#my experiences didnt just not happen because they dont fit with your narrative

[rue-bennett]

I tried to keep this short but no... sorry. I also know that it sounds like I hate the movie but I really did have a fun time. I have smaller problems with the story but this is the main one and idk if it's just that I dont get it and I also met not remember certain things because I only got the chance to see it once so far

my biggest issue, which was also the one I was thinking about while watching the movie, is that I don't really understand what barbie's character arc is? I mean, if the theme is why do I exist, what was I made for, what's my place in this world and what does it mean to be a person.. then that's pretty strongly shown through ken and not barbie. by the time the ending scene came along with barbie seeing the slide show of women with sad music on top I was kinda wondering what was going on? like oh she wants to be human now when did this happen?

I understand what they might have wanted it to be/portray I just thought it was all over the place. is it about overcoming your insecurities, or accepting your flaws, or appreciating the complexities of what it means to be a person or that you can be more than one thing?? (high school musical did it better). It's as if they had a bunch of thoughts about different themes and character arcs and then wrote meaningful moments for them and mushed them all together.

It never feels like barbie felt this overwhelming pressure to be perfect, felt not good enough or insecure about being stereotypical barbie. If they had a scene in barbieland where she wanted to do something outside of her stereotypical barbie role and couldn't, or showed that she felt a lot of pressure being ken's girlfriend, or that once she began to experience human emotion she felt incomplete going back to barbieland (where it would have fit in with being an allegory for growing up/stagnation/fear of change).

At first I thought, well that's okay because she's supposed to be one dimensional /a projection and only gain personhood when America's feeling spill over, but even in the real world there wasn't a lot of implication that she felt inadequate or insecure. It also doesn't work because ken still had hints at internal conflict and unhappiness in barbieland and then that developed when he went to the real world and spilled over to the other kens. all the other barbies should also be theoretically capable of having internal conflict or complex emotions while still being in barbieland.

I know they made a joke about casting Margot when barbie said I'm not pretty anymore. if that's her arc, her feeling pressure to be perfect because she's stereotypical barbie and she can't be anything else I just don't see the through line. it had nothing to do with Margot. Most of the conflict she's in is external. I understand that they wanted it to be rooted in internal conflict about self worth and identity but didnt take the steps to show where that came from.

It's sad because by the end her most consistent conflict was that she just.. didn't love her boyfriend. even then she doesn't treat ken any differently than any of the other barbies treat their ken's so it's not a failing on her part (not wanting/being something she should want/be). not gonna lie I felt really stupid in those last 10 min because it felt as if there was a good chunk of the movie that was just missing.

I feel bad about criticising it because I think everything about it is great but the plot... even then the main problem of the screenplay is that it's comprised of a lot of individually great moments that don't fit into a consistent narrative. from a comedic perspective it hits it out of the park, I have no notes. It's just ironic to me that all the moments surrounding the main theme of the main character seem to have been the weakest overall and the ken comes across as far more human by the end of it.

it's not just barbie though, I also think America and her daughter ended up being underutilised and mostly just existed as mouthpieces for the feminist speech at the end that snaps barbie out of her funk.

we know that America's depression? or mid life crisis? was the catalyst for barbie being influenced (I have more thoughts on that but it's just nit picky stuff) but did we ever find out what it was exactly, was her arc about reconnecting with her daughter (implied by barbies psychic visions??) because they don't seem to have any real or concrete conflict. was her internal conflict yeah its really hard to be a woman and life kinda sucks?

if barbie meeting real women was supposed to be a part of her journey into understanding the complexity of what is means to be human, I don't think they were that useful because they only really exist as a plot device for barbie to gain human feelings and then to expose the patriarchy which I also thought was a bit ham fisted and ironically the weakest part of the story even though I don't disagree with the sentiment.

Given that America's crisis was the catalyst for the events of the movie, her and barbie should have been going on a parallel journey or should have been foils. it would have ended with America's crisis resolving and barbie becoming perfect again but choosing to become human because even though it's messy, she would always exist within the limitations of being an idea. That's obviously what they wanted it to be and you can see hints of that I just don't think it was executed well.

I don't wanna be one of those people that holds women this movie to unnaturally high standards. I see very little legitimate criticism and some of it has been brushed off with the "holding women to extra high standards" but I don't think asking for a coherent character arc for your lead is too much to ask for.

sorry for the ramble lol but I was holding this in for a week

No, thank you for sharing! I actually think you hit the nail on the head with a lot of this and I agree with a lot of it. It did feel somewhat incomplete and I have seen quite a few people talking about how Ken felt like he had more of a character arc than Barbie and I hate that I kinda feel like that's true. I do hope it'll get better on a rewatch (reader: I really enjoyed this movie like I said last night I think I gave it a 4/5 despite that being kinda high given its intense flaws too, the thing is that it is uneven! Very high -- especially in comedy and some of the emotional moments -- and very low -- some of the other emotional moments and plotting and yes hamfistedness).

I think your point about a lot of Barbie's conflict being external rather than internal is accurate and probably not the intention of Greta but just what sort of happened. I think that she wanted to be human because she no longer fit into Barbieland once she started feeling emotions, she couldn't go back and couldn't pretend that the world was perfect when the human world was hurting, but full of beautiful emotions and real women and stuff. At least that was my interpretation. Very The Little Mermaid and all that.

I definitely agree that the Barbies should've been explored more... or the movie could've been a bit shorter. Tbh. Some scenes dragged on and others flew by. I think it was at its best when it was being camp and then the emotional moments and sort of glitches in reality would've been harder hitting maybe? IDK. I'm still sorting out my feelings.

For America, I think she and her daughter started getting along again and her daughter Saw The Light of Barbie and so that helped America heal her inner child. Or whatever. Idk yeah I think your point about having a lot of ideas but not quite plotting them together in a smooth or totally sensical way is accurate.

It's like very good but so close to being a better movie.

#asks #anonymous #barbie spoilers #movie talk #long post

[ihophashbrowns]

hi, if u dont mind me asking what happened between you and user @fapper ? ive scrolled their blog and didnt find anything

nahhhh ur good LOL its probably best that i get my side of the story out god knows what she told our mutual mutuals idk

tldr; she blocked me abt a misunderstood joke and then instead of just. keeping it pushing she further told lies abt me and called me names!! yay!! and i have no way of verifying if the two mutuals we share(d) believe her side bcuz i was never asked abt it by them

it started on twitter n she replied to one of my tweets "the way nobody gaf" and we joke back and forward... i said "stop bullying me youre a bully im telling my mom its only my 12th day out here i dont know" OBVIOUSLY still joking... right?

then i before i know it im blocked on twt, tumblr, and spotify? 😭😭 i thought this was because i replied to HER initial reply with "-is what your parents said when you told them what you major in" (a little harsh, i admit, but we were JOKING.)

anw, i sent her anons on my old account apologizing and trying to explain but she just kept replying with "idc" and shit like that. she even posted scs of my tweets on her tumblr? to get people to attack me? i guess? but it never worked LOLL.

anw she called me a bunch of things behind my back like "a bitch who cant take a joke" odd. she called me a bitch a LOT during the situation as if its the only insult in her tiny ass vocabulary.

when i sent her an ask on my old account i called her a horrible person (not for blocking me, but for.... intentionally twisting my words to fit her narrative?) and she didnt post the ask instead she made a post that was like "whine waaaah waaaaah cunt called me a horrible person because i broke the mutual youre so in love with me bitch i can curate my own experience bitch if im not feeling you anymore its not that deep for me cunt"

i sent her another ask telling her that i DIDNT call her a horrible person for blocking me, but for twisting my words because sge didnt understand (or want to understand) that i was joking the whole time.

after she replied "the way idgaf" and reblogged the post saying "we shoukd make this a new copypasta" and then made a post like "omg she (referring to me) was really in love with me wow so obsessed just keep it pushing like i wont tell you to kill yourself and move on." and yeah.

since then, i got softblocked by one of our mutuals on here (not anywhere else tho so???)

but its funny. maybe if she communicated through misunderstandings and didnt insult people everytime she got upset and stopped using aave and liking posts with the n word in them despite being nonblack and stopped feeling sorry for herself constantly and stopped setting herself up to be the most unlikeable and obnoxious person in the room she'd have some irl friends! sad :(

#✉️ #anon

[roughentumble]

If you want to suffer because of timelines, try to figure out when the Black Sun happened in the games/books timeline :D i have a post dedicated to raging about this but Im on mobile so I cant aend it to you to check it out. But I do want to know yoir thoughts on it! The central characters are Syanna (and Anarietta by proxy), pf course Renfri and Deidre. I loom forward to your theories and screaming about the ages

(ALSO! Radovid V is younger than Ciri (i think) and Morvran Voorhis is around 18 in TW3 ("a child accoridng to Imperial Law in 1268", which doesnt specify the age but he seems younger than ciri or her age at the very least; dunno where I heard 18, but eh, close enough). Look at their game designs. Look at them and tell me they look their age)

jaw on the floor. jesus holy hell. i never even noticed that but now i'll never UNnotice it

when the fuck did the black sun happen???

now ok, the thing with deidre is, i never really understood treating her as canon, because there's another fanmade adventure included in the enhanced edition's base game, in which geralt helps santa save christmas and is then raped by an old man in an infirmary. so like, i dont really consider that to be canon to the series. so deidre to me exists in the exact same sort of liminality.

and also like, she just Says Word For Word stuff that renfri said. so she's pretty obviously a renfri clone. it makes for an interesting fan game, and it was definitely well done and compelling! but she's. She Is Renfri, basically. and if they'd had syanna also say things renfri said word for word, they could play it off as intentional, these are things all girls born under the black sun say, this is some aspect of their weird metaphysical powers linking them all. but they DIDNT do that(i dont remember syanna saying anything renfri did), so you cant say that, so it's just renfri's dialogue lifted.

so already i never tried to mentally fit deidre into a timeline that worked, because in my head she never really Worked at all, she was an interesting thought experiment. you would have to fudge the numbers to fit her into canon, is my perspective. (though what if everything with her went down, in the SAME YEAR geralt ended up in blaviken with renfri. spooky. "two drops of water," indeed.)

but even graciously allowing "deidre didnt happen, or if it did it wasnt wholly accurate to the timeline", what the hell is going on with syanna!!!! she and anarietta would have to be like.... in their 60s or something!!! i see a wiki page(though its a fandom.wiki which means its entirely unsourced and basically worthless ugh 🙄) where the curse of the black sun is just being born under AN eclipse, not a SPECIFIC eclipse, but that really feels like cheating.

i could maybe accept an in-universe sorcerer fudging the numbers like that on purpose to get syanna out of the way, if she wasnt favored by him for some reason, but that just straight up isnt what happened in the game. and i refuse to believe that "AN eclipse" is the proper reading OR how cdpr understood the prophecy. its just too much of a stretch

i mean, props to them that they twisted the timeline that severely and i never noticed, quite the narrative slight of hand, but STILL. that is EGREGIOUS. it doesnt make any sense!!! is syanna drinking potions of immortality. how good is annarietta's moisturizing routine, damn. do the people not notice theyre being ruled over by a bratty immortal

also:

MORVRAN IS NOT 18 OH MY GOD I THOUGHT HE WAS LIKE. I DUNNO. 40. MAYBE OLDER. 18 is killing me. like, i had heard that radovid was still a teenager, and while i dont See it and that character design does NOT communicate that... i thought it made some amount of sense for the character to be young, how he acts and how the world treats him. a young despot. i get it.

but MORVRAN he looks so old he acts so old he is OLD in my heart he will always be an annoying old guy 😭 he is middle aged he cares about horse races and has a weird thing going on with that lady he's always hanging out with. that is an Adult Man

#witcher tag #ogc tag #thank you. this is killing me. i'll be thinking about it forever and b&w will never be the same 💕

[danielnelsen]

i allude to this a lot but i also want to say outright.. i am so sick of the idea that trans women share every negative experience that trans men have and the only difference between the oppression we face is transmisogyny. stop pretending that trans men experience like...........Transphobia Lite™ and actually let us talk about our own experiences. it’s not transmisogyny to say that we face specific forms of discrimination that trans women dont. obviously it’s not “transmisandry”, that’s stupid, we’re not oppressed for being men. it mostly comes down to being afab and id generally call it misogyny (i understand why that’s controversial but it’s also accurate), but saying that doesnt mean that trans women magically have it better than us in any way (they dont). im sick of having to specify in any kind of post i make about the issues trans men face that i dont think trans women have it better. it goes without saying that they dont!!!!!! i dont wanna be sent hate for just talking about my life ughh

#personal #just to specify: this isnt something that trans women specifically push #yeah ive had trans women tell me off but also plenty of tme folks #im not trying to demonise trans women because that's really not the issue #the main issue is that i end up making posts like this because im too scared to actually talk about the transphobia that trans men experienc #and i just dont do it because i know im either gonna have to write a massive disclaimer or be called a terf #(this is not hypothetical it has happened) #and there are always gonna be people like 'well obviously that means you said the wrong thing' #my experiences didnt just not happen because they dont fit with your narrative #(like that time i lost a mutual because i said that someone who was homophobic towards me was ace) #(and they decided that was aphobia) #(like..that's not how this works. homophobia that's informed by someone's asexuality is still homophobia) #but that's another issue anyway

[nothorses]

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, and I worry about saying this off anon but I want to actually, be a face as I do. When I came out I knew I wasn't cis, and I was lucky enough to have the support of two wonderful trans partners, but I had an extremely hard time finding my place in the trans community. I am pro MOGAI and new, hyperspecific terms because I know how important it can be to want to put a name, a flag, and individual pride to your identity. 1/?

