I was reading an essay about trans identity earlier and the author forwarded an interesting argument, which was that cis-heterosexuality is deeply unnatural. it can’t be anything but unnatural, because if it wasn’t it wouldn’t need to be so violently imposed on everyone and reinforced to you your entire life. which means humanity existed prior to that imposition - that there is a state of existential transsexuality, or rather pre-sexuality (used in this instance to refer both to gender and sexuality), where human beings are fully capable of existing in the world without the imposition of cis-heterosexuality. trans people are just sitting up and taking note of this imposition. so the real question is not “why are you transgender?”, the question is “why are so many of you not transgender?”

okay but the fact that we hear all about kaveh's life post-fall out with alhaitham, the fact he graduated, worked at construction firms and continued taking on others' burdens, had a hard time finding solo work because of how arts are perceived in sumeru, that he went to his mother's wedding in fontaine, that he took a vacation from work because he was stifled by the environment and felt he had lost motivation and worth as an artist, was determined to complete the palace of alcazarzaray at the cost of everything he owned just to have a tangible object of his efforts and view of art only for its outcome to further emaciate him, until he meets alhaitham for the first time in years, is understood at once, has no need to don a front as he does for everyone else in his life, is listened to, is challenged once more and reinvigorated in his perception of his ideals, is offered a second chance, a home, and accepts it, although he cannot comprehend why alhaitham would offer such a thing and yet not ask anything of relevant substance in return, other than rent

all of this, and we hear virtually nothing of alhaitham's life post-fall out with kaveh, besides his graduation and his taking on the job of the scribe. his character stories omit this part of his life whereas kaveh's is full of detail and emotion, mostly suffering. the first instance we see of alhaitham in this time is from kaveh's perspective when the two meet again in the tavern, and in this alhaitham endeavours to understand kaveh once more, before offering his house - the research centre previously allocated to the both of them for the success of their joint thesis before they fell apart - to kaveh.

we don't know why alhaitham moved out of his grandmother's house and into the research centre, why he renovated it from a research centre into a livable home, only that he did so after kaveh informed alhaitham through a third party that he was not in need of a house, nor do we know his thought processes and emotions in the years spent apart - the years that are carefully documented in kaveh's character stories. the image we are presented with is that of stasis; alhaitham pursues no other close friendships, he works as the scribe, owns a nice house within sumeru, is financially secure, and functions within, and carries out, his own ideals - is content with this way of life. in this, from alhaitham's perspective, there are no details necessary to give from this time

but in inviting kaveh to live with him, his character stories tell us that what he gains by doing so is the mirror of himself, both in personality and scholarly thinking, and in this, he is able to gain an enhanced view of the world, which otherwise would be limited. with kaveh being present in alhaitham's life, alhaitham believes that his vision is perfected, whereas it could not be before, with kaveh's absence. it is in this that we hear what alhaitham has been missing in his life, and ultimately, it is kaveh, not just as a scholar, but as a person

what is omitted from alhaitham's character stories is provided in kaveh's character stories; where we hear about kaveh's struggles, we don't hear about alhaitham's. perhaps this is because alhaitham did not struggle as kaveh did in terms of realising and achieving his ideals, but instead his struggles were in silence, recognising that his vision, and himself, had been compromised because he had rejected the ideals that served to enhance his own vision, that he had inadvertently rejected, and thus had been rejected by, kaveh.

actually it's kind of funny how people will say Alex's fatal flaw is that he 'doesn't ask for help' and that it's his determination to handle things on his own that leads to his deterioration and eventual death when his whole introduction to the present-day timeline was a very literal cry for help that simply went ignored

the reason why bejeweled feels very calvin to me still is how it parallels high infidelity. in general, the 3am tracks seem to explore a darker, more explicit side of a storyline that’s already present, if only in the form of subtext (like we don’t have a direct parallel for wcs, but we do have two songs exploring formative past relationships vaguely sexually, and wcs is the darker example), on the main album, and bejeweled/high infidelity is perhaps the best example of this. its similarities to tolerate it, which is about something she felt ‘at one point in her life,’ back this up. HOWEVER, I do think it’s exploring a potential outcome of the then-current state of her relationship with joe. like, this is how things could go - I have forgotten that I have a man in the past, and I can do it again.

