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nat20composure · 3 months

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Astarion and Agency- The Necessity of Discomfort to Self Discovery and the Infantilization of Victims

Minor Astarion discourse ahead that mentions the treatment of SA victims post-abuse:

I want to open this post up just with like. The statement that I don't think there is a correct way to enjoy media and that I LOVE to see individual head cannons and takes on characters in media. I think that is also, to a degree, an integral part of video games because of how unique the experience of playing a game will be to every person who plays it. But it has been making me feel so incredibly sad looking through fan content, art, or discourse for BG3 specifically because of how many people have taken the route of infantilizing Astarion.

I understand the instinct to shield or protect an individual that you love and care for. I also understand that because of the nature of the things that Astarion goes through, a lot of people also feel very deep emotional stakes in him. I'm one of the many fans of the character who is a victim of SA and CSA, I really do get it. That is also why for me personally it is so demoralizing to watch so many people treat him like he is a child who cannot make his own decisions or stand up for himself. Part of that frustration stems from it feeling like a media literacy issue, and the other part of that sense of defeat is just because it feels indicative of a broader attitude that people seem to hold towards victims of abuse, particularly those who are victims of SA.

To explain what I mean by people infantilizing him: I see so many people refuse to allow him the opportunity to be hurt, or to feel uncomfortable. They see this character who has been through an immensely horrible and traumatic experience, and their instinct is to try and shield him from anything else that has the potential to upset him. I get that the people who want that aren't doing it with malicious intent, but frankly it is not really...Helpful? To try and prevent victims from Experiencing Discomfort tm. I also think it kind of disregards the entire thesis of Astarion's character and arc.

When you go through something that robs you of your selfhood and agency, the world can become a crushingly terrifying place. In Astarion, that fear presents itself in a desperation for power, control, and at the core of both of these desires- Safety. One thing the game is clear about is that he has a right to kill his abuser. He has a right to escape his situation. A lot of Astarion's personal arc is centered around being able to finally do that. But the game doesn't just leave it off at getting him to safety. So much of it is also about him needing to take responsibility for himself and his actions, with needing to learn who he as a person is.

The inclusion of the Gur children and Sebastian as characters is a good example of ways in which the game gives Astarion the opportunity to take responsibility. I think that if the intention of the arc was meant to be that "Astarion should never ever have to deal with being afraid or uncomfortable again", then the Ascended arc wouldn't Come with such heavy moral ramifications, like sacrificing the other people just like him, killing the victims he lured in, literal child murder. The game infers that he doesn't deserve to die because of the things he Needed to do to survive, but it also makes it very clear that there is a difference between addressing an Active Threat and using your fear as an excuse to hurt others. Breaking that cycle of abuse when he finally gets the chance to is what separates Spawn Astarion from Cazador.

Taking responsibility for himself, and letting himself sit in the discomfort of vulnerability ultimately ends up being a thing that he is very proud of and cherishes. If you tell him you will make sure nothing like that ever again he himself says that he doesn't want you to be his protector. And so it blows my mind when people go into all of these discussions about Astarion with this...Weird moral high ground for never, ever making or letting him make choices that might hurt him?

I see this the most when it comes to discussions about the possible polyamorous relationship with Halsin and the interaction with the drow twins in the brothel. So many people are just...outright angry? At other people engaging with either of those options? And I feel like that anger is one) rooted in the projection of their Own feelings on non-monogamy and what a victim of SA can or cannot look like. and two) Relies on undermining the agency that Astarion BEGS you for at every turn.

When it comes to the drow twins, the game adapts Astarion's response to them based on where he is in his own personal development (a really cool thing imo). Obviously, if he still doesn't feel good or safe about engaging with sex he declines and says you can feel free, though he hopes you aren't just doing it because he hasn't had sex with you. I think this makes sense: He's just gotten out of a situation where his Safety and worth were directly tied to him having sex. I imagine he feels afraid that not wanting to have sex with you makes him replaceable or inadequate because at this point in the game, he feels like that's all he has to offer. The interaction is relatively the same if you ask him for a poly amorous relationship with Halsin: He just asks you to reassure him that you aren't only doing it because he hasn't had sex with you, and then tells you he isn't worried about it otherwise.

A lot of people have taken the expression of that insecurity in combination with him still allowing you to go forward and do these things as him just "sucking it up" because he's afraid of losing you. (I am aware Shadowheart says he wouldn't be able to handle it when you ask her if you can date both of them- But keep in mind, Astarion says she wouldn't be able to either, and THAT obviously isn't true of her. For the purposes of this discussion I'm only including interactions with Astarion as a judgement of his character.) I understand that concern, but I feel this take disregards so many other points of dialogue, and is also continually rooted in the baseline vilification of discomfort.

To further go into it, the way that he speaks about both of these interactions changes significantly if you speak to him about it once he is completely free from Cazador, and has had time to allow himself to start reconnecting with himself and his sexuality on his terms. He has absolutely No reservations about an open or poly relationship with Halsin, and says he trusts that things will be ok because he one) feels secure in Your relationship and two) Knows Halsin is experienced and trusts him to not be a messy bitch about it.

I think that shift, in combination with the in game explanation of why he isn't ok with being in that sort of relationship with the other Origin Characters (for Lae'zel and Wyll, he says they'd never agree to that. For Shadowheart, he says she's not experienced with open relationships and that he doesn't think it'd work out. For Karlach, that it would break her heart. And for Gale, he says you need standards.) is a pretty good indicator that he doesn't actually care about polyamory or monogamy. I think the vilification of that choice relies on you picking and choosing when you do or do not believe Astarion or just outright not liking non-monogamy in the first place. This interaction has more to do with the player's choice and comfort level, and so is not as important to the broader discussion I am trying to have in this post.

The interaction that is more pertinent to not Allowing him to make decisions is, I think, the drow twins. If you interact with the drow twins after the completion of the Cazador questline, he is outright giddy at the prospect of interacting with the Drow twins. Specifically stating that he is excited to see how he likes these sorts of things now that he's free.

NOW- I do NOT think that he enjoys the act. The game makes that abundantly clear, and I'm not arguing that he has a great time. He obviously does not, and dissociates during it. That being said, allowing this interaction to happen does not make a player evil or selfish. You are not playing the hero if you decide to moderate his choices just because you do not think he is ready for it. Once again, no one is evil for Not doing it either, and I am not saying anybody has to want to. I am just saying that treating this choice like it is an evil choice to make relies on completely disregarding what He wants to do.

Astarion says so many times in the game that he is anxious about finally having the freedom to find out what he wants to do, and I think that his excitement for the drow twin exchange is one of the opportunities the game gives him to make a choice. He makes that choice- And it sucks for him. He doesn't enjoy the act, and having done it he would be able to move forward knowing that. I think it's really cool and important that the game represents that facet of recovering as a victim. While you are trying to renavigate who you are, you are going to make a million new choices you never had before. And sometimes those choices are going to suck ass. It would be a different matter if he knew these things would hurt him and went ahead and did them anyway. But so many people expect him to move forward avoiding even the Potential of being hurt, and I think that is extremely reductive of his arc and who he is.

Beyond the matter of interpersonal relationships, the choice between Ascending or not Ascending Astarion is not a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. It is a choice between his fear and his humanity. Between letting his trauma and his fear define him for the rest of his immortal life, and allowing him the vulnerability of deciding who he is when he isn't running from the world. When he's willing to listen to the parts of himself that want to do right, that wants meaningful connection, that wants to be proud of himself. That wants to meet himself. To confront who he is when someone else isn't deciding that for him.

Astarion as a character is extremely ambitious, inquisitive, and adventurous, three traits that only become more and more evident as he breaks free from letting his own fear dictate how he lives his life. I don't understand how so many people can see him and want to take the core of his character away from him, when he spends the entire game fighting desperately to take it back.

Victims are not casts of the abuse they have gone through. Their shapes may be changed by the hands of others, they may have to relearn how to be the person they want to be. But they are not broken or irreparable or fragile. They do not need to be freed from the grip of one person to be held tight in the grip of another. It is so fucking unfair and self-important to think that your hands will be the ones that fix them. That your hands know better than theirs. I think the kindest thing you can do for a person is to trust them with themselves, and to listen when they tell you who they are and what they want. Please listen to the voices that have only just learned to speak. It is the only way they can get better at doing it.

#astarion #astarion bg3 #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion ancunin #I know this is kind of overdramatic #but like pls pls pls pls #ask yourself why you feel the need to protect victims from the experience of growth #and then consider if that attitude is a fair or helpful one #because freedom includes the right to make choices. even stupid painful ones.#that being said this essay is more for people who played the game exclusively making choices they thought would make astarion comfortable #like ascending him or not participating in polyamory #this essay is NOT for people who just ascended him for dom dialogue with him #bc I think it is a bit silly to tell people who wanted a toxic make him worse dynamic #that they are enabiling toxicity and making him worse #this is just an alternative pov for people who genuinely think it is for the best to do these things

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magioffire · 9 months

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rpc i think we need to have a little talk about misconceptions surrounding polyamory after the shit show last night

not all polyamorous relationships are open relationships. polyamorous is not a fancy word for 'free for all'. poly people can and do have closed relationships.

polyamory is not synonymous with religious polygamy. no one is mandating you into a polygamy unless youre in some kind of cult sect or a religious group that actively practices such things. consentual relationships between adults is a lot different from mandated polygamy brought on by religious or political authoritarianism. monogamy and polygamy both have been utilized to oppress and control people throughout history. non-consensual arranged monogamous marriages anyone? that shit still happens to this day.

polyamory is not a fancy word for 'lack of commitment'. if anything, it takes more commitment to support a romantic relationship with multiple people

polyamory is not inherently more abusive than monogamy. this is just straight up just not true from a statistics standpoint, polyamorous relationships are not any more abusive than monogamous relationships. and since there are just more monogamous relationships out there, the chances for abuse to occur in monogamous relationships is just simply higher. as the stigma against polyamory fades, more people are going to attempt it. just like how when theres more dogs, more people get bit by dogs -- doesnt suddenly make dogs evil (tho some people would argue that for some breeds). your relationship status or mode does not indicate how good or bad of a person you are.

polyamory is not cheating. as with any relationship, in order for it to be healthy, there must be boundaries and respect for your partner/s. people in both monogamous and polyamorous relationships cheat. cheating has nothing to do with your sexuality or your relationship preferences. no sexuality or relationship state inherently makes a person more likely to cheat. its like implying bisexual people are more likely to cheat because of their sexuality.

humans are not 'wired' for monogamy. this is bioessentialism. no one is arguing that monogamous relationships arent common among humans, but saying we are 'wired' to be monogamous implies that polyamory is somehow an unnatural state. which stinks of the same sort of bigotry of 'homosexuality isnt natural/humans are wired for heterosexuality'.

