#when we were first coming to terms with being disabled and spent a lot of time in chronic illness online communities

[sonofsin]

my doctor is putting me on another medication. I'm taking 6 different meds now, and I still have a bunch of shit that probably also needs medication that I haven't brought up yet. my pain is still unmanaged. my mental health is largely still unmanaged. I'm not looking forward to how many pills I might be taking in a year or two for now

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Hira's parents and his self-defeating tendencies

I was talking to @sorry-bonebag and @wen-kexing-apologist about what role Hira's parents might have played in creating the weirdness he displays throughout both seasons of Utsukushii Kare & Eternal. I started writing a response and it got too long and, well, now it's a post.

Before I talk about Hira's parents and the tendencies in him that they helped to create, I want to note that family of origin is just one of the influences that form us as people. Parents and caregivers have a huge influence, as do other family members. But so do peers. The bullying about his disability that Hira experiences nearly constantly is one of the biggest influences on his personality.

Hira's parents appear extremely briefly at the very beginning of the series. His mom fusses a bit about him being on his own and his dad is very "he has to take care of himself sometime" about it. We know they took him to specialists for his dysphemia, bought him his camera, etc.

Their departure is a show thing, by the way, and isn't present in the novel. In the novel they continue to live with him through high school and, if I remember correctly, part of college. But they don't play a big role in his life. The main things that happen involving them are either instances of Hira hiding things from them (or attempting to) or instances of his mother briefly, sporadically, having a big burst of worry about him. It would make sense if the show version of his parents were the same way aside from the leaving-him-to-live-alone part of things, though that’s not shown.

The rest of my thoughts are largely headcanon since I’m working backwards from his personality to guess about his formative years, but they match up with the little bit that’s shown in the series and how his parents are in the novel. I see Hira as having a self-defeating personality in a lot of ways. The typical etiology of this kind of personality (the set of conditions that lead up to it) is supposed to be a rather deprived childhood that is punctuated by occasional bursts of parental attention when the child is seen as in crisis somehow (or when they attract attention in other self-defeating ways, like intentionally getting in trouble).

This reminds me of something Nancy McWilliams writes about in Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, attributing the idea to someone named Emmanuel Hammer: “a masochistic person is a depressive who still has hope.” [I should note here that “masochistic personality” is an older term for self-defeating personality that is not meaningfully correlated with masochism in a sexual sense. I think that, despite how he might appear at first glance, Hira actually isn’t sexually masochistic or submissive. I have a whole mostly-written post about this that I hope will see the light of day eventually.] In other words, whereas the background that creates a depressive personality involves deprivation that's intense enough that the person gives up on the possibility of receiving the love they need, the self-defeating personality has had enough success with occasionally getting their needs met that they keep trying. If that’s what happened with Hira, it would be consistent with what we see of his parents in the series. We know they pulled out the stops at certain points when it comes to his dysphemia. Anyone who’s a parent can tell you how hard it is to get a good specialist to see your kid, even when they have some kind of glaring issue and you have decent healthcare access overall. The fact that they managed to get him in with a specialist is notable all on it own. (I actually have some stressful phone calls I need to make today in a similar vein, seeking specialist help for one of my kids.) They also spent a lot of money on a DSLR for a young kid. And yet they’re OK with letting him live alone and after that point remain very hands-off. It also seems like despite the attention they paid to his dysphemia during that one period, by the time of the series they’ve totally stopped trying to support him about it.

Basically, I think his parents are largely neglectful (emotionally rather than materially) but that every so often, they freak out and pay a bunch of attention to him because they perceive him to be in need of rescuing. When he was young, he probably appreciated the attention when it happened, but at the time of the series he gets those needs met in other ways and/or displaces that need for attention onto Kiyoi. The idea of seeking attention in this way maps especially well onto his relationship with Kiyoi, because he seeks Kiyoi’s attention and approval through exactly the sort of strategies typically used by people with self-defeating personalities. Here’s McWilliams again:

Reik (1941) explored several dimensions of masochistic acting out, including (1) provocation [she refers to a previous anecdote about a woman who feared angry outbursts by her partner because of experiences with her father; she would act out in ways that antagonized him in order to “get it over with”], (2) appeasement (“I’m already suffering, so please withhold any further punishment”), (3) exhibitionism (“Pay attention: I’m in pain”), and (4) deflection of guilt (“See what you made me do!”).

I can think of plenty of instances of provocation (the first type). Hira often does things he knows will make Kiyoi angry, and sometimes visibly relishes the negative attention.

One good example is the scene in Eternal where he creates a totally avoidable misunderstanding by vaguely talking about how “a divorce is going to happen” because of an affair, which Kiyoi takes to be referring to their relationship and specifically, to Hira cheating. When Kiyoi rears back to punch him, Hira protests for a moment but then says being killed by Kiyoi is actually a longstanding wish of his. It turns out it’s Naho-chan who is getting divorced because her husband cheated. Hira could easily have spoken more clearly when he brought this up by using subjects in his sentences. When he first brings up divorce, Kiyoi says, “Who are you to decide on your own without me agreeing? What dissatisfaction do you have with me?”, which makes it clear he thinks Hira is referring to something involving him. Yet Hira continues to speak without subjects when he elaborates and says the reason for the divorce is an affair. He only clears up the misunderstanding after Kiyoi has lost all patience and is (legitimately!) freaking out. There's no way this isn't, on some level, intentional.

One version of appeasement (the second type of self-defeating acting out) that McWilliams talks about is criticizing oneself before others can do so. It’s no exaggeration to say that Hira talking himself down to Kiyoi is a defining characteristic of their relationship. There are lots of examples of this but a particularly classic case is his constant refrain about being a “pebble.” His invitation for Kiyoi to “Please hit me as much as you want” after their fight in season 2 is another example of appeasement. 

It’s hard to pin down specific examples of Hira employing the third type of acting out, exhibitionism. It makes sense that they wouldn’t be easy to find, though. This is a very covert type of exhibitionism that doesn’t announce itself. I think you can observe it in subtle ways, though. For example, when Shirota dumps tomato juice on Kiyoi, a bunch of it gets on Hira as well. Afterwards, Kiyoi cleans the juice off of himself as best he can, seemingly as quickly as possible, and changes his clothes. But when he talks to Hira afterward, dried drops of juice are clearly visible on Hira’s face. Acidic juice on one’s face would probably feel uncomfortable, but he intentionally doesn’t wash it off. It’s like he’s wearing these stains as a badge of honor and proof of his mistreatment.

I think deflection of guilt, the fourth type, is less characteristic of Hira than the others. He tends to absorb guilt rather than deflecting it, blaming himself in a way that often takes the form of the self-critical form of appeasement.

I think it's worth noting that he also employs appeasement as a strategy in the hostile environment of high school. His biggest rule in school is to avoid attention as much as possible, so exhibitionism and provocation aren't acceptable options. (He does disobey Shirota in a way that could be considered provocation when the rift between Kiyoi and Shirota first starts to form, but I think that's more a case of overt rebellion.) We don't see him employ deflection of guilt, though his teacher does seem a bit more forgiving of his attack on Shirota given what he knows about Hira's experiences with bullying. But appeasement? When he can't avoid attention entirely, that is his go-to strategy. It doesn't draw much, if any, additional attention this way. He can demonstrate to people who pose a danger to him that he's not a threat and is ready to comply with their orders if it will allow him to avoid mistreatment. It's only when he finds a kind of vicarious strength in Kiyoi (see my post here for more on that aspect of Hira) that he starts to deal with the bullying in other ways.

So, yeah. Hira's parents initially formed these patterns in Hira, peers deepened them, and they came out in his relationship with Kiyoi. A big part of the shift that needs to happen in order for their relationship to last is for Hira to stop using self-defeating strategies to sneakily get his needs met by Kiyoi and start seeking what he needs openly and assertively.

Maybe now would be a good time to brush off those other in-progress Utsukare posts and try to finish them off while I have a bit of momentum, huh?

By the way, if you’re interested in my previous Utsukare posts, I have a master post here with links to everything.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By - Jessica Wildfire

You’ve been lied to, over and over, about Covid.

Here’s a recent example:

A public health grifter in Australia named Nick Coatsworth recently urged schools to “save your money” because “any investment in air filtration is unproven and wastes precious resources” and that “Covid is no more harmful to kids than any respiratory virus.” You’ve heard this before, from dozens of highly credentialed doctors and public health officials, all of them with their own motives.

In reality…

Up to 25 percent of children who catch Covid go on to develop Long Covid, a euphemistic term that describes long-lasting damage to virtually every organ and system in their bodies. One recent study has estimated that 5.8 million children in the U.S. currently suffer from the condition.

There are dozens of studies.

In many cases, children who were healthy and happy go from performing well in school and having lots of friends to barely being able to solve simple math problems and withdrawing socially, even after a mild illness.

As a pediatrician at NYU has said, “This is a public health crisis for children,” adding that we’re going to see the “long-term impacts of experiencing long covid in childhood for decades to come.”

So when someone tells you that Covid is a mild illness for children, they’re lying. They’re doing harm to your children. You should get angry.

People are sicker than ever, and it’s getting worse.

When they say air purifiers don’t work…

They’re also lying.

Public health officials like Ashish Jha and Rochelle Walensky have advised their own children’s schools to spend millions of dollars installing clean air systems at the beginning of the pandemic. Rich parents joined them. Jha and Walenksy, like Mandy Cohen after them, have become some of the most notorious Covid minimizers on the planet, continually spreading misinformation and encouraging a culture of “personal risk assessment” that has driven a mass disabling event, with tens of millions of adults and children now suffering from chronic illness and disability, with slim hope for treatment in the near future. It’s not because we lack knowledge, but because our governments lack initiative.

Meanwhile, they spare no expense for their own families.

You deserve to know the truth.

In the U.S., our government originally allocated billions of dollars explicitly for the purpose of installing air cleaning systems in schools.

What happened to all that money?

First, many states explicitly refused to spend those funds. They redirected as much of it as possible. At the same time, CEOs pulled off what federal prosecutors call “the biggest fraud in a generation,” spending pandemic relief dollars on toys. Even NBC reported on the scandal, describing how the rich engaged in “the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money” by “purchasing luxury automobiles” as well as “mansions, private jet flights and swanky vacations.” They didn’t just raid payroll protection. They also took $80 billion from other disaster relief funds. As one attorney said, “Nothing like this has ever happened before.” It’s theft on a massive scale, and it happened during both administrations.

The rich did all of this while the rest of us were dragging ourselves through the hardest years of our lives. And of course, you remember how the minute things started looking a little brighter, those who stole from us started complaining about how we didn’t want to work anymore, and we had too much cash. Some of these thieves were prosecuted, but many more got away with it.

It gets worse.

While the rich were spending pandemic funds on yachts and sports cars, our governments were spending money on police, prisons, and courts. According to a bombshell report by The Marshall Project, “billions of dollars flowed to the criminal justice system by the first quarter of 2022, from covering payroll to purchasing new equipment,” as well as “courts, jails, and prisons.” The equipment included tasers, rifles, shooting ranges, and armored vehicles. Governments were very clever in how they framed their purchases. In one case, a town in Alabama said new tasers with longer ranges would help curb the spread of Covid, since “officers will not have to get so close to the perpetrator.” Another city said armored vehicles make the public feel safer during challenging times.

By the middle of 2023, an investigation by Epic uncovered that at least 70 different municipalities were spending even more relief funds on police surveillance equipment, mobile forensic technologies, monitoring stations, and drones. They also bought software to spy on our social media.

