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scarlet--wiccan · 2 months

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Do you think Billy and Tommy suffer from intergenerational trauma ? Also we never see Billy and Tommy interact with Max. If you could alter their origins what would you do ?

(You don’t have to answer all these questions sorry lol)

When we talk about intergenerational trauma, we are usually referring to trauma which persists in our cultural memories, or to trauma responses which become cyclical patterns in our families. One of the things that's really interesting about this family of characters is that none of them were raised by their birth parents or grew up with a complete knowledge of/relationship to their cultural heritage. This is slightly less true now for Wanda and Pietro, post-retcon, but my point is that the way these people have inherited intergenerational trauma is typically non-linear.

I tend to get in trouble for saying this, but I think that Billy and Tommy's reincarnation makes the most sense as a metaphor for interracial adoption. Specifically, their relationship to Wanda, their Romani heritage, and their family history maps fairly well to that experience. So, while the course of their lives has been impacted by the trauma of past generations in a very material way-- and there is something to be said for epigenetics-- they may not have internalized the Maximoff family's intergenerational trauma in the way that you're picturing. The nature of their existence and upbringing creates its own traumas and fractured identities, but a lot of what they've inherited is going manifest in the course of processing new information about their background as young adults-- not to mention the ramifications of being publicly known as Wanda's children in a post-Decimation world.

I am not an adoptee, so this is not my experience to speak on, and you can take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but I am a person of mixed Romani heritage, and family separation and cultural disruption in the wake of WWII are big parts of my inherited trauma. That's part of why I find the Maximoffs-- Billy and Tommy included-- so relatable, because that's a specific form of cultural trauma that they have had to endure in every generation, and in ways that reflect multiple periods of Romani history. Part of why I like to really emphasize the fact that Billy and Tommy are Romani characters is because their positionality and way of arriving at Roma identity adds nuance and diversity to Romani representation. I think the spectrum of Romani cultural & ethnic identity is something that a lot of comic writers and fans just don't understand, but I think that digging in to how Billy, Tommy, and Luna relate to those identities would be a really good, organic way to have those conversations in the text and bring a more authentic understanding of the subject to readers. But you absolutely need a Romani writer to do it, and that's why they need to start hiring us!!!!!

I'd also like to point something out that I don't think anybody really talks about-- the current version of Wanda and Pietro's origin story and how they got their powers reflects the real history of human experimentation, reproductive rights violations, and child abductions that have plagued Romani communities for a long time, especially in mid-century Europe. Their "mutations" are a product of that violence, and the fact that Billy and Tommy inherited those mutations reflects the medical and genetic legacies of this racial trauma. This is presented in direct contrast and conversation with the Maximoffs' magical heritage as witches, which is is a racial stereotype that here is subverted as a positive, enduring legacy of cultural empowerment and survival.

Of course, the text itself does not fully commit to these ideas on paper, but my point is that when you have the knowledge and you're invested in how Romani people are imagined and portrayed in this world, it's a very rich text!!! I love comics and I love these characters! There's so much to talk about!

Since you did mention Magneto, I want to note that Wanda and Pietro's relationship to his & Magda's history and their inherited trauma is also non-linear, and has shifted several times based on retcons and varying character treatments. There's no doubt that they have a lot of baggage, but again, it's a situation where they didn't grow up as children of Holocaust survivors, so the way they process it might just be different. I certainly do think that the Holocaust and the war are part of their cultural memory, even if we don't know how much the Maximoffs were directly affected. Billy and Tommy are more removed from Magneto in this sense, but it should go without saying that one or both of them are Jewish and would already have a connection to that history through their foster/birth families.

#billy kaplan #wiccan #tommy shepherd #speed #intergenerational trauma

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nico-esoterica · 3 months

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The Pluto in Aqua Survival Guide For Millennials and Gen Z 🚀

Part 1: Pluto through the Houses (Below) | Part 2: How The Generations Will Be Affected + Advice // Long Post Ahead++ If you’re reading this in February 2024, Pluto hasn’t officially transited into Aquarius yet but it WILL spend most of the year in it. This is giving the same vibes as 2008, the year of the US recession and subsequent global economic crash—but was, interestingly enough, when Pluto previewed Capricorn. It wasn’t exactly stable yet carried a smorgasbord of influence. In the 5 months and 2 and a half weeks it spent in the water goat’s sign, billions of charts were affected in ways we’re still studying to this day. So I consider this ‘preview’ worth studying as well because history can be cyclical.

But I think a doom and gloom perspective is redundant. We’re used to hearing how we can’t do something or how insurmountable the odds are because we typically associate Saturn with austerity. ‘The economy’s down’, ‘we can’t afford this,’ ‘climate change is worsening by the day,’ ‘10 tips to stop yourself from doom scrolling,’ including whatever well-meaning anxieties your parents reminded you of this week while you’re panicking over whether or not your Uber Eats tip is going to overdraft your account. Where Aquarius differs from Capricorn is that it prefers not to compromise its ideals over its survival. The latter are like the Millennials who project their neatly compartmentalized boomer inflicted trauma onto their subordinates because they’re from a generation where Uranus and Neptune’s dreams of job security on the horizon became lofty and farfetched by the recession. It hit when those born from the mid 80s to mid 90s would’ve been entering middle school or finishing university by that time (11-23yo). That means that those on the cusp of adolescence and at the beginning of our stages of realization in early adulthood weren’t catapulting into the abundance promised if they ‘worked hard enough’ but straight into an echoless void. But under Pluto in Aquarius, we can expect hopefuls to pick up the debris left strewn on the ground from the failed system and repurpose familiar ideas into more promising and sustainable fabric. If we think of the typical Aquarius, they’re usually a person who had to adapt to a negligent environment using a unique form of genius which subsequently separated them from the rest. They’re shrewd and strategic and have a sixth sense for building their world view around what makes sense to them—even if they’re the odd ones out yet again. Because what they don’t tell you about the water bearer is that no matter how embittered it becomes, somewhere under the weeds of the pain and disappointment its grown to expect, there’s an idealistic child selfishly clinging to hope—they’re lovers masking as misanthropes. That’s why Leo, ruled by the Sun, is its sibling. Through its opposition, we learn to always keep our standards for ourselves and the world around us sky high. If the system benefits from us underestimating ourselves, we must invest in shameless self belief.

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Dates are a rough estimate and will hypothesize what Pluto in Aqua (and other slow moving transits) have in store for those born between 1984-2007. Pluto in Aqua (themes): Recycle/Upcycle, Renew, Radicalize, Reject Key: • Saturn = Consolidation and attitudes towards structure and foundation (how they systemize/structure themselves esp when they need help or avoid it) • Uranus = Innovation and drastic sudden changes personally/circumstantially • Neptune = Personal zeitgeist and attitudes towards social trends and moods which deal with the topic of that house • Pluto = Aggrandizement of power, resources, and gains and losses of scale through the process of (slow and deeply sewn or festering) upheaval/uprooting, death, decay of the topics of the house it occupies, catalyst(s) for personal transformation Aries 1H: (Pluto in 11H) - friend groups, networks, the internet, and community service, (theory—ruler = social capital and clout) —Expansion (or) creation of friend groups and networks who share what matters most to you and finding community support amongst an unexpected group of people who’ll radically change your mindset. You may go through a period where everyone seems to ‘fall off’ right before you find the right people (they’ll probably be outliers or unique). Industry wise, this can mean being more tapped into what’s next tech and internet wise especially if you have placements here. Some of you may go off the grid entirely and live in a co-op in the woods/mountains to be honest.

But you and Gemini Risings need to watch Midsommar twice at the least. But this transit will also put many of you in places of leadership. You’re going to become the main protagonists in these tribes or circles of new ideas, especially with Uranus trining from your 3rd and Neptune creating a blazing soul fire in your 1st. Since Jupiter generally joys in the 11th, that Pluto/Neptune on your 11/1 feels like many of you may adopt a belief system or reject the notion of mainstream spirituality entirely for something more grounded and personal to you. Just be mindful of ideological rabbit holes and potentially isolating yourselves by accident. Taurus 1H: (Pluto in 10H) - social status/public image and career direction and its honors and great achievements, bosses and people in high positions of power, public recognition (and the pursuit of it) —Thought leader and People’s Champ—See what’s happening with Megan Thee Stallion where the entire internet shifted to support her after years of bullying and targeted harassment (she’s a Taurus Asc). The ambitious will benefit heavily from this transit while the unambitious (but who want to live well) will gain attention, credibility, and opportunity for surviving all this time, esp if you’re marginalized w/ a platform (if you don’t have one, get one NOW). People will uplift you for the more authentic you are.

But you’re going to have to learn to accept that others will see the greatness in you that you’ve been afraid of believing all along. With Uranus moving through your 2nd and Neptune in your 12th, you’re going to feel like you finally have autonomy with your finances and life path. But it’s going to call for you being comfortable with advocating for yourselves and setting clear boundaries because the former outers in Aqua hitting your 1st from your 10th can mean you spent a period being disrespected and feeling adrift by male or authority figures and it leading to you questioning yourself and your life potential. You’re used to people not believing in you—but the tables have turned. Stand on top of the business of yourself. Gemini 1H: (Pluto in 9H) - higher education, government, long distance travel and foreign culture, and organized religion and traditionally taught spirituality, politics, and publishing (large scale, corporate), teaching —Many of you may drop out of school (or find niched but polarizing niches within it), travel the world permanently, or may be radicalized by spirituality, politics, or education in a very BIG way that’ll be unique to this era. Please avoid Scientology and cults like the plague (or starting them) because there’ll be a strong ‘itch’ to find a sense of purpose w/ this transit. Because it’s so deep and aggrandizing, you’re going to feel like your entire life revolves around something larger than yourself and while this is a GOOD thing, you can get lost if you don’t have an internal compass.

The answers are within YOU, not something else. But this will be a very big ‘finding yourself’ transit to get to that conclusion. Similar to my advice to Aries Risings, these outers are hitting major identity shifting houses for you—The difference with you, Gemini, is that your ideals will be more solid but your concept of ‘yourself’ will undergo several transformations which will compliment your politics. Your framework for life will experience a new barrage of ‘what ifs’ and the current way you think will not be the same as it was a week, a year, ten years, 20 years into the future. You love change but with Uranus squaring a Pisces MC for some of you (or planets there), it’s important that you remember who you are versus what the world may want from you. Don’t get lost in the sauce. Cancer 1H: (Pluto in 8H) - shared resources and boundaries, inherited trauma and family karma [5th from the 8th] (and material inheritance) and trauma cycles, and coping mechanisms, shame and denial, loans/taxes, supernatural experiences, death, and the occult, sexual entanglement and taboo —You’ve already had three outer planets run amok in here and this will be the continuation of what Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have prepped you for. Having terrible boundaries (too thick or thin) and other people’s baggage you feel like you have to shoulder or inherit is not gonna be it this time around. But the theme of this for some of you will be a HUGE taking-back-your-power-from-other-people era.

It’s taking ownership of something in your life that others thought they were entitled to. But it usually comes with a molting, shedding, and releasing process. This period can also be about transmuting grief, shame, or guilt into power. Others may fall down the rabbit hole of metaphysics (esp via NDE, astral travel, etc) and there’ll be a pocket who’ll (this sounds wacked but ima say it) experience alien contact and communication due to Uranus/Pluto being in air signs in psychic houses for you. But oof—The era of the people pleasing because people made you think being assertive is a ‘bad’ thing is over. Leo 1H: (Pluto in 7H) - contracts, serious relationships and marriages, relationship dynamics and what is projected onto you and from you, enemies you know —Similar to Cancer Risings, you’re used to having your boundaries compromised because conditioning taught you not to have them (or to make them steep). During this next cycle, your rebellion and rejection of what’s expected from you in your relationships will most likely send you down several rabbit holes where you experiment with different relationship styles and there’ll be a sense of ‘anarchy’ to everything.

