#she's the first victim of those systemic issues

[dancerfelix]

Talked with my partner about this and have put together some thoughts:

I actually think transphobia and misogyny are more closely interlinked for trans men. Kind of inherently, every instance of misogyny faced by a trans man is also an instance of or the result of transphobia. And generally speaking, the reverse is true as well, most experiences of transphobia are tinged with misogyny. The few that aren't explicitly so tend to be by radfems, and even those I think carry tinges of misogyny. It's genuinely quite hard to find occasions that are explicitly one but not the other for us. I obviously think the systems of transphobia and misogyny do intersect for trans women but it is at the very least easy to imagine her experiencing an instance of not explicitly transphobic misogyny (especially if she passes). Arguably there can be cases of transphobia that arent explicitly misogynistic against her but I'm not really going to die on that hill. It is definitely true that for a trans man, ability to pass may prevent a lot of transphobia, and that will inherently mean less misogyny will be faced. For trans women, once they are acknowledged as such, it seems the rate of misogyny faced is not going to decrease, even as she passes better and potentially faces less transphobia. I do think this is fundamentally important to conversations about trans experiences and social power (ie, why I think it makes sense to use the term transmisogyny to refer to the social forces against trans women specifically) This does however lead into my next point.

I think a lot of theory about trans men (especially by people who are not themselves trans men) implicitly focuses on trans men who do generally pass, who do have access to hormones, who have been out for years, etc. And of course theory needs to include them, and of course there's a form of transphobia to discussing trans men as if they are not men + pretending we as trans people are only ever defined by our AGAB + have exactly the same relationship with our AGAB as a cis person would. But like.. most people who are trans wont ever acknowledge that they are, nevermind publicly coming out as such, nevermind choosing + being able to access hrt (and options to DIY when transmasc are riskier + more limited) + being able to access surgeries (especially phalloplasty which generally is the more cis passing™ bottom surgery, which genuinely very very very few trans men have). It feels like people are intentionally focusing on trans men as an unfluid category of people who are granted privileges from the day we come out, when in reality, its significantly more complicated for the majority of people. You do mention trans people as having quite fluid genders which I think is really important to this conversation, but I think in the case of trans men, it kind of is the meat of the conversation and it is genuinely just not possible to write meaningful theory about us without specifically addressing timelines. I think it is probably still relevant to trans women but it seems (from the outside) a bit easier to skate past the issue and still come away with something meaningful.

In regards to the trans men siding with patriarchy/transmisogyny/terfism... I have two main thoughts. First I'd like to say that absolutely some trans men fully do buy into patriarchy and try to emulate normative + parriarchal gender roles. But it is kind of frustrating to see such an emphasis on this idea of trans men as potential abusers, when trans men and afab nonbinary people do consistently report (on surveys, not to police) having the highest rates of sexual assault and domestic abuse (although trans women are more likely to be specifically murdered or hospitalized by an intimate partner). There's not really data on the rates of trans men abusing other people, but it'd have to be quite high (30%+) to make us more likely to abuse than to be abused. I also think that trans men fall victim to this analytical phenomena where if they and a cis women have a similar issue, the trans man will be labeled evil misogynistic patriarchal man, whereas a cis woman will say pretty much the same thing and not get the same shit. Example, if a cis woman says she struggles to do dishes because it just feels expected of her because shes a woman, anyone with any interest in feminism will understand that she probably is doing a disproportionate amount of housework and probably is still doing the dishes, and even if she's not, its totally valid to struggle with doing them and if she has a cis male partner, she should encourage him to do more dishes. And its valid to feel discomfort with engaging in gendered activities. Some "piss on the poor" people will choose to argue "ummm are you calling me a misogynist for enjoying doing the dishes??" but most vaguely leftists will not object to this (at least not publicly). A trans man says "doing the dishes makes me dysphoric so I dont like doing them" and we all assume he has a girlfriend and he's forcing her to do them and we circlejerk about how much of a misogynist he is for making her do them, even though we have literally no other context (genuinely I know of at least two instances of this specific thing). This then goes into the big book of evidence for how misogynistic trans men are even though it's literally the same emotional experience + dysphoria added on top. So while I absolutely do see the occasional fucked up comment, or fucked up guy, within the trans man community, I think it does feel like online theorists do really overestimate how much this happens. Which gets into my next point, that while I think that most of the analytical frameworks used by online transmascs have issues, it's just genuinely hard to find a framework that is universally good for speaking about our experiences.

(More of a 3.5 really) The main choices we have are a) transfeminism, which is great for discussing the experiences of trans women but none of the Canon really speaks about transmasculinity in depth, and when the theory does speak on my experiences, I find it to be lacking. Which is fine, I think transfeminism has its uses, to some extent I identify as a transfeminist (kind of hesitant to Use That Label™ because I've heard different things on whether or not this is acceptable to do as a non transfem) but it just doesn't really have much for *me* outside of tips for being a better ally to trans women. b) buying into "we are oppressed for our gender", which I would argue is tied in with the more recent liberal feminist (not necessarily derogatory) swap from "sexism"/"sex based discrimination" to "gender based oppression". If we face gendered violence, it is because of our gender, this means men are oppressed (kind of a strawman admittedly). I think to some extent there is interesting stuff here but it's not a super useful framework and to me it just kind of feels like cope. There's sometimes a hesitance to describe things happening to transmascs as misogynistic, both because of a genuine concern around misgendering and because of arguments that "misogyny only affects women". I don't think all transandrophobia believers actually buy into this framework, but I do think enough people do that it's worth talking about. This framework is probably the only one that speaks in any way specifically in regards to the transphobia faced by trans men (vs a which doesn't really address much specific in regards to trans men, in c which is just transphobic). c) terfism (or more commonly, terf adjacent rhetoric). So, gender obviously isnt why we're oppressed. We're not oppressed for being men. We're oppressed for being born afab in a society that seeks to control afab bodies. And uh shit it looks like the only people who consistently speak this way identify as wombyn-born-wombyn and are speaking a lot about the divine feminine or whatever the fuck. Part of this issue is TERFs love coopting and weaponizing legitimate vaguely true things (cis women generally do experience 'female socialization ' and cis men do generally experience 'male socialization' but we should probably not go around calling trans women 'male socialized' and implying theyll never be REAL WOMEN™ because of this). Part of the issue is that yeah, I genuinely just would not be oppressed if I didnt have the reproductive organs that I have. It is just kind of hard to avoid speaking about the way I'm oppressed without kind of misgendering myself sometimes. The guy weirdly staring at my chest is weird about women, and I'll say this and then think like, well I'm not women. But there's not really like, good/commonly used terminology for that. Women, women + femmes, women+, women&, women + nonbinary people, women + people identifying as women, non man, etc all are semi commonly used attempts at inclusive terminology, and none of them include trans men. Sometimes I'll see "gender marginalized people" which is better but still maybe a bit odd, as if I was just a binary trans man, we get back to like, well men aren't oppressed for being men. There's also the part where people generally do (mis)gender our issues, I mean, abortion is always talked about as a womens rights issue, we are implicitly excluded from this conversation if we are not willing to misgender ourselves to speak about our oppression. This then gets to the (actually quite radfem coded) nihilism of "no one respects my identity during these conversations/I can only contribute if I do misgender myself". Of course, this is a toxic impulse and it makes it quite easy to ignore when radfems say noxious shit about us (doesnt excuse it though, especially when radfems say fucked shit about trans women). d) we can of course entirely invent a new framework for speaking on our oppression. Not exactly convenient though lol.

I do think your choice to focus on privilege from transmisogyny as a really interesting (and useful) one. It's very reminiscent of discourses more generally in regards to assimilationism. Do you think it is possible for a trans woman to generally (albeit perhaps not fully) exempt herself from transmisogyny through 'successful' assimilation?

