People in the Cronus v. Vriska debate will also completely ignore that Cronus. Really wants to kill people. He just says that. No obfuscation included.
He doesn’t even have any excuse for it. Vriska killing people makes sense because she grew up on Alternia and had to feed her Lusus. Cronus just wants to kill people because he wants to do murder-eugenics and is really fucking mad murder-eugenics isn’t legal and does in fact have social consequences. Cronus just wants to kill disabled people for being disabled and not get in trouble for it. He explicitly says he wishes culling “meant what it should have” on Beforus.
Vriska was born and raised on Alternia, and that’s not her fault. It is, in fact, an entirely new level of fucking deranged to want Alternian laws to be real. Growing up in a system where killing people deemed below you is okay is different from wishing you lived in a system where killing people deemed below you is okay, because growing up there inherently means that that is already normal to you, while wishing that was the case inherently means it is not normal to you, you just want more harm to befall specific out groups (the lower class, the disabled, etc.) and to hurt more people in more violent ways.
People also love to casually ignore that Cronus is a grown adult. Like, sure, he’s 19, and 19 years old is pretty young in the grand scheme of things, but he is still a grown ass man who knows better. Him knowing better and simply not caring is literally a major part of his character. He is a grown ass man who can make his own legal decisions and live on his own. He can pay taxes. He could buy a house. He could invest in the stock market. In some countries, he can legally drink. He can drive. He can drink and drive. He can go die in the military. He’s grown. He’s a grown ass man. Vriska is 13. That is a child. Like, a CHILD child. Vriska is a middle school child. This is the difference between a middle schooler and a college student. Think of how mentally developed you were at 13. You weren’t even done with puberty yet. You’re not even done growing at that age. Cronus can fucking vote. He can go to adult prison. If you spotted a kid Vriska’s age out roaming the street with no guardian in sight, you’d probably be worried.
A major part of Cronus’s character is that he is a terrible person by choice, willingly, knowingly, and does not care. He is making a decision. Him being shitty and awful is a conscious choice he is making. He knows he is hurting people, and he knows what he is doing is terrible, and he does not care. Cronus knows that trying to bang children 6 years his junior is bad. He doesn’t care. He knows he is abusing Mituna, he calls it abuse, and he knows abuse is bad. He doesn’t care. He knows sex crimes are bad. He doesn’t care. He’s too entitled to care about anyone but himself and his own gratification.
Vriska is a 13 year old anti-hero who literally gets groomed and is shown to only be Like That because she is extremely traumatized and her experience of living on Alternia has made it so her guard is up 24/7. She literally cannot put the metaphorical swords down. She thinks it’s the only thing keeping her alive.
Cronus does not have an excuse.
That is, like… The Point.
The point is that he sucks and is irredeemable. He doesn’t have a single quality that makes standing around him worthwhile. He’s a relentless, unapologetic abuser. He just doesn’t care. He’s the most entitled man to ever live. He sees people as punching bags and sex toys, and any time this notion is rejected or faces even the slightest pushback, he freaks the fuck out about it.
And the point with Vriska is that she is complicated, and a child. A really, really traumatized, really, really scared child.
I don’t know, I think there’s a party here that is objectively worse.
… And - hear me out! - I think… I think it’s the adult sex predator… And not the child.
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"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:
If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.
'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?
This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).
But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."
- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.
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I saw a post a couple of days ago that said one of the most important things about Steven Universe, thematically, is that everybody in the core cast has done at least one completely morally unjustifiable thing, regardless of how likeable or sympathetic they are otherwise, and that this is important to understanding the show thematically. This is true.
But it also reminded me of one other thing I really like about Steven Universe, which is that it’s the emotional-toxicity equivalent of all those posts about how cartoons have to come up with unimaginably worse forms of death and violence in the course of avoiding getting censored for depicting plausible forms of death and violence. All of the ways in which SU characters cross those emotional and interpersonal lines are wrapped up either in their fantastic abilities or their bizarre life circumstances in a way that makes it all esoterically awful and often much more existentially horrifying than any of the real-life dynamics it’s alluding to. You’ve said nasty things to people in the heat of the moment but you’ve never shapeshifted into the guy’s dead wife to twist the knife a little more. No violation of bodily autonomy is ever gonna involve contriving a situation in which the other party will believe that it’s necessary to fuse with you, body and soul in order to do demolition work. The most toxic relationship in the world isn’t gonna involve imprisoning someone at the bottom of the ocean for several months and only emerging to participate in humanoid-sacrifice rituals. Your codependency will never last 8,000 years, be frontloaded with a faked death you’re biomechanically incapable of confessing to, and end with your partner’s suicide-by-childbirth. Your worst roommate situation will never end with one party stealing the apartment and taking it to the moon. Et al. Et al.
