#they don't WANT to be considered disabled! because being disabled IS a moral failing to them. disability is abnormal

[llatimeria]

I feel so resolved right now bc I've been getting a little frustrated with the Instagram reels I've been seeing that's mostly het women complaining about how their husbands don't share the mental load of housework - which is absolutely justified, ofc. everyone needs to partake in taking care of the home as close to equally as is reasonable.

the thing is this mostly takes the form of people making fun of how their husbands say things like "Yeah sure I'll share the load :) Just make me a list!:) just tell me what to do! :)" when that's kind of defeating the purpose -- if your partner's making lists of chores for you, you're still basically offloading a ton of mental effort onto them, which doesn't actually help the problem.

however I know from experience that I am that husband lol. and I'm sure a lot of these men are just kind of inconsiderate, but from my perspective as a disabled neurodivergent person, I reflexively try to offload things like Making Lists or Asking To Be Told What To Do onto my (overstressed, often panicking) partner because I'm scared that if I make decisions about what I need to do, I'll focus on something my partner didn't even have on their radar and waste all my energy "fixing" something which they didn't consider broken, leaving me with nothing to help solve the problems they actually care about.

I'm not trying to be a dick or deliberately being lazy, I just need to know what's bothering them the most so I can start there instead of starting on a random side quest that doesn't matter to either of us. considering how many of these people I've run into are in nd4nd relationships, I'm pretty sure I can't be the only "inconsiderate husband" out there who's having this feeling, and it's a little frustrating to see it being completely attributed to a moral failing and not, like, a possible symptom of their partner's own mental health issues. (like we definitely can't pretend like misogyny never plays a part in the Just Make Me A List type of behavior, but I know relatively certainly that is not where it's originating from in my own personal relationship, and I'm not that unique)

just when I was about to just make a kind of grumpy post about this problem and offer absolutely no solutions, I fuckin run into a reel where someone actually tells people how to bridge the gap between offloading mental effort and actually knowing what your partner wants you to do- literally just. offer a couple of observations to them instead of hoping they'll do everything for you. ie - instead of "just tell me what to do!!", say "I see the dishes have to be done and the trash has to be taken out, so I was gonna do the dishes then take out the trash, unless there was something else that needs my focus first". this tells your partner that you are taking on some of the mental burden, but still offers them the opportunity to point you in the right direction if you're WAY off.

it just makes so much fucking sense and I never would've thought of doing that on my own. genuinely an extremely useful video to just algorithmically be provided to me. it's actionable advice instead of just telling people "share the loaaaddd" without providing the scaffolding someone needs to do that when theyre unused to it (whether that be due to neurodivergency or growing up as a guy in a misogynistic society).

and its just like. God damn it. this is bullshit. I can't believe the stupid camera app is helping me in real ways. maybe the mental health gurus and internet therapists have a goddamn point sometimes. fucking hell

[nekropsii]

okay i want to hear your opinion on this. out of all the alpha trolls, which one do you think sucks the Worst and which one do you think sucks the least. genuinely curious

Difficult and Vague Question. Could be answered in a whole number of ways. Part of the difficulty in finding an angle in it is that Morality is highly subjective, and also some of the shit the Alpha Trolls get up to is so reprehensible it's astounding. I'm choosing a combined angle of "Worst/Least Difficult to Survive a Conversation with", and "Worst/Least Sucks Traits + Actions". This is because, for the most part, the male Alpha Trolls are generally intended to be Spineless Intolerable Misogynistic Morally Bankrupt Sex Offenders, and the female Alpha Trolls are, for the most part, Chilling.

If someone has an answer for the first question that isn't "Cronus", and that answer doesn't start with "Aside from Cronus", Stop Listening To Them. That's the point of his character. He's a Serial Child Predator, an unrepentant Sex Offender, and a Turbo-Bigot who wants to kill people for being Minorities, he's the correct answer. As far as an answer that excludes Cronus goes, the answer necessarily has to be one of the men, sans Mituna... But really, it depends on what crimes you personally can stand less that day, or which kind of guy you specifically have more trauma about. Lol. Cronus, Rufioh, Kankri, Horuss, and Kurloz are all insanely evil men in different ways. Make them coworkers at a shitty failing pub, and you'll have a sitcom for the ages.

The people who suck the least are the Women without contest, minus Meenah, and nuance for Damara.

Last bit there is probably somewhat Controversial, but, like. Damara's perfectly nice if you're not an Alpha Troll, but deservedly an utter bastard hellion if she is with them. I don't approve of her methods, but I do approve of her torturing them. We see her interact with people who are not the Alpha Trolls, and she's plenty nice to them. Makes sense, considering she was mentally broken into acting like that by other members of her team repeatedly gaslighting and victimizing her for years, rather than her just having always been Like That. Meenah is impulsive to the point of crimes happening regularly and seemingly cannot stop herself from pursuing children. Meenah's the person your Intrusive Thoughts convince you you would be if you didn't have a crippling Anxiety Disorder to "keep you in check". She's the main female exception to the rule of "The Women are Chilling and the Men are Insane Criminal Perverts". Diversity Win..?

Porrim's just a Feminist and is pretty normal, though her Social Position shows. She tends to be the default pick for "Most Normal", but since she's a woman written by Hussie, she still has some sucks traits. Latula's got issues managing her combined Mental Health problems and her insane case of Internalized Misogyny, both of which Porrim seems to be trying to help her out with. Porrim also seems to be succeeding at helping her. Good for them! Aranea might've done all of that, but she was a preventable disaster. I don't think any of that would've happened if people just listened to her for once. She had to pay her own best friend to listen to her, and even then she didn't do it. Meulin is a bit sucks, but a lot of that has to do with her main Character Traits being "Annoying Fangirl" and "Fujoshi". Even with those in mind, these aren't crimes, especially not ones of the same caliber as Cronus', and she's really funny about both things anyway. Also, she's quite passionate about Disability, particularly Deafness. As a Hearing Disabled person myself, I like this about her, so she can do anything.

My personal ranking is... Cronus is the Worst both of the men and in general, Meenah's the worst of the Women. Porrim, Meulin, and Latula are the least sucks women and likely the least sucks people in the whole cast, and Mituna is the least sucks man.

[late-draft]

Thoughts on Toph, Jet and Suki? For these last two the question is more about potential or what you'd like from them, more than about canon.

I'm curious about how you feel about some of my favourites. Don't feel pressured to reply and have a nice day. Love your art!

Hello! Thank you!! I'm gonna try to formulate my thoughts here, but I'll definitely have to expand on these in the future.

I think all of these three are strong, quality characters. Toph has most characterization and she and Katara share an aggressive temper, something I always thunderously cheer for; yet, they're vastly different despite that. The way I see it, Toph's situation is probably happier because the type of pain she carries is a feeling of betrayal and loneliness as she was restrained and oppressed by her parents and had no friends up until recently. She broke free. The writers said they wished there was more time to conclude Toph's struggle with her parents because it's an obvious pain point for her, for which she expressed several times a desire to fix. Fortunately for her, and unlike Katara whose pain comes additionally from traumatic loss which cannot be reversed, Toph's problems mostly can be solved relatively quickly by getting in her life what she was missing. She really is one of the best benders in the world and I was saying "Holy sh*t!" every time she fought because of the stuff she was able to pull off. She has a great dynamic with all characters from the gaang. Her animations of movement and bending are incredible - her character design, clothes and outer shape contribute to this (as shape and movement of clothes affect how animation feels a lot!)

(There's more movement in the lower part that emphasises groundedness?)

I think her discovery of metalbending has been undercut because she probably wasn't in actual danger, she was being brought to her parents who as it turns out, wanted her unharmed. If I had been writing, I would have had her be in a more dire situation which would have then made her discovery and subsequent victory all the more amazing.

She's a character who I think couldn't be stopped by any obstacle. That's literally how she's constructed as an archetype, compared to Katara who might face much more moral/emotional dilemmas or unsolvable situations rather than just challenging obstacles. But I should never say never; Toph did show a vulnerability in the form of (unfounded) guilt when Appa was taken. The narrative correctly found one of her character vulnerabilities because she's someone who theoretically "can't lose" so what happens when she lets her (only) friends down by failing? She didn't solve this guilt last time. It would most likely show up again later if similar situations happen. She's a very compassionate person who cares very deeply about people important to her. (I vaguely hearing about her dealing with guilt about her daughters in LoK, but I've only briefly watched LoK, I have no idea how that could have happened and I'm no longer sure how "canon" that show is considered to be, due to vastly different characterizations of many old characters…) Also her disability is never erased, neither does it make her helpless and her parents wrongfully use it as an excuse to restrain her. It's a part of her that isn't just a cosmetic character trait. She's perfectly capable on her own (if we ignore specific circumstances like being in the air), and I like how the show, instead of having her learn this, skips that part and advances onto Iroh helping her through anxiety and assuring her that it's also okay to accept help from friends in general, unrelated to her disability. Because she expanded this stress due to her parents' treatment onto thinking she should refuse all help in order to stay strong.

