#let's have a discussion let's debate

[spookylightwhispers]

Today I had a class on career in which we talk about career planning and the like. The topic for today was about our work view, and life view. Every group had to come up with a tagline to represent our work and life views. And unsurprisingly, it was all about money, money, money.

Every group was just talking about how we work to earn money, and with money we'll be happy in life. And everyone was just laughing and joking about it but I just sat there thinking, "what a depressing bunch of people you all are."

And while we were supposed to discuss as a group, one, and then two people, said "work to earn money" because "why work if there's no money" and suddenly I felt weird because what I had wrote on my copy was "contributing meaningfully to society while doing something that I enjoy or am passionate about." Believe it or not, the thought of money hadn't even occurred to me and suddenly I was just like "oh. right, money." (I felt a little more sane after another guy in my group steered our tagline towards something more humanistic and not money-based. And we turned out to be the only group in the class whose tagline didn't have the word "money".)

And, just, is this what society has come to? Is life really just all about working, and working, and earning money till you drop dead? Is there no meaning to anything anymore? And it's not just about working. Even studying. In the previous lesson, people were just like "get a degree so I can get a job". But I'm not here to get a degree so I can get a job. I'm not here to "get an education". I'm here to gain knowledge. To take part in the inter-generational transfer of knowledge. I'm not here so that at the end of the day, I get to earn money. I'm here because I want to learn things. I want to marvel at the world. I want to be more appreciative of human society. I want to contribute. I want to make the world a better place. I'm not here to get a certificate so I can get a job and work until I die.

I know I can't, and I won't deny that money is a very important factor in living life. And for some people, money can buy happiness. And I acknowledge that I come from a very privileged background. I've never had to worry about money and I've always lived a comfortable life. Even when my parents were supposedly "broke", we didn't have all the extras but we never lacked anything either. My life has been very smooth-sailing.

But is there nothing more to life than just earning money? I mean, I'll be honest, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I'm immune to the whole money predicament either. Lately I've been really interested in research and I've really been considering the idea of furthering my studies and becoming a researcher. But at the back of my head, I have this nagging thought of how am I going to get money to survive? Is that going to give me a stable income? Who's going to be funding this research? Especially if I were to do it for a PhD thesis? Who's going to pay for all that? How am I going to live? Should I just follow the conventional pathway and get a proper job that's going to bring in a stable income?

Money is important to live, and this may be true for pretty much every place on earth but in this part of the world especially, the culture just feels extra crazy. Especially with the mindset that is very prevalent among the majority race. In fact just earlier in the day, I had another class and in trying to come up with a topic for research I shared with my professor a possible topic my group was considering doing. And it revolved around education. About how our universities have very limited choices in terms of courses and how it seems like the only kinds of courses you get here are the ones that "bring in money" and other kinds of courses which would get you not-very-profitable jobs are practically non-existent in this country. (Even if those particular set of skills are very much needed in this country! To meet the government's own goals! (and they might probably then use this as an excuse to import in more foreign workers because we don't have enough 'skilled local talents'?)). And the only way to get qualifications in those specific fields is to go overseas...which obviously costs even more money, something not everyone can afford.

I did not mention it to my group and my professor earlier, but even for me, personally, while I did apply to three different universities, when I applied to my current university now, I only applied for one course, which is the course I am in now. And this is despite the fact that my university is one of the two biggest ones, and thus one of the two which offers the most courses. I felt kinda badass, not gonna lie, about "confidently" (I wasn't really confident about getting in to be honest) applying to only one course in this university but honestly, it's not really something to gloat about. It's a sad predicament, that none of the courses the university offered interested me...except one. Everything else I could possibly be interested in is not even offered at a university level in this country. Sad, sad, sad.

People are unable to pursue their interests, and do what they are good at, simply because the government thinks these things are not worth investing in, because they're "not profitable". It is true, the government runs this country like a business, not a country. At the end of the day, it's all about money. And this mentality seeps through to the people. (Or, I guess, you could argue that the very people with this mentality are the ones who control the government, and have thus forced everyone else to live that way). It's no wonder people here have no life. All we ever think about is ace-ing the academics to get a good job to earn good money.

What is your purpose in life?

[moongothic]

[bogkeep]

i don't know how to fully articulate this but it makes me a little sad every time a video essayist or podcaster just Assumes their audience has Obviously Heard About X and doesn't bother to explain who or what that is... like of course not everything's gotta cater To Me but like let's assume i DO live under a rock (or rather: i'm autistic and european) and have never heard of this musician and have no idea what place they hold in popular media. ok thank you please continue with your essay

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

How do you imagine the conversation between Megumi and Gojo when kid Megumi tries to tell him of the Zenin’s abuse would go? What would be the last nail that convinces Megumi that it’s pointless and that they know but don’t care? Is what happened going to be talked about in sea glass garden?

It’s probably not going to be discussed in sea glass gardens.

I’ve been turning it over in my head again and again, and the limitation is really Yuuta’s POV. I don’t see Megumi confessing what happened back then to anyone, especially considering how he was just retraumatized by the Zenin. At the same time, I don’t like the idea of it coming out of anyone but megumi. It’s an intensely personal thing to him. I don’t like the character implications it would have if other people told Yuuta about it behind his back. So it probably just won’t come out in this fic. If I do end up making it a series, it may come out there.

