#i try not to be so pessimistic..

[borderliner-sapphic]

"Why are you so negative?"

Because growing up, nothing ever went right, so now I just expect things to go wrong. I expect abandonment, so I either cling on or push away, I expect things to not work out because that's what I've known. Whether it's a relationship, a goal, anything.

I also just have a severely low self-esteem that was consistently reinforced.

It's true that I can be positive when it comes to others' lives. I believe others can heal and become the best versions of themselves, I believe anyone else can deserve happiness and love. Me, on the other hand? Nah.

[89cats]

having pets is like … you’re not acting like yourself so I’ll be here obsessing over it until your vet appointment. and no, you may not leave my sight(at least for a little) 🥲

[yuseirra]

On Kamiki- so what IS the truth about this guy? A summary

So vol.16 is out in my region (I get distressed tbh) I do wonder what kind of intention the author had in releasing something like this into the world, but I’ve already talked about that a lot in other posts—and if I don’t get sick of it, I might talk about it more in the future.

But in this post, I’d like to plainly and briefly summarize just what on earth this particular character is supposed to be, what their deal is, and why they ended up swallowing the entire latter half of the story.

If you’ve read many of my posts, you probably already know all of this.

But let’s go over it one more time!

First of all, if we’re asking whether Kamiki is a good guy or a bad guy (and this is important), then:

He was good— it is that he went insane.

The process and circumstances of that descent into madness are portrayed rather ambiguously within his short amount of screen time, and in fact, the decisive clues are found in the anime songs.

The full lyrics of "Mephisto" and "Fatal" are essentially dedicated to this character, and if you dissect those lyrics, you can draw out his situation and his goals.

This character has been doing something ever since Ai died—because he wants to see her again.

And if you look closely at the lyrics, there are lines about “gathering light,” about lacking “love,” about wishing upon a “star,” about a life driven mad by a selfish “star,” and so on. You’ll find a lot of expressions that would seem strange if a regular person were talking about themselves or others, like “I forgot who I lived with,” “I forgot who I was,” “I’ll become you,” “a creative fall from grace,” etc.

Here, the “star” would be Ai. And in the songs, we hear about “sparkle” (as in "egoistic sparkle," "you who won't forgive the sparkle") and even “jewel”—all of which might refer to Hikaru. After all, Ai once likened Hikaru to a jewel. The twins’ names were chosen by Ai with this man in mind.

I’ve analyzed before that in this manga, “star” = “god.”

I’ll skip the longer explanation here, but another important point:

The “star” can inhabit people. There’s a passing line in the story that hints at this.

Especially in "Fatal," there’s a line about “your sparkling eyes” and the “lack of love.”

And this “eye” is crucial. It implies that “god” resides in the eyes. Through these eyes, influence can be exerted.

The narrator of "Mephisto" and "Fatal" is the same person. If you combine the two songs, here’s the conclusion you get:

“Kamiki is trying to gather the love that radiates from the light of the eyes of the stars in order to become a god-like being similar to Ai—and that also becomes his way to get closer to her.”

Even his name, Kamiki Hikaru, is a clue.

His true nature is Sarutahiko Ōkami, the god of light.

This god is known for emitting light from his eyes (and entire body).

And this is the very god who protects the Aratate Shrine that appears in the story,

together with his wife, the goddess of performing arts, Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto.

If you make a wish at that shrine, this divine couple is supposed to grant it together.

Now, what is this god’s ability?

It is “to guide people toward good.”

But as the story suggests, at some point, his eyes go dark.

That happened because of overlapping misfortunes and despair.

And as the songs say, the reason for this darkness is a “lack of love.”

He was supposed to obtain that love from Ai—who, in this framework, is a reincarnation of his wife, Ame-no-Uzume. (The “reincarnation of the morning star” in IDOL hints at this. Ame-no-Uzume is the goddess of art, laughter, happiness, and dawn—the star that rises at dawn, the “star,” literally.)

If things had gone well, Kamiki might have been healed only through Ai, who had the “eyes that convey love.” That’s how it should have been.

But Ai left him.

And as a result, a fatal flaw emerged in his abilities.

This damaged something at his core, and he began to fall apart.

When this man speaks to others, the opposite of what his power was originally meant to do occurs.

Instead of inspiring goodness, he begins to amplify ruinous outcomes.

“Fatal” refers to Kamiki in his corrupted state. That’s why the song’s title is in the masculine form.

Of course, to him, Ai is the true "fatale"—his femme fatale.

Sarutahiko is supposed to be a protective and guiding god, shielding people from harm—

But in his flawed state, the destinies of everyone around him become distorted.

This includes what happened with Ryosuke and Nino.

The god who was once supposed to amplify goodwill instead begins to amplify malice.

