#uncharitable interpretation of events

[suddencosmology]

A lorepost constructed while fighting Shadow of the Erdtree's Final Boss

I have thoughts. This started when I was born, but these particular thoughts began during my first playthrough of Elden Ring as a set of notes to keep track of events. With Shadow of the Erdtree (and me smashing my head against a brick wall), this section on the Shattering War expanded.

Repeatedly dying to the wrath of heaven gives you time to think, and now that I own the gate of calcified bodies, I must share them.

Fact

Quote

Conjecture

(Sword Monument, Altus)

The First Defense of Leyndell

A sovereign alliance rots from within

Traces yet remain of bloody conspiracy

(Direct translation) The battle of the First Defense of Leyndell

A sovereign alliance, from within collapses,

becoming a defeated army

A blood plot, these are the traces

Sword Monument refers to both Blood and Rot, suggesting involvement of Malenia and Mogh.  Who is in the alliance?  Translation suggests the attackers.

There's nothing I've found to shed more light on this idea, and so I have no extrapolation.

(Sword Monument, Altus)

The Second Defense of Leyndell

The Fell Omen stacks high the corpses of heroes

Yet the Erdtree remains unshaken

(Direct translation) The battle of Leyndell's Second Defense

The shunned ogre,

piles the champions' corpses 

The Golden Tree is unshaken

Margit the Fell appears on the battlefield.

Omen can be found in open Altus.  Given the location of the Shunning Grounds, they most likely originated there.  But did they escape, or did they follow Margit?  One group is found at a campsite not far from the Leyndell war camp.  More, alongside Misbegotten, are found at the Minor Erdtree within the outer wall, engaged in prayer.  A third group wanders the hill of abandoned treasure carriages, but near that is the Perfumer's Ruins, where lives an Omenkiller.  One must be present due to the other, but who?

Promotional art shows Radahn attacked by the Fell Omen.  Opening cutscene shows army w/ Trolls attacking Leyndell.  Beyond pulling carts,Trolls are found primarily in Limgrave, but one guards the gate of Redmane Castle, and another overlooks Sellia's gate, both in Caelid.  

Unlikely to be Carian: Carian Trolls wear helmets and tabards.

Alliance between Godrick and Radahn?

(Sword Monument, Liurnia)

This marks Malenia's southward march

The Blade of Miquella and her Cleanrot Knights

Grant her wings never to be clipped

(Direct Translation) Malenia's southward march monument

Miquella's Blade, the Noble Rot knights

The wings that are never hindered

Why did the march start here?  Leyndell and the Haligtree are both north.  Or does it mean that here her march turned south?  Were she chasing Radahn out of Altus, her first stop would've been the land of his birth.  Once certain he had not retreated there and/or recieved no aid, her path would have gone South.

(Sword Monument, Limgrave)

Godrick the Golden, humiliated

Having tasted defeat by the Blade of Miquella

Now on his knees, begging for mercy

(Direct Translation) Golden Godrick, a humiliating battle

To Miquella's Blade, a total defeat

Grovelling, begging for forgiveness

Either Malenia defeated Godrick here, or if he and Radahn sieged Leyndell, then perhaps he groveled rather than face Malenia again.

(Sword Monument, Caelid)

The Battle of Aeonia

Radahn and Malenia locked in stalemate

Then, the scarlet rot blooms

(Direct translation) Aeonia Battle

Radahn, Malenia come to a draw

The Scarlet Rot flower blooms to full glory

Here occurs the fated battle that ended the Shattering.  Malenia blooms in a bid to destroy Radahn, and whispers in his ear the following:

(Young Lion's Helm)

"Miquella awaits thee, O promised consort."

In the aftermath, Miquella heals Redmane Freya of the Scarlet Rot.

(Cleanrot Knight Finlay Spirit Ashes)

Finlay was one of the few survivors of the Battle of Aeonia, who in an unimaginable act of heroism carried the slumbering demigod Malenia all the way back to the Haligtree. She managed the feat alone, fending off all manner of foes along the way.

Malenia is "slumbering" after Aeonia.  With the presence of Miquella in Caelid, it suggests Miquella was responsible for halting the bloom of the Rot Goddess, Saint Trina sending Malenia into a deep, long slumber.  Perhaps an eternal one, until Millicent and her sisters arrive, each carrying a part of Malenia cast aside in Aeonia.  

And as each of them blooms, the Goddess begins to stir, and the Tarnished is but the unlucky fool forced to slay her.

Above is but connecting dots, but there are still questions unanswered.

Morgott calls all the demigods traitors.  Did he know of Ranni's part in the Night of Black Knives?  Or was her and Caria's inaction during the Shattering treachery enough?

If we follow the Radahn-Godrick alliance, those two are on the list for certain.

Rykard's rebellion was open and clear-cut.

Why the twins, though?  Betrayal, or like Ranni, was their disappearance/retreat to the Haligtree after Aeonia the cause?

For Radahn, why did he and Malenia clash? 

His lore paints him as glory-hunter, raised on tales of his father and Lord Godfrey proving their might in the field of battle.  A naive prince born in an era of peace, hungering for a war to prove his mettle.

He clearly sought to be Elden Lord, but perhaps not with Miquella as his God.  Or perhaps the war was a sort of elaborate courting ritual, demanding he face the full strength of Miquella's ideals and followers.  Or crueler, the promise was meant to be an impossible request, one to goad Malenia into combat and prove to all the Red Lion deserved the title of Strongest.

Whatever the case, it seems Malenia warred as a way to force him into compliance, and when he would not yield, she Bloomed.  

This either suggests she knew of the Secret Rite scroll we find in the DLC, and that perhaps the entire war was an extension of Miquella's plan, or perhaps just a final barb, given to a man worthy of no honor or glory.

The Unalloyed's presence in Caelid would be his compassion, or his moral calculus (such that could convince him puppeting both Radahn and Mogh would be for the Greater Good), could not allow the Scarlet Rot to spread.

The other option is that, again, Radahn broke his promise to Miquella, Malenia's march was in pursuit of vengeance, Miquella arrived too late to stop them from destroying each other, and his ascension was in turn a reaction to losing his promised consort and his sister.  In this charitable perspective, his original plan was the Haligtree, watered with his blood and fully absent of gods, shelter to all.  A throne of unalloyed gold, sadly abandoned when his hopefuly ideals clashed with cold reality.

Either way, we come to Mohg.  Why Mogh?  Again we turn to the moral calculus.  Miquella needed a guardian while he slept, and without his loyal Blade, turned to the next most dangerous demigod.  And also, the more expendable.

Of the others: 

Messmer was already in the Land of Shadow.

Rykard was a heretic and possibly a snake-god at the time.

Morgott had assumed regency of Leyndell.

Ranni was either dead, missing, running Caria, and/or definitely couldn't be trusted with the plan.

Godwyn was a cancerous corpse fused to the Erdtree.

Miquella needed a body for his Lord.  The closer in relation, the better.  And it needed to be someone who wouldn't be missed.

Mohg's Dynasty was small, heretical, slightly obsessed with blood, deeply tied to an Outer God, and possibly already involved in the whole murder and kidnapping thing.

An easy choice.

Either way, little suggests Mohg somehow knew a way to reach the Land of Shadow.  The closest connection is the Formless Mother's foothold with the Bloodfiends.

More likely, Miquella had the power and knowledge to reach it himself, and his ascension was delayed until both Mohg and Radahn were properly dead.

A lord's soul delivered, and a body to host it.

And so the enchanted followers and a lone Tarnished followed him into that hidden realm.

Of the two interpretations, I ask both myself and the reader, this: which is the more tragic?

That the good-natured promises of salvation are built on lies, deceit, and manipulation.

Or that the dreams of someone good and kind and loving have corroded into cruelty.

