#post isn't even about him but he's in my brain so..

[babyangelsky]

Faith as a love language and why I want Ju Yeong to give Do Hoe his cross necklace

Let me preface this by saying that one, my interpretations are drawn heavily from my own personal experience as well as the culture I was raised in and two, that this is going to be very rambly and maybe not make a whole lot of sense to anyone but me. But @respectthepetty encouraged me to get this out of my brain so here we are.

In order to explain what I mean in the title of this post and actually get into the meat of it, there's two other things I need explain first. There are layers to this so please bear with me.

The first thing is that I am not and have never really been a practicing Catholic. I believe in god and have a very loose, very personal system of spiritual belief but I am not religious. My grandmother is Catholic however, a very devout one, and since she helped to raise me I would say I was partially raised Catholic. Emphasis on the partially because my beautiful mother in her infinite wisdom (and due entirely to her own religious trauma) felt it was important to give me a choice on the matter and figure out my faith for myself, which I love her dearly for.

(She also once infamously refused to kiss the ring of the local very important priest in the village she grew up in which is one of my favorite things about her)

However, I've learned that even if you are given a choice on whether or not religion will play any part in your life, that does not save you from developing religious trauma. Especially if you also happen to be queer and especially if you don't adhere dogmatically to the widely accepted--and arbitrary--set of rules that determine whether you are considered a "good (insert faith here)".

The second thing has to do with cross necklaces and why being given one is a very specific loving gesture.

I lived in Mexico for a while a couple of years ago. On the day that I was due to come back to the States, my grandma gave me a cross necklace. She didn't just give me a cross necklace, she gave me her necklace that had been custom made for her. She wanted me to have a safe flight and get home in one piece so she gave it to me.

I have worn that necklace every single day for the past two years. If I happen to wear another necklace for outfit reasons, I put my cross in my pocket. It's always around my neck or on my body. Always. And the thing is, I don't wear it to signify my belief god.

In the broader sense of faith and what it means to people, giving someone a necklace like that holds a lot of weight. Taking something off of your body, your 'self', that you trust to keep you safe and that represents your faith and your beliefs and then putting it on someone you love to keep them safe is such a visceral expression of love. It becomes a symbol of faith in a different way.

As I've established, I'm not devout like my grandma is. The necklace doesn't represent to me what it does to her. I wear it because doing so makes me feel loved and safe because she gave it to me, not because I have faith of my own.

Now, having said allllll of that.

Ju Yeong's cross necklace has been established to primarily represent not his faith, but his family's expectations. Expectations that he hasn't lived up to and that have turned that cross into a heavy symbol of his failure that keeps him shackled at all times except when he chooses to take it off. And when he chooses to take it off matters.

He took it off when he confessed to Do Hoe and again when he slept with him because in those moments he wants to be free of that burden, free of those expectations, free to just love Do Hoe without having to think about anything else. Not even god.

Because even if the necklace isn't primarily a symbol of Ju Yeong's faith, it still is a symbol of his faith or rather, the faith that he had no choice but to adhere to when he became a pastor's son. That's what makes Do Hoe misunderstand what it means for Ju Yeong to take it off when he's with him. He interprets it as Ju Yeong being ashamed, as wanting to hide his sin, as only allowing himself to love Do Hoe when god isn't watching. He's wrong, of course, but he doesn't know that. Yet. (Petty explained it better go read that post)

We haven't really gotten into Ju Yeong's relationship with his faith and with only two episodes left I don't think we will, and that's a shame because I think recontextualizing what the necklace means to him and what his faith means to him would help him heal.

(Which is something I believe anyone who has religious trauma should do at some point in their life, especially if they're queer. Religion is so often weaponized against people and something that's used to make them feel inadequate and ashamed and like they aren't allowed to draw comfort from it unless they fall in line with what it asks of them. We always think of it being used that way specifically against queer people but that isn't always the case. I'm not out to my family and I once had a relative look me in the eyes and tell me I was going to hell for not going to mass.)

