#rude girls not to be conflated with mean girls

[big-meows]

Scrolling my twitter FYP against my better judgement and encountering "women don't like f/f because they're self-loathing misogynists and only like m/m because they're fetishists and objectifiers" and "drop your favorite tomboys/butches in the thread! (Thread has the same 5 tomboy/butch characters that surface in every one of these threads and then 30 other big titty anime girls who are not tomboys and/or butch by any stretch of the imagination)" in quick succession felt like a little like the guy who thought someone was breaking into his house and leaving post-its everywhere discovering he had a gas leak and was doing it himself

If you wonder I keep filling the house with m/m post-its, it's because there's a gas leak and it's "female characters designed around/defined by a time-tested and committee-approved feminine tropes"

"but you'll fixate one cardboard-ass background boy and give him imaginary depth why can't you do that for a boring background female character--" because the boy's elevator pitch one-note characteristic is something I align with and enjoy (loser, goofy, comedy relief, gross, obnoxious, weird, autistic) and I promise if you made that same boy a girl and changed nothing else I would make her my whole personality for literal fucking years.

Idk like it's true I gravitate to shitty obnoxious boys in fiction but if that's a problem for you have you considered maybe the solution is more shitty obnoxious girls in fiction and not more of the same girls that I don't really enjoy, or telling me to stop liking shitty obnoxious boys?

I do feel a little insane sometimes to see femininity constantly conflated with womanhood. "Soup, why don't you, a gnc woman, gravitate to more super sexy mommy doms or cutesy moe schoolgirls or walking talking fashion dolls do you just hate women?" like idk Jan I'll give you three guesses.

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Gift, Pt. 6

Between McKay and Sheppard leaving the meeting room together and when we find them walking together toward Weir's office, there is another scene with Teyla talking about her issues with Heightmeyer. The two of them sure seem to be bonding over the course of this episode. In this session, her 'gift' as a metaphor for being gay is once more highlighted:

Teyla: I know that it is not my fault. There is nothing I can do about it. The fact is, I am really no different now than I was yesterday or last week. Heightmeyer: But you feel different. Teyla: Yes. I think the thing that I am most worried about is how people will perceive me.

While Teyla and McKay have been paralleled in the episode, there are also differences. Where Teyla tells Heightmeyer what her father thought of this thing that makes her different and how he told everyone that she was special, McKay seems to have had a very different experience with his father. Back when he was recording his video message in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17), McKay talked about a time he kissed a girl and how he almost caught mono. But then he says that he missed almost a month of school. It's possible that he was conflating two memories, the first time he kissed a girl and a time he got caught kissing someone that was not April Bingham. Because the missing nearly a month of school seems to be unrelated to the almost getting mono from her.

McKay told Carter that his parents hated each other and took it out on him which heavily implies that there was physical abuse in his childhood. So if he did get caught kissing someone that was not April Bingham, that was not a girl at all, there may have been a darker reason for why he missed almost a month of school. And the way Sheppard reacted to Teyla mentioning that her nightmares had not been this bad since the passing of her father earlier, what with his own father still being alive on Earth, it is also possible that Sheppard's dark look means that he knows about this incident--given also the fact that we later find out (McKay and Mrs Miller, S03E08) that he has seen and even possesses a copy of McKay's video message.

So, McKay and Sheppard then walk into Weir's office and I find this scene probably the most interesting in the entire episode. It's... weird. The dialogue seems clunky, and there is most definitely something going on that is not spelled out to the audience. There is something that is clearly left up for the audience to interpret for themselves--and this is not the last time this happens on the show.

They walk in through her open door and she tells them to wait non-verbally by pointing up her finger while she continues reading something. This could actually be interpreted as a little rude but Weir, also, must be feeling exhausted by now. Sheppard seems to be leading the way (where McKay was leading the way when they left the previous meeting), McKay follows him with his hands in his pockets like he's feeling relaxed. Notice that Sheppard places himself behind the chair with his hands on the backrest so while he leans forward on it, he again made sure there was a barrier between himself and Weir. This is probably not a conscious decision and I'm not convinced even the actor was doing it on purpose half of the time. They are also standing real close, let's say because of Weir's tiny office.

When they first walk in Sheppard has his brow raised, seemingly amused by what McKay was saying, "Even with Major Sheppard in the chair we weren't able to--" (it might be he was at least anticipating some kind of an unintentional entendre from McKay, or was just reminiscing what ever they had been doing by/at/on the chair) but his look turns more serious as they both notice Weir acting strangely. Also, McKay is the one who mirrors Weir physically, lifting up his own finger sarcastically.

McKay: Alright. Even with Major Sheppard in the chair we weren't able to-- What? What is that? Weir: Yeah, something you said made me wonder. McKay: I thought we decided there were more important things than-- Weir: Why did the Wraith scientist stop the experiments?

Because Weir doesn't answer right away and McKay has no patience to wait, he rounds up behind her to take a look at her screen. Note that Weir had just interrupted McKay twice. And as soon as McKay leaves his side, Sheppard turns to watch him go. Like his body actually almost takes off to follow him but he then makes himself stay put. There are marines standing just outside of her office that can see into it, it would seem weird to be that attached at the hip to McKay even though he clearly wants to be near him. He looks like someone just took away his favourite toy when McKay leaves his side.

Now, they came in to tell her about their non-progress with the command chair. We are to think that the two of them are just on their way back from the control chair room where they had tried to initialize the chair using Sheppard in much the same way they tried with Beckett earlier, only getting Sheppard to actually sit down on it. It seems as though they were not able to make it work. However, we don't actually know that that's where they are coming from, or are coming directly from there. They left the previous meeting together, they arrive here together, we have no indication of how much time has passed between these two scenes (Teyla has another session with Heightmeyer between them but that gives us little indication on the passing of time). Also, presumably they tried using Sheppard after they failed with Dr. Kusanagi but this also is far from certain. He could be reporting their failure to initialize the chair using Sheppard from any number of occasions.

All we know is that McKay and Sheppard have spent time with each other between the two scenes. They may have done anything. They may have talked about any number of things. Frankly, they look like they were coming back from lunch. But note that neither is wearing their ear piece which at least means that they wanted some privacy or that when they were in each other's company, neither had any need for anyone else to be able to get in contact with them. The fact that we saw Teyla remove her ear piece to get some privacy or confidentiality in her meeting with Heightmeyer earlier just calls attention to this fact, as does the way Sheppard turns his face here to show us that he's not wearing one. One scene that we know for certain that is missing is Sheppard sitting in the chair and McKay taking readings. This we know for sure did happen at some point even though we didn't get to see it. But they leave space and opportunity for more.

The fact that Weir interrupts McKay twice is interesting. It seems as though she is trying to keep her thoughts together which is making her act in a way that McKay might normally act. Note also that McKay is, for the second time in short order, the one who points out that they have more important things they should be doing, which is Weir's responsibility. It's what Weir should be doing. But instead she insists on pursuing the wraith mystery. Exhausted, they have sort of taken on each other's personality traits. The dialogue then gets real odd:

McKay: What would I have said that would make you think that? Weir: I don't remember. McKay: Well, it's a good point. I'm just wondering what I said. What have you got? Weir: Well at first, I thought it was because the other wraith caught him. Sheppard: They didn't? Weir: No. According to this, he stopped on his own.

So, the strangeness starts with the fact that we are never really explained what Weir means. McKay asks her what he might have said that made her think that and we never get the answer to it. There is nothing that we hear McKay say previously in the episode that directly relates to that premise. The closest thing that we hear him saying on screen that might relate to what Weir is thinking about was "So you think this Wraith scientist was trying to make humans what, more tasty?" but it is a stretch to go from this to the question "Why did the scientist stop the experiments?" And it's strange that they drop this piece of dialogue on us and then never resolve it. Why even mention it at all? They could have done the entire exposition dump without a reference to "something" McKay said. It's jarring. But the dialogue then gets even stranger:

McKay: See, now you've got me wondering why the rest of the wraith didn't want these experiments taking place in the first place. Weir: Exactly. McKay: Especially since they were supposed to be intended to improve things for everyone. Weir: Yes, that's what I'm saying. McKay: I just said it. Sheppard: Will you stop?

This is the most important part. The face Sheppard pulls here makes all the difference. You could interpret this as Sheppard stepping in for Weir, to defend her from McKay's need to be argumentative for the sake of being argumentative, or what ever is going on here. The dialogue is weird, and we never get a real explanation for what is going on. McKay is tired, and it seems to make his communication with Weir more difficult than usual. Weir is likewise tired and not able to communicate as well as a diplomat like her should. They are both being needlessly contentious. There's no real disagreement, they both do find this interesting and important, but for some reason they are still at odds. Like, the two of them are basically saying the same thing. They are talking about the same thing. They are having the same thoughts but even in spite of all of this, they are having a difficulty communicating here.

And what McKay and Weir are doing here is the opposite of how we see McKay and Sheppard communicate, even here in this very same scene. When they are thinking the same thing, they don't even need to speak. They can tell what the other person is thinking just by looking at them. And here, McKay and Weir are thinking the same thing and even though they are using their words, it still seems very difficult for them to find common ground. Even when you know a person very well and you're thinking about the same thing, the communication between the couple and a couple of colleagues is going to be different. This scene is fucking beautiful.

And Sheppard. The way he says "Will you stop?" and then gives McKay this look of "We have talked about this, we have just talked about this, what did I just say?" Earlier, Sheppard talked with Teyla about her needlessly snapping at Weir and almost biting his head off just for caring about her. Based on the look Sheppard gives McKay, they have had the same conversation. He told Teyla: "But you yourself admit it, that you're a little off your game. You snapped at Doctor Weir this morning in the Briefing Room for no good reason. Now you're biting my head off for caring that you might need help in dealing with the fact that it's been three days since you've had any sleep." McKay has gone days without sleep, as by his own admission. McKay is snapping at Weir for no good reason, check. McKay is off his game, to be sure.

It follows that he has also tried to bite Sheppard's head off for caring which has lead him to have the same discussion with McKay as he had with Teyla. And the way he's looking at McKay here, he is reminding him of this. He is saying "Will you stop?" not because McKay just suddenly crossed some line here what with him and Weir both being unable to communicate with each other, or because his own patience is wearing thin listening to the two of them. He is saying it because McKay is continuing to do something that he has already said something about previously. His "Will you stop?" is picking up a conversation that the two of them have been having off screen where we have not been party to it. In fact, it really seems like while they are talking with Weir, McKay and Sheppard are having an entirely different conversation with each other, what with McKay looking at Sheppard every time he says something to Weir. And here, too, the meek look he gives Sheppard in response speaks volumes. They are having another private conversation while the dialogue plays out through the words spoken.

And notice that while McKay and Weir are both culprits here, he only says it to McKay. It's not because he cares about Weir by coming into her rescue as her white knight and is thus chiding McKay, let's not even. It's because he feels that it's his responsibility to protect McKay even from himself. It's not his place to say anything to Weir but it is his place to say something to McKay--even if it was just in the role of his team leader. But he's not acting as his team leader here, he's doing the thing a spouse would do. He's saying, I know you don't even want to be doing this and you'll feel bad about it later so can we just not. He's saying, even you know this isn't you so just give it a rest. He's saying, I know you're tired but this isn't helping us. He's saying, you don't have to do this, it's just us here.

It displays such familiarity between them that in only three words and one look they are having at least a dozen different conversations between them that have no beginning and have no end, "apprehending one another's thoughts and exchanging ideas with extraordinary swiftness and perspicuity, contrary to all the rules of logic, without the aid of premises, deductions, or conclusions, and in a quite singular way." And it works, too. For the rest of their meeting, McKay keeps from being needlessly combative and tries to be constructive instead. The look that he gives Sheppard clearly says "You're right." It says, "I'm sorry" (to Sheppard, not to Weir). It says, "Thank you for reminding me."

Following this, they have a very professional, very productive discussion about the wraith's psychic abilities and using Teyla to tap into it. McKay looks concerned when Sheppard says that he had noticed the wraith having this network, and he could be thinking back to any number of encounters they have had with the wraith. Sheppard himself is likely referring to what happened at the end of Rising (S01E02) when the wraith were awakening around him, and if he is making a reference to that and McKay knows about this (as he seems to know a lot about Sheppard), his worry is warranted.

Sheppard also has a notable reaction to the thought of the wraith wiping out an entire planet, something he had just recently witnessed with Teyla:

Sheppard further has a somewhat curious reaction to Weir's statement that it seems as though the wraith are unable to read the minds of humans. Something clearly goes through his mind and he very almost looks at McKay, his eyes are already going there, before he stops himself from doing that. Let us recall that in Before I Sleep (S01E16) Sheppard was unsettled by the notion that someone could just look at another's face and know what they are thinking--like both himself and McKay have been doing even in this very same scene.

After this scene, McKay vanishes from the episode. We are given no explanation for his absence. He is mentioned briefly by Weir when she and Heightmeyer are in Teyla's private quarters (none of the men are present, I suppose due to reasons of propriety). She says "And McKay, he does have some doubts about the range of this telepathy" referring to the wraith psychic network, also indicating that their discussion went on for a while that we again didn't get to witness. But other than that, we are left wondering why he is not a part of the happenings in the rest of the episode. Granted, he's not precisely needed and there are so many characters that are present during Teyla's attempts at connecting with the wraith that for narrative reasons, it probably was better to leave him out. But usually we are given some reason for his absence, like he's doing something else in the meanwhile.

The last we see him, he is looking at Sheppard while Sheppard is looking at Weir, the two of them clearly excited about this possibility of tapping into the network to gather intel about the wraith. McKay does not look as excited as they do, he looks more concerned. Now, the reason Sheppard is looking at Weir so intensely is because he very much wants to do this (as we shall see later), and he needs to make sure that Weir is on board with the idea. He will take any edge they can get and if this is it, they are doing this. He is making sure that this gets done. Sheppard is not looking at McKay because he's not the one he needs to convince, manipulate, cajole or what ever he needs to do, to make sure they do this. He's also not looking at McKay because that's a side of him that he would rather not show him and he's trying to shield McKay from it by not letting him get that read right off of his face (but again, it's not because he doesn't want to look, the scene ends with his face turning toward McKay even when he's keeping his eyes fixed on Weir). But McKay seems to sense that something had just changed in him. There's a new fire in him. He knows this man and this change has him concerned.

