#meta answers

[jgnico]

I ran so fast to your inbox I almost tripped. pls share your knowledge!! what's the original japanese version of sukuna saying "see you later" to uraume??

(I accidentally discarded my first draft of answering this, sorry for the delay)

I wasn't able to find the original tumblr post about this, but essentially:

In the original Japanese translation of chapter 117, Sukuna says またな or mata-na. While this does roughly translate to "See you later," the tone of it is something that you'd use with a friend or someone that you're close to, rather than... a colleague or aquaintance. It's very casual, to the point of being cute.

The suffix -na is also kind of inquisitory, so not only would it be a friendly farewell, but it would hold the hope of seeing that person again.

So it's "bye / see you later" but the way you would say "bye / i hope to see you again" to someone you care about.

In my opinion, that's why Uraume looks surprised here, as they weren't expecting that level of familiarity.

[black-butler-meta]

Hello there♪! I've just discovered this blog and it peek my interest 👀

And since the askbox is open.., what's your opinion on the fourth arc, Noah's Ark Circus/Season 3/Book of Circus?

Yessss! I love LOVE Book of Circus! It's honestly my favorite animated arc so far, and I really think it's because of how dark the content is and how we learn more about Ciel's past and his trauma.

Some things that I found interesting and/or loved about this arc:

The theme of good people doing bad things, and overall a human's capacity to both love and commit atrocities simultaneously (the circus orphans and their relationship with the Baron; also Ciel's decision to burn everything to the ground, including the lobotomized children).

The theme of childhood trauma and how it warps one's ability to identify toxic/damaging relationships, familial or otherwise (Joker's relationship with the Baron, Beast being seduced and manipulated by Sebastian for information)

The way that sex, sexual tension, and overall physical touch are merely tools for Sebastian; it's a means to an end (oh boy do I have an entire essay on this already typed up, just based on this arc).

Ciel's PTSD panic attack scene - so uncomfortable but also SO FREAKING GOOD. It was uncomfortable on purpose, because Sebastian is a manipulative fucking demon. There was so much happening with this scene, so much nuance in it... UGH. Definitely need to write an entire post about this scene specifically.

The ever present nuances of the gray areas that Sebastian has. Does he care or does he not care? Is he doing kind things to manipulate or because he's genuinely concerned for his master? Could it be a little bit of both?

Oh man, so much to say... but Tumblr doesn't give me enough characters to put it all into this ask, so I'll have to do a more in-depth analysis in a separate post.

[tinystepsforward]

Matt Mullenweg is now sexually harassing Avery on Twitter for posting a selfie and the caption “too hot for tumblr”

what the actual fuck is he doing. where those were sw accounts this is not just completely inappropriate harassment but potentially outing. so fucking far beyond what he was already doing to follow her there.

also noting that he's changed his focus since nobody thought the screenshot of the threat was valid (and i have had multiple ex-staff confirm that it's not against tos, btw). this kind of info should never be dug up and put out there by a ceo having a tantrum, christ alive

[deancasforcutie]

"your angel" with such little context is another way of saying "your sweetheart" romantically and well. they're not wrong

[sageshouldknowbetter]

[rqbossman]

hello, bossman!

ive been wondering if there’s any words you particularly like when writing. i’ve noticed jonny, for example, uses the word “acrid” far more often than is reasonable than an average enjoyer of the word. also apotheosis but he’s explained that one! so: any words you’re fond of and use more than reasonably? (or perfectly reasonably. you’re the bossman after all)

Goddam "apotheosis". (sighs) So if you want a deep cut on @jonnywaistcoat he loves the phrase "burst like a rotten grape". I think @rq-producerperson have caught him adding it to Protocol on three separate occasions normally accompanied by the world "Bulbous" and we have edited it out. I try to work in the word "Maelstrom" in every creative work I do. I also try to sneak in arbitrary asinine alliteration as its awesome to assimilate.

[laser-tripwires]

i am occasionally reminded that parker knows how to shoot/handle a gun competently in redemption s1e3 and it's like, eliot, mr. "i dont like guns", why are you teaching people this.

(i am aware parker has a handgun in s1e1 but i dont think the skills are transferable to shotguns and its never really established if she can actually hit anything and also i doubt archie would train her in it bc its not a gentleman thief skill and by the same logic i doubt parker would teach herself bc its not particularly thief-y)

anon, this ask was like an early christmas present for me. i love when people are "wrong" in interesting ways, or if not wrong then... take a different view to what i do. so, parker and guns. i can't believe i've never made a post about this.