Really it would help both of them heal because even though Do Hoe wasn't the one with the religious upbringing, the necklace is still making him feel the same sort of inadequacy and shame he thinks Ju Yeong feels.

Which is why I want Ju Yeong to give Do Hoe his cross necklace.

Recontextualizing what it means, allowing it to be a symbol of his faith and nothing more, and making the conscious decision to take it off of his body and put it on Do Hoe so Do Hoe knows that he's loved without shame would mean everything to me personally.

Faith is a love language. It's why Mexican mothers pin medals with the Virgin of Guadalupe on them to their newborns' onesies, why parents choose auspicious names for their babies, why the very first prayer Christian and Catholic children are taught is the guardian angel prayer, why grandmothers do the sign of the cross over their children and grandchildren and end every conversation with "que dios te acompañe", and why we put crosses on the people we love.

[on-a-lucky-tide]

Hey Jack,

I´m sorry but I need to scream at you for a second, this is the weirdest coincidence: I was thinking about Nikprice while I was cleaning my flat (as one does) and was trying to come up with a scenario were Nik would feel vulnerable and like he´s letting Price down and my "pharmacist brain" supplied me with: how about erectile dysfunction?! Like make him sleep deprived, stressed, underfuled (maybe he´s still struggling a bit around food even after he and Price had a their conversation in Florence) and just generally not in a good headspace and then issues ensue... and I thought about sending you an ask but then I got shy and thought this was too niche.

And not two hours later I just came across your answer to that ask about "Nikolai getting caught off-guard". And the way you wrote this is just so bloody good... like Nik struggling and then, rather than talk about it, he looks for a solution on his own. And all his fears around getting older and loosing his appeal, and more generally not being "useful" anymore, this is just so perfect!!! and the way you described John handling the situation, 10/10 so him and actually what Nik needs !!!! I do hope that Nik will actually visit Janie and get´s some sense talked into him...

sorry for this ridiculously long ask and for me rabling so much !!! Have a lovely weekend !!!!!

(I hope you got my answer to your lovely message from a few days ago, I was answering it while being very sleep deprived and was trying to figure out how to post it, when it suddenly just disappeared)

Omg, wow! That's so weird and so awesome. We same brained from two sides of the world.

I quite liked the ideas behind the Florence conversation and wanted to dig into those feelings some more. Nik is 47. He's gonna start experiencing all sorts of shit that happens as men age, and Price just isn't there yet. It's anxiety inducing.

Nik finally has what he's always yearned for and now his dick has decided to stop working? With the hottest man in the world in his bed? Where's the justice in that?

I imagined him discovering it towards the start of those months off, getting gradually more alarmed when it just... didn't happen, finding the Viagra, being unwell but getting an erection, so that's the "greater good" and he can absolutely style it out.

No, Nik... No.

I also, same as you, thought psychological with general "physically run down" causes. But I was also looking at the nervous system connection and wondered how much shrapnel that man probably has embedded in him in places...

[galactic-rhea]

The thing is,,,,abuse doesn't have anything to do with intelligence or lack of confidence, though yes, a person with low self-esteem is an easier target for abusers, however that's what not I'm talking about.

Like I'm someone who doesn't like to take part in The Discourse (tm) because this is fandom, I'm here to talk about my favorite dolls and create silly scenaries with them. And it might feel a bit egregious to talk about something as delicate and serious as abuse, grooming or domestic violence but also it's the perfect playground to explore such themes and you can learn a lot by psychologically analizing a character and do your own research on the matter so you can understand abuse better, and sometimes that way you can also have a more critical view on real life, and for some of us, also come to terms with our own lives.

That said, back to my original point, it has nothing to do with intelligence. A person that falls into a cycle of abuse doesn't make them stupid, the whole deal of predators and abusers is that they know how to play their game, they know how to manipulate. A victim's mind will always try to cope with the abuse in ways that can be hard to understand sometimes in ways that will make you say 'well, that's enabling their abuser', but is not a statement on their intelligence or lack of it, abuse dynamics are extremelly complex, and victims will go through several states such a guilt, or violent outbrusts, fear, appeasing, avoidance, sometimes all sometimes just a few. And it's because no one is the same and no one's experiences will be the same, even though there are patterns you can identify sometimes.

