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wordsandrobots · 7 months

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I finished IBO recently, and I don't think I fully get why people call Mika and Orga's relationship one of "toxic codependence". That they depend on each other is obvious, but I feel like I'm missing out on why people think their relationship is unhealthy.

(Thank you for giving me a reason to procrastinate on the chapter I have nearly finished but my brain has gone 'nah' over.)

The way I look at it, there are two key levels on which it's unhealthy. These are related but I think it's worth distinguishing them, because one plays into wider problems within Tekkadan, while the other is a deeply personal matter between Orga and Mika.

But first of all, I think it's important to be clear: Orga and Mika's relationship is rooted in genuine care and affection. This is not apparent friendship built on a lie. These two really are together for life and there are many positive aspects to that. We see them joking about early on, Mika making sure Orga eats (whether he wants to or not), the ease with which they operate as a double-act -- and there's a real sense each would be dead before the series began if not for the other.

However, there is also a profound imbalance at the heart of their relationship. I've written before about how that imbalance is inverted compared to what it looks like at first glance; that is, Mika is the dominant personality, with Orga twisting to follow his wishes. At the same time, yes, Mika has absolutely outsourced his decision-making to Orga. No question. It might be Mika's desires and dreams that ultimately shape their path, but Orga is still the one making choices about where to go and who to shoot.

And it's the absolute degree of Mika's surrender that fucks Orga up. Because, to a very specific point, Mika will do exactly what Orga tells him without question. Period. Everybody else's opinions and orders are secondary to the man he's picked as his guiding star in life. I say 'man'; I mean 'boy'. This started when they were kids, after all, which is why Orga's sense of responsibility is quite so thoroughly warped.

As far as Orga is concerned, being in charge means working everything out on his own. Because Mika does not help him. Mika, at most, offers gut feelings for why something should be done; he never provides useful input on how to get from A to B. So Orga internalises that the buck stops with him, that he always has to be the decisive one, always has to have a plan.

It's masked to begin with because Biscuit is there as the angel on his other shoulder, offering useful advice and acting his second-in-command. However -- Orga never actually listens to what Biscuit has to say about the direction Tekkadan should go. That's the central tension in their relationship, in fact. Orga actively expects Biscuit to go along with what he chooses because that's what Mika does.

With Biscuit gone, there's nobody left to make even a token attempt at calling him on this tendency. Eugene utterly fails to, despite having a good set of instincts, because he's too committed to Tekkadan and too easily swayed by other people who seem to know better. Merribit gives it her best shot, but lacks the tools to approach the boys convincingly. Kudelia doesn't see it as her place. And the rest of Tekkadan fall in line over and over, reinforcing Orga's bad habits.

They trust him, is the thing. They trust him to deliver on the dreams he weaves, enough to offer up their lives on his say-so. None more than Mika himself, who literally gives an arm and a leg to make sure Orga's plans come through.

There is a point where this commitment slips out of Orga's control. I'm not sure where to pin it generally but the battle with the mobile armour is when Mikazuki makes it clear he isn't going to back down on the idea of becoming kings of Mars. He's seen Orga latch on to McGillis' offer as *the* destination, their place, where they can all be together and happy. And because he's always done whatever is necessary to see Orga's plans come through, he . . . does precisely that. Even knowing it's going to injure him further. Even with Orga literally telling him not to.

Making sure Orga gets his victory is more important.

I should stress how much this fucks Mikazuki up as well. I tend to focus a lot on Orga, but Mikazuki reduces himself down to a weapon for Orga's sake. To the point of breathing a sigh of relief once he's been sufficiently disabled he thinks he won't have a life outside Barbatos any more. Atra says at one point that Mikazuki is lazy over things that don't interest him -- that includes conceptualising an existence beyond fighting and following Orga. He does have his own dreams (being a farmer, seeing interesting sights) but actually working out how to achieve them after he's given away so much to Orga is beyond him. In the end, he simply gives them away too and chooses to keep following what he imagines Orga's orders would be.

Neither of these boys intended to do this to each other. That's the tragic part. Orga uses Mika as a weapon because it's the smart choice but it tears him up inside to see what that does to Mika as a person. Meanwhile, Mika insists what happens to him comes from his own choices and isn't something Orga should feel guilty over or see as a reason to give up.

