#nothing of value to say is me being charitable

[thebibblebobb]

"Vote blue no matter what" posts would be more tolerable if they didn't tend to also include "and never criticise blue for anything, not even for supporting literal genocide".

As it is, I think it's quite logical that people who think genocide is bad, look at posts telling them it's wrong to say "supporting genocide is bad", and conclude the people writing those posts having nothing of value to say.

[comicaurora]

I'm sorry that the terfs made their way onto your blog but it does feel good to see you support trans people. Thank you for that

Always.

I think, charitably, that the discourse going down on that post is an extrapolation and over-focus on one element of the point I was making: that for me, determining with certainty that I was cis was a rather fraught process. I was presented with many alternatives, but underlying their imposition on me was the oddly regressive idea that the things I liked, the principles I valued, the parts of myself I was proud of were not permitted of women. My whole life I got smacked with the background radiation that I couldn't like being strong because women aren't allowed to be stronger than men. I couldn't like being loud and boistrous because women aren't allowed to take up space. I couldn't be a math geek because women aren't smart. It was all deeply regressive misogyny from day one, but I started getting hit with it slathered in a fresh coat of paint - all those assumptions still held to be true, but now there was the out that I could do all those things if I just wasn't a woman.

Concluding that the underlying bioessentialist premise was wrong was very important. Absolutely none of those statements were true, and were only ever maintained by cultural saturation, goalpost-readjustment when they were actively disproven, and the occasional bout of lying with statistics to pretend they weren't just Shit All The Way Down. The core premise that certain things were only permitted of or possible for men was bullshit, and I didn't need to surrender the gender I liked best in order to play in the spaces I wanted to. I could simply exist the way I was already existing. I didn't need anything else.

The misinterpretation is the assumption that this being true of me means this is everybody's relationship with gender. I turned out to be cis, so for me, feeling that holding onto my assigned gender wasn't allowed was distressing - just another invocation of the same bioessentialist bullshit I'd been dealing with since the preschool playground. This is because misgendering is fundamentally denying that a person has the right to express themself the way they want. When aimed at me, it says I'm not performing traditional femininity well enough to deserve my pronouns. The same disrespect is the root of misgendering when aimed at trans people. "Perform your gender to my satisfaction or I will confiscate it."

The problem is, bioessentialism is 100% ingrained into the terf playbook, which is why, for instance, all their shitty talking points about trans athletes eventually boil down to "no woman can ever defeat a man in any contest because we are simply naturally weak and stupid and there is nothing we can do about it" and quite frankly nothing disgusts me more than the defeatist acceptance of the very lie that feminism is dedicated to overcoming. Instead of accepting that the paradigm of bioessentialism is a false dichotomy right from the jump, they embrace and weaponize it against the people whose existence proves the dichotomy is a lie. If gender essentialism is fundamentally false, then it is nobody's fucking business what anybody does with their gender. If the lines don't exist, nobody needs to enforce them. And yet there the terfs go, hunting down people whose lives are none of their business and trying to argue that they represent some great and terrible evil, some downfall of society made flesh, something that makes it totally correct and normal for them to spend so much time thinking about strangers' genitalia. They want this to be a noble crusade so badly they won't even examine what flag they're flying.

I love and support the trans people in my life and will always, always stand on the side of your right to exist, but alongside that, terf rhetoric especially disgusts and infuriates me because it is, at its heart, utter cowardice. The world told them they were weak and stupid and inferior and they fucking believed it. And now they think Fighting The Good Fight For Women means turning around and using the same paradigmatic weapon that hurt them to hurt the people whose existence outside the binary proves the weapon is a lie. They're the same shithead schoolyard bullies who made me believe my entire existence was foundationally wrong for years of my life and I will never, ever side with them or the shitty, cowardly rhetoric that contributed to the loneliest years of my life.

Figure out who you are and do it on purpose. Find the real source of the misery in your life and try fighting that instead of the other crabs in the bucket. Trans rights.

[uboat53]

I'm calling it now, Donald Trump had a stroke. Hear me out.

So, first of all, Trump did an interview with Elon Musk yesterday on Twitter (or "X", I suppose) where he sounded off. I hadn't heard it until today so I was prepared for it not to be as bad as the chatter, but it was definitely bad. Whenever he got excited it seemed like his mouth filled up with saliva to the point where he sounded like Sylvester the Cat; I half expected to hear him say "thuffering thucotash!" after listening to him for only 30 seconds.

Of course his campaign is trying to blame it on the sound equipment and, while he does sound a trifle muffled, I know a few people who deal with sound equipment (benefits of marrying a music teacher) and none of them think this is something that the equipment could have caused.

So why do I think it's a stroke? Let me explain with a story.

You see, in 2016, I had a discussion with a friend where I argued that we should assume Trump is in debt for more than the value of his assets. You see, at that point he was refusing to release tax returns and financial records to prove that he was actually as rich as he said he was. My point was that, by assuming good things about his finances, he would have no incentive to actually release the documents because anything in them was probably much worse than what we were assuming. By assuming the worst, we provide incentive for him to release them, if only just to prove us wrong.

Now it's eight years later and… boy do we know a lot of bad things about his finances. We know that almost none of his buildings run at a profit and that the only one that does is the one that he doesn't manage (the Vornado partnership). We know that his charity was shut down for being a slush fund that did no actual charitable work, we know that he fraudulently inflates and deflates the values of his properties depending on whether he's talking to a lender or a tax collector, and we know that he falsified his business records to hide illegal payments to aid his political career.

In other words, if we'd assumed the worst in 2016, we'd have been much closer to being correct than if we'd even made a neutral assumption!

So that's why I think Trump had a stroke. It would explain why he suddenly developed a speech impediment (unlike Biden's stutter, this wasn't there four years ago) and why he's been holed up in Mar a Lago for the last month.

If he didn't have a stroke, then let's hear the real explanation for these things. I'm betting I'm much closer to being correct than the people who would brush it off as nothing.

[mdhwrites]

Going back through TOH's episodes, it strikes me how boring they are. Part of the problem seems to be how criminally unfunny the show is, generally speaking. I can count how many times I've laughed on one hand. In fact I can list them:

There was the "It's been my dream since I was a boy" guy pushing kids off cliffs (Moving Hassle), Luz's "He'll be fine" after throwing Hunter overboard - and then his subsequent re-entry (Hunting Palismen) - and lastly Luz tumbling offscreen in front of Amity after a spider crawls on her face (Grom). That's 3 scenes, 4 jokes if we're being charitable. And sure, maybe my sense of humour is just incompatible with TOH's and I'm being harsh.

But I can't deny that I just feel like there's no rewatch value in TOH? Like it's just... the jokes are so bad to the point it's not fun, it's not entertaining, it's a slog, I see no value in retreading the same ground. And I am a SERIAL rewatcher! This is coming from someone who spends maybe 85% of their time experiencing the same stories! I love seeing well-done media all over again, because even if I know what's going to happen or what they will say, a well-structured joke or a skillfully delivered line is still gonna engage me.

I can't even recommend the show to anyone because I HAVE in the past... and what ends up happening is they watch the first couple episodes, get bored, go "I recognize that you like this, but it's not my thing" and drop it. And I CAN'T BLAME THAT! Because that's how I reacted too when I got into the show! I only stuck with it because it seemed like it was going really interesting places. And it tried to, I think, and failed.

I'm also a very fandom-heavy person so TOH's boring episodes have made it increasingly harder for me to stay within it. Because I'm not rewatching anything, I can see myself in real time as I forget more and more of the plotlines, and even a lot of the characters. It's just... kind of disappointing. It's like I just had a gradual fizzling out of interest. I don't even hate the show, which might be better in some ways - instead I just can't muster enough shits to feel any type of way towards it.

I rambled a bit but I guess my ultimate ask here was: what are your thoughts on whether or not TOH manages to entertain new/old viewers?

So I like S1. I think the characters are what carry it and that they are at their most interesting, EASILY, in S1.

The vast majority of S1, in terms of concepts and executions for plots, is OKAY AT BEST.

This actually just comes down to a simple tonal decision of TOH and also just the fact that a boring world with boring magic creates little to do with bog standard plots and TOH actually has a LOT of bog standard plotting. It is a pretty classic story structurally and takes genuinely very few risks in the structure... Which is okay in theory.

There is nothing wrong with not reinventing the wheel and TOH talks a big game about subverting tropes but no. As a fantasy fan, I can tell you this is EXCEPTIONALLY normal. Like... Insultingly from how much it talks a big game. Especially because if you're going to do classic, you have three options: Shoot the moon, lean into the unique elements of your concept or do it VERY. VERY. WELL.

And remember: They did a body swap episode and it is one of the most hated episodes of the entire show. That's not a good sign.

But this touches on the second problem I brought up: This is a boring world with boring magic. Because TOH's fantasy world is so basic, has little magic and little flair with its magic, it inherently limits what it can do. Now, it doesn't have to be this way but the show made it this way with how little we see of it, how limited it is (like how plant magic is 99% vines), and how often it just blatantly makes one to one comparisons between it and our world with effectively NOTHING altered like how the covens are just jobs, right down to them being introduced through a job fair and a boring one at that.

So when we look at a classic episode concept like the body swap episode, the three plots are... Easily replicated elsewhere. One person gets in trouble in the swap's job because they don't know what they're doing (with the most unique twist of this actually landing them in prison), a classic animal plot where they're taken in by a place that seems cozy and then isn't with literally no changes, and finally... Teenager pisses off bullies and agrees to jump DEAD MAN'S GORGE! But instead of skateboards and people really building it up, its rat beasts.

None of these plots are actually bad, they're go tos for a reason, but... No one is bringing anything special to this. Luz is entirely ignored so her character may as well not matter, Eda is doing NOTHING to add to her plot and King... King is fun for about two minutes leading the bullies and otherwise is just any other character in this situation. It's not bad, I personally enjoy parts of the episode... But it's nothing special. From the second the thing that X character is going to do is revealed, you can guess every step of the plot and they don't even really throw in good jokes in the process. A couple jokes but nothing memorable because everything is weirdly subdued compared to how other shows would be, even in an episode that is definitely trying to be more over the top.

