#inherently categorically bad

[somespicyshrimp]

i genuinely think there’s nothing more tragic than art that is not permitted to be sincere. stories that are frightened to be stories, ashamed by the specter of their own silliness, their own absurdity, their pockmarks and cliches and fundamental honesty. art that apologizes for its own existence, begs you not to look at it, made by artists mortified by their own vulnerability, who shield themselves away layer by deadening layer in their impenetrable armor of cynicism and irony and lampshading and “it was all a dream” and “none of it was real, he was just ~crazy~ all along” and snarky little quips whenever there’s emotional honesty and meta disclaimers whenever there’s the faintest hint of imperfection, like there’s a cinema sins counter going in the writer’s head and it pings every time the armor slips. like little kids hiding their favorite stuffed animals in the back of the closet, absolutely, cripplingly terrified of being exposed as creatures that feel. that’s what’s silly!! that’s what’s absurd!! be earnest with your art!!!!! be earnest and wholehearted and sincere even when it’s silly and absurd and imperfect and excruciatingly honest!!!!! say something beautiful and true!!!!!!!!!!!!

#there are lots of things i want to do and be as a writer #but the absolute most important one of them all #is that i always always want my work to be sincere #if i don't believe in it #who the fuck else will?? #to be absolutely clear #none of those tropes i mentioned are like #inherently categorically bad #but they do tend to symptomize a certain brand of cowardice #especially when multiple coincide #that i find really sad #original shrimpy

[bioethicists]

maybe i'm just annoyed bcuz this is just bcuz this concept is responsible for 95% of my suffering but people are not wholly good or bad!!! there is no secret black + white system of inherent morality lurking beneath the surface! stop adding on to my posts abt how you "used to be good" or "just want to be good" or "i used to be so bad" etc regarding healing/recovery!

#tbh i extend this even to the concept of ~maladaptive~ coping #like categorizing entire behaviors as inherently good or bad #when it's about how they affect YOU #reinforces this idea that things are 100% good or bad + there is a secret right solution to everything

[corvidcall]

i keep looking at video essay recs because i love to see how many of them i already watch, and theres one that keeps coming up in rec lists that i tried to watch but couldnt get into bc. ok it was about bo burnham and the essayist started the video by saying that they think dont like comedy music as a genre??

like you can have all the opinions you want on whatever you want. you dont HAVE to like comedy music, and you can have stuff you wanna say about art you dont like, but tbh i just dont understand why you would start off a piece of art criticism by entirely undercutting your own credibility right out the gate???

how can i take your criticism seriously if you wouldn't have liked it even if it was good? you dont even know what a good version of this thing WOULD BE because you think all versions of this thing are categorically bad!!

like, if i was trying to give a critique of. idk. an italian restaurant near me. and i started off by telling you that I think italian food is, as a rule, bad, you're not gonna take what i have to say very seriously, are you? If I made a long video essay about Miles Davis, and started it off by saying that I hate trumpets, theyre the worst instrument and they entirely lack musicality and artfulness, why would you watch to the end of that video?

its just weird!!! I guess its better than saving it for partway through and revealing that ive just wasted my time, but still. it's weird. why do that!!!!

#anime life #its not that i think every video should be positive or anything #theres a little joel video that i thought was really good where he talked abt how actually negative videos are good #people want to watch criticism more than praise. its easier to write criticism. #if he wanted to praise something he would do it in comparison to something he was critiquing #(ex if i wanted to talk abt how dream daddy is the best ever dating sim. the video would be more abt criticising a bad dating sim) #(and using dream daddy as the example of what a dating sim SHOULD be like) #but its weird to try to do criticism about something that you not only dont like. but cant even see potential in it #that you think is categorically inherently bad and not even the deftest hand could make good #'heres my 3 hour video abt why into the spiderverse is bad. i hate animation btw.'

[whumpslut]

must there be a caretaker? and i don’t mean there’s no comfort, i mean having The One Caretaker for whumpee. can there not be a character who looks out for their hurting friend, but maybe not necessarily waiting on them hand and foot day in and out? they drop in when they can, they check up on them, but life must go on. can there not be multiple characters sharing the burden of taking care of whumpee? but none of them strictly consider themselves the primary caretaker? or a caretaker at all? can the lines be blurred between who is whumpee and who is caretaker, can they be fluid? must there be a binary?

