#now making call out posts and thinkpieces on people you never talked with

[bu99erfly]

that cc that made the ines call out said they blocked u too :/ bc they think ur gifs arent right either

im gonna use this ask to talk about the situation

if you see something you don’t like just don’t interact, we all have different opinions and mindsets about the situation… tumblr is just a silly little hobby and i won’t waste my energy on something that in the end will conclude to nothing

so have a great may everyone 🤍✨

[mcytblr-archive]

Early MCYTblr Interviews: leftistgnf

today's interviewee (after far too long letting this sit in my drafts) is leftistgnf/marg, also known for running the gnflegalteam blog! they were kind enough to answer my laundry list of questions, and i'm excited to finally share them with you all!

Q: What do you remember about the mcytblr awards?

A: omg i hope this isn’t a disappointing way to start but i actually remember very little about these. were these the ones angie markets did? i just remember attempts to make mcytblr-wide events like this usually got complained about because the fandom was too big lol.

Q: What was the gnflegalteam blog?

A: probably the most poorly-aging part of my digital footprint 😭sometime in late 2021 i started doing a bit on my blog where i’d roleplay as a lawyer defending george from the gay allegations. on april fools day 2022 i made a sideblog with this fake press release about how we lost our case and needed help with the appeal and people started sending asks and it became a whole little side project. it was honestly pretty fun! people who already didn’t really fuck with me called it parasocial, but so was everything we were all doing all the time. unfortunately it is gone forever now…. after the story about george sexually assaulting caiti became public i made a final post telling him to kill himself and someone reported it and tumblr deleted the sideblog LMAO. it was a pretty fitting way for it to go out.

Q: What was the "drama stream" that you and Hari streamed?

A: HAHAHA okay this was like, summer 2022 i think? i had made this channel with the gnflegalteam username just to talk in sol’s twitch chat, with no intention of ever streaming, but hari and i began kicking around the idea of doing a “””drama stream””” where we’d mostly talk about cc drama. i’m not sure how to best describe this but: we, and our friends, tended to disagree with the dtblr majority on a lot of controversies. and dtblr could be really vicious when you had differing opinions! even on inconsequential stuff like lore takes! so people already saw me and hari as being toxic and controversial, just because we held those differing opinions, and i guess i felt like i didn’t have anything to lose by talking about it all at once.

admittedly we clickbaited it a lot and probably flew too close to the sun and hari made a very uhhh.. inflammatory advertisement for it. but looking back i don’t think we actually talked about anything THAT crazy. like i said, most of the “drama” was related to creators or the dsmp and not other tumblr users. there was a group of blogs who specifically planned a stream at the same time as ours and made posts about choosing positivity or something, which blew what we were doing way out of proportion and created its own unnecessary drama. but the stream itself, after all the angry anons we got leading up to it, was a lot of fun. it attracted a lot more attention than i ever expected. i infamously got connoreatspants to react to a raid from a channel called “gnflegalteam,” which was probably one of my favorite moments of my whole mcytblr experience.

Q: What was it like to be in 404blr?

A: 404blr, especially in the earlier days, was nice because there were so few of us who actually considered themselves “”george mains.”” george never streamed and was barely even active on social media so a lot of the community bonding happened over content droughts. i remember a lot of thinkpieces on the trajectory of his career and these floods of desperate “i miss george” posts. also, i know you didn’t ask about 404cord but i want to mention it briefly because basically everyone on 404blr ended up joining in the first couple of days. before all the drama it was really just 404blr people, plus a couple dream stans who also really liked george. it used to be very fun and normal!

imo most of the conflict surrounding 404blr happened when we fought with other subblrs. there was definitely a clash between dream/dnf mains and george mains, because they would really mischaracterize and over-sexualize george in ways that felt weird to us. in the context of shipping, george was always portrayed as this blushing virginal twinkish nymphomaniac. in general a lot of self-proclaimed dnf/dream team mains were really just dream mains who liked george as the other half of a ship and didn’t really care about him as a person. honestly, we were always just on a soapbox trying to convince people that george was a fun interesting good streamer.

it’s complicated to look back on because obviously i think george is really fucking gross now, which colors all my memories of being a fan of his. i don’t know that i still agree with my past self about him being particularly good at streaming either. but i met a lot of friends through 404blr and generally think about that specific community fondly

Q: Why was Hari in people's blocklists?

A: hmm i won’t say too much about this just because it’s not my exposé to give. but like early 2021, when i had just joined mcytblr, there was this discord server that hari was in, and they had a conflict that escalated to the point of some members putting her and “her supporters” in their dnis. it was really bizarre because they talked about her like she was a problematic content creator and not a friend they fought with. i was mutuals with a couple of the people who were mad at her and they were vagueposting like she killed their entire family. iirc everyone involved was very young at the time, which i think explains a lot of how that went down.

Q: Do you think there was an overlap between inniters and 404blr?

A: yes thanks to me! JUST KIDDING. i personally was a big clingy duo fan so i followed a lot of inniters and ended up being friends with a lot of inniters, but most of them didn’t really gaf about george. a lot of inniters (sbi fandom in general) didn’t like dream and really didn’t like rpf so we were a little star-crossed… i can’t speak for innitblr as a whole but there were definitely jokes among my mutuals about a couple of us being token george mains or token dnfers. because george (at the time) was kind of controversy-free and also interacted a lot with the uk dsmp creators, i think it was easier for them to let 404blr into their hearts than like, dreamblr or dtblr.

on the other side, a lot of dtblr people hated inniters because they were critical of dream, or because they had such different opinions on lore. i was constantly getting anons asking me why i was friends with certain blogs who had made fun of dream before. so i guess idk if crossover is the right word because it was more like, three or four dnfers who really liked tommy and shamefully showed up at the doorstep of innitblr asking not to be softblocked. thank you spider enclosure for extending that grace to me.

Q: What was it like on the inniter side of Tumblr?

A: my personal experience with innitblr was great! obviously a lot of them felt apathetic or negative towards george or the dream team but that was never really an issue for me i guess -- all my mutuals’ criticisms were pretty fair, even back when i disagreed with them. i remember the community itself being really funny and a lot less volatile than dtblr or even 404blr. they were also way more invested in lore, which was another draw for me because i was always a huge lorehead. tbh i probably posted as much about clingy duo as i did about the dream team so i was basically a part time inniter anyways. that being said, innitblr skewed a little younger than dtblr so i was never as involved in the community. but i always loved interacting with them and i’m still friends with a lot of my (ex-)innitblr mutuals. most of spider enclosure (for example) are still on tumblr and just post about like doctor who and shit.

Q: What were some positive things you remember from that time?

A: like i’ve mentioned: i made a lot of really really great friends who i still talk to often, even a year and a half out from leaving the fandom, which is easily the most positive outcome for me. i could write a million words on how grateful i am for those relationships. it’s kind of sweet to think about how these random blogs i befriended during a crazy minecrafter hyfx are now people i’ve hung out with in real life, or who send me instagram reels, or who i watch timothee chalamet movies with. mcytblr also had some of the most talented artists and writers i’ve ever met! i also think the culture of liveblogging was a LOT of fun, especially during like big lore streams or mcc. an all time favorite memory was liveblogging tommy’s love or host because i saw tommy fans, george fans, and variety fans on my dash all begging for it to end lmao.

Q: Conversely, what are some negative ones?

A: a lot of people were like… really really not nice. and i’ll be honest, most of the not nice people were on dtblr. it’s kind of insane thinking back on the stuff that was said to and about me and my mutuals. this is another thing i don’t want to get too into because a lot of the stories aren’t mine to share but in addition to run-of-the-mill suicide baiting i got a lot of lesbophobia in my ask box, and my friends got anti-semitic and islamophobic and racist and transphobic hate anons. i’ve been on tumblr for like 10 years and it was my first fandom experience that was that vitriolic. it was also really easy to get swept up in that kind of toxic culture -- i’m certain i said some things i wouldn’t be proud of now, especially in defense of dream or whatever.

after october 2022 when dtblr self-rebranded as “dtblr 2.0,” there was a lot of gossip and hate posted about those of us who had left. i don’t like admitting this but it really fucked me up for a while! and ruined a lot of my ability to look back on the fandom fondly! it sucks knowing that people who have never once spoken to you have decided to hate you.

anyways, i’ve done a lot of self-reflection on my own relationship with fandoms and online discourse and public figures and i think i’m better for it, so i guess i hope the people who harrassed us have done that too.

Q: Were there any major fandom/creator events that you remember?

A: broadly speaking, mcc will always have a special place in my heart because it was such a community-wide event. like yes it was about the creators but there was so much activity in the fandom surrounding it (posts, art, analysis, etc etc) that it felt really major for us too.

i don’t remember details about this but i know there were mcytblr elections at some point in like 2021 maybe? i just remember i endorsed the 404blr ticket. maybe you’ve already archived posts about this. i don’t think it really went anywhere, but the campaigns were fun! and it was the first “community” event in the mcytblr fandom that i remember being around for.

ALSO i’m a little nervous to talk about this one in case it’s still controversial on dtblr. but ages ago i had a friend who put a bunch of mutuals in one of those silly hunger games simulators and it became this whole thing where people accused them of only including the “dtblr 1%”. which was like, categorically untrue, but it spawned such inane discourse that it’s ingrained in my mind forever.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to share or have archived?

A: i think you got an anon asking for 404blr perspectives in the wake of caiti’s statements, which is like… what do i even say except that george is a sexual predator lmfao. because he is! obviously i left the fandom when a lot of people did, after dream’s grooming allegations, because i think he’s also acted inappropriately with underage fans (to put it mildly). the sheer number of survivors publicizing their experiences with abuse and assault in the mcyt space proves how prevalent an issue it is, and how harmful it was to have george and dream (and wilbur, and punz, and so on) in such positions of power there. it’s nauseating to think how much they, and men like them, were able to get away with. i regret how many red flags i overlooked, even back then before the worst of it was known.

i’d like it archived that spider enclosure was technically in the washington post. they ran an article about r/place back in april 2022 and the screenshot they chose for the header included the spot where we wrote “spien” even though it’s so horribly pixelated that it’s illegible.

uhh i think that’s it. sorry if this was more focused on dtblr than 404blr, they were pretty inextricable by 2022. but i hope those people who wanted to hear from 404ers got the insight they were looking for? my parting words… subscribe to tubbo.

[doberbutts]

Like. Seriously. Between things I have never said and things taken in the absolute worst faith possible, and worse yet when it's coming from another black person and another black trans person at that.

I have always represented myself as multiracial and specifically afroindigenous and Irish well before anything regarding Palestine appeared on my blog. I have even said what Nation a few times before a fellow mixed Native trans fem warned me that people can dox you when you do that, and thus stopped doing it. I can point to indigenous ancestors in my family line if you want but the entire point of doing away with blood quantum is to stop having to do that to prove anything to those who are not indigenous themselves. Being Native is not about what you claim, it is about who claims you, and plenty of fellow Natives have claimed me as family by just seeing my face, and I've talked about *that* and how it adds to my complicated relationship with my own heritage years prior to any mention of Palestine.

This is a common situation for afronatives. For as long as slavery was a thing in this country we have been told to choose between being black or being Native. Things haven't changed much in a "post-slavery" (if you can even call it that) world. We are still made to choose being one or the other. The choice was made for me before I was even born. Forgive me for continuing to unwind my own complicated feelings on that into adulthood 🙄

I don't talk about white trans women unless I'm specifically talking about a specific problem I had with two specific white trans women on here being racist and transphobic to me. I do occasionally reblog thinkpieces from black trans women talking about white trans women- I reblog a lot of stuff from black people of many backgrounds including black trans fems. I thought we were supposed to boost our sisters' voices? I don't have a problem with any demographic of trans women nor do I consider them convenient scapegoats.

I don't think black men have it worse than black women. I also have literally never said anything of the sort. I have said that in my personal experience, upon transitioning, having lived life being treated like a black woman, and now being treated as a black man, some things are better for me. And also some things are worse. It is hard for me to say which is objectively better, because regardless of what gender people think I am, I am actively in danger when surrounded by nonblack and usually white people. This is echoed by OVER ONE HUNDRED individual responses to my massive post on the subject from black people across the gender spectrum including black trans women that black gender and black expression in any form is demonized by white society and that it is actively dangerous to be regarded as black plus gender regardless of anything else. This is also echoed in a fair amount of established, published black feminism written by black women cis and trans.

This is my problem. I cannot talk about my own experiences nor can I discuss established theory without the worst possible interpretation or people blatantly making shit up. Then they sic their followers on me and refuse to stay out of my notes and my name tag and then I get blamed for being annoyed that it's happening.

I have never once even spoken to this person. She and I have not interacted as far as I'm aware. And yet she hates me, and encourages others to hate me, for things that quite frankly aren't true.

I have never once actually interacted with this person to my knowledge and yet she will not stay out of my name tag nor will she stop taking personal shots at whether or not I qualify as black and yet somehow anons think it's me not curating my experience properly when people are literally siccing their followers on me for no fucking reason.

[rahleeyah]

Hi Leah! I have a question that you may not have an answer to but maybe your followers may know.

On a few occasions, I have seen some post that say Chris Meloni in the past may have said or tweeted something transphobic. I can't find evidence of it anywhere!

I don't agree with everything he post on Twitter. Mostly the pro cop tweets. Given his job I don't expect anything different. Mariska has posted the same. But Chris for the most part seems like an cool dude. I don't know him personally so I don't have a blinding trust in him but I have yet to see any huge red flags.

Are they confusing Chris for Elliot? Elliot has said some pretty shitty things. But so have all the characters from SVU. I watched the Pose episodes he starred in with Dominique Jackson so I don't get where him being called transphobic is coming from.

Did he say or tweet anything or are antis making this up?

whew ok i debated not answering this at all bc i don't like to give a platform to the random garbage the antis spew, but in this case i felt like i needed to address it.

re: the transphobic thing. i had to look it up, bc a) i'd never heard anyone say this and b) i have a hard time believing that chris "be weird" sex positive ultra liberal meloni was transphobic on main. if you google chris and trans or transphobia, the first thing that pops up is one tweet thread from two years ago. literally just google "chris meloni transphobic" it's the first hit. he retweeted a video of some sort (i can't find the actual video now) and cracked a joke. you can look it up for yourself and decide how you feel about it; i think it was in poor taste, but he's also a (then) 58 year old white dude, and there was no particular hate or malice behind it, and when people called him out for transphobia he tweeted asking why. not whining, he literally said "Ok so I am getting the idea that my honest reaction is transphobic. Why?" the comments in reply to that are pretty divided, as again his words were not blatantly hateful, and people had a variety of responses. it's not a clear black and white. but that's literally the only thing; the next hit for chris and trans issues is an article from the advocate years ago where he talks about raising kids in an "lgbt inclusive" family. trust and believe if there had been more than one incident, there would have been more thinkpieces about it; this one tweet incident spawned several results and at least one youtube video i could find, but there's literally nothing else.

this is really a subpoint of part 1, but elliot wasn't transphobic, either. elliot literally sits beside a trans kid who asked him what he'd do if his son was trans and he says he'd try to understand and love his child anyway.

which leads me really to the final paragraph of your message, sorry i'm out of order here, but. elliot didn't say a lot of shitty things. that's an anti myth. elliot stabler, devout catholic, says things like "when god gives you a uterus then maybe we'll care about your opinion" to anti-abortion priests. elliot is the one in the early seasons who tries to make olivia be more compassionate towards a man with mental health issues. he's respectful of women, he's gentle with children and victims, he doesn't bash gay people or trans people or do any of that socially conservative bullshit. the only victim he ever belligerently didn't believe is in doubt, and the entire point of that case is that neither of the people involved was believable. that's just literally not who elliot is. was elliot violent? sure! liv is too! but the show - bc it is copaganda, so of course it does this - takes pains to show elliot's aggression only being directed towards other aggressors; elliot isn't beating up every random person he meets.

circling back to chris's pro cop tweets; if you search his twitter feed for "police" or "cop" all you find are hits about Uvalde and Jan 6. like. like literally, all the way back to 2013, there's nothing about cops in there beyond "hey jan 6 was bad" and "the police failed those kids". the oldest tweet, from 2013, is someone asking him "has playing a cop changed ur view of crime/punishment & law enforcement" to which he responded "i learned some gnarly stats." he doesn't even say what those stats are!!! like i'm sorry the data simply is not there he's not tweeting pro-cop shit. again unless you count the jan 6 stuff, but i feel like "an armed mob attacking capitol police in an attempt to overthrow the government is bad, actually" is maybe a little more nuanced than "pro cop".

all of that goes to this point: celebrities are human, and fallible, and make mistakes, and should not be held up as some kind of paragons of virtue who say the right thing 100% of the time. but it is important to remember that just bc we hear something doesn't mean it's true; we gotta look for the facts. you won't find a lot of facts from fans on twitter; the antis will keep repeating the same made-up lines that justify their point of view, and hardcore chris fans will refuse to believe he's capable of saying something unkind. you gotta look for the data, and decide for yourself.

but we also gotta remember; we are not all born knowing everything we need to know about rights issues, about communities other than our own, about life and the world and people. we are all gonna hear something for the first time at some point, and we are all gonna be faced with a choice to learn and grow, or continue on the same path as before. we all gotta allow ourselves the grace to say something wrong, hear that we're wrong, and try to be better. if someone doesn't try to be better then we say fuck 'em.

