#when I picture myself I immediately picture my fursona- not a human who (at the moment) appears feminine

[captain-crowfish]

They say to never trust how you feel about your life after 9PM but it's always before 9PM somewhere. Anyway I think I might be a therian

[geejaysmith]

Wolf 359 Classpects, pt. 1

Soooo, while I was still busy with the last few weeks of my summer internship, I did keep thinking about classpecting the Wolf 359 cast. Possibly too much, because it wouldn't leave me alone until I'd solved my own God Tier riddle. Unfortunately, it got really long in the solving because I have many Thoughts and want to share all of them, always, so uh, a complete Classpect Analysis of Wolf 359 will be in parts? This first one covers Eiffel's, Hera's, Lovelace's and Minkowski's aspects.

DOUG EIFFEL: An utter no-brainer; ya boi Dougie Fresh is a Breath player if I ever saw one. For Chrissakes, he's the communications officer, and the first one to start complaining about the monotony of being stuck in a deep space sardine can. Breath is associated with communication, freedom, openness, and change - "free as the breeze", you might think of it, but that also leads to Breath players having trouble pinning themselves down to anything. They get skittish if they feel pinned down, and frustrated when stuck in place. Doug's noncommittal aloofness, the way he's off in his own little world (partially to hide from the fact he really does not like himself very much at all), and the way he's incorporated media into his self-perception all match pretty well with John and the Nitrams. But at the same time, he's the one playing mediator even as early as The Sound And The Fury. Being largely outside of the War Industrial Complex the other characters are so familiar with and thus mostly free from its dogmatic worldview of hierarchy and order, he's becomes the One Sane Man when he's the one to shout "what is WRONG with you people?" when "murder" shows up in the top 3 potential solutions to a problem, and he has no hesitation in saying what's on his mind. And it's not all complaints and bad ideas, either; he's got whole speeches telling the others how amazing he thinks they are and how in awe he is of their skills. A key catalyst in the plot of Wolf 359 is the reaching effects of his radio broadcasts. Also, there's something hilarious to the fact that for the aspect associated with communication, Doug *literally* cannot lie to save his life. I kept my ears open for the infamous Breath Hex on my second listen - that is, the strange little way in which things Breath players say tend to come to pass in reality. Cigarette Candy is basically 20 straight minutes of the Decima virus being Breath Hexed into existence, and he guessed Lovelace's situation in one - "Maybe she's a clone, or like a *really* good robot replica."

HERA: Another easy one. Although Hera is resistant to splintering as we've come to recognize it, Heart players are nothing if not determined to be an individual. They have a firm idea of themselves as a person and defend it fiercely, including compartmentalizing away pieces that don't fit their self-image. Maybe less actively putting them down like Jade Harley did to Jadesprite (the manifestation of the negative feelings she repressed out of fear they'd make her less useful) - that would mean attacking or denying a part of themselves - and more... "why yes, I put this part of myself in this box, and I may look at the box on occasion, the box definitely exists, but I don't go near the box and I definitely do not touch or open or interact with the box. And then one day, I will die." So that piece finds other avenues to express itself because it can't not do that. Hera's programming dictates she be "chipper and non-confrontational and always ready to help", but she actively resists being a mere utility and always has - her earliest know action was to attempt a jailbreak of the manufacturing facility she was made in, born rebel that she is. She will insist upon her name over her serial number unless you force her not to, and gets passive-aggressive at people treating her like a machine. And yet, even as she teaches herself to ignore commands literally written into the base of her personality, she doesn't reject her directive to be helpful, nor does she express a wish to be a flesh-and-blood human, or even really to have a physical form? She has a human self-image in mental spaces (we presume, I will semi-seriously point out there's nothing definitively stating she doesn't see herself as like, her fursona or something), but when she has to limit herself to a human-like view of the ship, her immediate reaction is "this is weird, I don't like it."  This is honestly something about Hera that I think may be unique among non-villainous AI characters; she seems to be content with being what she is in general, and she just wishes for people to treat her as a person and not a piece of equipment they can do with as they please.  

ISABEL LOVELACE: Arm-wrestled Hera for the Heart aspect and lost, despite Hera not actually having any arms, but that's okay because there's two aspects that fit her much better: Blood and Time. I ultimately went with Blood.

