#teenagers are learning to socialize and talking to adults is also part of that?

[theeconstantcompanion]

I agree about the interests thing but genuinely what's so bad about asking about school? It's the thing that's likely to have changed the least from when we were young and can engage with on both sides?

Are teens really anti-social and non-conversational and stuck on their phones or are you just trying to form a conversation while asking them about stuff like their school curriculum (a tedious repetitive thing they at best suffer and at worst suffer from) while dissmissing them whenever they attempt to talk about their interests?

[thehmn]

It might simply be that I don’t frequent ADHD forums enough but I haven’t seen a whole lot of talk about learned social withdrawal.

As a child I made friends left and right but as we all turned into self-conscious teenagers it slowly became more and more difficult for me. Plain and simple, other people thought I was weird. For some reason I never got bullied which I think is related to something my teachers kept telling my parents “She’s such a sweet, bright child and we can tell she’s not malicious or trying to be disruptive on purpose but we can’t teach her anything”

Basically people couldn’t figure me out. I had good social skills with both children and adults, I had a good moral compass, i felt compassion and empathy for others and was willing to go against my friends if I felt they were being bullies, I taught myself English and my drawings showed good observation skills. Because of all that it was decided I should start school a year sooner than most kids and my parents were very proud. Unfortunately that’s probably one of the main reasons why I was never diagnosed with raging ADHD as a child. People soon realized I didn’t do well in a school setting but assumed it was because I “wasn’t done playing” and my ADHD symptoms were interpreted as childishness.

So as I got older my classmates started to distance themselves from me. They were always kind and friendly but they didn’t know how to deal with me and ever since then people have always been worryingly comfortable with calling me weird to my face. I get the impression it’s because they think it’s a choice on my part. To them I’m clearly of “normal intelligence” so I must be acting like this on purpose and my parents would repeatedly tell me to “just act normal” as a child when I told them I was struggling to make friends. I tried so damn hard but kept failing. I knew something had to be different about me and when I first heard about ADHD I thought “That’s me! That’s how I feel!” but my parents said that was impossible because I wasn’t hyperactive.

Because nobody wanted to help me I eventually learned to just stop trying to make friends and keep to myself. I was so tired of being told by friendly, well-meaning people that I was so weird and quirky and unique only for them to distance themselves once they realized it was permanent and not something I could turn on and off for parties. I always enjoyed being alone so it wasn’t a huge loss but it did feel incredibly lonely at times.

Things got a lot better when I became an adult, mostly because adults are generally more chill than teens so my ADHD behavior isn’t as embarrassing to them and ironically they’re often surprised to learn I don’t make friends easily. Unfortunately I learned to be withdrawn in my formative years so new friends are still a rarity. Before I really sat down and put my past into context I even started to wonder if I had autism despite not connecting with anything autistic people said about their experiences. I went as far as to be tested but wasn’t surprised when the diagnosis was negative because of course it was, I kinda already knew that. I was just looking for an explanation.

So while there can be overlap between ADHD and autism (I have just such a friend) my experience is also that oftentimes people with ADHD simply learn to stay away from social situations and entertain ourselves which ends up looking like autism to outsiders.

[blorboazula]

The Hunger Games 2023 Renaissance and Gen Z's "Bad Media Literacy"

So, not sure how it's going on other social media, but The Hunger Games – that will be referred to as THG in this little "essay" – is having a massive "renaissance" all over TikTok. And I've seen, more than once, unfortunately, people saying that Gen Z people have bad media literacy.

My issue with that is one specific argument. One about the people who have been genuinely surprised with nuances and details they didn't notice in the first they read it.

Which's such a stupid argument. Even more when, as I've seen, made by people who read the books as they came out and watched the movies as they came out. They tend to be in the younger side of the Millennials.

Do you know when Gen Zs were born? Here:

So, let's say the specific years are from 1995 up to 2013.

Here's when the trilogy was originally published;

As you see: a significant part of this generation couldn't read or wasn't even born when these books came out. That's how young this generation is.

But also, the oldest ones were between 13 and 16 as the books came out. It's unfair to expect that a 13-year-old will read THG and see the same subtext and nuances and have the same interpretation as people 18-and-above.

It's not bad media literacy that someone in their mid-to-late 20s is seeing things in a trilogy they've read ten or more years ago.

I, for example, read these books in 2013. They came out in 2010/1/2 in Brazil. I borrowed them from a classmate who had the money to buy them as they came out here. I was 15. Then got my hands on PDFs and read them in English later in the same year, I was 16. I never noticed a lot of subtext and nuances and shit when I read them ten years ago.

Both because of course I wouldn't, I was a teenager. And I read it as an escapism for some stuff. They were fun. I read the trilogy in a week – which's fast when you have school, schoolwork, almost all the home chores and the responsibility of taking care of an adult – and I wasn't looking for anything but a distraction. For a little bit of fun.

People roughly my age are seeing these videos and talks and are learning details and nuances they didn't before. It's fun, it's nice. I'm having a blast to re-read those books aware that they're more than what I thought they were back in the day.

Don't belittle people for not understand deeper and more mature topics when they didn't have the age and maturity to understand those topics.

[from-the-owls-nest]

Intro

Hi, uh, I'm Noa. Nice to meet you. I'm new in here and my cabinmates said to do this??

(ooc: this is basically a me camp half-blood version to interact with other rp blogs and the fandom beyond my other rp blog @flipflops-n-bones whose character is a toddler as of now.)

I'm 15, usually - when my brain glitches or when I want, it can be anywhere from toddler to teen (ooc: IRL I'm a young adult as far as ID goes!).

I'm nonbinary, aro-ace or something? Generally some kind of confused queer. I use they/them or she/her as pronouns, default is they.

Uhm. I look like the little picture I put - on the smaller side, dark curls, blue eyes, headphones and hoodie.

I like: stories, books, music, stars, rainbows, owls, cats, hugs, hot chocolate, helping people understand things, windy days at the lake... in general I'm more of a quiet and cozy person, but with my friends I can be quite silly!

I don't like: loud noises, spiders, darkness, pain, social issues, thunderstorms and crowds.

I read a lot, and listen to music, and I like doing crafts like crochet, sewing, embroidery... Also I got some experience with medical stuff if you need any volunteers.

As far as weapons go I'm okay, I think? Learning Archery, and before coming here I was already learning some Karate and Kobudo (basically quarterstaff work) which is really fun!

My Godly Parent is Athena. At least an owl appeared over my head when I came here (before I passed out)... So I guess I'm good with thinking and concepts and like noticing stuff, and "putting the pieces together". At least when my brain cooperates.

Update: I can change into an owl and fly!! And with practice I'll be able to change just body parts into their owl versions (hearing, vision, claws, even beak i guess? - not wings though that's not how physics works). Athenas symbol or something.

And my age and bodily appearance can change based on mood / unconsciously or when I want it to, from like small child to teenager. We're not really sure why. If I find out, I'll tell you.

And since I got adopted by Jack I can change into a cat too!!

My mortal family... um. No. No thank you. No. I'll be here year-round, please. I miss my little siblings, but... let's say there's reasons I left.

I'm dealing with some issues body and brain wise - autism, disability, silly brain - but it's usually not too much of a problem. Like, i get dizzy and walking hurts so I'll sometimes use mobility aids like a cane, crutches or a wheelchair. And I'm confused sometimes and have a really bad memory, or talk weirdly, but yea. Just some chaos all around.

Uh. Oh yea. Please don't be weird or mean, this is for fun.

People I know:

Jack @demigod-jack-hearth My adoptive mum, Daughter of Hestia, Champion of a whole bunch of gods, gives great hugs and cookies!

Nico @nico-sees-dead-people Son of Hades, needs some sleep

Will @dr-flipflops Head Medic, Nicos Boyfriend, Son of Apollo, also needs some sleep

Aria @flipflops-n-bones their kid, reminds me of my brother, Daughter of Demeter?, (my other rp blog)

Crescent - @the-eclipse-is-in-me Nicos sister, Daughter of Hades

Quinn - @quinn-is-victory Crescents partner, Child of Nike

Annabeth - @not-annabeth head counselor of my cabin and i guess half sibling?, Daughter of Athena

Percy - @seewead-brian Annabeths Boyfriend, Son of Poseidon

Grover - @proud-tree-hugger a Satyr. also something with Pan?

Bianca - @the-one-who-returned Nicos Sister who died, Daughter of Hades (link broken?)

Thalia - @thalia-grace1248 was a tree?, now a Hunter, Daughter of Zeus

Kayla - @sun-girl-offical Wills sister, archery instructor, Daughter of Apollo

Hazel - @the-gem-girl-from-the-argoii a roman demigod and Nicos halfsister, Daughter of Hades Pluto

Jason - @demi-gods-blonde-superman a roman demigod, Son of Zeus Jupiter

Piper - @theghostsaredancing Daughter of Aphrodite

Frank - @zankfrang23 a roman demigod, Son of Ares Mars, can shapeshift into Animals

Leo and Harley - @mrmcshizzleandh-meister Sons of Hephaestus

Selena - @hexpect-the-worst Daughter of Hekate

Reyna - @praetorofthebestlegion Daughter of Bellona, now a Hunter

Rachel - @rackel-mackerel-dare Mortal, Oracle

Silena - @silena-beauregard-xxx , Daughter of Aphrodite

Connor - @connorstollslays (link broken?), Son of Hermes

Calypso - @calypsoontheisland former immortal

Magnus - @dont-call-me-beantown Annabeths Cousin, Norse, Son of Frey, Healer

Alex - @alexf1erroo Magnus' Partner

Cleo - @cleoreadsbooks from Egypt

Apollo - @no-longer-lester Apollo. God of Poetry, Music, Healing, ...

[missmarveledsblog]

It's the middle ( Joel miller x reader)

Summary: the town had their own theories to why y/n shell suddenly was opening more , only some took it as invitations and after she sets an asshole straight in the bar for his words on her and Ellie she is attacked . Some things are reveal and a darkness is coming back from the past

Warning: attempted sa , sort of heavy part not gonna lie

This is part two of its a start

They wondered how he did it , how the usually non social butterfly Joel miller got the surprisingly worse no social y/n well to talk . it wasn’t like she was new towns personality or anything but she was saying hello and actually answering people. They heard her voice albeit at first was almost a whisper but it was far from the short nods of acknowledgements which to be fair were also far and few inbetween . ellie also stop swearing keeping her word for a whole ten minutes before her mouth caught that missed out time up. But in the end they all wondered how he done it.

