#+ how we define humanity + what makes a person a person. is so interesting and cool

[amara-scott]

Just friends.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 — Pairing: Mattheo Riddle x female!Slytherin Summary: Hiding the one thing you truly loved, the one person you trusted most was a horrible way to live. But if it was the only way to be with him, you would do anything. And he would do the same. warning: physical and emotinal pain

The silence that followed was deafening, save for the occasional shuffle of boots against the cold stone floor. The ropes binding my wrists and ankles burned against my skin, their magic pulsing with every desperate movement I made to free myself. My breathing was shallow, my heart pounding so loudly I was sure it echoed through the cavernous space we had been dragged into.

Theo groaned behind me, his voice hoarse. "Y/N? You okay?"

I clenched my jaw. "Define 'okay.'"

A low chuckle sounded from one of the masked figures, their stance relaxed, as if they had all the time in the world.

"Oh, we’re going to have so much fun with you two," one of them murmured, voice dripping with amusement.

My stomach twisted. I forced myself to keep my expression neutral, despite the fear creeping up my spine. I had no idea where we were. No idea why they had taken us. But I knew one thing for certain—this was no ordinary kidnapping.

A door creaked open somewhere in the darkness, and the atmosphere shifted instantly. Heavy footsteps echoed through the chamber, slow and deliberate, each step sending a fresh wave of dread through my already trembling body.

I didn’t have to see him to know who had arrived.

Voldemort.

The air turned colder, as if the very presence of him had sucked the warmth from the room. My pulse quickened, but I forced my chin up, refusing to cower.

A long silence followed before a voice, low and smooth, cut through the stillness.

"Ah… what do we have here?"

I didn't dare turn my head, but I could feel his gaze settle on me, scrutinizing, calculating. My entire body tensed under his invisible grip, my fingers curling into fists despite the restraints.

"My Lord," one of the Death Eaters spoke, bowing his head. "We found them exactly where you said they would be."

Voldemort hummed in amusement. "Of course you did. I do not make mistakes."

A slow, deliberate sound of footsteps circled us, and I swallowed hard, my throat dry as parchment. Theo shifted slightly behind me, but neither of us spoke.

"Such an interesting pair," Voldemort mused. "Tell me, children… are you loyal?"

I bit my tongue, willing myself to remain silent. Beside mine, Theo's breathing was controlled, measured. He was trying not to react.

Voldemort sighed as if disappointed. "Silence? How predictable."

A sudden, searing pain shot through my arm, and I gasped, back arching against the ropes. Fire burned beneath my skin, spreading like venom, and I knew without looking what was happening.

The Dark Mark.

My vision blurred for a moment as agony racked my body. Theo let out a sharp curse behind me, telling me he was experiencing the same torment. I clenched my teeth, refusing to scream, but my breath came in ragged pants, my body shuddering from the intensity of the pain.

"Do you feel it?" Voldemort’s voice slithered into my ear, deceptively soft. "The power that binds you to me?"

I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on anything other than the blistering heat of my burning flesh. I refused to answer.

A cold hand gripped my chin, tilting my face up. I was forced to look at him.

Scarlet eyes bore into mine, empty of anything remotely human. His expression was unreadable, but the amusement in his tone remained.

"You will learn, child. You will learn that resistance is futile."

A new wave of pain slammed into me, and this time, I couldn’t hold back the strangled cry that tore from my throat. My nails dug into my palms, desperate for something—anything—to ground me.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, the pain stopped.

I gasped for air, my entire body trembling, my vision swimming as I struggled to stay upright.

Voldemort released my chin, turning away with the eerie grace of a predator who knew his prey was already trapped.

"Take them to the dungeons," he commanded dismissively. "We will see if their loyalty can be... persuaded."

The last thing I saw before darkness claimed me was Theo slumping forward, the same exhausted, pained look etched onto his face.

And then, everything went black.

—

With a jolt and desperate for air, I awoke, sitting up. The stone warm where I laid but otherwise cold as death. My blurry eyes take in the dungeons, eyes snapping to Theo still lying on the floor—

The dungeon was suffocating. The walls, slick with damp, seemed to close in around us, the air thick with the scent of cold stone and something metallic—blood, maybe. My skin still burned where the Dark Mark had seared itself into my flesh, the pain pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

"T—Theo," my voice croaks as the dryness returns to my lungs. I shuffle to my hands and knees, arms free of ropes, but I fall back onto my stomach. My arm burning darkly, my skin prickling in pain. A few tears slip from my eyes as I glance over to see the mark now etched into me forever.

"Y/N?"

I look up and see Theo shifting, giving me enough purpose to try again, and I crawl forward, sinking against the wall he was laying by.

"You okay?" I ask this time, voice quiet. I lift a hand and feel his burning skin.

"Shit—this feels worse than that one hangover after the biggest Slytherin party last year—" He mutters and sits up too, holding his head with a groan.

I can't exactly laugh, but my lip lifts into a calm smile as I see Theo is well enough to make jokes.

"You always have to wake up shit-faced after a party, otherwise you say it wasn't a good one." I added, and he chuckled, wincing from pain. A sigh leaving his strained lips.

"What the fuck is going on, Y/N?" He asks, sounding vulnerable and raw, a rare sight for any Slytherin but especially Theodore Nott.

"I wish I knew." I replied, glancing around once more.

I focused on the feeling of the stone beneath my fingertips, grounding myself, forcing my mind to stay here and not drift into the abyss of pain and fear. But it wasn’t fear for myself that threatened to consume me.

It was Mattheo.

Theo shifted beside me, his breathing still uneven. “You’re quiet,” he murmured, head tilting slightly as he regarded me through heavy-lidded eyes. “That’s never a good sign.”

I swallowed, pressing my lips together. I didn’t want to say it. Not here. Not now.

But when would we have another chance?

His gaze sharpened. “Y/N,” he pressed, voice low but insistent. “I know you. And I know when you’re keeping something from me.” He inhaled shakily. “If this is one of our last moments, just—don’t waste it on silence.”

I looked down at my hands, my fingers trembling slightly as I traced the fresh mark on my arm. The skin was still raw, red and angry. A wound that wouldn’t heal. Much like the truth I had buried deep inside me.

I exhaled slowly. “I think I know why we’re here.”

Theo tensed. “What?”

I hesitated, the words catching in my throat. I could still feel Mattheo’s hands on mine, the way his touch had always felt like both a promise and a warning. The stolen moments. The whispered confessions. The fire that burned between us even when we tried to smother it.

And now, the cold realization that it might have led us here.

“It’s Mattheo,” I admitted, barely above a whisper. “More precisely… Mattheo and me.”

Theo stared, confusion flashing across his face before it hardened into something unreadable. “Explain.”

I swallowed, my throat tight. “He—he and I… we were keeping something secret. And if Voldemort found out…” My stomach twisted. “I think he did.”

Theo’s jaw clenched, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten. “What kind of secret?”

I hesitated again, but what was the point of holding back now? If I was going to die here, I refused to let this truth rot inside me.

“We are together,” I admitted. “In secret. Have been for months.” The words tumbled out now, unstoppable. “And it wasn’t just some meaningless fling, Theo. It was real. We planned things. We talked about—” I stopped myself, shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter now. But if Voldemort saw it as a betrayal, as a weakness…”

Theo exhaled sharply, running a hand down his face. “I knew you were close but—Fuck.”

I nodded, pressing my fingers against my temples. “And what if he’s here too? Or—or worse, what if that's why he was summoned with Draco?”

The thought was unbearable. The possibility that our love, our reckless, secret love, had condemned Mattheo—

Theo’s hand closed over mine, grounding me. “Hey,” he said, his voice steadier than I expected. “We don’t know anything yet.”

I blinked back the burn of tears, shaking my head. “But I might have gotten him killed.”

Theo was silent for a long moment before he spoke again, voice softer now. “Or he might be the only one who can save us.”

The weight of those words settled between us. Because if Mattheo was out there, and if he knew—he wouldn’t stop until he found us.

But would he be in time?

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Taglist: @genterom903 @a-little-funny @revesephemeres

[animentality]

I just figured out why Isagi's "self destruction" doesn't work for me in terms of narrative or emotional impact.

because Isagi doesn't have enough of a self to DESTROY.

This is why Isagi's blank slate self insert personality doesn't work, especially not in terms of making the story more interesting or emotionally impactful.

Barou. An arrogant guy, who calls himself the king. Expects everyone to feed him passes. Is talented but pigheaded. He's tricked into passing, and has a moment of despair, but then realizes he can both cooperate with a team and still be strong enough to shine the way he wants.

That had emotional impact bc Barou as a character was so strongly set up to be impossible to work with. I didn't like Barou before that but the new Barou had believable development, which was very earned, AND he became a much more likable person after that, because he learned respect.

Bachira. A lonely character who hides his grief behind a mask of cheerfulness, and who desperately wants to be understood by others even as he doesn't even try to act normal. His entire character revolves around an imaginary friend. He gives up on this friend and embraces being alone again... and in doing so, finds that he will never be alone again.

And he lets go of that friend. He goes back to what he was like before even coming to blue lock, shattering all that was broken by years of solitude.

Emotional because Bachira is a very lovable character and it gave him an intense amount of depth. And it was allowing him to move on and grow as a person. Again, because he feels like an actual person.

Then there's Rin. A character who was literally introduced as the younger brother of the famous Sae Itoshi. Whose entire motive is surpassing his brother. During u20, he had this beautiful moment.

We saw how tragic his and his brother's dissolving relationship was. We knew what they were like as kids. And we saw how much Sae hurt him.

Rin coming around and deciding that he wasn't going to be Sae's little brother anymore, or Isagi's rival, or Bachira's friend, or anything except for Rin Itoshi, fully realized human being who doesn't define himself by his relationship to others...

it was impactful because his coldness had just been explained, basically shattered by his backstory reveal. then his entire character motive was smashed to pieces... at least until nel, which ruined it, but we'll talk about that some other time.

That was a big deal, because it's everything we knew about Rin, turned over and abandoned.

Then you compare these three wonderful characters, who all had these big emotional moments that were directly tied to their success on the field...

to Isagi.

Who has no character besides, I must win. I must be better at soccer.

And not only is that not a character trait that can be broken, because of the nature of the story... it's also so boring.

who gives a fuck if he's always rattling about self destruction???

he has no self to destroy.

he is a blank slate, that never even cracks.

as soon as he entered blue lock, he had the right ego.

he hasn't had to learn a new ego at all. all he ever does is learn more bullshit rambling from ego about flow and tactics and luck and shit.

isagi has no character by design, so whenever he insists he has to break himself down... I have to laugh.

you have no foundation, isagi. there's nothing to break.

because you are nothing. this empty audience stand in.

in order to break an audience stand in, you'd have to actually make him suffer too. make him actually lose.

but blue lock can't do that. not anymore, at least.

and that's why it feels so disappointing right now.

the cracks started to appear at the start of nel, and only now have people realized they were always there.

[maligatorthealligator]

I was really excited to read your response so thanks for responding! It is indeed very interesting conversation and I personally enjoy a community approach to critter training where there's an exchange of ideas.

Yeah totally! I see where you're coming from. There's a lot of communication that's missed and a lot of nuance to those interactions with non-human animals (just like with our human social interactions!) that I think the average pet owner has a hard time grasping or has literally just never considered. I'm going to expand my thoughts on that more in a second, but I feel like there's some background to my perspective that needs to be shared first before what I'm going to explain fully makes sense so hang on lol

I agree that you're using consent differently than its definition. Or at least the way I define it. A lot of dictionary definitions say it's "agreement" (which has a positive connotation but doesn't actually have an emotional basis either. You can absolutely agree and be mad or upset about it even though we often think about "agreeing" as a "feel good" thing you know?) or "to be of the same mind" which implies an inherent understanding of what's happening (and "informed consent" is a whole bucket of stuff but I'll get into it here since it's part of this conversation I think!) but doesn't say anything about the consenting being's emotional state.

So for me and the way I interpret those definitions: consent doesn't mean the animal likes or enjoys what's happening, it means it's opting-in. For example (I use my personal dog as an example a lot because he's had opinions about handling since I got him at 9wks old): my dog will still come up to get his ears clean. He dislikes the feeling of cold wetness in his ears. He knows that if I have the ear cleaner and cotton balls out and he comes over to me, his ears will get cleaned. He's consenting. He's actually demonstrating informed consent imo. He's also ducking his head a bit and avoiding eye contact a little, he pulls away sometimes, he grows or bares his teeth if I accidentally press too hard on a sensitive spot (great video of me doing this specific thing with him on thenoodlesadventures). But he doesn't leave. He is fully opting-in. He is consenting by it's definition. He doesn't like it, it doesn't make him happy and he definitely doesn't enjoy it lol I do think that his ears feel better after they've dried but that's a longer-term consequence that can be debated about whether he's able to process the connection between or not. And it's a separate topic so we're going to ignore it for now 😂

I'm constantly working to try and reduce his stress surrounding different types of handling. We do unrestrained blood draws at the vet. We do unrestrained injections. We do unsedated and unrestrained ultrasounds for his bladder stones. My vet is incredible about working with us and letting me be the one who handles him (we've used muzzles before but he hasn't been muzzled at the vet in years and mostly just chin rests and I hold his collar).

But to train for painful things, you have to teach your animal how to consent to painful things. So you have to help them understand the "if > then" contingency surrounding those setups. The if you come over while I'm holding a needle (and I have treats and I ask for your "can you hold still while I stab you?" cue) then I'm going to poke you with it.

