Aremo Shitai Koremo Shitai Onna no Ko ni Mietatte

No, kids should not have unsupervised acess to the internet.   Yes, I got that and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.    Its a paradox.

Thinkin' about how Gamzee Makara is genuinely a Really Tragic Character. Like he spent his entire childhood unsupervised and unattended in the throes of a cult, developing an actual substance abuse problem in an attempt to self medicate because of the constant voices he appeared to be hallucinating. Except He Wasn't Fucking Hallucinating, THOSE VOICES WERE FUCKING REAL they were the Literal Devil and an unholy fusion of what would become of his debilitatingly loyal and subservient friend after Gamzee kills him and some thirteen year old alien But Fucked Up And Dangerously Overclocked By A Supercomputer made as a response to apocalyptic loneliness and said someone else's need to keep occupied and feel on top of things, and Gamzee could only hear them because his soul is irrevocably tied to the cursed artefact they all reside in that brings nothing but misery and paranoia wherever it goes. He developed a very laid back unbothered inscrutable personality in response to all the awful things he didn't want to be aware of and relied heavily on his faith in a pair of Mirthful Messiahs that would give deliverance to all and forever erase any unpleasant stagnancy in favor of a chaotic carnival of wonder.

When Gamzee calms down from his whole murderous rampage/vindictive ruining of the Beta Kids' Session thing, he Can't go back to the way he was. He Can't be the same person he was before. He never speaks the same again, we hardly see him speak again At All. His thirteen-year-old mind breaks under the realization that he is not who he thought he was. He is not the person who extends his own brand of kooky clownish shangri-la to those around him until they see the world as it should be. He is the tool of something malevolent and petulant and calculating and selfish. He decides (correctly if the deterministic Alpha Timeline is to be followed) that this cannot be helped, and simply leans into dissociation.

Like-- Karkat sees this kid when they're still on Alternia and is like 'I can fix him' and he tries so god damned mother fucking hard and fails in part if not only because he simply was not meant to fix Gamzee. Not because Gamzee never wanted to be fixed, but because when Gamzee sobers up and his head becomes clear enough for him to reckon with reality and he understands that: he hasn't been hallucinating the voices, the religious beliefs he has held above all else throughout his broken memory were corrupted half truths at best, and at least two of the trolls on this void forsaken meteor are dirty backbiters and bad friends who he believes don't deserve an ounce of forgiveness, he completely goes off the deep end and starts relying on The Literal Actual Most Evil Person To Ever Exist for judgement. How is Karkat supposed to remedy that when he doesn't understand or won't believe that the voices are realer than he previously believed and He Is Powerless To Dispel Them? When he truly wants all of them to just. Fucking. Be A Team and trust one another and be good to one another, but Gamzee no longer believes that was ever an option? What does one Knight wager against the Devil and The Narrative for someone's soul?

In that space of three years where he's growing into the offputting smelly clown husk of a teen that Jane meets in front of her house just before The Trickster Incident and that everyone in the fandom in my experience collectively frowns and groans audibly at, he tries to become comfortable in this new state. In the dreaded Retcon Spree that removed a huge chunk of the complexity happening in an effort to power through to an ending, it's revealed that he did genuinely develop black affections for Terezi, He Just Also Was Bad For Her and she wasn't what he needed because Nobody could give him what he needed because what he needed was to Not Be Connected To Lord English for one second longer. He brought out self loathing in her and no amount of fucking with her and getting into fights that were supposed to be stimulating and romantic but in reality were just hurtful and toxic could make him feel like he could be any semblance of any normal ever again.

I have thought about Gamzee taking care of Calliope and Caliborn from the shadows for Literal Actual Years at this point. He does it because he has to. Because it is his duty as steward and passive enabler to the evil locked inside Lil Cal. Because he has faith that this little sugar loving skrellington squiggle worm will grow up big and strong and horrifying, and it is imperative that he help that along. We never once hear him say anything about Calliope. It's as though she's not a factor that weighs at all in his mind. As though her existence is incidental to the fruition of his grander purpose in her brother's life. Does he think about her? Does he know that another version of her is what will do in the voices that have tormented him since he could comprehend speech? Does he want good things for her? Does he think Caliborn is good at this point, or does he just think he's Important? Is his perpetually placid vacant stare a mask he uses to become inscrutable, or has he truly locked away his every emotional reaction from even himself never to be found again?

The interaction he has with Kurloz and Meulin between becoming sober and becoming a caretaker where the other two are going all 'Hail Lord English' and doing The Cult Thing and he just looks at them with such deep contempt and says in all lower case 'shut the absolute mother fuck up' is So Fucking Important-- like he does not think this is fun and glorious and enriching anymore. He just knows it to be true and knows he's in this shit whether he wants to be or not. These two Chose this. Kurloz could've Run The Fuck Away from the chucklevoodoo bullshit that deafened his matesprit, and Meulin could've simply Not leaned into this evil toxic nonsense, but they both actively turn to it to cope. They see serving the power of Lord English as their salvation. Gamzee sees his salvation as completing his grim purpose and hopefully finding solace in oblivion, and he Cannot Fucking Stand these two talking like that grim purpose is a blessing that gives his life new dimension instead of a horrifying curse that ruined his health and relationships.