So when someone wants to argue against a character being too smart to fall for abuse or manipulation, it's a bit sad to me. Not necessarily malicious or dangerous, or anything, again this is fandom and fandom runs rampant with whatever takes that makes all of us grimace. But because that's not how it works, if a certain dynamic isn't abusive by your pov, then it has nothing to do with the character's intelligence. It's not about being strong, or confident; that downplays how abusive dynamics come to be.

Like for example y'know I don't think padmé and anakin were abusive, I've made several posts about it, but it's not because they are too intelligent for that.

Likewise, Anakin wasn't stupid for being groomed by Palpatine; the contrary, he was quite literally a gifted child and a genius at mechanics and was good at many things, including drawing and strategies, but he fell for Palpatine's grooming because:

a) Palpatine is an evil top tier manipulator and predator who knows how to play adults, he literally knew how to play the jedi council, what was a 9 y/o going to do about it.

And b) Anakin's trauma and unattended mental illnesses made him an easier victim for grooming; he was already used to be a thing and be a servant from the moment he learned to talk.

But even if we weren't talking about someone as deeply messed up as Anakin was already, abusers and predators always will take advantage and exploit of the weaknesses and flaws on an individual, they will adapt and change their tactic according to the victim needs, that's why anyone could become a victim, it doesn't matter if your IQ is up there on the moon.

It's not about being too "stupid" to not realize there was abuse, it's a deep, complicated and terrible ensemble of thoughts and insecurities tangling around the brain in such a way that there's no a way to blame the abuser without feeling at fault, or at the very least without feeling scared of retaliation or lost, it's a power dynamic that messes up the sense of self.

[luzon-dove]

okay i'm finally able to elaborate on my post where i asked "what is it about death note that makes it so compelling to people with ocd" and it's half personal headcanon half textual evidence, because quite frankly i don't think light yagami was written to be obsessive compulsive with any degree of genuine intention on the part of the authors. but like. he has, as they say, the vibes. severely. i'll explain.

but first, if you have ocd, please read with caution. i do talk about my personal experience frankly and in some detail; i'm not responsible if you ignore this warning and trigger yourself. please take care of your brain.

now for some background: i like to call ocd a disorder of delusions, not in the clinical sense of a delusion vis a vis schizophrenia, but in the sense that when you have ocd, the fundamental way you interact with the world is disconnected from reality. "i can't step on this specific part of the sidewalk with only my right foot, it has to be even, or something indescribably bad will happen. i have to check my stove isn't on before i leave the house for the thirtieth time because what if i missed it being on the last 29 times i checked. i need to make sure i don't look suspicious when i enter a grocery store lest they think i'm stealing, even though i have zero intention to steal, have never stolen, and never will."

it's a profoundly detached-from-reality way to move through the world. i am explaining this, of course, not to blame or shame but just to explain some context about what it's like having ocd.

there is nuance. often there's an awareness of how ludicrous the rules you're following are, because of course, stepping on a sidewalk in a certain way isn't going to cause a horrible curse to befall you and your loved ones. and you know this, but you do it anyway, because you feel inexorably that you must. compulsions can also start from a semi-reasonable anxiety, but are blown endlessly out of proportion. i have, for example, mild contamination ocd and i do research in a biology lab that handles bacteria. these are even harder to parse and resist because at the end of the day, worrying a little bit is reasonable, and so washing my hands a couple times per lab session is also reasonable; worrying that some bacteria has magically gotten into my mouth and considering drinking rubbing alcohol is not.

background out of the way, let's talk about light yagami.

this is a guy with scrupulosity ocd. it's a type of ocd concerned with religious or moral obsessions. "am i a good person? am i going to get in trouble? am i going to hell?"

