#this isn't the essay btw

[ebbywaffle]

Let's see for a character with a small amount of screen time:

Kairi's the first to bring up Riku's condition at the Secret Waterway, reaches out to him as the world is attacked by heartless (weaponless and only left at his urging), reaches out to stop him from running away (though some of yall just want to attribute that to ~being for Sora~), stays even though he now looks like the guy who started all of this (to her knowledge), encourages him to be himself and no one else including Sora, is excited to see him when she wakes up after a long sleep (Sora's location was mentioned afterward), and trusts his judgement when he greatly implies she's not ready

not in this silly meme: still feels comfortable joking with him, did invite him to talk at the paopu tree (he refused bc he had to talk it out with his clone brother), still wants to go on that damn raft with him, AND MORE

AND YET

"~But she said she wanted to leave him behind tho~ she doesn't care about him~"

I suppose I just want people to try to give her the benefit of doubt sometimes. Why expect the worst/most selfish from her? Is it some weird way to give her a """flaw"""? uh one of her flaws is that she makes jokes at the worse timing tbh but seriously i and a lot of Kairi fans wouldn't get as frustrated if yall gave her the same leniency as yall do for some characters who've done so much worse, arguably less, or have even less screen time

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[iridescentmirrorsgenshin]

An analysis of Alhaitham's egoism in relation to Kaveh

(Update: The essay this is taken from is now uploaded! It can be accessed here and here as as a pdf <3)

Max Stirner's anarchist egoism is speculated to be the basis of Alhaitham's personal egoism, therefore I will be drawing upon Stirner's 'The Unique and Its Property' for this analysis.

Property and power are key principles within this philosophy. The egoist recognises himself as an individual, separate from the general collective of “humanity”, in which concepts such as freedom and property are governed to and over the people, for then the individual is not considered as such, rather they are a part of “humanity”, rather than a whole individual (Stirner, 170). This thinking is demonstrated within Alhaitham’s Story Quest, where he dismantles Siraj’s Hivemind by targeting individuals that compromised the Hive and reminding them of their own beliefs and preferences – the individual in themselves is a whole, and is not a “part” of a system (Stirner, 170).

In this, the egoist governs himself by what he owns and what he wants to own: “ownness is my whole essence and existence, it is myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power, what I control. I am at all times and under every circumstance my own”(Stirner, 106). This relates to the concept of freedom, which, for an egoist exists according to having the power to be free of something, for example, being freed of hunger, thirst, or societal expectations (Stirner, 105). This is reflected within Alhaitham’s description: “He lives free – free from the searching eyes of ordinary people,” but also extends to the power to own.

As power is considered something which the egoist owns, property then becomes something which the egoist exerts power over, and in this, can property be made use of by the egoist – all the while, the property remains an independent vessel (Stirner, 162). This is seen within Alhaitham’s view on his vision, in that it is “no more than a useful tool”, as it can be used to serve his own needs, and that since it in his possession, he has obtained it with his own power, it makes no difference to check on it as he continues to retain that power.

In this sense then, Alhaitham has constructed his life around this form of egoism, in that anything he wants, he has, such as his job as the Scribe, his house, the interests he pursues, the people he enjoys. In order to maintain this way of life, he will deal with, or be rid of, anything he deems as "harmful".

With this, the egoist seeks satisfaction in themselves through the satisfaction of another. Ownership, in relation to another person, can become love, which like all things the egoist has power over, is ultimately theirs – as in their love for a person (Stirner, 187), which is given willingly by the egoist, for loving a person is done for the satisfaction that love brings: “But I love them with the awareness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy, I love because love is natural to me, it pleases me,” (186).

In loving another comes sacrifice, which the egoist can give into without compromising himself, as he himself sets the “purchase price of [his love]” (187) according to the happiness attributed to the loved one, as in return, the egoist shall also receive happiness (186). To enjoy someone, in an egoist fashion, is to be able to sacrifice all possessions and ownerships without foregoing the sense of an individual, of “ownness”, as the egoist would then lose his objectivity:

“I can deny myself countless things to heighten his pleasure, and I can risk for him what would be dearest to me without him, my life, my welfare, my freedom. Indeed, it forms my pleasure and happiness to feast on his pleasure and happiness. But me, myself I do not sacrifice to him, but rather remain an egoist and—enjoy him. If I sacrifice to him everything I would keep without my love for him, that is very easy… But if I sacrifice others to one passion, I still do not…  sacrifice my particular worth, my ownness. Where this nasty incident occurs, love looks no better than any other passion that I blindly obey.” – The Unique and Its Property, 185

