#theres also a lot of other nuance.

[dvasva]

I have a lot of complicated emotions about jgy that i wont get into now but i will say. Really i think peoples dislike of him comes down to who he ends up benefitting and why he hurts other people. because while wwx hurts a lot of people, we tend to view this in a more forgiving light because of something I like to call The MXTX Cycle Of Self Sacrifice And Tragedy in which an mxtx character does a big self sacrifice thing for the benefit of another character but it ultimately leads to a worse tragedy. Examples include: WQ and WN giving themselves up to jgs, only for wwx and the wens to still die, jiang yanli dying to protect wwx only for wwx to go crazy cause of her death, wwx giving jc his core only to be forced to use demonic cultivation, jc running out to save wwx fro. wens only for his core to be destroyed etc etc (there are examples in svsss and tgcf too but this is an mdzs post so i will refrain).

Some characters, imo, are kind of excluded from this cycle of Tragedy and self sacrifice, and they usually tend to be either the characters that are meant to escape this cycle of tragedy, like the juniors, OR characters who make decisions that are only meant to benefit themselves. They may make sacrifices but the sacrifices at the end of the day aren't for the benefit of other people. Theyre caught in another cycle, a foil to my MXTX Cycle of Self sacrifice and tragedy, one might say. I havent had a chance to fully define this cycle or name it but maybe i will one day.

In any case, the most moral thing you can do in mdzs, and in a lot of cultivation novels in fact, is to have Unwavering Morals. Lan Wangji is considered a paragon of morality by both the internal characters and us on the outside because he neved falters. He scolded Wwx when others praised him, and stood by his side when the world turned against him, and never compromised his own morals and decisions for any selfish reason. Wwx is the same way, despite all the tragedy, and thats why wwx and lwj respect each other from the start. AND this doesnt necessarily mean that they are making the 100% pure, unproblematic uwu they did nothing wrong decisions, this is entirely that they do not compromise what they feel is right for the sake of public opinion.

Jgy, on the other hand, is immoral because of his lack of Unfaltering Morals. He will cross any boundary he may have, change any opinion, adjust any morality, and compromise his own feelings in order to achieve greateness. To the point where a lot of times it feels like he doesn't have a sense of personal morality, only a sense of desire and ambition where anything is negotiable as long as the outcome is what he wants.

And this isnt to say none of his decisions were GOOD or didn't Benefit the Greater Good, cause its clear he did a lot of positives for cultivation society as a whole. Wwx comments how the guy is likeable and at the end of the novel, wwx doesnt really habe any personal gripe with Jgy. And you could say 'Wait! jgy does a lot of stuff for the sake of his mother, doesnt that count as self sacrifice?' but his mother kind of serves as an extension of his own ego, a dead justification for the things he does rather than a person in the story who contributes. she is the same as the guanyin statue with her likeness, passively watching over the plot, dead and unable to voice any opinion and unable to be someone who things are sacrificed for. Inherently separate from the cycle of self sacrifice.

Jgy and wwx are foils, is what it boils down to. Which doesnt mean theyre the same or make the same decisions, but their actions and decisions contrast with each other to point out and emphasize certain character traits and details. They have similar backgrounds, but make the opposite choices and yet their outcomes end up almost the same. Cycles yada yada yada.

Also, postscript, nobody likes jgs and while jgy doss eventually kill him, i think some people who dont like jgy are still pissed that he ever helped jgs for any reason, which is so valid. i hate jgs too.

MXTX: so the story starts with the main character's death. Then we unravel his story and how he tried his best but had to resort to fucked up methods in order to create real change and save lives, how society supported him while it benefited them and then turned on him when it was convenient, how his complicated social status of being gentry-adjacent was intrinsically tied into every decision he made AND how he was judged before during and after those decisions, how he experienced abuse and abandonment and support and love, saved lives AND killed people. He sacrificed everything but never compromised his ideals once, and it got him killed.

MXTX: and then we close the story on the death of this other guy, who we're also shown having gone through ALL THAT SAME STUFF, except this guy compromises every single time and that ALSO got him killed.

MXTX: neither of them were killed because it was "right" to, or because they were "evil", but because those with power in society were done with them. Their past actions were used to excuse their executions, and it's kinda fucked up actually, wouldn't you say?