________

Suki is also one of my favourites. It's unfortunately clear that she doesn't have much characterization besides being a badass (which is spectacular, it's so cool that she's such a skilled fighter as a non-bender!) and a kind, no-bullshit person. These traits she has are very strongly repeated. Suki to me feels like someone who wouldn't suffer from social anxiety in the slightest. She could be the boldest in social situations alongside Aang, a confident extrovert. However, she feels like too stable of a character with no visible obstacles for her to overcome. I was disappointed by the Boiling Rock episode - yeah, a lot of things happened but it felt like nothing there affected the characters. Like in Toph's situation, what if it was tougher on them? The narrative did say Suki was Azula's favourite prisoner?! As much as I dislike torture, and this was a children's cartoon, imagine how strong Suki could have been to not break under worse conditions? But more importantly, I feel like she might have been really shaken from losing to Azula. How much would this harm her confidence in her skills, and how would she recover from this? Another one is how she might feel about Sokka's brief relationship with Yue, considering Suki had met him first. It would hurt her, and perhaps some feeling of guilt would arise because, how could she feel bad when Yue was no longer in the mortal realm? How would she deal with this? And maybe she could have an inverse parallel in Mai - if both of them had beef with benders, they might have different ways of overcoming this (Suki's being a healthy one). This thread would clearly be connected to the defeat to Azula, the prodigy bender. Because inversely, the narrative currently has Suki not feel anything from losing to Azula, not feel any envy towards benders in the series - that's kind of healthy for her, but boring to the audience. Plus, envy is one strong motivator to improve oneself. If not envy, then anxiety. Her and Kyoshi warriors' fight animations are also spectacular, I love the movement in the specific clothing they wear because you can't really see their legs. It's different from other characters and I heard their fighting style is inspired by aikido? The variety in combat styles is amazing! I think Suki could be additionally developed as one of the characters who puts the most focus on raw, physical prowess. So not just agility like Ty Lee, but strength and stamina too. Maybe Aang and Zuko don't have to be the only characters to push through sustaining scars from difficult wounds (if the show really doesn't want Katara to keep scars on her hands). Boiling Rock anyone? She and Sokka could match in this in the end when he hurts his leg in the final confrontation.

______

Jet is also a very strong character as he has a clearly defined role. He fulfils his purpose well. I really do have a feeling that he is sort of an inverse-Zuko: this doesn't mean I think he couldn't exist as a character on his own if Zuko didn't. But considering who ends up as part of the hero group, Jet additionally fills the role of showing something inverse of Zuko through the form he takes because he's a side-character (two birds with one stone). An Earth Kingdom character (Ally). Nonbender (masculine even without bending). No mercy for enemies. Successful and respected leader (of kids, but still) unlike Zuko who strained to get adults on the ship to respect him (loser). Jet's character design even has the more extreme version of Zuko's type of eyebrows!

This next part touches on shipping which can be skipped: ~ Most likely it's one of the integral parts he was created with. I'm not sure if I read this correctly, but I guess it's possible that Jet's character, which was made to fulfil the narrative purpose of showing a possible bad side to Allies who take things too far and kill innocents, in the visual and behavioural FORM he takes, was subsequently designed to also be someone Katara could project her forbidden interest in Zuko onto, but this time in a "justified" and "good" way, since Jet appears as a good guy freedom fighter. Then reality turns upside down at the end of the episode. (Narrative was planning to redeem Zuko since the beginning, so this was taken into consideration even while making S1. Katara gets a random FN crown in S1E13.) There is no hard evidence in the TEXT of the show for this, but to me it feels like this is what the narrative was doing. Thus there would be a high chance the narrative could force the two to clash in the future; and they do - I guess this is part of the reason why Jet physically fights Zuko. That fight grabs a bunch of threads: Zuko and Iroh are not safe/hidden even in Ba Sing Se, Jet was unable to overcome his visceral hatred for firebenders, Jet needed to be put in the brainwashing machine for some crime, the narrative needs a way to show that Zuko ISN'T integrating in the society outside of FN so it does it by having him refuse to join the freedom fighters gang, AND the two boys inevitably have to clash. I guess this might prove my suspicion, since the two had no interaction in S1 at all.

~

However, when the show implied that Jet had died, I was literally shocked. Mostly because it was Zuko who kept giving off the vibes of "dies in the end" type of character, so I was stunned to see this transferred onto Jet. (My bro was convinced Zuko was gonna die right up until the end when Katara healed him. Then we were both staring at the screen and I said "I thought you said he was gonna die?" anyway) I feel like Jet did manage to speedrun a sort of redemption arc though. The narrative COULD have pushed him more into "refuses to redeem himself" path if he had ended his run still fully obsessed with killing any firebender he comes across. That was one option. But the story decided to pivot into him managing to overcome brainwashing in order to save the heroes, this is what his arc ends on. I feel like both situations of him dying or surviving were fitting and satisfying. If Jet had survived, maybe I'd push him into an even more morally ambiguous spot, something pretty tangled in which he'd be an ally to the gaang but still antagonistic to Zuko in some way. Or some sort of indescribable negative tension existing there, with no easy or clear explanation Zuko could point to when confronted by someone from the gaang defending Jet. Then what if there was a plot by Ozai's supporters to secretly get the Earth Kingdom to attack the Fire Nation, which would then have Jet be tempted in aiding this. Secretly? Openly? Or not at all.

How cool his animations with hook swords are? They're that good that it feels like his weapons are extensions of his arms. It looks very believable and makes it seem like he's on an equal power level with benders. References used in animation definitely paid off. I'm sad his fight against Zuko didn't last longer or gotten a rematch! But I'm a simple person, I love watching energetic fights.

______

Now in terms of animation of ATLA in general, I was surprised to see that it's actually spectacular in many parts, even if it's not constantly as high as the one in LOK (whose S1 I watched first.) Before watching ATLA, I had the wrong impression that the story was childish, with continuous annoying tea jokes and the like, and thought "well the animation is worse than LOK, so why should I even bother." Then many times during my watch I had to gasp how skilled the animations were! Also, references for fights - amazing, I'll always support this. The fact that I'm now attempting to match ATLA's animation should be telling!

I'm not sure if I replied along the vectors of your interests, feel free to ask additional questions if you'd like.

[22degreehalo]

Like I know I'm just a whiny stupid antifeminist girl for caring this way about a Man but what did Aegon even do to deserve to be offered up for death by Allicent? Aside from that totally random scene that makes him a rapist despite there being absolutely nothing in his character before or after making that plausible.

Dude didn't even want to be king. He just wanted to drink and fuck around and have fun. He's just an obnoxious, lonely frat boy with daddy issues. It was Allicent and Otto who pushed him towards the throne, in order to protect and empower themselves. He sincerely tried to end the war quickly and to listen to the townsfolk, despite literally no-one giving him the proper training. And then in a failed attempt at heroics he got himself almost killed.

He's lost almost everything. He was forcibly married to his sister, which he seems actively disgusted by tbh; at the very least it's not a happy marriage. His adored son was murdered as a baby. His own brother tried to kill him, and did render him permanently disabled and in chronic pain, and also seemingly did kill his beloved dragon. He was never loved or even liked by any of his parents, who dismissed him with open disdain, and encouraged him to actively let them treat him as a puppet because if he ever tried to do anything he'd just fuck it up.

He never wanted any of this, but he did it because he was so desperate for love and approval. And he really tried to do it well, despite it all!!!

And for all that, Allicent thinks she has a right to just... offer him up as a human sacrifice?

If it was about killing Aegon to save the people of King's Landing from a drawn-out war: fine. It'd still feel out of character and implausible, but at least on a moral level it'd be forgiveable.

But... it's almost framed like this is for Allicent's sake. So she can be free. Because she was never treated well in the Red Keep. Or so she can feel good about having done the right thing. Like this is a relief.

Would she have done the same with Helaena?

No, don't answer that. Because it's sort of implied, unless I read in too deeply, that Allicent considers this 'trade' because Aegon already has 'nothing to live for', or whatever. Because he's disabled. So, who knows? If Helaena hadn't suddenly become this whole Useful Exposition Prophecy Girl, maybe she would've been an acceptable sacrifice, too.