Now, while we have nothing to base it on, we can propose three reasons for why McKay is away for the rest of the episode. First is that he is simply busy, he is working on the control chair or some other project during this time. This is very likely. Second, he is sleeping. He has finally been able to get some sleep and the reason for this might be that Sheppard was finally able to wrestle him into bed. He certainly could have done with some sleep. This is possible. And third, Sheppard felt that it was better that he not take part in this due to the potential danger in attempting something that has never been done with regards to the wraith. The reason for this could simply be strategic--if one is attempting to psychically connect with the wraith, having the person with the most intricate, most detailed knowledge of their defenses present might be a liability. They don't know how this psychic network works, and McKay and everything he knows about Atlantis is the last thing they should make available to be psychically scavenged by the wraith.

McKay is much too important to the city (as pointed out by Zelenka in the following episode) to risk him needlessly even if Weir claimed that the wraith would be unable to read the minds of humans. And this is true regardless of how you interpret McKay and Sheppard's personal relationship. But given how protective we have seen Sheppard be over McKay, trying to protect him from all things and everyone including himself, it would make sense for Sheppard to not allow him to take part in this experiment. John Sheppard is known for taking chances with his own life but he is not taking chances with McKay's life, and this is something we see again and again. This is something that culminates at the end of this season. And the way Sheppard was looking at Weir, he seems fully ready to step out of the path of angels if it should be needed here. And he wants to protect McKay from that, too.

Continued in Pt. 7

[radfae]

you seem rational etc can i ask what your thoughts on trans people are?

i self identify as a trans woman and i know that a lot of womens' issues specifically DO NOT REFER TO ME, however

the conflation of gender and sex i see in radfem spaces is intense and just comes across as bigotry tbh

i've seen radfems refer to trans men as "confused girls" who were manipulated by the patriarchy into hating their body and like.. that just seems very anti-expression and backwards to me

since you’re asking, i’d like to believe you’re coming into this with an open mind, so i ask you to please listen to me all the way through. this is also a pretty general question so i did my best to sum stuff up but if you have any specific questions feel free to follow up with another ask. i’ll talk to anyone in good faith.

i believe in freedom of expression and common courtesy in respecting other people (until you’ve done something to lose that respect). basically, you can do whatever you want, and i mainly take issue with people who can’t/won’t separate trans people from the gender they’re transitioning to and recognize their sex/actively encourage ill feelings of dysphoria/etc. i also think we have a huge issue with informed consent regarding transition and we need to examine why dysphoria is occurring and explore other methods of treatment instead of jumping to being a lifelong patient.

i think “confused girl” is rude but i do think it’s important to know exactly why you feel the way you do. gender isn’t innate. your feelings of distress stem from something. reality girl zine doesn’t do a great job at appealing to a wider audience (and may have caricatures some find offensive), but it makes great points about what girls are taught about gender from a young age and how stereotyping male and female traits may lead young girls to identify out of girlhood (some of which i personally empathize with as someone who is now desisted).

all this being said, our ultimate goal is always gender abolition. since we do live within the frameworks of gender and i understand transness in our world as it is, it’s important to recognize that gender is not real, it’s not innate, there’s no male spirit and female spirit, and wearing pants and having short hair doesn’t make you any more male than wearing a skirt and having long hair makes you female. gender, when it comes down to it, is a set of stereotypes. if you remove the social aspect of gender/the idea of what it means to be a woman removed from sex, you have nothing leftover. it’s a bunch of gunk created to oppress women. it’s evolved a lot now, but the extremely basic premise of gender is to fit people into boxes: women-like activities include wearing skirts, makeup, tight clothes, and cooking. men-like activities include wearing pants, loose clothes, having body hair, etc. if this weren’t true, the basic elements of transitioning to a different gender wouldn’t exist. trans women wouldn’t be upset online about being misgendered while wearing a dress and makeup, because clearly dress and makeup = woman. doesn’t this all seem a bit regressive at its core? i’ve used this infographic a lot, but it’s always relevant:

[zalrb]

Not to cause bad boy discourse in your inbox, but here’s my 2 cents: I feel like bad boys and assholes are often conflated. Like, a bad boy will go against a power structure and he will be loud and open about it. He can be stupid about it, but then he does come off as more of an asshole (like that kid in class who argues that having his phone on him is a constitutional right to his own property when the teacher issues a phone ban during class time).

If he is rude or sarcastic, it has to be for a reason that isn’t limited to a traumatic backstory and it has to be directed to something that deserves or warrants that aggression. If you’re writing a romance, you can’t, say, have him defend his love interest and then turn around and be cruel to her himself, because that means that he doesn’t actually care when people are mean to her, it’s just that only he can be abusive toward her. That’s not protection; it’s possession.

If he’s a bad boy in a more general sense, then he’s snarky and inconvenient to the bad guys in power and he stands up for the little guy, especially if the little guy is not himself.

This is a bit of a hot take, but I view characters like Batman’s Robin or Percy Jackson as possible bad boys. I see other iterations like Jess from Gilmore Girls or Damon from TVD as assholes at best, and the scum of the Earth at worst.

Another hot take: Bad boys work best when they’re teenagers or kids. Having an overly snarky adult character gets real annoying real fast.

for anon.

[waters-and-the-wilde]

okay so one of the fun and neat things about going on T and shifting into boy mode is. i'm hot now??

it's not that i've changed that much or was dealing with negative self-image stuff, like i was already the prettiest boy you've ever seen before i got on T. back in girl(?) mode i dodged the worst of the usual body image issues due to a confluence of factors, such as

a.) enough early messaging to the effect of 'hey trying to make girls be attractive all the time is kinda fucked up' and me going 'yeah! that is fucked up! fuck being pretty'

b.) just. extraordinary amounts of asexuality. and with that came the primary incentive to go 'oh fuck i don't want to be attractive. dear god get that away from me. engage the Somebody Else's Problem Fields to maximum capacity!!'

c.) 'but also hey i've got great hair and look dashing in a waistcoat, i just do it for me you know? i'm like if a vain creature spent a lot of time scrabbling about in a tree hollow'

like i felt like i looked fine as a girl(?) and i didn't want to deal with the social baggage of being pretty (TM) or hot (TM) and clearly all that took so much effort anyway so it was super easy to just. not. although I liked wearing fancy costumes so in a lot of ways it's easier to look back on like. girl formalwear moments and be like 'oh yeah. that's drag. i was in drag.' without getting hit with the dysphoria stick. and the moments i felt really good about myself, like, 'flirt with myself in the mirror' moments were. boy drag. but i wasn't going to call myself hot. (also probably an autism thing, bc The Neurotypicals and the CisHetAlloNormies love to take the things you say literally and contort them to fit their assumptions so i couldn't risk them conflating 'hot' with 'sexually available'.) i was 'allowed' to be hot when i was dressed as jack harkness but under all other circumstances i didn't want that and wasn't willing to risk being thought of in those terms. never mind nipping it in the bud i was gonna salt the earth first.

which, maybe was a little overkill, i've got a bit of a tendency there but tbh i'm incredibly grateful for how much that kept the background society noise from getting the worst of its hooks into me. like the rampant asexuality and baby's first genderqueer shenanigans did me so many favors for maintaining a neutral-to-positive outlook on my relationship with my body. especially when it came to keeping prospective attention at bay so any time someone actually tried to ask me out it was just like. reaction gif of those girls with the red cups at the party. how did you get past security.

didn't hurt that i didn't want to hang in the kind of environments that made a big deal about appearances slash recognized it's rude to be a dick about peoples' appearances, but also there was probably a certain amount of baseline white/able-bodied/skinny privilege that i wasn't really aware of at the time, and lately i've been suspecting that contributes to other people trying to reinforce their idea of my place in 'the girl club'. something something same coin as those standards that also exclude and deny cis women for not measuring up.

recent years it's been weird because it sort of hasn't mattered how obvious i think the transmasc cues are, how much i look in the mirror and go '!!! hell yeah look at that handsome little guy!' because it just wouldn't translate. there was just a lot of 'yes fine i know i know i kNoW what people see when they look at me. it is still weird to me but i have to maKe Allowances for our soCiAL coNText riGht?? just because i got sick of being low-effort nonbinary and decided I wanted a turn at the blue hair and pronouns thing doesn't mean that other people aren't stuck in their assumptions. yes i know who i am but i have to wear a little sign and point it out to people and most of the time they don't notice or remember and if i'm lucky they'll wring their hands and get all conCerNed about having oFfEnded me instead of telling me they don't think they should have to make the effort of trying.' and don't get me wrong i love meeting cishetnormies who are cool and onboard and supportive or just baseline chill about it, but there are a lot of them where there's this definite undercurrent of knowing they're just humoring you and it itches like a shirt with the bad textures.

anyway it's not as if i didn't know i built in a bunch of defensiveness around knowing I was being perceived female and trying to control for the implications of that. (it's been a perennial topic of household conversation bc sibling and sibling-in-crime are a bit more settled into their own flavors of genderqueer especially in terms of dealing with other peoples' perceptions and i've still been grappling with a lot of 'i need to look GAY i need to look QUEER i need to look LIKE A BOY I need to look COMPLETELY UNAVAILABLE. do NOT perceive me. ENGAGE 'SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROBLEM FIELD' to MAXIMUM CAPACITY. i am JUST SOME GUY. FUCK i dress like a 12-YEAR-OLD and people think i'm in HIGH SCHOOL but they STILL DON'T THINK I'M A BOY' 'buddy hey do you think maybe you're overthinking the way people perceive you and trying to accommodate for that instead of being yourself' 'I KNOW BUT HEY'

i think starting to working in a much more public retail job kind of threw it into sharp relief because before I wasn't doing that on purpose, i just got so used my Whole Deal just sort of automatically flying under the radar. and suddenly every day i'm having to deal with other peoples' assumptions. and every day i'm still kicking and yowling and biting because all i'm getting is other people trying to shove me into a box. they see a girl-shaped person and it doesn't matter about the collared button-down shirt and what's usually a boy's name on the apron, lol what's a pronoun button, she's young and skinny and cute and white and that's what the quirky young ladies do these days because androgyny is trendy right??

(do not get me started on how women are not allowed to age and how trans guys get infantilized and how i keep getting clocked as much younger than i am, what does a guy have to do to get treated like a goddamn grown-up ah fuck i gotta show up with healthy boundaries and self-respect probably because i'm not about to stop dressing like a twelve year old because i am fighting for my life to retain my youthful whimsy on this godforsaken bitch of an earth)

and then. not much changes but I change. six weeks on T and i'm like ugh nothing's happening it's fine it's fine it's gonna be gradual it's gonna take its own time. and then two weeks later, holy shit. the goddamn second i unlocked the slightest bit of facial hair and boom. 'not my fault you think i'm a girl. skill issue. oh shit i look GOOD'

they (the charming and helpful transmascs who make youtube videos) said T won't just up and fix your confidence issues, and yeah okay they're right because something something gotta find that in yourself or whatever, but also. they were right when they said it doesn't not fix your confidence issues.

now. sometimes it's even more fucking jarring when it's easier for me to forget that it still doesn't always translate. last week some middle-aged guy tried to ask me out while i was at work (it was a short and not ill-mannered interaction but pretty obviously 'area man has interacted with a Young Lady for five minutes and decided to go for it' way) and it was like. The FUCK? now?? like. sir. babygirl. you are not only barking up the wrong tree you are not even in a forest right now. this is in fact. a lumber department. 'you look lovely' my ass i am the grubbiest little dweeb you have ever seen and these aprons flatter nobody, not even me. who the fuck do you think you're trying to kid. also i'm a boy. no sparing your feelings no laughing it off no 'easy mistake to make' i hope you feel super awkward about this. not my fault you tried to pick up a grown-ass man with a mustache. i don't care if you were polite about it you're old enough to be my dad and this is my workplace. i am once again asking how the fuck did you get past security.

(work-life gender is totally a thing too. at work i am 'actually a boy but thanks', i'm they/he and uh him actually when people use 'her', i am just some guy, fuck you i am a grown-ass man stop telling me how to do my job boomer. and then i get to go home and be a creature and a weird little man (nonbinary) and i'm suddenly more comfortable in a bunch of the girl(?) shirts i had stopped wearing and i'm looking forward to approaching more of a queer guy flavor of femininity on my own time)

it's weird too in that materially very little has changed, like it's been all of four months, i sound like i'm getting over a cold and my face can do a new party trick. it's all still mine, it's just that maybe it feels a little bit more mine now.

anyway the point of all this was that. i couldn't be hot because i couldn't act like i was hot because i couldn't envision a version of events where people didn't make this my problem. and suddenly I'm Just Hot Now. because I Am. like it's just a fact now it's an immutable law of the universe. all those posts about 'i'm transgenedner and sexy' and i was like 'love that for you, couldn't be me tho' and now i'm transgedener and sexy. am I going to do anything about it?? god no. i'm gonna make this everybody else's problem.

(be funny if i had a slut era in an asexual way but one thing at a time perhaps)

[author-by-night]

Okay but literally though. LITERALLY. I know Tumblr reads everything queer and neurodiverse and sometimes it’s a stretch of a take but I promise you that Sherlock Holmes reads with the very specific coding that historical authors reserve for autistic folks before they really had the vocabulary for it.

When Sherlock meets Watson he infodumps about forensic science before anyone can stop him and then goes on a ramble about all his catalogued faults so that Watson will know what he’s getting into with him as a roommate up front. Sherlock literally has a visualized order to his thinking that appears in diagnostic tests for autism. He doesn’t really recognize social cues or, if he does, tends to kinda think they’re stupid and pointless. I’d argue that he gets categorized as rude because the ableist mind conflates “autistic” and “rude,” but this is why I think the best adaptation of Holmes I’ve seen is Basil of Baker Street. He’s not mean, he feels horrible when it dawns on him he’s hurt someone’s feelings, he just… has pride and mood swings and crime to solve.

