#stories and the real world aren’t. they’re not the fucking same

[okcoolthanks]

I feel like my family’s getting sick of me

[4dbeingguide]

there is only one sentence you need to know as a manifestor:

the 3D/physical world isn’t real. only the mind is.

disclaimers:

this is slightly rant-y though i don’t attack you, i uplift you

excuse any grammar errors!

credit to all the artists whose art was used!

let’s get into it.

you do not exist/live in the 3D, you simply perceive your own mind and assumptions in three dimensions. the 3D is an illusion. it isn’t real. the phone you’re reading this on, your surroundings, me writing this post, “other” people, they’re not real.

this will literally answer all the questions you have about LOA. examples include:

“what if what i’m doing won’t make anything manifest in the 3D?” then boo-fucking-hoo? it wouldn’t even matter because that’s not where you live. you’re 4-dimensional. if it’s happened in the 4D, it’s fucking happened! put it in your success story list. rejoice now that it’s happened. because it has! the 3D is NOT real, the 4D is so you should be checking the 4D! think about this question: “what if it doesn’t manifest in the 2D (a world of only length and width)?” i bet you’re like “womp womp? the fuck would that have to do with me? it’s not real and i don’t live there!” give that SAME energy to the 3D. you live in the 4D.

“where is it in the 3D?” why do you care? it’s not where you live. CONSCIOUSNESS is the only reality. you heard me. you shouldn’t give a fuck about whether it will manifest in the 3D or not because the 3D doesn’t determine reality, YOU do. why do you want confirmation from an illusion when you can have confirmation from what’s actually real (the mind)?

“but if i stop caring about whether it’ll manifest in the 3D or not, it might not manifest in the 3D!” first of all, womp womp then? you don’t live in the 3D. second of all, that’s literally impossible unless you directly/intentionally assume that it’s the case. the 3D literally EXISTS as a reflection/limited perception of the mind. it’s LAW that it will come. and the last time i checked, “i don’t care whether it comes or not” and “it won’t come” are different statements. but what i just find so hilarious about this one specific doubt is that you’ve literally just PROVEN your THOUGHTS create the 3D.

“i can’t manifest abc! it goes against the laws of physics/circumstances etc” lemme just get this straight. the MIND is the only reality yet you are lying and saying it has limits based off of 3D “law”? and the 3D is not real meaning the “laws” of the 3D aren’t either? the 3D doesn’t and will never be able to tell the mind what to do. that being said, you can manifest pissing a million bucks, teleporting into a villa in italy or becoming wanda fucking maximoff and developing superpowers. you can manifest hulk hogan flying across the pacific to your door and proposing to you, hell, you can even manifest BECOMING hulk hogan. you can manifest your SPs buying you three million bentleys then making out with you in each of them. you can manifest going back in time. you. can. manifest. ANYTHING. you. can. manifest. anything. you. can. imagine. you’re OMNIPOTENT.

this one is very interesting cause it’s a response to doubts! “if i keep doubting, it won’t show up in the 3D!” the reason your doubts persist is because your mind thinks they actually mean shit and are an issue worth addressing. so what if it doesn’t show up in the 3D? it’s already happened.

“but what if im one of the odd ones out? what if i can’t manifest?” despite the fact that it’s scientific law, the rebuttal for this doubt is very simple. you wouldn’t be alive lmao. being alive is a constant act of the 3D reflecting your mind, that’s literally its only purpose. it’s an inanimate, mindless, limited perception of your mind that instantly conforms to your beliefs. you are CONSTANTLY manifesting. what you’re doing is just learning how to control WHAT you manifest. (just to set the record straight. this doesn’t mean you are to blame for your problems since you didn’t consciously choose them).

“the 3D isn’t showing me what i want!” well it isn’t real lmao? why the fuck would that matter?

one of the WORST beliefs you can have as a manifestor is that the goal of manifesting is changing the 3D. i know you (probably) came in thinking that but i want you to shed that belief. the 3D is not real. the goal is to get it in the 4D, where you live. to fully experience something, all you have to do is change your mind as that’s the the only reality. when you accomplish that goal, rejoice and move on.

this is why i very, VERY heavily dislike the statement that “an assumption persisted in will harden into fact”. no, an assumption IS a fact. only regarding something as real when it manifests in the 3D (which isn’t real) is fallacious.

“thoughts create reality” i bet you’ve heard this before in this community but i don’t like this either for this simple reason: thoughts (that you accept) ARE reality.

my biggest piece of advice to you as a manifestor is this: realize that the 3D doesn’t mean shit.

when you DO get your manifestation in the 3D, it’s perfectly fine to be happy but don’t jump up and down saying “it’s finally happened (in reality)!”. NO. it happened in reality ages ago, the 3D just caught up.

i’m gonna link some really sexy posts that will help you understand this better. most of these are scientific.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NevilleGoddard/s/AmlHe5oipA (the post is up, i don’t understand why tumblr won’t embed it)

if you liked this post, leave a like, reblog, engage, follow, let me know if this helped 🫶😭

[jointherebellion215]

Flowers

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x female!reader

Summary: You're living a perfectly content life on Geidi Prime with your husband. It's a shame your mind can't rest, sparked by glimpses of a life unknown. Loosely based on the song from Hadestown.

Word Count: 1.5k

TW: Dark!Feyd-Rautha, Dead Dove Do Not Eat, yandere!Feyd-Rautha, manipulation, gaslighting, like SO much gaslighting holy shit, descriptions of violence, abusive relationship, emotional abuse, isolation, tragedy, nonconsensual drug use, nonconsensual medical treatement, induced memory loss, amnesia, dubious consent, pregnancy, songfic, happy-but-not-really-happy ending, I know I said female!reader but there's virtually no pronoun usage or descriptive words in thisfor the reader besides titles so maybe GN!reader??

A/N: I'm blown away, almost 500 notes on His Kiss, the Riot? Holy shit, all of the thanks! Here it is, the final part! I'm ending it with the song that actually started this whole idea. Listening to Eva's interpretation of Eurydice singing Flowers gave me the most delicious, fucked-up bit of inspiration and this came out. I was clutching my own metaphorical pearls writing this cause damn, this gets dark. Like, way more than I thought I could write. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the end of this twisted tale. Thank you for reading! As always, I appreciate you taking the time to like, comment, and reblog.

Read Part One and Part Two

AO3

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Dune properties, characters, or storylines-- nor do I own anything related to Hadestown. The images used in this are not my own, and any similarities to stories or events other than what are directly referenced are strictly coincidence.

Lily white and poppy red

I trembled when he laid me out

“You won’t feel a thing,” he said, “when you go down”

Nothing gonna wake you now

Drops of blood. 

A wicked, black smile.

“You won’t feel a thing.” 

You wake up with a gasp. Your doctor had warned you about dreams like this. They weren’t real, just an aftereffect of your accident.

The medical staff for House Harkonnen had been gracious enough to inform you of your predicament. When your family had recently hosted the Harkonnens, you quickly met and fell deeply in love with the na-Baron Feyd-Rautha. Your love for each other was so intense that you had demanded to get married right away. Your father disapproved of the union, so he disowned you and banished you, demanding to never see you again.

On the journey back to Geidi Prime, a stray asteroid hit the ship and caused you to hit your head. Feyd had apparently worried for your life, which saddened you and warmed your heart. It was nice to know that someone truly cared for you. However, your mind wasn’t quite the same afterwards. Your life before Geidi Prime was completely unknown to you. Your memories were in a fragile state.

That was just a few months earlier. Unfortunately, your mind has not yet recovered your memories prior to the accident. You were diligently taking a specially brewed tea that would calm your mind so it wouldn’t fracture under the immense pressure to try and fix itself. When you asked how long it would take for you to recover, your heart cracked when they said that it may take the rest of your natural life.

While it broke your heart to hear of your father’s dismissal of your feelings, you believed that you were strong enough to carry on. Having no further ties to your home world made it better to settle in with your new family.

You are a Harkonnen now.

Now, your footsteps make the quietest of echoes as you traipse down the narrow corridor. Heads of nearby servants and slaves bow, and eyes snap to the floor as you pass by. You feel the barest of sympathies, for not being allowed the simplest of human connection with their na-Baronness. But it was paradise considering the consequences should anyone ever feel bold enough to try otherwise.

Your husband wouldn’t allow that.

Dreams are sweet, until they’re not

Men are kind, until they aren’t

Flowers bloom, until they rot and fall apart

“Can I not have a single friend on this planet?!”

You burst into your shared chambers, rage rushing through your veins. All you had wanted was to have lunch and tea with one of the few female palace advisors you had taken a liking to. Maybe share a laugh or a story. Make a connection outside of your new family. That was all ruined when Feyd barged in and gutted your companion, stomach-to-throat, while she sat in her chair.

You were sure that your shoes had trailed blood down the hallway, but your mind was focused elsewhere at the moment.

“What use would you have for friends? I am right here.” He closed in on you, grasping your arms and forcing you to look in his direction. “Am I not enough for you? Do I not give you everything you should ever desire?”

His hands tighten around your wrists, making you flinch. A stray tear falls from your eyes, guilt starts to overcome your anger.

“No, not at all, husband! You have given me everything I could have wished for and more,” You wrench your hands out of his grip and grasp his face. He showered you with gifts, never let you go hungry or thirsty and this is how you repay him? “I just… I didn’t think you would want to hear me talk about certain things. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.”

“I know you don’t, my darling.”

You take a deep breath as you feel the tension in the room start to settle.

“Your mind is already fragile from the accident… I just want to keep you safe.”

Safe. That was the key here. He takes step back and retrieves a small dagger from his belt.

Feyd holds it up, showing you the weapon. “Did you know that your friend had a blade dipped in poison strapped onto her person?”

You can feel the blood rushing from your face. No. You didn’t know.

“I-I didn’t see a knife on her. She couldn’t have-“

“She did.”

He drops the blade and leans in closer to you, forehead aligning with yours. “There are people out there who seek to harm you, who seek to harm me through you. I can never let that happen.”

You nod furiously. You couldn’t believe that you had been so stupid. 

Trust is unbelievably hard to come by in the Galactic Imperium. Your few months’ worth of memories can even attest to that. It seems that the only people you can truly rely on is family.

“I only want what’s best for you.”

You understand now.

Is anybody listening?

I open my mouth and nothing comes out

Another argument discussion had emerged from your telling of your latest dream. Your husband was convinced that you were entirely too exhausted to put any stock into what your subconscious was telling you, but you thought otherwise.

Fingers run through a patch of bright pinks, yellows, and blues—

“I swear to you, it felt so real! It was almost like a memory, like something I-,” A firm hand is placed on your shoulder as you give a slight stumble. Feyd puts a hand on your back, leading you to the edge of your bed, setting you on the bench that was placed against the footboard.

“Please, have some of your morning tea, my darling. You look a bit peaked.” You accepted the cup he gave you, settling down and taking a few sips of the warm, spiced drink. Your mind instantly calms, anxieties evaporating from your body like puffs of smoke. Never mind the memories that you had just… Floating.

Your husband is now on one knee in front of you, arms encasing your body, as his hands cup your face. He brings your eyes to meet his, seemingly searching. For what? You do not know.

“What were you saying about this dream of yours?” A pause reverberates throughout the room as your head tilts in confusion.

“My…?” You stutter, mouth opening to complete a thought that was no longer entirely there. “I can’t quite remember. What were we talking about?”

Your husband gives a smirk, analyzing your face once more before placing his hand on the dark fabric covering your swollen belly.

“Nothing of import. It seems that my heir is set on scrambling your thoughts.”

There seemed to be nothing in this world that brought more joy to Feyd-Rautha’s face than the sight of you and his unborn child. He’s more protective of you now than ever, having guards always posted near you, having you wear a shield during all public appearances. Not to mention, he was damn near insatiable in private. His hands and mouth are practically dragged away from you and your growing stomach every morning.

You give a chuckle. “I’d heard about pregnancy brain before, but never knew it to be this taxing! Perhaps I’ll take a walk later if I’m feeling up to it.”

Feyd gives your cheek a soft pat before rising to his feet, “Rest, my darling. I shall check in on the both of you later.” His hand rests next to yours, giving your belly a quick rub before he walks towards the door.

Your head goes to set on your pillow, the warmth from the tea running through your body. You must be really tired, since you fall asleep so quickly.

Quick enough to not hear the deadbolt lock clicking from the outside once the door is closed.

Flowers, I remember field of flowers

Soft beneath my heels

Walking in the sun, I remember someone

Someone by my side, turned his face to mine

The dreams start to encroach your mind while you are awake. You continue to follow your doctor’s instructions: take your daily tea, rest often, don’t overexert your body or your mind. But, ever persistent, they push through, finding parallels with your daily life to latch onto.

A hand, gently enlaced with yours, guides you through a meadow—

You husband’s hands lead you to stand with him by his uncle’s side, preparing for another ceremony.

A laugh, familiar and warm—

A chilling cackle of laughter reaches you in your viewing box, watching your husband gleefully slay another adversary in the arena.

Bright, yellow sunlight caressing your face and neck—

The black sun of Geidi Prime pulses in your periphery as you wave to a crowd below, your husband standing stoically next to you.

A kiss, given freely—

Feyd ravishes you in your chambers, lips melding together with yours.

My darling—

My love—

My darling—

My darling—

My darling—

My darling—

My darling—

“Is everything alright, my darling?”

