#i made a bunch of radical decisions while making these

[dizzydeadeye]

animals (affectionate)

[sketching-shark]

Is it just me, but mk being the “chaos incarnate” frels out of place???

Like of all characters he gets to called that? Seriously?!

Like not even sun wukong the og anomaly in the entire existence of all celestial bodies combined who caused chaos in his wake before mk existence—and doesnt get that title??

It feels so much like lore Olympus except without the weird things that it has.

I feel so guilty but so much of the writer decision makes me hate mk existence especially w portrayal of his powers.(i was the same anon that went off about the portrayal of cultivation in lmk)

So many ppl stated it was there in the beginning but i just thought he was going to be the third celestial monkey not another stone monkey. I just dont think it was a good decision to have mk specifically be a stone monkey considering the questionability of swk involvement.

Plus it make mk be the “chosen one” status that take away who he was at the beginning. Im starting to think we should have not gotten a s4 bc of the headache it gives me.

Monkie Kid spoilers and general complaining below, so remember that "don't like don't read" goes both ways & feel free to skip.

Hmmm yeah I can see where you're coming from anon, although for me it goes a bit deeper in that I'm feeling pretty peeved that Flying Bark seems to be more and more leaning into the "uwu stupid chaos monkey" characterization for Sun Wukong. Like yeah yeah I know people balk at the mention of Journey to the West when it comes to Monkie Kid, and on a certain level I understand the changes since this is after all a cartoon for children, but one of the things that I love about og classic Sun Wukong that a lot of retellings including Monkie Kid just flat-out won't work with is the way that a lot--perhaps even the majority--of his acts of violence are very deliberate and even done for understandable reasons. Even the havoc in heaven, which seems to be the thing many people point to as an example of the Monkey King's chaotic nature, comes right after he spent almost fifty days roasting in the Eight Trigram Furnace and for him soon after being captured by a heaven that he refused to go to war with until the deities were literally breaking down his door and saying unless he surrendered for ruining one(1) festival and stealing immortality-granting treats then they were going to slaughter his entire family. So you can definitely see why, especially given Sun Wukong's awareness of his own power, he'd decide his conflict with heaven would only end, that he'd finally get respect from everyone and his family would finally be safe from everything, if he deposed the Jade Emperor and made himself the ruler of heaven. Obviously this backfires catastrophically thanks to the Buddha, but you can definitely see how this is less a case of Sun Wukong doing things because he's a chaotic monkey who loves to break stuff for shits and giggles and more because he's a ruthless warlord who cares about a select few & lives in a world where many others in positions of power act like ruthless warlords as well. It can't be forgotten, after all, that even the beloved Tang emperor is also specifically said to be someone who had countless people killed while he was forging his empire!

But going then to the massive rewrite of Xiyouji inherent in Monkie Kid, the whole "chaos!" thing just feels like yet another way for Sun Wukong & it seems MK by extension to be handed a massive L in terms of what their stories are. Like Flying Bark radically changed the havoc in heaven from SWK raging through the heavenly palace as part of a (gasp!) understandable wartime power struggle to him just stealing a bunch of stuff for himself before him & his former bros attack heaven, rather than heaven attacking them, which Macaque told him not to do but he did anyway because he was just that much of a uwu chaos monkey/thoughtless a-hole. And while I actually do like the idea of the stone SWK came from regenerating and creating even more stone monkeys, the way things have been set up it does seem to be working as another example of how Flying Bark keeps making SWK worse to make MK better in comparison, as well as likely lying the grounds for a massive confrontation between the two because yeah with his truth-seeing eyes how tf did SWK NOT know that MK was someone like him. As is, you can add that to the ever-growing pile of questions that FB refuses to answer, such as what exactly happened to the og pilgrims, why did SWK & the Demon Bull King have their battle, what happened between SWK and LEMH, why are LEMH & the Demon Bull King suddenly okay with SWK when he's the guy who they pretty clearly thought ruined their lives, how did MK go this long thinking he was just some guy instead of an ultra-powerful and destructive stone monkey, why did SWK exile himself for so long, why did the Monkey King even take on a tudi in the first place, if he did know MK was a stone monkey why didn't he say anything, etc. etc. etc. And yeah yeah I know the nature of storytelling is that information isn't revealed all the way at once, but it's been 4 entire seasons of just piling on the questions with the added bonus of everyone screaming about how much SWK sucks & is going to destroy everything (& the plot going out of it's way to prove that sentiment somewhat correct lol) so that now it feels a lot more like mystery mongering than revealing information in good time. Honestly it does put MK in this pretty sucky position too of both getting brutalized and traumatized over and over again specifically because of his connection to SWK, but also being used as this cudgel in the story to further beat in what a cringefail loser SWK is. Which is another thing that sucks, because MK is at his core a genuinely delightful and good-hearted protagonist. idk, kind of feels like he was meant to be the main character in a light-hearted show about doing your best & going on sillytime adventures with the Monkey King and is now forced to be the protagonist in an increasingly grimdark show where he routinely has to deal with the potential end of the entire world all while getting screamed at for inevitably being just as destructive as his terrible mentor :(

[thedawningofthehour]

I'm scared by the very calm description about Casey's father compared to Casey's version, If this Papa Jones is anything like IDW's Arnold Jones/Hun, then I can easily see him pretentding to act calm just to raising hell and organizing a whole radicalized group behind the scenes to go to Mutant Town and see who took his daughter.

All ending in an incident that would support Draxum's agenda.

I don't know about this, but considering Casey's parent issues I have a feeling that once he finds out the truth about Donnie, he'll go all '12 Karai and go straight for Draxum's head.

Also, I wanted to mention how messed up it is that in '03, Hun is responsible for Casey's father death, while in IDW he's Casey's dad. It's like in some dimension, Shredder is relate to the turtles, hahaha...... wait.

Come to think of it! Shredder is like the x10 grandfather of the turtles, Draxum is their creator and Big Mama is their daddy's ex, if the whole plot of the series is just one big family feud?

Wait, IDW Jones Senior is Hun?! I need to read IDW, don't I? It sounds so fucking metal.

I mean, being sober makes a big difference. Don't do drugs, kids.

Or if you do, don't do meth. For real, I have not heard a single story of someone casually doing heroin or meth and having it not ruin their whole life. This is my big sister advice. Don't touch that shit. Go ahead and smoke a joint, have a drink, whatever, just don't drive. Be smart in your drug use.

Hold up, that was 2003 Casey Jones's origin story?! How do I not remember this?

My memory of 2003 is so weird. It wasn't even my first TMNT, I was like eight when it started, so I should remember more. I'm pretty sure I stopped watching around 2005 because that's when ATLA came out and my hyperfixation shifted, and I think I missed a lot of episodes because TMNT was on right when I got home from school and my mom would go through periods where she made me do homework before anything else. (which meant that I never did anything else, my parents were really crazy and would legit have me at the table doing shit from 4-9/10 at night in the third grade) Back before streaming and I don't think they had the episodes on VHS at the video rentals, so if you missed an episode you'd have to wait until the whole show cycled through. Dark ages, truly.

I do like how everything is connected in Rise, I think that was a good narrative decision. The Krang are responsible for Yokai, Yokai nonsense resulted in the turtles, Krang made the Shredder and the Shredder caused the rise of the Hamato clan. I think that's cool and a good choice for the story.

But I do have to appreciate the absolute chaos that TMNT storylines have typically been. The ooze is usually alien in nature, (was that the case in 87? I was very young then I have an excuse for not remembering plot points) but everything else? 2012 Splinter was a whole-ass dude with his own generational trauma and conflict and literally stumbled into a secret alien meeting that had nothing to do with him. Saki just shows up wanting to kill his former best friend and winds up involved in crazy alien shit. There's a bunch of gangs in 2012 and 2003 that see all this mutant stuff happening and are like "damn that's crazy. Anyway." There's a whole-ass alien invasion that has nothing to do with any of the above. The Triceratons just show up and feel like wrecking shit. The turtles end up in space because why the fuck not? Their space dad is a robot. It's insane. And it just works.

[wenja45]

Three Houses fails to justify Edelgard and fails to prove why the war was necessary

It's crazy how many people still believe the game justifies Edelgard's war and it's also nice to see a Church institution not being shown as stupidly evil and makes siding with Rhea far more reasonable than siding with Edelgard.

It's weird how people still parrot this headcanon that Edelgard is a powerless puppet with zero agency, with no power in the Empire and the moment she tries to move against The Slithers that they'll destroy her. This never happens in both Houses or Hopes. Hell, in Hopes, Edelgard straight up tells Rhea about The Slithers and she helps her root them out, with zero strings attached (debunking the "Edelgard couldn't trust Rhea" defense that people invented prior to Hopes) and The Slithers are caught completely surprised with their pants down. They had no back up plan for this. Which leads me to believe that they had little to no leverage over Edelgard and it's mostly imaginary. This isn't like FE4 where the Loptyr Cult had real leverage and power over Arvis by being able to reveal his bloodline and completely screwing him over if he ever became a threat to them.

Edelgard's "I examined every decision and decided that war is the shortest route with the least amount of casualties" line is telling us shit, but not showing us anything. We don't get to see her thoughts or methods of determining why war is the best options, and then we see her in Hopes where she changes the Empire without violence, and still chooses to go to war.

Every "proof" I see on why Rhea wouldn't allow Edelgard to make changes short of dismantling her church can easily be explained from a different angle. Her crushing Lonato's rebellion? Self defense, as Lonato was literally out to kill her. Her attempting to kill Edelgard in the tomb? Edelgard is shown graverobbing and was revealed to be the Flame Emperor and working with the terrorists that killed a bunch of students & villagers/turned people into monsters.

We don't see the actual politics of this, where every change Edelgard tries to make is immediately blocked by Rhea. Even Rhea attempting to assassinate Count Varley is because Edelgard used him to discredit Rhea (and Hubert does the exact same thing to Empire nobles who are a political threat to Edelgard, so this is more a calling the pot and kettle black situation).

There's just a lot of assumptions made on Edelgard's part that feel like they're too much of an assumption. If Edelgard thinks Rhea is halting humanity's progress, then I would at least like for her to acknowledge/comment on King Lambert's attempt at changing the status quo. We're told that the Church keeps Fodlan isolated, but before his death, Lambert did try to open up peace treaties and talks with Duscur, a foreign country. While his ideas probably aren't as radical as Edelgard's, they are radical enough to make the Western Lords plot his assassination. But there's no acknowledgement on Edelgard's side on how she feels about it. Does she think the Church was the one that set up the assassination? Does she acknowledge that some changes can be made without Church approval? It just feels like a big shrug.

This Reddit post whilst more of a joke does leave interesting comments on how the game fails to justify Edelgard.

[justiceshot]

Inspiration

There’s been this phenomena bothering me for a long time now, and I’ve never spoken up about it because I didn’t feel like I had the authority to do so or the right words to articulate just what about it made me feel so hollow inside. I was doing meal prep today on my lunch hour and the words finally hit me. Like, “Holy shit I get why recipe blogs start with an 85 page thesis on country living before you get to the recipe” level of Hit Me.  

While I was chopping onions I noticed how I was holding my knife (badly) and an old scene from Good Eats popped up into my mind. Immediately it made me smile and I corrected the way I was holding my knife. I used to know the words to every episode of that show--and there were many seasons. I don’t anymore. I couldn’t remember the words to the scene and it made me a little sad before I moved on with the chore.

Why bring this up?

Let me dredge up some old, old tea to give you an idea of when I first noticed it acutely and how it’s changed the way I view media in general. There was a scandal years ago now. Might have been 2016 for the First Trump campaign even where donor information got out on a bunch of celebrities and Alton Brown was on that list as having donated sizably to the Republican party. This was about the time when fear at the LGBTQA community online was at an all time high. I follow a Lot of artists on Twitter and there was just this chorus of despair and dismay. Mr. Brown gave the predictable confusion as to why he was getting backlash and why his decisions should matter and all manner of very logical defensive statements as to why he should do exactly as he did. 

I’m not sure if he ever understood why an entire generation of people who grew up naming him as possibly a childhood hero or at least the reason they gave a passing shit as to why they’d care what they made for themselves suddenly turned away from him. Fast forward a few years and it’s the same story for the creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s (Scott Cawthon, I think?). And again and again there’s this tone deaf confusion from the people I and a lot of other people had kind of put on a bit of a pedestal as someone we wanted to emulate -- or at least aspire to their level of success and influence-- having an Inconvenient Truth coming to light about them. There are more. Many more, but these two were the ones that finally made me sit and think about it.

I never retweeted anyone’s comments pouring my heart out about it. I didn’t think I’d have anything valid to say. I do now.

Here’s the Finally Getting to the Recipe portion of this post.

No one is surprised to see an Influential white man support either the Republican party or values/actions that have been supported by said party as it marches ever toward regressive Authoritarian values. Not ten years ago, not fifty years ago, not now. That’s not why they lose a generation of fans.

When someone creates something they don’t get to choose who gets inspired by the content they create unless it never gets shown to the outside world. It’s how symbols get stolen by radical groups. Symbols that have to be hard fought to be reclaimed if they ever can be at all. So when a wholesome cooking show comes along that appeals to the nerdy and teaches them how to cook, or an indie horror game makes waves on the online community as being the brainchild of one person and these things get Big they’re going to reach a Lot of people. 

