Void Proper

Because I've definitely heard that analogy more than once from more than one person and again- maybe just MY experience here- but for me, it's less "nail through the heart agony and hopelessness" and more "waking up one day and finding out that loved one never existed in the first place, and in fact you HAVE no loved ones, and nobody loves you, either, nor will they ever"

ah ... otp ... <3

ref under cut

Jack whistled as she walked away. "He shoots, he scores!"

Robby wheeled on him. "I didn't say shit when you puked on Julie Matherson's shoes at our first college party."

"Yes, you did. You brought it up to every one of my girlfriends for the next seven years!" It wasn't one of Jack's best moments, okay- sue him. But college is for making mistakes, everyone knows that.

"Oh." Robby slumped into a chair at the hub. "Well you can't blame me. It was funny."

"I still maintain they spiked the punch with ipecac." Ignore the fact that Jack didn't even drink the punch, thank you very much. A man must have his pride.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night." Robby shrugged, like an asshole.

Jack wasn't about to take this lying down. "You know who didn't say shit? Me, when you sneezed in Margaret Wheeler's face while trying to kiss her at prom."

"The decorations were dusty!" Robby was blushing, bless him. Jack had missed that blush.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Jack replied with a smirk.

Robby also, apparently, wasn't going to take this lying down. "You’re the one who told Bubbe I broke her favorite lamp when we were nine!"

"She was terrifying! I was trying to save my life." There were many things you could say about Jack, but he always knew when to pick his battles. Being the cause of Bubbe's anger was not a battle he would ever choose to fight.

"She was 67 years old!" Robby scoffed.

Like that meant shit. "You were scared of her too!"

"I respected her. There's a difference." Robby said primly. Jack rolled his eyes. "Besides, she always blamed you for my corruption. I was a perfect angel before you came along."

"Sure, sure. An angel. One who handcuffed me naked to a flag pole during my bachelor party."

"I let you go!" Robby whined.

"We were chased- on foot- by the cops while my dick was flapping around in the breeze!"

"You had fun!" Robby defended, which was true! But also not the point.

"And then you and Tommy Stevens stood outside the window of my hotel room on my wedding night singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall until four in the morning!"

Robby shrugged. "That was your fault for getting a ground-floor room."

"And then!" Jack continued, really on a roll now. "You stole my car."

"I didn't steal your car!" Robby protested with all the conviction of the wrongfully accused. "Grant Palmer stole your car... I just didn’t stop him. And if you didn't want your car stolen, you shouldn't have dumped an industrial-sized trash can full of water from the roof during his wedding pictures."

"I waited until the pictures were done!"

"You ruined his wife's dress."

"That was Tommy's fault. Tommy was supposed to pull her out of the way; Grant was supposed to be the only one in the line of fire." Grant's wife had never forgiven him. She had only gotten a little wet; saying her dress was ruined was a gross exaggeration. "And I distinctly remember that you were the one helping me hold the trash can."

"That doesn't sound like something I would do," Robby sniffed. "Besides, Sharon thought the whole thing was funny."

"You had Sharon fleeced." Sharon had thought they were so cute, even when Robby was an absolute terror. Did Jack deserve the torture for the many pranks he had played in his younger days? Of course. He still didn't have to like it.

"You’re just mad she liked me more than you." Robby picked up a tablet like he was about to work, the bullshit artist.

"She was my wife! She married me, not you."

"Yeah, because you had better health insurance. Everyone knew she liked me more."

"Wow. You are so delusional." Jack huffed, coming around the desk to shove Robby in his chair. It sent him rolling back a few inches.

Robby didn't acknowledge the shove, just raised a judgmental eyebrow. "Who did she live with during your deployments?"

Neither Robby nor Sharon had been handling his first deployment well, so Jack had suggested they stay together until he came back. He had hoped they would find strength in each other. They had found strength, alright. The strength to team up and make Jack's life a living hell.

"Are you saying you fucked my dead wife?" Jack raised his eyebrow right back, and his voice to go along with it. Robby hadn't actually fucked Sharon, but everyone certainly thought he did. It had made Jack laugh himself silly when he found out.

"She wasn't dead at the time!"