'i have nothing against polyamory, but i dont want it forced on me' is a dogwhistle for 'i dont want polyamorous people to exist in my general direction' and if you said that about any other group of people, it would obviously be a bigoted stance. 'i have nothing against gay people, but i dont want their gayness forced on me'. you see how fucked up that sounds? no one is holding a gun to your head saying you have to be in a polyamorous relationship.

the internet has made people forget how to mind their own business. it has also made people forget that just because something makes you personally uncomfortable doesnt mean you have to create some sort of moral justification for your hatred and fear. its a common tactic among troll and extremist political groups to prey upon people's discomfort and fear and turn it into hatred (kink at pride discourse anyone?). outrage culture is very real and 'alternative' or non-mainstream lifestyles and people have always been a target for this. it is nothing new, it is just the same old bigotry given a new fresh coat of paint. learn to sit with your discomfort, because its ultimately a you problem, not an everyone else's problem. people are not obligated to change or make themselves smaller to uphold your comfort. a boundary is not an ultimatum you place upon other people, its something you place upon yourself. people existing and living their lives is not forcing anything upon you.

#ooc.#ok im not talking about this anymore sorry!! back to this money #but it really bothered me and honestly made me feel kinda unsafe that theres people out there that think this way #like i would expect this sort of mentality to be on reddit or twitter. not tumblr lol #long post cw #discourse cw #okay to reblog

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dogboyklug · 3 months

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give that man some gd body positivity for once he deserves it

sam is FAT and as a fat guy this is important to me. hes also very clearly self hating abt it and as a fat guy whos the same way that makes me wanna cry. i lov him your honor and i hope he can recover

ps: stop drawing him skinny Please oh god it hurts.

excessively long id under the cut for those who need it

[id: a six-panel borderless comic featuring sam from sam & max, and klugpuuo's fursona, fluorite.

panel 1: sam is looking off to his side, clearly agitated but trying to mask it. he's apparently making a dry joke about his weight, or deciding to go on a diet, but isn't happy about it. behind him, fluorite stares at him, a stylized red glint on its glasses.

panel 2: now off-screen, fluorite says "sam, listen.", which apparently shocks sam into silence.

panels 3 to 4: fluorite goes on a long-winded rant. transcript:

You've been making those jokes more or less constantly, and I just wanna mention, if you WANT, PERSONALLY, to be thin, then power to you, but it really doesn't seem like it. Being fat is a completely neutral thing, dude. The only reason it's seen as bad is because like five assholes in the beauty and medical industries realized that you can make a lot of money off of people's insecurities. That's literally it. Unless you're so fat you physically cannot move and are at active risk of dying because of it, you don't have to lose weight for anyone, at all, period.

And, with these jokes, too... Like, I get it, I know how it feels. Making light of this kind of self-hating stuff makes it feel more like a joke, or it just makes it feel... better. Something shared by others instead of terrifying and awkward and alone, even if others are laughing more AT you [than with you]

But at the end of the day, all that this kinda rhetoric is gonna do for you is just make everyone around you feel uncomfortable. It's gonna feed into other's self-hatred, or in another equally bad scenario, it broadcasts your self-hatred to people who'll use it t hurt you and people you care about. Assholes who want nothing more to just bring you harm and etc.

end transcript.

panel 5: sam, looking pensive, puts a hand to his face in thought, saying "

...So, to simplify your long-winded jargon-full rant for our audience (as in, Max, who's coming back over right now),

"Being... over the average weight for a bipedal lifeform of my specific height,

Isn't inherently indicative of some form of extreme moral, mental or physical failure?"

Fluorite responds with a simple "yea" in a comedically large font.

panel 6: sam looks up, brow not furrowed in concentration, discomfort or any negative emotion, and his shoulders are slack. he simply says "huh" in wonder.

end id.]

#body neutrality #fat positivity #sam & max #sam and max #klug's sketches #described #id #transcribed #my me #i am still participating in the strike and you should be too btw #but there have been a massive influx of skinny sams in the tag and its making me really upset.#so here ya go.

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docholligay · 2 years

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The ends justify the means is always such an interesting idea for me, because in honesty, all of us exist on some part of that line. There are people for whom no personal discomfort is worth the reward, and while I may think they are pathetic and sad, it is also your right as a human being to be so! There are people for whom their comfort and that of others means nothing in the light of what could be gained, and while I applaud the bugfuck insanity of that, it’s not exactly a winner.

As y’all might guess, I can TEND toward the ‘ends justifying the means’ end of things, and like, essentially Judaism is me going, “If you can’t grow your own morality storebought is fine” because at my nature I tend to be pretty ‘get the right thing done even if its the wrong way’ we fight the evil impulse in ourselves, that’s life.

But this is an example of that, that shows, I think, a more human version of that. Even what I indicated above, we’re always thinking of it such HUGE measures, but most moments where we discover things about ourselves are actually quite small in scale. It is worth it to Stan to lie, directly fucking lie, to Dipper and Mabel in order to get Ford back. It is worth the risk of opening a rift and destroying the world. It is worth being fucking arrested.

It is a love of FIRE, and that’s something I think we VERY rarely see in non-romantic contexts. Someone you would risk quite a lot, and risk OTHERS for. Because you believe you might be able to bring someone back who has been lost to you for so long. I find it fucking fascinating. I find it terrifying. Is he right? fuck if I know! And the show, being, and please know that I know this, for children, does not take a very sharp eye to what Stan does.

But it does make him pay for it. If he had never brought Ford back, Bill likely could never have made his way into this world. I don’t know that he ever parses it that way, because as much as his brother fucking annoys the shit out of him, as far as he is concerned, anything else went out the window the moment he got him back. The moment he ‘won’ against time and universes and his OWN MISTAKES. Bill comes through because of Ford’s bullshit, but who cares, in the end?

#Doc Watches Gravity Falls #Gravity Falls S2 E11 #spoilers for jetwolf #HOPE EVERYONE IS FINE WITH THE FACT THAT THE LIVEBLOG IS JUST THIS #to get indulgent #imagine Winston thinking of a way #using his knowledge of time technology #that he might be able to bring back A Lena #after she's died #that there's the potential one version of her might be alive out there #IMAGINE #imagine how deeply people would have to tackle him #because not only is it the exact opposite of what she would want #but she could never be HIS Lena #jsut A Lena

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headspace-hotel · 4 years

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its yet another post I don’t have the energy to make rn but obesity is one of those things that attracts hordes of people who evaluate the whole issue as being a result of people valuing ~*~feelings~*~ over Reality because their fundamental grasp of the issue is just “people dislike the discomfort of exercise and healthy eating, therefore theyre obese” and therefore all of them think they have The Solution to obesity that people are Unwilling to Consider whether they’ve done any research or not

and it’s ESPECIALLY irritating because like, they see you coming from a position of “I want people to suffer less,” and that leads them to interpret your position as “I don’t think people should have to go through the discomfort of living a healthier lifestyle,” and not “the ‘tough love’ approach of treating people as inhuman manifestations of laziness, weakness and moral defectiveness for being fat...doesn’t lead to people losing weight, and even if it did, it would be an accident because that idea doesn’t reflect reality, and even if it did reflect reality, it would...be sort of... evil.”

But, there’s also a whole essay on how exercise is seen as this torturous rite-of-passage thing that Weeds Out the Weak and Purifies through Suffering and specifically indicates the amount of willpower or self control that someone has. And how, generally, Being Healthy is thought of as something that involves suffering, that MUST involve suffering.

It’s to the point where people will get, like...offended if you suggest that a healthy lifestyle be composed of things that are themselves intrinsic motivators for the person, or engaged in to make a person feel better emotionally/mentally, because that’s...cheating? Or like, a Soft Wimpy Pansy version of the SIN-OF-GLUTTONY-PURIFIER-BY-FLAME-MACHINE-3000 that working out is supposed to be.

And another whole fucking essay on how people see self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-love as deeply threatening and potentially dangerous things, to the point that they are fucking convinced that if “body positivity” is allowed to exist people will destroy themselves because the self-hatred “body positivity” removes is the only thing preventing them from straight up plummeting into an abyss of destructive self-obsession like Narcissus falling off a cliff trying to kiss his own reflection.

Never mind, that one doesn’t need an essay. It’s Christianity. It’s Christianity so much. Specifically, it’s the doctrine of original sin—that our natural inclination as humans is toward destructive extremes of selfishness, self-gratification, and self-worship. Of course selfishness and such things are within our capabilities, but the idea that we’re constantly straining to hold the gates shut against a battering ram of self-love is very Christian. This idea that self-love is primarily destructive and self-criticism is primarily constructive is very Christian. Aristotle acknowledged that there is a balance between the two. (I wrote an essay on it.)

This unspecified dread of what catastrophic thing will happen if fat people are Allowed to be fat without hating themselves? Or even to love themselves? It’s rooted in a viewpoint that the destructive and harmful power of self love is much, much greater than that of self hatred. As “rational” and “objective” as the viewpoints that include it are supposed to be, they are built on a foundation that has uncritically swallowed a specific viewpoint on human nature that is far from being either of those things. Come on.

