#yeah im aware of the timeline issues i just dont care

[lexicrvg]

headcanon:

so neil perry somehow survived but his dad told everyone that he was dead. neil went to harvard as promised and when he got there he realized that he could be whoever he wanted, away from his father's gaze. he changes his name, but he's already too deep into med school to drop it, so he specializes in oncology and becomes one of the best oncologist in new jersey, where he came to live after college. he's living well until 2000 when he meets doctor gregory house and his life turns upside down.

seven years after that he passes by doctor robert chase in the hallway of the hospital and overhears him telling foreman about some patient who might have cancer and who they're calling "mr. anderson". his mind immediately associated it with todd but that would be too much of a coincidence... right?

[girldraki]

for obvious reasons i dont think 0166 would uh. care for morticia/their whole deal, BUT i still love friends meri and morticia it's so fucking sweet.

additionally, you've discussed how 0166 and alison would get along, but what about (rewrite) meri and alison? for some reason i always picture alison as ~5-10ish years older than meri/draven (altho im p sure that doesnt work out in canon) so consequently i picture the dynamic like... the younger cousin at family functions that has a similar flavor of Processing Issues you do that you let play games on ur phone (altho after the first time alison learns that it's probably not ideal to like. Have a phone around meri at all)

okay first of all we just want to say. never get sad about your timelines being fucked up ❤️ our alison díana claire iii timeline is probably downright hilariously broken but we simply never unpack it and so it’s okay sort of ☺️

uhhh second point: i feel like she would be aware of what’s up with mort like. metaphysically and therefore harbor a certain degree of sympathy for her. but i mean. yeah she probably wouldn’t be happy about it and certainly wouldn’t seek her out to spend time with, not that she really has the option anyway.

and hmm okay we made. a post about this but even the wiki timelines are all over the place for the second gen specifically. tales with draven are mostly around the ~late 20s early 30s range (as matched up to dear tally ran), meri is 16, epon 4166 is seventeen (as we recall calculating it?) and díana is 26 but has some weird Time Shit going with the narrative thing. alisons age is never really specified beyond the fact that she’s doing All That.

we usually default everyone to be around the same age because we’re supremely boring but meri prime probably is a little younger than alison. i think. their dynamic would be kind of odd in general because meris emotions on her foundation status are informed by the fact that she really didn’t have options for most of her life (very hard to argue she could have ever had a normal childhood with. That situation) and alisons worldview is kind of…. not spectacularly designed to accommodate edge cases, and so alisons stuck in a weird logic loop and meri is completely confused by what’s happening.

but also in a completely different tone i think they could both bond over being alt and alison would do meris makeup and they would sing along to mcr together so like. ideologically very confusing but good company. they would game together if meri had half the chance

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Comparing RWBY and YGO DM: The Handling and Evolution of Themes

Hey! Its been a hot minute since I last posted anything RWBY-related but Im laying in my bed right now and Im sick and bored so I guess we're doing this. Today I will do my best to analyze what I percieve to be the main themes and messages of both of these shows, or more specifically, how theyre handled narratively. Im mostly focusing on that part because, while these series do have similar themes and messaging, they are still a few things in which they are wildly different. And with that, lets start with this essay-post-thing!

1. Theres something we need to adress first

Okay so, before we can really talk about this, theres something I feel the need to clarify here: Neither of these stories was "planned from the beginning".

Now, I dont think a story being planned from the beginning or not nesscessarily makes the story any better or worse by default, however, it is still important to acknowledge because the way the story is planned is going to affect every facet of it. Things are not going to be foreshadowed properly, things are gonna be set up only for nothing to come of it, the story might drastically change directions, characters might act differently, etc, etc.

And, this is bit off-topic but, it's much better to just admit that the story was not planned than trying to pretend that it was. Like, there are a lot of reasons why I tend to be so forgiving towards YGO even though its not very good, but one of them is definitely the fact that, as far as Im aware atleast, the guy who wrote it isnt pretending to have had this big master plan all along and neither is the fandom. With RWBY on the other hand... yeaaaah, its kinda the opposite. From what Ive seen of RWBYs fandom, there seems to be this pretty popular narrative that everything was planned even though it clearly wasnt. Thats pretty bad and honestly lowers my opinion of the writers so much more than if they would just admit to not having a proper plan.

Like, I initially consumed YGO like this: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh (aka Season 0), like, a quarter of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga (I still havent finished it)

In all three of these we have the character of Yami Yuugi, or just Yami. Broadly speaking, he is an ancient egyptian gamer spirit who lives in a magical puzzle that has not been solved for 3000 years until this highschooler named Yuugi Mutou comes along and solves it, thus setting him free and allowing him to possess Yuugi and have access to the vague magical powers of the puzzle.

In Duel Monsters he's perfectly fine most of time, morally speaking. There is an instance of him almost murdering a guy and its a bit unclear what exactly happens to those he mindcrushes but overall he's very much a pretty good guy. In Season 0 most of what he does is set up these games for bad people, where they will go insane no matter what they do. From how I understand this whole Shadow Game, Penalty Game stuff, if you lose a Shadow Game, you get violent and intense hallucinations and you will always cuz yknow, gamer spirit. But if you try to cheat, which most of the bad people do in this show, you get violent and intense hallucinations as a punishment.

Since the two anime are generally considered two different continuities, its perfectly fine that Yamis characterization is wildly different in both of them. But in the manga both of these characterizations appear, basically one after the other with no real arc or consequences, for that matter. Why is that? Simply put, someone thought it was a good idea to try to turn an episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror manga into a more traditional, more plot-driven battle shounen. From what Ive heard, it was apparently largely because of network interference or something, but the point is, it changed directions incredibly drastically with little planning and everyone knows this and I can understand that for the most part.

In RWBY we have the character of Blake Belladonna, who, in the first 3 volumes/seasons atleast, was this aloof, more toned down loner-type character with a pretty strong sense of justice. She's an in-universe marginilized racial minority and she clearly cares about racial injustice. The way its initially framed makes it seem like she had a very hard life and no stable support system, which is what eventually pushed her to join a Civil Rights group/Terrorist organization (good god, the Faunus subplot is so awful, I could write a whole essay about it but Im already de-railing rn so I'll just save that for later).

Then, in volumes 4-5 it turns out her father is actually like, the mayor or chief of this island-place called Menagerie and she grew up in this big mansion with multiple guards/servants. Oh and also, apparently "space is a commodity" on there, so theres that. She still retains large parts of her personality but she's kinda like, worse somehow I think. I cant really describe it in a meaningful way but I hope you get what Im saying anyway. Then in Volume 6 she confronted her emotional abuser Adam (sorry for not mentioning him sooner but yeah, he was like, her abusive boyfriend, which is something that a lot of people disagree with but I wont really say anything about it either way because I dont really feel any specific way) with her friend, Yang, and ended up killing him.

After all that, she pretty much lost the rest of her personality, as well as her arc about all the Faunus stuff. She just kinda became the meek, generically nice, recovering abuse victim. Why? Well, the actual reason is that they didnt plan out shit and are just kinda flying by the seat of their oversized clown-pants and if they and the fandom just admitted it, I would have less of an issue. I still wouldnt be as forgiving towards RWBY as I am towards YGO because the crux of the issue, for me, is just that I dont particulary like RWBY but also like. Do you really expect me to take MKEK seriously as writers after admitting to not have a timeline because iT wOuLd CaUsE pLoThOlEs?

However, since they want us to believe that everything was planned out from the beginning, the explaination would be.... Idk, they deliberately butchered one of their main characters?? Because.. they hate her?? Maybe????

So yeah, that was quite a detour however, I would like you to keep this mind going forward.

2. Themes of the Early Series'

First, what do mean by 'Early Series' for both of these shows respectively? Well, for YGO that would have to be Season 0 or if youre reading the manga, everything pre-Duelist Kingdom. Basically, the part of the series thats a episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror series.

