#they exist and are so valid and still have feelings & are able to show compassion and be good people

[allthegothihopgirls]

Hc that Jason really resonated with Frankenstein’s monster after he came back from the dead and his terrorization of Bruce is, in part, inspired by the monsters terrorization of Victor

ok i'm gonna preface this by saying what the fuck anon (/pos). i've been talking about this concept since it popped into my inbox i'm actually OBSESSED.

clawing at the insides of my enclosure foaming at the mouth etc etc

anyways, 1000% YES. the whole thing of jason being put back together not only at the hands of another, but also in a way which is so so unfamiliar to the him he knew before death, soooo extremely frankenstein's monster-coded.

both brought to life by impossible circumstances, and neither feel as though they own their autonomy. searching for some kind of redemption, needing to feel complete or avenged.

both having a sense of justice, shunned by society, one which doesn't earn them praise but instead punishment and disgust. both resenting the decisions of their creators/mentors. torn between worlds, neither of which they feel accepted in. oh my GOD.

i'm a huge fan of the whole idea of jason coming back and feeling displaced and in an entirely foreign body, and that's just oh so frankenstein's monster..

like IMAGINE that being his frame of reference for his feelings. put together what feels like piece by piece, messily, with only second-hand scraps. all with no regard for the person he was before, only with the intentions of being 'repurposed'.. AHHHHH

(as well as the fact that it's ALL mental for jason, he comes back 'perfect', unscathed and replenished. he has no physical justification for feeling the way he does, second-hand and hand-sewn. his feeling of 'monstrosity' stems from elsewhere; the feeling he gets walking around in this body which is simply not his, or the look in bruce's eyes when he sees him again for the first time, seeing a monster not a son.)

also the conscious knowing that his make-up is no longer his own, he's composed of parts which are unrecognisable to his old body, the one he owned and hand-carved through age. having to walk through days, feeling his actions as his own, but having a body which warps the intent behind them to all onlookers.

god imagine, blaming your creator for your fate, and needing the answers of your inadequacy to come from him himself.. and no other source can explain your imperfection in a way you can accept, it has to be him. jason NEEDS bruce's validation, to confirm or deny that he is irredeemable and a lost cause.

as much as i don't think jason would take pride in relating so much to frankenstein's monster, it's definitely a lingering thought in the back of his mind, something that determines his own story and outcomes.

he thinks of him when he loses control, and knows that he can't use it to justify the way he acted. he cannot tell the monster that his actions were okay, and that the people just did not understand, although as much as he wants to.. because he knows that isn't the case. he knows the monster was always a monster, and grows to feel the same way about himself.

he resents the way he acts, because all he sees is the monster. the one who acts according to his moral compass, but is always wrong. always clouded by his monstrosity. he decides he really should never trust himself or his intuition, because it's always disgusting and ugly, and even he'll be able to look back in retrospect and be repulsed by the way he carried himself, and not hate the way everyone punished him for it.

he wants so desperately to get himself back, morph back into the boy who knew his rights and wrongs and was never looked at funnily for acting how any normal person would. but the only part of his past self that still exists is in his mind, he wants to rip it out and show people that it's still him inside of there, but he simply can't do that.

his body changed without his permission, he never asked to be an abomination, a scientifical anomaly. he wants to scream about how it's not his fault, how he's not what the world paints him to be. how he can just be normal. but he's never really going to feel that way, as long as his mind and body remain two separate entities at war.

i feel like he clings onto the humanity of frankenstein's monster, and uses him as an anchor, something that shows him it's possible to remain acceptable and human.

i also think he analyses the character oh so deeply, to try and latch onto all the relatability he can find, the things he doesn't get from real people.

maybe he has a copy of the book, annotated in such a personal way. perhaps someone else stumbles upon it, and is just so distraught by the conclusions drawn from the scribbles and highlights, the way jason seems to view himself.

the way that although jason's always seen himself like the monster, unloveable and unacceptable, everyone else was always ready to accept him.

that maybe the real downfall of jason and frankenstein's monster is that the way they viewed themselves was too focused on the displacement they felt, assuming automatically that everyone else must feel the same way about them, if not worse. not taking the moment to let people learn to love them all over again.

anyways, unreliable narrators post resurrection!jason todd and frankenstein's monster, who were always seen with at least an ounce of humanity, but were both overridden by self-hatred and the disgust of their form, which led them to total exile and isolation.

#anon you have a brilliant mind #im gonna be honest not sure how much sense im talking in this one #i didn't really touch on the inspo for terrorization of bruce thing explicitly. but i think that's implied??? #like he acts with frankenstein in mind. he succumbs somewhat to the actions of his and feels them set in stone #just because he feels doomed the same way the monster was #asks #anon #!!!!!!!!!! #jason todd #red hood #under the red hood #robin #character analysis #? #batboys #dc batman #dc comics #headcanon #dcu #dc #frankenstein #gothihop speaks

[thecameronchronicles]

By Your Side

TW: anxiety attacks.

SUMMARY: Attending your first event with Drew, your anxieties get the best of you. Luckily, you have him at your side.

WORD COUNT: 1000

*Requested*

By Your Side

“You look so beautiful, as always, sweetheart.” He spoke as he kissed your temple while pulling you to face him. But once noticing the shifting of your eyes, he would rub his hands over your arms as if trying to warm you, before leaving you still in such a way so he could observe you. That teasing smile from his lips having faded in noticing how truly mortified you looked as your thoughts were getting the best of you. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I just…I don’t feel like I…” You bowed your head as he quickly carried his hands to your cheeks. 

“You are always the most beautiful in every room. But if it makes you feel better, we don't’ have to go-”

“Drew! It’s your movie!”

“And you mean more. You always do. And I don’t want you to be uncomfortable or anything.”

“No! You have to-”

“Well I’m not going without you.” He teased, stating his ground as he extended his hand in wait. “I mean how the hell am I even supposed to focus on anything when they’re all going to be looking at you anyway?” You blushed, his words having silenced your anxieties for the time being, as you slipped into the car. 

“If it becomes too much, just squeeze my hand, okay? I know it can all be kind of intimidating…But I’ll just squeeze it right back…Maybe we can learn morse code or something, that’d be kinda cool, huh? Having secret little conversations…” He chuckled, making you share the moment of humor before the car approached the red carpet and you took a deep breath. 

The thing was you couldn’t be any more proud of him for his accolades. Of course, you didn't think we received enough praise for his talents, but it also meant you were able to appreciate him more by yourself. It was why you hated feeling you took him down in any capacity, but with each dent to your esteem came his quick rescue, as always…

But as your body began to relax with his affirming hands wrapped within your own, you became too overwhelmed too quickly. You compared yourself to everyone in attendance, questioned how you would look in photographs as you didn’t want to embarrass him, and found that annoyingly familiar pressure in your chest having returned in that damned anxiety. 

As he parted from you in order to do an interview, you had never felt more isolated. A thousand pairs of eyes seemed to remain on you with vulturous intent as you felt both in the way and out of existence completely. It was enough to send you away from the carpet as he would be quick behind you. 

“Baby?”

“Drew! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…I just…” He took you into his chest. 

“Baby, it’s okay…Look at me…” But when you did, tears in your eyes, he cocked his head in compassion. 

“I hate seeing you go through this…I just wish I could…I wish I could show you how I see you through my eyes…And I wish I could take all of this from you…”

“I ruined it! I…I embarrassed you and now you ran out following me and…” His hands tightened on your cheeks, brushing away tears with his thumbs. 

“You make everything better, you don’t ruin anything. I shouldn’t have left your side, okay? Not on your first carpet…So how about this…” He pulled you back into him, dragging the final tears away from your cheeks, before pressing a soft kiss to your nose. 

“I won’t let go of your hand. Not even if you beg me…not even if you have to pee…Not even if it gets sweaty from getting too scared from the movie…” He teased as you chuckled and nodded. 

“Deal.”

“Good. Now let me go show you off a bit more.” You smiled, the way his words held this effect on you having validated your love for him. 

And yet as the movie would get a standing ovation for its creativity and production of thespian talent, you found yourself consumed by your thoughts once again as you sat around the table in celebration of the movie’s coming release. But it wasn’t necessarily your thoughts alone that caused this as Drew hadn’t spoken a word to you since you’d left the carpet. Of course, your mind began to flash to every possible scenario as you became worried that you had just ruined his entire night. 

When you finally got home, you sat on the edge of your bed, pulling off your heels and moving into the bathroom as he was quick to join you. 

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“I know you’re gonna say it’s fine, but it’s not. I wanted to support you tonight and all I did was make it about me and my inability to handle all of it. I just wanted to be there for you and I couldn’t and-”

He scoffed as your eyes rose to him in temporary pain, believing maybe he didn’t understand just how deep these insecurities ran. 

“Do you have any idea what having you next to me does? Not JUST because you’re beautiful…but because you’re…you’re mine…And I HATE that you thought you ruined tonight, but I can’t tell you how much farther from the truth that is. You make everything-my mornings, phone calls, getting the mail even just worth it when I have you at my side…And I’m going to stay at yours…To remind you how badly I need you stay next to me…” 

“Drew…”

“So how about…” His fingers came to the back of your dress, pulling the zipper down to expose you from the weight of tonight, before he reached into the shower. 

“We relax and then I tell you about all of the things I love about you?” You blushed, not one to react to compliments well, but loving how attentive he was to you. And so you nodded, slipping with him beneath the water as he traced your skin and supplied sweet kisses, eventually drying you off and leading you to bed, where he wrapped you in his arms and you cried into his chest as you told him how much you loved him and how you felt so lucky to have him at your side as he confirmed the words to you as well.

Taglist: @hopebaker @iovdrew @penny4yourthoughts @magnificantmermaid @pickingviolets @lovedetlost @trikigirl271 @my-baexht-ls @slut4starkey @slvtherinseeker @obxiskewl @obxxrxfes @bluesongbird @slut-era @ailee-celeste @rafesbae

#drew starkey fluff #drew starkey x reader #drew starkey

[kitkatt0430]

I always feel a little sorry for Finis while playing (and now watching) Code: Realize.

He was created to fulfill Isaac Beckford's will. He wasn't intended to become a person on his own. But he clearly has become a person.

Cardia's compassion and desire not to harm others are what make her very human despite her artificial origins. And so, too, her brother shows himself to have taken on human traits as well.

Finis doesn't really love anyone. I'd argue he doesn't even love his father. But he's in many ways a child raised in an abusive home who, despite the emotional abuse he's suffered, still desperately wants his father's love and approval. But nothing he does will ever be good enough. Including fulfilling his part in Isaac's plan.

He's made awful choices and his upbringing doesn't excuse that. But Finis is in many ways just a naive child desperately for his father's approval. And Cardia could have easily turned out the same if not for the fact that the way in which she was abused was via neglect instead.

Cardia and Finis looked like the children Isaac lost, but Cardia also bore a strong resemblance to his dead wife. And I suspect that is why Isaac sent her away. But outside of the influence of the dying Isaac Beckford and his organization, Twilight, Cardia was able to do something that Isaac never suspected she was capable of and Finis would never dare to do.

Cardia disobeyed.

She couldn't remember her creator and so, ultimately, she had no loyalty to following his orders. But Finis could not get away. No matter how many puppets he controlled, his main body could not leave the place his father had created him in. And he could not escape when Isaac uploaded his own consciousness into that same vessel, a slumbering threat that would one day kill Finis.

And while I do feel sorry for the person Isaac used to be, he wasn't the only one to suffer terrible losses or to be treated terribly by people in search of a scapegoat for their suffering. Cardia herself goes through a very similar situation and sees the parallels between herself and Isaac's original family quite clearly. Van Helsing's family was killed despite him obeying terrible orders to murder Dracula's parents. Frankenstein's research was used for terrible ends by someone he'd trusted. Impey's quest to show the world the beauty of science by one day traveling to the moon often earned him naught but ridicule. And Lupin was a gentleman thief who chose to fix the mistakes of his mentor, who'd once been part of the Code: Realize terrorist plot Isaac planed.

But Isaac made the decision to destroy and remake the world. Isaac chose to become a monsters. And Finis was raised to think the only valid choice he had was to follow in his creator's footsteps.

Finis is so clearly jealous of Cardia - of her freedom and her ability to connect with others. He mocks her for 'playing at being human' when he's embraced being a monster. But Cardia ultimately refuses to become the monster people have called her and accused her of being. Finis envied her that strength as much as he envied her being the 'favored child'.

Yet it's no wonder that Finis rejects Cardia's attempt to save him, to offer him a life with her. He doesn't know what that life would even look like. Compared to certainty of death Isaac had raised him for, Finis had to be afraid of that unknown. Of what it would mean to live with the consequences of his actions and those of his father's. In a way, Cardia was offering him what he'd always wanted, but because it came from her and not from their father Finis could not accept it as real.

They'd all seen the worst of humanity. But Finis was never allowed to see the best of it either. Unlike Isaac, who rejected compassion, or Cardia, who embraced it. Finis never truly experienced kindness or caring from anyone until his last moments with Cardia. And he was too afraid to believe that a world built from compassion could exist for him.

