#i say death positive because i have nuanced feelings about death and especially how we treat the dead

[shalom-iamcominghome]

reading names of people who passed on their yarhzeit (the jewish date of someone's passing) is a really really common practice, as in every shul I have ever been to does it. mourning in judaism is very very scheduled and marked by time (after someone passes we mark shiva - 7 days, shloshim - 30 days, and then yarhzeit -which means year time, basically).

usually the names read are connected to the congregation i.e. family members of current members or deceased temple members.

i don't know when reading names at shul started or if all sects practice it (i've only been to reform and conservative) I know my uncle who is orthodox says that name on the exact date vs. my family where we say the name on the closest shabbos to the date but light a memorial candle on the exact date. but it's a way to collectively mourn and something i've always found a lot of comfort in when it's the yarhzeit of a family member.

really lovely to see your post about how much the reading of names at yarhzeit means to you!!!

Thank you for educating me, I really appreciate you taking the time to give such a detailed and helpful response! I was very aware of how important mourning and the dead are to judaism, and it was something I was prepared to encounter, but I wasn't ready for it being so... normalized, I guess, if that makes sense? As somebody who is really death positive, I love that we are encouraged to remember those who have passed, to respect and include them, and I appreciate that judaism is open about that and integrates that into important things like service.

[demonmoonsupreme]

Ugh. I have to say it. I’ve been holding it back because I know how much fandom hates this plot point so much. And like maybe it’s because I enjoy angst, or because characters coming in a vacuum sealed ‘morally upstanding’ package is just not realistic or enjoyable to me.

But Gwen should not have been ‘bewitched’ to cheat on Arthur with Lancelot. For one, it just sets another horrible precedence of magic use within the narrative. And two: it’s boring as hell. Oh, and also apparently Gwen was only allowed screen time in later seasons when her autonomy was nowhere to be seen. So three. Three reasons why I find it dumb as hell. And one that last front? Yeah, I think she should have willingly had an affair with Lancelot. I know, I Know. Cheating bad. Cheating make evil wrong person. Or whatever twitterinas are saying.

But hear me out (or don’t). How did Gwen feel after Lancelot died after she made him promise to return Arthur to her alive? Did she feel that she had unwittingly sentenced him to death? Her first true love; the man she looked for in other men. (Maybe we’d know how she felt if the writers didn’t have her going off like a broken record and just keep repeating what a great king Artie would someday be). I wish we had seen her grief, I wish she had been given time to mourn (as we know she never is in a series that kills every family member she has). And then Lancelot returns. She realizes she stills loves him, she feels guilty and blames herself thinking she had a part in his death. She thinks she asked him to sacrifice himself. And she wonders if she made the right choice. Lancelot and Arthur are there before her, and her wedding is in two days, and it’s all so sudden and the window of opportunity is about to be closed for the rest of her life; and she wonders if she’s chosen the right man. Gwen wonders if she’s been given a second chance, can she amend her previous choices. Does she want to amend them. Yes, this storyline opens her up to all sorts of criticisms. Fandom would condemn her a slut, she would join the ranks of women who can’t just make up their damn mind. Someone would declare it’s anti-feminist, because women aren’t allowed to be portrayed with “bad” qualities and when they are it just sets us all back.

But…it would be so much more nuanced than the plot they gave us. It would give Gwen the opportunity to make the choice because in the past it had been robbed from her (Lancelot leaving when he realized that Arthur loved Gwen, and Lancelot dying the first time). It would grant her autonomy over her own sexuality and choice of partner(s). Unlike the male protagonists in this show, Gwen is never actually given a real chance to morally grapple with anything, especially her own actions. She just is a good person who never does anything wrong, can be a bad-ass if it’s required, and falls into the straight and narrow path of ideal womanhood when she gets a boyfriend in a position of extreme power.

I know I’m barely making sense, but she just could have been written so much better. She could have been treated like a real person in the writers room, but she wasn’t.

[bloomeng]

I know MXTX is a good author I want to get that out of the way before I get into this. She’s a fantastic (male) character writer and she has a great grasp on interpersonal connections. Though she’s working in an established niche genre she’s still very creative, I think SV especially is evidence of that. But there’s one thing that I just can never seem to get a pulse on, and that’s how much she means to comment on classism.

Author’s intent is always gonna be tricky especially when I have to rely on translated texts and interviews. There’s probably a lot of nuance that I miss, not to mention literally interviews I’ve never seen etc. It also doesn’t help that I haven’t read most of TGCF yet, so I can’t comment on that series, and with SV this conversation is less applicable, so for the sake of what I know best I’m gonna be using MDZS as my main example.

Classism is undeniably at the heart of MDZS’s themes, however for years anytime I analysis the text I’m usually fairly cautious to note that I don’t know if this was intentional. This isn’t because I think MXTX is stupid or can’t handle deep conversations, it’s simply because I can’t tell if it was her intent. On paper it seems obvious; WWX, JGY and XY’s wealth disparities, how privilege drives the plot, literally everything about the Wens as a whole. So much of the novel’s runtime is spent showing us how corrupt the feudal system can be, going so far as to have a protagonist who dies for the cause and two antagonists who are driven to be awful because of their poor circumstances in life. It feels intentional that WWX was granted a certain amount of privilege based on something he was born with (his parents connections) and how easily people turned on him. Sure he does unethical things but if not for his status it’s likely he wouldn’t have had to do half the things he ends up doing, not to mention that plenty of people didn’t like before the demonic cultivation started. JGY acting as a foil for WWX feels intentional and I would absolutely consider them foils regardless of intent. With all this in mind I would be inclined to say that yeah, MDZS is commenting on classism, but then WWX marries into the corrupt system and we the audience are supposed to read this as a good thing.

This has always been my biggest qualm with the book. We spend so much time showing how awful this system is and the two people who do anything to try and save it are punished for it by death. Sure WWX is brought back but as soon as he’s in Mo’s body he’s aimless. JGY is of course the secondary villain of the series, but MXTX goes out of her way to make us understand that even when JGY had power, his birth kept him from actually holding any real control, and what control he did have he mostly used to get bad people out of power and make the community better (he was biased and paranoid and vengeful but MXTX’s characters are nothing if not nuanced). Why set all this up to end up in such a contradictory place?

I get that solving such big issues such as classism isn’t easy and we want a happy ending but does MDZS even have a happy ending? None of the mc’s besides LWJ and (supposedly) WWX and LSH and LJY are in good positions by the end of the story. I remember reading MDZS for the first time and thinking that LWJ would fall for WWX because of his radical ideas and eventually see that the Lans were contributing big time to this awful system that favors wealth over everything. Especially because we have a second plot line about whatever was going on with LXC and JGY. And then it just never happens. Instead the Lan sect are painted as ok just because they’re monks. The system wasn’t the issue actually it was the people in charge but don’t worry they’re gone. Life is great now that the most powerful sects are in the hands of a 15 yr old, a man with unchecked anger issues, a council of elders that think corporal punishment is the solution to everything and a man who committed to a life long bit to get out of all forms of responsibility. What could go wrong?

I’ve always thought it was strange and ooc that WWX just accepts going back to Cloud Recesses. His literal incense burner fantasy was a cottage in the woods away from society. He never really warms up to the rigidity or their bland ass food, and he doesn’t even really respect the Lans culture more than he has to. It’s clear he only lives there for his husband and son’s sake. So why am I to believe this is his fairy tale ending?

The only answer I’ve been able to grasp over the years is that the romance genre of the novel overpowers everything else.

This is what brings me back to my original point. I don’t know if MXTX’s intended to comment on class, because if she did I struggle to understand how the ending of the story fits this intention. Which means by default it wasn’t the intention, at least not the priority. I mean ok duh, obvious conclusion, this is a danmei, it’s the bl genre, of course the romance comes first, but that’s not exactly what I’m getting at. You can absolutely have a romance that comments on other things at the same time and I think MXTX’s writing is smart enough to do this, except it fumbled so hard at the end it left me questioning if she even meant to comment on classism in the first place.

A part of me thinks that all of this commentary was just a coincidence of the genre conventions. Cultivator/ historical fantasy tends to just have classism baked into setting, so maybe that’s all it was. Perhaps she was just borrowing what was already there to make interesting character motivations and it wasn’t done with any intention of commenting on any sort of greater societal issue. Which for the record would be ok. I’m not policing what MXTX should write and romance for the sake of romance is perfectly valid, but as a reader I’m allowed to say this particular instant made me dislike the actual romance she set up. These issues in the book made me actively dislike LWJ. I’m on an island about that though. Getting back to my point, I struggle to call this commentary intentional and thus things like WWX and JGY suddenly feel unintentional as well.

I also find MXTX’s own words to be contradictory at times. For instance, she’s mentioned that after SV she found writing more than one couple to be too taxing. When asked if other characters in MDZS were gay she said explicitly they were not, yet both MDZS and TGCF have unofficial side couples that are an inch away from being canon. She’s also mentioned that XY, Sl, and XXC were old characters of hers and were originally going to be the focus of the book, which leads me to believe that they would’ve been a canon love triangle. So I am skeptical when she said all the characters besides WWX and LWJ are straight. I’m not accusing her of lying or anything like that. Tolkien contradicted himself so many times in his letters and essays, it’s sort of par for the course in my opinion. What it does mean though is that I can’t get a read on her intentions. What I can gather from what she tends to focus on in her extras, interviews, and just the fact that this is the BL genre, I’m inclined to believe that a lot of these parallels are unintentional but then I circle back to just how heavy handed it all is and I’m unsure again.