You blink, snapping back to the present. Pale, smooth skin and blue eyes, your husband extends his hand towards you. Safe. He gives you everything. You and your child will never struggle or suffer with him. You are safe with him. Aren’t you?

Blood splatters over a patch of bright pinks, yellows, and blues—

You give a bright smile.

If you ever walk this way

Come and find me lying in the bed I made

[acowardinmordor]

Risk and Reward

Steddie-adjacent. Tw: homophobia

I always love fics where Steve makes himself Eddie’s alibi while Eddie is still unconscious/in a coma. Knows that it will work because he knows in this town there is no way anyone would believe that Steve Harrington would come out if it wasn’t real. No one would believe it, because everyone knows that his parents are always gone, because his dad is in Congress railing against the gays and their depravity and how they deserve to die and burn.

Steve saying it. Signing an affidavit about it. Giving quotes to the ravenous press. It has to be true. And everyone who doesn’t think it’s disgusting think it’s the most romantic thing in the world.

The government was stepping in, all eyes were pointed at Munson, and he was going to be thrown in a cell for life. Or, to save the cost of the trial, he would have vanished somewhere between the hospital and the prison.

Steve coming out stops that. Airtight alibi, reinforced by the knowledge that there will be consequences.

Eddie is safe, and the government has changed tactics, is blaming dead Jason Carver for it all. Eddie wakes up six weeks later, shocked to wake up at all, and trusts his uncle enough to play along. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were dating the Harrington kid?’ Eddie knows how to tell a story that leaves space for a player to fill in their side. He tells stories about little moments and always describes things from his perspective. That way, if it contradicts the story that’s already out there, he can make a find quip about how he remembers it different.

When he finally gets a moment alone with his uncle, two days later, his guess gets confirmed. Wayne knows damn well that Eddie’s gayer than a maypole, and also knows that Eddie has called Steve his nemesis for years. Wayne knew from the second Steve said it that it was a lie, and knew it would work if it was believed.

The only thing confusing Eddie - well, the only thing in this tiny slice of his world - is why his fake boyfriend/no-longer-nemesis, isn’t in the hospital too, playing the part. If the guy was willing to say it at all, then he’d go all in. If there was one thing Eddie’d learned during those days, it was that Steve only ever did something at 100%

And yes, part of him feels terrible that Steve did this just to save him. He feels awful knowing that this is going to ruin a chance for a normal life. Wayne said the Indianapolis paper picked up a story about it. But at the same time, he’s so fucking grateful. Steve saved him. Again. And now, at least for a while, they’ll need to keep up the story. He’ll get to hang out with him, pretend they’re dating, stand close and cuddle closer. He also feels bad about how excited he is for that chance.

It’s the next morning when Eddie realizes his uncle dodged every question about why Steve wasn’t here. Wayne dodged almost every question after explaining what happened with Steve and the press and the Feds in the first weeks. Then, nothing.

The party visits him that afternoon, a veneer of joy stretched thin over something worse. Eddie’s first guess is that Red didn’t make it. But he hears her a moment later, complaining about ‘these stupid casts slowing me down’. The kids aren’t as good at dodging as Wayne is. Eddie gets the story quickly, such as it is.

The Harringtons came home from DC, gave a few speeches in praise of law enforcement against a serial killer. They visited the families of those that died.

They sent an assistant to find Steve in the hospital to deliver a message. No one else heard it, but the best guess is that it was a threat. Steve went with the assistant. They haven’t seen him since. When Dustin confronted the Harringtons at their last event in town, all they’d say was that ‘our son is getting the best help, and we love him dearly’

Eddie looks at Robin when he hears that for what it is. She drops the kids back home and begs a sympathetic nurse to let her talk to Eddie past visiting hours.

“It’s been a month since he vanished”

“Where?”

“We don’t know, we tried, even Hopper - he’s not dead - couldn’t find him. And this guy named Murray. We don’t know.”

“But…. ‘The best help’. You know that means…”

“I know”

“He’s, Christ, Buckley, he’s straight. Ladykiller. He’s straight and they sent him to some—“

“Yeah, but Eddie… I don’t know if I should… I guess, not that it matters now, and he never said anything, but he’s my best friend. He’s my soulmate. I know him and I think… if his dad wasn’t like he is… if he’d ever felt safe saying so… he knew they’d be furious when he came forward as your alibi, but he told me they’d just disown him, and it would be over. He was scared, but he was okay with what he thought was going to happen”

“I thought he hates me”

“He kinda did”

“Not anymore?”

“No.” There’s a pause where they both think about where Steve might be right now.

“Maybe he hates me again now.”

“I don’t think he would, but…”

And Eddie thinks how weird it is to see spastic Robin Buckley, who rambled in the Upside Down and always had more energy that she could contain, acting so subdued. No. So broken.

They both heard the Harringtons’ speeches and ads when he ran for office. They know what the man thinks about people like them. They both heard stories about what the places are like, where someone can go to ‘get help’

“Do you think I’ll ever get to thank him?”

“No.”

“Do you think we’ll ever see him again? You and the kids at least?”

She’s quiet for a long time, before she picks up her bag.

“If he ever gets to leave wherever they put him, and we ever see him, I don’t think he’ll be the person we knew anymore.”

[soodoonimin]

Logan Howlett and animal instincts (or in other words my long winded analysis of a comic book character)

So before I start, just know that I have read a lot of comics but I don't know everything. I can take notes all day long but I have a bad memory and comics are confusing so please be nice and enjoy, this took a lot of effort to put together, it’s mostly my thoughts on the character as I read the the comic books. The movie character is a lot different and I will also probably do something like this for movie Logan as well (though it will be significantly shorter).

Also there are some pictures that have blood and body horror so beware.

What does it mean to be human? Well that's a question we as humans have been trying to answer since we could think to ask it and ever since then we've never been able to give a fully conclusive answer. Why? you may ask, well because think about it like this, the traits we most often associate with humanity (higher thinking, creativity, empathy, and love) may not and some times do not always exists solely within us when applied to fiction, we write whole stories about how robots can be human too, how aliens can be human etc etc as long as they have these traits (more or less) AND LOOK I'm not going to get into a whole philosophical discussion about the nature of humanity on Tumblr.com but I do want to take a second to talk about how those traits are applied to Logan and how he has to fight to prove his humanity.

So mutants are an oppressed people but being a mutant isn't always the same for everyone. You can be a mutant like Rouge who can kill people with a single touch or mutant like Storm who can bend the weather to your will (the most obvious example). You can be a mutant like Jean with no obvious physical signs of your mutation or you can be a mutant like Kurt, where 9/10 people think you’re a demon of some kind.

But what happens when you're a mutant like Logan Howlett? I mean you look human enough, sure you're a little more hairy than most people, you have fangs, you smell, and oh yeah the claws but those are retractable so overall....you're just a normal person right? Nothing you can’t hide, right? Yeah, for the most part, yeah. But there are a couple of other things about you that someone might not know from looking at you, you have an extraordinary healing factor, you have almost animal like senses and when you are pushed to your absolute brink you go into a monstrous like a rage and kill everything in sight.

For every gift Logan was born with theres a very real curse attached to each one.

Healing Factor: Logan still feels pain, the healing factor isn’t just limited to his body but it also messes with his memories, and more importantly he’s lived a very long life. In The End comic and Old Man Logan comic etc, when he’s out lived most of the world, he’s miserable.

Keen senses: Seems great, until they’re exploited, imagine what being able to smell and see and hear that well all the time without relief must be like. Imagine not being able to tell when someone is going to die? Or when they’re lying or when they haven’t showered etc. sure you might get used to it like you might get used to pain but that doesn’t make it pleasant.

Claws: Need to really touch on this one? Aside from the obvious please remember that Logan’s claws aren’t in his knuckles but in his fucking forearms so when using them he needs to make an effort to direct them or….

Berserker rage: great to get you out of a pinch but you can’t control it. (We’ll talk more about this later)

Most people don’t see these very real downsides of Logan’s mutation, they just see a small, angry guy, who’s good at fighting and can take a hit better than almost anyone.

Here’s what worse, a lot of people (X-men included) don't see, they don't all the ways Logan hates himself (and those who do don’t see the depths of that hate he has for himself). They don't see the scared little boy whose father was killed in front of him. They don't see that little boy who killed his father's murderer and was abandoned by all but one person for one person (Rose). They don't see the young man who accidentally killed his first love while trying to protect her from his brother. They don't see the man who lived a relatively miserable life being plucked up by a group of people who only saw him as something to be experimented on. They don’t see the man who believes that if he loves someone he's destine to hurt them in one way or another because he has multiple times over (even if it wasn’t always his fault). They don’t see that for all the times that they call Logan an animal, he already believes them and he’s called himself worse many times over.

(Deep down he truly believes he deserves be to alone, especially in death. That would be his “deserved” hell. Eternal loneliness.)

Which is funny because I think Logan goes back and forth in deciding on whether or not he has any humanity in him in the first place. See in the Black, White and Blood comic, the FIRST story told in this series, is an account of Logan’s time at Weapon X and we get this…interaction:

Pourquoi tu me fais ça?///Why are you doing this to me? This "monster" asks him this on the cusp of death....

(Moments during the Weapon X program, be they real memories or not, when Logan’s humanity shone through)

And THIS almost immediately snaps him out of mind control he's under going. I don't know if he understood the words per say but I think even if he didn't, he still understood the plea on a human level. Because it wasn’t Weapon X who responded, it wasn’t the berserker, or Wolverine. It was Logan Howlett. It was a moment of humanity that broke the conditioning he’d been put through that answered that plea and stopped him. Because if you think about it, if these two memories actually are real, that means that Logan recognized this plea as the same one gave to the scientists. Now determining what did or didn't happen during the Weapon X program is difficult to parse out because they implanted false memories. BUT regardless of that there was always a part of him that held onto his humanity. But I think that just adds to the horror of it all. Imagine not being able to know what memories are yours and which ones are not? So let me ask, even if those memories are “false” does that make them any less real? Does that mean that Logan suffered any less under their stewardship? He was still kidnapped, he was still experimented on, still tortured. He still had the adimantium grafted onto his bones, he was still made into a living puppet and was still seen as nothing more than a weapon, an animal, a monster by the very people who were doing all of this to him and in some respects they are the reason he is seen as a monster by others.

At the end of that comic (where he was momentarily snapped out of his conditioning) he states that no his humanity wasn’t stolen from him but he still lives with that guilt of everything he can’t remember and the things he can remember are unreliable.

I know a lot of people haven’t read the comics so I’m not trying to do annoying about it BUT if you get the opportunity to PLEASE go read The Weapon X comic (by Berry Windsor-Smith) & Wolverine’s first limited series run (by Chris Claremont).

I specifically say that second one because I think the story that’s told is probably one of the more interesting told for Logan because of the relationship he has with Yukio and Mariko. I’m not going to get too deep into it because I really think you should read it for yourself but the basic outline of it is that where Mariko loves the man, Yukio loves the “monster”. And when he’s initially trying to court Mariko it’s his attempts to in a sense to court humanity but he fails and when he turns to Yukio. And for her part it’s not just as simple as her loving the “monster” but more than she goads it out of him, for thematic reasons and plot reasons. But needless to say, they both love Logan but they both love an incomplete version of him. (It’s a really good story and it’s literally what sold me on the idea of reading through any of the older comics.)

Anyway, (in the comics and movies especially) some people solely see him as a man with an uncontrollable side that they’d run from at the first sign of aggression and others only want that animalistic side and don’t love the man that Logan is. The thing is, he is both of those things. Think about it like this. As humans we like to think ourselves above the food chain, we like to think of ourselves as *more* than animals. And sure we’re definitely one of the most successful species of animals on Earth and we definitely don’t act on instincts in the same way most animals do, we’ve created society and rules and we do things a lot different than other animals but we are still animals.

So Logan isn’t both a man and an animal anymore than you or me. But he is a man that is more in touch with those animal instincts than the rest of us (bc of his mutation). Which I think is why when he does act on those instincts, people see him as less, because we (yes even comic book characters for this argument) only seem associate those traits with animals, with something lesser than ourselves.

The thing is, being “an animal” doesn’t need to be an insult or a condemnation of any kind. Humans are still animals but humans are still kind, and caring, humans have still created beautiful art and music and food and architecture and have got to the stars will probably go beyond the stars all while still being an “animal”.

So I think where most people get hung up on word “animal” is because it has such a negative connotation when applied to humans. And thus that negative connotation basically perpetuates itself so the only time we call other humans animals is when we mean to attack their humanity.

So back to Logan. Imo, there is no better example of this than the way people, Logan included, treat his (and subsequently him) berserker rage. Logan describes it as a monster that shares his soul, something else inside him, the real thing that makes him a monster, something that he doesn’t like, something he’s scared of, something he can’t always control but that he does everything in his power to keep away from the people he loves. Because Logan doesn’t like to kill, he doesn’t like hurting people. He might be good at it, he might be known for it but that doesn’t mean he likes it. Even when he thinks death is a deserved punishment, he isn't ever happy about having to kill. And he even says as much at one point in the comics.

And as a real quick aside, but this is almost exactly what sets him apart from Victor Creed. They're both men whose mutation gives them heightened animal like traits. The only difference is that Logan is ashamed of those parts of himself especially when they pertain to violence where Victor likes it, enjoys it; he goes out of his way for violence.