Editing to add: I use 'we' to refer to transgender men but my relationship with the question of whether or not I identify as such is complicated but I have at times somewhat identified as such and still sometimes do. Most accurate way to describe me is nonbinary but I have a hard time fully separating myself from manhood. Also have a gard time fully identifying with it. Lol

[do not use this as justification for sexist bigotry, this is a personal thought relating to the investigation of ideas and not a statement meant to be derisive towards feminist theories.]

disclaimer out of the way, I've been thinking about transmisogyny a lot lately and it's really interesting to consider the nuances of. I think a lot of the objections to transfeminist theory simply come from sexism, but there is one point of potential critique that I think warrants further inquiry. to get at this we have to first clarify something else though.

the distinction of tme/tma might sound like an issue to a lot of transmisogynists, but most of their objections die away as soon as you clarify it's not "never ever experiences transmisogyny" and is perhaps more accurately "trans misogyny exemptable" as this gets at the reality of trans women facing transmisogyny regardless of what we do, there is no way out, we are the intended targets. other people face transmisogyny as a sort of warning, a clarifying statement that "if you are transfeminine we will Other you" and they're able to exempt themselves from this in most situations by clarifying "I am not a trans woman" regardless of the particular form that takes.

not everyone is able to exempt themselves from all gender related bigotry though. you cannot, for example, make this distinction (of not being transfem) to escape intersexism, which is why many intersex repeatedly experience gender based oppression and cannot opt out of it. this is oppression is fundamentally not an result of transmisogyny, it is a result of intersexism.

with that clarification out of the way, I think there is an understandable critique regards the simplification that

"men have power over women" <- correct, easily verifiable, almost everybody agrees. "Black men have power of Black women" <- still correct and non controversial (at least in feminist spaces). then you go to "trans men have power over trans women" and everybody freaks out, yeah? like people start to object to this understanding suddenly, even though we've only changed 1 thing, which we've changed before and nobody found issue with it in those other areas. much of theee objections come transmisogyny, but I don't think it actually tells the whole story to write all of this off as transmisogyny.

I think why we run into an issue with this understanding (again, critique, not refutation) is that trans people's gender is often, perhaps even usually in flux. the statement "men have power over women" is trivially true, and is a statement on gender and misogyny. this comparison can be brought to trans men and trans women, but it's not without nuance, as the most basic information we can get from this is applied to gender, something which is often actively shifting for trans people.

the reason is don't see this as some kind of disproof of transmisogyny or something should be clear though, for two reasons (aside from the obvious statement towards trends rather than specific instances)

1. transmisogyny is fundamentally not the same thing as misogyny at large, and

2. though trans-gender is often shifting, we can use the prior distinction of exemptable and intended targets to largely do away with this problem.

despite the framework of misogyny not applying 1-1 onto trans people (many who identify as trans men have 'correctly' experienced misogyny), we can still see how it is useful to look at the intersection of misogyny and transphobia. While yes, trans men often experience both of these things, it is often not simultaneously like it is for trans women. As trans women transition our closeness to womanhood tends to increase so as our experiences of transphobia increase, so too do our experiences of misogyny- where as the opposite goes for trans men. it's not that one can't be sexist and transphobic to a trans man, they're not transmisogyny exempt in some metaphysical sense, but rather that for trans women our transness and our womanhood have a positive correlation, our transness and our womanhood are inseparable, we cannot denounce one by leaning on the other.

on the contrary, while trans men will still face transphobia and sexism which denies the validity of their transness and treats them with misogyny, as they transition their relationship begins to more closely match that of men, because of course they are men, this leads to them being able to escape transmisogyny not by being part of some magically 100% transmisogyny excluded class, but because they have the ability to meaningfully denounce trans feminity, to put down womanhood and to become "one of the guys", it's conditional, yes, but often the conditions are not to "pass" in the traditional sense but rather to express views aligning with the patriarchy and derision of feminity, i.e, misogyny.

I think we can see this in the popular responses to tme/tma discourse within the trans community: many trans men correctly recognize what is happening and stand in solidarity, transmisogyny is a genuine problem and it makes sense to talk about the intersection between misogyny and transphobia, trans men even experience both at times, so it is a good idea to stand against. Then, some men begin to talk about their experiences with denial of who they are and the misogyny that can come with that. This too is rather sensible, though it doesn't somehow counteract or disprove transmisogyny generally, it can be studied and acknowledge much in the same way we understand cis men are tested with transmisogyny to enforce what others call "toxic masculinity", despite them not being transfeminine. Then we have a third and wildly popular group, who appropriate the struggles of the second group, where co-option occurs by men who buy into or express sexist ideas for the sake of more fully exempting themselves from transmisogyny. Along with this, instead of recognizing the basis for transmisogyny as intersecting gender based oppression, because doing so would show their fleeting relationship to it, they redefine it as being intersection of two metaphysical identities generally, and thus "transandrophobia" is born, posed as being on an equal to transmisogyny, after all, they're both born from intersecting identities are they not?

of course, we know Androphobia is not something which actually exists, nor is Misandry - these arent axis' of oppression, and they largely know this too, but their goal is to obfuscate the ways in which marginalized men still benefit from their manhood. it takes what I think can be a rather genuine expression that trans men experience both transphobia and misogyny, and instead of grappling with the ways they can societally put down others to gain exemption from transmisogyny, the way their relationship to it is transient, they instead cling to it and invent new terms or fall on old bigoted talking points to justify doing so. "transandrophobia" yes, but also "sex based oppression" and "male/female socialization" these terms and rhetoric are regularly used against transfeminists by these trans men who have exempted themselves from transmisogyny, who have sided with patriarchy over their trans sisters, instead allying with the general terf movement at large and often implicitly misgendering themselves in the process.

and just to be clear, not exempting yourself doesn't mean you will experience the brunt of transmisogyny or to the same degree trans women do - you may be called slurs by bigots, may be harassed in given instances, or sometimes worse, but the systemic forces of transmisogyny go far deeper than negative interactions with individuals, and these transmisogynistic forces are again, aimed specifically at trans women. While I want to recognize the ways in which transmisogyny permeates all of society, do not see this and mistake it for support for the idea that everyone experiences it equally and their relationship is only changed by putting down transfemininity, it is and always has been about targeting transfemininity, the reason I clarify exemptable is due to society's constant enforcing of transmisogynistic ideas on everyone, even if the worst persecution is specifically and intentionally reserved for trans women

Lastly I want to say that these ideas are still developing and my understanding of them will likely change with time and discussion. I dont think these ideas are particularly new, they seem to underpin a lot of discussion on these topics, but this is my attempt to bring them from an implicit unspoken agreement into a more firmly expressed position. Doing so is necessarily going to expose flaws and I see that as a good thing, as doing so is required to elevate understanding of these theories to a higher level. Some of these flaws will be with my expression and understanding, and I will work to correct those, but some will likely be with the ideass themselves and it will take time for them to develop. Please read in good faith, thank you.

[isa-renee]

how to explain to my vaguely-conservative-usually-a-republican aunt that she is literally a socialist

[codenamesazanka]

My prediction on what was Scissors-kun's deal ended up being pretty correct: he was indeed abused - horrifically so, being tied up and locked away - and then abandoned by his family during the war because of his quirk. Except Horikoshi actually exceeded my expectations and revealed that it wasn't because of behavioral issues (not that it would've justified it! Never. but I was imagining a parallel to Toga), it was only because his quirk was a random mutation, and also his family sewn his mouth shut.

Because thing is. The set up for something like this was here all along. I predicted it based on things that were already happening in the story. Continued fear of 'abnormal' quirks; horrific domestic violence enacted due to this; Heroes never catching wind of this because this was from a family that weren't consider 'Villains', so this was Scissors-kun's normal. And this normal broke and the dark secret got revealed only because something extraordinary happened - the country collapsed. Scissors-kun family left him, so he was able to escape.

But... none of this is apparently going to be addressed. The happy ending is Scissors-kun being found and helped, instead of any widespread, far-reaching, systemic change that would prevent shit like this. No, 'but it's obviously going to be addressed off-screen' doesn't count. The story brought up on-page and explicitly that quirk discrimination is a thing, that abusive quirk counseling/treatment is a thing, that abuse and abandonment of children is a thing. I expect the solutions to be on-page and explicit as well, and not just 'if I reach out when it's not my business, then...!'