[quasi-normalcy]

there was a post a while ago about structural interpretations of the humanities vs STEM divide, and i just. feel a desperate need to remind you that humanities illiteracy is literally the systemic issue. defunding arts, music, and literature programs in favor to STEM programs is THE systemic issue that creates humanities illiteracy. beyond that, Ways Of Knowing Things are important. it's called epistemology. and STEM fields do not engage in epistomolegy, they (at least before masters) teach The Right Way To Do Things. when it comes to Ways Of Knowing Things, there is a real and significant divide between people who have been in instructed in The Right Way To Do Things and people who have been instructed to Investigate Where The Knowing Comes From.

humanities illiteracy is not a magical divide, it's a literal structural issue caused by systemic defunding and deprioritization of humanities fields. i just. humanities degrees actually do have value. we are studying things that are difficult to find elsewhere. the same way that I do not understand programming languages, programmers do not understand how to analyze a given piece of rhetoric or place it in sociopolitical context. the problem is that the trust is one-sided. I trust programmers to understand more about programming than I do. STEM majors generally do not trust or believe that there is anything worthy of or requiring of further study in the humanities. because theyre soft, just 'stories' or an 'accounting of events.' and again, this is backed up by a systemic defunding and deprioritization of the humanities in elementary and high school programming nationwide.

I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you, I have a master's in literature and I'm literally doing a PhD in a humanities discipline right now. I do, however, think that a lot of the popular posts on the subject on this website are just terrible and utterly uncharitable to anyone who falls outside of the author's in-group.

[larsisfrommars]

I’m continuing to lose my mind about Xander in Amends and Zeppo and Consequences

I’ve seen some what I believe to be, maybe not bad faith, but uncharitable interpretations of his change of heart in that episode is just him avoiding being around his parents.

Firstly, can’t blame him if true, secondly, I think it’s more than that.

At that point in his character arc he has fucked up every single one of his friendships (Buffy, Willow, Corey, Oz). He is capital A alone on Christmas and he’d rather camp outside than put up with his parents.

That kid is at Rock Fucking Bottom and clearly has a lot of guilt he’s deflecting about it for a while.

I don’t think it’s wild for him to finally FINALLY go “hey I’ve been shitty and I wanna make it right.”

I mean he kinda half apologized to Buffy at the end of Revelations. He just finally followed through the rest of the way and I can’t discount that.

I don’t expect him to stop hating vampires but like, he’s trying to repair bridges with his found family since his blood family is horrific garbage.

I also think this long awaited moment self-reflection and the events of Zeppo is part of why he reaches out to Faith in Consequences, not just because they unceremoniously slept together. Xander and Faith deflect on their misdeeds in similar ways, it makes sense to me that he might recognize that in her.

[blairsanne]

I just finished my first rewatch of taj. This time around, I noticed more than the first time I watched. I was actually paying more attention to the storyline instead of just watching Dean in every scene and how good he looked lol.

I felt bad for Anders and how everyone treated him, even up until the last episode. Yeah there were times when he acted like a prick but hey that’s his character and I understand him putting up a wall and acting the way he does because if how others treat him. Still loved Ty. Yeah at times it was a little creepy with his approach to Dawn but I love the ending how it all turned out for them. Still cried. Mike, still can’t stand him. I think this time around I found him even more annoying. I almost got to the point where I had to wither mute when he was talking or just outright skip it lol. Axl was better this time around. First time I found him really annoying but this time he was better. Love Zeb, hilarious! Love all the goddesses still, except Gaia. Don’t even get me started on her! Especially the storyline with her and Anders. Nope hated that part, couldn’t watch it this time.

I loved it even more this time around! Since finishing it, it got me thinking about it they did go ahead with a season 4 and what would play out. I would’ve loved to see how each of them adapted to their life now without their god powers and who would embrace the new change, who would struggle the most, would they change anything about their life or try and keep it steady? Who knows!? And then what about Axl moving back in with Zeb, do you think he’d eventually start telling him everything or just leave that all in the past and build a new friendship? What are your thoughts on if they did another season and what they would tackle?

Yay, talking about TAJ is one of my favourite things!!

I fully agree re: Anders. I often feel sad for him when people who watch the show accept his brothers' opinions of him as fact, despite Anders himself repeatedly trying to tell them that he does the right thing often, that he's trying to protect them, etc. -- and the audience even being shown that effort on his part multiple times. It grinds my gears that other characters thinking Anders is a shallow jerk is taken as a statement of fact from the writers and not, y'know, the character's opinion.

Anders may not have the same set of ethics as Mike, but he clearly has his own set of ethics (which he brings up in S2 when he's uncomfortable with Helen's ideas for his powers, in S3 with Colin's ideas for his powers, etc...) and doesn't see his own actions the way his brothers interpret them, and I think it's a very uncharitable reading of his character to think of him as flat and selfish, instead of the very complex character that was actually written into the show, with flaws and good points and complicated family dynamics where mostly there's a lot of misunderstanding of each other going on. I could probably ramble on about that forever, but I'll refrain.

Mainly I wish that viewers would take Anders word for it what his own motivations are, because he does outright state them at multiple points, right from the first season where he explains that the thing that got him BANISHED FROM HIS FAMILY was done in an attempt to protect Mike.

I really disliked Mike my first viewing, because I felt like he caused a lot of strife for other characters by being inflexible and believing he knew best. As I've rewatched, I've come to better appreciate his character and the immense burden he bears. I think his attempt at controlling his family is his own way of trying to protect them, and that this was caused by the events surrounding both the toxic relationship of his parents and that he was forced to be the head of the family at age 21. (I still get annoyed with him during the S3 Odin contest stuff but I also headcanon that it was a "fate" thing to force Odin and Frigg together.) I try to remind myself that every character on the show thinks they are in the right, and why that might be.

I have a theory about Gaia, but that's a whole other essay lmao.

My answers to your questions re: S4 will be somewhat colored by the deleted scene from the final episode, which reveals what Colin was doing tossing a red gem on the ground before the Ga.

In the deleted scene (which they filmed in case they got renewed for S4), Loki comes out of the gem, and we were left with Loki and Colin standing in the woods, apparently about to cause some problems.

With that in mind, I have to assume that the Johnsons would discover Loki was in Midgard and try to do soemthing about it. I further assume that at least some of the other characters would have god spirits inhabit them again (mainly because that's more interesting than them coming back to Earth on their own and interacting with mortal Johnsons).

I think it would be REALLY interesting if they didn't necessarily get the gods they had the first time around. Maybe Odin doesn't want to leave Asgard, so Axl becomes another god. Maybe Freki, just for the lols. Maybe they find some new McGuffin that allows other mortals (liek Zeb and Dawn) to take on god spirits!

Re: Zeb and Axl living together, given how long their friendship was, I headcanon that - much like Dawn - Zeb would eventually start to remember Axl, and maybe everything. Alternatively, maybe part of the season is Axl finding a way to make Zeb remember!

Just re: the Johnsons being mortal in general, I have a bit of a hc where, since Mike's career wasn't based on his powers, he'd go back to construction (maybe rebuild the bar to sell it), and Axl would work for him. Anders (who I assume does know how to do his job, despite no longer being able to just Bragi his clients) might even do promo for the construction business. Ty could still be a courier, and as the only one to actually live as a mortal since turning 21, I think he'd have the easiest time of it, especially with Dawn remembering him and all.

I think initially there would be a lot of razzing Mike by challenging him to games and beating him, but overall I think Mike might actually feel really happy to get to be included in those games again after so long. I think losing Ullr would really help Mike chill out. Or, at least, I hope that for him.

