#I don’t find a lot of inherent value in reading a book just to complete it u know

[communistkenobi]

I don’t like when people ask how many books you plan to read/have read this year one because I think that’s a weird relationship to have to books and two because I think even reading a chapter or a portion of something is valuable. this is especially true with non-fiction but even with fiction I think any amount you read, even if you don’t read the entire thing, is not a failure or ‘incomplete’

#I read basically exclusively non fiction and every page I read is beneficial like I’m always learning something #like my relationship to reading is often extractive and utilitarian because of school and research #but that extractive process doesn’t require reading the whole text like 99.9% of the time #I’ve only read a third of Orientalism for example but like I have a good grasp of Said’s core arguments and concepts #and like part of how I finished authoritarian personality (a 1000 page book) was by skipping & skimming sections #like the whole is not always more valuable than its components #and also like ‘I read this book to complete it’ is not an insincere way to engage with a text but I feel like it’s limiting #if that’s your primary approach to reading. Like you read a book just to say you read it #& also more petty but I think that if your argument or thesis only works if people read 100% of your book then you’re doing a poor job #of getting your point across #again obviously it’s valuable to read and process whole complete texts not dismissing that but like #I don’t find a lot of inherent value in reading a book just to complete it u know

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

(I’m popping a extra disclaimer here because I don’t know if I worded this very well, and I understand if this isnt the kind if question you feel comfortable answering, but this is a genuine question made in good faith. I also apologise if this sounds really stupid)

I read one of your recent asks about inclusivism and it reminded me of something that always sat in the back of my mind with this train of thought.

If we say that everyone regardless of religion, or absence of it, gets into heaven, doesn’t that seem disrespectful to their faith. By saying that people of other religions get into christian heaven, is that not inadvertently telling them that their religion or their gods are fake, and that when they die it’ll be okay because they’ll learn the real truth? I hope this doesn’t come across as blunt or disrespectful to anyone, I’ve just never be able to come to a conclusion that isn’t exclusive (which is kind of a depressing thought), but is also respectful. Because it’s a beautiful idea that god loves us all regardless of who we are or what we believe, but what about people who have the kind of faith we do in a completely different god, or multiple gods, do they have the same thoughts about us? that their god loves us even though we dont believe?

I feel like I’m asking questions I’m not supposed to but I’m just really curious about your perspective if this is something you’re comfortable answering.

Hey anon, this is an important question, so thanks for asking it! You don't sound "stupid"; you're thinking like a theologian :) I'm probably not going to do it justice, I'm afraid, but maybe folks will hop on with more ideas or resources?

This got really long, so the TL;DR: I agree with you, and so do a lot of theologians and other thinkers!

In a religiously diverse world, it makes sense that people of various religions ponder where people outside their religions "fit" in their understanding of both the present world and whatever form of afterlife they have.

If someone has a firm personal belief in certain things taking place after death (from heaven to reincarnation), I don't think it's inherently wrong to imagine all kinds of people joining them in that experience, when it points to how that person recognizes the inherent holiness and value of all kinds of people, and shows that they long for continued community with & flourishing for those people.

However, this contemplation should be done with great care — especially when your religion is the dominant one in your culture; especially if your religion has a long history (and/or present) of colonialism and coerced conversions.

Ultimately, humility and openness are key! It's fine to have your own beliefs about humanity's place in this life and after death, but make yourself mindful of your own limited perspective. Accept you might be wrong in part or in whole! And be open to learning from others' ideas, and truly listening to them if they say something in your ideas has caused them or their community tangible harm.

In the rest of this post, I'll focus on a Christian perspective and keep grappling with how to consider these questions while honoring both one's personal faith and people all religions...without coming to any solid conclusions (sorry, but I don't think there's any one-size-fits-all or fully satisfying answer!).

I'll talk a bit about inclusivism and how it fails pretty miserably in this regard, and point towards religious pluralism as a possibly better (tho still imperfect) option.

And as usual I'll say I highly recommend Barbara Brown Taylor's book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others to any Christians / cultural Christians who want to learn more about entering into mutual relationship with people of other religions.

In previous posts, I brought up the concepts of exclusivism, inclusivism, and religious pluralism without digging into their academic definitions and histories — partially because it's A Lot for a tumblr post, but also because it's by no means in my sphere of expertise. I worried about misrepresenting any viewpoint if I tried to get all academic, so I just stuck to my own personal opinions instead — but looking back at some posts, I see I didn't do a great job of clarifying that's what I was doing!

So now I'll go into what scholars mean when talking about these different viewpoints, with a huge caveat that I'm not an expert; I'm just drawing from notes and foggy memories from old seminary classes + this article from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and anyone interested in learning more should find scholarly articles or books rather than relying on some guy on tumblr!

Defining exclusivism, inclusivism, & religious pluralism

When we encounter traditions that offer differing and often conflicting "accounts of the nature of both mundane and supramundane reality, of the ultimate ends of human beings, and of the ways to achieve those ends" (IEP), how do we respond? Do we focus on difference and reject any truth in their views that conflicts with our views? Do we avoid looking too closely at the places we differ? try to find common ground? try to make their views fit ours?

Exclusivism, inclusivism, and religious pluralism are three categories into which we can place various responses to the reality of religious diversity.

It's important to note that this is only one categorization system one can use, and that these categories were developed within a Western, Christian context (by a guy named Alan Race in 1983). They are meant to be usable by persons of any religion — all sorts of people ask these questions about how their beliefs relate to others' beliefs — but largely do skew towards a Western, Christian way of understanding religion. (For one thing, there's a strong focus on salvation / afterlife and not all religions emphasize that stuff very much, if at all!)

Drawing primarily from this article on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), here are basic definitions of each:

Exclusivist positions maintain that "only one set of belief claims or practices can ultimately be true or correct (in most cases, those of the one holding the position). A Christian exclusivist would therefore hold that the beliefs of non-Christians (and perhaps even Christians of other denominations) are in some way flawed, if not wholly false..." . (From my old class notes — Exclusivist Christians believe 3 things are non-negotiable: the unique authority of Jesus Christ as the apex of revelation; Jesus as normative; salvation exclusively through repentance and faith in Christ's work on the cross. Some will allow that God does provide some truths about Godself and humanity through general revelation, including truths found in other religious traditions, but the Biggest most Important revelation is still Jesus.) .

Inclusivist positions "recognize the possibility that more than one religious tradition can contain elements that are true or efficacious, while at the same time hold that only one tradition expresses ultimate religious truth most completely." . Christian inclusivists tend to focus on salvation, claiming that non-Christians can still achieve salvation — still through Jesus Christ. Sometimes they hold that any non-Christian whose life happens to fit Jesus's call to love God and neighbor, etc., will be saved. Other times they hold that only non-Christians who never had the chance to learn about Jesus can be saved; if you know about Christianity and reject it, it doesn't matter how "good"you are, you're doomed. .

Pluralist positions hold that "more than one set of beliefs or practices can be, at least partially and perhaps wholly, true or correct simultaneously." For Christian pluralists, that means believing that Jesus is not the one Way to God / to heaven/salvation; Christianity is one way of many, usually conceived of as all being on equal footing, to connect to the Divine. .

(These three categories are not all encompassing; the IEP article also brings up relativism and skepticism.)

Issues with Exclusivism & Inclusivism

I hope the issues with exclusivism are clear, but to name a few:

Christians who are taught that all non-Christians (or even the "wrong kind" of Christians) are doomed to hell are taught to see those people as Projects more than people — there's a perceived urgent need to convert them asap in order to "save them." The only kind of relationship you'd form with one of them is centered in efforts to convert them, rather than to live and learn alongside them as they are.

Doesn't matter if they are already happily committed to a different religion. In your eyes, they're wrong about feeling fulfilled and connected to the Divine.

Doesn't matter if you have to resort to violent and coercive practices like wiping out all signs of non-Christian culture or kidnapping non-Christian children to raise Christian — the ends justify the means because you're looking out for their "immortal souls."

...But what about inclusivism? If you're a Christian inclusivist, you aren't forcing anyone to convert to Christianity right now! You acknowledge that non-Christians can live holy and fulfilling lives! You even acknowledge that there's scraps of value in their valid-but-not-as-valid-as-Christianity religions! So what's the problem?

Turns out that this is a major case of one's good intentions not being nearly as important as one's impact.

You may be pushing back against exclusivism's outright refusal that non-Christians have any connection to the divine at all, which is nice and all — but by saying that non-Christians will basically become Christian after they die, you are still perpetuating our long history of coercive conversions.

There's a reason some scholars argue that inclusivism isn't actually a separate category from, but a sub-category of, exclusivism: you're still saying everyone has to be Christian, "so luckily you'll See The Light and become Christian after you die :)"

This is very reasonably offensive to many non-Christians. If nothing else, it's ludicrously smug and paternalistic! I won't get into it here but it only gets worse when some inclusivist positions try to get all Darwinian and start arranging religions from lower to higher, with Christianity as the "evolutionary" apex of religion ://

For now, I'll only go into detail about Catholic Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner's particular version of inclusivism, because it's quite common and really highlights the paternalism:

Rahner's Anonymous Christians:

A question that Catholics and other Christians struggled with in the 20th century was this: If non-Christians cannot be saved (because they held firm in believing that salvation must be in and through Christ), what happens if someone never even had the chance to learn about Christianity? Surely a loving God wouldn't write them an automatic ticket to hell when they're non-Christian through no fault of their own, right?

German Jesuit Karl Rahner's response was to conceive of a sort of abstract version of Christianity for non-Christians who lived good, faithful lives outside of official (what he called "constituted") Christianity:

"Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity. ...Let us say, a Buddhist monk…who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity." - Karl Rahner in Dialogue (1986), p. 135.

So someone who has intentionally devoted themselves to another religion, someone who does good work in that religion's name, is...secretly, unbeknownst to them, actually Christian?

I hope the offensiveness of that is clear — the condescension in implying these people are ignorant of what religion they "really" belong to! the assumption that Good deeds & virtues are always inherently Christian deeds & virtues! the arrogance of being so sure your own religion is The One Right Way that you have to construct a "back door" (as Hans Küng describes it) into it to shove in all these poor people who for whatever reason can't or don't choose to join it!

One theologian who criticized the paternalism of "anonymous Christianity" is John Hick, who was one of the big advocates for religious pluralism as a more respectful way of understanding non-Christian religions. So let's finally talk some more about pluralism!

Religious Pluralism!

As defined earlier, religious pluralist positions hold that there are many paths to the divine, and that all religions have access to some truths about the divine.

For Christians, this means rejecting those 3 non-negotiables of exclusionists about Christianity being the one true religion and Jesus being the one path to salvation. Instead of claiming that Christianity is the "most advanced" religion, pluralism claims that Christianity is just one religion among many, with no unique claim on the truth.

Some other pluralist points:

Pluralism resists antisemitic claims that Christianity is the "fulfillment" of (or that it "supercedes") Judaism.

Various religions provide independent access to salvation rather than everyone's salvation relying on Christ. (Note the still very Christian-skewed lens here in emphasizing salvation at all though!)

When we notice how different religions' truth claims conflict with one another, pluralists reconcile this by talking about how one's experience of truth is subjective.

Pluralism tends to give more authority to human experience than sacred texts

John Hicks' pluralist position

I mentioned before that Hicks is one of the big names in the religious pluralism scene. The IEP article I drew from earlier goes into much greater detail about his views and responses to it in the section titled "c. John Hick: the Pluralistic Hypothesis," but for a brief overview:

His central claim is that "diverse religious traditions have emerged as various finite, historical responses to a single transcendent, ultimate, divine reality. The diversity of traditions (and the belief claims they contain) is a product of the diversity of religious experiences among individuals and groups throughout history, and the various interpretations given to these experiences."

"As for the content of particular belief claims, Hick understands the personal deities of those traditions that posit them...as personae of the Real, explicitly invoking the connotation of a theatrical mask in the Latin word persona."

"Hick claims that all religious understandings of the Real are on equal footing insofar as they can only offer limited, phenomenal representations of transcendent truth."

We must accept that world religions are fundamentally different from each other, rather than falling into platitudes about how "we're all the same deep down"

Each religion has its own particular and comprehensive framework for understanding the world and human experience (i.e. we shouldn't use the normative Christian framework to describe other faiths)

Another angle: hospitality

As various philosophers and theologians have responded to and expanded upon pluralist frameworks, one big concept that some emphasize is hospitality: that all of us regardless of religion have an obligation to welcome others to all that is ours, if and when they have need of it — especially when they are of different cultures or religions from us.

Hospitality requires respect for those under our care, honoring and protecting their differences.

When we are the ones in need of hospitality, we should be able to expect the same.

Hospitality implies being able to anticipate our guest's needs, but we need to accept the impossibility of being able to guess every need, so communication is key!

Liberation theology & Pluralism

I also appreciate what liberation theologians have brought into the discussion. Here's from the IEP article:

"Liberation theology, which advocates a religious duty to aid those who are poor or suffering other forms of inequality and oppression, has had a significant influence on recent discussions of pluralism. The struggle against oppression can be seen as providing an enterprise in which members of diverse religious traditions can come together in solidarity.

"Paul F. Knitter, whose work serves as a prominent theological synthesis of liberation and pluralist perspectives, argues that engaging in interreligious dialogue is part and parcel of the ethical responsibility at the heart of liberation theology. He maintains not only that any liberation theology ought to be pluralistic, but also that any adequate theory of religious pluralism ought to include an ethical dimension oriented toward the goal of resisting injustice and oppression.

"Knitter claims that, if members of diverse religions are interested (as they should be) in encountering each other in dialogue and resolving their conflicts, this can only be done on the basis of some common ground. ..."

Knitter sees suffering as that common ground: "Suffering provides a common cause with which diverse religious traditions are concerned and towards which they can come together to craft a common agenda. Particular instances of suffering will, of course, differ from each other in their causes and effects; likewise, the practical details of work to alleviate suffering will almost necessarily be fleshed out differently by different religions, at different times and in different places. Nevertheless, Knitter maintains that suffering itself is a cross-cultural and universal phenomenon and should thus serve as the reference point for a practical religious pluralism. Confronting suffering will naturally give rise to solidarity, and pluralist respect and understanding can emerge from there."

Knitter also sees the planet as a source of literal common ground for us all: "Earth not only serves as a common physical location for all religious traditions, but it also provides these traditions with what Knitter calls a 'common cosmological story' (1995, p. 119). ...Knitter makes a case that different religious traditions share an ecological responsibility and that awareness of this shared responsibility, as it continues to emerge, can also serve as a basis for mutual understanding."

When Knitter and other liberation theologians speak of suffering or earth care as rallying points for interreligious solidarity, it's important to point out that such solidarity doesn't happen automatically: it is something we have to choose to commit to. We have to be courageous about challenging those who would pin suffering on another religious or cultural group. We have to be courageous about having difficult conversations, again and again. We have to learn how to work together for common goals even while accepting where we differ.

How to end this long ass post?

My hope is that as you read (or skimmed) all this, you were thinking about your own personal beliefs: where, if anywhere, do they fit among all these ideas? where would you like them to fit?

And, in the end, did I really address anon's question about whether it's disrespectful to people of other religions to assert that everyone is loved by God, or gets into heaven? Not really, because I don't know. I think it probably depends on context, and how one puts it, and how certain one acts about their ideas about God and heaven.

For me, it always comes down to humility about my own limited perspective, even while asserting that we all have a right to our personal beliefs, including ideas about what comes after this life.

When I imagine all human beings together in whatever comes next, I hope I do so not out of a desire for assimilation into my religion, but a desire to continue to learn from and alongside all kinds of people and beliefs. I hope I remain open to learning about how other people envision both what comes after death, and more importantly, what they think about life here and now. What can I learn from them about truth, kindness, justice? How can we work together to achieve those things for all creation, despite and in and through our differences?

I'll end with Eboo Patel's description of religious pluralism, which sums up much of how I feel, from his memoir Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim:

"Religious pluralism is neither mere coexistence nor forced consensus. It is a form of proactive cooperation that affirms the identities of the constituent communities while emphasizing that the wellbeing of each and all depends on the health of the whole. It is the belief that the common good is best served when each community has a chance to make its unique contribution."

