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[hopey-thinks]

Listening to Mama’s Gun and Baduizm to calm down from reading Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns for my AP lit class.

This might be the most heart wrenching story I’ve ever read, and the storytelling is all around phenomenal. I might make a meta on it sometime soon just because there’s so much to unpack, but if you plan on reading it be prepared for LOTS of heavy topics.

What books have you guys been reading recently? I’d love to know and maybe get or give some recs!

[hopey-thinks]

Bruh

Lemme get this straight- you guys are going out of your way to create new tags for specific things you KNOW make many people uncomfortable to bypass the filters that said people put on the original tags so that they didn’t have to see content that disturbed them? Just so that your content gets more reach? Some people are just asking to get blocked at this point 😭.

You can post whatever you want, but for the love of fuck don’t go trying to get past filters that people put in place to protect their mental health and curate their internet experience.

[hopey-thinks]

They could never make me hate you Reno 😌 (a little rant)

I saw something online today when looking for fan art of one of my favorite ff7 characters, Reno, that high key gave me the worst intrusive thoughts I’ve had in a long time. OCD is a real bitch. But I’m managing despite that and just have a little message for all my other peeps who deal with OCD: you are not your thoughts, and it’s okay to take breaks from things that are overwhelming you.

Mindfulness is so important considering how our brains work, and we can’t allow ourselves to spend all our time mind wandering and fixating on the past (the default mode network being the reason for this). The greater good in action website has some mindfulness activities that have helped me personally, so I’d recommend giving them a shot if they sound to your liking :).

Have a good day or night whoever is reading this.

[hopey-thinks]

Your MXTX metas are the only thing keeping me sane while I’m bedridden with COVID, lol. Anyways back to the question. What do you think Wei Wuxian’s most prominent character flaws are? While I personally believe he’s a good person, I often feel like people try too hard to portray him as almost perfect and in the right in every situation he’s in, when he doesn’t by any means have to be and in fact shouldn’t be for the themes of the story to make sense.

OMG I hope you feel better soon!! I've had Covid and it suuuucks.

I think his most prominent flaw is essentially that he doesn't think he matters. Which is ironic because on the surface, it comes across as "isn't that a good thing, to focus on others?" Or as "but it only hurts himself!"

Not true, though. MDZS takes a really nuanced look at the individual and society, and while it warns against groupthink and encourages people to make up their own minds, it also warns against cutting yourself off from human ties and relationships. WWX does exactly this.

In thinking he doesn't matter, he can push people too far without realizing what he's doing because it's just him, he doesn't matter, so whatever he does won't actually affect them. And in thinking he doesn't matter, he sacrifices himself again and again and again without realizing that this is hurting the people who love him, like Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli.

Wei Wuxian's other flaw is pride--that he thinks he can control things that he ultimately can't, because he's just a human being. Human beings have impact and make a difference, but they can't control outcomes. Clearly, this is what led to Jin Zixuan's death.

I often feel like people try too hard to portray him as almost perfect and in the right in every situation he’s in, when he doesn’t by any means have to be and in fact shouldn’t be for the themes of the story to make sense.

Yeah, I feel like this is the case a lot in the fandom, and The Untamed's censored adaptation also meant that they had to scrub away a lot of his flaws. The donghua even more so. So, people are inclined to lead with that framing, when in reality the entire story is founded on the idea that no one is entirely right all the time, or entirely wrong all the time either.

[hopey-thinks]

Knives and ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) (spoilers in post)

To preface this, I’d like to say I am not trying to demonize people who have antisocial personality disorder (sometimes also referred to as sociopathy). I am not saying that people with ASPD would do the things Knives does or are automatically bad people, nor am I saying that Knives is possibly a sociopath only because of the atrocities he commits. I am simply trying to get a better understanding of Knives’s psychology as a character.

With that out of the way, I’ve been learning a lot about personality disorders in my psychology class, and I’ve done quite a significant amount of research in and outside of class about personality disorders (including reading about it them in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders fifth edition text revision).

This comes to my current predicament. My teacher wanted us to think of examples in media of characters that exhibit certain personality disorders. I was particularly fascinated with the nature of ASPD, so I zeroed in my research on that disorder in particular. The first characters that came to mind for me were The Joker and Ren Yamai from Komi Can’t Communicate, but in my trigun brainrot I realized that Knives would actually be a very interesting character to consider.

While he meets most of the diagnostic criteria according to the DSM-5-TR, there are some things that are making me wonder if he actually has antisocial personality disorder. Mainly his motives.

I’ve seen a lot of discourse about his motivations. And the two most common interpretations I’ve seen are the following:

he genuinely believes that he��s helping the plants and doing what he’s doing selflessly for them and the benefit of them. He also genuinely cares about Vash and the Plants and is doing what he’s doing for “the greater good.” He is only hurting humans because they are destructive towards plants, and only hates them because they are cruel. If this is the case, he likely isn’t someone with antisocial personality disorder because his entire philosophy is based off of pro social, albeit extremely immoral and flawed motivations and ideas since he doesn’t consider humans a part of his social group.

Knives has convinced himself that he is fighting for the greater good of the plants to rationalize his cognitive dissonance, but that’s not what he’s actually trying to do deep down. His true motivation (which he is not something he is consciously aware of) is simply because he wants to hurt and kill humans out of his own fear of them and because of their inferiority. Essentially, he’s actually doing it all for himself and to quell his own fears and not because he actually cares about the safety or autonomy of other plants. In this case, he would be more likely to have antisocial personality disorder because his true motives aren’t in service of anyone else’s rights or benefits, and he exhibits antisocial behaviors towards the beings he does consider a part of his social group (plants). He also doesn’t actually care about Vash as his family, but only as a means to achieve his goals and be part of his plan.

There’s a lot more nuance to it than that of course, but in my personal interpretation I’d say Knives seems to align more with the second description. Here’s why: He consistently shows disregard for the autonomy, rights, and wants of other plants, especially Vash, and will exploit them just as awfully as the humans he hates have if it means achieving what he wants for his vision. This creates cognitive dissonance because he simaltaneously believes he’s a good person who is improving the world by doing that, but the humans who do that are bad and destroying the world by doing the exact same thing. So he rationalizes it by thinking he’s different because “it’s for the greater good of all plants and those who oppose me are preventing that” which then created more cognitive dissonance because he can’t exploit and abuse the plants without a second thought while also fighting for their rights and caring for them. The rights and safety of other plants don’t matter to him if they conflict with what he wants to do. Which would make the true motivation in this case, wanting to hurt humans out of his own fear and hatred (which developed because of his trauma), make sense.

When you think about Knives’s actions, you come to find that he cares more about hurting and destroying humanity than helping plants. He is fine with hurting the plants to hurt humanity, rather than hurting humanity simply for the good of the plants. He prioritizes “cleansing” the world of humanity over the actual lives of plants.

Here’s why I made this post. I think Knives is a very complex and fascinating character, and would like to hear other people’s perspectives and interpretations of him, especially in relation to his psychology and possible disorders he may have. So if you’d like to join me in psychoanalyzing him, I would appreciate hearing your opinion in a respectful discussion under this post. I’m especially curious about what any psychologists here might think, and I hope I can learn something new and also be corrected and get a better understanding if I’m wrong.

Ik this seems really strange that I’m writing and thinking so much about the psychology of someone who isn’t even real, but I just really like character analysis and think it’s interesting to see psychological concepts in media.