#there is just… something about the narrow caregiver-whumpee relationship categorization that’s been bothering me in particular #it’s not true of every dynamic the community discusses but it does seem very ubiquitous #yes there is the whumpee to caregiver and vice versa tropes but that is still a binary pipeline. this or that that or this #don’t get me wrong. cliches and tropes are not inherently bad and are really useful tools! #i just want… more than these boxes…

[ofdreamsanddoodles]

the thing about having a dissociative disorder is that even though i logically know the reason i don't always have the same opinion on things is because i'm sometimes a different person about it but that doesn't stop my brain from feeling like we need to choose a solid "path" to go down. it's like if one of us says we want to spend the day with one friend, and the other one wants to spend it with the other, there's a little pop up in my brain that goes "okay, so now one of you gets to hang out with your friend, and the other one never can again." like, hey wait! i think that might make both of us miserable, actually. i think i should be allowed to do two things even if they seem inherently contradictory to people around me

#theres always this feeling i get like if i'm comparing my desire to spend time w one person vs another #im a bad person for potentially being 'less invested' than i should #but its not even like always that its just trying to categorize things like im one person #inherently feels kind of constricting sometimes #bc theres always a part going well *i* didnt agree to this #& i think sometimes my gender gets impacted by that feeling too #but its like.... i mean sometimes you cant choose both w that lol #anyway this is a long way of me saying i wonder if i would be happier if i was polyam

[eggs-can-draw]

komaeda anon: THROWING ROCKS INTO THE SEA CAN MEAN SO MUCH

i have, i have like a cousin, so much younger than me, who was like too energetic for my family and they told him not to throw big rocks into the ocean but that wasnt working so i just, even though i was tired i didn't want the little tyke to get hurt so i was like

hey kid, come on, here's a smaller rock, did you know you can throw them much farther? and we spent a good few minutes of me handing him small rocks to throw real far

and one time he took one rock and gave it to me to throw too

anyways its the little things in life that seem so simple but can build bonds for me O(-(

SHAKES YOU SHAKES YOU SHAKES YOU THAT'S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT BESTIE! WHAT IS LIFE IF NOT AN ACCUMULATION OF EVERY LITTLE MOMENT OF JOY, A LIFETIME OF LITTLE MOMENTS TO LOOK BACK ON AND SMILE?!?!?!!??? WHAT ARE "THE BIG MOMENTS" IF REALLY HYPED UP BUNDLES OF LITTLE MOMENTS LIFE IS ABOUT LIVING YKNOW???

#eggs can answer #komaeda anon #sorry bestie you set me off on my life thoughts and how inherently love is living and stuff #im bad at communicating it but it basically boils down to: Living = Love #and that like. love in the inherent sense not in the categorized sense. life in the loving yourself loving moments loving being yknow??? #i dont really know sometimes #one day ill write a long ass book about love and life and their inherent meanings to me #and I'll hide it behind a silly fantasy set up or something and completely change a generation of children #I hope I'll make them kind

[stellarhistoria]

substantially i understand the patronymic privilege of russian "middle" names, and it's deliberately why none of the cytos kids have anything close to their father (as he's a cocktwat), but have a lot of ties to their mother's lineage/heritage/ancestry, even through russian bloodline - though their mother is greek and if i'm looking into how she carried herself in life, probably a little bit of indian upbringing.

#i'm not categorizing the russian thing as Inherently Bad i'm saying MOROZ is the worst actually #the patriarch before him was actually really. eh not sweet but 'sweet' in the russian grandfather way #u know how it is #northern grump who loves his step daughter very much but also has a job to do n sometimes is. oof #♡. mordred mumbles ⁄ ⁄ right hand to the king .

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

i honestly think that a lot of the "mental illness doesn't make you violent or say/do extremely harmful things" stuff would be mitigated if we didn't treat "doing a violence" or "doing harm" as automatic panic buttons that call for the immediate ostracization and unpersoning of the harm-doer in question. like i think it's pretty inevitable that traumatized people are going to do really bad and harmful things to each other when our nervous systems are activated, and that psychotic people are going to do really bad and harmful things to each other when our realities frame it as necessary, and i don't think we'll ever get anywhere with how we categorize and treat mental illness on a broad societal level as long as we keep acting like those are irreparable evil actions that only truly fundamentally Evil, Bad mentally ill people will do.

like i think social focus on the rupture-repair cycle in casual relationships and friendships might go a long way to repairing how we socially handle violations of trust and violence that stem from trauma+psychosis. and i think the focus being on what is needed to make sure someone stays in community with the people around them is a much better framework than how we can punish them or keep them away from the people they hurt. and like, yes, sometimes there is literally no way to keep someone in community, to be clear, i am fully aware of that.

i also think a lot of the long-term trauma and abuse patterns that stem from mental illness behavior patterns... are about the power the mentally ill individual holds. like, having an abusive psychotic parent isn't inherently traumatic because they're psychotic, it's because the role "parent" in society gives them complete and utter power and control over you, and you can't pursue healing and repair with someone who has complete control over you. you can only escape and cut them off to avoid future trauma. and addressing those hierarchical roles of power, removing entirely them where possible and mitigating what power they do have, would do a lot in the long run to prevent trauma and abuse stemming from behavior patterns categorized as mental illness--much more than focusing on unpersoning and isolating the perpetrators of harm imho.

