[donnapalude]

you can tell my family has had delightful life experiences bc whenever i talk about a job offer or anything new i want to pursue their very first reaction, without fail, is listing for me everything they can think of that could go wrong. i can see they think they are being helping but...it is not cheerful, let's leave it at that

[donnapalude]

you would think having been part of several working environments that people consider intimidating due to the expectation they contain formidably smart and competent people and finding them instead as filled with fools as anywhere else would have destroyed my ability to be intimidated by similar situations and yet here i am sending resumes with the internal disposition of a dog waiting to be kicked

[donnapalude]

riffing off a mutual's post on hotd, although i think i said something similar before re: mh. the incestuous relationship between ray and curtis is not explicitly realised, some reading between the lines is required to land on this interpretation, but it is nonetheless my interpretation that the moment in time crystallised by the show presents a ray that is aware he has developed some sexual feelings for his younger brother, aware he's capable of acting on them, and that has decided to maintain some distance between them in order to avoid the catastrophic outcome that would follow. it is yet another iteration of situations that are so compelling to me, where the power you have over another person is configured as such that you can never evade it in full and you can only explore an array of choices that spell different harmful outcomes. ray decides to position himself at a distance from curtis that he deems sufficient to minimise the risk of his exposure to ray's sexual desires but not so insormountable curtis can't call on him for help and support if needed. it's a compromise that hurts curtis on multiple levels: he is not exactly spared from perceiving the confusing intensity of ray's feelings, just refused an explanation for it; the frequent instances where he recalls past times of unity seem to indicate he experiences some hidden longing for them; there is a difficulty in curtis's ability to negotiate the boundaries between himself and others (both in taking the initiative to loosen them and in rejecting their breach) that seems to bear the shape of ray's past role in his life. and yet i do find it touching that this is the compromise on which ray lands: that he decides to bind himself to a situation where he's continuously confronted with desires he finds shameful and harmful and with the need to continuously manage them, instead of trying to eschew them and that he does this, at least in part, precisely because he doesn't want curtis to lose the safe port of call he has in him. it is not entirely unselfish: he likes being that port of call, his sense of identity is heavily embroiled in being someone that can offer that kind of unquestioning service to family members. still, i appreciate the commitment to remaining somewhat clear-eyed about the kind of danger he poses and to face the task of curtailing it every day so that curtis doesn't have to face the consequences of it entirely on his own.

[markiafc]

pick a brother

baby brother curtis (left)

big brother ray (right)

Voting ended onJun 14

[donnapalude]

i am. too overstimulated to be living in a house this small with no room of my own and no door to the living room where i sleep. i will blow something up. soon. it's impending

[donnapalude]

as a more practical approach: i remain convinced that it is an essential strategic decision to make sure parents/caregivers are acting against their own needs as little as possible in the context of their job. with this i don't mean to erase the fact that, when caring for a person that is to some degree dependent on and vulnerable to you, some degree of this abnegation will be needed. and i also don't mean to obscure the fact that most settings where care of children/sick people/elderly people/disabled people happens don't actually, truly have the care of these people firm as main and only structural interest. there are a number of discussions to be had on these issues. the point i am now making is simply that since parents/caregivers have objective power on people in their care it is just counterproductive to put them in a position where the cost of choosing to attend to the needs of the dependent person is very taxing on their own. bound to end badly

[littlesweatermart]

(source)

[matilda-aseo-deactivated2025043]

what needs to precede discussions on cultural transfeminine third genders is the understanding that trans woman is, on the one hand, not any less cultural than any other gender identity, while also being used as a clinical, culturally neutral term, and this creates a class of prestige through which the individual can access womanhood globally, and so makes it a question not only of cultural identity but also of the imperial administrative apparatus and border politics. and as long as we approach the topic of gender with the framework of determining what an identity and an individual "really is" we won't be getting anywhere

[donnapalude]

i am also battling against the constant instinct to just delete all these posts because not conclusive enough - and i often do end up doing that. but at the same time i think it matters to me to create a place of discussion where the entry point isn't "being the most well read, cleverest, most exhaustive, incisive person in the world". for me and for others. i could read abt this for another 12 years and probably amaze everyone with better prose and more cutting arguments but i would miss out on a lot of conversations on the way + i think this anxiety to be immediately autoritative runs counter to the aims of research-work. so here's to the worst symposium ever i guess

[donnapalude]

this is also not to say that someone performing caregiving duties on forced premises can never accrue any power over the person object of care due to their disability. this depends on a number of factors, including specific conditions of disability. es. it can happen that the disabled person is stripped of legal rights of decision-making when it's determined they don't have sufficient mental faculties to handle their affairs. those rights may be later transferred to previously dependent people like wives and children and this creates a different power balance. i am just saying the idea there's an absolute undeniable power each caregiver has over a disabled person by virtue of being able to refuse or poorly perform their services at any given moment only stands when...the caregiver actually has that power. if you can safely hit me/threaten me with homelessness and destitution/call for court orders to bring me home if i escape to other shelters how much of a power do i really have here? if i do have any, by virtue of maybe not being 100% reliant on you and being therefore more able to leverage your lack of other care options, it is still at least not absolute and undeniable

[donnapalude]

or, in other words, i think there is a huge difference between saying 1) that disabled people, as a class and as a general rule, hold special privileges in exploiting the work of others just by virtue of existing and having needs (= untrue bc again it exceptionalises the work of care needed here by obscuring how we all depend on a societal organisation of work of other people to survive) and 2) that there are classes of people that hold special privileges ensuring their survival can rest on the exploited work of others and there is a preemptive consideration this calculus, for them, also includes conditions of disability. this is evident in global relations too, when you consider the survival of many disabled people in the global north depends on the exploitment of people in the global south as much as that of non-disabled people. if you are a poor person in the us your survival may well "depend" on buying food that is rendered cheap by exploited labour elsewhere and by all means do buy it but you can see the definition of dependence used here is not equivalent to the one we use to relate an oppressed class to an oppressive one.

