#all just moral failings
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Because I’m a young attractive woman (I use this term very loosely - let’s say at least not what society thinks I should look like as a high supports needs autistic/disabled person), my autistic traits, burnout, depression, meltdowns, childlike/intense interests, self isolating, extreme sensitivity/empathy, problems with social relationships, eating/self image issues, trying to mask better have always been seen as personal & moral failings, lifestyle choices, “tumblr/edgy personality traits”, something to be fixed, shamed out of, that eventually I will grow out of feeling like this. Just some silly woman who will realise how juvenile she’s being eventually!
If I was a man, would it have taken me until my mid-late 20s, after years of violently refusing to go to school as a child (until police were called) or outside or not talk to people or look people in the eyes - because it made me feel disgusting/not in control to be seen while not masked/looking/feeling okay. Feeling like a monster and alien and not knowing why I was so awful or acting this way when nobody else did. Would he have been screened for something sooner instead of just being like “silly girl doesn’t think she’s cute so she’s gonna stay inside, it must be all it’s all for men/social approval, she will get over it” “You’re just depressed/socially anxious get over yourself and force yourself through it, it’s your own fault”
I realised at a very young age, the better you look and the quieter you are the better you’re treated or at least glossed over socially. I saw makeup, style, body language, interests even as a way to mask and got so hyper fixated on it/myself/hyper vigilant that even to this day I can’t go outside when I’m not feeling my best. Like I’m playing a part of “charminglovelynormalgirl.exe” on those good days, and days like today where I can leave my house or clean or function or throw up when I go in the car… I feel like I’m not even real, like that “other me” must just be an act. How can she be so different to this me. Like I feel totally disconnected to myself at times like this… it makes for some really complex trauma and identity issues… that’s just being a silly insecure girl to the rest of society.
Also those people who only see me irl every 6 months when I’m in “prettygirl.exe” mask mode, absolutely think I’m fine, or just a little anxious/shaky because look how great and charming and nice I am, how well I can communicate, the rest of the time is just me choosing to be inside/alone/hating myself because I enjoy it, obviously. I’ve ruined my whole life as an excuse to live this way. Absolutely.
#I fucking hate it hate it hate it#neurodivergent#autistic woman#all just moral failings#when I can go outside and put makeup on people will literally refuse to accommodate for me because I’m fine cause I look okay#oh and I definately think the abusive men who approached me while in my teens knew exactly who they were targeting before even I did
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tarpit site.
#personal#delete later#for context a tweet i made in the middle of the night blew the fuck up and brought the attention of anime fans who've been#harassing and hassling me about my big factual blunder for an entire day straight#“ok i'll apologize” “bro it's not that serious.”#“you're right it's not that serious“ ”why won't you just admit that you're wrong and apologize!“#i'm not going crazy right. i feel like i'm getting manipulated into thinking i must've been wrong#it's crazy how twitter hate will trick you into believing saying something someone else disagrees with is a moral failing#sorry i haven't seen frieren i guess but what's it to you. i wasn't making a claim or statement#also because nobody has gotten this in the original post i wasn't talking about the quality of animation i'm talking about solid drawing#which is a very specific principle of animation. dandandan has really good solid drawing wherein all the characters are animated#with realistic and proportional 3d depth. newsflash but trigger doesn't prioritize solid drawing in their animation and that's fine#it's an aesthetic choice and has ties to production limits. none of this is a big deal. this is all so stupid lol#i've dealt with worse and more annoying weebs though it's fine i'll put on my clown nose twitter needs their stupid guy for the day#oh btw at the end of the day this doesn't matter. it'll be over by tomorrow. all that's happening is petty angry emotions.#so please don't involve yourself by jumping into the argument and prolonging this shit#i'm about to go on a date with tulli after being apart for a month this is the furtherest thing from my mind rn
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i need daniel to be overcompensating for his insecurities so bad. 100 times more cocky and rude and aggressive and insensitive than he was as a human, falling back into old dangerous habits and vices, not just because now he has new energy and power and wealth to flaunt but because it's ALL he has, and he needs to cling onto it. play it up and revel in it so no one sees that underneath, he feels like a botched fledgling in the body of a sick, faded old man who maybe has no real idea why he was even made. that armand might think he failed in making him. that his maker didn't even really want him.
#i think vampirism isnt inherently torturous to him in any sort of moral way#but more in an inner self worth/image way#louis felt he was failing because he rejected/didn't enjoy human blood and death#i can see daniel being fine with killing but being insecure about the way he turned out/the way he is now#and his complicated connection with armand and what it all means for him. why he cares what he thinks or feels when he doesnt want to#but he does. and he has all these questions he needs him to answer#this sort of thing would be a way to connect him to louis further and also lestat now#louis who felt like a “botched vampire” for a long time and lestat who was immediately abandoned by his maker#and how lestat coped with what had been done to him by trying to fully embrace what he'd been turned into#anyway the bottom line is i think he should suffer and struggle with vampirism just as much as everyone else has in his own way#but he still has to be a massive insufferable asshole about it. and maybe get smacked around a bit because of it#iwtv#daniel molloy
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wei wuxian vs. pragmatism: what MDZS intends to say about righteousness
copy/pasting most of my rather bitchy reply into its own individual post because i think it deserves to stand on its own.
so i think we can all agree that MXTX intends for us to read MDZS and conclude that wei wuxian is ultimately a deeply heroic and righteous person. whether you as the reader agree with this assessment of wei wuxian's moral character is another question entirely, but at the very least it is fairly obvious to all of us that MXTX intends for us to read him as a good person.