(If there is more to Victor Creed than meets the eye please tell me bc I gotta say I don’t actually know too much about him except that any time I see him in any Wolverine media I immediately laugh bc I know the two around to brawl. And I’m almost never wrong lmao)

And mind you there are times when Logan is also a hammer in the sense that he tends to punch his way through most of his problems. But he doesn't go out of his way for it in the same way Victor does despite having every reason to.

Logan has killed people but unlike Victor he isn't a killer. Even if that's what he's "the best at".

So when he goes into this specific rage that labels him a monster (an animal) it’s almost always in front of someone he loves and it’s almost always in a moment when he’s trying to prove his humanity (when it’s being used thematically and not for plot convenience). Like if you go read the comics 9 times out 10 when Logan is being called a monster or animal by some scientist or an enemy looking to humiliate him. But it’s almost always in the mitts of a life or death situation. A situation that anyone would fight light hell to get out of even with an amazing healing factor like Logan’s.

Because he still feels pain.

He still wants to survive.

He still feels.

And at the end of it all, he feels ashamed and horrified with himself and he'll always have to live with that guilt and shame. There's a point in one of the comics when he describes his heart as being slower to heal than the rest of his body and I think its interesting because although that story he's talking more from a "heart broken" sense. I also think that can apply just as equally to idea that it also harder for him to heal from not just heart break but also from shame and guilt. In certain situations, it takes longer for him to forgive himself emotionally because he suffers physically in the short term. He’ll never have a physical scar of his wrong doing and so he carries the emotional weight of it with him.

But also because he isn't just dealing with himself. In those moments when he comes out of that rage, the people he loves are in shock and are scared because they saw the “monster” and some people do reject it and in so they reject him and although rejection is something Logan thinks he deserves, it doesn’t make that pain hurt any less. it doesn't make it any easier to heal just because you agree with them, and in a way I think that's what slows down that healing process. Logan's inability to forgive himself.

Because that's the thing, Logan, would rather be scared of himself than forgive himself, be it because of his past trauma or because of the Weapon X program (which in the Weapon X comic it’s implied if not outright stated that the scientist at Weapon X are the reason he feels the fear he does about himself). Logan is scared of no one on Earth more than the man he sees in the mirror. And that’s because in his lowest moments when he looks in the mirror he doesn't see a man, instead he sees an animal, a monster. He doesn’t need the rest of the world to tell him what he already thinks of himself, it just doesn’t help that he has a choir of voices that are sometimes louder than his own telling him his worst fear is real. He is the monster that hides under his own bed but the problem is, while the monster is 'real' is a physical sense, it does not share a soul with him anymore than the boogeyman does. He wrestles with himself. Somedays he believes he's a man like anyone else and other days he can't drown out the voices telling him he's nothing more than a monster.

And as my last touch on the beserker rage, I want to posit my own theory about it. Personally believe to some extent that it isn’t part of his natural mutation and that instead it’s something that was “given” to him by the Weapon X program. The reason I say this is because I think it would make a lot of sense that like the adimantium claws and false memories it would make sense to give you “weapon” this uncontrollable rage (that mostly comes out in times of great duress). Not just because it would be one more thing Weapon X has taken from him (control over his own emotions/body) but also because wouldn’t that just make sense on the side of the people who ran the project? That your living puppet have a fail safe of sorts in case it ran into something bigger than itself? During the Weapon X comic, the scientist are constantly surprised by how resilient he is and even though some of this surprise happens in a false memory, they really do believe they can kill him at one points so if they thought they could kill him, why not something else? Why not give their investment insurance? And what better insurance for an animal than monstrous rage. 

But of course none of this is even to talk about the kind of person Logan really is. The thing that I think most people (in the comics) tend to ignore about Logan, in favor of focusing on his rough exterior (and some of his more questionable characteristics) is that he really does have a heart of gold. Now do not get me wrong, he can do some pretty fucked up shit (I will not talk about the Jean and Scott love triangle bc it gives me a migraine) but he does regularly do things that show how much empathy he has. That show that despite what he (or the rest of the world) might think, he isn’t a monster. The best examples of this are his relationships and more specifically the relationships where he’s a father/mentor. Like his relationship with Kitty Pryde and Jubilee, two kids that he basically adopts/takes under his wing and constantly goes out of his way for. Some of you might remember this post and the reason Logan does eventually fuck Wade’s shit up is because Wade literally punches the ever living shit out of Kitty in front of Logan. In another comic issue (after this), Logan beats the shit out of Wade again for punching Kitty, it’s funny but it also just goes to show that he does take protection of his family seriously. And mind you he doesn’t hunt Deadpool down, he find him by sheer plot coincidence when he’s getting a book signed for Kitty and the author just so happened to be Deadpool’s mark.

And mind you, Logan does have love for his own kids (Laura and Daken) despite the troubled nature of both this relationships but again those are a little more complicated. That’s partially for plot reasons but also because they play into just how much Logan hates himself that he struggles active show the same love for his adopted family to his “blood” family (again with Daken it’s a lot more complicated) but I also think that not only are his relationships with them fraught because of how much he hates himself but because both Laura and Daken were experimented on just and manipulated like he was (and in Daken’s case by a major player of Weapon X) so while he does love them past his own self hatred, they are also a reminder of his deepest traumas. It’s not their fault and it’s not necessarily Logan’s fault either, it’s just the cards their characters were dealt. (I haven’t read any comics with them yet so once I do I will most likely write my thoughts on his relationship with them each individually)

Regardless, Logan, depsite what he’d like you to think, is a deeply loving, empathetic and loyal person and this doesn’t just extend to people who considers family:

(Logan says this a man who not only a few issues ago was trying to kill him and his partner/friends. He saved Roughouse (the character he went berserk on a few pictures ago) because he was being experimented on in a way not too dissimilar to the way he had been by Weapon X. And if I remember correctly this is before he even knows how he got the adimantium in his bones)

He is James 'Logan' Howlett. He is a man whose life was stolen from him so many times over. He is a man who believes that the worse parts of him are all that matter and fails (or refuses) to see the good he has done in the lives of the people he cares about and believes that only death will truly bring him peace. He is someone who despite his flaws can’t help but to be kind. He is someone who fights like hell for what he believes is right. And even if he believes he’s a monster, even if the world believes he’s a monster, he will try to do the right thing because although he knows his soul is damned that doesn’t mean that exempts him from doing what good he can. He is someone who gives and good as he gets and then some. He’s the best at what he does but for him, that isn’t alway what he thinks it is.

And I think that’s the beauty of Logan as a character. Someone whose life is so wrought with tragedy and yet he is someone who can’t help but to be kind, someone who can’t help but love and care and find the humanity in the world despite the world seeming to be hellbent on taking his humanity away. Even though he (and many people in universe) might disagree with me, he is not only a one of the best humanity has to offer but he is also a shining example of the tenacity of the human spirit.

[fruitlicense]

I love my research but I hate my field sometimes. I hate being a graduate student fresh out of undergrad and being unable to escape how much all of my peers hate Israel and just. having to sit with knowing what a slippery slope that is into full-on antisemitism. having to sit with wondering when it’ll all tip over the edge.

I’m the only practicing Jew in my program. There are twenty of us officially, plus ten or so other grad students who we interact with but who aren’t getting the same degree I am. There are a couple other ethnic Jews, but as far as I can tell none of them are active participants in the culture. I’m on the opposite coast from home in a city full of Jews and even knowing I have my local Jewish community outside of school, I feel so fucking lonely. Every goddamn day I’m aware that it’s basically just me.

There’s just no break from it all. I think I’m able to let it fade into the background and then one of the grads in our social circle from another school complains about how a Jewish student reported a TA they know for making her uncomfortable in class. or someone leaves a CUAD propaganda newspaper out on the table in our shared work area for an entire day and no one comments on it except to laugh at it. or I walk into the bathroom and there’s another poster for a protest that I note the time and date of so I can make sure I’m not walking in the area. or I look in the groupchat and instead of movie plans for Interstellar’s return to theaters or Mickey17, it’s group plans to see No Other Land and follow-up reviews about how eye-opening it is to see the reality of “the horrors and crimes of what a militarized people do” when they oppress others. It was “indescribable.” It was “a necessary watch.”

And maybe it is. It probably is just for perspective. I already know that horrible things have happened in the West Bank settlements. I already know that some of the settlements have dubious legality and that some of them provide the only access Jews have to holy sites and that a lot of the Israelis in the settlements are violent racists and that Israelis have died by taking wrong turns into Palestinian land. It’s messy and awful and fucked-up and I just. I can’t go see that in a theater. Not with classmates I already don’t feel safe with, not with my Jewish support system from undergrad scattered across the country, not when I already feel like I’m dragging myself through normalcy. Not when I can’t decide to go see October 8 or not because I feel like I have to but I’m so tired of forcing myself to bear witness. I don’t want to see these films but I feel like I have to to know what I’m talking about, to be justified when I speak about how I feel, and that’s so fucked. Why do I feel like I need evidence to feel pain?

It’s just hitting me now how tired I am. I’ve been sinking since the early hours of October 7th watching news from across the world drop in real time and wondering what would come next. It was easy to put on a brave face and be angry and stand up when I had my friends with me 24/7. Even when my classes were interrupted, even when my campus was graffitied, even when I was cyberbullied by name, I had a strong support system and I pretended I could brush it all off. And now they’re all gone, and the stories of October 7th feel like they aren’t leaving the Jewish community to spread to the wider world. There are still classroom interruptions and graffiti and I feel like I’m just waiting for the day that I become a target again. There’s nothing special about me to single me out, but the fear that one day soon being a Jew will be enough is constantly hanging over me.

I’m tired of plastering a smile on my face and pretending everything’s fine and making friends with people I can’t trust. I’m so tired of being afraid and angry and paranoid and suspicious and I don’t like the person I’m becoming. I want to be the way I was. I want to have the life I thought I was building. I hate that I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to run to Israel. I want to go back in time. I want to go home. I hate that I want America to stay my home but I will never feel safe here the way I used to. I want to feel like a whole person again instead of something fundamentally different, off. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die but I can’t visualize my future anymore because it just looks like this. I can’t do this forever and I need the world to snap out of it.

[starbeltconstellation]

Since you are a passionate jedi fan, I would be interested in your opinion on a thing I noticed on AO3. There is a fanon that is inspired by Ancient Greek scholars having had sex with their pupils. In the fics there is a special night in which the masters have to fuck their padawans because it is tradition. Sex and AO3, you ask? What's new, you ask? What is new is that the writers explicitely write in their notes that the institutionalized fucking of the padawans is their way to show how corrupt and morally bad the jedi are. But how is something that fanfic writers completely made up to get more readers (because sex sells) a critique of the jedi in canon? No matter what answer I come up with, it is weird. Are these fanfic writers fetishizing a law allowing teachers to fuck their students, feel bad for their own arousal and try to shrug it off by making themselves believe that they are just writing these sex scenes for a "good cause"? I mean, if they hated the jedi so much, why would they write about them? The MCU or DC would get them more readers, right? I simply can't come up with a satisfying answer to why this mental gymnastics exist. I know this is a very long ask, but please address it if it is of any interest to you as well!

Hi, anon! 👋💕✨

Sooooo deeply sorry for the long wait time. 😭😖💔 Things just got away from me, and I kept putting off my response because I wanted to make sure I had the time to give the nitty gritty of my thoughts on your ask.

And as a pro jedi fan and a SW fan in general… I just have to say… ew. 😭☹️🤢💔

And it’s not necessarily that I’m trying to SHAME people that write darker or more sexual stuff (even though there are some things that just genuinely baffle me why ANYONE would enjoy writing something so horrible, but then again, I’ve never been a fan of horror movies, sooo… 😂🤷‍♀️).

And look, I’m aware that fiction is separate from reality and not necessarily a show of a person’s morals (it’s FAKE, at the end of the day), but at the same TIME, I believe people on this app and just in fandom spaces in general sometimes purposely plug their ears and sing “lalalala” by pretending that how we interact with the world doesn’t shape our perception and psyche to SOME degree.

And this isn’t me saying that if someone writes something like “noncon” or “whump” that they’re going to go out and hurt anybody! That’s the EXTREME reaction that conservative panic tries to drum up by pretending that people have no self control and need to be shielded from “corruption 🙄” or something like that. But what I DO believe is that seeing stories (whether love stories or family stories in general) WILL affect how someone can come to view relationships. This is on a tier scale, obviously. Kids and teenagers will have a harder time grasping why “365 Days” is not a modern Beauty and the Beast movie. 😭🤦‍♀️ BUT… with ADULTS… it’s easier to separate fiction from reality… in a CONSCIOUS way. But for me, from a psychological standpoint, if a person grows up with a specific attraction to certain toxic love stories that are PRESENTED as healthy when they just aren’t—it’s POSSIBLE that they can unconsciously seek out someone who fits that mold. I don’t think this is the NORM—but it IS a possibility, and that’s why I think it’s so important to recognize yourself and your own wants and needs in the real world and ask yourself “Does this make me feel safe and happy? Or just obsessively DESIRED?” and other things such as that.