For RWBY that would be the first three Volumes, also known as the Poser-Era. Back then it was just kinda an action series that took place at Anime Warrior Academy (also known as Beacon) with some pretty bare minimum worldbuilding, character-driven plots and developments but now its more of an epic high-fantasy story with more of an emphasis on plot as opposed to just action.

The themes and messages in Early YGO are kinda vague, very confusing to me and if you were to follow any of it literally that would be pretty bad. For now Im just gonna say the main themes are Friendship and Identity and mostly focus on the Identity aspect.

Now, it took me a little while to figure out RWBYs deal but I think the main themes for Volumes 1-3 are also Friendship and Heroism. Once again, I'll mostly focus on Heroism and touch on Friendship more briefly later.

I dont have much more to add to YGOs themes right now, so I'll briefly go over Heroism in RWBY.

In RWBYs setting there are these man-eating monsters called Grimm that have basically infected the planet. In order to deal with that, they have people called huntsmen and huntresses that kill them and protect people. Theyre trained at special academies like Beacon and go on missions there and stuff like that. Our four main characters, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang, are training to become huntresses and one day they go on this mission to clean up a grimm infested city block with one of their teachers. Obviously, that takes a long time so they have to camp out in one of the empty houses. Weiss, Blake and Yang cant sleep because theyve been thinking about this question that their teacher asked them when they were fighting grimm: "Why do you want to become a huntress?"

They have a heart to heart and we find out about their motivations; Weiss wants to bring honour back to her family, Blake want to distance herself from the White Fang (that terrorist organization I mentioned earlier) and as an extension from Adam, Yang wants to have a life of adventure. They also talk about why Ruby wants to be a huntress and it turns out that she judt wants to help people. Unlike the others, she has no motivation besides that. We're meant to listen to that and look at her as a sort-of personification of Heroism: kind, but not naive, strong and most of all, selfless. The others on her team are not portayed as bad for not being like Ruby by any means but we are clearly meant to admire her the most out of all of them.

Okay, now comes the part Ive been looking forward to the most:

3. How did these themes evolve in the Modern Series'?

Alright, before we can really delve into the way they evolved in YGO I'll have to give you a brief summary of the character progression. At the start of DM, during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yami Yuugi is just that; A darker Yuugi. Hes more confident, bolder, his voice is deeper, hes somehow taller, more ruthless, all that good stuff. Notably, he doesnt actually seem more skilled than Yuugi even at the start of this story, but he's still dependent on Yami. Yami on the other hand, has no identity of his own or even hints at one at this point. He's just The Other Yuugi.

Then during the Battle City arc, they find out that Yami was actually a pharao prior to being sealed in the puzzle, he just didnt know because of amnesia, I guess. So now they need to find out his real name and then send him to the afterlife because hes meant to be dead, but not before saving the world from being swallowed by darkness, which is also a thing they have to do now.

Then we finally get to the Memory World arc, where Yami, Yuugi and the rest of the gang astralproject to ancient egypt via puzzle magic. Yami is trying to figure out what the hell is going on and who all these familiar people are, while Yuugi & Co are trying their best to help him. Then some weird shit happens and it turns out that all of that is not just Yamis sealed away memories, but also a giant D&D Shadow Game that will destroy the world if Yami loses. So now theres Pharao!Yami who is still clueless on the metaphorical and literal playing field and Player!Yami, who is kinda controlling himself now? I guess?? Yamis opponent, The Spirit of The Ring, has something similar to that going on where hes both controlling and properly participating in the game. So Player!Yami is now fighting against Player!TSoTR, Pharao!Yami is now fighting against Thief King Bakura (who is like, the human, ancient egyptian version of the Ring Spirit) and Yuugi is now fighting against Yami Bakura (who is like, the human, modern japanese version of the Ring Spirit). Yuugi gets Yamis real name, he and the gang go over to Pharao!Yami and tell him his name, meanwhile Player!Yami is also somehow helping as well and they defeat the Ring Spirit, thus saving the world. Then they travel to modern Egypt, the Ceremonial Duel happens and Yuugi wins, sending Yami to the Afterlife where he can finally rest and that was the series!

I originally wanted to recount the stuff that was going on with the Ring Spirit and his host as well because they parallel eachother, but this summary is already far too long and I think youll get the point without me needing to explain any more.

My point here is, that the story went from being vaguely about Identity, maybe? to being very clearly about Self-Discovery and Learning to Be Independent. I think this is a very good way to evolve the messaging of your story. How does RWBY track on that?

Well, uh... its not great. I will acknowledge that they have tried to introduce new themes and ideas since, even though I wont really be talking about them in this post. But yeah, the whole Heroism thing really regressed.

Like, I didnt explicitly say it when I was explaining grimm earlier, but theyre not going away. The grimm have always been there and people who sign up to become huntsmen and huntresses are effectively signing up for a job that will never truly be done, no matter what they do. Characters like Ruby and even more minor ones like Phyrrah have shown us that that doesnt matter when youre a hero. No life isnt worth saving, no grimm isnt worth killing, no criminal isnt worth arresting. Then, in volume 6 they find out about Salem. Salem is the Big Bad of the show, shes immortal, controls the grimm and is supposed to be very powerful.

What do our heroes do? They give up. Sike! They were just mindcontrolled by monsters or some shit, of course they didnt give up their mission (which is to bring an Important Macguffin to a city called Atlas, sorry I didnt mention it)!

But then they arrive in Atlas (which is llike, a city thats floating over another city called Mantle) and yknow, they do some plot stuff thats not really important right now until the city gets invaded by Salem and this big grimm army she has.

What do our heroes do? Well, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and some side characters are chilling, drinking tea in a mansion and Yang and the B Team were actually trying to do something, but even those efforts seem incredibly minimal.

Oh wait, I also forgot to mention that Ironwood (a fairly minor, vaguely antagonistic character up until now) wanted to lift Atlas even higher to save Atleasian civilians from danger while leaving Mantle vulnerable to Salems invasion.

What would be the most heroic thing to do?

A) Let Ironwood lift Atlas, get as much support as they can down to Mantle and save as many Mantle civilians as they can from the invasion

B) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas but then split up in order to protect both Atlas and Mantle civilians

C) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas and then dont do anything else

Congrats! If you choose C, you think exactly like the writers!

And I just

This is so mindboggling to me, I feel like I shouldnt even have explain how this is bad. And like, it wouldve been so easy to actually make them seem herokc through their actions, to make it seem like they did try but no.

I have never seen a central theme be this botched, how in the world did they do that? Why did they think it was a good idea for Ruby "The Embodiment of Heroism" Rose to sit in a mansion doing nothing, no planning, no organizing just ..... God, how are they this bad? Like, this doesnt even have anything to do with it being planned in any way, this is just straight up incompetence

4. Very briefly touching on friendship

The friendship is awful and its not solely because they all have the same opinions. They barely interact with eachother outside their designated pairs which leads to it all feeling incredibly hollow. Theyre also practically indistingushable from one another now, which is a shame because it wasnt always like that. Like, I dont think the characters were that well-developed in earlier volumes but they were very well-characterized. But now we've gotten to a point where you can literally copy and paste one characters dialogue onto another and literally nothing changes, it really sucks.

5. Some closing words

Damn, this took way longer than I thought it would and now Im pretty exhausted. I have no idea how yall always write these but props to you! I feel like this ended up a bit rambly but overall, Im pretty proud.

Please let me know what you think of the points I brought up! Id also really appreciate some tips on how to get better at these longer posts because I am planning on writing more in the future (not the near future, probably but yknow).

Thats all I have to say for now, thanks for reading!

