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#aka the people who naturally fucking live there
ruthlesslistener · 2 years
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idk how conservatives and other bigots can ever think that more diversity = less safe of a community. the more queer, interracial, and muslim a community, the safer i feel. like how can you not see a whole load of people from different cultures and lives peacefully vibing in the same area minding their own buisness and NOT go 'oh thank god theres some level of tolerance here I can just be myself and not have to be constantly on edge all the time bc of it'
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comicaurora · 4 months
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Nick Bostrom's "Fable of the Dragon Tyrant," which CGP Grey adapted into a video, left me feeling unsatisfied, and I got a certain unsettling vibe about the entire story.
I don't think it was the dragon's lack of agency, that just makes it an unusually traditional Western dragon.
You're a master at picking narratives apart to figure out why they don't satisfy. Do you have any insight, opinions, or cracktheories about why this story might be unsatisfying to some folks?
Probably because it's a very unsubtle metaphor casting the dragon as death, and death itself as a cruel, malevolent beast devouring and subjugating humanity for its own whims. This is very much intentional on the part of the writer. The paradigm of the story is that the dragon is huge, terrifying and incalculably cruel, and everyone lives their lives in the shadow of its terror or are just too deluded to recognize that it's COMING TO EAT THEM OH GOD
Intrinsic in this metaphorical structure is the idea that the dragon, aka death, is an artificial imposition on the natural order, and if we just got rid of the big ol' mean dragon, everybody would live forever and be fine. Accepting that the dragon exists is framed as a sign of desperation or even cowardice. This is an understandable read when facing a monster that only SEEMS timeless and inevitable (like LeGuin's thoughts comparing the current state of capitalism to the historical acceptance of the divine right of kings) but becomes bizarre when applied to something as legitimately factual as biological death. It's not even framed as unnatural death - the dragon specifically gets sent mostly old people. The metaphor is very explicitly about trying to frame death from old age as a big horrible dragon that everyone only thinks is unstoppable.
I get what they're going for here. The purpose of this story is to make the audience question if death is a true inevitability or if it can be fought, staved off, even defeated. But in the process, the story frames the systems of the world that have formed around death - doctors, pallative caregivers, will executors - as macabre gears in the machine dedicated to the genocidal cruelty of feeding the dragon.
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In the dragon tyrant framing, these people only exist to make the rest of the world more okay with flinging themselves down the gullet of the dragon and to streamline the process by which everybody dies. By casting death as the enemy, everybody whose jobs are based on the compassionate act of comforting and aiding people suffering from loss become reframed as collaborators with the incalculably evil enemy, and everyone who's ever accepted their own death becomes a loser. This is a deeply cruel way to frame people who dedicate their lives to helping people through one of the hardest and most tragic aspects of life.
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Damn, that's fucked up. Look at this eloquent idiot, explaining why we should be okay with letting a big dragon eat us because it's the natural order. Clearly he is wrong and it's not debasing at all to want to stay alive and not get eaten by a big dragon. This is a fallacy of false analogy: death is like being eaten by a big mean dragon. All his arguments look ridiculous when applied to getting eaten by a big mean dragon, therefore they must be ridiculous when applied to dying when your organs start failing because they've been running nonstop for nine decades and biological systems accumulate wear and tear like literally everything else in the universe.
Entropy increases; systems break down, from DNA to planetary orbits. Successfully shoot down the dragon and you'll end up outliving everything you thought was eternal, even the stars. The goal of immortality isn't really to personally witness the sun exploding, it's to have more good time. It's to make your twenties last into your sixties. It's to keep your back painless and your vision good for longer. We want to postpone the story's end as long as we can, and so we extrapolate "more time" into "I never want to die, I want to be young and healthy and hot forever" even though "forever" doesn't exist. To look to "forever" is to understand that your culture and language will drift, your home will eventually crumble out from under you, your shoreline will erode and change, your climate will transform, your tectonic plate will subduct or shatter, your moon's orbit will slow and tidally lock, and eventually your sun will start burning helium and cook your planet. You don't want "forever" to look like that, you want it to look like your twenties felt. But at that point you aren't fighting the Big Mean Dragon That Eats People, you're fighting the ocean and the biosphere and the earth and the stars, trying to hold them in place against entropy so your immortality can have an equally immortal world to enjoy it in. No, this argument doesn't want true immortality, it wants their twenties to last longer. But it can't admit that.
Back to the story. There's a condescending and spiteful tone in the narration. Death (being eaten by a big mean dragon) is OBVIOUSLY awful and we should all be fighting as hard as we can to make it stop happening. Even a child can see it.
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The story even helpfully adds a lengthy moral explanation at the end, in case you didn't understand that the dragon was the inevitability of death and we should dedicate all our resources to figuring out how to make a big rocket and shoot it.
"Nobody should ever die" is generally understood to be a childish dream with extremely obvious and unpleasant consequences that would turn its realization into an unending and waking nightmare, and once out of the confines of easy metaphor, the story tries to act like that wasn't what it was just saying. But its more realistic proposed substitute, "It would be great if people could live longer and have more healthy, youthful years in them," is probably the world's most uncontroversial statement. This story frames it like a bold revelation that the world will attempt to beat down and crush out of a misguided acceptance that Big Mean Dragon comes for us all. It's a morality fable whose conclusion is "I hope science improves the length and quality of our lives, potentially even to the point where we never have to die at all," which has been the number one goal of huge swaths of science since the invention of agriculture. This is not a bold or controversial take. It's just being written as though we're all looking at the naked emperor and pretending he's wearing pants.
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catboybiologist · 4 months
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Hi! I'm Sierra. Time for a pinned post refresh.
Otherwise known as CatboyBiologist, or @hi-sierra (my SFW blog [this one is SFW too, but less so]). This page is remaining active, but if you want to find me somewhere else, I use the same username on reddit, Instagram, co-host, and tech.lgbt. This is me:
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Trans woman, PhD student in molecular biology, boymoder, shitposter, freediver, hot girl on your phone, hiker, rambler (this post included), tgirl tummy tuesday supplier and enjoyer, former femboy, bane of bioessentialist fuckwads who try to use biology to validate biogotry, flaming bisexual, 196 nanocelebrity… whatever was the first thing that brought you to my blog, I hope it’s enough to get you to stay! I post selfies, hornyposts (minors and people who are averse to that be warned), stuff about the ocean, posts about my growing sense of wanderlust, my adorable lil tortoise, tutorials for transfemmes and GNC people, rambles about science, documentation of my own transition, rambles about transness, rambles about the eroticism of programming a machine to feel arousal, rambles about nature, and random shitposts. Please send me pictures of cute animals in your life!
If you wanna support my science career and my transition, consider dropping a tip here! PhD salaries are notorious for being negotiated to be exactly the cost of living…. And then forgotten about for years as inflation drops that below minimum wage. So I’m always a little strapped for cash. Anything helps!
