#Any of this works and it is in fact really racist to think it does
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:))))))
#cipher talk#Talking about Egyptian cultural preservation is a crapshoot#Several tombs got destroyed today to build a road#But since they aren't pharaonic I suppose it doesn't matter!#I swear the obsession over ancient Egypt is a reactionary bullshit cycle#Europeans started it by deciding it was the only part of African history worth knowing about and trying to prove it wasn't African#Because it made them uncomfortable. Now it's the main era of history anyone knows about and I've even seen Albanians claim to be the#'True descendants' and everybody keeps doing BS DNA tests when they don't know how haplogroups work#Plus the intracolonialism of Egyptian history makes people obsess over their connection to it to prove Indigenity when that's not how#Any of this works and it is in fact really racist to think it does#(Plus the regular colonialism)
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every time dilbert gets mentioned in a conversation/post i think about how hilarious it is that scott adams turned out to be such a deranged alt-right fuckwit, considering the fact that his comics indisputably radicalized me against capitalism as a kid and probably did so earlier than anything else
like there IS some pretty iffy stuff in dilbert for sure (particularly a lot of casual misogyny and xenophobia), and it definitely increased over time as the author got more edgy and self-important. i don't think i read anything from later than like 2003 and it was already starting to get pretty unreadable by then - LONG before he started openly being a turbo-racist podcaster weirdo. but the earlier stuff (especially before there were a lot of established recurring characters or running gags) was largely just a satirical cartoon focused on how corporations are evil and exploitative, and how you'd have to be completely detached from reality to truly enjoy working for them, and how trying to climb the ladder of success is a futile pursuit within a capitalist society where the upper class needs to keep pulling that ladder up behind them to keep the rest of us in our place and maintain their own status. it was basically vent art by a guy stuck working in mind-numbing desk jobs, who barely knew how to draw but just wanted to get his thoughts out and reach other people who were frustrated in the same ways he was. it's really weird but also fascinating to compare that to how it (and adams himself) ended up in the long run
i don't think it was particularly funny most of the time, and when it did have actual jokes, they were often pretty mean-spirited and/or cynical. i don't remember more than one or two specific bits from the comic that actually ever made me laugh, and i read a LOT of them as a kid (my grandpa had a massive collection of newspaper comic compilation books at his house that he'd let me look through and borrow stuff from - this is also how i discovered garfield and calvin & hobbes). but i DO remember having it instilled in me from an early age that there was nothing really exciting or praiseworthy about grinding your life away for a company that profits off your skilled labor and gives you pennies in return - which is especially noteworthy considering i was also raised by mormons, who are famously all about that "nobility in suffering" and "work your way to heaven" type bullshit. i'm genuinely unsure how this happened
anyways i think scott adams would probably piss his pants and explode if he ever took a break from peddling his psychic penis hypnosis and killer burrito podcasts long enough to seriously think about any of this stuff. (and i hope he does. it would be funnier than anything he's ever written.)
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So is Worm good from what you have read
"Yes" doesn't begin to cover it but yes. Worm is a brain-rewiring mobius strip disguised as a bible disguised as a superhero web serial that either cured your cancer or shot your dog or both depending on who you ask, and it has many extremely dedicated, brilliant scholar priest surgeons publicly dissecting it on this platform on the regular to the point I don't think I have much to add to the conversations surrounding it, even if I do have some The Thoughts about it. I had never even really seriously thought about superhero prose before and Worm isn't a thing I go back and reread frequently but it did a complete and total 180 on the way I think about superheroes and even fiction, and I've never stopped thinking about it since I've read it.
It is a monumentally impressive story with completely absolutely incredible characters that I cannot stop thinking about. No matter where it was going, even past stretches that were less interesting or more of a slog to read or worse, I could not put the story of Taylor Hebert down for one minute. Tattletale fascinated me every step of the way, I had to keep up with her. Rachel Lindt was a character I feel like I'd been waiting my whole life for. What was I gonna do, not see them through? I feel like Worm easily loses you if you don't particularly connect with the characters enough to justify to yourself the amount of time you'll spend with them, but man, I could not unglue my eyeballs from these people enough (I love all the core Undersiders, to be clear, I'd say it's Rachel > Taylor > Tattletale > Aisha and Alec and Brian, there are very small gaps between these, I just don't go berserk for the last three like I do for the first three, I'm taking Bitch and Skitter to the grave I'm dead serious)
Worm irreparably destroys your ability to engage with superhero fiction the same way ever again, as evidenced by the fact that it destroyed the author's own ability to engage with his own superhero fiction ever again. And everybody who read it has one or several gripes with it with some major dealbreakers in the mix. Tumblr's kinda the only place online where you can really talk about them at length without the spectre of John Wildbow hanging over the discussion, which enables discussion to the point where yes, maybe it does look like to outsiders that nobody can agree on whether Worm is good or what is it even about or whether it even has worms in it (it has at least one, although it's a very big one).
And it is good, it has the Undersiders in it and the Undersiders are one of the greatest groups of characters ever put together, but everyone has at least one major point of contention with Worm whether it's the timeskip or the length or the racism or the gross fatphobia or aspects surrounding the Dallon-Pelham Torment Nexus and etc. I'd say it has maybe the most racist vision of Latin America I've ever seen in a superhero text a hair short of pro-colonial tracts in Golden Age comics and that is a tall fucking order by any metric (part of why I started WEON4 as a project was motivated by spite, to try and make my own stories about non-American superheroes even if just as practice). It is Complicated, and that winds up making it so fascinating to talk about.
Worm has self-sustaining ecological systems of posts up here, far away from the Spacebattles and Reddit battlegrounds where it has different ones and that's not getting into Weaverdice or the sequel or Wildbow's larger body of work, which I haven't gotten to and probably will not any time soon because Worm was enough of a commitment as is. Do I recommend Worm to everyone? It is certainly not to everyone's tastes and I personally find it difficult to describe it simply enough to make it sound appealing or not like a pyramid scheme. But yes I do think it's good, in fact great, in fact, amazing, except when it isn't, and except it Plainly Sucks, but then something like Taylor vs Mannequin or Kevin Norton's interlude or "You needed worthy opponents" happens and it fucks harder than anything has ever fucked before and you don't walk away from it the same, so yes I guess "good" will have to do now.
It's certainly a lot but I definitely found it worth my time to read and then read the texts written about it here. You'll have to take my endorsement of Worm as proof of it's quality and proof of how deranged it makes it's readerbase, they're not mutually exclusive. If you can make it, Worm and the wormosphere has layers and layers to wade through and talk about and enjoy, despite how we're all so very small in the end *gunshot*.