[balkanradfem]

Cardiology is... Very connected to other fields, so it's simply if you don't have more specific specialists in your area, chances are a cardiologist will know what to test for and who to go to, at least in a very generic direction. But it's especially connected to rheumatology. Although if you have a traumatologist that could work just as well, but in a town (tiny) where I live a clinic didn't have one and still doesn't, so I just went to a cardiologist to refer me to another city and she was pretty good.

The way you're describing it you definitely have chronic pain imo. I think there's a very harmful ableist narrative in our society that if the pain seems to have a cause it's not "actually" chronic as if chronic pain just appears out of nowhere which is not true, but just suck at figuring out the diagnosis. Chronic pain is any pain that lasts for a long period of time, case closed. Even if you broke your leg and it fully healed and it still hurts you'd still have a pain that is chronic, for example. Triggers for pain are very common too, it doesn't have to be present all the time, in fact in a lot of chronic pain patients it doesn't. Still counts especially if your pain prevents you from functioning fully (I'd even argue it qualifies as disability to some extent, but I'm not a medical professional)

Not inflammation (although you can't rule out anything without tests), but like I said, nobody expects, or nobody SHOULD expect patients to know what's going on all the time, and there's no moral failing in visiting a wrong doctor for your pain because all healthcare is trial and error until you figure out the final diagnosis. Showing up to a vaguely correct doctor (or a general physician, if you have one) with a generic "hey there's something wrong, can I get help with it?" isn't malicious at all and is better than self-diagnosing in almost every case.

That said doctors can be and usually are shitty about it, especially chronic pain + misogyny combo (I've been chronically ill + disabled since around 8 years old, and I've only met two to four doctors that actually taken me seriously and gently and didn't shame for being in the state I am), so I totally understand not wanting to go through all that hassle and potential medical trauma lmao.

On that note maybe try looking into over the counter muscle relaxant?

Oh I love what you wrote here!

I never considered this pain a chronic type, but what you're saying is absolutely true, it is just a descriptor for pain that lasts for a long time. I'm sorry if my perspective on it was wrong! It's completely true that chronic pain can be caused and triggered by physical issues.

You're right about doctors too, my doctor seems to just be annoyed with me repeatedly showing up and not getting any better even after being checked out by two physio-specialists. I'll talk about it to her the next time I'm in and see if I can get a referral!

I did get a muscle relaxant medicine, and it does take the pain away temporarily, I will take it if my pain gets irritated (like if I'm in a situation where I have to run a few steps, that will cause me intense pain if I don't take the relaxant afterwards). But it's not something one could safely take for a long time and I ended up having some bad side-effects from it, so I'm mostly avoiding it.

[creepycrawliesinyourwalls]

rambling; online diary

i truely believe i can do heroin and not be addicted. i've been on dilaudid before, ive gotten high off my ass on weed, i took some vyvanse to see how itd go, and ultimately it was boring. being high is kinda boring. i complain about not having my cart, sure. but being so fr rn i do it for show. no one would ever believe me in a million years, but it is genuinely for show.

i have a hard time defining myself as a person, given the disorders i have. anything and everything that i could add to myself to humanize myself is a positive, never a negative. humanity is by definition flawed and faulty, if i have a flaw im more easily humanized.

im also incapable of being perfect, though if i wasn't abused to the point of my brain never fully forming a cohesive personality, i'm sure id be a prodigy. if my brain genetically disabled, i'd be top of my class, 4.0 gpa with honors.

with dissociative identity disorder, autism, adhd, bipolar 1, ptsd, clinical depression, arfid, and probably some sort of personality disorder, its hard to care about anything at all. these are only the mental and neurological disorders and defects, too.

inherently i was given the worst hand i could have gotten in birth. my potential is wasted, trapped inside this failure of a body. i could have been so much more. my face is somewhat conventionally attractive, so theres a win.

im confident that without my memory issues, joint pain, and depression i could be a full blown doctor. i have to settle for marketing, because my gpa currently is too low to get into engineering. i wanted to do mathematics for awhile to get into finance or something. i wanted to do geology bc my special interest is rocks, but i don't want to work for an oil company.

if i am not constantly improving with my life in any aspects, if i am stagnant for a stretch of time, i consider it a failure.

i do not have a personality, at least nothing coherent and consistent. some people say im loud, some say im shy. sweet, mean, smart, dumb, its all contradictory traits.

i consider myself better then most of the people i choose to be friends with. a good lot of them (danny, chloe, viktor) will probably never go to college. kaden might go, but im sure she'd just party the whole time. alix is maybe the only one who i'd even consider on my level, since he's aiming for law and finds debates enjoyable. he has the drive and determination to do well in life, and is at the very least takes steps to get where he wanted to get.

chloe wanted to get into medicine and be a doctor. she is chronically disabled and was failing half of he classes. from disabled to disabled person, there is no way in hell you are making it that far. id be surprised if she made it past 25, honestly. she viewed mental hospitals as a vacation, even excluding the morals on that view, its incorrect. she believed she wasn't addicted to her medication, and that it actually helped her. she never even tried.

i am beginning to become fond of alix, though. i hope my headmates realize how much better his is compared to others. taylor and vee are already fond of him, which is a good sign.

we seem to be improving our depression symptoms and dissociative amnesia, and we joined a cbt program to further along process after being voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility. (yes, we did ask to go. we were going to kill ourselves as soon as we were alone, we needed immediate help.) i want to work on breaking down our gatekeepers resolve, and get us to a place where we can work on final fusion. i would also like to address our npd traits, but our therapist wouldnt believe us, so ill have to work on that myself.

we haven't been practicing our religion as much as we used too, its kind of sad. we send a prayer up to apollo occasionally, and he usually answers. but otherwise we havent done any spell work. its sucks to admit it, and god to i want to delete this paragraph but i need to work on vulnerability to create and foster friendships that are mutually beneficial.

ive never seen the point of online friends, i think the concept is pointless. i've tried doing it, and everytime we ended up ghosting them. the effort did not match the spoils. if im going to have friends, i need them to invest in me before i invest in them. it can be materially, emotionally, or physically. as long as i gain benefits, you will too.

[mopeing]

One thing that stresses me out is a culture shift with regards to technology.

A decade or two ago, tech enthusiasts were generally distrustful of authority. Not just governments, but banks and megacorporations. They didn't believe in tech at all costs which is what the stereotype of "tech bros" these days is.

What motivated this post is (as usual) a series of reddit posts. One of them was a post about how National Rail want to get rid of ticket offices since we have ticket machines these days. Pretty much all of the comments were saying how this was a good thing, and implying that the only people who could possibly have an issue with this was old people who are too lazy to learn new technology. It wasn't until there were other articles about disabled people having difficulty at unmanned stations or instances of ticket machines not working that sentiment started to be that maybe having human beings at stations might be a good thing.

Then there was another post today about how society is increasingly going cashless. Again, the comments were saying how this is a good thing. The only people who would oppose this are old people (being old seems to be considered a moral failing by many redditors) and drug dealers so we shouldn't care. Never mind that cash is useful if technology ever breaks, or if you have a good reason to hide money, like someone with an abusive partner who monitors their bank statements.

This comes after weeks of news stories about Nigel Farage getting one of his bank accounts closed for political reasons. The gist of the comments on reddit was that it's good that this happened because we personally don't like him. (In fact, originally it was denial that it was politically motivated at all, which seemed to mysteriously stop when it came to light that it definitely was)

I really, really can't stress how much it terrifies me that people these days are perfectly fine with tech overreach just because it only negatively impacts people they don't like or just don't care about.

I consider myself to be a tech enthusiast. But I also distrust authority. I don't want a cashless society. I don't want unmanned train stations. I refuse to download things like banking apps because I don't think that having a smartphone should be mandatory for participation in society. I refuse to own any "smart" technokogy beyond a phone. I hate hate HATE when the only way to get support from a company is via a chatbot. It's not because I'm old, it's because I'm philosophically opposed to people in positions of power removing ways for ordinary people to empower themselves. And I want to avoid single-points-of-failiure. Humans can be reasoned with, machines cannot.

I like technology. It's useful and improves our lives. But it can also be used by big business to cut costs at the expense of service. It can be used to fleece people out of as much money as possible (e.g. websites using cookies to raise prices if it detects you left and came back to the same product later. Video games being full of microtransactions. Printers bricking themselves if they detect you're using third party ink. The entire SaaS business model)

It isn't just "tech bros" who want technology at all costs. It seems like society as a whole is perfectly willing to accept it. And I don't like that.

