#but what if we didn't make negative generalizations about people based on circumstances outside their control at *all*?

[lurking-latinist]

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[synthwwavve]

i don't have any bo hcs myself (at least not yet) and i enjoy your hcs!! someone i used to follow on twt portrayed her as a traumatized person who would be a good person if not for everything that happened. and i always kind of rocked with it bc i haven't seen tcw (i have seen rebels) but i like your take on her better. i think it makes more sense with mando culture as well. Mandalorians are nothing if not Absolutely Completely Committed to their understanding of the creed. so while yes Bo went through some fucked up shit that def affected her I can't see her being any other way

Omg thank you!! Seriously this means so much to me and makes me so happy ^^

But yes I totally agree, I'm glad that was your takeaway from my headcanons because that's exactly how I view her background and who she is as a person, and I wasn't sure if I fully communicated what I was trying to say!

I feel like she's definitely a case where maybe tragic things happened to her that messed her up/contributed to the path she ended up on, but not in the sense that she was a victim of circumstance completely at the mercy of outside forces. (I feel like I bitch about this constantly but that characterization of her just doesn't interest me.) I feel like she absolutely chose/voluntarily carried out most of the negative or destructive views she held or acts she committed.

I headcanon her situation as being a case of how a fairly privileged person can end up radicalized into an extreme ideology based on their reaction to mostly perceived/exaggerated slights or oppression, and through being socially isolated except for seeking out interaction only w. other people who share their extreme views, as we see often on the internet today.

Not that (imo in my headcanons) the newmandos did nothing wrong or were entirely on the right side of history, but my point being their wrongs were probably so much worse to someone with a reactionary worldview. Also I HC for Bo specifically a lot of her hate was initially rooted in dysfunction with her sister, a lot of which is tbh vindictive and one-sided on her side towards Satine.

All in all yes, my reading of her is a person who experienced traumas that contributed to, but didn't cause, her to turn to extremist nationalism or to generally be hostile, low-empathy, prejudiced, machiavellian etc etc. It's just her personality and who she is. And if you have spent five seconds on my blog you know I absolutely mean all of those things affectionately because she's so interesting to me and the fact that she's kind of a bastard is what makes her interesting imo!!

Anyway thanks again for the ask and I'm glad you enjoyed my headcanons, believe me I'm always happy to talk about them lol

[reds-burrow]

What’s the difference between someone with a badger primary model and somebody with badger values?

Great question, though I'm not sure you'll like my murky answer. At the end of the day, it's up to the person being sorted. If they feel that their Badger Primary values are strong enough to be a model, then it's a model. Remember that a model is who you've learned to be, down to your bones, through either positive or negative experiences. I think some people have mistaken the word "model" as meaning it's somehow less real or significant than an innate sorting, but it isn't. It's a part of who you are, and not something easily cast aside. If that's how a person feels about those Badger values, then I'd suggest they call it a model. But again, it's up to them. Of course, that begs the question: what about fictional characters who can't tell us how they feel about it? In general, you should use Occam's Razor whenever sorting characters. Don't over-complicate things. The simplest sorting that makes sense is the sorting you should stick to (until you get more character development that informs you otherwise). That said, I recommend considering where the character is getting these values from. All of the primaries can look like each other under the right circumstances. We talk the most about Birds building systems that look like the other primaries, but Snakes are considered Constructed too. They can build systems in the same way, although there's a strong pattern of them building systems based on the people in their circle. So, a Snake could adopt the same beliefs as their Lion best friend because what is important to their friend is important to them. In the similar way, a Badger is influenced by the people around them. If a Badger grows up in a community that values the pursuit of the truth, they can develop Bird values. And finally, we have Lions who can look like other houses because their feelings can lead them to all sorts of conclusions. Confusing enough for you? That's actually one of the things I love about this system though: with the right people you could have a scenario in which every single sorting comes to the same conclusion. It's all about how they get to that conclusion that we're examining. But I digress. My point, is that when sorting characters, I would first consider where they're getting their different primary values. If it's not linked to their innate primary, then I'd call it a model. If it can be linked, then I would consider if those values show any sign of changing when put under stress or into a different situation. If a Bird Primary is taught a system that contradicts their Badger values, how easily do they let go of those values? If they struggle to put aside their Badger values or if they somehow find a way to adopt their new system to still include Badger values, I would consider this a sign that those values go deep enough to be considered a model. It's a similar thing with the Loyalists. If they cut ties with people, do they also cut ties with the values they inherited from them? Does the Loyalist still refer to doing something because that's what their people would've done? Or did the Loyalist make those values their own? Lions are perhaps the most difficult to tell in this respect since feelings naturally change as people grow, sometimes regardless of external pressures. But if it's clear that they were taught a system from an outside source, that it didn't originate from or resonate with their feelings from the start, it's very likely a model.

