#it's very frustrating to see - for instance - people saying that your experiences do not exist at ALL because you are excluded...

[uncanny-tranny]

Politics that rely on there only being a clear-cut, unnuanced, simple, and easily definable separation/s between a group or multiple groups are bound to fail not only the people that are being defined for their protection and the people that are defined out of their own experiences. If you rely on there being a simple explanation for every human experience and presentation, you are failing yourself because you are denying yourself the opportunity to learn - you are reinforcing the thought-terminating cliché that things that are "simple" or "naturally unnuanced" are the correct option, fact, or opinion.

#politics #it's very frustrating to see - for instance - people saying that your experiences do not exist at ALL because you are excluded... #...from being Part of the Ingroup That Claims Ultimate Ownership Over X Experience. it's frustrating at best... #...and downright dangerous at worst. it's frequently a mixture of frustrating and dangerous

[pastadoughie]

i made anothr long rant abt sexism oh noooooo

so many people fundimentally do not understand terf ideology, and end up falling deeper and deeper into it because they think they are "immune" to it.

the fundimental feature of radfem ideology is sexism. or more specifically misandry. sexism by its very nature effects both genders, having a negative veiw of women fundimentally recontextualizes how you see men, if you see women as broadly less compatent, less intelegent, and therefore having less angency (dispite literally none of that being true) then you naturally veiw men as the opposite. thats just a core part of how sexism works. mysogeny and misandry are always gonna appear together. while you can just use the word sexism for all instances then, as that is more accurate in that it doesnt carry the implication that only one gender experiences negative effects from sexism, i think that having words like mysogeny and misandry are still useful. assuming you use them to mean 'ok im talking about sexism witch does effect both men and women, but im talking about just one gender to help make my point clearer' not having to bury yourself in asterisks is nice.

this does however mean that people can exploit this not explicitly stated part of the definition to pretend that misandry just doesnt exist. and i have gotten into many a very very annoying argument from people who just refuse to listen to my actual points and instead want to argue semantic differences about the words i use even when i explicitly state what i mean and their definitions. many people just refuse to use the word misandry entirely and just describe it as "mysogeny rebounding" or something of the sort. this is not only stupid and unhelpful, but also kinda sexist! a fundimental part of sexism is that it effects everyone, pointing out that misandry effects women too isnt groundbreaking stuff! thats how sexism works! women dont just exist in a void ok it is literally impossible to hate women and then be completely neutral about men that can not exist. if you want to speak about sexism but specifically talk about womens issues and experiences with it then thats fine and helpful! but you need to have the same thing for men. just like with mysogeny, being misandrist is going to make you a mysogenist as well, you maybe just word your sexist statements a little differently if youre coming from that angle, but you arrive in the same spot.

and because this is the piss on the poor website i should clarify that, no i am not saying that men experience the exact same issues in the exact same way as women, you will find that no where in this post! that is not my arguement.

feminism is important but if your goal is not gender equality but just to have it be in the opposite direction then that is! still sexism! and still bad!

to make my stance on this clear before i start… women are people, men are people, one is not more or less responsible, intelegent, phisically capable, or worthy of respect then the other. people should be paid fairly according to their skill level, products should be priced according to their value and not according to what gender stereotype they are meant to appeal to, sports should be based on skill level, and not on appearance or legal documents, persecution for crimes should be based on what actually happened, and not on the genders of the perpetrators or victims, and people should not be expected to act or dress a certain way based on what they looked like as a baby.

gender based descrimination is fundimentally illogical and extremely frustrating and horrific to have to experience, having to deal with mysogeny myself i am not somehow ignorant of this. given the magnitude of the issue this leads to alot of people lashing out and becomeing more and more radical. when you have so much of your life spent having people telling you you need to conform to "what men want" and seeing male peers be treated better in certain areas for no reason, youre gonna get a little bitter. when you view everybody as saying men are great and can do no wrong (witch people often do) then saying "well i fucking hate men" feels liberating. you start to get more bitter about it. you have to deal with so much shit for something you have no control over and men dont share your exact experience. its a classic case of trauma olympics where you start to veiw other peoples struggles as less valid and less worthwhile because of the shit youve had to go through.

this kind of emotional response is pretty understandable, but it is not a helpful or productive veiwpoint, sexism is frustrating. yes. but being sexist twards men doesnt help that!

this kind of response makes it really easy to tunnel vision on only the girl side of things. women face alot of sexual and domestic abuse, this is horrific and people have been desperately trying to help and spread awareness (though given the seriousness regardless of how much help there is its still horrible that it happens at all) men can often be violent or disregard womens consent even in non romantic/sexual circumstances, witch leads to a (sometimes warrented) level of distrust of people based on gender, though this is an issue with socialization differences between genders and not actually biological traits.

but theres a flip side to this. gender based socialization plays a big role in how alot of us behave and so, the same crime, for example sexual assault, can present differently depending on the socialization of the person. sexual abuse from a dude is broadly gonna be more violent, while with women its generally long term abuse, and alot more emotional, and when phisical less likely to be "severe" injuries.

agencies dedicated to helping in abusive situations, most of the time dont even consider emotional abuse. this means that its going to be biased to persecute men more, as abuse from women presents differently. systems designed to help with these things are pretty much only geared twards helping women, and to help in cases that align more with "male" patterns of abuse.

also, sexual abuse from women is far far more normalized, ive seen and experienced this myself, where, attention from older men to a young girl is seen as creepy and gross no matter how nonsexual the interaction is, but i have had older women grope me as a child, and nobody bats an eye, often seen as being a "cute" interaction and "just girls being girls!" ive noticed far far more pedophilic tendancies in older women then i ever have in men, as straight women from this demographic tend to expect young girls to be overly comfortable with them, thinking they have a "right" to little girls personal lives and bodies.

when it comes to the structure of organizations centered around abuse alot of people will argue with statistics that men are more likely to commit these crimes and therefore its completely sensible to prioritize an approach that works on that kind of abuse, and id argue this is unfair. this is like expecting accurate statistics on homosexuality from the 80s, there are a million reasons for people to lie on something like that. and moreover, if youve been sexually abused by a woman, not only are you unlikely to share that, but unlikely to properly report it, and extrordinarily unlikely to get any kind of action done for it, and extremely extremely extremely unlikely to have it actually be a punishment fitting for what happened.

moreover, women being seen as "weaker" in general then men means that within assault and abuse cases with a female perpetrator theres alot of shame there, youre seen as "not a real man" if you get sexually assaulted, its seen as a judgement against you, if you would even allow that to happen then you must have deserved it

+ alot of the time, in radfem ideology men are painted as little pervert sexual devients, witch makes talking about sexual abuse twards men really difficult because by the nature of your gender youre expected to "like it" or because of the fact that mysogeny exists at all its seen as "karma" for being a dude, regardless of the fact that one guy in an abusive relationship does not hold the responsibility of all womens rights issues on his shoulders (and argueing that anybody under any circumstance deserves sexual assault is horrific)

women are people, and people can be absolutely horrific. its unfortunately common to see women weaponizing mysogeny, the idea that they are fundimentally less capable and less responsible for their actions, to get disproportionitely less persecution.

these kinds of posts, and the idology they peddle its not just, silly tumblr nonsense, this has caused real, tangible, horrific damage to my (and many other peoples) lives,, and people just regurgitate it because is just so quirky to peddle blatent sexism.

and it doesnt even end there, veiwing people like this, thinking that people have some kind of biological flaws or superiority just naturally leads you to transphobia, this is why terfs are terfs, if youre a misandrist its just kinda the next logical step to hate trans people.

if you veiw men as awful evil penis havers who are, by their very nature, more violent and less trustworthy, then thats going to fundimentally recontextualize how you see trans women, you are not immune to being a terf because you post about girlcock or whatever, terfism including transphobia is a symtom of their sexism. and if you really want trans people to feel safe around you you cannot keep peddaling this shit! "men (or amab people) are biologically more violent" and "trans women are women (and all the gender stereotypes being a woman entails)" are fundimentally conflicting and odds are, youre gonna pick the one thats more violent and hateful, because the internet is about being angry, and there is nothing the internet likes being angry about more then trans women

also its worth nothing that quote en quote "trans inclusive" radfems exist, and they are going to exploit this idea that you are immune to right wing bullshit to push you further and further into the cesspit

you can go onto these blogs and you can find things you agree with, i think yea that the way we veiw gender is really shitty, i think mysogeny is bad and people need to be more aware of it, but then you start, agreeing with the more and more and more unhinged shit till ur straight up posting hatespeech

i cannot stress enough that this is. real shit, i want you to not be a transphobe! but theres only so much i can spoon feed you and you have to put on your big boy pants on at some point and start actually having your brain on when youre reblogging quirky tumblr posts about how hating men is such a cool opinion that does not impact anybody negatively at alllll

#the beast speaks #retchid opinions #this is kinda incoherent sorry #i needto get the words out of my brain so i can stop thinking abt them

[travosti]

It’s not easy for some queer/lgbt+ people to be able to go out and live the queer experience in person but what needs to be clear is that external queer spaces vs internal queer places are two different experiences inside our community, and those who live not having online discourse on Twitter or Tumblr over who’s more valid or what’s correct to identify as, most of the time, don’t care. I was so chronically online years ago that I got into silly debates that in the end never existed in real life situations. I ended up having constant hiatuses on Tumblr or Facebook because of how mentally draining it was to be fighting for situations that most of the time do not happen in person. Then I realized that there’s situations that needed more visibility of.

For instance, did you know trans masculine people in latin america have a higher chance of committing suicide before their 30s? One of the examples would be of a black Brazilian trans man, Demétrio Campos, was an activist who committed suicide on May 16th of 2020, because of social injustice towards the lack of opportunities he had from being black and transgender, many times also denying mental health services towards his well being.

Did you know that Argentina is the only country in the continent that has won the legalization to having a non binary ID? Being the first country to legalize this in all of LATAM.

Did you know that just a few months ago, a trans man named Estéfano González , was wrongfully sent to jail because he defended himself from being murdered in the streets with his girlfriend while the attacker kept shouting transphobic AND lesbophobic comments towards him even though he does not identify as lesbian?

Did you know there is no law in Chile that protects trans people who have the right to labor?

Did you know that Tehuel de la Torre, a trans masc in Argentina, was forcefully disappeared after he went to a job interview in 2021, and to this day the police hasn’t done proper investigations and closed the case saying he passed away when there is no body to be found?

And in another occasion, a few years ago another trans masc (Santiago Cancinos), again, in Argentina, was made to be off the radar, the police not helping this trans male whatsoever, just to find out approx 4 years later that the remaining parts of his body was found deep in a hole just a few meters away from his home?

Two Peruvian trans men went to celebrate their honey moon In Bali this year, both were detained by security airport, because of “supposedly having illegal substances in their luggages”. They were brutally beat up in their cells, to the point one of them died because of the attacks. Leaving the newly wed male, becoming a widowed individual in just short time.

This is what’s happening in Latin America towards trans mascs and men but the internet is so focused in the experiences of trans mascs in countries like the USA, or countries that are in Europe. The trans experience, in this case trans masc experience, is NOT the same in every country. As a trans masc living in Chile, it’s very frustrating to see that many comrades typing from their homes, in a first world country, dare to criticize our experiences saying that our privilege is the same as theirs. I invite you to acknowledge our pain and re-think that not everything is centered around countries that is socially looked as more important than others. Please take your time translating the articles I cited, because my job informing is sufficient. I’m not debating with someone that invalidates trans experiences from my continent. Thank you, and you’re welcome from your angry sudaca.