I switched my own terms quite a lot, from demigirl to genderfae to genderflux to where I am now, genderfluid. But I remember there was a moment, because I was so sure I was only female aligned, where I thought for just a moment that I might be a boy, and I was terrified, I didnt want to be a boy, I didnt want to be "that trans." Like every trans person, I struggled with internalized transphobia, not feeling valid or true enough in my identity, 2/15

But that dreadful feeling of being Scared of being a boy is something I think about a lot, and something I think is truly telling. I'll admit I primarily (only) use tumblr because social media honestly isnt my thing, so I can only speak to what I've seen here, but I remember seeing so little about trans men, other than the occasional mention in broad positivity posts, the even rarer info about binding or passing, but I did see how much people hated men. 3/15

It was always implied to be about cis men, I've been spared the more modern issues regarding overt hatred of trans men, but I saw the constant anger and vitriol and genuine hatred for men. And I realize now I wasnt just scared of being "too trans" I was scared of being hated. So I made myself nonthreatening, I called myself a boy, I performed femininity to an even higher, though subversive standard, because I was still so scared of being a man. The enemy. The oppressor. 4/15

It took many more months to dare say I wanted to call myself a man, and even then I was scared, in the comfort and safety of my girlfriend's company. I felt dirty saying it, and I still do. I always only dare to refer to myself as a trans man, instead of just as a man. And I do want to sidetrack for a moment and say my relationship to gender, as a genderfluid person, is admittedly more complex than just when I feel this way, in other ways people are also particularly hateful towards, 5/15

But even with those other facets, and my fear of being open in them, pale in comparison to my relationship with masculinity. Because when I did come out and admit to myself that sometimes, I am not a woman, or nonbinary, I am a man, I became more aware of things. I exited wonderland, so to say. Suddenly I became so much more aware of how much people simply did not care about me or people like me, and especially not our problems or concerns. 6/15

I saw how invisible I was, and worse than that, I saw a very subtle malice. The only mention of trans men were in those broad positivity posts including everyone under the trans umbrella, or in the rare case something was positive exclusively for trans men, it was always reblogged with "dont forget trans women/enby people" tacked on, I remember once I looked in the trans tag and counted how many posts it took to find one exclusively about trans men that didnt mention binding 7/15

I got into the forties. Because on other posts, I would see people make passive aggressive remarks about how "trans men are talked about too much" or "there's all these resources for trans men, what about trans women" and I wanted to know on what earth the people who said that were living on, because the only, and I mean the only thing people tend to talk about in regards to trans men is how to safely bind, and rarely, the effects of HRT. 8/15

This happened a while ago, but I remember seeing a number of posts on my dash about how much representation trans men receive. I believe there was a panel about trans people, where a majority of the panelists were trans men, and trans women were less represented than them. They encouraged people to complain, said we received too much attention, and pointed at mythical trans male rep in media that in reality, I could count on one hand. I remember being so angry and passionate about it 9/15

Now im honestly just tired. I dont feel accepted by the trans community, and even the trans male community is iffy (I fit in amongst mogai people most, but I cant deny trumeds are particularly prevalent, and it wore on me), and it's so tiring to have every post made by trans men for trans men have to be preambled by belittling themselves and downplaying their own suffering. I just want to exist in peace, but I feel like that's too much to ask. 10/15

I've reached a point of exhaustion that I have become entirely apathetic to my own gender, what was once a deeply important aspect of my identity. I feel disconnected from it, and as a consequence from my own body. I don't bother examining it anymore because I can't feel it, as someone who suffers from dissociation, I feel dissociated from it in order to protect myself, something I was once so openly proud about. 11/15

Im scared to try and push for transition, for my own personal reasons, but now on top of those Im terrified of being silenced and belittled and hated for something that should make me happy. I've tried so hard not to feed into the lateral violence and become embittered towards trans women, because that's not fair, but I won't lie and say it hasnt been hard when I have seen more than I ever would've liked be so willing to ignore or outright throw their brothers under the bus 12/15

And of course there are even more who do show their support for their brothers, and for that im thankful, but this invisibility effects how I perceive everything. I feel like I've been pushed back into the closet, I say im trans because I know I'm not cis but I don't even know who I am, what my place is, and I'm scared to explore because I'm scared that who I am will be violently rejected by the people meant to support me. I want to be free to even explore who I am. 13/15

I wish people would listen to my experiences and what I have to say, but in every microaggression every act of ignoring I feel silenced. Trans men are viewed as predatory, just in a different way; trans men are fetishized and have chasers; trans men face higher rates of violence and sexual assault for being trans men; research about transmasc transition is almost nonexistent, and new, better surgeries are not even thought about; transmasc history is erased and silenced. 14/15

I, feel like im rambling at this point, and I'm sorry I've been so longwinded, I just. I want to thank you, for creating a space where I can speak my truth, because before finding your blog I didn't think anyone would care. I feel like I have so much more to say but honestly im scared, and too tired, and have said enough for now. I just want this feeling of loneliness to go away and hopefully I'll find a way to accept myself. Thank you for listening to me, and giving me a platform to speak 15/15

(Edited the numbers for accuracy)

Thank you for trusting me with this, and to other folks: I think this is an important narrative to listen to and share!

#trans #transmasc #transgender #ftm #nonbinary #the 'transmascs are overrepresented' argument is also provably false #there are about 1/3 the amount of trans male characters in film and tv that there are trans female #and thats being generous #its very clearly an issue of hypervisibility v invisibility and both groups struggle in different ways! #harlequincy

[icecreamkink]

so i watched cobra kai all in two days and i have so many -

this show has so many cool and smart angles to it, but the same time.... its so stupid oh my god everyone is so dumb literally mr miyagi held all of the braincells in this whole universe 

like i am but at the same time i am not surprised it was made like this, bc in hindsight of course there were hordes of ppl simping over johnny lawrence ....  but it still amuses me that this is like... an Actual Official Thing

ok this will get long so cut it is

how much fun this cast has is super visible and i love it

i rly enjoy how the world was expanded ! i did grow up watching the karate kid movies, so watching how they progressed the world of the movies so organically was pretty cool. it rly feels like its the same universe

i fucking LOVE stories that are largely about a Thing. dancing ,skating, sports its just so thrilling to experience this all consuming relationship people can have with this type of activity? and martial arts are just that much more intense, so yeah, grown ass men kicking each other around at the lightest provocation and a war veteran caring so much abt teen karate is Ridiculous.... but i love it all because thats the intensity i find so thrilling

was kinda surprised with how much im missing mr. miyagi. first because, like everyone is so unhinged jesus christo, it just really throws into relief how much his character grounded the narrative of the movies. but also hes just a really great character

and on that note it rly Gets Me that the show itself aknowledges that and plays that into daniels angst and all the little ways they sorta weave myiagisms into the whole show........ im not getting emotional over this dumb karate dads show OK

related - i really miss hearing ‘daniel-san’ 🥺🥺

ACE DEGENERATE oh god oh no

they really went down the down and out johnny lawrence route huh. like i was always kinda bummed we see kreese choking him and then we never see him again in the movies, and while i love dumpster fire problematic trash himbo ck johnny, its like......................... actually really sad that his life turned out like this fjngn

everytime i hear ‘babes’ and ‘pussy’ i die a little inside. i know thats the point but i am a v cringe easy person, have mercy (ehe)

loved the way they are constantly drawing parallels between johnny and mr. myiagi of all people. hes the handy man of his building that has a bullied kid asking for help and eventually steps up to teach them karate, beats up a bunch of bullies for him, creates a friendship with said kid, estranged from family, drinks his sorrows away, surprisingly one of the least quick to anger characters (which says more about everyone else really but.... Well.), no schemes or ulterior motives hes just tryna vibe here.... oh and ofc magically heals miguel of is asthma apparently. the true disciple.. meanwhile daniel is his usual messy petty self even tho he wants to be mr myiagi so bad 

also interesting about that is how miguels character is a parallel of both johnny and daniel at the same time

overall the parallels in ck are done really well, drawing comparisons and also subverting them constantly. theyre well thought out

THE PARALELOGRAMS

fr tho, the angle being explicitly the cycle of trauma and its effects and how trumatized adults in turn traumatize kids, maliciously or not, is so interesting

but! on the flip side of that, it feels like the writers are getting in their own way @ letting the characters grow. especially this last season. theres only so many times you can do "johnny and daniel are getting along but 5mins later they are (literally) fighting over some dumbass random issue" or "johnny puts in 20% of effort with robby and then gives up" before it gets on your nerves yknow?

i see daniel no longer talks like macchio ingested 15 shots of espresso before every take and idk how to feel about that tbh

interesting tension in daniel, as in, in tkk mr miyagi was there and daniel was frankly, kind of a lil shit, this messy petty spitfire hot tempered sassy kid,(johnny lawrence voice: just... stop being so annoying) but now hes the adult, and he wants to be mr. miyagi... but hes just not, and never will be to his very core and it shakes him and in a way hes trying to find who he is now that he sees himself in a position to be a not! cobra kai figure. i kinda really like that 

plus how that relates to his cobra kai trauma. idk if the writers thought abt it Like That, i think so, but in any case, its interesting bc it seems like daniel has told everyone whod listen about johnny lawrence his Pretty Boy Karate Rival and high school and 84 cobra kai... But. no one seems to know what went on in 85 (or 86? idk) which was just so much worse

like ye og cobras were shitheads, but tkk iii is just two hours of daniel being emotionally and physically tortured. 

like, the third movie is.............chaotic, to put it nicely, and many people ignore it, but the writers clearly didnt. daniels actions are, in a way, responding so much more to the events of tkk iii than to the first movie ie. johnny himself, AND. daniel doesnt rly seem to have dealt with that trauma? he never told sam? doesnt feel like hes ever told amanda? he doesnt even say terrys name out loud? freaks Out over kreese ? the way he reacts to robbys deceit? his FACE when he walks past the new "fear does not exist in this dojo" paint or kreeses photo? hmMm i sense Pain

his fashion tho........... disappointing. where are the flower shirts daniel huh we had one (1) shirt what a tragedy STOP WEARING SUITS ALL THE TIME . also the band ts/grunge bi are a look for johnny but part of me longs for the preppy lovable 80s bully chic johnny lawrence getups

weird that they never used that last moment of karate kid where johnny kinda... snaps out of his anger and hands daniel the trophy almost in tears. like “youre alright larusso, good match” “thanks a lot”  that being their last direct interection seems like itd be perfect fruit for cobra kai but... they just dont. weird. 

especially when, the FIRST SCENE they see each other, suposedly in 30+ years, the first thing to come out of daniels mouth is QUOTE "u still got those golden locks huh?" WHO SAYS SHIT LIKE THAT DANIEL FUCKING SAN 

also amandas immediate reaction "your pretty boy rival?" like. can we talk about the fact that daniel had to have imparted to his wife the very important information that his high school bully/karate rival was like Really Cute and Fucking Hot Actually

 the writers Knew exactly what they were doing and honestly.............. power to them

tkk director voice: and billy was just so cute  

also I was thinking that daniel sounded strangely fond in that first scene, and i wonder if he developed a weird affection for johnny on the grounds that of all of his Karate Rivals johnny was actually the only one who didn’t actively tried to literally kill him

i was actually delightedly surprised with how great the chemistry between them is, like from the get go i am Invested. their rl friendship totally bleeds through and its fantastic

. granted, idiots enemies to lovers friends is my Thing so i am biased  

johnny lawrence: i am down in the dumps, i fucked up my whole life and my sons probably, largely in light of the trauma that the father figure sensei and the philosophy of my karate inflicted on me and all my friends. u know what i should do, as a traumatized, unreliable mess of an adult? teach that same philosophy to some other kids! what could go wrong! 

