#Are you listening? Yes.. I am..

[thebekashow]

The rebellion part 2

Tw: gunshot wound and verbal abuse

And so it begins.

[lazylittledragon]

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024

[shalpilot]

sparkle on

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy Valentine's Day! (and this blog's first post anniversary!)

[muffinlance]

EMERGENCY FANFIC PROTOCOLS: ACTIVATED

Hey while AO3 is down

Here is a GDrive link to all my downloaded fics (it's OVER 9,000 2,000)

Mostly Avatar, also The Magnus Archives, Danny Phantom, Teen Wolf, and a few others

Mostly unsorted, some not even intentionally downloaded because the auto-downloader I use is Like That, so consider this a glorified "give me a random fic" button

MAKE SURE TO KUDOS THE AUTHORS WHEN AO3 IS BACK UP

>>> Linkie link <<<

Edit: Note that when AO3 comes back up that link will go dead again... until it's needed, once more

EMERGENCY FANFIC PROTOCOLS: DEACTIVATED

...Until next they are needed

If you were going through these for fic recs, check out my AO3 Bookmarks for the more curated list.

To make your own fanfic backups, I recommend AO3 Downloader or FanFicFare. (I'm not tech support for either; please don't message me for help.)

Happy reading!

[wispforever]

original quote under the cut

[knife-filled-plushies]

i love these two so i decided to doodle them hsjfhskfj

tiny bit of style experimentation

[bbreaddog]

Practising Goncharov Theme by @caramiaaddio on violin bc I thought it would add an extra layer of haunting…ness (is that a word?)

Here’s the excerpt I’m playing in the video:

Despite it being in a fuck off key for violin it is a really beautiful piece and it’s absolutely worth the trouble of practising in second position (world’s most hated position) and I’m HOPING 🤞 I can record and (maybe) post a full cover of it someday

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

;3

[lyfrassiredda]

I, too, have had a vision of a vast and fiery orb floating in an endless void—

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I feel like nobody loves "Don't You" but I do with all my heart and she is mine

[toasteaa]

Sometimes I forget that Neuvillette uses a cane and then I go a little insane thinking about the way it would sound against the tiles in the Palais, the way he uses it (rarely, unless the situation truly calls for it) as a replacement for a gavel in court - something about it openly being a symbol of his authority when it's in use. Makes a little tingle go down my spine.

Accidentally pavloving yourself into having extremely indecent thoughts of what it might be like for him to be as firm and authoritative with you as he is in court whenever you see his cane between his gloved hands? Avoiding his questioning (and just a tad soft - his concern is always so subtly sweet) gaze and only getting more embarrassed when he clicks his cane lightly to get your attention? Oh...he's no idea what that does to you, does he?

[deyageka]

Pietro taking Luna out for ice cream because my boy deserves to be happy ok

Also I just finished the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (2024) mini run and I just gotta say….

[kedreeva]

Eddie Munson's message as a character should never have been that he needed to stop running and fight to be a hero. It should have been that heroism can look a lot of different ways. It should have been you don't have to be a hero to have worth.

[stardust-falling]

Having more thoughts about Shen Jiu because of course I am.

I don’t think he has the capacity for empathy or genuine selflessness.

He spent the entirety of his formative years deep in survival mode, and because of that, he evaluates people solely based off of how they might threaten or ensure his safety and/or comfort. As far as individual people themselves with their own perspectives… honestly I don’t think he even thinks of that.

Maybe a controversial opinion, but I don’t think even YQY is exempt.

Shen Jiu doesn’t have a moral code. When every day is spent on surviving, a moral code is a luxury.

And really, he just never got out of that mode. See, the thing is, once you’ve had enough adverse experiences it only takes a little bit to trigger you back into that mindset. Shen Jiu was used to being scolded and then beaten or abused, so for him, even a simple chiding is a precursor to abuse— even if he DOES recognize that nothing more will happen, his body and mental patterns will still go into that preparation time.

So of course he never left survival mode, because even if nothing is actively happening, your mind will keep reinforcing those patterns.

For someone with a normal upbringing, as far as I can tell, empathy is something you learn and develop from those around you. Many seem to think it’s something innate and natural and if you don’t have it then there’s something wrong with you from birth. I think Shen Jiu falls into exactly this category of thought— and so he doesn’t even consider that he could try to learn and develop it as a skill he can perform, even if it doesn’t come naturally.

Of course, would he even try? He hasn’t been given any incentive. Any time he has tried to do something good, he ends up getting hurt (saving Yue Qi leading to being taken by QJL) or misinterpreted and admonished (the well ghost incident, keep in mind my earlier point about scoldings perpetuating the same patterns).