The suicide of Demétrio Campos (Brasil): https://www.hypeness.com.br/2020/06/mae-de-demetrio-campos-fala-como-a-alegria-de-viver-do-filho-foi-abreviada-pelo-racismo-e-transfobia/

Legalization of the non binary identification in Argentina: https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/22/argentina-recognizes-non-binary-identities

The wrongful incarceration of Estéfano González (Chile):

https://www.eldesconcierto.cl/reportajes/2022/06/27/el-caso-de-estefano-el-joven-trans-encarcelado-por-homicidio-y-que-clama-legitima-defensa.html/amp/

No law that protects trans people from working in private establishments in Chile: https://www.latercera.com/paula/inclusion-laboral-trans-una-deuda-pendiente/?outputType=amp

The disappearance of Tehuel de la Torre (Argentina): https://agenciapresentes.org/2022/02/11/donde-esta-tehuel-a-11-meses-de-su-desaparicion-las-organizaciones-reclaman-justicia/

The disappearance of Santiago Cancinos (Argentina):

https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/policiales/2021/07/01/que-revelaron-las-pericias-al-cuerpo-de-santiago-cancinos-el-adolescente-trans-desaparecido-hace-4-anos-en-salta/?outputType=amp-type

The murder of Rodrigo Ventocilla and mourning husband, Sebastián Marallano (Perú): https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-62683218

#tw suicide #tw murder #transphobia #chile #brasil #Argentina #perú #demétrio campos #tehuel de la torre #santiago cancinos #estéfano gonzález #rodrigo ventocilla #sebastián marallano #carnet no binarie #cupo laboral trans

[musashi]

its just frustrating because the video i made, while under the guise of "hey, i think maybe a more nuanced take on this over-simplified character is a good idea," also had a lot to say about fanon, reductive discourse, fandom puritanism, and retributive justice/prison abolition. i talked in depth about the irony of a story like ace attorney, where culprits of violent crimes are often and frequently portrayed as morally grey/nuanced characters, and where you're trained to be inherently suspicious of the systems that incriminate the accused because you are playing as their defense attorney.

it's a game that encourages you to not see the characters are "victims" and "perpetrators" but instead people, capable of all the good and bad they are, and more often than not multi-faceted. but then you take a look at the fandom and that's ALL it is--people throwing characters into those two boxes. phoenix is a victim, dahlia is a perpetrator--ignore that dahlia was a neglected child who turned to crime at 14, clearly in need of support and intervention but simply unlucky to have no adults in her life to help. at the end of the day, she is a victim too, and her being a victim does not justify the lives she ruined and the people she hurt and traumatized, but it is a hard truth to acknowledge that evildoers are not monsters from birth but shaped by their circumstance. people do not want to acknowledge that, because then they have to acknowledge that they, too, can become abusive and cruel. they want to believe they are safe from it.

while ace attorney does not take a stance in favour of rehabilitative justice in a literal sense, it certainly makes you fucking root for it by presenting murderers and criminals who are, more often than not wholly sympathetic.

manfred von karma is, arguably, not meant to be sympathetic. but i am very charmed by AA's tendency to make me think harder about these perps. and so i think harder about mvk. because that is what the story has told me to do. in running that thought experiment, i found that i like it a lot more when he is, on the surface, a good person to those he considers worthy of his love. he is a rat bastard, a fucking brat, an entitled control-freak, and a little bit of a bitch... but, like, so am i, and those traits make him annoying, not abusive. if he was 40 years younger and conventionally attractive, the fandom girlies would fucking love him, but he's old and disabled so he doesn't get that privilege.

he sucks and he's a murderer. i just don't think he hurts his kids. when people get furious with me for this, they often say that i have dubious evidence. which is true, it's just my personal interpretation, backed up by some subtext in the games. same as theirs. they do not like when i tell them this, and when i ask, 'okay, where's your evidence, then?' they just kinda say 'dude, fucking trust me.' or 'did you play the games???'

i did. we took different things from the games, though. that is okay. why are people so mad? why can't they just understand, that is okay. they don't have to agree with me. they can just... exist elsewhere...?

first, the repeated line was that i said mvk was justified in all he did because he was lead poisoned (i did not say that. it's a joke headcanon i have.) now, the line is that i am apparently declaring the anime canon. i did not say that, just that i enjoyed the takes on canon they proposed and liked to incorporate them where the main canon does not contradict them. people in the fandom do this all the time, for instance a lot of folks put the signal samurai into their gameverse fic because shit's cute and adds a lot to narumitsu. why is that worthy of praise, but my own take worthy of mockery?

every single time someone doesn't like my opinion on this matter, instead of just ignoring it and doing their own thing, they instead... zero in on one point i made, take it out of context, completely misinterpret it in... not even bad faith, but STRANGE faith, and then spread it all across the internet as if it was gospel.

why... do they do that?

if i'm truly wrong, can't you just lay out the ACTUAL argument i made, and strike down its points with evidence of your own?

i've asked before. i get blocked. i get ignored. i get "its just vibes" or "play the game."

okay. i played the game. here's my favourite part:

what's yours?

#wordy wendy #wendy rambles #wendy rants #im so tired of this shit #i am just existing in my bubble. im not even bothering the fanfreds #i literally block all of them on site #and do not engage at ALL #why are you guys so obsessed with me!

[hextechmaturgy]

my thoughts on pathologic classic

finally finished the game all the way through, so here are my (not at all concise) thoughts

beware of spoilers and A LOT OF TEXT

NOTE: I do know quite a bit about pathologic 2, but seeing as I haven't played that game yet, I'll try to keep my ideas here separate and only focus on what I got from playing the classic version

Bachelor:

By far my favorite character, and if you say I'm biased cause we have similar degrees, you are absolutely right, but that's not why I love him. I got into pathologic by watching all the video essays I think everyone else watches, so coming into it I had a very specific idea of what Daniil would be like - rude, condescending, heartless, "the prickly prick who will bury us all" - and while I can definitely see where some of those are coming from sort of, after 80+ hours of playing this goddamn game I can safely say: Daniil is a good person who does good things and the hate he gets is largely undeserved. I'm a Daniil Dankovsky TRUTHER.

He's kind! He's surprisingly good with kids; when he does snap at them and threaten to put them in timeout or to call their parents, it's usually because they're breaking his quarantine rules and that's a REALLY BAD IDEA (after 2020, I feel we can all relate to that frustration). In one instance, Capella asks him to look for a kid in an infected district and, upon finding him, Daniil tells him to run off and leave testing the disease to him, earning a shmowder from the kid but also getting the plague. This is a side quest, it's up to you to decide if getting infected is worth the shmowder or not, but the fact of the matter is, Daniil doesn't have to care about this kid, he doesn't have to do this quest, but (at least in my save) he does. Forgetting about the kids though, Daniil is just a genuinely helpful guy. He's a fucking lifesaver when you're playing as the Haruspex, he clears your name completely on day 1 when he really doesn't have to. The two go on to collaborate pretty much until the end. When Daniil's solution begins to diverge from Artemy's, he explains that no, killing the polyhedron won't help Artemy actually, it's the only way to ensure Aglaya is sacrificed, which is the only way Artemy will be accepted by the kin, which he knows is important to him, it's his inheritance! Time and time again, Daniil gives it his all to protect the people of the town. He talks Peter down from suicide, he can try to do the same with Rubin, he kills a bunch of men to protect Andrey, at some point he has a mission to reunite a daughter with her father and he only fails that mission because Artemy kills her (because you asked him for an infected heart and Artemy chose hers). His best efforts are constantly thwarted or misunderstood. I'm not saying he's a saint, he still has plenty of awful dialogue lines to choose from, but? MAN, I've been a health professional during a pandemic, I understand frustration, the pure fucking rage felt at the people who don't quarantine or believe vaccines will help, the hatred that rises in your gut when you watch as politicians take advantage of the situation. I was only a student back then! Imagine being 1 out of FOUR (4!!) people who can do something!

Daniil's condescension is another one of those things where... I see it, but I don't. Yes, his latin is tacky and he does have lines calling people dumb as shit compared to him, a genius mastermind, but one thing that we have to take into account is that Daniil is, by all accounts, a genius mastermind. The mysticism of the town goes completely over his head (it's SO fucking funny to me that Daniil has 0 knowledge that the Rat Prophet even exists), but this is because it's not something one can easily prove 1) it exists and 2) can be repeated and reproduced, both of which are VERY important in scientific experimentation. Meanwhile, in the Capital, Daniil is a famous scientist known for his experiments surrounding death; he's so good he's earned himself a following, and if the rumors on the street are to be believed, Daniil has even successfully brought someone back from the dead! I think he gets to flex his smarts, maybe. He doesn't need to be rude about it, sure, but it's not like the people would respect him if he didn't flex it. He's told from the start that he just doesn't get it, will never get it, "you're smart but you're not" type of conversation time and time again, since he's not attuned to ~miracles~ like some of the others are. Again, as an atheist myself, I can see why that would get frustrating. There is also an instance where Daniil "mansplains" antibodies to Artemy? Artemy, a fellow doctor sort of, can reply with something along the lines of "don't make fun of me" and Daniil's response is a genuine "i wasn't making fun of you, i was only explaining a concept". To the fellow mentally ill person reading this, ain't that the most relatable thing ever? Talking about something you're passionate about with a person that you like, wanting to make sure they understand the concept because you love it and understand it, but just coming off as obnoxious?

Daniil is GAY AS HELL. Those videos don't prepare you for how gay this man is. I started getting into the fandom telling myself "wow people ship these two huh, I can't imagine why" and then I played the fucking thing and you can't not ship them. It's not even subtext at this point, this is how Daniil introduces himself to Artemy:

He has two women thirsting over him (I don't know if Maria's feelings are genuine of if the Mistress magic within her just recognizes that he's her path to victory) and he barely reacts to them inviting him to their bed or saying "I love you" to his face. He can flirt back, but I feel like Daniil is just a charming guy as it is, he's from the Capital, he was friends with Andrey so you KNOW he did drugs in university and he has to know about the orgies already. He does care about Eva, but who wouldn't? In the runs you don't control him he often refers to her as "my Eva", but I always read it as platonic I'll be honest. Her death hits him hard, she's a sweetheart who only ever tried to help him, she housed him barely knowing who he was for fuck's sake, and Daniil's last conversation with her in the Cathedral shows he feels awful because he thinks she did it for him. I like to think that Daniil took a liking to Eva's kind and free spirit and often looked to her for comfort. Do I think he was in love with her? Absolutely not <3

Finally, let's talk about his ending, shall we? I feel like this is often used to demonstrate just how heartless Daniil is, and I will admit that, to me, his ending felt weirdly cruel and sudden while I was playing him. Hilariously, though, when I was playing as Artemy and spoke to Daniil about his solution, I thought Daniil had way better reasons to keep the polyhedron when I wasn't controlling him, and he explains his views better too. Daniil sees that the town is basically destroyed already, so many have died, so many more are infected and will soon die, they have a panacea but lack the materials with which to make enough to go around. The tower is aseptic, children have managed to live in it for the entirety of the plague without getting sick; it would be the perfect isolation ward for the survivors, a controlled space where they would be able to be vaccinated and monitored. Daniil does show frustration with the town, I think he even has some less than kind lines calling it backwards and doomed, but when his mind is clear and he's just talking about his plan, he says that he wouldn't mind saving the town, but he knows Block has to shoot something, and the polyhedron is worth preserving. I feel like his reasons are mostly empirical, a real science man's choice, but I'm also not one of those people who believes that Daniil represents hard, cold logic. The only reason he's searching for a way to defeat death is because he wants humans to die on their own terms, at peace. He follows facts but he interprets them with the mind of a bright eyed idealist. He writes the most dramatic letters in the world. He wears his heart of his sleeve! By the end of the game, he has seen evidence that the Kains are as magical as they claim to be. Maria's prophecies have come true, and he's literally spoken to the spirits of Nina and Simon. He sees the marvel of architecture that his twin friends managed to build, he admires it for what it is even without the mysticism on top, but then he actually learns that the mysticism is real, and he's naturally enthralled by it. Going into the polyhedron, hearing that music and seeing those lights, watching the kids play without a worry or care in the world. The future could be immortality and comfort, peace equal to that of a child who doesn't know pain, wouldn't that be wonderful? Adding to the mix the fact that he feels used by Aglaya (gonna be real here chief, either she played me super well or I was just not paying enough attention cause no matter which protagonist I was, I only ever loved Aglaya, this one is on him xoxo), while knowing she will die only if the town falls + knowing Artemy needs her dead or his prophecy won't be realized and his people won't accept him....... When talking to Clara about her ending, all she says is that she can't explain her miracle, a miracle requires faith, and yeah! If you were to meet God and he told you exactly how or why he stayed silent and hidden from you all your life, believing God exists and has power over the world would become fact, not a belief. There are too many "what ifs" in Clara's ending, at the cost of blood sacrifice one might add. Idk, I hate to see the town die and I do still think this ending is a bit cruel, but I get it. Daniil would think keeping the Polyhedron alive is the best choice, I can't fault him for it.

Side note, I would like to add that, although Daniil doesn't understand magic, as I've mentioned, he is the first person to defend it when he finds proof for it, and this doesn't just apply to the Kains. He admits he was wrong about the people and practices of the Steppe; they do work, he doesn't know how, but they are very much real and they do absolutely work, Artemy even gives him a panacea, a cure for the epidemic made from ancient, sacred blood. How can he go on claiming they're dumb superstitions? When you play as the Changeling, Daniil doesn't believe what he's heard about you at first, good or bad, but then he witness one of your miracles and from that point forth he's on your side. He defends her from Aglaya, once again rectifying the reputation of a perceived scoundrel simply because he can and he thinks they deserve it.

Haruspex:

This man makes me feral, I want to hug him so bad. His casual playfulness gets to me, the fact that his bound are children means that he often has to deal with them, and he really is good with them. A lot is said about his first mission being a testament to how hard the game and, indeed, his whole run is: one of your bound, a kid, asks you to kill another kid for betraying him or whatever. The reward is a shmowder, a cure to the plague, but you obviously lose reputation for going through with it. And see, if making this decision really was as crucial as some people make it out to be, I would get it, but it's really not. Letting the kid leave with his life means you don't get a shmowder, sure, but that doesn't matter cause you're playing the guy who invents the fucking cure. Notkin, the kid who "hired" you, thanks you for letting him live because he no longer felt so angry he wanted him dead once you left his hideout. TO ADD EVEN MORE REASONS TO WHY YOU SHOULD BE A DECENT HUMAN BEING, that kid you let escape comes back on day 9 and helps you get the Bachelor out of prison, no questions asked. Saving that kid and getting rep for it is so much more important than getting a single cure, especially because, if you're role-playing as Artemy in that moment, he probably doesn't even know what the shmowders do. Don't make your life harder. Play Artemy as the nice, moral man he is, protect the kid, protect all the children of the town, and you'll be rewarded with their friendship and all the things they can do for you. Murky alone provides the ingredients you need to make 2 fucking cures, and the price you pay for that is "go on a nice stroll through the steppe looking for her missing doll".