In conclusion...people don’t have to live up to a standard of health or beauty or “self control” or personal Moral Fortitude or social acceptability to be justified in loving themselves; eat my ass for lunch and heat up the leftovers in the microwave for dinner

#weight mention #tw weight #weight tw #weight loss cw #thoughts #and this was the version of the essay that I DO have the energy to type out #self love #body positive

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kuromichad · 3 years

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different subject that’s heavy on my mind rn but since i’m already being harsh let’s get into it. i wish it wasn’t automatically presumed to be some kind of truscum attitude when someone tries to express that different parts of The Trans Community have like, different needs and different risk levels and different experiences and that we have the ability to talk over each other, harm each other, etc... like when i put it that way people generally are like ‘of course that’s true!’ but is it ever really understood in practice? a number of people (not a large enough number, but still) are able to loosely understand ‘you can be trans and transphobic’ when it’s applied to the matter of transmisogyny but when a trans person tries to express distrust of or frustration with afab nb people due to how common it is that that category of person will, despite being trans/nb, espouse bioessentialist, anti-medical-transition, radfem-adjacent if not outright cryptoterf rhetoric, suddenly ‘trans people can be transphobic’ gets applied to... the person with a complaint about transphobia.

because he’s clearly an evil truscum man! regardless of if the person making the complaint is a trans man or trans woman, oops, lol. he’s a bad person who is attacking and invalidating and totally hatecriming the heckin’ valid, equally at-risk transgender identity of “an afab woman who isn’t a woman except when she pointedly categorizes themself as a woman because being afab makes them a woman who is ‘politically aligned’ with women but she’s not an icky unwoke cis woman because they don’t like being forced into womanhood although Really When You Think About It 🤔 all women are dysphoric because obviously the pathologized medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in transgender people is something that equally applies to cis women just default existing under patriarchy 🤔, and no, equating these things totally does not imply anything reductive about or add a bizarre moral dimension to the idea of being transgender, whaaaaat, this woman who isn’t a woman doesn’t think there’s anything immoral or cowardly or misogynist or delusional about being transgender, they would never say that because THEY’RE transgender, except when she feels it’s important (constantly) to make clear that she’s Still A Woman Deep Down Inherently Despite Not Identifying As One, and none of this ever has any effect on how they treat the concept, socially and politically, of people who actually wholly identify with (and possibly medically transition to) a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, be it ‘the opposite gender’ or abstaining from binary gender altogether or ‘politically aligning’ with the ‘opposite’ gender from their asab. never ever!”

and like maybe that sounds like a completely absurd and hateful strawman to you! but in that case you’re either like, lucky, or optimistic, or ignorant. i’m literally not looking at random nb people and declaring that in My Truscum Opinion they’re ‘really a woman’ just because they’re not medically transitioning or meeting some arbitrary standard of mine. i am looking at self-identified afab nb people, who most often use she/they because, y’know, words mean things, especially pronouns, so people who are willingly ‘aligned with womanhood’ typically intentionally use she/her (sorry that i guess that’s another truscum take now!!! that pronouns mean things!!! the bigender transmasc who deliberately uses exclusively he/him wants it to invoke a perception he’s comfortable with!), who actively say the things listed above (in a non-sarcastic manner).

like, the line between a person who says “i don’t claim to really not be my asab because i know no one would ever perceive me as anything else” because theyve internalized a defeatist attitude due to societal transphobia, and a person who says that because they... genuinely believe it’s impossible/ridiculous/an imposition to truly be transgender (in the traditional trans sense, beyond a vague nb disidentification with gender) and are actively contributing to the former person’s self loathing... is hard to define from a distance! i think plenty of people who are, in a sense, ‘tentative’ or like ‘playing close to home’ so to speak in their identity are ‘genuinely trans’ (whatever that may mean) and just going through a process. they might arrive at a different identity or might just eventually stop saying/believing defeatist stuff, who knows. but there are enough people saying it for the latter reason, or at least not caring if they sound that way, that it’s like, dangerous. it is actively incredibly harmful to other trans people. and it’s fucking ridiculous that it’s so difficult to criticize because you’ll always get the defense of “umm but i’m literally trans” and/or “well i’m just talking about ME, this doesn’t apply to other trans people” when it’s an attitude that very clearly seeps into their politics and the way they discuss gender.

because it’s just incredibly common for afab nb people (most typically those that go by she/they! since i’m aware that uh, i am also afab nb, but we clearly are extremely different, so that’s the best categorization i’ve got) to discuss gender in moralized terms, with the excuse of patriarchy/misogyny existing, which of course adds another difficult dimension to trying to criticize this because it gets the response of “don’t act like misandry is real” (it’s not, but being a dick still is) and “boohoo, let women complain about their oppressors” (this goes beyond ‘complaining’). a deliberate revocation of empathy/sympathy/compassion from men and projection of inherently malicious/brutish/cruel intent onto men (not solely in the justified generalizations ‘men suck/are dangerous’, but in specific interactions too) underpin a whole fucking lot of popular posts/discussions online, whether they’re political or casual/social, and it absolutely influences how people conceptualize and feel about transness.

because ‘maleness is evil’ is still shitty politics even when you’ve slightly reframed it from the terf ‘trans women are evil because they’re Really Men and can never escape being horrific soulless brutes just as women can never escape being fragile morally superior flowers’ to the tumblr shethey “trans women who are out to me/unclockable are tolerable i guess because they’re women and women are good; anyone i personally presume to be a cis man, though, is still automatically evil, and saying trans men are Just As Bad is progressive of me, and it’s totally unrelated and apolitical that i think we should expand the concept of afab lesbianism so broadly that you can now be basically indistinguishable from trans men on literally every single level except for a declaration of ‘but i would never claim to be a man because i’m secure in the Innate Womanhood of the body i was born into, even as i medically alter that body because it causes me great gendered discomfort.’ none of this at all indicates that i feel there’s an immense moral/political gap between being an afab nb lesbian vs a straight trans man! it says nothing at all about my concept of ‘maleness’ and there’s no way this rhetoric bleeds into my perception of trans women and no way loudly talking about all this could keep trans people around me self-loathing and closeted, because i’m Literally Trans and Not A Terf!”

again, if that sounds like a hateful strawman, sorry but it’s not. i guess i’m supposed to be like ‘all of the many people ive seen saying these shitty things is an evil outlier who Doesn’t Count, and it’s not fair to the broad identity of afab shethey to not believe that every person who doesn’t outright say terfy enough things is a perfectly earnest valid accepting trans person who’s beyond criticism’ but like. this cannot be about broad validation. this can’t be about discarding all the bad apples as not really part of the group. we can’t be walking on eggshells to coddle what are essentially, in the end, Cis Feelings, because in the best cases this kind of rhetoric comes from naive people who are early and uncertain in their gender journey or whatever and are in the process of unraveling internalized transphobia, and in the easily observable worst cases these people are very literally redefining shit so that ‘actually all afab women are trans, spiritually, all afabs have dysphoria, we are all Equally oppressed by Males uh i mean cis men <3’ because, let’s be honest, they know that the moment they call themselves trans they get to say whatever they want about gender no matter how harmful it is to the rest of us. and those ideas spread like wildfire through the afab shethey “woman that’s not a woman” community that frankly greatly outnumbers other types of trans people online, because many of those people just do not have the experiences that lead you to really understand this shit and have to push back against concepts of gender that actively harm you as a trans person.

like that’s all i want to be able to say, is Things Are Different For Different Groups. and a willful ignorance of these differences leads to bad rhetoric controlling the overall discourse which gets people hurt. and even when concepts arise from it that seem positive and helpful and inclusive, in practice or in origin those ideas can still be upholding shit that gets other people hurt. like, i don’t doubt that many people are very straightforwardly happy and comfortable with an identity like ‘afab nb lesbian on testosterone’ and it would be ridiculous and hypocritical for me, ‘afab nb who wants to pass as a guy so he can comfortably wear skirts again,’ to act like that’s something that can’t or shouldn’t exist. it’s not about the identity itself, it’s about the politics that are popular within its community, and how the use of identities as moral labels with like, fucking pokemon type interactions for oppression effectiveness which directly informs the moral correctness of your every opinion and your very existence, is a shitty practice that gets people hurt and leads us to revoke empathy from each other.

like. sorry this is all over the place and long and probably still sounds evil because i haven’t thought through and disclaimered every single statement. but i’m like exhausted from living with this self-conscious guilt that maybe i’ve turned into a horrible evil truscum misogynist etc etc due to feeling upset by this seemingly inescapable approach to gender in lgbt/online circles that like, actively harms me, because when i vent with my friends all the stuff i’ve tried to explain here gets condensed down to referencing ‘she/theys’ as a category and that feels mean and generalizing and i genuinely dislike generalizations but the dread i feel about that category gets proven right way too often. it’s just like. this is not truscum this is not misgendering this is not misogyny. this is not about me decreeing that all transmascs have to be manly enough or dysphoric enough and all nbs have to be neatly agender and androgynous or something, i’m especially not saying that nb gender isn’t real lmao or even that it’s automatically wrong to partially identify with your asab; this is not me saying you can only medically transition for specific traditional reasons or that you don’t get a say on anything if you aren’t medically transitioning for whatever reason, now or ever. i just. want to be allowed to be frank about how... when there’s different experiences in a community we should like. acknowledge those differences and be willing to say that sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about or that what they’re saying is harmful. without the primary concern being whether people will feel invalidated by being told so. because these are like, real issues, that are more important than politely including everyone, because that method is just getting vulnerable people drowned out constantly.

#source on much of this: existing as a transmasc on tumblr for years and years.#i stopped identifying as any sort of 'woman-aligned' pretty much right before the ridiculous 'all afabs are dysphoric' stuff #but it sure did still make me hate myself and feel like a silly cowardly ugly little girl for wanting to transition!#and back when i WAS a she/they i definitely was falling for 'men are bad maleness is bad always inherently :)' rhetoric #not in the modern form outlined above but in the like. brainlessly parroted from 'baeddel tumblr' form #which was still like 'you can escape being a Bad Person by either becoming or admitting you are a girl :)'#and the only acknowledgment of trans men in this ideology was like. 'well i guess they feel like they have to do that :\'#'too bad for them. im not saying they shouldnt transition but you know. men suck though <3'#it was bad for me it was bad for other people so im saying from experience. Fucking cut it out! the end

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kaypeace21 · 4 years

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Coincidences? (Or foreshadowing of romantic endings?)

color me delusion over “ pointing out meaningless coincidences” but I still can’t get over the tv references most likely hinting about certain couples not being endgame.