And this runs into the inherent tonal issue of TOH: It doesn't want to be an adventure comedy. Those are genres that are commonly really over the top. They hear jump the shark and go "How about a shark jumping ten other sharks in order to finish making a can of tuna for their fire giant overlord?" And the face of this fact, in that the genres it pitches itself as for the first two episodes!

TOH flatly refuses to be silly and over the top. It's characters are very... 'realistic'. I don't mean real, just that they're meant to feel more mature by being more in control. They don't let them interrupt each other for a joke, they don't let a character be potentially OOC for a one off gag like Hop Pop screaming "EAT THE RICH!" or Sprig asking "Have you ever killed a a man, Hop Pop," and I can only think of one time Luz got mad for the sake of a joke and honestly, yelling about the Rusty Smidge barely comes across as a joke because of how genuine the anger feels after a point. Otherwise, stuff that would normally get exaggerated frustration or the like to at least let you laugh at the reaction just... doesn't get one, like how Luz yells about Luzura being killed off but then... Just walks off and is passive aggressive mostly instead of even exasperated. For a drama or romance, this is not a bad approach but for even just an adventure kid's show... It's not great to put it mildly because people meet odd situations with weird levels of nonchalance. Not quite irony poisoned levels but getting there.

It's why TOH is mostly remembered for the romance and drama episodes. Not only do they allow some of the romance scenes to actually include melodrama, they also just fit how the characters act better. It's why Amity has some of the biggest emotions of the series and why Lumity have such great lines between each other because they're actually willing to lean into the sort of genre fiction that they're doing. This is also why S2 works better than S1 because a lot of the pretense of being a comedy adventure gets dropped but like... There's still plenty of boring in S2 with stuff like how Elsewhere Elsewhen takes time travel and includes a couple jokes at the beginning and then is just... horribly bland and barely qualifies as an adventure.

This lack of allowing people to be emotional and jokey also leads to the reliance on comic relief characters. People like Gus, King or Hooty, or S2 Lilith, who the characters can mock in someway, including the writers. Characters who can be the punchline even if it means a lot of people come off a lot meaner than they should, i.e. Luz absolutely rejecting Hooty for the vast majority of the series despite supposedly liking the weird and rejected. That also means that most of the time they're not on screen, either the scene starts getting pretty dry or you have a character suddenly warp to be comic relief, like how Eda gets in some S2 episodes like Elsewhere Elsewhen or Eclipse Lake where suddenly she's MUCH more of a joke than she normally is and also REALLY bad at it too and seeming potentially brain dead for it. Thanks to Them even does this to Amity even though she is probably the last person in the cast to make sense as a sudden clutz.

All of this stuff makes it so that if you go in wanting a kid's show, a fantasy show, ANYTHING that is pitched in the first episode... S1 is going to be just okay to you. I enjoyed it... But I also fell off when I first watched it. I thought the characters were good but none of it stuck with me as actually memorable and I watched until I think Adventure in the Elements. I never was never compelled to come back until Lumity animations (literally THE Little Miss Perfect animatic that is nowadays probably hard to find actually) made me go "I remember this show being neat." And Lumity was what kept me, not because I was generally laughing or calling these episodes something special. In fact, that sense of unsatisfaction is probably why I watched through it faster than Amphibia. No one episode of TOH is really great to watch on its own because... It's just kind of boring, or like half of it is boring because the B plots across the board are SO BLAND. S1 or 2 for that matter since Lumity starts getting boring B plots like with the archives or finding out the author of Azura. Both concepts btw that could have been really interesting setups and instead... If you're not into blushing Amity, get FUUUUUCKED.

That's without getting into REPETITION. Repetition kills comedy so King having one joke for S1 and also taking up like half of the B plots for the first ten episodes means you are going to be in agony eventually anytime someone talks to him because you know where it's going and you have DEFINITELY heard this joke before. And you know, he also gets three repetitive B plots which just hurts the joke even more, even as they try to make twists on it, and hurts the feeling that the show is doing... Anything..

It's just not good. Which is probably why once the characters and the 'subversive/unique' elements of the show both weakened, more and more people left because... Why would you keep watching this then? Those elements are what made up for boring plots with boring execution in a world that didn't allow for more interesting storytelling because it had few ideas and expanded on NONE OF THEM. So of course people pitch it using the elements that say "this isn't like other kids shows/fantasy shows" because if you pitch it to people who like those... They'll just be disappointed eventually and bored quickly. Like i think a lot of people did to be quite honest.

And a lack of creativity, and a lack of genre understanding, isn't something time could have ever fixed.

======+++++======

The short version of proving this point btw is going "Compare Bumi's introductory episode, which is a character giving three trials to prove another's worth, versus when the Bat Queen challenges Luz. One is exceptionally funny, interesting and has genuinely interesting twists while the other is... There. So very there. Painfully just... there. Not even bad, just... There.

Also, yes, comedy is extremely subjective which is why I tried to talk more about how a lot of these premises are boring because that can be a bit more objective.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past.

I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead.

If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[lets-talk-spirituality]

Let’s Talk About: Starseeds

Ohhh I have so many thoughts. Mostly, I used to write views pieces every week in college and I really enjoyed having a public written forum to express my frustrations and thoughts. I don’t have all the answers on this topic, but maybe this opens up a dialogue we can all grow from.

First, what the heck is a starseed?

The concept of starseeds are rooted in the thought that there are different soul races or more like origin points and that embues the soul with certain advantages in certain areas, like technology for example. I sort of think of this as like soul expertises and certain groups have certain more innate skills.

The idea is that earth is on a trajectory for self-destruction and that other groups are trying to help earth evolve. These other races or soul have charitably infiltrated earth as a way to help it evolve.

These starseeds incarnate as earth humans to help teach lessons about unconditional love—something humanity struggles with— and the way society could be—think less capitalism, more secured housing and being able to do with your time whatever inspires you because you are given what you need. Different soul origins have different specialties, not all other places are benevolent. Some other places don’t value emotion the same as others. It’s just differences.

So what’s the big deal?

I struggle with the starseed concept because I feel like creating groups creates exclusion. Maybe it’s hard for me as a human to think differently, but I feel like if there were races and other labels based on inherent differences in soul fabric, it would create this idea of division rather than unity.

It’s hard for me to see soul ages or hierarchies of any kind in the energetic world because that’s not how they communicate and organize group structures. So many spiritual teachers say that certain souls are considered grand masters, and older souls are wiser, certain souls are special or this rare thing. It’s all ego stroking to feel special.

They don’t organize souls by races or by gender or any of these human labels. I think people apply human labels because they can only conceive of things through human understanding. That’s why I struggle for words sometimes because the thought itself is outside the realm of humanity.

The way I can explain it is they see things as just purely differences. There’s nothing attached to it. It’s like every element of all these energies are needed to make a full picture. You’re pink. I’m blue. Because both colors are needed equally. Full acceptance of what you are.

Spirituality as a means to uphold the capitalistic patriarchal status quo:

I struggle with how the spiritual community upholds so many gender stereotypes through the perpetuation of male and female energies. I prefer to say assertive and receptive energies, knowing when to push or pull. Because assigning certain traits as masculine or feminine is upholding a capitalistic economic system that encourages certain traits in men because they are useful for labor and certain traits in women because it’s useful for childrearing.

And yes, I believe anything connected to gender or sex is ultimately a direct reflection of the patriarchy and what it imposes on us all. So in order to truly free our LGBTQIAP+ family and friends, we have to abolish the patriarchy. It is the ideology that uphold men as superior to women.

Why are MTF individuals highly targeted, because to step down from a position of power is so confusing and upsetting on a subconscious level for many men. This is deeply ingrained patriarchal poisoning. The same poisoning that had women voting for Trump. We have to truly become equals to end the patriarchal system and that only happens when people understand each other on a very deep level.

How is it capitalistic?

Glad you asked! The concepts around starseeds are still steeped in capitalistic spirituality, the form that also produces scammy gurus. So many people use this idea and concept to prey on vulnerable people and make money. When more people buy into a trend it creates a larger energy imprint because more collective people are thinking about the same thing. That’s why I don’t like to use the term twin flame, the toxic collective thoughts around the term.

This idea of starseeds still envisions a world of cities, people focused on technology, all HUMAN things. Do you see what I’m saying about the mind being limited? We cannot conceive of how else it may be because we only know this experience of ourselves through our humanity. I have memories of being able to do other things, but I believe those skills used to be more easy to do on earth. It’s heavier here now and the energy doesn’t support it. Like bending elements.

This world still has governing bodies, it envisions a more utopian version of the capitalistic world we already have. They envision these races upholding diplomacy and how some places are bad and others are good. And this is the capitalistic colonizer mindset! This group of souls is low vibe and evil and this group is high vibe and benevolent. That’s why I try not to talk about lower energies negatively. That energy is needed as part of the full mural of existence. To label one as lesser or less desirable, it’s not how it is. They are just different.

The issue at the moment is that the balance is uneven on earth, too many lower vibratory energies are being supported here because of all the destruction to the earth (thriving plants help absorb so many of those lower vibes). That’s why we’re all here to “raise the vibration” To try to rebalance the planet before it falls off the table.

And the idea of starseeds is sort of racist:

There are certain “good races” like the Pleiadeans who are known to have Nordic features, while certain “bad races” or “low vibe” races like the reptilians (which is actually anti-Semitic), are displayed as less colorful—grey or black, dark colors. I feel like I don’t have time explain that that also mirrors currently valued physical features which are again, human understood features. The having to go through mind to translate is so fucking hard y’all!

