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shannankle · 1 year

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Queer and Crip Temporality in the Eighth Sense and Giovanni's Room

I've been thinking the last week about how The Eighth Sense represents mental health and queerness through a fractured sense of time. It got me thinking about the concepts of queer and crip time which I think the show is depicting. I've also been thinking about how the parallels between how the The Eighth Sense captures experiences of fracture and abjection in a similar way to the novel Giovanni's Room.

For reference:

Part 1: Queer and Crip Time explained

Part 2: Giovanni's Room

Part 3: The Eighth Sense

Queer time and Crip Time

Queer time is a concept that touches on the way that queer lives don't progress in the normative way that non-queer lives tend to. It's a temporal displacement from the norm that queers expectations of heteronormative progress. As a small example, think of the way that many queer folks don't experience many traditional coming of age milestones in the same form or pace as is often expected; things such as dating or going through one's desired puberty may often come much later in life.

Notions of crip time build on the notion of queer time while thinking about disability. This captures in part the way that many disabled lives run on a different time scale, much like with queerness. From the way that a flare or doctor's visits can run a person ragged, taking up their time. To the way that lying in bed, isolated from society, time expands in ways ablebodied folks rarely experience. Crip time, like forms of queer time, however, also refers to a resistant mode of thinking about disabled futures. It interrogates the ableist impulse to envision the future without disability, while opening up for thinking about what a crip future might look like.

In an important way queer and crip time, and representations of them, are both about capturing a lived experience and about imagining otherwise.

2. Queer Time and Abjection in Giovanni's Room

I want to start first by thinking about Giovanni's Room because I think both this novel and The Eighth Sense use queer time in similar ways, but are striving towards different conclusions. So I think it's useful to use Giovanni's Room as a base.

The novel by James Baldwin follows David, an American man who moves to Paris where he begins to navigate his bisexuality and internalized homophobia when he begins a relationship with an Italian bartender Giovanni. The story is told primarily as a flashback, moving between a telling of David and Giovanni's relationship and fallout and the present moment (what David calls "the night which is leading to the most terrible morning of my life") where David is passing the evening before Giovanni's execution.

While the novel structurally plays with time to tell it's story, it also embeds time into the narrative in more symbolic ways as well. Throughout the novel, Giovanni is associated with atemporality, constantly out of step with the flow of Paris life due to his poverty and queerness which require him to work the night shift at a bar. Giovanni is placed both in opposition to normative time but also dependent on it for his financial survival. He gets off work just before dawn as the rest of the city begins it's day. As a shift laborer (he works as a bartender at a gay bar) he must work within a specific schedule for survival, and his poverty and queerness force him out of step with the rhythms of normative society. In this way, atemporality is a form of abjection or social death.

At the same time, Giovanni also turns to atemporality as a form of queer refuge when he is not working particularly within the space of his room where David spends time with him. David recalls that "life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea. Time flowed past indifferently above us; hours and days had no meaning." Giovanni's room becomes a space where time has no meaning, making it free from social constructs of time. All of this, importantly, is carried by the metaphor of the sea, which on the surface marks time by the movement of the tides and the moon, but deep below the surface these tides become imperceptible. And after Giovanni loses his job, David notes how he feels as if he is sinking deeper.

Unfortunately, in Giovanni's Room Baldwin depicts this queer refuge as unsustainable. Temporal norms demand that the body must labor and do so on a specific schedule or social death turns into literal death. After losing his job when his boss tries to exploit him sexually Giovanni sinks further into poverty before killing his former boss and facing execution. At the same time, conformity is also framed as death. David ultimately struggles with his attraction to men. At one point he sleeps with a woman to test his manhood noting afterwards that at this point "I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine." Baldwin sets up a tension, where the characters can neither escape the norm nor conform since both bring death.

3. Queer and Crip Time in The Eighth Sense

Like Giovanni's Room, The Eighth Sense relies on a fractured and displacement of time to convey the abject nature of queer experience, particularly through the editing style and the way this conveys JaeWon's experience. Of course, I would argue that The Eighth Sense leans towards a more optimistic resolution (at least so far) while interweaving an exploration of trauma, mental illness, and disability with queerness (in comparison to Giovanni's Room which primarily interweaves social class).

