#but I hate this character for obvious reasons

[nekrotiize]

If you have to ask whether or not your blorbo really counts: Yes, they do. Yes, even considering whatever reason you're giving. Is it that hard to quit a phrase that's blatantly and inherently Transphobic?

This post is about how this is an inherently Transmisogynistic/Transphobic thing to say. Yes, even for that character. Yes, it does count for them, actually. Yes, even if they're nonbinary, yes, even if you think they're a "blank slate", and yes, even if their birth sex isn't clear (what the hell?). No, it's not cool to say. I just said why it's not. It's just fucking transphobic, and saying a nonbinary person is "trans in all directions" is weird and untrue on its face. Stop it.

It should be obvious, anyway, that the constant seeking of "exceptions" to the rule of whether or not something is Really Transphobic is, in itself, Transphobic. That kind of semantic nonsense has been used to justify every kind of bigotry under the sun, and you all should really be smarter than this. But again, you just hate trans women so much you're disregarding the idea that it even counts as bigotry. You'll find any flimsy reason that it doesn't, to the point where it just winds up making you look even more transphobic than if you'd just kept quiet. Jesus Christ.

Every time someone says a character is “trans in all directions” I kill someone with my evil gun.

[purgemarchlockdown]

I'm not really someone who enjoys participating in discourse. I find that the environment is too volatile and prone to ad-hominem to really work as any kind of reasoned debate. People look for the things that confirm their perspective and get mad when they don't. I do that. It's not really constructive and as such I don't really like writing anything about it.

Plus I enjoy writing things about what I care about, and what I find interesting. For obvious reasons, why would I put my energy into something that I find boring or makes me upset?

I'm saying all of this to state that I have a distinct frustration of the current discussion going around with Amane. Now, I'm biased. Amane is my favorite character. I have an inclination towards defending her. One could argue that should discount me from the discussions but then I think we'd have to discount everyone from it since Everyone Is Biased!

You can't have a discussion if you don't have an opinion, and attacks on someone's character based on what you Think their argument will be like is not constructive! Actually it's usually the opposite. Let's all be reasonable here, and not descend into baseless insults based on what we want our opponent to be like for the sake of our ego.

After all:

The fine line between "Hate" and "OK"Shouldn't you look beyond your EGO, before it all ends? After knowing all, I wonder Can you really say INNOCENT?

Let's establish my argument.

I find the reaction towards Amane Momose after the deaths of Haruka Sakurai, Mahiru Shiina, and Shidou Kirisaki to be disproportionate, and the mentalities and biases at play to be distressing.

I also find that the logic underlying the argument to be faulty and unconvincing most of the time. And this whole discourse to be a distraction from more important and interesting discussions to be had about this whole series!

For one, I don't think the argument of whether Amane should have been guilty or innocent in trial 2 to be relevant for trial 3 and its voting. As due to the fact trial 3 is going to be the Last Trial, any argument for or against the safety of the prison (a major factor in this discourse) is rendered Irrelevant by the fact they won't be in the prison after this.

This is their final verdict and their final fates will be decided here. The most relevant points of discussion for a trial 3 vote is their crime and their current mentality within the prison. As a result the vote that came to pass in Trial 2 is irrelevant to the Trial 3 voting situation.

This is why I think it's a distraction to argue about whether if people were right or not to do so in Trial 2. Now it's genuinely sad that these characters are dead but ultimately we have to live with that. I find it frustrating that people are harping on this so much as if it proves something about Amane's Character (moral or otherwise) that everyone else missed.

One can argue that Amane has shown how destructive her worldview in this moment (thus also connecting it back to the trial 3 voting and it's relevance,) and while I have my own qualms about immediately assuming Amane is at fault for this (we will get to this later) and I, again, find the argument surrounding if she should have been voted guilty or innocent a distraction. I do think it's important to acknowledge that.

One, all these people committing murder was already a showcase that their worldview's could be destructive. You can argue that they're on their best behavior, or that their crime was a circumstantial thing. But then we'd have to ask the same questions regarding Amane's circumstance before the murder she (presumably) committed against Shidou and the one she committed against her mom.

