#because they are able to conceptualize it because they live the way we all should be able to

[statementlou]

So I see folks pointing out that Louis' circle A tattoo is more likely an aesthetic choice than an announcement of a political commitment to anarchism, and saying basically that that maybe makes him a bit of a poser and I mean- I GUESS. But I don't like to look at things that way and I don't think it's useful. As I see it the subversive sexiness of the symbols of resistance have ALWAYS been gateways for people who are drawn to the struggle in vague ways and that's GOOD. Aligning yourself with those values is good no matter the reason, in my book, especially given the wretched options available out there, but also the journey doesn't necessarily stop there. Gatekeeping queerness victimizes people who are just trying things out and starting to discover that it may run deeper than just trying on a new look who should instead be welcomed and helped along their path, and I fail to see how gatekeeping political affiliations is any different (plus how counterproductive to actual movement building is that?)

ANYWAY. What I really want to say about Louis is that while I KNOW that Louis is probably not secretly a theory reading anti-state communalist anarchist, I think that actually Louis' optimism and idealism (and his unwavering commitment to allying himself with the working class and embracing those roots) are a perfect fit for the philosophy and always have been. I know that anarchism is mostly understood as being about throwing molotov cocktails and fighting the state (and the allure of its symbols are that they signify this, a terrific aesthetic for him to choose to sign on with in my book), but that's honestly largely cartoonish stereotyping that comes directly from anti-anarchist state propaganda. That resistance is necessary in this hellscape of oppression we live in and is super important, but in its heart anarchism is only about the state in that the state and capitalism currently stands in the way of its goals. The whole point of anarchism is that it's NOT about the state! It's about being able to imagine something better than a state, it's about how we live and about how we SHOULD live, it's about HOPE and picturing something utopian and something free of the ways capitalism pits us against one another! What could be more Louis than that?

"I need you and you need me and I love that" is as beautiful a way of talking about the cornerstone of anarchism that is mutual aid as any long winded essay I've read (even if what he meant was contextually different), and I think when he talks again and again about how special the space fans have made around him is he is expressing an intuitive understanding of the importance of autonomous zones, places and moments outside of the shitty life imposed on us by the system (also a huge part of anarchist thought). Maybe I'm just being an optimist but I think that Louis DOES understand that caring for people and wanting self-determination and freedom for all and allying himself with the working class involves a certain amount of resistance to and positioning yourself in opposition to the state. Thinking the symbols of smashing that state are cool isn't meaningless; it's a CHOICE. There are other cool symbols out there and I just happen to think that feeling a resonance with certain ones is something in and of itself, even if at this moment he does not choose to start a fight with the media about it all.

#long version of this part maybe later… (orrr maybe here and now oops lol): #I believe we are all born natural anarchists with a desire to live in mutually supportive ways and in freedom #it only gets beaten out of people by the trauma of the system and being forced to struggle to survive #Louis shares with many privileged people a certain immaturity of not understanding those struggles #but I think that 'immaturity' can include- in smart and good people- not having lost sight of that utopianism #because they are able to conceptualize it because they live the way we all should be able to #free of so many of the survival struggles #(I think that in some areas maturity is code for 'beaten down to a good capitalist') #anyway and that's why autonomous zones are important: #because you HAVE to have the experience of freedom sometimes to be able to move towards it #you have to experience wins to be able to keep fighting #it's the candy crush theory of organizing lol like: people will simply give up and lose hope if everything is struggle and despair #and nothing is hope and success #you don't have to win the whole fight to get glimpses but you have to have moments #anyway a song I love that is about that is Saturday Night by the Coup it's a BOP go check her out she feels like winning #boots is a commie but that's okay he Gets It :P #anyway #anarchism #blah blah blah #I love being a louis apologist I should add that to my header what can I say: I love him #also look how many WORDS I can churn out when there's no show😂gotta fil the time somehow #send me questions I beg you we've got a long couple months ahead #comrade louis

[cosmicjoke]

Levi and the importance of staying true to ones heart:

I'm gonna' talk about another aspect of Levi's choice in Shinganshina, but first, I want to dedicate this post to all the little bitch eruri shippers out there who are too scared to come off anon, who now can't send me hate messages over it since I turned anon asks off and ya'll are a bunch of cowards. Hope you enjoy this one, because it's for you.

I was thinking about an ask I got a few days ago, about why Erwin chose Hange over Levi to take over as commander, and why in turn Hange chose Armin, and I answered that I thought it had a lot to do with Levi's own philosophy of "no regrets", that is, Levi's insistence on always following ones heart, doing what one feels is the right thing in any, given situation. Not necessarily right in terms of what the outcome will be, but right in terms of how your choice will sit with your conscience.

I think obviously, this aspect of Levi's character, his belief in always doing what your heart tells you to do, is evidenced by his choice in Shinganshina, to give Armin the serum and to let Erwin die.

Putting aside all arguments regarding whether it was the right thing to do "for humanity", I think what maybe people don't focus on enough when it comes to this moment is whether it was the right thing to do morally.

I've talked before about how Levi's choice was really an act of compassion over ideology, here: https://www.tumblr.com/cosmicjoke/737207612761915392/the-importance-of-compassion-over-ideology-levis?source=share And I think it's worth revisiting this aspect of his choice again.

I think people get so caught up in the concept of "the greater good" when discussing "Attack on Titan", and this moment in particular, that they miss one of the main overarching themes of the story, which is that the "greater good", particularly, things done in the name of the greater good, can actually lead to horrific atrocities and cruelty, and that the idea of the "greater good" itself is based in subjectivity, and never absolute. It isn't something we should ever prioritize over the tangible and concrete reality before us. That tangible and concrete reality being the things we can do to alleviate the suffering of others now, rather than hoping for and pursuing some idyllic utopian future where nobody ever has to suffer, and, ironically, causing people to suffer in the pursuit of that goal.

I talk a lot too about how I don't think Levi has ever held any great faith in the concept of a better world. I think Levi is a realist. Someone who understands and accepts the bleak reality of life on this planet, someone who accepts human nature, who knows that a utopian existence isn't really possible because of that reality, but who, despite that, still maintains a great depth of kindness and compassion toward others, still values life and the right of others to live.

His support of his comrades in the Survey Corps has more to do with his wish to fight for them, to support their own, personal dream of a better world, than it does his own belief in that better world. He thinks of Erwin as a "greater existence" than himself, to quote Isayama, because he believes Erwin is able to conceptualize and believe in a better world, to see that possibility, while Levi himself can't.

What Levi is fighting for is people, not a concept. That's always been true of Levi, I think. We see that manifest in multiple ways, multiple times throughout the story. In Levi's first appearance, when he holds that dying soldier's hand and promises him that his sacrifice will give Levi the strength to keep fighting. When he gives Petra's patch to that grieving soldier. When he goes out of his way to help the people of Trost. When he saves Ramzi, endangering their mission to rescue a single child. When he refuses to accept right away that Eren has gone rogue, to turn on him, because so many of his comrades died for him and Levi can't bear the thought of them having sacrificed their lives for nothing. And we see it manifest in his choice to let Erwin die. He prioritizes a person over a concept. And I think that fact emphasizes the great morality of Levi's choice, and ultimately, the rightness of it. Concepts are just that. They aren't real. They're ideas. But people are real. People exist. People matter.

Armin talks early on about the need to abandon ones humanity in order to achieve victory. Erwin's entire character revolves around this premise. He's seen as a great and visionary leader because of his ability to detach himself from human emotion and make tough decisions and sacrifices. Basically, for his ability to engage the concept of the ends justifying the means. Whatever it takes to "win".

But then, what does winning even mean, what does salvation for humanity mean, if in the pursuit of it, we lose our humanity?

Levi talks about being willing to take on the role of a "monster" if it means nobody else having to. He understands that, if people are forced to lose their humanity in pursuit of freedom, then freedom itself is rendered meaningless. There is no salvation for humanity if we ourselves lose sight of what it means to be human. Levi says he's willing to become a monster, that he's willing to lose his humanity, as long as no one else has to. He's willing to make that sacrifice.

But what Levi's choice in Shinganshina shows us is that he actually wasn't able to abandon his humanity at all. He never was a monster, and never actually could be. Because he couldn't, in the end, look upon the suffering of another human being, and ignore it.

That goes back to what I said about why Erwin chose Hange, and why Hange chose Armin. To be an effective leader, in order to achieve "victory" of some abstract goal, one has to be able to abandon their humanity. And Levi can't.

Levi is the most compassionate and empathetic character in AoT. And part of the reason for that is because of the inherent nature of that compassion. He isn't able to give up his humanity, he isn't able to lose it, because it's too much a part of him, too deeply rooted in who he actually is. It's the driving force behind everything he is and does. The beating, bleeding heart and soul of the Survey Corps. His presence, his role within the story, in many ways, functions as the moral compass by which both the audience and the other characters are guided.

Even in the face of violence, war, atrocity, and prejudice, even in pursuit of some concept of "the greater good", Levi can't bring himself to actual cruelty. Because that's what it would have been, to give Erwin the serum. It would have been an act of cruelty, against a man who didn't deserve it. And, again, if in the pursuit of a better tomorrow, we ourselves become cruel, pitiless, unempathetic, merciless, how can a better tomorrow actually be achieved? What salvation is there for humanity if, by the end, we have no humanity left in ourselves?

Erwin was able to abandon his humanity in pursuit of a personal dream, and we saw where it ultimately lead him. Into a state of such utter depression, and so wracked by guilt, that he became ineffectual, needing Levi to do the right thing for him. Erwin had strayed down a path that went against his heart.