Meanwhile, what near everyone misses in the adaptation is that Watson is disabled. Man’s chronically ill, and far from being a long suffering straight man to Sherlock’s kookiness he is at least as much of a petty bitch as Sherlock is and gets straight up “middle school girl who just found out about boy bands” level of obsessed with him to the point that—and I can’t overemphasize this—the literal entire collection of short stories is canonically Watson journaling about Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes is, with no exaggeration, about an autistic man freelancing with his special interest cause he can’t hold down a normal career and his disabled gay roommate fighting crime together because otherwise they’re bored and insulting the cops constantly. It’s pretty much everything anyone on this site could ask for.

Just started reading Sherlock Holmes and all the adaptations are wrong. This man is a delight. He gets excited about hemoglobin and is ecstatic at the thought of Watson as a roommate. He purposefully forgets how the solar system works so he has more room in his brain for crime. He shows Watson the dirt stains on his trousers and he can tell what part of London they come from based on color and consistency. (As far as i can tell Watson didn't ask, Sherlock just gets back from walks and tells Watson about the stains unprompted.) The text specifically says "Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with." Why does every adaptation make him unpleasant and rude, he's literally just eccentric. He's such a goober, I love him.

[loverofpaperwork]

Mike Johnson, new house speaker, old views

S, the Republican house decided to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. For 22 days they bickered and held 12 elections? on who should fill the void Keven left. They settled, emphasive on settle here, on Louisana represenetive Mike Johnson. A self described devote family man who holds deeply held traditional christian beliefs. I have nothing wrong with that. A man of faith and conviction isn't inherently evil, but politicians seem to be. Faith and politics are a bad mix, historically. The founding fathers had deep relgious beliefs, and decided that the nation should not be a christian nation. A tradition that Johnson will have to uphold.

Anyway Mike hasn't done a lot in congress, the sole characteristic that made his run for speaker doable. He was apart of 12 bills or resolutions that went to the senate this year. So he did nothing this year.

I call these bills lame because they will not survive the senate, serve no purpose, and are generally offensive to the common person. I choose not to use their snappy titles because the titles often hide the true intent of the law.

Make no mistake, Mike has a lot more bills he has tried to get through, but these survived. I expect from his leadership to have trans children banned from schools and colleges, Biden to be legally declared a devil, aid removed from south America because of Socialism, and several agencies defunded (Social security, atf, irs, fbi, etc.) if the republicans ever did in fact pass a bill.

it is going to be like having a reddit thread lead the country, dumb, somehow well dressed and sometimes occasional nice. But very rude and have some really weird political takes about Cambodia.

HCRes3

A stupid complaint letter to Biden about crime that has no point or purpose.

HCRes9

A letter condemning socialism for some reason. I don't know why republicans have such a hate boner for it. they conflate north korean practices with castro and cambodia and venezula ( I mean they suck, but at least note that they don't have the same believes). It is basically a name and shame letter about politics from 40 years ago. The most confusing part is the section where they quote Madison and Jefferson despite both those founding fathers having hundrends of slaves in their lifetimes, an evil far worse than socialism (not that it is a contest, but quoting liberty from these guys is suspect at best).

I can't believe they said with a straight faith that the US was founded on the sanctity of the individual. Which is laughable for many many many reasons.

I love how they say congress denounces socialism in all its forms as apart of the resolution but doesn't acknowledge or promise anything.

No point or purpose

HJRes44

A house attempt to overrule an ATF ruling on stablizing braces, a tool to make pistols easier to use. The atf most likely banned them because of mass shootings?!?

kind of apart of their job, but perhaps I want them to spell it out a bit more. Like did the atf overstep its bounds, or are braces apart of the second amendment.

HR2

omnibus border bill that has every other government program.

DOA

waste of time

HR5

Some sort of school accountability bill that gives parents some imaginary oversight in curriculum. Like schools have to post stuff online and.... that's it. Like the school has to say if its over or under budget for some reason in a "report card"

redefines passing grades (kind of important)

they snuck in a thing preventing boys and girls playing sports on the opposite gender team. I mean who cares, they are kids. Let them play. Even if it is a trans thing. Like if little Sally wants to play football let her, or let Danny play field hockey. Or shock and horror if a student is transitioning or thinking about it, let them be wherever is appropriate during that difficult time. Sports is about community, we should foster good ones that are welcoming of others. Not asshats like congresspeople.

kind of a who cares law with some sleaze in it. in the name of parents rights, just not parents of kids that they don't like.

HR23

briefly amends apart of the inflation reduction act.

Might be a big change, but still who cares.

HR26

some sort of childbirth protection act in name only. Assumes children are aborted after birth, which is not a practice in any hospital I am aware of. I know that some use dubious sources at best to attempt to prove this point, but in general, once a baby is born it is born. Which oddly isn't just what the law is about. It is about extended anti abortion regs to cover friends of people who get an abortion who don't report it to the police. So a guilt by association Among other things.

Wikipedia lamely states that it says any infant that survives an abortion should be given healthcare, which, yeah why not. it was born. This law has been in the works since the 114th congress and has failed every time because it ignores law and medical facts.

Again most abortions occur within 12 weeks of pregnancy and can be done over the counter. It isn't something I particularly like because every pregnancy has the capacity to be born, but it isn't my choice or my place to pressure people into parenthood. Especially since I do not know their medical history and the risks that going to term brings. No one enters into a decision like this lightly, and I can with 99.999999 percent certainty say that any doctor willing to do an abortion in the last trimester will not do it in a way that is healthy for the mother or would allow the child to survive.

It ignores medical laws because not every children survives childbirth. If this law passed, a mother or doctor could be put in jail even though a child died to natural causes and the state regulator felt stinky enough that day to prosecute. The courts are hesitant to extend negligence laws to fetus's because miscarriages are a sad fact of life, and the last thing we need to do is lock people away for the saddest thing that can happen to an expecting parent. Their is no justice here.

This bill sucks eggs, attempts to gaslight people into thinking every pregnancy is safe and that doctors who do abortions do it at a dangerous point in a pregnancy. All for cheap political points.

a real lame bill he helped get pushed through.

HR277

a proposed law that attempts to make federal agencies more beholden to the house budget process and oversight.

my question is, who is going to fund the hiring of all the additional people needed to comply with this when it gets passed. Congress isn't earmarking any money for it.

also what is a concise general statement when talking about the entire defense budget? or social security. this is a wishlist.

it mandates rule reviews by agencies. Agency rules are what they use to bind people to regulations. Think of it like a law, but not codified by the senate. they are necessary for the function of the agency, but don't carry the same weight as, well, a law does. These reviews should be done by the house because we cannot trust self reviews, what agency is going to restrict their power.

a lame bill that attempts to shove off oversight power while expanding it in some other aspects.

HR288

A bill that attempts to remove the supreme court's ability to determine the law of the land. essentially congress is trying to say they have the final say of what a law is.

A curious idea because that is the vision of the founding fathers.

The supreme court gained the ability to review laws or decisions of the other branches of government in Marbury V. Madison. The outgoing president attempted to force a political appointment. The new president did not extend the appointment. At the time, the cabinet positions survived elections, so the court was asked to decide who should be in the position.

The court said, well in order to decide we get to have the power to decide. Which makes sense. At the time they just oversaw the court system in general and governed it. With this decision they gave themselves the power to affect the decisions of other branches of government after they occur, and a lawsuit is brought. Eventually the court would have gained this power.

The house is trying with this bill to make federal agencies exempt from this process.

A lame bill at best, kind of dubious.

HR497

Attempts to eliminate Covid-19 vaccine mandates on healthcare workers.

Madness.

HR734

adds a section to education laws that makes it prohibited for biological males to play biological female sports.

Also funds a study to show how single sex sports are superior to mixed sports.

Who cares, really.

A lame bill that, again, harms children and their communities. Sports teams are under capacity as it is.

HR996

renames a post office to the Dr Rudy Lombard post office.

honestly a good thing. I looked up the ceremony for his avenue. the New Orleans community enjoyed it.

HR1435

prevents the states from banning gas cars for some reason.

is that even a danger?

HR1640

prevents the banning of gas stoves

so who is going to pay for gas infrastructure, its upkeep, and whatnot.

Also if a state stops receiving funding from you, then what power do you have. They may even refuse taxes at that point.

I wouldn't take that fight if I didn't have too, party of state's rights.

US HR3564

redefines single family borrowing policies that fannie mae and freddie mac have.

Well could be important, but fannie mae and freddie mac haven't really been relevant since the housing collapse in 2008. You see they had to purchase a whole bunch of bad houses and mortgages because the house told them too. The banks then bought all sort of packages of these derivatives, transferring bad debt into the banks, and then when people stopped paying the mortgages, they had no operating capital.

might be loading another collapse.

[ithisatanytime]

Lazy Town | Cooking By The Book Music Video

one of the consequences of the recent shift in the public perception of jews and power that i think a lot of people are gonna miss is that even for the most blue pilled normie boomer, the idea that jews in nazi germany were just some random ethnic minority they scapegoated is irrefutably destroyed, the average person now perceives jews at the very least as a powerful group and that perception is cast back onto their understanding of history, it undermines a key pillar of the jewish lie, this holocaust narrative cannot be overstated in its importance to satan, as it provided the moral justification for equating simple prejudice with mass murder, so what the holocaust myth did was morally equate having preconceived notions based on race with mass cold blooded murder its hard for a modern westerner to even imagine a world in which blatant racism was seen as just “rude” instead of the ultimate unforgivable sin, yet this was the mode of the entire earth for literally thousands of years, we are living in a STRANGE time, if i cant convince you its an evil time, it should suffice to convince you of the strangeness of the times at the very least. if you own a bible, i suggest you search meticulously for passages railing against fucking young girls, sex BEFORE marriage, drug use, racism, sexism, homophobia etc. you will come away wanting, it doesnt matter if you are a christian im merely trying to impress upon you the strangeness of our current times, you could do the same for the quran, the torah, whatever ancient book of wisdom you want and you will find nothing even resembling the moral framework we are currently operating under, its a completely modern jewish invention, it is the work of the devil himself.

the premarital sex thing you may find some examples of if you dont understand the original meanings of fornication and adultery which as time progressed began to be used interchangeably, but i am completely convinced that adultery used to mean in the sexual context exactly what it means in other contexts its a commandment for the ancient israelites (modern europeans) not to race mix with the surrounding tribes, and if you have read the old testament you will quickly find that marriage and sex are the same thing, many of the patriarchs were “married” to their wives in beds and tents, you will find no example of one of them waiting for some ceremony before consumating their marriage the concept of this didnt even exist at the time, once you fucked you were married, extra marrital sex was fornication, the original meaning of adultery is as i described but slowly over time it became synonymous with fornication even by the time of jesus ministery so that didnt happen recently.   think of flour and granulated sugar, if you are making a cake, you will marry these two ingredients which just means to mix them together to make them as one “what gad has made one let not man make twian” and with that same cake baking analogy, lets say while you were making your cake and you had a bowl of sugar, a salt shaker should spill and pour into the sugar, well now the sugar has become ADULTERATED by salt, meaning they have mixed but they do not mix well, one ingredient has polluted the other. in the modern usage of the term adultery, the universal definition of adultery is sort of meaningless, i believe they just became synonymous and i think that when the israelites disobeyed gods command against adultery (race mixxing) and took wives from their defeated enemies and became like them and adopted their abominable ways like child sacrifice, they sought to actively muddle the meaning of adultery and conflate it with fornication to obfuscate the sinful nature of what they had done.as far as the fucking young girls thing goes a lot of people will take issue with that and i get it, but you dont understand, the most common age of consent laws in history where they can be found put the age of consent at puberty, literally thirteen years old in most instances sometimes 12, but fucking a 13 year old and leaving her would permenantly damage her right? the same is true for a 25 year old a 30 year old etc, they are damaged by promiscuity, but none are damaged if they are kept as wives.

 the times we are living in ARE evil, but they are as strange as they are evil. their is a time for everything under the sun my brothers and sisters and christ, even a time to kill, even a time for war. i do it for she

[darkcircles4lyfe]

retrospective & predictions

Since we're on a hiatus week (between 320 and 321) I feel like waxing poetic about the depth and growth of bkdk for a bit. Especially because it seems like we’re right on the edge of their biggest development yet, I’m getting the urge to lay all my perspectives and insights I’ve picked up from others out on the table. This is ultimately only my subjective interpretation of subtextual material in canon, though. If you’ve never quite understood what people see in their dynamic and you’re actually open to hearing me out, maybe from this you can at least see where we’re coming from. And if you don’t like my takes after all, well, we’ll see who’s right in the coming chapters, won’t we? What I have to say can be taken platonically or romantically; I appreciate both. 

putting it under the cut, since it’ll be long:

At the risk of projecting, I want to start by examining a couple things based partly on personal experience.

From many different directions, I often hear people expressing that Deku’s persistent attachment and admiration for Bakugou is baffling at best. Despite the bullying, despite Bakugou’s loud, rude, and uncompromising personality, he still puts effort into their relationship and frequently describes him as amazing. It seems like Deku himself is aware of this as he’s said things along the lines of how he’s difficult, BUT... etc. Although I don’t think it’s exactly that Deku finds Bakugou’s personality hard to be around, but that he’s deliberately expressing patience for Bakugou’s emotional turmoil. 

I have to say I know what this sort of patience is like, as I went through it with someone I love. I only chose to put up with their behavior because I decided the possibility of what our relationship could be was worth it. I wasn’t blind or submissive to how they treated me, and I wasn’t coerced. I simply expressed myself and established my boundaries while still allowing them the opportunity to join me in my world once they got over their own hangups. And guess what? It worked out in the end. That doesn’t mean there aren’t circumstances where it’s better to cut ties, but I want to stress that true reconciliation is possible sometimes. I used to worry that other people around me thought I was delusional for seeking it, but what really helped was my therapist reminding me that I’m smart and strong. So I think Deku deserves to feel the same. In a way this is his whole mission in life, his approach to being a hero as well as his personal relationships.