It is relevant to note that just as the egoist receives happiness from a loved one’s pleasure, so does an egoist suffer from a loved one’s despair. Just as the egoist would sacrifice something of their own to provide happiness for a loved one in order to exact their own happiness, so too would an egoist sacrifice something, or act, to eradicate the root problem of a loved one’s misery, as this, in turn, would then resolve their own misery:

“If I see the beloved suffering, I suffer with him, and I find no rest until I’ve tried everything to comfort and cheer him…. It doesn’t follow from this that the same thing causes suffering… his tooth gives him pain, but his pain gives me pain. But because I cannot bear the sorrowful crease on the beloved forehead, therefore, then for my sake, I kiss it away. If I didn’t love this person, he could go right on creasing his forehead, that wouldn’t trouble me; I’m only driving away my troubles. – The Unique and Its Property, 186

The phrasing of “driving away… troubles” is particular to note here, due to similar usages of language used within Alhaitham’s Character Stories, in relation to him acting in accordance with his self-governed rules and serving his own self-interest by: “[acting] on his own will and deals with anything that appears harmful in his eyes”.

Kaveh, however, interprets Alhaitham’s egoism as a detached, pragmatic view of humanity, in which the individual isolates themselves not only as a means of prioritisation, but by elevating oneself over others by refusal to intermingle and to cooperate for the benefit of others. Not only is this a harmful opposition to Kaveh’s view of individuals sharing their knowledge and talent in order to pursue a better society, but due to Kaveh’s experience of Alhaitham’s personal egoism, it is harmful to Kaveh personally. Kaveh refuses to prioritise himself over others because he has seen a negative consequence of egoism, in which he has been “cut to the quick” and it has ended one of the few stable relationships in his life.

By Kaveh seeing Alhaitham’s comment about his altruism as malicious, Alhaitham has elevated himself over Kaveh, since Alhaitham does not have the same struggles as him, and has trivialised Kaveh’s trauma. To Kaveh, Alhaitham’s prioritisation of the self actively harms others as it desensitises the self to the emotions of others. Therefore, Kaveh opposes the egoism which Alhaitham advocates for, since he interprets it through his own lived experience. Hence, by Alhaitham asserting egoism over Kaveh as a means of Kaveh prioritising himself, it only reinforces Kaveh to strive to consider the feelings of others, as well as to not prioritise his own way of thinking if it undermines someone else’s.

In actuality, Alhaitham’s frustrations with Kaveh lie in his belief that Kaveh’s talents are incongruous with his values, and that if Kaveh were to prioritise himself, he would save himself suffering and enable himself to discover his “true self”, unrestricted by others placing labels onto him.

This is a personal frustration which Alhaitham would not compromise himself to assert onto a person he was indifferent to, due to his belief of not getting involved with other’s fates. However, he has been observed to ‘subvert’ his own rules to accommodate Kaveh. Through egoism, it can be seen that rather than ‘subverting’ these rules, Alhaitham adheres to them as an egoist, since he sees Kaveh as his mirror, they offer each other a contrasting perspective he believes they need to have a complete, objective vision of the world.

This is necessary for Alhaitham to consider within his own life, and therefore has extended his house to Kaveh, in order to expand his scope of thinking, and to consider perspectives he otherwise would not entertain. Kaveh’s ideals, his beliefs, and his philosophies explicitly interest Alhaitham, in contradiction with Kaveh believing that Alhaitham is disdainful of his perspectives.

In this way, Alhaitham enjoys Kaveh. He willingly pays for some of Kaveh’s tabs; pays for crates of wine for the two of them; and goes out of his way to pursue interactions with Kaveh. Just as Alhaitham is to Kaveh, Kaveh is an old friend, as unchanged in his beliefs as he was in the past and thus is a constant: “the most unshakable part of one's past is a friend that will never change”’.

Alhaitham strives to act in accordance to his own egoism and therefore assesses what “appears harmful” to him, in relation to these rules, so as to be rid of them. This can be extended to Kaveh, as Kaveh falls under what ‘belongs’ to Alhaitham, in the sense that ownership equates to Alhaitham’s enjoyment.

