losing my actual mind rn
i had this interaction in the dropout discord (i am the first and third person). short. simple. i only got the first year bc of a discount + a gift card i had, so i was planning on using this person's suggestion.
then, i got this.
oh my god!! how nice!! how sweet!!! how thoughtful!! i gave them my email and they sent over a subscription, i thanked them profusely. i was very grateful, very touched.
hours and hours later i was still thinking about it and i recalled how, in the email id gotten about it, it said "tao yang sent you a subscription" and id seen that and thought "oh haha like the tao yang" and then moved on
but now, thinking back, i was like.... theres no way, so i googled tao yang.
......
TAO YANG BOUGHT ME A FUCKING ANNUAL DROPOUT SUBSCRIPTION
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It's a typical story, where the bassist kills the singer
The guitarist and the drummer
Find they're in love with each other
It's the story of the kid who clearly
Won't know what to say
When the love of his life starts to calmly walk away
And it's the story of the dad who decides to chase his dream
He quits his job, he falls apart
He loses everything
And it's the story of the kid
Who just wants to make a record
Loves and crafts it but nobody ever, ever cares about it
Hey hey, what's your name?
Talking to the guys you hate
We should sit in silence
While we think of what to say
Hey hey, I don't think this is working out
Will you forget I even asked you to come over to my house?
Hey hey, I don't think I know much
But I know I couldn't take a good punch
So if you feel like I've been talking enough
Just tell me to shut up and I will probably shut the fuck up
I'm afraid of everything
Staying the same or worsening
So what's the point of finding calm
When calm to me is unsettling?
Settle down, little kid
Your bones are shaking in your skin
Go and try to take a breath
Nothing more, nothing less
It's a typical story of the king who had it all
Except for citizens who didn't want his head upon a wall
It's a typical story of the wife who couldn't quit
Being in love with such a giant piece of shit
It's the story of the queen who could never ever think
Of any redeeming qualities a man could ever bring
It's the story of the dog who wanted to run away
'Till he learned that his life is way safer inside a cage
I don't really need much, just a place to be alone
You don't really see much
I think that I'm invisible, my mirror shows another guy
A guy who doesn't do shit, he just sits in his miserable
Everybody's gotta
Live a life
That they didn't ask for
Why
Would he put me here
Just to die?
Just to, just to die
Typical Story by Hobo Johnson, 2019
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Mandatory rant about kaveh’s 2023 birthday letter incoming!!
Kaveh and Alhaitham’s birthday message subject lines are seen to mirror the other through their usage of punctuation, as Alhaitham’s subject line reads as: “…” as opposed to Kaveh’s: ‘!!!’.
A sense of familiarity evoked in their current living situation emanates from these mirrorings and within this message. Kaveh writes about him bringing coffee beans “home” in order to try, and then follows this with: “we compared the taste of each, we decided that this was the best”. Through Kaveh’s explicit usage of the word “home”, it is evident that the “we” refers to him and Alhaitham. This description establishes a sense of domesticity, only to be achieved in a mutually agreed ‘home’ as opposed to a ‘house’.
It is relevant to reference Kaveh’s understanding of “home”, as in a place in which words are not necessary and link it to the idea of companionship being more important than understanding. The latter idea consists of supporting a person, regardless of the ability to empathise with and relate to their particular struggles, should be valued over attempting to be understood by people who are not willing to listen in order to understand - established by Kaveh’s mother within his hangout.
In this, Alhaitham is offered as a companion to Kaveh, where he cannot empathise with Kaveh’s artistic and idealistic struggles, but he is willing to listen to him over offering empty words which cannot solve Kaveh’s particular problems.
Kaveh’s understanding of “home” as a place in which people are at ease with each other and support another regardless, can be seen within his relationship with Alhaitham.
Kaveh and Alhaitham split the chores according to Alhaitham’s character stories; they both make attempts to decorate the house; presumably they eat dinner together, according to Alhaitham’s Story Quest where he excuses himself in order to have dinner, only to talk to Kaveh; the two can be seen to share a study; when ordering out, Kaveh orders extra for Alhaitham – a common enough occurrence for Alhaitham to be confident in relying on this; and for Kaveh’s birthday they try coffee beans together to determine the best ones to send onto Kaveh’s friends - Kaveh’s close friends who are also Alhaitham’s.
