#verso writes

[grammarpedant]

Indah's treatment of both SecUnit and the refugee Humans at the end of Fugitive Telemetry was the masterstroke of writing that showed what IS good about Preservation's establishment, actually. That Indah was able to hold compassion and understanding for both extremely traumatized parties, both the prickly consultant she's been butting heads with all book and the ungrateful strangers who shot it in the back, and balance their needs without letting either hurt the other further, shows what Preservation is GOOD at. Reparative justice, harm reduction, compassion and healing and the difficult logistics thereof.

She is dead serious when she offers for Murderbot to press charges against the humans who shot it. She also won't let the refugees be threatened or intimidated by that same legal action by her own officers. She makes sure everyone knows the rights and protections they're due. She says, No, we will not be charging Human One, "because I understand she’s experienced extreme trauma and because the consultant refused to make a complaint," because she understands due process is necessary for justice, and because she understands that what she doesn't understand comes from trauma—on both sides. She says, Are you going to help us find the real killer, "Or is this just how your whole group treats people who get hurt trying to help you?" because yes, she does understand where Murderbot's coming from better now, and because she has to speak up—she cannot simply accept the humans fear this SecUnit, despite its own resignation, not when her job is to restore and repair the society that holds both victims. And when she keeps Murderbot and the refugees from coming face to face with each other, it's not only for the humans' sake, it's for Murderbot's sake too. An unmediated, charged possible confrontation would harm both parties and serve no one. Her words and actions reflect her sincere beliefs in compassion and justice, and those of Preservation's.

And in the end when Murderbot has given up on its "less murdery," minimum force, life-prioritizing, "that was a SecUnit plan" aspirations to non-violent purpose and gone to kill Balin or be killed by it, it's Preservation's bot community that intervenes and de-escalates the situation without further harm or violence. After Human One, it sends a message to the reader: that despite the trauma and injustices the world brings to its doorstep, despite the missteps its people make in the process, Preservation is still ready to respond with strength, compassion, justice, mercy, and its belief in the sanctity of all life. It shows us, not better people, but people borne of a better society, and asks us what we could be if we could make our future better, too.

[grammarpedant]

urggh making myself emotional over aroace Jiang Cheng interpretations and how much family and familial relationships matter in MDZS again

I'm just upsetting myself imagining his proud and prickly figure standing on the pier, facing the distant mountains with his head high and his back like the axis of the world, too strong and proud to make amends with the one remaining brother he has in his one life because Wei Wuxian has moved on, he has his stupid husband to be in love with now so why would he care about Jiang Cheng, who was always second-best anyway?

Jiang Cheng standing on the pier remembering his nephew as a baby, cradled in his arms on this very pier, this pier at this sect that he spent the work of his lifetime rebuilding. his nephew, the apple of his eye, whom he'd move heaven and earth for but not say a gentle word to, the only remaining piece of his beloved elder sister in the world. his elder sister, the one source of softness in his life, and when he writes to the matchmakers so as to fulfill his duties as clan head, all he can think to ask for are the qualities of his sister. more than a wife, what he really wants is his sister back.

The prioritization of non-romantic, non-sexual relationships, the loneliness that Jiang Cheng seems surrounded by as the important people in his life leave him for romantic relationships, the particular love and grief of it all... the aroaceness of it makes me weep

[grammarpedant]

This observation is so trivial and so untimely as to be beside the point, but both sides of the discourse on Wei Wuxian's self-worth have truth to them: he is a character who is both supremely self-confident and cripplingly insecure.

He has a high sense of self-value, he knows he's clever and strong and charismatic, he knows he's objectively a strong cultivator and powerful force on any field of battle. He knows he's hot shit. I'm not a psychologist using these terms precisely, but I think that basically fits both the technical definition and most people's definition of self-esteem.

At the same time, valuing yourself highly is not the same as knowing others value you highly, something which is notably both a major theme of the text and a highly critical feature of the human psyche. People NEED to know that they are valued by others, that they matter to others, that they have support, friends and family they can trust and rely on, people who will care for them no matter what happens. Family, my god, don't even get me started on family- the culture Wei Wuxian was raised in reflects the real-world culture he was written in; in Confucian society how can there be any bond or organizing principle more important than that of family? Of parents, filial piety? What could you possibly be worth without that connection?

For better or worse, human beings need to know that the people around them value them or else they get fucked up in the head. And Wei Wuxian, who has no family in the Confucian sense, whose position with his adoptive family was not secure, who was raised embracing the expectation of being someone else's servant and whose life was thus of lesser value, who faced censure from his peers for rising above his status, he did not always have this. Of course he had his Shijie, and Jiang Fengmian, and Jiang Cheng, but—well, enough ink has been spilled on the ways in which the Jiang family was dysfunctional. Many other facets of Wei Wuxian's personality, e.g. the self-sacrificing, the hero complex, etc can be traced back to the lack of self-worth that not being secure in his position in others' eyes causes. Of course he has a great sense of self-value, he has to—he can't rely on getting any validation of his worth as a person from anybody else.

