#jokey discourse

[vaxyl]

Thinking about Vax'ildan.

Thinking about Vax and hair.

Thinking about a small child running to his mother crying because a bigger kid pushed him into the Gladepools and his hair is all messed up now.

Thinking of him sat in front of the fire as his mother dries and untangles his hair, singing to him in her mother's tongue.

Thinking of him and his sister sitting on stools at the kitchen table waiting impatiently as their mother braids their hair all prettily for the Harvest Close Fair, the pair giggling and kicking their feet as they're asked to "please sit still for just another minute, you two."

Thinking about Vax asking to brush his mother's hair and braid it, so she teaches him how to do it and Vex asks him to braid her hair as well.

When Syldor takes the twins, aged 10, to Syngorn, he forces them to have their hair cut according to Syngorn's bizarre Family Hierarchy Hair Rules;

waist length hair is indicative of political status

hair just above the waist is indicative of being the head of your household

just above the elbow length is indicative of being the household heir

just below the shoulder length is indicative of being respected by your household

hair that's shoulder length exactly is indicative of being from a wealthy household but of having little respect

just below chin length but just above shoulder length is indicative of you coming from a non-wealthy family

hair at chin length or shorter than chin length is indicative that you have been disowned by your family's household

Syldor has waist length silky black hair, which he usually leaves undecorated unless he's hosting or attending a ball

Vax also has silky black hair, Syldor having it cut from just above the elbows up to exactly shoulder length - while Vex has curly brown hair that had also been just above the elbows before it was also forcibly cut to shoulder length exactly

Vax would continue to help his sister with her hair, brushing it and braiding it for her

Whilst Vex slowly earned a modicum of respect through her hard work at school, her hair allowed to grow longer, Vax never gained any respect as he flunked his classes and started to act out, so he had to keep his hair shoulder length

By the age of 16, Vex had her hair back to just above her elbows to show that she's now the household heir - while Vax has rebelled and cut his hair into a choppy pixie cut in an attempt to piss off Syldor

He's forced to wear a wig to social events and he's banned from using sharp objects, but its worth it to him

When the twins run away from Syngorn and end up living in the woods when Byroden is gone, Vex has Vax cut her hair to match his as a symbol of her love for him and Vax cries while doing so because his sister's hair is so important to her

from then onwards, Vax comes to consider both of their hair as incredibly sacred to him, taking as good of care as he can of both of their hair even while living out in the wilderness

they both grow their hair out to be waist length, almost as if to spite Syldor and Syngorn

Vax braids Vex's hair in a way that protects and maintains her curls, while he likes to decorate his hair with small braids with colourful beads through them

When they join Vox Machina, Vax accidentally becomes the resident hairstylist as well as the resident cook - Scanlan, Pike and Keyleth all go to him for hair cuts, hair styling & help with shaving properly

Percy wouldn't start asking for his help too until after they've dealt with the Briarwoods and freed Cassandra & Whitestone

Cassandra also goes to Vax for help with her hair, having him cut it to her shoulders for her after years of Delilah not letting her style it how she wants to

when Grog gets the belt and grows a beard, Vax helps him to style and maintain it

Vax and Gilmore do each other's hair, teaching each other different styles and hair care tips as they gossip - just two boyfriends who have "caring for the other's hair" as a love language, so cute!

Vax and Allura, who are best friends with messy feelings in my fanon, love to gossip over tea and take turns braiding each others hair as they do

and I can so see Vax starting a hairdressing salon in the back of the 2nd floor of Gil's shop

just...Vax'ildan and hair 😭

(I will never forgive TLOVM for the fuckass ugly hair they gave Vax, let him have pretty hair!!!)

[the-meme-monarch]

yeah that ship is fine it's whatever (<- hates it badly but doesn't have any reason to and doesn't want to seem like an ass over it)

[vonlipvig]

saw a tiktok of a guy saying that he kinda got annoyed when he bought something online and they made him scroll all the way down to select 'united states of america', and then all of the comments agreeing, and it pissed me off so much. soooo much. everyday i pray for the downfall of the united states of america.