[vergess]

So there's this popular post circulating. It goes like this:

bulldyke-rider (Sep 11 2022):

"Do I deserve this?" "Am I worthy of this?"

So irrelevant. Do you want it?

OP has me blocked for saying this before and no doubt again in the future, but that vaguely phrased hopeful language is a recruitment tactic. See, OP used to be just a TERF, but has since decided being a "feminist" was too limiting, choosing to be an open and avowed eugenicist instead.

The unspecified "thing" OP wanted to do in spite of not "deserving" it was: A Lesbian Wife handed to her, since All These Fake Bisexuals Are Not Capable Of Truly Loving Another Woman. Incel behaviour is cool and normal and totally not flirting with fascism when lesbians do it, right? 🙄

Other gems of hers include:

Trans women also pretend to be lesbians for sexual predation

JKR and radical feminists in general are "too smart" for tumblr unlike the gormless ~moids and bihets~ that use this platform

Telling people that their poverty is a moral failing and that people in poverty should be denied the right to have children, but it's okay because it's "totally not eugenics"

Do you have a disability that makes using a computer or phone difficult or impossible? Good news! The eugenics parade continues, with "learn how to do it anyway, or die."

It's fine though, because see, some of her best friends are disabled, and that makes them better than most people and such an inspiration! So, her eugenics are TOTALLY cool and fine!

Oh, and if you disagree, be sure not to cite any of your studies in a "college degree" she thinks is "useless". If you study in a field capitalists don't want to fund, that makes you pro-capital by magic. Why, the very term "anti-intellectualism" only exists to justify extraction of wealth. It's not like anti intellectualism FAMOUSLY PRE-DATES THE ENGLISH FUCKING LANGUAGE ITSELF or anything. Aristotle? Never heard of her.

This is a great fucking example of what it looks like when a bigoted swamp of a person develops excellent fluency in the language of progressive, egalitarian, leftist, etc spaces. But uses that language to exclusively push the most heinous, undisguised hatred for any person she doesn't consider fuckable.

She makes these vague, optimistic sounding posts knowing they will get circulated by the people she hates, to literally trick them into directing their followers, especially their younger and more malleable followers, to her. She does this specifically to prey on people for indoctrination to her too-extreme-for-TERFs beliefs.

It is a predatory propaganda technique and I am desperately requesting that if you MUST reblog that post, at least make it clear to your followers NOT to click through to the OP.

Better yet, steal the post and make your own version that isn't a thinly veiled demand for sexual slavery!

[horizonsstandstill]

If that glorious revolution happened, maybe less people will need insulin. Because they were forced into cage-like working conditions and unhealthy diets that were pushed upon them and because they were pushed into poverty and because the healthcare system ran them dry and because they were heavily discriminated against by the doctors.

I'm not sorry but anyone who is supporting the brutal status quo are the most extreme of the extremists themselves. The world you're enjoying is built and being rebuilt upon the misery of billions of people. And they go out of their ways to ignore that suffering, and hiding behind hypothetical persons that will be inconvenienced by that. I'll burst their balloon but people are dying because they can't find insulin. Some die because they are rationing it.

What's their solutions for these people? May I hear your solutions other than bootlicking and deluding yourselves to believe you're actually moral human beings? Wake up. The healthcare system you defend is infamous for killing poor, old, disabled and also for the rampant racism that kills so many Black people through inhumane treatment. The revolutionary people I know from both authoritarian communists and anarchists of any kind are actually doing things for disability rights while these arrogant hypocrites find it okay if the eugenics imposed upon people by the order they love to worship the boots of.

Can't I say the same thing about your status quo? If your solution to keep the society stable entails the mass deprivation of people, how dare you argue it's a good solution? If you don't have any tangible solution, how dare you mock the oppressed people for wanting change? If your status quo is actually preventing feasible solutions, how dare you blame revolutionaries for desiring violence? After all, the status quo is built upon violence. By Weber's definition, a state is barely anything other than a monopoly on violence. If you're that against the violence, why aren't you guys are going against the perpetrators of the greatest violence on earth, starting by your own country? But I doubt any of the bootlickers are smart enough to realise the hypocrisy in it.

Let's get into an other aspect of hypocrisy. What about the misery caused by the counterexamples? Do they consider the fall of soviets a bad thing because it caused grave suffering for the millions of people? Do they consider Palestinian diabetes patients in Gaza not being allowed to have insulin having the same weight about their hypothetical scenario of a diabetic patient not having insulin because of a revolution?

Remember everyone, these colonialism apologists who think they know better than those people they are actively participating in the oppression of would have sided with the king in the French Revolution. They would have sided with the French in the Haitian Revolution. They would have sided with the slaveowners in the American civil war. They just don't want to be inconvenienced by both a loss of their privileges because of any substantial change, and the moral burden of upholding the status quo and taking responsibility for the perpetrated violence upon the undeserving.

I'm not even going to argue about the unfounded critique of not having actual solutions. That's their own projection because they don't want any solutions. Indigenous peoples, Black people, anarchists and communists have various solutions and they didn't fail by themselves. They were thwarted by the use of violence by the imperialist core. If they are afraid that the world is going to amputate the cancerous clump that they are in, we are heading towards there and they have nobody to blame but themselves for going against the peaceful efforts for change until it became unbearable for everyone other than them and the wearers of the boots they love to worship.

A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.

[relaxxattack]

hey, so i still havent read knifetrick yet, but i saw the post you reblogged about it being about capitalism's treatment of disabled people. im aware that this is just one interpretation of your work, but did you consciously make decisions about what messages to send within your story? did you purposefully include imagery or motifs or references or anything else to create a particular theme or idea?

im wondering because im making my own story, and im curious about what others put into theirs. i have a few key ideas i want to send with it, so i'm trying to tie all my characters and their arcs and the symbols and everything in my story to it. my brand of autism tends towards the "everything MUST have a logic to it!" and this is an obvious influence on it, but i still also think it's worth putting a lot of thought into it because theyre ideas i really care about. i want curious readers to be able to look into my story and see how it all ties together, and i want to impart messages of compassion onto my general audience as well. i think that all art has messages within it, whether personal or otherwise, and by being aware of what those are you can create a stronger and more cohesive story. at least thematically. if that is what someone wants to do, of course.

i know knifetrick is a story you started for fun. there is absolutely value in that (in your own joy) and i dont think art without intentional purposes or messages is inferior in any way. but did you ever get an idea for an overarching message in your mind, and implement it? its cool if you didnt, or if you did but dont want to say what it is too btw lol. im kinda just looking for the experience & thoughts another author had with their own thing. (i am very nervous sending this ask. i hope i dont sound like im jumping the gun.)

do not feel bad for asking this question, i'm always down to talk about my written works, even if it takes me a bit to collect my thoughts and figure out a response. yes, the truth is i went into knifetrick from the start with a lesson/moral i wanted to explore and teach. a fun fact about me is that i have several younger siblings, who are often being taught things i personally don't agree with. having conversations with them about what is really "right" or "moral" is awkward and not really doable. but stories and characters have always been a good and safe way for us to have this discussion-- why did this character do that thing, what makes this bad guy bad, and so on. this is why with writing i don't just like to tell a story, but i also like to teach a lesson. as patronizing as that sounds, i kind of just think it's pleasing when stories have a good moral behind them. although they don't need to for me to enjoy them. but back to the actual topic, yes. i did intentionally choose to explore the idea of capitalism's failure of certain groups of people in my story. that is what the main plot is actually wrapped around-- there's the obvious struggle with the main character, ran. he is physically and mentally disabled, he is treated differently than his peers. in a way he is fed from a young age the idea that the only way he can be considered equal to everyone else is to have a use to other people; to be the hardest working member of the order. his society encourages this worldview so that they can take advantage of him, but they don't actually care about him at all. they would discard him if he stopped being useful to them. the second example of this is the other main character, jackie. jackie's society also failed to take care of him-- he was orphaned, and then immediately lacked a support system of any kind, personal or governmental. he turned to a life of crime to make ends meet and repress his emotions, but all that did was eventually make his severe depression worse and manifest itself in a lot of anger issues and lashing out. by the time ran meets jackie, he's attempting to turn over a new leaf and take this opportunity he's been given to make an honest living; jackie cares a great deal about the people around him. the missing children are failed by society in the fact that they go missing in the first place, and nobody has bothered to try and find them (although the blame for that rests mainly on watson's shoulders, seeing as he tricked the king into thinking that was being solved). scoots and clem are failed by society as well- scoots is denied the job she actually wants to have due to her disability, and they are very poor. obviously this is made worse when clem goes missing, and since no one else is doing anything, scoots stops working to look for her sister. possibly the most obvious examples i can think of are maia snail and laggius maximus. maia's children are both autistic, with one of the two showing much more severe symptoms than the other. she's dealt with this in the way she best can as a mother, which is give them things they can comfortably work on to get their energy out and be helpful without having to do anything they don't like. society fails them as well, in that laggius is killed in the pit. but the more important part of their story is something snail tells ran: "i would have loved my brother even if he was never useful a day in his life, because he deserves it". essentially all throughout knifetrick, especially through ran, we are shown this idea of usefulness as equivalent to worth; i.e. how capitalism teaches us to view ourselves. we are shown how faulty of a system that is through the various characters. eventually ran realizes that he does not actually have to do anything useful to be worthy of existence, comfort, or love, and that is the sort of “end moral” of the narrative. ran ditches the council, showing that he knows his own worth and refuses to be tied to people who only ever hurt him, and then jackie helps the king start to reform subbin’s systems so that less people will fall through the cracks as he did.