[opalsiren]

okokok this is about to be a piping hot take. but i honestly think if h2o were made today it wouldn't have been nearly as gay as it was back in the early aughts

hear me out. western media in the early 2000s was soooo homophobic that the mere existence of gay people was consistently called into question. we're talking about a virulently homophobic, lesbophobic, and biphobic culture that failed to represent The Gays except maybe as the butt of some deeply unfunny joke. watch any episode of friends and you'll pick up what i'm putting down. now i'm not saying we've like cured homophobia at a structural level this decade but we have made such great strides in representation since then with canon gays in children's media and conversations about the importance of lgbt kids seeing themselves in media hitting the mainstream

in a weird, roundabout way, the pervasive homophobia of the early 00s actually contributes to a plausible queer reading of the text. the h2o writers likely would never have considered that emma and rikki's banter, chemistry, and dynamic could be construed as romantic since conversations about sexual difference weren't anywhere near mainstream back then. it wouldn't have even crossed their minds that the girlies could be gay for each other. perhaps someone who was in the trenches of the h2o fandom back in the day can speak to this, but it is hard for me to imagine even older viewers noticing some of the queer themes at play given the homophobic culture that dictated media, and vice versa

how and ever if h2o were made today i strongly feel that the gay of it all would have been dialled down substantially. parents watching h2o with their kids would have clutched their pearls at emma and rikki's interactions or heard the girls reiterate time and again that they are more important to each other than boys and alerted the censors. if h2o was written and aired in the early 2020s, thinkpieces would circulate about whether rikki and emma actually qualified as gay rep, and the steven universe/v*ltron/she ra industrial complex would be discoursing to high heaven about the queer themes present in the text. i honestly feel that the writers would have tried to avoid this outcome in the first place by making the show significantly less gay, thus avoiding having to implicate it in such discourse and hand-wringing from concerned parents

'but tumblr user hoziersgf,' i hear you cry, 'mako mermaids is a part of the same canon and aired around the time when conversations about lgbt rep in children's media began to gain traction in the early 2010s. those girlies sure were not even remotely heterosexual yet the terminally online gays never got a hold of mako mermaids!' to that i say that mako mermaids never reached the same levels of success and acclaim purely from a numbers standpoint as h2o, but i don't really have an adequate rebuttal that isn't just 'the overall quality of mako mermaids is objectively worse than the likes of a lot of children's media with canon gay rep from the same cultural moment'

anyway it is very sad? funny to think that homophobia likely played a part in our enjoyment of the gay mermaid show many years on. none of this is to say that the h2o writers were all violent homophobes, but we are all conditioned by the culture which we inhabit, and the deeply rooted homophobia of the early 2000s actually lends itself well to queer readings of the text. whether the h2o girlies 'count' as gay rep is probably discourse better saved for another post. what i will say is that i see myself in emma, in rikki, in cleo, in their bond and their sisterhood and the secret they share, whether the writers intended for me to feel seen in that way or not

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts-- 5x07: And the fight had a detente...

This episode is a wild ride, so if you haven’t seen it yet and you aren’t spoiled, don’t read this. Just go watch it.  

Ave Maria plays over a photo montage of cancelled men, including Kevin Spacey, Louie CK, and Scott Rudin. (Scott Rudin, if you don’t know the name, is a Broadway/Hollywood producer who treated his assistants like absolute shit. He’s the inspiration for the possessed producer episode of Evil—I think it’s the third episode of the series—and Robert King does not like him one bit.)  

And then the episode opens with Wackner, Del, and Cord discussing the Armie Hammer cannibalism ordeal. Whew, this is not what I wanted to be thinking about first thing on a Thursday morning. I do not think I can put into words how boring I find debating whether or not someone should have been “cancelled.”  Cancellation is usually about rich people facing consequences for shitty actions, and those consequences have never involved anyone’s rights being infringed upon, so why should I care about someone being cancelled? And, while I know that society/people on Twitter don’t always understand nuance, I’d like to think that when it comes to the most notable examples of cancellation... no one is losing their livelihood over false or minor allegations.  

There are so, so, so many issues in the world. Cancellation affects a handful of high profile, usually white, straight, male, celebrities. Why should I give a shit about, like, Louie CK not being able to make as much money as he used to? I just do not and cannot find it interesting.

I’m not surprised David Cord and Del Cooper find this topic interesting—Del likely hates worrying that all of his comedians could get cancelled and put him in a financially tricky spot; Cord probably says things like “Woke Mob” unironically. And as for Wackner, he almost certainly has a skewed understanding of what actually happens when someone’s cancelled and sees a place where he can step in and add some order. Blah. It’s just so boring.

"People are getting canceled without a trial, no evidence presented against them,” Wackner says. This is not it, Wackner! This is such a strawman argument. We don’t need the legal system to adjudicate people being assholes to each other, and in cases where a crime is committed or a particular individual can sue for damages, that is what happens. If you act shitty and then your sponsors realize you’re toxic and drop you, like, it is what it is. You can feel free to respond via a Notes App screenshot where half of your apology is actually just whining about cancel culture and then you say “I’m sorry if anyone took offense at what I did” instead of saying “I’m sorry I said/did hurtful things” and when people don’t take that seriously, maybe it’s because you didn’t take it seriously, either.  

“There are a lot of reasons these accusations never go to trial. The victims finally get to accuse the victimizer face to face,” Wackner explains. Were the victims asking for this?

Marissa shares my question, noting that if the victims don’t want to speak up, then the victimizer would have the court to himself. This raises a new question: who is even bringing these cases? Are Wackner, Cord, and Del just deciding they want to do things as cases and then getting everyone else on board? This sounds bad!  

Apparently, according to Wackner, “if #MeToo relies on mob rule, it’ll exhaust itself.” What... evidence is there for this? I get why people panic about the POSSIBILITY of this happening, even though I don’t share their panic, but is there any actual evidence that #MeToo is losing steam because of false allegations because cancellation isn’t a formal process? I don’t believe there is.  

The test case we have the pleasure of seeing this week is about “Louie CK two,” whom I shall refer to as LCK2 instead of learning his name.  

Now, suddenly, Marissa is asking one of LCK2’s victims to testify. She doesn’t want to participate because it’s just another way for LCK2 to get his career back. Marissa decides to be idealistic and say this is a real opportunity to confront LCK2 with his crime. I suppose she isn’t wrong, and that is what happens next, but, again, meh.

Apparently David Cord is going to defend LCK2. You know what would get cancelled in five seconds? A David Cord funded show that has David Cord actually on it, railing against cancel culture! Can you IMAGINE the thinkpieces?

God, when is this episode going to move on from this extremely irritating premise?

Marissa decides she wants to be the prosecutor. Wackner says if she prosecutes LCK2, she has to prosecute the academic who used a word that sounds like the n-word and lost her job for it.  Marissa thinks the academic shouldn’t have been fired, but Wackner insists she has to take both cases.

“Let’s go into court,” Wackner says, and, thank goodness, we do go into court: REAL court, where we are talking about REAL issues.  

In court, Liz and Diane are suing the police over the death of a black girl who was tased by the police. Her friend is on the stand and it’s quite emotional. Also, Diane tries to pass Liz a note and Liz ignores it. Why would you have two name partners on this case if they aren’t even going to try to work together?  

You can tell things are tense between two TGF characters when they talk at the same time in court but are on the same side.  

Hiiiiii Abernathy! ILY!

The victim had a heart condition, which the police lawyer argues is the actual cause of death. Police lawyer also argues that since this witness posted some ACAB lyrics on Instagram, she must be biased. Eyeroll.

Liz calls the other lawyer racist; the other lawyer tries to make Liz look like she is only on her client’s side because she’s black and that Liz is being absurd.  

Cancel culture court happens. We’re dealing with the academic case first. I don’t feel like talking about the cancel culture shit too much, so here is my take on this case as a whole: (1) I don’t think the actual word in question, which isn’t actually the n-word, is enough on its own to get someone fired (2) I also don’t think anyone can use that word, regardless of its meaning or history, without understanding how it will come across. (3) The teacher did not get fired for simply using this word once (4) This teacher believes that anyone who is from a group that’s been marginalized in history should have to confront that marginalization with as little sympathy and respect as possible because it will help them be more resilient. So basically, if you are from the dominant group then you don’t get challenged. She believes it is her job to do this. She is an egotistical asshole who has no business teaching.  

Cord wants everyone to have to say the full word in question. He says this pretentiously (though I don’t think saying “Said word” is that pretentious, tbh) and Wackner rules against him and also makes him wear a powdered wig for using “obtuse language.”

Marissa is not trying at all with this case at first, since she doesn’t believe in it. That’s shitty, Marissa. If you want to be a lawyer at a firm like RL you’re going to have to fight for all of your clients.  

Marissa makes a Latin joke and ends up in a powdered wig, too.  

The prof says, in one sentence, that she didn’t know what she was doing using the word and also that the black student who took offense thinks college is supposed to be warm, cuddly, and unchallenging. So it was a challenge, then, prof?  

I like this student. And I love that she calls Marissa out for obviously not trying.  

“The optics matter. Racially,” Diane says to Liz, who agrees. Diane, strategically, makes it about gender first (the cop is male, some jurors may react to a woman questioning a man), then makes it about how she should be the one questioning the cop since Liz is black. It would make the jury more “comfortable” (hey, there’s that word again!) Diane says. She says she is being pragmatic.  

Diane says that she could be “more dispassionate”. Be or come across as, Diane? Either way, Liz, who knows full well what the optics look like given that this isn’t her first time in court, doesn’t agree with Diane that they need to come across as dispassionate.  

Then Diane just changes the subject to the firm drama. “Liz, you’re shoving me out of my name partner position because of my race.” Like that’s the issue!  

“I am doing nothing. You are the one who got our racist clients to whine to STR Laurie about us,” Liz counters. “Those clients bring in a great deal of money, and they are not racists,” Diane insists. Yes. Sure. Diane just happened to choose white male clients who were “comfortable” with her to talk to. I have no doubt they’d have reacted poorly to any change in representation, but Diane was counting on those particular clients having some discomfort with their new lawyers.  

Liz calls her out and Diane’s still trying to play it like she just had to inform her long-term clients and it just had to be done this way. But, when Liz asks if Diane thinks the clients would’ve had the same reaction if their new representation were to be white, Diane says that maybe her clients are worried about racial grudges. So, what you’re saying is you knew exactly what you were doing, huh, Diane?  

I get why Diane doesn’t like being pushed out, because who would, but Diane, this isn’t about you. And if you didn’t want to make it about race, perhaps you shouldn’t have appeared on a panel about how great it is that your firm is majority black? You can’t have it both ways.  

Liz notes that Diane felt “entitled” to her name partnership. This is accurate, though based on revenue and stature I don’t think it can be denied that Diane deserves name partner status (generally speaking). Diane went over to RBK, was like, “sure, I’ll be a junior partner, thank you so much for the opportunity, I can’t even pay my capital contribution right now but what if I were name partner in three months?” and that is both entitlement and knowing one’s own worth, but mostly entitlement.  

(Liz does not act entitled, but if we want to get into who deserves their partnership more—again generally speaking, not their partnership at a black firm specifically—it is definitely Diane! Liz literally only has this job because her dad was important.)  

“I think that Barbara Kolstad was shoved out because you felt entitled to her position,” Liz shouts. OMG, a mention of Barbara?!?!?!??!?!? THANK YOU, WRITERS!!!

(This is a slight bit of revisionist history but I’ll allow it, and I think it’s right in thought even if it’s not right on the details. Barbara wasn’t shoved out—Barbara chose to go to a different firm that offered her a better deal—but I don’t think Barbara would’ve been on that trajectory had it not been for Diane’s presence at the firm. Barbara was in charge of a firm that shared her values when, suddenly, her partner decided that they needed to pursue profit over all else and needed Diane to execute that strategy. Maybe no one made a move directly against her, but Adrian and Diane changed the mission of RBK until it was no longer somewhere Barbara wanted to work.

“We can’t work together if you don’t respect me,” Diane screams at Liz. “No, we can’t work together if you use race cynically,” Liz responds. Diane gets even angrier, swears a bunch, and then says “You want to come after me, you come after me with an honest argument about my lack of competence, my lack of worth.” Diane, you are fighting a completely different battle here! You can be entitled and also correct and also good at your job. This is what you used to accuse Alicia of all the time. The fact you’ve turned this into something about your skill level when it’s about the meaning of having a black firm is only proving Liz’s point.

“Your unworthiness—which you don’t seem to want to acknowledge—is that you can’t be the top dog in a black firm,” Liz says. Exactly. But Diane just storms off.

Now the cop is on the stand. He did not know the victim had a heart condition. Uh, obviously, why would he have known that?  

Liz is aggressive in court; Diane thinks this is the wrong strategy. Without knowing who is on the jury, I have no idea which one of them is correct.  

The next move is to get the cop’s ex-wife, who he abused, on the stand.  

Goodie, it’s cancel culture court. Things go well for Marissa, but Del wants to know why Marissa wasn’t that passionate about the n-word case. Marissa says she feels like it’s not the n-word, like that is a valid reason to not represent your client to the best of your ability. “It is. It always is,” says Del.  

Marissa heads back to RL, and as she walks, the camera follows her and moves through the space until we end up in Liz’s office, where she gets a news alert about the cop from the COTW. He’s been killed, seemingly in retaliation for his actions. The news is quick to suggest the trial might’ve encouraged the killing. “Oh, fuck.” Diane says as she watches the news. Aaaand credits (at 20 minutes in!)  

From the promos, I thought this was going to be a Very Serious Episode about police brutality. From the opening, I thought it was going to be an insufferable episode about cancel culture. I was wrong! (Though, I suppose, some of the cancel culture stuff is still insufferable.)  

Yay for Carrie Preston, who directed this episode. I read an interview with her and she talked about how there’s a “look book” for directing TGF episodes and I have never wanted to see anything as badly as I want to see this look book. (Am I exaggerating? Probably. But I might not be.)  

After credits, Marissa finds Carmen and Jay to ask them if “n-word-ly" is offensive. She acknowledges she’s being annoying but they let her continue anyway. Jay finds it offensive. Carmen does not. This seems fitting with their characters, and I love that this scene acknowledges that not every black person is going to have the exact same reaction to everything.  

I want Carmen to have more to do! While I’m glad the show isn’t forcing her to have a large role in every plot just because, I feel like she’s gone missing for the middle part of the season. My guess is that their priority with Carmen is setting her up to be an ongoing part of the cast who grows into being someone we want a lot from rather than forcing her plots from the start... but surely we could get a little more of her! I doubt she’s a one-season character like I assume Wackner will be.  

The cop’s murder changes the vibe in court. Abernathy calls a moment of silence in his memory. “We’re fucked,” Liz whispers to Diane.  

