#im gonna go do todays wordle

[ourfag]

i think part of the resistance i’ve seen in response to the view of ed as an abuse victim—not just the view of izzy as someone who abused ed, but of ed as someone who was abused by him, as opposed to interpretations that pursue an image of Nuance and Complexity (unnecessarily, because their dynamic has heaps of both, but there seems to be a popular impulse to conflate complexity with shared culpability) by characterizing their relationship as being toxic/unhealthy in equal reciprocity, or as “mutually abusive” (oxymoron)—i definitely see the influence of racism there, but i think the racism is also working to amplify an adjacent issue where we tend to receive very specific cultural messaging about What An Abuse Victim Looks Like, and ed is excluded from a lot of that criteria.

he’s outspoken. he’s boisterous. he’s Very Cool and he Wears Leather. he’s physically bigger and browner than the person mistreating him. he spends the first season with a big grey beard, he’s covered in tattoos, he projects the image of A Man’s Man, to say nothing of his being a man in the first place. we see him get aggressive and we see him get angry (and sometimes we even see both at the same time). we see moments where he’s surly, prickly, insensitive, arrogant. his survival techniques and trauma responses incur collateral damage to other people, and in the second season this extends into affecting people we actually sympathize with. he’s extremely private about expressing fear. without examination, his professional relationship to izzy seems to position him as the one with the power slanted in his favor.

most damningly, we see him react multiple times to izzy’s abuse with physical violence. this is behavior that gets referenced all the time in the construction of narratives condemning subjects of physical abuse, let alone emotional abuse. which is why writing that intends for its audience to interpret a character as being unambiguously A Victim Of Abuse will often, for simplicity’s sake, avoid showing the character regularly engaging in anything of the kind.

and again, all of these departures from the image of The Model Victim are compounded by his being a man of color.

without any of the shorthand designed to point a big flashing arrow at his mistreatment, all we have left to work with are the words and actions we see from ed and izzy onscreen. who instigates conflict, and how does the other respond? how are they able or allowed to respond? how do we see them speak about each other to outside parties? does one go out of their way to control or isolate the other? what consequences does either party stand to face in saying “no” to the other? in acting against the other’s wishes? in trying to leave the relationship? when either of them attempts these things, how do we see the other respond?

i realize and appreciate what people are driving at when they garnish their analysis with disclaimers that they’re not saying ed’s just a poor innocent abuse victim, they’re not saying he’s a perfect angel who’s never done anything wrong, and that’s true, but these are points already contained implicitly in statements like “this show’s protagonists act like human people” and “ed’s emotional struggles are portrayed in a realistic and believable way.” my assumption is that these disclaimers are anticipatory responses to worst-faith interpretations of any discussion that attributes any victim status to ed whatsoever, so i definitely sympathize with their inclusion, but a (very small) part of me still worries about them potentially reflecting or reinforcing a belief that there is any way for someone to behave towards their abuser that imparts a responsibility for them to make right whatever damage the abuser receives, or for that matter any degree of ambiguity over their status as an abuse victim in the first place.

part of what i find so gratifying about ed as a character is that i don’t feel like the show’s writing is pressuring me to consider that ambiguity at all. which was a really nice thing for me to discover!

and tbh—did using ed to deconstruct The Model Victim even factor into the writers’ agenda?? ive got no clue. im guessing no? ??maybe?? probably not?? but if you create a main character whose central premise is that he feels trapped in a performance of exaggerated masculinity that he’s desperate to escape, and then you set him up with a character premised on embodying a tangible obstacle against that escape, then i guess that’s the natural shape your story’s gonna be inclined to take

#man thats a lot of words when i couldve just said ‘im not an ed apologist bc he has nothing to apologize for’ and yalld get the message #had to get it off my chest though #abuse tw #sorry about the verbosity Im Aware. Its An Ongoing Issue #this is actually after i went through and edited to make it as concise as possible #the good news is ive finally managed to limit myself to a mere half dozen commas per sentence #the bad news is all these words are mush in my brain now and i can barely tell if theyre actually saying anything #are any of these paragraphs related to one another? i dont fuckin know #i do know i agreed with them when i wrote them though #am i procrastinating in the tags because im nervous about posting this? maybe. shut up #im gonna go do todays wordle