so yes, that is essentially how i explored the idea of capitalism failing disabled people through knifetrick. there’s likely more stuff that i forgot but that’s what i remember off my head right now. anything anyone else sees in knifetrick about this topic is probably fair as well, death of the author and all that. this is what i intended while writing but other people might have seen more things in other characters that i didn’t think of too hard.

i hope that helps.

(bonus: firefox completely froze while i was at the end of this ask and made me fear for my fucking life. it took so much waiting and minimizing the program before i could safely save this to my drafts and then close firefox. terrifying.)

[jecook]

There's been this ongoing dialogue with BNHA fans about how certain fanon tropes are seemingly amoral, especially the idea of changing, erasing, healing to a level where they become invisible, or otherwise removing scars and/or trauma is a moral failing of those engaging with certain headcanons, art, fics, etc.

This conversation arises especially with the villain characters, as many AUs are about if their trauma never happened. Other stories and theories revolve around the main LOV getting rewound to be kids again so they can grow up without going through the horrific childhoods they have had. More have Shigaraki or Dabi have their scars get completely healed with no trace. Some art and fics have Dabi's burn scars replaced with tattoos. These things are all part of a larger narrative of fans of these character wanting the character to have a better, less painful alternative to the horror that they have been through, wanting the characters to not have to live in pain daily. Of course, much of BNHA is about scars and trauma. Getting rid of these things does indeed erase a large part of what Horikoshi addresses in the narrative, and many people feel that headcanons and fanon of this type also do a disservice to real people with scarring and real people who have gone through abuse and trauma. Their experiences can't be magically erased, although a lot of media often makes it seem like disabilities, scars, and trauma in fantasy and scifi deserves to be healed, given a completely new start, even though that isn't possible for those people in actuality.

So is it wrong to have these headcanons/fanon? In short, no. Seriously, no. I approach this with the exact same logic as a lot of the same rhetoric as being able to write dark content--this fan content will not change the direction that the canon narrative is going in, it is just something that these people want to explore for their owns reasons. It is nice to imagine characters if they had gotten to live better lives and it makes sense to wish for this idealistic life, and that's okay. It's aesthetically cool to imagine Dabi with intricate tattoo work instead of tattoos. Yes, it is good to consider the larger concepts behind how these things can have serious implications in published work, but I firmly believe that most fanfiction inhabits less of a literary zone and more of a fan wish fulfillment zone, which is awesome! Good, that's what many people want in their fiction oftentimes!

If someone's enjoyment of BNHA hinges on how scars, trauma, and disabilities are represented honestly, then great! Ignore the rest of the stuff by scrolling past, filtering it out, not clicking on that twitter thread, unfollowing, or blocking.

Personally, I understand fan content disregarding what you like best about a work. There's tropes popular in BNHA fanon that I don't engage with because it leaves out what I like best. That isn't a moral failing on the part of those creators, it's just a difference in what time of fan content you enjoy.

Tl;dr: please stop moralizing so much fanon content. If you believe that people should be free to enjoy and explore what appeals to them, sometimes that means just letting people enjoy a wholesome, idealistic version of the story. And that's okay.

[coulsonlives]

It's 2023 y'all, we're here and queer and mad at assholes, but here are four ableist insults you (yes, you) should consider not saying the next time someone chaps your nips:

Don't insult people by saying 'get a job'. Not being able to work, or not having a job, isn't a moral failing, a measurement of someone's maturity, or a measurement of their effort, it's also super stinky because of the internalized toxic capitalism because it implies a person's value only goes up substantially if they get a job

Don't tell someone you hate that they 'probably live in their parent's basement', because it's ableist and culturally ignorant. It's the most western shit ever y'all. Some people need support bc of disabilities and other things, some people just like living with their parents. Plus y'know, at least here in Canada, shit's fucked for housing so a lot of people do live with their parents, big deal really

Don't insult people by calling them ugly or gross or hideous, because most of the time there's nothing they can do to change it. How is a person supposed to easily change their nose or weight or acne? It's a low blow. Call out their actions instead

Don't call people 'mouthbreathers'. There is a big percentage of the population with chronic congestion, allergies, or structural things that make breathing through their nose impossible, people with sleep apnea or other obstructive sleep shit are often mouth breathers and you wouldn't link that to a pejorative insult, right? But the origin of 'mouthbreather' was to describe a stupid, dumb person who stares vacantly at nothing with a slack jaw. So by using this word you're calling someone stupid and weaponizing that as a pejorative, it's kinda like the r-slur but more covert

If people want to scream at me because 'it's not that deep', that's cool, but I'm not listening. Peace out

[obsessingoverthisandthat]

Please don't take the hate to heart. There are several reasons why there is so much of it and it has nothing to do with the actual writing of Nevermore.

1. The age group of the target audience on Webtoon. Webtoon has a lot of very young readers, reaching as young as 13 (and I heard a rumour of 10) years old. These young readers logically do not have the same experience in engaging with media they consume calmly, reasonably and actually critically and they absolutely do engage with any sort of comic that catches their eye on Webtoon regardless of the target demographic. Due to their young age they have yet to learn to analyze a story beyond what is presented on the surface.

2. General declining media literacy. This has been noticed and discussed on several social media platforms: There is a very noticeable tendency of people failing to notice subtlety or even just plain factual statements in the story (example. of it happening in popular media: "Alastor, Altruist, died for his friends" was said in the show Hazbin Hotel. People thought his surname was Altruist). In Nevermore people fail to consider the fact that the reader knows less of Annabel Lee than they know of Lenore because the story largely is being told out of Lenores pov. Additionally, they also fail to consider the tidbits that we are shown of what makes Annabel Lee Annabel Lee as important information and how the story partially frames her as this cold manipulative mastermind, when she is far more human than innitially presented. People get presented with a character that makes Morally questionable decisions and due to the large lack of a backstory info dump explaining why she is like that, fail to see her as anything more than a villain. And in their eyes it really does not help that the story is incredibly successful in making Lenore likable and plays with the idea that Annabel could hurt Lenore and other fan favorites, because people who do not get nuance usually find it uncomfortable and even Morally wrong if a character does not behave how they want them to.

3. Sexism. Let's be real. Annabel Lee is a Morally grey female character. People easily fuck up the characterization of characters like Katara from Atla for example and perceive them worse than they actually are and Katara is a hero. If a woman dares to be Morally complex and hurt people differently than in the established "Sexy girlboss I'll beat u up" way? People are not gonna like her. It doesn't mean she's written wrong or badly, it means that any perceived wrongdoing is being judged ten times as harshly then if the character were male.

Those are three reasons I could come up with just off the top of my head.

Now, combine all that and mix it up into a big pile of smoking hot garbage takes and u have the hate comments.

It literally has nothing to do with ur guys excellent writing. U didn't fuck up anywhere. I'd rec disabling the comments if possible for ur sanitys sake. Maybe take a break from making the comic for a long while if it's affecting u really badly. And keep remembering that there are readers who love Annabel Lee (like me, for example. She's my absolute favorite, I'm literally obsessed with what u are doing with her) and love ur story and love what u are doing with Nevermore. Ur doing great.

Thank you for making it in the first place <3

Oofh. The hate in the comments. It's starting to get to me. I've been trying to ignore it for a long time now, but like they literally want one of the romantic leads to disappear. So many people. They just hate her. Like not even "love to hate her." Just despise her enough to call her slurs and pray for her death. In a wlw.

I must have really fucked this up, I think.

[grossbabygoblin]

Okay so my bad on putting a gender on it however the rest of what you've said falls flat in my opinion.