#code: realize #it's a silly concept - a romance visual novel where a mysterious young lady is protected and wooed by public domain characters #but the plot and characters were written with a great deal of thought and depth

[daz4i]

everyone has done something bad before. you have hurt people before, whether you know this or not.

i’m not saying this in a “you should feel guilty” way, but rather that you should spare people some sympathy when they make a mistake or hurt another person.

it’s not your place to forgive them - that’s for the person/people they hurt to do or not - but that doesn’t mean the only other option for you is to treat them like a villain.

if we don’t show any compassion to people when they do something bad, when they make a mistake, or act without thinking, we create a society where basically no one can exist.

when you hold people to an impossible standard or expect perfect actions all the time, you are only furthering your own guilt for things you have done and will do, because it’s simply impossible to avoid when you interact with other people and create bonds with them. 

not only that, you are furthering a victim mentality. when you treat any person who’s hurt anyone as a bad person, people who refuse to believe they’re a bad person - including yourself - think “well, i’m not a bad person, so that means the other side is at fault” whenever something happens.

^to be clear, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing to think at every case. it’s good to know when you’ve been wronged and stand up for yourself, but it’s also good to step away and think “hold on, am i actually doing something bad now? did i make a mistake? did i ignore this person’s pain by focusing on saving my skin?”

if we show compassion, empathy, sympathy, and understanding to people even when they fuck up, even when they hurt others, we create a safer environment to grow as people and are kinder not only to each other but also ourselves.

i’m not asking you to forgive abusers or dangerous people. you are free to hate them, and you are entitled to your anger and hurt. this is a perfectly valid reaction, and you should be able to express it. (that being said, i’m not talking about straight up abusers in this post, but i still feel like it’s important to emphasize)

no, i’m not asking you to forgive anyone, just to keep in mind that we’re all people and we can all fuck up, whether on purpose or not. it’s just a fact of life as a social creature. you can let go a little, if not for them then for you.

#this is ok to rb if you wanna #just had this on my mind and wanted to say it #long post #ask to tag

[mercurial-madhouse]

Trigger Warning: Healing is painful, but there’s so much light on the other side if we’re strong enough to walk through the dark.

My hope in sharing my story is to help anyone who reads it find peace or healing, just as I always aim with my fiction. If it feels right to you to do so, I encourage you to reblog this. It is highly personal, but I choose to share it publicly.

************

This past Sunday, I received an email responding to my desire to withdraw from a fic fest. Instead of the simple “You have been removed from the fest” that I’d been expecting through an official channel from mods to a participant, this is the response I received. Please be aware, the following is painful.

***

We've removed you from the fest and will mark you down as not being welcome to participate in future fests. We show a great deal of compassion toward our writers, which is why we send reminders, answer any and all questions, and provide extensions when requested. There's a reason why our fest has one of the highest numbers of fics of any fest/challenge in the fandom - it's because we support our participating writers and do everything possible to assist them as they complete their fics.

However, once a writer has repeatedly failed to communicate and missed both a deadline and an extended deadline, it's clear that they do not have any respect for the fest, the mods, our time, or our own unique situations, as we don't have endless extra hours to track down participants in a fic fest. Several reminders on three different platforms, an extension, and requests for writers to simply let us know if they need more time does not demonstrate a lack of compassion in any capacity. We also showed a great deal of compassion by welcoming you with open arms into the [redacted] after you insulted the fest, insulted [redacted] fics, and made writers uncomfortable last year after signing up to beta their fics, all while pretending to support and uplift writers in the fandom just as you did in your email here.

Have a great week!

- [redacted] Mods

***

This email arrived right at the end of the night, just as I was lying down to sleep. I couldn’t read it all the way through. It elicited a trauma response in me. My heart started racing, my palms were sweaty, I was shaking, I felt sick to my stomach.

I went into fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode. My first response was to freeze. In order to escape the barrage of pain bombarding me, I simply dissociated and disconnected from my body. It allowed me to sleep, but barely. I deleted the email in a desperate attempt to pretend it didn’t exist.

The pain caught up with me twenty-four hours later. I couldn’t breathe, my lungs shrunk in around my heart. My whole body locked up. I couldn’t move. I knew that if I spoke, even to say ‘hello’ to someone, I’d start crying.

The moment I was alone in my room the tears came. The pain came, bursting through me. I sobbed uncontrollably, curled into myself on my bed, begging for the pain to stop, begging for a miracle, screaming internally for relief and to understand what I’d done to deserve this because I didn’t have the air for more than broken whispers.

I fell asleep whispering ‘I need a miracle’ over and over. The mantra blocked out all the disgusting thoughts that wanted to keep swirling through my head. This is it. This is the final proof that you don’t belong here. You never have. You never will. Run away, M. It’s over. You tried, you failed. You always do. You always will.

I fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

Grief is intense. These are the moments where we don’t think we’ll survive what we’re feeling. My love, whoever you are, if you are reading this, hear from me. The agony passed. I needed to feel that agony, to allow it to move through me and to give myself the space to feel it. Without diving off the deep end into what hurts, I wouldn’t have been able to find the inner peace to keep healing, to start to understand.

The residual pain is still there, even as I write this post. But it no longer overwhelms my senses. And by Tuesday morning, I’d been given insight into what was happening.

I experienced a trauma response because it mirrored mistreatment I first received in childhood from family and classmates alike and continued into my adult life. In full view of others, it was acknowledged as cruel even by my mother, who struggles with her own guilt because she never stood up for me. No one did.

So I internalized the mistreatment. I must deserve it if everyone else around me is ok with me being singled out like this? At first I spoke up for myself. But in the end I stopped speaking up for myself too. I had never healed this pain and here it was, coming back around again, forcing me to face it, to heal it once and for all.

I still do not know what exactly I may have said to cause these accusations that you see in the email. **I do not and will not deny them.** Even if my words were taken in a way I did not consciously intend, to deny that I said anything that caused someone else pain is to deny my own power AND to deny that everyone’s emotions are valid and worth digging into.

I have the power to inflict pain, just as I have the power to spread and share love and joy.

Whatever I said came from a place of pain, of believing I did not belong in this community. That I am not good enough or worthy enough to be here. A series of unfortunate but necessary events when I first entered this fandom completely disintegrated my core beliefs in my abilities as a writer, something I have always kept so close to my heart, and my belief that I had a place in this fandom.

I expect, as I look into my past patterns, that what I did was try to logic why I wasn’t allowed to belong. At the time, this fest was the only subset of the fandom I knew, I was so brand new. So I looked through all the prompts in the fest. I brought a scientific method view to answering the question: “What is it about the fics people write in this fandom am I unable/incapable of doing?”

This process allowed me to generalize everything I saw that I perceived as ‘I can’t do that, this is why I don’t belong here’. Consumed in my own doubt that I could measure up and write something worth reading, I dropped from the fest last year too. If I can’t contribute writing that’s worth reading, I could at least stick with what I do best, which is helping others be their best selves. I had signed up to beta, and I chose to cling to the only grasp of belonging I had, which was through beta’ing. I ended up beta’ing four fics last year for the fest. And, of course, each of them were (and still are) incredible fics. At the time, it was further proof to me of exactly what I can’t accomplish.

In all likelihood, these generalizations, stemming from a place of pain and jealousy because I wanted to write good fics too, came out in a personal conversation with someone, which they translated as a personal attack. It is valid. Whoever you are, your emotions are valid. It does not matter how I meant whatever I said, pain is what you felt. This person did not feel comfortable sharing that pain with me, so instead they turned to others and shared. My moment of vulnerability and pain then spread more pain.

Pain only comes from pain.

The response was to shadow ban me. In fact, I was never meant to find out about any of this. The pain this person shared was simply taken at face value and that was that.

So on my end, this decision showed up in the physical world this way: Suddenly all my asks went unanswered, people I tagged to share snippets and last lines and get to know more through ‘about me’ posts or who had once talked to me through DMs simply stopped speaking to me in a way that is only noticeable to the person being ignored. I thought I was going crazy. But there it was, right in front of me: absolute proof that I wasn’t good enough to be a part of this fandom.

Is anyone else beginning to see the cycle of pain?

I expect I continued this cycle right back, because the pain turned to bitterness. I’d been doing everything I could to support every author the best way I knew how, and this was what I got? The exact opposite?

I found out about this shadow ban and actual blocking around June of this year. An ask sent in by a friend for me, inquiring why I couldn’t reblog a post that’d been sent to me by someone else, finally gave me the answer that I’d been banned for the accusations you saw above.

Horrified, hurt, and unable to comprehend any of this except to know that I support every author no matter what they write, I sent an apology to the mods, trying to end this cycle the best I could without knowing any of the details of what had happened. There was nothing more I could do.

They thanked me for the apology, though as you can see from the email, it was never accepted. I do not say that as a judgement call, but simply as a statement of what happened. Everyone is entitled to accept or not accept in their own time and their own ways.

I have been healing so much since everything that occurred last year. And the more I dig in to this cycle, the more my heart goes out to the drafters of this email, to the person I hurt with my words who then turned to share it out of context with others, and to the people who shadow banned me in connection with this situation.

We attract to us what resonates with us. Like attracts like. Which means just as I’ve attracted the greatest friends to me, I have also attracted this pain, and conversely, these mods and that person attracted me to them.

Deep down, on some level we share the same core wounds. And the person who can really understand just how painful those wounds can be is someone who feels them too.

So this is my message to the mods of the above email, to those who have shadow banned me and want nothing to do with me, and to the original person I hurt with my words:

I am sorry for my part in this pain. I am sorry for causing pain and I apologize for it. You are loved. You are enough. You are doing a fantastic job. Your feelings are valid. Your hurt is valid. I don’t know what occurred that hurt you before I entered the fandom, but after finding out from others that an email like the one you sent above is ‘Oh that’s just how they are’ tells me something else happened to hurt you before I even arrived.

Your hurt then is valid too. Allow yourself to feel it and process it. Don’t let it consume you. Don’t let that hurt and fear of it happening again or believing that that’s how everyone is push away from you people who in fact love just what you love. If someone has a different belief from yours, don’t let it invalidate what is true for you. Believing internalized lies about myself only caused me pain. And we spread and create what we believe to be true, whether we consciously realize it or not.

So here, now, is my truth:

I choose to perpetuate love. I choose to spread love. I choose to understand my pain and the pain of others, to transmute it, and to heal it, instead of passing that pain on.

I choose compassion. Compassion for myself in making these mistakes, and compassion for those who have hurt me. I do not condone the email that was sent to me. No one deserves to be treated that way. I choose to focus beneath the visceral anger and lashing out, to focus on the agony beneath the words, and stop this cycle of pain.

I choose to belong in this fandom. I choose to support every author in this fandom and ensure no one ever feels not good enough. I choose to own my past mistakes and learn from them.

I choose trust. To trust that those who I truly hope will see this, will see it. I have no expectations of responses or outcomes or reactions. My only hope is that whoever will benefit from seeing this post will see it.

This is not a matter of right or wrong, bad or good, just or unjust. It is a situation of two parties in pain, triggered by the same triggers.

Looking back on that email, I’ve come to realize that half of the pain I felt when I received it was not my own. I felt the pain of the attack, sure, but I also felt the immense pain beneath those words. And I wish I could hug you. I acknowledge your pain and I acknowledge how painful it is because I know that pain myself. I also know that this pain isn’t you and it isn’t who you are.

So I choose to remember the mods I first met around this same time last year in this same email chain. Mods who were so kind and offered advice to a brand new writer even when she sent an email that had nothing to do with the fest and was still struggling to find her place in the fandom. I choose to remember how beautiful that kindness felt. I choose to remember how I was so grateful for that kindness that I shared my gratitude for these same mods in an email with with another fandom friend at the time. I am still grateful for you.

You are so loved. You are loved for being exactly who you are. This fandom is built upon love. A shared love of five incredibly talented lads who have brought so much joy and light when each and every one of us has needed it the most. Shine your light through the dark and believe with all your heart that you are not alone. You have support. I support you. Shine on. Don’t let anyone dim it.

#Being this vulnerable #is an act of courage #I never knew I had #I'm not fearless #I feel ready to vomit #I have no idea how this will be received #but I am sharing my truth #have courage to share your truth #the world needs you

[cosmicjoke]

Okay, onto chapter 128 of SnK.  There’s some really huge thematic payoff in this chapter which I want to talk a little about!

The big theme that really comes full circle here is the theme of violence, and how it’s intrinsically linked to the human condition.  That’s obviously a huge theme throughout this entire series, but in a lot of ways it culminates in this chapter.

I first really noticed it in a big way, in terms of having a big impact on the characters, way back in chapter 50 something, during the Uprising arc, in that scene where Jean, Connie, Sasha, Mikasa and Armin are waiting around, and they start talking about Levi and how repulsed they feel by what they perceive to be his unnecessary violence.  They flatly condemn him for it, even going so far as to say there’s something wrong with him, and making bold statements about how they would never kill another person, no matter the circumstances.  This statement of course comes back to bite them not long after, when Armin is forced to kill one of Kenny’s squad in order to save Jean, and Jean begins to understand the impossibility and even selfishness that can be inherent to holding without compromise to one’s moral values. 