Links to some of my tutorials and relevant resources under the cut:
I'm tracking my transition, and some people have said they found this helpful! This spreadsheet is generally updated monthly:
Usually, I write a little journal to go with it when it updates- you can find that under the #trans journal on my blog.
If you're interested in checking out some of the things I'm trying to write, here's a post with links to individual stories I'm making:
https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/741010247774306304/writing-consolidation-post?source=share
My femboy guide, written well before I started HRT, but still has relevant info:
A "boyboob" tutorial, aka how to make it look like you have cleavage in an outfit that looks better with it:
A quick and dirty guide to taking better selfies, with a specific emphasis on people who may have stopped hating their body recently due to transition:
And here's a few of my personal favorite little rambles and posts about my transness, in no particular order:
CW for transphobia on this one:
A massive shoutout to @foldingfittedsheets for this amazing art of the lil borgir holding a trans flag:
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I adore this so much <3 if you want to support their art, her commissions are open and really sweet!!!!
And of course, a massive shoutout to @whalesharkcat for this lovely pixel art of my tortoise:
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I still love this so much, and will continue to into the future <3
For preHRT selfies, search the femboy tag. For post HRT selfies, use the "trans selfie" tag. I've been on HRT since August of 2023, so I'm still very early in the process! Day to day, I present male, but I plan to change that around the 1 year mark.
I guess that's about it! One final note is that I've been alluding to video/podcast style things for a while now. With my aderrall prescription, I've actually put in a lot of research work that might lead to 1-4 of those, so that might actually happen in the near future! No promises of course, life always catches up to you.
And if you liked my previous pinned post better, here it is:
Anyways, if you read this far, thanks for sticking around and bbyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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hangman request incoming ‼️‼️
so the reader is best friends w rooster and whenever she’s around hangman he’s always quite rude to her, only bc he’s harbouring huge feelings for her which he isn’t very used to. then maybe he goes too far and rooster needs to talk some sense into him (reader could be a pilot or just a close friend of rooster’s)
SORRY i’m not great and giving requests but i hope there’s something in there that you like !
Ahhhh I LOVE this request!! And I really loved writing this piece, which may or may not turn into a series.. oops I couldn't resist haha
Less Talk | Part I
Jake Seresin x F!Reader
Summary: Jake can't stand Bradley's best friend. What's more, he's probably in love with her, which really pisses him off.
CW: mild angst, Hangman being a dick aka Hangman being himself, unresolved sexual tension, swearing, drinking
Masterlist
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“Do you ever not have an opinion?” Jake watches you irritably before taking a long swig of his drink. He needs the alcohol to calm his nerves so that he doesn’t inadvertently push you off your chair.
You glare at him. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A nice, safe space for Seresin to dominate the conversation without opposition.”
Jake lets out a steady breath. No one riles him quite like you do. “We’re talking about food, Y/N. It doesn’t exactly have global ramifications.”
“Actually, it does,” you respond matter-of-factly. “And are you saying I shouldn’t have an opinion unless it is ground-breaking in nature? Maybe I should just sit here quietly and look pretty.”
“Ha!” Jake cackles. “I would love to see you try.”
“Hangman!” Bradley, who’s sitting to your right, gives him a disapproving look.
You make a grimace. “I will never give you that kind of satisfaction.”
Jake meets your gaze with a hostile look. The thought of you satisfying him in any way sort of disorients him. He makes a face at you because he can’t deny that if you were to just sit there in silence, you would be exceptionally pleasant to look at. Pretty, even… maybe. Instead, he says, “How the fuck does eating avocado toast for lunch have global implications? I would love to know.”
“The recent surge in consumption of avocados - thanks to health nuts such as yourself - has led to an unprecedented increase in price to the point where those people whose culinary staple for generations has been the avocado cannot afford to keep it their diet.” You fold your arms over your chest to drive your point home while Jake just stares at you, speechless. No other woman in the world has ever rendered him that. He glances over at Bradley who is looking back at him with a slight grin. Just when Jake thinks you might be all talked out, you add, “And don’t even get me started on the environmental burden of growing enough avocados to sustain the whole of North America’s health culture.”
Jake blinks at you. “Trust me, I wasn’t planning on it.”
“The avocado trade is contributing to local violence and extortion” – you continue, but Jake cuts you off.
“Okay, okay!” he says. “I’ll never eat an avocado again.”
“Just quit spreading your avocado propaganda!”
“It’s not propaganda! They’re actually good for you!”
“How wonderful it must be living in a world where your needs come before everybody else’s,” you say bitterly.
“Can we please talk about something other than avocados?” he says tiredly, his eyes sliding to Bradley in a plea for assistance.
“If you’re looking for a topic on which I do not have an opinion” – you say, but Jake interrupts you again.
“Does such a topic exist?” he asks flatly.
You roll your eyes at him. “Did you ever think that maybe you’re the one who should talk less?”
Jake nods. “Certainly. I should talk less to you. Because you’re driving me crazy, lady.” He stands up after having downed the rest of his drink. “I’m getting another beer and, when I return, I’m going to have a conversation with my good friend here, Rooster.”
Bradley shakes his head and looks over at you. “Don’t mind him, he’s just a bitter, bitter man.”
“A bitter man who needs to be schooled on occasion,” you mutter.
Jake turns to look at you with wide eyes. He slides back into his seat. “I heard that,” he says dangerously, inclining into the table.
“Good,” you respond, leaning forward so that your noses are nearly touching. “You were meant to.”
“You are so fucking annoying,” he whispers, his eyes slipping momentarily to your mouth as you lick your lips.
“Hangman, come on, don’t be a dick,” Bradley says, also putting his weight into the table in an attempt to intervene.
Jake’s eyes are still scanning your face as you glare at him without moving away. The truth is, he could probably listen to you talk about the problematic export of Mexican avocados for hours just to watch your mouth move and to hear the passion in your voice. But he’s tired of the tunnel vision he experiences every time your boyfriend ditches you and you end up going out with your best friend, Bradley Bradshaw. This is the fifth time this month that you’ve accompanied Rooster to ‘guys’ night out’ and it’s becoming more and more difficult for Jake to shake you after each successive evening of relentless verbal sparring.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake can see Bradley slowly inching off the table, having realized that he may be a third wheel. But Jake doesn’t need him to be some sort of wingman in this bizarre scenario where he may or may not be completely in love with an unavailable woman who happens to be an expert at pushing all his goddamn buttons. Normally, he would remedy this kind of matter with a good old romp in the hay but, considering the fact that you are in a relationship, this option is, unfortunately, off the table. Besides, he’s not entirely sure it wouldn’t have the opposite effect on him, anyway.
But, despite all the reasons for avoiding your pull, Jake can’t look away, not even for a second; not even to get another beer. He moves his face a millimeter closer to yours, just to see what would happen; not because your breath smells like Peach Schnapps and not because your eyes are absolutely destabilizing him. His nose is about a split second away from brushing yours when your phone buzzes on the table. You flinch, withdrawing immediately, leaving Jake to watch you try to frantically pick it up. You shoot him one last intimidating look before rising from the table.
