#and it does us a major disservice

[writingpuddle]

Your hashtags make it seem like you’re very passionate about your recent reblog about one story having a trope being fine versus the entire trope being bad.. I’d like to hear more about your opinion behind it if you wouldn’t mind sharing!

thanks anon! i suppose all my exclamation points were a bit of a give away. i should clarify perhaps that what i am passionate is less that specific topic than the general notion of statistics.

(this got real long and a bit meandering, but i will not apologize, because i think its fascinating)

we as humans are...really bad at statistics. honestly, thats being kind. we are terrible at understanding statistics. you see a weather forecast which says 20% chance of rain, and while you know, logically, that means there is some chance of rain, your brain basically reinterprets this to: It Will Not Rain. 20% is the same as zero percent. if it rains, then the probability was actually 100%, and the forecast was wrong. but actually, it was 20%, and some random winds blew just right and your campfire got drizzled on.

statistical literacy is wildly important for understanding large societal trends and also wildly undertaught. (i am particularly salty that a few years after i graduated my province removed statistics from the high school math curriculum. i love math, i really do, but while i think theres value in people knowing about calculus and the ways we can use it, most people wont have to actually use it themselves. everyone can benefit from understanding how to read statistics better. in our current society, its almost a critical survival skill)

(i also want to add a caveat which is that while i love statistics, statistics are also incredibly easy to lie with. no, seriously. this is part of the statistical literacy i am talking about. if you like reading academic articles, i recommend this one, which discusses how if you analyze the data differently, you can often get large variations in results. if the pdf is not free for download, the unpaywall extension will grab it for you)

(relatedly, this is why i am of the opinion that you should be careful of any statistic that is presented in only one way. This Medication Doubles Your Risk of Blood Clot! (the risk went from 1 in ten million to 2 in ten million))

so, statistics are important. statistics reveal a lot about society. but we dont experience life as statistics, we experience life as a series of events (or anecdotes). large numbers are not something that we actually evolved to understand very well. we process the world through stories and examples, and we have to learn to think carefully about numbers.

(even watch: i am about to use an anecdote to centre this discussion. i use it to place my point somewhere, because thinking about it in abstract is difficult to do without practice. but it is also falling prey to exactly the fallacy that i am talking about)

i was discussing last summer an incident in which a Black athlete tested positive for marijuana and was given a temporary suspension. she claimed this was a racist ban, and a bunch of discourse ensued. (please note: i am not interested in discussing the validity of her specific claim, which is why im not linking to a specific incident. this could apply to any number of similar examples, and others have likely done more in depth analyses of the particular event. i am using it as a rhetorical device to discuss bias and how it manifests, and am not interested in debating about this one incident. pretend it is a fictional example, if you wish.)

with all those caveats out of the way, here is why this is a difficult claim to make: in isolation, there is very little substance to it. there was a rule, which a person broke, and they received the standard consequence for it. its hard to argue bias when the narrative is so linear. especially if we assume the situation has no deeper narrative (as we know, often stories like this contain more blatant bigotry, while only the softest version makes the headline.) there is little to support the idea that this was a racist decision. moderates might see this and, without more context, think that its a lot of fuss kicked up about nothing. because on its own, it is.

what makes this a racist incident isnt (necessarily) that it was a specific Black athlete that was hit with the suspension. its that there is a trend wherein Black athletes are more likely to be tested, and more likely to be punished rather than dealt a warning.

which returns me to my point, which is the statistics. literally nobody involved in this specific suspension had to be individually racist, or have racist motivations. hell, this individual suspension could be totally ideologically squeaky clean of racism. but on average, in the system, certain people are being hit harder than others, and that indicates racism in the system. but its hard to tease out that racism because every individual instance of it seems kinda wishy-washy. the trend is only obvious in aggregate, and we are, as ive said, very bad at understanding the abstract statistic, especially when we can look at an individual event and label it (we think) clearly.

we focus on the individual rather than the aggregate, which is a natural, and very human response. rather than address the racism in the system, the discussion becomes primarily about whether the people enforcing the ban are racist individuals.

(i emphasize primarily because this is still a good question to ask; you want to make sure there arent any explicit racists in the system! but it should not be the only question you ask, because there are systemic factors that could produce this bias without a single outright racist person involved)

a lot of systemic bias works under this kind of...plausible deniability schema. this athlete broke a known rule and faced consequences. how is that racism? that femme gay man keeps getting rejected from jobs, but there are lots of other qualified candidates, and its not like resumes can really be objectively classified as 'better' or 'worse.' some people will rank resumes differently. maybe the other candidates were just more qualified!

but when there is an average of femme gay men having trouble breaking into a profession, or of trans women struggling to find housing, or or or or...then it reveals something about the structure of the society that is happening in. the individual incident may or or may not be a manifestation of bias, but the totality is. it is even possible the hiring manager who has rejected all these applications is, themself, unaware that they are subconsciously judging these men as being less qualified based on their voice and bearing.

ie. it is possible to perpetuate bias without any conscious malice. and it is very frustrating to our brains, which like stories, when we cant find a clear villain and hero. when its just an evil hiring manager, the situation is comprehensible. when its a bunch of neutral parties that all have the same cultural framework influencing their decisions subtly in a negative direction, its harder to process. and also a lot harder to fix. being able to point to an Evil Hiring Manager is nice because we can boot that person, and the problem is fixed. it feels good to be able to fix a problem, and systemic factors are way harder to actually address.

which is also why its sometimes very hard to criticize things like media trends (yeah, we're looping back to that original post now, im getting there) because we are so much better at processing individual stories than statistics. the problem is often not a specific narrative--ie. a gay character dying in a story--but an overarching trend--ie. all gay characters in stories die. pick one single story out of this trend, and you learn nothing. it may be that in isolation, this story is moving and beautiful, that the death was narratively necessary, that it spoke to a lot of people. individually, the story could be a net good. and so when the trend is criticized, those who enjoyed the individual story, rather than have a more nuanced discussion about what the trend reveals about how our society treats queer people, and how we subconsciously think about queer narratives, people jump to defend the one story in isolation. the point of criticizing a trend is not (or should not be, or generally should not be) to say: This Story Can Never Be Told. it should be to ask: why is this the only story being told?

the question when looking at a trend, or a statistic, should be: what does this imply about what is going on under the surface. and well meaning people who are anti-bigotry can fall prey to whats under the surface. hell, people who are members of the groups in question can fall prey to whats under the surface. i'll give a fandom example (since i do fandom shit on this blog).