this interpretation stems from light's constant paranoia about being seen as Good. this manifests in several ways. most obviously, the desk drawer explosion trap and the slip of paper/doorknob angle indicator so that no one "catches him" doing a Bad Thing. compulsions can be thought based, too--you can see this in his constant revisiting of "did i just do a bad thing" and his moral justifications in order to settle that anxiety. his cognitive gymnastics to justify murder read almost exactly like a compulsive thought spiral. sometimes, when an obsession is so beyond the pale, you have to come up with something equally beyond the pale to quiet the anxiousness; for light, this is his whole "i'm god, therefore it's okay that i killed people" thing. you can also see this in his obsessive checking of how people perceive him, in his constant awareness of how he presents himself, his constant body-checking--he is always, always trying to make sure he looks like a Good Person. this is compulsive! he can't stop.

you may argue that light actually is kira, so these are all justifiable precautious. this is why i brought up earlier that compulsions can come from initially valid anxieties. this is also why i said that light isn't written explicitly to have ocd, his neuroses just mirror ocd pretty strongly. because, you know, this is fundamentally a story about death gods and magic notebooks, and i'm less concerned about diagnosing a fictional anime boy and more concerned with answering the question of why death note is a compelling story to people with ocd.

anyway. i think that in many ways, the death note becomes the compulsion as much as it's the obsession. writing 500 names of criminals to justify 2 murders is the kind of disproportionate retroactive justification that you can fall into when you're having an ocd spiral.

there's just...so much. light's neuroticism about everything, from what he's allowed to think about himself to how he's allowed to act. his disconnection from reality--how he thinks he's acting normal and non suspicious. the perfectionism. the cognitive gymnastics. the way he reaches for the death note over and over and over.

and that's not even discussing the intrusive thoughts aspect of ocd, where your brain comes up with the most upsetting scenarios to horrify and taunt you. the difference is light justifies the thoughts of "what if i killed everyone who i thought was unworthy" with "i'm god, so it's allowed" instead of, you know, literally anything else. you're supposed to acknowledge an intrusive thought, remind yourself that it's not representative of reality, and let it pass through you; this is obviously not how light deals with it.

i think this is most visible in the yotsuba arc, when he ruminates on the idea that he could be kira, and how it upsets him. how he compulsively devotes every ounce of his time to proving that he's not kira, to catching kira, to denying the possibility he could be kira. it is a thought that consumes and spurs him to repetitive denial and evidence-based rebuttal. it's so very obsessive compulsive of him.

there are just so many ways you can take this scaffold of thinking about light yagami and run with it in both interpretive meta and fanfic. and i think, at the end of the day, the way he behaves is resonant in an uncomfortable and cathartic way to people with ocd, without explicitly being about ocd; i think that's fundamentally very compelling.

[fist-of-vengeance]

just saw someone on tiktok discussing whether or not a character "deserved a redemption arc" and i am losing my mind. we as a society have lost sight of what a redemption arc IS. it doesn't mean a character is rewarded by the narrative. it doesn't mean the other characters forgive them. it only refers to a character acknowledging their mistakes and choosing to better themselves, which any person can do, no matter how terrible. of course there's no shortage of badly executed redemption arcs, and a character who willfully committed countless atrocities having a change of heart after a single conversation about the power of friendship is simply poor writing and unrealistic. not every character who CAN change WILL. but there is zero value in debating whether a character "deserved" to be redeemed. no one in fiction or reality needs to be "worthy" of making better choices. there is no fixed point where a person is "too evil" and therefore forbidden from doing anything differently. it's always worth it to change, and implying otherwise is both a genuinely harmful ideology and bad literary analysis

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.

[corfisers]

i really need to finish this one day

[elisedonut]

fuck i'm actually going to end up enjoying Sevpercy huh

maybe in a picky I like them when they are in my head or when I do it kind of way

or in a time travel way because when it comes to Snape I like his teenage self a lot more than his adult self

[sskk-manifesto]

What a good episode. Maaaaaan

[steakout-05]

i think having TF2 as a special interest really early in my childhood influenced so many things about myself and my identity.... my gender is big men my sexuality is big men and my sense of humour is big men. i even named myself after the "very tiny and scrawny but still big" big man and i think about all the big men in TF2 on a semi daily basis,,,,,, anyway yeah i like the men in TF2 :)

[ladyhavilliard]

So. I think I do fixate on people, huh.