I imagine that when Megumi told him, it was the worst possible time.

Gojo would have had to have been at absolute peak burnout. Like, he hasn’t had a break in a week, let alone slept style burnout. He was a teenager who was mentally and physically exhausted and in a moment where he honestly, desperately wanted to be a kid again.

He had just fielded endless demands from a lot of people more than twice his age who were all very angry at him at all moments for no discernible reason while they sent him off to do the work of a hundred sorcerers without any real support or help. He didn’t even have one of the assistants to help—why would he need someone to drive him? He can teleport. Why would he need someone to do the veil for him? He can manage that and the job.

And I want to emphasize that all of this was a very targeted scheme by the higher ups. This won’t be in the fic (again, because Yuuta’s limited POV), but in my mind, before Yaga brokered the deal with the Zenin having partial custody, negotiations about Megumi’s care (re: gojo loudly shouting that he’s not giving him back while the Zenin threaten war to secure his immediate and absolute return with no further contact from gojo) deteriorated to the pint where Nanami, Shoko, and Gojo straight up fucked off with the kids.

Megumi and tsumiki still think it was just a vacation gojo randomly decided they all needed, but they were actually low key fleeing the country to maintain custody. Fleeing used incredibly loosely, because gojo could take the Zenin clan in a fight. But it had gotten to the point where the Zenin were going to fuck around and find out, and gojo was faced with the option of 1) just start killing whoever shows up to try to reclaim megumi by force or 2) not being there when they show up. He chose door number 2.

This had an unintended consequence they all didn’t realize, which was forcing the higher ups to contemplate a world where they lost control of the three of them.

Nanami was less important to them compared to how the other two were, just because he was still a student, wasn’t even a first grade yet, and didn’t seem to have anything particularly special about him on his face. But Shoko was the only healer they had and Gojo was, well, Gojo. They were impossibly valuable assets to the jujutsu world that they couldn’t lose.

Now, the sane thing to do is to actually take steps to make their employment one they wanted to actually stay in. The higher ups are not sane. They did not pick the sane route. Instead, they tried to find ways to make sure they couldn’t leave again.

The approach they took to Gojo was basically that idea of the elephant tied up to a stick—train him young, break him young, and he won’t realize that he can rip the stick clean out of the ground without any effort at all. They wanted him eternally exhausted, off kilter, and seeking approval he wasn’t getting. He couldn’t have time to seek out a life outside of the jujutsu world, because that would give him options the higher ups did not want him having. Then, when he was ready to break, they could start rewarding him and affirming him and chain his happiness to them. He had to be second guessed at every turn and rewarded when he did what the higher ups wanted. Treat him like an infant when it comes to decision making but an adult when it comes to evaluating him.

That is to say that Gojo’s mindset when this was happening was not just simply “he was tired and frustrated.” A group of extremely manipulative, extremely dangerous people all got together and made a comprehensive plan to break him, and they had been executing it for a while then. He was a child. And he wasn’t the Gojo Satoru that we meet in season 1 yet.

The Gojo Satoru that he grew up to be was a product in great deal because of this time in his life, when he was overwhelmed, exhausted, and had what little of his childhood he had left taken away from him by a bunch of greedy old fucks. He became the protector that he didn’t have growing up.

The other thing feeding into his mindset was the fact that the Zenin had not fucking taken this custody agreement with grace.

Like. Any compromise was an insult to them. It was bad enough that the ten shadows had lived outside of the jujutsu world for his entire childhood thus far—the idea that he spent most of his time with gojo instead of them was unbearable. They wanted Megumi in the Zenin compound, being raised in the Zenin manner, following Zenin traditions and taking the Zenin name. The only reason why they accepted the partial custody offer was because the Zenin leadership knew it was the best deal they were going to get.

It was a political game. Under no circumstances could they just shrug and let the Ten Shadows be raised by their enemies without a fight. They’d go down in history books as the failures who went and lost another ten shadows after they just came off the death of the previous one, to their sworn enemy no less. And that’s only if the more opportunistic members of the clan didn’t take this failure as a chance to unseat their authority entirely. They had to bring megumi back into the clan somehow.

They also knew they could all fight Gojo and still lose. Which would be a definitive humiliation in the eyes of the jujutsu world. Trying to take megumi by force was just. An absolute last resort.

Gojo wasn’t budging on keeping Megumi with him for his primary care. It wasn’t happening. But partial custody gave them the win of returning him to the clan, even if it was only for a short while.

It also gave them the wiggle room to try to get more time with him.

They have in roads with the higher ups. And they know how much work Gojo gets. They know gojos completely overwhelmed and as vulnerable as someone like him ever gets.

They had gotten an inch, and they wanted a mile. So they were pushing too.

Constantly, endless haranguing for a new custody arrangement that gave them more time with Megumi. They wanted every two weeks instead of every month. Then every week. Actually you know what? They should just change it from weekends entirely—they get megumi for a week every month instead of a weekend. 50/50 custody. Actually? Gojos so goddamn busy, and megumi can spend so much time getting care from his family if he’s with the Zenin. They should get primary custody, and maybe gojo can visit when he’s less busy.