Something that didn’t end with the world was the gossip , each having their on theories of the matter from something bad happening she it was like a life is too short sort of thing to not so pg remarks that joel fucked her so hard she went into a factory reset those ones made him roll his eyes and scoff. She on other hand didn’t take notice of the rumours , ignored whispers about her as she walked learning to be open again was taking up more head space then grown adults acting like teenage girls. Which the little social interaction now open she notice men her age and older started talking to her some took her saying no as it was , some added weak jokes but again took her word and other well they didn’t take it so well like the very existence of her rejection was a threat to their male centred egos . she didn’t give them time of day which only made them more pissed like she was” little miss high and mighty” in their words. One in particular didn’t like it as much as the others , thought his shit didn’t stink and she was lucky to even have his attention .

Nigel Baker , he was attractive she’d give him that but it was everything else that was so ugly about him . the man was selfish , expected the best when he gave the bare minimum and serial womaniser . He bragged about how he took down a hoard of infected with just his hunting knife yet seemly everytime it was time for him to go on patrol he would have some form of injury that would make him useless for the task but for some reason or other he thought he desired everything he wanted and that included y/n .

“ he’s staring at you again , creepy fuck” ellie rolled her eyes as two sat at the bar of tipsy bison.

“ let him i ain’t bothered man like that is a child at best” she chuckled taking sip of her whiskey as ellie drank her water although she did try persuade them give her a glass of the “ hard stuff” .

“ i mean joel and tommy should be here soon , he usually stops when their around , going back to his fake ass tales” she snorted.

“ fake ass tales who would that be?” the sniffling voice asked behind them .

“ oh you know some kids and their tales , it’s cute but you can tell real one mile away” y/n barely looked at the man who was too well self absorbed to pick up the slight dig in her words.

“ ain’t it truth , they ain’t like us baby huh? Real survivors ” he took seat beside her.

“ why you talking like that aren’t you from chicago or something” ellie snorted at fake southern drawl he kept putting on .

“ ain’t you too young to be here , seems as though the miller bitches need to be taught their place, is that what you need baby , i mean fix her might make that one like men again huh? ” he shot back .

“Hey hey , so you fought off a hoard right that must of been scary when you do that” she asked batting her lashes fake smile like she wasn’t biting her tongue .

“ oh like six month ago easily” the smirk on his face one she seen in so many before him a mask of a monster, was the best way to describe it.

“ do you have it” she asked sweetly as ellie head watched in amusement , she may of not heard y/n speaking long but it was long enough to know she was playing with the man before her.

“ course ya can , see this is the one that did it” he held it up, anyone with weapons experience could tell it was a phoney ,thing wasn’t cutting anything but possibly the air. She took it from his hands and let out a loud laugh , louder than anyone possibly ever heard before including ellie.

“ this ain’t fighting anything but a hoard of butterflies never mind infected , i mean it’s good but it’s faker than your accent which could use a little work just saying” she snorted.

“ clearly don’t know anything about knives baby because look at it clearly been through it ” he scoffed although the blush on his face told a different story.

“ i know it a faux metal made probably what six months ago rust and pattern on knives ain't like that this ones got green flecks not the rust of the older ones would get , see it don’t even mark the wood so nigel my fake ass cowboy infected annihilator why the bullshit because my daddy used to make um before all this told me how to spot cheap ones from the real ones , i can see now why you don’t go on patrol wouldn’t want to break the show piece… oh and cowboy wanna be ain’t nothing needs to fixed with ellie just pissed she get more women than you do ” she laughed watching his smirk fall , that look in his eyes .

“ you’d wanna shut your mouth girl , just cause your joel millers plaything doesn’t mean i won’t put you in your place” he growled.

“ go ahead and you’ll see what a real knife is” she smiled holding it in her hand and his fake in her other . “ now leave before we have real problems” she handed it over .

“ watch yerself sweetheart old man can protect you all time” he hissed.

“ i can protect myself little man” she waved watching him storm out .

“ that was bad ass, the rust really go green ?” ellie chuckled .

“ the metal has a chemical reaction over time only thing that knife could do is spread butter on my toast i mean could take down one but even at that it would break easily” she shrugged.

“ hey there’s dina i’ll tell her to wait here til joel gets here incase he’s outside ” ellie smiled excitedly.

“ nah go ahead joel will show up he knows we’re here and bastard knows his place go on lover girl ” she smiled taking another swig .

“ ok tell him i’ll be home for curfew” she had a bashful smile while heading to the girl ones she’s expressed her interest in the last while seen as it wasn’t one side and two were close. Of course y/n wanted that , she wanted it with a man she could never have well in her mind could never have .

It was hours she sat waiting only too give up thinking maybe the meeting was in over time or joel already went home either way she was getting tired and her bed was definitely calling , a few good men offered to walk her home but she waved them off knowing it was a five minute walk back plus air was getting cooler hoping to catch the first of snowfall one tradition she always kept from her old life , the life of her family . ones who wanted her to be must of a child as she could be in a world falling apart. She stood out it was perfect sort of weather , her eyes on the sky watching waiting as she walked through the darkening streets of jackson . like on cue the first flake floated down from the sky as she smiled softly catching it on her finger tips , then another and then another. So concentrated on the connection to memories she didn’t register the figure sneaking up behind her til his hand was around her mouth and other dragging her off into the makeshift ally of the stores. Kicking and pushing trying to break the grip to no avail , being tired and drinks in her system didn’t have her as precise as before . she felt herself being slammed into the walls hitting her head against the brick but she could tell even in her daze vision she knew exactly who it was.

“ fucking bitch , what you gonna be a nasty little slut for , what is it i’m too young fer ya , like em old” nigel spat pinning her front to the cold wall . “ i’ll get you liking em you age again put manners on ya , stop you running your mouth” he laughed as she felt his hand going to her jean only for her to pull the knife out she could feel the blood heading into her eye . she felt his hand going for the button only for her knife to hit the skin cutting him making him get off of her with a hiss when she pushed him away . she ran yelling , screaming loudly as could hoping someone would hear her. She felt the arms wrapping around her making her slap and hit the person away.

“ darling stop it’s me , calm down” his voice , the man she wanted the panic setting as his scent hit her know . his voice calming that fight only for her to break in his arms it reminded him of the night she first let those walls come down . “ what happened” he asked softly.

“ nigel he tried to … tried”she said before crying again what she didn’t know was the men heard the commotion , was heading way as tommy and couple others headed to the alley .

“ take er home we’re going to pack his bags” tommy called as the men held nigel in their grips probably for his own safety from the look on joel’s face .

“ come on darling we get you home and cleaned up” joel lifted her up a her hang clung to him terrified like some how her mind made up the fact he was there and if she let go he would disappear. “ i cut him” she sniffled head buried in his neck. “ i hurt him to get away”.

“ only protecting yourself darling s’okay “ .

“ i pissed him off , provoked him joel i made everyone laugh at him i just wanted him leave me alone” she began crying again he could see it her torn clothes blood on her face the bruise on her cheek , the way she shook in his arms . it killed him , killed him to see her like this hell if she didn’t need him so much the bastard be dead before tommy and other even got the chance but she needed him and he promised her he always got him on her side.

He brought her to cleaned her up , gave her some clothes and gave her his bed for the night .

Ellie was late but moment she stepped in door she knew something was wrong, she could see he was tense more so than usual , she could see the bloody cloth and yet not scratch on him .

“ Y/N was attacked tommy and couple other taking him out of town , she’s sleep upstairs so be quiet” he said too tired mental and physically hating if wasn’t so close what the outcome would of been.

“ let me guess nigel” she asked .

“ yeah she told me about the bar man waited til she wasn’t looking , took her off guard cause prick knew she would of done worse if he confronted her straight on” he spatted hands gripping the chair knuckles bone white . “ lucky i ain’t out there now , she thought she done wrong , said she provoked him , she hurt him you believe that her heads busted open and bruised cheek and she thinks she done wrong i don’t care if she punched him in that bar a man don’t do that” he growled ready to grab his coat.

“ hey pretty girl you ok” ellie called looking to the stair snapping joel from rushing out the door.

“ i’m ok really urm i think i should get home” she smiled weakly.

“ yeah not happening in fact i’m putting you on house arrest til breakfast tomorrow” she joked hugging her tightly . “ i should of stayed” she could feel the shake in girls voice.

“ nah i already told him i’d show him real knife i got it don’t worry” she kissed her head softly probably only other person to have the affection from y/n . “ it’s no ones fault ellie he deserved what he got in the bar after what he said nothings more fragile than a monsters ego” she pulled back .

“ what he say in the bar?” joel asked.

“ bragging , said ellie needed fix , i was your plaything i mean lists goes on” she rolled her eyes yet winced at the sting in her cheek. “ i was biting my tongue and then he started with that so i well probably pushed too far but i’d do it again” she sat on sofa .

“ go get bed kid let you off this time coming home late” joel nodded his head at stair .

“ you better be here is morning , night you two” she called heading up the stairs .

“ i’ll take sofa” she looked up at him a smile on her face but he could tell it was put on , he could see it didn’t reach her eyes or did it convince anyone before he could say anything a knock was heard at door making her jump .

“ it probably tommy relax i’ll tell him come back in morning” he patted her shoulder hating how she tensed under he touch but he didn’t take it personal . he was right minute door open it was his brother only he didn’t wait for joel to speak letting himself in straight over to where y/n .

“ hey firecracker you ok” he asked going to reach out touch her face only she moved back . “ sorry sweetheart , you cracked him in the nose and his hand is fucked so good job” he smiled weakly .

“ i didn’t know i just swung and ran” she laughed dryly wishing she done worse .

“ he gone?” joel asked .

“ we had bring him to doc but guys are bringing him out now” he nodded . “ you ok though? He didn’t…hurt you?” tommy asked feeling guilty for not getting rid of the prick sooner.

“ he only got to touch my jeans before i sliced his hand” her voice cracked looking down at the sweats .

“ ok ok good he won’t bother you again i promise you that , couple of guys will double check in morning too but tonight it best you stay here ok ” .

“She is now let er rest , come back tomorrow” joel huffed holding door open .

“ yeah right sorry it’s late just needed to..” he said only to hugged her tightly. “ i’m glad your ok” he smiled pulling back heading out the door.

“ Course I am I not alone anymore I got you guys” she Called out .

“ ok ok hallmark you need rest I'll see you tomorrow And so will maria bring proper shit to cover the wound “ he chuckled calling Back .

she sat looking at her hand , she hated she let herself Get distracted it could of been so much worse and yet joel proved her right He was there when she needed him , she wasn't facing things alone .

“ come on go take my bed no one needs to take watch"he huffed sitting beside her keeping his distance but still being close.

“ I can sleep every time my eyes close I feel the wall , I can feel his breathe on my skin “ she sighed head falling back hating She felt so vulnerable It wasn't a emotion she'd felt in years and one she thought she never Feel again .