[the-kipsabian]

🍄🌻💐💫 LYNN BABY

ty babe 💜

🍄 What are your OCs favourite snacks? Their favourite comfort food which always cheers them up when they’re down? Favourite meal to make? Do they enjoy baking and cooking and are they any good in the kitchen? for both snacks and comfort food, muffins. especially blueberry muffins as for a meal to make, shes not really a cook tbh? if she has to cook, she prefers to make something simple and easy that doesnt require a lot of assembly, due to time and a space being an issue (staying in hotels a lot and having a busy schedule, plus her apartment doesnt have a big kitchen so yeah), and honestly lynn wouldnt really consider herself being too good in the kitchen. shes definitely better with baking than with cooking, but both of them are things she rarely does tho

🌻 What little things do they notice about people or the world around them that make them happy? What tiny little treasures do they find in the normal every day that makes the world seem a little brighter for them? for her its mostly about the sounds? she likes listening to stuff in the nature, like the wind in the trees and birds singing (ironically enough tho she dislikes rain which is like. one of the best nature sounds tho lmao), little critters in the bushes, waves against the shore, all sort of natural sounds. tho that also works for people, she loves hearing people especially sing and laugh, and she could listen to her favorite people talk for ages. ..also accents. as hers is kinda faded, she loves to listen to people with stronger accents as for tiny things, like. when she sees people doing little nice gestures for one another? it can be something as small as seeing strangers smile to one another on the street, holding doors open for others, just giving compliments, that kind of stuff. ..also dogs. dogs make everything instantly better for her lmao

💐 How does your OC handle being unwell or forced to rest in bed? Who cares for them and in what ways? Does your OC enjoy being doted on or are they a terrible patient? Reversed: is your OC good at taking care of others who are ill or in need? oh shes the absolute worst about that, lmao what is rest? dont know her. she hates to rely on other people, especially since she rarely gets sick enough to be bedridden, but usually if that happens she really is in a condition where she cant do anything herself so she has to be helped to get like food and water and such. in that case its usually either tyler or any of the potential significant others, depending on where we are on the timeline and which timeline we are on lol as for taking care of others, yeah shes one of those ppl who has to make sure everything is always good with others and that she can offer any possible help that she can to anyone who needs it, be it them being sick or just needing help with anything at all. honestly its mostly cause lynn has known struggle enough in her life that she doesnt want anyone else to get even close to scratching that bottom if it can in any way be helped

💫What is your favourite fact about this character and why? oh my god uuUUUH. theres so much i love about lynn tbh like. well first of all how @ss-trashboat has designed this absolutely unit of a babe for me cause shes gorgeous as hhhhell. also im. honestly proud how she has come together so far? and how realistic at least i personally think she is compared to how my wrestling ocs have potentially been in the past lol ..im aware these arent exactly like ‘facts’ tho more as just personal things i love the most about her but i dont care i love lynn so much lol

soft oc asks ~

[golgoterror]

Alright, this is ungodly long, but I just wanted to talk about something regarding Jake. 

A lot of this fandom -- at least, from what I’ve seen -- label Jake as stupid. Some may even say Jake and smart are antonyms. This could not be further from the truth. It almost irritates me how much the fandom places this mischaracterization on him. Also, I get to talk about The Lad™ for about ten pages worth of words on Google docs, which is always very, very fun for me.

Well, first things first, let’s talk about the child genius and multi-billionaire polymath that is Jake English.

Puzzle Modus.

Let’s begin with something small. Jake’s modus is of puzzlekind! This is described as:

It's quite a handy modus, allowing you to captchalogue objects of any size, as long as you can fit them all in a finite space by maneuvering the cards around like a big game of Tetris. You like it because it keeps you sharp for solving any puzzles you might find when you go out raiding hallowed tombs, which is never. (x)

He likes puzzles! This is a huge headcanon I absolutely adore that has a basis in the comic: He’s a puzzles guy! This is just sort of a neat little fact about him that I adore to the moon and back. Just the idea of Jake fiddling about with a Rubik’s Cube is kind of adorable.

This is how he goes about doing everything every day of his life. I think that’s just amazing! And incredibly smart of him, I might add.

Skaianet. 

Jake is shown in the credits to take over Skaianet after the game ended. For those unfamiliar, Skaianet made many things for the game, including but not limited to: the interstellar travel we see, transportalizers, the lab by Rose’s house, all Jake’s fancy-schmancy computers, and Sburb itself. In the beta timeline, Grandpa Harley founded Skaianet. In the alpha timeline, Grandma English did. I know Jake didn’t start it up and trying to pass off his alt-timeline self as him is a bit far-fetched at best, but he had the spoons to take it over. I think that speaks volumes for Jake’s intelligence -- this implies, at the very least, he can understand mathematics and physics at a high level. Remind you of someone we already know?

It is also important to note that Jake does, in fact, build the company back from the ground up, because it went to shit before his grandmother died:

GT: Pretty sure her company made a tidy fortune til it went belly up. At least i still have a few of her knickknacks for keepsakes. (x)

So he built an interstellar company back up -- using what his intelligent grandmother had once used -- to being very useful and practical once again. 

As someone with a degree in mathematics and about to finish a degree in physics, I can say this sort of work would for sure require at the very least a decent understanding of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, electrodynamics, calculus (vector and differential forms), ordinary and partial differential equations, and perhaps other things like topology. I don’t know about you -- and I’m probably tooting my own horn a bit by saying this -- but I think that’s pretty nifty, if I do say so myself. 

Actor.

Once again, I’m reaching into the credits to show that Jake has become a movie star after the game ends. Memorizing all those lines, slipping into characters... Being an actor is no easy feat. 

( Side note: This leads into my headcanon that Jake can imitate accents and voices on a whim. No more arguing about whether he has a British, American, or Australian accent -- you’re all right! )

And I would like to add he has two jobs! Skaianet and being a movie star! This guy’s a fucking polymath for Christ’s sake.

Reading People.

Let’s start of simple: Brain Ghost Dirk. I can hear the outcries now of Dirk’s powers being the cause for this. And, yes, I can’t ignore Dirk’s influence in this, but Jake’s hope powers were also needed for the projection to come alive. And the fact he was able to make such a startlingly accurate projecting of Dirk in his own mind is astounding -- even BGD himself thinks so!

TT: You could view me as a projection of the real Dirk within your mind, as expressed through all of your thought patterns about him. TT: So I'm kind of a splinter of his corporeal self who happens to live in your awareness. TT: I'm a startlingly close approximation to the real thing, for all intents and purposes. GT: Just how startlingly close are we talking? TT: I'm not going to give you a bogus percentage like the glasses cause that's not my shtick. TT: But pretty damn close. (x)

A very deep understanding of the other is needed for Jake to do this. That is pretty fucking incredible. He can clearly read people really well -- he had a few times where he was cluing in on Jane and Dirk have feelings for him:

TG: its one of those things jane likes about u so much GT: It is? TG: which TG: errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr im not supposed to talk about 2 u evr so nm GT: Talk about what? TG: nope GT: You mean how um... GT: Well a way in which i suppose... TG: no nope GT: Jane is prone to looking upon me with what i fathom to be more than just friendly affection? (x)

TT: I guess call it an extra birthday present. But instead of a present that's awesome, consider it more like a weird confession that may change the way you feel about me. GT: Whoa uh... GT: Dirk are you... uh... GT: Saying what i think? (x)

He’s not completely clueless on people! In fact, he seems to have a really good understanding of his friends. That’s something a lot of people seem to forget because of the incident that I will be getting to later on.

Fending For Himself.