Sorry, i just don’t think it’s a coincidence that El in s2 watches ‘all my children’ where she mimics Erica Kane who (in the ep she is watching) rushes into a relationship/elopement with a writer named Mike Roy, after a traumatic experience ( and the 2 end up not being endgame ). And the relationship gets messy and involves stalking .

Then in s3, Joyce watches Cheers (”rescue me”), and Jopper is compared to Dianne and fraiser. Diane says as joyce is listening to the tv “He had a couple of sips of Chianti tonight and asked me to marry him.” . At dinner Hopper orders a chianti while being stood up by Joyce. And Dianne and Frasier don’t marry and are also not endgame, cause Dianne stands him up at the alter. The other ep of cheers she watches in s3 (was in the Bob/joyce flashback) , and was called “ the rebound part 2″ in reference to Fraiser (aka Hopper) being the rebound. He’s just a rebound to Bob-why she’s thinking of Bob after Hopper asked her out.

Then Hopper in s3 also watches a magnum pi rerun from 1980- the 2 ep pilot is called “don’t eat the snow in Hawaii”. Magnum ( solving crime with his colorful Hawaiian shirts, similar to Hopper) kisses Alice who he has a history with. Alice promises to come back so they can be together (like Joyce with Enzo’s)-but it’s a lie and she never shows up again in the series and they aren’t endgame either . Also, when Joyce in ep 8 accepts the date- Hopper says he can’t do so at a certain time because he and El watch Miami Vice. The main cop in that also has a will-they wont they relationship (for several seasons with a female detective who was also a main character (like Joyce- aka ‘detective Byers’). AND THEY ALSO WERE NOT ENDGAME. ”Gina had an on-again, off-again relationship with Crockett, who was on the rebound after divorcing his wife, Caroline. The relationship faded out as Gina realized they mainly got together when one or both needed someone. Crockett was very protective of Gina, and had some jealousy when Gina was involved in relationships with other people …but was the first one to be there for her when things went wrong.”

-Also, In s2 Hopper angrily turns off cheers (Ep : ‘Sam turns the other cheek’). Causing jopper to (maybe?) also be compared to Sam and Diane from cheers too. Who have a long ‘will they won’t they’ relationship for more than 5 seasons (and used to date). And are also not endgame.The ep that plays in s3 that Joyce watches - has Diane say that Sam abuses her and mentions how they constantly argue (just like s3) but she says she can’t stay away because she loves him. A guy hearing this says “if you ever get tired of him and want a normal quiet life, think of me.” And this is also at the same time she’s reminiscing about being with such a guy- Bob (while watching the show). It pretty much reflects what Murray said about jopper. Hopper reminds her of a “bad relationship”(Lonnie)- but she can’t help wanting to hook up with Hopper. Despite “wanting to settle down with a nice guy (like bob).” Sam even was an alcoholic ex baseball player (Like Lonnie forcing Will to play/having beer cans everywhere) and Dianne having mental health issues (like Joyce).

Glen and Les Charles (just like the Duffers were brothers who created a show -cheers) . Their explanation about why Dianne and Sam didn’t end up together despite all the seasons of ‘will they won’t they ‘ echos jopper’s dynamic to a T . And I believe the Duffers are emulating Sam/Dianne and these fellow bro-writers.“Sam & Diane were so different. Their relationship (for comic and dramatic purposes) was fraught with conflict. Most of our time was spent devising new, funny, and fresh complications for them. Projecting forward, I believe they would driven each other insane had they gone off hand-in-hand – each with the best intentions, but ending with restraining orders. “

Pretty much. the moral of sam & diane’s story according to the Charles brothers was ‘there may be someone in your life you long for but deep down in your heart of hearts you know they’re wrong for you.’ And i think the duffers are using this inspiration from a fellow brother writing team (from the 80s) in regards to Jopper.

Then in regards to Lumax. Max and Lucas wear shirts referencing the couple from that 70s show. Max -is donna the feminist, tomboy, red-head, who doesn’t take sh*t. What’s interesting is lucas wears one of eric’s shirts from when they’re broken up and he’s fliritng with other girls- and earlier in the season Max called Lucas ‘Don juan’ (a name for a player- so it’s probably foreshadowing for s4.)

Max is also paralleled to 2 film characters Lucas doesn’t like- Michael meyers & Winston. Lucas: “ I specifically didn’t agree to Winston…nobody wants to be Winston, man.” Mike: “what’s wrong with Winston?”Lucas: He joined the team super late.Mike: yeah , but he’s still cool.Max being cool and joining the party late probably means she’s supposed to be Winston, right? it’s like how Lucas and dustin in s1 dissed el and said she was like Michael Myers. Cue max in her Michael Myers mask

- Also, the tv parallel of El (in s2) mimicking Erica Kane and pretending to be with a fictional Mike Roy. Also parallels Karen/ Billy. In s2, before she meets him she’s reading a romance book that has a guy that resembles Billy on the cover. The Duffers even mentioned they changed the cover to show the resemblance between Billy and the fictional book character. And we see Karen reading the sequel in s3 before Billy appears. Both El and Karen don’t/didn’t love Mike or Billy- they just projected onto them fictional characters they were infatuated with.Max also is said to do something similar- as the costume designers have Lucas dress up like “Max’s crush”- the karate kid (to impress her) and “be like him”.

I mean maybe I am “crazy” but this seems more like overt foreshadowing about these pairings not being endgame. I could be wrong but I really do believe the Duffers throw in details to foreshadow and allude to things occurring in the story. In a video (7:41) the Duffers mention how they had El in s2 watch Frankenstein on tv to indicate her emotionally state in the cabin feeling “cut off from the world” and “like a monster”. So I don’t think it’s a stretch-when they’ve already admitted what their character watches on tv pertains to something regarding that specific character . ( So why can’t what a character watches on tv (or read) also foreshadow them not ending up with a particular person?)

Then you have the Stalking elements...

Lumax is paralleled to mileven and jancy which have stalking elements, specifically stalking their future partner (lucas being called a ‘stalker’ for stalking Max, el spying on mike and saying “I make my own rules “ -ignoring his discomfort , Jonathan taking pics of nancy unbeknownst to her- although he apologized ) . And although, not as direct of a parallel as the first 3- Hopper spies on mileven kissing and eavesdrops on Joyce’s move. At the snowball, Lumax and mileven danced to ‘every breath you take’- a song about a bad break up and a stalker ex . The writer of the song also has said many times “it’s NOT a love song.” The duffers obviously knew that. Lumax also danced to it and Lucas was called a ‘stalker’ before they go to the dance floor- to emphasize this point. El also stalked Mike in s2 (all that stuff milevens found romantic- El watching him without him knowing. Mike says he was not ok with it in s3). And in s3 when he said not to do that she just says ‘i make my own rules’.

* lumax also danced to ‘time after time’ which is also a song about a breakup. And, Max in s2 when arguing with Lucas’ says “ you guys act like you want me to be your friend but then you just treat me like garbage” (paralleling mileven when El said mike treated her “like garbage” in s3 , before she dumps Mike.)

You can read about more of these “coincidences” or what I’d like to think are purposeful parallels HERE. Warning there’s a lot of parallels.

#joyce byers #jim hopper #mike wheeler #el hopper #stranger things #anti mileven

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e-louise-bates · 3 years

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It’s Jane Austen’s birthday! I hate ranking lists that claim objectivity (Austen Heroes, Worst To Best, Absolutely And Completely The One Correct Way To View This, No This Isn’t Clickbait Why Do You Ask?), so here, instead have my own personal opinions of least-favorite to favorite Austen Heroes and Heroines.

First, the dudes, because, well, why not:

7. Edmund Bertram. Look, Edmund is unfailingly kind, but good grief. So judgmental toward others! So blind to his own weak spots! So unforgivably dense about the Crawfords! I could forgive the blindness and denseness if he didn’t set himself up as the wise and unfailingly correct judge and mentor. Edward Ferrars is also an idiot (see below), but at least he doesn’t go around considering himself better than everyone else.

6. Edward Ferrars. A bit of an idiot, but trying his best, poor thing. Kind of remarkable he turned out as well as he did when you consider his family and his tutor.

5. Colonel Brandon. A bit boring (unless portrayed by Alan Rickman), but a true gentleman and a man of sterling worth. Not much else to say about him.

4. Captain Wentworth. I disliked Captain Wentworth for a long time because of his unyielding bitterness against Anne. But you know, the older I get, the more I like the fact that he’s not perfect, and his flaws are actually kind of major ones, and he really does have a lot of growing to do throughout the story--and he does so. And yes, the letter. Swoon.

3. Mr. Darcy. The man who recognizes his flaws and then acts to correct them, both out of love for the woman who shoved them in his face and because it was the right thing to do. I have little patience for those who claim Mr. Darcy’s “real” problem was social awkwardness--Austen makes it thoroughly clear that yes, he is socially awkward, and that’s no excuse: he doesn’t think highly enough of other people to work to overcome his discomfort.

2. Mr. Knightley. I’ve already written an entire post on why Mr. Knightley is one of the best Austen heroes, so here I will simply say: I love his kindness, and empathize with his dislike of social gatherings, and admire his willingness to participate in said gatherings despite his dislike (unlike a certain other Austen leading man ...)

1. Henry Tilney, of course. He has a sense of humor! He cares about people! He’s kind! He makes mistakes, and then acts to rectify them! He’s mischievous! He’s human and adorable, and I love him.

The ladies!

7. Marianne Dashwood. Oh, Marianne. When I was sixteen, I too believed I knew exactly how the world ought to be, and was convinced my views were utterly correct and would never change. I suspect I was just as irritating to the people around me as you are. Marianne is a difficult character to really like. Yes, she does grow and improve by the end of the story, but I suspect she will always remain an exhausting individual.

6. Catherine Morland. Poor naive Cathy, she is so easily mistaken for a nitwit--that’s how I read her for years, until I had enough maturity myself to recognize that no, she’s simply an innocent girl who is too prone both to letting her imagination run away with her AND to expecting everyone else to be as straightforward as she is. Her character development isn’t as finely drawn as it would have been had Austen written her book later in life, but it is there.