being a system can be really fucking hard and it comes with a lot of challenges and struggles but man?? I fucking love my headmates. I don't know what I'd do without them and my life is better because they are in it.

do we have a judas correlative in tlt? like we have a main jesus with some jesus-ness sprinkled onto some others, there's mary, joseph, paul, herod, cain, abel, the holy spirit, god of course and more, but i can't think of anyone who's had the same character/textual allusions to judas like the biblical figures do...

went into this episode excited to see ylfa and the beast interact and crossing my fingers for a good elody and gerard union and came out with an existential crisis about these young nihilistic women running themselves into the ground and destroying everything because they don’t know what else to do

looked at the terror tag on here (mistake) and I saw someone dismissing criticisms of the show’s depiction of colonialism because like all the guys die at the end and the british do all the violent shit they accuse the Inuit of doing so the show is ultimately telling the audience that colonialism is bad. which I think is kind of silly. I don’t think the show is apologetic about british colonialism in a general sense and like obviously The Point Of The Show is to make the argument that british colonialism creates conditions that are hostile to all human life, that you reap what you sow etc, but there is a generosity and sympathy going on with the main cast that does blunt the text’s ability to be critical, and coupled with the like weird magical indigenous people bullshit going on I think the show is limited in its capability to deliver a full-throated criticism of British colonialism and its consequences. and this almost goes without saying but the vast majority of what I saw in the tags was people shipping white guys together as opposed to discussing the show itself, although to be fair I don’t think that really indicates anything meaningful about audience response beyond the fact that tumblr’s sole mode of engagement with any text ever made is to make shipping edits and meme compilations

how much i hate seeing the same misconceptions appear in syscourse over and over again

okay so can everyone make art because it came free with your humanity or is art defined by how much physical effort you put into it. answer quickly

I'm not done listening to the Alex Hirsch interviews but god it just reminds me both of how much I miss this show and how much I appreciate the love and care that went into it. I love listening to him talk about the characters with a frankness and care that shows how much he values them being three dimensional beings.

the thing about saying "anyone mad at Christopher Nolan* for making a pro-bomb movie is an idiot for not realizing that the moral of the movie is anti-bomb" may SEEM like a good and sophisticated argument against a certain type of very online reactionary who has never seen a movie made before 1995, but the problem is you're still buying into the same basic understanding of film that the reactionaries are, which is that the raison d'etre of each and every film has a Lesson that can be boiled down to a single sentence, and the merit of the film comes entirely down to whether that Lesson is aligned with your moral and political worldview. I think this is not a good way to think about movies. Once you stop expecting every film to be an episode of VeggieTales I think you will find that there is a whole world of experiences out there for you.

Grimmer is Immune to Johan

Probably a stretch and my reasoning definitely boils down to “because I think that would be interesting and will analyse text based on this premise” so don’t take me too seriously lol (but I’m right)

I mostly wanted to write this because I lament the fact that Johan and Grimmer never really get any proper interactions together despite being, in my opinion, much better narrative foils to each other than Johan is to Tenma. They were made of the same building blocks, but turned out as total opposition to one another. We do get a faint taste of this through Milosz, and that’s actually part of what makes me argue this point: Milosz was saved.

Before really getting into Grimmer vs. Johan, it’s important to draw another distinction. Grimmer and Roberto are the ones often compared, given their ties to one another. They both went to Kinderheim, and both were similarly broken down to hollow human husks, then left the orphanage and began different lives. It’s here, once they moved on, that an important distinction is made.

While little is known about Roberto and so there’s not much to go on here, he indicates while talking to Lunge that he lived as an impersonal mercenary, with no connections to anyone or anything. Because he never speaks on having had any connection of any kind, my assumption here is this has always been the case for him.

