#we unfortunately live in a society and this isn't fully possible

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Sitting here pondering my age old question of, do I want testosterone?

[envy-of-the-apple]

alright so i've been obsessing over family man and the more i think about it the more i'm convinced that the cat is gonna come out of the bag at some point. gojo might not want reader to know about jujutsu society, but becoming MRS gojo kinda puts a giant target on her back and the back of her baby and it's unfortunate that she doesn't know it. but. reina is capable of becoming a sorcerer, right?

how do we think familyman!gojo would be like as a dad during her upbringing, especially her teen years, when kids become far more interested in asserting themselves and differentiating themselves from their parents? would he be more controlling of her and if so when? he's so lenient with kids and encouraging them to grow they way they really want to, and i think this gojo would be like that as a dad as well. except. how it could implicate his relationship with reader.

would reina become a student at the tech, or would gojo try to keep her in the dark, too? gaslight her? or maybe worse, let her in on jujutsu society and try to turn it into an 'our little secret' thing, encouraging her to keep anything like that from her mom and sort of delude her into thinking she's protecting her mom by keeping her in the dark as much as possible. (rip kiyo and unnamed grandpa you have no chance at having any serious influence over gojo reina's life now even if you did love her, god forbid satoshi's influence be allowed to surface anywhere)

what would that be like for reader to have her daughter become a sorcerer and not really know it? for gojo to put a wedge between the two of them and keep the two of them from being able to honestly communicate with each other? would he intentionally try to make it a wedge? would he want what's best for reina (having an open and honest relationship with her mom) or would securing reader's ignorance be his number one concern?

what would it be like for him to even become reina's teacher? how would that influence his relationship with her? because canon gojo, i could see him trying to be the best dad he could be no matter what blood relation, and i think out of all the yan's familyman!gojo is amongst the closest to canon gojo in terms of disposition and circumstances (which is probably why he thrills me aslkjjsa),

but. the yan factor. how would reina having more agency and being in the position she is in change everything? and also. this reader isn't dumb. prone to missing things and denial, sure, she's kinda occupied with a LOT. but. i think she'd notice if something was up with reina. she already kinda notices that something's up with gojo, especially after he's made his romantic intentions apparent.

wouldn't reina inheriting her father's cursed technique just about ruin everything for gojo? because as much as she might not want to, this reader can connect the dots.

so like...as cruel as it is to say, the only reason gojo rlly cares about reina is cuz she's ms.sawai's daughter. he kinda sees reina as an extension of miss sawai. as we saw in the fic, he kept obsessing over how similiar miss sawai and reina were. as reina gets older, their relationship with eachother will get more distant. yknow how some parents only want babies and not humans? yeahhhh thats gojo! so he's not gonna be as controlling over her as he would be on miss sawai+any kids they have together. reina gets the best scenario in this case

i think i mentioned this in another ask but reina is a sorcerer and will have ce. so yes miss sawai will also learn about curses as well as how important gojo is buuuut miss sawai isnt gonna be able to put together the dots of what rlly happened to satoshi cuz there's no real papertrail. gojo is able to keep the stuff that he wants secret, a secret.

as for reina, due to miss sawai, i dont think she'll fully become a sorcerer (aka go to jujutsu tech/learn about CE). miss sawai wants reina to live a normal happy life. buuut the same cannot be said for the children miss sawai has with gojo. even if miss sawai tries to plead the case for them to live normally, gojo+ the clan wont accept it. he's gonna consider those extensions of himself and so ya, their all gonna be sorcerers.

strangely enough, Gojo's favorite kid will be reina. again, its mainly due to him seeing her as an extension of you, but he prefers her over his biological children.

and reina wont inherit satoshi's technique cuz the technique wasnt an inherited technique! but for the sake of discussion...i still dont think miss sawai would be able to put the dots together. despite how crazy the jjk world is..how can you figure out that your now husband fell in love with you via switching bodies with your late-husband and then got so jealous he wound up killing him to take his place???

[leonawriter]

Okay apparently I'm going to do a study on this introduction, because going back to it? Especially knowing more about Hakuba via more recent Magic Kaito chapters? Fascinating stuff.

So. Hakuba's introducing himself, and he starts out by bringing up "My father spoke of you often" and "It seems you're a very sharp detective." Both of those are positive!

Hakuba is... high society, compared to Hattori simply hanging out around high ranking people and treating them like normal. Hattori argues with Kazuha in a very down to earth way, while Hakuba knows how to drink tea and probably how to set the table with a full set of cutlery (or at least how to use them).

So, Hakuba using their fathers to introduce himself is, to him, a normal enough way to say "I've heard good things about you, we're similar, I hope we can get along well."

What's more - Shinichi realises that, pretty quickly. Even if they hadn't met previously, he'd have been able to figure out by the words being used, that Saguru's father knows Heiji's father, or that they're in the same business.

If anything, I'd say that this slight culture clash is the second step of things going wrong between Hattori and Hakuba here, right after Hakuba being present at all, since Hattori had wanted Shinichi to take his rightful place where Hakuba is currently sitting.

Strike one, strike two.

Unfortunately, it gets worse from there, and I'm gonna go into it.

But then Hakuba brings up that he's not even fully based in Japan. To which, mostly Hattori is just "wait, what?" - but although I'm sure he means it simply to be as clear as possible, that could also be read as "I would say that, but I'm actually better." As in, being smug.

Strike three.

Still with "Kudo is the high school detective of the east, that's obvious, isn't it?" and rubbing salt into the insult to Hattori's bro with "they'd have liked me to represent the east in his place" but...

Oh boy.

This... this is also where I just stared and held my head in my hands because now? Because of something Hattori's said, and what he's going to continue saying/leaning into... we need to go back in time.

All the way back in Hakuba Saguru's first appearance, the papers say "just returned from London," suggesting (as I've seen someone say before) that he'd spent at least some, if not much, of his youth in Japan.

Certainly, he doesn't seem to speak with an accent in the present day, so he can't have grown up in the UK and only sometimes lived in Japan.

In Japan, however, he is referred to as...

In Nakamori's (uncouth) words at their first meeting, "Y-you're that bastard from London!"

No mention of how he has a fully Japanese name, partially Japanese features, a Japanese father, and no accent.

His introductory splash also frames him with the Union Jack behind him, showing off his Holmes cosplay and light hair. Almost all the major characters in the series have blue eyes, but here it's rather... plainly emphasising his Western features. His non-Japanese-ness.

Now, I do have to wonder if Gosho wrote that back in 1990 and hadn't given much thought to it. I certainly don't think it was intentionally cruel.

However, by volume 40, released in 2003, he's learned a bit more about social prejudice, and shows this with the Professor's First Love story:

This shows something that happened 40 years ago in-universe, with a girl of Japanese-American descent who has light, gingko colour hair, being very aware of how different she is, and not wanting her friend to see. She calls her hair "weird" and starts to cry.

Coming back to the present - content released in 2006 - let me go back to Hakuba Saguru.

Hattori "That's obvious, isn't it? And yer not even from this country to begin with."

Oh, Hattori. Only the previous case had you seeing how words can be as sharp as knives, and can hurt people.

Saguru doesn't seem too bothered at first, however...

First off, he points out that it isn't even his fault he's "taken Kudo's place" in the first place!

They contacted his housekeeper, who he's been shown to be very close with (I'd hazard a guess to say that, having not seen his mother at all, or seen her mentioned, Baaya is closer to him than his parents are), and when she heard that her charge would only be taking someone else's place since they weren't there, she got offended on his behalf.

Saguru, who loves this woman like she's literally his nanny, could hardly say no at that point.

More to the point: how he says "But it appears I am unfit to represent the East..."

So now we have Hattori having come in wanting his best friend to be represented and not sidelined just because of circumstances out of his control, and being in a bad mood immediately because of someone else having been called in. He also possibly inflates the number of cases he worked on or solved, by including childhood adventures, leading Saguru to point out that his count is only low if you only count the ones in one country. Saguru attempts to make friends with him regardless, and that doesn't work because Hattori is still stuck on how Saguru is "taking Kudo's place" and then focuses in on how Saguru "isn't even from this country" which... starts leaning into the uncomfortable territory of "Hattori I love you to pieces but are you being racist/xenophobic right now?"

I say that in the context of how Japan has a really big problem with seeing anyone who isn't fully Japanese as Not Japanese Enough, as I went into earlier. I don't think he's aware how he's coming across, by the way; he's simply got a big case of foot-in-mouth.

So now instead of having come to this conclusion organically and naturally, Saguru is offering to take the place of "Guest Participant from Overseas" to placate Hattori.

I'd imagine he won't be wanting to tell Baaya about that, for sure.

Saguru goes on to suggest that Conan (i.e, Shinichi himself) should represent the East instead.

I reiterate: they could well have come to this conclusion over a friendly conversation, because of how they have five detectives. But instead now Saguru has ceded his position to (as far as he knows) a child. A very clever child, but a child nonetheless.

The next time we're back at the island with Hattori and the others, he's already decided he doesn't like "that smug guy."

