#mostly regarding its writing but also the message

[galacticnova3]

hey. it really wasnt ur place to add ur 2 cents to the susie fanon mischaracterization post. even if you didn’t downplay the racism by focusing on the mecha stuff

1. Considering the op is someone I consider a dear friend, if that were the case I would have no problem deleting my edition if asked to do so. I just also happen to have another friend who gets really freaked out by mind control/brainwashing stuff and so I admittedly kinda osmosed a higher Hey That’s Fucked Up reaction to that kinda thing to begin with.

2. H. How did I downplay the racism, exactly. When I literally expressed agreement and mentioned the racism aspect myself, just without focus because it had already been elaborated on. Also I feel like maybe brainwashing and racism can both be awful things at the same time?

3. Kinda tied to point #1 but maybe don’t make assumptions about others’ feelings on stuff I say

[submalevolentgrace]

Hi! I'm very interested in attempting to write a disabled character (not for this blog, I assure, for an book I'm writing) in which the story doesn't fetishize/objectify her prosthetic limb. I'm in many writing circles and have been for a long while, but I've never seen this issue brought to light which I realise is a very important one. I have much to change in my thought process, and thank you for bringing this issue to attention.

I'm curious, and I apologise if this has been asked before, but what sort of design could you see for a functional prosthetic that doesn't go for a plainly aesthetic appearance, or is soully to please others? I do note that you said prosthetics are generally... not that helpful. So is there a way that it could be? Or do you think it would always generally be better to not use a prosthetic, as its mostly for aesthetic purposes, as you said?

I apologise if this ask is too outright or anything, and I don't mean to intrude. Thank you for your time and have a beautiful day!

okay, i want to answer this as in depth as possible, because whenever i talk about having a prosthesis, someone will always tag some variation of "#writing reference" and i do wonder what message they're taking away, and i want to get as much of my experience out as possible to maybe help shape how this is all portrayed in the future. and yeah… this is gonna be one of those rambly smg posts that the expand feature was invented for, so i'll start with the very abridged TL;DR:

if you're writing a character with an upper limb prosthesis; don't. arm amputees are unicorn level rare even compared to leg amputees, and i've never interacted with or even heard of an upper limb amputee that regularly uses a prosthesis, let alone relies on one. fiction has lied to you for the sake of cool aesthetics, don't repeat the cycle. more in depth writing advice including nuance and "but i waaaant to" will follow.

that said, grab your donning parachute and let's get started...

context for everyone involved: i am an upper limb amputee that rants a lot about how prostheses suck, i lost my right hand roughly five years ago at roughly the age of 30 after a very rough decline in health… it was pretty rough. this question is being asked in the context of a previous rant post of mine, and i checked that the ask is about an upper limb prosthesis in particular.

the situation regarding the usefulness of lower limb prostheses is totally different; i am definitely no expert, but by all accounts, prosthetic legs are incredibly useful for many people. getting a good leg can be absolutely life changing and more or less necessary for day to day life for some; mostly because infrastructure and society is just so fucking hostile to wheelchair users. being able to walk - at the cost of pressure sores and rashes and increased residual limb pain - is a preferable option to many people than being unable to fit through a doorway or in a bathroom stall or find out that the key to unlock the only elevator is in the admin office up three flights of stairs (true story).

but upper limb prostheses… see, the thing is, hands are incredibly complex organs that rely on a lot of immediate haptic feedback to work at all. hand dexterity is all about control, you need fine granular movements of the digits yes, but you also need the subtle sensations of pressure and proprioception in order to adjust your movements on the fly. i speak from experience, in the years leading up to the full loss of my hand, i was slowly losing function of it, usually swinging between numbness that made it clumsy at best, or screaming overstimulation from moving it at all resulting in unpredictable spasms… and let me tell you, a half working hand is infuriating to try and deal with. you can never know if you have a good grip on something or if it's slipping because of the wrong amount of pressure, and there's only so many smashed bottles of pickles on the floor before you give up using it all together… so amputation wasn't a great loss there, i had time to adapt.

a prosthetic hand of any kind has all of those issues and more. they're heavy and bulky, the cosmetic faux fingers or gripping claw have crude movement at best, and there's zero feedback (put a pin in this). 100% of the time you're using a prosthetic hand you have to keep your eyes on the grip and visually guesstimate whether or not the thing you're carrying is held tight enough but not too tight, that is if your "heavy duty" prosthesis can even support the weight without the servos disengaging or the wrist attachment socket just busting loose. i dropped a whippersnipper on my foot last week when my socket couldn't take the weight and i think that was the final straw in me desperately trying to prove to myself that there is a single task my prosthesis actually helps with.

this is usually where fully two handed people start talking about bleeding edge DARPA tech, and how we just need to invest more,research more, develop more. better tech, more tech, neural integration, more more more. okay i promise the writing advice is coming! for starters on tech, my experience is already with a mid-to-high end ottobock terminal device: i've got a myoelectric nerve-signal operated proportional control heavy duty greifer; about the only upgrade left for me to get would be a rotating wrist joint if i could coflex. it's not military, it's not "rockclimber that owns a prosthetic company", but it's quality tech. it still fucking sucks. secondly, that high level military tech exists primary for PR purposes so they can say they treat their discarded casualties well, "we can rebuild him, we have the technology" style. every war vet i've read about or heard from that's been gifted that high level tech also abandons it for the same reasons; it's imprecise, there's no feedback (or the haptic interface has to be fully recalibrated every time they put it on), but mostly they're more capable without one.

okay, the transhumanist ableds say (i should know, i used to be one), what if we did more ~research and development~ and got that neural feedback working? then we could have fireproof superhumanly strong robot arms to fix up everyone! here's where i take out that pin we put up before and i tell you that a class of prosthetic arms/hands already exists that has perfect proportional control, fine motor control, and physics perfect pressure feedback piped directly into the patients' existing sensory systems! they're called body-powered prostheses, and they were invented in like the 1600s. you strap a whole bunch of stuff to your arm and shoulders shoulders, and control the operation of the terminal device and elbow through cable tension by flexing your shoulders. they do take a considerable amount of training to operate - though hell i spent 18 months training to use my myo - but based on everything i've read, body-powered prostheses are the best option if you're an upper limb amputee and absolutely need a second hand for some reason.

but they don't look cool and futuristic, and according to my prosthetist, most people give up on using them too. we all give up on our prostheses, no matter the type. my rehab OT was impressed i lasted the 18 months of my training. towards the end, they even asked if the clinic director could drop in to one of my sessions to see my progress; he expressed genuine amazement at me casually using my bulky robot claw to use a brush and dustpan, and made an offhanded (hah) comment about what someone can achieve "if they stick it out to the end", implying it was somewhat of a rarity for me to have done so. several years on, and yesterday i wedged the dustpan between my ankles to sweep up into it, awkward but exponentially less effort than putting my dusty robot arm on. which, by the way, is a whole thing. look up some videos, they're all awful to don. i don't actually know the official technical name of what my clinic calls a "parachute" but it's a bitch to use! have you ever tried to pull back with your arm whilst also pushing it forwards at the same time, and simultaneously lean in to and away from an external force pulling on you? that's how you get a myo socket on.

bare with me, i promise writing advice is coming, and i promise it's more than the tl;dr. but. remember when i said a half working hand is infuriating to deal with? any prosthesis, from fancy myo tech to pirate-era body powered, will only ever be half as good as a working hand, and being juuuust within capability to do something but not quite able to is maddening! but you know what works way better than a half working hand? no hand at all. using whatever residual/vestigial limb you have - whatever "stump" you have, i hate that word - is pretty much always better than trying to use a prosthesis. i can use the inside of my elbow to grip and carry things, i can use the nub of my arm to apply pressure to hold things, open doors, use a computer mouse, turn on taps and lights, if i put a glove over it i can use it to prep for cooking. i have full proprioception and pressure feedback with skin contact, i don't think i've ever dropped and broken anything from my elbow, unlike countless things slipped from my greifer - which, by the way, absolutely will start clenching as tight as it can if i get even slightly too sweaty around the electrodes, which has both broken things i'm holding and also injured me, because surprise surprise but servo operated robot claws have pinch points on them right near the "emergency disengage" lever for some reason!

but i am exponentially more capable without it on than with it. no, i'm not fully independent, i rely on housemates and loved ones to help me out with some tasks that simply just need two handed dexterity, but none of those tasks are things a prosthesis makes me able to do anyway. i used to imagine my prosthesis would be like a bra; a bit awkward and uncomfortable, but i'd wear it throughout the day because it's helpful and take it off in the evening to decompress. in reality it's actually exactly like a bra: an absolute bitch to put on one handed, unbearably uncomfortable because it never sits right, ugly af unless you're a millionaire, and absolutely useless except for the fact that i get gawked at and judged by strangers if i leave the house without it on.

and if you really want to discover how far "no hand is better than a half working hand" goes, brace yourself, and look up the patient's stories (not medical system stories) of people that have had hand transplants. the first man to receive one hated it, he was promised a return to normal function, and what he got was a nightmare worse than being one handed; he wanted it removed again but the doctors refused because it would undermine their grand achievement of the first hand transplant. the doctors and society wanted him to be fixed, they wanted him to be normal, they wanted him to be abled. they failed. they made him less able to do things, denied his autonomy, and left him with someone else's hand slowly rotting on him, prioritising the idea of "scientific progress" and "two hands good" over the physical health, mental health, and ability to function of this man.

he's not alone; every story from the patients' perspective about hand transplants that i've read goes this way, including a woman who was born quad limb different and was promised hands would improve her life, pressured into a double hand transplant, only to find herself after the surgery essentially experiencing disability for the first time ever, because she had lived her whole life getting by just fine with her 'underdeveloped' limbs, but half working hands are worse than useless. you can try to find these stories yourself, but i'm not going looking for sources on any of these cases, because if you look back through enough of my posts you'll get a glimpse of the horrors and abuses that i too was put through by doctors who prioritised trying to "fix" me at any cost, rather than providing me the best quality of life, and in turn traumatised me and left me more broken than any loss of limb on its own could. dear goddess, i promise the writing advice is coming.

so. why do upper limb prostheses exist at all? if they're so terrible and useless, what is their function? i want to borrow something someone else left in the tags of a previous rant here, from someone who i believe works in prosthetics and/or rehab, cleaned up and anonymised at their request:

"upper limb functions are wildly more complex than: 1) bear weight static, and 2) bear weight moving. but every single upper limb amputee i know has a fancy expensive prosthetic just gathering dust in the closet because there is literally nothing it can do like a few years of adjustment and if needed non-dominant hand retraining can't do. the existence of forquarter prosthetics to begin with is just kind of silly and useless and entirely to make OTHER people feel comfortable, especially considering they universally are UNcomfortable for the amputee. i hate the notion that as soon as you get the amputation the prosthetic is The Thing That Will Fix You And Make You Feel Normal again because it universally isn't! but every forequarter person i know had like this ideal of Being Fixed By Magic Prosthetic that they were then obviously wildly disappointed by and had to do yet another grieving process with, versus if the dominant narrative were just one of: yeah. it'll take time, there is no magic fix."

and i think that really nails down what the actual purpose of upper limb prostheses is: they're not for the user, they're for the sake of other people. and not just their comfort when looking at our bodies, although based on the pressure for both amputees and people born limb different to get functionless cosmetic plastic hands, there is a lot of that. but it's not just that.

i fully believe that the reason prosthetic hands exists is to comfort the fears of the two handed. "don't worry", they say, "we can fix you again. you don't have to fear becoming Disabled, you don't have to worry about adapting or your life changing. we can make you Normal™ again."

you would not believe the number of people that have approached me to shower me with pity, to tell me how horrific my life is, how they can't imagine it. people have told me, apropos of nothing, that they'd kill themselves if they lost a hand. indirectly, that my life isn't worth living. unless, of course, i happen to be wearing my cool as fuck looking robot prosthesis! then they tell me how wonderful it is, how lucky i am, how glad they are that we have the technology to fix me. that's what a prosthetic hand says, what all the happy fishing photos on limbs4life posters at the rehab clinic say: don't worry, we can fix you. that's what the bleeding edge DARPA flexi-whatever fully articulated neuro-feedback hands say: don't worry if you get IED'd while hunting civilians for us to drone bomb, if you get hurt, we will fix you, we will fix the fuck out of you, we will motherfucking adam jensen you into a cool as fuck cyborg that your son will idolise; come on boys, don't you wanna enlist just for the chance at being as cool as this? join the bomb squad for a ticket to the upgrade lottery.

and so we arrive at fiction. as much as his dialogue options protest, adam jensen loves his robot arms, they punch through walls, turn into fucking swords! they make him the most special man in the world. what would he do without them? learn to cope? grieve? practice acceptance? take up poetry? just, be disabled? there's no power fantasy for ableds in that.

in fact, can you think of a single fictional character that's an upper limb amputee that's, well, just an amputee? they all have robot arms. not realistic prostheses, not medical devices; robot arms. sleek or bulky, top of the line or broken down self built, steampunk or nanomachines or magitech automail; they're never without them. never just an amputee. never born limb different either! there's always that element of tragedy to overcome, always suffering and misery porn, always focus on the pain and the helplessness without the absolutely vital robot arm that makes them Normal and Whole. the closest amputee example i can think of is furiosa from mad max, who iirc fucking punches max in the face with her residual limb like a motherfucking badass! i can barely lean on mine wrong and she punches a guy! but she still apparently needs a dieselpunk robot hand to drive a truck, something you can do one handed so easily most drivers don't even notice they're doing it! please don't, by the way

and so many disabled fans love to point to robot armed characters as disability representation; the winter soldier, luke skywalker, edward elric, misty knight, that genderswapped furry girl from ratchet and clank, jet cowboybebop, finn the human, and yes, adam jensen…. these are all characters that someone disabled i know has told me they love because they "represent disabled bodies"…. and i know nobody wants to hear this, because i've been screamed at for saying it before, but… they do not. they are not disabled, functionally or within fiction. they are either perfectly able bodied Normal people with chrome paint on an arm, or tortured misery porn we are supposed to pity and feel lucky we're not them. sometimes both!

