#asking asks means people are willing to hear other views right? to hear other's interpretations and thoughts?

[project-sekai-facts]

Asking this because I genuinely need an explanation, not as a counterargument.

I'm 100% aware of the queer erasure going on in JP → EN translations. The shameless hiding of LGBTQ+ subtext is ridiculous. However, some examples have been bothering me lately ("bothering" as in, I've been thinking about them a lot), these examples being the lack of usage of the word "love", especially in one of Minori's.

In one of Minori's dialogues, she states that she loves Haruka (originally using "daisuki", if I recall correctly). The expression "love" in this case gets translated to "have feelings for", which is considered to be erasure. That's what bugs me: why would it be queer erasure?

In my first language, Spanish, we have the expression "te quiero" (literally "I want you", though it has no possessive connotations and it's a more toned version of loving), and the stronger "te amo" ("I love you"). The latter is generally used romantically, though it can be used in other contexts (I tell my deepest and closest friends both "te quiero" and "te amo", for example). From my understanding, English doesn't have an equivalent to "te quiero", so "I love you" can apply in any context.

However, and again, to my understanding, "having feelings for someone" is only ever used romantically. Maybe it's weaker than loving someone in a sense, but still, you wouldn't say you have feelings for someone who you wish to have/maintain a platonic relationship with (correct me if I'm wrong).

So, to my understanding:

"daisuki" → [strong] loving someone, with vague connotations (generally interpreted as romantic)

"I love you" → [strong] certainly used romantically, yet it can be platonic or familial too

"I have feelings for you" → [weaker] used romantically.

Does that make sense or am I being ignorant?

Ah sorry if I confused you with that example from the MMJ main story. I don't think it's erasure because the EN translation keeps the pretty much the same meaning, I pointed it out because of EN's refusal to translate the words suki/daisuki as love in certain instances.

EN seems to be willing to translate suki/daisuki directly when it's being used to talk about things or aspects of a person, like in these instances:

However, when it's used directly about a person, the translators always find some way around it, like in these instances:

(An/Kohane are an exception and iirc siblings are too?)

(Also in the Asahi example he uses a conjugated form of horeru but it means pretty much the same thing)

Whilst most of these convey the original meaning to some degree and don't really count for erasure, it's still odd that EN will not let the characters say they love each other. It's not even like it has to be interpreted romantically. Like it's firmly established that Leo/need are childhood best friends from the start, I don't think a lot of readers are going to jump straight to romance if the girls said they love each other. It's like they're removing it as a "just in case" so that no one can view it as romantic at all.

Yeah, you're right that "having feelings for someone" is by far more commonly used in a romantic sense. Whilst some people irl probably use it platonically (most likely aspec ppl), in media you're really only going to hear it used romanitcally. It's not weaker than "I love you" imo, but it depends on who you ask because to other people it might be weaker/stronger.

[antebellumite]

(since i sense you may be having an atticus finch moment rn) is go set a watchman "canon" to you? i always liked tkam but i never read gsaw (even though someone gave it to me when it came out) because i got a weird feeling about the circumstances of it being published among other things. never talked to anybody about it so figured i'd ask a certified tkam enjoyer

i am having Such an atticus finch moment that i have three fics in the works for him

ohhh boy so hear me out.

warning: i'm rereading tkam as we speak and its been a while since ive read gsaw

in my own personal head-interpretation of to kill a mockingbird, in which the irl reality of its publication is disregarded, gsaw is canon in the sense that it's the alternate universe of to kill a mockingbird, with the point of divergence being the tom robinson trial.

tom robinson is found guilty: atticus experiences Character Growth and becomes and remains the folk hero Defender of Rights and dilf we know today

tom robinson is not found guilty [or at least, not found guilty via the defense atticus uses in gsaw]: atticus basically remains on the natural course he was in the beginning of tkam to bigotry and Racism TM

tldr: gsaw, on its own, is not a good book, and nor is it fully canon, but it does serve as great contextualization to the person that atticus is in tkam and who atticus could have been.

at the beginning of the book and throughout the trial, atticus finch is clearly a very White Moderate in our Modern Terms, in the sense that he might disapprove of the racism exhibited by the citizens of maycomb, but he also is more than content to not do anything about it. his worldview is essentially: "man it sure sucks that my neighbors are prejudiced and more than willing to sentence an innocent man to death, and but i guess i'll tolerate it and spend time around them because they're good people at heart [to other white people]." you know how one of the most memorable lessons atticus teaches to scout is to have empathy for others? my argument is that atticus's practicing of that is what makes him to give too much leeway to the bigoted members of the community around him.

we see this with ike finch, maycomb's "sole surviving confederate veteran" and stonewall jackson fetishist. he makes his appearance early on in the book, prior to the robinson case even being introduced. according to scout, he comes by at least once a year to "rehash the war" with atticus. while i can assume this means that ike is representing the confederacy and atticus the union in this conversation, considering that in the immediate paragraph after, atticus states "this time we aren't fighting the yankees, we're fighting our friends. but remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home." it implies that in this american civil war replay, either both of them are identifying with the confederacy, or ike is and atticus is more than okay to go along with it. and in addition, atticus's apparent determination to remain on good terms with the people of maycomb no matter how bitter it got adds questions to just what he would have considered bitter enough for the people of maycomb to no longer remain his friends. if the mob at the scene at the jailhouse actually managed to lynch tom robinson, which they were probably going to do, until scout saved the day, would that have been "bitter enough" for atticus to reconsider being friends with murderers?

actually the fact that he adds in 'and this is still our home' makes me think he was planning to leave maycomb entirely if that scenerio actually happened but i digress

and then you get to ms. dubose, who serves as another aspect to how atticus views the racism of his town. when ms. dubose dies, he calls her the most bravest person he'd ever known, for having the courage to die clean of her morphine addiction, and also a "great lady". which, i understand, in part, is because she Just Died and he's talking to Jem and Scout who are children, but the way that atticus talks about it makes you feel as though he's implying that her courage serves as either recompense or excuse for a. the racism and b. the whole thing where she essentially verbally harassed jem and scout whenever they came by for the horrid sin of walking where she could see them.

of course there's also maycomb trial in general. atticus obviously knows that he cant win-- the famous 'just because you're licked doesn't mean you can give up' quote-- because he understands the prejudice of the town. but i believe that behind the quote, atticus still had faith in the judicial process, just not in the people who were in charge of it in maycomb. its part of the reason for his appeal-- to get robinson to a higher court where the people there could be more open-minded.

so in essence, atticus at the turning point of his story [ the trial ], is someone who's

1. overly lenient and sympathetic view of his maycomb neighbors allows him to excuse much of the harmful rhetoric and actions they perpetrate

2. considers racism to be, while Bad, a certain type of bad that is ultimately forgivable/excusable. i think there's also evidence in tkam that he basically also thinks the same thing for other forms of bigotry but i'm not going to look for them.

3. has trust in the judicial system

so from there, we have the tom robinson trial.

i like to think that what acting as tom robinson's defense attorney did for atticus was that it forced him to actually reckon with the racism of maycomb as directed towards an actual human being rather than a Nebulous Construct. when tom robinson got declared guilty despite being innocent, it showed him the actual harmful effects of what the people of maycomb believed, on an actual human being, who was subsequently presumably murdered via 17 gunshot wounds. it showed the failures of a system that allowed for tom robinson to be murdered and sentenced for a crime he didn't commit in the first place.

in gsaw, without tom robinson being convicted, i don't think that lesson would have hit so hard. to gsaw!atticus, robinson being declared not guilty is proof that the racism of maycomb is ultimately Not That Harmful, proof that the system ultimately Works As It Should, and it allows him to sink deeper into interactions with more extreme racist individuals, and eventually become the verison of atticus we see in gsaw.

in addition, gsaw!atticus's defense for tom robinson that gets him acquitted is that the robinson's presumed rape of mayella was consensual, whereas tkam!atticus reveals that the rape didn't happen between robinson and mayella in the first place (although, you know.) which implies a contrast between gsaw!atticus and tkam!atticus where tkam!atticus was focused on exonerating robinson's public image in order to then acquit robinson, but gsaw!atticus was focused on acquitting robinson head on, even if it meant attacking mayella instead.

what this would mean is that gsaw!atticus might not even have had all that much of an interaction with tom robinson, and therefore wasn't able to do that whole tkam-trademark Understanding and Seeing Him As A Person, thereby Removing his past Blinders to Injustice TM TM TM.

and this leads to the changes in atticus from tkam and gsaw. they're still the same person, but with a different turning point.

[bettyshoweduptotheparty]

Hi! I'm really interested to hear your opinion on this. Why are people so resistant to the idea that celebrities, to put it bluntly, lie? Even if it's not about someone they stan. It should just be common sense. I'm so frustrated with people taking what celebrities say at face value. And if you dare to suggest that they do, in fact, lie, for whatever reason, people often start acting like you're the stupid one. Like, take Taylor for example. Why do a lot of people simply refuse to engage with any evidence we have and just decide that we're delusional. Because "she's always dated men and is dating one right now". They refuse to even entertain the possibility of these relationship being fake. And it's especially frustrating when it's coming from other lesbians, who call Taylor "the most heterosexual celebrity ever". What is stopping them from just listening what "those crazy gaylors" have to say? How do you break through this denial? I'm just ranting at this point because I was just talking to someone like that, and it's so annoying when people treat you like you're insane without actually listening to you😔

Hello! That is such an excellent question, and it has so many layers to it. But I think the two most prevalent ones I'm going to discuss are parasocial relationships and news media literacy. Warning, this is LONG!

Firstly, let me say that I don't advice to ever try and convince anyone of something that is not a widely accepted truth when they haven't asked to be persuaded. People need to be open-minded and willing to see other people's views and reasoning, in order to come to new conclusions, if they are not in that ready mindset, you're only ever going to get rejections. I'm not a Jehovah's witness, I have no interest in convincing anyone if they're not interested. But if someone came to me saying, 'Hey, I saw xyz and that seems suss, what's your opinion...?' Then I know I have their attention and they are open to listening to my interpretation and the evidence I present to them. If we come to different conclusions, that's fine, but at least you've taken in my reasons for why I believe what I believe. And I'm an academic at heart, academic discourse is ever changing, if new information comes to light, I may change my opinion.

Media Literacy and what we believe about the world

It's sad and shocking perhaps, but trust in reputable news media is at an all time low since 2020 in many developed countries. In a time where raw scientific research was influencing political decision making 'hot off the press', many people lost faith in science because they mistook scientific discourse and peer review as 'changing your mind'. Following the evidence where it leads, can always mean finding something you don't want to see. And that happened a lot during the pandemic. So, while I'm frustrated, I'm not surprised that so many people turned to types of media outlets that would bring them more comforting (if less reputable) news. And we're only three years past that now, I think the general populations' thirst for comforting news is still high, especially when we only see war and destruction everywhere we look. So what we choose to consume, shapes how we see the world, and with more and more people consuming information on the internet, the algorithm keeps them in an echo chamber of those existing views. Now, here is where celebrity culture comes in. Celebrity news are often gems of good and engaging news media, because they evoke emotion that unites people behind something. Celebrity gets married - everyone is happy for them. Celebrities break up - everyone is sad for them. Celebrity cheats on partner or commits some other crime - they are now universally hated. Very simple, gives people an easy way to build a belief system and moral compass on who/what is good and bad. It's also the easiest way to form an opinion on someone who you most likely won't ever meet in person. Now imagine someone coming in with an opinion that challenges those truths that you've built your believes on. You'd most likely get defensive, right? Accepting even the possibility that the truths we accept about the world are based on incorrect information, and therefore might need changing, is very daunting. For everybody. I teach information literacy to Undergraduate students for a living, and even I sometimes have to take a step back from research when the evidence is leading me somewhere that makes me uncomfortable. We all have biases and we like to be proven right rather than proven wrong. Or we might find something that would require us to take action on something. That's a lot of work though and ignorance is bliss so finding information that doesn't fit into our biases and ignoring it is also very common. It's all in the name of protecting the pillars of what we believe to be true about the world. So, to answer your question 'Why are people so unwilling to believe.../unwilling to engage with the evidence': Because they have a lot to loose. One thing that changes might lead to a lot more questions and before you know it, everything you thought was true collapses like a house of cards. You can't be the wrecking ball, people have to pull the cards out for themselves when they're ready. And the biggest celebrity in the world right now being a closeted gay woman? That wouldn't just be about Taylor, it would be a statement on the state of LGBTQ equality/freedom and how far we've supposedly come.