now most people who are in fandom would probably agree that trying to label one member of a queer couple the 'man' and one member the 'woman' is stupid. theyre both the same gender! thats the point!

but when you think of your favourite blorbos...you know, right? even if you vehemently disagree, even if you think that way of looking at relationships is stupid...you know. you know which one is on average treated within the fandom as taking each role. even by people who are vocal allies, or who are queer themselves. maybe your instinct is to push this knowledge away from you, to claim you only know it because other people are biased, but you do know it. you are aware of the general trend. we cant help it. we are part of this society, so we know about it, even if we dislike it. and even if we dislike it, we can still accidentally absorb it.

heres a metric i find interesting: when constructing an au of a queer couple based on a het story, which member of the queer couple gets the womans role, and which gets the mans?

even the most progressive het stories still, on some level, have absorbed the cultural context we live in. most stories, not being the Most progressive, will be saturated with many, many small gender stereotypes. it will influence what careers the characters have, what type of choices they make in the narrative, how they interact with the other characters, etc. its not always blatant, but its often an undercurrent (and sometimes it really is blatant).

one would expect, then, that with a queer couple, sometimes it will make sense to mold the het story one way, sometimes the other. but if i look at my own fics that are based on het couples...both of them i have the same character taking the mans role and the other the womans. and i know that falls in line with who fandom as an average treats as the 'woman' in the relationship and the 'man'.

now, two fics does not a significant dataset make, but i also have no evidence that had i not started to think about this trend, i would not have continued to accidentally follow it. and i would wager if you did a survey of all fics in a fandom, you would not find a vaguely 50/50 split, with half the time one character getting one role and half the other, but some kind of skew in the expected direction.

what does this mean? i would hope, in reading either of the fics ive just referenced, few people would walk out saying 'that was homophobic.' the stories themselves are almost irrelevant to the discussion. but it does serve as a probe. somewhere, in the bottom of my mind, whether i want it there or not, gender and sexuality stereotypes are still fermenting quietly. growing like long-lived weeds in places they were planted when i was so small i dont even remember it. tiny seeds planted daily by subtle interactions with the world. being aware of this makes me a little more able to prune back some of these weeds. to interrogate my own beliefs and counter them. and it came not out of a specific homophobic statement or act that i made, but a statistical trend that would be too subtle to notice in isolation. if i look at each story on its own, i can offer very good explanations for why i made the choices i did. but somehow i still managed to blindly find my way into a stereotypical cave.

i use myself as an example because i dont want to point fingers and say: These People are being bad. its not a valuable way to approach narrative analysis. if you are looking at broad media trends, the goal is to understand what societal beliefs and motivations might lead to that trend, even if that wasnt the specific motivation of an individual creator who happens to fall under the trend. every single creator may, individually, have a very good reason for the choices they made. but the fact that we all made the same choice tells us something. and maybe what it tells us is its time to explore some alternative choices.

no individual story needs to be at fault. but it is very hard to separate the statistics from the individual, because our brains are literally programmed to focus on the personal. a story does not have to be bad to be part of a trend. pieces of a trend can be good even if the trend itself is bad.

which is a very long winded way of saying that bias is statistical, and people are bad at statistics. when apes started to walk around and start talking, there was no evolutionary pressure into understanding exactly what a percentage means. it takes conscious effort to not take statistics personally. your favourite story doesnt need to be monstrous to spend time thinking about why a popular trope it happens to contain might be rooted in something you dont believe in.

i will leave you with one final bit of wisdom when it comes to statistics: be skeptical of any statement containing absolutes.

yes, even this one

[greekromann]

ultimately i do actually enjoy the ghibli films i watch theyre well animated and always have an interesting way of conveying the message theyre trying to convey i just cant stand the fandomification of the films so much that i outright refuse to watch some films on principle

[shummthechumm]

part of me wants to say that MV couldve really benefitted from being longer, but then i immediately remember that this is wc we are talking about and no matter what; they will find a way to deny just how dangerous a way of life following the code can be for those who don’t fit within it’s rules. 

all of warriors does this and it only confuses the narrative more. im not surprised that there is so much discourse surrounding the story and it’s characters, man. and on top of that the series is targeted towards kids in elementary school so. 

[justinefrischmanngf]

it’s not that it makes me sad per se but i really could’ve been dating someone i did actually kind of really want to date since JULY. and now the moment is literally so far gone and i didn’t realise until the moment was so far gone !!!

[lackadaisycal-art]

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

[sscarletvenus]

yes suguru's plans to exterminate a vast majority of humanity is undeniably evil, but to say that he is murderous from the very start, cruel for the sake of being so, or lacks compassion or any emotional nuance is a gross disservice to his character's writing.

suguru is a case study of a romantic idealist and self-sacrificial saviour whose absurdly rigid, quixotic ideals are shattered brutally by reality intervening. the intense hatred he has for humanity is born out of, is an inverse of, the intense love he once possessesed for it. this is also why even though satoru is portrayed as brash and selfish and arrogant in the hidden inventory arc, it is suguru that turns "villainous."

suguru places his faith in the goodness of humanity, believes the duty of shamans is to protect the weak, their existence solely hinged upon saving the lives of non-sorcerers, and for that he is disappointed so tremendously, betrayed to an extent that makes it impossible for him to recover his ideals and past self.

ultimately there are also more than one reasons why satoru doesn't become "evil" : 1) "protecting humanity" was never his cause to begin with. he hardly cared about preserving human life, as is evident in his intentions to kill the cultists who cheered on riko's death, and 2) he had someone shielding his inner self : suguru. for it is suguru that tells him the duty of shamans is to protect non-shamans and the weak, suguru who asks him to sympathise with riko, suguru who persuades him to not kill meaninglessly.

satoru is indeed attached to riko, as well. he is the one who decides not to hand riko over to tengen if she wishes to return home, and tries to enliven her last days as a lucid person. it would thus not surpass one’s expectations if satoru turned to villainy post riko's demise, since he never even liked non-shamans to begin with. and yet, he doesn't. suguru protects his heart, which is a part of why he is able to steadily process his grief and anguish over riko's death.

suguru doesn't have anyone to do that for him, he is strong in his own right but not the "strongest", nobody notices how deep of an abyss his soul has sunken in, and he succumbs to the lethal loneliness, falters in this marathon of sorcery.

