Please Share! Building A Home For Hope

Old people got me feeling emotional

Sorry, didn't know about that, I always viewed the Jewish people getting Israel back as the opposite of what happened to Native Americans, they finally got their native land back that they were forced out of, and fought to keep it, it kind of inspired me in high school, after learning the travesties committed against Native Americans, that times had possibly changed. Glad to know the truth though.

it’s okay, tumblr is kind of terrible.

yeahhhh a lot of pro-israel people like to spin the tale like that, that they’re people fighting to get their land back. but it’s much more accurate the other way around; palestinian people are an indigenous group fighting to keep foreigners from stealing their land. they’re the ones who were just on their land chilling when a group comes in and invades.

also, it’s better to refer to the people behind israel as zionists, as not all jewish people support it. in fact, large parts of the israeli government actually support things that go against jewish interests. one example is netanyahu celebrating trump’s election as meaning an end to palestine, despite the number of neo-nazis he’s appointed to office.

You might not want to hear this but people with anger issues and/or violent impulses need social accommodations. And no by accommodation I don't mean walking on eggshells around them, actual accommodations for people with these issues comes down to giving them a space away from what's triggering them to process their emotions and calm themselves down same as what kind of accommodations people who get sensory overload or just any kind of overwhelmed. There is no moral value to having anger issues or violent impulses, people with them are deserving of accommodation the same as everyone else.

I swear we used to be able to think critically about random GoFundMe asks

It used to be understood that if someone using a throwaway blog suddenly starts messaging a bunch of accounts to beg for money, they were most likely a scammer.

Now suddenly there are fucking swarms of throwaway bots relentlessly shilling GoFundMe campaigns to anyone who even so much as breathes in the direction of a trending tag or post, yet the mere suggestion that any of these could be a scam will immediately get you yelled at by self-righteous strangers.

What changed?

it's interesting to me that torture just works to us, as a literary device. It's everywhere in movies and stories and whatnot, from big-budget dramas to little grindhouse short stories. It fits neatly into the requirements of plot: character doesn't want to offer information, Gets Tortured, has to offer information.

the issue with this is that it isn't how it works.

torture is a display of power. It fouls interrogation, this is known; a person being tortured will tell you whatever you want to hear to make it stop, which is more often than not a lie, made up on the spot, or if the truth an incomplete and useless version of it. It isn't generally done for information's sake anyway, but as a form of what the ancient Greeks called hybris, the violent exhibition of your power over another person.

This is, every once in a great while, done right in fiction, but it's a challenge to write vs. the idea that it's a shortcut to one character revealing plot-critical information to another. Pretty much every form of torture works this way, even the ones that are legally permissible. Psychological torment or physical discomfort also produce an animalistic desire to escape harm and foul interrogation. The forms of torture the cops can do? The cops do it not to gain information (or if they think it will, they're lying to themselves) but because it makes them feel powerful.

There's probably a master's thesis in it for somebody studying the rise of torture as a plot device since the beginning of the war on terror and the contemporaneous development of the Broken Windows theory of policing. I'm not really aware of any similar level of disconnect between what Works in fiction and what happens in real life!

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

Crazy idea for a new continuity: Megatron having died multiple times

And Soundwave and Shockwave just takes a spark from a random Decepticon or captured Autobot and shoves it in the corpse and then brainwashes/programs the resulting new mind into being almost exactly the same.

Found family that’s made up of celebrity/mayor equivalents and everyone’s always busy (Click for better resolution)

People like to pretend I will "get better" so they do not have to think about the deadly lie they are living. Abandoning disabled and high-risk people to preventable death is eugenics.

To clarify, this is NOT just an American issue -- think of the "pan" in pandemic.

The MSKCC Library

The People's CDC (weekly weather reports on COVID in the U.S.)

Image IDs available in Alt Text and written out below:

Image ID begins. A black and white cartoon comic titled Pandemic Year 4. This is panel 1. A boy with short hair — Joey, the author of the comic — is holding a Christmas wreath and handing it to his boyfriend, a boy with long hair and a beard, who is standing in a window while decorating. The text reads: This year, my boyfriend and I got fresh pine wreaths from the farmer’s market — our fist big Christmas decorations together!

Panel 2. A hand holds pine needles. Cartoon stink clouds radiate off of the pine needles. The text reads: I break pine needles between my fingers and it smells hideous. Pain shoots through my head.