And . . . here's where we move from the first level (Orga's no-middle-gear sense of responsibility coupled to Mika's unconditional loyalty) to the level on which Mika personally scares Orga into escalating over and over again.

It's that scene in the Montag Company ship. Or, no, it's not just that: Orga talks earlier about how he constantly feels Mika's eyes on him. Yet it's following Biscuit's death that this aspect of their relationship is laid bare.

I love this scene so much. It has the form of a triumphal rescue from grief, complete with swelling musical score, in much the way Mika often has the form of being the daring protagonist. But the content is Mika being the most blatantly scary he ever is in the entire show. The way he looks at Orga -- the way he always looks at Orga, his unblinking, uncompromising stare -- is at last framed as an overt threat. Mika is not going to let Orga give up because Orga promised to take him to the better place. What Orga wants is irrelevant.

Ah, screw it, I'm transcribing the dub script because it is so, so good.

"Tell me. What do you want me to do next, Orga?" "Hey give me a break. I'm just -" "Look I'm sorry. But I can't stop yet." "That's enough." "Now I wanna know -" "I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH -" Mika grabs Orga by the shirt, dragging him close. "Is this the place you told me about? 'Cos I won't stop. Not 'til we're there. I can't. On that day, Orga, I decided. So. How many should I kill? How many more until we get there? Because I need to know. Tell me, Orga Itsuka! You're gonna take me, aren't you? That's what you told me! What should I do next -?” "GET OFF ME! Orga throws Mika at the locker in the corner and stands up. "Yeah, alright, fine. I'll get you there. Can't turn around now anyway. That's what you want, RIGHT? No matter want kind of hell might be waiting for us. OK? Then I'll do it. And I'm bringing everyone with me." "Yeah. That's right. Take us there. So who do you need me to take out then? And what d'you want me to destroy? 'Cos if I finally get to reach that place someday, there's nothing that I won't do." SFX: lightning and thunder

This is not Mika pulling Orga out of the darkness. It's Mika driving Orga further into it, into a battle that kills dozens and very nearly ends with every single named character dead (in the real world, the commissioning of a second season saved them; in universe, it's stubbornness and pure fluke).

What would it be like to have someone so committed to what you've promised them, they would do anything for you, up to and including refusing to let you break your word? What would that be like if said person was the most dangerous individual you had ever met in your life, because there is a point past having no sense of self-preservation where no line is 'too far'?

That's Orga living with Mika as his shadow. That's not healthy. That's not sane. Orga comes loose at the seams attempting to be what Mika expects of him, and I think he's genuinely terrified of what might happen if he can't.

It goes the other way too. The scene in the ship is one of two times I'd say, yeah, that's what Mika looks like when he's scared. The other is immediately prior, when it seems Carta is going to kill Orga. 'That's what you told me' isn't just a reminder for Orga; it's the closest Mika gets to a crisis of faith. Seeing the one you believe in waver is its own form of terror and Mika has committed everything he's got to Orga. He can't conceive of stopping now.

[I should say, I primarily watched the dub and the vocal performances vary somewhat here even if the underlying intent doesn't. I love what Kyle McCarley does, injecting a note of increasing franticness into Mika's speech, but Kengo Kawanishi hits the volume rise hard on 'What should I do next?', hammering home just how much he needs an answer. Of course, they then both give Mika this deliciously bloodthirsty joy when he gets the one he's looking for.]

I don't know if there's anything Orga could do that would truly break Mika's faith or push Mika to turn that prodigious strength against him. I don't get the feeling Mika is the kind of person who'd ever hurt a friend for real. He isn't cruel and we see how much friendship matters to him (woe betide anyone who hurts the people close to him).

But what these two are actually capable of is beside the point. What matters is what they think of one another and they each think the other is the most amazing thing in existence. Orga sees Mika as near superhuman and Mika sees Orga as fantastically brilliant, and they're both afraid of being proved wrong, so they aim for an impossibility imposed by their mutual expectations.

The further they head down the shortest path to their goals, the more Mika crumbles physically and the more Orga crumbles emotionally. Like an engine shaking itself to pieces as it turns faster and faster. Love, hope, faith, determination -- and no brakes. A mad charge towards destruction.