The same is true for picking up little dogs or petting an animal or trimming their nails. You have to teach them a framework of "if > then". Sometimes little dogs need to be picked up regardless of whether they want it or not. Same with nail trims and "petting" (if you're looking for a tick or feeling for a lumpy spot. The animal just knows you're touching them not that you're searching their body for a particular reason). And if they don't understand the whole consent process of "you can say yes while still being displeased" then (and this is my personal experience with working with dogs to help them feel more comfortable with these experiences) they escalate quickly if their smaller signal doesn't stop the process. I think it's a kind of panicked "oh no how do I get out of this now because surely it'll never end/oh no it's going to get worse now better stop it quick!" That's just what it seems like. And I find that this happens when animals don't understand what they're getting into (or like in your example where someone just does something to critter without warning (sidenote: people who just reach out and grab little dogs are the bane of my existence 😡)). Which I forgot believe that this breakdown in communication here is the difference between knowing how to say "no" and knowing how to say "I don't like that but fine. Go ahead."

I absolutely pause if the creature I'm working with is uncomfortable but I think it's important to teach our critters what saying "no" actually is verses what expressing discomfort is. Which means teaching them that communication is a two-way process and that they can be uncomfortable and express that discomfort but that if they don't want to experience the thing then they shouldn't walk within reach in the first place and should move away of they're getting overwhelmed (I typically do this by only paying dogs for whatever husbandry behavior we're working on by tossing the treat a few feet away. If they come back then we do another repetition. If they don't come back or they hesitate then we end the session and I then provide a different reward than food which might be praise/pets/a toy depending on what's interesting to that dog. When they do come back I tell them what I'm going to do, then I grab that appendage, then I ask if they're ready and then I open my hand so they can pull away. This gives them the opportunity to pull their body away from me and say "no" (remove their whole body from reach) OR "I'm not ready" (remove appendage/shift body away but stay FIRMLY within reach). I can then respond accordingly by either ending the session or just helping them calm back down before asking again.

Which brings my to where I was trying to get to lol but as we both have said it a complicated topic 😆 so to add to what you're saying: I think a massive problem is that people just don't actually communicate with their pets because they think their pets can't understand. Like a whole part of my process is that I don't just reach out for the animal. I tell them what I'm going to do first. I check in after I've grabbed them. And only then to I perform the thing (trim nails/dig through fur to find the tick/etc.).

Saying "no" is important, but how many people actually stop and give their animal the opportunity to say "yes?" Far FAR too few. And if someone's critter has to say "no" all the time then of course they're going to jump to the "Big No" (growling, nipping, teeth baring) first! How freaking annoying would it be to be interacting with a someone for the fifth time that day and once AGAIN have to say "no" or "please slow down" repeatedly? Ugh. It would be the WORST!

And I think a big part of the reason that almost no one is asking for a "yes" (which imo almost completelygets rid of the need for a "no" and moves the interaction firmly into the "hey I just need a second/can we pause or maybe show down?" framework) is because they don't think that their animals can understand the explanation required to get informed consent*. When it's actually a very simple process of pairing words with actions or even offering a portion of the action (like reaching towards the animal) and then pausing before making contact. If your critter wants it then they'll stay still or move towards you (depending on the critter) and if they don't then they'll shift or move away.

And I think that's why I feel like the "consent" piece actually detracts from the conversation? Like the whole thing is so "no" focused that your average pet owner is looking for the opt-out rather than the "opt-in" which would prevent the whole thing. I do agreed firmly that more people should learn how to respect the boundaries of non-human animals. But I also think that it would become pretty irrelevant if we as a community started majorly pushing conversations around how to hear "yes" and how to inform critters about our intentions. Kind of a "in going to use a bandaid if I get hurt but how do in not get hurt in the first place?" You know?

Which I think this is part of what you were getting at with the "does it mean your dog will never get pet?" paragraph because you're talking about starting where they're comfortable which implies looking for that dog's individual "yes! This is cool!" behavior cues.

In my house, I don't even nudge my dogs out of the way lol I ask them to move ("excuse me/pardon me") and then praise them when they do. I don't get up or move them if they're sitting/stepping on me (even if it hurts because thenoodle is 100lbs), I ask them to move. I don't put equipment on them, they put it on themselves. I don't just reach out and pet them, I invite them to be petted. My dogs don't ever tell me "no" when we're interacting because I'm only interacting if I get a "yes" and I wish more people framed their expectations and interactions that way because I think it really increases comfort and decreases stress.

*there are a subset of people who simply don't care that their critter doesn't want the thing (usually petting) because THEY, the HUMAN, want the thing and lack the empathy and impulse control to seek "yes"s. This is my least favorite kind of person and I don't think these people should own animals (both non-human AND human because I don't think people like this should be raising kids).

Seeing the care givers at a zoo practice Cooperative Care, except on top of motivating the animals, they hear their Nos. The tiger growled and they stopped what they were doing and only continue when the tiger was okay.

I've been seeing a lot of Cooperative Care where the dog shows significant signs of stress, but they get rewarded.

A reward is good, but I think it's important to remember that in order to consent, animals should be allowed to say no first.

Obviously, there are life saving procedures or necessary treatments, but reducing an animal's discomfort as much as possible and allowing them to opt out... Goes a long way.

Is what I'm hoping with Cooperative Care. I was on the "do it anyway as long as their stress is not intense" side when, ideally, it should be: "we acknowledge there is some stress to the procedures, but we're trying to give you more agency. Including whispering no.

I'm also not saying that it's black and white— my thoughts are: "working towards a goal counts", "any effort is better than none" and "any living being should be given the choice to opt out of situations, contact, activity, etc. as much as possible" can coexist.

It's worth working on if it means happier pets.

[doomingthenarrative]

we NEED more stories abt the humanization of robots

[elodieunderglass]

Why are jockeys not supposed to look at smartphones?? will it make them heavier

No, of course not!

It’ll make them criminals

This is in reference to something I mentioned about a prominent female jockey leaving the sport over breaking smartphone usage rules. Nanako Fujita, who raced for Japan, was an excellent jockey with a promising career and international prospects. She was lucky, talented, and in a sport that’s starving for public interest, popular. But she used her smartphone on a weekend, so on October 2024 she tearfully penned her resignation letter and left the sport.

Now, this is slightly more about Japanese sporting authorities than general horse racing practice, but it’s embedded in the idea that jockeys are inherently just such unscrupulous little bastards that they can only be prevented from cheating by locking them in hamster cages.

Going back to how horse racing is historically the province of organised crime, disorganised crime, chaotic crime, things that aren’t crimes but should be, crimes that haven’t been invented yet, and felonies; and given that it all happens for the amusement of billionaires and royalty, not noted for being generous and scrupulous; and given that - much like how claiming a hobby of “knitting” is really a cover story for collecting yarn - horse racing is really an excuse to gamble;

Given all that background - there’s always been a lot of anxiety about jockeys “fixing” races. After all, they’re historically treated as disposable and make inconsistent and indifferent money while entire fortunes are wagered on their backs they’re in an obvious position to influence race outcomes, and there are unbelievable amounts of money at stake.

Thus, the sport feels that we have to assume that jockeys are simply inherently susceptible to bribery. In the UK, jockeys can’t bet on any races and have to declare their mobile phone numbers to the horse racing authority, and have restrictions placed on where/how/what they can use smartphones for around the tracks. They can’t bring a phone to work, basically. Which isn’t too unusual in some professions. The idea is that jockeys with phones could communicate with each other or outsiders to change racing outcomes, or share information in advance before it can impact on the betting odds (like insider trading on the stock market.) this is not commonly practiced in other UK sports. It’s a working condition imposed by anxiety about preserving the integrity of the gambling.

The Japanese licensing authority is more strict. The night before a race meeting, Japanese jockeys surrender their phones and go into separate quarters without lines of communication. So you might give up your phone at 9pm Friday night, enter a sort of corporate youth hostel, work for 2 days, and recover your phone on Monday. Nanako was caught using her phone during this period of sequestration, even though there’s no evidence that she was using it for race fixing (another jockey caught for the same thing in the crackdown was making a restaurant reservation.) again, this level of control over personal communications isn’t practiced in other Japanese sports! Even Japanese pop idols, famed for having restricted personal lives, don’t risk getting pushed out of their job entirely for touching a phone.

It’s about a lot of things, but the level of control exerted over jockeys is interesting to me! and speaks to their position as athletes who aren’t the focus of the sport they do; of jockeys as the disposable pilots of things that are far more valuable than they are; of workers whose working conditions are unique; of sportspeople whose sport is defined by the anxieties of the rich about gambling; of people whose bodies are ferociously honed for a specific set of rules that don’t even necessarily make sense; of a sport thousands of years old, one of the oldest continuous sports of human history, in which the humans who play it are invisible; of ancient once-immovable traditions colliding, in the 2020s, with renewed interest in animal and human welfare and renewed pressures to Perform for social media and everything changing in ways we can’t see because we’re in the middle of them. Like when I say “one of the oldest continuous sports in human history”, as old as the domestication of horses, think about it for a minute and think how strange it is that the human athletes are this invisible, this disposable, this secondary to considerations. Why is it that you’ve been forced to learn about football against your will all your life, and you never thought for a second about this. Isn’t that wild? I think it’s wild.

(Disclaimer: I’m really not an expert, just a mild fan, which is a bit unusual for my demographic; despite the sport being ancient and internationally known, it isn’t very relatable to “people like us,” so this is kind of the first time anyone on tumblr’s really posted about having an interest in horse racing/jockeys. I’m really not an expert and I barely follow the news and do NOT attend races or understand the stats/gambling. It’s just that it was my first career ambition when I was 6, and it’s one of those things where literally no one else cares, so you get to feel like you have Secrets and a Unique OC.)

[flying-fangirls]

Not to be an English major, but my genuine favorite part of Malevolent is how it handles its themes. Overall Malevolent tackles such profound and interesting ideas to chew on, but it's specifically the approach it takes to those ideas that really gets me going.

For example, one of the major themes across several seasons and characters is identity. The podcast asks pretty standard questions like "How do you define yourself?" and "How do others define you?" But it doesn't choose to stop there! It constantly expands on that idea, and it also asks things like "Which of those definitions is the 'real' you?" and "Are any of them right, are any of them wrong?" and "Is there even a singular definitive version of you?"

Malevolent works out from one idea and poses all these rich lines of discussion and questioning, and then just. Doesn't provide an answer! Or, at least, not a single, one-size-fits-all answer. Instead, it gives us multiple possibilities:

John's arc tells us that your identity is what you make— what you say, what you decide— and no one else's definition of you matters. Arthur's arc tells us that you can get stuck in a rigid, self-deprecating personal identity, so you need others' perspectives to help you see and love the real "you." Larson's story tells us that you do not have the right to selectively accept/deny parts of your identity and actions, and that others can see the whole of "you" whether or not you take accountability for it. Noel's story tells us that you can choose what parts of your past define you, and that leaving behind all the other versions of yourself can be beautiful and empowering. Kayne's story tells us that leaving behind other versions of yourself is akin to murder, killing off the pieces that you don't like and pretending like you've evolved past your own self. Yellow's arc tells us that your identity is fluid and can easily be influenced or manipulated by what others tell you, and by that point you've changed your own self-definition to something entirely new that can be just as true or untrue as the old you.

With all of these characters and with every other character throughout the show, we get a unique answer to the question "What is identity?" And if you look further at all the characters, you can break down their different arcs over the seasons and find even more answers just within that one character's development and story. And some of the answers we get correspond, and some of them contradict, and none of them are the right answer, and all of them are the right answer.

Malevolent takes one idea, and then it crafts an incredibly nuanced and humanistic exploration of said idea that adapts with respect to whatever situation or character it is applied to. And it uses this approach with all of its themes: identity, morality, guilt, grief, love, hope, etc.

Malevolent knows that life is messy, that people are complicated and contradictory and diverse and ever-changing, that no part of the universe or humanity can ever be explained or defined in a simple manner. Malevolent knows all that, and it wants to help us understand that too.

Malevolent shows us that nothing can ever be easily understood or answered, and it shows us that that fact is beautiful.

[keferon]

This is such a complex and nuanced topic that I can’t stop thinking now about artificial intelligence, personhood, and what it means to be alive. Because golem!Prowl actually seems to exist somewhere in the intersection of those ideas.

Certainly Prowl does not have a soul. And yet, where other golems depicted in mimic au seem to operate primarily as rule-based entities given a set of predefined orders that define their function, Prowl is able to go a step further — learning and defining his own rules based on observation and experience. Arguably, Prowl is even more advanced in this regard than real-world AI agents we might interact with such as ChatGPT (which still requires humans to tell it: when to update it’s knowledge, what data to use, and what that data means) currently are. Because Prowl formulates knowledge not just from a distillation and concentration of the most prominent and commonly accepted ideas that have come before.

He shows this when he rejects all the views that society accepts — resulting in the formulation of the idea that Primus must be wrong. And in a lot of ways, Prowl’s learning that gets him to ultimately reach that conclusion seems a lot more closely related to how we learn. He learns from observing the actions of those around him, from listening to what the people closest to him say and from experiencing things for himself. And this also shows in the beginnings of his interaction with Jazz. Prowl may know things like friendship as abstract concepts, but he only can truly come to define what they mean because he is experiencing them.

In some ways then, what seems to make Prowl much more advanced in his intelligence is that the conclusions he ultimately draws — the way he updates his understanding of the world to fit the framework he’s been given — is something he does independently. And this is what sets him apart.

So is he a person? Given his lack of soul or spark perhaps not. But then again, what truly defines humanity, for lack of a better word? Because perhaps there is not a clear and distinct line to tell when mimicry and close approximation crosses over to become the real thing.

But given the way that Prowl learns and interacts with the world around him, it does not seem too far-fetched to say that he is alive. And further, that he seems a fairly unique form of life within this continuity. Therefore, is he not his own individual? In much the same way that the others this society deems beasts and monsters because of their unique abilities are also individuals.