but really i enjoy the setup of it. i kinda like that i watched it late because, season 1 was johnny setting himself up for failure in a way and it was exciting to watch it all go to shit sjfn

Like. his heart might be in the right place, but theres just.... not a way to teach something like ‘strike hard, no mercy’ and not have it fuck up a kid 

case and point: aisha, miguel and hawk become annoying as all hell over that bullshit in the end of s1, even before shit gets truly fucked up

billys subtle panicked eyes when he sees hawk and miguel fighting dirty in the all valley was SO GOOD especially in parallel with the panic that is so visible in his face in the movie when kreese tells bobby to injure daniel and in the sweep the leg scene 

seen people question wether kreese should have returned and i absolutely think he needed to. johnny needed to realize that cobra kais fundamentals are flawed, at the root, beyond kreese himself being a toxic piece of shit 

also who are we kidding? we are here to see the tkk characters play on new playgrounds!

i get what they're doing abt kreeses backstory, ( also. cobra kai. pq eles caem nas cobras djjs sorry) but did it need to take up that much time? feels like they couldve  done it in half the run time and developed some other stories better 

martin kove has such an evil eye. i love it

love that we get a good follow up to kreese breaks johnnys trophy and tries to CHOKE HIM in the parking lot, which happened in the movie and then....................... was never mentioned again

“the gang is all back together again” aaaa u piece of SHIT 

also. terry silver is definetely appearing ha ha ha PAIN i cant wait

seen ppl say kreese was too much of a cartoon villain like..........................oh......... sweetie........... u dont even Know

interested how johnny will fit into that bc kreese was simping rly hard for johnny here. like i did not expect him to be so adamant to have him with cobra kai ... under his control, sure, but he really wants johnny by his side despite already having control of the dojo and how will terry silver self appointed jon kreeses forever simp going to feel abt that? 

like bitchs dropping by every episode like ‘joooooohnny ..... come bacc to me joooonny......... this ur last warning! for real this time johnny! i wont say it again! watch me ! im leaving johnny! im rly leaving ! im dragging a chair” and johnny is just like. dont let the door hit ya bitch it was so funny pls

and on that subject oof, johnny! doesnt! Know! he doesnt get that side of daniels cobra kai trauma. and i kind of.............. cannot wait for ck 2021 johnny lawrence to meet terry silver like. what a shit show i need a front row seat and popcorn (imagine terry tries some greasy charm and johnny just roundhouse kicks him in the teeth bc he just doest Not Have the Patience for This. glorious)

feels like we, as a society, should acknowledge that cobra kai will never die................ bc their sense of design is just chefs kiss. their name is COBRA KAI. they have sexie sleeveless black gis. theyve sneks. colorful leather jackets with embroided naja insignia, the get ppl thru the aesthetics. evil geniuses

the flashback cuts : masterpiece behavior

the other takes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of the movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the differente angles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of the FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE CLOSE UP ON JOHNNYS FACE AT THE KICK 

that scene of daniel and johnny vibing to 80s music in the car. just. oh my god. the fan wish fullfilment. no thoughts head empty.

the new characters! theyre .... good. but. idk. i really like miguel (save for the annoying phase mid s1 - end s2) and amanda, who is a damn riot and has some functioning braincells, but everyone else is       

like dont get me wrong, i dont hate anyone,its not a jane and rafael from jtv situation,  and i am interested and invested in their arcs, but i wouldnt say i like   Like them, as in, personality wise 

like, sams grappling with ptsd was rly gutting and i enjoyed that plus her slight rage issues, 

which nicely parallel torys rage issues. torys background is all over the place tho so im pretty on the fence abt her so far

robby deserves better in every way, and i like how smart and cunning and surprisingly sweet he is

hawk............... is there i guess,

 demetri is annoying in the best way possible,

 carmen is sweet but. i just feel like her character is blunted to make the johnny relationship easier. like when shes furious with him after miguels injury but then forgives him like an episode later? and then convinces him to fight for the tournament bc she had a karate epiphany off screen even tho she was always against it? meh. feels like with the plot thiccening she was swallowed and now shes like a crutch for johnny mora than anything, which is disappointing.

aisha was cool and im kinda mad she wasnt in s3, especially bc a storyline with her tory and sam was like RIGHT THERE , but also... cant say i was super super fond of her... doesnt feel like we ever spent enough time on her

moon the bi icon, 

overall its a good cast but the main draw for me remains the og cast 

the tory/sam miguel/robby Thing. enjoy how theyre Narrative Foils and i like how their stories were so dramatically entangled but oh god give me a break with the teenage love square for the love of god. if u gonna put us through that at least have the decency to not make it so straight

and honestly some sam/tory        miguel/robby romantic tension would even make more sense. just saying! 

also im not sure how i feel abt the cobra kai: red miyagi do: blue theyre going with since some of daniels most iconic looks in tkk are also red. like it was a color they (johnny and him) sorta shared. i get it, opposite but complementary but idk... a little too fire nation and water tribe for me .

 and like the cobra kai kids are so funny abt it bc their outifts grow progressively more ridiculously coordinated. its like do they group chat every morning before leaving their houses? 

robby still sticks out like that tho. he went thru an athleisure/daniel san tsleeves phase and now hes back in the bandts grunge, but his color scheme doesnt fully blend with the other cobra kais. hmmmm.

LOVED LOVED LOVED both the okinawa episode and the cobra kais easy rider episode just such good good heart aching fun

bobby is an icon. he was in tkk and he is now ck hope appears more and more

 tommy is like the most iconic background character. all his lines, freaking gold then and now. sigh :( 

the framing in the okinawa trip was so good everything was so good

i stand by the fact that kumiko was the love interest daniel had the most chemistry with and shes is overall such a joy to watch, loved to see her again, idola, fashion icon

also tkk ii is good u guys are just mean

also really enjoyed chozens role in the episode, his evolution; i love that they introduced the pressure points (ty lee the blueprint) and! the honk + karate! cousins! absolutely iconic

when kumiko reads mr miyagis letters........ oh my god, my eyes FILLED with tears, it was so heart wrenching :(( tamlyns delivery was so emotional and lovely and its so obvious everyone involved in ck has so much love and respect for pat morita and mr miyagi as character, and i adore that it exists like this electric current through the show

when we were watching i told my sister i thought that ali would be miguels big shot surgeon and ngl i am so disappointed that didnt happen. hire me cobra kai writers

also the johnny ali daniel amanda chemistry? off the charts

AND the sassy retconning of daniel and alis breakup! LMAO ‘I HOPE U DIDNT TELL MR MIYAGI IT WAS MY FAULT’ HFDJJGNKFKSD

i am preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty sure back injuries dont work like that    but oke

daniel and johnny are so good together whenever, like they never actually help the kids or get shit done and end up fighting anyway but its just so much fun when theyre hanging

JOHNNY LAWRENCE AND DANIEL LARUSSO FIGHTING TOGETHER

daniels “plan” on how to get robby to juvie was so stupid. literally were u TRYING to make him hate you. dumbass

parents at those hearing rly brave for ppl that did not do ANYTHING as their kids got involved in a karate gang war until now

“bullshit i heard u were the real bully!” i mightve screeched

this s3 ending was SO DRAMATIC omg

everyone is such a MESS go to THERAPY u unhinged motherfckers

also im sorry but uh. a richass neighborhood in california doesnt have some type of neighborhood watch? the larussos rly dont have any security at all? neighbors wont hear the sound of a damn karate brawl happening next door??? also wasnt tory all like ooo i cant go to juvie, my mom yada yada yet shes always running around town getting into fights even at the rich girls house she was kicked out of school for fighting??   ?  ??    ??        ?                ?    ?          ??                  ?    ? girl??

stop destroying the larussos house, its so pretty :((((

sam finding her center looking at mr miyagis picture...  uwu maybe

robby yelling ‘U ARE WEAAK’@  johnny \as he is easily blocking him is like.... so funny and so sad to me. sweetheart. 

also i know it was meant as ‘oh johnny pushes him and HURTS HIM’ but it just looks like robby runs himself into the lockers and IM SO SORRY I FEEL SO BAD BUT IT WAS SO FUNNY 

i like that he and tory are the cobra kai kids now. we need ppl we care abt there to not revert to a good vs evil schtick, and this is the most engaging it could be... tho it hurts that these kids cant catch a break

ah yes "lets bet some real shit on the result of this teen karate tournament bc that is always a great idea" is BACK

so daniel saves johnny from kreese..... maybe johnny will save him from terry 🧐

and dojos unite ohohoho. lets SEE how that’ll work out 

miguels face of Despair when the ck defectors and the md kids are bickering like 'this is never gonna work' : gold

also. Johnny Lawrence is gonna learn some myiagi-do karate AHAAHSJAKDFH

 ive been waiting for this moment all my lifeeee oh lawrd 

final thoughts! there are def things i hope the writers will improve on the next season, but i am very excited for it either way AND i feel like it has made me enjoy the movies even more and that is a win for a reboot/sequel to me!!

#m. #did i procrastinate watching this since it came out and only watched it now bc my sister nagged me to when i said we should #watch karate kid over the holidays? #and then binged the whole thing in two days?? #mayhaps and what abt it #cobra kai #the karate kid #its funn #y bc like karate kid is a Childhood movie but i wouldnt say #it was like particularly special for me? #like i wasnt in a fandom or anything #but now. #i might be invested #maybe #talvez

[bisluthq]

No one drag me but I gave Taylor a slight pass last summer only because she represents a weird cultural figure in black culture in regards to Kanye. Whatever your views on what happened back then I remember alot of my friends who are black saying it sucks but I hate an influential black man once again being the villian in the story about a perfect blonde girl being the victim. The narrative after that completely changed for me. Of course I support Taylor and I thought is was shitty, but I also dont trample on lived experiences so I stayed out of having "opinions". And again whatever opinion you have of Kanye he is huge in the black religious experience and a thought leader in that space. So I never thought it was a good idea for Taylor Swift and a team of security to show up to a protest.

I used to think maybe turn her IG over for a day, but her black influential friends have their own platform. Could she have asked say one of the singers?? Sure, but what if they didnt want to. How do I know.

Could she have posted more? Yes, but with that being said I despise the fake posting from rich white women that is clearly virtue signaling, so I don't know what would have annoyed me more to be honest. Like Karlie went overdrive in her posting but it didnt feel genuine you know.

Obviously we can all do better but again I am just hyper aware of how Taylor Swift fits in the "cultural black space". If she makes it worst or takes the voices away then yes I don't want that attention for her either. Like please dont pull a YNTCD moment with civil rights.

Okay look this is true better silence than YNTCD the civil rights edition.

#nat talks tay’s politics

[autumn-foxfire]

The thing i noticed when i look at dabihawks fanart n read through your expiriences with the meta part of the fandom is that a lot of people seem to lean on dabi side of the dabihawks conflict. Like its hawks who has to make changes to earn dabi. Its hawks whos turned it a villain, its hawks who forgives or even thanks dabi for what he did. Actually i dont think ive ever seen art ro read a fic (but to be fair im extremly selective in fic reading) where dabi is the one to apologise and try to earn hawks

N i think this sorta makes sense because for a lot of dabihawks shippers, dabi is probably their favorite out of the two. That also makes sense cuz hes been around longer n has appealing design so it makes sense that people would try and fit hawks around dabis narrative instead of vice versa. They find dabi more likable n more interesting so its his side they want to explore.

I feel that this is completely different for me because hawks is my no 1 best boy. Like before hawks bnha was the kind of show where i would say 'oh i like the characters but none of them are mine fav' like id say shouto, shinsou or jirou were my favs mostly based on aesthetics or recognizing pieces i usually like in characters in them, but those pieces never being strong enough for me to say this is my fav bnha character like id say izaya is my favorite durarara character or ranpo is my favorite bungo stray dogs character. And then bam. Bird Time. Like when i first saw hawks i think the most i thought was 'damn thats a cool design' but as we got more of him he very quickly became the character i loved most and wanted to see more off.

Dabi on the other hand i was never really interested in. Like he was cool n all but overall i didnt really care for him until the touya theory dropped and until dabihawks. For me hes perfectly fine, i dont dislike him or anything but i like him most when hes involved with other characters i like, like Todorokis n Hawks. Like even now after a good while on Dabihawks juice id still stay hes not my fav villain. That would probably be Toga, Geten (as little as we get of him) and honestly mr compress just for being an evil magician i need more mr compress

So the fact that hawks is my fav means that unlike ppl whos fav is dabi i focus more on how can dabi earn hawks. How can dabi get better, would he ask for help, would he quit villainy, would he apologize. And most importantly would hawks accept him back.

Makes me feel like amongst dabihawks shippers theres simply two different streams that would probably get annoyed by each others content n feel like the other is spoiling their fav character.