Rather than the “cold” and “lonely” house which Kaveh was left with after the passing of his father and departure of his mother, this conjures the image of warmth and familiarity. In this, it can be inferred that the two have created a home together.
(Update: For more analyses like this, the essay this is taken from is now uploaded! It can be accessed here and here as as a pdf <3)
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Deeply fucking unsettling things about the Honored One himself, Satoru Gojo
Thanks to his ability to fuck with gravity, you put him in a blank, empty room with identical walls, floor, and ceiling with no doors or windows, he'll quickly lose track of which way is up. Realistically this situation would probably never happen, but the concept freaks him out ever since Geto made a joke about it once.
Gojo's body maintains a perfect thermodynamic equilibrium, making his skin creepily cool to the touch. He can go out in a blizzard with shorts on, and between that and Infinity, he'd be perfectly fine. It makes for a cool party trick, because he can stick his hand in a candle flame or put cigarettes out on his arms with no ill effects.
He's unsettlingly clean at all times, because dirt can't touch him. Gojo hasn't needed to use stain remover on his uniform in years.
He quite literally has six eyes. He keeps four of them shut and all of them hidden most of the time, though, because a) looking into all six at once would liquefy the brain of your average human, and b) his Six Eyes are constantly feeding unfathomable amounts of information into his brain every second. Even with his tolerance to his powers and mastery of the reverse curse technique, there's only so much stimuli a human brain can process without completely shutting down, and Gojo doesn't want to find out what that'll do to him--in a nutshell, just because he can see things that mankind can't even hope to comprehend doesn't mean he wants to.
He can perceive the entire electromagnetic spectrum, meaning he can see shrimp colors. Everyone else desperately wants him to describe the shrimp colors. Gojo continues to smugly refuse.
Because of his reverse curse technique constantly refreshing and regenerating his body, he just. doesn't really need to eat anymore. or drink. or even breathe. His body is basically frozen at peak physical condition, and it's very likely that he is functionally immortal.
Sometimes, Gojo forgets what pain feels like, because nothing can touch him. Pain feels almost like pleasure to him, because nothing can hurt him. Nothing can even touch him, and Gojo has secretly developed a perverted interest in seeing how badly he can mutilate himself before he's forced to reengage his technique and heal.
Gojo can bend and contort himself in ways that aren't humanly possible, run faster and farther and lift heavier objects than anyone alive, because his body can repair itself almost as fast as it's damaged, depending on how severe the injury. Basically, he has permanent hysterical strength, letting him push his body past its limits to perform feats that would kill a normal human with no ill effects.
Gojo doesn't sleep. He literally can't unless he releases his technique, because his body is constantly being refreshed and doesn't need to shut down. Oh well, it's for the better. He's most vulnerable while he's sleeping anyway, and it opens up his schedule by a lot.
His teeth grow now, almost like a rodent's. He has to file them down to be able to open and close his mouth properly, along with much more frequent trimming of his hair and nails.
His skin is oddly smooth, and unnaturally pristine. Gojo hasn't recieved a single scar since Toji sliced him open, and all the ones he'd recieved before are healed flawlessly at this point. His hands are so soft they make it look like he hasn't fought a day in his life, because calluses aren't able to form anymore.
Gojo's been around the world countless times now. He can go wherever he wants with a thought; the only cost is his sanity. Warping himself across the Pacific for lunch in San Francisco is fun, but he can only do it a few times a week if he doesn't want to have another... ah, episode.
These episodes involve blackouts, gaps in his memory where his powers manage to slip their leashes from overuse and literally short-circuit his brain. He's only had a few so far, and every time, he wakes up in the infirmary completely unscathed, with blood all over his clothes and an awful fucking migraine. Nobody knows what happens or where he goes, and all Shoko's been able to tell him is that when it happens, he seems to go into a giddy fugue before blasting his way out of the compound and vanishing for anywhere from days to weeks. Gojo's absolutely terrified of these episodes, because he's wholly aware that if he lost it for real, nobody would be able to stop him.
