#social analysis

Ilya is bi and he can't turn off who he is any more than Shane and Scott can.

We see ourselves, for the most part, as a society that values ability. When we see someone "talented" we marvel at said talent, and talk about how "people should appreciate it". When we achieve, we acknowledge the hard work that led us there. The term "meritocracy" has seen a lot of unsavory political use recently, but notably, the ideas behind it are, in fact, not politically biased: "Equity" is about placing minorities into positions where they can demonstrate their aforementioned talent and work ethic. Which is to say: All of us believe that genuine demonstrations of talent, work ethic, and ability should be celebrated by society. People should be given places to exhibit their skills and flex their strengths, and ideally, the system will work to grant them said positions.

It's a nice thought, for sure.

One of my favorite musings has been how plausible the abilities of the PJSK characters really are. Like, is it really possible for someone to sing and dance at a professional level, learning (or writing) new material every few weeks, while still in school? Is it possible for them to do all of that while also maintaining a nutty workout routine and any other skills/hobbies the game mentions?

This list is based on breadth and depth of skills, academic and athletic performance, and how much fucking time it would take to actually do all this shit lol. For example:

>> Emu and Rui are both academic overachievers, physically capable, stage performers, and have a collection of other feats. Most notably, Emu's ability to jump from high places is blatantly supernatural, and Rui's mastery of robotics (Nene-Robo in particular) is far beyond publicly available modern science

>> Tsukasa is, to me, the silliest person on the list. He writes the scripts and the music for the shows, maintains a crazy workout routine, and presumably helps with costumes for the shows (at least, he has sewing skills). As someone who's done all of those things, I don't know where the fuck this guy has time for all that shit

>> I might be wrong, but my impression has been that Haruka handles most of MMJ's business operations and maintains the strictest workout routine. I think she also does the choreo too? Not sure if it's her or Airi (or a 3rd party) as I know Shizuku and Minori spend time learning the dances at least

>> Mafuyu is self-explanatory

>> Mizuki is, low-key, one of the most absurdly talented characters in the cast, arguably rivaling Mafuyu's level of bullshit:

She only ever skips school or sleeps through class, but still gets good grades whenever she shows up, and even gets grouped with Rui and Toya in the "smart kids" during the we-almost-fail-school event

She's possibly faster than Mafuyu, which means being faster than the ENTIRE MIYAJO STUDENT BODY

She learned how to sew entirely online (confirmed in Mizuki's picnic event side story) and made Nene's costume by herself, which is...completely insane on multiple levels

She's never been seen taking a voice lesson in her life, but sings in an online group that gets hundreds of thousands of hits per song. (she also sings against her birth sex kinda but not really it's complicated)

She also makes the whole-ass MV's for said online group (again with what training?) which is another entire list of skills

She easily makes friends with all the other main characters and is incredibly emotionally insightful, and was arguably the main reason Niigo became friends in the early events

Idk if the dances/tiktoks are canon, but if they are...who do you think choreographs them? Most likely the idol fan, right?

She does all of this while literally just being a fucking weeb who browses social media for discussions of magical girl anime

Anyway this isn't (entirely) a Mizuki glazing post so lemme move on.

The point

The top of the "stupid multitalented/crazy hardworking" list tends to overwhelmingly favor social outcasts or characters who feel forced to lie about who they are.

>> Tsukasa, Emu, Rui, and Mizuki are all viewed as weirdos by their peers. Tsukasa and Emu don't seem to mind it, but Tsukasa is repeatedly called a weirdo at school, and Emu's academic achievements and business prowess are consistently doubted by others. Rui and Mizuki...yeah.

>> Mafuyu obviously falls into the "mask" category, but I'd also like to nominate Shizuku and Airi as exceptionally hard workers who were forced to act different to survive in the idol industry.

In addition, we, the audience, readily accept that the outcast characters are outcasts, and that the masking characters are masking. The fact that the other in-universe characters treat them the way they do does not surprise us; it's the expected result from our knowledge of social norms and human behavior.

...this does, however, raise the question. If we expect these highly skilled "weirdos" to be social outcasts, what does our society actually value?

If our society truly valued "merit" so highly, we would expect the incredible merit of characters like Rui and Emu to get them placed into highly valued, respected positions. If our society truly held "ability" above nearly everything else, Airi and Shizuku wouldn't have to lie about their true personalities on-stage, and Mizuki would be revered like a demigoddess.

But they AREN'T treated that way because we DON'T actually value talent and hard work the way we think we do. What we value is normalcy–fitting in and behaving as one "should".