Throughout the show JaeWon faces the strain of normative time and a lingering feeling of too-lateness. He is on the cusp of graduation, like many of the seniors he is expected to take the next step soon of finding a job and entering the rhythms of the workforce. We can feel the strain of this in many ways. For example, the fact that he would like to try out a different career path (photography) but tells his therapist that he feels it is too late.

This too-lateness, of course, also ties into both his queerness and his experience with trauma. Experiencing his brother's death and feeling that he was to blame, that he was in every way too late to save a life that meant so much to him. This affects his relationship with JiHyun after the accident. Once again he failed someone close to him. And in his eyes we can see how he has given up, that in his mind it is all too late. Too late to choose the happiness JiHyun brings him, too late to remove the mask he wears around others, too late to trace a future that doesn't just repeat the past.

The stylistic way in which the show edits and chops up time shows this fracturing well, capturing the way trauma can crip time and the way non-normativity can lead to an internal sense of abjection. Much like Giovanni's Room we see the pressure of normativity and the way this fractures JeaWon, and of course the show subtly gestures to one potential end point when his therapist asks if he has been considering extreme options.

In another similarity to Giovanni's Room, the strain of normative time is contrasted with spaces that offer queer escape, where time expands and normative progression is cast aside. The ocean for him is in some ways that space. We see this most in how JiHyun becomes a safe space for JaeWon. He tells his therapist that he is "happy with him" to which she responds "I can tell that he offers you a place to rest." As @respectthepetty and others have noted, this is shown visually as JiHYun brings light to JaeWon's world.

It is also captured on their beach trip in episode 6. The dreamlike quality and temporal jumping can be read as a way of conveying the refuge of queer and crip space that throws of the shackles of normativity through a sense of atemporality. I think we might also consider the therapists office as a quasi space of crip refuge. While these scenes are still darkly lit and not so dreamlike, they similarly serve as a space where JaeWon's trauma is not fully hidden behind a mask or himself in shadow.

It is largely the ocean which centrally stands in symbolically as this space of refuge for JaeWon and of course as JiHyun comes further into his life, the two merge as JaeWon brings him to the ocean for their trip. Yet, as episode 6 closes, we see this space of refuge, much like in Giovanni's Room prove unsustainable, marked by the threat of death and loss when JiHyun is hurt and this refuge slips away in JaeWon's eyes. He is sinking deeper.

Once again we are faced with both paths leading to abjection and death. However, while the last few episodes have not aired yet, I do believe that The Eighth Sense pushes for a different conclusion than Giovanni's Room and we see this in JiHyun. Like David in Giovanni's Room he comes to find himself in the big city, but instead of internalizing homophobia, he challenges himself to be brave. He is building a network of caring people, many of whom are themselves outcasts in some way, finding new ways to think about queer futures. Even his choice to work sidesteps the grueling constraints of capitalist labor by finding a place where he is valued by his boss (note how often she assures him he doesn't have to work, it's a choice). Again, the final episodes aren't out yet, but I believe the show is building to an alternate conclusion, one where JiHyun and JaeWon can both find it in themselves to choose a future, a future that is crip and queer and not too late, but rather infinite.

#the eighth sense #meta #my posts #my analysis on giovanni is from a term paper from years ago so citing myself i guess #i love the layers in this show #I also feel like the line #to cause you trauma #takes on more nuance in this context #but that's probably for another post #i might update this after the final episodes drop #giovanni's room #the eighth sense the series #bl series #korean bl #the eighth sense meta #my meta

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lord-squiggletits · 4 months

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The reason this fandom hates IDW Optimus isn't because he's a cop (plenty of people are fine with Prowl) or because he's a bastard (most characters in IDW are) but because he commits the crime of being an actual person who's messy, flawed, and makes a shitload of high stakes mistakes fitting for the intense situations and pressure he's put under constantly.

