ok sorry for being a hater yesterday. I started reading some Ursula k le Guin essays and i have positive emotions again. i love her.

I think there’s a remarkable way in which the isekai doomed villain aspects of my next life as a villainess and the bisexual harem aspects gel together to create a metaphor for queer childhood. to me the most interesting way to view katerina is as a girl who is convinced from a young age that people around her are eventually going to subject her to a fate beyond her control and she’s going to be cast out, and this colors her entire perception of the world around her.

it feels very gay experience (though ofc not universal) to be like i have to overcorrect for the fact that one day everyone is going to hate me and exile me for something i can't help through being so kind and helpful to them.  i have to heal everyone around me.  or i will DIE.  they will KILL ME. i need to make myself essential to the people around me because something is inherently wrong with me that only i know about.  and then of course she self-conceives what is in large part her earnest desire to help the people around her as like "i am masterminding a dastardly plan to change my fate"  (read: feelings of duplicity and monstrousness as a gay child).

i also think there’s a way in which her revelation of her past life’s memories could have given her an uncomfortable or even predatory power over the people around her but it does not.  instead she reads very much as a child but like a child with an adult's sense of responsibility for the other children around her (in a world with horrible real adults)?  + mildly related point on the game mechanics aspect, i also like how neatly katerina’s backstory solves for some of her oblivious and quirky tendencies.  like of course she doesn’t think her friends are in love with her, she’s worried about them killing her.

anyway, on katarina/maria: it’s also soooo interesting that everyone is in love with her by the time she meets maria and the possibility she is going to be the "villain" who "dies" is 0 but she just doesn't know it.  but she meets her and is like she is so beautiful and charming and cool, that's why i'm so sure to meet an evil fate. . it’s so on the nose for like, the evil anvil that is going to fall on me which is proof that i’m doomed. . . is how wonderful and captivating this other girl is!  because of course it is, the crux of the issue is gay childhood.  [astronaut meme] “wait it was all about gay feelings?” “always has been”

i am an unapologetically Pro Abortion On Demand At Any Time No Questions Asked and i think i am open enough about this that so is anyone following me so this is preaching to the choir. and i feel weird about it in some ways anyway because, again: the question of abortion is you trust women & others who are pregnant to make choices about their bodies or their lives, or you don't. period. end of story. don't care why, don't care about context, don't care about anything except: do you want to be pregnant anymore? no? okay, you deserve an abortion. but. even so. even with all that. i do still keep seeing takes on the internet (my first mistake) that make me want to print out copies of this interview with a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks on every wall in the fucking country. i want everyone who feels the need ever but especially at this moment in time to proclaim that they're pro-choice but only up to X amount of time to read it and understand exactly what fucking cruelty they're supporting.

and i also want to point out that this woman was a woman carrying a wanted child, living in blue state new york, who found herself, against all her expectations, flying on a plane to fucking colorado and traveling back a day and a half later, because the alternative was spending another month pregnant and having a C-section to watch her child either be stillborn or choke to death in front of her right after being born. that's what people are endorsing when they endorse late-term abortion bans, and it is your first day on planet earth if you think that there is any degree of codifying medical exemptions that is going to prevent situations like this from occurring. and if your first response to that is to think about how lucky she was to be able to actually do that instead of how horrific it is that she had to deal with that in an already traumatic moment of her life, something important inside you has been badly broken and you need to reflect on how to fix it.

"I've been skipping two of the most important character POVs since the first book, am I missing anything?"

Honestly though, this is taking me out because I just know this is how a lot of people actually "read" the books. At this point the books have been discussed so much people just assume they know enough to skip through certain parts and that's exactly why we have so much misinterpretation in this fandom. People are getting their information through second-hand sources instead of the books themselves 😭

dear everyone,

a while ago, i hit 1.5k followers on this blog.... i didn't want to get too sappy but i really wanted to write something, so:

the fact that over one and a half thousand individuals follow me is truly insane and too much for my little brain to grasp. i want you to know that i'm so extremely thankful for each and every single one of you and this makes me so so so happy. this is way more than i ever had expected when creating this blog.

i made this account back in june purely for my own enjoyment; i created it mainly because i was disappointed in myself for having stopped writing, since writing has been such a big part of my life since forever. ever since i stopped writing about kpop, i had barely written anything at all... i made this account just for fun with no pressure and no expectations, and before i knew it, this blog turned into something so special for me. the blog, all of the people i've met through it and all of the moments we've shared, all mean the world to me.