Like i sure as fuck get annoyed when artists i follow for dabihawks start talking about how hawks should have been a villain n how hawks is actually an evil murderer while the league has a point n is poiting out that the heroes will save only those who dont fight back. No really thats a take i heard, lets just forget muscular, mustard, moonfish, gentle, the yakuza and ALL FOR FUCKING ONE who were all arrested perfectly fine without fighting back. But of course these people dont mean saved as in arrested, forced to rexamin their own behavior and work to be better people, they mean saved as in i want my favs to be coddled and patted on the back and instantly forgiven and even told they were right all along and they are the most special a good. Geeze

I fuckin went off subject so hard this is less of an ask n more of a rant now. The only good thing about seeing all those bad takes is that every time i see one my motivation to write a dabihawks story where dabi faces concequences, and they actually have to hash the whole villain hero ideologies thing out, grows stronger

...I’m sorry, I wanted to answer this sooner but wanted to get the smaller asks out of the way first T-T

But yes! That’s been my experience when it comes to Dabihawks as well. Not many people focus on Hawks side of the conflict and instead tend to make him the agressor in the relationship when they want conflict (it always tends to be Hawks who upsets Dabi for example, or Hawks will say something insensitive towards Dabi or do something that upsets Dabi). Not many people treat them as a pair, they just tend to focus on the Dabi angst more then the Hawks angst or angst experienced by the both of them (I like to call that the Dabias and many people suffer from it in the Dabihawks shipping fandom I’ve found).

I like reading stories like this too, from time to time, but I’m just tired of all the stories or comics or fan art being Hawks the bad person in the relationship with him having to apologise and make it up to Dabi. Especially when in canon it’s Dabi that has treated Hawks pretty terribly (he almost got him killed by lying to him about when he was going to release High End and he almost killed him during the raid, meanwhile Hawks hasn’t anything as horrible towards Dabi except hold him at knife point but that was more for his own protection then to threaten Dabi).

I feel like I’m just bitching because people don’t wrote fanfiction to my specifications but you’d be grumpy too if your favourite character always gets the short end of the stick in work that is supposed to be about the pair of them being a couple.

Also don’t get me started on the stories that make Hawks “see the light” and join Dabi’s side after he maimed him, some even going far as to have him thank Dabi for what he did. It just reeks of the Dabias and I absolutely hate. Let Hawks experience trauma you cowards, especially trauma that we know was caused by the hands of dear old Dabi.

I wish more work would try to reform Dabi as a person instead of having Hawks become a villain (especially because works that usually have Hawks become a villain tend to ignore the horrifying plans the League want to commit or acknowledged them but fool themselves into thinking Hawks would actually be down for all the BS). I think it’s more interesting to see a bad person try to change, it’s why I’ve enjoyed Endeavor’s character arc despite not liking him as a character. Like sure, I don’t mind bastardization arcs too but they have to be done with character I can see it happening too and Hawks isn’t that type of person.

(In fact it’s such an interesting source of conflict that Dabi and Hawks are very resolved people. They’re not likely to change their ways for anything but I don’t really see people explore that even though it’s the perfect source for angst).

I’m so tired of villain stans who wanted Hawks to become evil (and then wanted him to validate their murder favs). I want more stories where Hawks puts his foot down and Dabi realises he wants to be a better person for him (it’s in those stories I could actually see him bonding with his family again too because right now Dabi is a man with no qualms with breaking his family apart for his revenge).

I just wished more people would let Dabi face the consequences of his actions too. Like if you’re going to make Hawks suffer for what he did (even though I roll my eyes at the thought) then Dabi who has done much worse should be suffering ten times over.

Make it make sense.

#bnha #bnha dabihawks #dabihawks #thanks for the ask!! #rant #from the both of us really XD #thegaygyrus

[theinterloper]

just gonna give my overall DLC thoughts since i finished! potential spoilers below

so i liked the dlc a lot, it was a neat thing to throw into the world and i liked the lore, story, etc. i do understand some of the issues ppl had with it but ive come out positive still. i think one key thing to remember on the story end, if me and likely many others are playing this after having already beat the main story... you need to first remember the dlc isnt another ending, its not a separate story. its “end” might feel simple or inconclusive if you play it alone and not like an addition to the Nomai/main story which all tie together very well. this isnt a continuation or whatever, its just another story to another group of people like the nomai that add more to the overall story. and i think it was really good for that- it really adds a lot to the main story i think even if i didnt play it like that for the first time. kinda just pulls more details together and the new race’s experience is a very interesting narrative mostly if you do already know the Nomai.

past that- i think i really dont have a problem w the overall gameplay choice for the dlc. i will admit i was a little nervous what the dlc could be, i was afraid it could shatter the original story’s feelings by shoehorning in something that felt unfitting. the game is very exploration based so i kept thinking “how could they add onto the solar system? it would be strange to do that”. so i wasnt surprised by tackling the Stranger the way they did. it fit well. of course the downside is that youre left exploring one massive vessel and nothing else, and it does get tedious when you have already completed the main story, because there is nothing else to do in the game aside from just that. i can agree that is one flaw, but i also think the dlc worked fine the way it did because i couldnt imagine them trying to expand the existing world without it feeling wrong. the story here is linear, even with the main story left to complete.

but onto the next parts, the horror- which is a part i definitely didnt mind in the same way and im not exactly someone who was smart about any of this dlc tbh. i think OW has always managed to use Fear for gameplay. in the overall/main game, you fear places like Dark Bramble or Giant’s Deep because you dont know them. you need to learn either by exploring for more info or just trying something to see what happens. thats how the dlc is, but less so of fearing exploring and more so of fearing the puzzle you dont know the answers to. i completed the dlc without figuring out some of the “secret” things but i still learned other things that told me the “stealth” part could be avoided, it didnt take too much trial and error to realize how to get around some and use the new mechanics to my advantage. some people find it frustrating that some of the secrets are learned after you do them but i had such situations even with the main game- i think it perfectly makes sense because theyre all things i know others tried on their own. i didnt, but its certainly open to you to try if you question the new mechanics enough which i did very well in the main game. And OW has done that in other ways.

overall i understand some mixed opinions but it felt very OW through and through just with the lack of planets to explore, which i cannot blame them for considering the circumstances of the game’s world tbh. these are my more analytical/game reviewy thoughts tho and i have many feelings abt the story, many thoughts.... but i wanted to get this ramble out of the way

#ow spoilers #outer wilds spoilers #outer wilds

[p1nkwitch]

I have plenty of questions about your fanfics I don't even know when to start. Can I just name every one of them and send you star with it?

But please tell me something interesting funfact behind Heart Machinations? Also were you at some point considering bad/different ending?

i think i would never finish writing if you did send me all of them even with the star, i ramble a lot and go on tangents, but if you send them like 3 fics per day i can make it i promise.

Ok to start! Nope! This was the story where i literally envisioned the ending first and had to go backwards to write it. The ending was solid.

But for fun facts!! Oh boy.

This entire story begun with the idea of a one shot, with a slight different plot, it would have ended with Peter as an old man uploading his mind like he promised Elias in the fic and coming back as an Ai, to stay with Elias for as long as they could. I ended up switching things arounf in my head until i ended up with the image.

The thing that started this entire fic.

Peter floating in space with Elias declaring his love.

I was forced by the entire story to find ways to keep them from confessing earlier than intended. God did i regret having to put it so later, because the mental flips i needed to justify them not realizing, were driving me up to a wall.

Another thing that i was not aiming for, but ended up liking was the TimPeter, i didnt aim for it to be a plot point, i didnt even ship them, but i wrote them so well i actually hesitated. Not to the Elias romance with Peter that was a given, but i hesitated to actually make a policule out of everyone.

In the end i decided to go for my original plan, but it had been a posibility.

Most of the relationships surged as the soty progressed, because i realized if it was only them it would get boring so i started to shuffle characters and relationships and it worked far better than i intended.

Now the other interesting tidbit.

Was that originally i was intending for Elias to be the actual big bad, a la Glados in portal. Elias tricks Tim and Peter into thinking Jon went rouge and he got Leitner killed so Peter connects him, Elias pretends things are normal but sends him off to rrepair something outside, once Peter is safe he uses the gas to kill everyone who is not going to be sent to do experiments in the hidden labs.

Martin opens the door for Peter makes him help by trying Elias like the original one did to get himshut down. He realizes and hurt tries to attack him, Martin uses the portal door and Peter still tries to hold unto Elias, but they ended up slipping and going into space.

The Simon plot point was always going to be there, same as the oxygen and confession.They apologize and everything.

In fact Peter was never supposed to realize Elias was killing people until he takes over. I realized it would be impossible to keep him in the dark for so long along with the not confessing so i had to give one up for the story and i was set on my ways.

The more i developed them, the more i started to change the plot to fit better with the new narrative wanting it to be more satisfiying.

Something else that i changed in the story, was that after Leitner dies, Gertrude was supposed to come to check the station, Elias sees her and gets her killed. It did not pan out of course, because i considered it would be too out of nowhere.

When i realize the story was sort of getting shifted i went with the idea to switch the notSasha on its head. Which created lovely Pasha!! Whom i love a lot.

Another thing that i had to develop because i grew very fond of it were Missy and Titania. Particularly Missy, since Titania was a stand in for the vast in some ways. Missy was needed to provide Peter some form of love, since yes, i made the Lukas terrible people, but a child still needs some love to grow and i wanted someone to help with that since Simon couldnt. I love her a lot and honestly wish i could use her in more stories because she is a great character. I know people dont really are in it for the original characters but she is dear to me.

The honest to god most fun i had during the story was writting the chats between the characters and the moments where Elias and Peter where being horny for each other. Peter freaking out silently about the things Elias said, while Elias was being the most horny creature in the station was delightful.

My favourite parts were also writing Elias realizing that he ruined Peter, that he had caused his misery, i wish i could have gone harder on those. Because they are a great part of his motivations. He starst not caring but the more he falls in love, the more he realizes how much of a horrible person he is and how much he is hurting Peter. I love that, i put it before but i like making characters go though bad stuff to get them to the good, to get that catharsis after all the bad.

I wanted to do a bonus. Where Peter does go to Simon’s funeral and everyone has to sit there while Android Simon was just chilling giving his own eulogy.

One thing i sort of chikened out of, but left crumbs around was the plot point that ogElias and Micheal Shelley were dating. Thats why Elias had the picture and writings about him. They split due to Gertrude and Elias defending JON4H. Its why Elias could keep Helen so easily to raise her. She calls him uncle, because they had broken up and he felt he didnt deserve to take that from Micheal.

Currently they made up and since Elias was single they are patching things up, Helen was thrilled.

This is also the story where the cats appear. And im so glad for it.

Captain was an idea based on the au of another fic i love Timeline of Theseus, i just pictured Peter getting the cat and voila. (No, there is no cat in there, but it would had been so funny) They were foils, Elias has a lonely cat and Peter a beholding one. They fall in love. I like that.

Thats all i can remember now. Nikola was always also a plot point, i mean who else would make androids but the puppet herself! Since ideally i intended for Elias to get a body, it was supposed to happen.

I went off, but i really did have a lot of ideas and scrapped ones that i figured no one would see. Im happy i could just leave them out to the world!!

So yes ask away, but as you can see, i sort of go off. Thanks for asking!!!! I hope its what you wanted. Sorry if it goes all over the place.

#ask #i went off im sorry #but seriously i had to scrap so many ideas #and adjust them later

[horngryeyes]

Ok Im actually super curious about how you feel abou the gods as characters? Because I briefly thought about it when o first saw tbi but Im not really pagan so I didnt really come to a conclusion

thank you for asking i actually kinda wanted to talk about this but didnt know if people cared lol. anyways a little basic information abt me - im omnitheist and that means i believe ALL gods exist if people actually believe that they do (yes, if theres at least one person that genuinely believes spaghetti monster actually exist, then i am sure that it does). second of all i am no authority paganism and only speaking of my own experience (that is quite small). BUT i have opinions and i am going to make them known

up until recently i felt like it was disrespectful to treat gods as your ocs - especially that modern pagans didnt do stuff like the christian church did (with the narrative “if youre christian then you can suck it up and sit still when people use god as an antagonist/make them into a character”. and that was a thing i believed before i ‘converted’. im not sure how to explain this well but like, if church killed people for not being christian then i can sit down and shut up while people make fun of god. people dying and me being uncomfy are not comparable)

but then i saw this post. i think its a really beautiful post from a really smart person and you should read what she wrote about this subject, but if you dont want to - tl;dr: those beings are literally gods. people made them into characters in order to spread their stories and thats exactly what the gods wanted

and that changed my stance on this. because like, theyre literally gods. if they didnt want this to happen they could just not make this happen

sure, i still roll my eyes when people call hera a bitch or make zeus into a fuckboy (because gods are not one dimensional. and honestly if you write them as characters and they end up one dimensional thats a character problem, not a deity problem) but i understand that when you write stories about something (whether thats loki, jesus or lancelot) you have to expect that people will retell the stories to their liking

tl;dr: if gods didnt want this stuff to happen, they would make it not happen. and when you write stories about something, you have to expect that people will retell the stories however they see fit

#personal #religion tw

[autisticmob]

HELLO everyone i am now ten days out from my tiddy surgery so i think while everything is still fresh-ish in my mind I should get a rough timeline of how things went for me, just so anyone having similar stuff done in the future can have it as reference?? 

so under the cut is how shit went down, warning we are gonna be tmi about it for Max Information Dissemination, i will be talking about IV placement, Needles, Bleeding, Bruising, Bathroom Stuff In General, etc. so like. Be Warned.

