fun fact about togame, his voice actor also voices a jojo character named "Weather Report" (you see where i'm going with this?)
i want to believe that the one singular contact number in sakura's phone is not in fact his piss poor attempt to use a phone, but rather a well-kept secret point of contact between him and one certain togame jo. after the showdown with shishitoren and the rooftop celebration, togame and sakura remain... curious about each other. it starts off surface-level enough. togame wants to find a way to repay his debts somehow -- keep an avenue available to someday prove to sakura that he isn't so lame anymore.
he's eternally thankful to sakura for snapping him out of whatever fugue state choji's mistakes put him in and wants to actually befriend sakura because of it. make sure he hasnt changed and all. meanwhile sakura contemplates it, because umemiya WAS right in the grand scheme of things and he did somehow "communicate" with togame in their fight. he wants to keep talking to togame, sort of. learn all the things he couldn't gather with his jabs and kicks. so they both find themselves at the tunnel a few days after the fight as complete coincidence.
its complete fate they ran into each other without meaning to, but togame wastes no time in warmly greeting sakura and chatting him up. night begins to creep up and at that point sakura knows they've gotta start getting home if they both don't wanna start shit sitting out at night on territory boundaries while wearing their respective recognizable uniforms. he's hesitant to pull away from the conversation though and togame seizes the opportunity to ask for sakura's (barely used) phone and write himself into sakura's contacts. (he doesn't even have a password btw)
"Wow~ Not a single person on here, Othello-kun."
"Hah? What th' hell would I even need it for? If I need something, I can just go ask in person. None of that slow, boring texting crap."
"You really live life too fast, haha. What if it's too small for the effort? Or you can't come find me in time? Shishitoren territory is quite far from Furin's campus, after all."
"What would I even need'ta ask you that isn't urgent enough to come here, scraggly?"
Togame simply laughs under his breath. "Anything you can think of." he hands the phone back to Sakura, screen lit up with a single new contact under the name 'Weather.'
That's stupid.
The older boy continues to tease Sakura. "Call me to ask about the weather, if you really can't come up with anything at all. I promise I'd pick up; it's the least I can do for you after everything."
They part ways, and even if neither of them mention it -- Sakura keeps this encounter close to his chest. Thinks about it when his classmates make fun of him for it the very next day, even as he says nothing and lets them tease him. With 5 new names in his list of contacts, he remembers to go home and scroll to 'W' and asks about the weather tomorrow. Asks a whole lot of other things too. All until he falls asleep.
(He never changes Togame's contact name after that. Not even months later, stranded on a bridge and staring down an army of enemies and another black-haired tall douchebag to humble. What will the weather be like tomorrow? Clear motherfuckin' skies, baby.)
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maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)
it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.
mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.
it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.
it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!
the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.
and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.
it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.
he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...
...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.
there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.
but doesn't that prove the point?
wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.
jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.
jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...
do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.
"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.
that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.
that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.
of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.
with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?
jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.
of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.
i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.
if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.
is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.
however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.
this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.
this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".
of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.
to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.
wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.
for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.
that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.
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Christianity and Plurality
I want to preface this with a few different things.
Firstly, I don’t fully identify with the label plural, even if I used to; I struggle to see my plurality as “plurality,” even if I do technically fall under that label. I’ve been working on finding a good alternative, but at the end of the day, I still associate with certain plural ideals and symbols, and regardless of how much I’d rather not associate with that community, I am forcibly put into that community due to my disorder. I feel qualified to talk about plurality from a personal experience lens, but as always, do not take my word as the one and only truth.
Secondly, I have wavered somewhere between Christian, Agnostic, Atheist, and various other styles of “ex-Christian who is traumatized by the religion.” I’m not entirely sure what label to apply to my religious ideals, particularly as, I didn’t think I’d be figuring this out due to… syscourse, of all fucking things. Through all of this, I think I’ve determined I am Christian, just… loosely.
Lastly, connecting to the syscourse point: I really don’t want to make this post. The only reason I am is because I haven’t seen people who share my perspective speaking out, despite knowing that many do, and I figure… If I won’t, who will? As a Christian who struggles with modern Christianity, and a system who struggles with modern Plurality(™), I feel the need to speak up about all this drama lately regarding the topic of a Plural God, and how it is negatively impacting me. I want to speak my truth, y’know?
So, let’s talk about it.
When I was still going to church weekly, I was part of both the children’s worship and the more adult sermons. I watched the sermons for adults before heading downstairs to work with the children and see their lesson. By and large, I appreciated the latter far more than the former, as I felt it got to the core of the religion without frustrating semantics and vague ideas.
In all of these spaces, when the topic of the Holy Trinity was mentioned, it was… odd and definitely confusing for me, especially as someone who struggles with AND without things being seen in absolutes. I’m unsure what denomination I fell under (my parents refused to inform me, saying we’re all the same under God) but the approach was the same for the three different churches I recall attending.