It’s just really interesting to think about.

(But I will stop myself there, because I did not initially think this would get as long as it did and I feel like I’ve already written an entire thesis in an ask at this point!)

DAMN That’s a really really interesting essay you got here👁

If we take an artificially created algorithm based on seek a goal -> complete the goal but then give it learning capability of a real person. At what point it’s gonna just become one? And if it gains the ability to have emotions. Could they be considered “real” if it’s processing them in it’s own way completely unknown to us?

I love making stories that force me to question the entire life hahdkj

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids,

I feel like advice on loneliness comes in only three flavors:

"It's all mindset, learn to embrace being alone and you'll never feel lonely!"

"Your head is lying to you, you have friends and they love you!"

"Here's a list of places you can go to hang out with people and make new friends!"

Those are usually well-meant and I'm sure there are situations where they do help someone feel better - but they're definitely not universally applicable.

The first one is even plain wrong: connection is a basic human need. You can't just "change your mindset" and turn that off, the same way you can't turn off your need for food or air or mental stimulation. Humans are group animals. We absolutely need social interactions to stay healthy and sane. It is true that some people do not need a large number of friends and are happiest with just one or two close friends, and it is also true that some people prefer to fulfill their social needs in other ways than what's traditionally defined as friendship - but that's not something you can (or should) try to train yourself to do, that's just natural differences and preferences!

The only thing you could "train" yourself to do would be to learn to ignore your social needs and bury them deep down under layers of denial... and you don't need me to explain to you why that's a very unhealthy idea. It's sad enough that so many people have to do that to not lose their minds in loneliness, we certainly don't need to celebrate an unhealthy coping skill as a "superior mindset".

The other two at least get a bit closer to the truth: the solution for your unmet need is not to kill the need, but to fulfill it... but that's easier said than done, isn't it?

After all, "Don't worry, your friends love you!" doesn't help if you have no friends. Loneliness is not always "all in your head": Maybe you moved to a new place and don't know anyone there. Or you cut off contact with all your friends after a big fight. Or you grew up neurodivergent (or got mentally ill at a young age) and had no chance to learn how to make friends at the age most kids do, and by now you have been friendless for so long you don't even know where to start.

Same with "just go to a bar and talk to some new people" or "Take a pottery class and you'll meet some interesting people there" - that's not factually wrong, but also not helpful if the reason you feel lonely is that you struggle to make friends (or even struggle to just talk to people). Which can also be part of neurodivergence or mental illness, or just be a part of your personality (shyness), or be a result of isolating circumstances (like having spent a lot of time in a closed environment, for example a long hospital stay, and now feeling unsure how to connect with people outside of that environment). 

And those are just a few of the many, many possible explanations why someone may be lonely that require a more individualized approach - which is why we can’t solve loneliness with any one-size-fits-all solution.

That may be a somewhat disappointing-sounding conclusion in a letter on loneliness, so let me also tell you: hope and support are always within reach, even if it might take some time and patience to find them. The key is to remember that your feelings are valid and that you're not alone in your struggle.

First, recognize that admitting that you feel lonely, and wanting to take action based on that feeling, is a sign of strength, not weakness. You’re pretty insightful for recognizing your loneliness and super brave for wanting to reach out!

Secondly, be kind to yourself and allow yourself to take small steps. Small, actually manageable steps are crucial in any healing journey! If it’s not an option to just go to the bar or that pottery class, then it’s okay to start somewhere else. Maybe a therapist, a support group, or even online communities can be valuable “training sessions” for social connections. Even reaching out to one single person can make a significant difference over time. Your journey to finding companionship and connection might be different from someone else’s, but that doesn't make it any less valid (or achievable!).

Lastly, do consider embracing new activities that you may enjoy - but not just for the sake of meeting others. It’s important to nurture your own happiness and well-being when you’re feeling lonely. Those can be activities you can try out alone and even at home, for now! Anything that enriches your life is good. Long down the road, maybe it will lead to opportunities to connect with others, but even if it doesn’t: it’s important to incorporate new experiences into your life.

While there isn't a universal solution to loneliness, I truly believe there is a path forward for everyone. It's all about finding what works for you.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

[tjelestial]

🌙 Moon's Influence: Your Emotional Needs in Love

Moon in Houses Part 1

The Moon in astrology is all about emotions, intuition, and how we process our feelings. Your Moon sign reveals what makes you feel loved, secure, and emotionally fulfilled in relationships. This is Part 1 🌕

Moon in the 1st House

You wear your heart on your sleeve. One of your most defining traits is your protective instinct, you’re fiercely devoted to the people you love and will go out of your way to fight for them. You express your emotions openly. This emotional honesty makes it easier to build strong connections with your partner, but being open also means you’re more vulnerable. Romantic and personal relationships are deeply influenced by your mood swings and emotional nature.

You crave deep emotional connection and may instinctively prioritize relationships in your life. However, you might struggle with emotional overreactions, dependency, or taking things too personally in relationships. You’re not clingy but you may find yourself growing too attached or worrying about losing those you love, so maintaining emotional stability is important.

Moon in the 2nd House

Loyalty is one of your strongest traits, and you value relationships that align with your personal beliefs and values. Love, for you, is expressed through actions, thoughtful gifts, affectionate gestures, or creating a comfortable space. What truly wins your heart is consistency, reliability, and shared values. Just be sure your partner understands your love language, cause differences in emotional expression could lead to misunderstandings.

When it comes to love and relationship, stability is very important to you, both emotionally and materially. A relationship should feel like solid ground, not something chaotic or unpredictable. You’re drawn to partners who provide a sense of safety and reliability, just be careful of setting high expectations, it will lead to disappointment if your partner doesn’t fully meet them, and at the end of the day, we’re all just human.

Moon in the 3rd House

Words are your love language, whether through deep talks, affectionate messages, or playful banter, you express your emotions best through verbal or written connection. In short, communication is the key to your heart. In love, you bring curiosity, excitement, adaptability, and emotional intelligence.

However sometimes you might struggle with emotional inconsistency, needing variety and engagement to keep your romantic interest alive Love also may come from friendships or social circles, as you're naturally drawn to those who challenge your mind. And while you love sharing your thoughts, don’t forget that listening is just as powerful as speaking.

Moon in the 4th House

This placement gives you a strong intuitive connection to your partner, as you are deeply attuned to their feelings, sometimes even before they express them. You’re not just looking for love; you're looking for someone who can build a home together. You want a partner who can offer the sense of safety and comfort that you crave. But you may struggle with emotional clinginess or a tendency to rely too much on your partner for reassurance.

Your love is very nurturing, whether it’s through creating a warm environment, offering emotional support, or taking care of your partner, you express love by building a sense of belonging. You’re all about emotional security and creating a cozy, loving home. But don’t get so caught up in creating the perfect home that you forget to let the relationship grow.

Moon in the 5th House

Ah my favorite placement, here we go. You’re playful and romantic, you love partners that can keep up with your energy. You’re naturally expressive and find fulfillment in being emotionally open. You want a relationship that feels like an a movie, full of joy and excitement. Your heart seeks fun and excitement in love.

Now, while you love the highs of romance and its passion, love also requires emotional depth and commitment, and quite frankly, sometimes it needs work. You might be drawn to the excitement of the chase or the rush of infatuation, but remember that true connection comes with nurturing and stability. Balancing passion with emotional depth will lead to a love that’s not only thrilling but also lasting and meaningful.

Moon in the 9th House

You value emotional independence in relationships and need someone who respects your space and freedom. A relationship that feels restrictive will leave you restless, as you thrive in relationships where both people can grow individually. Routine and predictability can feel emotionally stifling, so keeping the relationship fresh and exciting is key.

Travel and new adventures are your love language. You might struggle with restlessness if you feel stuck or if your partner doesn’t share your need for growth. This can sometimes lead to you being detached or morphed into fear of commitment if you worry that settling down means giving up your freedom.

[tooturtly]

Daily reminder that Alecto didn’t have to be a woman*. John could have made any body to shove the soul of the earth into. He could have picked a man, or a child, or literally anything. But he chose a woman.

And not just any woman! He specifically chose a barbie doll. An object. An object with heavy sexual and white beauty connotations. A doll which holds so much cultural weight and meaning for so many different people.

He could have chosen his mother or grandmother!!!!He could have depicted her as an actor or other real living person. But he chose a doll which had been part of his childhood expression (in both the complicated gender, sexuality, and power hierarchy meanings of that).

Which is so fascinating! It says so much about John as a person that in a moment which he himself describes as a level of insanity, he chose Barbie.

And I think we can say multiple things about that: he was physically manifesting his own complex relationships to gender by turning part of himself into a female form; he was upholding traditional gender norms by making her a woman; he was upholding white beauty standards of womanhood by picking Barbie; he recreated aspects of Christian creationism; he was insane and returned to the things he had been taught most basically.

And all of those different interpretations can be simultaneous! What John thinks he was doing (what he tells himself), what others think he was doing (how Harrow interprets it), what the reader interprets him as doing (see above), and the potential experience on Alectos part can all be different and bring new perspectives to the scene without there existing an “objective truth”.

What Johns experience says about himself, the reader, and our world that we live in is so fascinating. (The fact that he chose a human figure at all says a lot about how we as a collective value humans above all else) And I find him such an interesting character to analyse.

*I’m sidestepping the issue of defining woman, pls don’t ask me. It’s so complicated I couldn’t even begin.

[linkspooky]

Are You Satisfied?

As you might have heard chapter 236 of Jujutsu Kaisen ends with the death of Gojo Satoru. The fandom is making a pretty big deal about it. As someone who predicted from the beginning that Gojo was going to lose against Sukuna, the reaction is fascinating to me. This is perhaps the most controversial chapter of Jujutsu Kaisen I've ever seen. So I've decided to throw my hat into the ring.

The central theme of Jujutsu Kaisen is death, so the death of one of the main characters isn't too surprising, but what does Gojo's death mean for the story? What does it say about his character?

As I said above I am a little bit shocked by the extreme controversy over Gojo's death. Gojo was never going to win the fight in the first place, because Jujutsu Kaisen is a story and the story would be over if he defeated Sukuna. He'd easily be able to take care of Kenjaku afterwards and the main conflcit would be resolved. Would it really be an interesting story if Gojo one shotted the villains while the kids just wathced on Television?

The story is also not about Gojo, it's about the students. Gojo may think he's the protagonist of reality but he's not the protagonist of the story.

Once again, Jujutsu Kaisen is a story and stories have themes. We may grow personally attached to characters, but characters are just narrative tools to convey the themes of a story, no different from prose, dialogue, and art. Characters are a tool to be used well or used poorly, and sometimes yes that means killing them. Whether Gojo's death was naratively satisfying though isn't the purpose of this post though we're only asking what does it mean?

Finally, Jujutsu Kaisen is not only a fictional story, it's specifically a tragedy. Full disclosure, it's a manga about death.

The Protagonist of a Tragedy

So, number one shout out to me for making this post 4 months ago where I called the way Gojo would end the fight.

Excuse me while I fist pump for calling it!

The question on everyone's minds is why does one of the most powerful characters in the manga die offscreen in a pretty humiliating way, cut in half and helpless on the ground just like Kaneki. The reason Gojo didn't get a more heroic (or cooler) death is because we're not reading My Hero Academia, this is not a story about heroes or even a typical Shonen manga it is a tragedy.

In poetics Aristotle defines tragedy as:

"an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions" (51).

To paraphrase a tragedy is about human action, actions characters make in a tragedy often have dire consequences. One of the most common consequences if the reversal of a hero's fortune, a hero of a tragedy usually starts out on top and ends up on the bottom because of the bad choices they make. If in normal shonen manga characters overcome their flaws through effort and persistence, in Jujutsu Kaisen we see characters more often than not lose to their flaws.

The reason I posted that Kaneki panel specifically is because it was a brilliant moment of narrative punishment for Kaneki's central character flaw. Kaneki the hero's main flaw is that he always fights alone, and he constantly makes that same choice over and over again to fight alone. One of the characters helpfully explains it as well.

Stories are primarily about change. If a character doesn't change they're not serving the plot, unless that specifically is the point. People have pointed out how abrupt it is for Gojo to get sealed in Shibuya, get let out, and then immediately die afterwards but that's kind of the point. Gojo made more or less the exact same choice (he asked for Utahime's help for a buff but otherwise fought the entire battle himself). The definition of insanity and what not, why would doing the same thing over and over again net him a different result?

Not only did Gojo choose to fight alone, but as I've been hammering on and on about in previous meta the entire fight Gojo cared more about fighting a strong opponent then he did saving Megumi, the child he was responsible for.

Jujutsu Kaisen is not a typical shonen manga where everything is resolved by beating a strong villain in a fight. That's specifically why I used the Tokyo Ghoul reference, because the reason Kaneki is defeated offscreen like that is because he thought the world worked like a shonen manga. He has a fantasy sequence where he's fighting Juzo in a shonen battle tournament like this is Yu Yu Hakusho right before it snaps back to reality and he's limbless on the ground.

Gojo is a major character in the manga Jujutsu Kaisen, literally "Sorcery Fight" and he is the best sorcerer in the whole world. His entire identity revolves around being a sorcerer. Since he is so good and beloved at what he does, he thinks that everything is resolved by exorcising a curse or defeating a strong opponent. He has basically no identity outside of that. Which is why when he's fighting the possessed body of his student, a person he's been mentoring since childhood his priority is not to save Megumi but to beat a strong opponent. Gojo is a sorcerer, before a human being. That's who he is, that's who he always has been since day one.

I think part of the negative fan reaction comes from fans being really attached to this scene in the manga and deciding Gojo's entire character revolves around being a good mentor figure to children.