I don’t remember where I was going with this, precisely, (and I may have drifted sideways from the original discussion topic of crossed lines per se, but whatever.) I mean part of it’s funny because it exists in a series with tons of mundane, non-metaphorical examinations of interpersonal issues, like everything to do with Lars and Sadie, or Sour Cream and Marty. And there’s an extent to which I’m just describing how cartoons are written. But there’s something special about how Steven Universe does it. Something delightfully fucked up about it all. I think maybe part of it is that it’s a considered and embraced fucked-upedness, none of this is just an ill-considered fridge-logic by-product of something else they were trying to do. Like for every one of these, someone in the writers room probably went, “Man, this has some fucked up implications,” and then everyone would go, “Yeah!” and hi five and put it in specifically because of that. Great Show. Great show
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— “hands off! i’m taken!”
for the first time in your drunken daze, you don't recognise your own husband.
CONTAINS : gn!reader, 983 wc, fluff, (attempts at) humour, mentions/reference of alcohol consumption
A/N : neuvillette is in pain (emotional) while you are in pain the morning after (literal).
it’s not often neuvillette finds free time amongst the seemingly endless piles of papers on his desk. when he does get some free-time, he always makes sure to treat you out to the places you most recently show interest in. however, these evenings out more often than not result in you having one too many drinks. (“it’s a rare evening date!” you would tut, waving a finger at him while your free hand holds the wine glass.)
he worries for you and your health after all, and he most definitely doesn't want you to experience these so-called "hangovers" you bemoan about as he coddles you through it all the mornings after.
and so what better way to help prevent such a tragedy than by putting a stop to it prematurely?
“hands off! i’m taken!”
…or so he thought.
regardless, that doesn’t change the fact neuvillette now stands in the middle of one of the (now quite humid) private rooms in the upper floor of hotel debord, clutching his stinging hand close to his chest while staring at your huffing form in a mixture of hurt and shock. he blinks once, twice, thrice as he slowly begins to process your words — or, lack of.
“pardon?”
“i said,” you stress, narrowing your gaze at him as you begin to sit up, “hands off! i’ll have you know i’m happily married to the loveliest, most beautifulest man in teyvat and i don’t need some… some meddlesome old creep trying to get in between that.”
were this quite literally any other day besides one you were drunk on, neuvillette would be jumping for joy over the moon (metaphorical… probably) and documenting this moment in his diary he keeps safe and secured in a locked drawer under his desk, positively cooing and sighing in pure adoration at your adorable self.
(he also doesn’t have the heart to tell you beautifulest isn’t exactly a real word, but he’s flattered all the same. and it makes you that much more adorable in his eyes.)
alas, this isn’t any other day. no, instead it is a day which marks his drunk spouse being unable to identify their own husband, and your intoxicated words render him silent.
now, don’t get him wrong, he’s glad you are, for a lack of better words, raring to defend your marital status and honour when intoxicated. however…
‘meddlesome old creep’? is that how he appears? he thought he looked quite dashing this evening, what with the way you sang his praises after he got himself dressed and questioned if you were actually married to one another.
then again, he supposes it’s still accurate to say you’re still questioning whether or not he is your husband. just not in the joking manner you initially did.
seeing how you’ve begun to grow a little restless with his prolonged silence, neuvillette awkwardly clears his throat and begins in what he hopes is a tone which masks the minor betrayal your words caused. “i’m glad you feel that way about our marriage, mon cœur, but—”
“stop!” neuvillette’s mouth instantly ceases movement. “how… how dare you, a stranger, call me that! just who… who do you think you are? my husband?”
“actually, i am.”
you blink at him. “you’re what?”
“i am your husband. neuvillette.” in all honesty, he doesn’t know why he’s nervous. perhaps it’s your scrutinising gaze causing him to sweat, taking him back to the first days when he could finally put a name to the emotions you brought out from within him — ones which have never weakened, but only seem to grow stronger as the days pass by. his hands clam up, and he’s glad you can’t see him wiping his palms against the fabric of his clothes from where you sit. even when you’re drunk, you tend to remember the most random moments. more often than not, they end up being in some relation to him.
(neuvillette laments the times where you only remembered his brief loss of composure.)
after a few more agonising seconds of staring, you speak up once more. “you’re lying.”
there are many things neuvillette wishes to say in response — such as showing your wedding rings, pulling out the small polaroid of you both nestled within his inner coat pocket, recalling the first day you met, the first day you talked, the first “thank you” you ever said to him, the first—
quickly, he snaps himself out of this spiral. just in the nick of time too, for you open your mouth to say something else. “my neuvillette is cute and lovely and pretty and everything a person could only dream to have.”
is he not cute right now? is he not lovely and pretty right now? is he not everything a person could only dream to have right now? what makes the him through your drunken lens so different to the him in your memories?
against his better judgement, he decides to ask the big question.
“then… may i ask what i am?”
“a liar.” and, as if to rub salt in the wound, you add, “i don’t like liars.”
neuvillette feels as though he could cry.
(when you awoke to a pounding headache the next morning, the last thing you expected was your husband brooding on the edge of the bed, his back facing you as he mumbled something along the lines of, “i would lie for you… not to you…” though it was a little hard to tell amidst the incessant pitter-patter of rain against the window.
despite racking your brain in an effort to figure out what caused him to be in such a state in the first place, the only things you remembered from last night were him wiping his hands on his clothes, as well as him looking as though someone slapped him across the face.
yeah. perhaps it is best you don’t tell him that.)
mon cœur = my heart, which can be read as my sweetheart/other half/life, etc.
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