That's something Levi was never able to do. Go against his heart. Go against what he felt was right. The only time we really see Levi do something that doesn't sit right with him is when he helps Hange to torture Sannes, under Erwin's orders and as a favor to Hange. Levi is noticeably less enthused about the whole affair than Hange, taking no actual pleasure in the exercise, even visibly distraught over Hange's level of cruelty. And still we see after how heavily that weighs on him. He completely forgets to inform Historia of the information they tortured Sannes for in the first place, and then explodes on her when she refuses out of self-pity to take on the role of queen, threatening to render the whole thing pointless. Do what your heart tells you, this is something Levi emphasizes to others again and again, which is what I mean when I say he acts as the moral compass of the story. Do the best you can, make the choice you won't regret. That doesn't mean the choice that will have the best outcome. That means the choice which will sit well with your conscience.

And I think in order to understand Levi's choice in Shinganshina, one needs to understand what sort of choice it was. Levi's choice, in its purist form, was a choice of the heart. It was a moral choice, decided upon through conscience, through the understanding, at an intrinsic level, what was right, rather than some ideological pursuit with an intangible endpoint.

He knew it was wrong to bring Erwin back into the world, and to put the same expectations on him to be the great leader he had been. He knew, in its way, that to do so would be to betray his own declaration, of taking on the role of a monster for himself so long as it spared anyone else from having to do the same. Erwin was corrupted by his dream. The threat of that corruption promised to make him into a monster. And Levi wasn't going to let that happen, just like he said. He wasn't going to allow Erwin to lose his humanity, even if it meant condemning himself.

Whether one wants to argue over Levi's choice being the right choice for humanity's salvation or not, what I don't think is up for discussion is that Levi's choice was, in the end, the right choice morally. And no, that doesn't mean Levi chose Erwin over humanity, or that he sacrificed humanity for Erwin because he loved him. It means he chose compassion over an idea. He chose humanity over a concept. He chose a person over an ideal. Because it was the choice that rejected the ideology and the dogmatism of "the greater good" in favor of something real, which was kindness and mercy for another human being. It was a rejection of cruelty and barbarism in pursuit of some evanescent and ultimately meaningless concept.

There is no greater good without morality. There is no salvation for humanity without mercy or compassion.

#Levi Ackerman #attack on titan #shingkei no kyojin #Erwin Smith #meta #commentary #analysis #suck my big fat one eruris #you bunch of pansy-ass cowards

[disruptivevoib]

I am eternally thinking about how Whole is a concept of the fandom and not canonical at all.

Arguably, maybe someone would say the inclusion of Whole diminishes the original message of the album, to which I do not disagree but I do not agree either.

He changes the context of it, I suppose?

Because the original album, Whole is a concept to be strived for. He is not real, it is always just Heart, Mind, and Soul beneath the surface. They are manifested facilities of the way a person is, how they talk to themselves, the internal conversation. That "psychosocial envy" is the idea of the album. The effect that social standards have on someone who views themself as flawed beyond recognition without any idea how to fit into what the world wants of them.

Soul longs to be Whole because he longs to become what society deems is a person. All of what they are and what they want to be comes in many different forms. It could be any number of internalized ideals of what a man should be, or who you should love, or what you should strive for in life.

Two Wuv as a song is that realization that even after Mind and Heart are better, after they've been able to communicate and function "properly", there is no Whole coming. This is who they are, and that is fine. He is not perfect, he is not what society wants, but he IS a person, and to him, he is Whole.

It is a concept of self forgiveness and grace. The ability to have nuance that what society seeks of you is not so important as truth of the self, owning your flaws and seeming imperfections.

Ultimately, everyone's brain runs differently. Everyone talks to themselves differently, refers to and conceptualizes their inner-world in many ways, and none of it is definable. We have no capable way of putting the way somebody speaks to themself, refers to, and functions within themselves entirely into a box. We are a collection of lived experiences turning itself into informed reactions and responses. If that makes any sense at all.

Of course, the things we have put labels to are definable and are all a part of how we interact with ourself, and there are always commonalities and similarities. There is so much variety in it, being human is fluid...

Anyways.

Without Whole, the "end" of the album means they are in acceptance of one another, that there is a positive relationship with your inner dialogue for some time before something happens and causes a harsh reflection to shatter it all. With him, it is essentially the same, just that there is a more literal or tangible figure to represent that cohesive self-acceptance.

Whole being a tangible character doesn't change Soul, but as I said, informs him more. Whole and Soul are mirror images, they are had to separate and Soul is what Whole is without the interwoven Emotion and Thought.. I suppose. Soul strives for him, and without him, comes to accept this is how it is and who he is. With him, Soul may miss that aspect, or more so, get it only to discover Whole is real, and everything he did worked, but now he sacrifices himself for that.

The dynamic is interesting but incredibly devastating in that regard, especially because it is unlikely Whole's intention to ever split. Nobody wants to have a mental breakdown, y'know?

I could go on about this forever. Whole not being a real character (at least not in the way we often think of him) in the album but something very real and even achievable within the fandom space is.. I dunno, so unique? Its not often fans get to create something that while entirely uncanon to the project, is very important to it.

Side note, what I mean by not how we see him is that Whole is real because they have always been Whole. In album there is no separation. If anything, Concord is like leaving CJ's inner dialogue and witnessing just all of them in tandem being him.

Okay okay. I'm done.

#chonny jash #chonnys charming chaos compendium #voidthoughts #cj heart #cj mind #cj soul #cccc #I could really really keep going forever #I think I find the album itself more satisfying #but in concepting and writing whole being tangible is SO so much more capable of intriguing narrative #long post

[da-mous]

My Read of Puhoy! :)

Hey pizza babies! Puhoy is an often praised Adventure Time episode, and I've seen a few analysis videos on it, but I've never really felt satisfied by any of them, so I wanted to put my own thoughts on the episode in writing somewhere. After all, the episode turned 10 just two days ago!

So, right away, I think this episode is about Finn letting go of the simplistic understanding of the world he had as a younger kid throughout the first few seasons. In the early episodes, Finn has an extremely black and white perspective. Stealing is always bad, everyone's problems can always be solved, and good and evil are clearly delineated categories

Puhoy opens with an establishing shot showing a knife storm raging outside the tree fort. This calls back to "Rainy Day Daydream," an episode where Jake's imagination becomes reality. Puhoy also plays with the line between imagination and reality, and, while this post isn't about trying to explain the pillow world lore-wise, I think the knife storm's appearance suggests that the pillow world was created by Finn's imagination, which is very thematically in line with the rest of my read on Puhoy

Finn starts the episode in a funk because he's convinced Flame Princess doesn't like him anymore, just because she didn't laugh at one of his jokes. I think this conflict illustrates that Finn doesn't know how to separate his feelings from reality. He imagines FP doesn't like him, and he's unable to conceptualize anything else. In the simple, ideal world in Finn's young mind, she would have laughed if she liked him. There isn't room for the nuance that maybe she just didn't get it

Jake is able to see that Finn is completely making up this problem, but his solution of ignoring his feelings, demonstrated by hurling his favorite cup out the window, is pretty unhelpful. In the end, even Jake can't let go that easily, and he fishes his cup back up

Fortunately, instead of trying to hurl his feelings out the window, Finn decides to crawl into the pillow fort to let his thoughts "fester," and Jake perfectly illustrates the difference between their approaches by telling Finn that festering is always bad. Jake wants to move on from things immediately, without having a moment to sit with or say goodbye to his feelings

The pillow world Finn ends up in reflects the simplistic worldview he needs to let go of. It represents the fantasy that he, until now, thought his life would play out like. He easily slays a pillow dragon, immediately wins the adoration of the pillow people, and wastes basically no time hitting it off with a pillow girl. Years pass and we see a strapping, idealized older Finn living a simple, cushy life providing for his pillow nuclear family

There's no horror to Puhoy. No dark turn, no sudden twist. Finn gets to live an entire, comfortable, satisfying lifetime in his idealized fantasy world, right up until he simply dies of old age, at which point he finally "wakes up" and finds himself back home

Puhoy feels, to me, like a twist on a common trope in fiction. Typically, like the island of the lotus eaters in the Odyssey, a world as cushy and idealized as the pillow world is presented as a trap of some kind, and the "right" choice is to resist the temptation. These stories usually suggest that there's something wrong with choosing a simple life, like it's ultimately unfulfilling or hollow in some way. But Puhoy doesn't moralize about Finn's life in the pillow world. He comes off as certain the entire time that he does want to find a way to go home, but as the years pass and he forgets what home even looked like, he ends up making the choice to stay, and it comes off to me as entirely reasonable. He has an entire life here, meanwhile he can't even remember what Jake looks like. Why should he throw all this away to return to the people from his past?