Shidou did not just die because she hated medicine. Shidou was someone who repeatedly made her feel small and talked down to her.

Amane: I warned you. I can no longer turn a blind eye to this wickedness taking place right in front of us. You’re bringing ruin unto yourself. Do you understand? Shidou: No, I don’t understand. It’s my job as an adult to teach you that throwing a temper tantrum isn’t going to make everything go your way. If it’s a test of endurance you want, I’m happy to oblige, Amane.

People might think that this reaction is unreasonable, but the point is not if she's right or not for feeling this way, but that she Did feel that way. And I would like to posit that the stressful conditions Amane was under exasperated the problem, thus pushing her more towards killing Shidou.

And either way, my point is that she's not inherently destructive she just holds the ability to cause destruction when under the right circumstances...like everyone else.

Arguing that she's more destructive because she's "too far gone" misses things like how Muu's worldview hasn't been examined all too much even with the trial 2 guilty, or how Shidou's worldview wasn't examined all too much and he's implied to have killed:

A lot of people.

One can say that they only did these things due to the circumstances surrounding them but that just goes back to my first point. Arguing that Amane is uniquely more dangerous, despite the fact that like everyone else her murder has a specific circumstance surrounding it feels like a double standard.

Two, characters like Kotoko have arguably more destructive worldviews, and while there Was Discourse surrounding how people should have voted her in trial 1, it is not nearly as debated as Amane's is. Which again feels like a double standard.

And ultimately, even if we ignore the double standards at play here and how this is stuff we have Known Since the Beginning, we still have no clue of Amane's Mentality Now, we don't know how she seems in Trial 3 at all.

We can't immediately assume she's dealing with all of this well just cause we Assume that she's the reason behind the events, for one she was close to Mahiru.

T2Q8: If you had to make one of the prisoners part of your family, who would you choose? A: Shiina Mahiru. Her innate goodness might have brought the two of us closer, maybe.

And this situation is really close to something sensitive to Amane. The death of the cat.

As a result we cannot use this to adequately determine her current mental state, my original criticism still stands. The relevance this has to a Trial 3 vote is pretty...lacking. As a result we can't say this discourse exists so that we can determine what should be done in trial 3. This firmly exists as an argument of who was right and who was wrong in Trial 2.

One can call it petty (I have) or a distraction (I just did) but since I'm writing a post on it I am participating in that distraction. We can now travel to the second part of this post. Which is a dissection of the arguments for Trial 2 now that people have died.

Now, obviously people should be allowed to have opinions and have passionate feelings about those opinions. However I think the reasoning behind opinions, me or yours, should be questioned. It's good for a nuanced debate for opinions to be questioned, and for the other party to listen.

I for one have seen a lot of questioning about T2 Innocent Amane now. Some of it being blatant ad-hominem mind you, but lets take a charitable look at the discussion. Do I have a good counterargument against common arguments I've seen about this? Well, sort of, for one I would like to question the assumption that if Amane did kill Shidou that she should hold all the blame for Mahiru's death, first of all.

If we are working under the assumption that Amane killed Shidou and that means she killed Mahiru. Then can't we also say Kotoko killed Mahiru? She's the one who beat her up in the first place after all. And if we're going to say that then putting the full weight of responsibility of the deaths on Amane feels unfair. She's not the one who beat her up after all.

Additionally, if we're really tracing the threads of consequences back to the source then really shouldn't we be the ones taking responsibility due to how we created a Trial one?

Arguing on these grounds inevitably leads to questions about the Audience's own moral integrity if followed to the logical conclusion. If we believe Amane should be punished for this and that the earlier act of voting innocent in Trial 2 is incorrect because we let her "do something bad" then shouldn't that apply to the Audience? To Kotoko? To Shidou for clearly not doing as much as he could to help considering that Mahiru was in his care for Twenty Nine Months? To Kazui for not doing anything to protect anyone even though he Said he would?

I think it's reasonable to say that if any of us put the full weight of blame on any of the other people I mentioned this would be contested. But I'm not saying they should have the full weight of the blame put on them. I'm pointing out a double standard here.