(heads up, i've stolen vast swathes of this post from conversations i've had with both @ghostlyarchaeologist and @aardvaark. words are all mine but ideas are mutually borne, so thank you both for being sounding boards at various points in the past. everyone go follow heather and adrian cos they're better at this than i am.)

right, let's talk about the pilot, becuase parker can absolutely hit things with that. both eliot and nate know immediately that hardison isn't a real danger, but the second nate hears the safety being turned off there he whirls around and matches her threat; that's what you do when you know someone's not making pointless bluffs.

also, boiling this back to it's utter basics, what's the main skillset you use in order to handle a pistol competently? hand-eye coordination. which is something we know for sure parker has in spades; she's a master pickpocket and she learns fast.

we need to remember, also, that parker's initial sense of morality is completely fucked. or... not morality, exactly, but sense of what does and doesn't count as wrong, what does or doesn't count as harm? because there's that scene in homecoming, right, where everyone's protesting the concept of eliot having to do the thing they hired him for, and parker weighs in with "i never hurt anyone." except... like, the FIRST thing we know about parker is that she blew up a house as a child. it's canonical that the parents survived, but parker also spent six months in juvie and has broken out of prison multiple times and lived on the street for god knows how long and stork job shows she can fight pretty well pre-leverage, too. i'll come back to all this in a minute.

her being a crack shot with a gun is... not really incongrous with who she was pre-leverage. archie describes her when he found her as "a danger to herself and to others" and like YEAH no i buy that. i buy that completely.

next up, what about things that aren't pistols? well.

that's a fucking sniper rifle.

that's a fucking sniper rifle.

that is, and i cannot stress this enough, a fucking sniper rifle.

so yeah, i'd say that those skills are transferrable. she can take out an armed gunman and tie him up with duct tape, without causing a scuffle, and re-aim the gun. with enough consistency that nate knows for sure she'll manage it in less than three seconds. sure, we can chalk some of that up to parker at this point having had four seasons of eliot here's-how-you-take-out-thugs-with-guns fight training, but... i think at this point it's pretty fair to say that (regardless of the provinance of her skills) parker's kinda a good shot, actually.

okay, let's revisit that point about morality, because there are kinda a bunch of really important touchstones here.

so, john rogers once said that "parker is the second most dangerous person on the team, and eliot would argue first most dangerous." she's the team member with the least qualms about hurting people, always, and that's a detail that tends to get brushed over.

she would have killed tara here. she makes that extremely clear. i can't listen to that "Bye, now." and not get shivers.

talking of shivers.... "I want to do the right thing."

because, look, parker's not eliot. she's not thawing ice all the way through, and yet we're shown again and again that, despite that, "She has the nuclear winter inside her." there will always be a part of her who's first instinct is to jump, to hide, to run, to kill, to not care because caring hurts. but there's also a part of her that is softer than any of the team, that is a child who'll never grow up and yet grew up too fast. she grew up beaten, bruised, neglected and starved yet she's something wonderful - but she knows she's broken, she knows they all call her crazy, and it hurts. she wants to do the right thing, make the right choice, but she hates that it'll never be her first instinct. and the thing is? that's okay. she went through hell and back and turned out someone strange and weird and at times unkind, but... the team like how she turned out. hardison likes how she turned out. and that's worth the world - she just needs to remember it and believe it and use HER skills instead of trying to be something she's not. that is what parker and eliot's conversation in the ice cave is about, if you strip it back to it's bare essentials. parker doesn't want to be normal, she just wants to be normal enough for her friends.

has parker ever killed someone? i don't know. i don't know if she even thinks like that, in such clear terms - as i already talked about, parker's definition of 'hurt' is not the same as anyone else's.

so let's talk about broken wing job for a second, because absolutely everyone overlooks the reason why parker does the job in the first place - "You brought a gun? To my bar?"

because. yeah.

"Those guys are gonna rob this store, right? Which is fine. I don’t mind robbers who aren’t robbing me, or my friends, or kids or… But they brought a gun to the party, and that changes all the rules."

this is season five. she investigates the theives because she's bored - but she only decides to stop them because they brought a gun. that's the kind of very specific morality you only get after being the good guy for a very long time, and i do think that hanging around eliot probably helped affect that a bit.

actually, fuck it, look at what else she says about this whole thing in the broken wing job.

