#like yeah they have a majority

[britcision]

Y’know people talk about Audible having almost complete control of the audiobooks market and them having the rights to everything and I mean, I’m sure they’ve got a fucking hefty chunk

They also have exactly fucking NONE of the books I’ve wanted for the past 5 YEARS, new or old. They’re not even close to the only players in the game, they don’t even have Percy Jackson.

They didn’t get Iron Widow or Zachary Ying, or the Nine Eyes Of Lucien, like at this point it feels very personal cuz we have 2 credits for free audible books on the family account from 7 years ago because that’s how long it’s been since they got a book I fucking want

I love me other audiobook dealer (Audiobooks Now) and they do great sales very often, but also Never On The Books I Want

I am Suffering

(Obviously we have one audible account between about 20 family members we aren’t animals and no one else has found shit either)

[theshadowrealmitself]

I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them

People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human

“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”

“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”

“Yeah!!”

“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”

“Mostly just my dish but yeah >:(“

“How illogical”

“That’s what I’m saying!!!”

[abellarts]

[ID in alt]

jon should have been able to sock him at least once before s5

[razzafrazzle]

enough strong bads... time for strong sads (theres still a strong bad here)

[image description: a page of drawings of a human design of strong sad from homestar runner, where she is depicted as a fat, tan-skinned trans woman with gray and brown hair pulled into a bun and multiple piercings. she is wearing a gray sweatshirt, jeans, and steel-toed combat boots, and next to her is a note stating that she is trans and bisexual and that her pronouns are she/they. next to that is a drawing of her smiling and wearing a sloshy t-shirt, and above that is a comic of strong bad poking her in the stomach and saying "even her gender is my hand-me-downs", to which she stays silently angry at him. end id]

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

The thing about doctor who is that every episode is simultaneously the best and worst episode in the show and you can’t trust anyone who tells you it’s one or the other

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[edwinisms]

you know. I think the reasons it feels so literally narratively wrong when people refer to charles as being straight (such as in interviews where his love life comes up and so on) are that A) he’s never deemed outright straight in the show, so it’s just an assumption that he must be straight by default (which is silly in a show like this), and B) what he says following edwin’s confession. I know I’m biased, but even when I try to look at it as neutrally as possible, the way he reacts in general and the specific words he uses just don’t sound right when you imagine them being said by a Totally Definitely Straight guy.

first of all if you actually listen to it instead of absorbing the scene superficially it’s not particularly a rejection at all, and the actors have stated that themselves– it’s not him saying no, it’s him saying “I can’t give you an answer right now, but I will eventually”. that’s not an interpretation, that’s literally just the truth of what he said (and again, the actors agree). can you imagine a straight guy saying that, or possibly even more damning, “we have literally forever to figure out the rest [“the rest” meaning anything that goes beyond the kind of love charles already solidly has for him]”.

imagine you’re a straight man who’s unwaveringly confident in his orientation and your gay best friend confesses his feelings for you. you would not respond with the implication there is a “the rest” to figure out. since the main, obvious obstacle would be your solid lack of attraction to men, that’d probably be essential to your response– it wouldn’t be a “I can’t say–“ it’d be a “I can’t be–“. and on top of all that, I feel like the whole thing would have to sound far more apologetic– “I’m sorry, I love you and that’ll never change, but I just can’t love you the way that you love me.” something like that, right?

tldr: this is a rare instance in television where assuming a character is straight by default makes Less sense than the alternative. and charles’ choice of words in the confession overtly suggest that he is, at the very least, unsure of his orientation.

[starry-bi-sky]

i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.

He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.

And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.

And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.

Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.

Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."

There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.

It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.

Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.

At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.

"Do you like to do anything?"

Nothing. Just silence.

Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.

Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.

Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.

And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.

He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.

Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.

So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.

"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"

"Don't."

He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.

Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"

"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."

It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"

The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."

Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."

And they fall back into silence.

Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."

He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.

(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)

At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.

Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.

("Tucker told me once--") ("Tucker?") ("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")

(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)

(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)

It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."