Uranus transiting your 10H has been amplifying this already so you’re at the point now where you’re too far gone to appease and bow out like usual. But you’re also committed to radically setting boundaries now or letting them dissolve—if you’re ready for it. If not, Pluto transiting here can create spores of abandonment issues to infect relationships if the core causes aren’t uprooted—but having any natal Aqua placements will provide clues to learn what’s there. Being vulnerable and intimate means letting people know what hurts, where it hurts, and how they can care for you to accommodate it. Virgo 1H: (Pluto in 6H) - service industry, day jobs and short-term employment and trends with employment, overall job market and how you fit within it, work ethic, everyday health and routines (and health concerns), and pets (small domesticated animals) —You are so DONE with the way you’ve been treated or felt ‘afloat’ with your everyday life over the past several years (and longer). With Uranus about to transit your 10H for a while with Neptune in your 8H are going to push you (externally and internally) to take charge of your life in a way you can control. You’re very good at following orders because it’s sensible but suck at taking charge because honestly?

Neptune transiting your 7th for so long gives me the impression that you have a hard time saying ‘No’ when people need things from you. For the contrarians in the audience, relax—It just means your environment taught you to placate it. But life path wise, or just for right now, Pluto will force you to take your dreams and goals more seriously by thrusting you into situations where you’ll feel like you’re being called to act on your deep soul urges at last. Especially with the North Node transiting here in a few years—You’re going to know you’re doing what’s ‘right’ for you if it feels like you can finally be yourself. Libra 1H: (Pluto in 5H) - pleasure and recreation, the arts (esp those which feed the inner child), children, and more serious hobbies or deeply felt/consistent ones (passions), romanticism/addictions/vices which become necessary for recreation or to feel creative inspiration, what inspires you and how deeply it hits/affects —In a professional or creative sense, you’re about to tap into some serious inner child healing where you take those years you’ve neglected the more artistic part of yourself and devote yourself to nurturing it (at last). Relationship wise, many of you will be reconsidering having children later on than you originally planned because you value stability. Others will be abandoning it all together.

This will also be a period, calling it now, where a good portion of you will be more open to polyamory if you weren’t already. In a non-romantic sense, you’re going to be more interested in non-hierarchal and more communal relationship dynamics where your world has the robust support system you needed as a child. The focus overall will be finding sustainable ways to repair the damage/trauma you most likely experienced from having Pluto in Capricorn hit your angles for so long, especially for cardinal signs. But it’ll feel strange and even dizzying at first—You’re not used to shamelessly choosing yourself and your inner world and desires therein. Get comfortable by letting people be uncomfortable with this shift. Scorpio 1H: (Pluto in 4H) - family and origin, family secrets and history, bought and inherited real estate/material wealth, one’s sense of security and privacy and the private self, family legacy and drama, roots and family patterns and obligations and how we react to them —There’s some childhood wounds that need to properly scab over that you’ve been picking at for the last several years or more since Saturn entered its home signs and conjoined Pluto. Not all of you have family problems, but the other three outers transiting here lets me know that the concept of ‘safety’ will be a sensitive topic. Did you feel completely supported? Did you experience neglect? Were there issues with boundaries?

Gen Z/illennials with outer planets here will not be able to skirt around facing their core issue of fearing being vulnerable. Uranus in Gemini trining this house from your 8H will expedite this after it’s done squaring it from Taurus in your 7th—which just made things more awkward and chaotic than better. This house also dealing with family legacy with Pluto here may present…unexpected rewards for your suffering that were long overdue. Material rewards and those that can only be measured with the heart. You will be gaining this time instead of losing. Sagittarius 1H: (Pluto in 3H) - early childhood experiences, siblings, neighborhood and local community affairs, communication and publishing (written and digital—usually small scale), everyday rituals and hobbies, creature comforts which are ritualized, short distance travels, habits which are taught or gained/inspired, mundane everyday activity or obligation and how you feel about it/go about it —With Pluto leaving your 2H, you’re experiencing a titanic-level mindset shift. Depending on the rest of your chart, what you can anticipate is that your everyday life will carry a new level of intensity. Everything will have additional weight and purpose. But your well-being is moving out of a place of operating out of constant survival-mode to prioritizing what you think about what your life ought to look like.

Pluto transiting from your 12H to your 3H, depending on your age, means that the underpinning of your life has revolved around what your role is within a conglomerate of people where the focus isn’t on you but what you can contribute or you acting out in defiance of that or having an existential fear, that’s usually impressed on you by a parent, of losing control. With the outers beaming from your 5th and 7th, this is going to be about you going back to the beginning—what makes you genuinely happy? What makes you feel good? Who do you like having around you? Who’s important and why? It’ll feel like learning to walk again and rediscovering your core interests, passions, and love styles but without worrying about who you’re performing for. Because fuck them. Kindly and unkindly. Capricorn 1H: (Pluto in 2H) - personal resources and finance, attitudes about material security and said resources, the different ways in which material comfort can ground us and reflect in what makes us feel the most secure in our lives on a day to day basis, love of the material and/or fear of it, conditioned attitudes about money —You’re in a unique position where you’re going to begin valuing yourself outside of what you can tangibly provide—and for you this is a big deal because that’s how you’ve perceived yourself until now. Pluto settling in your 2nd means that for some of you, your ideas will become your black card (your perspective on the outside looking in or the inverse) and any community you tap into will provide you with its resources.

For others, you’ll be experiencing ego deaths where you’ll either want to detach from the system entirely and start growing your own food, sourcing your own materials, etc, anything to make you into the resource instead while the opposing camp will turn their corporate trauma into winning underdog success with new industries (and opportunities) that’ll open up. There’s going to be a death somewhere with all parties involved regarding how you see yourself. It won’t be about what you can do for the world but how it will pivot to work for you. But it requires a perspective shift—Are you ready to kill off the part of yourself who’s been taught wind, storm, and turmoil are required to live a comfortable life? Haven’t you suffered enough? Aquarius 1H: (Pluto in 1H) - vitality and life force, core identity, the lens you see your life through (esp w/ planets here), how others see us and how we present ourselves consciously and unconsciously, appearance/style, the circumstances life brought you into and themes which play out around it (has more to do w/ parents and family dynamics) —You’ve been a lone wolf for a hot minute now—With so many outers hitting your angles for decades, you’ve found a bit of schadenfreude in the world waking up and realizing how fucked up everything’s been. But in a strange turn of events, said world’s now standing awkwardly on your doorstep, especially for those w/ other placements in Aquarius. You’re being recognized and vindicated for what’s been denied to you.

But if you’ve been sabotaging all this time, you may take any life or behavior adjustments you’ve felt prompted to make as an invitation for more rejection and ridicule. Because Pluto’s going to energize any generational planets you have here (or have transited), all of your actions have radical potential—but it’ll be up to you to decide if they’ll aid or hinder you. If they’re moving you forward (w/ Neptune in Aries hitting your 3rd), you’ll be able to transmute your self-consciousness of feeling othered into self-actualized power. If not, you’ll truly be rebels without a cause—feeling more lost than ever before. Especially for those of you w/ Scorpio placements. Pisces 1H: (Pluto in 12H) - what’s hidden from us and the unseen (including enemies), the unconscious, hospitals/mental institutions/jails and hidden but very present structures of life, isolation and sanctuary, foreign lands, spirituality, sabbaticals, unconscious wounds, where we undo ourselves, large animals, circumstances before birth which affect the native in unseen ways or were present —You have the opportunity to set things right but it’s going to require you do a little forgive and forgetting, wiping the slate clean, or whatever necessary to heal the wounds of alienation and scrutiny many of you have experienced w/ the Aquarius outers transiting and/or occupying your 12th. Because this is the house of self-undoing and unearthed psychic trauma, there’s a lot you’ve been processing. Many of you have a bad habit of wearing your wounds without tending to them properly or detaching and letting them fester in private—And the first new and full moons in Aqua over the next several years will help you realize just how debilitating that’s been. You don’t know who you are unless you’re impaling yourself on something–because deep down, you may find suffering to be necessary or it gives you purpose.

But your 12H in Aqua being hit with transformative Pluto is going to make you aware of how much this cycle is the result of you being emotionally neglected in some way, shape, or form. Especially for those with personal or generational Aquarius planets, it means that you found refuge in alienation and being on the outside looking in. But Pluto here can operate as a catalyst for rich and profound spiritual and emotional growth. But this planet here is double edged—Either you’re going to learn that you have an identity outside of the outsider or you’ll let it push you further into the void of detaching and expecting the worst because the worst is what you’ve always had to endure. Don’t do this anymore.

#astrology #pluto in aquarius #pluto through the houses #astrology transits #millennials #gen z

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female-malice · 1 year

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can you give me some tips on how to awaken your inner witch? my problem is that my inner reddit bro refuses to let me believe in things like astrology, witchcraft and palmistry. idk where to start because eveything comes off as phony to me. i want to do rituals and believe in something bigger than myself because the trauma of being raised in and escaping an Abrahamic religion will never leave me.

Start here:

Crann Bethadh. The Celtic tree of life. The green leaves photosynthesize energy from the sun to grow the tree. Then they fall to the ground. By covering the ground, they prevent certain weedy plants from colonizing the area around the tree. They also help the soil around the tree retain moisture. Over time, the leaf litter decays into humus. The rich nutritious humus creates a perfect environment for the interconnected tree roots and mycorrhizal network. The mycorrhizae store nutrients for the tree and gradually distribute them when the tree needs them.

Not only do leaves fall to the ground, but seeds, too. The tree of life shows them falling to the ground and growing into new trees.

This ancient tree of life symbol intricately illustrates these cycles in detail. The leaves growing, falling, protecting the roots, decaying into humus, and being managed and stored by mycorrhizae. This process happens over the course of a whole year. But in the tree of life, time is a circle and you can view the whole year at once. And you can see the symmetry of cyclical time. As above, so below. As the sun energizes the tree, so too does the soil.

The tree is a perfect holy being. She is a saint. She is an autotroph. She does not need to take life in order to live. Her relationship with the life-death cycle is fascinating and there is so much we can learn from her.

But we are very different. We are heterotrophs. We can strive to be like the tree saints, but we can never reach true sainthood. We must take life to live. Therein lies the great riddle of heterotroph life. All other heterotrophs have solved that riddle. And our ancestors solved that riddle, too. The answer to that riddle was ancient and loved and protected. And that answer was passed down from one generation to the next. It was passed down through animism and holy trees and heroic stories. It was passed down by midwives and scouts and druids. The answer was used to resolve conflicts between different people. And it was used to resolve conflicts between different forms of life. Our ancestors were never perfect. But they did solve this riddle.

But then they came across a different answer. A much simpler answer to the riddle from a far off land with brilliant cities and fierce armies. For this simple answer, you did not need to try and conceptualize time as a circle. You did not need to hold the whole cycle, life, death, above, below, all together in your head. This new answer was more linear. All you needed to know was that a heavenly father created nature and then gave men dominion over that nature.

But not everyone is charmed by simplicity. The ancient solution to the riddle still carried on alongside this Abrahamic solution. Christianity taught people to be farmers and to produce wealth for their holy feudal lords. But getting the pagans to do any kind of organized wealth production was like herding cats. They were a woodland headache for the lords who were supposed to turn their forest lands into gold. And then a plague came and many Christians died. But in the middle of the forest where people lived by ancient knowledge, they fared much better. And so suspicions grew. And the church capitalized on those suspicions.

The Hammer of Witches. After the bible, this was the second-most popular book during the renaissance.

Centuries of this. The ancient answer to the great heterotroph riddle was burned at the stake.

In the absence of that complicated ancient knowledge, men began trying to rebuild complexity.

Alongside men's mysticism and alchemy, the tree of life survived in various strange and altered forms. Eventually, Carl Linnaeus gave us this one.