5. Fanny Price. I love Fanny--she is not a drip!--but even I can admit that she is a difficult protagonist to admire. Her quiet steadfastness and strong moral compass are incredibly admirable, but her timidity and lack of self-esteem make for difficult reading, especially for modern readers who more easily resonate with a “headstrong, impertinent girl,” then with someone who cowers in the corner and passively accepts the terrible treatment she is given. That said, I do love her for the fact that despite the terrible treatment, despite her natural inclination to avoid conflict, despite her lack of faith in her own judgment, she still stands firm on what she believes is right and wrong, and won’t bend from that.

4. Emma Woodhouse. Emma is such a complex character. She’s not very likeable, but her journey from self-absorption to genuinely thinking of others (not just of how wonderful she is for appearing to think of others) is compelling. I especially appreciate Romola Garai’s portrayal of her as a too-intelligent woman desperate for mental stimulation and broader horizons, yet compelled to remain closed in a tiny box out of love and duty, and the indication that much of her errors came about as a result of that situation.

3. Elinor Dashwood. Elinor is nineteen at the start of S&S, and man, the poor girl. The only person with any sense (hah) in her family, she is forced to crush down all her emotions because otherwise her mother and sisters would be destitute and most likely disgraced. She’s not a very joyful character, but she is lovable, and especially when played by Emma Thompson, you rejoice all the more with her at that glorious ending.

2. Elizabeth Bennet. She is witty and intelligent, she makes mistakes and then strives to do better, she sparkles, and she is utterly lovable. There you go.

1. Anne Elliot. Anne is The Best, and that’s that. (Oops, I said I was going to stay away from objective statements, didn’t I? Let me rephrase) So far as I am concerned, Anne is The Best, and that’s that.

#happy birthday jane austen #jane austen #pride and prejudice #persuasion #emma #sense and sensibility #northanger abbey #mansfield park

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subtlereferencetomyinterests · 3 years

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I Taste Honey but I Haven’t Seen the Hive - Chapter Four

Ao3, Masterpost, C.1 C.2 C.3

Relationships: eventual queer-platonic intruality, mentioned platonic relationships

tumblr edits out my italics when i copy/paste, and its midnight on a school night, so. italics arent in the tumblr version of this chapter cuz im not manually replacing them rn :P

Warnings: Taxidermy, swearing, fights (verbally, not physically), mentions of death, sexual innuedo (thanks remus), sympathetic everyone but there is Conflict.

Word Count: 2,645

Patton had learned, in his many years of emotion-filled life, that every person interacted with others uniquely. An obvious thing to learn, maybe, but in his younger years he felt like it really wasn’t made clear enough.

When it finally hit Patton that other people didn’t feel things in just the same way he did, it came with slow disbelief. Shocked was he to learn that not only were people so vastly different inside, but that he might’ve been one of the most different of all- even with the other sides. After all, each of them had seemed to understand all their differences like it was second nature, while Patton tried to come to terms with the information.

And come to terms with it he had, throughout Thomas’ late teens to early twenties. It was just Patton’s nature to try and learn about his friends, and that didn’t change when the task got harder. If anything, he’d become furiously determined to know how to care for all his family better than anyone, even if it more than once sent him spiralling in thought.

Logan, for example, was at his best when he was around other people; calmly talking, debating, doing work in the same space, anything that amounted to time spent together. So, even when Patton didn’t know what he was going on about, he did his best to at least be someone Logan could talk at. Which must’ve have worked somehow, because Patton couldn’t even count the times anymore he’d realized it had been hours after starting a conversation with his best friend, the both of them grinning and talking and enjoying each other’s company. Color Logan understood!

Roman, an even easier case to crack, didn’t really care what kind of attention he got- as long as it was positive. Which Patton was of course happy to provide! Though Roman became easily suspicious of any signs of friendship, Patton liked to think he’d weaseled his way into being a close companion, if the amount of times Roman dragged him off on adventures was any indication. Roman, too, was a check!

Virgil had been harder to figure out; not enough support and he got nervous, too much and he’d get overwhelmed. Fine balances did not come easily to Patton, so there had been more than a little trial and error. He’d eventually landed on treating him not unlike a wild cat: to just exist in the same space and let Virgil do whatever he wanted in his own time (a method that had found resounding success!). Virgil, much as he wanted to seem mysterious, was also marked off the list of understanding.

Janus was deceptively easy to work out. He just needed someone to challenge him, all in good sport, to be friendly and frustrating at the same time. Call it environmental enrichment, but with people! Patton was more than happy to be one of those people, pushing and pulling in equal parts banter and genuine conversation. Janus, surprisingly, was clear as well.

Patton wondered if it was weird to think about it so much. He thought about all of them, and he wondered if they took time to decode him, too. Or maybe they just knew already- they saw the heart on his sleeve (or chest, as it were) and had him all figured out right then.

He liked to believe they did spend time thinking about it, though. It was nice to think he wasn’t the only one that cared enough to take the time, and he knew that they cared about him already! Even if they didn’t say it as much as he did, even if they showed it all differently, and even if sometimes it felt like they didn’t understand him…

They still cared. The hoodie around his shoulders said so. The card framed on his wall said so. The stray dog dander on his clothes said so. So long as he had that, who needed the luxury of understanding?

Patton shook his head, no, he wasn’t worrying about all them right now. Right now, there was someone else to worry about.

Remus. Remus, who always chatted on and on, but sometimes went dead quiet for no reason at all; whose expression never seemed to match his words, who laughed when he was happy and when he was angry, who yelled when he was bored and when he was overwhelmed. Remus, who threw himself around a corner for a cheap jumpscare every five minutes, limbs broken and wrapped in ragged, punk-style clothes. Who would also drape himself all the way across Patton gently and calmly, wearing something baggy and impossibly soft (but still neon as ever), talking and talking and acting like it was all perfectly normal. Remus, who Patton wasn’t even sure was officially his friend yet.

Patton wanted him to be. But there was still… something in the way. Some kind of frustrating, tense, unknowable barrier that left him on edge around the trait. If Remus could just tell him something, anything, or give him any hints at all about what Patton was supposed to make of him, then it wouldn’t be so downright impossible. But he was inscrutable, an open book written in a language Patton didn’t know.

Whenever Remus walked into the room, it was almost like nothing had even changed since his acceptance.

Speaking of-

Patton barely had time to dodge out of the way as Remus leapt onto the couch, landing in a sprawl and taking up as much space as possible. He looked out of breath, so he’d probably booked it down the hallway and stairs, too. Just as probable was him having no reason for doing so at all.

“Hello,” Patton said.

Remus, from his laid down position, arched his neck up until he was peering upside-down at Morality. He had a reserved look in his eyes, but it was obvious he was fighting not to grin.

“Guess what I did.”

Patton paused. There were… a lot of ways that could go. Most of them weird.

“Um-”

Remus made a disturbingly accurate buzzer noise, exclaiming, “Took too long!”. He flipped over onto his stomach and propped himself up on his palms, his legs draped over the arm of the couch, and rocked back and forth excitedly. “I made you something!”

The worry slipped out of Patton’s mind, replaced by curiosity. He hummed, smiling, and asked:

“Like a gift?”

Remus beamed.

“Something like that!”

As Patton laughed by response, he ran his thumb compulsively over his bead bracelet (that he hadn’t taken off even once since getting, of course).

“That’s so sweet!” he chirped, “You didn’t have to do that.”

The Duke puffed out a breath, ruffling the white section of his hair. He rolled his eyes and shifted around, pushing up until he sat upright.

“Yeah, I know. Haven’t we done this dance before, Morey?”

“Okay, okay, I know,” Patton shrugged, his expression turning sheepish, “What is it, then?”

Remus’ grin widened in that almost impossibly way of his, and something about the glint of his teeth was distinctly threatening. It probably wasn’t intentional, but Patton could never really tell, when his claws tapped impatiently against his leg and something mischievous wormed into his expression.

“Well, you have to close your eyes, first!” Remus clapped his hands together, and there that glint seemed to get brighter.

“Oh, uh-”

“It’s not gonna be my dick, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Patton yelped, covering his face with his hands in embarrassment.

“Well I wasn’t worried before you said that!”

Remus shrieked with laughter. Patton didn’t move his hands from his cheeks, a flush of discomfort starting at his ears and pricking his skin.

“You’re hilarious, but no- not this time, at least,” -Remus winked- “But just close your eyes, okay?”

Patton took a couple deep breaths, glancing up to give Remus his best approximation of a stern glare. He then let his hands drop to his lap, palms up, and squeezed his eyes shut.

There was a soft whoosh, and something small was dropped into Patton’s waiting hands. He ran the pad of his thumb over its surface, tracing something like fur. Soft, short fur, but when he pressed it was far too stiff to be a plush animal.

“Remus,” Patton felt along the object with both hands, jolting when he felt something scaly at the end, “What-”

“You can look now!”

Patton did as told, staring down at his lap.

There laid a rat.

A dead one, to be precise. A dead, taxidermized rat, posed up on its hind legs like some goofy little cartoon character. It’s eyes were impersonal glass orbs, but its skin was perfectly, horribly real.

Patton looked up, his eyes wide with disgust, to see unfiltered excitement shining on Remus’ face.

“I made it myself!” His pride echoed in the words, that grin stretching his lips looking all the more unnatural.

It was then that Patton’s body caught up with his brain, and he realized what exactly he was holding. He dropped it- all but threw it, actually- kicked it and scrambled back and anything to just get away.

The gift fell to the floor with a dull thump, toppling under the coffee table and out of sight. Patton pressed his hand against his mouth, the other one tightly fisted in his lap. He felt sick- sick enough that his brain was leagues away from rationality. Because he’d really touched- held- that corpse, that thing that used to be a cute little critter, what was now a homemade trinket of horror.

He turned his attention back to Remus, and a million thoughts and feelings rushed him. Betrayal, horror, fear- and weirdest of all was surprise.

Remus’ smile twitched, and he tipped his head from side to side.

“You dropped it,” he pointed out, “I thought you liked rats?”

The noise Patton made was something between a gasp and a cry.

“I like alive ones!” He exclaimed, pushing himself back until there was a good cushion’s distance between himself and Remus.

Remus’ smile dipped lower.

“Well, this way you don’t have to take care of it! It’s all of the cute with none of the trouble!”

