#Which it isn't inherently so

[some-pers0n]

I'm so close to writing about a character being beaten over the head with a rusty shovel and bleeding out dying to prove just how easy angst is to write

[orb-weaving]

Recognition

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[trixxedheart]

It is amazing how the "people that love and uplift transwomen" website will instantly fucking maul a transwoman if she even remotely insinuate that using radfem rhetoric harms trans people

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[mamawasatesttube]

the thing about generally-accepted broad fanon batfam dynamics is that even if you disregard the complete stripping of all nuance in order to make a perfectly nuclear family with no lasting or significant conflict etc etc, half of it is all just built on vaguely (or explicitly) racist stereotypes anyway, like .......... ah yes the little half arab boy is a violent feral gremlin who can't fit in with refined polite society. the half east asian girl is the golden child who never speaks and is good at everything and has no flaws because she's the favorite who holds the family together. the romani one is a slut. LIKE. okay...!

[mxtxfanatic]

A lot of people say that Wei Wuxian's demonic cultivation is inherently disrespectful to the dead. I personally disagree but I'm not really sure how to say that, especially when they bring up how he treated the ghosts for the war or the torture session.

It's confusing 😔

Ok, to answer this question, we must first cover the basics of both what Wei Wuxian's cultivation is and how cultivators deal with the resentful dead in the orthodox path. 1) Wei Wuxian is not s demonic cultivator. He is a ghost cultivator, hence why his cultivation path is called "the ghost path" and why the title of the novel is a misnomer. The cultivation world calling him a "demonic" cultivator is meant as a slander of his work, not a neutral description of it:

“Let me ask you, are fae, demons, ghosts, and monsters all the same kind of being?” Wei Wuxian smiled. “No.” “Why not? What are the differences between them?” “Fae come from living non-humans, demons from living humans, ghosts from dead humans, and monsters from dead non-humans.”

—Chapt. 13: Elegance III, fanyiyi

By definition, Wei Wuxian is not a demonic cultivator, and every cultivator is taught this distinction from a young age. Moving on, 2) this is how orthodox cultivators deal with the resentful dead:

[Lan Wangji] nodded his head politely, and quietly said, “First, release the spirit from suffering. Second, suppress it. Third, eliminate it. For the initial approach, use the loving memory of his parents, wife, and children to comprehend his deepest desires and fulfill them. If this fails, move to suppression. But if the crimes are too great and his resentment too bitter to dissipate, eliminate him root and branch; his continued existence must not be permitted. Cultivators must conduct themselves carefully in accordance with this sequence of measures, without error.”

—Chapt. 14: Elegance IV, fanyiyi

The ideal goal of dealing with the resentful dead is that you get them to move on. That is why these are not three separate paths but a single route:

Lan Wangji said, “Thus release from suffering is the primary strategy, suppression, supplementary, and elimination, the last resort.”

However, only the first part of this route leads to peace for the suffering spirit; the other two either lead to prolonged suffering or utter destruction. Wei Wuxian's ghost path opens up a second route, the so-called fourth solution:

Everyone inside the elegant room stared at them in shock. The old man suddenly shot up. “The purpose of subduing demons and exterminating ghosts is to alleviate suffering! Not only have you forgotten this, you want to incite further resentment! You are inverting the means and the ends, without a care for humanity!” “If some people’s suffering can’t be relieved, why not make it useful?” Wei Wuxian replied. “When Yu the Great tamed the floods, redirection was the superior strategy, and obstruction the inferior. Suppression is like obstruction, it can only be worse—” Lan Qiren flung a book at Wei Wuxian, who quickly ducked out of the way. The color of his face unchanged, he continued to run his mouth. “Spiritual energy is energy, but resentful energy is also energy. Stored inside cores, spiritual energy is able to cleave mountains and drain seas, and is available for human use. Why can’t humans use resentful energy too?”

The end goal remains the same as the orthodox path's, just with the addition of using the dead's resentment to achieve your own goals in the meantime. To say that Wei Wuxian "creates" the resentment by which he then controls the dead he summons is to ignore that he actually can't create resentment and must rely on the resentment the dead already have. We learn this in the opening chapters of the book at the Mo Mansion where he must summon the corpses of the Mo family to fight because the other walking corpses that were already in the house had too little resentment to be useful. It's even in this very example of him pitching the theoretics of the ghost path: he doesn't say "just dig up any corpse" but specifically that the heads of those executed by the executioner (and therefore who would have resentment remaining in death) should be dug up to deal with the fierce corpse of their killer. And when everyone has burned off their resentment, it goes without saying that it would be easy to liberate them.