But we can't have Optimus actually react to his situations by lashing out or being unpleasant, no, he has to have the personality of a cardboard cutout of G1 whose only defining personality traits are "dad, funny, nice," and if he ever vents negative emotions it can only ever be #relatable depression or him being sad on his own without ever letting it show during the important parts of the story. If Optimus dares do things like be angry or frustrated or bitter it's just a sign that he's a bastard and LITERALLY the worst Optimus ever. If Optimus ever makes mistakes or does wrong things in the heat of anger/frustration/stress it's because he's just an evil bastard with no redeeming traits.

God forbid Optimus go through an unending gauntlet of war, politics, atrocities, near-complete loneliness, and a seemingly endless cycle of violence for his entire life and come out of it kind of bitter, angry, and tired of dealing with people's shit. He's not allowed to be a realistic person, context doesn't matter, sympathy doesnt matter. IDW Optimus doesn't fulfill the fandom's fantasies of Father Figure or Perfect Cultural Icon or Twinky Fucktoy and since that's the only reason most people care about Optimus in general, the fandom collectively trashes on IDW OP.

All because he can't fit into the overly simplified and childlike double standard the fandom has where if any other character is messy and flawed, that's good writing and interesting and compelling, but if OPTIMUS is messy and flawed, he's Literally The Worst and he's an asshole for no other reason than He Sucks, context be damned

#squiggposting #ive been here too long and seen the same shit too many times #i'm tired of going 'maybe it's just a difference in taste' nope #the issue is literally just double standards and people not reading the text or taking things out of context #and the worst part is if this were just something OP haters did i would get it #after all if you just dont like OP then of course you arent gonna find anything interesting or compelling #but i see this shit from literally other MOP fans who supposedly love M and OP #but their OP takes are shit and i can count the no. of people who write IDW OP on one hand #i kind of thought that at least among other OP fans there would be deeper readings but if anything it's worse #fandom OP content is 50% haha funny dad jokes g1 knockoff OP and 50% yaoi uke twink sad baby OP #so unimaginative. so fucking boring. so immature #to style yourselves some sort of mature TF fans and then viciously reject the One OP who #dared to be written a little darker and more flawed than any others #it's literally just people refusing to give a chance to any nuanced take on OP #they just want him to be There and Nice and for his biggest flaw to be Being Annoying About Equality or something #might delete later might not

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thatonefandomjumper · 8 months

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The whole Goldric stepbrother's thing makes me so annoyed.

I feel like people really miss the point of a found family when they assign everyone into these stereotypical roles that family is supposed to be: Parents and children, when it can be a lot more nuanced.

I am an enjoyer of Aladarius and I do like Dadrius too, and yes, in some au´s, Edric and Hunter are step-brothers. Just like in some au´s, Luz and Hunter are siblings.

But as enjoyable as the headcanons are, they aren´t canon. Trust me, I love the Noceda siblings as much as the next guys, but a the end of the day, it can´t be used as an excuse as to why you can´t ship Lunter, regardless of how much you may dislike the ship. It could be in an au where only Darius adopts Hunter, and Camila plays no part in it.

The same can be said about Goldric. Alador and Darius didn't canonically get together and Darius didn't canonically adopt Hunter. And even if they had, there is nothing suggesting Alador would have taken any part in adopting Hunter too. It's understandably fun headcanons but it's dumb to shame people for what they enjoy because you personally subscribe to them.

I think people just need to come to terms with the fact that people will enjoy ships that you´ll dislike, and you shouldn´t be scrambling for some moral justification as to why they shouldn´t be allowed to do so. Just leave them be, block the tag if possible, and continue your own fandom experience in peace.

#Do not even try to bring up the Your Family Now scene as evidence that Luz and Hunter are siblings because that defeats the purpose #of a nuanced found family entirely.#Like I'm a Camila and Darius share custody typa guy and a big Noceda siblings and Lumity a enjoyer but I'm still allowed to enjoy Goldric #and Lunter when taking them out of that context. Shipping for me has always been about exploring character dynamics #in specific situations more than anything else.#It's already a rare pair so it's not like it's all over the place like Hunter and Willow or Luz and Amity #Just leave people be #toh #toh hunter #hunter noceda #hunter deamonne #edric blight #lunter #goldric #huntric #hunter x edric

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sluttylittlewaste · 2 months

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Hilarious that the same people defending any and all questionable choices the Bad Kids make (namely Kristen lbr) by saying "They're just kids! They have all this trauma and it's fucked up to expect teens to be good and nice all the time!" are the same people insisting that Kipperlily is an evil bitch and the Ratgrinders deserve to die.