so why does MXTX call wei wuxian a good person? what aspects of his character and which of his choices make him a good person? what moral framework and what definition of morality does MXTX employ in order to call wei wuxian a good person?
i posit that MXTX argues that wei wuxian is heroic precisely because he is not pragmatic - because he adheres to his moral ideals despite the consequences, and because he did not make moral sacrifices at critical junctures of his life. the first half of this post will argue that wei wuxian is not pragmatic. the second half of this post will argue that this is exactly why wei wuxian is heroic, and that the moral framework employed by MXTX is deeply idealistic instead.
so let's begin.
let's start by establishing two things.
first: what MXTX argues about morality through the narrative of MDZS and the reader's own beliefs about morality are two different things. me saying "MDZS argues that xyz is righteousness" and me saying "i think xyz is righteousness" are two different statements. the following analysis is concerned not with what i myself consider to be righteous, but rather what MXTX argues through MDZS is righteous.
second: wei wuxian is not pragmatic.
what does it mean to be pragmatic? unless we are speaking about the school of philosophy specifically (which i am not here), being pragmatic means being grounded in reality and focused on practical outcomes. it means being result-oriented and considering the consequences of your actions before you act; it means acting only after you have considered the potential consequences of all possible courses of action and have then decided which outcomes are acceptable. being pragmatic also means recognizing when achieving everything you want is impossible. and, in such situations, being pragmatic thus entails compromising to achieve a desired outcome, even if that means you don’t get everything they want. to put it in edgier terms, being pragmatic means being able to make moral sacrifices.
an idealistic person attempts the impossible. a pragmatic person recognizes when something truly is impossible.
wei wuxian is not pragmatic.
first, wei wuxian is not someone who carefully considers the consequences of his actions before he acts. in fact, he displays a startling lack of consideration for consequences. it repeatedly falls upon other characters to either try (and fail) to hold him back.
when wei wuxian punched jin zixuan for insulting first jiang yanli and then jiang cheng, did he consider that jiang fengmian and jin guangshan might then dissolve the betrothal, and that jiang yanli might have wanted to make a decision regarding that on her own? no. he just punched jin zixuan because he was mad that jin zixuan had insulted two people he loved.
when wen chao threatened mianmian, and lan wangji and jin zixuan stood up for mianmian, and then wei wuxian stood up for them by holding wen chao hostage in turn - did he consider that there might be consequences for humiliating and threatening the life of the son of a warmongering great sect leader who has already proven capable of attacking other sects? no. did he stop and think "alright, wen ruohan has already attacked the cloud recesses, which proves that he's willing to wage war against the other sects. threatening the son of a sect leader is an easy way to earn any sect leader's ire, and since i'm the first disciple of the jiang sect, this puts not just me but the entire jiang sect on wen ruohan's shitlist"? no. it would be one thing if wei wuxian weighed this possibility and then decided that rescuing an innocent girl and the people who defended her was more important was worth the risk - that would show that he considered the consequences and then made his choice. but the thought simply never entered his mind. he acted simply because he wanted to save mianmian, jin zixuan, and lan wangji from the wens; he did not think beyond that.
when wei wuxian busted the wen remnants out of the qiongqi pass labor camp, did he have a clear plan as to how he was going to weather the political fallout? did he have a plan more detailed than "live quietly in the burial mounds until everyone forgets about us"? no. when jiang cheng challenged him as to how he was going to survive the situation, he did not in fact offer anything more concrete than "we'll just wait for everyone else to forget about us." he blustered about being a once-in-a-generation genius who could accomplish the impossible, but he provided no actual plan as to how he was going to do it. this leads me to conclude that wei wuxian did not in fact have a long-term plan for handling the consequences when he went ham at the qiongqi pass camp - that, instead of weighing the consequences and then making his decision, he instead decided immediately that this was something he had to do, consequences be damned.
and then - on top of this - all of his following actions then point in the exact opposite direction of his stated plan of waiting for everyone to forget about them. because instead of doing anything to fade into the background, everything wei wuxian did instead just convinced the jianghu he was an intolerable threat.
and this was not a sustainable strategy.
one thing i really appreciate about MXTX is that she does not make the rest of the jianghu into one-dimensional villainous morons. it's quite easy for lazy writers who want a persecution plotline to have the rest of the story's society magically start hating on the protagonist for no good reason, to make every background character in the story's world a three-braincell moron. but MXTX is not that author. it speaks to MXTX's skill as an author that, from the perspective of the rest of the jianghu, fearing wei wuxian as a mortal threat was an entirely reasonable conclusion for them to come to.
first, the gentry's most recent direct interaction with wei wuxian during this time period is him threatening to kill all of them. when jin zixun doesn't give him the information he wants, wei wuxian straight up says: "if i want to kill everyone here, who can stop me? who dares stop me?" this is a threat! and - surprise - threatening to kill people naturally makes people think that you want to kill them!
next, wei wuxian refined wen ning's dead body into the first sentient fierce corpse in history, and also the strongest fierce corpse in living memory - and then took wen ning with him on night-hunts. that's where the reputation of "the yiling patriarch and his ghost general" comes from. this very naturally made the rest of society fear him even more, because now the guy who has just recently threatened to kill you has demonstrated even more of the power to easily do so! the unparalleled power to do so, which no one else possesses and it would be very hard for anyone else to counter! add in the fact that wei wuxian's activities were also attracting prospective disciples - people gathering outside the burial mounds because they wanted to learn demonic cultivation - and naturally the public is even more frightened, because now it looks like the guy who threatened to kill all of you is also gathering the political force to do so!