"No cops. No cops. That will actually increase the chances of people getting hurt. [...] Seeing a uniform in the middle of stealing something could cause you to panic, make bad decisions..."

"These guys aren’t that good, which is actually another reason why we should do this, ‘cause sooner or later, they’re gonna make a mistake. Someone’s gonna get hurt."

so. yeah. on the one hand, this is weapons safety 101, for someone in parker's position. "[The Leverage crew] don't use guns because - when guns come out, people die. This attitude very much comes out from traditional American crime literature, and also from talking to our professional criminal friends. Guns are messy, when they show up things escalate, you take a longer, harder fall when doing a crime with a gun - professional criminals are pathologically averse to carrying weapons." i'm quoting john rogers here, because i can, but you'll hear similar in any training manual, and it's especially relevant to parker's actions both here and elsewhere in the show.

on the other hand, mix up all those statements and it definitely implies parker has fucked up badly in the past. again, i don't know if she's ever killed someone. but.

well, for funsies, let's look at the rest of JR's above statement about gun safety (i'm quoting from his blog on the gone fishin' job, in case you wanted to find the source): "You do not point a gun at anything or anyone you are not willing to kill. [...] I had that drilled into my head at an early age. A gun has two settings - holstered and murderous. 'Wounded' is an accidental condition. Eliot in particular is aware of this, and one of the many reasons he does not use a gun is because he is trying to, well, not kill people anymore. Hardison is magnificently awful with weaponry. Although Parker is probably a fine shot, she's trying to play nice by the new rules, and only brought a weapon to the meet in the pilot because she wanted to get paid."

and all that is, more than anything else, the core and crux of everything i'm saying here. factor in how broken parker is, how we know she's made mistakes in the past, throw in archie's "a danger - to herself and to others" line, think about the tara rooftop incident... there's a picture emerging here. it's not a nice one, but it's unpleasantly clear.

so. where does that leave us?

well, it at least leaves me extremely certain for a vast number of reasons that eliot didn't need to teach parker how to shoot a rigged game.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thoughts on the “E”?!

Hey Nonnie

Oh I have many thoughts on the ‘E’ on the bomber jacket!! @lover-of-mine and I have been talking about it and doing some research to find out when it first appeared and if anyone else has letters on their jackets.

I can confirm that no one else appears to have a letter on their jackets, so this is a Buck exclusive thing. That in and of itself is important and revealing - it means it’s intentional and relevant in some way.

As you can see above - nothing on Bobby or Hens jackets in this up coming episode.

As for its first appearing - well - the bomber jackets have been part of the uniform since the crossover episode with Lonestar - back at the beginning of season 4. There is no ‘E’ on the jacket we see buck in during that episode. I’ve messed around with the brightness to make it easier to see on most of these screen grabs, so ignore the slightly weird colouring!

After that - we see the bomber a couple of times in season 4 and it bears no ‘E’ - this is a still from 411!

The same in season 5 - the bomber appears a few times and there’s never an ’E’ present on the sleeve, this is a still from 511.

It’s the same through season 6 - the bomber is worn but there is no ‘E’.

Then we get to season 7 and things start to get interesting! Below is a still from 701 - no ‘E’ is on his sleeve here.

But when we get to 704 - oh hi there ‘E’ you’ve decided to appear - in a scene that kickstarts Bucks bi arc, and from then on - the ‘E’ is present on bucks jacket sleeve!

Right up to the next episode!

As for what the ‘E’ means and the significance of its connection into Bucks bi arc. Well I have a couple of theories.

The fact that no one else has a letter on their sleeve means it’s not about his name - so it’s not meant to represent Evan in any way - if it was I would expect a ‘H’ on Hens and on Chim’s, and an ‘R’ on Bobbys and Ravi’s and to have seen an E on Eddie’s (I’ve just realised that we have two names for each letter as I typed this out - which is very fun!)

So that leaves us with it having a different meaning. Buck as a character is someone who tends to wear his heart on his sleeve and so it’s a fair thing to come to the conclusion that it’s connected to that idea of his heart being on his sleeve. It’s also his left arm - which is important in connection with the red string of fate which is supposed to run from your heart down your left arm and connect to your lover or family etc through your left hand.

So buck having an ‘E’ there can only really mean one thing - Eddie. There’s literally no one else it could conceivably be linked to. So in my opinion (and if that makes me a clown then I am a clown and I’m prepared to die on this hill) it’s been put there at the start of 704 to very subtly inform the audience that Buck is misunderstanding the assignment yet again and misdirecting his feelings for Eddie onto Tommy. It’s a way of telling the audience that we are correct in our opinion that it’s all about Eddie and not about Tommy at all.

