concrete spacetime katabasis

Stressing that it was never okay to criticize someone’s appearance, Ariana Grande fans reportedly took to social media Monday to slam body-shamers for pointing out that the singer was actively on fire. “One, she’s always been naturally flammable, and two, she’s asked people to stop talking about the fire multiple times,” said 29-year-old Emma Dunning, who vigorously defended Grande’s new look in a comments section online after photos from the Eternal Sunshine Tour showed the singer performing with a visible blaze consuming her from head to toe. 

Yuta represents the social dominance of men. His most powerful allies are his wives; his best tool is his wedding ring. His timid nature and lack of status as a boy allow him to persist in the delusion that marriage is a bond between equals and not a contract where the husband takes everything. That's the heart of his sorcery: "because my feelings of love are real, it's okay for me to gain power through unequal relationships". He's a good man, doing what good men have always done: make the right excuses to himself and take care of his family.

Megumi doesn't have that luxury. Unlike Yuta, he inherited the dark underbelly of patriarchal power instead of the rosy veneer. He DID inherit wealth and status, and with them, a living clan perpetrating horrors to preserve them. So instead of a symbolic exchange like marriage, Megumi's curse technique provides ruthless tools engineered for winning power struggles.

Unlike love, power is selfish. Unlike love, power only protects itself. So Megumi can never reach the heights Yuta can as a sorcerer while still believing he acts to protect his loved ones. The Ten Shadows Cursed Technique won't allow it. Love protects Yuta's illusion, but it ruthlessly attacks Megumi's.

That's why, from the start, we understand that Megumi isn't reaching his full potential. He's noble and kind, so a crown doesn't suit him. He could only reach the height of his power by rejecting love in favor of power, which is something he'll never do.

What is my response to the unequal nature of relationships between men and women?

How do you use undeserved power inherited from a corrupt system?

Yuta answers, "If our relationship is unequal, I'll just use my power to benefit those under my care. I can use this power without abusing others, so the fact that it's undeserved is irrelevant."

Megumi answers, "I'll do my best to protect the women I love, and I'll put my own desires last to make up for my privilege. I'll hand this undeserved power to any woman who asks for it, especially those in the structure supporting me. To be honest, I don't even really want to use it."

The wedding ring and the shadow crown. The good man and the depressed isolate.

I really see myself in these characters because every boy faces the same questions. Becoming a trans woman for me was the equivalent of answering:

"I will reject every trapping of patriarchal relations that doesn't suit me, including marriage, dating, and respectability, rather than rule over a woman as a patriarch. I can't protect women using the tools that oppress them, so i will be a friend to them with the tools that can actually help. If I have undeserved power, I will see it as a moral failing."

Like Yuta and Megumi, there are pros and cons to taking this path. Your true feelings of love suddenly become legible, you're happy, and you feel free from the obligation to start a family and be a provider/protector. After all, freedom from privilege is also freedom from responsibility!

But on the other hand, the belief in your own moral superiority can make you complacent, and complacency is the first stone in the road to stagnation. Freedom from responsibility isn't always good, either. In truth, you are still responsible for taking up the social and domestic labor that you didn't have to do as a man because that's the only way to lessen the load on other women. Just because your patriarchal responsibilities were stifling doesn't mean all responsibilities have to be.

Gender is truly a convoluted curse with its own set of rules and balances! As a trans woman, I love jjk's approach to these subjects. More than almost anything I've ever read, JJK depicts men and women as we actually are: conflicted, sharing and distributing power according to what we feel is right as well as what's just easy. No perfect fathers or wives, just people handed something bigger than a human lifetime and asked to square the circle.