(Also. it is their fucking business. They're government employees. Their job is to save people and guarantee the welfare of all citizens. it is very much their business.)

I'm not upset that Scissors-kun isn't Shigaraki; never really expected that in the first place. Shigaraki died. Deku fucking failed. I've come to terms with it. I'm not upset that Shigaraki wasn't saved, but this kid was; not even in the meta-, story-, character-sense, because, fine, he's replacement goldfish Tenko, but I'll take the 'we'll do better next time', it's a good thing this kid gets saved, it's what Shigaraki would've wanted, it's what the League fought to destroy for. It's even good that The Old Lady has become a better person.

What baffles me is that this save occurs pretty much because of nothing except the purported 'What Deku Showed The World That Day (When He Killed A Man)'. This save isn't because Heroes and civilians have more awareness of victims. This save isn't because society is promising to stop quirk discrimination. This save isn't because Ochako learns of Toga's abusive parents and so sets out to tackle this issue of quirk-related domestic violence. This save isn't because Deku has lead a new movement to stop bystander inaction. (Moreover, about 'bystander inaction' - Scissors-kun lists 5 other people outside his immediate family of Dad/Mom/Sis who knew about him... and did nothing. His uncle, his aunt, his grandparents, his great-grandfather - if they didn't directly help sew Scissors-kun mouth shut, they still turned a blind eye and never alerted authorities. (Tenko explicitly states this as one of the factors that led to him lashing out, but I guess the story forgot about it long ago, so. Even with the memories sharing of Chapter 417 and 418, Deku never sees this.))

As I said above, none of the issues that lead to Scissors-kun being in the circumstances he was in has been addressed.

This save isn't because any random civilian has decided to help - because any rando can and should help! This isn't even because Old Lady came to the guilt-ridden conclusion herself to do better.

This save is because Old Lady, carrying the burden of guilt, watched Deku kill the kid she didn't save all those years ago (tho she doesn't know it) and is apparently inspired by this act of "I can't help but do something" to finally take action (as helpfully narrated by Hawks). It's not because civilians have done any deep thinking about the rot that permeates their culture; it's because Deku was a hard-working murderer on TV. There were dozens of other people on the street. Real change should've been a whole crowd of people seeing Scissors-kun and wanting to help - someone giving him a blanket or offering him shoes while another calls for an ambulance???

But whatever. I just want to state this: the first thing that truly saved Scissors-kun was Shigaraki's destruction. Without it, his family would've stayed in that house and kept him locked up. It's really only because of Shigaraki's destruction that Scissors-kun even got the opportunity to find freedom and get his hand held.

[1americanconservative]

@Bitcoin4Freedom

I can't stand Donald Trump. He is braggy, he insults people for no reason, and he is just a brutal personality. But my mind is made up. I'm voting for him and here's why: * He puts Americans and their well-being first. Kamala will not. * He will bring

@elonmusk

into his cabinet to be the efficiency czar and get rid of waste. This alone may be the best single reason to vote for him. * He will bring

@RobertKennedyJr

into his cabinet to Make American Healthy Again. He will finally get to the bottom of why our food companies are destroying the health of our children. * I'm sick of the way the media lies continuously about

@realDonaldTrump

, starting with the incessant racism claims. They are just nonsense. The latest thing I learned? He sent his plane to fly Nelson Mandela home after he was in jail with the U.S. wouldn't do it. Racist? No. * I'm sick of the U.S. being embroiled in foreign wars. Trump will keep us out of them again. He's just crazy enough that foreign nations will stand down. They have no fear of Kamala. They will fear him. * Trump sees this country as fundamentally good. Kamala sees it as inherently evil. * Trump will end the nonsense of the open border which makes our country less secure, less financially stable, and brings in millions of people illegally who compete for Americans' jobs. * This government has to print billions to care for the illegals. That makes all of our dollars less valuable and makes prices zoom upward. * He will stockpile Bitcoin. * He will keep men out of women's bathrooms and women's sports. * He is a heavyweight personality and negotiator. Kamala is a phony personality and a lightweight negotiator. * The people who want Kamala Harris to win are the most annoying people in the country. They have pushed for pronouns, masks, endless vaccines, cancel culture, riots, blatant racism towards whites, gender confusion, undermining the U.S. constitution. * He will upset the current political system. He was nearly the victim of assassination 3x. And he keeps going. He's not the best in interviews, but he at least puts himself out there. Over and over and over. Kamala hasn't done a single press conference. * Harris and the media trying to prop her up hid Biden's cognitive decline. They accuse

@realDonaldTrump

of being a threat to democracy. Yet she was installed as the nominee with no votes. She wants to pack the Supreme Court. She wants to eliminate the filibuster. She sued

@RobertKennedyJr

to keep him off the ballot. And the threat to democracy is Trump? Nonsense. * Those who support Harris look at Trump supports as vile, stupid, ignorant, and fascists. They disown family members or disinvite them from Thanksgiving dinner of they support Trump. This is disgraceful. * Every time she talks, I try to give her a chance. But she is the most phony and condescending politician I have ever seen. Ever. I can't do it. I won't do it. * She and those who support her are resistant to Voter ID and believe requiring an ID is racist. Her Department of Justice is suing the state of Virginia for trying to purge the voter rolls of illegals. Why would we not want 1 vote per 1 U.S. citizen? Is it more racist to believe people from the inner city are perfectly capable of securing a government issued ID? Or to believe they are incapable? That's it. I'm done. Thanks for hearing me out.

[nothorses]

About that "a trans man committing a mass shooting proves trans people really are the gender they identify as" post: women have committed mass shootings too? Okay it's a lot less statistically frequent, but it happens (as the song "I Don't Like Mondays" demonstrates). It reminds me of the time TERFs on Reddit assumed the woman who shot up the YouTube HQ in 2018 was trans, and then when she turned out to be cis, someone immediately speculated she was getting justified revenge on an abusive BF who worked there (though that comment got downvoted and may have been a troll)

I took this opportunity to look more into statistics around mass shooter demographics, and interestingly, there are a lot of myths tied up in this issue.

This article looks into a few studies and databases to investigate the "90% of all mass shooters are white men" myth, and finds that in actuality, "It really depends on what type of mass shooting you’re talking about. Several of the highest-profile mass shootings in recent memory [...] were committed by white males, such as the 2017 Las Vegas attack by Stephen Paddock. But much beyond that, the stereotype breaks down; Muslim man Omar Mateen killed forty-nine people at a Florida nightclub in 2016 on behalf of a terrorism group; white male Adam Lanza killed twenty-seven people in 2012 at an elementary school, though Asian student Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007. And so on."

This article fact-checks the gender-specific claims as well, in the context of trans people, and finds that there have been more claims that shooters are trans than can be reasonably substantiated, and that even this number is overshadowed by the number of cis women who have committed mass shootings.

I bring this up because I think the first article in particular brings a lot of much-needed nuance into the issue:

"The whites-are-overrepresented-among-mass-shooters meme does serve a useful purpose in that it helps displace another myth about mass shootings: that they’re most often perpetrated by angry immigrants from travel-banned countries, and that nothing is more dangerous to America that the scourge of Islamic terrorism. … These are worthy ends, but we shouldn’t have to build another myth to reach them.”

What are we saying when we talk about these kinds of incidents this way?

What I find interesting is that in a lot of these conversations around crime, we recognize that crime is often the result of poverty. Indeed, this study finds that the number of mass shootings increases in countries that experience an increase of income inequality.

We can also often recognize that these numbers are skewed because they rely on media coverage, arrests, and criminal charges; all of which are influenced by societal bias. The first article on mass shootings notes that, "mass shootings with white victims tend to get more attention, both from journalists and those on social media, than those with victims who are people of color. This is a well-known pattern and explains why the public is quicker to react to a missing young blonde girl than a missing young black girl."