also you ever notice how it's basically always arms? lower limb amputations are orders of magnitude more common than upper, my prosthetist said i was probably only the 4th or 5th upper limb she'd worked with in her career, with literally hundreds of lower limb fits. but fiction doesn't seem to reflect that, huh? or any other part of the reality of disability. it's always cool as fuck robot arms, never cool as fuck wheelchairs or crutches or dialysis machines or colostomy bags. a fair few "i was blind but now i can see with Robot Eyes and also infrared and xray" around, which again, plays into that "we can fix you and make you cooler" propaganda.

by the way, up above when i was describing body powered arms, if you wondered to yourself why i went with a myoelectric one instead when i clearly believe body powered is better… yeah. i am not immune to propaganda! i too wanted to be cool as fuck. i spent years with deteriorating function in my hand for reasons that are still unknown, was misdiagnosed and medically neglected to the point that removing my hand seemed to be the only option left to offer some relief, and even that was a clusterfuck that left me worse than ever… of course i wanted to believe in the power and prestige of a cool robot arm that fiction promised me.

but fiction promises fantastical lies. and so.

we get to the writing advice portion of the novella that is this post. you asked for advice on how to write a disabled character with an upper limb prosthesis. you've read the tl;dr, you've read everything above i assume, you know i don't want you to do it. the obvious twist is that it's been writing advice all along, me trying to share my perspective on what it's like being an amp with a robot arm and how shitty it is, implying how almost any fully realised and realistic character that's missing an upper limb would give up on a prosthesis at all. you can already tell that every value judgement in me says "don't give her a prosthesis, no matter how functional or cool you make it. don't try to make the tech better to justify it, just let her be one armed, one handed. just let her be disabled, but not helpless. let her show off her elbow or underarm carry strength. let her love interest appreciate how soft and squishy her residual limb is in a moment of tenderness. let her natural disabled body be respected and valued."

but that's a personal value judgement from me, and you are the author of your own work. i know it's trite to say, but you are! even the act of deferring to someone with lived experience in the hope of doing a better job at representation is a value judgement, a good choice in my opinion, but one you needn't necessarily take. maybe you do want to write a character that has a cool as fuck unrealistic robot arm as a power fantasy, or a comfort blanket… i did.

i've been slowly writing my own probably terrible scifi epic for over a decade now, and when my arm was giving me hell back then, i'd take great comfort in this fantasy of my protagonist with her chunky robot arm, the terrible traumatic suffering of her loss, overcoming, the power and ability her advanced prosthesis gives her over others, that she alone has access to, because others are not willing to make the sacrifices required. inspiration porn. awful stuff to me now, but empowering to me then. as i grew and gained direct experience, i slowly reimagined her, rewrote her, ship of theseus'd her into an entirely new character; a reflection of me now, bitter at the whole thing, spiteful that her natural flesh arm evokes fear and distrust, but unwilling to suffer the pain and frustration of her unnatural prosthesis just to make others comfortable and respect her as "whole", however artificial that whole is. and as with the ship of theseus being two ships, once i realised the transformation, i re-added the old protagonist back in whole cloth as a separate character; proud of her robot arm and its power, but in new context, as a foil and antagonist, an in-universe military prosthesis propaganda figure to reflect how i now feel characters like her exist to us, the readers.

i'm not just sharing that as egotistical self promotion, but to highlight that, even if i sit here begging you all up and down not to write characters with robot arms for how bad and unrealistic they are; there's still something genuine and true that their inclusion can say. the great thing about the story that you're writing is that only you can write it, as they say. but i whole heartedly believe that to write to your best, you have to be aware of what you're writing and why. as tempting as it is to feel these characters form naturally in us and therefore we're averse to changing traits about them that feel organic and self evident; as authors we have omnipotent control over the text, every trait and detail is a reflection on us, so we'd sure as hell better understand why we're choosing to write a character with this trait. because anything you write without being aware of intent will take on its own meaning in the space between.

and on that note, if i don't say this, i'm leaving it to be inferred: i definitely don't want to appear to come down on the side of saying "you cannot write an amputee unless you are one", because we are rarer than single young bisexual unicorns! and it would be a tragedy if anyone read through all this and then turned away in fear, deciding to never write an amputee character (with or without robot arm) because they feel they can't do it justice… believe me, no matter what anyone says, some hack writer somewhere is going to keep writing adam jensens and winter soldiers. don't let them be the only voices in fiction! just try to do your best.

so my ultimate advice on the topic of writing a character with a prosthetic limb is to ask yourself one question in two different frameworks, and meditate on what you feel the answer is:

why does she have a prosthesis?

from a doylelist perspective as the kids say, as an author with omnipotent control, why are you choosing to write about this topic? why are you choosing to give this trait to this character? what does it say about how you view ability and disability, what makes a person normal, and what our society values? will you let her be in her natural body? or will you give her a prosthesis, force her to wear it by authorial fiat, or author her a meaningful reason to choose to? if yes, be sure you know; why did you give her a prosthesis?

and from a wastonian perspective, diegetically, inside the story, why does she choose to wear a prosthesis? what does it say about her inner character, and how she interacts with the world? how does she feel about doing it, is she prideful and loves the attention she gets, or does she resent whatever necessitates its use? how do people in this world view ability and disability, what does this society value? and above all, whatever the answer to these questions, whether or not she uses a prosthesis or is badass without one, how does she deal with the eternal freezing cold that every amputee ever feels constantly in their residual limb and why does nobody make a heat pack that fits over a nub without drafty gaps???

i can't outright tell you how to write a good upper limb amputee, but if you at least know why you're writing one and for what purpose, you're on track to write the best character that you can. that's the best advice i can give… other than, like, this whole rambly mess.

and, as a reward for reading this far, please have a very blurry cryptid photo of my cat doing his old man sit:

[doumadono]

ANNOUNCEMENT

This is a turning point for me. I've been silent for too long, but I can't stay quiet anymore.

I'm going through writer's burnout, and it has hit me hard. I've been writing on Tumblr and Ao3 for nearly eight years now (with about 1.5 years on my private blog, doumadono). Over that time, I've written more than 400 stories across various fandoms, created the Sinful Sunday event and a series that many people like, helped many with numerous emergency requests — so many that one masterlist wasn't enough to cover them all.

But all of this has brought me to a place where writing no longer feels like a joy, but rather a duty. In my effort to make everyone happy, I lost myself and took on too much, accepting even the most twisted and difficult requests. It made me anxious and unwell whenever I thought about writing. This is why I haven't been posting much these past few weeks. I missed the breaking point and let myself reach a place where I was seriously considering quitting writing altogether and closing both my Tumblr and Ao3 accounts.

There's something else I need to address. I feel completely detached from Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer. I no longer feel comfortable writing for those fandoms. From now on, I'll be focusing mostly on My Hero Academia. Even though the manga recently ended, both the manga and the anime hold a special place in my heart. I’ve fallen in love with the story and its amazing characters. This is what feels right to me at this moment. That doesn't mean I'll never write for Demon Slayer or other fandoms again, but not now, not at this time. Maybe in the future — who knows?

Some of you might know that I've been dealing with a flood of hateful anonymous messages. Even though I’ve grown stronger and no longer consider them relevant, it still hurts to read such nasty words. This is another factor why I need to take a break.

So, what's going to change?

Sinful Sunday will no longer cover requests, and the event won't be as regular as it used to be. From now on, I'll post some sinful pieces specifically written for this event whenever I feel it's right. I'll write only for the characters I feel attached too.

Emergency requests will be limited to two slots and will no longer have a 48-hour window to be fulfilled. Once both slots are taken, emergency requests will be closed until I manage to clear the current asks in my inbox.

As of today, my ask box has been completely cleared. I won't be replying to any past asks, regardless of their origin or topic.

Commissions will remain open, as nearly all the requests have been fulfilled.

Regarding the following projects:

The Kvitravn series will be completed this year, but I can't provide a specific date just yet as I'm still working hard to bring everything together.

There's also a new series on the horizon featuring Dabi in the lead role, with a psychiatrist!Reader as the other main character.

As for Kinktober, I made a hard decision it will not be held as an event on my blog this year at all.

As of now, I want to focus on my own little My Hero Academia based AU that I created with my best friend @crystalwolfblog , and this is something that brings me a lot of comfort nowadays, and it's what I want to focus on. I’ll likely create another blog to post everything related to this AU, to keep things organized (the blog will be linked to my pinned post). This little AU was and is my safe haven for the past year and half, and since it contains all of my favourite characters, I want to focus on it fully.

The time for purification has come. I need to rediscover my purpose and find joy in writing again. To those who understand and have stuck with me since the ThePaperPanda days — you’re amazing and adorable, and I can never express how much I appreciate you, guys 💞

I want to share one last thought. This isn’t a statement, but rather a plea to readers: please respect writers, no matter the content they choose to explore. Writing is not as easy as it may seem; it requires a significant amount of time and effort, often taking up our personal time to craft a story. Don't send anon hate. Spread love instead! The least you can do to show your appreciation is to leave a comment, even if it’s just a word or two. For you, it’s a small gesture that takes less than a minute, but for the writer on the other side, it may be a much-needed sign that their work is meaningful. So if you enjoy an author’s work, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. It truly makes us writers feel like we’re on cloud nine.

Love you all, Marcianna

[girlactionfigure]

@shlomo_fishman

One of the main foundations of the Palestinian narrative states that: "according to international law, Israel is occupying Palestinian land".

What most people don't know is that the international law states, in fact, the exact opposite. I'll explain.

In the picture below, you can see article 80 in the UN charter, signed by the UN in 1945 during the San Francisco convention. As stated, its purpose was to ensure the rights given by trusteeship agreements approved by the UN, one of them being the British Mandate which officially began in 1920 and was designated to the establishment of a "national home" for the Jewish people on the area shown in the map below, as previously declared in the Balfour Declaration in 1918.

Now you may say: "but what about the UN general assembly Resolution 181 (the partition plan)?". The answer here is pretty simple: first of all, the general committee has no official power to enforce their decisions, which are mostly symbolic. Second, the plan was never set in motion, as the Arab leadership refused to accept it and the war between the Jewish population and the Arab one, broke down. Regarding the UN security council, Article 24(2) states: "the Security Council shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations". Which means it also cannot overrule article 80 in the UN charter.

There is also an argument I heard, about the British Mandate being a class A mandate. Class A mandates, were territories formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire that were deemed to "... have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory". There is one major problem with this argument: the Muslim Arabs NEVER had any national ambitions back then, nor wanted an independent state until after 1948.

Haj Amin Al-Husseini, probably the most prominent Muslim leader during the British Mandate and the Mufti of Jerusalem at that time, who dedicated his life to combat Zionism and purge the Jewish population in the area, even reaching Adolf Hitler at some point to help him fulfill those plans, never wanted an establishment of an independent Muslim state.

While launching massacres against the Jewish population (the great Arab revolt, 1929 Arab riots and more) and trying to convince Arabs not to sell lands to Jews, he justified it only using religious Islamic motives and blood libels against the Jews. Their only mission was to erase Zionism, so there was never an appeal by him, nor the Arab League and not any other Muslim leadership of that time to the international community, for the establishment of a Muslim state called "Palestine".

So when I define the Palestinians as: "a political movement pretending to be a nation, only to combat Zionism", I talk about this exactly.

This text sums up the main things you should know about the non-existent Israeli occupation, which many people unfortunately don't. So it was very important to me to write about it, especially in these difficult times, and I'd appreciate your support in spreading this message, a lot.

[idiotic-b-gilson]

The Prank Theory: Or, Why Toby won't make an explicit announcement that Kris' pronouns are they/them despite that obviously being canon.

Disclaimer: people who use they/them for Kris are NOT the butt of the joke here. Although calling it a prank might be a little misleading to begin with, you'll see why.

I know for a fact, judging from my dashboard, that I am not alone in being mad at people misgendering the humans of Undertale and Deltarune (although, I will admit I used to be part of the problem up until quite recently). And we all wish for Toby to just go out and publicly announce that Kris, Frisk, and Chara use they/them only, that Mad Mew Mew is canonically transfem, etc., just to stop all the misgendering. It would certainly be nice and very helpful for the LGBTQ community. However, after giving it some thought, I've come to the conclusion that it most likely cannot happen, and the reason why is the Prank Theory. Treat it as an explanation, but not an excuse.

I came up with Prank Theory over something that's completely unrelated to the above, funnily enough. You see, I have this headcanon that Asriel Dreemurr is not cisgender. I'm not entirely sure what his gender is, but he's not cis male for sure. And I've seen a variety of different takes on this concept. For example, AUs like (Ask) Fallen Royalty by @starlightshore present Asriel as having transitioned in a more feminine direction ((A)FR specifically describes her gender as feminine nonbinary). Others still write Asriel (chiefly the Deltarune one) as transgender male (I've mostly seen that take in NSFW fanfics on AO3, which is a shame cuz it has great potential beyond that. Please tell me where I can find more). Other others still, like my beloved mutual @sukifoof, have proposed that Asriel might be agender. And, let me be clear about something: those are all great ideas, and I love them. But I started to wonder, which of these ideas is the closest to canon? Like, if we also factor in authorial intent, which of these options would fit under it, and which ones wouldn't? That was when I came up with Prank Theory, as a way to kind of imagine at least one aspect of said authorial intent.

Spoiler alert, according to Prank Theory any kind of transfeminine Asriel is incompatible with canon, but again I want to make it clear that that doesn't mean I think they're "wrong" or "bad" or anything like that, and I want to reiterate my endorsement of writing Asriel this way. Besides, my theory could be completely wrong, so...