___

Further resources:

Explore my #religious pluralism tag for more thoughts and quotes

You might also enjoy wandering through my #interfaith tag

Two podcast episodes that draw from Eboo Patel, Barbara Brown Taylor, and other wonderful people: "No One Owns God: Readying yourself for respectful interfaith encounters" and "It's good to have wings, but you have to have roots too: Cultivating your own faith while embracing religious pluralism"

My tag with excerpts from Holy Envy

Post that includes links to various questions about heaven

Here’s a post where I talk about why I don’t believe in hell

My evangelism tag (tl;dr: I’m staunchly against prosletyzing to anyone who doesn’t explicitly request more info about Christianity)

#feel free only to read the tldr anon -- the rest goes way beyond your actual question! #exclusivism #inclusivism #religious pluralism #long post #essays #theology #other faiths tag

[satorugojjo]

I’m just gonna say it, but I think current kids younger than 15 are almost incapable of dissecting anything with critical nuance. Because there is a HUGE difference to the 15 year olds BEFORE lockdown, and after. I’ve seen Gen Z teenagers on tiktok and tumblr have the most empathic, kind, amazingly supportive and intelligent opinions in 2020 who have now grown up and are in college absolutely killing it - they’ve gone into lockdown already having developed their emotional skills and come out of it with a lot more depth and growth. But YOU guys were 12 and younger when the pandemic started, you spent YEARS of it online without interacting with a wide variety of people and learning to read between the lines as you HAVE to in order to navigate the real world and peoples speech patterns and behaviours. You grew up alone in your house behind your screen, without being able to bond with classmates or friends, and most importantly, without anyone to temper your thoughts, or have rational and calm discussions in person. Half the teens I see on tiktok and tumblr NOW are so full of hate, so quick to put down and dismiss peoples choices, so quick to troll and voice really bizarrely conservative and ignorant opinions as if they’re entitled to do so, and so anti-empowerment and anti-ENJOYMENT in general. And I’m gonna be real with you and say it’s because of lockdown. It’s not entirely your fault bc y’all are still kids.

Your literature programs would have been cut, you’re just reading for the assignment, you’re not engaging in seminars and debates and classroom exercises the way you would in class, and all the while you’re just being increasingly exposed to sensationalist media that boils down complex and nuanced topics to a black and white, yes or no, 7 second hook. And it’s made you incapable of approaching anything with logic and empathy, because you just didn’t HAVE that the way everyone else did during their formative middle school puberty years. So now the moment you have a singular negative opinion of something, it’s all encompassing. There is no give, no flex, everyone is guilty until innocent. And why wouldn’t you think that? That’s what people have been doing online during the whole pandemic, cancelling people for 1 comment taken out of context, or being so quick to say something negative first instead of positive. You got comfortable behind your screen instead of being taught the consequences of saying shit things, and now when it comes to exploring all angles to a situation like you should be taught how to the way EVERYONE is, you take it at the most basic, surface, face value.

And when it now comes to fandom spaces where you have older fans in the same space as younger fans, there’s so many more instances where something will get an inordinate and undeserved amount of hate or hype based on a very surface level of understanding. Inherently, this isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s just a thing. What IS bad is when people come under someone’s obviously thought out and nuanced opinion to be like “you’re wrong for liking this bc (insert a completely unrelated logical fallacy of a reason)”. “If you like this book that happens to be a straight romance, you’re homophobic” IT DOESNT WORK THAT WAY AND IM SICK AND TIRED OF ARGUING WITH PEOPLE WHO NEVER BOTHERED TO DEVELOP READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS EVEN AFTER FINDING OUT THEY DON’T HAVE ANY.

Please for the love of GOD I am begging you guys to learn how to analyze literature. Like in an enforced curriculum at a high school level way. Please. YOU will be better off for it, and in turn the rest of us. This isn’t the new wave of boomer-esque hate against the kids. Gen Z is the goddamn future!!! This is a very specific, very VALID gripe, about a very small subset of kids who spent their formative years chronically online. And please! I am BEGGING teachers to recognize this and help their kids out to fix this. There is already a lot of hate in this world and we don’t need a new wave of people spewing hate under the guise of pseudointellectual liberalism because they don’t know how to see any deeper. This is one of the main reasons puritanism in the younger generation is exponentially on the rise! We’ve taken away the ability for them to form a fully informed opinion, and it’s now a self serving spiral. BREAK OUT OF IT, I AM PLEADING.

#I swear this is gonna make me lose followers #but I said what I said

[complainingatthevoid]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea I’ve seen discussed in quite a few contexts, of the text of a story (the show/book/podcast/whatever itself) only being half the experience, with the other half being whatever the audience brings to the table themselves. I feel like sometimes, with social media, there becomes a narrative of what the ‘correct’ reading of a work should be. And I certainly enjoy seeing other perspectives on things I watch/read/etc., especially when it comes to more niche stuff that I can’t for the life of me convince my probably-already-tired-of-my-suggestions friends to check out. But those discussions also, in many cases at least, mostly take into account the work itself, not the experience any individual is bringing to it.

Like, my experience with Agents of SHIELD. I like the show plenty, but I also strongly suspect that if I hadn’t watched it live, and had instead stumbled onto it later and binged it on streaming, it wouldn’t hold the same place in my heart that it does now. So much of my emotions around this show have to do with the experience of watching it live or near-live, with friends, family, or by myself. I mean, this show was airing weekly during some of the most stressful months of my life so far. It was a constant, a source of small comfort, good enough that it kept my attention, light enough that my brain could handle it during that period of time, and that made it special to me in a way that would be hard to replicate under different circumstances.

(For example, I didn’t get around to catching up on say, Game of Thrones, until after some things in my life had settled down.)

But what I think I’m trying to get at is, I don’t think my affection for the show being so tied to a personal experience in any way diminishes the ‘value’ of that affection, even though there’s a voice in my head that seems to think maybe it should. Art is inherently subjective, and you can never be quite sure why something is resonating with someone else, what additional meaning its bringing based on the specific context of an individual’s unique experience. Hell, even figuring out why I resonate with something sometimes takes internal work.

(A not small amount of what I think I’m doing with fic writing in the first place is trying to sort out my feelings on various things.)

I don’t know, I just had a conversation recently with a friend who didn’t like the movie Annihilation very much (a movie I adore), who thought it was missing something. And I think her views on that are as valid on mine, so something else is probably different, right? It got me thinking again about how trying perceive the meaning in art as an objective thing is probably a fundamentally flawed idea. That certainly doesn’t invalidate criticism, especially when it comes to context around how and why a thing was made (I have… thoughts about the corporate machine behind much of the MCU that I’ll leave by the side for now), but I do think there is something to the way any individual may or may not enjoy something, or may or may not find something meaningful, that may be completely inaccessible to anyone else, especially to a stranger. And I think there might be something kind of beautiful about that.

#agents of shield #writing #rambling

[songoftrillium]

World Purpose Statement

The announcement of Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition is something that has invoked in me a sense of urgent inspiration. I find the news inspiring because it marks the launch of a new product that rings so close to the original game that it's new premises instantly evoke a lost-world setting perfect for new-players to uncover through revelations. And with it, a sense of urgency that a large chunk of the game's pathos will be lost in lieu of chronicles centered around direct action, high entertainment, and transactional resolution.

First and foremost I applaud the efforts of the developers behind W5 to purge the literature, and the fandom, of it's toxic gamer base that has festered far too long. You gotta cut out the rot to prevent it from spreading, after all, and I have been a strong advocate for all coming changes. When I look at the old literature, I consider it's inherent value, and feel that the things that made the original editions of werewolf so special to me don't entirely align with the majority of current W20 players. And in that observation is born the chronicle Dead Dog Mountain, the project of mine culminating in close to 25 years experience in entertaining and horrifying players. In many ways this is the culmination of all that work, and a passion project that I hope those who might read this may too someday come to enjoy.

In the first and second editions of the various splats published across the World of Darkness library, the Storyteller's Guides serve to provide ST's the raw narrative tools to convey the world to their players' characters. As time has progressed (particularly in the realm of Werewolves), the guides, and their breadth, have greatly expanded to include garou society, their relationship to their places of power, as well as the forces of power the garou fight against. As their wirth and breath expand in what they make available to ST's though, some of the original content of earlier editions have had to be left out. The 20th Anniversary edition in many ways is even worse with this, opting to truncate the bulk of background in favor of raw stats, leaving even more content on the cutting room floor, so to speak.

In fairness, a lot of the discarded text can come off as repetitive, particularly with chapters starting with a dialogue of game mechanics being explained in-character and starting with 3 paragraphs of picks-his-nose saying 'young pup there's an apocalypse coming now sit here and listen' ad nauseam. As someone that's read quite literally every published rpg book back and forth so many times the pages are forever marked, I can say that it gets objectively tiring to see the same format and it's so easy to just skim over it and get straight to the stats and toys. And indeed, a lot of the edits that came to create W20 were made with the intend to cut back a bit on the roughage and "get to the meat and potatoes" in a manner of speaking. In that way, the edits were a complete success.

The intent to change the game was misdirected however, and in those aspects, W20 was an utter failure, and didn't fix some of the problems with the . The intention of conveying game-world information in-character is because it's not easy to simply convey the context of terror and horror in stats alone. The first-person flavor text fails to convey the horror of this world in that same way either, but the information contained in that first-person text is some of the more important parts of the setting; they wouldn't have tried so hard to convey the horror of the world if it was secondary to the savagery. The other failure is in ignoring a lot of glaring ableism, anti-semitism, queer erasure and a laundry list of continually-evolving problems that has necessitated this impending and much-improved edition.

I feel that in many ways the World of Darkness as intended by those that created it to be a place of genuine terror. Invoking horror in a horror campaign is a complex enough endeavor that by and large, these efforts on behalf of the publishers were, to put it simply, a failure. Horror is a very complex basal guttural emotion; one that sits in the ganglia ready to tug the ebrake on your hormones in the present of what it believes to be a tangible threat. There are many complex higher emotions, but when it comes to the lizard brain, it takes considerable effort to trick it into getting spooked.

There are littered across the cutting room floor of Onyx Path chapters of text that offer no game mechanics whatsoever, and instead convey nothing but pure pathos, driving home to the storyteller that all the action and savagery aside, the earlier ST guides lay out explicitly that the World of Darkness is a horror game. Essays within their pages lay out advice on how to use textural descriptions and different modes of storytelling to lure in players and make the hairs on the backs of their necks stand on end. These remarkable essays are now lost to those that don't possess the older editions serving as a raw toolset that could be applied across any RPG, and not just werewolf alone.

Dead Mountain is to serve as a masterclass in using those old tools to introduce new players not just to Werewolf and the World of Darkness on the whole, but to give these important storytelling tools to new and future storytellers in any game, that they might continue genuinely terrifying their players for many more years to come. The setting from the weather to it's antagonists are to ultimately be what teaches your new players every corner of their sheet, and hopefully instill some of that old love of horror. Over time my musings here will come to identify those key parts, as well as identifiers.

Additionally I'd like to introduce an entirely new setting, one that could be as equally at-home in a W20 setting as it would be in the pending W5 series presented in two acts. In Act I we experienced players sunset our beloved characters and close the chapter on their lives that is the garou nation in it’s current condition The Apocalypse comes ion many forms in many locations, and Act I is the tale of the apocalypse when it came to Trillium. In Act II, set 15 years in the future, we welcome our new players. They will find themselves living as lost cubs in a lost forgotten world, where they have to uncover the secrets built on the events of Act I and reconcile the past in order to heal the present. I have considered the pacific northwest my home for a couple decades now, and the same mystery and majesty of this place leaves me as filled with wonder when I experience it now as I did the first time I saw this place. Dead Mountain, the Winefelly, Sept of the Trillium Glade, and Dume'fa are collectively my love letter to the pacific northwest, and I sincerely hope you come to love my home as much as I do.

#werewolf: the apocalypse #World Building #Dead Mountain

[monsterkissed]

i finally found a book on making your mental health better that actually seems to be Working and making sense to me and a lot of that is to do with how it’s addressing a lot of the common cbt/dbt shit that just spends half its time telling you all thoughts are value neutral and the rest telling you that a lot of your thoughts are actually Bad and Unhealthy. this one seems to be taking the radical position that thoughts are usually a reasonable reaction to Being A Human and actually trying to find inarguable value in the “bad” thoughts and it’s helping me to address a lot of stuff and shutting down a bunch of “i am a bad prsn and also i am bad for thinking i am a bad prsn” feedback loops.

but one aspect of those it still sticks to religiously is the “events don’t make ppl sad only their thoughts make them sad” and i know that individualist mental healthcare is inherently centrist-conservative but god i wish they would can it on this one point. not just bc i genuinely believe a better world is possible or even bc i believe that the stats show ppl who r part of persecuted minorities/the poor/the severely disabled and terminally ill show higher incidences of poor mental health For A Materialist Reason but also bc honestly. no part of us is a closed system and we r all interconnected with everything else in very measurable ways and it’s good to be aware of that and bad to act as though our brains are isolated little lumps of meat talking themselves into self-harm. there is no part of us that exists outside of the universe and out of sync with it, that’s not spiritualism or hippy bullshit it’s just a fact of existence. we are a part of the world and change and are changed by it. this kind of reading i think really induces a kind of apathy and again, conservative-centrism, i know that that is in part the entire point of it.

like i am happy to compromise here! i would even go so far as to say “most sadness is perpetuated and magnified by thoughts about the event and not the event itself” but to just flat out say no it’s always you, there is never a situation in which real life events are the direct cause of both the emotion and the thoughts behind them, seems...... kind of like all or nothing thinking to me? overgeneralisation, perhaps even fortune telling, to pick a few trite phrases at complete random.

#mental health

[buzzdixonwriter]

On Genres, Truths, and Tropes (part three)

In his novel The Serialist, David Gordon writes:

“In its tropes and types, genre fiction is close to myth, or to what the myths and classics once were.  Just as, a century ort two ago, one could refer to Ulysses or Jason and hit a deep vein of common understanding in your reader, now we touch that place when we think of a lone figure riding in the desert, or a stranger in a long coat and hat coming down a corridor with a gun, or a bat wheeling above the city at night.  Reduced to their essence, boiled down, the turns and returns of genre unfold like dreams, like the dreams that we all share and trade with one another and that, clumsy and unrealistic as they are, point us towards the truth.”

I think that’s an over-glorification of genre fiction (and to be fair, the passage is the novel’s narrator, a mediocre pulp writer one step away from failure, justifying his hack work) but it does touch on a few baseline truths.

Genre fiction reflects what audiences believe to be true -- or perhaps more accurately, what they wish were true.  It’s fiction written catering to those beliefs, and while that doesn’t automatically preclude work in that genre from being worthwhile and valid, it sure doesn’t help.

Which is why I intend to steer clear of it in the future.

Mind you, this is no slam against those who delight in writing or reading genre fiction. 

I know many of them to be honest practitioners of their craft, bringing their best effort to the page, and trying their utmost to leave readers with something both entertaining and to some degree uplifting.

I enjoy genre fiction and I will doubtlessly be writing a lot of it in my future fictoids, but those by and large are merely light extemporanea.

A single potato chip, as it were; a tasty delight, crunchy and perhaps a bit salty, but junk food nonetheless.

Healthy meals of substance will be my long form stories, novels I intend to self-publish.  I don’t see much of a future for professional short story writing (i.e., getting paid for it) and will leave what little remains of that market to newer writers seeking to establish a foothold for themselves.

I’m tired of chasing after bones tossed by others, jumping through their hoops.  Yeah, it would be wonderful to write a best selling novel that garners me a huge financial reward and a vast readership, but as Joel Hodgson said of his show, Mystery Science Theater 3000, “It doesn’t matter if everybody doesn’t get the joke so long as the right people get the joke.”

To cop a line (but without irony) from This Is Spinal Tap, I wouldn’t mind becoming more selective in my audiences.

I have three completed novel manuscripts in the hopper, two contemporary stories, one set in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

More on the way.

If science fiction reflects a world the writer wishes (or fears) to live in, then these three books share a kinship to that genre insofar as they reflect the world I want to inhabit.

There is nothing inherently fantastic about them, though various pop culture brands and genres get mentioned in passing.

There is practically no violence in them (one’s about football, so there’s some rough and tumble gridiron action, but no one ever faces serious harm in the other books).