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The thing about every modern Sherlock Holmes story is that it doesn’t understand that “disdain for the existing criminal justice system” is not only a fundamental part of the themes of the ACD stories it’s vital to making the whole concept work.
Holmes, when we first meet him, is on the bleeding edge of forensics for the 1880s, and this continues on into the ‘90s (the planted thumbprint in ‘The Norwood Builder’! the Sherlock Holmes test for hemoglobin in A Study in Scarlet! the use of pigs as substitute cadavers in ‘Black Peter’!) and beyond. He’s flippant about and disrespectful toward the police because he knows how criminology is a science and forensics matter and the cold hard facts are significantly more important than intimidating witnesses to extract coerced confessions, or deciding on a theory and bending the facts to make them fit, or relying on racist stereotypes to explain how people act and who’s most guilty (all things that really happen in the canon, btw). He’s smarter than everyone else because he’s doing things no one else understands yet, he’s made a study of crime and he understands how and why policing is a flawed institution.
This is why he’s not a cop, only occasionally allied with cops, and so often complaining or explaining that a moral injustice and a legal one are two different things. There are multiple antagonists (Sir George in ‘The Beryl Coronet’, Charles Augustus Milverton, Dr. Roylott, the parents in ‘A Case of Identity’) who he can’t catch in the jaws of the law but wishes he could, and at least one criminal he overlooks because he knows prison would only force them deeper into crime.
But. But.
In the 21st century, forensics are not only the backbone of police investigation they’re common knowledge to any average police procedural enjoyer or true crime fan. Holmes’s once-cutting-edge chemistry and geology are passé and ordinary now. If he’s going to be smart, he’s got to be looking ahead.
And what does that look like? It looks like knowing about the flaws in forensic analysis, like knowing about fingerprints maybe not being totally unique, like arguing over DNA evidence being misinterpreted and innocent people being sentenced for crimes they didn’t commit, like calling for the defunding and dissembling of police forces, like siding with the underclasses every. single. time.
Holmes shouldn’t be working with the cops, he should be trying to destroy them, and fighting to prove why they’re obsolete with science and quick thinking and research. Not doing that is spitting in the face of his roots and missing the whole point of what he’s working for.
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I didn't really like the helmet grab by Michonne in towl. I didn't think it was necessary for them to make her do that even though I know they were trying to show how angry she was. Am I overthinking this?
forgive me but I actually think you're not thinking enough. You're not thinking about what's happened from michonne's perspective. even if you were, you're not extending her any empathy because writing off her as just "angry" does not cut it here
....Michonne had to carry on believing rick was dead for FIVE YEARS, raising their kids despite that grief and then when she was given the smallest hope he was alive she gave up another 2 years with her kids, risking her life in the wastelands, surviving chlorine poisoning, and enduring more fucking trauma with nothing keeping her going but the fact that she loved him and would not give up looking...... AND THEN she finds him against all those odds and rick had the CAUCACITY to try and trick her into ABANDONING HIM and insinuate that she DOESN'T TRULY LOVE HIM UNLESS SHE DOES??? of fucking COURSE she rips that dumb fucking helmet off his head!! she wants him to say that nonsense to her FACE, hear how insane it sounds, and be greeted with the only appropriate response to an assertion so ludicrous: silence.
When my dad and I watched that episode we both agreed rick actually got off easy for trying to pull that shit after what michonne had been through. My dad even left the room when rick was bragging about his stoopid plan to trick michonne into leaving to jadis because my dad is very sensitive to second hand embarrassment and rick was so fucking idiotic for trying to do that to michonne and thinking it would work.
ALSO.....something that I've ranted about before is this idea of an empathy gap between how people see white characters and characters of colour (ESPECIALLY Black characters) because such is the racism of the world that people simply don't empathise or even sympathise with characters of colour because they've been conditioned not to. Years of racist media conditions you to empathise with white characters almost instinctively even when they're wrong. In this case, rick was wrong. Totally wrong, despite his intentions. He was dishonest, condescending, and inconsiderate. Michonne had every right to be angry and every right to show him how angry she was. The fact that you're uncomfortable with that maybe means you haven't really paid mind to what michonne has been through and maybe you haven't done that because she's a Black woman. Personally, I loved that scene so much and I also love all the scenes in ep4 where she's pissed off because michonne isn't just rick's love interest she's a protagonist in her own right and she's NEVER not once accepted less, even from him.
anyway, hope you don't think I'm being mean! I've just seen weird discourse about that scene that is so unnecessary. It simply wouldn't be a thing if people actually cared about michonne as a character, rather than just as one half of a ship.
#towl#richonne#the walking dead#I rmr in ep 4 when he said that shit AGAIN I was like THAT DOES IT IT'S TIME TO DIVORCE HIS ASS
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Kim, the mender
I’ve been thinking so much about Kim navigating his own deep loneliness and touch starved-ness through caring for others, and what I feel are implicit statements made by the game that he studied emergency medical first response as his mandatory RCM civil service role
(his year working in body processing, him knowing how to keep Harry alive and able to walk after the tribunal, the morale healing pats on the back, even offering his jacket to Acele etc)
It’s unselfish and not something he has to justify to himself as an indulgence, it’s practical. It’s being a good coworker. Kim mentions repeatedly that gets seen officers in worst states than Harry and I don’t think Kim is unaware that Harry absolutely thrives on his reassurances and praise.
@1tbls has some Kim posts I mull over a lot (one of them is just the sentence 'Kim's horny little need to take care of Harry' because I really feel like that hits the nail on the head. another is the one about how Kim does seem to have self analyzed himself but in a kind of shallow way.) I really agree with that, it does feel like we're meeting Kim after he’s done some internal processing of his own. in the fashion police conversation he mentions that he used to be very uptight before he started wearing plainclothes etc
This is all to say that I know fandom is understandably wary of writing Kim as Harry’s caregiver and that’s good 👍 it’s very good to be aware of racist fandom trends and push against those. But for Kim there is textually, I think, the fact that he does thrive on caring for other people. It gives him a kind of authoritative position, and stability.
(It even ties into his tailoring hobby, he’s a mender of clothes and people, a mechanic, and wants to be that for the city so badly.)
There’s a lot of reasons why Kim wants to take care of Harry, why he believes that he can come back from all of this. Obviously one is that if Harry who is white, who works in this legendary precinct with his heroes, who puts in these impossible hours and burns himself alive for the RCM, who is ranked Double Yefreitor can be so easily left to die by the RCM…it means Kim never stood a chance. That his dwindling faith in the system means nothing and he has thrown his life away in this job.