It was a moment where Gojo felt like he was barely holding together the arrangement they did have as it was. He had to go intervene the last three times that someone else tried to pick megumi up because the Zenin straight up would not let him get in the car unless Gojo was there to force them to. He fought so fucking hard to keep megumi with his sister 98% of the time, and this, this was the only agreement that got the Zenin to stop trying to light his fucking dorm on fire, and he was fighting tooth and nail to keep it from getting anywhere past that. The Zenin were exhausting him, and he was of the mind that it was either this or kill them all and he was trying to not kill them all. This was it. It was the best they could fucking do. He was trying to not go the route of mass murder like some people, and that apparently involved some fucking compromises.

That’s the mindset he was in when Megumi told him that he never wanted to go back to the Zenin again.

And I want to emphasize that from megumi's perspective, this was a huge act of vulnerability. particularly in light of the fact that he walked into the meeting half convinced that gojo already knew.

It wasn't because of anything Gojo did, per se. It wasn't even a judgment on whether gojo would let this go on. It was just because Gojo seemed to know everything.

It was the six eyes. They were too young to understand what it let him do, fully, and he always seemed to see and know everything. The teen parenting trio teased them about it, sometimes, not in a mean way--just in the sort of way where you tell a little kid that santa can see them being naughty. Gojo sees everything, including Megumi sneaking his book under his covers to read past his bedtime.

but this left megumi with the mistaken impression that Gojo had to know from the start. This impression had been reinforced by the Zenin (mostly Naoya) who were purposefully misleading him about Gojo already knowing and approving of what they did to him.

Megumi also just wasn't a kid who was in a habit for asking for help. Especially when he thought he wasn't getting it.

He grew up in really unstable circumstances with no adult he could rely on. His dad canonically would just go out and find a sugar mama between killing people, and I see a lot of them as resenting the baggage that was Megumi and treating him a little cruelly. He didn't remember it all that well back then, and he completely forgot it by the time he was a teenager, but he had a lot of reasons to distrust the adults in charge of him. And even as a kid, he was pretty stoic. he was not about to cry and beg for help when it was. not. coming.

Asking Gojo for help anyway was probably the biggest act of trust and vulnerability that Megumi was capable of, back then. He was saying that he trusted that Gojo cared about him and wanted to protect him to go against what his entire way of living thus far was telling him to do.

And it took a grenade to their relationship when it went bad.

I think that Megumi and Gojo remembered the conversation differently immediately after they had it. And that Gojo remembered it differently from how he initially did after he learned the truth.

It's just the natural bias of human memory. They both walked into the conversation with different understandings and preconceptions and that colored what jumped out to them.

In megumi's mind, he told Gojo all the important parts, the bad parts, the parts that meant that Gojo shouldn't keep sending him back there. he told them that he didn't like it there, that he was always getting hit there, that they were always touching him and making him wear weird clothes and wouldn't call him his name no matter how many times he asked. He wants to just stay with Tsumiki from now on. Gojo promised he could stay with Tsumiki.

But Gojo was burnt out, exhausted, and had a lot of misconceptions as to what everything megumi told him meant.

The thing about Megumi getting hit there--Gojo knew he was getting hit. But he thought that Megumi was talking about the other kids hitting him, because he was getting into fights. Because that's what the Zenin told him.

Megumi was showing up with scrapes and bruises. They all asked about them. Some of it was explained away as just like, the normal bruises and cuts a kid collects because they're tiny and the world is very big and they have the motor control of a potato alarm clock. But anything they couldn't explain away as just your average cut was blamed on Megumi getting into fights with kids his age and giving as good as he got. Maki actually was a favorite scapegoat, though neither megumi nor maki know it. She was around his age, and had plenty of reason to be at odds with him because he had the best technique in the clan and she had none at all. The best day either of them had growing up in the compound, the day where they got to play together, ended with all three of them getting beaten horribly for running off. If it was just Maki and Mai, no one would have cared, but Megumi had every second of his day planned and the entire schedule was fucked irreparably now.

Of course, the teen parenting trio had a lot of questions about this, namely "what the fuck happened to him," and were promptly told that he got into it with this little psycho a year older than him who had a heavenly pact and was bitter that megumi got the clan techinque and she didn't. And to Gojo, shoko, and nanami, who had just dealt with Megumi's dad, a bitter psychopath with a heavenly pact who made it everyone's problem? They believed it. The Zenin promised they'd punish maki and keep her apart from Megumi from then on out, which quickly turned into "Megumi wanted to prove he could win the next fight and ran off to track her down and have a rematch and these new bruises are the result. Kids, huh?" or "we kept maki far away this time and Megumi went out and fucked with some other kids. What do you want us to do, cut him off from every other kid in the compound?"

As if they hadn't already cut him off from every other kid in the compound

The Zenin's lie also had a huge amount of credibility to it because Megumi was already getting into fights at school. He was a holy terror who couldn't go a week without being in the principal's office. They thought he was in some kind of phase. (He was actually lashing out under the stress of being abused and having no control in his life and trying to reclaim his own sense of autonomy and fairness by fucking up any kid who started shit and acted like a bully). but yeah--kid who couldn't go two days without punching another kid in the face and getting punched himself for his trouble, getting hit? Yeah, uh. no shit.

So Megumi said he was always getting hit there, and he remembered it as a very explicit proclamation that his extended family were beating him every time he set foot on their compound. Gojo heard it as "I keep getting into fights with everyone there because I've got the disposition of a rabid wolverine and you have had to make the trip to the principal's office many, many, many times as evidence of that."

