I feel like a lot of people's idea of why transmasc erasure happens is taken in bad faith ('the queer community needs an underclass' 'we're still women to everyone so we barely even exist' among some takes that are genuinely transmisogynist, what the fuck guys) so I'm just gonna put forth my theory on why we don't see more.

For a lot of people, especially in the queer community, men = privileged. This isn't an off the wall concept, male privilege is very real and very well documented. An effort needs to be made to platform more women, and this includes trans women. And that’s good! But then the oppositional sexism starts seeping in. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Women are disenfranchised and should be uplifted and have the spotlight on them more. Therefore, men, including trans men, do not need to be platformed or given extra attention, because they have male privilege.

But that's like...kinda missing the forest for the trees, right? Or missing the trees for the forest, maybe? Yes, a trans man is a man, but an out trans man is 1) NOT going to benefit from male privilege the same way a cis man is going to and 2) is STILL disenfranchised, on the basis of being visibly queer. Something that is true for a trans woman does not necessarily mean the opposite must be true for a trans man, man and woman are not opposites, and neither are their places in society- this isn't even touching on how often nb people are arbitrarily shoved into gendered boxed in order to either be 'woman (disenfranchised' or 'man (privileged)' which I should not have to say at this point is not how this works.

Lemme be clear here- I'm not pointing fingers or implicating ANYONE here, I think the reason we see less and hear from and about transmascs within the queer community COMES from a good place! The intentions are good! But as with most things the issue sorts comes down to treating this as a binary issue, when it really shouldn't be! That's all.

I'm not an expert and I don't exist in people's heads, this could be it, I could be completely off base, I dunno, I just learned about oppositional sexism and it's given me some insights, so. Idk

Do ya think taur AU Crona has little fangies?

yes, absolutely! they also have a split jaw, like snakes do!

(fun snake fact, only venomous snakes have fangs! other snakes only have these inward-facing teeth, made to guide prey to the back of the throat. thats why non-venomous bites dont hurt that much, snake teeth arent built for chewing or piercing!)

crona definitely has these inwards-facing teeth too. this means that they arent able to chew their food, and have to swallow it all whole, which is really funny to imagine.

(worldbuilding rambles under the cut!)

SOO! weird mouth=weird food! it would be pretty difficult for snaketaurs to swallow small food because their tongues just aren't built for pushing food around like ours are. they also obviously can't chew. so most food catered towards snaketaurs is going to be in some kind of wrapping: top choices are dumplings, sausages, and burritos. some restaurants that cater towards snaketaurs have specials that are like, HUGE to take advantage of their weird mouths. their acutal process of eating is a bit weird and messy, imagine someone splitting their jaw in half while shoving an entire burrito down their throat whole. fun stuff!

when it comes to seasoning and taste- the insides of the food doesnt matter at all, because they dont chew it. the taste of the food, actually, doesnt matter a lot to snaketaurs! their main sense is smell, and they already use their tongue for that, so theres not a lot of room for taste. so most snaketaur food is made with a lot of external seasoning to stimulate the sense of smell, and not as much care put into the ingredients of the food. you *could* technically try to feed a snaketaur some rancid shit inside a dumpling, but a snake's sense of smell is pretty good at telling the difference between good and rotten food, so it's likely they'd catch on. i'd considered giving snaketaurs a whole prey diet, like real snakes, but it didn't make much sense in the end! (a whole prey diet means that essential nutrients come from every part of the prey- bones and organs included.)

now, since this ask was about crona's fangs, its only fair i talk about the societal implications of venom!

the thing thats tricky about worldbuilding this au- and a lot of animal/furry societies in general- is that humans are very squishy, and a lot of our politics are built on the fact that we are squishy. we're pretty much only lethally dangerous with training or tools. when dealing with animals tho? a lot of animals have weapons built in. (also this is why animal racism allegories are almost always executed horribly. they usually end up implying that race/racial differences are fundamentally biological. its a very very tricky topic to get right.)

even so, most taur species' are only just as lethal as their physical strength, sometimes enhanced by their claws or whatever. venomous species' are tricky at first, and a lot of shit probably happened in-universe before thing settled, (tldr for taurlore every humanoid on earth suddenly got turned into a random taur bc some witch fucked up. present day soul eater/taur au is set a century or so after that event to give everyone time to get their shit under control) but i think that it's not that big of a deal by now. hospitals are equipped with antidotes of every kind, and venom-drives are common and similar to blood drives. its not uncommon to see posters stating: "got venom? donate now!" or some shit idk. most venom attacks are accidents & are rarely lethal when given proper treatment.

i kinda forgot a lot of stuff about the soul eater universe when typing that last paragraph, especially it's entire thing with kishin eggs and witches that kinda re-contextualize murderers and how this society looks at them. theres no paranoia like "anybody could be a murderer ouuuu" its always "murderers eat souls and then become kishin eggs or whatever (therefore its ok to kill them) im soo glad we dont eat human souls lol. its also really easy to spot a kishin egg so we just dont have any stranger danger/societal paranoia issues." GOOD LORDD these implications r fucking me up. this is ofc not a super deep look @ the soul eater society i need to sit down and think long n hard abt it now bc i literally. just forgot. what the hell. what the hell.

ok if u read this far ur a hero god bless i promiseeee i'll draw more taur au eventually.. thanks 4 listening to my TED talk

ok im finished with s2 of bsg btw

EVERY TIME I THINK I KNOW HOW BAD GAIUS CAN FUCK UP HE ASTONISHES US ALL. ITS SO FUCKING FUNNY. HES THE FUNNIEST FUCKING CHARACTER EVER TO FUCKING EXIST.

LIKE IVE NEVER... THE WORD CRINGEFAIL? ITS FOR HIM AND ABOUT HIM; DEFINED BY HIM. HOW DOES HE FUCKING MANAGE IT. IM LOSING MY MIND. THIS MAN WILL DOOM US ALL . GOD SPEED

anyways im starting the resistance webisodes rn. a few things. i hope going forward we do get more development for the civilians and again not the same recurring issues ive been bringing up bc NOW i feel like its imperative that theyre well fleshed out if this is taking the direction i think its taking

bc otherwise this whole thing could be exhausting as hell LOL

also cally. her actress is really cute and early on i was endeared to her (bc shes set up as a chara i'd rlly like) but since then its so funny like... they just get her to do whatever the fuck huh. like. she'll shoot sharon or she'll get beat up and now shes married to the chief. ok. right. its so funny like shes existing outside the narrative until they randomly decide to ave her do osme shit

btw i bet if billy was still alive the voter fraud well they would have still been caught no doubt tory fucking rules but it would have been funny if billy was caught instead

ALSO GOD I DONTKNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY MY BRAINS EVERYWHERE LIKE

i dont know how i feel about the cylon storyline right now. i absolutely did really love the caprica six and boomer episode bc theyre my favies BUT im unsure if i like it narratively speaking does that make any sortof sense

again i think its coming from a place of like... hmm... the societal aspects of cylons ALSo has always felt underdeveloped BUT that was more passable under the guise of mystery and NOW i think its one of those things where its like... ahrgh you've tried to put the bad sfx into good lighting and we can see it dont do thattt LOL bc like

i dont know i do worry that the cylons will approach a state of "too human" if that makes sense. like within the story and within their own motivations. i dont quiteknow how to describe it im very tired but its like... I DONT mean discussing how they're like/unalike humans thats FINE but. AHRHGHGHGHGG

YOU KNOW WITH LIKE EVERY AI STORYLINE THERE'S ALWAYS THAT "I'LL NEVER BE AREAL HUMAN

YEAH but then a lot of the time its still done in a very... human way even when theyre trying to reject it and... NOT purposefully its like people cant write an actual inhuman perspective, without assuming some fundamental aspects of human nature. does that make any sense in the world and whatsoever???

