#and untangle all of these thoughts

[invasivefungus46]

if I could write a proper sentence I'd never shut up about how well written quincy is (the way that his death/survival scene from the quest parallels the scene he talks about after the "make me hate" you talk for example?)

[starry-bi-sky]

yall ever think Shen Yuan went through like, internet withdrawal after being transmigrated into Shen Qingqiu? Like, he's canonically a NEET shut-in who did nothing but spend his time online, you can't tell me that for the first week or first few weeks of being SQQ he wasn't twitchy.

Like, reaching instinctively to his pockets for a phone that wasn't there, having an obsessive itch in the back of his mind that he should check and see if X or Y novel or webcomic has updated -- only to realize he can't anymore and being irritated by it. Wanting to go and see if there's new posts about this or that, but again realizing that he can't.

When he's bored or uncomfortable or just feels like wanting to escape he tries to go for his phone to distract himself, but oops! Not there anymore, and now he has to find a new and different way to distract himself from his feelings. And going through system notifications, quests, etc only does so much.

And there's that Tetris Effect too. SQQ makes a mistake while writing and instinctively goes to backspace on it except hey-ho that's not a keyboard and now he just dipped his pinkie into a bottle of ink or on a still-drying letter.

With him scrambling to fix his reputation and learn how to be a peak lord, I think his abrupt cold-turkey from all things internet would just be another straw on the camel's back that he promptly Ignores until it goes away on its own after he acclimates to his new surroundings.

[kaurwreck]

There's certainly Something about singularities in Bungou Stray Dogs presenting as massive, myth-derived creatures with more than passing resemblances to kaiju given the setting predates its analog to World War II.

Gojira and the kaiju genre were born in the aftermath of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Lucky Dragon Incident (in which an American hydrogen bomb test rained radioactive ash on a Japanese fishing boat and much of the South Pacific). Life form singularities (like Chuuya and Verlaine), the Seven Traitors, the Transcendants, Mori's fixation on skill-based warfare, and everything else about the Great War all indicate that skills are akin to nuclear arms.

But unlike nuclear arms, skills are generally framed as intrinsic to their user. They're neurological; as much as part of skill users' wiring as the rest of their synapses. Even for Kyouka, whose skill was inherited but not fully integrated, her skill more resembles hereditary neurochemical wiring than it does nuclear proliferation.

Gojira (1954) ends with Dr. Serizawa's promise that hydrogen bombs would always assure nightmarish, monstrous manifestations of the horrors of war. You'd think Dazai's gift, then, would be the enigmatic focal skill of the series; he's capable of nullifying hydrogen bombs, after all.

But it's Atsushi and his celestial Byakko that Shibusawa calls the antithesis of all other abilities. And, as explained in 55 Minutes, Byakko doesn't heal or regenerate Atsushi, it negates his wounds. Atsushi isn't only a particularly tenacious shounen protagonist, Byakko compels him to stand when he's been cut down. When Atsushi is at the edge of death, Byakko consumes him completely, and Atsushi is lost within him, moreso than even Chuuya is in his Corruption state (Chuuya is fully conscious in Corruption— if Atsushi is conscious, he's either repressing or sluggishly recalling the memory of what occurred). Akutagawa also mentions during the Cannibalism arc that Atsushi's claws cut through skills themselves (even Rashoumon, which eats space). Akutagawa also becomes aware, in 55 Minutes, that Byakko can be triggered by Atsushi's peril, and Akutagawa does so to negate the manifestation of a seemingly transcendant skill that otherwise had utterly defanged them (although he seems sorry to have to do it).

Nevertheless, although Atsushi's Byakko seemingly negates the metaphorical horrors of the Great War illustrated by the others and their relationships with their skills, it's Atsushi who posits that perhaps skills aren't innate. He says to Kunikida, "Maybe they come from somewhere else and stick to us. Maybe they're something we can't understand... I don't really know how to put it into words, but that's how I feel."