“Hey, babe,” he hears you say as you walk away.
“What’s your deal, man?” Bradley says as Jake watches you step outside.
Jake shakes his head solemnly. “Doesn’t she have other friends to play with?” he asks. “Why’re you always babysitting her?”
Bradley fixes Jake with a knowing look. “Hangman,” he says with a suggestive squint to his eye. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Jake stares at Bradley. “Yeah,” he says. “I want to tell you that your bestie is a pain in the ass, Rooster.”
Bradley’s jaw hardens. “You’re way out of line.”
“Come on, I can’t be the only one who finds her absolutely infuriating. The girl never shuts up!”
Bradley narrows his eyes. “And you don’t, at all, find that sort of thing attractive?” he says sarcastically.
“Attractive? I find it immensely aggravating, actually.”
“So aggravating that you argue right back every time,” Bradley points out with a smirk. “Movies, books, social constructs. Last week, I heard you guys bickering about space waste. What do you even know about space?”
“What does she know about space?” Jake responds angrily, pointing toward the door with his entire arm.
Bradley leans back in his seat with a sigh. “I know that you don’t actually hate her, Jake,” he says. “You can stop pretending.”
“Who’s pretending?” Jake looks up at him aggressively.
Bradley purses his lips. “What if I told you that her boyfriend is a shithead?”
Jake’s jaw tightens but he continues to stare at Bradley coldly. “Why the fuck would I care?” he says.
Bradley returns his callous expression before looking away. “Been trying to get her out of that relationship for months.”
Jake lets out a sigh. “She’s a grown-ass woman, she can decide for herself if she wants to end it.”
Bradley nods. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Jake rises from his seat, his eyes unintentionally drifting up to check if you’re still outside. He sees you pacing back and forth through the big window of the bar. You look like you’re arguing. Big surprise. “Want another beer?” he asks Bradley.
“Please,” Bradley says.
Jake nods at the cocktail you’ve been drinking. “She going to have another one?”
Bradley shrugs. “Probably, unless you’ve pissed her off enough that she decides to leave early.”
Jake scoffs. “She’d be doing me a favor.”
Bradley shakes his head with a laugh. “I don’t even know what she’s drinking, man.”
Jake shifts his jaw. “I do.”
Bradley gives him another piercing look. “Shocking,” he says with a smirk.
“Shut the fuck up, Bradshaw,” Jake says under his breath as he walks away. He glances back at the window behind which you’re now waving your arm around aggressively and yelling into the phone. He tears his gaze away from you, frustrated with himself for even giving a damn.
For some reason, he feels a painful pang in his chest, like he’s jealous of whomever it is you’re tearing into. You’ve never gone off on him quite like that and he can’t help the resentment this fosters. He tries to suppress the impulse to go out after you and rip your stupid phone right out of your hand. That would surely reclaim at least a fraction of your attention. Then maybe he could do something unexpected; something that might persuade you to channel your passion in a more constructive way.
He orders three drinks and walks back to the table with the beers before going back for your cocktail. When he returns, he exhales sharply, giving Bradley a humorless look. “Why’s her boyfriend a shithead?” he says, feeling his hands forming into fists before Bradley even has a chance to respond.
But, right when Bradley’s about to speak, you walk back into the bar.
Read Part 2
A/N: Hope you enjoyed this piece! It's my first Hangman story, so let me know what you think!
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writingwithcolor · 1 year
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Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning
Last year, I made a very quick, basic post about thanksgiving: Indigenous Day of Mourning aka Thanksgiving. if you want the sources for what I’m about to say, check there.
This post will be about why you cannot just go “fuck the pilgrims, we deserve a harvest festival no matter the origin” or anything else that tries to sanitize the holiday.
You Are Still On Stolen Land
As a result, you are still actively profiting off the genocide the pilgrims committed.
I don’t care how educated about racial issues you profess you are. I don’t care how you behave the other 364 days of the year. If you try to distance yourself from the origins of Thanksgiving simply because it makes you uncomfortable to see the blood under the tablecloth, you’re not practised in sitting with actually being anti-racist. You know what to say, but you don’t practice what you preach.
You Are Eating Our Food
Pumpkins/squash, beans, turkey, cranberries, potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, pecans, maple syrup?
Those are all Native American foods that we taught you how to grow and harvest.
You wouldn’t have any of your traditional Thanksgiving foods without us. The ideal meal of Thanksgiving is ripped right from Indigenous practices and cannot be separated from it.
The fact that these foods have been taken out of Indigenous hands and appropriated by colonizers as the bounties they somehow deserve for landing here is a tragedy, and people need to remember where their food comes from and who had been growing it for thousands of years.
You Had So Much Because Of Massacre
Thanksgiving became an annual tradition after 700 Pequot men, women, children, and elders were killed, freeing up acres of land that colonizers promptly took over. The sheer amount of extra acreage that colonizers had because of their genocide contributed to the excess of food experienced during Thanksgiving. That land had been structured to support more people originally.
Colonizers had never, ever, deserved that much food. They were taking more than they needed, not leaving much behind for the animals that depended on a balance to be held with humans. They took far more than was needed, throwing the balance off in nature.
Maybe I’m reaching. But I think that if you suddenly had 700 less people in the area, after all of the growing and planting for the total population had been done, you’d have excess food? Or even before the growing, you’d have land set up to support 700, that I’d assume you’d still use, when you were a much smaller population?
Sit With Your Own Grief
If this makes you feel bad and that you shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving? Sit with that.
I’m not telling you that you have to give up Thanksgiving traditions. I’m telling you that you cannot divorce them from Indigenous people.
You are giving thanks for our massacre. You are giving thanks for stealing so much from us that you had this excess.
Yes, you can need a break; yes, you can need time with family and friends. None of this is inherently bad.
It’s not even bad to eat local food from Turtle Island! Part of having a sustainable diet is eating locally, in time with the seasons.
But remember, it is Indigenous people who first gave this to you—and then you stole far more than you ever needed from us, killing us to get what you felt you deserved.
Do not divorce Thanksgiving from Indigenous people for your own comfort.
We are still here. We must live with the aftermath of colonizers stealing from us every single day.
If you feel this way hearing about our history, imagine what we feel like living it.
Donate to a local org/Indigenous person this Thanksgiving
I (again) don’t have the spoons to compile a list of vetted charities, but look for local tribe language revival programs, COVID relief funds, and activism around the Indian Child Welfare Act currently in front of the Supreme Court.
Pay reparations for what you have taken, and remember. It is also Indigenous Day of Mourning.
Indigenous people, drop your links below.
~Lesya
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ftmtftm · 3 months
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I've been scrolling through your blog, and I saw your post about discussing the racialized nature of gender. As someone who has several transmasc POC friends, and someone who's a nonbinary POC themself, I wanted to give my 2 cents.