Basically, while the rich were stealing from us, our governments went to absurd lengths to spend billions of dollars on anything other than clean air. By 2022, Biden was even giving governments his blessing to do so, using the unspent funds as proof that he supported law enforcement, a largely political move. As The New York Times reported, Biden was “making a forceful push” ahead of midterm elections “to show he is a defender of law enforcement.” As PBS explained, Biden urged governors to spend the rest of the money on law enforcement even as the treasury department released another round of funds.

So, that’s why our schools don’t have air purifiers.

We have an overwhelming amount of information that HEPA air purifiers work. They don’t stop transmission in cases where someone is sitting or standing right next to you without a mask, but they remove anywhere from 70 to 99 percent of the virus in the air, when they’re installed properly.

They significantly reduce your risk.

Indoor air experts can tell you a lot more about how to maximize the efficiency of air purifiers and ventilation systems. The end of this post offers resources toward that end. For now, we’re just going to talk about the simple point that they work. There’s absolutely no reason not to fund them, especially given that our children’s futures depend on it. Let’s get started.

Carl Van Keirsbilck has written an extensive review of studies on the effectiveness of air purifiers. Nina Notman provides an extensive overview on the benefits of clean air, including air purifiers and why certain types might be so reluctant to embrace them. So does Andrew Nikiforuk.

First, the CDC found that adding two HEPA air purifiers “reduced overall exposure to simulated exhaled aerosol particles by up to 65 percent without universal masking.” When you add masks, it goes up to 90 percent. They recommend HEPA purifiers as part of an overall clean air strategy.

A review of more than 50 different studies in Indoor Air found that “when HEPA filters were utilized, regardless of the type of ventilation, number of ACH [air changes per hour] or hospital area, minimal surface-born and no airborne SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected.” In other words, HEPA filters can significantly reduce the amount of virus in the air, even when you might struggle to ventilate a space.

A study in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts found that portable air cleaners used in classrooms “reduce the mean aerosol intake of all students by up to 66 percent.” A study in Physics of Fluids found that using multiple HEPA purifiers in a classroom led to a reduction in viral aerosols “between 70% and 90%.” A study reported in Buildings & Facilities Management found that using a HEPA purifier in combination with open windows led to a 73 percent drop in the risk of infection in classrooms. A study in Virology found that a HEPA filter could remove between 80 and 99 percent of viral aerosols from a room.

A study in Aerosol Science and Technology found that when researchers installed four air purifiers in a high school classroom, “the aerosol concentration” of Covid “was reduced by more than 90 percent within less than 30 min” and the reduction “was homogeneous throughout the room…”

A study in the Journal of Hospital Infection found that HEPA filters can “reduce the viral load in air” by as much as 99 percent and that “air purification systems can be used as an adjunctive infection control measure.” A brief article in Nature reported that an ICU in Cambridge used HEPA purifiers to largely remove Covid and other pathogens from their wards. That brief report turned into a full study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, showing that not only do these filters remove Covid but also “significantly reduced levels of bacterial, fungal, and other viral bioaerosols on both the surge ward and the ICU.”

A study in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology found that by using two HEPA air purifiers, “99% of aerosols could be cleared within 5.5 minutes.”

A study in Building and Environment found that combining air purifiers with ventilation in a gym “can reduce aerosol particle concentrations” by up to 90 percent, “depending on aerosol size.” Another study in the same journal found that adding a portable air purifier to a hospital patient’s room “could prevent the migration of nearly 98% of surrogate aerosols…”

So when someone says investment in air filters or purifiers is “unproven” or “a waste of resources,” they’re not just wrong.

They’re lying.

There’s a major movement for clean indoor air.

Many of these researchers gathered last fall at the Clean Air Expo, a virtual conference hosted by the World Health Network, where experts and advocates shared their knowledge and strategies for getting the public on board with the message. I sat through every minute of it, and I learned a lot.

(You can watch the stream here.)

Some cities like Boston have already deployed sophisticated air-cleaning systems and air quality monitors in their public schools. They did it because parents and teachers teamed up with nonprofits to get the job done. Groups like Indoor Air Quality Advocates are building local, regional, and national networks to do the same. Advocates like Liesl McConchie are touring schools and speaking at school board meetings to spread the truth. HVAC experts like Joey Fox run blogs to educate the public on effective strategies.

Companies like Clean Air Kits are changing the game by offering quiet, affordable PC Fan filters and quick guides on how to use them.

Startups like the Air Support Project are taking the Corsi-Rosenthal box into commercial territory, to make them more accessible and to clear the red tape that often keeps them out of schools. Other companies like SmartAir are providing people with portable air purifiers when they need extra protection.

Consumer Reports explains how air purifiers work and tests the most popular brands. Groups like the Clean Air Crew have posted multiple tutorials on clean air, including buying guides. Confused parents and teachers can also visit Clean Air Stars to find affordable, reliable filters.

The elite will tell you that clean air is a waste of money while they spend millions of dollars on it themselves, all while big tech companies make special deals with energy utilities to restart nuclear reactors and coal plants to power their data centers. They’re not being very honest, are they?

Maybe it’s comforting to believe that air purifiers don’t work, that Covid doesn’t make anyone very sick anymore, and that we don’t have to figure any of this out. Deep down, you probably know it’s not true.

Public health agencies are staying silent on clean air, and sellout doctors are pushing misinformation, all because our governments gave our clean air money to the police and let the rich walk away with hundreds of billions of it, which they spent on sports cars and vacations. Instead of facing consequences, they would rather have you believe that air purifiers don’t work.

Your children deserve clean air.

So do you.

[maybeimamuppet]

this will probably be a very long and dramatic post but i feel the need to speak right now. i’m not gonna try to claim i don’t make my blog political, but i rarely speak to things personally.

i was 15 years old when trump was elected for the first time. i was a sophomore in high school coming off of my first queer relationship and coming to terms with who i was as a person.

i remember being so furious that i was too young to vote. i felt so betrayed by everyone who could and did vote for him. he may not have said it directly, but he may as well have.

people like me were a problem. we need to be solved, and we need to be eliminated.

how could i look some of those people in the eye again, knowing i was just a child and yet they were not only okay with supporting people who wanted me dead, but they wanted it too?

i went to a pretty purple school. we had around 2000 kids, give or take a few hundred. i spent a lot of time in the office, since it was quieter there and i could spend some peaceful time with a smaller group of friends.

the day after trump was elected i remember seeing streams and streams of kids coming in. the nurse’s office was right across the hall. i watched through the huge bulletproof windows as kids of color and visibly queer kids were led in bruised, many of them bleeding, to be patched up before they had to speak to the principal for daring to defend themselves. most of the instigators of these incidents were of one demographic.

and all of them said the same thing.

“trump is president. this is how things are now.”

i remember the terror. i remember feeling that as long as i was in this country i could never truly be me and know i was safe. i remember the distrust i felt, not knowing who felt what. who disagreed with my mere existence. who felt i was an issue for simply daring to have feelings outside the norm, as if i wanted this. i remember the hurt.

i am a cishet passing, white woman, and i felt, however briefly, genuine fear for my life.

and i am incredibly lucky.

i have the “right” skin color. i was raised in the “right” faith. unless i told you, or you really analyzed the way i dress and act, there’s no way to tell i’m queer.

try as i might to understand them, i am so blessed to feel a mere fraction of the terror some of my loved ones are experiencing in this moment.

i remember the hurt and the fear. it is back.

but i remember the strength, too. i remember seeing the way minorities banded together and stood strong in the face of such paralyzing terror and heartache. i was able to hide behind those stronger than me, and some of that safety i had felt before and craved so deeply was back.

i remember when it was finally over. the relief and the joy, although the alternative wasn’t great, a weight had been lifted. i had hope again.

we will be there again. we will be there soon.

we will make it through.

check on your people. even the ones who are less visible in their minority status. check on the women you know. queer folks, trans folks. check on the sick and disabled and mentally ill people you know. effectively, if you know anyone who is of a different race, faith, sex, or sexuality than what they try to insist is the norm, check on them.

we are not okay.

but we will be.

they may have won the election, but they will not win over us.

i know so many feel like they’re completely isolated and alone in their fear and sadness right now, but i promise you you aren’t. there are millions of people across the country and across the world feeling the exact heartache you feel in this moment. and we will make it through if we find those people and keep them with us.

hug your friends. check in. keep each other afloat.

and be gentle with yourselves.

i’m going to go cry and then go to bed because it’s now 6:30 in the morning here.

and then tomorrow i’ll wake up and face this with all of you.

keep hope, my friends.

lots of love,

ezzy

[bunnakit]

last twilight ep 5 thoughts feelings etc.

eyy actually watched this earlier and rewatching it, so things should be a little less feral and unhinged. actually took notes my first watch through as well (wtf am i doing)

once again i love how stories are our constant companions in this show. i love how they keep playing with the parallels between worlds, it's one of my absolute favorite things in storytelling.

i love the fact that day is now 'invisible' in the world of badminton but he can still experience all of the joy of the game by supporting his friends. badminton was such a big part of his life and he doesn't have to leave it all behind, he just experiences it a little differently now.

film is so fucking pretty even covered in 'sweat.' i do love the show let her be 'sweaty' and disheveled instead of having perfect hair and make up after what was clearly a hard game. GIVE ME SWEATY WOMEN. (god im so gay)

so i said it last week but the only time we've ever seen mhok be violent is when he's been protecting the people close to him. (his garage bro, porjai x 2, etc) and we see him ready to do it again when august confronts day. there is no doubt in my mind that mhok was fully prepared to bury that bitch for even daring to make day the slightest bit afraid.

and god how scary does that have to be? you can't see, you're already nervous to be here, and suddenly someone is shouting at you - and maybe you don't recognize them at first because you haven't heard their voice in over a year but all you know is they're coming closer and they're so angry. i can't imagine anything scarier than that.

ahh, a broken picture frame representing a broken bond, an absolute classic metaphor. an oldie but a goodie.

once again i love that we see day's rage. anger really is such a big part of coming to terms with being disabled. i got some bad news a few weeks ago about my own disease and i've spent the last few weeks so angry and frustrated and then just sad. it's such a complex journey and the show is doing an absolutely brilliant job of showing that.

i do owe day's family a small smidgen of an apology since day is the one that asked it to be kept a secret, HOWEVER, i do think that conversation should have been revisited after a fucking year. how long were they just going to let him live in isolation? like cool for respecting his agency, not cool for letting him waste away in a tomb of his own making.

FINALLY WE GET MHOK OPENING UP.

so here's the thing with mhok. i love him. no - the real thing is i see so much of myself in him. my friends and family constantly get frustrated with me because i will never tell them when something is wrong or when i'm shouldering a lot of emotions about something. when i got the bad news about my disease i hid in my office and cried at my desk and then cleaned myself up and pretended nothing happened. fuck, i feel like i understand mhok on such a deep level.

not to get too into it but my own habits stem from neglect in my formative years, and i have to wonder if mhok's behavior maybe stems from his isolation in prison? oftentimes people with these behavior patterns will self isolate, either deal with or bury their emotions, and then emerge back into their friend group as if nothing happened. (am i talking about myself again? shhh.) mhok didn't really have a choice - sure you can write letters, have visitors, but a large part of his day was probably handling his grief in solitude. he's probably gotten so good at "handling it" and pushing everything down and dealing with everything in silence that he doesn't know how to handle it any other way now.

to make things worse, it happened over a year ago. he probably feels like he should be "over it" and not make it a big deal. maybe i'm projecting just a smidge (just a lot) but i do think it's something interesting to keep in mind. either way, him finally talking about rung to day is fucking MASSIVE, both for their relationship and mhok's emotional wellbeing.

august is fucking king of mixed signals and i don't super like that he looked for mhok's permission to lead day through the court. why the fuck are you looking at mhok when you could just ask day? if you look closely, as mhok is letting go day curls his fingers around the hand that mhok uses to remove his hand from his arm.

i do love we see mhok pushing day a little more out of his comfort zone as he did in earlier episodes.

porjai is so fucking pretty. is there anything more attractive than a woman in shorts and an oversized band tee? no. no there is not.

and again we see how much time and effort mhok has put into being day's caretaker - and his friend. he did research and learned methods that would make dining out easier for day. i love him so much! i don't know how day could still be thinking about august after that adorable little date.