I don't really see Michele and Anders working out long term unless Michele started to take Anders seriously. She didn't really seem to understand him very well even in S3. I did feel like Anders seemed to want a more serious relationship (not necessarily that he wanted what Ty or Mike would want, but just that he seemed to be looking for emotional connection in S3, and not only physical, perhaps because of the whole Idun plot?) so I could see with not having Bragi anymore that he might settle down a bit and get a gf. I've always sort of thought maybe mortal women didn't seem like suitable gf material to him because they couldn't know about everything going on (like he saw how being with Val was complicated for Mike) and that's why they're always little flings. We do see him treat Michele and Helen pretty well imo (not cheating on them, taking them seriously as people, etc.), so I thought maybe he would do better with a goddess gf. (See Lofn fic lmao)

Ahhh that was a lot of rambling, but I'm always happy to talk more about TAJ!! Thanks for the ask :)

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

I don't entirely disagree, but I think that what you say about it being impossible to be apolitical would extend to the original poll itself. Ignoring the political climate doesn't make it apolitical. I do agree in that case not posting them at all would be political in a different way. If I might suggest? Perhaps you could simply add a small statement. "Free Palestine" at the bottom of the post, to make it clear. Or add a tag to clarify it is Israeli made, on occupied Palestinian land. Or add a watermelon emoji if you want it to be as innocuous as possible and hopefully not invite people to bring up the politics of it. My kneejerk reaction was discomfort due to the lack of any acknowledgement of a conflict that is impossible to escape. Any mention of Israel is inherently going to bring politics into it, so for people's reassurance and comfort knowing you're not purposefully ignoring said conflict for the sake of your polls (which I think people could uncharitably interpret that as), maybe adding something small to acknowledge it without making it a big show would be a good gesture. Thank you for responding thoughtfully to my prior ask.

Another long reply.

hello there.

unfortunately after reading the other ask I found myself slightly disappointed by the fact that you didn't fully read mod sus' response. Even if you did, one of the main points was "we do not wish to bring genocide into this" this is not a blog about politics. we do not wish to force our opinions, or anything upon anyone else. who I stand for should not affect other's opinions when it's on a blog that is about horror movies and if you have seen them or not. as mod sus suggested, you could simply block the tag "israel" if you do not wish to see movies that have been made by them, this is why the tagging system is in place. bringing politics onto this blog will increase attention from both sides of the matter, whether it be positive or negative, will ultimately block the audience's view of what this blog is actually for, having fun and joy around what the world could only know as, horror movies.

thank you for reading, have a wonderful day.

mod chris

mod L would like to add: the reason we don't add "free Palestine" to posts about movies by Israeli filmmakers is the same reason we don't add "free Ukraine" to posts about Russian films, or "free Tibet" to posts about Chinese films. Individual creatives do not bear responsibility for the actions of their government, and we will not imply otherwise by applying a standard to their films that we do not apply elsewhere.

Mod Sus: This is to not say we ignore or support the on-going conflicts or wars between the countries or groups of people. We merely want to keep this blog free from reminders of these events going on. We hope that can be seen as reasonable to not add the suggested messages or additions into our polls.

We're here just to talk about movies. If you do wish to talk about the problematic or heavy topics related to these movies, whatever they are, you are free to do so in the reblogs. It is part of good media and art critisism to acknowledge its darker aspects too, but you can enjoy (or not enjoy) the art while acknowledging them.

[ssruis]

(Re: tsukasa post) if you wanted to be a little uncharitable you *could* say that tsukasa cares for others just because it lines up with his goals - as in, he cares for others because he believes that’s what a star should do - rather than just genuine kindness and goodwill, but I would argue

- wrt loved ones: saki specifically (& to a lesser extent toya just because they interact less) is the greatest counterpoint against that interpretation. He wants to be the best brother possible because he loves her, not because it’s what a star should be doing (gestures at the doll event where he brought her the dolls as a kid even before he started the whole I am a world future star thing). Like yes he views that as something he *should* be doing but that’s because he believes that’s what you should do for your loved ones. I think at this point the big brother-dream of being a star thing are so irreversibly intertwined that they’re kind of one and the same. Of course a star would care for others because tsukasa cares for others and he views himself as a star etc etc. He wants to look out for/do things for his siblings/friends because he loves them.

- I guess you could argue him doing the same for strangers is solely because it upholds his star persona/image? But to that I would point out that his whole “I realized my real dream was to make others smile” thing in the main story sort of contradicts that. Given the whole “theatre is life” thing he’s got going on I think making strangers/acquaintance/etc happy in his day to day life is just like. A microcosm of what he aims to do on stage. I think he’s egotistical yeah but I don’t think that has to be mutually exclusive with selflessness. I do think there’s a discussion to be had about tsukasa being self-centered because he *is* and he’s absolutely not the completely selfless guy some people want to think he is but I also think that he can be motivated by egotistical desires *and* selfless desires. Being self centered isn’t inherently a bad thing. Tsukasa is kind because he’s a kind person and because that’s what a star should do in his mind. His own kindness is self serving. Does that make sense (no, it’s incomprehensible) great glad you’re following along. Sliding scale of how selfless his motivations for being kind are depending on the person with saki being on one end and random strangers on the other.

- I think it’s inherently difficult to ascertain whether the motives behind kindness are self serving or not. Does someone being kind because it makes them feel good mean they’re selfish? Humans are a social species, we enjoy making others happy because it makes us happy. Evolutionary adaption that helps the survival of the group. I think the idea that true kindness depends on your altruism making you miserable is stupid, although I guess you could argue that a kind person chooses kindness regardless of how it makes them feel. But then there’s the question of what motivates your kindness (a sense of doing the right thing? Upholding your morals? Because the guilt of being selfish is something you can’t bear? Wouldn’t that be just as selfish as wanting to feel good?) Whether or not true altruism/selflessness exists is a philosophical debate I don’t really feel like having over characters from the gacha miku tap tap game. Whatever. Would like to point out that tsukasa has canonically chosen to do the “right”/kind thing at the cost of his own benefit before (giving up on winning the pxl show contest/chance for a big break in favor of putting on the WMS show, which he was a little upset about doing).

I think people tend to err too far on the side of “he’s super selfless all the time with a pure heart” because they don’t want to admit their fave is an absolutely bizarre guy with a massive ego that comes into play for more than just his funny little speeches about being The Most Special Guy Alive which is tragic because Tsukasa Tenma is truly an interesting critter. He doesn’t do things solely out of the goodness of his heart but he also doesn’t not do things out of the goodness of his heart. He’s complex. Layered. A weird little freak. I’m studying him like a bug. You understand.

[shallowseeker]

I'm not trying to be contrary but I'm genuinely curious why you think Jack would be jealous of Claire rather than follow her around like a lost puppy.

I mean, he might try to be friends at first. Jack likes to style himself as a polite, young fellow, after all. Plus, he appears to be uncomfortable about Jimmy Novak, if you go by the script outlines. There'd be guilt mixed up with everything, too. He has his dad because she lost hers. Claire is someone he'd instantly want to protect.

But Claire is mean as a fuckin' snake, and Jack's feelings aren't iron-clad. He also can tend to get snipey and sassy when pressed, especially if he thinks Claire is doing something dangerous.

For her part, Claire doesn't want to be protected. She wants to show off and be the superior hunter, which of course gets her into trouble.

And well. Jack's never really had to share Cas before. Not like that. I don't know if he'll understand at first why he's so uncomfortable, but he definitely will be.

///

Maybe you're right that you'd need one of those serpent tongues around to voice the most uncharitable interpretations of events, in true SPN fashion. This way, Jack's fears and jealousy can get riled up more properly (Claire, on the other hand, doesn't need any help getting riled up).

Instead of a demon or villain of the week to be the mouthpiece, I'd choose Dark Kaia. I mean, Dark Kaia is ruthless and cunning and blunt and cruel...and she tried to skewer Claire. Plus...

REGULAR KAIA IN HER DEBUT: I mean, you picked the wrong bait. I'm not the kind of girl folks come for. In this world, I don't even rank a milk carton. No one is gonna come for me. I'm not white, rich, blonde. No one's gonna fight for me. I don't matter.