In conclusion:

The idea of starseeds is challenging for me because I feel so vastly that there are other places we experience other humanoid experiences and some of us do prefer other places over others. I’ve said before I’m not a huge earth fan. But so much of the modern spiritual concepts people perpetuate, since it’s almost a collectively held thought now, are rooted in racism and capitalism and sexism and things I just fucking hate about humanity!

So while I see myself reflected in qualities of the races of starseeds I’ve read about, and while I feel like some of the ways the other planets are described feels familiar, I also can use my discernment to say, some of that doesn’t resonate with me or make sense so I discard it. I find learning about starseeds is helpful just like learning about astrology is helpful. They are all tools for self understanding.

But it’s also important to call out things that perpetuate systems of oppression. Because that’s the exact shit we’re trying to liberate from.

[over-the-time-flow]

Super Robot Rollcall: The Nadesico Crew of The Past

Yurika Misumaru

"You can't tell people fighting on the frontlines, people who don't know if they'll even return alive, that they don't have the right to know anything!"

Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico Age: 20 Height: 166 cm Hobbies: Jigsaw puzzles, singing Favorite Food: Anything sweet Voice Actress: Houko Kuwashima Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh

Yurika Misumaru is the seemingly airheaded captain of the Nadesico. Between her difficulties adhering to social norms and her fervent affections for Akito, it's easy to think that's all there is to her, but in truth, she's a combat genius, and passed military academy with frightening scores. When everyone's back is to the wall, she's liable to make up for her lack of experience with her tactical gifts to create miracles.

Much like with Noin, her stats do not reflect her canonical skills, being painfully middling even for battleship captain standards. SRW R hates to see a girlboss winning.

Her spirit commands are fairly decent, however, with a lot of fringe support utility that you won't find in many other learnsets, which is especially handy to have on a unit that's gonna be forcibly deployed most of the time.

Fun Fact: She has a near photographic memory, and seems to have a knack for linguistics.

Nadesico

Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico Length: 300 meters Power Source: 2 Phase Shift Engines, 4 Nuclear Pulse Engines Real World Designer: Rei Nakahara

A civilian battleship designed by Nergal which far outclassed anything the Earth military had in their possession at the time. This fact, coupled with the fact that it was heading for Mars for a seemingly suicidal rescue mission while the Earth Sphere was embroiled in the bloody Lizard War created a lot of enmity between Nergal and the military, leading to a lot of the conflicts early into the story.

It's the Nadesico B if it had missiles (meaning it's not completely EN dependent). I don't know what you want me to say here, it certainly is a battleship.

...If i'm gonna be a bit more charitable, it is fairly funny that when you think about it, this thing is a straight upgrade over the B, which is meant to be a successor to this thing.

Fun Fact: The Nadesico is an amalgamation of quite possibly the three most iconic space battleships in japanese sci-fi nerd culture at the time the show came out; its large, flat upper hull is reminiscent of Star Trek's Enterprise, the protuding "legs" are a homage to Mobile Suit Gundam's White Base, and the Gravity Cannon is obviously evocative of the Yamato's Wave Motion Gun, to say nothing of how the two names combined form Yamato Nadeshiko, a name emblematic of the idealized "japanese beauty".

Akito Tenkawa

"I finally watched the last episode of Gekiganger V."

Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico Age: 18 Height: 175 cm Favorite Food: Earth cuisine Voice Actor: Yuuji Ueda Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh

A cook who felt completely aimless in life. He lost his previous life on Mars, he lost his job due to his PTSD from his experiences with the Jovian Lizards' assaults on Mars, and through a series of convoluted circumstances, he ended up landing a cooking job on the Nadesico... only to be further roped into being a pilot as well.

Throughout it all, the few things anchoring him were Gai, Gekiganger, and Yurika. His struggles to balance these influences on him with his dreams, ideals and values are the crux of the story of Nadesico. He loses sight of himself multiple times, but in the end, he manages to come out of it with a better understanding of both himself and the things he holds dear.

He pilots the pink Aestivalis unit.

Akito and Gai are very much a set. Akito has a more Real-oriented spirit learnset, better Evasion and worse Defense, but better Ranged... sadly, since the aforementioned Double Gekigan Flare is gonna consistently be his best move, it's easy to consider Akito to be a simple add-on to Gai, and he doesn't really feel like a protagonist for much of the game.

Even so, as the game progresses, he'll get a few ways to differentiate his playstyle, and by the end, both him and Gai will be a lot more interesting... though ultimately, you'll still realistically need Gai (who can actually draw out the full power of the DGF thanks to his higher Melee stat) if you want to use Akito to his fullest. It's easy to joke then that Gai is the real protagonist of Nadesico in this game, but in my opinion, we haven't yet encountered the character who truly takes up the mantle of Nadesico protagonist in SRW R...

Ryoko Subaru

"Did i just find it...? My own evening star..."

Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico Age: 18 Height: 165 cm Hobbies: Basketball, motorcycles Voice Actress: Chisa Yokoyama Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh

Daughter of a military man, Ryoko is a confident pilot with the skills to back it up, but she struggles with social situations, and can find it hard to act formal.

She's the leader of the trio consisting of her, Hikaru and Izumi (often called the Buttercup trio, as the Aestivalis is named after the Adonis aestivalis, a member of the buttercup family).

She pilots the red Aestivalis unit.

she's also really cute

Gameplaywise, Ryoko is like a midway point between Akito and Gai. Her Melee and Ranged stats are perfectly balanced, and her defensive stats are on par with Akito's, but she has the upper hand in the Skill department. The biggest issue with her though is that much like Akito and Gai have their combination move, she and the other two girls have a combination move... which primarily uses the Ranged stat. As such, you'd really want for her to have higher Ranged, rather than the balanced loadout she has here, which seems to be an attempt to make her better on her own than the other two, but just isn't impactful enough when Aestis are so underwhelming without their combination partners.

Still, she's far from a bad pilot; you just wouldn't really want to deploy her without her two squadmates.

Fun Fact: This is less of a "factual" one and more an experience report, but. I went with her route in the first Nadesico Sega Saturn game because of course i did, which has a mechanic where you can take the girls out on dates to the Nadesico's holodeck and live out a little romantic fantasy scenario. But for some reason, Ryoko seems to have glitched for me, and every single time that she initiated a date, without fail, she'd pick the castaway scenario, over and over and over again.

maybe she just really liked The Blue Lagoon

Hikaru Amano

"I learned the hard way that hobbies and romance don't mix..."

Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico Age: 18 Height: 152 cm Favorite Food: Pizza crust Voice Actress: Shiho Kikuchi Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh

A quirky girl who's really into anime and manga, being a fan of Gekiganger herself (though never really talking about it much with Akito nor Gai). She's a doujinshi artist and writer (remember, doujinshi here just means fanwork), who plans to break into professionally making manga.

She easily falls for 2D men, is a bit of a fujoshi, and seems to have gone through a bad breakup not too long before the show began.

She pilots the Yellow Aestivalis unit.

In terms of raw stats, Hikaru's a really good Aesti pilot. Her spirit commands, while not amazing, are also more than serviceable. If i had a complaint, it's that like Ryoko, she really needs the other two to function, and even moreso than Ryoko, as her second strongest move, the Distortion Punch, is Melee-based. But if you're deploying all three, she's rather powerful.

Izumi Maki

"I'm a woman who only causes misfortune..."

Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico Age: 18 Height: 177 cm Favorite Food: Botamochi, inari sushi Hobby: Bad puns Voice Actress: Miki Nagasawa Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh

A patented Weird Girl, she's a gloomy-looking young woman of few words. Usually, she only ever speaks up to make a terrible pun related to something that was just said, but she's not just gloomy-looking; she seems to have had quite the unlucky past, though she doesn't outwardly dwell on it very often.

She pilots the Turquoise Aestivalis unit.

Much like with Hikaru, Izumi is clearly meant to be deployed as a set with the other two. Only real notable difference to point out here is that Izumi has slightly better offensive stats and slightly worse defensive ones than Ryoko.

Fun fact: The second Sega Saturn Nadesico game (The Blank of 3 Years) reveals that Izumi enjoys... dressing in a ninja costume and jumping around in the woods in the middle of the night. Just for fun.

yeah sure why not

Aestivalis

Source: Martian Successor Nadesico Height: 8 meters Power Source: Gravity Wave Antenna, backup generator Real World Designer: Mika Akitaka

A modular machine made by Nergal, made to work in conjunction with its line of battleships. Thanks to cooperation between the machine and its mothership, the weight of a dedicated generator doesn't need to be taken into account, and Aestivalis units are capable of formidable versatility thanks to their various frames.

If you're coming from other games, you basically get the gist of how Aestis work. Pretty good survivability, pretty underwhelming firepower unless they can fire off their combination moves.

Of note, however, is the Artillery Frame, which i feel is particularly strong in this game; though its Mobility and Movement Range are just as bad as always, and it has no post-movement attacks, it manages to make up for it with decent firepower, and perhaps more importantly, there are a lot of maps in this game where you can get away with turtling on base tiles. It's also a tempting way to use Hikaru and Izumi's high Ranged stats without having to deploy all three of them, but don't get too used to that; you won't actually get to keep these to the end of the game. Not as they are right now, anyway.

Another thing of note is the lack of a Ground Frame; as a result, against land-based opponents, Aestis will really struggle to deal damage unless you're using the Artillery frames.

Fun fact: In flower language, the Adonis aestivalis can stand for bittersweet or unforgettable memories.

[lawenderss]

I AM affirmations

Hello, petals! Below you will find affirmations for the I AM state. Take whichever works for you and make sure you have fun! Make sure you check out my affirmations tag and my pinned post for more.

Personality

I am lively. I bring the energy. I am the sunlight for people around me.

I am affectionate. I move with love with every breath.

I am charitable. My abundance overflows from me to others in every single way I can think of.

I am compassionate. I have understanding for everyone. All is me, and I am all.

I am confident. I am anchored in myself.

I am courageous. I am bold. I am brave. I act despite my fears.