UGH OKAY SO. HERE'S WHERE WE GET INTO MY BIG FEELINGS.

in my opinion, the theme of this episode has been "being late." here's why.

the boys were very nearly, or were, late to gee's badminton game

you could consider mhok 'late' to tell day about rung

day thinks he's too late to confess to august

mhok realizes he's come into day's life too late to receive his affection

and then we have august's literal late arrival (i still dont know what fucking game this jackass is playing)

this also ties in to a little trend i've been noticing in regards to mhok that oftentimes he's too late in life.

he was too late to save rung, and learned of her death late

he was too late to receive the mechanic job as it had 'already been given to someone else'

he was a late arrival to the interview to become day's caretaker

and again, he's entered day's life too late to receive his affection (or so he thinks)

i genuinely don't know if this is intentional, but i think it's something interesting to draw connections to.

anyway, again, i dont know what the fuck august's deal is but i can tell you if i was day i'd be getting over my feelings for him real fucking quick. i don't super like that august shows up, hears about day's feelings, and asks mhok to keep his being there a secret - but i do understand it and i do understand mhok's side of things. i don't think he does it out of his own selfishness, i think rather he realizes august likely doesn't return day's affection and letting him think august didn't show up is possibly the kinder of the two scenarios. (my only hope is we don't see august return and try to woo day or something later with this knowledge)

i do love that mhok stayed. he was concerned and it might seem a little overbearing but day was clearly nervous for this outing and all in all it's good that he stayed. and then he made sure to salvage the evening for day and take him out on a proper date. maybe it's not the date day wanted but it looks like he had a great time (perhaps even a better time) spending a day with someone he could relax and be himself around.

flowers have so many different meanings across cultures and tbh i'm far to tired to dig into the thai meaning of hydrangeas (if there are any) but i do think hydrangeas are neat. this is prob common knowledge but the color of hydrangea petals is determined by the ph balance in the soil they're grown in. (blue hydrangeas grow in soil with a ph balance of 5.2-5.5, far more in the base range than red hydrangeas that grow in a ph balance of 6.0-6.2, and once the soil reaches acidic levels it tends to produce pink flowers) i guess maybe if you wanted you could draw a connection to how malleable mhok is becoming and how his environment is changing him.

scientifically, sunflowers are also an interesting flower because they are often used to heal damaged and irradiated soil. they're so fucking resilient and help heal the world around them. i think there's a lot of connections we can make there with both mhok and day, regardless of flower symbolism and going purely on science.

anyway sorry to be a science nerd.

that's all ive really got for this episode, i say, as if i have not written you all a novel. this show continues to make me feel so much and tickle my brain in such a delightful way. between this and moonlight chicken p'aof has definitely made me a fan for life.

tag loves: @benkaaoi | @callipigio | @lookwhatihave (once again pls always feel free to lmk if you want to be added or removed)

[saintsenara]

How does your adhd help or make more difficult your job as a doctor?

thank you very much for the ask, pal!

obviously, this answer needs to start with a little acknowledgement of my relative privilege when it comes to my adhd.

like many women, i was diagnosed as an adult, but i was lucky enough that this happened when i was still a student [six year degree coming in clutch - the fact that i had to pay for the diagnosis, not so much], which meant that when i qualified and started actually working, i'd had several years of taking medication and coming up with techniques to manage my life. i can very well imagine [particularly because i know so many people it's happened to] how much more difficult i would find doing my job if i had only recently acquired - or was still waiting for - a diagnosis.

as i've said, the reasons for my late diagnosis were primarily gender-related - i'm a cisgender woman, and so even though i have the more "classic", "male" version of adhd [by which i mean that i'm hyperactive, rather than the inattentive-type manifestation of the condition which is presumed - although not, in my view, entirely accurately - to be more common in women] i wasn't screened as a child because adhd was seen as a thing which boys had.

but they're also because the circumstances of my early life - above all, that my family wasn't housing- or food-insecure, and that my parents were able to have a work-life balance because of this - allowed me to cope well enough with the bad parts of being a child with an undiagnosed neurological disability to be extremely high-achieving while at school. i was in trouble all the time - as most of us were - but this was usually because i spent my time in the classroom messing around, safe in the knowledge that i could race through any work last minute and be completely fine. i was my teachers' nightmare, but it was for the extremely chic reason that all the consequences they threatened me with never came to pass. i was told for fourteen years of schooling that the rug was about to pulled out from under me if i didn't buck up my ideas. instead, i got top marks in every exam, i got into an excellent university to study a competitive subject, i got a first in that subject, i have also - as well as my medical training - got a phd, i'm in an interesting and unusual speciality. i have a lot of letters after my name.

this is because i'm astonishingly clever - and i won't apologise for stating that as fact - but it's also due to good fortune. adhd [especially adhd which is undiagnosed until adulthood] is enormously overrepresented in the prison population, among addicts, among those who have no qualifications, among the long-term unemployed. i think it's important to simultaneously recognise that - while i do think of myself as disabled, and i'm right to - i am very, very lucky in the treatment plan and support system i have. i could be in a very different position had even minor things about my childhood changed.

but with this context taken into account... my view is genuinely that medicine is the number one job for the dopamine-challenged.

i'm not going to go into details about my specialism on the public timeline, but it has several aspects which work really well for my brain.

it's usually very fast-paced and unpredictable. like many people with adhd, i am excellent at working under pressure [and i'm great in a crisis] and very much not excellent without it.

but even when we have slower days it still always feels like i'm progressing towards a tangible goal. like many people with adhd, i'm not great at visualising long-term things - i think in the now and the not-now - but my work relates to cases where the long-term goals and outcome are easy to visualise, and i like that.

it's an area of medicine which is, essentially, puzzle-solving, often in creative and novel ways. like many people with adhd, i struggle to maintain focus on tasks which are too repetitive - but i'm also, as we often are, very good at spotting patterns and details, i have excellent intuition, and i'm a very good lateral thinker.

it lets me be on my feet a lot, to be moving around, and to be doing things physically. my fidgeting has really been cut down by the ol' lisdexamfetamine, but the twitchy impulses which remain are channelled very nicely into being able to do things with my hands and have it count towards my workload.

it's very sociable. i get to spend a lot of time just having a natter with the nurses - and i always have someone around to body double with - but i also get to work with lots of other departments and other non-medical professionals, i teach medical students, i present at conferences, and so on. it's very busy, there's always something new going on, and something which interests me is guaranteed to pop up just when i'm starting to get a bit fed up with a sitting-at-my-desk task...

and the "this interests me" point is the key one, i think.

like many people with adhd, my issue isn't a deficit of attention, it's an inability to easily control the focus of that attention. i have a typically low tolerance for boredom, and i find it extremely difficult both to start and to concentrate on enough to complete tasks which don't interest me.

but i like what i do - i find it fascinating - and that means that i have a lot of attention to devote to it. i can't remember what day my bins go out or what my mam asked me to pick up for her from the supermarket, but i can remember endless information pertaining to the human body, no matter how grim the situation that body finds itself in.

it's taken a bit of trial-and-error to get to where i am - i found the surgical rotations of my training really tough, for example, because surgery is a discipline which is very repetitive, and which lacks that mystery-solving element which so appeals to me - but i'm in a place now where i genuinely think that having adhd makes me a better doctor.

and even the night shifts are worth it to not have to work in an office.

[no disrespect to the spreadsheet girlies...]

[norbezjones]

I've been thinking a lot about something concerning Romance The Backrooms, so I wanted to write it down and share it.

Content Warning: Discussion of suicidal thoughts, self harm, mental health issues, and homelessness. There is a hopeful ending.

I got the idea for RtB in October, when I was living on a friend's couch and trying to find permanent housing. That ended up being a really difficult month for me, because I self-harmed for the first time in months and, as a result, I went to inpatient.

I was there for a while, and I got better. With all the time I had in thee, I worked on creative things, and really fleshed out RtB. I couldn't live with my friend anymore after October ended, but the social worker told me that she would find me a group home.

However, when I was transferred to a different wing of the hospital, I was given a new social worker. And this one said that I couldn't get into a group home, and he was going to discharge me into a homeless shelter asap.

That resulted in a spike of suicidal thoughts. Why had I come this far, only for this to happen to me? Should I just end it? But, no--if I did that, who would be around to make Romance The Backrooms? If my light snuffed out now, that game would never be made.

I've been suicidal since I was 10 years old, and it's usually not big, grand things that make me want to stay alive. It's the dogs I would never pet and the movies I'd never be able to watch that make me say, "One more day." And RtB became my "One more day." It became the reason why I persevered.

After I was discharged, my friends told me that I still needed inpatient help & psychiatric care. So after toughing things out for a few days, I brought myself to the ER and was admitted. A few days later, I was brought to another inpatient, and two weeks later, that inpatient sent me to a short-term residential program.

It was a wonderful program, and I met some fantastic people there. I also worked more on RtB--I figured out all of my love interests, and drew them for the first time. On the characters profiles, which you can view here, there are drawings with the description, "Concept art from when I was in treatment in December 2023." These were all done while I was at the residential program.

I was able to scrounge up some money to be able to get an Airbnb after I discharged--it was cheaper than other options, and would hopefully be temporary while I searched for permanent housing.

Unfortunately, finding housing is difficult when you haven't worked in 2 years (mainly thanks to pseudo-dementia, which I've documented extensively in this game here), and don't have the money for a security deposit. I also wasn't poor enough or disabled enough to get help from the government. Very unfortunate.

Long story short, I ran out of funds to stay at the Airbnb in 2 months. I was able to get into a short-term housing program for homeless folks with mental health issues. That was when I met Kevin.

Kevin told me he could help me get hotel & housing vouchers if I went with him after our time at the program was done. I had no other options, so I did. I spent the money I had keeping us afloat at a motel while we waited for the voucher, and went across the state to a different one when Kevin told me the one we were at wouldn't accept the voucher. When he left to retrieve it, I waited very patiently for him to return.

He never did.

I suspect the whole thing was some sort of scam all along, and even though part of me knew it could be, I went with it because it was either go with Kevin, or go to the homeless shelter.

The next day, I had to check out of the motel--I had literally no money left. I gathered my bags and sat in the lobby--well, I say lobby, but there weren't any chairs or tables, so I was basically sitting on the ground in the corner of the room, with sun from the window scorching my back--while I tried to come up with a plan.

I made a lot of phone calls to people who might be able to help me, but nothing came through. Even 211 had nothing, because the homeless shelters in the town I was in were full.

I became suicidal again at that moment. Again, the eternal question: why had I come this far, only for this to happen to me? Should I just end it?

No, goddammit. If I go now, Romance The Backrooms will never be made, I thought to myself. I want to be around to make it. I want to be around to see it through. Come on, Bez. Things looks like shit, but let's keep going anyway.

Not long after that thought came to my mind, another person entered my head, someone else I could call. I wavered, but eventually decided to try calling them, and they answered. They were able to help.

It's thanks to them that I am where I am today. I have housing for a while, and I got a job that I'm satisfied with.

Best of all, I'm working on Romance The Backrooms.

I'm so happy I stayed around to see it through.

[defilerwyrm]

Hello, thanks so much for your last post! I hope this isn't insensitive, but I'd be really interested to know: What helped you get out of right wing ideology? Do you have any advice for helping people out? Thanks!