#dyspunktional

[comradekatara]

there are a lot of bad takes in the atla fandom (like, atla fandom may as well be a bad take generator) but something that has really been pissing me off lately is the assumption that you can categorize the fire nation royal family into good guys and bad guys. first of all, obviously, they're all bad guys. they are imperialists. but the idea that "sozin ozai azula bad" and "iroh lu ten ursa zuko azulon(?!) good" is actually insane.

lu ten died attempting to conquer the earth kingdom. lu ten was there because his father, iroh, was leading the siege. ursa laughed when iroh joked about burning ba sing se to the ground. zuko laughed too, mirroring his dear mother who taught him about the wonders of imperialism. and the fact that some people think that azulon was a good guy because he favored iroh is crazy. he favored iroh because iroh was the better imperialist, was more charming and tactically savvy as he bent the world to his will. people who think that azulon didn't like ozai because ozai was cruel literally have it backwards. ozai was cruel because azulon didn't like him. sozin shaped azulon, and azulon shaped iroh and ozai. azulon reigned for most of the war, and he was responsible for decimating the southern water tribe and colonizing the earth kingdom.

iroh only realizes the error of his ways well into middle age, after spending a majority of his life colonizing the world. he only stops to reconsider once he experiences the adverse effects of war for himself through the loss of his son. likewise, zuko can only gain empathy for the victims of the war by being one himself, as a refugee in the earth kingdom, and bonding with people who have been hurt by the fire nation. azula doesn't get that chance. ozai doesn't get that chance. azulon, lu ten, and ursa are dead, so they will never get that chance. but it's not like there is some ontological moral divide separating azula from zuko. zuko was a sensitive child whereas azula was better at embodying fire nation values of power and cunning. zuko was punished for his outbursts whereas azula knew how to keep her mouth shut. therefore, zuko experienced circumstances that led him to disavow fire nation imperialism.

but that doesn't mean that azula is ontologically evil. azula was the iroh of her generation to zuko's ozai, and iroh (eventually) disavowed conquest as well. there is no inherent divide between good and bad, monster and human. ursa was a warm and loving mother to zuko, just as iroh was a warm and loving father to lu ten, but they both laughed at others' suffering. their values were shaped by their circumstances and experiences. their ideologies do not make them less human, or less capable of change, just as their interpersonal behaviors do not negate their abhorrent ideologies.

#just because they're cartoon villains doesn't mean they're. yknow. cartoon villains #i think a lot of people just don't really understand iroh at all #and that's where a lot of these biases stem from #because if you think 'iroh good' then the next step is to assume that anyone iroh likes is good and anyone iroh doesn't like is bad #even though iroh is heavily biased and incredibly complicated #analysis #sort of #this is like. analysis for babies #taking you all back to preschool #so we can learn that fascists are human too #azula #zuko #iroh #ozai #azulon #ursa #lu ten #the evil gang's all here!

[qtubbo]

You know something that really interests me about Tubbo is how he categorizes certain relationships as dangerous and others not. He’s stated his fear over the eggs being used against parents multiple times, even taking someone like Bad to be in greater danger because some greater force might make him choose between Dapper and Pomme. He’s ideas behind Fit and Pac’s relationship is not that they can’t love each other to this level, it’s that they can not label it lest someone use it against them. He believes certain relationships inherently cause danger, due to how other people will see it as a weak point, Parent and Child, Godparent and Godkids, and Lovers.

The way he talked about Empanada being only in danger with her Moms both comes off as religious and trauma based. He believes that universe itself will target a death to when it can cause the most pain, inherently a much more religious belief but one born from his experience with Fred. In the same vein when he compares his thoughts about how Sunny is similarly only in danger with him, it’s not that he doesn’t trust Em’s parents its that he does not trust others to not try and hurt her moms through Empanada.

It’s sad man, he doesn’t think people can be happy in their relationships because there will always be someone seeking to hurt you in the worst ways possible.