The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."

The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.

When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.

Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.

"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."

When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.

Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.

[meamiki]

mira !!! :]

[qiu-yan]

wei wuxian vs. pragmatism: what MDZS intends to say about righteousness

copy/pasting most of my rather bitchy reply into its own individual post because i think it deserves to stand on its own.

so i think we can all agree that MXTX intends for us to read MDZS and conclude that wei wuxian is ultimately a deeply heroic and righteous person. whether you as the reader agree with this assessment of wei wuxian's moral character is another question entirely, but at the very least it is fairly obvious to all of us that MXTX intends for us to read him as a good person.

so why does MXTX call wei wuxian a good person? what aspects of his character and which of his choices make him a good person? what moral framework and what definition of morality does MXTX employ in order to call wei wuxian a good person?

i posit that MXTX argues that wei wuxian is heroic precisely because he is not pragmatic - because he adheres to his moral ideals despite the consequences, and because he did not make moral sacrifices at critical junctures of his life. the first half of this post will argue that wei wuxian is not pragmatic. the second half of this post will argue that this is exactly why wei wuxian is heroic, and that the moral framework employed by MXTX is deeply idealistic instead.

so let's begin.

let's start by establishing two things.

first: what MXTX argues about morality through the narrative of MDZS and the reader's own beliefs about morality are two different things. me saying "MDZS argues that xyz is righteousness" and me saying "i think xyz is righteousness" are two different statements. the following analysis is concerned not with what i myself consider to be righteous, but rather what MXTX argues through MDZS is righteous.

second: wei wuxian is not pragmatic.

what does it mean to be pragmatic? unless we are speaking about the school of philosophy specifically (which i am not here), being pragmatic means being grounded in reality and focused on practical outcomes. it means being result-oriented and considering the consequences of your actions before you act; it means acting only after you have considered the potential consequences of all possible courses of action and have then decided which outcomes are acceptable. being pragmatic also means recognizing when achieving everything you want is impossible. and, in such situations, being pragmatic thus entails compromising to achieve a desired outcome, even if that means you don’t get everything they want. to put it in edgier terms, being pragmatic means being able to make moral sacrifices.

an idealistic person attempts the impossible. a pragmatic person recognizes when something truly is impossible.

wei wuxian is not pragmatic.

first, wei wuxian is not someone who carefully considers the consequences of his actions before he acts. in fact, he displays a startling lack of consideration for consequences. it repeatedly falls upon other characters to either try (and fail) to hold him back.

when wei wuxian punched jin zixuan for insulting first jiang yanli and then jiang cheng, did he consider that jiang fengmian and jin guangshan might then dissolve the betrothal, and that jiang yanli might have wanted to make a decision regarding that on her own? no. he just punched jin zixuan because he was mad that jin zixuan had insulted two people he loved.

when wen chao threatened mianmian, and lan wangji and jin zixuan stood up for mianmian, and then wei wuxian stood up for them by holding wen chao hostage in turn - did he consider that there might be consequences for humiliating and threatening the life of the son of a warmongering great sect leader who has already proven capable of attacking other sects? no. did he stop and think "alright, wen ruohan has already attacked the cloud recesses, which proves that he's willing to wage war against the other sects. threatening the son of a sect leader is an easy way to earn any sect leader's ire, and since i'm the first disciple of the jiang sect, this puts not just me but the entire jiang sect on wen ruohan's shitlist"? no. it would be one thing if wei wuxian weighed this possibility and then decided that rescuing an innocent girl and the people who defended her was more important was worth the risk - that would show that he considered the consequences and then made his choice. but the thought simply never entered his mind. he acted simply because he wanted to save mianmian, jin zixuan, and lan wangji from the wens; he did not think beyond that.

