#exonerating

[ilynpilled]

will always be super annoyed with the implication that art delving into an evil person’s conscience or internal conflict is bad because it is being overly sympathetic towards them. that is not exoneration. the whole point is that regardless of their humanity (that, yes, evil people ultimately have in real life) they continue to make the choices that render them irredeemable. it doesn’t turn into less of a condemnation. depicting complexity ≠ manipulating the audience into forgiveness. i keep seeing the accusation of the latter being thrown at media that is very clearly only doing the former

#like if u r thinking that a piece of media is telling u to feel sorry for or jump to forgive someone just because it is depicting the bare #minimum of complexity that sounds like a u problem #an evil person feeling emotion is not meant to be exonerating 😭

[essektheylyss]

did someone actually hate on your fave? or did they neutrally attribute a trait to them that you've unnecessarily negatively moralized and you hurt own feelings about it? or, perhaps, did you project too hard and now interpret even mild critique or simple acknowledgement of interesting character flaws as an ad hominem attack on yourself?

#like I'm sorry but. as an essek stan. skill issue. #ngl I'm more inclined to block someone going 'essek is baby who has never done anything wrong in his life and he should be exonerated' #than someone going 'essek is a horrible criminal and he should die' #the first is like 'incorrect. even his partner does not hold this opinion.' #the second is like 'depending on your tone it's possible you have a point. let's talk it out and see if you do' #I myself have also had my fave formally executed on occasion. for kicks and angst. 😌 #actually laughing this reminded me of a one-shot post live show that I never finished where caleb and essek basically have this conversatio #I should actually finish and post that #anyway this is not that serious it's just constantly on my mind on this hellsite

[exosciences]

my favorite thing about loyalty missions in mass effect 2, aside from how absurd of a concept they are already, is that none of them are made equally

like on the one hand you have missions like mordin’s, which require you to make the extremely difficult decision of whether or not to keep the research results that could potentially cure the genophage, which will have MASSIVE implications for the inevitable clash between the krogan and turians/salarians in the near future

and on the other hand you’ve got people like jacob who show up and go “my dad sucks” and then you find his dad go “wow your dad SUCKS lol put this man UNDER the jail” and now jacob will survive the swarm of alien bees 20 hours from now

#mass effect #mass effect 2 #like hmmm surely helping zaeed chase down some guy is the same as *checks notes* #helping tali exonerate herself and letting her gain political leverage among the admirals for the looming war to retake rannoch #yes because these two things carry the same weight lol #you could make the argument blah blah roleplay some ppl need help w/ things personal to them and only them #and some people are entangled in something bigger and need help yadda yadda WHATEVER that’s not as funny tho ❤️

[nandorsrelentless]

there seems to be far too many fans who can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that no relationship in the Vampire Chronicles is healthy. every relationship includes an element of abuse/power imbalance by normal standards. literally every single one.

they are all monsters who are no longer constrained by societal rules. so I don't think it's too crazy to expect them to do mosntorus things. the genre is Gothic HORROR. the show really prioritizes the HORROR element more so than other adaptaions, which i love.

i don't need louis to be a liar to enjoy lestat. if louis lied or misremebered things about the fight in episode 5, i literally do not care because it's never gonna make me hate louis. the baseline of what constitutes "evil" or "bad" is so different in iwtv because of the fact that they are NOT HUMAN. Claudia is literally a serial killer and she's still mother to me. ykwim?

the nature of vampirism is they have to kill to survive. so it would be really cool if people could accept louis, armand, and claudia as complex characters who are fundamentally not good people (because they aren't people!) without being racist about it. THEY ARE ALL KILLERS

im more interested in this exploration of the complexities of memory and seeing how the show integrates the other books into this story in a way that hasn't been done before than I am in discoursing about whether louis is a liar or not. who gives a shit???? grow up and realize that there are no good guys here and that's OKAY