Let me also be clear though that I don’t mean Deku is only tolerating Bakugou’s personality, his mannerisms, the parts of him that will likely never change. I’m drawing a line between those things and his emotional state (they so rarely align anyway, but I’ll get to that later). In fact, I think Bakugou’s general attitude is part of what Deku admires. This is gonna be hard to explain without inserting personal experience too, sorry. As a writer myself I’ve noticed I’m drawn to writing characters that are brazen and bold and don't mind telling people off. Really it’s because I operate in the world in the polar opposite way. I try not to draw attention to myself, I’m quiet, and I’m a people-pleaser. People who project confidence, especially in an impolite sort of way, fascinate me. It’s good to take cultural context into account, too: I've heard people who’d know better than me that part of the reason Bakugou is the most popular character in the Japanese fandom is likely because he contradicts a lot of their social norms. His disregard is refreshing and cathartic. I can speculate that Deku has a similar point of view based on what he thinks but does not admit about Bakugou being his image of victory and how this sometimes makes him mimic Bakugou’s speech and mannerisms: 

There’s also the bit in this fight where Deku realizes he's the only one able to receive Bakugou’s emotions. This is because he’s the most intimately familiar with him and his situation, but I think there’s another layer. Deku, as we know, has a self-sacrificing tendency, and in the current chapters we’re seeing the worst side of that. But let’s also not forget that to an extent, it can be a positive trait: resilience. When it comes to Bakugou, he has an almost comical ability to dodge the potential fallout of his outbursts. The example we all jump to (and fight about..) is how in ch1, apart from the initial shock of Bakugou suggesting he jump off the roof, the most he reacts is to criticize him for saying such a ridiculous thing. However, I think their interaction post- sludge villain is a lot more interesting:

Note two things: 1, in his head, Deku is practically making fun of how Bakugou’s acting as he stomps away without waiting for a reply. It doesn’t faze him. 2, Deku thinks, optimistically, that he can now focus on a different career choice. This is astonishing really. Up to this point, none of Bakugou’s attempts to put him down have worked; he just kept pursuing his dream. The only reason Deku concedes in this moment it because for the first time, he has been shown that he really couldn't do anything in a fight against a villain. All Might told him he couldn't be a hero (although he’s literally about to take that back in the next few pages lol) and the other heroes at the scene gave him a lecture about it too. It was those experiences, and not Bakugou’s words, that truly affected him. And when All Might tells Deku he can be a hero after all, it’s not thinking of Bakugou’s bullying that makes him sob and fall to his knees, it’s the memory of his own mom never telling him those words he so desperately needed to hear. Having spent most of their lives together, Deku must have been aware all this time that Baukgou was influenced by larger societal forces rather than a core judgement, so he didn’t take it personally. He separated the person from the action, and because he’s resilient and patient, he is thus equipped to handle Bakugou’s emotions. It’s a testament to his maturity and emotional intelligence, really. 

But I can almost hear some of you saying, “that doesn’t mean Deku should have to be the bigger person here!” Correct! Just because Deku is perfectly alright bearing all of that, doesn’t mean atonement-era Bakugou sees it this way. We can track his awareness of Deku’s care and selflessness as follows-

The bridge scene, when they’re little kids: Bakugou conflates Deku’s heroism with pity, and subsequently thinks Deku is looking down on him because Bakugou’s own insecurity makes him defensive.

The Sludge Villain, and also Deku vs. Kacchan Part 1: Bakugou witnesses first-hand how easily Deku jumps to risk his own life, but still thinks he’s being looked down on. 

The Sports Festival: Bakugou fights Uraraka and recognizes her endurance strategy and refusal to give up as very Deku-like. He’s half right. He thinks Deku advised her in the fight, when in reality she just mimicked Deku because she admired him. I want to draw attention to his very sober comment about her not being frail. It’s a great endearment of Uraraka’s character and Bakugou’s respect for her when others didn’t take “fighting a girl” seriously, but it also reflects on his opinion of Deku. Deku isn’t weak either. He never was.

Deku vs. Kacchan Part 2: Deku finally corrects him about the whole looking-down-on-him thing, and Bakugou is informed that Deku’s selflessness is in fact the reason All Might chose him. Since Bakugou had been in search of what he himself was “doing wrong” for All Might to favor Deku over him, he now has to reconcile the fact that selflessness is a heroic trait, and moreover something he lacks. This is also possibly the first time Bakugou is able to see his past actions toward Deku as bullying since he previously thought it was more mutual. Additionally, Bakugou can now link Deku’s selfless behavior to what he perceived as pity/contempt, and realize that Deku has been giving him A LOT of grace. Maybe too much. Maybe more than Bakugou deserves, and definitely more than Deku should have to. Holy heck- now Bakugou has to figure out how to live up to all the faith that’s been placed in him. 

Subtextually, we can see Bakugou’s feelings about atonement reflected in the Todoroki family:

1, Shouto is another example of Deku growing a friendship using his selflessness (since their fight in the sports festival) and their relationship is being acknowledged here where it hasn’t been in Bakugou’s situation. Perhaps Bakugou is wishing it could be so simple for him, to be able to thank him for being his friend like that. Deku saying the pleasure is all his also probably calls to mind how a mere apology from Bakugou would probably be dismissed because that’s just the kind of accommodating person Deku is. Bakugou has to operate more quietly in order to actually make up for their past. I personally don’t interpret this scene as Bakugou being jealous of Deku and Shouto’s friendship, exactly, just the lack of emotional baggage. Side note, Deku and Fuyumi are kinda similar in their desire to repair relationships. I like that she’s the one to give him some credit. 

2, With the common terminology, this can be interpreted as Bakugou receiving a model for atonement, one that is about action, and nothing to do with receiving favor or forgiveness. It’s a sense of duty. 

Many of the above sentiments are repeated in the flashback conversation between All Might and Bakugou right before Bakugou’s sacrifice. 

Bakugou acknowledges his bullying and that it happened because of his own insecurities, but aside from that, it’s interesting he neither confirms nor denies All Might’s suggestion that he’s trying to atone, or that Deku doesn’t see it that way. All Might is a bit of an unreliable mentor sometimes, but I don’t think he’s misreading here. Rather, Bakugou is displaying his tendency to hold back when talking about things that would make him really emotional. Besides, admitting to what he’s doing kind of defeats the purpose. He isn’t seeking acknowledgement. All Might has gotten to the crux of the issue here when pointing out that Deku doesn’t recognize the atonement, likely because Deku doesn't think Bakugou even needs to atone. Am I reading into it too much to say Bakugou looks wistful at this? It’s kinda frustrating sometimes trying to interpret Bakugou’s actions because he’s so paradoxical. Loud and in your face, but also extremely reserved. Sometimes I feel like I’m grasping at thin air, but hey, being hard to figure out is part of his intrigue as a character. The simplest way to look at him is to assume that unless he’s really showing vulnerability, he’s probably deflecting and hiding something.

Speaking of Bakugou’s tendency to to hold back emotional stuff, there’s his apparent lack of issue with Deku calling him Kacchan. Maybe to begin with, in his warped perception of things where he thought they hated each other, Bakugou saw it as Deku’s way of getting back at him for calling him “useless,” and didn't dare give any indication that it actually bothered him. However... consider how betrayed Bakugou has appeared when he was noticeably thinking Deku was looking down on him- the bridge scene, and the beginning of their first year at UA when he thought Deku was hiding a quirk all along. He looks shocked and hurt. That kind of emotion couldn’t be invoked by someone Bakugou didn’t actually care about his relationship with. “Kacchan” comes from a long time ago, before their relationship was strained, so it’s connotations are pure. Maybe somewhere deep down, Bakugou has always been hoping that Deku’s continued use of the nickname was not simply a matter of habit or teasing, but a vestige of friendship they’re both clinging to, and Bakugou himself was too afraid to admit to himself that he felt this way about it, so he mostly ignored it. (These are not original thoughts I am having here lol, this is a common interpretation. I’m just laying everything out like I said.) 

And now we turn to the current situation. Personally, I’ve been looking frantically back and forth between them wondering who’s going to break down first (Deku vs. Kacchan Part 3, this time it’s just a fight to get the other person to cry? ha.) Both have looked like they’re approaching a breaking point for some time. Also, I’ve addressed this before, but I think it’s significant that Bakugou is no longer wearing his mask with his hero costume, in contrast to Deku recently donning his own. It feels symbolic of Bakugou about to be upfront about how he feels.

The question is, what is it going to take to get Deku to accept help? If you ask me, Deku has dug himself so deeply into the I’m-doing-this-for-everyone-else’s-safety-and-smiles hole, no common sense argument can possibly reach him. By the end of 320, Deku’s mask is off, and we can see how desperate he truly is. But he has not cried, yet. I predict we’re going to see a bit more of his defiance, this time on full display on his face as the remaining class members and his other friends take their turns. But then I think Bakugou has to be the one to break down so Deku can witness his actions having the opposite effect he intended. People have been pointing out that Deku is currently ignoring Bakugou, and oof, that’s gotta be intentional. Regardless of what Bakugou says, it’s going to be wrapped up not only in his understanding of Deku’s self-sacrifice, but also the betrayal Bakugou feels at being ignored/left behind that ironically echoes his previous perception of being looked down on, as well as a need to express how much he cares about Deku before it’s too late. He must show that the two of them are inseparable because they both act to save each other without thinking, and both feel like losing the other would be like dying themselves. All Might may have been right when he told them they could learn from each other after Deku vs. Kacchan Part 2, but he didn’t fully realize that idea by making sure they stuck by each other for support and balance. 

I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like when they do finally get to that point, totally in synch and in tune with each other. They’ll be a powerful force no one is quite prepared for. Who knows when that will be, or even which chapter will be their big showdown, but I know the day is coming.

To speculate even further, I think the 2nd user is going to be really important really soon. And no I don’t mean to suggest that the 2nd user is Bakugou. But I do think their resemblance is key. Okay this is gonna be convoluted...

See how 2nd is the only one still standing? I think that’s symbolic of him withholding his quirk. Deku may not even know what it is at this point, let alone have unlocked it. Given that 2nd approves of Deku’s strategy at this point, it seems odd for him to withhold his quirk based on lack of faith. I think if his quirk was something that would help Deku in combat, he would have shown it to him already like the others did. So what if those gauntlets of his are support items that are meant to make up for his lack of a combat-oriented quirk, rather than to augment it? Mind you, I still have no idea what his mysterious power might be, but I’m dead set on it not being explosion-y. Regardless, I think 2nd looking like Bakugou is more about aiding some grand visual parallel, so! You know how 2nd and 3rd were probably intending to do away with Yoichi but 2nd changed his mind as soon as they made eye contact? This is really a long shot, but I wonder if 2nd’s quirk has something to do with that exchange. Maybe it’s something psychological, or some 6th sense about people he meets. So... in that way 2nd’s quirk could play a role in bkdk reaching a deeper understanding? Idk! But it could be significant at least that 2nd left Yoichi’s question about why he reached out to him unanswered. 

One more thing- while I was gathering screenshots I found this. I think “you’re the last one I’m telling” might be foreshadowing for Bakugou revealing his hero name to Deku and it being a Big Deal:

As for other lingering threads in the overall plot right now, such as the UA traitor, Stain, whatever Tsuyu is apparently about to do, All Might’s car maybe in the background of the last page of 320... man I have no idea. All I know is there’s literally 320 chapters’ worth of build-up to this confrontation that can’t be interrupted. 

See you next week <3

[105ttt]

Hi sorry if this was already asked before but could you explain a little further abt the things devsis has done?? I haven’t heard abt a lot of the stuff you mentioned I don’t mean to sound rude or anything I’m just genuinely wondering

I can tell you mean it genuinely, it’s okay! I’m happy to answer because you want to know. I’ll go through everything I said.

The Valentine’s 2021 fanart video, posted on the official CR YouTube channel, is a compilation of fanart drawn for Valentine’s Day that fanartists submitted. Some of the art submitted was chosen BY DEVSISTERS and put in the video, but not all art made it in. Two pedophilic ships, Red Bean x Snow Sugar and Roguefort x Walnut, were featured in the video. Red Bean x Snow Sugar was featured TWICE. Snow Sugar and Walnut are confirmed to be children while Red Bean and Roguefort are HEAVILY implied to be adults. Devsisters allowed the pedophilic ships to be shown in a fanart video for a holiday primarily about romantic love, therefore putting their seal of approval on these pedophilic ships. Despite fans saying it should be taken down, the video is still up as of today.

Related to the video and Devsisters’ promotion of fanart on official Twitter accounts, they are known to promote fanart that whitewashes the Cookies. This applies to not only Cookies like Cocoa and Mint Choco, who are clearly black, but also Cookies that are tan, like Alchemist. This approval of whitewashing has been going on for literal years, and when an artist was called out for a piece that Devsisters promoted, Devsisters sided with the artist and claimed that they should be respected rather than made to understand why whitewashing is bad.

Both the Dreamy Cookie Land event and the 2021 April Fools GingerBrave Trial contain sections that are known to harm photosensitive people by either giving them seizures or seriously hurting their eyes and causing immense discomfort and pain. While Devsisters altered the maps in Dreamy Cookie Land to make them less likely to hurt these people, the 2021 April Fools Trial has not changed. Devsisters should have made sure these maps were safe BEFORE publishing them to thousands of people (or more).

Devsisters misgenders its own characters on official Twitter accounts and in game notifications. Squid Ink Cookie was referred to as “she” on a Puzzle World Twitter post, despite this Cookie never having pronouns anywhere in the game. Mocha Ray Cookie was referred to with “she” in a game notification despite having no pronouns listed anywhere in the game, including cutscenes. Devil Cookie was referred to with “he” in a Twitter post despite the game canonically using only “they/them” for them. In addition, a statement from the Thai branch of the Devsisters team claimed that you can use any pronouns for a Cookie since they are born sexless (and they conflated sex with gender). This gives transphobes the “right” to misgender canonically nonbinary characters. Lastly, before the Guild update and before OvenBreak, Dark Choco and Cinnamon had no pronouns. After the Guild update, Cookies referred to Dark Choco as “he”, and in OvenBreak, Cinnamon’s Story uses “he” for them. This erases two canonically nonbinary characters, as cis people will see “he” being used for them and assume they are male rather than he/they nonbinary people.

