lynnmanda therapist au where lynn is the therapist and amanda is the patient and lynn realises she’s a little too invested in her patients life, or — just her patient.

Do I ignore my allergy ear pain, stick the earbuds in, turn on my laptop and disappear into writing?

or

Do I continue to glare at my phone and argue about AI on twitter?

DEVASTATING the lyric you've been mishearing is better than the real one

What's distressing, but also important to understand, about JK Rowling hitting the "Denying trans people were targeted in the Holocaust" point is that it's kind of the last stop before she just goes full alt-right weirdo.

Joanne is denying the Holocaust (if a group was targeted, denying they were targeted is Holocaust denial) and that's going to lead to pushback from historians and experts. But Joanne is too deep in to believe what anyone who disagrees with her says, so she's just going to dismiss what those historians and experts tell her. And once she's disbelieving them about that one thing, well it's just a tiny step to start disbelieving them about other things.

This isn't by accident either, transphobic circles are swarming with far right agitators, ready to use hatred of trans people as an in to recruit people into their causes. They have handbooks for this sort of thing and they are, unfortunately, good at it. I suspect Joanne will be spouting coded versions of Great Replacement stuff by the end of the summer.

This is not a plea to try and pull Joanne out. She's too deep in, and even if she wasn't, she's already demonstrated an inability to examine her own prejudices, an unwillingness to hear criticism and a weakness to flattery. She is perfect recruitment bait for people who know what they're doing, and my impression is she's surrounded herself with people like that.

No, this is to understand two things: First is to use her as an example, to understand how a well meaning liberal can chase their own prejudices down a very dark rabbit hole. We are none of us immune to propaganda and even if we can't change what's happened to her, we can at least use it to protect ourselves.

And second is to understand that one of the main reasons you can't pull Joanne out of the transphobic pipeline is cause she is the pipeline now. She is the transphobic banner bearer now, she is funneling money and attention to these groups, she is their most famous celebrity and she is helping recruit people. Being able to show people how far she's gone, how deep into the right wing rabbit hole she's going, is important to help other people who still think she just "Had some concerns" know where her path leads.

Female characters who are the sole voice of reason <<<<<<< Female characters who think of themselves as the sole voice of reason but who are actually just as insane as those around them

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

absolutely love reading such a well-written story and falling a bit in love with the author based solely on the way they write. like baby the way you italicize words makes my heartbeat quicken.

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

i love learning cursive just to write text for exactly one character

“ryo,” it rolls off your tongue. naturally—as if you’ve called him that thousands of times before. you don’t realise it until he stops his movements.

sukuna narrows his eyes. you turn your head and look up, oblivious to your slip-up. the sorcerer doesn’t utter a word and instead glares down at your short frame. he looks irritated, or more annoyed.

“oh,” you realise why only a few seconds later. you bow your head at him and try to explain yourself in a hurry. normally, you’d address him with respect like everyone else does. ‘my lord’, ‘lord sukuna’, or even ‘master’.

you nearly fall to your knees. you don’t know how or what sukuna’s going to do now that you’ve dropped the honorifics on accident and called him by a nickname. you hold your hands together, “my deepest apologi—“

“again,” sukuna demands in a rough voice. you freeze for a second before tilting your head back. you catch a glimpse of his expression; he’s amused, intrigued and perhaps still a bit annoyed. he repeats, “call me that again.”

sukuna isn’t annoyed by the fact that you’ve called him by a nickname for the first time. he’s annoyed, because your sweet voice makes him feel stuff he’s sworn to never feel for a regular human. that warm feeling in his chest. . . he hates it. yet he yearns for it. from you.

you hesitate for a second, unsure if the firm tone in sukuna’s voice was a bad sign or not. you decide to just comply and hope for the best, “. . . ryo.”

sukuna grits his teeth. you think he’s mad, but in reality, he’s trying to eliminate the feelings of love from within him. your voice calling him so affectionately—so intimately; it makes him feel that warmth in his chest.

no one’s dared to call him anything like that before. everyone’s formal with him. it’s a must. sukuna’s used to everyone acknowledging his superiority in the conversations he holds. it’s a given.

no one refers to him so casually. no one dares to.

you’re the first one to break that pattern. the first one to make sukuna’s cold heart tremble. if it were anyone else, they’d be his dinner by now. but it’s you so it’s. . . fine, he assumes. an exception.