Related to my last point, Artemy will only really be hunted down by the masses for his crimes if he goes around town killing innocent people for no reason. You don't need to do that!!! If you must kill (and I do understand you kinda do in order to make your awesome potions), killing criminals at night raises reputation and, surprise bro, they also have organs: steal 'em, cook 'em, thrive. Artemy is portrayed as a brutish, scary man who will spill blood, and just like how it is with Daniil, this is all true in places. Despite what his model in 2 might suggest, I always envision him as a tall, large and imposing figure, the giant with the heart of gold archetype and all. People in the streets see that man, they hear about his crimes and his alleged crimes and they think the worst of him. I do believe part of the confusion also comes from the racist views of the people of the town, who go on and on about how freaky the worms and the brides are. Artemy's prophecy that he will spill blood is true for his ending, that's how he gains access to the ingredients he needs to make the cures, but it's also just a part of his occupation. Not to be a filthy solasmancer on main, but there's a character I really like in dragon age who says "the healer has the bloodiest hands" and to me that's Artemy in a nutshell. Daniil is more scientist than doctor imo, he deals with antigens and antibodies, proteins seen only through a microscope, a modern invention. He injects his solution with aseptic, hypodermic needles, and it seems to me that he mostly dealt with corpses in his previous job. Artemy's role in his society requires him to get his hands dirty to make sure that whoever is still living but hurting can recuperate and go on living. I think both positions are admirable and, to me, Artemy's is downright beautiful. As the devs have said, his story is about love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HIS ENDING FUCKED ME UP, MAN. I really spent the entire game thinking I would go for his designated solution no matter what. Nothing else made sense to me, I was looking forward to seeing how Daniil would explain his side to convince Artemy into choosing ANYTHING over the town, his town. Then I found out about Oyun who told me about Aglaya, Daniil told me that, if Artemy destroyed the polyhedron, the ancient blood would indeed flow, but the kin would not allow him to use it because, by choosing to not take his sacrifice when he needed to, he would not be accepted by them. Aglaya x Artemy is the only romance with the protagonists that I'm willing to believe, besides Daniil x Artemy ofc. Aglaya is enamored by Artemy (or possibly manipulating him because) she sees how he lives his life independent of the Powers That Bed. So what if my decisions are preordained? They're helping the ones I love. She's hoping his independence will rub off on her, and indeed his ending is the only way she lives. If you care about Aglaya, which I certainly do, choosing an ending as Artemy is torture.

I wish Artemy had stronger ties to the town. His father is dead when the game starts and all of the kids he's put in charge of are strangers. He does have an old friend there, Rubin, but he mostly contacts him through letters telling him he's out to kill him, and if I'm remembering correctly, later they meet once so Rubin can apologize and then he never comes back? My memory is bad, but that feels right. Anyway, the kin do seem to remember him, they do certainly recognize his name if not, but they don't respect him until Artemy proves himself to them. I won't get into pathologic 2, I said I wouldn't, but I know this alienation was tweaked in that game and I'm glad for him. Having Grief and Lara as extra childhood friends only adds to Artemy's connection with the town and the people living in it. Wanting to keep his childhood friends safe, who are all bound to Clara, would give him even more reasons to agonize over his ending. Imagine if, after falling down Oyun's hole (oops!) and speaking to the Changeling, Artemy had to choose one of those three women to die knowing one of his oldest friends was among them! Delicious drama, I say.

Oh yeah, Artemy is also gay as shit. I'm sorry, but if a stranger from the big city came to me and asked me for a still beating infected heart which I might have to lose reputation to get, I would at least think to tell them "maybe" if not "go fuck yourself". I won't go into this ship again, but the way they're both always so willing to help each other, even though it would be easier not to.........

Changeling:

Getting into this game, I had quite a bit of information on Daniil and Artemy, but very little on Clara. I knew the basics: she's the plague, but she isn't! She has a twin but she doesn't! How is that possible? Fuck you! That being said, I was probably looking forward to her route the most because I felt like this was the character I had the most to learn about, and I was right. Clara deserves more love, her character is truly incredible. But.... where to start, oh my god................

Okay, so Clara is the personification of the plague, we learn this super early on; in the Haruspex route, she asks Artemy to talk to the Rat Prophet about who she is and what her purpose is. Artemy can be nice and tell her she's a holy healer who can only do good, or he can tell her the truth, which terrifies her. She is spit by the Earth (wakes up in a hole with no memories) and arrives in town on the day the plague starts. While Daniil and Artemy have to pay everyday for updated maps showing the different infected districts, Clara sees her "twin" in dreams who tells her where she'll go next, so she always just Knows where the plague's spreading. She has to convince her mirror self to leave an infected district to prevent it from staying infected until the end of the game. It's obvious that she holds power over the plague, the how is what gets most people. How can she both have and not have a twin? How is she a deadly disease but also a holy healer? The answer, in the end, is quite simple. Clara is the personification of the plague, but she is also a bright 13 year old girl with an imagination. In this world we're invited to play in, which is actually the invention of two very traumatized children and, beyond that, a group of indie game developers with a passion for what they do, having an avid imagination is what makes Clara unique, it's the source of all her magic and goodness, even if it cannot completely erase her wickedness. Clara believes she can heal people and find a solution that doesn't require Block to shoot anything, and in doing so, those options become real. When Clara said she had a twin sister, she spoke another Clara into being. It's truly fascinating and also tragic, I think, to tell the story of a young girl who believes she can cure all of Humanity's ailments, not realizing (or perhaps living in denial of the fact) she's the reason those ailments exist in the first place.

I'm gonna break the mold a bit and talk about her ending already, because I feel like it flows well coming from that last point. Clara's ending, the miracle that keeps both the polyhedron and the town, can only be achieved by keeping her bound alive and healthy until the end of the game, which is harder as Clara than it is as the other two. With Daniil and Artemy, if you manage your time correctly, you will keep all your bound healthy, but Clara's daily missions require her to meet her bound and learn how awful they are (well, some of them) and then she has to lie about their true nature to those who could punish them for it, just as Clara lies about herself. She detests trickery, but if we ourselves are to suffer deception, our hands are no longer tied. When you know the truth about something, you are compelled to form a just opinion on it, but if you are lied to or deceived in some way, any decision you make may yet be forgiven because you just didn't know all the facts. Clara lives in make believe land in the most figurative but also literal sense possible. The sins of her bound don't hit her as hard because they have been deceived into believing they're real people, so she's inclined to forgive them, especially cause she's certain they can still be useful to her. In many ways, Clara is lying to herself about her true nature so she can navigate the world without concerns. Lying to her dad about the "goodness" of her bound and taking the reputation loss because of it is kind of poetic; her dad made the wrong choice by believing her and not arresting those people, but he's been freed from his crimes by her lies. Later, when Clara turns to her bound and asks them to make the ultimate sacrifice to power the miracle, they go in peace. Most say they're glad they get to die like "a real human" with a blood like Simon's.

Clara's route is really fun, but later on it does get as repetitive as everyone says, you can tell she was rushed. The missions "find your sister and banish her" and "find the bachelor and the haruspex so they won't kill each other" do get annoying, especially because they don't even have different dialogue prompts and every time you get into one of those houses to talk to them you just get the shit beat out of you, or you get the plague. There's also like... NO mention of Eva's death in her route? She's alive in the Haruspex's so I though she would be too in the Changeling's or, if she did die, I thought there would be a really cool conversation between them, seeing as the Changeling sends Daniil a letter taunting him with Eva's suicide. But no, Eva just stops showing up at her house and that's it. Huge waste of potential there. I also don't get why some of her bound are those people? Anna Angel, Bad Grief and Aspity are the fucking most in this game, so those I get. Oyun is out to kill the Burakhs, so yeah I read him on the bad vibes scale too. Katerina is a failed Mistress who only ever gave me bad instructions, so I GUESS she counts, and Alexander is a cop so fuck him too. I could make a case for Rubin? Kind of? But for Lara and Yulia, I am truly out of ideas. Clara's bound is made up of all these complex liars and cheats, corrupt politicians and the like, and then there's the lady who's too nice to shoot even her father's murderer and the math lesbian who....????? I'm gonna be real here, I never know what the fuck Yulia is talking about, I could not tell you if I like her or not because I simply do not understand what her purpose is. She's a fatalist who believes in the predetermination of fate and, as far as I can tell, that's it. Cool look, though.

I love that she gets to meet the Powers That Be twice and that they're spooked she got to them earlier than the other two. I also like the detail that this whole Clara dichotomy exists because the kids can't decide between one another if she should save or kill everyone.

One thing I forgot to say in the section about her ending: I love the implication that her ending will only reach peak effectiveness if the healers learn to work together. Clara will transform the blood of those who volunteer to die "like Simon"; this blood is what will allow Artemy to make the cures to all of those who get infected; this blood is also what allowed Daniil and Rubin to make a vaccine that can prevent the disease from coming back for as long as they can. Note: Awesome world building detail, adding in that Simon's blood was old and that was why it could only be used to make vaccines, not panaceas. It makes me think about how older folk tend to hold wisdom of past generations that allow the younger ones to avoid unnecessary pain (Daniil is older than the other two healers, not by a lot but still....... curious). This suggest that, when catastrophe does hit, the younger folks can return the favor by protecting them to the best of their ability, and then, when the bad days pass, we can look to the children and recognize that the future we build afterwards is for them. Allowing humans to exist within a loving community is Clara's miracle. It's so fucking nice to be alive, you guys.

anyway play pathologic, it's not as hard as it seems, and if it is just cheat, i won't tell anyone

#pathologic #don't look at me i have many thoughts so i'm dumping them here #edit: I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT IN THE CHANGELING ROUTE IT'S IMPLIED THAT DANIIL AND ARTEMY FOUGHT EACH OTHER IN THE RING NEAR THE TERMITARY #clearly none of them won. how fucking funny is that #i'm having plague thoughts (BEWARE)

[prophecyqueen]

as a person on team green twt that surrounds herself with alys rivers enjoyers/alysmond shippers, i don't think they were the first to start things, though at the same time i don't believe them to be blameless. there were countless times when a completely unrelated alysmond tweet started getting traction and all of a sudden its author was under fire with helaemond shippers on the front lines. to this day no tweet about alys, even outside of romantic context - for example just talking about the potential of her character, can avoid gathering at least several negative and private quote retweets either from other shippers, team black stans or even jealous aemond fans.

im guessing because of that they're super defensive over her character and resolve to putting their anger and frustration onto the first visible target. which is probably the same reason behind always mentioning alys' status as aemond's canon lover. and as much as i can't stomach helaemond (while at the same time honestly believe it to be a better alternative to l*cemond, at least in this instance people aren't using the likeness of a real life minor in nsfw content) i do agree that everyone has the right to ship what they want if they're not harming anybody along the line. ig all i want to say is that bad apples exist on both sides of the conflict. ive found out that its better to just curate the content you want to engage with, ignore the rest and under any circumstances not bother oneself with snarky quote retweets.

no, i still think they were the first to start things. a lot of us didn't even know who alys was before she and alysmond were shoved into our faces asking "but why don't you like her and this ship? why are you incest freak shipper? ew gross" when we didn't even know who she was. 

i've personally closed my eyes to my own moots tweeting really insulting stuff about helaemond shippers only to later, some of them, to start suddenly ship helaegon. funny that, lol

also the "alys come on screen, they are shipping your man with his sister" that were obviously started by alys and alysmond stans.

also between the two of us, most tweets i've seen are alys in the context of her relationship with aemond and very little stuff about her as a character so yeah

and believe me, all the hate you see now, started way back. hotd barely finished when i saw the first anti helaemond tweet and i was like "who's this girl?"

i'm sorry but this was one of the most unpleasant experiences within the hotd fandom outside of team black stan bs so i'm really not very welcoming of it. it has left a very bitter taste in my mouth and it's a side of green twitter and green fandom that i dislike

the names i've been called, the way alys and alysmond shippers interacted with helaemond shippers who make fanart, the way i've had multiple people come into my mentions uninvited to argue on behalf of it, even trying to pose like they're not fans only to later admit it and resort to namecalling.

just last week someone said "don't share the movie where ewan is a r*pist without proper warning, but what can i expect from a helaemond shipper?" implying somehow that we're all really morally bad people

and as evidence about how i argue about every other topic on my blog, i'm not likely to let go of my resentment because it's been a bad experience and i am resentful of it.

as a last note, it's a bit backhanded to say the only thing that makes helaemond better than lucemond is because it's not ped*philia.

#asks #anti alys rivers #anti almond #anti alysmond #helaemond #aemond x helaena

[doberbutts]

Man, that post about that friend who went wildly downhill after you admitted to liking Snape is definitely an Experience, but also reminded me that a huge portions of Snape's fandom tends to be marginalized people (especially ethnically) and are also very keenly aware of all the bigoted crap implied throughout the Harry Potter series. Which, is admittedly *very* besides the point of that post but does sort of reinforce an idea that actually listening to people with "problematic" favorites is more likely to net you a greater and more complex understanding of the world then just knee-jerk hating them because the creators presented them as someone unlikeable.

I'm not- and never really was outside of somewhat casually enjoying it in the Before Times very briefly- in the fandom and so I can't verify at all whether marginalized people like Snape.

However I would say that I think it's interesting that many many people can find something that resonates with them in these "problematic" characters, even if they overall disagree with the choices and actions of these characters. Same with problematic and flawed media.

My example of Anders for instance- he's not *wrong* to dislike the Chantry or the templars or to be very sensitive about the topic of mage freedom in general. He has a huge amount of trauma surrounding that part of his life and nearly died as a result. His best friend and ex-lover was more or less killed by the authorities (depending if you consider the Tranquil as being effectively dead) and he has a potentially vengeful spirit whispering in his ear at all times. Of COURSE he commited an act of terrorism, that's a character arc that makes sense given all the shitty things that led up to that point.

