#this isnt some radical idea

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Love is Stored in the Cat: A Nepeta Leijon Character Study

I guess these are a series now! I also have a request for Feferi in my inbox that I'll get around to eventually.

SO! Dear, sweet Nepeta.

Nepeta is the troll that is most against the existence of the hemocaste.

I believe the Ultimate Self speech was originally going to be from her, not Davepetasprite^2.

She's bad at shipping.

These all make her extremely impurrtant!!!

So furst of all, I'm going to start with the same disclaimer as my Eridan essay (go read that first!!! It sets up a lot of ideas that I'm expanding on here), which is that the things Hussie says are going to be lowered in value, because he likes to play coy about plot stuff. I'm also not counting anything but the actual text as canon, and even with in that text, I'm counting everything after GAME OVER as soft canon - a suggestion of what would have been, often truncated for time, often a deliberate middle finger to the shitty fandom.

Okay, so with that squared away!

Nepeta Says Fuck The Hemocaste

I'm not going to bother doing a deep dive on Nepeta's characterization, because fur the most part, I think the fandom more or less gets her right - she wears her heart (h33h33) on her sl33ve, after all! She's a very sweet little catgirl who loves roleplay and shipping, who is also a vicious hunter of wild beasts and lives in a cave. She's very nice and friendly, but has a tough streak and a spine.

She also says fuck the hemocaste, why does that even exist:

CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!

This is a radical stance not outright shared by any of the other trolls. Aradia calls highbloods "hateful sn0bs" that she and Tavros shouldn't have "ever had anything t0 d0 with", the highbloods are, of course, all casteist to varying degrees, and even Karkat seems fairly accepting of the class divide, at one point taunting Vriska that her rejection from the blue team is "ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY". Not to mention his long-held dream of becoming a threshecutioner.

Even Feferi, despite saying to Eridan that "W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!!", is actually perfectly comfortable with the caste system's existence, comparing having to stop using her royal typing quirk to "peasant-IFICATING" herself - and let's not forget that a Beforus under her rule had its caste system 100% intact.

This means that Nepeta is the ONLY troll who has said, in no uncertain terms, that the caste system should not exist. It's stupid, it's bad, and it doesn't meowtter!

AND SHE'S RIGHT.

But she's never able to fully express this opinion, which brings us to:

A COMPLICKATED RELATIONSHIP WITH EQUIUS

Now, before I say anything, I must insist that I do believe these two work as good moirails. That does not, however, stop them from being 13, and therefore, being poor to each other the way 13-year-olds sometimes are. I don't think they should break up; I think they should re-examine certain dynamics, and I think they need some space to breathe apart from each other.

Equius has a lot of problems, which I won't get into overmuch here, because... that's a whole essay on its own (are you people seeing a trend yet). But with regards to Nepeta specifically, he's extremely controlling and protective, to the point where she's a little scared of him before the game begins:

AC: :33 < well it does sound like it will be a lot of fun but i think i should get purrmission first GC: BL4R!!!!! GC: TH4TS SO STUP1D GC: H3S NOT TH3 BOSS OF YOU AC: :33 < i know! AC: :33 < but still im kind of scared of him and i think purrhaps its best to just run it by him first so there isnt a kerfuffle about it or anything

She's also afraid to tell him about her crush on Karkat, since she knows he doesn't like Karkat:

AC: :33 < well AC: :33 < i have never told anybody this not even my moirail AC: :33 < heh, actually hes the LAST guy i might tell, he so wouldnt appurrve X33 AC: :33 < but yes i have liked somebody for quite some time, but alas he doesnt know it

By the time they end their game, she's gotten over this fear, seeing as she spends many hours curled up with Equius in a pile of robotics parts, but it still must be noted that they have some issues in their relationship that were never resolved, primarily on Equius's end. What this means for Nepeta, however, is that in addition to setting her up as the most outright anti-classism troll, the comic sets her up to be socially isolated due to her moirail's paranoia about letting her associate with both lowbloods (seeing them as bad influences) OR other highbloods, seeing them as dangerous.

He's not entirely wrong - his refusal to allow her to participate in FLARP kept her from winding up entangled in the horrible chain of revenge, as Tavros alludes:

AT: iT'S PROBABLY FOR THE BEST, AT: tHAT YOU LISTEN TO HIM, AC: :33 < i dont know AC: :33 < you think so? AT: wELL, AT: iF YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM BEFORE, AT: yOU MIGHT HAVE PLAYED GAMES WITH US BEFORE, AT: aND SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU, AC: :33 < hmm purrhaps

But he's still wrong. And it's probably an uncontrolled manifestation of his Heir of Void abilities - he's both consciously and unconsciously hiding her from other people.

This isn't to say she doesn't stand up for herself! Many of her discussions with Equius are pseudo-arguments, and she does get her way often enough, managing to get him to roleplay with her, and managing to get him back in the roboti% pile to talk about his feelings about Aradia. She also talks to the humans explicitly against Equius's orders, although she's keeping it a sneakret from him:

NEPETA: :33 < but equius already furbid me from doing that :(( NEPETA: :33 < not that i am listening to him, but shhhhh! :33 KARKAT: WAIT, HE DID? KARKAT: OK, THEN AS YOUR LEADER I ORDER YOU TO RP WITH THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. BE AS OBNOXIOUS ABOUT IT AS YOU CAN. NEPETA: :33 < yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

But the fact that she has to tiptoe around him like this speaks to them having issues in their relationship that go unexamined and unresolved, especially since it's clear that Nepeta really would like to be friends with more people, were Equius not getting in her way. So, even though I do think they are good moirails for each other - they clearly genuinely, deeply care about one another. But they could use some relationship counselling.

In fact, Jasprosesprite^2 outright calls her lonely:

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Or the girl who likes ships! Cause they made her less lonely. ;3

So, she's anti-hemocaste and lonely, two character traits that were set up and never resolved. And beclaws this is Nepeta, in her honor, I'm going to talk about a third:

Her Unrequited Crush On Karcat

She has the BIGGEST flushed crush on Karkat. It's seen on her shipping wall twice, once with the word OTP on it.

And, despite never discussing it with her moirail, Nepeta mentions it once to Jaspersprite, and once to Jasprosesprite^2.

Now, I'm not really here to debate on the validity of KatNep - I think it's fine, even if I don't personally ship it, and don't personally think it would work out (there are lots of indications that they wouldn't work out, including Jasprosesprite^2 outright saying so). However, her crush on Karkat is both complicated and creates some interesting setups for her character. I am going to discuss it fairly critically either way, so KatNep shippers have been warned.

A lot of her feelings about Karkat - and about shipping in general - wind up being heavily interlinked with her status as a Hero of Heart, so I'm going to expand on it more there. But what I will note in this section is the fact that, despite Nepeta insisting twice that she doesn't think Karkat knows about her crush on her:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < it was karkat NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but i never told him and im pretty sure he never found out how i felt!

He tooootally did:

KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME. KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK?

Interpret that how you will for shipping purposes, but I want to propose that this is a reflection of their statuses as Heart and Blood players. Heart, despite its players' obsessions with romance, is not the romance aspect, Blood is. Karkat displays this very same romantic acumen when he tells Dave that he's known Terezi and Gamzee were a thing for a long time, despite everyone else on the meteor trying to keep it a secret from him. Heart is, instead, about identity, feelings, motivations, souls, and self. In other words:

Nepeta Is Kind Of Bad At Shipping

Let's take a look at those shipping walls.

Let's break this down a little. Nepeta's ships are not entirely wrong, but even the successful ones are kind of wrong. Here's what I mean. We've already discussed how Equius and Nepeta's moirallegiance has some... issues in it. If we go down her list of ships that actually do happen, most of them have some issues in them!

Aradia expresses her regret for getting together with Equius in the Ministrife. Kanaya and Rose suffer some major relationship problems when Rose starts drinking, to the point Karkat feels a need to step in as an auspice. Karkat and Gamzee fail, as Karkat is not calmed by Gamzee, and Gamzee stops listening to Karkat. And while Sollux and Feferi seem to be fairly healthy, after they both wind up in the Furthest Ring, he's pretty much always next to Aradia - he and Feferi don't even get to exchange words with each other once they're in the Furthest Ring. Purrsonally, I think he and Feferi are meant to end up as moirails, but shhhh.

So what's happening here? Well, this goes back to her identity as a Heart player. Heart is concerned with feelings and motivations.