anyways i dont know my point is i get a little anxious the more and more aspects of cylons that come to light bc i feel like ive been anticipating A LOT with them with the wa y theyve been stringing us along but yeah theres behaviours like that where im like am i about to get terribly disappointed

speaking of im wondering who he other cylons are in the fleet still bc they mentioned 8 and idk if that meant 8 copies or 8 models and who that counts as but surely there must be some unrevealed did the girlies just pretend thats not a concern or assume it was porkie pies

also also im . very tired all over the place but hmm.im thinking moreso about the nature of the others and i think i brought up last time abt how lee couldnt be a copy bc theyd have to make a line of models identical to him and so and such BUT ehhrm. hm. i still dont think lee is one but i do wonder if like... the order of their numbers is significant that maybe like. there are later/newer models thatmight be unique or are working to be replicas of existing people rather than just .. whatever is occurring with them rn

alsog od what else

roslin is so girlboss funny for just becoming a teacher again

what else

idk

im tired

i'llremember whatelse later<3

a real big reason im scared to ask for things, or post opinions or...anything really, is that theres been this real conflation of “asking=expecting” and “one mistake or doing something someone out there doesnt perceive as morally okay = a reflection on your personality as a whole and that youre entirely Bad”

i get so scared of p much saying anything (even tho im very left-leaning, queer, and consider myself progressive or at least always open to learning, improving, and being holistic and understanding of everyone and developing and curating my language to make ppl comfortable) because i feel like having a couple thousand followers suddenly makes me an “influencer” in the eyes of people

i think it goes into the whole recent crituque of “the internet has been commercialised and commodified and we all have to present ourselves as a brand and less of a real person” and that really strikes a chord with me. im literally not an influencer, especially because this self-fulfilling cycle of hating the current internet culture and not posting much anymore. 

its honestly ridiculous and i shoulnt be feeling these ways, and its fucking hard too because a lot of the shit i see is also very american-centric, so for example the c0vid stuff (and the morals about public safety etc) like the general consensus and societal cultures differs from country to country, how australia deals w it differs to how america does, so its hard hearing ppl from america talk in a way thats not reflective of how things operate here, but its treated like thinkign otherwise to them means we’re bad as a whole

im extremely c0vid safe for example (was even moreso before my immuno-compromised housemate was vaxxed) but for about 6 months we literally had NO active cases. so we had no lockdowns, and we did a c0vid-safe continuation of our normal-lives pre-c0vid. this was around the time where america wasnt at all vaccinated and unfortunately a lot of cases and deaths were occuring. so my social media was full of ppl being very aggressive about “if u dont stay home ur a bad person” essentially. and while i knew back then it didnt apply to “me” specifically, its bloody fucking hard to feel like i could even talk about going out and having fun in australia bc the general consensus was “there are ppl dying overseas how dare u have fun” when in reality we were just bloody lucky to have a government that shut us down and acted a lot better compared to other countries, which lead to us having no cases. and at that point we had been in lockdown for like 7 months or some shit. who knows. time is weird. but basically what im saying is that in context of australia, it was safe to, and im allowed to have gone out and do things.

of course, this is all earlier this year, bc now we have an opposite thing where our vaccine rollout was so botched and we have a shitton of cases and are opened out of lockdown again, and it fucking sucks. and now of COURSE im being safe (especially only being half vaxxed) with it all, and it bloody sucks too bc now the americans are acting all “c0vid is over :)”

maybe this is more of a rant about american centricism and all but...idk. i know i could “curb” this issue by following more australians, and its not necessarily peoples fault bc theyre just posting about “their” experiences etc, but it just sucks like how theres a general assumption that youre from america, and that u should be doign thigns the way their culture is.

idk anymore.

Idk if this is the kind of justification you're asking for but PLEASE talk about techno or the dream smp I love reading giant walls of text about him/it.

anon i will take any justification i can ever get now. like i could go On about techno. his whole Thing is very interesting to me. and also practically Only him like literally. thats all i watch LMAO. i like him as a character and a person a Lot

one thing ill take the opportunity to say. in regards to his character. i guess its something that could use some ‘work’ but he seems to have been trying to do with the whole retirement arc. 

but like. at the beginning especially his form of anarchism isnt really entirely true to the idea of anarchism. although of course theres subsets of anarchistic idealogies but some he has gone alone with and said just Dont fit. 

looking a bit into it he’d probably fit into egosim, or egoist anarchism, which is essentially the idea of being entirely self-interested, where everyone is only concerned with themselves and the rejection of governments and other major societal bodies under the idea that they limit how you can know and own yourself.

a big point of that is the idea that. you have no concern with the whole of humanity. essentially, morality is no longer a concern. you live how you choose to and thats it. theres no ownership of things beyond having the ability to defend it. 

honestly i doubt he Actually looked into anarchism and the schools of anarchism before proclaiming himself an anarchist. at the beginning it feels he entirely wanted a sort of. ‘government bad. the strong are at the top’ and latched onto the anarchist idea from there.

BUT. he’s been reading anarchist writings and shit. like. no joke. and near the beginning of one of his retirement arc streams he mentioned trying to do more ‘research’ and discussed some ideals like the ownership of land n shit. i dont remember much.

one of the Big ideas of anarchism at its core, which egoism doesnt abide by, is the idea of community without laws, governments, etc. anarchism gets a bad rep as ‘violent and Evil’ but the idea of it often goes back to having people working together as equals, without any semblance of laws, government, or hierarchy.  

but in short i want techno to go into the ideology that rejects hierarchy and ‘the strong have power over the weak’, cuz that aint very anarchist tbh. his retirement i feel played on this and continues to because it had kinda been assumed he was going to ‘assert’ his own form of government after the revolt when it all blew up. instead, he took off and tried to live to his own rules. 

i still feel it a bit; the idea that he’s only enacting violence as a way of retaliation. and i love that shit anarchism for the win. i wanna see More

@gramizar am i so glad you asked!! i dont have a whole hell of a lot for it just yet but the main points are something along the lines of uhhh -instead of eating perry, r eats julie -r as a whole is a little less cynical/views the world a little more romantically since its julie in his head -theres a potential romance between r and perry -r, in some fashion, is going to be more drawn to music/music is going to be more of a focal point since that was a major way the he and julie connected in the first place, both in warm bodies and the new hunger alike

this got really long so im slapping a readmore on it!

i think the whole theme of it is that like... while julie has had her fair share of struggles, she more or less came out on the other side and wanted to keep fighting, even when things got hard, but perry never quite got to that point. its clear that perry is using the outing as an excuse to You Know, but what happens when thats taken away from him, literally in the sense of r taking him back? its clear the novels overarching themes have to do with trauma and mental obstacles and overcoming them, from both societal and personal standpoints, and the general theme of depression (whether it be the depression of being alive post-apocalypse or the more literal depression of being Dead) could be explored in another way as far as two people currently in the thick of it goes, as opposed to someone in it and someone who has sort of learned to cope (whether or not its healthy is up for debate)

at the end of the day, its sort of... almost an intervention of sorts for perry. his plans are disrupted and his immediate self-destruction is shut down, and i genuinely think, as someone currently dealing with depression, that perry seeing the Dead at the airport would make him realize something important about himself. part of it could be that he sees the Dead, realizes that r has some semblance of consciousness, and makes the connection that he very well could have ended up that way given what his plans were and understands that there would be no real rest, or! in a more metaphorical leaning, he realizes that hes basically already there, living life by going through the motions, and this + julies death (read: the one person he really cared about at the end of it all) galvanizes something in him and gives him even just a temporary reason to stick it out  an addendum thanks to @sartorially : the main thing that draws perry to r and gives him some pause or reason to stay in the airport as long as julie did is that... hes going to see himself in r (who is already overly cynical despite not knowing much of anything at all), consider them almost the same in that theyre both ‘dead’, and be taken in by the fact that despite r not having a past that he knows of or any sort of future goals, hes still fighting, almost in spite of it all. hes going to see some of julie in that, who kept fighting despite all the shit she went through. r’s penchant of collecting things for no apparent reason to either of them is also important here because he effectively has no past, so hes collecting from the present so he “doesnt forget”, and i think this would honestly make perry a little mad! hed want to know whats so good about life now that r wants to remember it but then sort of get knocked on his ass by the fact that r doesnt want let go of what little he has left

take this with an extremely small grain of salt because i dont know how to articulate myself and its not something i’m saying definitively its just a thought i have sometimes but don’t know what to do with but

autism and adhd are literally not functionally different at all while each label might come at things externally from a different perspective on what it focuses on, even beyond the fact that like barely any contemporary psychiatric diagnosis is actually based on a distinct neurobiological cause, even more than a lot of other diagnoses theres just nothing distinct to me as someone dx-ed/un-dx-ed/re-dx-ed with both autism and adhd whos been involved with some irl and online communities for both to some extent.

but also at the same time even if it doesn’t always match up with who individually gets dx-ed with what (also i think self diagnosis can be incredibly useful to be clear but since i’m kinda talking about the role of mental health professionals like psychologists in our society my wording is more focused on that) just because i kinda see the emphasis on why each of these are seen as disordered very simplistically being centered around people with adhd being “unproductive” in this capitalist system and autistic people being seen as a threat to how class society perpetuates itself through a variety of systems of oppression by not going along with a lot of social norms used in that process (getting off topic but since i think my wordings bad to get an idea of stuff i mean, i think soooo much about the statistics about ppl dx-ed autistic being more likely to be trans/gnc and vice versa)

so like even if it doesnt fit neatly into peoples personal struggles vs diagnoses because of that general trend in diagnoses plus societal perspectives on both, sometimes i want to express frustration with how both in personal experience growing up and in some people with bigger platforms with adhd how they sometimes put autistic people under the bus or just frame their experiences in really bootlicker-esque ways i really really don’t resonate with way more often than i see the same with autistic circles