“ I can sit with you talk So you won't hear him , you hear me , hold yer hand so you can feel me whatever you need I got you I promised you that and I don't break those not to You” he said softly watching the way she relaxed to his words , how when he touched her hand she didn't tense or freak out. She held on tighter like she was afraid it was all part of her dream , joel would be gone And Nigel Would come back .

“ could You stay with me all night?” It was so low almost a whisper But even he heard her like not matter What he'd always Hear Her. He didn't say much just a nod of his head and keeping hold of her Hand bringing her up the stairs making sure to keep his promise.

The towns Men all glared as he was dragged towards the gate . Each one Of them wanted to hit the bastards Since some had women In their life some had daughters some had sister , some had experience of men Like him . Nigel knew he fucked up moment She ran and they showed up . He seen it on all their Faces like they Took it personal but the bitch needed manners , needed to be taught A lesson . He pleaded Said he'd make it up some how but was only told me like that don't changed . Bag on his back And out the gate he went .

“ I'll bring um out” mark called dragging him roughly along other probably sensing a beating coming But for a man like him , shit happened with wave of their hands stood waiting.

“ come on you” he growled as The other man gulped. Wondering if he could make some Sort of break for it.

“ just play along asshole” mark hissed. “ I'm helping you out here” those words Melt his fear away following man out dragging his steps to make it look good .

Once they were out of the hearing range mark let him go pulling a knife and gun out Handing them over. “ there's a camp couple Miles east leader is jonah , tell Him mark sent you from jackson And whatever you have on y/n and jackson , he'll set you up , don't tell um you touched er though he'll kill you on spot” mark spoke Quietly.

“ why y/n why should I believe All this?” Nigel eyes widened .

“ because jonah. Wants his wife back sent me here To do it but i needed get on their good side” he explain hastily . “ just tell him soon” he handed over gun and knife . Headed back into town as other waited . “ he’s gone , wont see that scum again” he smirked to the men and headed off to his house. Yeah he needed to get y/n back soon and now with nigel might be sooner than he thought lets hope the dipshit made it.

Part three

[mylevisdontfitanymore]

I hear you want to write but are having a hard time answering prompts. Don't feel obligated to answer this one either, this is free labor, you never have too!!!! But maybe it would help by giving you a free space. What's eating at you [pun intended hehe]?

Me and this anon be like:

You are so thoughtful, thank you! ❤️❤️❤️

And you know what has been eating at me 😂 for whatever reason, I have no idea what turned me onto this idea, or why I can't stop thinking about it but there is something about the idea of completely, entirely spoiled Bucky that's been heavy on my mind.

Unbeta'd stucky belly kink under the read more, complete with lots and lots of stuffing, weight gain, and teasing/fat-shaming, too.

I'm talking about silver-spoon, generationally wealthy Bucky. He never has known what it is to want, yanno? Everything he could ever dream of, he gets immediately. He's never had a job other than learning what fork to use during meal times and which to use during dessert.

He looks like Wakanda, Jesus Bucky in spirit.

His hair is lush and shiny but his is proper, high-society style. So, it's cropped short at the sides and marginally longer at the top, coiffed back into stylish, fluffy waves. His face is clean-shaven, not beared, but his skin still glows and his marble-carved bone structure has been filled out by good food and constant pampering. He's always in the latest fashion, too. He looks the part of his high-maintenance, rich lifestyle.

When he was a kid and then a teenager it was totally fine that he fit so, so well into his lavish upbringing - including his taste for excessively sweet food and excessive amounts of food - because he had a speedy metabolism and the whimsy of a child, always running through his parent's expansive mansion or spending hours in the endless, deep green lawns playing by himself or roping one of the servents or his tutor into his games. His parents always were too busy with their socializing to raise their own messy child, instead passing responsibility off to someone, anyone else.

For a while, Bucky also took an interest in polocrosse, so he stayed slim for his elegant, equestrian sport. Loping through open, well-manicured fields on horseback, going after the ball with his racquet. But, as he grows and matures into a snooty young adult, with his twenties comes a slowing of his hummingbird metabolism and a boredom of sport. He has more important, more luxurious, relaxing activities to attend to than riding some beast that he doesn't even pick up after or care for - that's what the help is for. Besides, the medals mean nothing to him. He knows he's deserving and is a blue-ribbon winner without the physical reminders. Naturally, it's in his genes, he may as well be a hot-blooded, thoroughbred himself.

Bucky's metabolism slows and his activity level wanes but neither can be said about his appetite - not slowing, nor waning.

His hunger was one of those wants he's always, always had met through his generational wealth. His dire want for sweets. When he was younger, he always got a slap on the wrist for gorging himself on sugary sweets - pastries, candy, and the like - but never truly punished. His love affair wasn't tamed no matter how often he "spoiled" his own dinner, charming the cooks to feed him more than he needed, secretly getting their driver to go and retrieve him something from the city's candy shop, or even simply tiptoeing into the well-stocked pantry at night to give himself a tummy ache.

Now, his appetite is insatiable and he is growing more and more unfit seemingly like the hour. All because his days aren't spent working - he's never had to lift a finger for anything - but, instead, his hours are filled to the brim (and then some) with wine tastings, occasional tours of the winery grounds, cheese samplings, fine dining reservations or world-class chefs inhabiting his home for a few nights, and more. As soon as he's allowed by Mommy and Daddy, he moves off the sprawling family property to buy his own. He comes in and sweeps up a swath of land, putting a huge, pretty house on it and filling the rooms with staff. Most of the time, he doesn't leave his home. His driver's chauffeur experts in drink and food back and forth, bringing waves of delicious, expensive delicacies straight to Bucky's beautiful abode from the private airport nearby.

He. is. spoiled.

As he grows, he becomes rich fat, not poor fat - which becomes an important, prideful distinction in Bucky's spoiled, snobby mind. He is high society. He is well taken care of. So, of course, he's large.

Rich fat is fat that's undeniably plump and round with perfect curves. Rolls. Pale and smooth. No cellulite. No stretch marks. No blemishes. Just milky, pale swells of flesh that are soft but still firm and high. Something of a cherub straight from a masterful Renaissance painting.

His body tells the truth of his life - he doesn't lift a finger. He's practically a Roman Emperor, lounging on his side, draped in a sheet that barely fits over his bulging, excessive curves, fed the finest wine and offered peeled grapes that he lazily consumes until he's so full and drunk that he has to stop his servants by lifting a dainty hand, breathily moaning. No more. He can't take anymore now, he's so full that his fat, normally plush, soft belly has swelled to be as firm as a drum. But... give it an hour and he'll be snapping his fingers, rolled onto his back, under the weight of his belly, needing more. He won't even bother to get back up unless his servants help him, at that point, all he wants is more.

Always more.

Bucky becomes so insatiable with his life of luxury orbiting his round belly (rapidly transforming to be so large and spherical that it might be its own planet with a gravitational pull, keeping his hands to it at all times, unable to stop rubbing and touching his big body), that he hires someone new to live on his estate with him.

A masseuse.

Bucky becomes accustomed to eating until he feels fit to pop, stuffing down delicacies as if they're commonplace. Then, when he's so achingly tight, it's only natural to crave hands on his belly. He needs all the help digesting that he can get on a steady diet of peeled grapes, chocolate-coated strawberries, and other delicate fruits alongside the finest cheeses in paper-thin slices (but so many of those slices that he may as well have eaten the entire wheel by biting hunks off rudely) paired with jam and honey and bread and meats cured and prepared just so, plus bubbly champagne to wash it all down. That excessive diet leaves his tummy churning, groaning, and gassy. He has to stifle his burps behind one hand while the other works to soothe himself - it's instinctive, those rubbing motions.

Working? Aching? That just won't do. Bucky isn't dumb enough to expend energy when he doesn't have to. His private education afforded him better common sense. And he often goes to the spa, so he's familiar with massages. One plus one is two. Bucky needs a masseuse to rub his belly.

His masseuse is a tall, broad man - muscular and handsome with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. He has a pleasantly pale complexion with freckles but his nose that like it's been broken once or twice, bumped in the middle, and his hands are certainly the hands of a working man. He has obviously worked hard to get where he is with veins obvious in his arms and the backs of his hands and callouses on his palms. Even with all the lotion and oils, his hands are just the slightest bit rough thanks to those callouses.

If he weren't so handsome and hadn't proved himself to be so good at his job, Bucky might not keep him around. Thoughtlessly he could fire him, or any of his staff, and hire someone else.

Bucky doesn't like anything rough. He likes simple, easy, and luxurious. He likes softness. He reclines in overstuffed chairs and couches, expensive and sink-into-the-softness, and sleeps (and eats) on a perfectly swallowing-up bed. His body is currently being transformed into the same type of sensation - plush, soft, overstuffed. He likes that. He's becoming as excessive as his lifestyle - shaped perfectly for it.

He doesn't enjoy roughness.

He doesn't enjoy the bit of resentment on his masseuse's face and weaved secretly into his voice when they first meet.

Steve is a good worker, though, and Bucky appreciates that. He's accustomed to throwing money around, but he only throws it when it's what he wants or something he needs that he's having done his way. If a gardener, cook, or tailor doesn't work as fast or as hard as Bucky thinks they ought to - they're gone. Simple as that.

Steve works hard, Steve works fast, Steve is... interesting. He doesn't approve of Bucky's lifestyle, that much is clear, so he must need the money. But also, he doesn't complain. Not really. He does tease Bucky, though. It seems they both know their differences and there's something there. Something exciting. They both have their tastes and the clash of their differing tastes becomes electric.

Bucky learns to enjoy a little bit of roughness because of Steve.

Steve is called in to support Bucky either nearing the end of a massive meal or after his meal has been finished. His job title is "masseuse" and he does massage Bucky but, just, one part of him -

His belly.

His job is to aid Bucky's body in digesting after a splurge... if you can call his gorging meals and oversized snacks that happen every day, multiple times a day like clockwork "splurges." Splurging implies you don't do it all the time. Bucky is consistently stuffed to the gills. The only time he's not full is when he wakes up, first thing in the morning, and that's not always a guarantee - Bucky has gotten especially fat recently, it's why he needs Steve, and now, he can't always make it through the night without a snack. If he needs one, he snaps his fingers or rings the little bell he keeps by his bedside, rousing his live-in servants and making them retrieve a "light" snack for him from the kitchen. If he's had a midnight snack, his belly might still be firm and bloated when he wakes up. Regardless, Steve helps settle his belly.

At first, when Steve was hired, he did his job without comment. Now that they know each other a little better and each of them is rubbing off on the other with Bucky enjoying a little bit of roughness and Steve learning to embrace comfort and a taste of luxury - now, Steve prods and pushes verbally while he does the same physically. He rubs big circles on his big tummy, presses into the parts where he's the tightest to release pockets of gas and make him more comfortable, giving him more room (that he often immediately fills with more food), and kneads his soft flesh, using lotion and oil to keep his flesh supple and stretch-mark free. He lets his mouth run, too.