As said before, there are plenty of things that Hattori could have picked up on that'd suggest Saguru "looked down on people" and "had a prideful way of thinking" and he certainly could appear smug in his achievements.

Hattori himself says that Saguru was "was like a copy of [Kudo]." But he has decided he doesn't like Hakuba, therefore he won't like Hakuba.

A moment of Saguru bonding with Natsuki over their natural brown hair, a shared trait - we can see him smiling after saying "But... there aren't any tv cameras yet, so you could do what you want for tonight?"

In a way I feel like I'm making too much of a big deal out of this one thing, but I'm not the one bringing attention to it - Gosho is. Gosho's the one who reminds us that kids get into trouble for their natural brown hair, and Saguru got that too.

Those who've read Magic Kaito will know that he DOES have a Japanese school uniform - but as we saw at the start of the post, when he arrived, he arrived from his school in London.

This further emphasises how he's set apart from the others.

(An aside: it's entirely possible that his "school abroad" is more likely him going to sixth form, since our Secondary schools last (or did for me) up to the age of 16, and depending on the time of year he may have transferred over to the new school year already. Or he's just finishing his last year of Secondary. We don't know.)

Honestly... I'm going to leave this at that for now, because for one thing the post got away from me a bit, and became longer than I expected, and for another thing, I've covered the majority of the first meeting and both of them getting off on the wrong foot.

In short:

Hattori arrived with an idea of slipping Shinichi into the event, and was offended and upset when someone was already in his place. He, being the loyal friend he is, wasn't willing to simply let it lie.

Instead of backing down and accepting the situation and make friends with the new detective - who Shinichi knew and was acting friendly with, and who was willing to befriend him - he let his bad mood get the better of him and made offensive remarks of his own, most of which to the others would seem entirely unwarranted.

Because of that, Hattori still has a bad opinion of Saguru, and Saguru's opinion of Hattori has gone from "my father's spoken of you [positively]" to "rude asshole."

Neither of them are innocent, but when you look at them individually and fairly, neither of them are the only one in the wrong, either.

Like... no wonder they don't get along from here on? Wow.

I did not expect there to be so much in it, but there we go.

[bells-of-black-sunday]

Obligatory, I'm not a historian this is just what I think after reading some student papers, watching video essays by people who have credible sources and peeping those sources, listening to free recorded lectures, etc. etc. Information on q.ueer history isn't really a thing and it is never good to project modern ideals and labels onto people from the past even if they do apply and it's even harder for me to find resources on a lot of m.edieval history that isn't B.ritish centric outside of wars. Yada yada anything else I haven't mentioned, now let's get into the headcannon novel.

Throughout history in Europe gender has been very segregated by what jobs each person is supposed to do, it is a role you play in the society you live in and you are expected to play and has always been way more harsh towards women than it has men. That being said there are so notably possibly trans figures we can pull from history to get an idea of at least what being rich and trans was like. Honestly looking at those figures, even if a woman was "manish" as long as they acted and did their societal role it didn't seem like people cared beyond making them a social outcast or in a very famous case, disgracing them after they've died by referring to them as their assigned gender at birth. Granted due to the unfortunate part of the past where history was written by the rich, you do not get a view into the lives of the average person.

That being said, Tarhos being intersex meant he fell into this weird other category which varied by society. He was neither male or female, but something different. While being classed as this "third sex" he was still raises male as that's what society dictates, you get treated by whatever predominates you. While one might expect in a Christian society that they'd be seen as signs from the devil, a weird monster that should be culled, they had the same rights as anyone else just dictated by whatever gender they looked and acted the most like. Medieval society was more concerned with roles than biological sex and well it'd be hard to call Tarhos anything, but a man. He looks, sounds, and peforms his roles as such.

Though in some law writings by Peter Cantor in 1197, we can assume that the determining of Tarhos's sex wasn't a thing until after puberty when his voice depended and he started growing facial hair regardless of how he was initially raised. Truthfully I write Tarhos as been 13 or 14 when he was pulled from the body pile and thrown into mercenary slavery which meant his sex was already determined by then. He looked and acted like a boy, so that's what his societal role is. Though truth be told, I doubt someone like him got much of a childhood, but that's a whole different discussion. Which, while legally and socially he is a man, it brings us to how others may have treated him. Truthfully we don't really know how intersex individuals were treated when people knew they were, honestly if I had to guess like many individuals throughout history that fit the modern label of transness i.e assigned one gender at birth and performing in society as another while identifying with that label, it probably wasn't really found out until their death.

While I genuinely cannot find any resources on how medieval mercenary slavery existed and I honestly cannot find much on mercenaries in general even though they did exist, because we have written text of them existing from the damage they'd cause when not employed. So fully being honest, this is speculation off of what's mentioned in his lore that implies the Guardia Compaignia had a more permanent place that they lived. I honestly doubt Tarhos got the luxury of privacy, even if he wasn't a slave, people generally shared rooms. There was one room you'd sleep in as a family, so I'm guessing if they did have permanent fixtures it'd either be large tents or large bunk style buildings to sleep in with smaller ones for those important like the captain and those lower in command. That meant Tarhos was often undressing and bathing around other men, this meant his identity was very well known and honestly probably treated as more of a curiosity.

I doubt it effected much how others seen him beyond obviously insults and ways to try to dig under his skin. Maybe even telling the nobles he worked for to try and get him in trouble for something, but I doubt he was treated as a woman. He very much already had this mythical presence to him with people seeing his efficiency in battle and rallying behind his bravery and that's something to be commended. I doubt it was something he even thought about much in his every day life and he cringes every time someone does. Though the fog does permit him the privacy to keep that part of his life a secret, he doesn't really see it as particularly mattering. Why would it? He's not sleeping with them. He's a man, who cares about how he was born. He's a muzzled dog here to do one job, let him do that job in peace.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Hello, do you think that Unohana being the first Kenpachi was a retcone or not? And what would you have done different with her story?

Thank you for allow me to ask you.

Thank you for this question! I feel like “retcon” has gained a negative connotation, where a retcon becomes a critique to levy against something. But the fact of an audience or the author (or both) assuming something to be true, only to find that it is not, isn't automatically a bad thing.

Do I think, in-universe, Unohana’s co-workers were aware of Unohana Yachiru?

Most of them, no. Everyone’s too busy and too young and the institutional memory is too poor and they respect her too much for it to come up. Though I think everyone has always been well aware that Unohana could kill them all if she wanted to. It’s the “had she ever wanted to” part they probably hadn’t really considered, or felt need to. They probably largely still haven’t, because so much was/is going on and they have so much to do and process. I’m sure Isane would appreciate some friends, though.

Do I think we, as the audience, had to reassess how we knew Unohana?

I mean, I suppose, but I don’t think it feels, like, egregiously out of step to me. It didn't take me out of the narrative. And I say this as a writer who inflicts that feeling on myself all the time (unfortunately for me). We know how long Unohana’s been around (Kyouraku makes mention of this in TBTP), and we know what Soul Society is like, and we’ve seen her ice out rowdy 11th members in her hallways. If someone pitched me “nice lady is secretly bloodthirsty af” as a premise, I can’t say it would immediately appeal to me. Who doesn’t have a bloodthirsty past in this genre, lol yawn.

But I enjoy Unohana’s story in its particularity very much. I don’t think it negates how we knew her before, or tarnishes it, or cheapens it, or renders it false. We have a woman who is/was both/an; someone who has enjoyed the sword; someone who learned healing arts in order to prolong her fights; but ALSO as someone who has nurtured generations of healers, and saved the lives of countless; brings her A-game to these dumb captain’s meetings, and built the entire 4th as we know it. You don’t do any of that if you don’t believe in it for real. Not well.

Do I think Kubo knew about Unohana Yachiru when he started Bleach?

I don’t know, but I hope not! I hope he had no clue, for years and years! I hope he had a retcon moment, because I cannot imagine anything more soul-depleting than working for years and years and years on a story you already knew everything about.

I believe that writing should be an act of discovery, a means of processing and knowledge-creation in itself. And I think that is beautiful about sprawling serialized works is that you get to see the creative endeavor—not laid bare, I suppose, but in a state of dishabille. You get to see the ideas grow and evolve and sometimes totally about-face. You can see the misses and the “actually we’re gonna drop that storyline” and the “lol we should have dropped this, but now we can’t” and the elegant saves. There’s an element of live theatre to it, except perhaps with more of a puzzle to it, too. Because the creation isn’t fully live; there’s a time-delay; there’s space to look at what has been written and ferret out where one might go from there. Like ferrets, sometimes the solutions are elegant, and sometimes they are simply bold. I love both possibilities.

If there’s one thing this blog believes in to its very core, it’s in the premise of “yes and.” Whether reading canon or creating in fandom, we believe in going on the journey and figuring out what we can make of it, or what we can make with it. On this blog, we've talked about sprawling serial canons as being full of invitations, and I think that's true for Kubo, too. Design your world with plenty of open doors, or closed ones, or doors defined loosely, to pick and choose and experiment with or abandon later on.

