#And it is one that doesn't exist yet iirc!

[doink-boink]

DRAWTOBER DAY 11 - OWL

[raviscin]

Movie take: tbh Fight Club's social commentary got kinda lost on me when apparantly every single man on the planet was 100% on board with doing every single thing Tyler told them to because at that point it feels less like "oh my sigma we literally live in a society so true" and more like flat out cosmic horror

[ladyloveandjustice]

A Ranking of the '4 Days of Ohtori: Someday My Revolution Will Come' Revolutionary Girl Utena Game Endings

I was commissioned to do a post ranking the endings of the Revolutionary Girl Utena dating sim based on quality and enjoyment! I did a liveblog for it for it a while ago, see here. If you know nothing about the game, I think you should read it and then come back to this post. It's a fun liveblog!

I was also asked to talk about if any of the endings work out well for the main character (who I call Purple Pigtails).

Basically all of the endings aren't ideal for Perfect Pigtails. Her dad is sick enough she has to leave Ohtori to help him iirc, she doesn't ever get to reconcile with Chigusa even though she badly wanted to (it's implied she had a crush on her despite everything, but she had to basically kill her). She also knows her dad's a piece of shit now, and that both her parents lied to her. I doubt she'll ever trust them again. She may even hate her Dad now. Her family was a lie, and that's very sad. On top of that, several of the endings imply she may come back to Ohtori which is honestly not a good thing for her!!! So none of them really work out for her, but I'm going to talk about which ones work out for her the least and the most as I rank the endings.

My favorite endings of the Utena video game, from best to worst:

Juri Ending

So, after much deliberation my favorite ending is the Juri one. The fact that her response to Purple Pigtails falling in love with her is "sorry, can't just enter a healthy lesbian relationship because I am super committed to this toxic one. You know that girl I painfully pine over while starting at her in my locket? That locket I wish I could throw away? Well I'm giving you your own pining locket to torment you with MY picture. We can be sad lesbians together."

It's just so Juri. Has to spread her unhealthy behavior everywhere. I don't think she knows any other way to deal with this stuff except to put it in a locket, keep it a secret and stare at it longingly. So she assumes Purple Pigtails needs that too. It's just...incredibly funny but also incredibly sad.

Does this ending work out for Purple Pigtails? Not really, no, she has to leave her crush behind and mirror Juri's unhealthy behavior. As long as she has that locket she can never move on or find a girlfriend. I will say she's better off than Juri though, because at least her crush doesn't try to actively torment her every chance she gets. I also think she's more likely to eventually put away the locket than Juri. She only knew Juri four days and isn't quite as fucked up as her. But then again, I could see her go on a similar quest to find Juri someday, like Utena did for her prince...but I don't think Juri will ever be in the position to be what she needs, even if she's healed and moved on. Because no real princes exist.

Then again, the fact Purple Pigtails was able to leave Ohtori at all means she was able to grow up and move on herself. She's accepted that her childhood was never what she thought it was...so maybe such a quest is unlikely. Maybe she will move on pretty quickly. Or maybe being obsessed with Juri means she will be welcomed back to Ohtori soon...

Anthy ending

My second favorite ending is the Anthy ending. The only reason it's lower than the Juri ending is that the washing each other's back scene is a little uncomfortable to watch, knowing Purple Pigtails has no trouble coercing sexual favors from Anthy. Whether this is all part of Anthy's plan or not, she is likely not enjoying this...and yet it's framed fairly comedically, which feels weird.

But otherwise? God it's perfect, so wonderfully absurd, so wonderfully Anthy. Her plan here is so elaborate and there are so many layers. There's also the question of why the hell she even did all this, which is so intriguing.

The way she's so direct with Purple Pigtails, her resentment and cynicism coming out, is great. Purple Pigtails is pretending she wants her, but she only wants power.

She also actively sabotages Utena in the fight in order get with Purple Pigtails. Why?

But after that, she also sabotages Purple Pigtails, deliberately keeping her up all night with uh. possibly sex, (again, uncomfy) to ensure she'll be too tired to concentrate the next day. But she does this so PP will lose to Utena even though Utena doesn't have a sword anymore.

Anthy played PP so thoroughly, but again, why? My theory when I first played this was Anthy was feeling guilty about her inevitable betrayal of Utena and was trying to get with Purple Pigtails, only to immediately realize there's no way PP could become a prince so she goes back to Utena.

But there are a lot of options. Maybe Anthy and/or Akio needed PP to be taken out. She was upsetting their plans somehow, so she needed to be defeated so humiliatingly she'd never try to get with Anthy again. It could explain why PP eventually left in the other endings, maybe she actually hadn't moved on, maybe Akio felt she was too much of a risk (possibly by how things got so complicated with Chigusa, too much of a distraction for the duelists) and kicked her out.

Or maybe this was all to test to find out where she was a prince candidate, and she was found wanting...considering you have to order rose tea as a prerequisite, this one's very possible.

It's all so fascinating. Maybe I should have put it as favorite...ok, let's say it's this and Juri tied.

Obviously this doesn't work out at all from Purple Pigtails Perspective. She becomes a supervillain, she's humiliatingly defeated, and she very well may be stuck at Ohtori for a long time...and fact she doesn't appear in the anime implies she's no longer friends with any of them. Maybe Akio made everyone forget about her. Maybe she was so bitter she rejected them all.

Utena's ending (Romantic Version)

(As a PS... it's very obvious the girls aren't allowed to kiss on the lips in this game, likely because of outside pressure, both Saionji and Miki get lips, while Utena and Juri do the princely forehead kiss (but you could also argue it's because they are the most "princely characters...and imitating the prince kiss is 100% in character for Utena. Also kissing a girl on the lips at this point in the story would pretty much short circuit Utena. Send her into such a lesbian crisis her heart might give out)

This ending is so sweet on the outside, but then you peel a layer back and see how fucked up it is. Utena very deliberately imitates her "prince" here, and that will someday horrify her, that she imitated Akio and got another girl obsessed with princes. And obviously that's very bad for PP too, since the thesis of Utena is the chivalrous prince who will save you is a lie.

Utena's words imply they will meet again and there's not a lot of outcomes that are good for that. One outcome is that PP goes back to Ohtori to find Utena, only to find she's already gone. But then Akio has a replacement Utena, right there. I'm not sure that would even matter, with Anthy gone, there's no way he can like, use her for anything...but he might take his anger at Utena and Anthy out on her. The better option is PP finds Utena in the real world, and sees that she and Anthy are officially girlfriends and have become healthier people. That might be good for her, actually--I'm sure Utena would encourage her to move on, find her own identity, and Utena would still want to be friends. Or she could ignore Utena andsink into bitterness and jealousy.

