#racing boy part

[thepersonperson]

Sukuna's Loneliness Part 1

(Thoughts on Sukuna's Dehumanization as of JJK 261.)

Part 2

Some things to keep in mind...

1) This analysis deals with topics of ableism, racism, and discrimination. (Very brief suicidal ideation mention.)

2) I will be mainly using the TCB scans because of their accessibility. 

3) There are a lot of links so you know I'm not making stuff up. The sources are both formal and informal. Please do research on some of the discussed topics to gain a better understanding of them.

(Click pictures for captions/citations.)

The Name Ryomen Sukuna

Before we start this needs to be made clear. Ryomen Sukuna is not a first and last name. Ryomen is a title. Sukuna is a name.

Ryomen uses the kanji 両面 which can be translated as "two-faced".

Sukuna uses the kanji 宿儺 which can be translated as "specter". Individually the kanji can be read as "lodging, inn" (宿, suku) and "exorcism" (儺, na).

Two-faced specter is not a nice name to put it lightly. It's such a mean spirited name that the JP fanbase suspects he was called something else before becoming The Disgraced One.

Normally I would assume his parents did not name him this, however, Sukuna himself had this to say about his birth.

In the original Japanese, Sukuna calls himself 忌み子 (Imigo) which can be translated as "Abominable Child", "Unwanted Child", or "Shunned Child." None of these translations in my opinion get across how severe Imigo is. It's closer to meaning "child who should've never been born". Like the child's very existence is an affront to god. (If you play Elden Ring the Omen are called Imigo in Japanese for this reason.)

You combine this fact with his name and it starts to paint a nasty picture. Sukuna straight up may not have a last name in part from what is implied to be disownment from birth.

Sukuna's Trauma

(Even if he won't acknowledge it as something that has deeply affected him.)

As a Basketball American (aka one of those people with a unique skeletal structure and muscles as Mr. Gojo Satoru would say), I consider myself a professional experiencer of discrimination. This means when a character has likely experienced something similar to me, I can sniff it out like a bloodhound. Though what Sukuna experiences is much closer to ableism than racism. (Discrimination across the board is pretty similar in a lot of ways you know.)

Sukuna is disabled—not as in he lacks an able body (my goodness he is too ablebodied), but as society is not built with any consideration for him. He’s a massive conjoined twin with 4 eyes and 4 arms and 2 mouths. If you know anything about being tall in Japan, it's that it’s a nightmare. Doorways, showers, bathrooms, and buildings are built for small people which leads to the very infrastructure causing problems for anyone big. But Sukuna’s size is just the start of those kinds of problems. He canonically wears women’s kimonos to accommodate his arms since they have larger sleeves. He often goes shirtless or wears a shawl simply because clothing isn’t made for him.

If you’ve known or read anything by people with mobility issues or missing limbs, a major complaint is clothing. For example someone with a missing leg can either pay for expensive customized pants, or they can purchase regular pants and tie off the extra pant leg. They can have trouble buying one shoe since they almost always come in pairs. (To rectify this sometimes they find a mirror twin called a Sole Mate who they share the extra shoe with.) 

Now if I’ve learned anything from people with mobility issues, it’s that ablebodied people are really fudging annoying and rude. They will grab mobility aids unprompted and even move people around in wheelchairs without permission. In this treatment, the ablebodied dehumanize the disabled and treat them like objects in their way.

Sukuna also experiences objectification in a similar manner. People see him as an obstacle to conquer, a means to test their strength, a helpless thing that needs curing, a test subject to study, and a symbol for their own use. All of these things are extremely dehumanizing and things disabled people may have to deal with.

We’ve got Yuji and co seeing him as a curse to exorcize.

Kashimo and others using Sukuna to test their strength.

Yorozu seeing Sukuna’s lack of interest in romantic/sexual love as a thing to be cured. (Your honor, he is aroace.)

Kenjaku using Sukuna as a test subject and insurance for The Plan.

Heian era society revering him as a god to use him in rituals for their benefit.