Anyway, I got a little off topic (which I often do 😭😅), but my POINT is my disgust isn’t necessarily about these writers’s choices on exploring such darker themes in their work if they truly want to—it’s THEIR fic, at the end of the day. But what DOES disgust me is (yes, dear anon, you guessed it! 🙃🙃) that apparently writers are USING this trope to create even MORE anti Jedi rhetoric when there is already SO much of it in the community in general (and that god awful ‘The Acolyte’ show only made the hatred and genocide apologia worse, even though I do acknowledge the show wasn’t given as much of a chance as Ahsoka and The Mandolrian shows were).

Just as The Acolyte had to INVENT an entire scenario where the “EMPATHETIC SPACE MONKS 😭🤦‍♀️” of the galaxy apparently cover up a massacre which DIRECTLY parallels Anakin Skywalker’s descent to the Dark Side—which makes NO goddamn sense that it’s truly LAUGHABLE—you have brought to me a fic trope scenario where the writer has apparently INVENTED something that was NEVER canon to show how “corrupt 🙄” the Jedi Order is—before they stand back and go “haha! 😌 See? SUCHHH horrible people.”, as if they didn’t just invent that scenario in THEIR own head to justify their bias against the Jedi and their way of life.

It’s very similar to the uncharitable views that certain parts of the SW fandom (specifically the Anidala and the radical Anakin fans) have towards the Jedi in regards to NONCANON info that we do NOT truly know (such as why Anakin never visited Shimi all that time), before just CHOOSING the most uncharitable and mean spirited view of the Jedi that they can, which is saying—“Well, the Jedi Order must have a strict policy on NEVER seeing your birth family again, or they’ll be kicked out! 🤪🤪”, when there is NOTHING in canon to ever give any indication of that. It’s literally fanon that has somehow all but become canon in the eyes of the fandom, and I haven’t the foggiest clue how it happened (yes I do. 🙄🫠 It’s because SW fans LIKE Anakin, so of COURSE they don’t want to admit he was in the wrong or that he could’ve taken things too personally or the wrong way—so they settle on, “Those mean Jedi must’ve bullied him and kept him from his mom! 😡🤪”🙄🤦‍♀️).

Fans will make something up out of thin air—literally twisting themselves into KNOTS to try and excuse Anakin’s choices while blaming everyone else to pretend it’s not his fault and he didn’t truly have a choice (COMPLETELY untrue)—while at the very same TIME, giving absolutely NONE of that courtesy to the Jedi Order themselves. The Jedi’s actions are nitpicked to DEATH. Everything they do—choosing to fight in the war to save lives instead of sitting on the sidelines to watch the galaxy burn, not worshiping the ground Anakin walked on to try and teach him humility and grace and respect, literally putting their LIVES on the line RIGHT BESIDE THE CLONES each day on the battlefield, Mace going to arrest Palpatine before realizing the man would never be convicted at a corrupt trial—NONE of it is ever enough.

They are 10,000 strong (NOT taking into consideration how some are younglings or retired Jedi), and yet they are judged with the sharpness of a knife that they cannot solve every damn trillions of problems in the galaxy.

They are a literal DROP in the ocean. It is LAUGHABLE to expect them to somehow be able to end slavery throughout the galaxy in the Outer Rim without the backing of the Republic’s help (which they definitely would NOT choose to help the Jedi, and even if somehow they DID, it would STILL be a long and tedious thing that would take DECADES to fully accomplish), and it is even MORE ludicrous to BLAME the JEDI FUCKING ORDER of all people for the Clones’s situation, like they could just stroll into the Senate building and wave their lightsabers around to suddenly give the clones their (deserved) rights, or to expect them to somehow—what? Kidnap all the clones (because a lot of clones would sadly NOT go willingly because of their brainwashing indoctrination that this is what they were ‘made for’) and run from fighting in the war? Where the hell do people expect them to GO? How do people expect the Jedi to be able to take CARE of all those people (INCLUDING their own) in such a situation without the Republic backing or the Temple walls?—be able to just magically give the clones rights or to just magically be able to say no to fighting in the war as if that would somehow do ANYTHING for the clones instead of just placing them under the rule of men like Tarkin.

The one thing I will concede is that (WHILE being in the war, because YES, despite what some people believe, it was UNAVOIDABLE. Palpatine definitely made sure of that) the Jedi probably needed to learn to get more into politics to control their image in the eyes of the public (ironic, considering how many people blame them for their own genocide by saying they were ‘too involved in politics 🙄’ when the TRUTH is that they did everything to AVOID being in the political sphere because they heavily disliked it). There is a bit of (gentle-hearted) naïveté here, because they all assume that the citizens of the galaxy will just SEE that the Jedi are trying to protect them. But people get selfish and greedy REAL fast when their lives become affected badly by things happening around them. And the more the war dragged on, the more citizens of the galaxy (disgustingly) latched onto Palpatine’s slowly growing propaganda that the Jedi were somehow the big bad villains of the war and not like—oh, I don’t know—the fucking SENATE. 😭🙄🤦‍♀️

My POINT is that—you’re RIGHT, anon. This fic trope you’ve brought up is (while HEAVILY ew in my eyes 😭🤢) just one part of a growing infection of the SW fandom where it’s becoming the “edgy” take to blame the Jedi (the VICTIMS) for their own genocide, instead of placing the blame at the politicians’s feet, where it belongs. Palpatine wasn’t able to gain this power ALONE. The Senate makes it EASY for him. Because they’re all out for themselves at the end of the day (YES, even Padmé, who would’ve taken Anakin’s tusken massacre to the grave if she’d had the chance), and even the ones that DO care about the bills they’re trying to push to help change things STILL are in such a position of privilege (ironic, considering fandom pretends the Jedi Order is ‘privileged’, when they are anything but and are more of a ‘model minority’ group struggling desperately to keep the soft power they have to at the very LEAST have a place at the Senate’s side to TRY and make them see reason sometimes) that they forget about the little people suffering underneath them (Padmé has to be REMINDED of this by one of her handmaidens at one point).

The point is that George Lucas intended the SENATE to be the corruption of the Prequels that brought about their own doom. Not the fucking JEDI. 😭🤦‍♀️ But somehow, SW fandom has rewritten their memories to somehow believe this to be true. But if they’d watch ANY George Lucas interview, they’d see this is not the case. And people are allowed to have different interpretations of stories at the end of the day—but what IS ridiculous is how certain anti Jedi fans SHAMELESSLY try to rewrite history by outright STATING that it WAS GL’s original intent to portray the Jedi as ‘corrupt 🙄’, which is just… SO far from accurate that it’s laughable.

But yeah, at the end of the day, the REAL ‘villain’ (besides the Sith) of the prequels is the SENATE, because THEY are the ones who should be doing their jobs, but who are INSTEAD lining their pockets or kissing up to the clueless citizens of the galaxy come election time, while apathetically expecting the Jedi Order to solve all the problems that the SENATE is too damn lazy and selfish to solve.

The one conclusion I can make is that if the Jedi HAD realized they’d need to play the game of politics to keep in the public’s good graces—then you bet your ASS they would have been on intergalactic interview after intergalactic interview subtly “hinting” at the clones’s lack of rights and plight to try and stir up public outcry—because THAT is how you get true change. By changing things from WITHIN the very public itself. Because THAT is the only thing that will make the Senate LISTEN—is if they’re at risk of losing votes later on down the line.

Anyway, I of course went on the longest of rants once again. Lol. 😂😅 But I hope the long wait time was worth this response! 😊❤️💕

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To any readers that stumble across this and are curious enough to check out my fic:

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Tags:

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[minustwofingers]

exoplanet p.6 (ellie’s journals)

summary: you’ve won the life lottery as one of the few people on earth with parents who gained admittance to the most prestigous safezone in the world after the outbreak. but after a lab accident sends you out to jackson, wyoming, real life hits you fast. it’s a good thing that a hot lesbian finds u. (lol). mean ellie at first, slowburn, enemies to friends to lovers, fem reader asf

warnings: a significantly different writing voice! this is going to be a very different vibe from the other chapters since i had to write it as i imagine ellie would (which is a lot different than i do). slight nsfw content (mdni), language, mentions of violence/gore, angst, ellie’s pov is actually really depressing

a/n: soooo i know it’s been almost 3 months...and i’m really sorry about that! a lot of stuff happened in my life and i kind of fell off writing for quite some time. but i finish series, so i’m going to get through exoplanet in its entirety so i can finally give you all closure. some preliminary notes: know that these are modeled after how i imagine ellie would journal if she did journal this much. canonically she didn’t do that much writing that follows a narrative like it does here. i think it’s honestly a little ooc for her to be emotionally responsible enough to talk out her feelings, but given that there’s no other way to tell her side of the story (save for legit rewriting it from her perspective, which would take another 6 months or so and be horrifically repetitive), i decided to just suck it up and write it. i’m sorry if it sounds awkward, since she definitely doesn’t write in a voice that i have much experience with. the next chapter will be better!

word count: 5.5k

tags~ @intrnetdoll @dazedshoon @lovecaraya @pctcr @sariyaflowr @loser-keiji @prettyplant0 @666findgod @sawaagyapong @rystarkov @buzzybuzzsposts @addisonnie @galacticstxrdust @elliesbabygirl​ @pinkazelma @ariianelle @lu002 @blairfox04 @sparkleswonderland @elliesflower @muthafuckingstargirl @elliewilliamsissubermommyoml @eviestevie-14 @quicksilversg1rl @guacala @crtcrp @overtrred28

(i haven’t updated this yet bc my tags aren’t working)

a special special SPECIAL thanks to both @roarriita and @elliesflower​ for being soooo sexy and betaing for me. you both are so wonderful and helped me sm in feeling good enough to post this :)

without further ado, enjoy ellie’s journals!

January 20th, 2038

Today’s been…fucking…

I don’t even know where to start. I don’t get why this sort of shit always happens to me. First it was being bit and somehow surviving. Then it was getting carted off across the country. And now some girl basically falls out of the sky, claiming that she comes from some sort of paradise up North?

I’ll spare the immediate details. I don’t think I’ll forget the basic stuff—her name, the way she looked clutching at her knees in the clearing and shaking. That stupid shirt she had on and that expensive scarf.

I still want to believe that she’s just a liar who happened to get lucky with running into us, but even without Joel vouching for her story, I don’t think I’d ever be able to buy that she’d been living in the same world as us. I’ve never met someone without scars before. I didn’t know that there were people out there who didn’t have marked up arms and faces. Or people without calluses. Did you know that hands can be totally smooth?

Anyway. Tommy says that he’ll try and reach out across the contacts he has. Joel has her living right down the hall from me in the meantime, so now I have to share my bathroom. Hopefully the Terranovan authorities are good at finding people. She takes so fucking long to shower. It’s a wonder the whole compound still has hot water.

[One page of drawings follows: Dina smiling in the snow on her horse, Joel playing his guitar]

January 25th, 2038

Maria says that they’re thinking about breeding Shimmer soon. I know she told me because that means I’ll need to ride another horse for a little until she recovers and I know that we need another generation of foals, but it still made me cringe for Shimmer’s sake. She’s too free-spirited to be a mother. She doesn’t deserve that.

I went stargazing last night. It was pretty. Lots of shooting stars. I ran into the girl while I was coming back from the meadow. She gave me a weird look, and I could tell she wanted to ask me where I’d been but kept her mouth shut. Sometimes I regret dropping off that bag of clothes. I really fucking liked that gray sweatshirt, actually. I’m not even joking. It looks weird to see it on someone else.

[Half a page of drawing follows of the night sky with labeled constellations]

February 5th, 2038

Long time no see. I’ve been pretty busy with patrols and helping Maria with securing the walls. Joel made me try some of that coffee that our new house guest brought. It was just as awful as I remembered, but he seemed happy. So one point for the space girl. I guess.

Dina’s been hanging around more. She just broke up with Jessie (yes, again). She swears that it’s for good this time, but I’m not so sure. She also talks a lot about Y/N and what little detail she’s gathered about her life back in Terranova. I thought teasing her by asking her if she had a crush on Y/N would make her talk less about it, but it just made things worse.

I miss when things were normal.

[One page of drawings follows: one of Shimmer in cross-ties, another of a girl’s face, half-finished with the face scribbled out]

February 12th, 2038

Today I’m sad. I’m in bed with that book about astronomy that Joel nabbed for me on patrol a while ago and there’s a section I wanted to read that’s completely waterlogged. It shouldn't be a surprise. It’s decades old and has survived through an apocalypse. Normally things like this don’t bug me much because I’m so used to it. Half of my Savage Starlight collection is damaged. I don’t think I’ll ever find the first book to actually complete the series, and that’s okay, because I’ve never expected anything more. But now that I know that there’s a world out there where I’d never have problems like this, stuff like this hurts. It’s so stupid. I’m lucky to be alive. Compared to what’s left of the world population, I live a much cushier life than most. But for the first time in a while, I’m wishing for more.  

“Greed is the enemy of happiness” is what Maria would say if I ever said this kind of shit out loud. But is it really? Or is it just realizing what life can be?

[Half a page of a drawing of the solar system, with each planet labeled]

February 22nd, 2038

Maria let me pick the sire for Shimmer’s foal. It felt kind of gross, to be honest. I asked Maria if there was any way for Shimmer to choose and I was only sort of joking, but she just laughed anyway and patted my back. I won’t have to worry about finding a new horse for another two seasons or so, she told me. It’ll be weird not having her for a little.

She also told me that there was still no word from anyone who knew anything about Terranova. She said this to me in this placating voice, like she thought that I was going to punch a hole in the wall or something after hearing it. That seems to be common when it comes to people talking about Y/N and me. I don’t know why so many people think I don’t like her staying with us.