It's important to understand that "woman" in the "man vs woman" gender binary is a colonialist, white supremacist construct, especially in Western countries where you are the numerical minority. My trans friends aren't on T, they haven't gotten top surgery, we are all quite young. But they all have numerous stories about being addressed as "sir" which brings them euphoria but as one person said, while we were making fun of the amount of white people in our club, "Due to my race and skin color, I get masculinized."
And again I'd like to emphasize, that since we're young, none of us really have medically transitioned due to financial and familial barriers. Their hair is long, our binders we definitely have notable chests, and even if they dress masculine, it's notable that no one in our communities would ever gender us properly. It's often white people calling them "sir." Again, I think this reflects how gender performances in mainstream queer communities are deeply White. Like, trans boys talk about having haircuts, but only one of my friends has that wavier, more manageable hair that will help them pass. When you've got curly/kinky hair, the standards are different. For a white person, what's the difference between a "girl" Afro and a boy "Afro"? White cis people have a harder time identifying us, and literally talk to any black girl, and they'll tell you about being mocked, dehumanized, and called "manly".
I don't have much else to say. These are just my personal experiences. But if you want to be an ally to POC in the queer community, this is why it's so fucking important to bring in colonialism/imperialism/white supremacy into discussions of queer liberation. My biggest gripe with ignorant white queers is when they ignore their white privilege, and act like "cishets" (AKA the patriarchal system regulating sexuality and gender) is the only enemy. Because cishet POC deal with plenty of shit with being infantilized, masculinized, feminized, seen as brutish & dangerous, the list goes on. Doberbutts had a post saying, "Believe me, your family's going to care more about me being black than my queerness." towards his white partners. Acknowledging and creating a framework that centers these intersections of queerness and race into your beliefs is true allyship. This is why if you're not anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, ACAB...I do not think you care for queer liberation. None of us are free until all of us are free.
Please don't view this post as an attack. But this is my perspective, and I thought you'd be receptive to me sharing my lived experiences.
Oh I absolutely don't view this ask as an attack, and I really appreciate you bringing these things up because you're right! Like, just very plainly: You are right and your and your friends lived experiences are extremely important to the conversation on the racialized aspects of gender.
It gets me thinking about where Misogynoir and the social White Fear of Black manhood intersect for Black trans men in particular. Because Black women and Women of Color in general are masculinized by White gender standards and the ways in which Black trans masculine people are gendered in alignment with their identity is absolutely not always done with gender affirming intent. In fact, it's often actually done with racist intent or is fueled by racist bias when it's coming from White people or even from non-Black POC.
That's kind of restating things you've said but differently, it's just such a topic worth highlighting explicitly since it's extremely relevant to the conversation that's been happening about Male Privilege here the last few days.
I do think I know exactly what @doberbutts post you're talking about and yeah. It's just truth. It's something Black queer people have been talking about for ages in both theory and in pop culture (my mind immediately goes to Kevin Abstract and "American Boyfriend") where Black queer/trans identity is both materially different from (neutral) and is treated differently from (negative) White queer/trans identity in multitudes of ways and those differences are worth sharing and exploring and talking about.
Genuinely, thank you for sharing! I try really hard not to lead these kinds of conversations outside of explicitly referencing back to non-White theorists because I don't particularly feel like it's my place to do so, but I will always provide a platform for them because they're extremely important conversations to be had.
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sissa-arrows · 8 months
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Mayotte doesn’t have any water left.
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Mayotte is a French overseas territory. Aka a modern colony.
The majority of the (indigenous) population is Black and Muslims and yes it matters to the situation. Mayotte is not like other French overseas territories white people don’t go there on vacation and they don’t move to live there.
It became French in 1841. It used to belong to the Comoros. The indigenous people living in the Comoros and in Mayotte are genetically one and the same. In 1974 France made a referendum asking if they wanted to be independent or not on the 4 islands of the Comoros. The deal was that the votes would be counted TOGETHER. When France counted the vote they realized that the island of Mayotte “wanted to stay French” so they changed the rules and said that the vote was independent for each island and that because of the result in Mayotte a second vote would happen. That’s how Mayotte was officially separated from the Comoros and became a French overseas territory.
The inequalities between mainland France and Mayotte are crazy. In mainland France 15% of the population lives under the poverty threshold. In Mayotte it’s 75%.
Now it’s an island and islands are known to have very limited ressources in water. Except the situation is getting really bad. 30% of the population doesn’t have access to running water all year long they just live in such an extreme poverty they can’t get running water at home. But it reached the point where the 70% of the population who had access to drinkable running water now only have drinkable running water 2 DAYS A WEEK. ONLY 2 DAYS A WEEK.
Their only solution is bottled water. Except it cost twice as much as in mainland France and the stores are running out of bottled water the second they restock.
The administration (white people) is managing this like a bunch of fucking idiots and despite the low reserve they are still letting huge leaks of multiple liters of water happening in desalination factories.
At the same time the one and only natural lake of freshwater is dry.
France is letting it happen because it is not affecting white people. France is responsible they wanted to keep Mayotte for fishing then it’s their fucking job to make it so the population can live with dignity and access to basic needs like water. But they don’t care because the victims are Black and Muslims.
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borzoilover69 · 11 months
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Alpha kids and why I like them (AKA the loneliest kids in paradox space)
(Elaboration under the cut.)
To get the nitty gritty out of the way, I like the Alphas because they're so openly flawed and relatable as characters, yet incredibly talented and ambitious in their desire to achieve and succeed, even though they're doomed. They're doomed to never even come close.
Take a look at the starting of the Beta's session, versus the Alpha session. The beta session starts in spring, a season thematically connected to nature, new beginnings, change, and opportunity. Their story grants them the chance to change and grow and realise their full potential, of which they do with the help of the trolls. They are the heroes, they are the ones that will create a new world.
The Alpha session starts in fall, otherwise known as Autumn. It's fitting that it's called the fall, given it truly is. Fall symbolises the late stages of maturity, decline, decay, and death. Their story is not one of creating, of realising their potentials. They were told to wait. There was to be no positive growth, no positive development or true adventure and beginnings, the planets they inherited were barren, and with only each other as company, it put a strain on their relationships that broke them apart. They were never called heroes. They were called Nobles. Their session, their entire lives, were ruled by the VOID. Not BREATH.
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Even their tools that we first learn of them using are thematically on par. The betas, with their alchemiter, create a retinue of cool things to use, upgrade their fraymotifs, so on. They create and thrive. The alpha session is given a gristwidget, to conserve and survive.
They struggle. Terribly. The one thing that was supposed to save them, to be the biggest thing in their lives, was a massive disappointment and year long wait with nothing that much going on. They struggle with seeming independent, never feeling like enough (again, the void) and their expectations were such a let down for what they all expected.