Devsisters is not subtle about their homophobia, as well as their goal of appealing to cishets who hate gay people. They show their homophobia in how straight ships are treated compared to gay ships. Firstly, in the Valentine’s fanart video, there were mostly straight ships. I believe I counted only 4 or so gay ships, and 3 of these were either selfcest or pedophilia. Despite the majority of the art being shown being heterosexual, many people who regularly follow the CR tag on Twitter and Instagram claim that there was a lot more gay ship art submitted compared to the proportion shown in the video. The gay ship art shown was also ambiguous enough that cishets who hate gay people wouldn’t get mad at Devsisters, while some of the heterosexual art was blatantly romantic. Secondly, the treatment of ships like RaspRose and PrincessKnight, popular straight ships, is much better than the treatment of popular gay ships by Devsisters. For example, RaspRose got a merchandise item in a set of cups that also featured a cup with Sea Fairy and Moonlight and Orange and Lime. The RaspRose art on the cup is explicitly romantic. The art on the Sea Fairy and Moonlight and Orange and Lime cups are ambiguous or platonic instead, despite both of these ships being historically far more plausible and popular than RaspRose. Finally, Devsisters has been gaybaiting with Madeleine Cookie and Espresso Cookie in Kingdom, but they refuse to make them canon because that would be gay. Gaybaiting is homophobic in itself for using gay people as a way to advertise something without fulfilling the promise of gay representation. It’s also worth mentioning that they once gaybaited with Milk and Purple Yam on Twitter, but the art shown was not romantic at all, and only the caption hinted at a ship (and the caption was vague enough to be interpreted as the Cookies merely appearing in an art piece together).

Multiple black CR fans have spoken out and said that Purple Yam Cookie is a racist caricature of black men, ESPECIALLY when he is juxtaposed with Milk, a white man. Indian and Middle Eastern CR fans have spoken out and said that Yogurt Cream Cookie and Lilac Cookie are caricatures of Indian and Middle Eastern people. These are not debatable. Google the history of the portrayal of black men in non-black media, and you’ll see what I mean for Purple Yam. The evidence that Yogurt Cream is a caricature comes from the very fact that people compare him to Aladdin, specifically Disney’s version of the tale, thereby showing that their only exposure to Indian and Middle Eastern people is stereotypes in white media. Note also that Dark Choco Cookie is the stereotype of a solemn, lonely, strong black person, and this has leaked into the fandom so much that people draw them unrealistically buff and mostly draw them suffering from angst instead of having any actual character.

There was an IRL sex crime in South Korea perpetrated by a club called the Burning Sun, and a certain Guild named itself after that club and changed their usernames to the names of the people who committed these crimes. They were only forced to change their names by Devsisters AFTER people protested. They were NOT forced to disband the Guild or banned from the game. Keep in mind that these people named themselves after a REAL-LIFE SEX CRIME that harmed REAL WOMEN AND GIRLS, and the only punishment they got was a forced name change. Fuck Devsisters.

Lastly, the trigger joke. Back when Ion Cookie Robot and Cyborg Cookie were new, the official CR Twitter account made a Tweet captioned as “triggered”, and below that caption was a GIF of Ion Cookie Robot becoming angry and shifting to their Red Dread Costume, thereby implying that Ion Cookie Robot was “triggered” and became unreasonably angry. This was posted during the time when ableists were using the term “triggered” as a “meme”, which harms people with PTSD. The Tweet was deleted, and another Tweet was made that apologized for the previous Tweet, but this was only after backlash from fans. However, notice that Purple Yam Cookie is also a trigger joke. He has PTSD from being burned alive in the Oven for so long, and as a result he is easily angered (anger is his stress response). The game treats this as a joke and minimizes his suffering just because other Cookies were in the Oven (before coming to life). His anger is treated as unreasonable and unwarranted, and it’s treated as a joke. Does that sound familiar? Now take into account that his anger is juxtaposed with Milk’s “kind”, “gentle” demeanor. Yikes.

BONUS ROUND:

DevSam, a worker at Devsisters, once said that GingerBrave had a Costume in LINE that was a “sexy cat costume”. GingerBrave is a minor, and the Costume was literally not sexy at all. Why did they refer to him as sexy if he’s a minor??

Images from an official CR account showed a person dressed as GingerBrave giving gifts to a person dressed as Pink Choco Cookie, a Cookie associated with romantic love. This can be easily interpreted as romantic and is therefore pedophilic because GingerBrave is a child and Pink Choco Cookie is an adult. Why post this at all??

Buttershell Fox referred to Maple Panda with a word that was VERY close to a slur against black people in the original text of the Secrets of the Hidden City cutscenes. This was only changed when a popular Twitter user let everyone know about it and asked people to email Devsisters about it.

I can provide links and screenshots for proof if needed, but please DM me or send an ask to ask for these. I’m definitely forgetting other things they’ve done that are bad, but this already should be enough to raise eyebrows.

[transmeds]

My apologies, another person in your replies said “Anon you realize that exact logic is and HAS been used to justify the deliberate misgendering of trans people, right” and I thought it was you. Anyhow, there is no reason to get so nasty, I’m just asking you to explain your thoughts on this since you frequently post in the tags with your opinions. Being a “boy” or a “girl” is a social role, not necessarily a gender. So, yeah, it’s possible to take on a different gender role than the one associated with your gender. Since roles are often conflated with gender, they tend to be used interchangeably. People who are PNC often use “wrong” pronouns to express their complicated relationship with gender identity. Aside from this, some people use certain pronouns for themselves because they simply enjoy them, which is their own prerogative. So, then, you’re against being PNC because 1) it’s too complicated for you personally to process and that is somehow deserving of your vitriol and 2) you feel that English grammar and syntax rules are more important than respecting people’s referential language? How is challenging language any different than challenging gender stereotypes, as one would do being GNC? Do you prioritize your comfort over the dignity of other transgender people, or do you seriously think that language is sacred? Words are created all the time and definitions change with their usage. It sounds that rather than even attempt to accommodate your brethren, you would prefer to latch on to the anti-PNC position so you have some excuse to not challenge your notions of “gendered” language. As a person with an auditory processing disorder myself that impacts my life greatly, that is not an excuse for you not to better yourself, even if it is difficult for you. Other people do not deserve your anger for simply existing with pronouns that challenging the status quo. If you *definitively and actively know* a person’s pronouns are contrary to their appearance or identity and you refuse to even try to refer to them properly, that is not an issue with processing, but with conflating pronouns with gender identity at the best and willfully choosing to disrespect them at the worst. That can’t be explained away by saying you have a processing disorder. Do not attempt to paint being PNC as ableist because you are unwilling to challenge your deep-seeded, actively obsolescent beliefs. Having a processing disorder makes people rely on context. If you are communicating with or about someone whose pronouns you know, PNC or otherwise, you have been provided the context. You are choosing to either ignore it for your own comfort and a lack of desire to improve yourself or because you think language is more important than people. If I’m wrong, prove it.

i didnt mean to get nasty i just dnt have a good concept of whats too mean n stuff.

i love that you consistently add more to what i am saying and look to deep into it to paint me as a bad person but i will get to that later. its hard to pay attention to one thing at a time but i will try 2 go in order.

being a boy or girl isnt a social role,, its just being a girl or boy?? like a kid female n kid male like. thats not a role thts a fucking.. way to describe someones gender when theyre a kid?? like i cannot even understand why i have to say that. wtf do u think being a girl/boy is?? its a way to describe someones gender, like pronouns. not a role or gender expression.

im not against it because its too complicated or that i want to disrespect ppls pronouns or something like that you want to put into my mouth. challenging a language is different than challenging gender rules because language was made with a purpose and one that still matters today. gender roles never served a solid purpose, them getting removed doesn't matter at all.

this is really pointless because youre going to keep refusing to recognize that language is important and that pronouns aren't something that you just use to make yourself happy, they are a tool in language that serve two singular purposes. to replace a name. and to describe the person in a gendered way. getting rid of gender should just mean getting rid of pronouns all together because they are pointless without any description of the person that they are being used for. because then you cant fucking tell who they're talking about at all. this is why robots struggle with pronouns :)

its funny to me that you add "appearance" to "identity" as if 1. they match. 2. that i at all ever said they have to watch appearance. if you didnt know im NOT PASSING. 3. as if appearance matters <3

this isnt about me wanting to be rude or not challenge gender roles or anything, im a very gnc man myself. this is about the fact that pronouns only real purpose is to tell you what gender someone is, not if they're masculine or feminine or just like the sound of them. this is why getting called "she/her" makes the majority trans men dysphoric, but why wearing dresses or having traditionally feminine roles won't make the majority of them dysphoric.

you clearly aren't listening to what im saying so i dont see why you insist on replying and putting things in my mouth from finding excuses like "someone else said it" to whatever youre going to make for trying to say i just dont like people who r pnc and am using processing an an excuse, instead of an example of why its important this time.

language isnt more important than people, but people can not exist as is without a way of communicating. trying to tear down communication because you dont like its rules just make what it is to be human harder to be. i cannot be myself to anyone else if there is no words to describe who i am in a strictly male or unrelated sense. there's a difference verison of you to every person you know, and you can't make it remotely accurate without the words to express it.

[grandiosetirade]

I don't mean to be rude but the "soft uwu girl" thing you wrote seems kind of misogynist. I do agree that some people portray Kaeloo as much nicer than she actually is, but when you conflate that with feminity, it feels like you're trying to further the stereotypes that girls are "soft and uwu" and boys are aggressive and mean.

I’m not saying this at all ??

What i meant is that some people portrays Kaeloo as a soft cute girl .... i never said all girls are like this ??? I was just talking about how people are portraying Kae like ??? Sorry but i really don’t get how you can come with this kind of conclusion....

[pneumasthesia]

Epilogue

Epilogue

 “Hey, kid! Your time’s up. Get out so the real psychologists can use the room” says a mildly annoyed voice from outside the room.

“Yes, yes, yes, of course. Just give us a moment and we’ll be right out” responds the therapist, with more than a mild tone of annoyance.

“Come on, sleeping beauty, we’re going to have to end the show here and get out now” he says, shaking awake the middle-aged woman passed out on a reclining chair in front of him.

“Ugh, just when I had started to have an actually restful sleep. How annoying” the culprit sleepily responds.

“Oh, so you were actually sleeping this time” the therapist exclaims with further growing annoyance, “I had thought you were having another trip, but now that you’re done with that you’re just trying to fool me into letting you off any further examination, isn’t that right?”

“Obviously. I just relived the most traumatic moment in my life, of course I’d want a rest afterwards” she answers while getting off the chair to leave the examination room.

“That’s all well and good for you” says the therapist, his annoyance reaching its peak, “but some of us here have research to do and precious little time to get it done.”

“Don’t worry ‘Pet’, I’m not going anywhere” the culprit reassures, “I’ll surely be in this psychiatric ward for the rest of my life.”

The patient and doctor-to-be walk down the psych ward’s hallways, passing by patients and therapists alike on their way back to the culprit’s room.

“That’s exactly why I have to rush” the therapist says, a note of faint concern in his tone, “don’t you want to see the other pneumasthetes again?”

“Is that the name you’ve given us sufferers?” the culprit questions, “you’ve really taken to continuing the old man’s research, even using the same name for the disorder.”

“I may not have liked his methods or his reasons, but his hypotheses are still worth considering” Pet answers somewhat defensively, “besides, those theories of his are just as much mine.”

“Hmm? What do you mean? You came up with that fantastical theory?” the culprit says.

“I wouldn’t say it’s all that fantastical” the therapist explains, “given that it’s based on experience.”

The culprit suddenly halts her advance down the psych ward hallway and turns back to her therapist, mouth agape.

“You have pneumasthesia too?” she exclaims.

“Of course” Pet answers matter-of-factly, “you’ve seen through my eyes, I mean walked in my shoes, you must have noticed that.”

“I thought that those were my abilities” the culprit says with some degree of embarrassment.

“But you’ve never experienced those things before, have you?” the therapist questions, “from what I’ve gathered your particular type of pneumasthesia is based around seeing people as stock personality archetypes, whereas mine manifests as ‘seeing’ people’s current thoughts and emotions.”

The culprit starts walking again, deep in thought. Eventually she speaks up, “but that doesn’t explain what I experienced. I saw the thoughts and emotions that other people had in the past. Neither of our abilities can do that.”

“It’s not accurate to call our conditions ‘abilities’” the therapist explains, “if you talk about pneumasthesia like that, the other psychologists will discount my research as nonsensical postulating about ESP.”

“Is that not what it is?” the culprit rudely interjects.

“Hurtful, but not true this time” the therapist says with an amused chuckle, “from what little research I have been able to do, I can say with some certainty that there is a mostly logical explanation for everything we have experienced.”

“’Mostly, huh? Very well then, explain it to me, Professor” the culprit says with a wide smirk.

The therapist returns the smirk and begins “well, surely you remember the late Professor’s explanation?”

“Yes, empathy is supposedly a sixth sense all people possess and, in some people, these ‘pneumasthetes’, that sense becomes conflated with another sense” the culprit continues.

“Quite right” the therapist congratulates with the tone of a kind teacher, “in some cases, that is. For example, that young man had his personal empathic judgement of other people’s personalities conflated with his ability to perceive color.”

“Only his own judgement of personalities?” the culprit asks, “I thought empathy was some sort of secret infallible sense, not something that subjective.”

“No. Like I said, there is nothing fantastical about this condition” answers the therapist, “a less charitable psychologist may simply disregard that young man’s ‘powers’ as hallucinations since they are only based off how he subjectively views other people.”

He continues with his explanation “that is why he was unable to tell two people that he perceived as ‘Green’ apart. After you, the great blue ocean that you are, had a sudden change of heart, he perceived your ‘soul’ as that of a different person, due to his flawed judgement of your surface-level change in persona.”