And indeed they are. The cop’s ex no longer wants to talk about how abusive he was—she wants to talk about how great he was. Whose idea was it to still put her on the stand?! Idk about legal procedures but this seems like a really avoidable mistake!

Diane argues that the cop’s death has prejudiced the jury. Abernathy decides to call a “voir dire de novo,” using an obtuse Latin phrase that would not be permitted in Wackner’s court. (Love the little parallels in this episode, like this, the transition between courts earlier, and how much of Marissa being called out on her whiteness feels like a thematic extension of everything going on with Diane.)

Cancel culture court continues. Carmen shows up.

I don’t really get how June, the victim of LCK2, potentially losing a headlining gig for a bad set instead of retaliation from LCK2, scores him a point. One, if she was a rising store, one bad set shouldn’t have damned her career. Two, isn’t it enough to prove that he masturbated in front of women who didn’t want him to do that???????  

Having June perform her act with no prep in Wackner’s court so they can judge whether or not she is funny is a wildly bad idea. So now Wackner is an arbiter of humor as well as cancel culture?  

This whole system is silly and I reject the whole premise but June should not lose two points for the logic that Wackner + the audience don’t find June funny --> June must’ve had her career derailed because she just isn’t funny (how’d she book the headliner gig, then?) --> LCK2 scores points??? He still masturbated in front of her without her consent!  

Using cancel culture to show Wackner’s court is going too far/slipping into bad territory: I’m on board with this. Using Wackner’s court to actually comment on cancel culture: Ugh. The writers seem to be trying to do both.  

Lol at Abernathy having Stacey Abrams’ book on his desk.

Marissa argues the n-word case more passionately, because these writers love to make situations that seemed clear cut seem more uncertain. It’s no coincidence they have the sexual harassment case look murkier (though, again, June being bad at comedy does not negate the sexual harassment!) right before they have the n-work case begin to tilt in favor of the professor’s cancellation.

Hahah what bullshit about trying to prepare the students for a world that won’t be kind to them. Do you seriously think your black students need YOU to prepare them?  

This lady thinks history classes have to describe rapes in detail to get students to sympathize. No, no they fucking do not.  

She also says she’d use the n-word if she were teaching a topic where it might come up. Um, no?

Mr. Elk (this is what I call Ted Willoughby, Idiot Reporter, after he said “things of that elk” in his first appearance) is attacking Diane and Liz on his show. Diane and Liz are, apparently, “Marxist slip-and-fall lawyers” and Mr. Elk plays a clip of Diane saying cops need to be held accountable. Obviously, this was before the cop’s death and meant to be about the legal system, but it looks like Diane’s calling for his murder. I also love how they go out of their way to only pause the clip on unflattering frames of Diane.  

Liz wants to use this in court—I forgot that Liz is super sneaky but this tracks; she is always quick to use things to her advantage and we’ve known that about her since her strategy with the DNC in 2x07 (to make outlandish allegations and then drop them before presenting proof). Julius wants to get Liz and Diane security.

That security is, apparently Jay. I think they’ve shown Jay as security before when Lucca went viral. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now.

I was, briefly, worried for Liz and Diane’s safety, especially after I saw all the angry cops waiting for them in court. Then I thought, oh, well at least they’re in court, they should be safe from being shot there. Then I remembered 5x15. Then I laughed at myself.  

Liz’s new strategy works and Abernathy uses more Latin. But, they can’t get any more jurors thrown. (They’re going for a mistrial.)

Oh, Carmen is back again! She did SO MUCH in that court scene where she appeared and then disappeared! She’s chatting with Marissa and spots LCK2 in the RL offices.  

Apparently, LCK2 negotiated a contract with Del, with David Lee’s help. (Why would David Lee be doing entertainment law?) Suddenly everything makes sense to Marissa.

She calls Del to the stand. This—and, honestly, everything after this—makes me wonder how much of this would ever make it to air. Why would Del televise this?

What a shock—Del wants LCK2 back on his streaming service (which I don’t think has a name LOL).  

Somehow Marissa’s questions become about Wackner and whether or not Wackner is an impartial judge, which doesn’t seem like the core issue. Wackner has made it pretty clear that his stance is that he doesn’t care if others are corrupt around him or try to use him; he’s going to be impartial no matter what. Why not play that up instead of making the entire show look staged and Wackner look complicit, Marissa?  

Like, why is Marissa asking Wackner if he’s prejudged the case?! Why isn’t she just trying to like, get him to declare a mistrial because there is a conflict of interest? She can make a version of this argument without accusing Wackner of PREJUDGING, which she knows—I know, so she knows—will set him off. Wackner truly believe he thinks he is impartial. It’s not smart strategy to question that (even if we all know that Wackner is not impartial!)

Wackner blows up at Marissa and shouts at her. He tells her to get the fuck out of court.

This is certainly dramatic, but again, would Del ever choose to air this? I doubt it.  

On her way to work, Diane notices hot pink spray paint in the elevator. When she exits the elevator, the whole firm is gathered in the lobby. Someone has painted COP KILLERS across the elevator bank. “Security doesn’t know how they got in,” Jay says. “Of course they don’t,” Diane responds. “They suggest we call the cops,” Jay says. I love this little exchange. I wasn’t exactly wondering how someone got in, but I like the show making it clear how unprotected Diane and Liz are right now and why.

Julius appears and says that Mr. Elk is saying something new. Diane and Liz sit down to watch and the tone of this episode completely shifts.  

I had forgotten completely that Liz’s dad’s assault issues are out in public until Mr. Elk called him “a disgraced civil rights leader.” It doesn’t feel like they’re out in public! Also I would believe Mr. Elk calling him disgraced for no reason at all.  

Y’all, when Mr. Elk said the name “Duke Roscoe,” my jaw dropped. WHAT A CALLBACK.  

This scene, and really, everything in this plot from here on out, is a delight. It just keeps going and going. It is the best kind of fanservice.

1x11 has been, for no real reason, on my mind since 5x04. It popped out to me as an example of this show’s humor so I talked about it in that recap. I nearly mentioned it in my 5x06 recap when Diane laughed at Julius’s suggestion that they start a firm together. I rewatched 1x11, by complete chance, like two weeks ago. How weird that I'm somehow on the show’s wavelength about this!  

Also I made a joke about Mr. Elk last week without knowing he’d be back this episode. I would like to think I conjured this.  

(1x11 is a really pivotal episode for TGW, even if it isn’t one of the most notable episodes overall. It's composer David Buckley’s first episode and that ending, with Diane laughing, is one of the earliest moments of TGW showing its sense of humor and playing to its strengths.)

Mr. Elk notes that they “rarely see” Kurt, which is apparently evidence that Diane is a lesbian. Hahahahahahah. Mr. Elk also wouldn’t want to note Kurt, despite his recent controversy, because to his viewers, Kurt’s beliefs would make Diane seem more sympathetic.  

GUYS, THE WRITERS DECIDED TO MAKE A CALLBACK TO AN ICONIC MOMENT FROM AN EPISODE THAT AIRED OVER A DECADE AGO AND THEN BUILD ON IT. I cannot express how fucking happy this makes me.  

Now, Mr. Elk says, Diane and Liz are an item!  

What’s better than Diane laughing hysterically at the original allegations? Diane doing it again, eleven years later, JOINED BY LIZ.  

This also works super well to cut the tension between Diane and Liz. I assume this isn’t the end of the name partnership drama, but I think it might be the end of Diane and Liz being pissed at each other. Since the name partnership drama was never really about Diane and Liz (Liz seems to want Diane to stay on...), I’m fine with that.  

Because this is an episode full of callbacks that delight me, Del asks Liz when he gets to meet her son! HER SON STILL EXISTS!  

It sounds like Liz and Del still aren’t fully official, which clarifies why they don’t seem to be a couple in public.  

Del brings up the Diane rumor (jokingly) and Liz jokes along. I love that we get to see this playful side of Liz.  

Wackner’s watching his outburst with regret. Del calms him down and notes that this is good TV (why... would Del air this... it makes DEL look worse than anyone!). Wackner calls Marissa to apologize; she picks up and accepts his apology.  

Abernathy calls Liz and Diane into chambers. He’s worried he was “insensitive”-- he's noticed the tension between Liz and Diane, but now he thinks it was a lover’s spat.

Diane puts on a poker face and leans in towards Liz. She starts nodding attentively and thanks Abernathy. Liz smiles and doubles down: she’s not just going to play along, she’s going to milk it. She gets a juror kicked for homophobia, which means a mistrial. Shameless. I love it.  

Diane and Liz playing off each other as Abernathy tries to look like as much of an ally as possible is comedy gold.  

Diane even calls Liz darling. Omg.  

LCK2 is on the stand, being charismatic and annoying. Of course he is. This is what happens when you give someone who is known for being able to connect with a crowd... a crowd and the benefit of the doubt.

LCK2 is talking about “stupid women” in his new set. Why... is Del giving that a platform at all? See, the fact that Del thinks it is not only interesting but also somehow essential to let LCK2 make jokes about sexual harassment is why I can’t take this episode seriously. Why should I be more outraged about someone who did something shitty not getting a trial for his shitty but legal behavior than I am about powerful people continuing to offer shitty people platforms? Only one of these seems outrageous to me.

Wackner decides that the professor did something “awful but lawful” and that’s it. So you’re saying that if it isn’t illegal, it doesn’t get decided in your court, either? What was the point of this, then?  

The professor says she doesn’t want that—she wants the school to know she’s being punished so she can get her job back. The student storms out, rightfully. Wackner’s job isn’t to offer someone who wants punishment some form of penance, like she can exchange community service hours for offensive remarks. It’s to... well, idk what it is to do, since this whole thing doesn’t really make sense and he makes the rules, but I don’t think his verdict has to be about giving anyone what they want. I’m disappointed that Wackner comes up with a punishment and I don’t think it’s going to get her her job back.  

LCK2 loses, too, because he hasn’t made amends. Wackner doesn’t want to fine him because he’s too rich for a fine to matter. Cord argues that LCK2 deserves a second chance. I mean, sure, but is he being denied a second chance? He doesn’t deserve an easy path back to his fame just because he wants it.  

Wackner mentions prison. At first I was like, oh, that’s a nice throwaway line that he mentioned prison! This ties into what I was saying a few weeks ago about how Wackner likes the institutions that already exist—he just thinks they’re imperfect! It’s fitting that he’s not a prison abolitionist!  

And then the episode actually went there: Wackner, thanks to David Cord’s private prison company, actually sentences LCK2 to prison. This is deeply uncomfortable (and of questionable legality). Wackner’s system is just going to recreate prison? Worse, private prison? He’s creating an unchecked, privatized legal system?! This sounds bad! Kudos to the show for taking this to some place so dark—I knew Wackner’s system would start to show cracks, but I didn’t realize they’d go this far.  

And I’m not sure what the end game is with this! All I know is I’m not on board with Wackner sending people to prison (except as a plot—I am very on board with this plot) and neither is Marissa.

I do not think viewers of the reality show will like the prison twist or the fact that Cord is financing a court and prison! Can you imagine the scandal!

And what do the contracts look like that allow Wackner to sentence someone to prison? Can LCK2 leave any time he wants? If so, then how does the prison sentence help? If not, is that legal?  

Del wants it to be a 2 week sentence, not 3, because this means LCK2 will have to miss his taping in two weeks. I have many questions. (1) Is Wackner’s show airing live? If not, then why do they need to rush the taping of the special? They could push it quite easily. (2) Why can’t they push the taping? This guy is a huge deal and enough potential $$ that Del wants to rehabilitate his career... so why does the taping have to be on this particular day and time?  

Is there really an Exxon Mobile case, I wonder?  

I like that we spend a good amount of time watching Marissa’s reactions to this latest addition to Wackner’s court. Combined with the score, Marissa’s facial expression serves to underline that private prisons are not good here! This isn’t Wackner getting legitimate methods of enforcement... this is just opening a pandora’s box of highly questionable extrajudicial practices.  

I do love that this episode ends up here: it starts out like it’s going to be about cancel culture silliness and ends up being about the escalation of Wackner’s tactics.

Funny how both of the cancelled people end up being found guilty by Wackner, huh! Almost like they actually did something wrong and faced the consequences!  

Liz and Diane get called in to talk to Liz’s favorite department: HR. They’re asked to sign “love contracts” to confirm things are consensual. I find it hilarious that HR gives them the paper before even asking if it’s true.  

Liz grabs a pen and signs. Diane follows her lead. They look at each other and smile politely at HR.

I am... not sure how to read this last scene! Is it a fuck-you to HR? A way of easing tensions? A way for Liz to get people to stop talking to her about removing Diane as name partner because no one will want to ask if they’re really involved? Something else? Help me understand!

Curious to see where things go next. I can see LCK2 coming back for another episode but it also wouldn’t surprise me to never see him again. Similarly, I could see some glances/discussion of Diane and Liz’s romantic relationship next week, or I could see it never being mentioned again, or I could see it being mentioned next season out of the blue.  

[thedailycourtney]

On My Mind: 1

I don’t think I’m going to give any more money to politicians. 

This year, and this last election specifically, made me question the purpose. The amount of money spent on elections, especially at a state or federal level, is grotesque. Honestly, does it even matter? With gerrymandering and voter suppression and humongous super pacs, and the number of lies/innuendo/misleading statements political advertisements legally contain, I can’t see that it does. Would my recurring $12 donation to Elizabeth Warren as penance for going to Taco Bell (rumor has it the CEO of Yum! Brands is a big Trump supporter) be better utilized in my own community? Absolutely, yes. The fuck am I doing giving to ActBlue Beto, or Amy, or Jaime, knowing, deep down, that it’s about as practical as sewing dollar bills into an airplane and trying to fly it to the White House. 

(I feel kind of weird talking about this? I have a very modest donation budget, which admittedly mostly goes towards local animal rescue organizations annually, but I like to keep a discretionary portion for unplannable gofundmes, etc.)

(Side note: sometimes I just want a cheap, consistent, convenient Taco Bell specific bean burrito? Does EVERYTHING have to be such a big fucking deal? Sometimes a bean burrito is just ... a bean burrito. No more, no less. Not everything is a moral dilemma. Not everything is a thinkpiece.)

2020, in particular, was disgusting. Even from a cushy, privileged view, the obscene amount of spending, on ad space, on security, on transportation, on any number of other things, while so many people in our country were struggling, was just... gross. I’m done participating in that particular game. I hate politics in general, but I especially hate politics as it relates to government. As a very wise person (ICE-T) once said, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” I really, really hate the game.

I wish money didn’t exist. I hate what it does to people, I hate how it changes people. I really hate that we need it to survive in this world, and I hate that it’s the forefront of almost everything here, in the U.S.

I’m obviously still going to vote, in every election, especially local elections, and I’m obviously still going to put up yard signs and shit, but I’m over all of it - an easy thing to say when you’re a middle aged, middle class white woman who will probably be just fine regardless. I recognize that, and I’m trying to reconcile how gross that makes me feel vs. the amount of detachment I need for my own self preservation. That sounds dramatic, but I do not have the fortitude to be outraged every day. I can’t sustain it. I don’t want to sustain it. I hate that everything has to be us vs them, zero gray areas, you’re posting constantly on social media, or you’re SILENT, you’re either toppling statues or you’re the oppressor, you’re calling out strangers on Twitter, or you’re complacent - and that’s just our side! You’re this, or you’re that. No room for nuance, no room for growth, no room for productive conversations. Definitely no room for redemption. If you think that makes me weak, I’m OK with it. 

I used to think the word “content” meant you’d given up on being HAPPY! and just decided to settle into this boring, even-keeled existence. Maybe it does a little? I thought being content was the worst thing in the world - not EXUBERANCE! not FEELING EVERYTHING!! until I realized how happy being content every day makes me. LOL the irony. I worked hard for content! I aim for it! I revel in it! When I find myself getting off course, I do the little things to get me back - the journal, the woods walks, limiting social media, taking a booze hiatus.