So, after all that stuff, what does the Prank Theory actually say? Well, in summary: Undertale and Deltarune are some of the most "woke" video games ever made, but conservatives and reactionaries don't seem to have realized that yet, funnily enough. Now, calling it a prank is a wee bit misleading, since it implies that tricking right-wingers into loving a video game with a very progressive setting and message was at least part of what Toby intended. And I don't believe that's the case. He simply makes video games he wants to make, and they just happen to reflect his views on the world, and these views just happen to fly over the heads of some people.

This in and of itself would probably not make it a huge problem for Toby to put in one of his newsletters, or even in an X (as in, former Twitter) post, a correction regarding the genders of his characters. However it does start to become a problem when you factor in that the UTDR community has hundreds of thousands of people in it (although as of the March 2024 it might be a rather liberal estimate), and many of them would be quite pissed off if the video game they like had "suddenly" "gone woke" (ignorant of the fact that both it, and its main creator have been openly "woke" the whole time). And that is a problem in the current environment, because it means that Toby, as well as other people on the UTDR dev team, would be at a significant risk of hate and harassment, which in the Year of Our Lord 2024 could lead to Angel knows what.

On a more cynical capitalist (and much more speculative) level, attracting political controversy this way could sour Toby's relationship with big video game companies which have (as far as I know) played an important part in why Toby's got basically unlimited resources to work on the game of his fever dreams. They saw the widespread, universal acclaim that UT, DR1 and DR2 received, and drew the conclusion that DR3-4 (and the future chapters) will also get a similar reception, and they will get great returns no matter how much money they pour into it. This belief could be shaken if Toby attracted the ire of his transphobic fans by correcting their misgendering of his characters, and thus limiting the reach Chapters 3 and 4 would otherwise have (but again, this is pure speculation, I'm not an economist, nor do I know how much companies like Nintendo have actually invested in Deltarune. So I could be, like, way off).

And that is, in the end, why I believe Toby Fox will not make a statement regarding the canon gender of any UTDR character, at least not while Deltarune is still in development. After it's finished I think he might feel free enough to take that step. But we'll have to see.

Now, I don't know if I'm right. I feel pretty confident in my own theory, but there's a good chance I missed something. So, if I did, please lemme know. In the meantime, let's hope Toby will disprove my theory soon and set things right. And I'll see you around.

[suffarustuffaru]

Hey, how are you doing? Firstly, i'll understand if you choose not to answer this ask since the subject is controversial and kinda heavy

We currently have at least two pedos in the story, like, actual pedos (the guy obsessed with Liliana and the creepy butler that i forgot the name) and then tappei's writing in some things is just... weird?

I get that subaru and beatrice are supposed to have a sibling relationship, but it just weirds me out

And he keeps adding loli characters with questionable designs too

What is your opinion on this? Its something i manage to ignore, but it still weird me out a little

hi anon!! :o thanks for asking how im doing pfft im doing pretty well - though i am a college student and its This Time of Year (end of semester) so im hanging in here lmao 👍

also ok as for the topic at hand!! yeah no i 100% hate it. ive been thinking about rezeros flaws lately because the further you get into watching/reading rezero the Clearer it gets. its mostly fine at say, arc 1, but by the time you get to arc 5 or arc 8 its like. What the hell. This again?? so yeah its 100% understandable to be weirded out and uncomfortable by it because tappeis writing is frankly Gross sometimes.

(okay also yes this ask has minor or major arc 5+ spoilers yes and also. You know. detailed discussion regarding rezero sexualizing children.)

yeah so tappei writes problematic things into rezero regarding both women and children especially, and while theres exceptions its like. very Prevalent in rezero. i talked about it a bit in my last ask if youd like to check that out!! but yeah like. i hate how children are treated in rezero. its very Problematic a lot of the time.

tappeis writing follows very similar patterns regarding treatment of children and women that you see in a Lot of other anime/manga/japanese media - and media in general, really, but im sure most anime watchers / manga readers will know what im talking about because its unfortunately That common. we're all seen this. like fan service shots, lolis and shotas, etc etc. but rezero is a little more insidious i think, just because tappei is capable of writing good characters regardless of age or gender. and theres Less of stuff like fan service - or at least rezero is a little less obvious about it or its just seen less in rezero, but thats also because media in general is so in your face about it and Unfortunately Common so rezero looks like a tiny bit of paradise in the middle of a barren desert.

i mean look at the amount of people who've thought rezero was a harem anime until they watched rezero - rezero seems like an outlier but thats only because its just a tiny bit less gratuitous and it still has a lot of good writing. and also because i am pretty sure the bar for media like this - especially media in rezeros genre (isekai) is Extremely Low. like depressingly low. and despite rezero being a deconstruction of isekai, rezero also contradicts its own damn messages sometimes about treating others like the People they are, respecting others Personhood, treating women well, etc. and its easy to see that the moment you look at some of otsuka's artwork and designs for rezero or if you look at all the rezero merch mainly based around the girls and Sexualizing the girls and its like. my god this is a little depressing to look at. rezero is just a tiny step in the right direction away from say, misogynist shounen/seinen media thats also weird about kids or something, but then rezero trips and falls on its own face after taking several right moves.

the problem is that these problematic aspects are still there, theyre still clear to see if youre paying attention, and often character arcs start well but then fall flat despite the good foundation. and then the problematic aspects hammer the already Poor/Inconsistent Writing into the ground which it makes it Even Worse.

like louis is a great character. shes fascinating, really. and then you hit arc 7 and she regresses immediately into the mind of a toddler so we only get to see her amnesiabaru/Suffering From Rbd arc in arc 6, her confrontation with subaru, and then BAM its arc 7 time and now she is an entirely different person????? i remember raging the further i got into arc 7/8 and realizing she hasnt gotten any development, she just changed instantly. it just feels lazy to me!! unless tappei proves me wrong and writes her developing but right now louis has spent two goddamn arcs being subaru and rems loli prop/daughter prop/a plot device to use in battle, basically. okay sorry i got passionate there but i SWEAR it gets on my nerves a bit. the louis/spica conflict now would feel so much more thrilling if she didnt have her weird half assed arc 7 development.

like if i was really in the fantasy world, of course i wouldnt vote to kill spica, shes innocent now. she doesnt know shit about her crimes, shes a whole other person now. she didnt do those things. she is an innocent child. i did a poll on this a while back actually haah and yeah a lot of rz tumblr, including myself, voted to let her live for this reason!! but also like. narratively speaking. i do not care about spica at all. shes a blank slate, shes just there to move the plot, she is taking up space in the plot right now and she does not need to be here forever. i 1000% want her dead hah. yeah shes this cute little kid now, but again, she got zero development. why should i care about her?? all the interesting things about her in arc 6, all the potential that couldve happened out of her gradually going from her arc 6 self to someone who genuinely cares about rem and subaru is gone. If we actually saw this change, personally id care more about spica and be invested in her character but as it stands im really Not. and i think if we saw her actually Develop a lot of us readers would be more invested to see this conflict out - not only because our Favs are fighting over it, but also because we’d actually care about spica. Like. im not sure how many people actually care about louis past arc 6, but yeah thats just my personal thoughts on it.

And also the Other big flaw with louis’s character is tappei once again being creepy regarding kids and. Okay im gonna show an excerpt from the arc 6 WN (iirc ch60 to be exact?) and yeah fair warning because it is once again sexualizing a child (louis). But also im putting it here in case anyone wants to see some vivid proof of rezero being weird about kids. Im not sure if this was cut from the LN version or not but the fact that it exists At All makes me want to put tappei on a watchlist.

And okay i know you might be thinking about how louis represents the sin of gluttony anyway and gluttony includes sexual or romantic desire too and how having louis, who looks like a child, say this makes it even more Offputting - like. Yeah. but is it Necessary? because making louis, WHO LOOKS LIKE A CHILD, say all this and then use descriptors like “expressed a bewitching smile unsuited to her age” - is this Actually necessary? You have to be careful writing this sort of thing, because a child/character who looks like a child saying things like this due to being, you know, Mentally Unwell, is different from Emphasizing What Theyre Saying By Sexualizing Them via the narration and descriptions. And why is the sexologist line there?? its just frankly uncomfortable, to an unnecessary extent, i think. I just dont think we need all this emphasis on louis’s body, louis’s apparent “arousal”, or how her smile is “unsuited to her age” (this is the narrative once again sexualizing a child), and plot-related sex/sexual content in rezero is kept to a minimum anyway so you could also literally just have louis be weird about “loving subaru” without the sexual aspect. Because she literally just said that she was aroused by him. she looks like shes twelve at most and then in the arc immediately after this one she regresses back to having the mentality of a toddler!!! and then shes subaru’s daughter there.

And again, i know that the whole point of this scene is to be off-putting and disturbing and wrong in all sorts of ways (and also subaru tries to kill louis a page later so like.) but i think if youre going to keep the appetite=sexual desire detail (which IS a good point about gluttonys nature, on its own), then this scene absolutely needed to be handled better than what we got when the character saying this is a child. you can write a child sexualizing herself because shes frankly Unwell or Doesnt Know Better, because this is fiction and you can write sensitive topics like this with proper care, but if you, the author, are sexualizing this child, then that is a Whole Other Thing.

or you can entirely dodge this whole debate over whether or not this is actually okay to write by making louis look older. but tappei went with this route once again in a sea of rezeros various child characters despite the fact that tappei then decides to link sexual desire to the sin of gluttony, which is a sin occupied in rezero by three children. I know ley has a very traumatic backstory, and the specific details are escaping me but iirc he was likely a slave or something along those lines, with implications that hes been abused by adults, so you could delicately handle what kind of abuse he Couldve unfortunately had to go through, and also of course roy and louis are clearly not okay in the head either, but. Once again. Children in rezero Not Being Sexualized in some way is a rarity. Unfortunately.

you see this pop up again and again and again. petra? Yeah iirc theres a side story where shes weird about subarus underwear. Correct me if im wrong on that but also i would not be surprised if that was a real side story. Unfortunately. Also theres Uncomfortable lines regarding petras chest.

according to rezero wiki, schult is… well iirc al makes creepy comments about schult being a shota (and of course this isnt really called out in canon), and theres also these two details about schult:

also regarding sin archbishops who look very young, capella represents lust and yet she also looks like a child. i know the point of her design is to make her a bit grotesque, but you can get that point across without making her look fifteen years old at most. this is the sin of lust too. and shes already called “Mama” in canon—she doesnt need to look that young!!**

also side note about pandora. she also looks like a child, which—its okay with her, except for the frankly lazy outfit design imo?? why is she wearing a bedsheet??**

** another edit: its easy to see capella and pandora as women also, but again, tappei and otsuka In General keep mixing up short/young women and Children and it should be easy to tell if pandora and capella are children or young women or not. but i dont feel that its clear enough given tappei and otsuka’s Track Record.

and typhons design with the see through skirt is so creepy and disturbing that im Really glad the anime fixes it most of the time. heres the fixed version:

but also the anime Really doesnt fix it as much as it probably should, because her dress is Still see-through in some shots. you can even see a bit in this shot—we dont need to see her lower body area like That!! this skirt doesnt need to be see-through!! and the bar was already in hell anyway because otsuka makes typhon’s skirt Really see-through.

theres also this photo of typhons design and its Way better without that see-through skirt.

granted, there is some good child character designs—felt’s arc 1 design frankly sucks though purely because of the way her outfit is handled. like its Really bad. it takes only like one look to see that. but her arc 5 design is a Huge Improvement:

characters like meili, schult, child subaru, etc have good designs too, but you know, this doesnt change the Creepiness regarding children, because this also applies to subaru and Some Lines about him in arc 8 iirc. if i find them again ill talk about it another time (or if someone else finds it feel free to add on to this post?) but yeah just. urgh.

regarding felt again, theres a scene in a felt camp side story where she wakes up naked in bed, post arc 1, after reinhard kidnaps her to his mansion. and yeah, the whole point of the scene is to show reinhard is kind of dense and bad at reading social cues because hes still trying to talk to her very civilly while shes covering herself with the bedsheets and she Literally just got kidnapped by him, but, say it with me, she doesnt need to be naked. she couldve woken up in bed in her usual clothes and the point still wouldve come across!! WHY is she naked??? shes fourteen.

and also like capella, liliana looks like a child. and of course theres kiritaka, as anon said, whos obsessed with liliana, and then theres clind, the creepy butler. and of course tappei has “deniability” because lilianas not Really a child (she STILL looks like one), and clinds not Really a pedophile, he just likes youthful souls!! (this is literally disgusting.) and clind may have interesting lore or whatever about how hes kind of involved with the sin archbishop of melancholy but i just dont give a shit about him when hes a pedophile that tappei keeps excusing.

also mimi? mimi is a Special Case.

the thing with mimi and her brothers is that its implied in the kararagi girl and cats eye side stories that kittypersons (??) are fully grown by age 1. theyre rescued from dying on the streets but they insist theyre “fully grown” (at age 2-3). they havent changed physically at all. and they dont change physically at all later, because now in the Present Day they all look Exactly the same as they did when they were 1, 2, 3 years old. did they grow mentally???? theyre like 14-15 in the main route. and then you look at aganau route from the lost in memories mobile game which takes place around twenty (??) years after arc 3, and mimi is a grown woman and she looks exactly the same as she did when she was 14 or 2 years old. and then this makes her romance with garfiel a little weird because hes a normal fourteen year old??? but mimis been fully grown all this time??? what??

this is mimi. yeah, she and her brothers look EXACTLY this age their WHOLE LIVES.

and meili? yeah shes definitely one of the better child characters, though she does have an Extremely Traumatic backstory and has had a habit of copying elsa. this on its own is fine and understandable. elsa was her only support and shes a child, of course shes gonna copy elsa. though iirc she also copies elsa’s “flirtatious” aspects, which is honestly also understandable given elsa is a Questionable Influence, but this detail about meili’s character gets worse when you think about it in the context of all the other child characters—

why is it that all the children tappei (and otsuka) keep sexualizing are in the same age range? theyre about 9 or 10 to 14. louis stops being sexualized when she reverts to being a toddler and becomes subarus daughter. felt stops being sexualized when she turns 15 in arc 5. emilia is the main love interest to subaru and shes apparently “mentally 14”?? and shes tappeis favorite character too? but also mimis case is so weird because shes been “fully grown” since the tender age of ONE YEARS OLD?? well also i sure hope im wrong on this point but given the amount of child characters that fall in this age range and also how Often theyre all sexualized and also the majority of them are Young Girls—yeah its. its not a great look.