Are white mass shooters covered more because their targets- being overwhelmingly people and institutions they have ties to- are also usually white?

If "white men are overrepresented as mass shooters" means white men are particularly dangerous and must be feared, what does this imply about other demographics overrepresented in certain crime statistics? What does it mean when we find this isn't true- is there suddenly just is not an issue of white cis male violence? I would certainly disagree.

And I think this gleeful claim that "trans men are proving their gender" by committing acts of violence- again, far more rare than cis women doing the same- only plays into these issues.

Is crime the result of entitlement and privileged anger, or is it the result of a broken system failing its citizens? Are cis men committing acts of extreme violence because they are all- regardless of race- whiny pissbabies who take joy in hurting others, or is this the result of a system that teaches men they can only express emotion through anger and violence? That human connection is not for them, and that needing things makes them unworthy of manhood, love, or even life?

I'm not saying we need to coddle and woobify mass shooters. I'm asking: is this an issue we fix by fearing and hating and wishing death on whole demographics of people based on how represented they are in criminal statistics, or can we make systemic and cultural changes that meaningfully prevent this from happening in the first place?

Do we condemn groups as Bad because some of them have done violence, or do we examine the causes and work toward meaningful solutions?

Obviously, trans men and trans people in general are not in any way "overrepresented" as perpetrators in mass shooting statistics. But I think the people reveling in any new trans male shooter are making it very clear that they don't care about solving problems; they're just interested in looking for reasons to hate, fear, and condemn this specific group of people they already dislike.

[stsgluver]

tags. criminal minds x jjk, eventual gojo x reader, basically just a backstory to drabbles in this au, no plot, overview, some characters are based around criminal minds characters

serial killers were once considered an american phenomenon — a consequence of culture and inadequate socialisation. however, if there is one thing all countries have in common is just that: serial killers.

japan specifically devised a new department to help tackle the growing issue posed by these deranged individuals: jjk. within the jjk, the most notorious unit is the bau — behavioural analysis unit.

ssa yaga masamichi leads as unit chief and has done so for the last decade. he has accumulated almost two decades of experience on the job and, prior to that, worked as a prosecutor. he is considered cold and abrupt to those unfamiliar with him but is deeply admired by his agents for his tenacity and drive to put evil away.

utahime iori is their stubborn technical analyst with a competitive streak. she was recruited by jjk after her father was arrested on significant drug charges and she successfully managed to hack into the criminal database and remove them. her little sister was to be moved into the foster system had she not since she did not have the money to support her. jjk offered utahime a job and then helped to ensure she could take legal guardianship of her little sister. she hates going out on the field and loves her little cave of screens.

ssa shoko ieiri is a former pathologist turned agent. after finishing medical school, she spent two years working as a pathologist when she became involved in a serial killer case. she had been the first to identify a specific signature across three different bodies and alerted local authorities who brought in the bau. for two weeks she spent a lot of time with these agents and, once they left, decided that just determining the cause of death no longer appeased her ambition. she enrolled in the next behavioural study class ran by a former bau agent and within several years made it onto the team. she is cocky by nature and often clashes with the local authorities due to her blasé attitude and blunt words.

ssa (dr) gojo satoru is a genius and he knows it (and he makes sure everyone else does too). with an eidetic memory, there is not much that gets past him. he's arguably the best agent when it comes to speaking to families and interrogation, as he has the widest range of personalities and can quickly switch from bubbly and playful to imposing and serious. little is known to the team about his life before the bau - only that he has several phds to his name (but he hates to be called dr).

ssa ln yn was personally recruited and brought to the team by yaga once you had completed the basic training due to your unique perspective as the daughter of a serial killer. yaga had been on the team for around five years when he'd put your father away for the murder of eight young girls. your mother was dead too which meant that you were forced into the system at only ten years old. he'd maintained contact with you, encouraging you into jjk and then into the bau. you're the most approachable and one of the hardest workers on your team, although you often overcompensate for your unresolved guilt around your father.

not much is known about ssa geto suguru prior to the bau as most of it has been redacted. what is known is that he was enlisted by the government to join task forces and commit acts that the government would deny ever took place. despite how scary he seems on paper, geto is sweet and caring and always puts his team first. he has literally jumped into a burning building for gojo one time after negotiations went wrong.

nanami kento is the communications liaison for the bau. often mistaken for an agent due to his strong build, he in fact hates the idea of being on the field. he dislikes violence and prefers to do whatever he can to help victims and the public by communicating with the unsub through media.

[inu-jiru]

Jazz's "Apology Tour" ramble

Episode was trash, let's go.

First off, the whole "Fuck Blitzo" party is so stupid to me, like you're telling me this 30-something year old man had intimate relationships with ALL these demons and HE was the sole thing that ruined ALL of them?

And how did Verosika even find out about Stolas? Like I know Ozzie's happened, but how'd she hear about their "breakup" (they weren't together but whatever, show)?

Why the FUCK does Verosika care about Stolas being an uwu sad victim of mean old Blitzo aside from everyone being written to want to huff Stolas' sad boi farts?

Why is no one trying to kill Stolas like in Loo Loo Land, like suddenly we're just cool with the oppressive racist now (who am I kidding, the rank system doesn't exist anymore unless the "meanie supremacist" characters bring it up I guess)?

Don't think I'm trying to be "Blitzo's#1Bitch69" or anything, but Season 2 is just so gross in how they've written him. Either he's the big bully meanie for hating his abuser, or they've had him commit the most out of pocket atrocities (like possibly SAing Stolas since he was technically drunk or the circus incident or the shit he pulled with Verosika because what the fuck kinda trauma makes you steal someone credit card for horse riding lessons???) that they just gloss over because fuck having Blitzo actually progress normally or Stolas taking actual responsibility for his own actions, let's just speed through everything so it's back to Stolitz City, don't think about the implications. I just can't stand itttt, I still like and pity Blitz to an extent but his writing is killing meeee

Stolas, stop whimpering about being wanted YOU HAVE A KID WHO HAS STILL NOT APPEARED SINCE SEEING STARS WHERE IS SHE?

Am I really hearing that people are hating the dude flirting with Stolas like come on yall STOLITZ IS NOT OFFICIAL YET CHILL

I've honestly started skipping through episodes, like I can't fucking listen to "WAHHHHH BLITZO I WANT YOU TO WANT ME" for the millionth time, I wish this episode could've just been Blitzo and Verosika facing their issues or something I just don't wanna see this owl loser act like a victim anymoreeee

Man really said "when have I ever been condescending?" SEASON ONE???? How about every time you grab his face and call him out of his name and watch him be shot at while demanding he come over one a month? Oh, but when Blitz starts doing it back it's "Oh I'm uncomfortable ooOoOoo stop it Blitz hnnghhh I don't like it :C :C :C", like whatever man.

The Striker comment was dumb and wrong but that's because Stolas is dumb and wrong

Honestly I feel like I'm repeating the same points I and others have made in the past so all imma say is, I hope Octavia and Stella are enjoying their off-screen and better written adventures together. I'm gonna draw some AU stuff now to give my eyes something better to look at.

OH I forgot to talk about Verosika, uh, she was there? I honestly think she should just get over herself at this point, idk when she and Blitz broke up but what the fuck is it about this clown that she was so enamored over where she's this hurt? I can get being mad about her credit card and Blitz being a lazy partner but if that's the case, I fail to see how they got to a point where she got his name tatted on her arm. Idk it's weird

The Mayweather shit or whatever her name is was pointless and made no sense, like "I want you to kill this woman who made me attempt to kill her and myself but now we're dating" like? Hey Vivzie if yall can callback to that why can't yall call back to Stolas being a creep huh?