So he stays in that same vicious cycle, perpetually in survival mode and unable to escape, even in a relatively secure position (see: his paranoia).

Now, this is all relevant to the discussions of SJ’s feminism, misogyny, and/or lack thereof. I feel like a lot of discussions aren’t really getting the full picture.

SJ sees people, no matter who they are, as solely how they can affect him. Just because this isn’t exclusive to women, or because if comes from a reasonable place, does that really mean it doesn’t play into misogyny?

Let’s take another angle.

I think his abuse of LBH and other talented disciples also is rooted, deep down, in this same issue. He’s not just hurting LBH only to hurt him, his aim is specifically to stunt his cultivation. There’s jealousy at play there of course, but there’s a bit more layers to it too— SJ doesn’t think he’s capable of goodness. So reasonably, he’ll be a bad teacher. He already knows what happens when someone becomes more powerful than their oppressor. LBH may be a child now, but a part of SJ whether he acknowledges it or not sees him as a future threat that needs to be treated as such.

It’s rooted in fear— because everything is with SJ.

So does that mean it’s not actually abuse?

No. The behaviors he shows are still abusive, the reasoning just gives a lens for understanding.

Now, with his views on women— I mentioned in the tags of my original post that I don’t think he views women as people. This is based in that earlier idea of how he interprets others based off their risk and benefit to him. For women specifically, though, there’s another layer.

Shen Jiu grew up in a society where women are inherently lesser— and he grew up in an extreme version of this. He saw women being treated as property firsthand(both as slaves, as well as QJL’s views on his sister). Your worldview is shaped by the world that you view during those early years. Whether he agreed or not, SJ would still take on the patterns of his environment. This, though, is just the same as general societal misogyny and ingrained bias. I don’t think he’s any different than anyone else in this way.

But where SJ’s particular flavor comes in is that to him, women are a source of comfort. For various reasons— positive past experiences, less threatening (or at least don’t carry the dangers men do). He craves comfort— needs it really, because he doesn’t get it and his cortisol levels are always so high they’re poisoning his body. Women are the best source of that comfort for him.

It’s not that he likes them— at least, not any more than someone would like drinking water, or a coat in the winter. They’re fulfilling a survival need for him.

That is what the objectification is where SJ is concerned.

So… is it misogyny?

I’d say yes, in a way it still is. It’s not violent, and it doesn’t come from some inherent sense of “superiority as a man” but at the core of it all, he’s still not viewing women as people, and he has no interest in changing the status quo, because it benefits him to be able to go purchase comfort at a pleasure house, even if it’s not what people usually do there. The picture is bigger than just misogyny, but the traits taken as themselves are misogynistic nonetheless.

I could go into his specific relationships with women and how that informs his character, but this post is already long enough. We know that he mentally divides people by sex, and that distinction has a lot of weight in his judgment of them. Even if it comes from a place of trauma, even if it comes from a general worldview that applies to everyone, he still views women as a commodity— so on some level, and from an outside perspective, he is misogynistic.

In the end, though, it still all comes from him being stuck in survival mode. His lack of empathy, his viewing others as risks and benefits— these things themselves aren’t moral failings— it’s just a consequence of his environment. He’s a bad person because he won’t confront this, develop a moral code, and act on it, not because he doesn’t experience empathy.

But in his circumstance, there’s not really a chance for him to choose to be good. Because he’s still trying to survive, and goodness is a luxury he doesn’t realize he can afford now.

He’s scum, but pitiful, you know?

[ganondoodle]

apparently one of main guys directing the god damn zelda movie "aims for it to be a live-action miyazaki"

and i just-

you idiot, you fool, you absolut buffoon

first of all, there is a REASON why all his films are ANIMATED, animation can do things live action will never be able to no matter how much shitty CGI effects you pump into it

secondly, given how any possible ghibli influence in totk is so clearly purely a superficial attempt of copying aesthetics and NOTHING more is making me more convinced that movie will be shit

miyazakis works have been reduced to whimsical childrens fantasy with a specific kind of aesthetic in the mindset of many and i HATE it, its so much more than that and seeing how much totk has been compared to it, again, purely bc of some aesthetics reminiscent of his movies is still driving me nuts

the zelda series, especially the most recent entry, is very clearly lacking in everything that miyazaki excels at and i am not confident that anyone in higher positions whos working on that darn movie understands any of it and will just go for the usual copying of surface level aesthetics tm