I’m posting this on Tumblr, almost none of y’all are cishet and even if you are chances are you’re either an Ally or at the very least not a goddamn enemy. So I’m talking to the choir when I say the older I got, the harder it was to find adults or media outlets in the mainstream who I could feel good about supporting. When news like this breaks? It breaks my heart a little bit every time and takes me by surprise. 

Not because another older white man is putting team mentality politics over the well being of his fellow Americans. But because these people through their creations and success have been able to get out of their tiny home bubbles and meet people. Either through real travel or online. They’ve gotten to expand their horizons so much to make all those waves. And when they come back to their homes and decide where the fruits of their labor should go, they show they haven’t Grown because of those experiences. 

They still choose the side that wants to take away basic human rights. 

So I’ll continue to say goodbye to a lot of childhood heroes I expect. Not because they’ve passed, but because I’ve grown more than they have as a result of their creations. It doesn’t make the lessons I’ve learned or the joy I’ve taken from their works any less valid, but it does make me look elsewhere when I want to find that next rainbow to chase.

[noandnooneelse]

having read both a declaration of the rights of magicians and a radical act of magic i just dont think theyre particularly well written. all possible criticism about the implementation of magic in history aside theyre just somewhat mediocre-to-bad. the writing style is unobtrusive at best and terrible at times but for the most part hovers around annoying (subjective opinion, of course, and so on)

but i found the fact that it swings wildly between sarcastic quips that sound like a tumblr post and/or a joss whedon film and like it wants very much to convey a specific sense of grandeur grating, and annoying, and badly written. (and i dont dislike funny ha-ha little quips in books, rol does that a lot, and they do it well, but i also dont dislike the jokes in black sails and i fucking hate comedy, so maybe the problem is that i dont think its funny, maybe the problem is that in rol it fits better into the narrative coming from a guy who has a sense of humour, instead of literally every historical character that is dragged out for the book making the same tired sarcastic jokes, maybe they just dont land for me and i dont like them bc of that, and objectively its fine, but it really bothered me)

also i just didnt like the magic system. i feel like the books arent particularly interested in magic, which is a wild choice for alternate-history-but-with-magic-books, but the magic system is barebones, while its definitely well integrated with what happens in the world it might as well be a bunch of people weilding battery-powered electric lamps, not knowing or caring how they work, nor terribly interested in magic for the sake of it. which, i dont need them to write a dissertation on how magic works in the world, but if you have a book about magic where the magic is boring then thats maybe not good, no? - especially the blood magicians. they have such a wild assortment of powers and rules, including being the only magicians who can control dragons, and it is such a cobbled together mess of things. magic doesnt seem to have any sort of cost whatsoever, and the magic that people have seems too strong to have as little impact on things as it apparently has, even with the braceletes prohibiting magic use. (i really like that one goodreads review that sums it up as "fine. these historical events happened because of magic. but clearly they happened without magic, so whats the point of this, which. yes.)

i also think the ending was quite sudden - which, fine, pitt died in 1806 so theres kind of a hard deadline there, but still, in the context of the book, it felt like the decision to have the final confrontation there and then did not feel like it made sense for the story, it felt more like hg parry had written up to 1806 and suddenly plot had to happen in order to stay consistent with history.

overall, meh. very meh.

[festeringfae]

Worrying about bills that are being introduced-- not voted on, *introduced*-- is doomscrolling.

For context: I have zero faith in the morality of the legislative system. I'm not saying this because I have any optimism about how the system works, or because it's too scary or overwhelming to face how bigoted & apathetic people are. The reason bills being "introduced" is not an accurate measure the amount of looming threat is actually based in a deeply cynical view of politicians and an acknowledgement that many people are morally reprehensible beyond comprehension.

See, while politicians base their meaningful actions based on whatever corporation is footing their bill, they do have to make sure SOME of their electorate find them at least TOLERABLE during the months they are not actively campaigning. And because most people do not exclusively keep track of which individual local politicians voted a specific way on a specific bill, when the vast majority of bills never even become close to becoming laws, the press around "introducing" a bill is a great way to make voters think you fight for their evil, bigoted desires than you actually do.

Let's use a completely made up example that's relatively politically neutral--let's say a Pennsylvania Republican introduces a bill to make it illegal to be in public in Philadelphia without wearing at least one piece of Gritty merch on game day. Is it credible to assume this bill will pass once, let alone twice, let alone with no veto from the executive branch? Fuck no! But now, a whole bunch of moderate liberals think Gritty Republican doesn't seem as disagreeable as the other conservatives, even though he has done absolutely fuck all.

A more decisive but still politically neutral example: let's say all of my constituents want a law banning pineapple on pizza, and I'm a politician who loves pineapple on pizza. If I know everyone else on the Pizza Committee loves pineapple too, I can get introduce a Bill to Ban Pineapple, get the clout for being Tough On Pineapple, and never worry that my fruity Italian pie was under threat. The bad news is that the "pineapple" that remains unbanned could be conversion therapy; the good news is, it could be trans people in sports.

"Okay but SOME bills become laws. How am I supposed to know how threatening a bill is?" Glad you asked! Google how many co-sponsors it has!

"What's a co-sponsor?" A co-sponsor is a deliberately vague official term for supporter! Representatives have the option to publicly endorse a bill; to put their name on it, essentially.

Does a bill that sounds like your worst dystopian nightmare come to life not have any cosponsors? Congratulations! That bill probably only exists because an unpopular Republican hoped it would sound enough like some evil people's utopia that when it inevitably failed he looked like a martyr instead of an unlikeable loser.

Horrible bills being INTRODUCED are a measure of how fucked the most radical ideas Republican politicians find it safe to publicly fake for clout. It's only when you get into bills PASSING that you get into reflections of how fucked LAWS are likely to become.

[earlgreytea68]

I Read West Virginia v. EPA So You Wouldn’t Have To

I told you I hadn’t forgotten these!

People have been referring to this as the climate change case, basically, shorthanding it that the Supreme Court made it more difficult for the EPA to manage climate change. I think that this is true, but it’s a case that is reasoned in such an incredibly byzantine way that the reason it’s harder for the EPA to manage climate change is because this opinion is so impossible to comprehend that the EPA no longer has any idea what it can and cannot do.  

At issue in the case is a rule that the EPA established in 2015 known as the Clean Power Plan. Under the plan, the EPA was trying to shift from coal-fired plants to natural-gas-fired plants, in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as we all know is important for climate change. This would be expensive for coal plants, of course. If they couldn’t convert to better standards, they’d have to close down. People could lose their jobs. The rate of electricity could go up. We also might save the planet, but, you know, details.  

Almost as soon as the EPA established the rule, the Supreme Court blocked it from being enforced, in a move the dissent calls “unprecedented.” And then Donald Trump was elected and we decided to destroy as much of the environment as possible so the Clean Power Plan went away. The way it went away was the EPA suddenly decided that it did not have the authority to establish the Clean Power Plan. So the EPA tossed out the Clean Power Plan in favor of a different rule that would allow coal-fired plants to happily keep puffing along.  

A bunch of states complained. They said the EPA shouldn’t have tossed out the Clean Power Plan. They said they didn’t understand why the EPA had suddenly decided it wasn’t in their authority. So they went to court. The court said basically, “What the hell is the EPA up to?” and told the EPA to get its act together. It told it to go back and reconsider the Clean Power Plan. Then Biden was elected. The EPA didn’t actually put the Clean Power Plan back into effect. Instead, it was thinking about coming up with a completely new plan. (Part of the reason for that is that the power-source-shifting kind of happened a great deal already in the years that squabbling was happening over the Clean Power Plan, so the EPA was kind of like, “…we don’t need that plan anymore because its goals have been largely accomplished.” [It wasn’t super-revolutionary, despite how the Supreme Court characterizes it.] However, we don’t learn all of this stuff about the success of the “Clean Power Plan” while it wasn’t even implemented until the dissent tells us. The majority opinion makes it sound like the Clean Power Plan is so incredibly radical it must be stopped. It’s…already done.)

Enter the Supreme Court…somewhat weirdly. In fact, the first part of the Supreme Court’s decision is dedicated entirely to justifying the fact that it’s even making this decision. Like, the whole time the Supreme Court has been WEIRD about the Clean Power Plan. GEE, I WONDER WHY. I bet it doesn’t have anything to do with a bunch of conservatives who don’t believe in climate change being on the Court, though! Basically, this entire opinion seems to be just setting up the Supreme Court as the ultimate authority in what the EPA can do to affect climate change.  

So, anyway, the first part of the decision is explaining why the Supreme Court is allowed to make this decision. The Government argues that nobody has “standing” to bring the case. Standing is a legal concept that states that cases can only be brought by people who have some kind of interest in them. That makes sense, of course! You wouldn’t think that very often people would go to court who don’t have some kind of interest in the outcome, after all. But, anyway, the court system (all of them, not just the Supreme Court) just likes to make sure that you’ve got a reason to bring this case and you’re not trying to do something sketchy. So that’s the Government’s contention here: that no one has any reason to bring this case and this is all kind of sketchy. Basically, the Government’s like, Look, the EPA has decided not to go ahead with the Clean Power Plan, so why is this Court deciding anything about the Clean Power Plan??? It’s irrelevant.  

And therein, the Court claims, lies the problem with the Government’s argument: it’s not a standing argument, it’s a mootness argument.  

………Really?????

Yup, it’s a technicality. The Government argued standing and should have argued mootness. I think. But, lest you think the Government totally messed up here, the Court says the case isn’t moot just because the EPA has said it’s not going to implement the Clean Power Plan. The Court thinks this is just a ruse and once the case is dismissed, the EPA will immediately implement the Clean Power Plan.  

It is true that sometimes courts really worry about that possibility, but other times courts are like, …well, only an idiot would come in and lie to me about this. Like, if the EPA did exactly that, I would have to assume the Supreme Court would listen to any complaint that comes from it. They’ve certainly been extremely interested in suppressing this Clean Power Plan so far. And anyway, there is literally no reason for the EPA to say it’s not going to implement the Clean Power Plan and then turn around and implement it because...THE CLEAN POWER PLAN’S TARGETS HAVE ALREADY BEEN ACHIEVED. But we don’t learn about that until the dissent. The majority makes it sound like any minute now that dastardly EPA is going to twirl its mustache and admit that it was lying the whole time and it’s going to put the plan back into effect.  

Anyway, the Court here says: no standing issue, and not moot, I can totally make this decision.  

And the decision is: The EPA did not have authority to establish the Clean Power Plan.  

Okay, a little admin law: Federal agencies have authorizing statutes that set the parameters of what they’re supposed to be doing. This is to make sure that agencies don’t run amok. Like, the Federal Communications Commission should not be passing environmental rules, and the Environmental Protection Agency should not be regulating the internet. So, there are all these rules about making sure that agencies don’t overstep their boundaries. I have to confess that I didn’t take admin law in law school, so this is just everything I’ve gleaned over the years.  

The Supreme Court says that this is a situation where what the EPA has done is so extraordinary and of such significance that it can’t possibly be the case that Congress meant for the EPA to be able to do that. This is called the “major questions” doctrine. The EPA would have had to prove to the Supreme Court, under the doctrine, that Congress had clearly intended for the EPA to be able to do something like what it tried to do with the Clean Power Plan. And the Supreme Court says, …nope.

Okay, that’s the basic outline but the rest of the opinion is so esoteric to me, I really struggle to follow what they’re saying. It’s something about how the EPA used to understand that its job was to reduce pollution by causing existing power stations to operate more cleanly, and not to reduce pollution by shifting away from existing power stations toward cleaner ones. And that means that the only way Congress has authorized the EPA to reduce pollution is by maintaining coal power plants, apparently? Because the problem is that there is nothing coal power plants could do to put them into compliance with the Clean Power Plan; the point of the plan is to reduce their existence, and that, according to the Court, goes beyond what Congress intended the EPA to be able to do. 

The problem, to the Supreme Court, is the EPA’s plan is “broad” and “forward-thinking.” And we can’t have any of that, now, can we! The Supreme Court thinks the EPA’s mission is not to reduce pollution but rather just to regulate our existing pollutors, basically. They can regulate them somewhat, but not in any way that would be too upsetting to them. When the EPA tried to reduce pollution in a way that threatened coal power-plants, that was too revolutionary for the Supreme Court to handle.  

The Supreme Court says that, in shifting the power grid, the EPA is trying to get around Congress. Congress is the entity that should make the decision to shut down coal, not the EPA. And, here, the Clean Power Plan is apparently a plan that Congress failed to pass several times. So the Court’s like, If Congress can’t get it done, the EPA’s not allowed to just get it done by itself.  

The EPA argues, though, that, under its authorizing statute, Congress has ordered it to come up with “the best system of emission reduction.” And the EPA says that it’s done just that. There’s nothing in the statute that “the best system” has to maintain existing power plants.  

The Court says, no, actually, the Clean Power Plan isn’t a system of emission reduction. 

Just because it’s a system to reduce emission does not mean it’s a system of emission reduction. I honestly don’t know what to make of that Dr. Seuss sentence. And it’s the end of the paragraph! So apparently the Court doesn’t think it needs further elucidation, Idk. Like, this is why I said that this is such a byzantine case, because I don’t really understand how the reasoning goes. The key provision is Section 111, which never seems to get quoted in full for some reason so I can only “read” it through how it gets selectively quoted. (I could go track the statute down, but I think Supreme Court opinions should be understandable without me having to track down other sources.) As best as I can figure, Section 111 tells the EPA to make “categories of stationary sources” that cause or contribute to dangerous air pollution. After making these categories, Section 111 then tells the EPA to create standards of performance for these sources of air pollution. Under Section 111, these standards should be developed by looking at the “best system of emission reduction” (which the Court shortens to BSER), which will take into account cost.  