[keytaryourheart]

A LOT HAPPENED TODAY…

i knew the sweet hot merch was dropping today because it’s good old bandcamp friday. what i did not know was that there was gonna be a lovely fresh single paired with it.

i also stumbled upon DEFS. i searched for RJM on youtube which usually has brett domino as the first result. but it didn’t this time, it had RJM come up first with a different pfp, DEFS.

i was a bit confused then absolutely FLABBERGASTED by the fact he’d only gone and done a leave the door open cover. not to mention the fact it was by this so called “DEFS”.

so this project has been going on for a while now and somehow it’s gone completely under my radar which is a bit embarrassing.

the point is im part of the DEFS party now!

it’s come at such a perfect time for me. i was watching old rocco la bête videos and tried seeing if his website was still up and it wasn’t. which was a shame. i felt kinda sad that RJM wasn’t really doing much for the “madinverse” per se. back then it seemed like all these crazy characters were knocking about and had all their own social media pages, websites and songs. but at the minute it’s only really brett and rob doing stuff given c-bomb has been inactive for ages. turns out i was WRONG! (btw im excluding APPLZAFT because there wasn’t really a persona attached the project)

this character seems c-bomb adjacent in terms of /character/ with the spiky hair, big glasses and brash tone. also with the whole “PRE-EMINENT. POST-PUNK. SHEFFIELD.” ordeal. okay now listen, i don’t know anything about music so i can’t tell you what genre this is or who he may have been inspired by. the only punk i’ve listened to extensively is stuff by the tuts. i guess i know punk from lady parts too but YEAH OKAY SO THE GENRE IS PUNK!!

c-bomb had a “political song” (mutha nature) but it wasn’t really punk-esc (yeah he’s EDM but i mean in terms of lyrics). but DEFS is very steamroller, the track not the album. honestly it’s overall very on brand for RJM if you think about:

get the tories out

manifesto

fireball

steamroller

middle-of-the-road comedian

everybody defecates

trees

you know i could talk for hours about RJM

motifs but i’ll spare you. i’ll be mainly talking about so sue me! first of all, when i found out the difference between initialisms and acronyms a few months ago i was blown away. i told everyone i knew but he’s taken it a step further and put it in this song.

he talks about the mundane and how it continues until the world ends. which is why i said it’s similar to MOTRC (when’s the earths just dust and dying embers), fireball (if we’re ever in the middle of nuclear war) and trees (will someone tell me how it’s going to end // how much time have we got to spend). the things he lists at the start (will they just go on forever) is so perfect. i love weird stupid stuff like that, things that i’d like to ask if they’d go on forever are: ipads, the bachelor, oodies, starbucks, wordle and liquid eyeliner. he does a similar thing in blackberry: am-dram phantom //!road race on tandems // …overpriced candles // … reaching out the fandom.

after the silly stuff he actually says some serious stuff. after a quick google apparently punk critiques “pop culture and conventional society” which is basically what happens. societal issues being the monarchy and the working week (anti-capitalist yet some how just released a song call buy stuff! lol i know it was ironic. plus im supporting a *smaller* artist directly not doing a haul off shein.)

tbh i can’t understand some of it because i’m terrible with these things and maybe also a bit because of his accent i’m sorry.

back to the acronyms, i feel like he always has to add someone sciencey. in this it’s lasers, previously (most notably on steamroller the album) it’s been mentions of acrylamide, dysprosium with opposing magnetic charge, hydrogen peroxide, bituminous coal. funk also has similar stuff with ngc4945 which actually has NASA in it. i just love the physics lyrics. even tho i do not understand physics and it was my second worst subject i adore mentions of supernovas, black hole entropy, thousand watt incandescent bulbs, the earths curvature and the hippocampus.

okay i went really off topic. but anyway there’s a little skit part after that which SCREAMS alistair green (i was gonna say alastair campbell that would be very wrong). not that RJM hasn’t done skits before, but this one reminded me a lot of mr alistair green rather than stuff he’s done as brett.