[vrsenus]

Athena our fav problematic EAH acc, making a jokey joke that made everyone in this fandom crawl outta their cave🙏🏽

[starlitsequins]

caitvi had sex and it still wasnt as gay as whatever tf was going on with jayce and viktor

[werewolf-cuddles]

Damn, some of y'all just cannot let shit go, huh?

[avoidantcreachure]

saw a reply on a post by an avpd blog that said something like “those people aren’t real good friends!! you should find people who-“ and i was like i’m gonna cut you off right there, not being able to do that is like my central character aspect… that’s the name of the disorder

[menlove]

like actually yes I am pretty pissed off about this whole thing. nowhere not once in my post did I mention anything about feminine women being the issue. not once. literally all I said was, essentially, "feminine men and masculine women are not accepted and adored by society" that's it. that's the post. and yet everyone and their brother is crawling out like weevils to go off in the tags about how as a feminine woman they feel attacked

listen very very closely. a post supporting one group is not automatically attacking the other group. if you feel left out, make your own positivity post. that's great. I will even reblog that post from you. but if a post says "I really love cats" you getting on there like "what did dogs ever do to you? dogs aren't the problem why do you hate dogs so much? I wish everyone could like dogs or cats and shut the fuck up about hating dogs" is doing literally nothing but annoying op

[ciderjacks]

“Aw man this drawing I spend hours on only got 11 likes, and only 1 rb! This sucks I’m so discouraged” or “wow, 11 whole people liked my work, and one person liked it so much they wanted to share it!” Which way online artist

[mypimpademia]

why i come back on here and some bull happenin’ 😭

it literally was never that deep 💀 let’s use our comprehension skills y’all !!! cause they missed the entire point of what you said

Cuz it’s tumblr and it’s always something happening😭 but no really good the og post was a joke and either way they missed the actual underlying message so that whole thing just made no sense💀

[twipsai]

every time ppl talk about idw's writing making Sonic kinder i wanna just throw all the moments where hes a piece of shit out there in the wild but. no. i shant

[mr-ribbit]

something fascinating to me about egg discourse is how often tme people Also joke about or question their friends potential to be trans, and it's literally never talked about like this.

my cis and tme nb friends routinely joke about celebrities or characters that have big "nonbinary energy" or who otherwise exhibit behavior we would associate with ourselves. i have tme friends and acquaintances who have approached me or my wife and straightforwardly said "something seems trans about you, have I asked for your pronouns recently?"

similar friends have even talked about other still-cis friends in our circle this way, or joked about "when are you going to transition like the rest of us?" or "yeah cis people are a minority in this group, just give it time" or "no wonder you have queer friends with how comfortable with being gnc you are" or etc etc examples like that

even the actual examples of people in my life that I can think of as being the most "invasive" or presumptive about gender have been tme people:

it was my cishet friends who outed me and my wife as trans to everyone at their wedding, including their boomer parents and hundreds of strangers, and called it "the most queer wedding party ever"

it was my tme nb friend who kept saying they could "always tell" her transfem cousin was trans before she came out, and then proceeded to randomly give us extremely personal details about her bottom surgery

it was my transmasc friend who refused to call me and my wife anything other than "little enby beans" after we met and introduced us with our full genders+sexuality labels to every single person one by one at a party

it was my transmasc nb friend who kept insisting my wife could "still be nonbinary" when she was first considering identifying as a trans woman instead, and it was THAT idea that actually slowed her down from making changes to her life that she wanted

it was my cis friends who approached me arm and arm and cornered my outside of a bathroom at a party right after I took a piss to suddenly ask me what my pronouns were because they "heard something" at the party

like, transfems deserve robust support against this trash so a lot of our defensive discourse has ofc been about how it IS okay for transfems to talk about eggs and be jokey about it and non-invasively approach others about being trans

but i swear to god none of these weird people have even stopped to make their discourse ABOUT anyone BUT transfems. it's so clearly targeted!!

