#good/bad dichotomy is OUT

[towerartt]

Has this guy from Borderlands ever cleaned a toilet? 

Handsome Jack: It was one of many household duties his grandma saw him fulfill. Her authoritarian streak taught him a lot, about discipline, hard work, most importantly about the value of sucking it up. See, he went from a low level programmer to the CEO because he wasn’t scared of tasks that are gross, dirty, or even demeaning. He'd say that his experience with cleaning toilets is the cornerstone of his success, actually. And that's exactly why being made to lick the toilet clean was an Awesome thing to happen to him as a child.

Rhys Strongfork: Blew up a space station over getting demoted to janitor. He would not even touch a mop. Cleaning is simply something that happens to other people. As the CEO of Atlas he does however make sure that those unfortunate other people are getting paid well. Mostly due to his own near toilet cleaning experience.

Timothy Lawrence: Dodger of chores: electric boogaloo. But he is a significantly lesser offender than Rhys. Before the double program, Tim had to make a living somehow, right. He cleaned a rather fair share of toilets. And he won’t clean even one more, he refuses. There is a limit to the amount of piss a guy can wipe up in a lifetime. He gets out of cleaning anything by being Weaponized Incompetence incarnated.

Katagawa Jr.: In practice, no, but he views the siblicide he committed as a metaphorical cleaning of shit. 

Roland: Was put on latrine duty during his service in Crimson Lances. As the commander of the Crimson Raiders, he never cleans toilets, but he does meticulously inspect them. If the conditions are not up to his standard he has a stern word with whoever is tasked with keeping things clean. 

Wainwright Jakobs: No Jakobs has cleaned a toilet in three generations. But Wainwright doesn't act like he hasn't. At least.

#borderlands #good/bad dichotomy is OUT #“has/hasn't cleaned up shit in his life” is IN #☀️

[bunabi]

rest in peace to whoever sent that 'um actually most Russians are villains' message

this is not that kind of place hon

#good guys bad guys dichotomy ? at our grown age ?? youre never getting out of my blocked user list

[professuntothelord]

i think there's a danger in interpreting john winchester's actions under the false dichotomy of the "good abuser" and the "bad abuser." with the good abuser being driven by love, but led wayward by personal trauma or experience, while the bad abuser is driven by hatred, stymied by little as they are simply bad; simply hateful. that's not how abuse works. abusers are, as all humans are, shaped by experience and a product of their life on earth. now that abuse can be expressed in a myriad of ways, to varying extremes, and led by a multitude of motives. this can subsequently lead to a spectrum of variable impact on the abused. you can't really dichotomize abuse and its different forms. it's likely a more illuminating approach to understand abuse for its individual cases, its individual motives. false dichotomies imply a narrative that is much, much simpler than abuse could ever be

#i see a lot of john isnt that bad a father bc he did xyz out of love was stymied by his trauma did the best he could with what he had #which makes him unlike the other abuser type that is Bad Hateful and has no good reason to be etc etc #this fictional case of abuse is still complex; it is still dangerous to reduce it to a false dichotomy #to posit that abusers have 2 camps and everyone fits into one or the other; led by love/led by hate; influenced by trauma/born bad etc #abuse is much more variable than that #and overarching all of it is the fact that it IS abuse #motives and expressions thereof are vital; but to create a false dichotomy that implies a better or healthier abuse versus a worse and #irredeemable abuse will inherently weaken an argument #spn thoughts

[satanfemme]

"no mental disorder makes you a bad person" is very very true and a good statement to promote, but "if someone does something bad, they must've chosen do it, there's never any other possible explanation, and it's especially never b/c of any mental disorders" isn't true?? besides the fact that people can make honest mistakes (even big ones) without realizing what they're doing, or the fact that life circumstances can influence what choices someone even thinks are available to them in the first place, my hot take is that mental disorder can influence you to do bad things sometimes and that should be acknowledged.

that does NOT mean a person with a disorder would be a special extra evil kind of abuser compared to a neurotypical person (ie "narcissist abuse" is still a meaningless and harmful term). it also does not mean that abusers are more likely to have a disorder than to be neurotypical. but disorders are disabling, they cause disorder, it's right in the name, they negatively affect you and your connection to others... why do you think that wouldn't that affect your behavior too sometimes? I know my disorders affect mine. often in negative ways!