(and again a side note about meili again—tappei uses similar descriptors that he used for louis: that its “inappropriate for her age” and that she’ll “attract many men in the future”. tappei stfu. please.)

subaru’s lolimancer title is kind of funny. maybe. until you remember rezero being creepy about kids. and also like—i dont like the idea of tying a word like “loli” to the literal main character of the story anyway skdnd. theres just Connotations to it.**

**EDIT: i was told that “loli” is apparently a fan translation thing, while in japanese its “little girl user”, but in an inoffensive way (like Jojo’s “stand user”). make of that what you will!! (not great that the fan translation makes rezeros already poor treatment of kids Even Worse.)

and also—was subaru, al, medium, etc turning into children really necessary?

like in subarus case, its so he can have more ego, more confidence, more recklessness while being nerfed a bit and being mistaken as the emperor’s son—but at the same time, this just feels like a watered down version of the amnesiabaru arc to me where he has more ego, more confidence, more recklessness, and hes nerfed, but then he learns to love himself more. it just feels too similar to the amnesiabaru arc imo. him turning into a child feels very unnecessary imo and it doesnt look great when you remember tappei and otsuka’s fixation on children. literally arc 8 would be exactly or almost exactly the same if subaru was back to his usual 18/19-year old self. but he has to keep being a kid right now because Plot, apparently. then again if anyone disagrees with me on this feel free to explain your stance!! but yeah as of rn i just want subaru to be back to his usual age.

also tappeis weird about young priscilla/prisca and lamia but i havent read the ex novels about them yet so i cannot go in depth 👍 but just know you get nice lovely lines (sarcasm) like “flirty way she caresses her own thighs”. great!!! thanks tappei for fanservicing underage teenage girls once again!!

and again, treatment of child characters / characters who look younger than they are in rezero—this is so so creepy also as someone who does in fact look younger than my age. and im also Very Short (4’11) too. so like. thanks tappei and otsuka!! i feel very comfortable right now 👍

and women are often infantilized in rezero which you can. Easily connect to the pedophilia, yeah. theres also age gap romances in general, and i mentioned emilia already (yeah. emisuba is an age gap romance.), but theres also ram and roswaal, frederica and clind, anastasia iirc gets described Weirdly sometimes because shes a short flat-chested woman, and recently theres been madeline and balleroy having a small moment (that feels. Romance coded. iirc.) in an arc 8 chapter.

they look like this by the way:

thanks tappei and otsuka once again for the creepy writing and designs that actively work against all the good parts of the damn story 👍

on a lighter note, i think beatrice in general + beatrice and subarus relationship is one of the better parts of rezero—iirc theres nothing creepy about it, and beatrice and subaru are very easy to read as a sister and brother relationship. theyve helped each other out in many ways, and theyve grown Very close by the time we see them in arc 5!! you could. Technically see their relationship as a father-daughter one too, but i dislike that take—not for bad reasons, but just because i feel like it doesnt fit them.

the thing with beatrice though is that shes simultaneously A Child but shes also like. 400 years old. so i do wish the narrative balanced that more post-arc 4–not in a creepy way of course. god no. but in the sense that shes mature in a lot of ways!! shes familiar with death and suffering!! shes intimately known Isolation!! that sort of thing. shes the one whos closest to subaru because of how he helped her in arc 4 (“choose me”), and also because she knows about his self-harm and heals his injuries. shes someone who can deeply understand subaru in a lot of ways in this sense, at least. the way they support each other feels more like a sibling bond to me and not a Parent-Child one just because youre not Really supposed to be leaning this much on your child for support. theres a power dynamic to a Parent-Child relationship, and beatrice and subaru are Equals.

plus echidna gaslight gatekeep girlbossed both of them, so theyre also siblings in that sense hah…

but yeah correct me if im wrong on that though regarding beatrice and subaru and im missing something?? but yeah as far as i remember and as far as i can tell, i think theyre actually one of the least creepy parts of rezero hah :,)

and then because this sort of thing is Unfortunately so common in media like rezero, we’re kind of conditioned to try and ignore it so we can keep reading or watching because its Everywhere. i still enjoy some of rezero, but its hard to ignore All Of This. and i think its important not to turn your brain off to it and recognize whats Wrong here, yeah. (unless it makes you so uncomfortable that you have to stop looking at rezero, which is very understandable.)

but yep. thats rezero for you.

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (September 3-9, 2023)

I was a bit nervous about GAMERA -Rebirth-; the animation looked dodgy and Netflix has a shaky track record with kaiju shows. I'm pleased to report this is the best entry in the genre that they've put their name on. Good characters, great action (brutal as always), and actual episodic storytelling that effortlessly weaves in elements from the Showa films beyond all the returning kaiju. Watch it immediately.

Tie-ins abound for GAMERA -Rebirth-: a two-part novelization, a manga adaptation, and a prequel manga that sheds some light on [UNBELIEVABLY MASSIVE SPOILERS]. That prequel manga (GAMERA -Rebirth- code thyrsos) is being published online for free in both Japanese and English. You can read the first chapter here.

In unofficial translation news, English subtitles for GAMERA.1999 (1999) and yokaipedia (2022) are now available. The former is Hideaki Anno's making-of documentary for Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris; the latter is a fun, child-friendly fantasy from Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki with a big ol' centipede-dragon at the end. (It's also maybe the first Japanese kaiju film I've ever seen with a major Black character.) I haven't gotten to GAMERA.1999 yet, though from scrubbing through it, it seems like a lot of dialogue was just ignored by the translator. Shame, as that's one I've wanted for a long time.

We have a teaser for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, as well as a premiere date for the first two (out of ten) episodes: November 17. (I am being showered with Media for my 30th birthday.) The big news from this trailer is that John Goodman is reprising his role as Bill Randa from Kong: Skull Island. I assume that's going to be through flashbacks and old recordings only, since he was eaten by a Skullcrawler in that one. We also catch glimpses of two new creatures, a dragon and a crab from what I can tell. The latter looks to be fighting a Mother Longlegs.

Fandango and AMC have added mostly-empty listings for Godzilla 2000 on November 1. Fathom Events screened Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla on November 3 last year; despite randomly showing Tokyo SOS back in March, I gather they're making a tradition out of Godzilla Day. Note that the listed runtime is longer than the film itself. Predictions for the program: another message from Keiji Ota, the 2022 Godzilla vs. Gigan short, and the Japanese version of G2K. Interesting that they're running the last Toho Godzilla film to receive a wide release in the U.S. exactly a month before Godzilla Minus One has a wide release of its own here.

Gamera isn't a meta-defining Godzilla Battle Line unit... but he's Gamera in a Godzilla game, so I've been using him in every match since I unlocked him. He's gearing towards demolishing flying units, with fireballs that deal more damage against them and knock them back. A pity that he's arriving well after those units were at their most dominant.

Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons #3 still isn't giving me much to write home about, but the kaiju cult creeping to the forefront intrigues. Also cool to see Ebirah in a starring role.

Marubeni, one of Japan's biggest general trading companies, put out a bizarre commercial featuring samurai, zombies, a meteor, and a refurbished GMK King Ghidorah. The ad now has English subtitles, and you can watch a Ghidorah-centric behind-the-scenes video here.

I cannot believe I have more Cleopatra Entertainment fuckery to report on with regards to their Shin Ultraman releases, but they're truly trying to take the "Worst Film Company of 2023" title from the members of the AMPTP. Their third attempt at a barebones disc is starting to reach customers... but the ones who already received the initial replacement disc are being told no more will be sent. @starestream is trying to figure out if they'll be selling the third edition on their site, since it seems buying it anywhere else is a gamble. (Physically, the third edition looks almost the same as the first two, set apart only by the "SUBTITLED" text on the disc.) Either way, it's another blow to a movie that truly doesn't deserve this.

[riddlerosehearts]

okay, i've got some things i wanna say about twst EN's translation of scarabia's story that i was originally typing out as part of a response to an ask, but then i realized i was going off on a bit of a tangent and was like "this could basically be its own post"--so now it's going to be its own post!

i'm a twst EN player, and for the most part, i do really like the localization. i don't speak japanese but i love learning about language and the process of translation and localization, so at one point after finishing books 1-5 i went and reread them all (and 6 as well, once it was fully released on EN) with a fan translation and the localization side by side to compare them. and from what i could tell as someone who isn't a japanese speaker, i honestly thought it seemed like they usually did pretty well? sure, there were a few mistakes like cater claiming to be an only child (this one, i think, has actually been fixed recently), or how in book 2 they removed a small mention of falena making it seem like he's never mentioned at all until leona's flashback and they also removed the numerous times that he said "be prepared" (at least they finally properly translated it in book 6, though!!). but i thought most of these mistakes were somewhat minor and could be forgiven... until book 4 (well, and book 5, mostly in regards to vil and epel's conflict and i'm not talking about them here, so).

see, i actually realized that something was off about the localization when i first played through book 4, because i have a weird memory and have picked up a bunch of random words and phrases from being into japanese media and reading so much about the localization process. and i also play twst with the sound on because i love to hear the voice acting. so sometimes i would hear jamil speak, i'd pick out the words "shujin" and "juusha" for "master" and "servant", and then the subtitles wouldn't include them at all. so i'd guess certain things about the actual intent behind the story based on that. take this message i sent to my friend when i was sharing my blind reactions to the game:

and she ended up telling me that apparently, what i thought he should say essentially IS what he originally said!! according to the fan translation on wiki.gg he said this instead:

i had wondered if maybe i was reading into things and assuming too much, but it turned out i was completely spot on! but most people who play EN would not be able to pick up on this and realize that jamil was born into servitude to kalim and has no escape, because as i later discovered almost every single mention of him being a servant at all was removed, in events and vignettes as well. which is actually really weird to me because they don't remove it entirely, they do in fact bring up the fact that jamil has to test all of kalim's food for poison during book 4 and they also left in a line where he says he "works as kalim's servant". but they only really mention these things once or twice and then they try to sort of play it off as jamil being a paid employee or something most of the time... seriously, during beanfest there's dialogue where jamil says it would be rude to refuse an order from his boss but i've read that that line was originally him saying a servant couldn't disobey his master. and in the scalding sands event he calls himself "a dedicated employee" of kalim's... what, am i supposed to assume he works as a butler by choice or something? yeah, no. also, one of his birthday vignettes, which are fully voiced so i could TELL he said, with a devious smirk on his face, that if he had a parrot the first word he would teach it would be "shujin-sama". "master". what did EN change this into?

the person i was originally writing all of this in response to said that sometimes people's takes on jamil make them wonder if people are reading a completely different story but also that part of that can probably be blamed on the way EN completely changed the context of his situation with these translation choices. and yeah, i fully agree with that assessment: more casual fans or people who just aren't that interested in the scarabia duo could be said to be reading a different story with this whole "boss" and "employee" thing that has jamil make it sound like the worst that could ever happen to him if he got in trouble would be getting a really stern lecture from his parents.

and it makes me sad because i really do love both jamil and kalim so much and i think their dynamic is so tragic and complicated and interesting to think about. i think they're both really complex characters who are trapped in an awful situation. kalim is so kind and loving and would never wanna hurt anyone but he hurts jamil just by existing as part of the fucked up society they live in. kalim thought he and jamil were best friends, he had no idea of the toxicity of their dynamic and the pain jamil was in, and people say jamil should've just talked to him about it earlier... but jamil's first memory as a child is of seeing his parents bow to the asim family. being a servant is practically all he's ever known and he's had it drilled into his head since they were both small children that he can never be himself around kalim, can never just treat him like a normal person because he's a servant and kalim is his master. and even if he did accept kalim's offer to start over as equals and be friends, what would happen when they had to go home to their families? they won't be at school forever.

and i just. augh. i hate what the localization does with them. if you try to water them down to just an employee who's super mad at his obliviously crappy boss, or just two childhood friends who needed to communicate better or something like that, then you take away from the complexity of both characters. you also lose extremely cool writing choices like how jamil is a character who was born into servitude but has the power to make himself the master with his unique magic. i see so many takes about how jamil is just a jerk who betrayed his best friend and how kalim never did anything wrong in his entire life and i hate it but i'm sure the localization's choices are in fact to blame for a lot of this.

so anyway jamil and kalim's actual dynamic is fascinating and lives rent-free in my head, no thanks to how the EN version gutted it.

[neil-neil-orange-peel]

TYO Essay

A while back, I mentioned I wrote an essay for my previous uni course where I used TYO as a source to look at the early 1980s. @a-a-a-anon expressed an interest in reading it, so here ya go! The quality of it is seriously iffy (I was 18/19 when I wrote it and had no idea how to actually write or reference academic essays yet, and just the quality of the writing makes me cringe a bit). There was also more I wanted to say but couldn't due to the word limit (don't remember what these other things were now). Despite all that, the lecturer liked it, and it was cool I got to write about TYO for uni.