Anyway this was just the world’s longest way to say that actually we don’t have any idea what her intentions are and this is why when I’m analyzing her work I make a point to not put words in her mouth.

[epickiya722]

I am seeing a lot of people in the jjk fandom idolize sukuna and empathize with him and say that his backstory is more compelling and interesting than geto's and that geto's radicalization journey was not interesting and relatable.

And while I understand that sometimes it can be hard to understand a character that wants to commit genocide I feel like that take is so shallow?

Part of me thinks its just a product of the ship wars but also its deeply fascinating that they would put geto's crimes and sukuna's crimes next to each other and say sukuna is better out of the two of them.

I feel like it has been a deliberate choice by gege to give a drawn out backstory only to geto while not giving Heian era flashback to sukuna as many wanted because the story wants you do understand geto (not agree but understand) while sukuna is presented as a villain even though there are crumbs of his backstory in there but not as nuanced and detailed like geto's.

I don't know I'm rambling but I feel very sad when I see people dismiss geto and his radicalization journey and in the same breath say that sukuna is more relatable.

But fandom is gonna fandom of course.

Before I say anything, I am a fan of both mentioned characters. Sukuna is actually one of my top favorites (of course, after Yuji). So with that said, I don't care for anyone to act an ass and be like "fake fan" or "how dare you bash---". No, no, no. Chill out.

◇

You said something that I feel like some people tend to not do when it comes to villains in stories.

"Understand", that part right there.

Sometimes, I do think the writer can have the intention of readers to sympathize and/or empathize with the villain. However, it depends on the kind of villain. But, at best, when writers give backstories to these villains, it's to understand why the villain do what they do and how they became that villain.

You can understand a villain and still not sympathize or empathize with their actions.

In the case of Geto and Sukuna, I do find it odd that some will say Sukuna is more relatable than Geto. Especially, as you pointed out, Sukuna doesn't have as much backstory present in the canon story as Geto has. We'll get back to that.

Now, do I think people can't relate to Sukuna? No. I think if you relate to him, you can and I'm not stopping you. However, that doesn't mean Geto can't be relatable, too.

In story, both are presented as villains.

We don't know much about why Sukuna turned out the way he did, but we do for Geto.

I know that the arc is also called "Gojo's Past Arc", but it is also Geto's, too. It shows why he changed, too.

It boils down to the fact he was a teenager that was just as much as a victim like his friends were to a fucked up system ran by a conservative group of traditional folks who would rather exploit the people under them than get their hands dirty.

Geto, as many jujutsu sorcerers, witnessed deaths of people he came to care about and if it wasn't death, stress caught up to everyone and him as well as a growing distance played a part.

Now, while usually a teenager isn't going to resort to killing a bunch of people, teenagers (anyone really) have been put in positions that will make them feel helpless. That was Geto.

Bringing back the backstory thing...

What backstory? (Not directed to you, Anon.) As much as people were up in arms about "we didn't get the Heian Era backstory", it's just doesn't make sense to then turn around and Sukuna's backstory is more interesting than Geto's.

I ask again... what backstory?

I said it before, but none of these characters actually had a full backstory. Not just Sukuna.

No one had a backstory that showed everything. In fact, some bits and pieces are found out through fanbooks and interviews.

That may be on purpose. I know it felt like Gege may not have touched on a lot with the characters, but for some parts of the story, what if that is the point? Maybe we're not meant to focus on the past but on the present and future. (Reflecting how some characters are working to make the future better and being more adaptive to the present unlike other characters who are more traditional and stuck in the old ways.)

Yes, some parts of the past are meant to be known but that's meant to understand the present. That doesn't mean everything must be known.

With Sukuna, I feel like some did miss the mark with him. I'm not saying I'm right, but my guess is we're supposed to feel detached from him. We're meant to understand him, but not idolize him.

We don't know much about him because we're supposed to not see him as someone redeemable, someone not humane. Just as Sukuna portrays himself to be. Sukuna does nothing in the story worth going "Ah, he's just a hurt guy 🥺". Sukuna admits that everything he does is out of his own pleasure and selfish gains. He is aware of emotions, he knows what love is. He just chooses to not allow himself to feel those emotions. He doesn't allow himself that humanity.

Rereading the story, you can see how dismissive he can be even about himself. When he talks about eating his twin? He says it like it was just another day for him. When he tells Hajime about being an unwanted child? Again, he's dismissive. He states it with even a small smile on his face.

He has the title "King of Curses", but what are curses born from? Negative human emotions. Taking a guess here, but what if that title is meant to be fitting (other than visually) for Sukuna being metaphorically that how he sees himself? A curse born from the nasty nature of being human and he happens to be the strongest one of all?

For both characters, I do find them interesting in their own right. And I agree with you, I do think some of the fandom have their views on their characters because of shipping. I don't think shipping is the whole reason, but part.

(I think I know the ships, but I could be wrong. Both involve a certain white haired guy? I have no problem with either ship though.)

When it comes to Sukuna and Geto, I feel like some can mischaracterize both and stick to that fanon version of them just to make their ship more interesting.

With Sukuna, some tend to write him as only being attached to a certain person because "he gets him, he knows how to challenge me, I'm in love, he taught me love". When, just me probably, it's not that Sukuna doesn't understand love. I don't think he wants it, no matter the form of it. (Let's remember there are different kinds of love, folks.)

With Geto, it's like he can't stand as his own character because everything he does was only for one person and/or he's a lot worse than what he is.

When you compare who's worse and than say "it's Geto", that's wild. They both may came from a place of hurt, but let's not act like Sukuna is a Saint. He has done more heinous shit just for even the hell of it. Geto isn't the only villain here.

I know people will say "he's a genocidal maniac" but so is Sukuna??? Hello??

Let's be real, Geto's biggest kill counts definitely came from the village and maybe the Night Parade event and I say maybe because by then sorcerers may have already gotten civilians out and some people died at the hands of his followers.

But I doubt he actually was killing endlessly for ten years. I think he killed, but not as many as some of the fandom says. If he was that big of a problem, then why was he able to do whatever for TEN YEARS?! There is no excuse! They knew where he was at. If regular people knew, I know for a fact, the Higher-Ups knew. They could send a group or whatever? No, because Geto was collecting curses and as we see, he doesn't have to kill people to collect curses. He killed those that was no use to him, money wise. And maybe the occasional jackass.

I apologize, I rambled there.

Point is! Both characters are in the wrong for their actions. Both characters can be interesting, however you choose to feel. Find Geto boring, but Sukuna interesting? Alright. The vice versa? That's fine, too.

But regardless of backstory, or lack thereof, to idolize Sukuna and not Geto is rather absurd because "Sukuna is better". No, no. No. He's just as bad. He is evil. He literally had beef with his own nephew and sought to kill him. People in the Heian Era worshipped him out of fear. He wasn't some hero. Saying this as a Sukuna fan.

Both characters may be different, overall, but why excuse one character for the sake of "I think he's cooler"? That does nothing for the story at all! In fact, that's quite an injustice. Don't get the story, that's fine and all, I'm still understanding some things myself. I'm not an analyst expert on JJK at all.

I get having preferences, do you, folks. But let's not mix up fanon with canon and argue with people because of preferences. Do you truly like that character if you only seem to like a fanon version? Do you really hate a character if you try to worsen how they really are in the canon?

Sorry, this got longer than I intended! As you can see, I ramble!

[fishbloc]

I was honestly anxious to send an inbox, but I got your artbook and keychain in my mail today and felt that I really just HAD to tell you just how exciting it was to finally hold these in my hands. I was shaking so much that I was honestly hesitating on opening it at all because I didn't want to ruin anything of it. But!! I'm glad I was able to get over that short crisis because as soon as I opened the book, I was immediately BLOWN AWAY at how gorgeous it is up close, paired with the little bits of dialogues that didn't fail to absolutely make me smile and cry (in a positive way). I was so emotional over finally getting to read it all that I honestly did just have one moment of silence where I wondered if it was normal for me to be this attached?? I thought I was being a little dramatic. But then I thought that; if I'm smiling this much and I've shed this much tears, then the book is just that beautiful, and I'm not one to reprieve myself of such gorgeousness, right? Especially when it's made with so much love for a friend. Overreaction or not, sorry about the long sappy paragraphs- I'm happy to have been able to buy your artbook and keychain :D It was well worth the wait!

this actually got me into tears oh my god 😭 im this close to plastering your message onto my journal or something

i'm actually pleasantly surprised you got attached to the story. maybe it was the art, or the expressions, or the colours, or even the dialogue that were sometimes too nuanced. whichever it was, i'm really glad you felt that way, because that was what it felt like to have known my friend

we didn't knew each other that long, and some might even consider 1+ years was nothing compared to the other people i know. but that amount of time never once subdued the fact we were close and we understood each other in a way no one else ever would.

in the same way what i believe grian and scar would in a death match.

of the fondness at the start, and the abruptness at the end.

so no, i wouldn't say you are overreacting or being dramatic, and i'm really happy my book made you feel the way i really hoped it would. :')

thank you, truly, genuinely, from the bottom of my heart.

