brokensoulmates2000

[brokensoulmates2000]

i need gay rights because literally not a single self-proclaimed cis/het 'ally' understands the alienating experience that comes with being the only gay person in the workplace.

i am a gnc butch lesbian. i use he/him pronouns. when i came out to my manager regarding my pronouns (i had been an open lesbian since the moment of my hire), she told me that she supported me, but she could not enforce or ask our clients to use the correct pronouns for me. she told me it was something i would have to learn to deal with. she never uses the correct pronouns for me unless a person from a different department (who also happens to be LGBT+) is present. she is our HR in addition to manager.

none of my coworkers in my department ever remember to use my pronouns. if i remind them, they go over the top with the "im sorry's" and the "im still learning" and "you know i try my hardest's!" and "i swear im not homophobic!", it has been over 6 months since i came out. if i say nothing, they continue to use she/her (unless that other lgbt+ person from the other department is present, then they miraculously get it right).

sometimes they call me 'girl'. they always flounder and correct to "man-boy-uh youknowwhatimeanright". they laugh it off. they never bother to ask what terms i am comfortable with, or if i even cared in the first place. they don't care about my gender, they never bother to ask. somehow the subject gets changed every time i try to tell them, or set a boundary.

once in a while in a slow shift, the conversation will hop to our dating lives. somehow, it always jumps to how men suck and how dating a woman must be so much easier. they wish they could be gay and not straight. every time, they'll stare at me expectantly, like i am an animal at the zoo. no matter what i say, positive or negative, i must be lying. i cannot be that happy in my relationship, or if i have any issues, they must be minor. if i say 'why don't you try dating a girl then' to their remarks, they'll laugh, say something like "there is no way i possibly could" with that special tone of disguised disgust.

i am a prop, at work. they tell me about how much they love their kids. how they could bring anyone home and they wouldn't care. "they could be black, brown, or purple," they'll say "it could be a woman or a man! I support gay rights!" Then they will talk about how hungry they are, and how they will be going to Chick Fil a for the 4th time this week. 'as a treat'. it is thursday. they talk about going to Hobby Lobby again for christmas decorations, or another sale. sometimes i think i can taste blood.

its june. they talk about the pride parade and how excited they are to see the queens and their 'funny costumes'. they talk about how fun it is to go and watch, how they like the free things the corporations hand out. they don't want to bring their younger kids though. they're not old enough. they do not know that the first pride was a riot. they do not know what happened during the AIDS crisis, how many died. they don't really care when i try to tell them, they'd rather focus on the fun parts of the parade. the spectacle.

i wear a pronoun pin, to make it easier. still somehow no one can get my pronouns right. a client notices it. commends me for "being brave" and "coming out." she never uses my correct pronouns. i stopped wearing the pin after the 11th person asked me if my name on my name tag was my real one, and after the 45th person went out of their way to use incorrect pronouns every sentence. my manager, the HR, did not care.

i need gay rights, but somehow everything got resolved when they allowed us to marry in 2015. to our allies, the work is done. somehow i am left more alone than when we started.

[brokensoulmates2000]

Jenin, Jenin (Mohammad Bakri - 2002)

[brokensoulmates2000]

‘Children of Shatila’ (Lebanon, 1998) film by Mai Masri. In this scene the youth of the Palestinian refugee camp interview an elder with a video camera.

[brokensoulmates2000]

Lestat... you must think me an idiot.

#iwtv

[brokensoulmates2000]

It’s very clear that the family is not functioning well, that there is something very, very screwed up about the dynamics here. It’s not fun, it’s not pleasant, but you endure the years because you cannot have relations with humanity. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022)

[brokensoulmates2000]

if i think about them too long i’ll go insane (text from @/veniennes on tiktok)

[brokensoulmates2000]

picture this. you are a member of the band of the hawk. you and your comrades have somehow been transported to another dimension. monsters are appearing out of nowhere. the sky is bloody red. everybody is screaming. you are about to die. you look up desperately for one last view of the world and you see raiders captain guts and commander griffith partaking in ardent emotional passionate eye contact with each other as the latter is consumed into some weird fleshy monster mass and the former screams his name loud enough for you, dying, to hear. the last thought in your head before a monster snaps you up is "you have got to be fucking kidding me" 

[brokensoulmates2000]

Remember kids, Nazis don't deserve their kneecaps.

Also if any of these are incorrect pls lemme know

[brokensoulmates2000]

[brokensoulmates2000]

okay but saying “i wish i had known you sooner” — like the love in my heart is growing so big and fast for you that i wish i had the opportunity to have you way earlier by my side, because i want to love you longer than i can do now. my love for you reaches my past and makes a place for you.