suguru is brimming with love and compassion: it is what drives his heroism in youth and villainy as a cult leader. he is able to protect gojo's heart but not his own. he fluctuates between two polar extremes : utter distaste of humanity Vs. a duty to protect it despite its horrors. three things serve as final nails to the metaphorical coffin : yuki's words, haibara's death, miminana's abuse. he describes imbibing curses for curse manipulation is "like eating a rag used to clean vomit". how macabre, how grotesque, how enlightening - who is he doing all this for? the humans who killed riko? it was these humans haibara died serving, these same humans violently mistreated miminana.

toji and sonoda encapsulate evil very blatantly, and aren't enough to shake suguru's belief in humanity. but the turning point is the non-shaman cultists rejoicing : suguru is thus forced to confront the banality of evil.

and suguru responds by rejecting what he once loved, embraces the darkness plaguing him. believes the only way to eradicate curses is to uproot their source : humanity. humans, for as long as they will live, will give rise to curses born out of their negative emotions. there is no one to tell him any better, or protect his self-identity. he loses himself to his own sense of empathy, his own ideals.

he isn't indifferent at all, cannot pick and choose whom he loves and doesn't. his love and hatred is collective, in both he gives his all. even amidst his hatred, he doesn't lose his love.

who does he choose to target first, once amassing enough money, power, and reputation? sonoda, the man who ordered riko's assassination. someone who lies in wait to enact vengeance does it out of love. if he was nothing more than a corrupt tyrant, he wouldn't remember the circumstances of riko's demise or care enough about them. suguru's rise as a hero and his subsequent fall as a villain has always been about love. and it seems, to me, up until his death, he prioritizes satoru over himself. doesn't see satoru as a weapon at all, or he would have directly asked satoru to join his cause. instead he poses to satoru a question, presents him with a choice - which in turn makes satoru shaken enough to question his identity, his place in the system, becoming a teacher and dedicating his all to a fitting reformist centrism from an isolated and dare i say, individualistic person such as himself, who stands on the pinnacle of power. but he wouldn't have come to such a conclusion without suguru's experiences shaping his worldview (he himself apologizes to riko during his fight with toji because rather than feeling depressed over her death, he feels the pure pleasure of the world in that moment. killing toji endows him with a sense of duty towards megumi, and riko's death but obviously impacts him, but the change from full apathy, to neutral indifference except in the case of his students, was losing suguru.)

as evil as suguru becomes, he is not a hypocrite. that he kills his own parents is to show the seriousness and conviction he has in his ideals. his code of operation is consistent, even when it turns from pro-human to pro-shaman.

reminds you of what mahito tells yuuji: does yuuji ever consider how many curses he kills? so why should mahito account for how many humans he kills? suguru geto presents us with a possible answer : someone has to care about how many shamans are killed.

you can condemn him for his use of collective punishment, but suguru is a villain!

you can criticize his killing of innocents, but jjk conveys the carefully crafted narrative of a villain who once held staunch traditional and moral ideals.

suguru is evil for proposing collective punishment, but it is incredibly consistent with how emotional he is. he is empathetic because he cares about a girl like riko, doomed by the actions of the rest of the world, forgotten in her misery. he cares and it drives him to the deepest pits of despair, where life loses all color and meaning, despite only knowing her for so long and haibara as well, he enshrines haibara in his memory, when no one other than nanami does. hardly anyone remembers riko's existence, haibara's laughing face, but he does! and for that he spends each moment sinking in the quagmire of his grief and torment. his empathy is a sword of damocles hanging over his neck! to say that he is cruel and unfeeling is to contradict the very agony that drives his (wrongful?) actions. and he is indeed wrong for externalizing this indelible pain, wanting to inflict it upon innocents. but suguru is a villain! has been set up as such!

mahito raises this question to junpei,"is the opposite of love really indifference?" to satoru, it is. but to suguru, it is hatred which is the opposite of love.

[zutaranation]

Wishing for the Netflix Live Action Avatar series to be bad and jumping to conclusions based on one-off interview comments isn't it. This show is reclaiming its culture inspiration and being led by a majority POC cast and crew, so the hope for its downfall is icky to me.

I've discussed this on Twitter a lot, but not on here. I find it incredibly frustrating that people seem to be wishing for the live action Netflix version of Avatar to fail. This fandom is so dead set on commiserating and hating that they're damning the show before it even comes out and they see a single second of it based on a few lines from interviews taken out of context.

The watering down of sexism from Sokka could be done in just such a way that translates better to a live action format. It makes sense for Sokka to be sexist in a way that believes in rigid gender roles, but still appreciates the roles women perform. In the cartoon, he was more disparaging of women's roles in general. I think this would be a suitable change that still addresses sexism.

The change of Katara's role in regards to sexism I welcome as a breath of fresh air if it's done how I expect. Katara was portrayed as motherly, and I hope that stays, but her motherliness was seen as nagging, annoying, and a bad thing. She can keep these traits, but be appreciated and not depreciated every second and seen as a bore. She is also a child and deserves to be viewed with the same depth and appreciation as the others.

The Game of Thrones comment also makes sense. This is a show primarily for older audiences who grew up watching Avatar. GOT is a popular, beloved fantasy drama series. Many people who watched ATLA as adults compare the appeal of Avatar to GOT. The comment does not mean that the show is going to have sex scenes and SA scenes. It means it's going to appeal to that sort of audience, which makes complete sense for a fantasy live action series. The head runner of the live action show also stressed that the integrity of the show and its characters remaining intact was pivotal to their depiction. So, striking a balance between making this something fresh and interesting in its new medium, but staying faithful to the original should actually be seen as a promising aspect for the series, not something detrimental. I'm so hackneyed by this fandom's obsession with dragging everything down.

Azula having a bow and arrow is badass. Zuko had the dual swords. I have no idea why anyone is mad about this. It's cool. Her coming in early in an 8-episode series makes sense. She's the best villain in the show, she SHOULD get more screentime. It's not like Toph where her Book 2 introduction is concurrent with the pacing of the plot. I also hope Zuko is on the gaang's side for the entirety of Book 3. I always thought that would have made more sense, gave us better friendship building moments, and improved pacing. This criticism confuses me.