When he says things like, “Should I go see her?” or “I think I’ll bring her flowers,”

those words end up pushing people’s existing feelings about Ai into extreme, destructive directions.

Until then, Kamiki didn’t seem to have strong malicious intent, but being in a love-deprived state seems to have altered the nature of his power.

(Sarutahiko and Ame-no-Uzume are a famously harmonious couple in the original mythology. And even in the manga, there’s no strong sign that Hikaru and Ai, their respective reincarnations, held negative feelings toward each other. In fact, there are many hints that they cherished one another.)

But once Ai is murdered, this man falls into despair.

From then on, he stakes everything on seeing her again.

He wants to reclaim his wife—Ai—but she’s become a star, residing within others.

Realizing this, Kamiki began to seek out people with "starry eyes"—probably in hopes of drawing closer to Ai in some way.

Looking at the songs, it seems he tried to revive her but failed because something was missing.

So he decided to become something similar to her instead.

Unfortunately, there’s a myth that this god—Sarutahiko—drowns to death.

And that’s how the manga ends up in this tragic shape.

This manga and its songs are intricately intertwined.

The story revolves around the idea of “eyes that convey love.”

Ai is the one who delivers that love through the eyes,

and Kamiki is the one who needs that love to be delivered to him.

This is even stated directly in the dialogue, it's a crucial hint in order for this story to be understood.

The reason Kamiki’s eyes briefly lit up when he saw Ruby is exactly that:

Ai, now a star, resided in Ruby’s eyes → Love radiated out → That love reached Kamiki and momentarily filled him → Kamiki felt joy and said something like “Maybe you could shine even more than your mother.”

That’s also why he later said something like, “If I had killed Ruby, I could’ve felt Ai again.”

And that is truly the case.

But does that mean Kamiki actually tried to steal Ruby’s light by killing her?

This is where things get murky. Probably not at that time.

Shortly after meeting Ruby, he also went to see Aqua.

He even funded the twins’ movie, and acted like he was about to die.

Going to meet Aqua was probably part of his plan—he said there was something he needed to do.

If he had seriously intended to kill Ruby, would he have gone to congratulate her twin brother?

Most likely, he just wanted to speak with the twins—perhaps for the last time, as he said.

The video of Ai was something that caught him off guard, but his actions up until then were all deliberate.

What’s clear is that Kamiki has two powers: the power to move people, and the power to grant wishes. It's the nature of the god he stands for.

(Which is why he spoke of wishes when talking to Aqua and Ruby near the end.)

But because of his “flaw”—that is, the absence of love, the absence of Ai—those powers became extremely destructive.

If you pay attention, you’ll notice that the wishes people make in the story do come true—but always in a warped or tragic way.

This applies even to things concerning Kamiki himself, so it doesn’t seem like he’s in control anymore.

The god at Kamiki’s core, Sarutahiko Ōkami, is known as the “noble god.” This is why the idea of this character having possessed a "noble soul" has been brought up.

He is a native sun god predating Amaterasu, also known by the name “Great Bright Deity,” or “God of Radiant Light”—a title subtly echoed in this character’s name.

He famously entered a romantic and loving marriage with Ame-no-Uzume, the goddess of performing arts, and the two are always enshrined together. They are a divine couple who bless people’s romantic and fated relationships with love. That’s likely why Ai possessed the power to send love.

As depicted in Fatal, these two figures are indeed a fatally destined pair—one of inevitable fate.

Had they not fallen apart, they could have been very happy.

In fact, if we set aside the accusation that Kamiki did something to Ai, the actions he takes can consistently be interpreted as kind and broad-minded. In fact, to the point where it might feel almost unnatural. Ai really did meet someone who was good to her. That’s why she wanted to live with him forever. That is the truth of their relationship.

However, the impression forced onto him is so strong, and the story deliberately guides the audience to view him with suspicion and negativity—so much so that this truth is obscured.

But if he weren’t someone with a good soul, there would have been no need for such hints to be included. In the end, just what he did, with what intention, and how much malice—whether he truly meant to do those things or not—all of this is left strangely ambiguous. He never gets to explain things about himself properly.

And of course it is. Because originally, he was a being meant to lead others toward goodness.

How far he may have fallen or how extreme his actions were in order to see his wife Ai again—that’s where the real ambiguity lies. And honestly, it doesn’t feel like those details will ever be fully revealed. Personally, I feel it would be kind of cruel of the authors to make a benevolent god like him really go that far so perhaps that's why that ambiguity exists.

The story has deliberately shrouded this character in mystery, leaving everything in the realm of speculation.