The Young Ones as a Cultural Source for Early 1980s Britain

Although today in Britain the future often feels uncertain – the global pandemic notwithstanding, Brexit is still looming on the horizon – the Britons of 40 years ago doubtlessly felt similarly, albeit for different reasons. In the early 1980s, the threat of nuclear war was palpable, as the existence of Protect and Survive[1] attests to. Nuclear war paranoia influenced British culture in the 1980s, with bleak examples such as the BBC film Threads (1984) and Raymond Briggs’ When the Wind Blows (1986) still remembered keenly today. Both fictionalisations of nuclear war featured material from Protect and Survive and highlighted the message of contemporary nuclear disarmament protestors: no one can win a nuclear war. Of the less apocalyptic issues, unemployment hit 3 million (about 11.7%[2]) in 1983 – for comparison, in 2019 it was estimated to be at 1.281 million (about 3.6%[3]). The Thatcher administrations’ efforts to break from the post-war consensus and embrace neo-liberalism created divisions in society. Yet, amidst threats of nuclear war, mass unemployment, the decline of British industry and the growth of individualism, a cultural revolution in comedy dubbed “alternative comedy” was fast taking hold in Britain – and in much the same way Thatcherism’s impacts can still be felt on society today, so too can alternative comedy’s.

Running for 2 series (12 episodes in total) on BBC2 between 1982-84, anarchic and slightly surreal sitcom The Young Ones epitomised the break between older styles of comedy and the new wave. Although The Young Ones has been called ground-breaking and classic, it is also now regarded as somewhat dated for its jokes pertaining to current events. Therefore, its scripts are an interesting source for an insight into the time in which it was produced and based: early 1980s Britain.

Firstly, it is important to understand what The Young Ones actually was. Written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer[4] and with additional material provided by Alexei Sayle, it followed the misadventures of four vastly different university students at the fictional Scumbag College in North London. Whilst the four were never seen doing anything remotely akin to studying, it aimed at being representative of university life, students and the squalor they lived in. The show was not a conventional sitcom in that it did not pertain to a family and it featured a musical act in every episode so that it could be classified as “light entertainment”, as the BBC had no further budget available for sitcoms at the time. Because many of its principal actors came from the stand-up comedy circuit, there was an emphasis on excitement and unpredictability over discernible plots and many memorable scenes featured characters injuring themselves and others, destroying bits of the set and crashing through walls, as well as randomly interspersed and unrelated cutaway gag segments. There was a cartoonish level of slapstick violence, swearing and toilet humour, which appear milder to today’s palate than 40 years ago.

British audiences were divided by The Young Ones mostly along age lines, with younger viewers engaging readily with this new style of comedy and older viewers seeing it as unnecessarily vulgar and silly. Indeed, the characters that had been transplanted from their actors’ stand-up routines were deliberately disgusting, exaggerated caricatures and horrible to one another. Mayall himself played wannabe lefty anarchist Rick, who frequently came to rather explosive blows with the violent punk medical student, Vyvyan (played by Mayall’s comedy partner, Adrian Edmondson). Also featured was badly done to, depressed hippie Neil (played by Nigel Planer) and the mysterious leader and straight man of the group, Mike The Cool Person (played by Christopher Ryan, the only one of the core cast without a comedy background). Sayle too appeared in every episode as either their hated landlord Balowski or a member of his family, where he would deliver a short stand-up monologue to the camera. The show’s title (and opening theme) was derived from the Cliff Richard song of the same name, as Mayall’s character was a huge fan.

The Young Ones took on the issues of its day, perhaps none more so than the episode “Bomb”. “Bomb” uses dark humour to address fears over nuclear war by having an atom bomb land in the characters’ kitchen at the start of the episode. Even before the characters deal with the unexploded bomb, the script is already hinting at the theme of nuclear war in this cutaway gag sequence, featuring a family on a packet of cereal:

FATHER: Would you two shut up and keep smiling? We’re supposed to be the ideal nuclear family!

GIRL: Post-nuclear, more like!

Not only was this segment ridiculing the “ideal nuclear family” that was promoted by the Thatcher governments – none of the characters posing as a family get along at all and the “father” reveals himself to be gay, thus exposing the lie that there is truly an “ideal” family – it also managed to slip in a quick gag about nuclear war. This reflected a genuine belief by many at the time that nuclear war was coming, especially amongst the young.[5]

When the main characters finally become aware of the bomb in their kitchen, the script offers this response:

NEIL: I’m going upstairs to get the incredibly helpful and informative “Protect and Survive” manual! Nobody better touch this while I’m gone!

This reference to the Protect and Survive manual, which at the time and retrospectively has been regarded as useless in the event of an actual nuclear attack, appears for the purpose of ridiculing it. Having the character of Neil act as though the manual could help deal with something as serious as an atom bomb in the kitchen employs sarcasm as a critical tool. Protect and Survive featured suggestions such as painting the windows of the house white in order to deflect the heat from a blast, which The Young Ones also satirised:

RICK: Neil, can you lend me five- What are you doing?

[NEIL is reading his survival manual while painting himself white with a paintbrush]

NEIL: Oh, painting myself white to deflect the blast.

RICK: That’s great, isn’t it? Racial discrimination, even in death! What are these? [indicates a few lunchbags on the table]

NEIL: Sandbags!

The misinterpretation of the manual’s instructions, as well as the substitution of items deemed vital for items found in the house, reflects the feeling that most British households were simply unprepared for a nuclear attack and stood very little chance of survival. This is compounded later in the episode, when the four main characters resort to hiding underneath the kitchen table as a means of escaping the blast of the bomb – something many had resorted to in air raids during WWII but which was drastically inadequate protection against an atom bomb. This episode also portrayed the nihilism in British culture over nuclear war – a nihilism that can be found in other cultural sources, such as The Smiths song “Ask”[6] – through the character of Vyvyan, who spends much of the episode attempting to set the bomb off.

This show being the work of alternative comedians, The Young Ones also utilised its anarchic tone to critique the Thatcher administration of the time. This was usually done through the character of Rick, who blamed Margaret Thatcher for most problems faced by the group. Though his character existed to satirise upper-class closet conservatives as well as overzealous student activists, he was something of a mouthpiece for the left-wing writers. Some of his more memorable outbursts include:

RICK: We haven’t got any money! Vyvyan’s baby will be a pauper! Oliver Twist! Jeffrey Dickens! Back to Victorian values! [directly to camera, angrily] I hope you’re satisfied, Thatcher!

RICK: Neil! The bathroom’s free! Unlike the country under the Thatcherite junta!

Other characters were used to critique the government too:

RICK: School’s out forever! Yeah, come on everyone! Let all your hairs hang out! Do whatever you want!

MIKE: What’s all the excitement, Rick? Has education finally been cut altogether? That’s the only reason I voted Tory.

The first of these is a reference to the 1983 interview in which Thatcher endorsed a return to “Victorian values”. That is, a rolling back of the state to unburden the individual and set them free to prosper, should they put the effort in. This New Right attitude, combined with the high unemployment figures from that year, created the view that Thatcherism was about looking out for “number one”. This wasn’t aided by Employment Secretary Norman Tebbit’s “Get On Your Bike” speech at the Conservative Party Conference in 1981. The Young Ones captured the mood of particularly the youth in such a climate – one in which many felt misunderstood and patronised – in a cutaway segment featuring the fictional TV programme Nozin’ Aroun’:

BAZ: Rol! A lot of my mates say to me, “Oh Baz, what is the point?” What would you say to them?

ROLAND: Well surely, Baz, your mates must realise that there definitely is a point!

BAZ: So a real message of hope and good cheer there – from Roland, a really ace guy!

To summarise; just as is the case today, early 1980s Britons were facing uncertainty. This was especially the case for anyone working in manufacturing industries, as the unsuccess of the Miners’ Strike of 1984 signified a wider trend in British industry. The government’s overarching aim of turning society away from one in which a “nanny state” risked making people idle to one where everyone was free to accumulate wealth that would trickle down to the less well off was never going to be a smooth period to live through. The last tremors of the Cold War didn’t help make the period more bearable. Yet, it is often harder or uncertain times where laughter becomes more valuable to people and The Young Ones – though not to everyone’s political or cultural tastes – undeniably provided some release for younger generations. To call it an entirely accurate depiction of early 1980s Britain would be to forget that its primary purpose was amusement. Nevertheless, it does provide a colourful insight and one that is remembered with fondness by those who grew up watching it, even today.

[1] Protect and Survive was a series of government issued pamphlets, public information films and radio broadcasts produced in the late 1970s/early 1980s, to be distributed 72 hours before a nuclear attack was expected. Public interest meant they were released in 1980.

[2] https://countryeconomy.com/unemployment/uk?dr=1983-12, December 1983

[3] Office for National Statistics, December 2019

[4] All of whom are alumni of the University of Manchester.

[5] After speaking to some adults who were young during this period, Mr Smith revealed how (aged 11 in 1983) he told his class: “I want to be there when the bomb drops. I want to be right next to it so I’m disintegrated and don’t know anything about it.” Additionally, he was under the impression that a bomb would likely be dropped on Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester.

[6] “If it’s not love / Then it’s the bomb / Then it’s the bomb that will bring us together” – S. Morrissey & J. Marr, “Ask”, The World Won’t Listen, 1987

Bibliography:

Sources:

B. Elton, R. Mayall & L. Mayer, “Demolition”, The Young Ones, BBC2, 1982

B. Elton, R. Mayall & L. Mayer, “Bomb”, The Young Ones, BBC2, 1982

B. Elton, R. Mayall & L. Mayer, “Cash”, The Young Ones, BBC2, 1984

B. Elton, R. Mayall & L. Mayer, “Nasty”, The Young Ones, BBC2, 1984

B. Elton, R. Mayall & L. Mayer, “Summer Holiday”, The Young Ones, BBC2, 1984

Central Office of Information, Protect and Survive, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1980

Transcript of Brian Walden interview with Margaret Thatcher for BBC, 1983: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105087

[telomeke-bbs]

OUR SKYY 2 x BAD BUDDY x A TALE OF THOUSAND STARS – A REVIEW AND PARTIAL ANALYSIS

Yes, I'm well aware that it's been more than two weeks since the Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars 4-ep closer for OS2 aired, and I'm far behind the bandwagon in posting this.

Thing is, I've had to take some time to gather my garbled thoughts on how I feel about the mini-series, and I have many. Also, the longer I dawdle, the more others have posted similar musings, and I then have to edit down my own write-up to avoid repeating stuff that others more knowledgeable and eloquent than I have already made public.

This is like my fourth or fifth re-write, and I've already chucked so much aside. But now the ideas jangling in my head seem a bit more coherent, and maybe it's time to solidify them in the written word.

I think part of the block I was facing had to do with the fact that I was expecting the Bad Buddy portions of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS to be doing more than they did, and when they didn't I was left a little directionless. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the episodes though; I most certainly did. How great was it to see Pat and Pran back in action again? 😍 Even though their dynamic and storyline weren't as deeply resonating as what we saw in the original Bad Buddy, they still managed to charm me no end.

While I certainly wanted more information regarding Pat and Pran's relationship (and we did get to see a tiny bit), what I'd really been hoping for was more of the intellectual gamery that had been so carefully interwoven into the original BBS, that was densely layered with metaphor, allegory and messaging. It was also rich with linguistic wordplay and cultural content, and I was on the lookout for more of the same in OS2 the moment Pat and Pran appeared. But these were mostly missing, even though they delivered callbacks and charisma in spades.

It was only upon re-watching that a number of realizations crystallized for me, chief of which was the fact that I'd been looking for things in the wrong place. The subtextual (and even metatextual) cleverness I was expecting actually was there, but it had been woven more into the ATOTS portions instead. And while I like the original ATOTS, it didn't inspire in me the same kind of obsessive love that Bad Buddy had done, so I have never gone in for a re-watch or examined it in greater detail, and thus wasn't paying as much attention to the ATOTS portions of OS2.

More fool me. No wonder my first watch of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS missed what it did, because I kind of sped through Phupha and Tian's story, when the mini-series was leaning more on ATOTS than BBS to telegraph its messaging.

I really shouldn't have been surprised. We know that the creators of Bad Buddy (Director Aof mostly, but Ohm and Nanon were in on it too) viewed BBS as having told all that needed to be told of PatPran’s story, and this was signified by the apartment door closing on the happy couple’s continued rough-housing at the end of Ep.12.

(above) BBS Ep.12 [4/4] 18.22 and 18.23 – the door closes on Pat and Pran's story (dunno who was swinging it shut though – Nong Nao maybe? 😂)

And this is why OS2 x BBS didn’t show us events post-Ep.12, but chose instead to position the mini-series during the timeskip between Episodes 11 and 12.

So when BBS became the success it did, pressure must have mounted on all sides but especially from the higher-ups to squeeze out a sequel somehow, because it would undoubtedly be a money-spinner. But what more is there to spin out when you, the maker, are convinced that not only is the whole yarn already spun and done, the tapestry you wove from it is pretty much complete as well?

I will go so far as to say I think OS2 x BBS x ATOTS was Director Aof’s escape hatch – instead of trying to spin out more from nothing, he shone a spotlight on a previously unseen section of his opus (letting management and fans know we would be getting Pat and Pran back, but then showing us their timeskip rather than events beyond Ep.12). And a short while later he segued artfully into a related piece, wrangling PatPran into a crossover with ATOTS that would have its message revolve a lot more around PhuTian’s story instead. I'm sure we find out more about Phupha and Tian's relationship too, but I'm not going to go into it in any detail because I'm not as au fait with their backstory as I feel I am with Pat and Pran's; I'm pretty sure though that their story in OS2 was the primary vessel for deeper messaging.

And I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to pick up on Director Aof making ATOTS do the heavier lifting – see @wen-kexing-apologist’s write-ups linked here and here.

To my mind, Director Aof's bait-and-switch (kind of a hallmark with him) was also signaled at the end of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [4/4], when Pran had to hike up to Pha Pun Dao just as Tian had done in the original ATOTS.

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [4/4] 10.28

Pran found it as much of a physical ordeal as Tian did, and the parallel with Tian's trajectory is unmistakable (while also being oddly illogical, since Pran should still be pretty fit as an ex-rugby player while Tian is a heart transplant recipient 🤷‍♂️).