So explain your reasoning on someone that gets raped and gets pregnant as a result? Someone that is pregnant but there is a severe issue with the fetus that would cause deformity or put the parent at risk if its taken to full term knowing full well the child would not survive. How about someone is abused or manipulated into sex? Or someone that has an issue with contraception and would not be able to support a child (I don't see you offering to adopt). There are so so many reasons someone would make that choice besides being careless with sex. You're very judgmental without having a solution like most anti abortion belivers. Definitely made me second guess you as a person because you come across as someone who would support others rights not want to rip them out. Banning safe abortions won't stop unsafe abortions from happening.

Someone getting raped is a horrific thing to have happen and our laws and justice system should be better at investigating and punishing rapists. Heck, up to me we would castrate them and more. However, it does NOT justify the killing of another life. That baby is not responsible for how it came into this world and should not have their right to life stripped from them because of that. Same thing with someone being abused or manipulated into sex.

And in the case of the child being deformed, even if they are likely to be deformed or have a disability, it is not someone else’s choice to make whether they get to live or not. Their life is not less valuable than any other baby just because they might be considered deformed. If they don’t want to be alive later in life because of it that is their own decision to make.

In the case that there is a likely hood that the parent is at great risk health wise and might die in the process of pregnancy and/or birth, and the baby might die in that process as well, bc of health reasons, then that is the only moral scenario where an abortion can possibly make sense. Any other time is inhuman and immoral and downright fucking evil.

And yeah, contraception and birth control fails. It’s a good precaution, but people should know that it is still a risk as well that even if they use it there is still a high probability that they can get pregnant. So if people don’t want any possibility of getting pregnant and having a baby, then don’t have intercourse, dick and cum in/near vagina type sex. There are still tons of other ways to have sex. There is oral sex, there is fingering/hand jobs, there are multitudes of toys one can use on themselves and their partner. Ect, ect. If you want to have intercourse type sex you are consenting to having a child.

Also, yeah I would adopt. If I had the money and means to, I would and probably will someday. I have thought about adopting a baby ever since I was in high school so don’t act like you fucking know me when you don’t. You say I’m being judgmental but you are the one being judgmental tbh. And if you’re view of me has changed I really couldn’t give a fuck. Even if you are one of my mutuals I literally do not care. You mean nothing to me.

And I do support people’s rights. Gay rights, trans rights, right to own guns, ect. And most importantly those babies lives. Babies lives matter. They are valuable and precious.

[spirit-of-vengeance]

@spxcemuses @mr-mansnoozie @xxstar-bluesxx

Guess who gathered enough mind to finally write her full backstory of Western Verse. Her being a bounty hunter is set in the Wild West time period (1865-1895), there is no current year(s) to set her story in mainly because I don't want to make a mistake messing up the timeline.

Calm before the storm

Her father, Attila a lesser Hungarian noble whom supported the 1848-1849 revolutionary war but after the failure of it he escaped emigrated to America to avoid the Habsburg revenge, soon followed by his brother Gábor. He could save a small amount of his fortune along with his two most important horses: a purebred Lipizzan stallion and an extremely rare Akhal Teke mare. He had settled near a small town, due to his financial situation and education as a noble he established a school with the support and approval of the local church. To quieten his guilt for abandoning his country in its peril, he poured all of his heart into educating children; at least he is still useful in some way.

One day, a group of artists traveling artists, acrobats traveled through the town and the aristocrat fell in love at first sight. She was like the queen of fairy from the folk tales he'd heard in his childhood, she was tall, blue eyes sparkled like light sapphire, long golden brown hair floated ethereally with every twirl. The smitten lord shamelessly courted the the graceful acrobat, determined to know at least the name.

The group had stayed in the town for a few weeks, allowing Attila's and Myra's romance to blossom; after a month she ended up staying with him, just like in true fairytales.

My obsession with angst backstory strikes again

The lord was in love, deeper than poets could express it. Since the loss of his home and country he had found his place in the universe along with the perfect companion by his side. He paid less attention to the school, the church and other public affairs; it wasn't like he abandoned them but became more withdrawn to spend time with the love of his life, especially after the birth of their daughter. She was almost the perfect miniature of her mother, same beautiful hair glinting gold in the sunlight, only her eyes were the brightest emerald green he'd ever seen.

While Myra's heart and aura was as pure as a fairy's; the local church was beyond distressed. They claimed that Attila had completely abandoned helping those in need because of her wicked seduction. When they witnessed her performing for the amusement of the crowd, the 'temptress witch' brand couldn't be lifted. They gathered a few enthusiastic townsfolk whom shared their views and a few morally questionable men whom only wanted a piece of the lord's fortune.

10 year old Karma was awakened from her deep slumber by her frantic father; smoke and yelling blinding her senses as he carried her out of the burning house into the nearby forest so the mob won't find her. He promised her he will be back but he had to return into their home for Myra; he couldn't leave her inside. Karma watched her dad disappear into the flames, the air filled with suffocating smoke and religious shouts for god to smite the sinners. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the spot where her father was gone, waiting for her parents to stumble out of the half collapsed building; but that never had happened. She sat unmoving from her spot, struck staring into the flames then into the ashes as the sun has risen.

Birth of the marksman

Attila's brother, Gábor arrived the next day after hearing the news, he was the one whom found Karma still staring at the ruins in a catatonic state. He couldn't avenge his sibling as it meant endangering his niece and she has lost more than enough.

Gábor expected her to become a soft spoken, reserved lady once she overcame her trauma; that theory was soon abandoned when once he had awoken to his niece practicing with his rifle outside with frighteningly great accuracy. The young girl naturally had an extraordinary aim and after a few long talks, he'd seen the determination burning in her to avenge the murder of her parents. Given by her mother's dance lessons, she was also flexible and capable of many different acrobatic moves; this combined with her aim proven to be a very dangerous combination.

To not awaken suspicion he told his friends Karma was an orphan whose parents were killed by bandits and he had adopted her to give her a family and education. Karma was fascinated chasing greater heights of her skills, this involved reading every possible book about anatomy, marking, engraving the useful spots of the body. Karma knows where to shoot to disarm, to cause a slow death, to paralyze, to disable for life and when it is only a warning: an injury which will heal with time. Along with her accuracy, her drawing speed only can be compared to lightning. Although she prefers/most comfortable with her dual revolvers (model undecided yet), she is still a menace with shotguns, rifles, flintlocks and even bows due to Gàbor's 'A Hungarian is not a Hungarian if they can't use a bow' mindset.

The bounty hunter quicker than death

Karma had her first official gunfight at the age of 18 on the auction. for Vihar (Storm), the filly of her father's horses.

Detailed post about Vihar

She officially entered the bounty hunter business when she was 20 and Vihar was 2, aiming for the most dangerous criminals whom committed the worst acts possible. In her early years after the kill she slit open corpses she trying to find the bullet, surverying the damage it caused and adding filler information to her anatomy knowledge. Of course she didn’t bother burying the bodies, she knew as a woman she has to be extremely vicious above talented to be hired and mutilated dead bodies did send a great message & served as cement for building her reputation. The name Karma wasn't entirely her idea, many thankful family members claimed that karma has came for their loved ones' murderers. Her talent spread like wildfire among the men of law, glad to be rid of the dangerous scum; with careful planning, use of environment and Vihar as backup she had wiped out gangs, not solely focused on individuals.

Unfortunately her reputation summoned an unofficial grand price on her head as well in certain circles; they had tracked her back to her uncle's house. The battle claimed Gábor's life and nearly her sight as her right eye was almost slashed out. The new loss opened old wounds: her not being able to protect her loved ones. She couldn't look into a mirror, the scar a reminder how despite all years of training she wasn't untouchable; after burying her uncle plan to gain control over her psyche already formed.

She took a knife and carefully carved four half circles around her eye to form a crosshair with her pupil being the middle of it. She made sure she kept the wounds open for enough time to scar as visibly as the vertical cut; she wanted a symbol to add to her legend. Excuse my pathetic excuse of an edit, I'm not good in this, nor I can draw.

Now Karma is 25, Vihar is 6, both of them in their peak physical prime; the name Vihar is also symbolic a little, Karma is the lightning to her horse. She is dancing on the thin edge of bounty hunting and being an outlaw as she often takes...side jobs to help people who deserve it and usually that person doesn't have a bounty on their head, therefore it is technically murder.