I’ve already written quite a bit on this, but I’ll sum it up here: Jake is exceptionally good at living in the wild and taking care of himself. Sort of like a wild garden; he doesn’t need to be taken care of. Survival skills, especially around fighting and fending off things, aren’t something everyone has. This, once again, counts in his favour, even if it doesn’t line-up with “book smarts”.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

That’s five things! It’s clear Jake is, in fact, a polymath and incredibly intelligent. So, what’s with the fandom painting him as being dumb? What’s with people actually thinking he’s stupid? I think we can all take several wild guesses as to why that’s the case.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Takes things literally.

This is something that plagues Jake quite a lot. Case in point:

GT: Wow like the epic kevin costner film? TT: Almost exactly. Especially by the same degree of shittiness. GT: Oh man does that mean you have to drink your own pee?????? TT: You get used to the taste. Welcome it, even. TT: That takes about 15 days in a row of hard piss drinking though. GT: Ewwwwwwwwwwww no dude. No ew. :( TT: Relax, I don't drink any goddamn piss, ok? GT: Oh ok. Whew. (x)

But, well, let’s address the elephant in the room. The chat I laughed so hard at when I read it the first time due to pure, unadulterated second-hand embarrassment: Jake asking Jane if she had feelings for him.

Let’s analyze this, shall we? Jake starts off by being vague as all Hell, and I’ll spare those details, until finally...

GT: Just come out and say it. Do you fancy me? GG: No! GT: I see. GT: Very well then. GT: Jeez i mustve really misread that one! I feel like kind of a bone head now. (x / x)

Okay, she says no, and he backs off. That’s fine and dand--

GG: No!!!!!! GG: Oh my God, what am I saying here? GG: Jake, I didn't mean it! I didn't want to make you feel that way! GT: Now jane lets not backpedal here. GT: Youve spoken the truth and i greatly appreciate and respect you for that. GT: But now that i think about it you know what? GG: ... GG: No? :( GT: Please dont take this the wrong way but your answer is actually kind of a relief! (x)

... Oh, right. Yeah. It keeps going. It just keeps--

GT: Actually since youve made your feelings apparent and only see me as a friend that makes it a lot easier! GG: Haha, yes! GG: Friends!!!! GT: Maybe you could help me sort out some stuff that has been weighing on me lately? GG: Well what are friends for Jake!!!!! (x)

Sweet Jesus, Jake.

GG: Me? GG: HOO HOO HOO! GG: I'm just GG: Terrific! GG: I'm feeling so... GG: Friendly!!! GG: I clearly just want to be a good friend and bring all my AMAZING FRIENDLINESS to bear on your problems. GG: Friendlystyle! Ahahahah? GG: Shit I mean GG: Ahahahah! GT: Thats aces. Jane youre a sweetheart. (x)

Alright, alright, enough! You all remember the fucking chat. 

Regardless, it’s very apparent Jake takes things at face value. I also will cite him talking to Jane before her birthday, but not list examples, because what happened above will just happen once again. 

Okay, so he takes things at face value. What’s wrong with that? He trusts people to not lie to his face -- to not sugarcoat things or beat around any bushes. Perhaps I’m projecting a bit, but I do the same damn thing. I think a lot of people do! I don’t think reading things as fact over text is a good measure of someone’s intellect. All it does is show he has issues with communication. Okay, so he struggles with one thing. Sue me.

Doesn’t catch things right away.

Yeah okay I’m just gonna dump a few examples of this.

GT: Haha wow. Must have been a hell of a guy. TT: So... TT: You're not making any connections there? GT: Where? Huh? TT: Famous comedian, about the age of your grandma, inheriting the family name of the Baroness... TT: Not ringing a bell? GT: What are you talking about! Dirk stop speaking in riddles and keep telling the story i am on tenterhooks here! TT: Ok, well it's not like it's that important. Just a super obvious thing that'll probably occur to you later when you're looking in the fridge you don't have, at which point you'll feel like an idiot. GT: Oh my god you can be one opaque motherfucker just clue me in bro! TT: Nah, it'll be funnier this way. GT: STRIIIIIIDEEEERRRRRRRR!!!!! TT: Moving on. (x)

GT: Whats going on? TT: Took you long enough to figure it out. TT: Pages really are a slow burning class. Damn. GT: Figure what out! TT: You're asleep. (x)

This leads into the point above. His mind doesn’t work that way -- but that doesn’t mean he’s not intelligent. He needs everything laid out in front of him so he can make the connections and understand what’s happening, but there’s no real harm in this, and it certainly doesn’t dictate whether the guy is “intelligent” or not.

There are many, many more examples in canon depicting Jake as having difficulties with communication and you all can open most of his pesterlogs and probably find one. I’m not going to list anymore. But, hold your horses, I swear I’m getting to a point!

Difficulty reading.

A lot of the media Jake consumes is picture-based. Movies, comics, even the puzzles are most likely spacial and probably not riddles. It’s not far to imagine Jake might not be a terribly good reader, considering nobody was really around to make him read. Of course, his grandmother was around when he was little, so he can read -- and he can read just fine. But he probably isn’t very good at it simply from lack of practice. He also has terrible grammar, something Jane picks on him for, so it’s entirely possible that’s a contributing factor. He may just have trouble reading and writing.

Speaking from experience, I have dyslexia. As such, reading and writing are incredibly hard for me. I never read the books in my literature classes -- both in English and French -- but I did get the gist of the books (enough to get a decent mark in the class at least) by watching a movie adaptation of the novel. I don’t think it’s that far-off to think Jake may, indeed, do the same thing.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

NOTE: This next part is a bit hard for me to write, because I don’t want to vilify any of you. It might not have clued in on anyone or maybe you just saw Jake as a sort of comic relief and meant no harm by it. And I hope shining a light on this will make you all think twice about the guy. However, I can’t really avoid this next part, and I may get a bit emotional in it. Just a bit of a warning.

All of the above points are just me trying to say Jake probably has undiagnosed learning disabilities and perhaps autism. I don’t think I need to go into detail about how those don’t make someone “stupid”. If you think that’s the case, fuck you. I can’t argue with ableists, much less do I actually want to. 

NOTE: I wrote a thing on his speech impediments. That may be of interest too. I don’t really know, but here it is nonetheless.

My take-away message here is: just because someone struggles with socialization or other things doesn’t mean fucking anything in terms of their intelligence. Jake is very clearly smart and has the ability to read people incredibly well -- to the point of making copies of them! Perhaps it’s just a bit easy to underestimate the guy compared to other characters, though.

There are other things that muddy this up a bit, unfortunately.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Trolling.

Jake is such a fucking troll. Jesus shitting Christ, does he get a kick out of acting stupid just to make the other person look silly. Or perhaps even to make himself laugh in the process. Case in point:

uu: I WILL JUST BE YOUR PATRON DUDE. uu: OR MAYBE. YOUR PATRON MANBRO. GT: Sounds pretty gay. uu: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? GT: Whats what? uu: GAY. WHAT'S GAY YOU IDIOT FUCK. GT: Oh right. GT: Forgive me i forget you arent familiar with all of my earth lingo. GT: Its like... GT: How do i explain. GT: You know. Its a rather old fashioned term for being jolly and festive together. GT: Like "that rollicking time we had scrumming the other eve sure was gay." uu: I SEE. uu: THEN YES. YOU ARE CORRECT. uu: THIS IS GOING TO BE GAY AS HELL. (x)

Look at his goddamn face during this exchange:

That little bastard knows exactly what he’s doing. 

And these aren’t stand-alone events! Jake is very, very silly and will use the fact others see him as stupid to have a little fun. May as well, right? And, in the process, he makes others look pretty damn stupid. 

But sometimes it’s a bit hard to tell when he’s acting stupid against when he’s genuinely not getting something. I think he even fools himself sometimes! So you have to be a bit careful about fake-outs. I’m sure even the other alphas have trouble deducing when he’s doing this -- which only adds to the myth of him actually being “stupid” when viewed on first-glace.