(also to be clear even beyond making it clear on an individual level theres no real difference between us, that doesnt mean there aren’t issues the other way, shit like aspergers supremacy is extremely harmful and effects dialogue on this subject and didn’t come from a distinction between adhd and autism, or theres how so much media really focuses on “savant” autistic people who can be “redeemed” for productivity in society in ways not usually afforded to adhd. i’d be willing to change my point of view but i do think since “savant” autistic people are much rarer it is more often people perceived as more autistic than adhd get the short end of the stick, but its not a concrete dynamic just something i wanted to articulate venting about)

but yeah. i don’t really think its helpful for me to express that personal frustration without all that prefacing but its just weird and i think about it sometimes

but also this doesnt mean i want to reify those arbitrary distinctions between those diagnoses in the slightest, i think its a really good thing for people who feel comfortable with it to talk about their experiences in a way that acknowledges theres no real difference between us and literally dont care if anyone dx-ed with one also uses the other label. on an individual level we all have different things we struggle with more and less than others and practicing compassion with that is something that even in times of my life where people characterized me on the whole as being very autistic that i needed to remind myself of when interacting with other autistic people who went about things a different way, so on an individual level i dont think anyone should need to worry about “overstepping” by being someone diagnosed adhd who decides to participate in discussions framed around autism or uses terminology associated with autism (or vice versa) because as long as you keep in mind that compassion we all should be having regardless of diagnosis i think its a really good way to build solidarity among us and have discussions that look beyond how our society is currently structured. anyone who wants to participate in bridging that gap isn’t part of the problems i sloppily am expressing frustration with above and i think thats really important for me to emphasize because talking about the problems i think the distinctions psychiatry makes between us in our society creates shouldn’t just sound like me reifying those distinctions

All the pretty people seem to be thin. That's not meant to be mean, just means I got a lot of work to do.

fuck i wrote out a whole long reply and tumblr deleted it i hate u tumblr, here we go again:

ohhhhhnooooo this is not the feeling i want anyone to ever get when they come to my blog i am so sorry this is the messgae you recieved :( 

listen babe i wanna say something that probably you wont believe but truly, youre wrong, theres tons of beautiful, pretty, handsome, sexy and beautiful chubby/fat/not thin people out there (just google it!), and even if you are not one of them its fine because your job is not to be visually appealing it is to feel things and make art maybe and pursue things that make you happy and to dance around to fun jams and eat yummy food and do things yu like. also, youre entitled to all the feelings you have around your body ! and they make sense, but maybe you can re frame the thoughts around your body as less negative

i think often we get kinda distorted views of our own bodies and faces because we see them so much, its like saying a word over and over till it doesnt sound like a word anymore, like you see your body so often that sometimes it looks distorted, other people do not see you the way you see you, i promise, in fact, a really good resource for this ime is https://www.mybodygallery.com/ where u can find photos of people with your body type and stuff and be like!!! oh!!! theyre cute!!! i guess i must be cute! or “oh! i would never tell them they arent pretty, so maybe i shouldnt do it to myself”

i would gently reccomend to do some googling about the body positivity movement and find videos and articles n stuff about others talking about their bodies and the societal conditioning we have around them, cause truly, loving yourself and your body is an act of resistance in a white supremacist, hetropatriarchal capitalist world that is constantly trying to make you feel shit about yourself so u buy more shit.

talk to ur body the way you would talk to a little child or a beloved friend. get dressed up in makeup and cute outfits and take cute selfies or get friends to take pics of u, or get dressed down and no makeup and messy hair and take pics of that, look at both and be like Damn i am A Stunning Human regardless of what anyone might think! (it might feel like a lie but just lie to yourself till it doesnt feel like a lie, theres not much negativity that can come from being kind to yourself so just try!!! if u can)

sometimes i dont feel great about my body and in those days i go to the mirror and strip to my undies and i look in the mirror and i say “hey. this is the body i got right now. i can change it if i wanna, and thats within my power, but also its perfect as it is right now and i love it.” and then i give myself a hug and lots of times you will feel like you are lying to yourself but do it anyway.

another little self love ritual i do is after showering i lotion all my body and as i lotion each part i tell it “i love u foot, thank u for takin me places” “i love u leg, thanks for walking me around” “i love u butt, thanks for being soft” “i love u belly, thanks for holding my nourishment and being squishy and cute”, like, just tell your body parts you love them. 

I dont think anyone has ever guilted or shamed or berated themselves into the person they want to be, so try to be nice and gentle and kind w yourself and know that you are doing just as much as you need to right now, and youre perfect. and i love you. 

I am really sorry if any of this sounded condescening it wasnt meant to be, sending u a really big hug  

Thoughts on Other Students in 3H

in no particular order

Hubert: evil snake boi, i kinda like you. i just wish there was more actual meat to ya then what there is. still, he does his role effectively and unlike edelgard plays into the whole evil empire thing with more gusto so i ironically find him more palatable because atleast the game isnt trying to pretend he isnt shady as fuck.

Dedue: oddly charming despite his straight laced attitude, he gets some interesting nuance in how well he highly respects (cough loves cough) dimitri and likes individual people from the blue lions, he doesnt have any particular fondness for faerghus as a whole which is definitely understandable given his history. hes essentially using the camus/murdoch aspect of undying loyalty and even borrows elements of the female camuses line of romantic interest in their liege however heavily implied it might be and applying that to a male playable character. Plus he just has some fun and interesting interactions with other characters in general.

Lorenz: I have difficulty saying whether i like him. on the one hand, he ended up being more multidimensional then i thought he was going to be with his internal conflict between keeping up appearances for the sake social status and societal order and his desire to pursue his own personal interests and ideals against the needs of his father and thus societal conventions. on the other hand, the game never really runs with this as much as it should and hes still treated as a bit of a joke character so... c+ to b? 

Ingrid: the token heterosexual of the blue lions whos still kinda gay anyways, her whole struggle with being a knight over a housewife seems a bit odd on the surface considering theres plenty of female knights and no one throws much of a fuss in universe, until you learn that it isnt so much that society expects her to do it as matter of course and more so that shes struggling with whether to pursue personal duty to her family or personal desires and ideals kinda like lorenz. in that respect she hits the mark a bit better then he does.

Raphael: kinda insubstantial but i liked him anyways, his sheer exuberance can be kinda refreshing in the games darker moments and hes got a few angles of his own such as his refusal to consider his parents deaths as part of a larger conspiracy so as to not hurt his friendship with ignatz nor ruin his own life and his sisters. plus hes just generally a nice guy. like a big huggable bear. just a shame that being a nice kinda dumb huggable bear is all thats really done with him.

Ignatz: his painting stuff and personal insecurities about wanting to do it over being a knight which his parents want him to do, more of that duty over desires and ideals thing again, is well enough and his probably misplaced guilt over raphaels misfortunes is definitely a highlight of him but he never really grabs as a character for some reason. probably because theres a lot of other characters in the game that hit those same marks and do it better then him.

Sylvain: has a lot of aspects that never really feel like they get proper follow up, his big thing is less womanizer and more so that he covers up his own mistrust and personal feeling by pretending to be a shameless flirt and philanderer. basically, maybe the emotional pain will go away if i flirt with girls and act the fool. but again there never really feels like theres any proper follow up for all this, others comment on it and then its more often then not dropped in story. hes fun enough but never really realized if that makes sense.

Caspar: shonen protagonist is kinda an apt word to describe him honestly, and that idealism of his clashes with the more grey on grey morality of the world hes within which is never a particularly bad direction to take the shonen bois in if done well like hunter x hunter. And he is done well, or at least satisfactorily to the point that hes another one i ended up liking more then i thought i would. his problem is more so that his interactions with most other characters in the main cast which feel duller then they should on most occasions.

Dorothea: probably gonna get a bit of shit for this, but i have no interest in her. her insecurities about her future and getting a good husband is well and interesting but manuela does that better honestly and outside of that dorotheas a bit... not shallow but hazy and insubstantial if you will. she obviously has appeal to people but like ignatz she failed to grab me in part because others did what she did and better within the game itself.

Ashe: soft boi chose to be soft instead of hard, one of the characters i found liking and one i expected to kinda like to begin with. in game he gets accused of being childish and naive a lot but i dont see it personally, hes not naive but more so tries to look for the best in people and in life like lonato did all those years ago for him. that said, the speed with which lonato dies damages his identity as a character a bit by happening before we really get a chance to feel for his relation to lonato, its not to big a bug bear as it doesnt hurt his character all that much but it does feel a bit frustrating.