They simply want to understand the one thing we all are stuck with for our entire lives, i.e. our own minds. Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story. That isn't to say Heart-bound don't care deeply for their friends and allies; they just have a tendency to assume that everyone is as concerned with identity as they are.

Nepeta's shipping has also been associated with her isolation and loneliness. When you put this together, it implies that Nepeta's shipping is about her desire to understand others, and much of her ships are based on one of the parties having feelings, regardless of compatibility, feasibility, or broader implications. After all, despite the fact that she has pretty terrible romantic acumen, she IS able to instinctively identify that Eridan's advances toward her were insincere:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well ok i guess eridan hit on me a few times NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but his advances always struck me as cr33py and insincere

And that Karkat secretly LOVES and RESPECTS his friends:

JASPROSESPRITE^2: On the contrary Nepeta. You deserve someone who will RESPECT and ADORE you. NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well... yes NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i always hoped to find someone like that some day NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i dunno maybe youre right but in spite of whatever problems he might have i always felt like i saw something in him that made me think he could be that purrson!

Or knowing that Equius loves to play games, and still feels sad about Aradia exploding:

AC: :33 < i s33 right through your stupid act, who are you trying to kid! AC: :33 < look how you go out of your way to use words that have x's in them so that you can use your silly purrcent signs AC: :33 < or use these absurd words that you can shoehorn a '100' into, even if its not strictly replacing 'loo'!!! AC: :33 < you are so transpurrent AC: :33 < i can tell you like to play games, d33p down you are a guy who likes to play games! AC: :33 < i can smell a guy who likes to play games from so fur away with this nose, you have no idea X33

NEPETA: :33 < she was so happy, just like she used to be, and she said she would s33 you soon! EQUIUS: D --> That's a nice thought, and thank you for sharing it EQUIUS: D --> But it was only a dream, and will surely have no consequence in reality NEPETA: :33 < equius? NEPETA: :33 < are those f33lings i an detecting with my wiggly whiskery nose? EQUIUS: D --> Maybe

Because feelings, and not relationships, are her actual domain.

And speaking of Heart powers...

Nepeta and the Ultimate Self

So from this point forward, I'm going to assume you're more or less agreeing with my take that at some point after Game Over, Hussie - for whatever reason - gave up on his original ending, and wound up truncating his ideas so he could finish the comic faster. I go more into detail about that here.

So, in this hypothetical original ending, I firmly believe that the speech about the Ultimate Self would have come from Nepeta. First, let's take a look at what the "Ultimate Self" entails, as it appears within the comic:

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self... like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but in your physical form there are all these partitions in your mind that prevent you from remembering any of that which makes your existence f33l totally linear DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < which is probably for the best! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in a regular body s33ing all that would be too overwhelming ... DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and after it sinks in for a while you start coming to this understanding of a greater self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe i "got it" quicker though because of the two people i was and their aspects DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < understanding heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < nepeta never got to make much headway with her aspect but shes finally gettin the chance DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < the time aspect is all about running into different versions of yourself so you kinda get confronted with it in a really literal way that can be disturbing DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < obviously davesprite stuggled with that too, but now its fine DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < hes fr33 from worrying about it all and what it means for his place in reality DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < because he can s33 now all his selves have relevance in painting the full picture of who he truly is DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im not COMPLETELY sure because im not like some sort of ASPECT MASTER but DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < my avian slash feline intuition tells me that all roads will lead you here eventually DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < gaining the d33pest possible understanding of any aspect will bring you to the same final conclusion about your ultimate self

Now, I believe - and I hope you'll agree - that it's kind of lame, narratively, for Davesprite to have been set up with so much angst about not being the "real Dave," and for Nepeta to have all her issues with loneliness and shyness, and for these two specific iterations of each other to have never interacted, but suddenly getting double-prototyped fixes all of their problems, and they achieve Ultimate Selfhood despite being two total strangers to each other. So let's instead break down the more salient points about what Ultimate Selfhood entails, divorced from the fact that it's Davepetasprite^2 doing the narrating:

Every player in the game possesses an "Ultimate Self," an ultimate culmination of all their experiences and memories, specifically referred to as a "persona"

Normally, people are not aware of this, because it would be too overwhelming to deal with so many memories and iterations of each other.

Everyone will achieve Ultimate Selfhood eventually as the final culmination of their understanding of their aspect.

Heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self.

Let's talk about that last one some more, and by that I mean, let's see what Calliope has to say about it:

TT: I don't know why it had to be this way for me. Juggling these two waking selves at once. TT: I guess I'm used to it, but it still makes for a pretty intense existence. TT: Do you even know what the deal with that is? Like is there any precedent in your readings? UU: i don't know aboUt precedent, bUt it makes plenty of sense to me as the type of path one might expect for a hero of heart. UU: a path rUled by the heart aspect can be a joUrney of splintered self. UU: that is, the player's being may exhibit the same kind of fragmentation which certain classes coUld caUse in others. UU: i think this is what has triggered yoUr dUal-awareness between waking and dream selves, thoUgh it woUld not sUrprise me if the symptoms manifested in even more ways than this.

Now, Dirk has a clawmplicated relationship with his alternate selves, given that he's a Prince, but Nepeta wouldn't have the same struggles, or at least, not to the same degree. The problem is, hampered by Equius and her own shyness about discussing her thoughts and feelings with others:

NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i get so shy and worried what people might think of me if i say how i f33l NEPETASPRITE: :33 < im always so scared that they wont f33l the same way or just think im stupid or pathetic or something

She never actually gets to explore this part of herself.

But What If... She Did?

The way I imagine the original ending going is that each troll that gets saved by John's interference in the timeline then asks John to help them fix their own mistakes, thereby saving somebody else. Each successive trip through the meteor brings new character development, and also riddles the comic with progressively more password pages, which I think would be really funny. And throughout all this the Game Over team is searching for Vriska, Meenah, and the treasure, and resolving their arcs that way, so it's not like they would be replaced - they're the ones who get to kill LE. The process, in my mind, goes like this:

Terezi asks John to save Vriska, and prevent her from getting too spades with Gamzee, as these are her two greatest regrets.

Vriska obviously had great regrets about killing Tavros, both pre- and post-retcon, so she asks for his death to be prevented.

Tavros staying alive means that he and Gamzee wind up hashing out some stuff - Gamzee mentions that he feels "So aT ChIlL WiTh yOu" while talking to Tavros, and Tavros reciprocates the friendship and also - interestingly - acknowledges Gamzee's religion, calling it beautiful even if he doesn't necessarily believe in it. This is interesting because Karkat's inability to do so is explicitly one of the reasons their moirallegiance broke down. So having Tavros back, alive, means that he and Gamzee would likely end up in some sort of relationship, probably pale despite flushed leanings, and would bring Gamzee back into the fold.

Gamzee would then be like, yeah, wow, that time I killed Nepeta and Equius was pretty bad, huh? Especially since his decision to hang onto his friends' bodies and prototype them is often interpreted as him genuinely feeling bad about his dead friends (he tells Kurloz to shut up when Kurloz mentions all the dead friends, and his religion seems to be about a paradise he wants to share with his friends anyway). So he'd ask John to prevent him from killing them, resulting in the two of them getting to live.

Things get much more hypothetical from here, since so much of the character dynamics would have changed, but I think by this point, Equius might command ask John to let him say goodbye to Aradiabot before she explodes, which he expresses feeling very sad about. However, in doing so, John and Aradiabot end up in the same room, and when she realizes that he has the ability to change the timeline without repercussions, she'd seize him by the arm and demand that he take her back in time, to before she died. After all, she expresses regrets about her reckless actions, and how she always felt like it was all one big setup.

She would take Aradia's place in the Vriska revenge chain, being once more freed of her robot chassis, and from there, would trick Doc Scratch and the Handmaiden into thinking everything was still going according to their designs. Meanwhile, Alive!Aradia would be hanging out at Equius's place, borrowing his void powers to avoid notice, coordinating a new timeline that keeps the beats of the original (too much deviation causes unpredictability, and an paradox'd timeline offshoot without John's direct interference would still become doomed), but allows them greater freedom and the ability to overcome the machinations of Doc Scratch and associates.

This would also prevent Sollux from becoming so self-loathing, since it's no longer "his fault" that Aradia dies, although he winds up in that hole again after Feferi gets killed. Now that his Aradia is alive, he wouldn't feel like he might as well stay in the bubbles because his closest companions are there, so he'd make it to the end, and would ask John to prevent Feferi's death.