The game was supposed to be the time where they reunited, where mind you, they saw their LIFE LONG friends, and finally had the chance to grow and change with each other, but it fell first. To quote a buddy of mine.
youre telling me they were given horrible starts and the game that they were anticipating their entire lives ended up killing them and oh it started a downward spiral of the very bonds theyve spent so much working up to? to.. wait for better people to save you? fuck my life man.
They resonate me because they have such high expectations for themselves and refuse to communicate because of that, because for so long they've been doing it on their own it becomes genuinely hard to talk about the things that suck. There's a VOID separating them all, whether it's Janes VOID in knowledge, the VOID that Roxy handles by indulging in underage drinking, the VOID of Dirks heart, splintering and constantly plaguing his thoughts, or the VOID that Jake has to struggle with as he borders on knowing, and being willfully ignorant if it means he can be comfortable. There is a VOID. A VOID separating them from their friends, from their achievements, and their potentials.
It's so hopeless. Their aspects, their themes, their stories and relationships, they're never enough, it's a struggle of not being enough. Do you know what it's like to finally make a change and oh, it turns out it's going to be debilitating to you? You get your big break and.. it's not it.
Their expectations crashed on the shores of opportunity and they could only watch and wait for their ancestors, who they never got to truly know to save them. The true heroes. Even their alpha versions were defined as heroes, adamant on fighting the condesce and bringing her down. They were never shown as human beings, they were yet another expectation to hold themself up to and aspire to be, which they could never surmount to.
They struggled to amount to something in their lives and they fell short. They became for the most part worse versions of themselves, and they blamed themselves terribly for it. Their moment isn't a rise, it's a fall. Everything just got worse. They're stuck with that feeling of insecurity, of inadequacy, that void, because they couldn't do what they needed to do as well as their dancestors, the kind of "I know we were doomed to fail and there's nothing we could've done to change it, but I feel like we are lesser for not finding a way."
The guilt that the betas had to go for YEARS to get a happy ending, and they didn't break as much as the alphas. The betas seem so much stronger than the alphas in a "if THEY could handle it, couldn't YOU GUYS handle it?" way, but it's not about which group had it harder, it's different. The alphas had so much bullshit happen, more than the betas, because they didn't really have the exposure to outside world that told them "hey you shouldn't always hold yourself to such high expectations constantly it will do a number on you if you expect so much from yourself and your peers." but it didn't exist.
The betas didn't grow up in shattered worlds. Maybe they grew up in households that weren't intact, but it was never the same level as the alphas, not even close. The alphas were broken from the start, in time, in space, in beginning. A VOID. They're so unbelievably tragic for that.
And the saddest most tragic part is. We don't see them change for the better. We see them *come to terms* with their flaws, but in ways that are detrimental in the long run, it's almost fitting that the only one that adjusted for the better was Roxy, Rogue of Void, and even then she indulges as soon as she's given a chance to do so. Because it's hard to grow up and change your ways. It's hard to grow up and change and grow and nobody really understands.
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alpaca-clouds · 8 months
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The Search for a Solarpunk Anime
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Allow me to think aloud for a moment. Because I noticed something.
Whenever people ask for movie recommendations or anime recommendations for Solarpunk, a movie that often gets named is Netflix's Bubble. And on one hand... I get it. The aesthetic of the movie is more Cozy Apocalypse than Solarpunk (aka lots of greens on the buildings and what not, but not because they have been planted there to make a better environment, rather than because the buildings falling into disrepair). But it scratches that certain itch, aesthetically.
Yet, the movie does not really feel Solarpunk to me. While one can argue that the folks who have fled into the bubble zone are kinda anarchistic in that they do lack clear hierarchies, they also do not do a ton of mutual aid, rather competing over ressources. Which to me is the issue. The movie does not have a lot of that Solarpunk spirit. Not much in terms of either mutual aid or environmental protection going on. It just has a pretty green aesthetic. (Though it should be said: Fucking darn, that movie is pretty.)
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Of course, the obvious answer to name when it comes to Solarpunk anime movies is Studio Ghibli. Obvious, because the studio is one of the central inspirations behind the genre. So, duh, yes, there are quite a few Ghibli movies out there that are pretty darn Solarpunk. Most notably of course Nausicaä, Laputa and Princess Mononoke. These movies all are not only Solarpunk in some aesthetic aspects, but also when it comes to the themes inspiring them. Which is kinda funny to me, because neither of the movies is classical science fiction - making clear that scifi really is not a prerequesit for the genre.
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But there is also another genre, I would say. And that genre is the movies, that do not have much of the aesthetic - outside maybe a vague cottagecore aesthetic - but have a lot of the themes I associate with Solarpunk.
To me two of those movies are Ame to Yuki: Wolf Children, and Misaki no Mayoiga. I already talked about the second movie, but just to sum up: Both movies really go deeply into the aspects of community building, mutual aid and also living in harmony with nature in some degree. Both very much show that we are really good at helping each other. And that you can have a good life without rigid organisation. And I really fucking love that about those movies.
Funnily enough: While funnily enough Makoto Shinkai with his generous aesthetic does have some scenes in several of his movies that just have the aesthetic flair of Solarpunk, I would say that thematically Suzume is the one most in line with the genre. Because it, too, as a lot of themes of mutual aid and just forming community and what not.
And I do not know. Maybe we are gonna see more of that stuff in the future?
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esamastation · 6 months
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Part thirty-four of Shizuroth, aka, the SOLDIER General's Self Saving Shizun.
Ao3 link.
Previous parts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three
-
Sephiroth feels a little better after an evening of meditation and a full night of sleep. Things look a little better in the light of day, and though the question of what the fuck he'd going to do about the war is still there, it has been put off. In favour of monster hunting!
"You seem… excited?" Angeal comments as they prepare to go.
He is! "Mn," Sephiroth answers, and carefully doesn't bounce with eagerness.
Even if the monsters of Final Fantasy can't hold a candle to the convoluted, messy and lazily put together nature of the monsters in PIDW, they're still interesting! Especially since he isn't sure what they actually are and how they work. Advent Children and Crisis Core really make it so unclear, because, like, everything turned into energy sparkles when it died? And he thinks in the movie one of the Sephiroth copies - weird to think about them now - summoned some monsters with magic? And then there was Zack in Crisis Core. Who turned into sparkles when he died!
Not everything can just disappear into energy, right, you need living things dying and rotting and composting to make up soil and stuff! If plants just disappear when they die, what do people eat, what were all these buildings made from? Plus he distinctly remembers coal being a thing in this setting, there was a whole town that got shafted because of it and everything, so fossil fuels exist, therefore stuff must leave behind physical remains! Except when it doesn't?
So! Is death like instant ascending here? Or like it descending, since all energy returns to the Planet? Sephiroth is pretty sure that Aerith left behind a body, and there were definitely corpses in the original game - but again, in the prequel it was really unclear. Enemies in combat disappeared, but cutscene death left a body. Except when it didn't!
Ah, the limitations of technology.