Alhaitham wants to have Kaveh in his life due to the alternate perspective which Kaveh offers him, thus expanding his horizons and granting him knowledge he otherwise would not obtain. As well as this, Kaveh is seen to be considered part of Alhaitham’s way of life that he wants to protect. In line with Stirner’s egoism, it follows that as Alhaitham enjoys Kaveh, as in, ‘owns’ the contentment Kaveh elicits, he therefore is affected by Kaveh’s self-inflicted grievances. Therefore, Alhaitham sees Kaveh’s altruism at the expense of his own wellbeing as something “harmful” to be dealt with, as this not only causes Kaveh inward misery, but also detriments Kaveh finding his “true self” (Alhaitham Character Story 3), which the egoist pursues above all else.

[mintytrifecta]

[whetstonefires]

I think a part of the reason I feel so connected to JGY and XY is that I, too, think everyone is lying about what a good person they are. Sure, there may be a few genuinely good people, but those are in the minority and never claim the title.

I don't know about never; some people are pretty straightforward.

And in some ways the whole point of the concept of 'a good person' is that the feeling of losing the right to consider yourself one can impose instinctive recoil from doing wrong, in situations where you don't have the leisure of working your way through an ethics diagram and choosing the logically moral path before reacting to a situation. It has practical utility.

But that system can backfire pretty horribly too, in a lot of ways. It can be hijacked by definitions of 'good' that actually make you recoil from ethical acts because they're deviant. It can lead to disappearing up your own ass lmao.

And definitely the threshold for 'talking about how you're a good person' enough that it makes you suspect as either a) a liar or b) someone who values that self-image over objective reality and other people's wellbeing is. Not very high.

Jin Guangyao, ironically, is one of those people who's so performatively A Good Person in his public life that in retrospect it looks like a red flag. Which knowing this about himself in an ongoing fashion ofc just reinforces his own cynicism about everyone else lmao.

Even Lan Xichen, who I think he may see as a genuinely good person, he also sees as an easy mark who will reliably choose what is comfortable over what is 'right,' if you just structure the scenario to make that an easy choice that's easy for him to justify.

Xue Yang's bitterness is in many ways more exciting than Jin Guangyao's because he has a way more unusual relationship to reality, but it does share a lot of notes.

The role of deception in his psychology fascinates me because as far as I can tell he's as instinctively straightforward a person as Lan Wangji, albeit along quite different lines involving a total lack of impulse control, but has adopted 'deceit' as a weapon against the wicked world in the same way he has adopted 'murder.'

But when he feels someone is not merely lying but papering over bad behavior with principles they are not living up to he is livid.

People claiming to be better than him because they're 'good' when 'good' is a construct of privilege, is the underlying idea he's not equipped to articulate. Except he takes that and applies it to 'hitting me to interrupt my random murder of some guy who happened to be within arm's reach when I wanted to hurt someone.'

Which isn't like philosophically perfect, but the underlying problem he's actually reacting to is that he understands the social contract as a lie that has never protected him but seeks to control him, while protecting rich men it has no power to control.

Which it is fair to be mad about, but then his feeling is that since that's the nature of the world and all people, he is entitled to amass for himself the power to inflict hurt without consequences as much as he possibly can, and to use it against the vulnerable for fun, and no one is entitled to interfere.

Which brings him to a place where he is violently angry at anyone talking about trying to treat other people well as a value, because either they're a hypocrite and a liar or they threaten his entire system of rationalization for why he can be The Worst and still In The Right.

'Everyone is equally bad, actually' is like, an understandable take for anyone who's had cause to become embittered. Everyone is free to make whatever philosophical peace they can with the world and by and large there's no ethical weight to any such opinion, in itself.

But it's an ideological crutch people tend to wind up leaning on very heavily when they can't or don't want to take responsibility for their own behavior.

Which is an approach that Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Su She all share, and which not only is shitty of them, it...traps them in a wheel of doubling down on their own worst impulses because rather than going 'that was bad and I shouldn't do it again' they've repeatedly invested all this energy into making what they did actually the correct thing, according to their interpretation of the context. Which means they're more likely to do it again.

(I think this is how Jin Guangyao became a serial killer, for example. He followed a doing-a-murder-impulse and then internally doubled down on how he had nothing to be ashamed of, so he was more likely to do it again, every time.

Wei Wuxian's strain of self-righteousness about his revenge was less...thorough than Jin Guangyao's, because he had the benefit of going after people on the opposite side of a war from him while Meng Yao's first known murder plot was against a shitty boss. But it probably didn't help him not try to solve army-shaped problems with mass murder, even after that stopped being allowed.)