I don't tend to describe things as 'toxic'. For whatever reason, it's not a word with much presence in my vocabulary. Still, I think it fits here. Mika and Orga's relationship might have been healthy, in a kinder world. It's undeniably the most important aspect of their lives. There's no intention on either on part to cause hurt. But the combination of who they are and the circumstances they are trapped in means they're ultimately toxic to each other.

No matter how much they care or want what's best, the very form of their relationship impedes their ability to grow, cuts them off from those who might be able to help with that, and eventually leads them to their deaths.

-----

Well, that's how I see it anyway. I hope this helped? I think Iron-Blooded Orphans does some pretty brilliant things in terms of presenting fucked-up relationships that have positive aspects while at the same time dooming the participants, so I'm always happy to ramble about that aspect of the show. Or indeed, any aspect of it at all!

#words in answer #more rambling #gundam iron blooded orphans #gundam ibo #g tekketsu #tekketsu no orphans #mikazuki augus #orga itsuka #character interpretation #spoilers

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hagenwo43 · 5 months

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Emergency!!! ☎️

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sa1808fi · 8 months

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The thing is, I think that Rex's friends didn't exactly not look for him. They certainly care for him to a certain degree, and they showed it horribly during apocalypseburg when they tried to change everything about Emmet. But I do think they did look for him.

That being said though, I don't think they looked for very long.

...

I give them two months, tops

NOW SEE I KNOW THAT SOUNDS BAD, I GET THAT

But if you really put it into thought, Emmet served as the group's main motivator throughout the first movie.

And I think that if you look into tv tropes, you would be able to see how well Emmet fits into the heart character (I might make a post about that someday, not rn though), as he did bring the group together, and was the closest person to stop the kragle before convincing Business to stop of his own free will.

The master builders all seem to give up easily and are quick to make hasty decisions. So what do you expect from them after they loose their main source of motivation?

They stop looking for him.

and leave him for years with the hope that they will finally find him

So yeah, they might do a couple of small celebrations every year in honor of him, maybe make a statue too, but they stop looking for Emmet, and that hope he has just

slowly fizzes out

And then he builds Rex from the ground up from that pain of being left behind and watching his friends get over him and forget about him that easily.

Of course, another, albeit smaller reason for this headcanon of mine is that it has so much potential for more angst (and Au purposes) because if Rex finds out they did look for him, he would probably experience a small glimpse of joy or relief they still cared, they didn't forget that's still left of his Emmet side.

But once he finds out how they just gave up on him in a few months, his anger is going to erupt again, the grief and pain that they never thought that he could survive without them is going to hit him all over again.

...

God I give my favorite characters way too much trauma

I swear I'll make up for it please don't kill me

#rex dangervest #emmet brickowski #the lego movie #the lego movie 2 #more rambling #pain and even more pain #just dump it on my boy #saffi's rambles #lego movie #lego movie 2 #lego movie au

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piratesoftheseaandsky · 2 months

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I got a full ending for Slay the Princess. My last two routes were The Razor and The Damsel (reverse order again). Woo boy, I have a lot to say about that. We are the Long Quiet, and once we leave the cabin, one way or another, we overtake the construct, and it's only us, and the Shifting Mound. We are as much a self-made god as we are forming our other half. Are we even half? maybe we're less. I don't know. The narrator is as much of a bastard as I first assumed. An arrogant bastard whose selfish desires didn't even reflect that of the world he was trying to "save". What a monster, to force two parts of an infinite whole to torture each other for eternity, until we finally succeed in killing our better. What a coward, to wish to kill the very incarnation of change simply because he fears death. What a lair, to swear she would end the world, when all she could do was allow it to change. I think there's something poetic, that the last path I followed was The Razor, a perfect encapsulation of what we are. Each death is a new voice and they keep coming faster and faster, and when you face her the last time, those voices can't help but still see her beauty, in that collection of blades surrounding her beating heart. We shut them out. We become formless. We are nothing and everything and forever shifting because, like our other part, we are change itself. Those voices are us, but now we don't hear them, they've formed who we are and we are better for it. The Shifting Mound asks us if we are ready. Not yet, we fight, wish for her to see us as we have seen her. Through Conflict We Carve Meaning, the achievement says. We are one and the same and yet two separate entities, and together we shatter the construct and change is returned. What a fantastic way to end a game. I still don't see the psychological horror part, sure the razor was freaky, but she was such a a bad liar and those knives were so kickass and her final form was just goddamn beautiful in all the ways a glittering blade and a beating heart can be. I couldn't find the fear there. Maybe in The Damsel. In the way that, if we keep asking her what she wants, she unravels. I pulled back early there. That was fear for what I had turned her to. But aside from that, I rarely found myself afraid. Awed, angry, amused, but rarely scared. Maybe it's worse for other people. I really loved the Our Song list at the end, and I will be making that playlist for myself. Maybe I'll post it here.