Still, regular Kaia fell in love with Claire, even though she was milk-carton gorgeous. But Dark Kaia tried to kill Claire, because Claire was the thing taking her twin from her.

We also understand that Dark Kaia is jealous of Kaia for even having a Claire in the first place, just like she admits to being jealous of her world.

In 15x12, Dark Kaia too sees a beautiful, Claire-like face in a magazine and angrily shoves it across the table. Like regular Kaia, she seems to have hang-ups about the sort of person society seems to "instantly care about."

All that to say, she'd totally be the voice in Jack's ear pointing out the contrasts between how Claire is treated versus how Jack is treated. Look how soft they all are on Claire, how precious she is, how they protect her, etc. etc.

Sorry, that wasn't really your question, was it. The real answer is...because I like the flavor.

Claire is jealous because TFW gives Jack more responsibility; Jack is jealous because they give her less.

It's spicy.

ADDENDUM: If she'd been an active player in the plot, Claire would absolutely volunteer to "Kill Jack Kline...so Cas, Dean, and Sam don't have to." Dark Kaia would agree, and regular Kaia would be looking for a way to save him. If Jack killed Claire, that might be the thing that motivates Cas to act more visibly out of character, similar to how Mary's death pushed Sam and Dean to the brink.

[necronatural]

hi! so i just came across the whole korean incels mad at a comic (i think) with absolute NO context beforehand. what's the game and character are they mad at??

limbus company, 3rd in a series of games by Project Moon, and a gacha game. We're getting an upcoming summer event banner with 2 new summer themed character units.

For comparison. This Sinclair unit is the first unit we've gotten that shows skin, and a wetsuit is obviously very chaste (even if it's skintight and the most Ishmael Breast we've gotten in the whole game) so they interpreted it very uncharitably.

I cover the rest of what went down here.

In short: Misogynistic gamers go "hey guys, do you think LimCo is actually misandrist? swimsuit man but no swimsuit woman?", their theory is easily jossed, they dig deeper to find that the Lead CG artist tweeted about feminism when she was 18 (South Korea gender politics are a wedge issue making this inherently incendiary and political), they associate her with a reviled radfem group to pressure the company and justify egregious threats, cyberstalking, and IRL harassment, artist is let go.

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

(Apologies for continuing what I started as replies to a post but) While digging through The Kindly Ones to make sure I wasn't misremembering, I noticed the Corinthian's comment tying Nada, Ruby, and Carla's deaths together is followed immediately by the Furies entering the Dreaming and threatening Morpheus as the first salvo of their attack. Given a LOT of the story involves Dream's belief he deserves this doom visited upon his realm, it may be possible the fire motif is itself an echo.

Note: This ask was sent in two parts, and the second part continued: "Sorta him unconsciously imposing an order upon otherwise unrelated events to self-justify his suffering and eventual death. Recently killing Orpheus already has him behaving uncharitably towards event he points where he's objectively a better person than when he started, so sliding back on how he feels about Nada's death even after coming to some measure of peace with her could fit. I'm not married to the interpretation, but it popped in my head, and I'm curious what you make of it."

Thanks for sending this as an ask, since it makes it much easier to reply to than a comment.

Yeah, I reread part of the books after reading that bit of the Companion to see if there was evidence of that wacky claim of the "curse against black women", and sure enough the Corinthian's comment is there. That led me to post the initial half-joking "Well, damn, I guess Morpheus is canon racist misogynist" post that led to a few less-than-friendly inbox comments and a lot of the discussion that's been happening. So yes there is that layer there. Barely. And I think it's really a stupid and unnecessary addition to an already super dense narrative, but yeah, that comment from The Corinthian serves as canon evidence outside of The Companion.

I guess him accidentally cursing all the black women in the narrative because he thinks he's done irreparable harm to the universe because he's depressed is... well, I was going to say it's less bad than him actively holding a grudge against an entire class of people, but I'm not sure it's less bad, really. Because it is still the targeting of a specific class of people to harm, which also happens to be a real life marginalized group. So it's still not a great look either as a character trait or authorial choice if the character is supposed to be sympathetic. I've seen people try to erase various characters' bad actions with "but he's sad!" but this may be the first case I've heard where the character LITERALLY being sad CAUSES the crimes to happen!

Your interpretation does seem to gel with the general writing in the series, where characters being "messy" is an intentional part of the narrative, and they realistically backslide in development the way people might.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Like the thing about FOB we didn’t start the fire is that it’s structured differently than the og we didn’t start the fire. In my opinion it’s not really important that it covers 33 years of time instead of 40 because none of the events described in the song are described in linear order. The first verse of the song jumbles things from 1993 and 2020 in the same line.

This could be because FOB didn’t understand the brief but a charitable interpretation is that in choosing the cover the song they also chose to put a spin on it. Their cover may be “about” something different than the original song was about; in the days of the 24 hour news cycle and especially in the days of everyone being as online as they are, all sense of when events happen in relation to each other are lost.

Later in the song, by listing “Sandy Hook, Columbine”, that’s perhaps a commentary on how each new “biggest school shooting” calls back the discourse and the frenzy of the previous one.

As a Billy Joel purist that’s probably not something that you like, but it isn’t as though this is the first cover of a song — or hell, adaptation of a piece of media to recontextualise it and in so doing use the bones of the original to say something different.

And of course if you are not a FOB fan you might just want to be uncharitable and say that they weren’t trying to achieve anything by doing it and they just missed the whole point of the song. And that’s fine. But I think quibbling about whether the song spans 33 years or 40 (i.e: the singer’s entire lifespan) is really missing the point because the song isn’t about that anymore.

If they’re gonna do something completely different they should have just written their own song because the melody of We Didn’t Start the Fire kinda sucks. Like they’re not writing the next chapter of it because they went out of order so?? I don’t have a problem with Fall Out Boy, I'm not super familiar with their usual music but I think it's pretty good, but I think this song is bad and misses the point of We Didn’t Start the Fire and I’m gonna say so! I’ve been very self-aware about insane I’m being about this but at this point I think you’re being weirder??

I want the song to span 40 years because I like the neatness of two 40 year installments, but there are a couple of other things behind it. First of all, 40 is a milestone age, and Billy Joel always talks about how he had just turned 40 when he wrote it and that was one reason he was reflecting on events that had happened in his lifetime. But also, I started the "not until 2029" refrain because when people call for an "updated" We Didn't Start the Fire, it's almost always in the context of "so much shit has happened recently" and suggesting it can or even needs to cover less time because "so much more" has happened. This feeling is contrary to the very point of We Didn't Start the Fire.

Billy Joel wrote We Didn't Start the fire after spending time with Sean Lennon and a friend of Sean's who had just turned 21. The younger men were talking about how hard it was to turn 21 in the late 80s, and Billy Joel told the how he felt the same way when he turned 21 (in 1970). Sean's friend responded by saying "yeah, but you grew up in the fifties, and everybody knows nothing happened in the fifties!" And Billy Joel said "have you ever heard of the Korean War?" The point isn't "so much is happening right now" it's "so much has always been happening." It's "everyone who came before you felt the same way you feel right now." It's about taking off the generational blinders and looking at the bigger picture of history. Things have always been happening and they're still happening. That last verse is probably a lot of the things Sean Lennon and his friend were stressing about: foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, okay... maybe not Bernie Goetz, but you get the idea. "China's under martial law" is the penultimate reference because Tiananmen Square happened shortly before he finished writing the song.

"Haha, you'd need an entire verse just for 2020!" There are a ton of major headlines missing from We Didn't Start the Fire just from the year 1968. He rushes through the seventies because he realized he was running out of song. It doesn't mention the Cuban Missile Crisis! But there are two references to the Dodgers, because it's mostly things Billy Joel remembered (obviously some of the early stuff isn't direct memories).