Felix: teenage angst personified, his main gripes seem to be a distaste of warrior culture and its glorification of bloodshed and sacrifice but instead of approaching it with sadness or pacifism, he lashes out against what he feels is the unfairness of the world. hes not exactly wrong in his feelings and as a character it makes sense and works for his abrasive attitude, and its an interesting twist to the navarre type to have their isolation come not from stoicism nor sheer blood lust or a combo of the two but rather from a rage against the machine of society mindset.

Ferdinand: he got more interesting as i got farther along, and i personally feel he works the best as a character when going against edelgard since thats where more of his personal drama comes from. hes eager to succeed and prove himself worthy of his title over time and holds a chivalrous mindset very similar to others in the cast but his growth is less about learning how to hold onto those ideals in the face of reality for the sake of personal fulfillment but more so about learning to define himself by himself and not by societies needs. ultimately he comes to value chivalry not because its what people tell him to value but because he truly values it and i enjoy that. but its also why i feel he works better on other routes then edelgards since there hes still valuing himself not for himself but for the expectations society or edelgard in this case is placing him under, one tyrant for another in a sense. i admit i dont remember much about him on edelgards route though because i just like him more on the others.

Leonie: poorly timed support aside, she has an odd charm to her that a lot of modern fire emblem characters just dont have anymore. but knuckling past jeralt senpai shes an interesting blend of stingy and work effort that goes to inform itself and her relations to others. and like a lot of the golden deer she has a lackadaisical attitude of ‘i might not know what the fuck is happening, but i do know someone needs an ass whooping!’ and it works especially well in her case since her character is very attuned towards focusing more on her personal matters then the grand scheme of things because she has rent due in a few months. if she was in a more traditional fe set up she would definitely be a beowolf archtype that you need to pay to recruit. in fact im surprised thats not an option on other routes to begin with for her.

Hilda: honestly suprised me by not being a pure serra type. she has aspects of that on the surface with the selfish almost vain attitude towards life and others bur well serra is more about puffing herself up to hide insecurity and contribute towards a desperate desire for grand social status, Hilda downplays herself and her abilities due to living in her brothers shadow if unintentionally and seeing the stress it can bring. they’re both lazy and vain, on the surface anyways, always getting others to do their work for them but well serra seeks more social status to escape it hilda seeks less social status to escape it. plus it was kinda funny to see hilda act as claudes unofficial number 2 you could still recruit.

Lindhart: Sleepy boi needs a nap and thats kinda it really. exaggeration maybe but unlike a lot of characters in the game and the series as a whole he really doesnt have a reason to be there as a character. as a unit certainly but not a character, in terms of motivation anyways. He hates blood, fighting and violence, hed rather sleep or pursue personal interests then work or politics, hes insightful and intelligent but the important players in the plot have other advisers and hes not interested in stepping up in that regard anyways. his only real reason for being there is academic interest and even then a pin has to be put in that when war breaks out. hes not a bad character overall though, his sleepiness and insight make for an interesting double act along with his blunt mannerisms, i just have trouble pinning down motivations for him.

Mercedes: big team mom energy, which i suppose goes along with the whole being older then everyone thing. a bit dopey and airheaded at first glance shes one of the more receptive characters to how others are feeling and well she does try to nurture shes not above scolding if she feels it would help someone more then praise and reassurance. of course shes also very detached to events of the world mostly just there to help the people around her from the bottom rather then the top which is not an insult and more one of the things i find fascinating about her. it all makes for a very interesting character and one of my personal favorites of the cast.

Annette: overworker, issues with her dad, magic bubbly, and hits things with axes. a nice recipe of a character but it never feels as if the game can get it all to blend properly. more so to the point is that most of these elements work independently of each other and not to inform each other despite the games insistence. theres a lot of dramatic potential involving her father as well and though the game makes the best use of those aspects its not to the benefit of the rest of her character. it doesnt hurt her either though and she has some appealing dialogue with other characters.

Marianne: I had trouble getting to like her, perhaps more so then any other character among the other students. not because i hated her but because shes, well, very boring. alot of the characters in the game are into the self deprecation thing already and well her personality aspects of acting quite and submissive to fall into the background from a lack of self confidence it also feels like the game came up with two different explanations for it and couldnt settle on whether it was because of her adoptive fathers pressure or her families history and instead of weaving both together decided to use them interchangeably. Sometimes shes a wallflower because of her father and a lack of confidence to state her mind and self loathing over that lack of confidence, other times its because of her lineage and self loathing over her cursed history. never really at the same time.

Bernadetta: another odd favorite for me. recent support changes aside, the basic gist of her history remains the same in that her father was a tyrant in regards to her future which caused her to grow up with no confidence and a crippling fear of society, so shes already off to a good start as a character by basically doing mariannes schtik but better. well its hard for me to definitely say she ever grows past that as a character, thats fine in my opinion because her development is less stop being a recluse because society demands you dont and more so about making actual friends and learning that not all people are garbage fires just most of them. in most of her supports anyways. she just feels the most rewarding to interact with alright, and she was the one i always felt the most upset to mess up a speak thing with. Let us hug and stay inside watching cartoons together.

Petra: i went in wanting to like her and really liking her at first, but shes hit a middle of the road for me now. her speech gimmick wasn't particularly egregious and gets even less noticeable after the timeskip, but her actual character is a very straight forward ‘national pride demands independence’ package and doesnt really escape past that boundary all that much. its very understandable motivation, id even go so far as to say that shes the one with the best reasons to betray the empire of the black eagles characters, so like ferdinand i feel she works better outside of the black eagles in term of her own character identity and motivation/development as she finally stands up for her peoples right to exist on their own in an fe6 echidna kinda fashion. outside of that though shes... foreign to the other characters. thats kinda it.

Lysithia: as a unit she hits like a truck, as a character shes functional but hardly revolutionary for the series. i mean i did like her since i have a fondness for her archtype of weird magic prodigy poor social skills, but more so that she doesn't hit any particularly new notes in that regard. Shes a lot of lute, with some delthea childishness in her, some of sanakis sharper political wit and dark history, and a bit of miriels scientist on top. that said its all blended very nicely and she has some nice scenes for herself that got me to feel and care for her, some kinda adorable moments, and a history well woven into the games background and more so then most of the other deer and a lot of the other characters from across the houses in general. for a minor character anyways.

you may now all stone me to death.

ugh

nsfw and trigger warning: dehumanization beneath the cut. its a long post. id like it if you did the like-if-you-read thing.

so i was looking up some resources for trans women and i found this dumb twitter account that posted like, stupid lil nsfw trans woman memes. and like okay im normally very hesitant to approach shit like this but ive been trying to ~reclaim my sexuality~ and be less dictated by fear or w/e recently. so i figured, who knows, maybe there’ll be a goof or two thatll make me feel a little better about my body and stuff. may as well try. Whats The Worst That Could Happen

so i look thru it and theres the usual upsetting stuff. yknow, blah blah sub, blah blah dom, blah blah tie me up and fuck me. but im becoming increasingly numb and jaded, and so since i had my guard up to a certain extent when i went into this, that doesnt faze me so much. its gross, and i dont like it, and its repulsive to me on an ethical level, but im not like... having a panic attack. so i keep scrolling

But, Then.

things got, like... really extreme. really fast. and my guard wasnt up nearly enough, it turns out. and so i end up down the rabbit hole.

did you know, that theres apparently an entire subculture online of women, especially trans women, fantasizing about having their names taken away, being given a numeral code to identify them, and being turned into interchangeable sexual “drones?” did you know that this intersects heavily with “hypnosis” fetishism through which a person is conditioned to become sexually pliant and unresisting, as well as latex fetishism through which a person’s body is made to be an object sans any distinguishable features? do you know relatively prominent trans personalities on twitter support and interact with accounts that promote these fetishes?

ask me how i know.

its shit like THIS - not the disrespect i get from others, not the shame i feel when i dont pass, not the awkward family interactions - that genuinely makes me question whether transitioning was a correct choice. its not the shit i get from other people or my own self loathing. its the fucking brainworms that a lot of trans women seem to have been stuck with, the toxic, fucked up way the trans woman community seems to ALWAYS interact with sex and love.

other trans women online, ive noticed, love to tout themselves as radical, woke agents. but then as soon as they hit the porn shit, they just fucking switch their brains off. trans women are generally not dumb. they can analyze down to the atomic level how various interactions in their every day life are rigged to favor the rich, to favor men, to favor white people, to favor the able bodied, to favor neurotypicals.