And of course that resonates with people who have been heavily punished for simply existing, whether because of their sexualities or mental illnesses or personalities or ethnicities or whatever. To have someone go "but that's not FAIR. it's not RIGHT." when an authority says "people like you deserve to be caged, you're lucky we let you exist". To show the righteous anger of the downtrod in one literally explosive fit of rage.

Snape's a bad victim. He's less likeable than Anders, who we see flirting and being a gentle healer and joking around with his friends. He's severe and stern. He terrorizes the kids and is a wizard-nazi. He was abused and bullied and sexually assaulted. A popular kid at his school tried to kill him as a prank. He obsesses about the one girl that's genuinely nice to him without an agenda and becomes incredibly creepy and possessive. Any attempts he made at being friends with someone were either met with people trying to get him to join the cult, or being rebuffed because he wasn't wanted. That's a really frustrating place to be, especially as a child and especially so as a teen trying to get your footing in a world that's made it clear it will always be at least somewhat hostile to you. I don't think he made good choices. I do think what we know about his story is a recipe for "makes bad choices".

I think having him serve as a foil for Dumbledore, someone else who made very bad choices but is presented as overall likeable and even someone to respect and admire, makes him an interesting literary device. I think having him serve as a foil for our protagonist, a similarly traumatized and abused child who happened to luck into having a support network once he got away from his shitty living situation for half a aecond, makes him a very interesting character as we watch Harry recognize something of himself in Snape's misery. Not because he wanted to be Snape, but because he realized that he could have been Snape if his life took that same direction. That's why I never really minded him naming his kid after him.

Bad victims are a hard sell. People love the idea that being a victim gives you more empathy. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it makes you angry. Sometimes it makes you lash out. Sometimes it makes you not really a good person to be around anymore. Trauma's funny like that. Unresolved and unprocessed trauma festers. Sometimes inwardly and sometimes explosively as it unleashes itself onto a different victim to continue the cycle. When a villian or morally gray character is a bad victim, people have a hard time understanding why that character could be considered at all interesting.

Maybe it's because other victims realize that's the path they could have gone down. 🤷‍♂️

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Could you review the locked tomb books by tamysn muir? I’m interested in your thoughts on it! It’s one of my favorite series right now.

I am so glad people asked me this, because I just finished Floornight last night and had a lot of thoughts on the Locked Tomb series that I might as well get down on paper.

Locked Tomb

The first thing I've got to say is that in a lot of ways this series could have been perfect. It has some great characters and an exciting setting. And it's got a distinctive kind of story-telling, even if its prose doesn't always do it justice (see what I mean below).

But also

There's something that's missing from this series that isn't always missing from other fantasy novels I read, which is this … thing where there's a very clear sense that the author had a clear idea of his clear idea of what the whole story is going to be, in the broadest sense. Or at least in the sense of "what are the story's big plot-level themes and messages."

And this creates a feeling, in some scenes, of "these characters are going somewhere with this story," where they're in these situations for the purpose of advancing this overarching idea of the world, the characters are acting as representations of that idea, etc.

Now obviously this kind of thing can be a strength in certain ways. But I think it's just as often a weakness, especially when the story is less plot-heavy and more character-driven. In a lot of cases, it creates characters that are flat, at best, or else overly schematic, which is especially frustrating in stories like the Locked Tomb series where the character personalities are often at least somewhat distinct from their world-views.

This isn't to say these people are not distinctive; they are, in a certain sense, representations of some specific (usually quite specific) ideas about the world. But in a way, this makes the characters less complex; it means they are not "well-rounded," because by definition one cannot have "a complete worldview." There's not much room for complexity or nuance within such a worldview; the characters are one-note (even more so than usual), and it's not clear why that's a good or bad thing.

For instance, the main character of Floornight is, or seemed to be, a typical nerd-like college student who likes weird sci-fi but is kind of a nerd about it, and who gets dragged into some sort of conspiracy plot due to his lack of imagination (this is a metaphor for his lack of mental creativity in general and his lack of social skills in particular), etc. He has no inner life whatsoever; when he is "shown" what is going on in any of the story's flashbacks, it is always very literal and not very "about" anything, which makes these scenes rather tedious; his inner life seems to consist only of abstract ideas like "the universe is vast and uncaring," which are supposed to be inspiring, but come across as tedious, abstract, and removed from any kind of human experience.

One could imagine an "actual person" like this existing, and doing things he actually believed in and valued. But a literalistic, abstract, intellectual viewpoint like the ones described in this story just doesn't strike me as the kind of viewpoint a "well-rounded" person could even be. It's not one that one could, without a great deal of effort, really live or feel deeply with. (One could argue that this was the point, and that the reader was supposed to get something similar -- perhaps similar but different -- from the book's actual characters, but it still feels a bit contrived to me. And I don't think that would work, because the "characters" are not well-rounded in a deeper way.)

On a more positive note, it should be said that there is one scene in the book that does really capture this feeling of the whole story fitting together, for a moment, into a clear-cut, satisfying pattern. If I were going to rate the book on this quality, I'd give it 6/10.

Other Thoughts:

I said in a reply to one of the reviews in question that my own views on this series tend to differ a lot from those of its fans. And, indeed, in many ways, this book seems to have captured a certain vision of the world that I (and many other people) dislike. The book presents itself as "about" something like modernity and the scientific revolution, and it seems to be written by someone who sees himself as one of the "weird outsiders" who participated in that era. In the story, the characters are people who were born after the scientific revolution, and who have never really been in contact with those "olden days" that are the book's inspiration. (If I were a writer writing from such a perspective, this would make me very nervous; I've met a lot of people with this kind of viewpoint, and they can seem extremely naive or even bizarre.)

Some of these people even view the book as "about" modernity per se. Some of them have said things like "Floornight was the thing that finally made me admit that I could never be a scientist, and I've always hated the idea of science." This is a very strange sort of thing to say; one would think that such a character would want to be a scientist to see what kind of world he could create, rather than to avoid it.

This also creates a very strange worldview. In the story itself, it is suggested that the very universe they live in has been "created" by some scientists. What's more, it seems to be "made" in ways that the scientists' science "could not comprehend," because it is not grounded in human logic, etc. I can understand why people writing from this perspective would want to see science as embracing the spirit of humanity, of trying to create something that could comprehend reality as it is, rather than a set of rules which humans use to manipulate it. But in Floornight, it comes across as very dehumanized; as if science were a set of rules which could be mechanically applied to humans as "machines." The characters are all treated like characters who were created by science, rather than people who came into contact with science.

On a more personal note, my own views on the series are complicated by the fact that when I read it, I had never read any of the author's previous books.

The original novel was her first book, which makes sense, I guess -- I don't know a lot about her background, but I imagine it's the sort of thing she would write if she had always been into this kind of thing. But then I read her other work and I started to wonder why I liked Locked Tomb so much, when I wasn't in any sense "into" this kind of book. So I googled her and read more, and found that her other novels tended to be about similar "things," if not quite so literal and "abstract".

#tamsynmuir #johncenwry #blah blah blah #jushiro-ukitake

[first-only]

How do you get over that 'what if I'm wrong' fear? (specifically with queer discourse, fiction discourse, and para/kink discourse)

I do get that fear a lot, and while I'm confident I'm not wrong in my opinions, I think the amount of anti [blanks] make me question myself

check your priorities - so what if youre wrong about some detail? about the whole thing? will the world end? are you more comfortable this way, and feel happier and more satisfied in your community and view of yourself? does it cause you more harm to believe this? is it actually affecting anyone what you believe and how? are you the bully in just existing in your convictions, or is the vocal opposition the ones who are tearing communities apart over personal opinions? even if the butterfly effect is real, is it your responsibility to kill off all butterflies in your country so there's no tornado on the other end of the world? would that not cause more ecological harm?

check your sources - the best way to disparage fear of being wrong is to confirm with facts that you're not. it's usually conviction that makes people comfortable, and the best type of convincing for someone so inclined, is with verified information. I personally look for sources from people and places ive already verified i can trust. i check new points of view and information with people who study the topic or are personally versed in it (i will once again point at fiction-is-not-reality2). Another very practical way is to look at sources from "both sides" so to say. For example, a study by Dolf Zillmann reports test subjects having increased levels of aggression after seeing violent media (abstract link, text link), while a study by Margot Kuttschreuter reports no correlation between violent media and aggressive behaviour (abstract link, text link). And now we need to look at those studies. Kuttschreuter's is a longitudal study (ie studying the phenomena over time, not in a single instance) and is conducted with 466 child participants, of roughly equal gender numbers, with outside contributing factors explicitly controlled for. Zillmann studied 63 male undergraduates of the same university, a single time, and with no control over aggression states before the experiment. Zillmann's study is from 1971, Kuttschreuter 's from 1992. Zillman is born in 1935 in Alabama, known for his anti-porn views, and publishes "studies" and articles of the sorts of "the effect of pornography on the nuclear family" (since we're talking abt being wrong lets check /this/ view a little bit - the nuclear family is a relatively new concept born by industrialization and capitalism, its revered status, despite its MANY downsides, children safety included, is primarily kept up by authoritarian politicians and religious leaders. why should something as old as humanity like pornography cede way in order to keep up this new-age community-destructive concept?). Kuttschreuter is a professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, specializes in psychology of conflict, risk and safety, and has been president of the Society for Risk Analysis Europe. And let's look at the studies' results too, whats the conclusions? Kuttschreuter concludes with no duality, that under controlled factors, "The hypothesis that television violence viewing leads to aggressive behaviour could not be supported". Zillman's study is written in more academic language, you can read it for yourself in the links, but his conclusion is basically "after consuming content that is exciting, test subjects show an elevated level of excitement". Groundbreaking, truly. You will note that this 'exciting' content isnt necessarily violent, and physiological excitement does not always transfer to aggressive behaviour, let alone long term. You need to look at what the objective results are and how the author presents them to you, what they want you to believe. So if you lose a game and get frustrated, does this make you an abuser? And is this only media related? What if you stub your toe and scream? Is this a predictor for abusive behaviour?

putting the cut here as its getting long but i do have more to say

and also putting under check your sources, i will add /check the arguments/. if one side's arguments are "your thoughts somehow influence people who dont even know you" and "fictional children have the same rights as real children" and the other side's are "bodily autonomy is a human right and behavioral autonomy is part of that" and "personal boundaries end where another person's begin" and "active targeted intentional tangible harm is not the same as having a hobby" then studies are sometimes not necessary to come to a coherent conclusion. A study on the difference between a fictional character and a child would be interesting tho. "we tried to conduct an experiment on sasuke uchiha but he was not found for comment" jkfsjf

3. build an internal solid system of belief - i think this is of critical importance and a lot of 'proshippers' havent done it either. That means believing on foundational level the concept that builds other convictions. For example if your belief system says that harm is the only measure of morality, and active targeted intentional tangible harm is the only measurable indicator for harm then believing thought crimes would be irrational for you. That means yes, incest fic and underage shipping are effectively harmless. But that also means that 'racism against fictional characters' is also effectively harmless. This seems to be a point of particular content thats why i mention it. And if your belief system says that artists and authors are free to express themselves and share their stories as they see fit, then yes absolutely fan artists should not be held accountable for what they fancy. But so shouldnt popular and published authors, for daring to put a hot woman in their video game.

4. honestly, most importantly. Learn a little bit of hedonism. Learn some i dont give a fuck. Learn some i live for myself and my own comfort will not be sacrificed for someone else's. My body and mind are my own to with as i please. - Listen. I'm a smoker. There's endless, cohesive, correct, factual research on the harm of smoking. I dont care. This is my body and these are my rights to destroy it. I dont care about concern trolling or people trying to tell me it makes /them/ uncomfortable how i treat myself. The government doesnt have rights to tell me no, so no one else does (and if the govt did have those rights then the people wouldnt take it - prohibition era america for reference). Even /if/ fiction had an averse effect. Even /if/ it did affect everybody else. This is their responsibility. In the same way i will smoke in allowed places in public, i will keep posting my fic and art. It's other people's responsibility to not see me as cool as fuck while smoking and taking it up too. It's their own right to do or not to do. If someone has an averse reaction to smoke they sit in the non-smokers section. If someone has a bad reaction to fic, they filter tags. Even if fic "rotted the brain", cigarettes do so at twice the speed and damage. And i smoke unfiltered cigarillos. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what i put in my body and brain is my business. what other people want to see and do about it is theirs. meddling into my business is where the line is.

#ask #at the end of the day we are our own zookepeers #and even medial professionals do not have rights on your body and mind #i feel like i should point out that most juridical systems are fully in line with what i said #do no harm and you're free #thats why abortion laws prioritize the 'rights' of a 'fetus' #bc w no other person's rights infringed you dont get to tell people what to do #*medical professionals

[feelingunfulfilled]

My parent (won’t disclose which one) firmly believes that that the root of my issues has to deal with being hormonal and not getting enough nutrition or daily exercise. They believe that I need to strengthen those aspects of my life in order to balance everything out and then I will have the proper amount of serotonin and feel better. Seems to not believe I have anhedonia and even thinks I’ve been lying to my therapist, not telling her the full disclosure truth of how my mood has been? From what my parent gathers living with me each day, they believe they are more familiar with my internal emotions then the therapist could be and I’m not being honest about the good moments I’ve had. Only focusing and talking about the negatives. But isn’t that what I’m MEANT to do with my therapist, discuss concerns and struggles so we can talk about healthy solutions? And even as I’ve had “good days” or seemed happy, it was a fleeting feeling and my baseline of emotion is still monotone or flat. Just because I have ups and downs doesn’t mean I’m improving, just because I can appear optimistic doesn’t mean I actually believe it or take my words to heart. Overall I’m still very negative and pessimistic, with no real baseline emotion. But I also won’t deny my parent the mindset that I’ve been having nice days, because all things rationally considered my days HAVE been good. But it seems kinda biased to ignore all the negatives and ignore my depression and say “oh yes your getting better without any medication, you just had to work harder at it”. I don’t want to have to work harder just to feel NORMAL. I shouldn’t have to dismiss all the sucky instances in my life and push them aside as if they don’t have merit in the situation. That isn’t realistic. Although they have a point, saying I shouldn’t keep feeding into negativity because that only worsens depression, it’s also irritating when they want me to only recognize cheerful fleeting moments and act like I’m not still feeling empty after all that ends.