Much of 55 Minutes is colored by Atsushi's fear of Byakko and his understanding that Byakko could devour him. His fear is seemingly validated by the antagonist, a manifestation of a skill that seemingly swallowed its human. But although textually consistent with his expressed fear, Atsushi's tone, demeanor, timing, and thought processes from when he speaks that line until the light novel ends aren't. His musings reflect his namesake's exploration of and uneasy relationship with the nature of existence, which he understood to be constructed by one's culture and environment better than most due to his somewhat rootless childhood.

I think it's interesting that someone with a skill capable of cutting through other skills, negating wounds, and antithesizing all skills challenges whether skills are innate at all. And if they're not, what does that imply about the parallels between skills, the horrors of war, and the fear of nuclear holocaust?

It's important to me that the scars of American imperialism and disregard for the sanctity of life are not erased from the narrative when discussing the world wars and nuclear proliferation. So I hesitate to posit anything about what skills may be in Bungou Stray Dogs that is too abstracted from trauma wrought by Western imperialism, Japanese imperialism, or the horrors of World Wars I & II. But perhaps that's it; when Atsushi speculates that skills are something that sticks to you, I'm reminded of how trauma has shaped and informed his own. He is certain that Byakko's negation and restless hunger are connected to his birth and subsequent suffering. At first, I thought we were being teased with his early background. But there's no need to tease; the reason so many characters in Bungou Stray Dogs are orphans directly relates to the Great War and the generational trauma still reverberating in its aftermath, and amid the threat of another, even more destructive war.

Perhaps Atsushi was implying that skills are constructs born not from any innate self, if there's such a thing, but from traumas, experiences, needs, cultures, and environments. Which is to say that skills aren't separable, exactly, from their users, but they're not innate either. They're like our personalities: immutable once shaped in the crucible of our most formative years, but nevertheless reflections of not only ourselves, but of what we need and who we become when confronted by others, in all of their beauty and horror.

Thus, perhaps it isn't Atsushi's skill that's so very antithetical to all others. It's his understanding of it, his ability to cut through to others, his compassion, his cowardice, his curiosity, and his separation from his sense of self that both inflicted him with Byakko and which will allow him to transcend it to become who he desires to be. It reminds me that, shortly before his death, his namesake decided to become a writer. And that although he wrote and lived only briefly, his sincerity, thoughtfulness, and introspective skepticism cut, and continue to cut, with a brilliance emblematic of life.

Anyway. Atsushi is both the main character and protagonist of Bungou Stray Dogs. Dazai knows this, too; even if he can nullify Byakko, he's just as impacted by Atsushi's brimming earnestness as everyone else Atsushi encounters. Atsushi liberates the narrative so that it's not a warning that the horrors of war will proliferate so long as we are capable of mass destruction, but instead it's a promise that hope needn't be intrinsic to persist all the same.

[nucleiaster]

So ive been playing a lot of elden ring, and i had no inspiration for what my tarnished should look like, so i just made raki. And now i have 3 rakis.

some lore about each raki under the cut

from left to right :

Tarahn, aka the cockroach, aka raki #3, i play her as a faith/dex build and until very recently she had like. 20 vitality so every ennemy would two shot me (but for some reason i always end up with 1hp left and surviving against all odds. hence the cockroach)

i picked the confessor class because the outfit looked cool, but now part of her lore is unlearning the rigid rules of the golden order with the help of miriel, so thats nice. i'll end my current playthrough with the frenzied flame i think and try to get a good (better ?) ending in ng+

she's a very curious person, eager go learn and discover new things, but this side of her has been very repressed, and she comes across as cold and aloof. She's very stubborn and ruthless (as all rakis are)

Raki, aka the original, one of the main characters of my comic project. They're a cyborg bounty hunter, who doesn't really like being around people. His body language is very stiff but his face really expressive. he can move surprisingly silently, and has made an habit of scaring people who are unaware of his presence. She's also very tired. Please get this cyborg a bed.