no one has EVER approached *me* as a tme nb person and suggested i was pressuring gnc people with my egg jokes. never. nothing even remotely similar. i joke about other people being trans all the time and no one has ever treated me the way you all are treating transfems over this issue.

important note: my examples are all things I recall as being invasive and awkward, and I'm sharing them to make a point about how often rude behavior comes from the same tme people pointing fingers over this. but I still don't think any of them are worth the crucifixion people are treating transfem egg discourse with.

even when my friends were weird to me in the above examples, my reaction was either to confront them about it as friends who I trust to be able to communicate with, or to cut those individuals off after they proved not worth a relationship in the long run. at no time did I desire to make a call-out post or spread rumors about them or publicly declare all of their gender as a screeching menace to society.

my point here is that even when I do think about moments where others crossed a line, acting like this is a "issue trans women have" is blatantly transmisogynistic garbage that only exists to serve the woman-hating machine at the heart of our society. fucking cut it out

[mr-nicegirl]

the demiromantic specification is a representation of asexualfication of true aromantic tendencies (im only half joking im gonna hold your hand (maybe.) when i say this bc this is real and true to my spirit)

people who only engage in casual sex and hookup culture for WHATEVER reason. { literally none of your business btw to ask them why that is. okay? } THAT only formed DEEP emotional bonds with people after forming a regular situationship/fwb situation and the consistent familiarity after sharing their body with someone NO MATTER HOW. okay? are literally the same as people who are demisexual. people who dont catch feelings for anyone for any reason only until FUCKKK i had too many good times sharing their bed an got too comfortable and started bearing my heart and soul to them in my post orgasmic haze and warriors bond with them FUCK fuck fuckkkkkkkk.. are literally just some type of arospec. IDC how they personally identify. idgaf how YOU personally identify cuz that has nothing to do with it. idgaf about who their bedmate is as long as it'a consensual I DONTTT GAF.

STOP toxic alloromantics from defining classic aro tales as old as timeee

POST SIGNED BY A TRUE TOXIC AROACESPEC TUMBLRINA WITH A DISORDERRRR PATRIOT 🫡💟✅

the fact that that demiromantic doesn't mean the EXACT INVERSE of demisexual will always make me insane. btw. this is how u know that the TRUE villains of the ace discourse lies soley with the toxic alloromantic asexuals. ///: it's your closest allies 😔✊🏽 that are your biggest haters sometimes /:

[paperstorm]

What do you think Jonah should call them then 👀👀 are you team names

Oh boy we love the smell of discourse first thing in the morning. Okay here is the entirety of my thoughts on the situation, which I'm sure people have been awaiting with baited breath (🙄 half the time I'm not even interested in my thoughts)

People can and should headcanon whatever they want and there is truly no need to get upset if someone headcanons something different than you none of this is that serious

Headcanons do not equal canon. You can headcanon that Tommy never had cancer if you want to but it isn’t fair to demand other people acquiesce to your way of thinking, right? I think the show was very clear about telling us that Jonah is not going to call them Dad. That was the entire point of Papa-Bro – the writers went out of their way to make it clear that 5 months in they still haven’t figured it out but they’re trying a moniker that a) is clearly a jokey one that isn’t going to stick and b) very intentionally does not include the word Dad. I am actually not personally opposed to the idea of Jonah calling them something other than their legal first names, I get why that feels a bit formal, but the show purposely made it clear that it's not gonna be Dad. Again, headcanon whatever you want. I totally understand why it can be frustrating when non-canon things are sort of insisted upon as if we all must adopt the same headcanons but ultimately this is all fictional and for every fic that writes this in a way you don't like there will be others more to your taste

I feel like TK would want to do everything he could to keep Enzo and Gwyn alive and a part of Jonah. This is the man who in 3x08 sat there crying and heartbroken about the idea that Jonah would never get to know his mom, I just can’t wrap my head around that same person then wanting to take the place of Jonah’s biological parents when he loves his mom and stepfather and values their continued place in Jonah’s life. I know that Jonah hypothetically calling TK ‘Dad’ doesn’t automatically equate to TK completely erasing his biological parents, which I hope we can all agree he would never do, but it feels, to me personally!, adjacent enough that I just don’t really vibe with it. But there’s no one single right way to be a family. My thoughts on this aren’t objectively correct, they’re just my thoughts. People can and do think my thoughts are stupid, which is fine.