#slay the princess #slay the princess spoilers #Side note: I love that one of the achievements is called “Death of the Author”#more rambling #I am on a roll

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marionmorse · 7 months

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Ohh my absolute goodness..

side note, one look at Heavy and Medic on the character lineup at the teamfortress.com homepage tells you EVERYTHING about their marriage

Anyway, the god... damn... I can't get over... just, Engineer TF2 and the duality of his character. Like, he's one-hundred percent someone to pull on gator skin boots, a ten gallon, get all yee-hawed up for a night out at the dance hall. But then go home and infodump about hotchkiss drives, stress-strain curves, and reflow soldering.

There are some specific competitive lines that comes to mind that are JARRING to hear in his honeyed-up Texas voice along with shit like "hooo-whee, makin' bacon!" and "START PRAYIN', BOY." Maybe that's just a huge part of the appeal to his character, but think about his BUDDIES, too.

Medic is probably quite familiar with American stereotypes pre-Gravel Wars, doesn't expect much from a bumbling rural southerner with a generic set of tools upon first glance. but.., he's a bit BLOWN AWAY when Engie gets all inquisitive about the ins and outs of the medi-gun. Wants to look into how the serum works as a mechanical component, the powering and logic behind it all, even overwhelms med's (limited) level of delicate mechanical knowledge. his arc is all, "okay, so, this little guy might be a bigger-brained fella than I expected!" The punting of med's early-day ego and subsequent forging of their friendship is just so... ourgh... I love characters and arcs and stories and growth and...

Also, Soldier! The all-American Ultra Yank who doesn't see eye-to-eye with Engie at first. They've both got contrasting leadership qualities when it comes down to it, fr, a- a- and, AND, soldier HATES nerds. Engie's a nerd. Big time. It takes a while for that mutual love respect to build up, you know? do you catch my drift? I'm just rambling now.

ALSO also, Engineer himself going from the more introverted, lone-wolf type we see in Meet the Engineer to a sort of leader, the level-headed de-escalator we see in Expiration Date. The guy who feels for and loves his team, but no doubt brings out the 'Texas' in 'em all. It's kinda cute. I imagine he taught everyone square dancing at some point, 'cause how else would they know?

In the end, I just love to think of Engie as being one of the cornerstones of the team's overall culture. i mean, he's a solid family guy - cooks the breakfasts, fixes the (practical) problems, heck, plays music, tells stories, keeps 'em together when times are tough. We ALL know that some of him has to rub off on the team he bunks with for years. Not in a father-figure way, nahh, but certainly in a Dad Friend way. Big difference.

(Can you tell who my favorite character is yet? (demo, actually. And Heavy. come to think of it, the defense trio is the love of my life. My boys. (I could write and MLA-formatted essay about the balance of culture and personality within the Tuefort Nine, citations intact.)))

#tf2 headcanons #tf2 engineer #tf2 #More rambling #I adore Engineer TF2 #I adore TF2...#Demo/Engie is a fuckin' treat btw #I hc Medic being the most egotistical of em at the start of things #love changes a man #Spy's lines mocking engie are probably my favorite genre of tf2 voiceline too #also I am south texan and an adorer of the lovingly vibrant dance culture here #That might have something to do with it #Ultra Yank sounded so funny in my head #Me realizing 50% of these are repeated from past posts LOL

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rams-wool · 5 months

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Imagine your hair growing out because you can't care for it (tortured) and everyone being like OMG SO SEXY and you are most likely not allowed to cut it as a reminder of that horrible shit (plus you might still like it for the added gender ambiguity and therefore defying standards which adds even more weight to making that choice. You might also wonder if your abuser likes it because it "emasculates" you and makes you more "fragile" in his eyes). I have thoughts, so many. TOO many.