Which is just incorrect, Gojo's entire character revolves around being the strongest. On top of that though, Gojo can care about children and also care about being the strongest he can care about multiple things at once and have those things contradict each other because humans are complicated. I'd point out even in this panel where he's stating motivation he's not trying to raise these kids up into being healthy adults, he wants them to be strong Jujutsu Sorcerers. Even when he's raising kids, his intention is to turn them into Jujutsu Sorcerers because everything in Gojo's mind revolves around Jujutsu Sorcery. Gojo does not exist outside of the world of sorcerers. Gojo may be the chosen one but he'd never be able to hold down a job at Mcdonalds.

I think in general readers put more investment in the things characters say out loud, rather than their actions. You can say one thing and do another. I can say "I should never eat sweets again I'm going to improve my diet", and then go and eat ice cream five hours later. Gojo can state out loud his intention to foster children and protect their youths, but then fail to properly do that in the story. Characters are not always what they say they are, that's why they're interesting to interpret. This isn't me calling the readers stupid, just pointing out that Gojo is made up of contradictions. He wants to get rid of the old guard and replace them with something new, but Gojo IS THE OLD GUARD.

If the culling games arc has shown us one thing, it's that ancient sorcerers brought to the modern age do not care that much about human life on an individual level, they are all of them egoists. There's a reason Gojo resembles someone like Sukuna more than he does any other character in the manga. I'm not saying Gojo is exactly like Sukuna, he's far more altruistic and uses his genuinely noble ideals but at the same time Sukuna is a shadow archetype to Gojo he represents Gojo's flaws. The flaws that Gojo succumbs to in tragic fashion.

Which if you believe that Gojo genuinely does love his students, and the ideal he's fighting for is to raise up a better generation and allow them to live out their youths, then Gojo throughout the entire Sukuna fight is acting against those ideals. He cares far more about fighting Sukuna then he does saving Megumi, it's shown over and over again in the battle, Megumi is an afterthought to him. If Gojo care moredefeating the big bad and saving the world is more important than helping a child that Gojo is responsible for then Gojo is acting against his stated principles. Why should Gojo win the fight when he's fighting for all the wrong reasons?

Tragedies are like visual novels, if you make the wrong choice the novel will give you a red flag. If you ignore the red flag then you get locked into the route with the bad ending. Gojo always fights alone. Gojo only ever fights for himself, even if he's using that selfishness in support of a more noble ideal like creating a better generation of sorcerers. If Gojo consecutively makes the same changes then in a tragedy he's not going to be rewarded for it.

Gojo wants the old generation out and the new generation in, but Gojo resembles the old generation too much. Old sorcerers like Hajime and Sukuna respect him, Hajime argues that Gojo being able to fight for his pride is far more important than him living to the end of the battle when Yuta wanted to interfere and help him.

Gojo's death isn't a surprise curve ball that Gege is throwing us for shock value, it's a result of his choices throughout the manga. A manga about change, and the change between generations is not going to punish a character for remaining roughly the same. Of course you might find it disappointing that Gege didn't give Gojo the chance to grow and change and experience a character arc like Megumi or Yuji, but Jujutsu Kaisen is a tragedy, and the way Gojo's arc ended is consistent with what Gege wrote.

Jujutsu Kaisen is not just a tragedy though, it's a manga about death. The manga begins with Yuji's grandfather warning him not to die alone the way that he did. His grandfather's dying words are what motivate Yuji throughout the beginning of the manga as he's searching for a "proper" death.

One of the major themes of Yuji's character is a contemplation of death. He accepts that death is inevitable, so he wants to save them from the gruesome deaths they'd experience if they became victims to curses and allow them to have a more satisfying death. Yuji's grandpa died an unsatisfying death because he died alone in a hospital room. Yuji even tries to make his own death a satisfying one because he believes by dying to seal away Sukuna he'll reduce the total number of casualties to curses.

Jujutsu Kaisen keeps investigating the theme of death and what exactly would make for a satisfying death. At one point it's all but stated that death is the mirror that makes humans analyze their lives.

When Yuji fails to save Junpei from the "unnatural death" it calls into question whether or not his goal of saving people from unsatisfying deaths and the gruesome deaths caused by curses is even feasible. Nanami even says that Yuji might not be able to accomplish his goal and warns him away from the path.

We see repeated unsatifying deaths in the manga, each time someone reflecting on their deaths that they weren't able to get what they wanted out of life. This list comes via @kaibutsushidousha by the way I'm quoting them.

Nanami's a character who chose to work as a sorcerer because he didn't want to evade the responsibility of doing all you can to help people, he wanted to believe he's somewhere where he's needed. He never runs away from responsibility like Mei Mei does so he quite literally works himself to death, living and dying as a sorcerer. Nanami or Gojo's dying hallucination of Nanami even says as much, his death is the result of him choosing to go south and returning to be a sorcerer.

Maki chose revenge against the Zen'in over her sister, and as a result Mai is dead. Maki has all the power in the world now, her revenge complete but she's left with a sense of "now what?" She's as strong as Toji now but she failed to protect her sister, and it's the result of the choices she made. Maki's reflection isn't triumph, it's "I should have chosen to die with her."

Even Yuji himself is robbed of his narrative purpose. The manga began with Yuji saying he wants to choose how he's going to die and he'll die taking out Sukuna with him so he can reduce the number of people killed by curses in the world. Both of those things are thrown in Sukuna's face. Number one the amount of people Yuji can save by permanently killing Sukuna is now a moot point because he let Sukuna rampage in Shibuya.

Number two, Sukuna isn't even in Yuji anymore. To build on what Comun said though, this repeated tragedy has a purpose to it and understanding requires understanding that Jujutsu Kaisen is an existentialist manga. Existentialism is basically a school of philosophy centered around the question of "Why do I exist?"

There's nothing about the invetability of death to make you question why you're alive in the first place. In the myth of Sispyhus, Albert Camus boils down all of philosophy to one question.

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. "

All of philosophy is should I shoot myself in the head or should I keep living? Everything comes after that question, which is why in Jujutsu Kaisen a lot of the characters motivations revolve around them contemplating death. Sorcerers exist in a world where they can die any moment, and as Gojo says most of them die alone. It might be the nature of sorcery itself that causes so many people to die, not only are they dying because they are trapped in an uncaring system, but the characters themselves aren't really attempting to live outside of it. They live and die as sorcerers, replaceable cogs in the machine.

All of these unsatisfying deaths may just be the result of all these characters making one choice, to live as sorcerers rather than people. Because to exist means to live in the world.

Even in Mechamaru's case, his goal is deeply existentialist by what I defined, all he wants to do is live in the world with everyone else rather than be stuck in his hospital room but his actions contradict that goal. Instead of letting his friends come and visit he's obsessed with the idea of getting a normal body because he feels that's the only way he can exist with everyone else, he makes a deal with the devil, he lies and goes behind their backs. He wasn't living with everyone else in the world and he could have chosen to, he chose wrong and his death is the result of that choice.

Jujutsu Sorcerers aren't living in the world. They're living in a little snowglobe far removed from the world with its own rules, most of them regressive and disconnected from the rest of society. If you define existentialism as just "living in the world' then a lot of these characters aren't, because they only exist in the world of sorcery.

INVISIBLE BUFFY: What are you talking ab- SPIKE: The only reason you're here, is that you're not here. (drinking) INVISIBLE BUFFY: Right. Of course, as usual there's something wrong with Buffy. She came back all wrong. (moving around on the bed) You know, I didn't ask for this to happen to me. SPIKE: Not too put off by it though, are you? (drinking) INVISIBLE BUFFY: No! Maybe because for the first time since ... I'm free. She tosses the sheet aside. Spike looks around, trying to figure out where she's going. INVISIBLE BUFFY: Free of rules and reports ... free of this life. SPIKE: Free of life? Got another name for that. Dead.

Not living in the world with everyone else is the same as being dead.

A lot of these characters either make the choice to act alone, or be a jujutsu sorcerer rather than a person and because of that they die as sorcerers, b/c sorcerers die that's what they do. Mai didn't want to keep living as a hindrance to Maki so she kills herself. Maki didn't want to be anything other than a sorcerer, so her little sister dies and she's not a big sister anymore. Nanami chose to leave his job behind and become a sorcerer again, he dies as one.

Of course I don't think the manga is punishing characters for being too egotistical, but rather too unbalanced. If anything Mai is too selfless and that is why she died, she didn't want to live for herself and chooses self sacrifice for her sister. An unbalance between selfishness or selflessness results in an underdeveloped ego. Jujutsu Kaisen doesn't punish individualism per se, moreso if you're not a fully developed individual you won't last long. Because it's also a manga about growing up in the world, and a person who doesn't have a healthy, mature, well-balanced sense of self is not a grown up.

This twitter user det_critics points out that Gojo (and also Yuki + Yuji's) failures in the manga can be attributed to the fact they don't have real senses of self.

Gojo has an identity crisis as outlined by Geto, "are you Satoru Gojo because you're the strongest, or are you the strongest because you're Satoru Gojo?"

It's a challenge for him to find some reason to live outside of being the strongest, and in tragic fashion Gojo just doesn't find it in time. Gojo lived for fighting others, and proving to himself that he's the strongest, and that's how he dies.

There's something I like to say about narrative punishment in stories. There are two ways to punish a character, you either don't give them what they want, or you give them exactly what they want. This is the latter, Gojo wanted to find someone stronger than him because deep down he believed that nobody could understand him unless they were on his level. He wanted to be surpassed, and that's why he focused on creating stronger young sorcerers, but he never shook himself of the belief that only someone as strong or even stronger than he was could ever be emotionally attached to him so he made a deliberate choice to draw a line between himself and others.

Gojo's essentially gotten what he wanted from that choice in the worst way possible. The student he picked to succeed him Megumi, has his body stolen and kills him. Gojo is surpassed, but it's not by one of his own students it's by an enemy that's not only trying to kill Gojo but is going to massacre his students afterwards.

Gojo's spent his entire life believing that because he's more powerful that makes him inherently different and above others, and being lonely because he himself believed he couldn't relate to ordinary people and he dies like an ordinary person, an unsatisfying death where he wasn't able to bring out Sukuna's best, where he gets unceremoniously cut in half offscreen but yay he's no longer the strongest. He's gotten exactly what he wanted. Megumi is still not saved, Sukuna's probably going to kill more people because Gojo failed to stop him here, but hey at least he stopped to compliment Gojo.

It's empty, but it's empty because of the choices Gojo made in life to just not bother connecting to people or develop any kind of identity besides being a sorcerer. Gojo lives and dies as a sorcerer, and his dying dream is returning to a teenager being surrounded by everyone he was with during his school days, because that's the happiest time in his life. Ironically he was happier before he became the strongest, because that was the only time in his life that he allowed himself to connect to people.

However in the eyes of others, he is someone who has it all. That's why he is always alone. There was no one who could hold the same sentiments and mutually understand him. Geto was the only one who could understand what he was trying to say, and the only one who could communicate well with him.

It's no coincidence Gojo and Geto die exactly a year apart on the same day, if anything I'd say the reasons they die are similiar to at least thematically. They both die because they don't want to live in the world. Geto thinks the world is too corrupt and GOjo doesn't want to be anything other than a sorcerer, both of them fail to adapt.

「 'It's just. . .' It's just that it was what Geto had to do. [...] To someone like him, the reality that the world of sorcerers presented to him was just too cruel. '. . .that in a world like this, I couldn't truly be happy from the bottom of my heart.'」

They can't be happy in a world like this from the bottom of their hearts, so narratively they both die. The things they chose to live for at the end of their life they fail to accomplish, Gojo is no longer the stronget, Geto fails to wipe out mankind or make major changes to the world and they die as normal people unsatisfied because they weren't trying to live in the world and make connections to others. They die almost karmically a year apart because their main connection for both of them, the thing which made them feel connected to the world and other people was each other.

Which is why this panel breaks my heart and is so narratively satisfying because of how unsatisfying it is...

"If you were among those patting my back... then I might've been satisfied."

Gojo reflects that he's not satisfied dying against Sukuna, not because he failed to give him a good enough challenge but because Geto wasn't there to pat him on the back. The one thing that would have satisfied him he couldn't have, because he didn't live to connect to people he lived to be the strongest and he died alone as the strongest. There's just something deeply upsetting about Gojo's dying dream fantasy just him being there talking with all of his dead friends who he never appreciated or connected to properly when he was alive. Knowing that if something had just gone a little differently, that even if he had to die no matter what he could have died happier if Geto was among the people saying goodbye to him because that connection with Geto is what gave his life meaning.

Dazai Osamu: "A life with someone you can say good-bye to is a good life, especially when it hurts so much to say it to them. Am I wrong?" -Bungou Stray Dogs Beast

[ckret2]

Hey, so you've mentioned that Bollford will eventually play a small part in the fic... and that got me wondering. What exactly are their sexualities? Bill isn't technically any human gender (I don't think? Like he just says he's male becuase its easier?) could human sexualities apply to him? And becuase of that... what would it make Ford? Obviously he only ever loved Bill becuase he's a monster fucker... but what now? Is he actually plansexual? What's your take?

This is Bill's own answer about his sexuality, from the reddit Bill Cipher AMA:

Because the original comment was removed, a lot of later readers assume that Bill is talking about what his own gender is; but the original comment actually asked what his orientation is.

Since Bill's reply says "my dimension has" rather than "had," and he talks like he COULD file his paperwork if he were so inclined, I'm assuming that by "my dimension" he means the Nightmare Realm, not Euclydia. (If I tell you something about "my town," I'm talking about the town I live in, not the hometown I left a decade ago. Why assume Bill does differently?) So he's talking about trying to figure out his orientation in a context of mingling with alien genders, not his orientation within the context of his home dimension.