But uh. When you tell someone you're getting beat by your bio family, and they, in a very tired, very frustrated tone start trying to get you to reflect on what in your own behavior might have caused it and how you might have provoked the situation, it doesn't exactly leave an impression of an adult who's going to go to bat for you.

And like. Gojo was trying to actually do the parenting book thing? He was tired as fuck and not thinking entirely straight and had been putting off talking to megumi about how he cannot keep biting the other children for a while. He thought he needed to get megumi to reflect on how you're probably going to get hit if you hit them first and how he should hit less children, even if they are little assholes.

It was that kind of recontextualization. Like, Megumi just didn't have the words to properly explain what was going on. I've talked in another post, somewhere, about how the Zenin forcibly bathing Megumi was like, a regular thing when they had custody. it happened every time he went there. They were control freaks who felt entitled to him and who wanted him to look exactly how the ten shadows was supposed to look, and they weren't about to trust the grooming skills of a six year old to get what they wanted. They'd hand him off to the servants, and Megumi would have all of his things taken from him, and he wouldn't get a single say in anything from then on. They'd decide how his hair was styled. What clothes he wore. Where he went, what he ate, everything.

But Megumi didn't have the vocabulary to be like "Hey the Zenin habitually steamroll every boundary and preference i have in a way that reflects alarmingly on their understanding of my autonomy and personhood. Here's a list of ways they've done that." He put it in the way he experienced it, which is that they were always touching him and making him wear weird clothes.

But Gojo knew this kid, and he knew that Megumi hated anyone touching him at all. He got pissed at Gojo for ruffling his hair and Tsumiki for trying to hold his hand. Megumi had a very low tolerance for being touched, and Gojo skewed his interpretation with that in mind.

The worst he imagined was the kind of touching where like, your Great Aunt Bertha comes in for Thanksgiving and you're like, eight and you don't even know this woman but she has weird smelling perfume and you don't want to hug her but she wants to know where her hug is and your parents are getting mad at you and you end up in this weird, uncomfortable, sweaty hug that you wouldn't have picked but it isn't like, an active source of distress after. He didn't get "the dust from the car wheels haven't even settled before I'm getting forcibly bathed by strangers over my very explicit protests."

This was also filtered heavily through his expectations of how the Zenin would treat the ten shadows based on his experience as the six eyes.

like. people just get fucking weird about techniques that are on the scale of the six eyes and ten shadows. People were fucking weird about gojo when he was a kid too. He thought it was normal for your relatives to cry a little when they saw you and beg to be blessed with a touch of your hand. It wasn't until he went to jujutsu tech that he met normal fucking people.

He thought Megumi was surrounded by an entire clan of people who were treating him like the Second Coming of magic jesus and were weird as fuck about him as a result. a clan of vaguely sweaty great aunt berthas fresh from the plane and demanding their hug. stuff like that, or being required to dress in Zenin fashion when he was there... like, it's not stuff you kill an entire clan over, and that's what gojo thought the alternative was. it sucks, but it's two days a week where you have to wear the stupid clothes and suffer through some distant relatives wanting to hug you.

same thing with the name thing--it's the Zenin's millenia-old practice to call the ten shadows "the ten shadows." gojo knew that would happen from the start (but didn't realize how much it bothered Megumi) and it's not something you decide to trigger a war that will probably end with him slaughtering a clan over. He can ask them to cool it with the ten shadows thing, but he doubts they'll listen.

and the last misunderstanding that the had was around Tsumiki.

Gojo thought this was, ultimately, megumi getting worked up because he couldn't stay with tsumiki every single day of the month. Tsumiki was worked up plenty over it herself. And gojo just wasn't in a mind to hear again about how he wasn't fighting enough to keep them together when he nearly went to war to manage this much.

And the thing is, he wasn't the Gojo from season 1 yet. That gojo was still being made. And his belief that no one should take childhood from the children? It was still being fully formed.

What he heard, again and again and again, was that there was time to grow up. He heard it from the higher ups. yaga. nanami, when he's pissed at gojo's antics. all those fucking parenting books trying to teach him not to raise a serial killer. And he didn't want megumi to grow up fully. He wanted him to stay a little boy.

But he thought that this was one of those tough lessons you get when you're growing up that a parent is supposed to walk you through, which is that you dont always get what you want. You need to make it work.

This is what lets Megumi stay with Tsumiki the rest of the time. This deal. Megumi may not fully understand it right now, but putting up with his weird relatives a couple days a week is the reason why he gets to stay with his sister the rest of the time. They worked hard to get him such a good deal, and he needs to just... try, okay? No more picking fights and antagonizing his cousins. Behave. Just... wear the stupid clothes and ignore them on the name thing. Okay? Gojo will ask. he'll ask them to call him megumi and let him wear his own clothes but if they say no, well.

This is the best deal they've got to make sure Megumi stays with Tsumiki. They just. sometimes you put up with stupid, annoying shit because the thing you're trying to save is worth it, right? Gojo does a lot of that.

Gojo walked away thinking he had done a semi okay job getting megumi to understand that sometimes life sucked and you had to put up with annoying fuckers like the higher ups or the zenin because the only alternative was to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and you were willing to put up with the bathwater for the baby's sake.

Megumi walked away thinking he was just told by Gojo to suck it up and take the hits nicely because they'd take away Tsumiki otherwise.