I don’t, by the way. Let me be clear. But I mostly feel indifferent about her now. She doesn’t bother me as much anymore, not since she started getting out of the house. I think she might be helping in the gardens, but I’ve never actually asked. We don’t talk a whole ton. I don’t think she likes me all that much.

[A drawing of Shimmer’s head poking over her stall door that takes up one page]

March 2nd, 2038

Today was finally our first nice day of the year. I would’ve enjoyed it more if the bird that lives in the tree outside my window hadn’t blown me out of bed at 4 in the fucking morning. I’m exhausted now. It’s been a long day. Joel says I need to take Y/N out on patrol soon. Why, I have no idea. Maybe he just wants me to actually befriend her or something, and I do nothing but patrols now. He can’t possibly expect her to be a good patrol partner.

Thankfully, I checked the logs when I came back. The route he wants me to cover with her has been the quietest all season. I doubt we’ll run into anything. If we do, I’ll probably be able to handle it. Hopefully.

[Half a page of doodles, mostly of nature and wildlife with the exception of a half-finished doodle of an arm clad in a fabric that drapes like silk and a hand with polished nails]

March 3rd, 2038

Many surprising things were learned today. I can’t believe it’s illegal to be gay in Terranova. Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. It’s just—out of all the things they could be bothered by, it’s that? Really?

March 12th, 2038

I haven’t been good at journaling recently. I don’t really want to talk about why. You know why.

[Six pages of drawings, with many unfinished doodles of Y/N—including but not limited to her on her horse, her reading on the couch, and one with her sitting in what is a very loose interpretation of a classroom, taking notes]

March 13th, 2038

I will feel more normal tomorrow. Hopefully.

[Two pages of drawings, all of Y/N. One is her bent over a book, the other is her smiling up at you]

March 14th, 2038

I did something really stupid. I think I should probably just document this here so I don’t accidentally drunkenly spill it all out to Dina at the next bonfire. This is so embarrassing. I don’t get why I feel this way. It’s so stupid, you know? To feel anything towards someone who’s so…I don’t know. Different.

She gives me the weirdest looks sometimes. I can’t tell what they mean. It feels like she’s judging me. And why wouldn’t she be? I bet all the girls she spends her time around back home are just like her—perfect, orderly, pretty, proper. The day before I took her patrolling she gawked at the shorts I was wearing. It was borderline offensive. Actually, fuck that. It wasn’t borderline. It was offensive. You don’t just stare at people like that. She should know that.

Anyway, I invited her over to my room last night. Normal, right? Because we’ve been doing that a little since I took her on patrol, by the way. I’m not sure if I mentioned that before. But this time I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m…I don’t know. Creepy? Strange? Scary? She told me that she thought I was intimidating. And then I called her “untouched”, like how some old-timer devout Christian wackjob or whatever would describe virginity. It was so fucking weird of me. I don’t know what got into me, but she kept doing this thing where she kicked my foot with hers or touched my knee and it just threw me off. It took me forever to fall asleep last night—I kept replaying what I’d said to her, especially how I’d told her that she wouldn’t have made it if she were me like I was some sort of hardcore survivalist. I think I embarrassed her. I’m never doing anything like this again. I’m going to be dead sober every time I see her from now on.

I’ll stop talking about that. Y/N did come back after I’d made a fool of myself and showed me her collection of movies, so maybe it wasn’t so bad. I haven’t watched any movies since I was with Cat. When we first started dating, I’d invite her over and she’d sit right where Y/N did last night. I’m trying to not think of the implications, because it’s space girl, and she’s going home sometime soon.

[Three pages of drawings follow—some nature drawings of ferns and moths, others of Y/N with wet hair, her knees tucked up to her chin like she’d been in Ellie’s bed that night]

March 19th, 2038

It’s the Spring Equinox. That’s the first thing Y/N told me this morning when she saw me in the kitchen this morning. She gave me a mini lecture on what that meant for the planet’s axis tilt and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I already knew, since she seemed really excited to tell me.

I made a horrible discovery yesterday, by the way. Maria came up to me and told me that Tommy had decided to reach out to some of his other buddies up North to see if they had any connections to Terranova, and for the first time, I felt myself hoping that it wouldn’t work.

It’s awful. I shouldn’t be thinking like this. Even in Jackson, where things are comparatively much better than the rest of the world, there’s risk. Just this winter, one family had to be kicked out when they were found hiding an infected son. No one here is completely safe, just safer. I shouldn’t be selfish. Y/N needs to go where she’s meant to be, where there’s no chance of infection or invasion. I’ll be fine. I just need to get over whatever this is.

Speaking of her, I need to go get her to tell her that we’re heading out on patrol in just a few minutes. Fingers crossed she doesn’t accidentally shoot me, but Joel swore up and down that she knows how to handle a gun now. Sure. Haha.

I’m back. It’s the middle of the night and she only just left my room. I don’t know how much detail I need to go into—chances are I won’t forget this. But for bookkeeping purposes: patrol did not go so hot. I had to give her stitches without any local anesthesia. I’ve never given stitches to anyone nearly in my lap before. I was really nervous, too. I don’t think I’ve ever had to focus so much on keeping my hands steady when it came to stitching someone up before, not even with Joel.

I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong about thinking that she didn’t like me. I still can’t tell exactly what she thinks of me, and I know that it’s a really bad fucking idea to be entertaining thoughts like these, but tonight she did something that made me reconsider. She got under the covers with me, and instead of moving away to keep us from touching, she rested her head next to mine on the pillow.

I hope she couldn’t hear how much my heart was racing. People can’t hear that kind of stuff, right? Even if they’re close?

I’m being ridiculous. There’s no way she—No. She doesn’t see me like that.

March 21st, 2038

She rested her head on my shoulder today. I don’t know what to think of it. If she was normal and grew up like the rest of us did, I would know exactly what to think. But she’s not normal, and it’s not fair of me to treat her like she is. Maybe this is, like, a culturally acceptable thing back from where she grew up. Maybe rich people just cuddle each other all the time. I wouldn’t fucking know, and unfortunately no one in this godforsaken town can help, because there’s a distinct lack of what Maria calls the “bourgeoisie”. They’re all either dead or back where Y/N grew up, doing whatever rich snobs do.

Even if it is normal for her, I feel like I can’t stop analyzing everything she does. She seems more nervous around me than she does anyone else, but she lingers like she can’t help herself. I’ve noticed that she stumbles over her words and touches me much more than is really necessary. Or at least I think she does—maybe I’m just imagining things.

But even if it means what I think it does, I can’t let myself think like this. It’s not fair to her. No one deserves to live here if they have the choice. At least the people out here know how to handle it. She doesn’t, and I don’t want her to turn into the type of person who does.

When I stitched her up and teased her about being weak and sensitive, I think she thought I was insulting her. I try not to think about it, but if I let myself wallow too much, I’ll wonder what kind of person I’d be if I wasn’t so jaded. Maybe I’d draw more, or read more, or write more. Maybe I’d be an easier person to love. I didn’t get to choose how I turned out. It just happened to me.

So if she has the choice, I’m going to do everything I can to help her make the right one. I don’t want her to be like this.

March 29th, 2038

I had a dream about Riley last night. I haven’t had one of those in years, not since I was traveling with Joel. We were back in the mall, and Riley had just turned the lights on as a surprise. I had this feeling then, like I was being given a second chance. That I could set things straight and do what was right. I woke up before I could insist that we leave.

[A drawing takes up half of the next page. It’s a crude depiction of the mall Riley turned in.]

April 4th, 2038

It’s the middle of the night again. I can’t sleep. I’m so disappointed with myself about what I did tonight with Y/N. At the time, it seemed like a really good idea. She likes me back, apparently. I was right about everything that I wrote about earlier, I guess. But it certainly doesn’t feel like I thought it would.

It’s not like there’s no part of me that isn’t thrilled that she feels the same way. That’s why I gave in and slept with her. But even when she told me how she felt, even before I completely lost my self-control, something heavy was already hanging over me. Regret, maybe. Or guilt. I don’t know. What I do know is that this can’t last. I can’t make this good for her like I want to. She needs to go back, and she needs to be able to feel like she can make that choice without feeling like she’s leaving anything good behind.

I’m not a spiritual person. but even so, I can’t help but feel like that dream of Riley was a sign. This is my second chance. I’m not going to fuck it up this time. I’ve already been an accomplice of so much suffering. Y/N is going home, and I’ll never see her again when she does. That’s that.

It took all I had left in me in the end to kick her out. She looked so hurt, and the fact that she tried to hide it made it even worse. I wish I could tell her why this can’t work, but I don’t think she’d understand.

[A drawing of Y/N kissing Ellie’s palm follows, her hair slightly mussed]

April 6th, 2038

I need to stop making rash decisions like knocking on her door late at night and asking her to come over. I really don’t know what’s gotten into me, because whenever I see her now, I can’t help but freeze up. Like last night, when she kissed me and touched my face and told me she thought I was a good person. I panicked and told her—well, nevermind. I don’t really want to repeat it here. It was mean, but I didn’t know what else I could do to get her to stop.

She was already tearing up by the time she left. I had to sit down and breathe deeply for a few minutes before I was sure I wasn’t going to be sick. I don’t really think I want to write more about this right now. It just makes me sad how unfair this all is. Of course the one time after Cat that I meet someone I really like it just has to be in one of the cruelest scenarios possible. I just have no idea what to do.

[Five pages of drawings follow of Y/N in bed, her head tilted back against the pillow, her eye’s half lidded, and her mouth slightly agape. Ellie redraws this multiple times, x-ing out parts that don’t seem quite right]

April 10th, 2038

I know this is none of my business, but she’s been spending a lot of time with Dina lately. She nearly got herself killed getting a gift for me with Dina yesterday, which feels like some sort of especially cruel joke. The universe isn’t being very fucking subtle right now.

If what I’m worried about is right, at least Dina has the option to come with her up North. She’d test negative.

April 20th, 2038

I would really like it if I could have one short break from the misery that’s my life right now. I turned 20 yesterday, accidentally introduced Y/N to my ex, proceeded to get much drunker than I meant to, completely fell off my rocker and asked Y/N to stay the night, and then discovered this morning that not only has Terranova found Y/N but that my strategy of keeping Y/N at arm’s length completely failed.

She wants me to come with her, and she’s threatening to stay here otherwise. I did the only thing that I could think to do and snapped at her.

I’m so tired of this. I hate having to act like I don’t care. This is the third time now that I’ve had to say something nasty to her to keep her from getting too close. I just want to get in bed and sleep until she leaves and I can pretend like nothing ever happened and that everything is normal.

[One page of drawings of Y/N passed out in her bed and Y/N grinning while holding a lopsided cake]

April 28th, 2038

I know I haven’t been writing much again. Sorry about that. I just can’t bear to think about my life right now. I know I should be relieved—this is what I wanted. I wanted her to go where it’s best for her.

But there’s still that selfish part of me that keeps me up at night. Y/N is going to leave this place never knowing how I feel about her. Logically, that should be what I want. This way I won’t need to say a real goodbye. I know I won’t need to now, since she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. It’s really fucking immature of me to be so hurt by what she must think of me now, but I can’t stop.

I wonder how long it will take for me to stop feeling sad about this. I’ve never had to process anything like this where there’s nothing I can do. With Riley and Sam, I at least got to heal from the knowledge that I was going to help make the vaccine to save the world. But losing Y/N just because of where we come from is totally meaningless. I can go forward knowing that I made it easy for her to make the right decision, but that only goes so far.

I don’t know how I’m going to handle this. I’m going to practically live with Dina so I don’t need to be alone for the first few weeks.

I wish May 8th would just come already so she can go away and I can get on with my life.

May 1st, 2038

Things have changed some. Joel cornered me in the kitchen last night and told me that I needed to grow up and just appreciate the rest of the time I had left with Y/N. I was going to agree and try to walk past him, but he stopped me and told me that he needed me to escort Y/N. I guess he’s right. She can’t go alone, and Joel and Tommy are getting a little too old for week-long expeditions into the wilderness.

He also told me that I need to apologize to her and make things right, saying shit like I’d regret it forever if things ended between us like this. I don’t want to admit it, but I think he’s right. When I told him that she’d originally threatened to stay if I didn’t go with her, he blinked, hard. Then he told me that he had an idea.

I’m faking it. I’m telling her that I’m going, even though I’m going to leave her when she gets picked up. I don’t know how I’m going to pull it off. When I told her in the meadow last night, she was so happy. I know it’s really sappy and cliche to say this, but I felt my heart shatter, bit by bit. I’m not a very good liar, not to people who are important to me. But I suppose I’ve been lying to her all this time, kicking her out of my room and telling her that I didn’t want anything more with her.

I can do this, I think. I have to do this, or else she might threaten to stay, and I don’t think I have it in me to be cruel again. Not to her. I guess I’ll just trick myself into feeling like I’m actually coming with her, like we have a chance of actually being together. I don’t know. We’ll see.

[One drawing of Y/N laying down in the meadow that takes up half a page]

May 3rd, 2038

It’s easier than I expected. Y/N sleeps over in my room at night, and if I don’t think too hard about it, I can pretend like things will always be like this.