That Amane is treated as if she did all the work killing both Shidou AND Mahiru, assuming that she did kill Shidou and that lead to Mahiru's death. That she's being given a harsher treatment here regrading the consequences of her choices, despite the fact everyone else made their choices and they had consequences. Again, including the one who actually beat up Mahiru in the first place.

And before anyone brings up Kotoko is guilty and that means she's being treated harshly. That's not my point. I'm not saying Kotoko isn't being treated harshly. I'm saying Amane is being treated too harshly Despite the fact that other people and factors we're at play and Despite the fact we already Guilty Voted the one who arguably should have the most blame be put on her for the situation at hand.

Second thing, we...don't know if Amane killed Shidou?

I know that she's Said she's going to do it multiple times over, but this is a series known for pulling tricks on the Audience and giving red herrings to distract from more hidden things at play. Again I have already said that Mahiru has been injured for at least 29 months. That is not a normal time of recovery for the injuries she has received. That is more than 2 years. Even with Potential Milgram Time Weirdness considered it's still an unnaturally long time to be injured and Getting Worse despite being treated by a doctor.

Additionally, with Haruka's death we know with some certainty that the restraints on the guilty prisoners aren't as restrictive as we thought. And we have a certain prisoner here who has been very vocal about wanting to hurt people. Not to mention if Shidou is doing malpractice again then a lot of people probably want him dead.

However, my point here is not that "other people could have done the murder" cause ultimately that feels a bit weak as an argument, if you trust in Amane doing her murder then saying "it's possible that it wasn't her" isn't really convincing.

I wrote all of that to ask a question, why are we assuming Amane killed Shidou? That seems like something I've already answered, she said she would.

However, other characters, have been pretty blatant about what they were going to do and that was Ignored. For one, people didn't think Haruka was going to commit suicide, and even if he did the guilty restraints would protect him (despite the fact we knew from Amane's T2 VD that the restraints aren't as restrictive as we thought, an argument used FOR the idea that Amane should be guilty.)

A second example would also actually be Kotoko. Kotoko, was not exactly secretive about her intentions of beating up the people who Us, The Audience deemed as guilty. She was very clear actually about what teaming up with her meant. And yet we accepted it and then got mad at her when she did that.

When it came to Haruka that was due to infantalization and a belief it could have been prevented through other means, when it came to Kotoko that's cause her words aligned with most people's beliefs in the abstract that we were willing to ignore the warning signs regarding her.

So why then, when it comes to Amane, we take her words completely at face value? What about this situation has changed that make it so we Can't ignore what she says? Can't twist it to mean something else? Can't say "Oh its possible that" and have it be convincing.

We can't say it's because people's lives are on the line, we've already shown that with Haruka and Kotoko that's not enough, and again, we can't say it's because she was clear in her intentions. So what gives?

Now, what I'm about to say might be considered an ad-hominem to some. However, I think criticizing a mentality held by a group and direct attack against one person is different actually. If you've gotten this far and think I'm attacking you, no I'm not.

(You can say I'm straw-manning though if you want. I am holding an imaginary debate here.)

However, I think the reason why Amane is being treated, frankly, unfairly, is pretty simple.

She's a child that spoke out against someone who was older than her. Who's been Very Vocal about how much disdain she holds for Milgram as a prison system. Who in Trial 1 we voted guilty because the consensus was that we needed to "teach her to be better." Now, I'm not saying anyone here is an abusive parent or doomed to become one. If that's what you're thinking.

I am however saying, in our society, we have ingrained hierarchies when it comes to children and adults. Children are below the adults. They have to follow the rules set by adults. When they disobey they are punished by the adults.

This is brought up by Es themself to claim power over Amane.

Es: No matter what you do, no matter how grown-up you behave – you’re a child. That’s an unchangeable truth. Amane: You’re a child, too! Es: Wrong. I’m fifteen, so I’m an adult in Puerto Rico and Haiti. You’re twelve, so you’re a child no matter the country.

This is right after Amane attacks Es. A physical question of their authority over her. Es' response is to Claim that as her Superior she has to Listen To Them and Follow What They Say. That despite everything she is a Child while They Are Not.

I have said double standard so much in this post you're probably sick of me saying it. However, this is why I keep on saying it.