Local antisocial feral monk & cocky gunslinger feral lady / addition of the AU with the amazing @mr-mansnoozie

Near her uncle's house, Karma had discovered a cave and a grumpy mute monk living in it along with his pet bear. The monk, Sandy eventually became a second uncle to the traumatized angry orphan, he taught her how to move & creep upon someone soundlessly, disappear without a trace, cover her stances and behavior patterns of various animals. Before and after returning from a job she always visits her uncle of choice for a chat; a silent way to prepare him to the possibility of her not coming back. But she always do. She considers Sandy as part of her tiny family, although his...copying mechanisms with his own traumas were a bit strange to get used to; she adapted quite fast, after all who is she to judge with a past like that?

I'm a dead man walking, Hell's at my door.

aka collection of small headcanons

🎯 Her dual revolvers are called Salvation and Damnation because she's dramatic

🎯 Karma has a small sketchbook filled with anatomy drawings for further practice.

🎯 She actually can sing, but rarely does, only to Vihar since she never received positive feedback on it. Her voice is gritty, rugged and deep; definitely not the usual and desired sounding from a woman.

🎯 If her target was an outstandingly cruel bastard and/or one of those whom killed her parents she uses a little psychological torture. After fatally wounding them she starts whistling (for the most terrifying experience wear headphones & close your eyes while listening) as they try to crawl away or beg for mercy. The first time the whistle gets shrill & more intense is when she lazily reloads, knowing she has both the time and the upper hand. The second pace shift is when she aims; she shoots during the last, long drawn out high note.

🎯 This is her only verse where Cindy is afraid, no terrified of fire; during her....26 AU's she's always been associated with fire despite dying in or being wounded by it. In this verse she is more tied to lightning, the scent of smoke is enough to send her into a silent panic attack and despite loathing the cold she will never sit close to the fireplace. Her other deep fears include injuring her hands & sight and losing Vihar. Her horse is the only remaining family member of hers, she can't fail her too.

🎯 Most of Karma's scars, injuries are a result of her standing between Vihar and a knife/bullet/ even a bullwhip when a criminal was smart enough to catch on their deep emotional bond.

🎯 She has recurring night terrors about the night her parents died, she always wakes up in cold sweat; she's sort of used to them. Though, sometimes she still cries but thankfully Vihar is there to comfort her.

🎯 Karma has a special morning stretch routine to keep her flexibility and warm up her hands & keep them steady and fast.

🎯 Due to her dad and uncle she received high quality education

🎯 For the untrained eye, the belt of her hat are simple crosses while in reality, they are inverted crosses to symbolize her stance with Christianity

🎯 Karma's middle name is Emerald, given by her father due to her eye color.

🎯 Karma was first inspired by League of Legends Miss Fortune because that name alone is great but unfortunately she is too pirate coded for a western so I abandoned the relation. Though when Karma is not being the 'Call me a slow reader but I only made it to the Dead part, the or Alive didn't register.' ; her personality is similar to hers.

🎯 Due to her dad, Karma is actually half aristocrat. Not like she cares about it the slightest; the only indication of noble blood is her idle stance. It is an unconscious mirror of how her father used to hold himself: back straightened to almost impossible point, left arm behind it, right hand resting on the grip of in her case, revolver instead of hilt of a sword.

🎯 If given the chance to live a normal life, she would've grown into a captivating, lively young woman, much like her mother but with the aristocrat elegance of her father; finding a suitor who lives up to her parents' and her standards would've been the challenge of the century.

🎯 Her special move is called Dance of Death. This is used as last resort when she's facing more opponents up to 12, as with her dual revolvers she has 12 bullets without reloading. She mentally marks the stances of all opponents, predicts their movement, firing order and possible way of their bullets before whirling out of her hiding place. Each pose minimizes the chance of getting shot, and with each change of movement two bullets are fired, two men drop dead.

🎯 Her accuracy isn't just 'gun goes boom >:D' but a combination of natural talent, endless practice, movement prediction, sharp, quick thinking & analytical skills and different techniques molten together to utilize them all at once

🎯 Her hair is now as long as her mother's, she always keeps it in a single tight braid to keep it out of the way; without her hat and hair down she actually loses some of her dangerous edge.

🎯 The only physical memory Karma has of her parents is her dad's hussar sword she found underneath the ruins of the house, it was protected by a very thick wooden box & a lock of her mother's hair is tied to the grip. She has hidden it in the nearby forest, her thoughts often wander to it along with the wish to wield it.

[heliza24]

Reblogging this because I enjoy Blue's speculative August thoughts but also because I want to highlight some of the points she made about how damaging it can be to hear the phrase "healthy relationship" held up as a paragon in this fandom over and over again, and pull some of those ideas from behind the cut.

As a disabled/chronically ill/mentally ill person I hear this stuff all the time. "Oh we don't care whether our baby is a boy or a girl, as long as they're healthy!". "Oh it doesn't matter what your weight is, as long as you're healthy!". Well ok. Some babies are born disabled or ill. Some people are fat and sick. Some people (like me) will never be healthy again. The options are unhealthy or dead. And you know what? All those people are still people with inherent value, who deserve to be loved and cherished, regardless of their health status. Health does not equal worth. Our society wants to tell us that to be healthy (and to be in total control of your health, through diet and exercise and other means that don't really do anything at all for you if you are seriously ill) is to be morally good, and that to be unhealthy is to be bad or maybe even evil. But it isn't true.

So when I hear people in fandom constantly talking about how "healthy" Wilmon's relationship is, and therefore how good and pure and worthy of fic/fan art/gifs it is, I start to grind my teeth. Can we not come up with a better word that doesn't have such a eugenics echo to it? Can we not give Simon and Wilhlem the room to be realistic people, who sometimes mess up and hurt each other, and still think that their relationship is worth fascination and study and our creative devotion? Can we not acknowledge that they have done bad things to each other, in canon, and hurt each other? Can we not acknowledge that Wilhelm is bringing an anxiety disorder and a metric ton of grief into the relationship, and that Simon is bringing a familial history of addiction and related trauma? Or do those things have to be sanded down in order for them to be worthy of fandom's adoration? Do they have to be healthy for us to love them?

I think Blue did such a good job of summing it up here:

"I want to read romances where writers are informed about how trauma can affect relationships and how one can learn to survive it, yes. But I feel iffy about the idea of a perfectly “healthy” romances for sargust or wilmon, seeing as they’re all characters with trauma and mental health struggles, and all of them have days that are Not So Good. They could all mature into adults who’ve learned from their past, but like, Wilhelm might still have panic attacks because anxiety is like that sometimes and it’s not a moral failing. August could go through rehab and be in a much better place and harm others less, and still might struggle with intense emotional disregulation or thoughts related to disordered eating, you know? I’d like reading trauma-informed stories where sargust can mature and heal. But they still might have bad days because that’s what being human is."

I don't particularly care if Wilmon reaches some benchmark of what is considered a "healthy" relationship (whatever the hell that would even be) or not. As a fan of the characters I want them to grow and find joy in each other and to do their best to love each other. And as an audience member of Young Royals I mainly care that their relationship is portrayed in a way that is captivating and true to Lisa's vision. And none of that has to do with health status.

Hello @simonsapelsin! I’m ready to respond to the comment you left yesterday.

Within the parameters of canon—most likely no, but maybe? It would have to be backed up by a lot of plot and character developments in order for it to work.

This ended up being way too long, so more thoughts on sargust + thoughts on the potential created by AUs and canon divergences + thoughts on the idea of “healthy” relationships behind the cut…

So obviously season 2 ended in a really, really bad place for sargust. August refuses to embrace accountability and doubles down on his harmful behavior. Our last shot of Sara is her calling the police to report him, and in that moment she’s completely alone. They have that painful conversation about August buying Rousseau. That’s… that’s a lot for them to overcome, and season 3 doesn’t have enough episodes to get us there fully, unless the writing team are very, very clever and efficient.

There’s a popular fan interpretation of sargust that says that Sara and August both project identities onto one another and don’t see one another’s real selves. I understand and agree with that interpretation up to a point, but I don’t know if I necessarily agree with it 100%. In my mind they do see real things about one another (August sees Sara’s ambition and desire for independence, Sara sees August’s emotional vulnerability and need for help. And they do connect with one another in ways that others haven’t been able to connect with them. Where August and Sara fail to predict about one another is the other’s choices. Sara assumed August would choose to be honest and August assumed Sara would choose to be queen. But I think the care they showed for one another earlier in the season was real, and the way they could hold space for one another was real. That’s really a meta I could write for another time, but a lot of it hinges on this line, which is not a line I am even remotely normal about:

(Note: I’ll probably write this meta eventually. The fact that these characters create a sort of home with one another! Also lol @ August looking like he is stoned out of his mind.)

So what would it look like for sargust to get a Second Chance Romance within the parameters of canon? I mean, first of all, they’d both have to mature independently for a while and work through a lot of the trauma they’re carrying. 

