#obviously i'm too focused on being intellectual

[singingkestrel]

The Hunters Three.

I think I must have accidentally chosen the same flashpoint option on every single playthrough I've done - when I went to look up their names I found to my surprise that the werak name isn't always The Shattered Hearts.

It does feel the most right to me, though.

[ineffable-endearments]

I have all these disorganized but vaguely compelling thoughts about the demons being the only ones with animal aspects, and Crowley's specific connection to the Earth, and William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and humanity as a connection between these two universal extremes, and...

So like -- I'm wondering, do the demons' animal aspects and the wounds and filth that they choose not to heal link them specifically to the material? The "vulgar," for lack of a better term? Not just the Earthly, per se, but the physical stuff of the universe, as opposed to the spiritual.

I'm thinking of this in the sense that animals are often considered intellectually and spiritually "beneath" humans (not my opinion), more "of the flesh." I'm also thinking of wounds and rashes as visceral reminders of the physicality of bodies.

Angels have this sort of disgust for the physical world, we can see. It doesn't seem like a stretch to imagine demons taking on not only physical aspects, but possibly the most disturbing aspects of physicality they can think of, simply to spite the angels. I'm thinking of Beelzebub sitting around Hell with rot on their face, for example, in what is obviously a fashion statement.

(As an aside, that's yet another reason the portrayal of disabled angels is extra important. If this is going to be a decent metaphor, you have to be sure it's focused on the universal properties of physical bodies like decaying in death, not on casting certain human traits, like disabilities, as "demonic.")

I rented a book of the works of William Blake just to read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and a lot of it is too opaque for me (minimally educated) to understand without guidance. But one thing that Blake does is set up this contrast between divine things (reason, ideals, etc) as Heaven and physical things (energy, matter, and so on) as Hell, with the physical/Hellish things every bit as wise and worthwhile as the divine/Heavenly things. His work contrasts with a lot of Christian spirituality, which of course elevated the immaterial over the material.

I suppose I'm turning over my thoughts about Aziraphale and Crowley's priorities, and how I think they may be bridges for each other, and eventually for the rest of Heaven and Hell.

[pikabysss]

I've thought of a concept of a mainly Resident Evil 4 AU like... similar to a vampire AU but not quite. Some kind of Castlevania-ish AU (in a similar setting with similar rules to the universe of Castlevania. With vampires, but also a lot of other kinds of monsters and fantastical races.) It'd be like some kind of Serennedy focused AU, so I decided to design them both first.

Here they are! There's colours for once :0.

Also, I've written down some of the worldbuilding for that AU if you want more context and information. It's a WIP still, so not everything is perfectly set in stone. But, if I had the mental energy, was better with time management, and was able to concentrate on my writing for more than ten minutes, I would have totally already started a fic about it. So, there's still a lot of stuff here:

Leon is a vampire/monster hunter (for obvious reason), and he is sent on a mission to save an important governor's daughter (Ashley Graham) who got captured by Lord Saddler (who is a vampire almost on the same importance of Dracula in this universe.) Luis is a dark chemist who has a lot of forbidden knowledge with science and magic. He wasn't liked in the village, but Lord Saddler admired him for his intellectual prowess, and, well, it pretty much follows canon. But it's more of a mix of fantasy and sci-fi, unlike og RE 4, which is mostly just sci-fi with the parasite stuff. Luis learns how to turn humans into monsters but also reanimate dead bodies (making Frankenstein or zombies), but he's obviously not pleased by the result. He's not capable of creating vampires, tho. Saddlers, being a vampire lord, can turn other people into vampires, and he turned Mendez and Salazar into ones. He doesn't turn too many people into vampires since they have more free wills than, like, zombies and can't control their darkened souls as well. But the fact that, if vampires go out of the village, they would most likely be killed by the hunters, Saddler can emotionally manipulate them to work for him.

Leon eventually gets bitten by Saddler and is about to become a vampire. Obviously, becoming a vampire means he'd lost everything all over again, but, most importantly, for him, his humanity. This happens before he finds Luis. Luis, at that point, wants to change his way of living and repents for his sins, so he decides to help Leon. When he discovers that Leon got bitten, he's enthralled to study him and try to find a cure... Leon accepts being his test subject, but Luis needs to help Leon get back the governor's daughter first. (Which he hasn't found yet.) And so, they go on their... horror adventure. By the way, Luis is not a vampire, and it's difficult for vampires to control their bloodthirsty impulse, so Luis must keep distances with them. He made a deal with Saddlers to help him, but to not get bitten in exchange. But, since he works so close with Leon and that the latter can't be really ordered around by Saddlers because of his rebellious nature and free will, well... if he turns into a vampire... It'd get dangerous for Luis... and Ada, because Ada is a huntress and it'd be more Leon that would be in trouble if she found out about him becoming a vampire. :/

I didn't think much of Wesker's and friends' role in the AU yet, but it's a work in progress.... The time period is between 1700 and 1900, but it's still a fantastical world, so some anachronistic elements or mixing of time period can be found. Sorry, history fanatics. *^*

I'm keeping this here so I won't lose the idea in the near future. (Unrelated, but now that I think of it, RE is a series that takes a lot of inspiration from old monsters (or horror, I guess) movies, just like Castlevania.... no wonders, I'm a fan of the two. And no wonders, both series are getting in Dead by Daylight. Jeebus Chris, the Dead by Daylight team it so wise on their IP choices. :/ I'll try not to get caught into their marketing, but I won't deny that they're wise and that they already almost caught me as if I was some kind of pokémon.)

[qqueenofhades]

hilary, I really love talking about history with my friends but sometimes I talk about a historical person that I'm interested in and my friends act like just because I know things about a famous historical person I support everything they did. even when I know they know I don't support slavery, racism, sexism, etc. how do I keep from losing my cool when they do this?

Look, I have no idea where the "if you talk about anything complex/consume this material/think about it in any way, YOU TOO MUST SUPPORT IT AND BE PROBLEMATIC AND BAD!!!" mindset came from, but I honestly and deeply wish it a very killed with fire. It's the same anti mindset where if you read Morally Impure Fan Fiction, you are Morally Impure, but apparently now extends to... learning about the literal entirety of human experience? Why does this not surprise me, while also making me want to put my head through a plate glass door?

Once again, I don't know what people think historians DO, but I can assure y'all, it's not sitting around talking about how Totally Great [fill in the historical person, place, or thing] absolutely was, and how there were no problems with it ever and everyone should just be like, totally down with it, man. (Tubular.) In fact, the practice of academic history is often directly focused, especially nowadays, on identifying these problems and previous interpretations, putting them into context, and discussing how they happened in the first place. Considering that we're suffering from such a profound crisis of historical ignorance, both deliberate and inadvertent, and have seen how that manifests in current events (which are just the history happening right now), I am... boggled that "we shouldn't talk about anything because it was Morally Problematic!!!" is, indeed, getting serious play. Once again, it's the anti-intellectualism that is just as rampant on the left as it is on the right, while dressing itself up in different language and pretending to support different goals. But either way, any critical philosophy based on "we can never talk about things that went wrong/people who did Wrong Things in the past" is absolutely dead on arrival as any use to anyone. Ever.

Obviously, there are complexities in how to approach this material, and I personally don't think that historical figures, especially complex ones, should be "fandomized" or treated just as Cute OTP Blorbos or sanded down to fit a sanitized fictional box (unless they are explicitly fictionalized/being used in a fictional context, and even then, yeah, it's good to keep the background in mind). It's not that this is wrong -- after all, historians get into this line of work because they have Big Thoughts and Many Feelings about historical people/places/things and want to work on those in a variety of contexts -- but it's a little uncomfortable, at least for me. That said, it's still not inherently wrong, in any way, to be interested in/want to talk about people from the past. They're human, for god sakes! You are also human! They are your ancestors! Of course you, a primate with higher reasoning and anxiety, are curious about them! You want to know their stories and consider their circumstances and ponder why they did things, including bad things! If you can't do that, shun other people from doing it, and therefore you are completely cut off from your species' entire backstory and have no frame of reference for anything at all, you're going to end up an idiot. Guaranteed.