Parasocial Relationships

Ok, here is where we get to Taylor. Because a lot of people's first line of defense is the line 'But she wouldn't lie to us!' And why do they think that? Because she has, maybe more than any other celebrity, cultivated a relationship with her fans where they feel like they know her. But the fact is that they don't know HER, they know the version of her that she has carefully constructed to be her public-facing persona. Parasocial relationships are those where you can't have a true social interaction, because the person you're having it with is either fictional or you don't know them personally. It's a one way conversation. But Taylor has blurred the lines of this so much by engaging with her fans online, meeting them after shows and even inviting them into her house at secret sessions. You almost can't blame little swifties for believing they're besties now when they've met her in person and they've actually talked to her. Or the people she sent presents to for Christmas back in the day. That's something only a friend and not a random stranger would do. Taylor bases her public appeal hugely on relatability, and what is more relatable than feeling like she's your friend, right? And sadly it’s a lot more hurtful to imagine that your friend would lie to you than a random stranger. So, the version of Taylor that meets fans in person and invites them to her house and sends them presents, she would never lie to them. But that version isn’t real, it’s a fictional character built to protect the real person. Real Taylor lies through her teeth to protect what’s sacred to her. All the kids that were invited to the rep secret sessions and came out with stories of cute couple photos of her and Joe and a mission to tell everyone that those songs are about her bf and her bf only… I hate to tell you but you were used for free damage control. Imagine how hurt you’d feel if that was you and you thought you’d met your hero. I have no illusion that Taylor somehow cares about me. We’re not friends and if I ever met her I wouldn’t expect anything more than the chitchat I exchange with my uber driver. (In fact, I recently had a dream that I met her on a bad day and yelled at her 😬)

Compromise or Live and Let Live

Hopefully I’ve given you an idea of why it’s hard for anyone to let go of something they want to believe in. And it may be best to let people believe what they want as long as it’s not hurting others and they’re respectful of other opinions. There may also be a middle ground. E.g. in this context, a lot of people are much more willing to believe that Taylor is bisexual. So it’s possible to acknowledge her queer flagging without immediately calling all her previous relationships into question. I’ve had some lovely respectful discussions over lyrics analysis with people who don’t necessarily believe exactly the same as me. I can respect that others find comfort in stories that I believe to be untrue. I'm sure I also find comfort in things they believe to be untrue. Whatever brings people joy is right for them. If that's gushing over Taylor dating the boy on the football team, let them, that's why she's doing it. I would only argue if the same people don't extend that same curtesy towards us and let us be happy when she looks up at Karlie a million times during a show. And educating people is always allowed. Just because a woman has only dated men doesn’t make her straight (that applies generally, not just to celebrities). Just because you don’t know what queer flagging is doesn’t mean it isn’t happening and other people are picking up on it. But a majority of people will always buy the stories she sells them, and that's because she gives them what they want to see. Like she said in the documentary about what she feels the world expects from her: Live out a narrative that we find to be entertaining, but not so crazy that it makes us uncomfortable.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Joseph Burgo, Ph.D

Published: May 11, 2023

In 1942, the psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch published a landmark paper in which she described a particular type of person who relates to the world and to other people in ways that appear normal but who, over time, comes across as inauthentic. “Every attempt to understand the way of feeling and manner of life of this type forces on the observer the inescapable impression that the individual’s whole relationship to life has something about it which is lacking in genuineness and yet outwardly runs along ‘as if’ it were complete.” Hence the term she coined to denote such people—the “As If” Personality.

When these individuals come for therapy, they often appear to engage enthusiastically in the psychotherapeutic process, though over time, no progress is made; a feeling of futility might plague the therapist. The challenge is to recognize and address a fundamental dynamic crippling the work: rather than being used to convey meaning, the words employed by the client instead conceal and ward off an internal truth felt to be intolerable. The personality enacted for the therapist’s benefit embodies a kind of performance, the simulacrum of an actual person with emotions and connections to other people, when in fact, the person feels empty inside and unable to engage authentically with anyone.

In the early years of my practice, one client (a highly intelligent and verbal young man) once asked, “If you tell me what you believe my unconscious is saying based on what you hear, how am I to know if you’re right? How do I know if some other formulation isn’t what’s actually true?” It’s ultimately up to the client to decide whether an intervention is accurate, of course, but this young man couldn’t connect my words with his inner world to assess their accuracy, largely because he relied upon language to obscure rather than to illuminate. He appeared to be a willing client, but the way he communicated instead made sure I’d never get anywhere near him.

As the treatment progressed, he began to offer alternative interpretations to my own. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he might say. “But it could also be …” At that point in my career, I viewed such client-therapist interactions through the lens of dependency and the common defenses against it; I would have pointed out how he was relating me as if we were colleagues or co-therapists and couldn’t allow himself to be a client depending upon me for help. While that formulation is true, I would now add this: while it appeared as if we were engaged in a psychotherapeutic process, he was thwarting my attempts to make contact by substituting an alternative reality for each one that I proposed. Therapy became a competition via language to define what was “true”; he ultimately won that contest and moved on.

Historians of psychoanalytic thought view Deutsch’s formulation of the “As If” Personality as a precursor to our understanding of borderline conditions and pathological narcissism, and my own clinical experience bears that out. The use of language to obscure or annihilate hated truths regularly features in psychotherapy with clients afflicted by disordered personalities; helping them to connect with and tolerate acute psychic pain is a central challenge of this work and means developing a more authentic language connected to emotional truth.

* * *

In my more recent work with gender-distressed youth, I find myself again confronting this disconnect between language and emotion, but it feels less to me about disordered personalities than a social media-induced kind of dissociation. One teenage girl, trans-identified, talks at length about her daily interactions with her mother, her peers at work and at school, but the space between us feels dead. At times, I have a feeling of futility, that if I try to make sense of the actual words she employs and events she describes, we’ll remain stuck in a place without meaning.

Another client, a highly intellectual young man, uses sessions to expatiate on the socio-cultural construction of gender, explains to me why he rejects masculinity and embraces the feminine, but has no connection with his body. He never masturbates and finds his nocturnal emissions to be disturbing. Now and then for reasons that mystify him, he will begin to weep in session. He feels relieved by his tears but has no words to describe what he might be feeling.

Yet another teenage girl, also trans-identified, adamantly insists upon her desire for cross-sex hormones. Like my other two clients, she has no relationship with her body. She spends much of her free time playing video games online, inhabiting her avatar, and interacting with the avatars of other online players she’s never met in real life. The possibility that testosterone will make her sterile or eventually lead her to have a hysterectomy bothers her not at all; she finds the idea of sexual intercourse to be disgusting and has no intention to marry or have children. She has never masturbated and finds the idea “gross.”

Like many young people who survived the lockdown years by going online, these clients have spent so much time inhabiting virtual worlds that they’ve lost connection with what’s visceral, immediate, and real. They live in a realm of imagination where anything is possible, where infinite malleability has taken the place of a physical world with reality-based limitations. By changing your name and your avatar, you can transform yourself into someone entirely new. The laws governing this alternative space give rise to a belief that you can change the very nature of reality simply by describing it in a different way.

The apparent re-creation of reality via language lends an “as if” quality to their personalities. They seem to have an internal psychic life that’s meaningful to them, they appear to have friends and other social relationships, but their emotional lives lack depth. Because their words have become untrustworthy guides to truth, I’ve taken to teaching my clients about how we human beings come to recognize our own feelings as they arise—when it comes to sadness, for example, through the perception of bodily sensations around the eyes, chest, and back of the throat. With the first client I described above, most times when I ask her to move her attention down into her body, she will begin to cry.

For many young people, social media usage has severed the connection between specific words denoting feelings and the visceral indicators that help us to identify those feelings. The signifier has become detached from the signified. As a result, language becomes a disembodied and self-contained set of internal rules and interrelationships without connection to psychic truth and often external reality.

* * *

In our daily interactions with other people, we usually assume that the words they use to communicate accurately represent the meaning they intend to convey; this fundamental assumption underlies all cooperative efforts to engage with other human beings. But in our modern world, it’s increasingly difficult to believe that much of the language exchanged conveys meaning or objective truth, especially in the contentious realm of social media. Like my patients described above, the public language deployed in this space often serves to deny or obscure truth, to replace it with an alternative reality constructed via language. Life on Twitter often boils down to a war of words to determine whose version of “reality” will prevail, a dynamic obscured by the misleading appearance that both sides are using language in the same way.

In her keynote address last month at Genspect’s historic “The Bigger Picture” conference in Ireland, Helen Joyce, author of the book Trans, drew attention to this issue. While proponents of the affirmative care model for gender-distressed youth speak and write in the empirical language of fact-based science, they actually disdain it. Gender ideology is like a cuckoo bird invading the nest of empiricism says Joyce, appropriating its language and apparently respecting its methods while all the while subverting them. Like my long-ago patient who spoke as if he was authentic and in contact while deploying language to obscure truth, the gender ideologues publish studies in professional journals, written in language that appears to respect the empirical method but actually undermines its assumptions and replaces objective reality with their own disembodied version of “truth.”

The work of Jack Turban, for example, relies upon copious footnotes and citations to other studies which, upon closer examination, either have nothing to do with the position he claims they support or directly contradict it. Turban writes as if he were devoted to the scientific method and its standards of proof but actually cares nothing about them. Colin Wright, Jesse Singal, and Leor Sapir have devoted thousands of words to debunking Turban’s claims, highlighting his factual errors and misleading citations; for those of us firmly rooted in reality, their efforts are crucial, but for Turban and his acolytes, they are irrelevant. Gender ideologues only pretend to care about empiricism, mimicking its techniques for understanding objective reality; what they really intend is to replace immutable facts and objectivity with their own subjective version of the truth.

This dynamic reflects core tenets of post-modern thought and critical theory, where so-called reality is supposedly determined by the discourse around it, and whoever controls that discourse has the power to determine what counts as “true.” While it appears as if gender ideologues are engaged in good faith debate over what scientific studies can tell us about, say, the reality of biological sex, their position really boils down to “because we say so.” They amass flawed and flimsy studies published in professional journals and devote entire books to “proving” sex actually occurs along a spectrum of possible expressions, all in order to control the discourse around the nature of sex. Objective truth is irrelevant; whoever speaks with the loudest voice gets to decide what is true.

Helen Joyce’s observations were inspired by a philosophy symposium she attended focused on the work of British philosopher Roger Scruton; she was particularly struck by his delineation of two opposing views of human nature that give rise to very different ideas about how a society should be governed. One views human nature as a blank slate and believes it can be improved and eventually perfected; from this perspective we are evolving toward an ideal society. The other, “constrained” by the facts of biology and our evolutionary heritage, believes humans cannot fully transcend their bodies, and society must therefore pass laws and uphold traditions that restrain the more brutal aspects of our nature. The American economist Thomas Sowell believes these conflicting visions characterize the conservative versus progressive debate in the United States.

On a broader level, these opposing views also help us to understand the current battle about sex and gender, especially on social media. On the one side we have proponents of biological reality who hold that facts are facts and sex is real; they believe in the scientific method and esteem empiricism as a mode for apprehending truth. On the other, we have those who behave as if they care about the scientific method, but in fact care only about wielding power.

* * *

Just as Helene Deutsche’s landmark paper led to deeper insights into borderline states and pathological narcissism, recognizing the as if quality of contemporary discourse helps explain why our society exhibits so many features of the Cluster B Personality Disorders. Disordered personalities characteristically display overly emotional and irrational forms of thinking along with an unstable sense of self and its relation to others. As patients, they at first appear to engage in the psychotherapeutic process but remain quietly hostile to the process. They will defend their fragile sense of self in often hostile and verbally abusive ways against attempts by their therapist to illuminate painful psychic truths.

Due in part to the rise of social media and the increasing influence of virtual online spaces, young people today inhabit an as if world that mimics reality but actually denies many hated truths about it—that sex is real, binary, and immutable, for example. Adopt a new avatar or change your pronouns and you can become somebody else, even alter your sex. Your subjective belief about who you are overrides objective truth. And if anyone should challenge your self-image by asserting so-called “facts,” you are justified in weaponizing language and hurling abuse to ensure that objective reality will not prevail. Rage, invective, and crude insults to dehumanize the other are the order of the day.

Welcome to Twitter, a place where daily interactions between two conflicting visions of human nature resemble one prolonged eruption of borderline rage. On one side are those who insist reality must be what they say it is; they feel sorry for themselves and persecuted by those who, on the other side, assault them with facts and arguments about objective reality. It takes a non-defensive therapist with a high tolerance for pain and a strong sense of self to work with disordered personalities, in part because they so often attack your own sense of self-worth when they feel threatened; it’s no wonder that even the rationalists ultimately resort to contempt and abuse as Twitter discourse descends into name-calling on both sides.

How are we to heal a disordered society such as ours? Most of the time, I’m cautiously optimistic that the Colin Wrights and Jesse Singals of the world will eventually prevail and, through dispassionate analysis and assertions of fact, reinforce our connections to objective reality. But sometimes, in the dark of the night, I worry that the proponents of radical subjectivity will win. Like my long-ago patient who defeated my efforts to connect him with psychic truth and who ultimately destroyed his own treatment, they will shout the rest of us down with brutal abuse, in the process annihilating all the glorious achievements of Western Civilization and the Enlightenment.

==

Ideologues like Jack Turban don't post for truth, but for narrative. This is the guy who, like Kendi, blew up his core premise with a single tweet.

Turban's strategy is one he's learned from media on both sides: publish the narrative you want to be true up front (especially in the headline or summary); that's the story the initial wave of your most regular readers will see and retain; when forced to clarify, correct or retract, do so quietly; now you can say it's correct, but you've already convinced your regular readers of the original version.

It's designed to create repeatable memes, with the theater of linking to studies, regardless of whether what he's citing actually says what he claims, or even refutes something else he's already said.

[oraclemoontarot]

Lmao I've been seeing people requesting for straykids opinions on you if you were friends and tbh i found that quite interesting lmao like imagine them as your friends. 😭☝🏻

So can I try with BTS?? *As i don't stan a lot of groups and they are my OG lol* Like how would BTS view me if we were friends?

My info->Jasmine, (cap) sun, (virgo) moon and (taurus) rising.