She doesnt appear in part one of the story so most info about her is a spoiler. Just know that they want something and will stop at nothing to get it.

Mikhail, aka le ouicheur, aka stupid bear cub, my witcher oc. He's from the school of the bear, and uses more brawn than brain. He really really hate being around people, and thus make a very bad witcher as he will not dare go into villages to claim money for his kills. He tends to use more his fists than his swords, and has fully mastered the sign Aard, with his signature move being an aard powered jump that will send him flying over his ennemies (he doesn't remember how to use the other signs). He cheats at cards, loves coin tricks and sleight of hand, and got adopted by Ezé, a wolf school witcher (and my partner's oc). The most chill of all rakis, but still a raki at heart, dont be fooled by his silly smile, he is still a ruthless and cold warrior.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

[novelconcepts]

Watching my mom evolve over the years has been such a fun experience. For context, she's got nine kids (at least five of whom have turned out to be queer; at least four of those have turned out to be non-binary), and for most of my life, she was just your average Gen-X Irish-Italian Catholic mom. She didn't really do vocal homophobia or whatever, but she also clearly didn't know how to handle it when her firstborn interrupted a Red Wings game to announce, "I think I'm gay." (Spoiler alert: that was me at fifteen or sixteen. In retrospect, of course the Tomboy For Life who had never been remotely interested in boys but was ALWAYS talking about actresses/female friends at school a bit too much wound up being gay. And announcing it. During a hockey game. Of course.)

She also didn't really know how to handle that same kid starting to date in college, bringing a girl home, and so on. She did a bit better when the next kid came out as a lesbian, but when that kid came out as non-binary (shout-out to that sib for doing some of the heavy lifting first), it was a whole new deal. It clearly had never crossed her mind before, that this might come up. Gay? She was figuring out gay. Gender stuff? Whew. A shiny new Pokemon of a situation.

The changed pronouns have been a bit difficult for my mom. The new names still get jumbled. (In fairness, the old names got jumbled, too--it was always a laundry list of names before she got to yours, no matter what you went by, because there were just so goddamned MANY of us.) It gets harder when she's stressed, and sometimes she just seems not to be getting it. I know it frustrates my siblings deeply. It can grate on me, too. You just want people to understand out the gate, to take you at your word, to shift gears without a slip-up. You don't want the awkward conversations, the painful skips, the rough patches. It's tempting to just give up on people if they don't stick the landing immediately.

But if you look a bit deeper, there's such a soft mama bear energy to my mom. Such a stubborn determination to get it right where it really counts. My mother, who never once skipped Sunday mass as I was growing up, has left the church completely because "they don't treat my family well." My mother, who once told me not to bring a girl home because it might confuse the youngest children, bought Converse sneakers expressly for my wedding to a woman. And my mother, who had never known the word non-binary, who didn't seem aware of the trans umbrella at all before her kids started huddling beneath it, keeps leaping to tell me all about the shows she's watching lately. The ones where "there's a non-binary character, and it's so cool that people can see that now!" The ones where "and this one is non-binary, and they're so great, and maybe it'll teach the shitty politicians of the world that they're just people, you know?"

Sometimes you just have to give people a little space. Let them stumble occasionally. They're going to. They're going to trip up. My mom hurt my feelings so many times when I was young, said so many of the wrong things right on the heels of the right ones, confused and upset me because I couldn't understand why she just didn't get it. But here she is, almost sixty years old, and so gleeful to tell me about the power of queer representation on TV. She doesn't always get it right, but goddamn, does she love her kids, and goddamn, does she want the world to love people like her kids, too.

