literally everything people say about public defenders on the internet is so wrong and frustrating even when they’re trying to be sympathetic to us. and I certainly said some of that same kind of shit before I did this job. I didn’t get it yet. I get it now. the only people who really do get it are the people who’ve done it and the people who are in or also working with the communities we serve. representing a factually guilty person is the absolute least of any public defender’s fucking problems at any given time and the last thing I would ever lose sleep over lol
what a lot of people in the notes on the post that inspired this train of thought seem to imagine public defenders struggling with and getting upset about: finding out a client committed the crime they're accused of and having to grapple with the morality of defending a person who Did Harm To Others and what that means for the attorney as an individual immortal soul or whatever the fuck
Things that I have actually struggled to deal with in my 2 years as a public defender so far (non-exhaustive list):
Having to put the criminal records and self-esteem and livelihoods of clients I believed were factually innocent, people I'd developed relationships with and knew how much they had to lose if something went wrong, in the hands of a group of strangers who I'd had no more than 20 minutes to question about their knowledge and beliefs and biases.
Worrying those strangers would favor the young, handsome white male prosecutors' arguments over my innocent clients who've had rough lives and it shows on their faces, because of whose voice sounds "authoritative" and who "looks like a criminal".
Never feeling like I had enough time to prepare a case for trial because I also had over 100 other cases pending at the same time.
Put simply, it is harder to represent a factually innocent person than a factually guilty person. I think basically all defense attorneys agree on this. It's more emotionally taxing because of the stakes. There are always material stakes for all of our clients, but for a factually innocent person there are also moral stakes.
Representing people who are technically guilty of the crimes they are charged with, but no one was actually harmed, and maybe the law itself is unfair, and also my client was certainly racially profiled and overcharged. And having to put that in the hands of a jury, because my client wants to maintain whatever dignity they can to the bitter end.
Not being able to just say to the jury, I don't give a fuck whether my client is technically guilty. He's a poor Black man, so he was guilty in the eyes of the American legal system before he was ever arrested. He gets that. I get that. Do you get that? Who gives a shit whether he's factually guilty of a technicality DUI that happened 2 or 3 years ago? What the fuck are we doing? Are we all just here to give another black father a criminal record? Fuck you all.
Representing multiple very young men charged with DV assaults who grew up with fathers who abused their mothers, or parents who abused them, in and out of foster care, multiple generations of cycles of violence and substance abuse passed down from parent to child. It doesn't excuse it. Of course it doesn't. They have done harm to their own partners and they know this isn't the example they want to set for their own kids. But they're human - the idea that abusers are somehow inhuman just sets you up to fail to recognize abuse when someone you love is the person doing it - and what the fuck other ways of dealing with difficult situations and relating to other people were these guys ever supposed to learn? They didn't have the opportunity to learn anything else. They never had a fucking chance.
And if they don't have a lot of history yet, maybe there's still time to turn it around. One of them talked to me about how badly he wanted to break the cycle and not have his kids grow up to be like that. I hope he can do it. I don't know if he will. That's what haunts me about that situation. Not the fact that I had to represent his interests in court. That's just my job.
Family after family after family who call 911 for help for a loved one in a mental health or substance-related crisis. And then the cops show up and throw their loved one in crisis in jail sometimes over the weekend because if you lash out at someone you live with for literally any reason that counts as domestic violence which means the cops legally have to arrest someone. And 24-72 hours later the family is in court upset telling the judge if they knew this would happen they never would have called 911. Cannot stress enough this happens like weekly in misdemeanor court.
A prosecutor submitting victim impact statements for the sentencing of a colleague's client who absolutely had killed their partner, and it was awful - but the victim impact statements were provided by the victim's family, many of whom she was estranged from, and many of them misgendered and deadnamed their dead "loved one". And the prosecutor just threw them all into the public record unredacted. Because of pressure to "listen to victims", in this case coming from the transphobic family.
A 16-year-old getting held in juvenile detention on unproven charges an 18-year-old would get released from adult jail on, because while the 18-year-old is presumed to have the autonomy to find another place to stay, if the charge is related to someone who lives in the 16-year-old's parents' house - or their parents straight-up just don't want them going home - well, then, they can't go home, which means they have nowhere to go. so let's keep them in jail.
On the flip side, having 18-year-olds get released to homelessness because their well-intentioned parents called the cops for whatever reason (see above) and now the court is imposing a no-contact order with someone who lives at their house.