when wei wuxian busted the wen remnants out of the qiongqi pass labor camp, did he have a clear plan as to how he was going to weather the political fallout? did he have a plan more detailed than "live quietly in the burial mounds until everyone forgets about us"? no. when jiang cheng challenged him as to how he was going to survive the situation, he did not in fact offer anything more concrete than "we'll just wait for everyone else to forget about us." he blustered about being a once-in-a-generation genius who could accomplish the impossible, but he provided no actual plan as to how he was going to do it. this leads me to conclude that wei wuxian did not in fact have a long-term plan for handling the consequences when he went ham at the qiongqi pass camp - that, instead of weighing the consequences and then making his decision, he instead decided immediately that this was something he had to do, consequences be damned.

and then - on top of this - all of his following actions then point in the exact opposite direction of his stated plan of waiting for everyone to forget about them. because instead of doing anything to fade into the background, everything wei wuxian did instead just convinced the jianghu he was an intolerable threat.

and this was not a sustainable strategy.

one thing i really appreciate about MXTX is that she does not make the rest of the jianghu into one-dimensional villainous morons. it's quite easy for lazy writers who want a persecution plotline to have the rest of the story's society magically start hating on the protagonist for no good reason, to make every background character in the story's world a three-braincell moron. but MXTX is not that author. it speaks to MXTX's skill as an author that, from the perspective of the rest of the jianghu, fearing wei wuxian as a mortal threat was an entirely reasonable conclusion for them to come to.

first, the gentry's most recent direct interaction with wei wuxian during this time period is him threatening to kill all of them. when jin zixun doesn't give him the information he wants, wei wuxian straight up says: "if i want to kill everyone here, who can stop me? who dares stop me?" this is a threat! and - surprise - threatening to kill people naturally makes people think that you want to kill them! 

next, wei wuxian refined wen ning's dead body into the first sentient fierce corpse in history, and also the strongest fierce corpse in living memory - and then took wen ning with him on night-hunts. that's where the reputation of "the yiling patriarch and his ghost general" comes from. this very naturally made the rest of society fear him even more, because now the guy who has just recently threatened to kill you has demonstrated even more of the power to easily do so! the unparalleled power to do so, which no one else possesses and it would be very hard for anyone else to counter! add in the fact that wei wuxian's activities were also attracting prospective disciples - people gathering outside the burial mounds because they wanted to learn demonic cultivation - and naturally the public is even more frightened, because now it looks like the guy who threatened to kill all of you is also gathering the political force to do so!

the public is incorrect about wei wuxian's intentions, of course. but what does wei wuxian do to correct these misconceptions? to rehabilitate his public image, because now his public image has the life of not just himself but also all the wen remnants under his protection riding on it? to prove to the public that he isn't an active threat to their lives - that he does not seek to murder them all in their beds - that it is safe for them to allow him to live, and that they can in fact survive if they don't kill him?

nothing.

it would be one thing if the story mentioned how wei wuxian tried to correct the malicious rumors about himself and failed. but that is not what happened. what happened is that wei wuxian sat on his corpse mountain and let everyone else say what they wanted to say. and when he left his corpse mountain, it was to bring his one-of-a-kind unparalleled sentient fierce corpse with him on night-hunts, which of course just fanned the flames of the rumors instead. he doesn't even tell the prospective pupils camped on his front door to fuck off - he just sneaks in through the back door.

this is not pragmatic behavior. though you can argue that wei wuxian's strategy here was to become so powerful and so scary that no one would dare try to fight him, anyone with a brain can tell you that this is not a sustainable solution in the long-term. first, if you want to use threats to keep someone from attacking you, you also need to promise stability - you need to give people the reassurance that if they don't start shit with you, then you'll leave them alone too. if you drive the "threat" factor too high, as wei wuxian did, you instead end up convincing people that if they do nothing you'll kill them anyways - that they have no choice but to kill you if they want to survive.

second, if you want to use threats to keep someone from attacking you, you also need to prepare for the inevitability that, if someone does end up getting hurt, everyone will blame you first and no one will want to hear your side of the story. after all, if someone gets hurt, then the first suspect everyone looks towards will be the guy who's been consistently saying "i'm strong enough to hurt you! i'm strong enough to hurt you! don't start shit with me because i'm strong enough to end you!" for the past few months. this is basic common sense. and yes, the society of MDZS is unfair - wei wuxian deserved a proper trial and investigation after the death of jin zixuan. but the fact that society is unfair is something a pragmatic person would have recognized and planned for.

