man, reading ch3 was a ride, it's like all fun and jokes and then all of sudden, Nope! It's time to be sad now! but it's so good with it? like, I really enjoyed how seriously you took it, and that moment in the classroom was really like 'oh shit this is legit' in a way that had my heart just sinking in my chest and with the tone whiplash from the rest of the fic so far, it was just literally so good to read. also, seeing byleth and the rest of the class just kinda grapple with wth to do with dimitri while he's deep in this episode is just very interesting, especially when they all have their own hangups and issues with everything. 👍
YESSSSS. I'm always so excited to post the moment the story actually kicks into gear, and this chapter was it for Weekenders. A lot of fun.
I wrote a post a while back about people's discomfort with writing severe mental illness,
and while I wouldn't say Weekenders is a spite fic, it was influenced by how difficult it was to find non-modern AU fic that wrote Dimitri specifically as somebody on the schizophrenia spectrum/bipolar.
It was so hit-me-over-the-head obvious while I was playing! His entire personality and behavior flipped on a DIME in Part 1, and it flipped 'back' in Part 2. He couldn't switch topics, he was ranting incoherently, he was having headaches, he was doing nothing but training, he obviously wasn't sleeping or grooming, he was convinced a 12yo had orchestrated an assasination - that's not depression/anxiety/PTSD, and it's not even just a psychotic episode (mania does have elements of psychosis, hence the paranoid delusions). And, obviously, the actual hallucinations, delusions, antisocialness, lack of grooming, impulsivity, etc, of Part 2 that rang very loudly of a schizophrenic/schizoaffective psychotic break.
But equally important is the fact that Dimitri's illness did not make him hateful and homicidal. Dimitri was always a hateful person. I don't think he's naturally hateful nearly to the degree that he shows while having an episode, but one of the most important lines in the BL route is when Dedue just says that Dimitri was always angry and hateful, and that he just hid it. His behavior in late Part 1/part 2 is him losing all capability to hide it. I don't think he's a pathological liar, and I don't think the Dimitri we see throughout Part 1 is 'fake' - I just think he withholds a lot. Dimitri's cruelty is just as important as his generosity. His hatred is as important as his empathy. The horrible sides of his illness are just as important as the comfortable sides. Do you see what I mean?
That is what interests me about Dimitri so much. Dimitri wants to be Marth. Dimitri tries to be Chrom. Dimitri dresses up like Roy. He is not. He is an angry, paranoid, brutal murderer. Any depiction of Dimitri that forgets that - that unironically only protrays the Dimitri that he shows the world and never the sides of him that he's ashamed of - is kinda buying what he's selling, and it both demonstrates a deep disinterest in who he is and a discomfort with the sides of his illness that aren't palatable.
Dimitri's psychosis did not make him hateful (I think his PTSD had a lot more to do with his anger problems). It made him scared. Mania and psychosis are a very, very scary experience. His mind is constantly telling him that he's in danger, that Byleth's in danger, that everybody and everything around him wants to hurt and kill him, that he is a sinner if he doesn't avenge his dead family. And Dimitri is a good child soldier, and he knows that we destroy our enemies with prejudice. He's a good leader, and he knows that the BL are never safe and that their enemies are everywhere. He's a good son, and he knows that you have to avenge them. Violence solves problems and Dimitri is scared and angry and if he doesn't solve the problem he can't protect the woman and people he loves.
This is serious to me! I'm trying not to make this THAT long but I could go ooooon lol. I understanding wanting to either make him realistically/explicitly schizophrenic OR make him violent, because violent schizophrenics are a bad and harmful stereotype. But I think both sides of him are important, because I don't want to whitewash Dimitri's illness or his experiences. It's scary for the people around you. It very frequenty is triggered from trauma and hardship and it is informed by your life. Like many characters in FE3H, Dimitri is the product of the evils of his world.
Byleth's arc in this story is about her growing into a human being. It is shown as a beautiful thing. It is wonderful to be a person. It would contradict the message of the story to show Dimitri as anything else but a human being - flaws, traumas, SMI and all. He was Marth to her. That's the point.
I went on for soooo long lol but thanks for the ask!
Kenzo Tenma: He’s fine. He’s not online. He is fighting a losing battle to convince everyone else to reduce social media consumption
Eva Heinemann: Fashion TikTok/instagrammer who talks about thrifting and selling pieces for like $400 girlboss style, promotes MLMs
Heinrich Lunge: Full time internet sleuth, part time doxxer
Wolfgang Grimmer: Niche video essayist, big “this is just a brief look into the topic....don’t look at the video length” energy
Johan Liebert: NFT and crypto rugpull schemer, for the fun of it
Nina Fortner: Streamer who reacts to videos / drama / discourse / events and pulls out her schooling in law when applicable
Lotte Frank: Twitter/TikTok journalist of the “I asked random people about ___” variety where it frames the people being asked as stupid to make her point
can i say how fucking weird it is that loki s1 clearly presented the tva as a f4scist organization and s2 completely erased that with the whole "we can change this place" plot
TBH as a writer appreciating the set-up of a character I ADORE Vivienne but her lack of proper character arc & the inability to argue with her more is as infuriating as with most of your companions in DAI, if not more when you play a Mage because you CAN’T grab her by the shoulders and shake her and say Ma’am if you’d had worse luck and wound up literally anywhere other than the Circle you did wind up at you would be a fundamentally different person please for Maker’s sake admit out loud that you only like the Circles because you managed to etch yourself some limited social power out of the broken and corrupt system you might not otherwise have been able to get for yourself and therefore you have not suffered the true effects of it!!!!
