sorry imma put this one on here, i wanna reply to it but i won't be able to without watering down my intent, and if i do my point loses its weight
edit: nvm LMFAO i worded it nicely in the end, under the cut tho cus this is mf long
(context: in this chapter of a manhwa, the sister of a criminal who attempted to kill the main protagonist talked with her and told her about how her other brother died in interrogation for being part of the revolutionary group against the monarchy. his death was happening in tandem with the main character's violin recital, of which her father left his duty from interrogating the brother, just so he could attend. it was framed in such a way to show how oblivious she was to the political climate surrounding her, how her privilege kept her sheltered, and how even when the criminal's sister went to their gates she was detained and shooed away and dismissed as "causing a fuss". their eyes meet from the MC being up high on the balcony, and the woman from down low past the fences, officers manhandling her into going away as she was a commoner and could be seen as an ally to her brother as part of the revolutionary party. the woman says specifically that she doesn't think that the mc is guilty, she just wants her to know what happened. and the mc reflects on all of this and realises how clueless she's been, how sheltered of a life she had that, until now, she couldn't find the common thread between the two of them, and she starts crying and apologising. later on, when she calms down, the weight of her privileged birth and its responsibilities hits her, and she's steeling herself, and the chapter ends.)
first of all. hmmm?? "what exactly is the FL's fault"? of course, if we were to go by straightforward, linear logic, SHE hasn't done anything wrong. she never ordered her dad to kill people. she doesn't even know people are dying. no one has been put under harms way by her direct actions. all these things would be enough to clear your conscience.... if you are a child, that is.
if you are an adult, like she is, you will eventually realise that you have the power to impact people and things and your surroundings. if you are an adult with a moral conscience, you will feel BAD about your obliviousness to others' suffering that makes you rethink about what your blindspots in perception are; how could i have missed something so vital - how long has this been going on - why did this continue to happen? and this is the stage she is getting at. by our estimates as modern people living in modern world standards, it is very late to be living this long and not realise that you are not the only unique occupant of the world, blind to other people's perspectives. but that's besides the point, because everyone has their own path and pace to follow. it doesn't matter how long it took to get here, we're just glad you're here now to do the good work with us.
do you not feel some sort of revulsion knowing that a family member of yours is acting in immoral ways, and you've been the unwitting beneficiary to that immorality? does it not burden you with responsibility when you realise you could have had multiple opportunities to speak out against the hurt being inflicted onto others, while you were in a position to do so safely and without extreme repercussion? THAT is what she's feeling. she knows that she technically do anything wrong, but she didn't do anything right, either. and it is not enough to know suffering exists, but to strive to heal it, whenever you are able.
this is obviously a fictional story so it doesn't have to be that deep; except it can be, and it's trying to be, because this story is set after the revolution has toppled over the monarchy, so themes like classism, privilege of birth and how to quantify someone's 'value' will be present.
nevermind i wrote all of this but i got so heated instead that i actually managed to write a pretty polite sounding response to the comment, leading with curiosity abt their perspectives and trying to sound friendly and Open to Discussion. the proofreader in me will never die as long as im pissed off at people but trying to find a constructive way of communicating that upset 💪😎👍
anyways. this is what i wrote instead
i don't do zines these days but my proofreader ability for real saves my ass so many times in writing communication. fr i think i would've made some very regretful choices if i were trigger happy ajdhskdjkdjd i'm quite satisfied w what i wrote, i lined out what i got different from them and expressed curiosity on their perspective, posited positives to recontextualize things so that i'm not just going "no ur wrong and Here's Why", gently went "we can agree to disagree!" and remained pretty lighthearted throughout, with no accusatory or pointed language. i'm p proud of myself!! i am able to engage in discussions without pissing myself and other people off!! hurray!!