He probably also does this with crushes, purposefully ignoring the signs because he doesn’t want to deal with it or may not believe anyone could like him that way. After all, if he’s wrong, he may think himself to be conceded and having a big head. So, he ignores the signs, thus convincing himself the feelings aren’t there. Then he gets absolutely fucking bamboozled beyond belief to find out they actually do like him. But that’s just a little side-note.

Thinks he’s stupid.

This one is just a bit... Sad. Very sad. Jake genuinely does think he’s stupid. Quite a lot, really. 

GT: I shoulda asked where he fit into the picture if you were raised alone. I can be dumb as a bag of penny candy sometimes. (x)

Just... Man, he’s been called and treated as stupid so many times, he’s at the point where he believes it. If you asked him, he’d say Dirk is a genius, Roxy is always smart and sassy, and Jane is brilliant. (I don’t have a source for that last one but... Come on. She lectures him about grammar. Don’t fuck with me.) But when it comes to himself? He can’t say the same. Of course he then acts that way. He sees himself as a burly adventurer who is also a gentleman and tries to live up to that. No where along those lines does he think he’s intelligent. And that’s just... a little heartbreaking, really, all things considered.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Can’t believe this blog is just me going, “Wanna see how fast I can talk about Jake?”, and a shit-ton of people all nodding before I talk for six hours straight. Anyway, take-home message is: Jake’s smart. Jake’s very, very smart. He’s also a himbo, but he’s incredibly smart. Just because he has learning disabilities doesn’t mean fuck-all. 

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. There are drinks and refreshments in the back. Have a safe trip home. Remember to tip your waiters and waitresses. Jesus fuck can I run this gag any harder into the ground? Giving me language was a mistake. No but, really, if you read this whole damn thing, thank you! I hope this was as fun to read as it was to write.

[homestucky]

ok ok this is like not anything new but still since i havent been on here i havent fully ranted about this yet. big long rant incoming

re the epilogue (spoilers etc)

ok. i have onl y read meat. but fucking? dirk? dirk? ok? dirk??

no.

i am aware of what happens in candy. i know he dies.

i also know in the version i read, in meat, he becomes his ultimate self, all versions of dirk. as many people have said, this includes AR, this includes bro, this includes even to some degree, LE. its an interesting idea ill give you that. but its also.... shitty and not backed enough by well, anything?

so heres my personal rant about the shitty things in Meat.

when i first finished it i couldnt help but think. was the dirk narrative even necessary? on the one hand it was meant to be the MAIN PLOT and it defined the narration etc, but.... it honestly didnt seem to have any importance. i know it was likely  a set up to imply future stuff like making the next sburb or whatever but like

who CARES? why on earth would that be interesting or important? maybe im crazy but like, the ‘b plot’ which was mostly about character relationships and jobs in earth c, was compelling and enjoyable. the narrative with john ‘not important and not the main character anymore’ egbert had details and conclusions ACTUALLY RELATING TO HOMESTUCK, THE COMIC I LIKE AND WANTED TO READ AN EPILOGUE FOR. it was tragic and frankly very upsetting! im not saying i liked it!! but the tragedy felt compelling and significant. 

i appreciate that dirk as narrator IS BIASED so him saying that these narratives are less important is inherently like. not to be trusted but. just. i cant help but feel like you could have cut the whole ‘main dirk reality affecting’ narrative OUT 

and that seems to me maybe like... not good? if such a central part of your narrative has almost no bearing on homestuck or anything anyone cares about?

but im sure there are other people who found it compelling and necessary. thats fair. cant relate but you do you. there are other issues. 

me saying that the dirk narrative felt weirdly isolated and insignificant sounds pretty weird given that it put jade into a coma, manipulated kanayas mind, effectively killed rose and destroyed rosemary right? WELL that brings me on to the next thing. people have noted that meat barely passes the bechdel test. and hey, sometimes things like that can just be a coincidence or unlucky. but the repeated erasure of the female characters minds, motives, identities and autonomy was????  a little too consistent to dismiss. like ok terezi was still her dope self in a lot of ways. jane kinda did some stuff (under dirks direction, and only shitty stuff but . whatever). 

(sidebar: ofc it doesnt make sense to talk about calliope and roxy in the context of the female characters in Meat but either way they were very in the background. like cool an all, and i always love roxy. and i respect they were mostly just minding their own businesses??? which is fair)

 i just. urgh. homestuck has such a genuinely good track record of giving female characters genuine motivations and powerful abilities etc. the fact that almost ALL the female characters involved were working for or manipulated by DIRK. DIRK of all people. is like... is this even based off the real comic? idgi????

roses loss of autonomy.... rose is such an important character. and she goes along with everything dirk says because dirk is suddenly all OP and ‘theyre basically the same person anyway’ like i get that there was some magic bullshit going on or whatever but at the end of the day rose was still written as weak and passive. dirk as strong and skilled and decisive. i get the undertones.. hes a prince of heart. a destroyer of souls, and identities. he messed with kanayas identity , destroyed roses, repeatedly ignored roxys and calliopes, and god i wont even get started on jake yet. but that doesnt make it satisfying to read. or even really feasible.

so theres a possibility im missing something. but im confused about WHY dirk is allowed this power. in the narrative its waved off as a kind of ‘i guess because im like a prince of heart or whatever and im just super good at managing identities and being a strong boy’ like ok if theres some implication somewhere that that is MEANT to be a bogus explanation id be interested to know because it sounds pretty goddamn bogus. why would this happen to dirk? why? literally? one reason? one that makes sense? because there arent any i can think of. why, in the new universe, would dirk, a prince of heart, manifest into a narrative controlling supergod. and fucking WHEN has dirk showed any actual capabilities in this area before?? he KINDA sucked at it in the game. dirks an idiot! hes smart and capable in like, some ways but. its like

why is dirk so powerful suddenly -> its because hes become super ultimate dirk -> ... ok why -> uh because like. hes just so naturally inclined towards being a great manipulator yknow..... canonically.... uhhhh

it just. canon dirk to epilogue dirk is the most ridiculous leap character wise, skill wise, arc wise, personality wise, with minimal reasonable explanation. 

which brings me on to the next thing. so i roasted dirk and said he wasnt strong enough to be able to manipulate things this well. well, obviously through some other means dirk HAS been afforded this power. but what about his personality? its obviously gonna be warped with self importance and knowing how things ‘have to be’. but hes heartless, cruel and hateful. in some ways it seems like canon dirk levels of ruthlessness, especially when it shows that he is actually doing something dumb and petty like his treatment of jake. that shows that he STILL has emotional connection to people as dirk. he also seems to care about some people, like dave and roxy, and cracks jokes and wants to have ‘fun’. this makes the ways in which hes so warped and cruel seem even worse. maybe on the one hand im giving dirk too much credit, everyone knows he has the potential to be a real bastard. but i dont think that was the trajectory he was on when we last saw him. and if this is truly due to him just.. becoming other versions of himself too including LE and bro and stuff..like. i dont see how it could have gotten that bad without say, roxy or dave noticing. 