As I said I am not opposed to Jonah calling them something but I honestly don’t know what! I don’t hate him sticking with their names, since that’s what he already calls them. I also don’t hate him calling them something else, some kind of nickname that feels less formal. But as to what that should be, I have no thoughts 😭 I am so glad it wasn’t my job to come up with those nicknames because I can’t think of anything better than Papa-Bro. I think ultimately I default to their names just literally because I can't come up with anything better.

[hellofastudysession]

am i rlly going to write a death note literary analysis when i could be doing other things

about the discourse going on in the tag abt "death note is acab and thats why the characters couldnt better the world with the note (/written in somewhat jokey matter)" vs "death note is trying to say we all have potential for evil, especially if you get a chance to insta-hurt ppl without repercussions, and it doesnt matter if youre a cop or not", i personally feel like it ignores the things that i like abt death note, which is "both of these things are true", and simultaneously "both of these things do not matter". the first part of this is dedicated to the first point, the latter to the last.

first point. i think its an important part of the message and themes (unintentional or not, and i lean on the former because... come on, can you really say the author intended you to not think of the cops as good people, at least compared to light and l) that light is a cops son, and that almost everyone who gets the death note is cop adjacent/thinks like a cop and is already corrupt/powerful when they get it (mello raised to think hed be just like l, yotsuba group is self explanatory; you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me teru "churchill" mikami, who was hand selected by light out of a bunch of rabid kira supporters, is a normal citizen). i appreciated the cop post bc its rlly important to not gloss over that aspect.

all of this would be an argument for "only someone like them would do something like this, and i am not like them, so im above them and immune to thinking about what id do with it", but... misa is the MOST important outlier in all of this bc her murders are solely selfish in nature and shes not doing any of this for "the greater good"!!! her nature of being an exception and still a very very bad person is really really important...

or it would be if death note gave a shit about her character at all!!! im not talking about her tragic side, im talking about exploring the ramifications of her killing people the way lights murders are (somewhat) explored. that would strengthen the message greatly! but shes dismissed and that weakens it overall. firstly, she's dismissed by the characters when l only sees her as a way to get to kira and basically shelves her the rest of the time. secondly, shes dismissed by the narrative when her character is gradually ground down to a stump and (not to sound perilously close to the bad takes ppl meme about) she never faces repercussions for her actions. every other character using the death note is treated relatively seriously, but misa just dies bc her love is dead. im not saying this isnt a... fitting punishment or that it isnt in character, but it doesnt fit snugly into the theme other people are talking about of "you reap what you sow" at all.

we do have something of an equivalent to misa's grayscale motives. surprise surprise, its light yagami. first is light's characterization in the musical (i will also note that misa never kills anyone in the musical). light's thinking is coplike, yes — he literally starts his first song by talking about "throw[ing] away the key" — but also, oddly enough, could be read as progressive and therefore sympathetic to tumblr ("let the corporations make the regulations / and hold no one accountable when everything gets wrong / let the rich and famous get away with murder / every time a high-priced mouthpiece starts to talk, his client gets to walk"). compare to the anime and manga, where his bigotry and pride and disgust come from a place of lukewarm dissatisfaction and boredom. the musical has much less time to play around with lights character, so it gives the audience something to immediately hook on. more on how that actually plays out later.

in the animanga, none of this is justified from the start. animanga light could say he was just killing people to make humanity way, way worse, and that wouldnt matter, because at the root of it, it was always his boredom that made him pick up the note. of course he actually believes in justice and believes hes doing the right thing (no, he believes he's doing the wrong thing, for the sake of the world... the right thing, because he is god...), but it was boredom at the start. all animanga light says about justice and righteousness and the law is a front in the end, bc he is exactly like l and misa — amoral. selfish. searching for entertainment. hedonistic. we know this. he kills naomi misora*. he kills lind l. turner. everything hes saying deserves to be dismissed from the beginning.