the public is incorrect about wei wuxian's intentions, of course. but what does wei wuxian do to correct these misconceptions? to rehabilitate his public image, because now his public image has the life of not just himself but also all the wen remnants under his protection riding on it? to prove to the public that he isn't an active threat to their lives - that he does not seek to murder them all in their beds - that it is safe for them to allow him to live, and that they can in fact survive if they don't kill him?
nothing.
it would be one thing if the story mentioned how wei wuxian tried to correct the malicious rumors about himself and failed. but that is not what happened. what happened is that wei wuxian sat on his corpse mountain and let everyone else say what they wanted to say. and when he left his corpse mountain, it was to bring his one-of-a-kind unparalleled sentient fierce corpse with him on night-hunts, which of course just fanned the flames of the rumors instead. he doesn't even tell the prospective pupils camped on his front door to fuck off - he just sneaks in through the back door.
this is not pragmatic behavior. though you can argue that wei wuxian's strategy here was to become so powerful and so scary that no one would dare try to fight him, anyone with a brain can tell you that this is not a sustainable solution in the long-term. first, if you want to use threats to keep someone from attacking you, you also need to promise stability - you need to give people the reassurance that if they don't start shit with you, then you'll leave them alone too. if you drive the "threat" factor too high, as wei wuxian did, you instead end up convincing people that if they do nothing you'll kill them anyways - that they have no choice but to kill you if they want to survive.
second, if you want to use threats to keep someone from attacking you, you also need to prepare for the inevitability that, if someone does end up getting hurt, everyone will blame you first and no one will want to hear your side of the story. after all, if someone gets hurt, then the first suspect everyone looks towards will be the guy who's been consistently saying "i'm strong enough to hurt you! i'm strong enough to hurt you! don't start shit with me because i'm strong enough to end you!" for the past few months. this is basic common sense. and yes, the society of MDZS is unfair - wei wuxian deserved a proper trial and investigation after the death of jin zixuan. but the fact that society is unfair is something a pragmatic person would have recognized and planned for.
wei wuxian did not recognize and plan for this reality. even after he accidentally kills jin zixuan, wei wuxian still insists that if only the jianghu investigates jin zixun's hundred holes curse, they'll see that wei wuxian didn't cast the hundred holes curse, they'll see that there was more scheming going on, etc etc. wen qing has to directly spell out for him that, at this point, society no longer cares about the truth of the matter. it seems that wei wuxian was actually oddly idealistic about the true nature of his society all the way until the very end.
all of this leads me to conclude that, when wei wuxian busted the wen remnants out of the qiongqi pass labor camp, he did so without considering the consequences of his actions. he assumed that he could improvise and weasel his way out of this situation, as he's always done in the past with his typical genius - only this time, he was wrong.
wei wuxian acts without considering the consequences of his actions. he does not make a decision only after carefully deliberating over all of the potential outcomes - not at all. instead, he acts in the moment - not out of any rational consideration of potential outcomes, but rather because it is simply something he must do. this by definition makes him a deeply unpragmatic person.
to put it into more familiar terms, for wei wuxian, the righteousness of an action comes not from its consequences, but are rather inherent to the action itself. even if he were doomed to fail, he could not give up on the wen remnants.
second, at critical junctures, wei wuxian is unable to make moral sacrifices. to be pragmatic is to know when you have to sacrifice: to know when, in order to achieve the most inalienable of your goals, you have to give up on some of your other goals. this is something wei wuxian is consistently unable to do.
of course, when it comes to his own wellbeing, wei wuxian is all too willing to sacrifice. he'll carve out any number of his internal organs to save those he loves. but this honestly speaks less to wei wuxian's moral framework and more to his lack of self-worth from a troubled upbringing.
because, when it comes to any moral cause, wei wuxian is entirely unable to sacrifice anything, even if being unable to sacrifice entails more negative consequences. wei wuxian could not sacrifice mianmian, jin zixuan, and lan wangji to wen chao and his goons, so he took action and took wen chao hostage himself. to sit back and do nothing as wen chao threatened the lives of those three was simply unthinkable for him - even if it meant taking a course of action that put yunmeng jiang in danger.
wei wuxian's relationship with jiang cheng deteriorated because jiang cheng did not know about the golden core transfer: because jiang cheng did not know that wei wuxian could no longer cultivate, from jiang cheng's point of view, it looked like wei wuxian was just refusing to help out and fulfill his promises for kicks. wei wuxian could have made things a lot easier for himself and also any wen remnants he chose to rescue had he simply told jiang cheng the truth - but he knew that finding out the truth of the golden core transfer would make jiang cheng miserable, and [jiang cheng's happiness] was not something he was willing to sacrifice.
wei wuxian's single most prominent moral decision is his refusal to allow the wen remnants to be sacrificed. anyone with a shred of political sense had to know that rescuing the wen remnants and then protecting them would be near impossible - that it entails making an enemy of the jin, and due to the jins' power, the entire jianghu. wei wuxian himself knew this; he is no moron. wei wuxian also had no long-term plan, no allies, and significantly less power than the rest of the world believed. yet, despite this all, he acted anyways, because he could not let the wen remnants be sacrificed.
the wen remnants wei wuxian rescued from the qiongqi pass labor camp included both regular civilians and cultivators. perhaps wei wuxian could have negotiated a proper release for the non-cultivating civilians, such as granny wen and a-yuan, had he chosen to give up on the cultivators. but - the question of whether this would have worked or not aside - this was not a sacrifice wei wuxian would be willing to make.
nor could wei wuxian sacrifice the safety of yunmeng jiang. i am firmly of the belief that, had yunmeng jiang formally stood by wei wuxian's side after wei wuxian attacked the jin-run labor camp, lanling jin would have eventually declared war on yunmeng jiang, and yunmeng jiang's would inevitably be destroyed. both wei wuxian and jiang cheng understood this as well - which is why wei wuxian told jiang cheng to let him go.