Panel 3. Joey stands in front of a table on which there are various foods. He looks disgusted and is covering his nose and mouth with his hands. The text reads: This is how I have lived since my February 2020 COVID infection. COVID caused brain and nerve damage, making everything smell and taste like rot. The condition is called parosmia, and it has no cure. Eating is a nightmare.

Panel 4. Joey’s boyfriend, a taller boy with long hair and a beard, puts his hand on Joey’s shoulder. They are shown from behind and are both wearing backpacks and winter coats. The text reads: Last week, my boyfriend walked me home from work midday after I had a near-fainting episode. I wear a heart monitor full-time. Doctors say I’m “too young”.

Panel 5. Joey is shown from behind, sitting sadly and gazing out a window. The text reads: I’ve literally been isolated from the rest of the world for four years. One COVID infection destroyed my life, and I can’t risk another. How can I get you to understand? After becoming disabled by COVID at 19 years old, I have been completely shut off from the outside world.

Panel 6. Joey stands in between two maskless and anonymous figures. Joey looks uncomfortable and is crossing his arms and gazing at them. He is wearing a respirator mask and goggles. The figure on the right is holding a bag labeled “food Joey can’t eat”. The text reads: “Friends” and family who have seen the depth of my suffering for four years have stopped masking and can’t be bothered to care. Family Christmas meant that I had to reiterate daily that I would not and physically could not eat at restaurants.

Panel 7. A drawing of an open laptop, next to which lays an N95 mask. On the laptop, a headline from the Washington Post is displayed. The headline reads: Covid kills nearly 10,000 in a month as holidays fuel spread, WHO says. The comic text reads: This winter has been the 2nd highest peak of the pandemic, with at least 10,000 Americans dying of COVID in December. Playing pretend at “normalcy” is profoundly violent and deadly. Under the comic frame, a citation reads: The Washington Post, January 11, 2024. This is an undercount, as there is no more COVID tracking in the U.S.

Panel 8. A drawing of Joey gesturing at an educational chalk board with a pointer. He is wearing a respirator mask, goggles, and a sweater vest. The text reads: COVID is a virus that causes long-term damage to your organs and nervous system. It’s also a Biosafety Level 3 pathogen, like tuberculosis, meaning that is can be lethal upon inhalation and requires special and serious PPE in Laboratories. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has a digital library of research on COVID impacts. https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Home

Panel 9. An anonymous figure behind an oration desk is trying to cover a pile of bones behind them. On the pile of bones is a flag that says: Just keep buying and working! The text reads: You are being led to enact violence on your community members by a government who is sacrificing you on the altar of capital. You should be terrified.

Panel 10. A drawing of Joey’s head from the side. he is wearing a respirator mask. The text reads: There is no neutrality in a mass-death and mass-disabling pandemic. Wear a mask or forever be complicit. The comic is dated February 3, 2024. Image ID ends.

The Toxic Romance of Fizz/Ozzie

I have gotten an ask in regards to depictions of abuse in Helluva Boss and there is obviously much to say on the topic. Many others have gone over and criticized the show for its poor examples of abuse, however I believe a greater problem exists on the flip side of that topic. Hand in hand with abusive relationships, the show has crafted romantic ones that are just as damaging to the young adult audience this show appeals to. Just as some say that poor representation of abuse and abusers puts people at risk of becoming victims, so too does the poor representation of love and romance turn into a quagmire of unhealthy codependency that sets unrealistic standards for relationships and people that are inevitably going to become toxic when removed from fantasy.

It is one of the few reasons why I insist that Helluva Boss is not a show targeting adults, as it does not appeal to mature individuals with any true life experience. Overwhelmingly striking a chord with the stunted, socially disabled adult minority, or the emotionally volatile demographic of early twenty-something teenagers who have yet had the experience in life to identify harmful relationships or the biological maturity of their brains to reason outside their emotions, who make up the majority. It feeds off the sense of victimization that both of these groups harbor towards reality and requires a fantastical disconnection of such to engage with authentically.