Also, I'm sorry i sent another request i was just going through your posts (stalking you) and i found the question really interesting tbh so I was like Lemme try it too. Also, no hurry if ny request will come after others as I've already asked before it's fine as well I don't have any problem!!

Also have a beautiful day ahead, have an amazing day!! 🫶🏻🤍✨🧿

hii jasmine, ofc!! and it's no problem, this is a fun request! (the stalking part is sending mee 😭 you're so real). honestly, i think about it sometimes, especially with idols who have similar personalities to me, and i'd feel sorry for anyone in the same room as us... 💀 here's the reading you requested 💗

this is also a new deck that i'm currently learning interpretations of, so lmk if it resonated!

requested reading ★

jungkook ୨୧

cards pulled: world, knight of swords, four of pentacles, two of pentacles, six of pentacles, seven of pentacles, hanged man, page of swords, wheel of fortune

this is already starting off really sweet. jungkook would feel like you complete him in a way, but also that you achieve whatever you set your mind on. like, you work on your skills and you put a lot of effort into your career. he would find you to be someone who values communication and share interesting viewpoints and talk about unique topics - you would have meaningful conversations.

he may view you as someone mature, takes care of their appearance, but also really sweet and cute? like, he would find you endearing. but also really dreamy and he would like how you dress and take care of yourself. but, with the seven of pentacles card in this deck, it's just such a sweet and dreamy card, and it's how he would view you. maybe you know how to enjoy the moment, or you may catch yourself living in your head at times and it's like this moment of peace - maybe you may smile to yourself at times.

with the wheel of fortune, he may find you to be someone surprising. it's like there's a new side to you each time he meets you or learns something about you. like you're constantly changing... i'm getting you're an enigma to him (i had to double check the meaning as it came out of no where 😭 but it seems to explain it well). you're mysterious and unique and that's intriguing.

rm ୨୧

cards pulled: seven of wands, nine of swords, eight of swords, two of wands, strength, four of pentacles, queen of wands, death + hierophant

rm would view you as someone who is open to communicating about your worries but also his. he sees you as someone who would want to sort misunderstandings, open communication, and hear others out. he sees you as a great communicator.

he also sees you as someone who looks ahead and has plans for the future. you set goals for yourself and, with the strength, you're someone who is strong-willed and you aren't shaken easily. it seems like he would have a lot of respect for you. he also sees you as the queen of wands, you have this allure to you, but you're also fun and exciting, you can by the hype friend where you bring energy and life to a party.

with the death card, he sees you as someone who has grown and changed a lot, you may have even gone through struggles but, paired with the strength card, you always manage to get through those challenges.

overall, with hierophant, he views you as someone special and unique, like you would be an important person in his life. but also, you could be a good mentor, you may have good advice or guidance for others, you may also have a sense of moral righteousness, where you know right from wrong and don't step over others boundaries.

v ୨୧

cards pulled: queen of swords, knight of wands, page of swords, five of swords, tower, five of cups, five of pentacles, two of swords, lovers

tae would view you as the queen of swords, someone who is a great communicator but also good at setting your own boundaries. you express concern for others and care for others, but you don't let anyone walk all over you. for some reason, in this reading, your appearance is important in how he'd view you. you may have sharper maybe almond eyes, but there's something expressive about them. you may appear cold or with an inner strength, but there are times when they'd soften and have a warmth to them? I'm not sure, but he'd see you as having many sides to you, and it would intrigue him in some way.

tae would view you as someone who appreciates gifts that people give to you and would care for it if they were fragile like flowers etc, he'd also view you as someone who knows how to have fun and pursue things you're interested in. he also feels like you're someone who brings change with you or at least have changed a lot, maybe you've gone through significant events in your life.

it may feel like the two of you may not get along/see eye to eye at times, and this may cause worry between the both of you, but there's this connection and the working through it, it's like you'd still be great friends regardless of certain misunderstandings. he may also see you as someone who has their fair share of worries, maybe you deal with personal problems on your own and don't really seek help from others sometimes? maybe you'd push people away if they asked about it etc.

jimin ୨୧

cards pulled: hermit, four of wands, two of wands, king of pentacles, two of pentacles, two of cups, world, four of pentacles + ten of pentacles

jimin would view you as someone who spends a lot of time thinking and improving themselves. you may be like the hermit, where you spend time evaluating things such as your feelings, actions, yourself, your relationships and the direction in which your life is heading. you may be an overall thoughtful person.

with the four of wands, he would see you as someone who is supportive, reassuring, strong and grounded. you're like a pillar in his life and keep him grounded. you also look towards the future and set goals that you stick to. he may view you as someone he'd want to protect or look after, because you'd be someone special to him. it feels like he treasures and values all his friendships/relationships, and this would be clear with you.

he would see you as the two of pentacles, you know how to have fun, you dress well for events, but you are also someone others can rely on. jimin definitely sees you as a supportive person through and through, like you're they hype buddy or the life of the party.

with the two of cups and the world, there's an emotional connection here and as though the two of you complete each other. there's a deep understanding that feels more like family than friends? or as though you'd have known each other for years. no words would have to be spoken for the two of you to know what's on each others mind.

with the four of pentacles, jimin would view you as someone who is reserved, maybe guarded at times. or it may feel like when he would try to get close there may be parts you protect. it may be that sometimes he may place you on a pedestal and sees you as being above his league.

overall, with the ten of pentacles, jimin would view you as someone who values family and relationships, he may view you as being family-oriented, wise, and an incredibly warm person.

(he had a lot to say 😭)

suga ୨୧

cards pulled: three of pentacles, ten of wands, emperor, three of wands, six of swords, seven of cups, two of swords, three of swords, king of swords

there's a lot of respect for your determination, almost like admiration and seeing you as an inspiration or role model of a sort. like, you would be good at cooperating or working with others, where you may bring new and interesting ideas, and hear everyone out.

with the ten of wands and seven of cups, even if a lot of options are presented to you, you stick towards one goal and work towards it, not letting anything sway you. he respects that determination and that you don't stray off track. with the emperor and two of swords, you are able to keep your composure under pressure, there's this strength to you where you don't let things weigh you down.

suga, with the three of wands and three of swords, would view you as someone who is able to look ahead towards the positives despite heartbreak or pain, you have a positive outlook on life and to him, are quite the optimist.

overall, with the king of swords, he would enjoy the balanced and interesting conversations with you. it feels like a really chill friendship where you guys would appreciate each other, it's nothing really deep or emotionally connected like jimin, but more so a mutual understanding.

jin ୨୧

cards pulled: five of swords, ace of wands, page of swords, two of pentacles, queen of swords, four of pentacles, lovers, nine of swords, strength

jin would view you as someone who doesn't let others words get to you, you're strong and set on your boundaries, you don't let people mouth off to you or say negative things to either you or the people around you. he also views you as passionate and creative, you have this energy to you where you stick to your goals and what you believe in. you're inspiring and someone who he would be motivated by.

with the page of swords and lovers, jin would view you as someone who matches him in terms of communication. he may like the way you speak/sound, maybe its the way you express you thoughts, or the way you use words. there's a harmony there, and this gentleness and grace. he views you as a positive person.

with the two of pentacles and nine of swords, jin views you as someone who has a cool and calm composure on the surface, someone who is mature yet he feels like you have a lot of worries that you bury.

overall, with the strength, jin would view you as someone who can get over any hurdle or challenge, you have this fearlessness about you and this confidence that is contagious. it's like you have this go-getter or the 'bring it on' energy. you could also motivate others really easily.

jhope ୨୧

cards pulled: four of swords, ten of wands, seven of cups, knight of cups, king of swords, five of wands, two of wands, hierophant, judgement

hobi would view you as someone who knows when to take a break from things, you're able to put yourself first when needed. with the ten of wands and five of wands, even if people may have objections or say things behind your back, you won't let it hinder you off of your path, you're determined even if it would take a lot of time and effort. and, similarly, with the seven of cups and two of wands, even if a lot of options are presented before you, you would weigh them and stick to one without looking back.

with the knight of cups, hobi would view you as an ideal friend, like someone he would value deeply in his life. paired with the hierophant, you're someone who is a great supporter, again a hype buddy, you'd motivate him and guide him if needed. he also sees you as someone who can be very driven and a great communicator, you're peaceful and mature, even the quiet moments with you wouldn't feel awkward as there's this sense of calm about you.

overall, with the judgement, you are constantly working on yourself, and he feels as though you're someone who knows your purpose or at least knows yourself really well.

[vmures]

Learning to live with uncertainty is important

I've been thinking about "discourse" lately. I use quotes because often what I see online isn't an actual conversation, which is what the word discourse implies, but people shouting at each other. Arguments on one side or another are often in bad faith and there is no openness to other points of view. And I've been thinking about why that is. I think the biggest part of the problem is the allure of bright-line rules.

Bright-line rules is a term used in the legal world and can be defined as follows: "A bright-line rule is an objective rule that resolves legal questions in a straightforward, predictable manner." These are rules where a thing is always right or a thing is always wrong. There is no room for interpretation or nuance. And they are alluring because they are easy and uncomplicated.

However, the world is very, very complicated, and using bright-line rules for everything means that sometimes the wrong party faces punishment. The example given in the link above is of a bright-line rule used in auto insurance. The car with the front damage is the one responsible for the accident. But using that rule and having no room for nuance means that if Driver A backs into Driver B, Driver B will be the one considered at fault despite not actually being at fault.

There are times where as a culture we decide that such bright-line rules are worth it, even if occasionally someone will be punished who might not deserve to be. But a huge problem arises when we decide that all things should be treated as bright-line rules. Because we stop thinking--we don't consider all the facts in a situation or all the consequences of the rule/law. One example of not considering the consequences of a broadly written bright-line anti-abortion rule is that many doctors in states that have enacted such rules are worried that providing IVF treatment because the unused fertilized eggs are often destroyed and that would be considered abortion under the law.

And when you apply this sort of thinking to cultural discourse, you get situations where someone hears "rainbow capitalism is evil" and decides that they should then inform a queer person selling their own art/merch during Pride that they shouldn't do that. That person isn't a horrible person, but they are misunderstanding "rainbow capitalism" as a concept. It isn't a bright-line rule that all sales of Pride merchandise are evil. But if you don't know the history of how corporations have generally treated the LGBTQUIA+ community, and how frustrating it is to see them add surface-level support of us now that they know they can make money off of us, then you might interpret the concept as a bright-line rule. It is even more likely you will interpret it as such if you already have a habit of thinking in very black-and-white terms.

It's so very tempting to want easy answers and clear "this is always right" and "this is always wrong" ideologies. But it's dangerous. You can end up harming the communities you want to support. One of the hardest parts of law school is learning to live with a certain level of uncertainty. If you ask any lawyer, or even former law student, if something is legal chances are high that the response you get will be "it depends." Because ultimately whether something is legal or not depends on the facts of the case. A litigator's job is to show that the facts of the case support their stance and not the other side's stance. But they also have to understand what facts support the other side's arguments. You then leave it to the judge and/or jury to decide who has the stronger case. It's rarely cut and dry.

Uncertainty isn't comfortable. Struggling with complex issues isn't comfortable. But you connect far better with your fellow humans and are more likely to be a fair and kind person if you are open to uncertainty. If you are willing to listen to all the facts and opinions and actually consider them.

When it comes to discourse online...well, that openness only helps if it goes both ways. If one side is engaging in good faith and open to considering the other's point of view and the other side is just looking to call them names and tell them they should die...well, that's not true discourse or helpful discussion. It's bullying hidden behind ideology. And ultimately, that is where insisting on nothing but bright-line rules leads.

[cynthiaruth95]

Hi sorry to bother you but I wanted to hear you opinion about the meaning of some lines in Halsey’s song the tradition.

The first one in the chorus “take what you want, take you can, take you please, don’t give a damn ask for forgiveness never permission”: do u think she’s talking to the men who abuse women in society or to women themselves in a sort of empowerment way?

The second one is “flesh amnesiac”.

ahh hi!!! thank you so much for asking this -- no one's asked me interpretation stuff on here before so this is fun!!

just to preface: this is all just my interpretation, there are many others and none are wrong -- in fact, in my opinion all of them are right, i usually have like 10 interpretations for the same thing and believe in all of them wholeheartedly. that's art to me.

i love how you phrased this question because to me it's exactly that: both!! "ask for forgiveness never permission" is a phrase of the church and represents an abusive system that tells people -- men in power -- that they can take without permission as long as they ask another man's forgiveness. but then if you flip the coin that same logic has to be a part of fighting that very system -- you can't ask the system permission to be free you know? so it's literally both (to me) which is brilliant because it highlights that interplay.

full credit to @/ @emeisgay on twitter who wrote an incredible interpretation which h liked on twitter awhile ago: “flesh amnesiac this is your song” womens bodies are often noted that they don’t belong to us, they belong to politicians or male partners. ANYONE but the actual owner of the body. the tradition is a reminder that once again, you do not belong to anyone but yourself.

it also adds on the theme of "forget her, find her" + viewing love as a powerless cycle/labyrinth that you have to be willing to lose yourself in (i always like placing that against ya'aburnee which is "i'll always see my youth in you" = love is something you find yourself in)

thank you so much for asking !! i hope this was useful -- please feel free to ask more whenever, i enjoy it (of course lol). sending love !!