#it's almost like the rules of empathy and nuance only apply to characters you like 🙃#we know absolutely nothing of significance about the Ratgrinders #and i can't wait for Brennan to remind us of that #you want to complain about Kipperlily using her families money to try to buy the campaign???#The entire shrimp party that kicked off Kristen's campaign was bankrolled by her rich friend #Adaine is a total bitch to anyone who isn't in her immediate friend group #Fig is a literal full time criminal at this point #they have at least 50+ murders under their collective belts at this point #the only verified difference between the Bad Kids and the Ratgrinders at this point is that we know nothing about them #I hope they are the biggest red herring Brennan has ever pulled #because I feel like there are people in this fandom who are so used to self-identifying as victims that they've become full bullies #and they're projecting that shit in some really gross ways #The same way Brennan had to remind Adaine that she wasn't the only one with a shitty life when she was dunking on Zayne?#how about we all take a big step back and try to have a little more perspective #instead of jumping straight to being triggered by a CHILD who had the audacity to not love your faves behavior #let me die #if i die #d20 fhjy #fhjy #dimension 20 #kristen applebees #kipperlily copperkettle #the bad kids #the ratgrinders #we have no context on what those kids went through in all the time the Bad Kids have been running around doing other shit #Aguefort is an awful school and their friend is dead #maybe she has a reason not to like the super special “chosen one” that got personally resurrected by the principal and keeps failing upwards #i didn't want to be a Kipperlily defense page #but the energy of the Kipperlily hate reeks of double-standards and unprocessed high school bitterness

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boyfridged · 1 year

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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.

#fyi i'm ignoring a single panel in which jay says 'evil wins. he chose the life of crime' because i think there's much more nuance to that #as in: choosing a life of crime to deliberately cause harm is a whole another matter #also: inb4 this post is not bruce slander. please do not read it as such #as i said eoc is highly criticised for being arbitrary which is something that bruce seeks to avoid #also ethics of care are highly controversial esp that their early iterations are gender essentialist and ascribe this attitude to women #wow look at me accidentally girl-coding jay #but also on the topic of post-res jay.#it's typically assumed that ethics of care take a family model and extend it into morality as a whole #'the ethics of care considers the family as the primary sphere in which to understand ethical behavior'#so #an over-simplification: you are allowed to care for your family over everything else #re: jay's lack of understanding of bruce's conflict in duty as batman vs father #for jay there's no dilemma. how you conduct yourself in the familial context determines who you are as a person #also if you are interested in eoc feel free to ask because googling will only confuse you...#as a term it's used in many weird ways. but i'm thinking about a general line of thought that evolves into slote's philosophy #look at me giving in and bringing philosophy into comics. sorry. i tried to simplify it as much as possible #i didn't even say anything on criminology and the label and the strain theories.#i'm so brave for not info-dumping #i said even though i just info-dumped #jay.zip #jay.txt #dc #fatal flaw #core texts #robin days

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awkward-teabag · 2 months

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I have to wonder how many people celebrating AI translation also complain about "broken English" and how obvious it is something was Google translated from another language without a fluent English speaker involved to properly clean up the translation/grammar.

Because I bet it's a lot.

I know why execs are all for it—AI is the new buzzword and it lets them cut jobs thus "save" money and not have to worry about pesky labour laws when one employs humans—but everyone else?

There was some outcry when Crunchyroll fired many of their translators in favour of AI translation (with some people to "clean up the AI's work") but I can't help but think that was in part because it was Japanese-to-English and personally affected them. Same when Duolingo fired many of their translators in favour of LLM translation. Meanwhile companies are firing staff when it's English to another language and there's this idea that that's fine or not as big a deal because English is "easy" to translate and/or because people don't think of how it will impact people in non-English countries.

Also it doesn't affect native English speakers so it doesn't get much headway in the news cycle or online anyway because so much of the dominant media is from English-speaking countries and English-speakers dominate social media.