That is not to say this is an attack on that group. As seen before with the meteoric rise of damaging media like “50 Shades of Grey”, it is not fair to claim no one can authentically interact and enjoy the material at presentation. Identically it is not proper to claim that individuals who enjoy this sort of media for what it is are somehow of subpar intellect. However, it is more fair to recognize that many who did see “50 Shades” as a romantic tale often ended up in abusive relationships when seeking out that “ideal” they believed the book portrayed. Many individuals who wandered into the kink scene looking for their own Christian Grey found exactly that as they were manipulated, controlled and taken advantage of by unsavory individuals. As such, this is not to say that media of this sort should not exist or be banned, but that coherent and concise criticism is necessary for these topics to keep people from reenacting unhealthy and toxic relationships.

In the words of Youtuber Swoop, “It’s not drama, it’s dangerous.” I feel it rings true here and for artistic media in general. It’s not just fiction, and it can have a real world impact on people, relationships and lives.

I covered over some of the issues with Stolitz in a previous post found *HERE*, but for this breakdown of harmful depictions of relationship dynamics, I’m going to be focusing on FizzaRolli and Asmodeus. The reason being, this is a textbook codependent relationship that is portrayed as an ideal through the narrative, and it is rather alarming to witness the way the fandom fawns over it. As I previously pointed out in *THIS* post, the issue with the Fizz/Ozzie relationship in the special episode is that the story conflict is FizzaRolli’s codependent nature on Mammon not being corrected, but rather redirected to being purely codependent on Asmodeus. I have legitimately seen it argued that because the characters are happy in their relationship, then the codependency is just love, which is why this essay is being written in the first place. This is direct evidence of a harmful and unhealthy dynamic being sold to an impressionable and immature audience to their own detriment.

According to PsycheCentral, codependent traits can be broken up into cognitive (how you think), emotional (how you feel), and behavioral (how you act).

Cognitive traits of Codependency are that the individual has difficulty identifying their own opinions from another person’s, primarily the target of the codependency. This means the individual will often conform themselves implicitly to the beliefs of their target. They lack a stable sense of self and attach to their target in a way to ground them psychologically. Additionally, they struggle to identify or express their needs because of this lack of identity. And it should be made clear that the lack of identity does not mean that they see themselves as an extension of the other person, but are highly changeable and lack any core sense of who they are or what they believe in. Their self image is so volatile that the act of codependency is a maladaptive coping skill to find some form of stability in another person. This also extends into a form of mirroring; taking on the desires of those around you as your own.

The episode makes it very obvious how FizzaRolli is codependent on Mammon because it is seen in the negative lens it is expected to be. FizzaRolli’s opinions and beliefs are mirrored images of Mammon’s greedy philosophy. Being the best with all the money and fame is what Mammon has instilled in Fizz’s core, and from the jump Fizzarolli expresses these values as his own. FizzaRolli doesn’t communicate with Mammon out of a sense of fear and often shelves his own feelings and desires to accommodate the King of Greed. These are obvious and I am sure everyone can easily identify them in the dynamic.

However, these are identical to FizzaRolli’s dynamic with Asmodeus. At the end of the episode when Ozzie and Fizz have their minute in the greenroom, Fizz consistently fails to communicate with Ozzie about his needs or desires. In context of the episode’s opening, FizzaRolli is able to easily lie to Asmodeus as to why he is participating in the pageant. It is never established that Fizzarolli is expected to participate, additionally his job with Ozzie would make his need to be hired by Mammon obsolete, let alone their relationship. So it appears to be solely Fizz’s choice as to why this episode occurred in the first place. It is obvious that Fizz feels out of control and overwhelmed about this situation, but he believes Ozzie would want him to participate because he would “lose him” otherwise.

Which means FizzaRolli believes his participation in the pageant is also what Ozzie actually wants, seen when he says “You’re with me because of who I am at my best!” And FizzaRolli is so entrenched in that belief that he imposes it on his partner despite Asmodeus clearly stating he would wish Fizz wouldn’t go. FizzaRolli’s decisions and thoughts are just as entirely embedded in the thoughts, opinions and desires of Ozzie, if not more, than Mammon. Just because Asmodeus’ cognitive priority is Fizz does not change the toxic codependency that this cycle is rooted in. It could be argued that because Ozzie rejecting FizzaRolli’s belief at the end of the episode allows Fizz the freedom to quit, it is only because of Fizz’s belief that Ozzie wanted him in the pageant, not Mammon, is why he ever forced himself to go in the first place.