[pocketgalaxies]

the fun thing about crippling imposter syndrome and ridiculously prolonged delayed gratification is that they do this cool combo move where they invent an especially ominous form of anxiety that is insidious and subliminal but reaches into me through to the tips of my fingers like an evil little poison impossible to ignore but also impossible to detect except in the way my jaw aches in the morning and the way i find myself unironically saying "this is the longest week ever" on a forking monday afternoon

[sunlit-mess]

Sometimes you just gotta take life one day at a time, but you never know when things might turn around for the better. Please stay safe and keep doing the little things that makes you happy to distract yourself, it's gonna be ok 🌷

Now you guys are just trying to make me cry fr hADUHFUBGKAHAHA

[journey-to-the-attic]

there's a moment in lesson 45 of nightbringer where mc falls off a thing (again?? is this foreshadowing?? i'm going to rule-of-three this and wait to see if it happens again) and satan tries and fails to grab their hand to catch them, but now i'm imagining the same thing happening with satan and ik except he does succeed, but it's her right hand and the prosthetic just POP comes straight off

[gaylactic-fire]

I will thank HTTYD live action for one thing, and that's reviving my interest in this franchise like jumper cables to the heart.

Anyway, my controversial HTTYD take is that the second movie feels more emotionally mature, and it continues to resonate more with me the more I've grown into adulthood. It's the cautious optimism... It's the fact that you can't change everyone's perspective, and sometimes you need to fight for what you believe in... It's the fear of adult responsibilities that feel larger than life, only to realise that instead of running you have to try... It's the knowledge that the world may try and strike you down, but the bonds you've created will bring you strength in an uncertain future... do you feel me?

[ganondoodle]

so, did overtime for work yesterday and got a splitting headache from it and went to bed earlier, didnt bother with the game awards i mean (dont care much for it either way)

and i still havent seen it, but i HAVE seen some posts about it so

new game from shadow of the colossus and last guardian makers???? (is its code name robot? if so .... pls dont be modern techy sci fi ... im so tired of it ... i havent seen anything else from it though) (EDIT: saw the trailer ... it is modern techy sci fi ..... from the trailer at least .... interest minus 50% but that studio has more of my trust so we will see)

- OKAMI SEQUEL ??????????? OKAMI ???? OK-? OKAMI??????????

so .... a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time and a huge part of my childhood huh .... i have a bad feeling about it, i cant even be happy or excited, i am DREADING that, anytime somethign i love gets a sequel it ruins it for me, and the trailer (though just a lil thing) i dont like the style, okami is iconic for its style and that trailer looked like cheap modern animation with an artsy filter on top (i know you cant judge it like its the final product BUT i can still dislike it) and i am worried its only being done bc you know .. disney 'remake' stuff, its easier to remake or make sequels than new stuff bc its guaranteed people are attached to it

again, i hate to be a negative voice in this but okami is really precious to me and i just ... i cant allow myself getting excited just to get absolutely destroyed again and again, id rather dread it and be positively surprised

elden ring ? what? multiplayer? the blue fire stuff and with the bird i immedaitely though ELDEN RING BATTLE ROYALE?????? but i couldnt take much away from that trailer other than multiplayer and fighting bosses from past games?

[federfleisch]

Being coconscious with Salem: Hater mode activated

[nukacourier]

Whenever I get mad about how popular defeationist narratives are becoming in apocalypse media and media in general I look at an image of Arcade Gannon and I calm down a little

[hanzajesthanza]

i like how easily i crumpled to the concept of crossroads

reading the description: ffff—a prequel?? are you kidding me? nooooo! you can’t make some young, baby geralt, this is going to be so weeeirddd! noooo, i can’t get behind this

one week later: silently. goes to hug young geralt like a brother. slowly pats him on the back. starts sniffling and crying and he starts crying also

[thasorns-moved]