And it's not like Amane is the only victim of it! I already brought up that we ignored Haruka's voice due to infantalization! It just manifested differently here because the way to spite Haruka in Trial 2 was to Ignore What He Said. However the way to spite Amane in Trial 2 is to Accept what she says and Vote Her Guilty Based On it.

This is the crux of my problem. This is not just about what is good for the prison. This is about spitting a child who disobeyed against a perceived authority. I don't think this ideology should go unchallenged. Especially when the subject of it is an abuse victim. Like Haruka was.

Jackalope says it himself in the Trial 2 Report:

Whatever the circumstances may be, she is the one that has to bear the blame. That’s just how it is. Both in and out of MILGRAM, isn’t that right?

Now, look, if you're someone who genuinely voted Amane Guilty in Trial 2 because you understood that to be the best choice and are now upset that what you expected to happen did happen. That's fine.

However, I believe, the reason why we are still debating about this past the point it should be over. The reason why people still care despite me already illustrating that it doesn't really matter for Trial 3. Is because of this. It's because people are upset a child spoke up against them.

And I just find that to be unacceptable to leave unquestioned. Because people will say Anything to deflect from being questioned about this. That it's not that serious. That it doesn't really matter. That people are overreacting over some silly show.

But, you can look through my blog. I just made a few posts about this before I wrote this, most of them un-rebloggable to make sure No One saw them outside of who followed me. I've been writing this in an exceedingly formal tone partially out of fear of being harassed for this.

I'm not the one who brought this argument up again. I'm Responding to people who brought it up again.

Maybe it's just me but...doesn't that contradict that statement? And even so, Milgram is written To be taken seriously. And people Have taken the previous discussions seriously.

Why is it suddenly wrong when this one is taken seriously?

I think the people reading this are smart enough to figure out why.

[utilitycaster]

Hi!

Outside of the obvious issues within the Campaign, One point i haven't seen talked about was how 4sD wasn't really a good way to find out why characters did certain thing or thought a certain way, the what the fuck is up with that section was the closest because the players and Dani would talk and ask eachother, though i believe that they also do that outside of the game, or talked about it on cooldown, but the questions selected for the tower of the deep dive often leaned into a fanfic-y narratives (mostly Tower, but sure i guess we need to know what their favourite ice cream flavors would be, for fun i guess)

I think cooldown is the closest to what i would have rather liked from 4sD but that's behind a paywall.

Do you think the format affected the way the audience engaged with the characters? or would it be like with Molly in C2 where Tal said that he was absolutely not a good guy but the critters insisted he was just misunderstood and actually a saint (hyperbole)

Hi anon,

4SD definitely impacted how people engaged with the characters, but if it hadn't existed the sort of person who cherrypicks out of context lines from 4SD would have just made things up whole cloth to support whatever they wanted a la Campaign 2. I also don't think 4SD is like, a problem. I agree there were flaws in the format, but also...I didn't ever watch Talks for Vox Machina (I did for Campaign 2 but as I binge-watched C1 I didn't have time and I didn't bother) and I understood the story just fine. I think that if you need a talkback shows to understand a character's motivations, either that is a flaw of the text for not showing them, or you are a stupid person. A great example is Bowlgate: Talks addressed explicitly why this conflict happened, but if you had, perhaps, watched the show, you would already know that Caleb had issues with abuses of power and massive problems with trust that often manifested as control issues, and Beau had control issues from the opposite direction that were no less explained by her past, and they understandably clashed, and while I personally agreed with Beau's assessment here neither of them expressed themselves very well, and it was a great moment of conflict in a game where conflict is interesting, and I also at no point was like "oh my god Liam and Marisha hate each other" because I understand the concept of acting. I actually, as someone avoiding the fandom at the time but watching Talks each week, was stunned to hear this had even been a controversy when I tuned in.