The last example is a very interesting form of discrimination. If you aren’t familiar with the term, there is one called benevolent prejudice. This is when discriminatory beliefs are flattering instead of malicious. (Examples: Black people are athletic, Asian people are smart, etc.)

Benevolent prejudice still results in negative outcomes for the group affected, but to me personally, some of them are kind of hilarious in isolation. Here are some of my favorites:

I’m pretty sure this is why Gojo apologizes so readily to Miguel and without resistance. He realizes “oh crap I’m doing to Miguel what everyone does to me”. 

And yes this belief had a negative outcome for Miguel—it’s likely the reason Gojo beat him so hard compared to other characters in the JJK 0 movie. (Remember Gege has direct involvement in the anime.) This is canonically a racially motivated beatdown, trauma response from the black ropes mimicking Toji notwithstanding.

On the ableism side of things this benevolent prejudice can manifest as turning people with deformities or atypical features into objects for worship, fetishization, or sacrifice.

As an aside, I suspect Uraume’s gender is ambiguous because they’re intersex. And boy howdy do intersex people experience dehumanization as objects of worship (fetishization and religious symbols) or as a problem that needs to be corrected (forced surgical procedures/mutilation and erasure). This, in my opinion, might be the reason Sukuna likes them more than anyone else. Uraume may not fully understand the isolation of strength, but they do get the dehumanizing way in which society treats them both.

My point here is that Sukuna experiences regular prejudice and the benevolent type. All of which are dehumanizing from every single angle, leaving him in a state of near constant objectification. (Uraume puts Sukuna on a pedestal as their master which is emotionally isolating but they still see him as an individual on his own merits.)

What constant systemic discrimination does to a motherfudger...

So now that we've established how Sukuna's dehumanization happened, I can rant about how this is probably a major reason behind his disconnect from his humanity and a source of his loneliness.

Gege has stated that Sukuna and other people don’t really know how to categorize his personhood. He's so strong he's more like a natural disaster than anything else.

Sukuna says things like this about himself.

"If I was a cursed spirit…"

"...that's the sort of human I was."

He doesn’t see himself as a human or a curse. At one point he did consider himself human but stopped. He sees himself as this third thing which is highly likely to be a “living creature” as Gojo would put it. 

Gojo also experienced benevolent prejudice that lead to his dehumanization and subsequent objectification (thanks JJK 261 for making me realize it was much worse than I assumed). And from birth too. I think this is why they’re able to connect so well during their fight. Especially since this prejudice leads to them becoming sinks for everyone's burdens while being scorned in the same breath. (It's like how people adore "my kind's" athletic/manual labor abilities but then don't want us in their neighborhoods.) The world isn't made for them but it's going to exploit the very thing it hates them for.

The difference between those two is probably the stares of disgust and day to day inconveniences from the extra parts. Gojo can effectively blend in with other humans if he really tries. Sukuna cannot. (Maybe that’s why he says this too.)

Sukuna to me, feels like a manifestation of this rage against constant systemic discrimination. You look at him funny? He kills you. You treat him like a thing that serves you? He kills you.

I know I'm projecting but hear me out!

I don't think Sukuna was aggressively abused by others for his appearance to get to this point by the way. It's more of a death by 1,000 cuts scenario. Someone crossing the street to avoid you, a flash of revulsion when they look at you, backhanded compliments, name-calling in whispers, gentle reminders you don't belong in infrastructure and accessibility to resources. On their own they feel like paper cuts, but if you experience them constantly without time to recover, one day you look down and realize there's a massive rotting gash.

Thankfully I have friends and spaces where I can exist without being subject to discrimination. I can treat these wounds and keep going relatively ok. When I was a child, I didn't have a proper outlet for that and it ate me alive. I flip flopped between wanting to magically wake up fully white or disappearing entirely and wanting everything to explode. Sometimes I wanted all of these thing at the same time. These old wounds reopen on occasion but I know how to deal with that now.

In Sukuna's behavior and attitude, I see that kind of hurt. And his coping strategy appears to be making everything explode since violence is all he knows. Maybe cannibalism wasn't the healthiest way to deal with this but you know it's Jujutsu Kaisen.