[brokensoulmates2000]

I don't know if you went into this before but if so let me know. When romance is discussed I see that they mainly pit just about every single ship there is against griffguts, mainly with Gutsca and Grifflotte whatever. Sometimes people bring up the possibilty of Griffith actually having undisclosed feelings for Casca, as another reason the eclipse occured. Aside from the Gennon scene the other two points mentioned was the wagon scene where it looked like he was trying to rape her or that dream

Sorry I ran out of characters in the last post so I’ll continue from here: And in the dream sequence where Griffith imagined Casca was his wife and Guts was there child? Did you think that what happened in the wagon was Griffith attempting to rape Casca and was the dream sequence suppose to reveal ANY sort of feeling he had for her?  What do you think is the case and why? 

I definitely don’t think the wagon scene or the dream sequence (I call it a nightmare lol) suggest that Griffith has feelings for Casca. And I don’t think the scene in the wagon was a rape attempt, because I mean for one Griffith stopped when Casca told him to stop, so yk, qed lol, but also because I think it’s meant to be a huge contrast to the Eclipse rape, rather than like, a sneak preview. It’s an offer, the only way he can make that offer without the ability to speak.

Griffith is at his absolute lowest point here. He’s lost everything that he perceives gives him worth, and Wyald’s just literally and metaphorically stripped away his last lingering ability to deny this. He overheard Casca tell Guts she wants to be held right before the wagon scene, and as Casca is bandaging his hand she reflects on how Griffith could always comfort her with just a hand on her shoulder - but now it’s her turn to do that.

So imo Griffith is offering himself to Casca for two reasons:

1. He desperately wants to be this person again:

She’s shaking, she wants comfort, and Griffith wants to be the strong leader who can ease her trembling.

It’s a way he’s denied his vulnerability in the past:

But he’s simply no longer able to be this person.

It’s a humiliating, and depressing reversal of their roles, emphasizing how far Griffith’s fallen.

2. It’s sexual for one or both of these reasons:

Guts and Casca just had comfort sex. As a failed attempt at initiating comfort sex, the contrast highlights Griffith’s removal from their new dynamic. Also, since Griffith knows they’ve hooked up, this could be an attempt to insert himself into that dynamic and redress the balance because he’s afraid of being left behind.

What may be a harder sell depending on your reading of Griffith but makes the most sense to me is that frankly, Griffith is desperate. Wyald just gave the Hawks a run-down of how fucked he is for life - he can no longer be the Hawks’ hope for the future, and he can’t even live on his own. He’s been hiding behind that hawk mask, clinging to the last vestiges of his image (like when he asked Guts for his armour), and now that’s gone. If someone doesn’t take care of him, he’s dead. Griffith is someone who judges his worth by what he can be to other people, and now in his eyes he’s nothing but a burden with tens of thousands of corpses worth of guilt hanging over him.

And kind of hammering this point home for the reader, outside the wagon Judeau is backing up Griffith’s own depressing image of himself too - he’s telling Guts to take Casca and run because otherwise she’ll basically end up stuck taking care of Griffith, while he himself offers to take Griffith with him because he feels like he owes Griffith. And after this scene, Casca cries because she feels like she can’t leave Griffith behind, even though she wants to leave with Guts.

Ironically, considering what Griffith overhears right after, Guts is the only person who actually wants to stay with Griffith now, as he keeps trying to tell the people who keep telling him to leave lol:

So, imo Griffith’s offering sex to Casca mostly because it’s something he can offer that still potentially has worth - it’s something he can give in exchange for being taken care of.Casca was in love with him, and lbr Griffith knows that, so this is theoretically something she might want.

And Griffith like, sees sex as transactional. It’s something he can trade to those with more power than him, who can give him something he needs. Money, with Gennon. A kingdom, with Charlotte. And here it’s Casca, for security - plus maybe Guts. So imo trading sexual favours absolutely seems like something Griffith would fall back on if he’s desperate.

And this leads right to Griffith’s hallucinatory nightmare after he overhears Casca telling Guts to leave - he’s envisioning the life he just asked for, believing Guts intends to leave, and it’s fucking horrific.

Griffith is living in what seems like a state of permanent dissociation. Guts is out there, still pursuing his own dream, totally out of their lives.

You mentioned the child being Guts, as in a surreal nightmare, but I think he’s just intended to be named after him. The “he” swinging his sword out there somewhere who Casca mentions would be the actual Guts, and this - blondish - kid is presumably Griffith and Cacsa’s.

imo a p disturbing way of underscoring that Guts is gone but far from forgotten.

Anyway yeah to me this whole sequence reads like Griffith grasping at the last straws available to him.

So to basically just sum up My Take on all this:

Griffith offers himself to Casca in the wagon both to try to reclaim a piece of his past self, and in an attempt to secure his future by offering Casca something she wants. And imagining that future, sans Guts, drives him to suicide.