I think there are two much bigger factors in how the fandom engages:

social media and especially algorithmic short-form social media creating echo chambers. Like, obviously I am biased but I think the reason why so many of the most rancid and incorrect opinions from this campaign are from Twitter and so many of the most rancid and incorrect people are as well is that on Twitter, saying buzzwords tends to get eyes on your post, and it's all very short so you don't have to explain yourself, and it's based on instant gratification and if you say something stupid in the past it's easier for people to move on because it's hard to find, whereas like, on Tumblr, people have longer memories and if someone doesn't explain themselves they can't point to a character limit. I think without like, Twitter, bowlgate would have been much smaller a phenomenon. I think a major flaw of 4SD is that they've addressed things brought up on Twitter that aren't even a controversy but are actually just incredibly fucking stupid (Relvin not saying the exact words "I love you" is the one I'm remembering off the top of my head but this has been a problem for a WHILE).

The biggest one: I have mentioned blorbo-centric morality and you alluded to how people thought Molly was a saint and I just think for whatever reason Campaign 3 attracted a MASSIVE number of people like that. 4SD doesn't even enter here; if it exists they'll use it but if not they'll again make shit up or cherry pick or misinterpret. The core of all C3 discourse, at this point, is that some people will defend literally anything Bells Hells do no matter what. This is why you are seeing people who insisted the gods were, as someone said, tall kings who needed to be dethroned (killed) and were colonizers and murderers suddenly pivot praising a plan that lets them live and oh how compassionate Bells Hells are. You got people who defended indecision on this topic earlier; who said there were no good options but were too squeamish to actually explore that if their are no good options their darling little angels will get their hands dirty no matter what. The No Agency crowd. It's utterly spineless and amoral; they will abandon whatever argument they had to pivot to the aimless whims of Bells Hells. So 4SD gives them more material in their endless pivoting but they'd do this anyway.

So the format was like, fun as a hangout show but not great as a talkback at times, but it really wasn't a major factor because idiots are gonna be stupid no matter what. With that said while there were things about 4SD I liked I kind of wish they could go back to a more Talks-esque format, obviously with like, a better host. I also think that it might be better to permit fan-submitted questions in real time and air the episodes a few months later, particularly since as mentioned the crew often asked questions from a while ago. I also think doing this as a big thing monthly might be easier on the schedule but meant that we heard a LOT from cast members who were frequently available even if if their characters weren't doing much that was interesting. I would ideally like to go to like, every other week, shorter and more casual, with fan-submissions through a web form collected during the week following an episode so that like. we wouldn't get Talkback Show For 119 for maybe a month but it would actually be about that.

[greenerteacups]

7 and 8 for Narcissa (or really, any member of the Black family - dealers choice)

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I love talking about Narcissa, I'll take the chance all day!

I love that fanon Narcissa absolutely runs Draco's shit. He's portrayed as an über mama's boy, with I really jive with (obviously), since it opens up the chance to explore a relationship we basically never see in the actual books. Leaning into that also explains how Draco got so spoiled, when by all evidence Lucius isn't the most cuddly parent — he's scolding Draco in a lot of the interactions we read of them (granted, usually because Draco's doing some dumb shit). Canon Draco is always nattering about his dad, so I think he idolizes Lucius a lot more, but he's actually closer to Narcissa. As an only child in a family where his mother doesn't work, that interpretation makes a lot of sense to me, as does the idea that Narcissa would play more of an influential role in his adult life, once he'd become disillusioned with Lucius (especially in a postwar context).

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Narcissa gets woobified in the fandom like you wouldn't believe. Especially postwar fics. No blood prejudice, no bias, no hateful language, and striking civility to all muggle-born characters, Hermione especially. A change which, in most cases, seems to occur spontaneously and apropos of nothing except the end of the war. I think people do this for two reasons: (1) prejudice not a sexy flaw for your villain to have, hence why many postwar Dracos don't seem to retain virtually anything of the ideology he has in canon, and extend that blanching to Narcissa in order to avoid conflict with him and his mother; and (2) Narcissa and Lucius are both extremely scary antagonistic characters in any Dramione story if you take them seriously, and sometimes people aren't trying to write serious scary antagonists. Sometimes people just wanna write slice-of-life low-stakes stuff. That's fine! People should read and write whatever makes them happy. It just drives me up the wall to read that specific characterization of Narcissa, because I think it's totally unrealistic. Narcissa married a Death Eater! Her sister was a Death Eater! She raised a Death Eater! She lived with Death Eaters for months, if not years! Yeah, she obviously doesn't give a fuck about the Cause if it threatens her family — cf. the "is Draco in the castle?" moment — but she would not have run in these circles if she hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid and kept it down. And plus, like: if losing the first war wasn't enough to create Woke Narcissa, why would the second one be?