honestly, i'm not sure what i would do right now if i didn't have this blog and this community. these last few months have been pretty rough for me, but i've always been able to come back on here and gain a smile or some laughter. you've all helped me so much, even if unintentionally – every single interaction helps me push forward. i'm eternally grateful for every single like, comment, reblog and ask i've received on here, and your kind words really do mean the world to me. i don't know where i would be without you.

i hit 1k a while ago but didn't celebrate it properly, so i decided to make an 1k/1.5k-celly that i will be releasing soon (when i have more time to actually write)(hopefully at the start of december). please stay tuned!

and once again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so so so much. you truly are the best. 🧡🧡

i’ve been thinking a lot about what is so unique and appealing about 80s robin jay’s moral standing that got completely lost in plot later on. and i think a huge part of it is that in a genre so focused on crime-fighting, his motivations and approach don’t focus on the category of crime at all. in fact, he doesn’t seem to believe in any moral dogma; and it’s not motivated by nihilism, but rather his open-heartedness and relational ethical outlook.

we first meet (post-crisis) jay when he is stealing. when confronted about his actions by bruce he’s confident that he didn’t do anything wrong – he’s not apologetic, he doesn’t seem to think that he has morally failed on any account. later on, when confronted by batman again, jay says that he’s no “crook.” at this point, the reader might assume that jay has no concept of wrong-doing, or that stealing is just not one of the deeds that he considers wrong-doing. yet, later on we see jay so intent on stopping ma gunn and her students, refusing to be implicit in their actions. there are, of course, lots of reasons for which we can assume he was against stealing in this specific instance (an authority figure being involved, the target, the motivations, the school itself being an abusive environment etc.), but what we gather is that jay has an extremely strong sense of justice and is committed to moral duty. that's all typical for characters in superhero comics, isn't it? however, what remains distinctive is that this moral duty is not dictated by any dogma – he trusts his moral instincts. this attitude – his distrust toward power structures, confidence in his moral compass, and situational approach, is something that is maintained throughout his robin run. it is also evident in how he evaluates other people – we never see him condemning his parents, for example, and that includes willis, who was a petty criminal. i think from there arises the potential for a rift between bruce and jay that could be, have jay lived, far more utilised in batman comics than it was within his short robin run.

after all, while bruce’s approach is often called a ‘philosophy of love and care,’ he doesn’t ascribe to the ethics of care [eoc] (as defined in modern scholarship btw) in the same way that jay does. ethics of care ‘deny that morality consists in obedience to a universal law’ and focus on the ideals of caring for other people and non-institutionalized justice. bruce, while obviously caring, is still bound by his belief in the legal system and deontological norms. he is benevolent, but he is also ultimately morally committed to the idea of a legal system and thus frames criminals as failing to meet these moral (legal-adjacent) standards (even when he recognizes it is a result of their circumstances). in other words, he might think that a criminal is a good person despite leading a life of crime. meanwhile, for jay there is no despite; jay doesn't think that engaging in crime says anything about a person's moral personality at all. morality, for him, is more of an emotional practice, grounded in empathy and the question of what he can do for people ‘here and now.’ he doesn’t ascribe to maxims nor utilitarian calculations. for jay, in morality, there’s no place for impartiality that bruce believes in; moral decisions are embedded within a net of interpersonal relationships and social structures that cannot be generalised like the law or even a “moral code” does it. it’s all about responsiveness. 

to sum up, jay's moral compass is relative and passionate in a way that doesn't fit batman's philosophy. this is mostly because bruce wants to avoid the sort of arbitrariness that seems to guide eoc. also, both for vigilantism, and jay, eoc poses a challenge in the sense that it doesn't create a certain 'intellectualised' distance from both the victims and the perpetrators; there's no proximity in the judgment; it's emotional.

all of this is of course hardly relevant post-2004. there might be minimal space for accommodating some of it within the canon progression (for example, the fact that eoc typically emphasises the responsibility that comes with pre-existing familial relationships and allows for prioritizing them, as well as the flexibility regarding moral deliberations), but the utilitarian framework and the question of stopping the crime vs controlling the underworld is not something that can be easily reconciled with jay’s previous lack of interest in labeling crime. 

good writing's really worth about a hundred other things

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is nothing if not consistent & feral.