[ningningkittie]

🦨💭

[cerealmonster15]

back to the trials and tribulations of I Dont Know How To Write Chenyas Voice

[astrxealis]

i am so obsessed with fandaniel tbh. epitome of guy i want to shake around in a jar and study. i want to bite him. i want to put a clown nose and cat ears on him and watch him burn down the world and fall off a cliff.

[todayisafridaynight]

GENUINELY so funny AraSawa occurred to you too for the hanahaki tags, but thinking about it, I appreciate both scenarios for different (but related?) reasons.

Because I've personally always found the base concept of hanahaki aesthetically immaculate, but impossible to relate to or take seriously. They don't love you back Specifically In A Romantic Sense so your options are either to DIE or have a surgeon come in and delete love.exe? Lol. Lmao even. Couldn't be me. Of course, to each their own, but sort of like what you were saying with Aoki and Yumeno, it's just not something I'm ever going to "get."

With MineDai, something I love about the canon dynamic is that I really don't get the impression Mine's even pressed about Daigo loving him back. Of course, there's a degree of "pining" as shown in his first character story, but it's also immediately subverted in that what Mine was pining for is a simple workplace friendship that would be more reflective of their status as oath brothers in his eyes. Like, fair enough, all things considered, right?

And in spite of the arguments that could be made here, I honestly do believe him overall when he says his love for Daigo is selfless and without ulterior motives. Even with his desire for friendship, it's super important to me that he resolved to never impose that upon Daigo unless it was what Daigo wanted. That's why Daigo had to be the one to initiate their friendship instead.

It's just refreshing, because often the execution of these types of concepts feel sort of adjacent to incel rhetoric in forcing two people together inorganically to lessen the "suffering" of one. Especially with the life-or-death nature of hanahaki played-straight pushing it to an extreme, and especially with the enormous backlog of fan-content where Mine is primarily only concerned with his own desires. But for Mine, because it doesn't cause him Suffering to not be loved back romantically (at least as far as he knows), "the problem of hanahaki" would not about The Pain of Unrequited Love, but a physical manifestation of extant problems.

It'd be about obliviousness, it'd be about miscommunication, it'd be about saying he's fine when he's not, it'd be about how the emotional barriers he puts up only serve to hurt him when his needs are unmet (kind of what we were talking about RE: Katase and past relationships; super excited to dig in and reply btw, I'm just rushing the Yokoyama clip for tomorrow), it'd be about workaholism and the need to overachieve in order to feel accomplished, loved, and wanted, and how all of that might intersect with physical illness.

That I can relate to and take seriously, because ignoring symptoms and keeping them to yourself so as to not inconvenience others really can kill you. Your crush not liking you back? Uh, not so much. But it's certainly not all gloom and doom either, because all of those things can be as comedic as they are tragic. So I think the Short, Sweet and Funny approach would be perfect.

And with AraSawa, it's kind of Just Works, right, precisely because it's another thing for Jo to endure in silence and make excuses for. "Just pretend it didn't happen. Brush it under the rug. That's what you do with secrets." It's so good as a representation of guilt and secrecy. And this is pretty much rehashing something my friend said (not about these two specifically) but if he just came clean, it might stop, but instead he continues to hurt both of them. The flavor.

In the case of Hanahaki for Mine and Jo, I do think and agree it would more be a matter not of their 'beloved' not liking them back, but just the fact they themselves either refuse to openly acknowledge the feeling, or don't try to confront the feeling and do something about it. It's more so an issue of themselves being so focused on being useful and overworking themselves that they give themselves sickness (that sickness spurring from that unspoken of love and the inability to express it because they don't know how to and whatnot)

Maybe it's just because I generally try to see things silly and funny, but yeah I dunno: letting your own overthinking or not wanting to be a disturbance just feels better than what's traditionally done with Hanahaki

[ectoplasmer]

bloomic posting again sorry but uhh

screaming dying sdfkjhfdjkfhsdkjhfdskjhkjfdshjkds