The obvious reading of a postwar heel-face turn, if you take canon seriously, is that Narcissa is at best a morally agnostic opportunist who adopts whatever philosophy happens to be profitable at the moment. Which is a pretty dark character. And I wouldn't mind at all if that's how she was actually written, because I think there's a real foundation for that in the text. But in fanon, it usually scans like she's a fundamentally loving and charitable person who never really believed in blood purity, she just decided to marry into a eugenecist death cult for — y'know — tax benefits or something.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Do you think as of S6 they should introduce a new school bully type of character ? I mean with Chloe not living in Paris anymore and Lila upgrading to Gabriel's role they did leave the position of pretty school bully/civilian antagonist for the heroes vacant for now.

The point of a school bully character is to cause conflict on the civilian side while the big bad causes conflict on the hero side, letting the show have conflicts on both sides of the mask. But if the big bad hates both Marinette and Ladybug and is actively trying to harm them? Then there's no need for an additional character to cause civilian conflict. The big bad fills both roles.

This is the type of big bad that I'm assuming Lila is going to be. She's once again going to be a student at Marinette's school so she'll once again cause conflicts through manipulation and lies on the civilian side. The only difference is that Lila will now use those conflicts to make akumas. If you want my best guess for how season six is going to play:

We are going to have a ton of episodes that play like clones of the episode Ladybug. Lila will make something bad happen and frame Marinette. Everyone will blame Marinette at first, but the truth will be outed in the end and everyone will be friends again. This will repeat ad nauseam, but no one will ever stop to ask why this keeps happening to Marinette because this is a formula show where the characters can't learn and grow. Marinette constantly looking bad will somehow never make people think less of her either because, once again, formula show.

That all sounds deeply aggravating to me and is one of the two main reasons why I keep saying that I have no plans to watch season six. The writers have always taken an in-your-face approach to Lila where the audience is extremely aware of every lie she tells while the characters are somehow totally oblivious. This is probably done so that the little kids who are watching at home can follow along, but I think it's selling kids short. Kids are smarter than this. You don't need to be this obvious especially since being this obvious makes the Lila-centric plots unbearable.

Because Lila's lies are so obvious that even a toddler could spot them, she comes across as ridiculously overpowered and everyone else ends up looking like a gullible idiot. I don't expect either of those elements to improve. In fact, while I'm expecting Marinette to suffer the most, I'm actually more upset about what this is going to do to Alya because the writing tends to drag her character through the mud whenever Lila is around. The idea that we're in for multiple seasons where Alya goes Lila-brained makes me sick. It was bad enough when it was just an occasional episode. I have no interest in watching it become Alya's new normal. I also don't see how another path is available to her so long as the show remains an episodic formula show where every episode stands alone.

[black-n-white-wings]

#it's harder and harder to like wwx as a blorbo when this is what i keep seeing

yeah, I don't hate wwx but his fans are reading an entire different story. Why should jc/jgy/xy's fans add the "i know my fave is problematic and a bitch but i like him despite him being an awful character" every time they post but wwx/lz/wangxian's fans get to stand on the moral higher ground? every time I see a discourse it's always "wangxian are perfect they're victims" and the others can eat shit? especially when it's used then to say "the very real people who are just enjoying a fictional piece of media can eat shit too"?