I question people who are constantly STRIVING! DO MORE! BE BETTER! DON’T YOU DAAAARE EAT THAT BAGUETTE CRUMB, YOU ABSOLUTE MONSTER - AT LEAST NOT UNTIL YOU HAVE EARNED THAT CARB! CLIMB THAT MOUNTAIN!!!! “Better” isn’t a six week program, or a life coach yelling at you, or a linear, quantifiable Instagram live. At some point, you run out of mountains to climb, so you climb the same one, over and over and over some more. You’re a hamster, with a wheel. Sit still with yourself. That’s the hard part.

Whew, this got long, and really took a turn there at the end. I took an extended break from sharing anything with real substance here - I’m way too sensitive for the internet - but I think I may be ready to now? Probably. Maybe. 

But I’ll still never again turn on anon messaging. 

[luidilovins]

You should turn your post on the Uncanny Valley into a book or something. I am not even kidding, it's brilliant and sorely needed information. Thank you for it.

Tbh its just speculative that the uncanny valley is an inherent biological trait and not cultural or a learned behavior at the moment. A good example would be the cultural phenomenon of colorophobia where in the US we have a longer history of using clowns in our horror pop culture genres than countries like Japan.

Clown entertainment has been around since the Egytian times and maybe some people have always been freaked out by them it honestly just takes one director or author to have an disproportionately irrational fear and good cinematography skills to convince people that they SHOULD hate clowns just as much, (I could say the same about the movie Jaws but thats a bit of a tangent,) or a memorable event that damages the public's trust in something that SHOULD be innocent or harmless. (A good examples being the John Wayne Gacy trials.)

Clowns are also thought to be in the uncanney valley so ita a fairly good argument on cultural phenomenon versus genetic traits. Up until aroud the 60s-70s clowns were actually fairly well liked by the US general public and a lot of older generation still find a fondness in it that would scare the living shit out of their grandchildren.

As far as evidence that I may be right about the "uncanney valley might be because of rabies" theory, there has been a small case study suggesting that the movements of a non-human robot that trigger the effect in us, is also present in people with parkinsons but the sample size is too small for me to be thoroughly convinced.

And don't be mistaken I also dislike this concept because saying that ableism is an inherent human trait is just as bad as saying racism is an inherent human trait. There is little to gain from distrust in the disabled and little historical evidence to suggest it was common or beneficial to discard disabled people. Disabled people's remains have been found time and time again to live to incredibly long livea and be cared for, and participate in their communities. I'm highly critical of this particular case study and I take it with a grain of salt because its on cosmo, but evidence of human disabilities and compassion can be sourced by actual bones and it's been placed on VERY credible sources. NPR, NBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, NY Times, literally the clostest you can get to creme of the crop news articles on DOZENS of accounts and if you have a goddam problem then pay for a tour to the Smithsonian, find an archeologist and coherse them into showing you the bones and then explain phorensics to you because you probably wouldn't understand unless you too were a phorensic archeologist yourself.

What I DO BELIEVE tho is that if the uncanny valley is a legitimate inherent trait, that like most evolutionary traits, it made it this far for this long because it somehow served us benificially. And the biggest benifit I can think of is identifying neuro-infectious diseases because they can spread agressivley, many of them lead to death or lasting effects and are fucking MISERABLE to catch. We're talking brain swelling, fevers, uncontrollable vomiting, tremors, hallucinations, motor and vocal tics, difficulty swallowing, seizures. This could all happen because they eat infected deer meat or because of one bad fox bite. It's miserable if you survive and horrifying if you dont. Rabies can survive in your muscle tissue for years before infecting your brain and once it does usually you only live for about 5-10 days in and out of concious knowledge that you're going to die painfully, and disease aggrivated psychosis. It would be hard to pinpoint the causation because the amout of time before full blown infection would vary too much to assosiate for a long time. So your only option is to hone in on telltale signs.

The disabled people who would suffer from herdeditary or developmental neurological disorders run the risk of prejudice from mistaken identity, but if a human is part of a community, and doesn't die within a week from having a wobbly head, it would sooner or later become apparent that they're not dangerous. I think nowadays culturally people don't press to learn more about disabled people due to social and political prejudice and never fucking grow up past that. Mistaken identity or not. You learn about people from the patterns of their behaviors so even ones that seem abnormal to you become a normal recognizable pattern for them. Fancy that.

We don't get grossed out by chimps or gorillas, who are even more distant cousins, and the proof that we don't have a search and destroy button for anything immediatly related to us is a bunch of bullshit can be found in almost every human's blood on earth. And not just neanderthals, but denisovans as well. And that's not even accounting for genetic backtracking the crossbreeding of other sapiens species before we were whittled down to just the three. What makes the tweet even stupider is that when neandertals still roamed the earth humans were shorter, hardier, and overall more rough looking so we looked even indistinguished then. We Also Chewed On Bones and neandertals handled cold climates better than us based on a study on chest cavity density and, skull nasal intake and heat circulation, providing genetic diversity and the upper hand in survival in the tundras or mountainous regions spanning over Eurasia. If it wasn't for humans fucking neandertals we might not have been able to spread over the contient or diversify the way we did.

So my full hypothesis is that if the uncanny valley is a genetic inherent human trait it was used to benifit people from catching agressive diseases in a time where the benifit of fearing a group member with rabies outweighed the cost of fearing a group member with a disability like parkinsons.

WHAT PISSED ME OFF was the idea that we are DESIGNED to be unwary of our evolutionary cousins could easily be used for white supremacist spaces to justify racism BECAUSE IT ALREADY HAS

So that one tweet that might seem like a quirky thinkpiece in my eyes is just fuel for eugenics trend round whatever number we're on. It's like we don't fucking learn. It would be REALLY easy to retool the concept that it's natural for people to be fearful of whatever the bullshit definition of sub-humans are. Claiming that black people were sub-human thus deserving of mistrust and submission to white ownership worked like a fucking charm.

Maybe if I go to college and major in psyche/socio/civics it'll be my college thesis. Right now I'm more of a hobbyist than anything, but what I DO know is that anyone can make an untested hypothesis to combat another untested hypothesis and it should hold just as much goddamn value. I combatted the idea that the idea that human othering was funneled into an unconfirmed effect that causes disgust and terror based on non-human sapiens is in fact racist and gave what is in my opinion a more evoluntionary practical approach to the uncanney valley.

The generalized links that I used APARENTLY weren't good enough for some people but aparently a single tweet that says "hur dur heedle dee uncanney valley exists because of human cousins" was taken at face value even tho it was probably tapped out in five seconds without regards to the reproccussions. I find a huge discomfort that less than studious links about the evolution of monkey social behaviors that I used as a guideline to explaining my concerns became the focal point for people to nitpick without even having the gall to "well actually" on the subject. That absolute ravaging NEED to rip apart at it and devolve into name calling because I MENTIONED racism is fucking suspicious and I don't trust it. I had to stop looking at the responses because some people were only reblogging and arguing with barely half of my argument and i was getting nowhere fast.

There were a few people that made actual points with cited sources that made their own rebuttle arguments. That I respect. It's just as valid an argument as mine and I'm ALWAYS willing to take on more credible sources to strengthen my stance or gain perspective.

But it's the utter dismissal of a concerning concept that just seeped into the subtext that gnawed at my gut. Some people on top of hating the linked sources I provided, admitted they didn't read it, refused to read between the lines to purposfully misinterpret or derail my main points, and detract that my claim that the tweet was a result of systemic white supremacy saturated into modern science was a bunch of bullshit because I claimed that 1500s anglos invented racism.

The thing is we did invent the racism that we fucking currently subscribe to.

We practice the science that we formulated based on our own social prejudice. Real people die from this.

We remain uncritical of our own theorums that we postulate then pat ourselves on the back like we're philosophical geniuses even though racism is a family heirloom with a new paint job.

We preach the eugenics ideals that we pulled out of our asses to benifit from fearmongering, promises of national security and unpaied labor.

White supremacists create subtext with the intention of it being consumed by accident or in ways that seem palatable.

Fuck.

That.

I don't hate the person who wrote the tweet. Chances are that they gave the tweet as much thought as they took the time to write it and went on their day as a fun little thinkpiece. Everyone on the internet does it. But its that kind of thinking error that needs to be adressed as a progression of historic and scientific prejudice that gets rehashed, recycled and untouched and continually damages and is weaponized against marginalized people. I am not wrong for taking it seriously especially when a bunch of people were sitting around nodding their heads just as effortlessly.

I don't owe the internet any more sources than the tweet. I don't owe anyone on the internet a full scientific ananysis. And the people's reaction to what I had to say was actually what further convinced me I might have hit the nail on the head.

[monsterfucker-lisa-swallows]

She tried to start a lynch mob using the old white lady trick of “two black men demanded drugs then stole my money and phone” as a cover up for murdering her son. Don’t let this slide, I’m literally begging you. Not this time. 

This boy was nonverbal, so when he was heard screaming he couldn’t explain to people that his mom was trying to kill him. They only realized after she took him to another canal to drown him that she’d been trying to kill him the first time. Because you guys don’t listen to us. You don’t believe us. You believe the people who do this to us. We end up dead because many of us don’t have a voice and you won’t raise yours with us. You say “he’s in a better place” instead of making this a better place for him

(Article from 23rd May, 2020)

This happens so often. I’m lucky to be alive because I was abused horrifically by people who were trying to “cure” me. Don’t believe me that this is common?

The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (an organization I actually support, as opposed to Autism Speaks) reports that “In the past five years, over 600 people with disabilities have been murdered by their parents, relatives or caregivers.”

Earlier this year, an 8-year-old autistic boy was murdered by his father who had sole custody of him. He called the child a “piece of shit” two days before the child died in a freezing New York City garage in the dead of winter. His father said after the death that he’d been through “more stressful things”. They had home video footage of him beating his children. 

His name was Thomas Valva

In 2018, a 5-year-old boy with “ fragile X syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, impulse control disorder and dysphasia” was the subject of 11 different complaints to child services because of suspected abuse, but as was true in my case no action was taken. He died of asphyxiation and a drug overdose. “Brayson suffered a broken arm, broken femur and numerous burns and bruises in the years before his death, court records state. Price withdrew Brayson from school a month later. It was October. By November, he was dead.” (Classic abuse tactic, isolating the victim.) When child services investigated her prior to the death, the mother claimed he couldn’t feel pain.

“Prior to his death, Price googled "Risperidone overdose" multiple times, according to the court transcript. Ingalls searched multiple phrases, including "beat child with fragile X abuse, I want to kill my autistic child, painful ways to die (and) most painful torture."

Ingalls told Price via text message that he hated her son, wanted to buy a ticket to see Brayson take his last breath and thought she should "kill him while he is young and do something with your life before he robs you of any chance of ever being happy or being anything other than a stay-at-home retarded caregiver,"”

really indicative of how you see us, guys

His name was Brayson Price

here we have a woman who is anonymous and said she was “overwhelmed and felt totally alone after her child was diagnosed with autism.” (Like cry me a fucking river, Karen.) Pled not guilty by insanity. She googled suicide attempts and mothers who killed autistic children in the 48 hours before she smothered her 3 year old daughter with a Minnie Mouse pillow. She was convinced the child’s form of autism was “more severe” than it was...which...okay are people who cover this story expecting me to believe it would be justified if it WAS more severe?

Her name wasn’t printed, but she’s not forgotten.

Here we have a Tennessee mother covering up her husband’s abuse and murder of her 5-year-old autistic son

His name was Joe Clyde Daniels

Think this is getting depressing? It’s state enforced

Up to 50% of people killed by police have registered disabilities

911 Can Be a Death Sentence for Blacks in a Mental Health Crisis

Last year, a non-verbal autistic man became agitated and shoved an off-duty police officer when in line for samples at Costco in California. His parents tried to apologize and explain, but the police officer fired on them 10 times - killing him and wounding his parents. No charges were pressed.

His name was Kenneth French

We have a manslaughter charge for a cop killing a 6 year old boy? At least he got 40 years for it?

His name was Jeremy Mardis

I don’t know how many times we have to tell you this before you believe us, but our lives are not worthless. Regardless of what “level of functioning” we’re at (which is already a ridiculous metric because I’m apparently considered high functioning even when I barely hold a job), we’re not burdens and we’re not inherently dangerous. People keep saying they’re in a better place now, but that’s just excusing it. Make HERE a better place! Stop letting these news stories slide! Stop spreading thinkpieces by Autism Speaks lamenting over a poor mother who has been burdened with an autistic child and saying she’s so brave to not murder her child! Hell, sometimes you guys make whole documentaries about mothers who murder autistic children SYMPATHIZING with them! And stop calling cops on autistic people having meltdowns, for fuck’s sake! 

Autism isn’t something we suffer from, not inherently! We suffer from the trauma of being forced to live in a world where people abuse and kill us for being different! You keep killing us instead of listening to us! Being non-verbal should NEVER be a death sentence! 

I made some posters just because I, too, sometimes need a catch phrase. Feel free to make more.

(Image: “Autism isn’t deadly, ableism is. Stop passively condoning the murder of autistic people. Hear us. Believe us.”)

(Image: “Autism shouldn’t be a death sentence. Neurodivergent children have a higher risk of being bullied and abused. Black autistic children are at a higher risk of corporal punishment at school. 50% of the victims of police shootings are neurodivergent. Hear us. Believe us.)

(Image: “Silence shouldn’t = death. Non-Verbal autistic children are routinely abused and killed by parents because nobody can hear the cries for help. Non-verbal autistic adults are shot by police because they’re assumed to be dangerous. Hear Us. Believe us.”)

Something for my non-verbal or selectively verbal peeps out there.

(Image: Non-Verbal but not silent. Some autistic people aren’t capable of verbal communication. This doesn’t make them undeserving of life or respect. Others can communicate with text or sign or are selectively verbal. It’s important to learn how to communicate with an autistic person in their specific way and to not force them to conform to yours. Practice conflict resolution. Be patient. Hear us. Believe us.)

For people like me who can speak, or for any allies who will stand with us but not talk over us:

(Image: I don’t take my voice for granted. I lift my voice for all those who can’t speak for themselves. I see you. I’m with you. I respect you. You deserve to be here. Hear us. Believe us.)

(Image: Vaccines don’t cause autism. I literally don’t know how to tell you that those findings were debunked over 2 decades ago and you’re bringing back deadly diseases. Autism won’t kill your child. Measles will. I can’t believe I still have to say this. Hear us. Believe us.)

Anyway, that’s my message. I’m sick of this. Feel free to spread this like anti-vaxxers spread measles, because people DO talk about this, but I don’t see NTS willing to do much about it usually. Unfortunately we do need you on our side to hold yourselves accountable.

And it goes without saying that even though this is an autism specific post, this post is also friendly to other types of neurodivergence. We’re all in this (risk category) together.

[carlyfrombleachers]

EMOTION, because a CRJ blog needs to talk about EMOTION.

Some things in life are inevitable. Life, death, consumption of media, crying, interacting with others, and many other things, they are simply inevitabilities. Another inevitability is a Carly Rae Jepsen blog talking about EMOTION. It is something every blog-runner is eventually faced with, because of how impactful this record is for everyone who has listened to it. We will all write our EMOTION thinkpieces someday.

This post will only talk about the standard 12 tracks, Run Away With Me to When I Needed You. I will write about the Deluxe tracks (Black Heart, IDJCHTD, Favorite Colour, NGTHY, Love Again) some other time. Okay? Okay.

Also, I just realized my last two posts had the word “brilliance” on their titles. I do not know why that happened, maybe I’m a fan of the word, maybe they’re both brilliant! I don’t know. But the word “brilliance” is being banned from my titles from now on.

With that being said, let’s begin.

The First Three Tracks

I have talked about how important the first three tracks of an album are in my previous post, about Gone Now, but basically, the first three tracks are how they hook you, how they pull you in, how they make you stream it over and over. And EMOTION’s appetizers of Run Away With Me, EMOTION and I Really Like You are quite the solid ones. Run Away With Me wins every single “which is the best CRJ song” poll, so I really don’t want to talk about it, because I think everyone recognizes this is a good track. Personally, I think it is okay. Please don’t crucify me over this??? Thanks.

