#the right to say nothing

[infinitesofnought]

We sometimes go on as though people can’t express themselves. In fact they’re always expressing themselves. The sorriest couples are those where the woman can’t be preoccupied or tired without the man saying “What’s wrong? Say something…,” or the man, without the woman saying … and so on. Radio and television have spread this spirit everywhere, and we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. What we’re plagued by these days isn’t any blocking of communication, but pointless statements. But what we call the meaning of a statement is its point. That’s the only definition of meaning, and it comes to the same thing as a statement’s novelty. You can listen to people for hours, but what’s the point? . . . That’s why arguments are such a strain, why there’s never any point arguing. You can’t just tell someone what they’re saying is pointless. So you tell them it’s wrong. But what someone says is never wrong, the problem isn’t that some things are wrong, but that they’re stupid or irrelevant. That they’ve already been said a thousand times. The notions of relevance, necessity, the point of something, are a thousand times more significant than the notion of truth. Not as substitutes for truth, but as the measure of the truth of what I’m saying. It’s the same in mathematics: Poincaré used to say that many mathematical theories are completely irrelevant, pointless; He didn’t say they were wrong – that wouldn’t have been so bad.

– Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972-1990

[lectorel]

Got permanently banned from a subreddit for saying law enforcement shooting someone dead in the street was still a bad thing even when the victim was a violent right-wing fanatic.

Gotta say, I did not expect that to be such a controversial statement. So repeating it here: law enforcement shouldn't kill people. Even violent assholes have a right to be taken in alive, and it's a failure of practice and policy when someone is killed in the process of an arrest.

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

[cryptticrow]

Not my post but I'm importing it over because I think some of ya'll have lost the plot

[bloom161]

This might be a hot take but can Mrs.Flood just be Mrs.Flood who knows what a TARDIS is cause she lived in London all her life, where alien shit is happening at least once a year and is always accompanied by the doctor and a strange police box.

Yk the doc aren’t as subtle as they think they are, word gets around as to what the box actually is.

[lostwords-found]

So. Norris! Buddy. Is there any particular reason you decided to read that particular file for everyone?

You know, the file about a man consumed by fear and guilt because he murdered the person he loved?

The file about a man who finds himself trapped in a walled garden, cut off from the outside world, with his murdered lover's voice forever whispering in whatever remains of his ears?

The file about a man who finds himself gradually losing his humanity as his new prison transforms him, slowly and painfully, into a part of itself?

The file about a man who finds that even as this transformation ultimately brings him serenity on the surface, even as he can no longer remember what he once was, "deep inside [him] beneath the roots there is something that still shakes with terror"?

Look, I'm just asking, here, but is there anything you'd like to say to the class, Norris?

[hinamie]

i don't normally participate in these redraw challenges but it's megumi so i'll make an exception

[kendyroy]

GUYS ?!?!?!?!!

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[connorsui]

Unfortunately, Gojo was right? Everybody did forget about him...there's no mention of him anywhere to the lead up of 271 and even when there was a single mention about him it wasn't about anything grand he has done or how funny of a man he was ...it was all simply as to what he could have done better in the fight against sukuna

So him asking yuuji to please remember him for he also has dreams and love as well is so ..

Depressing

I would never stop saying this, but he deserved better

[infinitesofnought]

What kind of times are these when To talk about trees is nearly a crime, Because it avoids speaking of all that's evil!

– Bertolt Brecht, from "An die Nachgeborenen"

A leaf, treeless, for Bertolt Brecht: What times are these when a conversation is nearly a crime, because it includes so much that's already been said.

– Paul Celan, "[A leaf]", trans. Pierre Joris

[3liza]

I don't know how many times we have to say this but this is because the United States of America does not have public transit in any form that a European would recognize as such outside of a few very small, highly-dense municipal locations like NYC and Chicago, and having used both those systems and the U-Bahn i can firmly assert that the U-Bahn blows American subways into smithereens. we especially do not have accessible interstate passenger train service outside of that one commuter Amtrak loop in the northeast. the country is designed to force its citizens to use cars and only cars, and the government has made it policy to incentivize car ownership since the 1940s and punish any other form of transit, including just walking around. do you understand? the vast majority of roads here do not have bike lanes. when we do have bike lanes they are not protected by a curb or divider, they are just white lines painted on the asphalt. you will regularly encounter roads and streets--inside of cities and suburbs, not just in rural areas--that do not have sidewalks

[benevolenterrancy]

("Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this." -- paraphrased from The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket)

[egophiliac]

@enderfore replied to your post “What do you think of Rook's savanaclaw card? <333”:

Chenya pic where???? I can barely see anything in that room there so much going on, rooks such a lil freak (affectionatr)

​he's under the row of flags on Neige's side of the room, next to the big Neige poster with the yellow background (look just to the right of the hand holding the apple)! he's REAL little; once you know he's there you can kind of see him in-game, but I only noticed him in the first place because I took a screenshot and was having fun zooming in on all the details!

I think that's either Hop or Snick and Dominic on either side of Neige, but if the others are meant to be anyone in particular I don't recognize 'em. though I do love all the absolutely terrifying implications of Rook having this. was this some kind of officially-published merchandise (and if so, why) or did Rook like...go hunting through the RSA trash to find this random student lineup just because it included Neige, and has had it hanging proudly on the wall ever since. (I mean, he definitely did do this, I don't know why I'm asking. the real question is why he hasn't cut out little pictures of his own face and stuck them over everyone else's yet.)

there is seriously SO MUCH in this room. how did Rook manage to keep this hidden for three years. also, somebody give this background artist a raise immediately.

[lazylittledragon]

isn't it weird how if you get up at 7 or 8, do your work all day, then have free time and go to bed at 11 that's absolutely fine

but if i said i get up at 10, do fun stuff in the morning then work in the evening and go to bed late, i could be called lazy, nevermind that i'm getting just as much or MORE work done as i would in a traditional work day

[dollarstorefern]

*cough* if you hate amber volakis i hate you *cough* (just kidding!) (i’m not.)