Puhoy is the ultimate wish fulfillment. It can be hard to let go of what the world looked like when you saw it through the eyes of a child. It can be hard to accept the complexities and terrors of the world. It can be hard to even understand why you would want to see the world as a difficult, uncertain, complicated place. If I were once again Finn's age and you'd asked me if I wanted to live out an entire, satisfying lifetime in the world I thought I lived in as a kid, I would be extremely tempted to say yes. Only then might I be able to move on with my real life without eternally mourning the honey-dipped worldview I was forced to outgrow, finally satisfied that I'd gotten to have my time with it

Once Finn winds up back home in his own time, he almost immediately forgets his life in the pillow world. Unlike Jake's cup, after living a full life there, it's truly gone and he truly doesn't care about it anymore, and so he's able to forget it entirely

FP calls Finn to tell him she finally understood his joke, which is a surprisingly convenient, external solution to Finn's internal problem, but he nonetheless comes off as if it never tore him up in the first place, as if, by leaving his simplistic perspective behind, he was able to develop a more mature perspective on his relationships with others

Thanks for reading!! :)))

I have an unspoken rule on this blog that it's strictly for the funny and only occasional self promotion, but I really wanted to write about this episode. Usually I write more analytical stuff like this on my devblog, but cartoons isn't video games! If I keep wanting to write stuff like this, maybe I'll make a sideblog to put that stuff in 🤔

By the way, I think of Puhoy as part of a trilogy with Dungeon Train and Hall of Egress. They're all important journeys along Finn's larger journey of growing up, and they're all framed by Finn trying to deal with rough feelings surrounding FP. The latter two are more overtly connected to each other, but Hall of Egress does have what I think is meant as a reference to Puhoy, where Finn emerges from the Hall by poking his head through the dirt on top of the hill it's under, the same way he emerges from the pillow fort at the end of Puhoy! Maybe one day I'll write about those episodes too. I have a lot to say about Finn's arc throughout the show in general, so I could even do a post about that :)

#adventure time #at #adventuretime #finn #puhoy #long post #analysis #mouswords

[mdhwrites]

Thought you might want to know, but all of Season 2A was written without knowledge of the shortening. Dana Terrace says this at the 16 minute mark of the April 28th Post Hoot.

Thank you! It's neat to know and kind of the assumption I'd had for a long time. In production and being written should be two different phases for a show after all. For the Amphibia outline I did earlier today, it'd mean losing an episode which.... *sigh* But yeah, I've effectively always treated it mostly like S2A was unaffected by the shortening and there are some plotlines I'm sympathetic about with that... But not by much.

Again, I've gone harder into this in the past but S2B had to mostly be the way it was for the sake of S3, full or shortened, unless S3 was DRASTICALLY different than what we got. Hunter needed to be an ally enough to go with them all into the portal so Sport in a Storm, Hollow Mind and Labyrinth Runners would have still happened. You do need to explore Belos and prepare for King's Tide with him so Hollow Mind bare minimum still needs to exist but also for Luz's angst arc, Elsewhere Elsewhen needs to exist. King being a titan needs to be confirmed so Edge of the World needs to exist. We also need to make King the most patient, kind, wisest person to exist so Titan, Where Art Thou needs to happen. And Clouds on the Horizon leads directly into the finale so while a lot of the A plot of that episode is pretty wasteful and lacks payoffs, you definitely still need to include it for where everyone is for the finale unless you alter the finale a lot. And Falls and Follies is a good recap of position and sets the stakes for Raine but... It'd pretty questionable too.

This makes the only episodes who's main plots could really be altered to a drastic degree be:

Reaching Out: Amity's relationship with her father barely pays off and frankly it'd have been almost just as jarring to have King do his conversation during Clouds on the Horizon even without this episode. Otherwise, it shoots the worldbuilding in the head and harms Lumity for the sake of double daddy issues. You also have the confirmation for Eda that The Day of Unity is bad news but no one who lives at The Owl House does anything with that. So let's of setup for effectively no payoff.

Them's the Breaks: I hate that I cannot justify this episode because it is EASILY the most of S2B but... It damages Raine's character, only really shows a potential reason why Eda gave up on the covens but the only story part is the last two minutes. You could have done ANYTHING else, like I dunno, an episode actually about Darius and Hunter/the rebel coven heads, and ended it with the Raine reveal.

That is two episodes. The fact that there are two episodes even is... OOPH, especially when Reaching Out at least has arguments but Them's the Breaks is just Dana gushing about the fanfic she wants to write for her own series. The fact that there are only two, with maybe being able to cut one of Hunter's episodes for his arc, is not good. Not unless the Day of Unity wasn't supposed to be the S2 finale.

And if it wasn't... What the fuck was the original plan?

This is a lot of why I talk about not wanting three seasons. It wanted WAY MORE. I think Dana assumed it'd be so popular and big as to have five or more. There are PLENTY of issues with that conceptually (again, S3 could never have been great) but it is the vibe the story gives. It is too redundant and too slow to be otherwise. TOH's biggest argument against being claimed as having a lot of filler is mostly in that a lot of episodes get a LITTLE done in way or another but it takes very few leaps. When it could do that, actually have a big payoff and move along, it cuts it off at the knees for the sake of 'realism'. This happened with Willow... and also fucking happened with ALADOR. IN SEASON 2B. WHY!? Why would you make a plot point specifically say more work and time will be needed when you DON'T HAVE TIME!?

Even S3 has this. In a season with THREE. EPISODES. Luz has THREE finishes to her arc. In Thanks to Them, she gets reassured by quite literally everyone that she did nothing wrong and should feel confident about her choices before she confidently prepares to head into the demon realm! Then... In show it's like five, ten minutes tops when Luz is self hating and self martyring herself again until the end of the episode has her confidently state that she wants to be understood! And with her friends and new palisman by her side, she will face the Collector!

Only to start the next episode with a dream sequence where she believes everyone fucking hates her, doesn't understand her and that she deserves to be hated. This only gets resolved when the FUCKING GOD of the show tells her she's A-Okay and she has nothing to fear. She's just too gosh darn good in order to have any reason to every doubt herself!

I'm not going to even ask why this happened. I can actually tell you mostly why because Luz is the only character besides Hunter with any character payoffs left to do. So if you want each episode to have a big character moment, Hunter can only replace one of those. They still tried to have Willow do one anyways by dredging up something that hadn't been a thing for TWO. SEASONS. But Luz was still given three different endings.

No, the bigger question to me just fucking HOW!? this sort of thing happens. This has fuck all to do with the shortening after all. Wasted time at this point, moments that mean literally and do nothing, are their choice. They are still the writers who decided to waste all this time despite claiming how much they wanted more time.

It makes it look like any potential S3 would have just been... Well, more of this. More repetition that dilutes its themes and doesn't really go anywhere. After all, if they couldn't fill three hours with actual story and pushing forward the narrative and themes... Why should we assume eight hours would have been suddenly so much better?

I didn't mean to go so hard on this. Sigh. But yeah, there's a lot of reasons why the shortening is not the excuse that people think it is. Why it honestly feels so much like a blessing to the show because people just have this go to statement to try and shut people or shut their own brains up from any issues they might have, even if those issues are self contained to a single episode.

TOH was never perfect and has flaws that run incredibly deep and start early on. No excuse will ever change those facts.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #toh #the owl house

[horizon-verizon]

Fire and Blood: Aegon II

[revised, from the older 2022 version]

This is a Headcanon and are subject to change (except the part about him being a rapist). You are welcome to disagree with them.

Before the Dance

Aegon was born to Viserys I (29-30) and Alicent Hightower (18-19) a year after they married. Despite being a boy and Alicent's/Otto’s pressing, he did not replace Rhaenyra as Viserys’ official heir and Viserys even dismissed Otto for "hectoring" him [definition: talk to (someone) in a bullying way.; browbeat; intimidate]:

And unlike Rhaenyra (ten years his senior), aka “The Realm’s Delight”, he never had the blatant or apparent admiration of the courtiers, peasants, etc. Rhaenyra also was definitely Viserys' favorite child (Aegon may or may not have known this, but I think it's primarily bc she came from was the first and only child he ever had during a slew of lost children with Aemma, so Rhaenyra could have been a sort of "miracle" child) and all their lives, they heard and saw Viserys protect Rhaenyra's rights over what they saw as theirs, esp Aegon's.

Early on, he and his brothers developed resentment, then hatred, for Rhaenyra and her first three sons: Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey Velaryon.

The enmity between Queen Alicent and Princess Rhaenyra was passed on to their sons, and the queen’s three boys, the Princes Aegon, Aemond, and Daeron, grew to be bitter rivals of their Velaryon nephews, resentful of them for having stolen what they regarded as their birthright: the Iron Throne itself. Though all six boys attended the same feasts, balls, and revels, and sometimes trained together in the yard under the same master-at-arms and studied under the same maesters, this enforced closeness only served to feed their mutual mislike, rather than binding them together as brothers. (F & B; “A Question of Succession”)

Image Credit: doug wheatley from Fire and Blood

Imagining how Aegon’s Childhood/Development (God, why....)

In a feudal society, individualism (or the way we conceptualize it) as a priority is not a substantial concept shared amongst the different populaces like it is for some societies today. You may come from a noble house with a distinctive history, image and notable deeds that shaped the customs of the land ruled. Or you are the ruled--the peasant that are told to work for the nobles. Of course, it’s way more complicated when put into action and in real life, with rich merchants, illegitimate children, etc. having sometimes influence enough to present an economic and political opposer and negotiations done. But generally, a feudal society is shaped by what role you play in maintaining the hereditary cultural order above most else, with the militant lords owning multiple tracts of k[land the serfs and peasants worked on their entire lives.

Here this kid is learning from a young age that men customarily inherit the final and nearly absolute authority and power over the House and the household, much less an entire country and its inhabitants. He knows about male-preference primogeniture. Sees that aristocratic and royal children learned about their own house’s history--that it is tradition or a precedent for sons to inherit power, and traditions usually define the identity of a house and its members as well as the relations to each other (Brackens vs Blackwoods; “Winter is Coming”).

But aside from a girl being chosen over him, he also learns that his father, Viserys, was able to ascend despite being the son of a second son because the lords were allowed to vote for him based on the principle that a man and those of the male line are the “best” and preferred leaders. Troubling the precedents of both undemocratic succession and male primogeniture. If he even thought about this deeply at all, we don't know.

If we’re going by firstborn male only-primogeniture, Viserys would be undisputed as heir. If by equal primogeniture, it should have been Rhaenys Targaryen who ruled, and then Laena Velayron after her. Viserys’s whole line, in another world, would have been mere secondary princes/princesses, then lords/ladies.