but as soon as it comes to “““erotic””“ content, they just refuse to take even a single step into criticism. they refuse to take even a cursory glance at the ideas they are planting into their brains and replicating and broadcasting, the people that are benefitting from these “ironic” sexual ideologies of subjugation and objectification, the power structures that they are upholding. they just forget that things have consequences. and all their standards of “woke”ness just go out of the fucking window. “no, not this, dont criticize THIS aspect of society!! i can understand broad sweeping societal restructuring, i can understand ending wage slavery, i can understand destroying racism and misogyny. but the second you ask me to stop replicating those dynamics during sex, now THATS a step too far!”

these kinds of fetishes prime subjects for a life under a kind of dystopian hyper-capitalism. a world where human beings are literally reduced to objects, to commodities. in literally any other situation, the tolerance of ideas like these would be grounds for community expulsion. in any other situation, trans women would be up in arms about behaivoural trends that idealize things like dehumanization, objectification, or the annihilation of sexual agency. but as soon as its “just a kink” (as if we can adequately seperate ANY parts of our lives from the whole), it seems like trans women practically line up to be put under the boot of totalitarian ideology. as soon as its “just a kink,” trans women turn themselves into the forerunners of these ideologies. ladies, a question:

what the fuck is wrong with us?

i am a transgender woman. and i would not ever be happy trying to live as a man again. but shit like this? really, really makes me wish i could live that way. cause listen: i live in a puny fucking city. and if i have trouble finding communities on the world wide web that are free from this memetic romanticization of sexual abuse and violence, if i can barely find two or three trans women on all of the internet who dont fetishize the kind of shit that would make serial killers blush - how the fuck am i ever supposed to live my life? without just fucking giving in? as a trans woman, as an activist, as a survivor, as a person with ethical fucking standards? how the fuck am i ever supposed to find a safe community with people like me?

when the choice is either, “become okay with sexual violence, or else be alone forever:” where, pray tell, is the consent you talk so much about, my good bitches?

fed the fuck up.

Saw a post on twitter talkin abt how reviews 4 detective pikachu keep saying it sucks cause u have to have knowledge of the pokemon franchise for it (which is stupid, but thats another can of worms) and comparing it to avengers endgame's 20 movie homework assignment - which isnt hyperbole. And i was thinking of all the folks who are like 'stop crying why dont you understand how sequels work'. And it got me musing on what marvel and disney have done here to basically guarantee that they not only garner huge profits from their new movies, but that they continue to garner huge profits on basically every mcu movie theyve made since 2008.

Like. MCU movies whether i like it or not are a huge part of being... social, basically. I dont give a shit about them, but i also have almost no friends and dont give a shit about communicating with people in a general sense. But every time a new marvel movie comes out, its fuckin all people talk about. It permeates everything. Ive seen the societal pressure to continue seeing these movies even if you dont care about them, *just* so you can be part of everyday conversation for a good few months. People RUN to see the movie as soon as humanly possible because people want to avoid spoilers so desperately they completely isolate themselves from the world. And, yeah, you can apply this to literally any movie in a popular franchise or any standalone heavy hitter - what sets mcu apart is that 20 movie homework assignment.

In looking up what movies are essential to watch before endgame, the absolute shortest list i could find was 8, and that was like, bare bones. Watching those 8 movies, if youre a newbie to the franchise, you still wouldnt know who the fuck most of the heroes popping up are or why the fuck theyre there. (I have general knowledge of marvel, but i never saw ant man, so even being marginally aware of the hero when i saw civil war and he popped up, i was like 'what the fuck, whyd they kidnap celebrity paul rudd?') In order to fully understand who everybody is, i'd say you have to watch at least the first movie of every individual hero's movie line. In order to have perspective on the inner workings of characters and what has happened to them so you can see where theyre coming from, youd have to watch *all* of it. Which, i mean, if people wanna do that, u do u booboo. Some people are in love with this shit. Some people wanna be able to, like, be part of greater society and talk to their friends. I get it. Youre not gonna be able to keep up with conversation as well if you dont know who a third of the characters even are. If your friends are big fans, you better be able to talk shop, too.

What im musing on is that, like, theres no way this wasnt fully intentional. Theres no way that disney and marvel arent aware of the social influence their franchise has, and no way they werent aware of how it would be from the beginning, just by watching social trends when huge movies come out. I mean, thats what your marketing team is there for, yknow. Its literally their job. The entire mcu line was carefully crafted to make sure youre not just giving money to their new movies, but to all their old movies, since its required watching and youll experience some level of social isolation if you dont. Yeah, other franchises have done this stuff too, having multiple sequals or breaking up their sequals into several parts to make more money. But - and i might be wrong, if theres another quite this huge, im just not remembering - not to the extent the mcu has. Not *20 fucking movies*, spanning several different storylines with their own sequels that are only intermingled juuuuust enough to be important. Imagine if all the disney princess movies were intermingled. Imagine if, in order to watch moana, you had to watch everything from, oh, little mermaid on, to understand whats going on.

And then, like the big bright maraschino cherry on top, if you complain about it being inaccessible, you get social backlash. Youre socially isolated and out of the popular loop if you dont see it, but if you take issue with everything you have to do just to get there, youre chastised by your peers. The only way to win is to give marvel lots of money, and thats entirely intentional on their part.

And yes, i know, ppl can pirate movies or read summaries. I am one of the ppl who basically live by doing that, so ofc i know. But i think we can all agree that reading summaries is absolutely not the same as seeing the movie first hand, leaves out a ton of details, and gives you none of the emotional impact of the situation, so youre still socially stunted - and theres absolutely a societal trend to some people to just experience the whole thing because it just feels right. Basically as a ritual. (See: people rewatching the LOTR trilogy before going to see the hobbit movies, just to hype themselves up and turn seeing the movie into a much bigger personal event, as ONE example among mmmaaannnyyy.) And pirating? Tons of folks are vehemently morally opposed to that. (I am not, but like, doesnt mean there aint a significant number of ppl who are.)

Its clever. And also kinda horrifying, in a 'capitalism is highly manipulative and insidious' kinda way.

Im 100% sure this musing is not new or groundbreaking in any way, shape, or form, and that tons of people have been well aware of it for ages. Its just interesting to think about.

Responding to Varun

@varun-krishnan

Great post Varun, thank you for making disagreeing so enjoyable. I mean that sincerely. Its the things that keep you up at night that are worth doing. And its 4:30 AM! 

Anyways, I see you’re point. When people are giving to chance to choose, they usually choose wrong. But I wouldn’t be so quick to say we’d all spindle into a grand canyon of ineptitude. If no one is “working” then who would supply us with our phones anyways? The entertainment industry would most likely dwindle because, like we both agreed, it is only able to thrive because we need it to distract us. But if we didn’t need to quench this thirst that was deprived from work and dread, we might go mad. Those friends you spoke with who were bored over spring break probably had copious amounts of entertainment, and it still wasn’t enough anyways. What if having nothing to do, because work and progress were thrown out the window, is enough to force us to be cool. The struggle is what births cool after all. We’d be so bored to death that we’d be forced to improvise. I think the reason people rely on Netflix and iPhones so much is because they don’t know what else to do. Without work they probably wouldn’t be able to have them anyways. People I’ve talked to have no idea what they’d be doing if not what they are now.  You’re right when you say that they want the easiest route, but thats a byproduct of a society obsessed with progress. We need fast food, fast cars, and lame jobs to progress our society. In order for maximum efficiency and growth. The question then becomes, how beneficial is this growth? How far do we want to get? 90% of the worlds waste comes from 10% of the worlds population..or something like that. So how much longer will this last? How much more do we want? What will we tell our great great grandchildren when they’re living in a glass bubble on mars only dreaming of being able to look at a lake…or a tree? Obviously sacrifices need to be made in order for a society to progress, but at the end of the day, whats the point of this progress? How many of us will actually reap its benefits? 10%? 20%? And the ones who do, hate their jobs most of the time anyways. And its all worth it so we can squeeze some art through the cracks and take bike rides when we aren’t busy? What a silly way to live. Our society will eventually collapse if we continue to advance. Progress progress progress. At some point its got to give. The term worker bee was born for a reason. The focus of their existence is to work, work, and more work. They also suffer from colony collapse disorder. Theres no scientific explanation for it, entire bee colonies just vanish into thin air, with no trace of struggle..maybe its because they work too much. Or the collapse of Easter Islands society, progress is great when you’re progressing, but how “sustainable” is it anyways. Theres only so much resource. You seem to suggest that what we are doing now works, does it? Will any form of society actually work? Everyone relies on being told what to do because, like we talked about in class, its hard to think for yourself, its hard to get control over your body/mind, its hard to DO things that you aren’t told to do. Like post to this Tumblr.