I've actually come to believe that We Didn't Start the Fire can never be replicated in a way that does justice to the original, because without setting out to, Billy Joel documented the Cold War because of when he happened to be born and when he happened to write the song. There's another song on the same album called Leningrad that is intentionally about the Cold War and Billy Joel's place in it (and does mention the Cuban Missile Crisis) that also highlights that he was born in 1949. I'm not sure if there's a Fall Out Boy equivalent to that or not. I don't think it's necessarily bad to try. But I'm not sure what they did do, here. It's not chronological, so it's not a reflection on their lifetime. The only thing that's really impressive about We Didn't Start the Fire from a songwriting perspective is that it's chronological and it still rhymes. I also pity anyone trying to write a sequel because they have to make it fit the melody. Billy Joel wrote the lyrics first (something he never did with any other song) and fit the melody to them, but if you're covering that melody you have to reverse the process. I don't see what bones of the original are left besides being a goofy novelty song that lists a bunch of events and a pretty lame melody.

[generalchelseamayhem]

Actually it just seems like Goldberg is keeping his outrage separate from his reporting. Which is the actual professional thing to do.

Readings that interpret Goldberg as being outraged at Trump, and readings that have him excusing military intervention in Yemen, are just that: readings projected onto the piece by the audience.

Goldberg is giving us cold hard information: who was bombed and when, who was known to have access to this information, people who had this information who definitely weren't supposed to, and how the high-ranking government officials were acting/reacting during this event. Plus, after the fact, a comprehensive breakdown of the laws each of these elected officials were breaking, with expert legal advice to back him up.

And like, fair enough, if you want to be outraged about any and all of that... go ahead! Nobody is stopping you! But journalists shouldn't need to hold your hand through how you personally should feel about the events they're reporting.

(He is also being far more sensible than anybody else involved about what information he discloses, and I can't fault him for that.)

The most emotive word he uses in the article is "bizarre", and this is for something that you have to remember

is completely unprecedented in U.S. politics as far as we know

happened to him personally.

What exactly does an uncharitable reading of Goldberg and his motivations accomplish here?

Everybody is shocked that US journalist was invited to a top secret chat discussing military strikes and then just left (honestly that's the funniest thing) while refusing to reveal sensitive information but that's about what I expected. You can read on his article, he doesn't care about the fact that the US military is striking one of the poorest countries in the world. In fact, he probably even supports it.

What he is outraged about is how dare Trump be so incompetent, how dare him compromise the effectiveness of the US military, which is doing its job to 'protect this country'. You will see this in media from other countries, there's little to no mention about WHERE the airstrikes were directed to, WHY and WHO they killed. It's all "oh Trump let a random journalist on his chat, how embarrassing!" If it had been Obama or Biden or whoever, the journalist probably wouldn't even had published anything, because after all I imagine (ha!) that they talk about bombing third world countries with propriety and decorum, not unlike these guys who are so, so cringe.

this is why I tell you that the US has a level of military worship seldom seen and completely naturalized

[yuucandoit]

ah actually

just want the details

Cater's imitation here makes me wish the event was voiced lol

uncharitable interpretation, it seems like it's just wanting everyone to have the present / not receive favoritism to me so I can't really understand this reaction, but it's interesting to see it received that way. I suppose if he refuses to accept a gift on the basis it doesn't extend to everyone else then this reaction kind of makes sense though

[vamptastic]

Part of this is just my fair share of dumb judginess based on my cultural background and I'm probably making a slew of uncharitable assumptions. Also I mostly know about Catholicism and not much else.

But I feel that people sort of misunderstand Judaism as a monotheistic religion. Like, we genuinely do not see Christianity and Islam as monotheistic, and we are not really worshipping the same God. God really does tend to be seen as a more abstract and primordial force in Judaism than other Abrahamic religions.

The most tangible God gets is a version of God that's a sort of all powerful alien being, who can directly intervene in our lives on occasion and may turn the tide on major events and cause inexplicable things to happen, and has a fundamentally different view on life than we do. The most common interpretation I've encountered is that God is the more abstract will of the universe, like a manifestation of fate. He makes decisions, these decisions are not always things we understand or agree with and all we can do is accept that what God makes happen is what's right and deal with it ourselves by extrapolating on His motives.

And we directly connect with God in these very sensory ways that connect us to nature and to ourselves. Smelling, tasting, singing, meditating, sacrificing animals. It's sort of at odds with the very literary nature of Judaism where one's experience of God, the moments you most believe in him, are very base and sensory, but you decide how to act based on the written word and God is just kind of the metric for good behavior to use as an argumentative tool.

[worldwake]

IM GOING TO GO INSANE THIS DISCOURSE IS SO RIDICULOUS DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN CRITICISE SOMEONE'S SHIT TAKE WITHOUT MAKING IT A HUGE DRAMA THING WHERE YOU'RE NAMECALLING EACH OTHER AND TAKING THE LEAST CHARITABLE INTERPRETATIONS OF EACH OTHER AND BLASTING THEM TO YOUR FOLLOWERS

[yggdraseed]

I was onboard with you up until the point you said that Gojo wasn't encouraging his students to be free thinkers. I get that you're trying to avoid painting over Gojo's whole character as some tragic victim, but I think you've ended up smashing down all of his characterization and oversimplifying what he represents in a different way.

By no means was Gojo a perfect person in general or teacher specifically, but saying he was just raising "stronger child soldiers" is an extremely myopic and uncharitable interpretation. He was the one who was pushing to defend Yuji because, no matter the pragmatics of it, a teenage boy doesn't deserve to be executed. Gojo seeded the baseball event for the second day of the Goodwill Event and pushed to not have it cancelled after the attack specifically because he believed that the events of youth should never be taken away from the young. His whole speech to Megumi was about telling Megumi to be more invested in his own life, to specifically not reduce himself to a cog in the machine and to not just build up other people at his own expense all the time.

You claiming Gojo doesn't even comprehend that he's a victim is also just extremely misguided. It's not as if he's just blindly aiding and abetting the system. The whole point of Hidden Inventory and Premature Death was Gojo coming to realize he was the benefactor of a system that was going to destroy him and the people he cared for eventually. Like the entire complexity of Gojo's character is that he's simultaneously a revolutionary against the system and an emblem of the system. He can only do what he does because the system warps and bends around him, but he chooses to use that to try and change the system.

These characters are all much more complex than I think you're making them out to be, and the answers aren't neat and tidy binaries of right or wrong. Like no matter how traumatic it is, Yuta had a point. What if there comes a time when someone has to shoulder an incredible burden - one that tests their strength and threatens their own inherent beliefs - or else everything they've been fighting for will come to nothing? Gojo was fighting for so long to prevent his students from making those kinds of decisions, but with him gone now, he can't protect them anymore.

Personally, I think that Yuta made a mistake. However, I think there were no good choices here. Like it is morally repugnant, it goes against Yuta's personal beliefs and against his responsibility to Gojo's memory, and that's the point. Because the story is positing the question: "Is this what needs to be done for the greater good?" I don't think we're going to get a clear cut answer, and I think that's the point.

I think it's good to be questioning these characters, but you need to look at the sum total of the story so far. You left out a lot of extremely important details that really over-simplified Gojo's character. I don't like the people that worship Gojo, but going to the other extreme isn't the way to see things clearly, either.

The Next Gojo Satoru

As you've probably guessed I have a lot to say about this chapter. However, right away I want to start out by pointing out once again that the fandom is taking a mostly gojo-centric view of this chapter. Which I understand it's Gojo's body that's being puppeteered around and dehumanized in the exact same way that Kenjaku one of the sickest and most inhuman characters used Geto's body.

However I think it shouldn't be understated how shocking it is to see Yuta betray all of his values like this. The most human character who represents love in the cast has given up on the cast and betrayed someone he loves. So let's talk about what this all means for Yuta under the cut.

GOJO GETS AN F IN TEACHING.

I understand why most of the focus is on Gojo, because yes Gojo's body is the one being violated here. He's not even allowed to rest in death after fighting on the front lines against Sukuna to the point where his brain was hemmoraging in the middle of battle and he was brutally cut in half.