Speaking of cannibalism, the definition of a cannibal is an individual that eats members of their own species. Sukuna is regarded as a non-human by everyone around him in every instance except when he is called a cannibal. He’s not human enough to be a part of society but just human enough to be a cannibal. His status as a human changes in what makes it easiest to disregard him as an individual worthy of respect or consideration. (Think of how conservatives misgender gender non-conforming cis people and then turn around and misgender trans people for hypocritical reasons.) 

Sukuna’s acknowledgement of both Jogo and Gojo is bittersweet with this lens. Jogo is a curse fighting on behalf of curses’ humanity. He wants curses to live as humans after being born lowly and unwanted in a world that wants him erased. Gojo is a human forced into godhood by circumstances he couldn’t control. He’s someone who became isolated and rejected by others until he stopped seeing himself as a human. Sukuna has lived both of these experiences and connects with them in a way no one else can. 

Unfortunately, because Sukuna only knows how to love through violence, he kills them. (Great job, Sukuna, you did this to yourself. You could've had friends.)

I also suspect this is why Sukuna believes this.

This type of society is one in which Sukuna can exist. He can relentlessly pursue the strength through which he builds his self-esteem and be acknowledged as something. However, that is still isolating. And Sukuna is a human, which means he’s a social creature that needs companionship. (Not necessarily romantic or sexual mind you.)

I find Sukuna’s vague suicidal ideation and refusal to die extremely relatable for all these reasons. Much like Gojo, he seems to be convinced the world will never treat him the way he wants to be treated and wants out.

There’s also something to be said about the unique loneliness aromantic and asexual people experience from wanting deep and fulfilling relationships without romance or sex in a world that only values relationships with both of those things.

So why is Sukuna like that?

Despite knowing how much it sucks to be dehumanized, Sukuna still participates in dehumanization himself, referring to humans as insects/animals or things for him to play with. 

And in a Kenjaku parallel, food for him to enjoy as well.

I predict this attitude he has towards humans is the direct result of his dehumanization and objectification for his appearance and strength. It’s all one big unhealthy coping mechanism.

I think this is why Yuji ideologically pisses him off so much. Imagine truly believing all this isolation and suffering for innate characteristics made you stronger, only to find someone who experienced none of that starts rising to your level and shatters your entire world view.

Trauma isn’t something that makes people stronger, but Sukuna likely believes it does as a cope. In my last analysis I called Gojo a sopping-wet pathetic cat who pretends everything is ok. Sukuna is no different if you ask me.

[carebeardean]

Charles loves Edwin So Much for so many reasons, but I think there must be a particular kind of joy for Charles, who walked on eggshells trying not to say the wrong thing to set off his dad for years, and probably brushed off a lot of racist micro aggressions from his friends before they killed him, watch Edwin Payne absolutely rip a man to shreds with his words.

edwin can’t fit in, has always been too effeminate, too queer, too autistic, and they already killed him for it so he doesn’t bother. what a relief it must be for Charles to be around someone completely, stubbornly himself.

someone who doesn’t lie because it doesn’t occur or him to. someone who is viciously, rightfully angry about the violence that was done to him. who maybe.. Charles doesn’t have to pretend around

[ryllen]

x

[clearnachopirate]

OKAY

TMA x DBD part two: how Charles Became.

As I said in part one, Charles could have easily been an avatar of the Lonely, but I thought I could find something else that fit, especially since in this case, Charles didn't quite feel alone as he died, even though Edwin wasn't there.

There are cobwebs in the attic, and that doesn't shock Charles, but there are a lot of them. Charles doesn't mind spiders, and he has bigger things to worry about, mainly, freezing to death, so he finds a blanket pinned down by a think book and folds himself into a corner, bringing the book with him, hoping to distract himself at least a bit.

There's a spider on the window frame above where he sits, and he honestly feels a bit relieved as it scurries down and sits on his knee on top of the blanket.

The book is nice, in a morbid sort of way.

It's a story about a soldier from the first world war. He thinks he's dying, bleeding out from his arm, when he sees an impossible door. Impossible because he's on a battlefield and because it is distinctly the door to his childhood home.