EMOTION is also a great track which I feel embodies what EMOTION (the album) is about. Which is why it shares a title with EMOTION (the album again). And this is what EMOTION (the album) is about. Emotion. I know, Queen of Subtlety, everyone please clap.

In all seriousness, EMOTION (the album!!!) is about love and the emotions that drive us. The love part is introduced with Run Away With Me, and the emotions, with EMOTION (the track). Run Away With Me is about unconditional love, about wanting to run away taking only the person you love the most. About forbidden love. About running away from all expectations and pursuing only love. EMOTION (the track again) is about evoking emotions in others, in those who you loved or still love, about wanting them to experience all emotions you two experienced together because you feel wronged by them.

And then we get to I Really Like You. I don’t like I Really Like You. You could say I Really Don’t Like It. And the fact it was the lead single? That’s just a weird choice. Sure, it’s catchy, and Tom Hanks is in the music video, but it’s just… not impactful enough? It’s very lovey-dovey, but that’s all it is. Love. Really Liking someone. There are better songs out there. But well, the first two tracks are so good, I think it hardly matters.

The Second Three Tracks..????

The middle of an album is weird. This is usually where themes are explored and pushed far. Lorde’s Melodrama features The Louvre, single Liability and Hard Feelings, where the themes of love shine through after their introduction through Green Light and Sober. Bleachers’ Gone Now features lead single Don’t Take The Money, along with Everybody Lost Somebody and All My Heroes. EMOTION’s tracks 4 through 6 are Gimmie Love, All That and Boy Problems.

These are weird tracks. The theme of love is very loosely present in all these songs, and the 80’s vibes shine very strongly here (especially in All That), but there is not much connecting all of them. Gimmie Love is about doing it with an ex, who you wish still loved you, All That is about being and doing everything for someone, and always being there for them, and then you have Boy Problems, which is, well, about how Boys Suck. The storyline of the record is confusing at best, much like Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. Future Nostalgia, much like EMOTION, is an album about those cool disco vibes and there is not really a present, recurring theme shared between most of its tracks. The progression on EMOTION is basically, “I love you, let’s run away”, then “I hope you suffer, because I kind of want you back”, followed by “Hey, I like you!” which then becomes “let’s have sex”, and then “I want to always be here for you and do everything for you and everything about you is incredible”... only to be stopped by “hey men are kind of trash aren’t they?”, the progression is all over the place. A record doesn’t need to be composed of only tracks that tell a concise story, of course, and I’ll talk about what this means for EMOTION later on.

The Second Set Of Second Three Tracks

“When you need me / I will never let you fall apart / When you need me / I will be your candle in the dark”

This is for later, don’t worry. :)

Tracks 7 through 9 are also quite the odd bunch, with a bunch of odd tracks with zero correlation between each other. 

Making the Most of the Night is about being there for who you love no matter what, much like All That, with a sick beat instead of the more chill vibes. Your Type is a song about jealousy, one that is very welcome on EMOTION because it displays both themes of love and emotions very well. Your Type shines. It ranks very highly on every EMOTION ranking I see because it’s hard-hitting. “I’m not the type of girl for you / And I’m not going to pretend / I’m the type of girl you call more than a friend / And I break all the rules for you / Break my heart and start again / I’m not the type of girl you call more than a friend”? Damn. Let’s Get Lost is kind of meh. Run Away With Me did the whole “running away from everyone” deal a lot better. But I think it sets out to do a thing and it does the thing. Not particularly impressive, but it’s good.

I have seen people go insane because of someone saying their favorite EMOTION song was bad or annoying, so if you have felt personally offended by any of these, send me an ask. End all your asks with “+” so I know you hate me. It’s okay. My self-esteem is quite high nowadays. I also wish to keep track of which of you to watch out for. Unless you send them anonymously, of course. In that case, I hope I know how to evade you. I have seen this happen very frequently with people who like Let’s Get Lost, so that’s why I’m apologizing.

Why didn’t I apologize at the end, though? Well, it’s because the next three are my favorites.

The End: The Last Three Tracks

The last songs of an album are magical. All the themes shine after their exposition in earlier tracks, allowing the record’s message to be complete and meaningful. Of course, not every record needs to do this, but it’s a lot cooler if they do.

L. A. Hallucinations is a nice song about a love story that starts being interrupted because of fame and how impactful it is to one’s life, Warm Blood is this eerie-sounding track about creating this façade and hiding who you are, only to meet someone who makes you give up on everything because you wish to be completely truthful to them, and When I Needed You is the best Carly Rae Jepsen song. No, I am absolutely not biased, shut up.

I think the album’s title, and its theme of emotion, shine on the last tracks. The build-up for the closing track is simply wonderful, and it just ties everything together. The connections that opening and closing tracks (or simply first and second halves) have is a beautiful thing to witness. Let’s take Melodrama as an example, since I’ve been listening to it a lot lately.

Melodrama is divided into two main parts: Green Light through Hard Feelings, tracks 1 through 6; and Loveless through Perfect Places, tracks 6 through 11. The first half of the album is dedicated to Lorde sharing how she feels, how her breakup makes her feel, how harshly she feels everything. How she loved and how she is no longer loved, how she didn’t care about what happened to her as long as she was having fun and how she sees that what she was doing hurts herself. The second half is Lorde accepting that she is not loved by him anymore, that it is not really her fault and that she has to move on, knowing that her ex may or may not realize what he’s done. That’s why we get Sober II, when Sober was present in the first half, and Liability (Reprise), when Liability was also in the first half. The first half was about hurting and feeling awful, while the second part is about how you're not the only awful person out there. In Liability, Lorde believes wholeheartedly that she is a burden to everyone, that she is too much, that she needs to disappear, but in Liability (Reprise), she mocks such an idea, or perhaps even comes into terms with the fact that she is a liability, and then follows it up with “Whatcha gonna do?”, because if she admits such a thing and is not bothered by it, then it doesn’t matter. After reflecting on whether or not she’s a liability, she doesn’t care anymore.

EMOTION's When I Needed You is basically Melodrama's second half crammed into a single track, and oh, does it sound good. This track fixes every single problem I had with EMOTION's inconsistency, its contradictory themes. Because I can just argue that it's foreshadowing. This is the part where I argue that it's foreshadowing.

When I Needed You, And How Great Closing Tracks Are Important

When I Needed You basically turns EMOTION on its head. Everything about this track is straight up perfection. All the emotions that kept hiding from you and refusing to show themselves finally do in what is, in my opinion, the best closing track of any pop record.

It’s just… the way everything sounds, the amazing production, the lyrics, it’s all just… so perfect??? EMOTION (the track), Your Type and Boy Problems kind of don’t fit the theme of the rest of the record, they’re not about how amazing it is to be loved, and instead are about how painful it is (for EMOTION and Your Type) and how love does not matter (Boy Problems). When I Needed You somehow manages to tie all these themes together with stellar lyricism.

“Sometimes I wish that I could change / But not for me, for you / So we could be together forever” 

The sheer power of these lyrics, oh wow. Carly is just so tired of things not working out that she wishes to become someone else. She wants to be who she isn’t. All of that, just because she likes someone who doesn't like her for who she is.

“But I know, I know that I won’t change for you / ‘cause where were you for me? / When I needed someone / When I needed someone / When I needed you”

Very few records reach this level of… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. But not every track can take the premise of “I wish I were someone else, but is it worth it?” and do it like When I Needed You does.

Remember what I said in All That, how I saved those lyrics for later? This is the part I bring them up.

“When you need me / I will never let you fall apart / When you need me / I will be your candle in the dark”

“[...] where were you for me? / When I needed someone [...] / When I needed you”

Carly wishes to be everything for someone in All That, she wishes to do literally anything for her lover, but in When I Needed You, she reveals her lover won’t do a single thing for her. Her lover does not care for her. And it doesn’t matter what she does, it doesn’t matter because she is not who she wants her to be.

I’m a Bleachers blog too, so I’m bringing Strange Desire up. I think Strange Desire, much like EMOTION, suffers from not having a very cohesive theme between all its tracks. Most of them are about love, and then you have I Wanna Get Better, and some more songs about love, but the album is quite… tame? It sets out to do something and it does it, and I like it.

The final track of Strange Desire, “Who I Want You To Love”, is quite the odd one. Whereas most songs in Bleachers’ first record are about wanting to see someone evolve while also struggling with evolving yourself, Who I Want You To Love is not really like that. It’s more like a “I give up” letter.

“I will love who you want me to love / Oh, I will bleed when you want me to bleed / But I don’t wanna know too much of anything / Because it all hurts me”

WIWYTL is simply about giving up. Going so far you don’t care about what happens to you. And it’s a perfect closing track for a record like Strange Desire. It has feeling. It has emotion. It has power, strong themes, a message. It’s beautiful. If you only come here for my CRJ content, I highly recommend you listen to Bleachers. It’s a bit wonky at first, but I’m sure you’ll love it if you give it a try.

Back to CRJ though, When I Needed You is an example of how to do a closing track. The weird, contradictory messages that popped up every now and then? It was self-doubt. Doubt that this relationship could grow. That maybe everything was not so great. She experiences a breakup, then falls in love again, and again, and again, only to realize she was changing too much for the people she loved, she was doing too much, and she doesn’t need to do too much. She needs to be happy and make others happy being herself, instead of changing who she is. And this is the main lesson you should take from this song: if you’re changing who you are just to satisfy someone you love, and you’re not happy with who you’re becoming, stop. It is not worth it.

I think every track has a message that can be taken from it, and the most important ones lie in Run Away With Me and When I Needed You. And I think that’s why so many people LOVE Run Away With Me. Because they love the message. Because of how beautiful the lyrics are, and because of how many people identify with wanting to run away with who they love, because they’re queer, because others would not understand, because being LGBT+ is seen as sinful. Or maybe it’s about sex, and that’s what the sinning implies, but I like my (and many other people’s) interpretation better.

Well, that’s all I have for today! Have a great month and happy holidays. As we approach December, I might start pumping out extra content, potentially talking about other records I love (Melodrama lol) or some other things I feel like you (my beautiful lovely readers) might enjoy! If there’s an album you want me to listen to, feel free to send me recs through the asks function! Goodbye.

[inikavulpixelreviews]

New Game Special: Let’s Talk About Pokemon - Sword and Shield

Just as a warning, this thinkpiece WILL contain minor to major spoilers of the newest games.

So. Sword and Shield, huh?

While the Pokemon reviews themselves might not be starting for a while just yet, I think these games and the little discourse that comes with them warrants a little “introductory” thinkpiece to drop my thoughts and hot takes out there. I've played all the way through Sword, beaten its postgame epilogue, and am currently working on a Living Galardex.

Honestly? As flawed as it is, this is the most fun I've had with Pokemon since Black and White. No way I would call it better than BW, or even my second-favorite game HGSS. But it was far more engaging than the Gen 6 games and its ideas felt like a far better way to “revitalize what is familiar” than Sun and Moon did. The Wild Area is a wonderful addition I want to see expanded on tremendously in future games. And I mean like. Almost every route should be a miniature Wild Area in and of itself.

So yeah, I've had a lot of fun with it. It's not entirely scratched the itch that I've been feeling about the Pokemon series taking a serious overhaul to its mechanics (more on that in a bit). And like I said, its flaws are very apparent. Graphically it's still not caught up to modern games, and it's still very much a Pokemon game anchored down by conventions that have been with the series since the very start. And online interactions leave a lot to be desired. The story is back to a much more simple structure, which is a shame since there's a handful of really good characters present between Bede, Hop, and even the game’s main villains that all had a lot of potential. I would love to see them in a story that was handled with the same finesse as Black and White.

But in the end? I did enjoy it quite a bit. A solid 7/10 from me. But with the little micro-review done and over with, we're gonna move onto the two bigger points I'd like to drop my thoughts on.

The Pokemon Themselves:

I mean, what else would it have been?

While Gen 8 is one I wouldn't say is in my top two favorites or anything, it's still very solid and has a lot of fun Pokemon within it. Without giving a ton away, and since I've posted this publicly already, here's a first brush tier list of what I think of em. Though Gigantamax form are missing obviously, and some Pokemon are just not here. For some reason, it's hard to find one of these tier lists with all the new Pokemon on it. Just know that Skwovet and Greedent are around C-range and Galarian Stunfisk, Darumaka, and Darmanitan would be in A.

These can change with time of course, there's quite a few Pokemon that my opinion has changed on once I've examined their design more closely. Yeah, leaning a lot more into the positive! I think Gen 7 edges out just BAAARELY ahead, but 3rd place behind the greatness of Gens 5 and 7 is not bad at all! All that really holds it back are some lackluster cover-legendaries and, tragically, the lack of any new Ultra Beasts.

Figuring out an order to cover these in is gonna be a thing. I'd rather cover new the lines in their entirety, but because some new Regional Variants evolve into entirely new Pokemon, it's puzzling to figure out where they aughta go! In the end, I might go in the order of covering Regionals with no relation to new Pokemon first, then Gigantamax forms, then go through the 810 to 890 in order, plus whatever Galarian forms are related to new Pokemon when they come around.

I’d still say reviews will likely not start until 2020. I’d obviously wanna wait until the official artwork of all the Pokemon in a decent resolution would be available, plus I’d like to put a bit of extra oomph into these reviews. I’ll save what exactly I mean by that for when I start the Gen 8 reviews proper.

But of course, Sword and Shield isn't all sunshine and rainbows. As I'm sure any Pokemon fan has heard, in the middle of this very year, Junichi Masuda himself came out on E3 with the very unfortunate announcement that Sword and Shield will be the first games in the series' long run to not feature every single Pokemon. And indeed, that this will very likely be the standard for all Pokemon games going forward, electing to chose different Pokemon that are best suited to the theme of the region, and all others will be completely incompatible. Fans didn't take this news lightly, to say the least.

And I've thought about it long and hard on my own time, occasionally listening to what others had to say about the matter. Which of course, brings me, the person who mind you hasn't bothered trading their team to the most recent games in a LONG time BUT also had their top favorite Pokemon of all time axed from the Galardex, to my own hot take, gulp:

How badly do we really need the National Dex?

Okay, before I get into it any further than that, I wanna preface this by saying if you're one of the people that are genuinely upset about the National Dex cut, I understand. If you don't think Sword and Shield are worth buying because of the National Dex cut, it's your money to do with what you please. If you think Pokemon from this point forward won't be worth playing anymore due to the possibility that it will never feature every single Pokemon ever again, I totally get it. I'd be a fool to deny that there's a lot to be upset with Gamefreak with at the moment. But I will rather boldly make the statement that, after all the consideration I've done over the last few months, the Nation Dex has been a long-running mistake that should've never happened and the very concept of having every single Pokemon in every single game should've died when Gen 2 ended.

While I have taken its presence much for granted over the years, since it had been such a matter-of-fact thing. Of course every Pokemon would be in every game, why wouldn't they be? Turns out, Gamefreak's insistence on making sure all Pokemon are present for every game could very well be a root for a good chunk of the series' problems, both in the long run and recent.

Implementing the entire Pokedex, for one, is a huge waste of resources and time. People have already proven that putting in the Pokemon themselves doesn't take too long; modders have already stuck their favorites not in SwSh into the games and they are more or less fully functioning (albeit with the need to program your own moves and stats onto them). But to take that as evidence that maintaining the Nat. Dex shouldn't be a problem would be fairly disingenuous. For every single Pokemon, form, ability, move, and whatnot that they add to the game adds to an ever-inflating problem in terms of Pokemon's scope. With how many combinations of Pokemon, moves, abilities, and held items there are, I can only imagine that making sure no catastrophic game-breaking bug is going to happen in-battle due to an extremely and stupidly specific interaction is a QA nightmare that eats up far more of the work force’s time and energy that could be better spent... literally anywhere else.

And all this for what? So that a small and ever-shrinking minority of the fanbase can fulfill the increasingly difficult if not outright impossible dream of catching them all. Especially given how many of said Pokemon are only obtainable during a limited time. Not to mention how you are required to own multiple games to catch them all at this point. And there's obviously FAR too many to reasonably pile into a single region. The other side of that particular coin is the opposite; the people that usually only bring over anywhere between 2-16 favorites. Even that, as much as it is understandable to be upset that Cacturne's biggest fan won't be able to have their favorite Pokemon in the newest game at all, is so much commitment to a relatively tiny part of the game.