Men are at the top of the tree because they are closest to a heavenly father. And all other life is below men. All other life exists to raise men up to that heavenly father. Although Carl's Christianity permeates his work, he did spend most of his life observing life. And his strange tree reintroduced an ancient question that many had forgotten how to ask. Is it maybe all connected? Are we maybe all cousins?

And a century later, Darwin answered that question with the brilliant science of evolutionary biology. Yes, it is all connected. We are all cousins. And there is a tree of life. And we can look at all lifetimes all at once. We can hold it all in our minds. And it looks like this.

And where are we? Zoom in on that tiny branch on the very far right. There we are. This tree is not symmetrical and perfect like the saintly Celtic autotroph tree. This is a wild chaotic fractal. The rings of extinction resemble the rings on a tree trunk.

Fast growth in spring/early summer. Slow growth in late summer/fall. And no growth in winter.

Just as there is annual seasons for trees, there is geologic seasons for biodiversity. There are springs that bring an explosion of biodiversity. There are summers where all that new life co-evolves. There are falls where some unfit variations of life fade away. And there are winters of mass extinction where entire branches of the tree of life crumble into dust.

Annual seasons follow the dance of the Earth around the Sun. And geologic seasons are influenced by the Earth's various personalities and moods. The Earth is alive, too. The trees of life refer to the biodiversity on her crust. But the Earth herself is like a giant cell or giant particle, with a core, mantel, crust, and atmosphere.

And every 100 million years or so, there's a gas leak or some volcanism or an awkward collision. And this causes a mass extinction.

The last one was an asteroid 66 million years ago. That winter gave way to a brilliant spring of mammalian biodiversity. But we're already back to winter again so soon. We were supposed to get another 40 million years of mammal paradise. But instead, humanity has summoned an early winter. And how did we manage to do that?

Well, the Abrahamic solution to the heterotroph riddle is incorrect. Men do not have dominion over nature. The world is not linear. It is cyclical. It's a complex system of mutual relationships. But for the last 600 years, the ruling class has killed and terrorized every human who understood that ancient knowledge. And now that knowledge is endangered. It might even be extinct but I hope it isn't.

Witchcraft is the process of rediscovering the answer to the heterotroph riddle. It's the process of conjuring the wisdom that our ancestors were prevented from passing on to us. It's about healing a 600 year old wound and preparing for winter.

#cc

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animebw · 7 months

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Short Reflection: Attack on Titan: The Final Chapters

The impossible problem of reviewing the ending of Attack on Titan is that there's way too goddamn much to talk about.

How could there not be? After ten years and close to a hundred episodes, after almost single-handedly jump-starting anime's mainstream takeover back when the first episode dropped in 2013, after so many twists and reversals that completely flip your perspective on what kind of show you're ever watching, Attack on Titan has become, fittingly enough, one of the most colossal media properties on the planet. It's a story that bursts at the seams with ideas and messages and Things Worth Talking About, and far from putting a nice neat bow on things, the ending somehow only explodes further outward with discussion-worthy topics. I can pick out at least four separate moments just from the final 30 minutes that could support an entire thesis paper all on their own. I could talk about its portrayal of fascism and genocide, its ultimate statement on the nature of war, its portrayal of trauma bonds, its observations on the cyclical nature of generational violence, whether or not it's ultimately hopeful or cynical, how the characters' final choices echo all the way back to their first appearances... and I still wouldn't cover everything meaningful there is to talk about in this two-part two-and-a-half-hour showstopper finale. I could spend all week writing analyses of Attack on Titan's ending and there would still be more to cover. Even trying to figure out how to tackle this monstrosity feels as overwhelming as staring up at the Colossal Titan itself.

But perhaps that's only fitting. Over the years, Attack on Titan has remained one of the boldest, bravest, most staggeringly ambitious properties to ever come out of anime, swinging for the fences as relentlessly as the Beast Titan's rocky barrages of death, never taking the easy way out of an impossible question or desperate situation. It's survived a sea-chance in the landscape of the medium that it itself helped usher in, gone through so many permutations of genre and form and production, yet never once lost its luster. From the first sight of Eren's home being destroyed to the final, haunting shots of this finale, Attack on Titan has been one of the most important anime of all time. So of course its finale would demand just as much of us as the rest of the show. Of course it wouldn't be satisfied if it didn't go out with one last jaw-dropper outing that blew everything you thought you knew out of the water. Of course it would close out its domination of the anime sphere just as inescapable and undeniable as when it first stomped on our screens 10 years ago. After the incredible journey it's taken us on, I wouldn't expect anything less.

Still, I've got to try and say something. This is the end of one of anime's defining properties, the epic conclusion to a story that stands head and shoulders above all its contemporaries. I can't let that occasion pass without commemorating the way it chose to close things out. Just know that this review in no way captures the full extent of my thoughts on the finale, in no way portrays all the countless whirling ideas it inspires in me. There will be time in the future, perhaps, to explore all its nuances in more depth, to give proper space and weight to the thousand component parts making up this massive whole.

For now, though?

For now, I simply want to celebrate the end of one of my favorite anime series of all time.

For brevity's sake, I won't spend too much time on the first two hours of breathless action that make up the majority of these two super-long episodes. There are far more interesting things to talk about in the final act, and I simply don't have time to dig into anything more. All I'll say is that this final battle was Attack on Titan operating at the absolute peak of its powers, and it was truly something to behold. For all the chaos that's historically plagued this series' production, Wit and Mappa alike, this was an absolute masterpiece of a climactic showdown. Stunning action fit to stand with all the series' most iconic moments, heartwrenching grief and tragedy in the face of armageddon, characters barely escaping death and facing down the apocalypse with all their strength, refusing to yield against impossible odds no matter how many walls stand in their way. I can't count the number of times I cheered in delirious glee or broke down in tears from the sheer majesty of it all. As spectacle, as mission statement, as payoff for ten years of escalating action and human drama, it's an unimpeachable triumph.

And then we reach the denoument. The battle ends, the day is saved, the war is over, the bloodshed has stopped, the centuries of pain and suffering the world has endured finally takes a long, haggard breath of fresh air. The Rumbling has been stopped. Eren has been defeated. Peace, at long last, has prevailed.

And then the show throws one more curveball.

Ever since the manga ended, I've been hearing how much manga readers hated it. I've seen every insult under the sun slung its way, seen it called the worst ending of all time, an insult to the series and everyone who loved it. But I've always had my doubts. Considering how Loudly Wrong so many of these people were about many other things, how many of their criticisms seemed to boil down to being annoyed at Eren not being venerated as a gigachad and treated like the deranged psychopath he actually was, I had a sneaking suspicion the hate was overblown nonsense. And while I've heard the adaptation changes a few lines here and there to maybe make some of the final scenes less clunky, if the finale I watched in the show was anything like the finale in the manga, then I can only conclude my skepticism was right. Far from destroying the story or insulting the fanbase, this ending is one of the single most audacious and ambitious ways I've ever seen a mainstream anime conclude. It's an ending that could only come from a creative spirit dedicated not just to writing a cool story, but creative capital-a Art(tm). And long after the Twitter salt of the moment has faded, it will linger in my mind as the punctuation mark that seals this series' legacy until the end of time.

It's maddeningly hard to discuss why without spoilers, but I'll do my best. In short, Eren's plan actually kind of ends up succeeding... in a way that only reveals how pointless it was to begin with. The world is left irreparably scarred by the Rumbling in ways that we are told and shown, in no uncertain terms, will only ensure the cycle of violence will continue long after the concept of Titans themselves have faded from memory. The best way I can describe it is a dark subversion of Lelouch's famous gambit from the finale of Code Geass. In that show, Lelouch took all the world's evil upon himself to give the world a common enemy, sacrificing his own life to unite the warring nations in a desire to defeat him. Here, Eren does much the same thing... but it only leaves the world more broken and insecure than when he started. All the madness he inflicted, all the carnage he wrought, and in the end, all he accomplished was guaranteeing an uncertain, unstable peace that we have no way of knowing how long it lasted before things once again fell to ruin.

On the surface, it's a bitter, bleak ending that spits in the face of all our heroes' hard work. And yet, it's also the most strangely honest portrayal of humanity I've seen in a long time. What this finale gets right about Eren- what all those screaming fanboys were so pants-pissingly angry about- is that he's not some maniacal genius or machiavellan mastermind. In his own words, he's just a garden-variety idiot, an ordinary person with ordinary fallibility and biases and prejudices who was given far more power than he could handle. Right up to the end, he was a scared, lonely boy wearing the hollow shell of mature, stoic rage as a shield from the pain he could never process. He was weak. He was foolish. He was immature and scared and completely unequipped to handle the incredible responsibility of holding the world's fate in the palm of his hand.

Now you tell me: what end result could such a person achieve, if not this ugly, imperfect half-measure?

The truth is, violent individuals in our real world aren't grand schemers like Lelouch who always have the answers and make everyone dance in the palm of their hand. They're people like Eren; flawed, broken, consumed by hatred, making irrational decisions off imperfect assumptions and forcing everyone else to deal with the consequences. Eren doesn't fail because of character assassination, or because the mystical future sight be picked up from the Founding Titan told him so. He fails because no matter how many times he runs through the future in his head, his hatred leaves him incapable of seeing any path forward that doesn't involve annihilation. His fate was not set in stone by intangible destiny, but by his own inability to accept a peaceful path when his heart screamed endlessly for blood. This messy, transient, tenuous peace is the best that someone like him could hope to accomplish. It's a miracle he ended up with a result that good, and that's only because his friends were brave enough and strong enough to stop his hatred in its tracks before it could completely swallow the world whole.

But that messy, transient, tenuous result is what we're left with. All the chaos of the past ten years, and we're left not with closure, but uncertainty. How long will this hold out before the cycle of violence begins anew? How much peace did we earn through such miserable ends? What, if anything, can be done to ensure the next turn of the cycle doesn't end up like this? What better ways were there to keep this from happening in the first place?

What do you do when the answer you've been looking for only leaves you with more questions?

This ambiguity, in all its raw messiness, is the ultimate message of Attack on Titan. This is not a story where the heroes save the day and defeat hatred and save the world for good. This is a story where the heroes do the best they can and accomplish as much as they're able... and then leave us to reckon with the failures they left behind. It's not even really a nihilistic ending; as bleak as it seems on the surface, there are countless moments of hope and light that speak to humanity's desire for love over hatred. Like all the great tragedies of the world, it doesn't claim that humanity is irredeemable and we can never escape our flaws. Instead, it forces us to consider how easy it can be to fall short of our ideals, and how much pain and misery they leave in their wake. It shows us the consequences of giving in to hatred not as an inescapable fact of humanity, but as a warning of what we sacrifice when we lack the courage to prevent our darker instincts from directing our actions. It takes these characters and this world you've fallen in love with for a full decade and, rather than bidding them happily after after, asks you to carry the weight of their failures into your own life, a reminder for every single time you're tempted to let blind rage guide your own actions from now on. "This is what their lives have amounted to," the show says. "Don't let your own life go the same way."

I've watched a lot of anime over the years. Since I started getting into it back in 2017, I've tackled countless series and movies with all different kinds of endings. But I don't think I've ever seen one that so perfectly nailed this kind of hopeful, agonizing ambiguity. I don't think I've ever seen a show commit to an ending this uncompromising or pull it off so astoundingly, let alone in a series this long. And in an anime industry that more and more seeks to only pursue the safest, least threatening options, flattening this medium's remarkable creative potential with art that doesn't say anything or mean anything, the fact that this, of all ways, is how the most popular anime on the face of the planet chose to end its tale is nothing short of remarkable. Attack on Titan is a runaway success story of epic proportions, a single anime that arguably paved the way for the medium's increasing mainstream popularity. And it married that mainstream success with a story that dared to ask hard questions of its audience and send them home with a plea to see their own world a little deeper rather than half-ass a happy ending for easy closure. It's the rare mega-popular franchise that didn't have to sacrifice an inch of depth or complexity to appeal to the broadest common demoninator. And it accomplished all that while still being a never-ending thrill ride of sheer entertainment value the likes of which we may never see again.