MDZS fandom: 1 billion years of meta on why JGY is an irredeemable villain, and WWX is a pure cinnamon roll

[ourhouseishaunted]

people acting as if laios can Do No Wrong and infantilizing him because he is autistic are annoying as hell. especially because laios belongs to my favorite genre of character: "person who desperately wants friends and deep relationships because they're lonely, and while part of their problems stem from people not wanting to understand them and refusing to meet them where they are, they also genuinely come across in a way where you Completely Understand why others can get turned off from them"

[daily-hanamura]

[lakegriffy]

i find myself guilty of this, i admit, but i think its pretty strange how people always feel the need to demean or put down other forms of media just to raise their own favourite up. like two things can be great for two different reasons. your band or show is not "cooler" than the other one just because they cover darker material. two things can exist at once. you dont have to dick measure your favourite things with other peoples favourite things

[oceanwithouthermoon]

what teruhashi haters are you referring to, i dont think ive ever seen any here?

hardly ever on tumblr, literally everywhere else though

[arsenicflame]

why does it feel like the only options anymore are babygirl ed teach into oblivion and pretend like he never did anything bad, or make him the worst person on the fucking planet and incapable of doing anything to earn any forgiveness (not that he even tries)

[bmpmp3]

dysgraphic artiƨts risɘ UP!!!!!

[powderflower]

It’s very important to reframe your thinking in your healing process.

Every time I see someone refer to the perpetrator of a crime as “their abuser” it upsets me. You do not need to reaffirm that attachment. You don’t have to keep that connection.

Every time I see someone call another person “a victim” it pisses me off. They’re not a victim, they’re a survivor.

Reframing your thinking and attitude is vital to the healing process.

[transbee]

having did and being online in any capacity is so fucking exhausting because you literally can't go anywhere without seeing the most heinous takes about your existence or validity it's like. can we be normal. can we please be normal and Chill for like two seconds.

[hazuneji]

every other week or so im struck with the powerful urge to become an editor on the limbus wiki. its been an uphill battle every time i see smth that i know and isnt on there or that could be fixed. but holy shit would i never do anything else

[playingonedchess]

reminder for the millionth time: never read tumblr recomended posts about politics

[gothamcityneedsme]

convos with kaiden are so complex and multilayered and tbh fascinating on a structural level with the flow of the conversation. shepards responses arent quite as interesting but shepard doesnt really get more engaging until me2 and me3 imo. But kaiden in me1 is just written well and his convos seem like the most interlayered.

[steeltwigz]

I'm not on Reddit, but I am aro (and maybe aroallo), and I think its important to add also that some aros Will want to have sex, and Won't love the partner(s) they do have sex with, even in a sexual way. Having sex without being in love, or even being involved with the person, isn't a Bad thing. Some aros never feel love towards anyone, aroace, aroallo, or otherwise, and that's ok too.

This is all to say, people define their identities in such vast ways that banning any mention of sex from Any aspec subreddit (aro, ace, aroace, etc) is Ridiculous, and it's disgusting that a subreddit that should be a safe, inclusive space for aromantics is refusing so many of us.

As per usual I can't stand r/aromantic because aroallo people will make a post simply alluding to sex and literally be told in the comments to get out of the sub and take it to r/aroallo instead, like we've got yucky sex cooties or some shit. Like I get it if you're aroace and sex repulsed, but r/aromantic is not an aroace sub. Aroallo people have a place in the aro community!

[were--ralph]

why exactly do you dislike generative art so much? i know its been misused by some folks, but like, why blame a tool because it gets used by shitty people? Why not just... blame the people who are shitty? I mean this in genuinely good faith, you seem like a pretty nice guy normally, but i guess it just makes me confused how... severe? your reactions are sometimes to it. There's a lot of nuance to conversation about it, and by folks a lot smarter than I (I suggest checking out the Are We Art Yet or "AWAY" group! They've got a lot on their page about the ethical use of Image generation software by individuals, and it really helped explain some things I was confused about). I know on my end, it made me think about why I personally was so reactive about Who was allowed to make art and How/Why. Again, all this in good faith, and I'm not asking you to like, Explain yourself or anything- If you just read this and decide to delete it instead of answering, all good! I just hope maybe you'll look into *why* some people advocate for generative software as strongly as they do, and listen to what they have to say about things -🦜

if Ai genuinely generated its own content I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, however what Ai currently does is scrape other people's art, collect it, and then build something based off of others stolen works without crediting them. It's like. stealing other peoples art, mashing it together, then saying "this is mine i can not only profit of it but i can use it to cut costs in other industries.

this is more evident by people not "making" art but instead using prompts. Its like going to McDonalds and saying "Burger. Big, Juicy, etc, etc" then instead of a worker making the burger it uses an algorithm to build a burger based off of several restaurant's recepies.

example

the left is AI art, the right is one of the artists (Lindong) who it pulled the art style from. it's literally mass producing someone's artstyle by taking their art then using an algorithm to rebuild it in any context. this is even more apparent when you see ai art also tries to recreate artists watermarks and generally blends them together making it unintelligible.