[euphoricfilter]

hi long post anon… again😭

yes “rule” is more so used as “unspoken boundary”

and its a lil concerning anon didn’t pick that up when the explanation is right under that specific quote they picked😭

like have fun but don’t get caught up in thinking that just because you write something that is fiction that your muse is gonna wanna see it

not only is this just to be safe/respectful morally but even legally in terms of copywrite

thats why mainstream authors don’t want people to send them fanfic because the author may accidentally add from the fic subconsciously. Or coincidentally they added it because it was an idea that you two happened to think of at the same time before you ever sent the fic or the author opened your letter/email.

this leaves people to then be able to claim the author stole content whether intentional or not.

but also in terms of morals, it just says that you respect how an author views their relationship with THEIR work by not making your interpretations aware to the author. many authors work hard to establish their worlds/characters and may feel put off if they feel someone has mischaracterized their work or morphed it into something they don’t recognize within the canon of their universe. not to say that the fic isn’t good but essentially you dont come into someone else’s home and tell them how to decorate.

and in terms of real life people, it keeps your muse from seeing how you characterize them which may not be a reflection of their own self-actualization. and again it can mess with how people see themselves. or almost feel like they’re being harassed to reveal something about themselves because fics with certain characterizations are being thrown in their face. like “i know something about you, you should just say it already.”

its not to say that a nonbinary or autistic headcannon isn’t valid but sending it to someone may feel like projection to that very real person.

like jungkook may not take offense to being called nonbinary or trans but if thats not his actual lived experience, then sending him fics or making him aware that you’ve “headcannoned” him as such would be crossing a line.

its like saying “oh im going to disregard how and what you’ve being willing to share about yourself publicly until you possibly give in and out yourself.”

we saw this with the actor who plays the bisexual boyfriend in Heartstoppers. people -mainly other queer people- couldn’t separate the actor from his role and kept poking him to come out until he actually did. just because the internet was right about him being queer, doesn’t mean they were morally right for pressuring him.

its like receiving a “love” letter from an unreliable narrator in which they detail how you smiled at them once which meant you were “obviously” flirting; when in reality, you -the person who knows your own feelings- only smiled cuz you were just being nice. doesn’t mean you aren’t a lover; it just means that your love hasn’t been extent towards them.

if Jungkook is nonbinary, he’s is for himself; not to reaffirm some preconceived notion Army have. he exists outside our collective thought and doesn’t need fic to convince him of his identity or lack there of.

basically this rule is a “curtesy” that we should extend to ALL people. so unless they ask, don’t show your fanfic to your muse, friends.

ugh i keep ending up long winded😭🤦🏽‍♀️

but this has been fun discourse and hopefully it enlightens someone cuz that what social change is supposed to do💜

thank you for explaining a little deeper, my lovely.

literally i’d go missing and you’d never hear from me again if bts were to read anything i’ve written, it’s not made for them 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️ my worst nightmare is them perceiving me LMAO

and i think i can speak on behalf of most writers that what we write, either it be bts as gay or anything of the sort, is no way for us as writers to push the boys to come out or feel as though they should identify a certain way. as i’ve reiterated like a million times within the last couple of hours, it’s all a story, not there to project onto anyone in real life. i don’t sit in my bedroom and scheme up ways to force an agenda onto bts, i’m just trying to have a good time and little fun and if i’m doing something wrong then at least i’m aware now and can improve as a person

i’m not saying, as a straight fact any of the members are gay, or that they specifically go by they/them pronouns. if he does identify as anything above then that’s super cool too and he doesn’t owe me or anyone else anything, and that’s fine!! but me writing a non binary jungkook is in no way me saying that is how he should be or is in real life. idk why that point hasn’t come across for some people yet 🏃‍♀️

anyways, thank you again for taking the time to explain!! you definitely deserve a yummy snack after all this, and you’re super cool and very smart!! so thank you for taking the time out of your day to talk about such a kinda weird but very interesting topic with me 🫂

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

I love your mdzs metas, especally the one where you say MDZS is not a hopeful universe and you can't fix it by just saying the Jin Sect is evil because the real problem is the powerful society.

And that post inspired my ask here.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about Lan Wangji deciding to remain in Gusu Lan Sect after wei ying's death. It's clear to me that his strong moral compass doesn't coincide anymore with the sect who was accomplice in the siege at burial mounds. Yeah his family wasn't the direct responsible of Wei Ying and the Wens' deaths, but still involved. I think his relationship with his family after Nightless city was deeply broken, not just emotionally but also morally. I think it would have been wiser leaving his seft after recovering from the wounds and being a rogue cultivator. Or living as a common with a-yuan, because I don't see how they could cohabit together after what happened. Or maybe lwj decided he was guilty as well for not being able to protect wei ying (and the wens), so he lived in remorse and guilt in the sect that allowed that crime? I'm curious about this dilemma because the novel doesn't explain fully in details that period of time. I was just thinking: "why lwj couldn't just live away from the sect after witnessing that their values ​​were no longer compatible and the corrupted cultivation society could no longer be his home". It would have been more coherent and right for him, I think. No one could blame him. Or maybe the punishment hurt him so deeply that he grow to think he deserved it... surely living there in gusu lan sect is not the healthiest option for his state of mind (we could agree that lwj doesn't care about money and privilege). So... why did he stay there and didn't choose another road?

Sorry for the long post!

Thank you for the ask, and for your kind words! 

There are factors we have to consider in this – practical, emotional, and thematic.

Firstly, there are the logistical (and most boring) reasons. After Lan Wangji brings A-Yuan back from the Burial Mounds, he’s responsible for him – and while he could take A-Yuan with him when leaving the sect, A-Yuan would have a much harder (and lonelier) childhood growing up as the child of a rogue cultivator, than he would growing up in the security of a prosperous sect with other disciples of the same age around him. We have an example of the former with Wei Wuxian himself, actually! And though he seemed to have a happy childhood, it certainly wasn’t secure, and at the age of five his parents, who were also very capable cultivators, died on a night-hunt while he was left at an inn (which probably happened regularly, because I can’t see his parents bringing him with them while on a night-hunt). If being raised in the Lan sect was an option, I don’t think Lan Wangji would choose to give A-Yuan that sort of very insecure childhood. I can’t really see him leaving A-Yuan at Gusu and defecting by himself either, especially with how reluctant his family was to accept a Wen into Gusu Lan anyway*.

Additionally, it’s important to remember that when Wei Wuxian dies, Lan Wangji is heavily injured from the disciple whip, and has to spend years recovering – he wouldn’t physically be able to become a rogue cultivator in that condition, even if he wanted to! And after he’s recovered, Lan Sizhui has already been a member of the sect for some time – again, I can’t see Lan Wangji taking him away from that.

Lastly, and very importantly, he holds a lot more influence as the second young master and Twin Jade of the Lan Clan (to the cultivation world at least – his reputation to the common people was made on his own merits!) than he would as a rogue cultivator... and that brings us to the second idea: Lan Wangji’s feelings and motivations.

Because I agree with the fact that the majority of the Lan sect, at the time of the siege, wasn't morally compatible with Lan Wangji's own ideals. But instead of leaving the sect and letting that corruption and hypocrisy stay and fester, he chooses to stay and work towards making a difference – to make it compatible, to shape it into the righteous sect it claims to be. He uses his position to teach an entire generation of juniors to be open-minded, compassionate and brave, and to not let the rules stop you from doing so (with Lan Sizhui as the primary example, but you see that in the others, too – he didn't spend all his time raising just A-Yuan). So that if or when another situation like the Siege or the Wen camps arises, they'll have the forethought to think about the situation and not be driven by mob mentality, the understanding to not fall victim to prejudice, and the courage to stand up and do the right thing, even if that means breaking some rules, because certain things are more important.

He teaches that to the people who he knows are the future of the Lan Sect, and when they take over, Gusu Lan can become the righteous sect it claims to be.

That's what he chooses to do, and chooses to do again and again – to take the initiative to make the world into a good place, when it isn't one. He didn't gain a reputation as Hanguang-Jun, for going wherever the chaos is and spending his time helping people rather than chasing acclaim, for nothing. If the sects aren't going to help, he's going to do something about it, and time and time again he does.

And that's infinitely more powerful than just walking away.

As we’re talking about Lan Wangji’s emotions and decisions, let’s consider your other thought, too: that Lan Wangji perhaps stayed because he thought he deserved it as a punishment. I don’t really believe that’s the case – not because Lan WangJi doesn’t have any turbulent feelings of guilt and regret, but because punishing himself is simply not the way he chooses to act on them. There is the scenario with the Wen brand, but it’s crucial to note that he’s drunk during that scene! It may show us his subconscious thoughts and feelings, but it doesn’t show how he’d act on them, because he doesn’t actually have the power to make conscious, meaningful decisions. However, when he does have that power, he consistently chooses to channel his grief into the inspiration and drive to not make those same mistakes, instead of channeling it into self-loathing, or even resentment for others. Instead of punishing himself for what he couldn’t do then, he focuses on what he can do now – raising A-Yuan and teaching the Lan Juniors are some examples of that. 

He and Wei Wuxian are quite similar in that aspect (another way they’re alike), and both actually have very healthy ways of coping with what happened in the past! Neither of them punish themselves over what they did wrong and can’t change, but instead focus on the present moment – and likewise, neither of them unhealthily fixate on those they’ve lost and get stuck in the past, but instead carry them with them and keep their memory alive, while accepting they’ve passed on**. However, I do think that Lan Wangji uses the past, and more specifically his grief, a lot more than Wei Wuxian, and actively channels it into not repeating the same mistakes he did. Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian simply lets the past be (while still acknowledging it) and focuses on the present. Both are very healthy ways of treating grief! 

Finally, Lan Wangji choosing this path also makes the most sense thematically. One of the main themes of the novel is the idea of moving on from resentment – the most obvious example of this is Wei Wuxian himself, but it appears in so many other characters, too. Wen Ning, for example, who decides to save Jiang Cheng from Nie Mingjue’s corpse, even after everything Jiang Cheng did to his family at the Burial Mounds. The rest of the Wen remnants, who, when they emerge from the blood pool, choose to channel their power into protecting people rather than doing something harmful (which sounds a little familiar, no?); Lan Sizhui, who after finding out about his heritage continues to be kind and compassionate even to the members of sects who were responsible for what happened; Jin Ling, who’s been brought up in an atmosphere of resentment his whole life, but learns to let go of that and has a breakdown because he realised he simply couldn’t hate anyone for the deaths of his parents!

Alternatively, if you look at the antagonists, all of them (apart from Jin Guangshan, who was driven by greed) held on to resentment in some way, and let it fester. Regardless of what people think of him, Jiang Cheng plays an antagonist’s role in the present storyline, and a big part of his character is that he let his resentment for Wei Wuxian fester instead of letting it go, and that leads him to convince himself that Wei Wuxian is still alive somewhere and therefore to him torturing demonic cultivators – and that resentment (along with poorly expressed care for Jin Ling) pretty much drives all his actions in the present timeline. Jin Guangyao’s driven by resentment for people disrespecting him and his mother because of their heritage/job, Su She is driven by resentment of Lan Wangji. Xue Yang is driven by resentment for Xiao Xingchen, and holds onto that motivation, convinces himself of it, even when his feelings get more complicated – and ultimately chooses to act in accordance with that. Even Nie Huaisang, whose role in the narrative is admittedly dubious, is driven by resentment for his brother’s death, and that is not presented as right.

Neither group of characters has suffered more than the others, and you could even argue that the first group suffered more. However, the thing that sets them apart is the way they deal with resentment. And so we come to Lan Wangji. 

Like so many other characters, he has ample reason to turn his back on the cultivation world, to not forgive and to place more importance on his negative feelings towards others than on anything positive. But just like so many other people – like Wei WuXian, like Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui, like Jin Ling – he chooses to not focus on his resentment. He gives his sect a chance, while still preserving Wei Wuxian’s memory, while still accepting they did something wrong. Lan Wangji is not somebody driven by resentment, and not someone to hold onto it; he’s someone driven by love***.

And being a member of the Lan clan won’t constrain him from that.

Thanks for the discussion, it was really interesting!

––

*Edit: Apparently it’s only Lan Qiren who was reluctant to accept him until he saw Lan Wangji’s behaviour! But with the general prejudice against the Wens, I feel like that (not necessarily the family, but other people) was still a factor in him not wanting to leave A-Yuan alone. They didn’t tell anyone, but if anyone somehow found out, that was a risk. Thanks to kimalysomg for catching that!

**Which is part of the reason takes that say Lan Wangji spent the thirteen years searching for and waiting for Wei Wuxian bother me, actually! It very much undermines Lan Wangji’s healthy coping of with grief, and diminishes his character and character arc a lot, too.