It's easy to be cynical about anime once you've watched too much of it. Honestly, I find myself struggling a lot these days to keep the bad parts of this medium from swallowing my enjoyment of it. But in an anime landscape that too often settles for taking the path of least resistance, Attack on Titan is a soaring reminder of what it looks like to be brave. It's a series that never compromised on itself, never gave anything less than 100%, and never once lost its magic through all its ups and downs. It represents the overwhelming power that anime is capable of when it trusts its audience to follow it off the beaten path and face more challenging questions than whether Ultra-Instinct Goku can beat Gear 5 Luffy. It's an achievement as staggering and colossal as any of the titans within Isayama's pages. And this ending, in all its powerful uncertainty, only cements its legacy as one of the single greatest works of art ever produced by this medium, and one my my new personal top 10 anime of all time.

I wish I had time and space to keep talking. I wish I could go in-depth about the show's willingness to let Eren be truly pathetic in hilarious fashion. I wish I could write an essay about Mikasa and Ymir's parallels as women trapped by their irrational love for monstrous men and why that makes Mikasa's final choice so fucking impactful. I wish I could go into every last detail of that ending montage and all the implications it raises about the future of this world. But there will be time later to dig into the guts of this ending and truly pick it apart. There will be time aplenty to appreciate all the moments that make this show such a titan in its own right. For now, all I can say is this:

Thank you.

To Isayama, to all the voice actors, to all the staff at Wit and Mappa who were forced to work unreasonable schedules to bring this story to life, to every hand that touched this series and ensured its continued majesty all the way to the end... thank you. I dedicate my heart to you.

Attack on Titan is over.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

And I feel fine.

10/10

#anime #tabw #the anime binge watcher #attack on titan #aot #shingeki no kyojin #snk #aotsr

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much-ado-about-whumping · 11 months

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Commissions Open for Writing and RP

Hello, darlings! I'm currently taking commissions for whump pieces (including/especially nsfwhump) and real-time whump roleplay over Discord!

Not all of my work will include nsfw content, but just to be safe, commissions are only open to readers age 18 and older.

Interested? Read on! (18+ only below the cut)

Who I am:

If we've already met, nice to see you! If we haven't, welcome! I'm Bellamy (he/they), a queer and transgender writer with a dark imagination and a passion for sparking whumperflies. I love writing all angles of whump scenarios, from whumper to whumpee to caretaker, and I have a real knack for getting under your skin and figuring out what's going to take your breath away.

What I'll write:

Broad Content: I especially like to write nsfwhump (that is, whump where the abuse is sexual in context or nature), with an emphasis on whump genre tropes around caretaking, rescue, and recovery. I'm also happy to write sfw whump, as well as the kind of nsfwhump that blurs the line between a whump piece with some sexual content and an erotica piece with some whump content. (If you’d like to see the more erotica-leaning version of this ad, you can find it at reddit here. Please note that this is in an 18+ only subreddit.)

Tropes: I’m partial to whump stories that involve a kind of total control over the whumpee’s life – things like kidnapping, imprisonment, non-chattel slavery, pet whump, and BBU-style dynamics are always interesting to me. I love long and complicated recoveries, trauma that feels cyclical, and complicated whumper/whumpee relationships. I also love the kind of whump where something about a character seems to be working against them – for instance, I’m always excited about stories in which the whumpee has powers or abilities that push away or endanger the people they love, or that are used to justify harm coming to the whumpee.

I’m super interested in communication, and I also love fish-out-of-water whump – stories in which a whumpee’s position is further imperiled because of a language or culture barrier are extremely fun and interesting to me.

Kinks: I have a lifelong love of stories centered around non-consent.* Within the fantasy of the commission or roleplay, that could be a fully non-consensual encounter, a consensual non-consent (cnc) kink scene between willing partners, or a scene that happens without consent but leaves the whumpee feeling blissed-out and conflicted. I’m into a wide range of BDSM kinks, and I especially love huge, impossible insertions, overstimulation, gangbangs, cumflation, breeding, monster-fucking, and other kinks that are about pushing the whumpee's limits, physical or emotional. I'm also game if the violence gets extreme. (You want the whumpee's pelvis broken under a giant werewolf whumper? I'm down for that.) I'm also willing to explore some scary identity-based scenarios under some circumstances - for instance, if you're a queer or trans person looking for fantasies of corrective rape or abuse, I'm open to talking more to see if that’s something we can (relatively) safely write together.

And there's a wide variety of kinks that are less central to my experience, but that I would be enthusiastically willing to explore. In general, I'm extremely game to try new things, even if they're taboo; if you have something in particular on your wishlist, let's talk about it! I promise to be non-judgmental about what turns you on and honest about what I think I can write well.

*Note: A word about fantasies of rape and abuse - they're extremely common and normal, both among the general population and among survivors in particular. It's very common for people to eroticize things they're afraid of, or things they're processing. This can be true even if you fantasize about being the perpetrator – brains are complicated! If you're feeling ashamed about this kink, please know that there's no need to be.

Character Types: I can write a broad variety of character types, but I'm especially good at two:

A brutal, bitch-breaking whumper with the strength of a linebacker, the patience of a power-tripping cop, and the eagle-eye for vulnerabilities of a middle-school bully, and,

A resilient, sharp-edged whumpee, cold and clever and sparkling, and shattering like glass when they break.

Those are my favorites, but there's a world of options. Some other favorites include innocent ingenue whumpees that break open at once, oblivious whumpers that do half their damage through neglect, clever and accommodating whumpees who try to survive through harm reduction, and slow, subtle whumpers who feign affection and gentleness while perpetrating violence. I also love, love, LOVE a stoic whumpee.

I've written characters across a broad universe of genders and orientations, and I'm happy to explore whatever identities tickle your fancy. I'd consider queer and trans characters a specialty, and I'm also happy to play with gender with cis characters.

Genres: I'm happy to work with a real-world/modern setting, but I'm also super fond of historical fiction, high fantasy, and sci-fi elements.

Hard Limits:

No underage whumpees. (I know that people sometimes want to write whump and/or erotic content featuring underage characters for some of the same healing/processing reasons I outlined above that can foster an interest in darker stories in general. I’m not condemning that; people heal and grow in a variety of ways, and the choices about how they do so can be deeply complex and personal. I’m just placing a limit on what ideas I’m willing to explore with other people; sexual stories featuring underage characters are not among them.)

No underage clients. I will not write with or for any client under the age of 18, and I will block you if you ask me to. Even if the age of majority in your area is lower than that, I need to make my rules based on the age of majority where I live.

No bad caretakers. For some reason, this is one whump trope I just really can’t get into. I can write imperfect caretakers, and I can absolutely write creepy comfort, but I won’t write a person being deliberately clumsy and unkind while trying to comfort the whumpee. (Accidental mistakes/growing together are different – those are fine.)

How it works:

Consultations: Not sure if you’d like to write together? Set up a free 15-minute new customer consultation! We can chat over Discord about what you’re looking for and whether we’ll be good fits for each other.

Brainstorming: I charge a reduced rate for the time we spend talking about what you’d like, whether we’re planning our roleplay or sketching out the parameters of your commission. The first 30 minutes of talking about details is free; after that, brainstorming together is priced at $20/hour.

Roleplay: I do paid roleplays in real-time for $22/hour. This means that you book time at my hourly rate and we write together over Discord during that time. Of course, you may not always know exactly how long a roleplay will take – that makes sense! We’ll make our best estimate together. If things get exciting and you’d like to go longer, I’ll be happy to accommodate you unless the extension conflicts with another booking. If our time estimate is incorrect, we’ll settle the balance at the end of the session. If we’re writing for more than an hour over our estimated time, I’ll pause to check in and ask you to pay an additional installment to book the extra time.

Commissions: I write commissioned pieces for $0.04/word, starting at 250 words. We’ll agree on an estimated timeline for the piece, beginning at three calendar days. Pending availability, I also offer rush 24-hour turnaround for an additional $35.

Payment: I accept payment via CashApp, Ko-Fi, PayPal, and Venmo. I request payment for half the booking up-front, and you pay the other half at the end.

Other things to know about me:

I've done a lot of research about the ways in which people can use storytelling, especially in the form of sexual fantasies, to process and move through trauma. I'm not a therapist, but I am a survivor of some kinds of abuse and violation myself; I've always worked through my experiences this way, and I'm really interested in the ways that fantasies and playing pretend can put agency and control back in survivors' hands. This interest shows up for me in the area of sexual violence, as well as in the areas of identity-based violence like homophobia and transphobia. If you like to play with fire, please know that you can trust me to play responsibly with you. I'm highly focused on consent, check-ins, and aftercare, especially when I'm writing the whumper. I will take good care of you. That's important to me.

How to reach me:

Elsewhere on the internet, I go by the pen-name James St. Sebastian and write for Shapeshifter Stories. You can reach me via DM on tumblr @much-ado-about-whumping, via DM or chat on reddit at u/jamstseb, via Discord at #shapeshifterstories, or via email at [email protected]. (Of these, Discord is often the most immediate way to reach me.)

Please feel free to message any time, whether I appear online or off; sometimes I may appear busy or offline when I’m already booked up, but I’ll be happy to reply to your message as soon as I’m available.

#whump commissions #whump writing #bel talks

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renmorris · 1 year

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You may know Inland Empire as a location in California or as Harry’s funny little brain goblin who loves cryptids and his ex!

But did you know: it’s also a movie? Directed by David Lynch. The skill itself also resembles Lynch's own artwork, with it's bloated head and uncanny proportions. Something to keep in mind wrt to the film as well.

It’s actually hard to quantify just how much of an impact Lynch has had on DE or in fact on any piece of the surrealist magical realism crime drama genre made after 1990 other than: a lot. A lot of influence. Television, and the horror genre in general would not be what it is today without Twin Peaks.

(But Twin Peaks is for another day, it’s Inland Empire's turn.)

Inland Empire follows the story of Hollywood actress Nikki Grace, her return to stardom, and her experiences as her reality rapidly deteriorates around her. The movie she was banking her big success on is possibly cursed.

If you’re familiar with Lynch's work it’s kind of the ultimate incarnation of his typical topics. Hollywood is shady. A woman is in trouble. Reality isn’t what it seems. And our main character's grasp of her identity is slipping away.

The movie's scenes of Hollywood are intercut with foreboding and dreamy snowy shots of an old Warsaw street. The violence of the past does not rest and trauma is cyclical. The layers of narrative and perspective peel back continuously.

Laura Dern is also just really in peak form here. She was was robbed at the Oscar’s.

The easiest thing I can compare it to is House of Leaves and Mulholland Drive having a baby. If you don’t like weird cerebral art house films you are not going to enjoy this film. And that’s okay! This is not a film for everyone. It’s weird. It’s slow.

CONTENT WARNINGS: domestic violence, violence against women, discussion of sexual assault, unreality, intense flashing lights, gore, vague 'fortune teller' cliches and use of the g slur

youtube

#disco elysium #Youtube #disco elysium blogging

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sizhui · 9 months

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hello clari i hope you’re doing well! how do you feel about rei’s ending in slow damage? i know a lot of people don’t like that he drops his femininity but i feel like his happy end is accepting the masculinity he spent so long denying and i was wondering what you think! ^-^

Hello, hellooooo! Ok (cracks my knuckles) ive been silent on slowdam for a while with some thoughts cooking in my head and i feel like its time to let a few of them out - to talk about how i feel about rei's route, i must first explain my understanding of slow damage in its entirety... i talked about it here and there to emery and dove but here comes a synthesis!

I warn you: this is only my unconventional analysis, and I think that many will find it unsatisfying and disagree. If anyone wants to discuss or criticize any of my points, i am open to having my mind changed.