(Likewise Kim also means this for Harry- If Kim is seen as disposable then there was never any point in being diligent and clean. Both paths are thankless and have left them to rot)
But the other I think is that this is how Kim copes, by taking care of others. He is so very careful about indulging himself in ways that he feels are extraneous. But this is a kind of closeness he is allowed to have, it does good for other people.
And over time this is and will be where Harry sneaks in past his defenses and takes care of him back. Get loved, idiot! Be cared for, bino! ❤️
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okay here's one post i have to make. Finally racism confirmed real in succession. other people have talked about this before but it is a huge blind spot of the show not to acknowledge the intersection between racism and capitalism, and the excuse that the characters are the 1% and the 1% are vastly white is pretty weak. the fact that the show sidelines its existing characters of color while every now and then broadly gesturing towards race makes this worse, especially as the show more directly focuses on fascism and just Doesn't bring race into it. like i don't even think race is totally absent as a concern of the writers but it's clearly not a priority. i think a lot about how mo's widow is a filipino woman
anyway. ken and rava's conversation in this sense doesn't really qualify as, like, revolutionary in terms of succession's commentary on race esp since it's a discussion between two white parents about their brown daughter without her present. the point of interest to me really is that kendall completely fails to recognize racism as a systemic issue, much less that he works for and is trying to sustain a company that actively works to perpetuate that hegemony. his questions are why was sophie on the street? why wasn't rava there? in the same episode where he calls matsson homophobic for saying the numbers are gay. socially aware king
it's not particularly revelatory to say that a rich white man doesn't grasp the concept of systemic racism LOL but i do think it's more than that for kendall, and i also think this trait is something his siblings don't share. it's like how he doesn't realize he's in a position of power over anna and she was pressured into attending the recny with him, and his adoption of a faux-feminist stance in s3 while continuing to treat women like shit. kendall's whole concept of Everything, including systemic social issues, goes back to logan. there's no system outside of dad. the doj doesn't find the cruises evidence compelling? that's because they're scared of logan. logan's the source of the evil in the world, therefore opposing him is inherently progressive, leaving kendall with even less of a coherent moral framework after his death. and he's completely unable to process the idea that he could be participating in and benefiting from the greater racist or sexist system, because that's fundamentally incompatible with his logan-based idea of his own identity.
i don't think roman or shiv or even connor share this particular nearsightedness. roman 'we do hate speech and roller coasters' roy knows what's going on but he doesn't really care and he doesn't believe it can be changed (or, maybe more accurately, that there's any point in trying). he doesn't buy into fascism on the ideological level, exactly, but the spectacle appeals to him and he does believe it's profitable to align with it, so he's perfectly happy to do so. i think he's the most similar to logan in this regard. and shiv and connor have actual political ideologies, even if they're far from being meaningfully opposed to fascism, which requires a base awareness of the fact that We Live In A Society and That Society Has Systems In It. for kendall it really boils down to logan and logan alone
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ngl as an abuse survivor the whole “micro trauma” thing makes me roll my eyes back into my head like that’s life babe sometimes we have a negative experience it’s not trauma 💀💀💀 i really feel like so many folks live soft lives that any negative feeling becomes “traumatic” and something to avoid. i don’t think it’s good to conflate times your ego was tested or times that didn’t go exactly your way with genuine trauma. you’re more resilient than that. (obviously this isn’t about day to day trauma living as a bipoc in a racist white society etc but i don’t think you were talking about that either)
Welp, there's a lot to unpack here.
First of all, I'm an abuse survivor with my own share of trauma. I was raised in a form of conservative apocalyptic Christianity where beatings were considered an acceptable form of punishment. Because my parents believed that parental authority was never wrong, and anything a child did or even felt that seemed to challenge that authority (whether intentional or not), I was constantly told that I was wrong for having my own feelings, punished for having my own feelings if I dared to to express them. In addition to this, my family thought I needed to be very aware that the Mark of the Beast was coming and I needed to emotionally prepare myself for beheading once the Antichrist took over and started killing anyone who refused the Mark of the Beast.
In addition to this, I was subject to all of the day-to-day trauma that comes from growing up with ADHD and autism in an ableist society, as well as the trauma that comes from growing up with ADHD and autism in an environment where people think children must be obedient at all times. (My parents believed spanking and slapping was fine, by the way. So, that happened often enough. And when it wasn't spanking or slapping, it was my mother screaming and yelling.)
Now with all of this context established, I'm going to tell you: You don't get to decide who does and doesn't get to have trauma. Trauma doesn't work according to some abstract notion of what should and shouldn't constitute "trauma." People can, in fact, be genuinely traumatized over things that seem totally ridiculous to you.
Also? You don't know what other people are living through. You don't know what goes on behind closed doors. You don't know how people are being traumatized by economic circumstances, by bullshit at the workplace, by knowing that Christofascists want to subjugate them or kill them. You don't know how many people are being slowly traumatized by partners who invalidate and mock them in countless tiny ways every day. You don't know how many people are being traumatized by thinking they should be able to meet certain expectations that they don't realize are based in ableist standards or impossible capitalist ideals.
You've also evidently never had a conversation with someone who can't figure out how they're such a mess because they "don't have a reason to be traumatized," but the more you talk to them the more it comes out that they lived a profoundly messed up life, and were profoundly mistreated in a thousand ways that they didn't even recognize as mistreatment at the time. (No, it's not normal for your mother to call you ableist slurs if you can't tend to her every whim in five seconds.)
You also say "obviously this isn’t about day to day trauma living as a bipoc in a racist white society etc but i don’t think you were talking about that either." And you know what? You wanna know what? I absolutely was, because my post was meant to be inclusive of all forms of microtrauma.
Anyway, I hope you can recognize that suffering and trauma aren't a contest, and trying to decide who does and doesn't "deserve" to have trauma based on your own personal abstract ideals and limited comprehension of their lives doesn't help anyone.
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A good day - a wolfstar microfic
April 5 - Bookshop AU - 811 words
@wolfstarmicrofic
Remus was having a good day. He’d chosen to spend a free afternoon and some well-earned money in his favorite bookstore. Having picked up a few books he'd decided on beforehand he was now peacfuly browsing. As he moved from English classics to international ones, a man in skinny black jeans and a black leather jacket was blocking his way. Remus didn't mind waiting. In fact, he could watch an arse as fit as that all day.
"Keep looking, I'm cute, I know."
"No, I... I'm not..." Remus stuttered, "I'm waiting to look at the books behind you."