#iwtv #tvc #lestat de lioncourt #louis de pointe du lac #interview with the vampire #amc iwtv #I pretty much cleansed all my feeds so i dont actually see much racism more so than i see people talking about it #just some random thoughts i guess in the wake of the new trailer just because i know things are gonna get weird #it would be nice if audiences could be trusted with complex and morally grey characters of color but idk #but i also think the fact that there are racists is not a reason to NOT make poc characters who are complex #same goes for the people who will interpret the portrayal of a morally grey poc character AS racist #there are certain tropes i think that are always going to have racist implications ofc and im not trying to discount that #but lets all be real here and realize that revisiting ep 5 to add more layers to it is NOT going to exonerate lestat by any means #add more complexity and layers and possibly show that louis was not AS helpless as he showed himself to be? maybe #but they are not going to exonerate the white character to make the black character look evil #idk if any of this made sense im just stream of consciousness rambling

[sillydegu]

Miss Daisy, I do believe your pillow used to be part of the hammock

#rat #cute #ratblr #petblr #Daisy #she's lucky that this level of cuteness exonerates her from all crime

[the-real-sasuke-uchiha]

He sees Itachi and what he asks is if the Uchiha were planning a coup. Not if Konoha committed genocide, not if they made child Itachi kill his own family, not if the Uchiha were truly oppressed. Interesting.

#pro Uchiha #anti Konoha #anti Naruto Uzumaki #were the victims guilty enough to exonerate my genocidal heroes?

[comic-sans-chan]

obsessed with julian asking "what did they do to you? is it some kind of punishment device?" in the wire because my god if this man didn’t go from "this is garak my super cool spy pal who i go on secret missions with and sometimes fuck teehee but also yeah his planet’s kinda fucked up and he’s got some weird ideas but we’re working on it" to "this is garak he's my precious little angel babyman who has been horribly traumatized and brainwashed by his government but it's okay because i'm a doctor and i will fuck and suck the fascism out of him if it’s the last thing i do" in just two years. shit's wild

#i'm having a moment #again #my posts #garashir #julian that entire episode is really just ''the power of love compels you!!!!!!!'' i can't stand him #garak was blorbo from julian's shows for a hot minute there and julian was writing all kinds of woobified fanfiction about him #like i've cried a hundred times over the wire from garak's pov cuz i see it as the episode where he started to respect and love him fr fr #but for julian i think it was more of an eye-opener like. he wanted to exonerate garak of all his crimes to try to justify his crush on him #and i don't think the wire exactly proved him wrong... but i do think it revealed key details and context that he was missing before #like that garak wasn't just some underling spy he was almost the head of his organization #basically garak canonballed julian's beloved headcanons so he had to start from scratch #obsessed w garak recognizing that julian had romanticized him and being like ''ok but what if i'm just a bloodthirsty killer? what then?'' #like they went thru All That just for julian to meet tain and come back like #''Your Boss Dad Is Evil The Plan To Heal You With My Dick Is Back On'' #gold star for trying i guess but ur gonna be loved no matter what apparently

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

I’m not sure what is so hard to get about “You can feel bad and sad for Jiang Cheng but it doesn’t make his abuse of Wei Wuxian through life an excuse or okay”. His issues are very much reasonable and his trauma exists. But it is not the excuse to say that Wei Wuxian should have been more understanding when Jiang Cheng was the one to make it a resistance for Wei Wuxian to offer more. Jiang Cheng was the one to escalate violence and harsh words long before Wei Wuxian put his own defenses up.

He was the one to met out violence in his frustrations against Wei Wuxian for the perceived wrongs made. Wei Wuxian did not need to do anything the moment Jiang Cheng decided Wei Wuxian needed to “support” him one way and one way only. That is not how healing works against an abuser and victim. And Jiang Cheng was never a victim of Wei Wuxian’s. Jiang Cheng as the abuser does not get a valid claim as to how Wei Wuxian needs to respond for him, even if Jiang Cheng chose him once.

One action over countless INACTION does not wipe his mistakes against Wei Wuxian clean. Wei Wuxian does not have to apologize for anything other than having coddled and his own ways of protecting him that enabled Jiang Cheng to grow up in the worst ways. At this point I feel the ones who say the relate to him, don't want to reflect on their own abusive thoughts that are indeed negative and want to be told "it's okay", when it clearly never was, to be relieved of their own guilt.