EDIT: They really made that fuckass "it's hell" excuse canon, huh? Like, it doesn't even make sense in the context of Blitz saying that, like people say "it's hell" because Biblically speaking, it's where those who truly oppose God in order to live a life of wickedness go as just punishment. Blitz the equivalent of a regular guy in Hell unlike the Hazbin characters, he shouldn't understand that there's a better alternative to Hell because he's not human and never had any opportunity to learn about Heaven or God (unless it's just in their DNA or something idk who knows with this show)

[animegirl3476]

Another day, another discourse comparing and contrasting Shoya and Shoko’s relationship in A Silent Voice with Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship in My Hero Academia.

At the end of the day, you’ll never get a 1:1 comparison with these two cases due to the fact that 1) They belong to vastly different genres, 2) One is far longer than the other and 3) One is a grounded character drama and coming of age tale.

But…

I think that A Silent Voice provides a fairly good basis for judging the way MHA handles the relationship development of two characters, where one used to bully the other and an arc of atonement occurs. More importantly, comparisons to A Silent Voice highlight the shortcomings of Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship development and allows me to understand and actually communicate what I don’t like about the way the story handles it.

In my opinion, what sets these two stories apart in the way they handle the atonement arcs of their respective bullies is the way they portray consequences. The big “C” word tends to elicit a hostile reaction from certain fans, who assume that your idea of consequences must necessarily involve the bully character being gratuitously punished and made to suffer as retribution for their past actions. But a consequence is just the “result or affect of an action or condition” and can range in severity, it can have many different effects.

A Silent Voice uses social consequences to prompt change from its main character. Shoya’s bullying results in him being shunned by his classmates and friends, and the story goes to great lengths to show how his actions not only hurt his victim, but that they also hurt people he cared about. His mom has to reimburse Shoko’s mom for the damaged hearing aids (when she is already short on money) for example. Furthermore, the knowledge of his past is something that impacts the way others perceive him, and that change in perception is essential to his arc.

More importantly, A Silent Voice makes it clear to the viewer/reader that despite Shoko generally being a kind and forgiving person, the bullying still hurt her deeply enough to leave a long lasting impression. Shoko is receptive to Shoya’s will to change, but the story doesn’t ignore that Shoko suffered greatly and that the bullying made her sad, frustrated and even angry. Her negative emotions are not overshadowed by her desire to see Shoya become a better person.

The thing that holds me back from enjoying Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship development is the lack of consequences Bakugou receives for his bullying (which is directly connected to the way the narrative denies Izuku both agency and introspection) The hard truth is that Bakugou faces little to no consequences for his past behaviour, and one would think that such a topic would have to be brought up at some point because, ya know…he goes to a hero school. A HERO school, a place where people train to be role models, help people on a large scale and protect those who cannot protect themselves.

The first scene we see with Bakugou depicts him as the opposite of a hero. A mean bully who beats up people weaker than him, and this is emphasized by the fact that he targets Izuku, who has no means of defending himself. Despite this, he gets into UA, which isn’t necessarily a problem because it communicates a major flaw in the system that cultivates heroes (Overlooking certain problematic traits in favour of innate talent and strength) BUT, the information that he used to be a bully never comes up among his classmates in any major or lasting way. We saw his classmates, and even his new friends discuss or think about how much they abhor bullying. The students of class 1A do not like it when people abuse their strength to pick on those weaker than them…yet that never seems to connect back to Bakugou’s past as a bully.

This issue is exacerbated by the lack of attention given to Izuku’s side of the story. In stories that involve the atonement or redemption of a bully, it is CRITICAL that the victim’s side of the story is treated as something equally important to the bully’s side. It’s not something that can just be overshadowed by the bully’s side, it must be focused on in order for the atonement arc to work.

It’s disappointing that Izuku lacks the introspection that Katsuki gets, and very unsatisfying that it effectively lets Katsuki off the hook for literally every bad thing he’s ever done. The ways the bullying might’ve impacted Izuku for the worst is hardly ever discussed because every time the narrative approaches the topic, it always pivots to Izuku praising Katsuki for the things he did right. This is a big problem, because it silences any discussion that focuses on Izuku’s feelings and shines the spotlight on Katsuki instead.

Before I end my little tangent, I also feel the need to say this: Pointing to any instance of Katsuki’s suffering throughout the series IS NOT EVIDENCE OF CONSEQUENCES! Any bad thing will happen to Katsuki and people will proceed to say: “SEE?! Did you see that?? Katsuki HAS faced consequences! How can you say that he never faced consequences for his actions? Why do you want him to suffer?” It’s so disingenuous and it’s a terrible argument that refuses to criticize the text.

[blood-starved-beast]

how would you interpret Maria hugging hunter in her visceral? i always thought of it as some sort of mockery from her

Sort of, but in the way that her whole fight is sort of a "mockery" of the concept of a dashing Heroic romance (In the Shakespearean sense of the term). Let me explain.

First, we have to understand Maria's character design in that she is of the bifauxnen archetype. The bifauxnen is a handsome, gentleman-ly type woman portraying all the traits we associate with a dashing hero: courageous, refined and sometimes aristocratic, and androgynous. She is the counterpart to the bishonen, the contrast to the more coarse Lad-ette. The most famous of this archetype of course is Lady Oscar from Rose of Versailles. She is essentially a Female Prince.

The Lady Maria reflects this design. Out of all the Hunters and Byrgenwerth crew, she is the one dressed to the Nines, wearing dashing Cainhurst fashion to something that is essentially nasty and wet and all the other things (the Hunt). She's wearing jewelry (the Lumenflower brooch) the cravat, the fact she curls her hair, the aristocratic looks and backstory (the fact that she's the Lady Maria, a Knight of Cainhurst Vileblood royalty), the fact that she was the one taking care of the Research patients and they worship her, etc. Her outfit fits along the lines of the Lady Oscars, Alucards, and so forth. The fact that she is the only one to realize the atrocity of her actions, to regret her actions and reject her calling as a Hunter, is so fucking introspective at the cost of noticing Gehrman's mania for example reads very much in line of a Romantic hero. She is presenting a Look and this Look says she is meant to come off as rich, handsome, and heroic as she's slaying monsters. At least, those are the visual cues the player is meant to read in that sense. And that is carried over into her actions.

Lady Maria fights the Hunter to "liberate [them] from [their] wild curiosity" - she is taking the role again, of the hero. The villain here, being that need for Insight and she is saving the Hunter from the call of blood. She then engages you a fight, a dance really, set to waltz - again, playing with those romantic hero tropes (assuming you don't parry her to death). The visceral attack therefore, plays into that fantasy. She treats you so gently cause of course you are the Victim enslaved by your thirst for knowledge, she is the romantic hero, mercy killing you with the sweet kiss of death. She steadies you as your now heartless body bleeds out onto the floorboards of the clocktower.

But like everything in Bloodborne, there is a catch you see. Cause the Lady Maria is not a hero in fact; she is a bloody coward.

Yes, Maria is the only member of the Byrgenwerth crew (and amongst the few Hunter in general) to make a dry stop + u-turn from the Hunt and the atrocities associated with that. But unlike someone like Djura, who at least is trying to be productive in his redemption, Maria runs from her mistakes. She casts Rakuyo into the Well and leaves. She joins the Research Hall and contributes to more atrocities there, but hey at least all the patients there love her right?? (😬) And when her brooding (or maybe insanity? who says she was immune to the Beast plague? Or Kos infecting her brain??) was too much for her, she takes her own life instead of you know, working to dismantle the systems - both the Research Hall and the Hunt itself. Her issues and her guilt - that is more important to her than actually helping or saving people. She the Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, Lord over nothing else but the reminder of her greatest failure. Both in life and in death.

Cause you see, her stopping the Hunter isn't really about saving them from their wild curiosity. The Fishing Hamlet is dead and gone. The effects are echoing throughout all of Yharnam in this day and age. Heck, the Hunter just came in from the Research Hall itself. It is well and truly Known, to prevent future atrocities of that scale, one has to know the events that led to those atrocities in the First Place. Lady Maria isn't helping you, isn't saving you from anything you already knew to begin with. She is, once again, trying to alleviate her own guilt and shame and trying to prevent others of knowing of that shame. So she tries to kill you. But you know, in a Heroic way. Hence why the whole fight is a sham and mockery.