"Sorry, I didn’t realise."
The stranger immediately stepped aside, giving Remus full access to the shelves, but staying close by. Remus found his eyes dancing over the titles without taking in what they said. His mind was fully occupied with the annoyingly good-looking, and apparently well aware, man behind him.
"Sorry, were you not done? I'll let you finish."
"No", the stranger dragged his finger through bouncing black waves with an exasperated smile "I'm looking for a gift for my little brother, but it's seeming more impossible the more I look. I was actually hoping to see what you'd choose. You look like a guy with good taste."
Remus chuckled nervously and hid the covers of the books he was holding against his side. He wouldn't call cheap romance novels good taste, even if he loved reading them.
"What does he like then?"
"Everything? I don't know. He loves to read, though. And he likes real books. Hardcovers."
Like any sane person. Not much to go by.
"Hm. How old is he?"
"He's 21. Just two years younger than me. You'd think we'd be close, but... it's complicated."
That meant Remus and the stranger were both 23. Which of course didn't mean anything. Remus just found himself liking it.
"You're not giving me much to work with here. But something clearly brought you to the international classics?"
"Well, our parents are kind of racist and I guess I wanted to show him..."
Remus stared into pearl-grey eyes and couldn't help guessing: "That you're not the same?" because he couldn’t be, right? Not if he was trying so hard to find a gift for a brother he was for some reason not on the best of terms with. Not with these breathtakingly beautiful eyes.
The stranger nodded, but still corrected: "That I know he's not the same."
"Yeah? Well…” Remus worked hard to focus on something useful, “what about The Book Thief? Not a classic per se, buts it’s about the love of reading, and set in Nazi Germany.”
"Sounds perfect.”
“Really? I think I saw it over there, I can show you the way.”
The stranger held out his hand as for him to lead the way. And smiled when Remus pulled out a copy and put it in his hands.
"Thank you. May I see what you've picked?"
Remus hesitated. But the stranger had been generously opening up about family matters in their just a few minutes of conversation. And Remus would most likely never meet him again. He might as well return the generosity.
"All right. This is the last two books in a series called The Seven Sisters. The dialogue is a bit over the top, like little girls having a tea party and pretending to sound like adults, but I enjoy the stories and the historical settings."
The stranger smiled. "Sounds like the kind of book he'd claim not to like, then buy the rest of the series in secret.”
Remus showed the way again. He had to turn around several times to assure himself that the good-looking stranger was actually following. Not only was he taking Remus' advice, he asked interested questions and listened carefully as Remus told him more and more about books he read and wanted to read.
The stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger anymore eventualy decided he was done. Remus slowly and reluctantly led their way to the counter. He didn’t want their brief meeting to be over, but he couldn’t force more books on the poor man, could he?
“Thank you for helping me out”, he said and turned to put his books down on the counter.
“It was nothing.”
He turned back at Remus with a smile that made his knees go weak. “No, really. I appreciate it. You didn’t have to walk me around. Especially after I embarrassed you first, accusing you of staring at my butt.”
Remus felt his cheeks heat. The teasing smile widening on the man’s lips told him he understood the accusation wasn’t entirely false.
He finally held out his hand. “I’m Sirius.”
“I’m Remus.”
“Remus”, he tasted the name, “may I buy you a coffee after this?"
"Yeah. Yes. That’d be lovely. Yes,” he rambled, unable to conceal his excitement.
Remus was having a good day indeed.
#wolfstar#wolfstar microfic#wolfstar au#bookshop au#sirius black#remus lupin#remus x sirius#sirius × remus#cute mess remus :)
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I’m so curious about Wizarding fashion. JKR isn’t very physically descriptive- we just know that wizards wear robes, which are outlandish to muggles, and pointy hats, but what does that really mean? What kind of robe? Magical fashion clearly isn’t very gendered, since Harry remarks on a man at the Quidditch World Cup wearing a dress and insisting that it’s unisex (certainly not the case in Britain at the time), but we don’t have any other parameters. Keeping in mind the uniform from the movies, and the fact that in SWM, Snape isn’t wearing any trousers, here’s what I think wizards wear:
1. Flowing silhouettes and cloaks; clearly, wizards love a good statement cloak. Think tassels and frills (not like Ron’s Yule Ball fit!), massive extended sleeves and lots of draping.
2. Skirts: let’s be honest, just one singular robe, without any layering, doesn’t give us much to work with. Skirts go with the general silhouette, explain why the World Cup wizard thought muggle men wore dresses, and keep with the no-trousers thing from SWM. I’m South Asian, so I like to have a little fun with it and think of wizards in ghararas (my favourite item of clothing); the Wizarding World is quite insular, travel is relatively unrestricted (hello, they have magic!), everyone has a common enemy in muggles (and other species- goblins, house-elves) etcetera, so race probably doesn’t function the same way and I headcanon a lot of cross-cultural exchange. Plus, wizarding fashion isn’t restricted by weather- they have warming charms- so wearing clothes made for hot climates in England, for example, wouldn’t be a problem.
Plus, I actually think saris are a natural fancy dress option- flowy, drapey, colourful. Speaking of which-
3. If there’s one fanon idea that I hate (aside from fanon!Sirius, of course), it’s this image of wizards (specifically high society wizards) as reserved. Sorry, did we read the same books? Wizards, even posh, rich wizards, like the Malfoys and Blacks, are camp and very outlandish. They do house-elf taxidermy, they keep their wands in canes. Just because Hogwarts uniforms are black doesn’t mean that people dress like they’re in mourning all the time. People can be total snobs and obsessed with their image and still wear bright pink, insane robes, because guess what? They have different social conventions than we do. Men and women dress basically the same, so there is no reason to believe that a man wearing a flowing robe would be against the norm. I say this as someone who believes misogyny and homophobia are well and truly alive in Wizarding society, especially in pureblooded families where the emphasis is on continuing the line; they definitely exist, but they probably look different.
4. My personal obsession and headcanon: rich wizards wearing bones. Look, I might not think of them as racist in the traditional sense, but they are undeniably speciesist, if that’s a word? They think of themselves as superior, and other sentient magical species either work under (goblins) or are enslaved (house-elves) by wizards. We only see Veelas very briefly, but despite them being admired for their beauty, I doubt wizards treat them very well. So- show me blood-purists wearing corsets made of goblin bones and teeth. Show me Veelas being hunted for their blood to stain and dye clothes with. Show me exotic “magical creatures” that are humanoid and capable of reasoning and should have rights, like mermaids and werewolves, being hunted for their scales and pelts while also being ostracised for being ‘non-human’. It’s terrible, but that’s the kind of archaic jewellery and fashion the old families that the fandom likes to fetishise would like to wear.