I used to have daily violent intrusive thoughts about attacking and murdering people brutally when I was a lot younger and I thought I was the sickest most awful person for it but honestly one of The Most important things I've learnt in life is that thought crimes aren't real and imagining a scenario in your head (whether you do it on purpose or not) does not affect anything in real life at all and therefore has no moral value because its not an actual existing thing that has happened
Okay I don't think this should be needed but unfollow me if you support Israel. In fact just unfollow me if you don't explicitly support the Palestinian people, because if you still after ten thousand children alone are dead from Israel's merciless and ceaseless attacks alongside thousands of other innocents, I don't even want to know you exist. I don't want a reminder that people like you who would watch Holocaust and say it's too complicated to do something, who only cares if it's people like yourself being attacked. Even more so if you're from the US, if you're not explicitly supporting the victims of genocide here then you are rotten to the core for me. Stay the fuck away from me and do your vile (direct or indirect) genocide supporting elsewhere.
so. hear me out here. i have no idea where i'm going with this bc this literally just popped into my head on a whim but. what if. pyrlina childhood friends to lovers au.
What exactly is the violence being done by the government when they tax less than 10 dollars out of 100 dollar purchase you only notice in your receipt? these guys act like we're in fucking medieval times where if you forgot a single penny for the king a soldier would arrest you, maybe is because the tax system in the USA is overly complicated, but in countries like Brazil shit is pretty straight forward, to the point if you get a 1 million dollar prize you keep pretty much every single penny since you will most likely convert the money back into society already.
They seem to mistake that simply paying any sort of tax is violence and not actual violence being used to get taxes, like making people have to keep a track of everything they send even thought the System™ already knows everything you did by the most part.
There's always to collect taxes that don't realy on violence and having bad faith to was citizens.
it's actually pretty simple: if you don't pay your taxes you are asked some questions, then the money is requested, you're given a trial or so forth if you disagree that you owe anything, after which point it will be requested again if you owe it, and again, and then the bank will be contacted and they will automatically send the money, if you don't have it a plan to pay it back will once again be offered, and after enough refusals by you you'll be arrested and that could end in prison time. these people think that people who do crime deserve violence against them, such as a highly armed and highly violent police force, violent prisons, etc, and so understandably they don't want to be labelled crime boys. but they make the mistake of thinking that we want that too, and they boil the earlier process down to more simple terms for their simple brains to understand: ie "if I refuse to pay the money I am a crime boy and will receive crime boy treatment", ergo when we say we think taxes should exist we are saying that we want them to receive crime boy treatment (which, to them, means violence) if they don't pay. what they fail to understand is that it's possible to want taxes to exist and to also want no violence against crime boys, so when we say "hey taxes should exist" we're saying "hey it'd be cool if you weren't a solipsistic jerk" and not "if you don't give me the money I will have the gun men hit you with a stick" - the reason they don't Get that there's ways to get taxes without doing a medieval king larp is because they think the world should treat all crime boys like that, and they often think that even wanting to do a crime means you're a bad person who deserves crime boy treatment, so when we say that something they want to do (not pay taxes) should be a crime we're saying, in their eyes, that they are a bad person who deserves crime boy treatment. they have very smol, easily confused brains.
just to be completely clear, the amount of military power and political influence Israel has has NOTHING to do with its settlers being Jewish. Israel is a force for American & European interests in the region and they're just doing what America does and allows/encourages its close allies to do.
war crimes aren't considered war crimes when someone America finds useful is doing them. european and american pushback against anyone criticizing Israeli apartheid & genocide is 100% because these crimes are useful to American & European hegemony.
Governments that are deeply antisemitic, like France, aren't suddenly caring about Jewish people. Jewish people, persecuted the world over, don't hold some kind of hegemonic power outside of Israel.
The state of Israel and its attendant brutal treatment of the locals are both incredibly useful to the US, and American hegemony means we're expected to celebrate both.
not bc they're Jewish. this isn't a break in the pattern of western antisemitism and it's not evidence that antisemitism doesn't exist.
it's just like how you could get fired for saying shit against the US war in Afghanistan when i was growing up. it is 100% about US military and political interests (ok slightly western europe too but lbr)
Assassin Heir? Crime Fighting Furry? NOPE NO THANK YOU!
"Danyal, its time to end this game and return with me."
Danny should had known Clockwork had something in mind when he sent him on this mission. He knew he should had been suspicious of the time keeper when he noticed the little 'this is going to be fun' smile on his face when he sent Danny off into the portal.