At the end of the day though, there is no clear criteria for all of this. If we never get to see the characters' values tested in specific ways, I'm afraid it has to be left to the sorter's discretion. SHC is an art, not a science. It's up to the person being sorted or the person sorting the characters to interpret things.

[crystalsenergy]

positions to touch the Shadow: the journey to your Self - # 1 (contacting our fragilities, fears, pain and so on)

pics not mine

Shadow: what is it? - The Shadow is an archetype by Carl Jung about what would be potential traumas / problems / characteristics of ourselves that we decided to hide from others and/or us. these Shadows, although they seem useless to people - because they are completely important for true self-knowledge. people hide this in an attempt to live without them, thinking they will succeed.

advice: it's important that you respect your pace, so as not to suffer the consequences of such abrupt contact with your "internal enemies". i have some experience with people who were completely unaware of their problems that, for me, were clearly appearing in their behavior in an unnoticed and irrational way, and when these people touched their Shadows, they went through moments of shock and a slight crisis for ask themselves about different points in their life. it's like opening the chest of that room hidden from your mind and finding significant points that influence your personality and, consequently, ending up also in contact with the memories of what may have originated all of this in the life experience of these people. it's delicate, so we need to respect our own time. on the other hand, i have also dealt with people who, when in contact with their Shadows, didn't feel so much sudden suffering and confusion, but an even greater hunger for knowing themselves. if you already know yourself and know that you don’t have to go so calmly, go for it. otherwise: respect your time, but don't miss the opportunity, don't waste time. the sooner we start looking for the completeness of our personality, the better it gets.

▪ PLANETS ▪

- Saturn: Saturn is present in our daily lives, in the sense that it appears within us (since the positions and aspects with Saturn influence our personality) in different situations, showing us where we lack maturity, where we need to evolve. Saturn is that internal voice (which can be increased or decreased depending on our life experiences) that tells us where we aren't good, that makes us be more rigid with ourselves. the positions of Saturn refer to the most practical thing and that turn out to be much more conscious than the other planets and asteroids. however, even so, i have seen cases of people who evidently have low self-esteem, which is explained by a position and an aspect with Saturn (Sun square Saturn + Saturn in Aries) but who admit none of this to themselves, however, a person who is outside and observes them, notes several irrational and defensive behaviors when they listen to phrases, for example, that touch their internal wounds, activating the feeling of 'not being good enough at anything'. this prevents us from evolving in the sense that the less we give light to it, the less we know each other and the more we make decisions and attitudes based on irrationality and lack of awareness of our fears and weakness.

- Pluto: our unconscious pains, the problems that we are not able to touch so easily, but that deeply affect our personality. once we touch on our Pluto issues that we try so hard to hide, we may be able to find a healthier way of dealing with almost unconscious patterns. here we have the most rotten, bad and negative feelings and sensations, the experiences that we want to forget, but that influence our personality so much. Plutonian matters (sign and house, but especially the house) speak a lot about how we project ourselves around the world. if we have the ability to analyze ourselves in a more psychological and internal way, trying to establish contact with our personal unconscious, we can transform such problems and negative feelings that we carry within us. but the first step involves letting go of the habit of hiding these problems even from yourself. Pluto wants you to let your power emerge to be reborn in the face of pain and hard phases. we all have a subject for which we will undergo transformations - be it in the way we accept that subject in our life, how we see that area in life and the way we treat others or how we treat ourselves. it's necessary to know how to overcome all the fear you have of such a subject present in the house in its positioning (example: Pluto in 7th house - excessive fear of being betrayed or left out of a relationship, going through troubled and unbalanced relationships. you need to learn through all these bad experiences).

▪ OBSERVATIONS ▪

- if you have intercepted houses, signs and planets: this means an empty area in your life, something that was not given to you or that you didn't know how to develop.

- aspects between shadow planets, asteroids cited, either among themselves (example: Saturn square Chiron, Lilith conj Pluto), or with personal planets (example: Nessus conj Venus) must also be taken into account when studying your Shadow side.