Yet, he was not chosen by the former king, but chosen by his own future subjects. Yeah there were EU elective monarchies, but that this is not a society where you did that to have a new monarch and it reduces the power of a monarch. Neither Jaehaerys nor any Westerosi monarch--Targ or not--wanted that.

So: But isn’t a king supposed to be made by the last king? Even with Jaehaerys' choosing and allowing the lords to choose, they still were those he decided to be the "final" deciders of who would lead them. There is this contradiction or paradox of monarchial leadership and succession: what the king desires then rules and what his subjects want from him and in a king. Even with Jaehaerys' choosing and allowing the lords to choose, they still were those he decided to be the "final" deciders of who would lead them. As if this were some sort of Spartan oligarchy. there is this contradiction or paradox of monarchial leadership and succession: what the king desires then rules and what his subjects want from him and in a king. 

Once again, the bit abt the GC of 101 is all more IF he actually spends time thinking this deep abt Viserys' ascension outside of how it should have made him also Viserys' heir and how it instead made Rhaenyra Viserys's seemingly biggest pride & joy. If he does or has at all thought about this, he's repressed its implications for him if he were to ever rule: that his own claim is vulnerable to circumstance of others’ various and changing desires, that he is vulnerable to others.

He also would have heard the courtiers, Alicent, her ladies-in-waiting, his wet nurse and other nurses, her brother Gwayne and father Otto, and even other servants talk about Rhaenyra, Viserys, the TArgs' state, etc. in whispers or aloud as he went his way around the Red Keep, constantly talking about the succession. Some would say how Rhaenyra is so cool, so beautiful, so precocious (not Alicent or Otto). Others that she doesn’t deserve the crown for her gender or her character, being so hostile to Alicent (his mother).  

Whatever the truth of these allegations, there was never any doubt that King Viserys still meant for his daughter to follow him upon the Iron Throne, and her sons to follow her in turn. By royal decree, each of the Velaryon boys was presented with a dragon’s egg whilst in the cradle. Those who doubted the paternity of Rhaenyra’s sons whispered that the eggs would never hatch, but the birth in turn of three young dragons gave the lie to their words. The hatchlings were named Vermax, Arrax, and Tyraxes. And Septon Eustace tells us that His Grace sat Jace upon his knee atop the Iron Throne as he was holding court, and was heard to say, “One day this will be your seat, lad.” (Fire and Blood; “A Question of Succession”)

Alicent and Otto could have felt that to convince Viserys to change his mind, Aegon will have to be presented as the better option or the "perfect" prince while play at Viserys’ heartstrings or desire for family and harmony. And they'd likely be doing this from babyhood until his more resistant teen years. So they may dress him from the moment he can be in group gatherings to create images suited to the persons they anticipate will see him at particular setting. Parties? Dress him up in intricate colors reminiscent of a king. Alone with the king at breakfast? Dress him up in subdued colors and simple stitching, maybe even have him just wear white to connote innocence and make him that much more attractive to engage with. Let everyone else also see how “bright” and “comely” Aegon seems. (Of course, he never manages to get a moniker like Rhaenyra celebrating his personality, so that would have quickly failed.) Not only with dress him, but instruct his behavior from as early as when he only begins to understand to obey so he may receive positive attention.

You can go into abuse territory like what was hinted at the episode 7 when Otto dragged him & Alicent slapped his face because Aegon, seeing how nothing he does or they do convinces Viserys will get him to change his mind, will just give up and "enjoy" the things that being a prince does entitle on: brothels, drink, food, and in his case, a beautiful dragon that he could rationalize also exudes, in its beauty, what he feels could be or otherwise already in him. It all also speaks to his sense of masculinity, and the SA and rapes he commits could be how he takes back control from his father and Rhaenyra though he may not always consciously think of them. Again, different directions. The more he doesn't allow Alicent or Otto to prince him up, the more profligate and uncaring he will be, and the more abuse they can both try to enforce onto him. He could have felt he was playing a game he never asked for, become a sort of trapped puppet, which in turn will feed into his feeling of victimhood and rage when Rhaenyra doesn't submit to his ascension (as us bk readers know).

Effect

So in all, Aegon, being a child and not being around his father 24/7 (partially also since kings aren’t like other noblemen and peasants, having separate apartments and doing several duties apart form their children), Aegon likely didn’t feel that Viserys truly saw him as worthy to inherit the crown as Rhaenyra, . So Aegon may have felt that his father thought him “worse” than a girl (which is sexist thinking). In spite of the importance that a lot of people around him place on custom, tradition, and precedent. Being a king--or being seen as deserving of it and conflating that with a father's love--speaks to his gender identity as a a trueborn firstborn man in this society because Alicent and Otto both would have impressed on him that it was so both indirectly and verbally. And everything in this world is valued through its given gendered properties: male (active; hard; fast; strong) vs female (passive; soft; slow; weak). Which brings us right back to how he self affirms/distracts himself: his dragon Sunfyre, alcohol, and sex/sexual assault.  

Sexual assaulters and rapists are losers. They rape and SA because it makes them feel more powerful than those they feel should not have power yet they see sometimes do or think they do. Often, when they can’t confront the real contender, they go after those that they can hurt with less consequences to themselves.

So, it’s easy to see that Aegon develops an "interesting" (not a positive connotation) inferiority complex. Everything that he is, it would be compared to Rhaenyra as well as all the other kings that have existed. Even by his mother and Otto. He is not the center of his world, Rhaenyra is.

In other words, he also still enables his own loser-dom.

Ironically, his dependency on only what pleasures his body can give him would not have likely endeared him to others around him (even his own siblings), because he is so emotionally stunted, resentful, and impatient--even with the statues he had commissioned later after his brothers’ deaths.  But I don’t think he was especially close to Aemond, Helaena, or Daeron because of the dissociation and because he himself is a way for Alicent to protect the others, creating another heavy obligation--which is one feature of ASoIaF. His family would have been together more for duty than love.

Duty vs Love

The statues were meant to "pay back" his dead brothers, reduce some of that guilt, and show his subjects how generous to those loyal to him will be treated & paint himself as a good king. It's a claim on the land, that he and his family can do what they want with it, because he is king.

Being made to feel like a device of duty and ambition perhaps wouldn’t encourage his already compromised ego into intimacy, creating an emotional void. Alcoholics are not commonly free with their affection either, especially when they are men. His siblings also might have looked at him as their future, or as an assignment. A duty. Someone to support for the kingship more than a friend. And the emotional voids each of them have would accentuate and affirm this.

The Dance

And what about his coronation? Runicter, Septon Eustace and Mushroom all refer to Aegon being away from the keep when Viserys died and Alicent brought the council members together in the green council. Two of these sources say that he was having sex--Mushroom with a more scandalous claim than Eustace, but actually correct as Eustace. confirms the garlic the girl (12-13) and tries to make it sound better by saying she was a merchant's daughter. (Class rather than the fact that he, a grown man, is fucking a preteen without it "even" being a forced arranged marriage, which just makes it so much the worse!)

Aegon even protested being crowned at first, one of them being that he shouldn’t “steal” from his older sibling--if we were to believe Eustace when he says that he eventually gives in when Criston Cole mentioned how Rhaenyra would not spare him or his family if she wanted her own illegitimate sons to sit safely on the throne.

However, Aegon did a quick switch up after he got his crown, and I think this just shows that he always wanted it (or the validation, really, from it) and didn't actually need much persuading bc it was his time to shine and show how great he could be to his dead father and all those who witnessed his profligacy. Prove how how great he is by showing how well he could protect his family by defeating his enemies.

One could say he accepted becoming king out of fear of Rhaenyra, esp after Alicent & Criston both told him what they did AND they never got along or spent time together. He likely has no idea or real knowledge of this older sister who lives apart from the rest of them for almost his entire life and only comes by for parties or the odd viist to their father, sitting on the table and rarely speaking ot each other. Like a distant aunt rather than a missed sibling. To this argument, Aegon might have felt he had to become king so as to be the King/the military commander before she can become Queen notably so she can't take him off guard and seek to kill or punish him and when Alicent has already the council and imprisoned the courtiers. But what drives me to think Aegon actually welcomed the crown even when he refused at first is because he still had the chance to keep refusing and lock his mother, Otto, & Criston in a protracted stalemate. They'd have to knock him out to really get him to appear before an entire crowd to be crowned, you can't crown a kicking-and-screaming or unconscious person, like they probably did for Daemon to marry Rhea Royce. So, I think he likely bent bc, again, hit was the final temptation, the opportunity to make himself worthy.

Thus Aegon II would have likely felt a strange euphoria after being crowned and “officially” becoming King. The final thing that stands in his way from completely consolidating power, validating himself, fully realizing his role, and affirming his manhood...is his more popular sister. again, they never got along or spent time together, so in this state of him feeling himself he’d be eager to get rid of her and his nephews through violence and dragons. 

Yes, it’s kinslaying, but:

he likely doesn’t feel her to be real kin and he is a character who depends on his sensual experiences as well as those things that symbolize power for self worth--Rhaenyra’s emotional and physical distance is too constant for him to see her as a true sibling

Rhaenyra is openly against Alicent, his mother

Rhaenyra is both a woman and the person keeping him from getting what he’s been owed for all his life

he marries his other sister, Helaena, and wives are not really the type of equal that we modern folks and non Targs would consider our spouse to be--royal siblings are not just siblings -> they are his subjects and if they are women they are also his sexual partner -> he has learned to see more as devices to show power or that which is mostly under his authority---Targaryens do not usually regard their siblings as just siblings. Quite literally, a sibling could be or become everything and anything: lover, enemy, peer/friend, child/dependent, superior, subject, etc. Depends on circumstances. How adaptable 👀.