mdzs is a story about a very flawed if well-intentioned protagonist and the very one-purpose-driven love interest that has little to no development except for his love for the protagonist. As readers we can have empathy for the corner wwx backed himself into and the series of unfortunate event that drove him to those actions, but if we wish to engage in meta discussions we can't have blinkers on. That's as simple as that. And the more i interact with wgxn fans the more i come to dislike the characters. It's no secret i have beef with how the story is written and that the fact it's a series of snippets, quick paced scenes, no time to delve into the context and see the bigger picture because the main drive is to arrive to the happy ending and subsequent porn scene does not allow for obvious layered-reading. The supposedly internal pov is not consistent and scenes suddenly go from wwx's pov to glances as other characters'. BUT what it means is that we *know* that jc (while obviously disliking the wen, they killed his entire family, shouldn't he??) never advocated for the annihilation of the surviving wen himself. He advocated for the survival of his own sect. he advocated for prioritizing the well-being of his charges over the well-being of the people that reduced his blood-family to one and a half. Is it morally wrong? maybe, certainly not a 100% virtuous. But it's justifiable. The characters are flawed. Is wwx's violent torture of wc virtuous? is the way he killed wlj, akin to sexual assault, virtuous and morally right? absolutely not. Is it justifiable? maybe. He also lost almost everyone he cared about in the wen attack.

But jc doesn't get the same grace. He doesn't get forgiveness or compassion from some fans. wwx is directly responsible for jyl's death because he went to the meeting, taunted the cultivation world that he had threatened for weeks and he knew they would retaliate. He was pretentious and insane, corrupted by the cultivation he assured he could control and manage. He believed he could achieve anything (and who could blame him? His main authority figure in his formative years never discouraged that) but he could not. His hubris caused his downfall and yet all the blame falls on jc. Jc wasn't loyal enough (wwx was the one who should have been loyal, he was jc's subordinate and PROMISED HIM he would be loyal to jc and he broke this promise). jc didn't love him enough (he tried several times to defend him against men ten times more powerful than him both politically and in numbers, and he tried to bring wwx back to reason, something impossible to do since he did not have all the relevant information to understand BECAUSE WWX ACTIVELY LIED TO HIM FOR MONTHS). Jc slandered wwx in front of jl despite wwx being a perfect innocent angel (wwx killed jl's father and had his mother killed because he lost control. He. Lost. Control. It's canon. For people who spit on the drama adaptation, it's the only one that absolved wwx from these actions by putting another player in the shadows). Jc tortured demonic cultivators because he's cruel and mad and hates wwx (the rumours concerning wwx, never proven, should be dismissed, but not those concerning jc? double standard much? We have third-hand accounts for that hearsay and when jc has the chance to torture wwx he just screams at him, not very blood-thirsty madman of him).

The moral, virtues, obligations and expectations from such a piece of media have been explained ad nauseum by people that actually have the necessary cultural background to know what they're talking about. as a westerner, i read it, i listened and i learned. And what i understood is that by leaving the jiang clan, by choosing the wen over those he had a moral duty to, he is CULTURALLY in the wrong. Of course saving innocent people is not morally wrong. But again, are *all* the wen in that camp innocent? debatable. maybe yes, maybe no. What does it mean to be innocent? Simply standing by, not directly murdering someone? Wen Qing is the character that raises this very question IN THE TEXT by repeating like a broken record that doctors don't kill. But did she save? Was there active resistance from some Wen to save the innocent people their sect targeted? Or is it just that they did not directly kill? Why? did they have no choice? Was there threats and repression? Or did they simply follow their sect leader? Have they changed their stance on the war once they realised they were losing? Putting them in labour camps, using them as fodder and guinea pigs for the jin to experiment demonic cultivation on is wrong. It's terrible. But my point is that if people want to debate and expand and argue about interpretation and canon events they can't go surface level and just scream that they don't agree because reasons and main character brainrot.

Jiang Cheng is not wrong to want to preserve what he has left. He's not wrong to prioritize the people he enlisted to fight a war for him over people that have started that very war. He is not wrong to hate (although that hate is also love and hurt and repressing unwanted feelings, and rejection and incomprehension, and confusion, yadda yadda) the man that betrayed him, lied to him, rejected him and then killed the last of his living relatives in a fit of madness. Jc had his sister. That's it. His only surviving blood relative and the one that stood by his side always. The last person who did not reject him and betray him. As readers we *know* wwx sacrificed a great deal for jc, but why did he do it? love? duty? this unshakeable belief he can fix anything? but jc did not know. We can't expect a character to act like they have all the information when it's the reader's privilege to have that. And again, readers also have blind spots. did you know that while wwx sacrificed so much for jc, jc did the same? First? that he threw his life away without even the possibility of hiding behind excuses such as duty? promises made to parents/guardians? when reading that, how can we still think jc is a heartless bastard that never loved wwx? that he's morally broken? why should we focused on how jc is ungrateful to wwx for a sacrifice he didn't know was made when wwx's resentment toward jc comes from the same place of ignorance? An ignorance that persists by the end of the story?