In low tones, just for the two of them to hear, he murmurs roughly about how he's never had so much to work with. Bucky knows under those sugar-coated words, he's calling him fat. Then, he goes on to say that Bucky feels especially tense today, is there anything particular on his mind? That's Steve telling him he's bloated as fuck, just a bit of sting behind his "polite" tone to communicate, oh my fucking god, you're a blimp. Or, he asks how his tailor is doing, the vague way to ask how he fits into any clothes at all. It's a damn mystery to Steve, after all, he only ever sees Bucky when he's naked with all of his soft, pale, thick fat on display. Round. Firm. Ready to be massaged until he's not so tight he could burst which, to Bucky, means he's ravenous. Bucky has no understanding of hunger. He doesn't remember what it's like to be empty, so when he isn't gasping in pleasure and pain, so full that his stomach is strained and there's food packed into him all the way up his esophagus to the back of his throat, he thinks he's starving.

Bucky savors those comments in a way he doesn't savor food - he just shoves it down. More.

More.

Bucky starts eating even more, pushing himself further, to make sure he can see Steve regularly. Weirdly, for someone who's never needed a damn thing from anyone else, he aches to impress this guy. It's strange, how much he wants to preen and parade around. He makes even more of a gluttonous mess of himself just so Steve can come in and berate him underneath his professional, light tone. It's embarrassing. Bucky has never been able to deal with humiliation or shame or anything other than resounding acceptance because of his high status, so it's strange for him to go after it now but...

God, is it good.

Steve commenting on needing another set of hands to reach and work on all of Bucky's glutted tummy sends a shiver down his pinned spine in spirit, in reality, he can't fucking move. He's so fat. Bucky almost moans at the thought of more hands groping and kneading his fat, working his cramps and burps out of him, easing the way for those calories to smoothly transform into more fat but, strangely, he only wants Steve to do this. He's used to hiring more help, having so many people around him, watching and aiding him in even the most intimate, private moments. This feels too intimate to share, though. He just wants Steve's big, strong, rough hands on his fat. He wants it bad. So, of course, he gets it.

He feasts on multiple rich, large courses. Steve massages him. He snacks on foods that would be enough for a meal if he were anyone else. Steve massages him. He gorges until he's hiccuping, whining, and curled around his fat belly like he can hold himself together, preventing himself from bursting at the seams with too much, too good of food. Steve massages him. He wakes up, belly gurgling with digestion that he can delude into being hunger, so he stuffs himself late at night into early morning. Steve massages him. Steve massages him through it all, witnessing him at his fullest and watching, judging, as he packs on more and more weight.

Bucky has been drilled to follow etiquette and be polite, but with Steve, he slips. He's just so full. And Steve's so good at his job. He can't deny himself the pleasure of moaning and burping loudly as Steve works.

"Buuuurpp-"

"Hic! Ah! Oh! Hic! Ouch! Hic! Hup! Oww!"

"Ooooohhh, yess. That's good."

"Uuuuuuurp!"

"Yes! Right there, press there, it's so tight, oh, oww-"

"Hnnnn-"

"M-mmmph- more. More pressure. Yes! Like that! Oh-uuurp!"

"C-cahhh, careful, I'm, oof, I'm soo full. Mmngh, I might - hic! - pop!"

Steve might disguise his interest well under a judgy, almost resentful exterior - which is truthfully how he felt when he got here, like, look at this fat asshole, Steve grew up struggling with a single mother making tough decisions between feeding her child, buying the medicine her child needed badly, or keeping the heating on to keep her child from getting sicker, no good options and no compromises - but he is interested. Bucky is miles and miles of plush flesh that jiggles and ripples. So much for Steve to sink his hands into. He's just fat. That's all he is. Greedy and oversized. He deserves a little shit for it. It's fine. He can squeeze a little harder than necessary, he can relentlessly push down on the part of his tummy that hurts the most just to hear him groan through a painful yet releasing burp, he can see his face pinch in pain when Steve goads him into finishing the last scraps on his plate despite having called Steve in expressed because he's too full for more, he can make comments about how he's getting fatter, bigger, and more spoiled. He can snidely inquire if Bucky has gotten his bed reinforced yet or wonder out loud how his personal tailor keeps up with his expanding waistline, actually, how does his tailor measure his waistline these days? Does he have to make a custom tailors tape or have they given up on numbers by now? He can pretend to be a little weaker than he is, just for an excuse to call the other staff into Bucky's master bedroom, "needing" help with rolling his big, voluptuous body or sitting him up as much as possible under that heavy, fat belly that overflows his lap.

It's fine for Steve to look over his shoulder as he leaves, his job well done, to smirk like a shark at one food-drunk Bucky moaning through a bite of buttery, flaky pastry, telling him off, "haven't you had enough, Mr. Barnes?"

He's the only one willing to challenge Bucky. The other staffers suck in shocked breaths and duck their heads, embarrassed and trying to stay out of the way, assuming Steve's about to be fired. It's going to get ugly. Right?

But it doesn't.

Bucky likes it. His stomach is groaning - only barely soothed thanks to Steve, complaining with heavy sloshes, deep gurgles, and loud glorps - but Bucky doesn't care. All he cares about is more. More food, stuffing his gob. More of Steve's merciless touch, his mean words, and his judgemental eyebrows. More.

"Nu-uh," Bucky moans petulantly.

"Only you would think that," Steve's eyes flick down to his gut like the big, round thing is offensive, "isn't enough."

Bucky crams the rest of his pastry into his mouth, puffing out his cheeks and dusting crumbs down his double (closer to triple) chins and heaving moobs, it's a challenge.

Steve rises to it, stepping back into his bedroom to slap his blubbery belly hard.

Even though all the others have scuffled away, leaving the two of them alone, they must be able to hear the clap of his hand against his fat. That, or, they hear the guttural way Bucky moans. His white, pale flesh is stamped red with Steve's handprint.

"You just have to ruin my work, don't you?" Steve sneers, sitting on the side of the bed next to Bucky's immobilized form of rolls and curves, pinned in place by too much fattening, sugary food. "Nothing is ever good enough for you, so you just keep going, don't you? You're gonna pop, you know that, you fat, spoiled brat? You need to learn you have limits. You need to learn restraint. If you don't learn your lesson by yourself, you'll force my hand to teach it." Steve threatens, his hand raised again, on the cusp of slapping his tender, overstuffed tummy again.

Bucky whimpers, pouting at him, his bottom lip crumby and stuck far out, "don't need your help," he argues, mumbling, just to be contrary. He really does need him. He wants him too. So badly.

"You do, princess. You need me whether you like it or not," Steve teases. "You can't do anything by yourself, not with this-" Steve rears back to slap his belly hard a handful of times until Bucky's whimpering and squirming around like a turtle flipped onto its shell, inelegant and stuck "-in the way."

Bucky moans loudly. It hurts! But it hurts like it does when he pushes himself over his limits, his gut too full.

"I'm gonna put you on a diet," Steve threatens, "teach your spoiled, fat ass what restraint and hard work is the way Daddy and Mommy didn't, they just shoved a silver spoon in your mouth and called it a day 'cause you shut up."

It's terrible. It's awful. Bucky likes it.

"Please-!" The word falls out of Bucky's mouth for maybe the first time. He's Bucky Barnes. He doesn't beg. He has everything he wants and more! He's never had anything he had to plead for, he always just demands.

With one last hit right to the top of his belly, where the bulging is the worst, where he gets the tightest, Steve knows all too well, Steve leans in. His smile is all teeth. "Good boy," he rumbles, "that's a start. I might be able to whip you into shape after all, God knows you need some shape, too," he unkindly grabs a handful of fat, shaking it and thus sends jiggling ripples throughout Bucky's entire, fat body. He's all lard. "'Cause right now you're just a blob."

Bucky says it again, as it turns out, it feels good to say, "pleeease."

Steve gives him a dark look and despite what he was saying about shaping up and slimming down with a diet, he wastes no time reaching over to the tray of fine French pastries perched on Bucky's elegant nightstand, selecting one at random and shoving it into his face.

Bucky moans his way through every chew and swallow. With Steve's relentless force, massaging and now feeding, too, he's due for a growth spurt like he's never seen on his own. He's gonna outgrow his king-size bed in no time 🥵🥵

[ell-arts]

I wanna theorise the Ghost Gang's ages

I think it's widely accepted that the Ghost Gang are believed to be kids, or at least the same age as the Pac trio. Their exact ages are never mentioned of course, but it has never really been brought into questioning either.

It's often a point of interest when fans talk about the Pacworld Wars or the Repository - either that Betrayus was cruel enough to enrol children to fight in his army, or that Stratos/The Freedom Fighters were cruel for supposedly allowing children to be sent to the Nether.

I've thought about this a few times, also as someone who saw the Ghost Gang as teens, but recently I've looked a bit more closely at the semantics of it all, and it's led me to this one big question:

Why are we assuming that the Ghost Gang ARE children?

Don't get me wrong, we have good reasons to believe they are.

They sound young

They often display childish or immature behaviour

They're familiar enough with the Pac trio to get along in ways that teenage friends would

Pinky has a crush on Pac, so we assume that they are both at least the same age...unless Pinky is a closet cougar.

But when you think about it, these traits can sometimes carry over into adulthood and do not always indicate child-like or teenage behaviour.

I've thought more on the matter, and I've come to realise that we also have a few reasons to believe that the Ghost Gang are in fact adults, or at least young adults.

Blinky is a Pac-Fu Master. The art of Pac-Fu is considered a powerful form of martial arts, supposedly more powerful than Kung Fu, and thus would take years to master. I highly doubt that a child would be able to reach Pac-Fu Mastery before becoming an adult, unless its a child prodigy. I think its safe to assume that Blinky spent several years mastering the art in order for him to reach Master level, so it makes more sense for him to be an adult. A young adult, at the very least.

Clyde speaks 9 languages. For a person to learn new languages, they have to reach an age of proficient academic understanding and dedicate some years to be able to speak multiple languages. According to google, it takes 2-3 years to become fluent in a new language. Multiply that with Clyde's languages, and he must be at least 27 years old. A loophole to this theory would be if Clyde learned all of his new languages in the Netherworld after he became a ghost.

Perhaps a gray area, but Pinky did allude to having a very busy social life. This could mean many things; either she's a teen who just likes to socialise or she's a young adult that likes to socialise. Leaning a bit more towards the latter, it could be that she's independent/old enough to make her own choices regarding dating and maintaining her busy social life (even though she spends most of her time with the boys).