(you can argue - successfully - that wei wuxian did in fact sacrifice [his obligations to yunmeng jiang and his promise to jiang cheng] by leaving yunmeng jiang to protect the wen remnants. this is true. but i think that - from wei wuxian's point of view - this was not much of a sacrifice, because due to wei wuxian lacking a golden core, he already viewed himself as mostly useless to yunmeng jiang. so him leaving - in his view - is not really that much of a loss for yunmeng jiang.)
wei wuxian promised wen qing that he would return wen ning's consciousness to his corpse. when wei wuxian made this promise, he had no idea if he could actually pull it off or not. but then he did - and, in the process, created the most dangerous weapon the jianghu had seen in living memory. wen ning specifically, or moreso wei wuxian's inability to control him, leads to so much of wei wuxian's eventual downfall: wei wuxian loses control of wen ning and accidentally kills jin zixuan; when wen ning goes to turn himself in at jinlintai, he ends up going berserk again and killing another 10-20 jin and lan cultivators, which leads to the nightless city pledge conference. frankly, wei wuxian could have avoided a lot of trouble - or at the very least, a lot of the public's fear - had he not raised wen ning from the dead. it's not like he'd be completely defenseless without wen ning, either. but wei wuxian promised wen qing he would resurrect wen ning - and he could not sacrifice his promise to wen qing because of what wen qing had already done for him.
a pragmatic person is able to make sacrifices, including moral ones. at the very least, a pragmatic person recognizes when sacrifice is inevitable, when all paths lead to something being lost. a pragmatic person, put in the trolley problem, would recognize that there were only two options and that both options involve sacrifice: either he must kill one person, or he must allow five people to die. there is no path forwards in which all six people live.
wei wuxian is unable to make moral sacrifices. he clings on to all of these moral causes, all of these promises and obligations, and it is precisely because he attempts to hold onto all of them that he ends up losing everything. to reuse the previous example, wei wuxian in the trolley problem tried to save all six people because he could not accept any of the sacrifices made inevitable by the trolley problem.
to put this all together - wei wuxian is not a pragmatic person. he makes decisions with his gut, not his head - he does not consider the consequences of his actions before he acts. nor is wei wuxian able to make sacrifices - even necessary ones in order to avoid greater tragedies.
but. none of this means that wei wuxian is not a deeply heroic person. rather, to do what you believe to be righteous and attempt to live up to your ideals despite the consequences is exactly what MXTX lauds as moral. and to be unable to make a moral sacrifice when everyone else in your society easily does so is in fact deeply heroic.
it is precisely because wei wuxian is not pragmatic that MXTX declares him a hero.
some people, including myself, favor a moral framework that centers pragmatism and reason as virtues. to us, the ideal moral character is someone who makes decisions based on reason and not emotion, who considers the potential consequences of every course of action before making a decision, and who then, based on these inferred future consequences, uses reason to deduce which of all of the possible outcomes is the most preferable.
but this does not in fact describe wei wuxian, nor is this how wei wuxian views ethics. and to be honest, i don't think this is how MXTX views ethics either.
in all three of her stories, MXTX repeatedly comes down harder on the characters who make pragmatic decisions, the characters who are willing to sacrifice. in fact, killing sunshot soldiers while acting as wen ruohan's spy, and then killing nie mingjue's men in order to ensure a chance at killing wen ruohan and saving nie mingjue, was the pragmatic thing for meng yao to do, because that was the least bloody path forwards towards a sunshot victory over qishan wen. in fact, cutting ties with wei wuxian after he attacked the jin-run qiongqi pass labor camp was the pragmatic thing for jiang cheng to do, because it was the only path forward that did not put yunmeng jiang, his first and foremost responsibility, in the line of fire. and yet (though the situation is less clear with jin guangyao), MDZS as a narrative criticizes both jin guangyao and jiang cheng for these decisions - because, to MDZS, righteousness does not lie in pragmatism.
(this is a statement i personally disagree with. but we are here to discuss what MDZS wants to say about pragmatism and righteousness, not what i want to say about pragmatism and righteousness.)
by contrast, the one single act for which deeply controversial jiang cheng is ultimately lauded for in the narrative is also his single least pragmatic, most emotional act. the one single act of jiang cheng's that MDZS does not criticize is when, after the fall of lotus pier, jiang cheng ran out from his hiding spot to distract the wen soldiers from seeing wei wuxian. from a filial, duty-based point of view, this was a deeply stupid and unpragmatic course of action: jiang cheng's first and foremost duty, as the sole surviving jiang and new sect leader jiang, was to survive, rebuild his sect, and avenge his parents. from a consequentialist point of view, this impulsive choice is also what led to the domino-fall of tragedy that followed, since jiang cheng then got captured and had his golden core melted, which then led to everything else. yet this stupid, unpragmatic, and impulsive decision is ultimately the one act MDZS considers to be jiang cheng's single most heroic.
