Hearing the stories of the women in my life and it is so heartbreaking to see how much they loathe their bodies. “I used to be thin” “I had always thought I was fat” “I couldn’t stand my body in pictures” “My body has this scar and it is so ugly”
And it’s treated like normal things to think. There is nothing wrong with being fat, there is nothing wrong with having scars, there is nothing wrong with having stretch marks and wrinkles and a tummy that just won’t go away. Our bodies are the home we are given to make memories in and that includes nasty bumps and scars and weird smells and creaks.
i hope everything gets easier soon. or at least funnier. amen
begging people to start paying attention to prison organizing and listening directly to incarcerated activists who are talking about these things instead of just basing your knowledge of the US prison system off of true crime podcasts or brooklyn 99 or whatever.
Marshall Project, Prison Journalism Project, and Scalawag Magazine all have a lot of really good coverage of US prison news and share a lot of writing from incarcerated journalists. Prison Radio has a bunch of important commentaries from incarcerated journalists.
there are a ton of books to prisoners programs and inside/outside organizing collectives and just so much out there if you look for it.
han sooyoung girl of all time. she really painstakingly wrote a whole novel for over a decade for a single reader and then another version of herself logged in just to dislike that person's comments specifically
translator? uhm.. im actually trans right now
One thing I love about orv is that it initially bait and switches you by convincing you early on that the constellations are the "big bad" of the story - voyeuristic beings that gain enjoyment off the suffering of others - until the reveal that they are also going through their own scenarios. This mirrors how us as the readers are going through our own lives and our own struggles yet we consume media highlighting the experiences of others. We root for these characters, we follow their journeys, we see ourselves in them. And yet we're not villains - we're just surviving. We're escaping the struggles of our own lives by indulging in these worlds created by human imagination. Similarly, many of the constellations in orv do not have malicious intentions despite living off stories - uriel cares greatly for the incarnations she supports (as the "fangirl" archetype) and sun wukong and abfd also greatly support kimcom throughout their journey.
This is further solidified in the reveal of the oldest dream. Despite unintentionally creating worldlines through his imagination, the younger kim dokja was never a villain or "monster". He was simply a child who sook to escape the tragedies of his life through a webnovel. He depended on that novel to survive. And that was in no way the sin he thought it was - not even secretive plotter who had gone through countless regressions and witnessed the despair of the universe could hold it against him. Nor han sooyoung, nor yoo joonghyuk of the 1864th round, nor yoo sangah, nor anyone else in kimcom. No one thought dokja needed to atone for anything - they loved him and cared for him even when he couldn't love himself.
Just like kim dokja and just like the constellations, we are readers seeking an escape from the struggles of reality. And we too are loved - regardless of whether we know it or understand why.
i love you shower chairs i love you pain meds i love you canes i love you wheelchairs i love you braces i love you crutches i love you nausea meds i love you inhaler i love you weighted blanket i love you ice pack i love you heating pad i love you loose clothing i love you giant water bottle i love you help from other people i love you mobility aides i love you disability aides