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vent warning under cut, scroll by if you'd like
I can't wait to have running water, a working TV, not have mold on my walls without my knowledge, a kitchen ceiling that doesn't collapse, a basement, a washer and dryer that I can actually access, a landlord that's actually your landlord and not pretending to be yours, working kitchen lights, stairs that aren't on the brink of collapsing each day and pipes that still work again <3
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🖊 for any milo and/or reiji details they fascinate me ^-^
YES thank u they live in my brain
Let me go on a tangent before I even get to what this ask actually is cause why wouldn’t I- Milo and Reiji are interesting characters to compare to each other, because despite their entwined storylines, I don’t draw a lot of connections between them as they were designed. Characters that never interact are fun to draw conclusions with because it’s more obscure out-of-universe things: Julian and Milo are so different but they follow very similar paths and come from very similar places. Milo and Brooke (actually they do interact but only like, once) both deal with the results of a corrupted worldview that once questioned, can’t be ignored once again. Reiji and Diana share an inherently wary, bleak outlook on how the world functions as a result of their own experiences. And characters that do interact but were designed that way are... designed that way. Julian and Liliana are the same stuff poured into different molds, impossibly similar and impossibly different, and that drives everything about their relationship- they’re foils. Diana and Julian start at the same place in the same situation, (for different reasons), and end up wildly different people in opposite directions- they are diverging paths evidenced by truth or lies.
But Milo and Reiji aren’t connected by anything inherent or anything unchangeable. Their meeting in the first place is mostly chance and a little bit of give and take of compassion. They stick together because the alternative is being alone in a world that’s so much bigger than both of them, so much older, and just a little bit more broken. Their relationship is a choice in a way that really isn’t the case for a lot of other characters.
And I mean, they do have parallels, but they seem different somehow, because they actually apply in-universe. They reflect off each other. They both leave something behind that they wish they could get back: but while Reiji’s was taken from him by circumstance and chance, Milo’s was a culmination of something grown that eventually he had to choose to abandon, though if there was any other way, he would have taken it. (He tried, before. It didn’t work.)
But now they’re both missing something, and with it, their place. Reiji doesn’t know where he belongs and the truth is that he doesn’t belong anywhere. He can’t return to the one place he did- (it wasn’t a place, but a people. They’re long gone, even as they live) -and now he searches aimlessly for someplace he can return to. He doesn’t find one. Milo loses everything he’s ever known when he walks away, and even as he makes the decision to, it feels like the admission of some crime (it looks that way to them, and he knows it). He longs for the community he lost, but even if he gets something close to it, it’s wrong, because it isn’t them, and because the reason he left still follows him.
They’re both ghosts wandering a vast expanse of unknown. There is exploration in it- Milo especially does genuinely love the places he passes through, the people he meets briefly, the idiosyncrasies of each town, city, village. Reiji less so- he’s only ever known the wandering, so it isn’t as special to him. He’s always looking for something that will change, but even so, traveling with Milo forces him to see things he wouldn’t otherwise.
The difference between them is that Milo stops being a ghost. As time goes on, less and less is searching and more and more is exploring. More is fixed than is broken. But the opposite is true for Reiji. As he finds nothing it feels more and more like he is one of very, very few. That he has found no place to exist because there is no place for him, for those like him. Reiji is looking for answers in an environment that buried most of them, in a world that hunts the rest. And it becomes this obsession- a thousand whys.
Why didn’t his flock look for him? Why did he even survive? Why is he hunted? Why did it start and why won’t it change? Why is the world sitting on the ashes of an older one? Why are people broken by something they don’t remember? Why does every place he goes scream that there used to be more? Why are his people a part of it? Why are they here? Why do they occupy a world that is so clearly not made for them? Why does he not know where they are made for?
Reiji asks a thousand whys and they can all be summarized by one what: What happened?
Milo and Reiji cross incomprehensible distances and in the time that takes, a lot changes. Milo goes from being a ghost of who he was and who he should be to being alive in a way he wasn’t before, genuine in a way he didn’t allow. Milo looks for an answer in a different way than Reiji, because he is looking for certainty. He wants someone to tell him, with no room for error, what is true and what is corrupt. He wants surety and permanence in a way that just doesn’t exist, and so instead must choose which side he’s on- he must decide what to believe, because nobody can tell him black and white. With that choice becomes an acknowledgement that the world isn’t as simple as good and evil, and the two can very much coexist, that perfect and unredeemable don’t really exist, not here, anyway. He’s allowed to just be. Reiji, though, doesn’t get the opportunity to make that choice, to take that answer. He isn’t looking for the answer to a moral question or a cosmic should. He is looking for a reason, which is an order of magnitude more impossible to find. He looks to the past for why and the nature of time is that he keeps getting further and further from it. He finds very little, which only makes him look harder, which makes it worse when he finds even less. He starts down an impossible spiral that he can’t get out of until he finds what he wants, but what he wants just doesn’t exist in the way he needs.
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