Huge thanks to Renne who introduced me to Surodame and set me on the path of studying it!

Under the cut TW: rape, csa

Slow Damage is a story about the consequences and the cyclic nature of abuse. Abuse sticks its claws into you and rakes down, leaving behind four ditches - orderly in some cases, and more chaotic in others. Either way, even as the skin and flesh heal, there is now a generous amount of empty space in you, and Slow Damage poses a question - what will you fill it up with, hmm?

I went into this VN knowing only that Towa enjoys rather extreme forms of self harm, and I have to admit that this was precisely what captivated my attention at first - the promise of a severely damaged protagonist, and the hope that he is more than a run-of-the-mill masochist. I was not disappointed.

The extent to which towa relates injury to sex and pain to pleasure immediately made me suspect the sort of trauma he must have endured in childhood. For a moment, I thought: Isn't the solution to this mystery a little too obvious? Looking back at the lack of subtlety, though, I don't think that Towa being a CSA victim was supposed to be some kind of a grand reveal. The point wasn't in cracking the mystery, in understanding motivations and getting concrete answers - the point was observing onr case of the consequences of abuse that will tell us - no, ASK us - something about all of them. HOW does the thing that happened to Towa keep happening over and over, and in silence too? What mechanisms allow it to happen, and to stay hidden? What all sorts of people, some of them generally good and kind, participate in these mechanisms?

Let us retrace our steps.

Maya forced her own son into violent prostitution from a very young age, all the while teaching him how to use charms to his advantage, how to manipulate people and fulfill their desires in order to gain control over them. The WAY she taught those things methodically seems to insinuate that this was something she herself had been taught at a young age and passed on; the art of assuming the exact persona you need to prod into people's insides. This isn't to say that her actions classify as excusable - in fact, isn't the fact that she's putting her child through the horrors she experienced herself even more disgusting? I wonder if her lessons in human psychology were all for the self-obsessed purpose of turning her son into a copy of herself... or was she, in a twisted way, thinking it would hell him endure and rise the way that she did? I am going to let that question hang in the air - after all, the point of Surodame isn't to review individual motivations, but to ask questions about the grander scheme of things. That is precisely why I cried together with Towa upon reading the strangely frail account of Maya's diary: I just can't make this work... realizing that the slow-growing disease had spread beyond that mother-son duo, beyond the walls of Euphoria, beyond Shinkoumi... in every corner of the world, there are hundreds of Mayas and Towas, and millions upon millions of Silent Takus wondering what they could have done differently.

For starters I want to focus on Towa himself. When I think about him, the first phrase that comes to mind is 'a void filled with the dregs of abuse'. Though he himself doesn't remember his abuse throughout the first three routes, his every move is a reflection of it: every sexual encounter both a self-inflicted wound and an attempt to affirm: IT'S ME WHO CHOSE TO DO THIS TO MYSELF, which is why Towa's breakdown upon realizing that not even his scars are his own is especially painful. I like the choice of stating that Maya did not like nor understand art. She COULDN'T understand it. Though the penchant for uncovering people's dark desires and the ability to read them were all influenced by Maya, the instinct to paint those is Towa's. The art that almost died together with him was the one thing that belonged to him alone - and yet, there is comfort in the fact that the true route ends with him saying that he doesn't know whether he'll paint anymore or not. What matters is that he quit performing euphoric episodes, closed the cycle of abuse and perpetuating Maya's ideals, and began walking towards a peaceful life. The sight of the atelier in the main menu all clean and bright upon Towa's vision returning to normal made me strangely emotional; the reveal that the painting was never dark and muddy, that the atelier was never that dark and scary... the final tour around Shinkoumi with everyone telling Towa that he looks like something good had happened to him... at the end of a very painful road, Towa still found some comfort in existing.

But what of Fujieda? Of Madarame, of Rei, Taku? For a BLVN, isn't it strange to go 6 paragraphs deep without mentioning any of the love interests?

I will preface this by saying that, to me, the very point of Surodame lies in the fact that none of them are ultimately good boyfriends to Towa. I really wanted to interpret the actions of the three sans Madarame more charitably than I do now, but in reasoning with myself, I failed at every single attempt. They are, to varying degrees and each in their own way, a deadend.

Let's go route by route.

Murase Takuma is a kind man in a way Towa is not - this is driven into our heads from the start, he is a doctor. He cares for children, workers and the elderly. He even lends an ear to them outside of his responsibilities as their physician, overworking himself to the brink of death. His role as a caretaker of a hopeless, bleak person like Towa, an addict who is destructive towards both himself and others, can certainly be percieved as saintly. Even his actions of keeping Towa's past from him, burning letters and throwing away packages, were all for the sake of preserving Towa's sanity! However, though Taku's intentions are pure, I can't read them as benign. Well - he is probably the most benign of the four men Towa involves himself with, being the only one who never physically lashed out on him. Neither abuser nor victim, Taku is a third thing entirely - an observer. A hider, a savior, a carer... and at its core, though not intentionally, an enabler. I do agree that there was nothing Taku could have done to save Towa as a child. There just wasn't a way to take Towa away from Euphoria while Maya lived. I do believe that he did the best he could, patching Towa up time after time... staying throughout the years, changing the bedding, throwing out the liquor bottles. Eat something, Towa. Smoke less, Towa. Once Towa got a lot older, Taku grew to love him romantically. Though I find it unsavory, Towa is over twenty-five at this point so it's not really some big deal. The much more dreadful power imbalance than that in age is the fact that Taku is holding the entirety of Towa's past, his abuse, and his identity over his head. Once again, I'm not calling Taku out as a gaslighter here - not in this route, at least, since Towa had no interest in his true identity at this point anyway. But you can't deny that their happy ending - embracing under the cherry blossoms with a calmer, more mature looking Towa, his hair a clean black, an orderly cardigan billowing behind him - is a sort of a quiet misery. Taku loves the man he saved (raised?), the man who presumably quit painful sex for his sake, and Towa doesn't even know what it is that he's being saved from. Towa is a hole. I really might not have interpreted this ending so negatively if it wasn't for the scene of Taku showing Towa a photograph of him as a little child in a restaurant with his mother. This smiling child prostitute in an orderly little boys' getup, dining with his pimp mother and his future lover. It felt to me like a means of truly driving into our brains the extent of Taku's helplessness, delusion, failure, and LIES. The photograph is a fabricated reality, a fabricated happy past that he feeds to Towa. In this route, this is what Towa filled the ditch with - a daydream, and sweet vanilla sex that doesn't scratch his itch. I can't give them more than five years before Towa falls back into his old habits. The end.

Now we get to Rei, who you originally asked me about. I am sorry I dragged it out to this extent, but I truly can't talk about Rei alone without addressing the grand scheme of things. Rei is also a sort of a carer to Towa, though a more casual one. A friend friend rather than a dad friend, I say this with half a scowl hanging off my face. Let us review Rei's situation with gender - due to his toxic, abusive dad (who was also a child sex trafficker, might I add!) degrading him for his homosexuality and saying it made him less of a man, Rei developed an aversion to masculinity, speaking in onee-kotoba and growing out his hair and such. At some point he attempted to cut off his own penis in Towa's presence, but ended up hesitating and not going through. All in all, he decided to drop all things associated with traditional masculinity other than street fighting, which he uses to vent out his frustration. This is the key word here - FRUSTRATION. Rei's frustration grows to hundred percent when he is forced to enter to-the-death matches. Killing opponent after opponent, Rei grows more frustrated and less and less like his friendly effeminate self. I think the key solution to the question of 'how is the writing of rei's gender handled?' Is the fact that Rei rediscovered his masculinity through violence. And Slow Damage is not a game that... likes violence, encourages it, or overall relates it to anything remotely positive. I don't think that Rei reconnected to his masculinity in a healthy way, and I don't think it's meant to be read as a cool finding himself arc. Most of all, it's not his or Towa's happy ending. Towa... the thing is that Rei only realized a sexual attraction to Towa once the amount of violence in his life amplified to the max. As his level of 'manliness' grew. Their sex scene is very frank about this - after he and Towa beat each other into bloody pulp, he says something along the lines of 'I'm a man and I want to fuck you.' I think it drives the point further that he was the only virginal love interest to that point - when he percieved himself as a woman, he had no violent sexual appetites, or at least didn't see a way towards realizing them. Once he 'reverted' into a man though, he could fuck Towa. He could claim his prize - who has no objections, given that it feeds perfectly into his own penchant that I described at the start. And their ending, showing us a casually manly Rei biking with Towa? We have no proof that he's in any way abusive, nor that they're unhappy, but... this 'new gender' of his, he built it up with bricks made of blood, some of it Towa's. I don't think Rei reached a happy ending. I think Rei is a feminine person, or at the very least a gender nonconforming man who retreated back into the closet within the violent festa that his father brought upon him... many will disagree, but this is how I read it - a manhood built up on violence equals unhapliness for two. I think Towa and Rei might stay together longer than Towa and Taku would, but it won't bring either of them any healing. The end.

Madarame's route is the simplest, since Madarame does not hide himself behind any masks. He is a violent, shameless pedophile rapist who gladly continues paving the road of self-destruction that Maya had left off half-finished. I think that placing this ending behind Taku and Rei's serves as a bit of a wake up call who felt pacified by the former two - um, hey, hello? Did you forget? This is not a 'happy story'. For some three hours you watch Madarame break Towa psychologically, repeatedly rape and torture him - only to release him back to Taku and Rei for Towa to find that he can't truly fit im with them anymore. What purpose does it serve? Well, I think it just shows us that there never was any long-term happiness waiting for Towa with either of those men. I think the purpose of the Madarame route, beyond preparing us for the true route, is to totally nullify the effect of the first two. A 'forget what you thought you knew' type of detail. Broken into obedience, a wild blond Towa kissed Madarame after a boxing match. The end.

Fujieda.

He perplexes me the most, and I'm still not entirely certain in the answer I arrived to. Why would the author who penned this painfully real story about abuse have Towa end up with a man who - midway through the route - raped him? I tried to work wonders to explain this to myself, try to interpret it differently, but the truth is concrete. Fujieda raped Towa in a fit of rage, and then with a sober mind refused to apologise for it. Why would this be in a 'painfully real story about abuse?'

...precisely because it's painfully real. It happened to Towa. It happened to a million others. It might happen to you. When you hit your knee, do your fingers not venture to fondle the bruise, press down for a small reminder of what the pain felt like? The fingers are usually kind, but once in a while, they press down.

And again - Fujieda does not consistently abuse Towa. In fact, he gives him his first taste of truly pleasurable sex in a scene that pushed me to the brink of tears in its sad honesty. When Fujieda has a good day, he gently washes the remnants of assault out of Towa. But when he had an extremely bad way, he was the perpetrator of the assault. I think it's 'painfully real' for Towa to end up with such a man. After coming to terms with his past, this was the best he could do. This was as much as he could save himself. The VN ends on such a note - don't be too happy for him, and don't be too sad. I do believe that Fujieda brought Towa some comfort and clarity, but I can't say that this isn't a deadend, too. Just a more peaceful one in the light. In the ocean.

What's the point then, if Towa ends up stranded no matter what choices you make? Let's return to the beginning, to the ditch abuse made in you. Sometimes you fill it in with fantasies, sometimes with violence, sometimes with the 'next best thing', a 'he's a good man you know, he's only rough when he drinks' typa marriage... no matter what, fact is that all abused kids seek to fill it in with something familiar. Something they know and recognize. It yearns to be filled, it aches for it - whatever you're ready to dish out, just put it in! I think this merry-go-round of victims and perpetrators is what Surodame is tryong to turn our eyes towards, or at least force us to stop averting them. So that you may not scorn the Towa in your life, so that if you are a Towa yourself, you may find comfort in knowing that someone somewhere dreemed you up, empathized with you and lead your hand along the path. Why, then, do we not see our Towa free?