“You think this is cute?!”

He couldn’t believe this was happening, after everything- he hadn’t gotten through to Remus even a little? It was all still a game for him to terrorize Patton? To shove dead things into his lap and laugh about it?

But Remus wasn’t laughing, strangely. In fact, he was very still.

“You don’t like it?”

In hindsight, Patton would look back on what he said with remorse so strong it gave him headaches. He had scores of memories like that, of course, but this one’s sting would never fade, not even long after they’d moved on from it. But in that moment of fear, of revile, he could not think about anything else but the feeling of being tricked by his almost-friend laying heavy in his stomach.

“Like it? Is this- are you joking? Remus, you made me touch a dead animal! I thought we were starting to be friends, but- oh my God, what is wrong with you?!”

Patton was sure he stopped breathing right after he said that, his voice choking out. In the silence that followed, you could’ve heard a pin drop.

Remus stood up, and everything about the way he moved showed a woundedness that didn’t suit him. He looked at Patton with an awful intensity, his ruby-red eyes practically glowing. There was nothing vulnerable about him when he was hurt, nothing at all like how Patton would respond to something like an argument. There was only anger and tension.

He didn’t smile, but his voice stayed pitchy. Gleeful.

“Everything,” Remus hissed, “I thought you’d catch on before now, but.”

Remus spun on his heel, and the floor beneath him bubbled with oil and acid and plague as he sank into the ground and out of the living room. The carpet shriveled, sick-green, in his wake.

That was when the understanding hit him. A lot like a train.

“Oh, no,” whispered Patton, “Oh, no.”

Patton struggled to his feet, as if on autopilot. Was he going to go after Remus? No, no, that definitely wouldn’t go over well. He was probably halfway into the Imagination by then, anyway, ready to take his anger out on his creations and not do any talking at all.

Patton tore his eyes away from the spot where Remus had sunk out, stumbling over to the coffee table instead. He crouched, reached his hand under it, and let his fingers touch the fur of his discarded present. He grabbed it, looked down at it. The wave of nausea when he saw the little rat was now less disgust, and much more regret.

He cradled the preserved creature in his hands with all the gentleness he could. There was a slip of thick, yellowish paper attached to it, that in all the upset had gone completely unnoticed. It was folded in half, tied with twine to the rat’s neck.

Patton looked into the rat’s shiny, empty eyes for far too long, watching his reflection be distorted by the spheres. He took a shuddering breath, then, and thumbed the edge of the paper, felt its grain, and flipped it open.

“This is Jenner. You can have him, because even if you’re a priss, if you can handle me you can handle having cool shit like this. Plus, you’re weirdly nice to me, so I guess I don’t mind being nicely weird to you.

-R (the funnier one <3)”

Patton read the note once. Twice. Three, four, maybe six times the words ran over each other in his head.

The paper slipped from his fingers. He held his rat in both hands and stared down its coffee-brown snout. Patton couldn’t help bringing the figurine to his chest and hugging it tightly, like it was the thing he’d hurt so badly, serving as surrogate. Its sharp fingers and tail poked through his shirt like needles, but he ignored it, holding the irrational hope that the inanimate object could forgive him somehow.

Jenner was creepy, that was probably intentional; his proportions and pose were so uncanny it couldn’t have been an accident. And it was so, so very Remus of a thing that Patton couldn’t stand to hate it. His shift in view was so sudden, and in some sad way he realized that the conflict had been the final piece he’d needed. What let that understanding crash into Patton’s mind, painting the picture of somebody layered.

The picture of Remus, who he was, had finally clicked into place- and at the exact worst time for it to do so.

Patton had fucked up. Massively.

He didn’t react how he thought he would when he realized it. He didn’t grow weary and exhausted, desperate to apologize and then collapse into unthinking sleep for days. Gone was the emptiness of making promises that he hoped he could hold true on, just wanting to have gotten it right the first time. No, Patton felt something burning under his skin, something itching him to take action because he’d learned from a mistake. He knew exactly what he’d done, and he was ready to do better right damn now.

Patton breathed in deep and exhaled sharp, because first…

He sunk out to his room, Jenner tucked into the crook of his elbow. He rose up at his bedside and shoved a handful of knickknacks off the nightstand. With enough space cleared, Patton set his rat down on the table and stood it up on his alarm clock, facing the bed. And then, as just a final touch, he smoothed back the fur of its head and gave it a peck on the forehead.

Now, he had some planning to do.

Chapter Five

Taglist: @shrimp-crockpot @glitter-skeleton-uwu @donnieluvsthings @intruxiety @thefivecalls @did-he-just-hiss-at-me @gayformlessblob

#sanders sides #ts #intruality #my writing #fanfiction #fanfic #platonic intruality #qpr intruality #patton #remus #ts fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction

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broken-clover · 4 years

Text

AU-gust Day 6- Hospital

I’m here early! Mostly because I had a lot of this written earlier, so if that didn’t make it obvious enough I really liked this prompt. While it’s a hospital prompt is isn’t especially intense or gory, after yesterday I tried to make this one pretty lighthearted. Honestly I feel like the only really uncomfortable part of this is how much effort I put in trying to make a Pokemon expy. Hehe.

Sorry-not-sorry for more Sin and Bedman, it’s a bit more ‘romantic’ then last time but still pretty much platonic friendship. Enjoy!

Though it felt weird to say, Sin knew his least favorite thing about his father was his charity. Helping out people in need was a good thing, obviously, but a ridiculous amount of his childhood memories involved being dragged along to food banks, hospitals, and shelters so his dad could give corny, well-wishing speeches and lend a hand to those less fortunate, forcing him to help out alongside the other volunteers. Sin had used to wonder if it was because something about having a cute little kid around raised everyone’s morale, or whatever.

Well, considering he was now a grown-ass teenager at the age of sixteen, and Ky was still dragging him along, maybe he’d been off the mark.

At least he’d been allowed to take a break after an hour of schlepping donation boxes up to the children’s wing. Of all the places his dad went to for charity work, hospitals were by far his least favorite. The colorless, sterile atmosphere was just unnerving to be around. As soon as he could, he made a dash for the nearest sign pointing him toward the courtyard.

Sin swiped his guest ID through the maglock, which released with a cheery beep. The white walls and stench of antiseptic gave way to an array of soft colors and the smell of flowers. He took a deep whiff of the aroma and sighed with relief. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his handheld, fully charged for when he got a break and could take a minute to loaf off and relax.

Which game had he left in it this time? He popped out the cartridge and smiled. That was right. Pocket Beasts: Light version. His current favorite. He just needed a comfy place to hunker down and play.

A few stone benches were placed in between bushes and flowerbeds, all unoccupied. The place looked really empty, but it made sense. Everyone who wasn’t already busy was probably at Ky’s speech. At least it meant he’d be able to get some peace and quiet and privacy.

He spotted a pretty lavender flower poking out of the bushes and approached. The ‘flower’ moved, making him realize he’d seen wrong. Sin groaned inwardly at the sight of another person, perched on the short stone wall surrounding the flowerbeds. They didn’t glance up, if they’d even noticed him at all, appearing too absorbed in their own handheld device to care about much else.

“H-hey.” He raised a hand at them, and offered a twitchy half-smile. There were so many ways he knew this could go wrong. Sometimes people screamed at him until he fled, or immediately launched into the most boring small-talk possible. Sin just wanted to play his game, he really had no interest in causing any trouble. “Can I sit down?”

Sin braced himself for a response, but he didn’t get one. “Hey?” He tried again, waving harder. Maybe they were deaf? “Is it ok if I sit out here?”

Eyes glanced up at him, but only for a half-second before they returned to the screen. Well, it wasn’t a ‘no,’ so the best he could assume was they just didn’t care.

Hesitantly, he found a place to sit. If the hospital gown and IV hadn’t already given it away, it was pretty clear that he was a patient, not a visitor. He was scrawny and spindly to the point where it was almost disturbing, his skin was pale and sickly, and the messy bedhead was only slightly offset by the awkward purple hair dye. Why was he out here in the first place, instead of at Ky’s speech?

He knew staring was rude, but he just couldn’t stop himself. Every time he tried, there was another odd little detail that caught his attention. A peculiar little hairclip in the shape of a pink arrow. A purple charm bracelet half-hidden by his standard-issue hospital band. Glittery star stickers on the sides of his handheld, and- hey, he recognized that game!

His expression brightened. “Oh, you play Pocket Beasts too? That’s my favorite! Who’s your starter?”

The only response he got was a couple of button clicks. Sin found himself sinking back into an uncomfortable silence. Well, he supposed it was better than being yelled at. He switched his game on.

Dad said he wasn’t supposed to use the internet at the hospital because it would mess with all the fancy machines, so online matches were out of the question. Well, there was always the battle tower. Maybe he could item grind to kill time. He still needed to finish his Soup Encyclopedia and some of the rare cooking items could only be found there.

Any discomfort he had was wiped away with the familiar music and intro screen of the game. How could he worry when there were battles to be won? All he had to worry about was making the most of his free time.

His avatar flickered into existence, still in the last town he’d visited. As soon as he moved towards the nearest building, though, a little indicator popped up on the bottom of the screen. Puzzled, Sin took his stylus and tapped on the icon.

Trainer BEDMAN would like to battle!

>Accept Decline

‘Bedman?’ He looked up at the little avatar that had appeared, then glanced off to the boy at his side. The messy lavender dye-job was surprisingly close, as was the magenta arrow pinning his bangs out of his eyes. Was it just some weird coincidence? If he wanted to play, he could have just asked…

Despite his confusion, Sin clicked ‘Accept.’ PvP battles were more fun than doing the same grind he had done over and over again. Even if he did lose, it was in a totally unique way.

The usual introductory animations played out as their avatars posed and tossed their first beasts into battle. Sin had to snicker at the disparity between their choices. He always liked sending his biggest and toughest beasts out in the beginning, and pretty much anything looked tiny beside it.

But smaller meant faster, so he wasn’t all that surprised to see the other one attack first. He braced himself for a tough starting move...only to be confused at the sight of a sand cloud being thrown at him.

Enemy Used SAND TOSS!

Accuracy Lowered!