Eridan still dies; he's so disconnected and isolated from all his friends that his course of actions is largely unaffected even by everybody else's timeline tweaks. But before Feferi can suggest bringing him back, Karkat would butt in.

The Friendship Troll should be the one to demand that ALL of their friends be revived, especially if they had everyone except only one guy, and Karkat and Eridan are heavily implied to be moirails anyway. The course of Karkat's fixes are so comprehensive, and primarily romance-based, that the end result of this final loop is everybody not only being alive, but god-tiered, with appropriate character development.

Now, where Nepeta's Heart powers would play into all of this is that she would start to notice something going on. After all, Heart players are sensitive to their splintered selves, and (Nepeta) is probably much closer to Nepeta than regular doomed timeline offshoots. As the loops continue, and Nepeta has more and more time to talk to people, and meets her dead alternate selves, and even meets (Nepeta), she starts to awaken to her Ultimate Self - to come into possession of alternate memories.

And if the Ultimate Self is a very soul-y kind of concept, such that Heart players have a natural advantage in coming to understand it, then isn't it a natural fit that a Rogue of Heart - one who steals from Heart or steals Heart for others - would be naturally inclined to share the wisdom of her alternate selves, and even the very concept of the Ultimate Self, with her friends?

Because the Ultimate Self is actually, in my opinion, a pretty good narrative device. It turns the sadness of the dead and doomed timelines into something littersweet instead, and makes it so any weirdness regarding time travel and not really knowing your friends anymore will eventually be resolved, even if off-screen.

It's not really narratively satisfying when Davepetasprite^2 suddenly comes into being and reaches enlightenment, but imagine if instead it's a post-character development Nepeta comforting Davesprite on his relevance, or Jade on her loneliness, or John on not really knowing these new post-retcon versions of his friends? It would feel a lot better, since in this hypothetical, she would have reached that point after on-screen character development. Being able to share her true self with her friends on the meteor - by necessity, since what else are they going to be doing for three years - leads to her finally being able to fulfill her role as a Rogue of Heart.

Also, at some point during these repeated meteor trips, she dates Karkat (whether that's successful or not, I'll leave to reader interpretation - you already know where I stand), fulfilling Jaspersprite's musing that she might only be able to date Karkat after she dies.

So that's two out of thr33 of her outstanding plot hooks resolved... okay. So, I try not to make these essays into ship propaganda, but hear me out:

Hate Is Stored In The FefNep

Okay, so, remember that thing about how Feferi is actually a huge casteist hypocrite? Well, let's also note that the comic, post-Murderstuck, seems to put Nepeta and Feferi together a lot - they're a Commodore and Rear Admiral in the ghost pirate army, respectively, and they also wind up as Fefetasprite. So I think it's not entirely out of left field to say that these two were implied to have SOMETHING going on.

And that something... is a difference in political views.

I mean, let's be real, there's a reason Fefetasprite is the most explode-prone after Tavrisprite. Miss "The Hemocaste is Stupid and Shouldn't Matter" vs. Miss "I Love Being A Princess And Call Jade Hornless and Finless (Derogatory)"? Come on, tell me you don't see it.

Without getting too much into Feferi, this hypocrisy, and unwillingness to check her privilege (so glad I found an excuse to use that term unironically), are probably her greatest character flaws - ie, the things you would expect the story to address about her. Meanwhile, one of Nepeta's flaws, which she laments to Jasproseprite^2, is that she feels too shy to talk about her feelings to other people, leading to her having never expressed her views on the hemocaste to anyone but Equius.

I think that they initially think they'd be friends. Each one of them would go "oh man, this other girl is soooo cute, I wish I could talk to her more often!"

And then, once they do, they realize they fucking hate each other. Nepeta would go "X00 < you are such a hypocrite who f33ls like youre better than all of us!!!" and Feferi would go "You're suc)( an uneducated glubbing P-EASANT! 3X0" and then they'd claw each others' eyes out. It would be so funny, and if a homestuck ship isn't extremely fucking funny, then why are we even here.

But more importantly, this would further them along into resolving each others' arcs - Feferi would be forced to grapple with the greater implications of classism, and Nepeta - who is shown having a spine the most in defiance of somebody else - would grow more aggressive about being open about her feelings in defiance of Feferi. Even Equius would get roped into it in a positive way - you can just imagine him going "D --> Can I really believe my auricular sponge clots D --> Nepeta, you are finally taking interest in politi%" and be 100% on board with teaching her so Feferi won't be able to call her uneducated.

And then for flushed, I dunno! Karkat's an option, and Jade and Jake also both love the fuck out of furries, and Tavros seems nice. But yeah I'll die on the fefnep hate ship. Guys it would be so funny.

Thank you as always for reading! Let me know if there's a troll you want to hear me ramble about next.

#homestuck #nepeta leijon #feferi peixes #equius zahhak

[littlestpetgoth]

Tell us more about your little homestucks?

ok.. ill only go over my descendent ocs because they're the ones ive been posting about recently, i have too many homestuck ocs to cover lol..

mayosi pyrope is the first descendent oc i made back when there was a brief trend on twitter to make, fan descendants of the trolls. i think i was inspired by ko's descendent acarid, and terezi being one of my favorite trolls i ended up making a bootleg pyrope. (and i draw them together all the time bc they rot my brain)

they're a radical transmasc weeaboo skater "vigilante" who grew up being raised by humans in a very normal average household where they got basically anything they wanted with no issues. their interests include; dishing out justice, watching animes, playing videogames, and doing sick tricks on their board. they wield a katana that resembles terezi's dragon cane.. they're my simplest designed character, and though they look a lot like terezi with a skirt and long hair their design was heavily influenced by dirk because i imagined that dirk has influenced some kind of anime character that mayosi obsesses over and has based their look on..

they aren't at all interested in, being a lawyer or anything like that and would like to take care of bad guys samurai batman style in their ideal world.. unfortunately the loving gently parenting of their human family didn't toughen them up enough so they're mostly a baby who doesn't do well when faced with conflict. mayosi's easily bossed around by anyone who firmly tells them to do something because they're too scared to step up and stand up for themself and others, they have a lot of shame for not being as strong and cool as terezi or red glare. real wet blanket.

uuuh like terezi, they weren't always blind. they were lured in by their ex best friend now super complex hate not boyfriend acarid and he poured acid into their eyes, ruining their vision and giving them crazy chem burn scars.. i think around this time they were also given their super rad pointy shades so they can look more like their hero, but it was a major blow to their confidence since not only are they a weak coward they're now a weak coward who can't see. they eventually learn to navigate the world via sound waves, its not as effective as terezi's sniff and taste vision but mayosi isnt as interested as smelling and licking everything in their presence.

example of what i think it's like for them here..

theyyy are convinced by acarid to join him in his perfect sburb sesh, where they eventually grow a pair and cut off his arm and gouge his eyes before being shot in the brain and killed dead without ever waking on their moon. (sad) mayosi's feelings about acarid, who essentially abuses and manipulates them constantly, are very complicated because they feel an obligation to take on the brunt of his crazy in order to protect everyone but also because they cling to the nostalgic memories they have of him and are hoping he'll one day go back to that.

kokesi megido is based on kokeshi dolls, i think she sees ghosts and is really scared of them so she's super skittish and is always finding ways to shoo them away.. she probably knows how to speak japanese ig, i dont have a lot to say about her unfortunately.. i like how her design turned out though.

grimir maryam and romato vantas are brothers adopted into a rich human family, they're both spoiled brats and are constantly bickering with each other when they aren't pretending the other exists. grimir is mute and likes to garden (sooo original, i know) and romato speaks a lot and is a hopeless romantic writer. shrug.

i don't have as much to talk about. for any of my descendents other than mayosi because i have a really hard time developing ocs when i dont have people to bounce ideas off of. i mean most of mayosi was formed around acarid's existence and from ko's influence, otherwise they also wouldn't be developed . sorry .