A kid who got pulled over and charged with DUI/physical control of a motor vehicle while under the influence on her 18th birthday. She was a senior in high school. She had never been in trouble before. She had no criminal record. The law doesn't require someone to be booked and held in jail for a first-time DUI charge with no history, so the jail's policy is that they usually don't do that. If it was just the DUI she would have been cited and released. But the cop also cited her for 2 counts of minor in possession. So, because she had non-DUI charges, I guess, they booked and held her in jail. If it had been just one day earlier she would have been in juvenile detention. She cried. I almost cried. I sat in the attorney meeting booth with her for an extra half hour until they kicked us out for the lunchtime visiting area closure, just so she could be in a quiet space with a friendly face instead of back in the adult jail dorm. That was all I could do.
Tiny old people in jail. Tiny old people, deep in dementia, deeply upset, who got angry - personality changes including becoming very quick to anger are common with dementia - lashed out at family members and got arrested on domestic violence charges. (Again, see above.) And all I could see was my own late grandmother, who was a tiny old lady with dementia who lashed out all the time, but she was a rich white lady who could afford to live in a home with professional caregivers who were trained to handle those situations and deescalate, instead of having to rely on overwhelmed family members. And getting praise from teammates for how well I handled those clients and their jail hearings, and knowing it was because there but for the grace of god go we.
A guy who stole 2 beers from a grocery store, products that cost like $13 total, getting held on $1000 bail because he has warrants in other counties. $1000 bail when he's charged with taking $13 worth of beer. From a gigantic corporation. And he stayed in jail. Because if someone is stealing from a grocery store, they probably don't have $1000 to pay.
I think people who talk about the moral conundrum of public defenders get too stuck on the defender part and forget the public. Public defenders, by definition, simply do not represent the worst of the worst. People who hurt others because they can, quite literally can, because frankly most of them don't end up getting arrested and prosecuted for the ways they hurt people in the first place. And if they do, they can usually afford to hire a private defense attorney. I think most of us know the actual statistics about rape and abuse reporting, but for some reason that goes out the window when people talk about public defenders. (The reason is racism.)
Acting with (perceived) impunity is a privilege. It's for rich (and mostly white) people. The vast majority of crimes prosecuted in the U.S. are crimes of poverty and addiction (and that includes many violent crimes - yes, really), and that vast majority is where public defenders operate. There aren't moral quandaries in knowing what our clients did. The part that hurts is understanding the systems that have led them to this place, and knowing what those systems are going to keep doing to them once their case is resolved, and not being able to do jack shit to stop it.
hello tumblr... i realize i have written a whole 36 arknights fics. that's a lot. if you stumbled upon my fic and have no idea where to start, here is a slightly shorter list of my personal favorites:
the little things - 3,664 words - texas/exusiai - 2020
Just Deserts - 5,648 words - zima/rosa - 2020
a due passi - NSFW - 16,188 words - lappland/silence/saria - 2021-2023
Salvatrix - 28,002 words - fiammetta/mostima - 2022-2023
shape always becoming - 11,215 words - saria/ptilopsis - 2022
A Treatise on the Somatic Nature of the Perspicuous Divine - 6,579 words - pramanix/kjera - 2023
prise de fer - NSFW - 21,496 words - sora/texas/lappland - 2023
devil reef - 9,231 words - specter/amaia - 2023
intaglio - 30,651 words - lappland/sora - 2024
the seen walls of lost eden - 7,268 words - degenbrecher/kjera - 2024
I'm writing a quick announcement to let you know that my latest yuri visual novel with maids (I feel like I've written a few of those actually how funny haha), Café of Roses, has been released! You can check it out on Steam here and Itchio here!
Café of Roses is a spinoff of my previously released gothic yuri visual novel with vampires, Cage of Roses. There are fewer vampires this time around, though, and more of a focus on slice of life romance.
Set in the early 90s, Café of Roses follows Meike, a young librarian living in Germany, as she meets the mysterious maid, Magdalena. Meike is drawn to Magdalena immediately, but she has no idea why. What draws her to this young woman, and why has she been having so many dreams about her...?
I hope you enjoy the story if you do choose to check it out! I love maids, so I'm going to do my best to spread my maid agenda all across the world! Wish me luck!
(pssst you can also find Cage of Roses on Itchio here or Steam here if you want to check it out too, though you don't need to read it to understand this story. They're both self-contained and present whole narratives on their own!)
This is the project I was hired to do art for. I am very grateful and honored Ebi contacted me to work on Cage of Roses' spinoff. If you like cute maids and GL(yuri), you should totally check it out!!
Most of my fellow creatives are familiar with the flavor of imposter syndrome that insists we aren't that great at our chosen skill. We can point to other people doing aspects way better, or who are more successful etc. Hopefully we know we're not bad.
Anyway, approaching from another angle, when do you know that you're "okay"? And is that enough?
I basically stopped drawing a few years ago in part because of this. Life got lifey and my art was bringing me stress because I felt that pressure of not being good enough, of not progressing quick enough, of not posting enough and I just... stopped.