This is the part where you notice I'm onto the third of four characters in an aspects-only meta post, yet there is still a lot of post to go. This is because These Kinds Of Characters, the sort that're constantly on emotional lockdown, are a Challenge Mode, and for me to truly be satisfied with my classification I have to start drilling into the bedrock of what it even means to have an aspect in general, what it means to have a specific aspect, and what each aspect is really about. When you're on that level you tend to find yourself throwing out explicit expositional statements as incomplete, oversimplified, or unreliable, and looking at the text directly with a subtextual electron microscope. Brace yourselves. I have thrown the author out of the airlock, and I am about to get verbose.  

Lovelace's character sheet describes her in contradictions, and we get to see two different sides to her that resolve into the complete picture by the time Lovelace Mk. III wakes up. There's Captain Isabel Lovelace, goofing around in her earlier logs, and The Terminator. She does things Her Way and is very much prepared to fight you if you object - the whole reason she was picked for the Hephaestus mission was her willingness to go against (in her words) "stupid orders" and do what she thought was right. She's also fiercely loyal; The Terminator is the end result of her anger and grief for her lost crew and at her failure to get them home alive. Her backstory episode has her summing up her complicated relationship to the Air Force with "I owe a lot of who I am to them." And even before she and Minkowski have completely stopped butting heads, Lovelace shoves her out of the way of an exploding wall panel that would've killed her, and takes a near-fatal bit of shrapnel to the gut in the process. At her best, Lovelace is a fearless, boundlessly determined, dedicated firebrand of a leader. At worst, she can be impatient, stubborn, shortsighted, and ruthless. I dunno about you but that reminds me of a certain... angry crab that I know.

"Time" was what a few people chimed in with for Lovelace and while I see some of the connections (her awareness of the time loop, "Variations on a Theme", her multiple selves and multiple deaths, the repeated motif of clocks and pocketwatches) I don't think she quite fits in with the other Time players. Unlike most Time players, she doesn't have a fixation with historic context, the "Why Things Are The Way That They Are." This manifests in Dave's paleontology and his taking of source material for ironic twisting, Aradia's archaeology and knowledge of The Nature Of The Game, Damara's... /noises and vague gestures bc I don't want to go back through Meenahbound but her role as The Handmaid fits the pattern, and Caliborn's own warped, thoughtless replication of narrative archetypes. Context. Decisions. What came before and how it shapes the now, where your decisions will take it from here. The consequences those decisions will have. The details versus the larger picture. Even failure has its place in that scheme - that's the Time aspect. Lovelace doesn't like to dwell, she's a very "barrelling forward momentum" kind of person.

Side note: Aradia, Dave, and Damara all face hesitation to take action they had to learn to overcome. Also, all of them had to be pushed to use violence except in self-defense; Aradia let Vriska cross a series of lines before beating the everloving shit out of her, and Damara snapped after what, years? Of Meenah's abuse. Dave, on the other hand, never raises a hand to another person except as a complete necessity. Caliborn is, if anything, an aberration here in that he's outright homocidal and self-doubt is something that happens to other people. Caliborn is an outright aberration to a lot of Time player patterns, and to SBURB in general, because it's SBURB, so the rules are made up and the points don't fucking matter, except when they do, because Fuck You, The Author Said So.

No, Lovelace's approach to decision-making is that regrets are for afterwards, and "if I fail I deserve to be out of this picture; also, this situation has gone entirely pear-shaped, time to fling myself into the sun." (and that sounds an awful lot like someone that I know very well, but I'll deal with that royal mess when I get to the crazy whamma-jamma that is Classes). Impatience and railroading of other people can be her undoing just the same as assertiveness and decisiveness are her gifts.

...aaand then I went ahead and watched the live episode and yeah, major Karkat vibes there. However, I note that I don't believe we have ever hit hard evidence in Homestuck that Blood players are capable of Chilling The Fuck Out - this is part of the limitations of classpecting characters who weren't made for this system, you really have to dig into how much of their behavior is situational and where you see the kernel of individual perception shine through, the Rosetta Stone by which you begin to see the constants. "Where the object becomes the subject", to quote Memoria.

Finally, I think it's also worth noting that while Lovelace has a lot of connections to Time motifs, she also has connections to a lot of Blood motifs that arguably become more important to her story. Personal bonds and social justice are two of the Blood aspects strongest associations - see Lovelace's loyalty to her crew, and extending her desire to avenge them out to everyone Goddard Futuristics has ever used and tossed aside. The physical body and literal blood are other strong associations, and gee, how many times does the O-negative Cure-All Alien Juice in Lovelace's veins become a critical plot point? Not to mention the implication that her new friends all pulled through the finale because all of them now have her blood in their system. I'll accept that she's closer to the line between Blood and Time than some, but I'm holding by ground here: 

(Also, here's some irony for you, she may share an aspect with the Cancer trolls, but her birthday is August 11th, making her a Leo.)