Grimmer on the other hand became very much connected to people. While, yes, it was a facade - he didn’t care about them, he was performing a role as a spy - he did still have a grounded existence in which people were familiar with him, treated him like a friend, a husband, a father. Even if it was false, Grimmer had grounded himself by living a life. Roberto was transient, with no other person to validate his existence.

In a way, I connect Grimmer to Nina; both have little to no memory of their childhood, and both were “given” a new name, living their lives under this new persona and growing into a person of their own, holding that new name as a part of themselves. Basically, Grimmer has an identity. He started developing into a proper person, and allowed himself to move forward with his life as that person. And after losing the people that had become his family, he set his sights on a goal to unearth the organization that had put him through everything he endured. While he is contemplating his past here, he’s doing so through the lens of a forward-moving goal; he can’t achieve it if he’s only looking back. Achieving his goal means he has to keep moving forward.

The reason that Johan was able to get to Roberto, and to sway him to perfect loyalty, was because Roberto had nothing to ground him in the present, and nothing to look for in the future. He was stuck in the past, and having someone validate those feelings gave him ground to stand on. He finally had a connection, but that connection was fixing him into his past, rather than pulling him forward. He’s trapped by Johan and sees no future except “the end”.

Overall this is how Johan works; he himself is unable to let go of the past, and sympathizes with people who in turn have traumas they’re unable to let go of, helping them to embrace that part of themselves instead of moving on. Convincing people to kill themselves isn’t that hard when all that exists for them is their past, and the future has no meaning.

This brings us back to the pseudo-conflict between Grimmer and Johan over Milosz. Indeed, Johan is able to break Milosz down and trap him into his past - the trauma of knowing his mother abandoned him. Rationally, if he were able to look forward, he would know that he has a new family now, in the boys that befriended him. But because he was caught in Johan’s trap, the present doesn’t matter. Grimmer, though, was able to break through with one important assertion: that someone wanted him. True his mother may have abandoned him (or died, we don’t even know!) but so long as he looks forward instead of back, there will be people in the world he will meet that do want him, that do love him, that need him in their lives. He gives Milosz a goal: to find the people that can become his new family, instead of wallowing in the despair of not having his mother.

While I do think that Johan would have had the power to reach and break down Grimmer when he was younger, still more freshly out of Kinderheim and barely established as a person, the Grimmer of now is too grounded in his existence and forward-looking for Johan to be able to ensnare him. The only way I think he might have an angle on Grimmer is through Steiner, as Grimmer still expresses visible vulnerability about not being able to control that other side to himself, but I don’t think it would be enough to convince him that the world is full of despair. His connection to the world, even if manufactured some of the time, is too strong for Johan to crack.

I would have loved to see them have a proper discussion in the show, I think it could have been very insightful.

As an aside, I think it’s interesting to consider both Johan and Grimmer’s dialogues with Milosz as being somewhat self-reflective; Johan feels abandoned by his mother, and therefore unwanted in the world, while Grimmer holds onto the necessary belief that someone somewhere in the world wanted him to exist.

peace and love on planet earth save me.... peace and love on planet earth.... save me peace and love on planet earth....

hey can raging aphobes get out of the Hazbin fandom please :D /srs

just saw one person try to claim that the scene in the beginning of episode one where Alastor says “not gonna happen” to Angel’s p*rn video suggestion was violating to Angel Dust, not Alastor. they then proceeded to say that “asexuals claiming that this was ‘good ace rep’ are ignoring the blatant wh*rephobia that Alastor is showing in this scene” (not even kidding that is the actual word they used)

maybe? some people??? just don’t like sexual remarks made about them like that????? even if they’re NOT asexual???????

and they seem to be just. incredibly aphobic in general. they seem to disregard the fact that sex-repulsed aces exist (talking about them in quotations “like this” in a derogatory way as if we’re not real) and are really hostile to anyone who tries to reason with them - reblogging their responses with what are practically essays on why THEY’RE right and the other person MUST be wrong

anyways sorry for the rant. i’m just pissed lol