complicated relationships with your parents are like. you cut up fruit and bring it to my room without me asking. i can't remember the last time you told me that you were proud of me. you told me i wasn't good enough for you but i'm not even good enough for myself. your hugs feel like coming home. i can't tell you anything that happens in my life. i doubt myself every day because of something you said to me when i was eight. would you like to hear about my day? please don't ask me about my day. i miss you even though you're in the next room. i wish we didn't live together. i've never loved or resented anyone as much as i've loved and resented you. are you okay? are we okay? are we ever going to be okay?
I went to fucking bed thinking I don't even need to bother watching the count, Kamala is going to steamroll him...
And then 71 million Americans proved that my faith in them was misguided.
She didn't even win the popular vote.
71 million Americans watched Trump rave and froth like a dementia patient on national TV, against possibly one of the most qualified women in history...
and they still voted for the rapist and pedophile and convicted felon.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I'm so sorry. to the rest of the world.
maybe we Americans fucking deserve what we get, but the rest of you do not.
For those people who need to hear it, there is nothing wrong with going back into the closet for your own safety. You aren't less queer because you can't be queer publicly. You aren't less trans because you have to act like you're not trans.
If you need to start going by your old pronouns or quietly go back into the closet to be safe - you are allowed to do that. Please do that if it means you're alive.
Your safety is important.
You are important.
And if you know someone who has to do this, don't push them. Don't out them. Follow their lead. People's safety is more important that grandstanding.
My emotions are high right now so I may not think straight but let me get this straight.
EVERYBODY survived except Kashimo (who cares), Gojo and Choso.
KENJAKU/GETO lives and so does Takaba (or whatever his name is, I don't care at this point).
Gojo died fighting Sukuna just so others stood a chance against Sukuna later.
Yuta used his dead body to fight – and the guy didn't even do much to Sukuna. Gojo agreed because he view himself as a weapon – but that just means that no matter what, his students also thought of him as a weapon
Despite all of the above NO ONE grieves him (Choso isn't even acknowledged), KUSAKABE blames him for everything, and that's it
TSUMIKI (or rather her grave) gets a panel or two with Megumi and Shoko – but not Gojo.
The only person who even thought of Gojo in the last chapter was Yuji, but the context basically was for us readers: "forget about Gojo, don't you get tired of Gojo Satoru? there are other characters". Like yeah, no shit, Gojo would have high hopes for his students and for Yuji specifically but did we REALLY need to have Gojo himself stating "aren't you tired of Gojo Satoru?" (maybe it was a wrong translation, idk).
Overall, I'm so angry, sad, and disappointed with this manga. Yes, I wanted Gojo back, I was hoping for his comeback for a long time, but at some point I've accepted that it's over. But I never expected such treatment that Gojo would get after his death.
He was always just a weapon. His friend didn't even seem sad when she was asked to help Yuta use Gojo's body (something even Gojo acknowledged in that chapter). Gege had an opportunity to make Shoko say ANYTHING about Gojo during the Tsumiki grave scene, hell, MEGUMI, also could say anything!
But they didn't. Because Gege has a hate boner for Gojo Satoru.
Gojo poured all his heart and energy into growing and helping his students. He saved Yuta, he saved Yuji, he took care of Megumi, he was apparently friends with Shoko.
And yet no one grieved him. No one acknowledged his death. Fucking KENJAKU had a panel with Takaba indicating that he survived, but no, Gojo and Choso had to die... because.
And only Yuji ever remembers Gojo. Only Yuji said that he would not be able to forget Gojo Satoru.
And I didn't need much, you know? I just wanted people close to him to be sad about Gojo. People to reminisce about him. Someone to show that they cared about Gojo apart from his strength. But I feel that all his students just... Forget about him. True, Yuji is the protagonist so that's why he had that panel with Gojo, but what about Megumi? Why couldn't he show that he cared about Gojo? Why didn't we have at least a mention of Gojo from his lips?
Gege wasted one chapter at characters talking about what could and couldn't do against Sukuna and yapping about MVPs of the fight and such. Couldn't that chapter be used for something else? I know this is Jujutsu Kaisen and characters never grieve but, come on, those were the last chapters! This was the perfect moment to honour the dead, to acknowledge that Gojo Satoru was always more than his strength! For Yuji to be grateful that he could at least spent some time with Choso before his death! For Megumi to realise that he killed his guardian (well, Sukuna did in his body) and try to move past this trauma (by, for example remembering something that Gojo once told him or sth).