[wimbledon2008]

so i just finished the captive prince series about a week ago and am rereading it now. just finished the hello lover scene and honestly im still so confused over what's going on in laurent's head lmao like??

was he previously compartmentalizing his resentment so well that real feelings developed, but now he finally has a chance to truly let his anger out, he's locking down the positive feelings?

was he being truthful about manipulating damen the whole time (highly unlikely to me)? or was the cruelty in and of itself a play, either to push damen away despite not actually wanting to, or some other convoluted reason? bc damen really would have done anything he asked, trying to outmaneuver him like that was unnecessary.

my first theory feels the most right to me, and he just needed more time to process and purge his desire for revenge but idk im a taurus and very akielon coded. i love laurent but i do not understand that man lol

okay, disclaimer, i haven't read the books in quite some time so this probably isn't the fullest or deepest analysis. i welcome any additions or corrections from those who are better at meta than me <3

so the hello lover scene is incredibly complex and nuanced, a standard of pacat's writing that makes his works so infinitely re-readable. based on my personal understanding of the scene, there are a few key things that help to explain why laurent behaves the way he does in the tent scene:

1. laurent needs damen and the akielons to win against his uncle, which he very much wants to do. charcy didn't go how he'd originally planned, and he knows damen is pissed about it and probably thinks the worst of laurent right now - that he intentionally abandoned the akielons at charcy for his own purposes. so laurent is being manipulative; he is trying to outmaneuver damen. because what damen says is true: laurent has no allies, no friends, he's ruined his reputation by aligning himself with akielos, etc. we as the readers know that damen cares deeply for laurent and wouldn't just abandon him, and if laurent simply explained what happened and asked damen to help him, damen wouldn't hesitate to stay at his side. but laurent doesn't think damen has any reason to trust him, so laurent can't trust damen either. so instead of being honest, he chooses to be cold-blooded, to assert control over the situation and force damen's hand to ensure that the alliance he worked so hard to establish stays intact. he could've just asked, but this is laurent, and there are other factors at play, such as the fact that

2. laurent is already in love with damen by the tent scene, or at least most of the way there. but laurent can no longer pretend damen is anyone other than the person who killed his brother. damen walks into that tent as prince damianos, in full akielon regalia, covered in blood, with a sword. laurent has been doing some aggressive compartmentalizing, especially in order to have allowed himself to sleep with damen. who killed his brother, which was the inciting incident that made laurent's life a living hell. laurent has not forgiven damen for auguste, and he's having to really confront that hatred and anger for maybe the first time since the first book. and laurent is also punishing himself for caring for and sleeping with damen, his brother's killer. can you even imagine? it's better not to. laurent probably hates himself as much as he hates damianos in that moment. so he shoves all those glimmering, positive feelings down because he wants to hurt damen, and himself too. and none of this is particularly rational because

3. laurent is very upset at the beginning of king's rising. this is an understatement. he's still reeling from nicaise's death, which he blames himself for, he's losing damen, the only person he trusted, he was recently stabbed, and everything is spiraling out of his tightly held control. and when laurent is upset he's cruel. he's not at his best in the tent scene. he's clinging to his own self-preservation, and he's making it up as he goes along because whatever his original plan was got blown to hell, which is clear because he's saying shit that doesn't even make sense. see, e.g., this post about him allegedly enduring damen's "fumbling attentions" to win a battle he didn't even know about at the time. while laurent is being cold and ruthless to secure his position as best he can (see no. 1), he's also acting from a place of emotion instead of strict rationality, which is how he typically operates, and how he prefers to act. he's on the defensive, he's deeply confused and unable to cope with all of his conflicting feelings about damen, and he's lashing out - protecting himself before damen can hurt him first. and then damen literally sticks his thumb in his stab wound. basically: our boy laurent's going through it in a major way.

going back and re-reading your message i realize i've essentially just reiterated everything you initially said but with a lot of extra words. so i guess the long and short of it is: you're right. honestly there are so many ways to interpret the tent scene and everything else laurent says and does, which is what makes him so fascinating! so thanks for giving me the opportunity to dive back into his psyche for a little while <3

[aihoshiino]

Reading spica and about how much Ai wanted a family, specifically twins, sometimes I think about is if she never got into a relationship, how would that have worked...would this girl have gone and adopted twins lol

But even if she only had one child, knowing Ai she would've cherished and spoiled them just as much (still makes me wonder about her reaction from I want twins -> I got one child) Maybe get another sibling for this child...possibilities are so endless, I have an unhealthy amount of obsession over this lovable, amazing character...HELP

I'm going to be fully honest and admit that. i. don't really take anything from the spica epilogue into account when aiposting LSKKNSKSJS. In general, Spica falls flat for me in most regards but the OMG WOULDN'T IT BE CRAAAAZY IF I HAD TWINS SOMEDAY thing is just so hamfisted and so transparently leaning on pre-existing emotional setup from the series it did not earn that I just cannot take it on board as organic, additive characterization LOL. Especially because this idea that Ai always wanted twins/to be a mother full stop… idk it's hard to explain, but it feels kind of gross and in line with the weird misogynistic way Spica handles all the other women, too. I think Oshi no Ko handles Ai's r/s with motherhood in a way I think is really warm and lovely and nuanced but Spica is so shallow it ends up with this really "well of COURSE she wants babies because she's a girl ^_^" ass take on things. KDKSJSSNA SORRY, ANYWAY…. THAT WAS SO NOT WHAT YOU ASKED I'M JUST A HATER

Anyway, the timing of me finally getting around to this ask is funny because I've had second-time mom Ai as a concept on my brain lately… Aqua and Ruby kind of Happened to her and she found an incredible amount of fulfillment in loving and being loved by them, so it's interesting to imagine what a second/planned pregnancy would be like for an older Ai…

I definitely think she would need to be in a long term, committed and happy relationship with someone for it to happen, just because she's so caught up in being Aqua and Ruby's mom that I don't think it would really enter her brain otherwise. But like she says in episode 1, motherhood is so much about creating family and joy for herself and the people she loves and for herself that I do think that if she ever found a second love and they were happy together and in a position to make it happen, she'd want to take that to the logical extent of them having their own kid together. A big family is a happy, busy one, right?

The idea of her adopting a kid is also super interesting… we were chatting about something unrelated on the OnK Brainrot discord when a link was made between Ai being a foster system kid abandoned by her family and Aqua and Ruby being essentially orphaned by her death and it kind of made a little !!! ping in my brain lol. As I've interpreted her, an adult Ai is one who has extremely strong feelings about the responsibility of adults to care for and protect children which leads to her being generally big sisterly/motherly towards kids and teens because she wants to be the kind of adult who was never in her own life. But for some reason, I'd never actually followed that thought through to the idea of her adopting a kid… it's a neat idea though and I think you could do some interesting digging into her own feelings as a kid left behind in the system.

[emotionallychargedtowel]

The Eighth Sense e5 & e6: portraying trauma with nuance

Episodes 5 and 6 of The Eighth Sense have really blown up a discourse bomb in tumblr’s BL scene. I had been putting off watching these episodes because I had gathered that episode 6 ended with something pretty distressing, and stuff like that sometimes hits me pretty hard, especially when it’s left as a cliffhanger. But I was already tempted to rip off the band-aid and watch it anyway, and then everyone has been debating aspects of these episodes. So I just had to see what all the discussion was about and figure out my own take on it.

In case it’s not obvious, the following will have spoilers for the series up to and including episode 6. I have a lot to say about this, because it touches on subjects that have been a major focus for me in my personal life, in my previous work as a trainee therapist, and in my research and writing. But I want this to be a manageable read, so I’m going to put things in bullet form when I can to keep them brief and organized and I’m going to make some section headings to help with skimming or skipping around. But before I launch into the rest, there’s one thing I should get out of the way: I don’t think any part of episodes 5 or 6 are a hallucination, a dream, or otherwise did not occur. I do think that there are aspects of the way the show portrays certain things that indicate dissociation and/or an acute trauma response. I’ll talk more about that below. (Hey, @waitmyturtles, this is the epic TES post I’ve been writing off and on for two days! I hope it’s of interest.)

Here are the section headings I’ll use below, to give a sense of what I’m going to talk about:

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

We don’t know how his younger brother died, but we know that he died in front of Jae Won when they were together, and it’s clear that he blames himself. I would be shocked if he was actually at fault even a little bit. But it does appear to have happened “on his watch” in a sense that lends itself to blaming himself. This is a huge issue, one that I’ll discuss in more detail later on.

Even before his brother’s death, Jae Won was clearly under a ton of pressure from his parents. And his father appears to be emotionally and, almost certainly, physically abusive. This is also far more likely to have pre-dated his brother’s death than to have only developed afterward.

In addition to pressure and abuse, I think it’s pretty clear that Jae Won was a parentified child. This means that he was put in a position of having to take care of his parents’ emotional needs as a child. This kind of role reversal has profound effects throughout the parentified person’s life. 