#qsmp #Qsmp tubbo #qsmp empanada #qsmp fred #qsmp shipping

[slyandthefamilybook]

they're not dismissed because they live in "the bad country" they're dismissed because any solution they might pose, for the vast majority of them at least, will fundamentally involve preserving the state apparatus of israel, which is an inherently oppressive force. the two state solution is not justice. don't twist this into a call for the murder of the israeli population. that is explicitly not the goal. it is a demand to dismantle the fucking government system of a settler state that has spent 75 years committing genocide. if your leftism was worth anything you would believe that israel should be abolished. if you don't, your allyship is shallow and will only lead to electing people who will still do genocide, but with better pr so you can go back to ignoring it. if you really give a shit, genuinely ask yourself if the solution you have in mind would actually stop the genocide of Palestinian people, or if it would just slow it down a little, and answer the question honestly. if you can't do that, fuck off

HA

I predicted this. I saved this to my drafts 3 days ago

here's that response

there are a lot of people who seem to think that peace would be bad because it would involve Palestinians cooperating with the Israeli government. They believe the government should be spurned at every moment. Any action taken by the Israeli government is inherently one-sided and therefore it's categorically impossible to reach an agreement that's mutually beneficial and respects the dignity and autonomy of Palestinians

I hear this a lot in discussion of the UN Partition Plans. "Oh, so you want victims of violence to just roll over for their oppressors? You can't just steal someone's land and then offer it back to them!" To which my response is always "this is better?". Can you honestly look me in the eye and say that whatever lopsided colonial apartheid agreement you're imagining would've been made in 1948 would've been worse than the situation we have now?

It displays a really limited understanding of how geopolitics works. Countries aren't just a government and a set of borders. A country is also a people and a mechanism through which that people can interact with other peoples. You can't just point at a country and say "they're doing bad things, we should get rid of them". That's how America has functioned for the past 150 years and I thought we all decided that was bad. Dismantling a country doesn't solve your problems, it just creates new ones. "Burn it all down and start over" won't bring back the dead. It won't honor their deaths or make them any more worthwhile

Every time Hamas attacks Israel, Israel gets stronger. The right thrives off of conflict. It's why they don't want to give people free healthcare. When people suffer, it strengthens their positions. Every time Israel is attacked it generates more support for the military, in the people and in the Knesset. The IDF gets more soldiers, more rifles, more tanks. It drives the Overton Window further to the right. The Israeli government starts borrowing more money from the US, starts getting sent more foreign aid, further entrenching their economic dependency. The only reason Netanyahu has stayed in power for so long is because Israel keeps getting attacked. Israel gets hundreds of millions in military aid from the US, a country that has made killing people a science. You're not going to defeat them in open battle. People have been trying for 75 years with no success

I dislike the Israeli state as much as I dislike every state (which is a not-insignificant amount). But I also understand that states are massive webs of economy, policy, international trade, and agreements and treaties. If every member of the Israeli government stepped down tomorrow with no plan, the country would be thrown into chaos and millions would die. You can't say you want to destroy the apparatus of a country that is currently at war, while also claiming you want its citizens to be safe. That's not how that works. You claim that the majority of Israeli leftists want a two-state solution (something I don't believe I've ever said I support), but if that the case you don't have to throw your weight behind those people! There are also leftists who want anarchism, and a no-state solution. There's a vast diversity of thought and pretending that there isn't doesn't help anyone

I notice that in your decrial of people who are actually trying to help, you don't offer an alternative solution. You say you want to dismantle the Israeli state, but how do you plan to do that? I assume from your tone that you're not yourself Israeli, so how do you plan to affect change? You can pressure whoever is the leader of your country to stop sending aid to Israel, but Israel has a domestic economy as well. The worst you'll do is send them into a depression. And if you are somehow successful in cutting of Israel at the windpipe, what will you do when people begin to starve? When people are kicked to the curb because they lost their job? Will you be proud of yourself for sending 9.5 million people into a humanitarian crisis? Does your plan to end suffering involve making other people suffer instead?

We live in a statist world. As much as you or I dislike it, that's the reality we have. You can aspire to a better system, you can set your sights on a world in which there are no states, no governments, no militaries, and no borders. But you can't work within that framework before it's applicable. You can't eat raw cookie dough because you want it to eventually become a cookie. Liberalism won't save us, but it might stop the bleeding

#ask #anonymous #also I never said anything about Palestinian liberation being a call for Israeli genocide? people just love to make up a guy to get mad at

[queenofwhoredom]

The more sophistically attuned your psychic body becomes, the more you realise nature and the Earth have different spiritual layers and spectrums. The New Age movement told us the Earth is gentle, soft..that Mama Gaia is nourishing..this is partially true.. The Earth (think of Demeter) can give yet the Earth can eliminate as well.

If you want to understand yourself better, observe animals and nature. If you want to understand the Law of Nature (which is not always the "softest" law which is something that is not well understood by modern spirituality) , animals teach you how to be connected to your root chakra. I am not saying to look at life from a survival mode pov though (which also implies a root chakra imbalance), however I do believe many people are not connected to their primal instincts and therefore cannot properly function in society.