She also hates your guts. I consider this to be tertiary canon at best, but the deleted lines has it so that she calls you insufferable, and baits you to kill her. She Does Not Actually Give a Shit About You. It cannot be more blatant than that. And how couldn't she? You make her recall her greatest shame, force her to break the last of her principles (no Vilebloodbending) so that your ass does not learn of what she's done. You also keep coming back, so you're a constant reminder that no matter what she does, her actions really do mean nothing, not before, and definitely not now.

Also she stares at you like this the whole fight if looks could kill well, you would be dead and not coming back (The way you ought to. Bastard. Stay dead already!! - Lady Maria, probably):

So yeah, she is mocking you with a oh so sweet kiss from the Handsome Hero type as she rips your heart out (breaking it) and kills you very dead. Cause fuck the Hunter specifically.

[nezuscribe]

(i was the nonnie who asked about how america works) i don't really wanna keep going back and forth with this cause i dont wanna be annoying or anything, but i did a little bit of research and... that's not really what i've seen??

for all the economy stuff, Biden still had four (or is it five? idk how long your presidents stay in office) years to fix the economy he got from trump if it really was bad, and what ive seen from gas prices and grocery prices in america, he clearly hasn't done that

kamala also had four years to fix the issues she was talking about, so there's that

also, from what i know (pls correct me if im wrong) all of those sexual assault cases and other charges placed against him were proven wrong. i dont think hes actually been indicted or placed in jail for anything (which ig you could sum up to the unfair legal system over there, but wasn't there that hole issue with the Clinton guy?? maybe im getting things confused, idk)

from my research didn't he also provide a lot more jobs for people of color? ive never heard him say anything explicitly racist during his rally's (i havent watched all of them) or with his legislation. ik that whole thing with the border wall was going on, and i do think that was 100% rash way to deal with the border crisis, but the Biden guy also didn't do anything to help that situation

for reproductive rights, i remember tuning into the kamala v. trump debate and he explicitly said that he was pro-abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother (if you think that abortion should be okay in any circumstance, the ig its just a different morality, where i live thats very not okay)

for the banning books thing, ive seen plenty of clips where in elementary school library's theyve been putting out books with porn and smut in them, which i think is not okay for little children to be leanring. from what i understand, that's probably what he was trying to do with banning books (again, pls correct me if im wrong)

and i've also never really seen him display any sort of homophobic tendencies.

pls keep in mind that this is all very basic level research, as i dont really have time to go that in depth, but im majoring in politcial science at my uni, so i think this is an interesting and important topic to discuss (sorry for making this so long)

so you seem pretty pro trump at this point but I’ll still humor you if you want to be so forgiving of him.

Who told you those sexual assault cases weren’t true? Those victims still stand by their stories.

And I said I’m not saying that Biden is great. But he was still working with Trumps fuck up. Also idk how much you know about a vice president, but they can’t really do much when they’re not president. I’m not saying Harris did everything she coudlve done, but being a vp has a lot less power than you think.

And for reproductive rights, yeah right. Those fuckers don’t give a DAMN about any cases. Even if they say they do. They want it gone, point blank period.

And one of his first days of office he took away trans people from the military. He spews homophobia.

Do more research. This is embarrassing

[cosmicroadkill]

So after obsessing over Arachnis Prime and reading @sonicasura's bat Optimus idea I just was really, really digging it and was inspired to make my own AU similar to it

So basically in this AU both Optimus and Elita fall back into the cavern; Elita's power times out like in canon but Optimus manages to catch her as she's falling. The issue is all that does is put too much sudden weight and tension on his grappling hook causing it to pull out of the rock and send them both tumbling down. The explosion separates the two of them, sending Optimus even deeper in. While Elita becomes Blackarachnia as she does in canon, during and after her change she's looking for Optimus to see if he survived, eventually finding him in a terrible state. He'd run into the cavern's other denizens, massive vampiric and carnivorous bats. He managed to fight off and kill a few but not without serious damage, bordering on death.

In a bid to save him, but also for the selfish reason of not wanting to be a freak alone, she makes him a techno-organic like herself. From there, Optimus lives up to his name for the first little while, practicing with his new alt and eventually managing to fly out of the cavern to watch for any Autobot ships, believing Sentinal will surely come back with or at least send help since he didn't come back for them originally, eventually realizing that Blackarachnia is right, no one is coming.

Well, no Autobots at least. The two get picked up by the Decepticons, Optimus being very much not about the idea but following Blackarachnia almost blindly as he still sees Elita-1 in her and basically owes her his life.

From there it's kind of all over. For a good bit he kinda just follows her around like a puppy and follows her commands; after all initially the idea is for them to return to how they once were, but eventually, Optimus will realize that Blackarachnia is no longer his beloved friend and something will happen to cause him to finally turn on her and split off into his own thing, of what I'm not sure; honestly, it'll more than likely be a build-up of things instead of one big thing.

There's also the debate of how Optimus deals with the Decepticons and basically being one for a while. On the one hand, I like sonicasura's idea of him just being a victim of circumstance. He's not a Decepticon, or in this case, he's only a Decepticon in name, he's just a man who's trying to deal with his current situation the best he can while sticking to his morals and general worldview.

On the other hand, I like the idea of Optimus realizing the flaws and downright failings of Autobot society and becoming a Decepticon for real. He doesn't agree with their morals and what they do a lot of the time, but the ideals Megatron puts forth? He can get behind those, especially since he and Elita were failed by the system they followed so doggedly while Sentinal abandoned them (as far as he's aware) and potentially still gets 'rewarded' (given the rank of Prime and his own team; Optimus would not know he's delegated to bridge repair until later if at all)

More than likely he might fall into a third option of neither, where he abandons the Decepticons like Blackarachnia does but refuses to rejoin the Autobots because of the whole debacle, likely hiding away with the Dinobots on their island.

Also as you've likely noticed I haven't quite come up with Optimus' new name? I'm partial to Chiropteras, as Chiroptera is the order bats are from. I considered going with Optimus Primal since Blackarachnia is also from Beast Wars and a lot of people used/use Tarantulas for spider Optimus before Arachnus Prime was revealed, but my biggest thing is in TFA Prime isn't technically anything special, it's just a rank, so why would he still be Prime or even make it Primal? Unless he's giving himself the rank because he feels he deserves it/is bastardizing it for his own use. I could also potentially use the name of another bat transformer in the way that Tarantulas is the name of a Predacon from Beast Wars but none of them really fit? Cause there's Nightscream, Sonar, and Nyx (and technically Noctorro but he's a bat and a bull). I could use Nocturne or Nocturnus, too.

Lemme know what y'all think?

[hannahssimblr]

At the house, I am conscious of the mess. Nobody has made an effort to clean up properly for weeks, and now dishes and miscellaneous bits of rubbish litter every available surface. The bins are full. Tangles of chargers and cables pile up on the table, and water damage has well and truly set in on the oak flooring under our feet. The same patch of floor that Evie’s hair is dripping on now, but while it’s too late to save it, she might as well add to it. 

“Wow, this is a beautiful house,” she says, and I have to check her face to see if she’s taking the piss out of me. She looks genuinely charmed. I frown.  

“I’ll get you a towel downstairs.”

As we descend to the living room, I find myself holding my breath. It seems even dirtier than the kitchen there, and I wonder how and when this happened, how it is even possible. Yet here we are, and it is. I pray there are clean towels, at least let there be clean towels…

Oh, thank God. 

I hand her one from the hot press. It is old and scratchy, and likely a victim of my mother, back when she used to dye her hair at home, evidenced by the big, bleached patches all over it, but at least it’s clean. I show her the bathroom. 

“Feel free to take a shower if you want to. The water is hot.” As it constantly is, because I turned it on at the beginning of the summer and found the system so complex that I never risked turning it off again. I’ll be hearing about it when my dad gets the bill, but that’s an issue for September. 

Evie peeks in. “You don’t want to go first?”

“No, go ahead.”