it’s also good just to see him scream!!! go girl let it all out.

there was obviously a reason why he hadn’t mentioned this project on brett domino or RJM (at least i don’t think did? maybe he said something on instagram i gave no idea) and i’m not gonna pretend to know that reason. regardless i’m glad he’s having fun with it. it seems that way anyway! he’s mentioned through c-bomb that sometimes it feels like you gotta produce “content” for “the man” and that some people say his political stuff is “not what they signed up for” so having this be completely seperate from BDT and RJM makes sense. i’m glad he’s able to say and do the things he wants to say that he can’t necessarily say through brett.

i love what’s he’s doing and i don’t care how he does it. it’s his art. social media (and the algorithm) is a bitch and whether or not it positively impacts creative work is still being debated.

bonus: as someone who’s trans queer and asian it’s so fucking amazing that my favourite artist is involved politically (in a good way aka not a right wing nut). i think a lot of people can relate to this actually. (shoutout to those who’s favs are political satirists)

#DEFS #brett domino #rob j madin #teddy text #well that was a lot #i said i wasn’t gonna talk about motifs but i did #thank RJM and tim key for ur anti tory bangers #i’m not even british #but fuck them #fuck scomo #i’m gonna read this next week and cringe #i ordered the beanie and tote but not any of the prints #i didn’t even talk about the leave the door open cover tha much #i need to listen to bd to calm downI find him relaxing #because this was A Lot

[chemicaljacketslut]

hiiiiiiiiii hiho beloved :3 how was your day? good i hope <3 tell me all about it dearest 🌼

aaaa it was okay!! i did like. freak out and cry a little bit because i am Physically Unable to handle like any amount of workload with school ever? but i have been having a big workload for like a week? so i’m. stressed. even though everything is planned out and manageable it’s just everything weighing on me yk. but i should be done by the end of this week! unfortunately like every teacher wants to do an end of the year project so i have like 3 projects to do after that plus an essay 💀 but anywayy. i was so nervous today because i have a makeup math quiz tomorrow and half of the content on it i don’t really know?? bc i was absent and there’s no video lesson for it? but i asked my math-y friend to help at lunch and it JUST clicked like a little while ago when i was thinking about it and it makes sense i think!! as long as i don’t have to have the formulas memorized. idk if he’ll let me use my reference sheet… so just in case i will absolutely be cheating by making up some symbols that look enough like doodles but are actually a code for the formulas to write on my hand lol works every time. idk getting a bad grade wouldn’t even be the end of the world it’s just. i really need good grades this year to make up for the failure that was covid year & idk, this is the last of my missing work to catch up on so i really want to finish strong. also if i get an a i don’t have to take the final exam so BLEASE i need at least a 90... i think i can do it it’s just stressful to have it in the back of my mind all the time yk? im gonna have to be in work mode for these next couple of weeks every class is having some kind of wrap-up thing… physics project + final unit, english essay, math review work, choir concert & banquet, facing history project + content. i think history is my only class that doesn’t have something going on lol. it’s gonna be super busy but honestly im kind of excited for the challenge… if i stay organized it will be satisfying and i know i’ll feel so relieved once it’s summer. someone will probably throw a wrench in it (already did- i have an appointment tomorrow i wasn’t told about. girl i had plans… to do nothing) but i just have to adapt and keep going.

but actually even taking into account all that stress it’s been a pretty good day! all my wordle spinoff games went well & i talked to my friends and sang in choir and relaxed after school. it’s a more fun atmosphere at school now (still kinda sucks bc. it’s school. but it’s bearable) bc it’s almost the end of the year. & i watched (i rewatched, they watched) s3e1 of barry w my family :3 & now i think im gonna write a little bit maybe? although not too much probably im tired :/ but yeahh

eeeee i did not intend to rant THAT much but. there was my day. much happening. mwah mwah love youuuu feel free to come message me & tell me abt ur day!! also when is ur birthday i need to know for scientific reasons

#i have a gift like half-planned & i gotta work out timing #ghost rants #asks