besides just "mental disorders are never disabling in ways that make me feel uncomfortable" being ableist, understanding this is important if you believe in prison abolition (which you should). "someone did something bad because they randomly chose to be bad idk" is just as unhelpful as "someone did something bad because they were born bad". but "someone did something bad because of X thing they're struggling with, or their Y need is unmet" is helpful, that's something you can work with and fix. integrate this into your anarchist worldview.

and lastly, tbh it's isolating to have "scary" or "bad" symptoms, and then get told by armchair "mental health advocates" online that you're just choosing to have those symptoms and maybe you could be a better person if you simply chose to stop having mental illness in the first place. so you know, don't be fucking rude lol

#some of this wording is probably clunky from an anti-psych lens #but heres my morning soapbox #🙈 READING COMPREHENSION CHECK ✅: #Q: ''so you think all abusers are helpless babies that should be coddled?'' A: no. but behavior doesn't exist in a vacuum - #- and this post is about more than just ''abusers'' specifically #Q: '' so you think abusers should go unpunished?'' A: by our current definition at least yeah. also maybe yeah in general idk. - #- I'm a prison abolitionist; including involuntary hospital confinement. there's better options out there than torturing people. #Q: ''why are you sympathizing with abusers?!?!'' A: you have more in common with ''abusers'' than you think - #- and until you accept that; you're never going to escape the ''good person vs bad person'' false dichotomy. #Q: ''what's even the point of this post?'' A: the point is that mental illness/disorder is not always harmless or something that - #- only affects the person experiencing it and your discourse should make room for this fact instead of ignoring it - #- in favor of the easier feel-good arguments that leave more stigmatized experiences behind.

[raziraphale]

I'm upset about the gomens S2 finale (er, rather the last like 15 minutes of it) obviously but people that are genuinely upset about it in a "he would not fucking say/do that" way are aliens to me. you do not understand my man aziraphale. he is a cunt and a dumbass. he is still not ready to let go of the good/bad heaven/hell dichotomy he needs another season to stew in the Consequences

#good omens spoilers #good omens #thinking about how the bodysnatching bit was such a good example of aziraphale and crowley's worldviews ugh #like crowley is questioning the entire system of it and aziraphale is obsessed with trying to pin down the 'good' side and keeps #running into the consequences of his black and white moral thinking #he's not ready to dispense with the good and bad dichotomy!!! #he genuinely thinks that crowley is 'good' and that because he thinks crowley is 'good' that he should want to he aligned with heaven #and he thinks the only problem with heaven is that it isn't run correctly #instead of throwing out the whole concept #UGH #i have feelings im sorry #reilly.txt

[halyorke-vampiredisaster]

Most of the time In the Flesh is just another dvd case on my shelf that I don't think about and then once in a while I go to rewatch it very innocently and 5 minutes in I'm violently run over by how fucking raw it is and by how insanely hard it hits omg

#in the flesh #it has everything #the small reclused village and the atmosphere that comes with it #the rising right wing politics #the queer (sub) text (it has both. text and subtext) #the mental health struggles and navigating those for yourself and in a family #KIERENS SHAME (this one is in there for me personally i know it) #he doesn't take out his contacts even when he goes to bad. he covers the mirror when he takes off the make up #it just hits so hard #the camera focuses on kieren after having to experience yet another (micro) aggression and my heart opens up and bleeds #plusplusplus apart from everything that's good about it it also has my special interest: a variation on vampires (it's close enough anyway) #one thing i think is interesting is that back in the day i related to s1 the most. and now it's s2 that i feel is more relevant for my life #which means i made progress kind of doesn't it? now it's less about family and grief and being closeted for me #and more about the shame/pride dichotomy and living in a society as an 'other'. finding joy despite and because of it all

[faunabel]

tw maybe? dark psychology thoughts. careful if you're in a bad mental space.

i think it's a disservice when people treat selfish and selfless as two opposites of each other.

nothing is ever truly selfless. i think part of a selfless person should be the motivations behind their behavior. you can care about others and put them before yourselves and still have your own motivations for what you're doing for them. that's part of being human. it's impossible not to have your own reasons for doing something unless you yourself are a mindless machine. it causes kind and giving characters to come off as shallow when they're reduced merely to a giver, or people overcorrect by trying to force generic "badness" onto a character. what are the motivations behind their giving? those motivations don't necessarily retract from their nature. you can be genuinely kind yet have motivations behind it.

also, you can be selfless and still do things for yourself, even things that hurt others. that does not make you selfish. selfishness is a streak of caring about yourself regardless of how it may affect others.

selflessness is seen as purely a virtue, but it can also be genuinely selfish, like for example, it's easier to do what someone wants from you than to assert yourselves against them. it might seem kind on the surface, but it's really all about you not wanting to deal with conflict.

