#such a good message and reminder

[kanerallels]

Just finished reading Nadine Brandes' new(ish) book, "The Nightmare Virus" and it was AWESOME

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[goldkirk]

okay, wow, I’m not publishing that ask, anon.

I need you to understand that online activism only reaches people who are also online.

And it only reaches people who, in our current algorithm-based internet, are actually shown that content.

When you do online activism that’s not something concrete like a petition, you’re spreading information and awareness. That’s super important.

But it’s also like, step one of twelve, and unfortunately it’s where most of us just stop. We share information and news and share guilt tripping posts and we say things should be different and we tell other people that things are terrible and we carry on and most of it makes no real-world difference at all.

I don’t know how to tell you that you have got to do local, real life activism if you want to make any change.

You have got to pay attention to your school boards and judges.

You have got to campaign for local candidates.

You have to encourage locals to run for office, or run for office yourself.

You have to volunteer your time and energy for real local causes and groups.

You have to get acquainted with your local news sources so you know who to reach out to when word needs to be spread about something important.

You have to call and contact and petition your local officials, you need to put up flyers where your actual community will see, you need to get aquatinted with local resources so you know where to direct people who need them.

You have to actually do activism irl. That is how you make change happen.

Any time you spend arguing with online users about activism and not doing enough could be spent actually making a difference in your literal real life community, or helping the people who do.

[iron-sparrow]

It does get easier, I promise. But you have to keep going for that to happen.

So keep going, okay? ‧₊˚❀

[and-corn]

I love your art and the happy feeling it gives. I'm wishing you all the happiness.

and all the happiness to you too, my friend!

[lord-squiggletits]

Is anyone talking about Megatronus' cog and how maybe Megatron taking that was also a sign of him being not a good leader.

Is anyone complaining about how Orion got the Matrix going to also complain about how Megatron stole Megatronus' cog out of Sentinel's chest even though 1. he supposedly doesn't believe in Primes and false prophets any more and 2. Sentinel stole that cog from Megatronus' body who he murdered, so Megatron is literally just perpetuating that cycle of treating a dead hero's body parts as a collectible one is owed for having the Vision And Initiative To Seize Power. And being a hypocrite because despite supposedly hating Primes, he still covets Megatronus/his iconography so much he stole his cog and used it for his own despite the fact Alpha Trion (the last living Prime) gifted Megatron a perfectly usable one that he got consensually unlike Megatronus'?

Bc like. If we're talking symbolism into account. Idk it felt pretty symbolic to me that one of Sentinel's evil acts was to steal someone else's t-cog and then what does Megatron do? Steal someone's t-cog. Sure, Sentinel stole it first and was a bad guy so he ostensibly doesn't deserve having his corpse treated with dignity, but like... was it not obvious to anyone else that that act was where Megatron definitively went over the line of "revenge on an evil leader" to "stealing dead a dead guy's organs to suck out his physical power and symbolic presence for himself."

Are we going to talk about that or are we just going to keep bitching about how Orion was given the Matrix while he was dead, not expecting to be given a chance at life again, not seeking power for his own gain, with the consent/blessing of the previous Primes which somehow makes him evil and unfair

[thegoodmorningman]

Good decisions lead to safe outcomes!!! Good Morning!!!

[schmweed]

[iraprince]

Hiii, i love your stuff and kinda from a distance really look up at you for, in my perception, being able to express yourself without giving a fuck. Thats sick dude, Im so so afraid, of absolutely everything, its nice to think like i might grow into someone less apologetic of my existence. Nice to see people just being yknow

hey, thank you, this is really really nice. the secret that is probably not a secret is that i am also deeply afraid a lot of the time lmao -- but less than i used to be, and in ways that feel less stifling and self-suffocating, if that makes sense.