But different languages have different grammar structures that LLMs don't do, and I grew up on "jokes" about people speaking in "broken English" and mocking people who use the wrong word when it was clearly a literal translation but the meaning was obvious long before LLMs were a thing, too. In fact, the specific way a character spoke broken English has been a way to denote their native tongue for decades, usually in a racist way.

Then Google translate came out and "Google-translated English" became an insult for people and criticism of companies because it was clearly wonky to native speakers. Even now, LLMs—which are heavily trained on English compared to other languages—don't have a natural output so native English speakers can clock LLM-generated text if it's longer than a sentence or two.

But, for whatever reason, it's not seen as a problem when it goes the other way because fuck non-English readers or people who want to read in their native tongue I guess.

#and it's not like no people were doing translations so wonky translations were better than nothing #it's actual translators being fired for a subpar replacement #and anyone who keeps their job suddenly being responsible for cleaning up llm output rather than what they trained in #(which can take just as much time or longer than doing the translation by hand from scratch)#(if you want it done right anyway)#hell to this day i hear people complain about written translations of indigenous words and how they 'aren't english enough'#even though they're using the ipa and use a system white english people came up with in the first place #and you can easily look up the proper pronunciation and hear it spoken #but there's such a double-standard where it's expected that other languages cater to english/english speakers #but that grace and accommodation doesn't go the other way #and it's the failing of non-english speakers when an english translation is broken #you see it whenever monolingual english speakers travel to other countries and utterly refuse to learn the language #but if someone doesn't speak in unaccented (to them) english fluently in their home country the person 'isn't trying hard enough'#this is just the new version of that where non-english speakers are supposed to do more work and put up with subpar translations #even as a native english speaker/writer i get a (much) lesser version of this because i write with canadian spelling #and some people get pissed if their internet experience is disrupted by 'ou' instead of 'o' or '-re' instead of '-er'#because dialects and regional phrasing/spelling is a thing #human translators can (or should) be able to account for it but llms are not smart enough to do so #and that's not even getting into slang and how llms don't account for it #or how llms can put slurs into translations because it doesn't do nuance or context and doesn't know the language #if you ever complained about buying something from another country that came with machine-translated instructions #you should be pissed at companies cutting english-to-[language] staff in favour of glorified google translate #because the companies are effectively saying they're fine with non-native speakers getting a wonky/broken version

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wonder-worker · 2 months

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"[Alice Perrers] requested that she be buried in the parish church of Upminster, St Laurence, before the altar of the Virgin Mary. Alice seems to have had an affinity with Mary through her life; a seal of hers from c. 1374 shows an image of the Virgin Mary and child, her tabernacle seized in 1377 had an image of the Virgin Mary on it, and now she wished to be buried before Mary’s altar."

-Gemma Hollman, "The Queen and the Mistress: The Women of Edward III"

#historicwomendaily #alice perrers #my post #I didn't know about this but it's so very intriguing #I wonder if Alice associated herself with Mary to try and assert her own 'quasi-queenship'#(ie: the most powerful woman in the country at the side of a king)#as Mary was obviously important element of queenly iconography in late medieval England #though on the flip side I suspect it would have also raised hackles that Alice - a commoner and royal mistress - was attempting #to present herself in such a way #it's especially interesting to consider in the context of Tompkins' argument that Alice was perceived as 'inverting queenship' (slay)#also this book was ... complicated.#It's very understanding and sympathetic and raised some very good points #but also tried to...massively soften Alice's actions and downplay her role and power in the process #(ie: defending her by diminishing her)#also there's this gem:#'Edward had been markedly restrained with the gifts and favour he had bestowed upon Alice' girl that is a flat-out lie #no other royal mistress of medieval England was ever given so much or honored in such a way.#yes we should emphasize Alice's own proactive role and intelligence in building up her vast estates #but even if that hypothetically hadn't happened #Edward's grants and gifts would have still made her extremely wealthy and powerful regardless #and was also weirdly obsessed with romanticizing Edward III and it got kinda questionable #like yes obviously I think we should ascribe more nuanced motivations and emotions to *Alice* than 'ambitious gold-digger #taking advantage of an aging king'#but I'm not fond of it veering too far on the other side either #I think sometimes we should simply be comfortable admitting when we simply don't know something