They’re not about mcguffins, prizes to be won that are important only to the characters in the stories.

They tend to be about values, and what we put important, and how we weight those values against one another.

All that philosophy is buried under tons o’fun, however.  They’re raucous, rowdy works with a lot of silliness and satire blended in.

They are, in short, the kind of books I find myself wanting to read at this stage of my life.

Which is why the Chronicles of Q’a will never be completed…at least not by yrs trly.  At some point in the not too distant future I plan to publish a short story anthology and the next Q’a tale will be included in that, but that’s the end.

I’m looking for something more substantial to chew on for nourishment in my coming years.

 © Buzz Dixon

#fiction #genre fiction #tropes #cliches #stereotypes #literature #writing

[c-is-for-circinate]

Wait, isn't "anti" stuff more like "anti-pedophilia" and stuff? Like, you have a point about anti-porn attitudes, but from what I've heard just "anti" on its own means against stuff like kid porn and incest porn and legitimately f*cked up sh*t like that.

Okay!  So this, I think, is actually a great example of what I was talking about, and a really useful thing to understand.  (CW rape, child abuse, etc)

Smarter people than me have written much better essays about why policing thoughtcrimes is a bad road to go down, and I will probably reblog some of them next time they cross my dash for more context.  What I want to talk about is the trigger mechanism, the ‘oh, this looks like danger!!!’ immune response in how we look at different kinds of porn, and how that applies to anti culture.

Here’s the thing: I am anti-pedophilia.  I think that, for most people, that’s a stance that largely goes without saying!  Adults who prey on children are bad.  I’m also against incest; relatives who prey on their family members are bad.  Above all I oppose rape.  Sexual predation of any kind is bad.  In fact, I’d say that’s the most important item on the list.  There is plenty of room to argue about where the lines are between ‘adult’ and ‘child’ and how teenagers fit in the middle, and there’s plenty of room to get historical about the lines between ethically terrible incest, distasteful-but-bearable “aristocratic inbreeding” between distant cousins, and the kind of consanguinity that tends to develop in a small town where everyone’s vaguely related to everyone else by now anyway.  The core of the issue is consent, and it has always been consent.  Pedophilia and incest are horrific because they are rape scenarios where the abuser has far more power and their victim far fewer resources to cope, both practically and emotionally; because harm to children is, to us as a culture, worse than harm to adults, for a lot of very valid reasons; and because they constitute betrayal of trust the victim should have been able to put in their abuser as well as rape--but they are all rape scenarios, and that’s why they’re awful. 

These things are bad.  It is good for us to have a social immune response system that recognizes these things when they’re happening and insists we step in.  That is a good thing to develop!  It helps us, as a society.  It can help the people being victimized.  It’s the same reason educators and childcare workers in the US are all mandated reporters, why we do background checks on people working near kids.  These things happen, and they’re terrible, and it’s good that we try to be aware and prepared for them.  (Though obviously studies show we’re a lot less good at protecting the vulnerable than we’d like to pretend we are.)

The question is: why does that same social immune response trigger, and trigger so angrily, in response to fiction?

Anti culture is fundamentally an expression of that social immune response.  Specifically, it’s that social immune response when it is set off by a situation that, while it has some similarities to the very bad real-life crime of sexual predation including pedophilia and incest, is in and of itself harmless.

If you’re instinct is to flare up in anger or dismissiveness because I’m calling these things harmless, I want to ask you to just take a deep breath and bear with me for a bit longer.  What you’re feeling right now is an allergic reaction.

Humans tell and read and listen to stories about “legitimately fucked up shit” all the time.  It’s part of the human condition.  It’s part of how we process those things happening, not just to use, but to other people in the world around us.  It’s part of how we process completely unrelated fucked-up shit, playing with fears and furies and insecurities that we all have, through so may layers of fiction that we don’t even recognize them any more, playing with power dynamics in metaphor and making characters suffer for fun.  Aside from the fact that literally all stories do this to some extent or another; aside from the fact that drawing lines between ‘ok that’s good storytelling’ and ‘that’s too fucked-up to write about’ is arbitrary, subjective, and dangerous in its own right; aside from all of that, these stories are stories.  All of them. 

Even the ones about rape, about incest, about pedophilia.  They’re words on a page.  No real children were harmed, touched, or even glanced at in the making of this work of fiction.  This story, pornographic though it may be, is part of a conversation between consenting adults.  (And if a teenager lies about their age to consent, that is a different problem altogether.)

Stories in and of themselves, no matter what they’re about, are no more dangerous than a crate full of oranges.  Which is to say: utterly harmless, unless all you have to eat is oranges, all day every day, and you find yourself dying slowly of nutrient deficiency--which is why representation matters.  Or unless someone wields one deliberately, violently, as a tool to cause harm, and someone gets acid in their eye--which is the fault of the person holding the orange. And unless you happen to be allergic to citrus.

The key here is this twofold understanding:  First, the thing that hurts you can also have value to others.  Real, legitimate value.  Whether you’ve undergone trauma and certain story elements are straight-up PTSD triggers or you just don’t like orange juice, that story, those tropes, that crate of oranges may be somewhere between icky and fundamentally abhorrent--but we understand that that is still your reaction.  Even if you don’t understand how anybody could ever enjoy it; even if every single person you surround yourself with is as sensitive and disgusted and itchy about this thing that makes your eyes hurt and your throat stop working as you; that doesn’t make it true for everyone.  That doesn’t make oranges poisonous.  No real children were involved in the writing of this story.  It is words on a page.

But, secondly: the thing that has value to others can also hurt you.  Just because a story isn’t inherently poison doesn’t mean it can’t cause you, personally, pain.  That’s what a PTSD trigger is: an allergic reaction, psychological anaphylaxis, a brain that’s trying so hard to protect its own from a threat that isn’t actually present (but was once, and the brain is trained to respond) that it causes far more harm and misery than the trigger itself possibly could.  And no, it’s not just people with PTSD who sometimes get hurt by stories.  There are many, many ways a story can poke the part of your brain that says, this is Bad, I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here.  The story is still, always, every time, pixels on a screen and ink on paper.  The story causes no physical harm.  But it can poke your brain into misery, it can stir up your emotions, it can make you want to cringe and run away.  It can make you want to scream and fight and go after the author who brought this thing into existence.  It can make you hurt.

This is an allergic reaction.  This is your brain and body, your reflexes and instincts, trying to protect you from something that isn’t really happening.  And just like a literal allergic reaction, it can do actual harm to you if it gets set off.  This is real.  The fact that stories can upset you to the point of pain and mental/emotional injury is real, even though it’s coming from your own brain and not the story itself.  There are stories you shouldn’t read.  There are stories I shouldn’t read, regret reading, will never read, because they hurt me.  That doesn’t mean they’re the same stories that would hurt you.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

And, finally:

If getting upset about stories is fundamentally an individual person’s allergic reaction, their brain freaking out and firing off painful survival instincts in the face of a thing that isn’t, in and of itself, a threat?  Then the anti movement is a cultural allergic reaction.

Fandom as a whole has a pretty active immune system, which doesn’t mean we have a good immune system.  We try very hard to be aware of all the viruses and -isms and abuse and manipulation and cruelty, both systematic and individual, that exists around and within our community.  We’re primed and ready to shout about things at all times.  The anti movement is that system, that culture, screaming and shouting and fighting at a harmless thing on a grand scale.  It wants to stop that thing, that scary awful thing that trips all of its well-primed danger sensors, at all costs.  It’ll swell up and block off our airways (our archives) if it has to.  It’ll turn on the body it came from.  It’s scared and protective and trying to fight, and it’s ready to fight and destroy itself.

Luckily, fans and fanfic and fandom and fan culture are a lot bigger and older than they often get credit for, and it’s not like these cultural allergies are anything new.  We could talk about shippers and slashers in the X-Files fandom in the 90s.  We could talk about the birth of fandom in the days of Star Trek.  We could talk about censorship and book burning going back centuries.  We survived that and we’ll survive this, too.

But god, does the anti movement my throat and eyes itch.  Man is it irritating, and sometimes a little suffocating, to realize how many stories just aren’t getting told out of fear of what the antis will say.  And that’s the real danger, I think.  What are we losing that would have so much value to someone?  What are we missing out?

#fandom #anti culture #anti-anti #I guess? #asked and answered #you are not WRONG or BAD or BROKEN if a story hurt you #but neither is the story #Anonymous #anti discourse day

[blondiebarnes]

in the middle

summary: steve and bucky just got home from a tough mission, and you’re determined to make them feel good.

pairing: steve rogers x bucky barnes x reader

warnings: smut! threesome, male & female receiving oral, established relationship, cumplay, basically just porn

word count: 6.5k

For the most part, you’ve gotten used to being by yourself when Steve and Bucky are on missions.

You don’t like it - not in the slightest - it goes without saying that you’d love nothing more than to go on missions with them when they’re called in the dead of night but it hardly, if ever, works out that way. They’re nearly always sent together (Fury says they balance each other out, and you’re not exactly sure you know why or how but you’ve learned to accept whatever your director says at face value) and you’re generally excluded from their missions. They get too protective, can ignore the objectives of a mission when you’re in danger, and it’s a sweet sentiment but you know it’s an issue, even if you appreciate it.

And you are used to it. Really, you are. It’s been a year of having them called off in the middle of the night, leaving you sleeping in bed with a lingering kiss to your forehead as you dip out the door - occasionally they’ll wake you up (usually Bucky, because he tends to be a bit more sentimental, though he’d never dare to admit it) and give you a proper kiss, but for the most part you simply wake up in a too-large bed that’s void of the two super soldiers sandwiching you between their warm bodies, and it never fails to feel any more jarring.

That’s what happened Friday. You simply woke up on a day like any other and they were gone, leaving nothing but ruffled covers and a small sticky note pressed to your cell phone in Steve’s scribbled handwriting, telling you that it shouldn’t last more than the weekend and we love you so much and a small smiley face that looks to be more of Bucky’s doing, but you can’t be sure.

It had been a long weekend.

Movies and books and making dinner, and work had been so slow recently with no new missions on the come-up that you need to be called away on, so you’ve been primarily holed up in your apartment watching the time tick by and waiting for your boys to come home. You’d even called Nick at one point, in your boredom, to inquire about how their mission was going, and he told you (paraphrased, of course) that they were doing just fuckin’ great and should be home by Monday, and Monday couldn’t have fucking come any slower.

You’ve been lying awake for nearly three hours since you settled into bed on Sunday night, covers pulled tight against your chin to protect yourself from the January cold that nips at your skin, even after you’ve set the thermostat to 71 degrees. Steve likes it cold - Bucky warm - you laugh at the irony of it, much to the latter’s chagrin - and you prefer it being right in the middle.

The TV plays on mute a rerun of some old movie you’ve never heard of, black and white film running rickety slow and glitching, though you’ve long since given up paying attention to it. You’d been on Pinterest for an hour before getting bored and plugging your phone in on your nightstand, and you’d begun flipping through one of Steve’s favorite books he loves to read to you sometimes, and now - you simply gaze at the ceiling in your boredom, fingers interlocked on top of your stomach, boredom settling in every crevice of your body.

You’re not sure what, exactly, you’re waiting awake for. Not even sure if you’re waiting or simply unable to sleep - it feels like a 50/50 situation, at least at the moment - but there’s still something inherently wrong with sleeping in bed without your boys. Curling into Bucky’s chest while Steve is pressed to his back, the latter’s hand wrapped around to rest on your lip while a metal hand slides up your shirt, cupping your breast just to hear the way you squeal at the chill - or, alternatively, sandwiching yourself between them as Steve practically throws his mass on top of you and Bucky squishes your face into his hard back.

Empty. You feel empty, in more ways than one, and that’s what’s keeping you awake, you decide after a long fifteen minutes of contemplating on it. Your boys complete you. It’s not right without them -

Just as the thought crosses your mind, you hear the front door knob jiggling from across the apartment, and you jerk upright as though someone had doused you with freezing cold water (not that it would be much of an adjustment from the temperature your apartment feels, but the implication still stands.)

If you were smarter - or perhaps less groggy - maybe you’d dig through your nightstand for the gun you keep in case of any intruders, buried beneath notebooks and stray pieces of paper decorated with small smudged sketches that Steve puts on any smooth surface he can find. It’s loaded and ready to go - all you’d need to do is dig through and grab it, creep outside the bedroom door and take down whomever may be invading your home -

Just as you roll onto your side to dig through your drawer and find the weapon, the front door fully opens with a jingle of keys and the scuffling sounds of footsteps, and you pause, listening to the voices that roll through the apartment, hushed and breathy.

“Fuckin’ - tripped over my foot,” comes a familiar voice, louder than the one who follows right after him, murmuring for him to shut the hell up - are you trying to wake up the entire city? -

You’re out of bed faster than you can even process, covers mercilessly kicked to the very bottom of the bed in your haste. The hardwood is cold against your bare feet and the air bites at your skin, wearing nothing but one of Steve’s old t-shirts that falls to your mid thighs and a pair of lace panties that peeks out of the shirt when you bend over or reach up or do anything, really - it’s a bit of a scandalous look - but you pay no mind to it, opening the door and tearing down the hallway into the foyer.

You’ve smacked into a hard, thick body before you could stop yourself, arms thrown around Steve’s torso as you bury your face into his chest, and you can practically feel his deep laugh before you hear it but you do hear it, clear as day, and it brings a grin to your face that’s only deepened when Bucky tugs at your waist, pulling you into his back, arms wrapped around your stomach as he buries his face in your shoulder.

“Fury said you guys wouldn’t be home until tomorrow,” you tell them, letting your body relax into Bucky’s embrace as Steve traces his fingers across your jawline, tilting your head up so he can press one light kiss to your puckered lips. His arms snake around your waist, sandwiched between your back and Bucky’s chest, fingertips clutching tight onto the loose fabric of the shirt you’re donning and he uses it as leverage to hold you closer to him.

“It was an easy one,” Steve replies, leaning forward just a bit until you’re fully pressed between the two soldiers, your head squished into his chest as he inhales the scent of your shampoo, nose buried into the top of your head. “Can’t believe you called Fury about it - missed us that much, hmm?”

A dry chuckle jostles the body behind you, feeling Bucky’s warm laughter against your neck, and you bite on your bottom lip as you nod. “‘Course I missed you - don’t get cocky -” for you’d just caught sight of Steve’s smug grin, toying his lips upward, and you use the top of your head to push him away from you in mock disgust, leaning further into Bucky’s grasp. He hums softly, breath ruffling your hair, messy from your failed attempts to sleep. “S’so lonely here.”

“Aww,” murmurs Bucky, lips pressing warm kisses into the exposed expanse of your neck, and you tilt your head to the side to give him easier access as Steve crosses his arms over his chest, watching the pair of you at work. “Poor baby.”

“Hey -” you reach behind you, running your hands through long, brunette locks just to feel the way Bucky smiles against your skin. “At least you two have each other on missions, getting each other off - I’m here all by myself. Nothin’ but the fingers.” “There’s a lot less time to get your rocks off in the middle of a mission than you’d think.”

“Is there?” you inquire playfully as Bucky’s lips trail further up your neck, landing on a spot just beneath your jawline and suckling the soft skin - the teasing lilt in your voice that you’d intended to sound confident and self-assured gets breathier and just a tad more pathetic as you continue, “Sam and I always seem to have enough time -”

Bucky grunts against your cheek, murmuring something you can’t quite make out about how he hates that fuckin’ bird boy, and a grin spreads across your face that mirrors Steve’s as he watches you. Bucky tilts your head to the side with two fingers pressed to your chin so he can ghost his lips over yours but you deepen it, pushing your face further into his as you wrap one of your arms around his neck, tugging at his hair to hear him groan into your mouth and you swallow the noise. You can practically sense Steve rolling his eyes both at your teasing and the way Bucky’s absolutely devouring you, the metal hand around your waist trailing up your torso and leaving goosebumps in its wake until he reaches your chest, cold fingers plucking at your nipple, and your chest arches into his hand with a broken gasp into his mouth.

“Better tell Sam not to touch what isn’t his,” Steve tells you, and you nod, watching the blonde take a few steps forward and for a moment you wonder if he’ll lean down, take your lips from Bucky’s and kiss you until you’re practically putty in his hands but instead he pushes past the both of you, disappearing down the hallway behind you, and you crane your neck backwards to watch his back as he vanishes around a corner.

