#to be clear. i don't think they are necessarily “good”

[sideblog-usernametaken]

See, this is one of my issues with Trigun Stampede (Disclaimer up front: Trigun Stampede isn't necessarily a bad anime, I just don't think it's a good adaptation or reimagining of Trigun).

As you go through the original anime and manga it becomes increasingly clear that Vash's pacifism is an active choice he is making. There are points where he does legitimately take into consideration the option of taking another person's life, because he can do it and it would immediately solve the problem. Yet he still comes to the conclusion not to.

These two versions of Vash constantly have their ideologies genuinely challenged both by the world they live in and by themselves. They present themselves to the world in whatever way that helps the most, be it by acting silly to put others at ease or acting bloodthirsty to make people evacuate. It's all so calculated and you can see how much it wears on him, especially when it doesn't work. Whenever the mask slips it's usually because he's exhausted his other options. That's where some of his anger comes from, the fact that doing things his way doesn't always work out but he hasn't found a better alternative. So you're never really judging other characters for being afraid that he's going to snap and what that would entail. What happens when someone who's been holding back this whole time decides it isn't worth it anymore?

You don't get that at all in Stampede. Everything Vash does looks and feels sincere, there's no performance to put people at ease because his regular personality already puts people at ease. Here it seems less like Vash is choosing not to kill people and more like he can't. Like the possibility of even thinking about killing someone himself is just permanently shut down. Sure we see him mad sometimes, but never to the point where he almost actually murders someone with his own two hands. He never feels threatening despite the story trying to tell you he's strong.

Sure, this Vash will hide stuff like his sadness and guilt, but there's no real anger. You never wonder if this is the thing that'll make him call it quits. He's arrived at the same conclusion as the original Vash without doing any of the emotional, philosophical, or logical work needed to get there.

It's just a lot more meaningful and compelling to have a pacifist who is making an active choice than one who doesn't consider any alternatives.

(Also I can give specific examples but I don't really want to get into spoilery territory on this reblog)

See what bugs me about the babygirl-ification of Vash is because the whole reason he was cool as a character to me was because he acted silly and rakeish and was such a pacifist to the point of being ridiculous-- but he also was capable of great violence. Of anger. The fascade would slip at times and show the lonely, sad man beneath. But it also showed the rage. The power. As capable of destruction as Knives himself.

He isn't a "uwu baby". He is a weapon of mass destruction who chooses love. Who chooses peace.

[bloodbluepearl]

i think that the phenomenon of people ignoring / leaving out swansea should be studied because there is a LOT of implicit fatphobia and ageism in that that people don't realize.

and even when people do include him in posts, he often gets boiled down to just being a father figure, which is yet another product of ageism- he's not really that fatherly in the game at all, but the only way that some people can really see an older man like him is as a father, so that's what he gets reduced to.

again, it's all implicit and subconscious more often than not, so it isn't like people are actively trying to be harmful in the way that they perceive him and exclude him, but it's important to recognize these schools of thought and call them out for what they are to nip them in the bud in order to seriously engage with the game on a critical level.

it can also manifest in actual explicitly fat-related jokes, which in and of themselves aren't necessarily indicative of anything, but when people are both dismissive of him as a character, dismissing his impact on the story and reducing him down to what they think an older man should be WHILE making these jokes, it's very clear that there are some very harmful biases at play.

i've been thinking of making this post for a while but what really pushed me to was a conversation i had in a server with someone who would not engage with the idea of swansea as a character outside of making jokes about him being fat, and when i pointed this out, they said theyd say it about anyone, that it wasn't because he was the only fat character, and then later that they couldn't be assed to understand what i meant when i explained how they and a good handful of people see him is really weird. this on top of a few artists i've seen who would draw every character MINUS swansea in a piece. these sorts of conversations need to be held! people will do and say these things without realizing the subconscious thought processes that motivate their actions, so it needs to be said that there ARE these biases and this DOES happen so that people can, at the very least, be aware of it.

[idyllic-musings]

i didn't feel like formatting this one so....... 🙏🙏🙏 ambrose enjoyers, here is a random unformatted minimal dialogue drabble of yaoshi being an attentive parent and easing ambrose through an episode of mara 🫶 i love writing about characters who have said less than ten lines canonically fr /lh

a thick, impenetrable haze had settled in ambrose's mind.

it happened sometimes, generally after injuries or stressful encounters; they weren't unfamiliar with it, and if they really focused on it, really thought about what may have caused the hazy episode, they could feel a dull, pulsating throb in their side. that was undoubtedly what had caused them to fall into such a poor state. a nasty hit from one of the anitmatter legion's elites... right. they'd almost forgotten about the encounter, really. they were somewhat surprised by the fact that it still hadn't healed. it should have. the child of abundance themselves should have healed by now.

a scalding, burning sense of frustration boiled in their chest. the destruction, damn the destruction—how could nanook be so careless? how could they stand to live with themselves, knowing the kind of pain and suffering they have plagued the universe with?

(some would say the same about yaoshi. the thought only made ambrose's blood boil further.)

nanook, nanook, what a vile aeon...

the gentle drag of nails on their cheek lovingly guided their mind back to where it should have been—far away from the festering fury and unrest.

to be so angry was unbefitting of the child of abundance.

(although...

would it be unbefitting for them to have an abundance of rage, just as they do love? there was no clear answer. it didn't matter, because that rage was not a product of them, but a product of the mara they suffered from.

they were not an angry person. they sincerely weren't.)

newfound peace bloomed in their chest. the fog thinned slightly, and they subconsciously leaned towards the source of their respite.

two of yaoshi's hands reached out to cup ambrose's face, a fond coo dancing on their lips as they observed their child and the way they immediately sought out the aeon's comfort the second it was offerred to them. ambrose looked as if they were about to cry.