So with every pushback like how Rhaenyra’s supporters coming out the woodwork, her supporter’s military wins...it’s no wonder he was ecstatic at Lucerys’ death at the hands of Aemond and the claws of Vhagar. Targaryen might seems on his side.

Aemond Targaryen...who would henceforth be known as Aemond the Kinslayer to his foes...returned to King’s Landing, having won the support of Storm’s End for his brother Aegon, and the undying enmity of Queen Rhaenyra. If he thought to receive a hero’s welcome, he was disappointed. Queen Alicent went pale when she heard what he had done, crying, “Mother have mercy on us all.” Nor was Ser Otto pleased. “You only lost one eye,” he is reported to have said. “How could you be so blind?” The king himself did not share their concerns, however. Aegon II welcomed Prince Aemond home with a great feast, hailed him as “the true blood of the dragon,” and announced that he had made “a good beginning.” (F&B; “A Son for a Son”)

Perhaps this is one of the only moments that he actually felt close or obtained intimacy with Aemond. Or feels like he has. Aemond helped him out, so he's praising Aemond for being what Daemon is to Rhaenyra. An enforcer of his own will. Aemond proved himself to be an agent that will “prove” him and his strength and kingly authority. Aegon sees Aemond apart from being this guy who’s better than him in the physical stuff, like a warrior. And with Aemond and seemingly the entire kingdom at his side, Aegon felt he could take on anything.

It's when Dameon takes Harrenhal with barely a scratch and when more people declare for Rhaenyra against him, with the green's total surprise, that this arrogant euphoria starts to diminish and morph into something like the doubt and helplessness he's felt before being crowned. So when he’s butting heads against Otto for what he thinks is inaction, he is showing frustration at Rhaenyra display a seeming competency or luck over him that he can't handle or help to compare to before Viserys died:

AND

"The Red Dragon and the Gold"

With Criston’s encouragement to show his strength and his son Jaehaerys’ murder, it gets to a point where he flagrantly dismisses Otto’s bids at less violent attempts to cow Rhaenyra, and it definitely leads into his decision to put himself in danger and fight with Aemond against Rhaenys and Meleys.

That was the first time he ever used Sunfyre for battle and it came with grevious self harm and harm to his dragon: he got many burns, broke bones and Sunfyre’s wing was incapacitated enough that he had to be left behind for a time in the field to be fed and recover, while Aegon also stayed in bed for the rest of that year. He had to be carried around in a litter when he wasn’t sleeping.

And later, when he finally escapes King’s Landing and reunites with Sunfyre at Dragonstone to recover, he must have generated enough sick anticipation and rage to kill Rhaenyra through his dragon in front of his legitimate nephew’s face. Before then, he had flown Sunfyre again only to be attacked by Baela and her dragon Moondancer. In that altercation, he got even more injuries, shattering both of his legs. 

Both were mistakes that began as him, again, trying to prove himself AS WELL AS revenge after years of being pushed into a more “feminine” passive position. The Rook's Rest fight was also him trying to make Jaehaerys' death mean something, a new motivator of that long, deep desire for affirmation, even though he probably loved his kids...in his way.

Broken and burned both those times, but specifically talking about the first for now--now he’s in an even worse passive position than he had ever been in, where he has to stay put and still be carried in a chair. Now that his body is actually broken, he feels a "crippledom" & uselessness worse than before. Worse and similar to how he’s been told to depend on those he felt in his way and worse/similar to when he was just a prince. When his life meant being a comparison to Rhaenyra.

In his second time getting burnt and broken by Baela & Moondancer, he attempts to mimic his coronation flight on Sunfyre but that affirmation is also denied to him. He is not allowed to land on Dragonstone as its master, or as a dragon (since he'd been hiding and recuperating in the caves on the island...dragons "live" in caves naturally) but a sort of mangled alien.

In all this time, he has, maybe in his eyes, been “disproven” and flouted as the rightful Targaryen heir. But like Rhaenyra with her position as heir for many years and others denying her, he is not going to just give up after having been king and been crowned for some time. Not after gotten the injuries that would have stayed with him for all his life if he had been allowed to continue. He probably felt that he had to hold onto his claim more and give meaning to his losses, despite also feeling like a cripple. Maybe he felt that his father’s dismissal of him came from a real place and he wanted to banish that feeling through cruelty. 

After Rhaenyra’s Death

Image Credit: doug wheatley from Fire and Blood

I believe that by this time, Aegon was so desperate to hold onto the power he had finally “assured” through Rhaenyra’s death. But as proven later, people still fought against him.

He refused to grant clemency to those who had supported Rhaenyra (as Jaehaerys I did w/Maegor's followers) and to even cut off pieces of his nephews to intimidate those still fighting. He wanted all these people, those who will not accept him, dead and when some actually appeared to be close enough to threaten him, he took Alicent’s suggestion to mutilate Aegon III/the Tounger. That, his open distrust of Corlys, AND the plan to later kill Corlys when he's no longer of use to them--divulged by Larys Strong-prompt Corlys and Larys to put their plan to assassinate him in action (“The Short, Sad Reign of Aegon II”):

“Your Grace,” the Sea Snake said, when the rump of the once proud green council had assembled, “you must surrender. The city cannot endure another sack. Save your people and save yourself. If you abdicate in favor of Prince Aegon, he will allow you to take the black and live out your life with honor on the Wall.”

“Will he?” King Aegon said. Munkun tells us he sounded hopeful. His mother entertained no such hope.

“You fed his mother to your dragon,” she reminded her son. “The boy saw it all.”

The king turned to her desperately. “What would you have me do?” 

“You have hostages,” the Queen Dowager replied. “Cut off one of the boy’s ears and send it to Lord Tully. Warn them he will lose another part for every mile they advance.”

“Yes,” Aegon II said. “Good. It shall be done.” He summoned Ser Alfred Broome, who had served him so well on Dragonstone. “Go and see to it, ser.” As the knight took his leave, the king turned to Corlys Velaryon. “Tell your bastard to fight bravely, my lord. If he fails me, if any of these Braavosi pass the Gullet, your precious Lady Baela shall lose some parts as well.”

Yeah, he’s a charmer, this one.

Lastly.

None of this is to say that he deserves the throne and it should be given to him or Rhaenyra should just give it to him (fuck that!), that he is a good person, or that he deserves to be allowed to do what he wants--it is to say that he is a perfect example of feudal patriarchal purity and thus a terrible human being who chose to use women’s bodies as if they are toys. 

Going by the trailer alone AND by his given character behavior/traits in F&B, I think Aegon is one of the better adapted and acted characters of the show. Let's hope they will at least continue that with him.

#aegon ii's characterization #aegon ii #fire and blood characters #fire and blood #asoiaf #the greens' characterizations #my headcanon

[arctic-hands]

Lol governments and charities really don't conceptualize disabled people at all

Caved in after waiting three months for my SNAP to go back to the previous two hundred thirty that was slashed to one-oh-eight dollars over summer with no reason given other than that I was under "redetermination" during that time despite my having emailed the papers needed over back in May. So that was four months of going hungry because I couldn't afford much in the way of hypoallergenic foods, and pretty much living off of white rice the entire time, only to be told last week I'm finally getting my SNAP increased again...by twelve whole dollars. Fuck. Gf bread is 7 dollars for a third of the amount so that's right out, same with pasta and even ramen, what little meat I've been eating is the fattiest slabs of ground beef that leave half a cup of grease when drained and maybe turkey bacon since it was on sale, I couldn't afford oat milk when I last ordered groceries, and today I had my first fresh fruit in weeks solely because of a new program in my city alone that gives us thirty bucks of SNAP for fresh produce.

So I caved and contacted 211, the government hotline that's supposed to hook you up with various help like charities, housing, and food pantries, pleading my case that I, a disabled person with no car, no ability to carry things more than five pounds, and no ability to walk very far, with only a corner store and amazon delivery for food and no food pantry within my severely limited walking distance, and even should I be able to hobble to a distant pantry and somehow don't wreck my back carrying a box of food home, there's no guarantee I'd even be able to eat what they gave me.

So I plead my case and desperate circumstances and this is the email I got back from them.

[Image Described: a screenshot of an email that says "Good afternoon, I am responding to your request for food assistance. While we do not offer a program her [sic] that specifically meets your needs, I will email over severeal resources in your area that may be able to assist you during this time. In terms of transportation, we" it cuts off. End I.D]

And then they send me a list of the closest pantries, all out of walking distance even before I had a bum knee and a cane and probably give out breadish food, and they say they have a "special lyft program" I can use a full TWO times a month, but that still leaves me unable to carry a box to and from the lyft.

lol rip me I guess 🥲

#ableist society #ableism #snap #food pantry #211 #the government doesn't care about disabled people at best or actively want to starve us out at worst #food #food allergies #disability

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

In honor of PRIDE, I want to share with you all some words from my mother. Now, my mother is an older lady now, even SHE says so. She's in her 60s, and she's lived through a lot. These days, she's moved down to Florida to care for HER mother and stepfather at the end of their lives.

Here's the important context for you to know about my mother - she is a queer woman, a queer elder if you will, married to her wife, my stepmother, of 15 years. My mother was engaged, very young, to a young man her age. And the week before her Bachelorette party, she came out as queer. Her friends turned the party into a "Tess isn't getting married party" and the young man took the broken engagement shockingly well, but my mother had always liked quiet, polite young men. From then on my mother lived the life of an independent queer youth in the 1980s, living in the Castro in San Francisco. She organized marches, sexual health and safety classes, she sat at bedsides while people died, she lost loved ones and found family whose names she taught me to call out in joy and grief and love on days of memorial, even though I never had the pleasure of meeting them. She ran drag shows, she fought bigots, she ran abortion clinic protection trainings, and she spent her time writing letters to detained peoples and collaborating with mutual aid programs that were led to benefit their families.