I’m not saying we like everything Bleach has to offer, LOL. We do not. Or that we think Kubo as a creator is beyond reproach. Generally, I don’t really care to linger too much on what Kubo does or thinks. But I do hope he’s enjoying himself. Time is precious and we all deserve to enjoy ourselves more than what this world offers on its own

[sunbutter-fem]

Okay, but it /was/ unfortunately an "anthropological curiosity," and that's what led to Indigenous Peoples with gender expression/presentation outside the realm of white comprehension having their genitals studied by settler-colonial invaders. It's what led to the immediate reactionary massacres of all who didn't fit into white people's ideas of gender. RE: primarily Indigenous People we would label as transfem with today's lense/understanding. Not to be a sour fuck on this post, but I feel incredibly weirded out when I see presumably white trans people fantasizing about a time when they'd receive the smallest of crumbs from polite (cis/white) society regarding their status as trans when those same people didn't view people of color as fully human (varying degrees).

On a similar note... The burning of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in 1933 (Institute of Sexology)? Magnus Hirschfeld's life work being destroyed? He helped to administer hrt and even worked on gender-affirming surgeries (among so much else). Nothing exists in a vacuum. The masses were being riled up by fascists. There are similar patterns to everything that came after that as well.

"Estradiol was discovered in 1933. It became available as a medication that same year, in an injectable form known as estradiol benzoate. Forms that were more useful by mouth, estradiol valerate and micronized estradiol, were introduced in the 1960s and 1970s and increased its popularity by this route." - from the Estradiol (medication) Wikipedia page

By '79, we had "The Transsexual Empire." For those unaware, that was radical feminism's response to the increasing popularity of trans people, particularly trans women, transitioning with hormone replacement therapy (hrt) and "claiming lives as women."

I'm getting off track. Like sure, it might appear through what little is accessible from the documented past that the public thought transness was just this "quirky little thing." However, the better conditions become for trans people (along with numerous other marginalized groups), the more of a perceived threat they are to the status quo. The better fuel for rising fascism. A better target to point at and say, "the degeneracy has come too far." Thousands of trans people are accessing a kind of happiness they never thought possible, and some are displaying it on social media for the world to see or are appearing in media and livestreamed debates. The "weirdos who cross-dress and act unnaturally for their sex" has gradually become "there isn't a hard line between the sexes." It's giving the keepers of the status quo absolute whiplash. It's why there's dangerous mouthpieces like Jordan Peterson and Matt Walsh going on about Manhood(tm), "traditional" masculinity and femininity, marriage, and "Western Civilization." It's why the political and legislative discourse has shifted past bathroom/sports bills and is now focused on what could be called "forced detransition" bills. It's all connected, too (RE: nothing exists in a vacuum). It's why abortion rights are being struck down. It's why interracial and gay marriage are being eyed. It's why the ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act) is being challenged.

This isn't an attack on OP, either. I want that to be clear. If anything, it's a critique on the romanticization of the past in a way that glosses over the grim reality of those times (while not acknowledging the wonders of today). I'm sure you're as down as I am about the particularly vicious and unrelenting attack on trans people we're experiencing right now. I just want to remind people that there hasn't been a better time to be a part of virtually any marginalized group than right now, even though so many of us are under direct fire. This isn't to say that "progress" is linear. Let's just say that seeing transness and anthropology in the same line of thought triggered something deep inside me.

man this sucks, being trans should have been an anthropological curiosity, not a political movement, it should have been a quirk of humanity, not a fight for survival, it should have been like being colorblind, or having six fingers, it should have been something science teachers taught their students excitedly because it was this interesting bit of trivia, it should have been no more exciting than being a furry or being born with edietic memory. it should have been this little vibrant community whose only care in the world was to share tips about how to customize your presentation it should have been an off hand remark while hanging at a bar to the tune of “hey, isnt joan of accounting trans? crazy stuff my cousin tom changed too and now is nora”

i look back at all those old news papers from like the 30′s and 40′s and the way they seemed to talk about the subject and is like fuck, how can we get that back

[twst-hanaya]

Silver's Tragedy

Some of my thoughts on Silver and his situation.

Note: There will be spoilers, and no, I'm not paying attention to what kind, so read at your own risk. Also I dive into a LOT a lot of speculation about Silver's possible thoughts and feelings, so again, disclaimer: this is all just my opinion lol please don't get mad at me. This is chock-full of assumptions based on not a lot of evidence so and I'm willing to live with that lolol.

That being said, let's get into it!

I made sure to read through all of Silver's Vignettes before writing this all down, and it did make me restructure some of my ideas into something based more on what we've seen of Silver in the story.

Here's the thing about the Diasomnia quartet right? They're a family, really family in a way that no other dorm is. There are childhood friends and people who have known each other all their lives, but Diasomnia is different because it wasn't a group of peers growing up together. They're more close to the nuclear family structure of having a parents, an adult that is meant to be a caretaker and children who were guided under that paternal role. While Malleus is obviously not quite as guardian-like as Lilia he's basically the doting Uncle in this scenario.

The reason I mention this is because although this is their dynamic, there's an inversion of expectations here that is unfortunate and unavoidable and not normal. Whereas most people would expect the parent to be the first to die, and the child to forge ahead without them, it's the opposite here. Silver is a human, in a society full of fairies and ancient creatures, and Lilia raised him knowing that it was all the more likely that his son in all but blood would turn to dust before he even saw a wrinkle appear anywhere on his own face.

Silver expresses in his Scary Dress Personal Story that having Lilia and Malleus disappear like that was incredibly rattling, because it had never even occurred to him that they would never be in his life. He's fully steeped in the expectation that he'll be the one leaving everyone else behind, and the experience of having them stand before him as an enemy, someone he could no longer stand beside, was a moment that woke him up to the reality that this may not always be the case.

(While it seems like there was a hell of a lot of foreshadowing for the events of Chapter 7 in this particular Vignette, I'm not really gonna get into that here since I'm focusing on analyzing Silver as a character rather that the events of TWST as a whole. )

While this episode focuses on Silver waking up to the possibility of loss on his own part where it never existed before, I want to focus on the other side of this coin. I can only imagine the kind of mentality you end up having growing up as a mortal in a world of practically immortal beings. Indeed, he seems unbothered and unflappable for the most part, with a tendency towards obliviousness. He doesn't seem to have much negative emotion in general, and is fairly straightforward and honest with both himself and others. And you know what? I'm sure he is fine.

The thing about people though, is that we're capable of being "fine" with a lot of fucked up things. We get used to it, we compartmentalize - we can't keep functioning if we let it bother us. There are things that are "just the way they are" that are absolutely fucked up. While Lilia and Malleus's tragedies are the burden of time and the inevitability of it, and everything that's swept away by it, Silver's tragedy is that ever present understanding that he will be the one abandoning everything he loves. It's one thing to grow old with your loved ones - it's a whole other beast to feel time slipping by you as they remain unchanging and ever the same, on a completely different plane of existence.

Can you imagine how lonely that must be?

He isn't a dog - he's a person and he's aware. And that's all Silver has known really. He's befriended fellow humans during his time at NRC certainly, but they aren't family. He's constantly focused on what he can give back to them for loving him, and he's constantly fighting to give them something of worth while he still has the chance. What can he leave them? He talks a lot about returning Lilia's debt of kindness with everything he can, and I can't help but feel it isn't just gratitude that drives him, even if he isn't aware of it himself.

I think we focus a lot on how the ones being left behind are hurt, but it's worth acknowledging the burden that comes with being the one that leaves.

(On a sidenote, I think Sebek has a very interesting role to play in all of this, but with the level of information we have on him, I hesitate to make any speculations. He's half-fae, half-human, and I'm sure that comes with its own baggage that deserves its own post. The reason I can't make a more meaningful analysis is because we don't really have a grasp on how half-human half-fae lifespans work in comparison to full humans and faeries, and even different types of fairies, though it's pretty clear (to me at least) from what he's said that his mom is some kind of Vampire, or Baobhan Sith type of fae.)

[satanfemme]

re: that post I reblogged yesterday(?) about how dogs can be/are dangerous, and my tags saying they aren't human babies. I'm thinking about that still cause, honestly imo, soooo many problems with how people treat dogs seems related to the fact that most people see them as a 1:1 equivalent to a small human child. infantalizing them to a cartoonish degree. cause it's like, yes they need so much help navigating human society, and it's our job to care for them either way -- that's literally the evolutionary relationship our two species have. but an adult dog is still gonna be a fully autonomous living thing exactly the same as you are as an adult human. different social rules/'types' of intelligence/evolutionary niches doesn't negate the existence of a dog's internal world, thoughts, wants, and opinions. u might not be able to fully relate to those thought processes or understand them, but your understanding isn't what gives them worth.