I’m starting to get desensitized to that notion my parent pushes though; that my hormones are a contributing factor. Sayings things like “it could be your period making you upset, not depression” and attributing my frustrations to teenage hormones. The reason I kept rejecting that viewpoint was because it genuinely sounded like a personal attack to me. It felt like she was dismissing all my struggles and raw emotions (and lack of) as nothing more then a chemical reaction in my body. Like she wasn’t trying to see me for ME. Trying to separate myself as “perfect” from the messy aspects of who I actually am. And I hated being compared to those stereotypes of angsty teenagers, because I hate the notion. Ever since (and even before) I discovered myself to be asexual, I’ve been rather disappointed by the way movies portray teenagers…making a comedy out of real struggles we face, labeling them as “moody” and “emo” and “rebellious”. Oh this teenager is having identity crisis, hating their self image, and crying over how others judge & betray them? lol depressed teenager haha imagine being this self absorbed. I absolutely HATE how the film industry has made a joke and mockery out of being a teenager. Don’t get me started at the constant shoe-horned in immature sex jokes about MINORS and acting like every teen wants to get drunk and party and fuck everyone. Getting actors in their 30’s to pretend to be teenagers banging on the couch….like WTF how absurdly out of touch with reality ARE these people??? Not saying it doesn’t exist, I’m sure it does, but not to this degree and it’s certainly not fair for adults to then make the assumption that this is EVERY teenagers experience. That’s why I’m repulsed when people say “oh your just hormonal right now” because it’s seems like an assumption based on something that isn’t accurate to reality

It’s only now, after taking a step away from all this discussion, that I’m starting to think more deeply about the hormonal argument my parent makes. It may have more merit then I give it credit for. Although I want to see myself as an exception, truth is my body is still developing and I’m sure my mind is too. That most likely IS some reason behind my current actions and way of processing information. It’s possible my mind makes a bigger deal out of things which don’t matter in hindsight. And it’s very possible this “rebellion” phase of teenagers does have some logical truth to it, where children going into adulthood have to advocate for their wants and make themselves independent from parents. That resistance to control and being dictated is instilled deep within many teenagers, including myself to a certain degree (although I don’t enjoy the idea of having to fend for myself as independent adult for the rest of my life lol). So yeah, I’ll give the claim that. But aside from that notion…I still don’t believe it? The excuse that all my thoughts, feelings, actions are dictated by hormones seems absurd. And it makes me feel pretty shitty honestly.

#rambling #cw vent #vent

[odinsblog]

i usually use the anon function bc im embarrassed to ask people things sjfjfjhs but I've never sent anything horrible to anyone!! I'm sorry you've had negative experiences with the anon function before, you don't deserve that at all!! sending love!

[re: this post]

Thank you. I genuinely appreciate you rn

People like you are literally the only reason why I don’t completely disable the anon feature, because I understand that sometimes people are shy, or they want to express themselves without taking shit. I actually dO get that

But alas, as with everything, there are those who abuse what really should be thought of as a nicety, or privilege—some people just abuse it

Very long rant, incoming

So here’s the thing, right? Sometimes when people are online, they act and behave in ways they wouldn’t dare to irl

I’m not the government. I don’t have a staff to edit my posts. I’m not anybody special. I’m just some dude on the internet who enjoys sharing my opinions and other things. If YOU don’t like or agree with my opinions or something else that I post, you are completely free to keep scrolling or to block me. That’s fine. But when anons begin demanding that I phrase things the way that they’re more comfortable with, then we got serious issues

And another thing: people need to not be so quick to assume malicious intent where none exists

For example, I have accidentally typed the number 500 in a post when I meant to type 50–now, in the specific post, it truly was a significant error. But an anon immediately jumped into the comments and self righteously accused me of lying to make a point, rather than saying to themselves, “Hm, maybe Odin just made a typo”

And my personal favorites

them: YOU’RE SPREADING MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION !!!!

me: um, it was a fucking joke? do they have jokes where you come from?

Or,

me: posts a video of an alligator and some cranes, and adds a bit of whimsical commentary

them: WELL ACTUALLY, THAT IS PROBABLY PREDATORY BEHAVIOR AND I THINK YOU SHO-

me: no. goddamn, I can’t be fucking whimsical on a social media site? eat shit. stfu

And also,

them: well technically, it’s not really fascism

me: maybe not, but it’s fucking close enough. I’m not gonna wait for people to start getting marched into ovens and say, “now can we call it fascism??”

I have literally had all of these dumb, stupid ass conversations (almost verbatim) here on tumblrdotcom, and lemme tell ya, it’s frustrating af

And other times, when I author a post containing a hyperlink on desktop but then later edit it on mobile, sometimes the hyperlink doesn’t carry over to mobile and you’re left with a post that may say “source,” but is not clickable. It happens sometimes, and it’s not a big deal, right?? WRONG! Instead of sending an ask to ask me what happened to the link, I’ve had anons accuse me of “not crediting” a source

I’ve had people use anon to accuse me of cropping videos so that I could somehow “steal” credit from others, and I’m just like … What??? Who does that? Who has the time for all of that? Are you aware that sometimes people on the internet see something like a video or a photo from somewhere else (also uncredited from twitter, reddit, facebook, etc), and then just post it here on tumblr??

And no, I am not talking about reposting someone’s art or other works

Look, if YOU get your thrills from finding out who/where/when the very first instance of every single cat or dog video came from, that’s great! Do you. Knock yourself out. Have fun. But don’t try to shame others because we aren’t all humorless poindexters like you

If I post something from tiktok, the video generally tells you where to go to see it there. If it’s a tweet or from reddit, again, there are usually twitter or reddit handles in the tweet. And NO, I am not putting a link to every single tweet or reddit thread or facebook post — if that’s that important to you, then figure it out. It’s not hard, and in the year 2023 most adults should have the necessary skills to find an original tweet, if that’s something that’s important to you. I’m not doing it for you, not sorry

(SN: I’ll never forget when I took my first college English literature course, and at the end of the semester I was on the bubble for getting an A or an A+ in the class, and our final exam was a written essay that would decide my final grade. I didn’t quite score the A+ that I wanted, and when I looked over my essay, the professor wrote on it: “Odin, you are the quintessential college freshman, and your inquisitiveness has made this semester one of my most enjoyable.” And after class, I walked up to him and thanked him, and asked him what quintessential meant? He opened his mouth and was about to answer me, but then he smiled, wagged his finger at me and said, “you should learn to look things up.” He was one of my favorite professors (had a British accent, eyeglasses and reminded me of Giles from Buffy), but I’ve never forgotten that lesson. Some of you very obviously need to learn it too)

I’ve also made what are very obviously jokes online, only to have people accuse me of misrepresenting facts—and then I’m like, do I really need to explain the concept of what a joke is to you people??

Like, I could see if it was something racist, trans/homophobic, Islamophobic, antisemitic, etc, BUT I DON’T DO THAT

I think that some people need to be seen as, or have a desire to be known as a gatekeeper, and instead of using just a tiny bit of common sense, they try to make mountains out of molehills to elevate themselves in the eyes of their followers

The people who act this way are truly joyless human beings, and they probably suck all the fun out of parties and other events that people are forced to spend time with them

Maybe try socializing a bit more? Learn to read (online) cues. Don’t be so eager to accuse everyone of doing something wrong just so that YOU get to look like the good guy

And all of that’s without even addressing all of the straight up racist anons that I constantly receive

Like, do people even understand that we aren’t inside of each other’s heads? Sometimes we’re all dealing with life and other stuff. And just maybe people are busy trying to have just a tiny bit of fun, and then the mf fun police come along and try to ruin shit? Because I don’t use a word exactly the same way you do?? Or because of an obvious joke?? You guys who do this kind of shit really SUCK

I feel sorry for you

I almost can’t believe this is the piddling little shit that some people choose to be upset over

Please find some REAL things to be upset over

Try learning to use the feature that lets users (gasp) make a post of their very own! instead of fixating on one goddamn mutha fucking post that wasn’t worded to your liking

I am not here for the discourse with anyone with an internet connection and a keyboard

Please go touch some grass

#anon #ask #answered #odin rants #please grow up #dont be so fast to assume the worst in everyone #stop trying to be a gatekeeper #lighten tf up

[regrettablewritings]

Soulmate AU: The First Drawing You See From Your Soulmate is Tattooed on Your Skin

A detective having a tell would probably be considered inappropriate to most people. Detectives were supposed to read tells, not have them. But then again, Benoit had never been much for keeping up appearances. Besides, what was the harm in rubbing his thumb along his right wrist? It helped him focus; it helped him think.

Or at least, that was what he’d told himself. He wasn’t entirely lying, either, rather the larger whole of it all was more so that when he rubbed that spot on his skin, he felt calm. Composed. He liked to think that that was the feeling his soulmate had intended when they painted that image, whenever they made or would make it. Whatever it was. After all, it had plenty of blue in it.

He was pretty sure it was meant to be a pond or some kind of body of water; that might explain the blues and greens and maybe the bits of white that he could make out. And if he squinted his eyes a little, he could swear there were little flecks of gold. Goldfish, maybe? Honestly, he had no clue. Benoit wasn’t much for complaining or expressing a lack of gratefulness, but he couldn’t help but sometimes feel envious of those whose tattoos covered a larger part of their body. Not a massive amount, but at least just enough to be able to tell precisely what the heck their soulmate’s image was trying to portray. Clearly, the image was larger than what that patch of his skin could afford, and honest to God, he’d spent a good part of his life trying to make out what it was!

(The embarrassment of it all, he would sometimes muse deprecatingly: That the acclaimed “Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths” could solve the most absurd cases in the country, yet had spent most of his natural-born life completely stumped by what might as well have counted as a body part!)

And yet, Benoit could never stay frustrated about it; not when his thumb gently grazed against the image, imagining the smoothness of his skin ebbing into the aquatic swirls of the proposed water. But just for extra precaution, he saw no harm in distracting himself.

That afternoon’s distraction? A quick skim of the local paper, accompanied by a mug of hot tea. He tried not to think of how such a method revealed his age, instead snapping the paper open to a page discussing the local goings-on. It was the usual sort of content: The community theater’s spring production was seeking house crew members, a mom and pop-style restaurant was having an anniversary special . . . It was the same sort of thing Benoit had grown used to expecting.

But what his pale blue eyes landed on next didn’t make the rest pale by comparison -- it downright washed all else from existence: An art show.

Benoit considered himself a well-rounded person, but it was more so in an almost tongue in cheek sort of manner: As a detective, it was his job to be appropriately versed in an assortment of fields. However, a jack of all trades was never truly a master of none. Benoit’s experiences with art theft and forgeries had lent him a hand in only about as much observation as was necessary for the respective occurrences.

But . . . he knew those swirls. He knew that blue, those greens, that white -- he recognized how the gold was patterned! Sure, the cheap ink job of a colored newspaper picture might have dulled the quality ever so slightly but there was no mistake to be made: That painting was his. No . . . It was theirs!

You tried to make calming breaths without making your anxiety obvious. A nervous but otherwise acceptable smile twitched into place, fooling the guests as they wandered about the gallery. Or, at least, you certainly hoped it was fooling them; but it was probably all to be outdone by the fact that you’d been nursing the same champagne flute for the last half-hour.

Is this what “making it” feels like? you wondered. Because if it was . . . you weren’t too fond of it. You felt bad for not relishing this opportunity; the art world was highly competitive, and you were more than blessed to have had the chance to not only display your work in a showroom, but to have said room be dedicated entirely to your pieces. But in that blessing was also a curse: The curse of criticism, of weary eyes, of people both waiting to pounce on you with ribbings of how you lack the magnanimity of the classics or the free thinking of the contemporaries --

Shitshitshitsmile! You did as you were told -- both by your brain, and by your manager earlier when they walked you through how you were to compose yourself through this entire ordeal. Just smile, enunciate when spoken to, and let the potential schmoozing flow and oh god, that Karen-looking lady who definitely owns a house in Martha’s Vineyard for when she wants to get away from her husband for a day totally hated that piece you’d spent months working on, didn’t she?!

The thought made your stomach twist, your already awkward smile along with it. You inhaled sharply. You had to find something to distract yourself with. 

You turned and faced the painting nearest to you. Some might call it vanity, but you were actually quite pleased with this particular piece. That, and its blueness gave you a sense of . . . serenity. You imagined the ripples washing over you and into you, the scent and sound of the painted environment gently caressing your nose and drowning out both the stench of perfume and pretentious chattering . . . And also, apparently, the sound of approaching footsteps.

You hadn’t realized anyone had joined your side until the rumble of a southern baritone carded through the water.

“It’s gorgeous. Isn’t it?”

You hadn’t meant to jump and appear so clumsy.

“Oh, sh -- ” You cut yourself short as you eyed the droplets of spilled, room temperature champagne. If your manager found out that you had cussed around a potential buyer, they would’ve mounted your head on the wall. Thankfully, however, the stranger didn’t appear at all fazed. If anything, the chuckle he responded with sounded genuinely amused.