If any of them had just like, zero moral sensibilities they would have created very different problems, and very possibly fewer of them. It's making a central goal of your operations 'self-vindication in your own internal narrative, created retroactively via reframing' rather than 'figuring out what I think I should do and trying to do that' that traps them in the self-reinforcing murder pissbaby vortex.

So if you look at it one way, these three villains are themselves perfect examples of how pursuit of the 'feeling of being good' (or at least 'not the bad guy') can make you worse.

Notably Wei Wuxian was also extremely sensitive to hypocrisy in his youth; it was the only part of Madam Yu's behavior he was ever shown objecting to. But he's sufficiently mellow and cynical from regret and burnout by the 'present' timespan after his resurrection to just get disgusted and alienated about it, rather than outraged.

He wasn't even all that mad at Xue Yang, though honestly that may be partly because he stopped entirely characterizing him as a person at some point during their interaction. Like, there's no point being angry at someone whose moral sensibilities operate exclusively on the plane of 'is this unfair to me' for manipulating and destroying people who were good to him, and then getting obsessed with his own self-pity about it. This is not a person who understands how not to be, metaphorically speaking, a cannibal.

And Wei Wuxian did know better and still got roughly the same result, so what business does he have getting angry?

Anyway yeah those two villains are both delightfully relatable if you sit down and put their perspectives together; they are clearly operating with the same basic suite of human needs and emotions as everybody else, without that being in itself particularly exculpatory, which is honestly refreshing. They've just got the most fantastically toxic interpersonal habits that knowing them counts as some level of Suffering A Curse.

Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang do both stand as scathing rebukes of the society that created them. But within the narrative, wherein they're people, the fact is that each of them had agency and one of the things they chose to do with it was develop rationales for why they were the most special little guy and everything was someone else's fault.

And their moral nihilisms, while also grounded in serious trauma, ping me as emotional masturbation of this variety.

[bonefall]

As a big sibling with a lil sib with epilepsy, when they read TBC they Honestly thought if they got struck with lightning reciting the lord's prayer they'd be cured like Shadowsight is from their epilepsy. I had a discussion with them on how that's not how it works, but ge was so upset they took it away from Shadowsight that he hasn't picked the books back up and has stated that 'he hopes Ashfur wins and starts a new religion.,'

I do not even know how to respond to this besides saying that your little sibling is 100% right to be pissed and I now also hope Ashfur wins and starts a new religion.

[thedroloisms]

just an essay bc it's been on my mind but the way that victimhood becomes a weapon on social media is so fucking stupid and counterintuitive to actual advocacy. people wielding "im a victim" as a defense not only in situations actually involving their specific case but also in basically every damn situation in the world is so ???? even in cases involving dream, for example, i will see people using his history as a means of defending him (it's really fucked up that you would accuse a victim of ___, he's an abuse victim i'm sure he won't defend ___ and that he'll ___) and while i understand where that sentiment comes from, the base assumption it's making is...nakedly untrue. and assuming its truthfulness can hurt victims moreso than it helps them.

being a victim isn't moralizing. being a victim doesn't make you a good person. suffering isn't absolution, and going through fucked up shit doesn't make someone "good." people equate abuser = bad person and victim = good person, and then assume that victims are incapable of abusive behavior or "problematic" internalized ideas. an abuser can't be neurodivergent, or mentally ill, or part of a marginalized group, and most importantly an abuser can't be a victim. the boxes of victim and abuser are strictly defined with no overlap. once you've been through something truly, verifiably, Fucked Up (tm), congrats! you get a certificate of eternal victimhood that prevents you from ever being a Real Bad Person ever for the rest of your life.

only that's not how real life works! it's just not! generational trauma leads to cycles of abuse that perpetuate themselves over whole generations of people! the kids that think that it's perfectly fine and a-okay for a parent to physically punish their children don't tend to be the ones with parents that don't lay a finger on them! and you know, it sucks. it sucks that you get nothing out of being hurt, that there's no fucking prize, that there are no suffering vouchers for you to cash in because of the abuse you suffered that can give you good-person-points. it sucks to endure all that shit for nothing. but the opposite idea of suffering making you a good person is the exact reason why some people preach about the miles they walked to school in the driving rain to excuse taking out their shitty temper on their small children.