(ntm it's entirely possible to better understand dog behavior with simple practice/research, but maybe that's just my personal "inclined to understand dogs better than other humans" neurodivergence talking idk lol)

obv example, but that's all why small dogs (who are easier to physically control, and therefor easier to physically treat like a toy/baby) are so frequently reactive -- their autonomy isn't respected otherwise. meanwhile in a lot of cases (tho nowhere near all unfortunately), large dogs can more easily demand respect before resorting to reactivity. and that's why we have to bribe the dogs at work so constantly lol. if a guy who's stronger than me doesn't want to follow me somewhere or go into a kennel for me or whatever, I simply can't force him even if I try. he will just stand there, and no one can stop him. so instead we need to work together to reach a mutual agreement; it's two-way communication. in the same vein: one of the first things I was trained on at work is how to respect dogs' consent/ask for their consent with things whenever possible. these considerations are super important in treating dogs right... and yet how frequently are they ignored/not-considered by humans cause a dog is seen as unthinking or lesser?

anyway this is just an incomplete thought tangent that doesn't even touch upon the way human children are wrongfully denied autonomy as well, or how worth isn't remotely tied to intelligence anyway. but u know. just something I've been thinking about while dealing with bad dog owners/potential-owners every day & while contemplating "hecking pupper furbaby" culture

[lale-txt]

I'm volunteering at a lgbtq+ group for troubled youth in my hometown.

We watch movies, go on hiking trips and provide social help and counseling services! And try to teach as much as we can to the teens, our society and especially the teens' families.

I unfortunately can't afford donating anything else than my time and heart, so would it be OK to send you an official paper about my service there instead of a donation?

I might not be your only follower in this situation, so I wanted to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to do it - it involves tons of personal information and my first language isn't even English, so I'd have to see if I could even make that work....

But I wanted to ask if it's a possibility 😅

oh honey! thank you for reaching out!

i fully understand that not everyone has the financial means to support this with a donation. it's shitty times we live in. there's many ways of helping and doing what you do is just as important as giving money, if not even more important!

you don't have to send me any details or personal information of course, i trust that people don't misuse this whole thing simply for a free fic (and if they do i will haunt them). i think it's amazing that you're volunteering and helping local, the world needs more people like you (っ˘з(˘⌣˘ ) ♡

send me a dm and we can talk about all details, i'm happy to write something for you!

same for people in a similar situation, please always feel free to reach out to me and we can figure something out! i want this to be a safe space for everyone who faces oppression and who stands up against it. i'll write till my fingers are bloody if it means someone who does their best to help will get a little reward for it.

[dogsplayingpoker]

Ok weird it wasn't letting me reblog this properly. Anways hiiiii

I did read it (over a year ago when i reblogged this) and that isn't what I said, or my criticism of his point and, overall, the neo-liberal ancient-contemporary comparative perspective that Devereaux is routinely writing these articles in. It would be silly to be fully Pro-Rome, sure, but I'm not really accusing him of that persay. I do still think his general perspective is a silly and factually inaccurate one and disagree with it, so I therefor disagree with the arguments he makes starting from this perspective. In particular, I think that no matter how much he claims to actively be against it, Devereaux and the many historians that follow his same playbook end up: 1. romanticizing (I previously said "admiring," which may have been where we got mixed up) Rome by claiming it was a ghastly horrific slave state (true) while also being unable to help from looking to "the good parts" with a kind of breathless nostalgia, and here, overtly for guidance. This is of course a pretty common issue for classicists, unfortunately, including professors of mine that I've generally really respected. Usually the "good parts" = freedom of religion in occupied territories, civil rights afforded to slaves (+the way that pre-Race slavery functioned differently in general), and exactly what Devereaux says in the title of the article, i.e. their "Notion of authority" being likened, often, to a gentle but firm father figure who knows whats best for his children. It is absolutely hilarious to me how often historians, even ones that claim to have left-wing values, can believe in the noble pater familias rule of the romans with a smile and a tear in their eye. Does anyone else here remember 'the white man's burden'? Did anyone see that weird tucker carlson speech where he talks about daddy coming to spank the disobedient little girl that (assumably?) was supposed to be the Biden government? Anyways. Writers try to isolate only that there was religious self determination (in occupied territories of an expansionist empire), that they Ruled the horrible violent imperial war machine Fairly, and then don't even hide the fumble when they get to the slavery part, proudly saying YEAH, they were ENSLAVED, sure, and that's BAD, BUT........ This all ties into issue two, or the underlying issue:

2. Devereaux is a liberal American historian that is either unable to appreciate the full context of the country he lives in OR is actively obfuscating it AND/OR accepts it and thinks its just peachy outside of a few stubborn issues like police brutality and the like which he thinks can be handled in a vacuum by throwing enough good old fashioned liberal values at them. He fails to view issues from a systemic lens and therefor thinks anything he doesn't like is a weird flaw coming from some outside source. In that article (and I can't find this specific article again on Foreign Policy to pull examples from, I'm sorry) he was trying to 'learn from rome' for the sake of America. Even if he's saying Rome was a heavily flawed society, he is saying our empire can still learn a good thing from their empire. I disagree with that. I disagree with the empires staying empires in the first place, or that empires are things worth saving, or that they're even possible to save. My argument is also that we should actually definitely not look to Ancient Rome for advice on law enforcement, or indeed any of our policies point blank period. I personally think this kind of Rome-USA compare and contrast exercise is always fnny because the writer also never seems to reckon with how much we already, fundamentally, ARE Rome-- in all the worst ways, and in the ways he's claiming we can 'learn' from them. We already have. We've been romanticizing and following in their footsteps very intentionally the whole time, just as others were inspired to follow in ours in a horrific timeline of gore and human atrocities. Devereaux, per his website, is really into classical liberalism, liberal democracies, private property, free-market capitalism, and John Locke. (https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-liberty-on-liberalism/). We simply have really different perspectives on politics that also inform how we view and would choose to write about things as historians.

I think this quote from that blog post on liberalism is especially funny in context: "And of course Cicero himself never fully absorbs the implications of his philosophy: a wealthy Roman slave-holder, it never occurs to Cicero that perhaps he daily violates the natural law by keeping people in bondage." Devereaux himself never fully absorbs the implications of his philosophy: a white well-to-do professor in an elite seat within American Academia, it never occurs to Devereaux that perhaps he daily violates the individual freedoms of liberalism by rationalizing and hiding away the dark parts of a fundamentally unjust empire relying on the slave labor of prisoners, the indentured servitude of sweatshop workers worldwide, the slaughter and subjugation of millions of in the global south and the underclasses within the empire itself, and the theft and hoarding of the world's resources. But okay. Cicero bad, John Locke good. Got it. My argument would of course be that they are both bad, both equally ignoring the reality of the society they lived in and their places within it. Devereaux is starting his argument from an already catastrophically flawed point of view that forces him to look past things like 'context' whenever it becomes inconvenient. He has to say in the post multiple times that like yeah, sure, Locke's view of who counted as a "person" worthy of having things like "rights" was, um...narrower than ours today, but he was still correct because I like him (and it's totally different from how other people cited, like Cicero, were incorrect hypocrites). Ignore the slavery and colonialism, same old same old, it is still correct and not at all laughable to claim that the United States was a nation formed on a defining principle of inalienable freedoms for every single person. He mentions that those things were obviously bad but doesn't see them as truly conflicting, more as growing pains. He even says the founding father's misogyny and racism (towards the enslaved specifically: indigenous people, and therefore the ACTUAL founding principles of the US colonial empire, go completely unmentioned) "[...] represented betrayals of the principles that otherwise document: the crime was common, the hypocrisy was special." American exceptionalism who? Obviously if he was saying we should instate a more 1:1 ancient roman government that would also be ridiculous. But my point is that he's asking the wrong questions about the society we have and what's wrong with it in the first place. He is often wrong about Rome and near-universally wrong about America.

Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered. Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth. The Spartans were at best tactically and strategically uncreative. Tactically, Sparta employed the phalanx, a close-order shield and spear formation. But while elements of the hoplite phalanx are often presented in popular culture as uniquely Spartan, the formation and its equipment were common among the Greeks from at least the early fifth century, if not earlier. And beyond the phalanx, the Spartans were not innovators, slow to experiment with new tactics, combined arms, and naval operations. Instead, Spartan leaders consistently tried to solve their military problems with pitched hoplite battles. Spartan efforts to compel friendship by hoplite battle were particularly unsuccessful, as with the failed Spartan efforts to compel Corinth to rejoin the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League by force during the Corinthian War. Sparta’s military mediocrity seems inexplicable given the city-state’s popular reputation as a highly militarized society, but modern scholarship has shown that this, too, is mostly a mirage. The agoge, Sparta’s rearing system for citizen boys, frequently represented in popular culture as akin to an intense military bootcamp, in fact included no arms training or military drills and was primarily designed to instill obedience and conformity rather than skill at arms or tactics. In order to instill that obedience, the older boys were encouraged to police the younger boys with violence, with the result that even in adulthood Spartan citizens were liable to settle disputes with their fists, a tendency that predictably made them poor diplomats. But while Sparta’s military performance was merely mediocre, no better or worse than its Greek neighbors, Spartan politics makes it an exceptionally bad example for citizens or soldiers in a modern free society. Modern scholars continue to debate the degree to which ancient Sparta exercised a unique tyranny of the state over the lives of individual Spartan citizens. However, the Spartan citizenry represented only a tiny minority of people in Sparta, likely never more than 15 percent, including women of citizen status (who could not vote or hold office). Instead, the vast majority of people in Sparta, between 65 and 85 percent, were enslaved helots. (The remainder of the population was confined to Sparta’s bewildering array of noncitizen underclasses.) The figure is staggering, far higher than any other ancient Mediterranean state or, for instance, the antebellum American South, rightly termed a slave society with a third of its people enslaved.

