Hello!

*Gently pushes the Wikipedia link to the European Wars of Religion across the table*

There's a reason why European Christians, even when they are active churchgoers, tend to dislike talking about Christianity in public, because Protestants and Catholics are just barely managing to be civil to each other in some places. That is history written in blood.

Some of us also know where they drowned the anapabtists in the Limmat and are not exactly intent on a repeat performance. Unless you are, maybe sit on your mouth and keep that stuff private.

Source: Vinland Saga ヴィンランド･サガ

Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??

Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??

gandalf is scratching his head in moria, and legolas is thinking "oh man, the wizard noticed something off *besides* the obvious balrog that we all are aware of??"

Because I think it really centers one of the key narrative tensions around the characters' life choices, and the question of the very definition of 'crime.' And how it's a contextualized process, rather than a hardcoded binary of actions that are okay and actions that aren't.

It maybe wasn't good to do that to Wen Xu's corpse, but it was war after all, so it's also not a big deal and the cultivators involved don't carry any lasting culpability, even though it wasn't even useful to the war effort to do that.

There's no need to figure out who it was exactly, and attach a stigma to them for vengeful corpse desecration.

But Jin Guangyao having done the very same thing to Nie Mingjue that Nie Mingjue did and allowed to be done to Wen Xu--well that's bad, right? Because it's not war, now. Because it's politics and personal relationships, and the rules for those are different. It's different.

And Jin Guangyao is like, is it though? No. That's bullshit you all tell yourselves. Lines drawn in water, to make sure you're always in the right and anyone else who resorts to violence is wrong.

The rules aren't ever different. Some of us are always at war.

Which is simultaneously the mindset that makes him a dangerous untrustworthy person who makes everyone around him less safe, and He Has A Point Tho.

All of which juxtaposes really interestingly with Wei Wuxian, who in the two phases of his Terrifying Necromancer era did exactly the same things under what were, to him, about the same circumstances (i.e. people he loved had been killed on a pretext that he'd started it, by people who self-professedly weren't going to stop until they'd taken everything he had left) but when it was war he was a hero (albeit controversial), and when it wasn't war anymore he was a criminal, unforgivable, had to be put down.

The crime scene investigation begins. Was it Malice, the Meatball Supreme? Or No Bones Jones, Mayhem Jane?

Or was it, perhaps, the Wyrmsinger himself???

Though I think we've narrowed down who the real masterminds are ...

it is also widely accepted that women get raises less often because they don't ask as much as men. this is objectively not true.

it is also widely accepted that women are more talkative than men. this is objectively not true.

it is also widely accepted that women are taken less seriously when speaking because their speech patterns are associated with a "lack of confidence". this is objectively not true. [1][2][3]

every time we talk about gender discrimination, people look for an explanation that starts with women's behavior.

and every fucking time, actual research shows that across the board, women actually don't behave that differently from men.

please join me in screaming over these Galadriel portraits?? I have never felt so beautiful ahhhh