If you are suffering from the following problems, studying the animal kingdom may be beneficial:

Good girl syndrome? Animals are neither categorized as good or bad. Animals defend themselves because it is in their nature to survive. Sorry to say this but sometimes life is a jungle and you must act accordingly to survive. As I said, Nature can be harsh sometimes but the Law of Nature always prevails.

Sexual guilt and purity culture

Fear of nudity

Fear of being hurt, blocking your heart and staying alone because you think you'd protect yourself from being hurt, hyper independence; Most animal species live in group to protect themselves from predators because they instinctively know that they must rely on each other to survive.. Hyper-independence is a myth and do not fall in this New Age paradigm "if you desire love from others, it probably means you don't love yourself enough". It is 100% normal to desire human connections and romance. Self love does not exclude this inherent desire for human connections.

#root chakra #animal kingdom

[joseline-woodhouse]

Okay I have to say it.

Will, Ada and Montresor did something way worse than Annabel Lee.

Why? Because motive matters. Now don't get me wrong, a good motive cannot justify an inherently evil action, it however matters more and more when going deeper into more morally grey areas.

Annabel has made it very clear she understands these people, including Duke to be damned regardless of her actions and basically sees herself confronted with a trolley problem that goes: "You, your wife and like X other people are bound to rails. A trolly will run over all but one of you. However if you pull just the right levers, both you end your wife will survive. The first lever you must pull is on Duke." While this doesn't make her actions noble, it gives them a noble cause and one could argue in several ways that she's acting within a moral grey area if we take the situation to be as unshakable as it seems. To make to examples, one could argue in an utalitarian way (this saves more lives than the other option) or in a very human way (this saves a loved one at the cost of a soon to be dead man, who could blame her?). There are also concepts of morality that would condemn her, like for example the categoric imperative or Jewish or Christian (and I think Muslim) religion, in which it is inherently bad to kill a single person even to safe thousands of others.

Annabel considers killing Duke a necessary evil.

Montresor however is acting out of pure sadism and spite and he puts on quite a show to make this clear. He had done so even if he believed everyone would get a happy end and he is having the time of his life killing Duke. That is picture book chaotic evil behaviour right there and by no means redeemable.

Will and Ada? Arguably worse than Montresor, at least not a bit better. This is the kind of stuff that makes large scale modern genocides possible. Hannah Ahrendt (great woman, you should look her up) argues in her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" that evil at its worst is not some kind of demonic evil like it has been preached in medieval times, but lays within the sheer banality of an office worker casually doing the phone calls and paper work necessary to send thousands to their certain death, while the office worker goes back home, eats dinner with his family and thinks "I'm just doing my job. It's my supervisors moral responsibility, not mine."

Ada and Will tried to kill for no other reason than because they have been told to do so and the lack of willingness to accept responsibility really shows in their actions afterwards. So I am a bit confused when I see people arguing how terrible Annabel Lee is while defending the "poor boy Will".

So, controversial opinion: in this very specific case, even though Annabel Lee either started this or at the very least didn't stop it when she clearly could have, she hasn't committed anything as immoral as her henchmen committed, who did not even need a motive to kill.

Also I would every day prefer an Annabel Lee willing to kill Duke to safe her wife in the long run over an Annabel Lee that prefers to not be a controversial female character. Let's not forget these people don't actually exist.

#nevermore webtoon #annabel lee whitlock #montresor nevermore #will nevermore #ada nevermore #annabel lee #annabel lee nevermore #annabel nevermore #nevermore

[hella1975]

it's been pointed out on here before that a lot of terf arguments are actually rooted in sexist idealology that feminists fought and died to unnormalise decades ago and that's its own kettle of fish but one thing i also find very frustrating about this so called 'radical' feminism is that it's so... defeatist? like the moment you categorically label an entire section of society as Bad and Inherently Evil then there's also the implication that nothing can be done about it, and it completely takes all accountability away. saying all men are evil is just another way of saying boys will be boys. he raped her because he's a man. he hit her because he's a man. he didn't listen because he's a man - it's almost offensively oversimplified. there's no point trying to fix this issue in society because men are just Like That, okay! so now what? it's not like they're going anywhere, so you just accept that 50% of the population are evil and will forever treat you terribly and there's nothing to be done about it bc they're biologically predisposed to it? like is that fr the argument here? you're soooo radical for that