Im not sure if people would turn to cool if they no longer had to work or go to college, but most people I ask usually say “I don’t know,” or that they would travel.

Im also not sure that art only existed after humans had civilized and advanced utility. Archeologists have discovered Paleolithic cave art dating 40,000 years back, in Indonesia. It’s pretty amazing too. The time spent looking for your next meal in 10,000 BCE is directly replace with time spent looking for your next pay check, and because of the efficiency we’ve “mastered,” excess has been born. Pablo Picasso was cool, but he was doing the best with what he had. He wasn’t making art to progress society, he was just putting it out there. We are obsessed with extremes, manic or depressed. Wealth or poverty. Cool trys to show us a middle ground, a constant hum rather than shouts and whispers.

You say that “..societal progress is critical not because it helps alleviate human suffering, but because it allows more people to be Cool..” But I disagree. Societal progress doesn’t alleviate any suffering, thats just part of the human condition. To rid ourselves of suffering would be to rid ourselves of our humanity. Which is exactly what we are on track of doing, becoming robots whose only purpose is to progress. On the contrary, In order for our society to advance, AKA produce more shit for the rich to buy, there has to be suffering. Most of these consumer products which blossomed from “societal progression,” have been tainted in blood. The invention of the iPhone has provided millions of sweatshop workers with 40 hour shifts and zero time to be cool..the only progression there is suicide rates. That sounds a lot like slavery, which still exists by the way, in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, the list goes on. As for the starvation, theres plenty of that too. And way more people to endure its wrath, possibly because of societies advancements, what happened to Darwins theory of evolution, survival of the fittest? Are we cheating a bit? Even people who have access to food, still starve themselves. Eating disorders may have even stemmed from technological advancements (social media) too.

You say cool won’t progress society, whys that such a bad thing? It is true that the sophisticated and advanced society that James Dean or The Beatles could enjoy being cool in would seize to exist, but ultimately cool is a battle stance. What if there was no battle? What if we were so cool we didn’t even need I️t. I️ also agree that In order for cool to exist, there needs to be uncool. But does the uncool world depend on the cool one to exist? Its possible that we could become so dictated by success that we become like the worker bees. You could argue both sides. When people don’t have food, they are starving, but when people do have food, they are still starving. Of course cool needs the uncool and there will always be duality, Yin and Yang. There has to be, or else meaningfulness would be lost. If you just love everything and everyone, loves power sort of looses its meaning and just dilutes in its ubiquity. So I️ agree that cool has a relationship with the uncool, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that its intimate. Im not arguing for a utopian society, where we live in tribes and sing kumbuya by the campfire, hunt our own food and refuse to advance. Because that didn’t work either, someone eventually decided to make things easier, and advance. Maybe that was a mistake. It’s worth thinking about, and free too. Im not really sure what im arguing. We can learn from all of these different forms of society. Maybe not eradicating the workforce but promoting genuinely passionate career paths. I’d be lying if a little part of me didn’t scream fuck that, advancement is only creating more suffering to the unlucky ones. As you said, slaves cant be cool. But Slavery exists on both sides of the spectrum. On the far end, we could become so obsessed with advancement that we become slaves of money and material pursuit, and on the other end(living in tribes), slaves of famine and lack of clean water. Maybe theres a healthy middle ground. Perhaps nothing works, not even cool. As we learned in class, cool cracked up in 1968. Revolution swept the streets. Those streets have since been paved, where did the rebellion go? We live in a whole new world now, Lester Young and Andy Warhol didn’t have iPhones or Netflix, and Im sure it would have negatively effected their coolness if they did. But their art wouldn’t have existed if society didn’t advance in the first place, so is there a line? There must be. Any form of suffering, to a certain extent, would allow cool to exist. Its not necessarily the marketplace because that was the bane of cools existence in the first place, I think. You don’t necessarily have to be cool to enjoy the sunset either, so cheering for the hamsters on the wheel to run faster, just so the barrier to cool is a little easier to hop, isn’t the best idea. That perpetuating wheel has A LOT of side effects and cool is just one, if it even exists. I️m not sure it’s enough to outweigh the rest. I think cool should view the culture industry as an enemy, and there will never be a cool that isn’t thrust upon you through hardship, theres no escaping that. Even purchasing your cool requires some suffering, as we can all agree that making money isn’t all that fun. Unless you love what you do. I think the real question we should be asking is, how can we learn from all of this? How should we be?  to be continued in paper 3...

speaking of how anger can be as necessary as any other feeling, can be an appropriate and healthy emotional response, and can be entirely positive, and yet some people will say that anger is always wrong / to be avoided

i shouldve bookmarked it because of course i forget where i found it or who posted it, but yesterday on twitter someone had started a thread talking about how they for years tried to suppress their own anger and avoid conflict whenever they could because they had it pushed on them so strongly from a religious (christian) angle that anger was just like straight up a sin. and then they were asking about other people’s experiences with considering a broad emotional area being off-limits or inexpressible because other ppl were telling them it wasn’t an option. / having an emotional reaction of theirs just being ignored or condemned because frustration or whatever is a sign of not being good enough in whatever way

anyways it reminded me abt the whole christian approach to never expressing anger in the whole misinterpreted “turn the other cheek” thing....its kind of wild the way really christian concepts and ideas can be embedded in these nonreligious aspects of society, and considered to be a “common sense” type of perspective rather than a christian-informed one, and often involves societal/historical factors that altered US christianity which turned around to contribute right back into social/historical spheres...

like, how some kind of puritan-adjacent Moral Living agenda thought up by some dude back in the day and obsessed with asceticism & lack of self-indulgent comforts & definitely-no-masturbation as part of a Health Initiative that was sort of like this US-wheat centric cult. and today we have the breakfast cereal aisle largely in thanks to this one guy and his take on religion

or how the concept of Hard Work has been taken on by industrialized capitalism (especially post-wwii and its never-since-dropped Moral Necessity of time-efficiency above all else) to justify poverty (they deserve it) and worker exploitation (they also deserve it or they’re just lazy and thus deserve even worse poverty) and racism (they deserve it! or should just Hard Work their way out of it!) and sexism (women are paid less because they dont do men’s Hard Work! stay at home moms dont do real Hard Work! working moms arent Working Hard enough if their family work cuts back on the time and attention and energy they can give their paid job) and classism (if you cant Work Hard enough to escape poverty then you deserve the poverty) and ableism (if you cant do the same Hard Work of any other abled person then why are you alive tbh :/) and racist & anti muslim anti immigration (uhhh they both Work Too Hard and keep white people from getting in their Hard Work and also don’t don’t Work Hard Enough & steal from white people’s Hard Work) and you see how it goes........everything

and this whole concept comes from the protestant values of early colonizers......they believed very much in the necessity of the religious value of labor and suffering and self-denial and sort of grim survival and all. harken back to the wheat-worshipping cold-baths don’t-spank-it Cereal Dude.

and then there’s how US christianity was deliberately altered to not only accommodate the idea of a morally acceptable institution of chattel slavery, but to also actually promote it as morally necessary. it censored bible readings of pro-abolitionist passages & censored anyone who would preach against slavery. i think the whole still-existent branch of “southern baptist” churches was created post-abolition as a white refusal to drop the pro-slavery religious stance? and then there’s the ways that white christianity still had to justify segregation to itself, and all the other forms and practices of racism, up to today, and which i should be aware of more concrete examples of how this manifested historically. but like it sure does like continue man

anyways tldr protestant values and perspectives are often conflated with universal/“common sense” ones or outright pushed as core/necessary “american” values, and that’s an important factor to take into consideration when thinking about like, anything, because it’s so far reaching in influence that it’s probably a part of anything you look far enough into. like, again, the cereal guy. no wheaties if not for puritans. would we have chex mix in a universe where the vvitch couldnt be made because what are pilgrims? you crucify one guy and suddenly cheerios are possible because of one weirdo two millenia down the line.

anyways. there’s a lot of factors stemming from christianity that can go beyond technical religious beliefs/practices. seeing as i just complained about how anyone imposing a requirement to completely suppress any feeling or expression of anger is at best, unhealthy, and at worst, unhealthy AND abusive, it seems relevant to take into account people invoking arguments (especially to kids or anyone else over whom they have authority) about anger being an actual Sin. jesus was getting p.o’d all the time, not only about that classic temple shit but also when people interrupted his nap or when he was denied snackage. and that “turn the other cheek” bit was about NOT letting people hit/exploit you. theres no argument for needing to not express anger in order to be properly christian. and the suppression of necessary, justified anger can be used to sustain and support a ton of fucked up and violent and unethical practices then and now so fuck that in all its forms tbh

The Memeing of Life - A pretty extensive philosophical critique

Hey everyone, I’m just gonna take another break from writing my graduate thesis to briefly run through some of the points (???) made in Dan’s video. I’m pretty tired and stopped watching Supernatural to type this up so this is incredibly informal so yh, excuse the rambling nature of this. I’ll type what he said in the video then provide my thoughts.