“Hmm, alright, but that still doesn’t change why he couldn’t tell us apart without his color-personality hallucinations” the culprit says, “It’s not like he was blind as well.”

“Not blind, but face-blind” the therapist says.

“What?” the culprit says incredulously.

“It’s called Prosopagnosia. He generally just tells people apart by their hair, height, and clothes, but since you and the older man were similar in those regards, he had to rely on your colors to tell you apart” the therapist says, “it took a lot of testing to convince him that he had that condition. He was so adamant on insisting that he was ‘normal’.”

“Huh, so even he had a condition like that” the culprit says, contemplatively, “what about the others. What about that girl?”

“Her?” the therapist says, caught by surprise for a moment before beginning to smile at the culprit’s touching concern, “her condition is much simpler, she was highly empathic and sensed her exceedingly accurate judgements of people’s personalities as noise. It should have been a very easy condition to diagnose, but her Schizophrenic auditory hallucinations somewhat complicated my analysis.”

“Schizophrenia” the culprit muses, “I had thought her condition was more like mine, but that makes more sense.”

The therapist lets out a good-natured laugh, “well there was certainly something about you that made her open up to you more quickly than anyone else. It took me at least a dozen meetings to get her to speak. She just kept having those panic attacks whenever I was nearby.”

The culprit lets out a mocking laugh, “that’s to be expected. You try to pretend that you’re extremely empathic and all that, but deep down you’re just an awkward little kid.”

The culprit quickly transitions into another line of questioning, “speaking of awkward children, what about that strange older man?”

“Wow, that was extremely rude” the therapist notes, “it’s a good thing he’s not here so I don’t have to lie and tell you that your judgement is false. His condition is a little bit more complex. His sense of empathy is crossed with the part of his brain that recognizes quantities of objects.”

“Counting is its own sense?” asks the culprit, “I didn’t know that.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s a sense per say” the therapist explains, “that’s why I said that the Professor’s explanation was incomplete. From what I’ve seen Pneumasthesia can include the crossing of empathy with less straightforward neurological processes.”

“Is that the reason why his judgement of other people was so flawed?” the culprit asks, “he even thought that I was kind and ‘complete’ or some nonsense like that.”

“I wouldn’t say that particular judgement of his was entirely wrong” the therapist says with a smile, “the fact that he is on the autism spectrum is probably the reason for his somewhat, let’s go with ‘awkward’ empathic senses.”

“Autism?” exclaims the culprit, nearly tripping on the stairs as the two pneumasthetes walk up them to her room, “that makes sense, but I wouldn’t have expected it from the way he acted.”

“Me neither” the therapist laughs to himself, and at himself, “I feel ashamed as a psychologist to have been so closeminded as to think that someone so functional in social situations couldn’t be autistic. He was simply well adjusted to working with his condition.”

The culprit is silent for a bit, reevaluating her judgement of the older man, before speaking up, “and what about that old lady? What was her deal?”

“Her ‘deal’, as you put it so crudely, is memory loss” the therapist answers.

“And what about her type of pneumasthesia?” the culprit probes.

“She didn’t have it, at least I’d wouldn’t say so from what I gathered” the therapist says with a shrug, “the Professor misdiagnosed her. These things happen.”

“Oh” the culprit ruminates on this thought before realizing something and speaking up, “wait, but what about yours and my conditions? That’s what I was asking about at the start and you didn’t answer.”

“Yes, yes, yes, of course. I was getting to that” the therapist says with a laugh, “I was just taking my time to ease into that whole complex affair.”

The therapist takes a deep breath as the two reach the floor that the culprit’s room is on, then begins his explanation, “my condition is fairly simple to explain because it’s the basis for the initial theory that guided the Professor’s research after he examined me. My sense of empathy is crossed with the part of my brain that recognizes visual information, but because my eyes do not function due to a birth defect, that part of my brain works entirely on processing empathic information, causing me to ‘see’ people’s thoughts and emotions with great clarity.”

“That’s basically what I figured that it was” the culprit says, “but you would only be able to see people’s current thoughts, right? How does that lead to seeing people’s memories?”

“That’s where your peculiar condition comes in” the therapist says, “I theorize that your sense of empathy, that being your subjective judgement of other people’s personalities, has been crossed with your long-term memory.”

The culprit appears befuddled by this explanation, “what exactly does that mean?”

“It means that when you first see a person, you judge them as possessing a particular set of personality traits, you then associate those traits with a familiar personality archetype in your head” the therapist theorizes, “in your case people are conflated with the archetypal Arcana of the Tarot.”

“So in simple terms, it’s a crossing of memory and empathy” the culprit suggests.

“Yes, you could say that” the therapist says.

“And you said it’s based off my ‘subjective judgement’, not anything more concrete than that” the culprit says.

“Yes, it’s no different than that young man’s condition” the therapist agrees, “well there is one difference, because this condition causes you to associate people you’ve just met with familiar archetypes, it causes you to falsely assume familiarity with people, potentially leading to an inflated sense of your own accuracy in your judgement of people’s personalities.”

The culprit gives a sharp laugh in response to this statement, “well, if you put it like that, it can hardly be considered a superpower at all, it’s basically a curse!”

The therapist does not smile in response to this self-deprecation, “I wouldn’t say it’s bad exactly. It’s just a different way to see the world.”

The culprit turns her head away from her therapist, “you are nice, you know that. Saying these things to me even after what I’ve done. Calling me a man and all that.”

“You may be a murderer, but your life is still your own” the therapist states without hesitating, “you should be able to enjoy it however you are able and make your own choices about how you want to spend it, and who you want to spend it being, so of course I’ll support your transition.”

The culprit turns his head back to his therapist, a wry smile on his effeminate face, “you’re sure that you don’t want to diagnose me with some sort of self-hating delusion? Something to do with my bipolar personality disorder, or whatever they call it?”

The therapist returns his patient’s mocking smirk, “it doesn’t matter if you believe you’re a man because you’re crazy or not. If it makes you happy, and you’re not hurting anyone, it’s not my job to tell you what to do.”

The duo begins to laugh to themselves as they stand in front of the entrance to the culprit’s room. The culprit stands with his back to the closed door, clearly not wanting to retreat to his quarters alone again.

After a moment of contemplation, the culprit speaks up, “so I know what my condition is, but how did that whole ‘memory trip’ thing happen?”

The therapist turns away for a moment and speaks with less confidence than usual, “I’m not fully sure in this case. That one was a first for me too. I just had a theory that if the two of us stimulated our empathy and memories with a few pointed questions, that something potentially therapeutic might happen. I can’t be sure that what I experienced was the same as what you experienced, but I have a vague idea as to why it happened.”

The therapist continues, “my condition causes me to perceive the emotions or others as if they were my own vision, and your condition causes you to perceive the emotions of others as part of your memory, so perhaps when the two of us began to look into each other’s heads, the thoughts of others and your memories were temporarily entangled, causing us to witness the memories of other people.”

“That seems like a leap of logic” the culprit says, “something like definitely sounds like Sci-fi nonsense. It’s not like either of us ever witnessed those memories ourselves, so how could they have been in our heads?”

“I don’t think those were anyone’s memories” the therapist says, “I think they might have been our own fabrications of what we thought their memories might have been.”

The culprit stares back at his therapist incredulously, “you mean that those things we witnessed were not the truth, that we just made them all up and thought they were other people’s memories?”

“Perhaps” the therapist reluctantly says.

The culprit slumps back on the door, “you’re telling me that none of that was what really happened?”

“No” the therapist answers, “but just because it was not true, doesn’t mean it can’t be useful to believe in it.”

The culprit answers back, “how can a lie help me understand the truth of myself any better?”

The therapist takes a long pause, contemplating how to say this, and finally speaks “all observation is a lie that our brains tell us. We have no way to know if our experience of the world is true, so all people experience their own false truth. I think that we should be allowed to believe in whatever lie about reality helps us live better.”

“I refuse to live a life built on a lie” the culprit states flatly.

The therapist looks disappointed, but not surprised, “I understand, but I think that lie did do good for you.” The culprit looks away, unwilling to admit to it. The therapist continues, “please, just think about it.”

The culprit does not respond, taking a long moment to sort through his thoughts. He doesn’t seem to come to a conclusion, and simply pushes those thoughts aside before saying, “so tell me, what actually happened, in the objective reality?”

The therapist gives a sad smile and begins to recount the “true” story of events, “what actually happened was that after we discovered the body, the police were called over and all of the people present were taken under custody for questioning. I was suspected at first, but suspicion was quickly dropped after it was discovered that I was blind. The investigation took quite a while, but after some handprint analysis on bloodstains found on the gun and the determination that you had Bipolar Personality Disorder, you were charged with the crime.”

“What does me being bipolar have to do with anything?” the culprit asks.

The therapist sighs, digging up unpleasant memories, “that investigation was not pretty. The police interrogated all the guests rather forcefully. Everyone present was considered guilty until proven innocent owing to their mental illnesses. The detectives in charge thought that any one of us could have been a psychopathic murderer. When they finally determined you to possess violent mood swings, they indicted you without any further investigation.”

“Are you saying that I may not have killed the Professor” the culprit questions, a faint note of hope in his voice.

“Do you truly not remember at all what happened in that room on that night?” the therapist asks.

“No” the culprit answers, “it’s all just a blur. It frightened me, thinking what I might have done in that moment.”

“You must have had some selective memory loss” the therapist postulates, “perhaps by separating your memory of yourself from your own personal memory, you constructed an archetypal personality distinct from yourself that you could blame for your own past actions.”

The culprit looks away from his therapist, ashamed. The therapist puts his hand on his patient’s shoulder, having to reach up quite a distance to do so, “it must have been an unconscious self-defense mechanism. Something like that is very common among sufferers of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’d know, I’ve had a lot of experience working with that condition.”

“Don’t tell me that you’re about to admit to having that condition too?” the culprit jokes.

“No, no, no” the therapist laughs, “but a previous patient of mine that you might know quite well did. One of my responsibilities as his assistant was to help him deal with his condition and calm him down when it flared up.”

The culprit is incredulous once again, “you mean to say that the Professor had PTSD? Is that why he shot at that girl in such a panic?”

“I believe so” the therapist says with a sigh, “his symptoms were very severe: hallucinations, panic attacks, violent tendencies. That wasn’t the first time that he’d struck out at some ghost of his mind’s invention, neither was it the last.”

“What do you mean?” the culprit asks.

“At the scene of the crime” the therapist hesitates, then speaks, “there were signs of a struggle.”

“What? I don’t remember any struggle.” The culprit says, realization beginning to dawn on him.

“From investigation that was done after the case was laid to rest, evidence was found that may suggest that the Professor was the one who attacked first, not you” the therapist says, looking his patient straight in the eye, at least as accurately as he can manage.

“You mean…” the culprit slides down the door he is leaning against and crumples down to the floor, “I killed him in self-defense?!”

“It is possible” the therapist says, “he was in a dangerous state of mind. Seeing you enter with a gun, he may have attacked you, and in the confusion, you may have accidentally ended his life without having truly intended to from the start. After a traumatic experience like that, you could have shut away that memory and convinced yourself that killing the Professor was not a mistake made in the heat of the moment, but a calculated plot from the beginning.”

The culprit holds his knees close to his chest and chuckles a bit to himself, “that seems like something I’d do. Even in a time like that, I couldn’t admit to myself that I could have made a mistake. That is some seriously destructive self-love.”

“Perhaps it was done out of self-hate, not self-love” the therapist suggests. The culprit stops laughing at this suggestion and looks away.

The two are silent for a long few seconds. Then, the therapist reaches his hand down to his patient to help him get up. As soon as he does this, the culprit stand up on his own, a smile having erased all other emotion that was on his face before.

“One last question” he blurts out, “I never got your name. What is it, in full?”

The therapist is taken aback, for numerous reasons, “I could have sworn that I introduced myself properly when we started the therapy session today.”

“You probably did, but I didn’t pay attention” the culprit says without any shame, “so tell me it again.”

The therapist seems mildly offended but shakes it off and says, “Peter Eric Tomas-Jacobs, that’s my full name.”

“Doesn’t that make your initials PETJ?” the culprit questions, “I thought you were the ‘PET’.”

“Well, at the time that we first met, my name was only Peter Eric Tomas” Peter answers, “the second family name is a recent addition.”

The culprit stares blankly as he ponders why this could be, before suddenly realizing. He shouts out, “y-y-you mean that you got married?”

Peter places his hand over his patient’s mouth to prevent the sound from traveling through the echoing psych ward hallway and says, “quiet down! I can’t let anyone else know that I’m married. The people here don’t even know that I have a boyfriend.”

The culprit looks more incredulous than he’s been throughout his entire pseudo-psychic mind-trip. His mouth is so agape beneath his therapists’ hand that he almost accidentally bites down on that hand. Eventually he whispers, “you swing that way?”

Peter gives a big smile, “yes, of course I’m into men, why do you think that I was flirting with you before?”

“So you were flirting with me!” the culprit shouts out and then realizes how loud he is being and shuts his own mouth.

“Of course not. I’m a happy newlywed, even if the two of us haven’t gotten the union properly officiated. Besides, if me and you were together than I’d be Mr. Tomas-Rider, which is a name I don’t like nearly as much, though when I do get my doctorate, Dr. Rider would be a pretty cool name” Peter muses to himself, “oh that reminds me, you probably don’t go by Regina anymore, so what should I call you now? Wait, let me guess … Reginald is your new name, right?”

“I go by Rex” says the culprit.

“Like, the dog name?” says Peter, now his turn to be incredulous.

“I think it’s a cool name, Rex Rider” the culprit chuckles to himself with unabashed pride, “it struck fear in the hearts of all the girls I faced in the ring when I was in prison.”

“Oh right, I do remember that in your file” Peter says, “you were the undefeated boxing champ at the woman’s prison. The resident therapist at that prison wrote about it as evidence of your ‘persistent innate violent tendencies’.”

“It’s not my fault if I’m good at being a boxer” the culprit says, pride not fading one bit, “I have the physique of a natural-born man and all the time in the world to train. I just wish I could have some opponents more my size.”