Wei Wuxian has self-esteem, but he's also deeply shaped by insecurity. Those are not contradicting aspects of his personality. Like I said, it's a trivial observation.

[grammarpedant]

Worldbuilding concept: a world in which most humans possess psychic powers, producing aura fields around their bodies that other humans can sense. These auras serve as emotional signifiers, revealing a person's state of mind- and have tangible physical qualities that affect the world around them, oftimes dramatically. Flaring, burning, chilling, darkening, cutting, enveloping, wafting; weighty, turbulent, laminar, jagged, bright, scintillating. You can feel people's aura prickling like static on your skin, or see it lance out at the object of their attention, or hear it buzzing in your teeth. And some people's auras can be stronger and more overwhelming than others.

Entire confrontations can be held between two entirely unmoving, unspeaking opponents as their auras flow against each other, standing stock still while the room around them tears itself apart with the sheer force of self-expression. Forget speaking looks or subtle body language; human beings would be able to communicate with the subtlest of changes in aura flow: a flicker of jagged irritation and your roommate's mouth snaps shut around an insensitive comment; the warmth as your mother's aura embraces you reminds you that you are loved; the dullness and smallness of your own aura tells you how much your new job weighs on you- tells you, and your coworkers too. Meanwhile, the bloom and commingle of a thousand auras as the lead singer hits the high note at a concert is a uniquely, ecstatically overwhelming experience.

And in the midst of all the questions about how differently the world would be structured in a world where psychic powers are tangibly real and omnipresent- how directed does aura control get? enough to do manual labor? do people still value physical power over mental ones? can people exert enough fine aura control to do detail work? is emotional regulation considered a central life skill across cultures, or do some cultivate explosive trauma instead? what kind of technologies arise around aura use? are there forms of art that rely on extrasensory perception of the aura? etc- I find myself interested in the people that must exist in the setting who can't use their aura. Who can't control their aura, or can't sense others' aura, or sense too much, or express their aura weirdly, or weakly, or can't express their own aura at all.

It's a great metaphor for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent disability, after all. I barely need to tell my fellow what it would mean for a person in this world to be impaired in or missing out on such a crucial aspect of life, communication, and sociality- for many of us it's our lived reality already.

[grammarpedant]

Every now and then I'm reminded that although I've spent years learning and growing and moving beyond the Basic 101's of, e.g., feminism, anti-capitalism, queer theory, anti-racism, intersectionality, etc, I must still have dozens of followers who are just stumbling ass-first into them. I'm usually reminded of this by getting a supportive and well-intentioned but very bad take added to something I posted or rb'd.

Quick recap:

Sexuality, gender, sexual assignment, etc, are not the same thing. Say it with me: what kind of sex you want has nothing to do with what gender you identify with. You can be very physically, sexually attractive to people and still not want any sex at all from anyone. Being agender (identifying as not a man, woman, or any other gender identity) does not necessarily mean that you identify as asexual (not experiencing sexual attraction to other people)

God is that too complicated for people? Homosexuality exists. Men can want to have sex with other men. This does not make them less men. Lesbians also exist. Bisexuality

Asexuality is real. If a straight man can feel no attraction to another man no matter how hot, and a gay man feel no attraction to a woman no matter how hot, then it should follow that there are people out there (of all genders!) who don't want to have sex with either men or women, or anyone else, no matter how hot.

Aromanticism is real. (Although romance might not be). The basis of the long-term committed relationship in our society is predicated on mutual attraction, on Romance, a concept written into our marriage and family laws and media supergenres alike. If you don't feel about other people in the way that society tells you you should, if you don't feel romantic attraction, that's aromanticism.

Aromanticism and Asexuality are queer, and real. Queerness is deviation from norm; queerness is a coalition of the sexual minorities, the deviants who can't or won't do sex and gender the way society says it is done- and aros and aces are deviants in the eyes of a controlling society, too; deviants in their refusal to participate in sex and romance. That makes aros and aces queer. Together, aros and aces (and the various other identities belonging on their spectrums) are called by the umbrella term Aspec.

Sexual identity, sexual behavior, and sexual attraction are not the same thing (and the same goes for romantic identity/behavior/attraction). There are straight men (identity) who willingly have sex with other men (behavior), in some cases- though not all- because their identity is founded in the personal truth that said straight man does not feel sexual attraction to other men, instead engaging in the behavior for the purposes of socializing with other men. In the same way, asexual people can engage in sex, because there are many reasons to do so besides sexual attraction, and the behavior is not the same as sexual attraction or identity.