 ‘‘Born too late to explore the earth, born too soon to explore the galaxy, born just in time to browse dank memes.’ Also a phrase that defines the purpose of our existence at this point in human history. Do you ever find yourself wishing for a different life, that your weren’t just a kid at school, or you weren’t just a young adult trying to work out what to do, or a person stuck in a job, but instead a person with a calling – a mission to go on adventure bigger than the life we know’ – OK, I have so many issues with this. 1. Only white males get to say that they wished they lived before this point. 2. ‘just’ a kid, and ‘just’ a young adult? Mate, Dan my man, no one is ‘just’ anything. Every single person is a complex, awesome human being capable of so much. No one is just anything and you say that like everyone out there thinks so little of themselves? Yeh of course, some people are on a journey to try and work out their life’s purpose but some people aren’t? For some people their purpose is to have close friends or family, or theyre on the career path they want, or some people are not in their mid twenties and just wanting to enjoy/get through the hell that is school. If I was 14 and watching a video where someone was telling me that ‘we’ all spend life trying to find our calling or mission I would have been like ‘fuck no. I just wanna pass my exams and get to uni mate, stfu.’ Or many teens, as actually was the same when I was young and super into philosophy, liked to think about this stuff on occasion, but in an informed manner not some chill youtube video they used to escape flinging an existential crisis at them.

  ‘our boring time’ – No, Dan. Our time isn’t boring. It’s exciting, amazing, there’s so much good in the world. Yo, have you even seen videos of baby pandas? Have you read the amazing things activists and progressive politicians, and inspiring children, and wonderful artists, and artists and non white cis straight amazing people are doing to make the world fucking awesome are doing? Nah mate. Not having it.

 (this shit got long so more under the cut)

‘well this is your life and its probs the only one youre gonna get’ – WHY DO YOU SAY THAT LIKE IT’S A BAD THING??? The fact that we only have this one life is such a beautiful thing to cling to and whilst sometimes things may seem shit, theres no need to go saying that phrase in that way like our lives are bad and we should just accept that? Yeh I could be Hermione Granger if I was in the Harry Potter books but would I want to be? NO. Yo, I wouldn’t give up my best mates for anything. And Hermione couldn’t play the guitar but I can. And Hermione didn’t laugh so hard she cried when my mate and me were out walking with huge rucksakes and my mate got stuck between two trees and couldn’t get out, then heaved herself through and fell flat on her face in the mud. NO, I saw that. – a wonderful moment. Yeh, this IS my life, and it’s the only one I’m gonna get SO GREAT. Things can be shit but yo, my mate got stuck in a tree so pffffft, this shit can be pretty awesome sometimes.

 ‘this reality could be a computer simulation talk’ – erghhhh, don’t throw stuff like that out so flippantly. That shit is actualy worrying to some people. I had a breakdown which took me 3 full months to get over that ONE thought, so cheers for saying that so casually. But it’s fine because if this is a computer simulation (which I highly doubt cause I did research, a lot of research) then this is what life is and it’s pretty great anyway so lets just not think about that and enjoy life if we can.

  ‘it’s a lot more difficult for us to find a quest that will give us the big answers’ – who are these people needing quests? Why do we need these big answers? You talk like there is some great, intrinsic meaning to everything and we should all be searching for it? Nah mate. Just enjoy what we have, don’t spend your life constantly searching for answers you’ll never find. Enjoy the now. What’s my big quest? To try and be kind to myself and kind to others. And to try to love myself and love others; there we go – big quest sorted. Don’t go giving people this existential crisis where they feel as though they wont be satisfied if they never find this ‘one true purpose’. You will have many different purposes and many different paths and missions and journeys and you will change and its OK to go in varying directions. There may not even be this idea that everyone has or needs ‘one big quest’ – just do what makes you happy and be kind, and if what makes you happy changes over the years then that’s cool. Don’t ever go thinking that you need to spend your whole life trying to find your purpose and you wont feel fulfilled unless you’ve found that purpose. Why only ‘one’ mission anyway? Do everything that makes you happy and live now instead of waiting and searching your whole life for something that you don’t find because you simply search for it.

 The whole discussion about contributing to science so that only a few people can go to mars – No dan, the amount of incredibly important advances in science, medicine, and technology that was discovered BECAUSE we funded space missions and people tried to find answers in the universe is staggering and I wish I could remember them all, but tust me – the amount of cool stuff in our lives that wouldn’t have been invented if it wasn’t for space exploration is seriously cool and y’all go try and be astronauts because you might change the world even if you don’t get to space.

 ‘reality is slow and painful’ – ergh, I mean, it’s cool if you sometimes think that, I do too! But you cant just say that without any context, or like ‘reality is slow and painful sometimes. But not all the time’. – like, of course we all feel this way sometimes but if you’re making a video you cant just announce that without also saying life is fast and amazing and wonderful. You have a certain responsibility here Dan. So no, reality can’t be defined by that wholly pessimistic and way too sweeping statement that it is ‘slow and painful’.

 then goes onto explain how cool, but not really cool books and film realities are. - yeh, but our lives are pretty cool. I mean, over half all movies and books are based on our reality... so i mean, it gotta be kinda interesting. Which it is...

Good bit being aware of this being a first world problem

 ‘you may say that there are many meaningful missions you could go on from perusing personal passions to politics, science or even changing the world to being a better place by doing charity work, and yep, that is all true but its not something that we can completely escape to, leaving what we know behind. I know, pretty disheartening right.’ – I mean, yay, finally some optimism but it was all ruined when you said that basically no matter what you do, you cant escape this reality. Eergh. No, Go do all those amazing amazing things and there is no way that any of these things are lessoned by the fact that they’re still within our reality. Escapism isn’t necessarily the best thing? Sometimes we gotta look at our reality and see how awesome it can be amongst the shit. And we should do all these amazing things to make it even better because if you could escape to a different world would you? If everyone who had something to give to society left then what state would humanity be in? A shit one. I for one am glad we can’t escape and I wouldn’t want to. Changing the world and making it a better place, whether that’s through charity work or by being a generally nice and lovely person, is awesome and the fact that we cant leave this reality isn’t disheartening.

 ‘But what do we have… is a world that might never do anything particularly amazing apart from destroying the world; memes’ – No, just no. People now are doing pretty fucking awesome things. Like, I don’t really need to say any more. Have you seen how far we’ve come? How much societal progression has occurred for minorities and women and the LGBTQIA+ community, and those who are disabled? Of course we have so so so far to go, but things are slowly progressing in general.

 meme discussions – they are relatable and show us how we all have relative experiences – but like no, memes are a cultural artefact which can be alike to Dadaist and surrealist work pointing out the absurdity of our time and how meaning can be warped and blah semantics, existentialism, satra, kafka, keikergaard, Joseph Heller, (I can’t be asked right now to go into a discussion of memes and existentialism and meaning because it’s interesting but long and tbh Dan should’ve covered that so I’m salty he missed this great and obvious discussion)

 ‘it’s what we do all day, and perhaps, that is us attempting to find meaning within ourselves in a time when the universe isn’t providing any easy answers’ – ergh, why do we always have to be searching for this true meaning you’re talking about? Maybe we just shouldn’t search for an intrinsic meaning? Look for love and kindness and humanity because who can argue with that, and let’s just not give your entire audience an existential crisis, or if you did want to discuss existentialism then please do so in a balanced, well researched and UPLIFTING WAY. This shit is serious and I’ve had so many breakdowns because of it but through YEARS AND YEARS of reading am I good and OK and not in that deluge or worry for meaning anymore. If you wanted to discuss such deep and truly worrying stuff as this, you needed to be more eloquent, less ‘ergh life is shit’ and just generally more optimistic (which I know you can be so, like, why was this so dreary and ergh)?

 so go reach for your dreams because what is important is that it’s your choice – erghhhhhh where did this argument go? We’ve missed so many steps in your discussion of finding one ‘true mission’ into you having a choice? Mate, I know how you could jump between these but you haven’t explained how you got here or how this all links up and whaaaaa? You need to back up WHY peoples choices make sense within the existentialist discussion youre basing all this on. You cant just say it and expect people to know?

