#metadiscussion

[tropylium]

there's something to be learned from that considering "how would I most productively continue this discussion" often leads to a lateral conclusion "I don't actually especially want to continue this discussion". maybe some day I will indeed end up wise enough to be able to more often identify when do I not want to even open particular discussions

[tropylium]

briefly considering continuing thinking out loud about the nature of what "civilization" "should" be, but then I'm cancelling this anyway as the wrong question to ask; because I do not think cultural evolution is a force that "humans" control. whether you like it or not, there in fact is a civilization (multiple depending on your method of counting), it has no off switch and not even anything that we could properly consider a control interface; any questions of what "we" should do with it will have to be closer to the object level than that

[tropylium]

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" does not mean "that which can be destroyed by the reaction of the public to the truth, should be"

[tropylium]

tumblr’s political environment continues to really bring out resentment in me.

making a number of topics taboo to charitably discuss does not make the topics go away; it just ensures that they will be discussed mainly elsewhere, without your side’s view being heard

and I could probably navigate these discourse standards with oblique hinting and insistence on general principles, but that takes absurd amounts of energy and brings an additional layer of resentment that certain other people get to have their voices heard

(maybe particularly ironic in cases where people are loudly insisting that they Deserve To Be Listened To and therefore people who disagree do not)

and I suspect several groups of people who insist on making these taboos to bubble themselves in are going to have the thing blow up in their face eventually… probably with unnecessary prejudice too, but y’know, I find it difficult to muster up the sympathy in advance at least.

[tropylium]

I should not be too harsh on posts of the “people should be given X [by some ill-defined entity]” genre, though. Most of the time they’re pretty clearly statements of goals or values, not concerned with the particulars of how to actually get there. And there are also enough versions of these posts going out there that do have a “people deserve” or “people have a right to” wording.

OTOH I have also seen some more worrisome cases where people seem to not realize the distinction exists at all, though — a kind of belief in Omnipotent Society, where enough people wanting something is not only a precondition but basically equal to making a thing happen.

All actual societies are, of course, more or less incompetent and disorganized messes, no matter what the PR departments may claim.

[gg-carboxylase]

La Pluie thoughts. Just going to bulletpoint ADHD ramble here.

Saengtsai being a virgin bugs the hell out of me. I don't know why.

Let the boy be a slut. I LOVE the way that they talk about Pat being a slut in the first episode Step By Step and we need more of that. Especially considering the scenes we got out of these guys.

The "comic relief" of Patts slamming on the breaks and the speeding to his apartment when Tsai says he wants to stay the night hit me wrong but I'm not into that kind of comedy.

Spicy scenes were eh.

OK now on to my actual analysis.

Lomfon is in the Threesome Soulbond and Patts is pissed off about it. It's pretty standard for the trope for the Top (this is the term I am going to use, I hate it but it's what we have) to be kind of possessive in these relationships, so it isn't terribly off base for him to tell Lomfon to stay away from Tsai.

However, Tsai is an adult and should be able to be friends with whoever he wants. Now... Lomfon has ulterior motives — and he has found out that Tsai was the one who saved his life. So he is not only bonded to Tsai (and Patts but ignore that for now) but infatuated with him because of being saved by him. So he kisses him, and Patts shows up at exactly the wrong time and it leads almost where we think, to a confrontation. We all expected that. I knew there was going to be a fist fight from the teaser for the series way back when, but Patts really just snapped.

He has turned into a violent, angry, possessive, red flag.

He doesn't just punch Lomfon once, he does it multiple times while being verbally abusive. That is way over the top. That makes talking this out impossible to Tsai. That makes Tsai deny the soulbond and surprise, surprise — it breaks.

Now here's an aside; I bet this is what happened with Tsai and Tien's parents. They got into some kind of fight and one of them broke their bond by accident. Why do I say by accident? No one seems to know that it can be done.

Back to the main thread here. Everyone gets their hearing back.

Tsai is boggled that he could break the bond, and that he doesn't feel better.

Lomfon doesn't know what to do with himself because he doesn't know what he really felt / feels.

... And Patts is still being an asshole.

Then there's poor fucking Tien. Suar is doing a fucking stellar job as Tien. He isn't really given much to work with, but he does so much with it. He has so much quiet pain going on. And when he looks at Lomfon and tells him he's a jerk, from that moment on it's just a masterclass in microexpressions.

Being the littlest brother is a bitch, and you can tell Tien already struggles in a lot of ways with it, even if he's a brat. Losing the boy you're in love with to your older, cooler brother has to hurt even worse. Especially if you don't have a soul mate of your own, and he has two.

Another aside, Suar is fantastic in You Are My Sky, which is an all around solid BL I can't recommend enough. You should watch it.

Lomfon standing in the rain, trying to figure out if this soulbond creates love or if he genuinely likes Tsai, looking like a wet cat is great stuff. Where does he go from here? Especially after Tien just confessed to him and walks away. Tough break buddy.

The rest of the episode is pretty predictable. Patts trying to talk to Tsai but coming off like a possessive walking red flag again. Tsai is just so hurt. Title really makes you feel it. Pee also does well with his anger, as he really isn't the kind of guy you look at and think angry.

If I were Tsai and I was a terrible, selfish person I'd snatch Lomfon up like a lucky Kongbuck. You know that man would fuck you better than Patts.

Overall, a trope subversion that I did not expect — being able to reject your soulbond if you don't want it. What happens now? I'm sure that Tsai and Patts will end up together even though Patts has acted completely unhinged and violent — and I don't like it.

I hope Tien and Lomfon end up together, too.

Really interesting stuff. I hope this means we get to see more things where we get tropes that are broken instead of followed.

[tropylium]

for some years now, the most interesting posts on tumblr consistently come from textpost-heavy blogs who just shout views of theirs into the void and don't much care for participating in further discussion; sure enough this practice, followed consistently, deals with the problem of getting bogged down with responding to low-quality critiques; but then if a poster of this type has a couple of views that you find terrible or even just inconsistent with whatever else they say, there's also very little to be done about this other than picking better take providers or looking for better indirect access to said takes

and since nobody on tumblr sources anything (takes generally aren't a response to any one other post in particular), this basically means that trackable discussion is mostly dead and attempts to do so mostly amount to "shouting back at the void"

going by my notifications there are also someone elses still in the void reading such responses, but even then, attempts at discussion often have a fundamentally false sense of "interaction" to them these days

[yojfull]

There is a delightful irony in the fact that Tumblr is the last social media site that presents your feed in chronological order, yet is so fundamentally unanchored in time.