Cut Off The Bad Roots

i love it when fandom infantilizes characters to the point of denying them their own agency.

"if people in cang qiong had treated shen jiu differently-" do you have any evidence that they mistreated him? or is it too hard a pill to swallow that shen jiu was the one who decided to close himself off and be an asshole. that cang qiong treated him just fine, that his martial siblings tolerated him to the point that even when he was suspected of murder nothing was done to him?

who forced shen jiu to abuse luo binghe? to abuse other disciples? those were his decisions, that was him acting in a position of power.

the moral of the story is not "shen jiu was misunderstood :(" the moral is: the person who was abused can also become an abuser. the one who suffers violence can be violent towards others. you, despite what you've gone through, have the capacity for kindness and cruelty. so be wise on how you decide to act, because your pain doesn't justify hurting others, and your actions will have consequences.

you have agency, you have whatever amount of power you have over your own life and the things you do have an impact in the lives of those around you and yourself. so maybe try being at the very list neutral to the world and yourself, if you can't be kind.

but no, shen jiu's mentality was "since I suffered, they deserve to suffer too". and by taking that path he perpetuated the cycle of abuse.

bingge is the same, because he could have stopped at taking revenge on shen jiu, but he decided to involve the whole sect and the rest of the world, no matter who was innocent. he was unnecessarily cruel, but so was his master.

both shen jiu and bingge had the capacity for some form of "niceness" (in the way they treated women), so it wasn't as if they'd never known some form of love. at some point in their lives, they stopped being abused children and became abusive adults.

and that's an expression of human behaviour that we have to accept as possible. the svsss narrative invites us to examine ourselves in this light, to witness our capacity for both love and hate, to realize that even in the most adverse of circumstances, there's always a small sliver of agency over how we feel and how we act. that, despite the things that defines us from birth through childhood, our decisions also define what we'll become in the future.

Nathan stands at his left. Mary stands at his right.

Neil doesn’t turn to look at them, but he can feel them there—one carved into his ribs, the other burned into his skin.

He is made of them.

Of his father’s brutality, his mother’s desperation. Of bruises layered over bruises, of fists and sharp words and the lesson that pain was the only thing he could count on.

Nathan’s voice is smooth, proud, as it murmurs in his ear.

"You were built for more than this, Nathaniel."

Mary’s whisper is sharp, urgent, dripping with every frantic mile they ever ran.

"You don’t understand what it means to survive."

Nathan had tried to shape him into something ruthless. Mary had tried to strip him down to something weightless.

And neither of them had ever asked what he wanted to be.

Neil closes his eyes.

Nathan’s presence is heavy, all iron and control and the scent of blood that will never wash away.

Mary’s is lighter, but just as cruel—a ghost that lingers, a reminder that even love can leave bruises.

They will always be here.

Because Neil is made of them.

Of a father who saw him as a tool, and a mother who saw him as a liability.

Of a life spent running, and a body full of evidence that he was never meant to survive this long.

His shoulders ache under the weight of them.

And no matter how far he goes, they will never leave.

one thing i need you all to realize is that you have to fight like hell for the marginalized people you don’t like. you have to fight for the cringey discourse queer and the misogynistic man of color and the transphobic cis woman and the politically conservative jew and the racist disabled person. you don’t have to like them or agree with them. but if you see them experiencing bigotry and you are a person who claims to be against bigotry, you are obligated to fight for them. you have to fight against bigotry, even if you don’t like the target of that bigotry, because as soon as you let yourself slip, as soon as you allow bigotry on your watch, even if it is directed at the shittiest person you’ve ever met, you’ve now established that in your personal ethos bigotry isn’t wrong, it’s a weapon. and as soon as you’re okay with bigotry being used as a weapon, you have already lost.

there is something to be said about how the the two major “socially inferior” characters—wei wuxian and jin guangyao—were shown to be extremely skilled at people-reading and cognizant of the social, hm, dynamics throughout the story. not in the same exact way, of course. wei wuxian’s social competence was about knowing how to approach people and endear them to him and knowing what to ask to receive what he wants, usually in terms of information. jin guangyao was amazing at anticipating other people’s needs and what they want to hear and thereby delivering things in a way that would placate them.

i bring this point up because these were two characters granted the least amount of social grace and yet the expectation was that they must maintain the niceties or be deemed singularly arrogant (we see this happen with wei wuxian because he does end up going openly against the sects; where behaviour previously considered unobtrusive is now labelled as attitude problems lol). i mean, while i do commend wei wuxian’s attempt to present his request about the wen remnants to jin guangshan with politeness, it’s also so bafflingly out-of-place in a situation where he’s rightfully calling out the unfair atrocities the wen remnants were being subjected to. jin guangyao’s entire character is built on his specific method of rising through ranks using his honeyed tongue and ability to not let the naysayers get to him. “son of a servant” and “son of a prostitute” are thrown at them and these tags can reduce everything good they have done for the cultivation society in the blink of an eye because they are, infact, considered to be valid criticism of their character. it’s the dichotomy of it where jiang cheng and nie mingjue and jin guangshan can be crude and aggressive and predatory and receive, at most, hushed criticism but have their authority intact, while wei wuxian and jin guangyao’s very standing is threatened by the callback to their social status. how they are forced to be so aware of people and their ways of thinking and make all these interpersonal considerations while the other characters are allowed to be way less self-aware about their behaviours in social settings because their position was never threatened to begin with. how wei wuxian’s “manipulative” abilities and jin guangyao’s “cunning” were products of their treatment by the cultivation world in the first place.

24/7 obsessed and endlessly fascinated by sidney crosby. he is a freak. i love him. i hate him. i hope he has access to consistent therapy. he is both endlessly compassionate and ruthless in his desire to succeed. humble and won’t settle for anything but number 1. involved in everything and anything for the community as long as it’s to do with hockey. sexiest, rough, low voice that regularly squeaks hysterically when he’s yelling giggling or laughing

lowkey mad my current hyperfixation is just. this feral little fussy princess babygirl old man who does Sports.

This is insane

It’s funny but pretty it’s only funny if it happens to other peoples

She's an icon

canon: they died

fanfic: fUCK YOU