The soldier goes through the door, in the end, and Charles doesn't remember if it takes him back home to die or if the soldier was just seeing things, because when he looks up, the door to the stairs looks different,

He could swear it looked just the door to his bedroom back home.

Charles stumbles to his feet, the spider on his knee climbing up to hold onto his shirt instead. He presses a hand against the door, and it's warm, like the room beyond it has a nice fireplace going, and Charles barely hesitates before twisting the knob open.

If he was just seeing things, feeling warmth that wasn't there, maybe he was in worse shape than he thought, but he stepped through the door anyways, the spider jumping from him, spinning a web that slowly lowered it to the ground as the door shut firmly behind Charles.

[read-write-thrive]

I wanted to get a head start on palasaki week and now I’m building out a reverse AU. why do I keep doing this to myself I can’t keep starting new stuff without finishing the old stuff 😭

[acidicpenumbra]

two "ultimate" level douchebags

[bayetea]

seeing non-black people critique rick's portrayal of black characters is interesting sometimes. only like 30% of the critiques I see make any sense to me to be honest

[wanderingmind867]

Part three of me listing books on my bookshelf that i've read. At this point i'm feeling tired from writing, but I might as well commit and finish this damn thing. But once i'm done, I'm doing back to reading comics and maybe watching tv with my dad once he gets home from work. Because this is shockingly draining. So here we go:

The Neil Flambe Capers by Kevin Sylvester (I think these are my only books that are actually Canadian written. I think I found them in my public library years ago, and I was hooked. Cooking based Detective Novels about a lonely, socially awkward teenage cooking savant? They were pretty fun. My one criticism? They ended on a cliffhanger, and they haven't made a seventh book to resolve the cliffhanger! It's been at least five years! That still bugs me!).

The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer (I never watched Glee, so this is my only experience with Chris Colfer. I thought he was a pretty good writer. I really liked his stuff, although I never did get around to finishing the series. Knowing how finicky I am on endings, I worry that the ending would leave me upset and unsatisfied. But putting that aside, his characters were pretty good. I still remember that he chose to portray Mother Goose as a wild old woman who liked alcohol. That was fun. I also liked the Prince who was turned into a Frog, but then just embraced it and kept to himself, living lonely and alone for years).

Some of the Rick Riordan Presents books (I have the Aru Shah books, although I only ever got around to reading the first one. I have the first one in the Tristan Strong series, though I haven't read it. I read Sal and Gabi break the Universe, and it was really funny and enjoyable. I read The Storm Runner by JC Cervantes, but I don't remember much of the plot, and I never got around to the sequels. I read Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, which was a great book that taught me about Navajo myth. I read Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee, but it was a space opera type of story, and I didn't love it excessively. And I apparently own one The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim. Seriously, I forgot I owned this book. How can you forget owning a book!?).

The Hardy Boys series (I don't remember when I picked these books up, but I ended up with like the first 20 of these books. They weren't bad, although I don't really remember them too well nowadays. But for being children's detective fiction written in the 30s and 40s, it was pretty good. The one interesting thing about them? No known writer. They were written by multiple different people under one pseudonym, so we can only guess at the writers. I once considered trying the Nancy Drew books, since they were made by the same publisher and just featured a female lead instead of male leads. But I never got around to owning them).

The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins (In elementary school, a French teacher I had suggested these books to me. I told her I hated the Hunger Games, and she said these books were her preferred books from Suzanne Collins. So I read them. And yeah, they were far superior to The Hunger Games. But they're also so goddamn sad. Their ending made me feel miserable, because it was one of those endings where the character could never return to the fantasy realm. And that made me really sad).

I also have picked up a lot of humour books over the years. At least ten of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and stuff like that. But I never felt like bringing those books to school, so those were sort of like my secret (I guess). But I do like a lot of humour. Comedy is something I almost always enjoy. But this has all been so much writing, that i'm finally exhausted. So i'm done now. sigh.