[homeiswherethewitchcraftis]

Hi, I've been browsing your blog (instead of doing my project proposal for class haha) and I just wanted to acknowledge that yeah I'm here commenting on your controversial stuff not out of malice, but as a way of questioning my beliefs and working through them consciously rather than just believing them dogmatically. I think it's important to engage with content you don't fully agree with to see WHY it is you don't agree with it, or if there's something you do agree with. So thank you for allowing me to do that on your posts. Do you have any advice or resources for witches who would feel smothered being a tradwife but want the self-sufficiency that tradwife-ism(?) is involved with? Also just a heads up I noticed you said you weren't feminist (why would you not be on your own side to choose? That's a side question) yet you've reblogged some radical feminist content (which is often misandrist and hateful, which, again, I'm not sure that was your aim). Also also (bear with me lol) I notice you have some posts about getting off birth control? In a world that tends to treat women so poorly (I had the displeasure of finding an online community that specialzed in objectification, sexualization, and open rape threats), how can women protect themselves against these types of people? Early blessed Samhain and may whatever you put into the universe return to you thricefold

Hello, I'm glad you are interacting with my posts I always encourage people to interact respectfully with content thy may not agree with.

I am happy to address your questions and encourage you to reach out to me with any further questions you might have.

My advice for witches who want self sufficiency even if they don't want to be homemakers or traditional wives would be to focus on the aspects of these lifestyles that do work for you. For myself my time as a homemaker was freeing I feel and have always felt smothered by working/ boss babe culture. I'm a traditional witch (meaning I practice traditional folk magic ) most of the women who practiced this path before me were wives and mothers who lived off the land out of necessity.

No I am not a feminist because feminists aren't on my side. You can belive in equal rights for men and women and still not be feminist. You can acknowledge any good done by past feminists and still not be a feminist. Modern feminism does more harm to women in my opinion and the cultural impact of alot of the feminist movement has been negative.

I sometimes reblog posts I agree with even if I disagree with other thins the original poster believes or if we agree on a topic but for different reasons. It's OK to agree with someone occasionally and disagree with them the rest of the time

I'm against birth control and the way our society treats it. Many young women are FORCED or bullied into using it without ever being told about possible side effects or the downsides. Birth control leads to increased rates of depression and obesity 2 major health issues we face right now. Birth control can also be linked to long term fertility issues.

Personally I was forced into getting an invasive form of birth control (iud) that caused me alot of problems. I've known so many women and girls who have had similar experiences it's important to speak out about it. Unfortunately speaking about negative experiences with birth control (especially if they are also issues of medical misogyny) will lead to being bullied either by other medical care providers or more commonly "feminists "

My advice to women who are concerned about their safety (or in general) is get a gun. A dead rapist isn't a threat to anyone

[whiterbone-a]

i wanna know what your take on the nanami / gojo relationship is ?? cause a big part of me is like nanami isn't someone who really talks , like you won't get inside of him and he'll make jokes here and there with the whole work is shit thing . but i think he lost his heart and happiness alongside yuu and i think he even said this wasn't a mission first years should be on and the fact that yuu looked up to getou and gojo so much and still got killed was like a fucking blade to the stomach.

i mean do you think there is a romantic possability , i do play around with it but at the same time do you think it would be comforting ?? like i know the big ship is gojo and getou because of how close they were but what is nanami to gojo , a tool and a function or a friend and possible lover ??? and how will his death effect him ???

also were gojo actively smiles , nanami only smiles when death is around the corner and i am like red flags here and there . but sorry this got so long and please feel free to ignore it .

hello and welcome.  take a seat and thank you for joining me.  if this doesnt make sense just pretend u know what im talking about, its the adhd for making my thoughts so scattered everywhere

so in concept the nanami and gojou ship in a romantic concept is rly cute in concept like u have an ex - salary man whos serious doesnt allow himself the luxury of acting his age but on the other end u have someone who still acts like hes a child and never takes anything serious even when hes fighting.  they both endured the trauma being a jujutsu sorcerer entails yet they have nothing in common -- gojou dresses like hes a reflection with the moon and nanami, the sun.  also the fact that gojou thinks that he, himself, is ascended above all he works with while nanami is just a human living his day to day, and lot of ppl use this as nanami to bring down gojou to his morality just like a nudge or a friendly reminder.  he even tolerates and puts up with him a lot more than he should.  hes very patient but very honest.  a lot of the fanart of them is SO CUTE esp when theyre married and living happily with one another.  i even ship them, its actually one of my top ships next to satosugu but like in reality its not so great unfortunately

honestly?  theres a small slim of a possibility but due to the nature of the clash of personalities and what their job its like ... not rly possible

nanami, even out of being a salary man, fully treats being a jujutsu sorcerer as a 9 - 5 job and refuses to work overtime. he has small luxuries like he enjoys reading and eating left overs after a day of working hard like who wouldnt and not to mention hes the type to keep his relationships strictly professional. gojou has probably asked him several times to take him out for drinks after work (altho work never ends with gojou which is ironic) and has said no.  it’s funny now that i think about it,  shouko probably asks him for an occasional drink after hours and he accepts because at least he likes shouko and he knows theres no ulterior motive from her just a couple of coworkers doing some heavy drinking but nothing ever more than that -- hes even said that he wants to get married but when hes no longer a sorcerer

sucks tho, because like everyone else, nanami sees gojou as someone who is extremely powerful and only sees him for his techniques except more like hes a nuisance and extremely annoying, even to the point of having absolutely no respect for him.  he realizes, yeah hes strong but as for the full package that is satoru gojou?  there’s absolutely nothing to respect about that man

and while we’re talking about gojou, i’ll say it, he’s mentally unstable.  i mean, we all knew that -- hes got a couple of “screws loose” as he puts it inside that rattling brain of his.  on the opposite side of the spectrum, hes not capable of handling a romantic relationship.  hes always always busy, its rare that that he gets a breather for himself.  hes always being sent out on missions out of country and ive always portrayed gojou as the type of partner thats not even gentle on his partners in terms of being playful, childish, and being a nuisance.  his mental health is absolutely terrible (i’m not saying nanamis is any better but) hes always acted much younger than what he is altho i do blame his upbringing for that.

and gojou treats everyone as good friends but does like to particularly pick on ppl who take themselves too seriously (nanami and utahime), mei mei and yuki are exempt from this.  he also doesnt rly care for ichiji but like, that doesnt matter LOL.

i do see nanami eventually giving in for one (1) after dinner ‘date’ after work but when gojou is actually less himself, hes tolerable to be around which isnt saying much tbh.  you should def listen to the nanami and gojou drama audio if u can!  they’re so fucking funny as a pair, which solidifies them as being cute but were not talking about that rn.

in terms of being ‘what are they’ to each other, its hard to tell.  i talked about it briefly as nanami reminding him of his morality and being his humility tho gojou doesnt act like it, he fully believes hes above all and everyone, lovers and close friends are included in this.  i read a lot of nana/go fanfics and they portray nanami as someone to push down his ego;  to remind him hes actually Not all that great, a child in an adults body, etc.  he’s a brutality honest man and gojou can take critic and criticisms to his person but that doesnt mean hes going to listen (and he doesnt, hes even self aware that his personality sucks ass but does he bother to change?  absolutely not and he wont start now nor for anyone else).

yuu did definitely help nanami change and shift his ideas about the world, esp hating the jujutsu society afterwards.  like, i dont blame u king, it sucks ass.  tho, i dont think nanami looked up or cared for gojou and getou that much.  getou he looked up to more so because at least hes as a respectable guy, strong, good looking, and stimulates intellectual conversations.  gojou?  not so much.  nanami probably thought that it doesnt matter if u have techniques that is extremely rare to acquire and even more so to master but u suck ass and u dont stimulate joy to be around.

nanami is a good friend and high school buddy to gojou and nanami would definitely call him ‘coworker’ or something along those lines when hes annoyed him too much or doesnt want gojou to benefit too much from simple acknowledgement.  gojou thinks hes an ascended being but he definitely respects and finds nanami to be a strong sorcerer and was rather surprised when he took the 9 - 5 job but it was definitely safer.

death ... ah, i think about this all the time.  it’s like losing suguru all again except he didnt go rogue and kill a whole village.  hes absolutely confident in nanamis abilities to fend off curses and hes too stubborn to let himself die as well, so the idea of him dying doesnt ever cross his mind.  thats a true stab to the gut to hear that nanami has died, maybe a moment of truly being unhinged and a darker nature but we wont rly know until it happens in the manga, which i cant wait.  i mean, at least mei mei, utahime, and shouko are around but this is nanami were talking about.  if this was in terms of a romantic relationship rather than a simple seemingly one - sided friendship of enjoying of being around that person but that person just tolerating him and hoping he goes away eventually.  i can’t say, i can’t say!  just take these thoughts with like a grain of salt.

also that last statement in the ask, gojous smiles are fake and a mask while the rare times nanami does smile, its genuine.

regardless of what i said, i think it can be a comfy ship!  this ship isnt toxic but any means (unless u make it toxic then well, thats a you thing) so just enjoy it!  i know i do i think as long as u recognize that maybe neither of them being a relationship would benefit the other then go stupid go crazy, i know i will.

