🦊Neil My Boy🦊

sick post i just found online. sorry i couldnt find the source

wanting and being wanted

sources:

1. chaandajaan // 2. schuylerpeck // 3. phantom pain by caitlin conlon // 4. desperation sits heavy on my tongue by a.m // 5. what I could never confess without some bravado by emily palermo // 6. are_you_okay66 on tiktok // 7. ashstfu // 8. lily rain @/lilyrainpoetry on insta // 9. love as an act of merciful conquer by silas denver melvin // 10. 300122 by @ryebreadgf

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

A LANNISTER ALWAYS PAYS HIS DEBTS

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.

Lool petty king

never forget that odysseus had a daily cry on calypso’s beach for the entire 7 years he was there

These posts are cousins to me.