I cannot shake my thoughts about this and I’ll know I’ll keep this drama close to my heart. The fact that Myung ha’s ‘sunbae’ opened the riff to the world with the question “would you change it for me?” Also the fact that Myung ha’s alternate universe/game world started with the sound of an ocean tells already a lot about it but we won’t know until Episode 8 why. Throughout the series we watched Myung ha doing everything in his power to make Yeo woon happy while he himself couldn’t rely, couldn’t trust, couldn’t open himself up to him. We know the phrase of his ex gf “you don’t know how to love anyone.” left a deep scar in his soul which he carried with to the alternate universe/game. I try to think the system errors which occurred during the game was a way to change Myung ha’s mindset to not make the same mistakes and/or go on with his habitual habits he did in his life before he drowned himself. Also the different tasks was it actually for Myung ha to realize that he’s the one who makes Yeo-woon happy (which he didn’t). He retreated himself from Yeo woon because he couldn’t choose between the most important persons in his life as we saw his grandma died in real life which makes me think if he also knew that because in one sequence in the game/au it asked him if he wants to bring back some memories of Myung ha’s life. Also the last I love you from Yeo woon was the cherry on top to let the system completely crash where he distanced himself from Yeo woon. “I want to spend my remaining time making Yeo woon happy as best as I can. But it seems the more I try, the more unhappy I make Yeo-woon.” Which Myung ha remembers what Yeo-woon said: “whenever I see you, I both feel good and want to cry. I feel so much about every little thing. But I’m not happy at all right now.” Which again I try to think it is about why Myung ha doesn’t rely more on him? Why he doesn’t open himself up to him? A relationship is based off of trust, give and take… etc. but Myung ha goes into this relationship with deep rooted traumas which causes lack of self love. If one loves not itself enough how can they expect to love someone else which what explains Myung ha’s last phrase in the same scene so much. “Why did I think I could make you happy?” It’s as if he doesn’t think that a loner like him could be the one to give him love and happiness. What follows after is that he choses Yeo woon’s happiness even if he’s not his happiness… which again brings me to the beginning where Myung ha thinks “but I prefer lonely supporting characters to happy protagonists.” In this case he’s the lonely supporting character to our happy protagonist Yeo-woon. “But being fated to live that kind of life�� is just so unfair.” He knew/knows how cruel life can be so he chose his happiness over everything and got vanished from the game. He realized by now that Yeo-woon is/was more important than he wanted to admit. Yeo-woon is/was a glimpse of happiness in Myung ha’s life. What brings us to the tragic backstory of his life and how he lived. All the obstacles he endured and went through led to his drowning (at this point we saw Yeo-woon’s obstacles in the alternate universe/game at least in my opinion). This is the turning point for Myung ha. “I was hoping if you saw yourself from someone else’s perspective, you would learnt to love yourself. I thought if you learned to love someone, you would be a little happier.” I want to make a reference here to the title itself “Love for Love’s sake” because all the sacrifices he did and cared more for others than himself… but he found happiness. In Yeo-woon. And he chose his own happiness for once. It’s the way he chooses all these things for himself, to open himself up for him, to rely and be cared for. “It would be nice to have someone. Someone who cares by my side. Someone who gives me chances when I fail and feel hopeless. It would be nice to have someone who always gives me love.” Which they found both in each other.

[equalperson]

I decided to reflect on My PD status recently, and it's honestly something to see how much I've changed as well as the things I perhaps missed.

firstly, I'm barely even avoidant anymore. I don't fit either the main or alternative DSM-5 criteria for AvPD (not to say that criteria is everything, OFC), only fitting a preoccupation with criticism in the former and anxiousness, withdrawal, and intimacy avoidance in the latter.

even aside from the DSM, I've noticed this in Myself. I still show signs of being avoidant, but most of them feel "residual," so to speak: I still have social anxiety, I'm still inhibited, and I still have shame spirals under physical stress (hunger, sleepiness), but I generally have pretty decent self-esteem and take criticism easier than before nowadays.

but on the other hand, I've been wondering as of late if I have antisocial or negativistic personality in addition to My narcissism.

I was already wondering if I was negativistic, as I have a major aversion to doing what people want Me to (even beneficial things, like using My inhaler or eating) and often feign forgetfulness to get out of it.

but I especially started considering antisocial personality recently. I've found that I relate a lot to antisocial people, sometimes even more than prosocial narcissists.

for instance, I don't really care to abide by social or moral norms (especially as I've gotten less avoidant) and I don't feel much of any shame for My "disordered," "immoral," or irresponsible actions.

meanwhile, I notice a lot of other narcissists care less than other people, but will still beat themselves up for doing things "wrong," which I just can't relate to. I want to be admired, sure, but not at the expense of My own hedonism. I can have My cake and eat it, too.

by DSM-5 standards, I mostly fit the criteria for ASPD through deceitfulness, irritability, and irresponsibility, although rather than a history of conduct disorder (which I know not all antisocial people actually have), I also fit the criteria for oppositional defiance (though I have contemplated many of the actions used to diagnose CD on countless occasions).

I fit the broader, alternative criteria even closer, fulfilling basically every criterion there.

I arguably fit the definition of "ASPD" better than I do that of "NgPD" (negativistic, not narcissistic), as I don't experience the aimlessness and ambivalence often attributed to the latter. like I said, I know what I want and I do whatever I can to get it, even if I do need to be a bit dishonest in the process.

overall, I definitely want to look into the possibility of being antisocial, but I'm sorta dreading it; not only are the narcissistic and antisocial personalities so similar that it's pretty hard to distinguish the two unless one or the other is incredibly blatant, but they're both so demonized that I just know any searches I do to distinguish them will be filled with sanist pop psychology.

much to think about, for sure.

[melanytm]

another addison grace thing bc i am obsessed with diving lessons 🐛🎧

[thebisexual-disaster]

There is no heterological explanation for whatever the fuck is happening between Evan Buckley and Eddie Diaz