#i saw an awful take on reddit i had to rant before i lost my mind #when will we end this dichotomy of good vs bad traits those are not helpful descriptions #this is how you end up with shallow characters imo #you do not have to give characters with “good” traits “bad” traits to balance it out #how are their “good” traits also “bad”? #( 💭 faun thinks ) #rant #man i wish i could rant to someone abt what im angry about but im scared to bother my one friend abt the same thing #that i should've ranted fully on the first time but i was too embarrassed #to care so much abt something this dumb #anyway i am not faun fronting rn i hope she isn't like wtf whenever she comes back to front #whoops

[apricotopera]

one of my most deeply held beliefs about bbs (one of. many.) is that despite being a literal part of heart hotel ven’s closest parallel isn’t sora, but kairi. aqua is the sora parallel here!!

i think it’s important to me to see both ven and kairi as balancing forces - even though ven has no darkness in his heart and kairi is a princess of heart, they’re sort of the middle ground in their trio. while sora and aqua are pulled to unflinchingly follow the light and riku and terra are being manipulated by darkness, they’re the ones who can, in some way, see through that dichotomy to the people they love past it. kairi is the one who sees ansem as riku in kh2!! this is vitally important to me!!! both are also in a lot of ways seen for their utility - ven because he can make the chi blade, kairi esp in 1 (and the melmem flashback) as a princess of heart to make the keyblade of heart. this isn’t unique to those two per se (xion roxas and namine cough cough) but it is a fun parallel.

and aqua and sora are the seekers!! they’re the ones whose goal is to find and bring together their friends again!!! theyre the ones that are the most unflinchingly devoted to the light!! and they also have the same very stubborn devotion to their friends, the way that both of them won't back down that their friends Are good people, that they Wouldn't fall to darkness, that they Will find them. theres a reason that aqua tells sora that it's going to be his job to bring his friends back, the exact thing she is doing at that moment. theres a reason that she (accidentally or not) sends kairi to him. theres a reason sora ends up with master's defender, however briefly. that's the part of the lineage he's a part of.

#pers #kh #kh bbs #wayfinder #destiny islands #the ven kairi parallel is SO important to me. both of them being 'pure light' but lying in action outside the dichotomy #is like. so intersting #theres also something interesting in a morbid way about how that reveals a lot of the misogyny in kairis writing #because like both of them have character arcs about being left behind and put on the shelf os to speak #but kairi is also put on the shelf By The Narrative Itself and we dont get to explore any of that time with her #hell even as much as i love melmem. the amount of actual kairi characterization in that is so miserably slim #and ven you get to hang out with and *play as* for the entire time hes being left behind. ykwim #its interesting!!! in the good and bad ways. awua sora parallels make me so bonkers too

[vidalinav]

Aside from the deranged and almost derailing way that Nesta ended up in the House, I actually love the House as a symbolism for Nesta and her personality. A house that is hard to reach, covered in unshakeable rock, menacing and looking down at everyone. A house that has too many stairs to climb so climbing is a punishment or lesson and no one can really reach unless they’re born with a particular set of wings. A house that’s warded away from the rest, which means that effort must be made to reach it. A house that’s used for courtly functions, who’s value is based on its purpose. A house where its cold and lonely and secluded from the rest, and which was never really going to be anyone’s home...

A house that for the people who find themselves here when they have no where else to go, who find themselves seeking refuge from dark and decrepit things, people so broken they feel they can never be fixed... for those who find value in the rock, love this mountain so high that there’s no easy way down, it’s a house that means security, a solid foundation... a library and friends and even some magic hidden in its heart. Such wonderous understanding. Empathy in its depths, even if it at first appears to be monstrous. A house that cares. A house that loves. A house that lives despite all odds. A house that reminds me so very much of Nesta Archeron that it’s marvelous that it’s an expression of self-love. 