#this is coming from someone who used to very genuinely be a misandrist #ironically it was only when i started actually analysing my own feminism that i got MORE confrontational with men #and started respecting my boundaries a lot better BECAUSE i started holding them accountable again #like when men treat me like shit nowadays i dont just write it off as 'what did you expect? he's a man' i get MAD about it #because i EXPECT BETTER FROM THEM even if it's just tiny shit women have to deal with daily #i hold them to just as high a standard as im held to and i make them take accountability when they dont meet that #and whether you realise it or not even on a subconscious level the MOMENT you black-and-white blanket statement all men as bad #you stop holding them accountable. #like it is literally just boys will be boys. do terfs seriously not realise they're sending feminism BACKWARDS #like if a girl came to me with her trauma and people - other girls no less - tried to comfort her with 'yeah all men are evil' #id be fucking furious. like no he did that because he was a piece of shit that had it normalised to him that women arent to be respected #dont you dare let him off the hook with something as simple and uncritical as 'he's a man' #i promise you men like that will MUCH prefer a blanket statement such as 'all men are as bad as each other' #than actually being point blank told they're an abuser or a rapist. because being lumped together is comfortable and even empowering #wheras isolating their behaviour with words that are Bad and Ugly (LIKE 'rapist') is not comfortable at all and has heavy connotations #idk i dont think radical feminism is always bad on its own it can be v liberating. just terfs and misandrists that i have a problem with #dropping this post in a piranha tank and closing tumblr knowing im gonna have some thirty year old karen yelling at me within 5 mins #i probably wont respond to any terf comments bc they literally mentally exhaust me with their stupidity #but that also depends on my mood and ability to keep my mouth shut LMFAO we shall see

[cosmicjoke]

Okay, this is a bit of a call-out post, which I don't like to engage in, but some of the stuff that's been brought to my attention, that's apparently been being said about me and, by extension, people who share my views, isn't really something I can let stand.

So apparently there's some blogs going around vague posting about Levi fans who dare (oh the horror) to call Levi a good man and a hero, saying stuff like doing so is how one treads down the path toward Nazism, because it's a "denial" of Levi's faults, and if we don't condemn his violence as outright bad or wrong, then we're liable to start making excuses for and justifying all forms of violence.

Do I even need to lay out why this argument is absurd and absolutely childish at its core? I don't think so, but I will anyway.

One of the overarching and main themes of AoT is that we shouldn't flatly condemn people for their actions without first understanding the context of those actions. That nothing is ever so simple as being flatly right or wrong, good or bad. That there can be and are complicating factors that might lead to any, given person's actions or behavior.

Levi himself is a prime example of this, and we see the error of flatly condemning and writing him off as "bad" in the form of Jean's and Mikasa's judgmental and dismissive attitude toward him after seeing him engage in acts of violence, only to themselves be forced into similar acts moments later.

The stupidity inherent to uniformly condemning all violence as bad or wrong lies in its total failure to consider any mitigating circumstances that might have lead to the violence in the first place, and, ironically, it's THAT sort of basic and simplistic thinking that leads toward the kind of fanatical, ideological foundations of Nazism and other, similar movements. Nuanced thought, consideration, empathy and critical thinking are never the things that lead down that road. Moralistic and generalized view points are what do that. To call Levi a "morally grey" character is to fundamentally misunderstand that morality itself is a "grey" concept. There's no such thing a black and white morality. Almost nothing is always right and always wrong, including violence. Very few things, if anything, can be definitely categorized as right and wrong in and of itself. The argument that some things need to be wholly condemned or eradicated is, for example, the same sort of logic that people who advocate for censorship apply. All pornography is bad or wrong? Better to just flatly condemn and ban all of it, then. Oh my, you're going to let two men marry each other? What if someone wants to marry an animal next? Better just make gay marriage illegal then, I guess. Many Jews are bankers, and banking is a corrupt business that preys on people's vulnerabilities, thus, all Jews are really just money launders and loan sharks and need to be stopped. Killing and violence is always wrong, and so people who kill or commit acts of violence are always criminals and bad people with malicious intent or who reveal in other people's pain. See how that works? All generalizations like that lead to is mass persecution, either of a concept or of a person/group of people, without taking into consideration the actual complexity or nuanced reasoning for why something or someone might be a certain way or do a certain thing. That's what's dangerous.

To deny Levi is a good man or a hero because he commits acts of violence is to totaly deny and strip him of all the many aspects and characteristics of his personality that makes him who he actually is. Levi's violence doesn't define him. It isn't who he is. Rather, it's a product of the world he lives in and the circumstances of his upbringing and life. It doesn't signify the person he is at his core. It doesn't negate the immense compassion, kindness, empathy and sensitivity with which he regards and treats other people. It doesn't render his heroism worthless or questionable. It doesn't undermine his intentions or motivations. It doesn't rob his many sacrifices of their selflessness. That's why I say Levi is a good man. Not because he's on the "good guy side" or because he holds a certain set of ideological beliefs, but because of those inherent qualities which define him as a good man. Compassion, kindness, empathy, emotional intelligence, and a genuine desire to help others for others sake. He's a good person because he actually, truly cares about other people. Is that assessment of him supposed to somehow lead down the road to fanaticism? How absurd.