Okay, that seems to be it. According to the Supreme Court’s actual majority opinion, the goal of Section 111 is to keep air pollution regulated by the best system: 

Alright, so, having read the statute, we can now see that the EPA decided that the best way to reduce air pollution was to shift from coal to other less harmful means of power production. But then – Section 111(d) suddenly comes into play. Again, it’s never quoted in full, but I think that it seems to allow the EPA to regulate existing power plants? Because apparently the rest of the Section 111 is only about new power plants? I think it has to do with…if we figure out that something is dangerous and we didn’t know it was dangerous, the EPA can set standards about it, but…only for new sources of power????

Honestly, I keep reading this and re-reading this and I don’t think I’m being helpful at all. This clearly requires someone who’s an actual environmental attorney who understands this stuff who can explain what’s going on here. According to the Court, the EPA has only regulated existing power plants, like, five times in the past fifty years???? How can that be???? Is that true???? I mean, I guess that’s why our environment is such a mess, because if you’re an existing power plant apparently the EPA just…leaves you alone???? Honestly, I do not understand this system as explained by the majority at all.  

But I think I’m right in my reading of it, because then the Court explains that, in the Clean Power Plan, the EPA had decided to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (I guess we didn’t do this until 2015?????? God, I have no idea, this is all unbelievable to me) and once it decided to do that, it had to set standards – different standards, apparently, for new vs. existing power plants. 

Okay, so, the EPA looked at existing coal plants and was like, You know what? These are basically as clean as we can make them. We can’t get them to be much better about carbon dioxide. And we need them to be much better, because coal plants are releasing too much carbon dioxide into the air. So, because natural gas plants would produce much less carbon dioxide, the EPA said that the existing coal plants would need to shift to natural gas plants. The next step was to then shift the natural gas plants to wind or solar. This, the EPA says, was the best system for reducing emissions.  

It would also, obviously, be very disruptive to coal plants. The expressed goal of the program was to get rid of coal power plants, period, end of story. As soon as the EPA proposed the program, as I mentioned above, the Supreme Court shut it down, then Trump got elected. The EPA under Trump decided that the Clean Power Plan went too far because shifting the electric grid away from coal wasn’t a “system for reducing emissions.” A “system for reducing emissions” could only be, like, a new design for a building? Or something? Anyway, the EPA replaced the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule, which would upgrade equipment at coal power plants to help make them more efficient but wouldn’t try to shift the electrical grid over to less polluting sources. This would not really reduce carbon dioxide at all, as the majority opinion just bluntly says.  

Now, a number of states who were worried about climate change immediately protested and wanted the Clean Power Plan back, pointing out that this new ACE Rule wasn’t going to do much of anything at all. The lower court said that it didn’t know why the EPA thought it couldn’t shift the power grid, that was definitely allowed under Section 111. Then Biden got elected. The EPA said basically, “Hang on, we’re looking things over and trying to figure out where to go next.”  

…And then the Supreme Court, for no real reason other than they want to make it very clear how much they don’t believe in climate change – or don’t believe in administrative authority – or don’t believe that agencies should act unless the Supreme Court has personally approved them – swooped in.  

And the Supreme Court said yeah, always every other time, the “best system for reducing emissions” was just helping power plants operate more cleanly. This is the first time the EPA has announced that it can change the type of power plant. And the Supreme Court thinks that’s just too much. The Supreme Court says that Congress wanted the EPA to focus on technologies to improve air pollution, and not address the causes of the air pollution themselves. The Supreme Court thinks Congress should decide whether the power grid shifts and how.  

And it’s true that what the EPA is proposing is a “system,” but that doesn’t mean it’s the right kind of system. But I…don’t understand why. Idk, you can read for yourself and see if you get farther than I do. 

I mean, I think, if I’m reading that right, that the problem is that they don’t think Congress really meant to give the EPA the ability to establish a system. Even though…that’s exactly what the statute said. The Government argues, hang on, I don’t understand then. Are you saying, Supreme Court, that the EPA can only come up with systems that keep coal power plants in existence? And the Supreme Court says, We’re not answering that question. We’re only telling you that you can’t do this.  

Apparently, the Supreme Court wants to be able to weigh in every single time the EPA makes a decision to say what it thinks about it. The dissent points out, like, this is really restrictive of the EPA, because it gives them no guidance and makes everything subject to Supreme Court review. And the majority opinion spreads its hands out innocently and says, What?! Are you accusing me of interfering with the EPA?! You’re saying that I haven’t told them a bunch of stuff they can’t do! How can that be restricting them?  

This is so disingenuous, and we know that, because we don’t allow vague laws because we know people will over-police their behavior when they’re not sure what they can and cannot do. And that’s exactly what the Supreme Court does here. It gives zero real explanation what its definition of “system” is, just that it’s not this system.  

A standard feature of the liberal dissents over the past term is that they actually talk about, like, facts, and the present day. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion mentions climate change, like, twice. Which is a feat given it’s an opinion about environmental regulations. But, anyway, the dissent is pretty straightforward: We’ve got climate change, so we implemented a statute for the EPA to deal with it using the “best system.” Ta-da! Here it is. I mean, that’s really all I need to summarize what the dissent says. It backs up its argument with lots of citations, of course, but that’s basically the argument. The dissent notes that other sections of the EPA’s authorizing statute limit what the EPA can do to just fiddling around with technologies. So, if Congress wanted to put that limit into this part of the EPA, it knew exactly how to do it. This is a rule of statutory construction, meaning that it’s generally accepted that this is how we interpret statutes: If they did it somewhere else and not here, that must mean they didn’t want it here. The dissent points out that the majority doesn’t really explain why that rule of statutory construction doesn’t apply here.  

There’s a lot of stuff in this case about this “major questions doctrine.” The majority says it’s a doctrine they have that basically lets them interpret statutes differently, ignoring the usual rules of statutory construction / interpretation (sorry, in law “construction” and “interpretation” mean the same thing and can be used basically interchangeably, which is probably confusing outside of law oops). The dissent says there’s no such thing as this major questions doctrine. I really don’t know who’s right (but my money is on the dissent). But, at any rate, the dissent just doesn’t think the EPA is doing anything wild with the Clean Power Plan: It’s trying to regulate the environment, which is its whole job. 

That’s how the majority opinion characterizes it. But the dissent says, eh, that’s not really true. It actually wouldn’t have had any impact. The Clean Power Plan never went into effect, but the industry still exceeded the target it had set, all on its own, shifting the grid away toward clean power sources. In fact, the dissent informs us that the power industry itself is on the side of the EPA. Which means that this case isn’t even about trying to make money, because surely the power industry wants that. But the power industry agrees with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan! They’re not complaining about it! This case literally just seems to be about wanting to be cruel and vicious.  

The problem with this decision is its incredible vagueness. Its main justification for its ignorance of all of the usual rules we use to handle these questions is how revolutionary the Clean Power Plan is, which the dissent says isn’t even true. But then it follows that up, after throwing all the rules out the window, with zero actual helpful guidance as to what the EPA is allowed to do. For instance, the dissent points out that the majority says the Clean Power Plan would put coal plants out of business, and that’s not allowed under Section 111. But that’s not the majority’s holding. The majority doesn’t say, “The EPA is required to keep coal plants in business.” The majority says, “The EPA can only regulate technology to help make coal power cleaner.”  

But the dissent says, what if the way the EPA regulates the technology makes it so expensive to comply with that coal power plants would be forced to shut down? Is that allowed under the majority’s reasoning? Strictly speaking, yeeeees, it’s the EPA regulating technology, just as the majority said they should. BUT the majority was offended that the EPA might put coal power plants out of business, so it seems as if they would block the EPA doing that. And they would do that by coming up with some other weird reading of the statute that would probably narrow the definition of “technology” or something. The point is: Who knows what the EPA can and cannot do anymore?  

[loving-n0t-heyting]

You've talked before abt how u used to be v scrupulous, pusillanimous, deferential in th past...Do u have any advice on making th change away from that

Tbh I still really worry about the extent to which these are tendencies I have bucked but…

What kicked me out of my cycle of deference personally was a) committing to a big life decision that required me to selfishly cheat and lie in order to see it through and b) meeting someone intelligent who was able to confirm a bunch of stuff I had been stoically accepting about the culture and authorities around me was, in fact, actually fucking insane

Each of these required the other. There were other smart ppl I knew who said (or would have said) similar things about my circumstances, but I don’t think it would have clicked the same absent the life upheaval, and without meeting the person I would not have made similarly radical shifts to my life trajectory. I also had to kind of fall into the decision by accident, in a way: I was at the time misled about how much cheating and lying it would require, and would not have made it were I apprised of it beforehand. That’s how I managed to sidestep the catch-22 of needing to undertake a cheating-conducive project to shift from LN to N and refusing to do so while being LN instead of N

But the process is long and ongoing, and it came at the cost of a long spiral of mental illness and life instability. By rights it should have permanently fucked my career, too, were it not for a combination of: academia is unusually tolerant of weirdos, I had built up a bunch of social/professional credit, and my departments are just ridiculously and undeservedly good to me

I don’t really know how to like, operationslise this. I think it’s the sort of task that can probably only be undertaken involuntarily and with external aid, bc to begin it deliberately on ones own requires some de-cuckery to begin with, which will be lacking precisely in one in need of it. (I believe theologians at least once upon a time were apt to discuss an analogous problem under the heading of “prevenient grace.”) But mb this is all somewhat helpful to you

[ghostietea]

On Tohru and Akito: a long overdue analysis

As some may know, Tohru Honda and Akito Sohma from the manga Fruits Basket are pretty much my all time favorite protagonist/antagonist pair. They just work incredibly well as thematic pieces and driving forces of the story in relation to eachother. And beyond even the surface level they have a rich and layered goldmine of parallels that make them fascinating to think about. While it may make many a newbie raise an eyebrow, I think this is a fact that is to some level pretty widely acknowledged in the fandom proper. However, there is another level of their relationship that is often mostly left out of analytical conversations about them and their parallels: their eventual friendship. Something which, partly due to screentime, is often somewhat simplified down and misinterpreted. Which I think is a shame because, when you look at it, their eleventh hour friendship is deeply interwoven with their parallels and the very thematics and ending of the story. So then, what’s really going on with the girls that stand as part of the thematic core of Furuba? Beyond (most of, true analytical objectivity is impossible in interpretation) my personal sentimental feelings, let’s talk Akito and Tohru: their parallels, relationship, and role in the story overal. Read more present, this is going to be a long one but I hope you stick around 😊

One facet of Akito and Tohru’s role in relationship to eachother that I think is both interesting and imperative to understanding their purpose is their nature as eachother’s foils, especially their parallels. See, the two girls are both opposite and the same. Takaya sets them up as foils before we even properly meet Akito, as you can see in these panels: 

However, their foil relationship becomes a lot more intriguing once their similarities become more apparent later in the story. Just think about it: two girls with boy’s names whose fathers died when they were young, leaving them alone with their mothers, who both developed behavior that, according to the environment that they grew up in, would keep them from being abandoned. Akito, coming from the cultish Sohma clan where she was treated as a God to the point that she thinks she can do no wrong and has tied all of her self worth to the role, plays the part of a male ruler who must uphold tradition and keep the zodiac with her by any means. Akito is terrified of being abandoned, especially since she has no idea how to have relationships outside of the context of the bond, only exacerbated by the fact that Ren, one of the only people that openly questions her role, has constantly told her that she’s useless and will be abandoned. This is something that informs all of her (many, terrible) decisions and leads her to try desperately to keep the curse together, something which puts her in direct conflict with Tohru, who actually wants the curse broken in part so that she won’t be abandoned. Tohru may not be as obvious with her abandonment issues as miss screeches-at-people-not-to-leave-her, but they still inform a good deal of her character. Like Akito, she develops behavior around the time of her father’s passing to try to keep herself from being abandoned, mirroring her father’s proper speech because she was worried that she was losing Kyoko.  But, as she grew older in her much warmer environment, Tohru turned to kindness instead of fear to capture others, maintaining a facade of extreme positivity, politeness, and determination so as to not bother anyone. And, while she hides it, Tohru just gets worse after losing her mother. She becomes dedicated to preserving her feelings about her mother as is, refusing to move on much as Akito also refuses to move on from the curse and what her father wanted. Then comes the beach house reveal, where Tohru learns that Akito plans to take away her new family, even locking up the one most precious to her. Tohru tells herself that she’s going to break the curse for the freedom of the zodiac and cat, but she is also, in a way, doing it to keep herself from being abandoned. Later this feeling changes to become more focused on preventing the loss of Kyo himself, something which Tohru doesn’t want to admit. Tohru is a truly good and kind person and does want to help, yes, but also some part of her is doing this to keep the ones she loves by her side, understandably as she is a teen that recently lost the person she revolved her whole life around. But it comes to a point that you have to realize: Akito and Tohru are both motivated by the same thing, they just present it in wildly different ways. I don’t think that I have to explain how exactly their behavior foils eachother, the more worldly and modern Tohru acting on radical kindness and acceptance and thinking she deserves nothing while the sheltered, traditional Akito uses manipulation and fear to get what she thinks she is entitled to. It’s very apparent, but just gets even spicier in the context of how similar they are. Another parallel is in Tohru’s mom picture vs Akito’s father box, both relics of their dead and favorite parent that they are extremely protective of and treat almost like it is their deceased parent. Early in the series Tohru is seen carrying around a photo of her mom which she talks to, something which seems pretty harmless, until we consider how terrified she is every time she thinks she’s lost it, even going as far as to refer to it as if it were her mother.  Notably, it barely shows up in the second half of the series, as she reluctantly drifts away from her mom and towards Kyo. In this later part of the series, we are introduced to Akito’s box, which she (semi, it’s complicated) thinks contains her father’s soul. Akito’s box is shown in a much darker light, from how the reveal of what it us to her is framed to how cruelly she reacts when it’s being stolen. Akito’s box is to Tohru’s photo what their owners narratively are to eachother: a dark mirror.