'poor thing,' yaoshi mused, thumbs brushing away the beginnings of tears pricking at their emanator's tired eyes. still... a little smile pulled at their lips. they couldn't help but squish ambrose's cheeks ever so slightly. such a delicate little thing ambrose was.

(of course, the child of abundance noticed. it made them pout a little. they almost wanted to tell the aeon to take them seriously! they really weren't some defenseless, scared little kid with separation anxiety anymore. they had long since gotten over it!

...

they also noticed, however, that yaoshi's fond attention was dulling their pain, so they supposed it was tolerable to be cooed at...)

the aeon wondered how it was possible for a single being to be so unbelievably cute, so unbelievably fragile in their hands. perhaps this was how mortal parents felt towards their own children—an indescribable warmth towards their fragile and weak offspring, an unearthly pull, some comeplling need to tend to the needs of their children.

then again, perhaps not.

the intricacies and complexities of immortal bonds were far too complicated to be put into mortal terms. the lord of longevity's feelings could not be described in such a simple way.

ambrose sniffled, fingers gingerly clasping onto yaoshi's wrists. the aeon took that as their sign to gather their child into their many arms, as if to shelter them from the threats and dangers of the universe.

yaoshi leaned down slightly, kissing away what remained of the emanator's tears, as if to whisper kindly reassurances.

'shed your tears no longer.'

'i am here.'

'you will get through this, little one.'

to those with a bond that transcends space and time itself, words were trivial. unnecessary.

the aeon of abundance and their child had no use for words.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Thinking about marriage/women's rights on Vulcan Some may think that T'Pring not being allowed to divorce Spock was because he was going through the pon farr but if she were allowed to divorce him at all she probably would have done that a long time ago, confirmed by T'Pol when she's speaking with Koss, who isn't suffering from the pon farr. She says that he can choose another mate (without invoking a fight it seems: note the difference between a 'mate' and a 'challenger') and after he makes it clear that nothing she says will change his mind about marrying her, she finally threatens to declare a kal-if-fee. It's clear that Vulcan women cannot divorce/refuse to marry a man they've been betrothed to under any circumstances if A) He himself doesn't consent to ending their marriage or B) She doesn't have someone else waiting in the wings to be given to in his stead. Though, if the challenger she selects fails to win the fight, she'll have to marry her betrothed anyway unless (again) he decides he doesn't want her after the challenge. That seems like an incredibly unfair system, heavily biased towards men. SNW is an alternate universe in many obvious respects but most egregiously in that T'Pring has a lot of non-canonical agency over her relationship with Spock. It's interesting to me that Vulcan society has women in many positions of power and treats women as equal to men from what I've seen despite these laws. We don't really see Vulcans exhibiting a misogynistic attitude towards women in general but in TOS (perhaps because of its general writing style but it's still interesting to note) both Sarek and Spock take on patriarchal attitudes specifically regarding wives. Amanda says that 'of course' Sarek commands her because "he is a Vulcan and I am his wife." It's worthwhile in my eyes to note that she specifies 'wife' instead of attributing this attitude to women as a whole. Again, with TOS' writing style it wouldn't be out of place for her to say "he is a man and I am a woman." Spock, while in a pon farr induced irritation, states that it's "undignified for a woman to play servant to a man that isn't hers" - again implying that there's something specific about being a Wife in Vulcan society which is different from being a woman in general and demands subservience to a husband. This could perhaps stem from the extreme sense of ownership that Vulcan law has permitted men to have over women. A woman legally cannot point blank refuse marriage. There is no option which guarantees she won't have to marry her betrothed other than death. When T'Pau speaks of T'Pring she refers to her as being 'property' and Stonn, before being interrupted, states he's made 'the ancient claim' - we don't know what this is because he gets cut off but it's obvious they're both using the language of Vulcan law. Men are permitted true freedom to choose. If a woman wants to choose someone else to be with there is no option available to her other than the kal-if-fee which might result in the death of the one she wants to be with. And, if her lover fails, her husband can still just decide he wants to marry her and she'll be forced to. T'Pring gives two scenarios: One where Spock 'frees' her and one where he doesn't - it's still ultimately his decision which is clear when he ends the conversation with "Stonn, she is yours." This again isn't just because of the pon farr as T'Pol also goes through this. Koss can choose another mate and when the option is talked about there's no implication that this would result in any sort of fight (both by the casualness of its mention and by the fact that there's no formal word for it unlike the kal-if-fee.) Also, the fact that Koss does eventually grant T'Pol a divorce and it's all fine means that T'Pol isn't lawfully required to have another man waiting if her HUSBAND doesn't want her. It's ONLY required if SHE doesn't want her husband. Tradition must take precedence over individual desire UNLESS!!! You're a man. Then it's fine. Like, your parents might not be happy but legally you're golden.