From his answer, I can conclude three things:

His orientation isn't whatever was considered normal for his culture (example: straight in a heteronormative culture), because if he was attracted only to The Things He Was Expected To Be Attracted To and never attracted to The Things He Wasn't Expect To Be Attracted To, that would be pretty easy for him to recognize.

His orientation isn't ace/aro, because if he was attracted to NOTHING that would be really easy for him to recognize.

His orientation isn't pan, because if he was attracted to EVERYTHING that would be really easy for him to recognize.

So he knows for a fact that there's some genders he definitely feels attraction to and he knows for a fact that there's some genders he never feels attraction to, and they're not the genders considered "normal" in his species, meaning he can't just make a sweeping "yes" or "no" declaration about his attraction to as-yet-unknown genders.

That's as much as we know about his orientation and that's as deep as I care to take it. He knows some things he likes and he knows some things he doesn't like and sometimes he runs into something new and discovers whether he likes it.

As for Ford, I personally headcanon him as somewhere on the ace/aro spectrum—whether that's ace-ace and aro-aro or something a little more demi/gray depends on my mood, the weather, the stock market, and what house Mercury is in.

Is he a "monsterfucker" in the sense of "experiences sexual attraction to monsters" or the sense of "has a kink for monstrosity and is turned on by the excitement of (sexually) exploring something new and strange"? He couldn't tell you.

Has he ever fallen in love? He doesn't think so. Could he ever fall in love? Is he going to fall "in love"? Define "love". What's the dividing line between "emotionally wrapping yourself around someone who fills you with awe and excitement and the contentment of being understood and fantasizing about the wonders he'll show you and the ways he'll impact your life" and "love"? Define the dividing line between platonic friendship and queerplatonic friendship. Define the dividing line between romantic love and queerplatonic love. What's the precise difference between a crush and an obsession. What's the precise difference between a special interest and a romantic interest. If your answer involves criteria like "the desire to kiss" it's no good. Ford's made out with his special interests. He's spent fifty years trying to figure out how to kiss moths.

As far as he can tell he's like this

Ford's a busy man of science, he's got better things to do than search for his precise microlabel*. (*Ford doesn't know what microlabels are.)

This is how he sees it. Forget about the actions and rituals people assume automatically come with "love" and "attraction" and "desire" and "relationships" and "orientations." You don't need to know what your orientation is. For example you wouldn't need to know you like women in order to Like A Woman, your body would just make you like her. An orientation is just a label used to categorize your observations of your body's instincts. So focus on your instincts rather than your label.

You find somebody. You like them. They like you. You want to do things with them. Don't waste time trying to figure out if you're "in love" by comparing the things you want against a hypothetical list of things that somebody in love would want: just pay attention to what you want to do with them.

Kiss? Go to movies? Talk about interdimensional quantum mechanics for eight hours straight? Hold hands? Sleep together? Bring them to family reunions? Play board games? Live together and jointly make decisions about finances, careers, education? Live next door to each other so you can see each other every day without having to cooperate on so many parts of your lives? Get joint filing tax breaks? Entrust each other to make medical decisions if one of you is in a coma?

These are a few of many possibilities. Maybe you want some of them but not others. Maybe you want some things that aren't listed. Maybe you hate this entire list. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Just figure out the things you want to do with them. They figure out the things they want to do with you.

Maybe you don't know whether you're "in love". Maybe one of you is "in love" and the other one isn't. It's irrelevant! The only benefit to knowing whether you're in love is that it provides a template with a list of things you probably want to do (kiss; sex; marry; babies; whatever)—but wouldn't you prefer to do the things you WANT to do rather than do the things you think you SHOULD want based on how you THINK you feel? You just figured out what you want from the person you like all by yourself, so who NEEDS "love"! You have a list!

Now you two can compare lists! You decide which things you both want to do and which things you don't. You compromise. You reach a mutual agreement on a way to conduct your relationship that will make you both happy. You have made...

... a plan.

(In the fic, I plan to continue addressing Bill's orientation by having him crack jokes about paperwork and answer questions like "do you like boys or girls?" with "sometimes"; and this chapter is probably as deep as I'll get into directly addressing Ford's orientation: "I only know there's been too many aliens for me to be straight." With Bill currently in human form, Ford sees him as "Bill (triangle) stuck inside a human puppet" rather than as "Bill (human)," so how Ford feels about Bill has no relevance to how Ford feels about human genders and vice versa.)

[fitzjamesbulletwound]

welcome to my jirv character study and thank you in advance for reading/commenting/liking/anything, if you interact with this at all i love you <3 

i don’t want to spend too much time on an intro but what i will say is that overall, what i found so fascinating and tragic about jirv as a character is that throughout the story he and his actions are defined by what he denies about himself and how he subsequently closes himself off from others, and the tragedy of this being that once they abandon the ships he, like many of the other characters, begins to allow parts of himself to come to the surface that we haven’t seen before, and of course the saddest part of this is that for jirv it begins to happen only days, hours, minutes before his death. oh one note- i refer to him as “john” and “jirv” throughout most of this so hopefully that’s not confusing lol. 

episode 1/first impressions- the first time we see jirv is in the chinese sniper story dinner scene and both in this first scene and the early episodes in general there’s a lot to be seen regarding his relationship with crozier in particular and of course just his general pattern of behavior and what it implies about his state of mind. at the dinner scene he appears prim, maybe a little uptight, a bit of that upper class-ness that i think is evident in a lot of the officers in the early eps. it’s also really interesting seeing how he reacts to crozier in this first scene- i do think that jirv’s relationship with crozier is similar to ned’s in the sense that he very much wants to please crozier but he is also somewhat derisive in his reactions to crozier’s more explosive moments. when he interrupts fitzjames at dinner jirv looks down in embarrassment and is clearly uncomfortable with crozier’s behavior. 

this spills over into the ice talk scene where jirv again reacts in embarrassment to crozier borderline insulting franklin (“you nearly starved, not all of your men survived”)- he was listening to crozier with rapt attention but when he says this he instantly hangs his head in shame and you can see him fidgeting in the background. 

and jirv’s overall depiction in this scene is so interesting to me because there’s a certain almost childlike innocence that characterizes him in his ep 1 scenes (i also have to add that there are quite a few songs on the davechella playlist that seem to explore and make reference to jirv’s childhood which i think is significant but anyway)- we make a lot of jokes about him basically not being allowed to sit at the grown up table but i wonder if the purpose of this was more to symbolize his isolation from the other men, including his fellow officers, due to his own issues of denial and repression; that is to say- denying parts of yourself also denies you the joy or even the routine comfort of human connection, of belonging. but another part of this characterization in the first ep is that it’s in such contrast to how we see jirv in his later and arguably most memorable scenes; in ep 1 i don’t have any other words for it- he’s cute! he looks innocent! and i think they meant for him to come across that way! but later on what we largely see is his anger and although i will make the argument that jirv uses anger to mask other more complicated (to him) emotions, it’s such a difference from what we see in the first ep. it’s almost a case too of meekness vs. righteousness in a religious sense as well- the two sides that we see of jirv at different moments in the story. 

on to episode 2 and THE orlop scene. one of the first thing i noticed with this scene is  how jirv’s greatcoat fits him- it makes him look almost like a priest and i just love how the costuming is used in the show to convey personality and mannerisms ahhhh.

this scene was also such a great study in jirv/ronan’s microexpressions and what they reveal about him- from this moment on, we can see that jirv spends a lot of time hiding fear with anger, and in this particular case using it to hide the paralyzing shock of knowledge- jirv knew exactly what he was hearing immediately and it froze him in place. what really surprised him here i think is that it was someone he knew- when billy comes out and jirv asks “what are you doing down here?” it is a rationalization- he KNOWS billy isn’t meant to be down there and he knows exactly what it is he was doing. 

and jirv remains frozen in place to the point where he’s not even doing his nervous fingers compulsion that i noticed he does a lot in stressful circumstances (essentially rubbing his fingers together) and the look of absolute fear that comes across his face when he sees it’s hickey with billy- i’m skipping ahead (kinda) here but this makes me think of their (chronological) first scene, where you can tell that there is something that jirv recognizes in hickey- not just that something is off with him, but i do think that on their first meeting hickey really elicited some feelings in jirv that he wasn’t willing to confront and that that feeling lingered for the rest of the expedition. but back to the scene at hand- jirv can’t look at hickey and can’t take another step forward and can’t even address him directly in that moment and the only time he looks at him is when hickey’s back is turned. i think for jirv this whole scenario just really drove home something that was already in him, something he doesn’t allow himself to think of but that he is forced to contend with in this moment. 

overall the scene of him catching billy and hickey shows the reaction of a man who knew immediately what he was walking into because it lives in his heart and in his body no matter how much he denies it, and he masks the fear of his own reaction with anger because the feelings that come up are ones he can’t acknowledge to himself; he can’t meet hickey’s eyes because to meet them would be to meet his own nature and confront everything that comes with that. and later once jirv has left when hickey says that he is a “man afraid of chaos” and refers to there being “worse things than being lashed”, he could be referring to jirv’s denial in both cases (i don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that hickey likely clocked jirv early on) 

this is a very jirv/hickey heavy episode but the next significant jirv moment we get is the scene where hickey is drinking with crozier and jirv comes in to tell him about the lead parties returning- he certainly displays nervous body language when addressing crozier- slightly higher pitched voice, his nervous fingers thing he does- but i think what clearly has him the most freaked out here is hickey’s presence. i really thought about this because even in the context of what jirv just saw, he has no reason to fear hickey in the slightest; it was jirv that caught hickey, not the other way around, although to jirv i’m sure it may still feel that way. hickey poses no actual threat to him beyond the effect he has on him and hickey knows it; that’s why he smirks at jirv’s reaction. the only way this really makes sense to me is if jirv’s fear is due to his own internalized shit because truly what does he have to fear from hickey? what could hickey possibly threaten him with? if anything, hickey should be afraid of jirv telling crozier what he saw but he knows he won’t tell and he knows why i think. what could he do to john besides make him understand himself in ways he’s terrified of? and of course i mean that in the sense of what we know about hickey up to this point in the story and not yet knowing what he is capable of in later episodes. but this is all to say that jirv’s fear here is 100% due to his feelings about hickey and nothing else. 

this scene is also another great example of him using anger to cover his apprehension- he forces himself to meet hickey’s eyes once crozier has walked away and the best way i can describe what happens is that there is a tension in that look. it’s one thing to be religious and angry and judgmental about sodomy on the ships but it’s another thing to be terrified of the mere presence of one single gay person, to say nothing of how hard it was for him to even look at him! 

and on to episode 3! what i realized when watching this episode through the jirv lens is that in almost every scene we see him in leading up to his confrontation with hickey, it’s fairly evident that he is thinking of that very moment and how to go about it (i think what sent him over the edge was billy coming to him and everything that he told him) and that’s how i want to canonically prove that jirv was thinking of gay sex during the before breakfast crozier/lieutenants meeting scene when he’s just zoning out lol. 

another thing i noticed about this scene is that it’s the first of a few where jirv is present when potential interactions with the netsilik people are being discussed. edward’s colonialist attitudes and assumptions about them that he expresses in this scene are foreshadowing for the reaction to the false story that hickey tells about jirv’s death, that ned and hodge both buy into in their grief for jirv but also in their racist views. that whole scene is actually foreshadowing for all 3 of them when jirv dies.

the next time we see jirv is when hickey sees billy go into his cabin. and the way he looks to hickey nervously not once but twice- this is i believe his nervousness and contemplation coming forward as he is still contemplating speaking to hickey, or at he very least thinking about what he walked in on. 

and finally we do get the jirv/hickey confrontation scene- when jirv is walking down the little ramp to find hickey you can hear him take a big deep breath, definitely indicative of his nerves in going to speak to hickey. and again we see that he can’t make direct eye contact with hickey when hickey says he was hoping they’d meet. i also love the addition of the AB in the background saying “mind the grease sir” right after this- really speaks to the way john thinks of hickey in this moment- and of himself as well. 

something i really thought about in this scene is jirv’s use of the term “devious seducer” and the more i thought about it the more it made me think… those words sound way less like something that billy would say vs sounding exactly like something that jirv would say, especially since his use of the term, regardless of who really said it, absolutely refers to how hickey makes him feel as much as it refers to what billy allegedly said about him. 

 jirv really is a deer in headlights when he finally brings himself to look at hickey and address him directly; even the way he says “please” is so pitiful and you can tell hickey is surprised that the conversation went beyond hickey thanking him for his help. the script notes that john is “usually a shy man” and that he “isn’t used to this kind of candor” but that this “may be the most courageous thing he’s ever done”- i think all of these are interesting in the context of what is being discussed as well given what we know about jirv’s sexuality and how he handles it- this wasn’t just difficult for him because he’s withdrawn, it was difficult for him because of the subject at hand specifically. 

another phrasing of note here is when he tells hickey “though it benefitted you as a sin in itself i’m sure” because here jirv is basically accusing hickey not only of the “sin” of sodomy, but the sin of enjoying it. i can only imagine that when he has sexual thoughts or urges towards men jirv convinces himself that if he doesn’t like it, doesn’t indulge in it, doesn’t entertain it, then somehow it doesn’t “count”. 

he takes a huge shaky breath before he says “how you pressed him into service” because this is the closest he’s come to picturing that and perhaps even imagining it for himself- he can barely get the words out. and when a few moments later he starts in with the whole “turn your wolf’s ear to me” speech, we can really see some actual anger coming out- i do think he is angry with hickey but more so i think he is angry with himself, made even more significant considering what i believe he was just thinking about. he is projecting like crazy in this entire scene; much like the future lashing, this whole chastisement is as much meant for jirv to himself as it is to hickey. 