I’m getting to be such a sap, though. I almost broke down in the bathroom today while I was getting ready. It was over the stupidest thing—a toothpaste bottle. Y/N always folds it so neatly, making a perfect, tight spiral of plastic near the end. It used to really bother me when I first had to share with her (because who does that—it’s weird and doesn’t do anything since she doesn’t manage to squeeze out the extra in the bottom anyways), but the thought of throwing it out when it finally emptied and having to find another one that’ll never be folded again hit me and suddenly I was counting my inhales and exhales. I don’t really give a shit about toothpaste. It’s just that it was the moment that I realized that she’s really going to be gone soon, you know? Slowly but surely, the evidence of her stay here will be wiped away and replaced. Someday I’ll forget all the little details about her.

She’s knocking on my door. I need to stop being so depressed and go see her before she picks up that something’s wrong.

[One small doodle of Y/N smiling and rolling her eyes while brushing her teeth]

May 6th, 2038

Dina’s coming now. Y/N told me this morning after she went to say goodbye. I feel really shitty about this. I guess I should tell her that I’m not going now, because this way Y/N needs to go home to get Dina the help she needs, but I just can’t bring myself to. I’ll have to escort both of them to the pickup spot anyway since Dina’s weaker now that she’s pregnant, and the thought of having to spend a full week with Y/N after she knew I lied to her makes my skin crawl. I can’t tell who I’m trying to protect by doing this—me or her. Maybe both.

I’m losing my two favorite people here, and they don’t even know it yet. But this is the best option. This is my chance to finally do some good in the world.

May 7th, 2038

I’m about to go stargazing with Y/N for the last time. I don’t think I’ll be writing in here again until I get back. I don’t want to risk losing this while I’m out in case something crazy happens. Which it probably will, but I canonically happen to be really good at living when shit hits the fan. Also—I don’t imagine Y/N to be a particularly nosy person, but if she ever came across this and thought it was a book or something, it would make things really awkward. So, you’re staying tucked carefully under my bed until I come back later this month.

I don’t know how to handle this sort of goodbye. I don’t really know how to handle any sort of goodbye, I guess, but at least I’ve been through them before. I may not do it well, but I know how to live when people I love die. But this isn’t like that. No one is dying (hopefully), and more importantly, I know it’s a goodbye this time. I see it coming on the horizon and I can’t even tell anyone about it. How does anyone deal with that? How does anyone cope?

Y/N’s knocking on my door now. I need to go before I start thinking even more and do something stupid like start crying or whatever.

I’ll be back in about two weeks.

June 1st, 2038

Sorry for not writing. It’s been pretty shitty, actually. It took me 5 extra days to get home because some scavengers gave me trouble. I hardly slept for most of them. I ran out of ammo about 4 days out and had to use my knife for everything I ran into until I was able to raid the cabinets of this abandoned cabin. Nearly got taken out by a clicker, too. It was not fun. It was especially not fun because I was not feeling super great to begin with, for obvious reasons.

Things haven’t gotten any better since getting back to Jackson. Y/N didn’t take her stupid Exoplanetary Systems textbook and now I’m struggling with whether or not I should throw it out. The rational side of me says to keep it because it was published after the outbreak and probably contains updated information that isn’t anywhere else. The rest of me doesn’t even want to look at the stars anymore because it reminds me of her.

It’s really hard not to blame her for ruining everything. I can’t go out and ride my own horse without thinking about the first time we went on patrol together and she dropped my gun and nearly killed one of us. And I can’t even relax in my own home, because I’ve spent almost every night with her since March in my bed. Sometimes when I hear a creak in the middle of the night I assume it’s her walking down to the bathroom or getting water until it hits me again that she’s never coming back.

I know I’m being melodramatic. There are many other worse problems I could be having right now. But I don’t even have my best friend anymore. I wonder if Dina and Y/N are angry with me for lying. I wonder if they’re settling in okay. I hope that Y/N manages to fix whatever her research was and that Dina gets better.

[Twenty pages of drawings of Y/N and Dina together. Some are snippets of them on their expedition to the pickup site. Others are pictures of Y/N and Dina walking around with smiles on their faces in what looks to be a city]

June 21st, 2038

It’s been over a month since I’ve last seen her. I had a breakdown while getting ready for bed when I realized that I didn’t remember what her voice sounded like anymore.

[Ten pages of half-finished drawings, each with its face scribbled over]

June 28th, 2038

I don’t think I really remember what she looks like—not exactly. I’ve been trying to draw her because I’m still in the habit of making decisions that are definitely not good for my mental state. I just can’t do it, and it isn’t for the lack of trying. Every time I get to her eyes I keep drawing something that looks wrong, but I can never tell why. I compare it to my earlier drawings of her from when we first met and it feels like meeting her for the first time again.

Joel says it’ll pass and that he’s proud of me for doing the right thing. Jessie and I have been hanging out more. Even if he won’t admit it, I can tell he’s miserable without Dina. But he understands why she had to go—just like how I feel about Y/N. And Dina too, of course. Jackson feels like a ghost town without her.

July 17th, 2038

I haven’t been writing or drawing in here for a while, I know. I was going to just go ahead and start a new journal—you know the one that Maria gave me for Christmas with the dark blue cover—but it didn’t feel right to just stop without explaining. Otherwise I’ll feel like an asshole for wasting so much paper.

I don’t want to move on from what happened with Y/N and Dina. I really don’t, but I don't think I have a choice. If I keep going on like this, I’ll never be able to live normally again. I’m just sick and tired of being sad all of the time. So I’m not going to write here anymore. I don’t think it’s realistic for me to forget all about it, because I don’t want to forget her. Not really. But I guess if I want to get better, I’ll need something different. So, here’s that. The beginning of my fresh start. “Fresh start” and you call me overdramatic!! haha. Y/N was here!

(You left this on your nightstand. I promise I didn’t read too much. I opened it because I thought it was your sketchbook. I’m going to put this back since I hear you walking down the hall now.)

ok as an aside my blog is broken so my stuff isn’t notifying people when i tag/showing up on dashes or in tags. please reblog if you’re comfortable so people can actually find this! thank you!

final a/n: i totally get it if this wasn’t quite your cup of tea this time—i just really wanted to iron out ellie’s pov before their reunion in the end. which is happening and not a spoiler because i have always promised a hea! this was a change in pace for the story and i promise you that the next chapter will be more normal/align more with my normal writing style. i have also changed my mind (probably) and have decided to stick with writing an epilogue! so two more chapters are coming before this is totally over. thank you so much for waiting and being so patient! i love you all dearly ok bye bye now

[sapphicrot]

going on anon in the community to have a gigachad opinion is my hobby but like yeah i simply think also, people should look at characters for their story value. not all characters in a story are going to be likeable to everyone but that doesn't mean they aren't absolutely vital to it. to change moon kills the story. rainworld works because it's so layered, has so many themes, is so tragic. iterators are intentionally flawed in how they think. insert that discussion those users, forget who, had awhile back abt ALL iterators very clearly demonstrating poor eq. moon has a lot of the same flaws as the other iterators and i feel like it's definitely unfair that she gets critiqued so harshly for having flawed logic in her situation when literally every character (dp wise, i cant speak for vanilla atm) had flawed logic. the only real explanation for disliking moon and not the other iterators for that reasoning is misogyny and i think you've been pointing that out pretty dead on. most of the time i feel quite neutral to the iterators as i like them all but even then, even if i ever do forget why moon is likeable as a character, i still appreciate that she is part of the story simply because she is objectively a necessary component to it. not sure i'm putting words together well here now but it's whatever

girl literally tells you little stories and is nice to you if you're not a jerk. i can't comprehend how anyone would hate her without exhibiting flawed thinking themself lol. arguments against her fall apart like sand they just aren't defensible. everyone is entitled to an opinion, if they just dont vibe with her sure whatever, but being so drastic as to hate her and act like she's not a valuable character with important themes and ideas is weird to me too

and my last note here, a little less related, your art is swag as hell. i'd make a more specific compliment but i need to put down the phone so i'll be back another time. have a good day👍

[nods sagely] i completely agree. like the iterators, despite looking/seeming like untouchable gods, are no better than we are at the end of the day. they’re emotional, they care too much, they make rash decisions. they fuck up despite a lot of the times thinking they’re doing the right thing…much like all of us. that’s what i think rain world is really trying to drive home: the gods that tower over you, the scavengers that seem erratic and irrational, the slugcats, YOU, are all the same. you are all trying to survive, to understand your purpose in the world. monk and survivor are a parallel to pebbles’ and moon’s story. like, the game makes that pretty clear. it all comes full circle, doesn’t it?

at the end of the day all the iterators were doomed from the start. even if moon had “done everything right” (could anything even qualify as right??) she still would have collapsed. so too with pebbles. its not like they can do much being, ahem, “locked up in a box”, with miles and miles between one another. the damage had been done already. judging their reactions to such an unprecedented situation, filled with emotion and desperation and fear and sheer hopelessness, you probably wouldn’t have reacted in the most flawless way either. the iterators aren’t pure, rational machines! and that’s what makes the game GOOD!!!!

…not to mention, if they did nothing to the game aside from flip pebbles’ gender, you KNOOOWWWW the fandom would HATE his guts rather than being like 🥺 omg my poor littol emo baby 🥺 and like idk. call him a selfish bitch or whatever

also [kicks feet and twirls hair] awwww thank you for liking my art !!! i wanna draw moon now damn it

[horriblengrossstories]

“It’s not kink. It’s not catharsis. It’s not fucking cute.”

🦉Professor Birdie’s Nightmare Media Studies 101:Why Depictions of Sexual Violence Aren’t Automatically Porn.

“It’s not rape kink if the camera never blinks.”

The Price of Flesh is a gore-drenched horror story full stop. It has rape scenes, but it’s not a sex story. It’s about control, degradation, and the sick machinery of power. The violence isn't aesthetic; it’s structural. It’s a story where blood and silence mean more than dialogue. Where the threat isn’t just physical— t’s psychological, systemic, and intimate.

"Not all media with rape is a kink. Some of it’s a scream."

The rape scenes aren’t shot like porn. They’re shot like horror. There’s no fantasy, no glamour, no soft lighting or erotic framing. Just raw dread. The game doesn’t ask you to enjoy it, it dares you to endure it. That’s a critical distinction. Because when rape is used in horror like this as something grotesque and destabilizing, not romanticized it stops being about kink and starts being about what it means to be powerless in a world that feeds on your body.

"You want comfort? Read something else. This is for the ones who know."

And The Price of Flesh leans into that deliberately. It wants to make you uncomfortable. It wants to make you question what you’re playing, why you’re still playing it, and what it says about how we depict suffering

“I don’t want catharsis. I want the rot to show.”

In Funny Games, the killers break the fourth wall, rewind the narrative, and let the killers win not because it’s satisfying, but because it punishes the audience for expecting catharsis. It weaponizes your desire for justice, then denies you the release. The Price of Flesh does the same through gameplay: it hands you choices, but none of them are safe. You aren’t rewarded for cleverness, you’re punished for endurance. The more you see, the more it stains.(with veryyyy few exceptions that are very hard to get)

“Liking it doesn’t mean condoning it. This game’s a mirror, not a fantasy.”

It’s not about voyeurism, it’s about complicity. It dares you to admit you’re fascinated. Then it punishes you for it. Not with jump scares or cheap thrills, but with scenes that feel too real in the worst ways: rape that isn’t romanticized, gore that isn’t stylized, degradation that doesn’t resolve. It’s not a power fantasy. It’s a slow, choking spiral where survival is the least merciful outcome. not all media with rape is “rape fetish”, and lumping them all together flattens the intent of TPOF.

“The Price of Flesh doesn’t romanticize pain. It documents it.”

🐦“NO SAFE WORD IN HELL” (by Professor Birdie, PhD in Uncomfortable Truths and Bleeding-Through-the-Teeth Feminism)⚠️If you’re not a feminist, you’re gonna hate this. Go cry about it somewhere that isn’t my comments section⚠️

🥀 DISCLAIMER:

This isn’t about banning art, it’s about exposing the rot in its framing.

🚫 DON’T READ THIS IF YOU THINK FEMINISM IS A VIBE KILL

Don’t read this if you call critique “censorship.”

"You think feminists can’t handle violence? We’ve survived it."

“Feminists don’t fear gore. They fear silence.”

You wanna talk about damage? Talk about why people are more outraged by depictions of rape than the culture that enables it. Talk about how we’re allowed to show corpses with their ribs blown open, but the moment a girl gets stripped of agency, everyone screams and assumes it’s for arousal.

It’s Funny Games with a blade to your gut, not a wink to the camera. It strips you of safety, rips out the possibility of victory, then drags you through a system so rotten it makes death feel like mercy. This isn’t narrative kink.

And if that makes you uncomfortable, good. It should. Because this isn’t about voyeurism. It’s about complicity. About how we consume women’s pain until it stops tasting bitter. How we call it “dark” or “gritty” or “mature” and forget to ask who gets torn apart to make it feel real.

You don’t get to win. You don’t get to fix it. You get to endure it. And every time you click forward, you stain a little deeper. Because you’re not the hero here. You’re the audience. You’re the one still watching.