[wardensantoineandevka]

look, I simply don't have the patience to entertain argumentations apparently rooted in the idea that everything Solas says about anything is a clear-eyed and fair judgment of what the current state of affairs is, what the implications or consequences of that state of affairs is, how those living in those conditions feel about them, what is the best way to move forward to improve those conditions, and what the consequences of any action he takes in an attempt to correct or fix that state of affairs is going to be.

he's a very interesting character and one that I do find sympathetic, especially after Veilguard, but I find it laughable to take anything he says as even remotely grounded in the reality of Thedas now or that his claims about what is and what will be are authoritative. his tragedy is that he is unable to see outside of his perspective and his desperation to assuage his regrets and guilts over hurting others and the world repeatedly in an attempt to make up for or correct his previous hurtful mistakes, which invariably go wrong, creating a vicious cycle. the thing is that Solas does not want to work with the current reality because he feels guilt and regret over creating it, so he is trying to hit a reset button to restore what he destroyed, believing that such a reset is even possible after the world having already changed so much since, adapted to new material conditions, and is trying to find a way forward and better through it—so, I don't necessarily find it convincing that he understands what the current reality even is and whether this is the best course of action to remedy what harm or pain is happening.

if an argumentation starts from a supposition that Solas has the most clear, sensible, authoritative, and grounded assessment and judgment about what is happening now, what must happen to move forward, and what will happen after he acts, I find it a fundamentally flawed one and thus too tedious to entertain, especially given that the series as a whole is very loud about how everything is being filtered through a flawed perspective

[name-doggo]

One thing I really wish the FF Community would Stop doing is Removing All Nuance from the Parents in Those Stories in order to Make Them Abusive Supervillains who Never Loved their Kid.

Like... In the Four Years I've been here, and for how Small the Community really is, you'd be surprised how many Times I've seen it-

[moe-broey]

VIVID fucking idea I had last night....

Background info, I think Moe has some really distinct tendencies that Alfonse ends up being able to immediately identify it by (and finds a lot of comfort in doing so). One of which, is it doing a quiet, hesitant, but steady knock. Persistent, but with long pauses in between.

ENTER..... the Vision........ just. This entire sequence. "You'll never hear from me again". Into, the quiet knock only a few hours later. Into bursting in with the MOST enthusiastic, "HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Moe really is Some Type of Guy LMFAOO

Fave panels.......

[fragmentedblade]

No but even beyond the heathcliffean air of his story as a kid, Nelly scene and revenge fantasies included, and even beyond the identification of the self with the craft, the entire concept of Yingxing is so good.

The glimpse we get of the relationship he has with his master has so much potential. What it says about him, what it says about everyone around them, what it says about the kid.

The fact that already as a child Yingxing was vindictive, as he will be as Blade.

His self-consciousness about being a short life species, and how he is right to be self-conscious about it. How in such a short time, being so young, he's had to deal with enormous tragedy, so that he can even as a kid look the truth in the eye and admit it. Admit that he has to work harder, longer, more obsessively, and that still nonetheless there's little chance to get ever at the level of the long life species that look down on him and take him for granted. How he is able to overcome it.

It's incredible also in the context of Dan Feng. How both struggle with their identities and how they get new ones, but in totally opposite ways. Dan Feng is weighted down by what he is and what he can do, and wants to escape that fate, and dreams of a new life in which he can be something else; and Dan Heng is born. Yingxing takes pride in that which he can do, something he wasn't born into, something he had to work very hard to achieve, and that was the path to overcome the prejudices and undermining gazes he had to bear as a short life species. He crafts his place into the Xianzhou society and becomes the legendary Furnace Master. Even on a more personal level, one could argue this is his way of maneuvering his life, of expressing himself, this is how he deals with things; like his relationship with Jing Yuan having a turning point after giving him his weapon, or how he crafted that jade flask. And then he loses his ability to create and loses himself; he becomes Blade.

The fact that even as an adult, as an exceedingly arrogant craftsman, something of the shy self-conscious kid remains is both endearing and heartbreaking as well. In some ways we still see that in Blade.

We also see echoes of that personality in Mr. Xiao, who worked under him. And that alongside his craftsmanship, his ability to fix and create auromatons even though they are vanishing in the civilian landscape, live on through Mr. Xiao. And die alongside him, for Mr. Xiao too has become but a relic of another time.

The way the other stories of craftsmen enhance facets of Yingxing's is so good too. Mainly in the story of Master Ryan and Chengjie, with the insight we get of the struggles of short life species in the Xianzhou, especially those dedicated to a craft, and how hard it is for them to reach positions of prestige. It also poses the question of how we can transcend time, if it's possible at all, and how the sharing of knowledge, the passing down of skills, the shared loved, is one of the answers. This was all already significant before, but the information gains weight with the existence of Mr. Xiao. I'd argue there's echoes of Yingxing even in Master Gongshu. His love for his automatons, his sincere fondness for them, his pride on his job, his loyalty to his position and duties, the way he is both hard and stern as well as loving with his apprentices, and how he talks about short life species.

On a sort of ontological way, it's very interesting to see how Yingxing goes from craftsman to tool or weapon, from creator to creation, from subject to object. The potential in the context of Abundance/Destruction is also extremely intriguing, I think. He who created is unmade by a curse of Abundance. He who forged weapons now follows that path of destruction. There's so much going on with Yingxing conceptually around the cycles of death and rebirth, destruction and creation; it's so fitting that now Blade is stuck in such a cycle in the most literal way.

And it's so fitting too that, in all this context, given Yingxing's entire story, Blade's entire being, that which he made unmade him. That which he created and gave him so much pride was the weapon that killed him. And now he wields it himself, his tool of revenge while he follows the path to eternal and irrevocable death.

[batking-lich]

"i'm not like those Other People, i only consume Unproblematic Media™ with Good Representation™ and i don't like Irredeemable Media™"

"i'm not like those Other People, i don't like this Sanitized Media™, i only like Real Art™ with Bad Messy Representation™"

you are literally the same people wearing different hats the only things you disagree about are what counts as bad media and what counts as good representation

[tyrannuspitch]

describing a marvel movie as "cerebral" and getting asked not to come back to film club

[theultracharmingladynoire]

.