Anyway: yet again, people talking about history (or fiction, or anything at all) in a complex way that takes into account the fact that uh, people have never been perfect in their entire existence does not mean that the person is Bad or Supports All The Evils of Human History or whatever. I'm not sure what this attempted-gotcha "don't you know they were a bad person!!!" is going to accomplish, other than giving someone the same kind of fleeting self-righteousness high that comes from Being More Correct On The Internet (or wherever), but like... if you like studying history, and they know you like studying history, I don't know why they would think you don't know that, unless you tragically failed to post a 50-page disclaimer first. And it's stupid, and it's juvenile, and it's not useful, and I think you're entitled to say much of what I've said above, in whatever amount you please, because yeah. Sheesh.

[chiscribbs]

For your Donnie clone idea, I really really love the thought if his brothers getting to see the bits of him that aren't always obvious, but very big parts of him. It might just be me projecting, but I like the idea of them being a little surprised at Eager-to-please Donnie. Like maybe hes a little too eager (staking his self worth on usefulness couldn't be me ahaha). And obviously Affectionate Donnie would catch them a little off guard, but I like to think that they didn't know the extent of how little Donnie values himself outside of being helpful. I also wonder how they would respond to anxious Donnie? And anti-social Donnie? I just really like the idea to ponder over, and I love seeing other people ponder it too. I like thinking about how the brothers would react, and how they'd act after Donnie goes back to normal. Sorry for the big block of text aha this is like my first ask on Tumblr ngl

Well, firstly- Welcome, Anon! And thanks for choosing my little blog to be the recipient of your first ever tumblr ask, I'm honored! :D 💕

Secondly, yes - I totally agree! There's a lot that the boys don't know about each other, and I absolutely love plots that result in some of those things being revealed. Like Donnie and April's interaction in DvWT, or Raph's emotional breakdown in the S2 finale. It's always interesting to see how everyone reacts to those sort of unexpected situations - it's a unique bonding experience.

Also, I commend you on figuring out the narrative purpose behind "Bad Feelings" Donnie's existence, as well as the scene he shares with Leo! That's basically what I want to convey with him - those hidden emotions that the real Donnie prefers to just shove into a little box and set aside in a dark corner somewhere to just not acknowledge. Hence why none of the other Donnies want any part of him - Donnie himself doesn't. In Donnie's mind, that part of him just gets in the way, makes it harder to function and be useful - it's a burden. (Needless to say, he doesn't take very good care of his mental health, he's very self-critical.)

You could certainly do a similar thing with other Donnies, too - I think Affectionate Donnie will probably be the most shocking for his brothers to encounter, simply because the real Donnie is almost never that upfront about his affections (except on rare occasions). As well as, like, Compassionate Donnie - they might be a little surprised to find out just how much he actually cares despite not showing it very often.

Unfortunately - as much as I would love to be able to give each of the Donnies more focus and involvement - the way I've been envisioning this concept is in episode format. Meaning it has a built-in time limit and a single plot thread that needs to be resolved by the end. So, I'm really only able to explore a handful in-depth, mainly focusing on Bad Feelings Donnie and Intellectual Donnie as they have the most direct plot involvement.

However, that's one of the reasons I love to see other people's ideas for this concept - you can explore all of those things that I can't, get as in-depth with each of the Donnies as you like! Give every side of our boy a chance to shine, I love to see it. :>

[brechtian]

hey so ik you JUST got an ask about the waves but. can i ask about the waves too

okay so virginia woolf is like FAMOUS for her feminist novels and to me it almost seems like the waves is the odd one out. i just reread it (and annotated, and underlined, and highlighted, and tabbed, and pronounced it one of my favorite books because HOW COULD YOU NOT ITS SO WONDERFUL AND THOUGHT-PROVOKINGG AND POETIC) and although i love it the female characters seem to have more stereotypically feminine roles. i checked the introduction of my copy (intro by molly hite) and saw that it said "The Waves did not offer such exemplary female characters or themes: Indeed, it gave its female characters stereotypical feminine persuits, while its male characters were writers and also active in the public sphere."

there wasn't much elaboration in the intro however (i might be wrong about this though, i lowkey hate reading introductions it's my fatal flaw i'm sorry) except that later on feminists re-examined the waves and looked at subtext. (like how rhoda is a lesbian icon now bc of the mrs lambert passage)

but still, susan is housewife and mother, a stereotypically feminine role (i adore susan but analyzing characters sometimes means discarding some emotional connection for me) and jinny is the romantic sensualist. idk i love jinny and susan but yk i'm just thinking about their roles specifically regarding gender roles HELP IDK I'M PROBABLY MAKING A FOOL OUT OF MYSELF RN AND AM MISUNDERSTANDING SMTH REALLY MAJOR IM SORRY

i was just wondering your thoughts on this?? i mean i just stumbled across your tumblr a few days ago from this other (kind of boring but likes-the-waves-too) blog and you seem to have really interesting opinions abt the waves !! no pressure to respond obv

Hi!! I’m about to get on a plane to London so I will see if I’m able to get all my thoughts out in time. I’ll begin by saying that I’ve read a fairly considerable body of scholarship surrounding the waves, but none of that was particularly feminism-focused scholarship (it was primarily formalism, biographical crit, and analyses of spirituality, science, & metaphysics in the novel with some post colonialism thrown in), so most of this is based off of my personal analysis and discussions I’ve had with my Virginia Woolf professor. I actually love the women in The Waves, but I think a pivotal starting point is the understanding that all of the characters in The Waves function as concepts and ideas first and as actual people second. With that said, I think it is notable that there is not a female artistic/scholarly presence in the book beyond the vaguely mentioned, never-named woman writing in her room (often viewed as being Woolf herself). Originally The Waves included a narrator character that was female and felt very much like a stand-in for Woolf, and I wonder if that was meant to sort of be the female writer/intellectual presence in the novel but got cut to make the book cleaner. Regardless, each of the women are functioning both as archetypes and commentary on their archetypes.

Jinny is probably the least obviously a critique, but I think you definitely very clearly still get it in some moments where she links sexuality and sensuality with violence and objectification.

I also read some criticism that discusses how Jinny as a character can be seen as combatting the solipsism in the book by conveying the possibility and beauty of living physically in one’s own being & that the flesh cannot be ignored, finding a kind of power and importance in the female body (which feels very cixous second wave feminism). Overall, though, I think it’s a discredit to Woolf to not view Jimmy as an explicit examination of her archetype.

Rhoda & Susan are my girls and my favorite characters in the entire novel. If Susan is not just the most brilliant and breathtaking critique of the wife-mother expectation of women of the time what is. One of the most heartbreaking passages in the entire book to me is when Susan, who found freedom and joy in nature and movement and being one with the outside world (exacerbated by continuous connections between her and animals & nature), is confined to moving exclusively between the rooms of her house. She even immediately evokes the image of the dead mother as she goes. (Additionally, the end of this passage gets into post-colonialist critique, as Susan clearly symbolizes the upper-middle class white women who stayed at home as their husbands colonized India/Africa and directly benefitted from & supported colonization even if they were not actively violently participating)

Susan also holds so so so much anger, like violent fury, the exact opposite of what one would expect from the perfect housewife, and her motherhood is portrayed really as something more animalistic than anything. I also love that her husband is like completely irrelevant to both her and the book; even though becoming a housewife is a horrible restraint placed upon her I think Woolf is playing with expectations by the husband being a nameless shadow and just a vehicle for Susan to get her child (AND functioning as a commentary on the absence of men’s presence and aid in the domestic sphere). I think knowing about Woolf’s opinion of motherhood (continued horror & fascination by it) and her complex feelings surrounding her sister’s motherhood rly adds to understanding why Susan is Like That and so fierce in her nurturing. I also love the passage early on where Susan talks about crumpling the calendar pages in balls and discarding them, her vengeant war against time itself.