I am dependable. I am honest. I am reliable. I am grounding.

I am generous. I have all that I need, want, and more to share. My riches are tripled with sharing.

I am harmonious. I'm in perfect harmony with those I choose to have in my life.

I am humble. I know myself and cherish my characteristics without having to boast or brag.

I am independent. I have all that I need within me. I never have to cling to anything or anyone.

I am modest. Free of pretension.

I am understanding. Being empathetic comes naturally to me.

I am radiant. I am nurturing and encouraging. I am helpful.

I am fearless. I am reckless. I am careless towards the wrong rules. I do what is right to me.

I am receiving. Knowing that I can do all that I desire on my own. My desires come to me as fulfilment without me lifting a finger. I receive simply by existing.

I am flowing. Knowing how to be stable, I choose to flow like water, keeping myself soft, therefore unbreakable.

I am optimistic. I know that what many call optimism is merely realism to me.

I am witty. I am humorous in my own intelligent way. I can get silly and funny.

Mind

I am adaptive. I can work in every situation with anyone. I easily fit in and belong everywhere I go.

I am assertive. I mean what I say in a confident, calm tone.

I am tactful. I can explain myself with kindness and politeness.

I am laid-back. Everything resolves itself with ease, without effort. I care for my peace.

I am ambitious. I do my best and let it go for it to resolve itself before my eyes.

I am balanced. I do nothing more or less than what the situation calls for.

I am curious. My childish wonder creates greater realities for me.

I am determined. I persist. I believe.

I am disciplined. I follow my own core values and responsibilities with ease.

I am initiative. I face life with curiosity and take the lead.

I am logical. I lead with reason and rationality of mind.

I am mindful. I am aware of the life around me and inside me.

I am methodical. I follow a collected approach to life.

I am open-minded. I am ready for the new experiences, new adventures, new points of view, and change.

I am pragmatic. I do things for a system for an objective.

I am wise. I can see beyond what only eyes can see, for myself and for others, too.

I am calm. I am proactive. I know all that happens is in my favour.

I am stoic. I can use my emotions for a deeper and logical understanding of myself.

I am flexible. I can be whatever is needed in the given situation. I am multi-talented.

I am self-reliant. I need only me, but I enjoy others around me.

Body

I am active. I am full of vitality. I am grateful for this healthy body.

I am strong. I can perform many physical skills. I have a great posture.

I am energetic. I sleep well and always feel well-rested. I am ready for new adventures every day.

I am content. With my sexuality or lack of it. I am open to new experiences and feel comfortable around my sexuality.

I am fit. I have great stamina and endurance. My body is exactly the way I desire it to be.

Soul

I am joy. I feel ecstatic while knowing all my desires were meant to be mine since I created them within me first. I am at utmost peace, knowing all that I desire is already mine, and I get to breathe.

I am free. From emotional, financial, social, cultural, sexual, and physical burdens. I am free of the pain and suffering from the unwanted. Now I choose my own battles as I am the creator.

I am creative. I create all that I see. I am limitless.

I am love. I am the embodiment of love as it overwhelms everything else within.

[the-elu-within]

unstructured tired ramble

on the topic of AI generated art, i often find people making bad criticisms.

i frequently see in conversations the criticism that AI art is bad because it looks bad. because it doesn't do anatomy correctly. because it gives extra fingers and doesn't understand backgrounds, or makes nonsensical images. AI art is not bad for these reasons. if a human drew something identical to an AI generated image, extra fingers and strange sheen all included, i would be interested. because this artist had reason for these details, even if those reasons were as trivial as "well i thought it contributed to an aesthetic i'm going for".

AI art is bad because art is identity. art is communication. art is intention and the delivery of information from a conscious mind to a tangible creation. i choose the words i write with intent. a musician chooses their notes with intent. a painter strokes their brush with intent. i believe that intent and communication of a conscious experience is what infuses an image, some words on a page, or a series of sounds with the essence of art, and the ways we can apply them to our lives is what gives them meaning.

i can be even more charitable and assume this art is in a socialist utopia where no artist is replaced for profit, nobody's work is stolen, and no artist's livelihood is threatened because of it. i'm talking only about the experience and value of the art itself.

i think we have an inherent bias toward things that have conscious meaning and experience. if my dog was replaced with an exact copy that had no consciousness but looked identical and could mimic my dog's behavior identically to a tee, i would find no meaning in my pet anymore. because i don't have meaningful emotional interactions with something that is fundamentally incapable of those interactions. there is no companionship. it would be a glorified decoration.

most of the art i see derided in art industries such as video games and movies are ones that are lacking intent and communication. cash grab slop churned out by marvel or disney that have nothing to say. we perceive them as lacking in value because the value we find is derived from what we are communicated. a desire for the profit that will be reaped from these products is a cynical intent that we don't wish to see. a level of communication has been ripped from these titles because the art is insincere. we do not feel spoken to, we feel patronized.

AI art goes a step beyond, and rips even the slightest bit of sincerity that those large cynical projects have. the little bits of themselves that the writers and visual artists put into making the overall project, working within the boundaries that they're given by those running the project. there is no "why". because a machine is incapable of "why". it is because it is, and nothing else.

maybe i'm being pretentious here but the value i find in art is the way it can speak and touch. all of my favorite pieces of art are ones that made me feel understood, like omori or celeste; ones that communicate complex emotions in a masterful way; like requiem for a dream, pathologic, or outer wilds; and ones that meaningfully comment on social tendencies and political concepts, like breaking bad, nier: automata, and disco elysium. all of these works speak. a machine cannot speak. a machine can make noise, but that noise does not communicate.

it's genuinely saddening to me to see people internalize the transformation of art into a product to be consumed that capitalism has cultivated. you don't need to have the same perspective as me, i'm no expert. i don't have a degree. i think everyone's experience with and view of art is different and i don't want to come across like i think everyone should think the same as me. but a view of art that is totally surface-level and defined entirely by its shallow entertainment value is, i think, destructive.

sorry this is structured like a ramble and i'm sure i could write something better if i really sat down for a while, but i think i got my general point across. i love art, and i don't want to deride anyone for the way they experience it. i don't want anyone else to enjoy art less. on the contrary, i want everyone to have an enriching experience with art in their own way. i believe that randomly-generated pieces that remove the human element of art are unable to be enriching in the same way.

i think this stretches beyond appreciation of art and reaches into the fundamental ways we interact with the world and other people. it's a harrowing and alienating idea to imagine a world where you can look at a sea of art, words, and music, and not know whether or not anybody is on the other side. some say all art is political, i guess i'm saying the concept of art itself, or lack thereof, is political.

[happysheik]

I read this story where this child always noticed that their neighbors would request something from their mother from time to time maybe it will would be milk or cream, or it would meat or poultry and in in return every so often the child’s mother would request something from them but it was always something like salt or pepper. When the child asks why does our neighbor ask for stuff the mother said sometimes people cannot afford certain things and it our job as neighbors to help, the reason I ask them for pepper or salt is because it is inexpensive I want our neighbors to feel like they are wanted and needed as well. Although my reiteration of the story is not quite as beautiful as it was read when I first saw the story. It is safe to say the story is simple and sweet. People want to feel they are needed, loved and appreciated. This is such a small ask of anyone. Help Thy Neighbor, it is not just words to those that live at our side our neighbors is each person that passes by. The item you give your neighbor out in the world could be maybe your last 5 dollars or even a slice of pizza. It’s a small gesture that means nothing to you, but means the world to the person. You are giving them what they can not provide for them selves. A since of love, nourishment. Your act of kindness just let them know that there is a person in the world that values their existence. To spend our lives doing acts of kindness, being charitable. Maybe it is small acts of kindness and charity that lead to saintly hood. I don’t know, I have never met a saint. Speaking for myself, I am no saint. Like anyone else in this world I have lived life. I partied, when through that stage of life where it was nothing but one night stands and moments in my life where the mere thought of a possible child was in the air. The only way to live life is to experience it. Road I took may not be the one you want to take. But looking back I wish I would have slowed down not have been that guy that is so quick to grow up. Instead of being a wreck less child I wish I would have taken the time to live some what righteously and spend time valuing and caring for those that were around me. Some people may refer to me as a dreamer, They may be right. This I do know every time I walk out my door and I walk the streets of my hometown, I see homeless people, people that are hurt, in pain and feeding their addiction to either drugs or alcohol to numb their pain because they’re hurt. Each night they curl up into a store front walk way, wear the same dirty clothes, cover up to keep warm with the same dirty blanket to wake up each morning to see their reflection in the window, reminding them they are at their lowest, so they talk to themselves, they lie to themselves, they lie to the world to justify the craziness of the life in which their living to give them peace of mind. People depend on our genuine appreciation for them, our acts of kindness. For those that took the time to read this post, I thank you.

[mrssweethomealabamareads]

Underneath the goody-two-shoes persona is damaged goods…but can the bad boy across the street save her?

Damaged Goods, an all-new angsty, enemies to lovers, sports romance from USA Today bestselling author L.J. Shen is now available!

Bailey Followhill is the perfect daughter.

Sweet. Charitable. Pretty. Control freak.

Not a hair out of place, not an inch out of line, she is everything her troublemaking sister Daria isn't.

But when her A game turns out to be a lukewarm C- at Juilliard, Bailey's picture-ready life starts fraying faster than the worn satin ribbons of her pointe shoes.

She's becoming a piece of gossip.

The Troubled Child. A drug abuser.

No longer the girl her best friend once knew.

Lev Cole is so golden, he's got the Midas Touch.

Prized quarterback. Football captain. Hottest guy in SoCal. A textbook cliché.

But with a girlfriend he doesn't love and a career path he doesn't value, Lev is coasting.

The only two things he cares about―Bailey and becoming a pilot―are out of reach.

But Lev is done being satisfied with the life others have chosen for him. He wants to pick his own cards. To demolish the seamless kingdom of lies his family stitched together on the ruins his mother left behind.