Well, the future is long. He was in an ocean. Maybe he walked out.

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psychewritesbs · 8 months

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Question I have BC I love your opinion and I think you have a great understanding of these characters (and jjk as a whole) what do you think about yuji and megumi's relationship and the parallels between them and suguru and gojo?? BC personally I think it's EVIL and hurts me so bad but also just.....idk I'm terrible with words so I can't exactly express why I think it's done so well but i do so just curious on what (if you even do) you think abt it?? I think parallels in jjk are honestly crafted so well in general and gege truly has such a clear idea and understanding of what and where he wants the story to go. Apologies if you've been asked smth like this before there's a very good chance I've missed it but I hope you have a good day and I hope megumi comes home soon bc it's getting pretty dark out 😞😞😞

HOLA anon. Thanks! I appreciate the vote of confidence 🫡

So I feel like your ask needs a thorough re-read of jjk, which I am unable to do at this time.

I also have to admit that I had never paid much attention to "parallels" in general, so that makes it a little harder to look back and pinpoint exact moments for a proper analysis of Megumi/Geto parallels. But I HAVE thought about this in passing before.

So, while I don't think I can do your ask justice, YES! I think aside from parallels, I'd also say that it feels like Geto's story is also meant to be a cautionary tale for Megumi.

Let's taco'bout it under the cut...

I'll start by saying that jjk has been exploring the idea of "intergenerational trauma that is passed down from generation to generation". So there's something that feels extremely cyclical about jjk right now--like a cog.

That said, the Megumi/Geto parallels are most likely meant to underscore how, due to the nature of the work they do, the same tragedy keeps happening time and time again.

If I were to pull a quote by Jung that encapsulates this, its the idea that "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

Now, jjk has also felt like an exploration of the "corruption and redemption of the self" for some time now. To me, this means that a sorcerer is often confronted with the question of what is aspirational about his human nature and what isn't, but more importantly, the choices they make as a result of being confronted with this question.

In Geto's case, the aspirational values he chose were actually quite twisted. After all, he chose to justify committing genocide with his love for sorcerers. Similarly, Megumi had no qualms killing indiscriminately if it meant protecting Tsumiki.

They have both made a choice where protecting someone (aspirational value) justifies something not aspirational as a necessity (killing others is a turning away from aspirational values). In other words, you could say they have both "sinned" for lack of a better word.

This is where "saving" others who are ready and willing to be saved comes into play. Gojo couldn't save Geto because Geto wasn't asking to be saved; on the other hand, Yuji is trying to save Megumi because Megumi asked to be saved.

Megumi asking to be saved is relevant af because it means Megumi acknowledged something Geto couldn't or didn't acknowledge about himself.

The thing is that Yuji also had to be receptive to the idea of saving Megumi. As of ch143, Yuji had had his sense of self bruised and battered by Sukuna's rampage in Shibuya for which he felt responsible for. And now Megumi is asking him, a mass murderer, to save him.

It's almost like Megumi is absolving Yuji of his sins by asking to be saved. This is Megumi validating Yuji's desire to save others. So, who's saving who, really?

On the other hand, while Geto was descending into a corrupted state, Gojo had his head so far up his ass with the whole "The Strongest" identity, that the best he could do was ask Geto if he had lost weight.

So I feel like this is where the parallels turn into a sort of continuation of what could have been possible if Geto would have come to Gojo and asked for help, and if Gojo was emotionally available to this bid for connection when it could have made a difference.

In retrospect, given the emotional state Megumi was in during the Yorozu reveal and how anxious he appeared to be during his fights inside the colony, I think that in asking to be saved, Megumi was asking for a lifeline from the bottom of his heart. He was asking Yuji for the strength and unwavering conviction that he was missing in himself.

I like to think Megumi knew he would have to kill others, and that he would be willing to do it if it came down to it. This meant Megumi might have been aware that he'd have to set aside his humanity and any aspirational values he might still be hanging onto.

So who better to ask than the one person he knows to have unwavering humanity?

Geto never asked the same of Gojo.

So I am not sure whether Gege is trying to say that because Megumi asked to be saved it is more likely that he can be saved.

But here's the thing...

And I am very much aware that this is my personal preference, but I believe that Megumi (and Geto since we're on the topic of parallels) has to save himself.

While I LOVE the religious symbolism behind the idea of Yuji "saving" Megumi and think it's super bromantic, waiting to be saved absolves Megumi of responsibility for himself. And right now, at the core of Megumi's arc, is the idea that his sense of self was suppressed by Sukuna precisely because there was a hole in Megumi's sense of self that Sukuna could exploit, therefore arresting Megumi's development. To continue that development, Megumi has to choose himself.

So I am curious of where Gege takes it from here.

Now, on the topic of saving others, there's actually REALLY juicy symbolism around the idea of "saving" in chapter 236 and 238 where Sukuna is technically absolving characters in their last moments.

So that's a nice parallel and commentary on the idea of saving others.

Anyways, did this make any sense? lol. I read and re-read this thing several times and I kept making edits so I hope I was able to express my thoughts properly.

Hopefully the tangent made sense.

I think parallels in jjk are honestly crafted so well in general and gege truly has such a clear idea and understanding of what and where he wants the story to go.

Thank you for sharing your jjk-love. Yes, I couldn't agree more that, not only does Gege know where he's taking his story, his attention to detail on how he wants to execute these themes is fantastic.

Thank you for stopping by anon :)

#ask the mental gymnastics anime girl #god I love jujutsu kaisen

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thricedead · 1 month

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Hi Clari! Do you still have your slow damage essay/post? I've been meaning to reread it because I really loved your analysis of the subject

Yesss!!! Here it is under the cut, I edited it a little bit!

Slow Damage is a story about the cyclic nature of abuse and its consequences. Abuse sticks its claws into you and rakes down, leaving behind four ditches - orderly in some cases, and more chaotic in others. Either way, even as the skin and flesh heal, there is now a generous amount of empty space in you, and Slow Damage poses a question - what will you fill it up with?

I went into this VN knowing only that Towa enjoys rather extreme forms of self-harm, and I have to admit that this was precisely what captivated my attention at first - the promise of a severely damaged protagonist, and the hope that he is more than a run-of-the-mill masochist. I was not disappointed.

The extent to which Towa relates injury to sex and pain to pleasure immediately made me suspect the sort of trauma he must have endured in the past. For a moment, I thought: Isn't the solution to this mystery a little too obvious? Looking back at the lack of subtlety, though, I don't think that Towa being a CSA victim was supposed to be some kind of a grand reveal. The point wasn't in cracking the mystery, in understanding motivations and getting concrete answers - the point was observing one case of the consequences of abuse that will tell us - no, ASK us - something about all of them. How does the thing that happened to Towa keep happening over and over, and in silence too? What mechanisms allow it to happen, and to stay hidden? What all sorts of people, some of them generally good and kind, participate in these mechanisms?

Let us retrace our steps.

Maya forced her own son into violent prostitution from a very young age, all the while teaching him how to use charms to his advantage, how to manipulate people and fulfill their desires in order to gain control over them. The way she taught those things methodically seems to insinuate that this was something she herself had been taught at a young age and passed on; the art of assuming the exact persona you need to prod into people's insides. This isn't to say that her actions classify as excusable - in fact, isn't the fact that she's putting her child through the horrors she experienced herself even more disgusting? I wonder if her lessons in human psychology were all for the self-obsessed purpose of turning her son into a copy of herself... or was she, in a twisted way, thinking it would help him endure and rise the way that she had? I am going to let that question hang in the air - after all, the point of Surodame isn't to review individual motivations, but to ask questions about the grander scheme of things. That is precisely why I cried together with Towa upon reading the strangely frail account of Maya's diary: I just can't make [parenthood] work... realizing that the slow-growing disease had spread beyond that mother-son duo, beyond the walls of Euphoria, beyond Shinkoumi... in every corner of the world, there are hundreds of Mayas and Towas, and millions upon millions of Silent Takus wondering what they could have done differently.

For starters, I want to focus on Towa himself. When I think about him, the first phrase that comes to mind is 'a void filled with the dregs of abuse'. Though he himself doesn't remember his abuse throughout the first three routes, his every move is a reflection of it: every sexual encounter both a self-inflicted wound and an attempt to affirm: IT'S ME WHO CHOSE TO DO THIS TO MYSELF, which is why Towa's breakdown upon realizing that not even his scars belong to himself was especially painful. I like the choice of stating that Maya did not like nor understand art. She couldn’t bring herself to understand it. Though the penchant for uncovering people's dark desires and the ability to read them were all influenced by Maya, the instinct to paint those is Towa's. The art that almost died together with him was the one thing that belonged to him alone - and yet, there is comfort in the fact that the true route ends with him saying that he doesn't know whether he'll paint anymore or not. What matters is that he quit performing euphoric episodes, closed the cycle of abuse and perpetuating Maya's ideals. The sight of the atelier in the main menu all clean and bright upon Towa's vision returning to normal made me strangely emotional; the reveal that the chosen painting was never dark and muddy, that the atelier was never all that dark and scary... the final tour around Shinkoumi with everyone telling Towa that he looks like something good had happened to him... at the end of a very painful road, Towa still found some comfort in existing.

But what of Fujieda? Of Madarame, of Rei, Taku? For a BLVN, isn't it strange to go 6 paragraphs deep without mentioning any of the love interests?

Let's go route by route.

Murase Takuma is a kind man in a way Towa is not - this is driven into our heads from the start. He is a doctor. He cares for children, workers and the elderly. He even lends an ear to them outside of his responsibilities as their physician, overworking himself to the brink of death. His role as the caretaker of a hopeless, bleak person like Towa, an addict who is destructive towards both himself and others, can certainly be perceived as saintly. Even his actions of keeping Towa's past from him, burning letters and throwing away packages, were all for the sake of preserving Towa's sanity! However, though Taku's intentions are pure, I can't read them as benign. Well - he is probably the most benign of the four men Towa involves himself with, being the only one who never physically lashed out at him. Neither abuser nor victim, Taku is a third thing entirely - an observer. A hider, a savior, a carer... and at his core, though not intentionally, an enabler. I do agree that there was nothing Taku could have done to save Towa as a child. There just wasn't a way to take Towa away from Euphoria while Maya lived. I do believe that he did the best he could, patching Towa up time after time... staying throughout the years, changing the bedding, throwing out the liquor bottles. Eat something, Towa. Smoke less, Towa. Once Towa got a lot older, Taku grew to love him romantically. Though I find it unsavory, Towa is over twenty-five at this point so it's not really some big deal. The much more dreadful power imbalance than that in age is the fact that Taku is holding the entirety of Towa's past, his abuse, and his identity over his head. Once again, I'm not calling Taku out as a gaslighter here - not in this route, at least, since Towa had no interest in his true identity at this point anyway. But you can't deny that their happy ending - embracing under the cherry blossoms with a calmer, more mature looking Towa, his hair a clean black, an orderly cardigan billowing behind him - is a sort of a quiet misery. Taku loves the man he saved (raised?), the man who presumably quit painful sex for his sake… but Towa doesn't even know what it is that he's being saved from. Towa is a hole. I really might not have interpreted this ending so negatively if it wasn't for the scene of Taku showing Towa a photograph of him as a little child in a restaurant with his mother. This smiling child prostitute in an orderly little boys' getup, dining with his pimp mother and his future lover. It felt to me like a means of truly driving into our brains the extent of Taku's helplessness, delusion, failure, and LIES. The photograph is a fabricated reality, a fabricated happy past that he feeds to Towa. In this route, this is what Towa filled the ditch with - a daydream, and sweet gentle sex that doesn't scratch his itch. I can't give them more than five years before Towa falls back into his old habits. The end.