the key as to what MDZS considers to be heroic, what it considers to be righteous, lies in the jiang family motto: 明知不可而为之, attempt the impossible. this line, taken from the analects of confucius, can be considered to be a deeply deontological ideal. i find this twitter thread (warning to my followers: does kind of dunk on JC) to be rather helpful in elucidating this line's meaning.
to attempt the impossible, to try what shouldn't be tried. "ask yourself not whether you can do it, but whether you should...consider not the result but rather the journey - have a clear conscience regardless of outcome." in other words, what matters is less whether you succeeded or failed, or what sort of outcome your actions brought about - what matters is that you tried. what matters is that, in the face of overwhelming odds, you tried to do what you think is right. and even if you end up failing - even if everyone you sought to protect ended up dying - the fact that you tried still has moral weight.
this is why it was righteous of wei wuxian to save the wen remnants - even though the ultimate consequences of that decision were overall negative, even though everyone wei wuxian tried to protect died. in fact, if wei wuxian had died immediately - if he had been shot down by jin archers at the qiongqi pass labor camp the moment he came within their range - if he had died before any wen in the labor camp realized someone wanted to save him - he would still be a righteous person. because, for MDZS, what makes an action righteous is not its consequences. for MDZS, what makes a person righteous is not what impact their actions have on the world, but rather that they have the sort of moral character that leads them to never give up on their ideals.
wei wuxian does not consider the consequences of his actions before he acts. or, should i say - wei wuxian makes decisions despite their consequences, because despite the consequences there are simply some moral causes he simply cannot give up on. wei wuxian did not save the wen remnants because it was pragmatic to do so. it was in fact deeply unpragmatic to do so. no - wei wuxian saved the wen remnants without a concrete long-term plan, without having thought through anything beforehand, with the knowledge of how weak he was in reality - because he could not give up on the wen remnants, consequences be damned.
to have some moral causes you simply cannot give up on, no matter the consequences - to MXTX, is deeply heroic. in this sense, MXTX's moral philosophy is not pragmatic at all, because to be pragmatic is to be concerned with practical consequences. instead, both wei wuxian and MXTX herself are deeply idealistic, because what matters to them are ideals and principles that extend beyond consequence.
as the linked twitter thread notes, this is why MXTX waits until the very end of the book to reveal that wen yuan, now lan sizhui, lived. this is why wangxian only meet mianmian and her family at the end of the book. this is why all of the cumulative positive impacts of wei wuxian's resurrection - jin ling forgiving wei wuxian, jin guangyao, and wen ning, for one - are kept to the end of the story: because MDZS needs to move away from the consequentialist argument. MDZS needs to establish that wei wuxian's righteousness is separate from the impact of his actions: that wei wuxian isn't righteous merely because his actions had a positive impact for which others can thank him, but rather because the actions he undertook were inherently righteous on their own. that even if none of these positive impacts existed - if wen yuan had also died, if mianmian hadn't made it - then wei wuxian's choices would still be moral.
this is also why MDZS ultimately comes down harder on characters like jiang cheng and jin guangyao, even though a more results-oriented moral framework would instead laud such characters. both jiang cheng and jin guangyao are deeply pragmatic characters: they put concrete results before abstract moral ideals, and they're willing to compromise on their ideals in order to achieve better results. i am a JC stan and a jiggy apologist because of these exact traits. but MDZS is a narrative that criticizes such pragmatism and instead holds up wei wuxian's idealism as a moral ideal - so, in order to advance its themes, the MDZS narrative ends up criticizing both jiang cheng and jin guangyao.
ultimately, this idealism - this criticism of pragmatism - lies at the heart of MDZS's themes. wei wuxian's righteousness is directly connected to the fact that he is not pragmatic. the fact that wei wuxian makes moral decisions despite the consequences, and that he is unable to sacrifice any moral cause - is all part of what makes him at once deeply unpragmatic and deeply heroic.
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you see, the funny thing here is that i personally disagree with this theme. as i've said before, i'm a utilitarian. to me, the morality of an action does in fact arise from its consequences; to me, someone who compromises on their ideals to achieve better results is preferable to someone who adheres to all of their ideals and then loses everything. the character i consider to have had the greatest positive impact on this story's world is jin guangyao. the character i consider to have most dutifully fulfilled his obligations is jiang cheng.
therefore, i disagree with basically everything i wrote up there about "trying": i think that if you try to do the right thing, fail epically, and in the process of your failure get a bunch of other people killed as well, the fact that you failed this badly does in fact matter quite a bit. the bulk of my more haterish posts are born from this fundamental disagreement with what MDZS posits is righteousness.
however. as a reader i must recognize that [what i consider to be moral] and [what the author of this story considers to be moral] are two different things. my own moral philosophy may be heavily results-oriented, but MXTX's is much less so. therefore, regardless of what i think of wei wuxian, i conclude that MXTX ultimately intends for us to read wei wuxian as a heroic figure for the exact reasons i gave above - and that fact must then inform every analysis of MDZS i write.
#mdzs#wei wuxian#yanyan speaks#this analysis is also focused on wwx's first life bc wwx in his second life seems to give much fewer shits about moral causes tbh#second life for wei wuxian + all the good rewards at the end is basically a victory lap lol#anyways rip jiang cheng and jin guangyao for being pragmatists in a work that celebrates idealism#get dunked on ig#anyways wwx antis will read the above and go “well isn't this just a lot of words for 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' ”#and like. yeah. that's correct#but mxtx is placing the majority of the moral weight on those good intentions imo#to mxtx - it is better to have heroic intentions and fail epically than it is to have unheroic intentions and achieve decent results.