That theme comes back in a huge way in chapter 128, and it’s really interesting to see Reiner try to step in and take on the role of martyr by telling the members of the 104th that they don’t need to fight, trying to save them from the moral dilemma of killing their own comrades.  What I found really interesting here was how Jean, Connie, Mikasa and Armin don’t answer at first, and you can see this is a huge struggle for them, the scenario presented before them one which clearly goes against everything they want to believe they’re fighting for.  Connie even says that they’re supposed to be saving people, not murdering their friends, etc...  But it’s impossible to ignore how it’s Hange who steps in and dashes any possibility of them sitting this fight out against the rocks.  They say they aren’t interested in being a spectator, and reminds everyone there that humanity doesn’t have any time left for them to be debating their morality.  This ties back in perfectly with what Levi had spoken to his squad about way back in the Uprising Arc, again, when he told them he doesn’t know what’s right or wrong, and that all any of them can do in any given situation is act in the way they think is best, both for themselves and those they care for, and for humanity as a whole.  We’ve seen Hange come to terms with this blunt and often brutal reality well before this, during the battle for Shingashina, for example.  Hange really began to separate whatever moral qualms they might have had, any emotion they might have had about killing other people, during this arc, and coming to really understand and accept that sometimes morality was something that had to be sacrificed for the greater good.  Here in chapter 128, Hange isn’t interested in or willing to indulge in preserving either their, or anyone else’ moral purity at the expense of the Marlyean group.  They’re in this together, and Hange understands fully that to accept Reiner’s offer of sitting back and watching while he, Annie and Pieck take on the Yeagerists would be the height of selfishness and a prime example of placing one’s own moral purity over the well being of others.  I always think it’s brilliant the way AoT explores these issues, of how an uncompromising loyalty to one’s idea of morality can, in fact, lead to total disaster for others, can in fact worsen the lives of others.  How if one has a moral code they are absolutely, under no circumstances, willing to break, that person often is the one who is most self-serving and self-centered, more concerned with keeping their own hands clean than with helping anyone else.  SnK doesn’t condemn violence, but instead makes very strong arguments for why it is sometimes not only an option, but the ONLY option, and that’s incredibly bold, and incredibly true to reality.  

Armin, as usual, is the first to understand this, after Hange reminds them all.  Armin was also the first, back during the Uprising Arc, to extend understanding towards Levi and his violence, and why he had to at times resort to it.  Armin flat out says here “I refuse to stand by with clean hands”.  He’s acknowledging the selfishness inherent in an uncompromising moral code, and refuses to place himself above the rest of humanity, even if it means once more getting his hands dirty with the blood of other people.  He still comes up with a plan to try and avoid any bloodshed, but you can see Armin is willing and ready in this moment to do whatever is necessary, which he does when he and Connie get into the situation they do with Daz and Samuel.  Armin is the one who tackles Samuel, which is what gives Connie the chance to shoot him.

There’s this huge moment with Levi I want to talk about, after everything goes to shit and Armin’s plan falls apart, where Yelena says “You can’t separate humanity from violence.”  And then she says to Levi “Right, Captain?”, and we get a look at Levi’s face, and once again, he just looks filled with naked despair.  I think these two panels are incredibly important in understanding Levi’s own psychology during this entire final arc.  Yelena is right, for once, when she says you can’t separate humanity from violence.  It’s a part of the human condition.  And she asks Levi specifically about it, because if anyone understands this, it’s Levi, who grew up in a world where violence was often the ONLY option, if one wanted to survive, or protect those they cared for.  But Levi’s saddened expression in the following panel really speaks to his feelings regarding the undeniable truth of Yelena’s words.  Levi knows it’s true, but he wishes desperately that it wasn’t.  I’ve called Levi an idealist over and over, and it’s because Levi is someone who understands the way of the world, and understands human nature, with more clarity and compassion than probably any other character in the series, he understands that violence, pain, poverty, desperation, fear, death, are all a part of life, and especially a part of the human condition, and yet, even with that understanding and acceptance, Levi is also someone who strives towards something better,  towards a world in which these things AREN’T necessary, aren’t inevitable.  Levi has been fighting this whole time in order to try and create a world in which people can live in genuine peace and prosperity, without fear, or violence or inequality.  But every bit of Levi’s life experience tells him and reminds him, day in and day out, of the impossibility of that ideal.  The impossibility of creating a world in which these things don’t exist.  Nothing in Levi’s life would ever lead him to believe true peace and prosperity for all is an attainable dream, nothing in his life which would ever give him real hope in that dream becoming reality.  But still, he fights for it.  This is part of what makes Levi so remarkable.  It’s the very fact that he STRUGGLES to believe in the possibility of a better world, and yet still gives everything of himself to make it a reality, that makes Levi such a hero.  In fact, Levi doesn’t really believe that it’s possible, I don’t think, his life having been too hard and too desperate to fully embrace such an ideal notion.  But, once again, even as he’s riddled with doubt as to it’s attainability, he sacrifices everything he has for the possibility, no matter how slim.   Levi’s naked despair in the panel following Yelena’s question is because he’s being reminded once again of the impossibility of that dream.  Once again, he’s being shown that humanity is incapable of achieving true peace within itself, he’s being shown once again that people are by nature violent and warlike, and that everything he’s fought for seems more and more like a distant and hopeless dream.  Yelena sits in stark contrast to Levi here.  She’s bitterly accepting of the ugly reality, unmoved and unemotional.  She doesn’t care.  She thinks humanity is a worthless mess, unsalvageable and unworthy of salvation.  To Yelena, this is the inevitable result of humanity’s very existence, and to fight for something that unrealistically idealistic is a fools errand.  Indeed, Yelena seems almost to revel in it, the violence serving as affirmation of her beliefs, giving her a sense of validation.  But Levi, beside her, is deeply affected, his pain and sadness openly expressed in his face, his disappointment and heartbreak plain to see.  Levi is HURT by the violence, by seeing it unfold.  Levi, despite knowing the truth of Yelena’s words, despite knowing from the most first-hand experience the brutal and violent nature of human beings, and the improbability of humanity ever achieving true peace, still believes with his whole heart that humanity is WORTH fighting for.  Levi, despite how hard it is for him to believe in actually achieving a better world, still believes that FIGHT is worth an attempt.  And that’s really one of the most vital philosophical difference between Levi and people like Yelena, or Zeke.  Despite knowing and understanding better than anyone the brutal and harsh reality of the world and humanity, to Levi, it’s still something that’s worth fighting to protect, and worth sacrificing for.  Even against his own, weary doubts as to its possibility.  And that just shows a strength of character that is immense.  To be so burdened by doubt, but still to fight with every last ounce of your strength, to give to your very last breath.  That’s Levi.  That strength of character, that unwavering conviction in giving his all to a cause he isn’t at all sure is even possible, is never more apparent than in this final arc, when Levi is in the most literal sense at deaths door, physically wrecked and barely able to even stand, and yet still he fights with everything he has.  That truly is remarkable.  That truly is heroic.

Just one more note.  Floch really exposes himself in this chapter for what he actually is, which is a power freak.  He’s been spouting off this whole time about the Empire of Eldia and saving the island and the people on the island and blah, blah, blah, but during his conversation with Kiyomi, he admits that he doesn’t really believe that the island will be safe, even if Eren wipes out all of humanity, that people will still continue to kill each other, and then he starts in about how what’s important now is for people to “know their place”, as he holds a gun to Kiyomi’s head.  Floch is a power freak, he wants to control other people, wants to dictate to them, wants to hold power over them.  He exposes that about himself here.  He doesn’t actually care about Paradis, or the people on it.  He’s simply getting off on being able to push other people around and make them do what he tells them to.  He’s such a bitch.  It was hilarious when Kiyomi took his ass down and messed his arm up.  

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #hange zöe #Levi Ackerman #snk 128 #meta #thoughts

[iimpavidwrites]

Benzaiten Steel and the Fragility of Perception

or: reasons why setting boundaries is important #1283

I’ve figured out a reason why Benzaiten Steel stayed with his mother instead of doing the “sensible” thing and moving out. I think that it’s possible, too, that Juno has always been aware of the answer but, in the scope of Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection, he isn’t able to face it head-on because it contradicts his black/white, either/or sense of morality.

TL;DR: Despite Juno Steel’s unreliable narration we are able to see clearly the enmeshed relationship Benzaiten had with their mother Sarah and the ways in which that unhealthy family dynamic shaped Juno Steel as a person.

Sources: 50% speculation, 20% lit crit classes, 30% my psychology degree. 

Juno’s perception of Ben is shallow and filtered through the limitations of human memory. We all know by now, too, that Juno’s an Unreliable Narrator™.  In light of this, we need to ask ourselves why it is that Juno remembers Ben as happy, supportive, and only ever gentle in the challenges he poses to Juno. Throughout the episode, Ben’s memory is clearly acting as a comforting psychopomp: he ferries Juno through the metaphorical death of his old understanding of his mother (and also himself) and into a new way of thinking. He does this through persistent-but-kind questions, never telling Juno what to do or how to do it. This role could have been played by anyone in Juno’s life (Mick and Rita come to mind first) which makes it telling that Juno’s mind chose Ben to fill this role.

Juno’s version of Ben is cheerful, endlessly patient with Juno and Sarah, and above all he is compassionate. He acts as a mediating presence between Juno and Juno’s memory of Sarah and he doesn’t ask a whole lot for himself. If this is Juno’s strongest memory/impression of Ben’s behavior and perspective, then we can draw some conclusions about the roles they each played in the Steel family unit: Juno was antagonistic to Sarah and vice versa, and Ben was relegated to the role of mediator for the both of them.

Juno: She’s just evil. Ben: That’s a big word. Juno: “Evil”? Ben: No, “Just”.

We can see in this exchange that Ben is a vehicle for the compassion Juno needs to show not only to Sarah but to himself, too, in order to move on and evolve his understanding of his childhood traumas. 

This is not necessarily an appropriate role for a sibling or a child to hold in a family unit.

In family psychology, one of the maladaptive relationship patterns that is discussed is enmeshment. Googling the term you’ll find a lot of sensational results (e.g. “emotional incest syndrome”) that aren’t necessarily accurate in describing what this dysfunction looks like in the real world. This is in part because enmeshment can present many different ways. So, in order to proceed with this analysis of Benzaiten Steel’s relationship with his mom, I need to define enmeshment. 

Enmeshment occurs when the normal boundaries of a parent-child relationship are dissolved and the parent becomes over-reliant on the child, requiring the child to cater to their emotional needs and to otherwise become a parent to the parent (or to themself and/or to other children in the family). This is easiest to spot when a parent confides in a child as if they’re a best friend, disclosing details of their romantic life, expecting the child to give them advice on coping with work stress, and similar. Once enmeshment occurs, any kind of emotional shift in one member of the enmeshed household will reverberate to the others; self-regulation and discernment (e.g. figuring out which emotions originate in the parent and which ones originate in the child) becomes extremely difficult for the effected child and parent. When an enmeshed child becomes an enmeshed adult they often have issues with self-identity and interpersonal boundaries. For example, they may struggle to define themselves without external validation and expect others to be able to intuitively divine their emotions. After all, the enmeshed adult could do this with their parent and others easily due to hypervigilance cultivated by their parent and they may not understand that such was not the typical childhood experience. These adults are often individuals to whom the advice “don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm” is often relevant and disregarded. They may perceive their own needs as superfluous to others’-- and resent others as a consequence.

Another layer of complication is added when the parent in an enmeshed relationship is an addict, as Sarah Steel was. The enmeshed child often times becomes the physical caregiver to their parent as well and must cope with all the baggage loving an addict brings: the emotional rollercoaster of the parent trying to get clean or the reality of their neglecting or stealing from their child to support their habit or their simply being emotionally absent. Enmeshment leaves children with a lot of conflicting messages about their role in the family, how to conduct relationships, and how to define themself.

We only get an outside perspective on this enmeshment in the Steel family. It’s clear in the text that Juno’s relationship with his mother was fraught. He jokes in The Case of the Murderous Mask that she didn’t kill him but “not for lack of trying”, implying that Ben’s murder wasn’t the first time Sarah Steel lashed out at Juno-- or thought she was lashing out at Juno but hurt Ben instead. During the entire tenure Juno’s trek through the underworld of his own trauma, Juno asks the specter of Benzaiten over and over, “Why did you stay?”. This is a question that Juno himself can’t answer because Ben, when he was alive, probably never gave him an answer that Juno found satisfactory. There are a few possibilities, which I can guess from experience, as to what the answer was:

Ben may never have been able to articulate that his relationship with their mother left him feeling responsible for her wellbeing. 

Or, if he ever told Juno that, Juno may have simply brushed off this concern. After all, as far as Juno was concerned, Sarah was only ever just evil. To protect himself from his mother’s neglect and codependence, Juno shut down his own ability to perspective-take and think about the nuances that might inform a person’s addiction, mental illness, abusive behavior, etc.

It is likely that Ben thought either his mother needed him to survive or, alternatively, that he couldn’t survive without her-- as if often the case with children who are enmeshed with their primary caregiver. It was natural and necessary for him, from this perspective, to stay. Enmeshment is a very real psychological trap.

