Connor’s first aid at the scene had minimized the blood loss and risks of infection, and the hospital was taking every precaution to keep it that way. The more concerning injury came from the concussion that he’d gotten from falling backwards and hitting his head on the concrete.

All things that Connor had already determined from his own scans at the scene and his continual scanning as he waited in Hank’s hospital room. The glass monitor screens mounted on the wall displayed Hank’s vitals in real time detail. Hank himself had told Connor that he had been through worse, and he was just right there in front of Connor, finally succumbing to exhaustion after the evening’s events.

He was going to be fine.

And yet Connor was still worried for him.

So he stood by the window for a while.

Then he sat in the recliner by the bed.

Then he stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the monitors, at Hank, at the wall.

He didn’t have brain chemicals or have organic nerves, yet it felt like his skin was crawling with anxiety.

He could distinctly recall the scared expression on the WR600’s face as he’d realized that Hank and Connor had chased him into a corner between two buildings and a wooden fence. The shaking and panic in his frame as he’d pulled out a gun, raised it, and fired. Androids, even lawncare and landscaping maintenance models, were designed to have perfect aim in all things. His emotions had compromised his aim…if the WR600 had even meant to shoot to kill, which Connor didn’t think he did. He had just been afraid and trying to get away.

And Connor’s emotions were compromising him now.

The mound of bandaging around Hank’s shoulder was rising and falling with his breathing, which was good. The bandaging around his head was making the rest of his face look pale and washed out, which was bad. He felt very far away.

Connor remained standing at the foot of the hospital bed, watching the monitors and comparing them to his own scans of Hank’s person for a while. A long while. Perhaps too long.

When Hank finally stirred, Connor’s eyes locked onto him, even as he remained rooted to the floor at the foot of the bed.

Hank cracked his eyes open, swallowing against a dry throat before bringing Connor into focus.

“Hey,” Hank greeted in a raspy voice.

He frowned and coughed once, and that was rewarded with pain aggravating his head injury and possibly his shoulder, going by the twist in his facial expression.

Connor felt a pang of added worry, and he hurriedly moved to the table beside the bed, filling one of the glasses there with water from the small pitcher that an orderly had brought.

“Hank?” he asked, inwardly wincing at the shaky tone in his own voice.

Hank lifted a hand to rub at his chest near his shoulder, and he cracked his eyes open again to look at Connor. He blinked once, and the fog seemed to clear the rest of the way.

“Hank, it’s me. It’s Connor.” He felt it needed reinforcing. Just in case.

Hank smirked and lifted a hand. “Hey, Connor.”

Connor caught his hand and held it supportively. The warmth and weight of his hand abruptly made all of this real.

It wasn’t just monitors and screens and scans and diagnostics.

Hank had been shot. He had sustained a head injury. He could have been killed.

The distress of that abrupt punch of reality must have been visible on his face, because Hank’s smile sobered. He gave Connor’s hand a squeeze.

“Hey. I’m all right, kiddo.”

“You were shot,” Connor said shakily. “I should have stopped him. I should have anticipated—”

“You can’t predict how people are going to act when they’re scared like that android was,” Hank tried to reassure him.

“I can,” Connor pressed. “That is one of my core functions. And I failed.”

Hank frowned, and Connor felt guilt pile on top of his feelings of failure. Hank was injured; he shouldn’t have to comfort Connor too.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized for both of those shortcomings. “There was a lot of blood.”

Hank waved his hand dismissively. “Ah, head wounds always bleed like…I’m fine.” He glanced at the glass of water in Connor’s hand. “That for me?”

Connor fidgeted and gave him the glass, watching him take small sips from it. It looked like the cool water was a relief, and Connor felt some of the tension ease from his own body.

“They didn’t let me…They kept me away from you until they got you settled in this room…Hospital policy. I am not…family,” Connor mumbled.

Hank finished the water and looked at Connor with an unreadable expression as Connor took the glass back.

“Yeah, they can be real sticklers about that stuff,” Hank said, shifting more gingerly in the bed. “Well, I’m awake now, and I want to go home. Can you get a nurse, and we can get this release paperwork going—” he said, starting to sit up.

Connor frowned. “You were knocked unconscious. Perhaps you should take some time to recover before—”

“I can recover at home,” Hank assured, leaning more on his good elbow, trying not to move his other bandaged arm. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself there.”

I don’t need you to take care of me. Clearly you can’t.

Hank would never say that. That didn’t stop Connor from hearing it.

Connor braced himself and nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop the WR600 sooner. My preconstruction identified him as a threat, but I didn’t notice the gun sooner and didn’t…anticipate that he would shoot.”

Hank shifted, looking at him with a frown. He sat up the rest of the way and kept his eyes on him.

“Connor. Come here.”

Connor hesitated, but when Hank lifted his good arm, Connor stepped closer. Hank looped his arm around Connor’s shoulders, pulling him in for an admittedly awkward half-hug.

Again, the warmth and weight of him made it all the more real, dispelling the what-ifs and could-haves and should-haves. Connor eagerly returned the hug. Hank moved his hand up to ruffle his hair at the back of his head.

“I’m all right. You’re all right. We’re all right,” Hank assured. “All right?”

Connor gave a small smile. “All right.”

Hank bobbed his head. “All right. Now go find a nurse. I want to go home.”