anyways it's getting a bit too long, i got carried away again.

tldnr : wwx's fans are making the character unpalatable by engaging in discourse they cannot conduct properly and emptying the text of comprehensive, deep and active reading and by simply being defensive and claiming a non-existing moral high ground and purity. their attack of other fans creates a toxic environment that affects the reading comprehension of the text and makes being in a fandom about a fictional world a deeply unpleasant experience

I love JC a lot I really do.

But I think the main reason he gets criticism for the wen situation with the Jin's and not others like NMJ and LXC for not supporting that idea because it's not about the morality.

It's about Wei Wuxian. It's about the family supports family or the loyalty to each other if you would.

Like sure he was a young sect leader with a lot of new responsibilities in the middle of the rest more mature with a good backing but there was also Jiang Yanli who would have and even did Stand by Wei Wuxian even in her last moments, even though she was married into the Jin's, even though WWX has supposedly just killed her husband and the father of her child.

But he failed where he failed okay.

He managed to protect something (the sect) but it cost him the last bit of his family.

He could have done something right, at least told Jin Ling the truth about his mother who died protecting her little brother instead of being his victim.

He had his reasons for what he did but it still doesn't make those actions any more likable.

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[myimaginationplain]

jayvik shippers PLEASE be normal about Mel & Sky challenge, part 2, difficulty rating: (impossible)

[wraith-caller]

It costs 0 dollars to not go on art of a pairing you don't like and tell the artist "they don't belong together, actually"

[tytoalbatross]

god damn i do not post often but can i talk about intentionality for a second?? one second please

i'm gonna be talking about bg3 but this really applies to any fandom space. people will, surface-level, agree that a Black character is not getting enough content compared to their white counterparts because it's. obvious . take wyll, who is several hours behind on voiced lines compared to other origins despite being one of the original five (before they added karlach and whiteified her too but that's another post). it's hard to deny cold hard facts

but then instead of engaging in content that uplifts Black characters and creators, they'll go right back to pumping out more and more content of just their white faves. on its own, it's not actively harmful, but here's what the implication is, whether they acknowledge it or not: yes wyll has less in-game content, yes his writing didn't get the attention it deserved, therefore i don't like him as much. it only perpetuates wyll's lack of content by contributing to his sidelining in fandom spaces

what i would love for fans who claim to be allies to do is to step out of the comfort zone of their initial favorites (which can, in fact, be biased!) and start pursuing content centering Black characters with intentionality. like all things, anti-racism (actively pushing back against racism rather than simply "Not Being Racist") takes practice and effort. you can't really agree with us that wyll needs more content, then in the same breath say that it's because of that that he's not interesting to you . the point was right in front of you doing a jig and you still missed it

[chiangyorange]

hey why s2 got the messiest worstest terrible awful fucked up compelling tangled dirty filthy complex nasty ass family drama ever. mianite was killed by his father using his mother's sword. how fucked up is that. hey do you know how fucked up that is. hey. hey wake up h

[musicalmoritz]

Defending Hakubo online isn’t enough, I need boxing gloves

[no1ryomafan]

Need to get back on the grind today and watch G Gundam but watching this show makes me think about one thing I’ve been overthinking a lot in anime where we have a story that either has characters from multiple countries, not just Japan OR we explicitly do have a story that ISN’T in Japan which leads to the conclusion of “there’s no way everyone is actually speaking Japanese here” and this shit always rattles my fucking brain despite the fact I’m watching this dubbed.

[faceeeeee]

Your fav characters from TPOT/BFDI?

I honestly like most characters except for some but if I had to pick my top 3 it would definitely be these guys

[flying-cat]

I'm stealing a tweet but what are your media literacy check characters

[swagging-back-to]

worst trope is found family separating as soon as the antagonist is dealt with.