 Sorry guys, that was my incredibly messy discussion of this video which was not at all eloquent because my brain is fried and I paused my rewatching of Supernatural to type this stuff up. 

Post-Moonless predictions— Septimal Moons’ endgame (10/10)

previous part<–[end]

for the last week or so, i’ve been talking about a large theory i’ve been writing. since finishing it, i’ve decided to publish it in parts, since it’s actually about 10 different theories all on one subject. since it’s all written out, i’ll try to be publishing one part of this per day.

essentially, this is a set of theories about what i believe will have to happen in order to properly lead up to a climax–the one we’ve been building up to for years and years now. so, these are what i theorize will happen after the first moonless vs beloved battle, broken up into ten different parts. each theory is explained and theres images for each one.

table of contents (bolded is the post you’re looking at):

moonless and beloved will rematch (1)

soubi will fall into a deep depression and possibly become suicidal (2)

ritsuka will arrive at seven voices, SM’s activity will be revealed (3)

SM will reveal that there was a mole in their organization (4)

kio will be the one to take ritsuka to goura (5)

ritsuka will find things out about soubi and the aoyagi family (6)

SM’s true purpose will be revealed. ritsuka will have to make a decision about good vs evil (7)

seventh SM member will be revealed (8)

nagisa will find out what really happened to sanae (9)

ritsuka will be asked to join SM to fill the aoyagi seat (10)

Theory: ritsuka will be asked to join the septimal moon council and will be faced with the choice of either leaving his childhood behind or letting the council fall apart without him. he will not make this choice by the time of the rematch.

this is the last point im making here, because everything else anything after this will be preparation for the rematch. there’s no other exposition to be had, and the story needs to lead to a climax (or at least, one of many) after this. the mysteries and loose ends need to be tied up and put to rest because anything after this has to be new information or focus on new relationship dynamics (ie seimei and ritsuka wherein ritsuka views seimei as ‘evil’, soubi and ritsuka wherein soubi is actively suicidal)

something that’s pretty heavily ignored in loveless is the fact that SM has been after ritsuka since the beginning. it actually wasn’t ritsuka who started going after them first. SM sent teams after ritsuka and didnt seem to know that he’d have soubi with him, hence why they sent breathless, a very low-level team that was not equipped in the slightest to go up against soubi and ended up getting crushed by him–twice.

in total, four teams were sent. breathless, who were battled twice, sleepless, male zero, and female zero, all increasing in difficulty. fearless was sent by seimei and nisei and beyond that, all the battles that follow are a direct result of the incident at seven voices. SM specifically sent four teams, though.

–and what’s more is that septimal moon sent those teams to retrieve ritsuka. not to kill him.

the logical conclusion is that SM wants something from ritsuka. the stipulation with the teams seems to be that if ritsuka’s team loses, then they ‘capture’ him and return him to SM, rather than killing him, sending him away, or leaving him alone. this is confirmed later on, when in wisdom resurrection, ritsuka is asked to come to goura. this is even further expanded upon when they get to goura and ritsu and the others seem to want something to do with ritsuka and how nagisa talks with seven about how ritsuka has finally arrived. this is all interrupted, though, of course, by ritsuka’s older brother barging in on the party and making everything go to shit and effectively putting off whatever it was that SM had to do with ritsuka by gorging out the eyes of a member, ‘kidnapping’ another, kidnapping soubi’s best friend, wrecking school buildings, hurting students, and stealing 30% of the data that SM had. obviously, SM had to do damage control after this instead of conducting a meeting with ritsuka about things.

in one of my previous points, i talked about how there doesnt seem to be an age limit when it comes to SM, as mikado is 14 and seimei was 17, and both seem to have been on the council for a few years. who’s to say that a 12 year-old couldn’t be on the council? it actually seems plausible to me, considering the facts.

the fact of the matter is that aoyagi is an open seat currently. even if hes not dead, seimei has been completely removed from the council.

septimal moon is an organization. a council. they vote on things. they need seven members on the board to run correctly, or else one of the sectors/branches isn’t getting run by someone. right now, theres a seat that no one has. and that seat belongs to the aoyagi family, who happens to have a son who has never sat on the council before, is alive, and is a sacrifice. he fits the requirements, and SM has been trying to meet with him since the beginning of the manga.

what im trying to say here is that the most logical course of action for septimal moon is to ask ritsuka to take the open seat on the council.

theres nothing else SM can do. seimei has a death warrant and is the cause of every single problem the council is having right now and the person who had the seat before him is either dead or retired, and i doubt you can have the seat back if you meet either of those two conditions. SM needs that first seat filled, and maybe part of their dysfunction as a group is that they dont have a full council and are missing a seventh member. regardless, theyve been trying to fill this seat for a while now, and now, in the timeline ive set up for these predictions, ritsuka is back in goura and there’s no better time to ask him to take the seat than now, when he knows about the history of the board and the purpose of the council and what the responsibilities would be.

the very last thing that needs to happen before the climax of the story (or the first of many) of ritsuka confronting his brother and soubi, is ritsuka being asked to replace his brother.

this means a lot of things for ritsuka.

first, up until now, ritsuka’s been a bit different from other sacrifices we’ve seen, but not in the same way that seimei is ‘different’ from other sacrifices. biologically and powers-wise, ritsuka seems to be the same as any other sacrifice. however, there is one caveat: ritsuka is very clearly rooted in the ‘normal’ world. he goes to normal school, partakes in normal activities, and has normal friends. up until now, hes been a total stranger to the fighter-sacrifice world. for the entirety of his life that he can remember (a whole 3 or so years), ritsuka has lived a fairly normal life (aside from the horrible abuse at home) without magical violent people in it. because of this, so far he has not functioned well in the fighter-sacrifice world and does not seem to share the same societal expectations and ideals that most people in that world do.

soubi, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. soubi knows nothing other than the fighter-sacrifice world and for as long as he can remember, aside from his foggy memory of his parents, has partook only in that world. it’s his entire life, and his entire identity. soubi has lived a life where people have always been hostile and violent towards him and hes always had to be the same for them (the source, i suspect, of soubi’s notoriously short temper). because of this, so far he has not functioned well in the normal world and does not seem to share the same societal expectations and ideals that the majority of people do. he is completely inept outside of the fighter-sacrifice world and occasionally seems frustrated or depressed that he’s not like other people and can’t be like other people. this will come into play at the end.

making this decision would mean that ritsuka has to step out of the normal world. he can still function in it a bit, but not like he used to. the council would become his life, and he would become extremely important to the fighter-sacrifice world and have a lot of responsibility on his hands. he would have to trade his identity of being a regular elementary school/middle school child in for being a government council seat holder. he would no longer be allowed to live the life he currently leads.

going along with that is the second problem: ritsuka would have to grow up.

as i stated above, ritsuka would be forced to give up his identity as a child and take on enormous responsibility. he’s a mature kid, sure, but this goes beyond that. ritsuka would have to completely trash his childhood and go right into adulthood and go to a place where he is treated like an adult all the time without having time to gradually grow up and get used to it. he’d have to do it all at once, and he’s have to learn very quickly, and he’d be throwing a huge part of his childhood away.

i want to bring this back to soubi again, because soubi didn’t have a childhood, either, and it was because he was forced to grow up fast to take on the responsibility to be a tool to be used by someone else for their own purposes. soubi did not have a childhood. his childhood ended the day his parents died.

im sure you can probably see by now where im taking this.

this is a huge decision to make, and i dont expect ritsuka to leave goura having made it. i expect him to want to seek counsel from someone who’s had a lot of experience with SM, but is not part of the counsel, as well as having been in the world their entire life. someone ritsuka actually trusts and someone hes able to actually get advice from.

hes going to try to seek advice from soubi.

this is assuming soubi is still alive at this point, which might be a 50-50 chance. if he is, soubi is going to urge against it as much as he allows himself, too. soubi wants out of this world. he’s discussed retiring. he’s discovered a family. he has people he enjoys being around. and ritsuka becoming part of SM would cause him to be wrapped right back up into everything he wanted to get away from.

and his reasons arent all selfish, either. he sees ritsuka’s everyday life. he can probably figure out that ritsuka needs a childhood and he would be miserable if he left his place in the normal world. so he’s going to urge ritsuka not to do it.

then ritsuka will be left with a choice that is his to make.

the way it is now, SM is dysfunctional enough that it’s bound to quickly fall apart. theres a chance–a good one–that regaining a seventh council member would mend the broken enough to make things work again. things could get back into working order again and the fighter-sacrifice world would remain as is.

as is, ritsuka’s normal life is good, aside from his mother. he has friends. he has a chosen family. he does well in school. hes happy.

so either ritsuka can choose to let SM fall apart, or he can choose to give up his happiness.