#tbh this whole thing makes a lot of sense in the system context. nuts!
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i do some volunteer work in the local trans community, and it's crazy to see how teens just flock to me. today there was a group gathering in a free-ish format n it's... god it's still blowing me away that among the familiar adult faces there's an ever-growing group of teens that rush up to me all excited. i am putting in effort too, i want to help them when i can, or just make the whole experience feel easier. crack a joke here and there. but the hype i get back...
the intensity comes with being a teenager i suppose, the whole experience is emotional and isolating even without the trans layer. i remember how big the desire to be heard was, it never really went away, i just got much better at making others listen. but when i didn't have it and when most ppl tried to get away from the overly excited adhd kid... that shit stung. i see it from the other side now, i see them, and it feels sometimes like i know just what to say.
i suppose i *do* know, cuz they keep coming back. they started a running joke when i was absent for a couple of months: they called me 'a father that went out to get milk and never came back'. but then i came back and was... god can you imagine returning to a bunch of teens greeting you all screaming THE FATHER CAME BACK!!! i shrug off the discomfort, i laugh it off like 'hahah, when did i even get kids, whoops!', but... man.
i am a someone to them. to matter to someone like this, to be remembered... i ground my whole childhood for this, learned to mask the best i could, then got stuck behind that mask with the same feeling of isolation. it sucks and it hurts, but when i talk to them and see them aiming for the same validation, i know how to give it to them. how to make all of them say something and be heard. it's a little thing, it's meeting once or twice, but it's a 'cool' man talking and listening to them, a Trans Adult from the other side of the thing they want, and he's talking to them in their mother tongue too. god.
it's just surreal, cuz to me i am mostly just me. i know me, i know us. but in their eyes i become someone with so much power that i struggle to imagine it actually being me. like they actually call me dad and i know that a lot of them have difficult family situations and honestly most of them are like 16-18 so they aren't even Kids kids, but holy mother of god, it fucking hits.
there was a new one today and he said he was 17, but to me he looked so tiny and lost, and he stuck around with me, asking questions n just chatting n god the way he opened up. you could see him become more comfortable and i don't even know what it was that we talked about but he paused and said 'you make me feel safe'.
god. man. i took it like a man, i was all comforting and slightly distant 'i try to be, this is a good place to let it out!'. but you know i was crying inside. i was this
like. ok. i don't let it get to my head! but. it did get to my heart
#also the protector instinct kicks in like NOTHING else. makes sense with the whole system...#tbh this whole thing makes a lot of sense in the system context. nuts!
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I'm not going to be teying defend Jason here. Some of his actions were terrible. The fact he felt the need to go all vigilante and round the town in like that was insane (like fucking Gaston over here) and that scene where he's intimidating Nancy is pretty godamn sketch. His friend threatens to break Erica's arms and that was really fucked (I did find an old ask of yours where an anon said that Jason said he though Lucas "was one of the good ones" but I can't find that anywhere, but obviously pulling a gun on him in the first place was very bad)
That said, as someone with a lot of religious trauma, I really understand his fear regarding the situation. Like... he saw that shit happen with Patric and with what he believes about the world, of course he would think it's some kind of demon shit. Honestly, if I was even just , like, medium religious and I saw that shit, I would probably become a bit of a nut too.
Now I didn't get a lot of talk about dnd but I did get a lot of fear mongering about ouija boards. I just thought that... idk, I'd bring it up. I see a lot of people talking about how people are shitting on Billy without addressing his abuse, but then those same people never talk about how Jason is clearly in so much emotional distress which is propagated by a system that people unfortunately just fall into. He's harming other people, yes, but it's clear he's terrified of just everything constantly, because the kind of religious circle he was probably indoctrinated into really drill that into you and then he's experiencing these gruesome murders. Who wouldn't become hysterical?
I try to be understanding of Billy even when it's hard to watch him get violent like that, but I see little grace for Jason who I relate to to an extent (as someone who was raised in a cult, funnily enough), and then the people who wholeheartedly support and defend Billy will act like Jason didn't have any understandable motivations. They'll literally make fun of people for even bringing up that his girlfriend died so it makes sense he'd be emotional.
I'm sure you'll try to dunk on me about this too, but I think that both Jason and Billy or morally gray and are both products of their environments and they're both sad. So... do you have any thoughts on that?
I mean I haven’t watched season 4 so any thoughts I have on Jason come from what I’ve seen others say, so truthfully I cannot give a firm opinion on him because I just don’t have the full context.