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Really have to assume that anyone saying hector didn't deserve to die the way he did didn't actually read the Iliad
#i mean first of all none of them deserved to die so jot that down#entire book is about how pointless and tragic war is#but beyond that hectors slaying of Patroclus#was just as dishonorable as Achilles killing hector#just because he failed to decapitate pat and feed him to the dogs#doesnt somehow make him morally better#also the fight over pats body did mutilate him to an extent#that corpse went through it#did hectors end up going through more?#probably#doesn't really change much#the iliad#tumblr showing me lukewarm takes at six am#my kryptonite#morning me does not know how to not write an essay about it#afternoon me is better at letting it go#homer#tagamemnon
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Siffrin plays Disco Elysium AU: Featuring backseat gamer Loop.
#in stars and time#ISAT#Siffrin#Loop#disco elysium#digital art#When I first thought of a crossover I went from 1) 'ISAT Disco AU but Loop is all of the skills'#To: 2) 'Loop is in the mindspace alongside the skills#To my magnum opus: 3)'Loop is sitting next to Siffrin backseat gaming him the whole time.'#Loop beat Disco Elysium ages ago and repeated it to the point they know all the vision quests and dialogue variables.#Siffrin just started playing and Loop keeps ruining the fun by using their meta-game knowledge to try and help.#Also let's be real. Siffrin's stats are 100% completely focused into motorics and nothing else.#If we can't Savoir Faire ourselves of this situation - we will explode. Endurance? Call my insurance instead.#Thinking skills? None. Emotional intelligence and morale? A failed social interaction canonically feels like death to them.#I might have bumped Phys up but...Siffrin's Electrochem stat is like -10. And Pain Threshold is emotional durability too.#Unused part of this joke is that I set their signature skill to Drama.#Both these games made my brain melt so now I get to combine them! I have that power!#This joke made me laugh the entire 3 hours I sat down and drew it and that is what creation should be about.
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are we ready to face the truth that is bruce did not love jason as much as jason loved bruce?
#i know most jason fans know this but you'd be surprised#so much of bruce's love for jason is just misplaced guilt about failing a child he took in#at the end of the day he took jason in because he missed dick/having a kid around#jason was always gonna be expendable to bruce#but to jason bruce was like another father and all his fights with bruce weren't just teenage rebellion or angst#i'm not saying bruce didn't/doesn't love jason because i'm sure he does but most of that love was before jason died and only when jason#behaved the way bruce liked him to#once jason branched out on his own and started having his own moral standpoints bruce started detaching himself#bruce's love was always gonna be conditional compared to jason who would've dedicated his life to bruce for so much less#jason's love for bruce isnt also purely love tho. he has a fucked up sense of what he feels towards bruce because every traumatic moment#in his life happened when his brain was still mentally developing#jason todd#red hood#batman#bruce and jason#bruce wayne#robin jason todd#second robin#dc comics#dc
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imogen fumbling shit is just eternally good fodder for memes, alright. and its at least partly BECAUSE of how powerful she is. someone tripping while using a nerf gun? funny. someone dramatically hoisting up an outfit matchin heavy death laser gun and then immediately tripping and landing on their face? phenom. sometimes she goes "GROVEL" and the enemies grovel and we all go "oooooh" and "aaaahhh" and sometimes she just gets fully ignored and gets so huffy and petulant and ineffectually burns a cantrip just to be petty about it. sometimes she smites her enemies into dust with one move and renders a tree in half after threatening and other times she fucking. falls down a flight of stairs and accidentally sets everything on fire. fires a gun at her own team. loses all her hair. turns blue. etc.
Imogen lifts a humongous sand squid into the sky with her mind powers. Imogen is also falling out of a sky ship and landing on the desert sand far below and just. lying there. while her friend plays the flute in the background. epic hot failgirls NEED the HEIGHT to FAIL FROM. u gotta swing and miss sometimes!!! AND you gotta be REAL petty about it when u miss!!!! fucking fantastic.