For Sara, I want her to get away from home and have some distance from the place she grew up so she can put her childhood in perspective. Therapy would help. (I want that for Simon, too!) I’d also like to see Sara find some neurodivergent friends/community—I mean, we do tend to find one another and run in packs! And then some sort of career or life path that makes her happy. Maybe with horses, sure, but it’d also be interesting to see Sara keep horses as a beloved hobby while also finding a different career she’s passionate about.

For August, accountability and rehabilitation and understanding of the harm he did is incredibly important for his personal growth. Whether he faces that through the legal system or through some other process is something we have yet to see in the show. Then comes the long work of restitution and atonement, as well as the steps August needs to take to grapple his various personal traumas. Like, please get this boy a place to process his grief over his father, treatment for his disordered eating, and rehab for his addiction to pills.

Now, Sara and August wouldn’t have to be 100% healed and self-actualized when they run across one another as adults—I don’t know if there’d be a story if they were, and this sort of stuff is lifelong work! But further along the paths above that I described—that could still be a good story.

Beyond growth and maturity, I think we’d have to see some sort of change in how August and Simon relate to one another, happening primarily on Simon’s terms because he was the one wronged, and that would need to be an important part of the story. This feels crucial. Now that Sara’s aware how much she hurt her brother, I don’t imagine she’d enter a relationship with August even if August is a super chill, okay person now. So I actually think a good Second Chance Romance story would have to heavily involve Simon in one way or another. But a fic where August and Simon interact more honestly with one another, and August has to face up to Simon’s personhood? That would definitely hold my attention. (I am kind of hoping they get more extended interaction in season 3, really. They have some sneaky but fascinating parallels as characters and I like watching the way Omar and Malte play off one another.)

Outside of canon… one thing I have considered is the potential to write a version of sargust in AUs that’s more tailored toward happy endings. Which doesn’t quite relate to your question but I do want to talk about it. As of now, AUs/Canon Divergence fics are a perfect place to make sargust actually work out. This fandom has a lot of imagination for AUs and canon divergences. And it’s no surprise—Young Royals is a rich, nuanced text that can be explored from many angles, so it only makes sense that we’d want to create a thousand alternate universe scenarios where canon could have gone differently. In my mind, if people can write “Erik lives” AUs, then “sargust is successful because August learns over time to be less shitty” AUs are also fair game.

The thing with writing an AU or canon divergence is that August’s complex brand of shittiness does not have to be inevitable or eternal. We’ve got creative freedom, baby! We can write any kind of arc for him that we want to and nudge him in all kinds of directions, and set him and Sara up for success! To me, part of the spirit of Young Royals is embracing the idea that everyone has choices, and that they are capable of growth that allows them to make better choices. I mean, sure, it’d be weird to find a version of August on page #1 of a fanfic who’s suddenly like, quoting bell hooks and pushing for an inclusive socialist utopia. I don’t know if I’d suspend my disbelief for that. But I also really struggle to suspend my disbelief for AU versions of August where he’s like… a straightforward flat villain solely out to cause trouble, which is something I have seen out there in the wild and clicked the “back” button over. I crave the nuance. The texture. The literary crunch of it all!

And I don’t think August has to be the center of a fic for that to happen, even. Like I think there’s ways to have him and Sara as a story’s Beta Couple or Gamma Couple and we’re rooting for them and you know what? It’s an AU where some of the characters are fae or 1980s punks or rival scholars of Cold War history so events are happening differently anyway. I’m sure there are ways to write August in character as his shitty self and have him eventually grow and change, without having August also ruins his chances with Sara because he does something that fucks Simon over so completely, you know?

Now, I know there’s fic writers out there who never under any circumstances want to write August’s character and can’t do so from a place of emotional safety. For some folks it is more comfortable to engage with him as a more straightforward villain. And that’s fair. Everyone should write what they feel comfortable writing! In this post, however, I’m thinking more about the people who want to include some kind of nuanced arc for August in their story, but also feel like no one will be interested in it, or like they’ll actually lose readers and engagement if they do write about him, even as a secondary character. Every once in a while I’ll see another fan allude to a really cool fic idea that involves August in some way or takes him in an interesting direction, and then they’ll be like, “oh, but why bother writing it, no one will read it anyway.” And… that makes me incredibly sad! Because I would happily read those fics. I know some other people who would happily read those fics! But I think we’ve normalized the idea that that’s just not how things are “done” in the Young Royals fandom. Which makes it very hard for people to take that risk. I think we’re missing out on some cool stories as a result, that could really be satisfying to read.

One final thought… I notice some fandoms use the word “healthy”  when describing their OTPs/favorite pairings. I hope you’re okay with me unpacking that a bit? This is less a response to your comment in particular and more a response to fandom at large.

Honestly, “healthy” is a word that’s starting to feel pretty loaded for me, and can kind of rub me the wrong way. It seems that generally what people mean by it—when they apply it to a pairing—is that the pairing is good at communicating, respects one another’s boundaries, responds to one another’s needs, processes trauma, etc. And I do appreciate in a story when characters can do these things, to an extent.

But putting it under this umbrella label of “healthy” …well. Okay. “Healthy” is a word that society has added a moral dimension to, and it often gets weaponized against people with disabilities and mental illnesses and other chronic conditions. And health is not an indicator of personal worth. Holding people IRL to a standard of “healthy” kinda feels like you’re saying “it’s okay if you have these diagnoses, as long as you manage them in such a way that it seems like they don’t affect you or the people around you.” (And as someone who’s just recently begun managing a chronic condition, who’s struggling with how to tell my family members because of the way they’re going to moralize about my diet or my stress levels, and also struggling with the shit I’ve internalized over the years… well. I’m thinking about how we use the word “healthy” a lot.)

Bringing this back to the realm of fandoms (because, oof, TMI there blue!) holding a fictional character or pairing to the standard of “healthy” can kind of create some uncomfortable fandom dynamics—at least it can for me, personally. When I see fans take pride in the fact that they ship a “healthy” pairing, to the point where they frequently talk about how “healthy” their pairing is, it’s almost impossible for me not to read such comments as using a moralizing tone that implicitly puts others down for having “unhealthy” ships. Sometimes—generally I haven’t seen this as much in YR fandom—there are even people who will straight up write you off if they perceive your ship as “unhealthy” or “toxic.” And then suddenly all ships are either deemed healthy or unhealthy, and healthy ships are retroactively interpreted as doing everything right, while unhealthy ships can never do anything right, and there’s no hope for them. And that is… a bleak and boring landscape for shipping, if you ask me.

I want to read romances where writers are informed about how trauma can affect relationships and how one can learn to survive it, yes. But I feel iffy about the idea of a perfectly “healthy” romances for sargust or wilmon, seeing as they’re all characters with trauma and mental health struggles, and all of them have days that are Not So Good. They could all mature into adults who’ve learned from their past, but like, Wilhelm might still have panic attacks because anxiety is like that sometimes and it’s not a moral failing. August could go through rehab and be in a much better place and harm others less, and still might struggle with intense emotional disregulation or thoughts related to disordered eating, you know? I’d like reading trauma-informed stories where sargust can mature and heal. But they still might have bad days because that’s what being human is.

In addition, I also like tragic sargust where things just don’t work out between them and everything falls apart, because as I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, I’m a slut for tragedy.

So. Idk. I talk about all these things and all these possibilities in hopes that maybe someone in the fandom will get inspired by them. We’ll see if it does that! Ahaha. It’s worth a try.

ADDENDUM, since I didn’t talk about my own fic ideas here:

Heart and Homeland is an AU fic, and it’s tragic sargust for sure. And I’m proud of it, despite the part where their relationship is tragic! And I tried to work in little glimmers where you see how their relationship could have worked.

Now, my next fic idea, shared with @heliza24, is one set in a canon divergence universe where Sara goes to campus to look for Simon, on the night that Everything Is Fake But Wilhelm’s Love For Simon Is Real. As Sara walks around campus, trying to find her brother, she bumps into August, who is still high from the party and is just sort of… emotionally all over the place? In my head I think Sara and August actually trip over one another and he gets a skinned knee or something, so they have to break into some part of school late at night to get band-aids from a first aid kid, and they end up in a weird, late-night conversation and August actually ends up talking to Sara about his grief for Erik. Thus, he’s never at the window to film the video, and some weird door opens up in his brain about actually having someone he can open up to. He doesn’t change overnight, but his character—and everyone else’s characters—are butterfly effected in a totally different direction. That’s all I’m going to say for now! But gosh, I really hope I get the time and energy to write it.