But I also have an interest in religious cults…(watch a lot of documentaries and YouTube video essays lmao) so I do often think about those aspects coming into play with Jason and the brainwashing that goes on. I get mad at a lot of religious discourse in tumblr for these same reasons cuz I don’t think people ever consider that these people actually believe what they’re doing is for the greater good/trying to help people get into heaven etc etc but that’s a whole other topic we don’t need to get into right now
So I can totally understand how in Jason’s mind he thinks he’s being a hero (which most good villain ideologies operate this way tbh. Or at least should). Like I don’t hate Jason. I’ve come around to him to the point where I joke about shipping him and billy. I’ll include him in things from time to time, granted not in the best light but if i straight up hate a character I simply do not include them at all
I think the difference between Jason and billy is that we SEE where billys trauma comes from. We have visual canon proof of it. So it’s a lot easier to look at that and go “ok now everything’s making sense”. With Jason, it’s not canon he was indoctrinated into anything (unless it is. Again, didn’t watch season 4). For all we know he could just live like that. Yes it can be easily assumed since he is still a teenager it is most likely his parents are also cuckoo and passed their ideologies down to him, but again, without any real confirmation, it remains a guessing game.
I also think with billy it’s like, he went after the people he went after for good reason (to him). Max gets his ire because they’re pitted against each other by neil, he goes after Lucas because he’s directly tied to max and everything that gets billy in trouble, he goes after steve for lying to him and being a creepy weirdo with his underage sister
As far as my knowledge of the Jason situation goes…there was no reason to go crazy on Lucas and Erica? Like yes they know Eddie and I guess it was about Jason thinking they were hiding him or something? But it’s like why do they need to be physically attacked (or threatened) so aggressively for it? The two situations in my mind are not the same. And maybe it’s because I’m a billy apologist. I’ll own that. But it comes down to billys safety specifically was in jeopardy the entire time, which led him to act out vs Jason just going on a vigilante crusade that ultimately had nothing to do with him
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all of them for all your muses
fck u anna. at least i have a manageable amount of characters. #roASTED #jk #ily
Put a tarot card in my inbox and I’ll answer the question! // NOT ACCEPTING. (blame anna for that. jk i’ll probably answer some more of these)
bc u were a fcker i’m putting my answers under read more for the sake of people’s dashes.
The Fool: What is the stupidest thing your muse has ever done?
Dany: Oh boy, the stupidest thing? Wow, that’s a lot to choose from for her. But the stupidest has gotta be when she was five and she superglued her hands together so she could have the greatest karate chop known to man. Now that was an interesting hospital visit.
Sabina: Don’t know if this counts as stupid, but when she had kids way back when, she’d go through a list of names before she actually yelled at the right child. (She had four kids).
Alexnder: Kissing a telephone pole in the winter because his older sister dared him to. She said if he did it, he’d get to kiss her friend who he had a crush on at the time.
Dean: He is also a muse that classifies as doing a bunch of stupid shit. The stupidiest thing would be stealing a book from another dragon in the 50s. Never steal from a dragon unless you want to be dead. And yes, this was a dragon he slept with. No, he didn’t get a book, but he got stitches.
The Empress: What would your muse name their children?
Dany: Well, as you know with being thany trash, you already know the names. But I’ll throw some out there anyways: Beatrice, Elanor, Rosie, Henry, Alexander (lmao yeah), Thomas, Benjamin, and Charlie.
Sabina: She had four children and here are their names: Katrina, Phillip, Simon, and Rhoslyn
Alexander: Ella, Jackson, and Nora.
Dean: Never wants kids, but he had a little girl he never met and her name was Robin.
fuck after doing two of these i’m already done jfc why did i take up this challenge to do all of them? Judgement: Would your muse ever go back to their most recent ex-lover?
Dany: FUCK NO (her ex-lover would be Dean). She has a Teddy, she is perfectly fine with that old Welsh plant nerd.
Sabina: She’s had lots of “lovers”, I use that term loosely. She’d rather use the term companion, but she’s not activiely looking for one. To be honest, if her husband was alive, still, she’d want to be with him. (but yes she is very happy with Raphael)
Alexander: No
Dean: Maybe (it was Dany and yes he still loves her). NO
The World: What has been your muse’s greatest success?
Dany: Tbh, actually finding someone who loves her completly. (i’m a sAP OKAY AND SHE IS TOO)
Sabina:Well, she’s a CEO, so.