And, the thing about Aang not going off on side quests is simply logical. Of course Aang can't be mentioning side quests and frivolous detours like riding on the sea eel (sorry I forget its proper term rn lol) because the way the show is being adapted does not have any time to show these kinds of filler episode scenes. It's being reimagined as a mini series drama with 8 episodes. It makes no sense to subdivide these episodes to include filler moments, so of course Aang needs to be more plot driven becasue there's less breakdown in the episodes because there are less of them. It doesn't negate his childlike eagerness and faithfullness to his original portrayal. It could also serve as an enhancement where this 20-year-old series fell short, despite its successes.

This is a reimagining, otherwise there's no point. A carbon copy would be absurd and terrible for anyone to watch. Wishing a show to fail that was created by an almost entirely POC cast reclaiming the show's culture is so icky to me and I think it's a disservice to this fandom. I'm hoping for the best and being cautiously optimistic. Of course, things could go sour, but why expect it? Why not hype the show up instead of aspire for its failure? Especially in the Zutara fandom, we should be better than this. There is so much opportunity for this series to correct the problems our fandom at large has been complaining about for years and years.

For the bulk of the fandom, including casual and nostalgic fans, they don't know the horrors of the behind the scenes nonsense Bryke, the two white guys who created ATLA caused. So they're crapping on this version left and right because Bryke left. Bryke didn't even create these characters' depth. They didn't write the intricacies of the beloved episodes or develop the characters the way people are so found of. That was the other writers. Bryke wanted Toph to be a boy and have a love triangle with Aang and Katara. They also wanted Azula to be a boy. They wanted Iroh to betray Zuko and be pro-Ozai at the end of the show and Zuko have to choose between Iroh and the fate of the world. The other writers changed this. Look at the mess they made of LoK without the input of the other writers when they were writing entirely on their own in Legend of Korra book one. Their removal is a chance of further improvement.

[steveyockey]

While some of both Davis and Crawford’s work could arguably be described as camp (for the former, King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest; for the latter, later-era films such as Strait-Jacket and aspects of the wondrous Nicholas Ray film Johnny Guitar), that their entire careers and places within film history are defined as such does a disservice to their artistry. But they aren’t alone in representing what has become a troubling trend when it comes to women’s work. As camp entered the mainstream lexicon, especially after Susan Sontag’s landmark 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” the term has been increasingly tied to work featuring women who disregard societal norms. Camp is often improperly and broadly applied to pop culture that features highly emotional, bold, complex, cold, and so-called “unlikable” female characters. I’ve seen films and TV shows such as the witty masterwork All About Eve; the beguiling Mulholland Drive; the stylized yet heartwarming Jane the Virgin; Todd Haynes’s Patricia Highsmith adaptation Carol; the blistering biopic Jackie; the deliciously malevolent horror film Black Swan; Joss Whedon’s exploration of girlhood and horror, Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the landmark documentary Grey Gardens (which inspired the 2009 HBO film starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore); and even icons such as Beyoncé and Rihanna be described as camp. Look at any list of the best camp films and you’ll see an overwhelming number of works that feature women and don’t actually fit the label. Usually, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the film whose behind-the-scenes story provides Murphy’s launching pad for Feud, will be at the top of the list.

While camp need not be a pejorative, that hasn’t stopped it from being widely used as such. In effect, being labeled as camp can turn the boldest works about the interior lives of complex women into a curiosity, a joke, a punch line. The ease with which camp is applied to female-led films and shows of this ilk demonstrates that for all the (still-paltry) gains Hollywood has made for women in the decades since Davis and Crawford worked, our culture is still uncomfortable respecting women’s stories.

That major Hollywood icons such as Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford (and, more recently, Natalie Portman, thanks to Jackie) have been roped into this lineage isn’t surprising. Society doesn’t know what to do with women of this ilk without discrediting their very womanhood. Take artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s offensive description of Mae West in an essay on camp: “[She] played with androgyny to the degree that her final performance — her autopsy — was necessary to prove her biological femaleness.” In his 2013 essay “Why Is Camp So Obsessed with Women?”, J. Bryan Lowder expands on Sontag’s most well-known line: “It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role.” Lowder writes, “‘Woman,’ the concept within the quotation marks, is not the same thing, at all, as a real woman; the former is a mythology, a style, a set of conventions, taboos, and references, while the latter is a shifting, changeable, and ultimately indefinable living being. Of course, there may be some overlap.” But if all gender is a performance, where does the “real” woman begin? And why does the presence of camp hold more importance than the actual work and voices of actresses such as Crawford, who have come to be defined by it?

At times, camp can feel like a suffocating label. Its proponents often misconstrue the fact that recreating oneself as a character is not merely an aesthetic for women, but rather, for many, a matter of survival. Living in a culture that profoundly scorns ambition, autonomy, and independence in women, girls learn quickly the narrow parameters of femininity available to them. When they transcend these parameters, life can get even more difficult. Women often pick up and drop various forms of presentation in order to move through the world more easily. Performance as a woman — in terms of how one speaks, walks, talks, acts — can be a means of controlling one’s own narrative. Camp often limits this part of the discussion, focusing instead on the sheer thrill of watching larger-than-life female characters cut and snark their way across the screen. How these works speak to women, past and present, becomes a tertiary concern at best, and the work loses a bit of its importance in the process; it either comes to be regarded as niche or, if it still has mainstream prominence, as abject spectacle. In turn, the conversations around these works become less about the women at their centers and more about how those women are presented.

Much of Baby Jane’s camp legacy comes down to how more recent audiences have interpreted Davis’s performance. She’s ferocious, frightening, and grotesque. But framing Davis’s performance as camp, as Murphy does, doesn’t take into account how dramatically acting has shifted over the course of film history. In some ways, camp has become a label used when modern audiences don’t quite understand older styles of acting. Modern actors privilege the remote, the cold, the detached. The more scenery-chewing performances that make the labor of acting visible — such as the transformative work that Jake Gyllenhaal did in Nightcrawler, or most of Christian Bale’s career — is typically the domain of men. (Or, at least, it’s only men who can get away with it without being called campy.) As Shonni Enelow writes in a marvelous piece for Film Comment, “[Jennifer] Lawrence’s characters in Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games don’t arrive at emotional release or revelation; rather than fight to express themselves, her characters fight not to. We can see the same kind of emotional retrenchment and wariness in a number of performances by the most popular young actors of the last several years.” Davis’s work as an actor was the antithesis of that; she painted in bold colors. Even her quietest moments brim with an intensity that cannot be denied.