[thejustmaiden]

Why do you think Sunrise did that event in with Sesshomaru and Rin's VAs mirroring InuKag? They have already done that CD Drama, do you think they did that to give hope to the shippers? What if after so many hints, if they reveal in the anime that Sessrin isn't canon, aren't the shippers gonna be disapointed? This may be a dumb question and your answers are always smart and well-articulated, but i seriously don't understand their marketing strategy, do you care to explain for me?

Oh, hey there! I appreciate all the love you've been leaving on my blogs lately. I really hope I'm able to give you an answer you're satisfied with. Sorry it took some time to get back to you. I hope this makes up for it. 🙏

I'm not gonna lie, I'm up and down about how I feel about that livestream and what it means for the future of this ship. My brain has been on roller coaster mode since basically the moment the sequel was announced. We're in the home stretch now, and we better get the answers WE WANT the second that sequel comes out. Since it's evidently not going to happen anytime sooner- welp!

Before the livestream aired, I really thought us fans were on the verge of discovering the mom and that it was going to be Rin. We still had hope she wasn't, but at the same time most of us antis were "bracing for impact." lol

Then nothing happened.

We were pretty shocked but obviously relieved. The days before it came out, I was telling others (as well as myself lol) that just because Sesshomaru and Rin's VAs had a livestream together doesn't confirm anything. Besides, why does that have to automatically mean that both pairings need to be romantic? We all know how integral these characters are/were to each other's storylines, so these pairings make the most logical sense, wouldn't you say?

In the previous livestream with the voice actors who play Inuyasha and Kagome, they discuss the new character Moroha and introduce her as Inuyasha AND Kagome's daughter. Now let's compare that to the other livestream with Sesshomaru and Rin's VAs. When they described Towa and Setsuna, they did so as Sesshomaru's daughters NOT Sesshomaru and Rin's daughters. That to me is the most telling piece of evidence.

Like how could they not use that prime opportunity to tell us Rin's the mom when her voice actor was literally sitting right there??! We were all expecting it and they still insisted on giving us nothing! What this tells me is that it's possible this mom is a new character, and it even appears she is quite pivotal to the new series. I keep changing my opinion on that part though to be honest with you, because sometimes I think she won't be important at all in the grand scheme of things. (See what I mean about being up and down? lol) Idk about you, but it seems to me like we haven't even met her character. If it was Rin, why keep it a mystery? It's not like Sessrin's popularity is exactly a secret in this fandom. Why wait until the big reveal if it's "so obvious" in the first place? How does Sunrise benefit from hiding this information?

If it does end up being Rin, it would've been better to just come out and say it. If this ain't just pure fanbait like some of us still hope it is, why hold back? Give 'em what they want already and let us antis be at peace. If they hope to think that I'll change my mind and give this sequel a go just because I've waited this long so might as well, they're sorely mistaken. If anything, I'm going to be pissed they kept us in the dark this long when they could've just saved us all the trouble. I imagine that goes for a lot of us, shippers and antis alike. Whatever way you look at it, I won't be invested in this sequel if Sessrin goes canon- period. I cannot and will not be on board with a series that promotes such a harmful and insulting dynamic.

Which brings us to Sunrise's marketing strategy. Well, I definitely think they have been catering to the fans of this ship for quite some time now. Because, ya know, money. Whether that's because they plan to make this ship canon or not remains to be seen. "Show meee the moneeeeyyyy!" *yells in Jerry Maguire*

There was first the drama cd and more recently that calendar which included art of adult!Rin with Sesshomaru, but neither of those are canon first off. Also, does anyone know if it was actually confirmed to be pro-Sessrin fan art? I mean, I know it doesn't look very good when the artist who made it is a Sessrin shipper and certain fans are fawning over their OTP, but that doesn't necessarily mean the calender automatically is either last I checked. I wonder why it can't simply be Rin as an adult visiting with Sesshomaru. I believe in one picture she's seen giving him a flower, much like little Rin would've done, or just as any child does for a loved one. So if Rin is still bringing him flowers as an adult, I would assume that means their relationship dynamic hasn't changed at all. That's what's supposed to happen, too! If an adult's relationship was established with another person while they were just a child, then that adult will always view them as a child no matter what and vice versa. Even when those children become grown-ups, that won't change. That's just how things are, or how they're supposed to be rather. In other words, a normal healthy adult-child bond does not resemble one like Sessrin.

Both Sessrin fans and antis agree there haven't been any romantic implications between Sesshomaru and Rin in the original series. That's why I can't understand for the life of me why we're even having this discussion. Alas, here we are. This is what happens when society has conditioned us to believe that the only proper (aka "best") way an adult male and a young female's closeness can evolve is with romance. So maybe it's not obvious at first (because that would be illegal), but we should EXPECT their relationship to shift in that direction. Why, you ask? Well, simply because sexualizing young girls is the norm so why not, right? No clues or foreshadowing required! Because like I just said, that would be illegal. Fiction has loopholes for this kinda stuff, so problem solved?

Nope! Aging her up counts too, folks! When you look at a girl character and the first thing you think is, "I can't wait till she grows up so she can f*ck" then, yeah, you're a part of the problem. You may not realize it, but you are. That's not to say you're a bad person or that it's even your fault, just saying that there are times in all of our lives where we start to question some of our beliefs. If you not only support but desire the idea of a romance eventually forming between a grown man- yes, 19 is an adult- and a young girl, then you should probably ask yourself why that may be and re-evaluate. Please stop using cultural differences and history that dates back almost a thousand years to justify this so-called tradition.

"You all shouldn't think too deeply about this, it's just fiction! Ugh, you're ruining the fun! Antis should all just shut up! Only we can have problems, but when you do it's just complaining!"

Right....

And by the way, most of us are not even complaining. We're being critical of the content we're watching. Criticism isn't always pretty unfortunately.

If Sunrise and Rumiko do decide to go through with this, then I will disappointed, sure, but not surprised. Romanticizing these sexualized images of young or pre-pubescent girls has been happening for far too long, after all. We've become desensitized to it sadly enough, especially when the media continues to glorify it. I wish we'd realize how many young girls- or minors in general- we're putting in danger by sending messages such as this.

To you young teenage girls and even boys reading this, you may not fully understand right now, but it's never okay for anyone to tell you that your body being sexualized is a natural and beautiful thing. It's going through through a lot changes at your age, yes, but they should never use your curiosity to satisfy their sexual needs. Don't allow some of these stories to be an example of what is acceptable to occur in your own life if you were ever to encounter a similar situation, especially if fiction is all that you have to compare it to. It is not in any way, shape, or form okay for an adult to say or do sexual/romantic things to you. Even a conversation that may seem harmless at first could have dire consequences. No, not even if you trust them and they're one of your favorite people in this world are these things ever appropriate. What they're asking from you or showing you is dangerous, and even if it doesn't seem like it they are very likely taking advantage of you. If you're ever unsure about something, don't hesitate to come to me. Or maybe you have a loved one that you can go to, that works too. 😊

Idk if I even gave you a definite answer, but perhaps it's because I'm still figuring it out myself. If I ever do, ha! I hope by allowing you to get inside my head for a little bit you got a better idea. Or maybe not, and I just made it more confusing for you. Oops! lol Feel free to hit me up again, dear, and have a nice day/night!! 👋

[yaz-the-spaz]

There's a track record of celebs coming out as bi and then like a year later as gay. Example: George Shelly. And even going all the way back to Elton John. For whatever reasons management now thinks bi is the new gay. They may let someone come out as "bi" who's actually 100 % gay to save face on all the het stunting done and protect former beards . That's all my point was. Many fans in fandom are fake bi. They're really straight but pretend to be bi so that the fetishising isn't as creepy?Or?

yes that is true not only in the celebrity community but in the queer community as a whole. lots of people use coming out as bi as a gateway to coming out as gay/lesbian and that’s not at all a new trend or new track record or a new thing at all (for managements nor celebs nor any of those in the entertainment industry nor queer people at large) and while i understand it from a coming out perspective b/c for some they may feel that’s the safer/safest option as a stepping stone to coming out fully b/c they feel they may be more ‘accepted’ by society/straights/homophobic family or friends, etc. that way, it unfortunately does also inadvertently hurt the bi community b/c many people (both straight and queer) have come to view bisexuality as just a halfway point to (and/or point of confusion leading up to) coming out as gay/lesbian (or on the flipside just an ‘experimental phase’) which coincidentally enough is exactly what amandla addresses in the video of question, which again is precisely why i reblogged it. it’s something that bi/pan people need to see and hear b/c unlike others we are in a unique position b/c we have a history of being excluded and/or looked down upon by both straight and queer communities and often face discrimination from our own community in a way that gay/lesbian people generally do not and just because amandla no longer identifies as bi doesn’t make the message any less relevant or important for people to hear if only so that they don’t feel quite so alone or confused or rejected or wrong for being the way they are.