#nesta archeron #You know I don't mind that Nesta lives there even if she doesn't have an easy way out #I figure she'll get a pegasus and that issue will be solved fairly quickly #a magical horse car #even if she didn't #I still don't think the issue is her leaving #it's the lack of choice she had about being there at all #the trickery and coercion no matter the positive outcome #If Nesta had truly chosen this house I wouldn't feel so bad that she lives there #that it's some gift from Rh/ys as if to say hey I did this to you and for you here you go #ugh such manipulative bs #But the beauty and function of the house itself I love #it's honestly one of the more solid things in this book and sjm could have really milked it way more than she did #I actually wrote a fic about the dichotomy of a home and a haunted house #it was my 20000 word fic that I never finished #but damn it would have been good

[soft-serve-soymilk]

Imagine finally going on your laptop to work on your project that is rapidly becoming due because u beat the executive dysfunction and finding ALL your files deleted (art, apps, sentimental screenshots etc)

And then while you’re fixing your dad’s dumbass mistake file explorer itself corrupts 😞

#FORTUNATELY with my son Dism (the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool) I was able to fix it 😌 #Which reminds me of when this laptop had it’s usb and camera functions corrupted too #That was a whole affair that involved me having a seperate laptop for a while but the most humiliating thing #was after I came back to this one and had it factory reset my dad said it was from a bad double image #and I’m like 😭😭😭 we could’ve used the DISM… like my beloved head child #Ok real talk the nature of how Dism’s name came about is going to have to come out sooner or later #I was planning on taking it with me to the grave but Dolphin consider this a treat for us becoming so close #It’s extremely embarrassing but it’s also 100% the truth #Dism and Archus have their names taken from a persona YouTube channel I used to watch obsessively….. #like the channel name literally is their two names smooshed together in that order #The funny thing is as I got older I learnt that those names were actually the names of the YouTuber’s OCs themselves 😅 #They REALLY were meant to be placeholder names but when the time came I really couldn’t find anything that suited #Dism better than his non-name 😅 it’s too fitting to the story and his character even now. especially now. #And I really love the dichotomy between the warm and loved Archie vs the cast-off broken Archus it’s so good for him too #And as a side-note. My Dism is the superior Dism ✨ #just pav things

[phlyaros]

im gonna be real anon I don't care about label shit ship discourse I care about if real people are getting hurt and ONE reblog from someone being jokingly aggressive on the subject isn't enough to convince me that people are getting hurt when there's more evidence to the contrary. you've put me in a shitty situation here and I don't want to engage with it. please just ask people what they actually think next time before you go throwing your assumptions at other people.

#i trust enough that most of my mutuals understand the nuance needed of media depiction of unsavory subjects. #if i'm wrong then I'm wrong. okay. thank you. #i hate the dichotomy i hate the lack of nuance in this discussion I want people to actually talk to each other #I want people to realize that you can respect people with different opinions than you if they aren't actually hurting anyone #I'm literally. someone who was alone with me a lot as a kid is in prison for CP/solicitation. I think if anyone can say that media- #depiction of fucked up shit that really happens is more nuanced than 'x is bad so it shouldnt exist' #you cant do that in real life. you cant make something not exist. just because something fictional contains it doesnt mean it condones it. #im so tired. im so tired. why wasnt this a dm. i dont really want to have this discussion publicly. #i can think things are gross but understand that there's nuance to depiction and just because I don't like it doesn't mean those people- #-don't deserve to have something that understands them. #not everyone is good at actually. being mature enough to handle that nuance. when they try. people can be wrong #and if people ARE weird I can just not engage with them. there's. I can decide for myself! #and now I'M stuck in my brain is insane and. as if! as if people always reblog things they 100% agree with! #im so tired. im so tired. im in pain and people are messaging me about a singular reblog from six months ago on someone else's blog. #i understand being cautious i really do but thats like insane behavior. why are you putting this on me. why didn't you just talk to me. #fucked up things happen and people deserve to be understood. okay. even if i don't like it. there is no right answer. there is no world- #where all pain can be avoided. saving private ryan made vet suicides skyrocket. did you know that #but it also understood those people. yknow. and there's more people living that it understood too. #there's just so much nuance that's thrown out when you cover everything you don't like with a blanket. okay #it's more complicated. it's more complicated. please. #in my mind it's far stranger to assume everyone is out there giggling and twiddling their fingers thinking about in/cest #than it is to just assume they don't until proven otherwise. #im so tired. just block me if you don't understand where I'm coming from. I don't care about ship disco/urse and i dont want to live- #constantly worried about what other people think about shit that has no right answer. #everyone is innocent until proven guilty and one reblog of a joking aggressive post isnt enough for me. sorry. #phlyaros' nonsense #euurgh. #welcome to the internet where we judge people based on one reblogged joke and nothing else even if it contradicts us #what a perfect encapsulation of what I don't like about dichotomy argument #tw suicide