As a result my tolerance for the bad stuff got tiny. I was stuck in a cycle of wanting to draw -> drawing something shitty -> getting frustrated that my first attempt in months was not on level with where it "should" be -> not drawing. A LOT of it was comparing myself with an older version of myself that drew more frequently, not just comparing myself to other artists. I basically had impostor syndrome against myself.
Last year I looked through my backups of all my old art files and I noticed that a vast majority of what I used to draw was on that same "shitty" level, I just liked drawing enough that I didn't care. I kept on drawing anyways. Back then I wasn't trying to make things good, I was just drawing to draw. Every once in a while I made something that I got lost in, and those usually became the things I posted(aside from commissions). Every artist I see that talks about this says something to the effect of "artists only really post their best work", but it hadn't emotionally sunk in that the things that those artists don't post are things they think are shitty. It's the exact same emotion.
Eventually I realized that what I was seeking wasn't the feeling of having made something "good", it was the feeling of looking up at the clock and realizing I'd been drawing for five hours straight. It was the feeling of putting a line down and the sensation that I was reaching through the canvas into a different world to sculpt something with that line. I usually ended up thinking those drawings were good, but that was incidental, it was a consequence of letting myself get lost in drawing. My impostor syndrome and lack of tolerance for my "bad" art was really the only thing that was stopping me from getting to that feeling again.
tbh I'm still not fully out of the funk, but the big thing that let me pick pick the stylus again was at least partially letting go of the idea that my art has to be good. Hell, a lot of the things I really love in other art styles are things that I find myself critiquing in my own art when I get into that mentality. It's all bullshit.
Right now the goal I have when I sit down to draw isn't to make something of any quality (great or good or okay or bad), it's to let myself get lost in the act of drawing. If I'm not vibing with something then I'll draw something else until I eventually hit on something that lets me get lost. Learning to tolerate the shitty art, being okay with the idea that I will make stuff I don't like. Sometimes I'll go back to an old sketch and pick it up again, sometimes those sketches just get abandoned and that's fine.
I have a whole other tangent on the commodification of art and hobbies that are intrinsically part of the human experience, but this is long enough already ha. I do wanna say though that if the point of making art is to make something that looks good or even okay, then AI "art" would have value. Making art isn't about being a good artist, it's about being human and experiencing stuff through the process of creation, and sharing that with other humans.
so. not to doxx myself (i've talked about this here before though) but i live in Kansas. and my license was just revoked very suddenly and immediately because i'm trans and had changed my gender marker.
so now i cannot legally drive or vote until/unless i let them force me to carry around a card that misgenders me and outs me as trans, because i certainly don't look female anymore.
so hey if you have the means and want to help with any of this, please consider donating to the ACLU of Kansas because they are at least going to try to do something to push back against this, and i'm such a panicky wreck that the only thing i can do to get through my immediate gut reaction to having my license revoked tonight (i cannot stress enough that i received the letter today saying that my license is no longer valid tomorrow) is focus on the fact that there's at least one entity trying to protect me and my fellow trans kansans.
Ergo it is your responsibility to communicate your needs and boundaries
If you lie to someone about something being okay when it isn't, that is on you
Something being a trauma response doesn't exempt it from harming your relationships and the other people in them
Enabling your trauma responses will not make them go away, and it is your responsibility to work on yourself for your own wellbeing as well as the people around you
Being A Victim cannot be a pillar of your identity forever, and being victimized does not make you incapable of harming other people (see above)
You are not a mouse in a jean jacket you are an eel with a gun / adult human being who can use your words even if it's Scary
Having a personality disorder doesn't make you evil but you have got to get off of Personality Disorder Tumblr (see above, re: enabling)
Deep sigh. You want me to ~be compassionate~ here's the compassionate answer: your trauma will tell you you're a helpless child forever and you need to Not Think This Way for yourself (living under the assumption you're still in danger whether you actually are or not) and everyone else who has to tiptoe around your Sensitivity. That's how you break the cycle and you can only do this by accepting responsibility for your actions. And it seems like a small semantic thing but imo step one is calling yourself a survivor instead of a victim. Self identifying with your victimhood helps No One. You lived, now get up
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I often see people point to Class S as an example of Japanese lesbophobia and talk about it like it's "pseudoromance" or some pure, fleeting phase of life that teenage girls are expected to grow out of. Frankly, I think this viewpoint is ignorant at best, and more often a form of Usamerican cultural chauvinism. "Our out and proud lesbian stories" vs. "Their homophobic lesbian stories" type deal.