Nothing else makes sense to me, it can’t be an allergy information thing, it’s not a brand thing or everyone would have an ‘E’. I guess there’s a vague possibility that is signalling where emergency information is located for Buck, but that seems very unlikely.

So in summary it’s metaphorically buck wearing his heart on his sleeve and his heart is Eddie shaped! I also expect that him wearing a jacket on the job with this ‘E’ on in this episode is very intentional - playing into bucks sense of loss over Eddie leaving and his heartbreak - even if he can’t recognise it for what it is.

I’d love to hear if anyone else has any theories on its appearance and meaning m, and there is plenty of room in the clown car if anyone wants to join Anna and I in this theory🤓💜💜

[ultfreakme]

"Gojo should've gotten to live as a person-" THAT’S THE POINT. That is the ENTIRE point of JJK. Every single character who died was someone who "should've gotten to" do a lot of things. Riko should've gotten to live for herself, Geto should've had the chance to be a teenage boy given support and safety, Junpei should've gotten to live without fear, Nobara should've had the chance to let people in without fear, Nanami, Yuki, Mai, Higurama, EVERYONE.

Here's the thing, Gojo is on this list. Gojo isn't the exception because JJK at its core is a story about how overarching systems destroy people; bullying, capitalism, sexism, etc. And this system does not need people to run it. Which is why killing Kenjaku didn't stop shit because yeah he started this mess but its grown beyond him. Fuck, it was there before him.

This is also why despite Sukuna & Uraume being the only ones who are actual threats, nothing is better. The cast got rid of the higher-ups, jujutsu tech as it is, is no more. The major families are dismantled. This should be a victory. This is what the Sashisu gen pointed out as the problem but things have never looked more bleak.

Why? Because the problem isn't Kenjaku, Sukuna, curses, sorcerers or curse users. It's the existence of Cursed Energy itself. This has been pointed out multiple times by Yuki. Its the system and Gojo has been complicit to the system for a long, long time. He's also it's victim. Gojo says he's the exception a lot, but as everyone has rightfully pointed out, he was nothing more than a weapon to jujutsu society.

JJK has followed a very clear pattern to every character right from Geto to Junpei to Riko; characters are representatives of systems of suppression, and they will not escape it. I can't recall a single character that's escaped unscathed, much less alive.

Is it disrespectful? Yes. Is it demeaning? YES. There has not been a single character death that's been dignified in JJK. It's all on a scale of bearable to absolutely horrifying. It is genuinely wild seeing people resort to threatening the author AGAIN. Calm the fuck down. You are entitled to feeling upset about how Gojo has been treated but Yuta stans are being calm despite Yuta arguably suffering the "he is a weapon" thing WORSE. It's still a fictional character and JJK's narratives never treated Gojo with any exceptions despite the character saying otherwise.

[preseriesdean]

Let's pretend for the moment you're not entirely insane.

SUPERNATURAL 2.07 | The Usual Suspects

[starcurtain]

I know you mentioned Kavetham in your essay and how ppl mistake them as toxic. I think the issue is that their banter at the start does not sound friendly at all. Kaveh sounded so incensed every time he’s with Alhaitham I wonder how’s his blood pressure. I know Kaveh gives back as good as he got, but most of Kaveh’s jabs doesn’t come close to hitting Alhaitham, whereas Alhaitham’s snipes seems always to hit Kaveh right at the jugular. It’s only until the Parade of Providence event and Cyno story quest 2 did I see any possibility with them.

I'm really sorry to say this, but unfortunately I think this is a case of misreading.

Although Kaveh was definitely more incensed in their early scenes and way more likely to fly off the handle, I think the game went out of its way right from the beginning to make it clear that that's Kaveh's personality.

Kaveh's a sensitive and temperamental person who gets worked up easily, and it's not just at Alhaitham but with virtually everyone, from his own clients to the Traveler. One of the first things he does when meeting the Traveler in Alhaitham's story quest is be such a poor host to them that Paimon of all people starts giving him shit.

Rest under the Read More:

According to Alhaitham's voice line about him, which was available long before Kaveh became playable:

Kaveh gets worked up about everything and is constantly making a fuss. Putting his blood pressure at risk is just what Kaveh does on the daily, whether Alhaitham is involved or not.

