#i swear i wanted to like him

[ceruleanwhore]

As someone who has never liked Jin since I first started ikepri, I recently was convinced to attempt to make my way through his romantic route after reading @randonauticrap’s wonderful and very compelling fanfic about him and now, as I finish his story, I wanted to take a very long minute to talk about it. I’d like to start with a bit of context before really getting into things, though. (Major spoilers for Luke and Jin’s routes below the cut.)

A few months ago, I saw a post somewhere on here that mentioned what, for me at the time, was a massive spoiler, that Jin killed Luke’s sister. At the time, I was in the middle of another route so I immediately took to YouTube to find a playlist of Jin’s route because my thought at the time was that I wanted to read it. However, I very quickly decided that I hated it, and then I kind of just flipped through some of the following chapters, kind of scanning for the stuff with Luke’s sister and not finding it, so then I just ended up skipping to the last 8 chapters and slogging through those. It is also worth mentioning that the only ending on YouTube was his dramatic ending.

Now, that whole experience sucked beyond belief and I came out of it deeply, passionately hating Jin because really all I saw was his awful, disrespectful behavior at the very beginning and that horrid shit he pulls both in ch 19 and then in the actual ending. A while after this whole ordeal, I did get around to reading Luke’s route, which made me hate Jin even more because, in the part where Jin is finally explaining what happened on Bloodstained Rose Day and we get his own flashback, there’s no dialogue, like he pulls this injured little girl from the rubble and then just slices her throat without her ever saying anything. Between that and what sure seemed like sexism from what bits and pieces of Jin’s route I’d seen, it gave me this idea that Leyla was straight up unconscious and he just decided to slice her throat like that because, in truth, he just wanted her out of the way and didn’t want to have to deal with her during the fighting but obviously he’d tell himself that it was for her sake or some shit. There’s still a bunch I’m missing with that but I’m about to get way more into this shit so I’m not concerned, but tldr I fucking hated this guy and I thought he was the worst kind of scum coming out of Luke’s route, especially since so many other people in the fandom have talked about how much he gives them the ick.

So now, at the end of his romantic route, I still don’t like him and I really think I was just bewitched by the beautiful things that @randonauticrap has written about him, but I don’t truly hate him anymore. I think I’m going to just list off my issues with his character as quickly as possible to just really show how much there is that I take issue with here without going on about it for an eternity.

First is the way he talks about women (i.e. comments about how he’s never seen such an impressive “rack” before.) More importantly, there’s how he’s sexualizing women in totally inappropriate contexts where there really aren’t any women present, like when he’s training his troops or when he goes to deal with that issue on the border and is addressing those kids from Obsidian. This particularly is disturbing to me because there’s already a longstanding history of men conflating sexual violence with the violence of war and for Jin to, however unintentionally, draw that direct of a connection between fighting in war and having sex with women is something I cannot abide by.

Also with his lack of respect of women is how he demands and abuses Emma’s time at the start of his route. It’s bad enough to put her in that god-awful position in the first place with Sariel and all that, but to then drag her away from the hard work she has to put in because of him just to make her spend an entire day watching him go around hitting on other women is beyond disrespectful. The other thing that really irks me is how he continues to hit on Emma after she’s made it super clear that, unlike the women he has relations with, she truly believes that such relations exclusively accompany real feelings. He acknowledges that she’s a true romantic and then is out here like “where’s my hug” and it makes me feel violent. I originally wasn’t totally against how he talks to women, since in canon all those faceless nameless side characters he fucks seem to be into it and I thought he was a consent king who stops if the woman clearly isn’t interested and only ever pursues women who are really into what he’s offering but apparently not.

Then there’s everything with Clause 99. First off, him putting in the clause basically reflects that his biggest fear is history repeating itself with his parents’ relationship and Clause 99 puts ALL of that responsibility on the women who will serve as Belle in the future. Secondly, this is backed by his hypocritical behavior throughout the different routes. In Luke’s route, he outright encourages Luke to pursue Emma in spite of making this clause and he easily yields to his other brothers when, in their own routes, they decide they want to revoke the clause, and yet Emma herself gets Clause 99 looming over her head throughout all of the routes. The conclusion which I believe is actually meant to be canon with this is that women are fragile little flowers who need extra special protection from the big, bad men and they need a fucking man to provide that protection. Rather than putting in any amount of effort at all whatsoever to make himself and his brothers and future generations of their family better, he’s putting all this serious, overwhelming pressure on the women. Also, the clause does jack shit to help mitigate the development of such emotions, so it literally just serves to put pressure and responsibility on women about things beyond their control while accomplishing nothing other than turning them into scapegoats.

Okay so then I really need to talk about Luke’s sister. So, as I started to talk about before, I now know that the flashback in Luke’s route was incomplete and that Leyla did actually beg for death, but even with that being the case there are still some major ethical issues here. For example, can a ~8 year old child have the bodily autonomy to actually request assisted suicide and should they? Does said child have enough knowledge of pain and injury to know when they’re actually about to die or not? Should a grown ass man actually heed a child’s request for death without even so much as having a doctor spare said child a glance first? But then after he killed her, he went and stole her body to go bury her in the woods, clearly just deciding that her dead body should go to him to use to try and make himself feel better. Those graves that are hidden where only he can find them do nothing for Leyla or for Luke; they exclusively exist for Jin. They are there solely for him to use to try and alleviate his guilt over time, like props. 