***And not just for Wei Wuxian!

[ootahime]

analyzing every gojohime moment in the manga p2

part 1 is here :3

this post includes more excruciatingly long paragraphs so grab urself something and enjoy LOL

chapter 40 

i know they’re not interacting in this panel but i still want to bring it up.  i’m gonna give some context to this scene in case someone needs to jog their memory.  so basically, mei’s ability to command crows is what allows the staff to observe the students from afar.  however, gojo notices that there’s lack of footage where yuuji is and asks mei why that’s so.  she tells him that they’re animals at the end of the day so she can’t control what they look at.  he doesn’t believe her so he asks her whose side she’s on (for yuuji’s execution vs against yuuji’s execution) to which she responds with, “whose side?  i’m on the side with money, of course.  there’s no value in something that can’t be bought since you can’t exchange that for money.”  in other words, she’ll always choose the side that offers her more money because she doesn’t care about how morally “correct” or “incorrect” something is.  it’s not worth fighting for a cause that doesn’t benefit her in the long run which is why she views things that are unable to be bought (friendships, relationships, favors) as useless - they can’t be exchanged for money.  it’s clear that gojo knows she’s not on his side because he replies with, “spoken from experience!” or “i wonder how much!” (translation varies).  he says it out loud to perhaps let gakuganji know that he’s onto him.  i find it interesting how utahime is in the panel as well with a “?” to express her confusion at his words.  let’s overthink dissect that.  why is she there in the first place? if the message was to let gakuganji know that gojo is aware of his ulterior motives then a panel with gakuganji and gojo would have sufficed.  why add utahime with a question mark? 

here’s a personal headcanon of mine that makes no absolute sense, but who cares? it makes me happy LOL.  so let’s examine the panel.  gojo’s face is more simplified and cartoonish with a grey background on top and some sort of white bubble surrounding the three characters.  gakuganji is staring at utahime and gojo.  in the official viz translation, he replies to mei with, “i wonder how much!”  

normal and logical explanation: shading the principal by asking out loud how much mei was paid by him to avoid monitoring yuuji.

gojohime brainrot explanation: 

mei: “there’s no value in something that can’t be bought since you can’t exchange that for money”

gojo: (in response) i wonder how much utahime’s love would cost if it did have a price.

utahime: ?

you’re probably thinking i’m delulu (true) BUT HEAR ME OUT.  IT WOULD SOMEWHAT MAKE SENSE IN THIS CONTEXT...

mei’s saying seems to be what she lives by.  relationships, love, friendships, etc. do not matter to her as this is evident when she ultimately abandons everyone in shibuya to escape to malaysia, selling all her stocks before japan’s economy goes down.  she doesn’t care about anyone else.  she even takes advantage of ui ui’s adoration for her.  she contrasts utahime.  utahime is loved by her students.  children, especially teenagers, are picky when it comes to choosing the adults they admire and respect.  while everyone trusts gojo, they do not respect him because of his childishness and overall absurdity.  it’s refreshing to see how they always call him an idiot or have a -_- face when he’s around.  when akutami says everyone absolutely adores utahime-sensei, it says a lot.  we haven’t seen her interact with her students all that much, but she’s obviously close to them because she’s frequently arguing with momo.  even a closed off person like mechamaru wanted to keep her away from danger.  she most certainly expresses a lot of concern and care for her students, and gojo and her students can pick up on this. 

i’ve talked about this in every post LOLOL but there’s a reason why he went to utahime first to help him investigate.  utahime is a loyal person through and through.  she would never do something that harms the students even if she was offered everything in the world.  she values relationships above everything else.  besides her concern for the students, how else was i able to come to this conclusion about her character?  well, she got shoko to stop smoking because she was worried about how it might damage her friend’s health.  from these two details, it’s obvious that she’s the complete opposite of mei.  

maybe that’s why he calls her weak.  she’s too selfless and compassionate in a world where every sorcerer is for themselves.  the world is cruel as a sorcerer.  no matter how hard you try to fight, in the end, you’ll always die alone.  remember his talk with megumi after the baseball game?  after witnessing megumi pull a sacrificial bunt to help his teammates advance, gojo has a talk with megumi about his attitude and potential.  he says that being selfless and caring about others is not a bad thing, but in a world like this, where people always die alone, he is wasting his potential by being concerned with others.  it’s okay to be selfish.  this is why we see fierce independence in a lot of the sorcerers like mei, nanami, and gojo.  they each have their own reasons as to why they work alone, but it’s still a common characteristic.  i feel like utahime doesn’t have a selfish bone in her body.  i speculate that her selflessness is the exact reason why she is being held back.  during her mission to exorcise a grade 1 spirit by herself, the final task before being promoted to grade 1, she likely got distracted trying to help civilians out of danger and failed her mission.  he’s right when he says she doesn’t have the guts to be the traitor, utahime doesn’t have it in her to do something so boldly solely for her own benefit.  

after this long tangent, how does this relate to your headcanon, ootahime?  

as you know, love is not transactional.  you can’t pay someone to love you.  what if gojo is asking himself how much it would cost to buy her love.  hence, her confusion because she is oblivious to what he really means.  it could be probable because gakuganji is observing not only gojo, but utahime as well.  so what gojo says must involve her too, right?  

or she could just be confused because his words seem out of place because she is unaware of what gakuganji is doing behind everyone’s back.  that explanation makes sense for viz’s official translation but it doesn’t make sense when he says, “spoken from experience!” because his words make sense in that context.  he’s basically saying that mei’s beliefs must be based on her past experiences so he understands why she feels this way.  that’s an appropriate response to mei’s statement so i don’t see why utahime would be confused by this.  unless i’m interpreting this whole scene completely wrong.  in that case, whoopsies!  

let me know if you’re confused because i’m willing to clarify.  idk why but i found this really difficult to explain.  maybe because i’m reaching so hard haha

chapter 40

he finds any way he can to tease her.  they seem like a married couple watching a movie or something.  does he take pride in being the only person she doesn’t get along with?  i mean, she says it herself so he is aware she thinks he’s annoying, but he keeps picking on her anyway.  he doesn’t even pick on his enemies this much LMAOOO i think the only other person he likes to make fun of is gakuganji but he does so because he doesn’t agree with his views.  with utahime it’s different.  he trusts her a lot and even looks out for her.  

chapter 44

why are there two separate instances of gakuganji observing utahime and gojo’s interactions from afar?  nah i’m just playing.  he’s just looking because he’s concerned she’ll run into the semi-grade 1 curse he had for yuuji.  OKAY BUT I NOTICED SOMETHING KINDA CUTE?  whenever utahime says something suddenly, he always has those 3 little triangles near his head.  it’s like he’s thinking, “oh!  utahime is speaking, i must listen <3″  look at his face too.  he’s looking at her like :O

this is also an example of her showcasing her concern for the students in front of gojo.  i feel like he questions why she’s so caring because if it were him, he would have left the student to figure it out themselves.  i really wonder how she would react if he answered her truthfully when she asked what he’d do if she were the traitor.  

chapter 45

there’s not much to say here...they’re just cute.  i know it’ll never happen but i’d like to see them fight side by side one day.  i’m aware that gojo works best alone but i just want to see how they’d work together, okay? 😔

chapter 45

see the little triangles on his head again?  UGH SO CUTE.  

chapter 45

IS THIS NOT INTENTIONAL???  they share the same thoughts.  he even finished her thought.  mannnnnnnnnnnnn what is akutami doing?  giving us false hope and stripping it away just for fun?  making them work so well together for what??

chapter 52

cute how he looks out for her.  i have nothing more to say LOL

chapter 53

notice how they’re sitting across from each other?  HEHE

chapter 53

yet another instance of her caring for her students in front of gojo.  in the anime she has the cutest expression when she says she’s glad the students are safe.  i bet gojo saw that too.  i also bet that she looks prettier from his point of view.

extra

from the manga and light novels, gojo and utahime are the ones that talk about sports the most.  he most definitely chose baseball to cheer her up.  it’s not a coincidence people!  

--

i feel like i had a lot more to say but i completely lost my train of thought while writing this, especially with chapter 40. i’m once again writing this at 4 in the morning LOL........  please please please add on or share your thoughts!  thank you for reading and sorry for any mistakes.  

[kimmyyang]

210408 Zhang Zhehan's interview with Elle Magazine

"I want to be like Ah-Xu, be a gentle yet strong person."

On the day of the photoshoot, it was a rare windy day in Bei Hai. The weather forecast reported it will rain, which made everyone slightly heart-stricken. "Can we still take photos by the seaside?", "how about changing the location?", we were worrying, but fortunately it didn’t rain, only left with steer drop in temperature and roaring wind.

On the way to the photoshoot location, Zhang Zhehan recorded the sound of wind outside of the window. To be able to use the last bit of daylight before the sun sets completely, after filming, he only had one hour and a bit to go back to the hotel, have dinner, change clothes, and get his makeup done. And now, when we have done everything, he uses the time in the car to chat with the long-waited fans in the drama interactive zone.

Busy is an expected state. But when we saw him at the location, you can’t tell any trace of being busy from his face. The strong wind blew the gravels on the beach in the sky. During the interval of the photoshoot, everyone couldn’t help but complained about the cold wind and getting sand all over their faces. Only Zhang Zhehan looked more relaxed as if he came back from a different beach as us.

When we moved to the coffee shop, we finally had time to sit down and talk. He asked the staff to give him a cushion for his back, at that moment, it was probably the first time that made us realize that he is actually very tired. "It’s tough and tiring to be an actor, right?" we haven’t even finished the sentence, and he disagreed, "it’s all the same, every job is tough and tiring."

It seems that he has a big heart.

He chose to ride to Tibet with his friend for his graduation trip. Like his mum said he always has the spirit of seeking out suffering. Speaking of this journey, he said: "we’re living too happily, most families don’t have to worry about clothes and food, don’t need to go through a lot of hardships. I like what Huang Lei teacher once said, ‘people will only have faith after suffering, people will understand kindness after suffering.’ I think after seeing the suffering in the world and feel the suffering yourself - you will be kind to others."

After hearing what he said, you will realize that ‘big heart’ could have been a misunderstanding. He can’t dilute ‘sufferings’ more than others, instead, in the moments of ‘seeking out sufferings’, his feeling towards ‘sufferings’ is stronger and more abundant compared to most people.

He has a very meticulous side, he feels, understands, and hides his ‘sufferings’. Then, those experiences and feelings related to sufferings become something that is hard for others to spot on him.

He said, "when we’re going through a hardship, we can only see the hardship itself, you don’t realize that it’s actually reminding you something and teaching you something else." This is also his understanding of being mature – you can see the many sides of one thing.

‘Bruce Almighty’， ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’， ‘The Bucket List’ are his favorite movies. He said, "there’s a line from Bruce Almighty that left a deep impression – do you really hope God will give you happiness? Maybe everyone’s interpretation of happiness is different, but in the movie, the protagonist only realized it at the end, God was giving him happiness, but not the so-called happiness, God taught him the ability to gain happiness." He pressed his thumb again his chin, slightly looking down, earnestly sharing his impression of the movie.

He added, "you’re actually changing your perspective of the problem." Like what he wrote before, "being mature is being able to see the things that you couldn’t see before."

Maybe if the settling time is long enough, you will be able to stay calm in the change of tides and guard yourself in the quicksand under your feet. Speaking of popularity, he was calmer than we expected.

He said, "popularity is very important for an actor. I think it’s complementary, when you’re popular, you will receive more attention. You will be able to carry some things on your shoulders, first, it can prove that you have the ability, second, it can prove you’re acknowledged by the market."

He continued, "as actors, we also need to be acknowledged by the market. I have seen some amazing actors, they put so much effort into every character but maybe haven’t been acknowledged by the market yet, so they remain unknown. Therefore, a lot of great characters won’t fall into their hands.” It sounds cruel but it’s an undeniable fact. He added, “if you’re not popular, good scripts won’t even land in your hands."

The success of ‘Word of Honor’, to Zhang Zhehan, is like winning the lottery.

He said, "the success of a drama depends on timing, geographical and social conditions, none of these is dispensable. There are hundreds and thousands of dramas filmed each year, but in the end, there will only be one or two that everyone would love. That kind of feels like winning the lottery."

Working hard is very common, it’s nothing special, he thinks it’s unreasonable if you just use ‘working hard’ and ask why you are ‘under appreciated’. Just like how everyone praises him for being an experiential actor and praises his immersive acting. But he thinks, this is the passing line to be an actor, this is what actors are supposed to do.

He said, "if you’re an actor and you don’t experience the character, how could you portray it well, if you don’t get into the character, how could you make the character come to life?"

Working hard, experiencing, and immersing… he views them as a refined definition of actor, these are the preconditions of the lottery ticket. As for whether you can win the lottery in the end, no one can predict it. At least in his experience, he waited for 11 years for that winning lottery ticket.

After the filming ended, he wrote ‘jianghu, goodbye’ on Weibo, when the last episode aired, it was exactly 6 months after the last day of filming. His Weibo is on the setting of showing only the recent 6 months’ posts, as if it was a ‘long been destined’ farewell.

Perhaps the character Zhou Zi Shu is destined to be his. During the four months of filming, he had to gradually reveal Zhou Zi Shu’s two thousand layers of gray, he had to find him, become him, and lastly live the rest of his life for him.

Actors are probably all like this, they always must pour in their own life, emotions, and experience to make the character come to life. The process of making the character come to life means the actors get to experience life and emotions once again.

"Life is experience, you need to put some of your experiences into your characters."

Hegel mentioned in ‘Lectures on Aesthetics’ - 艺术通过供观照的形象可以缓和最酷烈的悲剧命运, 使它成为欣赏的对象。(thank you @sixteenthshen for providing the original quote!)

the specific lines zzh mentioned is bolded: If we are in a general way permitted to regard human activity in the realm of the beautiful as a liberation of the soul, as a release from constraint and restriction, in short, to consider that art does actually alleviate the most overpowering and tragic catastrophes by means of the creations it offers to our contemplation and enjoyment, it is the art of music which conducts us to the final summit of that ascent to freedom.