RHODA!!! I’m literally getting a Rhoda tattoo that’s my girl my girl!!!!!!! She is psychosis she is transcendence and isolation and mirrors and the waves itself my god. Rhoda is the moon tarot Rhoda is Inland Empire from disco elysium. There is a very fragile membrane between the characters of the waves and Something Larger (my whole capstone paper was on occult spirituality in the waves and my planned future masters thesis will be on ghosts and souls in Woolf’s work), maybe God or the Universe but symbolized in the novel as the ocean of which the characters function as individual waves, but Rhoda is the one for whom this membrane is the most frayed. I honestly don’t know if I have much to say about Rhoda from a feminist perspective other than I find her fascinating and that while I don’t usually encourage overly biographical readings of Woolf it becomes very very apparent if you know Woolf’s diaries and letters well that Rhoda is a mirror of Woolf’s own periods of poor mental health. I guess it relates in that to me Rhoda is of course a woman because she is the most explicitly connected to Woolf herself (in Hermione Lee’s biography, she presents the reading of each of the characters of the waves as members of the Bloomsbury group and Rhoda is picked out as the Woolf parallel. I don’t agree with this reading but it is significant to me how immediately Rhoda is identifiable with Woolf). Okay I’m about to board my flight but if you want to talk any more about the waves or have more specific questions about anything I said let me know!!!

RHODA YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS!!!

[earlgreytea68]

I'm going to descend into Fall Out Boy stuff for probably a while but before I do, I just wanted to put down some musings on AI. Sorry.

You, like me, are probably already sick to death of talking about AI. In my field, it feels like the only thing people want to talk about, not only because I'm a teacher but because I'm also an intellectual property lawyer focused on the technology space, so it's just endlesssssssss.

First I should say that I've been so far completely underwhelmed by AI. Like, yeah, sure, I get that it's amazing and I'm probably spoiled by tech wizardry or whatever but if AI is so great I think all the algorithms in my life should be better at recommending things to me (I gather TikTok has the best at that but I'm not on TikTok). Westlaw's AI is so incredibly terrible that the database has gone downhill ever since they tried to make me pivot that way and I'm constantly being like, PLEASE GIVE ME THE OLD WESTLAW INTERFACE WHERE I USED MY OWN ACTUAL BRAIN AND GOT THE THINGS I WANTED EFFICIENTLY WITHOUT ROBOT INTERFERENCE.

I tried out ChatGPT because I wanted to know what the fuss was and I put one of my old exam questions in and it gave me four sentences in response, one of which was just a flat-out wrong statement of law, and considering I would have expected around a thousand-word analysis of that exam question, four basic and only half-right sentences was just not super-impressive to me.

But I gather that it's getting better all the time and that the harder you work on what you ask it for and keep refining your prompt then the better the output is, or whatever. I also gather that asking it for text output is probably super-different than asking it for visual output.

I'm talking about this now because I went to this symposium and there were panels on AI and honestly, the more I hear *tech* people specifically talk about AI, the more I want to light myself on fire. Like, one of the topics was whether the AI using everyone else's copyrighted works as input without the creators' permission was copyright infringement. The tech people were like, "No, not at all, because the output doesn't actually use their work, it's just training the machine, it's just an algorithm." But then the tech people in the next panel were like, "But of course we should get to own all of the output of the AI because it's using human creativity." And I'm like, ...this feels contradictory to me? Like having your cake and eating it, too? It can't NOT be infringement because it's all machinery but also you get to own all the output because it's not just machinery.

Like, sometimes I think if AI were really just about, Idk, algorithms helping us out, we wouldn't have to talk about it in IP symposiums. The reason we're talking about it is because OBVIOUSLY people are going to start claiming ownership over the things AI creates and so we're going to end up in a world where humans (corporations) own what humans create AND they own what machines create and all of that is so much more stuff owned than ever before and I don't think any IP scholar looked around and thought that the problem with our creative landscape is "not enough stuff is owned."

Setting aside my views on ownership, though, I've been trying not to be a kneejerk crotchety old person about AI. The tech people at the symposium kept saying it was just a tool that people would use to aid them, like a typewriter or PhotoShop or whatever, and that people always freak out about new tools possibly killing human creativity, and that doesn't turn out to be the case. So I keep trying to keep an open mind. Maybe I'll really like writing with AI! Maybe it will be awesome! But I can't shake the fact that I don't even like Word to suggest autocompletes to me when I'm writing a fic, because I feel like it's putting ideas in my head about where the story or sentence or dialogue is going that isn't what I intended. I especially hate that little thing on the side that tells you that your document is "54% good" or whatever and then wants to edit you to within an inch of your life. All of it makes me think that maybe it's a great tool for writing a cover letter or a resume but I don't want it going through my fics telling me to take out the run-on sentences that I have intentionally added to suit the mood of the character. Like, those aren't accidents. I know how to write sensible sentences, I do it all the time for work. Not everything should sound like work. "The next generation of content creators are all going to use AI," this tech person confidently stated, and I thought, Well, I'm going to get left behind obviously because I cannot imagine using AI to write my fics, OR in a few years I WILL be using AI to write my fics and thinking how silly it was that everything in the fic used to come straight from my own brain.

I get that their argument is that the AI isn't going to write the fic for me, it's just going to help me, the way spellcheck helps me. After all, what they say is that it's not going to supplant the market for artists, that there will always be demand for human creativity. But they say this while simultaneously admitting that the movie studios have already begun to use AI-generated scripts and scores and even actors. "So far," the movie studio reps announced, these are not as good as human-generated ones. But it's pretty clear to me that they think they eventually will definitely be good enough for them to cut the humans out of the equation. And anyone who thinks, "no, no, that won't happen, employers totally value human labor," has apparently never had a job, because employers definitely do not value human labor lol. And sure, I'm sure there will always be creators who will be able to get paid but these will be the big-deal creators with the connections, and it's not like we don't already have income inequality in the creative space and people's ideas being stolen when they have no power because of this inequality. I'm sure that problem won't be massively exacerbated when a corporation can see someone's work they like, feed it into AI, and have what they want produced in that person's style with zero effort or money paid.

The tech people talk about AI with so much hope, and I want to be on board, I want to hope for good stuff. I think it sounds like it could help people with the things they find difficult and challenging, that, for people to whom writing doesn't come easily, it would be a huge help to shape their sentences. For people to whom art doesn't come easily, it would be a huge help to give them a template. I want that to be how I think about AI. It *should* be a great tool for this stuff.

But then I think about how the problem with every tool is the humans using it. That tools are always relatively neutral and benign, it's the humans who use them for ill. That it was a straight line of less than two decades to go from "here's a great way to connect with friends and family!" to "here's how we turn the world's leading democracy into a fascist dictatorship." And yet tech people still talk about having hope. I want to live in their world. But I can't help but live in this world, where I look at all this "promise" of AI and I think, Great. So great we came up with this so we can do something absolutely nightmarish with it in the next few years.

Sigh.

[dinoburger]

honestly I think one of the biggest appeals of anarchy is that there is a major disincentive for cults of personality to form - obviously they still do, but those seem to fizzle out relatively quickly

if the core principle is autonomy, you don't really need to have done an extensive amount of research to be able to assess whether someone is giving you means to further your autonomy or restrict it.

a lot more of these super intellectually focused marxists seem to focus heavily on these groups as a sign of a failed movement as a whole, but in a more optimistic way the failure of anarchist cults is a sign of success for anarchy as a whole.

I genuinely think a lot of marxists have their hearts in the right place and don't necessarily intend to build cults of personality, but I've seen even staunchly "anti-Lenin" marxists have practices that are barely distinguishable, except for the terminology they use to describe their position. And I think the Russian revolution does have a lot to show us about theory and practice, but it's not that Marx was basically a prophet or that Lenin was or that Trotsky was or whatever - more about the triumph of struggle but the perils of needing to rely on a very rigid framework that can't adapt to the peoples' needs and enhance their autonomy.