And that was his last nail. Gojo obviously knew all along, just like the Zenin said, and he needed to just shut up and take it or they'd take Tsumiki away from him. So he shut up and took it. He didn't want to lose his sister.

After, Gojo just about tortured himself with the memory. It seemed so obvious in hindsight and so stupid to miss. It was right there. Megumi told him.

A part of him wonders what's the use of the goddamn six eyes if he always sees what's happening too late.

[sonego]

actually no it's not your place as a man to comment on what's women tearing other women down or this whole thing in general

hi thanks for stopping by. i'm nonbinary, i'm not a man. i don't know where you got that from since i believe a look at my blog (or even just my about if you don't follow me) will tell you that i'm nonbinary. i don't even know if this ask is in good faith or not, it doesn't feel like it is to me but feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, and maybe we can have a better discussion that doesn't involve answering an anonymous ask

that said i will respond bc it's not like i haven't thought about this myself so i guess that's an opportunity to talk about it.

is it my place to say what's women tearing other women down? i'm not a woman, so maybe not. i've posed this same question in that tag that i'm assuming made you send this ask? so yeah, fair, i can avoid commenting on that kind of thing next time. i've lived as a woman most of my life, i'm still considered and treated as a woman by some people, so i do want to say it's not like i'm completely removed from the concept of relationships between women. but like that is a whole can of worms and we're not getting into the socialization of trans people here so i'll just keep questioning myself on when it is appropriate for me to comment on issues pertaining women

which brings me to the other thing you say i shouldn't speak of, "this whole thing in general" which i assume is zverev's case/the issue of abusive men in sports and how players and fans talk about it? again idk correct me if i'm wrong. but uh. sorry but that feels insulting to me. i know it's a problem, a societal problem first and foremost, that disproportionately affects women. domestic violence and gender based violence are strongly linked. i don't think i've ever said anything that suggested i don't believe this. but that doesn't mean 1) only women should talk about it?? women need allies in this battle. 2) only women are victims of domestic violence. and again, i think it's insulting to suggest i, a survivor of domestic violence, shouldn't talk about this? you might not know. fair. i've mentioned it on here lately but you might not follow me or have seen it. but it's not hard to think of the fact that domestic violence affects children of any gender, that trans people are also disproportionately victims of it and that literally anyone can be a victim

sorry but even if i'm not a woman and frankly even if i was a trans man, that doesn't mean i can't know what gender based violence is like, i've lived it on my own skin multiple times throughout my life and it affects me to this day and i'm not gonna sit here and not talk about it just bc i'm not what most people would think someone "qualified" to speak on it is

sorry if i sound aggressive. sorry if i assumed you should know things about me that you maybe didn't know. but honestly you came onto my blog, on anon, and kinda assumed things about me yourself when you had the information here on this very blog so?

[a-vicious-faithless-angel]

Originally i wasn't gonna post this, n was just gonna keep it to myself but it's insane to me how much fandoms or just people in general cannot seem to fathom anything outside of what they know. They've placed themselves into a box of what they know, what makes them comfortable and what's understandable to them. Anything past that is met with hatred and dislike for xyz. You can't have a morally grey character [ESP FEMALE.] Without accusations of abuse of any of fucking being terrorist [Looks at what people say about Mia Winters.] Fiction is not supposed to always be made for YOU. It's made for anyone, they're not nor SHOULDN'T be limited to yourself. This idea that things cannot be bad or gruesome without backlash destroys so much of what sm media is built on... If a ship between 2 characters can be seen as horrible and disgusting when theres no actual evidence of it being that way yet theres still a push when in all actuality you are allowed to write shitty relationships, its okay to write about the relationships that arent squeaky clean!!!! This idea that if you ship it, it immediately means you support it, has gone so far, when i talk about 4525 [David x Simon] or hell Woods x Hackett. Its not to bring this idea that i want real relationships to fucking be like this, its just an interesting viewing of 2 people trying to make something work. They're fictional characters. They are not real. They're little dolls you play around with, to push n do whatever with. A limit of which is okay and isn't should be there, but we've crossed it so much that, the line isn't even there anymore. Like any difficult subject you handle it with care but it doesn't automatically mean you cant ever talk about it or want to talk about it! Just like how real life is not pure, not all media will be pure and that's FINE. You should talk about villainous characters and their complexity and not be harassed for just liking them. <3333

[pumpking64]

okay hmmm maybe unpopular opinion, but i don’t personally think vincent is trans, nor do i think he needs to be to be important for the queer representation? like, hear me out. what if he is just completely cis. wouldn’t that also be a really nice way to deconstruct a bit of gender norms? if we want good and varied representation and if we want trans people to feel safer in an environment that can be rather trans-hostile, we need cis people to also break gender norms. or else experimenting with gender expression would practically be the same as outing yourself. so like, completely here for trans vincent, but if he canonically ends up being a cis person breaking gender norms just because he feels more comfortable that way that’s actually also really rad

and if that technically still counts as cis, i don’t know. but him not ever becoming explicitly trans would also be a really cool thing, because it would imply that it’s okay for cis people to experiment with gender expression - and we actually don’t have a lot of that in popular media anyways, especially not for men

[belovedisaster]

What are some like darkstalker apologist arguments or narratives that piss you off the most?