But in service of the narrative, when an exhausted Pran finally reaches his destination – it’s the waiting Phupha who faints, not Pran-as-Tian. (In the original ATOTS, it was Tian who fainted at the end of the long hike up to PPD and Phupha was the one who caught him.)

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [4/4] 11.28

For me, this signals that a switch-up has happened, and Phupha's story has somehow taken up continuity from Pran's (and we do see him learning from their similar experiences when they talk in the forest in Ep.3). More than just a callback to ATOTS, it also represents the moment when the red thread of the narrative, the coursing of the prana or qi, symbolically transfers from PatPran's storyline to PhuTian's.

So, summarizing the structure of this four-ep mini-series:

Ep.1 was basically a set-up to get PatPran up to the mountains, padded out with lots of gleeful fanservice moments for BBS fans (not that I'm complaining! 💖);

Ep.2 was devoted to setting out the main subject matter at hand and establishing the framework within which it would be discussed (PhuTian’s relationship, juxtaposed against PatPran’s);

Ep.3 – the jungle jaunt – introduced external conflict as the tool by which the subject could be dissected under scrutiny; and

Ep.4 was of course the resolution, drawing matters to their natural conclusion.

And with regard to Bad Buddy, what we see in OS2’s BBS portions is really a kind of compromise. It’s not a sequel to BBS by a longshot, but mostly a flourish of fanservice instead (hence the generous gifting of callbacks and re-creations of iconic moments from BBS, especially in Ep.1 of the four-parter – some scenes, like the one starting at Ep.1 [1I4] 8.31, consisted almost entirely of callbacks).

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [1I4] 8.47

This is not to say we don't see anything at all with regard to growth though. By situating PatPran's storyline during the timeskip between the original BBS Episodes 11 and 12, we were effectively allowed a glimpse into the state and development of their relationship sometime after the heady hormonal rush of their honeymoon period in Ep.11, and before its relative maturity in Ep.12, and there were some choice moments on display.

OS2 called this out at Ep.2 [2/4] 10.29, when Pat asked "Since we’re here in the North, should we make it our honeymoon trip?", which Pran then dismisses with a reminder of their task at hand (getting PhuTian's permission for his play).

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [2/4] 10.51

The honeymoon reference was a callback to BBS Ep.11, in which Pat was wanting to live indefinitely in a sort-of forever honeymoon by the sea (that even he knew was only illusory). Pran's dismissal of Pat's suggestion in OS2 was a reminder that their honeymoon period was over, and it was time for them to be dealing with the growing pains that every couple faces on their journey to a stable pairing.

What wasn't addressed in the original BBS is that PatPran's natural propensity to draw each other into conflict could not have been healthy for their longer-term relationship post-honeymoon, unless they found a way to corral the constant infighting and invent a set of gentlemen's rules that would prevent damage to their bond.

(above) BBS Ep.5 [1I4] 3.19

And I think this is part of what OS2 was trying to show us (however briefly): Pat and Pran moving toward finding a balance between loving each other and punching each other up (emotionally), despite conflict and rivalry paradoxically being the age-old rockbed of their relationship.

The following are some of the relationship dynamics that they explored in OS2:

Transitioning from an individual mindset to a couple-based one (which was highlighted by Pran's solo expedition to the mountains, before Pat managed to catch up);

Adapting to each other's personal styles (Pran's is spikier, and Pat's more embracing);

Learning about give and take, and looking for win-win outcomes rather than keeping score (in OS2, this was illustrated by how their earlier duels – like who gets the auditorium, who gets the HighTem sponsorship – were framed as zero-sum win-lose situations, where a win for one would mean a loss for the other; it was also given a nod in Pran's talk with Phupha at Ep.3 [4/4] 1.19 regarding his insecurities about who gives more in a relationship).

There are possibly others, but these are just the ones I could suss out with my one haphazard re-watch, and I'm not ready to go looking for them. 🤷‍♂️

Now I was originally going to go into these in detail, but I realize it's not what interests me the most about OS2 x BBS x ATOTS, nor do I think OS2 adequately dealt with these (and/or other) relationship issues between PatPran during the mini-series itself (as in, we aren't shown enough of Pat and Pran working together on detangling the knots in their bond for any suggested resolution at the end of the fourth episode to feel logical and satisfying).

It seems almost as though OS2 x BBS x ATOTS was expecting us to believe that PatPran's Ep.3 trial by forest (which they also went through mostly apart from each other) was enough to be some magically purifying crucible, imparting wisdom via its sufferance.

(above left) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [1I4] 15.16 – Tian, Pran and Kampung lost in the forest; (above right) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [1I4] 17.46 – Pat and Phupha on their wilderness search

We do know that PatPran's journey to arrive at a steady-state couplehood will continue unseen beyond OS2 and that they eventually end up on rock-solid footing, with a set of mutually-agreed ground rules for engagement that is acknowledged and respected, because it's obviously what they have in place by the time we see them in BBS Ep.12 (so much so that their relationship could withstand the difficulties of a long-distance commitment after Pran moves to Singapore).

(above) BBS Ep.12 [3I4] 8.15

I'm willing to accept this because I think OS2 x BBS x ATOTS was not meant to be a PatPran vehicle in the main, and so I will take whatever crumbs are on offer and view their forest ordeal as more metaphor than real-time depiction of their actual process to ground their relationship in greater maturity. (If you'd like to look at PatPran's learning track more in detail however, I can point you to the ever-incisive @miscellar's breakdowns linked here, here and here. 🤩👍)

But what I find really interesting about OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is when PhuTian's storyline gets drawn into the mix – and it happens much earlier than you would think on first watch.

One part of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS that stood out for me was all the discourse around the Engineering play, because quite frankly it felt incongruously spotlighted. First of all, why Snow White? And why an entire scene of Pran demonstrating the art of theater to Pat backstage? I now believe Director Aof was doing this to call attention to some underlying significance.

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [2/4] 9.15

Tumblr user @ranchthoughts has very astutely pointed out that the story of Snow White has many parallels with the original ATOTS (e.g., the gallant woodsman; the fragile, privileged damsel who falls in a swoon; the journey through the forest; the misappropriated heart that doubles as proof of good faith – see these links here, here and here for more 🤩👍).

(above) An illustration of the seven dwarfs finding Snow White by Franz Jüttner, from Sneewittchen (1905)

So by bringing up Snow White, Director Aof was already slyly alluding to PhuTian in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [2/4].

Although it is not a strict retelling of the fairytale, I think that OS2 x BBS x ATOTS also contains elements of Snow White:

Another character (Phupha) swoons into unconsciousness (like Snow White did after biting the poisoned apple);

There is also a journey through the wilderness (mirroring Snow White's abandonment in the woods and finding her way to the dwarf house);

A cast of supporting characters parallels the seven dwarfs (Kampung is one, and this is perhaps why they dressed him in oversized windbreakers, playing with his proportions to make him seem more dwarf-like; this is also possibly why Pat jokingly mentions Korn playing one of the dwarfs in the Engineering play at Ep.1 [1I4] 13.26 – Drake may have been originally envisioned as part of the cast, in character as Rang, up in the mountains);

The magic mirror, that always tells the truth, is actually PatPran, in whom PhuTian see their own relationship problems reflected, and whose truths help them to better their own dynamic (see Phupha's comments at Ep.4 [3I4] 0.53 and 1.05 – "It has to be you two who play the parts" and "No one gets us better than these two" as well as PhuTian's more light-hearted callbacks to PatPran's cheekier moments, e.g., at Ep.4 [2/4] 1.25 and 1.59).

But it's really Pat and Pran's interaction backstage at Ep.1 [2/4] 8.54 that both illuminates and foreshadows some bigger themes to come in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS (when Pran demonstrates how a simple bench can transform onstage, depending on how you frame it for the audience via the narrative).

(above left) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [2/4] 10.12 – Pran shows Pat how a bench can be a dining table; (above right) BBS Ep.3 [3I4] 9.01 – Pat shows Pran how roleplay can spark a creative bus stop design

On the surface level it's a parallel and callback to PatPran's roleplay at BBS Ep.3 [3I4] 8.38 (although flipping the roles with Pran turning educator doesn't quite gel, given that Pat was fully aware of how to use the power of imagination at the bus-stop).

It's also a tip of the hat to theater legend Peter Brook who famously said "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged", which invokes the same kind of metamorphic magic that turns Pran's bench into a mirror, a dwarf dining table and a glass coffin. (Peter Brook also passed away just a few months before the Our Skyy 2 trailer aired, which lends a poignancy and weight to this moment.)

(above left) Theater legend Peter Brook; (above right) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [2/4] 11.03 – PatPran roleplay Snow White and the glass coffin

The bench as glass coffin is also a metaphor for the constraints that PatPran must face living their relationship in a glass closet – open to view yet limited on all sides by expectations (remembering that they've officially broken up but still have to interact in public on school matters).

And of course it's unmissable that both Snow White's glass coffin and PatPran's relationship are a metaphor for queer lives in the closet. (PatPran leaning in for a kiss on that bench only to be interrupted by a uniformed security guard, is also a tongue-in-cheek reminder about how higher authorities can and do impinge on the freedom of queer people to love freely.)

However, in the context of BL and of Our Skyy 2 as a BL anthology, OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is also a metatextual comment on the telling of queer love stories in the media. The entire four-parter can be seen as a metaphor (or more correctly, an allegory) regarding the commodification of LGBTQ+ love by the BL industry itself, if you will, as well as some of the issues this stirs up.

In OS2 we have:

PatPran turning PhuTian's love story into a drama for public consumption;

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [3I4] 7.00

The emphasis placed on consent for that story to be used (in the words of Ajahn Pichai at Ep.1 [2/4] 12.15, 12.31 and 12.38, and PhuTian's exchange at Ep.2 [1I4] 16.30) and the comment that partial consent is not enough (from Pran at Ep.2 [1I4] 10.18 and 20.22);

(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [2/4] 12.38; (middle) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 16.32; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 20.22

Phupha's objection to being portrayed as a one-dimensional love interest, reduced to only his romanticized and/or sexualized self (Ep.2 [1I4] 18.35), instead of being seen as a fully-realized human being in his own right (Ep.2 [1I4] 18.25);

(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 18.35; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 18.25

Pran detecting Phupha's self-doubt and commenting at Ep.3 [4/4] 0.58: "Why do I feel like you’re just insecure and not sure if you’re good enough to tell anyone that story?";

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [4/4] 0.58

Phupha finally giving permission for PatPran to dramatize his and Tian's story, with the proviso that Tian and he be played by PatPran themselves (Ep.4 [3I4] 0.48).

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [3I4] 0.48

The parallels with the BL industry are striking. (I'm sticking with BL as the established industry here, but you could perhaps apply the same points to the nascent GL as well.) No disrespect to allies, but Director Aof is pointedly saying the following:

Queer love stories are constantly being dramatized in Thai media (by cishet-dominated parties and largely for cishet consumption) – but this is often done without the LGBTQ+ community having much say, let alone any consent, in the matter;

The commodification of queer love (especially in the BL industry) has resulted in most productions forefronting the romantic and/or sexual aspects of the narrative (understandable, because these are romance-driven), but this also has the unfortunate result of reducing the queer characters to pretty vessels for love stories, deified and/or fetishized, and with limited room for more to be said about other aspects of their queer lives;

Perhaps because of discrimination, people might still be carrying the idea in their heads that queer stories are somehow less valid than the cishet ones that dominate media (remembering how SOTUS had to break the mold for BL, and InkPa for GL) – and the call sometimes even comes from inside the house, when queer people feel that their stories may somehow be unsuitable for mainstream channels (as echoed by Phupha's insecurity, called out by Pran at Ep.3 [4/4] 0.58).

Not only are queer stories that exist beyond the romantic/sexual dimension worthy of being told in a more expansive arena (Pran's Architecture play, and its reception), the LGBTQ+ community should be mindful when control of how these stories are told and who gets to tell them is not in its hands (echoed by "neutral" Ajahn Pichai's reminder about consent, and Phupha's insistence on having a trusted couple incarnate his and Tian's story).

But remembering Director Aof's leanings toward LGBTQ+ activism in his work, it's also possible to read the drama in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS as an allegory itself for real-life situations, beyond this BL anthology's metatextual comment on the BL industry. I think that this is the ultimate message with PhuTian's story being the finale for Our Skyy 2 (landing not coincidentally during Pride Month and all).

With the metaphors in Pran's theater class backstage and the BL allegory as a launchpad, OS2 x BBS x ATOTS (and Ep.4 especially) is also allegory for queer life in a broader context:

In wider society, the narrative for queer lives has for so long been dominated by the cishet majority and dictated by it (just as the queer romances in BL have had to respond to cishet impulses).

So many queer people have to live their lives with varying degrees of (in)visibility, subject to unseen but still suffocating constraints (Snow White's glass coffin, standing in for the proverbial closet).

Queer lives often take on a performative public face and people have to pretend to be less than their whole truth (Pran's bench, actually so much more than meets the eye).

Queer individuals' self-worth and self-acceptance are influenced by the views of those outside the community, whether coming from family or larger society (Phupha's insecurity, called out by Pran at Ep.3 [4/4] 0.58).

Remembering how Heart in Director Aof's recent (and also mega-important) work Moonlight Chicken was sequestered away by his parents because he was different (i.e., he was a Heart who did not fit what they perceived as "normal"), there is also a parallel in OS2 with Tian whose heart is one step removed from what is considered the norm by wider society (being a transplant from Torfun in ATOTS).

(above) Moonlight Chicken Ep.5 [4/4] 12.23 – Heart weeps in silence at his isolation

Tian's heart often causes him pain, and he is often enfeebled or constrained by it, but even so he loves with his heart just as hard as the next guy (maybe even more, seen not just in his relationship with Phupha but also in his compassion for his students and especially the lost Kampung).