Still, he's interested in seeing how the creatures would look and feel and compare them to those he knows from PIDW. Final Fantasy VII had some really weird monsters, and he has a bet going with himself about how much they resemble awakened beasts or yaoguai. 
Angeal looks at him and then smiles, hoisting the Buster Sword to his back. "Ready to go, then?"
"Ready," Sephiroth agrees.
"We're going to have to talk to the Colonel first, but don't worry - I'll handle the talking," Angeal says. "He's an… old-fashioned soldier." 
Sephiroth arches a brow. It sounds like a warning. "Which means…?"
"He doesn't like SOLDIER, he thinks we're stuck up and get our abilities handed to us, we don't deserve our reputation, the usual stuff," Angeal shrugs. "Just ignore it and let me handle it."
"... If you say so."
They head outside together, and Sephiroth takes a moment to look around and try to be an objective observer. This place isn't really anything like the towns back home, in PIDW - the aesthetics are mixed, and though they're more like home than Midgar was, it's as if the place was squeezed through a funhouse mirror. It's just a little off.
And of course, there are no locals anywhere to be seen for a full comparison - just Shinra troops, infantry men and SOLDIERs. Who, the moment they notice him and Angeal, stop to stare and point and whisper.
Has the… incident in Midgar already spread this far, or is this really what it's like being Sephiroth all the time?
Depressing.
"Here," Angeal says and leads him to another house, apparently being used by the Colonel. "Remember, let me do the talking. You just stand there and look imposing, okay?"
Sephiroth snorts. "I think I can manage that."
The Colonel didn't look happy to see them, but then, he doesn't look like a man that's ever really happy. He sizes Sephiroth up and then scoffs. "It's about time. I don't know what kind of discipline you SOLDIER Firsts enjoy in Midgar, but this is a war front, sir, there are rules here."
Does that mean Sephiroth isn't a General then? 
"Right, you're right, of course, sir," Angeal says placatingly. "Well, we're here now, and we already have missions lined up, so -"
The Colonel ignores him and comes around his desk and to Sephiroth's face. "You've been in and out of Wutai for most of this war, isn't that correct, SOLDIER?"
Sephiroth blinks at the man, slowly. "I suppose so." Behind the Colonel Angeal looks panicked.
"What was that?" The Colonel asks dangerously, narrowing his eyes. "You suppose so?"
Sephiroth narrows his eyes back.
The Colonel continues. "When talking to an officer of superior rank, you answer yes sir, or no sir. You do not suppose! Now, do you have experience in the war or not, SOLDIER?!"
Oh, someone is feeling very insecure in their boots, aren't they?
Now, Sephiroth could handle this with all the tact and delicacy of Shen Qingqiu… but even Shen Qingqiu wouldn't have swallowed that kind of spiel without biting. The original definitely wouldn't have! And Sephiroth is supposed to be a villain… well.
Sephiroth smiles - the Colonel recoils.
Last night he'd reread everything there was on his phone about Wutai, going through all his missions again, trying to get as much intelligence as he could. Funny, the things the tutorial left out. 
"I'm sorry," Sephiroth says sweetly. "Who are you?"
The Colonel goes a little red. "Excuse me, SOLDIER?"
"You're barking at me as though at a private, expecting me to go yes sir and no sir," Sephiroth says mockingly. "And yet I have no clue as to who you even are."
Behind the Colonel Angeal gapes and then lifts a pleading look to the ceiling.
The Colonel sputters. "You, you - How dare -"
Ah, you gotta love zero IQ bullies.
"I was given a whole slew of missions and orders," Sephiroth says softly. "All are very vital and high priority. I'm to slay monsters that have killed your men, I'm to hunt down spies you've clearly failed to find, I'm to clear a guard station you haven't been able to get near, I'm to weaken a fortress you cannot even touch, and ten other things besides. All my mission files are very clear. And you know what they all have in common?"
He leans a little closer to the Colonel - right in his purple face. "Not a single one of them mentions you."
Then, before the Colonel can recover, Sephiroth turns on his heel with an imaginary mike drop and saunters out, feeling a whole lot better about everything. The sun is shining, the troopers are scattering at the mere sight of him, and the air is fresh and sweet with natural Qi.
Already this day is looking up.
Angeal, clearly deciding that evasion was the better part of valour, hurries after him. "We're going to pay for that later, you know," he says, sounding defeated.
Of that Sephiroth doesn't have any doubts. What good is a one-time bully? There'd either be a horrifying scene of comeuppance to bring home the realities of war, or a heartfelt discovery and understanding about how they're not so different after all, or whatever else. 
"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it," Sephiroth says cheerfully. "Now. I was promised monsters."
Angeal sighs, glancing back at the house commandeered by the Colonel. "... I guess we better clear out anyway. Alright," he motions. "Right this way to the monsters."
Sephiroth grins at his bitchy tone, and together they head out.
-
SY can have a petty bully scene, as a treat.
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relaxxattack · 8 months
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what's your least favourite fanon aspect of homestuck
disrespect of troll culture, ESPECIALLY quadrants (aka the idea of saying “oh they’re not Really Like That, their society just tricks them” and “the other quadrants are unhealthy/platonic/not real romance, they only do it because society tells them to”)
their society does control them and convince them of shit to a certain extent but hell that happens to the humans too (most obviously dave)
and i think it’s a billion times more interesting to accept that the trolls are a whole ass different species with different cultural aspects and context for everything and literal different biological needs than humans have. LE can be said to have fucked with the society to an extent, yes— BUT BEFORUS LITERALLY STILL HAD QUADRANTS. clearly quadrants are a natural fucking part of troll biology that they evolved with!
they aren’t just humans painted gray! “human romance” isn’t naturally more healthy than any quadrant just because it’s human! human romance is lacking so much that trolls need in their lives! karkat especially is not going to be into human romance because it ‘represents all quadrants’ (it doesn’t)
maybe it’s the autism about alternia talking but come on man that’s a whole ass different species, try to respect the culture a little.
second least favorite fanon thing is uh. fanon rosemary being really cool and dignified. because anyone who thinks theyre put together didnt even read the comic i mean. look at this shit.
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WHO is calling this dignified. you could even say davekat have their shit more together than rosemary does.
and also uhh. the fanon idea that june is totally naive/oblivious. she’s constantly making sarcastic little wiseguy jokes in like acts one through four to get under people’s skin. i think people mistake her sort of willing repression of shit and general lack of game knowledge as naivety.
sorry i gave you three 😭 i had to say em before i forgot
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meraki-sunset · 1 year
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How many blood colors now in your AU?
You'll learn more about them on the CSAU epilogue but here's a quick rundown
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I placed the SpriteBloods in between the canon bloods acording to the colorweel. They might look out of place due to their brightness but if you check it they are where they're suposed to be in the colorweel
Facts about CSAU'S EarthC's hemospectrum
Lime blood resurfaced naturally a couple generations after the gods left, from Karkat's descendants, since there was no mandatory culling for any grub born with that blood
Mutant limes like Karkat always get mistakenly placed in the Crimson blood since Karkat's blood in basically indistinguishable from Arquius's
SpriteBloods are sometimes called Bright Bloods or Neon Bloods, since they have a diferent saturation than the other bloods but are not considered mutant in any way.