It was a combination of things over time.

This turned out to be pretty long so I’m gonna put it under a cut. CW for discussions of various forms of right-wing bigotry within.

a) In the midst of a LiveJournal slapfight, I said something that I absolutely in no way meant or even conceived as being misogynistic, but was clearly taken as such, and was chewed out for it. I went “Tap the brakes, what are you talking about?!” and the gal I was arguing with was kind enough (not nice, but kind) to lay it out for me. And I listened. That started me thinking.

b) I realized that the far right that I vaunted literally wants people like me (queer and disabled) dead. I spent a long time in denial about this, thinking I would be an exception somehow.

c) I dug more into the true nature of white pride groups and discovered that, far from an honorable community of people who are simply proud of their heritage, groups like the Aryan Brotherhood are actually murderous, hyperviolent gangs—in some cases, literal prison gangs—of drug dealers, domestic abusers, and straight-up racists, and I couldn’t reconcile that with my notions of honorable behavior.

d) I actually read Mein Kampf. At first it was mostly curiosity and a way to keep people from talking to me in public. Book 1 (the first half) you can kinda see where he’s coming from, wanting a strong, self-sustaining domestic economy, not relying overly on imports, etc; but Book 2 is where he goes completely off the fucking rails, just utterly batshit, and you can tell it’s coming not from a place of “I want to rebuild my homeland after we were devastated by the aftermath of WWI and the Great Depression” but rather “I have a raging hateboner for this specific group of people who had fuck-all to do with that devastation and will make up just the wildest shit to justify and proselytize that hate.” I didn’t have any strong opinions on Jewish folk then so it really whipped my head back. It’s one thing to learn, in the vague terms that my Texas public school education provided me, about the surface facts of the Holocaust, but I don’t think I had any clue what the depths of the vitriol that led to that horror looked like until I heard it from the horse’s mouth. C and D were the big things that showed me that “white pride” isn’t about finding joy in your heritage—it’s about harboring a deep, dark, hideous hatred for others’ heritage. I did not like that.

e) An element that only in recent years occurred to me, but I think an extremely important one: I did not have a right-wing community. All I had in the way of friends & associates were fairly apolitical, mostly queer people who looked the other way when it came to my horrific personal politics. I think I knew at the time that they were unpopular views (or at least, they were in at the turn of the century) and mostly kept them to myself. As I came to accept and understand my own queerness more deeply, as I lived within the poor queer community of my hometown, as I made friends with more and more diverse groups of people, I found things within myself to be proud of, and those close to me—the very people whom the far right still want dead—welcomed me, guided me, supported me. No one on the right was there for me that way. I didn’t have a cluster of far-right friends beating their noxious values back into my head at every turn. The community I had vs the community I didn’t have made it a lot damn easier to make that heel-face turn.

With all that in mind, I think I can offer two pieces of advice:

Understand that far-right ideology is fundamentally built on anxiety and insecurity. Racists, misogynists, homophobes etc latch onto their identities as white, men, straight etc because it’s something they did not have to work for/on and cannot be removed from them, so they hold up these intrinsic traits as things that make them “superior” to others despite evidence to the contrary. Look at how many out-of-shape, mediocre white men brag that they could win a tennis match against Serena or Venus Williams. They don’t think they’re good at tennis—and they are absolutely not going to go through the years of extremely challenging work and practice and dedication required to get that good—they think they’re superior because they’re white men, even though factually either of the Williams sisters would destroy them blindfolded. The reason they go out of their way to make these ridiculous claims is because they feel insecure that someone who isn’t white and a man is better than them at something. This is also what’s behind the whole “Oh they just chose/should choose the best person for the job”—they’re saying they don’t believe someone who isn’t an abled cishet white man COULD be the best person for the job, regardless of what the job is. I don’t think the answer to this is just to point out the innumerable amazing achievements of people of color, queer folk, disabled folk, etc, because they’ll just go “yeah well MY people did xyz.” They’re feeling insecure. What they need is something about themselves to be proud of that they, personally, accomplished: being a good woodworker, or a talented speaker, or a whiz at math, some skill they have worked to foster. What they need is a sense of confidence that their worth is not dependent on what they were born with/as. For me, learning to value myself for who I am and who I can choose to be helped me stop looking down on others for what they are and did not choose to be, because I no longer needed imaginary metrics of superiority and inferiority to prop up a lack of self-worth and an iceberg’s worth of self-loathing.

Separate them from their herd. Understand that many will choose the security of the familiar over the risk of the new. But familiarity does not breed contempt—it opens eyes. A LARGE part of far-right ideology is made up of lies and assumptions and outright ignorance. Don’t just dunk them into the deep end right away, but exposure therapy is the name of the game. It’s a lot easier to think of (for example) Black people as being inferior to you when you don’t freaking know any, or to think of trans people as just a niche category of porn if you’ve never actually talked—and LISTENED—to us. Understand that right-wing social circles are vicious, internecine places where everyone is frothing at the mouth to pull someone down the instant they misstep, and they will expect the same from a left-wing circle. “Well actually” might be your friend here, rather than rubbing their nose in every fuckup or shitty thing they say. The goal is to, you know, teach them how to care about other people, and you have to model that for them. Offer other ways of looking at things instead of just “no, that’s wrong.” This can be an arduous and painful process for everyone, but if their mind can be pried open, it will be worth it in the end.

[thebibliosphere]

Hello! I hope that you are well* (*As well as can be, in spoonie terms). I'm writing to ask if you have any Spoonie Advice on how to keep going with house repairs when it seems like your house invents new ways to be inaccessible every week. I had to move recently, and meeting the rising tide of accessibility challenges in my new apartment is daunting and tiring. Any tips, tricks, or words of wisdom? (No pressure to answer though, if you don't have the spoons or wouldn't like to!)

Hello, thank you <3 I hope you're doing well too. (With the same caveat of course lol)

My advice would be to do what is immediately available to you to improve your life and help you preserve energy for the big things.

When we first moved into our house, I was suffering the worst of my fatigue. Yet foolishly, I did very little to make my life easier. I was stuck in the mentality of not wanting to spend money on temporary fixes that would make my life easier because we would eventually redo the entire space.

So why bother to invest in a shower chair so I can sit down and preserve energy while I wash? We were going to redo the tub soon. Why bother with mobility aids that suction to the wall and don't require drilling? We're going to be installing permanent ones at some point. Why waste $20 on an ugly piece of plastic that I eventually won't need?

I did the same in our apartment. Why bother to do XYZ to the space when it would never be our permanent home? I could manage, I could cope. I didn't need to make minor accommodations when we would eventually make major ones.

Was there some internalized ableism going on there? More than probably. Was I justifying denying myself aids that would improve my life because I was suffering under the idea of being more efficient and cost-effective in the long run? Absolutely.

So yeah, when everything seems overwhelming, look around your space and try to assess what can easily be helped with a quick trip to your local Walgreens or Home Depot, or a quick look at Amazon and browsing through the accessibility options.

Would a shower chair help you preserve energy in the shower? Great! They can also double as extra flat storage space at the side of the tub/shower when not in use.

Would temporary suction cups bars help your stability in the shower? Also great. And the good thing about temp ones is you can take them with you if you wind up going somewhere where you're not sure your accessibility needs will be met.

Would extra laundry baskets help you pre-sort your laundry, thus removing an extra step from the executive dysfunction chain come laundry day? Awesome.

Would removing cabinet doors help with executive dysfunction so you can see where everything is? Cool. Most are easy to unscrew and set aside for putting back on later if/when you move on from a rented space.

Same with labels? Would labeling things help you find stuff? You could buy a label maker, or you could get some crafting tape that peels off from (most) finishes easily and write them by hand.

Would something like the 15-minute pick-up help you keep on top of your cleaning routine and make it easier for you to tackle? Fab. I bought a bunch of cheap buckets and baskets from Ikea to keep things contained. Helps with my dust allergies and reduces tripping hazards in the house.

Can't reach the storage space in your house? We bought low-down sorting bins for me to use that don't require a lot of upward mobility. You can get some pretty stuff at Ikea too if you're able to build things or have someone who can help you with them.

If the counters in your kitchen are too high, are you able to place a table you can comfortably sit at for food prep, or can you bring a chair into the space you can use to boost yourself up the counter height?

What about your utensils? Would tools designed for mobility help save energy/reduce injury? (Some good examples when searching Amazon for 'knives for arthritis'.)

I don't know what your specific needs are, but if you would like to discuss examples with me, I can try to help troubleshoot them and lighten the mental load. That’s the benefit of having a diverse disabled community around you. We get to share our experiences and our life hacks. And they're usually more helpful than "install an entire pulley system of ropes and sliders across your basement staircase to do your laundry in the basement" when you're talking about waiting to install a washer and dryer on your main floor lol.

(I love all of you. It's just mentally taxing when people all keep suggesting the same thing repeatedly. Especially when that thing involves major structural work that isn't actually as simple as it sounds.)

Of course, these are all steps that require money, but that is sadly true of most accessibility steps. The world is not built with us in mind, so it always costs extra for us to function in it. But from experience? It's money well spent, even if you have to do it gradually and if the goal is to replace them with "better" things in the end. Tackling things in little steps helps. And honestly, sometimes you don’t realize how much the accumulative weight of minor problems is weighing on you until you pick them off one by one.

A kilo of feathers still weighs the same as a kilo of steel. Just because one is softer and not as hard looking doesn’t make it any lighter to carry.

[dragonmuse]

So I know there’s cultural expectations of queer people to look a certain way (ie lots of transfems feel pressured to be thin, fat phobia and ableism in the gay male community), do any of the main “cast” (for lack of a better term) feel pressured or insecure?

Yes, they absolutely do. Putting this one under the cut because it got long.

Oluwande almost doesn't continue his drag career over it. He blames dancing etc, but he is acutely aware of how how people respond to him before he says a word. When it seems like just another place to get rejected, he closed it all down. When Jim pushed the subject, he decided he could put up with it just a little longer if he didn't have to face it alone. Jim didn't find out about the extent of it until they were already settled into their act and successful. It's a long hard discussion, but they both come out better for it.

It's also the reason Frenchie, John and Pete have such a strong bond. None of them move effortlessly through the community, but they accepted each other right from the start.

Pete because he is sexually active and spent years going to bars to hook up, experienced way more sexual rejection. He doesn't give up because he's a stubborn man, but it wounds him. In Baby, I'm Amazed, Pete asks Lucius that first time if he finds him attractive in or out of drag because he gets far more interest from guys with a fetish for drag queens then for himself. That does things to a person. He's excellent at bluffing, but it's only when he stopped wearing a wig consistently while in drag, that he accepted himself more.

When we meet John in Someone to Watch Over Me, he has assumed that no object of his affections would ever love him back. Even years later, he almost didn't respond to the library's general call for queens who would be willing to read to children because he thought they would prefer someone that looked entirely different. It took a lot of convincing for him to go and now he loves it and gets a lot of validation from it.

Frenchie has more innate confidence, in general, but a lot of that comes from having to develop a subtle 'Fuck You' attitude as armor. He's more careful than he is insecure, but there were bad days, especially before he figured himself all the way out.

Lucius has a lot of insecurities, but as he famously says in canon 'I've decided to hold myself like I'm cute'. He has his days where he compares himself to 'cuter' men, and feels shitty about himself. Wanting to be absolute dynamite in bed started from a place of compensating for his perceived shortcomings, before he found out he just really loved it and was able to derive tremendous confidence from it.

And Eddy. It's so complicated for her. In some ways like Frenchie, she has strong 'Fuck You' armor, expect hers was reinforced by violence. On top of that they only really came into the gay community at the same time they met the love of their life.