[jewishvitya]

@turgidturnip I hope you don't mind me replying to this on a different post.

This is about "from the river to the sea" and the claim that it's an antisemitic rallying cry, calling to ethnically cleanse Palestine from Jews.

There's a misconception that this slogan comes from the Hamas charter, but it predates Hamas by, I think, a couple of decades. It's been used this way by more militant groups, and by Iraqi leadership at some point, but before that it's been used to call for a democratic secular nation state.

The reason you see these claims of antisemitism from Jewish people online is that this is the context where most of them will have seen it. Both because it is part of the history, and because that's how antisemites use it against Jews.

Both "Free Palestine" and "from the river to the sea" are thrown at random Jewish people, who are completely unrelated to Israel, to tell them essentially "You're not wanted anywhere and we want you gone."

This abuses the cause of the Palestinian people to weaponize against Jews. It's wrong and violent, but doesn't make the desire to be free in their homeland into something genocidal. And I'm not willing to just give antisemites this, but even if I was, I'm not Palestinian and giving up on a slogan because antisemites are abusing it is not my call to make. It's pretty obvious Palestinians don't want to put it away. Any slogans Palestinians might create can be used this way against Jews, because antisemites will always look for ways to be hateful towards us. But it doesn't make the antisemitism inherent in the desire for freedom.

Recognize where it's used in an antisemitic way from context: if someone uses those slogans to throw at a random Jewish person, or if it's used to disrupt a conversation about antisemitism, that's a misuse of it that does a disservice to Palestinians in favor of harming Jews. That's when it has genocidal intent applied to it.

Otherwise, don't let antisemites steal a slogan of a group of people who have been facing ethnic cleansing for over seventy years. Their real ethnic cleansing takes priority over the hypothetical one we're supposedly threatened with.

I'm not trying to tell other people what their liberation should look like. But when I talk to Palestinians, so far what I heard was a desire for one state that isn't an ethnostate. A civic state that tries to be safe for all the people within its borders. As far as I could see, Palestinians have been saying for a while that what they mean by this, is a state that will be free and equal to everyone.

The assumption that Palestinians will pull some sort of reverse ethnic cleansing against us is racist. And this assumption is the reason Israelis feel comfortable calling the carpet bombing of a civilian population "self defense." Killing them based on this is not self defense, it's a racially motivated crime against humanity.

Gaza is experiencing a genocide. This is because Israel wants the land - without the people. The manufactured Jewish majority can't be sustained if they're made equal citizens. Palestinians are risking the ethnostate by being alive.

So far Israel is the one practicing the genocidal interpretation of "from the river to the sea."

Palestinians deserve to be free on every single part of this land.

[uniquepeanutcreatorfire]

Stolas being "Nice" to Blitz

There's been debates within the fandom about Stolas being considered a r*pist involving sexual coercion. Let's go over common defenses that have been used to prove he's not.

He asked Blitz if the deal was fair- So if you re-watch the scene, notice how Stolas said it in a sly, condescending tone. As if he knew Blitz would agree and not give pushback, considering the circumstances at the time. Circumstances that the fandom will ignore and insist that Blitz gave consent.

He respected Blitz's decision when he said "No"- In regards to Ozzie's, this happen outside of their arrangement. Blitz wouldn't be obligated to have sex outside of that. The fandom also loves to use those text messages as proof. However, Stolas only gave Blitz an option on whether to come over. Also, keep in mind that Stolas already got what he initially wanted from Blitz which was sex. Him being nice now doesn't negate the fact he took advantage of Blitz before in season one. People act like abusers and r*pists can't be nice to their victims sometimes (i.e. DV situations, groomers, etc.). That they have to be mean 100% of the time. This is how victims may normalize the abuse, thinking their abuser cares about them. Unfortunately, I see this happening with Blitz.

He is nice to Blitz off-screen. Look at the Instagram posts. Pay close attention to the scene when Stolas was asking Blitz about his day in Ozzie's. Blitz seems confused as if Stolas hasn't asked him something like that before and Stolas is acting nervous and awkward. You would think if they spent time together outside of sex, they would be comfortable having a causal conversation. Now you may argue that they're acting like this because it's a "first date" and that could be true to some extent. It’s just their interactions don't hint at any form of chemistry like the Instagram posts would suggest.

The deal was a mutual agreement- This is another major problem with Stolas. He doesn't fully acknowledge his power and status in the situation. In the recent trailer, he worded it as if they both came up with the terms of the deal. This is to resolve him of some of the responsibility and make it seem like he's being the morally righteous one. When in fact, he came up with the deal on his own and has had full control the whole time, even with this new offer.

Conclusion: HB has handled abuse and SA in a very surface-level manner. Some people who aren't aware of the subtlety and nuanced forms of abuse will only go off what the narrative is telling them. This does a disservice to the sensitive topic. I also understand that this wasn’t the intent for Stolas’s character, but even some abusers aren’t aware of the harm they cause.

[nayatarot777]

PSA For Those Who Don’t Understand That Shit Ain’t Always Sweet Out Here In This Spiritual/Tarot World

I’m not one of these “love and light” tarot readers/spiritualists. You’re going to hear shit about yourselves in my readings that you don’t like, if that’s what Spirit wants to come out. Idgaf if it’s based on personal topics, relationships, work, health in any aspect - a lot of us self-sabotage. A lot of us are in situations with people and environments due to our own doing (partially). I’m not the reader that’s going to enable your perpetual victim complex and tell you what you want to hear to protect your ego from seeing a side to yourself that you don’t like. I’m not one of those readers who help you to lack accountability over what you allow into your own life despite having the option to do better. Of course I’ll try to put it in a delicate way where I can, but if a difficult pill to swallow is presented in a reading, I’m going to point it out.

I’ll point out your control issues that I see (no matter how much you try to hide or deny them). I’ll point out where you’re betraying yourself, where you’re disrespecting yourself, and where you’re disrespecting another. If you want to focus on love and light, then by all means - do that. But that’s the reason why so many of you are still unstable and imbalanced with no idea of how to balance and ground yourself. You think any of us could exist without darkness and negativity (which isn’t always evil and “bad”)? You think that you can exist only paying attention to the good parts of you without the bad? Go ahead and see how that turns out for you.