Considering how much horror Gojo experienced when he saw Geto's body taken from him and made into Kenjaku's pupet. Cosidering the horrible pain that Nanako and Mimiko endured just seeing Geto's body still moving around denied a good death (Nanako and Mimiko were tellingly willing to let go and not try to take revenge against Gojo for killing Geto because of their friendship even though Geto was their whole world, but they'd never forgive Kenjaku for taking his body). Considering that Gojo even went out of his way to say he wanted to kill Kenjaku / Geto on Christmas Eve again in order to give him a proper burial it's understandable how horrifying this update is.

This is also a series where the two main antagonists are parasites who take the bodies, and steal away all bodily autonomy from characters like Yuji and Megumi and then force them to do horrible things they would never do and bear witness to it, such as the slaughter at Shibuya, or the murder of Tsumiki at Megkuna's hands.

It's understandable how people had such a visceral reaction to this chapter. However, I think the fandom has a tendency to paint Gojo like he's the central victim of all of Jujutsu Society when he's both victim and perpetrator.

Gojo is someone who has only been regarded as the strongest his entire life, and been used as a tool to keep Jujutsu Society stable his entire life. Gojo is also someone who never tried to be anything other than the strongest, never tried to empathize with anyone other than those who were just as strong as he is, and who raised all of his students to be tools too.

To illustrate my point here's an incredibly similiar character from Tokyo Ghoul: Arima Kishou. They are so similiar that they're both white haired mentor characters to the protagonist, they're both the strogest in their respective worlds, and Gege straight up copied this section of panels from the Tokyo Ghoul Manga.

Arima is a breeding project, who was bred by the Washuu Family who mxies blood between humans and ghouls through a series of controlled marriages for the purpose of creating hybrid ghoul human children. Arima isn't the ideal hybrid they were looking for, but he was so ungodly talented he quickly rose to being the most powerful and well-respected investigator in the CCG.

However, this is how Arima reacts to the fact that his entire purpose in life was just to be a weapon to kill ghouls.

Arima loathes violence, he loathes being an investigator, he loathes himself most of all and designs his entire political revolution around him finally being killed by Kaneki - to punish himself and also to relieve himself of the burden of living a life where he was only meat to kill others.

Gojo on the other hand loves being the strongest, he lives for Jujutsu. Arima's death is tragic and nihilistic believing his life had no real worth because all he ever was was a weapon to hurt others, whereas Gojo died satisfied.

Arima's last battle against Kaneki is grim, silent, and tragic, he does everything he can to make Kaneki despise him, to force Kaneki to kill him by being the worst version of himself and when Kaneki still wants him to live he just slits his own throat because even if Kaneki forgives him he can't forgive himself. Gojo laughs his head off and has the time of his life fighting against Sukuna, and going out in a blaze of glory.

Gojo dies smiling, Arima dies finally breaking into tears after a life of pretedig to be cold and emotionless. Gojo's dying regret is 1) that Geto wasn't there to say goodbye to him, and 2) that he wasn't able to draw out all of Sukuna's strength. Arima's dying regret was all the pain and suffering he caused throughout his life and how he was never able to rise above his circumstances and be anything other than what he was born to be.

These two characters are incredibly similiar, they are both the strongest, and they were both made into tools by a dehumanizing system they were born into. However, their attitudes are entirely different. Gojo enjoys being strong, and yes part of it is that Gojo himself doesn't realize he's a victim or what society has groomed him into becoming, but the other part is just because it's an ego trip for him. Gojo doesn't see himself as the tragic victim his fandom makes him out to be.

If you were to transplant him into Tokyo Ghoul Gojo would be happily killing ghouls, and he would think killing ghouls is fun because he's the strongest and best at killing ghouls. This is the complexity that is Satoru Gojo, he has been dehumanized and put on a pedestal his ow life, but Gojo also enjoys being on that pedestal and won't ever step down from it willingly.

I'm not saying that Arima is a better person than Gojo. I think the fact that Gojo doesn't think of himself as a victim is tragic in its own right, because he lacks the self-awareness to actually grow and change as a person. In the end both Arima and Gojo believe they couldn't be anything better than what they were, and their only release is death which is just insanely sad to me because as long as the future exists people always have a chance to get better no matter who they are. To give up on the future, to see an early death as a good thing simply because you can't endure life any longer is one of the most hopeless things imaginable.

Gojo's not sad because he was born to be a tool exploited for society's benefit, he's sad because he was lonely. He doesn't even realize it's his own darn fault he's lonely, because not only has Shoko said that he's not alone she's always been right there, but this chapter we get a repeat of Gojo's students begging him to let them in and Gojo himself decided to draw that line between himself and others and thinking an enlightened, godlike being like himself can't possibly be understood.

All of this to say I think Gojo is the sole victim here, but he's the middle of a chain of of victimhood. I think ultimately the biggest victim here is Yuta, and yes I will not only play trauma olympics here I'm going to win.

If this chapter goes to show anything it's that Gojo has completely failed in his ideals of protecting the youth from the dehumanizing system of sorcerers that takes children and reduces them to cogs in a machine.

A lot of people criticize Jujutsu Kaisen for dropping basically all of its political elements and themes of reform in the second half after Shibuya, and while I understand the criticism I think Gege intentionally shifted away from politics because Gojo's political revolution was never going to succeed.

From the beginning Gojo's solution to reforming Jujutsu Society and it's habit of taking away the youth of children and raising them up instead as child soldiers is... to make stronger child soldiers.

This is Gojo's blindspot and it has always been Gojo's blindspot.

It's why Gojo is completely okay with someone like Mei Mei who at the best uses her brother as a human shield to get out of curse domains and has stolen his entire childhood away to make him own pet little shoulder, and at worst actively molests him.

It's why Gojo is stated in the databooks to have only taken an interest in Megumi and Yuta because they were strong.

Gojo understands that he's being exploited by Jujutsu Society, but doesn't understand you need to deconstruct unfair systems of power and exploitation in order to build something better. Gojo from the beginning only had one plan, and that was to replace the people at the top with his own allies who'd support his agenda. He just thought waiting for them to die out and the children to grow up was the more peaceful way of doing it.

Gojo's political revolution was doomed from the beginning and that's why we see him go back on his word this chapter and just slaughter everyone at the top. His choice of a new leader for Jujutsu Society is hardly better than the elders, the person who executed Gojo's teacher and tried to get all the children to kill Itadori early on. Good choice.

This is what Gojo said would happen though, if he just wiped everyone out at the top no real systemic change would occur because they'd just be replaced with someone who wasn't that differet. Gojo's just given up on the notion of lasting change out of pragmatism.

Which is why Gojo himself is not that different from the elders in the first place, not because he's a bad person but because he was shaped by that same society and he's the pinnacle of that society.

I think the thing is and this point often gets ignored - a lot of the choices the elders make are because of outdated traditions like choosing to oppress Maki and Toji just because they challenge the traditional notions of cursed energy.

However, some of the decisions they make are out of cold hard pragmatism. Gakuganji actually turned out to be right in his assassiation attempt against Yuji Itadori. If they had succesfully killed Yuji, then the massacre in Shibuya would have been prevented and likely Kenjaku's plans would have been pushed back. The elders didn't sentence Yuta to execution just to be cruel, or just because they're superstitious but because he's already had several incidents of nearly killing people because he can't control Rika.

It's easy to dismiss the Elders as evil because they're just faceless entities, but then we witness in this very same chapter the main characters making the same heartless decisions out of the same sense of pragmatism.

Gojo understands Jujutsu Society is flawed, but doesn't understand exactly why it's wrong. He doesn't raise his students to be independent free thinkers because then they might question him, he raises them to be very powerful because that's more pragmatic.

Here are the next generation of sorcerers who are going to bring about the change to Jujutsu Society that Gojo so desperately seeks.