Cultural differences in romantic and sexual expression aside (more on that later), Class S is unambiguously a form of lesbian storytelling. Hanamonogatari is essentially the foundational Class S text. The short stories in it date from 1916-1924. The author, Yoshiya Nobuko, was a woman who resisted the socially conservative expectations of a well-to-do family to get married off. She effectively had a common-law wife from 1923 until her death in 1973, and even formally adopted her as a daughter in 1957 to share many of the medical and legal privileges that a marriage would have granted them. Another one of her works, Two Virgins in the Attic, ends with a pair of schoolgirls explicitly deciding to live together as a couple. If you're going to tell me that a lesbian pioneer was actually lesbophobic, I am going to tell you that you are full of shit.
The truth of the matter is that Class S takes an oblique approach to lesbianism because of prevailing social conservatism and publishing censorship when the genre was developing. Take a moment to ask yourself why a lesbian author might focus on the ephemerality of lesbian relationships in boarding schools. It's not lesbophobia, it is getting your heart broken over straight girls treating you as practice, the cruelty of having your love denied as "just a phase" by school administators, the expectation that even something real will eventually be crushed by the social and financial pressures to marry. Thematically, it is attempting to treasure the beautiful moments in an otherwise soul-crushing adolescence.
What's more is that throughout the 1920s, it slowly became effectively impossible to write about lesbian relationships in a direct manner. Though Hanamonogatari was published during the (relatively) liberalized Taishō era, there was still a deep fixation on public morality, especially concerning womens' social roles. Schoolgirl relationships were a popular theme through the 1920s, and its popularity meant they stories increasingly attracted blame for lovers' suicides between schoolgirl couples. As such, the stories were often subject to formal obscenity/moral censorship and editorial interference aimed at discouraging these relationships in the first place.
Modern Class S is sort of cast in the mold of Maria-sama ga miteru (Marimite), which began serializing as a light novel in 1998. It follows many of the same conventions as Class S, though the author Konno Oyuki was apparently unaware of the genre until well after she started publishing. Instead, it was conceived as more of a counterpoint/parody of all-male casts in BL fiction, though I suspect Kanno eventually began incorporating some of the genre's themes into her work as the serialization went on. The relationships in Marimite, much like in Class S, range from girls' school situationships to mutually-reciprocated lesbian relationships. Marimite proved to be an incredibly popular franchise, and a lot of those working in yuri novels and manga today are influenced by it. Importantly: many, if not most, of those creators are women, writing about lesbian and queerplatonic relationships primarily for an audience of other women.
The idea that these stories were intended to highlight lesbian relationships as just a phase is taking a heterocentric interpretation/explanation of them at its word. And I suspect the reason this extremely general "explanation" finds traction is that projects Usamerican cultural values about what queer relationships and the stories about them should look like onto another culture. To a Usamerican, "authenticity" must actively reflect and affirm specific identities and relationship dynamics.
You see this attitude reflected in reductive purity tests that Western fandom tends to apply ("it's not a lesbian relationship if they don't kiss!"), debates over whether "subtext yuri" is "real" yuri, or wholesale transplanting of specific Usamerican lesbian relationship dynamics into a different culture with statements like "Japanese authors don't write enough butchfemme yuri". And when these supposed criteria for a "real" lesbian story aren't met, it is held up as an example of Japanese (internalized) lesbophobia. In reality, it is just wearing Usamerican cultural blinders.
If you actually read these stories, you will find that the writers are simply following a different set of storytelling conventions and have a different focus on which parts of a relationship they find compelling. It might be more subtle or require a closer reading of character interactions, but it's usually there, plain as day. If you need additional reassurance, that's a failure of your imagination, not theirs.
Am I going to argue that Japan is free from homophobia or that Class S or yuri is uniformly pro-lesbian? No. (Internalized) lesbophobia is everywhere. Corporate hets will trade on subtlety to deny a lesbian relationship exists. Writers, especially hets who are adapting a lesbian or queerplatonic work, can bring homophobic attitudes to the table with them. But distinguishing which is which requires you to at least make the effort to understand another culture's own standards before you filter them through your own. You cannot and should not make sweeping generalizations about a culture when you've put the barest minimum of effort into understanding it.
hi all — my grocery assistance programs hasn’t been responding to me for while now and i’m struggling to make ends meet food security wise until my next payday (feb 2). they removed the food pantry by my workplace too so i haven’t been able to get anything from there either.
the goal would ideally be $150 for two weeks worth of groceries, but i know it’s a bit tight right now for everyone right so if you can send anything, it would matter a lot to me.
my v*n*mo is vidwindow. thank you in advance to anyone who donates!
I feel like we’re backsliding in terms of sex positivity. To combat that, I will be openly hornier. Nothing wrong with enjoying sex and wanting to have it.
germansingergirl
jacobvanloon
pixelskylines