The question is, can he save his best friend and his dream before too much damage is done?

Start reading today!

FREE in Kindle Unlimited

Amazon Worldwide: https://mybook.to/damagedgoods

Bloom Paperback: https://bit.ly/3OUfHYc

Audible: https://adbl.co/48fFJgT

Add Damaged Goods to Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3YJGWc8

Keep reading for a look inside Damaged Goods!

PROLOGUE

Lev

Age fourteen

I’m standing over my mother’s grave, wondering why the fuck my eyes are dry.

I couldn’t look at the coffin back inside the church. Knight said she looked pretty. Calm. At peace. But also…nothing like herself.

I squeezed my eyes shut the entire way through, the way I did when I was really little and went on spooky rides at theme parks. Now I’m freaking out because maybe I made a mistake, because it was the last time I could look at her face not through a picture.

That’s the thing about losing someone—there are so many losses along the way that make up a big loss.

No more cuddles in bed on rainy days.

No more heart-shaped fruit in my lunch box.

No more singing lullabies to me when I’m sick, with me pretending I’m embarrassed and annoyed by it when actually Mom singing lullabies is the best thing to happen to this universe since sliced bread.

Bailey is hugging me so close, my bones are about to dissipate to dust. She’s about four inches taller than me now, which is stupid and embarrassing and just my luck. My face is hidden deep inside her hair, and I pretend to cry because it seems rude and screwed up if I don’t. But the truth is, I’m not sad or gloomy or any of those things. I’m fucking pissed. Angry. Enraged.

Mom’s gone.

What if she’s cold? What if she’s claustrophobic? What if she is struggling to breathe? What if she’s scared? Reasonably, I know she isn’t. She’s dead. But logic isn’t my friend right now. Not even an acquaintance. Hell, I doubt I could spell the word in my current state. I feel like Bailey is physically keeping me together. Like if she loosens her arms around me, I’ll collapse into thousands of little marbles, scatter and disappear into the nooks and crannies of the cemetery.

Everyone files back to their cars. Dad claps a shaking hand over my shoulder and steers me away from the grave. Bails reluctantly releases me. I clutch the tips of her fingers. She’s gravity. She’s oxygen. In this moment in time, she’s everything.

Sensing my unspoken need for her, Bailey turns to my dad. “May I please catch a ride with you, Uncle Dean?”

Thank you, Jesus.

“Yeah, Bails, sure,” Dad says distractedly, laser-focused on Knight’s back. My brother is going through his own stuff right now and my dad is trying to ensure he doesn’t lose another member of our family. Usually, I’m cool with being the low-maintenance, “background” kid. Not today, though. I just lost my mom at fourteen. I want the world to stop, but it disrespectfully keeps on spinning and functioning like my life wasn’t just destroyed.

Before we hop into the car, I clutch Bailey’s fingers and pull her to me. “If I told you I want to run away from here, somewhere really far, like…I dunno, Kansas far, what would you say?”

Her big blue eyes hold mine like my eyeballs are about to fall off. “We ride at dawn, bitch.”

“Really?” I ask.

She nods once. “Try me, Lev. You’re my best friend. I’ll never let you down.”

It’s weird, but the possibility of Bailey and me running away from all this is the one thing holding my ass together right now. She might be everyone’s good girl, but to me, she’s a bad addiction.

The drive is silent. I’m a page torn out of a book. Out of place and floating aimlessly. All I have is the memory of once belonging. Then, we’re in front of my house. Everyone trickles inside in their black frocks. They look like ghouls. Home without Mom isn’t a home. It’s a pile of bricks and expensive furniture.

Invisible ivy roots me to the ground. Bailey is the only one who notices. She loiters behind with me, and suddenly, I really hate that I’m putting all my dreams and hopes on her. Because she could be gone tomorrow too. Bus accident. Freak heart attack at fifteen. A kidnap-and-murder plot. The options are endless, and I have really shitty luck with people.

“Kansas?” She grabs my fingers, playing them like they’re keys on a piano.

I shake my head, too choked up to produce actual words.

“We don’t have to go inside.” Her hands slide up to grab my arms and keep me standing. How did she know I’m close to falling? “We can hang out at mine. I’ll make fondue. We can watch South Park.” Her blues gleam like sapphires.

Fresh irritation floods me. Bailey is being soooo understanding, even though she doesn’t understand jack shit. She does have a mom. A healthy one. And a dad. And a sister who isn’t an addict. Her life is perfect, while mine is a pile of calamities.

She’s a blossoming flower, and I’m dirt, but that’s okay because the thing about flowers is they’re buried in dirt, so I know exactly how to cut her off.

Shaking her off, I swivel and stomp my way out of our cul-de-sac. She races after me, calling my name. Her Mary Janes clap the ground urgently.

“Lev, please! Did I say something wrong?”

To be fair to her, she stood no chance at saying anything right. But screw being fair. I’m hurting, and she is baggage. Just another person to love and to lose.

I pick up my pace, running now. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m eager to get there. The sky—completely blue just seconds ago—cracks like an egg. Thunder rolls, gray washes over it, and rain starts pouring in thick sheets. It’s summer in SoCal and shouldn’t rain. The universe is angry, but I’m angrier.

Whenever Bailey manages to catch the sleeve of my shirt, I speed up, but even after thirty minutes of running in the rain, soaked to the bone, she doesn’t quit. Somehow, we find ourselves in the woods on the outskirts of town. The thick, tall branches and blankets of leaves intertwine together like laced fingers above us, creating a makeshift umbrella. I can sort of see my surroundings now, and it’s pretty and it’s calm and far enough away from that stupid cemetery. I stop running when I realize I’m not gonna escape the new reality: Mom’s dead.

I finally understand the term heartbreak. Because that thing in my chest? Split open clean in two.

I turn around, my lungs scorching. Bailey is pale and sodden, her black dress clinging to her body. Her lips are blue and her skin is so pale, I see a map of purple and red veins under her flesh.

“Go home,” I growl. But I don’t want her to go home. I want her to never leave.

She steps closer, tilting her chin up defiantly. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Fuck off, Bailey!” I fold in half, screaming. I feel like she kicked me in the stomach.

She’ll leave. She’ll let you down. Don’t fall for this, Lev.

“I’m so sorry.” Her eyes are full of tears, and she flexes her fingers, itching to grab me.

Hug me.

Go away.

Fuckfuckfuck.

My mouth opens again and more bullshit spews out. “Don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry for yourself. You’re the loser who hangs out with an eighth grader instead of people your own age.”

“I wish it didn’t happen.” She ignores my insults, trying to grab my fingers again and play them like a piano, like she does every time I’m upset.

Laughing, I rasp, “I wish you didn’t happen.”

“I wish it were me who was dead.” Her face is covered with tears and pain and mud, and I can’t do this anymore. I don’t care how much I’m hurting, I can’t ruin the only good thing about my life right now. She gives me something to fight for when every cell of my body wants to give up.

“Now you’re just talking outta your ass.” I spit phlegm between us.

She shakes her head, quivering fingers darting to her hair, massaging her scalp. I believe her. And it kills me that even though I feel like someone slashed me open and my guts are pouring out, I still wouldn’t want Bailey to be in Mom’s place.

“I’m not. I’m serious. I would die before willingly watch you suffer.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then I open my mouth and the most feral, scary, loud cry I’ve ever heard tears out of it. It echoes in the sky and bounces off the trees. A flock of ravens takes flight from the treetops.

And then I go to the only place I need to be right now—I go mad.

For more information about L.J. Shen and her books, visit her website:

https://www.authorljshen.com

[pazodetrasalba]

μέτρον

Dear Caroline:

I feel like there is a big kernel of truth in what you're saying, and it comes from a lot of reflection and personal experience. I am a European, if you think regulations are omnipresent and abusive in the US, you ain't seen nothing yet: we Continentals go completely overboard with them. I'd attribute this to the wide Western European consensus on social-democracy, on moderate socialism - nobody questions the Welfare State and the its right to massively regulate the economy and the lives of our citizens. I wouldn't say it is altogether wrong, though, as I would be being hypocritical. From an individual perspective, overregulation and state protectiveness are nice, they take away many of the burdens and dangers of modern life and allow us to devote our thoughts to the pleasures and pursuits of an aurea mediocritas. The problem is that I firmly belief this generates issues at the collective level: it makes our societies and economies stagnant and enemies of innovation, and in the long run, that is a road that inevitably will lead to future poverty.

It also easy to attack the bureaucracy and the politicians, as they conform a group with a will to power that is at odds with the will to profit of enterprises and companies. Your asking about what regulators get of not necessarily popular or demanded rules is just that: power to control, to decide, to steer, to subjugate. The most charitable reading would be that they are wise mandarins who want to control stuff 'for our own good', like a Gandalf with the Ring of Power. The least charitable would point towards Nietzsche and, perhaps, Orwell.

And yet having said this, I think it would be easy to find cases where regulations are good and necessary, and have avoided more damage than they have provoked. I'd guess you would be fully onboard with Europe's legislating on AIs. And if you were to claim this is an exception to the rule, I'd have to point to the whole FTX and Alameda fiasco as a bit of confirmatory fable. Like, I am sure that a lot of companies do the same, or similar bad and careless stuff as was done in your companies, and most of the time they get away with it, and nobody says anything. You also know that that doesn't make it good, although perhaps this is a too deontological way of putting it. It is many times the case that the rules are stupid, irrational and limit expansion and the creation of value; but at others, they are necessary checks and balances that overly enthusiastic and inexperienced clever clogs will do away with at their peril. It is Chesterton's Fence all over, and a story as old as time - definitely as old as Alcibiades.