Now to address the whole war time torture session stuff: if we remember what I just said about Wei Wuxian being unable to create resentment and that in his speech he believes that the best dead to summon in order to subdue another resentful being are the dead who were killed by the being, then the fates of the Wen involved in the fall of Lotus Pier makes sense. Wei Wuxian does not control any of the dead like puppets, as explained here, so the ghosts got their own revenge themselves. It's not accidental that every Wen supervisory post was covered in ghost repellent talismans where none existed previously. As for the ghoul child and blue-faced woman, they had some sort of history with each other and Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao that probably wouldn't be too hard to guess:

[Wang Lingjiao] collapsed onto the ground. Back then, the second that she opened the chest, she saw what was inside. There was none of her beloved treasures, only a pale-skinned, curled-up child!

—Chapt. 61: Evil, exr

The ghoul child, however, had bit out an entire chunk of the flesh on his hand and spat it out. He continued to devour the palm. Wen ZhuLiu grabbed the child’s head with his left hand, as though to put so much force on the small, cold head that it exploded. The blue- faced woman threw the bloodstained bandages on the ground and, like a four-limbed creature, she crawled to Wen ZhuLiu’s side almost instantly.

...

Wei WuXian, “Of course it’d be with a certain thing gone.” Jiang Cheng was disgusted, “You’re the one who did it?” Wei WuXian, “It’s nasty if you think about it that way. Of course I wasn’t the one who cut it off. It was bitten off when his woman went mad.”

—Chapt. 62: Evil, exr

"His woman" can't be Wang Lingjiao, because Wang Lingjiao died suffocating on the stool leg she stuffed down her throat. When Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji find her body, the stool leg is still halfway out of her mouth. "His woman" is the blue-faced woman, who obviously holds extreme enmity towards Wen Chao. It's the same situation when Wei Wuxian resurrects Wen Ning:

Wei WuXian, “Congratulations to you for successfully draining all my patience. Since you don’t want to speak up, let’s let him answer on his own.” As though it’d been waiting for his words for a long time, Wen Ning’s frozen corpse suddenly moved, raising its head. Before the two nearest inspectors could even scream, each of their throats was clenched by a hand as firm as iron. Expressionless, Wen Ning raised up the two short-legged inspectors high in the air. The empty circle around them grew larger and larger. The head inspector shouted, “Young Master Wei! Young Master Wei! Please go easy on us! Doing this in the heat of the moment would lead to irreversible consequences!” The rain fell heavier and heavier. Drops of water trickled incessantly down Wei WuXian’s cheeks. He suddenly spun around, putting his hand on Wen Ning’s shoulder before shouting, “Wen QiongLin!” As if a reply, Wen Ning let out a long, thundering roar. The ears of everyone within the valley ached. Wei WuXian spoke one word at a time, “Whoever caused all of you to be like this, let them meet the same end. I give you the right to do so. Settle everything!”

—Chapt. 72: Recklessness, exr

Wei Wuxian didn't "make" them do anything; he just corralled them and focused their resentment.

While Wei Wuxian is being very glib in his Cloud Recesses discussion—because it was an on-the-fly theory posed specifically to piss Lan Qiren off—the way he uses it in practice is actually much more contained. He also, personally, treats the dead more respectfully than most other cultivators, who react to the presence of non-aggressive dead with violence or disgust (reread how he interacts with the ghoul child and blue-faced woman, or the ghost girls in the restaurant, or the skeleton hand, or A-Qing, etc. etc.). So to answer your question: no, Wei Wuxian's ghost path does not disrespect the dead. It gives those with too much resentment or a who have a grudge too difficult to fulfill another way to burn off their resentment in order to achieve peace. While an individual can use it disrespectfully (Xue Yang, who uses it as a basis for his demonic cultivation), it is not inherently disrespectful in and of itself.

[rexonalapis]

it is very telling that average genshin players cannot comprehend seeing an actual mature, qualified leader that is actually good at taking her job seriously after meeting archons who either is still childish, clowning whimsically, or straight up incompetent.

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked

[gutfaced]

yes i am the biggest advocate of surrogate father haymitch & adopted daughter katniss but like. they're so Awful. they've not got a mother/daughter relationship, they've got that father/daughter relationship where the dad is both reaching for a connection and rejecting the thing that he made because she's too much like him, too close to what he is and far away from it because of her potential and the daughter rejects because she doesn't understand him. understanding him is understanding herself. caring for him is caring for herself. and then she's awful to him because she doesn't understand and doesn't want to understand. and he's rejectful of her because she's got so many traits that are for the worse and not for the better. their similarities don't hurt nearly as much as what their differencee impale them with. it will always be what katniss could be (haymitch), and what haymitch prevented/could've been (katniss.)

[peanutbutterandbananasandwichs]

"Jensen doesn't age, he looks like exactly the same as he did as Dean in S1"

*extremely loud incorrect buzzer*

Why would you be erasing the eye crinkles like this?