"Oh yeah," Jack scoffed. "Like that makes it better."

"It does, actually." Robby argued, like he had the moral high ground in this conversation. "Necrophilia is a crime. Fucking your best friend's wife is just a dick move."

"So you admit it was a dick move!"

"Well my dick certainly mov-"

"Oh my god!" Trinity groaned. "Just kiss already and stop making your sexual tension everyone else's problem!"

As one, Robby and Jack turned to her. She put on a tough face, but her eyes made it clear that she wished the earth would swallow her whole. Historically, the combined force of Robby and Jack's disappointment had brought even the strongest resident to their knees.

"That is totally inappropriate!" Robby scolded.

"We could go to HR." Jack backed him up.

"We should go to HR!"

"It's sexual harassment!"

"Enough!" Dana yelled, taking her glasses off to point them menacingly in their direction. "We have had enough of the Robby and Jack show!"

"It would be the Jack and Robby Show, if anything," Jack pointed out. "Rolls off the tongue better and we all know who the star is."

"Jacob Christopher Abbot, I know you missed Robby, but if you don't get the hell out of my ER right now, you will regret it. Flirt on your own damn time and stop harassing the children!" Dana's glare was sharp enough to cut glass.

"Oooh, you got full-named," Robby whisper-taunted like they were back in Mrs. Glenn's 3rd grade classroom: the place they met, the fire they were forged in, for better or for worse.

"I'm leaving, I'm leaving!" Jack put his hands up in surrender. Again, he knew how to pick his battles, and Dana might just be scarier than Bubbe ever was.

- France abolished the Code Noir 2 months ago. That law project that said hey you can enslave, mutilate, kill, cross breed, etc. black people at will bc they're not people they're property ? Yeah. Abolished 2 months ago. We are in July 2026.

- the last human zoo closed its doors in 1994 in France due to social pressure. Not bc they were running out of business, no. Ppl still visited that place until it closed its doors. No, it was bc (black) French people were fed up. That human zoo was specialized in displaying black (presumed Congolese) people in fake huts in enclosures, for white entertainment.

- now while this might no longer be the case, when I was growing up, I went to a French school (as in. It was an international French School w the French flag n all) and the way we were taught French geography was that France has the biggest and largest access to the sea in the world. And they'd show us a map of France and its colonies around the world. It's all occupied indigenous lands. I don't know if they still teach that. I hope not. But they absolutely did until I graduated high school in 2017. Again, I write this on July 21st 2026, for the record.

Benedick: no woman's ever gonna meet my standards, I'm never gonna get married, it's too much hassle anyway

Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato: Beatrice is in love with Benedick

#We all need a platonic soulmate like Steve 

Bodily autonomy (like abortion, anti draft, etc) -> “The government shouldn’t be able to force anything on my body I don’t want.”

Anti surveillance -> “I don’t trust big government/big tech (big brother if you’re feeling frisky) with the ability to spy on me and my family.”

Immigration -> “Next to all of us immigrated at some point, I don’t see why the elites get to decide who’s allowed to be where. What’s to stop them coming for me?”

Climate Change -> “Big oil shouldn’t get to determine whether or not I get to go places. I don’t want to be dependent on some big business to survive.”

State Violence -> “I don’t want the goddamn secret police breathing down my neck! I trust my community a whole hell of a lot more to help me than I do the state!”

im going to start yelling why are people i like falling for the badly disguised antisemitism in posts comparing Robby to biblical figures STOP ITTTTT you guys are so cool and lovely why like and reblog sinner/saint/priest/whatever Robby whu.

Stop christwashing my boy!

Stop making him a priest!

Stop making the Jewish man a “sinner” tormented by Christian sin anxieties and Hell!

Stop erasing the history of queer Jews by giving a Reform Jew the anxieties of an Exvangelical!

It’s truly so fucked that people are taking a minority character, beloved for being representation, and stripping that character’s identity so people can feel excited in their private parts. It’s a disgusting use of privilege.

People are uneducated about Judaism and Jewishness. Statistically, that’s gonna continue to be a truth. I’m not gonna assume selfish malice when ignorance is more likely. But just as it’d be homophobic to erase a character’s canonical queer identity, or antiblack racism to whitewash a black character, it is antisemitic to christwash a Jewish character.