[veggiecorner]

What do you think about redeemable Ganondorf headcanons or stories

real shit: i....do not care for them. Mostly because "redeemable villain" is overdone for me? I don't necessarily dislike it, I just feel like its...cliche. I get wanting to have Ganondorf to be more than just "big bad evil guy" or the concept of fighting Demises' curse, though.

I DO see Nintendo maybe one day doing a "Ganondorf was once a good man but turned evil" type of plot. Again, cliche but its Nintendo

(Putting possible plot things under keep read because a I feel like I'm posting a lot of long posts tehe)

I'm more interested in how crazy the Hylian royal family is. I want a plot of the family breaking things apart from within. Where things get corrupt or maybe the people are just straight up tired of being ruled by that family. I'm not necessarily saying "an evil Zelda" (because I don't think Nintendo will do it right), but more of a "hey many the monarchy has been uh, ruling us for way too long. And the fact that our Princess is someone with 'divine blood' which is insane". A power struggle plot would be sOOO fascinating and imagine just throwing Link into it. Just some dude with a sword. Also theres a dark past in the royal family's history? Why not discuss this? And the shiekah??? imagine a plot where they straight up are like "actually no we will not be pro-royal family" (yes like the Yiga but more seriously).

Not to make Link a knight again but my ideal zelda plot is a power struggle between the people and royal family, the royal family within itself, and Zelda struggling to accept whats considered the "right thing to do" as she learns more about how corrupt things have been. Meanwhile Link, a loyal knight to the royal family, is thinking "no actually the monarchy is fine" and then he's struggling to see the reality of things as well.

Yeah so basically politics with a lil bit of "hey the Triforce is a thing as well again!"

[golden-redhead]

I think there's a lot of signs pointing to Jayce actually doing the right thing ...or at least the right thing based on the information available to him at the time.

We can't know for a fact just how much Viktor was changed and what his healing was doing to the people who came to him in the long run, but considering all the hints dropped by the writers, the situation is much less clear than we think. Obviously, everyone's first instinct is to condemn Jayce and his actions, especially because Viktor is one of fan favourites, but looking at the teaser for the next Act and what little we know about what happened to Jayce, I think it might have been necessary evil.

I think this scene of Viktor temporarily 'possessing' Salo in order to talk with Jayce points to just how fucked this little community that Viktor created actually is. There's a reason why everyone's getting those 'it's a freaking cult' vibes.

This scene made me more uncomfortable than anything else this season and I think it's clear that it was meant to make feel that way. There's something so uncanny about Viktor's voice coming out of Salo's mouth, especially paired with that look on his face and how Viktor seems to be able to see and experience things through him in this moment.

And then there's also the issue of all these people dying a horrible drawn-out death as soon as Viktor himself 'dies'. Yes, they came to him on their own, they asked to be healed, but did they really know what they are getting into? Did they know this is what might happen?

Some of them were already dying, true, but Viktor healed all kinds of people, some of whom most likely had their whole lives ahead of them. He, knowingly or not, inevitably sped up this process. Not all of them were consummed by Shimmer-addiction or permanently disabled like Salo.

And then there's also the fact of all of them basically abandoning their previous lives to serve Viktor and his community. Which, okay, makes sense, there's certainly a parallel with the community that Ekko created for Zaunites to keep them safe from Piltover and Silco's plans. They made an informed choice, though, and I don't think the same can be said about Viktor's cult-like commute.

They seem peaceful, yes, but also devoid of personality and entirely dedicated to Viktor and his cause. Of course, it can be explained by gratitude towards him and desire to be kept safe in a calm and peaceful environment, but it's taken to such an extreme point that it definitely crosses the line into uncanny territory in my eyes. Their hivemind behaviour is very unsettling and even though Viktor seems to frame his recent actions as some kind of greater good, I don't think it's necessarily true.

We have yet to find out what Jayce saw and who's in the right and who's in the wrong. Either way, as usual when it comes to Arcane, it seems to me that more than ever, everyone's a victim of the circumstances and tragedy spares no one.

Considering that Viktor is set up to be 'reborn', I can't help but wonder what it means for his community and if they will also be brought to life by whatever connection they have with him. It would be a fascinating choice given how Viktor's arc has always been about autonomy and making your own choices.

Arcane, it's been a pleasure having my heart torn out of my chest by you. Can't wait for the last Act.

[ms-demeanor]

You posted about adhd and I was hoping to follow up to clarify something. I’ve explained to my partner a million times about how the borderline-hoarding mess of his space is very mentally draining to me, and he understands but we’ve both essentially accepted he won’t clean his mess because he can’t because of his adhd. You’re saying he’s actually being a shit head?

This isn't necessarily an issue of him being a shithead, but it also isn't a sustainable situation. It's not good for you and there's a level of clutter that's probably not good for him either.

Large bastard is a lot more clutter-y than I am. The solution we've come to is trying to keep our messes at least isolated from one another; he can have his messes and I can have mine, but he can have those messes in his spaces, not all over the place. Sometimes those messes migrate, and that's when it's important for him to make the effort to rein them in rather than trying and failing to make a daily effort to keep our entire shared space tidy.

I think when you say "we've both essentially accepted he won't clean his mess" what I'm hearing is resignation; you're not happy about this but you don't know what to do so you've thrown up your hands and he feels helpless and unsure of what to do to improve the situation. This is the kind of "it's fine" that isn't really fine.

I think it would be worthwhile for you to each separately think about the mess and talk about it together. Are there areas that YOU *need* to have not-messy? Both for utility and your mental health? Are there areas where you can tolerate more mess than otherwise? Are there areas that are going to be harder for him to keep the mess out of than others? Are there things he doesn't *know* about cleaning up the mess?