to the point of whether it’s the celebrity’s decision to adopt the bi label or their team’s decision i can’t speak on b/c in my opinion there’s no real way to tell that. whether someone for a period of time felt they identified as bi or not before realizing it was not the case or was simply using it as a stepping stone can only be known by that individual and/or those closest to them and so i don’t feel it’s fair to assume that certain celebrities coming out as bi before later coming out as gay/lesbian was simply a ploy to ‘save face’ or ‘protect former beards’ b/c they and/or their teams think ‘bi is the new gay.’ i also don’t know how you can possibly know whether someone is a ‘fake bi’ or not as you (most likely) don’t know/have never met these people you’re referring to in real life. unless you’re somehow hunting down and stalking these people to see whether or not they exhibit attraction to more than one gender (which still wouldn’t prove anything anyway tbh) or unless they’ve explicitly stated on blog ‘hey guys so just wanted to let you know that this whole time i was just pretending to be bi online, but i’m actually straight, soz’ then i don’t know how you can make that assumption.

all that said, if that was in fact your point in the first ask (assuming you are indeed the same anon from earlier) you might wanna work on your communication skills b/c if you are the same anon your ask came off as extremely accusatory and rude not only to me but to all bi/pan people in the ziam fandom as a whole. to accuse not just one person (me) but a whole community of being ‘lesphobic’ simply b/c i/they didn’t reblog a particular post is extremely inconsiderate and disrespectful and, like i said before, i have a feeling you already know that or you wouldn’t be on anon. i would also recommend doing a bit of self-reflecting b/c a lot of things you’ve expressed in your ask here and the previous one reflect a lot of highly-problematic views of bisexuality and bi people and also judgement of people in general, especially people you don’t know in real life and know next to nothing about. i would never go so far as to say you’re biphobic b/c like i said earlier calling someone something like that (especially without knowing them personally) is extremely disrespectful of them and their experiences as a queer person but you definitely do have some problematic (and quite biased imo) views that you may wanna re-evaluate.

some helpful things to keep in mind: 

try to remember that what you see on someone’s blog does not reflect their entire lives nor necessarily who they are irl, how they identify, what they do or don’t do irl, what they believe, who and what they support, what they’ve experienced, or might be going through currently, etc.

try to remember that just b/c someone didn’t reblog/blog about something in particular doesn’t mean they didn’t like it or don’t know about it or didn’t see it or don’t support it, a blog is not reflective of a person’s every thought or experience or beliefs (and even if it were those could all change in a millisecond b/c we’re people not robots and we grow and learn and make mistakes and change)

try to remember that not everything a celebrity does or says is a stunt/stunt-related, especially something as delicate as coming out and that changing their identity/label later on down the road does not mean that they didn’t identify with that previous identity/label in the past or never will again (this goes for non-celebrities too), sexuality is fluid and can be very confusing to figure out and sometimes people may change their label or go back and forth between labels, this does not make their identity at any particular point in time any less true or valid nor does it make them a ‘fake’ gay/lesbian/bi/pan/trans/ace etc.

and most importantly:

try to remember that just b/c someone doesn’t present (or say/do/act/etc.) how you think they should as a gay/lesbian/bi/pan/trans/etc. person does not negate their identity as such

try to remember that when talking to people online you’re still talking to an actual person that has emotions and can be hurt or upset just as easily as you can

try to refrain from making assumptions about people based on limited information, and especially try to refrain from insulting people or calling people names based on assumptions made from that limited information

if you ever need any resources or advice or wanna talk further (whether about ziam/the ziam fandom or lgbtq+ issues or anything at all) i’m always here and i hope this post finds you well

[whitewolfstracks]

Okay, I found this perspective really interesting because I've never thought of it this way before, so I pondered about it for some time and wanted to write my take on this:

I consider myself a psychological therian. I don't believe in the afterlife, so neither in past lives. Everything wolfish that happens in my life is related to the present moment.

I am a pwBPD, so aggression is a part of my wolf experience. It's not a defining part, but I also can't separate it from it.

What I found interesting was the idea that for a wolf hunting is not violence, it's an instinct. A wolf doesn't have a human perspective. I do, which makes it complicated.

I do feel the urge to hunt, I crave meat, blood, sometimes I want to tear things to shreds, to growl, bite, express dominance, protect my pack.

But these things make me ashamed, because I'm judging them from human perspective. And sure, I can't be fully myself all the time, because I live in human society, but I'm even ashamed in therian spaces, because the judge is inside.

That's the inner dichotomy: There's the human part, and from that part, I empathise with other animals and don't want them to suffer, so I try to at least compromise by buying meat as ethically as possible, because I can't give it up due to the animal part.

If I deprive myself of what 'the Wolf' craves, I suffer. And then it gets worse, much more destructive and unhealthy. So, I try to 'feed the Wolf' in a way that's not harmful (like writing about these experiences online).

When I get in the wolf mindset, tho I don't feel guilty about eating meat, or weird for tearing into it. It's just instinctual. Just like the urge to howl or whine.

And like you said, hunting isn't about violence it's about the thrill of the chase, the feeling of sharing the same goal with the pack, it's almost intimate. And it's natural. If we judge that, we judge it from the human perspective.

I was also glad you mentioned the experience of wandering, because I don't think I've seen anyone talk about it before, though it's such a huge part of my wolf identity and always has been.

That's why Wolf's rain has been such a huge point of awakening for me in the beginning, because I very much identified with the endless search for...something. As Kiba mentioned in the anime, it's not even Paradise in a biblical sense as an ideal, it's just a future.

And I've always had this drive in me. To go on. I used to be proud of my ability to never give up. Before life knocked me to the ground. But after I stood up, found my wolf-self again, I still have Hope. Even though I'm going through the darkest time of my life.

I never knew if it's just inertia, but I've always connected it to the Wolf. I just can't stay in one place too long. I get restless. I have moved flats way too many times in my life. I used to run away from relationships, because of my need for freedom (I need to make a note here that those were relationships where I was masking), changed interests, started projects and abandoned them...

I tended to try and fight against this tendency, but I'm starting to think it's a part of who I am. I'm not careless with my relationships, tho. I also have a wolf's loyalty. So, unfortunately for me, when I bond with someone, even a friend, for me, it's for life. Then it hurts when people inevitably move on.

This hunger, empty belly - it's been with me as long as I can remember. And I have my own psychological explanations for it, but it's also inseparably tied to my wolf experience. So, I was glad to realise, after reading your post, that it's just a natural thing.

(I wrote about packs in a different post, but I would like to write about the weird vivid quality of wolf experiences too, I'll get to it in another post, I hope.)

Content warning: this post contains mentions of wolves hunting other animals, and some thoughts on the subject. Nothing I'd consider graphic, but I know it can be sensitive for some folks so I thought I'd warn beforehand!

Hhh, it's a bit hard to know where to start with getting back into writing about my experiences.

It's not that I don't have anything to say - it's the opposite! There's so much I'd like to share. I've always loved talking about my experiences... maybe a bit self-indulgent, but I like to think it can help other folks too, and I've gotten many interesting conversations out of it in the past, so no regrets!

Can't imagine I'll be posting big things like this frequently, but I'll happily answer questions and chat too. ^u^

So... right now, what I've decided I'd like to write about is some of the, I guess kinda fundamental aspects of my identity as a wolf therian.

It's interesting in a way, because there are so many wolves around - there's a lot of people to compare experiences against! I guess, if you have a rare kintype, or a kintype that's varied enough that your individual variation of it is rare (like dragons) - it might be hard to imagine that a wolf would struggle to find other people they relate to. But then, well: there's me.

I don't think anyone's nonhuman experiences are wrong. I don't think anyones' are "superior" either; it's just about who you are as an individual, what feels right and comfortable to you. I just wanted to get that across! Cause what I'd like to talk about does involve some comparison between my feelings and the things I've seen expressed by other wolf therians, and I wouldn't want it to be read as me saying my way of being as any better than anyone elses' (it's not).

During my time in the kin and therian communities (which, I first encountered over ten years ago now, but my activity has been very on-and-off since I reached adulthood) I've met so, so many wolf therians. It's... hmm, complicated for me, in a way? Because I felt very isolated, especially when I was younger, and I felt like wolf therians were supposed to be "my people". But really, I could count on both hands how many wolves I've met that I really related to on any level.

And the reason for that is the same now as it's always been: for a lot of wolf therians, being a wolf seems to be a kind of violent, bloodthirsty identity. The "predator" feeling is strong; there's some affinity for the thrill of the kill, the violence of it all.

That's not a bad thing. It's not wrong! But my experience has been... very different from that.

My perception of wolfhood isn't really "red in tooth and claw" like that. It's more... simple. Not peaceful really - life as a wolf is full of trials and strife - but the violence never felt defining for me. In terms of personal importance, the feelings of wanting to hunt, to fight, to bite and maim... I'd be lying if I said they were entirely absent, but they were always tertiary to things that seemed far more present and central.