...Which is a real shame, since the very existence of the Nat. Dex has only encouraged the deep rut of series stagnation the franchise has suffered. Most if not all other major RPG franchises have had the room to experiment and do major mechanical overhauls because they never have to worry about whether or not the most recent title is reliably compatible with previous entries in their respective series. Because Gamefreak has been so insistent that every Pokemon, move, ability, and item has to be present in all future games, it's lead to a bigger issue in ensuring that everything functions the same way it did in previous games (barring tiny changes made to numbers more than anything). Meaning even the most recent games in the series have been bound to game design decisions made in 1996 on the goddamn Gameboy. Because of Gamefreak adamantly making sure EVERYTHING can function in future games now and forever, the franchise has not been given the room it needs to properly evolve or have a major update to its battle mechanics. For every new major mechanic that's added to the game, they would have to go back and ensure that it works with EVERY Pokemon, their alternate forms, and whatever moves they all may learn. And all the other major mechanical features in the battles. Is it any wonder that it was only twice that an entirely new feature was added that drastically changed the way battles played out? Only twice! Once when Held Items were introduced in Gen 2 and again when Abilities were introduced in Gen 3. There's been other, comparatively tiny updates here and there (The physical/special split in Gen 4, The streamlining of the battle system and the Pokemon themselves finally being animated in Gen 5, etc.) Is it any wonder Mega Evolution only effected a select handful of Pokemon? Or that Z-moves were a feature that affected moves more than they did the Pokemon themselves?

If you chop down the number of Pokemon to say, 400 or so per game, it would be considerably more reasonable to experiment with each new title. It's disappointing that this couldn't be evident in SwSh itself (though I would attribute a lot of that game's problems to questionable mid-development decisions). I personally would just hope the backlash has them listening to the criticism but not take it so much to heart that they backpedal entirely. Otherwise we'll just wind up neck-deep in the first problem again. I really want them to commit to this because it feels like there's a golden opportunity to make a truly modernized Pokemon game.

(A bit of a side-note, but I’m also noticing that now that the Pokedex is down to a much more reasonable number, a lot of people, myself included, are actually attempting to complete Galar’s Pokedex.)

NOT TO MENTION that it'll free up opportunity to make more new Pokemon. A lot of the reason recent gens have slowed down in Pokemon numbers is simply because the the National Dex was getting too big. Now that there's no more National Dex, perhaps we can start having generations of 100+ Pokemon again? In fact, I think SwSh would've been all the better had they pulled another Gen 5 in conjunction with the natdex offing to say that Sword and Shield will ONLY have 200 or so ENTIRELY new Pokemon, and not a single returning one. Fans would've still gotten upset, but the prospect of a game with ONLY new ones in the form of a soft reboot would've gotten people excited to see a sizable generation again. It'd also have shown a bigger commitment to making up for the lack of a National Dex, even before large gameplay changes would be made. (Although again, who knows how plausible that would've been given the implications SwSh had a rocky development)

Could Gamefreak have handled this mess better? Absolutely. I love what y’all do but I’ll give brutal honesty when I feel it’s warranted; they have been ultra trash about communicating with the fans correctly. Between citing “to make high-quality animations” as a reason for the Dex cutting as if you wouldn’t have expected every single animation in the game to be under heavy scrutiny as soon as you said so. Plus rather tone-deaf responses to the backlash. Something that should’ve been communicated was a reaffirmation that this decision was made for the betterment of the series’ longevity, and that it’s a choice that would make the series better in the long run (Even then though, that sounds like admitting SwSh aren’t as good as they could’ve been. And I doubt PTC would ever let anyone at Gamefreak say anything like that.)

This next point is just a personal one more than anything, but it’s a lot better of a solution than the other thing I was fearful might happen at some point: a hard reboot on the National dex. As in, most if not ALL Pokemon get permanently booted from the series and they start over, only keeping a select few. At least with this, so long as they prioritize Pokemon that haven’t been featured in a regional dex in while, I’m all for it. Friggin CHARIZARD aside, the Galar Dex feels like it has a healthy balance of fan favorites and niche Pokemon as far as returning ones go, which is good.

And of course, the Nat Dex isn't the ONLY problems in the Pokemon franchise. For one thing, I'd love it if this annual release schedule just stopped right the hell now. It's hardly a secret that crunchtime because of Pokemon game development is a huge problem at Gamefreak, all because of decisions most likely made by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, though I'm sure some blame can be shafted on GF upper management as well. It's literally as easy as making the supplemental media stop being so caught up in doing the exact same thing the main series is doing. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the recent anime arc being “Globetrotting with Ash” is a move to distance the anime away from the games so the two don't have to be so coincided at all times. Like, Pokemon can literally do anything and make money off it. Why arbitrarily chain down the main series to a tight one-generation-every-3-years deadline.

Also Gamefreak REALLY needs to expand its workforce. There's evidently only 150 or so employees who natively work for Gamefreak, in which they have to rely on a lot of freelance work. Even so, that's a tiny work force to be working on a game that should be, by all accounts, treated with Triple-A game quality.

And again, let me just say that as much as I genuinely believe that the removal of the National Dex will be better for the series in the long term, nobody is wrong for being upset about it, and nobody is wrong for deciding they don't see the games as worth buying anymore. It's not your fault that Gamefreak made a promise to all of its players that they wouldn't be able to keep forever. And it’s certainly understandable to be upset given the very marketing has trained us to get very emotionally invested in these fictional animals. Like, as much as I saw this day coming, my first gut reaction upon hearing the news was genuine shock. And a slight tinge of disgust that Zorua, my top favorite of all time, could very well not be in the first home console main Pokemon games. At least until I realized “oh wait, I limit myself to only using new Pokemon anyway.”

And obviously this is by no means a guarantee that Gen 9's games will feature massively sweeping changes that fix all the shortcomings of the battle mechanics and will feature the vast Breath of the Wild-esque open world experience that fans have been clamoring for and 250 new Pokemon (plus 75 regional variants!). Gamefreak has been conservative enough about Pokemon to have landed themselves in this problem in the first place. Just forgive me if I hold onto even just a little bit of cautious optimism for the next games.

[ginmo]

I’ve been sure since I read AFFC/ADWD that Jaime’s getting one of the better endings because House Lannister isn’t gonna be wiped out and both Cersei and Tyrion are now Too Dark To Live. But I’ve seen a lot of people rewatching bring up that awful sept fuck up and consensus is that it renders him irredeemable. The show is gonna have to WORK to avoid a million thinkpieces when he gets both power and a family. I’m not convinced they’ll pull it off.

That scene was gross af, but we’ve since learned that the intent of the scene was not for it to be rape. We also know that canon Jaime is not a rapist. So if the narrative intent was for it to NOT be rape (and ended up being just a really bad fuck up from writers, director, post production) then we can’t blame the non-rapist character for the shitty product. What’s gross is they didn’t realize they filmed a rape scene, so people need to shift their blame from Jaime to the filmmakers. If people are really stuck on Jaime being a rapist even though in canon he isn’t and wasn’t even meant to be on the show, then they’re going to really hate the outcome of this story, because there won’t be anything to revisit Jaime being a rapist in the narrative (such as redemption for that) because he isn’t supposed to be. This is why most of fandom acknowledges that scene was an oops from the production and don’t use it to judge the character.

In other words, since the show was doing a direct adaptation of a consensual canon sex scene from the books, thinking their adaption was also a consensual sex scene, then the narrative itself doesn’t need to, and will not, do anything to have Jaime redeem himself for something he didn’t do, but that the filmmakers stupidly did.

My friend Koops went off on this topic a while back, so I’m going to add a read more where I quote her posts. It’s way more than you asked about, and I already answered the question, but I just really love her rant over the sex scene lol. So for those who want cast, crew, and GRRM quotes, discussion of that D&D video people love to refer to, and a total take down of basically why using that scene against Jaime is completely moronic then here it is: 

In response to this D&D video:

I don’t think this video disproves anything. The girl is calling it “rape” but they are not once owning up to it. They’re calling it “this” and insisting that’s something Jaime would do in that moment, but it feels to me like what they were trying to do is avoid getting into a debate about whether it’s rape or not, because they know that can get them into all kinds of trouble. ETA: Also, notice how David rolls his eyes towards the end and the person who captioned the video interpreted it as him rolling his eyes at the girl who asked the question. I don’t think he is at all, that was 5 minutes earlier, talk about a delayed reaction. I think he’s rolling his eyes at KIT stepping in just as David had finished answering with that stupid comment calling it rape and saying how great it is that the show has rape scenes, when David had been so careful in avoiding using that word all along in order not to get into an argument. And they’re emphasizing how hard this was for Lena and so on (despite, IIRC, her always saying it wasn’t intended as rape), just to earn feminist points of “we know how tough this is for women, look at how distraught we all were filming it”.If that had been their intention, they would have followed up on it in subsequent scenes/interactions, which is something the show does with rape scenes (see Sansa). Yet it was never mentioned again and it’s like it never happened. I think D&D sometimes have a bit of a rape-style fetish when it comes to sex scenes because it makes them come across as “edgy”. See the way they wrote the broken tower sex scene in the original pilot script or the way they changed Dany and Drogo’s wedding night. But they refuse to admit it and hide behind nonsense like “this is something the character would do”. They want to see how far they can push it, basically.Even if we want to say they’re admitting to have it intended as rape, saying this is something Jaime would do is absolutely ridiculous since not only he saved Brienne from rape but in the books he even has one of his men executed for TRYING to rape Pia. It’s nothing to do about having a linear redemption arc or not, it’s about WHAT kind of “bad things” the character does and whether it’s consistent with its characterization or not. Rape, for Jaime, is absolutely NOT. Equating that scene to Jaime pushing Bran out of a window is completely insane since the two things are dramatically different in motivation and intention and while Jaime is a complex guy that can do horrible things for his family and for Cersei, he doesn’t do them out of his own selfishness, especially when it comes to sex when he even refuses women throwing himself at him. Not to mention the entire point of Jaime’s “bad deed(s)” is that he has to own up to them and deal with them and their consequences. If you just ignore that sept scene ever happened and never deal with it again then you either think it isn’t a big deal, or it wasn’t a bad deed in the first place. Otherwise it adds absolutely nothing to the character’s arc. It’s like they think that a “complex/not good guy” engages into all sorts of “bad behaviour” just by virtue of being complex/not good, which actually does precisely what they’re claiming they don’t want to do; i.e. making a clear cut distinction between good and bad guys, since they’re equating all possible bad actions as being equal and the same and stemming from the same psychological motivations, which is ridiculous. The bottom line to me always comes to the fact that, unlike most stuff post S5, we have the scene in the books, in written format, and we KNOW it’s not meant to be rape. It’s meant to be the kind of gross, rough, angry sex those two have. To change the intention of the scene just because you feel “that’s something the character would do”, to me is not really caring about really understanding the character’s intentions in the first place, since you have source material and an author you can check with. They simply didn’t care in order to get HBO points.

And for some quotes 

I find the idea that we are meant to read into Cersei’s actions after the sept encounter in the books as indicative of a woman who experienced rape, or that George did not come out to straight up say the words “I did not write it as rape” (he would never throw D&D under the bus that way, come on) as evidence that it was indeed intended to be rape all along in the books, even more of twisting oneself into a pretzel than trying to explain away the scene in the show as not rape. Neither D&D nor George have ever shied away from calling rape out for what it is in the show or the books. Why would they suddenly tiptoe around this one particular scene? I think it’s because the issue here is much more nuanced than just filming a rape scene; it’s about the grey lines of consent and it’s about changing something from the books to make it look much worse than it originally was intended to be, for a character they know it will be regarded as very controversial/OOC, which raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions about how far D&D are willing to go for shock value. This is what GRRM has to say on the issue (bolded and underlined for emphasis):

“I think the “butterfly effect” that I have spoken of so often was at work here. In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other’s company on numerous occasions, often quarreling.The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that’s just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime’s POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don’t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing. If the show had retained some of Cersei’s dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline.”

Nothing whatsoever of what GRRM is saying above in explaining how he wrote their sept encounter even remotely hints at the fact that he intended consent to be even a question in his original work. He is not pointing out that he is writing from Jaime’s POV to build a contrast with Cersei’s, he is pointing out that he is writing from Jaime’s POV to build a contrast between the books medium and the camera medium and what each does or does not allow. And he goes further by saying that Cersei’s dialogue from the books might have helped giving a different impression of the scene: i.e. that it was NOT rape. What is happening is George trying to distance himself from D&D’s choice while at the same time being a professional and not bashing their botched adaptation of his work, by explaining why perhaps they might have decided to approach it differently from the way HE wrote the original scene and how maybe some of his material might not have fit because of the timeline.We actually have Cersei’s own POV later in the books, where she reminisces about tons of events from her close and distant past, and not once does she ever think back upon that incident in the sept in a way so as to indicate it was in any way a “traumatic” experience for her, while she does plenty of reflecting back upon her unpleasant sexual experiences with Robert, for example. Meanwhile, Cersei being disgusted with Jaime’s loss of his hand, or the way his looks are changing and his personality is changing, is very much a plot point that she comes back to over and over. “How could I have ever loved such a wretched creature?”, or getting up naked from a bathtub in front of Jaime thinking he still wants her and even taunting him with “Pining what you lost?” and then getting annoyed that Jaime pretty much tells her she’s a fool for thinking that? Hardly dynamics one has with their rapist. And also GRRM also says: 

The scene was always intended to be disturbing, but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.

“It has disturbed people FOR THE WRONG REASONS”, means that he wanted that scene to cause controversy because of how damn gross it all is, them having sex next to the corpse of their incestuous son, not because there was an issue of consent. So, no. The book scene was not intended to have consent be a central point, let alone rape. Yes, something happened in the adaptation to make it come across as significantly more forced, in a way that can very rightfully be interpreted as rape, while at the same time not being intended to be rape for plot point’s sake. But, when it comes to the filming of that scene, this is what the director had to say:

Of course Lena and Nikolaj laughed every time I would say, “You grab her by the hair, and Jack is right there,” or “You come around this way and Jack is right there.“ 

Yeah. Lena was SO distraught and it was so difficult for her to film that “rape” scene. They was totally totally totally directed to play it as such, and were so serious and affected by it. Give me a break, David. And also:

The consensual part of it was that she wraps her legs around him, and she’s holding on to the table, clearly not to escape but to get some grounding in what’s going on. And also, the other thing that I think is clear before they hit the ground is she starts to make out with him. The big things to us that were so important, and that hopefully were not missed, is that before he rips her undergarment, she’s way into kissing him back. She’s kissing him aplenty.

So there’s two possibilities here: either D&D intended it as rape from the start, but didn’t give clear instructions to the director, and, in turn, Nik and Lena, so that they didn’t set out to shoot it the way D&D intended, or nobody intended it as rape but something was messed up in the editing process (apparently after this scene, they made some changes to the editing process? Not sure how reliable this info is, but maybe someone can dig it out, if they remember). Regardless, what they ended up with is a scene that has some serious, serious issues of consent, and the comments afterwards, trying to downplay the consent in favour of highlighting the context or the way Cersei did give non-verbal consent, only ended up stirring more criticism of the director and actors being rape apologists. So, it doesn’t surprise me if they’ve just given up trying to defend their original intentions, since it only made things worse (and rightfully so), in favour of trying to explain it away the way GRRM did; by trying to make up explanations that the narrative required it and it made sense to be filmed that way.So, to conclude and link everything back to the reason why we are debating this (i.e. “NCW is a misogynist for disliking Dany when Jaime is a rapist and he excuses him”), while I can totally sympathize with a show-only person who watches that scene and sees it as rape, I also think this particular scene is not something we can use in the discourse about Jaime’s character and arc, given that not only there are huge question marks about what was intended with that scene in the first place, not only it is forgotten like it never happened to the point that you could skip it and nothing would change, but we know for a fact that it was NOT what was intended in the original source material by the original author. The one who decides where the characters’ arcs are supposed to go. You cannot say “it doesn’t make sense that Jaime does X and Y in his endgame because he’s a rapist” when that endgame is being decided by someone who never wrote Jaime as a rapist in the first place. All you can say is that D&D messed up big time with that scene because it literally does not line up or fit with anything else that is going on at the time or in the past or in the future when it comes to Jaime. 