I'm obviously a big "communication communication communication" person so I'm going to recommend a lot of talking about stuff, which is probably going to mean a lot of thinking about and interrogating stuff. I'm going to say "talk to him about why the mess bothers you" which means you also have to really articulate to yourself why the mess bothers you (for instance I'm not actually *bothered* by a messy kitchen, but I know it's going to reflect badly on us - and me specifically b/c of presumed gender roles - if someone pops by and the kitchen is a disaster, AND a messy kitchen is going to be harder to use). Genuinely, sometimes knowing *why* something is a problem might make it easier for someone with ADHD to do something. And it's not that he doesn't care that it upsets you, it's just that "Oh if I don't wash my breakfast dishes Anon won't have clear counterspace to make lunch" might be stickier in his brain (and less hard to look at emotionally) than "this thing I forget to do upsets my partner so I should do it."

For the record, I think that people with ADHD should read up on Demand Avoidance and see if it might explain some of the issues that they have in their day-to-day life; I've seen some really unfortunate situations with friends where trying to do things that their partner needed became the subject of demand avoidance. *I* have experienced negative outcomes of demand avoidance. The solution to that, however, isn't to stop making attempts to do the thing OR to simply try harder to do as they're asked/told (which reinforces the demand), it's to work on setting up a situation where the partners' needs are not interpreted as a demand. This is fuck-off difficult and requires a lot of patience and care and many attempts to succeed and will be different for each person and relationship.

(Also for the record demand avoidance isn't *super* strongly linked to ADHD and it's not a definitive symptom; like Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, it is something that occurs in some number of people with ADHD and can be a useful lens through which to examine various behaviors; you don't need to have DA or RSD to have ADHD, and having DA or RSD also doesn't invalidate your diagnosis; they're symptoms. For me, DA often feels like "if I don't look at it, it can't get me" - If I ignore all the messages I've got they aren't real and don't have real consequences so I'll just ignore my texts. If I don't look at the vendor email about the order, the problem with the order isn't real and it won't get added to my task list. If I don't look at the requests in my inbox I can't let people down when I don't do them. It's a self-protective coping mechanism but it's *maladaptive* and I can't just ignore the vendor email or all my texts. I need to work on a way of doing the stuff that I'm avoiding in a way that makes it less stressful and doesn't hurt the people relying on me. That takes a lot of effort, personal insight, trial and error, and )

But before I dive into specifics I want to be really really clear about one thing: sometimes people are simply incompatible. Sometimes one person has such a low tolerance for "mess" and the other person has such a high threshold for "mess" that it can't be reconciled. It sucks that this can end up being a thing that people break up over, but it is MUCH better to acknowledge incompatibility as early as possible instead of spending years and years building resentment.

There used to be a great forum called MiL's Anonymous that I spent a lot of time on. It had a lot of people in a lot of difficult situations struggling to get by and hold their relationships together. The question that was used as a litmus test to approach each situation was simple: If you knew today that everything about living with this person would be the same in five years, would you stay?

Because you can't control your partner. You can't control the future. You can only control yourself and your proximity to situations that are harmful to you. If you knew, 100%, that things wouldn't get better in five years, would you be okay with staying in this relationship? If the answer is "no," then that's that. Don't worry about questions of whether or not your boyfriend is a shithead, start the process of ending the relationship because there's a good chance the situation is going to be exactly the same in five years.

If the answer is "yes," and you'd stay in the relationship regardless of whether or not things changed, then it's time to take actions to improve your life within the context of the relationship.

(No judgement on that yes or no, btw. If you would hate living like this for another five years, and you would feel like you'd wasted your time and hadn't done the things you wanted to with your life, get out. Bail. Go. It will be better for you and better for your partner if you split instead of spending half a decade building resentments and and problems that you'll have to spend another half a decade healing from.)

Also, a note: you describe your boyfriend's mess as borderline hoarding - is the issue *mess* or is the issue *clutter*? I have friends who are very tidy, but whose homes are very cluttered. They like things, they have many things, they keep many things around, but their houses are always clean and well-dusted and orderly, just with a tremendous amount of *stuff.* I am addressing all of this as though the issue is mess, not clutter. If your boyfriend's situation is clutter (the space is busy and packed with things but it is functional and clean) and your issue isn't with *mess* (things out of place, things not having a place, things that need to be cleaned up gathering in stacks, falling behind on regular chores like laundry and dishes and taking out the trash) then you definitely need to assess whether or not you are compatible.

For instance here's a room that is messy but not cluttered compared to a room that is cluttered but not messy:

That first room is a *mess* but it would be very easy to clean up in under an hour. The second room is fairly tidy, but would take significant effort to pare down and declutter. BOTH of these can be difficult to live with but the second one is not dangerous or threatening to anyone's health. (The second one is QUITE cluttered and if every room in a house looks like this it can be overwhelming to live with; this is actually harder to deal with in a relationship than the first one in a lot of ways. I don't have a lot of advice for what to do if your partner is a high degree of tidy-but-cluttered because I don't actually think it's a problem or wrong to have thousands of books or bins full of lego or a million kitchen appliances as long as you have the space and can keep it safe and well-maintained; this is a really significant compatibility issue)

Okay, all that out of the way, here's the hard work.

Talk about this shit

Talk to your partner and define "mess." Make sure you are on the same page about what you mean when you're talking about what a messy room looks like versus what a tidy room looks like. Gather reference pictures. DRAW reference pictures.