Idk. The ending is just lackluster for me. I can't say I hate it but I certainly don't like it. And it's not because Gojo is dead – I've accepted it, sad as it is. But because Gojo (and Choso) are THE ONLY ones that died. Sukuna was such a threat, the final boss, the one who was unbeatable... and yet with all of the characters surviving apart from Gojo and Choso, it just feels empty. The stakes that were during that fight don't exist anymore. Because how could Sukuna ever be considered a threat if almost all his attackers survived? He killed Gojo, why it was so hard to kill anyone else, people who were considerably weaker than Gojo? Yeah, I know Shoko is a good healer, and Ui Ui was there, but come on.
Well, now I guess I just stick to writing fanfics and pretend that all of this didn't happen. Who knows, maybe after anime ends, we all truly forget about Gojo Satoru and Jujutsu Kaisen.
i have never read these novels or watched this show but i gather by fandom osmosis that this here is Lan “If You Have A Problem With My Necromancer Boyfriend’s Terrible Life Choices, You’ll Have To Take It Up With His Manager, It’s Me, I’m The Manager” Wangji in the center stage there
ON GHOSTS AND DEMONS: Wei Wuxian's "demonic" cultivation?
There are a few big misconceptions I have repeatedly seen in English-speaking fandom about things that are fundamental to the story of MDZS. One of them is this—
Wei Wuxian is not a demonic cultivator.
To prove this, let's take a deep dive into the original Chinese text of MDZS.
(Adapted from my original gdoc posted on Twitter on May 27, 2022. All translations my own unless otherwise stated.)
Demon vs. ghost
Let's start from the very basics. In addition to orthodox cultivation using spiritual energy and a golden core, there are two other forms of cultivation that are mentioned in the novel:
魔道 (mó dào), or “demon cultivation/path.”
鬼道 (guǐ dào), or “ghost cultivation/path.”
To be clear, 魔 mo "demons" and 鬼 gui "ghosts" (and thus their respective cultivation/paths) are not interchangeable because of the in-universe worldbuilding within MDZS. Using the characters in the term 妖魔鬼怪 "monsters," MXTX created four distinct categories of beings, each of which has a strict definition in the novel. From chapter 4 (jjwxc ch 13):
妖者非人之活物所化; 魔者生人所化; 鬼者死者所化; 怪者非人之死物所化。
Yāo (妖) are transformed from non-human living beings; mó (魔) are transformed from living people; guǐ (鬼) are transformed from the deceased; guài (怪) are transformed from non-human dead beings.
And of course, WWX hoards all the ghost-type pokemon monsters at the Phoenix Mountain tournament, and he only exerts control over corpses, spirits, and the like (aka people who have already died). (As opposed to Xue Yang, who appears to have been actively trying to make 魔 "demons" out of living people with those "living corpses" of his, perhaps.) (And, ironically, in order to avoid showing necromancy / zombies on screen, CQL technically does show WWX practicing demon cultivation because everyone is "supposedly alive" even when they're corpses? Which is, funnily enough, far worse morally in the MDZS universe, lol.)
So, intuitively at least, we know that WWX must be practicing ghost cultivation—now let's look at some concrete examples from the book.
Running the numbers
1) 魔道 (mó dào) means “demon cultivation.” As such, it must use living humans.
魔道 appears one (1) time in the novel.
Yes, once. The only time it appears is in the term 魔道祖师 modao zushi, or the namesake of the novel, in chapter 2. This is a title the general public has given him through rumors:
魏无羡好歹也被人叫了这么多年无上邪尊啦、魔道祖师啦之类的称号，这种一看就知道不是什么好东西的阵法，他自然了如指掌。
Wei Wuxian wasn’t called titles like “The Evil Overlord,” “The Founder of Demon Cultivation,” and so on over the years by others for nothing—he knew these sorts of obviously shady formations like the back of his hand.
2) 鬼道 (guǐ dào) means “ghost cultivation.” As such, it must use dead humans.
鬼道 appears 12 times in the novel.
Here is the first instance that 鬼道 appears, which I believe is the first time Wei Wuxian's method of cultivation is properly introduced. From chapter 3 (jjwxc ch 8):
蓝忘机 […] 对魏无羡修鬼道一事极不认可。
Lan Wangji […] had never approved of the fact that Wei Wuxian practiced ghost cultivation.
Here's another quote from chapter 15 (jjwxc ch 71) for funsies:
蓝忘机看着他，似乎一眼就看出他只是随口敷衍，吸了一口气，道：“魏婴。”
Lan Wangji looked at him as if he saw through his half-hearted bluff. He took in a breath, then said, “Wei Ying.”
他执拗地道：“鬼道损身，损心性。”
He stubbornly continued, “Ghost cultivation harms one’s body, and harms one’s nature.”
