i'm like if an omniscient narrator didn't know shit. you can call me cal / 30s / friendly neighborhood cruciverbalist. [ID: avi is a close-up of a woman looking unimpressed from the thomas anshutz painting "a rose" (1907). header is a slaps roof of car meme i have edited to read "moi, lisant le dico: *gifle toit de langue française* ce truc de dingue peut contenir tant de mots de ouf dedans" /end ID]
Oh man I’d forgotten that LHK said the way he played it, LXC was thrilled about Wei Wuxian being back. Despite his grudge against WWX. because Wangji’s happiness is more important to LXC than anything. devastating.
@madtomedgar I definitely agree you can also see frustration, anger and even dislike in his performance when he’s interacting with WWX. I like the idea that he’s so tolerant of WWX not because he really believes that he’s a misunderstood victim but just because Wangji has been depressed for 16 years and there’s been nothing LXC could do to help which has been devastating to him and having that magically undone is a miracle he’s not going to question too hard.
Thinking about the whole "there is no platonic explanation for this" thing and how it doesn't account for intense platonic situationships and anyways I think we should start saying "there is no casual explanation for this" bc really what we're talking about is the way the characters in question are Obsessed with each other
-become furiously angry over what seems to be small things
-hit a self destruct button over and over again
-lose all sense of reality
-becoming straight up unable to communicate
-view every situation as life or death
-experience delusions/become vulnerable to irrational worldviews
-perceive hostility where none exists
-become extremely nauseous and/or throw up
-stop engaging in sleeping/eating/basic hygiene
-stop processing sensory input
-process way too much sensory input all at once
-lash out at others/themselves
-and more!
being able to recognize when a human (ie. you or another person) is so stressed out they cannot think clearly is VERY important for conflict resolution and diffusing emotional crisis. highly recommend trying to train yourself at being able to recognize that state of panic- there is a point in which logic and rationality is useless and you have to address the underlying emotional issue first. knowing that saves everyone a lot of pain and struggle.
the Murderbot situation (killer robot attempts to integrate into a nonviolent communalist utopia, but somehow always ends up shooting a bunch of people) is on some level kind of symbolic of Martha Wells's writing (old sci-fi/fantasy from the long and venerated tradition of evil races and boss battles, now writing for the new sci-fi of cozy cottagecore settings and talk-it-out conflict resolution, yet always wraps up the finale with a big shootout)
issue with being mentally and physically ill and/or broke is that all you ever do is survive and that sounds like enough on the face of it but it is very normal to want and even need more than that. and it feels almost dismissive to pretend like there’s not a lot of grief associated with the experience. because there just is
Thanks to ultrasounds, the genders can be assigned before birth. The people are so excited to conform they throw “Gender reveal parties” to make sure their offspring exist in a strict binary since before they can even form thoughts.
“And s-omeday,” Mihashi hiccuped, “he’s gonna look. Like. His dad!”
Suyama and Sakaeguchi exchanged a desperate look. “And that’s…good?” Sakaeguchi hazarded.
“YES it’s good,” wailed Mihashi. “Have you SEEN. H-his dad?!”
“We’ve seen him,” Suyama said cautiously.
“S-so—broad,” Mihashi moaned into his arms. “So soft…”
Sakaeguchi patted him on the back, mouthing What do we do?? over his head at Suyama.
Suyama was wondering the same thing. He had been enjoying a very normal evening when Tajima blasted the old Nishiura group chat with an emergency request: Ren was getting drunk and being maudlin, by himself, in public. Could whoever was nearest go pick him up and get him home before he got recognized?
Abe lived closest, but his response time had become downright erratic since starting his first clinical rotation. Suyama and Sakaeguchi were on opposite sides of the city but about equidistant to the izakaya and figured it would be easier with two—one to be lookout, one to be human crutch—so they’d met up in the middle and walked there together. But now that they were here, they couldn’t get Mihashi to stop talking long enough to take him anywhere.