Alexander: He read 40 books in one summer when he was twelve.
Dean: He won a poker match based all on bluffs.
The Sun: What was the happiest moment of your muse’s life?
Dany: The happiest moment of Dany’s life probably would be the moment when she was at her grandparents’ for the weekend back when she was nine. Her grandfather played old jazz, her grandmother helped Dany bake, and her grandfather started a flour war. The not fun part of that memory was having to clean the kitchen—they all did it, though. Even then, I guess, it was fun for Dany.
Sabina: When she first held her first born baby, along with holding her children for the first time in general.
Alexander: When he won a spar against his siblings back when they trained together.
Dean: V-E Day.
Wheel of Fortune: Does your muse believe in luck?
Dany: Yes, but she’s always shit out of luck.
Sabina: No
Alexander: Yes.
Dean: No
The Hierophant: What is one rule or law your muse would never break?
Dany: this is a toughy. Probably something to do with vandalism with CERTAIN (American) national monuments. Not all of them, but certain ones.
Sabina: Well, now in modern times, theft.
Alexander: Talking in libraries.
Dean: Oddly enough, something to do with jaywalking
Strength: Name a time when your muse had to be strong in the face of danger or trouble.
Dany: Her whole life, basically.
Sabina: When she lived on the streets with her sister.
Alexander: He’s a hunter. So…
Dean: He was in WW2
The Star: If your muse had one wish, what would it be?
Dany: It’s moribid, but for her mother to have died during childbirth. She feels, that if her mom had died during childbirth, she wouldn’t’ve had to go through foster care and her father wouldn’t be in jail. Her mom basically was the root cause of her childhood trauma.
Sabina: for her family to still be alive.
Alexander: To not be a hunter anymore.
Dean: To know his daughter.
The Magician: What would your muse draw if given paper and markers?
Dany: Well, in canon, she can’t draw for shit. In some AU”s she can draw, but for her main verse? yeah stick figures. Something to do with Captain America, probably.
Sabina: Lmao Raphael, probably, when he wasn’t looking. Joking with that (mostly). She prob would draw a still life of water lilies, i think.
Alexander: Doesn’t like to draw.
Dean: A stupid looking squirrel reading a book because he’s “nuts for knowledge.” bye.
The Emperor: Name a time your muse has broken the rules.
Dany: Lmao. Uh. All the time.
Sabina: Back in the good ol’ days, she stole food for her and her sister. Also, she’s old as fuck. I don’t have the time to go through all the times she broke the rules.
Alexander: He has to break and enter into places as a hunter.
Dean: He gambles illegally and does illegal shit all the time.
FUCK THERE ARE SO MANY TO ANSWER how am i nOT DONE.
Death: If your muse had to change something about themselves, what would they change?
Dany: Her past. also to not be allergic to cats.
Sabina: She’d like to be mortal.
Alexander: His insomnia.
Dean: His cowardance (yep. he’s a coward in the context of not seeing his daughter).
The Chariot: If your muse ruled the world, what would they change first?
Dany: Make foster care a better system.
Sabina: Access to health care and food to be more readily available.
Alexander: Doesn’t want to rule the world.
Dean: FIND THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA.
The High Priestess: What is the smartest thing your muse has ever done?
Dany: She doesn’t do many smart things. BUT to be sappy here—Probably letting Teddy in her life bc he’s helped her become a better person.
Sabina: Helping those in need and also, preserving artifacts and art.
Alexander: Not pissing off his sister when she was pregnant when he visited her and his brother inlaw.
Dean: Leaving his longtime girfriend and daughter behind. He wouldn’t’ve been good for them in the 60s.
Temperance: Would your muse remain calm despite the worst circumstances?
Dany: Depends on the circumstance.
Sabina: Yes.
Alexander: No.
Dean: No.
The Lovers: At what age did your muse first fall in love?
Dany: When she was seventeen, living on the streets. It was with a twenty-year-old woman who kept her under her wing when Dany pissed off the wrong person. She struggled with drug addiction, though, and Dany tried her best to care for her. (but if we want to actually go into how dragons actually love someone, it would be when she met teddy llmao so that would be when she was 24)
Sabina (awh shit i have to do math for this old fuck): When she was 37 lmao. She never really felt romantic love until she met her husband. Dragons don’t really feel that intense love all the time, it usually happens once. Idk if that makes sense. I’m going crazy answering all these.
Alexander: When he was twenty three.