3) 邪魔歪道 (xiemowaidao) means heretical path/immoral methods/evil practices/underhanded means/etc—e.g., lying, cheating, stealing, bribery, and so on.
It appears ~24 times in the novel.
I mention this last term because it is often used to refer to Wei Wuxian's cultivation, but as a pejorative. Every instance of 邪魔歪道 is said by or to quote someone looking down upon Wei Wuxian’s cultivation (Jin Zixun, Jin Ling, etc.) and referring to it derogatorily, whereas every instance of 鬼道 guidao/ghost dao is said by someone discussing it neutrally and/or factually (Lan Jingyi, Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian himself, random cultivators at discussion conferences, the narration, etc.). Here is a pertinent example with Jin Ling (derogatory) and Lan Jingyi (neutral) in chapter 9 (jjwxc ch 43):
金凌怒道：“是在谈论薛洋，我说的不对吗？薛洋干了什么？他是个禽兽不如的人渣，魏婴比他更让人恶心！什么叫‘不能一概而论’？这种邪魔歪道留在世上就是祸害，就是该统统都杀光，死光，灭绝！”
“We are discussing Xue Yang,” Jin Ling said angrily. “Am I wrong? What did Xue Yang do? He’s scum that’s lower than a beast, and Wei Ying is even more disgusting than him! What do you mean ‘don’t make sweeping generalizations?’ As long as those practicing this kind of demoniac, heretical path are alive, they’ll continue to bring disaster. We should slaughter all of them, kill all of them, annihilate them once and for all!”
温宁动了动，魏无羡摆手示意他静止。只听蓝景仪也加入了，嚷道：“你发这么大火干什么？思追又没说魏无羡不该杀，他只是说修鬼道的也不一定全都是薛洋这种人，你有必要乱摔东西吗？那个我还没吃呢……”
Wen Ning shuffled around. Wei Wuxian gestured at him to stay still, only to hear Lan Jingyi also cut in loudly, “Why are you getting so riled up? It’s not like Sizhui said Wei Wuxian shouldn’t have been killed. All he said was that people who practice ghost cultivation aren’t necessarily all like Xue Yang. Do you have to go around breaking things? I didn’t even get to eat any of that yet…”
Tl;dr—Wei Wuxian does not 修魔道 practice demon cultivation. When Wei Wuxian’s craft is discussed in a neutral and factual manner, it is referred to as 鬼道 ghost dao.
In fact, Wei Wuxian’s imitators are also referred to explicitly as 鬼道修士 ghost cultivators.
魏无羡早就听说过，这些年来江澄到处抓疑似夺舍重生的鬼道修士，把这些人通通押回莲花坞严刑拷打。
Wei Wuxian had heard a while back that over the past few years, Jiang Cheng had gone around snatching any ghost cultivator suspected of being possessed or reborn, detaining them in Lotus Pier to interrogate them using torture.
So why the confusion?
Of course, there is the matter of the novel's title, which I will get into in a second. But the real issue is a matter of translation.
The idea that WWX uses "demonic cultivation" is a misconception in English-speaking fandom due to issues with the translation of terminology. Of note, EXR actually did translate 鬼道 guidao as "ghostly path" most of the time, though there were at least 3 instances of "demonic" and 1 instance of "dark," especially regarding the first few.
However, this misconception was perpetuated (and arguably worsened) by 7S's official translation, which not only mistranslated additional terms as "demonic cultivation/path" (at least in book 1), but also consistently mistranslated every instance of 鬼道 as "demonic cultivation/path."
So why is this book called 魔道祖师, commonly translated as "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation?"
One possibility is one posed in Chinese-language meta online, which often cites that WWX himself is a sort of 魔 demon. While this may be true—after all, he can hear the voices of the dead—it doesn't quite explain the fact that the title sets him up to be the 祖师 or "founder."
My take is that this novel is very much concerned with hearsay vs. truth. This is one of the many monikers WWX is given by the public, who collectively view him as evil. (Also of note is that the non-cultivator public is not aware of all the nuances that cultivators learn re: distinctions between the 妖魔鬼怪 monsters.) In the quote from earlier, note that the first title we're given is actually 无上邪尊 “The Evil Overlord,” then 魔道祖师 "The Founder of Demon Cultivation." Like, what can that be other than MXTX telling us, "please take both of these with a HUGE grain of salt, lol."
(And not only the title, but the very first line—"魏无羡死了。" / "Wei Wuxian is dead."—is a lie.)