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dykedvonte · 2 months

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Discussing the NCR (Fallouts NV's Military Industrial Complex)

Fallout regularly discusses the idea of the military, its faults, its strengths, and most importantly, the psycho-social aspects of it regarding those who are members. We have seen a direct critique of the military generalized through the Enclave's overt nationalism, the hoarding of resources and indoctrination through the Brotherhood of Steel, and an almost eerily modern critique of the whole military-industrial complex through the NCR in New Vegas. In these series of posts, I will be focusing primarily if not exclusively on the last one.

The NCR we see in the game is strictly the military side of things and the depiction of active occupation during a time of eminent war, conflicting factions, and resource scarcity. It is in this we are missing a major factor that negatively affects the view of the NCR in the game and out: Civilian life along with citizen opinion on the military. While we do get Mojave civilian opinion on the military (often neutral or negative) we do not get those who are New California Republic citizens, not those who actually discuss the military more so not understanding the importance of the occupation and the President's choices.

We do not see how life is regularly lived by the average citizen as we have not seen New California in New Vegas, though, we get words and glimpses that the people are relatively content in the growing country minus the fact many people are not happy with the choice of encroaching on the Mojave. This most similarly reflects it's real-world application that many civilian citizens reject acquisition and war due to the economic effects it has on the country and the general violence/loss associated.

In this, we come to an issue of losing a perspective that is unique to the NCR as a military representative. The Brotherhood is notably a place where its active members are intertwined with its efforts, the young are raised to be scribes, paladins, etc... To where even if one is not fighting for The Brotherhood, they are still intertwined, it's propaganda is the life. The Enclave is even more cut n' dry in that it is mostly made up of government representatives. It is a group even smaller than the former, even more selective and intertwined that their propaganda IS a form of Eugenics. The NCR is unique in that there is a clear distinction between what is the military force, the civilian population, and the choice if one wants to be a part of the former.

There is a distinct difference in the cultures of the factions you are born into and those you must enlist or join (forcibly for some). While this is a long-winded way to get into the actual discussion I want to facilitate throughout these posts I wanted an initial background post to understand the aspects I am and am not exploring and explaining along with a hub post to link everything I intend to discuss in the coming days and weeks, starting with:

Why Do People Join the NCR?

...which will be discussed and linked back here like everything else regarding to this topic.

Links: TBA

#fallout #fallout new vegas #new california republic #these will be longer posts so be warned #prepare to be sick of me #you thought i could yap before #should pin this but Im just gonna link it in the pinned post to be concise and since this isnt just a fallout blog I just am just obsessed #plus I dont want it to be centered focus while im only half way through with the first word doc #the three posts are just the beginning on my disection of the NCR and how the MIC is shown through it cuase #like pls its so much more nuanced with the specific ways each character in the faction interacts #at least the ones you can talk to and have options for like i know so many people do independent route but its so intriguing and you get ho #the military takes advantage of people but also how the individuals try or believe they fight for a good cause cause of all the brain washi #like some perpetuate and others dont but its a system that just gets worse the higher you go like grrrrr #a take cant be nuanced if you refuse to look or discuss the reasonings of another side or generalize their arguement through a personal len #like you need to be objective at points cause while you may feel a way in an analysis the context explains why in canon they feel a way #a retrospective on tumblr??? shocker #was gonna make this one giant mega post but it wouldve been cluttered and i wanna space them out cause its a lot to work on in one sitting #and what if I want to be silly in between???