Reverse racism isn't real. Racism itself isn't just "when you say bad things because of skin color," it's systemic discrimination on the basis of race (which, like romance, is a social construct and isn't based in physical reality.) A Black person being rude about a White American cultural peculiarity may be rude, but it isn't racism- because it's not backed by decades and centuries of disenfranchisement and belief in the inferiority of non-White people that even people of color themselves internalize. A given microaggression towards a person of color may seem small, but it's harmful because it's part of and reinforcing a much bigger structure of racism. Black people deciding that Whites don't get to say the n-word without consequences is not racism.

Feminism isn't "when woman good, and man bad." It's the philosophy that comes from dismantling the gendered norms and hierarchy that make people believe that women are inferior to and less valuable than men, but it doesn't stop there.

Transgender people are queer, and real. A trans person is someone who does not identify as the sex that they were assigned with. As such, transness reveals the truths that gender is not sex, that gender roles are not immutable biological facts, that gender is a social construct like race and romance and identity itself- an idea that people make up to make sense of the world, not a physical reality in itself. Transness reveals that our ideas of what gender is can be changed.

I'm focusing on the ones that I tend to see and which annoy me personally, but by all means add your own Social Justice 101's as well. Just try to keep it simple, keep it civil, and keep it truthful.

[grammarpedant]

i dreamt i was a dog with bloodied jaws.

(cw traumatic injury, pet injury, mentions of pet death, gore, intrusive thoughts)

It seems that November is the moon for hungry predators. It was around this time a couple years ago that I lost my hen Pepper to the raccoon, whose festering bite killed her months later. They strike at night. I should know better by now, really.

Last night one of my young hens, Roxie, the brown girl, not two years old, sweet Easter Egger with her silly beard fluff, was bitten by an unidentified creature in the night. She screamed into the darkness, screamed again, and screamed again with the shock and pain of it. As I threw myself out of bed I thought grimly that it was a good sign- it meant she wasn't dead.

Whatever bit her must have been cowardly- no bold raccoon dragging my poor spotted hen into the vines, this one. By the time I finished clattering down the stairs it was gone, and at first I didn't see what was wrong. All five of my hens in their enclosure, the door neglectfully ajar; they were stressed and aflutter but sometimes chickens spook, that was the way of things--

Roxie was huddled and silent between her sister hens by the time I thought to turn the lights on, and only then did I see the red pouring down over the wooden slats they liked to perch on. Recent blood, ruby red, the fresh chicken meat smell rich in my nose. Vivid in my eyes despite the darkness, vivid on my untasting tongue. Remembering it makes me sick and hungry all at once.

She'd been bitten on her rump, near the cloaca, a deep wound mostly hidden by her feathers that I hadn't been willing to look at too closely, myself. I spent much of the rest of the night with her in the veterinary ER, alternately pacing and dozing in an empty lobby. Once, in the distance, I heard her squawking protest, and I strode at the unattended reception desk as if to go to her, before catching myself. All told, I got about two hours of sleep before going in to my usual 11-hour shift at work. Roxie I left in the care of the vet hospital.

I wish I hadn't let the vets explain in quite so much detail what was wrong with her wound. I keep seeing the pictures they showed me, bloody flesh peeled back; I keep remembering the descriptions: deep wound, skin flap hanging off, infection risk, potentially not enough skin to close the wound. Then, after the surgery: last vertebra detached, not viable, removed, whatever bit her tore through skin and fat and muscle and yanked the tip of her tail off. They reconstructed her tail, but they're keeping her inpatient for monitoring: the skin stretched tight over the wound might yet peel back and flay from the flesh.

Driving home from work that day I bite my own teeth in the darkness; my jaw grinds and clenches on nothing but a sense memory. I remember the sweet smell of blood, fresh and red, the scent of chicken fat, so rich, so delicious; I remember layers of fat peeling back before my teeth; the crack of bones, delicate in my jaw; the textures of tiny vertebrae, rough on my tongue. I've never been ashamed of being a carnivore before- but now the joy of it melts like fat and draws out the flavor of remembered pain and fear. Every time I think of Roxie I think of her wounds, and I remember how it must have felt to inflict them. I grind my jaw and bite against nothing again.

Let me take her back from the hospital today. Let me care for her wounds, and scritch her beard, and feed her treats; let me forget what it felt like to be her killer.

[grammarpedant]

You just know that if Gon were cursed to push Sisyphus's boulder up the hill for all eternity, he'd find a way to turn it into a fun game, or training some skill tangential to boulder pushing. Set a speedrun record to the top in the first century and strive to break it for the second century, then work on discovering new boulder-handling techniques for the next century and work on those, etc etc. The whole time reveling in the feeling of his body at work, sweat on his brow, smiling up at the peak for the millionth time as he pushes the boulder onward.

One must imagine Gon happy, in Sisyphus's place.

[grammarpedant]

She went pale. It was like the sight of it had stabbed into her; she took a breath—but only to scream, her face gaping into a hollow mask. Grief rushed out of the hole of her mouth like the air from a hull breach, with an equally dreadful sound.

It was a sound that taught me to be afraid of death. I hope I never hear it again.