#its like how fjord with no dignity is fantastic because fjord is Hot and Charismatic and ClearHeaded under pressure but also#has never had a good experience with an animal despite being wild mother follower. tried to yell a flower into submission (and failed).#u have to take ur hottest and most powerful warriors and make them eat shit every now and then with the same zealousness that they#absolutely wreck shop#I apologize I know I've reblogged like four posts about it its just so delightful#critical role#c3e58#cr spoilers#imogen temult#shitpost#spar speaks#god with fjord and imogen there's just something about extremely powerful anxiety ridden Universes Personal Joke characters huh#whoops. I guess I might have a weakness after all.#theres a separate post about how her fucky morals and general anxiousness also collide hilariously but i realized i was losing the thread#what portion of it i hadnt already lost at least
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ep 43 had me tearing up in a fucking shopping centre ‼️‼️
b+w alt version that I truly couldn't decide if I liked it more . Also I included a lot of thoughts in the tags but they're somewhat incoherent<3
#i dont know what i expected but i was waiting for a friend and too excited to wait until later#malevolent podcast#john doe#john doe malevolent#john malevolent#malevolent fanart#grimm art#ep 43#ep 43 left me with a lot of thoughts ... i didnt quite like how much of a recap it felt like at times but that might#be because ive been relistening and like yeah everyone knows that john 🙄 but that's not the case for everyone and with monthly uploads#things get forgotten easily#i find the discussion of “humanity” so interesting because John has shown that without someone that he has forcibly grown to value as an#equal... something he cannot do as the king of yellow as he is superior to all of his realm and presumably stays out of other elder god's#anyway. without that equality and enviroment to grow he fails to reach his goal of compassion and falls onto old ways.#John. The King in Yellow. shown by both times each has found themselves in human form do not just crave power and influence!!!#THEY CRAVE COMMUNITY!!! an endrich being not born or raised with nothing but power and ego#CRAVES COMMUNITY.#His goal of “humanity” is not a selfless goal like John projects - it is ultimately somewhat selfish as he does not want to be alone!!#which makes this desire so much more human#i don't know maybe this is just me spelling out whats already there but the way john and the witch argued about humanity frustrated me#it felt like they were missing the point or that perhaps the “good/evil” “black/white” retoric was already realised by me and john needed#realise it himself . which is fair !!!#i dont know!!!!#the witch was talking about how bad everyone was and how humanity is cruel and john was talking about Lily (#who also frustrates me how shes used in the plot somewhat she was literally just a nurse doing her job bro#) but to John - yes internally he is struggling with his moral greyness and im so proud of him for growing being himself SO PROUD#JUST.!!! he wants community. he needs community. he loves his friend. 'humanity' at its core does not matter as long as you try to be bette#and i think thats awesome and i really enjoyed the episode#guhh im rambling enjoy my tag rambling i dont know i want john to have more friends :(#yorrick can be another friend godd i love you yorrick so silly
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"There is no excuse for ignorance" fuck you. I wish I could be more gracious about this but fuck you. Nobody is omniscient. Everybody has different time and resources and experiences to learn. The fact that you know more is more down to luck than any inherent superiority on your part: luck to be born in the right education, luck to be educated by the right teachers, luck to hear fragments and to find the truth rather than a lie when you got curious. How dare you look down on those who weren't as lucky as you. How dare you claim that sharing the knowledge you have been given is beneath you.
#i am so so fucking sick of this#this anti-learning bad faith anti-intellectual idea that you are better than the ignorant#i too despise those who refuse to learn but refusing to learn is not the same as never having the chance#and you'd rather believe every ignorant person is the former than admit that it's almost always the latter#you are ignorant too. we are all ignorant in one way or another#making it a moral failing to be ignorant just means you can't admit your own fallibility and that's a path you don't want to walk down
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"believe victims first always" "a rich white man does not need your protection" and "your mental health comes first" "you don't need to make a statement about anything" are all statements that absolutely should coexist btw
#last thing ill speak on this i promise it's just that i saw some people like implying that not immediately putting out a statement against#neil gaiman#is a moral failing#and that fucked me up a bit. i dont think it is. not openly saying how much im heartbroken and angry at this whole thing doesn't mean im#apologizing his actions at all.
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Detroit Become Human and why does this game decide that the problem in society is individual people treating androids poorly because those androids are choking them out of the workforce and NOT the corporations and governments who deliberately designed the androids to do this
#AUGHHGHH#I promise you dbh is still one of my favourite games I really do#But ohhhhhhhjghh my GODDDD it makes me mad#Like ESPECIALLY this year. With artists and writers being so fucked by ai#Like the game has less than no sympathy for people who were screwed over by cyberlife deciding their labour wasn't worth anything#Like everybody has to be a strawman. Everybody has to be the violent 'android bad because (some vague reason that draws on the#'immigrants are stealing our jobs' line despite the fact that these things aren't equivalent at all)#Like yes. Robots being placed in positions where a real human would be paid a real wage to do that job is bad. This is a bad thing#But the game. Does not CARE#It's so morally neutral for cyberlife to be allowed to mass produce androids in the middle of a poverty epidemic that they created#It's fine! Says Detroit Become Human because everyone rendered homeless or struggling by this company's actions is a violent drug addict#Or something#It's like HUH#H U H#This game was so enamoured with it's weird bad civil rights allegory that it forgot that people do actually need jobs to uh. Pay to live#Because things are hell#And I think it could've been SO much better if the game acknowledged this AS WELL as acknowledging that no android chose this#Like a fresh deviant didn't ask to cause a real person to not have a job. The company who made them did#But dbh doesn't care. Cyberlife is morally neutral in this. I swear#Loses my mind this game is such a mess#Uhhh if anyone's reading this please don't get mad at me I promise I do really love this game. Like this game is the reason I#Met the love of my life. I am physically incapable of hating this game#I just think it's so worth discussing the ways it fails in (what I think is) a constructive manner#detroit become human#game analysis#I guess#If anyone has any contributions or disagrees with me I would LOVE love to hear. Genuinely I love talking about things like this#Essay in tags
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if I had a nickel for every time I was in a fandom and a child character had a breakdown and did something that accidentally hurt another character, and then the fandom all turned on the character and vilified them because they [the fandom] can’t understand that sometimes 14 year olds make mistakes when they’re going through something traumatic, I would have 2 nickels