and in regards to the “watercolours” advice- to me, there has never been a doubt in my mind that he is speaking from experience here, that these are all methods he’s employed to avoid the temptations of his own mind; the way this part is shot is almost humorous, and not just because we can see hickey start to try not to laugh. it just feels like such a wink nudge to the audience as if to say “yeah clearly jirv has tried all of these because he’s had many instances of having these thoughts himself”. his breathing gets shallow again as he discusses it and he starts to lose that anger and become anxious and unable to meet hickey’s eyes again. 

however, all that anger comes back when he says “your crisis is an opportunity for you to repair yourself”, which i think is such an excellent line because as the viewer, we KNOW that hickey is in no way having a crisis about his sexuality; he is not ashamed of himself at all and even the threat of punishment isn’t enough for him to consider not being who he is and doing what he wants. we do know though (partially through the power of jirvchella) that john IS and has been having a crisis about his sexuality and that again these words, this anger is more for himself than it is for hickey. and finally with this scene- i love the zoom out that shows how close they are as they speak, how there’s no one else around. despite his purpose jirv ends up sharing this intimate moment with hickey that is caged in suggestion and implication and really shows us how jirv feels about himself and what he keeps secret. 

finally, this isn’t a jirv scene persay but i do find it interesting the way hickey and billy discuss him later, especially when billy refers to jirv “forgetting the whole thing as he assuredly wants to”- i think it makes sense that both billy and hickey would have at least suspicions about why jirv reacted to the whole situation the way he did and honestly who would know better than the two of them? not to mention all the times that hickey mentions watching jirv but that’s a whole other post in itself. 

to episode 4! his first scene in this ep is when they’re discussing tuunbaq after finding strong and evans’s bodies and this is another instance of foreshadowing to jirv eventually meeting the netsilik family, not just because of what they’re discussing but because he’s the most calm and rational in the room regarding the potential involvement of the netsilik

there’s a lot going on when he says “perhaps it wouldn’t be a mystery to the indigenous people here”- he seems very nervous to speak (doing his little nervous hands thing he does) and his use of the term “indigenous” is in stark contrast to the slur and the anger that fitzjames displays a moment later. i do think this shows that jirv is capable of a higher empathy towards the netsilik people than some other characters are and to be honest i’m not interested at all in trying to determine “who’s the best native ally in the terror” because the true act of hubris that they are all committing is the colonial violence and destruction inherent in their quest in the first place. BUT i do think it’s worth examining and thinking about who displays the most respect for the native people and why and ultimately how that plays out for them. and i mean it didn’t stop jirv (or goodsir) from dying but i think it says a lot about his beliefs and his nature. due to his extreme religious beliefs i think it would’ve been easy to depict jirv as being dismissive of any cultural or religious beliefs of the netsilik but instead he openly suggests that they simply ask them about tuunbaq. i also think it’s interesting that he accepts the reality put before him that tuubaq is a supernatural force, especially considering his later “god doesn’t grant us ghosts” bullshit. another source of religious conflict for jirv.

i don’t really get why jirv stomps out of the room after crozier goes to his bunk to have his depression flashback but it does look like jirv may be a bit disturbed and frustrated by the implication of bringing silna in for questioning given how aggressive fitzjames was about it and i certainly don’t think that or what hickey did was what jirv intended when he said that they should ask the indigenous people about tuunbaq. 

when all hell breaks loose and everyone is clamoring to get above deck in the hallway you can hear crozier say “irving, irving get in there (up there?) and help us” but jirv is frozen in fear; even before crozier yells at him he is shrinking against the wall and i think this comes down to a matter of experience or lack thereof that some of the officers, including jirv, seem to display in moments of peril (ned’s panic when tuunbaq attacks in ep 8, hodge not being able to make a rational decision when he discovers jirv has been killed, etc). 

once he’s above deck with crozier though, jirv being scared does actually seem to turn to real anger once he assesses the situation. he repeats crozier’s order for everyone to get on their knees and walks forward with him but while he does appear to be genuinely mad at what has happened, i think it’s worth noting that jirv only seems comfortable with taking action when he’s following someone else’s example. he seems terrified to ever act on his own unless he really hypes himself up to do it (confronting hickey, scene with manson). he has an issue making his own choices based on his own gut feelings or readings of a situation and prefers to let others lead and set the tone which can again be linked back to the denial he carries within himself. he really is a man of inaction.

i also caught him staring at hickey shortly before crozier dismisses everyone and they pass close by one another but by that point jirv has averted his eyes once again

and okay what i want to say about the lashing scene up front is that i don’t think that jirv told crozier about hickey and billy- i think crozier’s use of the term “dirtiness” is 1) crozier being a prick because he’s mad and he wants to humiliate hickey and 2) more in line with a section if the articles that refers to “swearing, drunkenness, scandalous actions” etc and mentions “uncleanness” specifically; there’s a whole separate article that refers to sodomy and if that was part of what hickey was being punished for, i think crozier would’ve just said that. and this is to say that jirv won’t look at hickey when hickey glares at him here for the same reason he always can’t, although in this instance i do think there’s a degree of guilt there too. hickey is about to experience something horrible and jirv feels like it’s something that he himself deserves as well and i believe this is why he forces himself to watch hickey the entire time once the lashing properly starts. he is punishing himself as much as he is forcing himself to witness hickey’s punishment. it’s a private warning and internal lashing that he does to himself. 

some details of this scene- there’s that one infamous pan to him, billy, and jop and i know we focus a lot on the jop flinch but jirv flinches pretty hard here too and unlike billy and jop he doesn’t look away even as his expression gets more and more disturbed (he’s displaying a lot of his typical signs of distress- wide eyes, mouth falling open). of every significant reaction we see to hickey’s lashing, jirv is the only one to not look away. the only time he does he is looking in shock at johnson as he delivers some of the heaviest blows toward the end of the lashing but right after he goes back to watching hickey.

and the final jirv scene of the episode is when he goes to see to crozier and like it’s not a super significant jirv scene but i just want to point out that the terror does storytelling with a lot of different small elements and one of them is footsteps- they are often used to convey mood and tone of specific characters and in this instance, jirv approaches the room slowly where usually we can see and hear him walking pretty briskly and i love how that conveys his mood in this moment post lashing. 

but moving on to episode 5- he only has one really important scene in this ep besides being mostly in the background of some others and that’s the scene with manson. this scene shows a very different jirv than the one we’ve seen up to this point but i think there are a few reasons why this is the case. he acts flippant and borders on cruelty towards manson and i truthfully don’t want to defend his actions but i think that the reason he behaves this way is because in the story, he has just come off the whole ordeal of confronting hickey but ultimately choosing to spare him and billy and also the kidnapping of silna and the subsequent lashing of hickey; in jirv’s mind this all happened because he wasn’t hard enough on hickey in the beginning. he showed him too much mercy and what came next was a direct result of that. because despite his delivery i think that jirv truly thinks he is helping in both of these scenarios, both with manson and with hickey previously. i’m sure discipline and cruelty are things he privately uses to keep himself in line and besides that it’s classic christian logic- he didn’t do a good enough job at being god’s warrior and because of that bad things happened and people were punished. he’s trying to avoid the same outcome with manson, as misguided as all of his attempts are. 

anyway details- i think in the beginning of the scene we are seeing some real anger from him but i do think this anger is largely aimed at himself, much like in the hickey confrontation scene. the apprehension doesn’t come through until he has to take a big deep breath before he says he’s going to order manson down the ladder in the smallest, meekest voice possible, almost like he’s convincing himself that he’ll do it rather than telling manson he will. he really steels himself to do this and i think it’s very telling that the 2 times we see him overcome his fear of candor to directly confront someone he is much more motivated by his faith than he is by his duty as a lieutenant. 

jirv very cautiously puts his hand directly on manson’s which i think is sooo interesting considering how significant touching is in the terror, especially bare skin to bare skin but anyway- manson only pulls his hand back when jirv touches him, he doesn’t hit him or shove him at all. jirv is just so high strung and scared in this scene that he has a ridiculously high startle response

and then hickey shows up- jirv is already against the wall at this point and hickey doesn’t even look at him but jirv like.. there is no other way to describe this but he arches his back, tips his head back, his eyes even roll into the back of his head. it’s very… interesting to say the least lol (the word i really want to use is erotic but it could just be the hickeyirving demon in my head whispering to me). jirv’s eyes also widen with fear when he watches hickey talk to manson and i think this is partially because of how intimately they are behaving, something that of course would freak jirv out. he looks one more time before deciding to flee rather than continue to try to exert his authority in this situation and i think this just further solidifies the effect that hickey’s mere presence has on him. man it’s been impossible to write this without mentioning hickey a million times but it’s always relevant lol. 

aaand that brings us to episode 6! i really like the opening scene with jirv at the meeting because we get a little glimpse into his role as an officer and also the way he clings to order and routines in order to feel in control (all an illusion of course given what we know about the tins). but i think we can also conclude that john has been privy to just how fucked they all are in regards to their rations for a while as he is the one in charge of keeping track of them. 

i’m usually too busy laughing at hodge’s reaction when jirv mentions the christmas pudding they made but i noticed this time around that jirv gives him a pretty irritated look and i think this is because he’s trying to emphasize “hey we have almost none of this left and that’s kind of alarming”. jirv has had to shoulder the burden of keeping track of the tins for the entire expedition and i imagine that put quite a strain on him, especially when they started overwintering. 

he starts doing his little nervous fingers when he’s telling fitzjames when they’ll run out of food ugh and when fitzjames kinda tells him off for mentioning the number of men i feel like he doesn’t understand that jirv KNOWS that between the dwindling rations and the lemon juice no longer protecting against scurvy, jirv fully knows that more people are likely to die regardless of whether tuunbaq is around or not 

he does look genuinely grateful for the encouraging words from fitzjames a few minutes later though; he almost looks surprised but he still nods and it’s very similar to how he looks at crozier later during his speech at carnival. again i just think jirv is very much a follower and he greatly values reassurance from those in power. 

on to carnivale itself- it’s so funny to me how shocked crozier and jop look when they realize who’s singing lol. just knowing what jirv is like normally and then seeing him like that is jarring in a pleasant way even for us as the viewer- and of course i can’t mention this scene without the note from the script: “he’s had too much to drink already, relaxing his defenses”. i don’t want to spend too much time on this because i feel like it’s been talked about enough but the symbolism of jirv, drunk and inhibitions lowered, singing a song about a popular area for gay cruising is very well done. it sounds heavy handed typed out like that but it really isn’t in the scene itself! it’s just nice to see him be a part of the group and be happy and have fun, things he usually cuts himself off from no doubt because of what he’s in denial about.

jirv removing his halo when crozier asks them to remove their masks- there has been so much said about the symbolism of this and one thing i want to add is that it goes hand in hand with his actions of drinking, letting loose, singing that specific song, etc in terms of removing the mask of his faith that he uses to lie to himself and deny himself the truth of who he is. the halo being his mask that he removes (along with the eventual loss of his wings in the fire) is such a great detail ahhh i love it 

the third and final scene of encounters with the netsilik being mentioned while jirv is on screen is when we can see jirv listening with rapt attention to crozier as he tells the men that the netsilik are good people who will help them- this is the ultimate foreshadowing to what happens with him in the next episode

the fire- i’m not going to go blow by blow but of course we can see jirv a lot during the fire scene- when stanley is burning he’s shouting for help trying to get blankets brought forward to put out the fire, and he can be seen ushering people out when fitzjames tells everyone to move calmly to the ice. after this, most of the times i can find jirv in the crowd he has shut down and seems frozen in place at various points. towards the end of the fire sequence i lose him entirely until we see him running out without his wings. this is a stretch but i think that little scene of him pulling on his wing ropes may have been him trying to pull them off because the next time we see him he doesn’t have them on. 

and going back to the symbolism of him losing his halo and his wings at carnival- not only does he lose them, he loses them in a fiery inferno… crazy. 

and here we are at episode 7. i will say that i’m going to do some analysis of eps 8 and 9 as well because i think they’re important to jirv’s characterization and also a theory i have about something that may have happened in the aftermath of his death. buuuut let’s get into episode 7

idk if i’ll remember to put the link in but if not someone pointed out a few weeks ago that jirv can be seen watching the men, specifically the future mutineers, packing up the boats to prepare for the march south. this was so intriguing to me because there’s no way that didn’t look suspicious to him but again it’s likely that he was too afraid of hickey to intervene or get closer. 

john giving the order “forward men” truly just makes me sick for so many reasons… he is sending them all forward to their deaths! of which his will be one of the first! and the catalyst for the ultimate breakdown of the entire camp! ugh! 

anyway on to the jop promotion scene- i feel so bad for jirv in this moment because he’s essentially learning that despite the fact that he has done everything he can to weed out the rotten tins and keep track of their provisions, they have always been a source of danger and death for the men and we can really see his shock and despair here. and i’m sure he felt so much guilt for it as well even though of course there’s nothing he could have done and no way he could’ve known. we can also hear the anxiety in his voice when he asks crozier what they will do if they can’t find any game. 

ahhh and the nedving thigh grab scene- i would be remiss not to involve this because i DO think that it’s further evidence of jirv’s gayness of course. jirv is disassociating, thinking of the implications of what they’ve just been told, and when ned puts his hand on him he fully jumps; his hands jerk from the table where they were resting. he makes brief eye contact with ned and then stares off into the distance. it also looks like he’s breathing heavier. not a ton of analysis i want to do here that i haven’t already but i think his reaction is proof enough that that touch affected him very deeply. 

moving on though- jirv’s reaction to the jop promotion scene is almost as happy as ned’s- it’s similar in the sense that we never (excepting carnival) see him so happy and i think this is because leaving the ship opened him to connection and belonging and letting himself be a part of moments with other people. it really is so so tragic and devastating to me- in this episode jirv just really seems on the cusp of becoming, letting go, days, hours before his death. he is experiencing joy, even permitting hickey’s proximity in the upcoming scene (he doesn’t argue or seem too uncomfortable with hickey accompanying him and farr) which is an interesting departure from his previous attitude towards him. and of course his interaction with the netsilik family but now i’m getting ahead of myself. 