‘oh they didnt notice because hes just so good at hiding’ why on earth would i believe that!! dave especially this is kinda insulting for. dave is shown to have an almost supernatural ability to detect danger. partially this might be timeline stuff, knight stuff, but also notably im sure his upbringing is involved too. he was trained to be hypervigilant. who was he trained to be hypervigilant for? bro. bros manipulation and traps. near the end of the epilogue we show that dave IS capable of detecting the mindfuckery thats happening. how would that not set off 1 million alarm bells? theres literally apparently a twisted dirk-bro mutant INSIDE HIS HEAD telling him what to do. i just. know that scene was played for comedy and romance but at the very least thats gotta like???? mess with u if ur traumatised? and thats like , why i think dave should have had an inkling abt what was going on!! this is exactly the thing he hates and fears and was traumatised by! and it just going under his nose n him not even knowing , and still pretty recently being all buddy buddy with dirk seems just stupid and infeasible to me. maybe this is me being naive or kind of a stretch but i just feel like daves danger instincts would have been kicking up a whole assed ruckus that whole time. 

also kind of unrelated but i associate sunglasses with strider style toxic masculinity and hiding things so like. ok transitioning or changing gender presentation is one thing but roxy apparently permanently wearing sunglasses makes me NERVOUS

and ill probably wrap up this mighty rant soon but i wanna also say jake was done so fucking dirty. i know he was like, meant to be, because for some reason god dirk just hated him? like ok petty much. but. urgh jake is such an interesting character with a lot of potential and while i appreciate that him being manipulated by someone who may reasonably have a problem with him may make him do stupid and embarrassing stuff, all the narrative seems to have taken a backward step in how hes represented. jake isnt stupid, dirk clearly knew this in canon and he maybe was the only one even including jake. and there was some acknowledgement of this near the beginning of the epilogue. but then for some reason it goes back on itself. everyone still thinks jake is just completely stupid, including the embittered superdirk. so yeah i guess hes upset with jake or whatever but. its still dissatisfying to be like oh yeah jake isnt stupid he actually has a complex set of motivations and potential etc BUT over the X number of yrs on earth c no one else has realised this yet?? hmm. then his narrative is just gonna end up with him being a total joke and essentially becomes as stupid and incompetent as his worst critics say he is. feasible given the mind control ? yeah. enjoyable to read or having any kind of satisfying bearing on anything? nope!

so anyway. i feel like any criticism i have could be argued back with ‘but oh it has to be this way’ or ‘mind control!!’ or ‘not everything has to be nice and happy !!’ but like. dude. there are flaws. many of them. and seeing characters just get shat on is never gonna be good writing. 

[mxadrian779]

It really sucks when you find out someone you thought was a friend (or at least a good acquaintance) is actually a pretty trashy person.

Okay, let me build up the backstory. Almost seven years ago, I created a niche political page. I tended it alone for about a year before enlisting the help of a second admin. In comes this guy we'll call Richard. Richard and I got along decently. We shared a lot of thoughts and identities. I thought he helped me with the page considerably. He helped tend the page with me for about two years or so. We chatted a lot, and I really liked him. Then things start getting weird between us. Richard seems to start getting weird. There's stuff going on in his life, divorce and whatnot. I get a notice that the page we had was scheduled to be deleted within seven days. I loved my page; I certainly didn't schedule it for deletion. I ask Richard, who swears he didn't and blames his ex-husband, whom he insists must have hacked his account. I don't know who to believe, although I am certainly more suspicious of Richard than of his ex. I remove the deletion schedule, and bump Richard's page access down—basically, I took away his power and control over my page. Things are okay, kind of. The stuff Richard posts to the page is half decent and half questionable. Then he posts a swastika picture, a meme comparison of some current figure to a past Nazi figure with a swastika flag in the background. I wasn't aware of the post at the time; I was busy with school. I only heard of it when my stalker elsewhere online started circulating news of that post (my stalker watches every one of my online pages and presences) and calling me antisemitic—because of something I didn't post and wasn't even aware was posted! I immediately track down that post and remove it, and talk to Richard about it. He claims innocence and dodges the matter. I don't remember what else went on between us, but I certainly remember him being vague and dodgy about it, even after I told him what a shitty thing that was, and told him to at least consider the image that post projects. He didn't care.

(edit: looking back at my messages to him and finding a host of other problems that happened at once. I wanted to address them but he just ignored me. Transphobia, the swastika post, and he'd made some crude sexual posts, as well.)

 Now, I don't remember the exact timeline of events, but this was coming to a head about two years ago, when I was coming out of my transphobia. Richard had made a few transphobic posts on the page over its lifetime, which I didn't protest then. But then I started to see its shittiness and started deleting it all. I tried to open a discussion about it with him, like, “hey, what's up with this stuff?” kind of thing. Richard ignored me. A little later, I removed him from the page completely, which he didn't protest or maybe even notice. Richard was no longer an admin, but I spent the next few months cleaning up his messes and remaking the tone of the page. I tried to track down his old crappy posts and delete them. I know there must be many more, but they're buried beyond reach. I made it clear on the page that we are no longer to be transphobic, and that we are to be welcoming instead of mocking. I ran solo for a long time, afraid to enlist another admin and another Richard.

 A few years ago, before anything went sour, Richard decided we should have a group counterpart, which he created and added me as an admin. I was hardly active with it, though, more focused on the page part. I was last in the group three years ago—my last post. The group fell inactive and I stopped caring about it, especially when I started seeing what a richard Richard was.

Recently, this group came back to the fore when one of the other people Richard enlisted as an admin came back and started poking around. He took issue with what I had posted three years ago, and flew into all these weird accusations about it. He questioned my integrity and my identity, and said I shouldn't be an admin there. He especially didn't like when I told him I was transgender (he said something derogatory about me being a woman or something, so I countered). I private messaged Richard, and said, “What's going on with the group (i.e., this asshole)?” He replied that he'll handle it. I wish I took record of exactly what was said in the group by the other guy, but that wasn't on my mind. I'll finish this off with the transcript of our messages.

>me

>>him

 >Okay, what's going on with the group?

 >>I have no idea. [he] messaged me about your post im reading it now. But i dont particularly see anything controversial

 >It's so old xD I don't get the sudden action and the “I don't think you should be an admin”

 >>Think he just wants my attention...:P

Ill tend to him

I didnt know your not a woman

 >I'm female, but I don't identify as a woman.

 >>K well.. he says and I agree thats [accusation]

 >No, it isn't.

 >>And I was having such a pleasent day... haha

Drama queening over a dead group

 >Did

Did you just ban me?

 >>No y

 >I think [the other guy] removed me.

I can't access or even FIND the group.

 >>Dont worry about it. Were chatting ill take care of u in a min

And dont talk to him... shes just in a mood. This a mans job

 >? [I have no idea which of those was intended for me]

 >>Sigh... just let the men talk thats all you gotta do. RN

 >Uh, okay then, I'll let the penises talk.

 >>Lol

>> […]

>>Ok weve decided to reinvent the group and its gonna be male exclusive

 >Why??

 >>Because its a dead group anyway and if we reinvent it we can just say its been here for years. Also engage gay men in intellectual discussion and dialouge

Which isnt something woman are not typically interested in anyway

 >Only cismen are interested in intellectual discussion? Wow, seriously dude?

 >>Yeah actually. Its true. But ill let you know if theres something interesting going on in it :)

 >No, it actually isn't, and I didn't have you pegged as a sexist turd. Don't bother. I'm not interested in whatever Grindr knockoff you're going to turn the group into.

I can't believe you're doing this. We used to be a team. You wouldn't even have had the platform without me and the page, and you're just going to turn around and betray me like this?

 >>Its a dead group hun. Buisness comes first... also didnt need page platform for anything. Actually thats what killed it imo

Also no its not grinder. Its for intellectual dialouge and discussion.

We smoke cigars and drink brandy like men. And its a beaitiful thing

 And that's that. Richard is gone. I feel betrayed, but I don't know what I'm entitled to feel when I wasn't that close with him for the last few years anyway. He was married to a man and for all intents and purposes, he bills himself as gay, but he recently had a very strong and public relationship with a woman and got close to her son. Apparently that relationship is no more, and he still calls himself gay. Meanwhile, his page is full of questionable things. I haven't been keeping track of him, but he had recently started cropping up on my feed again. One of his posts said something to the effect of “the country went to crap when we gave women and minorities the vote” and it's just like WOW ARE YOU KIDDING ME. How was I EVER friends with this dude??