"but doesnt that mean you agree with the discourse post you wrote this post to argue against?" like i said, i agree with both of them! but i... still think its not right to reduce death note to the message of "the power to kill people is bad". because that is not exactly what the story is saying, even though that's literally its whole plot and therefore reaching that conclusion is self explanatory (lmao). let's look at the concept of mu. nothingness. "there's no heaven or hell". The Real Slay The Princess (Death Note Essay) Starts Here.

in light's final moments in the death note manga, while screaming about not wanting to die, he remembers that the first day they met, ryuk told light that "there's no heaven or hell. no matter what they do in life, all people go to the same place. all humans are equal in death". it is retroactively revealed that light knew this the whole time, operated under this knowledge for all the years we watched him — the knowledge that nothing he does is actually bad, that nothing any human does is actually bad, that shinigami are not "evil", that the universe does not care. that no one cares except humans. this oblivion absolutely terrifies him more than anything anyone could ever do to him. its what he thinks of before anything else as he flails there, screaming, dying. one could say everything he does after that day is him trying to escape that fact, or wrest control over it. but it doesnt work.

here are the lyrics of requiem, the musical's final song, sung over the bodies of l and musical light, a light who was at least somewhat good-intentioned at first: "sleep now, here among your choices / then fade away / hear how the world rejoices / shades of gray / gone who was right or wrong / who was weak or strong / nothing left to learn". this is the final message the death note musical and the manga chose to leave us with. there is no judgement. even after all that acknowledged hurt, after all the damage done, there is no judgement.

in the manga and anime alike, the world is just as fucked when light picks up the death note as when he dies. sure, we as readers can guess otherwise logically (and be optimistic, believing the world was never fucked regardless), but that's not what death note wants you to think. it ends with matsuda and another member of the task force noting how the world is worse again even though they killed kira (matsuda is clearly much worse for wear, but still determined), we see the shitty motorcycle band again, it ends with misa and a whole kira cult on a mountain even though kira died a long time ago...

its extremely important that light is never killed by any human or any aspect of the law. he is always killed by ryuk: a chaotic force completely detached from human sensibilities, one that does not care about good and evil. same with l; in the anime, manga, and musical, he is always killed by rems senseless, morally gray love (and you could argue in the kdrama that hes killed by love there too lol). justice is just a set dressing.

this is not just because death note is a tragedy, because good and evil can still matter in a tragedy. the theme of "nothingness" and "good and evil doesnt matter here" is also shown in a situation relatively unrelated to light winning or losing, or being good or bad. and its in fucking lawlight of all things. we all know ls not a good person. we know lights not a good person. this is tip of the iceberg death note knowledge. but the moment they start to interact, none of that starts to matter. textually, their relationship becomes more important than the people theyve killed and hurt. and the thing is? the thing is? THAT WORKS STORY-WISE. THAT'S ENTERTAINING. AND IT'S NEVER TEXTUALLY CALLED OUT IN A LASTING WAY. l and lights relationship, no matter how much i meme it, is genuinely important to the themes and "mu" because it makes it clear that despite all the pretensions, despite everything, this was never about good and evil. and it still works in the story. this is why death note is simultaneously a comedy — isn't the battle of good and evil supposed to matter more? well, fine, i'll keep watching this anyway. that suspension of disbelief comes crashing down the moment l dies, though, and a relationship built on nothingness (the "mu" sort, meaninglessness, not "character development" nothingness, theres plenty of character development) gives way to just nothingness (again, "mu", not light's post-l depression nothingness), forever.