#oc #ask #homestuck #fantroll #im not very good at working on ocs #i mostly just design them and pput them on a shelf

[sassykinzonline]

when people talk about naruto's repression they kind of miss a crucial element which is that it actually makes complete sense.

firstly from the power perspective, simply put, by its very nature he requires repression to function on a most basic level. this is opposite to the sharingan, which thrives on huge displays of emotion. im going to assume that the reason this is missed is because it runs counter to the personality traits each character is known for: the "emotionless, calm and cool" one actually is constantly accessing and expressing the most powerful of emotions, and the "expressive, empathetic and emotionally honest" one is actually warring with letting true emotions come to the surface. comparatively, when you look at starfire and raven from teen titans, you see that their personalities reflect their power. starfire is bright and expressive because thats how she best accesses her powers, and raven is subdued, controlled and calculated in order to control her powers. this means that contrary to popular belief, naruto isnt starfire-- naruto is raven. there are actually a few moments where you are subtly shown just how calculated naruto's displays of emotion are, and how they are reinforced in such a way (context is naruto being saddened that his request for parental affection was rebuffed):

which brings me to my second point: socialization. this part is straightforward. from itachi actively causing and incentivizing hatred and anger, to various mentors/people of influence (eg. kakashi) remaining silent at clear expressions of violent anger-- these negative emotions are not punished or discouraged when it come to the context theyre in. why? they are beneficial to the agenda of various characters. the revenge plot only starts being punished when its disadvantageous to the state. remember that there is a monetary value attached to the murder of itachi uchiha, and this is actually a common way to earn money. when you look at naruto, there is never a single instance when naruto is encouraged or even tolerated for having these emotions. the only exception who does this leaves him due to their own parallel struggle (side note: this is why naruto distinctly says the reason for his obsession is that this person accepted him more than anyone else, given this person is the only one who saw naruto's pain and anger and actually blamed his aggressors for it). naruto, raised implicitly to know that everyone seeks to be a tool of the state, and that in his case this is not just a choice but a requirement for his humanity. iruka's acknowledgment of naruto comes with an indication of possession, implying conditionality. people like kakashi, hiruzen, and others in positions of influence witness the abuse he faces, and ignore it or groom him into accepting the idea that he should appeal to his abusers for eventual acceptance. naruto meets gaara, someone with the same condition as him, but with radically different circumstances. whereas naruto's condition symbolically papers over his pain over time, gaara's is self-protective and defensive against his pain. gaara also occupies a position of power as the member of a royal family, and has siblings who are afraid of him but do hold some level of affection towards him. gaara's feelings of loneliness, while rational, come from a different place than naruto's. for gaara, he is surrounded by community that he doesnt know how to access. naruto has no community, he needs to find a way to forge one, but even when he does it is superficial. this dynamic is repeated in his introduction to killer bee, who from an early age is granted family and institutional protection. this isnt to say that the treatment of jinchuriki is ethical or healthy, but that naruto's situation is actually uniquely oppressive. kushina is the closest naruto gets to someone who validates this pain, but she cannot truly relate to him because she is never cripplingly alone (again, not to say her life was not difficult or oppressive or traumatic) and the object of her affections returns those feelings consistently and early on. naruto's trauma is thus compounded over and over by the conflict his need for his specific love interest causes: naruto is only tolerated as a weapon of the state, and in order to be an effective one he needs to love and be loved, but his love interest who allows him these negative emotions is an enemy of the state, leading to further isolation/tension from the state and pushing him towards the love interest.

as such, i actually think naruto does remarkably well at balancing this conflict and tension in a way that keeps him functional. though, obviously and eventually the compounding of his trauma and the repression of his pain is something that needs to be addressed. the only person who is capable of doing this in a way that puts naruto's wellbeing first ("when i saw you in pain...i also felt pain" and the subsequent frequent moments of protection and defence) only reunites with him at the end of the manga, so you never get to see that actually happen.

im assuming the reason why a lot of this is missed is partially because through framing this repression as positive through the majority of the manga (aside from naruto's own personal thoughts), the reader is never really forced to decide how they feel about the concept unlike the inherent conflict of the radical revenge plot. the other part is the grander, underlying allegory in the naruto story which is the varied manifestations AND expressions of trauma. through readers' responses and attention to certain individuals in the naruto story, you can learn how they relate to and look at trauma. to me, naruto himself is actually the example of a trauma victim who shows a brave face and thus isnt recognized. naruto is the woman who puts on makeup to cover the bruises to go to work a day after she is assaulted. who tells herself that she must have some part in it, so it isnt abuse. maybe she grew up in a family where no one answered when she cried, so she learned to keep it moving and stop crying.

lastly, on a greater scale, people also forget a crucial aspect of "yin/yang" is that things with a large properties of one, by nature will also come with a small amount of the opposite. thats what the smaller inner dots represent.

a more surface level example of this is that naruto's face is brash, large, and masculine-- these are yang traits and they are predominant in his appearance. however, looking closely at his rounded cheeks and eyes and the soft nature of his eye colour, there are subtle yin elements. naruto's "positivity" or "optimism" is fueled by a certain level of negative repression.

#naruto analysis #naruto meta #naruto #naruto uzumaki #uzumaki naruto #sasunaru #narusasu #pro naruto uzumaki #uh who are relevant characters to tag here #gaara #kushina uzumaki #sasuke #sasuke uchiha #uchiha sasuke #the rest is up to god #i wrote this in one go so typos are expected

[vampiremiffy]

hi, this feels like a rlly dumb question so i hope it doesnt come across as insincere- as a radfem, i truly dont understand why trans exclusion is needed for the liberation of women as a social class and the female sexual spectrum as a biological form. its something i’ve never been able to really get answers on from other radfems directly. i understand the concept of “womens spaces” and the preservation of women’s social identity (and thus social class) as an extension of female biological liberation, but practically i really dont see how transexuality (both contemporary “radical identity” in the form of nonbinary gender and sexual presentation and traditional hyper-binary transexuality) doesnt serve to undermine the power dynamic of male/female social control. idk its always been a sticking point for me lol, i would love for some insight on it bc i suspect maybe its a difference in approach (i.e seeking to eliminate gendered power structures by grinding away the meaning of genders and biological categories vs seeking to maintain womanhood as a social role that is liberated)

hi! sorry for not answering, i wasnt on tumblr these days the main focus is that radfeminism puts the source of women's oppresion at the basis of sex, it isnt really a trans exclusivity since female trans people (using TIF from now on since that includes both binary and nonbinary trans females, same w TIM) are still included in it all examples of female oppression comes from our sex, not our gender.

girls and women cant identify as men/non binary genders to escape female genital mutilation, feminicide, or simply misogyny microaggressions. we arent oppressed simply by being women, that's the excuse it has been formed by the creation of genders, we are oppressed as female. and even though, TIM may suffer discrimination when cispassing, its still proof of sex based oppresion (the perpetuator assuming theyre female) and we cant talk about all of this without the recognition of a female class, the same way people of color recognize that their oppresion is based on their ethnicity or homo/bisexual people recognize their oppresion comes from same sex attraction at the same time is weird to say "i see no race" when talking about racism, it is when trying to "erase" the existence of sex

also, and no less important, just like non human animals, female and male humans have different physical characteristics (+the female and male socialization), we need female spaces (and male) only, even after an idea of gender abolition like in medical aspects

hope this helps?? i answered at to how i understanded your question lol

#vampire miffy anon #radblr #radical feminism

[favouritefi]

Hi there, I'm here to ask about whether you have thought of the childhoods of Blanky and Peglar in your purror and errebark au? Because they're favorites of mine.

thank you for this q tho im sorry i started out writing about their childhoods but somehow ended up talking about the legal and political worldbuilding in my catboy au through the lens of blanky and peglar's lived experiences? enjoy?

our main cast is largely middle/upper class and this is obviously only a small subsection of the overall cat/dogboy population in england. blanky and peglar are working class and a lot of the really fucked up stuff around adoption don't apply as much here. sure they still don't have legal autonomy and life isnt easy and they still get treated like shit by humans, but there isn't that pressure to be adopted / breed like there is amongst the pedigree-holding cat/dogboys.

blanky is old enough to have lived through legal changes that actually imposed more restrictions on dog/catboy freedoms than ever before. for example, when blanky first joined a crew as a young dogboy and learned to sail and became a whaler, they didnt need to declare the number of non-human crew members and their pedigree status/breed. for a komondor like blanky, this meant he could easily hide the fact he's a dogboy if he just grew out his hair. by the time blanky was a young adult though laws had come into place that required ships to declare this info whenever they reached a british port (bc as empire grows its need to control and manage its citizens and noncitizens and make clear distinctions between those two becomes ever more important) but by then he'd had enough experience under his belt that crews wouldnt turn him away just because of his species. so he had a very interesting and atypical childhood, he wasn't always treated like a dogboy.

peglar had what i think of as a "typical" working class catboy childhood. mid-sized family, working class parents, generally speaking they were getting by but they werent doing well. they could put food on the table, and they loved him, and that was enough. the interesting thing is that his father was a bastard so somewhere in his ancestry is a savannah which might explain his nimbleness and his extra long ears. his father was also a political radical who believed that cat/dogboys should have legal personhood and supported universal male suffrage. peglar was too young to fully absorb those ideas before he left the home and was enrolled in a catboy naval training program, but his naval and military experiences brought him to places where cat/dogboy rights did exist either legally or culturally and so in a strange way him and hickey actually share similar political values, aka if humans get to be people then why shouldn't I? this leads to some spicy hickey x peglar later down the line and also influences his relationship with bridgens in interesting ways.