The reason why those so-called pains are endowed with aesthetic tension may lie in ‘being watched with pleasure’. Those most beautiful things aren’t been torn in our real lives, they become one ‘tearing performance’ after another, being shown on the stage, shown on the screen. The existence of aesthetic distance made ‘those so-called pains’ into something that can be bearable, having its own appreciation.

That so-called ‘pain’ experience comes more direct towards actors, there’s not much room for leeway. In his previous interview, he commented that Zhou Zi Shu is the most memorable character, the character that hurt him the most. Talking about ‘getting hurt’ again, he thinks that is unavoidable.

"I say that an actor has to get into the character and get out of character quickly. But when you’re acting in a happy scene, that happy feeling might last for a day or few days. When you’re acting in a sad, heart-broken scene, even you say it’s ok, it’s fine, it won’t affect me. But it will affect your mood, including your actions. When I go back to my room, I can’t help but to think about that scene, I might not be willing to go out and walk around."

"So, do you think acting is a process of wearing yourself out and wearing emotions down?"

"Of course, of course, of course, it’s wearing myself out." He said of course three times consecutively, "it’s not just wearing my emotions down, it also wears my physical strength out, wears my experience out, and a lot of my own things. So, if I want to do well in a piece of work, I can’t go into the next crew right after I have finished filming. Because you will have traces of the last piece of work, it’s actually hard to accept and get into the next character."

"I personally really like to stay in the filming crew, the reason why I said Zhou Zi Shu is great is that we couldn’t have any other work due to COVID-19 restrictions. I was in the crew for 4 months, in peace. I was looking into and experiencing the character carefully."

On the day of the interview, the Q&A part about acting was the most ‘unrestrained’. Every time we throw out a question, we would always get a powerful and resonating reply. From the perspective of a bystander, you could feel that he is the kind of person that is shining in his professional field.

At the end of every drama/ film, he would choose to leave that environment, and go out to have fun for few days. "I’m not insisting that I need to disengage from the drama/ film, I just want to relax, return to myself, return to Zhang Zhehan’s life."

"So, when you’re looking at Zhou Zi Shu again now as a viewer, do you have any different sentiment?"

"Of course, I would think of the funny parts and incidents. A lot of interesting bits that I’ve added in myself, you can see it in the character." Fortunately, as an actor, he can also feel the happiness that ordinary viewers have.

In our conversation, the words that he mentioned the most were 'gentle yet strong'.

"I really like netizens' comments that Zhou Zi Shu is gentle yet strong."

"The quality that I admire the most now is gentle yet strong."

"I feel like now I want to be like Ah-Xu, someone who is gentle yet strong."

"I want to be like Ah-Xu, become a bit gentler."

He thinks this seemingly contradictory combination is very interesting, "strong describes a person who is strong, whereas gentle is soft. These two words may seem to have no connection, but when they’re put together, it’s also a perfect connection."

"I didn’t feel this way before. I used to think people have to be strong, powerful, how can you be gentle yet strong? I think that’s something I need to learn now. This person must make everyone around them feel comfortable and think of others, but at the same time he/ she is also an individual who’s very strong and full of capabilities."

"Like water, it’s like this when it’s calm, it’s like that when it’s surging high."

He used as many hand gestures as he could as he wanted to express what’s on his mind as much as possible.

Gentle yet strong, this is what he saw, felt from Zhou Zi Shu, and it’s also the character experience he most wants to leave behind.

"Speaking of what hasn’t changed for 11 years, is that I’m still acting; speaking of changes there are a lot. All these years of experience, it became my understanding of each character, in contrast, 11 years of acting experience allowed me to learn a lot from my characters."

To him, every big or small character he had in the past 11 years is a mutual encounter, he gave something to the characters, and the characters also left him with something.

Those who have seen his acting praise him that he truly understands Zhou Zi Shu, so we asked how he could stand in the perspective of Zhou Zi Shu to understand his words and actions. He doesn’t think that it was understanding, it just naturally happened.

"I didn’t deliberately try to understand him, I think what he did was just following his heart, that’s how I feel, so that’s how it should be. I would ask if it was myself, can I do that? Is it acceptable? If I think it’s ok, then it’s right. If I think it’s unacceptable, I will definitely tell the director - 'I don’t want to act this way.'"

"I read another book today, the main idea is the most important thing for people is to know themselves. Know yourself, know what kind of person you are, then you will know the world. You need to learn how to reconcile with yourself, learn how to communicate with yourself, tell yourself when you need to keep going, when to compromise, when you need to understand, when you need to be strong… you need to keep being yourself and convince yourself at certain times."

Meeting Zhou Zi Shu, to Zhang Zhehan is also the process of meeting and knowing himself. "But I’m probably not as mighty as Zhou Zi Shu," he laughed.

He thinks that he’s not at the age of looking back, the things that have happened, just let them go. "There’s nothing to remember in particular, there’s nothing memorable. And my occupation, a lot of people will remember for you, they will remember your good, remember your various moments, so I don’t need to remember. What I need to do now is to live well, my current life, future life, and get into the next role."

"When I can’t act anymore, I think I will look back more."

Now, he wants to challenge a new area, "I really want to act in movies, act in more movies. 40 episodes of acting and 2 hours of acting are different, condensed acting is the quintessence. I still need to learn how to act well in the 2 hours."

And "I hope I can be a director one day."

The beautiful scenery in spring is as deep and wide as the sea, it’s fortunate that we get to meet.

"My occupation, many people will remember every moment of yours."

"Immerse into my next character, and live well - that's what I need to do now. "

Translation by: KIMMYYANG

[evas-apartment]

would love your thoughts on death of the author, separating art from its creater, etc.!

as someone who enjoys critically thinking about what i read & watch, i love the idea that i control the lens thru which i view plots & characters. maybe the author didn't mean to write these two women as potential love interests or create an allegory for transitioning, but i can, thru my own lens, see it in the story. however, i can also understand that when another author creates a "dark skinned evil race" for their story (very common example in fantasy) it is reflecting real world prejudices that harm real people & that needs to become a discussion imo of the author, their purpose in writing, & its broader effect on other media

This might be a long answer, but I got a lot to say here.

Long story short: Depending on the severity of the of offense, it can become impossible to "separate the art from the artist". But frankly, I've never attached such a large part of myself or my personality to a piece of media, or a celebrity such that I find it impossible to detach myself from something that can hurt people.

Thankfully, I was never that into Harry Potter, but the fact that it's author is a TERF amongst a bunch of other bigoted things like being blatantly racist and blatantly antisemitic should be enough for people. It's basically the "I don't know how to tell you you should care about other people". It's largely about having empathy for groups that you aren't a part of. It's about listening to the people who have been affected by a shitty person's shitty behavior/views/attitudes. Being really into something is special, but being so into something that you blindly defend a bad person in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary leads people to believe that you're bad too. And Harry Potter isn't worth that.

I was VERY into Five Nights at Freddy's, but then Scott Cawthon was revealed to donate money to demonstrably bad people, and I felt my love for something just ebb away into indifference, but that's just me. I LOVED Alton Brown until I saw reports that he made a bunch of shitty jokes (which I haven't been able to substantiate beyond two blog posts, but still) and I was able to just....stop interacting with it. I don't really listen to Michael Jackson's music anymore, but I can admit that it's objectively good music. But the love isn't there anymore. And I'm not going to praise a person that AT THE VERY LEAST shared a bed with and gave alcohol to minors. To relate it to my current hyper-fixation, wrestling, I can watch the matches of Chris Benoit, and admit that he is a phenomenal wrestler, and seller, but outside of that, I wouldn't go out of my way to praise the guy, to buy merch of him, which I've seen someone in real life do, or to say something so stupid as to say he should be in the Hall of Fame, like he killed people. That should be enough.

I feel like there is a greater conversation to be had about fandom culture, about how fans consume media, and attach themselves to whatever golden calf they're into that week. But TONS of people have said that, and this response is long enough, so I guess that's a conversation for another day. (Or another ask if you wanna keep hearing me ramble :P)

So, to answer the original ask, Yes. Viewing a piece of media through your own lens can be great. As a trans woman, it materialistically hurts nobody to headcannon someone as trans, and it makes me feel good. Being aware of stereotypes in otherwise beloved media franchises (the Gerudo in tLoZ, Jinx in Pokemon) is something everyone should be aware of, but go beyond that and actually listen as to why these depictions are offensive. Wonder why the original Fire Temple Chanting was offensive in Ocarina of Time and just have the empathy to hear different people out. As for "death of the author", everything is written with intent, whether intentional or not, and people's worldviews, ingrained biases, and privileges will shine make it through a person's work regardless of genre or medium. People's writing has intent, regardless of what people's interpretations of it is. Basically I don't agree with the idea of "death of the author" cause things made by bad people are usually ingrained with their shit views. Separating the art from the artist is a privilege afforded to those willing to listen to us. But when people like JKR not only include horrifically offensive depictions of people like me, get called out for it, then DOUBLE DOWN ON IT, you lose that right. And that's when we call it. And that's when we call it for people that continue to contribute to that.

And just as a little addendum for the end, saying Miku made something popular instead of the actual creator is worthless, and pirating Harry Potter media helps nobody but yourself.

All that being said, I do enjoy asks, and like receiving and answering them. Thanks for this!

[astaroth1357]

This is going to be my last post on this subject, I would appreciate if you hear me out...

First, I want to say unequivocally that I am sorry. I'm sorry to anyone that I've hurt, I'm sorry to anyone that I disappointed, I'm sorry to anyone who felt marginalized or hurt by my handling of the situation. It was wrong of me, I see that now, and I accept responsibility...

Secondly, I want to reiterate what I said in my original post. I care for the mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing of all people, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, what have you. And I do what I can to not cherry pick this principle (minority or majority, I always try to approach every individual as that, a person, with a unique perspective, thoughts, and feelings to share with me if they’re willing). My blog is a reflection of me and my stance on this. I do have people of several backgrounds as my friends, family, and colleagues and though I don't claim to perfect at always knowing how to address what troubles them, if it involves my behavior I always try to make an effort to correct myself and not let it happen again. They are who I think the most about when approaching the things I know that matter...

Thirdly, transphobia is a big deal. It is not something to be taken lightly. It effects the wellbeing of trans individuals everywhere and I never meant to downplay that. I know what hate feels like. I had to be careful of which friends I visited in my hometown because their neighbors would shout and threaten to shoot me for the color of my skin. I don't wish that feeling on anyone... I'm so sorry if I've made you feel unheard... It was never my intention.

Fourthly, a short background on me... I study Comparative Religion at the academic level (had it not been for COVID I would be going for my Masters right now). I was raised Unitarian Universalist and though I don't follow as much any more, its principles of unity and respect are still ingrained in my soul (if I were to have one). That is to say that I've been personally exposed to multiple practices, faiths, personalities, and viewpoints.

The first thing you learn when you've had that much exposure is everyone, and I mean everyone, believes differently. They may use the same book, but have different interpretations. Merely saying it is or is not in the scripture means almost nothing when the words themselves could be interpreted 5 different ways by 5 different people (including yours and my own). To anyone who says that by subscribing to a religion you must subscribe to all its views, I'm sorry but I believe that in practice that view wholly incorrect. Belief is individual and should be regarded as such.

I am personally friendly to religion, I have to be, it's my area of study. I think it's a beautiful expression of culture... But that doesn’t mean that I hold any of the views they apposed or agree with everything I hear. It took me years to learn for myself that tolerance is not acceptance, because if asked for my opinion I'm not afraid to speak it if it differs. I'm quiet with my opposition, but that’s because outright denounce things left and right only ends a conversation before it can start.

The difference in my approach to some people's is that I don't shut out different beliefs, nor do I assume that a person of faith can't be spoken to. As I've said, the same book can have a million interpretations. Sometimes it just takes respectful discourse to see things a different way. A way more true to who the person wants to be, while still maintaining their goal of salvation. It takes a while, a long while, but it never starts with me shutting them out completely.

You are not me. You're free to disagree with my approach, you're free to disagree my beliefs, you're free to hate me or how I have handled this, but I think it’s important that I at least share where it is that I'm coming from... I understand that my situation is different from others and I have the privilege to make this kind of decision. I'm so sorry to anyone I've hurt...

[oumaheroes]

sorry if this is burning you out on the uk bros but your headcanons of them are so good! since the previous anon ask about wales and England's relationship, do you have any on ireland and england? I'd love to hear your view on their rocky relationship. I hope your doing well!

Other brit bro headcannons can be found here:

The whole gang (Relationships & History)

Scotland (Appearance)

Wales (Relationship)

Ireland (Appearance)

------------

England and Ireland are an interesting pair

Overall, I’d say they’re the least close out of the UK siblings. Their personalities clash but without a redeeming quality that helps them make up for it: England and Scotland both have hot tempers but they cool easily which allows them to move on from things. Wales goes silent and moody but is hard to rile or annoy in the first place and has a lot of patience, so England’s fiery temper doesn’t affect him so much.