One of the most screwed up things about this ending is that PP basically loses her individuality and has become a copy of another person. It's not great for her that she's so wrapped up in Utena that it's her identity now. It's very sad just like it was with Anthy in the manga.

So no, I don't think this ending goes well for Purple Pigtails at all. She loses who she is, becomes obsessed with something that's just a false patriarchal idol, and that makes her vulnerable to Ohtori. Her only hope is finding Utena in the real world, and Utena making up for her past mistake.

Miki's ending

It was such a chore to get to this ending, but it's worth it for how funny it is. Purple Pigtails immediately deciding she actually wasn't in love with Miki after all (hint it's because she's a lesbian hint) and just. blowing him off, pretending she has a boyfriend back home. Legendary of her, and honestly Miki kind of deserves it. From his perspective it must feel like she really played with his feelings, though.

Because it doesn't exist, Miki!!! It was never real!!!!

She does say she "likes younger boys" after this, but that's just what she's telling herself. Someday she'll realize. Hopefully.

I think its interesting that Miki is the only one in this game who explicitly actually has feelings for her. He is able to move on from his sister (sort of. I mean at the very least iirc he never compares PP to Kozue that I can remember. Which is HUGE for him), but none of the rest can move on past their obsessions.

I actually think this works out pretty well for PP. She's not too attached to Miki, so she's unlikely to go back to Ohtori, and it doesn't break her heart to leave him, she's still herself, and I think she'll be able to move on.

Touga Ending (italicized since I haven't seen the whole route)

I haven't fully watched this route, so I don't know what it takes to get there. If I did it might affect my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. But while this ending is so mean and horrible, it is also so darkly funny. Touga distilled. He's such a asshole that it is impossible to get any thing positive from your ending with him even in a dating sim, and that's amazing. You think you've won but you lost. You lost the second you decided to date Touga.

Basically, Touga promises he will write PP every single day, and he will come visit her too, and she's ecstatic.

And then he goes and burns her address, calling her stupid, because of course he fucking does. Thus PP is totally ghosted, left despairing and wondering why.

It is also very interesting he's the only love interest she does NOT get a kiss from, unexpected since Touga has not problem kissing girls he does not give a shit about. Either he just, genuinely hates her guts THAT much or he's ---

ahhh shit. I just looked it up. You can have PP have sex with him. In fact you have to actively avoid it if you don't want to. So that's why he doesn't need a kiss. Her already got what he wanted. That actually makes this ending so much more heartbreaking, a lot of girls place a lot of importance on their first time, and PP was treated so cruelly with hers. This goddamn prick.

It is horrible, but it is exactly what I'd expect Touga to do (esp since this is set so early in the story) and I think it's incredible the game was so true to his character that you just get a straightforward unhappy ending when you date him. The others at least APPEAR a little happy, though they're quite sad when you think about them for long, but the game makes no pretenses with Touga. It just goes "no, you got nothing good out of this relationship, this man is trash, he played you like he does everyone"

Obviously this is pretty sad for Purple Pigtails, who gets manipulated and ghosted, and, depending on your choices, gets to have the lovely experience of a horrible older boy manipulating her, fucking her, and throwing her away at the tender age of 14. But, assuming she is able to move on (I hope so?) this might be happier than others for her in the long run (especially if she avoids having sex with him). Touga ghosting her means he won't be able to torment her further, and that's better than any other option with him. Unless, of course, she goes back to Ohtori to get an explanation...

Perfect Ending

I do like the perfect ending bc of the funny interactions the council get in--Juri teasing Miki about liking older girls and Miki getting extremely flustered, Touga being so fucking annoying especially when he insists on calling Saionji BEST FRIEND over and over until Saionji is like "can you shut the fuck up''...

The goodbye with Utena is fairly generic though, just the tiniest bit gay. One thing that is interesting for this ending is PP wanting to learn fencing.

It's ambiguous who she's talking about here, she could even mean Chigusa despite the fact she's deader than dead, or it could be "we don't know which person she's most attracted too ooooh".

As far as working out for Purple Pigtails? She escapes romantic trauma, which is great for her, but she seems really determined to go back to Ohtori in this one, and as has been said many times, that is not good for her.

Akio Ending

I considered rating this higher bc it's so funny how PP calls Akio on his bullshit.

But there's the fact that PP's particular Akio ending is even more uh, rape-coded than any other Akio car ride, IIRC? It's not only the fact she's underage, but she actively begs Akio to stop. But of course that motherfucker doesn't listen.

It's honestly so sad so that kind of ruins any fun. Which doesn't make it bad, but i don't like thinking about that part.

This is the second worst ending for PP. Just like the Black Rose and Anthy endings, she's still at Ohtori and has no friends, but there's the sexual assault aspect on top of that. She will be so traumatized, and on top of that she lost humiliatingly, while Akio basically called her worthless.

Saionji ending

Saionji's ending is both kind of boring and vaguely interesting. (And I'm ranking it like this on the assumption Saionji never hit her, which I assume he didn't from the Youtube comments. While he would definitely be cruel to a gf in multiple ways if she stuck around enough, I think it's possible the only person he would physically abuse while dating is Anthy. which is. something to analyze.) Saionji is (blessedly) silent during most of this ending. only saying "I owe you a lot" when he gives her the present (implying she's been kind of for caring for him, wet pathetic dog that he is, which does fit with the snippets I've seen of this route and echoes his relationship with Wakaba)

Saionji does give her his little leaf (apparently the only present he's capable of making?? like if he can carve this leaf he must know how to carve other things, right??? maybe it's just the carving he's best at) but PP knows he's too obsessed with Anthy (and Touga. the obsession with Anthy is just an extension of an obsession with Touga lets all be honest here) to return her feelings and they're both pretty honest and open about things. But THEN she claims she'll come back and make him look her way someday.. AND THEN she just plants one on him out of nowhere. Girl, you forget about consent!

Honestly Saionji just seems extremely confused and freaked out about it, even his expression afterwards, which makes me feel bad for him, something I'd never thought I'd say in my life. It's kind of interesting to see him like that. But...it doesn't stand out too much other than that. It's kind of just like. okay girl. calm down.

This one does not work out perfectly for PP since she seems pretty determined to come back to Ohtori and make Saionji love her, which is definitely never going to happen. But she doesn't lose her identity, doesn't get a pining locket, Saionji is surprisingly nice to her, unlike Wakaba she knows she doesn't have a chance right now, so she wasn't hugely disappointed...so it could be worse.