#RGG #Yakuza #Majima #Majima goro #MORE rambling

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poopwons · 3 months

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Remembering that one time I wrote myself a reminder that said “call during the week idiot” and my boyfriend saw it and crossed out idiot and put “beautiful<3” in its place.

AND IF THAT’S NOT SOMETHING JEAN KIRSTEIN WOULD DO IDK WHAT IS

#jean kirstein #aot #more rambling #Jean lives rent free in my head #brain rot #I hope everyone’s partners treat them the way mine treats me😭

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quiets-cradle · 6 months

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fucked up and evil that charlie's plan for when flippa first died actually worked out, kind of. when all the other eggs were gone she came back.

#more rambling #qsmp #slimecicle #sure it's not why she's back but like. there's something here. something about his ideas being falsely validated or something idk

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flaming-like-anything · 9 months

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Spoilers Aziraphale breaking up with heaven at the end of S1 and how that affects S2

So we can all agree that Nina and Maggie are parallels for Aziraphale and Crowley yes? Yeah. Good

At the end Nina talks about how she just broke up with her ex and shes not ready to be with Maggie yet.

They explicitly say that Nina = Crowley and Maggie= Aziraphale. But that's not true

Aziraphale is the one who broke up with heaven at the end of S1 and is still trying to grapple with his feeling about the whole matter.

Meanwhile Crowley's never been attached to hell. Hes basically been a free agent since the fall (single one might say)

While Nina is taking the time she needs to step back get get her life together, Aziraphale is jumping back with his "toxic" ex (while Maggie and Crowley patiently wait for their respective partner)

#good omens 2 #go2 spoilers #more rambling #good omens meta #???#ineffable husbands #good omens maggie #good omens nina

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beets826 · 4 months

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first stream over, had a bunch of hiccups starting it out, but it overall smoothed out over time so nice! thanks for the peeps who dropped by, I gotta see when I can stream again in the future/if I'm in the mood for it tho' lol hopefully sometime soon, perhaps. But I have links and stuff to update now lol

#text post #more rambling #the cat's here to watch

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wordsandrobots · 3 months

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Apropos of half-awake thoughts this morning, I've been considering the perennial subject of people coming into fan-works and making demands of the writer or artist in regards to their creative choices. You know, 'this is wrong', 'you should change this', 'make more!!!' etc. It's been quite some years since I had to deal with that kind of behaviour but I've seen it happen to other people and it always sucks. Today my brain has decided to connect it to Humphrey Smith.

Story time: the town I come from has three breweries. The reason for this is that the limestone we're built atop filters the local water, making it 1) good and hard and 2) easy to access. Technically we're a market town but brewing is the foundation of our modern economy.

Two of these breweries, John Smith's and Sam Smith's, are the remnants of the brewing empire started by John Smith, a Victorian gentleman endowed with truly spectacular mutton-chops and also money, who bought an existing brewery in the town before building a new, much more impressive one further up the street. After his death, the business was left to his brothers, one of whom would go on to leave the old brewery to his nephew Samuel. Thus, the empire split into two. Both halves are still operating and have been successful enough that the current owner of Sam Smith's -- Humphrey -- is the biggest land-owner in the town.

Here is where the problems begin. You see Humphrey is, to put it gently, crackers. He suffers from being exceptionally wealthy and, despite some motions towards investing in local amenities, largely exists on a moral crusade against the changing social mores of the 20th Century. He won't countenance any businesses that does not contribute to the atmosphere of a sleepy market town (read: basically anything), refuses to maintain or sell off his properties, leaving the place full of the rotting shells of buildings, and he's been at war with the town council so long, they're currently planning to build on a flood plane that does indeed routinely get swamped by the river just to have somewhere to put new houses.