OKAY SO what did i have done and how did i get it:

- i got a bilateral breast reduction with a “T,” “keyhole,” or “anchor-shaped” incision. this procedure, unlike double-incision top surgery, does not detach your nipples at all, but it DOES leave a decent hunk of breast tissue behind to avoid the nip graft. this connecting tissue keeps your nip attached and supplied with enough blood to survive. that means with this one, theres basically a limit to how much they can take off, and it depends on how big you are to start off with. 

- i went with the T-incisions because as a NB person, I wanted to sidestep the “gender-confirming surgery” route with my insurance. technically, I believe it would have been covered if i had gone through the process of talking to a therapist and getting a note that the surgery WOULD help confirm my gender, but i suspect it would have taken much longer, and I was afraid that my doctor and community resources would not have ended up approving me FOR the surgery since I don’t exactly fit the typical trans narrative. and luckily for me i had Massive, Spine-Bending G Cup Tiddies to contend with. so every doc that took a look at me said “yeah, you need those taken care of for medical reasons.” so i thought hey, let’s see how far this will get me!

- i talked to my primary care doc about my back pain and mentioned i’d like to look into a breast reduction, and she referred me to a local surgeon who could do the procedure. at the time i was still entertaining the idea of double-incision, but as it turned out, this surgeon just didnt do that. but i knew for certain my insurance would cover him, his results were good, and he was local, so i said yes to the T-incisions, which he said would likely get me down from a G to at least a C. it wasnt my ideal scenario admittedly, but frankly the back pain was getting to be too much, and i needed it to be addressed sooner rather than later.

- i had a consultation with the surgeon in early december, and they took pictures and measurements to send to my insurance so they could confirm the tits WERE in fact Too Bomb To Live. Doc said that it varies between insurance companies, but most will have a minimum amount of tissue that needs to be taken off, in grams, from each breast. he was like, “your insurance needs at least 1000g total removed, which’ll leave you on the small side, is that cool?” and i was like “My Man, take AS MUCH as you possibly can, im sick of these” and he was like “cool, makes my job easy then.” 

- it took my insurance like 1.5 to 2 months to get back to me, but late january the surgery place called me and we set a date for february 5th, 2020!!

PRE-OP:

- before i went into surgery, the hospital made me go over my medical history with them over the phone, informed me of all the risks, and gave me a special scrub kit to shower with at home for the last 2 days before the surgery

- fun fact this soap will make your whole bathroom and body smell strongly and exactly like a hospital and it is gross as hell if you hate hospital smell

- i also had to go to my primary care doc to get the OK that i was healthy enough to go under general anesthesia, and also get some blood tests and a urinalysis done. i fucked up the urinalysis tho (which is a whole other story) so i had to redo that the morning of the surgery when i got to the hospital anyway. 

- when i scheduled my surgery they also gave me a list of things i had to NOT DO before i went in. this included stuff like avoiding herbal medications and non-prescription supplements and not drinking any alcohol for like 2 weeks prior to surgery, and not eating anything after midnight the night before surgery.

- then it was SURGERY DAY!!!

- i went in with uhhh a LOT of anxiety about what everything would entail, ngl. i knew i had to do it because staring down the barrel of life with tiddies forever was way scarier than surgery, but yknow whenever you go under general anesthesia they legally do have to let you know that you could die and thats just a lot to consider, PLUS the whole thing involves just, really mangling your torso so like. its a lot! its okay to be scared!

- both my parents went with me for moral support which i appreciated a lot, but i didnt actually see them much since they had to spend a lot of it in the waiting room.

- when i went back with the doc they had me Wash The Tiddy Off with some antiseptic and change into a gown. i got some grippy socks out of the deal which is probably not a universal experience, but this hospital did it so shoutout to them for the socks i guess

- then they asked me all my medical history stuff again and checked me for any like, rashes or open sores or anything. i had some Tit Zits but they did not seem to be worried about that.

- then the surgeon came in and drew lines on me for the incisions. bro when i saw how high up my nips were gonna be i was losing my damn mind. this is one of the really exciting parts, because you finally get to really visualize what your end size is gonna be!! 

- once he was satisfied with how everything looked, they started really Prepping Me For Surgery.

- they hooked me up to a blood pressure cuff, a heart monitor, and some compression leg thingies that would inflate and deflate intermittently around my calves to help me not get blood clots. this felt weird but tbh also like kind of a nice massage

- then the iv placement. bro im not lying when i tell you this is the worst part. the nurse numbed me with some lidocaine before placing the needle and let me tell you that shit HURTED. lidocaine Stings and Burns when it hits and this was arguably the most painful part. but the good news about that is it means nothing else after that is all that bad. and i got THREE lidocaine shots because these two nurses could NOT find my blood anywhere. they finally called in their ringer (an EMT named kirk, s/o to kirk) who got that sucker in my arm with NO numbing and NO pain in like, 2 fucking seconds. i pray you all have a kirk. kirk knows where your fucking blood is and hes not gonna fuck around getting to it because he JUST wrestled a drunk dude into an ambulance like an hour ago and compared to that this is nothing. kirk had sleeveless scrubs. im obsessed. anyway.

- then they put a plastic, inflatable, heated blanket over me? it was between two regular blankets so it wasnt as uncomfortable as you might imagine, but it was strange. warm tho so that was nice.

- THEN they wheeled my bed down to surgery. i was having so much anxiety at this point it was like... dreamlike. getting wheeled into the OR was just surreal. i was like, no thoughts head empty, just taking everything in.

- once i got there the surgical team was very cool about keeping me calm tho. they were playing their like, pump-up music and one of the guys was like “hey fyi about halfway thru the surgery we will be turning the lights off and having a rave, just in the interest of full disclosure. promise not to leave any glowsticks in there tho” and i was like what no i would LOVE glowstick tiddies

- i had to kinda roll from my bed onto the operating table, which was significantly harder and smaller. that kinda made things feel real, so i got a little more anxious at that point.

- to help me calm down they had me breathe in some straightup oxygen thru a mask while they hooked my iv to the fluids and such, and the guy was like “WHOA you got some lungs on you dude” and i was like yeah thanks im recovering from hyperventilating

- then they let the anesthesia into the iv, letting me know the whole time what was happening, talking to me until i was just OUT, which was not a lot of conversation time because i was out in like 5 seconds or less. they didnt make me count down or anything, but i promise you it was nigh instantaneous.

POST OP

- it really was instantaneous. i know everyone says that but it really is the truth, it feels like the whole thing takes seconds. like one moment youre laying there in the OR feeling the drugs Hit, and the next youre waking up in the little wake-up room feelin kinda groggy with a nurse talking to you, and youre still druggy so youre just rambling to her about how fucked your voice sounds right now and as soon as shes contented that youre basically lucid they start wheeling you to your room where youll ACTUALLY stay while you recover.

- THE THING I WAS THE LEAST PREPARED FOR WAS MY THROAT

- your throat will Hurt afterwards, but even more than that, you will be producing So Much Mucus. my surgery took about 2 hours and during that time, all my muscles were paralyzed by the anesthesia, including my lungs, so i was on a breathing tube. my throat, understandably, hated this, and started producing Gallons Of Fucking Mucus to protect itself. it then continued to do this for the next two days or so. the nurses were encouraging me to breathe deep and cough Hard to combat this, and avoid getting pneumonia, so i did. but THAT hurt the tiddies. it was really a vicious cycle. but its necessary because god if i had to have pneumonia on top of all the other recovery shit?? god. 0/10 wouldnt recommend. so it might hurt but dont worry your tiddies wont bust open or anything.

- i spent basically the rest of the day still hooked up to all the machines i listed earlier, PLUS a thing that would beep at me if my heart rate went too high, which it did a lot because i have anxiety, but luckily the nurses didnt seem too concerned. it really kept my breathing on track though because if i didnt breathe deep enough my heart would shoot up super fast and it’d beep and god that was just annoying and im pretty sure that was The Point. you kinda have to get used to breathing again, and the beeping trained me.

- they gave me like a bunch of crackers and a huge mug of water to work on at my leisure. i actually had lunch pretty quick after waking up? i know a lot of people have nausea issues from anesthesia but i didnt experience any of that. i DID move like a fucking sloth while i was eating tho. the pain meds and general grogginess of recovery slowed my whole body down sooooo much. my mom was actually like “are you okay??? like neurologically??????” and i was, totally, i was just. on slo-mo.

- anyway i didnt have to get catheterized for this procedure thankfully but they DID make me measure my pee every time i went to the bathroom. like i had to pee in a little bucket attached to the toilet and the nurse had to come check it every time and i felt really weird about that. so idk just be prepared for that i guess lmao

- also idk if it was the pain meds or the anesthesia itself but post-op, i couldnt shit for like a week. the constipation is real so get u some fucking laxatives asap when you get home, this is not a joke lmao

- they also had me put on a belt every time i got up so the nurse could hold onto me in case i decided to fucking biff it. they got me up a couple times throughout the day/night to walk up and down the hallway outside and get my body used to being upright again

- oh speaking of i never got to lie down completely flat, they had my bed locked at like a 30 degree angle minimum to help with... something. im not quite sure what, but im not gonna question it

- when i got up the next morning they had a couple nurses come in and help me un-bandage so i could shower and finally look at what the tiddies looked like for the first time!! and it was exciting but i didnt cry like i expected lmao i think i was too drained and too distracted by the bleeding

- the bleeding wasnt too bad actually, just little beads kinda coming out of parts of the incisions between the stitches. but once i got in the shower obviously stuff started getting diluted in the water and it looked like a lot more than there actually was, so dont be alarmed by that! 

- SHOWERING: its a little complicated. youre not supposed to soak the incisions, and youre not supposed to apply direct water pressure or actually touch them at this point. so what i had to do was get a washcloth wet and soapy (with antibacterial soap, i think it was hand soap honestly. hand soap’s what ive been using at home so........) and then just kinda. squeeze it at your collarbone and let it drip down over everything kinda minimally. its kind of a process but it works fine. washing your hair and like, tbh literally everything else is gonna be hard. reaching over your head is hard and scary at this point. i will admit my hair care Suffered the first week. 

- then i got bandaged back up and they got me back into my own clothes and ready to go home! they also put a bra on me over the bandages in my new size. i was only there for about 24 hours total, since i didnt really have any complications. 

- on the ride home i had to make sure the cross-chest part of the seat belt was NOT touching me. if whoevers driving you hits a pothole, your soul WILL exit your body tits-first for a moment. im sorry if you live somewhere like here in nebraska where the roads are garbage but its not gonna be fun.

ONCE YOU’RE HOME!!

- i live at home with my mom and sister and if you live alone, id try to have a friend basically move in for the first week. you will need Help with things. basic things. you’ll mostly want to sleep because of the pain meds but those made me pretty dizzy so it was cool having my mom around in case i like. fell on the way to the bathroom and died or anything like that.

- changing bandages is really kind of a 2-person affair too, and youll have to do it at least once a day post-shower, so keep that in mind. 

- the bleeding is like, not that bad after that first day honestly. i never had to change the bandages more than just the once per day. 

- basically from here the procedure is just to take it easy, get up every few hours and walk around a little to keep the blood clots at bay, and enjoy yr new silhouette basically

- worst thing about recovery honestly? im a stomach/side sleeper, and i cant manage anything other than laying flat on my back with my arms at my sides right now, and thats just like.... idk i really cant sleep like that. its not comfy. ive had to set up kind of a pillow fort around me to keep me from rolling over in my sleep bc im afraid i might hurt myself accidentally like that, but idk how well-founded that fear is.

- i will say as someone who did have back problems before this, the difference is IMMEDIATE. i literally had better posture like Day 1. im still a little hunched over because the stitches create a bit of tension in your chest, but like literally it was instantaneous. god. once i got healed to a point that i could like, kinda relax and not be so fucking tense all the time? back pain has basically just been GONE. 