Dean: fuck i have to do math for him too dslfjk I don’t think he’s really fallen in love with someone. Then again that might just be me going crazy answring all these.
The Hermit: If your muse were trapped alone on an island, name three things they’d have to have..
Dany: Well, she’d hate everything. She hates water. So tbh. Yeah. I can’t think of anything bc she’s too freaked out in my mind to even come up with anything. Yeah. Hahaha yeah. She’d rather die than get trapped on a damn island surrounded by water.
Sabina: Sketchbook, pencils, and a compass.
Alexander: A knife, water purifier, and probably a book of some kind.
Dean: A pilot, a working airplane, and fuel for an airplane. There’s no way he’s getting stuck on an island.
The Moon: Has your muse ever had something unexplained happen to them? If so, what?
are you really going to make me answer this?
Dany: Um. Well. Learning she was a dragon was one of them.
Sabina: No
Alexander: Woke up on the other side of a state once, didn’t know how he got there.
Dean: No
Justice: What’s something your muse has been dying to admit or confess?
Dany: She loves pop music. So much pop music.
Sabina: Her favorite snack is one of those chocolate ice cream pops thing.
Alexander: Hates the color fushia.
Dean: Still loves likes hates Dany.
The Hanged Man: Name a bad habit your muse can’t give up.
Dany: Burning things.
Sabina: Peeling off a new manicure.
Alexander: Biting his nails.
Dean: Gambling.
The Devil: What was the worst relationship your muse has ever had?
Dany: With Dean.
Sabina: Probably with some painter in Italy during the Renaissance. He snored. Really loudly.
Alexander: He’s never really been one for relationships. He’s more so a one night stand kinda guy.
Dean: With Dany.
The Tower: What event would trigger your muse’s breaking point?
Dany: Her fear of water
Sabina: A reminder that she can’t save everyone.
Alexander: Having to physically fight his family to get out of the hunting life.
Dean: Meeting his daugher.
#immortalmusings#i don't even think you're going to read all of these#jfc#i have gone crazy#answered#ask meme
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Ughhh, I finished it like forever ago, but my soul won’t rest until I finally say it once and for all... What I fucking thought of 1984.
I thought it was... Bad. I disliked it. I knew I would. But I said that already and it can’t be my WHOLE ENTIRE THOUGHTS.
So I guess I’ll say it had its good points, and that, actually, its good points could be really interesting. It’s just a shame they had to be part of 1984, which was written by a guy who wanted to gloss over that stuff as quickly as possible to get back into the “but what if the government was... Bad? Bad like This? Hmm?” stuff. Which I found insufferable. Tbh, it’s one of my bottom five tropes and nothing turns me off a story faster. Which doesn’t mean Bad Governments are a trope I dislike. I just don’t like stories that are about them and seem to only exist as a Dire Warning. I hate stories as Dire Warnings and Bad Examples (or even Good Examples) in general. (It’s why my eyes roll all the way back into my head when people start up with that “As LoNg As YoU CoNdEmN iT iN tHe TeXt” bullcrap. No! I won’t! I’ll write bad situations and unlikable people and let the audience sort it out and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!)
One thing I did really like was the prison arc near the end of the book, or at least a lot of the aspects of it. I mean, most of the book listlessly oscillated between hokey and dry, and then, holy shit, the writing got really viscerally emotional and evocative right the fuck out of nowhere. This is a weird thing to say about a book I don’t even like, but the descriptions of both physical suffering and complete no-exits hopelessness, and the depiction of knock-down-drag-out person-on-person dehumanization, actually stick out as standards to hold myself to when I’m writing awful things. And like... Okay. I’ve never been a naysayer in a dystopia, and have never experienced anything to that degree, but I was an autistic kid in abusive educational and therapeutic settings, so a lot how the nuts and bolts of behavioral conditioning were written about and explained rang really true to me. There was an exchange that went something like “look at yourself!” “what are you talking about? You did this to me.” that punched me right in the gut. And my favorite part of the whole book was probably the line about how it isn’t enough that people obey you, they have to suffer while they do it, or else you can’t know they’re following your will and not their own. It honestly felt like time stopped when I read that, because, holy shit, that’s spot fucking on, it’s intentional and it always has been. That concept was an unthought known of mine, I’m pretty sure. And it probably also was for people who did all that shit to me, too, or maybe they actually were aware of it, at least in some awful euphemistic sense, and holy shit, I’m so not surprised I came out of that with probable PTSD.