being abused generally doesn't make one "better." if anything, trauma tends to fuck you up in ways that hurt you...and others. going through shit tends to make people worse. working to get better is something that requires actual conscious effort, not something that you are given as a side effect of going through hell. over and over again, traumatized individuals who are made to feel powerless and given little freedom and ability to change their circumstances, when in a situation where they are given power to some degree over some person, may choose to abuse that power while they're in their own abusive situation or after. part of being a victim of abuse often means having a distorted view of the abuse you've been through! it can mean normalizing fucked up behavior! looking at shit and treating it lightly because you've been taught that it's "not that bad," if you've been taught that it's bad at all! victims aren't granted perfect ideologies from god because they walked through flames--cult survivors usually have to unlearn all sorts of messed up beliefs that were drilled into them--beliefs that many people on twitter would then damn them for, because obviously if you've thought something like that in the past then you're a bigoted hateful individual.

i can only speak from my own experience, but i can't fucking count the number of people i've heard of or met or known personally who have been through some kind of trauma in the past, who are undoubtably victims of abuse, who then go on to act in toxic, manipulative, and abusive ways to others. oftentimes, these people are aware of the fact that they were in abusive situations in the past and make quite a big deal about the fact that they care about victims, as a victim, and want to advocate for them. they're the same people who react extremely negatively to anyone alluding to the idea that they could be abusive--they're not like that, they've been abused, how could anyone accuse them of abusing another person, don't they know how much that hurts with their history. and so on and so forth.

and...i have a lot of sympathy for these individuals, generally speaking. because as mentioned above, being abused in the past doesn't necessarily make it harder for you to be a perpetrator in the future. sometimes--oftentimes, even--it's the opposite. and i feel for them, because going through trauma and being hurt makes you scramble for ways to not be hurt again, and oftentimes the easiest answer for that (and the ways of solving problems as modeled to them in the past!) is control, and controlling another party can very easily slip into manipulative, abusive behavior. especially if you still have internalized ideas mixed in with the fear that surviving abuse entails, internalized ideas that are often left unexamined by people who believe that their victimhood absolves them from any further responsibility. i feel for people who are deathly afraid of ever being seen as terrible people, oftentimes because of the shit that they went through, who seek explanations for their abusers' behavior that make it so much easier to simplify the matter into "they're something separate from me, something that i can never become." i sympathize with the anger and fear and frustration and grief that might never had had a healthy outlet while in a past situation that ends up poured out into places where it shouldn't be in the present, i sympathize with the desire to find reason in being hurt where it doesn't exist, to want there to be something to make the whole damn thing worth it instead of having nothing to take with you but your pain.

but at the end of the day, that's not how life works. that's not how abuse works. yeah, there are abusers who are cruel for cruelty's sake, who are aware of the harm they do and desire to cause more--and there are just as many who genuinely believe that they're doing the right thing, that they're doing good, that they care for the one that they're hurting unselfishly and wholeheartedly. there are many, many people who hurt others because they have been hurt before, and this isn't an excuse--of course not--but refusing to acknowledge the ways that pain can perpetuate itself and blinding oneself to the possibility of their own actions ever being abusive can literally be how this pain continues. it's good to be self aware, it's good to want to do the right thing, but assuming that victims are good people because of the suffering they went through not only means that so-called "bad victims" (or anyone that's not yet Acceptably untangled the thought patterns and actions that have been normalized to them, or anyone who lashes out in quote-unquote appropriate ways as judged by whatever social media council is handing out social justice tickets for the week) get overlooked and ignored, but abusive patterns of behavior are allowed to continue to exist, just in a repackaged form with different language. it's not fair to victims to nail them to this standard of so-called righteousness that is also inextricably connected to their experiences, allowed to be revoked if they're too "abuser" to be "victim" anymore, or to overlook the victims of their behavior because their inherent suffering-borne righteousness keeps them from crossing the line into bad behavior.

at the end of the day, no one deserves abuse, victims deserve to be advocated for, and people who have been through horrific shit didn't deserve to go through horrific shit. but you don't get handed get-out-of-jail-free cards for being treated badly, you know?

[beesinspades]

i know astarion's attitude towards sex is all due to his trauma but. listen. there are some aspects of his romance and experiences that can be so relatable as a sex-neutral or sex-averse ace person. in fact him being ace or acespec on top of the trauma makes him even more compelling and tragic to me. it would've been amazing and interesting if he'd been canonically ace and these aspects plus how his asexuality affected his traumatic sexual experiences had been explored as well

[kingofthewilderwest]

Moral Orel hit me in a sweet spot. I think it’s beautiful seeing fans on different paths discussing how the show touched them. I’ve seen people who’ve left the church, agnostics, atheists, and Christians all say the show spoke deeply to them. Of course the show’s black humor on religion offended many, especially before its last season aired, but I think the show’s resulting legacy - connecting to people who’ve both left and who’ve stayed - demonstrates successful nuance to how Moral Orel was crafted.