Emotional traits of Codependency can be broken down into a single feeling: Fear. The difficulty of saying “no” due to a fear of rejection or abandonment. A fear of not being accepted, loved or supported. Feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem are all intrinsically tied to a codependent dynamic. This results in the individual giving of themselves beyond their own boundaries in order to appease their target and maintain a sense of value to that person.

Again, this is clear in FizzaRolli’s dynamic with Mammon. He never asserts himself in any way regardless of how uncomfortable he feels while simultaneously pushing the limits of his own mental and emotional health to the point of resentment. He attributes everything he is and has to Mammon, highlighting his utter lack of self-esteem. Additionally, the episode goes out of its way to show Fizz feeling inadequate in direct contrast to the competition.

This inadequacy goes deeper still, however, when presented with the Fizz/Ozzie dynamic because FizzaRolli believes he is unworthy of his relationship with Ozzie as a fundamental basis. He says, “I’m barely worthy of working with a King of Sin … Without all this, I’m just nothing.” And it isn’t FizzaRolli who finds value in himself. He spills himself out to Asmodeus, leaving himself vulnerable and empty, and instead of seeing his own value, it is Ozzie who fills him up. He originally places his value in his work. His fame and abilities are what his entire sense of self-worth is hinged on, which gets replaced by another external source that FizzaRolli arguably has less impact on One could argue that while unhealthy, FizzaRolli has a direct input in his work and thus feeds his self-esteem through his own merit. The solution to that problem is to give up all control and ownership of his emotional state for it to be regulated and maintained entirely by Ozzie. One could reasonably say that the solution to this episode’s conflict was for Fizz to actually become less of a whole person to find happiness.

And then there are the behavioral traits. Keeping in mind the emotional motivation behind all behavior is fear, the individual may take on more responsibility than they can handle or are not even their responsibility in the first place; pressuring themselves to support their target, getting caught up in the other person’s matters, or even “rescuing” them from their hardships. They tend to overshare, lack boundaries and are constantly seeking external validation and approval.

For this one, I’m skipping the Mammon comparison entirely because I feel the situation is self-evident. Instead I am going to pivot slightly to add onto this thought:

In the PsycheCentral article, licensed marriage therapist Kate Engler says, “All codependent people are people pleasers, but not all people pleasers are codependent.” She proceeds to expand this point by explaining how Codependency is a more extreme form of people-pleasing due to its mutual nature. When two people are in a true codependent dynamic, neither party can function without the other one.

That is to say, Asmodeus is also codependent on FizzaRolli.

Ozzie does not express his codependency in such a way that feels so textbook in comparison due to his social superiority, however, we see in Oops how codependent Asmodeus is on FizzaRolli to regulate and maintain his own emotional state. Ozzie is so incapable of functioning without Fizz that, if not for Stolas, he would have immediately signed away all his factories and even resulted in the death of his partner. He doesn’t make decisions based on his own values, but denies Stolas a crystal due to his partner’s wants and desires. Asmodeus’ proud announcement of doing so, as well, shows a degree of approval seeking. Being so pleased with himself on the belief that he did what his partner would have wanted him to do, and openly seeking validation for that decision as well. He lacks any sense of self outside of elevating FizzaRolli and Fizz lacks any sense of self outside of Ozzie’s approval.

The sole reason this relationship even seems to be healthy is because of the fact that Ozzie has no character outside of being in love with FizzaRolli. The unrealistic nature of a whole other human having no will, desire, or purpose outside of being in love with you is unrealistic and unhealthy. It is predicated on a belief that another person will make one "complete", placing the responsibility of your existence as a person on another and believing that is love. It is handing someone a gun to aim at your head, but its okay because they will never pull the trigger. If Asmodeus had any sense of his own identity, he would inevitably cause immense emotional and psychological harm to Fizz, and the only saving grace is that he is poorly written.

The result is that FizzaRolli and Asmodeus depict a fundamentally toxic dynamic being depicted as mutual support and love. It is a demented ideal of what a healthy relationship should look like that is actively poisoning the concept of relationships for an entire demographic of young people. It reaffirms anxious attachment styles that a concerning majority of the fandom embody, fundamentally dooming a percentage of those individuals to replicate this rotten cycle in their own reality. Regardless of how few people ended up abused following their romanticization of 50 Shades of Grey, the fact that even a single person ended up in that position due to a piece of media is too many. As such, I feel it is beyond necessary to denounce the “most wholesome” relationship of Helluva Boss for the dysfunction it actually is.