A bit of a messy point, but it doesn't make a lot of sense for the Freedom Fighters to deliberately allow children to be turned into ghosts. These guys fought for freedom against Betrayus' war and tyranny, and good people like Zac, Sunny, Sir C, Spheria, etc were all part of the side that fought against Betrayus. Compare the Freedom Fighters with Betrayus and his army, and it's more likely that the Freedom Fighters would've opposed sending children to the Nether. So how did the Ghost Gang end up bodystripped? Probably because they weren't children, but were old enough to join Betrayus' army and thus face the consequences of such a choice. This makes it all the more likely that the Ghost Gang are young adults, between the ages of 18-30.

In the real world, some countries allow citizens to become part of the army as early as the age of 16. If we apply this to Pacworld, then we can stretch the perimeters a bit and speculate that the Ghost Gang are between the ages of 16-30. It would definitely make more sense in Inky and Pinky's case, who seem to act the youngest/least mature out of the four.

The Pacworld Wars and the politics surrounding who got bodystripped, and the bodystripping/soul-extraction matter itself, is quite the can of worms. For me, knowing all that we know, it would make more sense for the Ghost Gang to be young adults. They would be within the age of enforced enrollment in Betrayus' military, and that subsequently puts them in the same category of soldiers to be bodystripped.

What do you guys think? Am I reaching too far with this theory? xD

With all that being said, here is a ROUGH estimate on how I hc the Ghost Gang's ages to be, slightly tweaked from my previous guesses:

Blinky - 23

Pinky - 16

Inky - 18

Clyde - 27

Again, this is just a theory! If the Ghost Gang are legit teens, then they're teens I guess. This is just me trying to plug in the holes in the story for why children were fighting in the war in the first place - and send to the Nether in the first place.

[ikeoji-subs]

Zettai BL Ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL Ni Naritakunai Otoko 2024 - Episode 4 Eng Sub

VS SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS and VS SCHOOL FESTIVAL

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translation notes:

about “konpuraiansu” (4:28)

This was a tricky situation because Japanese uses an English loan word, compliance/konpurainsu, in a way that has a really different connotation from the way that word is usually used in English. It usually makes sense to translate Japanese words that are loan words from English as the same English word in a subtitle. But in this case, it didn’t really mean the same thing. 

Personally, when I think of the meaning of “compliance,” I think about bureaucratic systems of rules. Before grad school, I worked for a number of years in admin positions at a large university. Every year we would have to do “compliance training,” which mostly involved reading interminable powerpoint presentations and answering quiz questions about them. They were about things like using a strong password or not accepting gifts worth more than a certain amount of money. Not exactly the same type of thing Mob alludes to here. 

From what I gather, in Japanese “compliance” means something more like acting in accordance with social mores. English really doesn’t have a word that gets this idea across, as far as I’m aware. Thankfully, we do have a number of ways of talking about social norms. 

Another factor that complicated the task of translating Mob’s observation about contemporary teenagers is that the literal translation was that they are “too conscious of compliance.” This also wouldn’t be a typical way to use “conscious” in English. So I ran some replacement word options past Snow that described various ways in which a person might be too aware of or focused on something, and we landed on “preoccupied.” The line then became, “Aren’t high schoolers these days too preoccupied with social expectations?” (Correspondingly, the title of the segment became "Vs Social Expectations.")

In my conversation with Snow about this line, I also learned about some cultural context for this line that I hadn’t been aware of before. She explained that it was related to the Japanese word seishun, which basically means “the spring of youth.” Apparently, the literal meaning is “blue spring.” Part of the idea of seishun is that when you’re young, you can act in an impulsive, passionate way that flouts societal rules because you aren’t as aware of the rules and/or as concerned with the approval of others as a proper adult would be. Thus, if adolescents are excessively worried about adhering to social norms, it’s like they’re wasting the opportunity to enjoy a kind of freedom that won’t be available to them later in life. 

This theme continues when Mob chases after Hatano and his parents see them running from below. Not recognizing Mob, his mother comments on the “energetic young men” they see. When they each mention “the spring of youth” (starting at the 5:46 mark), they’re saying “seishun.”–Towel

about “when I’m 20” (4:39)

You might think, from this line, that Hatano is saying he’ll confess to Mob again when he’s 20 because that’s when they’ll be legally able to date. That’s what I presumed when I first heard it. But there’s actually no legal reason why Mob couldn’t date Hatano if he wanted to. Hatano’s dramatic daydream about Mob being handcuffed in a jail cell aside, it’s actually not illegal for someone in their early 20s–or any adult, for that matter–to date or have sex with a 17-year-old in Japan. Actually, when I looked up age of consent laws in Japan I was surprised to learn that the age of consent was only raised to 16 a year ago and that prior to that, it was 13! But of course, laws are one thing and social norms are another. If Hatano wants to date Mob openly without fear of being judged, criticized, or snubbed–or, perhaps more importantly, without fear of inflicting that sort of treatment on his beloved Mob–he’ll have to wait until he’s an adult in a social sense. Snow explained to me that traditionally, this happens when a person turns 20. Apparently 20 was also the legal age of adulthood for a long time, and it remains in place for some purposes (for example, the legal drinking age in Japan is 20). But even though many laws have changed, the idea that 20 is the age when someone becomes an adult in a social sense remains.–Towel  

about “if I keep on believing” (9:09)

Here’s a little Easter egg. I was finalizing the lines Haruhiko speaks here when I noticed something–they were already very close to the lyrics of a song from the Disney movie version of Cinderella called “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes.” I haven’t seen Disney’s Cinderella very many times, but my sister sang this song at a school recital in fourth grade, so the lyrics got burned into my brain. The part in question goes like this: 

No matter how your heart is grieving If you keep on believing The dream that you wish will come true

This part of Haruhiko’s dialogue was already really close to these lyrics, so I exchanged a few words (no change to the meaning, just switching out synonyms) to get it even closer. Here’s what his lines look like if I arrange them to match up with the song lyrics:

No matter how sad I feel now If I keep on believing My dream will definitely come true someday

Not the same, but kind of a remarkable resemblance, all things considered.–Towel 

blackboard writing (16:44 and 18:20)

At a couple of points during the scene in Mob's university classroom, there's writing on the blackboard at the front of the room. Snow translated what was written there, but there was no way to fit that translation in the subtitles. The information given there wasn't so crucial that this posed a big problem. But it's interesting enough to be worth including here.

At 16:44, the writing on the blackboard says:

School festival play: Momotaro Cinderella - 26 votes King Lear Yotsuya Kaidan Prison Break - 1 vote 101 Dalmatians Toyama no Kin san Planet of the Apes 24 - 1 vote

This is clearly a list of ideas for what story to base the class play on, along with the number of votes each idea received.

At 18:20, it says:

Cinderella: Cinderella Prince - Ouji Stepmother Stepsister 1 Stepsister 2

This is clearly a list of roles, only one of which has been assigned so far--the role of the Prince, given to Ouji.

about Mob’s horse sounds (19:24)

This might be a bit excessive, and it’s certainly an example of my perfectionism. But when I got to the part of this episode where Mob starts making horse sounds, it didn’t seem sufficient to just caption it “horse sounds.” I knew there were some specific terms for the sounds horses make, and I had heard of some of them, but I didn’t know their exact meanings. I went looking around for resources and finally found a really good youtube video that explained a bunch of different noises horses make and what they mean. In the end, the only new term I needed was “nickering.” When he’s not neighing or saying “gallop gallop,” Mob is nickering. The person who made the horse sounds video had an amazing quote about this type of horse sound–they described nickering as “a melodic symphony in the equine lexicon.” I’m guessing that other people watching the show with our subtitles mostly won’t already know the exact meaning of “nickering” either, so maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. But I like getting the specifics of things right. And who knows, maybe a horse enthusiast or two will watch this and appreciate the accuracy.–Towel 

If you'd like to hear some examples of real horses nickering, or hear the narrator of this video wax rhapsodic about horse vocalizations, here's the video I mentioned:

Tag list: @absolutebl @bengiyo @c1nto @come-back-serotonin @lurkingshan @my-rose-tinted-glasses @porridgefeast @sorry-bonebag @twig-tea @wen-kexing-apologist

[morlock-holmes]

On Autism and Masking

So, for I want to do an exercise for those who aren’t on the autism spectrum:

I want you to think about a subject in school that you didn’t understand very well, it could be math, it could be history, could be a foreign language, just any subject where you struggled and had a hard time grasping the basics, where it took a little more work than usual to actually figure things out.

Imagine that you are learning this subject in school, and the teacher, well, let’s say he isn’t a very nice person.

Let’s say that when he calls on you to give the answer, he relentlessly mocks you in front of the whole class when you get it wrong. In fact, he doesn’t just do this when you get an answer wrong, sometimes he’ll hold up your homework and mock your wrong answers in front of the whole class.

Not only that, but sometimes he’s physically abusive, sometimes when you get an answer wrong he’ll throw an eraser at your head or hit your knuckles with a ruler.

And, occasionally, just to mix things up, he’ll sometimes just correct your mistakes in a matter of fact way and move on.

You can’t really tell which mistakes cause him to fly into a physically violent rage and which ones merit gentle correction; if there’s a pattern there you can’t figure it out, it seems completely random.

Maybe, unfortunately, this isn’t too far from how some of you were actually taught.

How might you react to this? Perhaps by keeping your head down, sitting in the back of the class, and desperately hoping not to get noticed? Or maybe erratic and sudden acts of physical and verbal defiance? Keep in mind all the other school officials are quite certain that this teacher isn’t doing anything unexpected or unusual, and really, if you aren’t applying yourself to learning the material, you can’t really expect anything different.

How do you think you’d feel about this subject as an adult? Perhaps you might sort of put it out of your mind as much as possible, avoid that subject as an adult and sort of put on a mask of placid ignorance whenever the subject comes up in conversation?

This is how a tremendous number of us autistic people had to learn social interaction as children.

People on the autism spectrum are often at their most rigid and inflexible as children, which is also the time at which the rules of social engagement are simultaneously at their most fluid and most strictly enforced.

For one thing, children are much more prone to enforcing the social order through outright mockery and even physical violence. Sometimes when you talk about your interests it’s fine; I used to talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the other boys and that was just fine. But then they started making fun of me because I also like My Little Pony. I had trouble understanding that, because, like, they’re both cartoons, right?

Exactly because you have a disability in social pattern recognition, it is very hard for you to distinguish between actions which are acceptable, actions which will result in overt mockery, actions which will result in days or months of overt mockery, and actions which will result in physical violence.

It begins to feel like every time you say something spontaneous, you’re rolling the dice, maybe saying this makes it okay to hit me, maybe it doesn’t, won’t know until the person is actually hitting me!