Utena Friendship Ending

Basically the same at the perfect ending, except we never get to see any fun interactions between the group. Boring.

Black Rose Ending

This one claims PP is obsessed with books, which has never come up in the game before, so it feels out of nowhere and like it wasn't properly developed. There's not much to dig into, when there should be. And her defeat is basically the same as the Akio endings, so it doesn't add much.

(Utena is being so mean here!!!! You know she's brainwashed why are you being an asshole about her skill!)

One the worst endings from PP's perspective, her mind is messed with, she literally has no friends, and she's stuck at Ohtori.

Game over

Obviously a Game Over is pretty boring. The game just ends. Bye.

I think PP would disappear from the world in the game over ending, just like Chigusa wanted. So this is the worst ending for her, she not only dies. she's erased from existence. At least in the other endings she gets to live.

(also I think either this one or the perfect ending are canon for the anime. The game over ending makes a lot of sense, since they would all forget PP and all that happened with her ever existed, and that would be the explanation for why she's never mentioned in the anime. But the more optimistic take is that the perfect ending is canon, and nobody ever mentions her because she just doesn't come up.

So there's my favorites ranked from best to worst.

NOW let's rank the endings from worst to best for Perfect Pigtails!

Game Over (she dies)

Akio Car Ending

Black Rose Ending

Anthy Ending (it's possible for her to have friends in this one)

Touga Ending (provided a) he has sex with her and b) she is unable to move on from what happened. Without those two factors though, it's under Utena's in the long run)

Utena Ending

Juri Ending

Saionji Ending

Perfect Ending

Miki Ending is the best one for her, weirdly! (Or at least my interpretation of it. She got out unscathed and has no desire to return to Ohtori!)

---

And those are my rankings! I hope everyone who read this far enjoyed the rambling.

[dragonagitator]

I think that one of the reasons House MD was so popular back in the day (at one point it was literally the most popular show in the world) and is currently having a renaissance is that the show is basically a power fantasy for disabled people.

Consider the state of television in 2004. IIRC, there had never before been a primetime network television show featuring a handsome leading man starring as a visibly disabled character.

Meanwhile, what little disability representation that did exist back then almost always fell into one or more of these categories:

An inspirational story about overcoming adversity that most likely includes the disabled character uttering some variant of the line "it turns out the accident/illness was the best thing that ever happened to me"

The disabled character has no agency in the story and merely exists to serve as a life lesson for the other characters

The disabled character is such an over-the-top "good person" that it feels like the implied message is disabled people need to overcompensate for the "crime" of simply existing around abled people

The character's disability is merely a bit of costuming that doesn't actually impede their life

Then along comes Dr. Gregory House:

His story was a trainwreck of a tragedy, not an inspiration

He would NEVER say the infarction was the best thing to ever happen to him

His own actions and choices were the primary drivers of the story

Any life lessons other characters took from him were usually in the form of a cautionary tale instead of something positive he did

He was a raging asshole in a way that most disabled people can't afford to be because we're dependent on other people for caregiving and/or financial support

His cane and pain pills weren't just costuming and props, they were necessities for him to function

His disability really did take away his ability to do things he'd once loved, like running, hiking, camping, etc.

AFAIK, there has been nothing like it on television before or since. The only other visible disability representation I can think of off the top of my head that even comes close is the character Furiosa in the movie Mad Max: Fury Road.

"Disabled people exist, have agency, and can be assholes too" shouldn't have been such a radically groundbreaking message, and yet it was (and largely still is) unique in mainstream entertainment.

[ckret2]

I believe I remember a post you wrote once, as an answer to an ask maybe, where you mentioned that you forgot not everyone has a clear mental map of the Mystery Shack's layout as you do, and some people were confused about what floors existed and how you were writing characters coming from where. I wanted to check the post again since iirc you explained or described some stuff in there, but I can't find it >_< I was mostly wondering, does the Mystery Shack have a basement that isn't connected to the elevator, and is this where Ford's room is, or is it in the ground floor? I feel like I see people treat the shack like it has 3 floors completely separate from everything the elevator leads to but I might also just be confused

i'm not gonna put the effort into digging that post back up but you're in luck because the basements weren't addressed in that post so it wouldn't have helped anyway!!!

Yes, the Mystery Shack DOES have another room that appears to be a basement, separate from THE basement with the elevator where the portal is! We see it in Bottomless Pit:

We never see how this room connects to the rest of the shack so we can't guarantee that it's underground. But the concrete-looking floor, plain cracked walls, bare bulb, exposed pipes, utilitarian hot water heater & washing machine, and very high window all scream "basement."

I personally call this room "the cellar" to distinguish it from THE basement.

We never fully see the wall that would be to Soos's left, so we aren't SURE that there's no additional doors down there, but there's no evidence of any.

As to where Ford's room is, it depends on which of Ford's rooms you mean. If you mean Ford's room as in the one that was revealed in The Last Mabelcorn, it's part of the elevator basement levels:

But you probably don't mean that one since we see them taking the elevator down to it.

If you mean the one revealed in Carpet Diem, it's somewhere in the main house:

Both the room itself and the hallway outside the room have normal large windows, preventing the room from being underground; and the room has a tilted ceiling with sunbeams coming through, indicating it's directly under the roof.

A complication: we don't know where the staircase on the left goes and there's no sensible place to put it based on what we do know about the house's layout. But that's the case with several locations in the house.

Based on the map we have of the house, this room is likely the "study." Notice that the shape of the hall leading to the room (dead ending against an outer wall) and the fact that there's a hall on the side of it lines up with the study's location; even if the staircase doesn't lol.

The reason a lot of people headcanon the shack has three stories is because the first floor's fully accounted for with these blueprints, (the three unlabeled rooms are the entryway, kitchen, and office), there's nothing in the attic but an open floor and the kids' room, and yet there's multiple rooms we have no location for (Stan's bedroom, the storage room the wax figures were found in, ANY of the bathrooms). The doylist explanation is that the showrunners wanted the shack to be a little magical with a confusing layout (up until they dropped these blueprints) so it doesn't always make internal sense; but if you want a watsonian explanation for where those rooms were, "second floor" is the easiest.