So many of you wonder why your intuition is thwarted and why you feel like you can’t connect to your higher self or the spiritual world without a “middleman” (such as myself). It’s because you’re not ready for that. Because you’re not ready to explore darkness within yourself in order to clear out a lot of the bs that’s clouding your vision. Why do you think that so many people who are great intuitives go through some of the darkest manifestations of life itself? Major abuse, betrayal, childhood wounds, just complete chaos - and they STILL come out to be some of the strongest and well-balanced people you’ll ever meet. They’re people who are strong enough to transmute darkness into light. You’re not going to do that by ignoring shit that you don’t like. And the darkness is terrifying. Exploring space, the deep sea, or any type of unknown is terrifying. But what would society look like if not one of us decided to do that? Where would we be as a human race if people with courage didn’t venture into those spaces and bring back a bunch of knowledge for us to expand our consciousness with? We all owe doing that for ourselves. Not doing so is self-betrayal and stagnation.

Intuition is represented by the moon. Does the moon emit light? No. Mother Luna is a dark entity and she lives in the darkness - which is the core of everything. And if you’re a woman/a feminine, you’re doing yourself even more of a disservice. Because darkness is pure, feminine energy. We come from our mother’s dark ass wombs. This entire universe began as a dark ass body of space-and-time before it formed physical planetary bodies and light sources. Reject yourselves all you want, but you can’t complain that you’re out of whack energetically if you choose to do so. Or when what you’re manifesting doesn’t come through (which also stems from the darkness btw). Don’t reject the darkness but expect to be able to use it when it benefits you. Sounds like shit that masculines have done to the feminine for centuries, huh? And so many feminines are doing that same exact shit to themselves. It’s sad.

We’ve seen entire groups of people with weak egos follow the same path of rejecting darkness/femininity and we see how difficult they are as people to co-exist with: ignorant men who have egos as big as the sun because they don’t want to face the hidden sides of themselves - that often times houses some ugly traits because of what they’ve allowed to fester in the dark corners of their psyche. Ignorant, male-centred religious people who identify so much with their religion that they only want to focus on the light, happy parts of their religion while ignoring how much harm that same religion can cause to others (especially feminines/women). Thats just to name a few. If you walk around with this idea that you’re nothing but “love and light” then just know that you’re another ignorant person in this world who is no doubt ignoring very real and human negative effects that you have on yourself and/or others - no doubt. And the darkness doesn’t always have negative effects (obviously) but it will when it’s suppressed and therefore forced to come out in uncontrolled, unconscious ways. If that’s what you want to do, then I’m not the reader for you.

[nyandaah]

I don't know how to articulate my thoughts on it consicely (as usual, hence why I rarely ever write posts here anymore), but ever since this week's dunmesh ep I can't stop thinking about That scene between toshiro and laios and how it's been talked about as a piece of representation of the neurodivergent struggle.

I've seen those panels countless times before the anime got to it, and I can't understate how Real of a thing it is that we're seeing through laios- that pain and frustration that comes from having the rug pulled under you in being told that been getting it Wrong the whole time and nobody's bothered to point out the donkey tail pinned on your ass.

but I think that's only the first half of the statement, and the way people talk (and don't talk) about toshiro does the moment a disservice.

seeing how people talk about it before getting to the scene itself, it ended up catching me off-guard how much of a Person toshiro is. he's always talked about as the strawman or the figure representing neurotypical society- the one that others us.

I see where it's all coming from, he's not a likeable character to most of the fandom for reasons I won't hold anyone against, but again- he's an important part of the picture that dunmesh paints of the nd struggle.

I find it absurd to portray toshiro as a representation of the 'average'. being both of royalty and of a culture that has instilled upon him his own values and expectations when it comes to socialization. it's why the inclusion of his retainers (especially maizuru) was a brilliant story decision; alongside laios', we get to see HIS social ineptitudes and how central they are to HIS character.

like. a major point of grievance many of the audience has with toshiro is his rose-tinted 'romance' with obviously-uninterested falin. I get it, especially if you've experienced that type of engagement with an unwanted pursuer. but dear lord if that doesn't perfectly parallel him with laios as a fellow Socially Inept Man.

it hit me as much as laios hit me when he said he envied our boy's sincerity. because that's a true and often less talked about part of the neurodivergent struggle(tm)- the difficulty to express your feelings. just like the other end of the spectrum, it hurts yourself as much as it hurts others.

as someone whose brain problems often manifest as social anxiety and feeling like i'm either unable to or unworthy of expressing how I feel, I envy laios too.

tl;dr- there are two characters present in that scene in episode 17.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Why are U.S. courts afraid of the 14th Amendment? Because it’s radical.

"The 14th Amendment has once again proven too bold for the judges empowered to interpret it. Political forces are at play again, this time fearful of a backlash if Trump is removed from the ballot. As this case makes its way through the appellate process and, most likely, to the Supreme Court, it should be understood in the context of how the timidity and unwillingness of judges to acquiesce to the judgment of the 14th Amendment’s framers effectively derailed our democracy’s promise after Reconstruction and until the mid-20th century. We must ensure that it does not do the same in the 21st."

--Sherrilyn Ifill, visiting professor, Harvard Law School

This is an important article about why the 14th Amendment was written and why judges are afraid to use it to ban Trump from running for office. Consequently, this is a gift🎁link so people can read the entire article even if they don't subscribe to The Washington Post.

Below are some excerpts.

Judge Sarah B. Wallace’s decision that Trump engaged in insurrection but is nevertheless qualified to run for office is emblematic of the often outright resistance courts have shown to the 14th Amendment’s guarantees and protections. This instance applies to Section 3, which bars any participant in a rebellion against the government of the United States from holding public office. But almost from its inception, all the amendment’s radical provisions have inspired fear and timidity in jurists of every stripe. I use the word “radical” deliberately. The 14th Amendment was conceived of and pushed by the “Radical Republicans” in Congress after the Civil War. They were so named because of their commitment to eradicating slavery and its vestiges from American political life. A number had been abolitionists, and all had seen the threat that white supremacist ideology and the spirit of insurrection posed to the survival of the United States as a republic. Although the South had been soundly defeated on the battlefield, the belief among most Southerners that insurrection was a worthy and noble cause, and that Black people — even if no longer enslaved — were meant to be subjugated to the demands of Whites, was still firmly held. The 14th Amendment was meant to protect Black people against that belief, and the nation against insurrection, which was understood to constitute an ongoing threat to the future of our country. Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved abolitionist who rose to become one of the most prominent voices of the Reconstruction period, had no illusions about the persistence of the “malignant spirit” of the “traitors.” He predicted that it would be passed “from sire to son.” It “will not die out in a year,” he foretold, “it will not die out in an age.” [color emphasis added]

I encourage you to read the full article, which goes into detail about how the US judicial system has been afraid to actually adhere to both the spirit and letter of the 14th Amendment, and in so doing has done a major disservice to Black Americans for well over a century, and to our nation as a whole.