Jae Won’s self-blame about his brother’s death means he was always going to be predisposed to stay stuck in the chronic version of the acute trauma response instead of moving through the natural healing process. In other words, he was almost certain to develop PTSD.

This is less clearly shown in the show, but my impression is that Jae Won has a deep-seated depressive tendency that existed before the loss of his brother. This would make sense for someone who faced the family-of-origin difficulties that he did. 

When he did develop PTSD, as I have no doubt he did, Jae Won’s existing challenges were going to make him even more likely to develop the depressive symptoms of PTSD than others. We’ve seen some of these in the show already:

feeling alienated from others, unable to form meaningful connections with them,

anhedonia (an inability to feel positive emotions), and

negative beliefs about himself, other people, and the world.

All of this is happening at once. He’s dealing with PTSD, but he also still has all the same habits and beliefs he had before due to the parentification and training in people-pleasing, so he’s supposed to bottle up all of this pain. And if it’s his fault (in his mind) that his brother died, how much more does he owe his parents than he ever did before? This is a distorted, unhealthy way of thinking about all of it, but these kinds of maladaptive thoughts and expectations happen all the time with trauma survivors.

Jae Won’s therapist really sums all of this up very well when she says, “All your worries, not doing what you want to do because you do not want to let your parents down, and trying hard to be a good person to everyone because you do not want to disappoint others. Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother? Your younger brother, who got into an accident while with you. Your younger brother, who you couldn’t protect. And you are struggling to live your life for him as well.” 

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

I went into this series feeling nervous about its portrayal of therapy. I was very excited that therapy was being portrayed at all, mind you! It’s horrifying how seldom we see therapy mentioned as an option, much less shown, either in BLs or kdramas, and I’ve hoped for this to change for a long time now. But therapy  is shown in an inaccurate way so often in media. And often, we see therapists and other mental health professionals breaking ethical rules. So I was on my guard, big time.

There’s one thing I really take issue with about Jae Won’s therapist, and it’s somewhat of a small thing: her office is way, way too dark! I just don’t think that kind of low lighting, with a lot of the illumination coming from her aquarium and other tinted light sources, is professional or conducive to therapy work. Of course, it’s obvious that her office is lit in this way because it looks cool and sets a certain mood for the show. And that’s fine. It’s a very stylized show in a lot of ways. But it makes me a little tweaky to watch it. 

Some of the things she does in the therapy space with Jae Won are a bit open to interpretation, and could be debated. But I view her in a fairly charitable light, and I found that a favorable interpretation wasn’t difficult to justify at all. I ended up viewing her (so far, at least) as a very skillful and effective therapist.

I loved it when she joked, in the first scene after the credits for episode 1, “For God’s sake! Just tell me what your worries are!” Jae Won isn’t great at sharing. He’s been trained from early childhood not to show his messy, vulnerable emotions around authority figures. Jae Won is not an easy client by any stretch, so she may have been showing a mild version of some real frustration with him when she began that comment with mock-hostility. But he seems really sensitive to criticism, real or perceived. Coming at him directly about this could be risky. Using humor is a good way to get around this sensitivity pretty effectively. It’s worth noting, though, that I wouldn’t endorse this kind of move by a therapist unless they knew a client very well and had built a solid rapport with them.

The comment I quoted above (”Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother?”) connects so many of Jae Won’s interpersonal difficulties to the loss of his brother in a skillful way. It was very astute and well-put. But there are some things I would quibble with about it.

First, I’m kind of surprised that she is only saying this explicitly this far into therapy with Jae Won. It seems rather late to make such an observation considering this constellation of issues has, without a doubt, been in place the entire time they’ve been working together. This could definitely have been done sooner.

At the same time, paradoxically, it’s delivered abruptly, as if she blurted it out too soon. Actually, the abruptness comes from the fact that there’s not sufficient lead-up to the comment in their discussion beforehand.

Though the show’s treatment of mental health is strong overall, I think this part of this scene suffered from flawed writing. If I had written this scene, I would have made a change that I think would have resolved both of these issues. Instead of introducing this insight as if the therapist has just voiced it for the first time, I would have presented it as something she and Jae Won have touched on together more than once during their work together. Anyone who’s been to therapy knows that the same ideas, which appear as shocking revelations at first, often have to be returned to many times and worked through before we can benefit from them. She could have said something like, “This is that issue we’ve talked about before, right? It seems like another case of your beliefs about your brother’s death causing trouble in other areas of your life.”

Even better, she could have been shown quoting some kind of metaphor or shorthand Jae Won came up with himself when they’d spoken about this previously. For example, I had a client once who used to talk about metaphorically carrying around a giant, heavy book where he wrote down all of his failures. He described it in a similar way to “the catalog of mistakes” (I’m not going to share his actual wording, of course). Whenever I would use his wording, saying “the catalog of mistakes” or even “the catalog,” all of our prior discussion of that issue came into both our minds immediately. It also served as a reminder of our rapport and the importance I placed on his perspective.

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

There’s one other area of Jae Won’s interactions with his therapist that is a bit hard to interpret. The exchange he has with his therapist about the amount of medication she’ll prescribe to him certainly seems important, but it’s hard to tell what exactly it means.

One thing that complicates this is the fact that he is receiving therapy and medication management services from the same provider. In other words, she seems to be a psychiatrist who provides therapy services. In most parts of the United States, this is rare (though that wasn’t always the case). I haven’t been able to tell whether this is more commonplace in South Korea.

Because she’s a prescriber and a therapist, asking for three weeks’ worth of medication instead of two also means waiting longer before having another therapy session. Maybe Jae Won really is just busy and trying to cut down on demands on his time, but this doesn’t seem too likely. It’s also possible that he’s seeking a greater quantity of his medication for some purpose, such as abusing it or using it for self-harm or to end his life. But he also could just be trying to put off his next therapy session to a later date because of his difficulty talking about vulnerable topics, something he demonstrates at multiple points in his therapy session. Similarly, when his therapist says she can extend his prescription to three weeks but not a month, because, as she puts it, “I need to do my job,” this could be in reference to the medication or her therapy work. Part of her job is keeping him from having access to too large an amount of medication at once, while another part is having therapy sessions with him (that are frequent enough to be useful). It’s hard to tell which of the two she was referring to, or whether it could be something else entirely. So I don’t think there’s one clearly correct interpretation here. But I do think we should be attentive to the possibility that he might be medication-seeking, possibly with the aim of using the medication for self-harm.

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Even if you have experienced trauma or have been close to someone who has, unless you’ve spent time with a sizable sample of trauma survivors, it’s hard to understand just how readily people blame themselves for traumatic experiences. I had had personal experience with this as a survivor of intimate partner violence before I ever did any training in trauma therapy, but I was still totally floored when I observed firsthand just how often this happens and how unjustifiable every single instance of self-blame I encountered in clients turned out to be.

This is actually a big area for me as a researcher so I’m going to try not to go off on a massive tangent, but I think this is important. When we experience trauma, one of the most frequent responses people have is to blame themselves. I used to describe this to clients as a “deal with the devil.” Blaming ourselves allows us to feel like we have control over whether such things will happen to us (and/or those we care about) in the future. If we tell ourselves, “the trauma only happened to me because I did something bad, or something wrong,” then we can also tell ourselves, “but I’ll never do the bad or wrong thing again so from now on I’ll be safe.”

It’s very tempting to make this bargain, but it is an extremely bad deal. Self-blame is one of the biggest reasons some people get stuck in their acute trauma response instead of completing the healing process, resulting in PTSD. That feeling of control isn’t worth that. But human beings are so tempted to make this trade. When I was doing trauma therapy as a trainee, I saw example after example of folks who did seriously remarkable amounts of mental gymnastics in order to justify blaming themselves for their trauma.  I’m going to talk briefly now about a client I had many years ago, without giving any details that could be remotely identifying. This person had witnessed the death of a close friend when they were in combat together. I did prolonged exposure therapy with this person, meaning he had to tell me the story of his friend’s death again and again and again. When we do this type of work, it usually seems at first like the client is telling the exact same story again and again without any real change. But little changes crop up gradually and accumulate and after a while, you find the story has made big shifts. And occasionally, a big change happens.

This client started out telling his story in a way that looked for every possible reason his friend’s death could have been his fault. And wow, was he ever grasping at straws. It was almost as if he had said something as nonsensical as “I had oatmeal for breakfast that day and maybe that’s why my friend died.” Every miniscule decision he had made that day could, in his eyes, potentially have caused his friend’s death in some mysterious and imperceptible way. It would have been absurd had it not been so sad. But thankfully, as we continued the exposure work, his story gradually changed and these justifications for self-blame started to fall away a little at a time.

Then, one day, a crucial detail was added to the story that blew me away. After weeks of telling the story in the usual way, my client mentioned for the first time that just before his friend was hit, he had called out a warning to him, which the friend had ignored. He’d mentioned countless ways he might be to blame--none of them remotely justified--but had never told me about the one very clear way in which he had tried to prevent his friend’s death. When I pointed this out, my client was shocked that he had never mentioned that detail before. We spent a lot of time unpacking what all of this meant. It was the single biggest turning point in his therapy. So, yeah. People have an amazing capacity for figuring out even the slimmest of pretexts for self-blame, and it’s abundantly clear that Jae Won is exercising that capacity big time. I’m pretty certain we’ll find out that he has been blaming himself a lot for what happened while having no real justification for doing so.