[furubabasket]

dunmeshi posting today (spoilers ahead for manga marcille stuff)

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i feel like there is so much to say and analyze about the fact that marcille's biggest--realest--fear is outliving everyone around her... specifically within the world of dungeon meshi that kui has created.

marcille's fear will certainly happen. (maybe not with falin, if her lifespan has been dragonified, but there's no way for us or for falin or marcille to know this yet.) and marcille has already watched every single one of her close friends die--temporarily. sometimes the circumstances have been dicey (or in falin's case nearly impossible) in ways that caused mounting dread and very real fear (in a way that seems uniquely upsetting in a world which has gotten somewhat blase about dungeon deaths--to have casual hope and to lose it), not even mentioning the initial shock, but so far, loss has not been final for marcille in recent years. that makes it hit all the harder when she has to contend with the possibility of falin being Dead For Good (such as when they couldn't find her bones in the dragon's stomach).

the thing that makes me absolutely sick about this is how marcille ends up just... having to swallow that her fear will come to pass. she just has to accept that both the "fix" she hoped for (the possibility of equalizing racial lifespans) is unethical and the "fix" she ALREADY USED (dungeon revivification) is impossible to implement everywhere. she just has to accept that no matter what, even in a world where death and loss isn't always final, she is doomed to experience it anyway or else succumb to the abusive and addictive pull of the demons' "security" like thistle and mithrun. (sidenote: all of the dungeon lords being elves, iirc, is telling and tragic.) I love the ending of dunmeshi and find it so compelling, and yet this is something that sticks out to me as so, so importantly "unresolved" even if I can't fully articulate it. marcille is not over this, and she can't be--while everyone else looks to the future, by definition hers is darker. that's going to take a lot more time to come to terms with. the moral is that whole "eating is the special privilege of the living," right? the moral comes down to "life involves hurting and being hurt, and that is the way of things, no matter how we run from it... but that doesn't have to be soul-crushingly depressing." marcille's friends are aware of the burden she has. they talk with her about her fears and comfort her without minimizing them. they help her feel less alone in what is a completely alienating existence. it's so fucking sad. it's horrifically sad! she got to save falin--but for how long? she got to save falin--but what about the next one? she got to save falin--why is that okay, but she isn't allowed to "have" everyone else? saving falin was only possible because of the help of a demon and forbidden magic, and while it's presented creepily, as readers we're certainly meant to root for falin's return. it's a "good" thing. it's the entire point of the first act, and the entire point of the very last. it's the good ending. it's happy! it's hard-won! and yet marcille needs to learn to accept death.

this dissonance is intentional, of course, and that's what makes it so fucking interesting. of course marcille goes crazy for a second. of course she struggles and obsesses. everyone else, functionally, gets to have what she wants! everyone else gets to "have" the dead now, no strings attached, no abnormal amount of future grief to carry. (for the opposite, past loss, imagine being kabru: being raised from the dead--watching your friends get casually revived--paying for the privilege--and thinking of your long-dead mother, who didn't get this chance, and wondering how easy it could have been.) in the future, when marcille's losses come, the dungeon's rules won't be around to protect her anymore from that cold, dull finality. it'll be real when it wasn't before. and she just has to be cool with that. man. MAN.

[intersex-questions]

hello friend! I'm just wondering why the h-slur became a slur? I thought it was just the scientific term for intersex stuff, like snails are called that even still I think... I dunno I'm just curious, I won't use it I just wanna know

Hey! This is a great question. Before addressing the actual question, let me clear up some misconceptions.

It is absolutely fine to call animals that are hermaphrodites that word. It is a scientific word. It is the correct word to use. But intersex and hermaphrodite scientifically mean something different as well. Snails and many many other animals are hermaphrodites and still called that.

Generally speaking, the term hermaphrodite in science refers to an animal that can produce both male and female gametes, i.e., sperm and ova/egg. An animal that is a hermaphrodite evolved to be a hermaphrodite. Their reproductive cycles are based around members of their species being hermaphrodites. But there's many different types of hermaphrodites in animals. Not all have both genitalia at once and not all have more than one genitalia at once and not all members of that species are hermaphrodites.

The term intersex is used specifically for humans or for animals that are typically male/female and have variations outside of the "expected" for their specific species. So, for example, female hyenas, which all have a pseudopenis/phallus created from their very large clitoris, as well as high testosterone, are NOT intersex because it is expected and how all females of their species are. It is how they evolved to exist and reproduce. A female lion that develops a mane, high testosterone, and exhibits other male traits IS intersex because their species does not typically or often have that variance.

If a human has ovotestes (singular is ovotestis), this was and sometimes still is referred to as either psuedo hermaphroditism (this usually refers to cases where the person doesn't have ovotestes though) or true hermaphroditism or ovotesticular disorder of sexual development (none of these are very politically correct terms, but the last is most common medically—I would avoid them). Even though (as far as I know) all/most hermaphroditic animals have ovotestes/both ovular and testicular tissue, which is possible in humans but it is INCREDIBLY rare, as in like, under 1,000 documented cases iirc, they must have male and female gametes like I said.

Humans most likely cannot have both male and female gametes. This isn't really possible. There are no documented cases of a human with ova and sperm. It is theoretically hypothetically possible but it has never happened as far as we know. Like... Maybe it could happen? And there's been billions of people, so who knows! But then in that case, one person who has both gametes would not be the thing that determines what intersex people are called.

But let's pretend that if someone has a penis and vulva/vagina or genitalia that look like that, it makes them a scientific hermaphrodite. (It doesn't, but we're pretending.) The problem with THAT is that it's then incredibly misleading and exclusionary to refer to intersex people all as hermaphrodites because that is only one of the ways someone may be intersex. Intersex is a HUGE spectrum. Most intersex people do not have "both" genitalia!

I think I've covered all I need to say in that regards, I'll edit if I have more to stay and if I'm wrong on anything please correct me.

It's kind of hard to answer why it's a slur, in my opinion, yet also really easy. It's a slur because it's used as one. All slurs are slurs because they're used as one. Any slur has a history of being used offensively and became a slur because it was used with the intention of offense, oppression, derision, etc. At the end of the day, all slurs are technically just sounds, and many of them as a word out of context aren't necessarily derogatory at all. But the word is a slur because it is used as one. The word/phrase "retard"/"retarded" used to be a legitimate medical diagnosis. (Was it ever a good one? No. But it was the language they had/used at the time.) It became a slur because people used it in a derogatory manner and used it to oppress and belittle people with autism, intellectual, and certain cognitive/developmental disabilities. Gay was (and can be still!) a slur. Why? Because it was used as one. Even if gay "meant" by definition happy or such, it was a slur when used towards people because people used it with the intention of it being a slur. Hermaphrodite is a slur because it is: inaccurate, often used to fetishize, misleading, medically and socially outdated, used with intention to belittle, used to oppress, and has offensive connotations. The term hermaphrodite used to describe humans at all came from Victorian doctors who were the ones that used the terms true hermaphrodite and male or female pseudohermaphrodite without any basis on the actual physiological and genetic structures of these individuals and rather to categorize them exclusively based on how they thought their genitalia looked (which told them and tells us nothing about how their body actually varies other than it looks like XYZ). It was and always has been used in stigmatizing, inaccurate, medicalizing manners.