It's a box I see a lot of socialists too put themselves into and just refuse to budge from. It's been a bit eye-opening to hear people I generally respect praise Maduro as "incorruptible" because he happened to tout the right socialist buzzwords, and opposing "conservative propaganda against the left" dominates the minds to the point where complicated reality slips past.

I'm frankly terrified of these people who are willing to give free passes to the "right kind" of dictator, or psychologically torment people if they have the "correct" reasons to do so. I'm terrified of what hierarchical power and ideological domination does. I'm afraid of being tricked into being abused again.

I'm glad there's at least some schools of thought that encourage safeguards against these things.

[terrainofheartfelt]

Oooooh I’d love to hear some of your natessa thoughts! Your fic has been making me remember why I liked them so much

lmaooo whoops I started answering this immediately and then I had to do Work or something, and then time really got away from me BUT! here we are <333

it's reminded me too!! lol. but really spending time having to actually think about them and how they fit together has made me discover some stuff that I really love about their dynamic that maybe I felt, but was never cognizant enough to articulate it before.

for me, they hit something similar to date, but in a different way, and it's profound in a different kind of way, if that makes sense. which essentially boils down to this: Vanessa gives Nate the space and permission to take himself seriously, and Nate gives her the space and permission to take herself less seriously.

Leila's articulated this well before, how parallel their journeys end up being, not in literal circumstances, but in the emotional state they are in when they first connect. They've both grown up with parents who -- to varying degrees -- emotionally neglect their kids

obviously I would rate anne and howard archibald as Worse, but Vanessa must have decided to move back to New York and in with her sister for a reason, and I have to assume that at least one of those is that she felt unhappy and smothered and trapped by her parent's expectations, much like how Nate feels. but what's interesting is that they are outwardly on the opposite ends of the spectrum, like the vdb expectation was that Nate go to an Ivy at all costs, and Vanessa nearly didn't take the SAT because of her families opposition to privatized higher education. She tells Nate not going to college is the expectation of her parents.

I wouldn't say that the Abramses (and really we only meet Gabriella) are wrong for pointing out the system's faults, but from what we see, they put the onus of saving the world and being So Very Virtuous All the Time on Vanessa's shoulders, to the degree that she feels like a failure if she doesn't live up to those ideals. When Dan tells Gabriella "She loves you, she does, I just think she wishes you spent half the time listening to her that you do strangers" (I'm paraphrasing bc I don't feel like looking at the quote) It is a little bit of March Parents Syndrome, if that makes sense, they put so much time and energy into saving the world and assuming that their kids will be just fine that they kind of...fail to check in and make sure they're fine.

So Vanessa holds herself to this standard that she always be unassailable. and then we have Nate, who has all this pressure on him, but it isn't focused pressure, he doesn't have direction, and every time he makes an effort to find it, he's essentially told not to worry his pretty little head about it. the unspoken collective assumption is that he isn't smart enough or capable enough, so his parents and grandparents and blair and chuck all try to smooth his way at some point, probably not knowing that they're diminishing him. (I think you just said this to me in fic comments, but when chip says "your only problem is worrying whose hair is shinier.") Because he's beautiful, and not conventionally intelligent, Nate is written off, but Vanessa never does that.

and, while I was thinking about this response, I thought (yet again) of that speech serena gives in s4 when she's "trying to choose" between dan and nate, and she decides, "I guess I just need to find someone who gives me what I get from both of them." and the more I thought about it, I think that's Vanessa for Nate. Like Blair, she challenges him and brings him out of his intellectual comfort zone, and like Serena, she doesn't come to him with any expectations of The Great Golden Boy. He's just Nate with her. A good guy, but Vanessa doesn't have "good guy blinders" that keep her from calling him out when he needs it, just because he's relatively better than most men.

So, that is the core of what I really love about them. Vanessa challenges Nate, but not in a way that makes him feel small or stupid, like the VDBs do, but in a way that shows that she sees him and what he could be, and that he doesn't necessarily need to stay in the feedback loop he's known his whole life. And Vanessa, who is working so hard all of the time, Nate gives her permission to relax, to find joy without having to pick it apart for all its problems first. They complement and settle into each other in a way that I don't think any other partner they have in the show does.

[chaoticacademicdemon]

Series Agogé, personal proyect

Chapter 1.2: “Aike”

On my way to the Agogé

I can assume that it is one to measure our intellectual capacity, another for Evepyoc and the one we just did for physical fitness. Although it doesn't make much sense for it to be like that, since releasing a record doesn't measure almost nothing, I suppose the director will have something in mind, after all she's obsessed with making it fair for everyone.

We go to where the group was attacked by my record that is leaving when we arrived. Here the ground is no longer grass, but well-kept stones with very beautiful shapes. And then I look at my next big enemy, an Evepyoc meter. I knew there must be one here but I didn't want to believe it, now I know I'm definitely lost. Focused on my own disaster, I feel the small current of air that forms a gray owl flying over our group. Obviously they had to spy somehow.

The guy next to me accidentally nudges me, apologizes, and starts biting his nails. His English level was not the best judging from his response. This blond boy is going to end up making me even more nervous if he continues like this. I look at him to get his attention and when he turns around I give him the mythical thumbs up to encourage him. He looks like he's calmed down a bit, better.

The instructor calls me up front and I do what I've already done thousands of times. Although I first ask what the limit is, to which he answers 700 E. Please get me out of here now, now I'm going to break a measuring instrument, how can my day get so bad? But like a Band-Aid, I'll rip it off quick.I place my hand on the orb and it begins to levitate, heat up, change color multiple times until it reaches the height of my shoulders and glows with a blinding white light. After less than 5 seconds, to my luck, it breaks up into thousands of little crystals, still with small unsynchronized waves of that white light.

And with that I'm off, that's it, I run to my spot at the end of my group. We are like 24 people more or less, they are not exactly few but it does not give me as much anxiety as before. The second round of disbelief doesn't affect me as much anymore, so I just stare at the ground until we're led to the next test. I got a 100 as expected and the blond boy a 78, he didn't have much to worry about, although it's normal to get nervous.

In this test we enter a room, surely the main classroom. There's another group doing the test so we sit on the opposite wall. Evelynn sits on my right side, while on my left is a guy who gave me a bad feeling. The tables are high, comfortable and the seats lightly padded, it must be great to teach here. The blackboard is huge too, and our monitor looks like chalk with the difference in size and its white uniform. While the exams are being delivered to us, I realize that the other monitor is not there.

I thank you for the exam and the pens that you are distributing and I write my name in the corresponding section. I see "name" and I write it in full, without realizing that it says "surname" below, a good way to start the exam, and without a tipex on top.Then out of the corner of my eye I watch our monitor walk away and walk out the door. I have no idea what they want us to do, although I can assume they will see that people are honest and don't copy each other.

The exam was relatively simple, a question with several sections of arithmetic, a commentary on a guided historical text, counting the main ideas of a given poetry and to which style it belongs and an exercise made up of 3 questions on general knowledge, I call them that way because they do not I know very well in what matter to classify them. The questions were "Which macronutrient consumes the greatest number of calories when digested?", "In what year did Christopher Columbus discover America?" and “Who is the God of Greek agriculture?”. I answered all the exercises, even the last trick question. The Goddess of agriculture is Demeter, but she has been named masculine to confuse.

Looking at my exam, I realize that if I really do everything right on the exam, I will have a perfect score on the tests. I review the exam and look specifically at one question, the date of the discovery of America. I change it to the year 1492, I'm pretty sure it's in the year 1469 although I'm terrible at dates. The one on my left looks at my test and, confused, he hands me his test that he says 1942 on. Dude, I think you've got the date off by a few hundred years.

