'hope is a discipline' - mariame kaba on dismantling the carceral state

cant believe my bbygrl was defeated by a faceless guy ◞‸◟

One of these days. One of these days, I will figure out what the hell makes the tipping point beyond which either a) there’s socialization that I feel insulated from and kind of numb about and too tired to pursue, or b) socialization where the very notion of so much as expressing one (1) internal thought or emotion suffuses my whole body with adrenaline and blaring Nope instincts.

i cannot believe you made me do 180 pulls you absolute slut

Honestly I really want to be able to side with Solas in dreadwolf. I think it'd be super interesting to play as an elf in Tevinter and be able to just go "yeah actually I think Fen'Harel is right let's tear down that veil." I mean I assume the main conflict will be Solas trying to convince your character to join him, or your character being told they have to try and stop him, and there are not enough games that let you side with the presented "villain" character. I want to see what the world is like with no veil I'm so interested. Also so interested to see what full-on Fen'Harel Solas is like. Is he still as empathetic? Or is he more conniving and distanced from "mortals" like the old stories would have us believe?

*cha cha chas into ur inbox* soooooo what is ur horrible exorcists arranged marriage headcanon AU friend!!! INQUIRING MINDS (ME) WISH TO KNOW!!! :))))

i need to preface this with: i thought about this and thought about this and it is not necessarily a happy story!!!

it would likely be an AU where the sight in the natori clan hadn't completely died out like it had in canon and they were in a much more panicked and precarious state and trying to form a desperate alliance as a last ditch attempt of keeping the name afloat even if only symbolically

shuuichi would be begrudging and prickly about the arrangement the whole time but go along with it to ~save the clan~ in whatever shape or form because he's one of the few stronger ones left with the sight and the de facto heir and ultimately feels responsible

the alliance may have been presented initially as an alternative to total clan subsummation wherein the natori clan gets protection as well but it does...inevitably...lead to...more or less total clan subsummation because who are we kidding??? all parties sort of knew this was gonna happen at the outset anyway what with how the matobas roll. exploiting yet another dying clan? is anyone surprised!!!?

and lbr shuuichi and his clan don't really have a leg to stand on which leads to a whole other brand of angst and interclan drama which also gets mirrored in their relationship for bonus fun anguish points :D

i do think it would be more punchy and impactful if they were a bit younger at the time of this marriage...like 19/20ish? something about them being less polished and savvy and settled into their identities and more easily swayed by the forces around them! seiji is also still the heir rather than clan head at the time!

seiji still held some softness for shuuichi prior to all this and was semi-pining for years but cant really focus on that so much anymore once the arrangement goes ahead and he tries to soften the blow of everything as much as he can (which isn't a lot early on and in his current position)

meanwhile shuuichi may have once had some semblance of softness for seiji mixed with insecurity and a thousand other complicated feelings à la canon but now he's far too busy being outraged and devastated in equal parts to feel anything else. like i said. NOT necessarily a happy story!!!!!!

there's a version where maybe, over time, they could approach some common ground but honestly even if they managed to mutually care for/grow into some semblance of functional partnership and "love" for each other, shuuichi very much would fight the loss of his identity as a natori tooth and nail (and grieve and mourn) and it would definitely colour and periodically sour their entire relationship if not overtly then definitely covertly

and the thing is: if it was anyone else, seiji would be able to nicely compartmentalize and barrel on through but because it's this specific person that he's quietly adored since they were kids, it crushes him as well to see shuuichi so stifled and that fire of his (one of the things that had charmed seiji about him early one!!!) nearly burned out

some time passes and the current matoba head dies and seiji takes the mantle. superficially and politically, they end up presenting a united front and rock the power couple aesthetic for a few years but DEEP DOWN THEY ARE CRUMBLING!!! they go days without speaking to each other behind closed doors unless necessary and it becomes more of a hollow, weary, performance than anything that they get good at doing on autopilot

eventually it comes to a breaking point and, hilariously, maybe the arranged marriage divorce--not a decision made lightly--winds up being the great point of catharsis (and the biggest romantic gesture on seiji's part)--ACTUALLY WAIT I'VE CONNECTED THE DOTS!!! I'VE CONNECTED THEM!!!

THEIR LOVE STORY WOULD IN FACT TAKE-OFF AFTER THEY ENDED THE MARRIAGE AND COULD FINALLY FEEL LIKE THEY WERE ON SOMETHING OF EQUAL FOOTING because that would be so important for shuuichi and also for seiji to let shuuichi have that agency and choose him on his own terms rather than because he was Supposed To

seiji offers shuuichi/the natori clan matoba clan's protection anywayyy because he can (to the matoba elders who aren't about it, he goes: shhh it's alimony!) and yes, i'm probably handwaving exorcist divorce law--which i now want to study for fun--and i know he can't just make these decisions unilaterally but, on a level, this would also be a story about seiji growing into his own power and identity as clan head and getting creative with loopholes that let him meet his own ends

so the end is the beginning is the end and shuuichi does wind up back at square one with a dying clan at the end of the day and hated by his family for being ~selfish and burning that bridge in their eyes

but the two of them also get a proper shot now at Being In Love in some shape or form ON PURPOSE!!!!!