If anyone has anything to add on please feel free. I hope this helped explain some! You can always ask more questions.

[beatrice-otter]

Genuine question for you, since iirc you're a pastor? Are there other ways to understand the Great Commission? I am not a Christian, but I am trying to be friendlier to Christians. My problem is: evangelism has deeply hurt my people through colonialism, forced conversions, and supercessionism. I cannot be neutral about this. On the other hand, I know it's a central Christian teaching and it's not so easy to just uproot things that are the word of God to their practitioners. I don't want outsiders forcing interpretations or suggestions on my people so in the spirit of interfaith understanding, is there a Christian way (or ways) of understanding it that doesn't force Christianity on the rest of us?

The Great Commission, as practiced, has done a lot of harm to a lot of people (understatement).

Short answer: no. Long answer: yes.

If your question is, "is there a way of interpreting that specific passage so that it doesn't mean Christians should try and convert people to Christianity," the answer is no. It's cut-and dried, and it's by itself--it's not a single verse in the middle of a longer passage of teaching that can be recontextualized. 'Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”' (Matthew 28:18-20). That's it. Boom. Done.

But there are two major factors in how it actually plays out that have HUGE impacts on everything about it.

The first is power. When Matthew was written, Christians were a persecuted minority. The idea of Christians being fed to lions and whatnot was largely a myth, the persecution was never as widespread nor as harsh as Christians remember it being, but it was still a thing. Christians had little or no social power in the larger community; a very large proportion of Christians were poor and/or women and/or enslaved. "Making disciples" could only happen when the prospective disciples voluntarily decided that following Jesus was the right thing to do because they could see the difference it made in the lives of Christians around them, or because Jesus' words touched something in their hearts. That is a very different thing from a colonial power coming in and imposing Christianity by force, and then trying to eradicate anything that doesn't fit within Christianity.

We get a lot of examples of how that worked in practice; the entire book of Acts is "what did making disciples look like in the early church." And what it looked like was ... tell people about Jesus, and if they don't want to hear, then don't bug them about it and move on. We also have Jesus' instructions to his disciples, when he sent them out to preach the first time: if people want to listen, great, stay and teach. If not, move on. (Note: at this point, their preaching would not be proselytizing Christianity, because Christianity didn't exist yet. Jesus was one of a fairly large number of traveling rabbis wandering about Judea teaching whoever would listen. The disciples were being sent as Jewish teachers into Jewish communities--this is before any of them believed that Jesus was the Messiah.)

In the 4th and 5th Centuries, Christianity became welded to the Roman Empire and became a tool of Imperial unification. Most Christians of the time seem to have thought it was a good thing because power! authority! wealth! and yet it warped a LOT of stuff about Christianity. Pacifism got jettisoned immediately, for example. There are a whole bunch of Jesus' teachings that are fine or beneficial when practiced by people with little or no social power that become toxic when they are the Official Position of the power structure. The Great Commission is one of those teachings. And now, of course, any thoughtful Christian has to reckon with that. Even as we lose our political and social power and hegemony (and I believe that's a good thing!), we've still got to reckon with the toxic and harmful ways we've used that power in the past.

Which brings us to the second mitigating factor, which is "what relative importance do you put on the Great Commission?"

That command is three verses long. Matthew has 1071 verses. The Great Commission is therefore only .2% of the Gospel of Matthew ... and it's not found in any of the other Gospels, or anywhere else in the Bible. There are 3,779 verses in the Gospels (the books directly about Jesus' time on Earth) and 7,957 verses in the New Testament as a whole (the specifically Christian books of the Bible). The Great Commission is mentioned once for three verses. Add in the Hebrew Bible (which Christians call the Old Testament), and the Christian Bible is 31,102 verses long.

And yeah, Jesus sent out disciples to preach ... but not to outsiders. And yeah, Acts is all about spreading the Gospel to new people, but the Gospel message is not "you need to learn this and pass it on like it's a pyramid scheme." Not to mention, Acts is very specifically clear that they are going out and spreading the Good News because the Spirit is calling them. Not just "Christians should go out and tell people" but "this specific person should go to this specific place and tell this specific person about Jesus." It's not about humans choosing to go out and conquer the world for Jesus, it's about following the call of the Holy Spirit. So if the Holy Spirit isn't calling you to proselytize ... shouldn't you be listening for what the Holy Spirit is actually calling you to do?

If you add in the book of Acts and count it as part of the Great Commission, that's 1,010 verses out of 31,102. We're up to 3% of the Bible, but still only 3%. Then we turn to the rest of the New Testament, and it's just not there. Paul spends a lot of time telling his churches what they should believe and how they should act. You know what he doesn't tell them? He does not tell them they should be going out and converting other people. Paul himself spends a lot of time making disciples, but he is not concerned with whether or not those disciples then go out and make other disciples. He has his ministry; theirs is to be the Body of Christ.

How much weight do we give to three verses out of 31k+? How much time and attention do those three verses require of Christians? When Christianity was the religion of the great imperial and colonialist powers, it was given a lot of weight because it provided a religious justification for imperialism and colonialism. But that's not an inherent reflection of how important it is in the Bible itself.

Most Christians in most times and places have not spent much time worrying about making disciples out of non-Christians. Even if you lived next door to non-Christians, it's not something the average Christian spent much time thinking about. It wasn't something theologians spent much time thinking about, and not something ministers spent much time preaching about, either. If God called you to be a missionary, great. If you were such a good example of Christianity that your neighbors saw your example and wanted to become like you, even better. But "making disciples" was not a major concern ... until you get to the massive wave of colonialism in the 19th Century. All of a sudden, it became this major thing. Every Christian was expected to participate in one way or another--missionary societies sprang up like weeds, dedicated to learning about missions to "heathens" and raising money for missionary work. The Great Commission came to the front and center of Christian teaching just as colonialism was coming to the front and center of European and American political concerns. This was not a coincidence.

Let's contrast that with another foundational commandment, shall we? The Great Commandment: 'Jesus replied, “The most important [commandment] is Israel, listen! Our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You will love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.”' (Mark 12:29-31) Now, besides the fact that Jesus himself says that this is the greatest commandment, it's recorded in multiple Gospels (cf. Luke 10:27-28, Matthew 22:36-40). Also, Jesus is quoting! The "love the Lord your God" part comes from multiple places in the Hebrew Bible (most notably the Shema Yisrael, Deuteronomy 6:4-9). "Love your neighbor" comes from Leviticus 19:18 and is the driving theological point behind a lot of the Law and the Prophets (in the Hebrew Bible) and the Epistles (in the New Testament).