...But even the really insightful parts of that leg of the story were kind of ruined because they came out in the context of one guy standing over another guy and ranting like a cartoon villain, because this goddamn book is fucking extra at all times.
The other Surprisingly Good Prison Arc revelation is why I’m not the kind of person who likes this kind of book. I’m not really all that interested in Bad Societies to Avoid on a macro scale as the meat of the story, but I am interested in interpersonal violence and trauma in stories, which might require a Bad Society or might not, but either way, the system itself isn’t the interesting part of the scenario, except as context and motivation for the individuals involved. And the wider context/specific scenario wires just never quite connected properly. The one guy was just... A cartoon villain. Talking up the whole system as if he was the one who instated it and wrapping it up with an overwrought metaphor about a boot.
ANYWAY.
A minor quibble, before I go off on a whole other long tangent about the next thing: this book seriously could not make up its mind about whether it’s good or bad to be stupid. The only conclusion it came to is that lower-class people are the stupid ones, but that makes you either docile sheeple or salt-of-the-earth noble savages who are going to save the world. I guess? Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
ONWARD.
I’ve said before that this book jumps right over the most interesting concept in the whole thing, which is the thought/language relationship. YOU INVENTED THE CONCEPT OF A LANGUAGE SPECIFICALLY CREATED TO ATTENUATE THOUGHT AND THEN DIDN’T GET INTO THE WEEDS WITH IT AT ALL. Which, duh, this a book about how attenuating thought is evil and we shouldn’t do it, not a sink-your-teeth-in exploration of cognition and semiotics. That involves open-ended conclusions on your part and would make it harder for George Orwell to smack you with a ruler!
But then there’s the thing where it did kind of start to delve deeper, which is actually a current pet fascination of mine and relevant to my goddamn Solarpunk thing: the whole premise around creating a tightly self-regulating society by manipulating social norms and letting herd mentality do the rest. Which I always think of as the “all lines are curved in the Velodrome” theory of soft authoritarianism. Like basically weaponizing the Overton Window? It’s actually really fascinating! But (there’s always a but with this book) it kind of loses some of its punch when the society portrayed is also just a regular old dictatorship where people kick the shit out of you and Make You Disappear. It’s like the author took the core concept of the book and didn’t even use it! And I guess you can argue that the setting was in a transitional phase, which is fair, and that actually could be really interesting, but it... Wasn’t. And that’s the whole problem I had with the story, pretty much. Not only was it preachy and hokey, but it was full of wasted potential.
ADDITIONAL GARBAGE THOUGHTS:
-How the heck did the other three Improbably Large Nations keep up the “we’ve only ever been at war with those guys and not the other ones” illusion? I can suspend my belief a little bit for Oceania, where the other two are three letters apart from each other and at least some people would probably just shrug and assume they read something wrong yesterday, but I don’t buy it for a second when it comes to the E*asia countries. People would damn well remember that the guys they were mad at yesterday started with an O and then the whole system would fall apart. People aren’t geniuses as a rule, but they usually damn well know if they read an O.
-Also, how is the whole “thoughtcrime” thing even enforced? I know it has to do with analyzing facial expressions, but... How? You can’t tell me that people know how to tell “bad thoughts about our overlord” from “itchy,” “smelled sour milk,” “intrusive thought about stepping on a nail,” “have to pee,” or “wondering where I put that thing” on every single individual face.
-Oh look, it’s another book that ends with a fictional document talking about the Bad Bad Government in the past tense. Where have I seen this before? Perhaps in another hamfisted trainwreck of a book. Perhaps in one that involves color-coded robes.
-Was it better than The Handmaid’s Tale? Eh. It was less-worse, for sure. But mostly just in ways that pissed me off because there were multiple interesting things ruined by being part of this Aesop Fable from hell, not just the one interesting thing with the vague threats of being sent away to clean up radioactive waste until your nose falls off.
-Did I ever tell you that I’ve considered making a blog where I read and dunk on every book in the “transparently didactic dystopian novel that somehow isn’t usually factored as genre fiction” genre? Because I have, but honestly, I don’t know when I’ll be able to bring myself to do this. Partly because I’d have to slog through THT a third time and 1984 a second, which is bad enough, but also because I’d probably eventually have to read Ayn Rand, and have you seen the size of those things? 1984 felt like it rambled on forever, and those are, like, three 1984s stacked on top of each other and there’s at least two of them. I’m willing to go through a lot if I get to make fun of something, but that’s really pushing it.
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