[pissditching]

I've noticed something in the discussion around Gerard Way and trans identity that I am officially fed the fuck up with. While talking about Gerard's outfits from the second leg of the tour, people love to use use the line "clothes ≠ gender" as a gotcha for those of us who are keen to the fact that they aren't cis. This pisses me off for three main reason plus a fourth mini reason that's more of a history blurb than anything else.

Before we start anything, Gerard has been out as not cis for the better part of 8(!) years now. To not acknowledge that is doing them a disservice. Some of you have purposely chosen to ignore that fact. Right out the gate that's fucked up. Ok now we can proceed.

First off, you're right. Clothes do not, in fact, equal gender. I know this, and it sounds like you'd like me to believe that you know this. So forgive me for being a little confused when you go on anon after they're photographed wearing what you dub to be "masculine clothing" (i.e. anything that's not a skirt/dress with heels) and tell me I'm an idiot for implying that they aren't a cisgender man.

Secondly, the concept that clothes don't equal gender in only true to us very recently. If you think that Gerard Way, a 45 year old ex-Catholic Gen-X'er who grew up in an wildly conservative suburb of north New Jersey doesn't have a different relationship between clothing and gender than you, a 14-to-20-something year old who hasn't closed tiktok in three days and averages 0.3 minutes of critical thinking per week, then you're extremely delusional and self-centered. People are socialized in entirely different ways. As humans, our experiences are not in any way universal. What doesn't mean anything to you means everything to someone else. Maybe you don't equate femininity with skirts and dresses, but I guarantee you a 45 year old who has openly struggled with gender identity their entire life does in some capacity. This is not a bad thing.

Thirdly is that in your attempt to sound as woke and morally upright as possible, you're unintentionally (or intentionally, seeing as a considerable number of you are terfs,) discrediting and invalidating the way someone experiences gender euphoria because you personally don't get it. Gerard Way has only ever said "I don't use labels" in response to people implying that they're cishet. If your first reaction to seeing someone who could even potentially identify under the transfem umbrella experiencing visible gender euphoria in a dress is to say "oh well clothes don't equal gender, so I'm going to assume that he's a man in a dress until he explicitly outs himself", then congratulations! You're transphobic. Because that's the thing. When you use the rhetoric of clothes ≠ gender in that context, it becomes crystal clear you don't actually care about trans people. You just want to sound like the smartest person in the room. And you're willing to throw GNC trans people under the bus in order to achieve that goal.

I think people have forgotten big time that "don't assume my gender" originally meant "don't assume I'm cis", because now the way people interpret the rhetoric (don't assume my gender, clothes ≠ gender, I don't use labels, etc.,) and use it to prove a point only use it as if to say "it's inherently wrong and creepy to identify and acknowledge when people aren't cis. Cis is the default and the only safe assumption. Anything else is offensive and crossing a major boundary" and you can tell it's because they view transness as an insult to someone's character. We have to, collectively, stop viewing transness as an allegation you either have to beat or bear with. Alongside that, we have to stop assuming cisness.

[doodlegirl1998]

your response literally made me realize that they need Izuku more than he needs them despite what Hori wants us to think.

Because think about it, nobody ever acknowledges Izuku unless he does something that benefits THEM! And fuck whatever he needs or wants!

They even make fun of his interests as if he’s the inpy one who does that sort of thing! So again, how am I supposed to believe they actually give a shit about him and his wellbeing?

Hi @theloganator101 👋

All of this. 👆

Now I like the idea of Izuku having friends, I like the idea of Izuku having ride or dies (such as Shoto.)

However, canon has left all of Izuku's friendships with the 'DekuSquad' and Class 1A as a whole to rot or actively does it a disservice in the name of 'comedy', for Bakugou's benefit or because Hori gives no care to them.

Class 1A, we know, never stand up for Izuku against Bakugou, so Hori's golden boy doesn't look bad. However, by consequence, it also looks like they don't care for Izuku apart from some key members like Tokoyami who never stand for Bakugou's shit. (Bless you, Tokoyami!)

However, with Izuku's main friendships in the 'Deku Squad', we have:

Izuku & Ochako - a friendship/budding relationship that is left to rot and actively done a disservice for 'comedy' and Bakugou's benefit.

Izuku & Iida - a friendship that is left to rot and actively done a disservice for 'comedy' and Bakugou's benefit.

Izuku & Shoto - a friendship that is actively done a disservice for 'comedy' and for Bakugou's benefit.

Izuku & Tsuyu - left to rot and done a disservice for Bakugou's benefit.

Izuku & Aoyama - left to rot.

How are we meant to buy that Ochako cares for and 'loves' Izuku when she calls him 'plain' and is so set on hiding her feelings?

When she doesn't stand up for him when he's being abused by Bakugou and when she looks freaked out whenever Izuku is shown to enjoy his hobbies?

Or when she 'who loves Izuku' barely spends any time with him?

From what we see in canon, we can't.

How are we meant to buy Iida cares for Izuku when he barely appears with him now?

How are we meant to buy Iida is Izuku's "best friend" yet when he is so quick to call Izuku "Mr House Arrest" and take Aizawa's side without hearing out Izuku?

Or when Iida is so quick to hit him* after Izuku getting out of the hospital?

Logically, we can't. *Yes, Iida apologised for doing this. However, this moment does rub me wrong, and even if this punch is nullified by the apology, the other criticisms still stand.

How are we meant to buy Shoto cares for Izuku when he thinks nothing of Bakugou verbally and physically berating Izuku now*?

*Yes, Shoto is an abuse victim, and some become desensitised to this behaviour as a result - however Shoto did not begin the series acting this way, so what conclusion can we draw?

How are we meant to buy that Shoto is a close friend of Izuku when he is chasing after Bakugou's friendship (Bakugou, who is openly hateful of Izuku?)

It looks like, through Hori trying to glorify Bakugou, that Shoto doesn't care as much for Izuku as we would like to think.