Quote:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it

G.K. Chesterton

[reflective-blog-ablearmonthughes]

C / O Berlin Foundation Gallery-2018

On my trip to Berlin, as well as the Boros gallery that I previously discussed, we also managed to catch an exhibition at the charitable C / O Berlin Foundation Gallery. At the end of a long day, it was tempting to head back to the hotel but in the end it well worth the effort. The exhibition was called The Last Image: Photography and Death which I have to say sounded intriguingly chilling from the outset. Not exactly a dry title, but I was fascinated about what might be in the exhibition as real life photographs of dying and death are often cleaned up for public consumption in the media on the grounds of ‘good taste’ so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. It was created by Felix Hoffman and there were over 400 photographs on display, almost all of them contemporary, covering journalistic images, art photography and video art which were divided into three chapter which were Dying, Killing and Death.

There were some images that initially appeared curiously out of place in an exhibition that was supposed to be about portraying death and dying. What was ‘Junior Suite’ by Thomas Demand all about, depicting a table and the remains of a meal? But it was not all that it seemed because if you looked closely it was all staged. The table’s contents were painstakingly crafted origami like creations showing the ‘last supper’ of Whitney Houston. In fact, it was a pointed parody of the tabloid photograph of the actual room service table from which she had been eating the night she died, that ‘leaked’ and appeared across all the media straight after she died. A very public intrusion into her death.

I guessed there would be some pretty brutal images included as well, but I wasn’t especially worried. After all, it’s fair to say that images of death are part of our daily lives. War, shootings and bombings are on the news all the time. And I have seen dying depicted in all sorts of inventive and gruesome ways in media, films, video games and on the Internet. So much so, I thought I was pretty hardened to that kind of thing. But what genuinely affected me about this exhibition was how really up-close and personal many of the photographs were. I am not talking about the forensic type pictures showing death in a sort of weirdly detached and unemotional way where the dead body was laid out on a slab, nothing more than another object in the photo. What hit home were some like for example Collage-1 by Thomas Hirschhorn that was genuinely stomach-churning, juxtaposing the model Claudia Schiffer lying casually on the ground alongside a second image of body parts, the artfully rearranged limbs and head of a bombing victim. Or being confronted by an image of a dead child in the morgue in Child Abuse: The Morgue by Andres Serrano. (Last century when infant death rates were very high it was apparently common for families to pay photographers to record images of their dead children for posterity but for us nowadays displaying a photograph of a dead child has real shock value). I also found the poignant simplicity of the huge close-up of a gashed and blistered foot within a body-bag entitled Rat Poison Suicide II: The Morgue by the same artist strangely affecting. Hard to tell if it was a man or a woman but it was definitely not old….

So, I came away from the exhibition feeling yes, very moved. Plus, in all honesty, some of the photographs were just plain gruesome, however others really connected and touched me on an emotional level. That supersized foot left me wondering about the anguish that chose a painful death by suicide over living way beyond leaving the gallery that night. Contemporary art does not always have to be pretty in order to tell a story, and this was a prime example of exactly that. The artist really used the shock factor in his work to convey serious matters. Yes, this gallery would certainly startle the average person, definitely make you feel rather queasy, and absolutely not the appropriate environment to eat any food in, but it was a memorable exhibition. It portrayed gruesome truth, that you would not normally be open to see and acknowledge. Even though it was hard to look at, it was powerful. The intricacy and attention to detail is what made this such a memorable exhibition. Many of the artists very accurately challenged conventional and traditional art throughout his work, allowing us to step out of our comfort zone with these morbid images, and that is one of the amazing factors of contemporary art. It isn’t often we like to think about death too much, but this opened my eyes of the sad reality, which contributed to making it such a moving exhibition.

[night-market-if]

Dear Mr. Stockfish

Hello. You don’t know me. And based on your lack of consideration thus far, it is doubtful you wish to.  I am the wife of one of your employee’s. I am a mother of four. I am the woman that has watched her husband go work, thirteen to fourteen hour shifts for you, often times in the middle of the night. I am a woman who raised children during the pandemic. Homeschooled them. Became their friend. Their teacher. Their support. Because you couldn’t spare a single worker.  I am the one that has watched him struggle with working for you, a good company as you proudly proclaim, while trying to be a good father.  He operates on little to no sleep due to the type of hours you demand and the shifts you implement. Because he wants to provide for us. But he also doesn’t want his children to grow up, as many are now, with an absentee father.

On September 13th, your employees walked on you. You claim your contract is fair. It is not.  A pay increase does nothing when insurance goes down.  It does nothing in the face of inflation. And it does nothing when most of your workers have to commute and the gas prices have skyrocketed. In fact, what you have offered them is a pay decrease in the guise of something charitable. You talk about fair and competitive wages and yet most people have been able to leave and find better money elsewhere. Your electricians are underpaid by far. Your hours are atrocious. Your insurance is abysmal. I have had two babies under your insurance. My first one had issue within the hospital. That original plan five years ago, was a lifesaver.  My child that was born without complications, without me spending a full extra day in the hospital, nearly bankrupted us because the fees were so high due to your shitty insurance policy. And now you wish to reduce it more because it is status quo? 

What happened to being a good company because you weren’t status quo? Because you offered what others could not? What happened to be a good solid foundation for a community? You pride yourself on hard work and family values and yet children are struggling to eat because you cannot meet your employees at the table and negotiate.

And that, is truly what it does come down to. Your employees are willing to negotiate. They are not asking for the moon. But each time you have come back to the negotiating table with nothing. Nothing but a paltry sign on bonus that you were shocked people weren’t going to take? Can I ask you what you think a sign on bonus is going to do for my children when they get sick? Or if Covid resurges? Can I ask you what your sign on bonus is going to do if a pipe bursts this winter?  Can I ask how your sign on bonus has helped or can help in the face of your employee’s family emergencies? Your community lost family members these last few years.  Your employees banded together. Grieved together. Supported and helped each other. Where were you?

You claim to be a good company. That you take care of your own. Your own are speaking back saying they do not feel support and your response is to gaslight them as if they are some small child undeserving of your time.  But hey, when you guys came to them and asked them to still work during a worldwide pandemic, they did. They made you billions in profit in fact. Let's just read that again. Billions.  But you can’t give them a decent raise or decent insurance.  Mr. Stockfish, were your bonus’s that you took this year more important than my child's speech therapy?  Was your bonus more important than the mental health of your workers?  Can I ask you if it is more important than your employees choosing whether they can turn on their heat this winter because they might not be able to afford it?  Can I see what you bought with your bonus while your workers all got up at two or three in the morning to come serve your company, while you do nothing but sit back and collect?

I’ll wait.

Sincerely,

A wife. A mother. A member of this community you claim to care for and are letting down.

If anyone wishes to e-mail this man, his email is devin.stockfish@weyerhaeuser.com

[anarchoherbalism]

Mental health is a lawn; Desire is a prairie

Introduction

A little over a month ago, I began posting about upcoming changes in my practice, which I’ve been working on since. As I said in an instagram story, I realized that I’ve been pretty bad about replacing surface-level words instead of actually challenging underlying concepts; so, I’ve been taking some time to work on learning to better articulate my philosophy.

In the following essay I am going to try to explain my critique of psychiatry and offer a framework to replace it. You don’t have to agree with anything I say to receive herbs, advice or education from me. If I only wanted to work with people that believe the same things as me, I would stick to caring for my network of friends and accomplices. I have a public-facing practice to offer something immediately and materially useful to (broadly speaking) anyone that asks for it. I’m writing this because—while we may or may not be/become friends—my services are a personal gift, and I do not want them to be received as a function of psychiatry.

Most of all, I believe that everyone has an idea about what the future will hold, and everyone is trying to bring that idea to fruition. Ultimately there is nothing in my lifetime that will result in everyone being on the same page about what we all “should” be doing; and we are all relatively powerless on a global scale. What I can do is help the people I can touch, and walk away from those that want to force me to believe things I don’t want to believe in. I can’t make universal healthcare happen, right now or decades in the future; but I can fight tooth and nail to help heal the people around me for free, and I can share, liberate and generate knowledge to help others do the same.

I’m writing with a very limited scope here—if I was having an easier time writing this it would very quickly become an entire book, not a 3,700-some-odd word essay. I’m asking to you believe at face value that this is what I consider to be true; unfortunately I don’t have the capacity to write out an argument containing all the applicable historical evidence and referential sources right now. I hope at some point I do.

Part 1: Groundwork

Lobotomistic violence

I’m going to start by laying out a definition that I think is important to understanding where I’m coming from. I started using this term because I think it marks a useful distinction in how certain people are treated by psychiatry.

Lobotomistic violence is the set of psychiatric “treatments” that intend to make someone “normal” by reducing/inhibiting function in certain parts of their brain. While surgical lobotomies are generally considered outdated and barbaric in mental health culture, the root concept is still very much alive and well. Several antipsychotic drugs have similar effects to surgical lobotomies, and many more otherwise limit brain function in other ways. These drugs can prevent the people they’re prescribed to from thinking abstractly or feeling deeply, and often cut them off from meaningful parts of themselves.

According to the psychiatric framework there are people who need support, understanding, and accommodation; and people who need their bodyminds* to be physically altered and parts of them literally removed/made nonfunctional. Lobotomistic violence is a “last ditch” effort, when less extreme forms of medication or therapy are considered “ineffective”. Sometimes this comes after a long process of trying different treatments—but a lot of people are subjected to lobotomistic violence because they occupy a social position that society sees as a lost cause from the start, like people kidnapped off the street by ambulances in the middle of a psychotic break, or kids in state custody.

*Bodymind is a popular term in mad liberation that refers to the mind and body as a cohesive whole–it invokes the idea that we do not just inhabit our bodies, we ARE our bodies.

Defining mental health

(In this section, I’m using a very charitable interpretation of psychiatry from a scientific standpoint. Even the most advanced neuroscience cannot reliably identify specific mental disorders or their causes—but even if it could, it would still be fundamentally bad, and that’s the point I want to make.)