It is often frustrating and hard as hell to love someone who is in an enmeshed relationship because, from the outside, the damage being done to them seems obvious. See: Juno’s assertion that Sarah was just evil. Juno is, even 19 years later, still angry about Sarah Steel and her failures as a parent and as a person. His thinking on this subject is very black-and-white. He positions Sarah as a Bad Guy in his discussions with Ben-the-psychopomp and the childhood cartoon slogan of “The Good Guys Always Win!” is repeated ad nauseum throughout Juno’s underworld journey. This mode of thinking serves two purposes:

First, it illustrates the role Juno played in the household: he was opposed to Sarah in all things and Sarah did not require any compassion or enmeshment from Juno. Juno was, quite possibly, neglected in favor of Ben which would create a deep resentment… toward both Sarah and toward Ben. This family dynamic would reinforce Juno’s shallow moral reasoning and leave him with vague, unachievable ideals to strive for like “Be One of the Good Guys” or “Don’t Be Like Mom” -- ideals that he can’t reach because he is a flawed human being and not a cartoon character, creating a feedback loop of resentment toward his mother and guilt about resenting Benzaiten. That guilt would further bolster Juno’s shallow memory of Ben as being infallibly patient, kind, loving, etc. 

Second, Juno’s black/white moral reasoning is an in-text expression of the meaning behind Juno’s name. When “Rex Glass” points out that Juno is a goddess associated with protection, Juno immediately has a witty, bitter rejoinder  ready about Juno-the-goddess killing her children. Juno was named for a deity who in some ways strongly resembles Sara Steel and he resents that he is literally being identified as his own mother. Juno-the-goddess has one hell of a temper, being the parallel to Rome’s Hera. Juno is not a goddess (detective) who forgives easily when she (he) knows that a child (Benzaiten Steel) has been harmed. This dichotomy of “venerated protector” versus “vengeful punisher”  causes psychological tension for Juno that is only partially resolved in The Monster’s Reflection. The tension is not fully resolved, however, because Juno never gets a clear answer for the question, “Why did you stay?”

The answer is there but it is one that Juno doesn’t like and so can’t articulate: Ben is enmeshed with Sarah who named him, of all things, Benzaiten and that is why he stayed. We’ve already seen that names have intentional significance in the text. Benzaiten is hypothesized to be a syncretic deity between Hinduism and Buddhism, is a goddess primarily associated with water. Syncretic deities are fusions of similar deities from different religions/cultures; their existence is the result of compromise and perspective-taking and acceptance. Water, too, is forgiving in this way: it takes the shape of whatever container you pour it into... not unlike a child who is responsible for the emotional wellbeing of their entire family unit. Not unlike Benzaiten Steel.

Ben stayed with his mother because his relationship with his mother was enmeshed, leaving him little choice but to stay, and this ultimately led to tragedy. Sarah Steel’s failures as a parent are many and Juno still has a lot of baggage to unpack in that regard, especially where Ben is concerned. It’s unlikely that we’ll get the same kind of “speedrunning therapy” episode again but I know that The Penumbra is committed to a certain amount of psychological realism in its character arcs so I am confident in asserting that Juno Steel isn’t finished. Recovery is a journey and he’s only taken the first steps.

#juno steel #benzaiten steel #meta #the penumbra podcast #benten steel #sarah steel #psychology #enmeshment #bad parenting #iimpavid writes #chatter #the monster's reflection #the case of the murderous mask

[acesydneysage]

My thoughts on how an Alchemist revolution could go

I turned some of the initial points into a one-shot, but I'm very unlikely to actually write anything that sees all of it through to the end, so I'm laying out what I imagine would happen. I could follow the initial fic's format and just write cutesy domestic fluff with hints of what is going on in the Alchemist revolution in the background, but who knows

In The Golden Lily, Sonya thought Sydney's blood might be key to a vaccine, since it was undrinkable to Strigoi. Later, in The Fiery Heart, in their visit to Inez, we find out that it's because her blood is coated in human magic. That makes it taste foul to undead vampires, and also broke her Alchemist tattoo, by countering the compulsion of Moroi magic with human magic.

She eventually uses a similar principle to make the tattoo breaking ink she gives to Marcus, and that she uses to help the other re-education inmates in Silver Shadows.

So, with that in mind:

My initial idea was that one of Marcus' operatives, who got tattooed with Sydney's ink, would suffer a Strigoi attack. Their blood would turn out to be undrinkable. Since Sydney's ink breaks the Alchemist tattoo, the receivers blood would get coated with human magic, like a witch's.

I would like it if that person was one of the people Sydney helped in re-education, because I'd like to think those people stayed loyal to her, and maybe see her as a leader. Just because it's really touching to me how she was still worried about others, and risking herself to help, while she was going through her worst nightmare.

In my fic I went with Sydney's roommate Emma, "the Sydney Sage of re-education", because I really love her. She really did turn out to be the Sydney of re-education, at least in part, because while she was repeating the party line and trying to seem cooperative, she was actually a badass rebel who fights back. There are other reasons, I'll get to that in the end.

Sydney's ink potentially working as a Strigoi vaccine is something important enough that she would risk her truce with the Alchemists to investigate. And since the ink also makes people immune to their mind control, the Alchemists wouldn't work with them like they did for the spirit vaccine. I truly believe that they value their control more than human souls.

I'm sure Declan’s blood will be important to the spirit vaccine. They couldn't mass produce it since it required a recent Strigoi restoration, trapping the spirit before it left the blood, while his blood is described as brimming with spirit. But Sydney and Adrian don't want their son to be experimented on, so that's just more incentive to seek an alternative.

I think Sydney’s ink wouldn't work on Moroi, going by the logic of the magic described in the books (human magic wins out in humans), but helping humans is already a big deal, and it could maybe work on dhampirs.

Meanwhile, the Alchemists have been getting polarized. When it's revealed that some of them were helping the Warriors of Light in the end of the series, while Warriors were keeping Moroi captive, that causes controversy. They eventually start to get divided into factions.

After the US re-education center burns down, those who oppose re-education try to defend that it not be rebuilt, and that other centers be shut down. There are symbolic concessions, but they eventually get basically re-education by another name. Similar things happen when it comes to demands for more transparency, and less authoritarianism in general.

And of course there's a reaction to progressive demands. A hardcore anti-Moroi faction is amenable to teaming up with the Warriors. They're tired of "fighting evil by cataloguing it."

If this faction wins out, they won't actually care that Sydney is blackmailing them into letting her live with proof that they worked with the Warriors, since they openly want that, and they consider her continued existence a humiliation. So Sydney and Adrian wouldn't be able to sit out this fight.

There are more and more defectors who simply leave and join Marcus (or go into hiding and try to stay away from that whole mess). But out of those who stay Alchemists, as things start to devolve into an actual civil war, the moderate faction has a lot of infighting about joining up with the rebels.

That's at least in part because Sydney is one of their most notorious members, and while they might not want to see all the Moroi exterminated, marrying one of them is still going way too far to a lot of them.

So, let's talk allies. Sydney definitely put Marcus in touch with more witches and taught them how to make the ink. And I think besides kidnapping Moroi and dhampirs, the Warriors could be capturing witches too, which would turn them against each other.

In re-education, when it's revealed that Sydney has magic they say that has happened before, and I imagine they handled it with the same amount of compassion. I think maybe Chantal is a witch too and that's why she was fown in the punishment level with Sydney.

Alicia definitely showed that some witches might be willing to work with them for their personal gain, but I think as a community they would protect their own. They wouldn't look kindly on Alchemists torturing witches. And even if they were born into the Alchemists, they chose to be witches, so their allegiance to them would take precedence in their minds. Sydney's coven and Ms. Terwilliger are definitely on board.

I think the rebels might be able to get the Keepers on their side, since they have a complicated relationship with the Alchemists, where they seemto deliberately keepthem dependent. Marcus' stated goal for a long time was helping Moroi on their own terms, that's what he did for a long while. He definitely didn't have any plans to topple the Alchemists in the Bloodlines era, he didn't thinkthat was possible. So they occasionally helped them get better technology and resources that the Alchemists don't want them to have, and they promise to help them further in the future. That gets them the Keepers sympathy.

The Moroi government obviously isn't gonna side with the anti-Moroi faction, but I think they'd try to stay out of the conflict and not be dragged into the fighting for as long as possible. But they've come to depend on the Alchemists too much to keep them hidden, and they're now in chaos.

With the Alchemists weakened by a civil war they aren't really doing a great job of keeping up the masquerade, Moroi secrecy gets very precarious.

Now. While Alchemists claim to be very worried about human souls, absolutely no one in the VA universe seems that worried about regular humans' lives. They don't even know about the existence of Strigoi so they could protect themselves. And yes, there are humans who'd work with Strigoi. Strigoi seem to have zero issue finding those humans as is, they simply tell them about vampires themselves when they wanna get servants.

Now there's a vaccine that could help protect humans, and really reduce Strigoi's capacity to feed, but you have to actually apply them to humans. And more and more supernatural events are being sloppily covered up since the Alchemists are otherwise preoccupied.

I'm sure there are some valid reasons for the masquerade, and humans might not behave amazingly towards supernatural creatures, but leaving them completely helpless to this threat isn't very ethical, and certainly not when you have a vaccine that could help them.

And honestly, as cliche as that argument is in discussions of monster hunting, humans could potentially take the Strigoi out, we have some pretty amazing weapons. Or we could be massively incompetent about a problem that we are fully capable of solving. You know...

So the supernatural world gets revealed, and that makes the Alchemists pretty obsolete. Of course, although they have been weakened by the decade(s) of infighting, that doesn't mean they lose all of their resources and connections all at once, but it would be a huge blow their relevance.

They get splintered into a lot of different groups that can still cause trouble, but they're no longer the omnipresent shadow organization they used to be.

And if this whole process took about 15 years, Declan and his buddies would be neatly protagonist aged in time to deal with the huge upheaval and the new mess of problems brought on by the integration of the Moroi and human world. And he'd more capable of thinking about his own relationship to the spirit vaccine and making his own decisions.

So most of this post was written to be understood whether or not you read Silver Stars, but this final bit is more about what could directly follow. When it comes to the fic I was more worried about the characters and their feelings, and excuses for domestic fluff and hurt/confort. So here's the fic on AO3 and on Tumblr.

In the end of The Ruby Circle, there's indication that Zoe Sage and Stanton, with the incentive of Sydney's blackmail, will be trying to reform the Alchemists. I don't really think they're reformable, attempts to extinguish re-education would basically result in rebranding. @sydneysageivashkov has some lesbian!Zoe head that I think are pretty compatible with my headcanons for an Alchemist revolution, and what Zoe would be doing during that initial period.

I think it could take a few more years, 3 or 4, for Sydney to actually have to leave her home and go into hiding. Declan foes actually get a little bit of a normal school experience. I imagine this whole process going very slowly, as the situation gradually deteriorates. And the witches would now claim Sydney as one of their own, making it a bigger problem for the Alchemists to attack her directly, lest they make enemies of the whole magical community.

By the time Sydney has to go into hiding I imagine Zoe is gonna have to leave the Alchemists as well. The other reason why I chose Emma for the first fic, is that she was in re-education in part for her sister's actions, so it shows that the Alchemists wouldn't be above hurting Zoe for Sydney's actions.

Sydney has very important reasons to join the revolution, and in fact she might eventually not have a choice, but she knows that once she officially breaks her truce with the Alchemists her whole family and even her fellow re-education inmates that she got amnesty for.

I imagine Sydney, Adrian, Eddie and Declan could spend a while hiding in a ranch very out of the way that Chantal and Duncan got themselves. Insert Adrian joke about that escape plan where cute blonde girls had to wear cow girl outfits.

Duncan has been shown to be pretty hesitant to risk going against authority, and Chantal is even more psychologically messed up than Sydney and the rest of them. Sydney feels pretty awful about placing them in danger, but they're both very grateful to her for helping them escape. Also Chantal is a really badass witch, although a bit unstable, I'll eventually find something to do with that, revolution wise.

But Sydney and Adrian would eventually leave and get more active roles in the revolution. I would very much like it to be an actual collective movement and not one special girl bringing down the Alchemists by herself, but I think Sydney would have a pretty prominent role after everything she went through.

