Here’s my metaphor for systemhood that I tell my singlet friends.

Imagine you’re playing a first person video game. You have the controller, you control your character. It’s a normal first person game. You are an alter, the character is the body. This is fronting.

Other people live with you. Sometimes, they come into the room and sit and watch while you play. They sometimes try to guide you, give you advice on what to do next. They don’t always agree, and they can argue with each other. Other times they scream at you that you’re doing everything wrong and you suck at this game. This is co-consciousness.

Imagine how distracting it would be for people around you to tell you what to do, or to scream at each other or at you, even if they have good intentions. It wouldn’t be easy to focus on your game, would it?

Then sometimes, something happens in the game that prompts you to hand off the controller to someone else so they can play and you get a break. This is (some types of) switching. This can be good.

Other times, someone rips the controller out of your hand or fights you for it. This is (other types of) switching. And sometimes, six other players hook up their controllers, but there’s only one character to play as. So all of you have your controllers, but you’re all trying to play the same character. This is cofronting.

Imagine how difficult that would be. Imagine how hard it would be to try and play a game while someone is trying to take the controller from you, or while six other people are trying to play too.

There are also times that nobody is playing, or you can’t decide who should play. What’s happening to the character in the game? What are they doing if no one is playing? This is dissociation. The character is doing nothing. They’re stuck.

This is the best metaphor I have come up with for being a system. It’s something a lot of people get because they’ve played games before.

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE YOUR SQQ HE LOOKS SO FUCKINH DONE WITH LIFE

The recipe for SQQ is: calm on the outside, screaming on the inside.

Incredibly hot take concept but ya know potentially maybe Pearless Cucumber wasn't really that renowned in the fandom. Saying this because A) it's funny and B) both Airplane and Cucumber are prone to wild hyperbolic exaggeration and dramatics and we only have their word to go off. Like fully consider what we see in the airplane special.

Airplane is specifically reading a forum thread and peerless Cucumber appears. Makes his rant. And virtually nobody addresses the rant outside of damn that's a lot of words. Not even op. If anything he's ignored despite the expert tag. Like nobody is making jokes about it being one of his famous rants. It's basically crickets.

If our boy was fandom famous that would not be the response. If anything... it speaks to him being DEEPLY UNPOPULAR. Like ignore dni. He's not part of the discussion. If anything it kinda seems like people are talking around him.

And you might be like ok but he must be some level of notoriety since Airplane knows him. Yeah cuz man has paying his bills and he sees the statement and every month along with the 8 pages of comments he leaves a day. For potentially 3 years.

What I'm saying is... our baby boy Shen Yuan might be bigger loser than first thought. Because do you know how bad it is to be the most online and unliked on a server or forum. It's sad. He's not even a mod. At best he's the guy people make jokes about living there.

we talk a lot about the symbolism of the repetitive traumas the other characters have gone through, eg. chim being impaled/having his heart stopped, buck needing to save/be saved by loved ones, eddie effectively being cornered/trapped in confined spaces (sometimes by a helicopter, sometimes by being shot at).

but we should definitely further discuss how bobby repeatedly falls victim to structural oversight/damages. eg. how his family died, the owners of the rehab center committing arson and blaming him for it, the snipper who targeted firefighters because of how he interpreted his treatment by the lafd (and committed arson to lure them out), being trapped in the rubble at the call center, and now presumably being seriously hurt in this literal structural collapse. like tell us more about how this public servant in a leadership position is repeatedly falling victim to what is basically systemic shortcomings in the community. like please. i'd very much like to know more about that.

in your most recent tyson post, you said something about leo being distinctly autistic-coded and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that? it sounds really interesting (sorry if you've already posted something on this, I couldn't find anything though)

Of course! I do have a specific tag for talking about Leo's autistic-coding/traits - [here], and [one for Nico as well].

The main aspects with Leo being autistic-coded actually have a lot to do with Nico being autistic-coded, because it's the comparisons between the two that most clearly indicate Leo is autistic-coded rather than it just being his ADHD or etc.

So with Nico being autistic-coded, it's very clear in the Titan's Curse that he's intended to be autistic. First, the first series has a repeating pattern of secondary characters being very distinctly neurodivergent-coded in different ways (Annabeth's adhd/dyslexia, Tyson's down syndrome-coding, Nico's autism-coding). With Nico's introduction, he's pretty stereotypically autistic and we're given a lot of descriptors about him that are notably not attributed to him being ADHD, like it would be for other demigod characters. He doesn't register social cues such as people getting annoyed at him, he's asking/making inappropriate or impolite questions/comments, he gets particularly upset about change (such as Bianca joining the Hunt) and generally gets emotional, and one of his most notable traits he's introduced with is the fact that he has a special interest (MythoMagic) - and we're shown that this special interest particularly colors how Nico navigates the world. While ADHD has hyperfixations, we don't really get much acknowledgement of hyperfixations with demigods usually - Annabeth gets a little, but most others don't and it's not nearly as focused-in on as Nico's is.