Ok, and now for the reason that I think it was important to bring all these parallels up first: because as you cannot understand Tohru and Akito as enemies without understanding their differences, you cannot understand them as friends without knowing their similarities. While it is easy to write off Tohru reaching out to Akito as just another case of Tohru being Tohru, that does a disservice to the full picture. I’ve seen around in the fandom that a good deal of people seem to think Tohru trying to befriend her is just Tohru being overly kind and forgiving, and this is something I think ties back a bit to some early fandom misconceptions about Tohru. Bear with me for a second, this is going to be a bit of a tangent but it ties back. It’s died down some now, but in the early Furuba fandom it was very common to just think of Tohru as a pretty flat nice girl doormat character, which besides misogyny is probably partially the fault of the 01 anime, which cuts off before we get to see more of Tohru’s insecurities and tones down what we do see (also, in the case of the relationship I’m talking about, 01 ads in that God awful end confrontation that I despise for being everything that I’m about to argue the ACTUAL confrontation that I like is not). Manga Tohru is a very subtle character, she hides a lot of her feelings behind a perpetually happy front which doesn’t start to let slip until later. And, since it’s later on in the manga which went unadapted for years and is mixed in with a bunch of crazy stuff, I think Tohru’s quiet development is often somewhat overlooked. For example, early series Tohru is very well known for the speeches she gives to the zodiac when she first meets them, speeches that, importantly, always tie back to things that her mom said. Tohru’s worldview back then revolved completely around Kyoko, so it’s probably a bit of a thing that in the later story, when Tohru draws ever nearer to the realization that she must move on, she does not give her mom speeches anymore? As opposed to the early story, when it was pretty much back to back character intros, in the late story Tohru notably only gets to befriend two new Sohmas: Isuzu and Akito. Notably, she doesn’t quote her mom either time, these are both people that she can relate to on some of her more hidden issues, and she shows a more personal side of her emotions in her turning point confrontations with them than she did earlier. It is especially important to realize that, in her confrontation on the cliff, Tohru is deciding that she is willing to go against her mom. Early series Tohru was a front anyways, and is a different Tohru from the one that finally gets through to Akito. I was using it as an example, but the evolution of Tohru’s befriending confrontations will be important later. Furthermore, there is the perception of Tohru as a doormat. Listen, Tohru may be very kind and polite, but one of her defining characteristics is being very determined and strong willed when need be. This is something that is especially relevant to her interactions with Akito. From the first meeting outside the school, Tohru knows to be wary of Akito and even breaks politeness and shoves her when she senses that Akito is making Yuki uncomfortable. This sets up immediately that Tohru can and will stand up to Akito. This is driven in even farther at the beach house, when Tohru, after again physically getting between Akito and a zodiac, decides that she will directly go against all of the Sohma family’s centuries of tradition and Akito herself to break the curse.  There’s even a cute moment when, upon remembering Akito telling her not to, Tohru just decides to meddle even harder. Tohru, while polite about it, does not like Akito and puts herself in direct opposition to her. Tohru does not originally want to be Akito’s friend, or to have anything to do with her. The cliff scene is not just Tohru befriending someone because she just is over forgiving and loves everyone (an argument can be made that she still goes to easy on Akito, but it’s in line with how the narrative treats her too so that’s another conversation), there was a specific reason both that she chose to try to get through to Akito and that it actually worked. Up until their big confrontation, Tohru still thinks of Akito as a threat, and while she has gotten more information that shakes up her view of Akito, she still doesn’t understand her well enough to see her as much more than an obstacle. Then Akito barges into her yard when she’s just been rejected, crying and confessing how terrified she is of being abandoned, of things changing, and Tohru just goes still, eyes wide in shock. And she realizes: her and Akito have been afraid of the same thing the whole time.  This is when Tohru decides to try to reach out to her. Because Tohru, on a deep level, sees Akito because of their similarities.  She calls Akito out on her insecurities, and Akito reacts badly, accusing Tohru of being “dirty” and trying to condescend.  Tohru partially rebukes this, not trying to hold herself above Akito as pure and righteous, but instead confessing her own fears of abandonment and change in an attempt to empathize with Akito.

At this part of the story, Tohru is fully coming into the realization that, in order to live her life, she needs to stop clinging to this idea of an “unchanging” relationship with her mom, something that scares her quite a bit. She realizes that, while she saw the flaws in Akito’s “eternity” and tried to destroy it, she had not been as perceptive with herself, clinging to that same notion. Tohru is an incredibly repressed character, especially in regards to emotions she thinks of as “dirty,” and she is showing a remarkable amount of vulnerability in this scene. Another thing to note about Tohru is that she, in her immense repression, will often process her own issues through other people. We see this throughout the story, from her showing grief over her mom by crying for Momiji and his mom to her projecting her fear of losing Kyo onto Kureno and Arisa. So then, it’s quite something to consider that the last Sohma she befriends is the one most emblematic of the issues she keeps locked up tightest? That as she’s speaking to her she’s deciding to move forward from her own fears? In a way, could accepting Akito be a symbol of Tohru accepting what she thinks are the darker parts of herself? Akito is also coming to a realization about moving on, acknowledging that the zodiac curse is coming to an end and that everything she believes is a lie, and she is absolutely distraught about it. But Tohru, in a way that nobody else does, understands Akito, and wants Akito to be her friend. Not out of pity or reverence, but a desire for solidarity. And this is the very reason why Tohru was actually able to get through to Akito. As we see with Kureno before he gets stabbed and Momiji at the beach house and when his curse breaks, it’s not like people haven’t kindly tried to get through to her before.

Of course, the reason it worked for Tohru can also be partially chalked up to the fact that Akito herself has come a long ways in personal realizations to the point that there’s just some things she can’t deny anymore, but that’s not all. Akito tends to react very negatively to what she sees as condescension, she thinks people want to try to pick her apart and see how she ticks just so they can look down on her, so they can see her as lesser. She thinks Tohru is trying to condescend too at first, especially since she perceives Tohru as this holier than thou saint wannabe. Fascinatingly, Akito’s view of Tohru is incredibly similar to that early fandom idea of Tohru as an angelic mary sue, and she hates her for it. She thinks that Tohru is trying to be like this and is seen as such, and that she (Akito) is the only who can see that Tohru is wrong somehow.

But Tohru rejects this notion of a pure her that both the fandom and her early self tried to project, presenting herself as flawed and human and purposefully trying to not put herself on a pedestal above Akito. She makes it very clear that she’s not trying to condescend, she is the same way (well, sorta) and she gets it. Notably, after this point Akito doesn’t accuse her of looking down on her, instead freaking out temporarily because of how much Tohru called her out before venting about her fears to her. And, while, partially due to outside circumstances, it does take Akito a bit longer to accept her offer of friendship, she legitimately manages to get through to her very soon after this point. If Tohru had tried one of her early series mom speeches on Akito, or just tried to blindly accept her without understanding, it would not have worked. Akito would have just written it off or reacted badly and left it there. But because Tohru tried to befriend Akito out of understanding as an equal it actually worked. You can’t separate Akito and Tohru’s parallels and their eventual friendship because one aspect is integral to the other.

A connected aspect of their relationship that I see talked of very little but is actually a pretty strong undercurrent is that of equality and power. To explain this, we have to look at Akito for a bit. Throughout her life, pretty much everyone around Akito has either put her on a pedestal or looked down on her. This is something that not only greatly damaged the way she thinks of herself and others, but has given her an intensely hierarchical view of relationships. We even see this notion clearly take form for her in the black paint scene, where she decides that Yuki, who she’d previously seen as the same as her, has to be lesser or else she will become useless.  From the moment Akito was born she was “God,” an existence above everyone else. Even her own father only seems to give her affection for being God, and when he dies and she takes his place as the head of the family she is just elevated even farther at an extremely young age. The only people (she thinks) she’s close to are the zodiac, and the curse itself puts an inherent power dynamic into that relationship that can only be overcome with its undoing. Akito clings to her power, to her rank in the hierarchy, all the while the very thing she desperately upholds has made her the real outsider. Akito, who does everything in the name of belonging, was always alone from the start. As Tohru points out, as long as she is above the group she cannot be a part of it.

Simultaneously, and almost contradictory to the pedestalization and power dynamic aspect, Akito is extensively coddled and pitied. A lot of the older adults around her treat her almost like a crotchety, spoiled child. A child who is coddled to the point of never being given any reprimand or instruction on just how to behave like a functional human being until things have gone far too far. Then you have cases like Kureno, who seems to still see Akito like a kid, pretty much just coddles her as a job, and only stays because he pities her. This leads to a strange dual sided dynamic in multiple cases, where Akito is seen as someone’s better and has more power but is also being looked down upon in a way too. Akito has never in her life been seen and treated as an equal, so it’s pretty important when it is made clear that Tohru tries to befriend her as an equal. After all this time, Tohru, an outsider that is not under Akito’s control, who can hold her ground in a challenge against her, is finally the one to meet her on the same level. There’s this page that I adore that symbolizes this idea really nicely. It opens on a panel of Akito sitting a distance away from the zodiac who are all having fun together, a motif we’ve already seen a few times, but this time Tohru sits down right next to her.

This page comes at a critical moment, when Tohru is offering her hand in friendship to Tohru, it’s Akito realization of what Tohru is trying to do. Later on, we get Akito narrating what this page was showing, which I think I just need to put in:

We also see a bit of their conversation after they reunite in the hospital later, where Tohru again denies that she is better than Akito. Now, I think both the Tokyopop and Yen Press translations of this scene are a bit weird, the Tokyopop version uses the word “pretty” (confusing) while the Yen Press uses “kind” (don’t think that’s the best word). However one time I saw like a Malaysian english release in the half price books that used “pretty on the inside” and I like that best so I’ll just pretend that’s it.

I think this scene is interesting because it could seem like they’re just talking about morality but that’s not it. This is, once again, Tohru pretty explicitly trying to stop the creation of any sort of hierarchy between her and Akito. It’s not about right or wrong, Tohru know very well that Akito’s done things wrong and actively worked to stop her, it’s about not wanting them to be put on some sort of different rank based on morality and Tohru understanding Akito enough to empathize with the fact that (wrong or no) Akito was really hurt by Tohru and they won’t get anywhere if they don’t acknowledge that. Furthermore, I’ve already talked a bit about it already, but I think the way that Tohru asserts that she gets what Akito’s feeling and thinks she herself is “dirty” during their confrontation is relevant here too. She is, again, presenting herself as someone on the same level who understands Akito and is not being nice out of pity. This then leads to the page I talked about before which is again, Akito realizing this! This is a huge moment for her, someone who has had all of her relationships messed up by inequality and has no idea how to have a normal relationship, who is having a breakdown because she thinks that because of this it’s too late for anyone to love her, to have someone who understands her and wants to meet her on the same level. Even if she tries to deny it and shift blame, at this point Akito has realized that the zodiac bond is not what she thought and that she has been acting horribly. The groundwork is already there for Akito to have a change of heart, especially considering that a lot of her horribleness stems from legitimate extreme ignorance and her obsession with the bond so once she’s snapped out of that… The main thing that’s holding her back past that is that she’s panicking and cannot see a way forward. So then when there’s someone who actually gets where she’s coming from instead of just tolerating her and is offering her the sort of friendship that she’s never gotten to have of course she’d go for it! Tohru Honda has proven Akito wrong in ever way and, in the end, she even proves her wrong on her greatest fear: that she can only be wanted because she’s God. Because of Akito’s specific issues, nothing could have been more powerful for her than someone coming to her as an equal. Again, the piece about why Tohru could get through to her. It just wouldn’t be the same if Tohru didn’t have a reason to want Akito around or if she somehow saw Akito as below her, the very core of their relationship is the destruction of hierarchies. From the beginning Tohru has been trying to destroy the hierarchy of the zodiac, and when it comes down to it she does not take Akito’s spot at the top, but decides to stand beside her and the zodiac instead. Early in the series we see Akito trying to have some power over Tohru through fear, but when the time comes and Akito is pretty much defeated Tohru does not take power as the victor, hoping that Akito joins her instead of being somehow defeated. And at the end of it all this works, and Akito dissolves the zodiac and with it most of her power and her godhood of her own accord. 

Despite their relative lack of page time, Tohru and Akito’s relationship has always been something that I come back to. Sure, a lot of that is just sentiment as they meant a lot to me when I was younger, but I think there’s something there. They work amazingly as protagonist and antagonist, contrasting nicely and working as symbols of both sides of the thematic conflict. There’s a palpable tension to their early interactions that makes you both scared and interested to see what happens when these two inevitably have to go head to head. But then, as the story goes on, it seems more and more like they are a tragedy, so similar yet on different sides of the story, fated to have one of them stuck with an unhappy ending brought on by the other.