▪ ADVICE ▪

- make a mini summary of everything you have from each shadow placement and organize it all in a list, studying a point one by one.

examples:

"saturn in my natal chart 🌌✨

- saturn in aries [low self-esteem, power issues] - saturn in 8th house [rejection of my sexuality] - saturn square sun [another possibility of low self-esteem, feeling thati should not have fun, relax, have an internal father who in the end is me. me = my internal strict father.] - saturn opposite neptune [difficulty with my psychological, with living my restrictive issues and obstacles in my life in a more creative way, embracing myself. difficulty with being complacent with myself] - saturn square chiron [a feeling that I deserve to go through what I am going through, a desire to further hide my weaknesses and show myself to the world in a more controlled and inhibited way with regard to my internal problems and pains"

"black moon lilith (true lilith, the most known) in my natal chart 🐍✨

- lilith in libra [obsession or denial of being in relationships, extreme experiences in relationships, power to transmute the way i see and deal with world and others] - lilith in 3rd house [feeling unable to know things and feeling smart, running away from conversations and socializing, having an immense power to persuade people through words, having to deal with the feeling of not being heard] - lilith square north node [feeling of having to go against my purpose in life, the possibility of self-sabotage in order to fail to fulfill what i was given as a task for this life, i may have difficulty embracing my most intense and dense sides of my personality . and at the same time i can have an immense power and energy to evolve using this intense energy in a positive way]"

▪ FICTIONAL POINT ▪

- Black Moon Lilith (h13 'True Lilith'): deep power to transmute the energies of pain of Dark Lilith and humiliation of asteroid Lilith. Black Moon Lilith represents the obsession, the escape, what we really do with all our unconscious energy and potentials. where you can experience the ambivalence of extreme desire and extreme denial / rejection. where you can pass through a deep transformation / meatamorphose.

▪ ASTEROIDS ▪

- Lilith (1181): where you are confrontational, impulsive, where you seek exile and rebellion because of feeling suppressed, humiliated or incapable. where there is refusal, emotional and psychic frustrations. where you feel untrustworthy, shameful. how is the core of your wound and how it was experienced by yourself. the projections in collective expectations and where you refuse to agree to them. where you experience pain, passion, redemption. the core of these issues.

- Dark Lilith (h58 'Waldemath Black Moon'): the most hurt and intense side of Lilith. psyche instincts. it's when you feel pain because of the suppression that you experienced and where you have an extremely pain to deal, what can lead you to seek revenge or simply act in defensive / aggressive ways. represents your reaction to your original pains (1181 Lilith). it is an intense energy and if it isn'tr used correctly, it can lead you to self-destruction or it can even lead you to insert this energy from your frustrations and negations into your human experiences. if we get lost in the middle of our pain, we can become selfish and project our negative experiences and emotions on the community or on other people.

- Chiron: where there is more pain within you, the situations in which you are most vulnerable and that you seem to be unable to cope with at all. represents cycles of pain in your life. it can also represent things that you feel you were "born" to have to deal with. it also represents subjects in which you sin when it comes to healing but you are / can be extremely good at healing others.

- Nessus: where you can experience some type of abuse, toxicity or abusive experience. acts of violence and situations of this kind.

- Proserpina (26): where you can have to work to leave the fantasy aside, where you may not have maturity. it represents a cycle of killing and grieving the child's fragile ego, and then becoming more mature. is the loss of innocence, revival and reconstruction.

- Achilles (588): your deep weakness, deep wounding, ‘achilles heel’.

- Echo (60): where you don't believe in yourself, where you may lack self-esteem and may be little original, where you may have to deal with narcissistic people. where you are prone to being manipulated and losing your individuality to others.

- Atropos (273): where you can experience endings or transformations, loss or death that can impact you deeply.

- Narcissus (37117): where you can be indifferent, selfish, what needs to be improved; or where you may have to experience situations of manipulation, being with people in general or with someone really narcissistic, or it can mean in which subject you will have to deal with extreme disinterest, lack of empathy, or abuse on the part of people, which can cause you deep pain.

- Karma (3811): karmic issues, which seems like you have to deal with this life in a repetitive and tiring way. which can bring you a feeling of helplessness, circumstances of pain and difficulties.

- Dionysus (3671): where you can have a double nature. where you can have addictions, and a tendency to get easily intoxicated.

- Grieve (4451): one more tip about possibilities for grief, sorrow.