Aside from that theres a lot of other ethical problems with it including generating pretty awful content, including but not limited to cp. It also uses a lot of processing power and apparently water? I haven't caught up on the newer developements i've been depressed about it tbh

Then aside from those, studios are leaning towards Ai generation to replace having to pay people. I've seen professional voice actors complain on twitter that they haven't gotten as much work since ai voice generation started, artists are being cut down and replaced by ai art then having the remaining artists fix any errors in the ai art.

Even beyond those things are the potential for misinformation. Here's an experiment: Which of these two are ai generated?

ready?

These two are both entirely ai generated. I have no idea if they're real people, but in a few months you could ai generate a Biden sex scandal, you could generate politics in whatever situation you want, you can generate popular streamers nude, whatever. and worse yet is ai generated video is already being developed and it doesn't look bad.

I posted on this already but as of right now it only needs one clear frame of a body and it can generate motion. yeah there are issues but it's been like two years since ai development started being taken seriously and we've gotten to this point already. within another two years it'll be close to perfected. There was even tests done with tiktokers and it works. it just fucking works.

There is genuinely not one upside to ai art. at all. it's theft, it's harming peoples lives, its harming the environment, its cutting jobs back and hurting the economy, it's invading peoples privacy, its making pedophilia accessible, and more. it's a plague and there's no vaccine for it. And all because people don't want to take a year to learn anatomy.

[cowgirlboy]

i don’t agree with the aroace-ification of any and every nuanced lack of romantic and sexual attraction so i hesitate to humor that terminology even by using it ironically. which is a long disclaimer just to say that if im actually aromantic i am going to fucking kill myself im (humbly) so attractive and likeable and sweet. and i love people and romance and the idea of romance. so why don’t i feel anything 💀

[a-little-revolution]

heya, this might be too much for a single post, but i would delight in a ramble about the overlap between dwarfism and disability (whether or not you/the community as a whole generally consider it a capital-D Disability or if theres more nuance like with the autism or HOH/Deaf communities where it just Is and folks feel the the struggles with outgroup folks are like, culture clashes, or perhaps a secret third thing?)

similarly, id love for a ramble on the overlap between dwarfism and queerness, especially The Genders. i have ehlers-danlos syndrome and theres a huge number of us who are trans or nonbinary, to the point where masculinizing hrt is (anecdotally) understood to be a bit of a treatment for some symptoms. i know theres a lot of overlap between queerness and disability as a whole, but so far the couple of artists with dwarfism ive found and followed are all some flavor of trans or nonbinary, so id love to know if thats as common of a thing in your community as it is in mine

dwarfism is for sure underrepresented in discussion about both disability and queerness, and as a disabled queer person they are so intertwined in my head, and im forever curious about other folks experiences so your thoughts are appreciated!

Hello!! I love these questions!!

Firstly, yes, I do identify as being both a little person and disabled, but that isn't the case for everyone with dwarfism. Though dwarfism falls under the classification of a physical disability, not all little people find it physically debilitating. For me, my Achondroplasia dwarfism has resulted in sleep apnea, arthritis, chronic pain, hearing loss, limited mobility and dexterity. I cannot walk long distances and I use multiple moblility aids (wheelchair for long distance, rollator most of the time, and cane for short distances or around the house). My disability is dynamic, meaning that my ability changes day to day depending on pain levels, spoons (unit of measure for disabled energy), and activity.

Being that I am both a little person AND noticeably disabled, I have experienced ableism within both the abled community and the LP community, which is something I don't often talk about. I've been in situations where I feel alienated from my own community - additionally for my queerness. When you exist at the intersection of as many things as I do, you experience many flavours of ignorance and discrimination from the very people who should accept you.

That being said, I have also had the privilege of meeting other little people who are trans, queer, and nonbinary like I am. Our community is incredibly diverse, but spread along the globe. It is easy to feel a profound isolation, but the internet has provided me with a means of connection which I greatly appreciate.

Disability and queerness is something I discuss in depth in my public speaking roles, as I deeply value intersectionality in education and activism (I hope to share some of my talks as I record them in the future!).

I am forever painful aware that ableism is alive and will within the queer community - even when "all are welcome", we are still an after thought. I really urge my fellow queers to think beyond our own community to bipoc and disabled folks, otherwise you're really just dipping your toes into radicalism. Read more books by black disabled trans women of colour, and expand your thinking. (Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk lol)

I can't really speak to hate from the other direction, as all of the disabled folks I know on a personal level are also queer. Though I will say that I certainly receive queer-phobia from older (white) disabled folks - in my experience, when white folks become disabled with age and have not faced any other injustice in their life, they can be very hateful.

This has been quite a post, so I hope I've answered your questions in full! I would be happy to discuss it more if not/answer other related questions! Thank you so much!

Elliot (they/them)