So stop asking if it’s a fetish and start asking why it rattles your ribs. Not all stories with rape are fantasies. Some of them are warnings. Some of them are traps. And some of them—this one—drag you down screaming

Yeah, TPof has a women-centric fan base. Of course it does. Because women are used to navigating terror disguised as entertainment. We’re fluent in reading between the lines, parsing what's horror and what's just reality with a mask on. And TPOF doesn’t hide it—it exposes it. The hollowed-out stare. The raw breath. The endless sense that no matter what you choose, the damage is already done. It’s not trauma for Spice. It’s trauma as architecture. And that resonates with the people who’ve lived that tension—the ones who don’t need jump scares to feel dread, just a locked door and a voice that sounds too calm.

That’s why the men got so wah wah when it came out—because The Price of Flesh doesn’t center their gaze. It doesn’t give them a power fantasy to hide inside. No cowboy hero. No savior complex. No clean moral lines to stroke their ego. Just the brutal, choking reminder that control is the real monster—and this time, they don’t get to hold the leash.

They expect horror to cater to them. To make even atrocity sexy, heroic, profitable. They’re used to stories that punish women for being victims and for surviving. But this? This game hands them a mirror instead of a gun. It strips away the fantasy and leaves them with what they usually ignore: how many women live with this dread every day. Not as plot, but as reality.

And it burns. Because deep down, they know Dworkin was right. For too long, women's violation has been served up as visual garnish for male pleasure. And when something comes along that doesn’t let them watch comfortably, that refuses to let them feel powerful, they call it “too much.” “Too dark.” “Too upsetting.”

🎉 Congrats, You Made It This Far 🎉 (Which means either you’re a feminist or you’re hate-reading with your teeth clenched either way, I win o<o)

⚠️ FANTASY ≠ REALITY — GET IT THROUGH YOUR SKULL

Just because someone has a rape kink does NOT mean they want to be raped. Or to rape. Fantasies aren’t blueprints—they’re pressure valves. Most people with these thoughts are repulsed by the real thing. It’s about illusion of danger, not actual violation.

🎥 FRAMING CHANGES EVERYTHING

Two writers walk into a room. One pans the camera over her bare thighs while she begs. The other looks at her eyes with panic. Which one are you? EXPLOITATIVE: Lingers on flesh/Thrills in the act/Feels like lube-slick cinema. RESPONSIBLE: Lingers on terror./Focuses on coercion/The act sickens you/The victim is real, not a mannequin in a porn loop.

🔐 WHY IT’S ALL OVER FICTION (BECAUSE WE’RE SAFER HERE THAN OUT THERE)

Media is the sandbox. The padded cell. The fireproof suit. You can scream without bleeding, you can explore the unspeakable without dying for it. Stories are how we pull the teeth out of monsters so we can stare them in the face. But—

🕳️ HOW IT CRAWLS INTO THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR SCREEN

▹ NORMALIZATION THROUGH REPETITION Every time rape is shown as “hot,” “unavoidable,” or “just how love starts,” another viewer forgets what no looks like. You watch enough of it, and suddenly “resistance” means “she wants it rough,”“coercion” is just “romantic persistence.” and rape?Just another plot device. You’re not desensitized. You’re reprogrammed.

▹ GLAMORIZING ABUSERS The brooding bad boy. The misunderstood killer. He’s hot, he’s tragic, he’s choking her. The media loves to paint predators as passion incarnate. Hurt her, but with feelings. Break her, but mean it. That’s not subversive, that’s a training manual for rapists in cologne ads.

▹ NO SPACE FOR THE VICTIM The shot lingers. The screams fade. The credits roll. And we never learn her name. If your story ends where her pain begins, you didn’t write a narrative; you built a peep show.

This isn’t censorship. It’s consequence. You’re free to write anything. We’re free to call it what it is.

And if you think any of this is about “kink-shaming”? Go back and read this again— S L O W L Y.

💌 With love,🦜

—Birdie, who Birdie, who just hit the hornet’s nest with a brick

“Go on, then. Prove me right.”

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I just wanted to say how fucking much I love pez dispenser debris. It is so cathartic and raw and the humour just adds to the moments that make me feel like I’m looking in a mirror.

The backflip treaty and all its mentions feel EXACTLY like something I would’ve done at that age, and when I’m laughing at things like “slaves to the flip and bakogou” it just. Is real. Even living with all that anger, there’s funny bits in between.

Especially this last chapter with Shinsou. You spend all that time having a cutoff point, at what time you’ll call it quits, then your life has changed and you don’t even notice as that point passes you by until after it’s over. And then you panic. Because you were meant to have called it quits but now you don’t have a plan for wanting to keep going.

Your writing is amazing. I mean that as genuinely as possible. Even for fandoms I’m not in, I’ll read them and be blown away by how human and alive these characters feel.

Thank you, honestly, for writing this and deciding to share this with the world. For all the Tiny Midoriyas knowing that the best they’ll get is that someone chokes on them, and the Shinsous, who don’t know what to do now the cutoffs gone and they want to live.

I really wanted pez dispenser debris to capture that sort of grey transition period between childhood and adulthood.

All the kids in Izuku’s class are exactly that—kids. They have silly little jokes between them like the fucking backflip treaty. They just all committed to the fucking bit like it was their job. It started as a silly little bit while being irresponsible and drunk, then that one kid who was a bit too goth in the class incorporated a fucking curse into it, and what were they supposed to do, get cursed? No. The only answer was to double down while simultaneously giving shit to the one friend who bypassed getting stuck in the fucking backflip treaty. Make it the group chat name.

Like. They’re kids. They’re horribly, painfully young, and at the same time, they are becoming adults who are catastrophically important to their society. They are already being heralded as some of its most important and influential members. And that’s in such uncomfortable contrast with their undeniable youth.

I also wanted this fic to just be a horrible funhouse mirror of being confronted with the pain of your past self. The most obvious example of that is Midoriya himself, but the other characters aren’t exempt, and Shinsou is one of the ones who most closely dovetails Midoriya’s own situation.

Shinsou knows, deep down, that there’s an angry, hurt version of his past self who still doesn’t know why he had to be hurt banging at the walls of his own heart trying to get out. There’s a reason why he’s the one who gets on best with Tiny Midoriya.

Tiny Midoriya is a screaming echo of Izuku’s past pain, and Shinsou hears the echoes and can’t help but think it sounds a hell of a lot like his own voice. Midoriyas not the only one who has to reckon with who he used to be.

Thank you so so much for your kindness. I’m so grateful you like my stories and that they resonate with you.

[greyarthur]

OK RANT TIME

This is an opinion that’s been fermenting in me for ages and I haven’t posted it publically because a) it’s going to be seen by only my irl friends anyway and I can just talk to them in person and b) I don’t want to seem like I’m targeting specific creators but. God. Fanfic is pretty universally awful at writing the bisexual experience. And I want to put that out there in the world.

I mean, most media is, I’ll be real. I think it hits harder in fanfic though, because it is most of what I read and generally fanfic strives for good queer rep.

As a bit of background, I’m bisexual (probably also a bit aspec, whatever, I’m working on it) and for YEARS I was bi-cycling like crazy. I was constantly like ‘I’m not really bi because I’m too attracted to men’ or ‘I’m not really bi, I’m too attracted to women’ etc. etc.

I think part of this is there just aren’t good narratives about being bisexual. And I don’t just mean characters who happen to be bisexual, I mean stories about what it is like to be bisexual.

Most fanfic (and probably original works too, I just don’t read them as much) seems to believe that all same-sex attraction is fundamentally equivalent. Like, being gay and bi is basically the same thing (bi people just sometimes fuck the opposite sex, I guess). But this isn’t true!

I mean, it isn’t even true that two gay people experience sexuality in the same way (rant for another time)

I need an example of what I mean. Ok, say I’m reading a story about a bisexual character who represses their same-sex attraction. This character goes through the classic comphet, coming out narrative.

But nowhere in this narrative does the character struggle with questions like “Well, I’m still attracted to the opposite sex, does this mean my same-sex interest isn’t real?” or “I can’t have gay encounters because I’m not gay enough, they’ll know I’m ‘faking’?”.

Like, there’s so many flavours of the bisexual experience. The girl who experiments in university but writes it off as a phase because yeah, she’s definitely into men, and only realises she’s into women as well in later life. The lesbian who realises she likes men, but represses it to fit in and feels like she’s betraying her community. The guy who 90% of the time likes women, but every so often he’ll form a connection with a man but he never pursues it because he’s ashamed. The nb person who is told that they’re pretending for attention and who feels shame because they’re doubting whether they can believe their own orientation. The mum who always felt different but never knew why, because she never fit into the traditional wlw narratives.

But we never see this specifically bisexual struggle.

I think that’s why it hits me extra hard when there’s characters who are widely headcanoned as bisexual are then are written as gay but just performing for comphet. To be clear, I have nothing against fanfic that does this – often they’re really beautiful, thoughtful pieces of writing. I just wish the same thoughtfulness existed for bisexuals.

And even when these characters are written as bi, it’s not really about them being bisexual. Like reading a fic from 2012 where Dean Winchester is bi isn’t great rep either, it’s just background information that Dean fucks women as well as men that doesn’t actually impact his character. And, again, these fics are not bad! They just don’t have the bi rep I want.

ANYWAY, off to write my bi 4 bi destiel fic (just kidding, I’m way too lazy to write anything)

[thebluestbluewords]

Rise of Red (princess status pending)

“Where are we?” Chloe asks, wide-eyed goggling at the buildings around her like she’s never seen a castle before. 

Okay, it’s not like Red’s seen a castle like this one before either, but still. She’s at least making an effort to fit in. 

“More like when are we?” Red shoots back. “We’re right where we were before the pocketwatch took us back. It’s a time machine, not a fucking teleportation device.” 

Chloe frowns. She’s cute when she looks confused, not that Red cares. “That seems improbable. I mean, what are the odds that we’d be standing in exactly the same spot where we left from…fifty years ago?” 

“My mom’s not that old.” 

“Your mom built the whole castle in wonderland,” Chloe says, frowning. “She was queen when Lady Alice visited for the first time, which was over thirty years ago. According to our history books—“ 

Red can’t help the laugh that tears out of her. “Hah! Your history books?” 

Chloe’s frown deepens. “What’s wrong with our history books?” 

“For one thing, they totally ignore the Wonderland War.” Red snaps, keeping her voice low and dangerous, both because it makes Chloe lean closer to hear her, and because she is not going to cause a time travel incident by making any of these pre-Auradon princess types think that they should instigate the Great War a few years early. “And they say that you guys are the source of all the goodness and light in the world—“ 

“Wonderland didn’t exactly keep their hands clean either when it came to the villains—“ 

“We were the villains!” Red hisses, so loudly that Chloe flinches back. “We were part of the villainous uprising that led to you people locking up our friends, and we didn’t want to be pushed back into tweedletown or stuck with my mother for a queen, but those were the only two options you gave us!” 

“The books say that Wonderland chose to secede from the United States of Auradon,” Chloe says, meeting Red’s glare straight on. “I know that books can be wrong, but while we’re here, we’re in a time before any of that. We need to remember that history as we know it hasn’t happened yet, so we need to be careful not to change too much and risk creating a time distortion so big we can’t get home.” 

“Home. Where my mother is staging a coup.” 

“Where my mother is a prisoner waiting for her beheading,” Chloe shoots back. “Unless you want to let things play out like that again, we need to get moving and figure out how to convince your mother not to be….” 

“Herself?” 

“I was going to say a tyrant.” Chloe says delicately. “But I suppose that works too.” 

Red throws her arm out in a sweeping Red Court gesture towards the road ahead of them. Her fingers slip automatically into the shape of a heart, and she flips them back into a rude gesture instead. She’s not giving her mother the satisfaction, even from fifty-odd years away. “Lead the way, princess.” 

Chloe makes a face that’s distinctly un-princess-y. “That’s the other thing we need to decide on before we find your mom. I can’t be the princess of Charmington here. Charmington doesn’t exist yet.” 

Red scoffs. Of all the stupid things to be concerned about, of course her roommate is concerned about her own royal heritage before she’s supposed to be born. “Your dad’s still a prince. You can be his cousin, or something. I’d never,” she puts as much sarcasm as possible into the word, just in case Chloe really is as dense as she’s acting. “Deny you the royal treatment you so clearly deserve, princess.” 

Chloe’s expression is so flat that she might as well be a flounder. “I meant that you cant call me a princess because telling everyone that I’m the heir to a country that doesn’t even exist yet is the fastest way I can think for us to get thrown in jail for espionage, if not outright treason. That is, unless you’d rather be sent to the madhouse instead?” 

“Madhouses aren’t real. They’re a story that my mom made up to get those stupid hatters off her case.”

Chloe’s face falls even further. “They’re real. And that’s where we’ll be going if we don’t have a good cover story for who we are and why we’re here.” 

Red shrugs. “You’re the one with the history books. Make something up.” 

Chloe grins. 

Oh, no. 

[jbdforspence]

Rmember when I made like SCU headcanons or some shit (Smosh Cinematic Universe)? Well some of y’all really liked that and I’m getting chosen lore brainrot after the live so I’m making another for purely chosen lore 🥰🥰

Disclaimer: these are all my headcanons, unless I like say or some shit all of this is being made up in my brain because I think it’s cool or whatever, don’t take this as fact at all but like u can also headcanon what I’m saying bro idk 💀😭😭

Bro my ass essentially made my own fucking story or fanfic plot or whatever 😭😭😭

Also this shit is a long ass ramble so if u don’t wanna bother just be known one of the headcanons is that Shayne and Spencer’s chosen are in a purely romantic relationship ❤️ (SOMEONE BETTER MAKE A FANFIC OF THEM)

Okay… so getting the most important chosen thing out of the way, chosen is not bullshitting, the chosen all have real powers and shit and are from different dimensions, doesn’t mean they aren’t also loser awkward virgins though they’re still that but just are also powerful Jedi mfs lmao

Now for the next one I’m gonna use into the spiderverse as a good example. All dimensions have a Spider-Man, however not all Spider-Man are Peter Parker, while he still exists in some of those dimensions, like Gwen’s.