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More Reminders:
Karkat is a bootlicker. This is a prominent character trait. He’s rooting for the Alternian empire- yes, even though it’s ruled by a system that wants him personally dead- and really wants to be a part of its military.
Eridan has a “genocide complex” and is able to be roughly described as the troll equivalent of a white supremacist. This is one of the first things we learn about him.
The Beta Trolls are 13. All of them. This includes Equius. This includes Eridan. This includes Vriska. This includes Gamzee.
99% of Gamzee’s character is racial caricature. No, he is not intended to be a Dionysus parallel. He is intended to be a “satirization” of Black people.
Sapphic pairings have always held precedent over MLM pairings. They’ve always been more important to the plot, been handled with much more grace, and had more screen time. This isn’t a bad thing.
Doc Scratch is a child predator. This is an incredibly prominent character trait of his, and you’re way past due for a reread if you’ve forgotten. He has a particular fixation on, as canon puts it, “little girls”, and targets both Rose and Kanaya. Do I even have to bring up what he did to Damara?
Regarding the previous point, Rose and Kanaya both get very traumatized during the course of Homestuck’s story. They’re not well put together sophisticated “mom friends”, they’re 13 year olds just like almost everyone else is, and they’re going through hell. Rose in particular makes the effect all of this trauma has on her very well known. This is what Grimdarkness is.
Cronus is a child predator, too. During the course of the Openbounds and Ministrife, we see him unabashedly predate on three specific kids, and this behavior is made out to be extremely creepy. These three kids are Karkat, Tavros, and, yes, Eridan.
The Exiles were incredibly important to the plot, actually. You guys are just mean.
Almost every relationship in Homestuck is flawed in some capacity, that’s the point of a tragic drama. The main cast is literally nothing but traumatized and/or mentally ill 13-16 year olds. A good chunk of them aren’t even socialized, or grew up in an actively hostile environment. Or both. No shit characters mess up sometimes, or have unhealthy behaviors- it’s just natural in that situation. Some dynamics are substantially more healthy than others, but the main appeal of Homestuck is that everyone is flawed and damaged.
A good majority of Vriscourse was just people leaping at the opportunity to express pure, unabashed misogyny. I don’t think I have to elaborate upon this.
No, Jane is not a fascist, nor is she racist. She’s never been either of these things, that’s something that was invented out of left field by the Post Canon writing team. Being a fascistic racist was never within the scope of Jane’s character. No, it being “a result of her having grown up being fed propaganda by The Condesce” does not explain that plot thread in Post Canon for a single second, because Jane experiencing a major personality shift because of HIC literally already happened in canon with her going Crockertier, and she came out of that a stronger person. Never once has “racism” been on the list of problems she has.
Hemoloyalty is not intended to be a 1:1 metaphor for racism, nor is it intended to be a 1:1 metaphor for classism, or any other type of oppression. It’s not a 1:1 metaphor for literally anything, it’s intended to be flexible and contextual. This is not a bad thing, and is, in fact, a common storytelling method used by a lot of fantasy/sci-fi writers. Condemning Hussie for a lot of things in their writing is valid, but Hemoloyalty not being strictly analogous to only one type of real world oppression is patently not one of them. You do not know how metaphors work.
Official =/= Canon. No one is calling Pesterquest canon. You really shouldn’t be doing the same for Post Canon. The Homestuck Epilogues and Homestuck^2 are Official, but they are definitively not Canon. This is literally the first thing you learn about either of these projects. This doesn’t invalidate anyone’s enjoyment of any of these properties, of course, but it has to be stressed: Official does not automatically mean Canon.
#i said id make a new reminders post. here it is!#homestuck#homestuck meta#homestuck analysis#beta kids#beta trolls#alpha kids#alpha trolls#karkat vantas#eridan ampora#equius zahhak#vriska serket#gamzee makara#doc scratch#rose lalonde#kanaya maryam#cronus ampora#tavros nitram#the exiles#jane crocker#post canon#dubcanon#nekro.pdf#nekro.txt
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Just Between Us
If we're being honest, I'm really fascinated by secret societies.
This is in part an artifact of my Southern-ish upbringing, maybe? Like, the cultural tradition of (mostly male) secret societies isn't discussed much except as a joke or in the past tense, but they held on much longer in some places than one might naively think, the American South included. I was kinda-sorta invited to join the Masons once (there’s no such thing as an actual invitation; you have to ask. But if somebody tells you this fact in confidence, they’re kinda asking you), and there are some groups associated with the Boy Scouts that they ran us through as a sort of 'trainer' secret organization. If you hang out in the right places, you'll eventually notice recruitment efforts for less benign versions- typically, right-wing militia groups work this way. And there's the Klan, of course, at the most evil end of the spectrum.
People tend to mark the heyday of the American social conspiracy as being in the first half of the 20th century, but as far as I know the pattern of highly gendered secret societies goes back basically all the way as far as we can track such things. Much older than any of the societies themselves, anyway. The pattern is surprisingly robust across different cultures, and it’s also a clear precursor to ‘modern’ stuff like the Delta Force in the US military. Even the famous white hoods adopted by the KKK (the second KKK that is, the resurgence from after Birth of a Nation was filmed) predate that organization by several centuries, and were a common motif in European secret orders going back at least to the late medieval period.
This is probably an under-examined part of why the Red Tribe’s got the weird narrative vulnerabilities that it does; why the odd beliefs so often take the form of conspiracies and ‘inner circles’ where the true evils are unmasked and the true righteous fight takes place. A lot of them- particularly the older set, who came of age before the web- have direct experience with the world working this way!
I’ve been ruminating on this, lately. Less because of the societies themselves, and more because of their second-order effects, the kind of unacknowledged changes that the presence and absence of really prominent secret organizations can make in the social fabric. Think about it- if you know, if you really actually know with confidence, that there are networks of people (in practice, men) out there scouting for potential members, and that these groups have real and undeniable power over your world, then that immediately changes your landscape.
For one, it passively encourages you to demonstrate the virtues of prominent societies in the hopes of being invited to join them, and you’ll be very self-policing in order to achieve this, because you never know who’s watching. If those secret societies have a reputation for honesty, fortitude, and generosity, you’ll try to be honest, and enduring, and generous. If they’re terrorists waging a campaign of racialized violence across America, you’ll be not just emboldened but incentivized to act in more racist ways at all times, for the promise of power and belonging as much as for any deeply felt racism you may feel.
