Every Single Time I See A Take That Amounts To "if You Write About X Happening, Or Like Fiction Where

Every single time I see a take that amounts to "if you write about X happening, or like fiction where X happens, you like X" I'm reminded of this one time I was at a casual friends house as a young kid. We were in her room, pretending to "be orphans" escaping from an evil orphanage and having to take care of each other and fend for ourselves. It was all very Little Orphan Annie/All Dogs Go to Heaven and based on the 80s pop media.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

My daughter does not want me dead. And I don't want bad things to happen in real life. But fiction and pretend help me face the horrors of the world and think about them without collapsing or messing myself up mentally.

Trigun: Stampede, Wolfwood, and Food

So, I think a major part of any worldbuilding should always involve food, and where it comes from. The worldbuilding around No Man's Land in Trigun: Stampede is a little tricky in this regard, since there's shown to be no real agriculture or plant life (Meryl's utter shock at the "flora" on Ship Three as a total foreign phenomenon suggests it's more rare than in the manga) so sustainable human-friendly food sources are rare and not really addressed. We see characters eating worms, and presumably there's whatever it is worms eat, and beyond that, it's suggested that pretty much all of humankind's nutrition comes from plants.

The desert dudes living off worm meat refer to "plant-based food" as an "extravagance" in the opening scene of episode 4 (aptly named "Hungry"). Meryl, by contrast, is grossed out by the idea of eating worm meat -- I think we can infer then, that Meryl, being a college-educated city girl, probably had regular access to Plant-generated food, while Outlanders are more dependent on alternative sources of nutrition.

Wolfwood, I think, falls closer to the latter category -- He's very used to eating worms, as we see in this episode, not even flinching at grabbing and devouring a whole worm, and even smoked dried worm legs as a kid in a later flashback, so supplementing his diet and other aspects of his life with worms is probably something he's used to doing for survival:

And I gotta say, the way Wolfwood antagonizes the others about eating worm-based food?

Yeah, it's a power play in some respects -- he's making a point to Vash about 'kill or be killed' to survive when he catches and throws a worm at him, and he's taunting Meryl to get a rise out of her with the roasted worm meat at the end of the episode.

But there's something very "Gross Big Brother" about it -- he's antagonizing them, but there's also some underlying level of care in it. He is showing Vash how Wolfwood thinks it's necessary to survive; he's bullying Meryl into eating the food that's available, because Wolfwood probably grew up with the understanding that you couldn't afford to turn your nose up at whatever food you got.

It's food, it's there, it's a valuable and scarce resource, and as much of an asshole as Stampede!Wolfwood is, he has those ingrained big brother instincts to look out for those around him. And food is an important part of that, because when you live with scarcity, food is life.

The whole bit with Zazie in disguise might be a charade (assuming Wolfwood already clocked Zazie from the get-go and it didn't take the worm devouring them for that card to be revealed) but it still pulls from Wolfwood's characterization in the '98 anime where he gives two of his last pieces of food to a couple of hungry-looking kids:

And the sentiment of "you still deserve to eat" as an expression of care is still real for him, especially given his smile when Vash repeats his words, finally eating some of the worm meat at the end of episode four:

Our worldbuilding implication is that food is scarce and rare in the Outlands, and Wolfwood is someone who knows how to survive by any means possible -- including eating whatever is available -- which is something he's nonetheless willing to share with others, because at his core he's a decent person who isn't as selfish as he may pretend to be.

And food is one hell of a love language.

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aspergianstoryteller

3 months ago

a good aroace manga

Recently found this lovely manga at my library with what seems to me like great aroace representation! 'I want to be a wall' by Honami Shirono.

It's about an aromantic asexual woman and a gay man who marry for appearances and become close friends. (In Japan, asexual and aromantic are often referred to as the same thing, which is explained in the volume translation notes btw)

Here's a few pages that I thought did a good job of discussing things. As an enby who likes romance in stories (especially BL) but not so much in real life, I felt pretty seen.

Work hacks for massage therapists part 2 (joke)

So you've got gas during the session. Blame it on the clinic's therapy animal. You can make one up if necessary. Oh dear, Fluffy's popped off again. Fluffy can even be another client's service animal in the other room, a neighbour's pet come to visit.