So, all dimensions have a chosen, however there are different chosen in different dimensions (if the chosen is played by a different cast member it’s not the same chosen, except mb Olivia’s we’ll get to that 💀) and a person who is chosen in one dimension won’t be chosen in another. Let’s use the chosen who faps, that chosen is that dimension’s Chanse, in that dimension Chanse is chosen.

Now you may IMMEDIATELY be thinking abt the main chosen, Shayne Topp and the chosen are from the same dimension. Well this is my most controversial headcanon, Shayne’s chosen is NOT from our dimension. But then who is our dimension’s chosen? ANTHONY PADILLA.

Anthony was a chosen, but then fapped or something (I have faint memories of the funeral roast) and is like calamity chosen and shit and no longer chosen. This is what attracted Shayne’s chosen to our dimension, as an incredibly powerful chosen he was drawn to this dimension as it completely lacked any chosen.

Oh yh and u may be thinking “but the main chosen’s name is Spencer Agnew… so he’s not Shayne Topp…” you think your parents are gonna give you the same name in every dimension buddy? You might not even have the same parents!

Anyways main chosen is stunned by our world as to how unchosen it is (normalised gooning) and comes here a bunch to try and change that, he also looks for some form of way to get his presence known on some kind of public platform, which is where smosh/smosh Vegas comes into play. (Where he was first introduced)

This is now a side headcanon: Smosh Vegas was this event hosted by Smosh to get unknown talent onto the channel to have their chance at possible success in some form of entertainment route for their future, which is where all these new characters (a lot of which we never see again coz it was for just that event and they didn’t gain much traction or popularity or whatever, bleeding into real life here). Smosh mostly picked weird and wacky individuals, think like reality tv show casting 💀, so the chosen most obviously got accepted onto Vegas.

Now I have not fact checked this but I’m pretty sure the chosen was the only character introduced in Vegas who came back afterwards, he was also one of the few in more than one video. I’d say he found success in entertainment, the audience loved him he could’ve gone on to do his own thing and shit, but he stayed with Smosh.

This is where my headcanons start to get really silly and in fanfic territory or whatever. Why did the chosen stay with Smosh? Well it’s a great public outlet for getting his ideas out there, they (us) loved him! But he also stayed due to other reasons. The chosen knows about Anthony, that’s why he’s here in the first place of course he knows what happened. But Anthony was long gone and presumed never coming back when the chosen came, so staying at smosh because of Anthony would be a stupid idea.

No, there was something else at smosh… SOMEONE. Charles Spencer Agnew, more commonly known as Spencer Agnew. They had almost the exact same name while not being variants of each other, the chosen couldn’t think that was just due to coincidence!! He believed it was some kind of sign and decided to stay to investigate what it meant. This is also why the chosen and Spencer are in heaps of vids together (…early on at least 👀)

Okay so now we’ve gotten the silly origin story out of the way and this is already like the longest post I’ve ever made 😭😭😭

The chosen begins to host Chosen Multiverses. This is a common chosen practice to see which chosen are strongest, the chosen just decided to start hosting it in our dimension as 1. Public platform and 2. This universe has no chosen so 5 chosen being there benefits.

An important part about these competitions!!! I believe this is canon coz it was mentioned once, when you win a chosen multiverse you are upgraded to “the chosen” over just being “chosen”, meaning Shayne, Spencer, Ian and Angela’s chosen are all the chosen.

Anyways here’s the silly part that’s inspired this and has ao3 vibes. The first multiverse is where we meet Spencer, Jackie and mb Courtney’s (idk if they did a tntl bit first but oh well!) chosen for the first time. Also Noah who thankfully canonically doesn’t have a chosen as he’s actually some merch ad and not a real chosen 😘.

Main chosen is truly stunned by Spencer’s chosen… as they are equal in power. Main chosen has never come across anyone close to his power, which is also why Spencer’s chosen comes back all the time. Now we also already established that Shayne and Spencer’s chosen are NOT THE SAME PERSON, and are variants of their respective cast members. So this brings us to the main headcanon for why I made this:

Shayne and Spencer’s chosen are romantically attracted to one another and have a purely romantic relationship.

Now the chosen is canonically not asexual (Shayne said in a Lego stream), I’m not here to headcanon sexuality stuff but I do agree with this and they’re constantly battling their urge to fap and shit coz of their Jedi duty .

Anyways the chosen already isn’t straight coz he canonically sucked Tim’s dick in the matrix (don’t ask) so when u think abt it not very far fetched ❤️

Anyways this brings us to the actual fuckinng livestream Jesus I’m so sorry for the LENGTH of this ramble

If you remember the trailer, it starts as Anthony hitting his head and having a “dream sequence”. Guys let me cook with this next one cos I’m proud lowkey: as Anthony is a chosen anomaly, he still kinda has powers, and the whole sitcom is a micro dimension created by Anthony’s brain after his accident that 3 chosen venture into to contain and eliminate it from existence. This is also why they kinda break the 4th wall in the script and stuff and almost spectate the whole live because they are aware that it’s fake.

Not really too sure what to think of the weed thing btw 💀 anyways yh so chosen!shayne x chosen!spencer canon plsplsplsssss

Also they’re teaching Trevor’s chosen btw that’s why the bring him (yet to be ready for a multiverse, which also btw I was 100% expecting him to be in this years multiverse, like I was thinking the lineup would be him and Arasha over Spencer and Courtney) and Shayne and Spencer’s chosen are dealing with it coz they’re the most powerful.

Uuhhh yeah cool so sorry u had to read all that lmao I probably missed some stuff like loopholes or whatever, I’d love to answer questions in the comments in shit so yh!

Ps: someone make a fucking fanfic of chosen Spencer and chosen Shayne PLEASE

Oh yh I also forgot to mention normal Spencer chosen by proxy and Olivia’s chosen but oh well they weren’t important…

[misterbitches]

joke knew from the beginning what he had and other people didn’t. me personally i’d keep my contacts with the pawn dealers because those aren’t the real enemies tho they’re acting like the petty managerial class i guess. fun (not) fact poor ppl have their shit pawned the most so i’ll allow it.

the show is very literal and there’s that fantastical element. obviously a single ring doesn’t give you power. i think the ring thing was to symbolize shifting money around? not sure and you know i kinda tune out when it comes to that plus it’s ugly but more people can explain the tightrope between the exaggerated and melodramatic and the realism whatever.

anyway his nice house, his dad’s nice job, his education, their cars. even the option to go to jail is so funny bc he could have just. not. gotten a lawyer. whatever. instead he spent his time being dyslexic and wanting to expropriate from the real thieves which are bosses and traitors (capitalism). i wish i knew more about thai movements to be able to tie it into a broader point but i know enough about what capitalism does. imagine this: there is no work in your home town so you must go elsewhere to do manual labor, leaving your family behind. that’s what extraction does but not purely internal—though “never colonized”, to say thailand has been untouched by western power would be silly and untrue by fact of being where they were. and obviously imperialism and monarchy and honestly what seems to be actually semicolonialism which seems a ridiculous marker but alright. the point is the british the french and eventually america all had their grubby little hands there and the monarchy supported it tho the monarchy is not their main enemy today—it is the military (imperialism lmao). (which now that i think about the parallels i guess the show is trying to say that which obviously with the bird flying close to the sun…to which i say no but it tried at least. that system doesn’t function the way the military does…get rid of hierarchy…)

this is the nature of exploitation. toi ting is dark, her dad is dark and an alcoholic; jenny is trans—none of these are central to who they are in the story but a part of them. Why would more poor people skew this way; what system of domination necessitates the darker and “deviant” seen as unproductive and unable to assimilate? what influences and exacerbates these ideas?

and even them talking about english. surprisingly jack knows and joke doesn’t. was joke a poor student or did he just not feel like trying? (obviously he struggles w school but my pt is…he also could not put in effort bc he struggles and is young and has money and will be fine) why was jack such a good student? just asking myself stuff like that.

I fundamentally clash with the idea that we owe anything to these evil people i really do. You see people trying to survive and struggling and grappling with their morality and these sick fucks STILL wont let go. They expect us to just lay down and die? To not fight? And that we are the same as them? Once we get free that we’ll do what they do? And this is where jack is wrong and where joke’s self loathing could be so transformed but i don’t know if the show can see that bc that is not the world we live in and the art that is accepted unless we make it so and usually thats thru other channels.

Just once i’d like us to be able to see that actually yes shit like this, who joke is, is righteous, moral, and good. it’s everyone else that has to understand that! he shouldn’t have to change, the world should and do something along with him about it! Like those angry townspeople are! even the way rosé placated them with bullshit indicates an INABILITY to get out of it without forcing them. They could simply solve the problem and they won’t. So we will make them. That’s it! And all labor fighters everywhere have turned violent and resistance and human flourishing go hand in hand. the need for that resistance, what binds us, that all comes from our labor, our work, being exploited and that’s what the contradiction cannot abide by

and if Jack is out for revenge are we going to acknowledge revenge as a motivator for freedom? morality of oppressors is not real morality. the morality of the resistance is one; it’s complex, dark, and nasty but also full of anger and with that love. it wrestles with the tradeoffs and discomfort but it tries to correct course. the difference between these two groups could not be wider so why pretend like the intent, method, and outcome are the same? What the fuck does it mean to come by anything honestly? joke is to me very deeply not wrong and for as long as we have it it’s refreshing to see a character who needs to do something that is integral to his way of life. that is an alienating dangerous thing

so that’s my real issue with the show: so much of joke growing is about leaving liberation in the past and growing up as if it’s a fantasy. like he was ever not putting himself in danger. but what’s interesting is how unsure i am that they are going to to reject the premise of violence and crime necessary to resistance/liberation entirely. It’s SO WEIRD bc it’s like ok is this jack’s rollercoaster? I hope so? Or am i so stung by the norm that i see this pattern and it isnt coming out? Maksksjuurhrhhebebwjqoeofidgeheb

[possiblyunhinged]

At this point, it feels like people have just decided transgender folks are the target because they’re powerless to solve anything real in their lives. They’ve found a group they can bully and demonise with impunity—and somehow, they still manage to play the martyr for their own cruelty.

Look, there absolutely needs to be more support for children with gender dysphoria. It’s frightening, in my view, just how little support young people get across the board—many with mental health issues waiting for what could be years for help. This neglect isn’t just about gender—it’s about a system that routinely fails the most vulnerable, leaving kids to fend for themselves.... *cough* CAHMS.

But is that support really going to come from people on Twitter, whose words not only harm these kids but are weaponised and spread with increasingly hateful tones? Is that cruelty supposed to help children, who are already one of the most at-risk groups in society for self-harm?

The sheer unkindness of it all is fucking mind-blowing to me.

And then there are the self-proclaimed “warriors” fighting the so-called wokerati. They’re always ready to demonise vulnerable groups but barely mention the millions of children in poverty or the systemic issues that leave kids vulnerable. They don’t talk about the 2020 report showing that 98% of defendants in child abuse cases were men—89% of those men were white (x). No, they’re too busy blaming trans kids and their families for society’s problems, all while ignoring the real, measurable harm happening under their noses.

The men going after trans women under the guise of “protecting women”? Honey, why don’t you start by protecting women from the men you actually know? Your work buddies, your mates who are “not the type” but you’ve quietly written off as a bit odd?

Some of the same men claiming to care about women’s safety are out here celebrating a rapist’s rise to one of the most powerful positions in the world. They call themselves “facts over feelings” warriors while waging imaginary battles against the woke illuminati—a fight they’ve invented to distract from their own mediocrity.

Stop hiding behind this “protecting women” bullshit, because let’s be real—men have proved time and time again they don’t care about protecting women. They just want to feel a little more powerful than they are. They puff themselves up, play hero for a second, and hope no one notices their complicity in the actual harm happening around them.

And yeah, it sounds harsh and cruel—because that’s exactly how I feel about it. I’ve got 29 years of lived experience, backed by the stories of the women in my life and hard government statistics, to tell me one thing: men just hate women. There’s nothing women can do to change that. Or rather, there’s nothing I’m willing to sacrifice about myself to be “not like other girls” just for the illusion of feeling 5% safer.

I’m furious about what people are willing to put young girls and trans women through when the real, overwhelming danger to women is, surprise surprise, cis men. FYI, “cis” is just an adjective—so don’t get your knickers in a twist, bud.

Men have never needed to jump through hoops to rape women. They’ve done it in plain sight, with legal backing, and some have even been voted into the highest offices in the world. They’re rarely held accountable, protected by a meticulously woven system designed over centuries to ensure women aren’t believed—unless they’re the elusive “perfect victim.” And even then, there’s always a limit.

Honestly, I’d have more empathy for those who are gender-critical if they were consistent in their concerns about children and young people. But there’s little evidence of that, buried somewhere beneath the hatred practically bursting out of their eyeballs.