I look at the date, look at my exam again, and leave it as it is. I give him a thumbs up but when he points to my exam and his for me to copy I turn my head telling him no. In an hour and a half we finished the exam. The monitor from the other group comes in to get them out and tells us that we still have 20 minutes left. Bored, I put my head in my hands and start to close my eyes when Evelynn lightly touches my shoulder with hers with a wide smile. If what she's trying to do is cheer me up, she's more than succeeded. We play tic tac toe at the table and wait until our monitor comes back and takes us to the square again.

I just realized what an idiot I've been, if they leave us in a room this big without supervision, it was certain that they were watching us on a camera. It didn't even occur to me to look at the ceiling to know where they were. I hope we don't get penalized for scratching the tables or playing on the exam.

Then the results pop up on my phone that had been blocked all this time, and my legs feel weak. 600/300. Impossible.

I click on the "elaborate in the results" tab and see all the perfect tests and next to it a 100 bonus on each one for completing the "secret task". You must be kidding me. Then the director sends the classification list and I appear first. I'm ahead of a guy with an exact 300 points, well now that I look at it it's three people with perfect scores. They're going to think I'm a genius or something. I am class α, and I have the 600 points that I just earned.My heart is going to break from how fast it beats. And then people start talking and I hear my name being called over and over again accompanied by my nickname, “the contractor”. I don't want to be here, I don't want this attention.

On top of that, my sister, whom I don't even know, she's here too. Nice family reunion. Oh no, I look at the list again and she is the third person with 300 points. Why does this happen to me? Running, I follow the instructions of the monitors that indicate that we take our luggage and go to the area of ​​residences. My sister is going to be in my class, my mother's second daughter, the one who made her leave my father with me and run away with his lover. Anyway, my family history is very convoluted. This day was going to come whether he wanted it or not. Now what matters is finding a good room with a common kitchen and gym and calming down with hot tea and a good movie.

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(Ty so much for reading. Any suggestions or corrections are wellcome, english is my second language)

[amnotaqueen]

Stuck At Home With Narc All Day

It rained all day so I had to endure being in the presence of my NARC husband the entire day. He does everything as if no one is around him and no one else has preferences or needs besides him. He plays music and videos on his phone loudly as if there is no one else in the house trying to read or listen to anything else. He sings along to his music loudly because he doesn't care if he is disturbing anyone else in the house. I and my son don't matter.

Who waits until close to 10 pm to start drilling a special needs 7 year old with autism, intellectual disability, and probable ADHD about Bible trivia and hits the kid with a switch for not answering correctly? I and my son are falling short of his too high expectations and we are getting punished for it. My son was yawning as his dad made him sit and watch a video about Noah. It was a kids video, animated with slow moving drawn pictures instead of the fast paced cartoon animated videos. And the pictures were accompanied by the voice of a narrator.

Our son does not focus well or retain information well in general. When it is late and past his bedtime and he is obviously tired, he focuses even less. And when his dad is angrily demanding that he answer correctly or get hit with a switch and get screamed at, he can barely focus at all. So, my husband's method of what he calls 'discipline' was causing our son to become more and more flustered and panicked and actually distracting him from focusing to answer correctly and set him up to fail so that the cycle of getting hit and screamed at would not end.

He had all day to study about Noah with our son. He could have done this earlier in the day when our son was more alert, but he chose to nap earlier in the day. I and my son did not nap. So by 10 pm, our son was naturally tired as he usually goes to bed around 8pm during the week and 9pm on weekends. Why choose the time of day when your child is most tired, least likely to focus to make them study and demonstrate proficiency in the subject matter and punish them when they can't do it? Because you are a narc and you don't have good sense and no decency.

The only thing my husband pays attention to is what is on my plate or my son's plate or his own plate. What is going into his mouth is what he is about. He is looking at what is going into our mouths because he sees what we are eating as food that he cannot eat. I prepare meals and sometimes I freeze food to have as leftover meals during the weekend when I like to rest more from cooking. So today, I warmed up some Nigerian soup my husband had made a while ago and gave it to our son for dinner.

The way he acted when his big eyes were peering at my son's dinner... The way he said, "That's my soup! Where were you hiding my soup? I thought it was all gone. " Sounding like a big, selfish child. I told him I froze the soup because I meal prep. I told him no one hid his soup, and that his soup was all go except for this small amount I had set aside for another day to feed our son. He said, "I know. I'm just kidding." But I'm pretty sure he was not kidding. If he had known the soup was there, he would have eaten it even though I had set it aside for our son. Now, I'm afraid he will start eating the food I put in the freezer for our son to eat on weekends. He is selfish and everything is about his own belly.

I have not heard from CPS besides when I reached out to them on Wednesday evening because they said they would get back to us on Monday. Well, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday passed without hearing from them. He said their recommendations are that we get counseling and get our son diagnosed. He asked if we agree to do that. I told him that I am willing but my husband may not be and would have to let them know. I asked if they were done with us if my husband said no to their recommendations. He said he would get back to me ASAP. I have not heard back. It's very discouraging when you reach out for help to avoid a tragedy and it seems like your issues are unimportant, overlooked, trivialized, and no one can be a good support for you.

I know counseling for us, like, for our marriage, is pointless. He is not going to change. Would be a real miracle if he changed, but it's that type of overly hopeful, delusional thinking that got me and my son stuck with an abusive narc in the first place. And getting more diagnoses is not going to help. He already has diagnoses: autism and intellectual disability. My husband disregards those diagnoses and just wants to spank, hit, yell, and punish all the time. Is getting another diagnosis going to make my husband realize that he shouldn't slap our son in the face? These diagnoses are irrelevant to my narc husband.

[otakween]

I'm Standing on a Million Lives - Volume 17

Still trucking along with this series. This arc hasn't been my fave and it's really mysterious how much longer there is to go. It would be comforting to just have a number or to hear word from the mangaka that they know what they're doing (just realized I don't know this mangaka's gender lmao).

Ch. 80

More action packed standing around and talking! But seriously, I do enjoy the in-depth strategizing in this series. It definitely elevates it beyond your trashy isekai harem schlock (plus this isn't a harem).

Still really don't like how Yotsuya will randomly go all yandere for two panels and then go completely back to normal within a split second. The mangaka is very obviously going for "intellectual sociopath" which makes me question the target audience...(sigma males? lol)

Ling's only role in the chapter was to go "please explain X to me, Yotsuya" and that was pretty frustrating. I guess she did chime in with some opinions here and there at least.

Glen being a badass as usual

"The dragons can only feast on souls if a human has been killed by a human or monster." The rules in this world are verrry specific/convenient. I felt the same way when they were explaining why Glen couldn't be hypnotized ("she wasn't gullible enough" lolwut?)

Ch. 81

Gotta love it when pooping is a big plot point lol (did we really need to see it happen?)

I'm still pretty much lost with what's going on here and what each faction wants (I'm not even sure how many factions there are). Could we get a diagram or something?

Ch. 82

Another chapter where the mangaka gives us a philosophical speech via Yotsuya. This time about human rights and how to determine a human's value. Really that's been the theme of this series from the start. I do enjoy reading these musings, although I don't agree with every point made. Sometimes they come off as actually intellectual and sometimes they're overly edgy, but that's fitting for Yotsuya's character at least.

Some high quality butt drawings in this chapter lol. The artist is super good at drawing scantily clad women in dynamic poses.

I guess this chapter could be summed up as "there are no real winners in war." (at least not this fantasy war lol)

It was cool to hear Yotsuya acknowledge that Glen and Fatina are best gurls (he calls them the strongest and smartest people he knows). Really it just feels like the mangaka saying "these are the best character's I've made" lol. And he's right.

Ch. 83

Glad Ling got something to do (bard moment lol)

Not much to say, this was basically an action/battle chapter.

Ch. 84

lol @ Kusue popping up outta nowhere at the end there. It was like a jump scare.

This episode focused on thwarting the blood ritual and ending the civil war. It all felt a little abrupt. I don't think I buy that a bunch of teens could convince an evil dictator to become a peace-loving great leader so quickly but oh well.