Tsuyu and Aoyama are barely even there anymore, let alone bond with Izuku.

Tsuyu used to stand up to Bakugou and his bullshit openly - now? Not a peep. She's only here to be an accessory to Toga vs. Ochako and Ochako as a whole. Izuku, who?

Aoyama has strong parallels with Izuku due to both starting the series quirkless and being given a quirk by AFO and AM, respectively. Yet this friendship is barely given any focus by Hori. Hori doesn't want Izuku to think about his own past during Aoyama's backstory, so he fails to give Izuku any introspection and fails to deepen their connection and Izuku's character as a result.

Class 1A as a whole are also done a disservice by Hori having them all gang up on Izuku with Bakugou leading the charge.

To conclude - Hori hates Izuku and it is clear looking at just how dirty he does all his connections in 1A and major friendships.

[soupthatistohot]

Soukoku is a bit fucked up... but that's why they work

Dazai and Chuuya do not have a normal relationship, however you want to define that (platonic or romantic). Without the context of their backgrounds, it reads as like... really fucked up. And that's true, to an extent, but to eliminate their circumstances is to do them a great disservice, in my opinion

First of all, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm fully cognisant of the fact that skk were not written to be a romantic pairing— Asagiri simply does not intend for them to be perceived as such. That being said, this does not mean that audience interpretations of a media are invalid. I ship skk, and as such this analysis may include my romantic interpretations of them as a pair and i acknowledge this bias at the same time that I acknowledge the validity of my interpretation.

Let's look at Chuuya's background first. He has little to no memory of his life prior to 7 years old, when he was separated from his family and treated as a government experiment. After his escape, he was an orphan on the streets taken in by a group of fellow orphans. He quickly rose to be the leader and protector of this group, who would eventually literally stab him in the back when he was manipulated into working with and eventually joining the Port Mafia. He spent his teen years with a suicidal maniac as a partner, watched countless friends and a clone of himself die, and found out a literal god was living in him, forcing him to question his humanity.

Dazai's past is much less clear. We don't know what his family was like, but we know that Mori recruited him after discovering him after a suicide attempt and began grooming him as the Demon Prodigy. He was forced to be an accomplice to a murder, and was constantly manipulated by and possibly physically abused by Mori. He was known for his coldness and was feared by many as a monster for the majority of his teenage years, and was expected to eventually become the boss of the Port Mafia through assassinating Mori, which the latter was paranoid about. Finally, one of his best friends betrayed him and the other died in his arms when he was eighteen years old, something plotted out by Mori, which resulted in his defection from the organization.

As teens, skk had a weird relationship (and that's putting it lightly). There was a certain level of contempt they held for one another. Chuuya resented Dazai's pessimism and lack of regard for others, and Dazai resented Chuuya's emotional and aggressive nature. Yet, they both had a deep understanding of one another that no one else really seemed to have at the time. They recognized one another as human when the individual himself did not. They had full faith and trust in each other, not allowing each other to die despite their disdain. It was complicated, and it wasn't quite healthy... but it was pretty damn good considering they were traumatized children in the Port Mafia.

There's a certain level of abusive behavior between them as teens, and I won't ignore that. Dazai played a large part in manipulating Chuuya into entering the mafia, and Chuuya insulted Dazai's suicidal and depressive nature a lot. Dazai found pleasure in causing Chuuya pain, both physically and emotionally. Chuuya literally has a list of torture techniques to use against Dazai. This is why I often stray from portraying an established romantic relationship at this point in their lives. I don't think they understood who they were fully yet, and sometimes projected their issues onto each other. Even if they were in love at that time, neither of them would have been ready for that type of commitment. I also just think they were too emotionally constipated to get to that point, anyway.

Something that I do love about their relationship as teens, though, is how they let each other be kids. Their bickering and arguments were childish and dumb, but that's the closest thing they had at the time to being normal teenagers. Amongst all the doom and gloom that surrounded them in the mafia, they knew that they could always go to each other and have a mindless argument or competition. In a way, this is how they reclaimed their stolen childhoods.

We see this when they're adults, too. In their first encounter in four years they tease each other about the same things as before, slipping right back into their childish banter. It's silly and immature, but that's how they operate. They allow each other to have that, and I really love this aspect of their relationship.

I think there's something to be said for how their time apart was good for them. Dazai is most clearly in a better place than before. Sure, he's masking a lot of the time, and he's still clearly suicidal, but I think the work he does with the agency is more fulfilling than at the mafia. He has more of a purpose, even if it's just to stay true to his promise to Oda (though I do believe it's more than that now). At his core, he's still a suicidal pessimist who finds humanity utterly disgusting and doesn't quite consider himself to be human, but I think there's a level of contentment of what he's doing with his life.

It's less obvious how Chuuya has changed, but I think that he has. He exhibits more self-confidence and maturity than in his teen years. He's more capable and well-rounded as an executive, and it's a personal headcanon of mine that in Dazai's absence, he was forced to pick up some of his skills of perceptibility and deduction. I think he is in a better place than before, as well, especially because he was able to establish himself independent of Double Black. He has also settled within Port Mafia, recognizing them as his family, which means he, too, is likely more content.

So as adults, they display less of the abusive behaviors than they did previously. Of course, there's still a certain level to which they're abnormal. Their jokes and quips about one another are sometimes quite dark, and there's a certain level to which Dazai still exhibits power over him when it comes to deciding to use Corruption. But that trust is still there, despite their time apart, and so too is that understanding of each other. They're not perfect by any means, but given their traumatic upbringings... they're kind of perfect for each other.

There is the fact that they want to kill each other. I'll admit that I struggle to explain this aspect, but I'll try my best, because I think it's not as bad as it sounds. I just think it makes sense for them. They're both sorta unkillable, so this aspect of their rivalry denotes a certain respect for each other. It's also a matter of likely knowing that they actually won't ever kill each other (and no, this isn't me being in denial about ch. 101, I fully believe that Chuuya is not dead, there is no way he's going out like that). This is one of the more complex aspects of their relationship, but when you add it to everything else we know about them, it just sorta works. I mean... thinking of ways to kill your partner for 7 years? That's kinda gay.

At the end of the day, skk keep each other in check and allow each other to have fun. They trust, know and respect each other, and though they claim to hate each other, I really don't think this is true. It's much more than that. They're rivals, they're partners, they're soulmates! And honestly, that's what makes them so goddamn interesting.