It wouldn’t be such a problem if he were talking about something else. But it had been half an hour of Mihashi sadly enumerating all of Abe Takaya’s finest qualities (many of which Suyama had not heretofore been aware he possessed, and to be honest still wasn’t completely sure that he did in fact possess), and whatever else was unclear, it was pretty clear that it was for gay reasons. And it was also pretty clear that Mihashi was not out to the entire world of pro baseball. If they could just get him to keep it to himself for two minutes while they got him in a cab…and then hope the cabbie didn’t follow sports…
If you’d asked Suyama back in high school, he would never have thought that someday they would have a problem with Mihashi talking too much.
He was aware he was no expert on crushes, or whatever, but really. How much more could there be to say?
“And now he’s. Lost. Forever,” Mihashi was saying in tones of deep tragedy. “H-he’s going to be too. Busy, and all the—with—the—the patients, w-who have in-interesting. Conditions, and so he. Will never. Look at m-me—ever—again,” he said, his voice cracking on the last word.
“Uh,” said Suyama. Was that how it worked? It didn’t seem right to Suyama, but what did he know.
“They’ll. Need him,” Mihashi cried. “He l-loves that.”
“Well,” said Sakaeguchi. Abe did love to be needed, that was true. But again, there was something off about the way Mihashi was looking at it.
“I’m not. Weird enough for him anymore!” Mihashi burst out. “He’ll think I’m—boring. How c-can I com-compare with patients? He—he can look at, at their bones. Their bones!”
“Oh…no,” said Suyama, in a tone he hoped passed for supportive. He barely managed to keep it from coming out as a question.
“Bones! In-inside of them! Do you. Know. What h-he said. When I asked i-if he wants—to look—at my bones?” Mihashi gave Suyama a look of such pure despair that he could swear he felt his heart wrench sideways, despite not understanding in the least what could be so devastating about a person looking, or not looking, at one’s bones.
“What did he say?” Sakaeguchi said breathlessly. Maybe the bone thing made sense to him.
“H-he said. ‘That would be. An.’” Mihashi buried his face in his hands. “’Ethics violationnnnnn!’”
“It would?” Sakaeguchi asked, enthralled.
“What if I. Want him to e-ethically violate me,” Mihashi said sadly.
“Oh, buddy,” Suyama said, patting his hair.
“And n-now I’ll. Never get the chance,” Mihashi whimpered, pushing his head into Suyama’s hand like a very needy cat. “H-he’ll be—People th-throwing themselves at him—P-parents of…of everyone wanting—son-in-law… A doctor…sexy genius who kn-knows all my favorite—m-mochi flavors—”
“Would that be a selling point for others, do you think?” Sakaeguchi interjected weakly, but Mihashi didn’t hear him.
“And someday he’ll. Look like his hot dad and—ugh, he would be s-such a—good father—!”
“Would he?” Suyama said, not managing to keep out the skepticism this time, but Mihashi wasn’t listening to him either.
“When he’s looking at-at you, you feel like you could do—anything,” he whispered, and his face crumpled. “As long as he’s—watching, y-you’re real…”
Suyama looked to see if Sakaeguchi was as alarmed by this as he was, but Sakaeguchi’s expression had gone thoughtful. “You know, Ren—” he started.
“What’s going on?” said a gruff voice as the door to their private room slid open. “Why isn’t he already home?”
“TAKA!!” Mihashi shouted, and spun himself around so fast he immediately toppled over.
Abe caught him, saying, “Easy, easy. I’m here.” He spared a glare for Suyama and Sakaeguchi. “I just got off a shift, but haven’t you been here for like an hour? What’s taking you so long?”
Suyama opened his mouth, but Mihashi preempted him. “Takaaaaa,” he said, petting Abe’s face to get his attention. “Don’t l-look at them. They’re not important.”
“Well, hang on,” Abe said, glancing back at them almost apologetically. “That’s not—”
“No, that’s fair,” Sakaeguchi said. Suyama nodded. It would be nice to be not important at this point. Maybe he could go home.
“Shh,” said Mihashi, putting his hand over Abe’s mouth. “Shush. You’re m-making—me dizzy.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Abe said from behind the hand. “Do you think there might be another reason you’re dizzy?” He looked pointedly at the empty beer bottles scattered over the low table.
“No,” said Mihashi emphatically. “It’s—you’re—I’ll tell you. Listen.” He took his hand away from Abe’s mouth to place it on his shoulder and leaned in. “You c-can’t be a doctor, Takaya. You—can’t take. Heartbeats.”