like, it used to be "i'm scared that if i express myself the way i want to, everyone will find me obnoxious, so let's just sand those edges down to be safe" -- now my fears are more like "now that i'm expressing myself in a way that feels natural and real, i'm afraid that it's all stupid/vapid/not worthwhile or meaningful" (<- specifically abt my art) or "i'm happy that i talk and act the way i want to now, but what if it makes me impossible to befriend," etc etc etc. which still feels bad and puts me in a funk a lot of the time but at least it's a fear that comes After/in reaction to doing stuff, rather than a fear that STOPS me from doing stuff, you know? like, it's evolved into a kind of fear that's less in my way.

anyway. i believe you'll experience something like this, because wanting to grow is the first step of growing. the fact that u hope or wish for something different means you're already on your way. to fewer fucks!! or at least distributing the fucks u give in a way that serves u better

[lesbianshadowheart]

the lack of fandom insanity about aloy hzd is crazy to me.....she was literally born of immaculate conception to be the saviour of a world that doesnt want her. she was the loneliest girl in the world the first and last of her kind. while gay

[neuroticboyfriend]

you belong on this earth, and you are worth fighting for.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[ca-createart]

[rdng1230]

Just a reminder that having multiple characters with the same marginalized identity in your story does not make the author automatically immune to using tropes harmful/reductive/insensitive to people with that marginalized identity. You can write a story with tons of women in it that still has tons of misogyny, you can write a story with tons of people of color in it that still has tons of racism. You can write a story with tons of queer people in it that is still queerphobic. Writers cannot “I have a black friend” (or character in this case) their way out of actually treating their marginalized characters with respect. Every writer has been shaped by a highly unequal society along many different lines and that continually reinforced world view is bound to show up in their storytelling. It takes effort to unlearn all that shit, and plenty of authors, however well intentioned, haven’t put that effort in enough to avoid falling into those traps.

This isn’t saying that the thing that happened was homophobic/ableist/ageist per se, I’m just saying that “there are other characters who weren’t fridged” is a shit counter argument to that claim.

[ct-multifandom]

I don’t usually make posts like this, but I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-intellectual junk lately, and I really think we need to put the word “pretentious” up on a shelf until people learn what it actually means.

It doesn’t describe someone who likes artsy-fartsy deep meaning media. People who are pretentious are fake. They’re posers trying to be sophisticated and unique, not like other girls. They pretend to only like stuff they think will make them sound cool when they talk about it. They want to act like they know something you don’t, and they want attention for it.

By definition, if you genuinely enjoy something, you can’t be pretentious. If it resonates with you, and you analyze it, and you don’t care what people think, that’s the polar opposite, actually. If you love obscure experimental prog music, if you watch underground high concept indie films through English teacher eyes, if you spend hours in a modern art museum reading each piece as a vessel for storytelling, if your backpack’s full of poetry books that inspire you, if you play underrated games that were someone’s passion project, if you have an interest in studying the classics or the masters, you are not pretentious.

Of course, some people just don’t like some stuff, and that’s fine, but that’s not what this is about. Don’t let anti-intellectuals shame you for enjoying things just because your interests are inaccessible to them, because they refuse to be brave and put effort into critical thinking. You’re not stuck up for refusing to overlook the craft of artists.

[lotrmusical]

watermill anniversary creative celebration! (25 july)

on 25 july, it'll be one whole year since the watermill theatre's production of the lord of the rings: a musical tale opened! if watermill lotr dealt you psychic damage, come take part in a creative event to celebrate the anniversary.

step one: what do you love about watermill lotr?

what are your favourite details from this production? send them in via this helpful form:

send your favourite details here!

the form will close on 31 may. all the responses will be made into a list and added to a 'spin the wheel' generator, which will be used as optional prompt inspiration for...

step two: create something

you can create anything you like, in any medium, as long as it's based around the lord of the rings musical. there are no strict themes, but if you're looking for ideas, spin the wheel as many times as you want, and create something inspired by the results you get!

you can make one thing, or lots, of any size, complexity or quality. if you love the musical but don't want to create something yourself, you can still send in your favourite details via the form - and maybe someone else will be inspired to create something based on them.

step three: share!

post your creative works on 25 july! you can share anywhere you like. if you're posting on tumblr, you can use the tags 'lotr musical' and 'watermill anniversary creative celebration'.