Totally forgot that the rest of the gang was working on building a bridge? No wonder we aren't focusing on them lol

Relieved to see that the next volume will be the end of this round. I've kinda lost interest in this plot line. Too convoluted.

I guess it's just my imagination, but this volume felt a lot shorter than usual?? Or maybe I just read faster on my schnazzy new ereader. Who knows.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

God, yeah, this is why the "you guys CLAIM to want complex and flawed female characters but you couldn't even handle [woman OP personally feels defensive of]" genre of post rankles me so much. As if the excessive and disproportionate sexist vitriol is obviously and indisputably coming from exactly the same people who are invested in criticism of gender in media.

In general, I'm deeply, deeply frustrated by the trend of people being reactive towards any kind of critique of how women in media are written and narratively positioned. I've speculated before that I think the "it's just an excuse not to focus on them!" response to that stems from a fandom culture that is very focused on fanfic as something that is, or should be, the primary mode of interaction with a piece of media - and as such, any kind of critical analysis about the shortcomings of a particular female character's writing gets interpreted as weaseling out of writing fanfic, rather than an important and intellectually stimulating end in and of itself. And as someone who's just as much, and often more, of an analysis person than a fic person, I find the "that's just an excuse! get out a shovel and start digging!" line of argument profoundly obnoxious.

(Is some critique of female characters' writing based in misreading or flawed pattern matching that reveals its own sexist bias? Yes, of course, but that's just an inevitable consequence of the project of criticism. That fact that analysis is fallible doesn't undermine the value of analysis.)

And while yes, gendered bias does impact how we respond to certain characters... I think there's something stifling and Othering about parsing female characters through this totalizing Gender First lens, and all too often I see well-intentioned, progressive-leaning fandom falling into that trap. There's a sense I get that women characters are often not parsed as individuals, with their own personalities and narrative positioning and idiosyncrasies, but as Representation Trophies (I'm thinking of "the ladies of [canon]" type posting). I often feel there's subtle pressure in progressive fandom spaces to emit a sort of hollow positivity about female characters' mere existence - something that doesn't make room for ambivalence, strong-but-conflicted feelings, or real, deep adulation.

The bit about weakness and vulnerability has also been a particular sticking point for me recently. One of my big frustrations with how women characters are often received by fandom is a tendency to completely excise their vulnerability, their neuroses, their internal conflicts and uncertainties, and, yes, their flaws. Because those things are often what draw me to those characters, just as they do with male characters! I don't mean this in some goofy "we need to show more ~soft femininity~" way, just in the sense that if you're only showing me glossy badassery without any human qualities underneath that - strength without any indication of the internal costliness of maintaining that strength - then I'm going to be put off.

And this gets at something else that I know we're discussed over discord before, which is how this dovetails with kink. People have complained on here about the fact that male characters get unhinged posting about people wanting to put them through the ringer, while female characters get shallow exultation of their badassery, and honestly? I think that reflects the fact that a lot of people's preferred form of engagement with their favourite characters is whump and hurt/comfort scenarios. And my intuitive sense is that it is pretty taboo to express the desire to put female characters in those scenarios.

Like, can you imagine talking about wanting to inflict violence and distress on a fictional woman the way people casually do all the time in their male blorbo posting? It'd make you sound like some kind of misogynist or domestic abuser. And I find that pretty restrictive, personally, as someone who does sometimes want to see women get whumped, and who is generally lukewarm on femdom. It's telling to me that so often the prevalent, memetic express of desire towards fictional women in fandom is "I want her to step on me" and variations. There's a degree of subcultural acceptability to eroticizing weakness and vulnerability in men, because men are instinctively parsed as strong and sturdy; eroticizing weakness and vulnerability in women is verboten, because women are instinctively parsed as fragile and delicate. I think it's naïve to act as if an aversion to "weak women" as a course-corrective to gender stereotypes doesn't inform how women are written in media and interpreted/rewritten by fandom.

I'll note that my perspective here is based on my participation in slash-oriented fandoms, and I do think these dynamics vary considerably depending on which fandom you're talking about, and the gender makeup of its cast. But a lot of the critiques I've seen and that this post brings to mind for me have also been directed at those fandoms, so I think it's fair to use those as a vantage point for analysis.

actually i do think it's weird that “complex woman” gets framed as this monolithic idea where anyone who wants a complex female character is obligated to be happy with whatever they get as though people cannot and should not have tastes and preferences wrt female blorbos just as much as they do for male blorbos. 1. not all “complex” female characters are going to appeal equally to everyone who wants them 2. people deserve a variety of complications in a female character that would beget emotional investment because again not everyone is drawn to the same things 3. “complicated,” colloquially has a much tighter definition for female characters than for male characters, where a male character gets to be complicated in a range of ways (by expressing remorse or the lack thereof, weakness as well as strength, pain as well as anger as well as resignation) but female characters have to pull against the cultural weight of misogyny and therefore cannot be frail, hurting, helpless, or resigned without being called stereotypical rather than that being an actual viable characterization. and some people are going to prefer their female blorbos angry and unhinged and others want them repressed and guilty, so all of those characters are not going to appeal in the same way to all people. and maybe, again, there should be enough complex female characters to choose from that people's tastes don't have to be flattened in order to accommodate the menu. am i making any sense

[dzpenumbra]

1/11/23

Today has been just generally... unsettling... an emotion-full day. And, unfortunately, not in a lot of positive ways.

I got my cat some food, started the day. Decided to go up to the package room and get my new headphones that got here today. They're like... Star Trek shit. It's spooky. It's weird. I feel really old when I use technology like this, like one of the apes from 2001. Noise cancelling technology has improved so much over the years, its nuts.

I tried to sync the headphones to my computer, but I guess the bluetooth on my PC is just absolute dogshit because I was sitting in my chair like 2 feet from the tower and the sound was garbled. That was a big bummer. I hope they pair well with the TV at least, that would be nice for movies and such. I guess that's a thought really only bachelors have - "how can I have a really great movie watching experience without making noise" - because, you know, if you have... a partner... or family... or friends... you don't really think about that kind of stuff, because noise is just a part of life. TV obviously has noise when you share a living situation, but when you're alone, is there really a good reason why you're not using headphones? Hmm?

My brain is pretty scattered right now, having trouble keeping up with it. I did yoga, it was mostly focused on the heart chakra. Did a lot of good for my back, honestly. And maybe part of why I've been so emotionally... open? Present? I don't know. Just like a fog of emotions today. She did a few poses that I just legit could not do. Like child's pose but with your chest touching the ground... like... I tried all kinds of shifting around and I could not for the life of me get my chest on that damn mat. It's very humbling. But, of course, points for trying, and for showing up in the first place. I kept flashing back to talking with that chick that went to dinner with my brother, sister in law, nephew and I; when she was talking about doing yoga and asked if I was new to it. And I keep going, "why the hell didn't I say yes?" Because I tried to get into it in 2019 and was doing it pretty regularly for a summer? And occasionally I'll add it in for a few weeks here, a few weeks there? I'm not a complete beginner, like first week on the mat, but like... I'm not very experienced at all here. My body is not really capable of doing as much as I'd like it to do right now. Guess that's growing up. 2019 was 3-4 years ago now. Time flies.

I've had a bit of a level of... fuck... hanging in the air today. Like... frustration. Apathy? ... What's the word? ... oh. Probably depression. Yeah, that fits pretty well. It has some more outwardly grumpy elements too, but depression is really the primary manifestation of it, I think.