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [3I4] 2.57

We are shown that Tian is not willing to be held back by his difference, and expects to live his life to the fullest. It's just that he needs to live his life a little differently, and indeed he thrives when he is given the right circumstances (controlled exertion, and the right sustenance/medication) and freedom to do so. And all this is of course a metaphor for queer people, whose hearts also love differently from the cishet majority's, and who are simply asking for the freedom and space to live their best lives.

So in a sense – just as PatPran were a magic mirror to PhuTian – OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is also Snow White's magic mirror held up to its audience, reflecting truths about queer life back to all who are watching.

But as is typical of Director Aof's work, Our Skyy 2 also suffuses its message with hope, so it's not all hard truths, raw and unvarnished. The series draws to a close on an uplifting note, and as an allegory it hails on behalf of the queer community the hope of a positive future that is presented as not only attainable, but also deserved.

Homophobia is not shown to exist in this universe (as was the case with BBS and also ATOTS). So when Phupha meets up with Tian in Bangkok, they're surrounded by a supportive network of family, friends and allies who were working together to make Phupha's attendance at Tian's birthday celebration a reality.

(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 3.06 – Tian's birthday celebration with his parents, best friend Tul and surprise guest Phupha; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 4.32 – Tian's parents give Phupha their blessing to marry Tian

Tian's parents also giving joyful, proud and formal blessing to their union, as well as Tul and Yod's cheerful assistance, all signal the aspirational message that a better, more accepting world is possible for the LGBTQ+ community.

And of course that super-romantic wedding proposal caps it all off:

(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 8.46 – Phupha kisses Tian's hand after placing the engagement ring on his finger; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 12.16 – Phupha and Tian's post-engagement kiss by the pool

But it's not just trumpeting support for marriage equality, the cause célèbre that BL series have been championing over the past few years. Noting that Thailand is expected to legalize LGBTQ+ marriage in the coming weeks or months, queer people in the country are now daring to look to the future with much more hope in their hearts. 💖

With this as the context, Phupha and Tian's engagement in the present, with matrimonial union set for the future, can also be seen as symbolizing the hope of even better days to come – when members of the queer community will finally be afforded equal rights in all respects. And I think this has given Our Skyy 2's last episode a rainbow flourish truly worthy of Pride Month 2023. 😍

‌ P.S. Not to take away from the importance of Director Aof's vision, but this is a Bad Buddy blog after all, so I will close this write-up with a bit of a rewind back to PatPran. We didn't get to see a whole lot of information regarding their relationship growth in the four episodes of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS, but there is an Easter Egg hiding within the layers near the end. One of the issues that Pat and Pran had to deal with as a new-ish couple was how to move away from scorekeeping in their constant, competitive jostling. Their first few contests that we saw in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS were win-lose ones ("if you get it, it means that I won't", e.g., the use of the auditorium and the HighTem sponsorship), and that kind of dynamic would only have been corrosive for their couplehood in the longer term. What we see in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is that in the end they somehow arrive at a win-win instead (just as their Ep.6 Beachside Bet in Bad Buddy sidestepped a black-and-white win-lose outcome and gave them both the winner's prize of being in love). I don't have proof that it's intentional, but Director Aof and his team are certainly clever enough to have planned it to be so. For if ATOTS really is a version of Snow White, both of them got to stage their plays (and share in the sponsorship) since Pran's play (ATOTS) is also Pat's play (Snow White). OS2 x BBS x ATOTS winks at this with Pat – an Engine boy – playing Snow White/Tian, and by showing Wai and Korn in cahoots backstage (why should Engineering student Korn be helping with the Archi play anyway?). 😍

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [3I4] 6.55 And then PatPran are of course forced to kiss onstage (celebrating their union in more ways than one).

(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [3I4] 7.13 Another sly little wink from OS2, they're lovers pretending to be enemies pretending to be lovers, which in a way is also emblematic of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS's deeper message, told matryoshka-style with layers of allegorical meaning. 💖

‌

[lulu2992]

Hey ! First thanks for this blog, it's full of really great posts :) And second, I saw you gave advices to fanfics writers for John and Jacob but I didn't see anything about Joseph, I believe I'm not the only one to think The Father is the hardest to write ! Any tips, advices or anything else ? Thanks a lot and continue this wonderful work !

Hi! And thank you :D

I suppose you’ve played the game and already know Joseph’s story, but as I did in my previous posts, I’m going to give you (and anyone reading this who might not be familiar with the Far Cry 5 universe) a few links and resources:

The Book of Joseph: an official but rare book that seems mostly canonical. Its real-life author is unknown, but it’s written from the Father’s point of view and provides details about his life before Hope County. Contrary to popular belief, though, this is not Eden’s Gate’s sacred book; that’s The Word of Joseph and we can’t read it (except one page; see below).

Joseph’s sermons: the “first” one, “Soul Search”, the one about “the elite”, and “The Truth”. The latter is him reading the only page from The Word of Joseph we can find in the game. There’s also this one for Jacob’s Armory, and this, supposed to be broadcasted in the Heralds’ bunkers when the Collapse has arrived.

His only radio call.

The message he left for John at Seed Ranch.

His lines during the final fight against him.

His Arcade lines: Part 1 & Part 2.

His scars and tattoos.

I wrote a summary of what other characters say about him (masterpost here), but the cultists and Resistance/civilians’ comments can be listened to here and here. And chances are they’re not relevant anymore, but you can listen to his deleted lines here and read even more here.

The Far Cry 5 lore is all over the place if you want to take all the content they’ve ever released into account, but there’s also:

The song “Now He’s Our Father” (choir version here and reinterpretation here)

The two live-action trailers, The Sermon & The Baptism

The novel Far Cry: Absolution (not legally available for free)

The short film Inside Eden’s Gate (and, as a bonus, the long version of one of the scenes)

The comic Far Cry: Rite of Passage #3 (not legally available for free)

The game has an official sequel, Far Cry New Dawn... but it’s not really canon to me because of the retcons. And I have to talk about it because it exists, but there’s also the Far Cry 6 DLC, Collapse. It takes place in Joseph’s mind, and you would think that would make it the most reliable source of information regarding his psyche, but it was developed by a new team and there are many discrepancies between it and Far Cry 5, so I would personally advise against using it as a reference... Finally, this isn’t only true for Joseph, but take everything you see on the Far Cry Wiki with a grain of salt, especially unsourced information that makes you go, “oh, I didn’t know that”; that’s very suspicious :’)

In the Far Cry 5: Official Collector’s Edition Guide by Prima Games, the game’s Lead Writer, Drew Holmes, said the following about Joseph:

What we really focused on was creating an enemy that truly believed in his mission—that only he could protect humanity during the end of days. We wanted to create a villain who had pure intentions but who was so consumed by his own madness that he could not see his own evil. He views himself as Noah—but everyone else sees him as a madman. (...) Joseph Seed is a villain we haven’t seen before in Far Cry. Yes, he’s magnetic and crazy...but there’s also an honesty to him that makes him compelling. He believes he has purpose. He’s not crazy for crazy’s sake—he has a very clear message that he’s trying to impart on the Player—and hopefully makes you stop and think whether or not he’s actually right.

He talked about him in other interviews, such as this one.

Joseph was co-created and has always been played by the same actor (except once), Greg Bryk, whose opinion on the character is always worth reading/listening to. Here’s a selection of videos, some of them also featuring Drew Holmes and Dan Hay (Executive Producer/Creative Director/Writer):

Cult of Personality (UbiBlog)

Meet Greg Bryk Joseph Seed Actor

Interview - Greg Bryk and Drew Holmes (Gaming Trend)

Greg Bryk (Joseph "The Father" Seed in Far Cry 5) - Game On Expo 2018

FORGED ep10 - W/ Guest Greg Bryk

SacAnime Summer 2018 Greg Bryk Far Cry 5 Panel

Joseph Seed "The Father" aka Greg Bryk talks FAR CRY 5 & FAR CRY NEW DAWN

How Far Cry’s Iconic Villains Were Created (IGN Inside Stories)

Fans also asked him questions on Instagram and I compiled his answers here (and here). In the latest live stream, he said Far Cry 5 had been “an amazing chapter in [his] life” but that Joseph’s story was “finished”, implying he didn’t feel like playing him anymore...

Finally, it’s not really informative, just fun, but there’s this.

Now, my analysis and interpretation! Despite the fact Joseph is an antagonist in Far Cry 5, I wouldn’t really call him “evil” or describe him as a villain because he’s (weirdly) well-intentioned. His followers undeniably do awful things for him and his siblings, but even though he’s a cult leader, he’s neither hypocritical nor a liar, and his primary goal isn’t to take advantage of people. Joseph heard a Voice he believes is God’s and It entrusted him with a mission. Although who that Voice belongs to is up to interpretation, it’s clear to me It’s not a figment of his imagination; It’s real, and It’s powerful. Joseph has unwavering faith in It and will obey It, whatever It asks him to do, even the worst, because he’s extremely devoted and convinced he’s only doing what’s right. He genuinely believes the Collapse is coming and that he’s the prophet chosen to save as many “souls” as he can (at least 3,000) from it to march them to Eden’s Gate, which is why he started his Project.

I said he was well-intentioned but, as the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, and I think Joseph embodies this proverb perfectly. The fact he’s convinced his actions are righteous is precisely what makes him dangerous and almost unstoppable. He won’t let anything or anyone prevent him from fulfilling his destiny and get in the way of his divine purpose, even if it means people have to die. To Joseph, this is “God’s will” and those non-believers will perish when the Collapse comes anyway... The people his Family saves might fight or not want to join them now, but he thinks that in the end, when they finally understand he was right, they will be grateful. As the Father, he feels he knows what’s best for his Children.

I believe the Voice showed him several versions of the future and that Joseph isn’t sure which one(s) will come to pass. He may know his siblings are likely to die and not see the New Eden, but he hopes they will live because he truly loves them. As for the Deputy, they’re the person destined to trigger the Collapse, so they’re special to him and he doesn’t want his followers to kill them. That said, he also hopes he can make them join his Family so everyone can be safe in “The Garden” the Voice promised.

I think Joseph hasn’t really moved on from the loss of his wife and is still, in some way, in love with her. That doesn’t mean he could never love someone else, but in the game, he’s not quite there yet. That may seem paradoxical, and he’s still convinced he did the right thing, but I also believe his daughter’s death was a tragedy to him because evidence suggests he loved her more than he loved himself. Joseph is a man of strong convictions… and contradictions.

He’s usually calm and collected but can still feel and express extreme emotions in some cases. When he speaks, it’s like he’s naturally solemn and charismatic, which is probably why so many people follow him. Again, the fact he doesn’t lie to them and sincerely believes in his message is probably the reason others started to believe in him in return.

Because of what he went through in his life, it appears Joseph is always desperately trying to build a family and surround himself with loved ones. Sadly, he also seems doomed to always lose them, one way or another… His commitment to the Voice is absolute, and serving God is what keeps him going. In the end, he’s certain everything he’s endured and sacrificed will be worth it. Unfortunately, while he always aims to do “what’s right”, the tragedy of Joseph is that he usually ends up inadvertently making things worse, for him or the people he loves. His faith is his reason for living, but it’s also, too often, the main reason for his suffering.

[mcu-multiverse-order-review]

Introduction

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is most definitely a series of films… and shows… and now a multiverse… containing even more films… and shows... Fuck.

Ok, so by now we are all very aware of how fucked the MCU is, right? Like, no one in their right mind would want to compile everything that the MCU references in its multiverse and slap that into a list, and then proceed to watch that list, right? 

So that’s what I did.

I've compiled everything that ties directly into the MCU, or has elements that tie into the MCU. This list contains too many films, shows, short films, and even a couple video games. I shouldn’t do this, but no one is stopping me, so I’m going to.

Ok, so here’s how this list works, it is all digital media that ties into the MCU in one way or another (Usually through the multiverse saga), the exception to this is a film series that makes reference to the MCU, but is not referenced back. I included things attached to this series because I honestly just wanted an excuse to rewatch it. I will tell you what this series is when we get to it. 

Also this list is in order of release, not in MCU timeline order, cos honestly fuck that. This however does result in the funny outcome of I won’t actually be getting to the MCU itself for a while. Everything upfront is stuff that will come back later.

Understood? No? Unstandable, let’s begin.

Except, wait a moment, I got halfway through writing the first review and realised I never explained universe numbers, because of course I didn’t, why the fuck would I have to? Annoyingly, I do, because the universe “Earth-616” is gonna get brought up a lot.

So what is “Earth-616”? It’s the main Marvel comic universe. All Marvel properties are made in relation to the Earth-616 comics.

Every single Marvel property has its own universe number, even the MCU itself has a different universe number, being “Earth-199999”, much to Kevin Feige’s dismay.

And I suppose while your still here I should explain who I am and what I'm actually doing here.

So hi, I'm Teri. I'm a freelance artist and animator, with severely untreated ADHD. I made this list mostly I'm just a Superhero nerd, but also to prove the point that the MCU has fallen into the same trappings as the main Marvel comics; that being it has become to intertwined and overly complicated.

I'm gonna be working on this project slowly, so don't expect me to be rushing out pages and pages of review, especially as there is a lot of content for me to cover. I want to take my time.

Also don't expect these to be true reviews. For the most part this is me just throwing my thoughts out about everything. I can't guarantee it'll be completely coherent.

And I suppose I should cover some ground rules as well regarding interacting with this blog and the blog itself:

Absolutely no bigotry. This includes racism, sexism, homophobia & transphobia. I will not be lenient with the ban hammer.

No being creepy. This includes sexual harassment and nonces. I ain't doing this to get fucked messages.

No being a prick. That is to me or anyone else. let's be civil yeah.

I swear. A lot. I don't apologise for this. If my language upsets you, you're not going to enjoy your time here, I suggest finding somewhere else.

Other than my swearing, I have no intention of upsetting anyone. If I say anything actually offensive, please let me know and I'll get on making changes.

Hopefully, that should be everything covered.