I don't mind the existence of The Retcon, I think a retcon was a perfectly sound writing decision given The Everything, but I really hate that the solution to everyone's problems in The Retcon was just bringing back Vriska so she could be The Most Important Person Ever just like she always wanted with no downsides and no caveats. This is in no small part because the solution she provides to The Gamzee Situation is just to domesticate him essentially. He won't be a problem if we keep him leashed up and under control. After all Gamzee's always been passive and only started being a problem when he started committing murders, so just keep him where we can see him and keep the option of murder off the table and Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen With Him Again~. And he Never Does Anything Else and We Never Hear From Him Again. Or if we do, it certainly wasn't consequential enough for me to remember it. Like, if you're gonna take the Gamzee Piece off the board while still holding the story together, just create a scene where the others banish him to Earth A during the timeframe where he's taking care of the cherubs and then bam! He's no longer a factor in the Alpha Medium while also still being able to do the things that he Must Do in order to retain the most continuity. Like I get that keeping him in the fridge for the rest of canon is a joke about fridging a character, but It's Not A Good Joke.

Gamzee Makara Deserved Better! I'm not even necessarily saying he should've gotten better. He deserved like. A Moment for us to see into his head before/whilst he went Full Catatonic Sycophant, as a token of respect for the Really Fuckin' Tragic arc he underwent. He deserved the ability to speak his mind post-Sober Murder Rampage. He deserved to be given weight beyond 'Anyway, now the murder clown is Also Here, so you know some funky shit is about to go down.' Or at least a proper transition into that 'portent of further chaos' role and not just a weird disconnected moment of Calliope going 'Yeah, bards are real passive and real fucky, y'all are lucky you don't have one in your session.' as a vague hint that Gamzee is doing the shit he does and appearing where he appears for completely inscrutable reasons that you shouldn't be looking into. Gamzee is one of plenty of characters in Homestuck whose arcs and selves kinda got lost in the shuffle, and It Makes Me Sad.

This essay has been brought to you by the emotions that arose in me thinking about how Gamzee Makara could've been a really good kid, and the only person who seems to mourn that loss is Karkat offscreen.

this is going to be a sizzling hot take but alloromantic queers can mention someone’s queerness without feeding into relationship hierarchy and amatonormativity

you can mention that sappho was obviously wlw without your reasoning being “friends don’t say that to friends!!” you can mention that khnumhotep and niankhkhnum were likely lovers without saying that friendships are inherently not as intimate as romantic relationships. you can say that you think this writer was queer without saying that people can’t care for friends that way or that only lovers would die for each other.

because when you do that shit, it fucking hurts aromantics. it feeds into the already pervasive narrative that we can’t ever care for anyone, that any love that we might feel isn’t nearly as meaningful even if we pour our heart and soul into it, that we can’t possibly be “just friends” with this person.

guess what? friendships matter! friendships exist, in a shit ton of different forms that’s far more different today than it was before, and us pointing this out is not the same thing as straight homophobes erasing gay people and relationships.

(also imagine how many “straight” relationships in history might actually have been close friendships but we don’t talk about that part of heteronormativity for some reason huh.)

want to point out that this person was clearly in love with his so-called “best friend”? okay. instead of diminishing friendships and saying that this relationship was “clearly more intimate than any friendship could ever be” you can just say that the relationship is very much in line with typical heterosexual relationships. and if a homophobe chooses not to care, that’s not an excuse to employ narratives that are amatonormative as hell.

THANK YOU.

I know this post is about historical figures, but I want to say that this is also a hugely pervasive thing in fandom.

There is nothing wrong with shipping fictional characters together romantically, but please try not to back it up by pointing out literally every positive interaction they have and insisting that "friends would never do this!"

Especially when it's stuff like openly saying how much they care for each other, or being there for each other during a crisis, or risking their lives for each other. Like, way to tell every aro person reading that "you will never have/be worthy of this."

I'm not saying you have to only have queerplatonic headcanons from now on. Or that you're not allowed to interpret certain interactions between characters who are canonically platonic friends as actually being romantic.

Just don't claim that said actions are inherently romantic, or that people in a platonic relationship would be incapable of showing that level of affection. Aka, don't be arophobic.

“Way to tell every aro person reading that ‘you will never have/be worthy of this.”

THANK YOU. you put it into words.

might i add that it’s not even limited to aromantics. currently single people; people that have had bad breakups; people who have been cheated on, abused by romantic partners; even some people struggling with unrequited love. imagine telling them that they aren’t worthy of someone being there for them in crisis or someone just really caring about them just because they aren’t in a relationship or because they have been taken advantage of. that narrative is the exact reason why so many of us feel that we’re unlovable or that something is wrong with us just because romance hasn’t gone our way. it’s so shitty.

for real, though, why do recipes consistently tell you to use less herbs and spices in than you should. fuck your “two cloves of garlic,” fuck your “half teaspoon of cinnamon,” and you can absolutely go to hell with your “dash of black pepper”

I’m pretty sure that the only time I’ve ever actually managed to overseason food was when working with balsamic vinegar, which is the most overpowering motherfucker of a sauce known to man

i appreciate the energy and anger in this post, which is righteous and just

Something ive been thinking about recently is how autistic people accomodate allistics way more than the other way around

Like autistic people have to jump through a ton of hoops to FORCE schools and jobs to do basic things like not fail or fire them for lack of eye contact by basically saying “it’s the law”

But autistic people constantly have to change their behaviors, reactions, way of thinking, way of speaking, etc just so they can get through life without constant punishment (getting fired, failing classes, being bullied) just for existing, which idk but that seems like a way bigger accommodation than letting an autistic person be nonverbal or flap their hands

Like I’m sorry my dudes but the NTs are the ones being coddled

It’s okay for allistics to reblog this

After watching today’s update, did any of you feel… weird about John? Like, the way he lives alone, the birthday sign always being there, his disinterest in celebrating his birthday.

And his willingness to take on Caliborn after everyone being happy. I feel like he’s depressed and looking for meaning again.

I don’t know, that’s how I saw it at least.

that

that is definitely what happened actually