“Oh, my dear girl, I’m terribly sorry!” he insisted, holding up his left hand. “I didn’t mean to scare you; I can imagine most anyone would be mighty transfixed over a piece like this.”

You gulped as you looked up at your unintentional scarer. His eyes were the same blue as the one that brought you calm just moments earlier, yet they had the almost opposite effect to you now. As you looked into them, you didn’t feel calm; not necessarily: Instead, you felt your heart beginning to ripple the pattern of the painting, your cheeks burning as bright as the gold swirling amongst the little waves. And yet you found yourself transfixed by them, only offered freedom when the older gentleman offered you a hint of a smile. A warm one.

Crap! Uh -- Answer his question! Think of something to say! your mind scrambled.

“Uh . . .” you stammered. The only way to save what atoms of confidence you still had left was to turn your eyes back to the painting. “I -- I should hope so.” Smooth. You tried to remember your calming breaths. You heard the man hum, shifting his position ever so slightly in your peripheral.

“What can you tell me about it?” he asked, revealing just how close to you he truly was. You could feel the warmth of his person and the richness of his voice vibrating into you. Or perhaps it was butterflies? Maybe both? Well, whatever it was, it almost made you stumble over your words. You’d spent the entire evening up to that point rehearsing stories of your inspirations, recounting whatever education you had to people who probably didn’t give a crap.

But this instance was different: Maybe it was foolishness sourced from a sudden and sophomoric attraction, but you almost wanted to believe that perhaps this man genuinely cared. That he was genuinely interested in what you as the actual artist had to say and not you as some painting mannequin made to recite lines over and over.

The excitement of such a possibility broke through your nerves . . . and, unfortunately, right out of your mouth.

“I just really wanted to paint a mermaid in a mall coin fountain,” you admitted. You wanted to kick yourself. Up until that point, you’d been rather proud of your nifty little idea. But when you said it out loud, you sounded ridiculous! You could barely hide the reactionary wince, much less how your breathing hitched and hiccuped with nervousness. Just as soon as it had come, the hope that perhaps this man was different disappeared, leaving you awaiting his ridicule.

A ridicule that never came. Instead, there was quiet between the both of you. Perhaps he was at a loss for words?

“Mm,” he hummed, making you tense with expectation. You glanced at him just enough to see him nod, his blue eyes still focused on the canvas before him. “Go on . . .”

You blinked. Was he . . . for real?

“I . . . What more is there to say?” you wondered. The entire night, nobody had really asked for more on your part. They usually just took whatever purple prose you gave them and left it at that. Your initial assumption was right after all: This gentleman was cut from a different cloth from the lot.

He pursed his lips and shrugged. “What inspired this?”

“Oh, uh . . . Well . . .” Was it worth telling him? Aw, hell: you’d already made a bit of a fool of yourself being honest, so what harm was there in doing it some more? “I did it because I never saw anything about a mermaid that lived in a mall fountain, collecting the coins people toss in there.”

You didn’t even have a chance to worry about his criticism before the man’s features broke into a smile. It wasn’t like the others’ more courteous grins; this one reached his eyes, making their icy coolness warm and welcoming. You hated the cheesiness of it all, but for a very split second you wished that you could be a mermaid in them.

He chuckled once again. “Can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything concerning a coin-hoarding mermaid myself, let alone a professional art piece.” It was small, but the assurance made you offer your own smile.

“Well . . . But then maybe I have . . .” At that, your heart dropped. There it was: The anticipated criticism. He thought you were a hack after all: Uninspired, boorish, unskilled, whatever word there was to describe a person who didn’t know how to use a fan brush properly if any.

The wound stung as one so sudden should: Heavily and down to your core. You wanted the floor to open up and eat you whole. Or better yet: You wanted to climb into your apparently uninspired painting and drown in the mall fountain. But none of those could be an option, and neither was the possibility of hiding in the bathroom or an empty corridor. Instead, you had to put on a brave face and do your best to get through the moment.

“Oh?” you uttered. Your throat pained from the threat of anxiety. “Where do you suppose? I’ll admit, I’m not much into contemporary art so I don’t know the what’s what of what if you catch my drift.” You tried to weakly smile at your sad attempt for a joke. God, this so wasn’t what “making it” felt like.

But the man didn’t offer a courteous hint of laughter. Nor did he offer you a verbal response. Instead, he turned to face you. You did the same, even though you really didn’t want to. But it was the polite and expected thing to do when being confronted. Damn politeness and courteousness.

You weren’t sure how to respond when the man began to make work of his right sleeve, unbuttoning the cuff and beginning to roll the rest of it up. Your paranoia was unfortunately the first to respond due to your preexisting discomfort of the entire ordeal of an evening. You were just about prepared to scream, yelp, make any kind of distressed call -- only for it to trickle out into a gasp. An amazed exhale. The image the man presented to you on his wrist was small. Clearly, for it to be recognized for what it was, it needed a larger stretch of skin to belong to. But you knew what it was: You knew those swirls, the placements of those flecks of gold, those blues and greens surrounded by white.

For the umpteenth time that evening, your breathing changed. Only, you were pretty positive that none of your deep breathing would be necessary this time around; you would be more than happy to look at your painting on your soulmate’s skin for the rest of the night.

Epilogue:

“Mr. Blanc, please,” you insisted. “You’ve grown up with that thing on your arm, surely you’re bored with it by now. You can have your pick of the gallery. Hell, I’ll even make you something on request!”

Pickings hadn’t become slim, but the night had ended surprisingly successful. Well, surprising to you: You hadn’t expected anyone to buy anything of yours that evening, let alone six. You supposed that perhaps they just wanted to participate in the elitism brought on by owning newcomer art. Benoit, however, insisted that the buyers simply had functioning eyes. What a sweet-talker your soulmate was.

You watched as he shook his head stubbornly, eyes still fixated on the painting that adorned his wrist. He’d seen all the other remaining paintings, and even the ones that wound up selling by evening’s end. They were all gorgeous, he insisted, but . . .

“Benoit, if you will, Ms. (Y/N),” he corrected, apparently missing the irony. He gestured insistently at the composition. “And no. I . . . I truly would be quite satisfied with this one.” He heard you raspberry in defeat as you made your way back to his side, folding your arms in exasperation. 

“Seriously, though,” you sighed. “Is a painting of a mermaid dwelling in, like, a fountain you can find nearby an Auntie Anne’s really . . .” You waved a hand as if searching for the right word. “. . . Befitting? Of a detective’s abode? I was thinking more of a bucolic piece or like a portrait of some kind or . . .” You trailed off, only to be met with an amused huff.

“Some detective I am,” Benoit muttered. He broke his gaze back to you and placed his hands on his hips. “Took me well over a damn decade or two to learn what it even was. And only because you told me!”

#benoit blanc x reader #benoit blanc #knives out imagine #knives out imagines #knives out x reader #regrettablewritings #for anyone wondering: I think Reader's tattoo would be of a flower. Or a random doodle. #something Benoit made while not thinking and they just so happened to glance at it

[cicissketchbook]

Okay so sometime ago, I think about five years ago, I saw some things in the tag about how April and Donnie’s interactions were abusive. It angered me greatly because I am of the opinion that misusing that word really devalues it and as a result, real abuse isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. During that time, I wrote this really long piece in the notes app of my phone, one part ranting, one part sharing, basically just putting my frustrations into words. I never posted it because I really didn’t want to open the doors of communication about the topic of abuse. Basically I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where people would try to argue with me about my own experience. 

Some time has past now and some people expressed interest in wanting to read that post.  I know that those individuals that expressed interest and are coming from a place of respectful curiosity, so this is for everyone else that might stumble across this post. 

Trigger warning: this post is about abuse. Not abuse in the show, not abusive characters, this is about real life actual abuse. This is basically me demonstrating why something is not abusive, by showing you what is. 

Also, it should go without saying that this is a story that’s very personal to me, I’m being a little bit vulnerable by sharing some aspects of that story. This doesn’t have my whole abuse story, but it has bits and pieces. You don’t have to agree with me, but please at least be respectful. 

I’m posting this because people have expressed interest in reading it. If you don’t like it or don’t want to read it, just scroll away. 

And bare in mind I wrote most of this like five years ago. 

So I saw something in the tag earlier about how someone or some people think Aprils treatment of Donnie is emotionally abusive and I am here to put this to rest right now. I'm sure he bulk of the fandom doesn't think this way, but I haven't stopped thinking about it since I saw it earlier and I'd just like to throw this out there. And honestly, I'm not even talking about just the Tmnt fandom. 

For the love of God, stop throwing that word around like you know what you're talking about. 

It's been my experience, coming from an abusive childhood myself and having been the one to help my best friend escape from her abuser, people don't really know what it is unless you've experienced it. That's not to say that you have to be a victim to recognize it, but to truly understand what it is and how it makes a person feel, it's hard to imagine if its never happened to you. People love to fucking throw that word around and nothing makes me see red more than that. 

First off, you sound ignorant as hell. Second of, by seeing interactions you don't like and calling them abusive, you are devaluing the seriousness of real abuse. And because that word gets thrown around so much, the line of what is considered abusive is so blurry now. Now you have people who think they're abused when they're not (kids who get spanked for example), and you have people are really are abused but they don't know it (partners who make excuses for each other).

You think April is emotionally abusive to Donnie? Honey, I will tell you what real abuse is like. Real abuse is being told that you aren't smart enough to come up with any good ideas on your own. Real abuse is being told that every good thing that has happened to you only happened because [your abuser] is in your life. Real emotional and verbal abuse is being humiliated and belittled and made to think you aren't good enough and nothing you do is good enough or ever will be. That your feeling are not valid and that you have no worth outside what this one person says you have. 

It is not abuse to disagree or argue with someone, it is not abuse to speak your mind even if it hurts someone else’s feelings. Just because someone has a negative reaction to something you did or said, that doesn’t mean your actions were abusive. Their reaction does not define your behavior.

The literal definition of emotional abuse is the attempt to control someone else. Be that through manipulation or gaslighting or isolating. Like I said before, the abusers goal is for the victim to think they need them, they are worthless without them, they could never make it on their own without them.

And then of course, there’s physical abuse, where your head is slammed in a door and your nose is busted open. 

Abuse isn’t this casual thing that happens sometimes, you don’t say “oh that person is kind of abusive” like it’s a character flaw. What you’re thinking of is just someone being mean. You can be mean without being abusive and you can be abusive without being “mean”, One of the steps in the cycle of abuse is literally love bombing. It’s a manipulation tactic to get you to think that the abuser is just doing this because they care about you, they want to protect you, they want what’s best for you.

And the affects of that can stay with you your entire life. To this day, I’m instantly distrustful anyone Who reaches out to me because I think they know my abuser. I suck at communicating because even the slightest hint that someone is mad or upset puts me in defense mode. If someone voice raises above a certain volume, even if it’s not at me, I shut down. I have to remove myself from the situation. I am literally in capable of communicating with someone who I perceive to be angry, even if they aren’t. Like my mouth will not form words, all I can think about is getting away from this person. I’ve been in situations where someone will move or approach me a certain way and I throw my arms up to cover my face. I’ve had relationships suffer because I would 100% rather be by myself then put myself in what I perceive to be danger, even though my logical brain knows that this person is not my abuser. My last boyfriend used to get mad at me because he felt like he was having to tiptoe around my trauma. To which my response was, “I literally just said I don’t like being yelled at, this shouldn’t be hard.”

This shit isn’t funny, it’s traumatizing.

(if you’re curious about this, I recommend looking up the cycle of abuse. A common thing is outsiders looking in and not understanding why someone can’t just leave an abusive situation, and then when the victim says it’s not that simple, they just don’t understand how that can be. Viewing abuse from an outside perspective makes it seem very black-and-white, but knowing the cycle of abuse can help to better understand what a victim is going through.)

(My abuser happened to be my stepmother, but it still affects me in both romantic and platonic relationships.)

(Also I’m not even going to touch on the thousands of people that are literally murdered every year for trying to get away from their abusers.)

Anyway….

I have yet to see anyone actually provide any kind of legitimate reasoning or example of April being abusive. Because she’s not, the examples aren’t there because they don’t exist. “Leading someone on” isn’t abusive. And I’ve talked before about how April doesn’t even do that.

Just because you don’t like some thing, doesn’t mean it’s abusive. And if half of these people actually knew what real abuse was, I guarantee they’d shut their mouth with a quickness.

It’s assholes that throw that word around that make is so victims of real abuse aren’t taken seriously.

If anyone has any instances where they think April was being abusive, let me know and I would love to debunk them for you. No, not discuss it, debunk it. This isn’t up for discussion.

#tmnt 2012 #april o'neil #donatello #apriltello #apritello #donnie #tmnt #abuse #abusestory #may be triggering #triggering content

[calciopics]

Kylian Mbappé is Born to Run

The France forward grew up in the suburbs of Paris, steeped in the culture of football. At 22, the World Cup-winner is already a global superstar, and only now entering his prime. Will Euro 2020 be the moment when he overtakes Messi and Ronaldo to become recognised as the best player on the planet?

Kylian Mbappé was 18 when he walked into the changing room of the French national team. “It’s very difficult,” he recalls, “because great players don’t want to give you their place. That’s what makes them great players. They especially don’t want to give you their place if you arrive with the label of ‘Future Great Player’.” Within a year, Mbappé and France had won the World Cup in Moscow.