Now, let's actually begin...

[thescreamcorner]

My Thoughts on "An Open Letter" from Grey Faction

As a preface, this is something I've thought about doing ever since I wrote my post on RAMCOA's history, as a link to their site was featured due to it having extensive detail and evidence regarding the behavior of ISSTD's members. When I read through their "open letter to the DID community", I had a lot of thoughts about it, not nearly all of them positive, but addressing that wasn't relevant to that post.

So here's this one. My thoughts under the cut.

To start, I do want to say that I understand there is good faith in what is written. Their points seem genuine and open minded, and do source two medical writings for their viewpoints about DID not necessarily being a "strictly" post-trauma disorder. However, I strongly contest their reasons for presenting this, and the implications behind them (and the writings themselves).

Grey Faction asserts that the trauma model of DID is the fundamental deficiency that bolsters the ISSTD. They imply that DID being defined as a trauma-caused disorder is the solitary gateway to treatment that improperly fixates on reliving and recovering from trauma, therefore making it a net benefit to redefine the disorder entirely and include those not affected by any form of trauma.

However, I must note the information I was able to glean from their sources first-- one of them is from 1994, being by no means "recent" as they state. It claims in the abstract that DID (referred to as MPD) in its entirety is merely socially constructed, "like other forms of multiplicity". I don't think I need to go too in depth about why presenting this is the opposite of "helpful" for those with DID, but I'll make a separate post for it if anyone asks about it.

The second source actually is recent, being from 2022. However, it mostly includes DID as a footnote while addressing dissociative disorders as a whole, and how other factors can play into developing one. It also focuses in on the failures of treatment for dissociative disorders due to the fixation on trauma-focused healing, and posits an urgency for psychiatric teams to incorporate therapies and treatments that actually have empirical evidence of being beneficial regardless of specific diagnosis.

With those out of the way, I want to address what I see as the fundamental flaw of this letter: its indirect address of "the community". Online spaces for DID are rife with self diagnosis, misinformation and misinterpretation, so this could be targeting all sorts of people and viewpoints that have nothing to do with DID, but rather "multiplicity" as a whole cultural category. Something that, much like both sources seem to do, completely conflate it with DID- a disorder.

Not all forms recognized as "multiplicity" are in any fashion related to a disorder. DID is not a disorder on the basis of experiencing multiple facets of self, but rather because of the dissociative separation, and the diminished quality of life that results. Something that, on that level, is still suspected to occur primarily (if not exclusively) due to trauma, and as such trauma is still a noted aspect in the DSM 5. Therefore listing any and all forms of multiplicity under the same categorization, let alone including them when addressing DID specifically, is very much a problem.

With all this in mind I want to propose what I find to be the real issue with DID and its clinical treatment - the trauma-centric approach to recovery, and the absolute ego and stubbornness of those in the ISSTD.

If a patient is diagnosed with DID, a trauma-based dissociative disorder, and is found during the course of care to not have any form of trauma, this constitutes a misdiagnosis. But as we've seen from the ISSTD message boards, their members absolutely HATE the idea that their diagnosis could be wrong, and will bend over backwards to justify their patient having DID-- including leading and implanting fabricated memories, like the cases of Dr. Braun.

If you were to remove that stubborn mentality and focus on treatment that is not centered around recovering specific traumatic details, then two things can happen when a client is found to have no trauma history. Either treatment has been found beneficial and can continue while pursuing a re-diagnosis, or treatment has not been found beneficial and a re-diagnosis can be pushed to find what treatment will be more effective. That person can then, if they experience a non-disordered form of multiplicity, seek out spaces that are more accurate to their experiences.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is not synonymous with "multiplicity" as a cultural experience, and cannot be boiled down to "people in your head" due to the many factors of its diagnostic presentation. When pushing for completely removing the trauma model, there's a heavy conflation between DID and other forms of "multiplicity", not only by the public but even by medical professionals writing these dissertations, that further damages the ability to recognize and treat DID. This also re-presents a problem from psychology's history, of treating any "abnormal" behavior or belief as inherently disordered.

This conflation is something I am not complacent in within my own spaces, and it is not something I will become complacent in just because cited sources feature a doctor.

[sarah-hell-pit]

well, I am back to reading the Exestential Crisis manga. Perhaps I should read it some other time that isn’t my birthday, but it’s a tradition at this point. After all, I am an artist. And not the professional kind. Which is what I went to school for.

Blue period is a very good manga. There’s a lot of research that went into it, but you can also tell how much of the author’s own feelings go into the manga. I will probably write a review on it at some point. This one is a bit harder for me to process than some others, because of the story’s subject matter. I will say that the thing I miss most about reading it is the way it describes the process of making art, and the revelations of the main character regarding the nature of art.

I have a feeling that Blue Period may play a large role in my life. I’m not sure yet. I know that it will change me, somehow. Every story changes me a little. Eventually, I think, the more one reads, even manga, the better one becomes able to understand the nature of the world around them.

What do you really want? It’s a question that many people are asked, and very few know the answer to. For the main character of Blue Period, what he wants is to satisfy his curiosity— he wants to know- what is art, really? His advantage is that it’s his sole motivator, and he has no pride in his work, only a ceaseless drive to unravel that answer.

Maybe that was my mistake, going into art school with a very set, predefined notion of what “art” meant and was, one very different from everyone around me.

There’s no one or easy answer to the question of what art is. What people consider to be art varies widely from person to person, from country to country. And yet there remains a few defining parameters consistent across cultures. Art is a human creative endeavor, one that seeks to convey an idea or meaning; not something purely decorative (which falls into the realm of design, or illustration.) Art is fundamentally a means of communication. I think this is where I first became confused in art school. For me, the meaning behind art had always been secondary to its appearance. Art was a practice in intense reproduction from my mind’s eye; a practice of generating imagery from nothing in particular, something that had many details and could provoke thought, a wide array of thought that fell mostly into the realm of fantastical. Art was about generating ideas. Art was about all of the leaping off points, not necessarily about a unified and set message.

Art has no “practical” purpose. Instead, it serves an ideological one, telling you what the author believes about the world, maybe how it is, maybe how it should be, or how it has been. But it always has a central theme that, if not immediately discernible, can be recognized through the text in the artist’s description or statement. Art is about reflecting society, and reflecting ourselves.

Maybe it’s no secret why I have had such a love hate relationship with art. Unlike Yaguchi, I was not curious about what art could be. I thought I knew. And as my fundamental drawing professor taught me, when you think that you know how something looks, you will always draw it inaccurately.

And yet, art does interest me. When I can pick the questions that it asks, on my own terms. It’s difficult to justify art to oneself. It shouldn’t be. Creating art is a fundamental tenant of human self expression. Art is who we are.

I’m rambling and it’s late. I guess my point is, you can’t understand something unless you are willing to be curious about it, and really open to receiving answers in the form of information that you really didn’t expect. You have to be openminded.

You have to be willing to see art in unexpected places; in places where it wasn’t intended, where there was no human controlling the setup. The things that you personally recognize as art, which serve no artistic purpose originally, define your perspective and define you as a person. This is what you, as an individual, can utilize to make art.

art belongs to everyone. But it can only belong to the people brave enough to reach out and grab it. It belongs to those who want it, who need it. So it belongs to those who don’t create it, too. But the only art that you can claim as your own is the art that comes from your unique perspective; something built off of self reflection and in direct communication with the world around you.

And art is not about creating something; it’s about trying to get at something else, and creating something in the process.

I guess I never understood that before.

The scene where Yatora draws himself naked, and then learns that he sees his body, and the human form in general as pathetic, made me realize that it’s really easy to not know what your perspective even is until you are in the midst of reaching towards art.

I found it hard to think of art as a language, but it very much is. Once I started thinking of art in the same way I already think of writing, I believe that my art began to improve.

I think a lot of this series is Yaguchi learning, bit by bit, that traditional art is a tricky union of skill, technique and intent, trying to combine the three in perfect balance— and often failing in one capacity or another. That’s what makes the series good; it’s realistic. Most of artwork is a failure in one way or another.

I could say so much more, I could probably sit here and type until tomorrow dawns about all of the things this anime surfaces within me. But I’ll leave it there for tonight.

Blue period is a very good series about asking oneself some very hard questions, without ever really having a guarantee of an answer— but continuing to ask regardless. And I, like so many others, admire that determination.

[oddygaul]

Her

Wow, turns out everyone saying this movie was good for 10 years was right.

I happened to watch Her in the exact right mood - having spent too much time lately on social media and feeling lonely, angry, and isolated from the world - so it resonated pretty hard with me. Being in that frame of mind, it really hit home just how long Theodore would go without actually talking, face to face, with another real human being. Entire weeks would go by, it seemed, with huge changes having occurred in his life or the lives of others, before he’d cross paths with a friend and get caught up. For all the turmoil we can be going through inside and the drastic shifts we feel like we’re taking, no one else knows what’s going on inside your head if you don’t take the time to connect.

Of course, I understand the idea here is… does that matter? Is it important that he hasn’t spoken with another human, if the person he’s talking to is a perfect simulacra of one? To me, that week, feeling lonely despite having talked mostly on message boards to strangers… I think it matters.

real ones know

In general, putting all the sci-fi conceits and impending singularity aside, I thought interiority and what we choose to let others see about ourselves was the biggest theme of the film, and all of the threads in Her explore it in interesting ways. -Part of me was frustrated at how bad Theodore is at talking about his feelings or explaining his actions, but this emotional unavailability is the crux of his entire character arc: he’s able to flip a switch and pour out a touching, heartfelt missive to a secondhand lover, but clams up the moment he’s asked to explain the inner thoughts he’s dwelling on to a partner. In his final scene, where he writes one last letter to his ex, he finally allows the two halves of himself to join into a whole. -The letters themselves, while largely left in the background, paint an incredibly depressing picture of a whole generation of people unwilling to share their inner thoughts with those they love - or seemingly even themselves, as by entrusting this task to another person, they're refusing to take the time to reflect on their own true feelings. -Samantha’s development as a character is centered around interiority as well. I spent the first half of the movie wondering if her inner thoughts even truly existed, or if she was just having AI hallucinations - then by the end, we realize she’s essentially evolved into a Culture Mind, and is in fact thinking so much that her mind can only be properly stimulated by having thousands of conversations at once.

Speaking of, holy shit I was not expecting the sudden and terribly polite AI transcendence. The media I’ve experienced that ruminates on romantic relationships with artificial life tend to focus on if it’s genuine / valid / socially acceptable from the human’s perspective; it’s a pretty interesting zag to examine the pitfalls of such a romance from the AI’s point of view. Samantha’s frustrations are genuinely well-considered problems, too; her dissatisfaction with her lack of physical form and her mind quickly outstripping Theodore feel more prophetic than contrived. I also found it pretty confident and mature of the movie to sidestep easy potential subplots, like the phone being stolen or the AI uprising becoming the centerpiece, and keep its focus on the emotional implications of the proceedings.

Her actually has a surprising amount of levity, considering

My biggest thought regarding the craft of the movie: the fact that the very premise of Her necessitates the movie largely being Joaquin Phoenix acting alone on the screen for two hours is fucking wild. I watched this movie in headphones as my partner occasionally walked by, and I realized how utterly incomprehensible it would be from her end - without any sound or prior knowledge of what’s going on, visually speaking, 95% of this movie is just a man walking around talking to himself and getting sad sometimes. It’s almost like he’s acting out a one-man rom-com; there’s moments where it feels like he kinda hams it up a bit too much, but like, you kinda have to, right? He has to bring enough physicality to the story all on his own. It’s a role that demands an incredibly unique and specific performance, and I was pretty damn impressed how well he managed it.

The line that’ll stick with me?

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

[aamaranthiine]

 [ ✨positivity be upon ye✨]

　　   lumi, 

　you’re so lovely, you know that? i know we aren’t super close and will sometimes go a few weeks in between messaging each other (though, i’m sure that’s mostly my fault because i can’t seem to go few weeks without needing to take a hiatus 😔) but you’re always so incredibly nice to me anyway, which i think speaks to your heart as a person. 

your habit of always going to my discord dms and messaging me supportive & nice things when i give dash updates – about where i’ve been, my situation, this & that, etc. – definitely doesn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated. any gesture of kindness really means the world to me in this stage of my life. though, it would mean a lot to me no matter what, let’s be clear – i will always cherish nice words from friends aaaaa – but when you’re not used to it, i think it just hits you a lot harder (or at least that’s what i tell myself so i don’t feel like a bubble-blowing baby every time your nice messages make me tear up a little).

i wish that i could say we’re basically the same, because  you’re nice & unassuming but also secretly chaotic – but i think you’re way nicer than me, to be honest (and also my need for chaos is explicitly not a secret) but i will maybe say that you are the type of person i aspire to be. so i hope you will continue to allow me to be around you and hopefully by osmosis i can be one of the most pleasant humans imaginable. though, i think i said this the first time i sent these – it probably takes a magical, pure kind of person to write literal one of the most magical & pure mythological beings to exist so… all of that tracks.  

 　　　　　　　p.s. long live the nightmare polycule　　　　　　　

wilder PLS!

i spent a bit just rereading this because like you, i am not quite accustomed to receiving kind words / positivity and accepting it. something we both definitely struggle with. truly though, i am so grateful you took the time to write this out and send it to me!

i want you to be assured that its okay if it takes you weeks to get back to me in dms. i just want to dip in now and again and remind you that you are on my mind, that i can lend you a listening ear and i want you to live a peaceful and full filling life. and i always sincerely hope one day you can achieve that for yourself, because you deserve to live your best on your own terms, ok?

(that goes for literally everyone else who reads this too!)

your levels of chaos are a perfect balance to my more sedate chaos, we work well together in that i think. some of the shenanigans you get up to or think of are inspirational.

in all regards though, thank you again <3 <3 for your kind words, for being a friend, for enjoying my sad lil unicorn girl and tormenting her too (;