- Koops (jaimetheexplorer)

[lizzybeth1986]

I can see what Hana is going through, but I'm disappointed that she never gets to be her own person. She never grows up to be a completely independent character. She puts everyone's need before her own. I'm not even sure if she has her own dreams and desires. If she does, she hasn't shared them with my MC. The scenes I’ve played were all about the things she couldn’t do when she was a child and hot chocolate dates are not exactly my idea of having fun.

Content Warning: I will talk of extremely controlling parenting and the aftereffects to some extent. If this feels like it might not be safe for you to read, I’d like to warn you of it at this juncture.

I don’t know if you’re the same anon who has been sending me multiple asks regarding Olivia (with comparisons to Hana that were, frankly, unnecessary), but at this point I’m quite positive you are.

You say you “can see what Hana has been through”…but I’m not sure you can. I’m not sure you understand at all.

I don’t know if you understand what a wide gap of difference there lies in “being your own person” when you’re a child who grows up a result of extremely controlling parenting, and someone who doesn’t. The statements you make after you claim to understand tell me as much.

I’m not sure you realize how deep the repercussions of going through that really go. But I owe it to myself, and individuals like me, and a character whose journey I have experienced in my own life, to openly tell you what it does to a person. Because it is so damn easy, in this seemingly open-minded fandom, to reduce people like Hana (also Liam) to just “fluffy-clingy-bland-dependent”, when the evidence that she’s been fighting a losing battle her whole life has been there in the books all along.

I could post a hundred articles, a thousand thinkpieces, and numerous papers on the long-term damage “helicopter parenting” - of the kind that Lorelai and Xinghai engage in - involves, but I will stick to just this definition and back up with evidence from the books, that

1. Hana doesn’t have the luxury of figuring out what she wants for most of her life. 2. Despite her own nature and the way her parents have brought her up, she fights for her own autonomy and still struggles with the long-term effects of her parents’ choices in parenting.

This is not about just you, Anon. This is a trend I’ve been noticing for a while now, ergo this is to those in the fandom that use similar arguments as well.

–

Put quite simply, “helicopter parents” are referred to, as parents who are overly involved in their children’s life and decisions to an extreme. They are called so because they practically “hover” over every movement or action the child takes. Often such parents provide their children very little opportunities to explore what they want or what they would like to do, control every aspect of the child’s life, and at times shame the child for trying to step out of the boundaries they have set.

The long term effects of such parenting may result in (among other things) severe emotional dependence on parental/adult authority figures, extreme risk-avoidance/risk-taking behaviour, lowered self-esteem, a constant fear of failure. Having family breathing down your neck every minute to follow their ways and methods and rules without any scope for independence is damaging. It forces you into a state where you’re constantly measuring your every deed to see if it matches up with the expectations your parents push forward on you.

Often it is emphasized to you, in words and in action, that your choices do not matter. You’re told by your parents that you aren’t capable of acting independently, and then not allowed to cultivate that independence. You’re pressurized into aiming for success, except that success is constantly determined on someone else’s terms. Where, in such an environment, is the scope to develop this “independent character” you speak so highly of? To actually believe that you even have the right to dream? Do you expect it to emerge out of thin air?

Now that I’ve established what that kind of environment can do to a person in general, let us explore what it does to Hana in particular. You speak of Hana only in terms of “things she wasn’t allowed to do as a child”, and “hot chocolate dates”, which sounds like an extremely shallow exploration of her journey to me. I mean, I think even the writers who have done such a poor job of her seem to have fared a little better than that. This is what you’ve missed:

Hana as An Individual

1. She was a lonely child, who nonetheless used her imagination to create imaginary friends for herself (Princess Snickerdoodle and Miss Lemon Curd).

2. Her imagination also led her to embrace the joys of reading, imagining her in the place of the people in the books. At a time when she didn’t even know what fanfiction was, this girl was writing her own stories. The freedom she couldn’t find in her own life, she explored through her imagination and her music.

3. She was often rushed into forming alliances rather than friends, and later on had to navigate through an engagement even before she had the words to articulate what appealed to her romantically.

4. I agree that she steps forward to help people more than she does anything for herself, but I don’t see why this is a problem if that is something she likes to do. Such people exist, unbelievable as it may sound.

Control and Submission

1. In both of the above cases, Hana followed through because she had no other options really, and in both cases she couldn’t find it within herself to actually refuse outright. One of the consequences of very controlling parenting is that you have a hard time saying “no”. Yet during the engagement tour, she recognizes she CAN and MUST refuse things she is uncomfortable with, and does so even though she doubts her actions later

2. This controlling environment involves different tactics - especially from Lorelai - to maneuver her into their way of thinking. One very obvious example of this is in Book 1, where she argues with her mother over the phone. Lorelai alternates between affection, criticism and “your talent doesn’t matter if you’re not delivering the required results”. The moment Hana actually attempts to fight back (in the same conversation), it doesn’t take too long to escalate to threats.

3. Hana is made to be dependent on her parents in every way possible, but especially emotional and financial. She is made to believe that nothing - not even the things she has lovingly made with her own hands - belongs to her, that she is completely at the mercy of her parents. One may say she could leave, but can you? When you’re brought up to be that dependent on your authority figures, can you really?

4. Disownment seems to directly refer mostly to loss of money and property, but in Hana’s case it also means she loses the only family, the only life she has ever known. You mention “hot chocolate dates”, so I’m surprised you didn’t catch the fact that her parents were threatening to throw her out if she didn’t do exactly as they said. And we saw what Lorelai’s version of disownment looked like: it meant taking away even her clothes. I’m surprised that it escaped your notice that she returned to Cordonia to protect the MC while keeping up her ruse of conforming, even with these fears.

5. Let’s look at this point again: nothing belongs to her, not even her belongings. We’re talking about material things that most children would take for granted. If she’s grown up with the impression that even the roof above her head and the clothes in her closet aren’t her own, that she is incapable of surviving without her parent…where and how is she going to even THINK about complete autonomy without another person’s help?? If she isn’t allowed to even enjoy the things she likes on her own, if interests and activities are forced upon her, if the focus is forever on what you can gain with these skills rather than if you like doing them, how is she going to have any idea what she likes?

6. The most telling proof of the long term effects her parents’ conditioning have had on her, lies in Hana herself. She perceives their tactics, behaviour and criticism of her as normal. So normal, in fact, that she views Olivia’s jibes about her being “damaged goods” as the truth. It takes her being outside their immediate control and the help of someone who has lived an independent life to see how messed up her upbringing is. Let’s also not ignore that Cordonia is the first time she has stayed long term outside of her parents’ influence.

7. Even after she has broken ties with them, she still shows some level of wanting them to be involved in her life. Her engagement shoot has her secretly arrange to send her pictures to them through Ana, and even when Lorelai doesn’t seem to have learned her lesson, she seems to accept her apologies and start over. Some may call this being a pushover, but you can say that only if you forget the complexity of such relationships. Many adults in such relationships find it hard to completely break away, and often a lot of time is spent trying to either work around this or to educate the parent, until they’re too exhausted to do any more. She knows in her heart that on some level her parents want what they think is best for her, and think they’re doing their job as parents. It’s why she chooses to take the emotional labour of educating Lorelai over and over, why she doesn’t cut them off completely, why when her mother apologizes she will reiterate that she doesn’t want them out of her life, she just wants them to respect her and her boundaries.

8. The repercussions of what her parents did her live on even after she has left them. She is so affected by their poor treatment that if you are marrying her - she stresses over wanting her own dream wedding, frets over whether she is turning into her parents if she finally decides to do what she wants. She overcompensates, struggles to understand how to set boundaries, has trouble figuring out what constitutes a healthy amount of control. The entire book shows her still trying to navigate this, even though they abandoned this plot line later on.

How Does Hana Fight For Autonomy?

Surprisingly enough, she does so early on in her life. She doesn’t do it in what you may call major ways, but in small ways.

1. Like I mentioned earlier, when there are things she genuinely likes, she goes all out to pursue them. That’s the difference between her attitude towards activities like ice skating and wine tasting, and her love for flowers and books and music.

2. She develops a sensibility early on, of recognizing that things she enjoys need to be done for herself first, not paraded for other people’s entertainment. Her piano scene in Book 1 is a perfect example of this. She knew why she had a problem with constantly performing for others, she figured out at that early age why she felt so uncomfortable.

3. Not only that, she actively works against them when she does recognize this. Telling them no doesn’t work for her, so she screws up her performance on purpose so they will never ask her again. She’s learned early on that what she wants won’t be taken into account, so she finds other ways to work against it until she can keep the one thing she loves most for herself.

4. With reference to the previous point, I’d like to point out that she recognizes how sacred her art is to her, and goes to extremes to make it her own. She has the foresight to understand that this parading will make her love her art less.

5. In her adult life, she only volunteers to play piano if she finds someone she CAN trust. Someone who will value the integrity of her music and respect her boundaries. It’s not easy to understand the level of courage that takes. Her final scene shows her setting boundaries with her parents and standing by them.

6. When an outsider advises her to “say something snappy” back, she responds that that simply isn’t her way of doing things. This is something she stays firm about throughout the series. When she does take the initiative to fight back, she does it on her own terms, in her own way. She does it with Olivia, she does it towards the end with Madeleine, she goes the extra mile with Neville because he’s acting like an ass both to her and her friend Drake.

7. She reads forbidden literature (in her mind, that’s Wuthering Heights). She chooses her own reading material and is involved in engaging with it critically and creatively. She essentially took an activity her parents made her do, and made it her own.

8. This is a woman happy doing domestic activities, and she genuinely enjoys doing them for other people. She chooses the people she does it for.

9. In her first scene in Book 3, Hana speaks to us about planning her dream wedding from the time she was a child. She mentions making hundreds of PinStop boards just for this purpose, at the same time telling us she knew back then that with her parents she wasn’t going to have much of a say in her own wedding. She knew her choices didn’t count. She still worked on it!

This is just a small sample of the things she does to affirm that she, indeed, has a voice and an identity independent of her parents and even friends - no matter how small and invisible it may seem. To some this might not count for much. But for someone who has had to grow up under this level of control, the amount of pushing back she has already done on her own is PHENOMENAL.

Pushing back from this level of parenting never happens in one go. You don’t wake up one morning and suddenly realize this in a flash of light. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes some level of distance before a person with that kind of familial background can even contemplate that what they’ve experienced so far is not normal.

We need to remember that the core of Hana’s journey lies in enjoying her uncertainty, in basking in the knowledge that she doesn’t know yet where she is headed. Especially if you don’t marry her…she finds that for the first time in her life there is no set plan she needs to follow, no final goal she must use all her skills for. Let us remember the patisserie scene in Book 2. The pastries she is shown represent the directions she could go in and she finds a surprising sense of freedom in recognizing that she doesn’t need to overthink this.

In the Book 2 Lake scene, if Hana isn’t your LI she joyfully replies that she doesn’t know when asked what’s next for her. She is happy about not knowing - she is ecstatic that she has a wide range of options to choose from. If you are marrying her, she trusts you enough to know that while she now has a path to follow, she is secure in the knowledge that she is free to explore who she is within that path. I think that’s as good a proof of independence as anything.

–

Where TRR went wrong, was in choosing not to center Hana in her own story. Half her diamond scenes in Book 1 explored everything else BUT her. The Shanghai portion of the book itself took a mere two chapters compared to Paris and Italy, and we learned next to nothing about her background. We know about her parents but it’s a pity that even while we spend time in her city we know next to nothing about her environment or how she was brought up. But to decide without adequate evidence that she has no life, no dreams, no individuality just because she doesn’t bury weapons in her ballgown is grossly inaccurate.

@grapecaseschoices did a phenomenal post regarding the things about Hana that many tend to overlook, and I would suggest anyone who considers her one dimensional or a mere clingy pushover, to read it at least once. Here’s the link: https://grapecaseschoices.tumblr.com/post/178004874932/playchoicesconfessions-sent-by-anonymous-hana

I’ve been seeing quite a bit of Hana hate, and a lot of unfair comparisons to Olivia. I really like Olivia, I think she’s awesome and I understand if Hana’s character type doesn’t appeal to you. But there is a difference between that and making judgements on a character that aren’t backed up by the text. This isn’t just about the anon, this is about a huge number of people who clearly don’t know about the character yet act like they do. And I think that needs to stop.

Note: @callmetippytumbles is awesome. And helped me immensely with getting my jumbled thoughts on this in some order. And awesome. That is all.

–

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

avengers: infinity war

um. SPOILERS.

so i finally watched spiderman: infinity war avengers: infinity war yesterday with the inimitably awesome aakanksha ( @franklyineedcoffee). it was great! very cgi and very Epic.

like. mcu movies were never terribly remarkable to me, but then they got Spiderman involved (and made him great!) and the ensuing trifecta of extremely enjoyable films (homecoming, ragnarok and black panther) finally made a fangirl out of me. which basically primed me perfectly to enjoy the shit out of infinity war. 

a few thoughts! a second reminder for SPOILERS because i discuss about basically everything.

1. the film did a great job juggling so many characters and so many plot threads? of course some parts were under-served (the whole wakanda stretch was a bit meh to me), but at no point was i just waiting for the film to get back to the Interesting Bit. almost all of it was equally engaging.

2. i’d heard a lot about thanos going into this film but what i wasn’t expecting was to be reminded of two villains that the mcu had done really, really well recently: adrian toomes/the vulture from homecoming, and erik killmonger from black panther. thanos isn’t nearly as compelling as either of them and certainly doesn’t deserve a fraction of the sympathy we can reasonably afford to either toomes/killmonger, but the kind of sad, single-minded conviction that he used to justify murdering trillions of people? yeah, that was all-too-familiar. far from the cackling, evil villain trope, both toomes and killmonger were shaped and scarred by unforgiving circumstances; you didn’t approve of the stuff they did but their pathos was palpable. thanos plays this part of the villain arc very well--he doesn’t visibly delight in death and destruction, but does it because he is burdened with it. and isn’t that how it usually goes in the real world? the worst people in the world never believe in their own evil--just their own status as a Special Person Who Knows Something Better Than Everyone Else. a special destiny, a special responsibility with all that power. sometimes the line between superhero and villain is so, so thin.

2.5. because looking at it objectively, his motivation was some malthusian bullshit, yeah? and in a way recalls some of the most harrowing repercussions of bullshit science from the early twentieth century. so if i read one more thinkpiece about ‘errrrr guys maybe thanos had a point’ i’m going to lose it. both the writing and performance for thanos was fantastic--he practically dripped with gravitas, even under all the layers of cgi and chaotic fight scenes--but let’s not confuse that with actual sense/decency, yeah?

3. the groupings were great--so great that i could’ve readily watched an entire film based on any one of them. my favourite had to be thor with rocket/groot. i would’ve never guessed it, but it turned out to be the most poignant dynamic of them all. that little conversation that rocket had with thor was a little oasis in the middle of a terribly chaotic movie and neatly tied in and mirrored the incredible character development both the characters had undergone in their last movies--GotG vol 2 and ragnarok. this scene for me was an example of the ultimate reward of getting a film like infinity war--a moment of truly resonant emotional connection between two wildly differing characters and genres.

3.5. and, btw, the genres! can we talk about that a bit? it was a really cool mix of generic superhero stuff with sci-fi, a touch of horror, magic, swords-and-sorcery, opposites-meet comedy, a bit of romance, and just good old-fashioned family drama. 

3.75. and speaking of drama, the whole arc with gamora was gutting and inspired more tears from me than the much-talked-about snap. the sheer range of emotions she went through right before and after she realised that thanos was going to kill her and why! zoe saldana is fucking amazing.