Nobara Kugisaki: Dead

Hakari Kinji: His greatest ambition is to start a fight club

Yuji: Actively calls himself a mindless cog and just wants to kill whatever society points him at and tells him to kill.

Maki: Mass murderer.

Yuta: Just stole Gojo's body and said he had to become a monster i Gojo's place.

Megumi: Begging to be killed.

Inumaki: Tuna Mayo

Panda: Is a Panda

(Joke lovingly ripped off from @kaibutsushidousha)

I understand that fighting Sukuna takes precedence now, but do you think once the dust settles any of these characters are going to do anything to make lasting change?

Are we going to see anything for them at the end of the road other than a mountain of their fellow sorcerers corpses?

Gojo didn't nurture his students to grow into healthy adults, he raised them into stronger child soldiers and yes that's the pragmatic thing to do to help them survive in the Jujutsu World, but the elders make those decisions out of cold pragmatism as well.

MHA is also showing a story where the children are failing to learn from the previous generatio's mistakes, but it's far less frustrating to watch in JJK because it almost seems like that's the point?

Maki sacrificed Mai for the sake of becoming someone strong enough to reform the Zen'in Clan, only for her sister to die and Maki to slaughter the rest of her family failing in both her goals to reform her clan and protect Mai.

Yuji became the host of Sukuna in order to help others, because the total deaths of people in the world would go down if he ate all the fingers. Not only did that decision lead to the death of thousands in Shibuya, but he's even lost his role of being Sukuna's host to Megumi.

Yuta wanted to find a reason to live and a purpose in protecting his friends, and also wanted to pay back the man who saved him, not only is Yuta choosing to die in a way that breaks his friends heart he's also violating his beloved teacher's bodies.

There's a lot of arcs like this where characters fail in what they set out to accomplish, because like in most tragedies they don't try to grow as people they only care about getting stronger. It's the same choice over ad over again, a decision made of cold pragmatism that brings about their tragic ending.

I think it speaks to why systems like this perpetuate themselves, because it becomes so hard to hold onto your humanity that even trying gets you actively punished all the while people like Mei Mei crawl to the top. However, even if you throw your humanity away purely as an act of survival you're still helping perpetuate that system instead of fighting against it.

Anyway, that's enough hating on Gojo, onto the main event.

THE NEXT GOJO SATORU.

It's almost masterful how perfect the foreshadowing for this chapter's twist was. Yuta sharing a common ancestor in Sugawara with Gojo.

The irony that Kenjaku said out loud that someone like Yuta could never become Gojo, on top of the fact that Yuta's true power comes from detaining his loved ones soul. He's turning Gojo's body into a weapon the same way that he once used Rika's vengeful cursed spirit as one (he even channels her strength into a sword, the same way Maki uses the sword that Mai gave her life to create in battle).

The way that Yuji's first impression of Yuta from his powerful presence and cursed energy alone was calling him someone even creepier than Gojo.

The idea that Kenjaku has been trying to get his hands on the six-eyes for years, which is what led most of the fandom to theorize a possible Kenjaku return by stealing Gojo's corpse. The fact Tengen said the six eyes, himself and the star plasma vessel are all connected and one time Kenjaku killed the six-eyes from a child only for another one to appear right away.

Yuta being told he could never reach Sukuna's heights because he lacks the selfishness of a calamity.

Even Yuta trying to tell a nameless assassin Uro to be less selfish, only to be chastised by her for not understanding because it's impossible for someone as blessed as he is to know what it's like to not have a name, to not have a face, to not be someone important.

Now here Yuta is, not only is he making the selfish decision to use his teacher's body as a tool, he's also most likely in five minutes going to die in someone else's body, having sacrificed not only his name, and face, but also his personal values in order to become a monster.

This arc makes it seem like Yuta's gone against everything he's stood for, making his arc a complete circle from Jujutsu Kaisen Zero and that's kind of the point. Heck, even something as small as Yuta's decision to show mercy to Ishigori was rendered pointless because Sukuna immediately killed him soon after taking Megumi's body.

If Yuta's regressed in his character it's because Gojo's purpose was not to raise these children into healthy adults, but strong soldiers.

What happened to Yuta is a direct consequence of the way Gojo recruits these children, and the underhanded motivations he has behind those recruitments.

Yuta's decision to take Gojo's body is more tragic on Yuta's part then it is on Gojo's, because Yuta is a child, and Gojo is an adult.

It is sad that Gojo is all alone, that he's forced to become a tool to society, but Yuta shouldn't be the one who feels responsible for that. Gojo is supposed to protect Yuta, he's the adult, the teacher, the one with power and Yuta is the child. Yuta is not the one who should be making this speech because it is not Yuta's responsibility to do any of this - but Yuta thinks it is because he owes Gojo.

However, when Gojo recruits people it's with the unspoken implication that they now owe him. He wants them to feel indebted, because then they'll be easier to use as pieces in his intended political revolution. We see this blatantly with the way he recruited Megumi.

I'll make sure you and your sister don't starve but you owe me in the form of labor later on in your life.

Gojo saved Yuta because he thought Rika was powerful and the elders were foolish for executing a potentially powerful sorcerer for THE GREATER GOOD instead of teaching him to control his power out of fear. Gojo recruited Yuji, because someone with Sukuna's power and who could eat his fingers as a vessel had the makings to be an incredibly powerful sorcerer. Gojo didn't even think of Megumi until after Geto defected, and Gojo decided he needed to start making changes to Jujutsu Society.

While Gojo's pragmatism is understandable to a point it also poisons his more nobler intentions. Since Gojo expects payment in return when he sticks his neck out for people, because these children are assets first and children secod.

I think Gojo likes Yuta. I think he gets along with him well. Yuta clearly respects him as a mentor. He did in fact go to great lengths to save Yuta from execution. He was right that it was more ethical to teach Yuta to control his powers rather than execute him for the danger he might represet. He even gives Yuta emotional advice a couple of times.

However, if Yuta was just like a grade 4 sorcerer with no special talent I doubt Gojo would have blinked at his execution. He sees Yuta for his talent first, and his potential to become someone like him. If anythig there are clear comparisons to both Megumi and Yuta. They're both prodigies born with incredible techniques, but Yuta is a lot more receptive to Gojo's grooming than Megumi is who's too traumatized to function. Gojo's not just grooming Yuta into being a powerful sorcerer, but another version of himself.

So it's almost karmic that not only does Yuta basically turn his back on everything that makes Yuta himself (his love for people, his desire to live and be surrounded by others), he also does so by literally becoming Satoru Gojo and transplanting his brain into Gojo's body.

Because Yuta is despite possessing a similiar level of talent as far from Gojo as possible. Gojo is not well liked by his comrades, he's there because he's needed due to his power. Yuta on the other hand has everyone vehemently disagreeing with his backup plan in the event of Gojo's death because they don't want to lose him.

People need Gojo, they want Yuta because of the connections that Yuta has made with them and because they care about Yuta as a person. Gojo is someone who deliberately draws a line between himself and others because he believes the strongest can't be comprehended, Yuta only fights for the sake of being accepted by others because he needs their approval in order to live.

Yuta's now turned his back on those two things, his tendency to put his loved ones first, and his desire to live, both because he feels he owes Gojo.

This comes about because of two factors, number one Gojo helping him with the implication that this help means that Yuta owes him something which makes Yuta desperate to pay him back and therfore easy to mold, and number two Gojo's intentions to begin with to take Yuta and make another Gojo out of him. To make a successor who would carry on the same burdens that Gojo did.

Gojo succeeded one hundred percent in making his successor as opposed to Megumi who turned out to be too different from Gojo i the end. He took what make Yuta unique and ironed out all those wrinkles until he was left with someone willing to make the same inhumane, pragmatic decisions that Gojo was.