RENEE MINKOWSKI: Minkowski was the hardest of these 4 to come to a decision on. My first inclination was Mind. Her general disposition put me in mind of a Life player. But then, I sat down and thought my way past the Commander's layers of emotional armor and ultimately settled on Light.

First off, by being a stickler for protocol and procedure as well as an Actual Responsible Adult, Minkowski is a kind of character that Homestuck straight-up just does not have, so snap judgements aren't gonna cut it here.  This is, again, another limitation of the classpecting system - all the examples we have to draw from are teenage disasters stuck in a lawless hellscape of some description or another, and written by an author allergic to boxing himself in with hard conclusions. But I digress.

Commander Minkowski is also stubborn. When she sets her mind to something, she digs in her heels, cranks the dial to 11, and then breaks off the knob and pockets it so you can't turn it back down. We see this as soon as episode 2, and at it's most hyperbolic when she Captain Ahabs the plant monster. Her's is iron-willed, bloody-minded, unstoppable, Determi-fucking-nation - when she sets her mind to it.

The submarine thought exercise is what had me initially lock her down as a hero of Mind before I mulled it over. The exercise is meant to provoke thought about priorities - what you think your role's purpose is in that situation will determine your priorities, and thus, your decisions. Mind heroes' most prominent skills are in riding the flow of causality, watching decisions, their causes and their consequences, and directing that path. They know people, and how to direct people. But the need for this means that they can get a little co-dependent. Other people are understandable - it's themselves that Mind heroes have the greatest struggle with. Without that vehicle of another person, Mind heroes may find themselves adrift and struggling to define themselves. This is fitting, given Mind is the most direct counterpart to the Heart aspect.

However, upon further examination, I found that this framework of priorities setting your decisions can also be extended to the Light aspect. What is "lucky" in a given situation? What do you define as a fortunate outcome? Rose arguably gets Grimdark'd by something like this, she asks the cue ball "are the horrorterrors evil?" and in doing so attempts to pry into the motivations and intent of *indescribable eldritch beings existing on a nigh-incomprehensible plane* and wedge it down into a relative human understanding of morality, which is sort of like trying to fit the Pacific Ocean into a water bottle. She was trying to deduce what impact the horrorterrors would have upon her and her friends, but asked the wrong question and got an answer she couldn't handle. She didn't recognize Doc Scratch was baiting her into this by leading her into a specific framework through which to ask the question. Vriska died because of her failure to recognize she was in a situation where luck didn't matter. Aranea got trounced because of her inability to recognize that reshuffling reality to prioritize herself and her preferred outcomes still didn't overcome the fundamental nature of timelines - you try to take over the alpha timeline with an insubordinate branch? That's a doomed timeline no matter how you slice it, and we know what happens to those. Luck and knowledge are both used by the Light-bound to give themselves power, whether in showing themselves off as The Smart One or the The Helpful One or The Unstoppable One, but their limited viewpoint often leads them to overlook the limitations of their own framework, or in other words, missing the bigger picture. I'll point out here also how Minkowski has the entire DSSPPM memorized and is the one who wants to get to the bottom of whatever the hell is really going on up at Wolf 359. Additionally, one of her other ambitions, at least once upon a time, was writing musicals. The verbal arts are one of the domains of Light players.

So while on the surface, Minkowski bears the most resemblance to a Life player, Life players tend to have an element of conformity to them. Unquestioned assumptions they've internalized have about the context in which they exist. Light heroes, on the other hand, need conformity so they have something to defy when they jump up and down screaming LOOK AT ME!  

So after much pontificating, I came to a decision. In the end, what Minkowski wanted more than anything else was a stage. Maybe to direct rather than hold the spotlight, but still; that's a Light hero if ever I saw one.