4. aagh i just wished we had more time but all of the groups played really well off each other: i enjoyed iron man and company in particular because duh, spiderman, and watching three gigantic egos clash in the form of tony stark, dr strange, and peter quill was entertaining as all hell. and i know tumblr fandom in particular likes to give tony a hard time but i was impressed not just by his quick thinking, his surely-impossible technology, and his raw physical strength, but also his ability to lead, well, any team. he had spiderman covered (summoning the iron spider suit! appointing him an avenger! collaborative flying of an alien spaceship!), had dr strange figured out pretty quickly, and tried his best to steady peter quill. 

4.5. the group on wakanda wasn’t nearly as compelling, but much of their screen time was filled with fighting cannon fodder and that’s literally the least interesting part of any mcu movie, so. i guess i was also annoyed by rhodey basically throwing away the principled position he took in civil war--the narrative had to essentially make the regulatory body a one-dimensional super-villain. and, like. whatever. the avengers have to reform, etc. but it still stinks. i kind of dozed through the parts of civil war that didn’t involve spiderman but some of the issues that it raised were compelling. but then those issues were just used as an excuse to get a slugfest between iron man and captain america and now somehow an agreement signed by 150+ countries is all about oh no! will steve and tony ever make up?? like, fuck that shit. 

4.85. i didn’t expect to be as moved as i was by vision and wanda, though. unlike the nat/bruce thing that also kind of came out of the blue in ultron, these two were weirdly compelling. (although wanda’s missing accent is bothering me.)

5. there was so much cgi in this movie! some of it was truly breathtaking but more often than not it felt suffocating. i feel like tony stark and co. were especially ill-served: the deep blues of the doughnut spaceship and the flashy, dusty oranges on titan just made it more difficult to see the characters and, idk. i’m not a fan of the effect. 

5.5. everything involving thor was great, tho. couldn’t possibly match the climactic bridge scene in ragnarok in terms of pure Epicness but came close several times. 

6. mmm, what else? i really liked that this film undercut a lot of the truly dramatic scenes with humour--it just lent a dreadful sense of finality to the scenes that left us with death rather than a punchline.

6.5. another note: i realise that thor continually calling rocket and groot ‘rabbit and tree’ was supposed to be funny, but why would he do that? the ‘captain’ has a name. and he speaks groot’s language! why would he call him something as reductive as ‘tree’? (unless groot’s actual name is tree) it’s just a little niggling thing but it’s starting to bother me a lot now.

6.55. but i do find it a little endearing that prideful, extremely sensitive rocket never once bothered to correct thor.

7. ultimately the Epicness that made this movie possible is also one of the things that repeatedly threatens to bring it down. i just don’t want this film to fall down the rabbit hole that SPN finds itself in--expand its scope exponentially and find itself unable to remotely do it the justice that it deserves. what do you do with a character who could kill half the universe with a snap of his fingers? what do you do with characters who, in their individual movies, have expressed powers and resources that are seriously large-scale?

we see the film sputter in this respect a couple of times: i never understood why thanos didn’t just use the reality stone to, say, turn tony’s tech into cheesecake or something. out of respect at the man’s sheer tenacity? idk. and loki going out by trying to stab thanos was weird to me. was he deliberately sacrificing himself? is there something else going on? doesn’t he have much better weapons in his arsenal? at least he was aiming for the head

and the consequences of the final snap where more than half of the heroes disintegrated in front of their friends’ eyes should’ve felt more devastating, but the neatness of the old avengers being spared so that they could save (avenge if you will) their next generation in a final hurrah in the next movie seemed way too obvious. that’s not to say it wasn’t impactful. watching peter parker disintegrate in tony’s arms, fighting till the very last minute to stay he was so scared oh god he just wanted to stay and for mr stark to make it all right was gutting, no matter how much i’d prepared myself for it. i may have whimpered. 

8. i’m sure i have a lot more to say but it’s getting late and i’m tired, so. another post in the near future maybe.

but before i go, how could i not talk about spiderman?? i screamed my throat raw at the first sight of peter parker, and although he doesn’t actually get all that much screen time he made every second count. the awe-inspiring appearance of the iron spider. “have you ever seen that old movie, aliens?” the sheer range of emotions that passed his face when tony stark officially made him an avenger. flying spaceships along with tony. fun with magic portals! almost getting the gauntlet off because he is Just That Strong. saving mantis and drax. and clinging to life till the very last second even as the edges of his body were starting to wisp away. this boy. god. how mcu hit the perfect formula to represent my all-time favourite superhero on screen is a mystery, but i’m so so glad it happened. 

[missingverse]

Missing Chapter Nine

The people you found in true crime communities could almost all be neatly sorted into three categories. It was usually clear within the first few forum posts, first created thread or podcast comment, so that Arnold found himself filing them away as 'ignore' or 'engage' just by looking at their usernames.

The most pleasant to deal with were the ones that had a scholarly interest in true crime. They were clever, thorough, usually respectful. A lot of stay-at-home mothers or particularly bright college students, the occasional retired detective. Arnold suspected Officer Plaskett was going by the username OldDogNewTricks on three of the forums he was a member of.

The ghouls were mostly easy to spot, they typically weren't too bright. Lots of edgy teenagers that hero-worshiped serial killers and mass shooters, emotional vampires feeding off of grief, deranged romantics that blamed the deceased for having the audacity to die at the hands of the poor, misunderstood murderer. Some of them were very good at faking sincerity until their probing for messy details gave them away.

The last category was the one Arnold had put himself in after much deliberation. The people the deceased had left behind, family, friends, loved ones, former teachers and co-workers, people who saw that person all the time until one day they were gone. Full of bewildered hurt, good-natured, sometimes angry, mostly just incredibly sad. There was a sense that the postings they made online were an effort to preserve their loved one in people's memories, in that immortal way of the Black Dahlia or Jonbenet Ramsey or Amber Hagerman.

Arnold's first step into the community came with a thinkpiece. He'd been mindlessly surfing the internet, finished with household chores but too mentally drained to start his seventh grade assignments, and it was well past midnight so nobody was awake.

SLIPPING THROUGH THE CRACKS: Does America's school system need to take more responsibility?

The picture at the head of the article was one that would become famous; the one with Helga and Phoebe building a snow fortress, Helga sporting the black eye that would set curious fingers typing all over the internet. The article itself was a mess, barely-there sources, typos and the author went off on an odd tangent about some teacher that had been mean to her back in grade school. But it brought Arnold to the comment section.

The school is definitely to blame, but let's not let CPS off the hook here. They had buckets of evidence even without the school reporting, but they left her there anyway.

Kids get bumps and bruises all the time, how is an underpaid, overworked public servant supposed to tell the difference? Where was this kid's doctor?

Ugh, just looking at that picture of Papa Pataki gives me chills.

He found himself scouring Reddit threads, which lead to blogs, which lead to podcasts and back again, in a circle. He was exhausted, but he kept going until the sun started creeping up the sky. He feigned illness to stay in bed, scrolling through post after post on his phone.

A lot of people had opinions on Helga's disappearance. Reading through them was compelling, they filled the vacuum she left behind her at least a little. And for Arnold, whose life was held taut between the boarding house and his schoolwork, it was something other than the everyday drudge to focus on.

…..

Arnold was buzzing with excitement (could it be called excitement? it was something, anyway) as they left the forest. He escorted Phoebe home, and left her with a promise that he would tell her what was on the memory stick once he saw it.

Only after, cycling back to the boarding house with her in the basket, did he realize that Helga had been oddly subdued. She'd been quiet in the woods, and hadn't entered her old hideout with them, and as they approached home she started rubbing her head, just under the wound.

“You okay?” he asked. Had something in the woods triggered something for her...?

“Yeah, I'm just really tired,” she mumbled back. “My head hurts.”

He had shown her the memory stick, but she hadn't shown any recognition or interest in it.

“Maybe we took you out too far today,” he mused. “I don't know, maybe the further you are from the house, the weaker you get, or something?”

“Maybe,” she agreed with a worn-out sigh.

He helped her out of the basket and brought her upstairs, and she was asleep before her head touched the pillow. He tucked her in and left her there to rest before joining his grandparents and the boarders for dinner. The chili was watery and the rice gritty (Gertie's cooking was going downhill rapidly, but no-one could convince her not to let someone else take over) but he swallowed it down fast.

The police never found the stick. She was going to give it to Officer Plaskett. It's evidence, important evidence. Crucial.

A tremor passed over Arnold as he slid the USB stick into the port, and his initial excitement paled in the face of dread. If it was evidence, it couldn't be pleasant. He glanced over at Helga, sleeping peacefully under the blankets. He was glad she was asleep.

The drive appeared on the screen, containing a folder. No name, just a sequence of random-looking letters and numbers. He opened the folder. It was full of pictures, thumbnails. He scrolled through them, leaning close to the computer screen, squinting. Was he missing something?

The first few images were of an empty room. Taken from some high-up corner. The room was mostly bare, just a single bed and a small rug and a few furnishings. Then he spotted the ragdoll, half-hiding under the bed. Helga's room. Without Helga in it.

And then, twenty or so images in, Helga appeared. It was unmistakably her, as this was unmistakably her room. But she was wrapped in a towel, another one wound around her head, as the series of images documented second by second. A sickness started to burn in Arnold's stomach, as the much-younger Helga on the screen took the towel down from her head and rubbed her hair dry. When she stood up and undid the towel wrapped around her body, Arnold hit the keyboard hard, flinching away.

That was an even bigger mistake. If the first pictures could be explained away as someone's paranoid surveillance, the set he accidentally scrolled down to couldn't be anything but what they appeared to be. He looked at them through his fingers, too sickened to look on them fully but too desperate to find something, anything, to explain away what he was seeing.

It was a mercy that Helga was asleep in these pictures. It was an unnatural sleep, clearly drug-induced, because nobody could have been propped up (displayed) the way she was without waking up. It was still her room, her pillow that her head was lolling against, her ragdoll that was lying beside her as a tawny male hand moved her bare limbs around. One hand fisted a handful of blonde hair, holding her up in a way that should have woken even the deepest sleeper, while the other presumably held the camera under her face.

There was her blackened eye. There were bruises in the shape of fingerprints on her legs, her torso, her barely-there chest.

Arnold managed to close the folder and yank the USB from the drive before he ran to the bathroom to be violently sick.

…..

MarkFisaTwat says:

What did you think of her dad? You get any creepy vibes from him?

TweenageDirtbag:

Not really...he was an asshole to her, but he was kind of an asshole in general. She definitely got the worst of it though.

MrsKirbyEdmonton:

I always thought he was more of an underprotective father than an overprotective one. Those don't really fit the profile for killers of that type. I'm still thinking suicide.

MarkFisaTwat says:

That's kind of blunt.

MrsKirbyEdmonton:

So, what, you think it's not a possibility?

MarkFisaTwat says:

Well, Dirtbag would know best....what do you think @TweenageDirtbag

TweenageDirtbag:

Honestly? I don't think she was the type. I mean, I know all kinds of people kill themselves but I can't see her taking that way out. I'd believe she would commit homicide before suicide, iykwim.

MrsKirbyEdmonton:

You never know, though, do you? Nobody really knows what went on in that house, except the people that lived there. There are things that make even the strongest of us want to die.

…..

Arnold shivered in the bathroom for over an hour before he could go back to his room. The images were burned into his brain.

She said she had stomach pains.

She was really tired in the mornings.

Stomach pain was a common side effect of certain sedatives, he knew that from managing his grandparents' meds.

She didn't want to go home.

Probably because when she slept in her own home she woke up with mysterious bruises and and stomach pains.

His phone chimed as he shakily slumped across his bed. He ignored it, and concentrated on the sound of Helga's breathing from across the room. It chimed again.

She found the pictures. She found them and was going to bring them to Officer Plaskett.

Back then, on that crime forum, he thought there was no way she could have killed herself and said so. Now, he wasn't so sure. If Arnold had found pictures like that of himself, he could say with certainty that he would want to die. Just seeing them made him desperate to find some way, any way, to block it out.

His phone chimed. Again.

And again.

He picked it up. Phoebe.

Did you look at the USB stick yet?

Officer Plaskett called my house while we were gone. We can see him at 2pm tomorrow.

Arnold? Hello?

You said you'd message me. I'm waiting.

If you make me wait til tomorrow about this I'll skin you alive.

He almost raised a smile. Phoebe had a fire under her again. Which just made it harder to tell her.

I looked inside it.

….and?

Phoebe, it's really bad. I can't talk about it right now.

How bad? She had it when she was alive...

I'm serious. I can't tell you. Not while she's here. I can't let her see this.

I'm coming over.

What?

No, don't, it's getting late.

I don't care. I want to see.

No, you don't. Trust me on this.

Fuck you, Arnold. This is solid evidence and you're not telling me what it is? Who the fuck do you think you are?

Phoebe, please. I wish I hadn't seen it. I'm giving it to Plaskett tomorrow. Let him tell you about it.

He stared at his phone, willing Phoebe to respond. If he had to open that folder again....

Fine. But if Plaskett won't tell me anything, you have to.

I will.

Helga made a soft noise in her sleep, turned a little under her blankets. Arnold glanced over at her. She looked peaceful.

Maybe this was why her ghost had no memory. Even after death, she had forcefully blocked it from her mind.

[sarahqueerest]

THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU WE WERE MAKING OUT AT A BUS STOP   3.10.2018

cooking up themes like, midwestern girls don’t talk about money don’t take up space the space is all inside of them when you turn them inside-out that is when things get overwhelming but honestly no one has yet written a thinkpiece that describes my precise condition leaving me alone to the labor i think of that song i posted in my blog in 2008 that christian played while we were staying in the place in el raval with the one-eyed cat who had my father’s name “i can’t wait anymore for you the feeling’s strong, but the summer’s gone” he used to paw through my old journals prying inside it turned me on he said, my song for you is “poker face” writing about fighting in the spanish civil war in the mountains of catalonia, george orwell wrote that the real fear of being shot was not knowing in which part of your body the bullet would nip you i tell nena, it feels like this whole year has been trying to build these home-like structures in the sand, and each time they get stomped on i’m exhausted nena says, when you start over with someone new it feels like everything you built and lost before was a waste a waste of time, a waste of effort but it’s not you just keep going nena and i are sitting in a bar in amsterdam she drinks a cherry lambic nena has two holes scarred in the skin between her eyes and to me they seem to mark wisdom remind me of trapanning the ancient practice of drilling a hole in your skull to let demons out or let spirits in i can’t remember which later nena and i are dancing circles around each other in a fog-filled room shot through with red lasers spraypainted on the wall is a waving cat with huge tits i kiss her sweaty neck, her hair in my mouth on the phone to christian i keep picturing the seam that runs down the center of a human skull, a squiggly line interlocking the two hemispheres, like a river seen from high above the earth i want to keep exploring, he says what have we been doing this whole time? i ask

what’s changing now? where are my limits? i sensed it coming all day, resented everyone around me for not feeling the oncoming doom. a week before he read the last poem i wrote in july and seemed to be in love with me; told me he’d forgotten i had so much going on inside less than a week ago he called me at midnight, sang happy birthday with the vowels bending flatly in his spanish mouth i had come back from amsterdam a shining new woman, having walked the rainy streets having passed the equinox wet and alone in the corner of a coffeeshop while despacito blasted from the speaker above my head and i coached myself through another broken heart too many poisoned memories of floating in the waters of catalonia nude, on my back, fluffed up with love my friends surround me and celebrate my 32nd year and i have never felt stronger or more beautiful and i get one whole day of this before i trip back into idle neediness i’m kissing your neck i’m crying and walking the dog a year rewinds, three years, ten the film warps and melts flickering frames of the sword being pulled repeatedly from my chest let me lick my wounds stuff the sky back inside me my oracles says the lesson of the wheel is that what returns to you returns to a purpose you need to learn the lesson again learn it again learn it AGAIN he says, we have the pieces of the puzzle we just have to figure it out i picture bone sliding on bone she tells me that if people met the me from 10 years ago they wouldn’t recognize her but i do; i see her ghost everywhere