#It's better left to interpretation

[wine-dark-soup]

Ffxiv devs were absolutely insane when they decided not to confirm venat and themis were related but declared lahabrea and igeyorhm were cousins. Absolutely wild. My respects.

[sad-leon]

TW!! Suicide Attempt, Self Harm, Implied Eating Disorder

i forgor the colour behind the dialogue but im too tired to add it now

im so tired and theres no resolution because nothing i can make will make me feel better. i Know my friends love me and think my life is worth living, but when it gets bad it gets Bad and theres nothing to do but pick up the peices

[art-is-kayos]

Sight of a Star - Blue-ish Star Ryōshū and Don Quixote

[littlebittyhollowbugs]

Time to think about how alone the pale king was when he died. He had lost everything. His kingdom yes, but even his closest relationships.

His trusted friends, who became dreamers, gave up their lives and all for a hopeless cause. His wife was driven away by her guilt and her grief. His child who he had learned to love, he sacrificed for nothing.

Almost every character that we know of who had a personal relationship with PK had either been sacrificed or had left him.

And of course all of it was his own doing. (At least largely his own doing.)

Still he sat completely alone in that throne room when he died there.

[fried-manto]

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[eerna]

Not to sound like a broken record but Dylan Wood's Orpheus was Insane

[daybreakerr]

hot take

[yzafre]

Roxas: Had the Halloween town kids throw bombs in his face for multiple missions in a row before finally breaking down and smacking them around a bit.

Ventus: The dwarves were rude and refused to talk to him, immediately resorted to chasing them down and whacking them.

Characterization I see frequently: Ah, yes, Roxas is the one always willing to throw hands and Ventus is a smol sunshine boy.

[two-corpses-in-the-burial-mounds]

It's interesting to me how much of the fandom seems to be convinced that Wei Wuxian has low self-worth, considering that I (having only watched the live-action, admittedly) see very little evidence of this in canon.

I assume this is because of his tendency towards self-sacrifice, which shows up multiple times in canon like with the golden core transfer, but I personally think this is a false equivalence. Yes, Wei Wuxian often makes decisions actively detrimental to his own health and wellbeing; he gives his golden core to Jiang Cheng, he takes a curse from Jin Ling, he takes the Wen brand for Liu Qingyang and he takes a whipping from Madam Yu and considers the loss of a hand for Lotus Pier.

However, in none of these circumstances does this choice seem to be made from a lack of care for himself. Instead, it is usually made because he thinks he can handle the situation better than the person in question. Wei Wuxian thinks that between him and Jiang Cheng, he can better handle not having a golden core. Between him and Jin Ling, he thinks he can overcome the course where Jin Ling cannot. The Wen brand is less premeditated, but again the pattern is clear in that Wei Wuxian makes the choice to take the brand because he thinks having it on his chest is better than Liu Qingyang having it on her face. At the fall of Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian decides that his pain and his hand is an acceptable loss for the lives of everyone in Lotus Pier.

These acts hurt him, but that is a side effect of a larger goal. The choice to handle these events himself does not indicate a lack of value in himself, but rather a prioritization of other goals. However, there seems to be a common conflation of Wei Wuxian's prioritization of others with his not caring or valuing himself. However, if Wei Wuxian doesn't value himself, then why does he make such an effort to survive for as long as he does? If he does not value his own thoughts and opinions, then why does he argue with Lan Qiren in the Cloud Recesses study arc? The problem is not that Wei Wuxian has low self-worth, it is that Wei Wuxian's decision-making process weighs harm to himself as acceptable in the pursuit of his moral imperatives. He wants to live without regrets and stand with justice, and to stand with justice, sometimes he has to walk a single-plank bridge. Necessarily, that will sometimes hurt him.

I suspect this association of Wei Wuxian's sacrificial acts as indicative of low self-worth stems from modern Western storytelling practices, which are deeply interested in the psychology of our characters. Recent media has been interested in the consequences of heroism on the hero themself and fandom especially is heavily interested in the psychological ramifications of these actions on characters. There's an idea that's been popular lately that extreme heroism is inherently self-destructive, and the solution to this is to raise a character's self-worth to convince them that they, too, are worth saving.

Now, whether this applies to Wei Wuxian is up to interpretation. However, he views his actions as correct in many of the sacrificial cases indicated above and these choices are framed by the narrative as being in some way noble. I don't think it's radical to suggest that the above actions cause harm to Wei Wuxian's self; that is not in question. I do, however, doubt that increasing Wei Wuxian's self-worth would change any of these decisions. He isn't throwing himself into harm's way because he believes his life is worth less than those he is taking harm for, he does it because he understands the harm he is incurring and chooses to take it upon himself because he thinks it minimizes the harm that would be done.

Rather than leaving the Jiang sect leader without a golden core, or a child with a very dangerous curse, or a young female cultivator permanently disfigured, or allowing Lotus Pier to be attacked and slaughtered, Wei Wuxians chooses to accept consequences in their place. It is more difficult to replace a sect leader than a head disciple. It is more difficult for Jin Ling to overcome the curse, so Wei Wuxian does it in his place. It is less consequential for a young male cultivator to take that brand to the chest than for a Liu Qingyang to be disfigured unjustly, so he does. It is more important than him, as a singular disciple, that Lotus Pier is safe. This is how Wei Wuxian approaches these problems.