wei wuxian did not recognize and plan for this reality. even after he accidentally kills jin zixuan, wei wuxian still insists that if only the jianghu investigates jin zixun's hundred holes curse, they'll see that wei wuxian didn't cast the hundred holes curse, they'll see that there was more scheming going on, etc etc. wen qing has to directly spell out for him that, at this point, society no longer cares about the truth of the matter. it seems that wei wuxian was actually oddly idealistic about the true nature of his society all the way until the very end.

all of this leads me to conclude that, when wei wuxian busted the wen remnants out of the qiongqi pass labor camp, he did so without considering the consequences of his actions. he assumed that he could improvise and weasel his way out of this situation, as he's always done in the past with his typical genius - only this time, he was wrong.

wei wuxian acts without considering the consequences of his actions. he does not make a decision only after carefully deliberating over all of the potential outcomes - not at all. instead, he acts in the moment - not out of any rational consideration of potential outcomes, but rather because it is simply something he must do. this by definition makes him a deeply unpragmatic person.

to put it into more familiar terms, for wei wuxian, the righteousness of an action comes not from its consequences, but are rather inherent to the action itself. even if he were doomed to fail, he could not give up on the wen remnants.

second, at critical junctures, wei wuxian is unable to make moral sacrifices. to be pragmatic is to know when you have to sacrifice: to know when, in order to achieve the most inalienable of your goals, you have to give up on some of your other goals. this is something wei wuxian is consistently unable to do.

of course, when it comes to his own wellbeing, wei wuxian is all too willing to sacrifice. he'll carve out any number of his internal organs to save those he loves. but this honestly speaks less to wei wuxian's moral framework and more to his lack of self-worth from a troubled upbringing.

because, when it comes to any moral cause, wei wuxian is entirely unable to sacrifice anything, even if being unable to sacrifice entails more negative consequences. wei wuxian could not sacrifice mianmian, jin zixuan, and lan wangji to wen chao and his goons, so he took action and took wen chao hostage himself. to sit back and do nothing as wen chao threatened the lives of those three was simply unthinkable for him - even if it meant taking a course of action that put yunmeng jiang in danger.

wei wuxian's relationship with jiang cheng deteriorated because jiang cheng did not know about the golden core transfer: because jiang cheng did not know that wei wuxian could no longer cultivate, from jiang cheng's point of view, it looked like wei wuxian was just refusing to help out and fulfill his promises for kicks. wei wuxian could have made things a lot easier for himself and also any wen remnants he chose to rescue had he simply told jiang cheng the truth - but he knew that finding out the truth of the golden core transfer would make jiang cheng miserable, and [jiang cheng's happiness] was not something he was willing to sacrifice.

wei wuxian's single most prominent moral decision is his refusal to allow the wen remnants to be sacrificed. anyone with a shred of political sense had to know that rescuing the wen remnants and then protecting them would be near impossible - that it entails making an enemy of the jin, and due to the jins' power, the entire jianghu. wei wuxian himself knew this; he is no moron. wei wuxian also had no long-term plan, no allies, and significantly less power than the rest of the world believed. yet, despite this all, he acted anyways, because he could not let the wen remnants be sacrificed.

the wen remnants wei wuxian rescued from the qiongqi pass labor camp included both regular civilians and cultivators. perhaps wei wuxian could have negotiated a proper release for the non-cultivating civilians, such as granny wen and a-yuan, had he chosen to give up on the cultivators. but - the question of whether this would have worked or not aside - this was not a sacrifice wei wuxian would be willing to make.

nor could wei wuxian sacrifice the safety of yunmeng jiang. i am firmly of the belief that, had yunmeng jiang formally stood by wei wuxian's side after wei wuxian attacked the jin-run labor camp, lanling jin would have eventually declared war on yunmeng jiang, and yunmeng jiang's would inevitably be destroyed. both wei wuxian and jiang cheng understood this as well - which is why wei wuxian told jiang cheng to let him go.