#purror and erebark

[joelletwo]

gintama time loop reading that i had while watching

(laid out for my own reference. this doesnt have to interest u guys.)

okay so like. watching gintama and getting to kintoki arc. what i knew was 1. i was getting into the anime art style changes i had varying feelings about which signaled 2. i was getting into the back half of gintama 3. what i knew about the back half of gintama is that utsuro exists, gintoki did something fucked up on that cliff that ppl cant stop talking about and drawing parallels to with every arc of gintama, and ppl (i sensed) think the writing of the ending is stupid

kintoki arc has yorozuya and tae promise:

before breaking Gintama The Series into a distorted au where the chars are WILDLY different but still play out their roles to their arc-concluding purposes. birthing in me the image of a gintama that can fill any shaped-hole you put it in and still have the same basic inherent form it moves towards (whatever happened on that cliff, which i sensed was being gestured at in kintoki arc w the beheadment seppuku but had no idea the fucking. extent of lol)

gintama making formal changes (ugly or lovely art style shifts, at some point a radical change in thrust of story with the introduction of utsuro as a final and plot-twisty villain) but (hoping that it's) remaining the same at heart... or being railroaded into being the same. somehow the yorozuya promise became about. being cognizant of being in the narrative timeloop** and being subjected to Circumstances. being cognizant that something was being taken from u (catharsis of ending--) and also inflicted on u (--replaced with episodic and genre-typical* endless storylines)

(*not a slam. just that gintama's storylines are all about like. accepting the horrors. which is a journey of experiencing the horrors in order to come to terms with them that is harrowing to be subjected to over and over and over again. [cest la vie]

**and timeloop was also being flavored by me understanding yoo joonghyuk orv's regressions as about the endless iterative failures of making progress on a journey of recovery from trauma. all timeloops are about that to me now.)

thought shelved until obi-one's arc where, although i understood him as an oboro figure, he was performing a shouyoutsuro role of being a dearly missed mentor figure who comes back for happy family times yayyyyy but oh no he came back Wrong (a disabled cyborg programmed to betray against his own will). and Evil (needs to be taken down, and the shimuras-through-gintoki have to be the ones to dismantle their own happiness that it turns out was always retroactively tinted by this grief).

the presentation of nostalgia as longing for a return to the past that cant actually be achieved. or rather, you can achieve it, but Time changes things, and the past you get back won't actually be the same.

this helps me shift what i know about utsuro (shouyou but Wrong) into being about. what actually isnt that textually present in the series? but has to be assumed, i think? bc like? of course? the desire to have shouyou back (tho now i ask: whose? gintoki's? again, not really... in the text?). you can have shouyou (idealized gintama timeperiod where everyone is happy and innocent) back! you can have all the shouyou (early days swagful gintama anime that i am constantly missing as i move into the future material) back that you want! and its gonna fucking suck (for the chars and for the audience)!

and that basically ends up being the framing thought i take with me into utsuro's introduction................... it gets lost the more i actually see him and late-game gintama for myself and gain the context i never had for everyones blogging i was seeing. but. still. the theme i understood to be what gintama was telling me. you cant get back what you lost. and if (when) you try, you only come face to face with what was damaged in the losing.

however...................................

the further i got into silver soul and through to the ending the more it was............ interesting but confusing that, as i put it, the chars were "fighting the representation of the dangers of Nostalgia with More Nostalgia"?

and still i dont know what to do with the ultimate last-pages ending of gintama being a return to the status quo (with cosmetic changes). yay we defeated the evil specter of our past that haunted us and kept us in the desire timeloop. now we can get back to the episodic timeloop that we spent the fight with the specter... desiring to get back. hm. well!

#sopping wet gintoki posting #ULTIMATELY. any time i conclude a gintama reading conflict with 'sorachi is an imperfect writer' im not mad at him for it lol. #like. i say before in series that take big ideological swings. im not mad at u if u wanna like. tackle the problem of capitalism. #but arent singlehandedly able to come up w the solution to capitalism. i just had fun with u trying. #if sorachi cant singlehandedly solve. the problem of human grief. well it sure is fun to watch him iterate on it for 300 episodes and #700 chapters. thats not necessarily a Failure! but it is. interesting. #gintama time loop theory

[sistervirtue]

the barbie movie like. ok so [spoilers and long paragraphs under the cut]

yeah it was really basic ideologically it didnt cover all the various intersections and theories of feminism but i think when people saw conservatives flipping their shit people expected it to be like, a manifesto. its a film, and more importantly, it's the Barbie Movie. i think expecting a gender and womens studies class from it would be silly, and while i get why people are disappointed in how much sympathy it lends to the men in the movie, i dont think like, once again, that was ever something to not expect?

furthermore on that point i think showing misogyny from a place of defining the self around a sense of loneliness by men isn't...far off. theres never an excuse for misogyny but thats rhetoric that radicalizes a lot of incels and shit i would rather that than they treat it like some mysterious miasma.

also, i think, once again while it was pretty basic in the ideas it presented... how often is it show that explicitly in broad-audience film? like stated directly to the audience in that manner? theres no flirting with the feminist theory in the movie; it says it outright, which is something a lot of films shy away from out of fear of alienating men once it becomes too "girl power"-y. im not usually for the use of a lot of buzzwords in film and discussion of issues but these buzzwords are never said with cheapness or to obfuscate. it could be heavyhanded at times, but that heavyhandedness wasnt ever really obnoxious? it walked the line of "haha silly" but still took its point seriously enough that you could appreciate the use of that heavyhandedness for comedic effect without being mocked

i also think the fact they just like "solve" the patriarchy in the barbie world isnt meant to imply that you can just fix the real world with a woman president or by being aware of misogyny. in fact a lot of the movie is dedicated to showing how the barbie world and real world are different. the conclusion of the movie is that barbie wants to become human, even though the human world is messy and unsolved and nothing like she assumed it was. she believed barbie had solved misogyny forever, which is a direct jab at the idea that any "one thing" or "girl power" movement can just suddenly whisk away the very power structures that created that sort of oppression.

its very much coming from a cis/heterosexual/white basis. they flirt with further intersection but dont commit, which im really not a fan of. my friends after the film were like "it was more homoerotic than i expected haha" and...yeah, it was, but it didnt do anything to address gayness or what that means in such a heavily gendered heterosexual society. you could read that subtext through allen and his thing.... but allen is a joke. his story is never resolved. hes one of the guys but he isnt, hes one of the girls but he isnt, he benefits not at all from "kendom" but conversely is not oppressed the way the barbies are and vice versa. he's just allen, and the only allen there is. when sasha and her mom want to go back to help barbie, the fact he just goes "God im never getting out of here" and thats just like, left was kinda. well. it was something for sure.

still. i know i just wrote like 200 words on the ideology of this movie but first and foremost its a pg13 comedy meant to be shown to broad audiences in theaters for money. its meant to be an enjoyable watch, and it is! its a gorgeous film, its funny, the songs are fine, and the way it makes its side comments arent distracting nor meanspirited. it knows when to take itself seriously, and i like that. i was actually expecting it to be a general audiences like, kids movie i was so fucking surprised when barbie said penis.

i also think saying the line at the end about the gynecologist is like "saying you need a vagina to be a real woman" is disingenuous honestly. one its meant to be a bit of a shock quip to get a giggle but two i think a lot of people who need gynecological care (which can include trans women) are afraid when it comes to that first visit and finally sitting down and talking about those areas because of the shame and lack of proper education. maybe its bc i grew up mormon but i dont think its meant to imply thats what MADE barbie a real woman or that its fundamental to being one.