So like, I don’t think it’s indicative of Griffith having any romantic feelings for Casca. It’s more a painful illustration of Griffith’s current powerlessness and desperation.

In case you want to read more lol, I talk about these scenes more thoroughly and with more context and build up in like the first half of the fourth part of this Griffith analysis.

[brokensoulmates2000]

New Things to Beware on the Internet

On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.

Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.

Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".

This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.

What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.

Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.

This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.

What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.

I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.

Be cautious out there.

[brokensoulmates2000]

Berserk, chapter 054 Reunion in the Abyss (深淵の再会, Shin'en no Saikai)

"Crying for other people and thinking about other people. That might just be a fantasy. But if it's a person with a heart like that, even if that person is a demon or a human, I'll accept that person." Miki Makimura in Devilman Crybaby 2018.

Remember when Guts said to Rickert “you could never really hate Griffith”? I felt called out completely.

As a reader, I am empathetic to the pain Guts carries, and I recognize his ambivalent emotions, the ways he has to make himself a certain way, how he can’t make himself forget the eclipse.

And I find myself very close to Casca - one of the most unbearable moments for me reading was to see her point of view in the dream sequence, the moment her heart and mind broke.

And I can never hate Griffith. And that’s why this story keeps me on my toes so much more than others, makes me think and think and feel so much.

Hate is such not the point. If you read a story and your point is hate, or to assign roles such as heroes and villains, then I don’t think Berserk is for you. (There’s an infinite amount of fantasy out there built precisely for that). Or you are missing out certain ideas Miura was painstakingly building and, if we are going to see the ending he had envisioned, you probably won’t be happy with it.

Berserk is a fantasy story written against the idea of evil, against the naïve point of view on giving judgment and punishment, against those common and institutionalized conservative practices born to maintain order and status quo and to relieve people from the burden of reflecting too much. These habits have enormous consequences in the way we prioritize condemnation, punishment and exclusion instead of forms of critique, understanding, acceptance and inclusion, to fight against the causes (causality) that drive people to make bad choices.

So yes, I can never hate Griffith because I looked at what Miura showed me with a non-conventional and non-conservative understanding of the possibilities of framing characters and stories.

Misunderstanding someone and that someone ending being alone, not being seen as deserving of empathy, love and acceptance, shunning people, people being rendered incapable of expression or communication, not being able to ask for help, not being able to face suffering and sorrow in others, isolation and loneliness are investigated so much in Berserk, together with all the possible ways and consequences of child abuse and neglect, it is really hard to not believe that Miura was making a point. The idea of evil is making us blind to the very real and common things that are going to facilitate our weaker behaviors and more basic instincts.

How many of us would have let Nina be herself, weak, desperate and scared and constantly making selfish decisions and still would have accepted her time and time again like Luca does? How many writers would have discarded her? But Miura included her in the story in a way that isn’t for comic relief or to ridicule her. There are so many examples, this is just an easy one.

I’d like to write down more of my impressions. But it is going to be a slow process and I will do it only if I can find pleasure in it. So these drafts are probably going to be done at whim and out of order.

Let’s go back to the scene above from chapter 54 for now.

Guts is taking in Griffith’s conditions after a year of imprisonment and torture. When he says his name, Griffith opens his eyes and stares sharply and a little crazed at Guts, lifting his arm to try and strangle him. Guts doesn’t even register the gesture as menacing, hugging him and starting to cry. Griffith observes his face and lowers his hand, his expression changes completely. But he isn’t able to cry. His tearless eyes are another detail that adds so much depth to this scene, where the one expressing extreme emotions and pain is Guts. Griffith can’t cry even now and this is one of the rarest instances when someone else does it for him, only it took him being destroyed for that to happen. I am amazed at how much depth Miura is able to communicate with gestures and expressions alone.

I am also glad that, immediately after, we see also Charlotte’s and Casca’s reactions. The princess has tears in her eyes too, even without fully understanding the situation. Casca is in a cold sweat, trembling because she is more attuned to darkness and she is intuitively aware of the horrors of that place. I really like Charlotte’s character and I think she plays a big role in the story that gets overlooked. Since the moment she is introduced, there are four main characters, not three, on the stage of the romantic drama. So I really want to talk about her soon.

[brokensoulmates2000]

Been rewatching Utena with my gf for like the 4th or 5th time? Had to doodle the gals because they are very special to me

[brokensoulmates2000]

I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

id in alt

[brokensoulmates2000]

And suddenly everything is different. They have looked at each other.

[brokensoulmates2000]

it’s so sad when cishet girls are like “I’m a feminist but I’m not a hairy lesbian” like don’t be so hard on yourself<3 I’m sure you have some good qualities too<3