Moreover, the Great Commandment is the lead-in to one of the most important parables, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). And while it doesn't explicitly appear in the Gospel of John (which is a very different book than the other three Gospels), John has the Farewell Discourse. After the Last Supper (but before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane), the Gospel of John has a timeout where Jesus spends three whole chapters giving his disciples one last lecture and then praying for them. And while that lecture covers a lot of topics, one of the ones it keeps hammering home is love of God and love of neighbor.

The Great Commandment doesn't come out of nowhere, nor is it isolated. It is laced throughout all of Scripture. Multiple books of the New Testament are meditations on what it means to love God and love your neighbor.

The Great Commission, on the other hand ... is three verses.

When "loving your neighbor" and "make disciples" conflict, which one should we follow? I know which one I choose.

[scoobydoodean]

i know it's compelling in fics for cas to feel betrayed about the jack in the ma'lak box decision but its So weird bc its obvious the moment jack breaks out of it hes like. oh man jack might need to be restrained at least until we can figure out a plan. like his first thought before jack breaks out is "this was cruel of them to do" and then hes like. oh fuck jack might be a threat actually.

like castiel is a complicated character hes on jack's side but by the time god suggests killing jack hes done a full 180 on it.

and when people are like "aiming the gun at jack is just as bad as shooting him" im even more confused bc like. dean aimed a gun at emma and didnt shoot her, even with the safety off. dean aimed a gun at SAM while under mind control/anger spell (talking about southern comfort iirc) and didnt shoot him. dean aimed a blade at cas and didnt stab him. like. its fine for cas to be upset at the god gun thing but its so weird when people act as if cas didnt basically admit jack needs to be stopped/bound next episode.

Cas should have been consulted and had a right to be angry that he wasn't included in the decision. At the same time, part of the reason the whole dead mom incident leading up to this happened is that Cas—yet again—kept something from everyone else so he could make unilateral decisions behind all their backs, so I'm not particularly sympathetic to his frustrations with being excluded.

I also just don't think it was cruel at all to put soulless Jack in a box and I think people should get over it. He was killing people and I care more about that than his feelings about being stuck in a box for all of 20 minutes. I simply don't care and it continuously baffles me how big a deal some fans makes out of this when Jack was going around fucking punishing and killing people in horrific ways for not believing in god on Dumah's orders after Cas suggested to her that Jack was in a vulnerable state due to being soulless and could be molded to do others bidding. Anyway like 20 minutes later, Cas went to inquire about putting Jack in The Cage. You know—the room where Sam was trapped for a year with Michael and Lucifer and where as far as Cas knows at that point, Sam was so badly tortured by Michael in addition to Lucifer that it ripped him apart at the seams?

Fandom's take on the entire thing is so devoid of even the most basic level of nuance or even plain simple honesty (to the point one of my mutuals was sent hate mail for months for nothing more than pointing out canonical facts surrounding the incident). It doesn't even surprise me anymore, because this is a fandom that infantilizes Jack to such an extent that it's been passionately argued to me that Jack should be allowed to kill people when he's angry because he has such Big Important Feelings and simultaneously and incongruously—that Dean shooting Jack to keep him from killing the black store clerk Jack was strangling to death in a rage was an act of abuse. Don't even get me started on gun disk horse that exists beyond that regarding the shooting people with guns show.

[thefirstknife]

idk if you've talked about this, but Maya says something interesting in her "final" message to the Young Wolf. She says the YW should ponder "iterations" of the conversation on the riverbank (iirc) but I don't remember the YW mentioned in the Dark Timeline, and in the Epistemic lore tab, Praedyth says "the figure always changes." Is the YW a unique individual or do they exist in other timelines too? (I feel like I've missed a few details so I'm hoping you can answer. 😅)

It's a really cool message that will be interesting to revisit from time to time.

I leave this to you now, when it is too early to act. Before you have the faculty to understand its gravitas. You were offered the age you've fought to restore. Everything we've lost. You won't find it on this narcissist's station. I will set it in front of you, finely crafted and tuned. You mistakenly label it hubris, and resist. And you know... failure is a catalyst: it breeds invention. Would you comprehend the endless permutations of our conversation on the riverbank? I was only trying to change your mind. To help you see a better future. That exchange... did not always end in your favor. It does not have to still. You believe my ideology, virulent. All right. Know that I have bled across time, and under the skin of the cosmos. My knowledge became its fabric, filled its vessels, through its mind. Humanity is scattered, yet to see a Collective, focused. But in this infinite network the Vex have created... There is one answer. A Golden Timeline... With a heavy cost.

It took a few reads for me to wrap my mind around this. Maya definitely confirms that this happened in multiple timelines, in some way. We're not really sure if it's exactly the same though, obviously, since we can't really check.

The interesting bit is that the few timelines that Elsie has seen, all of them have failed because, essentially, the YW never became what they did because we didn't destroy the Black Heart. Those timelines have failed completely. But there seems to be other timelines in which we do exist, except we're always someone else (kinda like keeping everyone's Guardian canon, in a way) which we know from Epistemic as you've noted, and it's really cool:

Some visions he gets once, while some come back over and over again. One recurring image: a piece of the Traveler cracked off from its body, lying belly-up in a forest, with a small figure standing in front of it. The figure changes every time, but the sickly glow of the Traveler doesn't.

This is us regaining our Light at the Shard of the Traveler in the Red War, so it's post-Black Heart.

I think the YW is unique in a way that they only exist in the timeline where they destroy the Black Heart (D1 base story), but since there's an unknown number of timelines, this person is always someone different (so there's no one canon YW, it could be any of us). There's also timelines where we never become the YW because Elsie never helps us and we never destroy the Black Heart and things spiral from there.

It always remains a question if anyone using the Vex and their Network and technology is actually seeing real existing things, or perhaps simulations or possibilities. I do wonder if they left Maya around with the Echo for some future purpose or at least to keep their options open. Also intrigued about her mentioning "a Golden Timeline" and if that will mean anything in the future or if it's just her yapping from the Network. I did not expect her to stay around and especially not with the Echo in her posession so I'm super excited about the possibility of storylines with this in the future.