AKUTAGAWA NOOO! 😫

AKUTAGAWA, C'MON MAN!!😩

BRO PLEASE!!! 😭

UM EXCUSE ME? BITCH, WHAT THE FUCK?? HOW STRONG IS YOUR STOMACH?!

This is going to be long so the short version is this:

I convinced my therapist to watch the 🌟Gay Pirate Show🌟 and now I have to confront a previously unidentified and terrifyingly deep emotional wound that could be as transformative to heal as it is terrifying to approach.

My therapist and I have a lot of let's say...demographic things in common that have made this the most successful therapeutic relationship I've ever had, but also that just made me think he might like the show. It's no secret that ofmd has been a deeply moving experience for its viewers, and queer, neurodivergent, and/or people of color have written at length about the special ways it touches us (or doesn't). Those are three categories both he and I fit into and it feels relevant to say that for context.

So yes I thought he might like it, but I also wanted to pick his brain about Big Feelings it was giving me that I hadn't experienced with the same intensity with other media/fandoms. Y'all, he gave me a completely unexpected reading on the show (and its story and its fan works) and why it makes us feel So Much that I haven't seen anywhere before.

When I say Big Feelings, I mean like I've literally had to swear off a couple of pretty innocuous categories on AO3 ("Growing Old Together" and "Domestic Fluff") because they would devastate me in ways that I couldn't attribute to anything specific. Growing Old Together comes with the possibility of death separating them, which is heartbreaking, but that didn't feel like it was the thing that was gutting me. Domestic Fluff could probably be called the most innocuous tag ever, but anything that saw our blorbos settling down and watching the Revenge sail off into the distance was fucking me up as well.

There are plenty of reasons why OFMD makes queer people feel so much, but when I say this was fucking me up I mean like, well, remember when people outside of classical music started learning about appoggiatura? Like intellectually knowing why I was crying but at a loss how intense everything felt. And my therapist (who is as good at analyzing a text as he is at being a therapist) was like "oh, it could be all the grief."

The grief.

The audacity of this motherfucker (affectionate).

It's a romcom! It's a romcom that we were explicitly told would have a happy ending! It's a romcom where the characters will get to sail off into the sunset together like they want and like we want for them! Stede and Ed, after four decades of self-hatred and trauma and fear and isolation, somehow find each other. And one of the sweetest things about their story is that it's a late in life love story, because it's incredibly inspiring for someone to get to experience a part of life they thought wasn't for them. The inescapable fact that their time together will be shorter than any of us would like is sad but not unaccountably sad to me, because of how much joy they'll be able to cram into the time they have left. I could be wrong but I don't think that alone is the source of what's been overwhelming me.

Grief is a constant presence in the world-building and the storytelling because grief is a natural response to well, so many things about being alive. Grieving is some of the hardest shit any of us ever have to do, but it's also so universal and so many of the things that make us uniquely human also make grieving well, maybe not easier, but something we can endure and process through ritual, community, and the example of those we've witnessed grieving their own losses. Many kinds of grief come with narratives that you can accept or reject all or parts of, but the narrative exists.

But have you ever heard of disenfranchised loss? Loss that's not easily labeled or classified or given the time or space or understanding it deserves? Have you experienced a loss like that? Can you imagine how much more difficult it makes the grieving process?

Well what my therapist suggested, the thing that knocked me on my ass hard enough that I had to come have Online Feelings about it, is that eventually, we all have to mourn ourselves. Not necessarily in a "mortality is inevitable" way (that happens to everyone) but in ways that are often unique to people like him and me (black, ND, queer). Even if we work on ourselves, if we grow and heal our trauma and feel at home in our identities and our bodies and build beautiful lives, eventually we will be forced to mourn the selves that we never got to be in the societies in which we live and the selves we once had to become to survive this long.

And that mourning is a kind of disenfranchised loss, with no clear path forward. Obviously this conversation happened within the context of everything my therapist knows about me as an individual, but I thought certain things might resonate with other fans as well so I wanted to talk about it. The story of this bizarre little man and his remarkable second act and his lovely little found family and his incredibly beautiful love story (that we've been guaranteed will end happily) is still haunted by the specific kind of grief that comes from learning what's possible, and regretting that you didn't know it was possible sooner.

And does anybody have more delayed milestones, later-in-life discoveries, and/or need to invent places for themselves than those of us on the social fringes? Than those of us in societies unequipped for (or actively hostile to) the ways we exist and the things we need to survive and thrive? Than those of us who have to create our own narratives or be saddled with inaccurate or harmful narratives created by others, or even no narrative at all?