He looks human enough, but if you look closer, he quickly starts to set off the uncanny valley effect. It's like a wolf in sheep's clothing--because you know how dangerous he is, even though he appears relatively harmless at first. Everyone who meets him has the same fear response clawing at the back of their mind as their hindbrain screams at them to fucking run, because Gojo is an apex predator in the body of a prey animal. His very presence awakens primal fear that's been entrenched in every human since the dawn of time--the fear of things that go bump in the night, of cosmic horrors beyond what mankind can even hope to comprehend.
His eyes glow all the time now, and the energy crackling in the air around him feels like the static that comes before a lightning strike. Satoru Gojo is insistent that he's still human even though he's the strongest, but... is he, really?
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As someone who’s done bereavement care for almost 20 years, I’ve observed again and again and again that it is not staying with grief that cuts us off from other people, it’s suffocating grief and suppressing grief. It’s impossible to repress grief without also repressing all sorts of other things like joy and memory. Actually, expressing grief naturally connects us empathetically to other people. It is not an accident that right now when there is such a profound suppression of global grief, we’re also finding ourselves in a moment of such isolation.
Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in them magazine
I sought out this piece because Rabbi Kukla was quoted in today's sermon in reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza ("It is lifesaving to mourn our humanity in inhumane times").
But this paragraph about grief hit me so hard I wanted to single it out to share. It is relevant to corporate grief of the sort we might experience when a state is doing harm in our name (police brutality, displacement, execution). It is also relevant to individual griefs.
In the bereavement calls I do for hospice, I have noticed, this is precisely what gets people stuck in grief: the feeling that there is no safe space and time to express grief. Companies tend to give very little accommodation for bereavement, if they give any at all. Culturally we're expected to get over losses in a matter of days. But grief rewires us, and some losses-- particularly losses like war, displacement, and police brutality where a state or institution does the same kind of harm repeatedly-- are complex and ongoing.
Grief impacts sleeping, eating, executive function. (I don't ask people in bereavement calls, "How are you doing?" I ask, "How are you sleeping?" "How's your appetite?" Maybe "Are there moments from your caregiving, or from your [loved one's] dying, that keep coming up for you?" Because of course you're not fine! You just lost someone essential to you. What I want to know is, is your body getting a chance to repair itself as your mind and heart process what you've experienced?)
People have talked to me after a loss about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by daily life. It's not unlike recovering from a major injury and having a sizable portion of your bandwidth given over at all times to the tasks of bone, muscle, and nerve repair that are not under your conscious control. When tasks you're used to thinking of as having one part suddenly make it clear how complex they are? Cooking a meal takes more out of you. Doing a load of laundry takes more out of you. If you're already an introvert, the cost of social engagement goes up, at a time when social engagement might actually be very helpful.
Doing some of our grief work with other trusted people shares the load. It recovers some bandwidth. But many folks learn early in the grieving process that they have fewer trusted people than they thought. Or that it feels like the wrong time to deepen an acquaintanceship they'd hoped might become a friendship. Or that they aren't as comfortable asking loved ones for help as they thought they would be.
And the bereavement model I'm trained in assumes that a grieving person has experienced one recent loss. We know that a recent loss might poke us in the tender spots left by earlier losses. But that's still different from the experience of a tragedy that affects a whole community at once (as in an entire region's population losing multiple loved ones in a very short time and being forced to flee).
I don't really have a conclusion here, but I'm finding the activism that feels most healing and hope-filled to me has lament built into it: a chance to name the people who've died in our county's jail, while advocating for better communication with families of people inside. A chance to call out the names of people lost to covid while advocating for policies that will mitigate risk to vulnerable people.
Maybe it takes days to name all the people impacted by ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Yemen, while urging our government to end its role in those genocides. Maybe our systems and structures, which aren't even good at honoring our grief for members of the nuclear family we're taught is our primary world, are disinclined to give us that time. Maybe we ought to take it anyway.
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