Now we get to Rei. Rei is also a sort of a carer to Towa, though a more casual one and closer to him in age. Let us review Rei's situation with gender - due to his toxic, abusive father (who was also a child sex trafficker, might I add!) degrading him for his homosexuality and saying it made him less of a man, Rei developed an aversion to masculinity, speaking in onee-kotoba and growing out his hair and such. At some point he attempted to cut off his own penis in Towa's presence, but ended up hesitating and not going through. All in all, he decided to drop all things associated with traditional masculinity other than street fighting, which he uses to vent out his frustration. This is the key word here – FRUSTRATION, which all of Rei’s pretenses fail to rid him of. Rei's frustration grows to hundred percent when he is forced to enter to-the-death matches to get his deadbeat father out of debt. Killing opponent after opponent, Rei grows more frustrated and less and less like his friendly effeminate self. I think the key solution to the question of 'how is the writing of rei's gender handled?' Is the fact that Rei rediscovered his masculinity through violence. And Slow Damage is not a game that... likes violence, encourages it, or overall relates it to anything remotely positive. I don't think that Rei reconnected to his masculinity in a healthy way, and I don't think it's meant to be read as a cool arc about finding the lost self. Most of all, it's not his or Towa's happy ending. Speaking of Towa... the thing is that Rei only realized a sexual attraction to Towa once the amount of violence in his life amplified to the max. As his level of 'manliness' grew. Their sex scene is very frank about this - after he and Towa beat each other into bloody pulp, he says something along the lines of 'I'm a man and I want to fuck you.' I think it drives the point further that he was the only virginal love interest to that point - when he perceived himself as a woman, he had no violent sexual appetites, or at least didn't see a way towards realizing them. Once he 'reverted' into a man though, he could fuck Towa. He could claim his prize - who has no objections, given that it feeds perfectly into his own penchant that I described at the start. And their ending, showing us a casually manly Rei biking with Towa? We have no proof that he's in any way abusive, nor that they're unhappy, but... this 'new gender' of his, he built it up with bricks made of blood, some of it Towa's. I don't think Rei reached a happy ending. I think Rei is a feminine person, or at the very least a gender nonconforming man who retreated back into the closet within the violent festival that his father brought upon him... many will disagree, but this is how I read it - a manhood built up on violence equals unhapiness for two. I think Towa and Rei might stay together longer than Towa and Taku would, but it won't bring either of them any healing. The end.

Madarame's route is the simplest, since Madarame does not hide himself behind any masks. He is a violent, shameless rapist who gladly continues paving the road of self-destruction that Maya had left off half-finished. I think that placing this ending behind Taku and Rei's serves as a bit of a wake-up call to those who felt pacified by the former two - um, hey, hello? Did you forget? This is not a 'happy story'. For some three hours you watch Madarame break Towa psychologically, repeatedly rape and torture him - only to release him back to Taku and Rei for Towa to find that he can't truly fit in among them anymore. What purpose does it serve? Well, I think it just shows us that there never was any long-term happiness waiting for Towa with either of those men. I think the purpose of the Madarame route, beyond preparing us for the true route, is to totally nullify the effect of the first two. A 'forget what you thought you knew' type of detail. Broken into obedience, a wild blond Towa kissed Madarame after a boxing match. The end.

Fujieda.

He perplexes me the most, and I'm still not entirely certain in the answer I arrived at. Why would the author who penned this painfully real story about abuse have Towa end up with a man who - midway through the route - raped him? I tried to work wonders to explain this to myself, try to interpret it differently, but the truth is concrete. Fujieda raped Towa in a fit of rage, and then with a sober mind continued acting like everything was normal between them. Why would this be in a 'painfully real story about abuse?'

And again - Fujieda does not consistently abuse Towa. In fact, he gives him his first taste of truly pleasurable sex in a scene that pushed me to the brink of tears in its sad honesty. When Fujieda has a good day, he gently washes the remnants of assault out of Towa. But when he had an extremely bad way, he was the perpetrator of the assault. I think it's 'painfully real' for Towa to end up with such a man. After coming to terms with his past, this was the best he could do. This was as much as he could save himself. The VN ends on such a note - don't be too happy for him, and don't be too sad. I do believe that Fujieda brought Towa some comfort and clarity, but I can't say that this isn't a dead end, too. Just a more peaceful one in the light. In the ocean.

What's the point then, if Towa ends up stranded no matter what choices you make? Let's return to the beginning, to the ditch abuse made in you. Sometimes you fill it in with fantasies, sometimes with violence, sometimes with the 'next best thing', a 'he's a good man you know, he's only rough when he drinks' type of marriage... no matter what, fact is that all abused kids seek to fill it in with something familiar. Something they know and recognize. It yearns to be filled, it aches for it - whatever you're ready to dish out, just put it in! I think this merry-go-round of victims and perpetrators is what Surodame is trying to turn our eyes towards, or at least force us to stop averting them. So that you may not scorn the Towa in your life, so that if you are a Towa yourself, you may find comfort in knowing that someone somewhere dreamed you up, empathized with you and lead your hand along the path. Why, then, do we not see our Towa free?

Well, the future is long. He was in an ocean. Maybe he walked out.

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robbyykeene · 9 months

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Do you think the storyline of Cobra Kai is irredeemable?

If so, when would you say it became irredeemable, and which storylines made it that way the most?

If not, is there something they are likely to do this season that would ruin it for you?

(Sorry if this is too negative)

Anon i am SO sorry it took me so long to answer this. Just found an entire essay of a response saved to my drafts that I somehow never published. So without further ado here’s the answer to your question that I answered BEFORE season 5 ever came out:

I mean, irredeemable is a big word. For me it’s not so much the storylines themselves as it is the general trajectory of the characters and the underlying narrative framing of it all. I got invested in this show because underneath all the karate soap opera absurdism, there was a really genuine and earnest story about the cyclical nature of abuse and toxic masculinity and radicalization. But it was still all through this lens of teenage karate gang warfare which was undeniably hilarious! But tbh what they had to say about that in season 4 was just…..not it for me at all. It feels like the show has moved away from saying something as basic as “toxic masculinity is bad” to saying nothing meaningful about it at all.

As for individual storylines, I’ve definitely not hidden how disappointed I was in Johnny and Robby’s storyline this season. I’ve ranted about this endlessly already but like. If the writers want to put the brunt of the blame of Robby and Johnny’s fractured relationship on Robby himself, what was actually the point of his character at all? Like genuinely. If Robby doesn’t exist to be a manifestation of Johnny’s own parental/parental figure trauma, then what’s the point? And it’s not about like. The believability of a kid in Robby’s position seeking out his deadbeat dad in a moment of emotional turmoil like that. Because people are complicated and they do complicated things and yeah if robby were a real life person, it could make sense he sought out his dad in that moment. It could make sense that robby would forgive him without any real effort being made to earn it, that he’d shoulder the brunt of the blame himself in the name of moving forward. But he’s not a person! He’s a character, just a tool created to tell a story, and the story they’ve decided to tell with him since s4 is something I am not interested in watching at all.

And relatedly, I am so not looking forward to Miguel going to Mexico to search for his dad. For starters, it’s absolutely going to be rife with racist stereotypes. But I remember reading an interview or something with Xolo a few years ago and he said something along the lines of “yeah I hope we never meet Miguel’s dad in the show. He’s irrelevant to the story we’re telling. And some kids just don’t know their dad and that’s okay.” And he was right! Miguel’s dad is irrelevant. And again is it believable that a real life kid like Miguel would, after everything he’s been through, run off to Mexico? Sure! But I care more about narratively meaningful storytelling than I do the hypothetical believability that someone like Miguel would do that.

Which is also why I hate with every fiber of my being that they’re going to redeem Kreese. And people can say it’s unfair of me to criticize the show based on speculation, but we all know it’s coming. And yeah, maybe it won’t be a redemption redemption. It’ll be him siding with Johnny and Daniel momentarily to further his own interests. Or some similar bullshit. But I don’t care. God, I just don’t care. The entire story was about the impact of Kreese’s abuse on Johnny. How it’s completely shattered his ability to function as a human being even decades later. How just when Johnny was finally getting his life on track, Kreese comes slithering back in, and Johnny, knowing what its like to want—to need a second chance from your son—he forgives him. He let’s Kreese back in. And it ruins his life completely. So to what, just undo all of that by having him and Johnny work together again for the sake of some meaningless avengers endgame type team up? It’s just a joke lol.

…….OKAY now for my updated post season 5 answer:

So I’m not certain Kreesedemption will happen anymore, but I do have absolutely zero confidence in their ability to wrap up the Johnny/Kreese storyline in any meaningful way at all. And I’ve made my opinion on season 5 as a whole pretty clear by this point lol. I guess in a way I do find it “irredeemable” at this point, although I’m not sure that’s the best descriptor. I’m happy for everyone who is enjoying this show, genuinely. I guess I’ve just so completely lost interest in anything that’s actually happening, and anything that could possibly happen, at this point. If I’m being honest with myself, I will watch s6 whenever it comes out, but it’s really just because I still enjoy being in this fandom and making memes and interacting with all the wonderful wonderful people I’ve met.

#anyway once again anon. sorry it took me literally over a year to respond to this 😭 i have a bad habit of burying asks in my drafts #also its not too negative youre good! i appreciate the question!#ck negativity #anonymous #asks

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strangersails · 2 months

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Can we talk about Horikoshi’s use of inner child work approach to healing? I need someone to talk to about this.

I honestly very much like that? He makes it very obvious with so many characters that their “flaws” as adults (or even as teenager still growing up) are the result of unresolved childhood traumas, and how healing them really makes the difference. It’s not the first time we see that in medias, but the fact that in the BNHA series it happens cyclically and in so many different ways is just so nice, especially for the youngest that may recognise some situations and identify themselves in some of the characters. My favourite thing about movies, tv shows, manga, anime, books, is how relatable the characters are, how much of a difference they can make to viewers/readers, the comfort it brings to not feel alone in some kind of situations. It works also for the “other kind of people”, to understand how impactful may be something that we say or do to another person, how easy may be to cause traumas to other people, especially the young ones. I am no expert when it comes to the healing process and to human psychology in general, but I honestly appreciate the whole inner child work probably more than I can explain. Now, I am curious about what you have to say!

#thanks for the question!! this one was actually very nice #bnha questions #bnha

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kairologia · 10 months

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🦋 The Fourth House 🦋

For the coming days and until the end of august, I’ll be trying to write down one astrology post per day, and what better way to start out than with houses?

The fourth house is a notorious favourite of mine, both for personal reasons (i.e it being one of my most active houses) but also for what it represents, making it the perfect starting point. I’m not one to go by the book & do things in the more conventional order, after all!

For starters, the fourth house is angular, located in the southernmost part of one’s chart. It is where planets hide & are way below the earth. It is the place that coincides with the darkest part of the night, and deals with what we usually keep under wraps. It is known as the “subterraneous place (υπογειον)” in hellenistic astrology and, in union with the Imum Coeli (IC), informs us about that space where we find comfort in our pasts.

A rather common belief among modern astrologers is that the 8th and 12th houses are “darkest” houses, but in actuality, that would be the 4th house. Though that begs the question— what is it that makes something “dark”... secrecy? eeriness? ineffability? mystery? How I see it, it is a state of being within reach, but also imperceptible and somewhat omnipresent. And that is precisely what makes the 4th house what it is. Its topics are experienced and perceived in a cyclical & unavoidable manner. It’s that core memory you cannot fully recall, but whose impact was so strong that it took on a physical form and is perceived sensorially, in a scent, or through a sound or song. It’s that sensation of déjà vu that creeps up on you occasionally. It’s generational memories, cycles, traumas. It’s an inescapable house. It’s the one house you will always return to.

Among the many things it represents, we can list family, roots, ancestry, & home. The association with home, being the place where people hide from the outside world, makes it a house of secrets. The fourth house is akin to a vault, in that sense. It is also the house of death — death in the literal sense, a topic that is still largely mysterious to the human psyche, and still somewhat considered a taboo subject, but also loss, grief, & mourning. It is also places where bodies are buried, & where remains are scattered. It's at once the roots, and one's final resting place. It’s a house that shapes and reshapes you from the cradle to the grave. It’s simultaneously where you came from & took your very first breath, and where you will be buried.