once again it definitely isnt a perfect movie. i think the way the ken and barbie talk happened at the end was still a bit coddly and the scope of the ideology underneath the movie was, once again, still very much centered in white cishetero society and thought with only passing mentions of intersectionality that felt both shallow and (especially with the gayness and racial dynamics) occasionally like it was being turned into a joke

still all in all it was a pretty good movie. weird barbie #1. allen get behind me i will protect u

#barbie movie #barbie movie spoilers

[sweeetrandall]

i wuld like to know your thouhts on randalls life in craggy dale

i think it was a low and slow boil. as in the initial realization and panic of not knowing where or who he is would wear off because he happened to land in the worlds most normal village. he said he eventually gave up trying to remember his old life which doesnt seem quite like the randall we knew right. like teen randall would chase his goals even when faced with fatal danger, so the fact he gave up tells me either his spirit was broken or he matured past that kind of thinking. or both probably both. so a majority of his time there was probably mostly ordinary with the ever looming twinge of knowing something is really wrong and missing. its not like he intentionally repressed anything since its not like he didn't try to remember (and the amnesia itself was from a concussion ......... even though i think its more than that .... but thats something else) but i think the entire situation, and maybe a subconscious realization that he failed, transformed him into a more melancholy person. i mean i think anyone would be a little bit knocked down after forgetting their entire life. but beyond that randall had ambitions that even with memory loss im sure his brain retained on a less than tangible level.

i will try not to get too deep into like. my tendency to project some pretty tragic things onto characters especially those who are radically transformed by an adverse experience or have lost/blurred/manipulated memories. but this entire mindscape randall was probably dealing with is complemented pretty beautifully by the serene and quiet place he ended up living. it gives this idea of almost like an afterlife or an intervention, secure yet stagnant, freeing yet ever so slightly off. i dont think cragy dale itself was a negative experience for him, in fact i think it did him wonders probably. just its impossible to be quite alright when your life is incomplete like that.

so the wound descole used against randall was long festering (and repressed) by the time he was contacted. this is largely why i think randall probably agreed full on to participate in terrorism without much of a second thought. that kind of impulsivity is pretty reminiscent of 17 year old randall isnt it ... not so much long tamed 35 year old randall. i will kind of just bluntly say i think suddenly regaining the memories of your teen and childhood years will jarringly put you back in an adolescent mindset accompanied by some sort of mania or just symptoms idk. trying to reconnect with repressed parts of yourself is usually a turbulent and violent and confusing and painful process. so like. mg is this manifestation of all this long festering stuff that was buried deep deep in craggy dale.

kind of went on a tangent i suppose. genuinely sorry if you wanted me to talk about more cute domestic things like randy helping his papa with the sheep. that is very sweet stuff. i do think he still only likes veggies you can dig up and pulling up carrots gave him an unplaceable joy

#ask #randall ascot

[baeddelations]

I think this part of my loathing of seeing this article passed around "i am tw, iam staying in the closet" bc it is a diary entry that was explicitly not supposed to be advice or a rubric. She origanilly aays its just 1 narrative to take in then when it gets past around she says hey this was me venting i didnt intend for anyone to read this.

I think this is the major interest in this piece. A view into the interiority of a tw whos been closeted for 20 yrs and her personal xp growin up then being a closeted tw in a University WGS dept. Some ppl might call this a fetishistic interest in the interiority of this tw, oh how they love poking around in the frankenstein monsters guts, poking his brain to see what horrid mismatched limb will jump.

I think the main reason @autolenaphilia interacted with this is bc this article was passed around by a bunch of transmisogynist who are adpting and pulling together the transmisogyny of jeniffer and her recounting of cismanhating that exists in primarily cisfeminist spaces and by extension radical and queer spaces. Jennifer does not bring up cafab transness or transmasculinity once in this article yet it is cited as inspiration for truther framework.

I do think the way that jennifer talks about not wanting to acquiesce is kinda built on a faulty conjecture which is that if she transitioned she would be able to talk about femininity in these spaces... at one point she says this probably wouldnt be true(mb just for her) but then goes back to the original argumentation on many occasions. This argumentation taken to conlusion posits that it is easier to discourse or even exist in those spaces as a tw than as a cis man that u will be more include and less ridiculed. At the time of this article she had never actually tried out this proposition, so she never got to see how this prop is at least in all the copius amounts of personal and anecdotal xp i have false. But this prop is useful for ppl who want push tw have it easier and that men are reviled for being men. Enter prager xcuse me truthers.

I also hate internalized oppression framework, imo it is an idpol tool used to shift blame from the brainwashed oppressed to som aspirational that oppressive ideology comes naturally to. Is she promoting transmisogynistic ideas? Yah, shes not bad for this but it is why its useful to truthers, and part of why it hurts to read as a tw.

@autogyne-redacted i do think its hard to see point 1, 2, and 5 of y shes not trnsn nd say these arent related to passibility. Repercussion are often contingent with passablity. Movin towards phys transn being dysphoria inducing is connected with what expectations of feminity u hav and how u line up with them(i also xp this). And the gap thing is imo her wishing she could be passable w ease and recognizing she cant so settling and saying its not worth it to try.

I think lena is apply a broader scope of trans xp to jennifers xp i dnt think this is even necessarily harmful and i dnt think shes even saying jen is wrong for it shes saying her words are easy to coopt that they are capering to these tmras which they are however unitentionally. U could also take things ive said in the past and warp them into tmra shit. I fortunately didnt write these things in a medium article. She is handling in other ways and this is wut conv therapy wants... thats what it seems they go for a lot again doesnt mean jen is bad nd lena doest say shes wrong for this. The only thing lena says is she doesnt want this for herself thats not restricting jens autonomy. And that the article and responses made her sick. They made me feel bad too. This isnt necessarily a moral judgement. It could be but idk.

All this is a dissection. I hate it. I wish her vent diary post wasnt being aired, analyzed, and discoursed. Im doing it right now ffs! It makes me want to leave the internet. I hope ppl stop talkn bout it...but they wont bc the corpse of this diary can be a useful weapon against tw so itll keep gettn used.

[fipindustries]

🔥 Aight, give me a spicy gender take perhaps

im probably the specifically wrong type of neurodivergent to deal with how people use terms now a days. i think people need to sit down and start nailing down some definitions a bit more clearly because by this point i have no idea what some people mean when they say the word "lesbian" or "boy" or even "trans".

by this i dont mean "they are using a new definition i dont like", i can work with that, i can accept new radical definitions of words. but what is happening instead is that they are not using any definition at all, they just throw the words around willy nilly because they associate them with good feelings and they want to belong to those good feelings.

and before people tell me "cathegories were made for people, not people for the cathegories". yeah, that is the problem, people are no longer cathegorizing at all, because cathegorizing is inherently exclusionary, it determines what is part of the cathegory and what isnt. but people dont want to feel gatekeepy or left out so they eschew cathegories all together.

is infuriating.

[raisinchallah]

you know im really fascinated by people who think alien is some kind of incredible anti capitalist text or something like surely your standards are not so low and like idk unless all you watch are like action movies funded by the us military or something surely you have seen a few evil corporation movies in your day like its a stock trope of a lot of bleaker sci fi like im not saying its a bad or evil secretly conservative movie im just like this is a pretty common trope even in american blockbusters whats so special its not like this was made at peak mccarthyism hollywood is contemplating releasing death of a salesman with a 10 minute short about how great being a salesman is so nobody gets called a communist like in some ways the evil corporation plot like its so over the top so comically evil and especially with how its often implemented in cyberpunk stories is also often written as like asian usually japanese encroachment on american cities intentional racist xenophobic angle and like also obfuscation and transferal of blame from american companies and like ridiculous reversal of actual history of american interests in economies in asia whatever but this is unrelated to alien i just think in general treating like evil corporation plots as something like deep and not just a broadly accepted opinion like a lot of people think their boss is greedy and sucks or giant corporations are kinda scummy this isnt like radical and that making them so comically evil and involved in weird convoluted sci fi plots also in some way disconnects the idea from reality and defangs the whole venture of whatever edge people might think it could have like its literally an expensive blockbuster etc etc