Three years on, we are talking in a room of his mansion in the leafy, old-money streets of Neuilly, just outside Paris. It isn’t even his home; he bought it to house his foundation, which offers after-school activities to rich and poor children alike. In conversation, Mbappé resembles a veteran TV presenter more than a young footballer. He makes short speeches in complete sentences, as precise in his footing as he is on the field. He sits as straight-backed as he runs. His expressive face keeps breaking into smiles: he likes talking, and is almost unburdened by the usual footballer’s fear of saying the wrong thing.

His burly father Wilfried sits beside us, but only once during the interview will he feel impelled to intervene. Meeting Mbappé, you come to understand how he hit football seemingly already fully formed. At 22, he has achieved more than most great players ever do. Can he take one more step and become the world’s best footballer?

His story starts 10 miles and a universe away from where we’re sitting today. His hometown, Bondy, is a multicultural suburb just northeast of Paris that looks as if someone plonked a Soviet town on top of an ancient French village. The old church is surrounded by fast-food joints and fading 1960s’ apartment blocks, one of them now adorned with a giant mural of Mbappé.

His parents grew up in Bondy: Wilfried, of Cameroonian origin, and Mbappé’s mother Fayza, of Algerian descent. Mixed marriages are common in the Parisian suburbs, the banlieues, but the couple did have to defy some local disapproval.

If a wannabe footballer had to choose the ideal place on earth to grow up, it might have been the Mbappé home in Bondy. Mbappé’s father and uncle were both football coaches, and Fayza, who ran after-school activities, played handball in the French first division. His parents had adopted an older boy, Jirès Kembo Ekoko, who went on to make a long career as a journeyman professional footballer. “I didn’t bring a new passion into the family,” Mbappé says with understatement.

He grew up practically inside the local football club, AS Bondy. “In the Parisian suburbs there are football fields everywhere,” he enthuses. “People here live for football. I was born with the sports ground facing my window.” It’s no wonder, he adds, that Paris’s suburbs are perhaps the deepest talent pool in global football, producing players such as Paul Pogba, Blaise Matuidi, N’Golo Kanté and Riyad Mahrez.

As a non-white kid from the suburbs, did Mbappé always feel accepted as French before he became a French icon? “I’ve always felt French. I don’t renounce my origins, because they are part of who I am, but I’ve made my whole life in France, and never at any moment was I made to feel I wasn’t at home here.” In the banlieues, he says, “We have a love of France because France has given to us and we try to give back to it.”

Mbappé’s parents made him take school seriously, and he was also a not-very-talented flautist at Bondy’s conservatory, but football came first. At AS Bondy, he says, “My father was my coach for 10 years. He helped construct the style of player I wanted to become. But I never felt the pressure of, ‘You have to become a footballer.’ Above all, it was a passion.”

Tagging along with his dad and uncle on their coaching jobs, the child acquired an unusual gift: he became a footballer who thinks like a coach. “Very young, I was always in the changing rooms, listening to the tactical talks and the different points of view, because football is made up of different viewpoints. I learned to have this tolerance, and I think it helped me, because being a coach is putting yourself in somebody else’s place. I think I have the gift of doing that. It helps in football, because if you’re a player, generally you think about yourself, about your own career. I can see, for instance, when something in a game is frustrating a team-mate. I can put him at ease.”

When you’re in the World Cup final, you’re convinced you’re going to win. You walk onto the field, the trophy is there, and you tell yourself it is impossible the other team will take it

Mbappé turned out to be that perfect sporting combination: a natural who is coachable. “He assimilates advice quickly. You ask him something once, and the second time he does it,” Antonio Riccardi, his former youth coach at AS Bondy, told me. Even as a child, Mbappé was an efficient footballer: decisive, never just decorative.

By adolescence, he was being courted by the big European clubs, which all keep close tabs on the Paris region. He visited Chelsea, and celebrated his 14th birthday at Real Madrid, which cannily found him the perfect babysitter: the club’s then assistant coach Zinedine Zidane, the greatest French footballer. When Zidane offered Mbappé a lift in his fabulous car, the overawed child offered to take his shoes off first.

The Mbappés sifted the countless offers and chose Monaco, where the route to the first team looked shortest. Mbappé arrived there, he says, “with my [footballing] baggage well filled.”

Kids in performance-sports families learn that they never arrive. Each step up is just another learning opportunity. In Monaco’s first team, the teenaged Mbappé encountered the veteran Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, freshly returned from unhappy loan spells with Manchester United and Chelsea.

“He was a star,” says Mbappé, “but he had a desire to transmit. He was like a teacher to me. He’s someone who always wants to score, but he left me the space to express myself. He’s very cool in front of goal, calm in his game, and he transmitted this serenity that I didn’t have, because I was young, excited and wanted to go at 2,000 kilometres an hour.”

The kid who didn’t yet have a driving licence scored 15 league goals in his first professional season to help Monaco win the French title in 2017. He added six more in the Champions League knockout rounds. He also passed his baccalauréat, France’s equivalent of A-levels.

Mbappé marvelled at the tension on the faces of other professionals, because he didn’t feel it himself. Everything came easily to him, without great sacrifice, he has said. When I ask about stress in a profession of hypercompetitive men, he shrugs: “Daily life is easy.”

His vertical ascent didn’t surprise him; it just happened a bit quicker than he’d expected. But others were stunned. Here was something new: an 18-year-old complete forward. Built like an Olympic sprinter, Mbappé ran upright, looking around him. He could dribble, cross and shoot. He was more advanced than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo had been at 18.

How does he describe his style? “The modern attacker who can play anywhere,” he replies. He explains that forwards used to be specialists: “There’d be a number nine, or number 11, or number seven.” Mbappé, though, is the all-in-one. “I think my CV can speak for me. I’ve played alone up front, I’ve played on the left and the right. In all humility, I don’t think it’s given to everyone to change position like that every year and keep a certain standard of performance at the highest level. That didn’t fall from heaven. If I speak of the baggage given me in my teens, it’s all there.”

In one regard he has always been unequalled: the counterattack at speed. He says, “I’ve managed to work on my weak points but above all to perfect my strong points, because I was always told that it’s through your strong points that you’ll exist.”

In March 2017, Mbappé became the youngest player in 62 years to debut for France. Five months later, his hometown club Paris Saint-Germain agreed to sign him for a fee of £166m. He drew on his childhood experiences to navigate two alpha-male changing-rooms. At PSG, his good English and Spanish helped him deal with foreign team-mates. With Les Bleus, France’s assistant coach Guy Stéphan told Mbappé’s biographer Arnaud Hermant: “He knows the codes of the changing room. At table or in the bus, he doesn’t just sit somewhere randomly. For a youngster, he isn’t timid or introverted. He expresses himself.”

By summer 2018, picked for the World Cup in Russia, Mbappé was comfortable enough to claim the blue number 10 shirt — previously worn by Zidane and Michel Platini — and to say in public that he was gunning for the trophy.

“I went to play the matches calmly like I always have. I didn’t want to change just because it was the World Cup,” he says. “We were lucky to have a young squad. We were totally carefree, just a band of mates.”

Hang on, surely a football team isn’t really a band of mates? “No,” he acknowledges. “Just like the baker doesn’t get on with all bakers. You don’t have to eat with your team-mates every evening to win.”

In the World Cup round of 16, his two goals and a 37kmph gallop through Argentina’s defence made his global name. The night before the final against Croatia, he admits, “I was a bit stressed. I didn’t manage to sleep much. But the nearer the match came, the less stressed I was.” Before kick-off he was joking in the changing room. Stéphan recalls: “He experienced the final as if it were a PSG-Dijon game.”

Mbappé says, “When you’re in the World Cup final, you’re convinced that you’re going to win. Even the Croats were convinced they were going to win. You walk onto the field and the trophy is there, between the two teams, and you tell yourself it’s impossible that the other team will take it. That’s why there’s such disappointment afterwards if you don’t win.”

Half of Bondy gathered in front of a giant screen to cheer on the commune’s own “Kylian national”. Scoring in France’s 4–2 victory, he seemed to have reached his career apogee aged 19. He didn’t see it like that. Interviewed the night of the final, he described winning the World Cup as “already good” but only a start.

The next day, as the Bleus’ bus edged along a packed, ecstatic Champs-Élysées, writes Hermant, the ice-cold kid mused to the French Football Federation’s president Noël Le Graët: “Was all this really necessary?”

Mbappé explains now: “For me, it wasn’t an outcome, a finality. I don’t think of that trophy now at all. I don’t look at pictures of the World Cup before going to sleep. Honestly, it’s people on the street who come up and say, ‘You’re world champion, merci, merci.’”

He understood that his early triumph had upset football’s all-important hierarchies. Returning to PSG, he immediately reassured Paris’s Brazilian star Neymar: “I’m not going to walk on your flowerbeds. I’ll be a candidate for the Ballon d’Or [the award for world’s best footballer] this year because you won’t be, but I promise I don’t want to take your place.”

Soon after, he took the World Cup trophy to Bondy, where thousands came out to greet him. “It was a way to say, ‘Thank you.’ I’ve never forgotten which soup I have eaten. So it was important for me to return there after my first World Cup and first international title.” (Note that word, “first”.)

France’s coach, Didier Deschamps, recalls falling into “physical and moral apathy” the season after he lifted the World Cup as a player in 1998. Did Mbappé experience a hangover? He grins: “I finished as best player in the league, highest scorer, best young player, I was chosen in the team of the season, and we won the league.”

Winning the World Cup made Mbappé a national hero. Does he consider himself a star? “I think so. If your face is everywhere in the city, everywhere in the world, that’s for sure. Being a star is a status, but it doesn’t make me a better person than others.”

He lives like a luxury prisoner, who cannot leave home without being mobbed. “It takes an organisation just to go out,” he says. He has joked that when his future children ask him about his youthful adventures, he won’t have any.

“A fan gives you enormous love,” says Mbappé carefully, “but sometimes maybe an excess of love, and he might not respect your intimacy. We give our lives to the people, because we give them pleasure every three days, and we give them our time. It’s impossible to hope for a normal life, but just a little respect for one’s private life isn’t too much to ask for, I think.”

As a young man of non-white origins, he has a particular vulnerability with the French public, one-third of whom voted for the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the run-off of the presidential elections in 2017. Even so, he has begun to speak out against police violence.

“I took time to start talking about it, because I wasn’t ready,” he admits. “I had a lot of things to digest: my change of status, my new life. But I have always opposed all types of violence.”

When I note that French police violence is disproportionately directed against people of non-white origins from suburbs like Bondy, his father stirs from his silence: “We’re not answering that. You’re orienting it as if the violence were only against people from the banlieues, which is false.”

In high-level football, nobody will make a place for you. Ego, self-love, isn’t just the caprice of stars. It’s also the will to give the best of yourself

French fans like their stars humble. Mbappé has explained “the French mentality” to Neymar, who favours a bling-bling, poker-playing party lifestyle. Mbappé says, “In Brazil, they are more festive, in France more serious. Here it’s not considered good to display your passions. People will think he’s neglecting PSG because he plays poker. I think he has begun to understand that. At first it was hard for him because he experienced it as an affront. When he arrived, they put his face on the Eiffel Tower, and six months later they’re asking him why he’s playing poker. In France, people know what you have but they don’t want to see it. They just want to see you playing football, smiling.”

But Mbappé believes humility isn’t enough. He thinks great footballers need big egos. “In high-level football, nobody will make a place for you or tell you that you’re capable of things. It’s up to you to persuade yourself that you are. Ego, self-love, isn’t just a caprice of stars. It’s also the will to surpass yourself, to give the best of yourself.” Every time he walks onto the field, he says, he tells himself, “I’m the best.”

In truth, he knows he isn’t the best — Messi and Ronaldo are better. “It’s not only me who knows that,” he laughs. “Everyone knows it. If you tell yourself that you’ll do better than them, it’s beyond ego or determination — it’s lack of awareness. Those players are incomparable. They have broken all laws of statistics. They have had 10 extraordinary years, 15.”

Still, he admits: “You do always compare yourself with the best in your sport, just as the baker compares himself with the best bakers around him. Who makes the best croissant, the best pain au chocolat? I watch matches of other great players to see what they’re doing. ‘I know how to do this, but can the other guy do it too?’ I think other players watch me, too. I think that pushes players to raise their game, just as Messi was good for Ronaldo and Ronaldo was good for Messi.”

Does Mbappé compare himself with the other great forward of his generation, Borussia Dortmund’s Norwegian Erling Braut Haaland? Mbappé’s reply sounds a touch patronising: “It’s his second year, we’re getting to know him. It’s the start for him. I’m happy for him, for what he’s doing.”

The more you become an important person, the more duties you have. I’m no longer the little kid. I’m Kylian Mbappé

In this elite individual competition, the top spot may be coming free. Messi (34 this month) and Ronaldo (36) are “nearer the end than the beginning”, acknowledges Mbappé. In February, his hat-trick helped PSG thrash Messi’s Barcelona 1–4 at the Camp Nou. “The best match of my career,” Mbappé says, “because it was complete. I helped my team both offensively and defensively, and I succeeded in the creation and finishing of my moves, in one-against-ones. I won 90 per cent of my duels, if that stat is correct. All match, I never had a moment when I felt extinguished.” He then scored two at Bayern Munich, before PSG fell to Manchester City.

Some opposing teams now rearrange their entire tactical systems to combat the Mbappé counterattack. “There are quite a few anti-Kylian plans every match,” he says. “It means I’ve been recognised as a great player. It requires you to have multiple strings to your bow. I like that, because I adore challenges.”