so okay here we go- final scenes. i do think jirv suggests splitting up to cover more ground because he knows how dire the situation is and how desperately they need to find food 

i’ve made a post about his before but there are two moments of halo imagery that get used with jirv after carnival and this is the first- when he’s checking their position the sun comes into focus right over his head, haloing his face in the exact spot where he’s going to die. ugh. 

he does hesitate very slightly when he realizes hickey will be with him but he doesn’t fight it and he seems more resigned to it (comfortable may be too strong of a word at this point but it’s possible). given he has spent most of the story avoiding even looking at hickey i think this is an important detail

ugh the way he takes off his hat both as a sign of respect before he goes to speak to the netsilik family but also as another stripping of his rank, a reducing to just himself, just john. and he looks so young and vulnerable… the way he first introduces himself with his full name and title and then strips it down to “john… i’m john”. he immediately realizes he can identify himself as a friend and in a less formal way, he leaves that piece of him behind and shows his vulnerability and humanity in a plea for help but also for connection. he is braver here than he has ever been and i don’t think he even realizes it. both the first time and the last time he says “john” he is holding his hand to his chest right where hickey will stab him.

and it all continues to crumble away as he calls hickey and farr, but most significantly hickey, his “friends” there is such a desperation when he says “food?” and wow just. there are a lot of face journeys and expressions in this show that have stuck with me ever since i first saw them and jirv’s when he eats the seal meat offered to him is one of them- from the second it touches his lips he looks like he is holding back tears- the longing and gratitude in his eyes is so evident. this act of communion that he receives from a complete stranger, someone who he has no doubt been taught most of his life to hate and distrust, yet they offered him this simple gift, the kindness of feeding him without question. not only that but i think it’s significant that he’s offered a second piece as well, one that he takes. and when he thanks koveyook it’s in a tone that suggests he doesn’t believe that he deserves it but that he is thankful for it nonetheless

he very deliberately reaches out with his hand (the ungloved one!) to touch koveyook in gratitude- all other points of touch we’ve seen with jirv have been cast in a negative light besides him shaking jopson’s hand (god hand touching becomes sooooooooo interesting in ep 7 and beyond, fitzier, joplittle, this scene, etc but that’s a post for another time)- but touch averse (to me) jirv deliberately takes this action in gratitude

and then the telescope… the telescope. his most prized possession, showing how precious koveyook’s gift to him was that he was compelled to offer it in thanks. they weren’t demanding anything from him, he just wanted to give them something in return and he is delighted to do so

he doesn’t even have time to put his glove back on before he dies which becomes significant in a sec, bear with me here. okay let’s talk about jirv calling hickey’s name 3 times before hickey betrays him- it’s not quite the same dynamics as peter denying jesus but interesting nonetheless… jirv’s first “hickey” is angry, the second is inquisitive, the third is almost pleading… and given dave’s whole “he sees what he thinks might essentially be fucking and he turns forward to either stop it or touch it”- which of course implies i think that even jirv himself didn’t know which and wouldn’t have until he actually found himself in the situation if indeed that was what was actually happening- but that’s just one of the most subtle insane ways to show jirv’s queerness in the story. and god like he literally grabs his shoulder, not even aggressively, almost like… questioningly? and although it would’ve been easier for him to touch hickey’s shoulder with his gloved right hand, he specifically reaches out to him with his ungloved, bare left hand?? actually i just rewatched it and not only that but he touches his bare shoulder too. wow. 

the utter fucking shock on jirv’s face when hickey stabs him and the way he looks up at him through his lashes and reaches one hand up between his legs after he’s fallen back and hickey’s crouching over him? is very crazy and i want to talk about how insanely erotic this scene is another time because that’s a whole thing in and of itself but yeah. (okay it’ll probably come up a little later in this paragraph but i digress). the way jirv struggles so hard to breathe just kills me. and the music- one of his happiest moments sickeningly twisted around his brutal death but also a callback to the inherent sexuality and gayness of the whole thing. jirv spends most of the show directly avoiding contact with hickey, not even eye contact, yet he dies with hickey directly in front of him, penetrating him, covering his mouth, and jirv holds his gaze the entire time. i feel like in a way this symbolically shows that jirv was facing whatever it was inside himself that hickey elicited in his final moments, mixed with the shock and rage that we can see in his face too. at first he leans forward, we can see the anger, then he lies back, accepting, accepting and then the next shot he heaves twice with his whole body trying to fight it but i think this is because this is the moment where hickey finally looks back at him where before he was looking away almost in impatience for it to all be over with. how many times i wonder did they picture each other in these exact positions in a sexual context, only to play it out finally in this moment as jirv dies underneath hickey (much like he might’ve felt like he was doing if he had ever acted on his urges). 

and this flashback scene it is everything; it is truly everything to me. we can see in jirv’s face that he can sense almost like a gut feeling that there is something off about hickey but i also think that what he is reacting to the feelings within himself that arise- ugh his little nervous hands, the lower lip falling open as it does with him, the way he looks hickey up and down as hickey does too when jirv walks away- i’m sorry i know this is my solving magnum opus but there was an attraction there- however fucked up and in denial there absolutely was. like the way jirv just walks away without responding too- he was nervous! he didn’t know what to think! this whole expedition for him started and ended with what came to the surface for him with hickey and it’s so so devastating.

anyway rip my beautiful angel jirv i love you forever <3

but i do want to point out a few things from eps 8 and 9 that again i think are important to jirv as a character and his journey- namely the grief that ned and hodge feel for him and a few other things concerning the aftermath of his death: 

ugh man… ned and hodge’s grief at jirv’s death gets harder to watch every time- in the tent hodge’s eyes are red from crying and it’s because he had to be the one to bring jirv’s body back, he saw everything that was done to him and he had to be the one to bring him to where he would rest. and edward is trying his best to keep it together for hodge, patting him on the shoulder and backing up his story but once he is out of george’s line of sight we can see him start to cry as well :( they loved him and of course they both blame themselves for what happened to him

okay a few notes about john’s body- in the script it mentions that he is partially scalped and that it looks like someone “got bored” or “lost interest” part way through doing it but what i fully realized here is that jirv’s scalping literally looks like a fucked up halo… and ugh his little cross around his neck.. he looks so tiny idk just like with the goodsir death scene in ep 10 there’s just something so awful about seeing them laid out naked like that when we spend the whole show seeing them bundled up and in uniform. a final stripping of rank and identity.

moving on, and these will be a little rapid fire because i’m mostly trying to document the final movements of jirv’s body and his clothing- the reason collins’ hands are shaking when he goes to the medical tent is because he can see jirv’s bloody clothes folded up on the table across from him - this is from the script: “as he applies the salve, collins’ hands tremble constantly. someone has folded and stacked up lt. irving’s clothes on a table there. collins can see a few knife cuts in the coat.” also jirv’s body is just there in the tent while bridgens and peglar talk about his scurvy.

jirv’s telescope is laying by the netsilik girl when silna goes to adjust her leg…… she was playing with it when she was murdered

i’ve made this post before on its own but it absolutely makes me sick how jirv didn’t even get to keep and take to the grave with him the final kindness that was ever done for him in his life because they had to cut upon his stomach and mutilate him further to learn the truth of his death. and to convince the men who are grieving him most that it was actually hickey that killed him.

when we can hear edward saying terror camp is clear from outside the medical tent, goodsir is finishing up sewing up john’s body again.

the wording when edward is reading out the charges against hickey and sol- when he calls the acts of sedition and mutinous designs “more pernicious” than the act of murdering jirv (and farr but this ain’t about him) it’s just so alarming- the suggestion that stirring up mutiny is worse than brutally murdering your fellow shipmates. i think this just makes the lack of proper mourning for jirv feel even worse

i believe the next time we see his body is when bridgens is trying to protect one of this patients in the medical tent- i don’t think we specifically see it brought out to be burnt with the men who are killed by tuunbaq but i do think that must have been what happened, idk what else they could’ve done at that point. but it makes me sad that we don’t know for certain

but anyway- tozer’s reaction to hearing about how jirv died and seeing the evidence against hickey- i’ll get more into this in my solving post but i think this was the beginning of the end of sol’s faith in hickey 

and then at the end we have hickey going to the med tent first, presumably to look for goodsir which is where he finds jirv’s clothes, and takes his coat. i wonder if this was a crime of opportunity or if he was determined to take a trophy from his murder of jirv. i could see it going either way for hickey tbh.

okay and my final little theory i will leave you with- i posted this in the main tag a long time ago when i first got back on tumblr but i didn’t word it very well and i wasn’t very confident in my ability to articulate my thoughts but now y’all are going to hear me lol (that is if you made it this far): in the scene where hickey is talking to hodge about the tins and turning to cannibalism given what they know about them, we can see sol listening closely but not participating in the conversation. and then comes the moment where sol realizes that hickey is wearing jirv’s coat; when the wind blows he can see the stab marks. there isn’t anything said about jirv in this scene, nor his death, but obviously we can see sol starting to creep out of his denial that hickey lied to him and killed one of their fellow crew members. what i can’t stop thinking about though is the context of the conversation in which this discovery takes places- hickey is talking about eating human flesh to live now. the parts of jirv that were cut off- pieces of flesh, his fingers, etc… i really wonder if they were eaten by hickey. he was already thinking about cannibalism before the actual mutiny- he deliberately wanted to bring goodsir and diggle when they split from the group, so i don’t think it’s a huge stretch to believe that he would’ve done that to jirv’s body after mutilating him. and i just don’t think anything in the terror is a coincidence, so the fact that we see sol putting the pieces together of jirv’s death as hickey is talking about cannibalism seems too on the nose to ignore or at least consider but i would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this! 

anyway if you made it to the end of this thank you for reading and for being insane about this stupid little gay freak with me <3 sol deep dive is incoming followed by solving i promise!!!! 

[loredrinker]

Framing Forgiveness - Solas Atonement Ending (Romance)

There are a few things that stand out for me around Lavellan’s forgiveness of Solas in the Atonement ending. 

1) Only a romanced Inquisitor speaks words of forgiveness to Solas specifically 2) Lavellan’s forgiveness comes before Mythal speaks  3) Mythal does not ask for forgiveness 

Lavellan Forgives 

Forgiveness is not comfortable; it is controversial because it can be viewed as weak or foolish. However, it is an incredibly strong act of free will and when given in truth, it offers spiritual, emotional and psychological healing. It liberates the forgiver and the forgiven.  

I’m actually impressed that the devs made this choice in the game and chose to tie it to love, framing it as an intimate and emotional act - an act of love.  

Forgiveness is about choosing to let go of resentment, it breaks cycles of guilt and vengeance, it helps to shift beliefs rooted in self-loathing. It does not erase what has been done. But it grants Lavellan agency. To forgive is to refuse to be defined by suffering. She is not the victim of his betrayal but takes ownership of how this story ends.

And what makes forgiveness powerful is that it forces the forgiven to see themselves through the eyes of the forgiver. For a man who has spent so long seeing himself as the betrayer, the destroyer - what must it be like to be met, instead, with grace – from the woman he admits he betrayed? 

One of the more difficult aspects of forgiveness, and why some may struggle with it, is that it isn’t always earned. Some don’t like that Solas could be forgiven before he has earned it. But the game doesn’t present forgiveness as a reward – it presents it as a gift. And that is when forgiveness is at its most powerful, when it can change a person, when it offers healing.  

Limiting the forgiveness to a romance is interesting. To have all characters forgive Solas would have made forgiveness feel like a general moral principle, rather than the personal act of emotional transformation I think Veilguard was going for in the Atonement ending. It also offers the idea that true redemption begins with love, not with punishment. If we only forgive someone when we feel they have fully atoned, then forgiveness is not about grace, it’s a transaction.  And that’s the messy thing about forgiveness, it comes first, when there is no guarantee that the forgiven will atone.   

I think for Solas’ arc, that gift of forgiveness is highly symbolic and impactful considering his history.  

And I love that the devs chose to position her forgiveness ahead of Mythal.  

Lavellan’s Forgiveness Before Mythal’s Release 

Sola's life has been dominated by Mythal – a bond as profound as it was painful.  With Lavellan offering forgiveness before Mythal speaks, she is standing independently from Solas’ legacy of entanglement with Mythal, away from all that pain and regret. 

Lavellan’s forgiveness is not divine or bestowed like a ruler pardoning a crime – her forgiveness is mortal, intimate and human.  By positioning this before Mythal, we are reminded of his humanity, but also of his personal connection to Lavellan, that she symbolizes a place for him to belong as himself – as Solas. He was Solas first, after all.  

Solas’ turning point isn't dictated by Mythal’s authority alone, but also by this personal moment.  If we, the player were only given Mythal’s voice at the end without the voices of Rook and Lavellan before her, it might have felt like a convenient way to absolve Solas of his guilt.  Instead, this gradual approach – Rook’s appeal, Lavellans’ forgiveness and then Mythal’s release – make this emotional shift feel earned rather than a deus ex machina moment.  

Mythal Does Not Seek Forgiveness Nor Offer An Apology 

If Mythal had asked Solas for his forgiveness, it would have acknowledged that Solas had power over her in that moment.  By having Mythal not seek forgiveness, the game reinforces that their relationship was never truly equal, that Mythal always dictated the terms.  Mythal had to be the one to dictate the terms of their parting.  It is also a fascinating exploration of their differences – Solas carries guilt, Mythal carries responsibility. She acknowledges they did many wrongs together, made terrible choices together, but she does not seek emotional resolution for it. 