Right from the start, we were supposed to understand that Kaveh is a dramatic person. It goes hand-in-hand with his status as an idealist, as someone who pursues his beliefs ardently and believes in beauty and the human spirit, rather than in cold, pragmatic rationality. Just as he's passionate and uncompromising on his ideals, he's passionate when it comes to disagreements too.

From his very first appearance, the point of Kaveh's over-the-top responses to Alhaitham is to establish Kaveh's character as Alhaitham's opposite. Alhaitham is quiet, so of course Kaveh is loud. Alhaitham is discreet, so Kaveh must be conspicuous (charging into the room, arguing publicly). Alhaitham is cool-headed and seemingly unemotional, so Kaveh's first scene will show him as easily worked up, with a quick temper. The whole point of their first scene together was to emphasize these extreme differences in their personalities, so that the "Kaveh is Alhaitham's mirror" plot point would be as obvious to players as it was supposed to be.

Furthermore, we were also given an indication right away that Kaveh and Alhaitham do not fight all the time. In Alhaitham's story quest, the first thing Kaveh does when hearing Alhaitham get home is react happily and ask him to come help with the task he was working on. If they fought all the time and had genuine hatred for each other, would Kaveh have reacted this way to Alhaitham's homecoming at all?

Then, during the follow-up scene to this, Kaveh insists that Alhaitham has to bring him shopping and buy him drinks at the end of the day. If you have a toxic hate-hate relationship where the other person legitimately makes you miserable, would you really be asking to spend a whole day together shopping and going out for drinks, a popular friend activity?

The face of a man who just goaded his "toxic" situationship into taking him on an all-expenses-paid date.

Even the OG message board and NPC interactions for Alhaitham and Kaveh tell us that their relationship isn't one-sided and that Kaveh benefits plenty from being close to Alhaitham. First, we learn that Alhaitham pays Kaveh's tabs regularly, enabling Kaveh to have a lifestyle literally labelled in-game as "like a noble," and then we learn that Alhaitham apologizes to Kaveh by gifting him wine, presumably to make up for times where his comments actually do go too far:

I'll go into the scene where Kaveh is introduced more in a second, but in the meantime, I also strongly push back on the idea that Alhaitham's insults to Kaveh are more hurtful than Kaveh's are to Alhaitham's.

In Alhaitham's story quest, Kaveh flat out asks the Traveler and Paimon if they are paid actors because he doesn't believe that Alhaitham can make other friends. That's pretty damn rude by itself, but coupled with what we learned when Kaveh's character stories were released, what Kaveh said to drive the final spike into their original friendship...

Kaveh was Alhaitham's only friend, and the insult he used to get back at Alhaitham was "I regret ever befriending you." Do you know how devastating it would be to hear that from the only friend you've ever made? Frankly, Kaveh is pretty lucky that Alhaitham is a rational person who can grasp that Kaveh was just lashing out, because while Alhaitham's insult to Kaveh during this argument was born out of concern for Kaveh's well-being ("Your altruism is actually self-harm"), Kaveh's was just a straight-up retaliation meant to cause pain after Alhaitham came too close to the truth.

I think this is far from Kaveh never managing to land an insult, especially since Alhaitham--as far as we are shown--went on to never form another friendship throughout his entire youth.

Anyway, regarding their first scene together, which I'm assuming is the basis for people believing they're toxic... I actually think this scene represents the only time we've ever seen Alhaitham genuinely upset. This scene was meant to highlight the differences between the two characters very deliberately--while also establishing that Alhaitham's behavior around Kaveh is enormously different from his behavior around everyone else.

Alhaitham spends the entire Archon Quest completely unbothered. Even when attacked by Cyno, he gives little more than annoyed noises and cold remarks. He keeps so much distance from the others in the group that all the way to the end, the Traveler isn't 100% convinced they can trust Alhaitham. Although he puts on a very convincing act for Azar, that's the most emotion we players see out of him for the entire Sumeru plot line. He is not presented as an immature person nor depicted as someone who would usually stoop to petty arguments.

Then, suddenly... this.

The moment Kaveh appears on the scene, Alhaitham's maturity just goes straight out the window. Suddenly he's full of snappy comebacks and aggressively getting in someone's face--because he can't be objective and aloof around Kaveh. He can't distance himself from the situation where his roommate is involved.

This scene is actually the one example we have of Alhaitham being upset enough for the mask to come off. We have never seen him this worked up ever again in the entire game.