Then as the series continues we see these traits stick with him and him start to show or voice more traits that similarly indicate he's autistic: He regularly mentions how he doesn't understand living people and prefers the company of the dead (social issues). He has more notable stims than other demigods (twisting his ring, fiddling with bones, etc). He's indicated to have strong sensory preferences (usually wearing mostly black/aversion to bright colors, usually wearing layers/his coat, multiple times he's described as wearing loose/baggy clothing or clothes too big for him). He has specific comfort items (his ring, likely his jacket(s) as well). We later get even more information about his special interests (Mythomagic/mythology/history and an older interest in pirates - the latter he specifically notes likely heavily influenced his feelings towards Percy). He struggles with emotions and facial expressions and tone. He struggles particularly with ostracism and feeling like he doesn't fit in and has something distinctly different about him from the people around him (who notably, all have ADHD, which indicates it isn't the ADHD that's making him feel that way), and other characters regularly describe him as being off-putting because of his strange behaviors - again, different from specific ADHD traits they recognize. And that last point is kind of notable because we have Hazel and Bianca for comparison - we know people are off-put by both Nico and Hazel because of being children of Hades/Pluto and their powers/aura, but other characters get past that general feeling of discomfort way faster with Hazel. And even after characters get past the death stuff with Nico, there's a second thing that they aren't moving past that isn't a factor with Hazel (Nico's autism).

So that brings us to Leo - Leo is paralleled to Nico a lot. And there's some very specific traits about him that we know are autistic-coding because of how they're used with Nico: He similarly struggles with social cues/etc, and in a very similar parallel to Nico describes how he prefers the company of machines to people because machines make more sense to him. He has similar types of clothing/sensory preferences (again some stuff with layers but also - pockets! He likes having pockets and things to put stuff in! He's even introduced as having a jacket with lots of pockets), and he has a distinct special interest (machinery) that we specifically know heavily influences how he views and navigates the world (constantly comparing things to machinery, describing things with machinery metaphors/terminology, etc etc). He even describes his entire general worldview to Hazel and it's a machine metaphor. He also similarly struggles with ostracization like Nico does, the only difference being that Leo specifically puts on a persona to compensate for areas he knows he's lacking in and very explicitly describes it as a means to make people like him, because without it he normally struggles to fit in (He's masking!). We also see notes of characters describing that similar discomfort with Leo's behaviors that they do with Nico, except without the aura of death this time. And when we're in Leo's POVs we see a very stark difference between his masking and his actual personality/behaviors such as his internal dialogues or how he behaves when he's alone. Also, like Nico, he stims more than other demigods, though for Leo it's more attributed to his ADHD. Leo also, more often than most, similarly struggles with tone and reading the room, such as making misplaced jokes/comments or etc.

But yeah! It's really interesting. Also it's just a fun thing that ADHD/dyslexia and autism have comorbidity, so it makes sense that we see demigods who are also autistic. It's also really fun to look at how other characters are coded in the series, what coding looks like in the riordanverse specifically (usually it's tied into the mythological stuff - like Chiron being in a wheelchair but he's actually a centaur, Grover being introduced as having a muscular disease but he's actually a satyr, demigods having adhd/dyslexia, Tyson being coded as having down syndrome but he's a cyclops, etc etc - it's a lot of specific metaphor stuff that I've talked about a bit before), and to look at how characters are compared to one another.

See I honestly do find the prequels-era Jedi an interesting (and at times painfully recognizable) portrait of institutional violence in that...they aren't cackling villains. They're mostly sympathetic well-intentioned individuals who via a combo of traditionalist inertia, ideological blinders, proximity to power, a dash of plain old arrogance and a liberal seasoning of end-justifies-the-means compromise end up being at best indifferent to and at worst deeply complicit in some pretty heinous injustice. I don't even think this is a completely against-the-grain reading on my part. At the end of the day it's a pretty mild critique, but it's hard to argue that the PT is entirely uncritical of the Jedi imo.

Unfortunately the narrative is never interested in really sinking its teeth into that. And even more unfortunately, a chunk of the fandom will clutch its pearls in horrified outrage if anybody else is interested in sinking their teeth into that

i just HAD to say "worm life series au" and now my brain is spinning

this is gonna distract me from current ongoing fics i just KNOW IT

ACAB DOESN'T MEAN ASSIGNED COP AT BIRTH???

the fucking clip of james somerton making a top/bottom joke about THE ROSE BRIDE SYSTEM FROM UTENA is so fucking bad its been carved into my mind forever

Lord I cannot believe it took me this long to realize this, but. Vnc's refrain of Noé trying to grab Vanitas's hand is a metaphor.