Explain not just that the mess upsets you, but *why* and *how* it upsets you. In this context don't think of it as your boyfriend's mess, think of it as an unpleasant roommate. Discuss this using "I-statements". "When I have to pick up laundry all over the apartment, I feel like a parent more than a partner." "When there are piles of miniatures all over the table, I feel like I don't have anywhere to do things I'm interested in." "When there are dishes in the sink, I feel frustrated because I have to clean before I can feed myself."

Discuss, frankly and openly, whether he knows how to clean. I'm not trying to make excuses for him here but a lot of people with ADHD have a lot of stress and avoidance around cleaning because they spent a lot of time getting yelled at for not knowing how to clean properly.

Discuss your needs, be firm about what you require but willing to compromise. You *need* some spaces to be clean, and some spaces may be harder for him to keep clean than others. It may be MUCH harder for him to keep a bedroom tidy than it is to keep a kitchen tidy; if you need a clean and empty bedroom with everything put away and he simply cannot do that, that is a compatibility issue. But perhaps you need *your* side of the bedroom to be very orderly and can tolerate a moderate level of mess and clutter on his side. Maybe you're really really bothered by a messy kitchen, but it doesn't bug you if the dining table is covered with projects and papers. Figure out something more workable than "his mess goes everywhere and i live with it because he's incapable of cleaning" because he probably is not incapable of cleaning and you deserve to have places in your home that are comfortable for you.

Reduce friction for cleaning

Sometimes the problem isn't cleaning, the problem is the many many steps before cleaning, or not knowing where something should go when you are done cleaning. One of the absolute best things I've done for myself for cleaning my space is getting a broom holder and mounting the broom to the wall. Sweeping is now essentially thoughtless. I don't have to find the broom or pull it out from a pile of fans or go scrounging around for a dustpan it's right there on the wall, frictionless. So here are some ways to reduce the barriers to cleaning:

Make sure you and your partner both know how to use your cleaning supplies and know where those supplies are. When I switched dishwasher soap I had to re-show Large Bastard where I was storing it and how it was used, because to him what happened was the dishwasher tabs just vanished one day and he didn't know what I was putting in the machine or the process I used. He sometimes puts tools away in places that I can't see (he's more than a foot taller than me) so sometimes I can't get started on a maintenance project until he shows me where he put the battery pack for the drill.

Consider making a how-to chart to or having him make a how-to chart to keep someplace accessible so he can reference it while cleaning. Goblin.Tools Magic ToDo is great for this. Basically a lot of the time people with ADHD have trouble knowing what to do from step to step even if they've done something before, so having a step by step guide can make it easier (I have notebooks full of step-by-step guides for everything from paying for my tuition to removing licenses for my customers to weeding my yard)

Remove obstacles; don't keep cleaning chemicals in the garage in a box that's behind a stack of parts, keep them in the room you'll be cleaning. Don't keep the cleaning supplies that you use to clean the bathroom in the kitchen. Sometimes this means buying two bottles of bleach solution and two scrubbers and two sets of cleaning gloves but having fewer steps (fetch the windex, fetch the paper towels, fetch the gloves) is often the key to getting things done (open under-sink cabinet and grab windex, gloves, and paper towels that are there instead of in the kitchen).

This sort of overlaps with the next category, which is:

Create Dump Zones

One thing that I've found that seems very different between people with ADHD cleaning and neurotypical people cleaning is that neurotypical people are good at getting to a point where the cleaning is "done." They have checked off their tasks and they have finished and it is over. There are *SOME* chores that are like this (taking out the trash is a binary state, the trash has been taken out or it has not) and some chores are perpetual (horrid cursed dishes) but I think with people with ADHD, some chores that are binary for neurotypicals are actually perpetual chores. For instance "clean off the counter" is not a one and done for me. "Clean off the counter" may involve a three day reorganization project. "Clean off the counter" does not mean "wipe down the tile and put dishes away" it means assessing whether or not I need to make vegetable stock and bleaching three tea containers and reconsidering whether or not the sharps container should live somewhere else and going through the mail and figuring out what needs to be responded to and taking out the recycling and on and on and on.

We have had company at the house for the last two weeks, so I asked large bastard to clean off the dining room table, which is largely a project zone for him. Cleaning off the dining room table meant putting away his meds (and since he's a transplant patient that involves a 30 gallon rubbermade tote), throwing away some trash, and totally reorganizing his workshop. It also incidentally involved picking up a table from facebook marketplace and moving my plants, which has now involved moving my former plant rack outside (moving buckets, finding and organizing planters and gardening tools) and taking the former table to the thrift store (not done yet) and cleaning the rug that was under the former table. So "either the table is clean, or it isn't" isn't really true for us.

HOWEVER "hang on we can't eat until the table is clear so let's drive to Pico Rivera to get that console table right now" isn't a workable plan, so you create dumpzones as areas of holding between the start and the finish of the chore.

A dump zone can be a laundry basket. It can be a craft bin. It can be a back room or under your bed. It is a place to put things that you are going to deal with later because if you deal with them now it is going to derail the thing you are actually trying to do, which is set the table for dinner.

Dump zones are vital to cleaning with ADHD and I recommend them for day-to-day cleaning as well. The day-to-day dump zones might be more for you than for your boyfriend. For instance, Large Bastard works with bullets and he sheds bullets all over the house. I used to get stressed when I found bullets when I was cleaning because are these work bullets? Are these recreational bullets? Are they in testing? Do they need to be pulled? Do they go in the workshop or the office or the garage or does he need these today so they have to stay on the counter? And the answer now is "that's not my problem naughty bullets go in the jar." Which is perfectly sensible because he gets to say "mystery yarn goes in the bin" and "art supplies go in the bucket."