And for another, it has a way of surrounding you with an intensely magical world. You see your fellow-members in public, and wink, and know; you see others winking, and sharing an understanding, and wonder. By their very nature, it’s ambiguous what, exactly, a secret society is capable of, how large it is, and so on. The episode of The Simpsons making fun of the Masons plays on this to great effect, bouncing back and forth between (on the one hand) this huge ancient and wealthy organization controlling the fate of the world, and (on the other hand) the more grounded reality that a secret society in practice is an excuse to have fun hanging out with your friends and drinking a few beers. But when the ‘secret society density’ hits a certain threshold, the banal realities of any given organization give way to the possibility that you just haven’t found the right secret society yet, the one where all the decisions are really made and all the power is really held. You start asking a lot more who?-type questions, instead of how?-type questions.
Third, and I think this is probably a lot more important than people give it credit for, secret societies were one of the unacknowledged pillars of male homosocial intimacy, and their gradual disappearance from the landscape over the last seventy or so years has created a much more emotionally barren and hostile world for gender-conforming men. It’s not unusual for someone to note that men seem really starved for intimacy; articles about men relying entirely on girlfriends and wives for their emotional support and comfort are a dime a dozen. But consider that participating in a standing conspiracy of fellow-travelers is also an opportunity to practice emotional intimacy with other men, and that these are the perfect conditions in which to share feelings and offer mutual emotional support without contravening masculine norms. And when participating in one or more such groups is the norm, they can become a load-bearing part of the culture of gender itself; traditional masculinity in the absence of secret societies may simply be less viable, but because nobody can talk about secret societies, it’s equally challenging to diagnose the problem.
I’ve been dancing lightly around one of the more important manifestations of the secret society in the modern era, which is of course being a sex pervert; it’s not the first conspiracy you think of, but it’s one of the forms that survived the internet boom, so it’s a good example. The Friends of Dorothy were a secret society in every way that mattered, back in the day, and many of their modern successors still are. As with the Masons, one pretty much has to invite oneself, but they’re usually quite welcoming to new members that show an interest. Consider the ways that these groups reward and cultivate certain virtues, even outside their perimeter; consider how they re-enchant the world; consider how they open the door to close friendships and emotional intimacy with others.
It’s the social power that fascinates me as much as anything, I think. As with everything this powerful, it’s often quite evil; actually it’s far from obvious that secret societies in toto have been a force for good in the world. But is there some way to cultivate that social potency in a way that’s ordered to the good? Some lurking alternative to the brute power of statecraft and economics and social norms? So very enticing…
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The last episode and the way it put everything else in a new perspective still has me spiraling. I can see every single thing having 10 different meanings. So this is nothing definitive.
But I was reflecting on the fact that we know now that Louis is living in what is clearly Armand's apartment, what looks like a very constrained life.
And that just got me thinking about Claudia saying "his love is a small box he keeps you in", talking about Lestat. And we all made the visual connection to Louis and Lestat fitting in the same coffin and interpreted it as a metaphorical confirmation of Claudia's words. But Claudia didn't have the whole picture.
Thinking back on it, Lestat is certainly insanely possessive about Louis and - in that sense - will always limit his choices. But apart from that he never wanted for Louis to have a small life. He wanted to show him the world. He wanted him to escape the country that treated him so badly, the family that didn't understand him and live free of any worry. Of course he lacked a fundamental understanding about why Louis was never going to be able to do that and never put in the work to really get it. But the point is that Louis chooses to stay in New Orleans for his own reasons and to live the life he lives for his own reasons. It's more guilt than love that keeps him close to his human family after a while and the choice to continously strife against the racist American society is born out of his feelings of inadequacy and desire for recognition rather then an attempt at helping his people. We understand why he does it, but he is objectively destroying himself with his own hands. Being a vampire exacerbates some of this, but it was always there.
And at this point Lestat actually screams to him "this is not a life" because he at least recognizes what Louis is doing to himself. And yet he stays and he lives that life with him. Even when Louis is so depressed he is living like a shadow still Lestat stays. He may not act impeccably throughout but he does stay, despite this clearly not being the life he wanted.
And the point is that, while some of Lestat's behaviours ultimately worsen Louis's condition, the box in not their relationship per se imo. Or at least it's not the only box. It's at most a box within the box.
I think the box is more generally a representation of Louis's mind and the life Louis always ends up building for himself within the confines of his persisting depression.
And the show tells us that Lestat joins him in his box. It's always Lestat that goes to Louis's coffin and never the other way around. And it's always Louis that closes the locks. Even with the house they live in, it may technically be Lestat's, but I would argue it is ultimately Louis's. Lestat bought it for him and Louis keeps it in the divorce. And Lestat wants to leave New Orleans but they never do, until finally - when Antoinette offers - Lestat says that there's no place for him but New Orleans. And when Louis "kills" Lestat and they separate, sure Louis is "free". But Lestat also climbs out of a coffin.
I just think that AMC has done such a good job at recentering Louis in the narrative and not let him be overshadowed by other characters. It's true that "the box" is a really good metaphor for abusive relationships, but it's also a very good metaphor for depression and the fact that Louis continously creates boxes for himself out of any situation is also very interesting to me.
This also does not detract imo from all the ways in which Lestat actively contributes to making Louis life miserable. Before I get a bunch of hate, I am not saying Lestat is a saint and that Louis deserved what he got or anything like that.
I was just reflecting on the layers of the narrative themes and the way they are showing us why Louis and Lestat are so bound to each other. And I think it's interesting that, in their dynamic, while Lestat boxes Louis in with more overt control, you get the feeling that Lestat also feels boxed in by Louis simply because the hold his love for Louis has over him is such that he can't leave even when he is feeling trapped. And that Louis know this.
And while, again, Lestat has a lot to improve, don't you think it's refreshing that his role in the narrative is not to save Louis? That Louis is a character that has his own path outside of his relationships and this is his story. That the role of love is never to fix, but just to accompany. That sacrifices must be made for this. That in moments when it's unclear whether you will ever be able to climb out of your box, all you want is someone willing to stay there with you for a while. And that ultimately marriage is partly about giving up and preferring giving up infinite freedom by choosing to build your life around one person.