Peter smiles at that, happy that his patient has some hopes for the future, no matter how small, “if I can prove to the world that your condition is real and not just some dangerous hallucination, then you might be able to get out of this place and do some real boxing.”

The culprit smiles, joy and melancholy both mixed in his expression, before turning away, opening the door to his quarters and entering, “then I’ll be waiting for you, as long as necessary, my savior.”

Peter looks blankly down at his toes, smiling the same smile, “you might have to wait for a while yet, maybe longer than a lifetime.”

The culprit’s expression does not change, “That’s fine. I expected that, but I’m glad you’re trying, for everyone’s sake.”

The culprit suddenly turns back, startling his “savior”, and says “there’s one more thing that I want to tell you?”

Peter answers back in an apprehensive tone, “what is it?”

“I just need to get this off my chest?”

“Yes?”

“I need to tell you how I feel.”

“You feel …”

“I… I…”

“…”

“I really don’t like you.”

“I could say the same thing.”

“Then go on and say it, right to my face.”

“I absolutely despise you.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant.”

“You know me so well. That’s definitely what I hate the most about you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“I hope I never see you again.”

“I wish for the same, but it seems that we can’t be rid of each other that easily.”

“What a shame.”

“Well, see you tomorrow?”

“I will, but I don’t think that you will see me any time soon.”

“If you make that joke one more time, I will have you sent back to the prison.”

“Well, fuck you too!”

“Fuck you and I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“Fantastic, I’d love that!”

“The feeling is mutual!”

The culprit slams his door on his therapist, the widest smiles of each of the pair’s lives on their faces. It had been an eternity, it had been several years, it had been a few hours, but at long last, they could finally begin, to understand.

[zenosanalytic]

People What Aint From Round Here Is The Problem...

So I just watched Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood and I have THOUGHTS:

Ive read a few reviews&ruminations on this film at this point and I can’t believe that none of them got(or at least, mentioned explicitly) the primary thesis of this movie, spcl given that Tarentino flatly states it out the mouth of his primary protagonist within, like, the first 15-20mins of the film: “...most important thing in this town is when you’re making money you buy a house in town. You don’t rent... Hollywood real estate means you live here. You’re not just visiting, not just passing through. You fuckin live here.” i.e., the most important thing in Hollywood, to Hollywood, is the people FROM Hollywood; Everyone else is just a filthy, trouble-making tourist or profiteer who is “Passing Through” and “Doesnt Get It” and  “Is Fucking It Up”(It being the film industry), and probably “Secretly Hates Movies”. There are places and aspects of this movie that are basically a Nativist Angeleno rant, written by a life-long Angeleno film-nerd-turned-film-maker, against Hollywood’s critics(and his critics which he just totally conflates with the former), and probably non-Angelenos(and non-Californians?) in general.

There are two ways to read this thesis: Straight and Subverted/Satirized.

The evidence for reading it straight is pretty plentiful. Lots of reviews have puzzled at where the line connecting the constant hippie-bashing, the weird focus on knocking Polanski’s Polishness & preference for shooting in London, and the inexplicable pot-shot at Bruce Lee is, and I think this is it. “The Hippies” are repeatedly presented as a corrupting force: digging through trash, living in squalourous filth at the Spahn Ranch dragging members of “Old Hollywood” like its owner into it with them, selling drugs, and using sex to “control” men. And attached to this is presenting “The Hippies” as foreign; not only from another place, but refusing to assimilate with the LA way of life and hostile to it. The Manson family are the only explicitly identified “Hippies” in the film(other than, possibly, the one who sells Cliff an acid cig). The only “positive” portrayals of Bruce Lee in the film are silent ones of him teaching anglos kung fu, which has some fairly obvs and well-understood Implications.

But there’s also good evidence for reading it as subverted and satirized. Both Tate and Dalton are NOT from California, let alone LA, and Booth’s origins are left unclear. Dalton’s the only one of them explicitly id’d as being from elsewhere(Missouri), but Tate’s easy to google and she was a military kid who grew up all over the place. When Dalton returns from Italy, that sequence and his look in it are VERY reminiscent of the scenes introducing Polanski at the beginning of the film. The side-characters around Tate, perennially shown in a positive light, are also non-Angelenos. Doing Spaghetti Westerns revitalizes Dalton’s career, despite his disdain for Italian cinema. Tate and her crew, while not explicitly ID’d as “Hippies” and often shown in Mod and other fashion styles, are also presented in “Hippie” fashion, shown listening to “Hippie” music, smoking the “Hippie” Reefer(Im sorry, but Comedy Demanded this phrasing and I am Devout u_u), and implied to be living a polyamorous “Hippie” life.

It really is difficult for me to say which predominates. On the one entirely metaphorical hand, the ways in which Dalton’s Angeleno chauvinism are subverted and mocked are fairly obvs, but on the other emh, the film is FILLED with LITERALLY GLOWING nostalgia for this pre-Hippy, pre-Lefty, pre-70s, Conservative and Republican California&Los Angeles. Dalton’s focus on property-ownership&the film industry in the opening thesis could easily be seen as resolving these subversive contradictions to allow for a straight read(ie: Tate, Booth, and Dalton are “Hollywood People” who’ve both bought real-estate in LA, and who’ve grown up in film or film-adjacent fields and choose to center their adult lives in the film industry). So much, in fact, that I kinda started to wonder abt QT’s politics while watching it. And, if it WAS satirical, then what’s the point of the knock to Bruce Lee and focusing criticisms of Polanski on his Polishness and shooting in London? Is that just meant to characterize Dalton and Booth as nativists and racists?

It really cannot be said enough that there are REALLY MORE APPROPRIATE CRITICISMS to make of Polanski than 1)begin Polish, 2)possessing boyish effeminacy, and 3)preferring to shoot movies in London instead of LA. Which are this movie’s only problems with him(though it also takes the time to show him bitchily smoking a cigarette in an evening gown while being rude to a dog). Obvsl I dont object to villainizing an ACTUAL REAL LIFE VILLAIN like this shitstain, but I DO object to being asked(albeit gently) to participate in this film’s understated nationalist bigotry.

It’s possible that Cliff’s turning Pussycat down during the drive to the ranch was intended to be this but I highly doubt it. And if it was it’d be misrepresenting Polanski’s misdeeds enormously, considering that Pussycat, the too-young girl, is the sexual instigator in this film. Polanski liked to manipulate, drug, and rape underaged girls(he pulled the same shit with models in Europe before getting busted for it in LA, btw, then continued doing it after fleeing back to Europe); really not the same situation.

There’s another irony in that, while the film goes out of its way to call Polanski “boyish” and imply that makes him feminine and that this is Bad, there’s also a subtle under-current that... Tarentino sees himself in his youth the same way? He’s certainly never been short like Polanski and Jay Sebring are/were, QT’s 6 1, but the actors he cast to play them and the description made of the pair in-film are more than a bit reminiscent of how Tarentino looked&was discussed in the press back in the 90s when he was starting out. AAAaaand the film explicitly calls that Tate’s “Type”; leaving me with the question: would Tarentino be able to stop himself from implying a dead starlet would have been attracted to him? I leave the answer to your imaginations, Dear Readers u_u

Having said all that it IS a really good film, which I liked, I dont think it’d be very hard to set aside this political stuff while watching, the driving sequences are especially emotive&exhilarating, and there’s some seriously great acting in it. IDK if I’d say I liked it more than the recent Emma movie, tho.

I feel like each of the trio, Tate, Dalton, and Booth, were meant to symbolically Embody LA/Hollywood/California? Like Pitt especially seemed to be channeling movie characters and CJ from GTA: San Andreas throughout his performance, while I couldnt help but think of Ronald Reagan watching DiCaprio(spcl given the character’s likely politics). So there’s this sense in which the film is a fantasy of “Old Hollywood”, embodied by these three, Vanquishing its “Enemies”, represented by The Hippies(moralizing, pretentious, gross leftist) and potentially Polanski&Lee(foreign film ppl who refuse to integrate into the LA scene). Again, given the political history of Cali after this era, this embodiment raises some questions for me abt the film and QT’s politics(particularly in re: misogyny and feminism).

Also DiCaprio is totally going to get pitched a Reagan biopic off of this role and I sincerely hope he has the good sense to turn that shit the fuck down.

Circling back to the ranting at his critics, this movie was definitely and consciously a response to them. Like: up until the last 5-15 minutes of the film, and aside from a handful of too-lingering too fetishistic too on-the-nose creep shots of the female cast that Tarentino simply could not stop himself from making, OUATiH is precisely the sort of “Serious” film Tarentino’s critics have been saying he should make for decades now(of course he did Jackie Brown, which was that and which he blew Completely out of the park). And then there’s that bloody, gross-out, exploitation-movie ending. I dont actually think it was as bad as many critics were saying it was? For some reason I was thinking there was gonna be a massacre of the ENTIRE Manson family, which would have been totally out of left-field. But it WAS clearly a stinger of a major tone-shift thrown in as a Fuck You to the ppl who’ve called out his violent and exploitative preferences throughout the years. As for me I generally like his movies and think he’s a great filmmaker but he absolutely does go too far sometimes.

Rick Dalton, in an evening-gown, with a mixer full of iced-margarita in one hand, getting all up in the face of the driver of a loud exhaust-spewing jalope in his PRIVATE STREET was TOTALLY Tarentino himself :| By which I mean NOT ONLY that That’s ABSOLUTELY the sort of cameo he would have given himself 30 years ago and if it made any sort of sense at all in the film(which here it wouldnt have, obvsl), BUT ALSO that I feel 94% confident that Tarentino has actually done that at least once in his lifetime :| :|

I think the monologue&interactions T gives Bruce Lee leading up to the fight were probably more insulting to him than the fight itself. Contrary to popular discussion, it isn’t Pitt’s character totally trashing Lee, he gets in one good throw after Lee repeats a successful attack at his request(which I doubt Lee would have ever done from what little I know about him; not being predictable in a fight was his whole Deal), but rather an even duel between them(most of the fight is just the two blocking each others’ attacks). I dont think the film was trying to say “Lee was full of hot-air”, if it wanted to say that it’d have shown him getting trounced instead of showing him knock Booth down then trade him blow for blow, but more “Lee was pretty arrogant and a bit pretentious”.

OK, that’s abt all that I can think of right now: thanks for reading ^v^

[unorthodoxchronicles]

Anime is a confusing subject for me to talk about, because on the one hand we have the serious issues of anime in the form of feitshization of young girls (and a few other things); but on the other hand we also have something the VAST majority of western serialized animation does not have: mature storytelling. 

When i say mature i don’t mean gory and violent and sexual. i mean it gives us a story or adventure of journey and excitement with continuity and character growth and stakes; instead of say, “HEY WIFE CHARACTER WHO ISNT TREATED LIKE A HUMAN, PENIS.” *pause for audience laughter: “*RACIST/SEXIST “””””TRANSGRESSIVE””””” Joke!*” Pause for laughter. 

Like the only times i can think of western animation that both art wise and character wise succeeds at this would be Avatar the last airbender and in a few ways, the new Voltron. 

Some other shows try; Adventure time, Steven universe, Samurai jack (even if it kinda had a shit ending no hate), (and recently final space), these shows are ones who generally get pretty big fandoms and one of their most plain and obvious details is that they all try desperately to push the stunted media of western serialized television animation into actually telling a real story instead of several small recountings of funny days. 

Again with japanese animation we have the serious issue of fetishization of the young but generally speaking you can point to a lot of anime that have a plot and the basic maturity for character development and angst that lasts more than one 11 minute episode. anime lets things take time more often than not.  If western animation could stop conflating maturity and being “adult” with “haha penis” or “haha racism” for five minutes it would be nice to see because i want more Avatar than I want a hundredth comedy show about the day to day going ons of some bad people who tell rude jokes. 

[robininthelabyrinth]

Countless Roads - Chapter 5

Fic: Countless Roads - Chapter 5 - Ao3

Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Gen, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, others

Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

A/N: This is a new chapter (chapter 6 on Ao3) 

———————————————————————————-

It is fine, at first.

Lisa is overjoyed to see Len, dumping a back-breaking number of mechanical engineering books on the kitchen table and coming for an unexpected hug, basking in being the only one in the world that Len freely allows that privilege (Mick's on probation). She tells him all about life in college, about half studying and another good half partying, which is about what Len expected.

Mick makes them food, too, which makes them both shut up for a while in order to eat it all.

The real sign of good cooking: no one's got anything to spare to talk 'cause they're too busy enjoying it.

"Any boyfriends?" Len asks, jumping the question on her. "Or girlfriends?"

Lisa gives him a look that says he's not anywhere near as subtle as he likes to think he is. "One or two," she says, rolling her eyes. The days where she used to tell him about every crush and attraction are long since past. "No one I'm bringing home to meet you and Mick yet."

"Aww, but I wanna scare a boyfriend," Mick protests, grinning. "It'll be fun!"

"No, Mickey," Lisa says tolerantly.

"But it's practically my thing – well, after fire anyway – to scare people," Mick says, grinning. "Jumping out and going 'boo'."

"Save the ghost humor for Halloween," Len tells him, shaking his head.

He spots Lisa frowning out of the corner of her eye, but by the time he looks at her it's gone. Len figures she'll tell him if it's important – god knows he has enough weird triggers that he doesn't want questioned.

Len offers to clean up – "Who are you and what have you done with my brother?" Lisa jokes; "You should've seen him before you got here!" Mick tells her, the traitor – and they retreat to the living room to watch movies.

Still, she seems uncomfortable sometimes, like there’s something she wants to say but isn’t saying.

Len lets it be. If they’re going to fight about something – and they probably are, he’s not doing anyone any favors by pretending they're not; he and Lisa always find something to clash about, largely because he sees himself as taking care of her and she sees him as being overbearing – they may as well have a few fun days first.

It comes to a head a few days later, when Lisa comes home from shopping earlier than expected. Mick's out grocery shopping again – he wasn't wrong about college student appetites – and Len's working on some tentative heist plans and idly arguing with Julie and Daniela about male privilege of all things.

