I Literally Cannot Wrap My Head Around The Notion That There’s Been A “decline” In “real Art.”

I have no idea why the sky is blue, but I do know that my love is true. Haylee Morice

i was reading the latest translated chapters of weak hero and i saw somebody saying that they 'weren't interested' in episodes like this because the girls in weak hero only purposes were to be love interests. for some context, lala, lily and julia's backstory is revealed in the latest chapters. but isn't a character's only purpose to be a love interest when that character has no contribution to the story and personality that doesn't revolve around the male characters? if julia, lala and lily already have a backstory about their friendship, and julia contributed to the story during the ganghak arc then that means that they aren't 'just love interests'. Isn't it sexist to think that the only purpose a girl could ever have in a story is to be a love interest? Especially if they have a personality, backstory and character outside the guys lmao.

"But only 2% of the population is intersex. It's not that common. Why should we reframe or perception of gender for intersex people?"

Completely ignoring the fact that empathy exists. You do realize that 2% of the population in the medical field is considered very common, yes?

2% of children and 0.5% of adults have a peanut allergy and that's so common that they have entire rules around in in public spaces.

0.24-1% of the population has Rheumatoid arthritis. That's an eighth to a half of the number of intersex people!

1-2% of people are estimated to have autism, and that's considered a common condition.

0.1%-2.6% of people will get melanoma in their life time, and that's considered common.

1.2% of people have epilepsy and that's considered common.

Completely ignoring statistics like 6% of women have PCOS (which is a condition that can fall under the intersex umbrella). 2% of the population in the medical field is considered a common condition, and ergo by medical terms intersex is in itself common.

I don't think you realize how big 2% is. That's 2 in 100 people. If you walk into 3 fully filled classrooms (when I was in school a full classroom was 40 students). Chances are you just saw 2 intersex kids and didn't even know it.

So yeah. I think intersex is common enough to include in our discussions around gender and how transphobic rules affects intersex people.

-fae

Jake's friend group + thoughts

(Okay so just to clarify I don't actually care about the morality of fictional characters because they're, well, fictional. I just wrote this because I don't really see anybody else talking about them)

Usually when I see people talk about the Daehyeon boys it's usually about how they're similar to Eunjang and that if it wasn't for the Union, Jake's crew would get along with Eunjang so well etc etc.

But I don't really believe that Eunjang and Jake's crew could be friends (hang out?? tolerate each other, maybe, but not friends) with all their differences. It's pretty obvious that SEOPASS made them similar on purpose so I'm not gonna act like that's some groundbreaking discovery I made lmao, but there are some things that make me think that the two groups are actually pretty different.

For one, when Gray and his friends are leaving to go find Big Ben after fighting Dean and the others, he tells the guys from Daehyeon that Ben wouldn't gang up on Jake with them, and that Ben wasn't "Some wannabe thug like you guys."

(Pop off Gray)

But yeah, Jake and his gang can act like they're the chill, strong, laid back good guys, but that's all it is. An act. I mean, Dean and Eunchan literally pick fights with people for no reason, and are assholes a lot of the time.

Jake doesn't start fights for no reason but he never stops his friends from doing so, and though I've never seen this happen in canon before, I can a 100% imagine him being excited when that happens so that he can get into fights for a 'justifyable' reason. (This reminds me of something @rare-and-beautiful-things in a post before about Jake beating people up for his friends in their strong abd kind Union member post)

Plus the dynamics in their group are actually pretty different. Eunchan and Dean immediately underestimate their opponents (and in a way, Jake does too, but that's more understandable since he IS the number two in the Union), making a bunch of derogratory comments about the people they're fighting.

I've never seen anybody in Eunjang do that (besides Teddy but he's a special case💀) even though most of them are unbelievably strong they always approach their opponent with caution and never look down on them.

Also,, one thing I've noticed is that Dean and Eunchan have the tendency not only to look down on their opponents, but their friends as well. Okay that sounds bad so let me explain more😭😭

I feel like Eunchan and Dean unconciously rank people? (like most people in the Union do, and I guess it kind of comes along with being a thug) and don't get me wrong, I think they geniunely think of Timothy as a friend and care for him, but when you're in the Union you tend to view people who can't fight as someone less deserving of your respect, whether you do it consciously or not.

An example of this is when Gray is about to fight Dean, Eugene warns Gray about Dean's strength, Gray pats him on the shoulder and tells him not to worry.

But when Timothy does the same to Dean, Dean tells Timothy that he "didn't give a crap about his data", and I don't think he would have responded the same way if someone like Jake (or someone he viewed as 'more powerful' than him) told him to be cautious.

And let's be honest, you'd only talk to somebody that way if you didn't respect them.

It's pretty obvious that Eunchan does the same thing too. When Eugene and Timothy start fighting, Eunchan looks over at them and says, "What a bunch of losers."

I literally did a double take at that one because 1. Calling your friend (who's trying to help you) a loser? 2. It confirms what I thought about the other guys looking down on Tim for not being able to fight. They hang out with him and love him, sure, but subconsiously to them, anybody who cannot fight is a rank below them: a loser.

(I'm pretty sure they aren't aware of this since their friendship does seem pretty geniune. It's probably from the inflated ego that comes along with being a thug.)

The Eunjang boys have never once looked down on Eugene for not being able to defend themselves and always treated him as an equal, so that's another difference.