He deliberately provokes this fight because he was worried for Kaveh--worried enough for the most famously unshakeable man in Sumeru to actually get angry.

First, Alhaitham intentionally stalls, riling Kaveh up by refusing to answer his question about what happened in Sumeru, instead going on a tangent about physical books. Kaveh redirects (with an insult claiming that Alhaitham frequently abuses his position of authority, for good measure), which prompts Alhaitham to remark, oddly:

This is actually the first sign that something is wrong. Alhaitham doesn't usually make incorrect logical leaps, so if he's claiming that Kaveh, who just came back that day, should already know the inside story, what he's actually saying is that he expected Kaveh to be much more in-the-know about the situation than Kaveh actually was. Alhaitham is saying here that Kaveh should have known what was going on in Sumeru, and that idea--Kaveh should have known, should have been there--is the turning point of this entire argument.

Alhaitham continues the conversation by complimenting Kaveh. His tone is sarcastic, causing Kaveh to doubt the meaning, but we players know already from Alhaitham's character stories that Alhaitham actually means this compliment honestly--he sees Kaveh as an intelligent and gifted artist who is his equal in every way. This is a genuine statement cloaked in a sarcastic tone to intentionally escalate the situation.

Then Alhaitham uses Kaveh's exaggerated response as a spring-board to actually snap at Kaveh, specifically stating that Kaveh is unkind to him. This is the only time that we've ever seen Alhaitham express direct and serious displeasure with the way Kaveh treats him.

In many of their early scenes, Kaveh would levy an insult at Alhaitham and Alhaitham would return a snappy one-liner ("If humans aren't humans without their humanity, you'll probably evolve into some other species in another decade" -> "What about you, will you devolve into a fungus?"), or Alhaitham will nitpick at Kaveh's bad habits and Kaveh will clap back with a one-liner of his own ("I hope you are aware of your lack of conversational skills" -> "Oh, so the pot's calling the kettle black, is he?"), but the bickering almost never starts with Alhaitham, and in no other scene does their arguing ever rise above the level of sarcastic and petty complaints.

This is the only time we ever see Alhaitham upset enough to confront Kaveh aggressively, to the extent that he actually stands up to get in Kaveh's space, and then makes a statement that he never, ever makes again:

After this point, Alhaitham will continue to tease and annoy Kaveh by bringing up the rent money, but he will never again suggest seriously that Kaveh should leave. If it wasn't clear yet, it should have been clear from this line: Alhaitham is flat out furious in this scene.

And why? What's got his feathers so ruffled that he completely abandons his aloof demeanor and engages in a public argument?

He didn't know where Kaveh was. The world was basically ending in Sumeru, and Alhaitham couldn't find Kaveh.

In fact, Alhaitham probably even had reason to be worried directly for Kaveh's safety (although he later tries to blow it off): Kaveh was sent out into the desert specifically by the Kshahrewar Sage, who was colluding with Azar, possibly to get Kaveh out of the way. As the Scribe who would be the one approving the paperwork for all the scheming that was going on, Alhaitham would have known that Kaveh had been sent out to desert--a favorite tool for the Akademiya to "disappear" other people in the past.

Actually, if you want to say that any element of Alhaitham and Kaveh's relationship is toxic, you would have better luck with the claim that Alhaitham is kind of a stalker. It's not stalking if the other person wants you there. Being all up in Kaveh's business is basically Alhaitham's actual full-time job. Kaveh's in Port Ormos? Well, what do you know, so is Alhaitham! Kaveh is out on a trip in the desert? Dang, what a coincidence that Alhaitham just so happened to want to explore that exact ruin at that exact moment, out of the entire thousand square mile desert...

Whatever reasoning you want to ascribe to this, Alhaitham goes where Kaveh goes. He dips out mid-conversation the moment Kaveh returns home. He serves as an announcer on an event strictly because it relates to Kaveh. He constantly intervenes when Kaveh is in trouble, appearing conveniently the moment Kaveh needs him for anything.

Remember that, at this point in the story, he literally had no one else. At the start of the Archon Quest, Alhaitham had no family. He had no friends. He only, only had Kaveh. So when the entire city started going mad, a plague that was relatively rare suddenly began raging out of control and killing people, the sages started plotting some kind of insane uprising, Forbidden Knowledge was released on the black market, the arts in Sumeru came under serious attack, important people like Tighnari were targeted, Cyno was sent to oppress him, and public figures in Sumeru started actively disappearing...