For a moment you wonder if Bucky hadn’t seen him leave, continuing his ministrations on your nipples as his teeth bite at your bottom lip as though there’d been no interruption, his mouth turning up into a smug smirk at the way you whimper into his mouth. God, you’ve missed his touch, clever hands knowing exactly how to make you fall apart for him even without slipping into the lace of your panties, and your mouth opens in a silent gasp as his flesh palm presses to the skin of your stomach.

“Wanna go see Stevie?” the soldier questions into your mouth, voice low and sultry smooth, and you jerk your head up and down once. “Tough mission for him.”

You frown at that as Bucky pulls away from you, leaving one lingering kiss to the side of your throat as he pulls your shirt down over your lower half. “Thought he said it was easy.”

“It was,” and that makes your brows furrow as his metal hand wraps around your wrist, beginning to pull you down the hallway where your bedroom door is swung wide open. “But Fury ripped him a new one, ‘cause he disobeyed his orders - got the mission done fine - but you know how Stevie hates having his authority questioned.”

Your lips part in a silent o, and Bucky smirks ever so slightly before leading you into the bedroom where Steve sits at the edge of the bed, peeling off his suit and kicking it off of his ankles. Bucky shuts the door behind you, immediately working at tugging his vest over his head and you leave him to it, bare feet padding on the hardwood floor until you reach Steve, and you merely stand before him until he’s finished taking his clothes off, leaving him clad in only a pair of boxers.

“Do you need something?” Steve questions, glancing up at you with an amused glint in his eyes and you groan, lifting your leg up to straddle his lap, calves on either side of his, and his hands go to rest on the underside of your thigh like an instinct. For a moment you don’t say anything, grinding your hips down into his until his hands slide up your back, tugging your shirt up over your torso so he can press his cold palms to the globes of your ass, halting you in place. “Words, baby.”

“Want you to boss me around,” you tell him, dropping your lips to the side of his throat, and his dry exhale of a laugh blows at your hair as his fingers slip beneath the scrap of lace between your ass, fully digging into the plump skin, and you smile against his neck. “Missed you bein’ bossy.”

“Really?” You nod, feeling the bed dip beside you until there’s another set of hands on your body, tugging the hem of your shirt up until you’re forced to remove your lips from Steve’s neck so Bucky can pull your shirt off, littering it onto the ground beside you. Steve leans his head back as both you and Bucky lean forward, your lips to his throat and the other soldier taking his lips so that the next words he speaks are muffled into the kiss, “Sure Bucky didn’t put you up to this, baby?”

“Who’s Bucky?” 

That makes both of them laugh into each other and you smile, leaning back in his lap as you take in the sight of them - lips crashed together, metal hand burying itself in blonde locks that he hasn’t cut in a while, hair brushing the tips of his ears, and Steve’s hand that had been on your ass drops, seemingly forgotten about his job - you huff, wrap your hand around his wrist, and lift his palm up to rest against your left breast.

Instinctively he squeezes, and the two men pull apart from each other as Bucky leans forward to kiss the top of your head, flesh hand sliding down your stomach until he can push into the damp lace fabric of your panties, and you jolt against his hand as he brushes your clit. “Can’t possibly think we forgot about you,” he tells you, and you shrug, watching the way he smiles. “Come on, Stevie, you heard her - wants you to boss her around.”

And Steve is surely still doubtful of your intentions - it isn’t as though you’ve ever asked him to boss you around before - it typically just happens when he’s pissed or upset or happy -

It happens a lot. He’s a bossy guy, both in the field and out of it, and he’s more than happy to give demands and orders and he loves to see you follow them.

Bucky is - usually along for the ride. He’s the calming voice in your ear when Steve is edging you until you’re screaming, the gentle touch when you’ve been overstimulated for an hour, the smooth, sultry kiss when you’re being filled so deep from both ends you feel entirely numb - and he can be mean, too, metal hand tightening around your throat and smirking at the way you sob -

Well, it depends.

“Get on the bed,” Steve tells you, and regardless of whether he’s suspicious of you and Bucky his voice is already hardening and if the words weren’t implicitly sexual, perhaps you could fool yourself into thinking you’re on the field - you listen, though. You always do - swing your legs off of his lap and land on your back on the bed, watching as Steve stands and Bucky merely turns around, leaning back on his arms as he watches you, your leg hiked up to give a limited, tantalizing view to the lace covered pex of your thighs.

“Buck - wanna get behind our girl?”

The phrase our girl never fails to make your stomach flutter, and the feeling only intensifies as Bucky grunts in affirmation, crawling towards you, and with hands hooked under your armpits he lifts you to sit, your back pressed to his chest. Hands reach up to your chest, cupping your tits in flesh and metal palms that have a chill rolling through your spine, hips grinding back against the erection you can feel pressed into your back.

“Spread your legs,” Steve tells you, and you oblige, feet sliding across the bed to spread yourself as wide open as you can, and Bucky’s metal hand leaves your chest to grab onto one of your thighs, forcing it open wide enough that a burn spreads through your muscle. “Yeah - don’t fuckin’ move, baby - hold her down, Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t need to be told twice, moving his other hand so he’s holding both of your thighs, and you can feel wetness dripping down your cunt onto the sheets as Steve stands still, for a moment, just watching the pair of you - your chest heaves and you can feel Bucky’s fingers twitch against your thighs, surely desperate to caress your tits just the way he always likes to, but he wouldn’t dare disobey Steve when he’s like this. You know it, and he knows it, and you’re sure Steve knows it too - he looks so smug, even as he climbs onto the bed, resting on his stomach as he presses his cheek into your thigh, warm breath fanning over your cunt. His fingers hook into the soaked material of your panties, feeling the stickiness that coats your folds and the undergarment, and with not a second of hesitation he rips them in half, tugging them off your leg and tossing the ruined scrap of lace onto the ground.

Your instinct is to reach down and run your fingers through his hair as he lowers his mouth to your pussy, tongue flicking once over your clit, but the second your hands jerk in their spot resting overtop of Bucky’s, Steve is reaching up - one hand manages to wrap around both of your wrists, holding your hands in place on top of your stomach with a grip so tight it’ll surely leave bruises that will darken in the morning.

You groan softly as Steve lifts his head, gaze hard and unforgiving as he stares at you, and then his gaze moves behind you where you know he must be having some sort of silent conversation with Bucky - they’re so good at that - before he’s leaning back down, teeth gnashing at your clit with enough force to make you jolt.

“Think Stevie said not to fuckin’ move, sweetie,” Bucky murmurs, lips sucking a dark hickey just beneath your ear, and a low whine escapes your throat as Steve’s tongue laps up your sticky folds before centering on your clit. “Didn’t you, honey?” And Steve hums in affirmation, pulling back to spit harshly at your clit, and you exhale skaily as you feel the glob of coldness trickle down your folds. “Move again, and I’ll punish you,” he tells you, which is more generous than he typically is when he’s in this state but you suppose the excitement of arriving home after a shitty, weekend mission must not have worn out yet. “Be a good girl for us, baby.”

You nod furiously, Bucky’s forearms hooking beneath your knees until the ache in your thighs nearly tips the balance of pain and pleasure but it’s still leaning towards the latter - more so as Steve dips his head back down, lips wrapping around the sensitive nub at your core that tears a moan from your throat, and you bite at your lips to try and silence the noises.

“Never told you to be quiet,” Steve mumbles against your cunt, vibrations from his voice sending a shiver up your spine, and Bucky smiles against one of the many hickies he’s leaving on your neck - you’re sure you’ll look a damn sight tomorrow, made of practically entirely concealer to hide the marks he’s obsessed with, but you don’t have it in you to stop. “Let us hear your noises - how good we’re making you feel.”

You drop your head back into Bucky’s shoulder with a desperate cry as Steve’s flexed tongue circles your clit before running back down your slit, parting your folds until he can slip his tongue inside of your hole, thrusting it in and out a few times, lips turning upwards at your resulting whine. Bucky’s nails leave deep, crescent-shaped indentations in the smooth skin of your inner thigh, and you can feel his erection pressed thick and swollen against your back. Surely he’s just as wound up as you are - and as much as Steve is, his hips rutting against the edge of the bed as though of their own accord - but he doesn’t do much of anything at all to alleviate the pressure, breathy exhales in your ear as your hips rub against his bulge.

“Wanna hold her open for me, Buck?” Steve questions, pulling back just a mere inch from your swollen clit before dipping his head back down, tongue licking a fat stripe through your folds before lust-blown blue orbs lift up to meet the ones behind you - you can feel Bucky’s hair, brushing against your cheek as he nods once, and your brows furrow in confusion. Surely he’s already holding you open, hands forcing your thighs so far apart that you can feel the burn in every inch of your body - and then he drops one of your thighs against the bed, metal hand trailing down to your cunt, and his fingers dip through your folds, spreading them apart and exposing your swollen clit further to the blonde between your legs. Steve adjusts himself, moving towards the side so he can press his face into your pussy without hitting Bucky’s fingers, and his tongue circles your clit once more.

You moan at the sight, nearly going cross eyed as you stare down at Steve. It’s so erotic, watching everything in your most sacred of areas, Bucky’s fingers and Steve’s face buried so intensely into your cunt you’re sure he can’t possibly breathe - he moans against your folds every so often, as though the act of giving you pleasure makes him feel just as good, and you don’t doubt it for a moment.

“Steve -” you gasp, back arching up, and Steve uses his hand around your wrist to force you back down onto the bed wordlessly - you drop pathetically back onto the duvet, a tear sliding down your cheek, and you can hear Bucky tut behind you, cold fingers slipping on the moisture coating your folds. “Steve - fuck -”

“Gonna cum, baby?” “Yes,” you breathe, hips bucking backwards into Bucky’s erection and he lets out a choked gasp into your ear, head falling back against the headboard with a loud thud that rings through the room. “Yes, need to - please -”

Steve pulls away, then - you cry out at the loss of warmth between your legs - and his nose nudges Bucky’s fingers, prompting the soldier behind you to take the cue to dip his metal digits into your cunt, the cold thickness stretching you out until you’re preening at the sensation. “Think she’s been a good girl? Think she should cum, Buck?”

You want to scream at the pause between the question and Bucky’s answer - he hums for a moment, as though in deep thought, fingers buried down to the knuckle inside of you and body practically leaning over yours so his metal arm can reach, brushing the sweet spot inside of you that makes your vision go fuzzy. He takes too fucking long, Steve’s grasp on your wrist pressed to your tummy the only thing keeping your hips from bucking up to force pressure into your cunt, before he finally says, “You’ve been good for us, haven’t you?”

“Yes!” you practically squeal as his fingers pull out hardly an inch before pumping back in, curling upwards again to hit your G-spot. “Yes, please, been so good, Bucky -”

“Cum for us, sweetie -”

You hardly wait for him to finish his sentence when Steve lowers his lips to your clit, wrapping around the bud and sucking until his cheeks hollow out, and your hips jerk desperately into his face as the waves of euphoria rack through your body, tearing a desperate sob from your throat as Bucky thrusts his fingers in and out of you, nearly hitting the side of Steve’s face in his haste to get you off, and he’s doing a damn good job at it - your hips jut into his back as you cum into their mouth and fingers, stuttering groans leaving your mouth one after another.

Steve’s mouth never leaves your clit - not even when your hips thrash against his mouth and you tear your hands free of his grasp to dig into his hair, attempting to stop his ministrations on your clit but he refuses - your folds drip wetness into his waiting mouth and he laps it up like a man dying of thirst, Bucky’s fingers lazily thrusting in and out of you as his chest rises and falls against your back, dropping your other thigh to hook an arm around your torso and hold you close to him.

Hold her down, Steve had told him, and he seems more than content to oblige with the order, whispering loving nothings in your ear that you can’t bring yourself to understand, words coming through as nothing more than incoherent babble to your brain muddled with the pressure to cum already building in your core again -

“Oh,” you whimper, heels digging into the mattress as Steve’s tongue laps over your folds and Bucky’s finger before settling on your clit again, flicking the nub over and over until you feel yourself fucking burst - “oh, fuck!”

It’s entirely more intense than the first one, Steve’s teeth nibbling at your clit as you topple over the edge like a row of dominoes - fire shoots through every limb, every crevice of your body until you’re shaking, tears streaming out of the corners of your eyes and trickling down to your jawline. Your thighs tense, a high pitched cry piercing the air of the room as the aftershocks overtake your body, leaving you trembling into Bucky’s grasp as Steve pulls off your clit with a pop.

“That’s good,” Bucky whispers into your ear, pulling his metal fingers out of you once the shaking rolling through your body has come to a relative halt - through your blurred vision you can see Steve take the digits in his mouth, licking them clean eyes rolling up to meet Bucky’s, and he groans softly. “Good girl.”

Steve leaves one last kiss to your swollen clit before moving up your body, and you’re quick to lean forward, wrapping a quivering arm around his neck and pulling him down for a kiss - it’s rough and biting, teeth clashing together and his tongue swiping into your mouth without a moment for you to catch your breath, and when he pulls away his breathing is noticeably heavier than before. 

“Yeah, you’re good for us,” he tells you, bringing a hand up to stroke at the soft skin of your cheek before pulling it back and smacking it back down - it’s not hard, not by a long shot, but it’s enough to draw another whimper from your throat at the soft sting. “On your knees.”

Your legs feel shaky but you manage to push yourself to your knees, resting your arms around Steve’s shoulders to hold yourself up as Bucky shuffles behind you, slotting his hips against your ass so you can feel his bulge through his boxers - he grinds himself into your ass, sliding his arms around your waist just as Steve tugs his own boxers down, fist lazily pumping his cock as you watch him.

“You know what?” the blonde murmurs after a moment of you watching him, your cunt throbbing in need. “Think I’m gonna take your throat.”

You whine at that as Steve pulls away abruptly, leaving you nearly collapse onto your stomach but Bucky’s arm around your stomach mercifully holds you up, practically manhandling you as he turns you around, shoving you onto your back with your head nearly dangling off the bed as he crawls up your body, leaving lingering kisses on the smooth expanses of skin exposed to him. Large hands force your thighs open, pushing his hips in between your legs, and you whimper as his cock rubs against your overstimulated clit, even through the fabric of his boxers -

Steve stands beside the bed, smoothing his fingers through your matted hair as you come face to face with his cock, throbbing red and leaking precum down the sides, and your mouth practically waters at the sight - then Bucky’s pulling his own boxers down, swollen tip of his dick sliding through your sodden folds wettened from the aftermath of two orgasms. You push your thighs farther apart, opening your mouth wide and sticking your tongue out for Steve and he grins down at you, the expression looking less joyful and more downright smug and don’t you love seeing him like this? All dominant and intense, like he could control you if he pleased, and he does please -

His cock shoves forward into your throat at the same moment Bucky sheathes himself inside of your cunt fully, and a choked cry forces its way out of your mouth, reverberating through Steve’s body until he lets out a strangled grunt. Your nose brushes against the trimmed hair at his pelvis, hollowing your throat to take him in the best you can, and his grip on your hair tightens as leverage to hold you onto him.

“Oh - oh, shit,” Bucky gasps, the noise stuttered and breathy, and the hands on your thigh move up to squeeze your waist, grasp tough and bruising against your skin. “Fuck, fuck -”

You gag around Steve as he finally pulls out of your mouth, leaving just the tip on your tongue, and you swirl it around him - he drops his head back with a groan and when he speaks, his words are shallow, controlled - “Feels good, Buck?”

“So good, Stevie -” Bucky thrusts himself out of you before pushing back in, cunt stretching around his girth and your eyes roll back at the coil of pleasure already building in your lower stomach as his pace picks up, hips working faster and faster until the sound of skin slapping skin nearly overpowers your desperate mixture of moans and cries -

Nearly. Not completely.

Steve tugs at your hair and you remember your job to suck him off and you let him push your head forward, lips wrapping around his girth and tongue flattening to lap at the thick vein on the underside - his resulting groan is immediate, is desperate, and your urge to smile is only thwarted by Bucky’s metal hand pressing to your clit as his hips slam against yours.