This is way too long, but I had fun with it, and if you got this far, thank you for reading 😀

#Rapha's Bloodlines Tag #sydney sage #adrian ivashkov #declan ivashkov #zoe sage #bloodlines series #bloodlines #Alchemist revolution #headcanons #sydrian

[sukumen]

sorry if this is a loaded question, ofc you don’t need to answer! what’s your take on the argument that dark content is harmful to reality, and that it romanticises traumas? personally i like reading some dc, but when i see posts about how it’s harmful to both survivors and readers (smth to do with psychologically normalising it) it kinda makes me feel guilty, like i’m doing something wrong? when i know i can distinguish between fiction and reality?

hey! so i’m going to keep this under a read more to avoid upsetting anyone - also because this is literally - and i mean, literally - an essay LMAO. i had a lot to say!

any anon hate will be deleted and blocked, but you’re free to engage me off anon (and kindly on anon) if you want to! anon, you’re also free to come chat with me in dms if you want to speak more freely about this :) 

warning for rape mentions, murder / mass murder mentions, dub / noncon mentions.

so, i want to preface this by saying that i don’t think that anyone is obligated to like or be comfortable with dark content. it truly is your prerogative not to be interested in it and you are valid if it makes you feel uncomfortable. so nothing i’m saying here is to convince people that anyone should like it or is wrong for not liking it.

but i don’t agree with the argument that people should be shamed for liking or writing it, that it romanticizes trauma, etc. i understand why people feel that way 100%, but i don’t agree.

sometimes, it feels arbitrary. “dark content” has become a pseudonym for dub/non-con fic, but is the the only type of dark content there is? dark stories can include murder, horror, gore, etc. yet, despite us knowing that murder (for example) is a crime and morally wrong, most people don’t bat an eye when a chara in a fic does it and is still protrayed as attractive or is the reader’s lover. we go crazy for mafia aus where characters kill and show power --- we love those characters, those scenes where they kill and go take their lover all covered in blood. i mean, even in the jjk fandom, one of the most popular characters is a cursed spirit whose first words in the series are about massacring women and children. and we love him. more than that, we love the gory, arguably dark world he comes from - we hypothesize about these characters, we sympathize with them, and we lust over them.

so it’s hard to reconcile that with telling fans who write dub/noncon that they are impacting people’s sense of reality. we’re all experiencing this series together - if written fan fiction is what desensitizes morality, what about the images from the anime and manga? would we make the same argument for banning it? would we say that the people who like sukuna are romanticizing mass violence or that gege is normalizing it for us psychologically by making the character who does it hot and engaging or showing/referencing it so much in the manga?

i just don’t think we would. i think we all understand that those things are wrong and like him knowing that, and can readily say he’s a villain or that the things we’re seeing is wrong. so, i don’t think there’s a black-and-white argument that seeing x in media will make you think y is a-okay or make you more comfortable with it in real life.

i do get that there’s a difference here: a big part of this argument is the sexual aspect of non/dubcon - it’s hard to feel like it’s not normalizing rape when people find a scenario like that hot (whereas no one is like...lewding a mass murder scene, haha). but i think that, at the end of the day, brains do what brains do and people just have dark fantasies. like it’s really as simple as that. rape fantasies in particular are common and talked about by psychologists all the time and i have never been able to find a common thread of them condemning people having them or even writing about them. what they DO talk about is the fact that consent is actually key to the fantasy - that the person fantasizing is the person controlling the situation, that the fantasy, despite being “dub/noncon”, is inherently exactly what they want because THEY are creating the situation, and that, in the end, it’s the absence of actual danger that makes it. ultimately: there is a difference between real life rape and an imagined fantasy or roleplay. so much so that it might not even be fair to call them “rape” fantasies at all.

“It’s crucial to recognize that real-life rape is anything but erotic for a woman. Being at the mercy of someone who’s so outrageously violating your will, holding you down, threatening you with bodily harm (or even death), and physically forcing himself upon you induces arousal all right. But not that of sexuality, but of utterly petrifying anxiety and panic. Contrast this to most imagined rape scenes, which are so electrifying precisely because they’re expressly designed by their female creator to stimulate the illusion of danger—which can, in fact, be positively arousing.”

>  from this article.

to me, this is ultimately what dub/noncon fic is. people writing out those fantasies for people who share those fantasies to process those fantasies.

you can make the argument that that it’s harmful to survivors, but that has its own issues when doctors have reported that some survivors have rape fantasies or find comfort in acting out those rape fantasies (and writing, in my opinion, is a form of acting that out). like are they not valid victims because they are contextualizing their trauma into something that they can control and can process on their own terms? i think the issue there is that the argument uses survivors as a monolith to make an argument on their behalf; but every individual survivor is valid in what they think about this because no two survivors process what happened to them in the same way.

i myself am a survivor and have no real issue with dark content (obviously). i don’t read it often and only write it now because of sukuna; but when i do read it, i draw the line at certain things because i personally cannot stomach it. but would i demand that person delete it from existence because of that? no, i wouldn’t. because again, at the end of the day, that’s the entire basis of the fantasy. i control what i’m fantasizing about, and if something that i do not want to happen to “me” as the reader occurs, i do not read it. i don’t consent to that experience or that fantasy, so i stay away. but at the same time, that other person’s fantasy isn’t mine to control or infringe on and it doesn’t make me a better person than them for not sharing the fantasy.

SO ALL OF THIS TO SAAAY: i don’t think you should feel bad for enjoying dark content. i don’t think the argument about whether or not you’ll know how wrong it is in real life anymore really applies because you could make the claim that any type of fiction runs the risk of distorting people’s perception of reality and making them desensitized to something. and i don’t think that’s what people’s struggle with this is. 

what it boils down to, to me, is that people can’t understand why anyone would find dub/noncon arousing, and think that they condone rape because of it. which, again, is understandable. rape is a horrible fucking thing to experience - it isn’t sexy, it isn’t hot, it isn’t arousing and it’s hard to see any nuance when you see “noncon” and “wow this was so hot” in one post. but based on the way psychologists talk about “rape” fantasies, i think the two things (the fantasy and the real life act of violence) can typically be distinct for people, even survivors, and it just comes down to whether or not it’s a fantasy you share. if you don’t, completely your right! block the tags, block the writers, do whatever you have to do to protect your peace and your limits! but the discourse about it always seems to go into the realm of shame or arguments about someone’s moral compass, which i think is unfair. 

hopefully this helps and wasn't an annoying thing to read! like i said, don’t mind talking about it more if need be!

#asks. #tw rape mention #tw dubcon / noncon mention #tw rape #tw murder mention

[spiritus-sonne]

"The Fall of the Therian & Otherkin Communities"

(Kind of long, I know, but hopefully worth the read, especially in regards to some concerns and discussions that have been going on lately or for awhile.)

The idea that just because some or even many people desire within a given community to have a litmus test of sorts to ‘prove’ or officially ‘become’ a *personal* identity (that, of course, can have social identity aspects due to there being a community for it) does not mean that such a thing should exist. Many people desire for all kinds of things to be done or happen that ultimately are Bad Ideas ™; we need to learn from experiences and our pasts to realize what is and isn’t okay to do within a given community. The fact that someone wants to take the *idea* of an otherkin and/or therian litmus test to potentially make it a reality is unfortunately VALIDATING to the use of that test--it establishes that there must be need for this and it must be a good thing to do because obviously people want it. It creates a sort of positive feedback loop in which the existence (or near and validated existence) of this test is further validated (regardless of whether it is actually or morally problematic to have the test) by those who see the test or have to take it in order to be “initiated” into a given community label--those who ‘pass’ the test become validators of it, showing that it works, and even those who ‘fail’ the test provide further validation because they “proved” they weren’t worthy of the given label. Eventually, the mere existence of the test validates to the community members that such a test needs to exist and the members generally stop questioning whether it actually even *should* exist anymore--it’s simply accepted as something that is “needed” and for the betterment of the community (whether it actually is or not).

From a more personal perspective: my introduction into the therianthropy community was on a forum that regularly practiced “grilling” on all newbies, including myself, and it was purported as a way to both “keep out the fluffies and roleplayers” (that we didn’t want in because they weren’t serious enough about therianthropy and made us “serious, real therians” look bad) and to help out those ‘serious’ therians in their own introspection. I bought it, full force, and after my own ‘grilling’, which turned out to not be much because I so thoroughly answered the standard ‘grilling’ intro questions (I was accepted quickly as being a ‘serious therian’) and felt comfortable on that forum, I practiced the grilling, myself, in people’s introductions. Eventually, activity on the board fell as people went elsewhere to be active in the therian community--they went places where they didn’t have to be grilled or ‘prove’ themselves to a group of people.

As the activity fell there and I found other forums to go to, I came to realize that grilling wasn’t the necessity, nor so useful of a tool as I had been led to believe. I still look back on what I did there--something I genuinely thought at the time was a good thing to do--and kind of cringe at myself for being so intolerant of other people, so unaccepting, and so disrespectful. I had fallen victim to the social atmosphere of that forum and decided that because they had that ‘test’ (the grilling practice) that I should trust in them that it was actually needed and right--that it was validated--and from there I further validated it by practicing the test on others. It’s sickening how this can happen, but it’s so easy *for* it to happen, especially if moderators, especially admins, and other regulars or highly-respected members validate the practice/test. It becomes that positive feedback loop of people essentially nodding their heads in agreement and continuing on with a practice without really questioning if it’s even okay to be an actual practice there or not, with more and more people being added to those seeing it as valid as they “pass” the test and join into the forum, taking after those higher respected members and staff. And naysayers are generally quickly stamped out by a barrage of angry ‘superiors’ on the board who will insist to their last breath that this test is “good and needed”. We stop questioning it, we stop thinking for ourselves about it, and fall into what the given site/community insists should be The Way, and we ignore those who suffer because of it or gloss over them, accepting that they are simply a ‘small cost’ to this practice that is ‘better for the community’.

But then that board was lost and the community managed to grow further on other sites and forums where grilling wasn’t a thing anymore. We came to figure out ways to function in the community, or at least in certain parts of it, without the need for grilling or going on “fluffy hunts”--we found a way to exist at least more balanced and less harmfully. So grilling, overall, became a thing of the past and became more widely recognized as not a valid, let alone good or healthy, practice in the community--it became accepted as a bad practice and it, along with similar forms of litmus testing in the community, became understood as something to avoid.

We can reinstill some kind of litmus test, be it grilling or something else, to try to fight off things like kffs (“kinning for fun” people), to try to make our experiences, identities, and communities more ‘palatable’ to those who are not part of those things, but we’d only be able to do it on a small scale, like a single or few forums. And on those forums, activity will probably eventually taper off and cause a near-death to the given forum(s) because newbies--who are a big source of activity & a key aspect of the ‘lifeblood’ that would keep the forum going--would feel too unsafe going there to be active. Plus, therian and otherkin forums are already borderlining on dying out entirely, do we really want to *assist* in that by further chasing away new people with fear and discomfort? And it would all be for naught anyway as the main places kffs hang out can’t be controlled with some litmus test or whatever--they are most prevalent on social media platforms that give them large amounts of freedom and little control over them from others. And those kffs, on those platforms, are going to be the main or first people most people are going to see in relation to therianthropy and otherkin. That’s the reality of the situation, no matter how much it sucks. That’s the way the world is at this point. We can continue to keep fighting horrendously amongst our own communities here, attacking the shit out of our ‘neighbors’ because we don’t know where else to point our frustration, worry, and rage, so we redirect it at another therian and/or otherkin site, another forum, another well-known therian/’kin, and we become a damn ouroboros devouring its own tail--and it’s THAT which will be the fall of our communities, if we let it happen.

Or, we can try to work toward better solutions. Maybe our focus shouldn’t be about sort of directly fighting off people like kffs. Maybe we should focus on garnering social atmospheres that are more prominent with acceptance, respect, and empathy and trying to honestly focus on *helping* people and nurturing positive social, communal bonds with the community members, including new people, and emphasizing good education. We should not fight with fire and rage, but with compassion and humility. We should acknowledge our limitations as individuals, as forums, as sites, and as communities, and learn to work through ways we are *not* limited. We should speak with voices that aren’t filled with disdain, rage, or defeat, but instead with hope and acceptance to be able to spread words or content of our personal experiences in being other-than-human so that others can find them and realize that THEY ARE NOT ALONE. Should we not allow more of us members--those who are willing and able--to be helpers and stewards in these communities so more therians and ‘kin don’t have to feel the dreadful ache and weight of being *alone*? These communities aren’t all about just each of us as individuals, about our own selves, but they are also about others who need these resources and socializations for their own good and wellbeing, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to just sit by idly with my mouth shut while others try to take that away (whether intentionally or not). My fangs and claws are my words, not of hate or anger, but of compassion, acceptance, and humility--they are my greatest strength and I’m ready to let them sing.