I think a big part of that is... well, for context, I believe my wolf identity is linked to a past life. Yeah, stereotypical, I know! But it's genuinely what I experience; I do remember that life, or at least aspects of it. And those memories influence a lot of my experiences in my current life as a wolf-person.

The thing that strikes me most when I compare my own perspective on wolfhood to the ideas often expressed by other wolf therians, is that to me, hunting wasn't violence. It couldn't be violence.

Why? Because I just plain didn't realise that the deer and other animals we killed were living things.

There was no... room to even consider that idea. I didn't know that the deer I drove to exhaustion felt pain and terror, same as I did. I just knew I was hungry and it was food.

It's a strange thing to consider, isn't it? People talk a lot about "what makes us human". I don't think there's any one thing that does. But if I were to point to one of the most jarring, and one of the most utterly sacred parts of being human to me, it would be the ability to connect emotionally with other species.

Humans are not unique for doing that. And maybe there's some animals a wolf could come to see as an individual, in the way I would've seen another wolf. But a deer would never be that. Which contrasts strangely with me, now, as a human: where I can love pigs, and care about their welfare and treatment, but still enjoy some bacon or a porkchop. That can conflict, sometimes, yeah - but from a wolf perspective, that would be incomprehensible. At least, from my experiences it would be.

And if you remove the idea of violence from hunting, suddenly a wolf's life doesn't seem very violent at all. The act of hunting and killing prey animals felt no more violent to me, than when I cook up a steak for myself now. To someone, that would be violent, but to me it's just a steak - y'know? I know the steak comes from a cow, but that fact brings me neither grief nor pleasure. It's just kinda how the world is and I'm mostly okay with that.

The act of hunting was, I'd say, something I enjoyed as a wolf. I loved the chase. It was fun. Taking down prey could be scary; even a deer is dangerous when cornered and desperate. But the thing with nature is that it makes what you have to do to survive feel desirable: so risking my life for a meal felt thrilling, in a way, and a full belly afterwards was satisfying, and comforting, and a relief from the usual gnaw of hunger.

Hunting's only a small part of being a wolf, though. Even setting aside all the attempted hunts that fall through before you even get into a full sprint.

A lot of wolf life focuses on territory. In some places, it's a very intense, almost war-like conflict; constant, bloody, often fatal. Not always, though. It depends a lot on the intensity of the ecosystem you live in: a place with lots of prey attracts lots of wolves, who then compete for access. If the prey's more spread out, the wolves are more spread out too... and an area of land feels less worth dying for when you've got so many others to search.

Me and my pack were one of the latter varieties. Territorial conflicts were rare, for us; I don't recall any specifically. We patrolled, we marked our space. Territorial disputes were something I was aware of, I think - if I saw a trespasser I certainly would've acted with aggression - but it just wasn't a common occurrence.

So my experience of being a wolf didn't feel like it was defined by violence much. It didn't feel bloody and raw. I could see myself in the image of a wolf that snarls, maybe, but moreso I see myself in the image of the wolf that sleeps, or - perhaps most of all - the wolf that wanders.

And that's what existence as a wolf was, and is for me! It's wandering. It is the neverending search. Even when you find what you need, the relief can't last long - you need to move on soon, you need to seek again soon, because it won't be long before your empty belly's gnawing at your insides again. It wasn't ever a life of violence, it was a life of travel, for the good and the bad of it: for the new sights and new smells and new opportunities; for the exhaustion, the uncertainty, the sore paws and aching muscles.

And the restlessness. The need to keep moving. Keep going. Keep searching, always searching.

But, of course, that's still not the centre piece of the puzzle. Because that could only ever, of course, be the pack.

This is something I'll probably dedicate time to writing about all on its own, because I have such deep feelings about "the pack" as a concept, and also about my pack, who I lived for in my last life.

But I will say that all of my deepest, most vivid, and most impactful memories... they're not of the hunt, they're not about territory or conflict or hunger. What I remember most richly is the love I felt for my pack. It's a feeling I can't quite find it in me to explain; sometimes I wonder if the reason I identify as loveless in this life, is simply because no love I've ever felt as a human could compare to what I felt as a wolf.

I think there's a kind of synergy between the simple mind of a wolf, and the feelings a wolf experiences: in the quiet of an animal's mind, emotions seem so much stronger, so much more vivid somehow. I feel that even now, when I have a mental shift, and the logic and reason falls away - all that's left is emotion and physical senses, and they paint a picture so, so bright.

And those past life memories that I hold dearest, they have a similar quality to them... to curl up with my family after a long day of travel. Or listen to their happy snores as we all sleep off a full belly. And playing with the pups... I was a very fun wolf-uncle. And those pups were my joy, light of my whole life! <3

So... yeah. That's what being a wolf is to me.

It's not the only way to be a wolf. It's not the "right" was vs anyone else's "wrong". This is just what wolfhood is to me personally. Maybe other wolves will see something of themselves in this, maybe not! Either way, I appreciate the time you took to read my rambling. It feels nice to carve out a place in my life again where I can really talk about this stuff. c:

[papamatrix]

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – physicist

“The true sign of intelligence isn't knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein

“Imagination is everything. it's the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Einstein

There is perhaps no stronger trait one could have, than that of a powerful imagination.

Imagination is EVERYTHING… because without it we will not create ANY-THING NEW.

Imagination is that the preview of life’s coming attractions, because without it we are certain to repeat the identical patterns, make the identical mistakes and live the identical life over and all over again.

WITH IT, there are not any LIMITS… there’s no limit to what we could attempt, no limit to how high we could soar, how big we could dream…

Sure, our dreams might end within the dust… but what if they don’t? Would you rather LIVE having tried to achieve the life you WANT… or die with regret?

We must giving up of our need to slot in… fit in to the present small box society placed us in… and that we must imagine the life we actually want… then, once we are certain what that life is, we've got to travel for it…

We only get ammo at this miracle of human life… live it fully and exactly how you want!

Sure, we all have dreams… the matter is the general public stuff their dreams within the closet when things get hard… when life presents challenges most of the people intercommunicate what they know… they address what's EASY… but the straightforward road… and also the KNOWN will never lead you to your dreams.

“There are only two ways to measure your life. One is as if nothing may be a miracle. the opposite is like everything may be a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

“He who can not pause to wonder… and stand rapt in awe… is pretty much as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” – Albert Einstein

It really is that easy. It really may be a choice. regardless of the circumstances of our life we are able to like better to see everything around us as a miracle.

The actual fact that we are here, during a physical structure, is alleged to be a 1 in FOUR HUNDRED TRILLION chance. only a few folks believe we are a walking miracle…

Sadly such a lot of people are walking around, living their life in their head, pessimistic of the long run and bitter from the past, so much so, that they're missing the miracles within the present.

Open your eyes and open your heart to the magic all around you. The miracle of human and animal life. The miracles of nature. The miracle of YOU and what you’re really capable of once you relinquishing of caring what people consider you…

Choose, from this moment on in your life… to hunt and find the miracles around you.

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” – physicist

They say the sole things guaranteed in life are death and taxes… you'll raise that list – the impossibility to please everyone.

The simple fact is… once you want to change… as in, after you want to raised YOUR LIFE… there'll be opposition, and unfortunately, that opposition is presumably to come back from people near you.

Many people won’t like your advancement because it'll remind them of their lack of it. many folks won’t accept as true with your direction because it'll remind them of their lack of it.

No matter WHAT or WHO the opposition… you need to stay faithful you, and faithful what's right. Do the correct thing, by others, and most significantly by yourself.

Those who matter will come around eventually, and people who don’t, don’t matter.

Live your life with purpose, intention, filled with SPIRIT and make no apologies to mediocre minds for dreaming and living big.

“We cannot solve our problems with the identical thinking we used after we created them.” – Einstein

“Insanity: doing the identical thing over and once more and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

Yes, we must dream big. Yes, we must try new things… but if life isn't going the way you planned, perhaps it's time to do a distinct approach?

You don’t have to change your GOAL, but you would possibly have to change the road you are taking to urge thereto.

Never stop learning and developing yourself. you'll find the way.

“A one that never made a blunder never tried anything new.” – Einstein

The actual fact you’re committed to grow, learn more and BE MORE almost guarantees you'll make mistakes and fail, somewhere, somehow along the way.

Remember, it's only considered a failure though… if you surrender. Keep at it, learn the lesson and permit it to serve you.

Don’t let anyone discourage you due to mistakes… it's a guaranteed trait of all winners and curious seekers.

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing isn't to prevent questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – physicist

“I don't have any special talents. i'm only passionately curious.” – physicist

Never stop questioning… everything in your life.

Be so present, and in reality with yourself, that you simply can feel when it’s time for change.

Never lose that child-like curiosity to be told more, develop more, and see more. Never lose HOPE that your best is yet to come back. Never lose that knowing, that you just are a miracle. Never lose that presence… that not many have…

“Strive to not be a hit, but rather to be useful.” – Albert Einstein

Add value, wherever and whenever possible… not just in your work life, but altogether interactions… with everyone… then, you'll be a success… you may have more riches than money should purchase.

What is your favourite Einstein quote? allow us to know within the comments