[cruelsister-moved2]

in love with this german girl whose whole channel is just 40 minute videos of her ranting abt YA booktok books i literally havent even heard of most of these books but i cant stop watching

#she does like YA i believe so its like taking apart these books for being bad at what they do #rather than saying that what theyre trying to do is inherently bad #which i think makes it way more fun to watch #bc its like yeah YA probably isnt going to be revolutionary but they should still be like well done for what they are #i feel like if anything the general cultural dichotomies between like 'real art' vs 'trashy crap for teen girls' kind of like #removes any expectation on people producing casual entertainment ffor teen girls to llike #do a good job at that #does that make any sense? #like its the same w pop music like there is still a really clear difference between pop music that's exciting and interesting and well #crafted within the paradigm #vs shit that is just lazy and cheap to make money bc they know it doesnt matter #and the ppl universally dismissing pop music as a form are kind of just helping those people out #to make bad lazy music

[wickedzeevyln]

Birthdays

Reflecting on my life I had the enduring impression that birthdays are nothing but a countdown. It’s just a period of time we cross out of our list. Until yesterday when someone pointed out that it’s not. We are always blessed with people that would sprout out of the moment when we say foolish things to remind us that life in itself is a miracle. Making it to a certain age is a milestone worth…

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#45 #Amalgamation of Experiences #Approval #Before This Day Ends #Beloved Friends #Birthday #Birthdays #Blessed with People #Born With #Celebrating Every Time #Cheesy Messages #Cherished Family #Chose to Meet Them #Coffee #Countdown #Cross Out #Cups of Tea #Dichotomy of Good and Bad #Each Second #Enduring Impression #Erwinism #Eureka Moments #Every Day #Excited to Hear Your Stories #Eyes of Ember #Family Laughter #Fantastic #Finite Moments #Foolish Things #Forever Partner

[specialagentartemis]

I get variations on this comment on my post about history misinformation all the time: "why does it matter?" Why does it matter that people believe falsehoods about history? Why does it matter if people spread history misinformation? Why does it matter if people on tumblr believe that those bronze dodecahedra were used for knitting, or that Persephone had a daughter named Mespyrian? It's not the kind of misinformation that actually hurts people, like anti-vaxx propaganda or climate change denial. It doesn't hurt anyone to believe something false about the past.

Which, one, thanks for letting me know on my post that you think my job doesn't matter and what I do is pointless, if it doesn't really matter if we know the truth or make up lies about history because lies don't hurt anyone. But two, there are lots of reasons that it matters.

It encourages us to distrust historians when they talk about other aspects of history. You might think it's harmless to believe that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was trans. It's less harmless when you're espousing that the Holocaust wasn't really about Jews because the Nazis "came for trans people first." You might think it's harmless to believe that the French royalty of Versailles pooped and urinated on the floor of the palace all the time, because they were asshole rich people anyway, who cares, we hate the rich here; it's rather less harmless when you decide that the USSR was the communist ideal and Good, Actually, and that reports of its genocidal oppression are actually lies.

It encourages anti-intellectualism in other areas of scholarship. Deciding based on your own gut that the experts don't know what they're talking about and are either too stupid to realize the truth, or maliciously hiding the truth, is how you get to anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. It is also how you come to discount housing-first solutions for homelessness or the idea that long-term sustained weight loss is both biologically unlikely and health-wise unnecessary for the majority of fat people - because they conflict with what you feel should be true. Believing what you want to be true about history, because you want to believe it, and discounting fact-based corrections because you don't want them to be true, can then bleed over into how you approach other sociological and scientific topics.