Surely he’s now too big a player for the French league? He umms and aws: “France isn’t the best championship in the world, but it’s my responsibility, as a flagship player, to help the league grow.” Yet he may well leave this summer, to Real Madrid or England. The decision, perhaps the biggest he’ll face in his career, will be made inside his family. Almost uniquely for a star footballer, Mbappé doesn’t have an agent, just lawyers.

At 22, he considers himself an experienced footballer. He says he and Neymar “are now the two natural leaders” of PSG. When he kicks off the delayed Euro 2020 with France in June, it will be with more responsibility than at the World Cup. “The more you become an important personality, the more duties you have. I’m no longer the little kid. I’m Kylian Mbappé.”

Kylian Mbappé’s prime may have already arrived. Fast strikers usually peak between 20 and 24. A Euro and a World Cup within 18 months, while France’s generation of 2018 remains almost intact, may be his best chance to make football history. What are his career ambitions? That smile again: “To win everything.” (Esquire Magazine)

#kylian mbappe #Mbappe #AS Bondy #AS Monaco FC #france national team #world champion 2018 #paris saint germain #PSG #football #fussball #foot #fodbold #futbol #futebol #soccer #calcio

[antiterf]

So I’m posting my genuine thought process here so that way people get a good context. If it sucks then I have ADHD and you’re going to have to deal with it.

Me, watching a new wave of transandrophobia discourse come up: Why are people saying that trans men don't oppress trans women? (Genuine)

"The experiences are too different to compare"

But trans men oppress trans women on the basis of being men and women. Why would that be disagreed with? Gender is odd with us, and shouldn’t be taken as black and white, but I don’t think it’s this odd. It’s probably because if you’re specifying an oppressed group of men (bi men, disabled men, etc) as holding privilege over another gender, it comes as a different form from that specific group.

So how did we reach this point where trans men are holding a specific form of transmisogyny where others are saying it? Does it exist? If it does then how and where did it come from? Why does transmisogyny keep getting a red underline it’s a word damn it WAIT I CAN ADD IT TO DICTIONARY SUCK IT WINDOWS.

And why do trans men and other trans masc people have an adverse reaction to being told this? I found myself checking recently if these calls for unity are ever coming from trans women, and I’m sure some agree with them, but it always seems to stem from other trans mascs. It reminds me of when other white people are rallying to me saying that we should set race aside. It sounds fine on the surface, racial differences shouldn’t make anyone feel less welcome in a space, but what was really happening was ignoring the issues of an oppressed group and silencing them for speaking out. While my fellow trans men may not intend to do that, or be doing the same exact thing, I’m still very wary.

Maybe it’s just another instance of people not knowing how privilege and oppression works. That not everyone experiences the same exact thing but that there is a pattern of one group treated better than the other when it’s averaged across the population.

Trans mascs are using transandrophobia, and I have definitely seen instances of some saying that trans women are the ones who are silencing us over our own experiences. Thats not the case from what I’ve seen. Trans women have an issue when we say to “stop focusing so much on them!” and try to act as if people cannot care about more than one thing. It’s like we think there’s one spotlight and we need to push the other group out to get into it, but that’s not how it works. Trans women have hypervisibility and saying that they hold power over our invisibility with it is incredibly harmful. I can understand that it’s frustrating when we look up anything regarding transgender rights or media and it’s mostly if not all trans women because we are looking for something that relates to us, but that is not the intent or fault of trans women.

And when it comes to us talking about our experiences without that and someone says that it’s taking attention away from trans women, yeah, that’s probably wrong, but we need to be able to differentiate that.

Overall when trans men and women separate to talk about our experiences, it does not end well and we commonly end up complaining about one another. This is not beneficial to either of us but we do it because it’s much easier to do that than to acknowledge the transphobic society we live in. Being trans will make you distrust a lot more people, because someone can become your enemy the second you mention your gender identity when they were your friend a second ago.

There is without a doubt transmisogyny within transmasc circles and as a trans man I still find myself there because I want to have a sense of community. It’s hard to tell that when there is critique if the intention is pure or not.

I’ve had plenty of experience being told that I can’t reclaim the t slur even though I’ve been called it for being trans since it’s only used against trans women, and I see myself reclaiming it anyway because before it was used in self-hatred and reclaiming it has improved my internalized transphobia and mental health. I’ve been told to delete my anti terf blog because I don’t experience transmisogyny and that terfs don’t target me, when that’s a lie. So maybe when people say that trans masc people have privilege over trans fems, that’s what we think of. We think of our experiences where people forget that transmisogyny will always include transphobia, and that transphobia effects all of us regardless of gender identity or agab. And instead of continuing to fight the outside transphobia, the oppression we are facing in the first place, we end up arguing who is truly facing that.

The fact that many people treat transmisogyny as just “transphobia towards trans women” is not helping either.

So trans men do oppress trans women, but on the basis that men oppress women. Trans men have an issue with transmisogyny but there is still the issue where trans men have their experiences with transphobia down played.

---- End Process ----

And I don’t like spending my time on this because after interacting with terfs A Lot I know that this benefits them more than anything. I know that they will say that us trans men are being abused by trans women and held hostage because of our agab and other bullshit. But maybe this long fucking mess of a post will get critique or others to expand their way of thinking a bit.

#long post #notaterftip #not sarcasm #q thought left out of this post was mmmmmm blueberries

[cassandraclare]

Jessa/Wessa ship wars

teenagefunbouquet said:Isn't it enough Tessa&Jem got a wedding comic, two kids (and you say more), a lifetime as the only mates for each other and your most explicitly written sex scene After the Bridge? Wessa are the most popular and we get nothing, every wessa moment is shared with Jem while Jessa get to be alone, Wessa fans got no "anticipation" like jessa fans are getting now everyday you give them a book in jem's pov or a short story or a new kid. it feels like wessa is dead.

I’ll be interested in people’s thoughts on this. (I left the username as is since it’s a blank account, probably created to ask this question, so no one’s really getting hurt in this minor drama.) Most of my long and somewhat crabbish post is under the read more.

First, let me reply with the obvious, which is the Jessa rebuttal: “Isn’t it enough that Will gets to be Tessa’s first love and Jem only gets to be her second? Isn’t it enough that Will and Tessa had sex when they thought Jem was dead? Isn’t it enough that there’s a whole series about Will and Tessa’s kids but we only find out that Jem and Tessa had a kid in a short story? Isn’t enough that Jem and Tessa have spent half their relationship looking for a kid who’s related to Will, not either of them? Isn’t it enough that Will and Tessa got two biological kids they got to spend eighteen years raising and Jem and Tessa only get like two years with Kit? Jessa are the most popular, but half the stories in Ghosts of the Shadow Market happened while Will was still alive! And now Wessa fans are getting content every day and have two more books of Wessa being married and doing cute stuff to look forward to. Every day they’re getting a special edition of a book with a whole short story about their wedding. It feels like Jessa is dead.”

Not that I believe any of that either: I think both complaints are equally silly and selfish. But they are complaints rooted in the same logic, which is “My ship is the best and most popular, and every time I see something that in my mind supports the ship I hate I feel angry and diminished, and rather than perhaps examining those feelings I’d like to vent them on other fans and the creator.”

So. My feeling about this is: I am sad to see there is still some kind of a ship war here. As far as I am concerned...

the Wessa/Jessa ship war ended in 2012 when we found out Tessa loved both boys equally and would spend a lifetime with both of them. The end. Quibbling about irrelevant details like how many kids each couple has subsequently or examining closely the explicitness of their sex scenes seem bizarre and pointless. It has nothing to do with how books and stories are made, or how they work, or what functions they serve. At this point it’s like you decided your favorite football team could definitely beat another team, and you spend all your time obsessing about it even though they will never play against the other team because the other team is a hockey team.

When I see people say that “Wessa got” something or “Jessa got” something, it makes me cringe. It reduces stories that are about other things, often friendship, to being about a ship war I am not a part of. (Not every story or book in which a couple appears is a story about that ship. Sometimes they’re just grouting their shower or fighting a demon.) Wessa and Jessa are not dueling pop stars fighting over who gets to perform on the Tonight Show. In fact, they are not fighting at all, which is part of the underlying problem. People are used to love triangles where two guys are fighting over a girl and are jealous of each other. Will and Jem are not jealous of each other. They are not fighting over Tessa. To believe that it lessens Will and Tessa’s relationship that Jem is around and alive, or that it makes Jem and Tessa’s relationship better that Will is dead, is a fundamental misunderstanding of these characters and the story they are in. You are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, and it will cause you endless misery and frustration.

For instance, claiming that “every Wessa moment is spent with Jem.” Well, that’s ridiculous. Obviously, Will and Tessa spent an enormous amount of quality time alone together in TID. (Otherwise, you would have no investment in this relationship in the first place. There’s a reason you’re attached to it.) Jem did not attend their wedding. He is around in Chain of Gold mostly in his role as a Silent Brother: tending the sick, helping James, bringing news. He is not around during the scene where Will and Tessa make love, or when they kiss and cuddle in the drawing room, grossing out their kids. (I had to fight very very hard to retain even one scene of Will and Tessa alone: in a normal YA book, you would never see a sex scene between the parents, from their point of view.)

The problem is not that there is no “Wessa content” to “anticipate.” The majority of Wessa fans are happy to enjoy stuff like the wedding story or the Wessa moments in TLH. The problem is that the person asking this question will only accept a TLH book in which Jem isn’t mentioned at all as “Wessa content,” and since that would be a fundamental and appalling betrayal of the story and characters — something I would never write and never consider — they will forever feel they are not getting what they deserve.

Asker: if you think that it’s somehow better for Jem and Tessa that Will is dead, that they “get” something that Will and Tessa don’t by having had something awful happen to them, then I do not even know how to begin to speak to you. What has always been meaningful to me about Will, Jem and Tessa is that they all loved each other equally. If that is not the case, then they are not people I am interested in writing about. If that being the case makes you not want to read about them, then you are free to stop — please do — but the story is not going to become something other than it is because you feel your ship is the “most popular.” (Which it is not in my experience, the ships are about equal, and I don’t know why it would matter if it was.)

In After the Bridge, which is not an explicit sex scene but rather a short story that contains sex (they exist!) Will is mentioned thirty-two times. Here’s an example:

“Jem swallowed, running his fingers up and down the blade. “He had only just died,” he said. She didn’t need to ask who he was. There was really only one He when it was the two of them speaking. “I was afraid. I saw what happened to the other Silent Brothers. I saw how they hardened over time, lost the people they had been. How as the people who loved them and who they loved died, they became less human. I was afraid that I would lose my ability to care. To know what this knife meant to Will and what Will meant to me.”

If you think Will isn’t present in Jem and Tessa’s relationship just because he’s dead, you’re wrong. He’s mentioned constantly. (And if someone thought that made it not Jessa content, I would have the same discussion with them: If Jem and Tessa didn’t care about Will, I wouldn't care about them.)

As long as there has been fandom, there have been ship wars. Social media has added a new dimension to that, which is what you’re doing here: the ability to run to the creator and complain, hoping they’ll side with you or give you what you want.

Here’s the problem: it’s really really toxic to have been involved in a clearly vicious ship battle for years. It will destroy utterly your ability to read or enjoy the canon you’re arguing about. I’ve been there, I’ve had friends be there. If you think it’s a point for Jem and Tessa that Will is dead, if you went into Last Hours thinking Jem wouldn’t be in it, that is a sign of a profound detachment from the actual reality of the canon books. You are not interacting with what I am writing or the characters as they are. You are interacting with the fight you are having. That is why your discourse has spun so far off from the books it no longer resembles what is actually happening in them, and demands such extreme gestures to be appeased — like leaving Jem out of Lost Book when he’s actually from the city the characters are visiting, or cutting him from Last Hours even though it would be unrealistic, cruel, and a disappointment to the vast majority of readers.

Dismissing every single moment Will and Tessa have together in TLH because Jem is alive somewhere and it’s bothering you is a recipe for you to be miserable. Clearly you didn’t enjoy the Wessa wedding, or the Will and Tessa love scenes in Chain of Gold. Clearly you consider Jem and Tessa having children not to be a reason for happiness but rather bitter rage even though it is totally irrelevant to Will and Tessa’s past relationship. The only thing that would be satisfactory would be a rewrite of Clockwork Princess in which Jem was run over by a tank and Will and Tessa didn’t care and were happy and got married and we never had to hear about Jem again. But because that would require time travel and a rewrite of Will and Tessa as vile assholes, that is not a thing you are going to get. If you are determined to always be miserable about the reality of what this story is, than the only result of that is that you will always be miserable.

There is never going to be a winner of this love triangle. It isn’t that story. No amount of anything I do is ever going to change that: no short stories I write, or content I produce, or books or sex scenes or longform poems about either couple will change the fact that both Will and Jem ended up with Tessa and she loves them equally. If you want a “somebody wins” kind of love triangle, there are other books that will provide that for you. These will never be those books.

So why did you write this long screed, Cassie, the rest of you might be wondering, and fairly. Three reasons. One is that there are other questions that are carbon copies of this one (as in, written by the same person/small group of people) cluttering up my inbox, and I want to put a stop to the idea that this kind of thing is going to be acknowledged as a valid comment or complaint. It’s not. Second, we have all been driven bananas by quarantine and I am no exception. The third is that this is the last time I am going to address this kind of ship-fight-disguised-as-question. Any further demands for me to favor one Tessa ship over another will be responded to with a link to this post. In the end I’m hoping this will be a time saver once we’re all allowed outside again.

#jessa #wessa #tid #tlh #gotsm #screed