Then, there’s the part in Luke’s route where he discovers the truth about Jin, so Jin takes him on a walk to those graves and tells the story of how he killed Leyla before he then tries to get Luke to kill him. Once again, this has nothing at all to do with trying to give Luke justice or closure and it has everything to do with Jin making everything about himself. There’s even a bit in there where Jin basically phrases it like he’s asking Luke to do him a favor and hear him out, making it clear that this is not at all for Luke’s benefit. Likewise, if he really cared about Luke getting real, meaningful justice and closure, he wouldn’t be trying to get Luke to murder him, putting all that blood directly on his hands, giving him further pain and trauma, and also ensuring that Chevalier would then kill Luke because of course he would.

Another thing I want to add, going off of that, is how very badly Jin sucks at conflict resolution, which we see multiple times between his route and Luke’s, whether it’s his conflict with Luke or how he handles shit so utterly fucking terribly with Emma or even that bullshit at the border with Obsidian at the end of his route. This man isn’t just shit at conflict resolution, he’s thoroughly proven that all attempts he makes at it are just variations of the same shit: self sacrifice fueled by ego dressed up to look like it’s heroic and really meant for the benefit of others that only actually harms those it’s supposedly meant to protect.

So I think my final takeaway with his character is that he is inherently very selfish but he has no self awareness about that selfishness and genuinely believes everything he’s doing is for other people. Another thing I want to talk about is that I saw a video the other day that also has softened my overall feelings about Jin, and that video was talking about the lack of self awareness of male feminists. This video talke about how some of these men who are out here making online content around ‘educating’ other men about feminism and respecting women will sometimes share this sentiment like “women have all been traumatized by the bad men out there so you just need to be patient with them” and how condescending it is. The issue here is that, when men say this, they are refusing to acknowledge that even as a good ol feminist ally, their own behavior can come across as sexist and they themselves can give us the ick or make us feel unsafe. 

I bring this up because, with Jin, I originally thought he was a sexist dick hiding behind a very thin facade of “but I love women,” but now I think it really is just a complete lack of self awareness where, like the men that video talked about, he sees himself as a feminist who loves women, so he doesn’t see how his words and actions can make it seem as though he’s violently sexist. So, to sum everything up, when I first found @randonauticrap’s stuff and then subsequently decided to read Jin’s story, I genuinely hated him because I saw him as dangerously sexist and selfish but now, as I finish his route, I don’t like him but I no longer hate him the way I did. Now I see him as capable of change and I think that like after the end of the story, a good person like the one he’s in a relationship with could successfully help him grow and change into a better person.

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[yuzuuu4]

(post 2.1 quest) unexpected

[maxgicalgirl]

Being a “Fun Fact !” kind of autistic is all fun and games until you get halfway through sharing an interesting tidbit and realize that it probably wasn’t appropriate to share in polite company and now you have to deal with the consequences :(

[humming-fly]

He was feeling left out

and the higher rez stills, since gifs always export as if you're sending messages through a metal can~

[hinamie]

someone asked if i had ever drawn gojo with his scars, now i have :>

[iliothermia]

Drawing my insecurities on beautiful men I want to be more like / representation I needed as a feminine but not twinkish man over the years has helped me feel much happier and more secure with myself, wanted to share. Highly recommend that process of self love, or at least self-appreciation ?

[huang-er-jiejie]

i. i just realised something about the kiss.

the way when aziraphale puts both of his hands on crowley's back, you can see them kinda shift so aziraphale isn't leaning. he held onto crowley for stability, and leaned in. pushed closer to him. he leaned forward. anyone ever says he didn't want the kiss im going to hunt you down because HE HELD CLOSE!!! HE KISSED BACK!!!!

EDIT: also im like WELL aware he kissed back i was even when i first watched it like its not a big revelation, its just that SOME people☠️ on TIKTOK☠️ KEEP SAYING HE WAS DISGUSTED BY THE KISS???? like i swear some people are watching a different show entirely

[astral-aromance]

I feel like 99% of the Silmarillion fans forget that Fëanor was actually a very likeable guy for most of his life.

That is literally a significant part of why people followed him. A lot of people loved and admired him. He wasn't mean to random people, and definitely not "a toxic husband/father." The whole point of his story is that he was universally beloved, which is what made his fall so impactful.

[lotus-pear]

god i love skk sm i wish gay ppl were real :(

[choccy-milky]

seb and clora working on baby #1 👶 🔞🔞!! NSFW !!🔞🔞

[poipiku]

[twitter]

[benevolenterrancy]

Mobei-Jun getting abandoned in the human realm by his favourite uncle and being left alone and terrified?? baby???? gonna lie awake thinking about him and Shang Qinghua meeting as children

[fisherrprince]

Instead of writing a fanfic like a normal person this oneshot turned into two separate, contextless things,

[spkyart]

Heck 💀

[kwillow]

Swimsuit season is well over now. Maybe it's for the best.

[casualavocados]

Chen Bowen as CHEN YI & Chiang Tien as AI DI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023) behind the scenes