(Generally I am Christians DNI, but for this post I encourage y’all to interact actually ^^ I think it would be interesting to have a conversation about this)

I HATE it when people say that Christian rapists, abusers, bigots, et cetera, aren’t real Christians. It feels very much like they’re trying to shift accountability/bad PR away from their religion, and it pisses me off.

That terrible person IS a real Christian. If they call themself a Christian, they are a Christian.

The Christian religion has a LOT to answer for, and you can’t just erase those stains by distancing bad people from the religion.

That child abuser IS a real Christian, and the Christian church is what enabled him to abuse those children. Saying that he’s not a real Christian is removing any blame from the religion, which is bad because it completely erases the hand the church/religion played.

Same with homophobes. You cannot divorce homophobia from the Christian church. Homophobes ARE real Christians. Saying that they’re not would erase that the homophobia originated in the church.

I hope I explained this okay. It just pisses me off so badly when I see people talking about harm they’ve faced from Christians, and then the comments are full of ‘I’m so sorry, those weren’t real Christians ❤️’. Like I’m sure they mean well, but it feels so off to me. I don’t think that it’s right to divorce all these terrible people from Christianity, because it’s a lie and it completely ignores the role that Christianity played. It is essentially just sweeping all of these terrible things under the rug and washing it off the hands of the church, you know what I mean???

I mean, obviously the school should have found out about this sooner, and stopped it before it became a deep-rooted problem. After all, it's much more difficult to get them out after they were pulled into the ideology. But hypothetically speaking, is there any safe way to help them, before they join the death eaters? How do you help teenagers who are being radicalized into a cult?

Cults targeting young people usually operate through two main pathways. One is the recruitment of youths from outside the cult (and this doesn’t apply only to cults; it also works with political groups and all kinds of organizations that function as extremely closed communities). These recruits tend to share a profile: young people from very unstable backgrounds, without solid support networks, often coming from conflictive environments or situations of violence or abuse. They are kids with a lot of trauma, often carrying a great deal of pent-up anger as a result, or maybe not so much anger but they do share one common trait: a need to belong to a structure and to have support figures.

These groups give them not only the resources they lack in their daily lives, but also an identity they probably don’t have or haven’t been able to develop because of their personal circumstances, as well as a support network and a sense of belonging. People often see this as something frivolous or fail to understand its importance, but in the end it’s something we are all subject to to a greater or lesser extent. People with healthier attachments usually feel a sense of belonging to functional groups, such as a football team, a club, a group of friends, a musical scene, a TV show fandom, a set of shared tastes, etc. What is often not understood is that those who end up falling into certain extremist narratives do so because they don’t have these things, or they aren’t enough for them to truly feel seen, understood, and/or accepted. These groups give them a sense of security that their family or environment never gave them, along with an education based on confronting fear with more fear. Kids without resources are a potential target because they have nothing, and with very little given to them, they can be easily won over.

Then there are the boys and girls who grow up already inside a cult, and although it may seem like they have nothing to do with the previous group, the core issue is the same: support networks and emotional relationships. These kids are born and raised in environments where all their support figures, their entire care network, and all their emotional references are within the cult. Not just their family, but their friends as well, and their entire ecosystem in general. Leaving the cult means leaving everything behind, because cults operate under a “you’re with me or against me” premise, and the most common outcome is that anyone who rejects the cult is rejected by the community. Being rejected by the community means being completely alone. This is unthinkable at an early age; it is psychologically and emotionally devastating.

In fact, when you look into how these communities function, you realize the tremendous emotional blackmail and pressure they exert on conscientious objectors, because they basically tell them that if they leave, they’ll be left with nothing. And that’s literally true: they can’t contact their family, they can’t see their siblings, their parents, or their friends, or go back home. The entire community turns its back on them. I’ve known people from religious communities like this: people who couldn’t leave because they couldn’t bear the idea of never hearing from their family again or of being completely rejected by them. A friend of mine left her community when she started university and her parents cut off all contact. She had to work TWO jobs at just 17 years old to survive because she had absolutely nothing. They wouldn’t let her see her younger siblings. She attempted suicide twice because of how badly she suffered. These processes are extremely brutal psychologically, because most of them have nowhere to go: EVERYTHING they have and EVERYONE they’ve ever interacted with, anyone they could turn to for help or support, is inside the cult. Many people think it’s as simple as leaving, but it’s not easy at all, especially because not wanting to belong to the cult doesn’t necessarily mean hating your family. But your family will turn their back on you, as will your relationships, and on top of that, the vast majority don’t even know how to get out because they have no resources and no knowledge of resources outside.