Civilization is an organism and an ecosystem in its own right, with structures to achieve equilibrium and to perpetuate itself. The choices that we make and options we see as available have been formed by thousands of years of accidents and choices that shape patterns of behavior and create social constructs. It is these structures I’m referring to when I talk about control.

In order for civilization to exist as it currently does, the people and things subjected to it must be easily understood, because things that are understood can be controlled. An example my friend used was a small, early agrarian state—a ruler wants to collect tax, with the goal of collecting as much as possible to enrich his position against neighboring states. He cannot collect too much tax, or else the population will either starve, or get angry and refuse to participate in the state; so to maximize what can be taken he has to know how much is produced, and in turn the farmers have to know how much they produce to know what they owe and what they need to meet immediate needs. Civilization needs to reduce complicated questions to knowable categories in order to respond in ways that benefit itself. This legibility occludes true understanding, pares down the messy, beautiful, difficult-to-communicate nature of life into one-dimensional criteria to be accounted for and processed. To see how these criteria are constructed, let’s look at an oak tree.

The name “oak tree” refers to a thing that exists, pretty indisputably (at least until you get into existentialism but, uh, let’s not go there). However, the name “oak” is something people made up. There are many different perspectives one might understand an oak tree from. Whatever lens you want to use impacts what characteristics you focus on and how you understand them in relation to the whole. You focus on certain attributes to create a story—if you’re using a scientific lens, you might look at DNA and draw connections to other DNA to tell a story about genetic history. Genetic history is also a human construct that only focuses on the pieces that are significant to the stories our culture wants to tell. These stories are what we use to build knowable categories; but a squirrel doesn’t give two nuts about the genetic history of an oak tree, and likely has its own stories that are entirely alien to us—because different attributes are significant to its life.

Mental disorders are real in the same way an oak tree is real—and fake in the same way an oak tree is fake.

The experiences that diagnostic labels describe are real, but the way disorders are defined is 100% a social construct that is entirely dependent on what is significant to our culture, scientifically backed or not.

“Health” is defined as bodymind states that are convenient for cultural perpetuation; and illness is bodymind states that are not. What experiences and attributes are constructed as diagnostic categories is dependent on what is valued and relevant to the dominant culture—and more importantly, what is conducive to the reproduction of that culture.

In our modern society, people who do not fit squarely into the mold of a responsible, reproductive citizen are either validated or marginalized. These are both methods of control, pushing people into legible categories to make them more easily understood and influenced by society. Validation might look like a kid who’s disruptive in class getting diagnosed with ADHD and working more closely with the school to receive accommodation, whereas marginalization might look like a disruptive kid getting diagnosed with ODD and being treated as if any resistance to an authority figure is a symptom of disease for the rest of their life.

In psychiatry, validation is “positivity”. This extends from clinical practice to what I’m going to call “mental health culture”, the expansion of psychiatry from a form of medicine to a fixture of culture. I’m going to talk about this more in a minute, but for now the point is: mental health does not identify a list of “problems” that exist in a vacuum. It constructs sicknesses in order to justify control. Which leads us to…

This wouldn’t work if we didn’t care about each other

Unfortunately, there’s no simple malice to blame here. A lot of the ways psychiatry hurts people are made possible by compassion. I try not to make generalizations about the human condition OR evolution-based arguments, but I do believe very deeply that humans are a fundamentally social species and that we are physically predisposed to caring about each other—evidenced in part by how much of the coerced labor necessary for society to function depends on making it hard to even SEE enslaved and low-class people, let alone extend solidarity and care to each other. The history of modern psychiatry (mostly over the past 200 years) and the birth of mental health is a chaotic mash of capitalistic profiteering, attempts to stifle liberatory movements, and individuals who are genuinely trying to take care of other people, all informed by the underlying assumptions about what “mental illness” is that I just described.

Brief digression: I’m always tempted to put “mental health” into quotes, but “mental health” implies a distinction between what I’m referring to and some other legitimate, non-fucked-up mental health that just doesn’t exist, so assume whenever I say mental health I’m using a slightly sarcastic tone.

Mental illnesses are, by and large, defined and diagnosed based on suffering, and the treatments, by and large, are designed to reduce suffering—or, the assumption that someone is suffering. How that suffering is measured and defined is still dependent on the basic assumption that correctly reproducing culture is good for you and not doing so is bad for you. For example, many diagnostic criteria measure one’s ability to work productively, and our society assumes wage labor is the norm for a healthy life. Sometimes, this is obfuscated by so many layers of reformed language and liberal feel-good-ism that many people who would disagree with that assumption when said so plainly (reproducing culture is good for you and not doing it is bad for you) are still deeply invested in mental health culture.

Diagnostic categories pick out certain experiences and characteristics to name as symptoms of a disease—but human brains are not very easy to put into boxes. Who is pathologized—labeled as diseased—is heavily dependent on their class status, and how well their behaviors contribute to the status quo. A lower-class non-Christian is more likely to be labeled as psychotic for describing their spiritual beliefs and experiences; whereas a richer person who talks about “being spoken to by the Holy Ghost” is simply a religious fanatic. We see consistently demographic-based diagnostic biases for disorders that are supposedly an issue with predetermined brain “hardwiring”, such as autism and ADHD being diagnosed more in white children, whereas Black children receive ODD diagnoses. By associating abnormality with suffering, and enforcing suffering for the abnormal, attempting to make people normal can represent reduction of suffering and a kindness. This dynamic is even more heavily enforced when people actively choose non-normative lifestyles: someone’s body state is not conducive to them living a “normal” life and they don’t even WANT to change, that means they are extra unhealthy. Under this logic, (attempting to/)forcing them to change is doing a good thing for them and thus the kindest course of action.

Everyone who advocates for broader mental health services is contributing to psychiatric and lobotomistic violence through kindness. There are plenty of people who think positively of their interactions with psychiatric institutions or mental health culture, AND there are ways to reduce harm when participating in mental health culture/be more honest about the risks involved; but encouraging people to participate in clinical settings is still encouraging people to put themselves in vulnerable, potentially dangerous positions.

Madness vs. pathology

Anyone can be crazy. I highly recommend trying it. Experiences are individually varied and highly personal—some people see and hear things other people don’t, some think in ways that are strange or confusing to others, and so on—but madness is simply refusal to conform to normative categories of mind-state and behavior. It is not bowing to social norms and the embrace of abnormal experiences that get in the way of a middle-class aspirations.

Pathologizing is the process by which madness is constructed as sickness. Pathology includes all the things that are “unapproved” about madness and it increasingly includes things that are only minorly inconvenient to our legibility and our participation. People re-contextualize experiences they never thought twice about as part of a disease, simply because they were given a label. “I never knew that was a BPD thing!”

Mental health culture encourages and facilitates this creep because even though its participants will often nominally criticizing practitioners who enact psychiatric violence, they continue to rely on the frameworks this violence is based on. Mainstream criticism of psych focuses on the idea that individual doctors (and/or institutions) apply psychiatry poorly, but it caries the implicit assumption that if it was only used correctly it would be a benefit. This can look like social/support groups of people identifying with a common or related diagnoses criticizing the way psychiatrists behave while encouraging people to self-diagnose, seek certain medication or therapy, or otherwise enforcing mainstream assumptions about the ontology of mental disorders.

Pathologizing talk surrounds us: “I think you might have ___”, “I’m like this because I have ___”, etc. It feels very similar to the ways in which certain queer spaces invent and push labels to describe every possible facet of gender or attraction, because well, it is. Both fixations gain traction because we are told that making ourselves legible to the outside world and making those around us legible in the same way will make us feel less lonely or invisible. Unfortunately, only letting people understand us in terms of our categories instead of on our own, unique terms continues to compound this loneliness. In an effort to make the system “work” we expand what experiences are known, create new labels and try to champion “inclusion”, instead of addressing the forces and dynamics surrounding the things that feel lonely, invisible, and difficult to communicate… A list of abbreviations doesn’t tell the world who you are, it tells the world how to react to you.

Many people who ascribe to psychiatric frameworks still live in ways that resist legibility. There are also plenty of people who are both mad and mentally ill, who use diagnostic labels but do not seek to conform to standards of “treatment”. There are also many people who use these labels to pressure conformity from themselves and those around them. It seems to me like the majority of people who, for example, encourage everyone around them to go to therapy, have never had a practitioner make good on the implicit threat of psychiatric violence.

The role of saneism

It would be incomplete for me to talk about the role of kindness without talking about the role of prejudice.

Saneism is a different form of bigotry than say, racism. It is not hatred of an “other” group that the “perpetrator” is not and never will be a part of. It’s more like fatphobia: hatred of a body state that every human being has the potential to experience. It is self-inflicted as much as it is wielded against the other.

Saneism is a tool to select who is and isn’t crazy. It should be clear at this point that there is no “sane” human being; sanity is only the ideal they beat you with. If you can emulate sanity well enough, driven by fear of internal and external hatred of madness, you are sane. If you can’t, you are insane, and either you can be mentally ill, assimilate to the categories and modes of behavior that are deemed acceptable for people like you; or, if you can’t do that, you’re crazy, and your options are either to submit to lobotomistic violence or to refuse to participate in psychiatry.

Part 2: Praxis

As I said at the beginning: The experiences that psychiatry addresses are real. Critique is all well and good in that it helps us name and understand the systems we live in, but it is only part of the process towards doing something better. Here is my attempt at building a model. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

A lawn is an artificially maintained shape, but a prairie is created organically through small and large events, which lines up nicely with the idea that mental health, as a noun is a standard that must be maintained, but desire, as a verb is a process of seeking, experiencing and evaluating that builds and grows in symbiosis.