If Mythal had apologized it would suggest that the past can be undone, old wounds closed.  But Mythal doesn’t give Solas any of that. This is very fitting – Solas' entire story has been about trying to fix his past mistakes.  Mythal’s lack of apology forces him to accept that some things cannot be undone and she denies him an easy emotional resolution. Instead, he must find his own way forward, despite the wrongs he did.   

Lavellan’s Forgiveness – Mythal's Release 

Mythal releases Solas as a leader releases a soldier. Lavellan stays as a lover choosing to stand beside him. Mythal says “I release you.”, Lavellan says “There is no fate but the love we share.” Mythal’s statement is about a duty ending.  Lavellan’s is about love enduring.   

But Solas’ fate is in his own hands now – and that moment where he looks back at the tear in the Veil, he is choosing.   

I feel like I need to add that this isn’t about diminishing Rook here. Rook offers a chance to atone - tied to duty. Returning the dagger to Solas is a gesture of trust, an acknowledgment that he still has a choice - but it comes with an expectation: bind yourself to the Veil. Set things right. Like Mythal, Rook does not release Solas from consequence.  

But this post is focused on forgiveness - its power, and that Lavellan offers the personal, emotional resolution that Mythal withholds.

I really appreciate the game having the courage to incorporate forgiveness into this world state. To offer grace as an aspect of this story’s ending is beautiful and fitting in the Veilguard setting, a game where many of the companions have to walk through their own forms of forgiveness and letting go.  

Forgiveness can be uncomfortable because it challenges the idea that justice is solely about punishment. It forces us to reckon with the full complexity of a person - not just their worst actions. In Solas’ case, it requires seeing him as more than the sum of his crimes - it demands acknowledging that he was not only a destroyer but also someone who cared, who loved, and who suffered. And by contrast, it demands viewing Lavellan and her forgiveness in the same light - not as naive or weak, but as someone making a deliberate, choice of strength to see beyond her own pain and shape what comes next.  

[kcwriter-blog]

More thoughts on Solavellan

I started replying to a post about the psychological aspect of Solavellan because it was interesting, well thought out and I thought good points were made but it got very long, and I had new thoughts. I wanted to put them down. This is not a criticism of that post in any way, it’s good and I urge people to read it. I just see things differently.

The big problem I have with most takes on Solavellan is how they take agency away from Lavellan whenever Solas is mentioned. We have a woman who grew to be one of the most powerful leaders in Thedas but when we talk about her and her feelings, she suddenly becomes this naive child desperately in love with the man who broke her heart. I just don’t see it. I don’t see a relationship – no matter how intense – of a few months, defining her going forward. So, let’s look at it.

Solas and Lavellan do love each other deeply. We don’t hear Lavellan say I love you until the breakup scene and she never calls him vehnan until Trespasser. Obviously, that is, as with most things in the romance, because it was a rushed, late add to the game. But it is interesting.

People get on Solas’ case for not defining the relationship, but I would argue she isn’t in a hurry to define it either. Which is smart. They haven’t been together long and one, the other, or both of them could die.

It’s possible that Crestwood is the first chance they have had to talk about it. I’ve never liked the first dialogue option because Lavellan seems genuinely surprised that up until now, she doesn’t know what to call Solas. Which is silly. They have been exclusive for a few months now. They are in love. She’s been calling him something and my guess is it is vhenan (her heart, home). And Solas fully intends to have that discussion. He just gets cold feet because what he has to tell her isn’t something she is going to believe.

Moving on. The valleslin scene has had a lot posted about it and I don’t want to get into it. I think what’s important is not whether it is removed or not but the idea that Solas alone destroys her faith by telling her the truth. Did he hammer the final nail in the coffin of her faith? Yes, but a smart Lavellan has to be questioning everything already. Why? Because she met Mythal.

Even before she meets the head of her pantheon, she has been to the Temple of Mythal and learned a lot that differs from her people’s mythology. She learns that Mythal was murdered, not locked away. She learns that the Dread Wolf had no part in that murder. She sees a depiction of the Dread Wolf in an antechamber of the temple in a guard dog position which is weird. If she drank from the Well, she has a lot of ancient elven voices in her head telling her stuff. If she didn’t, she would have Morrigan telling her the same stuff.

She meets ancient elves. And those elves don’t see her or the Dalish as their own. Just as a reminder, Solas isn’t the only ancient elf to have feelings about the Dalish. Abelas is very pointed about saying Lavellan isn’t one of his people. Felassan makes fun of the Dalish. Mythal says “the People bend the knee to easily” in DA2. Heck, Felassan thinks more of the city elves than he does of the Dalish. Solas eventually comes around. It’s a grudging respect but he does allow that they have some good qualities.

Lavellan meets Mythal and Mythal isn’t exactly a nice person. She has chosen to possess the body of a human, not an elf. She never helps the elves. So, you have an elven goddess in diminished form running around helping human heroes but doing nothing for the people that pray to her. That must rock her world and her faith.

Her faith is already on the ledge by Crestwood. Solas possibly pushes it over. And he never would have told her if he hadn’t messed up and changed his mind about the other thing. It’s all impulsive. He isn’t thinking straight, just covering his ass and it hurts her. However, I think he still intended to carry on the relationship without telling her the truth. During the kiss, he finally realizes that if he loves her so much he almost told her everything, then not telling her is morally wrong and he comes up with a reason to end it.

After the breakup, Lavellan is hurt. It always hurts when someone breaks up with you. What hurts the most is knowing he still loves her. What also hurts is he won’t give her a reason. I don’t think she is questioning everything he told her at this point. He’s just the cold-hearted son of a bitch who broke her heart.

Most of us have been there. We’ve got breakup playlists, alcohol and friends to help get us through it. I usually imagine my Lavellan grabbing Bull, Dorian and Cole to help her take out her anger on a poor unsuspecting dragon. I also put off triggering the Wicked Grace game until after the breakup.

That doesn’t mean she isn’t angry or crying on Josephine’s shoulder. Of course she is, but she isn’t questioning her life choices. She could tell Solas to get lost, but she keeps him around. She is even kind to him when the Orb is discovered broken.

And everyone is kind of busy planning to find and finish Corypheus off once and for all. I see her putting a pin in it. Once they win, she will confront him and demand answers.

She doesn’t get the chance because he leaves without saying goodbye. That has to hurt. I don’t see her in a place where she could never trust anyone ever again. It’s more likely, she throws daggers at a drawing of him out in the practice yard. Even if she still loves him, she is an adult not a maiden in distress. As much as she loves Solas, her entire world does not revolve around him.

Solas made his choice. She may be concerned about him - especially after Cole’s cryptic message - but I don’t see her searching frantically for him. He knows where she is and can send her a message if he needs her.  

And she is busy. She must help clean up the mess Cory made. She has rifts to close. She has dignitaries to meet. She has paperwork. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for pining.

There is an idea that Lavellan is alone because all of her inner circle except her advisors go off and do their own thing. Except that isn’t true. They write letters – which you can find exploring the Winter Palace – in those letters some of them mention having visited or that they will visit. Lavellan is also capable of making new friends. She is not static.

Solas leaving her may still hurt. She may have (and probably did) tried to move on but so far no one matched him for any number of reasons. She is only alone in the sense that any leader is alone. What she probably misses the most about Solas is that he always treated her like a person, not an icon.

Then we get to Trespasser. If you have found all the clues for the secret dialogue option, she has figured out Solas is the Dread Wolf long before she confronts him. She has seen the murals, learned his story. She knows the Dalish got it wrong. She knows from experience that the Dalish get a lot wrong. And he’s Solas. She might not know him as well as she thought but she saw beneath his mask a little. She isn’t going to be afraid of this figure out of Dalish legend. Mostly she is going to be pissed because he didn’t tell her the truth, because he didn’t trust her.

As far as the arm thing goes. Weekes and Epler have said, he did not amputate her arm. Solas drew out the magic that was killing her. The arm disintegrated. It was already doing so by the time she meets Solas. If he hadn’t drawn out the magic, she would have disintegrated just like Solas’ friend Wisdom. I think arguments that she would have trouble trusting anyone based on this are a non-starter

Once all that is over, will Lavellan have a hard time trusting anyone? She will have a hard time trusting Solas. Who wouldn’t? Will it color her perception of anyone she might want to be romantically involved with? For a few years maybe but what are the chances she will fall in love with another god?

Trust isn’t just about people you’ve been romantically linked with. She still trusts her inner circle. They help her. A bad experience with one person, no matter how much she may love him, isn’t going to make her stop trusting people entirely.

Now apart from Solavellan, I’m pretty sure Lavellan is messed up psychologically. You can’t go through what she did and not be a little messed up. But it is that experience that may make her empathize with Solas and understand why he left her.

She knows what it is like to be a leader. Not in the sense of leading her clan but in the sense that her decisions have huge consequences. She knows how a leader’s decisions are always second guessed - like they are at the Exalted Council if you chose to exile the Wardens. She knows what it is like to have to step up and be the one to save the world. She knows that sometimes there are no good choices, and you do the best you can. She knows it messes you up and you can lose your way. Solas has lost his.

Is it ten times harder to empathize when you loved that person, and they destroyed your trust? Yes. Solas will have to win her trust back. She will view anything he says or does with suspicion, as anyone would. However, Solas rarely outright lies. She knows this. She will be asking a lot more questions and be paying more attention. She also knows that he didn’t lie about loving her.

Okay, but he is still planning to tear down the Veil so he must not love her very much. Her love moved the needle. He went from believing nothing was real to thinking everyone is real. Is it so hard to imagine that Lavellan thinks he can be reasoned with? I doubt she thinks her love alone will change him. That doesn’t mean she won’t want to try. That doesn’t mean she will want him back when it’s all over. It also doesn’t mean she is a quivering mess obsessing over their relationship.

Solavellan can be whatever you want it to be, based on your own experiences. For some it's an angsty story with a Lavellan pining for him. For others, she gets over it fast with Cullen's help. For me, she is a strong, proud woman who is able to use her own experiences to empathize with Solas and want to save him from himself. She may still love him, but that love has been tempered by her experiences with him. They will need to have a long talk if they ever meet up again.

[kkoffin]

I’m never getting over how you say “a woman is an adult human female” (or they ask you to define female) and they say “WOW SO A WOMAN IS NOTHING MORE THAN A WOMB TO YOU”

Did you miss the “human” part? Yes, female, as a term, means the sex in any species which has a large, immovable gamete. Do i think my dog is the same thing as a woman because they have the same sex? They’re both female? No. Because of the “human” part.

Both men and women are human people. the difference, the reason for this split in category, is sex. Yes, the difference between a man and a woman is reproductive organs. Not their feelings, or attachment to being feminine, or whether or not they’ve got a dress on. The reason for this particular categorical split is which reproductive organs they’ve got.

Now what would happen if we in this hypothetical, instead of splitting by sex, we split by hair colour. Now we’ve got brown hair people and black hair pe- WOAH ARE WE DEFINING THEM BY THE COLOUR OF THEIR HAIR!? THATS BIOESSENTIALISM (apparently. no it’s not, that’s not what the word means, but that’s a topic for another day.) no. we just divided them by hair colour, and now we are labelling the categories that arise. they are still humans. “adult human brunette” if you will.

The “human” part includes life, or anything typical to being human. Thoughts, feelings, interests, self expression, relationships, literally just about everything to… being a person. And here’s the fun part! That can be different for every single woman! A woman can be any human, and do anything! Only other necessary parts are being female and being adult. The “female” part will mean you are a victim of misogyny and patriarchy, and you’ll likely be raised a little differently. Radfems want women to be free from misogyny and patriarchy, so we band together, against the oppressor, men, to make change.

Being female affects women in a very impactful way. Yes, the reproductive organs. Through periods, and pregnancy, hormones and simply having a vagina. Men like having access to a vagina, and they, for a lot of history, have been provided social advantages, though having more muscle mass, not getting pregnant, not having periods. They’ve long considered women, and their vaginas, to be their property. Women, again, because of men’s social advantages, were barred from much of society. Voting, dominion, rights, ability to be employed and have financial freedom. Men like having access to a vagina so much that women were sold to a husband, and had no freedom in the matter at all.

Today, women have been given many rights, but men still really like having access to a vagina, so they rape and sexually assault women (also misogyny is still deep in our society; in our media, our subconscious, etc). This is a Bad Thing, so women want to be free from it. Thus, we want spaces where we are vulnerable to be just for women. Not men that are feminine, or men that feel they are women, but women as in the sex-based group that’s been the victim to fgm and pregnancy and majority of rape, sex trafficking, sexual assault and harassment, etc this whole time.

Now! I can hear you! “but men get raped too!” You are so right! They are also 99% of offenders of rape. So sorry, but yes, the feminists, the women protecting women, striving for women’s liberation from patriarchy, still don’t want men in these spaces. Also being raped doesn’t make them a woman. Nothing makes a man a woman. (and before you bring up intersex people, I want you to know A) all intersex people are either male or female, a developmental disorder doesn’t take that anyway; B) every intersex person I’ve ever met fucking hates being used as an example to imply there are some people that are “less woman” or “less man”. )

Women were never and have never been oppressed because of their feelings or because they wear a dress - wearing the dress was a part of the oppression in fact. Women have always been in their disadvantaged group because of our sex. Because men like having access to a vagina, and we’ve been deemed weaker and inferior by men because of our organs.

There’s a reason why many women are offended if you call them “females” alone (see: alpha male podcasts) - it’s because it’s missing the “human” part, and it can feel degrading. It does include animals. “Female” either includes all females of all species and forms of life, or it’s an adjective. Woman are adult human females. Human.

@smokeweedeattherich

Anyways yeah, it’s rly not the terf-destroyed slay moment you think it is; it’s just you being kinda illiterate.