My mother struggled with being a mother. Her own intergenerational trauma combined with the unhealed traumas she suffered during her time on the frontlines of a genocide against the people who took her in, her people, the self-conceptualization she was learning to build.... She was able to give me so many of her gifts, but some of them had already been poisoned by her pain. But above anything else, my mother lived and breathed our community. Everything she did, every decision she made, in the back of her mind, she weighed her ability to continue her community building efforts. She "retired" so to speak after marrying her wife, far from believing the work was done, but finally recognizing that she was losing everything in her life that she was doing the work for. Since then, my mother has lived a quiet little working class life with her wife.

So here is what my retired radical queer mom has had to say about the community and PRIDE

Mom: I've had these moments where, where I start to get angry about what people these days are asking for. For example, when you kids were in school it was all about Prom, let us go to Prom too, we should get to have our dates or our clothes like any cis person or heterosexual couple. And my first reaction, of course, is like really? Prom? *That's* what you're worried about, what the fuck is wrong with these kids. But then immediately I check myself, because that's the trauma speaking, right? That's the years and years of blood and guts and the clenching of my heart still just to be able to hold my wife's hand in public, right? Fighting for Prom was the point, BECAUSE it feels outlandish to me, you know, that means you kids are there you're, you're freer than I am. I still wear that chain, you're free of it, and goddamnit if that ain't the point you know?

Me: Yeah, I get what you mean, basically seeing that resistance not as a reaction to the person you're talking to and what they're doing with they're life, but as a shackle that stops you from being free in that way that was put on you by an oppressive system. Or maybe, a door that gets closed in your face and locked by the system ahead of time so that once youenter the building thereare already only certain ideas you're even allowed to consider. Cuz it's not always about you wanting that specific thing for yourself right? Just, the idea that it could be available to people as the standard and it doesn't have to be a big deal in the first place sometimes is or isn't allowed to exist for things. I feel like sometimes the community itself has trouble with that too though, like I remember you telling me this story about a coworker or a friend or someone telling you that you'd have to choose someday in response to your bisexuality, and I've gotten some hilarious and fucked up comments over the years between the bisexuality, the genderqueer, the interracial marriage, the polyamory, the leather....

Mom: Oh, [dismissive sound] there's always been some people who are like that, sure, especially in my context it was bisexuality and leather, oh, people could get so weird about it. But they didn't mind our help so much when everyone was dying and community was all we had. I don't even know how many condoms and dental dams I must've passed out or classes I must've taught..... And then, when the rest of the world started to die, they blamed us! Bisexuals! Not the total lack of care, not the negligence, not letting us all....

Me: I know, Mama.

Mom: [grumpy] I love PRIDE, don't get me wrong, but I just hope all you kids** are keeping up the work and the enthusiasm year round. Or maybe pace yourself so that you can do some things year round and then go all out for PRIDE. I'm just so proud of all of you.

**I regret to inform you that "kids" means anyone under 40. I have tried to change this but in vein.

[bassiter2]

ok yeah it's like they're billionaires who chose to get into a tiny vessel using an xbox controller to steer 2 miles below sea level and yes that it just so utterly stupid and priviliged that on the most personal level that's just THAT stupid that yeah they deserve it. but the reaction to it. if i talk to 1 person and they agree "yeah i think they deserve it" that's whatever but knowing that the EN MASSE reaction to all this is like. so normalized. it's a joke. these guys for SURE deserve it but it's crazy to know the sheer number of ppl who think so. bc it's hard to believe that all these ppl have actually put as much thought into it as i have. my immediate assumption (perhaps mistakenly?) is that the majority of all this is thoughtless. just a product of the culture. that the context of this situation doesn't matter nearly as much as a very modern sort of morbid focus. can you imagine you're slowly dying and this process is more psychological than anything and unbeknownst to you twitter is trending with memes about your impending horrific demise. it's probably better that you're not aware of this while alive but oh my god imagine becoming a ghost and you learn about it. and it's like it's not even that i disapprove of the attitude in and of itself bc if you put the thought into it it's 100% valid but i KNOW that's not the majority, i know it's just how we deal with things now, that we don't care. that making light of something so deeply horrifying just like *conceptually* is so normalized. yes i think it's funny yes i also think it's awful. what the fuck is the world we're living in. 5 men are suffocating to death in a place that humans were never meant to be and yes it's their own fault and no it's not a somber moment it's a chance to quote retweet a family guy screencap. it's like the fact alone that they were able to get down there by these means to begin with IS the horror. the news we keep recieving is that there IS no news. we all get live updates on how much air they have left, as though we could do anything about it. why are we being given these not-updates? to honor their lives or just because it seems like we should? because nothing so terrible has ever happened before? because they would be mad if they got rescued and came back and found that nothing was getting reported? and god yeah chances are there will be nothing. the news will be that there is no news. they won't get recovered until we all forget about this. it's a horror story if nothing else of how far you get from reality due to hubris when you get obscenely rich and how ready you are to hop right into just the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person. can you imagine being so rich that nothing bad at all happens to you for like 40+ years and now you're dying like this. can you imagine. what a way to die. is it even really dying? if you're hardly human to begin with? there's no box to fit this into and that's what makes it more horrible than anything else really. i think that's why we have to veer toward humor. it's just THAT bad. i just wish we didn't have the platforms to let me know what the state of the world is. like we're all like this now ok. everything's bad

[max1461]

So the core idea behind local democracy is, as far as I see it, basically the same as the idea some radfems gesture at when they say "men shouldn't be able to vote on laws about abortion because it's a women's issue" and so forth. The principle is that we should minimize how much people can impose on each other's lives, through the government or otherwise. Letting people who are not affected by a given policy vote on that policy just gives them the power to push other people around unduly. If you don't live in Alabama, why should you get to be part of deciding what the laws are in Alabama? If you don't have a uterus, why should you get to be part of deciding what the laws are for a uterus?

In principle, I like this idea. I've referred to it as "minimally obtrusive government" before. If the function of the state is to solve coordination problems, then it seems reasonable to say it should aim to do so in a way that doesn't bring extraneous new agents into the given coordination problem being addressed. Or something to that general effect.

I think this is also why the idea of national self-determination often looks appealing to people who don't have nationalist sympathies per se. Even if the British empire integrated all its former colonies under a democratic framework with full voting rights for everyone, you might still object "why should people in Britain get to be part of deciding how people in Kenya live? They don't live in Kenya!"

The problem, of course, is that determining "who is affected by what" is extremely tricky business. To some degree, basically everyone is affected by everything. A location-based heuristic still looks ok sometimes—what goes on in some tiny town in Alaska doesn't have much impact on what goes on in some tiny town in Uzbekistan. But sometimes it doesn't, like when wealthy London boroughs block the creation of public transit lines through their territory, preventing construction of shorter routes that would have been of benefit to the people on both sides. As the world globalizes, I suspect the location heuristic will get worse and worse.

Beyond that, whoever gets to draw the boundaries of "who is affected by what" has enormous power. Gerrymandering is sort of a special case of this, but you can imagine that if the government actually implemented some identity-restricted voting system (along modern "woke" lines or any others), you'd get "conceptual Gerrymandering" just as pernicious. And of course whoever got to draw the initial boundaries would be deciding the fate of society going forward in a very significant way that not everyone might agree with.

The two extreme cases on either side of this question are "centralized world democracy", where everyone gets a say on every issue, and "total anarchy", where no one gets a say on the behavior of anyone else. Of course, that's only on a naive reading. Under total anarchy, you could use your total freedom to gather up some followers and weapons and go oppress the guys next to you; under world democracy you can of course employ various methods to affect what gets voted on in the first place and protect your "local" interests this way. In effect we're always striking some balance between "other people can tell you what to do" and "other people can't tell you what to do", no matter the government system we have.

But still, I like this principle. I like the idea that we try to prevent democracy from being used as a cudgel (intentionally or unintentionally) by which people can unfairly impose on each other from afar. But designing a system that does it well is really, really, maybe impossibly tricky.

#society

[themindmovement]

“I suppose it comes down to a rather awesome awareness of mortality. Our ability, unlike the other animals, to conceptualize our own end creates tremendous psychic strains within us; whether we like to admit it or not, in each man’s chest a tiny ferret of fear at this ultimate knowledge gnaws away at his ego and his sense of purpose. We’re fortunate, in a way, that our body, and the fulfillment of its needs and functions, plays such an imperative role in our lives; this physical shell creates a buffer between us and the mind-paralyzing realization that only a few years of existence separate birth from death. If man really sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?

Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective — who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled — can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie….But even for those who lack the sensitivity to more than vaguely comprehend their transience and their triviality, this inchoate awareness robs life of meaning and purpose; it’s why ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,’ why so many of us find our lives as absent of meaning as our deaths.

The world’s religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache; but as clergymen now pronounce the death of God and, to quote Arnold again, ‘the sea of faith’ recedes around the world with a ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,’ man has no crutch left on which to lean—and no hope, however irrational, to give purpose to his existence. This shattering recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than I suspect even psychiatrists are aware.

But if life is so purposeless, is it worth living?