- other fun things to notice: i had some pretty significant stretch marks before, and now they are running in a completely different direction. i crossed my arms over my chest the other day and they actually touched my torso for the first time in like, well over a decade. if i close my eyes and try to grab my tiddy from muscle memory, i stop like a full 3 inches from where my tit actually starts now. the size i am now, just like, freeballing it? this is how i looked when i wore a binder before. if i wore a binder now i imagine id be completely flat, and honestly if i layer up at this point you cant really tell that i have anything more than the average chubby dude’s moobs, which as a kinda chubby person is totally fine. 

its a trip relearning what i look like and what im supposed to feel like but its just. such a fucking improvement over where i was. absolutely no regrets, regardless of how hard recovery has felt at times. anyway i hope this information is at least interesting and maybe helpful to anybody considering anything similar!!

#words #top surgery #breast reduction #info post #again yall lemme know if you have questions abt anything i didnt cover here i tried to hit all my bases but u never know #teat yeet

[somnilogical]

davis tower kingsley (listed here on the cfar instructor page) who harassed a cis woman about her appearance another cis women reported this to acdc (the people who wrote the thing about how brent was great) and afaict they did nothing, claims that if trans people and gay people dont "repent and submit to the pope" they will burn in hell, defended the spanish inquisitions, wrote about how the mission system werent actually abductions, slavery, forced conversions and this was propaganda, defends pretty much any atrocity that an authority, "believes" the catholic god exists and does not try and destroy them, submits to them. and so much more.

born into another era they would actually work for the california mission system and say it was good.

said thing that cached out to that emma and somni should repent and submit to the rationalist community. wrote up a rant about "how about fuck you. go lick the boots of your dark mistress anna salamon." didnt send. got kicked by some rationalist, reasoning is probably that what id say would disrupt their peaceful machinations of omnicide, would be infohazards, because... the information is hazardous to their social order.

a few of these things are subjects of future blog posts.

--

cfar has never hired a trans woman, i have lots of logs of them trying to do what people did to porpentine. claiming emma thinks torturing children is hot, claiming emma was physically violent, claiming emma was indistinguishable from a rapist, claiming ziz was a "gross uncle style abuser", claiming somni was enticing people to rape, claiming that anna salamon was a small fragile woman and ziz was large and had muscles. as if any of our strength or speed had anything to do with our muscles in this place. all of these things are false except relative size difference between ziz and anna which is just transmisogynistic and irrelevant.

if they lie about are algorithms claim that we are using male-typical strategies and then they can fail by these lies and be sidelined by callout posts that transfered 350,000$ from miri despite their best efforts to cover this up. (all benefited by having relative political advantagr flowing from estrogenized brain modules. men are kind of npc's in this particular game of fem v fem cyberontological warfare for the fate of the multiverse, mostly making false patriarchal assumptions that ziz was doing things for social status. like status sensitivity is hormonally mediated, your experiences are not universal. or saying like kingsley is saying that people should repent and submit to whatever authorities in the rationalist region they submit to. NO. FUCK YOU. i will not repent and submit to your abusive dark mistress anna salamon.

i knew anna salamon was doing the edgy "transfems are all secretly male" thing before i talked with ziz. it was a thing, {zack, carrie}, ben hoffman, michael vassar were also in on it. ppl had men trapped in mens bodies on their bookshelves because the cool people were reading it. didnt think she was being *transmisogynistic* about it until i talked with ziz. in retrospect i was naive.)

also? anarchistic coordination ive had with people have been variously called lex's cluster, somni's cluster, ziz's cluster by authoritarians who cant imagine power structures between people that arent hierarchical. like based on who they want to say is "infohazardously corrupting people" emma goldman had to deal with this shit too where the cops tried to say she was friends with anyone who thought anarchism made sense. people she didnt know at all who did their own anarchism. because authoritarians dont think in terms of philosophy, they think any challenge to their power is a disease that needs to be eliminated and you just need to doxx their network.

like if ziz and somni and emma were all actually infohazardous rapists as people keep trying to claim we are and then saying "oh no i didnt mean it i swear" and then doing it again. what would happen isnt that a bunch of infohazardous rapists start talking and working together for a common goal. what actually happens with people of that neurotype is they partition up the territory into rival areas of feeding on people like gangs do.

like they dont get together and start talking a lot about decision theory and cooperate in strange new ways.

not that the people lying about emma, ziz, gwen, somni and others are trying to have accurate beliefs. they are trying what all athoritarians try with anarchist groups. unfortunately for them, ive read the meta, i know dread secrets of psychology and cooperation that they claim are like painful static and incomprehensible, yet despite being "incomprehensible" are almost certainly harmful. if harm is to be judged against upholding the current regime, and the current regime is evil, then lots of true information and good things will look harmful. like ive tested this out in different social spheres what people claim is "incomprehensible" is the stuff that destroys whatever regime they are working in. like someone said i sounded like i was crazy and homeless and couldnt understand me when i pointed out that reorienting your life, your time, your money, to a human who happens to be genetically related to you for 16 years is altruistic insanity. just do the math. eliezer, anna, michael, brian tomasik all once took heroic responsibility for the world at some point in their lives and could do a simple calculation and make the right choice. none of them have children.

pretending that peoples "desires" "control them", when "desires" are part of the boundary of the brain, part of the brains agency and are contingent on what you expect to get out of things. like before stabbing myself with a piece of metal would make me feel nauseated, id see black dots, and feel faint. but after i processed that stabbing myself would cure brain damage and make me more functional, all this disappeared.

most people who "want" to have children have this desire downstream of a belief that someone else will take heroic responsibility for the world, they dont need to optimize as much. there are other competent people. if they didnt they would feel differently and make different choices.

you can see the contingency of how people feel about something on what they get out of it lots of places. like:

<<Meanwhile, a Ngandu woman confessed, "after losing so many infants I lost courage to have sex.">>

but people lie about how motivation works, in order to protect the territory of saying "well i just need a steady input of nubile fems so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" or "i just need spend 16 years of life reorienting around humans who happen to be genetically related to me and my friends so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" when neither of these are true. these people just want nubile fems, they just want babies. (the second one has much much less negative externalities though. you could say i am using my female brain modules to say "yeah the archetypically female strat, though it has the same amount of lying, is less harmful". but like it actually is less directly harmful. the harm from gaslighting people downstream of diverting worldsaving resources and structure to secure a place to {hit on fems, raise babies} is ruinous. means that worldsaving plans that interfere with either of these are actively fought. and the knowledge that neither of these are altruistic optimizations, neither is Deeply Wise they are as dumb in terms of global optimization as they seem initially, is agentically buried.

this warps things in deep ways, that were a priori unexpected to me.)

this is obvious, but when i talk about it, the objection isnt that it doesnt make utilitarian sense, the objection is that "im talking like a crazy person". authoritarians say this to me too when i assert my right to my property that they took, act like im imposing on them. someone else asked if i could "act like a human" and do what he wanted me to do when i was thinking and talking with my friends. all of these things authoritarians have said to me "act like a human" "talk like a normal person i cant understand you" were to coerce my submission. they construct the category of "human" and then say im in violation of it and this is wrong and i should rectify it. i am talking perfectly good english right now. you can read this.

anna salamon, kelsey piper, elle, pete michaud, and many others all try to push various narratives of somni, emma, ziz, gwen and others being in the buckets {RAPIST, PSYCHO, BRAINWASHED}. im not a rapist, im not psychotic, im not brainwashed. before ziz came along, people were claiming i was brainwashing people, its a narrative they keep reusing.

porpentine talks about communities that do this, that try and pull trap doors beneath trans women:

<<For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.>>

https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/

(a mod of rationalist feminists deleted this almost immediately from the group as [[not being a good culture fit]], not being relevant to rationalism, and written in the [[wrong syntax]]. when its literally happening right now, they are trying to trapdoor transfems who protest and rebel asap. just like google.)

canmom on tumblr talks about the strategic use of "incomprehensibility" against transfems. and how its not about "comprehensibility". i have a different theory of this, but her thing is also a thing.

<<Likewise, @isoxys recently wrote an impressively thorough transmisogyny 101, synthesising the last several years of discussions about this facet of our particular hell world. But that post got just 186 notes, almost exclusively from the same trans women who are accused of writing ‘inaccessibly’.

Perhaps they’d say isoxys’s post is inaccessible too, but what would pass the bar? Some slick HTML5 presentation with cute illustrations? A wiki? Who’s got the energy and money to make and host something like that? Do the critics of ‘inaccessible’ posts take some time to think about what kind of alternative would be desirable, and how it could be organised?>>

https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/185908592767/accessibility-in-terms-of-not-using-difficult

alice maz talks about the psychology behind the kind of cop kelsey piper, david tower kingsley, elle and others are:

<<the role of the cop is to defend society against the members of society. police officers are trivially cops. firefighters and paramedics, despite similar aesthetic trappings, are emphatically not. bureaucrats and prosecutors are cops, as are the worst judges, though the best are not. schoolteachers and therapists are almost always cops; this is a great crime, as they present themselves to the young and the vulnerable as their friends, only to turn on them should they violate one of their profession's many taboos. soldiers and parents need not be cops, but the former may be used as such, and the latter seem frighteningly eager to enlist. the cop is the enemy of passion and the enemy of freedom, never forget this>>

https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/alien.html

anna salamon wrote a thing implying that ziz, somni, gwen suffered some sort of vague mental issues from going to aisfp. (writing a post on this.) alyssa vance tried to suggest i believe cfar is evil because im homeless. but sarah constantin, ben hoffman, {carrie, zack}, jessica taylor (the last three who have blogged a lot about whats deeply wrong) (not listing others because not wanting to doxx a network to authoritarians, who just want to see it contained. and the disease of "infohazards" eradicated.) are not homeless and ive talked with many of them and read blog posts. and they know that cfar is fake. jessica (former miri employee) left because miri was fake.

anna and others are trying to claim that theres some person responsible for a [[mass psychotic break]] that causes people to... independently update in the same direction. and have variously blamed it on ziz, somni, michael vassar. but like mass psychotic breaks arent...really a thing, would not be able to independently derive something, plan on writing a blogpost on it, and then see ben hoffman had written http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/engineer-diplomat/ and i was like "ah good then i dont have to write this." and have this happen with several different people.

like this is more a mass epistemic update that miri / cfar / ssc / lw are complicit in the destruction of the world. and will defend injustice and gaslight people and lie about the mathematical properties of categories to protect this.

they all know exactly what they are doing, complicity with openai and deepmind in hopes of taking the steering wheel away at the last second. excluding non-human life and dead humans from the CEV to optimize some political process, writing in an absolute injunction to an fai against some outcome to protect from blackmail when that makes it more vulnerable.(see:

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html

hyperexistential separation: if an fai cant think of hell, an fai cant send the universe to hell in any timeline. this results in lower net utility. if you put an absolute injunction against any action for being too terrible you cant do things like what chelsea manning did and i believe actually committed to hungerstriking until death in the worlds where the government didnt relent, choosing to die in those timelines. such that most of her measure ended up in a world where the government read this commitment in her and so relented.

if chelsea manning had an absolute injunction against ever dying in any particular timeline, she would get lower expected utility across the multiverse. similarly, in newcombs problem if you had an absolute injunction against walking away with 0$ in any timeline because that would be too horrible, you get less money in expectation. for any absolute injunction against things that are Too Horrible you can construct something like this.

--

a lot of humans seem to be betting on "nothing too horrible can happen to anyone" in hopes that it pays off in nothing too horrible happening to you.

the end result of not enacting ideal justice is the deaths of billions. at each timestamp saying "its too late to do it now, but maybe it would have been good sometime in the past". with the same motive that miri wants to exclude dead people from the cev, they arent part of the "current political process". so you can talk about them as if they were not moral patients, just like they treat their fellow animals.

(ben hoffman talks about different attitudes towards ideal justice coming upon the face of the earth.)

--

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

cev:

<<But again, we fall back on the third reply: "The people who are still alive" is a simple Schelling circle to draw that includes everyone in the current political process. To the extent it would be nice or fair to extrapolate Leo Szilard and include him, we can do that if a supermajority of EVs decide* that this would be nice or just. To the extent we don't bake this decision into the model, Leo Szilard won't rise from the grave and rebuke us. This seems like reason enough to regard "The people who are still alive" as a simple and obvious extrapolation base.>>

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

this is an argument from might makes right. because dead people and nonhuman animals cant fight back.