[skitskatdacat63]

2023 Canadian Grand Prix - Fernando Alonso(ft. Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, & Jenson Button)

[13bella-bell]

So I join a Naruto big bang a while ago and this is the picture I made!

For this amazing story my partner made please check it out to get a vibe of the action with these two dorks 💖

[sexynetra]

Yesterday I was (lovingly) bullying someone into drawing Dame fanart and they asked me what photos of Dame I would want to see turned into art so I went to her instagram and I stumbled across this which I somehow had never seen before????

Something something pretty women in T-shirts something something

[randomnameless]

Everytime I see your Pat lolcalization posts, I can't help but think if this is him overcompensating for voicing the character of n*zi germany in the first seasons of the hetalia anime.

I can't say and I'd rather not say anything about Pat's intent or own agenda or whatever -

But the interesting "lolcalisation changes" and direction give to VAs really seem to favour a certain reading of the events happening in FE16 and to this day, I still can't understand how that managed to be released without getting at least some flak.

Sure Fates' lolcalisation is a tough nut to beat and nothing comes quite close to what happened to Fates to FE16/Nopes, and yet I wish I am joking when I say nearly 80% of the lines involving Supreme Leader and/or Rhea/the CoS should be double checked, because "Dany expy bringing a revolution" has to fit in the story that is FE16, and that's talking about the washed down version of Dany some people have and not the one who uses violence for the greater good, until she starts to realise that the "greater good" is as solid as smoke and runs away from the - well-intentioned ! - mess she created.

Again, I don't think anything was malicious with the lolcalisation Fodlan got, is it just a case of misunderstanding the game and slapping archetypes and "trendy notions" to make this "strange" game sell like hotcakes in your home market?

Or is it another case of "think of the children Susan" where Susan sure as hell can't endorse a character presented as the heroine sprout disgusting things and advocate for imperialism 101 so the heroine is now rewritten?

Or is it the lolcalisation team - after looking at the jp script - try to make the general idea of "you must feel bad for this character" somehow work, because they thought no one would seriously want to walk with her and feel any sort of sad uwus for the "you have pointy ears, you cannot rule over humans" red emperor? So they modified the script and directed the VA accordingly ?

IDK, but I think if you've been long enough on this blog you know my stance on localisation and lolcalisation but this discrepency between the two versions (or at least two audios) really took me by surprise when the game was released in 2019 lol

[lestbian]

i used to play this fun game called "lets see how much racism i can put up with before i get the fuck out" and it was terrible for my mental health. and clearly ive learned nothing because here i am sitting as a white boy tries to tell me what racism is

[mrslatifi]

Logan using this photo from right after we met and I got to speak to him, when he was so smiley and goofy and happy all day long, makes me feel like I was a part of this.

HE’S BACK 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 HE NEVER LEFT 🦅🦅🦅

[rotinthedark]

It rly is depressing how Seb's perception of himself has been so deeply damaged by the emotional neglect/abuse he experienced growing up.

He knows it was wrong and he'll carry that anger and bitterness to his grave, but the scars are so pervasive that he subconsciously continues that treatment on himself.

[jackalmeat]

Mostly just throwing spaghetti at my own mental wall and seeing what sticks, but I have Unorganized And Poorly Articulated Thoughts about the fact that Ekko and Jinx are around the same age, lost their guardians and peer groups at the same time and in a deeply traumatic way, etc.; and yet I feel like Ekko's status as a victim of their broken, oppressive, and exploitative social landscape doesn't receive remotely the same acknowledgment or weight as Jinx's.

While I'm sure that that's due in large part to the fact that Ekko has been successful at building a sense of healthy, mutualistic belonging + community with others in a way that Jinx clearly hasn't, it's nonetheless worth noting that [A] he had to build that and learn how to take care of both himself and others when he was still a child, and the maturity he exhibits is a direct and tragic result of his boyhood being cut violently short; and [B] failing to acknowledge him meaningfully as a victim and a kid, just because he seems to have 'turned out okay' or some-such, reads very distinctly to me like an extension of the documented tendency in our own world for people to "adultify" young black boys due to perceiving them as older, less innocent, and more threatening/less in need of protection than their white peers.