not a lot but it really is weird it happened twice
#This is targeted at anyone who vilifies Gon from hxh or Homura from pmmm#”Gon was manipulative towards Killua and took advantage of him” shut up shut the fuck up#”Homura never actually cared about any of the other girls she only cared about Madoka” never touch the internet ever again you absolute idi#I’m sorry that some of you incells can’t understand moral complexity or that characters can’t always be 100% good all the time#they were kids#they were only 14#At the same time saying stuff like this is actively undermining both Gon and Homuras characters but also Killua and Madokas as well#Killua and Gons friendship was kinda toxic from the beginning. They were each others first ever friends#and they didn’t really know how to have any#Gon was literally having a mental breakdown confronting the person who killed the closest thing he had ever had to a father#can you really blame him for lashing out???#And Homura#don’t get me started on the amount of idiots in the pmmm fandom who think she’s evil because he did what she thought was best for Madoka#she heard Madoka say she was unhappy being a god and how lonely she was and she took action#if she didn’t care about the other girls then WHY DID THE CLARA DOLLA DRAG THEM INTO HER LABYRINTH???#WHY DID SHE MAKE SURE THEY WERE ALL HAPPY WHEN SHE REWROTE THE UNIVERSE??#she tried for years to save Madoka just to fail when she made her final wish to become a god#imagine how she felt when she realized she wasn’t happy with that outcome either#when she realized she was all alone#she just wanted for her to be happy.#i swear to god#if you think either Gon or Homura are evil you might as well just block me now#because I fully believe you should not be allowed internet access#rant#rant post#pmmm#madoka magica#homura akemi#puella magi madoka magica#madoka kamane
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healer higuchi theory is waking me up to all kinds of higusano possibilities. if she really was assigned to akutagawa because of his illness then that would mean it’s both of their jobs to heal people who are on the verge of death. hmm
#still thinking about lena's tags on that post i made. ty lena#new moral dilemma: choosing between a healing ability that can mend all wounds and makes fatal injuries seem trivial#or one that presumably can never do enough to push the possibility of death out of the picture#shunzen being completely healed only to have to go out to the battlefield again#akutagawa being given more time to fulfil his purpose which just turns into more time he fails at being acknowledged + has to live in pain#both of them having their suffering prolonged by what’s supposed to be kindness. ack#higusano
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I'm only halfway through it, will finish it...later. but my biggest gripe so far with Troy (2004) is how much they are butchering Menelaus. And not just by mispronouncing his name. He's portrayed as a cruel brute and I'm like bro. He does not deserve this treatment 😔
I understand some changes due to cultural shift and the nature of a different medium but. Why'd you gotta do Menelaus like that?
#wren rambles#greek mythology#troy (2004)#menelaus#the only character who is spot on PERFECT is Paris i think#because everytime hes on screen i want to punch his stupid face#even then though theyre trying to give him a *character arc* and make him Brave#BOOOO hes a pathetic man child#dang all my iliad related posts end up hating on paris huh#deserved.#anyway two things i think adoptions fail in#1) the portrayal or lack of portrayal of the gods#if you remove them fully it changes the whole vibe of the story#if you make them just Super Powered People and give them too much of a character arc beyond Force Of Nature it starts falling apart#and 2) overcompensating for modern values and morals#see: menelaus is a man who lives in a mysoginistic society so he must be Evil#(side note making helen and paris romance something the audience is supposed to root for is ALSO a bad take)#and also all the Girl Boss adaptations#i havent figured out what the balance is yet. but itll be there somewhere im sure
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Thinking about how Raf decides to run Hi-Note, turning it from a recording studio to a proper label* with a bit of a catch.
Specifically, Raf mandates Hi-Note to find musicians who've fallen through the industry's cracks or play to extremely niche audiences--and provide them the space and financial security to produce music in whatever capacity they're capable of. Hi-Note is able to market and distribute records/recordings, and it accepts that it'll lose money on the majority of the artists that sign onto it. It's run as a business on paper, but its goal isn't to raise capital. Raf's... from a wealthy family who runs a wealthy corporate machine. He gets paid a fuckoff amount of money every year just for existing, and he only inherits more as time goes on. He doesn't need Hi-Note to be financially viable. Rather, Hi-Note kinda becomes the seive through which he's able to pay steady patronage to musical talent that might otherwise have never been able to get a foothold via the more standard industry avenues, granting money/resources to them so they can comfortabley produce the music they love producing and reach a wider audience for that music than they might have been able to on their own. If an artist manages to make decent profit, the cut Hi-Note receives circles right back around again to help support the label's artists who don't generate profit. So, in that way, one artist's success is everyone's success.
Hi-Note cherry picks the artists they sign, of course...and the circle of talent they scoop up stays rather small, with priority given to those who come via the recommendation of established Hi-Note employees. There's a certain...type of artist personality that it favours, and certain types of personalities it staunchly avoids. Artists who'd get along fine via traditional avenues or who have little to no trouble marketing themselves are passed over. As is anyone who seems to have lacked certain challenges in their lives and failed to develop certain perspectives on...how people should be treated and discussed. And this area of high subjectivity/personal bias is probably where Hi-Note finds most of the critisism levelled against it. But there is an equalibrium/"vibe" that Raf aspires to maintain within Hi-Note, and he is pretty uncompromising about it, since a lot of it ties in with his own personal feelings of ease and comfort. Perhaps for this reason alone, Hi-Note can never grow beyond a very humble size.
But, so long as the people working with and within Hi-Note are happy and feel well supported in an industry that otherwise would have ground them into jadesd burnt-out husks, Raf is content with its trajectory. Hi-Note is probably the closest thing he and Margie get to having kids lmao. They're not family, and he's most comfortable keeping them at that amiciable, professional arm's length. But at the same time, he's very proud of his retinue and is ride or die for Hi-Note's artists and employees. And, for the most part, they are for him, too.
#it's quite different from how Guillaume ran things...#Uncle Bill still treated like A Business.#Raf is like “what if I turned this into a supermassive money black hole that produces just a bunch of really weird music instead?”#Raf is bad at wealth aquisition/retention and it's all Margie's fault--she's a terrible influence[positive].#Margie has conditioned him to believe that wealth needs to be shared and that dying rich could probably be considered a moral failing.#Not that Margie has ever SAID this...but she embodies it.#hi-note
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