I often hear a discourse where Celine in K-pop Demon Hunters, Alma in Encanto and Ming in Turning Red are seen as vilains. They’re the ones who restricted the younger generation, hurt them, and are ultimately responsible for their pain, trauma and self-doubt. They’re framed as the real villains of the story. But I’d like to differ.

These are stories of intergenerational trauma. They are women who survived, repressed, and tried to protect their families the only way they knew how: through control, perfectionism, and emotional suppression.

And yet, when the next generation begins to reclaim joy, freedom, softness — they become the obstacle. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re scarred. Their minds cling to survival strategies, unable to recognize that the environment has changed.

Alma is still stuck fleeing the colonizers.

Ming is still afraid of her true self.

Celine believes that fear and mistakes must be hidden.

It’s not about hating these characters. It’s about how unprocessed trauma twists love into control. How survival, unexamined, turns into rigidity. These women were never given space to process their own pain and they project it onto their daughters and granddaughters.

And here’s something we rarely say enough: intergenerational trauma can create toxic patterns but that doesn’t always mean there was abuse or conscious harm. Even when their love becomes suffocating or controlling, these women are not necessarily “abusive parents.” They are daughters of silence, fear, and sacrifice. And they were never taught another way. It’s important to make that distinction, especially in a world that often pushes a binary, punitive reading of family dynamics.

They’re the product of a generation that was told to endure. But endurance without healing becomes its own kind of violence.

What’s powerful in these stories is that they don’t end in vengeance. They end in confrontation and transformation. The confrontation is necessary: the younger generation refuses the silence. Refuses the shame. Refuses to carry a burden that wasn’t theirs to begin with.

The house is destroyed in Encanto.

Mei accepts her full self.

So does Rumi.

And in the best cases, this confrontation allows the elder to soften too. Alma opens up. Ming listens. And I’m hoping in the sequel, Celine will open too.

Maybe that’s also why these stories speak so deeply to POC audiences. These aren’t stories about cutting ties. They’re stories about how hard it is to transform them, to protect ancestral bonds while refusing to perpetuate inherited pain. In many racialized families, collectivity, loyalty, and intergenerational duty are sacred... even when they come at the cost of personal boundaries.

And sometimes, Western individualist frameworks read these tensions as dysfunction or villainy. But for us, they’re just the difficult truth of growing up and trying to do better.

These women aren’t villains. That would be too easy. They embody the fragile, necessary work of bringing change without breaking the thread. These stories are about refusing to inherit their pain without reflection. Because love, without accountability, is not enough.

These stories show us that each generation has something to learn from the next. And the new generation must also break free from the chains they inherited while preserving what is meaningfull.

But it’s not just their story.

One day, we’ll be the older generation.

And we’ll need to be humble enough to learn from the ones after us.

So don’t be a fool.

We may be Mei, Rumi, or Mirabel today.

But tomorrow, we could be Ming, Celine, or Alma.

And when that time comes, we’ll realize how hard it is to unlearn what once kept us safe.

So let’s have compassion for all these characters.

Because these stories show us not just how the cycle of generations works, but how it can make us better, stronger, and more connected... if we’re all willing to go through the change.

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If you’re curious, I’ve written more on K-pop Demon Hunters:

A post on the mental health themes woven through the songs — right here.

A breakdown of Celine-Rumi in comparaison to Gothel–Rapunzel dynamic — here.

An analysis about Rumi, Jinu, and the danger of sinking together — here.

Some book recs for each of the K-pop Demon Hunters characters — here.

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edit (07/08/25): Thanks to several kind Colombian commenters and reblogs, I’ve learned that the historical context shown in Encanto is more likely tied to the Thousand Days’ War, a brutal civil war rather than direct colonial violence. I initially framed Abuela’s trauma through the lens of colonialism, which was a mistake. The real context is deeply rooted in internal ideological conflict. As a South asian viewer, I’m very grateful to those who shared insights ! I encourage readers to check the comments and reblogs for more historical nuance and brilliant perspectives 🧡