As soon as I hear the hum of the shower, I pounce into action and tear into my bedroom. I yank all the dirty clothes off the floor and fire them into my already heaving hamper, then kick a pair of shoes under the bed, followed by a mucky football and some art magazine Jen thought I’d like, but I never read.

There are chocolate wrappers on the floor. What kind of creature am I? Was I sitting on the floor at some point, feasting on a family packet of dairy milk bars, or did these just fall out of my pockets? I rush around, picking them all up, then reach the wastepaper basket to find it full. I curse under my breath and yank the bag out, tying it in a hasty knot, then carry it and the two handfuls of coffee mugs strewn about the place up to the kitchen. There is nowhere for them to go, so I shove the mugs into the sink and toss the bag on the floor. 

She’s showering for ages. Good. 

Next, I tackle the bed, straightening out the duvet and pillows, which are, mercifully, clean. I could tongue-kiss the past version of myself that ran them through the wash two days before. To make extra sure, I give them a good, long sniff. They still smell like detergent. The clean clothes from that same wash go from the armchair to the wardrobe, and books on the bedside table. The tennis racquets… they’ll be fine, leaning against the wall. When I step back and examine my work, I determine that it’s barely passable, but time is surely running out, and she can’t shower forever. The dust on the floor can stay another day. 

Lastly, I toss my sweaty clothes onto the pile and peel off my sodden shorts. Once I have changed into something clean, I carry all the laundry out and heave it into the washing machine, right by the door of the bathroom. Evie hums tunelessly in the shower, and for a moment or two, I stand and listen. I wonder whose shower gel she is using, and shiver inexplicably at the idea of her choosing mine. 

I arrange myself in a casual position when she comes back into the room, hanging out on the end of the bed. She’s rosy from the hot water, and her hair lies flat against her head, so straight and fine that her ears poke out the sides. 

“You don’t have to wear the same wet t-shirt,” I inform her. “I can put your clothes in the dryer.”

She pulls at the hem and looks down at those two, damp, triangular patches. “It’s okay,” she shrugs. “They’ll dry on me.”

“You can leave all your wet stuff on the floor. I’ll sort them out after my shower and I’ll just find you something else to wear.”

“But I won’t fit in your clothes.”

“You’ll fit in a t-shirt, won’t you?” I saunter over to my wardrobe and lift a t-shirt from the stack. It’s old, and has a hole in the armpit, hence it’s permanent relegation to the beach house wardrobe, but like everything else in this house in its current state, it will suffice. 

“Thanks,” she says. I leave her to change and head for the shower. 

“What are you looking at?”

She jumps and turns around. I’ve caught her nosing around and looking at my notice board. She points at it. “Your ticket to a music festival.”

I hesitate, trying to gauge whether Claire has blabbed to her about what I said or not. “Oh yeah, are you coming?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should. All of us are heading up to it.” I pull a pair of socks out of a drawer and plonk myself onto the bed to put them on. 

She sits with me. “I’m not sure. It’s kind of a bit complicated.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah,” she hesitates before deciding to divulge. “Kelly and Claire are in a big fight about it. Claire wants to go, and Kelly doesn’t want to, even though it’s Claire’s eighteenth birthday the same weekend. It’s… it’s all a bit silly if I’m honest.”

I frown. “She doesn’t want to celebrate her friends’ birthday in a fun way?”

“No, it’s more than that. It’s that she doesn’t want to hang out with Shane for the whole weekend. She’d be too embarrassed to. She’s weird about that kind of thing.”

I should proceed with caution. I say, “sounds a little selfish to me.”

“Kelly’s a complicated person. I think she means well, she just… isn’t great at expressing herself. She gets angry at people instead of telling them how she feels in a normal way.”

I could talk a lot of shit about Kelly Healy, but I‘ll save it. I know that teenage girls’ friendships are strange and nuanced in ways my brain will never fully comprehend. Things never seem to be simple enough to just end the friendship. It must drag on for eternity until one of them is irreparably damaged in its wake. “So what, she’s forbidden you both from going to the festival?”

“She hasn’t said that we’re forbidden.”

“But you’re not going because you think she’ll be angry with you.”

“Pretty much.”

“So what about Claire? It’s her birthday.”

She groans. “I know. I hate this. I hate when people are fighting, and I feel like I’m in the middle of it. I don’t know what the right decision is.”

Tell me about it. “The thing that you want to do more, that’s the right decision.”

“I knew you’d say something like that.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Something wise.”

I laugh. If only I could take my own advice. 

She heaves out a sigh and slumps over her knees. “I can’t talk to either of them about it. Kelly is impossible, and Claire hasn’t been around. I’ve barely seen her at all since they fought. I don’t even know where she’s been.”

I blink. “Oh, she’s been here.”

“What?”

“Yeah! I thought you knew. She’s been coming here every day for ages.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“And did she tell you why?”

“No, I didn’t ask. I thought it was just to hang out with Shane.”

“With Shane?” She straightens to look into my face and I grin.

“Yeah, they’ve been hanging out.”

“Go ’way.”

“I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but they hang out a lot, go for walks together and watch TV in the living room. I usually just leave them alone, but…” I tap my nose.

“Oh, I knew it!” She throws herself back on to her elbows and shakes her head. “I wonder what this is going to mean for Kelly.”

“Kelly can grow up. She doesn’t have a say.”

“Ugh. I know. It’s just impossible not to worry about it.”

“Evie, how often do you let that girl live inside your head? Forget about it. Let Shane and Claire deal with her.”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

It’s not lost on me, the juxtaposition between this conversation and the one I had with Alison this morning. These two girls are only a year apart in age, and yet somehow their lives oppose so diametrically. Am I the same boy with them both, or have I somehow split in two? How can I be worrying about Alison and all that she’s been through, while hours later coaching Evie through friend drama? I know the turmoil and stress is real for her. I can tell by the things her face is doing, how she nibbles on her lip, the way her brow furrows, but I am comforted by it, by how simple it is. Maybe it would be good for my soul to spend more time with Evie. 

Regardless, I move on from this specific theme and bring the conversation back to where it began. “And as for the festival, I think you should come.”

“Hm.”

“Will you?” She doesn’t answer, so I assume she hasn’t heard me. I nudge her. “I want you to come. Will you come?”

“You want me to?” She echoes, like she doesn’t exactly believe it.

“I do.”

“Okay then.”

Perhaps someone else would find it worthwhile to read into the fact that she seems to want to do everything that I do, but I’m not really that bothered. I’m just glad that she agreed for the sake of herself. I suspect it may be a rarity for her. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

Corresponding LG Chapter [2]

[liquidorcard]

That's not what you fucking said though, is it Lily? If you're going to try to backpedal, you could at least delete the other fucking post.

"Those filthy disgusting druggies are a blight on society and they're horrible and they smell bad . . . But I guess they shouldn't be brutalized by the police or whatever."

First of all, it's clear by your post you don't seem to understand the difference between decriminalization and legalization. Second, it's clear from your enthusiasm to hop on the opportunity to talk shit you don't give a flying fuck about, nor do you support the rehabilitation and treatment of drug use for what it is: a symptom of greater mental health issues.

It's absolutely ghoulish and abhorrent for you to try to use your uncle's death and sister's hardships to lampshade your bullshit here Lily-- but I suppose that's not new behavior for you.

Your uncle was using medical grade cannabis-- which has been officially legal nation wide for YEARS and functionally legal here, if not officially, for even longer. Greencards were not hard to obtain. In BC and Ottowa they wouldn't even check if you had one. Weed did not kill your fucking uncle. Weed happens to be one of the few mind-altering substances that has NEVER been linked to anyone's direct cause of death. It is BY NO MEANS HARMLESS, and can have a seriously negative effect on certain people with other health issues or mental illnesses, however. I don't believe for a second you actually think weed is what caused your uncle's death or Courtney's drug issues. You're just using the general stigma around drug addiction and the profound damage the War On Drugs has done to the west.