(you can argue - successfully - that wei wuxian did in fact sacrifice [his obligations to yunmeng jiang and his promise to jiang cheng] by leaving yunmeng jiang to protect the wen remnants. this is true. but i think that - from wei wuxian's point of view - this was not much of a sacrifice, because due to wei wuxian lacking a golden core, he already viewed himself as mostly useless to yunmeng jiang. so him leaving - in his view - is not really that much of a loss for yunmeng jiang.)

wei wuxian promised wen qing that he would return wen ning's consciousness to his corpse. when wei wuxian made this promise, he had no idea if he could actually pull it off or not. but then he did - and, in the process, created the most dangerous weapon the jianghu had seen in living memory. wen ning specifically, or moreso wei wuxian's inability to control him, leads to so much of wei wuxian's eventual downfall: wei wuxian loses control of wen ning and accidentally kills jin zixuan; when wen ning goes to turn himself in at jinlintai, he ends up going berserk again and killing another 10-20 jin and lan cultivators, which leads to the nightless city pledge conference. frankly, wei wuxian could have avoided a lot of trouble - or at the very least, a lot of the public's fear - had he not raised wen ning from the dead. it's not like he'd be completely defenseless without wen ning, either. but wei wuxian promised wen qing he would resurrect wen ning - and he could not sacrifice his promise to wen qing because of what wen qing had already done for him.

a pragmatic person is able to make sacrifices, including moral ones. at the very least, a pragmatic person recognizes when sacrifice is inevitable, when all paths lead to something being lost. a pragmatic person, put in the trolley problem, would recognize that there were only two options and that both options involve sacrifice: either he must kill one person, or he must allow five people to die. there is no path forwards in which all six people live.

wei wuxian is unable to make moral sacrifices. he clings on to all of these moral causes, all of these promises and obligations, and it is precisely because he attempts to hold onto all of them that he ends up losing everything. to reuse the previous example, wei wuxian in the trolley problem tried to save all six people because he could not accept any of the sacrifices made inevitable by the trolley problem.

to put this all together - wei wuxian is not a pragmatic person. he makes decisions with his gut, not his head - he does not consider the consequences of his actions before he acts. nor is wei wuxian able to make sacrifices - even necessary ones in order to avoid greater tragedies.

but. none of this means that wei wuxian is not a deeply heroic person. rather, to do what you believe to be righteous and attempt to live up to your ideals despite the consequences is exactly what MXTX lauds as moral. and to be unable to make a moral sacrifice when everyone else in your society easily does so is in fact deeply heroic.

it is precisely because wei wuxian is not pragmatic that MXTX declares him a hero.

some people, including myself, favor a moral framework that centers pragmatism and reason as virtues. to us, the ideal moral character is someone who makes decisions based on reason and not emotion, who considers the potential consequences of every course of action before making a decision, and who then, based on these inferred future consequences, uses reason to deduce which of all of the possible outcomes is the most preferable.

but this does not in fact describe wei wuxian, nor is this how wei wuxian views ethics. and to be honest, i don't think this is how MXTX views ethics either.

in all three of her stories, MXTX repeatedly comes down harder on the characters who make pragmatic decisions, the characters who are willing to sacrifice. in fact, killing sunshot soldiers while acting as wen ruohan's spy, and then killing nie mingjue's men in order to ensure a chance at killing wen ruohan and saving nie mingjue, was the pragmatic thing for meng yao to do, because that was the least bloody path forwards towards a sunshot victory over qishan wen. in fact, cutting ties with wei wuxian after he attacked the jin-run qiongqi pass labor camp was the pragmatic thing for jiang cheng to do, because it was the only path forward that did not put yunmeng jiang, his first and foremost responsibility, in the line of fire. and yet (though the situation is less clear with jin guangyao), MDZS as a narrative criticizes both jin guangyao and jiang cheng for these decisions - because, to MDZS, righteousness does not lie in pragmatism.