[gayferrari]

idk if you watch the F1 Academy weekend wrapped but they did a very interesting piece on female anatomy in cars vs male. And how they the engineers and F1 academy developers have ti physically change the car and develop different parts and qualities to fit for a woman

All this to say, a lot of people (redditors) don’t seem to REALIZE that this is a multi-year endeavor that will require, engineering development, safety research and of course development of more female drivers. They’re not gonna advance a woman all the way through the Formula Ladder within three years in the second season of the championship

i feel that’s just common sense and i just don’t understand how people missed that

I haven't watched it! I'm actually very curious to see how they address this bc I feel like it's a topic that could get very easily misconstrued.

Disclaimer that again, I haven't watched those videos YET but my current stance would be: I see this as a double-edged argument because motorsport is one of the sport disciplines where broad biological differences in anatomy between AFAB and AMAB bodies that may to some extent influence performance in different sports (broadly and generalising and I am so not qualified to get into that) are pretty much non-existant. The technology at play minimises variations in physicality. There's no difference between drivers of any gender when they're in a car, beyond the basic body variations that you already get between somebody like, idk, Alex and Yuki. SO I don't love discussions that feels like it ultimately would boil down to "female racers need their own category because they can't compete with men in the same machinery."

HOWEVER. From what I understand (again not an expert just a Sport Follower) there ARE some differences that are mostly felt by junior drivers and broadly fall along gendered lines. iirc, F3 level cars take relatively more upper body strength to operate efficiently than F4 level cars, and that's a "jump" that's going to be felt more acutely by girls / young women vs people of the same age who are going through / underwent male puberty. It's less of an "issue" for adults but, at those ages — when a lot of talented pro-track youth athletes of all genders often "fall off" bc it takes them longer to adapt to their changing bodies, or they never quite manage it — it seems to be something that affects AFAB drivers the most. Again I'm 1) generalising and 2) this seems to be the current consensus based on the very small sample of junior female drivers who are competing. But basically I'm, uh. If I were the one in charge of F1A communication (which!!! I haven't watched these videos yet! I could be talking out of my ass) I would phrase it as "the way current cars are set up doesn't really allow all drivers to showcase their potential" vs. "girl drivers need special cars."

I'm absolutely gonna run to watch this video and I may eat my words, but I feel very strongly that we can call out the societal bias that means that most product designs / medical protocols / various industry standards / etc. in society are developed with a cis male (white) individual in mind as "the standard" AND we can also do so in ways that don't imply segregation across biological sex is something to strive for

(anyway ngl you hit the nail on the head because the thing I hate about redditors who talk about F1A is that they always go "Cute but what's the point, they'll never be competitive if they ever get into F3" and it makes me want to punch the walls. shut UP)

[boinday]

I could be wrong but did one of Roha’s crew members say that only men were moonbeasts? Because Ishki’s crew definitely all make me think moonbeasts— I figured her to be a spotted seal almost immediately, and iirc there may be one other woman on the crew itself

Also Ishmi’s first mate: red fox?

I think this is the panel you're thinking of:

This confused/surprised more people than I was expecting, since the episode ends with our insane ex-wife making her debut appearance (and you've got a good eye for Moonbeast animals ;3 ) but a lot of people seem to think this means Blade was wrong when they said this. Blade WAS wrong, but in a different aspect than the way I think many interpreted it.

Blade is right that the Moonbeast gene is only inherited by a subset of the population; as they say, it skipped their mother and sisters and went straight to Blade. But Blade is wrong in what they, at this point in the story, think it means to be a "boy."

In this way, Ishki's introduction at the end of that episode was meant as an optimistic portend for Blade's story, that they can recontextualise what it means to be a Moonbeast and that perhaps it's not as black and white as it seemed when Roha told Blade they were "becoming a man."

Poor Roha, he's doing his best to be a supportive adoptive dad, using the only positive role model he ever had:

Regardless of biological sex, Blade clearly doesn't feel like "a boy," but since they're a Moonbeast, and the Moon "only wants boys," Blade feels not so unlike Rose at the beginning of the story: chaffing against a predetermined, immovable fate they were assigned at birth.

And so it seemed only right to me that the episode feature two adult woman whose characters fundamentally reject that concept of assignment, albeit in different ways. In this way, Blade is surrounded by their own bright future, even if they themselves don't see that yet.

I mean, Ishki's crazy, but I think we can all agree she's one hell of a woman 🙏🥰 and her existence means Blade's journey of self-actualisation can be achieved.

[grisen06]

finally finished season 4 and apart from the obvious Ew im gonna make a list of All Major Things I Thought Was Wrong Because People Keep On Only Mentioning Two (that being five and the ending)

1. 'The Jeennifer incident' No because it was so important to them as a family to have this incident that showed how never properly learning to be a team and growing up in an abusive situation made them dysfunctional but now that's all overglossed with "actually our dad just wiped our minds

2. Their dad's (im not gonna try to remember how his name is spelled) last moments??? Why did it feel like the story (not the characters) tried to forgive him? "Oh hey you waited 2 more minutes to assasinate your child father of the year award you do actually care" like that whole seen felt so icky

3. The amount of shit that could've been solved with telling Ben (and the rest) "Hey btw never touch Jennifer just so yk" BEFORE everything

4. "We have to erase all marigold" Doesn't elaborate on the rest of the children that got borned outside of them

5. They come to this timeline 2019 and iirc s4e1 says 6 years has passed so that's 2025 but the ending acts as if it's 2024 and in the scene where Claire sees Ben on the news they mention him going to jail in 2019 which that + 4 years is 2023???

6. Season 1-3 all act as if there's one main timeline that keeps on being altered, not that there are multiple timelines existing at once

7. If Five started the commision how cane *No one*, not even the higher ups, reacognised him / mentioned it to him? Can't they contact which ever Five started them to stop s2 Five from ending them?

8. This could be explained by the small village being created by their father but their population is smaller than where i live yet the way the city is built w so many shops and stuff it seems like they are way bigger than where i live as if the creators didnt think at all but j slapped a number on the population sign (which as someone who has studied props and set design irritates me deeply)

9. their powers going weird. at first i liked what they did with five because his new powers seemed like a new/stronger version of his old but for the rest it just felt like they all just became powerfull for the sake of being good in a fight. esp since we saw what their powers upped to the max could be in s2 but instead of allison being able to i heard a rumor guys brains out she j has...telekenisis? kind off?

10. j what r the logistics of anything the keepers does/were capable of doing

thats all for now might add more later im just arghhh annoyed (+ obvi the horrible ending and everything abt five esp lila)

[nalyra-dreaming]

Re anon's ask with Daniel being powerful. You said [...]they would sense Armand's blood and likely either leave Daniel alone - or seek him out. (Well, outside of rampages. But that's another subject^^). Could you amplify on that subject? Thanks!