[cosmosogler]

hi. today i got up on time, which is a surprise, considering how little i actually slept.

i had dumb dreams. i had more to say about them this morning, but before i could write anything down i had to leave for linda and david’s. 

i was playing a very glitchy game. the level forgot to program in an ending, so it just kind of went on forever until you clipped through the floor. then it turned into like some film noir, i can only think “detective” story even though i am fairly certain there wasn’t really a mystery. it was... hard to see, because it was so dark. i remember there was something going on, but whenever i almost remember what the memory kind of slides around like a bar of soap. so whatever.

i showered and drove over to my relatives’ house. they made waffles and taught me how to make berry sauce. we talked about a ton of stuff. more than i can recall and list here. i ended up staying for four hours, which was just a little too long for me. when i got home i realized i was exhausted. i rambled at oz about jim cummings for a little bit and then i had to turn around and go over to gramma’s with my family for dinner. 

dad said something very interesting while we were on the road. mom asked if i had heard back from taylor about comicon. i said no, she hadn’t texted me back. dad strongly recommended i call. i said i would send her a facebook message about it. that prompted dad to start ranting about talking to someone with your voice and how i never know anything and this is why my generation never knows anything.

not only was it nonsense, it was also blatantly untrue and also annoying? he was sure angry about this imaginary phenomenon though!

while at gramma’s my family sat in the living room around the tv and discussed yet again how our glorious leader is “not a politician” and “not a bad guy” and then they started making, like, weird non-jokes about illegal immigrants and their children and laughing. i sat at the kitchen table staring at my brother while he chewed on the fat end of a water bottle.

it’s weird how gramma and grampa work... gramma basically hates foreign people except when she personally knows them. then she’s kind and even sort of motherly. i guess she operates under the “you’re not like the others” policy.

we had pizza. i also had a klondike bar because it sounded interesting more than because i was still hungry. actually there was so much cheese on the pizza that i started feeling kind of ill just feeling it in my mouth haha.

then we drove home and i diddled around for a while. i didn’t want to do anything and nothing updates on sundays. i played fetch with wiley and my brother in the back yard since the sidewalk was too hot to take the dog for a walk. it was over 100 today. 

i saw that my art trade partner had finally posted a reference of her character so i found some nice pokemon mystery dungeon remixes and got to work. she’s probably too young to recognize the jojo pose i used. it was fun looking up images of cosplayers (and araki himself) doing the poses. i had to use people models since jojo isn’t exactly known for its exceptional anatomical accuracy. especially for the stylish poses.

the character has just a few too many accessories that have to all be different colors for me to adjust the color palette well... and she stressed that the bracelets absolutely had to be “hot pink.” three times.

i noticed that these young artists spend a lot of time making sure their characters look like adult women even though they are basically just fursonas. all three of them were pretty... busty in the references i used. i don’t think i’ve ever drawn any of my non human characters like that...

while i was drawing i was thinking a little bit about why i was doing this. like... i know it’s mostly just to make other people happy and not for any personal gain. even though it puts a lot of stress on my wrist and fingers, especially when i use the tablet. like... i enjoy drawing. i guess that’s the reward here. why did i do the coloring page? because i enjoy coloring. 

but that’s not really what i want to be doing in therapy either, you know? my goal can’t be “help me learn to manage my energy so i can give and give and give.” that’s not gonna fly. 

i was so busy all day that i didn’t really have time to sit and do nothing but think about that goal. i guess that’s why i started writing the journal so early. to give myself time to complain my way through my thought process and hopefully arrive at a useful conclusion this time.

and immediately upon saying that i have no thoughts, of course.

i wish... i could get people to see me as a person and not a potential sex conquest or whatever. basically all of my relationships pick one or the other. but my goal can’t be to change how other people think. i can’t force anyone to think anything. all i can do is change how i present myself.

do i need to stop being afraid of judgment? i don’t know how i feel about being judged... i mean, it’s been a part of my life for basically the whole time. it’s gonna happen. it comes with being uncontrollably weird. 

do i need to learn to loosen up and commit? that would really be only for singing and dancing. people wise i run into the same problem as last night. just going to get steamrolled. 

i guess being more confident would help. especially academic confidence. impostor syndrome is deadly for careers. but i don’t think academic confidence is going to help with the underlying “cannot make connections” problem. 

haha. i guess i’m depressed. my brain just said “i could always kill myself. then there wouldn’t be a problem.” i wonder why the “start over” instinct is so strong in suicidal feelings. even if reincarnation was real, losing all your memories and experience could easily lead to you just making the same mistakes over again, even with different life circumstances. that’s not helpful. but then again, carrying your “beyond repair” feelings over isn’t helpful either. i guess that sucks.