(this is a statement i personally disagree with. but we are here to discuss what MDZS wants to say about pragmatism and righteousness, not what i want to say about pragmatism and righteousness.)

by contrast, the one single act for which deeply controversial jiang cheng is ultimately lauded for in the narrative is also his single least pragmatic, most emotional act. the one single act of jiang cheng's that MDZS does not criticize is when, after the fall of lotus pier, jiang cheng ran out from his hiding spot to distract the wen soldiers from seeing wei wuxian. from a filial, duty-based point of view, this was a deeply stupid and unpragmatic course of action: jiang cheng's first and foremost duty, as the sole surviving jiang and new sect leader jiang, was to survive, rebuild his sect, and avenge his parents. from a consequentialist point of view, this impulsive choice is also what led to the domino-fall of tragedy that followed, since jiang cheng then got captured and had his golden core melted, which then led to everything else. yet this stupid, unpragmatic, and impulsive decision is ultimately the one act MDZS considers to be jiang cheng's single most heroic.

the key as to what MDZS considers to be heroic, what it considers to be righteous, lies in the jiang family motto: 明知不可而为之, attempt the impossible. this line, taken from the analects of confucius, can be considered to be a deeply deontological ideal. i find this twitter thread (warning to my followers: does kind of dunk on JC) to be rather helpful in elucidating this line's meaning. 

to attempt the impossible, to try what shouldn't be tried. "ask yourself not whether you can do it, but whether you should...consider not the result but rather the journey - have a clear conscience regardless of outcome." in other words, what matters is less whether you succeeded or failed, or what sort of outcome your actions brought about - what matters is that you tried. what matters is that, in the face of overwhelming odds, you tried to do what you think is right. and even if you end up failing - even if everyone you sought to protect ended up dying - the fact that you tried still has moral weight.

this is why it was righteous of wei wuxian to save the wen remnants - even though the ultimate consequences of that decision were overall negative, even though everyone wei wuxian tried to protect died. in fact, if wei wuxian had died immediately - if he had been shot down by jin archers at the qiongqi pass labor camp the moment he came within their range - if he had died before any wen in the labor camp realized someone wanted to save him - he would still be a righteous person. because, for MDZS, what makes an action righteous is not its consequences. for MDZS, what makes a person righteous is not what impact their actions have on the world, but rather that they have the sort of moral character that leads them to never give up on their ideals.

wei wuxian does not consider the consequences of his actions before he acts. or, should i say - wei wuxian makes decisions despite their consequences, because despite the consequences there are simply some moral causes he simply cannot give up on. wei wuxian did not save the wen remnants because it was pragmatic to do so. it was in fact deeply unpragmatic to do so. no - wei wuxian saved the wen remnants without a concrete long-term plan, without having thought through anything beforehand, with the knowledge of how weak he was in reality - because he could not give up on the wen remnants, consequences be damned.

to have some moral causes you simply cannot give up on, no matter the consequences - to MXTX, is deeply heroic. in this sense, MXTX's moral philosophy is not pragmatic at all, because to be pragmatic is to be concerned with practical consequences. instead, both wei wuxian and MXTX herself are deeply idealistic, because what matters to them are ideals and principles that extend beyond consequence.

as the linked twitter thread notes, this is why MXTX waits until the very end of the book to reveal that wen yuan, now lan sizhui, lived. this is why wangxian only meet mianmian and her family at the end of the book. this is why all of the cumulative positive impacts of wei wuxian's resurrection -  jin ling forgiving wei wuxian, jin guangyao, and wen ning, for one - are kept to the end of the story: because MDZS needs to move away from the consequentialist argument. MDZS needs to establish that wei wuxian's righteousness is separate from the impact of his actions: that wei wuxian isn't righteous merely because his actions had a positive impact for which others can thank him, but rather because the actions he undertook were inherently righteous on their own. that even if none of these positive impacts existed - if wen yuan had also died, if mianmian hadn't made it - then wei wuxian's choices would still be moral.