Sand toss? What a waste of a turn! Sin grinned as it switched to his turn. Karate chop, a pretty powerful start, it always hit, and he had the type advantage, what a great way to start a match- !

Attack Missed!

“What!? How did that miss!?”

“Karate chop has a standard accuracy of 100%.” A low, quiet voice spoke up next to him, making Sin practically jump back in shock. “But I lowered your accuracy with sand toss, so now there’s a 15% chance it won’t hit.”

“...Huh.” He looked back at his screen. “Never see people use sand toss out of, like, NPC fights.”

“Most players treat accuracy-modifiers as a waste of time, but if you have a Pocket Beast with a high enough defense, then the turns spent not attacking are made up for when the opponent can barely hit you later.” The strange boy had such a casual tone to his voice, as though they’d been conversing for hours already.

It was a bit jarring, but Sin tried to roll with it. “I guess that does make sense. Sorta like when a beast has the ‘Decoy’ ability and the first attack never hits?”

“Kind of. But a lot of players know which beasts can have Decoy, so they know ahead of time to focus on stat-altering moves or poisoning instead of wasting a turn when they know attacking won’t do anything. Take your turn.”

It took him a moment to process the last bit, but he noticed the battle menu had popped up again. He picked another attack. “Why’d you want to battle me? Did you just pick at random?”

“You were the only opponent available.” Another sand toss. “It’s hard to find people to play with on local, and I’m not allowed to use global matchmaking in my room because it needs an internet connection.”

Sin waited for his two-turn charge move to activate, but before it could be his turn, a swift attack managed to knock his beast out cold. “Damn it! I thought I had that…”

He spotted a triumphant little smirk out of the corner of his eye. “Pocket Beasts is all about tactics. You have to take everything into account. It’s easy to just care about how much damage a move can do, but you’re doomed from the start if you don’t have the right stats, or the best moveset to compliment them.”

He couldn’t help but grin along with him. “Wow, you’re really good at strategy!

‘Bedman’ managed a small, awkward smile. “Well, um, not like I have much else to do…”

“Really?” Sin tilted his head. “I guess it’s good you’ve got something fun to do while you’re here, all this hospital stuff skeeves me out. When do they let you go back home? I dunno how long you’ve been here, but I think I’d go nuts after a couple of days.”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been here a while, already.” A lucky hit from Sin’s beast managed to knock his first one out. “Since...last January, if I remember correctly.”

Last January? Jeez, forget a few days, he was sure he’d be past insanity after a whole year!

Sin donned a look of pity. “That sucks. What’s wrong with you?” The words came out before he could think or realize that it wasn’t an especially nice thing to say. “Uh, shit, sorry-”

“Mmm. It’s okay. At least you don’t mince your words. I have a neurological disorder that affects how my brain processes information. It’s a bit hard to describe. Let’s say a human brain is like a computer, it processes the inputs that are fed into it. Powerful, modern computers can process a lot of information all at once, but if a computer is old, or wasn’t built properly, trying to process too much information can make it overheat and crash.”

“Oh. So how do you keep it from ‘overheating?’”

“Sleep, mostly. I’m only awake for a few hours every day. When I’m awake, and I don’t have tests to do, I like to play games. My sister and I play multiplayer sometimes, but usually I have to play by myself. She has the same problem I do, so a lot of the time one of us is asleep during the times the other’s awake.”

Was it weird to get all this personal information from someone he’d just met? Sin wasn’t sure. But he did like talking to this guy. “Well, want to swap Friend Codes? If we’re registered as friends then local multiplayer should work, then you don’t have to use an internet connection!”

“Where do you live?”

“Central Illyria!” Sin beamed. “Like, half an hour at most. It should still work from there.”

The other boy gave him an odd look. “I’m sure there’s plenty of hospitals closer to you, then. Why did you come out all the way here?”

That got him to roll his eyes, making an exaggerated gagging noise. “My dad. He always drags me along on his charity stuff, carrying boxes and shit. He only let me take a break because he’s making some dumb speech up in the-”

And the regret came just as fast as he saw his companion’s expression shift. He hated the visits, obviously, but he knew it was important to a lot of people. And if someone had been stuck in a hospital for that long, maybe they’d be happy to have someone new come by. He must have come off as such a dick-

Before he could stew on it more, he heard a little laugh. “Yeah. I hate those, too.” Bedman was smiling at him. “You’re Kiske’s kid? That’s got to be awful.”

“Heh. Yeah, it really is.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Never gave you my name, did I? I’m Samson, but everyone just calls me ‘Sin.’”

“I was curious about your name, that does make a bit more logical sense.” His companion nodded. “It’s nice to meet you, Sin.”

“Same! What about you? Can’t imagine your name’s really ‘Bedman,’ is it?”

“More of a screen name, really. My name is-”

“Mattie! Dr. Baldy says you’ve gotta have your IV changed!”

They both jumped at the sudden noise, accompanied by the slam of a door. A girl with shaggy blonde hair and familiar features limped into the courtyard, setting her sights on them as soon as she was visible.

“There you are! I just knew you’d be out here.”

“Well, there’s not many other places I could be…” He said. “When did you wake up?”

“‘bout half an hour ago.” She replied. “Just in time for mom and dad to send me out to look for you.”

The girl’s expression changed when she noticed Sin. “Oh! Mattie, who’s this?”

“Sin, this is my twin sister, Delilah.” ‘Mattie’ pointed to her. “Delilah, this is my...new friend.”

“New friend?” Delilah reached out and shook Sin’s hard with a remarkable amount of strength. “Did my baby bro talk your ear off about his favorite game again?”

“You’re only older by nine minutes, Delilah!”

“He’s really good at Pocket Beasts.” Replied Sin. “It was fun playing with him!”

At that, he realized neither of them had selected anything in a while. He looked down at his screen

TIME UP

DRAW

“Aww, maaaaan…”

“Do we have enough time for another match?” Mattie asked.

“Dr. Baldy looked really serious. We probably can’t make him wait that long.” Delilah shook her head.

Sin tried to bring the mood back up. “Well, we were still gonna swap Friend Codes, right? Then we can play whenever! Either of you have something to write with?”

Delilah pulled a thick black sharpie from her sock. “I have a marker! But no paper…”

“Oh! Hold on a sec.” Sin rolled his jacket sleeve up and held out his arm. Just write it on the back!”

The two of them looked hesitant. “Is that safe?”

“It’s totally fine! It’s a little hard to wash off, but that means it won’t smear before I get home!”

Mattie took the marker and began scribbling on his forearm. “You’re really quite strange, Sin.”

“Thanks!” As soon as the wet feeling on his arm went away, he twisted around to see two series of digits.“What’s this other number?”

“Our phone number. If, um, you ever feel like calling.” Despite his attempts to hide it, Sin could see the faint blush to the other boy’s cheeks. “Do you think you could do one more thing very quickly?”

He couldn’t think of what it could have possibly been. “Yeah?”

“Can you draw something on me? I’ve never done it before. I want to see what it’s like.”

He grinned. “Hell yeah! I’ll try and draw something cool real quick!”

Delilah winced. “You know mom and dad are going to kill you, right?”

“Just say it was my idea!” Sin beamed. Mattie flinched the first time he pressed the marker to his skin, but he managed to still draw a straight line. He couldn’t think of anything in particular to draw, so he settled for a series of sharp, criss-crossing black lines circling his forearm. “How’s that?”

“...woah.” Simple as it was, Mattie looked utterly awestruck. “It’s…

“C’mon, Mattie, we’ve gotta go!” Tired of waiting, Delilah all but dragged him off the wall.

“See ya!” Sin waved as they departed. “You’d better bring your A-game next time we battle, I don’t lose easy!” He folded up his game and tucked it into his back pocket. That was probably his cue to leave, too.

As he hopped off the wall, he could make out a faint voice trailing away to the other side of the courtyard.

“Huh? What’s the deal with you, Mattie? You never look that happy!”

Sin smiled as he turned to leave. Ky was probably waiting for him.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been excited for the next visit.

#AU-gust #writing #guilty gear #Sin Kiske #Bedman

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valsedelesruines · 3 years

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I once told Will that I found this new ideology of privilege was equivalent to the Christian dogma that all people are born in sin. Of course a simplification and quick comparison, but it has often felt like that in my experience lately, both in academic and personal circles. I have noticed something change in my interactions and conversations with people I know the last few years. As soon as people bring up personal anecdotes about my life, such as my economic, ethnic, cultural, etc. background, I start to lose interest, because the conversation no longer becomes a debate rather than a competition of subjectivity under the guise that one opinion is true. There are a few issues I find with this. For one, as an archaeologist, I fully understand that context is key, but the context works for all participants. Any ideology held right now by anyone is not truth. For example, let’s take economic liberalism (instead of my usual default example of Marxism lol). Economic liberalism is a relatively new concept but one that has been largely accepted in many circles as a true basis for interpreting the interface between our economic and political systems. This is cool, and there are many cool, new ideologies, philosophies, and perspectives that have influenced our modern culture, but the key is that most of what makes up our modern culture is formulated on ideas that are often less than 300 years old. So, how can we rely on these new ideas as a true, objective foundation for how the world works? The answer is we can’t, but we often get wrapped up in it and do. People forget that something like politics is a social science with a basis on philosophy. There is no truth in politics, otherwise we would all believe in the same thing. Surely if these ideas were universally true their origins would be biologically inherent to our species or at least naturally reoccurring. In another 300 years, ideas such as post-colonialism will be obsolete.