Because moving on is too hard for them and they don't get a reward for being told they fucked up and were in the wrong more so. Realization does not reward you when you are the abuser.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #forgivness is not the exoneration of things you still need to fix in yourself #it is no one's responsibility to make you a better person #that is on you alone #and as sweet as it may be to act otherwise that is enabling #he does not need an enabler telling him what he did was okay #even he knew this #canon jiang cheng

[odinsblog]

I am sO happy for him.

Yusef Salaam was proved innocent by DNA evidence, but not before he served almost seven years for a crime he did not commit.

#politics #yusef salaam #harlem #central park 5 #exonerated five #started from the bottom now we here #so happy for him

[bonebabbles]

I remember when I was reading DOTC when I was around 10, and ever since Misty died I had been waiting for the moment where Birch and Alder learned about her murder, how everyone in their lives has kept it a secret. And then it just didn't happen.

I also remember obsessively re-reading the part where Quiet Rain blows up at Clear Sky.

Birch and Alder are two characters that are just so...

I WANT to say they were forgotten about, but that word doesn't feel right for how they're constantly showing up on the screen. Clear Sky occasionally feels guilty about how he murdered their mother, but for the vast majority of the time, that's described in passive voice. So you're not reminded of just HOW cruel he was, and still very much is.

It's like they're not allowed to be characters.

Like, how does Alder feel about Clear Sky, who seemed to be acting as an adoptive father until he beat her as a child? How did Birch respond later, when Clear Sky was so busy thrashing his sister that he was threatened by a dog? How do they feel about the man who took their mother away from them?

They keep getting cited as "Good Examples Of Non-Campborn Cats," dodging around the fact they were stolen and raised by Petal. Like a lot of the other "adoptions" in the series, she quietly stops mattering to them. But even this fact... like, they're being OTHERED when they were functionally raised SkyClan.

How do they feel about THAT? That their earliest memory is SkyClan, and yet, they'll never be considered truly, fully "clanborn."

Their whole life taken from them, by Clear Sky's cruelty, their formative years spent in his violent shadow, and the narrative is just not interested in that.

#birch wc #alder wc #I see a lot of people calling this arc So Very Interesting #Begging for more of it #but like... the more I think about this arc the more I hate it. #Both reading it and the deep dissatisfaction that settles over me thinking about how much potential it wasted #All sacrificed on the altar of Sweet Brother Love or whatever was going on there #Even people who go 'oh it was so exciting' like... when. did we read the same series #the entire thing is clear sky causing problems and then no one is allowed to react violently to them #because that makes us Just As Bad #what was interesting about 3 books of the moor cats doing NOTHING as clear makes the plot happen #And another 3 books of Clear just being a bastard and everyone feels bad about hating his guts #And here's Birch and Alder who have never really been explored ever #because it would require them to fucking hate the guy who ruined their lives #it doesn't JIVE with his exoneration arc. so it cant happen

[cinamun]

Is he dead? | Next

#ts4 #indya #black simblr #when everyone left behind is blaming themselves #also Aaliyah should be exonerated now pls #please remove the tin hats lol #this is sad but we're almost over the arc #scrubs is EMS slang for docs and nurses #and notice how poor hani 'confirms' the pushing first #but i can't stress enough that it DOESNT MATTER #fuck that reporter #ts4 story #sims 4 story #simblr #ch22

[vulcanautus]

like a man possessed

#dgs #tgaa #the great ace attorney #dai gyakuten saiban #dgs spoilers #tgaa spoilers #tgaa2 spoilers #dgs2 spoilers #kazuma asogi #kazuma asougi #girls when they almost uphold their father's falsified legacy in an attempt to exonerate him of it. u know how it is #wanted something relatively fast and vibes driven. I like it when he is scary #anyways if u saw me post this already no u didn't #back to the art mines for me don't expect another fast post. gootbye

[swan2swan]

There's still not enough talk in Avatar circles about how Mai was absolutely hauled off for interrogation after the Day of Black Sun, what with the whole "Zuko was spending all his time with you and he knew the Avatar was alive and attacked the Firelord" thing.