Ireland, however, also has a short temper and is quick to change moods. He blows up just as easily as England does but not as explosively, so whereas England will assume something is not a big deal because Ireland hasn’t screamed obscenities at him, actually it is a Very Big Deal indeed. Ireland can go very silky polite when truly angry and England, with his stubborn pride and need to have things over and done with as quickly as possible, will wrongly interpret these behaviours as ‘oh he’s trying to brush it aside, he’s seen my way of things.’ Actually, Ireland is more opposed than ever before and now has given up on whatever it was they were arguing about- he cannot be bothered to try to change England’s mind or resolve things and so he walks away stewing and angry, whereas England walks away calm again but confused.

 England also doesn’t deal with passive aggression well; it’s not how he operates and prefers to be very overt in both his opinions and actions. This blunt force way of handling things is very intense for Ireland, who simmers on his feelings and enjoys a healthy argument where both parties pick fault and go around and around in circles but without intending offense. England, whose main way of communicating disapproval is through arguments, does not gel well with this- he takes Ireland picking fault as a personal attack against him, rather than Ireland just making a point and this then leads to the inevitable real explosion.

 Ireland and Scotland still work despite Scotland’s hot temper because Scotland is a lot more laid back and confident in himself. He doesn’t read into behaviours or words for a sly attack and his pride doesn’t warp his perception of himself. You can criticise Scotland all you want, he’ll either agree that you have a point, or disagree and call you a twat but he doesn’t take it personally. England does and this is why he and Ireland experience the most friction- England can’t let things go and Ireland hides his hurt in silences so they both end up driving each other batty.

 The two are also very different people hobby-wise. On paper they should get along: Ireland loves poetry and debating, as does England, and they’re both very skilled in both. However, their preferred types of each are different and rather than happily discussing the differences, they end up fighting about ‘who is right’ instead.

 I’m not going to go into the history history of England and Ireland and how this shaped their view of each other. As I said in my Wales and England headcanon, I don’t believe nations in Hetalia can influence their government, nor can they control them. They exist as a cultural representative of their people, to guide them, help them, and remember them. England and Ireland had no role in the actions their governments had upon each other, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t influenced by them and the English in Ireland haven’t been much of a positive influence. English Kings saw Ireland as an opportunity to gain and expand English influence and power so, although England himself didn’t do any of these actions or want them necessarily, he was still caught and tied up in it. Maybe he was shipped across the Irish sea to fight with him men, or maybe he wanted to go to be with them for support. Maybe England didn’t fight his rulers as much as he could have done in the cruel decisions they made, or maybe he let his own pride and need for recognition in Europe to help persuade him that what his leaders were doing was doing was justified.

I don’t feel comfortable digging that intimately into it, but I do believe that England defiantly didn’t do enough to stop what his government was doing and was very weak willed and shitty in how he conducted himself around these points in time. Ireland cannot blame England personally for the things his government did, but he can blame Arthur for how he personally acted, and Arthur did not act well, with his giant ego and need to be right at all times. The lingering bad blood and mistrust is very much deserved and England is aware that he Fucked Up.

For a long time, he didn’t want to accept this. He would blame others, blame Ireland, or try to minimise both how badly he’d behaved and how devastating his government’s actions were (‘he’s just sensitive! Look at the good side of things!’). It took him many, many years to accept his role in things and recognise that they were bad, and then even more years to admit this to Ireland himself. As England grew and matured and suffered his own losses, this understanding increased and eventually he was forced to accept things from Ireland’s side and admit that his actions weren’t the positive picture he liked to paint for himself. This pushed him to try and apologise, something he very rarely does.

These days, the two of them are better with each other. They’re trying, both of them. Sometimes England will say an ill-worded, offhand comment and Ireland will give him the benefit of the doubt and not jump down his throat. Sometimes Ireland will call him out, but England won’t brush the comment aside like he would have done a few decades previously, or instantly go on the defensive. They’re both working on listening and talking more, but things can still get strained at times, such as around easter, around North, around the EU, etc.

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Nonny, I’m so sorry for how late this is orz. I hope that you see this, thanks so much for the ask! (These sort sof things never burn me out, don’t you worry about that)

[out-of-this-dimension]

Hypothetically Rewriting Assault’s Story + Some General Assault Opinions

There’s a game my husband and I like to play when we watch a movie, play a game, or read a book that has a story that we don’t really enjoy or we enjoy certain parts of but not others.  We look at things we’d keep and things we’d change and we build a story from there-- sort of like an AU but we don’t really go into the writing part, we just stick to theorizing and mapping a general story.

I decided to play that game with Star Fox.  Not because I think Star Fox has a bad story but because sometimes I think the stories could have been handled better.  Note: for the rewrite game, I only really look at story, even for video games, I don’t really look at gameplay mechanics, but I do understand those have a lot to do with story potential so I do take it in as a factor... I just don’t bother to “rewrite” the mechanics, if that makes any sense at all.  Some of my list today will include boss encounters but I wouldn’t necessarily say those are mechanic-related... more like “event-related”.

I’ve mused a bit in the past about rewriting Adventures and Command and I do have plans to do a mock up of an Adventures remake eventually.  However, today I was thinking about how I would go about handling an Assault re-write in particular.  Much like Command and Adventures, I don’t have any beef with the core story but I do think there’s a few things that could’ve been better about Assault’s storyline-- like they had good ideas rolling but they didn’t quite refine them.

Under the cut because SUPER long.

My basic feelings on Assault are pretty positive.  I think the game is generally just fun and I like that it feels like the natural progression from SF64.  I liked getting to see planets we haven’t seen since the N64 era in better graphics and I liked seeing Star Wolf return.  I also just thought the aparoids were neat enemies. 

Generally speaking, though, when it comes to Assault, I think it suffers from the thing it tries to push the most-- the story.  I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking the story is better than it is because it’s the first game since SF64 that really follows the same Star Fox vibe without retelling the Lylat Wars.  Don’t get me wrong, the overall plot is great but the execution and pacing are... wonky.  Certain characterizations also take a hit in some regards but no one really talks about that when Command exists. That’s something we’ll talk about later on with this post.

That being said, Assault really does have a lot good going for it.  An absolute banger of a soundtrack, some great dialogue, a neat story synopsis, the introduction of cool characters like Panther and Beltino (who existed but was always off-screen), and just good levels.  

So, here’s what I would add, I suppose, if I were to somehow have the ability to rewrite Assault.  Originally I had this in paragraph form, but I’ve made it into more of a list under topic segments with main points bolded for your viewing pleasure.  Some of these points might be considered nitpicky and while I do understand that yes, this is a game about space animals, I do hold the developers in high enough regard to make a game with a continuity that makes sense.

The Story Changes

- Reduce Pigma’s storyline in Assault.  This is the biggest one for me because a bulk of the plotline feels like a giant chase to just get at Pigma and it feels like it derails from the actual plot with the aparoids.  We only go to Sargasso because of Pigma.  We only go to Fichina and then back to Meteo again, because of Pigma.  That’s 3 levels in a 10 level game devoted to just tracking down Pigma and chasing him.  While it makes the build up to fighting Pigma kind of nice, I personally feel like the plot could be reduced to 2 levels.  If Assault overall was a longer game, I could see them making it 3 levels.  Overall, though, in its current state, I feel like the side plot overstays its welcome and the aparoids promptly get shoved to the side in favor of “Oh no, we gotta get to Pigma!” And I get the main motive here is to show how the aparoids affect people and because of the build up, it does a good job at showing how utterly terrifying the aparoids are.  But it’s still too long given the length of Assault’s story. The only alternative to this is make Assault longer, which... honestly, it should be.  

- Revise the scene with Tricky.  I’m obviously not well-versed in dinosaur biology but I’m pretty sure dinos didn’t grow that fast from what studying I HAVE done.  And why is he suddenly king now?  Did his parents die?  He seems not affected by this at all?  Like it’s a funny scene with him, Fox, and Krystal, but it’s odd if you really look at it.  Give us, as players, more context because I’m still not even sure what happened to make Tricky suddenly the leader and... big.  As a note, you’re gonna hear me gripe a lot about the Sauria level in this post.

- The Star Wolf + Peppy sacrifice is a low effort way to raise tension/stakes and then cop out.  Oldest trick in the book, imo, is to act like you’re going to kill off important characters only for them to be alive miraculously.  And let’s face it, as an audience we all know they aren’t going to kill those characters because it’s Nintendo and those characters are too beloved.  I would’ve forgiven them for only doing this with Peppy or Star Wolf, but when you tack them both together and throw in the fact they make it seem like you’re going to have to kill General Pepper too... yeah, it’s just a bit much of the same trope over and over again.  I wanted to put a note in here about how I’m fine with the Great Fox being “sacrificed” but overall, it needed to return to the series because of it’s icon status, but I think that’s more of a gripe at Command instead of Assault.

- Keep Pigma alive.  This will conflict with a point I have later on about the game consistently having characters cheat death for easy drama points but with Pigma, I would’ve kept him fully alive... but maybe with some physical damage from the aparoids.  I understand he’s semi-alive in Command and tbh I don’t know where I stand on that.  Why keep Pigma alive, you might ask?  I feel like his character has a lot more potential than being “just the greedy guy”.  Like he’s got good potential future villain material for future games and... if I’m honest?  I just don’t see Nintendo wanting to keep Pigma dead so why even bother killing him off?  They couldn’t even commit to him being dead in Command anyways so it seems very moot.

- Bring Bill and Katt back.  Assault is acts a bit like a big reunion of all of our SF64 favorites but our two favorite side characters are suspiciously missing.  Wouldn’t Bill be out on the front lines fighting against Andrew in the beginning?  Or maybe back in Katina?  And wouldn’t Katt inevitably show up in the midst of the invasion, maybe to pointedly check in on Falco?

- Bring Andrew back for the final fight. I think Andrew being defeated early into the game is fine overall but I think bringing him back in for a reunion final fight against the aparoids would serve to really solidify that it’s really everyone vs the invading aparoid force.  It would show that not only is Star Wolf willing to put aside their differences but so is basically everyone in the Lylat System in the name of survival.  Imagine the Venomians and Cornerians working together against an aparoid fleet, giving Star Fox and Star Wolf time to attack the queen?  I just think it’d be neat and it’d open up the potential for some fun banter mid-mission.  I do understand that quite a few people consider Andrew canonically dead after Assault but personally, I feel that his defeat left his fate questionable (I’m a staunch believer that unless there’s a body, they’re probably alive, especially for Nintendo games because, again, they never like to kill people off) so him returning in Command never really bothered me.  

- In general, reconsider some of the character portrayals.  Unfortunately, when a series has a different studio for each game, character portrayals will inevitably have inconsistencies.  While I give Namco a lot of credit for putting in oodles and oodles of detail into the game (particularly the levels), I think they failed in their portrayal of Fox, at the least, and Wolf is a considerable offender as well.  While it’s obvious that Fox in Adventures was effectively modeled off of Sabre even in terms of personality, Rareware was at least able to justify Fox’s newfound jaded attitude with the passing of many years and a distinct lack of steady income, resulting in the team being in disarray.  Assault’s Fox is a stark contrast to his cynical interpretation with seemingly no explanation other than maybe “Oh, I have more money and a gf, maybe I should behave myself”.  As if the sudden change in personality wasn’t random, Fox also just seems very blah, like a blank slate stereotypical shooter game protagonist dude with little to no emotion.  Wolf is less obvious but gets slated into a mentor-like role midway through the game and ends up in a respectful rivalry with Fox... which there’s nothing inherently wrong with that except for it happening abruptly (and, I mean, Peppy is right there).  But I take less issue with this and more of an issue with the fact that there’s an entire level establishing that Wolf now runs a crime den with effectively what seems to be an army and no one bats an eye at this.  He doesn’t even call on them to help with the aparoids.  Did they all die when the aparoids attacked Meteo?  Are they safe somewhere else?  Where do they go?  How was Sargasso able to operate without the CDF being on their doorstep with warrants for arrests?

- Don’t kill all the dinosaurs.  A bit of a dramatic statement but the ending screen that showed all the damage to Sauria really bothered me.  While I understand that the dinosaurs had less of a chance against the aparoids than a more technology-focused society like Corneria, I was a bit disappointed that the decision was made to just state that a lot of tribes had been wiped out.  I know this could easily be retconned in a future game and I feel like it should be.  “But why, Amalia?  Why are you disappointed by that?”  1) It’s a little too grimdark for my tastes.  2) The fact it all happened off-screen felt very hand-wavy.  And 3) It brings into question the entire point of Adventures.  Why did we bother to save this planet if it was going to be reduced to rubble and ash 1 year later?  Where were the Krazoa in all of this?  Why did they not make an appearance at all to try to stop the invasion with their alleged powers?  It just raises too many weird questions and I feel like Namco didn’t think it through too much.  Which I mean, sure.  Family, kiddo game.  I’m not asking for bigbrain plot and lore but I’m squinting at this bit because it does feel very contrary to the lore from the previous game.

- Make the aparoids more relevant.  As nice as it is to have a random bad guy from another galaxy, I feel like there was more that could be done with the aparoids in terms of their origins.  Tiny things, mind you, not huge revelations.  Off the top of my head, they could have been tied into Krystal’s backstory to help alleviate some of the complaints that she was too random to be added to the series’ main cast.  Alternatively, they could have been a product of Andross or even a weapon prototype from Corneria that fled the lab (I actually thought the game was leaning in that direction for a bit then just Nothing Happened).  I get that the vagueness of their origins leaves room for people to speculate and speculation is nice but... when you leave too many things unknown, it starts to feel less like giving fans room to interpret and more like just doing random things for the sake of it.  I think a lore tidbit here or there would work wonders for the aparoids instead of leaving them as just borg/zerg clones.