[aotopmha]

I can't believe that you responded to the historia ask by saying the cake wasn't that fancy. She is celebrating her child's birthday while people suffer in refugee camps. It wasn't very hard to come to that "strange" conclusion based on how the panels were put next to each other. You even said that there's no reason to believe that she ain't helping orphans anymore. Like that even matters now! She allowed eren to kill 80% of humanity and if not for the alliance eren would have killed 100%. Don't justify her actions by saying she allowed for end of titan curse (on that account eren also allowed genocide for titan curse 🤷‍♂️), she was very well aware that eren was gonna kill every person yes orphans too and historia didn't know that it would end the titan curse. Even if she did that doesn't make her any less guilty. She stayed quiet and allowed people to be crushed. She also clearly stated that, eren said this fight won't end until eldia or the world disappears and he might have been right. Which further confirms that she knew eren was gonna kill everyone outside and now she thinks he might have been right. Great that's a genocide apologist for you right there. And not even a single panel of guilt or remorse from her. Some people like that she really is the worst girl/enemy of humanity and to each their own but don't deny that horrendous implications of her actions.

To put this in the most simple way, I think you're misreading the framing of the refugee panels. I think none of it is saying she is not helping to fix the mess Eren created, which includes helping orphans and refugees. In fact, I think that's exactly what the story is saying with the letter.

Your issue seems to me to be that she is shown to be happy at all.

I'll get back to this because I think framing makes a lot of how to read what is going on here (and any story in general).

The issue with this is that that's not the focus surrounding her character in this final chapter.

I personally think she is not saying what Eren did was okay.

Whether she supported Eren's actions of genocide or not is actually never directly answered in the narrative itself.

So you can make assumptions. You can assume the worst or you can assume something better.

How do you know she's okay with genocide and what Eren did?

You choose to read it that way because Historia and Eren talked about it and she knows about it.

And you think it would be strange for her to care for anything else or help anyone after allowing something like this to happen.

I think this is a fair assessment, I just disagree how she now can't have anything good left in her. You can call it hypocritical or short-sighted, but I think it is not impossible for her to want to help and fix the consequences. But again, we don't know that, so it is just as fair to assume she isn't helping than that she is.

I think she is helping because I think it was established as a part of her character that she is not a completely uncaring person. Selfish, but not completely uncaring.

The only other details we know are that she was really opposed to Eren at first and then had a baby. We can connect these things and say she had the baby because she is in support of Eren's genocide.

But there is no detailed reasoning given to her character here.

This is an issue with the writing rather than something delibrately written to be true. Which I think is one element your issues come down to.

It is a very easy and direct interpretation that she was initially opposed to Eren and then he convinced her by bringing up her selfish desires in the cave.

I'm also clarifying: my intention was not to justify any of her actions.

I was just wanting to put all of the cards on the table.

I think her character *really* needed that perspective elaboration because she wasn't praising Eren at the end, either.

"Might" is not a direct agreement and coming back to context and framing, it tells us that Eren's words are now framed in a very sinister light. Everything in the panels is listed as something that is a negative result of Eren's actions.

Even if she supported Eren, I think she can try her best to fix the situation they ended up in as a result of his actions. I think nothing in the narrative disapproves this, either.

Personally, I think a horrible person can do good things and help fixing what they helped doing.

Whether she is helping orphans or not was your initial issue. I think she can be in support of something horrible and still want to fix it later. (This kind of contradiction can equally contributed to bad writing. Maybe her motivations are just an underbaked mess.)

But if it is ultimately irrelevant to you now because she helped in putting the genocide in motion in the first place, I'll put it aside.

In the end, I just want to figure out what the most likely interpretation for her character is.

The interpretation of her letter in 139 I've arrived at is that she was opposed to the genocide part because she denies Eren's methods, but is happy with the result of the Titan powers being gone, trying to make the best of the circumstances they were given.

But we basically have no connective tissue between this and the scene in 130.

If she truly was on board with genocide in the most unnuanced, villainous way possible, she would just be justifying and excusing it. But the entire scene is super-imposed over some imagery with pretty sinister and unsettling framing. It's like the "devote your hearts" scene being turned around to be sinister back in the beginning of the arc.

I mean, Historia being a complete evil drone is a possibility. That's really easy to superimpose on her character because she barely has one in this final arc.

Eren told her he was going to destroy the world and she said/did nothing.

But then, here at the end, again, she denies Eren's perspective. You obviously seem to think her speech in the letter is in support of Eren.

Her being completely in support of Eren would be easy.

I'd kind of even welcome it. Just let her directly say she supported Eren because she wanted to see the world burn. No logic, no nothing. I could just dismiss it as bad writing and be done with it.