silence falls in the hallway. luckily, not another soul is around to witness the king of curses struggling to contain his own ‘foolish’ emotions. sukuna clicks his tongue and sighs before continuing to walk ahead of you.

you scurry after him—keeping your head low. you don’t wish to upset sukuna any further. you feel like you overstepped a boundary just now. the silence continues for a couple seconds, both of you deep in thought.

sukuna’s the one to end the quiet atmosphere. his voice is as deep and cold as ever, though there’s no denying the subtle softness that creeps in whenever he talks with you.

he takes a deep breath and sighs. sukuna keeps walking and doesn’t spare you a glance, however his voice and words tell you enough;

“from now on, that’s the only way you’ll address me until i say otherwise, understood?”

as far as everyone was concerned. percy had a year left to live in tbotl. and i know that we didn't see what that like for him because it didn't matter plot-wise. but i would have loved to read it. give me percy who is hardly speaking up at the dinner table. half-asleep and behind on last week's homework. give me percy who is clearly losing the will to live and trudging around the apartment like he doesn't care where his feet takes him. give me percy who is sneaking out of the house and visiting montauk. sitting along the beachside shore. wondering why his only purpose in life is that of a soldier and not of a kid.

just remembered a fic on AO3 (or more likely LJ because it had that distinct late 00's experimental vibe) that appeared double-spaced oddly, in that some paragraphs would be spaced normally and others would have double or even triple spaces in between. it was about one half of the otp getting over the other's death (or coma, can't remember which), so all the comments were about how poignant the use of visual spacing was as a means to convey all the emotional holes in the character's life.

and then the author replied like... *giggle* guys it's NOT double spaced. try selecting the whole text

and we were all like "no WAY"

but we selected the text, and yes!!!

the "holes" in the story? they were actually lines and actions from the dead/coma character's ghost, rendered invisible to the eye by the simple trick of coloring the text the exact same as the background, revealed by nothing more than a click and a drag of the mouse

a story about the profound loneliness of losing your the partner of your life and having to make do without them, without anything to fill the holes they'd left behind, suddenly became a story about the profound helplessness of seeing someone you love suffer from your absence while you are right there, unable to do anything about it, unable to communicate that you love them enough to suffer unseen and unheard with them, just to keep them company they'll never know about

it was then that I truly realized how *superior* the digital medium is to plain printed paper, how the medium and the format can add to a story.

I think about that fic about once a year. I wish I could find it again

EDIT: FOUND IT!!!! UPDATE HERE

I really do think that it’s good for the soul to be unironically pretentious about something. Not in a gatekeeping kind of way but in a “yes, it really is that deep and I would love to enthusiastically and passionately explain why” kind of way.

チーンホワ君の日常。

sqh’s everyday life.

Senshi is probably the most fandomized character in Dungeon Meshi, and while I don't exactly mind it, I do think he has more depth than that. I find all his little quirks and idiosyncrasies to be fascinating; he's very stubborn and set in his ways about things that seemingly don't matter, he thinks about things that other people don't, he has a deeply set value system that informs everything he does. He cares A Lot, like, this man cares So Much. That's the kind of person you have to be to drop everything to help a random group of adventurers save one woman. But because he feels so strongly about things, he can also be surprisingly immature at times (although he's also the character most likely to admit he was wrong about something). I think part of that is because he's lived in the dungeon on his own so long that he's not used to working with other people. He will extend empathy and friendship to almost anyone, but he does things his own way, and he doesn’t always feel the need to explain his way of thinking because again, he's usually on his own. He's both incredibly wise and kind of childish in ways that seem contradictory at first, but make more and more sense the more we learn about him. Major kudos to Ryoko Kui's writing and pacing to make that transition so seamless and have all those details from his backstory click into place perfectly. And on a wider thematic level, Senshi is kind of a perfect counterpart to characters like Thistle (or any other dungeon lord). Senshi understands the dungeon in ways that even its creator doesn't. Although everyone is scrambling to take control of the dungeon, Senshi is the one who actually takes care of it. He's the one who thinks about things like nutrition and proper sleep and the ecosystem, all those things that it's easy to ignore when you get swept up by the grandeur of it all. He's the most important character to have present in a story that explores life and death and hunger. His constant, invisible presence holds everything together.

“Take my hand” a comic for NaruMitsu Week 2023

day 1 - lies & secrets - 2 - 3 - 4