#all just moral failings

[memorygirls]

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.

[bixels]

tarpit site.

[fascinationstreetmp3]

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.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Siffrin plays Disco Elysium AU: Featuring backseat gamer Loop.

[qiu-yan]

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.

---

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.

[baejax-the-great]

Really have to assume that anyone saying hector didn't deserve to die the way he did didn't actually read the Iliad

[critter-wizard]

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

[mikakuna]

are we ready to face the truth that is bruce did not love jason as much as jason loved bruce?

[sparring-spirals]

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.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

"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.

[menlove]

Now when did the other beatles grow from their sexism and/or abuse like acknowledge maybe but grow from it yeah no💀 Not excusing Paul’s actions back then but we’re not gonna pretend that the others are on a higher moral standing than him😭

FASDFASDF WAS THINKING THIS TOO like all love and light but george was cheating on olivia and treating like women like shit and john was strangling may pang in front of god and everyone let's not pretend any of them were good people here lmfaoooo they were all sexist douchebags and the sooner we can all get on board w this and not be like "well MY sexist douchebag was BETTER" the more peace and love and joy i will feel on planet earth

no hate to the person who left that tag but let's all take a deep look within on whether or not the beatles were good people bc the answer is a universal "WELL-"

[urfavisananimegirl]

walter white from breaking bad

Walter Hartwell White (Breaking Bad) is an Anime Girl!

[starscreamingg]

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

[transexualpirate]

"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

[wavebiders]

For what it's worth I do understand how much it sucks when a CR character's arc doesn't end up being what you imagined. This is an incredibly longform show and sometimes you've spent years investing in a story before you realize that it's not at all what you were looking for.

I've been there with Orym. There was a long time where I had incredibly high hopes for a compelling deconstruction of the whole straight man good soldier boy thing. I was incredibly bummed out when I realized Liam didn't intend for any of that.

You do need to accept it, though. I don't hyperfocus on Orym every week and whine about how his story isn't working. I just acknowledge this particular character isn't interesting to me and that I at times find Liam's choices frustrating and then move on.

You can be sad Imogen's story isn't about accepting that her mom is evil and killing her or whatever, but that ship has long sailed. This is the direction Laura has chosen to take her character and you are under no obligation to like it, but at a certain point you're just gonna have to let go of the arc you wish you had gotten.

[rustedleopard]

I'll ask! Would Cerojin get divorced? They are both very stubborn people. I can see them trying to work it out somehow (even if only for Kanako's sake).

I love how people are starting to see me as the Cerojin divorce guy, lol

For the most part, I see Ceroba's and Chujin's relationship going out in such a spectacular fashion that there's no way for them to try to salvage it. I'm talking "months/years of poor communication and the stresses of life and having to provide for the family practically singlehandedly" putting cracks in the dam that is Ceroba's idolization of Chujin that holds back anything... unsavory that she might feel about him. And then, one day, the dam breaks and Ceroba goes from "Chujin is so wonderful and perfect" to "Chujin is awful. He's done nothing but bum around while I've had to do everything for the family!!! I hate him!!!" And then their relationship goes out in a full-on "flinging magic and words you can't take back (and maybe a chair)" messy explosion. (Okay, well, it wouldn't be immediate, there would be signs that Ceroba's getting frustrated with him, but she's too busy trying to bury/ignore those feelings, so you'd only really see her temper flare up occasionally before she tries to steady herself by saying "My husband is a wonderful person, I'm doing what I can to help him. I shouldn't be acting like this" and Chujin's too busy focusing on what he wants to do that he's not paying attention to how his wife feels. They CANNOT communicate properly for the life of them :'). The relationship still peters out pretty quickly once Ceroba stops feeling the love, though.)

Buuuuuut, let's say that they're able to communicate well enough that they can tell each other "We NEED to make this work. We can't get a divorce. We can't have our marriage fail." Well... It would be a nightmare. To say the least. They'd both only try to force the relationship and make it work for their own egos without any of the groundwork that makes a relationship work, so at best it'd be a public performance of what a happy couple should look like instead of what it would be like. A happy and healthy marriage needs more than just love to work. It needs trust. It needs shared responsibilities. It needs proper communication. And these are areas where Ceroba and Chujin fail each other. Sure, maybe they might be able to act like they tolerate each other when they're out in public (i.e. not yelling at each other, though there's still some weird tension between them that some people would be aware of). But behind closed doors, I can't see this facade holding up well. Conversations would be so insanely passive-aggressive, that you'd have to call them "passive-aggressive-aggressive." They would probably develop a routine like this every day:

Ceroba: "You're home late. How was work?" (<- Said with a smile tight enough that she could put teeth marks into steel)

Chujin: "Fine." (<- Chujin got his ear chewed off about not contributing financially around the house so he got the first job that he could to prove her wrong. He hates it and his negative feelings about his job rebound onto Ceroba because he feels like she forced him into it.)

Ceroba: "Oh, that's wonderful to hear! Well, dinner's on the table for you. Kanako and I already ate, so you'll have to have it alone."

Chujin: "... It's cold."

Ceroba: "Oh, well. That's what happens when you stay late at work without telling me. Microwave's in the kitchen, you can handle it yourself." (<- she is already thinking about the bottle)

And on and on and on. They'd be the sorts of people that everybody else around them wants them to get divorced because they're sick of all the arguing and stress and anger. Starlo in this situation, brave man that he is, tries to recommend that Ceroba gets a divorce and ends up getting yelled at because "How dare you suggest that we can't make things work!!" Martlet doesn't seem as privy to Chujin's home life as Starlo is with Ceroba, so all she knows is that things are rough at home, but she tries to invite him out bowling or to relax in Honeydew's hot spring to get some of the stress out. Both of them are trying their best to help their friends, but this isn't something that they can handle because their friends are just.... astronomically stubborn and stupid.

(And this isn't even getting into how a monster's health is heavily tied to their emotional state. A monster can literally be put into a near-death state from grieving too hard. Can you imagine how rough things would be with all that stress? Humans already experience a myriad of health problems when put under stress for an extended period of time, so you can just imagine how bad things would be healthwise for a monster. Food for thought...)

And as for Kanako? Oh my god. Out of everybody in this situation, she is the one I sympathize with/pity the most. Ceroba and Chujin have a choice in their relationship and how it's going/turns out, but Kanako doesn't. She's just a kid. Like I said earlier, on paper they might say that they're trying to make this marriage work, perhaps "for Kanako's sake," but that's their egos speaking because if they were actually paying attention to what their daughter wants, they'd realize that she'd be happier if they weren't fighting all the time, even if that means a divorce. I can see her feeling responsible for how terribly things are going because they keep saying "We're trying to stay together for your sake." Maybe she tries intervening in arguments to stop Mommy and Daddy from fighting each other, but over time gets burnt out on doing that because she's not stopping them from fighting, she's only delaying the inevitable. Most likely, she'd avoid being at home/around her parents as much as possible because there's so much tension at home and she never knows when tempers are gonna flare, so it's better to sleep over at friends or spend the day at the Wild East/the Sunnyside farm/at the playground/Cafe Dune/somewhere else. Over time, her parents' constant quarreling could even burn her out/make her jaded and irritated with her mom and dad as well as depressed because she feels like it's her fault they're like that. She never asked for her mom and dad to try to maintain their relationship for her sake; she just wants to be happy, whatever shape that happiness may take.

Tl;dr Divorce is a mercy in this situation.