"Get back here you demon spawn 2.0!"
But how was he supposed to know that he'd wake up in this world version of himself in a pit full of corrupted (AND NASTY) ectoplasim at the tender age of five or that when he swam up to the surface he'd be meeting face to face with what was apparently a cult.
"-O just spotted him a block away! I'll try to cut itty bitty bridie off!"
An Assassins Cult his, new to him, loving yet a little insane mother was in charge of (though during the few months he stayed in the compound he heard rumors and gossip from maids and others alike that if his grandfather returned from the dead he'll take over once again, no doubt punish Talia for creating another heir after the failure of the last one, most likely was going to kill Danny and that... that was can of worms Danny didn't wanna deal with yet)
"Ten bucks says they try to stab RR when we get the feral thing home"
"...Losers bet...."
Danny had lived with his mother for a while after being brought back from the 'dead' for apparently the first time, it turned out training a five year old with an actual sword and a dumbass hidden revenge seeking teacher was a terrible idea.
"I swear if this one tries to murder me like the others I'm asking Zatanna if there is a curse on me."
He dealt with her high demands of perfection, the endless training, and the constant comparisons to his apparent older brother Damain... Who didn't know Danny, or rather Danyal existed.
Nor did his father (when Danny, using his powers he's kept hidden since 'waking' up in this Realm, he sneaked his way around the base and discovered how he came into the world. And tbh he couldn't blame his mom how she made him, she was an assassin first and foremost, being naturally pregnant would had painted a target on her for to long... but he also felt it was unfair and an asshole move on his unsuspecting father as well)
"As your elder brother I demand you to stop running!"
Now don't get him wrong, he did like his new mother (total badass assassin lady and all that) and he knew she loved him in her own... deadly way. But yeah, she really shouldn't be taking care of kids. He could tell she struggled with wanting to be a normal mother but her first instinct after so many years was to be an assassin first.
Something she was trying to engrave into Danny with as well.
"Ah, hello Beloved. I see you've learned of our Danyal."
"Talia. Back away from him and leave Gotham now."
"I can not do that. The League needs an heir and since Damian refuses to return... I have decided to create a new one and I shall not be leaving until he returns with me."
"Talia."
Hence why when Danny, or rather Danyal al Ghul had gotten decent control over his powers he decided to leave the League. Again nothing wrong with the life his mom leads, to each their own, but he... really, really didnt want to be an assassin. Or an assassin heir.
So here he was, after almost a year on the run, using his powers and training to out smart and out maneuver his mother and her many band of Assassins, in Gotham. One of the last places he ever wanted to run to cause he knew his father and brother lived here.
It was just his luck that his mother had managed to intercept his train ride that passed into Gotham for a few hours and forced him to run into the city...
Add her assassins into the mix and running into Robin, who heard from Oracle his mother had been spotted chasing a young boy across the city, that same night.
After that it became a full on "catch me if you can" chase for not only his mother but for the batclan as well.
And after two whole days of chase, it seemed like the final showdown was about to begin because everyone was on top of this rooftop, his mother and her assassins on one side, his father and the batclan on the other and Danny well... he was right in the middle of all of it.
He just had to hope no one would notice him once the fighting started...
It's behind every single anti-lgbt law pushed the last year. They are why Roe v Wade was overturned. They are successful, well funded, and a massive threat.
What you can do is educate yourself and others about it. Get to know your enemy. Protest. Wear pride pins. Put out your flags. Show solidarity. We are ALL under attack by this white supremacist christo-fascist group.
Remember when 2020 had kpop stans organizing on twitter and gen z using tik tok to make Trump meets flop while white vets made themselves frontline walls at BLM protests that were organized to handle shit like kettling thanks to their amazing black organizers? Remember how people actually Showed up to those protests for awhile?
We need that cross-generational Fuck The System energy again. Not just for a summer this time. This needs to go passed the election.
They're playing a long game and so do we.
Get inspired.
Their goals include saving the children and traditional family, and "to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right."
This translates to destroying the EPA, disability rights, and criminalizing being LGBT. Also to overthrow the US government, as stated in their manifesto.
They want to replace our democracy with a theocracy. No Republican in office was elected without their approval.
They're the kind of right that makes being LGBT punishable by death. That makes it a crime just to exist where others can see you. They want librarians who work in libraries that make LGBT books accessible to be registered sex offenders. They want you prosecuted and even specify that no mercy should be shown to people the "left" likes (ex: immigrants, black people, etc)
That's the extreme right who's been manipulating our laws.
And they plan to make things a lot worse within the first 180 days a Republican is elected president.
Source
If you don't have plans coming up.... Start organizing them. We will be okay if we work together.
We will be okay if we work together.
If we have each other, we'll be okay. We have to rely on each other. You have to be reliable. You, person reading this, have to show up. That's how this works.
I have your back if you have mine. Do not leave me to the wolves and I won't leave you.
Sorry for being a Daughters of the Crown nonbeliever. I know it's hypocritical bc I am shaping up to be a Tokiko enjoyer. But ough I am not immune to purble