[turins-inbred-child]

Nienna about to strangle anyone who says that orcs are unredeemable or shouldn't be pitied.

seeing wayyyyyy to many so called “fans” on twitter saying that orcs are “ontologically evil”. Tolkien was catholic and ontological evil doesn't exist according to catholic doctrine, since evil is defined as the absence of good so pure evil is just nothingness.

also orcs have souls and only God/Eru can create souls according to the silm, and all souls have some amount of free will to choose between good and evil.

and God/Eru loves all his children, he wouldn't create a soul that is going to be evil with no hope of redemption and salvation. that would be a Calvinist heresy.

that is why Tolkien struggled with the origins of the orcs so much in his later writings and regretted how they had been written.

there are a LOT of things to criticize in rings of power, but humanizing the orcs is not one of them.

[some-pers0n]

I'm really sorry for Hazbin posting again but godddd because this one clip of Alastor and Bill Cipher has been going around late on Twitter reminds me so much of how utterly lame it is when Alastor swears. Like the whole thing that makes him unnerving is how well-spoken he is. I don't even like him saying "fuck you" to Lucifer. Him saying "I'm about to end your fucking life" sounds so lameeeeee he sounds like an elementary schooler who just learned the fuck word

The part that makes him fun and interesting is how well-spoken he is. It kinda plays on the gimmick of radio hosters being kind, chipper fellows and how they don't swear or do anything. It acts as a contrast. I literally don't understand why Viv is allergic to making characters not swear. Him not even swearing would probably be better when it comes to threatening Adam. Like I don't get it. Why is this show's writing like this. He's so uncool and unthreatening when he swears

[vegalocity]

It’s honestly a crime that the writing just brushed Syntax’s becoming a Spider under the rug. No, he’s fine with it, don’t worry about it. No we’re not gonna explore this, they’re bad guys and we’re killing them off anyway, don’t worry about it.

There was so much room to explore, especially with how Goliath and Huntsman might’ve felt, but no.

I MEAN RIGHT?

Admittedly it's a running thing with LMK to IMPLY a lot and then look at the audience and say 'no followup questions' with their full chests, (like all of the implications of Red Son's home life being kinda fucked but it barely gets touched upon again after season one despite clear evidence that things aren't all fixed in S3 and we're just supposed to believe everything's aces by S4) And the Spiders i think are probably the most egregious example

the deleted character (rip Spindrax regulated to the shadow relm), one of the characters never gets a dedicated episode to see how he acts as an independent agent and that spider doesn't even have a real NAME (which im sure drives you crazy in particular Twinkle) there are IMPLICATIONS of character arcs and backstories and overall POTENTIAL that just got thrown away to show everyone how cool and dangerous LBD was and gave NO hope of rescue.

Back when s2 was airing i thought LMK was sort of like- Building a rogue's gallery- a sort of batman rogues are we type cabal that could keep the adventures fresh and fun and... nope. I would have KILLED for a sort of 'Harley and Ivy' type episode that was focused entirelhy around the spiders, and possibly run it like essentially an Ed Edd N Eddy episode as the spider boys tried running a heist or smth without SQ there to keep them from feeding off of eachother's vibes too hard and it all turning to complete chaos.

LMK has a lot of stylistic influence to Adveture Time, and you can tell they WANT MK to be a Finn type (I mean his place in the mythological system seems to be essentially Finn's Catalyst Comet arc truncated significantly) but you kinda can't make an adventure time style world without understanding that the world belongs just as much to the semi-reformed wizard kidnapping princesses as it does to the hero that kicks him in the boingloins, you know?

and LMK very much belongs ONLY to the Monkie Kid Krew (I mean ive gone on record to say that Tang's arc would have been MUCH more interesting if he WASN'T actually the Monk in a past life and really was Just Some Guy and fully earned his own magic, but that would mean the world was bigger than just the characters designated as important so that couldn't be) and the villains are just pins to set up and knock over in a season and a special's time (if they even get that, sorry Nine Heads)

But as for Huntsman and Goliath's perspectives on Syntax- man i WISH i knew those... I think the ones i like the best are Goliath being... nice but distant to the new guy in like a 'whatever the queen clearly thinks its fine' type way and Hutnsman being like- INSTANTLY thinking Syntax is gunning for his 'position' (whatever it is) and is HYPER aware of him, Syntax is living RENT free in this spider's head because he's CONVINCED that he's after his position in the 'loyalty to the queen' social ladder or smth and meanwhile Syntax, genre savvy as he is is like "oh we're gonna do that thing where we start out as rivals but grow closer to respect eachother and eventually become very close friends and playfully compete with eachother sometimes to keep the spice in the banter! this is fun! ^.^"

Idk sounds like more fun than a pile of dead bodies that don't even get the dignity of being brought back in flashbacks

[dimonds456-art]

Maladaptive daydreaming.

[eshtaresht]

hey you 🫵💥 everage american online leftist!

stop scrolling for a moment. take a breather. play this video next time you need smth to occupy you for an hour. this is very much a call out post, but I do believe this essay has many well articulated points that felt like a nice cool sip of water to me

addendum: I'm not even american but the same behavior is rampant in most online spaces, regardless of nationality