well heres the thing. and ive wanted to elaborate so i thank you for asking. i dont fully disagree with darkstalker apologism nor do i fully agree with the opinion that he's a horrific monster. i think it's a much larger overarching problem for everyone of just not being able to put nuance into one's opinion on him and take ideas from both camps.

i want to say i think an even larger root to this is: tui is just not a very good writer. i absolutely love legends as much as the next guy, but if you look you can tell where and when her personal opinions fill in plot elements subconsciously. like, darkstalker coming from a bad home, having interracial parents (directly connected) being abused, and having a "savant" kind of mental trait, to put it as close as possible to real world ethics, speaks to the kind of people tui sees as "doomed to be evil from birth".

i havent read legends in a while. but i do remember that was a motif. the narrative tool of the nightwing powers of prophecy and predestination making it so that, within the story, him literally, from the moment he hatches and has his first thoughts, is really fated to be a villain, and that's like a canon fact because of how timelines and predictions work..it's kind of fucked. That, and clearsight; being a sympathetic hero, who, under the conditions, could have done better, but on paper, to the rational mind just kind of being a shitty coloniser at the end who didnt treat darkstalker the best.

like you see what i'm getting at? darkstalker is hard to engage with on a Very deep level because he's just. not very deep. and his writer is a flop with a lot of prejudices that leak into the way she thinks of stories, and some things may not be a fault Or a point of sympathy but just a shoddy piece of writing.

with that in mind. ive stated before i try to take as rational a stand as possible on darkstalker and clearsight. i try to pepper in a little sympathy and condemnation. i think darkstalker is obviously the villain and at the end of the day, a manipulative genocidal murderer who destroyed thousands of lives...who got drunk off power he had from birth, who, in a stressful abusive home was inclined to become more violent, powerful, and impulsive to protect his family from arctic, which turned to protecting the nightwings from the icewings.. which turned to making himself a godking under the delusion that it was all for the greater good.

i think clearsight is obviously the victim, and she couldnt have done a whole lot better under her own circumstances.. her powers turned her into a very obscure kind of terrible person whose fixation on controlling the future (encouraged by her job under the queen) turned into a kind of, thinking she was not only welcome to but that she should be responsible to control absolutely everyone around her. she was already so through the stages of grief that early on when darkstalker did bad things she just kind of swept them under the rug. more and more things judt passed by. and darkstalker did not make it easy for her to try and fix him.

its not realistic at all to say clearsight should have been a beautiful perfect partner who therapied darkstalker out of all his problems, AND its not realistic to say although darkstalker had a bad start he should have picked himself up by the bootstraps and never done any of that. its pointless to debate how one or the other could have fixed it... EMBRACE THAT THE DOOM WAS INESCAPABLE! they MADE EACHOTHER WORSE! they are not a romance, they are a horror story of how knowing everything, trying to be accountable and put a leash on everything in your life, will make it so so so much worse!!!! their environments their conditions and their powers led to this.

as much as ive stated i dont like that it coincides with an "evil from birth" narrative, the themes of Darksight just being an inescapable, unstoppable doom– no matter what, no matter what clearsight tried to do to get him to be better or control the timelines, or what darkstalker did to try to get clearsight to relax and live in the moment, no matter what fathom could have ever done or said –it was all just going to happen this way anyway. their meeting is literally The Beginning Of The End.

tl;dr and conclusion: the darkstalker apologism dilemma and the darksight debate is settled by the fact you dont need to be an extremist. you dont need to think darkstalker was a true pitiful sorrowful angel with a heart of gold and the REAL villain was clearsight (cough cough...cough cough.) and (but i respect this one more, and some people just dont like him, for EXTREMELY RATIONAL REASONS) you dont have to slam him fully as a totally morally evil death villain, and then go on a tirade of just distorting and rejecting any evidence against your idea into the earth, while hailing to high heaven any and all evidence that supports it. jist chill come frolic in a field. darkstalker was a fucked up kid who did bad things, clearsigjt was a fucked up kid who did bad things, lets get you an orange

[laconic-nightmares]

so fucking bored of having to deal with moral ocd over the use of words

people arent going to stop making progressively stricter rules as to why people who dont have the exact fucking experiences as them cant use certain words

they arent going to stop trying to exclude anyone they percieve as suffering less than them from community, or help, or fucking 'terminology.'

i cannot express how little i give a fuck about this obsession with only ever using the exact right words, only using the words other people give u permission to use once theyve decided youve reached an acceptable level of visible pain. because its only about how much they think ur suffering based on their perception of ur life

[mintacle]

Tim Drake stans up in arms to defend him because of my post saying that I dislike it when people woobify Tim to the point of spitting on Jason. I realized later I didn’t specify that the post was about the fandom’s representation of the Titans Tower fight between Jason and Tim, ut it’S still fairly obvious from context.

I hate that I have to repeat it but: Jason never tried to kill Tim, never intended to, Jason was 18 at the time and Tim was 16. The only run in which Jason is a mass murderer is from a decade ago by Morrison who had the agenda to push Jason from an anti-hero into a pure villain character. It was an experiment and it didn’t go well. It’s not so much a part of Jason’s canon character as a weird thing we don’t talk about. Something like pink kryptonite or the people that Batman actually totally did kill, but it was just slightly off-camera. So no, Jason is also not a crazy mass-murderer, he does murder, but not randomly or just for the heck of it.