That's not to say Levi doesn't have flaws. Of course he does. He's a human being, and all human's are flawed. Nobody ever said Levi was a "perfect" hero, just that he is a hero. Understanding Levi's violence and where it comes from and why he engages in it doesn't mean we're excusing it or calling it "good". It's simply an attempt to understand and acknowledge one of the main themes of AoT, which is that a person committing a "bad act" doesn't in and of itself make them a "bad person", and that certain actions and behaviors that are deemed "bad" by society can and often do have reasonable and justifiable explanations at their root. Does Levi resort to violence too often and too easily? Sure. I've said that and acknowledged it on multiple occasions. I've dedicated entire, long-winded analysis posts to exploring the duality of Levi's compassionate and empathetic nature with the fact that he's one of the most violent characters in AoT. His knee-jerk reaction and response to most situations is to apply physical force of one kind or another. Levi is also an extremely emotional character, and is given at times to bouts of emotionally excessive response. When he kicks Eren and Jean after his conversation with Erwin. When he manhandles Historia for her initial, flat refusal to take the throne. When he kicks Eren's teeth in during the RtS arc, or on the airship in Liberio. When he tortures Zeke in the cart on the way to the capital. These are all instances of Levi giving in to his emotion and responding violently. And no, it's not good, but it also doesn't make Levi bad. It doesn't make his intentions malicious or cruel in nature. In all of these instances of violence on Levi's part, it's driven by an intense emotional response, generally in regard to some traumatic event. Levi learning Erwin might not be the good man he thought he was. Levi having to torture a man for specific information, only to have the point of it threatened by Historia's self-pity. Eren interfering with Levi's direct command during a situation in which time was severely limited in making a decision. Eren slaughtering countless innocent people. Zeke forcing Levi to kill more than two dozen of his own soldiers. All of the examples one could point to of Levi being "unnecessarily" violent, meaning in a way that didn't further some larger goal or cause, were all moments of emotional reaction linked either to trauma or urgency or both. Most of these responses from Levi, in fact, came about because he was upset about someone else getting hurt, or at the possibility of people getting hurt. They're rooted, at their core, in Levi's compassion for others. They're emotional responses triggered by Levi's empathy and care. He gets angry because he's scared or grief stricken over someone else' suffering. And that's my and other fans' only point. Levi's violence might be considered bad by some, but the underlying reasons for it almost always prove Levi's goodness. He responds so strongly because he cares. So to refuse to acknowledge the circumstances and context surrounding those acts of violence and to refuse to acknowledge the influence of his upbringing in his inclination to respond with violence is grossly unjust and unfair to who Levi is as a person. To pretend that his very nature can't be contradictory to his actions and behavior is to deny, not just Levi's complexity as a person, but the complexity of people overall. Because Levi's nature is, much of the time, contradictory to his actions, especially when one only looks at his actions in a vacuum instead of in context. He's a violent man who also holds more kindness and compassion in his heart for people than any other character in the story. That's a contradiction. But it's true, nonetheless. You can be a good person who does bad things, or things deemed wrong by others and society.

Levi doesn't enjoy violence, and anyone who says he does or tries to claim he does is flatly wrong. To say, just because Levi is good at violence, that must mean he's somehow born to it, or that it's in his nature to want to commit it, is equally unjust and unfair in the way it dismisses the circumstances of his life and upbringing. A person can be forced into doing something that goes against their core temperament and personality due to forces outside of their control, and acknowledging that about Levi and his violence isn't the same as claiming him to be a "perfect hero". He's not perfect, but he is a hero. He's a hero because he's inherently selfless and kind and empathetic toward other people and their suffering, because he's willing to do all he can to help other people, despite an upbringing which forced violence and a familiarity with violence into his life, despite a childhood and young adulthood filled with deprivation and poverty. He wasn't born with a violent temperament, he was raised in an environment that necessitated a reliance on violence in order to survive, and so we see that manifest in Levi as an adult. A reliance on violence to survive. Again, to not acknowledge that and the impact it had on Levi's behavior and actions is unjust and unfair to him as a person. A stupid oversimplification of not just Levi as a character, but of people in general, and of the concept of justifiable violence too. Pacifism is an ideal, but one which doesn't and can't always coexist with reality. To judge someone and condemn then for engaging in violence, no matter the circumstances surrounding that violence, when nature itself is predicated on violence, is absurd.