That said, rehabilitating adolescents whose entire universe revolves around a cult is incredibly difficult, and not because of ideology, which people tend to focus on, even though that’s the least important part. Ideology is just the means by which the cult creates a sense of belonging and community around a shared goal. The reality is that even without that ideology, it’s extremely hard for a child to want to leave because doing so means leaving their family and all their support networks behind. The only truly effective way to help in these cases is to provide real alternatives outside those environments and to ensure they will have support, people who care about them, resources, and a place to live. Above all, intervention has to be non-aggressive. You can’t go up to a kid who’s been raised their entire life in a bubble where everyone thinks the same way and follows the same structures and tell them that everything they have, believe in, and everything their parents and environment represent is garbage, that simply doesn’t work.

The way to help them is gradual: opening doors little by little, giving them the chance to go out occasionally, to see other realities, to have other experiences outside the cult. That way, they can see, become curious, and broaden their horizons. They need to have groups of friends outside that environment, activities outside that environment, and opportunities to go beyond it. You have to understand that cults function in such a way that people inside do absolutely everything you would normally do: extracurricular classes, sports, workshops of all kinds, trips, excursions... but EVERYTHING, absolutely EVERYTHING is done together and supervised by people from the cult. As a result, they never really experience or relate to people from outside in any meaningful way; at most, those interactions are tangential or superficial. They never form deep relationships with people outside the cult, because they even attend schools or educational institutions run by the cult. That’s why one of the main ways they begin to question things is precisely by having spaces outside the cult, and by having support and attachment figures outside it as well. This is not easy.

We have spent a lot of time looking at the monsters under the bed. Now, I want us to look at the room itself.

Fandom was meant to be a sanctuary, a "Gift Economy" where outcasts shared their hearts translated into HTML. But something changed. We allowed the architecture of modern capitalism and the anxiety of the "purity cult" to infect our creative spaces. We didn't just break the stories; we broke the way we interact with them.

I’ve identified five systemic fractures in our current digital culture. I want to know which one we should perform a full sociological autopsy on next.

Which symptom of our collective decay concerns you the most?

These aren't just "takes." They are diagnoses of an environment that is making both creators and consumers increasingly miserable. Choosing one means deciding where we start the treatment.

If you have a personal experience with any of these, if you’ve felt the silence of AO3, the pressure of the purity cult, or the isolation of the 'peace' narrative, leave your notes in the comments. Your voice is the evidence we need.

As always, if the dashboard feels too loud and you need a quiet corner to discuss these fractures, the door to my discord is open.

Discord: symphony_of_dreams

Like one day I'll come across a vid on tiktok or yt or insta that says "it's so amazing to have a man that heals all of your traumas" and I'll be like "yeah, that's true. A healing man is great!"

And then I come across another vid that's like "here's why you have to heal on your own" and I'll be like "yeah okay I'm not... weak!"

And then I come across a vid that's like "love your body, stop body shaming yourself, honey!" and I'm like "you're right! I love my tummy!"

And then I come across another video that's like "use AI to make yourself look morbidly obese, put that picture on your refrigerator, and watch how motivated you are to lose weight!" And I'm like "Uhm, well that's... something."

And then I come across a video that's like "studies show having more friends makes you happier and more successful!" And I'm like "Yes, I love my friends!"

And then I come across another video that's like "friends are temporary. Block everyone out and lock the heck in." And I'm like "yeah, they actually do kinda in the way sometimes... But I still love them!"

And then I come across another post that's like "here's 20 beauty products you need to rock the summer!" And I'm like "Okay, yeah, I need some new products to try out."

And then I come across a post that's like "Overconsumption is killing the turtles!" And I'm like "Okay... Right! I won't buy anything that I don't need!"

And I find a post that's like "Cherish the men in your life they carry so much on their shoulders." And I'm like "Yeah, my dad, my uncles, my male cousins, my grandpas."

And then I find another post that's like "Men are still oppressing us! Ain't it time they went extinct?!" And I'm like "Men are pretty shitty not gonna lie but I still like them."

And then I find another post that's like "You won't get special treatment until you act like you deserve it!" And I'm like "I'm special!"

The fact that the only way that AI investors can recoup their investment is by turning us all into reverse-centaurs is not our problem. We are under no obligation to arrange our affairs to ensure their solvency. In 1980, Margaret Thatcher told us, “There is no alternative.” In 1982, Bill Gibson refuted her thus: “The street finds its own uses for things.”

I know which prophet I’m gonna follow.