(Side note: I have tons more thoughts about trauma, self-blame, victim-blaming more generally, and other related psychological constructs--these are all longstanding research interests of mine--but I’m going to stop here because this thing is already ridiculously long. But if anyone reading this ever wants to discuss any of this further, please feel free to hit me up! I love talking about these things.)

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Let’s review where we find Jae Won toward the beginning of the show. I’ve talked about how Jae Won had a lot of psychological difficulties before the story started. His family of origin situation was damaging even before he lost his brother, and then he had to contend with trauma and complicated grief. After that, he went through a breakup (possibly due to his partner cheating on him), completed his military service, and then had to make the transition back to civilian life, which isn’t easy under the best of circumstances.

And then he meets Ji Hyun, and his feelings for him unsettle the precarious set of strategies that he’s been using to get by. Ji Hyun makes Jae Won feel tempted to let his guard down and be himself. He places a degree of trust in Jae Won that challenges his cynicism and makes him feel tempted to trust Ji Hyun in return--to trust him to an extent that would normally be out of the question for him. Ji Hyun shakes things up, and while this is mostly a very positive thing--there are a lot of things in Jae Won’s life that urgently need to change--it’s also rather destabilizing in the short term. 

Then the shit starts to hit the fan when Jae Won wakes up after staying out late drinking to hear his father pounding on his door. And the makers of the show start to play around with cinematography, editing, sound design, and other aspects of the show’s production to evoke Jae Won’s inner experience. After his dad pounds on his door, the way the show is shot and edited changes.

This disjointed editing and other distortions of typical filmmaking at this point in episode 5 have reminded some folks on here of a dissociative state, and I can see why. I would agree that it has a dissociative flavor. There are two prominent types of dissociation (which can happen simultaneously):

derealization, a feeling that the world around us isn’t real--it may feel empty, strange, or just plain wrong; and

depersonalization, in which we feel like we’re seeing ourselves from the outside, as if the person we’re observing isn’t us.

It’s tricky to talk about either of these in the context of tv/film because as viewers watching a fictional story unfold in a TV show, we are by definition:

perceiving that the world the characters inhabit doesn’t seem real, because it isn’t

looking at the characters from the outside, because they aren’t us (and they aren’t real)

But there are conventions of film and tv production that give us a sense of realism and of seeing things from characters’ points of view, and when Jae Won is dissociating we see those conventions get suspended or distorted. For example:

Conventional editing creates a flow of time that feels realistic (partly because we learn the “language” of film from a young age and interpret it that way). At important moments in The Eighth Sense, the editing breaks the rules of conventional editing, often messing with the viewers’ sense of time. Contexts change abruptly, as when Jae Won suddenly goes from being at home to being in his car. At other points, dialogue also goes out of sync.

Shot-reverse shot techniques help to approximate seeing things from the characters’ perspectives, situating us in the story so that we don’t feel like we’re observing from a distance. The most notable moment when this rule is broken happens when Jae Won is upset about his camera being damaged. We see him telling someone between sobs that the camera was a gift from his younger brother, but that person (assumably his dad) isn’t shown at all--not even a shoulder or the back of a head.

There’s also a lot of use of shallow depth of field (something the show uses in other ways as well), putting Jae Won in focus while his surroundings become a blur, making the world around him look hazy and unreal.

The sequence where Ji Hyun and Jae Won kiss in the ocean puts their dialogue way out of sync. On my first viewing, this just seemed like an interesting choice, one that gave the scene a sort of dreamlike quality. I’ve seen this strategy used before, as well, without any reference to mental illness, usually in art films. The first example that came to mind for me was from a Godard movie. It would be a valid option regardless of mental health-related content in a show. But after what immediately follows, I think that scene is portraying a trauma memory. Sometimes benign events that happened just before something traumatic become encoded with trauma memories rather than our usual type. (To put it briefly, trauma memories are encoded and stored in a different part of the brain from our everyday memories, and this is why they “behave” differently and have a different sensory quality from typical memories. Trauma recovery often involves some degree of re-encoding these memories in a more normal manner.)

Basically, the show sometimes puts the viewer into an approximation of a derealized and depersonalized state, particularly relative to what we’re used to as TV watchers. At other points, it shows characters’ experiences as if they were traumatic memories.

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

All this being said, I think that Jae Won’s dissociative moments, while very concerning and doubtless extremely distressing for him, do not point toward any sort of severe dissociative disorder like Dissociative Identity Disorder, nor do they make me concerned that his reality-testing (his ability to effectively distinguish what is and isn’t real) is impaired. I also don’t see any signs of cognitive impairment that would create a similar degree of confusion about reality. As a result, I don’t think the show’s use of signs of dissociation suggests that entire sections of the story will later be shown not to have happened.

Here’s the thing about dissociation. On paper, it sounds like an extreme symptom that approaches the kind of severe mental illness that includes symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. But the vast majority of the time, it’s very different from psychosis. And it’s also, in my opinion, more of a spectrum than we care to acknowledge most of the time. When we look at it that way, we can see that in a sense, Jae Won is at least a tiny bit dissociated a whole lot of the time. But frankly, so am I. It’s not uncommon for trauma survivors. It’s very different from something that would result in impaired reality-testing.

It’s possible that the show will end up revealing that Jae Won’s mental illness has resulted in him imagining entire segments of the show. These types of symptoms are often portrayed in media, for a couple of reasons: 1) people just find psychosis fascinating, and 2) these types of symptoms are very handy for creating plot twists and other interesting narrative devices. It’s not hard to think of examples of this. Fight Club, Black Swan, Shutter Island...the list goes on and on. But these portrayals are almost always inaccurate and exploitative. So far, the folks who make The Eighth Sense have shown a great deal of nuanced awareness of and sensitivity toward mental health matters, so I don’t think they would use this kind of cheap plot device. But they might. If so, I’ll find that pretty disappointing.

There is one thing the showrunners are doing that is somewhat sneaky in a way that could look analogous to that. Others have pointed out that Jae Won and his therapist are wearing the same clothes in every therapy scene, suggesting that we’re seeing the same therapy session interspersed with the other events of the series. In other words, the therapy session operates on a very different timeline from the rest of the story. We don’t know where to situate it relative to the rest of the plot. But I don’t see that as tied to the show’s portrayal of Jae Won’s mental health, nor does it seem exploitative or out of left field.

To sum up:

So far, The Eighth Sense has been remarkably accurate regarding psychological matters and has portrayed therapy and the use of psychotropic medication in a mostly positive and realistic light. I get the feeling the writers/directors/etc. have had some experience receiving mental health treatment. I really hope they maintain this level of quality throughout the remainder of the series.

I don’t think Jae Won’s PTSD (or his depression/anxiety) are sufficient for him to experience psychosis. I don’t expect entire segments of the show will be revealed to be an elaborate lie or hallucination, and if they are, I would consider that to be an example of poor writing and an unrealistic and potentially harmful representation of mental illness.

[cupcraft]

I've been having some thoughts lately and decided to put it in a long post during my lunch break.

Cc's are not and never will be your friend. It's normal to engage and feel parasocial to a degree with cc's but it's important ccs and yourself create the boundary of "we don't know each other and thus are not friends/etc." This is important of the cc, because a responsible cc is aware of their impact, aware of the power dynamic, and sets healthy boundaries for themself. It's important for you in order to stay safe and engage with a fandom and cc with respect and to maintain a healthy mindset.

It is also normal for fandoms to defend their cc TO A DEGREE, especially when comments against the cc affect other people (this is a simple way to say it, theres a lot of nuance to this pt). But, you should never feel the need or actually try to parent or speak for a cc. For example, people being queerphobic to Ranboo is fair to speak up against particularly because the queerphobia affects other members of the fandom. However, feeling like you must speak on behalf of ranboo, be their parent, or protect them at all costs from "evil ccs and fans" is not only against their express wishes but just isn't a healthy or normal way to engage with a cc.

Because if you don't engage healthily besides breaking any cc boundaries, and hurting yourself and mental health, you really can hurt other people. If you're engaging in fandom and cc fandoms especially to a point in which you create yourself an echo chamber of toxicity that seeks to harm anyone in your path that is unhealthy behavior and you need srs help and I mean that genuinely like you need to talk to a trained professional or support group.