Raising Wei Wuxian's self-worth would not change the reasoning behind these choices. He would not revisit these situations and decide to take a different course of action due the inherent value of himself as a person. His value as a person has always been part of the equation, but it is not his priority.

Self-sacrifice does not inherently equal unwellness. Recent trends in Western storytelling suggest that self-sacrifice is both admirable, but an indicator that a person is struggling. However, there are other models of heroism. There are other sets of values. In some moral systems, the willingness to commit self-sacrifice, even when a person does want to live and does value themself, is an admirable virtue. This appears to be the framework that Wei Wuxian is working within.

Does self-sacrifice inherently mean that a person does not value themself? I don't think so. But it's interesting that a lot of people seem to think it does.

-- Right Corpse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm gonna briefly chime in Right Corpse's post here with my thought as an Asian person:

I totally agree with what RC said here. I don't think self-sacrificing should be conflated with low self-worth. A person can view themselves as noble, upstanding and honorable (which, inherently is a very confident mindset) and be self-sacrificing as a result of that mindset, because helping others in spite of yourself in a dire situation is essentially a very noble trait.

And I'm glad RC brought up Western storytelling practices, because I thought the difference between Western and Eastern's mentality is exactly where this discourse came from. Western mentality is individualism-based, and Eastern mentality is more collectivism-based. Western mentality values individual's well-being, rights and freedom, while Eastern mentality values the well-being of group/societal-unit as a whole. I'm not saying one is better than other, I'm simply pointing out that it makes sense for Wei Wuxian to act the way he did given the setting of the story, regardless of his own view of himself. No matter how much self-worth a person has, growing up in this setting means the expectation is that you'd always put the clan's well-being, your family's well-being above your own. Filial piety is a very heavy expectation in this society, clan loyalty is a very heavy expectation in this world.

A noble, morally-upstanding cultivator who pride himself as such should be doing what Wei Wuxian was doing. And a big part of the MDZS story is definitely a criticism toward all of the clans and cultivators, who call themselves all those traits and did the opposite. Wei Wuxian saved Jiang Cheng not only because he viewed Jiang Cheng as his brother, but also because saving the leader of your clan when you have the mean to was the right thing to do, both for your leader but most importantly, for the clan as a whole, for the region of Yunmeng. Hundreds of people rely on the Jiang family and Lotus Pier, and Jiang Cheng is the figurehead of it. You can argue that Wei Wuxian can take over if JC is indisposed, but that's not how it works, that's not how politics works. So Wei Wuxian made the best choice for the collective given the circumstances, even if that came as a cost to him, and to circle back to what RC said earlier, Wei Wuxian calculated the risk and believed that he can handle that cost, and he did.

Similarly, Wei Wuxian saved Jin Ling because he believed as an adult, he could handle the risk better than a child like Jin Ling, and as a man, he could live with a scar rather than a young woman like Mianmian. In fact, I think he took pride in himself in all of these instances. He didn't boast about them to other people, but I think he's proud of himself that he can live according to his principles and never fail them.

-- Left Corpse

[qoldenskies]

BIRTHDAYS FUCK FUCK FUCK

it was so hard to keep holding my tongue about that particular detail (i wrote a lot of miner's eulogy WHILE writing caged lungs so i Knew .... i knewwww) so i just alluded to it a bunch in responses BUT NOW I CAN YAP ALL I WANT ABOUT IT!!!! ahahaha FUCK!!!!!!!!! (in agony)

really its just a vehicle to push raph and leo to make that horrendous stupid ass decision at the end but i have not been able to stop thiiiinking about it. i love making leo and donnie be twins as a compromise/something they deliberately chose despite having a gap in age and that is exactly why. i get to use it for GREAT EVIL

[thegreatyin]

mr spices and mr wines. also mr candles and mr veils.

have you ever seen that one tumblr post that's like. "i don't ship these characters i just think they belong in couples therapy together". yeah. that's pretty much my stance on most spacebat ships

[a-shade-of-green]

yeah so that scene where mike kicks down the fort in his basement in s1 is definitely supposed to be paralleled by will taking down castle byers in s3. just if anyone cares about when mike turned his back on being a kid.

[reliablejoukido]

Someone just gave me a shit sandwich comment on a fic and it’s like… don’t do this. Don’t do this to me and don’t do it to other people.

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

.shattered dream.

-buy the newest shampoo and make your hair wavier than our favorite dark angel's-

there's gotta be a secret to her looks! >:'Dc

shattered belongs to @galacii

dark cream/studio au belongs to @zu-is-here

fem!studio au designs are made by me

[allmyandroids]

He looks so fine, so good in that dark green polo shirt plus his black suit and his lovely curls ✨️

[catacini]

man. oberon saying "i'm sorry i couldn't get rid of those proper human history bastards for you, titania" after he's already conflated guda with titania. what does it all mean.