The Holy Trinity (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was a triad of things. The Father was God, the Son was Jesus, and the Holy Spirit was what came after Jesus’s death. However, it was secondly the phrase, “My God is three-in-one,” referring to the idea that God is present in all of those ideals, having given the world Jesus, and having predetermined Jesus’ sacrifice to save us from our sins. Lastly, the Holy Trinity was a concept and belief, and that was what was focused on the most. See, the denominations I was raised in specified that belief in God and the Son and the Holy Spirit were just that: a belief. That our belief in God is what made us worthy of salvation, and thus, the Spirit of God was in all of us.
It was known to me that God was not also Jesus and was not also the Holy Spirit. They were separate, but each part informed the other, and our understanding of those three separate parts formed one unified belief.
With this new rise of the comments that God is an endogenic system… It feels incredibly disjointed from the childhood beliefs I’d learned and absorbed. Suddenly, my belief is something that isn’t factored in; the Holy Spirit is now something solid and tangible, an entity rather than my faith in Christ and the Lord. The best comparison I’ve been able to come to is how people play with Greek myth, making it more modernized while ignoring the original premise and meaning behind the myths -- No, no, Persephone wanted to marry Hades, really (ignoring the kidnapping of Greek maidens and the betrayal inherent to motherhood, yada yada yada yada).
If God were an endogenic system, suddenly, Jesus’s sacrifice is the death of God as well (as headmates share the same body). Unless people are attempting to say that Jesus’s death was only innerworld, in which case, we’re now saying, “The death that led to the salvation of humanity from eternal damnation was entirely in the innermind of God.”
It removes the human element of everyone else in these biblical stories. It removes the human context, the failure of humanity (and the successes) from the core essence of Christianity and centers instead solely on this idea of plurality.
Then we get to the Holy Spirit, and it all breaks down more. Now the endogenic headmate of God is inside of me? Now you’re stating that my belief is on the same level as my parts; but it’s not. God is not in my head — he’s in my heart and soul. He’s not an alter.
I will say, this is no fault of those who are sharing this headcanon, but I want to add it to provide context for why people may be feeling particularly heated about this topic. I’m currently in a very stressful time in my life, and this discussion of a plural God has made me start thinking about all of this at an incredibly poor time. Made me start thinking about the concept of the Holy Spirit being an alter, rather than the presence of God’s love in me, and how it’s suddenly more concrete. This has been sending my demonic and angelic alters into quite a tizzy, especially as one of those demons (Numb) is a protector who is certain I’ll be splitting a fucking Jesus introject.
Needless to say, this wouldn’t be good for us.
But do you see how the spiral arises?
I will say, I don’t feel that the belief that God is an endogenic system is inherently bad, and having a belief in God that could negatively impact someone else’s view of God or even just them as a person is not on that person’s shoulders. Again, I only mention the splitting thing because I want people to understand that these topics are stressful — and not just for “ridiculous anti-endos.”
I’m also not saying it’s bad to play around with the concept of God and adopt new beliefs that are outside the norm. Quite the contrary; I’m sitting here with the belief that God is a genderless being using He/Him and They/Them in conjunction, that Jesus qualifies as trans and queer, and that Joseph and his technicolor dreamcoat put on a stellar drag show for the Pharaoh, his lover. I know plenty of Christians who would have a heart attack at these ideas.
The issue I do have is that those who are saying that God is an endogenic plural are not doing so (excuse the pun) in good faith.
When I say that Jesus is trans, I do not do so to “raise awareness of transness in Christian spaces” or to “own the bigots and reclaim Christianity.” I do so because I genuinely believe it to be true, and I like to share that truth. I share it to help others gain more perspective about religion, not about transness. I also share it with those I know would receive it, as I don’t want to push others away from the concept of transness or Christianity by offending them -- religion should not be the starter course of acceptance.
And yet, in all of the discussions I’ve seen of this topic, it has not felt that anyone is actually saying this because they truly believe it. It doesn’t feel like people are saying this to share their joy and wonderment about finding themselves in their religion. It feels instead like people who are purposefully trying to bait anger or confusion in order to manipulate people into learning something, or even simply to be cruel. As a teacher, and as someone who was also manipulated by the church, I can attest that manipulating people in this way doesn’t… help. Why are people purposefully seeking anger? This literally goes directly against the edicts of the God you’re theorizing about.
In the past few weeks, I’ve seen more vitriol at the “colonizing homophobic Christian bigots” than I’ve seen for years, particularly as I’ve tried to avoid any mentions of my religion in public after years of abuse (both from my religious parents, and from non-religious peers). I try to avoid it because people form assumptions about me if I mention my religion, even in passing. Let’s not forget the poll that stemmed from this that lumped all Christians under the straight white label, an issue that persists and that queer Christians have tried to fight for goddamn years.
And all of these people are going on about a plural God.
It just feels… disconnected. Like the people saying this don’t actually say it to connect to God, but rather, to tread on those religious beliefs for their own agenda. It feels like people using my religion for their own means, without actually caring a lick about the meaning behind what I believe.
And that’s why I’m hurt.
I ask kindly that people consider not using a religion they don’t believe in for their crusade for more acceptance of Endogenic systems, or at least, to do so with the intention of actually interacting with the religion as more than a simple mythology. Please try to consider the context of these stories, the power behind these beliefs, and the impact that imposing modern systems (another good pun) on these beliefs could have.
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