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism — and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But, if he’s reasonably strong — and lucky — he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s elan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

— Stanley Kubrick

#stanley kubrick #life #meaninglessness

[adamsvanrhijn]

i think thomas' story may be more immediately sympathetic because he's this guy with nothing who just really wants to survive, whereas one of oscar's primary goals is not just to survive (which like. is clearly one of his goals! not just continuing being rich but avoiding reputational death and ostracism for himself and his family) but also to get a bunch more money so he can continue living a life of immense luxury. however i get the hunch that oscar dislikers probably are not also thomas fans (tell me if im wrong?) so i don't think it's just that. you're so right that thomas gives the viewer a lot of space to imagine his motivations though and leeway for interpretation. this is kind of getting off the oscar train, but i recently read the well of loneliness and felt like in many ways, the way radclyffe hall describes the main character's constant sense of being apart and separate and how she always feels like she's being laughed at or mocked even when she is not (there's this really affecting scene where she's on a hunt and starts to envision herself as the fox), which makes it very hard for her to essentially show off her good qualities when she's interacting with "straight society." i thought that this is essentially thomas' mindset and situation that drives his bad decision-making. the well of loneliness is definitely coming from that tradition of the gay person as part of a "third sex" (hall's words) that is forced to stand apart and is alienated bc of their intrinsic difference. oscar as a character is nothing like this because he doesn't have this conception of his sexuality or himself as an "other," which is explicitly discussed in the show to their credit!! but is perhaps still hard for the modern viewer who thinks about sexuality in terms of identity to relate with. i'm sorry about this super long ask lol i'd put it in the replies but my replies are broken </3

oh yes absolutely i think that in general the class aspect is Huge — both of them are, for most modern viewers i would expect, at two ends of the spectrum with lots of associated social ideas that serve the perception of their character — generally not in oscar's favor but not necessarily in thomas's either! like i think you're right that thomas is more sympathetic in general for his social position and what he does and doesn't Have, and i suspect the authorial intent is for viewers to feel that way given how thomas is presented literally from day one... but at the same time, on the flip side, a lot of people perceive thomas the same way that in the show, the others at downton abbey do: that his unwillingness to Know His Place is something worthy of criticism, and that he thinks he is entitled to things he doesn't really deserve, and that he should be able to settle for what he has and any desire not to do this is unreasonable or unrealistic of him and unlikely to turn out in his favor—and that is a sentiment that even devout thomas fans have aligned with as well.

some of those thomas fans have been vocal about their distaste for oscar.

i haven't read the well of loneliness in a very very long time but that's a compelling comparison — i mean da 2.02 alone speaks volumes about how thomas sees himself and his position in the world, and i think that aligns with what you're saying here.

i also think when we talk in terms of identity and self-definition, oscar is an interesting position in that, as you say, he doesn't conceptualize himself and his behavior as being intrinsic to his sense of self, and resists this when it is posed to him, but...

practically, he clearly does recognize that he is in a particular position that is related to his feelings and his behavior! "plenty of men have had to make exactly the same decision; they can't all be wretched" (not an exact quote i cba to look it up) in 1.03 i would say is the first instance of this, and then of course we have the everything of 1.08 — his calling out the difference between what he is doing and what he isn't doing, and recognition of the social consequences of this. like i think oscar is very careful not to other [verb] himself... but he is very extremely aware of how he might be othered by those in his community whose good opinion matters for him to lead the life he wants to lead. it's not quite that the box doesn't exist; the box does exist and he wants to stay away from it at all costs, while at the same time wanting to live his life in a way that is comfortable for him.

there's the material piece of that of course but also like... oscar is choosing to make choices that are likely to result in his being perceived a certain way. could he not Simply Not Do That? it's an interesting dimension to his character that clearly the answer for him is no, he can't just Not Do That (and as gay people all the world over know, it's not simple or easy to compromise yourself that way at all), while he also very desperately wants to have and exceed what everyone else has and to be perceived in a way that is going to at times be at odds with how he is actually presenting himself to the world.

#oscar van rhijn tag

[celiaelise]

So my dad and stepmom have been watching "Love On The Spectrum", and I ended up watching a couple episodes with them.

The show is fine, idk, I don't really have thoughts on it right now. What I DO have thoughts on is how my father responds to it.

He always spoke about the people on the show as such an Other! Now, let me be clear. No one in my family is diagnosed with autism. However, I strongly suspect most, if not all, of us have it, and my dad's the person who I have the least doubts about. (with myself being second) Also to be clear, I have not voiced this suspicion to my father.

He KNOWS he resembles an autistic person, and has been told so by more than one third party! But he seems to think people who are "successful" don't count, or whatever. (Which, I suppose if we're going by the very strict medical definition of "a disorder", could be seen as true.)

But when I pointed out that one of the autistic people on the show doesn't seem to have enough information on a topic, and say, "someone should have explained this to him!" my dad says, "they do explain it to them, but they don't seem to be able to conceptualize romance and relationships the way we do." Like, excuse me, who's "we"?? You KNOW I'm 28 and have NEVER been on a date; the same age OR OLDER as some of the people on the show whose lack of romantic experience is being portrayed as remarkable.

An autistic man goes on a date with a woman who tells him she's a pre-K teacher, and my dad goes, "oh! so she's not also autistic." (I worked as a teacher at daycare/preschool for four years.) And then expresses that he'd been wondering if it's even moral or appropriate for someone without autism to be in a relationship with someone autistic. I remind him that one of my friends, whose years-long relationship my father is aware of, has autism, and their partner doesn't. (I don't remind my father that he, himself, appears to be an autistic man in a relationship with a nuerotypical woman.)

My father tries to correct himself, without having the specific vocabulary to, that he means people like in the show, who live with their parents at the age of thirty. "Physically they're capable of taking care of themselves, so, y'know, there must be some kind of mental problem." I don't point out that I, myself, will turn 29 in a couple months, and, though I do live alone in my apartment, I receive a pretty significant amount of support, financially and otherwise, from both my parents. He maybe doesn't understand just how bad I am at "taking care of myself" l am, even aside from the money.

Perhaps he doesn't know that I can't even walk through my space normally because there's so much stuff everywhere, that I only shower every other day and I'm doing well to brush my teeth twice a week, that I can barely keep myself fed and never cook, or that I'm currently struggling not to get fired over being late because I struggle to process the linear passage of time. Not to mention that I need an entire armada of medications every day just to function at THIS level!!

Honestly I've lately been considering the possibility that I might never free myself from my parents' support, what that would mean and what it would look like. Because sometimes I'm like, "Wow I really AM disabled", and even doing my current job, (which is easy, and full of autistic people) seems like a huge challenge.

So, anyway, idk. I related more to the people on the show than my dad seems willing to recognize, and that doesn't feel great. Plus, like, even if I'm wrong, and we AREN'T autistic, what benefit is there to distancing ourselves from autistic people??? From being like, "they're NOTHING like ME."?

#autism #actually autistic #my life #my feelings #my family #by elise #ableism #love on the spectrum

[maizeversal]

Tbh I love Underverse!Ink, I think he's a lot of fun and seeing him get to play a non-heroic role for once is,,, chef's kiss. Fuck it up little man. Fuck everything up. Okay maybe not that much. Girl you are KILLING it. GIRL you can STOP NOW it is ALREADY DEAD

And, like... I totally get why some people dislike it, especially since in other cases, the Soullessness thing has been taken as a mental health metaphor. I think that's a valid take with a lot of potential and it's reasonable that people would be uncomfortable with this new angle.

But, at the same time, as somebody with its own cocktail of mental issues, a few of which are things that people tend to ascribe to Ink as aspects of the lighter, more flavor text versions of Soullessness, I honestly don't see it that way. So I don't have a problem with UV!Ink on that front. By no means is it a perfect series, nothing is, but that's not one of the things that's bugged me, y'know?

Personally I like the idea of Soullessness being something... Alien, for lack of a better word. Not "eldritch", either, but like... Okay. Let's try a comparison.

So, to a Human, a Soul is the source of magic, right? And it's definitely connected to emotions and identity and all of that, but it's main job as an organ is to contain and control the person's innate magic. It gets its color based on the Human's behavior, not the other way around, kind of like how flamingos turn pink because of the shrimp they eat.

A Monster Soul, however, is the ENTIRE ORGAN CAVITY. That's the brain. That's the heart, the lungs, the guts, all of it packed into a sort of nucleus (although that's not a perfect analogy, either, because an animal cell's nucleus only houses the genetic material, but... You know what I mean). The rest of the body is essentially a machine that allows the Soul to get around, feed itself, and fend off threats.

So imagine if you met someone, and they just... Didn't have organs. No brain, no heart, no lungs, no guts. There's a lot of variations that the human body can survive and even thrive with; we have ways to pump blood and oxygen through the body without a standard circulatory system, thanks to inventions like pacemakers and organ transplants. But you can't live without a brain. You just can't, like, fundamentally. Yet, this person talking to you has lifted up part of their skull and there is nothing there. They do the same thing with their ribs and there is no blood. They seem to be doing fine, no machinery or even surgical scars, but there is no way they should, scientifically, be a functioning organism.

That's what I've always thought of it as. Ink is not a Monster, nor is he Human; he is something else entirely. The best way I've been able to pin it down is that he is a spirit, or a pure manifestation of Creative magic. And quite frankly, yeah, a spirit would have a completely different way of interacting with the world around them. Our experiences, our motives, even our ability to bond with others, are uniquely human in the most animal, evolutionary sense; Monsters, too, would be influenced by the conditions in which they evolved.

But Ink? Did not evolve. He was Created. Though he learns and grows as a conscious being, as a mind, he will never physically grow; any changes over time are superficial results of his internal, personal growth.

And I love that. I LOVE how goddamn weird he is. I absolutely adore the conceptual tug-of-war between him wanting to be like the others and having to embrace that he just isn't in order to move forward - the idea that, yes, he is alien, he is "unknowable" but only if nobody tries, he is a different kind of creature and that is okay, he is still a person. He's done something horrible. But, like any person - Human, Monster, or otherwise - he is more than that one mistake. He has free will. That is his responsibility.