I feel helpless when cleaning a lot of the time. I'm frustrated and lost and I don't know where stuff goes and everything I pick up spins off into three projects in my head and every step feels like a wall to scale. Dump zones help me with that when there's pressure or a reason for cleaning beyond day to day home maintenance. People are coming over? The bedroom is a dump zone, I'll deal with that later. I'm just cleaning up because I need to? Okay I can find a permanent home for this new dish soap.

AS A VERY IMPORTANT COROLLARY TO THIS:

Active projects do not go in dump zones while you or your partner are cleaning. This may mean designating a project sanctuary area like a corner of the table or one particular chair in your main room where a project can be placed so as not to be disturbed. (if my current crochet project ends up in the yarn bin, that may mean that I don't pick the project up for another three months, it lives on the windowsill behind the couch because that's where it'll get worked on)

Do not put things away for your partner, put them in the dump zone for your partner. Your partner has to be the one to put their own stuff away in a way that works for them. I tend to find that this naturally puts a limit on the time stuff sits in the dump zone, because eventually you'll go "hey where's my thing?" and will put stuff away. If that doesn't happen, it's still generally better to have stuff in a dump zone than all over the home.

Do not decide you know what things go together from your partner's stuff and try to "put like things together." The neurotypical urge to put like things together is the mindkiller(j/k). You do not know which things are "similar" in your partner's organization schema and attempting to organize things on your own is going to end up with all of the things "organized" being functionally lost forever from your partner's perspective. Large Bastard's mom would do this and it was infuriating, she'd say "oh I put all the electronics stuff in one box" and she would mean soldering irons, transistors, ham radios, HDMI cables, and cellphone chargers. We are *still* going through boxes of stuff that she "tidied up" when he was hospitalized in 2020 and 2021.

To prevent the need for quite so many dump zones over time, you can work on setting up landing zones and "homes" for projects and tools.

Landing Zones

Landing zones are places where things go when you come inside from doing various things. Sometimes your landing zone only needs to be a tray for your wallet and keys, sometimes your landing zone needs to be a place to take off muddy boots and put a trowel and gloves down before you shower.

To make an effective landing zone, consider what behaviors you're trying to minimize and whether the people using it are ACTUALLY going to use it. For instance I was tired of the corner of my hearth getting cluttered with random junk so I hung up some hooks and put a shelf and a basket there and it became a really effective landing zone for my bag and keys and the mail, but it was VERY ineffective for Large Bastard because it's by a door that isn't the primary door he uses to enter the house. As a result I always know where my keys and bag are but he has trouble finding his keys and wallet. He tends to enter the house through our bedroom and has an overloaded valet next to the door and that's usually where his wallet ends up. Mounting a shelf to the wall above the valet and putting a basket and a hook on it will be a better place for his stuff to land. It's not that he's not using the first zone because he doesn't know that it's there, or because he doesn't care about lost time when I'm searching for my car keys after he borrows them, he's not using it because it's not by the door he uses. That's all.

I have a landing space for when I come in for gardening that's different than the one when I come in from grocery shopping. I have a landing space for when I walk into the dining room instead of the kitchen when I get home.

Landing spaces prevent stuff from piling up all over the place because they are a limited functional space that should be used frequently. Mail ONLY goes in the landing zone. If you have mystery mail or if you're not sure it's safe to toss, you put it in the landing zone. You can't let the mail get piled up too high or you won't have a space for your keys. You can't let the change in your wallet tray get too deep or your wallet is going to slide off, etc., but you also don't just put change on the coffee table or your nightstand because the landing zone is right there.

Homes for items are just what they sound like. They're the place the item goes. It lives there. My meds live on my nightstand. You would not believe how poorly I did with taking my meds on my vacation because they weren't on my nightstand. A while back large bastard lost one of his sets of sorted meds and we tore the house up looking for them because he couldn't find them in his nightstand, which is where they live. *I* found them in his nightstand because I emptied out the entire top drawer (he had only looked on the top layer) and found them underneath a radio and a hammock. Even though they were *hidden* they were in their home, so they were findable. I recently needed ink for an art class. Art supplies live in a dresser by my desk. Ink lives in the art bin or the top left drawer. The ink was not in either of these places (it was on a cabinet in the dining room behind a teacup) so it took me weeks to find it.

Sometimes the reason that ADHD spaces are so messy is because objects have been assigned homes in places that are visible and if they get moved they get lost. This is a genuinely difficult problem that requires a lot of effort to solve and can involve a lot of trial and error for creating a tidy living space. For some people, open shelving and visible storage might be a good solution. For some people, assigning a VERY clear home and inculcating that location by habit is the only way to clean up a space. For some people one very cluttered corner to at least isolate the chaos does the trick (for me and large bastard open shelving doesn't work because anything in one place for too long becomes invisible; that means that I rely on assigning things homes and large bastard relies on having contained chaos and a general idea of where to search but what that DOES NOT mean is that he is clean or tidy. His spaces look like an explosion. But he can mostly find his stuff and do what he needs to do and as long as that's limited to specific places in shared spaces I can live with it; the dining room table can be a disaster, the kitchen cannot).

People organize things differently. It often takes a while for neurotypical adults to settle into an organizational style that works for them and ADHD adults may need to settle into a new system every few months for it to continue working. The cleanup and declutter is most likely going to be a permanent project that is always going to demand some level of attention from everyone in a shared space, but "my ADHD means I can't do it" is not really going to fly. Maybe his ADHD means that he can't keep his space tidy, but it doesn't mean you can't move stuff from shared spaces into dump zones or that he can't do stuff around the house.