#or more than one if you are poly#but honestly they don't have this down#interview with the vampire#iwtv#iwtv spoilers#interview with the vampire spoilers
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rewatched more community with my friend. more specifically, horror fiction in seven spooky steps (and cooperative calligraphy, but that’s not relevant here).
annie’s story is just so obviously the best. it’s not just reflective of how her mind works, but also reflective of her entire relationship to jeff, her latent anxieties of his predation, the way in which she fantasizes about having the power to, quite literally, murder him gruesomely. it cycles through annie’s entire inner monologue regarding what jeff means to her: first bridal carrying her into his home in a chivalrous way, asserting his desire to protect her as a father might, then introducing his more predatory and exploitative tendencies through his relationship to britta (who is fine with being a vessel of desire through which he consummates his animalistic urges, unlike annie), then asking to be reformed through annie’s unique intelligence (shoutout to king lear!! i knew annie had taste), but then ultimately revealing that her efforts to construct him in a more palatable image are futile, at which point she subverts the power fantasy by destroying him painfully and without remorse. even putting aside the fact that annie clearly views britta’s tacit enjoyment of sex with men (and jeff in particular) as something appalling and debasing (because she’s a lesbian), annie’s psychological landscape as it relates to her sexuality is a distinctly macabre gothic horror, illustrating how her sense of desire is mingled with horror and repulsion. annie’s attraction to jeff has always very clearly been a power fantasy, but whether he is the one with the power (reminds her of her father, an older man who has life experience validating her existence through his approval) or she is (her ability to reform him, the worst man she knows, ideally demonstrates her ability to be desirable to anyone; she wants him to submit to her that prove that she can be powerful in her own right) doesn’t really matter. either way it’s clear that this attraction is hollow, signifying her desire to be loved rather than her desire to love jeff.
it’s also interesting to note that troy’s story immediately follows annie in an attempt to show her up, and while far cruder and more childish, it also illustrates his latent sexuality and its more horrific implications. annie and troy, notably, are the only characters whose stories are about sexuality in any way, unless you count pierce’s racist and misogynistic delusions, which you shouldn’t. shirley fantasizes about being vindicated as a christian, jeff sublimates his own fear and loneliness through chang (lol), britta brittas it, and abed completely detaches himself from his story whatsoever, because he’s literally normal. but annie and troy both belie their fears regarding their latent (homo)sexuality through the vehicle of the horror genre. but while annie’s fear of jeff’s predation is resolved through an empowering subversion of her victimhood, troy’s anxieties about being codependent with abed are simply resolved through accepting his codependency as a power fantasy which he levels against the unnamed crazy old racist doctor (ie, pierce, but also ie, hegemony). obviously troy does eventually confront the fact that he has subsumed his entire identity into abed’s, but i do think there’s also something quite beautiful about the fact that on a purely subconscious level, it’s not something he’s afraid of, but in fact something he welcomes. by becoming one with abed, he is also becoming himself. it’s quite a puerile power fantasy, because it’s troy’s, but it also conveys a really poignant sentiment regarding the nature of troy’s desires, his anxieties regarding his growing codependency (moving in with abed earlier in the season, doing literally everything with him, trying to counterbalance this fact by randomly deciding that he’s into britta) but also his acceptance of it as something that only makes him “more awesome.” coming out isn’t linear, but also by the time troy does come out, he won’t actually need to, because the closet is made of glass.
#community textposts#abed is obviously the goat but i also do love troy and annie so much#troy is an angel and a gift to this world and im convinced that that wasn’t even donald glover#the spirit of troy barnes simply posssessed him every time the camera started rolling#and annie literally deserves to kill people (jeff). as a treat
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Ok. So, i read some more Wuthering Heights today and this one paragraph really struck me- like it got to me just as much as lines like ‘whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same’. But I don’t think this part is probably talked about as much, because its about 2 of the supporting characters and its not a poetic romance quote.
I’m talking about this paragraph, where Nelly Dean is walking outside and is reminded of her childhood:
“all at once a gush of child's sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles, which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things; and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf: his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. 'Poor Hindley!' I exclaimed, involuntarily.”
The reason this got to me so much is that this is exactly the way I’d been thinking about Heathcliff. ‘Sure, heathcliff’s a jerk!’ I’d think to myself, ‘but in the earlier chapters when he was a kid he was so cute and loved cathy so much! He was so unfairly treated!! He had moments where he laughed and played!!’ Not that i excused Heathcliff’s wrongful actions, but i sympathized with him, just a bit. Deep down i want him and cathy to have a happy ending, even though they’ve hurt and will hurt so many people.
(somehow, having many of heathcliff’s future actions spoiled for me by reading through the WH tag so often has not made the book any less enjoyable to me. This book is that good.)
Hindley, however….Up until this point I had always seen him as nothing more than a monster. We see very little of his childhood. We see him cry about his toy being broken, and then later we see him being racist towards-and then physically abusing- Heathcliff. After that, he’s a young adult/adult and is just consistently even worse to Heathcliff (and everyone else at Wuthering Heights) than he was before.
Nelly, unlike the readers, saw hindley’s whole childhood. She saw the moments when he was good, when he smiled and laughed. She saw ways that he was treated unfairly (his own father liking this new adopted son better than him and not hiding that bias at all).
Does this make hindley suddenly a good person? Of course not! But it really put into perspective for me how similar heathcliff and hindley are, and how i was biased way more towards one because I had seen his good side. Heathcliff and hindley are both incredibly violent, grumpy, abusive people who crave money and power. I’m sure I’ll continue to find similarities as I read more.
My three main takeaways from this paragraph are:
1) i think that hindley not only serves as a catalyst for heathcliff becoming a bad person, but also as heathcliff’s narrative foil. (Wikipedia says: ‘A foil usually either differs dramatically or is an extreme comparison that is made to contrast a difference between two things.’ I think this is a perfect description of how heathcliff and hindley work in the narrative- hindley is perhaps how we would view heathcliff if we hadn’t seen his childhood.)
2) i think this paragraph serves to remind the reader that everyone is a human who has at one point been innocent, and that this fact doesn’t excuse bad behavior, and that you should be careful about sympathizing with heathcliff so much that you begin to excuse his actions. I also think the fact that this paragraph comes so soon before isabella’s letter to nelly is incredibly important and intentional. That letter she writes about arriving at wuthering heights really highlights how bad of a person heathcliff is.
3) i am now slightly sympathetic towards hindley, and view him as a bit more of a complicated character than i took him for previously. I am also now a bit more conscious and critical of my sympathetic reading of Heathcliff up until this point.