When I was getting ready for my shower, I opened my Reddit comment history. I was looking for my most recent comment I made this morning. There was a post about a big uptick in ER visits by older weed users due to freakouts now that legalization is rolling out, and I wanted to partake in the conversation. There was a lot of really shitty unproductive "get good", "handle your shit grandpa" childish fucking bullshit, like the majority of the comments. Like a bunch of fucking Neanderthals trying to weigh in on a quantum mechanics discussion. I bet it's college kids or some shit, I don't know. The mainstream subreddits are just... not what they were 10 years ago, feels like. But there were some people who actually had... intelligent, researched, helpful insights. A few people were hinting that this big push to breed out CBD and get as high THC content as possible has been the major contender in this, and it seems most growers have been doing that just across the board. And, conveniently, it's mostly driven by the majority customer-base being the shit-talking Call of Duty players above. Now, for the discerning, emotionally-in-touch, intellectual, sensitive type? Especially if they're a bit on the neurodiverse side or carrying mental health burdens? That's like a one-way ticket to freakout zone.

I mean this sincerely, I would LOVE to be part of psychological research for cannabis and mental health. I would be a perfect candidate. I really want to help people understand the connection between CBD and THC interactions, and how they affect different conditions. Because I can go into freakouts like clockwork, it really doesn't take much. I'd love to work with some knowledgeable people to formulate a blend for me that gets me the sleep benefits and the general mood leveling, the focus boost, all that... without sending me into an apocalyptic hellscape.

So I left a reply on a comment about CBD and THC, and asked for some recommendations, tips, etc. But I had just woken up and was like... I assumed that thread was on my local city subreddit, but it was r/science... so I went in to edit out my question about recommendations of a local dispensary that had weed for sensitive people. And I saw my most recent comments, the shit from last week.

Last week, I came across a local teenager, I assume female but you never know. They said they had ADHD in passing. Their form of typing did not have punctuation. It was very interesting to me, I didn't really understand it, it seemed like this person learned how to communicate through texting or something, and just never... learned or saw the point of using punctuation? It always fascinates me how stuff like that develops. But... because of this person's syntax... people were downvoting the FUCK out of every comment she made. Which I found... a bit childish, and honestly, pretty discriminatory. This was on her own post by the way. Yep. Her own comments were being voted by the majority population to be not relevant to her own question... It's not a "like" button, folks, this isn't Facebook. But I guess when 90% of the userbase uses an upvote as a "like" button, then... it just sorta defaults to becoming a "like" button, doesn't it. Reddiquette used to be something taken seriously, now it just sorta feels like a weapon people use to shame each other.

The person was asking for take-out/delivery recommendations when on a diet. They were citing having a lot of social anxiety and the whole experience of going out and doing that being very overwhelming and difficult, which I find very relatable. I left a big comment with my local recommendations for GrubHub and even left a recommendation to look into getting a crock pot or pressure cooker since the crock pot has really been a lifesaver for me. And I closed by saying I was sorry people were treating them poorly, that I didn't really think they deserve it and I was a bit disappointed to see this area wasn't really as progressive as I had originally thought. Some others even downvoted my comment in response. Like... I really don't get it. The justification that someone left as a reply to me... was that they have been "getting a lot of trolls lately". Which is... I mean, isn't that the textbook definition of witch-hunting? Like... isn't it? Just like... "this person types different than us - guilty".

The person said outright that they had social anxiety issues that were so severe that they frequently didn't feel comfortable leaving the house. They got downvoted to oblivion on their own attempt to reach out for help to their local community, on suspicions that it was a "prank". Today, the post and their account were deleted.

It made me sad. It made me angry. I wanted to message a moderator. But what fucking difference is it going to make. When a mob is the majority... that's just what the community is on there. But I'll tell you this much, I really do not feel safe posting anything honest about my mental health struggles in that subreddit. Dead honest. I feel like if I do one fucking thing that they deem as "suspicious" or "not normal", they will assume I am not just inauthentic, but actively fucking with them, deem me a threat, and try to suppress my voice. Just... take a minute and let that cause and effect sink in there. Please do not let that sound normal, don't normalize that stuff, really think about it. I, a creative with a brain that just works different than others (which is supposed to be a gift, by the way), will get shamed, accused, discredited, suppressed and deemed guilty with zero evidence. I will have my voice suppressed in a conversation that I initiated, simply because I speak or think differently. And remember, it's not 200 B.C. ... It's 2023 A.D. Boy golly, look at how far we've come!

I wonder why I was depressed and angry for a big portion of the day. That was a big part. It made me really not want to go out ever again. It made me really feel like I should be suspicious of people around me and how they will treat me if/when they find out I'm different than them. It put me really on edge.

But I managed to shake that a bit, at least enough to order some chinese food from the restaurant that's literally right next door to my apartment building. And, lucky me, it was the best of the three chinese places I've eaten at so far. And I didn't even have to tip a driver. And I went out into public, around people, and it didn't go catastrophically wrong! It was just a normal thing. Just a normal dude in his mid-30's getting chinese takeout from a woman wearing fluffy white mickey mouse ears for some reason. The normality of it helped ground me a bit.

I even played guitar a bit today. Found a chord progression to play around with. I'm not sure if I'm at the stage of setting up for recording just yet... but... I came up with some pretty cool stuff.

Then I just played some Session to round out the night, grabbed a few clips. I think I'm gonna do clip parts and post them on Instagram, why not?

Welp, I tried to get an earlier start on this today and now it's 2AM, so... that's improvement over 3:30. See ya tomorrow.

[dramionediscussion]

Am I the only one who feels like Hermione got kind of pushed to the side in the books?? I just re-read the whole series and I realized that she doesn’t really have much of a character arc. Like Harry and Ron have their thing and they both overcome so much but Hermione kind of seems to stay the same. When she’s introduced she’s the bossy know-it-all who loves to show off her intellectual prowess and uses that to help people figure things out. By the end of the series…she’s still like that? I’ll admit she breaks more rules and she has less of an innocent view of things, but not much else about her is revealed. With Ron we got to know SO much about his family history and he had this big arc about his insecurities and Harry obviously is the main character so we know tons about him. But Hermione?? Her parents and the rest of her family is a mystery, her time before Hogwarts is almost never spoken about, her deepest fears are barely touched upon, her desires are rarely spoken of, any friendships she developed outside of Ron and Harry aren’t really seen. Heck! She had SPEW but then that got handed over to Ron in the end via his whole “we can’t leave the house elves behind!” during the battle of Hogwarts. So really…what does Hermione get?? That’s why I love Dramione so much because I feel like we genuinely want to see more of her and expand upon what little was acknowledged about her in the books. And with Dramione she’s usually the main character which means her storyline is fully explored.

Oh yeah! She is one of the main characters, the only female lead basically, and we know nothing about her. What are her hobbies except reading or studying? What's her parent's like? WHAT ARE THEIR NAMES!?!?! Where did she go to primary school? Did she have a pet before Crooks? When did she realize that she was magical?

We know so much about Ron and his family because of Harry. He basically fell in love with the Weasleys and they adopted him. But he has another best friend, why didn't he care to find out about Hermione? I would think she would be easier to get along with since they have a similar background while Ron doesn't.

And I've said this any times before, but one of the main messages of the books is that no matter your blood, you are all equal. Muggleborn, Pureblood, halfblood; all are magical beings! But showing is better than saying it.

We know nothing basically about the main muggleborn character and her muggle life and family, we don't have Harry embracing that he is from a muggleborn, we see the muggle world as an exotic locale. Wouldn't it be better to show that "hey muggleborns are awesome and their world is great", instead of just saying "we are all equal". Have a scene where Ron and Harry visits Hermione in her home. Have Harry and Hermione laugh as Ron uses a TV or radio or microwave. Have Arthur not treat muggle items as a fun, quirky, silly thing. Show that muggles and muggleborns are just normal people. JKR focuses so much on the Wizarding World, and it comes across to me (and maybe I'm reading too much into this) as her saying that "muggleborns are cool and they should be treated equally, but let's be real, wizards and their world are so much better".

- Lisa

[transmascjfk]

i'm,, trans and hc chihiro to be a male..

i'm sorry, but i don't quite understand how that's transphobic. could you please explain how chihiro is transmisogynistic? (sorry if i come off as rude - that's not my intention and i genuinely just don't understand, though i would like to!!)