How we think about history informs how we think about the present. A lot of people want certain things to be true - this famous person from history was gay or trans, this sexist story was actually feminist in its origin - because we want proof that gay people, trans people, and women deserve to be respected, and this gives evidence to prove we once were and deserve to be. But let me tell you a different story: on Thanksgiving of 2016, I was at a family friend's house and listening to their drunk conservative relative rant, and he told me, confidently, that the Roman Empire fell because they instituted universal healthcare, which was proof that Obama was destroying America. Of course that's nonsense. But projecting what we think is true about the world back onto history, and then using that as recursive proof that that is how the world is... is shoddy scholarship, and gets used for topics you don't agree with just as much as the ones you do. We should not be encouraging this, because our politics should be informed by the truth and material reality, not how we wish the past proved us right.

It frequently reinforces "Good vs. Bad" dichotomies that are at best unhelpful and at worst victim-blaming. A very common thread of historical misinformation on tumblr is about the innocence or benevolence of oppressed groups, slandered by oppressors who were far worse. This very frequently has truth to it - but makes the lies hard to separate out. It often simplifies the narrative, and implies that the reason that colonialism and oppression were bad was because the victims were Good and didn't deserve it... not because colonialism and oppression are bad. You see this sometimes with radical feminist mother goddess Neolithic feminist utopia stuff, but you also see it a lot regarding Native American and African history. I have seen people earnestly argue that Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice, that that was a lie made up by the Spanish to slander them. That is not true. Human sacrifice was part of Aztec, Maya, and many Central American war/religious practices. They are significantly more complex than often presented, and came from a captive-based system of warfare that significantly reduced the number of people who got killed in war compared to European styles of war that primarily killed people on the battlefield rather than taking them captive for sacrifice... but the human sacrifice was real and did happen. This can often come off with the implications of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent victim' that implies that the bad things the Spanish conquistadors did were bad because the victims were innocent or good. This is a very easy trap to fall into; if the victims were good, they didn't deserve it. Right? This logic is dangerous when you are presented with a person or group who did something bad... you're caught in a bind. Did they deserve their injustice or oppression because they did something bad? This kind of logic drives a lot of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and defenses of Kyle Rittenhouse today. The answer to a colonialist logic of "The Aztecs deserved to be conquered because they did human sacrifice and that's bad" is not "The Aztecs didn't do human sacrifice actually, that's just Spanish propaganda" (which is a lie) it should be "We Americans do human sacrifice all the god damn time with our forever wars in the Middle East, we just don't call it that. We use bullets and bombs rather than obsidian knives but we kill way, way more people in the name of our country. What does that make us? Maybe genocide is not okay regardless of if you think the people are weird and scary." It becomes hard to square your ethics of the Innocent Victim and Lying Perpetrator when you see real, complicated, individual-level and group-level interactions, where no group is made up of members who are all completely pure and good, and they don't deserve to be oppressed anyway.

It makes you an unwitting tool of the oppressor. The favorite, favorite allegation transphobes level at trans people, and conservatives at queer people, is that we're lying to push the Gay Agenda. We're liars or deluded fools. If you say something about queer or trans history that's easy to debunk as false, you have permanently hurt your credibility - and the cause of queer history. It makes you easy to write off as a liar or a deluded fool who needs misinformation to make your case. If you say Louisa May Alcott was trans, that's easy to counter with "there is literally no evidence of that, and lots of evidence that she was fine being a woman," and instantly tanks your credibility going forward, so when you then say James Barry was trans and push back against a novel or biopic that treats James Barry as a woman, you get "you don't know what you're talking about, didn't you say Louisa May Alcott was trans too?" TERFs love to call trans people liars - do not hand them ammunition, not even a single bullet. Make sure you can back up what you say with facts and evidence. This is true of homophobes, of racists, of sexists. Be confident of your facts, and have facts to give to the hopeful and questioning learners who you are relating this story to, or the bigots who you are telling off, because misinformation can only hurt you and your cause.

It makes the queer, female, POC, or other marginalized listeners hurt, sad, and betrayed when something they thought was a reflection of their own experiences turns out not to be real. This is a good response to a performance art piece purporting to tell a real story of gay WWI soldiers, until the author revealed it as fiction. Why would you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that? Why would you want to risk inflicting that disappointment and betrayal on anyone else?