Before that, they were able to get laid just about every time they had an interest to because they were only trying with people fairly close to their inner circle or at least would want to be close to that inner circle. No one was going to make mean passive-aggressive or sarcastic comments to someone who has no issue with extreme violence or sending their horrible lap dog to do a more predictable, but possibly final violence. (There was much debate in the company on which was worse, Eddy delivering her own form of erratic 'justice' on the spot or having Izzy just show up where you live a day later. This is neither here nor there for this ask, but can you just imagine? Yikes).

Eddy's insecurity issues far predate having sex with men, let alone being a part of the community. But hooooo boy, once they are in the there, they are rapidly made aware of some stark issues. The moving target of being femme 'enough' whatever that means comes up more than they would like both internally and externally. Layer that with race and disability and yeah, she has some bad days. After all, Stede isn't unfamiliar with finding her in ensconced in the tub with the lights out.

What makes them all able to push through is strong sense of self. The Revenge staff are a deeply anchored bunch and despite all of the shit that they may have to shovel, none of them are willing to change to become more palatable to the people that make them feel that way.

It's the one thing they all have in common and why they're able to hold together as a unit. Sure Buttons is weird and often off-putting, but he's always going to be Buttons and if you say something shitty to him, you deal with all of them now.

It's also the thing that Stede needed to learn the most and accidentally fell into surrounding himself with. Chameleon pre-Revenge Eddy needed it too.

(Personal note here: I have a deep craving for community and I think that's where almost all of these stories spring from. I sincerely thank all of you that have read all of these stories and get to the end of answers like these, interact or reach out because it makes me feel a part of something.

This has taken me way longer to do than most asks. I've gone back through and fixed and added and adjusted. I'm still not sure I nailed it, but I have to go to sleep at some point.

Let's say if nothing else, they all get by with a little help from their friends. )

[apenitentialprayer]

I hit the breaking point as a parent a few years ago. It was the week of my extended family’s annual gathering in August, and we were struggling with assorted crises. My parents were aging; my wife and I were straining under the chaos of young children; my sister was bracing to prepare her preteens for bullying, sex and cyberstalking. Sure enough, one night all the tensions boiled over. At dinner, I noticed my nephew texting under the table. I knew I shouldn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help myself and asked him to stop. Ka-boom! My sister snapped at me to not discipline her child. My dad pointed out that my girls were the ones balancing spoons on their noses. My mom said none of the grandchildren had manners. Within minutes, everyone had fled to separate corners. Later, my dad called me to his bedside. There was a palpable sense of fear I couldn’t remember hearing before. “Our family’s falling apart,” he said. “No it’s not,” I said instinctively. “It’s stronger than ever.” But lying in bed afterward, I began to wonder: Was he right? What is the secret sauce that holds a family together? What are the ingredients that make some families effective, resilient, happy? It turns out to be an astonishingly good time to ask that question. The last few years have seen stunning breakthroughs in knowledge about how to make families, along with other groups, work more effectively. Myth-shattering research has reshaped our understanding of dinnertime, discipline and difficult conversations. Trendsetting programs from Silicon Valley and the military have introduced techniques for making teams function better. The only problem: most of that knowledge remains ghettoized in these subcultures, hidden from the parents who need it most. I spent the last few years trying to uncover that information, meeting families, scholars and experts ranging from peace negotiators to online game designers to Warren Buffett’s bankers. After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative. I first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a colorful psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual in American families.“There was a lot of research at the time into the dissipation of the family,” he told me at his home in suburban Atlanta. “But we were more interested in what families could do to counteract those forces.” Around that time, Dr. Duke’s wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities, noticed something about her students.“The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges,” she said. Her husband was intrigued, and along with a colleague, Robyn Fivush, set out to test her hypothesis. They developed a measure called the “Do You Know?” scale that asked children to answer 20 questions. Examples included: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth? Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and taped several of their dinner table conversations. They then compared the children’s results to a battery of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness. “We were blown away,” Dr. Duke said. And then something unexpected happened. Two months later was Sept. 11. As citizens, Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush were horrified like everyone else, but as psychologists, they knew they had been given a rare opportunity: though the families they studied had not been directly affected by the events, all the children had experienced the same national trauma at the same time. The researchers went back and reassessed the children.“Once again,” Dr. Duke said, “the ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress.” Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child overcome something as minor as a skinned knee or as major as a terrorist attack? “The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,” Dr. Duke said. Psychologists have found that every family has a unifying narrative, he explained, and those narratives take one of three shapes. First, the ascending family narrative: “Son, when we came to this country, we had nothing. Our family worked. We opened a store. Your grandfather went to high school. Your father went to college. And now you. ...” Second is the descending narrative: “Sweetheart, we used to have it all. Then we lost everything.” “The most healthful narrative,” Dr. Duke continued, “is the third one. It’s called the oscillating family narrative: ‘Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in our family. We built a family business. Your grandfather was a pillar of the community. Your mother was on the board of the hospital. But we also had setbacks. You had an uncle who was once arrested. We had a house burn down. Your father lost a job. But no matter what happened, we always stuck together as a family.’ ” Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he and Dr. Fivush call a strong “intergenerational self.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves. Leaders in other fields have found similar results. Many groups use what sociologists call sense-making, the building of a narrative that explains what the group is about. Jim Collins, a management expert and author of “Good to Great,” told me that successful human enterprises of any kind, from companies to countries, go out of their way to capture their core identity. In Mr. Collins’s terms, they “preserve core, while stimulating progress.” The same applies to families, he said. Mr. Collins recommended that families create a mission statement similar to the ones companies and other organizations use to identify their core values. The military has also found that teaching recruits about the history of their service increases their camaraderie and ability to bond more closely with their unit.Cmdr. David G. Smith is the chairman of the department of leadership, ethics and law at the Naval Academy and an expert in unit cohesion, the Pentagon’s term for group morale. Until recently, the military taught unit cohesion by “dehumanizing” individuals, Commander Smith said. Think of the bullying drill sergeants in “Full Metal Jacket” or “An Officer and a Gentleman.” But these days the military spends more time building up identity through communal activities. At the Naval Academy, Commander Smith advises graduating seniors to take incoming freshmen (or plebes) on history-building exercises, like going to the cemetery to pay tribute to the first naval aviator or visiting the original B-1 aircraft on display on campus. Dr. Duke recommended that parents pursue similar activities with their children. Any number of occasions work to convey this sense of history: holidays, vacations, big family get-togethers, even a ride to the mall. The hokier the family’s tradition, he said, the more likely it is to be passed down. He mentioned his family’s custom of hiding frozen turkeys and canned pumpkin in the bushes during Thanksgiving so grandchildren would have to “hunt for their supper,” like the Pilgrims. “These traditions become part of your family,” Dr. Duke said. Decades of research have shown that most happy families communicate effectively. But talking doesn’t mean simply “talking through problems,” as important as that is. Talking also means telling a positive story about yourselves. When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence. The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.

- Bruce Feiler. Emphases added.

[unwhitewashthebadbatch]

We the undersigned are Star Wars fans reaching out due to our deep concerns with the new series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch. We feel that elements of the show, including many character models and aspects of the writing, are alienating and harmful to fans of color.

When George Lucas first created Star Wars, many fans latched onto the cast of characters with a range of personalities and backgrounds, and they did this because everyone was able to see a little bit of themselves in Luke, Leia, Han, and Lando. The theme that anyone can be great regardless of one’s upbringing, that fighting for what’s right is always ideal over doing what’s comfortable, and that a family can be found in anything is what has drawn so many different people to Star Wars for decades.

These themes were the main driving force behind the writing of the clones in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Fans of the series can easily attest to the message that DNA does not determine value, and that what matters most is who you are, not what you are. The clones’ collective arc did away with the idea that a name, a face, or a particular upbringing determined skills or intrinsic value. This is the message that fans most identify with the clones, and they were excited to see the continuation of that message as far as the series went. Many fans see themselves in the clones in one way or another. Neurodivergent and disabled fans see themselves in characters like Hardcase, Wolffe, and Echo. Many fans of color were excited for the breadth and depth with which the clones were written, and Māori and Polynesian fans were glad to see themselves as heroes.

These valuable lessons and representation were in part why the introduction of Clone Force 99 – also known as the “Bad Batch” – came as a shock to many. Where The Clone Wars had spent over a decade building on the aforementioned themes, it was as if The Bad Batch had come specifically to do away with them. Sergeant Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Crosshair, Echo, and eventually Omega weren’t intrinsically valuable despite their sameness the way all other clones are. The Clone Wars (and later, Star Wars: The Bad Batch) makes it clear that these clones are intrinsically valuable because they’re different. Where Fives had said on Kamino and on Umbara that they were clones but they were also people, that they shared blood but that they were individuals with opinions worth listening to, who had rights that were being violated and who needed to stand up for themselves, The Bad Batch is almost the total opposite. The Bad Batch clones are special because their blood is special; their DNA is so different from Jango’s that they have an edge over the “regs” that they refuse to acknowledge as their battlefield and familial equals. This message already unsettled many fans, but what added salt to the wound was the appearance of the members of the Bad Batch. In The Clone Wars, it is made clear that they have genetic enhancements that give them skills and advantages regular clones do not have, like Tech’s genius and Crosshair’s sniping abilities. Their differences are desirable mutations. Their desirable mutations also made them white.

The term “whitewashing” began to take hold with the release of the story reels in 2015, but since The Clone Wars had been canceled, many fans did not say much because they did not expect the Bad Batch to ever be fully animated. When Disney revived The Clone Wars for one final season, these same fans were dismayed to see that not only had nothing changed, it was as though the whitewashing became worse with the full render. Tech looked and sounded like a British man. Many people likened Hunter to Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo (or to the actor himself). There was a lot of confusion over Echo’s complete lack of melanin and Crosshair’s dramatically narrowed features and yellow undertone. Fans were also disturbed to see that Wrecker, the clone who arguably most resembles Jango, is characterized by a number of negative racial stereotypes, including being violent / short-tempered, intellectually inferior, and to quote voice actor Dee Bradley Baker, “childlike”.

The release of the trailer for Star Wars: The Bad Batch only solidified fans’ feelings of disgust, dismay, and hurt. It looked like the creators of The Bad Batch had lost interest in telling a story about underdogs and people without special upbringings or innate abilities, instead choosing to base the premise of the show off the idea that being genetically superior is what makes a hero. Additionally, since the series began airing we have seen other characters altered, including Saw Gerrera (lightened skin tone, straight brown hair, and the return of light-colored eyes) and Caleb Dume/Kanan Jarrus (lightened skin tone, lightened hair, lightened eyes). To fans of color, the message of The Bad Batch was clear: to be special, to be the hero – to be genetically enhanced and desirable – one must be white, or near it.

On March 30th, 2021, the social media campaign using the hashtag #UnwhitewashTBB was started by Twitter user @Clonehub7567. It began simultaneously on Tumblr under the same hashtag. Other fans quickly joined the movement, as the stated message was simple and clear: undo the whitewashing in The Bad Batch and commit to accurate representation for people of color in both art and in writing.

Since that day, #UnwhitewashTBB has expanded to include more than just racism, colorism, and featurism. As the series continued, members of #UnwhitewashTBB became aware of various other issues with the series, the two largest being ableism and antisemitism. The ableism was made apparent in Tech’s coding as “on the spectrum”, according to voice actor Dee Bradley Baker; Echo’s treatment as an amputee (being sold and otherwise ignored); and the potential issue with Wrecker’s large facial scar, single eye, and his behavior and personality. More details can be found here: https://unwhitewashthebadbatch.carrd.co/#abttbb The antisemitism is in Cid, the broker that the team works with. She is a Trandoshan woman, a lizard species popular in Star Wars. She’s greedy, and she has an accent associated with New York Jews. On top of this, she is being played by a Jewish voice actress, Rhea Perlman.