“What?” Abe said, confused. “A pulse? Yeah I can. They taught me to. In medical school. And it’s not really that difficult to begin with.”
“Y-you think you can,” said Mihashi, “but you don’t know. It’s the—wrong heartbeat. You-you’re in-interfering.”
“Ohhhh,” said Sakaeguchi quietly, grabbing Suyama’s arm. Ohhhh, what? Suyama was lost. So was Abe.
“It’s wrong,” Mihashi said again. “You—mess it up. When you come in. The r-room. Faster—just because—you’re there—"
Ah. Suyama could see where this was going. Not bad for a guy without a romantic bone in his body.
“You’re saying…the presence of the doctor throws off the results?” Abe frowned. He was proving to be slower on the uptake than Suyama, but then again, he hadn’t been privy to Mihashi’s litany of his virtues. “Well, going to the doctor’s can be stressful for people, so their readings might be elevated—”
“No. Takaya,” Mihashi interrupted. “Not the doctor. You. Because they—w-want you, b-because, it’s you, and you’re you, a-and—” He started gasping, his breath tearing out of him in sobs. “You’re gonna—f-find somebody, and—forget—about me—”
Oh, shit. Was it too late for Suyama to leave? Or should he stay to support Mihashi?
“Whoa, Ren, slow down,” Abe said, voice rising in alarm. “I don’t even know what—how could I forget about you, huh? Are you stupid?” He thumbed at the tear tracks on Mihashi’s face and said more calmly, “And I don’t know where this is coming from, but nobody wants me, Ren, that’s ridiculous—"
“Wr-wrong,” Mihashi interrupted again, almost shouting now. “Everybody. To—to talk to you and h-hold you and sleep—with you and have your—at-attention! Forever and ever!”
Abe stared at him, stunned. Suyama was losing sensation in the arm Sakaeguchi was clutching, but it was nothing to how excruciating this conversation had become. What was anybody supposed to say to that?
“Ren,” Abe breathed. “Hey, Ren.” His eyes were shiny. He was still cradling Mihashi’s face in his hands. “You’re—you’re my most important person.” He took a deep breath, and the tears spilled over. “I’m not—you could never lose me. You don’t have to worry about that.”
Mihashi reached out slowly to catch a tear as it dripped off Abe’s chin. Then he opened his hand and placed it flat against Abe’s chest. Over his heart.
Suyama would have liked to take that as his cue to leave, but that would require wrenching his arm out of Sakaeguchi’s death grip, and the last thing he wanted to do was draw any attention to himself. So he could only endure.
“I just—” Abe shuddered and closed his eyes. “I can’t play baseball anymore. So I thought…”
Mihashi blinked. He opened his mouth. “Are. You stupid?” he said.
Suyama had to agree. But again, he had been there for the litany. Mihashi should probably repeat it to Abe at some point. When Suyama was far away.
Abe choked out a laugh and opened his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe?” He inhaled. “It’s just…Who am I to you, if I’m not your catcher?”
What a question. Could Suyama plug his ears without being rude?
Ren clenched his hand into Abe’s shirt. “You’re just mine,” he said fiercely. “If. If you want to be.”
No, that would definitely be rude.
Abe swallowed. “Even if…even if I’m stupid? Even if I don’t have time to work out anymore and I turn into my dad?”
Suyama and Sakaeguchi coughed in unison. Abe looked around at them in surprise. “Oh, you’re still here?” His eyebrows drew down. “Thanks for looking after Ren, but would you guys mind leaving? We’re having a private conversation.”