But, even as dark as it gets, that wouldn’t really be Fruits Basket, would it? In the end, Tohru and Akito’s similarities win out, not their differences. I think it would have been so easy to just make this a story where the sweet heroine “saves” the villain just because, but that is so blatantly not what’s going on. Tohru simply sees herself in Akito, she’s not trying to somehow fix her and nor should she have to, she just wants to be her friend. And then the two manage to overcome their driving fear of moving on, forging new bonds and inspired by their interaction with the other. It’s not like Tohru somehow fixes Akito’s problems, Akito has to do things herself and in fact independence is a big theme of her endgame arc. Tohru simply offered her friendship, and that was enough. There’s a distinction to be made between how Tohru inspires Akito and Tohru somehow “saving” her, because Akito very much has to learn to save herself in the end after a lifetime of pushing her issues onto others. And, as a side note, all this is sort of why it bugs me when people act like Tohru would be like a mom to Akito. First off, Tohru shouldn’t have to be the mom to everyone. And, kind as she is, Tohru is also not a Kureno, she sees and interacts with Akito in a completely different way and their relationships with Akito are one of the big points were Tohru and Kureno differ. Second off, Akito has spent her life coddled and clinging onto anything that she can hold onto as a resemblance of parental affection to a toxic degree. Part of her arc is that she needs to grow out of this, become more independent, and have more balanced relationships. Akito at this point does not want or need to make a mommy figure out of one of her peers, and doing so may in fact be regressive. Sure, she will definitely need a level of guidance going forward, but it would be more beneficial for her to learn from example and under more of a friendly, balanced context coming from multiple people, not one person holding her hand. For all the reasons I’ve gone over in this entire post, I think it is much more meaningful for Akito to have Tohru as what she was canonically presented as in text: someone who sees her as an equal. The whole point of their relationship is, again, the defiance of hierarchies, something which I think is often sorely overlooked even though it is very openly there in text. And that, in part, is why I think their relationship is so powerful to me. Beyond hero and villain, right or wrong, or any story roles, it’s about two girls finding solidarity and friendship on a very personal, human level. This is Akito for the first time being seen not as this distant, untouchable male deity or some pitiful being, but as a flawed, hurt human girl who is nonetheless capable of change and being loved. This is Tohru coming out of hiding, presenting her flawed, terrified human self to someone she saw as an enemy. Fruits basket is, in part, a story about friendship and defeating systems of power and abuse. Even in a messy third act that muddles its themes at times by weighing character endings too heavily on het romantic love, especially in regards to the women (Hello Rin, Machi, Uo, ect.), Tohru and Akito stand out as a friendship that is given a huge amount of narrative weight. It just feels nice that, in a story that often focused on the power of relationships between women only to ditch all that and focus primarily on their relationships with men, these two girls are one of the driving forces of the endgame. The curse didn’t get broken by romantic love, but by the friendships everyone made along the way, including Tohru and Akito. Tohru has gotten it to this point, and now Akito just needs to bring it to a close and finally end things. At the very beggining, before this all started, all the cat wanted was for the God was to move forward and live as a person among the humans, and, finally, a long time later that wish was granted. The tale of the zodiac gets its happy ending not by a villain being defeated, but by the power of friendship and solidarity between women.

[ex-terf-anti-terf]

Hey,

Firstly don’t know how long its been but congrats on getting out of the hate group ✨ I recently came across two trans men TERFs and one said they had a trans TERF boyfriend. The most concerning thing is they are studying to work in the medical industry.

They were in favour of trans man entering mans spaces but that they shouldn’t enter gay mans spaces (both identified as lesbian). I get the idea of trying to save yourself and deaming the rest. Though they said their was a group of GC trans man. Which is very scary and not pog do you know if this is actually true or if the people I came across during my info hunt on trans inclusive radical feminism just in niche groups?

I also read about ex-trans people (kind of like you lol) being TERFs for a while too. Also since their sadly studying to become doctors how do you think harm reduction can happen or if it can happen?

That's... wow.

I mean, yes. There are unfortunately quite a few transmasc FITs, and fewer (though still far too many) transfem ones.

I wonder how people like that would feel about trans women being in women's spaces. If they were not in support of that, I'd have to wonder why. While transmascs are not directly the oppressors of transfems (nor are transfems directly the oppressors of transmascs) there are examples of lateral damage that they can do to each other, and that would be one. Unfortunately, trans men are very capable of perpetuating transmisogyny.

There are also detransitioners and desisters (which are not the same thing, even though many gender critical desisters call themselves detransitioners) who get sucked into the GC hellhole. It's typically worse for the detransitioners, I think, because they feel like they've irreparably fucked their bodies and now they're stuck with this dysphoria for the rest of their lives.

Which always makes me wanna go "HOW THE FUCK DO YOU THINK TRANS PEOPLE FEEL???" Like, it's 100 times worse for dysphoric trans folk than for reverse dysphoric detransitioners because we didn't ask for it. We didn't get a choice!!! It wasn't voluntary, we were just stuck with this!!!

And then the detransitioners decide that obviously the solution to that is to remove our access to the one thing that will make us NOT feel the way they feel, just because they made a decision they weren't prepared for and/or had shitty doctors.

Sorry for the rant, apparently I'm ragey today. I don't really know how harm reduction could be implemented aside from like, a bunch of federal policy changes. I'm sorry.

[xiyao-feels]

A Comparison of the Stairs Dialogue in CQL vs MDZS, Pt 1

(Pt 2)

A few introductory notes:

-This wasn't intended to be a big project post; I was just doing the comparison because I thought it was interesting. As I went I thought other people would probably find it interesting too, and it would be worth having it all written down, so I did turn it into a post after all. But I'm not really arguing any central point or anything; I'm really just comparing the dialogue and writing down my thoughts as I go.

-This also of course means my usual pro-JGY and consequently very annoyed at NMJ biases are on display. As ever, if this will upset you, please don't read!!

-This is a comparison of the text of the dialogue, not everything about their interaction; I don't necessarily note it if e.g. the acting doesn't match the dialogue tags in MDZS, or what have you.

-To do a proper comparison, you really need to compare the Chinese text, not the English translation; this is what I'm doing, though of course I've included the English from the Youtube subs, for CQL, and from the Exiled Rebels translation for MDZS. (For the Youtube subs I recorded "Yao" as A-Yao and used da-ge instead of Big brother when 大哥 was used and er-ge when 二哥 was used, just because this is my habit when copying down the dialogue.)

-Speaking of which: for MDZS, I just copied from the text, but for the CQL dialogue both English and Chinese I copied down the subs. I don't actually speak Chinese, but fortunately CQL on Youtube has the Chinese subs as well; my reading level in Chinese is also completely terrible, but I can often recognize most or many of the characters, and what I can't I can find by identifying radicals or drawing it in a handwriting recognition thing, etc. I did my best to be careful and thorough, and I also checked it against the Chinese subs I downloaded from Netflix, but there may still be some errors, fair warning. This also means that, unlike the Chinese from MDZS, the CQL Chinese dialogue isn't punctuated beyond spacing it out as it appeared on the screen; this is because the Chinese subs aren't punctuated, and I am certainly not going to make that judgement myself.

-The characters that differ in a given line between the MDZS and CQL versions are bolded, to help make the difference visually clear.

With that aside, the comparison is below the cut.

CQL  

LXC: 阿瑶 大哥他心性不比从前 你千万不要再惹怒他了 他最近深受刀灵侵扰之苦 若不是你日日给他弹清心音的话 恐怕他 A-Yao. Da-ge's temperament is getting worse. Don't ever displease him again. He's been subject to the harassment of his blade lately. If you hadn't been playing Cleansing Music for him everyday, I'm afraid he'd be…  

MDZS  

LXC: 只是一时气愤，口不择言罢了。大哥现在心性不比从前， 你千万不要再惹怒他了。他最近深受刀灵侵扰之苦， 怀桑又和他争吵置气，到今天还没和好。 His anger was simply too great for him to have thought before speaking. Brother’s temper cannot compare to how it was in the past. You must not provoke him again. These past few days, he has been deeply troubled by the saber spirit, and HuaiSang has argued with him again. They still have not made up yet, even today.

I'm comparing the CQL dialogue to the equivalent dialogue in MDZS, but of course in MDZS this exchange isn't before the stairs in ch 49; rather it's part of a broader conversation NMJ hears before he bursts in to try and kill JGY on the spot, because he doesn't like how JGY is talking to LXC about him, in ch 50. (Note, incidentally, how obviously impossible this renders the task of not displeasing da-ge, even aside from his not being satisfied with anything less than Xue Yang's head, as JGY and LXC were having a private conversation at the time.) The mention of NMJ and NHS' falling out is removed, replaced with the information that JGY has been playing to MMJ "every day"; the reference to NMJ calling JGY son of a whore is of course removed, since it hasn't happened yet. One effect of this relocation is on our understanding of LXC's injunction not to "displease him again/provoke him again" (再惹怒他 in both). In MDZS, this seems to refer to the stairs incident where JGY talked back (as the text notes, unusually); here perhaps it might be read as suggesting that JGY somehow has a habit of avoidably displeasing NMJ, which I think is absurd.

However, that's not the only possible interpretation. Although CQL doesn't quite give us the scene mentioned in chapter 30, where NMJ shows up and lectures JGS into announcing XY would be executed (…and heaps abuse on JGY when he tries to intervene, terrifying JGY sufficiently that he hides behind LXC—observe that in the sentence immediately prior to this we are also told that NMJ had unsheathed his sabre), in episode 35 we are told that all the clans wanted to punish XY except for JGS, and given a brief flashback to JGS yelling. Therefore, I think, it's not unreasonable to assume that something like the scene described in ch 30 occurred in CQL. Perhaps LXC is referring to this, although of course JGY would still be held between the fatal opposition of NMJ's and his father's wishes.

It's also relevant of course that in removing the surrounding context, CQL removes the context of the conversation of JGY expressing his pain about how NMJ treats him, and LXC replying, and rather turns it into an apparently unprompted expression of concern on LXC's part.

CQL  

NMJ: 金光瑶 Jin Guangyao!   

MDZS  

-

It's worth noting, I think, that in MDZS NMJ never refers to JGY as "Jin Guangyao" throughout the entire stairs encounter. 

CQL  

LXC: 大哥 怎么了 Da-ge, what's wrong?   

MDZS  

LXC: 大哥 Da-ge?

CQL  

NMJ: 你别动 你出来 (to LXC) Don't move. (to JGY) Come out. 

MDZS  

NMJ: 你别动 你出来 (to LXC) Don't move. (To JGY) Come out.  

CQL  

JGY: 二哥 劳烦你帮我再过一眼 百花宴贵宾的名单 我先去和大哥说点私事 回头再请你讲解 Er-ge, please check the list of guests of the Floral Banquet for me. I need to talk some private affairs with da-ge. I'll explain it to you later.  

MDZS  

JGY: 二哥劳烦你再帮我理一理这条，我先去和大哥说点私事，回头再请你讲解 Brother, could you please help me go through this one? I have some private matters to discuss with our eldest brother. I’ll have to ask for your explanation at a later time. 

Interestingly the exact same sentence in the Chinese, 回头再请你讲解, is translated in CQL as JGY's promise to explain later—where the implication seems to be he'll explain about what he's discussing with NMJ, perhaps?—and in MDZS as JGY's intention to ask /LXC/ to explain (the work he's going over in JGY's absence) later. In MDZS, of course, they're working on the watchtowers…while in CQL host with the most LXC is /helping JGY put his banquet guest lists together/, omg. I wish they'd kept more about the watchtowers but I admit I enjoy this as well. They plan parties together!

In both CQL and MDZS NMJ tries to hit JGY after they are outside and before further words are exchanged.

CQL  

JGY: 大哥 何必如此 有话好说 Da-ge. Why act like this? We can talk nicely, can't we?   

MDZS  

JGY: 大哥，何必如此，有话好说。 Brother, why the rage? Let’s calm down. 

CQL  

NMJ: 薛洋呢 Where is Xue Yang?   

MDZS  

NMJ: 薛洋呢 Where's Xue Yang? 

CQL  

JGY: 他已被关入地牢 终身不释 He's been shut up in the dungeon, for life time.   

MDZS  

JGY: 他已被关入地牢，终身不释…… He’s already been locked inside the dungeon, imprisoned for life… 

CQL  

NMJ: 我当年在不净世是怎么跟你说的 我要他血债血偿 你却给他来个终身不释 What did I tell you in the Yet Clean Realm at that time? I want him to pay his killing debts. You now give him life imprisonment.   

MDZS  

NMJ: 当初你在我面前是怎么说的 (JGY is silent) 我要他血债血偿，你却给他个终身不释？ What did you say to me back then? (JGY is silent) I wanted him to pay blood with blood, yet you have him imprisoned for life? 

"What did you say to me back then" is interesting; we're not actually given a specific time or a specific thing said, which means we must speculate. An obvious candidate for 'back then' would be the ch 30 scene previously mentioned, when NMJ convinces the Jin to announce that they'll execute XY. Yet the Jin giving in on executing XY seems to come /after/ JGY is sufficiently frightened by NMJ that he hides behind LXC, "not daring to say anything else." NMJ is perhaps conflating JGY with JGY's father, or perhaps assigning to JGY an authority he does not in fact possess, as though JGY and not JGS was the person who made decisions for the Jin.