[little-klng]

look honestly the thing no one really thinks about with the content of the stupid wizard game (prof fig dies and rookwood cursed anne while framing the goblins btw) is that the game itself isnt transphobic beyond like... one single trans character having a dumb name. like, its not directly transphobic aside from the royalties going to jkr get put straight into trans eugenics legislation, but we already knew that and its not related to the games actual content or why it exists. it doesnt matter that the game sucks, that its buggy and barely functions, that it funds transphobia, it doesnt even necessarily matter that "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" (not what that means and it doesnt even apply here). primarily it serves one function, pushing radf*ms (censored to avoid tags) further down the radicalization into alt right, qanon, and neonazi pipeline

the game is marketed mainly to transphobes who will throw whatever amount of money at the first thing some shitty childrens book author who fell off 10 years ago and currently floats her career and reputation on ragebait says will "own the libs/troons". while it doesnt contain any actual transphobia (just promising to fund it), the main message, themes, and story are explicitly pro slavery and antisemitic, and are designed to put you, the player, in the position of a "master race" that has "the right to own slaves" and the slaves "love being enslaved" except when "the hook nosed bank controlling elite" try to "convince" the slaves "to rebel against their masters" in an effort to "destroy and take control over the whi-[COUGH]wizard race". its just blanket coverage over every white supremacist and neonazi conspiracy belief and then gamifying it for the enjoyment of transphobes. and because jkr juices up her fandom on the ragebait so hard that she gets them hungry for whatever political statements shes gonna feed them next, they're just gonna eat that shit up because "troons mad"

we all already know transphobes are just conservatives with a stupid feminism hat, we already know their basis for hating trans people is one singular step away (and most of the time not even that) from white supremacist eugenics and phrenology. you take one single look at "transvestigators" and realize just how bad it really is with them and demanding exclusively eurocentric "pretty and femme" white standards of beauty to even be considered a passing cis woman, its not even subtle. this game doesnt actually have any of that, its just the end piece of the pipeline getting installed for turning transphobes into qanon neonazis, turning their hatred of trans people and trans activists (or basically just anyone who doesnt pass their specific idea of eurocentric traditional gender/sex) into hatred of anyone who isnt "pure" white and christian, which just feeds straight into the "master race/slave race/elite controller" ideology that nazism comes from. transphobes playing this game dont talk about the slavery or the weird way the plot centers around putting down a civil rights movement or the way it belittles "lesser races" for wanting "their worthless artefacts [sic] back" (goblins and their "horn for rallying troops and annoying wizards" with a wedge of cheese shoved in it to mute it, anyone? thats a shofar, which is a jewish rams horn trumpet used during high holidays)

"pureblood"/"mudblood" is already an established part of wizarding world lore as "pureblooded wizards" vs "nasty mixed-blooded wizards", which is already white supremacist anti-interracial bullshit that jkr fully and unironically roots for. this is the same woman that named her only black character "Kingsley Shackebolt" and wrote a slave race to actually love being enslaved and not mind seeing their taxidermied friends heads on the walls getting decorated with santa hats over the holidays. its not surprising that shes a nazi at all, and i feel like all the people who are (rightfully, dont get me wrong) talking about it funding transphobia are not giving the antisemitism/nazism/pro slavery portions of the content enough credit in making this game evolve from "shitty childrens media IP game that barely functions and would be irrelevant by next week" to "$60 ticket on the radf*m to slave cop nazi pipline that is steam+ps5's most preordered game of all time".

its to radf*ms and transphobes what tucker carlson is to your parents, and what rush limbaugh was to your grandparents, and what turning point usa is to your college frat siblings, and what ben shapiro is to your highschool debate team cousins. shitty content designed to make you mad and slowly melts your brain until you're a paranoid wretch that cant stop seeing The Elite Agenda(tm) everywhere you look until you're willing to drop thousands on donations to anyone and anything that promises to protect your freedom to say slurs on the internet and make teenagers kill themselves for being weird. its just not often that it skips a lot of the dogwhistling and just straight up gives you an escapist fantasy where you're a part of the aryan master race and those stupid pesky slaves keep asking for "freedoms" and "equality" because all those evil jews keep trying to tell them what they're missing out on by not genociding white people instead, and you get to violently murder as many as you want to preserve the status quo

tl;dr transphobia is hand-in-hand with alt right conservatism and nazism and this game is just one more stepping stone added to an already decently clear path between the two points. if you paid $60 for a game that barely works because "troons mad", your dignity is pathetically affordable and its no ones fault but yours that you're officially the type of person who would pay money for the ability to own your own slaves and kill jewish people the first chance you get. did you know nazis during the 1930s and 40s offered financial rewards to people turning people in to the government? just thought that was an interesting fact

btw dont reply to this post with some bullshit "well im gonna pirate it so its fine" or "you're just making it more popular by talking about it" im a tumblr blog with less than 1000 followers and its the #1 most preordered game on steam and the ps5 store, and if you insist on still playing master race slave owner simulator through piracy then its whatever, i can just put you with the hundreds of transphobes on my blocklist so you can get along and play together in a nice farm upstate and away from me

#please use the replies instead of reposts i would rather not have this post breach containment. hp fans are super fucking annoying #read a different book. you can even just read better kids books if you insist. #to be perfectly clear im not saying that 'the transphobia doesnt matter' im saying 'the transphobia isnt the point. its just the vehicle #which picks up the intended target audience and drives them to their destination at nazism' #tumblr only tracks the first 5 tags so im just wasting an extra one so i can put my filter tags without it getting caught by trackers #jkr #jk rowling #antisemitism #nazism #racism #transphobia #hogwarts legacy #harry potter #<- filter tags

[shecomeswithteeth]

Are you anti plastic surgery. As in every form to be specific

to preface we’re all just doing what we can to live happy lives in our society. i acknowledge people get plastic surgery for many reasons, be it for wanting to be seen as beautiful or because they were in some kind of freak accident and want a semblance of normalcy again, but i do not have to agree with some of those reasons. more under the cut because this is a long one!

i think there should not even be a system that encourages plastic surgery for vanity in the first place, yet there is. and people can make their choice at the end of the day, and learn from it if it affects them both positively or negatively. bella (gigi?) hadid herself has gone on record to say that she wishes she still had her old nose, which is so important for women and girls like me who grew up with a nose that wasnt considered traditionally feminine… it is a removal of diversity so that people can fit the cookie cutter mold of this western idea of beauty, and, dare i say, exaggerated gender stereotypes. and because of this i would argue that many forms of plastic surgery for vanity’s sake has white supremacist or at the very least colorist roots.

plastic surgery for this group of people serve as a solution to the problem of insecurity, but it isnt a very good one. what is good is the abolishment of systems that prey on existing insecurities of women and girls and even come up with new ones they can profit off of. women and girls need to know that they can be above all of this, and be happy, or at the very least content with how they look and that there is nothing wrong with it, lest they become *addicted* to plastic surgery (a very real phenomenon). i would go deeper into the dissociative separation of the mind and body that permits and justifies this type of plastic surgery, but i am not quite yet confidently versed in the ins and outs of that philosophy; or at least, not confident to talk about it with my full chest. but ultimately, we are all affected by the beauty industry whether we like it or not, and to progress and become better for yourself, we must feel uncomfortable and work through that discomfort. radical feminism has allowed me to finally be at peace in this regard.

i had a friend that had nose surgery because of breathing problems, and it completely changed the shape of her nose, and while she wanted it both for breathing problems and vanity, the health problems definitely trump anything else i would say. and even then, im not going to go up to people that have had minor work done and tell them i disagree with their actions. thats just not going to happen lol.

as for victims of accidents, i have much less to say about that because what happened to them was just that: an accident, the result of an outside force be it a force of nature or someone else. as someone who has had horrible burns before i sympathize with burn victims who go through specialized surgeries to recreate their faces as accurately as possible. such a jarring shift in ones life, god, i cannot imagine. same for acid attack victims, who are often attacked in the first place because they rejected a man, or who dared to commit the crime of simply being a woman.

my opinions on this have been formed by the values that i hold very dear to myself: self discipline, personal growth and development, and nonconformity. so i wont say anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, just that we have different experiences that have informed our views over time. i should also add that im an older sister, so i have a few little shits looking up to me for guidance and support. i have to be a good role model for them and, despite wanting plastic surgery when i was younger, show my deeply insecure sister that things can and will change for her. that she is not alone, that we’re all going through it… that no matter what, makeup and plastic surgery isnt necessary for her to be beautiful, and eventually beauty isnt necessary to be happy at all.

yes, some people’s quality of life improve because of plastic surgery but the entire concept, i think, is abysmal and dystopian. how cruel that we must cut ourselves up to be happy, when we could just be, or learn to be. but again, everyone genuinely considering plastic surgery are probably grown adults that can make their own decisions, im not going to manually approve or disprove every minute reason someone has for wanting to get surgery. so go crazy because i cant stop anyone from doing what they really want to, i can just post my opinions on my silly womanblog and hope it resonates with the few that read this.