“Yes. Yep. Absolutely,” Suyama said immediately, and forgave Abe for everything.
i mostly just pretend that the curzon-loving-jadzia thing didn't happen because acknowledging it honestly makes me so frustrated and uncomfortable and it reveals too much of the biases underlying the writing of one of the more interesting star trek characters (to me) in any series. but, setting aside my reactive feelings about this reveal, i can read a narrative purpose and theme in this that i don't think was deliberate but is still interesting.
by the time she finds out that the reason she was rejected and then accepted into joining with a symbiont was due to curzon's feelings for her--attraction and then guilt, she'd already: a) held up curzon's promise, at the risk of her own lifelong imprisonment, to protect curzon's former lover, b) held up another of curzon's promises to kill a guy in battle (despite being told she shouldn't have to by kira of all unlikely people), c) had her symbiont taken away from her outside of her choice and then joined with the person who took it at gunpoint, and d) learned that the symbiosis commission lied to her to cover themselves about the fact that her symbiont had once been joined to a murderer, a person she then had to accept within herself or die about. and then she learns that the most recent host of her symbiont had feelings for her, who she was pre-joined. on top of all this, sisko has been calling her "old man" since he met her because sisko remembers curzon. and it's a joke--she's a young woman, it's ironic--but that's still the nickname he gave her. this man, curzon, who she has to carry with her for the rest of her life. who was a burden (which she accepted with a certain kind of nobility) before she found out about his feelings and his subsequent unjust actions because of those feelings.
she learns and experiences all this and then she meets lenara. and lenara breaks her heart and chooses trill society and custom. and lenara says to her, explaining why she's not going to choose to be adventurous or brave and go against the norms, "we don't all have a curzon inside of us". which is sort of crazy for her to say given that it was torias's memories that inspired jadzia's initial connection to lenara, not curzon's. (and like torias was established in the show as being a daredevil pilot who took big risks. so why mention curzon at all?)
and then after jadzia meets worf, she accidentally gets all the main crew trapped on a planet in "children of time" where she meets both her great-grandson and future host of her symbiont and it's his actions that have ensured she crash there and have to commit to reproducing with worf so he and the rest of the colony can exist.
so, counting, that's curzon, varad, joran, torias, and yedrin--all male hosts of jadzia's symbiont and all who in some way hurt her. and in each instance the conclusion to her agential action in each story was simply accepting it.
the curzon of it all is the most frustrating part. people have joked that jadzia is like a klingon "weeaboo" and it's true, there's so many instances where she performs klingon culture--sincere or not, there's still a level of performance. and that interest and that memory of past relationships with other klingons comes from curzon. and it's one of the reasons i was a little annoyed that sisko scolded her like a child and insisting she's a prideful young woman when she doesn't want to go through a ritual she had promised to do to marry worf. he calls her “old man” constantly, the value of her curzon memories has been celebrated again and again, the value and source of her personal choices have been attributed to curzon, her life as a joined person came solely down to curzon’s control, curzon is the previous host mentioned most who is implied (deliberately or not in the show) to have the most influence over who she is—and she’s called a little girl over a moment of maybe unearned pride and told she is not curzon.
all of this would read better to me if: a) we got way more substance about who jadzia was as a person before being joined and b) if dax’s other previous hosts, like, perhaps, some of the women, were given equal consideration and implied screen-presence. but as it is, as it’s written, deliberately or not, jadzia’s story is one of accepting the things that come at you and the people that hurt you, especially if you have to carry them in the most intimate way. this frames a lot of her actions in later seasons as one of a person who has to keep learning this lesson and then frames her death, with all its other accidentally concordant details like quark and julian lamenting they’d never gotten with her or the random introduction of her wanting a baby with worf.
obviously i think the intent when writing jadzia dax was not to write someone who swallows her opinions and convictions and pride. i think the intent was to write someone both youthful and old, fun and intelligent, committed to the ideals of exploration but also committed to her brothers-in-arms, so to speak, and in all that they succeeded. she’s a really fascinating character and is performed and written still with a richness of person that i think a lot of fans don’t give the character credit for. but the resulting character also has all these instances of learning a similar lesson over and over: accepting people who have wronged her and also that an enormous portion of her value comes down to curzon--the memories that she didn’t make but she still has to honor and own.
this is also why i sort of wish they'd had a plot where, like, jadzia is injured, she insists they remove the symbiont to send it back to trill to be joined to another, they do but it pisses julian off and he and his augmented-brain team figure out how to keep jadzia alive after the symbiont has been taken away, and like it’s a dire and permanent solution and it’s disabling maybe in some way, but it works and she’s alive, and then lenara hears about what’s happened when she realizes the dax symbiont is being joined to someone else and she races to jadzia’s side because now it’s just a gray area of the law, being together, and jadzia is like “i’m just jadzia now” and lenara is like “cool, can you help me build an artificial wormhole again? one that lasts?” because like, jadzia has several science degrees. one of exactly two things about her pre-joining self that is fully textual. and lenara returing specifically to be with jadzia would have implied an enormous amount of non-curzon-derived worth. and that’s how jadzia dax is written off the show, instead.