#astrology #astrological houses #the fourth house #damn. I missed tumblring. who would've thought

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fiapple · 2 years

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Irt my tags on that last post, though, I think the major failing of the "shattered innocence" reading of the Nature duology is moreso when it comes to later episodes like Help & Passing than its existence as a vaccumized reading of the duology itself. The main reason for this is that it fails to acknowledge that Orel isn't just being confronted with the fact that he's been abused- he's being confronted with the fact that it's cyclical, & with the fact that the continuation that cycle is a choice that is made by people, not by God. That the way he's being treated not only hurts, but is genuinley, honestly wrong, and not some form of religous suffering meant to better him. And that, to mantain his morality and his personhood, he is going to have to- at least to an extent- remove himself from social convention.

In the episodes Help & Passing, we also see Clay & Bloberta confronted with the cycle of abuse- however neither of the two is able to acknowledge it for what it is. They merely see it as painful, some sort of necessary evil that exists as a result of a flaw within themselves, and they seek to escape that pain through each other. They both still see societal expectations as something they must strive to meet. They both see their pain as something to be repressed rather than treated at it's root. They both make the choice, whether it be as a result of selfishness or societal expectation, not to break the mold.

For Clay, this looks like alcoholism, marital neglect, and physical abuse. Drinking and drinking to numb the ache of his constant lonliness, and his fears about his own selfishness making him unloveable, hiding his pain until he physically lashes out just like his father had. He seeks out extramarital relationships rather than communicating with his wife, displaying the way trangressions can often worsen as the cycle moves from generation to generation in an attempt to fill the chasm, but believes the rest of the world is responsible for his feelings of unloveablity rather than his own trauma. In very large part because he refuses to acknowledge it as traumatic- instead bouncing between bitter resentment of his father, and justifying the pain by saying it masculinized him. The smothering nature of his mother, when combined with the absenteeism and later abuse by his father, caused Clay to believe that the world owed him. And, more specifically, that women were meant to fix men while men were to allowed to grovel in misery. Clay's mother constantly bolstered his ego, positoning him as a quasi-deity within his family unit & enforcing the notion that women are to worship men, only for his father's abuse to then drastically influence Clay's self-perception by putting him in a postion where he had to seek out violence to get even a fraction of the attention that was previously spoon-fed to him. All of this created a thick layer of bigotry, which Clay repeatedly perpetuates then justifies over the course of the series, along with an emotional hole that could never be filled without intent. He neglects his wife because confronting his own pain would mean confronting the reality that life isn't easy, that there is no simple truth, and that the women and children- people Christianity positions as his lessers- are just as if not more valuable than he is. But Clay is weak, so instead of facing it he takes down as many of the people around him as he can, so as not to be the only pig in the mud. To Clay, this is nature, this is the way of things.

For Bloberta, this looks like obsessive cleaning, feverent conformism, and a perpetuancy for neglect. She's hardly emotionally invested in her marriage beyond how it impacts her appearance to the rest of the world, something we see somewhat paralleled in her parents relationship- as we're shown they're apt to present themselves as a complete and happy family unit while cutting out one of their daughters entirley- aside from her father's silent discomfort. a fact that positons men as figures to seek comfort from in Bloberta's life, while setting the expectation that they don't actually have to do anything of substance for her. She cleans with vigour as it's the one thing that gives her an illusion of control in a patriarchial society where she was given very little. The pain of being ignored, of only recieving any sort of attention for her relationship to social norms, caused Bloberta to be conformist almost to the point of religous fevor as achieving anything that the heteropatriarchy positions as a goal for women was, after all, the only time Bloberta ever recieved any positive reinforcement. She was taught that the mother of a nuclear family is one that is only emotionally present when she feels is necessary, for the members of the family she deems it necessary for, by her mother's targeted & vitrulent neglect, and she was taught that a flawed marriage leading to two legally bound people being miserable together is fine as long as the family can present a happy face to the rest of the world. And as a result not only does she seek out extramarital affairs in an attempt to reach any semblence of feeling valued, of feeling present, but she also neglects her own family- barely allowing their existence to faze her. For Bloberta, this imitation is not just the way of things but the way of being a person itself. It's godly.

And, to be honest, I think that's a large part of why so many people will defend either Clay or Blorberta & try to shift blame between the two. In missing that what Orel is being confronted with is the cycle of abuse, one is very likely to miss it when his parents are confronted with the same.

#this used to be a tag #moral orel #moral orel meta #clay puppington #bloberta puppington #arthur puppington #block posabule #shapey puppington #orel puppington

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navree · 11 months

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Wait what happened to Bruce wayne

In...In general or?

Listen, a lot has happened to Bruce Wayne, this is a character that's been around since the 30s and has Peter Parker levels of "writers will not allow you to be happy for longer than two minutes" syndrome so he has suffered more than Jesus by now, but I'm assuming this is in response to this post about Bruce and his bad track record of movie theaters.

So, for the only person I have ever met who does not know this story (no shade anon, this is like finding someone who doesn't know about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, I feel like Howard Carter discovering King Tut's tomb, I love it), when Bruce Wayne was eight years old, he went one night with his parents Thomas and Martha to go to a movie, at a movie theater in their home city of Gotham, which is like what conservatives think San Francisco is in terms of crime and quality of living (I'm of the belief personally that more projects should actually use SanFran as a filming location for Gotham but that's a rant for another time). After the movie, while leaving to go home, they take a shortcut through an alley in a rough part of the city known as Park Row (soon to be colloquially renamed as Crime Alley), where they are confronted by a mugger who wants Thomas's wallet and Martha's pearl necklace. In the chaos, the mugger ends up shooting Thomas and Martha dead and fleeing into the night, leaving little eight year old Bruce Wayne standing alone in an alley with the corpses of the parents he just witnessed get full murdered right in front of him. In most iterations of the story, the killer is never caught and the justice system in Gotham is so laughably awful that this moment is what drives Bruce to become the Batman in order to deal with the crime that the police really are not equipped to handle and make sure no one ever has go through what he went through that night ever again. It's a formative event in his origin and left him with a host of psychological issues that make him impossible to handle, and I imagine also that a healthy wariness of movie theaters is probably one of them, cuz trauma is whack like that.

(you know, this story gets retold often enough that the punch has kinda left it at this point but that is a very horrifying thing to happen to a small child, Bruce's ten million issues in his head make a lot of sense if you try to imagine something like this happening to a real kid)

Other things that have happened to Bruce Wayne, because a lot has happened to Bruce Wayne (this is not a comprehensive list I'm very sure I'm missing four dozen other traumas):

His Batman training was very intense and included some stuff that definitely wasn't good for the psyche

It's implied in a comic (I don't know if they've ever done anything with this since) that he might have been molested as a child by a teacher??? DC between this and Dick and Jason and Barbara we really need to discuss your habit of having the adult members of the Batfamily be victims of assault, it's weird at this point

He's never had a relationship that's ended well, and he's been in a lot of relationships. Best case scenario, they leave him. Worst case scenario, they die. Because everyone in this man's life dies

Case in point he had a girlfriend who I think got her throat slit in front of him and I don't know if we've heard from her since so she might have been full on murdered in front of him too

His close friend and civilian partner in crime fighting, Harvey Dent, was attacked and disfigured and the trauma of that and other elements of his life turned him into a supervillain who keeps trying to kill Bruce now and no matter how many times Bruce tries to help him the cyclical status quo nature of comics means he never gets better and these two are dancing a miserable dance of pain and lost friendship

He and his first son spent years on the outs and full on not on speaking terms

His pregnant long term partner faked a miscarriage of that baby and then immediately left him in order to raise the baby herself and not tell him for ten years (I don't know how canon this is anymore but it is a story that happened)

His second son was tortured and murdered at age fifteen by his greatest nemesis via extended and brutal beating with a crowbar and subsequently being blown up as a direct result of Bruce's actions (I know Jason doesn't blame Bruce and what happened wasn't his fault but there is a line of culpability that can be drawn)

Bruce found said second son's body in the wreckage after having arrived seconds too late to save him and the entire event fucked him up so badly that he was actively suicidal and dangerously close to killing people for months

That second son came back to life and made it clear that he doesn't hate Bruce for the things Bruce hates himself for, but in fact hates him for not doing the one thing that Bruce cannot do (killing the man who murdered him). It's very tragic, we all cry about it

His greatest nemesis also attacked his friend, the police commissioner, and his son's girlfriend, the police commissioner's daughter, as part of their cat and mouse game

He thought that his closest maternal figure since the death of his mother full on let a child under his care die of her injuries from being tortured in order to teach him a lesson

He was presumed dead while actually being trapped in the time stream for a really long time and nobody knew about it

He got left at the altar by his fiancée

His fourth and youngest son was killed (for five minutes but it happened) by being stabbed in the chest at the age of, like, twelve

His best friend died on live television which, combined with the ongoing trauma of his second son's murder, sent him into a slow motion psychological breakdown

After being kept awake for, like, three days straight in order to fight every supervillain ever (including a guy who makes him hallucinate his greatest fears) he is beaten to a pulp in his own home by a man on steroids and has his back literally broke in half like a Pringle

His greatest nemesis planned a massive attack on his entire family (which includes at least two people who have been very intimately personally scarred by this guy and what he did to them) in order to physically torture them and psychologically break them, which they all believed is Bruce's fault because he kept a secret from them and it broke their trust in him for a long time

His first son also got shot right in the fucking head, which resulted in him losing all his memories and rejecting the family for like two years (Ric Grayson my nemesis)

His longtime father figure and the man who raised him and loved him following the traumatic murders of his parents was killed and is currently dead

A longtime childhood friend of his secretly hated him the entire time and also attempted to psychologically torment him for days in a convoluted supervillain plan that fucked up another of his relationships and also increased his paranoia

A group of his superhero allies, including people he's known for nearly all his life and people he considers genuine trusted friends, decided via popular vote to forcibly wipe his memories in spite of his protestations (the mindrape also made his paranoia worse, and he's very paranoid)

Really he's paranoid, has OCD, severe control issues, horrible PTSD from a myriad of other things, a tragic inability to communicate, and this routinely strains his relationships with the people he loves, including and most especially his children who have all full on hated him at one point in their lives in spite of how much he loves them

A secret cabal of evil rich people who control Gotham are obsessed with him and trapped him in a labyrinth to drive him insane and also might have either killed his brother in utero or are being run by his brother who is secretly alive (this is up for debate) Thing is this entire story is kinda stupid and has a lot of problematic implications and only has one good moment, which is the ending of Red Hood and the Outlaws #9 so shrug dot emoji but it is part of the canon

Really a lot of his supervillains are obsessed with him and kinda wanna fuck him, which isn't good for anyone's mental health

He's been to Hell a few times

I think he's currently trapped in a nightmare realm as of the writing of this post, or dealing with a nightmare realm, I haven't had the opportunity to read DC Knight Terrors yet but I believe that's what's happening

He's been to multiple different universes and in them he's either a complete monster or the murders of his parents (and possibly his second son) are a fixed point in nearly all of these universes, which just has to suck to know

Worst of all, he's been around for nearly one hundred years and has spent most of those hundred years having his character misinterpreted in almost every way it possibly can by people who don't know a thing about him, Bruce honey I'm so sorry

You know, what hasn't happened to Bruce Wayne at this point.

#personal #answered #anonymous #batman #bruce wayne #'what happened to bruce wayne' how long ya got how much time do we have #this really does validate every single one of those movies that keeps on retreading the death of batman's parents #i'm missing so much from this list but i slept weird so here #an explanation of bruce wayne's origin and a very non comprehensive list of his other traumas

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