#ask #radblr #terfblr #radical feminism #radfem #terf #terf safe #terfs please interact #plastic surgery #beauty industry #makeup #misogyny #long

[gobstoppr]

Okay but in all seriousness the way you use color just shifts something in my brain whenever I see it, ESPECIALLY when you choose vibrant colors for the entire piece or only add one vibrant color because just AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH the way I'm SOBBING every time because it's so damn good

Also when you opt for more pastel colors????? It's been a while but back during ✨️our Kirby days✨️ you posted an art piece of Meta Knight sitting in the moonlight and just. The lines, the moon popping out thanks to the limited color pallet, the pastels, the way you made him So Fucking Shaped. It's literally the first thing that comes to my mind whenever I think of Meta. It's just such a stunning artwork like hhhhnnnnggggggGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH IT'S SO GOOD YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I LOVE IT

AAGHHHHH THANK YOU SO SO MUCH

this made me smile sm

im rlly proud of that meta knight ur talking about.. it was originally a physical sketch but i liked it sm i turned it digital and then i got silly with the colors

ive always been proud of my colors, but in the past (like idk 7 years ago) i had a weird limited approach to things. i figured out the trick of like,, taking something whose base color is pink and shading with purple. and then that was all i would do, because it pretty consistently made stuff that was pleasing to look at

and i developed a bit on that sorta style for years until my spamton era happened. i started using mspaint a TON and it radically changed my approach to coloring. having to both go into a seperate menu to select colors AND having the black/white slider be required to color pick Made it so that i had to experiment a lot more. mess around, maybe try a lower saturation. and after a while i started getting obsessed with grey tones.

my old old art was all super colorful, but in a sorta predictable way. its nice but didnt leave much of an impression

but in like my current era i use a lot of toned down colors. desaturated, greyish in betweens, playing with warm greys v cool greys, actually appreciating complementary colors

butyeah thats all to say. uh. i like colors a lot and i think about them alot

there r always new ways to approach coloring something and u can make some crazy stuff

ill admit that i feel like alot of my doodles n stuff look a little samey atm. u can tell what colors i default to when im feelin lazy lmao (cream, teal, green, warm pink, etc. all desaturated of course) but then again i havent been drawing much lately, the sample size isnt super big

i wanna make more shit i just never have the ideas or motivation.. i jsut end up doodling fish furries lol

uh i got distracted. anyways. thank u sm.....

#text

[earthplanet]

tagged by @maotism >>:3 !!!

Last song i listened to: Berg, Piano Sonata Op. 1 lmao. Dont tell anyone but I prefer some Berg to Schoenberg 🫣🫣🫣 even though Berg is more ~tonal~. Also might learn music theory to voice train and deconstruct my favorite songs with one stone.

Currently watching: "Made in Abyss". It's my favorite anime... decided to rewatch because I havent seen it in a long time and it's what got me back into anime after not finding anything interesting for 6 years or so. The concept is: there's a huge hole in the middle of this town and the town's entire religion, culture and economy is based on people who literally for the fuck of it decide they need to go to the bottom (which maybe only one person has gotten to). I'm offput by the loli/shota undertones going on and I really really wish they didnt have to stain the entire story with that buuuuuuuuuuuuuut; I think it's actually very telling about where the story comes from within the author's psyche.

Currently reading: Women, Race and Class; Angela Davis + The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. The Davis is a very easy read and I feel like I've learned more history than I ever did in high school in the first 50 pages. The Factory is strangely hard to put down despite how banal the content has been so far.

Current obsession: Practicing the religion I came up with and also discovering it out in the world... The ideas are on my page already so I'm not going to wxplain but, I've been figuring out how to transform cooking from a dead practice in my life into something which transforms my karma essentially? This along with shitting, breathing, peeing, etc are things I eventually think can radically transform us if we are mindful of them. While the result isnt magic, I think of the subjective process as dyed-in-the-wool magic.

I'm also just coming down from a magical girl obsession LOL. Like... magical girls are existentialist heros I think??? Like, if existentialism had a feminist mythology the magical girl archetype would be ESSENTIAL. It's also really interesting how uniquely Buddhist concepts become central to magical girl story lines??? Like good and evil becoming complements which only tell the story of nirvana or something. Crazy shit.

tagging: @dykemcqueen @wodnes--coyotl

i dont really inow anyone else on here yet lol

not expecting anything, i just dont know who else to put :p

#religious #tag game

[joy-haver]

So this is in reply to a post where a bunch of popular disability blogs were essentially yelling eugenicist ideas at each other. I’m replying here because I don’t think I’d be met with good faith on the original post, and because this stands on its own I think.

Anyways

If we want to have anything approaching a radical and helpful disability movement, we have to talk about eugenics. We have to talk about white supremacy.

We have to build theoretical frameworks, learn our history, and most importantly, learn the theories and history of those we are trying to fight. Otherwise we are lashing out at an enemy while having no idea how to effectively fight them. (1)

Capitalism is bad. But, capitalism isn’t the Big Bad. It’s not the Final Evil that you can kill and erase all other systems of oppression. In fact, if you don’t unlearn the root ideologies of capitalism, your anti capitalist actions may be just as harmful or worse than the current system.

As best I can tell, the root ideologies of capitalism are Eugenics and White Supremacy.

And one thing to understand is that on the Venn diagram of Eugenics and White Supremacy, it’s basically a circle. All eugenicists are building towards white supremacy (whether they want to or not). And all white supremacists are doing eugenics (whether they understand it or not).

Broadly speaking, eugenics is the process of biological power accumulation. White supremacy is the process of social power accumulation.

The goal of both is to ‘breed a better race of perfect whites,’ and ‘to breed races of servants that are suited to providing for the master race. ‘ this is not conspiracy. This was the stated goal of the entire American political system from fairly early on. [edit, and the stated goal of feudalism to some extent but that’s complicated, and the British empire, I digress, but this isnt a recent invention]

This is the root of the Progressive movement (it was all about progressing the race, in this case always meaning the white race).

This is the roots of the Klan. And the cops. And of landlords, and the education system, and scientific institutions, and most of modern Christianity, and the medical system is there to finish you off. They are all founded on the ideals of eugenics and white supremacy.(2)

And something you have to understand is that in the mind of these power seeking white supremacist eugenicists, being a person of color *is a disability*. White people can be disabled too, but categorically, they view all non white people as disabled, inferior, and somewhere between human (which to them means master race) and animal (which to them essentially means tool that works on its own).

White supremacy is trying to domesticate us. All of us. They are tying to figure how to ‘utilize’ the ‘animals’ at their disposal.

•If youre intelligent, your basically a better version of a computer to them, and that’s it.

•If your strong, they see you as a draft animal.

•A good companion and friend? They see you as a pet.

Capitalism is the name we give to the breeding project. That’s it. That’s what alll this is. All the systems are literally designed to kill those that they don’t want breading, or to stop them from having kids. All these systems are to encourage the “top quality” white women to breed. All these systems are to create a white future with a small, controlled, and self managing system of servants.

If you want to fight for disability rights *this!!!* is what you have to fight against. And you have to start by fighting against it within your own mind.

Disclaimer: Please feel free to critique me. I’m a white girl talking about white supremacy, I know for a fact I’m missing nuance. But treat this as a starting point to build better ideas. Tear me down brick by brick if you have to, but use those bricks to develope a systemic analysis if that is at all possible for you. If it’s not, then do what you can.

Footnotes

1. When I say “we” need to learn this stuff, I mean the disability movement as a whole needs to hold this knowledge. It’s impossible for anyone person to know everything relevant. But learn what you can and share it frequently and with a desire to teach. Accept knowledge and critique, and critique all knowledge you accept.

2. If you want to know the history, stick around. I’ll keep explaining things as long as I possibly can. I promise. But the fastest way to learn it yourself is to look up the views that different historical movements had on eugenics, white supremacy, and power accumulation. and then try to connect that to the actions they took. Follow the trails of how their ideologies informed their work, and how their work led to the hellscape we are currently in.

#text post #eugenics #physical disability #white supremism #anarcho disability #disability liberation #disability justice #anarchism #capitalism #racism #ableism