Like it's not normal to hate all ccs and people who are not explicitly positive about your cc at all times now and forever. It's not normal to make excuses for widely acceptable bad actions to the point you harm those affected by said bad actions. It's not normal to view holding a cc accountable as "just being an anti/hater/jealous" as you should always leave room to be critical of the content you consume especially if it's from a real person with real actions. It's not normal to dislike those that dislike ur cc so much (cc or fans) to the point you dedicate your social media presence to sending death threats, doxxing, harassment, gory images, etc as well as spending the majority of your blog screenshotting and vagueing and cyberbullying people. It's not normal to feel as though your cc is an infallible perfect idol figure that is in desperate need of an army protecting them at all times where you hang on their every word to dictate all actions, opinions, and morals to the point you will change your entire personality and ethics system just to maintain any ounce of being uncritical of someone. In simpler words, you might want to be aware the line of parasocialism and crossing over into being like a member of a cult (not to say it actually is a cult, this is an analogy)

And you might say to this post "this is a vague" but I'd rather argue that if you feel like this post applies to you regardless if you're mcyt or another cc/celebrity/real person based fandom you might want to realize that you need to do srs self reflection and understand how you got here, who you've hurt to stay there, and what things you've sacrificed for someone you don't even know. This isn't just an mcyt specific fandom problem.

Because why I'm making this post is I feel like something needs to be questioned when we throw away our kindness, empathy, ethics, and compassion towards people just because they are any ounce a tiny bit little bit critical of something a cc did. And it would be easy to say the people willing to suibait/send threats/harassment/slurs/etc toward someone over a cc and be happy about it and own it are people who "just don't care and won't change". But I'd like to think they got there somehow you know that they weren't always the kind of person to justify that. And that doesn't mean they deserve anyone's forgiveness, but it does mean I have concern for that person I hope they genuinely get help and feel the full weight of what they've done all for 1 person that doesn't know them.

As always with everything, please add on via rb if want, correct me on anything, and send asks if you wish. Stay kind out there though ❤️

[horizon-verizon]

Can we discuss how irritating this whole cry of "why you want jaehaera to die, why you want a little girl to die" is, I don't know… it must be because she actually dies? It's canon, it's in the book? I don't know, go complain to George like they already do, he wanted it that way

It wouldn't make any sense to me for her to stay alive in HOTD because everyone knows her ending, everyone knows that the mother of Aegon III's children is Daenaera… so why waste time with that?

and besides, ryan wouldn't show a child throwing himself out of a window, he didn't show jaehaerys' death which is horrible

And then they get mad when one says HotD is not an adaptation but fanfiction. Like, if you want to drastically change the plot so bad, it's no longer a damn adaptation! they clearly want fanfiction and they're getting it; they clearly didn't like F&B for reasons and think that some very obvious themes are not there or are so unimportant was to not have them in an adaptation. so why so pressed other than they only wish for their pro-green nonsense (the very antithesis of F&B and the entire series exploration of how institutional sexism is unnatural and what it looks like and how it ruins most things) to keep going through Jaehaera. Because why hate Daenaera or any other Targ woman aside from Helaena so bad?!

The whole point, as I've said time and time again, is that this war that was supposed to destroy the precedent of female rulership AND autonomy for male leadership ruins everyone, child or not, disabled or not....and especially so for disable female children even when they are of the upper class! You say you care about Jaehaera or respect her...do you when you can't or won't accept that her death and loss comes from the very ideology you mask behind the idea of "culture is culture"?!

And yeah, HotD or any attempted adaptation was going to have original "fill-ins" for what might have happened between characters pre-Dance, but as I've said before, some things are less likely or just plain impossible within the broader lore's logic AND what we do know and can reliably know that the book tells us.

More than anyone else's deaths, Jaehaera's death seems to "matter" more to those people because of their dull victimology ideology, too and really only enjoy fiction where there's a "redemption" or fluffiness and think everyone should only ever consume such stories. Makes them feel morally superior with leverage as social currency over others. With Daenerys it's different because she quite literally in necessary to the themes and plot's direction of ASoIaF that if she were to die a "mad" queen or be killed in lieu of what she represents and does for "smallfolk" and those exploited, it'd undermine what GRRM has already remarked several times about being able to resist destruction of self while wrestling with the nuances of authority and being "legitimate" for having it. As guiltless as Jaehaera was, she is a character with a very specific role, not mean tto be the savior or even progenitor of anything but a victim just as the children r*aped, tortured, and killed during the Dance or after it were under these systems. The real reason why they are so adamant abt her is bc they either/both hate-envy Dany/the "prominent" Targs and Jaehaera is a noble girl who like her mother doesn't stray from her gender-based designation of victim or chess-piece for men, so it's also veyr easy to project oneself into her position of victimness and self indulge that way. They want thatfantasy of accountablitiy-lessness while still being "elite". Very Sansa-stan energy.

You definitely can be sad for her and rightfully blame the adults around her, even the long dead ones while Maegor and Jaehaerys I. But it's not that anyone wants her tortured so much as they want the story that was given to us AND they know why she has to be killed the way she is told to have been.

If you don't like the narrative or refuse to really ingest its true meaning and how it gets there, you're under no obligation to continue to consume it.

[borgialucrezia]

omg i read blood and beauty and its sequel last week bc it had been on my reading list for months!!!! and is this a safe space where i can just say that it hit the nail on the head for all of the borgias without unnecessarily vilifying one or the other (i mean basically considering how most writers hold some vendetta against juan) and i loved how u could really see lucrezia's growth from her childhood innocence to being forced to mature and grow up AND obsessed w any media that portrays cesare as ferocious and sharp and ruthless and juan finally got his flowers bc they obv showed his flaws but without making him the big bad evil when instead he also started off a kid but ended up being dragged to the bottom of the river by his father's ambitions 😔

i wish the 2nd book had progressed a little further to lucrezia's childbirth bed death so the story could come full circle and sometimes the pov switching was confusing for me but aside from that, the borgias will always be famous to meeeeeeeee and i love a good book that portrays them well!

ive been on the hunt for more borgia-centric books so if u have any recs......... <3

zaynab omg hello!!!!! i was kinda waiting for someone to talk to me about this book because it's my absolute #1 favorite historical fiction book <3

i'm so happy you enjoyed reading it! the way miss dunant brilliantly humanized the borgia family by creating striking and compelling narratives for them was truly *chef's kiss*. it's safe to say that her portrayal of them has even made her my favorite author as well (and made me want to check out her other work, lol). the way she made them so sympathetic is truly admirable to me, which is also a standout aspect of the book as we manage to develop a deep understanding of their motivations and complexities through her nuanced portrayal, you know? i say it could've been done more when it came to lucrezia, as she is truly one of the most compelling figures in history (and my all-time favorite). i'm not criticizing dunant for lucrezia's portrayal!! but it's more like i wished she added more of lucrezia's lore...but alas! other books did her more justice, i must say!

my favorite theme of the book is the immense love the pope has for his children. the way [spoiler] juan was taken too soon from him is profoundly melancholic and it added emotional depth to the story and it highlighted the power of a father's love and the devastating impact of losing a beloved child. also, YEAH, the book felt like a breath of fresh air when it came to juan borgia! he was unfairly demonized with no reliable narrative and mostly used as a prop to hype up cesare at his expense *yawns*… but dunant made him an individual, likable character in the book, countering the unjust treatment he always receives. her portrayal of him allowed us to discover the vulnerability and sensitivity that lie beneath his outwardly arrogant and handsome demeanor. we really can't help but feel deep empathy and pity for him as we read about his inner struggles and emotional depth. he became a truly compelling and sympathetic figure within the borgia family, especially when his death is met with cruelty and brutality. the tragic nature of his demise evokes an even stronger sense of empathy and sorrow in the narrative of juan losing himself and being overwhelmed by the heavy task he was entrusted with…

and cesare, of course, was portrayed as that sulking, bitter, cruel but incredibly intelligent, cunning, and charming guy! lowkey a recurring theme for him, but the flavor in making him extra dark in the slayest way possible made me insane in a very positive way! you should watch "los borgia (2006)" for a delicious portrayal of cesare (and personally, i think it's the most historically accurate).

more books? i'd recommended emma lucas's 'lucrezia borgia' and maria bellonci's 'life and times of lucrezia borgia' - both are biographies btw! their work is a solid read, very unbiased without any manipulation of the letters about/between the siblings to push certain narratives (hello sarah bradford!!), well-researched, sheds light on the family's complex relationships and their rise to power, and is highly sympathetic to all of them. you won't be disappointed!!

for historical fiction, i'd recommend mario puzo's 'the family' ...you will never be disappointed after all it's by the dude who wrote the godfather!

i hope you enjoy them <333 i'll be waiting for your feedback :)

[bbygirl-aemond]

some thoughts on rhaena vs aemond in relation to vhagar

hello all i know that i am clearly an aemond apologist, but i wanted to give a more nuanced and unbiased take on the idea of him "stealing" vhagar from rhaena. namely, i wanted to argue that rhaena was always meant to bond with morning, and that to have her bond with vhagar would erase a great deal of her character's significance.

the show sets up some interesting parallels between rhaena and aemond, in that both are explicitly shown to be shunned and/or bullied because of their lack of a dragon. if the adults hadn't fucked up all of the children, i genuinely think the two could have empathized with each other about this, and maybe even have been friends. of course, we didn't get that, so we'll never know.

so we have two targaryens, both a similar age, and both the only dragonless members of their families. and we have vhagar, the largest, most powerful dragon of the world, freshly available for claiming.

how, and why, is it important that aemond ends up with vhagar, while rhaena does not? because rhaena WANTED vhagar, while aemond NEEDED her.