#therian #otherkin #therian community #otherkin community

[gffa]

I LOVED THIS SCENE A LOT, IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT WAS NEEDED BETWEEN THESE TWO CHARACTERS. It’s a softer final scene between the two of them, it’s not the angry one of the previous episode, where they were both coming from understandable places and yet were totally at odds with each other, that this episode still has a lot of the hurt and anger there, but they can put it aside to focus on something that matters more to both of them--Anakin. This is why Ahsoka is Obi-Wan’s Padawan as well as she’s Anakin’s.  The little touches in the episode were a great way to support that--Ahsoka twirling her saber like Obi-Wan, Maul commenting that she has Obi-Wan’s arrogance, etc.--but it’s in this moment, when they both soften towards the other because they can put aside their own issues, that they are both selfless people at the end of the day, that they’re able to end on a better note. The gifs don’t do it justice, the way Obi-Wan’s voice softens when he speaks to Ahsoka, the utter amount of care in his voice, the way her anger drains out of her (not all the way, she’s not there yet, but she lets go of much of it, when she understands that he’s reaching out to her) when he talks to her about how the Jedi aren’t perfect. And here’s the thing--they’re not, they cannot be, because perfection doesn’t exist and a huge, huge part of the problem in-universe is that they were held to impossible standards of perfection and, when they were human, the propaganda that Sidious used against them was a huge part of what killed them.  To hold them to impossible standards is to break them, that when they make any kind of mistake, then they’re suddenly total trash and an abusive group of people who never really cared about anyone else. Which is blatantly untrue, that everything they’ve done was what they saw as genuinely the best option in front of them.  And Obi-Wan has always said that the Jedi aren’t perfect, this is hardly news at all:

(Age of Republic: Obi-Wan Kenobi + Kanan: The Last Padawan) Hell, even here in “The Phantom Apprentice”, Obi-Wan’s not suddenly saying that Ahsoka was totally right and the Jedi were totally wrong, he’s just not getting on her case because that’s not what she needs to hear right now.  That’s not what she deserves and not what he wants to give her. This scene, of him saying that the Jedi Council makes mistakes, is perfectly in line with what he tells Anakin about this situation in the Crystal Crisis arc:

Mistakes were made, but she chose to leave.  She let emotions cloud her better judgement in her most critical moment.  In “Old Friends Not Forgotten” she does the same, she allows her feelings about what she wants to do to override that she’s being unfair about how the people of Coruscant need the Jedi, because the Separatists are attacking and we know what the Separatists do to planets they attack.  She’s wrong that the Jedi are just playing politics about saving the Chancellor instead of helping Mandalore, but that’s not what she needs to hear right in this moment and Obi-Wan is selfless enough, is Jedi enough, to let go of his own stuff to help her instead. And Ahsoka, for all that she’s not a Jedi, is acting very much like a Jedi (in the words of Dave Filoni, who is writing this arc), is moving towards being selfless enough to understand that, to look past her own entirely legitimately pain and see that Obi-Wan is reaching out to her.  She herself said she wasn’t being fair in “Old Friends Not Forgotten”, the last time she talked to Obi-Wan--and I think having him acknowledge her hurt, that it doesn’t matter what he thinks is the right/wrong thing here, that he genuinely cares about her and her hurt, that he recognizes that her feelings are valid, softens her a lot. At the same time, though, narrative reliability is a thing and this conversation has a really important point right smack in the middle of it:

“The Chancellor has been a great friend and mentor to Anakin.” In the previous episode, she’s angry that Obi-Wan and Anakin are going to help the Chancellor, accusing the Jedi of sucking up to him basically, rather than helping the people who “truly” need it.  Now, she finds out that they’re spying on the Chancellor and she’s like, WHAT!?  He’s been a great friend and mentor to Anakin! This see-sawing shows that her arguments aren’t fair and that it’s not really about what she actually believes, but that it’s about her hurt and anger still bubbling up out of her.  The Chancellor absolutely is not a great friend and mentor to Anakin, for Ahsoka to say this, it throws her into unreliable narrator territory (not a bad thing! it’s coming from an entirely understandable and reasonable place! and shows that she stepped outside of it for a really moment of selflessness) and thus the rest of what she says takes on new layers of meaning, on top of everything that wasn’t fair about what she said about the people of Coruscant. And I love it a lot, because this isn’t something she learned from Anakin, given that he’s not exactly great at setting aside his own pain, especially not this close to Revenge of the Sith.  But Obi-Wan absolutely is.  And Ahsoka is, too.  This is something she got from being raised as a Jedi, from being herself, and from being Obi-Wan’s Padawan, too.  That she sees him as her mentor right alongside Anakin and that’s why it was so good to have them end on a softer note, because these characters both did not deserve to live with the pain of that other scene being their final interaction with each other. They much more deserved the soft voices they use with each other and the soft looks they give each other, the initial mistrust melting away into remembering that they love each other, that they’re still family, even if they’re on different paths now.  That they are both selfless enough to connect with each other, even when something is deeply painful to them. That this isn’t about “Ha HA!  Obi-Wan or Ahsoka is totally right!” or “See, even Obi-Wan says the Jedi were totally wrong!” (They weren’t totally wrong or totally right.  Same for Ahsoka.)  But that it’s about, “These characters love each other and find a way to bridge that gap, to set aside much of it and find compassion for each other, because they are both good people when it comes down to it.” AND THEY BOTH DESERVED THAT MOMENT OF CONNECTION AND SOFTNESS WITH EACH OTHER I AM SO GLAD THEY GOT IT BECAUSE I DID NOT KNOW HOW I WAS GOING TO LIVE WITH STAR WARS IF THAT HAD BEEN THEIR FINAL SCENE TOGETHER LAST EPISODE.

#obi wan kenobi #ahsoka tano #tcw spoilers #meta #long post

[c-is-for-circinate]

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about why P5R didn't quite land for you. I had the same reaction to it, but I've never quite been able to properly articulate why the last section fell so flat.

God okay so I've tried several times to answer this, and it seems like the answer is 'I still have way too many feelings, personally, to say this in anything less than thirty pages and fifteen hours of work', because Persona 5 the original is a game I loved a lot and care about a great deal. And most of the reasons I disliked Royal feel, in my head, like a list of ways it broke some of the things I liked best about P5--which means explaining them feels like I need to explain everything I loved about the original game, which is a book in itself, complete with referents to P3, P4, Jungian psychology, the Joseph Campbell mytharc, and fuck all even knows what. And that is too much.

But today I realized that I could instead describe it from an angle of, Persona 5 Strikers succeeds really well at doing the thing I think Royal was trying to do but failed at. And that I think I can talk about in a reasonable amount of wordspace, hopefully, behind this cut because I have at least one friend who hasn't played Royal yet.

Note for reblogs/comments: I HAVE NOT FINISHED STRIKERS YET. I got through the jail that pretended to be the final jail and have not yet gone into the obviously inevitable 'ohshit wait, you mean there's something more than simple human machinations behind all of this?' dungeon. (I got stuck on a really frustrating side quest, put the game down, and then dived into Hades to avoid throwing the Switch across the room for a while--and anyone around this blog lately knows how THAT'S been going.) Please no spoilers past Okinawa!

So, one of the many, many things I really appreciated about Persona 5 was its straightforward and unashamed attitude towards abusers and their acts of violence. Because, while yes P5 is a story about the use of power and control to make others suffer, it fundamentally isn't about those abusers themselves. It's about their victims, those that survive their crimes. And this shows up repeatedly over the course of the game.

We do not give a shit why Kamoshida wanted to beat and rape his students. We really don't. Kamoshida does not deserve our attention one moment longer than it takes to make him stop. Because, ultimately, that's the goal of P5, start to end. We don't know for sure if what we're doing is fair, if it's justice, if it's questionable. What we know is that people are being hurt, badly, actively, right now this second. What we know is that victims are suffering. What we know is that we, personally, us-the-protag and us the Phantom Thieves at large, are in danger. And in those circumstances, we don't care about the abuser's side any more. We don't. We don't have the space or time or capacity to care, because that is not the point.

The point is to help the weak. To save the people who need saving, right here and now. To give others the courage to stand up on their own behalf. We're not even out to change society, not really--that's a byproduct. We are reactions. We are triage. We are important.

There's something so empowering and validating about that as a theme, y'know? In a media landscape so full of "sympathetic villains", the idea that, you know, maybe sometimes you don't have to break yourself to show compassion that might possibly heal the bad guy--that sometimes you can just make the bad guy stop hurting people--feels both refreshing and satisfying. I really appreciate it as a message! I liked it a lot!

And yes, there's nuance to that theme, and the game is not without compassion. We save Futaba, because 'make the bad guy stop hurting people', in that case, means 'make this person stop hurting herself'. We give Sae a path forwards, help her fix her own heart. Yet it's worth pointing out that in both of those cases, while we were very glad to do those things, to save those people, we also went into both of those palaces for extremely practical reasons to begin with. We needed Futaba's help. We needed Sae's help. The fact that we chose to talk Sae into a change of heart rather than simply stealing her treasure, while ultimately a very good thing for her, was absolutely a practical choice predicated on the need for her palace to still exist to save our life. And yes, we wanted to save her, for Makoto's sake--yes, we wanted desperately to save Futaba. But Sae and Futaba let themselves be helped, too, and that doesn't change the overarching themes of the story itself.

Akechi (and to some extent Okumura) would not let himself be helped. Akechi's another interesting nuance to this theme, because of all our villains, we do learn the most about what drove him to the cruelties and crimes he's committed. He's at that intersection of victim and villain, and we want to help him, as a victim--but we also know that stopping him as a villain is more important. We'd like to save him from himself if we could, because we save people from their sources of trauma, it's what we do. We regret being unable to do so. But in the end, what matters to the story is not that Akechi refused to be saved--it's that Shido and Yaldabaoth need to be stopped, for the sakes of everyone else they're hurting now and may continue to hurt in the future.

The thing is, there's space and maybe even a need for a corollary discussion of those places where victim and villain intersect. It's an interesting, pertinent, and related topic. Strikers made an entire video game about it, a really good video game. It's centered in the idea that, yes, these people need to be stopped, and we will make stopping them our priority--but they're not going after us, and that gives us some space to sympathize. Even for Konoe, who specifically targets the Phantom Thieves--compare him to Shido, who actively destroyed the lives of both Joker and Futaba, who ordered Haru's father's death, who's the entire reason the team is still dealing with the trauma of Akechi's everything. Of course the game can be sympathetic to Konoe where it can't with Shido. There's enough distance to do that.

But right--Strikers is a separate game. It's a separate conversation. It's, "last time, we talked about that, so now let's take it one step further." And that's good writing. (It's something Persona has done before, too, also really well! Persona 3 is about terrible, occasionally-suicidal depression and grief. P4 is about how you can still be hurting and need some help and therapy even if things seem ok. Related ideas, but separate conversations that need to be separate in order to be respectful and do justice to either one. P5, as a follow-up to P4, is a conversation about how, ok, changing yourself is great and all, but sometimes the problem is other people so how do you deal with that? Again, still related! Still pertinent! Still alluded to in P4, with Adachi's whole thing--but it wasn't the time or place to base a quarter of the game around it.)

So one of Royal's biggest issues, to me, is that it tries to tack on this whole new angle for discussion onto a game that was originally about something else.

Adding Maruki's palace--adding it at the end, which by narrative laws suggests that it's the true point that everything else should be building up to--suddenly adds in about a hundred new dimensions at once. It wants us to engage with "what in this abuser/manipulator's life led him to act this way?" for basically the first time all game (we'll get to Akechi later). It wants us to engage with, "if the manipulator has a really good reason or good intentions, does that mean we should forgive them?" It requires us to reflect on, "what is the difference between control and cruelty?" It asks, "okay, but if people could be controlled into being happy, would that be okay?" (Which, based on the game so far, is actually a wild out-there hypothetical! Literally not a single thing we've seen in the game suggests that could ever happen. Even the people who think being controlled is safer and easier are miserable under it. Control that's able to lead to actual happiness is completely out of left field in the context of everything we've encountered all game so far.)

That's too much! We don't have time to unpack all that! We only have an eighth of the game left! Not to mention we are also being asked to bring back questions we put to bed much earlier in the game about the morality of our own actions, in a wholely unsatisfying way. Maruki attempts to justify his mass brainwashing because "it's the same as what you're doing", and we know it isn't, but the game didn't need Maruki calling it out in order for us to get that. We already faced that question when we started changing hearts, and again several times throughout the game, and again when we found our targets in Yaldabaoth's cells. The fact that we change hearts does not mean we think "changing hearts is fine and kind and should be done to everyone, actually." Changing hearts has been firmly established in this game as an act of violence, acceptable only because it prevents further systemic violence against innocents that we must prevent. The moral question has never once been about whether it's ok to change the hearts of the innocent, only about how far it's ethical to go against individuals who are actively hurting other people. Saying "you punched that guy to keep him from shooting a child, so punching people is good and I will save the world by punching everyone!" is confusing! and weird! and not actually at all helpful to the question of, how much violence is it acceptable to use to protect others! So presenting the question that way just falls really flat.

(And right, I love Strikers, because Strikers has time to unpack all that. Strikers can give us a main bad guy who wants to control the whole world for everybody's own good, because Strikers has earned that thematic climax. It has given us sympathetic bad guys who started out wanting to control the world to protect themselves and ended up going too far. It's given us Mariko Hyodo, who wanted to control the world to protect other people and went too far. It's given us a long-running thread about police, the desire to serve, and the abuse of power that can lead to. And since we are actively trying to care for the people whose hearts we're changing in Strikers, we can open the door to questions about using changes-of-heart and that level of control to make other people happy. We can even get a satisfying conclusion out of that discussion, because we have space to characterize the difference--Konoe thinks that changing peoples' hearts means confining them, but the Phantom Thieves think it means setting them free. We have seen enough sympathetic villains that we as an audience have had the space to figure out how we feel about that, and to understand the game's perspective of "stop them AND save them, if we can possibly do both." And that message STILL rests firmly on Persona 5's message of "it is Good to do what you have to do to stop an abuser so long as you don't catch innocent people in your crossfire.")