If he's insisting that his ADHD means that he can't clean it is possible that he's not being a shithead, he just feels helpless and doesn't know where to start and has adopted the belief that he's a useless piece of shit who can't even keep a tidy space like a grownup because he's internalized a lot of shitty attitudes (hello, my internal monologue about keeping a clean house). But it's also possible that he's just being a shithead.

It's something that's worthwhile to investigate with him. If he's unwilling to make an attempt, then he's being a shithead.

It is also not your responsibility to rehabilitate another person. If he wants to clean and it's something he feels bad about and needs some help and support with the way that someone might need help or support for learning to use a mobility aid, that is fine but you don't have to be the one who gives him that support if it's detrimental to your health, and you don't have to be the one to teach him that stuff if it's not something you're capable of. And if he is NOT interested in working on making your shared living space more accessible for you, that is not your suitcase to unpack and you just have to ask yourself the question from the start: would I stay with this person if I knew the situation was never going to change?

IDK, I'm sure a lot of this reads like "anon you must take on the emotional labor of training your partner to be an adult" but it's really meant to be more of a way of assessing yourself and your relationship. If you created landing zones do you think he'd use them? Would he get angry if you assigned a laundry basket as a dump zone for his stuff while you tidy the living room? Is living with him long-term going to be comfortable for you if nothing changes? Do you have enough of a shared definition of "mess" that you're at least in the ballpark for what counts as a clean house?

anyway good luck, and a reminder to folks that I'm compiling a bunch of adhd resources and other information on my personal website, ms-demeanor.com. It's coming along slowly but it will eventually include stuff like ADHD cleaning tips and how to tackle a hoard, so maybe keep your eye on that space.

[signedsfs]

I've got some great fuckin news

Once again got a bee in my bonnet to spend a night doing obscure fandom research to make a point, so. For all those people who keep making the annoying, "Tim keeps '''stealing'' other peoples' names" comments -- have a table.

Everyone with a check mark has used that codename at some point in DC's 80+ year continuity -- Elseworlds and alternate dimensions/timelines count, adaptations (movies, video games, cartoons, etc.) don't unless they've got comic book tie-ins, and neither do in-universe dream sequences/illusions/fantasies/other narrative elements that are objectively "not real" within the boundaries of the fiction.

A purple marker indicates an element that only applies in Elseworlds or alternate timelines. Yellow is for the originator of the legacy title. Star symbol is for borderline cases/extenuating circumstances/it's open to interpretation (with some further elaboration below).

The "other" column is just there to account for people who've held lesser or non-legacy titles, like Renegade, Wingman, Arkham Knight, Drake, Redbird, Talon, Deadman, Black Bat, Orphan and Catwoman.

Point being: the people who have actually gone through the most legacy titles in this family are Dick, Babs and Jason, tied with 5 each (again, not counting "other;" if we counted those separately Dick would've had by far the most). Tim is tied with Steph AND Helena Wayne, so unless you're whining about them "stealing other peoples' names" you're just wrong, and they're all only one higher than Damian, Carrie and Bruce.

This is a legacy family that passes their codenames up and down the inheritance line. It's what they do. It's not a legitimate criticism to level at one character and not the others. Please get over it.

EDIT: I realize after posting this that I missed some colors on the table, mostly with Babs' Elseworld only roles (Batwoman and Nightwing) but I'm too tired to go back and correct them; refer to the info below for more details.

---

Further elaboration on some of the lesser known/niche cases:

- Bruce uses the Robin ID in Superman & Batman: Generations

- In the second half of Thrillkiller ‘62, Babs cuts her hair and dons the Robin costume worn by her deceased partner Dick to get revenge on his killer; however the only name ever used for her in the series is Batgirl

- Cassandra was a member of the Robins orphan gang from Dark Knights of Steel.

- Duke was a member of the We Are Robins gang, as well as the aforementioned DKS orphan gang, and has appeared as Robin in a couple of Elseworlds, including I believe a White Knight spin-off.

- Cass was Batwoman in one of the versions of the Titans Tomorrow, as was Bette Kane, depending on changes to the timeline.

- Babs is Batwoman in the Batman ‘66 comics and in the 1980 story “The Secret Origin of Bruce (Superman) Wayne”

- Earth-3 Steph is Batwoman in Young Justice 2019.

- Helena Wayne is Batwoman in the possible future story Last Rites

- Tim is a member of the Batgirls vigilante/little league baseball team in the DC Bombshells universe, as is Cullen Row. Some call them the “Batboys” instead. I call those people cowards.

- Helena Bertinelli wore the costume that would later become Cass’s signature Batgirl look during No Man’s Land. However, she was more often referred to as “The Bat” and her Batgirl status is up to individual interpretation.

- Dick didn’t originate the Nightwing name, it started with Clark in the Silver Age.

- Steph has never been Nightwing. The panel where she appears in the costume is a Black Mercy illusion that happens only in her own mind. It’s a dream sequence.

- Barbara was Nightwing in the Smallville Season 11 comics.

- Terry was briefly Nightwing in volume 4 of Batman Beyond.

- Damian briefly became Nightwing after accidentally killing Dick in the Injustice series.

- Dick is Oracle in the “Eight Wonders of the World” version of Earth 2 (aka the Black Superman dimension)

[elainemorisi]

definitely a large helping of I dunno, coping, probably. but jesus christ, in some ways the steep slide into blatantly obvious evil, ruinous, cruelty-as-point shit of the past several years is starting to convince me that some version of a milquetoast utopian future is possible, actually, in a way I have never believed before. because actually like, yeah, a fuckton of current problems would diminish significantly if We As A Society prioritized different things, in a pretty top down, structure of bureaucracy and government and systems, independent of personal virtue or revolutionary enlightenment, way