Level-Based Changes

- Add either Aparoid RedEye or Aparoid General Scales as a boss to Sauria.  Given that this level mysteriously lacks a boss, which is just weird compared to the other levels, I think that they had the opportunity to add something cool to go along with the cinematic feel they were going for with Assault.  Assault’s cutscenes do play in a movie-like fashion and it’s clear they’re trying to make the game as epic as possible.  It’s a shame they had so much fodder for a great boss here but they failed to go through with it.  Alternatively: Add a Krazoa-Aparoid fusion.  Why?  Because Star Fox is about cool epic sci-fi and that would be cool epic sci-fi incarnate.

- Add a boss to the Aparoid Homeworld Level, aka the penultimate level.  Another one I felt was personally weird that there was no “final defense system” to challenge the team.  Would be cool to do an aerial battle over the aparoid planet with some giant flying aparoid.

- Be kinder to Sauria.  The level had some good homages but overall was incredibly small and incredibly short.  It felt like a bone tossed to Adventures fans but was not entirely true to the setting built by Rareware.  I’m... not even sure where the Sauria level is supposed to take place?  I presume it’s Walled City but it doesn’t really have the same color scheme or aesthetic?  Also where is my revised Adventures music?  Why do all the other levels get it but Sauria doesn’t? 

- Put some of those funky items from the multiplayer into the main campaign.  I don’t know why some of these things, items especially, were omitted unless it was purely due to time constraints.  I remember having missile launchers and jetpacks in the multiplayer and was a bit sad that they were not in the main campaign.  Retuning the levels and adding those in would be a nice breath of fresh air for the more tedious on-foot missions.

- More levels.  Self-explanatory.  Still sad we didn’t get the Zoness or Titania levels in the single-player mode.  

I think all of the above changes would improve the game, though I recognize all of this is being said 16 years later after lots of time to contemplate Assault’s weaker points.  I’m not entirely certain how long Star Fox Assault took to develop but given that there’s obviously quite a bit scrapped from the game (an entire arcade mode was scrapped as well), I’m going to assume that the studio felt pressured to shove the game out the door and into the hands of customers.  It’s a shame, really, because I think a little bit longer in the oven would have done a lot of good.  Still, the product we got was good in its own right and a game that many people look back on fondly.  I haven’t gotten to replay it in years but I hope to quite soon.

You might wonder why I bothered typing this all out and I guess my point was this-- Assault was great but it wasn’t perfect, and while a lot of other games fall under a crushing amount of scrutiny, Assault seems to dodge it.  And don’t get me wrong-- I adore Assault.  But given that not many takes exist out there about rewriting it, I decided to give it a shot.  For variety’s sake.  

I do want to a mock up of a revised Assault story, which I think I will get to work on after completing this while all my ideas are still fresh in mind.  So stay tuned for that sometime in the near future.  I will also be doing my Adventures mock up at some point but probably not for a little bit as I do wanna focus some of my free time on actual fic-writing.

Anyways, if you stuck around this long, thank you for reading!  Have any changes you’d like to see to Assault if you could time machine your way back to the early 2000s?  Feel free to post in the comments, I’d love to read your ideas!

[kumkaniudaku]

Understanding

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17

Recommended Listening: Understanding x Xscape, Purple Emoji (ft. J. Cole) x Ty Dolla $ign, My World x Asian

Word Count: 2,137 

If you were going to win an award that afternoon, it’d be for attire, not confidence. Your expertly crafted golf outfit was the only thing willing your feet forward once you parked your car in front of Senior’s golf course.

Black women and men dressed like modern Jet magazine ads waltzed in and out of the clubhouse while you scanned the area for your party. You’d been to your fair share of golf courses, but none as exquisite as The National. Marble accents complemented modern brass finishes and unbeatable views of the city. The desire to take photos for your father was almost too much to shake, but you managed to play it cool. Acting out of place was surely some type of faux pas for the wealthy.

Across the way, Senior sat at the bar sipping a glass of water while thumbing through a newspaper. His furrowed brow was identical to Yahya’s whenever he was knee-deep in work or a good book. The mental comparison made you smile before ushering in a tinge of sadness. For two people so undeniably similar, they were miles apart physically and mentally.

You navigated through groups of young and old alike on the way to the bar.

“You made it on time,” Senior spoke without looking up from a story on education budget cuts.

“I made it with time to spare.”

“You don’t get praise for doing what’s right.”

“Think of how much better things would be if we did.”

Senior paused his reading to take a deep breath and shake his head. You mentally berated yourself for overstepping so soon. Not even five minutes into the outing and you had already committed an avoidable infraction

Yahya I prolonged the unbearable silence as he continued to read through another article, reading each line painstakingly slow while you watched in agony.

“I apologize. That was unnecessary.”

“I’ll ask you again,” he spoke, finally looking away from the newspaper to study your face. “Let’s leave the character right here. We’re here for a purpose, so grab your clubs and follow me to the first hole. I hope your game is as good as you are at running your mouth.” Taking his retort in stride, you quickly grabbed your set of clubs and followed with no objections. “After you.”

Senior found himself immediately impressed though he wouldn’t verbalize his feelings. He watched you breeze through each hole with near expert precision, opening a series of questions at hole 5 during casual small talk.

“Where’d you say you were from again?”

“A tiny town in South Carolina that you probably wouldn’t know.”

“Try me,” he answered while taking stock of his position on the fairway.

“Anderson, South Carolina. Home of Larry Nance and the great Chadwick Boseman.”

“Can’t forget James Kennedy, Young Lady.”

You cocked your head back in surprise. “What you know about Radio? I mean outside of what the movie says?”

Senior remained quiet long enough to take a hard swing. The loud “whiff” of his driver slicing through crisp, clean air didn’t match the stroke’s output. Both of you watch the golf ball sail high into the air before making a landing well short of the intended destination. Senior shook his head at the miscalculation before turning to answer your question.

“Black folks from all over are connected, even without all that Snapgram and Facebook foolishness.”

“I could argue it’s helped, right? How else would you be able to share your granddaughter’s first steps with the whole family?”

“In photo albums. You might not remember those, but they did us just fine.”

“Yeah, but it’s instantaneous conversation and information. Who wouldn’t want that?”

“Maybe instantaneous conversation is the problem. We aren’t making enough time to stop and really think about what we’re saying to each other.”

“Mm.” You let the conversation naturally taper before following Senior to his golf cart. The rolling hills provided enough scenery to keep you interested while you sorted the words in your head.

“I think we may have started off on the wrong foot.” You spoke once the cart came to a full stop. Senior trailed behind in silence, gathering a new club while watching you examine the other golfers in the area.

“You’re rather observant.”

You chuckled and plucked a club from your bag. “I’ve been told. Yahya calls me Eagle Eye when I catch something he’s already talked about ten minutes ago.”

“It’s what his Big Mama used to call his Pop-Pop for the same thing. That man was notoriously late to the punchline.” The nostalgia in Yahya I’s voice caught you off guard though he didn’t see your minor fumble. Something in his retelling appealed to your sense of compassion in a way that you considered long gone when it came to him.

“Let’s not beat around the bush. You have an issue with my presence that we should discuss. Because I can assure you, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Bold,” Senior responded with a sarcastic laugh. He gestured to nothing in particular as you squared up to take a swing and nodded. “And direct. Continue.”

You took a moment to hit a line drive toward the green in the distance, using the movement as an outlet for the unexpected nerves churning your stomach. Both of you quietly watch the golf ball for its final resting place before you turned to speak.

“You are extremely hard to please, and it is literally ruining your family. Yahya does everything in his power, and, excuse my French, you don’t seem to give a fuck. Why is that?”

“What makes you think that my love isn’t what makes me push him to be the best that he can? It may not be the fluff and frills you’re used to in your home, but it’s what he needs to get him to his potential.”

“Did it help you?”

Senior mistakenly allowed a quick moment of confusion to take over his features. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You tell me. When’s the last time you enjoyed a laugh with your family or felt like you could just...be? You’re carrying a weight that is crushing the people around you, and you don’t even see it.”

“You don’t…” Senior caught his words and bottled them behind his lips. He took a deep breath as he approached his golf ball and took a half-hearted swing. Noticing his misstep, he shook his head. “I’m from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My father, Yahya’s Pop-Pop, moved my mother and me to a shotgun shack to find work when things weren’t quite shaking out back home. He was in and out of trouble and such. Couldn’t get right, but he had a natural knack for building and design.”

A nearby group of golfers erupted into laughter, helping to break up some tension.

“So architecture’s been in the family for a while,” you asked. Yahya I curled the corner of his lips into a far-off smile.

“A long, long time. It got us out of that shack when my siblings came along and into a house with our own rooms and a backyard. But, my father was a hard man. Hard to please, you know,” he laughed, making a reference to your earlier words. “He wanted the best from me, and he made damn sure he got it. I needed that to get my head out of the clouds.”

“You also needed some reassurance.”

“Perhaps. But, what’s done is done. I look at what I’ve built with no complaints, especially when it comes to my boys. I couldn’t be more proud of the men they’ve become.”

Senior’s proud smile almost looked foreign on his face. You’d never seen more than an indifferent expression or the slight twinge of anger smoldering behind his eyes.

Leaning on your club, you kept your eyes forward to gaze out over the course.

“Yahya would love to hear that. I don’t know if you know this, but he is desperately searching for your approval. There is not enough praise from me or anyone else that could replace knowing that you’re proud of him. Yet, as much as he would like to tell you these things himself, he’s afraid that you’ll think less of him for being vulnerable.”

“I could never think less of the boy. Tough love is still love.”

“Maybe for you,” you added, shrugging. “But, what good is continuing this cycle if it’s hurting the children you claim to love and the grandchildren after them?”

Senior dropped his head in thought before looking up with an unreadable expression. “Deuce will be fine. He’s all the best parts of his mother. I...I’m confident he’ll figure out fatherhood on his own despite my shortcomings. We raised him well.”

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping -”

“That has never stopped you before, young lady.” His light-hearted chuckle invited you to follow suit.

“Fair point,” you laughed. “So, let me cut to the chase. Allowing Yahya to just ‘figure things out’ is a passive existence. Yahya says you’re constantly reminding him to take things into his own hands. Sounds like you should take your own advice. Be the parts of your father that you needed at 33.”

Instead of acknowledging your advice, Senior twirled his club in his hand on the way to the golf cart. He maintained an impenetrable poker face that even the most skilled readers couldn’t interpret. You silently hoped that at least some of your words had made it through his thick skull, but you chose to let the discussion meet a natural end.

As he started the cart, Senior turned to you and smiled. “How the hell you learn to swing like that? I know it wasn’t in Anderson.”

“Hey, we play a little golf here and there!”

“Where? Out in the woods?”

“No, out in the Bayou like you did.”

A small smirk crept across your face as Yahya I chuckled at your joke. He sounded identical to Yahya, full of mirth and beautiful melodies.

“The ole Bayou,” he repeated in a thick accent. “You ain’t seen a place more beautiful in your life.”

“Maybe Yahya and I could visit one day.”

He quickly looked over and shrugged. “Maybe. For now, you focus on defending this lead. I think I’m getting back into my rhythm.”

Senior couldn’t make a convincing comeback, but he did show glimpses of a softer, more personable disposition. He cracked jokes on occasion and asked questions that turned the conversation from a therapy session to banter between associates. Your mind traveled to the possibility of civil family dinners or vacations during the ride home. Though it seemed silly to create imaginary scenarios after one conversation, you couldn’t help the urge to see a better future.

Your happiness helped you float into your shared apartment, making Yahya smile when he caught a glimpse of your wide grin and short skirt.

“Damn, girl,” he hollered from the couch with Leche cradled in his arms. “If Tiger was out there cheeked up like that, I might’ve paid a little more attention to the golf network.”

“Oh, really?”

Your raised eyebrow made Yahya kiss his teeth once he caught on to the joke. “You know what I meant. Where you been anyway?”

“Oh, I was just out doing a little golfing...with your dad.”

“Right. That was today, huh?”

Even Yahya’s best attempt at feigning interest, his question came out in a flat drone typically used on annoying coworkers. You dropped your purse and keys against a nearby barstool on the way to his spot on the couch.

“It was today. I think we had a good time,” you answered as you slid your arms around his neck from behind, placing a gentle kiss behind his ear. “He didn’t yell at me.”

“You must’ve kissed his ass the entire time.”

“No. We talked about how great I am at golf. I mean, I kicked his ass.”

“Good on you, baby girl. Bring honor to our house.” In a surprise maneuver, Yahya pulled you over the couch and into the space beside him. “Is that all?”

Silence blanketed the room, allowing the college basketball game in the background to have center stage. You considered your options carefully, weighing the pros of a potential argument against a peaceful Saturday indoors. Yahya turned his attention back to the television as he waited for a response.

“Did you hear me, baby? He didn’t say anything rude to you, did he?”

“No!” You blurted. Taking a deep breath, you slowly slid the remote off the coffee table and pressed the power button. Yahya blinked twice at his reflection on the black television screen before turning to you for answers. Your fingers danced across his thighs to interlock with his long digits.

“I think...I think we need to have a real talk about your dad.”

----

A/N: I hope this is better late than never. Only two more chapters left! Really striving to have those to y’all by the end of the month.

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