I think the title is genius, honestly. It intentionally makes readers come into the novel with preconceived notions that Wei Wuxian practices 魔道 demon cultivation and evil techniques—just like the public in the novel. What better way to tell a story warning about the dangers of how easy it is to fall for misinformation and jump to incorrect conclusions?
(Though, in our case, perhaps it worked a little too well.)
“If you think this does not affect the women in your life, it’s not because it’s not happening to them. It’s because they don’t trust you enough to talk to you about it.”
I remember a guy in my team at work saying "I don't know anyone who..." and I was like, "nah mate, no one trusts you enough to tell you that, cos we know the same people"
tools not rules: the importance of critical thinking
More than once, I’ve talked about the negative implications of Evangelical/purity culture logic being uncritically replicated in fandom spaces and left-wing discourse, and have also referenced specific examples of logical overlap this produces re, in particular, the policing of sexuality. What I don’t think I’ve done before is explain how this happens: how even a well-intentioned person who’s trying to unlearn the toxic systems they grew up with can end up replicating those systems. Even if you didn’t grow up specifically in an Evangelical/purity context, if your home, school, work and/or other social environments have never encouraged or taught you to think critically, then it’s easy to fall into similar traps - so here, hopefully, is a quick explainer on how that works, and (hopefully) how to avoid it in the future.
Put simply: within Evangelism, purity culture and other strict, hierarchical social contexts, an enormous value is placed on rules, and specifically hard rules. There might be a little wiggle-room in some instances, but overwhelmingly, the rules are fixed: once you get taught that something is bad, you’re expected never to question it. Understanding the rules is secondary to obeying them, and oftentimes, asking for a more thorough explanation - no matter how innocently, even if all you’re trying to do is learn - is framed as challenging those rules, and therefore cast as disobedience. And where obedience is a virtue, disobedience is a sin. If someone breaks the rules, it doesn’t matter why they did it, only that they did. Their explanations or justifications don’t matter, and nor does the context: a rule is a rule, and rulebreakers are Bad.
In this kind of environment, therefore, you absorb three main lessons: one, to obey a rule from the moment you learn it; two, that it’s more important to follow the rules than to understand them; and three, that enforcing the rules means castigating anyone who breaks them. And these lessons go deep: they’re hard to unlearn, especially when you grow up with them through your formative years, because the consequences of breaking them - or even being seen to break them - can be socially catastrophic.
But outside these sorts of strict environments - and, honestly, even within them - that much rigidity isn’t healthy. Life is frequently far more complex and nuanced than hard rules really allow for, particularly when it comes to human psychology and behaviour - and this is where critical thinking comes in. Critical thinking allows us to evaluate the world around us on an ongoing basis: to weigh the merits of different positions; to challenge established rules if we feel they no longer serve us; to decide which new ones to institute in their place; to acknowledge that sometimes, there are no easy answers; to show the working behind our positions, and to assess the logic with which other arguments are presented to us. Critical thinking is how we graduate from a simplistic, black-and-white view of morality to a more nuanced perception of the world - but this is a very hard lesson to learn if, instead of critical thinking, we’re taught instead to put our faith in rules alone.
So: what does it actually look like, when rule-based logic is applied in left-wing spaces? I’ll give you an example:
Sally is new to both social justice and fandom. She grew up in a household that punished her for asking questions, and where she was expected to unquestioningly follow specific hard rules. Now, though, Sally has started to learn a bit more about the world outside her immediate bubble, and is realising not only that the rules she grew up with were toxic, but that she’s absorbed a lot of biases she doesn’t want to have. Sally is keen to improve herself. She wants to be a good person! So Sally joins some internet communities and starts to read up on things. Sally is well-intentioned, but she’s also never learned how to evaluate information before, and she’s certainly never had to consider that two contrasting opinions could be equally valid - how could she have, when she wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and when she was always told there was a singular Right Answer to everything? Her whole framework for learning is to Look For The Rules And Follow Them, and now that she’s learned the old rules were Bad, that means she has to figure out what the Good Rules are.
Sally isn’t aware she’s thinking of it in these terms, but subconsciously, this is how she’s learned to think. So when Sally reads a post explaining how sex work and pornography are inherently misogynistic and demeaning to women, Sally doesn’t consider this as one side of an ongoing argument, but uncritically absorbs this information as a new Rule. She reads about how it’s always bad and appropriative for someone from one culture to wear clothes from another culture, and even though she’s not quite sure of all the ways in which it applies, this becomes a Rule, too. Whatever argument she encounters first that seems reasonable becomes a Rule, and once she has the Rules, there’s no need to challenge them or research them or flesh out her understanding, because that’s never been how Rules work - and because she’s grown up in a context where the foremost way to show that you’re aware of and obeying the Rules is to shame people for breaking them, even though she’s not well-versed in these subjects, Sally begins to weigh in on debates by harshly disagreeing with anyone who offers up counter-opinions. Sometimes her disagreements are couched in borrowed terms, parroting back the logic of the Rules she’s learned, but other times, they’re simply ad hominem attacks, because at home, breaking a Rule makes you a bad person, and as such, Sally has never learned to differentiate between attacking the idea and attacking the person.