none of this to say we're given nothing about jadzia pre-joining:
she has a mother she writes a letter to every time she's "going into battle" therefore pre-joining she had some sort of loving relationship with her mom
she has a sister who once gave her a pair some glasses she didn't like. lots of different things could be extrapolated from this but my initial read is that she and her sister often tease each other
she excelled in school and achieved a very high-level of education in several subjects--one of which was "exoarchaeology" which is why she's tasked with translating some ancient carvings on an ancient bajoran stone at some point which is particularly fun to me personally
she was decided and determined to be joined ("ever since i was a little girl" and the fact that after being rejected she applied again--that's a unique type of self-championing and fortitude)
all of this is really wonderful stuff of character and makes her feel very much like a person which makes the setting and weird sci-fi alien conceit she's depicting more interesting with her presence. and also why it would've been delightfully painful to see her try to confront having to live on without a symbiont.
people love the idea of the mean girl nurse pipeline because it problematises medical abuse as a personal perversion rather than understanding it as a product of broadly held ableist values and its like, if this was only about ontologically evil teenage girls choosing to enter a profession because of their unique sadism then you really wouldnt expect to see the exact same forms of abuse pervading all arrangements of paid, unpaid, formal, ad hoc, and familial caretaking as well -- its more comforting to believe the nurse was just a preexisting bad person than that most of the world broadly hates disabled people and will abuse, neglect, and gaslight them if given power over their care
weirdest thing happened the other day on the phone with my sister. she was talking, and suddenly she just started repeating the syllable "he", but with normal sentence intonation. she was like "we're going at the end of september. he he he he he he he he, he he he he he he." as though that was a regular thing to do. so obviously i was like what? and she was like what? and i was like did you just say the word "he" over and over instead of a sentence? and she was like no?? and i was like okay, well then i don't know what you just said, and she said it was "i know you don't like traveling, but you're welcome to join us." and i was like THAT SOUNDS NOTHING LIKE HE HE HE HE? and she was like WHAT IS HAPPENING???!?! so either i had some kind of neurological event for the space of exactly one sentence, or my phone or her airpods had some weird glitch, also for the space of exactly one sentence? neither of which seems very likely?? what WAS THAT
it’s really cool to see someone who is in the exact same kind of relationship that i am for once. i get comfort from both the “aros can be in romantic relationships too” as well as the “aros dont ever have to date” kinds of posts but it always feels as if both of these awkwardly exclude me. i never thought i’d find someone else who was fine with their partner calling the relationship romantic for them but not for themselves. relationships can be just as messy and nuanced as identity itself but i dont think most people are ready to admit that.
even in places where relationship anarchy is talked about (the aro community being a big one, at least from what i've seen) it's still difficult to find people's accounts of like. how they put relationship anarchy into practice. i don't know. relationships are like gender to me in the way that every social construct is the same. every person is an individual. every individual is going to have their own approach to gender: just because we have these two major categories doesn't mean that it isn't infinitely variable and extremely personal. relationships are typically categorized as romantic, platonic, or familial, but the truth is that those categories are just as made up as the binary gender system. sure, they pop up a lot, and sure, they might be helpful for you to apply for yourself, but ultimately, every relationship is unique. once you start thinking outside of those arbitrary boxes— hold on i got so caught up in thinking about how to explain it that i stopped writing this post to draw a diagram
with anything listed being a stand-in for whatever else you can think of, obviously. but that's the thing it's like. you don't have to use the presets. everything is infinitely customizeable. you are ALWAYS creating unique relationships with other people you just don't think of it that way... once you approach every relationship in your life with an open mindset suddenly there are beautiful beautiful possibilities for all kinds of connections with other human beings... as always i fall back on my favorite phrase. which is "you can do whatever you want forever". because you can