For Alhaitham to not know where his one person was?

For Alhaitham to have gone from Sumeru City to Port Ormos to the literal wastes of the desert and still not find Kaveh?

Alhaitham actively glosses over a summary of what happened in Sumeru's Archon Quest because it doesn't matter to him in comparison to what he wants to know, the matter of Kaveh's safety.

He has no issue talking to anyone else about what happened with the Sages, and he's plenty talkative about the events and the Akademiya's status the moment the Traveler comes up right after Kaveh. It's only with Kaveh that he downplays and refuses to share the information about what actually occurred, because he was worried and upset that Kaveh disappeared. Kaveh could have been involved and wasn't. He wasn't there when Sumeru needed him--he wasn't there when Alhaitham needed him.

In a situation where disappeared people were turning up dead in the desert, Kaveh wasn't anywhere to be found at all.

Alhaitham provoked this entire fight and the only point he focuses on, harping on it repeatedly, is: Where were you?

This scene hammers home two messages incredibly well:

Kaveh is the polar opposite of Alhaitham.

Alhaitham cannot emotionally distance himself from Kaveh the same way he's able to be disengaged from everyone else.

This is definitely not the most pleasant of scenes, and starting out with the characters in a bad mood with each other was a very specific choice (one fueled mostly by the need to create plausible deniability so that they could get "my god they were roommates" past the censors, if you ask me), but just because two people have a fight does not make them "toxic."

Both Kaveh and Alhaitham had valid reasons to be worked up in this scene, and considering this is the only scene in which we ever see Alhaitham act so aggressively and with such seemingly genuine anger, it should have been obvious that this was out-of-character for him, highlighting the fact that his relationship with Kaveh is not the same as his dispassionate, cool-tempered reaction to everyone else in the story so far.

Alhaitham got mad and his temper came out, but it turns out that Alhaitham's temper (which Kaveh loves to point out) is connected canonically to his frustrating failures to protect Kaveh--sometimes from Kaveh's own self. Their first fight happened because Alhaitham was too honest and popped off about Kaveh not taking care of himself, and the first fight we get to see from them on-screen is Alhaitham once again genuinely frustrated by Kaveh potentially being in a dangerous situation.

(The humor of this moment is that just like Alhaitham is reluctant to tell Kaveh the truth about what he did in Sumeru, Kaveh conveniently side-steps the reason that he was nowhere to found: He was trapped in a magical bottle fairyland at the time, so Alhaitham couldn't have found him even if he had searched high and low.)

Kaveh, predictably, meets Alhaitham's temper with a full blast of his own over-the-top reactions, including suggesting that he's going to start a rumor that Alhaitham staged a political coup on purpose--something which Kaveh, who knows Alhaitham perfectly well and knows Alhaitham is just flat out too unambitious to ever do, obviously doesn't honestly think. Neither Kaveh's insults nor Alhaitham's hold any particular weight in this conversation, and out of the two of them, Alhaitham actually has far more complimentary things to say about Kaveh than Kaveh ever has to say about him, still to this day.

Personally, I think that seeing Kaveh as the "victim" of Alhaitham's barbs in their early scenes is a misread on Kaveh's character. A massive point of Kaveh's character is that he's literally the architect of his own suffering. He blamed himself for his father's death and his mother's decline, which crippled his ability to form healthy relationships with others in his childhood. His self-sacrificial behavior and--explicitly, in the canon text--his own inability to confront reality led to the collapse of his original friendship with Alhaitham.

He bankrupted himself for the Palace of Alcazarzaray, martyring himself on the altar of his own ideals. He gets into fights with his clients because he isn't good at drawing boundaries, isolates himself from his friends because he feels like a burden (even though they all clearly love him) and then laments feeling lonely, and constantly bickers with Alhaitham even in moments when Alhaitham really hasn't done anything to start a fight, like when Alhaitham brought the Traveler and Paimon home and Kaveh spent half of his first conversation with the Traveler bad-mouthing Alhaitham, who wasn't even in the room to provoke his ire.

While Alhaitham is absolutely not a saint and is a nitpicking champion, the bulk of their bickering comes from Kaveh's tendency to anger easily, his helplessness and lack of control over his financial situation, and from his internalized assumption that Alhaitham is incapable of altruism.