This whole time I've been reading the constant references to "Noé grabs Vanitas and saves him from falling, but one day he'll fail" as very literal foreshadowing for a day when Vanitas is going to fall and get hurt (or die?) and Noé will fail to catch him. And I still think there's a good chance that's true! However, it's also really obvious symbolism for the idea of salvation in general.

I've beaten this drum to death, but Vanitas is more or less the ultimate example of a character doomed by the narrative. He is going to die; the entire story is the buildup to his death. And one of the main conflicts is that Noé wants desperately to save him (and wants it more and more as they grow closer), but by nature of the story, we know he can't.

At least by Noé's definition of salvation, Vanitas is unsaveable. His death and suffering cannot be prevented, and despite Noé's best efforts, he is going to die by Noé's hand.

Enter the falling metaphor.

The absolute certainty of Vanitas's death works like the force of gravity. He is constantly being pulled down and down toward his doom like an endless free fall. But then Noé steps in and tries to save him, and in little ways he even succeeds! In all the little less important ways, he grabs Vanitas's hand time after time.

When Vanitas goes toppling off the ledge in Gévaudan, Noé catches him and shortens his fall. When Vanitas sinks into despair in Moreau's lab, Noé snaps him out of it. And when Vanitas gets lost in his own trauma and self-hypnosis at the amusement park, Noé brings him back to reality. For all of the little free falls, both literal and metaphorical, Noé is there for Vanitas before he hits the ground. The beating heart of their relationship is Noé's constant attempts to catch him.

However, Noé is haunted by the fear that he is going to fail someday. When Faustina reverts back to Naenia and dissipates in Gévaudan, he's shown a vision of Charlatan(?) telling him his hand cannot reach Vanitas. Naenia preys on people's worst fears and weaknesses, and this is one of Noé's. He fears that his hand will not reach the one he's grasping towards, and he will fail to save those that matter to him. The very broad line "you persist in reaching out for them" in the middle of Noé trying to literally catch someone more or less tells us outright that the falling and catching is a metaphor for salvation.

And when he speaks from the future, Noé confirms that this exact fear has come true. Noé in his narration is haunted by the regrets of "that day when I didn't grab your hand." His grand attempt at Vanitas's salvation has ultimately failed, and he didn't catch him when it mattered most.

The night that he first meets Vanitas, Noé throws himself out of an airship in the attempt to catch and save him. And from that point onward, he tries to catch him over and over again. Their relationship is one long straining outstretched hand as Noé attempts to pull Vanitas from his endless plummet downward. He is the one person deeply focused on Vanitas's salvation. However, Noé cannot ultimately stop the forces of tragedy and gravity and doom, and in the way that matters most, he can never quite reach Vanitas's hand.

There is going to be a day when Noé will be unable to catch him, and that day is the day that the entire rest of their relationship (and the entire rest of the metaphor) is building to. Noé is constantly reaching out, but he cannot save a man that is already dead, no matter how passionate the outstretched hand.

black tears

Now that they can, would they want to spend a lot of time together? (Patreon)

I will always be the angry child, the one who was too young to understand. The one who lashes out and is gagged like a rabbid dog.

I will forever be the hurt preteen, the one who was too young to understand. The one who craves attention like a starving dog.

I will be the lonely teenager each time, the one who wished so badly for comfort. The one who was too young to understand. Who wishes for a childhood they'll never have the chance to have. The one who waits everyday for their dead owner, like a loyal dog.

I will never stop having to be the adult who protects the rest, when they can't stop havoc from happening. I will be the fireplace, a mothers hugs, the embrace of childhood protection. The one who was too young to understand. I'll always be your childhood pet, like a good dog.

given that vol 3 is titled “son and heir”, is it safe to say that we’ll be getting some more background on the black sisters and lucius? there’s tons of juicy throwaway lines in book 4 that describe how they were at hogwarts that i’ve been hoping will be expanded on eventually.

two words: oh BOY

billy not telling anyone what happened the day after the crash because he knew full well that no one would help or even believe him and his point literally being proven when everyone realised he was in trouble and did, in fact, not help him

i am the number one fan of torturing Brennan Lee Mulligan, but it's honestly heartwarming to me how much Brennan suffers in episodes not designed around him, especially in the episodes he was a sub for. [spoilers through Game Changer 6.5]

for the first long stretch, Brennan was just very good at figuring out and adapting to a new game, and it was a bit less fun when he kept winning. where i'm from, when one student knows the answer every time, the teacher calls on them less. then there was Yes or No and Second Place, which knock specifically Brennan down, but these two wrongs don't necessarily make a right.

but then but then for Cool as a Cucumber and Bingo, the game was control your heart rate and be a funny person with a brand, two things you can't logic game your way out of. and Brennan just gets to play. and that's what it's all about. it's inspiring that we can play the same game with people of a range of natural ability and have the same fun. and by fun i sometimes mean torture.