It's worth noting that the general problem of 'asking way too many new questions and then not answering them' also applies to how Royal treats its characters, too. P5 did have unanswered questions left at the end! The biggest one, and we all knew this, was Akechi, and what actually happened to him, and how we should feel about him, and how he felt about us. That was ripe for exploring in our bonus semester, and to Royal's credit they did in fact try to bring it up, but by god did they fuck up doing it.

Akechi's probable death in the boiler room was absolutely the biggest dangling mystery of the game. It was an off-screen apparent death of a key antagonist, so all of the narrative rules we know suggested that he might still be alive and would probably come back if the story went on for long enough. So when Royal brings him back on Christmas Eve, hey, great! Question answered. Except that the situation is immediately too good to be true, and immediately leads to another mystery, which leads to a flat suspicion that something must be wrong. We spend several hours of gameplay getting sly hints that, oooh, maybe he's not really alive after all, before it's finally confirmed by Maruki: yup, he really died, if we end the illusion we'll kill him too. Okay, at least we know now. Akechi is alive right now and he's going to be dead if we do this, and that doesn't make a ton of sense because every other undead person disappeared when the person who wished for them realized they were fake but at this point we'll take it. So we take down Maruki, and okay, Akechi really is dead! Probably! We're fairly sure! Aside from our lingering doubts!

And then we catch a glimpse of maybe-probably-could be him through the train window, and I just want to throw something, because come on.

Look, it is just a fact of storytelling: the more times you make an audience ask 'wait, is this character dead or aren't they?', the less they will care, until three or four reversals later you will be hard pressed to find anybody who gives a shit. Royal does this like four different times, and every iteration comes with even less certainty than the last. By the end, we somehow know even less than we did when we started! Did Akechi survive the boiler room to begin with and Maruki just didn't know? Or was Maruki lying to try and manipulate us further? Or was he actually dead and then his strength of will when Maruki's reality dissolved was enough to let him survive after all? Is that even actually him out the train window?

Where is he going! What is he doing! How did any of this happen! What is going on! We all had these questions about Akechi at the end of the original P5, and the kicker is that Royal pretends like it's going to answer them only to go LOL JK NO. It's frustrating and it's dissatisfying and it annoys me.

The one Akechi question that Royal doesn't even bother to ask, though, let alone leave ambiguous, is how does the protagonist feel about him? The entire emotional weight of the third semester rests on the protagonist caring about Akechi, Sumire, and Maruki. Maruki's the person we're supposed to sympathize with even as we try to stop him. Sumire's the person we're trying to save from herself. And Akechi is our bait--is, we are told, the one thing our protagonist wished for enough to actualize it in this world himself. Akechi's the final lure to accept Maruki's deal. Akechi's survival is meant to be tempting.

For firm Akechi fans, this probably worked out fine--the game wanted to insist that the protagonist cared for Akechi the same way the player did. For those of us who're a little more ambivalent, though (or for the many and valid people who hated him), this is a super sour note. Look, one of the Persona series' strengths is the way it lets players choose to put their time and emotional investment into an array of different characters, so the main story still has weight even if there's a couple you don't care about that much. It has always done this. The one exception, from P3 all the way through P4 to here and now, is Nanako Dojima, and by god she earned that distinction. I have never met a person who played Persona 4 who didn't love Nanako. Nanako is a neglected six-year-old child who is brave and strong enough to take care of herself and all of the housework but who still tries not to cry when her dad abandons her again and lights up like the sun when we spare her even the tiniest bit of time and attention. It is impossible not to care for Nanako. Goro Akechi is not Nanako.

And yet third semester Royal doesn't make sense if your protagonist doesn't feel linked to Akechi. The one question, out of all the brand new questions Royal throws out there, that it decides to answer all by itself--and it's how you as a player and your protagonist ought to feel about an extremely complex and controversial character. What the fuck, Royal. What the fuck.

In conclusion, I'll leave you with this. I played the original Persona 5 in March and April of 2017, as an American, a few months after the 2016 election and into the term of our then president. It felt painfully timely. A quick calendar google early on indicated that the game's 20XX was almost certainly 2016, and the closer our plot got to the in-game November leadup to an election destined to be dominated by a foul and charming man full of corruption and buoyed up by his own cult of personality, the more I wanted to laugh/cry. It felt timely. It felt important. It felt right.

I went through Royal (in LP form on youtube, not having a platform to play it on) in summer of 2020, with a hook full of face masks by my front door and protests about racial tension and local policing that occasionally turned into not-quite-riots close enough to hear at night if I opened the windows of my apartment. The parts of the game that I remembered felt as prescient and meaningful as ever, if not even more so. The new parts felt baffling. Every single evil in the game felt utterly, painfully real, from the opening moments of police brutality to the idea of a country led by a guy who probably would use his secret illegitimate teenage son as a magical assassin if the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it. Yaldabaoth as the cumulative despair of an entire population who just wanted somebody to take over and make things be okay--yes, yes, god, in summer of 2020? With streets full of people refusing to wear masks and streets full of people desperate for change? Of course. Of course that holy grail of safety should be enticing. Of course it should be terrifying.

And then Maruki. Maruki, who was just so far outside the scope of anything I could relate to the rest of the game or my own life. Because every single other villain in the rest of Persona is real. From the petty pandering principal to the human-trafficking mob boss. The corrupt politicians and the manmade god of cultural desire for stability. And this game was trying to tell me that the very biggest threat of all of them, the thing that was worse than the collective force of all society agreeing to let this happen because succumbing was easier than fighting back--that the very biggest threat of all was that the world could be taken over by some random nobody's misguided attempts to help?

No. Fuck no. I don't buy it. Because god, yes, I have seen the pain and damage done on a tiny and personal and very real level by the tight-fisted control of someone trying to help, it never looked like this. Not some ascended god of a bad therapist. All the threats to the world, and that's the one I'm supposed to take seriously? This one man is more of a threat than the fundamental human willingness to be controlled?

Sorry, but no. Not for me. Not in this game. Not in this real-life cyberpunk dystopian apocalypse.

#c plays persona #driveby meta attack #p5 royal spoilers #p5 strikers spoilers #holy crap I did it #I actually wrote a semicoherent essay of a length I'm willing to put on Tumblr #about my problems with this game #I have been trying on and off for MONTHS #I wanted to like Royal SO BADLY #it makes me SO UPSET #anyway #now back to your regularly scheduled Hades blogging #asked and answered #Anonymous

[queenlokibeth]

THANK YOU so much for posting your comments about the scene with Bucky's arm... I could not agree more. I've seen so many garbage takes people are posting about that scene. Like, no, it is NEVER okay to mess with someone's aid or prosthetic! Disturbing that so many people literally do not understand... An interesting swap as an "ableism test" is to pretend the prosthetic was a flesh arm. Mind exercise for people who are NOT understanding the implications of that scene for people w disabilities!

Thank you for your message anon! It means a lot. I kind of added my comments thinking they would go mostly unnoticed but I've been so happy to see how well received they have been and I'm so glad that others are finding validation in that, too.

Ableism is alive and well and unfortunately it doesn't get spoken about in fandom/regarding media as much as it should. One thing that personally really bothered me was people turning this into the oppression olympics as dismissing us criticising that scene under the guise of calling our criticism racist, when race was never involved at all. Racism and ableism can coexist, just like any other issues, and it's absolutely not right for either party to be silenced due to a lack of empathy, arrogance, ignorance, and entitlement from some individual people. Falling into this extremism of "this is a white man therefore he can't have any issues and no viewer is allowed to relate to his experiences" is extremely dangerous.

I'd say that most of us speaking up about this scene are disabled ourselves, and/or work/live closely with other disabled people, and are speaking from our own experiences. Getting our comments dismissed as this being just pointless whining from Bucky stans is violent and shows a scary fundamental lack of compassion for other people. One of the main points that this series has shown so far is that EVERYONE is flawed. All the characters are complex and they all have faults, and this includes Ayo and the Dora Milaje. No one is "cancelling" them at all. I still think they're fantastic characters and want to see more of them, but as a disabled person it's also within my right to discuss the media I consume in comparison to issues that I have first-hand knowledge with.

I've seen the comparison with a flesh arm, and while to ME it makes sense, I'm afraid abled people focus on a different part: they'll focus on "ripping out someone's arm is painful and horrifying!" Which, yes absolutely, but it's ALSO incapacitating, a violation of your body, a shock, and it brings a multitude of instantaneous and long term effects, and that's the part that's similar to getting a prosthesis or aid ripped off.

A big part of being physically disabled is the associated mental struggle produced my environmental ableism. From my own experience and that of other physically disabled people that I know plus prosthesis users I've worked with, those mental struggles of feeling isolated, lacking autonomy, frustration, etc. More often than not come from the way people and spaces interact with your disability, not necessarily because of your physical limitations themselves. For example, if I'm in a wheelchair and can't enter a place I want/need to go to because it's not accessible, I'll feel pretty frustrated, a bit annoyed, discouraged, and sometimes a bit embarrassed because I might need to ask someone to go in for me (lack of autonomy), but if you notice, none of those struggles stem directly from "oh I can't stand today", they come from "wow i really just exist in a place full of obstacles". This is where a lot of the impact of removing someone's assistive device comes from, and I don't expect a lot of abled people to understand this. I have had my crutches taken away while i was sitting down, with no prior warning. It's terrifying. On a lighter note, to the people saying "the arm is a weapon!!" (It's not) I'll just let you know that I know way too many crutch-users who have used them to beat someone, usually someone who's trying to take then away as a "joke". I hope these nayseyers get hit by someone's assistive device.

I personally became (mostly subconsciously) a fan of Bucky BECAUSE he's disabled. As I mentioned in another post, this character came into my life at the same time as I got my diagnosis, and while i HAVE been disabled my entire life and will be until I die, coming to terms with accepting that that's what i AM (stigma, shame, you name it) has been a long road, to the point where the first time that I got the courage to call myself disabled was only a few months ago. I can't possibly tell you how hard these past years would have been without representation, without one of my fav characters being disabled. I literally got the courage to start saving up for splints (they're expensive lmao i'll get them one day) because younger-me decided that they WOULD look cool on LIKE BUCKY'S ARM when I wore them.

Anyways, thanks anon ily, sorry for the bible lenght response, i just have SO many thoughts on this.

#bucky #tfatws #anon #ask

[concerningwolves]

Hey I'm doing a short story for class about an autistic girl who discovers she have telekinesis and I want to knows how to portray her properly and how beint autustic affect her powets with makint autism sounds baf

Hi anon! I’m very sorry if I’m answering this too late for you; I barely had time to even look at my inbox in October and November, and then when I got time to do so this month, I got overwhelmed by the backlog. Nonetheless, I’ll answer this and hope that even if it’s too late for your original purpose, something in it will help you (/help anyone else who reads this) :]

AUTISM, SUPERPOWERS & FAIR REPRESENTATION

Okay, so, the basic answer to “how not to make autism sound bad” is approach the story with compassion and/or empathy – but that’s a very broad answer and probably not overly helpful for specifics. I’ll start with the “how to represent autism well” part and then break down the superpower-specific stuff from there.

1) Autism should be an integral part of your characters’ personhood, but not their entire personality

As an autistic, I struggle to define where my autism ends and my personhood (i.e., my sense of the “self”) begins, because they’re so deeply entwined with one another.  Autism is a condition that alters how I think and interact with the world, and therefore profoundly impacts how I perceive both myself and the things around me. That doesn’t mean, however, that my only personality trait is autism. It all gets very convoluted and existential – would I still be ‘me’ if you removed autism? What is ‘me’? Is it even fair to think of autism as a separate Thing? – but it is worth considering if you want to get inside your autistic character’s head.

A trap that allistic creators tend to fall into is “this character likes [X] / does [X] because they are autistic”. For example, I once saw someone say that their OC likes blue because it’s a calming colour and therefore sensory-safe. This is a valid process on its own: I also like pale blue (+ other pastel shades) because it’s a sensory-safe colour! But where many allistics fall down is in not considering that an autistic character’s likes, dislikes and hobbies don’t have to relate to their autism.

Although the show has its flaws, I do think that Sam Gardener from Netflix’s Atypical is a positive example of an autistic character just liking something because they like it. His special interest is all to do with penguins and antartic wildlife/explorations, and he also enjoys art as a hobby because... he just does. That’s not to say these things don’t intersect – he takes a scientific illustration class in college precisely because it combines two things he likes; it’s also fair to say that autism gives him an edge in drawing because autism brain is excellent at grasping theory/technicalities. But ultimately it’s nice to have an autistic character whose interests and personality traits go beyond the stereotypical special interest.

For more on representing autistic characters, check out [this post] where I go into a bit more depth. (NOTE: that post is on my list of things that I want to revise/rewrite/flesh out, so it might change soon, but the basic stuff is still the same).

2) Autism isn’t inherently “bad” – but that doesn’t mean it’s without issues, either

Autism is not the devastating tragedy that neurotypicals like to present, but it does come with its own difficulties and pitfalls that you should acknowledge if you want to write a well-rounded autistic character. There’s often discourse/debates on my dash about whether it’s fair to call autism a disability. I’d say it is – there are definitely aspects of autism that are disabling, i.e., sensory overload, burnout, trouble communicating, etc. – but it isn’t a disability in the way that allistics/abled people think.  