->"i think we should give planning of the town to the white people, then extrapolate their volition and if they think doing nice things for black people is a good idea, we'll do it! no need to bake them in to the town planning meetings, as they are arent part of the current political process and no one here will speak up for them."

i dont plan to exclude dead people or any sentient creatures from being baked in to fai. they are not wards of someone else. enslaving and killing fellow sentient life will not continue after the singularity even if lots of humans want it and dont care and wont care even after lots of arguments.) and so much else.

the list of all specific grievances would take a declaration of independence.

like with googles complicity with ICE having a culture of trapdooring transfems (for some reason almost the only coherent group that has the moral fiber to oppose these injustices, that is p(transfem|oppose injustice in a substantiative way) is high, not necc the reverse.) who question this sort of thing.

thinking of giving sarah constantin a medal thats engraved with "RIGHTEOUS AMONG CIS PEOPLE: I HAD SEVERAL SUBSTANTIAL DISAGREEMENTS WITH HER ABOUT LOAD BEARING PARTS OF HER LIFE AND SHE NEVER ONCE TRIED TO CALL ME A RAPIST, PSYCHOTIC, OR BRAINWASHED" thats where the bar is at, its embedded in the core of the earth.

kelsey piper, elle benjamin, anna salamon, pete michaud, and lots more have entirely failed to clear this bar. anna and kelsey saying they dont understand stuff somni, emma, ziz and other transfems talk about but its probably dangerous and infohazardous and its not to be engaged with philosophically. just like the shelter people acting as if my talking about their transmisogyny was confusing and irrational to be minimized and not engaged with. just like any authoritarian where when you start talking about your rights and what is right and wrong and what makes sense they are like "i dont understand this. you are speaking gibberish why are you being so difficult? all we need you to do is submit or leave."

and no i will NOT SHUT UP about this injustice. all miri/cfar people can do at this point is say "the things these people write are infohazards" then continue to gaslight others they cant engage on a philosophical level. all the can say is that what i am saying is meaningless static and yet also somehow dangerous.

::

it doesnt make sense to have and raise babies if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. doesnt make sense to need a constant supply of fems to have sex with if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. people who claim either of these pairs of things are lying, maybe expect someone else to take heroic responsibility for the world or exist in a haze.

the mathematics of categories and anticipations dont allow for the thing you already have inside you to be modified based on the expected smiles it gives your community. this is used to gaslight people like "calling this lying would be bad for the institutions, not optimize ev. thus by this blogpost you are doing categories wrong' this is a mechanism to cover dishonesty for myopic gains.

using the above, a bunch of people colluding with the baby industrial complex get together and say that the "beat" meaning of altruism includes having babies (but maybe not having sex with lots of fems? depending on which gendered strategy gets the most people in the colluding faction) because other meanings would make people sad and unmotivated. burying world optimizers ability to talk about and coordinate around actual altruism.

openAI and deepmind are not alignment orgs. cfar knows this and claims they are, gaslighting their donors, in hopes of taking the steering wheel at the last moment.

alyssa vance says paying out to blackmail is fine, its not.

CFAR manipulated donation metrics to hide low donations.

MIRI lied about its top 8 most probable hypotheses for why its down 350,000$ this year.

anna salamon is transmisogynistic, this is why cfar has never hired a trans women despite trans women being extremely good at mental tech. instead the hire people like davis kingsley.

kingsley lied about anna not being involved at hiring in cfar in order to claim anna couldnt be responsible for cfar never hiring a trans woman.

a cfar employee claimed anna salamon hired their rapist, was angry about it. mentioned incidentally how anna salamon, president and cofounder of cfar, was involved in hiring at cfar.

acdc wrote a big thing where defended a region of injustice (brent dill) because of their policy of modular ethics. when really, if you defend injustice at any point, you have to defend the defense and the thing iteratively spreads across your organization like a virus.

miri / cfar caved to louie helm.

not doing morality or decision theory right. among which is: https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html and https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

and so much more.

[therewas-a-girl]

Shipwrecks, Of the Wretched, de profundis ALL OF THE QUESTIONS

the 

you think i will be intimidated by this BUT CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!! *cracks knuckles*

Shipwrecks

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

this fic is written mostly traditionally tbh - its cronologically told, in third person and mostly from one pov which is (and will be) feclicity. however, i have changed my mind about a lot of things since i started the fic - for one, i want to incorporate the whole ‘unreliable narrator’ thing a lot more. i want to use flashbacks more carefully: playing with timelines in how cetain present time events triger past moemories that illuminate the REASON behind present time choices. things like that. 

the real inspiration for the fic itself was another fic i read -  I've Never Truly Loved (Until You Put Your Arms Around Me) by theirhappystory. And the fact that i read that fic ... while i was on a boat... while there was a storm. a small one BUT STILL. 

2: What scene did you first put down?

Whatever Walks Here, Walks Alone - aka oliver looking at felicity in the lair. by itself this scene could fit anywhere from the begining of season 1, to anywhere in season 2. i didnt really write it with a timeline in mind. it was mroe like me pondering the characters. 

3: What's your favorite line of narration?

i had a LOT of fun - unexpected fun - writing Diggle’s pov in teh whole situation. you see, when i started the story the first thing i wanted to figure out was where do i want the characters to end up in relation to each other - so that i could start the story with them being in the diametrically opposite  spot! but then i realized that i also want contrast within the trio - and where oliver and felicity move towards each other at a glacial pace, john and felicty have a much more easy time understanding where the other stands. like... they vibe. and it had a lot o fun planing out that vibe - and all teh ways it pisses off oliver, in the begining. 

4: What's your favorite line of dialogue?

To answer this i would have to go back and re-read a lot of what i wrote and plan to write, but there is a line that STAYS with me and its one felicity says. 

so - in the show, the trio do eventually find out that the Gambit was sabotaged and did not just sink. Now - in Shipwrecks - this would have  a major devastating effect on felicity, who was in the gambit with oliver and sara. And she is the one that has the hunch that moira was involved (i think this happens in canon too?) - and she pushes oliver about it. Bc ofc she thinks of moira as just another person. Worse even - a person who hurt her. At this point she is MANIC about it and it freaks oliver out. Like, take the natural defensiveness he has against the idea and add a fear that felicity might genuinely kill his mother, and you get him being very agressively AGAINST felicity following moira anywhere. and when felicity understands that oliver has no intention of pursuing a what she sees as a genuine lead about the event that practically ruined them as people, she just, shuts down, makes a disgusted face, thinks of all the ritch fuckers she’s known and framed and used and how they close ranks when their reputation or personal interest is touched and just, blurts it out.  

 ‘you fucking people.’ 

5: What part was hardest to write?

all of it lmao. like WRITING IT. 

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

The fact that i planned it out and it has like, different installments and a whole journey, which is one of losing oneself, understanding that ones self has been lost, seeing vengence for that loss (aka giving in/facing the anger it causes), seeking freedom, going against ones impulses to build better ones, building relationships, mantaining them, finding ones self through small acts of kindness towards ones self, rebuilding ones personality

basically i wrote a journey about getting out of depression and grief, before i realized that THAT was what i was actually writing about. 

7: Where did the title come from?

The title of the series is pretty straightforward: they were shipwrecked and now theyre coming back. 'above the vaulted sky’ is a line from a I am, by John Claire.  

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;My friends forsake me like a memory lost:I am the self-consumer of my woes—They rise and vanish in oblivious host,Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throesAnd yet I am, and live—like vapours tossedInto the nothingness of scorn and noise,Into the living sea of waking dreams,Where there is neither sense of life or joys,But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;Even the dearest that I loved the bestAre strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.I long for scenes where man hath never trodA place where woman never smiled or weptThere to abide with my Creator, God,And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,Untroubling and untroubled where I lieThe grass below—above the vaulted sky.

It’s a rather sad one actually, but i read it as a poem about hope. About the dream of hope, anyway. And this need to be away - from what is known because at this point what is known is horrible and the only happiness the imagination can come up with, is to be as far from it as possible and alone. and that is very much where felicity starts out with. With her hope not being about peace, but an isolation in stillness because that is the only good place she can imagine. 

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

It did. I’ve been depressed and strugling with horrendous issues of self worth and anxiety since i was about 14. And i never knew. It literally took me turning 28 to realize what the fuck was wrong. And its depressing (lol) because its just so much fucking time that i wasted, you know. And i remember - like, when i was deep in my depression - i used to think all the time ‘I must have been a real life person once. Like, an actual person, with a personality, and likes and dislikes and feelings - but i dont remember her. I dont know who that girl even is, i woudlnt regognise her at all.’ It felt like some part of me had died. Like there was literal murder involved. Cause so little of me survived. 

but it turns out, i have been this way - just less intensely (and in some cases a lot MORE intensely) since i hit puberty. i didnt die - i just got worse and did not deal with it at all.  

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

not really. not yet, anyway. 

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

im actually not sure that i do want oliver-felicity for this sotry. the dynamic between felicity and tommy is also very veyr interesting. and i dont really know where i will take them. especially in the first and second story, their connection is intense. but this is also part of teh slowburn - oliver and felicity, however it happens, its gonna be slow. 

11: What do you like best about this fic?

how personal it is to me, and my experience. and the fact that, if i write it well, i might actually be sayin something. 

12: What do you like least about this fic?

THE FACT THAT I HAVENT WRITTEN IT YET T_T

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn't listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

PHEW I have whole playlists i built as i was ordering this whole series. with songs that fit the mood, the direction of the storytelling and all. 

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

I genuinely want people to see this as a story about healing.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

i havent written all of it yet - but i did learn something very interesting about myself. that i have been putting my trauma into narratives to deal with it looong since i knew that was a thing, or i was even aware that i was doing it. 

and on that depressing note, i will end this post and start a new one for the other stories lmao 

#personal #shipwrecks tag #deathandindignitybedamned

[peckhampeculiar]

Twerking nine to five

PECKHAM’S KELECHNEKOFF STUDIO OFFERS FITNESS CLASSES RANGING FROM POLE-DANCING TO TWERKING TO YOGA. We meet its inspirational founder – the personal trainer, actress and Peckham resident Kelechi Okafor

WORDS JUMOKÉ FASHOLA PHOTO DILESH SOLANKI

I don’t think you could find anyone prouder to be a south Londoner than Kelechi Okafor. Born in Nigeria, she arrived to join her mother in Peckham at the age of five and the area has been her home ever since.

Describing herself as a ride or die Peckhamite, she not only lives locally, but has also established her Kelechnekoff fitness studio here.

Kelechi is a fierce, fun and fabulous woman, with boundless energy, who sees her remit as one of reclaiming the narrative about what it means to be a strong black female in the age of social media.

Her studio, based in the Sojourner Truth Centre on Sumner Road, offers everything from yoga to pole-dancing to twerking. Why twerking?

“One of the things I wanted from having a space like this,” she says, “is to allow women across the board to be tender and engage fully with their bodies.

“Because society has hyper-sexualised the female body so much, and the black female body specifically, there are women who just want to be as far away from that narrative as possible, not understanding that our power lies in the sexuality and sensuality of being a woman. That’s what I want us to take back.”

As an actor, director and personal trainer who specialises in twerk and pole-dance fitness, it’s been a challenging road to get to where she is today – from the homelessness she experienced as a teenager to supporting her mother and brothers, to depression, therapy, having to integrate into a new family when she first arrived in the UK, childhood sexual abuse and a lot more.

She has survived and is very open about her personal journey to date, particularly on social media. No topic is off limits – black issues, police brutality, mental health, her own recent miscarriage.

She has amassed a following of almost 35,000 people on Twitter, with a further 12,400 followers on Instagram. Where did her fascination with social media start?

“It was probably around 2013, when the shift started happening and I just felt that we had something here that allowed us to communicate with everybody, worldwide,” she says.

“I’ve always been a writer, and when Twitter came along I just took to it, because I thought, ‘This is a space where I can say what I’m thinking and I can put it out there as a form of microblogging.’

��I joined it when hardly anyone else was on there and I remember when the influx of celebrities started joining us. I thought, ‘There goes the neighbourhood, they are going to ruin everything!” she laughs.

“But it has changed and I’ve changed with it, as I saw how it allowed us to have our own voice separate from the narrative that we were getting from the media.

“I feel that this is where the power is. It’s an opportunity for me, Kelechi, to give you an alternative narrative to what you’d normally get from the mainstream.”

But in being so outspoken across her social media platforms, has there been a cost? “Yes, there has been, but I think that for anything that matters to you, there is always a sacrifice,” she says.

“Occasionally I will go online and there will be someone calling me a black b**** or a black this. Sometimes I save the tweets. Perhaps one day I’ll take it to court and then they’ll have to show up and explain that email or tweet they sent. But it hasn’t really got there.

“I did have horse manure sent to me in the first small studio I opened in Clapton, though,” she remembers ruefully.