Also @ all Tim stans, idk man, I prefer my Tim to not be rendered completely helpless and empty because of his traumas, but to understand him as a conflicted character with his own agency. I am completely in support of writing fics and reading fics with helpless characters at times to satisfy one’s own craving to be saved from a situation you are powerless in, that’s just fanon indulgence and 100% cool my dudes, what I take issue with is when this happens at the expense of only extending understanding and the privilege of being saved to victims who are deemed agreable, such as Tim, while condemning victims who are unagreeable, such as Jason.

However it is also more compelling to me to see Tim as a smart and constantly trying character. I think in canon he is highly self-reliant and has purposefully built a support system of friends around him to not have the same flaw as Batman to end up alone and dependent. I personally prefer stories of Tim attempting to save himself from whatever the situation is and seeing him using methods that should have worked and seeing it not being enough, because I can relate to that more than having given up in an abusive situation, BUT! I deeply understand that my experiences with abuse are not universal. When I was stuck with my abusive father I kept trying to negotiate or find a way to move out and nothing would ever work and I’m more familiar with needing a Deus Ex Machina sviour because everything I did wasn’t enough to save me, than needing a savior because I cannot ask for the help I need. Sometimes speaking up is more dangerous than trying to endure, sometimes speaking up is terrifying, sometimes you are not aware that your situation went across the tipping point and should be understood as abuse. Fans that relate to Tim for any of those reasons or others have my full compassion to indulge in Tim whump however much they want to, God knows I have too. The only thing I take issue with is the demonization of Jason in the Titans Tower incident and the misrepresentation of canon without disclaiming it as headcanon/fanon just to elevate Tim’s victim status. 

Because that is preferential treatment of one type of victim over the other. And that is what is so hurtful to me, personally. 

[autisticlee]

the whole "you shouldn't identify as X, don't form an identity when you can't/don't know yet, you're too young, what if/you might change your mind!" etc etc. it's so silly when you think about it. what's wrong with changing your mind anyway? why did we all decide that gender/sexuality identity has to be static and can never change? why did we decide that it's a bad thing to change? because the old generation tells us change is bad? because they (mostly conservatives) want to conserve "the good old days/the way things are supposed to be" in their minds???

WHO CARES if someone says they're gay then realizes 5 years later they're bi. WHO CARES if someone says they're a girl and realizes after trying it out they're not. let people explore who they are until they figure it out even if they go through every lable available to them! maybe none fit and they make up their own! who cares! who cares if they change it every year for the rest of their lives! humans change. that's the only constant about us! why is it a bad thing, even taboo, to accept change and exploration within sexuality and gender specifically?

there's always so much shame that comes with someone realizing they were wrong, changing as a person, or discovering something new about themselves. i've seen people afraid to explore themselves more or afraid to talk about a change in identity, for fear of the queer community pushing back on them the same way they're afraid to come out to the cishets in their life who are trans/homophobic. that's just not fair that their own community can become hostile towards them, too. being in a closet within a bigger closet essentially. everyone is always told to figure it all out first before claiming an identity, because then you're locked in it for life, apparently. you can't change your mind after that. why though? what's the point of that really? why can't we embrace fluidity a bit more? why can't we accept that humans do change all the time? why is making and trying to prove that these identities are static/unchanging/innate the only way to validate them? why can't they just, I don't know, BE VALID. without reason. why must we jump through hoops to be valid when we should just automatically be valid because we are human. stop letting the cishets gatekeep everything, leading to us gatekeeping each other!

I am sometimes very hesitant to talk about my own identity. I identified as a gay/biromantic trans guy for like idk 8-10 years? transitioned and everything. then like a year or two ago, I realized/decided that doesn't fit right anymore. now i'm a nonbinary, but also kinda fluid, aroace person. sometimes I don't like to talk about that because of the stigma behind changing your gender/sexuality identities. but you know what. i'll talk about it anyway and people have to learn to accept it.

what were the consequences and bad parts about changing my mind/identity like that? none. absolutely none. (outside of people being weird about it for no reason) but the benefits are feeling more comfortable with myself, and that's no one else's business.

[ladyluscinia]

Not going to put this directly on the long discussion chain that prompted it because it's somewhat topic adjacent at best and I have no intention of derailing a discussion of fandom racism, but - while reading some of the "Izzy critical" responses that @bromelads got - I did see mention of one thing that I have both passionate feelings about and a near constant desire to elaborate some oft ignored context for. So.

One of the things mentioned as a source of discomfort in fandom for "Izzy critical" poc was posts rejecting that Edward was growing or healing in 1x09 and 1x10, suggesting that it mostly serves to empathize with Izzy over Ed and to make Izzy's actions look better at the expense of Ed's character / softness. The same person who gave this example later agreed that there's some truth in the idea that Izzy crits' misinterpretation of Izzy fan meta has something to do with the (very baffling) perception that we all don't like Ed or think he's the simplified villain of Izzy's story or something, which I just want to a) appreciate for a second because I do actually adore Edward so much, and b) mention specifically because I think the whole Ed healing debate is a great example of that.

I'm not going to argue why I am staunchly in the "Ed wasn't healing" / "Kraken was inevitable" camp because I've done it before, but I do want to point out some related thoughts around that argument that I've picked up on each time it loops back around.