I think the better reasonings would be that she wanted the island and herself to survive and not be wiped out by Marley.

Or that she kept to her promise to Ymir to just live for herself and in principle decided not pass down the Titan power. This was her decision in the cave.

I think these are legitimate assumptions to make on why she did this because she says as much. She is willing to do anything for the survival of the island and herself. I think that's the most likely interpretation for me.

But the narrative didn't directly state these elements in relation to her character motivations in the final chapter.

AoT is full of horrible people shown in an understandable light.

I've said as much several times now that I don't care about the morality of a character as long as I at least get where they are coming from.

I could understand her desire to survive.

I could then also at least say it probably was clumsy writing of the narrative to let her have such a happy ending.

But as we are, this is what we have to work with.

I actually have a very different reading of the scene with Historia's child, too.

I think it is about showing how Eldian children now at least had some years of normalcy to their lives. It is a juxtaposition to the bad things Eren's actions lead to coming up in the following pages.

Historia's character writing is kind of a mess, but I want to separate what the narrative's intention is, what it can come across as and what part of it is the result of bad writing.

I think what you are mostly talking about is what it comes across as to you as a result of poor writing (and I think that's absolutely fair).

Thank you for the ask!

[emmanuelnathalie]

Sana is Muslim but she is also a 17 year old girl and I feel like that has been the focus. I'm glad that Julie didn't make Sana into her religion, but a normal teenager who just happens to be Muslim. I super relate to Sana

Yes! Exactly. Do you mind if I go on a lil rant about this season? Because I’ve been a little shy about voicing my opinion about the show since I’m not a Skam superfan and I’m afraid about possible backlash. I’ve looked through the tags and see a lot of negativity about this season and I don’t really see the logic behind most of it. 

The main thing I really like about this season is that its main focus isn’t on a romantic relationship. The last three seasons have been all about Eva/Jonas, Noora/William, Isak/Even as the sole plot and tbh I never found them relatable because personally I’ve only ever been in one relationship ever and I never have romance drama. Like there’s more to life than romance... and I wished the show would diverge from that for once. 

And then Sana’s season rolled around and Yousef was introduced and I was like, “Oh great... more romance drama.” But the show sort of turned this typical plot on its head and I was really glad. Sana’s struggle with her religion began to come into focus and it was so interesting to watch. Since the show changes perspectives every season, I always assumed that Sana was secure in her religion since she comes off as very headstrong and confident, but the more the 4th season went along, I could see that she has a really complicated relationship with Islam. Her prayers and traditions are supposed to bring her peace, but also bring her such immense conflict. 

The main criticism I see about this season was that the girl squad and Sana’s relationship began drifting apart, and the characterization of Eva/Noora/Vilde was compromised. Has anyone actually been a teenager before....? Did anyone ever stay the same throughout the four years of high school? I would certainly hope not. Some people change for the worst, some for the better. Friends and people in general will disappoint you. It’s human nature. The true test of friendship is learning to accept flaws and forgive people, or to have the courage to let them go altogether if they’re really hurting you. 

At the end of the day these characters are teenagers and will say/do irrational things that don’t make sense to those looking in from the outside (aka us, the audience). I think that’s the brilliance of the show, and people are missing it. The whole point of introducing all the side characters is so we can attach our assumptions onto them, only to be proven wrong once the new season begins and a side character is given a season dedicated to them. When the main changes and the previous main becomes a side character, of course their actions and behavior are going to be different. Once again, we’ve attached our assumptions onto them since we had a whole season of glimpsing into their life, and of course their behavior isn’t always going to make sense. WE’VE SEEN THAT FIRSTHAND!!! Circumstances change, we all have highs and lows that don’t make sense to people who don’t know what’s going on in our lives. The show explores that SO MUCH and yet people don’t seem to fully grasp it. We don’t know what’s really going on with Noora, with Vilde, with Eva... Their personal lives could be a complete shitstorm and we have no idea because the show is focusing on Sana and her situation. Some people see this as ooc or just bad writing, but I don’t see it that way at all. The show complicates the typical one-dimensional side character, but people seem to forget that once a new season starts and their faves drift into the background once again. 

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” 

This quote ^^ is basically what the whole show is about; perspective. It’s easy to judge characters based off of their surface-level behavior, but we as an audience can never really know what people are going through. It’s easy to assume, it’s easy to judge and hate, it’s much more noble to be open-minded and kind. That’s what the show is trying to teach us, and no one can see it.