rhaena has a sense of safety and protection that aemond never had. she knows that she has powerful grandparents, and a powerful father, who are not only able but willing to protect her. so a dragon is not a matter of life and death for her.

it IS for aemond. alicent and criston care about him, but both are in very limited positions of power compared to people like daemon, corlys, and viserys. it's deeper than him being bullied; it's everything he's been taught by alicent and otto about the danger he and his family are in; a paranoia that is later proven when viserys prioritizes rhaenyra's reputation over aemond's physical safety, and literally threatens to cut out his tongue if he says bastard again. aemond needs vhagar in order to protect himself and his family, because no one else will. and he is so desperate that he stakes his LIFE on this.

so vhagar is claimed by aemond, and not rhaena.

and rhaena is young, and grieving her mother, and so the opportunity is not important to her in that moment. but even in the years beyond laena's funeral, rhaena does not claim any of the several riderless dragons on dragonstone, where she is living. vermithor, and especially seasmoke, would have both been very viable options. but she did not claim them.

i feel like this points to the fact that rhaena was not MEANT to claim a dragon, during all of those years. she already had a dragon: it had simply not yet hatched. and also that she was never going to be the type of person to claim an already-grown dragon; rather, one who needed to grow along with her hatchling.

and once the dance of dragons was done, with almost all of the dragons and targaryens extinct, rhaena and her little dragon are suddenly EVERYTHING. together, they are the emblem of hope, and of healing, for their house and their family. they survive, where so many of our other beloved characters did not, in order to serve as this symbol: of the future.

rhaena was always meant to bond with morning. and if morning had hatched any earlier, they both very well might have fought and perished in the dance of dragons. and i think the fact that they survive, together, is incredibly meaningful. please don't take that away from rhaena, y'all.

[stackthedeck]

I fully recognize that being sad about losing my blorbos is not like a Real Problem, but I've decided that given the whole Sabra situation I can't in good conscience ever support Marvel again, and every day I remember another character that I'm never gonna get to see again and I get so sad. How are you dealing with it?

Okay fun answer that is like so deeply unserious but like i do think it is practical if you're like me and fandom has been your main hobby and identity for years. and then i'm putting the more political and upsetting answer under the cut because frankly they should be separate posts but I only got the one ask

I've been dealing with it but like forcing another hyper fixation lmao which you know doesn't work for everyone but like hey join me in booster gold and blue beetle brain rot!! It's super easy to not talk about marvel if all i want to talk about is other characters from dc and indie comics. I'm not buying marvel comics anymore because I've gotta save my money to buy the current blue beetle run. I can't post marvel fics right now, I'm working on boostle fics and I'm hoping that if I scream loud enough about them I'll have convinced enough people to read their comics and they'll have 1000 fics on ao3 by the end of the year

To some extent I still think about the characters in marvel that I hold dear, I'm still doing fandom for them through discord and continuing fics and i still reblog art on here. I do this because the cultural capital of those actions are negligible that the marvel brand and disney company really gaining nothing for it and i truly believe that all art needs to be discussed and thought about especially when the creator is problematic and like deeply involved in politics. I'm still thinking and talking about marvel because the space i gave it in my heart and brain never goes away and like quitting cold turkey this thing that's been in my life since i was 8 isn't super attainable. but I'm not doing these fandom behaviors on tiktok because it's a larger platform with no nuance, a younger demographic, and it's designed to sell you things. If I talk about marvel on that platform, aside from making people aware of the boycotts it is giving disney cultural capital and frankly it'll probably convince people to buy from the disney company. Still think deeply about these works because when we stop looking, we give ourselves permission to miss the actual messaging. when we say art has no value, we can't see it's values it portrays and we let too much shit slide.

I've found that the way i've distanced myself most from all my positive fandom feelings for marvel is through becoming more aware of the politics around comics. Getting really deep into the history of comics and the film making process of the mcu movies scratched a fandom itch in my brain, but most importantly I became so deeply and terribly aware of how the modern superhero genre has so deeply lost the plot. I gave a tedx speech about this on my campus and written a few papers about it but like Jack Kirby and Joe Simon made the character of Captain America to plead with their government to stop the oppression and genocide of their people in europe, they received death threats from nazis because they did that, despite the way people view the character as propaganda for the us military, steve rogers was first and foremost two men using fiction to beg for change and for their government to get involved to save lives. And now marvel studios is using the company they started to platform a character that represents the legitimacy of a settler state, marvel studios who is funded in part by the pentagon, who with every new movie results in increased enlistment in the military, is platforming a character that declares the right of israel to exist as it does now with the same tactics and symbols kirby and simon used to create a character that was made to stop genocide. It just makes me sick. It is a complete and total pervasion of who kirby and simon were and what they stood for. I respect their work too much to continue buying from marvel studios in any form and i can't stomach any of the new storylines the comics are telling because this isn't what comics are supposed to be

I think about this spider-man costume that was found in the rumble of a home in Gaza (link to original post) and i think about how these stories connect us, how there was a little boy who need to feel strong and powerful who wanted to be a hero and he was killed for the crime of being born Palestinian but he's no different than any other child i've loved in my life. and this multibillion dollar company funded his death, sanctioned the idea of it through the art they create, and my tax dollars fund every step of it. When I look at Spider-Man, a character who i grew up with, I can feel only grief and rage.

[honeycreammilkshake]

"What do you think are x and y’s greatest personality strengths and weaknesses? Why? What do you love about their dynamic?"

So, just found this kinda ask for various ships, I was thinking to ask you, if you don't mind and have free time, of course.

For your fav ships: Sukuita, Lawlight, Sherliam, or Tenjoh (feel free to pick whichever you want to answer). 🌻🌷

hi, anon! thank you so much for this ask! so sorry for the late reply.

i know sukuita is my number one ship and all but i kind of feel like talking about tenjoh more, since it's very underrated, so i'm going to go ahead and rant about those two.

spoilers ahead if you haven't watched monster yet!

i only recently started in on this series, but i'm already obsessed with it. what first drew me to it was, of course, johan. i love a complex, chilling, deeply philosophical villain, especially one who people think they understand when they really don't. and even johan doesn't fully understand himself either.

though his presence is a very dark and disturbing one that hangs over everyone, johan himself doesn't have much screen time for the majority of the series (much like james moriarty or hannibal lecter), and it's only towards the very end that we actually come to understand more about him and who he really is. even his true name is never given. and this is essential to his role in the story as it gives him a lot of nuance and complexity.

johan is depicted at first as the very embodiment of evil, a literal monster, yet his relationships with characters like his sister nina and his savior tenma give him a lot more depth and even contradict the idea of him being solely "bad."

arguably, johan has no "positive" traits initially, but his greatest strengths do like in his immense intelligence and incredible understanding of the human mind. he is able to come across as charismatic, compassionate, and kind-hearted to many others precisely because of how adept he is at essentially slipping into other people's lives, much like the monster from the storybook he read over and over as a child. his worst personality traits, morally, are his murderous intentions and manipulative nature.

like johan, tenma is also very intelligent and perceptive, too, but unlike johan he's truly kind-hearted, caring, and puts other people ahead of himself. i would say that the greatest strengths tenma has are his uncompromising optimism and empathy as well as his intelligence and sense of purpose. i would say his worst weakness, though, are his lack of self-preservation and his unflinching sense of morality, although his experience with johan does change him a bit towards the end.

for me, personally, i think the best thing about johan and tenma's dynamic is how unconventional it is. unlike the "heroes" in shows such as death note or psycho pass, tenma is not well-versed in criminology or psychology, as he's a doctor and not a detective. johan's relationship with tenma is also different from how a lot of traditional hero/villain dynamics are written, especially because tenma didn't create johan (bonaparta did) but still feels such a strong sense of responsibility towards him.

it's common for villains, especially the ones in comics or literature such as frankenstein, to have a vengeance against those who created their monstrosities. but tenma never did anything negative to impact johan or drive him into becoming a villain. in fact, tenma was the one to save johan's life as a child, even going as far as to prioritize the boy's life over the mayor's, which inevitably led to the ruination of tenma's successful career as a neurosurgeon.

though tenma was briefly bitter about this, he never regretted saving johan's life, even though the boy would grow up to become the "one in the shadows" who orchestrated so much of the death and destruction in the series.

johan was at the brink of death due to asking his sister to shoot him and kill the monster inside of him, but tenma chose to save johan's life, which led to johan returning the favor - in his own way - by killing the people responsible for the downfall of tenma's career. it was almost like his really messed up way of saying thank you. but learning that fact drove tenma to feel like johan was his responsibility. and even though tenma could have left johan's fate in the hands of others, he chose to pursue johan - obsessively and single-mindedly - for almost a whole decade.

although his personal mission was to kill johan himself, tenma failed to do so multiple times, mostly because of his overwhelming sense of ethics, his unshakeable belief that "all lives are created equal." his position as a doctor, as someone who wanted to live to help others, makes him almost completely opposite from johan, who believes that only death is equal for all and puts no value in even his own life.

even though johan kills pretty much everyone who remembers or knows about him, he spared tenma's life out of thankfulness that the doctor saved him... and also so that tenma could be the one to destroy him. he puts tenma through a living hell in order to create his own "perfect death" and wants to die from the very hands that saved him by driving tenma into breaking his ideals (which i find beautifully twisted and almost poetic).

but instead of coming to despise johan enough to kill him without regret, tenma actually uncovers the truth of johan's past and even feels an intense empathy and desire to forgive him.

johan wanted his own life, the life tenma gave back to him, to end so that he could prove his point that life has no meaning. but tenma saw meaning even in the monster. and even though johan killed so many people for no apparent reason or motive a lot of the time, tenma comes to understand that johan isn't a mindless monster with no other purpose than to destroy.

i have a lot more to watch before i actually finish the story, but based on what i already know and have gathered so far, the relationship between johan and tenma is one that i find really fascinating and complex. i would highly recommend more people try out this series - not just for them but also for the many amazingly interesting side characters and the thoughtful philosophical elements.

