“Are You The Witch Who Turned Eleven Princes Into Swans?”

i do find it very interesting how different the foxes and the trojans go about caring for and supporting each other. well, actually, i mostly find it interesting how differently people seem to feel about it, especially in regards to kevin's drinking problem.

the way kevin's clearly unhealthy relationship with alcohol doesn't get condemned or fixed in the original trilogy for example is something that many people in the fandom have been pretty upset and critical about for many years and jean's reaction to it seemed to have really moved people (though that in particular, imo, had at least as much to do with jean's very restricted and in itself unhealthy relationship to food and drinks as with him uniquely seeing and caring about kevin's substance abuse issues. like, yeah, he really, really cares about him, but i don't think he'd have been thaaat much less upset if kevin was coping by eating chips or something. but well, whatever).

but to me, that never really read as no one caring about kevin or thinking alcohol is the ideal way for him to regulate his emotions.

the whole premise of how wymack runs the foxes and how they treat each other is just very built around the idea that all these people have been through awful things and that the way they'll cope with that won't always be pretty. but as long as they cope at all, they'll be around for another day, and another, which'll buy them to actually get better.

which is how you get stuff like wymack, in good conscience, not only tolerating but at times even soliciting underage drinking. and looking past the harder drugs some of the team are doing. and it's how him and the team all accept that neil is definitely lying about pretty much everything but mostly just leave him be. and how they all agreed to let andrew get off his legally mandated medication during games even though that could have terrible consequences for all of them. and how matt's mom said "sure random eighteen year old calling me on the phone, do give my addict son speedballs, you seem to have a higher success rate at getting teenagers clean than me 👍" because they all view life less as you're either doing good or you doing bad, and more as you're either surviving whatever it takes to do so, or you don't, so who cares if you aren't coping in healthy or acceptable ways, as long as you are coping. (and then once they're ready to work on getting better, they do have a support system in place to help them get there)

meanwhile the trojans are mostly pretty normal and well adjusted, so they have a pretty clear idea of what a healthy person who's doing well looks like, and that's what they generally want for other people, especially those they care about. so when they see someone who's not doing well and not dealing with it in healthy ways they are very direct about it, sort of a "your behaviour is not healthy, stop doing it" thing. your eating habits are really restrictive? try eating different food anyways, it's really good, i prommy. you hurt yourself when you're upset? here's how to physically stop this from hurting. you get incredibly startled when you're touched unexpectedly? well, just let me try hugging you again. you drink to deal with your feelings? please don't, it's not good for you.

and obviously that's a lot more normal and straight forward than what the foxes are doing, and it's done with love and support. and a lot of fans find it very moving and beautiful and sweet. but i also know that i'm not the only person who was really put off by this and still finds it kinda disconcerting. to me it feels, especially in contrast to the foxes, who would largely find this sooo overbearing and rude and uncomfortable, kinda like strongarming someone into doing well, with (at least in the context of these specific books) shockingly little regard for personal boundaries.

my point isn't that one's better than the other or anything, i think both approaches are going to work differently well for different people and within the books it makes perfect sense why the different teams would act this way, and it's also perfectly understandable why some people really resonate with one approach and find the other irritating or unkind. it's simply some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head. building up to: nothing really. oh well

he is perfect to me

People talk about Max not wanting a competitive teammate but turns out Lewis made Toto promise to not sign Max -https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1064593/1/toto-wolffs-max-verstappen-promise-lewis-hamilton-revealed

No one wants a competitive teammate. There is no benefit to having someone as good or better than you in the same car. This “they push me harder” is a lie and it’s cope. If you need someone to push the best performance out of you you’re probably the type of person who is motivated by fear of not being good enough.

Max and Lewis are probably the two drivers I’d say genuinely believe there’s no one better than them. But it would still be a nuisance to have each other as teammates. For Lewis it would have been absolutely career killer to be next to someone so much younger because everyone would see Max as the one who would carry on after Lewis retires. Not to mention Max cares absolutely nothing for team games and has a pretty aggressive team of people around him. Even if lewis thinks he’d ultimately come out on top why would he want to invite that conflict into his “home”.