All this being said- heathcliff is still (for lack of a better term) one of my blorbos. I am obsessed with his stupid edgy personality and his sarcastic comments and his over the top evil plans. I am ESPECIALLY obsessed with his relationship with cathy. I know it wouldn’t actually be romantic in real life but, man. I could write a whole ‘nother post about how much i love their relationship. I want to put him in a microwave and watch him spin around. the former-AP-english-student in me is aware that he is a terrible person but the silly drama-loving side of me cant help but just find all of his terrible actions sort of equal parts funny and badass (i feel like this will stay true even as he does some of the more horrifying things i’ve heard about later). silly side of me wants him and cathy to do whatever evil things they want and ride off into the sunset laughing maniacally together.
(JEEZ i did not think i would spend an hour writing like a full essay when i started this post. this is what adhd does to you, folks.)
#wuthering heights#wutheringposting#heathcliff#wuthering heights heathcliff#heathcliff wuthering heights#hindley earnshaw#nelly dean#emily bronte#my WH posts
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re the ask about stede not doing enough to make up for ditching ed - did it not balace out that ed tortured his crew for weeks and tried to kill lucius? idk why everybody is woobifying ed as if being sad or having a hard life is a justification for any of the shit he did like he has autonomy and chooses to behave the way he does when stede leaves. same goes for blaming all of eds actions on izzy as if izzy forced him to do anything? i think its weird and doesn’t do justice to his intentionally morally gray dimensional flawed character
okay so anon you are bringing up multiple things and conflating them, i think so let's take this one bit at a time
re the ask about stede not doing enough to make up for ditching ed - did it not balace out that ed tortured his crew for weeks and tried to kill lucius?
so first, let's be clear: ed's actions towards other people do NOT balance out stede's actions towards ed. that's uhhhh not how it works. when it comes to if stede did enough to make up for ghosting ed, that is a situation resolved only within ed and stede's personal relationship. stede leaving doesn't justify ed being callous and later cruel to the crew, but likewise, ed being callous and later cruel to the crew doesn't mean stede didn't owe something to ed if he wanted their relationship to work.
now let me further say that...i don't think that ed tortured (members of) stede's crew for weeks. in fact, i don't think he's physically harmed any of the crew aside from izzy, and I would argue that his dynamic with izzy is it's own special beef. if anything, i would say that between season 1 episode 10 and season 2 episode 1, ed's been a classic overachieving boss pushing his staff to the breaking point by having them work long shifts with no breaks and low pay.
this is not good, by the way, i am not saying he is being a good boss; kraken ed is fully that shithead boss who schedules 13 hour days and thinks a pizza party or donuts in the lounge make up for it. izzy tells him morale is low and he asks if they got cake, and then if they want drugs. the crew does not describe being worn down from specific fear of ed - they are worn down by day after day after day of endless raids without breaks; all the worst parts of piracy (the raids, the violence, the death) with none of the benefits (the break time between targets, the shore leave, getting paid).
again i say this is not good because it's not, but also, i think the fandom has marinated in this idea that because ed took izzy's toe he'd be doing all kinds of violence to the rest of the crew, and s2e1 doesn't really bare that out. they're shocked and horrified that he actually shoots izzy, and none of them are missing bits - in fact, the behavior is apparently so unique to izzy that they think izzy and ed have a toxic relationship. if it was any of them getting that, it wouldn't be an intervention getting plotted.
(he did for sure try to kill lucius though, which is why i'm glad lucius got to dump him overboard lol. lucky lucius. izzy tried to kill stede twice and stede didn't even get to stab him once.)
idk why everybody is woobifying ed as if being sad or having a hard life is a justification for any of the shit he did like he has autonomy and chooses to behave the way he does when stede leaves.
now half the fandom is woobifying ed because we love him and like him and also because the other half of the fandom is wildly racist about him so.
but, also, it's important context that the showrunner describes ed's actions as "a bit much" and "not entirely inappropriate". in the context of their environment, most of what ed did is not that shocking or stunning; he has hurt people, but even the people he hurt move on from it relatively soon, and we can see from spanish jackie (who doesn't give her employees enough money to pursue their own ambitions/perfectly fine with killing a husband to remove an obstacle) and ned low (literally all of that in episode 6) and izzy (in the like ten minutes he was captain and forced people to season his food and threatening folks with going hungry for laughing at him) that pirate captains are, generally, pretty shit, actually.
roach and archie at various points express sentiments that show this is all pretty normal for pirates; it's not that ed wasn't a dick, it's that he wasn't uniquely evil or fucked up. it's also that his behavior is sympathetic to many people because the show makes it abundantly clear that he's incredibly depressed and suicidal, and while it's definitely NOT okay to hurt people because you're in a bad way, the show is definitely more geared towards "even when you do all that fucked up shit, you still can be deserving of love and compassion if you reach for it" rather than "if you do fucked up shit you instantly are on the death list".
same goes for blaming all of eds actions on izzy as if izzy forced him to do anything? i think its weird and doesn’t do justice to his intentionally morally gray dimensional flawed character
izzy's not responsible for ed's actions in the sense that he put a gun to ed's head during every move, but he plays a critical role in making all that shit happen. it's like how stede wouldn't have ghosted ed if chauncey hadn't of dragged him out of bed - the festering self hatred that chauncey tapped into was there in stede, but he wouldn't have given in without a jolt from his past. the festering self hatred in ed wouldn't have broiled over into the kraken without izzy, but that was all still in ed.
izzy is pivotal in all that shit happening. if izzy hadn't of come in and jabbed ed in every sore spot he had and been a huge homophobia ridden pest that *also* threatened ed if he continued behaving in a way izzy didn't like, ed wouldn't have gone all kraken.
however, ed still DID go all kraken, so like, yeah, he did that shit. izzy is the explanation for why he did, but it's ed who did it so he has to make amends.
but also like ed is only as morally gray as literally everyone else. frenchie and roach are both in full support of torture. jim fully tried to kill a guy for throwing a glass at archie. all of them are professional murderers who make their living being the absolute living nightmares of people who are just living their lives doing their thing.
ed isn't any more morally gray than anyone else, but it's very weird how people try to make it out like ED is the intentionally morally gray character when it's just that this is a show about professional violent criminals, so the show doesn't really moralize about acts of violence.
now taking it back to the top though:
nothing ed did to the crew would change stede's need to re-earn ed's trust for ghosting him without a word and not being honest about his feelings and doubts. if ed wanted stede to atone for that, that would be ed's right as a person in the relationship - just like it would be the right of frenchie, archie, jim, or fang to want to ed to do something more before they offered their forgiveness. the fucked up shit you do to other people does not retroactively justify the fucked up shit someone else did to you. stede doesn't get a get out of the doghouse free card for ghosting ed just because ed was a dick to other people; he gets a get out of the doghouse free card because ed decides to forgive him and try again.
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