Your hips jerk against his, pressure on the most sensitive point of your body making your eyes roll back once more as Steve’s cock slides in and out of your throat, both hands buried tight in your hair until there’s nothing else you can do than just take both of them - you bring your hands from their spot clutching the duvet to your tits, shaking fingertips kneading at your peaked nipples, and you’re not sure if the needy whine that emits from Bucky’s throat is due to his cock slamming into your pussy or from the sight of you toying with your boobs, but either one is reasonable, you decide.

It takes hardly a moment to work the three of you into a rhythm, but when you get it, it’s perfect - Bucky thrusts into you, filling you up so deep you swear you can feel him in every crevice of your body, and once he pulls out Steve pushes himself into your mouth, tip of his dick hitting the back of your throat just to hear you gag around him. Every once in a while, though, there’s a stutter in the pattern, and both men pull out to ram into your cunt and mouth at the same time, and the three of you cry out in unison.

Bucky’s flesh hand moves to your thigh, pushing it up so far that your knee nearly touches your chest and the burn only heightens the pleasure he’s giving you as he hits the sweet spot buried deep in your cunt over and over like he’s memorized exactly where it is - and surely he has - they know your body better than you do, sometimes - know just how to make you scream. Metal fingers tweak at your clit and your hips grind up into his, pushing him deeper and deeper into you, and you moan around Steve’s dick.

“I’m gonna cum,” Bucky groans, hips slowing deliberately in pace but it’s still fast enough to make your head spin - Steve moves one hand to your face, grabbing your chin and holding you in place with his cock still halfway down your throat. “Fuck - want me to fill you up, sweetie?”

You nod.

“Tell me,” he insists, and your eyes squeeze shut as you exhale through your nose. “Want me to fill you up?”

Steve pulls out until only the tip of his length rests in your mouth, and you swallow thickly before saying, words a desperate sob, “Please - please cum in me, Bucky, baby, please - fill me up -”

“Good girl,” the brunette between your thigh grunts, squeezing your clit harshly and your back arches, Steve slipping his cock all the way back in your mouth, hitting the back of your throat and you gag around him as he moans. “Good - fuckin’ - girl -”

With a few more harsh thrusts into your pussy Bucky’s hips halt, pressed taut to yours, filling you to the brim, and his head drops backwards, lips parting with a drawn out, silent scream before he fully cries out, and you feel his ribbons of cum in your cunt - the warmth filling you up is enough to snap the coil building in your abdomen and you sob around Steve as you cum onto Bucky, core clenching around him like a vise as he holds you to him. 

“Yes, yes -” Bucky’s voice sounds far away as your muscles go lax, collapsing like putty onto the bed with the grasps on your head and your hips the only thing grounding you to Earth - “yes, takin’ me so fuckin’ good -”

It’s then that Steve gives one last thrust, deep in your throat, and his grip on your chin forces you to look up at him, meeting his stern eyes and he’s so close you can see it reflected in his orbs - they’re dark, pupils wide, and you whimper. “Don’t swallow,” he whispers, tone sounding similar to that of a hiss, and you nod. “Don’t swallow a single drop.”

Your head bobs up and down as Steve’s hand pumps up and down the base of his cock, his cry strangled and needy when he finally releases into your mouth - he cums in spurts onto your tongue and you keep it stuck out for him, trying to resist the overwhelming desire to swallow everything he’s given you but he looks so proud of you when he’s finished and every drop still rests on your tongue and you prefer that look of admiration over the taste, really.

“Kiss her, Buck -”

And Bucky doesn’t have to be told twice, both hands moving to your neck and pulling you up so vigorously your head is spinning when he crashes his lips to yours. His tongue slips into your mouth and you part your lips for him, cum dribbling out of the sides of your mouth and he laps it up like a dying man, palms pressed to your tits. You can see the bob of his throat when he swallows everything you’ve forced into his mouth and you swallow the rest, parting your lips from him with a gasp, practically heaving for air in the bedroom that suddenly feels humid, smelling of sex and cum and desire and remarkably like your two boys themselves.

Steve collapses onto the bed first. He grabs for Bucky, tugging him into his chest and you sit on your knees for a moment, simply watching them - they fall into tandem with each other like they were made for it, and maybe they were, Steve’s face nuzzling into Bucky’s back and you’re never surprised by the sudden vulnerability of your captain immediately after sex. The first time you’d joined them you’d suspected he was embarrassed but you don’t think he is 

He’s in love.

It’s a sweet thought.

Bucky wraps his metal hand around your wrist and pulls you down to him, his chin resting on top of your head as you press your cheek to his sweaty chest, feeling his arm wrap around your back. He’s silent, using his foot to kick the comforter up from where it’s been shoved to the bottom of the bed, and when it’s far enough up Steve reaches down to pull it over the three of you, drowning you in its warmth even though you’re not feeling quite cold anymore.

“I don’t know,” you say, after a moment of silence, voice muffled against Bucky’s chest. “It feels like I’m the only one getting ganged up on, nowadays.”

They laugh at that, Bucky’s flesh palm smoothing up and down your back. “You asked for it,” Steve tells you, and you shrug.

“Still.” You move to rest your chin on Bucky’s chest, and he nearly goes cross eyed to meet your eyes as he looks down at you. “Maybe, one of these days, we could tie Stevie up. Have our way with him.”

“He’d love that,” Bucky muses, and you can practically hear Steve rolling his eyes.

“Yeah - right after a mission, when he’s all wound up -”

“Hey,” Steve warns, and you smile.

“I don’t think there are restraints strong enough for those muscles, anyway,” you murmur, and Bucky smiles, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of your head.

You fall into silence again, and after a couple of minutes you hear Steve’s soft snoring, followed by Bucky’s, until you’re the last awake between the three of you. They’re rightfully exhausted, surely getting little to no sleep over the weekend - you like hearing how peaceful they sound when they’re resting, even after fucking you so silly you were practically crying.

You smile as you bury your face into Bucky’s chest. Shit, maybe Fury was right - maybe they do balance each other out, a bit.

#stucky x reader #stucky x reader smut #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers smut #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes imagine #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers blurb #bucky barnes blurb #bucky barnes writing #steve rogers writing #stucky x reader writing #stevebucky x reader #stevebucky x reader smut #lol brother #marvel writing #marvel smut #mcu writing #mcu smut #avengers writing #avengers smut

[deardragonbook]

Privileges and disadvantages: recognising them in your characters and using them

Privilege is something thrown around a lot these days, and mostly, for good reason. 

We all have it. 

If it’s not the colour of your skin, what’s in between your pants, your sexual orientation, your wealth or your health, it’s one of the other hundreds of things I could list. 

I am extremely privileged, I’m white, my first language is English, I can talk and read, I have a roof over my head and many others things. 

But I’m also at a disadvantage in a lot of other areas, my hearing and sight are both pretty bad, I constantly struggle with metal health, I’m fortunate enough to have a job but it isn’t well paying enough to remove the stress of money, my health is in constant ruins and, well, many other things. 

The same goes for every character we make. 

I read a lot of books where the author focuses in on the disadvantages a character faces, and it makes sense, that’s often more a cause of conflict, but they rarely take but a second to acknowledge that which they do have. A family that loves them? A stable job? Good health? 

I always find it weird when people say something then do another. Reflect your values in your work, in your art, if you believe in the philosophy where we should take a step back and be aware of our place inside society, do so in your art too. 

This also goes the other way, feel free to take a priviledged character and show the disadvantages they face. It’s a pretty common trope to show the rich kids with absent parents. That’s a disadvantage, it’s usually shown as though related to the privilege but I don’t think it’s necessary for them to be related. 

Why do people always choose absent family for the rich kid as their disadvantage? There are so many good ones out there! Health problems, both physical and mental, discrimination of any sort with the added bonus of it always being lessened due to their financial status, disfuncional relationships because nobody is completely free of the risk of an abusive dick, being incapable of passing at school despite the expensive tutors, having an ill pet... 

If you like that trope there’s nothing inherently wrong with it of course, I just yearn for some more variety. 

So, how can we incorporate privilege and disadvantages into our stories? As so often happens, I’m going to go over a quick example from my own book because it’s easy. 

Itazu is the main character in my series Dear Dragon. 

Relevant Privileges: Her father is both loving and wealthy having a good job, because of this there is no true expectation from her, she’s pretty free to do as she wishes. She’s a dragon and thereby more physically durable than humans. 

Relevant Disadvantages: She’s a dragon, one of the last of her species with all the social issues that entails. (I’m simplifying so as to avoid spoilers for second and third books, sorry). 

The relevant disadvantages obviously move the plot forward at many points. But that doesn’t mean her privileges are ignored. In fact, they are bought up often, sometimes more obviously than others. It’s bought up through reminders like: “Your Father won’t let that happens.” “Henry will take care of it.” “You’ll always have a place to go”. And from her father himself: “You can count on me for anything.” 

This is a treatment many other characters in the book (specifically the male lead), don’t get. And it is something that sticks out. 

My intention when showing this is several: 

1.- Make sure the audience understands that all the accomplishments in the books are not the protagonist’s alone. She has a support system and that does a lot for her. 

2.- Show that it’s not all or nothing. You can are both in a situation of privilege and disadvantage. A good character reflects reality. 

3.- Split the audience. And this is the most complicated to understand. Mostly because the goal isn’t truly to split the audience, but to understand that a good character, a realistic character, will not be liked by everybody. We all know somebody who was absolutely charming and did nothing wrong! Except for some weird reason you can’t explain, you hated them. No character is 100% likeable to everybody (except for some atla ones but I mean there had to be some kind of dark magic in the creation of that show, too perfect), and I don’t want anybody to hate my character’s because they’re boring. I want them to be hated because there is something about them you don’t like.

I’ve got a whole post coming out shortly about this last point that goes way more into detail so stay tuned! 

From what I’ve tested Itazu can sometimes be disliked because, “She complains about her disadvantages while having more privilege than other characters”. A perfectly valid critique. If not one I personally believe in. I and many readers find Itazu’s willingness to acknowledge both her disadvantages and her privileges not letting either one get in the way of the other is a perfectly enjoyable character trait. 

Itazu is bullied at one point for who she is, and she doesn’t treat this any less seriously because she gets to go home to a loving father. 

She receives plenty of love from her father, even though he isn’t a dragon and can’t fully understand her. And she at no point sees her father as less loving due to this lack of comprehension. 

Use both. 

And I seriously hope I got the point across because I do now know how ot express these thoughts why now. 

Please, I’m begging you if you made it this far, did any of that make sense to you? Please tell me. 

As usual,  check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.

Hey, it’s Christmas Eve on Friday, I hope all the students out there are holding in! Remember, not long left! I hope all of you have amazing holidays, and some extra time to read! 

Also, I did a post but my ebook is currently on sale in the US and UK! It’s about dragons. YA Fantasy. Anyway, that’s all! Sorry for rambling, love you all! 

#writing #writer #write #writing advice #writing tips #writing tip #writing trick #writing tricks #how I write #how to write #writing resource #privilege #priviledge #how to write priviledge #author #fantasy #book #books #storytelling #character #characters #writing characters

[thewillowbends]

So I'm rewatching the first season and reading the book, and I've got Thoughts (TM)

And I've got a LOT of thoughts about what exactly Leigh Bardugo was doing here in terms of the moral and ethical statements of the narrative, so I'm putting it under the cut.

Something that's really glaring on the rewatch is just...the complete lack of compassion every character outside Aleksander has for the plight of the Grisha. The army treats treats them with reciprocal dislike, despite the fact that they couldn't even cross the Fold with the Inferni or Squallers. The tsar and tsarita treat them with condescension and disdain, clearly valuing them mainly as a utility that, historically, they've happily turned on when they felt they were growing too powerful. Baghra has just given up on trying to protect other Grisha who aren't immortal like her or Aleksander. Even Alina is guilty of othering them and has to be told off by multiple characters (Ivan, Aleksander, Baghra) to stop treating her power like a yoke instead of a responsibility and opportunity to help others.

We get this big, bad, armor-piercing line from her to Aleksander about how he doesn't care who suffers as long as he wins. Which is true to some extent, but...where is her compassion? Didn't we just spend a hefty portion of the narrative wanting to give her power away to somebody else so she can, what, be with her bestie? Meanwhile, there's, you know, an actual war going on. This isn't small stakes shit she sees going on around her. People are dying. We literally have an entire plot where we see a Grisha kidnapped, enslaved, and then sent to be put to death...who was given to the enemy by her own people!

And then we get that line from her in 1x07, only to have it followed up by her running away at the end of 1x08 for....why? Most people on the ship are dead or those that survived weren't his supporters. The people on the docks were killed, and most of them actually were traitors trying to kill Alina. Aleksander didn't lie about that. So she's running away to take the blame for some nebulous reason that's not really well explained, which is...well, what the fuck happens to the rest of the Grisha? Do we not care about how Aleksander's actions are going to reflect back on them and cause a potential backlash or something? Not to mention, nobody is on the other side to warn them that Aleksander is a threat to begin with. Even if you assumed he was dead, you'd definitely want to assume he likely had supporters back at the palace, too!

From a character writing perspective, I find it stupid that Aleksander doesn't tell her certain things because if he's such a big, bad, clever manipulator, he would absolutely be weaponizing his own pain and experiences to make her stumble in empathy. That's bad character writing to me when you're telling me somebody's an abusive villain but actually isn't using very real and effective abuser tactics. But then you also have Alina who refuses to even point out...Aleksander, I get it! I've talked to other Grisha! I see what you're going through! But this can't be the answer. You have to see this won't end well for you! Like, her own arguments make no sense to me. They're so myopic and self-involved.

One of the big things that bothers me that gets folded into Aleksander's other manipulations is this idea that he primarily associates and values her for her power, in contrast to Mal who primarily sees her for being herself. While I get the intent of that on a narrative level, in the scope of the wider story...it just literally makes no sense for Aleksander to parse those two as separate. Not when the whole reason Grisha are hunted down and killed is because they don't get the privilege of being people outside of their power. Aleksander doesn't get to be General Kirigan without also being the Darkling. Therefore, Alina doesn't get to be Sankta Alina without also being the Sun Summoner. Not a single other character gets to be relevant without being powerful.

Even on a narrative level, it makes no sense. One, it's frankly kind of sexist (when are male protagonists ever expected to be segregated from their power) and two...that's the whole reason we're telling her story! That's why she's the protagonist! She is special. She can't be separated from this unique power destiny has handed her. We don't tell stories about common, boring people; we tell stories about people who incite conflict or change. So even the mere concept to me of basing a character's identity or value around not wanting value is frankly kind of ridiculous.

There's just this strangely insidious underpinning to the story that power is inherently dangerous, even as it acknowledges that people who are NOT in power can very much suffer at the hands of those who do. So where's the moral and ethical reflection about what this means for the rest of us? What does that mean for minorities?

Think of the scene on the boat where Aleksander has Ivan kill off the nobility. The narrative wants you to see this moment as blackly humorous and awful, but stop for a moment and think about what happened there from his perspective. This is a man who spent centuries watching his people get killed and enslaved, and that isn't a false representation or manipulation from him, either. His statement is backed up both by what we see in the flashbacks and by other Grisha. Nobody created a safe haven for him and his people - he did that! He had to claw his way to the top, flatter, kill, and fuck his way through god knows how many noble houses, just to get to this moment where he could build a Little Palace. And it took him four hundred years just to get that! All while Grisha are dying!

And nobody did anything about it. Not the king, not the landholders, not even the peasantry. They were happy taking advantage of the Grisha's powers, of course, when Aleksander helped raise them up into a position of prominence, making them soldiers and enchanters. And even then, they're mocked! The army can't wait to get rid of them!

And then some noblewoman, who has enjoyed the benefits of her wealth and power, some of which were built on the backs of your people, sits there and tells you, the moment you take hold of the power everybody else has been grabbing for centuries, has the audacity to sit there and tell you that the world will hate Grisha and view him as a heretic?? When less than twenty years ago, your people were being killed right and left? When the enemy is still kidnapping and enslaving your people? When your own countrymen view you with fear and intrigue already? The audacity to sit there and frame it as a hypothetical when it's very much an actual reality still going on. Just look at the barely hidden seething rage and contempt on Barnes face when he delivers that quip about "needing to do that speech again." Motherfucker has been waiting YEARS for this moment, this revenge. And really, who can blame him...if you aren't wrapped up in the narrative wanting you to focus on just what he's doing to poor Alina.