What is transmisoginy?

"Transmisogyny is a distinct category of transphobia in that transmisogyny mainly focuses on trans women and other transgender individuals who demonstrate femininity, whereas transphobia is a more general term, covering a broader spectrum of prejudice and discrimination towards transsexual and transgender individuals. Julia Serano states in Whipping Girl that "when the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on 'men wearing dresses' or 'men who want their penises cut off' that is not transphobia – it is transmisogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults committed against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia – it is transmisogyny." "

Chihiro is written to mock trans women, to say that in reality trans women are secretly men, she is a man who is weak and uses being trans as a way to escape her problems, this is a thing that is also said to trans men a lot, that theyre just trying to avoid the hard parts of being a woman by becoming a man. Even if the writters intended it to be like that or not (which they probably did because transphobia is a big thing that happens a lot, obviously) it's still transmisogynistic. Thats that on that

This is a pretty common transphobic trope actually, the "Turns out this one character was actually from the opposite sex??!!", theres more examples of this in other games outside Danganronpa.

But also her experience is pretty different from other examples, her experiences are way too similar with trans womens experiences.

This is mostly for the cis people who call her a crossdresser and refuse to change their mind, on it, sit down.

Written by a trans man.

Don't tell me whats transphobic and what it's not transphobic if you're cis. Just sit down and read.

Tw: transphobia, transmisoginy, death mentions and blood in the pictures.

The game implies a lot of stuff with her dialogue, it doesn't straight up says "I don't want to be a woman anymore, I'm a man" like everyone claims it does.

[ Alt text 1:

Chihiro Fujisaki: I'm going to get stronger...and accept who I am... ]

[ Alt text 2:

Chihiro Fujisaki: Strong enough so that when someone says "even thought you're a boy" I'll be okay. I'll get better! ]

[ Alt text 3:

Chihiro Fujisaki: I wrapped myself in lies. I'm weak. I want to destroy that version of me forever! ]

[ Alt text 4:

Chihiro Fujisaki: ... I want to change. ]

[ Alt text 5:

Chihiro Fujisaki: I have to change. I don't want to be weak anymore ]

She goes to Mondo not because hes masculine, but because she admires him and his strength. She never once says it's because shes a man or because Mondo is a man.

[ Alt text 1:

Chihiro Fujisaki: Maybe talking to Mondo about it will help give me some courage... ]

[ Alt text 2:

Chihiro Fujisaki: I admire... your strength... ]

These dialogues can be read in two ways, the first one being the one the game tries the hardest to put in your head thats shes a man, all of this guessed by other people btw not what she herself says. Which is really transphobic, because she was written as a trans woman and then theyre like "uh no actually hes a man, because he was born as one but hes a coward so he started to dress as a woman to hide from his problems. Because thats what people do right? People who dress as their oppossite gender are so pathetic, specially men amiright? Ahaha"

Reading it in this way really weird, you're doing a lot of mental gymnastics because you would literally call her a trans woman with all of this if the rest of the trial, that consists of cis people assuming shes a man, didn't happen. And sadly you're following transphobic ideas by this. Because the canon is transphobic and transmysoginistic.

And the other way is just read what she says, that she just wants to be stronger and stop lying to everyone, basically about being cis, because shes not, shes amab (assigned male at birth) and thats probably what she said to Mondo, but most people when a trans person who already passes or is in their transition comes out many people tend to think "oh so youre your gender assigned at birth and not the one you claim to be?", because they don't get what being trans is and they think only "biological gender" is a thing. Basically, misgendering and invalidating the trans person.

I can guess all of this just because of how vague they decided to make her dialogue, not even showing how she tells Mondo about being amab.

What did she said to Mondo? "I'm trans"? "I'm a man"? "I was born a man"? We dont know, because they didn't show it and she died right afterwards and then everyone was like "Chihiro was secretly a man" to solve the case and thats it. A lot of people in the discourse get their information from Monokuma who isn't either Chihiro or even Mondo. Monokuma knows many things but he can't read minds to know if she was really trans or not, only she could say it but she died so she couldn't explain if shes trans or not.

[ Alt text:

A youtube comment by Gail Frisbee, posted 4 days ago, this comment was edited by the autor. The comment says:

"It's honestly increible to me when people try to argue that a scene in which a female-presenting character gets their genitals groped and then is posthumously referred to as a male from that point on can't be transphobic just because that character calls themselves a boy in some other side content later. It's on about the same level of intellectual honesty as claiming that Quiet from MGS5 isn't really fanservice because she totally breaths throught her skin you guys.

As it turns out, if you really dig down deep into the lore, Chihiro is a fictional character and the same people who wrote the genital investigation scene also wrote the lines that character says in the game as well. It's a shocking twist, I know." ]

Her fears of being outed and people founding out her secret (being trans) or being transphobic is used as a gross big twist. A trans woman being used as a mockery of trans people? Great totally normal (/sarcasm)

Read this post made by a trans woman. I'll be using this only part but it's still a great read.

[ Alt text:

So. There is a lot to unpack here, but I want to start with something that specifically hurts me as a trans woman, and that's how the game flippantly uses real world horrors trans people face as shocking reveals and twists. You can go down the list for "worst nightmares" of trans people incluiding:

Threatening to be outed against your wishes

Outing yourself to a trusted friend and being met with rejection, or worse, violence

Having your body and privacy examined and invaded

Having your deadname used and being misgendered after death, when you can't correct them ]

Now, let's go to her backstory for a bit. I will be using the wiki for this. (Which sadly uses he/him for her 💔)

" When Chihiro was a child, he became the subject of harassment and bullying. He was always told to "be a man" and that he was "so weak despite being a boy", and because of that, Chihiro slowly but surely began to develop a "weakness complex". In order to escape the bullying, Chihiro began to dress as a girl so that people wouldn't bully him as a weak boy. "

This doesn't sound like a normal crossdresser, this sounds like a trans woman who was bullied for being different when she was younger, like many trans people, and then she decided to transition because she's a woman, she wanted to be more feminine and stop being seen as a person shes not. Specially after so many people tell her to basically man up when she doesn't want that, because shes not a man.

Have you ever heard of the classic stories of "since I was little i knew i was different, i was a boy who liked playing with dolls and was more feminine than the rest" or "i used to be a tomboy when i was little, i had mostly male friends, i liked playing with car toys and was more masculine than other kids" coming from trans people? This just sounds as these types of stories to me.

People also like to say that alter ego uses he/him pronouns and says shes a boy. Many trans people can misgender themselves for personal reasons too guys, she could've been trying to misgender herself because she didn't felt like she wasn't enough to be a real woman, this happens a lot to trans people. If people constantly tell you that you're not actually transgender or you just feel like you're faking it then you might actually believe it, thats were most "detransitioners" come from. And thats basically what they made her, a detransitioner.

Some of you might also don't get how shes trans because you think she doesn't perfect or exact trans stereotypes. Trans experiences can be similar on the feeling of not fitting in, dysphoria, etc. But trans experiences, stories, transitions and complete lifes can be very different, because we all (including cis people) live different lifes, experience, process and cope with things differently. So i can understand why you might not get her being trans coded at first, don't worry. But try instead of just not caring because you don't get it at the first try, to see what trans people say.

This whole discourse its mostly cis people talking over trans people about their own experiences (incluiding the dead trans coded characters experience) saying if theyre valid or not and denying stuff not wanting to learn anything, completely refusing to it because "In canon hes a boy" ok then in canon shes written in a transphobic way too but most of you don't care about that. You would rather call her a crossdresser than try to acknowledge how obviously trans coded she is and how thats used as transphobia.

The way most cis people act in this discourse is very transphobic to me to be honest, if you think you're a good ally but act like this then you should get more educated on the topic as a whole and about trans people too.

-the trans Chihiro flag to finish this up, she has a bit boobie! good for her! good for her.