Let it not go unacknowledged that this is yet ANOTHER example of how blatantly Lily couldn't care less about the marginalized communities she uses as a bludgeon to obfuscate criticism. No community has been more systemically disenfranchised in Canada by the stigma around addiction more than the First Nations community. Almost every time, the government makes excuses not to offer aid or relief in indigenous populations because "they will just use the funds to buy more drugs." In my province, entire reservations have been left WITHOUT CLEAN DRINKING WATER. Most of the homeless population in my city are First Nations people who have had their lives devastated by addiction. NIMBYs refuse to let safe-injection or other harm reduction clinics open near their homes and buisness, then endlessly bitch about the homeless people they left with no where to go loitering around their properties because they have nowhere to go. Certain months get so cold that freezing to death isn't an uncommon occurrence. The dead body of a homeless person was discovered in the dumpster of my middle school when I was a kid-- what a formative childhood memory that was.

Let us not forget how common drug abuse problems are in the LGBTQ+ community and among victims of SA. I went into extensive detail about my own experience in this post:

So quite this weenie pissbaby behavior. Quite this Motte-and-bailey J.K. Rowling mealy-mouthed bullshit.

You're really not even very good at disguising your own bigotry sweaty.

Edit: Courtney wanted it clarified she used drugs, but was never an addict. Lily's pedaled that line so much I never even thought to check with Courtney if it was true.

[variousqueerthings]

i will say -- and this isn't news to anyone who watches elementary -- but there's such a cognitive dissonance between the episodes where sherlock and/or joan are doing things blatantly outside of the law in order to protect A Victim (for example the episode where Sherlock knows the killer is the teenage boy who was abused by his father, or when Sherlock went to see Kitty as she was considering murder and kinda went "you may not like being a murderer, have you considered acid?") and episodes that are like. super pro-cops

and yeah yeah any show related to crimes will have copaganda, it's not an indictment of anything more than what happens on a million other shows however I do think it's more whiplash in this one, because those episodes are like. "Cops. we look out for each other. Cops who narc on corrupt Cops are more the enemy than the corrupt Cops themselves. I will literally begin a harassment campaign against this civilian (Joan) for looking into whether a Cop was corrupt even though her findings cleared her. this is not A Bad Person Thing To Do. because I am A Cop. and if you try to complain about harassment I'll know you're not To Be Trusted around Cops. who put their Lives on the Line. Brothers In Arms who can never ever be questioned because of The Sacrifice. that episode where Gregson's daughter had been assaulted by her partner and she was begging him not to do anything about it, because it would tank her career." and none of this ever has real follow-through in any way, because then the show would have to be about how there are a lot of corrupt cops and even the ones who aren't are bound by an immoral system, which would defeat the point of crime-of-the-week format (although I note they could've solved this issue by just not going so hard on the weird pro-cop episodes in the first place and just left it at an ambient amount of expected copaganda)

it's an interesting insight into the tension that exists between some of what the show is sort of trying to do with Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson as the main protagonists (acting outside The System), but someone on that writing team has the most cognitive dissonance about what that means in a show that's also about policing. maybe everyone on there.

but it introduces a whole different set of ideas than intended (if you're the kind of audience that isn't super unquestioning about police) which is, "hey this is like. really messed up. cops really think like this? that's kind of culty. anyone else think this is culty? and this is pro-policing??"

I think a different show that had a similarish remit in characters, that is "protagonist is investigating crimes but is operating outside of the system, and there are also cops" could do something with this attitude by having the protagonists go "huh. that. is messed up. get a different job if you all have PTSD? also how many people have you manhandled who were innocent, just... curious. and uh... how many internal crimes have you covered up for the Good Of The Team?"

alas, this iteration -- while certainly getting us some of the way -- will not have Sherlock sincerely questioning the American prison system. but it will have Joan challenging a cop to an Honours boxing match and winning, which sort of nudged on the above ideas so, will take it and play with it in my mind

[sepublic]

You know a Belos redemption fic is going to suck and completely miss the point when one of the first things the writer does is restore his human appearance. Like. Season 3 made it pretty clear that the curse form was a permanent thing Belos had to deal with, and he only briefly recreates his human look as a facade when he’s begging for his life.

But more importantly, we have so many protagonists who have to deal with the scars and disabilities that Belos’ system (and often Belos himself) inflicted upon them; Luz, King, Eda, Hunter, Raine, etc. But Belos gets off scot-free for a curse he brought directly upon himself, the result of the cruelty he inflicted towards those palismen? Their own suffering, now reflected on Belos in a way he can’t hide from himself or others? He left his mark on Luz, it’s only fair that Luz’s mark on Belos (which she did by branding him!!!) remain.

And it’s not even necessary to restore his human form; The only real drawback to Belos’ curse form was him dying, but obviously if someone has a redemption fic, then they’ve addressed that issue. It isn’t a loss of bile magic like it was for Eda or Lilith, because Belos never had magical bile, and he ate those palismen for power.

Why does a redemption for Belos need him to regain his human form? Doesn’t it make more sense for someone who saw others as lesser for not being human, to learn to accept himself and others for this shared trait? To walk in people’s shoes, participate in the monstrousness as an actual member? Are there not consequences that Belos needs to learn to live with, as his victims did? Even an opportunity for angst as he grapples with this change? It’s also genuinely less interesting to change Belos back.

Honestly, it just kinda proves to me that people only woobify Belos as much as they do because of white favoritism’s apologism for bigots, like what happened to Billy Hargrove the racist from Stranger Things, or Kylo Ren from Star Wars. Because god forbid Belos no longer be a white dude, that would just take away from the appeal that incentivizes his stans to coddle him! Like Belos, they’d rather humanize a white dude than a slimy green monster, even though the latter is infinitely more compelling… The story was right there and stans willfully ignored it.

People can’t comprehend that Belos isn’t the main character (He serves Luz and others’ arcs, not the other way around) and that this entitlement was in fact his foundational flaw. It’s a double standard for an abuser’s pain with no regard for Belos’ victims, unless they can prop up his uwufication. Whether Belos deals with his curse form or not is a litmus for if a writer actually understands his character, and really the basic themes of the show.

[phoenixyfriend]

DeSantis is calling for a US representative to be denaturalized and deported.

The apparent cause? Said representative, Ilhan Omar, is a naturalized Somali-American citizen who recently gave a speech where she referred to herself as "Somali first, and Muslim second," without mentioning America.

“Expel from Congress, denaturalize and deport,” urged Ron DeSantis about U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is taking criticism from the Right for comments she made privileging Somalia over the United States.

As Newsweek notes, Omar recently told a crowd of Somali American constituents that she was “Somalian first, Muslim second” and “here to protect the interests of Somalia from inside the U.S. system.”

She also claimed that while she is in Congress, “no one will take Somalia’s sea. The United States will not back others to rob us.” There, she was objecting to a deal struck by Somaliland to give Ethiopia access to the ocean.

- Florida Politics

I'm not going to comment on the discussion of who deserves to own the disputed territories she's actually talking about in her speech, because quite frankly I barely know enough about that area to understand why Italy caused the Ethiopia/Eritrea/Djibouti port access issue, but I will say that it is a frankly ridiculous cause for STRIPPING SOMEONE OF THEIR CITIZENSHIP AND DEPORTING THEM. The woman was talking about her ethnic and cultural background and promising to protect people of that specific background. This is a normal thing for politicians to do. It's often their platform.

And let's not pretend that "I will strengthen ties with/support this ally" is uncommon. It's just usually the EU or Israel or something, instead of Somalia.

... possibly the actual cause, politically, is that she has been supporting Rep. Tlaib in pro-Palestine activities, and has been calling for reparations to be paid to the families of civilians killed by US operations in Somalia.

“Congress appropriates $3 million every year specifically to make payments to civilian victims and survivors of U.S. operations,” Omar said. “However, those funds have never been used in Somalia — despite confirmed civilian deaths there.”

- The Intercept

So, you know. Her other "hold America accountable in the middle east" activities probably are part of this.

Plus the usual racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia of the GOP.