once more with feeling: this is not (necessarily) a happy story!!!!!! not in every way anyway!!!!!!!

bonus epilogue: natori shuuichi shows up at the next matobacorp board meeting with a board seat to his name and half the company shares that he was gifted in the divorce <3 love is real etc etc. [muffled sounds of the succession opening theme playing in the distance] they go on a cute little coffee date after.

just wanted to share this inscryption card that carried my last act 1 runs. so beautiful and having no cost it was in my first hand so much

being autistic is like. so nothing is ever going to be easy? it's always going to be this hard? no amount of medical appointments will ever make me better? my entire life i'm going to be told that it can't be that bad if i was able to get a job and get along with people and there's really not much they can do for me. that they can address the symptoms (depression, anxiety, etc) but i need to do a blood test first to see if it's not just anaemia, and have i considered that i'm just tired out from work? and i seem fine honestly it's probably not even autism, everyone gets a little bit overwhelmed sometimes. here, have some magnesium. if you eat more vegetables you'll be fine. there's nothing else we can do. my computer says you're not autistic because you were able to make friends and you show signs of empathy. no i haven't updated my autism research since 1996. you're making a big deal out of nothing you seem fine. we can't help you. you seem fine. we can't help you. we can't help you. we can't help you.

I don't know if I've stated it before, but I don't see Cooler as a "Mutant" like Freeza and King Cold. I know it was only confirmed in XenoVerse 2, but for me, I don't accept it as canon. I think it would be far more interesting if Cooler wasn't born with his father's unnatural strength, as it would give more credence as to why he was set aside as Cold's heir in favor of Freeza. Further fueling the deadly sibling rivalry and the plethora of daddy issues and pushing him to obtain his ascended form out of hard work and spite.

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

*rotating blorbos in my head* i think we could rattle jeeves if we got him to watch a good production of 'othello' together with bertie (it flies completely over bertie's head ofc, all of that jealosy stuff leading a man quite so far as to murder his wife is a bit thick, what?). but like... in that play manipulation is so unquestioningly equated with villainy, and the pathos of it is so striking, it does provoke you to come up with justifications for why you aren't a selfish and bad person. DO you always use your powers for good jeeves?? just what exactly is your motivation? what if you were completely discovered and humiliated one day??

Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word.

my mom called me today and told me i might as well accept my fate and go half on a place with my dad

~

Tip of advice from a writing blog too shy to come off anon with like- 5 followers XD. Write for YOU, not anybody else. And if you don't feel like writing, then don't. Writing is supposed to be a fun hobby, not a chore. I know that only maybe 1 or 2 people are going to see my work, but that's okay! Because as long as a single person enjoyed what I put out through my stories, I'm happy. Write what YOU want to write, when YOU want to write it. Do not feel obligated by anyone else and don't let others tell you how to do YOUR hobby. Trust me, you'll be happier. I was in your place once (Not long ago, actually ^^). And hey, for what it's worth, I love what you do. Gives me the feeeeels!

I appreciate this! Honestly I do write for me. I know I sound like a broken record here but I really don’t care about notes or attention lol. It’s more about the ache of watching the active community shrink before my eyes. Fanfic is about self-indulgence, but it’s also about sharing in an experience with a community. There’s just little to no community anymore, and that sucks.

Most if not all of us write because we like sharing with you guys! Writing stuff for our people. Hearing the shouts from the void that you all loved sharing in a fic and want to see more is so motivating and heartwarming. For me, that’s a huge part of it. Even when I write something I’m not 100% into or a fic I’m not super proud of, getting to share it with you guys sparks joy.

Not to sound like a bitter old man here but people used to write essays in the tags. That was the thing to do. I can’t tell you the last time I even saw a fandom tag on one of my fics. Likes mean anything from “I saw this” to “reading later” to “omg I loved this but I can’t reblog this”. Going from a thrum of conversation that you could share in with other people to dead silence is unnerving and really sad. It makes me sad.

There are quite a few self-indulgent fics I could probably spit out right now in fandoms no one would care about, but would make me happy. I’ve done that more times than I can count! For me, it’s hard to feel motivated to write at all when the silence I expect from writing for a niche little thing in an already niche community is what I get for nearly everything I put out.

I’m so grateful for this little community. I really am. I don’t want to sound ungrateful or sharp, I’m just really fucking bummed out that I feel this way.

Being marginalized, especially in multiple ways, is just learning most people don’t give a shit about your happiness, health, or safety. It hurts the worst imo when even people in one marginalized group you’re a part of don’t give a shit about you bc you’re part of another marginalized group they don’t care about. And they’re not even honest about it, they pretend to care, and they think they’re good people as they’re hurting you.

I knew Micah wasn’t a great guy but I was a fool to think he had any redeeming traits.