I think it's tragic that as much as Gojo wanted to make things better for the next generation, he basically led Yuta down the same road he did, to make the same choice to throw his humanity away along with all of his loved ones. Especially since Yuta started out in such a different place.

Yuta has learned to become selfish like Gojo, because selfishness is apparently now the only way to get by in this world. A cycle that has been started with the elders, and continued on with Gojo, remains unbroken as Yuta becomes just another link in the chain. Yuta's likely going to die in a stranger's body, leaving all of his friends behind to mourn him, but even if he lives what life will that be exactly?

It speaks to the arcs in Jujutsu Kaisen that they're all kind of circles at this point. We have this heartwarming goodbye of Rika telling Yuta to live, and Yuta's whole arc was to learn to try to live without Rika and make new friends, but it's now likely goig to end with Yuta dying a year after Rika finally moved on.

Choso was told to try living on as a human and Yuki even sacrificed her life to give him the opportuity to escape the fight, and he only lived a month longer to die right in front of Yuji's eyes.

Gojo put all of his hope in the next generation, but now not only did he put all the power in Gakuganji's hands but he ended up dying a year after Geto did just like Yuta will likely die a year after Rika.

I think these character arcs are turning out to be circles because the characters aren't actually doing anything to try to break the cycles that they're trapped inside of - they're only trying to get stronger. Which is why they end up resembling the actions of the villains, Yuji becoming more curselike, Yuta stealing Gojo's body the way Kenjaku did with Geto's.

It reminds me of a quote from Critical Role that I absolutely adore.

“I have just taken an audience with the Raven Queen who has snuffed any hope of my redemption, for which I am truly grateful. With new clarity, I can finally see my life as a series of compounding, poor choices.” Vax winces. “There was nothing I could’ve done to save my family, yet I still sold my soul in search of vengeance. Later I allowed Ripley to leave, knowing full well she was a greater threat to the world than the Briarwoods would ever be. I traded the world’s safety for the belief that I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back. And once this lie was shattered I scrambled to find asolution, to make a deal, to undo my mistakes and balance the scales. I nowunderstand that there are no scales, there is no redemption, and no ledger that judges me good or evil. I am free to simply be myself and live with the terrible mistakes I’ve made."

Especially this sentence: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.

Maki is a character that I have not found all that interesting in a while because she committed such a huge mass murder, only for it to have no consequences in the narrative and never be mentioned again, but this chapter she suddenly became an interesting character again.

Maki who lost everything but gained strength, doesn't seem all that bothered by the loss. People compare Megumi's reaction to losing Tsumiki to Maki's reaction to losing Mai, but Megumi's reaction is much more interesting because it's always better to see a character be weak and fall apart then to be strong and power through things.

However, maybe the reason Maki hasn't experienced any grief at all towards Mai and has instead delighted in her newfound strength and independence is because of this, because she still had Yuta.

Maki is a character who's not really said anything other than exposition the past like twenty chapters, but now she's the most vocally against Yuta sacrificing himself for the greater good. Yet this is against Maki's own ideology of doing everything you can to be stronger, to win. Maki was always about individualism, not about friendship or the bonds between others, she severed her own bonds to be free. Yet, she can't stand to see Yuta do the same thing as her, to become more like her.

This might be the consequence of Maki's continued choice to value freedom and the power to achieve that freedom over all else. Now, the one time Yuta is trying to throw away the same things that she threw away she can't say anything meaningful or convince him to stop him.

Which reminds painfully of this chapter as well.

Mai killing herself in order to free Maki from cursed energy is an obvious parallel to Sukuna devouring his own twin in the womb, but the difference is in this situation Maki didn't want Mai to go, she begged her not to. However, just like with Yuta there was nothing Maki could ahve said or done by that point to convince Mai to stay. Maki has always chosen power over her sister, she's always abandoned Mai, so what exactly can she say to convince her that she cares more about Mai more? That her dream of defeating the Zen'in and having revenge against them isn't worth the price if it comes at the sacrifice of Mai?

Maki didn't want to abandon Mai, or for Mai to sacrifice herself, but tragically her every action indicated otherwise. It all comes down to this: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.

Maki seems to have achieved peace by murdering the Zen'in, but we see the same kind of circular arc that we have for Yuta.

Maki gave up on everything for strength, but Maki's not strong enough to finish Sukuna then and there, forcing Yuta to sacrifice himself the same way Mai did.

Maki can't talk Yuta out of making that sacrifice, or come up with any convincing argument with why he shouldn't because of all the choices she's made before this.

Maki chose to murder her way to peace, but it came at the cost of her humanity and growth and thus she's faced again with the exact same situation with Mai and she's forced to watch her heart be taken from her again.

It goes to show that we think these characters are getting stronger but they're actually sacrificing something vitally important.

These characters are just going to keep going around in circles and you have to wonder just when is it going to stop?

[jellybellyblimp]

I don’t know what’s not clicking with people that this all from LOUIS’ perspective, and therefore all colored by his perception of events. Like I know he explains to Daniel that “this is the more nuanced portrait” of Lestat, but it still is very clearly biased by Louis’ own emotions. This is far from an accurate portrayal of events “it’s an admitted performance” and there are several very clear examples of Louis misinterpreting Lestat’s actions.

The most clear example to me is the opera scene, where Louis is forced to act as Lestat’s valet in public. Louis interprets that moment STILL IN 2022 as manipulation. He sees Lestat expressing his loneliness and desire to be with Louis forever as Lestat preying upon Louis’ emotional weakness at being forced to act below his partner. BUT Sam Reid’s acting in that scene makes in clear that was exactly the opposite of what was happening. Lestat was attempting to comfort Louis. He was attempting to express that he saw them as equal, he was sorry that was happening, he loved him, and they had forever to not always be trapped by these racist social conventions. He wasn’t manipulating Louis, he was expressing his own feelings in an attempt at comfort, but Louis’ own tumultuous emotional states causes him to view that moment as uncharitably as possible. And it’s interesting and sad that even 50 years after the original interview, and having clearly reevaluated much of their initial relationship to try to see Lestat’s perspective of it, he still views moments like that as manipulative.

This isn’t a defense of Lestat necessarily, but this show has gone to great lengths to express, what always should have been obvious, THAT THIS IS NOT AN ACCURATE RETELLING OF EVENTS. This is Louis’ version of the story and we have no way of knowing Lestat’s version of events.

And I think people need to carry this with them as they continue on with the story. Because as much as we joke about Lestat “Baby trapping” Louis, when I initially read the book it was my view that that had never been Lestat’s true motive. Lestat hadn’t turned Claudia to trap Louis or even to have a child, it was because he knew Louis would never be able to live with himself if Claudia had died. Lestat would only lose Louis even more than he had already. It was his version of making the best out of a bad situation. It was still selfish and fucked, but Louis was just as complicit in her fate as Lestat was. It’s only Louis’ recollection that colors Lestat as more villainous. And I know people are going to disagree here, but seriously I am begging you to remember that all of the original Interview with the Vampire Novel is the uncharitable, bitter recollections of LOUIS. And that the more we see of Lestat in the rest of the books, the more obvious it becomes that IWTV was inaccurate portrait.

We already know the Claudia story has been altered. And I know speculation is predicting that Lestat will become violent, and that will prompt Claudia and Louis “killing” him and fleeing to Europe. I’m not personally fond of that if that’s what will happen, but I’m willing to suspend judgment because I was skeptical of some of the other changes and so far have been in love with every one of them. I think aging up Claudia changes her story, but also opens up a lot of new avenues of exploration. And frankly given how well they’ve handled the changes so far, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

So barring it being clear cut domestic abuse. I think we all need to remember that this is Louis’ perspective, and in the novels Claudia was canonically manipulative, (admittedly I feel understandably). Claudia intentionally worsened the wedge between Louis and Lestat. It’s absolutely possible Louis is interpreting any given moment as uncharitably as possible and his perspective of Lestat’s motivations have been skewed.