“I had been speaking that weekend about the appropriation of black culture by mainstream pop artists.

“I was pointing out that when it’s ‘appropriation’, there’s always someone with more power who benefits from it financially. If it was ‘appreciation’, the person who has less of the power should be benefiting from it but they’re not.

“I was explaining that and someone got extremely upset with something I said, because soon after, I got horse manure posted to me anonymously.

“Although,” she laughs, “it didn’t even offend me because it was so well packaged and 100 per cent organic.”

What was the response to that experience from her social media followers?

“I have a lot of black female followers who care about my safety and care about my wellbeing. So, someone wrote an article for BuzzFeed about it, which basically helped promote my studio.

“Many people, men and women, sent me flowers and books of poetry including one by Maya Angelou. I just received so much love.”

Whatever the challenges she has faced in life, keeping fit has always been her way of working through issues.

“I’ve always been active and into sports”, she says. “Growing up, I played football and netball. It was stuff I didn’t have to try hard at, it was just a skill that I had.

“I had wanted to be head girl at school but my teacher thought I was too boisterous for that, so she said I could be sports captain instead.”

Her love of sport comes not just from her innate ability, but also from the discipline that it requires.

“When I was in secondary school I joined the air cadets. All I’ve ever yearned for, after not seeing it in the family home, is discipline. I like routine and structure.

“I think we were in year eight when we had a talk from the air cadets. And I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s it, I’m becoming an air cadet.’”

True to form she worked hard at it and for her, “the psychological part of the training gave me a break from being the one who did everything at home and having to be in control of everyone. I wanted and needed that break.”

Alongside fitness, her other passion is acting. It was a choice of career that her mother was dead set against.

“I can understand why,” she muses. “If you’re losing your home and don’t have a regular job, what you want for your children is a steady job. You want to know that they will never suffer or want for anything. Mum was like, ‘Just be a lawyer, you are such a great orator’.”

As a compromise, Kelechi found a course that would allow her to study both drama and law at Liverpool Hope University.

“I’d never been to Liverpool before,” she says, “but that’s the only place which was offering that degree.”

Coming back to London, she started working at a call centre and found it soul destroying.

“I remember going through London Bridge one day and just thinking, ‘There has to be something I can do where I’m not at the mercy of this corporation’. And I just thought, ‘I’ll become a personal trainer’. Fitness was the thing I loved most after acting.

“I saved up my money from my job, paid for a distance learning course and then I did lots of work experience in different gyms.”

Her business took off straightaway, courtesy of her followers on social media.

“When I did qualify, there were already women on Twitter and Instagram who were like, ‘Just come and train me’.

“So I went into that and that’s when I started to see the kind of freedom and flexibility that I could have access to without being at the mercy of big corporations.”

Her personal background means that she has a real desire to see women embrace who they truly are, not just physically but also emotionally and spiritually.

“What I really want for women to understand, especially when it comes to our bodies, is that we only have this one body,” she says.

“When I start training people, I want them to understand that there’s nothing I can do that’s going to make them more beautiful.

“I can get you slimmer if that’s what you really want. I can get you more toned, but none of these things are actually going to make you more beautiful, because it’s not really based on what you look like.

“[It’s about] getting my clients to understand that to me, personal training is 80 per cent psychological and emotional, and 20 per cent physical.

“You didn’t come to me because you care about your fitness, not really. There’s something else that’s happening there. What is that thing?

“If we talk about that ‘thing’, then the fitness doesn’t feel so bad. I’ve had women and men break down into tears when we’ve been having a session because I will say things like, ‘I just feel today that you’re holding a lot in’.

“I can feel it and then they let that out. And that’s what they needed. Then they feel safer because they know that I will spot it if they’re holding a lot that day and we taper the session to create space for them.”

She’s irritated by men who try to dominate in gyms. “I’ve had it myself when I’ll be training at the gym and a guy who clearly knows nothing about fitness comes up to me, just because I’m a woman, and says, ‘So when you’re doing this you really want to do it like this.’

“Wait, you’re telling me, the actual professional, how to do it?! And then they often have the temerity to say, ‘Don’t grow too much muscle though, because you don’t want to look like a man.’”

She dislikes the way Christmas and the new year are promoted to us commercially.

“It’s interesting to me how around Christmas time, the focus in adverts is on massive turkeys, chocolates etcetera, pushing a form of gluttony on us.

“Then as soon as January hits, it’s ‘You, disgusting fatty, get to the gym, get fit’, and I just think that we have to pull ourselves out of that. We are being sold one thing while being beaten with another. What does that do to your self esteem? We never know where we stand because companies were just telling us five minutes ago to eat all of the food!”

What’s on offer at her own gym is a way, according to her, of connecting women to the “divine feminine” through dance.

“With the twerking classes at the studio I wanted to celebrate my African-ness while still paying homage to the ways in which it has changed and how it’s now become linked with hip hop culture,” she says.

Also available at the Kelechnekoff studio are very popular classes in pole-dancing and also yoga, which she is particularly keen to make accessible to all, especially those on lower incomes.

She hopes in 2019 to include a few more aerial disciplines, such as aerial hoops and also Wing Chun defence classes. Primarily though, whether it’s a twerk hen party or a pole-dancing class, her dream is that the studio continues to be a fun place that celebrates all women.

On a personal level as we approach the new year, she’s living by her own mantra: “Don’t stop striving for that thing that makes your heart warm. You deserve it. You can achieve it.”

[acefaerie]

I think its really understandable that a lot of younger people sort of assuming that somehow not having an attraction to others is seen as a virtue especially by religious groups. 

When i was a teen my lack of interest in relationships was seen by the adults in my life that “oh she is just shy” “she’s been a good girl and focusing on school work” and tbh that was the narrative i told myself.  

except, looking back there was an underlying concern from adults that I was “missing out” on the Ideal Teen Romance TM. I got hints of it when ever I made a new male friend. “Oh he looks like he might be your type.” followed by a hopeful smile. after a while i got the “Its okay if you like girls” because i think by this time my parents had realised “she’s really not that interested in boys is she”.

but these instances were mild, my parents, specifically my mother who is “liberal” mind you, and had many close female friends who were lesbian and bi, kept out of my way. I was doing well at school, i was a “good girl”. So for me i think i get why some young people don’t understand the pressure for people to pair up because when you are in highschool if there is pressure its from peers and generally parents consider you to be “just a late bloomer”. But this is my experience, which was.. 15 years ago, and the world has changed quickly and drastically it may be different for others. It may also be that i am privileged in coming grom a generally accepting family, that is not religious, that would have accepted without question any girls I brought home (in fact i was asked if i wanted to).

My peer group generally either made jokes about my lack of interest or assumed i was gay. the general knowledge around school was i was gay, even my guy friends who never asked me also just.. assumed that was the case. I was lucky in the sense that like my mother most of my friends were either bi themselves and therefore didn’t care or pretty liberal minded. so i was cushioned... except for this one girl Tanya. She was homophobic and hated me because of it, i know this because i overheard her complaining about me one time and it generally was about how she had interpreted any causual friendly touch i had with my other friends as “creepy and weird”. I was forced to spend time with her because one of my “best” friends  was really good friends with her (who we have another story about but its only slightly related to this) and wanted us to hang out all the time. 

Tanya made my last year of highschool hell. She poisoned friends against me, and created a sort of social outcasting that left me without a support group. I was unlucky that a lot of my out bi friends who accepted me dropped out the previous year for various reasons. So i was left with the only people who sort of hung out with me being the largely straight (or closeted best friend who when she did start dating a girl, did so in secretl) acquaintances of those friends, who were easily convinced by Tanya to drop me from the group.

but here is the thing. I never called myself gay, (a am a pan/bi ace yes but at the time the only thing i ever said or did was say “Im not really interested in boys” because I really didnt know what i was) just not being interested  was enough for Tanya. 

besides  my awful experience with Tanya I get why teens think “not being interested” puts a pretty light target on your back. even if my parents were disappointed i didnt experience the “ideal teen romance TM” it wasnt a huge concern. The bullying a recieved from Tanya is also ambigious because she was exactly the kind of bigot who was bigoted against everyone who was different she was basically the epotime of what prejudice people talk about when they talk about the “prejudice tree” where a bigotted person who is biggeted against one thing is bigotted against most things that are different from them.

What was my point. Oh, yes. in highschool the main negative reactions i got were from people sharing frustration and disappointment about me dating (though the “late bloomer” thought pretty much silenced this crowd) and the more aggressive lot who were homophobic and i fit enough of the criteria for them to consider me a target.

The first negative thing, the frustration and disapointment, as an ace i think that has become more impactful the older I have got. The pressure started to hit hard in my twentie. “Something is wrong with you” reactions from people grew the more i became “clearly an adult” Friends who were fine in highschool suddenly treated me like i was a kid who didn’t know anything about anything because “i hadn’t had a relationship or sex what do i know about being an adult”. My parents, though well meaning became more and more worried abut what was wrong with me.

Omg the relief they felt when i had a relationship that lasted two weeks (where i cried the whole time and barely even kissed the person).

relationships and sex are treated by our society as a right of passage for becoming an adult. So its fine to be a late bloomer, but thats what these people think you are “a late bloomer” not fully complete yet, still growing.

my mother who was so supportive in my teens and early twenties started letting her anxiety about me leak through when i spent most of my 20s not even “just single” but actively not looking I think she even once told me she just wanted me to have the experience of a real relationship, after i had one that was online (which was like having one without having to touch a person which i enjoyed, until he came over and there was touching and i didn’t enjoy it as much anymore because both I and he forced me into sexual situations i was not ready for but had been convinced by everyone i knew that that is what you did if you were in a relationship) after him i felt physically ill if i knew a person found me attractive so actively avoided being “too sexy” so people wouldnt.

the first healthy relationship slightly romantic relationship i had was a Queer platonic one, with a woman. Everyone knew we were in love, even my professors. but it remained platonic and honestly helped free me from all the toxic stuff that happened before. Im still incredably close to her. 

at this time though I was in my mid to late thirties, and my families comments had become less “you are too picky” to “Im worried you will never find someone” “you are nearly 30″ “what if you want kids you can’t leave it too late”. 

its all small stuff but it mounts up. its mirco-aggressions that become deafening. Im childish because i don;t like sex i need to grow up, im weird im wrong im mistaken im making my parents sad, why can’t i be who they want me to be, my mother crying because she just wants me to have a special person but never understanding that my QPR WAS my special person because to her that was just a friend, people saying i don’t know what i want, people saying im a loser cos they never see me dating, people telling me they ” think being single is a sign of failure” people telling me that when they call me a prude its an insult and im weird if i dont feel bad for being a prude, people telling me i should be interested, “don’t you find him attractive”, “sex is amazing what do you mean you dont like it”,” i think you are just scared of love”, “you must be a closet lesbian”, “your just a straight faking for attention.” “why are you trying to date normal people isnt there a website for people like you?” “its not our fault there arent many of you”, “your a bad girlfriend if you don’t like kissing he/she will be hurt if you wipe the saliva away or if you say you arent attracted to them”, “you don’t understand what love is” “you are confused” “you are sick, see a doctor”, “you’re abusive,” “ you don;t know what you are talking about”, “your sick, is it a hormone deficiency” “HAH you don’t like sex just get married then you wont get any”, “how can you not feel attracted then,” your abusive if you have sex but not sexually attracted”, “you’re abusive if you dont have sex cos you are with-holding from the other person”, “it's okay if you dont want sex for now know but thats just how relationships progress”, “Why don't you like him he likes you, “” Im worried you are going to be alone for ever” 

The pressure of it used to keep me up at night where i felt i was FAILING everyone i knew because i just couldn't bring myself to feel that way about another person. I became deeply depressed. It was the main reason i considered suicide.

when i finally did enter a relationship again after two years of EVERYONE pushing for it. that pressure stopped in so far as people stopped pressuring me to be with him, but now i feel like i have to pretend to be normal so people will leave me alone, and i feel like part of me is lying to myself.

I worry about falling back into unhealthy patterns where i play the role of girlfriend just so i can stop people from knowing im weird. The only saving grace is this time my partner and I know im asexual. He doesn’t quite understand it but he respects my boundaries. still part of me feels like this relationship is a compromise. he doesn't get it completely even though he tries.  he treats me well and i love him,  Its just getting to this point my twenties were years of me ripping up my insides because of all the things society was saying to me. I felt trapped between the fear of being alone and the fear of having to force myself into a relationship again. 

So i get why young people dont get what negativity you can face for being aro/ace but thats because the virtue of being disinterested is only a virtue if its temporary. and even then don’t underestimate the power of bigots to sniff out a difference to target you for.

#suicide mention #personal #abuse #homophobia #aphobia