should i ask for help from the therapist? as far as “setting a reasonable goal” goes. like, i’m already asking for help in general of course. that’s what therapy is. but again i’m worried about the difference between getting assistance and having my hand held. if i can’t be independent and self-sustaining here, where will that happen? “later”? how far is later? best to work on that now too.

what’s the difference between reasons and excuses? personal opinion, i guess. 

is this a problem i can look up on google? how would i even word that request? “fix my life pls.” “how to make connections.” “suggestions for handling a deep fear of other humans.” should i... be doing some personal research like a google search before asking the therapist for ideas? i don’t really have any other resources. can’t ask my parents. the rest of my family basically says “you have to get over it, you’re smart” when i bring up confidence issues. should i go to the library or something? surely out of the billions of people who have lived someone has had this problem before. 

google says to get people to take you more seriously you have to encourage others to talk about themselves. COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

linda’s advice for academic success was to work harder. as long as you work as hard as you can, things will work out.

i just... i don’t know where the limit is. i seem to have an endless amount of effort i can give and then suddenly i break. but i could just try a little harder if i kept going... i still have energy reserves in there somewhere. i feel like every time i break it’s because i am holding back and not because i am actually sick. like when i try to run. just because i’m tired doesn’t mean it is physically impossible to keep running. i could always just keep going, if i had the mental strength. but i am weak, so i stop running and walk instead. and then i can’t breathe or stand at the end of it because i ran too far i guess.

it’s hard to balance out the knowledge that i am mortal and able to be killed by a mistake with the fact that i have survived everything so far in my life (obviously). it’s not unheard of for people to die after pushing themselves too hard. but i look at that and some insane part of me says “but they were able to push themselves that hard in the first place, and you can’t. because you’re a wuss.”

should my therapy goal be to make better jokes?

but really, all that happens is that i feel like i didn’t REALLY try my hardest, because i have not literally died yet.

maybe i am splitting hairs and not focusing on the real problem when i think about the differences between words, between good connotations and bad connotations. i can’t tell. there’s a lot i don’t know, and even more i don’t understand. there are a lot of questions about myself i need to answer, but i can’t figure out how to think about them in a way that will allow me to give a definite answer. all my answers to hard questions are soft, laced with exceptions and the knowledge that there is more nuance to the situation than i am able to articulate. and then, i guess i get lost trying to navigate that. 

is that what it’s like to be unable to see the big picture? i always thought i was good at that. maybe i am not good at that either.

maybe i am retarded after all. there are a lot of questions i have about myself and i don’t know how to answer them. but i feel like an adult my age should have at least SOME of them answered, and i feel like many of my peers have come to decisions. i’m still trying to figure out what the questions even are. 

or maybe i’m hiding the questions i’ve already answered from myself so i feel less successful. who knows!!!!!

i just want to be safe more than i want to love other people. is changing what i want a good idea? and, if it is, what should i want instead? is throwing safety out the window a form of self harm? smells suspiciously like self harm to me.

if i get hurt again, i guess i could always pretend it isn’t real. or forget about it. but that doesn’t really make me happy either.

i don’t have the strength to back up my requests. evan at villanova made a big show of pinning me against the wall and there was nothing i could do about it because he was bigger than me. craig did his thing and i feel like i could have done something, but chose not to, and therefore what happened is my fault. i don’t remember being able to make a decision because i was so shocked by what was happening. but i should have made one anyway. i didn’t know if screaming would be an appropriate reaction considering there were other people in the room and none of them said or did anything. and when i broke up with craig they tried to get us to “talk it out” so we could potentially “get back together” or at least “be friends.”

what is even the point of having friends if they’re gonna be like that.

i have so many things to say in therapy and NO TIME to say all of them. how do i pick the “most important” things? how do i only pick a few things to talk about and still get across that this has happened for 24 years straight? how do i talk about this stuff when i don’t even WANT to remember it, let alone the fact that i barely remember it anyway?

except, you know, i do remember it very vividly. i just can’t be sure that it’s vivid and also accurate. because memories are persnickety like that. and it’s not like i can just go ask the people who were there what happened. they won’t remember it or they will just straight up deny it happened. like when i told dad that mom used to beat me.

wow it looks like i’m a wreck! how am i supposed to pick one thing to fix when EVERYTHING IS BROKEN?

maybe that’s what the problem is. like trying to fix the plumbing in a house that is on fire.