The show’s creators have said it’s not against religion per se, it’s against hypocrites. Even with the first season, I felt that and found appreciation (frankly, joy) for what was satirized. Here was a show speaking up, exaggerating, and lampooning the facets of Protestant American Christian culture I’ve vented about in confidence to relevant friends and family - without, like many modern shows which tackle this subject do, mocking followers themselves, faith itself, and suggesting to viewers one way of life is better than another, one group of people is (ex: intellectually) superior to another.

Some people have stepped away from Moral Orel and said, “This show comforted me when I left church,” or outright, “This show taught me there is no god.” And that’s not an unfair way to interact with Moral Orel because it doesn’t preach what you “should” do there (a sign of mature writing, really). I stepped away from Moral Orel and said, “This show comforted me in the areas I get frustrated,” which assuages my feelings and makes me more confident in my faith and place within culture.

I feel awkward in contemporary culture because I was raised with minimal secular exposure - daughter of a worship pastor, student at a private Christian school until high school. Meanwhile, in adulthood, I didn't attended church functions for over a dozen years. My group of friends have largely been non-Christians who hold negative opinions about the religion and don’t live remotely similar lifestyles to what I was raised with. I love what I've learned from them. Unfortunately, this also means the cultural building blocks that make me who I am seem shared by no one I'm around, which, even though I'm in my 30s, remains disorienting.

On the flipside, I'm the weirdo with the third eye in Christian spaces, too. I’m an ever-thirsty knowledge-seeker who strives to comprehend forbidden topics from all angles. I spent my twenties researching, questioning, rebuilding knowledge, and critically analyzing everything about the Bible. Church attendees and services feel painfully artificial, with mental blockers to topics I feel are critical to understand.

In either community I partake in, I feel “off.”

I’m grateful to have been raised by parents who didn’t pussyfoot around issues, with a father who deep-dives research. Discussions, delving, and digging into the hard stuff has always been fostered. My family spoke to pastors when we disagreed with their theology. I grew up around people who practiced passive acceptance, but my family was not that.

In the last year, I’ve returned more strongly to my faith and have been reintegrating with the Christian community. In some areas, my faith has grown and, humbly, I’ve learned much from peers. Despite stereotypes, I want to note that, in certain fields, the church community has always been deep and meticulous! And there are so many beautiful and uplifting areas in the church. But likewise there are those areas that get assumed, aren’t questioned, and aren’t… responded to well by questioning spirits. There have always been areas in the church culture I find disingenuous, foolish, illogical, limited, oversimplified, denialistic, or susceptible to hypocrisy and immorality. I’m not better than any person on this planet, but I’m rubbing shoulders with a community that has different blinders than I do, who don’t even consider asking the types of questions or seeking out the information I find necessary for a solidified faith.

Moral Orel disparages the toxic elements of Protestant culture, the misinterpretations, the artificial facades, the mindless assumptions, the poorly-hidden underbelly, all the areas Christian community can and does go wrong. It makes me feel justified feeling awkward in two worlds: someone for whom Christianity is deeply important, but someone whose mindset doesn’t jive with the rest of the town. Someone who can find and wants to find the best lessons outside of Christianity. Someone who believes in questioning, rethinking constantly, raising her eyebrows at common notions within church culture, and striving for the actual love, sincerity, dedication, and goodness our faith should be based on.

[sojourner-between-worlds]

I normally don't vague post about other people (and I'm not really here, even) but someone in the tag suggested that Jack would make a better Team Leader than Yusei and it made me realize something, in part, about why people think that Yusei is boring.

tl;dr: Yusei isn't boring; he was written as the MC in the wrong genre.

See, Shonen protagonists typically have the following personality traits: loud, brash, hot-headed, sometimes abrasive. Yusei is none of those things, and Jack is ALL of them. Which, I'm sure, is what led that person to say that Jack would make the better leader and what leads so many people (who are mostly only fans of Shonen anime) to say that Yusei is boring. He doesn't fit their expectations of what a Shonen protag is supposed to look like, therefore he's boring.

But the thing is, if you popped him into, say, a Slice of Life, he'd be perfectly at home (well...except for the Trademark YGO Hair anyway) and well-loved by the fan base. I can say this with fair certainty because I've at least never seen anyone say that Natsume Takashi (Natsume's Book of Friends) is boring in any way, and honestly the two of them have very similar temperaments. The difference is, obviously, the genre of their respective stories.