In CQL of course NMJ takes the position that /Jin Guangyao/ owes him obedience because Meng Yao used to be NMJ's servant—not even just that, but that Jin Guangyao must display obedience to orders NMJ gave several years ago, when JGY was MY. This is absurd and insulting, and even before NMJ actually calls him Meng Yao it demonstrates that NMJ does not actually recognize JGY's legitimacy /as/ Jin Guangyao. Honestly, I don't have the words.

CQL  

JGY: 只要他受到惩罚 无法再犯 终身不释和血债血偿也并无 As long as he's punished, and can't recommit crimes, I can't see the difference between life imprisonment and death sentence.    

MDZS  

JGY: 只要他受到惩罚，无法再犯，终身不释与血债血偿也并无…… As long as he receives his punishment and can’t offend again, perhaps paying blood with blood and being imprisoned for life is… 

CQL  

NMJ: 我问你 当年在不净世 究竟是谁放走了薛洋 是我的总领 还是你 Tell me. When we were at Yet Clean Realm, who on earth released Xue Yang? It was my captain, or you?   

MDZS  

NMJ: 你举荐的好客卿，做出的好事情！事到如今你还敢袒护他！ The good things that the good guest cultivator whom you recommended has done! Things are already like this and you still dare defend him! 

Imho, this gets to a central fault in the CQL XY storyline—why the heck is NMJ trying to have XY killed for the Chang killings, instead of for collaborating with the Wen and/or for killing a bunch of his men??????

I tend to put that aside because it doesn't… actually… make any sense at all, especially since CQL NMJ is quite clearly still preoccupied with XY's old crimes.

CQL  

JGY: 我没有 我为什么要放走他 不过当初是当初 现在常萍已经翻供 没有任何明确证据证明 薛洋屠杀了常氏五十人 而我父亲又一定要留下这个人 It wasn't me. Why should I let him go? But the past is in the past, Chang Ping had withdrawn his confession. No certain evidence can prove that Xue Yang had massacred 50 people of Chang clan. And my father insists on keeping him alive.   

MDZS  

JGY: 我没有袒护他，栎阳常氏那件事我也很震惊，我怎会料到薛洋会杀了人全家五十多口人？可我父亲一定要留着这个人…… I didn’t defend him. I was also shocked by the case of the Changyang Yue Sect. How could I have known that Xue Yang would kill more than fifty people? But my father was set on keeping him… 

So—I'm sorry, that in CQL Chang Ping has already withdrawn his testimony makes this completely absurd. In MDZS, that doesn't happen until /after/ NMJ's death, after the Jin have been hounding him! In CQL, the situation appears to be that they have officially condemned him to the dungeons for life /purely based on NMJ's pressure/, with no actual clear evidence at all—and note that unlike in MDZS, where the Chang killings happened like a month beforehand and XXC presents the evidence that it was XY to the assembled clans, in CQL the killings happened /several years ago before a war/ and Songxiao didn't present any evidence it was XY to anyone else at the time that we saw. I mean, they didn't need to because at the time he confessed when challenged,* but it's not at all clear to me what if any evidence is left! And—in this situation where the one surviving victim is publically saying it wasn't XY, and they're /still officially locking him up for life on NMJ's say-so/—NMJ thinks that JGY should nevertheless go and execute XY.

*To an audience that if I am not misremembering included JC, who was alive and a sect leader independent from NMJ and could presumably have been asked to testify at the trial. This doesn't seem to ever be mentioned, however. Again, the CQL XY subplot doesn't make a huge amount of sense.

I can only guess that they moved up the Chang Ping revokes his testimony timeline to emphasize Jin power? But to me it has almost the opposite effect, since if they're still locking XY up on NMJ's say-so it rather suggests /NMJ's/ power; and more to the point it makes NMJ's already frankly unreasonable demand completely and ludicrously absurd.

CQL  

NMJ: 为什么 他身上还有一块阴铁你不知道吗 你把他重新招揽回来 究竟是为了什么你自己心里清楚 Why? Don't you know he's got a shard of Yin Iron on him? You're trying to reclaim him now. I can clearly see what you have in mind.   

MDZS  

NMJ: 震惊？招揽他的是谁？举荐他的是谁？重用他的是谁？少拿你父亲当幌子，薛洋在干什么，你会不知道吗？！ Shocked? Who was the one that invited him? Who was the one that recommended him? Who was the one that regarded him highly? Don’t use your father as excuse. How could you not have known what Xue Yang was doing?! 

English of course doesn't distinguish between plural and singular second-person, but I think it's worth noting that NMJ is using singular here, 你, and not plural. This is true in both CQL and MDZS. In MDZS, I think the problem is that, although he is in fact referring to things JGY individually did, he refuses to accept the truth of JGY's position: that whatever JGY knew or did not know, he can't actually afford to kill XY if that's not what JGS wants. In CQL, by contrast, the problem is that he's locating the desire to obtain the Yin Iron specifically in JGY, despite JGS'…well, JGS' entire everything.

CQL  

JGY: 大哥 真的是我父亲的命令 我无法拒绝 你现在要我处置薛洋 我该怎么去跟他交代 Da-ge, this is really my father's order. I couldn't deny. If you want me to execute Xue Yang now, in which way can I report this to him?    

MDZS  

JGY: 大哥，真的是我父亲的命令。我没法拒绝。你现在要我处置薛洋，你让我怎么跟他交代 Brother, it really was my father’s orders. I couldn’t refuse. Now, if you want me to take care of Xue Yang, what would I say to him? 

The use of 你 vs the more formal 您 throughout this exchange is interesting. In their exchange before JGY goes outside with NMJ, he uses 你 for LXC; here, he uses 你 for NMJ, but you can see throughout the exchange he seems to use both. It would probably be very interesting to go through the text and observe which JGY uses, to whom, and when.

CQL  

-  

MDZS  

NMJ: 不必废话，提薛洋头来见。 There’s no need for explanations. Come back to me with Xue Yang’s head in your hand. 

CQL  

—  

MDZS  

JGY "wanted to speak"

I think the upshot of these exchanges is much the same in CQL and in MDZS, despite its shortening in CQL: NMJ utterly rejects the validity of JGY's desire to give NMJ a /reason/ for going against JGS' explicit wishes, the explicit wishes, I remind you, of a man he has a moral duty to obey as his clan head and father. Truly, we can only imagine how NMJ would react to JGY killing someone against the wishes of the leader of the clan he served because he deserves it in JGY's own moral judgement… Except of course we don't have to imagine it, because it occurs in both CQL and MDZS, albeit differently. It's not that NMJ recognizes as a general principle that subordinates should be allowed to kill people against their leader's wishes if that subordinate judges their victim deserves it; it's simply that he believes in the primacy of his own, obviously righteous judgement. (And in CQL, again, there isn't any actual definite evidence, and Chang Ping has retracted his testimony.)

I think the main things the slightly more extended MDZS version has, not present in CQL, is, first, the explicit visual of XY's head, and second, that NMJ's subsequent response isn't a response to JGY's actual speech; JGY was about to speak in reply, and NMJ responds in irritation to what he thinks JGY is going to say—responds, indeed, by calling him 'Meng Yao'.

(Next)

[marshvlovestv]

Zero Time Dilemma: Q-Team and Personality Disorders

(I’m not going to tag any of the disorders mentioned here even though I did that last time, because a. I feel bad about clogging up people’s tags with fandom nonsense and b. someone decided to be not-nice about it on my last post and it really affected me in a negative way. But if anyone is at all interested in learning more about these disorders, absolutely check out the tags for them here on Tumblr. They are full of people talking about their personal experiences and trying to bust stigmas. Obviously don’t let that be the be-all and end-all of your research, but it’s a good starting point.)

I’ve made it no secret that I love Eric, and to a lesser extent Mira, and that I ship the two of them with undue passion. I don’t find their relationship romantic, I would never want a relationship that looks like theirs, and I certainly don’t think either of them are good people. But I find both of them and their dynamic very interesting - it’s fun to think about and it’s fun to write.

Recently I have been very into researching personality disorders because I might have avoidant personality disorder (self-dx, but I’m looking into getting a formal diagnosis) . And because I tend to conceptualize a lot of things using fiction, I can’t help but see the traits of these PDs in fictional characters. I think that Eric and Mira both suffer from personality disorders, and that just makes me like and sympathize with them even more.

This is going to be a long and rambly post so I’m going to put the bulk of it under a Read More. There’s no real structure here, it’s just a bunch of thoughts. And big old disclaimer, I’m trying to be as sensitive as I possibly can be but I am by no means an expert on anything I’m talking about here. Take it all with a grain of salt.

Everyone goes “Eric is so annoying, Eric is so useless” and all I can think is that everyone is full of shit if they don’t think they would act the same way if they were trapped in a death game. I look at Eric and think that he’s the only realistic character in the entire series because “LOL that’s so me, I would totally be panicky and whiny and unhelpful if I was in that situation.” But now I’m thinking, maybe that is unique to me. Maybe what I recognize in Eric is not what is typical to most people and is actually the anxiety and self-doubt of a cluster C personality disorder.

My headcanon is that Eric has dependent personality disorder, a cluster C disorder characterized by fear of abandonment, feelings of helplessness and incompetence, acting passive, submissive, or clingy, and an overreliance on others to make important decisions. I also considered borderline personality disorder, which pairs that same fear of abandonment with an inability to regulate one’s emotions; Eric's emotions are certainly volatile enough to be a result of BPD, but I also definitely see in him the helplessness of DPD. Hell, maybe he has both. I don’t see why that can’t be possible. (I also don’t think it’s fair to read too much into expressing emotional extremes during, I repeat, a literal death game, but whatever.)

Here’s a pretty comprehensive list of Eric’s traits that I think are consistent with DPD:

1. Rarely helping with puzzles, even completely relying on Sean (a child, as far as he knows) to solve them in Pop-Off.

2. A preoccupation with pleasing or impressing Mira, even though they’ve already been dating for a while (complimenting her at every opportunity, trying to prove his manliness in Radical-6, changing his vote to match hers during the coin toss).

3. Projecting incompetence so strongly that Mira immediately noticed it when they first met.

4. His constant smiling, a way to show submission that was imposed upon him by both of his parents. (I do think that what his mother told him was fucked up, no matter her positive intentions - let your son express his negative emotions, ma’am! Otherwise he’s gonna bottle them up, and, well, we all saw what that leads to!)

5. Accepting mistreatment from the person he’s most attached to (marrying Mira despite knowing full well that she has murdered him in multiple alternate timelines; in Triangle, he actually encourages her to do it!)

6. Shooting himself in one ending, crucially one where Mira has died (of the cluster C disorders, suicidality is most common in DPD).

So yes, Eric does some awful things that can’t be explained by mental illness, and there are genuine reasons for fans to dislike him. But some of the reasons people give as to why they hate him - his lack of confidence, how he acts in ways that make him seem kind of dumb, the fact that he *checks notes* loves his girlfriend too much? Really, that’s a reason not to like him? - just read to me like someone suffering in a way that people find unacceptable. They are the things that make me relate to him and sympathize with him the most.

As for Mira, I won’t delve as deep into her disorder because it’s basically canon and I don’t think I need to justify it. It’s all but directly stated that she has antisocial personality disorder - specifically, the ableist Hollywood version of ASPD that turns you into an emotionless serial killer. (Kotaro Uchikoshi loooves this trope, btw; it showed up in AI: The Somnium Files, too. “There’s something so wrong with his brain that the only way he can feel pleasure is by killing.” Fuck off.). There are a couple things I learned that also make this diagnosis problematic: for one, all personality disorders, ASPD included, almost always stem from some kind of trauma, and unlike Eric, we don’t have any evidence of trauma in Mira’s past (although it’s not like we know everything about her - where’s her father in all this? There might be a story there). Secondly, ASPD can’t be diagnosed in people under 18, but Mira showed clear and extreme symptoms when she was as young as 9 or 10. I can chalk that up to a lack of research on the writer’s part, though.

It’s really hard to paint her as a victim of her own mind when she’s murdered several people, but interestingly enough, the ending of ZTD manages to offer an opportunity to do so. It’s implied that, by resonating with the espers in order to SHIFT, Mira is fundamentally changed in some way, judging by the fact that she willingly marries Eric and seems to care about him and how when she sees Sean, she offers him a genuine smile and it’s noted that she doesn’t have to fake it anymore. Now, the idea of a mental disorder being totally cured, even with a little bit of sci-fi magic, is unrealistic and ableist in itself. But the way I like to interpret this change is not as her being cured of her disorder; rather, I like to think that what she was cured of was in fact the harmful stereotype, and that now she will function as an average, realistic person with ASPD would.

I’ve written a handful of fanfics about Eric and Mira, and although so far they’ve mostly been porn with minimal exploration of their personalities, I want to do more careful character studies in the future. One of my fics, titled Family Planning, does already dip into the concept I just mentioned. It takes place post-game, but Mira still unambiguously has ASPD: she has low empathy, she’s plagued by ennui, and she acts recklessly. All that she’s really been “cured” of is her urge to kill. I hadn’t done a ton of research into the disorder when I wrote Family Planning and I definitely made mistakes (I tagged it with “Psychopathy,” for example, which I now know is considered an offensive term), but it is still one of my favorite things I’ve written recently and representative of the direction I want to go in with future fics. I want to write about them showing symptoms of and coping with their respective disorders and explore the way a relationship between two people with two different PDs might develop. Despite any possible pitfalls and the, uh, less than romantic reason their relationship started, ultimately I think that with more open communication between them (and both of them finally getting some therapy), Eric and Mira are capable of understanding each other better than others might be.