Even worse, when you’re a kid, socially acceptable behavior changes very quickly. One school year everybody is playing with dolls, the next only a dumb baby would ever play with dolls.

So you can’t even take refuge in doing what worked last year or last month; even doing exactly the same behavior that was okay last year might promote mockery or violence if you try it again this year.

In the face of this, it often becomes easier to withdraw from society; the way to keep safe is avoidance and the projection of a kind of placid anonymity.

To this day, despite being subjected to very little violence in the grand scheme of things, there is still a part of me that feels like admitting something openly about how I feel is putting me at risk of violence, and that the people around me will likely think of that violence as justified.

I have seen surprisingly little which focuses explicitly on this aspect of the autistic learning process; often we are not so much taught social interaction as we are, essentially, bullied into it.

I was looking up some definitions of “masking” on autism advocacy web sites and they tend to define it as various ways that autistic people attempt to mimic the actions of allistic people, but I don’t think that’s exactly the case. 

I think in particular that autistic people often develop a variety of strategies aimed at preventing people from noticing or reacting to them.

Again, this is because your formative years often teach you that it is extremely dangerous for people to react to something you have done; you simply don’t know whether or not they will react with mockery or violence; the only safe strategy becomes a kind of withdrawal, an attempt to minimize the amount to which others are reacting to your behavior at all. 

I don’t think that this is really the same process as allistic people use to conform to social expectations, indeed I think it is less an attempt to conform to an understood expectation and more an attempt to avoid doing anything that conceivably could be scrutinized or subject to expectation.

[drdemonprince]

Do you worry about being so open about your sex life under the same name you use professionally? How did you settle on your current approach to talking about kink/fetishism publicly?

That's my question. Below is some background but feel free to ignore it.

I'm asking because, like many people, my kinks are integral to my sense of self and engaging in BDSM has been significant for my psychological wellbeing. I don't like keeping these important aspects of myself separate from the rest of my life and I'm jealous of the people I meet at munches who share openly kinky stuff on their regular Instagrams. But I also have relatives on all of my socials, including a few adult family members who take any opportunity to create drama or get on their high horses, and teenage cousins who obviously shouldn't be given information about my sex life.

I like using social media to connect with people, and it feels harder to do that when big parts of me are walled off. I'm so worried about sharing anything 'inappropriate' that I'm only presenting this bland, watered down version of myself and it makes me feel alienated. Making side accounts is one option, but it feels like compartmentalising and involves more 'personal brand' management than I care to juggle.

That's without even touching on in-person disclosures. How do I embrace these aspects of myself without acting like they're shameful, but also without being obnoxious or unfair on other people who might not want to know?

I know "authenticity" can be an unattainable ideal, especially on social media platforms that necessitate curation, but I do want to stop tying myself in so many knots over this (in the figurative, unsexy way).

Sorry for venting in your askbox.

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this.

I don't worry about the potential of my speaking openly about my sex life ruining my professional life because I hate my professional life and professionalism in nearly all forms. I have nothing but contempt for the academy, social psychology, my employer, the publishing industry, 99% of the organizations that hire me to provide workshops, and a decent-sized subset of my readers who are of the more liberal end of things. Alienating myself from these institutions and people and making myself incompatible with their viewpoints feels as necessary to me as breathing air.

when I was very young I was concerned with making myself palatable to academia and shucking off everything that was unprofessional and hillbillyish and childish and weird about me, but then I learned what success within the academy really entailed. I heard faculty members shrug and say they "didn't really care" about the topics they were studying (topics like racism, sexism, transphobia, etc) and were just publishing work on these subjects to further their own careers. I was trained to use questionable research protocols that generated false positives and specious results. Nearly all the research that I worked on for three years of undergrad and five years of graduate school would eventually be discredited due to failure to replicate. And I realized that I was being taken advantage of all the while, mined for cheap labor on meaningless projects that meant nothing scientifically, making $14k a year in a field where there were no future job prospects.

by the time i finished my PhD I knew that I wanted to be nothing like the people that had trained me and taken advantage of me, and that I had useless skills in a dying field. I was plenty happy to cut the shit by then and be real about who I was, what I believed, and what was and wasn't a virtuous use of my time. This only became more pronounced after I was screwed over by even more employers as a part-time instructor, and then finally hired full-time in a department that was doing good work, but which was constantly getting undercut by those in higher up administrative positions.

My entire career I have essentially been daring people to fire me and they never seem to do it. No matter how much shit I talk about the university and my profession and no matter how much I bear about myself, I just keep getting rewarded for it and allowed to float along relatively unbothered. There's a power in having a lot of audacity. I am not ashamed of who I am and I don't worry about how my employer and colleagues see me because as a whole I have zero respect for any of them or their opinions. (I have some individual coworkers who are great! but they dont represent Psychology or Academia as a whole or its values. my coworker friends are supportive of my freaky trans kinky self).

It's much the same dynamic in my family. I have no respect for the majority of people in my family and I don't concern myself with how they might react to the things I have to say. When I first started writing openly about Autism some relatives found it deeply offensive and talked a lot of shit about me behind my back, saying that I was embarassing all of them by associating us with a disability they found shameful, but my mom communicated to those relatives in no uncertain terms that I was gonna just keep doing whatever the fuck I wanted and they'd have to find some way to deal with it.

My mom had already learned that about me firsthand. I complain about her sometimes but I do have immense gratitude to her for just accepting who I am, even if there are elements of it she can't understand and probably does not feel good about. She learned a long long time ago that I was on my own separate planet and that there was nothing she could do to stop me from running my mouth and living my life, and I'm thankful to her for that. My actions have set the tone with my family pretty clearly: i came out as trans publicly before I told them, I started hormones and changed my name/gender marker without consulting them and then told them it was a fact already and they'd need to get in line. I approach most things about myself that others might take issue with in the same way: it's a fact, it's fucking happening, and you can't tell me shit about it that is going to keep me from doing it. and if you're too much of a dick about it I might end up writing about you in a book or essay so watch out, I guess.

That sounds more vindicitive than how I actually feel most of the time, of course. I just don't think about the opinions of people I don't respect. I care about what my friends think of me, and the people I look up to, and I try to rise to a level that is worthy of them. And of course I do experience fear of ostacism and failure in those respects and have not always coped with it in a confident, principled way. But with my aunts and uncles or my boss? Fuck them. I have no desire to win their approval because I've seen what they approve of and it sucks.

All of this is possible because I am not financially reliant upon my family, of course, and because if I lose my job I would have a back-up plan. I've always done freelancing and side writing gigs, even back when I was a part-timer with really insecure teaching jobs, and so the loss of any one position has never felt that catastrophic to me. I was already released by my PhD program into economically shaky ground and I never had a prayer of having a successful tenure track academic "career", so I'm not afraid of losing that. that's already gone. I feel generally pretty confident in my ability to scratch by making a living doing this or that even if somebody fires me, and I won't have to ask relatives for money so it really does not matter if I alienate any of them. that is an IMMENSE PRIVILEGE and someone not in that position shouldn't compare themselves to me or expect themselves to have that same degree of confidence. sometimes you have to just keep your head down to survive and there's no shame in that either.

as for the question about "authenticity" as an idealized end state and how to reconcile it with social media, here are some of my thoughts: it's not authenticity if it is focused on how other people interpret you. authenticity is letting go of trying to manage what other people think about you. that means you dont ever have to broadcast everything about yourself to the public or on social media, you dont ever have to share something that you dont want to, the pursuit of being perfectly understood is one that will never be fulfilled and there is no need to make oneself unnecessarily vulnerable just for the sake of appealing to people who might not ever understand and accept you anyway. authenticity is more about an energy than about revealment. it's an energy of self acceptance, not necessarily self love, and it's not something that one broadcasts, it's something one cultivates by developing secure, supportive relationships, improving one's self knowledge, and by working through one's baggage.

[voidchiqk]

younger shane headcanons TW: mentions of abuse and self-harm. enjoy :)

he's an only child. his family situation was bad: neglectful mother and abusive father. id like to think of him as a pretty quiet child, but would have outbursts during grade school and struggled to make friends.

his family was poor and this was a major insecurity of his.

stole his father's alcohol and cigarettes' and would drink at 14 yrs old for the first time.

would spend summer breaks with marnie occasionally. marnie's ranch was a much healthier, safer and calmer environment. i like to think that shane see's marnie more of a mother figure than his actual mother. he looks back fondly on these summers.

because of the clothing therapy heart event i see shane getting into alternative music and being interested in the culture around his pre-teen/teenage years. despite and interest in the fashion he never really dressed that way. he did resonate a lot with the music though and probably has an old collection of cds from that age.

he would meet jas' father in highschool and they were quick friends. they were both on the gridball team and his new friend was always there for him when others weren't. even though shane's home situation did not change at this time, this new friendship and support helped him out emotionally.

shane has always been a more quiet, introverted and socially anxious person. since becoming friends with jas' father, he went out more and met new people, though he always kept his friend group small. he wasn't very popular, but people didn't have many negative opinions on him and he was tolerated among his peers.

shane's drinking habits would worsen a little in highschool when he would sometimes show to school tipsy. he did poorly in his classes. he started to take school more seriously when he learned he could be kicked off the gridball team with poor grades + drinking.

he didn't see much of a point of going to college after highschool, but would try it for a few months before dropping out. i'd like to think if he were to go back to school he would study film.

speaking of film i always loved the idea that shane would record short films, or just filmed random shots and places as a teenger/young adult. he has a lot of old recording of him and jas' father acting out random skits, footage of them hanging out or footage of his hometown. he still has all these recordings and struggles to sit through them now.

in school he went to dances with girls, but he was never in a relationship. he's shared kisses, had sex, but never dated. he entered his first relationship in his early 20s.

he tried to spend as much time out of his house as possible and would go on walks after school with jas' father. when they finally got driving licenses they would go on night drives regularly. they were always fun, gave him some adventure, and was also the time when he could express and talk about his emotions. these are fond memories that he thinks about often in memory of his friend.

in highscool, the summers he did not spend with marnie, he worked part time jobs. his favorite was a pizza parlor in his area. free pizza for breaks hehe.

shane experiences panic attacks and they started in middle/highschool. he started to cut and burn himself in his teenage years. he made great effort to hide the scars. during this time his self-harm wasn't very frequent, but it got worse after the death of his friend.

he never owned pets though he secretly wished he did. any stray animals around his neighborhood would get an occasional treat and some water from him if he had any on hand. he cares deeply for animals, dare i say he enjoys their company more than other peoples'.

was kicked out of home at 19 and he went to live with jas' father. they were roommates for years and shane moved to zuzu city with him. they both struggled a lot in the city financially, and shane job hopped a lot. despite those hardships shane considers the years living with his friend his happiest.