[donnapalude]

.

anyway my main point remains that i feel there are important differences in positionalities between: 1) caregiving dependent on the goodwill of close relations (goodwill being the operative word, in the sense people can stay or go as they please); 2) caregiving dependent on specifically tasked people that hold unequal positions of power over you (es. childrearing from parents, caregiving of disabled people in institutional settings) - which may involve elements of legal/economic/physical constraints on the caregiver but they don't come from the person that is the object of care; 3) caregiving dependent on people over which you have enough power you can personally enforce legal/economic/physical constraints so that they, specifically, perform these duties for you.

in that sense, it is worth noting that, while disability as a category exists by definition due to lack of wider societal accomodation around certain modalities of functioning, for some categories of people it is still accounted as a possible (even probable, considering elderly care in countries where life expectation makes this a common social issue) life risk and there are mechanisms of societal organisation in place to ensure related needs will be attended through the forced, unending labour of categories of people that are themselves dependent on the object of care and unable to reject this role. it feels unbearable to me that pointing this out gets you hit with the accusation "so you think disabled people should just die!". no, i very clearly don't think that and i can plainly see there is a wider injustice hitting them too in any societal context that creates the conditions for disability to be a relevant concept at all. but this doesn't automatically erase the power and willingness they have to force labour on others and the social hierarchy constructed among people that have access to this power and people that don't. not a 1:1 comparison but if someone needs an organ to survive we still object to them cutting someone open for it and we would object even further to a mechanism of societal organisation that positions entire categories of people as automatic spare organs for others. maybe a bad example but i am trying to convey this in the most extreme way possible because i feel anything less is largely deconstructed as meaningless

[donnapalude]

i haven't even watched half man yet but i am preemptively mad that the actor for young niall looks NOTHING like jaime bell

[donnapalude]

motorheads | sharp objects

[donnapalude]

i am relatively sure i have mutuals/followers apart from mark that have watched motorheads but not joined the fandom per se - fair! but i am curious about your opinions on it and the interpretation of incest subtext in the young family. no pressure but if you want to drop a line i would be interested in hearing what you think. it's just such a terribly small fandom, i am starved for interactions

[markiafc]

this car is a woman called dottie, in the way that cars are sexualized by men (she "has a big engine and a nasty clutch" + no one's allowed to see "what's under her hood" because "she's bashful"). and she's.... everybody's first. everybody's first vehicle and first ride, the car that takes your driving virginity. my brother brought me here when i was 12.

[boundwithpurple]

i just don’t think alicent is fundamentally opposed to violence or war. she is practical about having to use violence to advance a goal, and does it herself - she just has unacceptable limits that she hits, like rhaenyra’s murder or sending helaena to war against her will. but tellingly, in both cases she orders violence or accedes to violence to achieve the goal she herself seeks. she tries to stop one instance of violence unacceptable to herself, but must permit other kinds of violence to occur to do so. to save rhaenyra and her family in 1.09 she has larys burn down mysaria’s spy operation, and though the show is a bit frustratingly vague on this, it seems clear that this is done with the intent of killing the people who work for mysaria - just destroying the building wouldn’t achieve much. she agrees to aegon’s murder in 2.08 to save helaena. i think she experiences significant distress at both acts. she has an abhorrence of violence that is a thread throughout the show, from her anxiety at the bloodshed at the tourney in 1.01 to her horror at the violence of her own outburst in 1.07. but she does do them, and accept she has to do them, to acquire the (often limited) power to achieve her specific ends…which is exactly what she’s telling rhaenyra she’ll have to do in all we’ve gotten of her s3 so far!

she is a power player in a very violent political system that she has survived for a long time in, and regardless of her ambivalence, i just do not see the figure criston’s partial and sexist view conjures - a woman too tender and good to confront violence as a reality, and therefore unfitting to head a government prosecuting a war. it’s equally telling her moments of resistance, of using power for herself rather than others, are centered around the love of women, and work against the goals of the men who try to control her. but it can’t really undo the patriarchal power structure, as it is often posited to do via a richean lesbian continuum kind of framework - she has to work within it, always. none of alicent’s relationships with women can ever be extricated from hierarchies of power or said to be working against it in any neat way, at least so far. alicent saves rhaenyra’s life, but the only way she can do that is by seeking and affirming power for aegon. it doesn’t disrupt monarchal power, it actually affirms it, while working to strip rhaenyra of power. she later capitulates to rhaenyra for helaena, but it entails affirming rhaenyra’s pursuit of power, because safety for helaena is dependent on rhaenyra gaining power. these female bonds do not have any straightforward, inherent political purpose or function. they always affirm power as much as they disturb it, they might redistribute it or fight specific unacceptable ends, but they are too tied up in this system for it to ever fundamentally disrupt it. but that has great meaning to me! life is often not made up of radical acts or breaks, which most of us have few real opportunities for, but a more complex negotiation of accommodations and resistances that can still profoundly shape lives.