Slice of Life allows for its protags to be softer-spoken, more reserved; Shonen often does not.

It's time people stopped saying that Yusei is boring and just admit that they like loud, brash characters as opposed to quiet ones, and that Yusei just doesn't fit what they expect from a Shonen protagonist.

He's not boring; he was just written for the wrong genre.

[romansmartini]

(for @bonenest <3) yeah so the thing about that living+ convo is that it's so bizarre how roman is both flirting with gerri + apologizing but not really apologizing for the one thing she wants & deserves an apology for? strange vibes all around. not surprising given where their relationship stands but hugely tonally different regardless.

honestly the strangest thing is him mentioning tabitha — it sounds like he's trying to make gerri jealous, but that doesn't really add up. gerri i think is a very non-jealous person bc she's cutthroat enough and knows her worth, plus she's never had any reason to be threatened by tabitha personally professionally or otherwise. so what is the point of bringing her up.

i think the meaning of the scene hinges on her tbh. roman's essentially saying "hey, sorry about being attracted to you before, that wasn't me, i know that wasn't normal, but tabitha's in town and i'm pretty sure i can be normal again since my dad is dead so you don't have to worry about me anymore. friends again?"

it fits in with roman's "pre-grieved" mentality + his false belief that his dad's death made him "free." it also fits in with the fact that logan always liked tabitha('s image) and gerri's transformation in logan's eyes into the poster child for roman's sexual dysfunction.

obviously gerri was Wrong enough for roman and that was mutually acknowledged between them, but i think i realized for the first time with this convo that logan's view of gerri had fully become roman's as well because of logan's final request etc — even though he still cared about her so much and didn't want to fire her at connor's wedding. it definitely adds context as to why it was easier to fire her in anger later that episode.

i like how the script says roman is being 'honest' because like yeah he thinks he's got it all figured out but his mental state is completely incomprehensible. he's lumping in the sexual harassment with the sexy phone sex. he thinks his dad was the cause of his sexual dysfunction and his death erases it but he only thinks gerri is a source of his sexual dysfunction because his dad told him so. confused king. <3

[lavendertarot]

There's a pattern I'll occasionally see in fandoms with very character-driven stories, where the most popular characters will be read into so much that themes and arcs from other characters will get prescribed to their character instead.

People can analyze characters however they like ofc, but it's frustrating from an overall textual analysis standpoint; it's very often the result of the "fandom academic" not only projecting what's already explored better on other characters onto their blorbo, but also their own feelings and projections of themselves. It ends up creating a lot of ooc fanworks that are supposedly backed up by canon but in reality fall flat when considered in context of the original themes of the story they're from.

And like, I don't necessarily think it's the result of someone lacking critical analysis skills, because oftentimes it's not like they're pulling these additional character traits out of nowhere. These traits exist within the text within other aspects of it, such as being arcs better explored by other characters or issues that are more pronounced in less popular characters, so there's a level of recognition that the overall text is utilizing these themes.

I think the issue itself stems from an inherent need to grant characters (aka mechanisms to tell a narrative) a level of personhood that separates them from the context that they exist in. It's partially related to fandom-as-activism if you ask me, but also partially related to how we as modern internet users comprehend our senses of identity from within the digital space. The way that social media sites encourage users to condense and market themselves and post the most "exciting" and "marketable" aspects of themselves online isn't dissimilar to how one could hypothetically comprehend how a fictional narrative is structured. That combined with how facebook in the 2000s/early 2010s encouraged people to show a more "true" version of themselves, essentially resulted in a combination where everyone is a perfectly manicured, marketable, fake (fictional) version of themselves, while also being a real and honest person. Thus a trend of viewing every form of a manufactured person or character as also real, complex, and just like you fr, may have sprung up.

Not to mention the fact that corporations that produce character-driven stories will rely on you *as a consumer* to grow attached to fictional characters and see them as people instead of concepts, because you're more likely to continue consuming their products if you believe that the character you're engaging with has that personhood to connect to. It's akin to a celebrity endorsement, except they don't have to pay for an actual celebrity and the risks that are associated with it.

Ultimately though, issues really start to show up when "fandom academics" prescribe their *own* personhood to characters and thus forget the context that the character (as means to tell a story) exists in. That action then causes a level of dissonance between their attempted objective analysis of a character and the way one would analyze that same character as part of the rest of the cast and overarching themes of the text. Thus the ooc character that has traits that appear to be either stolen from another source within the text or the author themselves is born.