#underverse ink #underverse 0.7 #ink sans #lol it always feels odd typing that. this is not sans this is a creepypasta

[dream-critical]

Where can I honestly read this?? I don't have Twitter, but I need to see what was written for myself because it sounds golden

For you fellow Tumblr user? I have copy pasted the entire thing.

"this post is going to get a tiny bit personal, so if you’re not in the mood to be a little upset probably best to not read it, though it’s about the community drama right now.

When me and my friends started working on the United SMP, the QSMP had not been announced at all and Quackity had kept things very close to his chest with what he was working on.

We were all probably thinking the same general thing, we need another Minecraft server to play on. The idea was just to have a server to be able to just hop on Minecraft and play survival Minecraft again, and after squidgame we all agreed that it would be awesome to have it be creators from around the world.

So I instantly started working on the translation mod, and was really excited to storyboard ideas for the SMP! Calling with lots of creators about it, expressing excitement and brainstorming and really getting excited to play Minecraft again.

After the QSMP was announced I was surprised and reached out to quackity expressing support for the project and letting him know I was working on something to bring creators from around the world together too, and that we should chat about it!

His SMP announcement didn’t mention any translation stuff, and was English and Spanish based so I still was thinking that conceptually they were different enough to co-exist, and even was hoping to share the mod with Quackity if he was interested in using it.

Quackity didn’t reply to me at the time, and obviously I assumed it was due to being overwhelmed and busy with the QSMP and all the messages he was probably getting.

I reached out to multiple members of the QSMP that I’m close with after quackity didn’t reply to me, and got varying reassurance from them that the QSMP was a passion project to bring Quackity’s two biggest communities of English and Spanish together, and that the servers were completely different with hardly any creator overlap or idea overlap based on what I was planning.

Those creators even all expressed strong interest in playing on both, and excitement about all the communities coming together, and this new ERA of SMPS. I expressed my interest in sharing the mod with Quackity to them, and how I would be giving it to the public for free, and asked for advice on how I should approach him about it without him feeling like I was trying to butt my way into his project or something.

after talking with them though, it really encouraged me to continue working on the idea, with the idea that it wouldn’t really be a me thing, that there would be 6 other owners and it could be a big community project, with an open source translation mod to bridge the community together.

On my original owners list, Quackity was actually the idea for the “owner” from the Spanish community, as this was before I knew anything about the QSMP, and I wanted every language to have a figure to make decisions so it wasn’t just one guy making decisions.

I figured at this point he probably wouldn’t be interested though, and thought that was fair enough obviously with his new SMP. Then I uploaded my translation mod video, which was planned as an April Fools joke, and posted a simple little promotional photo graphic.

The next day Quackity announced a translation mod for the QSMP, with the same functionality, and obviously with the same general idea of bridging that language gap even more by literally live translating! I can’t pretend that I wasn’t a little bit taken aback, and even slightly disappointed as I knew this would probably lead to drama.

But at the same time I was also super excited and hopeful for the future of Minecraft content, I was excited to share ideas, potentially share development to make things even easier and better for the community, and just have a cool thing to talk about with Quackity that we both worked on and were clearly passionate about. Ideas and work like that are really hard to put together and take time, passion, and dedication.

I reached out to Quackity again, expressing support and laughing about the fact that we had such similar ideas. He hadn’t replied to my previous message, and didn’t reply to that one either.

I bumped him, mentioning that a lot of vitriol was building between our fan bases because of this, and suggested that we talk about it and work out what to do so we can avoid everyone being at each others throat.

All the hatred and in-fighting of communities can be avoided with creators communicating and setting boundaries and so on. After days went by, I bumped again going over the timeline of everything because I had the thought that maybe he was frustrated with me and thought that I had stolen his idea or something.

Still no response so I reached out to other friends of ours who were having the same communication struggles, so I figured it wasn’t a me thing.

I bumped him again a week or so later, expressing my love for him and that an SMP wasn’t worth hurting our friendship over and that I had no intention of competing with him or trying to copy any of his ideas.

To “at least talk to me man! I don’t want to have any problems between us I love ya & I tried avoiding anything like this from happening, idk what the best resolution is but it’s definitely not silence between us” Still no responses, and at that point I was very stressed and concerned about it, so members of the QSMP and non members that were friends of mine attempted to reach out to get clarity or figure out what was going on.

From what I gathered, there were no responses, and it was strongly alluded from Q that you wouldn’t be allowed to play on both servers if you were a part of the QSMP.

Which totally makes sense for Quackity, as there’s not that many creators on the QSMP and it takes a lot of time to make all the mods and updates for content and you want it to be as active as possible.

I was still incredibly confused, and I continued to reach out and have even put my project on hold to try and work out what was going on behind the scenes and extend love & support to quackity and everything he has done publicly.

as only a couple weeks before this happened we were all still joking and talking in calls, playing in events together, texting & chatting, and my assumption would be that we are all still really good friends and that this is just a big misunderstanding with a lot of lack of communication between Quackity & all of us.

That being said, I’ve seen the communities split against each other and have tons of hate build around this and around the speculations of peoples motives and friendships and so on, and it’s really really harmful to the community as a whole.

I have seen more threats, doxing, fights, slander, and hate between a bunch of fan bases that I’ve seen in a very long time. I personally have experienced an elevated level of in real life threats & stalkers & even had the police involved in somebody showing up at my house, & even putting trackers on my family vehicles, surrounding this drama, for the first time since pre-face reveal.

That’s really why I feel like I have to say something about it despite me wanting to avoid any kind of serious talk about all of this, especially even talking about communication publicly feels wrong but necessary in this instance.

I never like to air out anything that feels or is private, but I feel like in this case it’s really important for my fan base to be aware of my intentions, motives, thought process, and how we got to where we are.

I’ve always been a creator that’s very open with my fan base about everything going on in my life and this is a massive thing right now for my friends & me & is something an outsider might not really understand what’s going on and I feel clarity is important.

So like I said, it’s really not worth all the drama. I want to play Minecraft with friends again and really can’t wait to start doing it again soon.

The United SMP concept will be changed so that it’s again different enough from the QSMP to not compete with it, and keep the main goal of uniting creators from around the world to just simply play vanilla Minecraft.

so the original “10 creators from each language, these languages”, etc is going to be changing to a different structural format due to the QSMP announcements, as I really don’t want them to be conceptually so similar and had no idea they would be.

My intention was never to try and compete with another SMP, cause any friendship problems, or cause drama in the community, it was just to have fun and put out cool unique content. Just remember, this is all about uniting the world and communities and sharing positivity around the world.

I love everything that Quackity’s done and I really believe this is a big miscommunication that we’ll all be able to laugh about down the line together. I don’t support any hate towards anyone, any form of doxing, threats, harassment, racism, is unacceptable and you’re not welcome in our community if you think otherwise.

I will continue to say that I have the upmost respect for Quackity as a creative mind, a hard worker, and a person, and don’t want anyone trying to take things I do and compare them to his work to put him down or to pit us against each other.

My hope is still that quackity sees this and knows that no one’s ever meant any ill will, we love him, and that his friends are trying to reach out to him and know what’s going on and are proud of everything he’s done."

#mercury.txt #asks

[transgeoffrickly]

can i ask for some ed related advice please - no pressure if you're uncomfortable answering it though since it's a bit different to the usual stuff <3 my partner doesn't understand my ed, or me really. he knows i am restricting but doesn't say anything about it except that i should get help, and when i try to talk to him, he shuts me down and says he doesn't understand how anyone could feel that way about food. our relationship is already rocky and i feel like i have to do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting and this is just pushing me to a breaking point. like obviously i KNOW i need to get help it would just be nice if he tried himself with me. he's like this with everything though like school and work (he's already out of college and i am in my second year) where he expects me to just be able to deal with things on my own and i just can't. is it bad i wish it felt like he gave a fuck.

hi, anon! i'm so sorry you're being misunderstood by someone you deserve to have supporting you through something difficult like this. it's so difficult you go through even with support in place and your partner is absolutely someone you should be able to turn to.

there are a lot different ways that people around us deal with learning about our struggles with eating disorders. because we do have to acknowledge that we are hurting the people around us when we are engaging in our eds. of course, that does not excuse their inappropriate, ignorant, or dismissive behavior. but i think we need to look at the reality of what we're dealing with, also. what we do does hurt people and it contributes to how they respond to the situation. you can get overbearing, over-controlling attempts at support (not helpful), you can get genuine, balanced support, you can get enabling, you can get burying their head in the sand and pretending it isn't happening, you can get everything in between and all kinds of mixes of both.

i've learned some things the hard way - people are only going to understand what you make very clear to them, and some people are not going to understand even after you do. people have said things to me that i would think would be very obvious not to say to someone in recovery; they just did not know. i didn't advocate for myself and so they didn't know how to behave around me. very often, people do not know what to do and what not to do and they need explicit instructions. with that in mind, you could link your partner to articles, videos, and other resources that resonate with you to help explain how your disorder feels to you. lay out what is triggering to you and what support needs to look like for you, personally.

that said - it's possible you've done all this already. there are simply people who are unable to conceptualize the gravity of an actual eating disorder and what it means to suffer with one day in and day out. even after watching someone live with one, even after loving that someone. i have had relationships of various types where this was the case and the result was enabling me to stay sicker longer while straining the relationship. there are people you are not going to be able to make understand. that is going to be painful, but you are going to have to change the dynamic you have with them and turn to more reliable sources of support.

this is not me saying end your relationship. it is also not me specifically saying don't end your relationship. it is saying that recovery is hard! and complicated! and relationships in general are, too. but at the end of the day, you need - and, in fact, deserve - to make the choices that are going to facilitate a healthier and more fulfilling life for you long-term.

#e.answers #anon