Fan Responses

On July 26, 2021, the #UnwhitewashTBB movement released a survey to gauge the general audience’s feelings about the series. Within days, we received hundreds of responses, and the numbers continue to climb.

When asked what their favorite element of the series was, most (38.1%) said “Cameos”, followed by “Main Characters” (25%), “Art / Animation” (19.8%), “Other” (13.1%) and “Writing” (4.9%).

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When asked about their least favorite element of the series, the order was “Writing” (33.8%), “Main Characters” (22.5%), “Other” (19.7%), “Art / Animation” (19.2%), and “Cameo Appearances” (4.8%).

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Respondents were asked to read various pages in the carrd, and were then asked again about their opinion on the series.

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Upon reading the carrd, respondents were given the opportunity to explain their final feelings on Star Wars: The Bad Batch.

“...their skin is a little too pale. As someone who is part Māori, this is very important to me.” - Respondent 581

“...The show has failed greatly in many aspects but especially in their whitewashing and it's appalling that we can look at earlier seasons of TCW and see the clones' skin gradually becoming lighter and lighter. There are no excuses for it. I know that since I already had strong opinions on this my response might not adequately reflect the "average" viewer, but I'm glad that this is being talked about. Particularly in the field of animation this is very avoidable, the fact no one on their team throughout the very lengthy and grueling production process said nothing tells me that their team has severe issues and a lack of diverse representation in positions of power that needs addressing asap. I love Star Wars and it is has always had these issues but it is high time they start actually changing especially as the fanbase has never been as diverse as it is now. Apologies if I strayed from the main question here!” - Respondent 735

“I can't watch without noticing the whitewashing.” - Respondent 679

“I would just like to elaborate on the ableism aspect. As a amputee myself, I don’t like how Echo’s trauma has been ignored. The whole reason he is with the BB is because of what he went through. Losing one limb, never mind multiple, it’s extremely difficult. They made it seem like just because his prosthetic can be of use on missions, that means he isn’t grieving the loss of his actual hand. There is no healing or evolution. It also feels wrong to only address the fact that echo uses prosthetics for the sake of hacking into machinery. Prosthetics are so personal and become a real part of who you are as a person.” - Respondent 130

“Overall feelings about the series: It's disturbing that this misrepresentation is so pervasive in the project.” - Respondent 616

“...I can't believe Star Wars is still doing this, and that an entire team of animators with a huge budget can't get skin tone right. I didn't even know the clones were supposed to have a NZ Māori accent until a friend told me. That's a big deal, since I live in NZ and hear it every day. Also, casting a white man to voice a Māori accent, and then having him do an awful job at it? Shame on you, Disney.” - Respondent 209

“As someone who is neurodivergent myself, Tech and Wrecker just. sting, you know? in a “is that really what you think of us” kind of way.

“As a fan of color, its irritating and painful to watch and be brushed off as "lighting issues" and see justifications made by white fans and producers...It also feels very bad to me that TCW spent 7 seasons with several arcs emphasizing that the clones were all as individual as a 'normal' person, but then undo all that with TBB, which centers a group of "special" clones (who are suspiciously white) and have them treat the "regs" as a homogeneous group who are lesser than them, and then expect us to find it within ourselves to put that aside to enjoy the MCs. The way the treat "regs" is very offputting and it made me dislike them since their introduction...Star Wars is no stranger to racist and antisemitic media, but I must say, the blantancy of Sid, a greedy lizard who essentially financially enslaves the protaganists, being Jewish-coded and being protrayed by a Jewish voice actress is really next-level even for Star Wars. As a Jewish fan, it really grates on me.” - Respondent 40

“I’m disabled and autistic, and the ableism is appalling to watch. Watching Echo be treated as subhuman for needing machinery to survive makes me feel like having implants to keep my spine from breaking itself would have me be the pitied member of any group. I am disgusted by the blatant antisemitism, as a fair number of my friends are Jewish and it hurts me to think that people can so easily hate others based on internalized stereotypes. Me and my friends have also critically analyzed the fact that, despite being clones of a character portrayed by Temuera Morrison, for some reason the bad batch look nothing like him in any way. No resemblance in any way: just a bunch of someone’s badly worked characters fraught with disgusting writing decisions and design choices that make no sense. It makes me angry to think that the writers for this show, and to an extent any modern writer, would believe that using harmful tropes to make a story is acceptable and someone brings in profit. I tried to watch it out of fact that my family likes Star Wars and we all grew up watching it, but all of these unhealthy assumptions and terrible choices in terms of writing and design leave a bitter and nauseating feeling.” - Respondent 605

From the start, there was a striking pattern from respondents: regardless of one’s initial feelings surrounding the series, its characters, and the writing, not only did most people’s opinions decrease upon reading the #UnwhitewashTBB carrd, the vast majority of respondents (ratings 1-3, 77.1%) were not excited for a prospective Season 2 of The Bad Batch. The most commonly cited reason for this the racism/whitewashing, antisemitism, and ableism.

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Resolution

Supporters of #UnwhitewashTBB are as diverse as the viewers themselves. We all have differing understandings of what a solution to the offenses in the series may entail, but we are all joined under these four goals, stated in our carrd:

1. An end to the racism, whitewashing, and colorism/featurism. We all want to see a group of clones who share the skin tone of the man they are copies of. While some of us want complete model rehauls that make the Bad Batch look Māori in general, others of us would prefer it if the clones all shared the standard clone model. Regardless of the specificities, we are demanding an end to the racism in Star Wars: The Bad Batch that has prevented so many of us from fully enjoying this series. We want to be able to see ourselves, our features, and our racial and ethnic identities on screen without them being lightened, narrowed, straightened, or villainized once we hit the screen.

Fixing these means not placing the only representation fans of color have on screen in the Empire, and having people who look like us be heroes rather than supporters of a metaphor for a Nazi regime.

2. An end to the ableism in Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Disabled and neurodivergent fans have expressed continued dismay at the treatment of Echo in the series, from his being sold as a droid to his near nonexistence within the plot. Lots of autistic fans see themselves in Tech and enjoy his character for that reason, but they feel his representation is leaning heavily into stereotypes. Echo must be a full member of the team, and Tech must stop being a stereotype.

3. An end to the antisemitism. Cid is a gross stereotype of Jewish people, who have suffered enough over the centuries and to this day without having to see themselves dehumanized as a mean, greedy lizard person on screen. The antisemitic traits in Cid--whether they be the voice/accent, the personality, the species, or all three--must go.

4. An acknowledgement and apology from Disney and the Star Wars: The Bad Batch team. Fans of color, Jewish fans, disabled fans, and neurodivergent fans have been hurt and alienated by the actions of Disney and the writing/design team for The Bad Batch. Disney has made posts standing up for Black and other marginalized people before. They can do it again.

Fans across religions, cultures, abilities, and various racial and ethnic identities have been hurt by the portrayal of The Bad Batch, from their physical appearances to their writing. This letter is a plea from those fans to Disney, Lucasfilm, and the creative leaders of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. For decades, Star Wars was meant to be for everyone, regardless of the traits that make us different from one another. We are asking that that tradition continue, that our voices are heard, and that you unwhitewash The Bad Batch.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Personal life update, and for once this one isn’t terribly depressing (I mean, it touches on some depressing stuff about flaws in academic approaches to disability care, but still, by the standards of my usual personal posts it’s fairly sunshine and rainbows-y), as we finally approach that point of post-COVID real life coming back. Despite the fact that we are not actually post-COVID. But in the interests of maintaining what I said about not being too depressing, I won’t even dwell on that right now.

I just found out that I got the co-op placement I wanted, for which I spent way too many hours last week studying for an interview that ended up asking me almost none of the things I’d studied, and instead asking silly questions like how I define leadership and what qualities are found in a good team member. I prepared for an academic exam and ended up getting a normal job interview, and then spent all weekend convinced that because I’d insufficiently prepared my answer to job interview-type questions they wouldn’t be impressed and they’d give the spot to someone else who doesn’t know the material but can give a really good definition of the proper way to implement problem solving skills or whatever.

Anyway, that did not happen, they are giving me the spot, and in a couple of weeks I am going to finally be on track to finish the college program that I started at the beginning of 2020 and that was supposed to only take one year (I’ve done all the schoolwork, just had my in-person co-op term delayed for obvious reasons). And then I will have a diploma in the field of working with autistic people.

I made a post yesterday about a country singer who wrote a terrible song and sold it to a pop-country guy who made it really famous, and then took the money and clout he got from that and used it to make good music. I think... I think that’s generally sort of how I hope this works out, working in a field that has a lot of practices that are not great. You know, tell them the way they’re doing everything is right so they give me a diploma and then the best co-op placement (if I’d failed that interview I’d still have gotten placed somewhere, just in a program that’s lower-ranked than the one I got) and then hopefully a job, and then I can start to approach that job in a way that I realize won’t be implemented radical change, but hopefully at least can involve me not just following my professors’ explanations that stimming as a thing with no perceptible benefits and there’s no good scientific reason why it happens.

To get this far, when doing the academic parts of my college program, I have already written a lot of essays in which I wrote a lot of shit with which I disagree about what autism is and how it should be approached by those who work with autistic people (sorry “people with autism”, as I had to write in all my essays because all my academic materials use person-first language and I’d marked down for not doing so as well), and I’m really glad to be getting done with that. Just give me the diploma and let me out. Only then can I say, “Surprise! I was a secret autistic all along, spying on their organization!” Something that will definitely surprise them because the academic materials I’ve been given so far were clearly written by absolutely zero autistic people, and written with the assumption that no one taking the courses could be anywhere on that spectrum either.

Anyway, I’m pretty excited about getting this spot, because it’ll look great on my resume, and make me more likely to get a good job afterward, which I can use to both continue my adventures as an insider spy in that field, and to hopefully achieve a basic level of financial stability. I’ve spent the last ten or so days housesitting for someone who lives alone so I have a whole house to myself, and it’s going to be tough to go back to putting up with a roommate after this, so the financial stability thing is important. Finish school, then job, then enough financial stability to chase the big and outlandish dream of renting a one-bedroom apartment by myself, then use my status as a superspy to do good things in the deeply flawed field of trying to care for a vulnerable sect of the population - a sect to which I belong; and a field by which I’ve been failed pretty badly as a child, a teenager, and an adult. Big dreams.

[magnhild]

Nora Valkyrie, Identity, and Purpose

Hey everyone, Blaire here, and almost exactly a year ago, I made this mess of a post where I laid out all of my thoughts on Nora and what I thought the show could have in store for her.

And honestly, most of my ideas were way off, and not at all correct. Also, the post kind of flopped.

Thankfully, Volume 8 has given me a chance to redeem myself, and write another, more coherent, essay about my favourite RWBY character; where this Volume seems to be taking her character, and what it means to me, personally.

Buckle up.

To the vast majority of people in the RWBY fandom, Nora is the least-developed character, and the one most lacking in dimension. Most of her character seems to be defined by two things; her energy and love for fighting, and her relationship on Ren.

Volume 8 took note of these conceptions, and addressed them head-on.

Of course, any keen-eyed viewer will have noted Nora’s hidden depths even before this volume, which I noticed in last year’s post. She is perhaps the most perceptive of the main cast, at least, when it comes to people’s feelings and relaionships. She was the only one to really comment on Pyrrha’s crush on jaune, and the first to bring up Blake and Yang’s growing relationship. It was also her level-headedness that resolved RNJR’s argument in Volume 4, Chapter 9.