And of course, because Sally doesn’t understand the Rules in-depth, it’s harder to explain them to or debate with rulebreakers who’ve come armed with arguments she hasn’t heard before, which makes it easier and less frustrating to just insult them and point out that they ARE rulebreakers - especially if she doesn’t want to admit her confusion or the limitations of her knowledge. Most crucially of all, Sally doesn’t have a viable framework for admitting to fault or ignorance beyond a total groveling apology that doubles as a concession to having been Morally Bad, because that’s what it’s always meant to her to admit you broke a Rule. She has no template for saying, “huh, I hadn’t considered that,” or “I don’t know enough to contribute here,” or even “I was wrong; thanks for explaining!”
So instead, when challenged, Sally remains defensive: she feels guilty about the prospect of being Bad, because she absolutely doesn’t want to be a Bad Person, but she also doesn’t know how to conceptualise goodness outside of obedience. It makes her nervous and unsettled to think that strangers could think of her as a Bad Person when she’s following the Rules, and so she becomes even more aggressive when challenged to compensate, clinging all the more tightly to anyone who agrees with her, yet inevitably ending up hurt when it turns out this person or that who she thought agreed on What The Rules Were suddenly develops a different opinion, or asks a question, or does something else unsettling.
Pushed to this sort of breaking point, some people in Sally’s position go back to the fundamentalism they were raised with, not because they still agree with it, but because the lack of uniform agreement about What The Rules Are makes them feel constantly anxious and attacked, and at least before, they knew how to behave to ensure that everyone around them knew they were Good. Others turn to increasingly niche communities and social groups, constantly on paranoid alert for Deviance From The Rules. But other people eventually have the freeing realisation that the fixation on Rules and Goodness is what’s hurting them, not strangers with different opinions, and they steadily start to do what they wanted to do all along: become happier, kinder and better-informed people who can admit to human failings - including their own - without melting down about it.
THIS is what we mean when we talk about puritan logic being present in fandom and left-wing spaces: the refusal to engage with critical thinking while sticking doggedly to a single, fixed interpretation of How To Be Good. It’s not always about sexuality; it’s just that sexuality, and especially queerness, are topics we’re used to seeing conservatives talk about a certain way, and when those same rhetorical tricks show up in our fandom spaces, we know why they look familiar.
So: how do you break out of rule-based thinking? By being aware of it as a behavioural pattern. By making a conscious effort to accept that differing perspectives can sometimes have equal value, or that, even if a given argument isn’t completely sound, it might still contain a nugget of truth. By trying to be less reactive and more reflective when encountering positions different to your own. By accepting that not every argument is automatically tied to or indicative of a higher moral position: sometimes, we’re just talking about stuff! By remembering that you’re allowed to change your position, or challenge someone else’s, or ask for clarification. By understanding that having a moral code and personal principles isn’t at odds with asking questions, and that it’s possible - even desirable - to update your beliefs when you come to learn more than you did before.
This can be a scary and disquieting process to engage in, and it’s important to be aware of that, because one of the main appeals of rule-based thinking - if not the key appeal - is the comfort of moral certainty it engenders. If the rules are simple and clear, and following them is what makes you a good person, then it’s easy to know if you’re doing the right thing according to that system. It’s much, much harder and frequently more uncomfortable to be uncertain about things: to doubt, not only yourself, but the way you’ve been taught to think. And especially online, where we encounter so many more opinions and people than we might elsewhere, and where we can get dogpiled on by strangers or go viral without meaning to despite our best intentions? The prospect of being deemed Bad is genuinely terrifying. Of course we want to follow the Rules. But that’s the point of critical thinking: to try and understand that rules exist in the first place, not to be immutable and unchanging, but as tools to help us be better - and if a tool becomes defunct or broken, it only makes sense to repair it.
Rigid thinking teaches us to view the world through the lens of rules: to obey first and understand later. Critical thinking teaches us to use ideas, questions, contexts and other bits of information as analytic tools: to put understanding ahead of obedience. So if you want to break out of puritan thinking, whenever you encounter a new piece of information, ask yourself: are you absorbing it as a rule, or as a tool?