(Also another thing that's pretty telling is Eunchan's style of fighting- he hits Eugene in the face even though Eugene was practically defenseless and not attacking him. He also got Timothy to hold Rowan down so he could beat him up which is dirty asf and also just proves that they aren't really the 'cool strong heroes' they think they are.)

Anyways thanks for reading all this rambling and like I said at the start (i'll just repeat it because some people can't read and i don't want any hate) i don't actually care about whether fictional characters are good or bad because if I did I wouldn't be reading action webtoons (or having Wolf Keum as a fav) I just wanted to talk about this.

Interested in hearing yalls thoughts</3

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm hiiiiii turned a vaguely homoerotic poem i made about a mosquito i didn't want to kill into. this. yay 👍

so this is what stephen ahn saw😊😊

At times, Reading He Who Drowned the World felt like I was the one being flayed and steamed alive, being cut into a thousand little pieces by a knife. The mental and physical agony the characters go through is so painful it feels even excessive at times. But even when the most horrible things were happening and I was almost losing hope towards the end, I couldn’t even be mad because I could feel what the author was trying to tell me with all this pain and suffering, and I can buy that message 100 %.

Through these deeply painful scenes, the story shows how strict gender roles, toxic masculinity, misogyny and homophobia hurt and restrict us, and how lethal they can be.

Major spoilers after this

I was especially gutted by Ouyang’s death, but I feel like his storyline drove the themes of the story home in a very pronounced way. In the end, Ouyang was killed by the harmful ideas about masculinity and manhood that had been ingrained in him all his life.

His tragedy was never about having to avenge his family, but rather being so entrenched in the toxic culture of pride and revenge and masculinity that he would rather kill the one he loved and retain his ”honor” than put the idea of honor aside and love and be loved in return.

These toxic ideas are also the reason that stops him from forming real solidarity with Zhu. Even though they are both very similar, living as men while their bodies are not viewed as a man’s by the society, Ouyang cannot accept Zhu as an equal because he’s learned to project his self-hatred into hating everything even remotely feminine and female. It’s very upsetting to see how he loses his chance at healing and changing as a person by Zhu’s side, but I think that’s the whole point. This is a book series about broken people and how people who have been hurt sometimes only learn to hurt others, and how patriarchy and other harmful structures pit women, queer and trans ppl and basically anyone against each other. This theme is visible in almost all the pov characters of the story.

Madam Zhang is incapable of letting go of the ideas about what men and women can or cannot do, which leads to her not being able to accept Zhu as an ally and subsequently her own death.

Baoxiang has been equally hurt by narrow views of masculinity and manhood, and been scorned and rejected for his femininity all his life. His pain becomes so all-consuming that he is almost suffocated by his need to revenge the society that has wronged him. In the end, he is only able to survive because he can cast things like pride or shame aside in order to start anew.

In contrast, Zhu is able to not only survive but even thrive in some way bc she doesn’t really care about those roles. Even if she is not a woman, she never rejects or undervalues femininity and is able to use it to her own advantage when needed. She also knows that pride and honor cannot comfort you when you’re dead and she would rather live, and I think this extends to a more metaphoric level too. What’s the point of becoming ”successful” or hanging on to the idea of what a ”real man” should be like, if it only leads to you being dead inside?

Obviously, letting go of these harmful and hurtful ideas and structures can not be a individual effort, but something that needs to be addressed on a more systemic level. That’s why Zhu has to get on that throne herself in order to change the world. And it feels very meaningful that at the end, when she ascends on the throne, she’s wearing a maid’s skirts, owing her win to both the feminine and masculine sides of her.

For me, at least, the very final chapter of the book managed to justify all the awful things that happened. With mercy and grace, Zhu (and Ma!) demonstrate that to make it all worth the pain and suffering, you have to stop hurting and killing others and break free from that cycle of toxicity that their world has been built upon until now.

(Also as a disclaimer, I generally prefer to read about healing and letting go of pain and generally don’t think pain and suffering make things more deep or worthy… but I also think that this book managed to use these elements in a very meaningful way.)

"But I finished [Near and Mello] together as a set, and although they aren’t particularly laid out as such, I still feel a bit like they’re twins." —Obata Takeshi

whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same:

i. low sky, mahmoud darwish. ii. the world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire, ritika jyala. iii. kadan, 2008. iv. the dreamers, gilbert adair. v. @nathanielorion vi. nagiko, 2016. vii. elektra, sophokles (tr. anne carson). viii. wishbone, richard siken. ix. inbred, ethel cain. x. the boy who, tirol. xi. monster portraits, del samatar and sofia samatar. xii. in the field, @nathanielorion xiii. death note, "use" ch77. xiv. gut symmetries, jeanette winterson. xv. mystic union; fire and wine: poems, john gould fletcher. xvi. @inukai_0055, twitter. xvii. the carnivorous lamb, agustín gómez-arcos. xviii. my sister, the serial killer, oyinkan braithwaite. xix. the beatrice letters, lemony snicket (text); a quiet visitor, holly warburton (art); @unpardonablesins (edit). xx. ada, vladimir nabokov. xxi. this is how you lose the time war, amal el-mohtar. xxii. the borgias, s3e10, showtime. xxiii. @antaarf xxiv. @vilicity xxv. @boymiffy

You had fun when you killed everyone here. Didn't you?You can kill anyone you want to kill and save anyone you want to save. It feels like being a deity. Babe, you and I can do anything together from now on. Aren't you excited already?

Jong-woo: I'll kill you! Moon-jo: Is he flirting with me? 😏