Context matters. Circumstances matter. Intent matters. Levi's violence was never ideological in its reasoning. He never committed acts of violence in service to some abstract school of thought or philosophy. He never killed anyone because he thought they represented or symbolized some great evil or threat to the world and needed to be eradicated as a result. Levi's acts of violence have always been practical in nature. Defense of himself and others against people directly threatening their well being. And further, Levi has never, not once, tried to impose his way of thinking or doing on a single, other person. He's always, always, allowed everyone to decide for themselves. To come to their own conclusions of what they believe is right and wrong, good or bad. He's always allowed everyone their own agency. He's never manipulated or badgered or bullied anyone into agreeing with him or tried to brainwash anyone into a certain set of ideological beliefs. He's only ever wanted and tried to ensure people the freedom to make those decisions for themselves, and he's only ever tried to protect people, more often than not at great cost to himself.

He's the very definition of a hero, and to accuse people who call him that of exhibiting the kind of ideological thinking that leads to Nazism is not only absurd, but a massive insult, both to Levi's character and to the intelligence of his fans. As if they're incapable of understanding the nature of violence because they differentiate between acts of violence by applying critical thought to outside factors and mitigating circumstances. I guess our justice system is similarly incapable of understanding the nature of violence too, then, because it also dares to weigh outside factors and mitigating circumstances when judging a person's "crimes" or "guilt". It isn't the people who apply nuanced thought and consideration to Levi's actions who are susceptible to fanaticism, it's the people making those sorts of accusations who are, in exposing their total inability to divorce themselves from their black and white view of reality.

#Levi Ackerman #meta #commentary #analysis #attack on titan #shingkei no kyojin

[cock-holliday]

TIR/F arguments are often even stupider than TER/F arguments because of how much they want to bend rigid ideas to fit a new narrative but still be rigid in exclusion. The E’s insist biological determinism. You are born a man, you are born a woman. Biology makes us totally separate from each other. You are innately something and cannot change.

The I’s try to bend that idea around progressive language. Womanhood is something to reject or embrace, but then there is still an inherent good/bad dichotomy. To the I’s, your worth is in not being a man. But what is a man, then? The E’s stake their whole politic around a supposedly rigid definition of Woman™️ but then so do the I’s! On the surface it is rejecting maleness but what is male? Is it masculinity? Is it facial hair? Is it he/him pronouns? Is it a penis but we’ll pretend it’s not cause as long as I can pretend you don’t have one then welcome to the sisterhood (you’re on thin ice)

Trans women are good because they do not want to be men, but I get to decide what “man” means and if you fly too close then you’re a predator(y man) trying to trick us into letting you in

Trans men are bad because they reject the gift of womanhood and want to abandon their oppression in favor of supremacy and no matter how cruel my “punching up” at them becomes, if they cry, they are being hysterical (women), but maybe I can save them from themselves if they repent before me forever

Trans women cannot experience antimasculism because they’re NOT men, how dare you? I support trans women so long as they aspire to cisfemininity, and if they don’t, what’s wrong with a little smear campaign? Why don’t you let us police your body you sex freak? Got something to hide?

Trans men cannot experience misogyny, only trans women do, how dare you you transmisogynist? To prove that they don’t, any trans man who doesn’t take it lying down is a whiny (girl) cunt (boycunt?) who revels in victimhood and uses his woman tears to get out of a callout.

The way that trans people are attacked is tied to assigned (or perceived) birth assignment. We are misgendered and assaulted, even by other trans people who align with ra/df/em politics. It is a poisoned well that you cannot unpoison.

It is fine to talk about your own experiences or how they relate to systems of oppression but reinforcing a binary of “therefore the opposite doesn’t experience this” rather than continuing to blur the lines between “man” and “woman” strengthens the arguments of transphobes.

Trans men you can’t woobify also get smeared as predators. Trans women who don’t drive a hard line between themselves and trans men are accused of being ‘AFABs’ and experience a weird form of misogyny that cannot decide if you’re a girl or boy but you’re definitely a whiny bitch. Intersex and nonbinary folks who muddy the waters of distinct sexes and genders are ignored or cast aside or painted as appropriators and ‘transtrenders.’ We cannot even just discuss our experiences because everyone is assigned at birth and by tumblr dot gov to “basically boy” or “basically girl.”

It serves no one to pretend our experiences as trans people are so unique from each other when we are proof of the flexibility of identity and presentation.

We are at any given time one step away from being painted as predators or waifs, whiny bitches or scary men. We are taking up too much space, we challenge too much, and are all a third gender category until transphobes (cis and trans alike) decide how to categorize us.

If we cannot learn to appreciate the spectrum of experiences and struggles and see ourselves in “the other” AGAB and instead continue to reinvent “men vs women but enlightened this time” we are going to lose

#LJsm