"Oh, by the way, your father also failed to secure the city he was appointed governor of, so this was not a banner couple of days for your family."

#but she still had THE GOODBYE LETTER HE LEFT HER which would have been full exoneration #possibly #but she still had it so she might never have turned it over #she got out of trouble through her own honesty #mai #atla #avatar: the last airbender #maiko #doubt she was tortured or anything but #she had the absolute WORST week of her life

[veliseraptor]

"...what is gained in granting characters some say in their own destiny might easily be lost in dimunition of audience sympathy. It seems to have been a risk that Shakespeare deliberately elected to take. In his last few tragedies, he made increasing demands on the humane tolerance (or perhaps on the Christian charity, in the most radical sense) of his audience. We are not expected to agree, in every case, that the protagonist is more sinned against than sinning; we are expected, on the basis of our common humanity with the offending protagonist, to offer sympathy unqualified by the necessity for exoneration. It is a demand too radical for Aritotle, for Farnham, for most audiences. Most are too ready to rue the absence of less deeply-flawed heroes, too ready to accuse Shakespeare of having sat down to eat with publicans and sinners."

L.T. Fitz, "Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism", Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer, 1977)

#this is concerning protagonists but i think it applies to sympathetic antagonists as well #very interesting article in general #but also just. yeah. 'unqualified by the necessity for exoneration' here btw isn't talking about the impulse to exonerate #it's talking about the impulse to refuse sympathy #to characters who are not necessarily 'more sinned against than sinning' #and also the relevance of the idea that a character must necessarily be 'more sinned against than sinning' #in order to qualify for protagonist status #anyway. just struck me #quotes #actual english major lise

[fanghuas]

gu xiang saving that singing girl and kicking ass, then being surprised that she doesn't get in trouble just because "she was in the right" will forever be one of my favorite scenes in the show tbh

#soph rewatches woh #just. how clear it is she expects the yueyang sect disciples to protect these assholes #bc she grew up in a place where being strong matters more than being right #and because all she knows of the 'righteous' sects is their corruption #especially given her connection to luo fumeng #so of COURSE she assumes the 'righteous' offenders will be exonerated #who cares about some unimportant singing girl eh? #who'd believe her over them? #and the thing is that 90% of the time she'd be right #and despite having no hope that anyone would take her side she STILL does this #potentially jeopardizing her plans to get into yueyang sect as well #she's just so GOOD #she grew up in a boiling pot of fear and second-hand trauma #and people who adored her but that meant keeping her alive first #teaching her to keep herself alive at any cost #and she is still so fiercely determined to protect others #maybe because the people who love her protected her. maybe because she knows they couldn't always protect themselves

[compacflt]

wip wednesday: some dense icemav paragraphs free of charge idc idc

#god wouldn’t it be nice to exonerate ourselves by saying we’ve been consciously in love this whole time even if that’s so obviously not true #wouldn’t that make it all worth it? #love at first sight as a way to absolve the guilt of silent inaction. #feeling very stop this train by john mayer live at the Nokia theater December 2007 #im so scared of getting older / im only good at being young #so I play the numbers game / to find a way to say my life has just begun #anyway #1. i too can indulge in a little cliche quirky romanticism #2. this is from the original draft of debriefing edits & ices depression was like 10x worse; like to an edgy degree #3. wuhhhhhhh this graf speaks for itself #4. see above #top gun maverick #pete maverick mitchell #top gun #tom iceman kazansky #icemav #top gun fanfiction #edts notes #idk feeling. #just feeling. #it had to be at least 30 years bc that was the constraint TGM placed on me. But the emotional implications are so awful #old people make me sad #but i promise they find the happiness in the situation #that excerpt just wasn’t a nice neat paragraph for this post LMAO #having fun writing for writings sake #this post is being scheduled for the very second my Am. lit. final exam starts so wish me luck