(an aside: there is no one to root for in death note, and the only things to root for are either interesting character relationships, convoluted plots, or complete and total destruction: for everything to end so no more damage is done.)

not to say that death note does not encourage its readers to consider what damage they might do with the death note (obviously.), or that its characters never do. look at matsuda, a much easier heroic figure to latch on to than soichiro because of his unique place in the cast dynamic and because he's willing to consider both sides of the situation and kill light instantly for all he's done. its just that the story's own stance on the subject is... complicated by the existence of shinigami worldviews and by its own insistence that the world cannot change for the better.

also, this is not to say that this is executed well by the death note manga at all. it is a very strong tool, artistically, to establish and then violently remove any emotional connections between characters and make your story only about the exceedingly convoluted lengths characters go to to survive and catch each other so the reader can realize how ultimately pointless all of this is, but like... is that a good story choice if that's all you do? i would say not really. add in a good dollop of misogyny that destroys the second-to-last character who might actually be an interesting contrast to the rest of the cast's dull one-track focus on winning and justice, and youve got yourself a shitty story that... honestly still achieves what it went out to do, just not in a way id ever want to replicate.

anyway, back to the parts death note's actually trying to say. no matter what any human does in their life, no matter how they try to hurt or help the world, they all die in the end. hey, light, they all die in the end. once dead, they can never come back to life. and the seasons turn. and the world rejoices. and you say "goodbye"...

that's all.

no analysis of death notes overarching theme would be complete without nears final monologue, the definitive roast of light, the "you're just a murderer" speech: "what is right from wrong? what is good from evil? nobody can truly distinguish between them. even if there is a god." if we take this as talking about the actual god in the room (ryuk) as well as light, then near admits that humans will never be able to withstand these overwhelming forces and that, using justice and happiness and selfishness, they are just scrabbling to find meaning in things they ultimately have no control over.

but of course, near does not stop there. "[...] even then i'd stop and think for myself. i'd decide for myself whether his teachings are right and wrong." nears alright with not having control over everything, because near can still control nears own actions. these forces can and do exist, but they have no sway over nears own humanity — unlike light, who caved.

one of the creators of death note said they believe its message is "life is short, so everyone should do their best". the first time i learned this, i was like, thats... nice and optimistic, but an awful reading of the story! "life is short, so everyone should be desperate and striving like light yagami", who literally cut off other ppls lives for his own life? what character in death note are we supposed to strive towards when we "do our best"? they all do awful things with their lives! honestly, maybe they shouldnt have tried their best, if this is what their best is!

but with the view of "mu"... it makes a bit more sense. just a little. maybe.

there is no good and evil. there is only what humans think, and no matter what we do, we all die in the end. it is easy to be crushed and terrified by this in the same way light is, but what is more important than justice and righteousness and finding meaning is... doing your best. not being a person that hurts others too much. not letting yourself get swallowed up by an ideal. not going too far. and simultaneously, trusting yourself.

it leaves a few questions, though... was the currently dead l even a little bit right about his blatantly amoral approach, then? was there a point to this pain, and me slogging through this dumbass manga, and all the people that have lost their lives to a selfish teenage cop's son and the whims of everyone chasing after him? was there a point to any of this...?

the manga** never answers this. it stays clinically impartial until the very end. the musical is anything but clinically impartial (and i love it so much for that), and its ryuk that has the last word.

"there's no point at all."

of course theres no point. none of this was ever supposed to happen. that is what matters more than all the hurt and the crimes and the pain.

and that's... actually okay, because it's over now.

yes, death note has many really important themes present in its story, but its viewpoint is nihilism first and foremost. thats why its so fun and easy to play around with all the other messages, because no matter what fun or torment or awful things or righteous justice or absolute nothingness or sentimentality happens in between, there is always an end.

there is always the end.

[madlori]

gosh was that eddie being jokey and irreverent while buck was feeling upset and vulnerable

wow i wonder if there'll be discourse about that from people who objected to dinnertime flirting

i'll just be over here

waiting for that to happen

any minute now

(this episode is riveting so far gotta say)