It’s Julie’s fault. She was a college student herself, so Len asked her what she learned so he might have something to talk about with Lisa. Then it turned out she was a gender studies major and then, of course, Daniela jumps into the fray with her perspectives about how privilege changed when she transitioned genders and suddenly Len is arguing about things like intersectionality (they defined it for him) and whether passing privilege is a real thing and whatnot.

So, really, it’s actually Lisa’s fault in the end, her and her college-attending ways.

Not that she’s taking gender studies classes.

…that he knows about.

“I’m just saying,” he’s telling Julie. “You can’t just talk about feminism like the only person you’re dealing with’s a white girl, okay? Life don’t boil down to ‘closest to normal’ ranging to 'furthers from normal' like a math problem ‘cause there ain’t a normal you can use as a baseline, it's only considered normal 'cause most of the people doing the talking are white – oh, hi, Lisa!”

“Lenny,” Lisa says, and her voice is just that kinda weird he’s been noticing. “Lenny, what’re you doing?”

Len looks down at the blueprints he’s outlining onto tracing paper. “Uh,” he says. “Work? You know? That thing I do to get money?”

He’s never hidden what he does from Lisa, at least ever since she got old enough to understand that “breaking into houses like Santa does” wasn’t actually legal and that Len was both Jewish and unaffiliated with the North Pole.

(Lisa’s mom and dad are both Christian, so Len guesses she is too, but since he was the one that did the majority of her raising, he did what he could to teach her what he knew, so she’s got a nice well-rounded religious education: Judaism-by-proxy at home and Christianity from the nominally non-religious public school. He’s never been sure which one she prefers.)

“Not that,” Lisa says, rolling her eyes. “I can tell those are bank blueprints –” Hedge fund with a nice big safe, actually, but whatever. “– I meant the talking bit.”

“Oh,” Len says, flushing a bit. “It ain’t nothing, really.”

Lisa crosses her arms. “Isn’t it?”

“Really, it ain’t,” Len says, then thinks about the benefits of completing your education and being a good example. He's been studying up on grammar to try to make Lisa, at least, come off as less of a slum kid. “I mean, it isn’t. It’s just – it ain't - you see - oh, all right. I wanted to know more about what college is like, so I asked, and then Julie started in on the gender studies stuff, and, well, she’s just plain old wrong about some of that shit, like Daniela and I were explaining –”

“Lenny!” Lisa shouts, and she sounds distressed. “I don’t care what you were talking about, I care about the fact that you’re talking to an empty room like there are actual people here!”

Len gapes at her.

“Oh, crap,” Julie says, and disappears.

“Yeah, I’m gonna –” Daniela says, backing off rapidly. “Uh. Good luck with this.” And then she disappears too.

Useless, both of them.

“But –” Len says, totally staggered by Lisa's accusation. It's totally out of the blue. “But - I – it ain’t an empty room!” He pauses. “Well, it wasn’t, until they chickened out and ran away.”

Traitors.

Lisa puts her face in her hands. “Lenny,” she says, and she’s actually upset about this. “There’s nobody here.”

“Well, yeah, because –”

“And there was nobody here when I got here, either,” Lisa continues. “Lenny – have you ever considered that this might be a problem?”

“Well, yeah,” Len says, because the unquiet dead are always a problem. Plus there’s that whole dying young thing… “But, I mean, not recently.”

“It’s one thing to have imaginary friends when you’re little, Lenny, and even talking to them,” Lisa says, straightening up and grabbing his hand, pulling him over unresisting to the couch in the living room. “But you’re not a little kid anymore, okay? And I’ve noticed you talking to them sometimes, when you think I’m not paying attention, in the hallways or in other rooms.”

“But –” Len starts, but falls silent when she glares at him. He has no idea what to do about this utterly bizarre line of attack; he’d been expecting fighting with Lisa on any number of subjects, ranging from his criminality to his ‘wasting his potential’ like she said sometimes to, hell, not going out enough or failing to treat Mick right. But his ghosts?

“Lenny, I went to check your medical records,” Lisa says.

“Instead of shopping?” Len tries to joke, but she’s not having any of it. “Lot of broken bones there, Lisa; you shouldn’t be looking at that sort of thing.”

Lisa nods, biting her lip. “Yeah, I – noticed. That. It was…”

“Don’t start,” Len warns her. Lisa’s had a few jags where she’s tried to apologize for being their dad’s target sometimes and for what Lewis did to Len when he stood between them, but Len’s tried time and again to set her straight on that: he’d do it all again, a thousand times over, and not regret a minute, and at any rate it wasn’t her fault that their dad was a piece of shit. As long as she didn’t do anything stupid like try to go see Lewis in prison, Len’s happy with the way things are now, and the past doesn't matter.

“Right,” she says, and shakes her head a little to clear it. “But that’s not what I was looking for. Why didn’t you tell me you used to get seizures?”

“I didn’t think it was relevant,” Len says, puzzled. “They don’t bother me no more.”

Well, not unless Mick slips up on the job, but even then, Len’s got enough friendlies to fight off the unquiet dead. As he'd told Lisa, it’s actually been pretty good recently.

“Seizures can be a symptom of other neurological problems,” Lisa says.

“My proper lil’ college girl,” Len can’t help but say fondly, even though it makes Lisa give him another look of death. “Sorry. Keep going.”

“Lenny, you ever think that maybe you’ve got, I don’t know, schizophrenia or something?”

“Not once, no,” Len says, blinking.

“And I’m not saying you’re crazy or anything –”

“No, because that’d be rude,” Len says. “Schizophrenia’s a recognized mental illness, but mental illness and crazy ain’t the same thing and conflating ‘em is derogatory and leads to bad shit.”

Now it’s Lisa’s turn to blink at him.

“Mr. Crabtree used to teach special ed,” Len offers weakly. “He had strong feelings on the subject of ablest language, okay?"

“Mr. Crabtree.”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“The one that died fifteen years ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Before we ever met either of ‘em.”

“Yeah…”

“Lenny, if this is about the con you pulled on Mrs. Crabtree to convince her to take me in…”

“It wasn’t a con,” Len says, scowling and sitting up straight. “I mean, it was a little bit, ‘cause he didn’t say anything about taking you in in specific on his own, but he was all for her doing something with the money other than talking to stupid mediums who didn’t even tell her anything he was really saying –”

“Lenny! You couldn’t have talked to Mr. Crabtree, because he’s dead.”

“He was a ghost,” Len says, even though it's really a technicality; Mick calls himself a dead person all the time. “I talk to ghosts, not to dead people. Once they’re passed on, they’re gone.”

“You don’t actually have the ability to talk to ghosts, that’s my point – delusions like that are a pretty common symptom of schizophrenia, too –”

“Lisa, I ain’t schizophrenic. I’ve met schizophrenics, okay? I’m not. I just talk to ghosts, it’s different, it’s –”

The door opens and Mick comes in with the groceries – less than usual, Len notes – and blinks at both of them.

“Damn, you are arguing,” he observes. Julie or Daniela must’ve gone to tell him. “You two ought to stop that – or is this a ‘Mick don’t get involved’ type argument?”

“Mick, don’t get –” Len starts.

“No,” Lisa jumps in. “Mick, come here. I need your help to explain to Lenny that his ghost thing isn’t really a thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“That he can’t actually talk to ghosts! Tell him it’s not a real thing!”

“But it is,” Mick says, puzzled.

“Thank you!” Len exclaims.

Lisa glares at both of them.

“It is,” Mick protests. “What do you think I am, chopped liver?”

“Damnit, Mick!”

“Lisa – ” Len tries to start.

“No, damnit!" Lisa shouts, and now she's glaring even harder. She's pressing her lips together hard; it's obvious that she's really upset about it. "I’m an adult now, you guys can stop with your stupid Mick’s-a-friendly-ghost thing that you did when I was a kid, it’s not funny – I’ve figured it out, you know!”

“Figured what out?” Mick asks, blinking. Len’s glad he asked it, because it was right on the tip of Len’s tongue to do the same.

“I know you had to hide Mick from Dad,” Lisa says impatiently. “And you didn’t want me to spoil it, so you told me he was a ghost and that’s why he ‘disappeared’ a lot, so that way if I talked about him, everyone would think he was my imaginary friend and wouldn’t question it too much.”

“Uh, no,” Len says, because while that is a brilliant scheme, it is not actually one he’d thought of. “It’s because he was a ghost. And he disappeared a lot because I hadn’t gotten the hang of keeping him around yet.”

“Mick, you can’t seriously still be enabling this –”

“Right,” Mick says. “Lenny, I’m gonna shove some back to you; I need manifestation, not pure-solid.”

Len nods and feels the little spark of static electricity that he always gets when Mick gives back some life – a most un-ghostly act. Just more proof that Mick's perfect, he supposes.

“What are you talking about?” Lisa asks, frowning.

“I’m talking about the fact that I’m a ghost, Lisey,” Mick says, and walks straight into the couch.

Into, meaning his now visible-but-intangible feet keep going well past the point the couch starts.

Lisa shrieks and jumps up to her feet.

Mick crosses his arms and gives her a look, his latter half mostly concealed by the couch that he’s standing in the middle of, his ghostly body just immaterial enough to go through instead of over. “Ghost,” he says. “Apparition, manifestation, dead person. Someone who ain't passed on. I died in 1936, Lise; Len and I went to the Hall of Records and dug up my original birth certificate and death certificate. I died in a fire along with my whole family in a farm out by Keystone.”

“We didn’t lie to you,” Len says, looking at Lisa with as earnest an expression as he can manage. It's important that Lisa understands this. “We never did, I swear. I see ghosts, and I talk to them, and I met Mick in juvie, ‘cause they built a juvie on top of where his family farm used to be, and I brought him home. And I really was talking to Julie and Daniela earlier.”

Lisa puts a hand to her mouth, which is quivering. “You’re a ghost,” she says blankly.

“Yeah,” Mick says.

“And Lenny, you – speak to ghosts? For real?”

“Yeah,” Len says.

“And Mr. Crabtree –”

“There’s a reason I was able to pull all that personal detail stuff out,” Len says. “I wouldn’t have conned anyone I was gonna leave you alone with, not really. How’d you think I did it?”

“Guessing,” she says. “Reading micro-expressions, good luck, stalking – I don’t know – anything but real ghosts!”

Len shrugs helplessly.

“You were really talking to – what did you say – Jessica and –”

“Julie and Daniela,” Len says.

“So there are dead people hanging around all the time?”

“That’s not a nice thing to say about Mick,” Len says automatically, then caves when Lisa glares at him. “Not all the time. Right now they’re keeping their distance because they’re cowards.” He raises his voice a bit for the last bit and directs it towards the hallway.

Sun-hui floats in regally and gives him a look.

“Except you, Sun-hui,” Len corrects himself hastily. “You were just busy elsewhere.”

“Sun-hui?” Lisa asks, but it’s curiosity, now, not the worry that’s been eating at her the last few days. Len hadn't even noticed how tightly she'd been carrying herself until now, when all the tension is suddenly released.

“Her kids wouldn’t let her see her grandkids before she died,” Len explains. “She’s keeping an eye on them anyway. She’ll probably pass on when the last one gets settled.”

“My eldest grandson, Seung-gi, will be married soon,” Sun-hui says proudly. “He has found a good wife, a love marriage, no matter how my daughter-in-law seeks to drive her away. I have left her an envelope with money, for good luck.”

Len conveys this to Lisa, then adds, “Technically, I left her the envelope. Apparently the groom’s family is supposed to give money to the bride and Sun-hui’s kids weren’t doing the job because they're dicks, so I broke in and put it there. She cried about it, good crying ‘cause she’d just about given up hope for something like that, and then showed him, and then he told her his grandmother was dead and then they both cried about it. Super awkward. Glad I didn’t stick around too long.”

Lisa stares at him.

“…what?”

“Our Lenny’s a bit of a softie,” Mick says, amused, pulling himself out of the couch now that his point had been made and settling down next to Len, arms touching so that he can pull out enough life to solidify again. “Not that he’d admit it.”

“Literally none of what I just said makes me a softie,” Len objects, but somehow that’s the thing that makes Lisa start laughing so hard she’s nearly crying and throw herself into the couch between him and Mick, snuggling into both of them like she thinks she’s still five and will fit.

“I was so worried,” she says, eyes shining brighter and wetter than she’d ever admit to. “Oh, man, ghosts – I can’t believe I’m saying it’s a good thing, but I’m so happy it’s just ghosts –”

“Hey,” Mick protests, but not really. “I’ve got a mental illness; it’s not like it’s the end of the world. My shrink says –”

“You have a shrink?” Lisa says.

“I insisted,” Len says with a shrug. One of the first few times he'd dropped by to see Lisa at college, he'd found a flyer offering psychological therapy or some such and promising discretion; he'd figured there was no harm in it. Turned out Mick liked it, a lot, so Len made him keep going.

“You got a dead guy – no offense, Mick – a shrink?”

“None taken,” Mick says.

“Lisa,” Len says, long-suffering. “I ain’t sure if you’ve noticed, but Mick’s more of a long-term sort of a dead guy.”

“We prefer living-challenged,” Julie pipes up from the doorway, Nora standing by her side with a faint smirk.

“You do not,” Len tells both of them firmly, because they're just the sort of people to start in on that. Julie seriously, Nora because she's actually a giant troll. “Don’t you dare make that a thing.”

“Why don’t you set up shop as a medium?” Lisa wants to know. “Seems like you’d be a shoo-in, make tons of money.”

“It’s not like a light switch,” Len protests. “It’s not like I can root around someone’s cupboard and pull out the right ghost, y’know? I meet what ghosts I meet, and that’s it. Also, I ain’t a medium. That’s different. They’re creepy.”

“Oh, well. Would have been fun: the Snart Medium Show – watch the man who speaks to ghosts!”

“No,” Len says.

“Lenny’s Lifeline for the Living Impaired,” Mick offers.

“No!”

“Leonard and the Ghosts,” Lisa suggests, grinning. “Len’s Line to the Unliving.”

“Guys,” Len says, shaking his head. “No, no, and no.” He pauses. “Besides,” he says grudgingly. “It’d be called Snart’s Spooks.”

“I like it!”