It makes it harder to learn the actual truth.

Historical misinformation has consequences, and those consequences are best avoided - by checking your facts, citing your sources, and taking the time and effort to make sure you are actually telling the truth.

#history #history and the world #misinformation

[moki-dokie]

been seeing some stuff on blue eye samurai and big yikes to nearly everyone pushing extremely western ideals onto these characters.

this is early edo period. 1600s. the japan you know now did not exist yet.

yall. please. there was NO concept of sexuality in pre-modern japan. that came with both the influx of christianity and western influence very very late in history. like, mid-1800s. (yes, there was christianity pre-1800s but it was not a widespread idea yet and wouldn't be until about the 1800s since, y'know, missionaries were routinely murdered before then)

"so and so is either bi and hasn't figured it out yet or..." no. that isn't how it worked then. nobody gave a shit what was between your legs. anyone could be attracted to anyone else. it was a little more common for male homosexual relationships to be between an adult and younger male - like many other places around the world - but two adult men could bang and love each other just as easily. relationships between women were quite common - especially since so many men were often away at war. there's tons of pornographic prints from the time depicting all manner of fun queer relationships. sex itself had absolutely no moral assignment to it. good sex was good health. it didn't matter who with. (well, social class/caste mattered more than anything else tbh but that didn't stop upper and lower class from fucking.) that isn't to say people didn't have preferences. of course they did. that is human nature. preferences arose more from physical appearance, caste, and circumstances with gender being about the last thing one would look for in a partner - romantic, casual, or otherwise. the only role in sex where gender actually mattered was for procreation.

there would be no queer awakening moment, no sudden switch flipped, no stigma to have internal conflicts about because it simply did not exist as a concept whatsoever. you were either attracted to a person or you weren't, it was that simple. gender played no role when it came to sex and sexual attraction. the japanese were lightyears ahead of western cultures in this particular area - like most cultures were before christianity came in and ruined everything with its backwards morals and strict good/evil dichotomy.

yall have got to realize queer rep will not and should not always adhere by modern western standards. there was no straight, gay, bi, or anything else of the sort. the closest they ever got was referring to roles during sex - as in who is giving and who is receiving.

i know this is mostly a made up story but it is still set within a very specific time period and culture, which should be honored and respected by not making it fit into our box. tons of research went into making this show historically accurate (albeit with some discrepancies but tbh they aren't really that huge) right down to the calligraphy writing. please please please don't whitewash the culture from these characters.

i say this mainly because without this knowledge, so many of you are going to build these characters up on a foundation they aren't meant to be on and then you'll rage about queerbaiting and bad queer rep if it isn't somehow super explicitly stated, if it doesn't match your very modern, very western ideal of what queer looks like. don't try to force this plot and narrative and characters into something they canonically and historically aren't. headcanons are a thing, AUs are a thing, fanfiction is a thing - leave your western thinking for those and let these characters simply exist as they should otherwise. this is one of those times where the queerness really does not need to be examined at all beyond what we get.

i know it can be hard to wrap your head around - sexuality is such a huge part of our identity in the western world and has slowly started to spread amongst other parts of the world in importance. but just keep in mind with these particular characters, that concept would be so very alien to them.

#blue eye samurai #i'm gonna bite people if i see complaints about queer anything in this show

[catmask]

i think that interestingly enough media made for intended for children (as someone who both enjoys it and creates it myself) has made it so people expect real life harm to be presented in the form of antagonists rather than an action that can be preformed by anyone, to anyone else

by this i mean, rather than accepting that abuse is something anyone is capable of enacting unto others, 'the abused' and 'the abuser' are two starkly opposed character roles people fall into, one who is only capable of receiving harm, and one who is only capable of inflicting it

it makes it so that, within this dichotomy, people become so convinced of their own harmlessness and their own helplessness that they believe themselves truly incapable of hurting others at all. so that if you were to point out the ways their actions are currently causing harm, they would fall back into this belief that its impossible for that to be true, because they themself are a victim, they are GOOD, so the person 'opposing them' (pointing this out, or setting a boundary) must somehow be BAD

if the disclaimer is even needed, im a victim of domestic abuse and a csa victim numerous times over. this is not an accusation so much as an observation of the world around me, and the systems of harm we are all capable of slipping into.

#scratchpost #txt