[lord-of-the-margins]

Recent thoughts on Transgenderism

Tumblr, I think it’s time we approach the gender talk.

I’ve been very angry at liberals since about 2022. Before that (2019-2021) I was terrified of them. I grew up as a liberal in a very liberal area. I knew one moderate conservative. All I’ve known is liberal perspectives and ideologies for most of my life. I went to Evergreen State college for years (super senior). I lived in the epicenter of woke.

I’m not going to be a liberal ever again. Being around a lot of liberals, like in a city, makes me nervous. That’s how bad things have been in my little world. All the bridges have been burnt and every knife has somehow found its way into my back. I’ve since taken them out and re-calibrated my expectations.

Still, I have gender issues. They’ve gotten a lot better. And gender shit is still consuming society for no real reason other than to spread misery it seems.

Because of how horrifically poorly liberal society handles the issue of transsexualism and transgenderism, I’m scared to share the new insights I’ve made regarding gender dysphoria. The way the left fetishizes and commodifies mental illness is truly disturbing. The teenage impulse to commandeer and mimic mental illness for attention is never discouraged at any point. Not even in fully grown adults.

If I tell you what I’ve discovered, I’m afraid you will destroy yet another portion of the DSM in a misguided attempt to validate me. It is not validating. You are harming people. I needed the DSM to figure out what was happening. I needed psychologists to push back on my impulses. I’m glad they did. They can no longer do so without fear of being slandered as transphobic.

I look at the work you’ve done on behalf of the trans community and it reads as a collection of demons trying their best to fix society.

So yeah.

I like Tumblr for reasons other than politics. I don’t really want to talk about politics on here all that much. But this national gender dysphoria the younger generations all seem to have is hard to ignore. It can also be offensive. I’ve felt as offended by Zoomers and Alphas trying to be inclusive as I did from Gen X trying to hurt my feelings. So that’s been a fun little discovery I’ve made about myself and the world. Maybe you just can’t escape it. It’s part of life either way. And if you’re fucking around with gender, it’s inevitable. Maybe constant offense needs to happen just to make this demented form of self-expression that less attractive. Because a trans identity is not an attractive endeavor. It doesn’t make for attractive men and women. If you must do it, you need a thick skin just to look at yourself in the mirror let alone to hear what anyone else has to say about it. It’s signing up for a lifetime of disappointment and can only be explained through mental illness.

To conclude, what I found behind the mental illness was even more mental illness. Given liberals’ inclination to celebrate, imitate, and capitalize on mental illness, I don’t think it would be wise for me to tell you about what I did to make the pain of gender dysphoria go away.

What I will tell you is that I had to recognize that I suffered incredible abuse growing up. Truly exceptional abuse. I’ve been studying books on the matter on and off for about four years now. I had to learn a lot of new things and it was very overwhelming at first. It changed how I saw myself and even how I view reality. It’s been quite a journey.

None of the resources I used were made by anyone in the trans community. None whatsoever. All the people who helped me wrote their books in saner times. Your big gay trans social justice movement didn’t help me one bit. Just like feminism has never really helped me personally. Because exceptional people don’t need a parade to get their foot in the door.

Whenever I get close to woke people, I get nervous. I’ve gotten better at sensing that malevolent energy. Since I grew up with it, it took some time to suss it out. It took a massive fuck up, followed up with sticking to my convictions, to feel about fifty knives in my back before it finally sank in.

A lot of damage has been done and yet there are people under the left’s banner I could still care for. People who make uplifting art that has truly helped me. If I hadn’t found them, I wouldn’t have bothered writing this. So I guess this is for the innocent, the clueless, the kind.

I would only consider seriously talking about gender dysphoria with the public if and only if the DSM once again recognizes transsexualism and transgenderism as mental illnesses and the American Psychological Association allows its practitioners to discourage transitioning.

[trigunsbbygirl]

Human Things that Confuse Knives Part 2

Made a second one since I had more ideas lol

content warnings: teeth, use bomb in an analogy, mention bruises. this one gets more into the body/anatomy idk what all people are comfy with so just in case

•Knives already thinks dreams are kinda weird, but those surreal ones and the utterly weird ones that just make no sense or seemed so real you wonder if it actually happened? he wants to know what's going on in your brain. Knives will listen to you as you recount your dream, he won't say much or make any facial reactions, but part of him is kinda amazed that your can brain come up with the weirdest, coolest and/or creepiest things ever.

•the concept of having baby teeth and adult teeth weirds Knives out. when Knives learns that you do lose your teeth as a kid he's staring at you like you've just grown a second head. don't tell him that you have wisdom teeth that usually need to be taken out via surgery as a teenager. (Vash is kinda grossed out by it. found out when a kid he was playing with ran up to him and was like 'look! my tooth fell out!:D' he panicked, thinking they got hurt, but it's replaced with horror, disbelief, slight disgust and concern when he finds out every human looses a set of teeth. he hates it a little. has no idea what to do when a kid tells him that a tooth fell out. help him)

•also. imagine Knives surprise when he learns about the appendix. you had been talking with a friend when you mentioned appendicitis and that you had to have surgery. it peaked his interest and when you're done talking, Knives asks about it. he stares at you in uncertainty and disbelief the further you explain. what do you mean there's a small pouch in your stomach that serves little to no function that can essentially become a bomb? Knives doesn't actually believe you until he looks it up. he wonders how humans have survived with bodies like that.

•same wonder when it comes to you having to take vitamins and other supplements because sometimes a body won't produce enough of something or too much.

•the fact the humans shed/lose hair. Knives knows that, but it kinda grosses him out a bit. he hates seeing your hair strands, makes you clean them up. (I hc that the twins just have little to no body hair and they don't actually lose hair strands.)

•double jointed people also weirds Knives out. what do you mean you can twist or bend a joint further than normal? it doesn't exactly creep or gross him out, but he doesn't like it. he'll never admit that, but he won't look/talk to you for a bit after you show off that flexibility.

•Knives is fascinated by the way your skin can change colors. (don't mention that he can turn a lovely shade of red, he gets all huffy.) but, anyways, he loves examining your face, watching as your face gets darker with certain things he does. (also likes seeing your facial expressions. humans are so expressive..) he also likes seeing your bruises and watching as the bruise changes colors over time as it heals. you joked one day that you could give him a bruise of his own that he can watch. he didn't like the joke (he prefers to give you (consensual) bruises.)

•now let's get into reverse Isekai for a bit.

•Knives does not fucking understand social media lmao. why the hell do you have to tell people you've never met what you did or thought that day and why are so many people interested? why do people do stupid things for views??

•he hates online discourse and always tunes you out when you try to talk about something that happened online. he doesn't care and thinks it's stupid.

•do NOT let him find out about stan culture or chronically online people. he's gonna lose any faith he had in humanity again. I wouldn't worry about that too much though. he has zero online presence, never uses social media outside of YouTube and even then he only uses it to watch documentaries or how to videos.

•memes confuse him a lot, especially how fast they come and go. you don't even know how to explain them to him. "why is this picture of a man just standing so funny?" "it just is? I don't know either." how do you even explain memes and internet culture to someone who's never been on the internet lol

•Knives thinks you're really weird if you've got a skewed sense of humor where something dramatically falling over makes you laugh(thinking of that waffle video.) he watches those types of videos with a straight face and when the video ends he just stares at you, wondering if you seriously think that's funny.

•he hates those youtube poop and deepfried videos. not only does he find them stupid and doesn't understand them, but they just bother his ears.

•bonus: Vash thinks the circadian rythym is pretty neat and that some people just know when to wake up. it took Vash a while to develop one, or at least, something like that since he doesn't technically need sleep. it'll never quite be the same though since he doesn't exactly get tired like humans do. it took decades for that type of tiredness to become present, but even still, he doesn't need it to survive.

[bookshelf-in-progress]

My favorite thing about Jemrauth, last king of Arateph, is that he is so devoted to his wife and the concept of marital fidelity that it reshapes the politics of an entire planet. Unfortunately, he keeps falling out of any stories I try to tell in this setting, and even if I do manage to get him to show up, there's no way I'll be able to fit in any of this backstory. Which is an excellent reason to talk about it here.

Jemrauth's grandfather, King Evris, had no interest in ruling a planet and preferred to focus on his interest in landscaping, botany, zoology, etc. Which meant that by the end of his reign, the royal palaces had amazing gardens, but the planetary government was in shambles (because the ruling Houses had been able to run rampant without oversight).

Jemrauth's father, Hilath, (who basically started running the planet as soon as he was old enough to hold adult conversations), thus decided to value his duty to Arateph over any personal preferences. This included marrying a politically ideal woman that he didn't care two straws for.

Hilath thought the pursuit of virtue was irrelevant to ruling Arateph, and this philosophy spilled over into his private life. Once the succession was secure, he saw no reason to remain faithful to his wife, and openly filled his needs for companionship with an array of mistresses he housed in the palace.

Unfortunately, Jemrauth's mother did care for Hilath, and her husband's behavior broke her heart. (Especially since he'd string her along just enough to make her think he still cared for her and maybe they could fix things.)

(Also, it wasn't like she could have her own set of lovers, because while the king can do what he wants, cheating on the ruler of the entire known universe comes with extreme political, social and sometimes legal consequences).

After she gave her husband his heir and spare (Jemrauth's older brother and sister), Jemrauth's mother decided that this third child (conceived unexpectedly during one of those stringing-along periods) was hers. She took an active role in raising Jemrauth and was very close to him. Jemrauth was thus very aware of how much his father's behavior hurt his mother, and learned to view infidelity as one of the most heinous sins.

Jemrauth became his father's unfavorite--how could Hilath respect someone raised by his wife, who always took her side? It wasn't like Jemrauth was necessary anyway.

Except, um, surprise! Hilath lost his heir and spare to a plague in Jemrauth's late teenage years, which left Jemrauth as the only heir, despite not being raised for the role.

When it came to choosing a wife, Jemrauth knew he needed to marry a woman who he loved and respected and who he would always remain faithful to.

Not long after meeting Marastel, Jemrauth knew that she was the perfect complement to his personality and would make an ideal wife and queen, and he fell head-over-heels.

Hilath was outraged when he found out. Jemrauth had chosen possibly the most unsuitable woman on the entire planet. She was part of House Kepha, which was historically distrusted by the crown and the other houses because of a history of rebellion--and worse, she was on the lowest rungs of it. If he'd fallen in love with a commoner, it would have been better than this, because then at least she wouldn't come with the political baggage. As it was, her low-but-not-low enough rank was just enough to enrage people from every House, and Hilath forbid the relationship.