The man is not well-liked, is what I'm saying. And among his 'charming eccentricities' are the strict requirements he enforces on the pubs he owns. Any Sam Smith's pub must be run by people of good moral character (preferably a married man and woman), there must be no music and no phones, no swearing, no motorcyclists, no kissing, etc, etc. Basically imagine the dourest stereotype of Yorkshire grimness and that's what he's actively aiming for (no I am not kidding, just check out the 'controversies' section of the Sam Smith's wikipedia page).

Anyway, the point of all this is that there's a lovely tale shared around the town about how, one day, our Humphrey walked into a local pub and said to the bar-tender something to the effect of, 'Switch off that music, throw those people out, take down those fixtures and fittings, this is not the Victorian traditionalism I pay you for.'

Only, the bar-tender leant over the bar and replied, 'well that's nice, Mr Smith, but this isn't one of your pubs.'

Should you find yourself in the position of having some dipstick with fixed opinions swan into your work and start telling you everything you've gotten wrong, I think you could do worse than bear this heroic chap's words in mind. Your work is not their pub. They have no claim on what you make and no grounds for enforcing their vision over yours. They aren't paying you, you aren't working for them, and frankly, they have profoundly misunderstood the situation if they think they're entitled to tell you want to do.

This is true even in the face of widely accepted fanon or when you're cutting against general expectations. In fandom, every piece of art is the result of our own personal reactions to a piece of media. We can decorate our individual pubs however we want and if other people don't like it, well, they can lump it. Go forth and do what you like, music and kissing and all!

[This post brought to you by the belated 11 year anniversary of that berk on dA who spent ages arguing with my attempt at redesigning the Quarks from Doctor Who. The *bloody Quarks*, man! Sheesh.]

#fandom #fanfic #fanart #more rambling #just to be clear the usual 'do no harm' caveat always applies #you shouldn't be a jerk either #but beyond that #yeah #you don't owe nobody nothing

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veetyuh · 5 months

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More random trauma dumping / finding similarities between antis & conservative Christians & random bullies from childhood.

I think my brain gets perturbed when I see young people acting so stupid, cruel, and callous with gen z humour, partly because I've been on the receiving end of it so frequently in high school.

Despite shaving my face often, I'd still get some stubble by day's end. My "moustache" was a meme — hell, one time, I think junior year, I'd received a valentine's day card as a joke, and it was a print out of that can I pet your squirrel scene from iCarly. Despite identifying as more masc/neutral now, I still shave daily and whenever I feel even slight stubble on my face, I want to tear my skin off. Idk how many times I've cut myself from pressing the blade down too hard, trying to get the closest shave possible. God forbid I get depressed and go a few days without shaving — I get noticeable whiskers and feel like a disgusting abomination. Facial hair is fine on others, of course, but there's a compulsion to avoid it, myself. Even after all this time.

And at the time, having that insecurity, and the culmination of societal and religious pressure, condensed into a meme and presented to you as a joke at your expense? I remember feeling numb about it at the time but fuck me if it didn't stick in my brain.

There's something so insidious about seeing my own sense of humour weaponized against people for things they can't control, or for things that are harmless. Because I know how stupid little memes can stick to you and have long-lasting effects when, by all accounts, they really shouldn't. But like. I see antis dogpile twitter users with the most vile sentiments + memes and it makes me want to vomit. I wonder which of those is going to stick in that victim's brain. Which of those is going to press on the right button and make their trauma worse. At least one of them will. God knows that's what antis want, too.

And that makes antis worse than the random bullies in high school. I think that card I got was supposed to be good fun for others — they'd probably feel bad about it in adulthood, especially if they knew how long that insecurity has stuck with me. But that's the stated goal of antis when they bully people. They want you to hurt, to hate your own interests, to feel like an abomination, and kill yourself. They openly celebrate your pain. That makes them worse than any casual schoolyard bully I've ever personally experienced.

It makes them more cult-like, actually. Because that's how Christianity was. They need you to hurt and hate yourself, and believe that they hold the only cure. If you stand your ground and insist you're not broken, then they want you to off yourself. What use are you, living a worldly life without suffering for it? Look at the atheist, who hates life and is angry at everyone and God. Look at the queer, the transgender teen who kills themself — look how terrible it is, to stray from the path of god.

If you're not under their control, they want you dead. And I'll be damned if antis don't behave the same way.

#proship #more rambling

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