[elysiuminfra]

maybe i am strange and unusual for this but lately after uncovering truly terrible memories about what i went through as a child my go-to coping mechanism has been, "well, i can fictionalize this somehow. i can make up a little story about something like this." anything that i struggle to talk about to other people i make up a guy who went through something similar and cope by proxy. and it does work sometimes? by making a character to put into a plot or situation that went through something i went through, i can work to untangle feelings i otherwise have a hard time addressing. due to countless layers of repression. my brain knee-jerk tries to run away from Bad Feelings, shove them down until i forget they're even there, but by playing with stories and concepts that revolve around it i can kind of work through those feelings. and by making a sympathetic character that struggles and triumphs and is loved by others, i can learn to accept and love myself through that. but this has been a life-long coping mechanism - for as long as i can remember i've been a chronic maladaptive daydreamer. making up stories to comfort myself.

[needysweetheartoverdose]

SFW intimacy,,,

Combing someone's hair. Stroking their head. Kissing their shoulders. Massaging their neck. Helping clasp a necklace or zip a dress. Rubbing a thumb over knuckles. Holding hands in a way that your arms become intertwined. Brushing hair out of their eyes. Bumping against them lightly just to say "I'm here, I'm always here, I'll never leave"

SFW intimacy 💜💜💜

Pro/Comship/Neutral please DNI and don't copy. Respect my boundaries.

[luxrayz64]

this game makes me feel so fucking bonkers man like i knew all this shit but having it confirmed I feel crazy im insane i will never recover spiritually or emotionally

if you do not think that this ☝️ is the coolest thing you've ever seen in your entire fucking life i might have to just fucking kill you. with my bare hands & my teeth

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

anyways. I have been relistening to part 31 and the "nothing gold can stay" conversation was giving me thoughts

[sforzesco]

HAPPY TO KNOW IM NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH TURNUS THOUGHTS

sjsjsjdjdhgh to be 100% honest, most of my thoughts are influenced heavily by commentary on the Thebaid. I don’t really have a lot of thoughts about Turnus (or Aeneas) independent from that, like the Thebaid is truly the load bearing wall for Many Things

Statius and Virgil: The Thebaid and the Reinterpretation of the Aeneid, Randall T. Ganiban

[quibbs126]

I’m finding myself intrigued by the concept of how a Transformer’s alt mode may affect them on a personal level

I’m not sure if what I said makes sense, let me try to give examples

What I mean is like…

Shit I don’t know how to explain myself other than the concept of a Transformer not liking their alt mode and wishing they had a different one

I think it does depend on whether or not Cybertronians choose their alt mode, and if literally any option is available to them before doing so, or if they have a pre-set kind of alt mode when they’re first created, and can only really change their alt mode to something with a similar build

Also I feel like this concept I want explored is just Functionism and how it affects Cybertronians, especially when I’m thinking of it outside of just that one concept I listed above. And I assume this is covered a fair bit in the comics

But like, I don’t feel like I see much of it in the shows (at least as far as I’ve seen). Which is personally my preferred/default way of consuming the series, hence why I want to see it there. And I don’t just mean how it shows a corrupt pre-war Cybertron, but how it affects them individually, or how the influence of Functionism still affects them so long after

Crap, I’ve said the same thing like, three times now and all in the same way. I’m trying to say it in a variation that explains more of what I want, but it’s not verbalizing in my brain properly so I just end up repeating myself. I do mean in more ways, I just don’t know how to say them

I feel like this post is becoming incoherent, and reads very much like a flow of my brain thoughts, in part because that’s what it is, just not as polished as when I usually do it. But do you get what I’m saying?

[calig0]

Wish I could share my thoughts about my current hyperfixation! Unfortunately, those thoughts look a lot like this:

[morsobaby]

Back to me having extremely frightening to experience, batshit wild dreams with major surreal and horror streaks

[reckless-rider]

So sorry to my followers it might happen again <3

[sakorb]

250 hours and i finally beat the game.

i truly have no idea how to even begin to untangle the feelings bg3 has brought me. all of the story arcs and the character development throughout has weaved so deep in to my thoughts. i don't know if it is down to the past week personally being absolutely horrendous or what but holy fucking shit. holy shit lads!!!!! truly did not expect to have any emotional response to the game ending