Jemrauth believed that the relationship had gone too far for him to honorably release Marastel--and besides, he didn't want to. He couldn't marry Marastel, but he refused to marry anyone else. This went on for years, with Jemrauth and Marastel remaining faithful to each other.

Finally, Jemrauth reached the age of ascension and took the throne. His father wasn't worried about the marriage question; an elder king still held a lot of political power, so even as king Jemrauth couldn't marry without his father's consent.

Except, tradition held that the king takes a virtue name upon coronation to define the virtue he holds most important to his reign. Jemrauth took a name that meant loyalty. Caring about people more than the power of the throne--openly declaring he was going to be the opposite of his father. Even worse, the name also had a layer of meaning that stated Jemrauth would remain loyal to Marastel specifically.

At the time of Jemrauth's coronation, renewed societal interest in virtue had Hilath under political scrutiny for his lack of it. He couldn't keep his son from living up to his virtue name. Hilath was enraged, but had no choice but to relent.

Hilath died a short time after Jemrauth took the throne, so Jemrauth was able to rule without his father's interference (or his help, which actually would have been valuable).

As king, Jemrauth wasn't great at keeping his personal feelings separate from his need to cooperate with someone politically. If he found out that someone was unfaithful to their spouse, he immediately classed them as "absolute scum unworthy of respect" and would not work well with them.

The nobility quickly learned that if you want to get anywhere with the king, you either have to be faithful to your spouse or (more often) work really hard to keep the king from hearing about your philandering. This caused upheavals in the Great Houses as lords cast aside or tried to hide mistresses and illegitimate children.

When Marastel was struggling with miscarriage after miscarriage and Jemrauth refused to divorce her, some of the lords tried to set up Othello situations--since the king found infidelity horrendous, they tried to convince him that Marastel was unfaithful so he'd cast her off and marry someone more suitable. They didn't count on the fact that these two loved and trusted and communicated with each other, so none of the manufactured evidence had any ring of truth to it.

The nobility (and some later historians) tried to convince themselves that Jemrauth wasn't really faithful to that wife of his--he was just trapped by his virtue name. They tried to read a lot into Jemrauth's interactions with other women--sometimes the king attended social events while his wife was at home recovering from miscarriages/related depression--but though Jemrauth may have been a bit too sociable (especially when trying to distract himself from his own depression after the deaths of his children), he was never unfaithful and always madly in love with his wife. 1000% chose the right queen. Zero regrets.

This is my way-too-long no-one-read-all-of-this way of saying that I love that this guy's most enduring trait is how much he loves his wife and is dedicated to the concept of true--as in, faithful--love. And I think about it all the time.

[queerly-autistic]

My dad just messaged me going "seeing all this 'Save OFMD' stuff made me realise some things never change" and attached a load of pictures he'd dug up from fifteen years ago of me in my 'Save Ianto Jones' fan campaign era.

As much as it made me laugh, it also made me think about something that I've not talked about before: the fact that this is what introduced me to campaigning.

I was a very lost queer (undiagnosed autistic) kid, bullied and lonely and keenly aware that there were a lot of bad things happening in the world, but I had no idea how to begin to even try to change things, or even any awareness that there was anything I could do to change anything.

And then my favourite show killed off my favourite character, and I suddenly accidentally found myself swept up in the mobilisation (without even realising that that was what was happening) of the fan community around me. It's where I learned about the idea of campaigning as, y'know, a thing that I could do. It introduced me to the concept that I could actively try and do things to make a change I wanted to see in the world.

And now that's my actual literal real world adult job. This is what I do in my 9-to-5. Some of the skills I learned and developed at seventeen (and the lessons from the fuck-ups - oh boy there were many of those because I was seventeen) trying to get the BBC to un-dead my favourite bisexual welshman are skills that I now use every day to actually create change (such as writing persuasive emails to influence a specific target).

And I've also used them outside of the 9-5 in the smaller grassroots campaigns I've been involved with. For example, the skills I learned from a fan campaign when I was a teenager helped me play a small part in stopping the deportation of young autistic man, and potentially saved his life.

There's a HUGE amount of crossover/symbiosis between fan campaigns and 'real world' campaigning. A huge number of people involved in these fan campaigns are already involved in organising (or at the very least supporting/donating) for 'real world' issues. And, if they're not, then a fan campaign may well be their introduction to campaigning - a 'wow ok so I can actually do this' moment that inspires them to start pushing for change on other issues too.

It's fantastic if someone goes 'hey, I managed to call Netflix about picking up Our Flag Means Death, which has made me realise maybe I can also cope with picking up the phone to call my political representatives about [insert other issue here]' - and if the strategies they put in place to help them do the Netflix phone call also help them do the political phone calls as well, then that's absolutely brilliant.

The same with getting experience/confidence writing emails, or learning how to create and push a hashtag on social media, or realising the power of taking mass actions (like signing a petition). It even goes so far as inspiring people to follow up a fan campaign donation with an additional donation to a good cause, and helping direct them to some good charities/initiatives to donate to (because sometimes knowing which are the right ones to send your money too is very hard). These are all skills and experiences that can help build both confidence and understanding of how to get involved with campaigning for change, and these are absolutely transferrable to an infinite number of causes.

It's about people feeling empowered to take action: feeling like they can do it, that it's tangible to them as something they can do, and giving them the tools to do it. The endgame in real world advocacy and campaigning is getting stuff done: petitions signed, phone calls made, emails sent, donations collected, rallies attended.

And no one (outside of the internet moral purity police) cares if your journey getting there started with a fan campaign.

[swallowerofdharma]

Yashiro’s Cruel God part two

Intermission: romanticizing trauma or Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

Most people looking at someone like Yashiro would feel deeply sorry and they would make a wish for him to find something or someone good in life. But when we start talking about healing we forget or we don’t know what trauma is. Manga can actually help us understand much better in what terms trauma really works: the word we use in several european languages comes from the Greek word for wound τραῦμα. I don’t have the same linguistics insights for the Japanese words - it would be great to have that insight if someone can provide it - but I have access to visual representations, because a number of mangaka associated traumatic events/memories with physical injuries, and the very severe ones with a lost limb, a lost eye. I have talked about this briefly here. The earliest in life or the most severe or prolonged or repeated traumatic events or experiences - the deeper the injury is registered, written in the brain. In the case of a lost limb, there isn’t much healing to do, that part of the body is forever changed, but there are other things to do: relearning how to do things in different ways according to the changes and forgetting about what you could do before or what other people can do with their limbs intact and fully functioning. Of course you can get a prosthetic, an aid, you work around the injured parts. But they ache, they give you phantom pain, they don’t grow back, and the healing is only possible in the parts that are left. Thinking about trauma like this is how we don’t romanticize it. I really think that Yoneda-san is intentionally making a point to show how difficult this process of adaptation is and also how common is for the people around Yashiro to not fully understand or care or know what can be done and what can’t be done. Only Yashiro knows himself that well, can properly determine his boundaries. First he went through a long phase of trial and error and he progressively learned to regulate his impulses quite successfully I must say, because we see that he was alone, lacking guidance, and he did end up naked in an alley, but at least he was sober and drug free. That is when Misumi came in and, although he had also his selfish motives and interests, he cared enough and offered Yashiro some guidance and most importantly conditions so that Yashiro needed to learn how to restrain himself and only indulge his sex drive more safely and more intentionally, setting new rules and adapting to a life full of other responsibilities and commitments. Remember that the premise here isn’t to assign blame or make moral judgments or excuses, but to understand how these characters grew, matured or changed or how they developed their expectations and interpretations of the world around them.

There were areas where Yashiro, as a full formed adult, still refused to be challenged, mostly because he had adapted and learned how to be self reliant, but unfortunately also because he interiorized an image of himself as someone unlovable, as a consequence of his parents’ behavior and later his unrequited feelings for Kageyama. Yashiro can absolutely find love. He fell in love twice, other people have fallen in love with him before, he doesn’t want to hurt others, he generally cares, he has gained much better social skills than those he had as a teenager, he is still an eccentric but not unreasonable or crazy. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to accept romantic love because he doesn’t recognize the feelings of being loved. The new experience is confusing, disorienting and scary, nauseating, because he lacks points of reference. He can’t go back to a foundation in love, an original self that is pure and secure and healthy, because his parents didn’t help him build it or deliberately destroyed and reshaped it with fear. Romanticism poses love as a good, natural, inevitable human thing, implies an ideal world where everyone has that pure healthy self and if pain and hardship are inevitable in life and each person is wounded, they must get to heal normally or simply by reaching back and restoring that pure and secure and healthy self as much as possible. If it was parental love/care and responsibility to offer the best condition for the self to be that way, then it will be the love/passion and commitment of a romantic partner to help healing the inevitability wounded self later in life.

I don’t think it was pure coincidence that in the same chapter you have these two different scenes not far from each other. Doumeki has been left behind and he is reminiscing about the events that brought him to this point. I am still focusing on Yashiro now, so that I haven’t properly talked about Doumeki, who has his own wounds within him, but as I mentioned last time, Doumeki experienced betrayal, especially regarding his father, after he already had a foundation in a family with a sufficient amount of care. Even if his parents weren’t especially doting or his experience was so much at odds with his sister’s experience inside the same family, he still developed normally, if not very reserved or able to express himself only through controlled physical aggression at kendo practice. We see in this memory another element, Doumeki playing normally with other boys and having fun. When the chapter goes on showing Yashiro in a flashback, we see him spying on Kurobane’s nephew on Misumi’s order. But we also see him as this uncomfortable nineteen years old who is an outsider and feels like one when confronted with normal children playing normal games.

I’d really like to write a proper analysis of the confrontation between Yashiro and Doumeki in the car in chapter 32, because I think that conversation is a very good example of two people coming from completely different places and confronting each other without reaching a solution that would work for both of them, because of lack of understanding and the extreme difficulty to communicate. We see very well here how the dynamics older/younger and realist/romantic play out. Scenes like these, where they talk, get to know each other, they are there and they were frequent even.

For now, I just want to underline another example of Yashiro looking at children with a foundation in love/safety from the outside and having to wrangle with that feeling of alienation. How can he take part in that same world as these people, how can he be part of the same world Doumeki lives in? Since he is going to meet Hirata and he doesn’t know what might happen there, his only choice is to leave Doumeki behind, but since he doesn’t obey anymore, Yashiro has to push him away and, if necessary, intentionally hurt him. Doumeki tries different strategies to stay, and Yashiro seems to relent on occasions, but when the time comes, he takes the gun and shoots.

Again a long post, and I don’t know how much I have accomplished with this. Between phone calls and my cat giving me the stinky eye because I am two minutes late to feed her, although I had mentally prepared to tackle the part about Doumeki, I recon I am going to leave this part as it is and continue the analysis later. Hope you don’t mind, I am not great at planning things out. So this is again to be continued…