Another key axiom in archaeological theory, applicable here, is that our practice and interpretation is conducted in the social milieu we inhabit. Culture is a subjective and cumulative activity that we all partake in. So, often in discourse while my subjectivity is pointed out (of which I am almost always aware), it is never acknowledged the other way around. I think the problem is, while I enjoy being challenged on my worldviews, most people do not, and I have only recently become aware of that fact. To foster “good” discussion, I believe the aim is to strive towards total objectivity, whilst also acknowledging that it does not exist. True objectivity can only, maybe, be attained with the death of the ego, devoid of individual perception. But regardless, that’s not my issue. The issue is as I have started to follow a pursuit of challenging my own worldview, I have formed an opinion which promotes a lack of one; I don’t believe a true perception exists and therefore cannot have an opinion. This works well if you are a Zelig, questioning people you just meet on their beliefs out of genuine curiosity and lacking any form of judgement. But this does not work when you interact with people who you know very well, and who interpret your lack of opinion for a staunch opposition of theirs. So, the question is then, am I willing to forego my own perceptions for the sake of following the people I love’s dogma? Hard to say, and I’ve dwelled on this a lot, but the short answer is no. To acquiesce is to ultimately hold the view that you agree with theirs. Because I have been in this situation before, a long, long time ago, and ultimately the decision to keep on doing what I was doing, which is being true to my own interests, was what helped me in the long run. If I do not believe in an objective right or wrong, then why would I go against that to believe in someone’s perceived right and wrong? To do so would not only be disingenuous, but also an act of self-hatred (insecurity). So, following that, is the preference to follow self-interest an indication of a lack of empathy? Also, ultimately, no. Because the definition of empathy for most is also subjective, but tends to be formed around the idea that we can understand, and often relate, to other’s suffering. I don’t think we can do that. At most, I think empathy can only ever be the ability to forgive, because that forms a basis on the individual rather than on external experiences.

There is a story of a young man on a boat who is about to die after getting injured in a rough fight. As he was dying, he hurriedly requested that all f his shipmates come to him, so that he could ask whether he had ever annoyed or insulted any of them. When they replied in the negative, he was greatly comforted. This story is interesting to me because it displays a truly absurd scene: to be so self-hating that you rely on external opinions to justify a virtuous and moral life. And then I think, what is the point in attaining a useless merit like virtue? Is the aim to be comfortable and to provide comfort to those around you? if it is, then why? I’d much rather enjoy my life, embrace my curiosity, try to understand my own discomfort, forgive others as I can, and not close myself off to the thousands of worldviews held besides mine. I think trying to strive for truth or meaning is somewhat boring, and almost a recursive task, so I would much rather continue on devoid and critical of strong dogmatic influences. For now, I have accepted that I have grown into the person I am today and that I will continue to change as I learn from self-study and from others. I will never favor stagnation over growth, and I do not believe that there are right or wrong ways to grow. Surely, in challenge to the truth, curiosity did not always kill the cat.

#mine #thoughts #philosophy #once again my late night pondering turns out to be much longer than intended #archeology #archaeology

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periodicreviews · 4 years

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Last of Us Part II

I went into Last of Us Part II without many spoilers and completed it today. I’m writing out my thoughts before reading any other reviews of the game.

Technical stuff

On a technical level, the game is a logical successor to Uncharted 4. The same great sound design is key to trying to locate where enemies are and I feel like playing with headphones is key. There’s a moment where if you fail a jump, your partner will say “hey you know if you run before the jump…” and the character you control says “yeah yeah, I know.” This is a great way of guiding the character without interrupting them with a prompt.

Returning from Uncharted 4 is the ability for characters to pause mid conversation when you walk away and for them to continue when you get closer. There aren’t quite as many chances for this to be triggered without vehicles but it’s good to see.

One of my big problems with the graphics in Uncharted 4 is that the facial models felt almost unrecognizable as they made them match the actors faces way too much. Nathan Drake just felt like Nolan North, as did Elena’s model. Maybe they learned their lesson because all the faces in TLOU2 felt like the characters I remembered from TLOU1. The only exception being the young Ellie model. At times, her eyes kind of felt dead. I don’t know if that’s a result of porting it from PS3 or not.

I also felt like the default control scheme was too hard to get used to. Dodge being mapped to L1 just did not feel natural coming from a first person shooter background. I eventually remapped it to the circle button, put crouch on the left control stick click, and other changes.

The number of options with respect to controls, which are fully configurable, and visual settings, particularly for motion sickness, are something that every console game should provide.

Speaking of motion sickness, the settings never quite eliminated it for me and although it became more manageable, there was this constant physical discomfort while playing the game. I believe Neil Druckmann said something to the effect that TLOU1 is about hope and TLOU2 is about hate. In that sense, I guess I felt more immersed by hating the game itself for causing my motion sickness.

The plot

The game can be arguably be broken into two parts, Ellie’s story and Abby’s story. You play a tiny bit of Abby in the beginning of the game but then the focus is mainly on Ellie, until the two intersect at the theater confrontation. After the theater confrontation, you take control of Abby primarily, then finish things off as Ellie.

Once this midway switch happened, I figured they were going to have you play as Abby as you kill Ellie and Dina. I also wasn’t sure whether they would make you be the one to torture Joel. If you don’t know already, the game opens with Abby torturing and murdering Joel, which sets the plot in motion.

For a time, I was kind of upset that they were making me play as Abby. Your first big segment as adult Abby after you know who she is, is the slow walk through the WLF base. It feels like it drags on forever as you walk past children in classrooms, play with the dog, see all the animals, everyone eating in the cafeteria, etc.

Obviously, this is supposed to mirror the beginning of the game with Ellie as you walk through the Jackson level and see every single one of these same things. The level is supposed to get you to empathize with the people you have been murdering for 20 hours. “See? Abby’s not so bad, she wants pine scented soap at the commissary.”

But does everything need to be the same? There’s people running away from Jackson, the Seraphites, and the WLF. Characters on both sides are dealing with the internal power struggle. There just happens to be two pregnant women in Mel and Dina. It just happens to be that both Abby and Ellie are seeking revenge over the death of their father figures. Both WLF and Jackson engage in torture to get the info they need. At times all these coincidences just felt forced.

In the end, the game seems to be saying that this cycle of revenge is pointless because we’re all the same and it just causes more pain. The cycle plays out in this order in the game:

1. Joel murders Abby’s dad

2. Abby tortures and murders Joel

3. Tommy, Dina, and Ellie torture and murder Abby’s party members, in the search to find Abby

4. Abby murders Jesse, seriously injures Tommy, Dina, Ellie

5. Ellie attempts to murder Abby but eventually stops

But it bothered me the whole time that the game didn’t attempt to explain why Abby felt the need to torture Joel, when there’s no evidence that he tortured her father. Then it proceeded to make this equivalence between Abby and Ellie like they were equally guilty. Granted, Ellie tortured Nora in the hospital but that’s only after she egged her on by gloating about Joel’s screams.

Another thing that bothered me in the final pointless battle between Abby and Ellie is that they choose to portray Abby as the better person who doesn’t want to fight. Maybe it’s not necessarily a moral call, but just that she doesn’t think she can win in her current state.

Abby’s redemption

I guess my bigger complaint is about Abby’s whole redemption arc. After being rescued from the Seraphites by two kids, Lev and Yara, she returns to Owen where the two argue about Owen leaving to find the Fireflies. At the heat of the argument, they decide to have sex, despite Mel being pregnant with Owen’s baby.

That night, Abby has a bad dream where she walks through the door of the hospital where she found her dad’s body and instead finds Yara and Lev dead hanging from a tree. When asked by Yara or Lev why she came back to help, despite all the protests from Owen, she says something like she had to do something or she couldn’t live with herself.

I guess there’s some indication of regret for what she has done in the past. But it’s never made clear if this is about Joel or just her life choices in general. Later on, after rescuing them, she has the same dream but this time, she sees her dad alive instead. That temporary peace is then destroyed by the murder of Owen and she goes on a rampage to try to kill everyone associated with it.

I feel like there’s both not enough of Abby’s past in order to sell the regret and/or not enough regret in the present to sell the shift in behavior.

Trans representation

I should have done my research before assuming what I had heard was true. It turns out Abby isn’t trans at all, only Lev is (who is in fact voiced by a trans actor). I thought I remembered reading a paper in a Young Abby segment that mentioned “transitioning”. Maybe I read it too fast and it was about another character, not Abby. Thanks to the helpful commenter who corrected me.

It seems people are mad at Laura Bailey just because she voices a character and they don’t like what that fictional character did, which is absurd but unfortunately not surprising.

The game obviously takes a risk by featuring not just one trans character but two. By risk I mean both politically from a company standpoint and from a writing standpoint.

I’m writing this prior to reading any other reviews or to know what exactly the controversy is surrounding Laura Bailey, who plays Abby. I’m assuming the problem is that she is not trans and is playing a trans character. I’m unsure if the same is true for Lev or not. I understand the problem of trans actors being rejected from roles because of that identity. But I don’t think all of the blame for that should lie with Laura Bailey, rather with Naughty Dog for making the choice not to cast a trans actress. If the audition was blind and Laura was select purely based on performance, that would complicate things. But given TLOU2 is almost a movie in terms of all the motion capture that is done, I feel like that probably wasn’t the case.

As a straight man, I felt like Abby and Lev as characters were done tastefully. Their identity is never really centered around being trans, just like Ellie’s character has never been centered around her being lesbian/bisexual. The other characters in the world don’t seem to treat them any differently because they are trans. There also aren’t the usual “trap” tropes or accusations that they aren’t “real” women or men.

Things that suck

I was kind of surprised at how emotional I got during the game. There have definitely been games that have scared me (Dead Space) and games that have made me cry both out of sadness and joy (Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC). But I don’t think a game has made me feel the same combination of anger, despair, and disgust in quite the same way.

The game starts off with a very graphic torture scene where Abby murders Joel but that didn’t really affect me. The scene was for sure shocking and I empathized with Ellie. But what really affected me was first having to control Abby as you attack Ellie and maybe even more so, watching Ellie leave Dina to continue to pursue Abby. It just hurt so much to see her give up the perfect life in pursuit of this pointless struggle.

Was it good?

But is it a good game? Did I enjoy it? Do I agree with the message it’s trying to send?

It’s hard to describe a game like TLOU2 as fun or enjoyable when it’s a horror-action-drama. There are some great scenes between Joel and Ellie, Ellie and Dina, and Ellie and Jessie. It was also nice to see characters like Lev and Yara who have grown up exclusively in this infected world.

I’m 100% on board with seeing a conflict from both sides. I just feel like they portrayed Ellie as evil, in order to make Abby more likeable, all to make both sides seem equal. On a technical level, the game is great, despite it crashing once and some other minor visual issues when the camera would clip through the level. I’d probably give it an 8/10.

#tlou2

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