I feel like a lot of the people who strongly disagree with or get mad about that take frame it as though we are minimizing or rejecting the existence of Edward's softness entirely. It's like... Ok, so there is a distinct sequence of moments where Edward is displaying emotional vulnerability or a draw toward fine things that fans noticed, and then they interpreted the pink robe Ed's "healing" as all that starting to pay off in his character development (before being interrupted by an external obstacle: Izzy). A very straightforward A -> B. Only when I push back against B and say "hold on I don't see any healing in 1x10," then I feel like people hear me rejecting that all the moments of A meant anything at all. If I see the shadow of the Kraken as an internally motivated obstacle being built in earlier episodes, then I must think that's the dark and violent payoff, and the evidence of softness was a diversion or manipulation or just not going anywhere significant in character terms.

Which is very frustrating to me because Edward is a romcom protagonist.

Yes, this is very obvious to everyone. But it matters in this debate because protagonist status comes with very significant guarantees - namely, Edward is going to grow / heal / get his happy ending, etc. We've even got Stede's S1 arc (which remember is still unfinished too) as a good example of structure and focus on internalized character flaws framed by plot hurdles. There is no version of this story arc where Edward ends as the Kraken, and I have never seen anybody suggest he's not currently on a character arc toward growth and healing and a circle of true companions in Stede's crew who love him for who he is.

So when I or anyone else says he's not there yet, it's almost exclusively because we are arguing about where he is on this character arc in 1x10. Of course the appreciation for fancy clothes and slow mornings with overly sugared tea is going to pay off! Of course he's going to become friends with the crew (I'm rooting for Frenchie S2 bonding)! Of course he's going to get to beat back that self loathing he's carried since his dad! But people get defensive and angry like you are personally targeting them and declaring their blorbo an irredeemable asshole because you suggest character development major enough to drive a character driven show probably takes more than a few weeks of easygoing vacation to reach final form. That's not what I'm saying at all!

Interpretations upsetting or offending people even when written with a complete lack of malice is nothing new, but it really seems like making up a whole army of guys to get mad at for takes is happening more and more. (And I'll admit I'm probably getting more and more guilty of this myself as my understanding of what exactly people are arguing in different fandom city states gets more and more fractured. Meta builds off of meta, and if you randomly see one post by one blog you already disagree with, you might be missing a lot of context to clarify what they actually mean vs "of course that's the awful take you would have".)

[cakemoney]

i don't want to put my uninformed foot in my mouth or get involved with the Discourse but i've been seeing the two extremes of reactions to the korean low birth rates issue (on tumblr and twitter both) and i'm just kind of like. look. i feel like "low birth rates (in many countries but especially japan and korea as part of this conversation) are more broadly the result of capitalism/a culture of overwhelming overwork that makes social relationships and having families incredibly inaccessible to young people" and "low birth rates are very much a part of the current conversation about misogyny and social expectations for women in korea especially in the context of reproduction as 'unpaid labor' for women" are statements that can both be true

[siena-sevenwits]

[eternally-tired-cryptid]

(Preface! Moash crit is tagged as #Moash crit bc I do not personally say the f-bomb, and I want it to be easy for folks to filter if they don't wanna see.)

This post isnt really like. Actually Moash crit. More of a dive into my thoughts on Moash and more into the bickering I see over whether Moash kicked a child. For me personally this isn't even one of my main reasons for disliking Moash, but I'm not gonna get into that unless people genuinely want to know.

Ok so here's the actual text. "Moash shoved aside the weeping prince with his foot."

So like. Idk maybe y'all are joking and I'm missing it but. When I say Moash kicked a child, I mean he shoved a child with his foot, which for a 4/5/6 (?) Year old is going to knock a kid over if they're standing bc like. Yes they're big enough to do stuff but balance is still harder for them than for adults.

I think some people see kicked and think drop kick? Or like, that the kick threw the kid across the room. I don't think it did, just out of the way, forcefully, whilst watch his dad die.

Idk but I keep seeing people seem to view this moment totally different and then bickering abt it (the stuff that gets thru I have all Moash discourse filtered tbh), so I thought I'd toss this out there

[tintedglasses]

i’m driving back home to my apartment tomorrow and i’m feeling the normal like dread/panic about it which is made worse by the fact that i don’t have a clear date for when I’m going to come back again but i think ultimately this will be good for me. my dad and brother are coming to visit in February i think which will be fun so that’s something i can look forward to. plus, it was a really tough time at home this time. there were definitely some fun things that i did and good memories that i made but i also think that having a really vulnerable last therapy session before coming back opened up a lot for me and made me really pay attention to the ways in which i feel demeaned and belittled and small when i’m here and how i don’t always feel valued.

and that prompted a lot of thinking about ways that i want my life to be different. my 17 yr old sister is getting married next month at the courthouse and moving to be with her army boyfriend in Texas (which i have been avoiding thinking about ever since i found out but had to confront the reality of this break) and she’s the main reason that i come home although she was also part of what hurt me this time. since she won’t be around though, i think that gives me a lot more freedom to travel and i’m using that opportunity to plan a Montreal trip with my best friend that i’m so excited about and really hope happens! I might also go to the hockey hall of fame in Toronto one weekend too. idk man i just want to go do things that make me happy and while visiting home as much as i did this summer/fall isn’t something i regret doing, it didn’t necessarily make me happy so it’s a great opportunity to change and find things that do.