Volume 7 also showed us her innate desire to protect the weak, and her disdain to those who have the power to help, but refuse. I personally get the feeling that this was her driving motivation in becoming a Huntress; to protect people who cannot protect themselves, perhaps because she doesn’t want anyone to have to grow up as she did. Nora’s fury at Ironwood in V7C7 is esepcially signifigant, because it’s the angriest we’ve ever seen her before, even more so in that this anger is directed at someone with much more authority than her.

But these little details were only the tip of the iceberg. These were traits she already had, and while they help to add layers to her character, they’ve done very little in terms of her actual development. 

This is where Volume 8 came in stronger than any other.

Volume 7 hinted to us that Ren and Nora’s relationship was beginning to get more complicated, between their bickering, Ren’s dismissiveness at Nora, and their kiss in V7C6. By the end of the volume, it was clear that they were still struggling, despite their clear love for each other. Volume 8 carried this thread along, having them split into different parties, and Nora giving Ren a bit of attitude we’ve not really seen her direct at him before. 

She’s frustrated with him, and disappointed that he can’t see what she sees. But despite her tough front, V8C2 then hints that she’s sadder about the split than she’s letting on, after May brings up Nora’s ‘friends’. C3 then brings this to a head, where we get a conversation that sees Nora opening up to Blake and Yang, and revealing a deeply sad truth about herself- that she has no idea who she is without Ren, because she’s spent so much of her life with him and him alone, and her feelings for him have shaped so much of who she thinks she is. We’ve never seen her so hopeless and lost, especially after she reveals that, as far as she’s concerned, all she’s good for is hitting stuff.

Right in these few minutes, the show takes how the audience percieves Nora, and reveals to us that those two core traits are the gateways to a far deeper insight of her character. She’s known for her relationship with Ren, but wait- what about when he’s not there with her? She’s known for hitting stuff, but wait- that’s all she thinks she’s good for. 

It’s revealed to us that, not only is this how most of the audience percievs Nora, but it’s how she percieves herself. And for all her energy and upbeat attitude, deep down, she thinks incredibely lowly of herself. For all her confidence in her fighting abilities, she lacks confidence in herself as a person. 

Surprisingly enough, the ‘who am I?’ character arc is one that was hardly explored at all up until this point, despite it being one of the most common and signifgant character arcs in fictional media. And I don’t think many of us at all could have imagined that Nora would be the one to get that arc, when she’s always seemed so self-assured on the surface.

And then, when Penny is in need of help, Nora takes Weiss’ advice to heart, and does the one thing she believes she’s capable of- being strong, and hitting stuff.

Nora overcharging her Semblance to take down the wall is seen by a lot of the fandom as some kind of win for Nora; as her ‘big moment’. But while it’s certainly a really cool and badass scene, it was far from a triumph for her.

This was Nora at perhaps her lowest point so far in the series. This was Nora figuring ‘well, if this is all I’m good for, I’ll do it to the extreme’. This was Nora thinking her only purpose was to greatly endanger herself for the sake of others, because she figured she was the only one who could. And she almsot got herself killed for it. 

While certainly a defining moment, it was far from triumphant. It wasn’t a win. It was a self-destrcutive act that reflected how little she thinks of herself; that she’s not worth anything unless she’s pushing herself to the limit doing the one thing she thinks she’s good at.

And to drive the knife in harder, it backfires horribly. 

Because now she’s bedridden and critically injured, with scars that are probably permanent; a reminder of her lowest point, forever marked on her body. She can’t fight now, can’t help at all, and Salem has launched her attack on Atlas.

And in her half-unconsious state in V8C7, she realizes this, delivering an absolutely heartbreaking line:

As far as she’s concerned, her last attempt at doing what she thinks only she can do- what she thinks is all she can do- has prevented her from doing anything of worth at all. She lost one half of herself when she split from Ren, and now she’s lost the other half too. The two things that she defines herself by are gone. And the worst part is, we don’t know if she’s awar of the fact Salem has begun her attack. We could very well see her fully wake up, only to realize that the world has begun ending while she was unconsious, and she can’t do anything about it.

Now, this scene, and Nora’s struggle in this Volume as a whole, hit home for me in particular.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’re probably aware that Nora is only of my hightest- and only- kins. And I’ve only been able to relate to her more and more after what we’ve got of her in this Volume.

I am chronically disabled. I have a connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which fucks up my body in a multitude of different ways, but signifigantly affects the joints. For me, it hits worst in my back, ankles, and my fingers. The fingers are my main problem. To make matters worse, I’ve also been victim to intense pains in my shoulder, which came out of nowhere a couple of months ago and have only gotten worse since. The slightest movement aggrevates it. As any follower of mine would know, I am both an artist and a writer. I create both for fun, and I’ve studied writing as a profession. It is these things I’m known for being good at, and not much else. 

Thanks to my disability and my shoulder though, I have to do these things less. Even on perscription pain medication, it still hurts. It hurts to write this even now; my shoulder feels like it’s burning up from the inside. It will only get worse over time.

So, I’m finding myself in Nora’s position. I can’t do what I’m good at anymore, and I don’t know what to do with myself as a result. Not doing these things makes me feel lazy and unproductive, and makes me feel that the people around me will abandon me so long as i can’t keep providing them content. And I’ve gotta say, it hurts a lot, and I don’t just mean physically. 

Because of what I’m going through, it’s especially important to see my favourite RWBY character just so happening to be dealing with the same problem; the same loss of idenity and purpose. We don’t know who we are or what we’re good for without the things we think define us.

While I’m unsure of my own future though, I find comfort in knowing that Nora’s problem will be tackled and addressed; that her friends will help her to rediscover herself and find her true worth. And while we’ve got a while to go until we’ll be able to see the Volume continue, I’m incredibely excited to see where Nora’s arc goes, especially if we can get some backstory along the way. I find myself wondering if her life before Ren is part of why she thinks so little of herself without him- was it the way she was raised to think? Is this the fault of her childood circumstances? Or is this just something she developed on her own, after becoming too dependant on Ren for comfort?

Whatever answers we get, I have faith that Nora’s story will be told well, and I’m very sure that it’s only just beginning. Even if she finds her worth before the end of the volume, her story won’t be over yet, not when we’ve still likely got at least four more volumes to go after this one.

In just seven episodes, Nora Valkyrie has gone from one of the least developed characters, to one of the most interesting and relatable, at least, in my eyes. There is so much more depth to her character than having a crush on Ren, and being the strong girl who hits stuff. There’s a layer of tragedy to her character that we’re touching upon now, and I’m excited to dive into it.

Thank you all for reading!

[my-toh-theories]

Ok theory and speculation time. I'm gonna be focusing here on what potentinally happened between Philip and his brother using what we know about them so far and foreshadowing from Eda and Lilith's relationship in season one (think about season 1's hidden message like c'mon I think it's pretty obvious parallel each other). Also 4 notes: 1. In terms of the parrells I think Philip paralles Lilith (not Eda) and like Lilith, cursed his brother then split the curse. 2. I do think they're all related as well but that's not the focus of my post so I'm not gonna dwell on it much, 3. I think Philip came first then his brother at a later date (like he never mentioned him in the journal at all). Also finally 4, yes I do think Philip is Belos.

First and foremost I'm gonna focus on what we know about Phillip and his brother. We know Philip spent a long time on the Boiling Isles and it's pretty obvious he was traumatized with his time on there. We saw that in Eclipse Lake that he, 1. Spent 5 years there at that point 2. Lost all his friends trying to get the Titan's blood and 3. Had scruff which is symbolic that a character isn't doing too hot. When he finally came home he most likely just wanted to stay home. This is where I think that myth from Yesterday's Lie heavily comes into play.

"Gravesfeild was a peaceful colony until, boom! Tragedy struck! Two brothers were lured into a realm of evil by a real witch. Never to be seen again."

Note how the brother with the cardinal is shaking the witch's hand while the other has both a glyph and what I presume a staff. One's making peace whereas the other standoff-ish, almost as if he's on the defense. The witch is welcoming but is also depicted with a devil's tail which has some interesting implications. Did this witch have nefarious intentions or is this the product of how stories drift after centuries? Hell, is this event from Philip's point of view?

Broadly, in season 1 Lilith and Eda's dynamic was about Lilith hunting down Eda so she can join the Emperor's coven and in turn, Belos would heal her curse. However, this "help" turned out to be a sham as Belos never intended to heal Eda and just wanted her petrified. Now let's look at specific moments that I think foreshadow their relationship the best. In season 1 ep 11, Lilith calls Eda "frail" and she is demeaning when she tells her to not go on the mission cause she'll "break a hip." (Note: also in this episode Eda's cape clasp looks like Hunter's helmet which is another connection between them). And Eda, pissed at being demeaned makes her go on the mission anyways. Also, later in that episode Lilith doesn't take Eda in and instead she gives her the chance to join on her own terms thinking she'll make (what she thinks) the right choice. Eda obviously declines and we're left on a bittersweet note. In another instance, in episode 8 Lilith says to Eda "Sister, time and again I've offered you my help and yet you foolishly run back to your worthless life! I'm tired of trying Edalyn. Your days of running are over!" Lilith is both demeaning to her curse and way of life.

Personally, I think both that picture and those instances foreshadow a lot. Firstly, going back on that picture, I think that the witch was a Clawthorne ancestor, his brother fell in love with her + settled down and this picture is from Philip's perspective. She will, obviously play a big role in driving a wedge between the brothers. Ok onto Lilith's and Eda's dynamics and what they say about the brothers. Personally, I interpret their dynamic 2 ways. 1, his brother was already disabled beforehand and considering how rudimentary knowledge was on disabilities in the 1600s this probably caused Phillip to be concerned but overall generally demeaning towards his brother like Lilith was to Eda. But, if you tell someone not to push the button, they'll do it anyways. And, like Eda in that episode, this pissed his brother off and just made him want to go/stay in the Boiling Isles even more. This is where their wedge starts and Philip, like Lilith, at first is easy on him by giving him the choice to come back home. Then, getting impatient, curses his brother to scare him away from the Demon Realm but it backfiring cause 1. Curse and 2. He can't go being a goop monster in 1600s New England like, he'd die. Or 2. Philip could've cursed him at the start of his brother being intrested in the demon realm as a preventive measure but it backfiring for reasons stated above. How Lilith reacts in episode 11 is how Phillip then starts treating his brother leading to the furthering rift between them. (Personally I like the first option I think it's more interesting).

This all leads to the episode Keeping Up Afearances when Eda finds the portal.

It's buried in the old ruins of mabye a house/garden entrance? It's pretty obvious that things reached a boiling point. Personally, I think that even though he split the curse to ease the pain, unlike Lilith, he was unsuccessful.

[platypuskenny]

Can I get more f that Kenny’s physiology with his alter egos? I’m rlly interested in that

(assuming this means psychology, as a follow up to this post)

i’ve put it off cuz i’ve been busy with other stuff but i‘m really glad i got this ask cuz i love kenny and I love thinking about them in the context of their two alter egos!