[eff-plays]

Obviously I can't prove it, but I'm not the same anon from the BG3 Fandom Critical blog!

Alrighty! In that case, here's my response to your second message!

And also the BG3 fandom critical anon, you're welcome to read this too, I have a small bit specifically for you at the end, since I assume you read my blog.

I mean there are definitely freakos and weirdos who will use any reason to morally justify their irrational (or sometimes somewhat rational) hatred for a character, in any fandom. And there are definitely crusaders who will try to use social justice in order to justify being an absolute shithead online. Personally I'm not really interested in arguing with those people or their stances or offering them more nuance than I already have, mainly because to them it doesn't really matter.

Like this blog isn't for people who send death threats over fictional character takes. Full stop. Doesn't matter if I agree with the cause itself. Like your brain is so fried at that point that I do not see any reason to engage with you. And tbh anon I suggest you do the same! Not in a condescending way, I just genuinely think that throwing those sorts of people out of your thoughts will actually improve your brain space. Don't waste precious mental effort on trying to understand or reason with people who aren't interested in a conversation.

Sure there are people who will use Wyll's treatment to moralize about their own hatred for Astarion. I'm sure those people exist. And I think it's hella cringe to make the mistreatment and neglect of a Black character entirely about a white character, who is only a symptom of a larger issue. But I think if they're at the point where they're sending death threats, then writing out essays about how Astarion is totally a soft boy, trust me, isn't gonna help change their mind. So I won't do that. Le shrug etc.

This all being said, I also think that a lot of the people who are sick of Astarion and do feel that a lot of fans might step into Wyll's "territory" with their portrayal of him feel this way for a reason. Like, especially for Black fans, I'm sure these opinions come from a very real place of hurt, and it's not my place to tell them they're wrong to feel that way or express their frustration. If they're sick of what they perceive is fandom portraying Astarion as a white Wyll stand-in, I'm not in any position to tell them otherwise because I do not have the same perspective as they do. Like yeah maybe they are incorrect in their perception or interpretation of Astarion as a character, but me imposing my own view of him onto them is less important to me than respecting their pain and experiences, ya know? I'm not here to convince them to like a guy who's lowkey a magnet for the cringiest motherfuckers a fandom could ask for. It's not my struggle and I will not make it my struggle.

Obviously anyone who sends death threats is a freako and weirdo and I want nothing to do with them. But I don't think the overlap between those two groups is quite as large as it seems, and it would be disengenuous to claim that (not that I'm saying you're doing it, only that we shouldn't be doing it).

I'm also not here to absolve every Astarion fan of accusations of racism. Obviously don't send death threats over a headcanon, but I can't make a blanket statement that all Soft!Astarion fans are coming up with headcanons that aren't racist or that don't accidentally or intentionally portray him closer to Wyll than to himself. I have no way of knowing that, and I'm in no position to make that judgment even if I did know.

All I can say is: Don't debate or offer nuance to people who send death threats. They're beyond that. They're brain-broken. That's it. That's my one hard stance.

Anyway I also don't think Astarion would offer Tav flowers. Don't care enough to send death threats to whoever does though. Because I am. Normal.

Adding in a small comment for the anon on BG3 fandom critical:

Obviously, once again, don't take the words of death-threat-sending freaks into any sort of consideration, but pretending that anyone who makes these criticisms is a death-threat-sending freak would also be dishonest. Try to understand where these criticisms come from, even if you don't agree, and try to make a judgment on whether defending your fave is worth the same as people expressing real hurt over their real-world oppression being reflected in art they enjoy for escapism. It's just a bit silly to go "And now I'm going to commit the greatest sin of them all" over a pretty popular headcanon and then inviting people to send you death threats like you're Jesus dying on the cross. C'mon man.

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

this is so long please read if it interests you and skip if it doesnt i genuinely just couldnt stop thinking of things to add.

i used to wonder why antisemites would constantly make up criticisms about zionism that are either blatantly false or a misunderstanding of facts. especially when jewish antizionists have consistently been able to find real criticisms of zionism and analyze them based on jewish history and personal experience (tbh i dont consider any goyim to be antizionist or zionist but that's not the point). it's definitely not a problem of "valid criticisms of zionism dont exist". even when i dont agree with jewish antizionists i usually understand how they got to their conclusion and i find it fully respectable. also when i say factual/valid criticisms i dont just mean shit i personally agree with. im a zionist with plenty of criticisms about the movement (yeah I know it's ironic). all i mean by that is a criticism of zionism that is backed up by facts.

imo antisemites either explicitly or implicitly know that if they look up factual criticisms of zionism they'll also have to learn about the positive stuff. it's all intertwined. to a lot of jewish people this isnt that big of a deal. we're raised to ask questions and we're taught how to formulate a good argument from a young age. its pretty normal for us to critique things that we generally support or find postives in things we generally critique. however, goyim are much less likely to be raised this way. obviously some are but the dichotomy of good and bad is much more prevalent in goyische culture than jewish. of course we know some shit is good and other shit is bad, we're not fuckin idiots, but nuance is integral to us.

i dont know what it feels like to be raised in a culture with a strong difference between good and bad. it doesnt make sense to me at all. however id assume that that upbringing combined with social media, which favors quick, shocking information, would result in something like goyim constantly glazing over factual critcisms of zionism and just making shit up. the made up shit is simultaneously more gut-wrenching and easier to digest due to its simplicity. it's really fucking hard to accept that zionism is so complex if youve been taught that things are always just good or bad. and even harder if your activism began and ended with social media instead of a medium that favors long-form content.

you cannot research zionism without being whacked in the face with nuance. its the reason i research zionist history more than zionist theory because that shit is so confusing sometimes (said with love). learning about zionism isn't an easy task at all. ive been doing it seriously for around 5 years and casually since i was a small child and i still learn shit every day. if i studied zionism for hours every day id probably still have something to learn when i die.

antisemites do not like being called antisemites, so they try to learn things about jewish history and then fail. they dont actually care about the information they just want to seem like they know something. they are not doing this for the benefit of jewish people. they wont actually spread true jewish history or recommend jewish creators that could share correct information. they'll instead say bare minimum shit that makes themselves feel proud for saying the word "jewish" and their followers are making death threats towards zionists.

ive seen some goyim say some factual things about zionism and stay in their lane while doing so, both things i rlly appreciate. and time and time again they're met with antisemitic conspiracies, death threats, doxxing, etc. not as much as jewish people are but still a lot. most people are not ready and may never be ready to support jews through the good and the bad.

this ties into the idea of the "innocent" victim. the one who is pure and kind, who never said a bad word about anyone and saved baby mice from fires. this idea of the innocent victim exists in war, abuse, crime, literally anywhere where someone's human rights are violated. however even if someone is innocent in a particular situation most people are not 100% good and innocent all the time. there's a few exceptions like babies (although i do know some babies that are fucking assholes) but in general people are a mix of good and bad.

jewish people do not shy away from being both good and bad. we embrace it with open arms and even though we try to improve our bad traits we dont fear them. "the only good jew is a dead jew" is fitting because when someone is dead you can make so much up. you can pretend they were incapable of every doing anything even remotely bad. you can say the poor jew who died was your biggest inspiration even though you scoffed at them every time they opened their mouth.

and this is why antisemites hate zionism so much and love making up false critcisms. because it throws concepts like black and white morality, the desire to consume information quickly, and the innocent victim into the fucking mud. then it punches it and steps on it and kicks it. anything and anyone that favors simple information over complicated information, not matter how incorrect, is going to have a hard time discussing zionism. people want to know things, yet sometimes they dont wanna actually put in the work to learn the correct information from good sources because that's hard work and antisemites do not want to put in hard work regarding jewish history.

if you believe im gonna solve antisemitism singlehandedly then who the fuck do you think i am. this isnt going away anytime soon. however you can do shit to help. study zionism on your own time and develop your own opinions on it. i highly recommend focusing on 1-3 specific topics trust me it's really confusing otherwise. teach others about it when you feel safe to do so. share resources with them and encourage them to do their own research. maybe point them to a specific aspect that relates to an interest they already have, and if you're mentally able to handle it call out antisemitic misinformation. a lot of people will not listen but there will always be at least one person who just needs a little bit of help starting.

anyway i may do actual research on this in the future because observations and i might turn it into a proper essay. I'll write one version where i say fuck and another where I don't.