this is also why MDZS ultimately comes down harder on characters like jiang cheng and jin guangyao, even though a more results-oriented moral framework would instead laud such characters. both jiang cheng and jin guangyao are deeply pragmatic characters: they put concrete results before abstract moral ideals, and they're willing to compromise on their ideals in order to achieve better results. i am a JC stan and a jiggy apologist because of these exact traits. but MDZS is a narrative that criticizes such pragmatism and instead holds up wei wuxian's idealism as a moral ideal - so, in order to advance its themes, the MDZS narrative ends up criticizing both jiang cheng and jin guangyao.

ultimately, this idealism - this criticism of pragmatism - lies at the heart of MDZS's themes. wei wuxian's righteousness is directly connected to the fact that he is not pragmatic. the fact that wei wuxian makes moral decisions despite the consequences, and that he is unable to sacrifice any moral cause - is all part of what makes him at once deeply unpragmatic and deeply heroic.

---

you see, the funny thing here is that i personally disagree with this theme. as i've said before, i'm a utilitarian. to me, the morality of an action does in fact arise from its consequences; to me, someone who compromises on their ideals to achieve better results is preferable to someone who adheres to all of their ideals and then loses everything. the character i consider to have had the greatest positive impact on this story's world is jin guangyao. the character i consider to have most dutifully fulfilled his obligations is jiang cheng.

therefore, i disagree with basically everything i wrote up there about "trying": i think that if you try to do the right thing, fail epically, and in the process of your failure get a bunch of other people killed as well, the fact that you failed this badly does in fact matter quite a bit. the bulk of my more haterish posts are born from this fundamental disagreement with what MDZS posits is righteousness.

however. as a reader i must recognize that [what i consider to be moral] and [what the author of this story considers to be moral] are two different things. my own moral philosophy may be heavily results-oriented, but MXTX's is much less so. therefore, regardless of what i think of wei wuxian, i conclude that MXTX ultimately intends for us to read wei wuxian as a heroic figure for the exact reasons i gave above - and that fact must then inform every analysis of MDZS i write.

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[fox-guardian]

Hi, so I did the math, and if I'm not an idiot:

As of posting this, about 36,800 people have voted for Sans in the Sans vs Onceler poll, while about 51,180 people have voted for Cecil in the Cecil Vs Reigen poll. 14,000 more people have shown love for Cecil. (Yes, the Sans poll had a smaller total vote count but I think that's a sign of our Passion For The Radio Man)

I know that some people who voted for Cecil this time may vote for sans but guys. GUYS. We have the numbers, WE COULD DO IT. It's his BIRTHDAY MONTH, he has a HUSBAND TO MAKE PROUD. WE COULD TAKE HIM ALL THE WAY.

He is LITERALLY a founding fandom father of this hellsite, you CANNOT disrespect him and all he's done for us. Not only as a funny little guy, but also as an important pillar of queer representation in media. He announced his love for another man in episode one, in 2012. Gay marriage in the US wouldn't be legalized for another 3 years. This was big. Other posts have gone more in depth on how important WTNV is as a podcast and done so better than I can rn, but basically he's earned it.

Sans Vs Reigen (probably) isn't gonna happen.

Commit to the better bit. Vote Cecil Palmer.

[mercurymacaroons]

arrives 15 min late with a latte

......sup

[arolegos]

im way too scared to say this on main but icl i love lloyrumi n' i love ur lloyrumi art ... can u draw them more for me ... maybe dr harumi meeting sora and jordana like 'damn lloyd they js like us fr fr ???'

i love when the relationship dynamic is "kiss marry kill? all of the above"

[cracklewink]

some sketches of my guy

[ofswordsandpens]

the difference in Percy's water healing power in the show vs the movie is actually kind of interesting because while subtle, in the show the water heals his injury and then his blood is washed away, but in the movie you can actually see the water push Percy's blood back inside his body as its healing him... and I cannot believe I'm saying this but I think I like the movie's depiction of this power more because of that???