CW: discussion of child abuse and neglect, including inexplicit discussion of child sexuality. also a lot of discussion of The Whole Kenny Death Thing. also spoilers for the stick of truth if you haven’t played it!

kenny’s been treated a lot more seriously in recent seasons, with a shift in character to be a lot more mature as well, and it’s a development that makes a lot of sense in the context of “the characters have undergone A Lot and it’s really shaped their personalities because they’re at a stage when their brain is still very soft and malleable and susceptible to trauma.”

the addition of karen in “the poor kid” seems to have shaken up the depiction of the mccormicks a lot. in earlier seasons, kenny was more passive about his home situation, or at least went out of his way to ignore them, (like in “best friends forever” when he plays on his PSP and leaves the house while his parents fight). there are early scenes where he does have some responsibility to his family (i.e. trying to win a can of food for them in “starvin marvin”) but usually he’s just depicted as a kid trying to live through a tough situation. though his “willing to do anything for money even if it’s deeply upsetting, depraved, or outright deadly” character trait from “fat camp” kind of tracks with this understanding that he prioritizes financial security over his personal well-being. 

however, ever since karen was added to the show, kenny’s been depicted as a much more responsible and often even tragic figure. his parents are too caught up in their own shit to address their children’s emotional needs, and kevin sadly gets caught up in their violence as well in “the poor kid” (he’s also vaguely implied to be developmentally disabled in the few scenes he speaks up but that’s mostly speculation). because of this, kenny ends up being karen’s main caretaker - holding her close when she’s distressed at losing her parents, buying her a doll, etc. 

kenny’s situation is a textbook example of parentification. he ends up taking care of karen, at least emotionally, because his parents and brother are unable to do so. he also becomes the breadwinner in “the city part of town” as soon as he gets the chance. this is a really unhealthy scenario that a lot of children in poverty, especially older siblings, see themselves in. it can result in the child not knowing their true place in a family that takes them for granted, and thus not considering their own needs and/or feeling shame if they need help because they’re so used to putting everybody before them. i think this tracks with kenny being “the quiet one” and rarely asking for anything. 

that’s not even getting into the constant death and the fact he spent so much of his life not even understanding why he was doomed to constantly die in horrible painful ways, and for nobody else to remember that he even died to begin with. (kind of symbolic of the neglected child, huh?) 

this brings us to mysterion and princess kenny. in both the superhero game and the fantasy game, you’ll notice kenny is the one who tends to get the most involved, with the only exception being possibly cartman, who could be the topic of a whole other essay on identity issues. mysterion is the one superhero with a real power who exists outside of their superhero game (besides the kewn, whose superhero persona is entirely self-motivated anyway), and princess kenny gets so defensive of her identity that she betrays her friends in both the trilogy and the game. kenny also talks about lady mccormick in the third person in the first black friday episode, and i don’t know if any other characters speak about their personas in that way. so kenny intentionally places more distance between his personas and himself than the other kids do with their personas. 

therefore, i see mysterion and princess kenny as how kenny copes with his deeply repressed psychological issues. it’s a way to compartmentalize his feelings towards his constant suffering and the burden his family inadvertently placed on him by developing these two identities. one embraces his role as caretaker to the degree of becoming a superhero, and the other rejects it in favor of being entirely doted upon. (some people have read the prominence of roles as signs of a dissociative disorder, and i can see that with this context, but i don’t know if it’s really a perfect fit for any specific disorder, especially when there’s little information on kenny’s consciousness when it comes to these personas.)

mysterion is more obviously a tool for kenny to express his discontent with his town. in his first appearance, he states, “i could no longer sit by and watch as my city became a cesspool of crime,” which tracks with his earlier characterization as reluctantly accepting his family’s poverty despite constantly suffering. (plus i’m pretty sure several of kenny’s deaths were the result of crimes.) he refuses to be unmasked because he “would stop being a symbol,” and only does so in order to quell the unrest that his mystery has provoked. that "symbol" wording suggests that mysterion is an extreme version of kenny's self-sacrificing lifestyle to the point where he defines himself as a symbol of justice and hope, not a person. kenny himself is also pretty quiet and secretive, but more because nobody cares about him and he’s kind of afraid of getting killed any second. mysterion’s secret persona is something bold, powerful, and masculine. he is physically adept in a way we don’t see kenny behave, and much more reasonable and cautious about what’s best for him and humanity. (a good visual of this to contrast with kenny is the “mysterion re-rising” animation in the fractured but whole, where he consciously rejects the chance to go to the heaven full of naked women that kenny loves because he has to return to battle.)

mysterion is also a way for kenny to reclaim his "curse” and use it for good. as mysterion, he uses death (albeit reluctantly) to get out of tough situations and save his friends. in video games like fractured but whole and phone destroyer, mysterion’s ability to exist as a ghost and revive himself is a gameplay mechanic. this self-sacrificial personality trait has shown up in earlier seasons, and he kills himself for the good of the community/world/etc in “cartman’s mom is still a dirty slut,” the movie, and “jewbilee.” but he’s not nearly as interested in world issues unless he’s under pressure to care. (for example: he does join the workers’ strike in “bike parade,” but he’s not very passionate about it and doesn’t even care about the issue until his dad takes him to a union meeting.) kenny’s good with solving short-term issues while mysterion worries about the deeper, long-term problems with the town. 

this brings us to mysterion and the mccormicks. when we see mysterion’s interactions with karen, we see how mysterion represents kenny’s responsibilities towards her. mysterion is able to offer karen elaborate, heartfelt emotional support, and guarantee that he’ll always be there for her. he also beats up a girl who bullies her and threatens anybody else who thinks about hurting her - more on that aggressive instinct down below. while mysterion’s identity is known to his friends and the rest of the town, it’s not known to karen, who sees him as a guardian angel. presumably, this is so mysterion can remain a symbol of hope to her, just like he is to the town, and so karen feels like there’s people in the world who care about her besides her brother. however, this does backfire in the fractured but whole DLC where she laments how her brother doesn’t seem to spend time with her, which embarrasses mysterion as he promises to tell him to be there for her more often. this implies that kenny gets so wrapped up in being mysterion that he forgets that he has a duty to karen as kenny as well, further indicating that mysterion is a way to cope with the tragic responsibility of caring for a sibling not much younger than he is.

during the superhero trilogy, kenny also uses mysterion to question his parents about their cult meetings, something that shook him so badly when he learned about it that he broke character. mysterion also told his parents to be nicer to the kids, not beat each other up, pay their kids allowances, and not smoke. it seems that mysterion is able to approach kenny’s parents about serious issues while kenny himself mostly stays out of their business - possibly out of fear? (kenny’s more confrontational in later seasons, though - flipping off his dad in “bike parade,” for example.)

on a similar note, mysterion is way more openly angry and violent than kenny is, especially when it comes to the death curse, which he openly complains about in a way kenny himself never did. compare kenny complaining about stan ignoring his deaths in “cherokee hair tampons,” which only gets further ignored, and mysterion complaining about it in graphic detail in “coon vs coon and friends,” even killing himself in front of his friends, and understandably scaring the shit out of them. mysterion also gets really protective of karen, violently so, as seen with the girl he beats up in “the poor kid” and his distrust when the vampires befriend her in the “from dusk til casa bonita” DLC. such a mysterion is way more passionate and loud about justice and direct action while kenny is more resigned, and most of his good deeds are unknown to the public. if kenny has embraced this caretaker role, it makes sense that he vents his repressed anger through mysterion, especially if you take it in the context of dissociation - kenny can’t handle dwelling on his shitty life all the time, so mysterion holds that anger and finds a way to cope with it by trying to fix everything around them, including kenny’s home life. 

princess kenny is very opposite mysterion in many ways. most obviously, she’s a girl. kenny’s relationship with gender is something i think about a lot in light of PK. “tweek vs craig” depicted him as the only boy in home ec, and he was thrilled because it was the safe alternative to the deadly shop class. i think that, regardless of your headcanon for kenny’s gender (i personally see them as feminine nonbinary - i’m mostly using “he” pronouns in this essay strictly for recognition’s sake and because i’m mostly talking about the show’s depiction of kenny), he sees femininity as safe and comforting, but nevertheless very powerful. (remember that his mother, while not super feminine, is a very outspoken and aggressive woman who calls stuart out on his shit constantly.) and what’s a better combination of femininity and power than a magical girl? 

also one thing i want to note real quick is that karen still refers to kenny as her sister in the stick of truth despite not being super involved in their game which i personally choose to read as Trans Rights Subtext

this is how we get lady mccormick / princess kenny, who is largely a passive character during the black friday trilogy, sitting upon her throne and cutely commenting on the surroundings while stan translates for her. then when sony takes her in, she becomes the star of her own show, a magical japanese princess who doesn’t take shit from cartman or his army and gets whatever she wants because she’s a cute little girl and now she gets to be protected and doted upon! also she speaks japanese and is not muffled in the slightest despite wearing her parka....symbolism? and really interestingly is that when she supposedly dies, she brushes herself off and immediately revives, declaring that she’s okay. in kenny’s feminine fantasy, she doesn’t suffer when she dies, and revives without any mess at all. princess kenny is always gonna be okay!

PK is also very flirty and overly sexual. it’s no secret that kenny is very interested in and knowledgeable of sex. he also absolutely worships women’s bodies, as seen with his views of heaven and that whole plot of “major boobage.” i don’t even read this as lust, because he’s ten, but sheer fascination with sex. maybe it plays into that whole “growing up too fast” concept where he tries to indulge in the “fun” parts of adulthood to make up for the exhaustion of caregiving, but this has been a thing since before kenny was depicted as a real caregiver so IDK. 

anyway, i think PK is also a way for kenny to experiment with flirting and sex, particularly with other boys. she uses her coyness and, in the games, her bare chest to entice boys. her cuteness also attracts grown men in “titties and dragons” which goes largely unremarked upon, which is a bit uncomfortable but still works with the idea that she’s the most “lovable” form of kenny. she also apparently thinks the new kid is “cute.” iit’s really funny to me how kenny is depicted as interested in strictly girls while princess kenny only focuses on boys, which could support the idea that PK is a separate entity from kenny, or that kenny just needs to figure himself out. either way, i imagine kenny finds some thrill in getting men to pay attention to them when their male friends often treat her as superfluous, and even then it often involves objectifying herself (this also tracks with their behavior in “fat camp”). it’s kind of sad if you think about it.

in the climax of the stick of truth, princess kenny has her own in-depth backstory, where she was an orc/elf rejected by both the elves and humans. i think this reflects kenny’s feeling of being “othered” as non-human (since this game chronologically comes after the superhero trilogy) and just generally not feeling welcome among their friends unless they need her. there may also be some parallels between her friends denying her the right to be a princess and kenny’s friends refusing to believe in his immortality. when she rebels against her friends choosing the stick over friendship, it’s another way for kenny to cope with their mixed-to-negative feelings about their friends. so while PK is a figure to be doted on, she’s still probably more gutsy than the kenny we usually know. 

however, PK is not entirely selfish or apathetic about the world around her. in the opening of “a song of ass and fire,” her inner monologue explains her choice to deflect to the PS4 side as the side she believes “is best for all.” she also laments that everybody, including her parents, will be fighting on black friday. it seems that PK dreads the mere idea of war, which contradicts mysterion’s tendency to use violence as a means to protect others. PK still uses her adorableness to help her team, and only asks that they accept her, which really isn’t much. it’s just when she, you know, becomes a nazi zombie and puts the world in danger because she’s so pissed about not being accepted for who she is. 

in my original post, i used the freudian personality theory to explain these three personas, which i regret because i fucking hate freud and he’s heavily responsible for modern consumerism and planned obsolescence. but the basic concepts of the id, ego, and superego do kind of illustrate what i’m getting at with these guys. i assigned princess kenny as the id, because she’s more about self-gratification and getting what she thinks she deserves as well as a tendency towards sexual gratification, and mysterion as the superego (hehe get it super) because of his strong inclination towards morality. however, this isn’t that black-and-white, as princess kenny has some moral considerations and mysterion has violent impulses (the “aggressive instinct”) that are more easily attributed to the id. nevertheless, it seems that kenny is still the balance between these exaggerated personas, and when he expresses attitudes similar to theirs, they are far more downplayed due to the necessities of his situation as a caretaker and an underappreciated friend. kind of makes you wonder if/how the attitudes of mysterion and princess kenny will manifest in him when he’s older.