[lodelss]

Laura Barcella | Longreads | February 2019 | 13 minutes (3,517 words)

The 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade just occurred on January 22 — but the days of relatively uncomplicated American abortion access are, most likely, numbered. In fact, author Robin Marty believes it’s not a matter of if Roe will be overturned, it’s a matter of when.

For more than ten years, the Minneapolis-based freelance reporter and author of the new book Handbook for a Post-Roe America has been diligently chronicling the twists and turns of both the pro-choice and anti-abortion movements. Ever since Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation, Marty — like many other pro-choice Americans — has been waiting for the proverbial pro-life shoe to drop. Losing Kennedy, the swing voter on a number of major abortion rulings, and gaining Brett Kavanaugh — a long-time pro-life ally — seems to all but ensure the end of Roe, as well as the downfall of abortion being considered a constitutional right.

Indeed, several weeks after Marty and I spoke in late January, Kavanaugh voted with a minority of Justices to overturn recent Court precedent in favor of a law that sought to impose a new form of undue burden on abortion-seekers in Louisiana. The Cut called Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion something verging on gaslighting. In it, he postulates that perhaps the undue burden — abortion providers being required to gain admitting privileges at local hospitals — could simply be met, when of course providers have already been trying to gain admitting privileges for years. The Court ultimately blocked the implementation of the law, but only because the conservative Chief Justice, John Roberts, voted with the liberals. The margin of safety has grown vanishingly thin.

Let’s consider what that means. If Roe were overturned, it wouldn’t necessarily make it impossible for a pregnant person to obtain an abortion, but it would potentially make an already challenging process even more daunting. As it stands, obtaining an abortion is already far from affordable or convenient for many women, even in blue states with a plethora of clinics. Despite Roe’s current status, and despite the fact that statistically, most Americans believe in a woman’s right to choose, abortion care is still often portrayed as a privilege instead of a right — or as a miserable “worst-case” scenario rather than a straightforward medical procedure.

Marty’s new book (available now from Seven Stories Press) lays out various scenarios for exactly what a Roe-less future might look like. More importantly, it explains exactly how we should prepare for this reality. As Marty writes in Handbook, “While Roe and the cases that preceded it made birth control and abortion legal, they did nothing to curtail the coercive power our government wields over the bodies of those who can give birth.”

For the liberal naysayers who can’t fathom America sinking quite so far into Handmaid-land, Marty reminds readers that not only have anti-choice laws and restrictions been ramping up in recent years, but the pro-life contingent has been emboldened under Trump’s presidency in frightening new ways. In the following interview, Marty further explains the possible dangers of what lies ahead, and how we can start protecting ourselves now.

*

Can you tell me a little bit about how the book came about? It traces back to a Twitter thread, is that right?

Right. Anthony Kennedy announced that he would be retiring. As soon as that happened, my first thought was, ‘Okay, this is basically the end of Roe.’ And even if this isn’t exactly the end of Roe, it’s enough of a push and enough of a change that all the people who had been quiet before and hadn’t seen this as a real threat, finally understand that it’s a turning point.

Part of the reason I started the Twitter thread was because the first two things that I saw people saying as soon as Kennedy announced his retirement were, A) ‘I’m going to donate to Planned Parenthood,’ and B) ‘I’m going to stockpile emergency contraception.’ And my first thought was okay, donating to Planned Parenthood is always good, but there are so many clinics in states that only have one clinic that are not run by Planned Parenthood, and that doesn’t help them. And getting emergency contraception for yourself is always good, but the idea of stockpiling can be done in such a way that it actually harms access.

I talked to a number of people who are very high in the pro-life movement. Many of them assured me that Kavanaugh will be the vote, and that Roe will be overturned as soon as they can get a case up there.

My thought was ‘Here are all these things that you can do that would be better actions than what people are describing.’ And so it turned into…a 30-tweet thread of [suggestions for] places you can donate to and actions you can take instead; groups that you should be working with on the ground.

As I was doing this, I was getting a lot of really good responses. One of them was from … a woman book agent, who said, ‘I think there’s actually a book there; can you write a proposal and I will see what I can do?’

Within about a month, I had a book deal with the understanding that I had to write a book in three months, because they wanted it out before the anniversary of Roe.

I was going to ask you about the timeline because I knew it must have been tight. Was that stressful?

Yeah, it was definitely a challenge. Especially because it was summer, so I had children at home. My first book, Crow After Roe, was sort of … I accepted a proposal with my co-author and we didn’t really expect the first publisher that we sent it to, to say ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’ But they did, and then they said, ‘We’re going to move a book aside so we can run this right away. Can you have it done for us in three months?’

There seems to be something about three months! It’s always three months for me.

But I wrote this book in about eight weeks.

That sounds stressful.

I would like to say I wrote a lot, but most of what I did [for the handbook] was compiling all of the different information that was already out there. And I did that for two reasons — one was so that it was in one accessible place so it’s easy to get to, and the other … was because people don’t always know where to look for this information. We’ve already seen with the Trump administration how information disappears. Health and Human Services re-wrote some of their rules, they disappeared trans language from a lot of things. Nothing on the internet is completely safe, [whether] because of censorship or anti-abortion activists who decide that they want to do some attacks online to try and bring down websites; there’s always the [chance] that you might not be able to get to information when you need it.

Local Bookstores Amazon

How did you get involved in covering abortion care and abortion access as one of your primary beats?

That evolved out of being a progressive blogger. I started anonymously blogging in 2004 while I was working for an investment banking firm. I ended up working for a progressive news site that was setting up state-based news sites. I got more aware of the abortion issue, especially what was going on in [various] states.

In 2009, I ended up writing specifically for a reproductive health website. They picked me up after I was laid off, right after the Affordable Care Act debate and … trying to get all abortion coverage removed from the insurance plans. I had just had a miscarriage, and I had to go into a hospital for a DNC in order to have everything removed. I had this very in-your-face ‘what if’ moment of [wondering], ‘Would that be something my insurance will cover under the new plan?’ Because it was coded in the hospital bills as abortion.

After that I was working for RH Reality Check, as it was called back then (now it’s Rewire News), and I spent a few years tracking all of these bills as they were popping up through the states, and it grew from there.

Can you walk me through the scenarios that you see as the most likely and least likely when it comes to legal abortion access?

If you had asked me a week ago [we had this conversation in late January -LB], I would have said the most likely thing that was going to happen would be that the Supreme Court would keep Roe intact; that it would not overturn the verdict. The court would allow states to pass whatever bills they wanted to pass, as long as they did not explicitly completely ban the procedure.

Can you explain that a bit more?

What I [believed would] happen was that you would have a state like Mississippi, which only has one abortion clinic, and it would finally be allowed to enact rules that would close that one clinic. But because it didn’t actually ban abortion outright in the state, and the state would still [technically] allow abortion, that it would still be considered constitutional.

But now I actually believe that Roe will be overturned completely — and that states will be allowed to make it completely illegal.

Why do you believe that now?

I was at the March for Life [recently], and I talked to a number of people who are very high in the pro-life movement. Many of them assured me that Kavanaugh will be the vote, and that Roe will be overturned as soon as they can get a case up there.

I believe that Roe will be overturned, that we’ll have at least 10 to 15 states that will not have any abortion [access] at all. There will be a number of states that might go completely without abortion or otherwise will pass laws that will make it extraordinarily difficult to get an abortion at all, and then there will be about 10 to 15 states that will have abortion access and will probably expand it.

The problem with this scenario is that all the states that are going to either ban, or are going to make abortion nearly impossible to get, are all in the same place. They’re in the Midwest, and the entirety of the Southeast, except for maybe Florida, will be without any sort of legal abortion. That’s scary and alarming, and something that we have to plan for.

It sounds horrible to say ‘Plan for an abortion now,’ but the reality is, if you are capable of getting pregnant, [planning] is something that you should do.

How do we plan for that? What do you suggest people start doing now?