Max is probably not scared to lose to a teammate, more he’s comfortable in his environment and doesn’t want anyone rocking the boat. Who wants to come to work with some anxious little gremlin nipping at your heels, or someone with a pompous father complaining all the time, or an ageing champion making imperious demands.

Sacrificing your comfort to prove you can beat people you’ve already cooked is so counterintuitive. Idk why people lay that at Max’s door like he’s “scared” of good drivers. Man just wants a good work environment

Sorry 😞

please understand i am not booping you gently on the forehead. i am smacking your ass, it is audible and there is JIGGLING

PSA to anyone writing an essay at ANY level:

please, for the love of god, integrate your quotes properly. don't just drop them in the middle of nowhere D:

it's very easy:

Step 1: Introduce the Author of the Quotation (Who/where is it from) Step 2: State the Quotation (the quote) Step 3: Summarize the Quotation (paraphrase it) Step 4: Analyze the Quotation (Break down the meaning) Step 5: State the Quotation’s Relevance to Your Argument (Why did you just share this quote how is it related to your essay?)

Here's another example:

After talking with Cherry, a girl from the opposing group, Ponyboy, the main character in The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton, observes, "Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset" (Hinton, 78). In other words, after talking, they realized they had more things in common than they thought. This shows that one of the reasons the two groups keep fighting is that they don't really ever communicate with each other. This is a reflection of our society today, where people discriminate against each other based on stereotypes, without actually ever communicating with each other.

Its an easy formula to follow and literally makes your writing sound so much clearer PLEASE just DO it and SAVE THE EYES of your teachers today

- sincerely a teacher who is TIRED OF SEEING quotes that have been parachuted into a sentence and no one knows who said it or why you added it in your paper PLEASE we want to give you good grades help us out 😭😭😭

Me when I think about DC unintentionally making Batman so female coded. We’re constantly reminded his identity is based and fed by a shitty man. That he wouldn’t exist without him.His trauma is either diminished to be a point of ridicule, or invalided entirely. He’s expected to know everything, to have a perfect reaction all the time, to be somehow devoid of emotion yet shamed for having empathy. DC trying so hard to push the father optic on him yet the fandom sees him as a mother. He’s the problem and the solution and the root of destruction. He keeps Gotham alive, but he’s not raising it. He makes everything and belongs nowhere.

This is insane

Fem andreil

i love it when fandom infantilizes characters to the point of denying them their own agency.

"if people in cang qiong had treated shen jiu differently-" do you have any evidence that they mistreated him? or is it too hard a pill to swallow that shen jiu was the one who decided to close himself off and be an asshole. that cang qiong treated him just fine, that his martial siblings tolerated him to the point that even when he was suspected of murder nothing was done to him?

who forced shen jiu to abuse luo binghe? to abuse other disciples? those were his decisions, that was him acting in a position of power.

the moral of the story is not "shen jiu was misunderstood :(" the moral is: the person who was abused can also become an abuser. the one who suffers violence can be violent towards others. you, despite what you've gone through, have the capacity for kindness and cruelty. so be wise on how you decide to act, because your pain doesn't justify hurting others, and your actions will have consequences.

you have agency, you have whatever amount of power you have over your own life and the things you do have an impact in the lives of those around you and yourself. so maybe try being at the very list neutral to the world and yourself, if you can't be kind.

but no, shen jiu's mentality was "since I suffered, they deserve to suffer too". and by taking that path he perpetuated the cycle of abuse.

bingge is the same, because he could have stopped at taking revenge on shen jiu, but he decided to involve the whole sect and the rest of the world, no matter who was innocent. he was unnecessarily cruel, but so was his master.

both shen jiu and bingge had the capacity for some form of "niceness" (in the way they treated women), so it wasn't as if they'd never known some form of love. at some point in their lives, they stopped being abused children and became abusive adults.

and that's an expression of human behaviour that we have to accept as possible. the svsss narrative invites us to examine ourselves in this light, to witness our capacity for both love and hate, to realize that even in the most adverse of circumstances, there's always a small sliver of agency over how we feel and how we act. that, despite the things that defines us from birth through childhood, our decisions also define what we'll become in the future.