Well, one of the things Armand does to protect the still human Daniel is give him a vial of his blood, to protect him:

The following night, he'd given Daniel the locket, the amulet as he called it, to wear. He'd kissed it first and rubbed it in his hands as if to warm it. Strange to witness this ritual. Stranger still to see the thing itself with the letter A carved on it, and inside the tiny vial of Armand's blood. "Here, snap the clasp if they come near you. Break the vial instantly. And they will feel the power that protects you. They will not dare-"

AMC took a tongue-in-cheek shot at this with their necklace btw, it's not a locket with an "A" on it (not yet^^), but still it is no coincidence they put a blood necklace up :)

Daniel being Armand's only fledgling would have made the lineage clear to any older vampire immediately, as well make him fairly fascinating to some (at least). It is a lonely existence, and the very old sometimes seek out others, or invite others, for company for a while.

And Marius especially, must have been/must be mightily fascinated by Daniel. He did seek him out - at some point, after they all parted again from/in Night Island. Iirc it is not fully explained how and when their relationship actually started, but he and Daniel get together at some point, after Marius takes him in when he goes mad.

As per the "rampages"... I meant killing sprees here, sometimes in madness, sometimes in territorial fights, sometimes... triggered by something or someone else.

In those case the "power" of Armand's blood would not have protected Daniel either. But that... doesn't happen, at least not in the book^^

[abeautifulblog]

Hi! You said you could help talk me through feudal worldbuilding, and I’d love to pick your brain!

Absolutely! Probably easiest to hit me up over discord (I'm _gremble) and then I would be happy to talk your ear off. 🤣 My wheelhouse is very narrowly focused on mid 9th century England (re: what Anglo Saxon society/military/governance looked like when the vikings rolled up), and iirc, some of the features you mentioned being interested in are more the product of later medieval political structures. I cannot help you with those, but I can probably help with some of the overall mental shifts, because a lot of the things we take for granted in the modern era were just............ not the way things worked back then.

In particular, the word "general" in your initial ask jumped out at me, because it brought up one of the exact issues that I'd run into. The character I was working with had been presented in canon as "the king's top general" -- not those words, but definitely those vibes -- that he was The Guy In Charge Of The Army. Except as soon as I started researching military structures in that period, I found out that that's not how armies worked. When the king needed to go to war, he would call on all his top landholding nobles to round up a bunch of their dudes -- which would be a large number of armed peasants, and a smaller number of fulltime warriors -- and bring their portion of the army to bear.

But these various segments of the army remained under the command of their various lords, marching under separate banners. The lords, in essence, were the generals -- there's not one guy commanding the entire army as a single unit (except for the king, sort of), and there's certainly not any non-noble who doesn't own any dudes getting to call the shots and dictate strategy. Talented and successful warriors might well get rewarded for their service, and given land grants that would generate tons of money for them and put a large number of conscriptable peasants under their control -- and might have the ear of the king if they're known to be good at tactics -- but they don't have authority over anyone else's forces.

The politically neutral, career military guy that we think of when we hear the word "general," who has no independent power of his own but receives a paycheck from his higher-ups to command their men for them, didn't exist yet.

It's a bit of a paradigm shift, because we're used to the military as something separate, that's subordinate to civilian leadership and works in service to it, not for those to be one and the same. We're also used to a norm of strong nation-states with one centralized army, which was very much not the case throughout feudalism/manorialism -- at least in the Anglo Saxon period, power was decentralized and delegated, and being king involved a lot of herding cats wrangling your nobles, not exercising direct control. The king was the guy who could get the most other guys to back him up.

(In the same vein, early kingdoms also tended to be a patchwork of other, smaller kingdoms that retained a great deal of their own autonomy and identity. The modern nation-state that we're so used to, with a single national identity, is an astonishingly recent invention.)

Anyway, hands-down the most useful and eye-opening book I've read on the subject is Clifford J. Rogers' Soldiers Lives Throughout History: The Middle Ages. It's like $80 to buy (😭) but the pdf is on Anna's Archive, and it's invaluable. It is, essentially, a social history of medieval warfare -- most military histories focus on the politics of a particular conflict, or the technology and tactics involved, but this book is all about what life on the ground looked like. A+++ resource for anyone writing war and military logistics in a medieval (or medieval-flavored) setting.

[anghraine]

@redwooding said:

My only quibble with the letter, by the way, is that in more than one annotated Austen novel, David Shapard says in those notes that it was proper for an unmarried man to write an unmarried woman, and for her to reply, *only* if they are engaged to each other. Marianne violates this informal but strong norm, and (IIRC) Elinor worries about this. It DOES seem out of character for Darcy to do something so improper. Yet the tone of the letter is almost business-like, as if he is writing to a man who has insulted him and they're gearing up for a duel. Obviously he is not planning to duel Lizzie, but it does have that tone of demanding satisfaction to the smear on his reputation, though it's much more correctional in tone than challenging. So maybe he disregards that norm for this important reason.

I wanted to respond to this specifically in case I forget to respond to your overall reply.

David Shapard's annotations are a very mixed bag IMO. His historical annotations are intriguing, as are plenty of the more literary interpretations, but he makes some peculiar mistakes in applying historical knowledge to the characters without always attending to their individual personalities or circumstances. I've used a case where he does this with Lydia as an example (in my prospectus) of why I think interdisciplinary readings need to be handled more carefully than they often are.

As for the particular matter of propriety wrt letter writing, I think it is very much dependent on how openly it's done. Significantly, Darcy doesn't send Elizabeth a letter, which would flout the norm and put Elizabeth in a very uncomfortable situation. He waits for her and delivers it by hand so that she doesn't have to deal with the social consequences of being known to have received a letter from him.

Elizabeth could then destroy the letter if she wanted to be completely secure, and he seems to figure she would (though Elizabeth's response after their engagement suggests she kept it the whole time). But the norm is, of course, why she doesn't and can't respond.

Darcy is maneuvering carefully around propriety here to strike a balance between defending his character and keeping social pressure off Elizabeth. And, after all, this is the same man who will try to give Lydia an out from marrying Wickham despite the dictates of propriety. Additionally, he tries to handle that situation in a way that will accomplish what needs to be done while keeping Elizabeth from feeling social or personal pressure. He cares a lot about propriety, but he's not unbending about it when it really matters.

This is also relevant to Mrs Gardiner's half-expectation that Elizabeth will (openly) receive a letter from Darcy after they leave Lambton. A letter received that way would be very improper without some kind of understanding between Darcy and Elizabeth (which Mrs Gardiner thinks might very well exist, as seen then and in her later letter to Elizabeth). So that would put Elizabeth under quite a lot of scrutiny in a way his earlier letter doesn't.