Mental Health is a Lawn

The process of maintaining mental health through the reduction of suffering is like the process of maintain a lawn. A lawn is a pre-defined shape created through the prescription of behaviors and chemicals (weeding/mowing; herbicides/pesticides); regulated to be non-challenging and “safe” (no spikey plants, bee or wasp nests, etc) in the name people’s comfort and at the cost of native species; and prioritizing a certain socially-imposed aesthetic at great cost to the environment. Lawns have to be nourished (fertilized and watered) to grow, but are not allowed to get taller or more robust than a set value so that they’re easy to trim regularly with minimal effort. Lawns are monocultures with shallow roots that do not stand up to environmental conditions like drought without intervention. Lawns are also a standard everyone knows–and holds each other to, judges each other based on.

Likewise, to maintain “mental health”, people are regulated to a predefined standard that prioritizes “normal” aesthetics and the “safety” and comfort of others through the prescription of chemicals and habits (medication and therapy). Everyone knows the rules enough to police themselves and each other. Peoples’ material and emotional needs are taken into consideration enough for them to survive (and not commit suicide), but no one is well-supported enough to not feel the pressure to work; and people do not have the freedom to self-regulate on their own so when crisis occurs, you either have to keep working or rely on psychiatric intervention such as hospitalization.

Desire is a Prairie

Seeking desire is like how a prairie or grassland maintains itself as an ecosystem. Many types of plants grow deep symbiotic root systems that create resiliency and allow the ecosystem to survive through many environmental changes. Critters and bugs may kill/destroy plants at times, but they also reuse and decompose detritus and allow the ecosystem to recycle material and stored energy, spread seeds, etc. A prairie is too tall to be mowed easily by a conventional lawn mower and must be poisoned or crushed via heavy machinery. It is a complicated, compelling and beautiful organism that takes years of interaction to understand.

Desire cultivates varied experiences that let us practice the flexibility to survive distress emotionally, and shapes our lifestyles to prioritize self-regulation. Pain, whether external, self inflicted, or both, is an inherent part of life; but pain can allow us to grieve, process and grow, to clarify our desires, and maintain our bodyminds. When we live by desire we become unwilling to bend to social rules that don’t suit us, become uncontrollably mad, and are accustomed to freedom such that we can only be recuperated through incarceration and lobotomistic violence.

A prairie takes a long time to grow, and is difficult to support in a society that demands lawns. Switching from a mental health model to a desire model isn’t a simple or quick thing. Most of us will resemble something more like an overgrown lot, which is just as valuable.

Part 3: What this means for me

It’s taken a long-ass time to be able to articulate these concepts, so it feels extremely good to have finally made the pieces click.

Ultimately, what I offer isn’t substantially changing—at least right now, though I do have a new offering I’ll be announcing in the near future that incorporates herbalism into pleasure-seeking activities. I’ll still be here for consultations, workshops, and informal support; but the foundations are different, and I will be more explicitly incorporating these ideas into how I teach and discuss concepts. You might notice that the pages on my website have been rewritten and restructured, hopefully in ways that represent these ideological changes.

Something that comes up fairly frequently in conversation with my friends and accomplices who do similar public-facing non-hierarchical healing work is how to respond when people come to us expecting more standard frameworks: When people talk to us expecting to be told things about their bodies, or for us to diagnose a sickness and tell them what to do about it. To me, figuring out how to deal with these interactions is a matter of building and improving social skills; figuring out what questions to ask to break the script. This is just as much practical as it is ideological: What I do is in no way compatible with Western Medicine or psychiatry—the tools I have work granularly, effecting a few parts of the body at a time in specific ways. I can help you sleep, eat, relax, play, reduce fear, increase focus, cope with grief, ground thoughts and emotions, feel pleasure… but I do not use diagnostic categories, I do not offer “antidepressants” or treat disease. Someone telling me they have PTSD gives me exactly 0 information about what they want me to be doing for them. In some ways what I think what I already do in these interactions does more to ground my practice outside of psychiatry than any long-ass manifesto or theoretical explanation; but if you want to know why I do what I do, well, there you have it I guess.

[gffa]

My local comic book store didn't have Brotherhood in yet, so I'm just going on what you wrote, but it seems like it's a repeat of Master & Apprentice except maybe 'worse'? Because that too really depended on how much you wanted to go along with Qui-Gon and his beliefs. I remember a lot of people wondering whether we were supposed to agree with him or not.

It is very much like Master & Apprentice, though, I would say milder on the Jedi criticism, but far worse on actually exploring any of the established Jedi characters. (I will say that, ultimately, the way the Jedi youngling, Mill Allibeth, ends up, I found to be very much a positive Jedi ending, both for her and for what it shows us about the Jedi Order around her.  So we get other Jedi in that sense, but what I also mean is that the only Jedi who get speaking lines are Obi-Wan, Anakin, Yoda, Mace, Mill, and a handful of younglings and a Padawan in the beginning.  No other Jedi get to speak a word, as far as I can remember.) The dissonance between "I suspect the author means this to be taken at face value" versus "but it doesn't match up with the movies/TV shows or Lucas' commentary and it's contradicted by the events of the book itself" is absolutely the same and I'm not sure I have it in me to go through and detail it like I did with Master & Apprentice for specifics. While the Jedi criticism is milder here, the way Mace is written is just offensive, especially considering that the story is ignoring huge swathes of Anakin's horrific behavior and why he's untrustworthy. In M&A you had the characters being written as people, the Jedi Council was shown to have positive qualities. Here, literally every moment Mace is on the page, he's being written as the Angry Black Man who doesn't care about the woobie white fave and is mean to him for no good reason, there is literally nothing else to him in the book. So, milder in some ways, worse in others, all really dependent upon whether or not we're meant to take Anakin's view of Mace's demeanor at face value and where your personal lines in the sand are. But, as always, take my views with a grain of salt, I'm trying to be objective here, but I am a person with my own opinions and views on things, same as anyone. 😂 I freely admit that I've nearly run out of patience for the racism that Mace's character faces and so I'm not going to be as charitable as someone else might be.

[lakesbian]

slamming door open. wormblr's cert. alec expert here to assist. to be clear my memory isn't perfect and the fact that alec is a background character means there are lots of relevant moments for him which happen entirely in the background of scenes that have nothing to do with him. that said, the chapters i recall him getting the most notable features in are:

4.3

7.1

interlude 10 obviously

14.1

21.3

24.4 (just him biting it specifically)

24.5 (imp's retrospective specifically)

29.5 (imp's retrospective specifically)

i dunno if he's mentioned anywhere in the epilogues by imp because i haven't read that far yet lmao. i'll finish worm One Day. hopefully even soon

there might be more than that i'm forgetting but like. probably not anything significant

will also shamelessly recommend my own posts: this one as an overview of his character and this one for backstory analysis. also this one 4 some more alec morality thoughts and this one abt aisha

as for common gripes w/ alec fanfiction, i have admittedly yet to read even a single alec fanfiction that i feel really hits the nail on the head, and frankly 99% of it elicits a "jesse what the fuck are you talking about. what planet am i on" reaction from me. (which is very funny because like. he's a person who intentionally makes himself a background character to avoid scrutiny and/or being known beyond face-value who gets wildly misrepresented in fanfiction because people don't scrutinize him enough and take him at face-value. alec would think it was great if he was alive and also a real person.) i assume the fact that you're dedicated to rereading source material instead of just Making Shit The Fuck Up means you're already not prone to the worst offenses (e.g making him heartbreaker-lite or making him start crying if someone says the word 'dad' around him or so on). so here are some notes for getting it Right instead of just In The Ballpark:

as noted in one of the essays i linked, nearly all of the time we spend with alec is from the perspective of someone who has a very good psychological incentive to avoid thinking too deeply or charitably about alec. this means we primarily see the front he puts up. (that front being: he automatically & unconsciously obscures most of his thoughts and feelings from himself and others.) the vast majority of the moments where he's actually sharing information about himself, and the vast majority of his character arc, happen off-screen. what we get on-screen is the outline traced around those moments. writing alec fanfiction means filling that outline in--don't assume the outline is all there is to him

aisha is, and i cannot stress this enough, Thee most important person in his life! and yet! nearly every fanfiction for him under the goddamn sun forgets she exists! if you are writing for post-leviathan alec: You gotta remember that aisha is his bestie, and also the only bitch who gets him, and they are Hanging Out while taylor is busy doing her taylor shit. he spends his entire life repressing his emotions to hell and back and being wildly depressed, and then he meets aisha, and she's the One Person he really connects with. she's the One Good Thing he can get out of bed for every day that isn't basic pleasures & dreams of revenge, and he cares about this One Bright Thing enough to protect it with his life. if it's post-leviathan putting her in there is like...not optional, because he's not Not thinking about her. he's in love with her--you don't necessarily have to interpret that as romantic love, but he literally loves her to death. even if he doesn't realize it.

the thing about alec is that he grew up in a household where 1. any and all emotional responses from him were used to hurt him and 2. if he had felt the full emotional weight of what happened to him it would have been too psychologically devastating to survive. this means that he has zero emotional literacy for himself, and he automatically acts more unaffected the closer to home something is. it's an unconscious self-protection mechanism. taylor wants to put 10k black widow spiders in his house? not emotionally touchy, so he can react with normal levels of "wtf that sucks can we not??" the undersiders start asking about his dad? emotionally touchy, he starts immediately downplaying the topic & acting like it's the most boring thing on the planet. there's a distinct pattern as to when he does his silly melodramatic schticks vs when he acts uninterested, when he engages vs when he withdraws into himself. don't fall into the trap of writing him as deadpan all the time or a little shit all the time w/o nuance & variations to his behavior based on what's going on

also. feel free to ask for breakdowns of scenes he has or questions abt certain aspects of his character or whatever. i love excuses to break out the alecnalysis

Wormblr please assist: what are the definitive Alec chapters of Worm a person should review, in your opinion, as source material for writing Alec fan fiction? I'm committed enough to this idea to reread from the beginning to when he bites it + Aisha's comments on him post-death, but sourcing from the community might be helpful for like, my sanity and time.

Also hell if you feel like it leave your pet Alec fic annoyances here because that's a solid 10% of my motivation (the other 90% is mostly being a certified enjoyer of The Worst Little Guys)