Some aspects of autism are “double edged”, in that they have useful and troublesome sides. Speaking for myself, hyper-empathy means that I’m good at grasping why emotions Do The Thing, which is incredibly useful in filling in gaps in my social sense! But. It also means that I struggle to draw a line between my own emotions and someone else’s, and am simply awful at creating healthy emotional boundaries. As the writer, you create good representation by showing both sides. Let your character have meltdowns! Let them have trouble in social situations! Let them get burnt out or overwhelmed! But also make sure to show that this doesn’t make them inherently burdensome to other characters, and explore the good/neutral aspects of autism, too.

3) So, how would all of this impact superpowers?

A lot of that depends on your world’s magic/superpower system. Some things to consider are:

Does your character need to be concentrating?

Do emotions influence how controlled the power is?

Does the power take a physical or mental toll on the user?

etc.

These are laws you ought to think about as part of worldbuilding, regardless of a characters’ neurotype or ability, but I do believe that autism will have an impact on how a character interacts with their powers. For example, many autistic people have difficulty with fine motor skills and spatial awareness, either as part of autism or due to a co-existing condition [1]. This could theoretically cause trouble if a character needs to gauge personal space/use spatial perception when using telekinesis to direct objects. Where emotions effect a power, emotional dysregulation or rejection sensitive dysphoria could also come into play by disrupting a characters’ concentration or control. 

Make sure to show your character working with or around these sorts of issues, and keep a balance between the pros and cons. If sensory input throws off her concentration, what are ways she can get around that? Earplugs for noise, dark glasses for light sensitivity, seamless clothes, headphones... etc etc. On the more negative side, I can only imagine the chaos I might cause during a meltdown if I had telekinesis: objects flying everywhere, lightbulbs bursting, general pandemonium. That said, telekinesis would be great if I could levitate myself and just hang there without any sensory input. Also useful if I needed to get stuff and didn’t have the energy to move because of burnout, or if I could use telekinesis to “weigh down” a blanket on top of me during meltdowns. There are some really fun possibilities here! 

Another way to avoid showing autism as a burden/something bad is to give your character a support network and/or accommodations in the story. Have your character find ways to work around issues just like a neurotypical person would, yes, but also have other characters be understanding and ready to help. Thriving support systems are just as important as the autistic character themself.

Basically, address the fact that some aspects of autism are difficult to cope with/require aid but don't overtly focus on that, you know? Your character can get upset, frustrated, or be resigned. She can beat herself up! All autistic people live with this feeling of "not good enough". But show her overcoming this, show her with a good support system, and show her being a person as complex and developed as any other character.

FOOTNOTE(S)

[1] general practise in diagnostic circles is to avoid diagnosing with things like dyspraxia if another developmental disorder is present (i.e., autism), but we’re still learning about what the big ice-cream bar of autism actually covers. What traits an autistic person has can vary hugely from one person to another.

#Anonymous #autistic characters #writing advice #writeblr #superpowers & disabilities

[chumpmagump]

24 things you've learned about your 24th year on this planet. 1. After having lots of trouble with love and loss, I've learned I will be ok. Remember you are growing into the woman you are are piece by piece.. reclaiming the person you were before the rest of them thought it was okay to take you away from yourself and you thought it was okay to let them. Many will come and go, but you dont have to lose a piece of yourself with them. Be strong, don't let them. 2. It is okay to love someone but not like them. It is okay to have compassion and empathy yet still hold your ground that you deserve better treatment. Compassion is not synonymous with lack of boundaries. 3. After talking to your therapist and doing some hardcore reflection you know you show traits of bipolar disorder or borderline personality. Your therapist thinks its bipolar, you're pretty sure its BPD.. this hurts because BPD is stigmatised to the shit house - you would almost rather have bipolar. You work in a hospital where BPD presentations are rampant and you diagnose them in your assessments a lot. Your coworkers like to say things like '' we got another borderline up in ED...'' as if its a massive inconvenience. You feel kind of weird being a 'quiet' borderline because you function quite well but know you have this fucked up secret that you keep from others for fear of judgement. Your behaviour isnt affecting your functioning enough to warrant a diagnosis. But that doesnt mean your experience isnt true. You're good at recognising when your triggered and where it originates from, and actively pull back more and more from impulsive decisions. You can sit with your emotion at times and you've stopped abusing phenergan and have been self harm clean for almost a year now? so yay for you regulating more of yourself! 4. You realise searching for validation only leads to experiences of invalidation. Stop doing it. 5. You're good at empathising to a point where you find it hard to be angry at others for long, you sometimes tolerate too much because you can reason with the persons reasoning for acting the way they are. You shouldnt mistake this for respect, because its not. You still need self-respect. 6. Making spontaneous choices has led to some new experiences, like changing jobs, moving towns, meeting new people. You've learned you've missed out a lot in your last 5 years of 20 hood because of fear of rejection/anxiety/ unsafe situation phobia. but now thats all you want to do, you fear staying static for too long more than you do change. You're ready for new exciting things. 7. Friendships matter way more than romance ever will. Build your friendships and you will always feel connected and OK no matter what the status of your dating life is. 8. Going for solitude car trips with your music blaring, singing meaningfully, on a road in the dark to no particular, with no particular deadline is your muse. You spend a lot of time in your thoughts and with yourself, and sometimes you imagine being in company when the loneliness hits. But funnily enough when company does finally arrive, you yearn for the space you had with yourself. Honour that time. 9. What you make of this life literally doesnt fucking matter. You will be born again. You will never get another chance to be in this body, with this family, with these friends, in this place, at this time though. Do whatever you can to enrich your experience and dont worry about if other people are having a better time. Concern yourself with your own experience. 10. You validate yourself. Stop asking your friends what you think you should do about a situation, dont feel the need to tell them every situaiton thats going on with you to hear their perspective. Listen to your own voice. You dont listen to her enough. 11. You dont actually have to put up with people being rude to you anymore, you can voice that things bother you. You're not quite there when it comes to friends you dont know too well.. or family you know blow up easily, but you're less of a people pleaser somewhat and i'm proud

of you for that effort.

12. You realise you need to stop seeking validation that others have hurt you. If it hurts it hurts. Simple as that. 13. Trust a person by their actions waaaaaaaaaaaay more than their words. And give a person 6 months. They tend to send their representative first for a while. 14. Sometimes you dream up people without knowing first who they are. Its ok to do this but don't be surprised when they dont fit the version you had of them in your head. Sometimes living in fantasy is far more intoxicating than what comes to fruition. Sometimes i wish i only knew some people for the period of time where they were warm to my heart.

15. Keep going to therapy, its doing amazing things and slowly but surely helping you change your procedurally learned patterns of behaviour including the desire and panic to want to fix social relationships that sometimes shouldnt be fixed. If someone did something shitty to you, and they are upset with YOU , for whatever reason- this does not mean what they did to you is void. It may even mean they are deflecting and gaslighting you. Get out of there and you know dont like goodbyes of any kind. so in this case slowly drop off contact. 16. people cant read your mind with how your feeling, so tell them.. what they do with that information is on them after that.

17. you dont have to take pictures of everything. You will remember the experience more if you dont. 18. Drink your damn coffee!! its not going to stain your teeth anymore. you are so diligent with your skin and teeth care, you deserve to live a little.

19. Dont have sex with friends, just dont. its messy.

20. Just because someone doesnt choose you, doesnt mean you arent good enough. It means they're blind, theyre not meant for you, or better doors are opening. Sometimes you need to shut a few doors for some to open. Trust the process. 21. Its time to start doing the things yu have said you were going to do for years. Its time to sign up for that dance class, its time to start writing again (and you have been!), its time to start stretching (and you have been!), its time to finish your courses (and you have been chipping away!). The best thing is you are so motivated right now to do all of these things. They no longer feel like words, they feel like happenings. 22. Your body and mind is so much stronger than you think. You are managing a 23 + caseload, and working across emergency and intake. You sometimes dont have a lunch break and work 9 hour days at times. You still have the ability to relay information and type notes at great speed, connect with clients at a great depth and come to eat, shower and have been dedicating time to study and friends. Your body is a machine, and you are so much more robust than you give yourself credit for. People look at you and see a small petite typical white girl, but you are strength! 23. You have learned sex can be a safe and very enjoyable experience this year very recently. Even though the partner turned out to be a careless character emotionally within the friendship, you were able to experience what it was like to be that connected with someone sensually in such an intense way which was a first for you. Now you know what kind of sex you like - well you always did but now you know it exists. Good for you.

24. You spend the most time by yourself with yourself. Validate your own experiences and try to interrupt the fantasy that you should be waiting for someone else to enhance or witness it. i know you like to think about what it would be like to sing in the car with someone next to you, or to laugh about a ridiculous vine and hear someone elses laughter drown out your own, or to dance around your house and have someone watch you in awe... but its okay to be your own witness. This is one is probably the hardest ones of them all... All you've ever wanted is to feel seen. You fantasize about it all time, you live in fantasy because atleast you can always feel seen there. You're not so sure if you put yourself out there you'll leave feeling more discarded and invisible than before. This way its safer. It's time to witness you. It's time for 25. A year full of spontaneity, new experiences, enhanced friendships, self validation and enormous growth.

It's finally time to stop hiding from people, pleasurable experiences and desire.

It's time for 25.

#august 2021 #birthday #reflections #journal #25th

[dear-kumari]

hey i’m not disappointed by ur answer at all! and i agree, i liked her when she was first introduced, character design and the way she challenged yona, i just also love the page when she attacked joodoh for how it was drawn and joodoh’s expression lmao. i think it’s unfair for ppl to think she’s strong now bc i think it was clear she had a lot of fortitude the way she carried herself and offered soo won her deal at the beginning. i remember ppl thot it was silly she didn’t have a backup plan, but rly think she just couldn’t even think abt him turning her down bc she was sure he was lonely for family like her. she wouldn’t allow herself to consider the possibility. i do hope her frustrations w yona aren’t completely brushed aside in the future, bc i LOVED her whole speech abt that and def felt her pain. she was so sympathetic already, i’d be pissed too her in situation. the way i saw it, she knows she’s going to die young, and she wanted to at least die w dignity/secure position of power that’s HERS, not as a concubine. have all that she can bc her life’s gonna be short. and what’s wrong with that? it’s not like she had grand evil plans to use the dragons for, she doesn’t have enough time. i don’t want it to go straight to understanding yona’s had some hard times, bc that doesn’t change the point. her being angry w soo won now feels like a shift from that, but she could be angry w them both kusanagi doesn’t have to choose. basically, i rly hope her role can still be to push yona’s thinking abt hiryuu, since they’re both at the castle now still and someone has to bring her ho-chan....

(Anon, you have finally motivated me to figure out how people have been sending these insanely long asks lately, and for that I must thank you.)  I understand what you’re saying and I guess I do agree with a lot of it.  As nice as the sentiment is, though, I doubt she’s gonna be able to keep up the same level of animosity towards Yona as she has towards Suwon.  One thing I loved about her character at the start was that she didn’t owe Yona anything, unlike Suwon who always has the fact of his betrayal hanging on his mind no matter how valid his feelings and actions are — but then Kusanagi ruined that element of her character not three chapters in because, hey, why let a strong, compelling, motivated female character just exist independently of the protagonist’s divine influence, amirite?  It’s not like she could’ve negotiated her own imprisonment or anything when things went sideways, demonstrating her competency and quick thinking as a member of a cutthroat court or anything like that — nope, Yona has to step in with her Moral Compass™, Jaeha has to save her while she’s on her knees (I hate it here lol), and Yun has to show her the compassion she’s never received to melt her Ice Queen heart.  I think the stuff with Yun could’ve been fine and heartwarming on its own, but the whole conga line of “look how awesome and perfect the HHB is uwu” just doesn’t give her that room to be resentful of Yona’s ignorance without the narrative throwing what she owes Yona back in her face.  So … no, I think Kusanagi has already chosen, and poorly at that.

Can she still push Yona to think about her role as Hiryuu?  Sure, with time, I think the broad lessons Yona needs to learn about divine power and the gods will finally sink in.  But the framing is already super reductive, so I don’t think it’ll necessarily conclude with Yona needing to be critical of her own actions.  This is probably gonna end with the “wow this illness sucks”/ “okay then I’ll fix it” *fixes it* scenario that I expressed concern over before, one that nominally solves the problem but doesn’t actually take into account Yona’s personal relationship with power and responsibility.  If we’re just building up to Yona as a selfless savior of humanity, then I’m sorry, but I feel bad for both of these young women — Meinyan for being denied agency and dignity, and Yona for being denied dynamism and nuance.

#Kumari answers #Anonymous #Akatsuki no Yona #Yona of the Dawn #Meinyan #Suwon #Yona #Hiryuu #Boy … Protagonist-Centered Morality really does poison everything it touches huh #gals can't even have themselves interesting arcs without getting derailed #Anyway sorry if ppl don't like seeing these long anons on their dash/in the tags #I don't mind getting long anons but I'm gonna make a tag for y'all to filter if you so choose #and it'll be. uhh #Long Anon: The Anon That Is Long #yeah. #Kumari abuses the tagging system