The way the Grisha's situation is framed along with how the Darkling's descent into villainy is handled is so just incongruent to me. The pieces don't fit. You're asking me to see this man as completely irredeemable after you just showed me six episodes of Grisha being killed both for being what they are in the hopes of protecting Alina, after you showed me that Aleksander had already TRIED appealing to the protection of the crown by lending it his power, after making us see that lies and manipulation are the only way he and his mother have been able to survive as long as they have in a world that eradicated them. Where is the compassion in the narrative for that?

And okay, fine, you can do an irredeemable villain. You can do a Kilmonger-esque story with the Darkling, but that requires forcing your protagonists to empathize with the villain and change from it. But then I read ahead and...that doesn't happen?? She winds up walking away from it all at the end?? In fact, she even loses her power. And that's supposed to be a HAPPY ending? After we just saw how badly this minority was treated for how many centuries??

You know what it feels like? It feels like Leigh Bardugo read The Hunger Games, tried to replicate a Katniss, and then completely failed to understand the profound situational differences between her protagonist and that one. Katniss is a girl made extraordinary by her circumstances. She's not special herself other than the fact that she did the right thing at the right place at the right time and helped create the tipping point for a revolution that was already in the works before her. Katniss walking away from the world after makes sense because she's burned out after the war, but it also got its use from her. She helped make the revolution work; she showed up for the event while it was happening and did what she could. The situation was out of her control and power for the most part, and she still managed to rise the occasion.

Alina is NOT Katniss. She is inherently special. She is inherently powerful. She has the ability to create change and bring a new perspective that Aleksander has long given up on and which her country desperately needs. We know the world of the Hunger Games will be better because the creators of real change were always working behind the scenes behind Katniss. She was just their propaganda, their symbol. Alina is a symbol, but she is also a very real power. It's not an act of moral celebration for her to walk away from power at the end, namely because there's a whole minority class of people we still have to worry about. Putting a Grisha on the throne is no promise the country won't turn against them eventually, nor does that protect the hundreds of Grisha at the mercy of a superstitious peasantry and countries that will likely continue to invade them.

It's just...I dunno guys. It's frustrating because all the compelling elements are there in the characters and storyline, but it's like the author had a set of characters telling one story and then she had an entirely different plot in mind, and they just clash all over the place for me and become thematically inconsistent. But what really gets me is that she had seven years to think this shit over...and we're looking to get the same story all over again. Usually, it's a great thing to have an author involved in the show. This is a rare situation where I wonder if it hurts the chances of it improving.

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone spoilers #meta #long post #spoilers for the grisha trilogy too #critical analysis

[lightns881]

DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 1):

The Gifted Child Syndrome is Real with this One...

*Rubs hands together in preparation for some juicy data and in-depth analysis of the typical member of the DTeam Tumblr community*

Ooooooooh boy! Here we go!

I want to start of by thanking you guys for over 400 responses to the demographics survey! Y’all have no idea how much I appreciate it! We have so much to cover, so I’m going to divide up different sections of the survey into several posts to make it more digestable and do justice to each topic explored in the form! We’re going to start of with, you guessed it, personality types!

Strap yourself in because we’re about to thoroughly dissect your sub-conscious innerworkings and find out how the typical DTeam Tumblr Fan thinks! (And judging by the majority personality types, you guys will probably enjoy it)

The Delicious Data

From the 449 responses we received, this is a pie chart displaying the personality types of all respondents.

Image Description: INFP (40.5%), INTP (15.1%), INFJ (8.9%), INTJ (8.9%), ISFP (6.9%), ENFP (4.2%), ISTP (4.0%), ENTP (3.8%), ESFP (1.6%), ISFJ (1.6%), ENTJ (1.3%), ENFJ (1.3%), ISTJ (1.1%), ESTP (0.4%), ESFJ (0.2%), ESTJ (0%)

In comparison, this is a pie chart displaying the personality type percentages of the population as a whole according to the MBTI website.

Image Description: ISTP (14%), ESFJ (12%), ISTJ (12%), ISFP (9%), ESTJ (9%), ESFP (8%) ENFP (8%), ISTP (5%), INFP (4%), ESTP (4%), INTP (3%), ENTP (3%), ENFJ (2%), INTJ (2%), ENTJ (2%), INFJ (1%)

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sensing a tiny difference here... Oh, right!

INxx’s on the Loose!

It’s funny. When I first found one of the 18+ DTeam fan servers through Tumblr, I asked everyone what their personality type was. I was pleasantly surprised when a lot of them told me they were INFPs like me!

It actually reminded me of MatPat’s (Game Theory) survey for one of his Life Is Strange theories that found the majority personality there was also INFP...

Funny enough, can you guess what the second leading personality on that survey was? The third? The fourth?

You probably guessed it right. MatPat found that out of the fans who responded, the leading majority was INFP while INTPs came in second, INFJs came in third, and INTJs came in fourth. The exact order for the personality types in DTeam Tumblr.

But why is it that some of the rarer personalities of the world are dominating DTeam Tumblr or Game Theory’s fanbase? What is it about these communities that attract the rare introverted Intuitive Perceivers (INxP) and Intuitive Judgers (INxJ) of the world like magnets?

The Gifted Kid Syndrome

To answer this question, first we have to examine our leading personalities. As we can see from the data, INFPs and INTPs make up 55.6% and INFJs and INTJs make up 17.8% of the total respondents. That’s nearly 3/4′s of the DTeam Tumblr population made up of INxx types!

Now, here’s me calling y’all out.

A lot of you probably relate to the quiet kid sitting at the back of the classroom who’s put into some type of TAG, gifted program, or some authority figure has probably called you smart and/or “gifted” at some point in your life. Academics probably came easy to you at one point, maybe they still do.

You’ve probably felt your chest swell up at the shower of compliments about your intelligence and at another... you’ve probably felt like people put you in a pedestal and overrate you so you’re stuck with this inherent fear of failure, and it causes you to completely shut down when the things that came easy to you at one point no longer do so. 

It’s gifted kid syndrome hitting you like a brick to the face. And if it hasn’t yet, oh you’re in for a surprise, honey.

And I’m sure many of you have come across funny, relatable posts like this:

And you want to know why most of you relate?

Image Description: INTP, INTJ, INFP, anf INFJ’s rate the highest in a giftedness per MBTI Type chart

No. You’re not hallucinating. It’s not even a joke at this point. It feels true because it probably is true.

(Granted, the study that captured similar results to this graph is long lost to the internet, but the best source I found with it was a reddit post I will be citing in the reblog.)

Now, my next point is where we find a split.

INFPs and INTPs and their Need to Question Everything (even if it’s about one sentence [insert creator here] said that one time during a 4-hour long stream)

The strongest connection I found between the two leading personalities of DTeam Tumblr is they share Extraverted Intuiting (Ne) as their auxiliary cognitive function.

I’ll use a quote that explains Ne better than I could ever explain it in my own words:

“Extraverted intuition or Ne is very much focused on patterns and making connections from information they gather... Ne dominant users enjoy being able to explore things in a much more open manner, not wanting to feel closed off to the possibilities around them... They are also highly imaginative people, who enjoy being able to come up with unique hobbies and experiences... They are not afraid of imagining things which seem almost impossible to others... [For INFPs,] Ne is what creates this detailed and incredible thoughts process which keeps them busy for long periods of time.”

And another:

“Auxiliary Ne manifests in people constantly questioning the world around them, but unlike ENxPs, they can be more pick and choose about this. But generally, they don’t take people, things and events at face value.“

Now, think about the community you’re in right now. Think about the post you’re reading at the moment.

DTeam Tumblr is full of over-analysis posts, whether about Dream and George’s secret love for each other or about the inherent problems with Dream’s shipbait and gay jokes or theories about what’s going to happen next in the dream SMP lore and the dramatic betrayals and creator’s descend into madness and more theories about sexuality and charts depicting creator’s personalities and what they’d be likely to do in different scenarios and... ooof, I’m out of breath here. You get my point.

DTeam Tumblr is literally a group of ex-gifted or gifted introverted people who love to read or write analysis, theory, and discussion posts about sweaty Minecraft Youtubers because they’re probably too overwhelmed by real life and find joy in obsessing over “dumb” things.

That’s it. That’s literally the post. I might as well end there.

But I won’t. 

Because obsessions is exactly what I want to focus on next.

The Inherent Nature of the INFP and their “Micro-Obsessions”

This is me having a one-to-one conversation with all my INFPs reading this.

Do you sometimes just set your mind on a goal--like, let’s say, writing a book--and you spend so much time obsessing over it to the point where you burn out and suddenly it never sees the light of day because you move onto your next goal or obsession because now you’re getting ready to launch your freelance website so you can start a business on [insert new hobby here]?

Or do you just suddenly find a fandom or a show or a channel you really enjoy and you spend the next few months doing nothing but engaging with it and reading fanfiction and drawing fan art or making dumb analysis posts on your main Tumblr account where suddenly you get an influx of followers from that community and now people are expecting you to just post about MCYT!?

Oh, sorry, I got a little carried away at the end there...

Anyhow, my point is, do you ever develop an obsession over something all the sudden only for it to just disappear when you find something new or just fall into the deep crevices of your mind only for it to maybe reemerge a few years later after you get a deep sense of nostalgia remembering it?

I call them micro-obsessions. And I recently found out, I’m not the only one who does this!

Here’s another quote for you: 

“According to Carl Jung’s theory of cognitive functions, when an INFP makes a decision, Ne comes in second to another process known as Introverted Feeling (Fi). Fi does not use logic to make a decision. It uses how we feel about the decision according to our values. In other words, it asks, “Which choice feels right for me?”

Ne, on the other hand, craves new ideas and experiences to explore, which causes INFPs to always be on the lookout for something novel.

Unfortunately, INFPs can get stuck in a loop, going back and forth between their Ne and Fi. They search to understand their values by constantly trying new things. They ask themselves, “Does this feel right?” then throw it over their shoulder as they move on to something else.”

So, you’re probably asking right about now, Light, how the heck does any of this have anything to do with the Dream Team and MCYT!?

Well, my friend, it has EVERYTHING to do with the Dream Team and MCYT and DTeam Tumblr as a whole.

Because INxx’s are predisposed to end up in places like this--fandoms on Tumblr, channels that speculate whether Mario is evil, watching dramatic Minecraft smp wars and elections as opposed to looking at the news that depicts Murphy’s Law as 2020′s new favorite epigram. 

The introvert in them causes them to prefer socializing in small communities online where they’re not forced to engage in conversations if they don’t want to or put into uncomfortable situations where they have to talk to that one friend of their friend who wants to make meaningless small chat.

Their Intuition causes them to wonder into places like Tumblr where they can engage in deep discussions about their newest obsessions, and they won’t be judged for writing a 500+ word post about why Dream’s shipbait tactics are a genius algorithm strat or simping over sweaty Minecraft boys.

DTeam Tumblr is a safe haven for INFPs and INTPs who might be placed in the “other” category or marked as weird for being interested in “childish” entertainment or being different from the general population overall, whether that’d be sexuality, point of view, age, gender, etc. A place where you can fully be yourself and not have to worry about disappointing people.

INFPs are predisposed for drowning themselves in their micro-obsessions to avoid all of the madness in the world--even if that means giggling like a little girl while reading memes about your favorite Minecraft YouTube creators.

That is a deep-dive into the mind of a typical DTeam Tumblr user. What do you think? Is it accurate at all? Is it completely off? Let me know in the comments!

And with that, I digress. I’m not sure whether I’ll be covering general demographics next week or diving into the topic of ships (could be a mix of both), but I will be posting about it eventually, so make sure to hit the follow if you got to the end of this post and enjoyed it or learned something new from it!

Friendly reminder that this survey and post is in no way supposed to be taken 100% seriously. These are just the ramblings of a math major INFP with too much time on her hands and way too big of an obsession for MCYT. My asks are always open for literally anything, whether if you want to ask me about this or any DNF related subject, my own opinions, or just criticize the whole of this post and tell me it’s complete trash! I’ll answer as long as it’s appropriate!

And, again, thank you everyone who filled out the survey. Without y’all, this post wouldn’t be possible. I really enjoyed writing it! Adios!

#dteam #dteamblr #dttblr #mcyt #dreamwastaken #georgenotfound #sapnap #dreamnotfound #dnf #dream team #dream smp #dteamblr demographics survey #analysis

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

What happened w the rationalist community, if you’re ok talking about it?

LONG REPLY TIME.

In my Wild Youth (tm) I was hardcore in the rationalist/skeptic/humanist community. You know, the New Atheist types (the vast majority of the community didn’t call themselves New Atheists, that was mostly American Dawkins fans, but we were those kinds of people, just less arrogant-PR about it). For people who don’t know, the core philosophy of this subculture basically comes down to: - humans are mostly good people, or try to be good people, and we should act in ways that are good for humanity, the environment, etc. - people with better or more accurate information about the world are capable of making better decisions - it is therefore vitally important that we view the world as accurately as possible. Truth is inherently important and valuable. We should do everything we can to make sure that our beliefs about the world are as accurate as possible. - your mind will lie to you. Cognitive biases have their social and evolutionary uses, but they result in bigotry and bad information. We should do everything we can to identify and compensate for these, and think as rationally as a human is capable of. - while it’s not perfect, science is the most effective tool we have for determining what is most likely to be true. Rationalism is therefore massively pro-science and pro-science education. (This isn’t a blind trust; most hardcore rationalists are scientists and fully aware of the limitations of the messy reality of how science is funded and published and the biases that introduces. These are taken into account. The other hardcore rationalists tend to be magicians/illusionists.)

All of this is perfectly fine and a hill I’m still perfectly willing to die on.

When you get a bunch of people together who are sincerely seeking truth and want the world to be a better place, there are some fairly obvious groups that they’re going to tangle with. Before my time, when we were just called skeptics, the main targets had been psychics and life-after-death spirit-communing con artists (this is where our magicians came from, the philosophical descendants of Houdini, one of the earliest voices in the movement, and later James Randi). But the big proponents of harm in my time were the healing crystals/essential oils/faith healing people, and the ‘Creation should be taught instead of evolution’ creationists. We spent a lot of time trying to stop people from selling oils that they said could cure cancer, and fighting against science education being replaced with religious belief inserted in science classes. (I spent a lot of my teenage years debating creationists on the internet. I can summarise this experience as a frustrating waste of time on both sides of the debate. Neither side was going to accomplish anything in these discussions.)

This is all perfectly fine. I won’t pretend I’m completely happy with everyone’s actions; it’s the internet, so of course there were subgroups doing things like mass trolling conservative religion forums and stuff, which had no purpose except to piss off people we happened not to like, but you get that. The problem with this is that it’s easy. People can believe what they want, but if you’re coming into a rational debate, every pro-Creation, anti-evolution argument is complete and utter bullshit, mostly demonstrating nothing beyond the fact that the creationist debater a) doesn’t understand the most fundamental things about biology or b) does understand and is willingly misleading the audience. Every pro healing crystal, pro astrology or pro telepathy argument is fatuous nonsense. Twelve-year-olds could walk into these discussions and completely shred every argument put forth by big-name “creation scientists” in minutes -- I know, I watched it happen regularly. I was on our conservative creationist Christian-owned community TV station for awhile doing a little ‘creation vs evolution!’ debate against the wealthy station owner’s son to fill air time, and I’d see him do a couple of hours of research for anti-evolution arguments every time we filmed, and it always pissed him off that I’d shred anything he said immediately, having done no research whatsoever, because even to me, a child, the giant drive-a-bus-through-this holes in his arguments were obvious. (Also, they were old hash; I’d read all the books by his idols before and checked the reasoning myself long before.)

Fresh voices in the community came from two main sources -- people who’d been pro-people and pro-reason/science for years finding others like them, and ex-creationists and magic healer victims who’d eventually found the holes in what they’d been taught. This second group, for obvious reasons, tended to be the most passionately pro-reason and pro-science people, and discussing different experiences in a place where people could feel safe being critical and actively celebrate doubt was great. But, inevitably, we got lazy.

