Honestly One Of My Favorite Quotes Ever

if we're mutuals believe me when i say that i genuinely love hearing what you have to say i enjoy reading your posts of random thoughts or vents or whatever. i find you interesting, continue to light up my dashboard thx. post your tmi, post your deranged thoughts, we love to see it

uh hey that person you just reblogged from used to be in our discord server but we had to kick them out because they admitted to watching t*m and j*rry... that show features violence and as such glorifies it.... when we confronted them all they said was "wtf its a show about a cat and a mouse"... if you dont believe me theres a whole callout post that features their name age and street address so you can go to their house and check... anyways you should unfollow them before people start thinking you like problematic media too :/ just trying to help

Questions I think to myself a lot when confronted with certain kinds of Online Posting:

Do you want a better world, or do you want revenge on those you think aren’t doing enough to improve it?

Do you want a more just world, or do you want to see bad people suffer merciless punishment?

Do you want a less oppressive world, or do you want the reins of power for yourself?

Do you want to do the right thing, or do you want to feel righteous?

What the hell? Why did the English localization make Komaru say that?! Honestly, thank God it's different in the original Japanese translation; I love Komaru but that one line made me lose a lot of respect for her.

Credit to @absolute-despair-translation for the translations!

Komaeda and Dementia: Part 1 of 5: Introduction and Overview of FTD

Hi everyone!

I’m an aspiring Komaedologist with an interest in dementia. I often see people doubting Komaeda’s stated diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, since it presents differently in him than in the common portrayal of dementia in the media. While his portrayal may not be completely accurate, there is a lot of truth to it, and there are many symptoms visible in-game. I wanted to share a few posts about dementia symptoms that we do see canonically in Komaeda’s portrayals in SDR2 and DR:AE, and share some information regarding his specific diagnosis as opposed to Alzheimers, for example.

I work with people living with dementia as a recreation worker. This means that I see them living their daily lives, and know about difficulties they might have with recreational or day to day activities. There are a lot of observations that I might make that can’t be backed up scientifically yet, but do make sense in a practical way. Everyone with dementia is different, and since I work with seniors for the most part, some observations won’t transfer onto Komaeda. However, I’ll do my best to back up whatever I can with sources.

This post is just for fun and to give people ideas. It means a lot to me to see a fascinating and endearing character like Komaeda portrayed with dementia, since it is a sad and terminal disease, and I usually see it end badly in my job, so I hope to give people ideas on how to portray it, or just to notice things in a different way they might not have before!

My main sources for this post and the following ones include “Dementia Diaries,” which is a really cool project where people with dementia talk about their experiences, National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Society, and my own work experience. I plan on doing more posts about specific symptoms that we see in Komaeda later, but I would be happy to hear from other people who have dementia knowledge, or to answer any questions that I can.

For the most part, I'm only going to be talking about SDR2 and a little bit of DR:AE. I haven't finished watching the anime yet and have not read any of the manga. If anyone has ideas from any of those sources, I would love to hear about them!

Overview of FTD: Which Variant does Komaeda Have?

There are two major forms of frontotemporal dementia. The first, which Komaeda likely has, is the behavioural variant (BvFTD), which is also the most likely for young people to develop. This variant of FTD mainly affects behaviour, empathy, judgement, and planning.

Komaeda is less likely to have the other variant of FTD, primary progressive aphasia. This form of FTD mainly affects language skills, including speech and comprehension.

Komaeda doesn’t seem to have very much trouble with understanding the concrete content of what people say to him, but he does occasionally seem to have trouble fully comprehending hidden meanings behind statements (for example, taking statements literally rather than as sarcastic). To me though, this is less connected to him not being able to understand the words or content of statements, and more not picking up on the emotions hidden in the statements (which I’ll address more in the behavior post). He does seem to have some trouble with word-finding in the Japanese version of the game, but again, it doesn't inhibit his ability to express himself given enough time to speak.

Another thing to note about FTD is that, in its early stages, it mainly affects behaviour and language processing, as stated above, rather than memory. In later stages, memory does start to be affected as well, but it’s different from Alzheimers (probably the most well-known form of dementia) in that memory loss isn’t the main symptom.

FTD’s prognosis is about 6-8 years. Komaeda states in his fifth free time event that his life expectancy is between half a year and one year. However, he is also referring to his lymphoma diagnosis, meaning he expected to die from a combination of both illnesses within that time frame. In SDR2, Komaeda is probably in the early to middle stages of FTD, since he was diagnosed right before entering Hope’s Peak, and was a Remnant of Despair for some time without treatment, so while we can see evidence of memory issues (which I will address in another post), it’s something he’s able to cope with and isn’t a debilitating symptom yet.

One more observation: while dementia as a whole is usually seen in elderly people, Komaeda’s specific frontotemporal dementia diagnosis has an earlier age of onset, usually between ages 40-65, and is rarely seen in elderly people. Even though being diagnosed in high school seems unlikely, it is not impossible. According to Alzheimer Society Canada, early-onset or young-onset dementia (between ages 18 and 65) accounts for 2-8% of all dementia cases.

Thank you for reading! I plan on making five posts total. The other post topics will be Outward Behaviour, Judgement/Thought Processes, Other Symptoms, and Writing Ideas.

(Context)

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Please support me

, I'm Karam Al Nabih from Gaza. My home, dreams, and university have been destroyed by the war. I'm a software engineer in my final semester, and I'm urgently seeking your support to rebuild my life and help my sick mother.

Please consider donating, even a small amount like 10 or 15 £, as every contribution makes a difference. If you can't donate, please share my story to help me reach my goal. Your support means the world to me.

Reblog pin post

Donate here: https://gofund.me/a9d0f2d7

Thank you so much! 🙏❤️

Vatted by @nabulsi @90-ghost

There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

I'm realizing I apologize for taking a long time to do something a lot. Maybe the ADHD diagnosis *is* accurate and I'm not secretly neurotypical.