Chartreuse bloods can be kinda wacky looking sometimes because they have Davepeta's and Erisol's features, like wings, double horns, fins and psionics (it's really really rare to have all of them at once but some poor bastards do)
Tavros went from being the third lowblood color to the third highblood color, the colorweel oposite blood from his original blood, tying up with him now being a mirrored oposite of his original self, along with his hair going from black to white, his self self-esteem going from low to high, his body going from not able to walk to able to fly. Also as a big fuck you to Vriska, he is now higher on the hemospectrum than her
Crimson blooded trolls can have technopathic habilities, AKA comunion with computers, being able to hack or repair machines (with practice and training those habilities) from the inside. often have thick straight hair
There's nothing too diferent from violets and lilac bloods, except lilacs have a higher tendency of feline features and a higher percentage of females, like with jade bloods (this comes from the fuccia side, who are usually girls)
Chartreuse usually look like either Erisol (seadweeler + 1 Psionic eye) or Davepeta (white hair + wings). But they can come up mixed, have 2 psionic eyes and wings, white hair and fins, etc.
Azure bloods being half lusus, have parental incstincts just like jade bloods and the two cast work together in the brooding caverns, and are prone to have their own ofspring.
After centuries of natural non-selective breeding, life expectancy of trolls narrowed and people of diferent bloods have now closer life expectancies. Theres still a diference between bloods and you will live longer the higher on the hemospectrum, but EarthC trolls no longer live hundreeds of thousands of years
That's all i can tell you for now, like i said you'll learn more about it in the epilogue as the charcaters live on Earth C
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imshymorph · 2 months
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Gather around everyone, here’s some soft!Gaz headcanons. Idk if it's a blorbo or me ranting and fangirling but i need to share the brain rot. another post today cause fuck it, i’ve been thinking about it for a while. also this was like a constant stream of thought and not proof read.
I truly don’t understand why this man gets ignored so much and I never will. He literally has everything you could ever want, saying he’s a ten doesn’t cut it. And yet I barely see people talking about him. (Except the gaz nation pookies, I see you).
This man absolutely bags the hottest significant other, doesn’t even know how. Don’t get me wrong, he 100% has rizz but he’s also just naturally attractive and inviting so i feel like by the time he starts to flirt on purpose it’s been two hours of pure smoothness. He’s also absolutely whipped but plays it off really smoothly.
- - - - -
Not only does he bag the hottest and meanest pookie aka you, but he also absolutely knows he did. And he’ll let right about everyone else know. I do think he’s more private about his life than say Soap, so it’s not like he’ll stop a random recruit and tell him about you (which i truly believe Johnny would do). But he has absolutely followed Price around base while he tells him about the two weeks leave he took to be with you.
Poor Price on his desk, dealing with the paperwork that comes as a necessity after Ghost and Soap blew something up during a drill that didn’t involve explosives at all. Not only is he having to fill out like fifteen different forms and reports, but he has Gaz sitting across from him, scrolling through his gallery and showing pictures of the place he took you out to on your Friday dinner date. Not only that but if Price just pretends to look but doesn’t actually pay attention Kyle will know and insist until the captain actually looks at the slideshow.
He doesn’t hammer your dates' knowledge onto Soap and Ghost as much, but he’ll definitely do subtle flexes. He chest the time on his phone instead of his watch so they’ll see the picture of you he has as a background. If someone brings up a weekend plan he’ll say how he can’t because he’s already going out with his darling. Subtly will tell anyone that will listen how you got him his new shirt, pants, cap, whatever it is tbh.
He also knows every single product that you prefer, doesn’t matter what kind it is. Makeup, skincare, cologne, fabric softener, snacks, beverages, food places, clothing brands. He doesn’t care, he knows all of them by heart. It’s like he has a six sense too, every time you’re close to running out of them he’ll randomly stop in the store on his way back to you from base and get them.
While i headcanon that Johnny gets into skin care after his darling introduces him to it (which you can read here, if you want). I believe Kyle absolutely has his own routine and that he is the one who first brings up the idea of having a spa night once a week. He’s the one to get the products, he even goes all out and does them themed, like by scent or colour or something.
Has a bunch of hoodies in rotation (or any other clothing piece you might steal from him) always making sure to wear at least one of them for a few days before “forgetting” it at yours or “forgetting” to take it to base once you’ve moved in together. He knows how much you love wearing them and how important it is that it smells like him. So he dutifully makes sure you always have a fresh Kyle™ piece of clothing available. Also it absolutely works for him too because he takes back the one you’ve had with you meanwhile. The mix of your cologne, body wash and fabric softener his favourite scent for sure.
And last but not least of my Gaz is the perfect boyfriend agenda (for today) is the fact that i know he just gives the best back massages. You don’t even have to ask for it, he’ll just come to the living room, lightly pat your shoulder so you move forward. He fits himself between the couch and your back and just gives you the massage of your life. He just laughs it off when you tell him he could be a masseuse if he ever retires from the military.
It takes less than 5 minutes to have you absolutely melting, and when he’s pleased with how comfortable and relaxed you look he just pulls you back against his chest. His arms wrap around your waist and his chin rests on your shoulder as you sit between his legs, the both of you watching a random show he saw good ratings of.
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rjalker · 3 months
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Ableist: If you don't do X [having a job, not being homeless, voting, going out to physically protest despite no one wearing masks these days and the general inaccessibility of public spaces and /literal marching/, ect.], you're a bad person. No exceptions.
Physically disabled people: Yeah, a lot of us physically can't do that.
Ableist: Well, this disabled person [who has access to dozens of recourses you can only dream of] did it, so you have no excuse!
aka I'm still not over my mom's husband claiming that it doesn't matter if most homeless people are disabled, because one time he saw (saw, not met) a man with only one arm and no legs in a high-tech powered wheelchair who had a job, so homeless people who claim they can't get a job are just lazy.
he had no answer for why I was somehow magically different from disabled homeless people, because he knows I'm disabled and can neither get a job nor health insurance nor disability SSI because of the nature of my disability and not being born rich enough to be able to pull over 2k out of my pocket on a whim to pay for a psyche eval out of pocket, let alone pay for every test that would be required to ~prove~ that my hypermobility prevents me from standing long enough to do literally any job within walking distance.
no but really with protests, immuno-compromised people have been begging for years at this point for self-proclaimed leftists to wear masks, but everyone fucking refuses. But now abled people want to be holier than thou and say if you don't physically go out to protest it means you don't care, while ignoring the physically disabled people who literally physically cannot do that for any number of reasons, including the fact that every other protester there would be actively threatening your life by refusing to wear a mask to stop you from dying from Covid19.
Edit: Can't believe I forgot ableists' most favorite crime disabled people can commit: not being able to live independently!