And I think that’s beautiful.

[tundrainafrica]

1) about the social class headcanon that you write, that’s actually makes sense, but isn’t exactly what i meant. According to Isayama, Hange when she was young looked very much like Eren in the way of acting (even more with the titans), and (this part I am not sure if it is true) she lost her family at the fall of the maria wall. Eren looked like a rebellious teenager angry at everything, and recently I found out that depression in teenagers and children tends to manifest itself that way

2) (anger and rebellion), well, we know Eren was depressed (it only got worse with time) but what about Hange? seems to me she learned to hide her feelings so it wouldn't be between her and her job. We don't know her past, she probably didn't grow up in a violent place like Levi but it doesn't mean that her life was all joy and happiness you know.. 

---------------------------------------------   MY ANSWER   --------------------------------------

Hello Anon, 

Thank you again for your ask! Woops, sorry if I didn’t answer your  questions. I answered those two asks in a row so I ended up just building off of the last one. 

I don’t think it was ever confirmed if Hange lost her family at the fall of Wall Maria. I did some research and couldn’t find stuff on my end. If you could send me some on that, I’d love to read it.

I am aware at least that no one’s life is all joy or happiness. I think there is a difference though with growing up without ever having to consider your next meal and living in abject poverty. 

There are people who have had time to be a child and there are people who haven’t. So I think to a degree, Hange had more of a childhood than Levi. And a normal childhood is incredibly important for every single child. The early years are crucial because that’s where children build wonder, curiosity. That’s one of the psychological reasons behind children’s books. They make everything so fantastical to heighten the senses of the children. Because in fact, children only get full control of their senses later in life. Before they are even able to make sense of everything, everything is just a huge bubble or conglomeration of senses. That’s why children are so perceptive, imaginative and quick to learn things like languages. Their view of the world isn’t set yet by the rules and norms of the society they live in. 

That’s why asking children questions and exposing them to so many different things at a young age and providing for them is important. Children need to see the wonder of the world while not having to consider their next meal, their danger. A childhood is generally where curiosity and imaginative thinking is most easily built. 

And that’s why I say, that Hange somehow is a lot more curious, sees a lot more wonder than Levi. Similar to Erwin, he had a pretty comfortable existence, he went to a good school, he had a father who engaged him and that’s why Erwin was able to think beyond what was within the walls. Same for both Eren and Armin. Eren had his father who probably fed him some info and Armin had his parents books and his parents who were curious enough to build that hot air balloon

And, I know about that scene in the manga that explained that it was the lightness of the titan head that got Hange curious about titans. I think kicking the titan head was a good catalyst for titan research but I suspect that even before that, Hange was curious about the outside world. Hange’s interest extends beyond titans for sure because it was confirmed by Isayama already that Hange would have been studying botany outside the walls if it wasn’t for the titans. Also, the way Hange is handling the new world where she’s constantly on top of developments in Paradis etc, also shows that titans are only one facet of her scientist personality.

Besides, if she didn’t have that wonder and curiosity about the outside world, I don’t think she would have done something as ridiculous as join the survey corps in the first place.

“Eren looked like a rebellious teenager angry at everything, and recently I found out that depression in teenagers and children tends to manifest itself that way”

Although depression can manifest itself in anger, similar to Eren’s probably, there’s no exact formula for how humans react to anything. It’s incredibly complex that the field of psychology (or any other field) is just a conglomerate of people and a bunch of reports and the people trying to make sense of all the results of the experiments they made. This is particularly true in the social sciences where any findings won’t point to anything as exact as those in the pure sciences.  

Anger and rebellion could also stem from someone having grown up in a rich family with strict rules on how to go about this and that is generally how it fits into my head canon. Someone can have a good relationship with their family while at the same time have qualms about how they were raised. To be honest, I’m probably the same way. I grew up in a relatively well off family, I was a generally angry teenager but I admittedly have a generally positive relationship with my family. 

Okay to tackle the issue on depression

 <Trigger Warning on Depression>

I don’t want to be quick as to define any action or any emotional analysis as depression. Depression is an incredibly complex subject, there are biological causes, life events and it manifests itself in so many different ways. So many different ways in fact, that people are rarely diagnosed with just depression. There are always diagnoses which accompany it. 

To be honest, I went through a period in time also where I was considering ending it. I was sleeping a lot. I quit everything. I went straight home from school. Barely talked to anyone.  I talked to a counselor about it, then a therapist but it took them months before they wanted to give the diagnosis of depression. I actually never pushed through with the sessions after a while, got busy with school and eventually, this cleared up on its own weirdly. I’ll never know actually if I was depressed during that period in time. Was I going through very stressful life events, definitely. Were my answers to the tests they were giving me alarming then? Probably. They could have pointed to depression. But I generally got past it and am generally a happier person now without much intervention. So was it even considered depression? I’ll never know. Some people who are probably much stronger than me needed interventions to stay functional. They needed to make radical life decisions, like move out from their parents place, change their courses to keep going. They needed meds to keep functioning everyday. 

Depression is a complex and  terrifying condition and manifests itself in so many different ways. In fact, talking to some friends who really watched their life spiral down because of this shitty condition. Towards the later stages of depression, they weren’t even feeling anything anymore. 

Could Hange have been experiencing symptoms similar to depression? Definitely. General teenage anger and hormones can manifest as symptoms of depression. Grief can manifest with symptoms of  depression. Loss can manifest with symptoms of depression. Trauma can manifest with symptoms of depression. Hange will have experienced a lot of things that 

Note : Also Eren’s depression? I honestly think given the experiences he had, inheriting the founding titan and inheriting centuries worth of trauma, I think his experience is beyond fathomable for the average person so I chalk that as completely something else. 

Okay, to answer your question, Hange was probably not in the best mental state late into Season 4. 

Of course she wasn’t, she lost Moblit, she lost Erwin and suddenly she was pulled into a place with so much responsibility. And she was probably suffering from a case of survivor’s guilt on top of that.

Hiding emotions comes down a lot to discipline, self control and the general strength of your inhibitions.. Emotions are manageable like I could say, I have successfully stopped myself many times from punching someone in the face. Someone’s ability to stop themselves from acting on impulses, someone’s ability to manage their inhibitions is dependent on numerous factors like home environment etc. It is also dependent on the context of that moment where someone has to choose between punching someone in the face or walking away, on the context of that moment where people choose between lying in bed and letting the day go by and standing up and plastering a smile on their face. I guess, that’s the point I wanted to make in a previous post. If Hange did grow up rich, she probably found it a little easier, to plaster a smile on her face because not ever having to experience desperation at an early age, coming to the realization that you’ve had it easier than a lot of people growing up, can do that to people. 

But yes, towards the end of season 4, she was going through something. She was struggling, despite her smiling face. But really, in attack on titan, who is happy post chapter 122? Like I cannot think of a single person in that manga who is happy at that point. Please tell me if you can think of anyone. 

Would I chalk up Hange’s true feelings to depression?

Manifestations of depression maybe? Post traumatic stress? Stress with little time to process anything or rest? Exhaustion? Not being in the best mental state? Maybe.

I wouldn’t use the word depression definitely. 

Depression is an incredibly heavy world with so many implications. In fact, it’s a medical condition which needs to be diagnosed thus, I wouldn’t use that at all to describe anyone’s situation unless they have had multiple consultations with multiple doctors and have been laid a final diagnosis. 

I hope this clears things up.

Thank you for the ask again. I appreciate it :D

[officialwagnerrant]

Wagnerrant Review #1: Double Parsifal

(Picture Source: here)

Work: Parsifal House: Vienna State Opera Date of performance: 11.04.2021

Team:  Director: Kirill Serebrennikov Conductor: Philippe Jordan With:  Jonas Kaufmann, Nikolai Sidorenko, Ludovic Tézier, Stefan Cerny, Georg Zeppenfeld, Wolfgang Koch, Elīna Garanča

Notes: This is not technically the first review posted on this blog. Still I decided to tag it as the No. 1, as it’s the first review ever since I (Admin Dichterfuerstin) decided to post reviews somewhat regularly. By that I mean that I plan on doing on or two per month, depending on my schedule and my mood. Most reviews will feature productions that have been around for longer, but I promise that I will watch and review every new production I can. I also take requests.

Trigger warning: The following review of the new Vienna Parsifal discusses self-harm as it’s a prevalent element in Serebrennikov’s production. I ask you to keep this in mind when reading my text or watching the production. Don’t do either of this if you know you currently cannot deal with the subject.

Review: @dichterfuerstin

In the matinee talk preceding the premiere of the Vienna State Opera’s new Parsifal, director Kirill Serebrennikov announced a production that rather caters to an audience that doesn’t find the idea of devoting one’s whole live to serving a grail particularly appealing and struggle with the heavy role religion plays in Wagner’s monumental final work: According to Serebrennikov, his Parsifal portrays physical salvation just as in Beethoven’s Fidelio rather than religious one and focus less on myths and religion than on the development of the titular character, which is achieved by featuring two versions of the character. It is a rather radical concept, turning away from Wagner’s idea and calling for Serebrennikov’s own characters and storytelling. The director delivers a strong set-up in act one, but can’t avoid plot-holes and flat arcs.

The opera begins with Jonas Kaufmann’s face on a video screen. He appears on stage shortly after, as the old Parsifal, that watches act one from the front of the stage, reacting to all of his younger self’s decisions, mockingly lip-syncing Gurnemanz’ lines and singing his owns. He is supposed to recollect the events from act one and two and is already remembering, even though his younger self only goes on quite late into act one.  Until Parsifal’s entrance according to the libretto, the young Parsifal only is present on screens above the stage, where he is eventually shown killing another prisoner nicknamed “Swan”. Having Parsifal kill a human instead of an animal works. Not only because it fits Serebrennikov’s setting better. It also creates a bigger contrast between the young and the old Parsifal. However this is the only occasion where the projections on the three screens serve the plot. During the rest of the opera they show images underlining the cruelty of prison life, creating an atmosphere but having no impact on what happens on the stage whatsoever. By act three they’re even somewhat distracting.

Behind Kaufmann, under the screens, is the huge and elaborate set, a prison, in where the young Parsifal such as all the knights are inmates. The audience watches them working out, fighting, and bribing the guards for cigarettes. One prisoner sleeps on a bench, to give Gurnemanz a prompt for his wake up-call. Even though Gurnemanz’ position is lower than usually, when he’s not a prisoner but instead the factual leader of the grail’s knights, he’s the character changed least in this production. He may hide his cigarette’s from the guards, but he still commands over the knights and pages, and tells the story about Amfortas, while tattooing the other prisoners with mythical and religious symbols to remind the audience of Wagner’s plot and setting, and maybe to establish Gurnemanz as a somewhat religious character, as he proceeds to proclaim Parsifal the new king in a very holy service-like ceremony in act three, after singing at a random metal pole, since a spear isn’t needed in this production. Amfortas, some kind of a leader of the resistance, as we learned in the matinee talk, was never hurt by someone else but instead suffers from mental illness and self-harms. He needs to be saved from himself. Amfortas’ father, Titurel, is long dead, he seems to speak to his son from above. He is partly responsible for Amfortas’ illness The unveiling of the grail is substituted by a mental breakdown, in which the prisoners try to stop Amfortas from giving himself even more wounds and pain.

The last main character to appear in act one is Kundry, in this staging a journalist investigating the prison and smuggling medicine for Amfortas. She is sung by Elīna Garanča who delivers an impressive role debut. While some journalists who had the opportunity to see the opera live claim that she seemed to struggle with combining the staging and the score, both her singing and her acting came across amazing on the recording. She plays Kundry not like a singer but like a good actress.

It’s not Garanča’s fault that the character of Kundry eventually falls flat. According to Serebrennikov she was supposed to be a strong woman with a conflicting past, but not much of this is present throughout the opera. She starts out as the seemingly independent Journalist, who later turns out to be an employee at Klingsor’s magazine “Schloss.” He assaults her, she shoots him. This is also Klingsor’s entire role in this Parsifal. He doesn’t have any interaction with Parsifal and also seemingly no impact on him at all, a consequence of stripping the plot of Parsifal of important story elements such as the grail, god, and the celebacy of the grail’s knights. Kundry seems interested in Gurnemanz’ tales, collecting pictures of the prisoner’s tattoos, being clearly interested in the myths and the prisoners, but we never learn her motivations. Eventually her arc is completed by her walking off the stage, arm in arm with Amfortas, who freed himself from his father by throwing out his ashes and was then healed through Kundry’s kiss. This would be a satisfying ending for an action film, considering the source material and the set up from act one it’s a lazy, far to easy way to resolve both of their character arcs.

Unfortunately, the entire ending is dissatisfying. Parsifal returns to the prison as his old self, yet his young alter-ego appears later on and kisses Kundry, the old Parsifal doesn’t mind, no matter how determined to separate them he was back in act two. After that Serebrennikov makes a surprising return to the libretto: Kundry washes Parsifal’s feet, he is made the king and baptises her, before fulfilling the production’s premise as a salvation opera. All the prisoners can finally leave the prison and reconnect with freedom, this production’s holy grail. Gurnemanz even takes his time to wave Parsifal good bye, who remains inside the prison. It’s a symbolic ending, in the libretto Parsifal is now responsible for the grail, a prisoner of the grail if you will. However this third act end ending fail to connect with the preceding acts.