A lot of the ‘laziness’ was perfectly reasonable and practical. Time and attention is always limited, and when you’ve dealt with six claims of “the eye is too complex to have evolved!” and explained the flaws in the irreducible complexity argument four times that fortnight, when someone walks in with “blood groups couldn’t possibly have evolved, therefore the earth must be 6,000 years old”, you just don’t fucking bother, and you shouldn’t fucking bother, there’s no value in that discussion.

That’s not the kind of laziness I’m talking about. I’m talking about the part where we got so used to ‘that sounds so fucking stupid’ leading directly being able to tear an argument to pieces,that it became normal to assume that anything that sounds stupid on the surface MUST be obviously wrong. Where ‘this is weird, let’s examine it and check for flaws’ became ‘that person disagrees with my preconceived notions, let’s double down and explain why they’re wrong, because I’m already assuming that they’re wrong’. At some point, “we want to be as rational and accurate as we can be, we call ourselves rationalist and work towards that” became “we’re rationalists, so we’re more accurate and rational than average and probably right”.

You might recognise that as in fact being *the exact opposite of the proported philosophy*. There were always some overenthusiastic idiots in any group, but watching it slowly become normal for rationalising to replace active rationalism and for the names of cognitive biases to be thrown around as gotcha buzzwords rather than things people were seriously considering in their own arguments was... concerning. (There were a lot of very smart people in the community, which unfortunately made it far more vulnerable to this particular kind of thing. Smarter people are better at fooling themselves; a person good at reason is also good at rationalising, and you can’t tell the difference between these things when you’re the one doing them.)

In practical terms, this doesn’t matter that much when you’re playing in the easy leagues of explaining to someone that the overpriced eucalyptus oil they bought from an MLM won’t protect them against chicken pox. The person who’s gotten lazy is shit at being a rationalist, but your reasoning skills don’t actually need to be all that impressive for this. You know what they do need to be impressive for? For when somebody says, “women are taken less seriously than men in science and biased against in hiring, payment and promotion”, and this hypothetical you, a male scientist who’s never noticed this and already knows that his profession is full of smart and reasonable people who wouldn’t do something stupid like that, thinks “that is fucking stupid” and automatically, without thinking about it, puts their energy into shouting down and dismissing alternate evidence. Or when somebody points out islamophobia in the community, or passive racism, or... you get the picture. Social issues can (and should) be examined and interrogated using rational philosophies, but it’s so much harder to do that than laugh at creationists who are sending you abusive messages about going to hell. And given the particular hot-button issues in the community, most of the people there were interested in biology, chemistry or physics and simply had no idea how to *do* social sciences, treating the parts that were familiar from their own specialities as valid and the rest as irrational nonsense. And now, you have prominent rationalists panicking about Sharia law, sneering at the made-up problems of feminism, and generally making fools of themselves... because they got lazy.

Because, like how it’s hard to be a liberal (American definition) but easy to be a conservative in a gay hat, it’s hard to be a rationalist, but easy to be an arsehole with a big vocabulary. And that’s why I can’t gush about how great Richard Dawkins’ early science books are without somebody bringing up his bullshit twitter opinions.

[mediaevalmusereads]

Carmilla. By J. Sheridan Le Fanu. New York: Penguin, 2006 (originally 1872).

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: horror novella

Part of a Series? No

Summary: In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest – the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion. But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day… Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: blood, desecration of a corpse, implied racism

Overview: I feel like I knew a lot about Carmilla without having actually read it, so for October 2021, I decided to put it on my spooky TBR pile. I loved pretty much everything about this novella: the 19th century prose, the feeling of dread and suspense, the Gothic hallmarks. And who can say no to a lesbian vampire story? While there were some questionable moments here and there, and I do think the novella ended a bit too quickly, I thought this book was a delight.

Writing: If you don’t like 19th century literature and prose, you probably won’t be a fan of this novella. Le Fanu writes like you would expect a man of his time: long descriptions of the protagonist’s background, a tale within a tale that seems to go on forever, clauses placed willy-nilly. I’m not personally bothered by these things because I know what they’re doing, literarily. But if you’re looking for action or a story full of blood and terror, this might not be a good fit for you.

It is a good fit for those who want a relatively quick-moving 19th century story. I was actually impressed by how quick the narrative moved, and my only complaint is that, towards the end, perhaps it went too quickly. After Carmilla’s identity is revealed, things just kind of go as planned and there’s no trouble when bringing about an end. I think I would have liked to see more conflict there, but Le Fanu was writing a novella, not a novel, so I can see where he would have been constrained.

As a last point: I do love the romantic tension between our protagonist (Laura) and Carmilla, though the predatory, lesbian tone is not nearly as heavy as I expected. Instead, there’s a sense of mutual attraction and revulsion, and while some may interpret this as internalized homophobia, I personally didn’t think Le Fanu was explicitly condemning same-sex affection or even portraying lesbianism as inherently predatory. In some ways, I think Le Fanu could have gone harder on the queerness, but as this is a 19th century story, we’re only going to get so much before we tiptoe into blatant homophobia.

Plot: This novella follows Laura, a young woman living in a relatively isolated castle, and her experience with an unexpected visitor, Carmilla. After a few introductory chapters that detail Laura’s background and an unsettling event from her childhood, the main narrative begins when Laura and her father receive the devastating news that their friend, General Spielsdorf, will not be coming to visit because his niece has died. As Laura is wallowing in her loneliness, they happen upon a carriage accident. A woman steps out of the carriage and tells Laura’s father that she is on an urgent errand, and since her daughter (Carmilla) is injured, she must find someone who will take her in for the duration of a few months while the errand is being completed. Laura’s father agrees to take Carmilla in, and the two girls quickly become attached. After some time, the villagers in the surrounding area begin succumbing to a mysterious disease, and Laura herself starts to decline in health.

The value of this narrative is primarily in the way Le Fanu reimagines the vampire lore of his time. From what I understand, vampires were considered to be almost bestial at the time of Le Fanu’s writing, but Carmilla was one of the first to make them sensual and alluring. For that reason, it was interesting to consider how Le Fanu was pioneering a genre or set of vampire tropes; the story wasn’t particularly interesting for being vastly different from contemporary vampire stories, where sensuality is commonplace. Still, I enjoyed myself, even if I wasn’t experiencing a lot of twists and turns.

Characters: Laura, our narrator and protagonist, is easy to like in that her narrative elicits sympathy. Since the novella is written in first person, readers get to see Laura’s thought processes and experience her loneliness and longing for a companion. While there’s not too much to set Laura apart from other literary women, I did like her as a character; she was kind and eager to please, and I very much wanted her to be happy.

Carmilla, our antagonist, was sufficiently strange without being overtly evil. I liked that she was portrayed as being overly attached to Laura, but that attachment felt less predatory and more intimate, even romantic. There was little doubt in my mind that Carmilla truly loved Laura, and I liked how those emotions complicated the relationship between the two women.

Supporting characters did their jobs fairly well. Laura’s father was loving and admirable for both his generosity and his concern for his daughter. General Spielsdorf was sufficiently determined and driven. The governesses were fine and mainly existed to establish mood. There was, however, a questionable character, which may betray some racism (unless I misunderstood the passage). Laura mentions seeing a mysterious black woman wearing a head wrap or turban at the site of the carriage accident. This character is said to peek out of the carriage and then disappear, and she’s never discussed again. I have no idea what’s going on with that, but that’s about the extent of things.

TL;DR: Carmilla is a swift-moving 19th century novella that reimagines the vampire lore of its day. While it won’t dazzle readers who are steeped in “sensual” vampire narratives, it is a valuable piece of literary history, for both the horror genre as a whole and for lesbian fiction.

[hacawijo]

Azriel never said he was entitled to/deserved to be with Elain, those were Rhys’s words. Azriel said it didn’t make sense for two of the brothers to be with two of the sisters and not the third. Obviously it’s not the healthiest reasoning, but I think he’s reasoning in order to explain his strong feelings for Elain and to make sense of the powerlessness and envy he feels. Imagine pining after someone mostly unavailable and ultimately uninterested in you for 500 years, then finally finding someone else who makes you feel a lot of things and gets you better than maybe anyone else AND who is into you just as much as you are into them (he smells her arousal folks, Elain is super into Azriel and has been forever - literally fight me, I will give you receipts) and then to be forced to watch that person be essentially claimed, against their own preference, by someone else. Also, since when is it not absolutely certain that a fantasy romance ship is happening when someone expressly forbids it for political reasons??? That is such a classic trope!!

Azriel can’t catch a fucking break. How could you not have all of those feelings and then feel like fate screwed you when that person’s two sisters are destined for your two brothers? It’s a rationalization ADDED ON to the feelings he already has for Elain, he doesn’t have feelings for Elain because he thinks he’s entitled to her, he hopes that fate is showing him that his feelings are not in vain (AGAIN).

SJM herself said that she’s sprinkled breadcrumbs about Azriel’s story for a long time, which also makes me think Gwyn isn’t endgame because she’s such a new character. The moment between them in the bonus chapter actually reminds me a lot of Cassian’s moment with Emerie in ACOFAS. A lot of people predicted that he might be torn between her and nesta, but really it was just a way to flesh out that character outside of Nesta’s narrative. It seems more like SJM is trying to incorporate Gwyn into larger parts of the story and as more than just nesta’s friend. Perhaps what we need to glean from his interactions with Gwyn are the things Azriel values, and the personal growth he might go through, in a vocational sense, in the next book.

It makes him happy to make Gwyn happy because he ultimately cares very strongly for people who have suffered and survived and thrived. Cassian cares about what happens to the illyrians, Azriel doesn’t - the Valkyrie (to an extent) and the illyrians are Cassian’s mission, Azriel doesn’t have anything like that, yet. Azriel doesn’t like the violent things he does for the court, and that is probably part of why he feels so unfulfilled and lost. The most valuable things he has done have been the type of thing he did in saving Gwyn at Sangravah and training the priestesses with Cassian. This is all rooted, of course, in the suffering he witnessed his mother go through. All three of the illyrians are defined by the violence and wrongs done to their mothers, and two of them have found ways to make relative peace with those wrongs. Azriel has begun to and has done much to help wronged women and children and people, but I don’t think he’s had his Aha! Moment yet in the way that Rhys and Cassian have. His interaction with Clotho feels like an indication of his greater purpose, an alternative concern to his romantic woes re: Elain.

I’m not saying this means that Gwyn ISNT involved in a romantic way in the next book, but I think it’s hasty to assume it’s romantic just because Azriel has a meaningful, connected moment with her. Think about Manon and Elide or Feyre and Lucien, two friendships that bridged a lot of characters together and that could have gone in a romantic direction but didn’t. She tends to do that more with friendships than romantic relationships I think. I also think there was a clearer indication of Emerie’s interest in Mor than Gwyn’s in Azriel (I know there’s more interaction between Azriel and Gwyn, but Emerie is clearly into Mor when she says she doesn’t come around Windhaven anymore), and it seems almost as tidy to have Azriel and Mor end up with the other two Valkyries as for Azriel to end up with the third sister. Azriel, Mor, and Cassian are very nearly as much a sacred trio as the Illyrians. Also, I think it’s more likely that Mor will end up with Emerie because she hasn’t had a real romantic interest be yet revealed (the only thing I can think of is Viviane’s younger sister, but that was also superrrrrrrrrr subtle and I might have read too far into the text) and SJM pretty much never decides to start those in the course of one book (of which this extra Azriel POV chapter would be a part).

I also just want to say that Elain has been consistently uncomfortable with Lucien. He gets her the gloves for solstice, and it’s because he has a fundamental misunderstanding of her as a person. He sees her as something delicate to be sheltered and protected from thorns and elements, but that’s actually one of the things Elain loves most about gardening, and is probably how she wishes she could live her life if given the freedom and confidence. In the Feysand chapter, Feyre specifically mentions the gloves that Lucien got Elain and the consequences of Elain not wearing them. On the surface it seems silly because she hurt herself, using the gloves makes total sense, but Rhys and Feyre are actually talking about Elain as someone who is growing and who actually likes to get dirty and FEEL things. It would make COMPLETE sense for Elain to be with Lucien, he’s her mate and he’s courtly and traditional (for a high fey, anyway) and it would be very politically tidy. But maybe this new, changed Elain just doesn’t want that anymore. Maybe she thinks Azriel’s scarred hands are beautiful because they’re nothing other than what they are, and she’s not afraid of having her own scars (I.e. the thorns).

I don’t know for sure that it’s a great sign that Azriel got Elain jewelry. That could be an indication that he sees her beauty and delicacy similarly to the way Lucien does, and certainly he is protective of Elain. BUT think it could mean something different because it was juxtaposed with the pearl earrings that Lucien gave Elain. They were plain, we’ve never had any indication that Elain is interested in pearls or even regular jewelry. SJM OBVIOUSLY put much more thought into the description of the necklace and AZRIEL OBVIOUSLY put much more thought into his gift for Elain than Lucien did. He thought about Elain and what she means to him and gave her something that appears gently beautiful and informal but is even more lovely when someone PAYS CLOSER ATTENTION TO IT, as Azriel always does with everything, and especially Elain.

just can’t imagine SJM having anything that is awkward and at best uncomfortable and uncommunicative turn into an endgame relationship. Elain and lucien have no passion, neither sexual nor antagonistic nor romantic. All of her relationships tend to involve a pretty instant attraction and ongoing tension with tiny little moments sprinkled in from the get. Elain is only ever uncomfortable around Lucien. On the other hand, she is innately comfortable with Azriel pretty immediately (again ask for receipts and I will give them).

They also meet each other pre-cauldron, Lucien is literally like, “she’s my mate!” During one of the most traumatic and dissonant moments of Elain’s life. Remember how much Rhys DIDNT MAKE FEYRE’S LIFE OR TRAUMA ABOUT HIM???? He waited FOREVER to tell her about the bond, was pretty certain he could never be with her, would have been happy to never tell her and just have her be happy. Cassian was pretty sure of the bond with nesta and did not come close to mentioning it until they declared themselves together forever. Rowan and Aelin were also terrified to admit to each other that they were mates, again because they worried what it might do to negatively affect the other. But there’s Elain, fresh outta the cauldron, they all heard her screams and saw her terror and despair, and the first thing he says is “she’s MY mate.”

Also want to be clear I’m not trying to hate on Lucien. I mentioned above that Lucien is used to being pretty courtly and traditional, I think he was raised in the autumn court and has a very traditional understanding of what the mating bond means. I don’t think he is ever trying to claim Elain because he’s inherently trying to ignore her wishes or control her, but because he feels that bond and believes in the fact that it is sacred. Elain was born human, doesn’t really understand the significance of mates the way Lucien does. Of course she wouldn’t have a matching reverence. Elain is used to love and building trust and a relationship with someone over time and with patience. Which is exactly how her relationship with Az progresses.

Really think about Elain and Lucien, what about them seems compatible? He plays the game, he’s clever, his specialty is in people and he likes to have repartee with those he’s close to. Elain is pretty much always herself, she doesn’t change to suit her company, and she frankly doesn’t seem to love figuring people out. She loves being with the people she loves, but the politics of people don’t interest her - nature interests her. She’s kind in a way that Lucien would probably probably find boring in someone who isn’t his mate. In ACOSF, nesta is constantly thinking about the difference in her relationship with her mother from the relationships her mother had with her sisters. She makes it really clear that Elain never knew how to handle people in the same way as nesta or any courtier, and that she wasn’t really all that interested in intrigue or politic (which is why their mother was never interested in Elain). Elain and Lucien do not understand each other and do not understand the other’s passions or motivations. I like Lucien, I don’t love him the way that some folks do, probably because I never really got over his failure to feyre in ACOMAF, but I do want him to be happy. I think he can’t give Elain what she wants or needs and vice versa.

Lastly I want to talk about symmetry and fresh narrative. At this point, mating bonds are pretty played out. SJM has set a lot of groundwork re: the fact that mating bonds are NOT always perfect, and are NOT always happy. Rhys talks a lot about his mother and father. They were very unhappy together; they did not understand each other. It sounds like Rhys’s father was a politician and Rhys’s mother was wild and raw and genuine. This is part of the reason he waits so long to tell Feyre about the bond (and obviously he doesn’t even get to tell her, she finds out on her own). I am definitely not trying to say that Lucien is like Rhys’s father, he’s not, he’s a much better person, but I do think that the differences in Rhys’s parents’ values and passions mirror the dissonance that can be felt between Lucien and Elain as well. I think all of the wind was taken out of the relationship before it started because Lucien named Elain as his mate so quickly- it was really unearned. It is so EARNED in Feyre and Rhys’s story and Aelin and Rowan’s.