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aihoshiino · 11 days
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it's never going to come up in canon but i do often wonder a lot what the result of ai surviving and raising aqrb as their mother would have done for grsr's 'presence' in their lives and identities, so to speak. obviously both of them have differing and (in aq's case) complicated relationships to the people they were 'before', but how much of that is nature and how much of that is nurture (or lack thereof, i guess.......) is interesting to consider.
ruby pretty clearly straightforwardly thinks of herself as sarina 2.0 at least as of the last real interrogation of this aspect of her identity, but earlier in the series, we actually see her drawing more of a dividing line between the two identities, codeswitching between speaking as 'sarina' and 'ruby' particularly strongly at the start of the sweet today arc. i do think these aspects of her identity make sense in tandem - if she considers herself a continuation of sarina's wishes and dreams, i think it makes sense for them to both overlap and yet be differentiated in the way your past and present selves are at once different and the same.
aqua's r/s with gorou's identity is pretty messy and hard to fully nail down though i think that's in part because aqua himself doesn't know what the fuck to make of it, really. as a baby, we see gorou's personality much more prominently but once we timeskip to the twins' middle school days, the current aqua almost feels like an entirely different character. and in a sense, he is: he's lived a whole life's worth of time so far in a completely different body and brain, having interactions and relationships with people gorou amamiya would never have met in his life and occupying a totally different social role to his past self - i think it makes sense to call the sum of those differences 'aqua hoshino' and differentiate them in the same way as early!ruby does btwn her and sarina: the same, yet different. i do think aqua is intended to be read as separate enough from gorou as to be an individual person, just because a lot of things about him (in particular the aqkn and aqak romances) read Very Differently if he is intended to be an unbroken continuation of gorou's identity as opposed to a 14~18yo boy inheriting it. it's not that aqua concretely Is or Is Not gorou - both of these things are true at once and it's this lack of a yes/no binary and associated failure to compartmentalize as needed that seems to be one of the main causes of his Gorou Related Anguish
but!! all this stuff is infinitely more complicated by the fact that the twins were both traumatized by losing ai in their very early childhood. aqua in particular, as we later find out, was essentially retraumatized because gorou's guilt over his mother's death (+ his grief over sarina's, who he associated w/ai) was already floating around in his brain when all this shit happened. so how much of the current aqua is just the result of his personality naturally developing like that and how much is his brain getting fucking mgs4 microwave corridor brain blasted at a formative age?
then of course there's this smoking gun ass line
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what does this mean, aka akasaka. i'm going to laminate you.
i do personally like to think that in an ai lives au, the twins ultimately do fully step into their lives as 'aqua hoshino' and 'ruby hoshino' without feeling beholden to their past selves - not abandoning or forgetting them, but making the most of this second opportunity as new people to purify their regrets and lay them to rest with love. this is mostly because i don't think either of the twins could ever sincerely and wholly accept ai as their mother w/o that compartmentalization and just considering that makes me want to scream cry throw up eat fiberglass blow up a building and smash breakable dishware.
i just want the hoshinos to be alive, together and happy and mentally well....................... is that too much to ask
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Dead Friend Forever - What do we know about Non's brother
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From the family pictures I am inclined to believe the brother is the older sibiling.
The younger one wears red in one of the pictures and as @shannankle point out in their colors in DFF post, Non is red.
In the family photo you can see the younger sibiling hiding behind the older one, indicating shiness, much like Non.
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The other thing we find out that lends to that is that New doesn't live at home. And his parents send him money. Which makes me think he is in University, which would make him at least 19 three years from the present, which would make him at least 21 in the present timeline.
Other stuff we know (that I don't have screenshot for):
Non despite looking close to his brother in his childhood pictures can't rely on him anymore in the present, we only see Non try to text his boyfriend (❤️ > the red heart aka Phi) and never get a text or try to send a text or call to his brother.
I can guess that would make the brother feel pretty damn guilty.
Non and New's parents fight a lot, there is not a lot of love there, and that is probably why New stopped coming home. Again, guessing.
THAT'S IT!
Obviously everyone is thinking the same thing about the identity of the brother: Tan. Literally the only option within the friend group.
I am conflicted with that theory. Because even though I like it a lot, and there is stuff that does make sense.
Phi feels like the one more in charge, but Tan has more moments where there is an angry expression on his face, when the others talk about Non, and in other places.
Tan is the one that is the most insistant on getting the truth out of the group, getting them to confess, why? I mean why would it matter to get the truth, if he is that angry.
How the fuck did a poor normal uni student manage to fake documents and mess with two schools and the goverment for long enough to finish high school and go to uni again.
Why would a brother wait that long, hanging out with people that could be responsible for your brother dead? Can you even fucking imagine how angry that must have made him.
Why does Phi feel more responsible for Tan's well being if he is younger? Like the inhealer question.
Why does Tan nervous smoke in the wearehouse with the inhealer in hand if he is one of the killers?
Some of the moments where Phi and Tan are talking feel a bit weird if he is the brother.
This one is more doyalist: I know actor ages in thai bl mean less then nothing, but If I am right and the brother is older then did they have to give the part to an actor who is literally only a month older then Barcode??? They are both 19 this is ridiculous. They have actors in the cast that are older then both of them, why would the one who is only a month older play the secret older brother??
Now some of these I have theories for. Like Phi is the one more in charge because New was estranged from his brother, they weren't close, and Phi is a very natural and charismatic leader. It might also be part of the act. To make himself younger.
The fact that he wants to know the truth more might have to do with the dissaperance of Non, if him and the parents were stuck not knowing anything all this time, he might want to get the boys to confess everything just to get the satisfaction.
If Non is dead it might have taken them a bit to actually figure out everything that happened and investigate bit by bit and formulate a plan, that is why it took them 3 years to get revenge.
Tan was nervous because he wasn't sure the plan was going to go well. Phi asks more about his well being even if he is younger, because he is just like that (that is how he was with Non, asking if he was home, if he took the medicine etc.)
But of course the biggest reason for it to be Tan is very simple: If he is not the older brother, then WHO THE FUCK IS HE? He has to be in the plan, he is much to insistant on the wanting the truth, but if he is not the brother then who is he?
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Clow theory time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the brother is exeternal. Phi has been screaming about the ninth person since the begging I think that was the clue. I think, the brother is the third killer and the ninth person, and I think he is an adult that we have not seen before.
Like say someone who could get a job working for the people that take of the house
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So he could learn the way, learn the layout of the forest, learn Uncle Dang habits. So he could know that he takes the scoter up there not the car when he is alone. And he could know where to set up the fucking steel rod that took of his head.
So he could take his time setting up that fucking temple, and learning where the cameras are.
And so he could make sure to be the one to be assign to get up there to get them, so that no one would come to save them, because the killers could not have known that Fluke would cancel the ride, and that seems like a coincidence you would not rely on if you are planning revenge for 3 years!!
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