Or something like that idk

[torchickentacos]

Literary devices, how I adore you... allusion, colloquialism, alliteration, metaphor, simile, juxtaposition (!!!!!!!), anntithesis, foreshadowing, imagery, symbolism, personification, irony, hyperbole???? All amazing.

[cuntyqueerleondraisaitl]

If you think this is a straight man

Have you ever met a bisexual before?

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

"La misère corrompt les mœurs du peuple et dégrade son âme ; elle le dispose au crime en étouffant en lui le germe de l'honneur et le sentiment naturel que l'homme a de sa propre dignité. Elle le force à fuir le joug du mariage. Tandis que la nature l'entraîne vers le but de cette union et l'invite à donner le jour à des êtres malheureux auxquels il ne peut donner la subsistance, et lors même qu'ils naissent sous les auspices du lien conjugal, il est souvent réduit à ne voir dans l'augmentation de sa famille que l'accroissement de ses maux ; il maudit le jour qui lui assure le doux, le cruel nom de père ; il ne voit dans ses enfants que des compagnons importuns de sa misère, qui viennent lui enlever le pain qui suffisait à peine pour soutenir sa déplorable existence ! Il les abandonne, il les rejette sans pitié."

[Tr: "Misery corrupts the morals of the people and degrades their soul; it disposes him to crime by stifling in him the germ of honor and the natural feeling that man has of his own dignity. It forces him to flee the yoke of marriage. While nature draws him towards the goal of this union and invites him to give birth to unfortunate beings to whom he cannot sustain, and even when they are born under the auspices of the conjugal bond, he is often reduced to seeing in the increase of his family only the increase of his ills; he curses the day which assured him the sweet, cruel name of father; he sees in his children only importunate companions of his misery, who come to take away from him the bread which hardly sufficed to support his deplorable existence! He abandons them, he rejects them without pity."]

— Maximilien Robespierre, Observations sur cette partie de la législation qui règle les droits et l'etat des Bâtards, 1786

[bonefall]

longtime dc fan and i think a lot of people are angry because alex is obviously one of the most culturally relevant instances of misogyny in media. that being said being more culturally relevant doesn’t mean it’s the worst instance of misogyny and i think bumble definitely experiences more profound misogyny in the way the actual content is presented, if that makes sense

I get you, and that's a charitable way of looking at it.

I think what's rustling my jimmies is that like, there was a couple of WC fans being mildly dismissive of Alex in that note minefield, after dozens of comments of "fuck you how could you let the fridge woman lose" and "Bumble didn't deserve to win ANY rounds" and "how could A CAT experience misogyny." But then WE get blamed for the toxicity because THEY were butthurt that the Funny Cat People have the 'audacity' to win something they feel entitled to.

Like, we've gotta be endlessly charitable as we get openly insulted because they're upset about Alex losing, a very well-known and culturally relevant character with a legacy so massive we have a whole term named after her. But condemnations of "She's just a cat, letting WC into this poll was a mistake, Bumble can't even be a victim of misogyny" only started coming around once I started talking about it.

as if it's OUR fault people got passive-aggressive or even OPENLY aggressive towards us, and that we're "just as bad" for retaliating

But like you said, it's not a "Most Culturally Relevant Misogyny" tournament, it's a "Canon Misogyny Victims" tournament. And you're not even supposed to give a shit that Bumble died. The fat, woman abuse victim is beaten to death by a dictator, and your takeaway is meant to be, "It's so sad that Clear Sky is being blamed for murdering her, now they're all preparing for self-defense against a homicidal maniac, oh nooo :("

And I think that DOES make her deserve the win here! Alex is a MARTYR. Everyone with a brain agrees what happens to her is bad. It happened in her canon because it was bad. We talk about her and keep her memory alive. Bumble gets dismissed entirely out of hand because she's "just a cat in a kid's book" as if that doesn't make it worse, and as if the kid's book didn't treat a domestic abuse survivor like a moron for even asking for help.

Anyway, just to reiterate, I love DC fans. It's not all of you guys. Alex was done dirty and deserves justice-- and it's even kind of a shame that all she became is "The Fridge Woman." I haven't even heard people talk about how she was a wary, responsible person who was still ready to rock with Kyle's new weird glowstick powers, or that she was a journalist, or that she just got brought back in another edition as a Green Lantern only to be revealed as an illusion and re-absorbed back into Kyle's mind. Nope. Even her fans just remember her as The Fridge Woman.