I think the idea of choosing love over nature is actually extraordinary. Elain, who has never really had a choice in her whole life, will make the most subversive and difficult choice of the series by rejecting her mating bond. And Azriel, who has never believed himself worthy of good things, will be chosen over a mating bond because he is so extraordinarily deserving of happiness and love and to be truly chosen as someone else’s paramour even beyond the influence of a mating bond. Is there any greater narrative validation of Azriel than that???? SJM writes grand, dramatic cosmic payback for her characters, and this would be a crowning achievement in that vein.

As for Lucien, what he has needed is a way out of the lines he’s always been expected to live in. He was never at home in the autumn court, he was never truly at home in the spring court, and despite Elain, he is definitely never at home in the night court. Lucien’s love, the thing that made him more happy than anything else in his life, was inherently unconventional, and then the convention he lived in destroyed it. Letting go of Elain and the mating bond will be the best way for him to reject the rules that have confined him for his entire, mostly miserable life. Elain will choose Azriel, and Lucien will choose to let her go, not just for Elain but also for himself. I’m willing to bet he might even give up his immortal life to be with Vassa and Jurian. Obviously that whole trio’s dynamic is still pretty murky, but I THINK he seems to be into Vassa (hell who knows - maybe he’s into jurian). Certainly he is happier with them than he has ever been anywhere else (tamlin was Lucien’s dear friend, but Lucien was also fucking terrified of him), and maybe it’s not and will never be about romantic fulfillment for him. That being said, that seems unlikely given SJM’s tendency to pair off her characters.

As for people being mad about the sex stuff...... have we not been reading the same books? Cassian and Rhys have both made it clear to Feyre that Az can get it, he hasn’t been chastely pining for Mor his whole life. Nesta also specifically confirms in this newest installment that Elain is not a virgin, hello bread crumb set up. Elain and Azriel are both sexually active adults who are sexually attracted to each other. Why should they not be able to have agency over their own sexuality in the same way as all of the other characters? Because they’re shy? Because they seem nicer and gentler?

I think it’s actually really infantilizing to make Elain a victim/inactive participant in her solstice interaction with Azriel. Sure, narrators aren’t always reliable, but SJM always uses the fey scent as a story device to confirm sexual interest and initial/general consent for the reader without suspicion or misinterpretation. I. E. Nesta and cassian both had really warped understandings of how the other felt about them for a lot of ACOSF, but they always came back to knowing for certain that they were sexually attracted to each other. That is something that SJM makes pretty freakin clear in most situations. I don’t think that Azriel thought anything that was darker or dirtier than anything Rhys or cassian has thought about feyre and nesta. In fact it was definitely less kinky than how cassian and nesta often thought of each other sexually before they really got together.

Also, a lot of elain’s reactions to Lucien in ACOWAR remind me of mor’s reactions to Azriel throughout the series. You could tell she was feeling some type of way, but in reality it was guilt and sorrow that she couldn’t return his feelings, not that she was tortured by her love for him. I feel like when Lucien goes to the continent and Elain displays emotion about it it’s more about the fact that she feels bad she doesn’t feel more for him even though she does feel the bond. I’m sure it was really confusing for her. Elain’s reactions to Azriel, though, remind me more of the little snippets of interaction between Aedion and Lysandra before they had more POV in the ToG series and also those between cassian and nesta in ACOMAF and ACOWAR before THEY had POV chapters.

Wow so yeah here’s my dissertation. I hope someone out there reads this and is like YES THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN TRYING TO SAY, because I love when I find posts like that.

#azriel #elain archeron #acotar #a court of silver flames #elriel #elucian #nessian #nesta archeron #feysand #feyre archeron #rhysand #morrigan #aelin fireheart #rowaelin #rowan whitethorn #theories #sarah j maas #azriel bonus chapter #azriel pov #acomaf #acowar #throne of glass #azriel and elain #analysis #literary analysis

[dailydnp]

British YouTuber, presenter, and author Daniel Howell offers a practical yet poignant look into mental health – his own struggles held up as a mirror for anyone else going through the same – in his book You Will Get Through This Night.

Written in conjunction with psychologist Dr Heather Bolton, the book is an amalgamation of Howell’s own experiences and Dr Bolton’s expert perspective combined to create a reading that feels like a personal attack in the best of ways, forcing you confront, embrace and then overcome your perception of your own mental health.

Best described as, “a practical guide to taking control of your mental health for today, tomorrow, and the days after,”  You Will Get Through This Night takes readers through Howell’s mental health journey, wrapped in his trademark sense of humour and nuggets of wisdom that urge them forwards in their path to a healthier mindset.  

Speaking to 1883, Howell describes what pushed him to write the book, learning to question his normal, how upbringing and culture impacts one’s perception of mental health, the role that a sense of humour plays in getting the conversation around mental health started and more.

Was there a particular moment that solidified your decision to write this book?

I think it was just realizing the power that every single person has to tell their story and break down the wall. Because with mental health, it’s the thing that every single person has a universal experience of. And yet, we all like to go, ‘I’m fine,’ when we’re completely having a meltdown on the inside and it was me opening up, not because I thought it was a nice idea just because I thought I had to open up about what I was going through with my depression, my sexuality. I went through 27 years of terrible mental health, without even realizing that you’re not supposed to be that way. It’s the idea that we all think we are broken, born in a certain way and doomed to feel that way forever, and that’s fundamentally wrong. I thought I’d like to write this book because other people may see themselves in it, notice that they relate to something, and therefore maybe there’s something about themselves that they need to work on. I literally I just wrote the book that I wish I could have read, because for me it was a struggle to even find the resources and the advice I needed.

You’ve mentioned in the book, that you never questioned your symptoms and that you were taken aback when the doctor said you were suffering from depression. But where there moments before that you started questioning this perception of what was normal to you?

I think it became my normal to feel bad all the time, which sounds dramatic but it was me. I thought it was all to do with my choices, age, environment and my job. But mental health is deeper than that, it’s something deeper and it’s something that you can actually have a positive effect on, which is what I wish I knew earlier, and it only happened when I got to a point where I was struggling, so much that I couldn’t even function day-to-day. In my mind, there was either nothing or there’s crazy. I thought you just have to get over your problems or you are totally crazy, which is so ignorant but that’s just not the truth. So, I went to a doctor and he said I think you might have depression and that is a real thing. And there’s lots that you can do about it. It’s about just understanding everything to do with how your thoughts and feelings work, the relationship between your biology and how you interact with the world physically. It was such a slow and painful journey to learn all of that that I thought, I’m just going to put it all in here and the idea is that for someone who picks up this book, they can go right in. I’ll put it up on the shelf and then when I need to read it, I’m going to pick it up and open it  again. So, I just wanted to be super practical.

I really liked this quote in the book “breakdown can be breakthroughs”. So, when was the last time you can think of that a breakdown led to a breakthrough for you?

Every other week, like you know, all of us. It’s just human instinct to try and stick through it and ignore the problems especially with work. It’s a great excuse to lie, “ I know I feel bad but I’m really busy.” And it goes like that until things get way too intense. For me, there were moments where I felt I simply cannot keep going in my career or day-to-day life or try to pretend like I’m funny, until I deal with the fact that I’m gay. And though there was this terrible feeling like “have I hit rock bottom?” But the thing with any obstacle is that it stops you from going in the wrong direction and when you are forced to turn around usually it means you’re confronting the truth for the first time. Usually if someone has a breakdown, if you hit that wall in your life, that point where you absolutely can’t keep going until you turn around and something scary is going to be waiting, it means you’re going in the right direction. When you have these moments of confrontation, instead of procrastinating or running away, if you face it then it’s hopefully better days ahead.

Speaking of procrastination, you talk about burnout and the five-minute rule in one section. How do you strike a balance between not procrastinating and getting things done, but also not overworking yourself?

The human concept of work is very strange and it’s just one of those great examples of something that we’ve all brainwashed ourselves to see a certain way, to put value on certain things that are ultimately probably not great and inevitably lead to another dramatic moment of self-destruction and procrastination, which are both associated with so much guilt and shame.But in reality it’s not because I’m lazy that I don’t want to start this thing, it’s probably I’m terrified of starting this thing because I know that it’s important, I don’t want to fail at it. So, think of the five minute rule as ripping the plaster off, because it’s always the fear of starting. That was me, writing this book and feel like I’m not in the mood to do that, but then moment I start then I’d just write for consecutive hours. Again, it’s just snapping out of the mindset that you’re probably on, which goes I’m doing this because it’s important, and I have to do it. You probably don’t have to do it, you’re probably just running from something else. So, whether you are procrastinating, you think you’re lazy, or  you’re telling yourself that you have to put up all of your issues to deal with whatever you’re busy with, you need to flip it around and look at it, not just from in healthier way but in more honest way. I’m not going to cripple myself with guilt and shame about procrastination but I’m not going to over work myself.

You’ve also written about how one of the worst things you can say to someone going through depression is to get over it. What’s the hardest of trying to get people to understand that it isn’t something you can get over?

I think you cannot underestimate how profoundly ignorant most of the world still is about mental health and that’s not people’s fault. It’s just that science, education and culture has just not been doing the right thing even if science recently has come a long way. We’ve got hundreds of years of stigma that come from. Breaking down the barriers, by being honest, with someone one-to-one is a great way to do that. And it just telling them “I’m not going to pretend that everything’s fine. I just want to tell you that, I feel that way.” And for a lot of people who say they don’t understand depression, anxiety etc, if just say I feel bad and I want to do something about it, people usually empathize with it. I also think lot of people want not take it seriously when other people say that because they feel like where was their help when they needed it? I think that the human nature is usually to feel almost jealous that someone else is asking for help or sympathy and they want to get better but you have to talk back to that voice and say maybe this is an opportunity for me to finally, be honest about how I might have been feeling the whole time. Because at some point you have to break the cycle.

Though you’ve said how you can’t underestimate how ignorant people can be, there’s a section of the book where you talk about how you uploaded your video, “Basically, I’m gay,” and braced for negativity. But that you were surprised by all the positive responses. So, what’s the most recent instance you can think of where you were pleasantly surprised by humanity?

Something that anyone that has to admit something, they’re going through and has in common, whether that’s something that’s come out as gay or someone just admitting that they’re just really stressed or feeling very anxious, is feeling like they have to constantly explain themselves. This is just an example of how you can be afraid of what people will say but when you’re really just honest about something that you’re going through, people usually relate to it on a day-to-day level. Whenever I talk to someone about mental health or sexuality, who may think its weird at first but as I describe my thoughts and feelings, they may relate to it even if they aren’t going through exact same thing as you. For me, a year after coming out and I still have that conversation on a daily basis. As a teenager, I had that deathly fear, that I couldn’t tell anyone because it would be terrible, but now I realize that actually most people are just scared. They aren’t inherently hateful; they’re just putting up that wall because they think that being vulnerable leaves them for attack. But actually, if we’re all vulnerable we’d be a lot happier.

Speaking of vulnerability, you touch upon your upbringing in the book and how it sort of taught you to keep a stiff upper lip. When did you start learn to be vulnerable and what was the biggest challenge with that?

Being a young British man, going to an all-boys school or the comedians that I looked up to on TV – everyone was so cynical. It was about trying to be as like edgy as possible and like act tough, and not show this vulnerability in case it’s seen as weakness. I think that I carried this perception all the way into my mid-20s, it seeped into every part of my personality. A lot of the stuff that I made, when I was younger, had this cynical edge to it and it was only when I started to get more followers from around the world that I began people started questioning that cynicism. At first, I’d go “this is British humour,” but a few years later, I just started to reflect about the way I was about myself and realized it was a bit more than a joke have, I actually started to let this self-hatred and the lack of empathy towards how I feel sort of eat me up. I think because only because of the people who have followed me over the years, giving me a reflection of who I am through how they’ve perceived me that I’ve been able to break free of my default programming.

About your sense of humour and how you kind of make sense of how you’re feeling through jokes, have you ever felt misunderstood -particularly given the cultural differences of your audiences  you just mentioned – like you’re trying to make light of something that a lot of people suffer from?

Yeah, there’s  a weird line and there’s lots of conversations these days about what you’re allowed to joke about. What the difference between talking about something, being comfortable with it and almost glamorizing it. But I think if the biggest problem with mental health globally is people don’t even want to admit that they’re wrong. And that they don’t even know that they were wrong. A bunch of people joking about how depressed they feel could be a  good thing because they have at least taken the first step. So, I think it’s good that people can joke about things in a way that breaks the ice as long as they all know, in the same way that my book might make them feel very personally attacked that just behind that joke that you put up to protect yourself, there is something that you should work on. Even if it’s painful, that it will make you happier.

You mention celebrating small wins in the book. What win are you celebrating today?

I have just moved house and I have a toilet that doesn’t flush yet. But I managed to stick a coat hanger, inside the toilet and to make it flush. I just got my own toilet to flush, and for me, that’s such a miracle. It was a perfect example of how we take so many things for granted in life, whether it’s something huge to do with your health, the state of the world, your privilege. But I now have a flushing toilet and everything else felt easy. I can handle it because I got some perspective.

You also touch on the importance of inner circles in the book. , When was the last time, you personally reached out to bring someone into your inner circle and do you remember how you did it?

I am so awkward and awful at making friends and it’s something that usually, I’ll have one of those breakdowns where I go, “I have no friends.” The next day, I’ll wake up and DM people, out of every three people I DM two-point-nine will just ignore me and I will be very embarrassed. But then one of them will  say “ yes, in two and a half weeks, we will go get a pizza.” And you only have to succeed a couple times ever to make friends that you hopefully will see more than once. I know from experience, it can be embarrassing, painful and not fun to try and reach out to new people but you just start adding one person, every two years until you have a friend group.

While working on this book, I know you consulted with a psychologist for it, aside from your lived experiences. What did you learn about mental health while looking at it from an outside, expert perspective?

I think one of the biggest revelations for me while writing this book is realizing how much of it isn’t a logical thought in our head. So much of mental health is controlled by our body, and the physical things that we experience. It’s about just how we breathe, how much light, and fresh air. And the problem is in our modern world, our brains are looking at everything as a threat. As soon as you realize actually, humans are not as complicated and mysterious as we think, we’re just little animals trying not to get murdered. It was freeing to know because that meant we aren’t born with this magically broken consciousness, that’s just doomed. It definitely made me look at mental health for what it is rather than the mysterious fog of pain that I thought it was for the last 10 years that I had absolutely no control over.

You’ve said that you’re obviously not done with your mental health journey, but where are you on that journey at this moment in time?

I’m doing a lot better than I was simply because I can understand what I feel, and why, and that it’s normal now. And I honestly feel like that’s 90% of it. Most people don’t ever question their lives. If they spend too much time, feeling overwhelming you stressed or if they worry too much and they’re just not enjoying life day-to-day. But just knowing that there’s something you can do about, it gives me enough hope. From writing the book, I know everything I can do to get better.

Finally, what’s one question no one has asked you so far that you wish you were asked?

I think it’s just how do I convince the other people in my life to take mental health seriously?  I realized from writing this book and now, talking about it that the biggest problem I have is that most people simply do not think the conversation about mental health, or mental health,  applies to them because they’re fine. So many people think mental health is only something for people that have crippling depression or serious anxiety disorder, but it’s just how all of us, think and feel all the time. If you have bad self-esteem, if you worry about everything, if you have a way of looking at the world that’s really negative and you expect the worst, then  you might not need to immediately have an intervention with a psychotherapist, but you need to understand your mental health. Even if you read this book and say you are totally fine, then you still need to know this stuff so you can understand why you are fine. There will be a point in life where you need to make yourself feel better and mental health isn’t about waiting until you snap, and then picking up the pieces and going on medication. It should be about knowing how to keep yourself healthy and happy so that you don’t have a breakdown. Everyone has mental health, and that’s the thing that I wish I could just shove into everyone’s faces.

#daniel howell #danisnotonfire #dan #phan #mine #interview