And narrative is so much. Narrative is everything. Narrative is the story we tell ourselves and each other and that literally shapes our reality. So those story beats where we discover something better than what came before are inherently stories with loss and will require mourning, because we mourn loss.

Even when the story has a happy ending. Especially when the story has a happy ending for someone who never thought they would be allowed to have one.

I mean just like, FUCKING HELL. I can't blame anyone for this but myself. I know my therapist. I know how insightful he can be. I did this to myself and now I have to live with it. But my god is it a massive mountain I'm about to have to climb now. My therapist and I have always found it helpful to discuss media that makes me Feel Things (see all the trauma work that came from Life is Strange) but if you had told me that I'd be looking into this new dark cave of unprocessed shit thanks to what I thought was just gonna be a harmless little gay pirate show starring fucking Murray from Flight of the Concords I would probably just have assumed you were in the middle of having a stroke and taken off to get you the medical attention you desperately needed.

I just . Repeating "characters are tools" you end up erasing so much about arashi's character and motivations and interactions with other characters if you avoid using her pronouns aka avoid showing she's transgender. It's on the same level of frustration with the translators i had when i saw they had Mika speaking standard English, there's a LOT that gets lost if you don't show those little things.

One of my least favorite parts of how JRO wrote Optimus is that he wanted so badly to continue his dark and gritty world building making the Autobots problematic, but evidently couldn't reconcile this with Optimus being a Heroic Paragon, so instead he leaned way too hard into "oh Prowl was the one who did this and it was behind Optimus' back" which if anything I think makes Optimus look worse, not better. Because then it's like, okay I know Optimus trusted Prowl a lot as his friend but you CANNOT TELL ME that over the course of 4 million years, Optimus as the leader of the Autobot army who literally would have access to 99.9% of all the records they produce, would never notice or question where some of these odd/inconsistent details were pointing. It just seems really inconsistent with how a real military would actually function, especially regarding Optimus' character, who is incredibly thorough and responsible and wouldn't neglect to keep up with all the details of his army.

Hell, Optimus knows who the Wreckers are and had them on call for tricky operations when he needed them (Stormbringer) so he's literally not at all ignorant of/averse to the use of special wartime units composed of dubious individuals. He's the fucking commander of an entire army, of course he knows that War Is Hell (TM) and no one's hands are clean. That's not even getting into all the stuff he got up to in phase 2/3, I mean everything from the annexation of Earth to OP breaking humans out of prison against Council orders shows that Optimus is no stranger to immoral and/or unlawful means.

It also leads to a lot of annoying fanon where people write Optimus (sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not) as like some sort of ignorant fool who's unaware of the machinations of his own army or has some sort of naiveté of "b-but we can't use bad tactics against the enemy! I would never condone the use of morally gray means in war!" No, IDW Optimus knows perfectly well all of the bullshit he's enacted/condoned for the sake of trying to win the war. Some stuff is definitely out of character for him and was only machinated because of Prowl, but I think this fandom REALLY underestimates Optimus' personal agency/responsibility as the commander of a whole ass army and ESPECIALLY underestimates Optimus' capacity to condone morally gray Bullshit Of War while still being a good person individually as well as, comparatively, the lesser evil compared to Megatron/the Decepticons.

Anyways what I'm saying is JRO may be a good writer but he's really hesitant to make Optimus morally gray and does some asspulls sometimes to justify most of the bad things the Autobots did as "Optimus just didn't know," and since the majority of the IDW1 fandom only reads JRO's stuff they go running with this premise of ignorant/uninformed Optimus when there's evidence elsewhere in canon to show that Optimus is, in fact, very highly aware of the bullshit he's allowed "for the greater good" and the only stuff he was "unaware of" was the stuff he would literally never agree to the ethics of, like bombing innocent neutrals disguised as Decepticons to get them to join the Autobots.

I love my friends so much :3

man life must be nice when you're not a sensitive sally

i'd rather be friendless than to constantly have my boundaries disrespected

Saying that Izzy had to die because he had reached the end of his character arc is a circular argument when the reason he was given an unbelievably rushed character arc was because you decided he had to die.

Which came first? Chicken or egg.

Answer - a dead pirate in a roadside grave

genuinely didn't think I'd make it to 18 let alone 22 so now I'm looking around like..... Now What