The first thing that I tell everybody is that the best thing to do is plan for what will happen if Roe is overturned and abortion is illegal. What a person can do is figure out what is going on in their state first — will their state be one that will make abortion illegal or will they have some sort of access? Which is going to be the closest state to you that will have abortion access?

It sounds horrible to say ‘Plan for an abortion now,’ but the reality is, if you are capable of getting pregnant, [planning] is something that you should do. We’re looking at huge travel that will have to happen, and trying to get through waiting periods in some of the states that remain. The clinics that are going to be left are going to be overbooked, and abortion is not going to be covered by insurance. It will be extremely expensive, so if you plan for that and don’t need it, that’s fantastic. But if you suddenly find yourself with an unexpected pregnancy that you don’t want to carry to term, trying to figure all of that out at the last minute is going to be extraordinarily daunting.

People plan for retirement; people plan for all sorts of things in their life. You should also plan for an abortion.

I know there’s no way to explicitly predict this, but what sort of timeline do you think this might happen in?

I would say that Roe will probably be overturned … after the 2020 election. It would be that soon. We have a number of cases already in the federal court system that have circuit splits [in which two federal courts don’t agree about whether similar laws are constitutional]. Any one of those can be taken up to the Supreme Court for them to make a final ruling, and through that can overturn Roe.

Also, something that people don’t understand is that the courts can technically take any case that’s about abortion and use that to overturn Roe. So for instance, the Indiana Down Syndrome ban. Basically every time the court meets again to see if they’re going to take up a case, it could be the one that would overturn Roe, if they chose to use it that way.

But … I don’t see the courts doing it before 2020 just because of election impact. I hate to say it, but our Supreme Court has become so partisan at this point that I see them taking that as a consideration.

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Which state restrictions are you monitoring the most closely right now?

Depending on scenario, heartbeat bans are really alarming because they make it almost impossible to get an abortion before it’s too late to get an abortion. But for the most part, courts have been saying that [those are] unconstitutional.

One of the [other] things really alarming me right now is the idea of abortion restrictions on top of abortion restrictions, especially when it comes to states that are expanding their waiting periods. There’s two different ways that waiting periods work. In some states, waiting periods start from the point at which you call a clinic, and so they’ll give you information on the phone and you don’t have to make two trips into the clinic. But a lot of states are now having them in a way that you have to come in to the clinic, get the information, then walk away, come back and have your next appointment anywhere from 24 to 72 hours afterwards.

When you take a state that has a waiting period of 72 hours or more, has only one clinic, and then the clinic only performs [abortions] up to 12 weeks, then you have basically [created] a situation where a person is going to spend at least a week just going back and forth, trying to get an abortion knowing that there’s a cutoff, plus knowing that there’s an immense wait to get into that clinic to start with.

[This is how] they’re really strangling the system altogether. None of these things on their own necessarily look unreasonable, but stacked on top of each other, they’ve made abortion almost impossible to get.

You recently attended the March for Life. Did you notice a bigger turnout, or more fervency among the pro-life faction there?

Yes, yes, yes. I’ve been to the March for Life four times now. At the march I went to before the 2016 election, abortion opponents thought they had lost. They believed that Hillary Clinton was going to be elected. They believed they were losing the entirety of the Supreme Court, so it was a very dejected feeling there, but [there was] also a sense of ‘what can we do in order to make tiny gains around the edges?’

Being at the march over the last two years, it has changed so dramatically. Their people are in the administration, they’re in the HHS, their elected leaders are everywhere. They have so much right now, and they know that. They feel that Roe is on the rocks, that they are about to have that win.

Also, the March for Life has become increasingly political ever since President Trump was elected. There’s signs saying “Make Babies Great Again” and, like the Covington students, everyone’s wearing MAGA hats. It’s become so intertwined with politics, and especially with the Republican party, that it has in many ways turned into a rally for social conservatives and for the religious right.

If abortion is made illegal again … people are, frankly, unlikely to die  … Our problem now is that abortion … done outside the legal system is going to get you thrown in jail.

You touched on third-trimester abortion a little bit in the book, which is already not readily accessible throughout the country. What will happen to that if Roe is overturned?

We just had New York pass the Reproductive Health Act, which basically removed all abortion from the criminal code, which means that New York providers can now offer third-trimester abortions in cases where there is a significant medical need for it. So if a person is having mental health issues, if a person has a fetus with an anomaly that they can’t or don’t want to carry to term, third-trimester abortion has been opened up as long as there is a valid medical reason for it. And that’s not something that was happening in New York before. Before, we had a clinic in Colorado that would do it, and a clinic in Maryland, and a clinic in New Mexico.

There’s a section of your handbook about privacy concerns. Why was that important for you to include?

One of the things that we’re already seeing when people induce their own abortions or have bad pregnancy outcomes that make the hospitals or the authorities suspect that they induced their own abortions, is that when they’re investigated their computers get seized. Their phones get looked at. One of the things that happened to Purvi Patel, who was arrested for feticide and homicide in Indiana, was that they looked at her text messages and saw that she said she had taken something. That was what they used to prosecute her.

If a person’s going to work outside of the legal clinic system in order to end a pregnancy…we just have to be aware of what sort of information could get out there, especially when a person might be going outside of the legal clinic system, and anybody else who has talked to them could be seen as an accessory in either having helped them obtain medication or [other] ways.

Can you talk a little bit more about self-managed abortion? Were there legal challenges to publishing that particular chapter of your book?

Not specifically, although I did have it vetted by a lawyer. One of the things that’s very interesting about the publisher that I ended up with, and probably one of the reasons that the book exists at all, is that Seven Stories Press actually published a book called A Woman’s Book of Choices by Carol Downer. One of the things she did was explain how to do menstrual extraction. That was considered mind-blowing at the time, that there was a publisher that would actually give instructions on how to make this and do this.

So the publisher was really good about wanting to include all of this information, that this is information that needs to be public. And honestly, all of this information is online; it’s available everywhere, it’s just not compiled in one space. I’m not encouraging anybody to do this, and I think that the best way is always going to be going through the legal system. It’s just, if people are going to do it, they need to have information on how to do it safely.

Do you think we’ll see an uptick in DIY abortions? Is there already an uptick?

My understanding is that there probably is. The fact that we can’t verify that or actually prove that in any way, shape, or form is good because that means that people are doing it the right way, protecting their privacy and making sure that their caches are not being found. When they do speak to people at hospitals, making sure that it’s understood that this is a miscarriage and that’s all the information that a person needs to give.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you keep hearing or seeing regarding abortion access lately?

I see a lot of people saying that they still don’t believe that Roe is going to be overturned. I also see people — on our side as well — [repeat] the idea that people [will die] if abortion is made illegal again.

When we go into a post-Roe landscape, people are, frankly, unlikely to die if they get illegal abortions. Because we can get medications online, and these medications have been proven to be very safe. If there is a rare complication, it can be taken care of at a hospital, if necessary.

Our problem now is that abortion … done outside the legal system is going to get you thrown in jail.

We need to, as a movement, make sure that people understand that doing your own self-induced abortion is not medically any more dangerous than a [medically supervised] abortion would be. The only difference is that because this is not legal, people are afraid to report when something goes wrong. And in some cases it’s not even anything going wrong, it’s just too many people don’t know exactly what the process is like, so they think something is going wrong.

We have to make sure that everybody understands what a self-managed abortion looks like; what’s normal, what’s not normal, what will get them in trouble, what will not get them in trouble, what to say to a hospital, what not to say to a hospital.

People need to be aware of all of that because when we go into a post-Roe future … we aren’t generally going to see [people] bleeding out and dying in their homes, but we could see [people] going in for help because they think something’s wrong, and ending up in jail instead.

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Laura Barcella is an NYC-based journalist and author.

Editor: Dana Snitzky