The production falls flat on more than just a few occasions, however the cast and music manage to make up for it. Most outstanding is Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz. Not only is his beautiful bass voice made for this characters, no other Wagner role is so incredibly fitting for him, he also manages to combine the prisoner and commanding Gurnemanz through his acting. Overall the acting is strong for a bunch of opera singers, who still have a reputation for being great singers but struggling with acting. There’s  Elīna Garanča delivering her impressive role debut, as well as Ludovic Tézier as Amfortas, appearing perfectly hurt and pained as he drags himself over the stage. Parsifal Jonas Kaufmann is neither a debutant nor a born Wagner-Singer. His approach to Wagner’s music is rather italien, he values emotion and beauty over heroicness. It’s melancholic, well-fitting for this old Parsifal remembering his youth. Kaufmann and his alter-ego actor Nikolai Sidorenko work together to create a character and they do it well. The only downside of having two Parsifals, besides some confusion on who is the active parsifal especially during act three, is that next to the fantastic actor Nikolai Sidorenko it becomes obvious that acting isn’t Kaufmann’s strong suit. He often resorts to a preset set of gestures, other than most of his colleagues who are their characters throughout the whole four hours long performance. Last but not least, it’s the orchestra that is the center of nearly all of Wagner’s music. Philippe Jordan, the new musical director of the Vienna State Opera, leads his orchestra through this exhausting opera fluently, making every single Leitmotiv and their variations perfectly clear. But especially the solo parts stand out. But it’s also the unexcelled charm and emotionality of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra that makes this performance so fitting and so beautiful. Even on screen, through speakers, this orchestra feels live, and alive.

This Parsifal is mostly worth listeing to, but also worth watching. While Kirill Serebrennikov couldn’t quite do justice to the setup for a deep and thoughtful story he created in act one, he was able to create a captivating production, with an ending that is good for Parsifal nights, where you want to leave the theatre or laptop with the feeling of having watched a happy ending instead of having been confronted with four hours of Wagner’s music-religion. 

[nukyster-blog]

Changing course chapter 19) three question game

.-.-.

Ivar had torn a muscle between his bicep and shoulder that made him a lot less mobile. He’d managed to limp on one arm towards the kitchen’s wall and slouched down against it. Resting his swollen cheek against the cool stones, Ivar hid the knife away between the folds of the potato bags that were wrapped around his legs. 

Piglet forcefully placed a basket full of shell beans at his feet. Kneeling down, her instructions followed fast and angry. She broke the bean and sliced off each end of the pod, pulling the pod apart from the seam. 

“Aren’t we just two peas in a pod, huh Piglet?” Ivar joked and immediately scrunched up his face when his split lip opened further.

Piglet didn’t say a word, instead she gave him the stink eye and sagged next to him against the wall. Carrying on with the work, she managed to bless him with one facial expression for the rest of the day: one of unreserved contempt, disapproval, distrust and loathing. And the expression was just the start, soon came the grunts and sighs. 

But she never left his side, still cautiously scanning the room to spot any type of danger or a hint that Ludolf might come around the doorway. 

For someone who called him thick-headed, Piglet was pretty guilty of that trait herself. She refused to speak to him and moved a few feet when Ivar poked her between the ribs to probe a word out of her. 

“Pot, kettle, black, Piglet,” Ivar murmured underneath his breath while his stomach howled like a hungry wolf. He hadn’t had much to chew on. Asking for food was out of the question, he already knew the answer to that; none, just two dark smoldering eyes judging his impulsive behavior. 

At twilight, Ivar waited anxiously for Piglet’s arrival. He’d been brought back to the shed by a serf and chained. Piglet had been sent by Big Cunt to fetch some dry firewood for the pot and Ivar hadn’t seen her since. 

Restlessly, his fingers ran along the sharp side of his new toy. The tool felt foreign in his hand, it had been so long since he’d held a weapon of any variety. Yet he didn’t doubt he was still physically able to slash the knife down and hack his way through the Giant’s rib cage. 

He did wonder about the mental aspect of the task. It had occurred to him that he’d stalled in his reaction at the diner table. And why? Why, in a blink of an eye, had he made that radical decision to extend this torturous life for another day? He could have killed the Giant, with enough eyes to witness that it had been him, just him, who’d turned that rotting face into an entire carcass. 

He sighed, leaned back and rolled his eyes. His reason was the same reason why he’d been jittery and biting his nails; Piglet. 

It would be an act of weakness if he left her alone, to deal with Ludolf and his perverted tendencies. 

A load of bricks fell off his chest when Piglet tiptoed into the shed, carrying a tray of food. However, like the soup, her temper was still at its boiling point. 

“How do I know you didn’t piss in it?” Ivar spoke, trying to mask his relief at seeing her waltz in unharmed. 

Piglet raised her chin and gave him a stone-hard expression before sliding the tray over the makeshift line: “You don’t.” 

Well, she managed to ruin his good mood within seconds. He threw her a deadly glare and scanned over the other items to eat. Today's meal was made up of a possibly-pissed-in-soup, two slices of stale bread that was on the verge of growing mold and an egg. 

Ivar settled with the egg, ticked it against the tray and started peeling off the shell. When he wolfed it down, his stomach still growled and he debated if hay could be used for human consumption. 

“I did not piss in it,” Piglet confidently spoke in his language without a stutter.

Ivar eyed her skeptically for a long moment before deciding to believe her, in all honesty he was so hungry he’d eat it anyways. 

“I spat in it,” Piglet announced dryly as Ivar slurped from his soup. Piglet scrunched up her nose, made a disgusting sound in the back of her throat and spat up a gob of sputum on to the floor. 

At the sight of that, Ivar’s gag reflex immediately kicked in and he spat out a mouthful of soup. 

“I joke,” Piglet grinned while Ivar spat repeatedly on the floor. 

“Bitch,” Ivar growled sourly and stole the two slices of stale bread. 

“Numskull,” Piglet retorted and fled the scene for a moment. 

Ivar glared after her while tearing off tiny bits of bread with his front teeth, hoping that if he ate really slowly, he wouldn’t be so hungry. 

Piglet returned with a knitted blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The fabric was thin, torn and had hay intertwined in nearly every inch of it. Without warning or a word, she dropped down directly next to him and drank a little of his soup.

Piglet wiped her mouth and passed him the bowl, indicating it was safe to eat. Ivar gave her a half shrug, dunked the bread into the lukewarm soup and ate, brooding and cursing her under his breath like a full grown man-child. 

Piglet let him enjoy his moment of crankiness and used the time to rid her blanket from some of the hay. As they sat shoulder to shoulder, the blanket radiated her warmth and with a full belly, Ivar started to unwind for a bit and curiosity got the best of him again.

While lingering a sideway glance, Ivar realised he knew nothing of his faithful companion. She had no real name, no past, no roots that he knew of. And she’d been very keen to keep him in the dark, of pretty much everything. 

A plan formed inside his head when he stored the bowl away and asked her: “Wahid, arbe, sitta?”

Of course Piglet was eager to play her game, always happy to get her mind off of her daily struggles and she went to fetch the knucklebones. She returned and sat back in her previous spot, shoulder to shoulder by her shed-mate and threw the bones on the floor. 

“Wait,” Ivar spoke and held up his hands, “I’d like to add a new rule, to make the game a bit more exciting.” 

Piglet could not fully understand his words and gawked at him a little defensively but allowed him to continue.

“We play a round, the winner gets to ask the loser three questions, which the loser needs to answer truthfully.” Ivar said, pointing up three fingers, “oh c’mon Piglet don’t be so sour, wahid, arbe, sitta.” 

It was clear that Piglet did not like this new rule. But when Ivar crossed his hands and made it clear he wasn’t going to participate otherwise, she agreed half heartedly. 

To his discomfort, Ivar lost the first round of the knuckle game, for some reason he hadn’t calculated that his chances of asking the questions had been fifty-fifty. 

With glee and self indulgence, Piglet wiggled her toes and tilted her head to the side in thought, trying to come up with her three questions. Suddenly, her wiggling stopped and Ivar noticed how small the young woman looked from her own two feet to his.

“Maksura, broken,” she formulated, tapped with her stone cold foot against his, “how?” 

Self consciously, Ivar shuffled his feet a few inches away from hers and threw a bunch of hay on his legs in a pathetic attempt to hide his biggest insecurity. 

“I was born like this,” he answered truthfully, “one of nature's mistakes,” he added bitterly. 

Piglet stared up at him dully: “Allah no make mistakes.” 

Ivar snorted, shocked by the nonsense coming from her mouth: “Let me get straight with you Piglet, your God has nothing to do with me. He did not make me, because he doesn’t exist. It’s a false God, like the one those Christians worship. All frauds in the all-seeing eye of Odin.” 

Piglet rolled her eyes at Ivar’s blasphemy and hummed, thinking of her next question. 

“Why fight toothless?” She asked and ticked on her front teeth when Ivar didn’t understand who she was talking about.

“Because I can.” He answered.

“Hamar,” Piglet flatly told him.  

“No, I’m not Piglet!” Ivar snarled aggravated, “the Giant  -the toothless- can break every bone in my body, cut my throat and bleed me dry, but he’ll never have ultimate power over me. I won’t grant him that, you know yourself that there are things far worse in this life then death. And one of them is losing spirit. He’ll never be able to take that from me, I will taunt him, every day, the best I can without dying, until there comes the opportune moment and then I’ll kill him. Yes, I’ll slaughter the toothless,” Ivar added when Piglet’s cheeks lost a bit of their usual dark color, “they days of the toothless are numbered.” 

“Kill?” Piglet spoke breathlessly. 

Ivar chuckled, “yes, of course,” and held up both hands, “with my bare hands. And teeth,” he said and showed her his teeth. 

In her dark eyes, a part of her adoration for him seemed to be shattered. Which was incomprehensible for Ivar, where he came from, murder was not a sin. Murder was one of the numerous ways to become memorable and glorious. Of course his kingdom wasn’t a cradle of pure anarchy, there were rules, rights and punishments, but murder certainly wasn’t the worst crime. 

So when Piglet stared at him, as if he’d suddenly turned into a three headed monster, he felt a twinge of dread in his chest. For he hadn’t done anything wrong, yet she judged him and his ways. 

“If I kill the toothless, you’d perceive me as evil?” he questioned toneless. 

Piglet nodded and stared at her fingers, as she ticked at the hay.

“Why?” Ivar asked, “that man abuses you, beats you, mistreats you. Why am I evil when I rip out his heart?” he emphasized the word when, because he certainly wanted to give her the impression that he would.

Piglet did not answer, instead she picked up the knucklebones and threw them on the floor. This round Ivar managed to win. 

 Now if he wanted to get any information out of Piglet, he needed to play this out with a silk glove, because she already looked at him like a rabbit trapped by a string. 

“What’s your favorite food?”

His first question visibly surprised her and little warmth returned to her face: “basbousa,” she brought her fingers to her lips as her thoughts traveled back to a place far away from the shed. 

“Cake, warm, sticky,” she continued and bit her lip to sustain the happy memory as long as she could. It was all both of them had left, bittersweet reminders of the past that faded faster and faster each day. 

“What’s your favorite animal?” Ivar went on, keeping his questions light.

“Khuruf, sheep,” she answered, plucking at her blanket. 

“And what’s your biggest fear?” Ivar asked. 

“Men,” she stated immediately and Ivar felt the need to punch himself. He’d foolishly expected an answer such as spiders or the dark, for those had been the fears he’d used against the thralls that took care of him when he was young. But of course Piglet’s fear was not of such innocent things.

She picked up the bones and started another game without wasting another breath. Ivar managed to win again to his delight. 

“Where are you from?” 

“Nubia.”

“Nubia?” Ivar repeated, wondering if that was her country or the name of her village, “now where is that?” 

He was prying too much, her eyebrows rose and she huffed: “far.” 

“And how many winters have you been away from Nubia?” Ivar asked.

“Eshr, ten.” 

“What’s your name Piglet? Your real name?” 

His companion remained silent for a while and stared into the distance with a fixed expression before eying him up and down, raising three fingers.

“Three question game,” was all she said before picking up the bones and ambling away. 

Ivar allowed himself to fall back into the hay and let out a frustrated sigh, before shoving hay around and over his body. That woman was utterly frustrating, she hardly spoke a word and if she did it was mostly an insult or a way of belittling him. 

“You better not think you're going to sleep here again,” Ivar snapped when he heard her mince her way back to him, dragging her blanket through the hay and dirt, “that was a one-time deal, you reek and-” 

She wrapped the blanket over his shoulder and silently laid down underneath it with her back against his. Ivar let his fingers feel the thin fabric of the cocoon for the night and sensed the warmth spreading against his tense shoulders. 

“-Fine,” he grunted sullen and nicked some more of the blanket before allowing himself to fall asleep. But just like for the previous night, he slept with one eye open for he was Piglet’s safe keeper. 

 .-.-.

 A/N: For those of you who wonder, Nubia was the ancient name of Sudan. So that’s where Piglet’s from. I know that in this chapter their communication grew a lot and for those who think that’s a little bit too fast or remarkable, remember that Rollo managed to learn French in one episode:P 

 Xoxoxo Nukyster 

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