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c0l0re · 3 months

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You ever see a take about a piece of media that is just... so Fundamentally Incorrect that you genuinely start wondering if you actually managed to miss something in the source material because you cannot understand how the hell someone even got to that conclusion

#colore speaks #yeah i so spent like two or three hours tearing apart a Take i saw with my friends yesterday tore it apart it even more this morning #i am not going to get super into it because god i do not want to start shit but uh. people sure do have opinions on jonmartin huh #and people sure are incable of picking up on subtext and nuance and context huh #i am so tired man #characters are morally gray there are no heros their relationship in similarly not perfect but is also not inherently toxic etc etc #i need to write an actual analysis post on them at some point because my god do i have opinions and some people to prove wrong #tl;dr: shit is not black and white and never will be there is nuance and context in everything for love of everything please #my friends will know exactly what this post is about

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pisshandkerchief · 2 months

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very genuine question from the most neutral standpoint possible, why (specifically in bandom communities) is it seen as appropriate to write/post sexually explicit comments about real life grown ass people with families and shit? like it just seems uncomfortable and inappropriate to me but i also am not a fan of any of these people/ involved in the fandoms so idk. not judging just really curious about the prevalence within the fob/mcr spaces (im also a big fuckin lesbian so maybe its just that lol)

I'm honestly not sure how to respond to this one other than just...it's extremely common and normal for celebrities to be sexualized? especially on tumblr because not a lot of celebrities are on here. Like I think there's a difference between saying "I want to rail pete wentz" on tumblr and saying "pete wentz I want to rail you so bad" on twitter and like. tagging him or some shit. this really feels like a "it's immoral to masterbate to the thought of people without asking their consent first" kind of take.

#I could deliver a more nuanced take on this but I'm at work rn lol #anyway I really think whether these things are morally right or not depends on the situation and context

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tea-cat-arts · 1 year

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(Image found on Haresbeloved's page over on Instagram)

WE WERE ROBBED!!! It's not perfect, and it still has some "limited range of color values" issues, but with a couple more revisions I think the one on the bottom right really could've turned into something special

#honkai impact #honkai hare #I'm noticing a trend with honkai that idk how to describe other than “elysiaction”#Where they take they take what was appealing about Elysia in ER and apply it to characters but remove the nuance #Like they take her energic charm and charismatic mask and then they forget that there actually needs to be something behind the mask #Idk if that makes sense #Bottom right Hare looks like she would've been a much more stoic character and I think that would've been a nice change of pace #I think the reason I'm so annoyed with Hare's current direction in both writing and design is because I think she had such strong potential #There's so many character interactions they could've made and didn't #You could've explored Seigfried and Theresa's reactions to seeing their lost loved one coming back from the dead and not knowing them #Or Durandal and Hare bonding over knowing who they used to be while knowing they can't really be the same person anymore #Or if you really want to keep the back story with Bronya's mom #Hare could've just switched sides because Project Stigma threaded the life of her loved one's child #They also could've used Hare as a demonstration of what Project Stigma actually does #But nah- they decided to take the most interesting parts of Senti and Elysia and mash them together without the context and intrigue #Making her boring

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pacificgasandelectric · 8 months

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love seeing goyische Takes™ about israel that conveniently and unsubtly ignore that the modern state of israel was founded in the wake of the holocaust

like, was european (and later american) states’ support of zionism an explicitly colonial project? yes. did european jews in the wake of the holocaust (and frankly before it) have a VERY GOOD REASON to want to have a nation-state controlled by jews? also yes. does that excuse the colonial way in which the nation of israel was founded and its national status enforced? no. is israel the only state involved and the only government at fault? also no.

#mine #ce #israel/palestine for blacklist #EVERY DAY i am forced to see Takes.#like. the british empire’s defeat of the ottoman empire in palestine and the existence of Mandatory Palestine are #SO FUCKING IMPORTANT to the context of how israel got The Way It Is. so is the history of antisemitism in europe & in n africa & west asia #but you don’t get to pick and choose what parts of history you acknowledge either. jews did imperial-backed colonialism before the holocaus #AND then the fucking holocaust happened and that had a massive influence on the international viability of the zionist project.#jews everywhere faced violent antisemitism AND jews in palestine faced justified backlash to their settlement of occupied land.#it’s more complex than ‘X group was wrong abt everything and Y one was right’. nuance nuance nuance.#if you’re gonna cite history do it right. fucking. please.

