Today’s deck is the Delos Tarot.
I thought this was another illustrator with a kinda similar style whose name currently escapes me. My only complaint about this deck is that this box was TIGHT and it was tricky to take out the cards.
Today’s reading talks about a surge of creativity and emotional stability but warns about being too stubborn with things.
I should get back to writing more detailed breakdowns… I should get back to a lot of things, actually. I left that Learn Tarot In 30 Days book halfway through.
I woke up today at like 5 or something like that. Admittedly I expected it considering all the running around I did yesterday.
Today was a 90% uneventful day. The sort of day where I tune out while playing whatever mobile game I have in front of me with videos as background noise.
One of those videos was the usual deep dive into some famous youtuber that turned out to be a child diddler. Apparently they made some long ass fanfic that’s so explicit with underage depictions that it’s outright illegal in Canada.
And hearing excerpts from it… YEAH.
Here’s the thing that I found interesting: The fact that me, the person that has gone on record in this blog about my own sicko tendencies gets revulsed by that sort of thing.
So one fight I’ve learned to stay away from because it’s not the sort of thing you can argue in public (as much for how deranged you sound as it is for being the sort of topic best talked about face to face) is my argument that “loli” and “pedophile” overlap but are not the same.
The key problem with this argument is that it hinges on tolerance for a certain type of media that not everyone is going to have, and that’s something that I understand perfectly because I remember my reaction of revulsion as a teen when I read volume 3 of Shakugan no Shana and the villains were a couple of incestuous twins (that at most kissed and me saying “at most” should tell you how far gone I am).
But let’s assume for a moment that I’m trying to make a good will argument here, because I am. I’m not trying to justify myself because why would I and for the benefit of who? I ain’t a holy person, I’m a sinner. From the dirt I come and to the dirt I return because I am dirt.
To me, “underage” characters in say… anime (and to be fair this is an argument that I can only properly make for anime) have always read as adults within their own stories. And I don’t mean the sleazy “oh they’re mature for their age” (because let’s be honest, “adult media” feels more immature most of the time), what I mean is that if the protagonists are a bunch of 16 year olds, then often by design and action the bar is set at those 16 year olds being the base bar for maturity.
You will have older folks, but by that same token 10 year olds will then be presented as the younger ones of the story. And if the 10 year olds are set as the POV that’s where the bar moves.
Now this is all fine and dandy, but I’m skipping over the operative word here behind it all.
Back to loli, I think one of the elements at play is the fact that most of the content that uses it still keeps enough of that veneer of fiction. There’s so many body types out there after all, and most of the loli content you see you could feasibly just handwaved as ageplay for example.
But sometimes you can’t. And when you can’t that’s when the very blurry line is crossed.
This isn’t exclusive to loli mind you. There’s any number of depictions of THINGS that will be shocking on a base level but after the initial shock you can comfortably keep the divide with fiction. I’m very VERY sensitive to violence for example.
I’ve mentioned many times in this blog how much I don’t like kids, and I tend to recoil whenever a work of fiction has believable kids, something that doesn’t really happen that often to begin with.
And you know, at the end of the day, even if I’m not going to condone the subject of the video that led to this diatribe because fucking hell what the fuck, I’m also not going to condemn any art or creations no matter how shocking they might be to anyone because I believe self-expression should never be censored by any higher power. You can have context where certain things should not be allowed of course (explicit content near minors is the most obvious one) but that’s because at that point it’s individual or group of individuals dictating their rules. The moment that power falls into governmental hands they’re only going to go after the things they don’t deem appropiate to continuing in power.
Kinda like how the first thing to go in Venezuela with The Regime was the SNL equivalent that made fun of politicians.
I’m not a political person (in the sense I am VERY political but I don’t take sides because I think any and every side is corrupt and to side with a politician or party is the worst idea ever) but freedom of expression with creativity is probably one of the few things that gets me riled up.
Is this all justification for liking Prisma Illya so much? Who cares? How does that change the point?
Anyway, back to my day. More conversations happened near the end of the day but those are more in-progress stuff.