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came0dust · 1 year

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i cannot keep drawing this dude on my phone but god do i love drawing him (+ bonus colors)

#my art #sketch #samsung notes #castlevania #alucard #i was doing gesture-y drawings but i drew him with a sword and shield and then i just wanted to Draw Him and. hes doing something to me man #i need to play sotn but im determined to play at least the first few games in order but i still havent beat 1. i fell out of it 😭😭😭#i want so badly to have a proper understanding of his character so i wont just be drawing like 'man.. pretty.... hair.. flowy...' forever #but also i refuse to make an educated guess on his characterization bc it will Not be educated. my exposure to him is so narrow #and also mostly forgotten. most of it was years ago and what i do know is surface-level at best. any nuance will literally be speculation 💀#but i Need to draw him. for my enrichment. hes so designed. so it ends up being just. Mysterious Handsome Man Looking Somewhere #seriously holy Shit. the more i absorb his design the more i have to draw him. ayami kojima was Cooking in the studio like damn #by the way these last two posts were scheduled. about two days after i did both of them give or take. i did this the night before last post #im trying to pace myself a bit better (its not really working 💀)#for context: the colored version was literally not even a thought when i originally put this post together #i did it the day after making the sketch and then three days later (the earliest you will see this) the post posted #oh shit right that means #medibang paint #shoutouts to multiply layer mode i would not be able to just do this without being able to keep my sketch #if i had to redraw it i would not have done the colors lol #anyways stream wandering ghosts bye bye love and peace 🤞

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big-gay-bird · 2 years

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I know “neurogender” is generally treated more as an umbrella label but personally I find it extremely helpful to use as an identity in and of itself as someone with multiple nuerodivergencies. I don’t always know where one begins and where one ends. I also am not sure those distinctions are useful when it comes to my gender.

I also want to bring forward that label as a companion to “genderqueer” as they feel like cousins to me. I think normalizing the idea that ANY neurotype difference could impact the way anyone experiences gender is important and that it is important to understand that intersection of identities.

#to be clear #this not me taking a blanket stance on literally anything else in the mogai community #I think there are a lot of conversations around identity worth having #and some of them are happening with people who identify as part of the mogai community #I also do not like inclusionist or exclusionist labels because I think there is so much more room for nuance #and I desperately seek digging more into the nuance #also I desperately seek people working to understand individual context #neurodiversity #neurogender #actually autistic #actually audhd #actually ADHD #nuerodivergent #genderqueer #non-binary #trans

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morallygay · 5 months

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played my little karaoke and undoubtedly moved on from looking back at having been a brony with a lil bit of cringe to fully looking back at it with protective gratefulness. ofc the fact that i was in my early teens definitely helps but regardless i realize that it really was objectively great.

what's cool to note is that i have no lingering attachment to the tv show itself, it's the fandom im talking about. it's no news that it was a huge phenomenon/fandom but it truly was thriving, active and FULL of CREATIVITY. like how could i ever regret having been into it, for the fan songs alone. lullaby for a princess????? anthropology???? eile monty??? DISCORD????? and a bunch of more or less popular ones that nevertheless impacted me personally. not to mention the actual songs from the show which despite what i said about not caring for it, objectively slap. thank you daniel ingram.

pinkamena diane pie, snowdrop, vinyl x octavia, double rainboom, don't mine at night and button mash, derpy and doctor whooves, sweetiebot, etc etc. from wholesome to funny to edgy and angsty there was SO much good and fun, with of course some bad, sometimes louder, as is natural for any big fandom. and i'm both choosing not to mention and forgetting a lot of other stuff bc else the post would be 3 pages long. i know the brony polka by heart for celestia's sake (<- said with intentional self awareness but also fighting out of principle the urge to cringe) <3

#the potential with making pony ocs too #mlp #mlp fim #my little pony #and since im posting in the tags if ppl still active in mlp see this #good for you :)#like mentioned it's a question of personal loss of interest. nothing i can do about that and its fine with me. i just look back at it fondl #fandom #moralgayness #ofc i know nostalgia can be a liar and make you ignore/forget the less great parts. and ofc i know apparently some people who were young #were traumatized due to the more edgy/adult parts but that's another nuanced discussion (also taking into account the context of the time)#and honestly i can't speak on it from personal experience since i can't relate like at all in every aspect.

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