Even realizing that Alhaitham's words in the past came from a place of honest reflection on Kaveh's well-being, at the beginning of their scenes in-game, Kaveh still can't bring himself to let bygones be bygones, still can't accept a freely offered hand, and ultimately ends up taking out a lot of frustration about his personal situation on Alhaitham, the symbolic lightning rod for all of Kaveh's woes. Kaveh isn't comfortable with himself, so he's interpreting every thing Alhaitham says and does in the least charitable way possible--and Alhaitham is, in part, letting him do that (actively encouraging it even), because that's what Kaveh needs. If Kaveh is incensed and railing at Alhaitham for this or that petty disagreement, then he isn't withdrawing into depression and off making rash decisions that will ruin his own life again.

The alternative to Alhaitham taking "snipes" at Kaveh is this:

So I think we can all agree which one is less toxic, lol.

Kaveh also believes that Alhaitham is his mirror--but in a negative way, with Alhaitham being the strawman Kaveh repeatedly builds up to fight against in his quest to justify his idealism, even when that idealism brings him pain. If Kaveh's ideals are just and righteous and good, then Alhaitham--who represents the dead opposite of Kaveh's idealism--must automatically be bad. Alhaitham's selfish, he's egotistical, he'd "let people drown" (said without the self-awareness to note that Alhaitham never let Kaveh drown)... At least when we first started seeing them in game, Kaveh has created an image of Alhaitham that has little to do with the actual reality of their situation.

Kaveh could have had peace from Day 1 in Alhaitham's house if he could keep his own temper in check and stop rising to Alhaitham's bait--but that's not who Kaveh is. He isn't actually a peaceful person by nature. He's kind and generous to a fault; he believes in doing right by others and in putting his heart and soul into every project he brings into the world, but he's also just kind of quarrelsome. Even if he doesn't actually like to argue, he can't help himself because he is passionate about the things he feels and believes. He's impulsive, doing what he feels is right in the moment far more than reasoning rationally about his circumstances (another point of opposition with Alhaitham), and, despite having cripplingly low self-esteem, he's also a proud person, trying overly hard to protect his reputation, so that even just being in Alhaitham's house puts him constantly on edge, fearing that people will find out about his bankruptcy.

Kaveh's tense situation with Alhaitham in their early scenes is, in large part, Kaveh's fault, stemming more from his internal issues and wounded principles than from what is actually going on between himself and Alhaitham in that moment. He's carrying so much emotional baggage into their home that nothing Alhaitham is doing could ever be considered more toxic than the weight Kaveh came into the relationship already bearing--and clearly, as we've seen their character development continue, Alhaitham's methods are working.

Kaveh is much better off now than he used to be.

This isn't to say that Alhaitham is the victim instead, just casually bearing the brunt of Kaveh's personal issues--Alhaitham has issues of his own that he's also working through! Alhaitham is a flawed character whose lack of social skills caused him to experience extreme isolation throughout his youth and into adulthood. Alhaitham claims he prefers this isolation, and yet abandons it instantly the moment he actually manages to form friendships during Sumeru's Archon Quest, now going out of his way to attend social gatherings and even feeling attached enough to Paimon to enroll her in school.

Alhaitham did cause Kaveh pain in the past by being too honest. He had to undergo character development to get to the point where he could understand that "being correct isn't the same as being right." He did have to learn to apologize and to rein in his temper, to "save the bickering for later," because he simply wasn't good at--and still clearly struggles with--communicating his actual feelings about a given situation. We're told this is such a ubiquitous flaw of his that basically everyone who has actually met him thinks Alhaitham is a heartless person, despite Alhaitham generally being laid-back, surprisingly nonjudgmental, and respectful of people even when they come from wildly different backgrounds, like his attempts to get Dehya to join the Akademiya.

To this day, it's obvious that Alhaitham still hasn't managed to make his actual care for Kaveh clear to Kaveh--and he seems mostly content to just wait for Kaveh to figure it out, rather than putting himself out there and (hilarious for the character who knows twenty languages) just using his words. Alhaitham is a little allergic to being forthright, and his relationship with Kaveh moves a glacial pace in part because of that.

So no, their banter didn't sound friendly at first because it wasn't friendly at first. It wasn't supposed to be! They're two flawed people whose personal hang-ups are very difficult for them to overcome, making it extremely hard for them to connect and communicate. They both hurt each other badly in the past, and they're still not over that pain because they've never managed to confront and properly address it. Both them are carrying some intense emotional baggage into their house and struggling to make life together work despite those weights they're carrying. They don't really know how to even be friends because the way they were close before was exactly what fell apart on them in the first place.

But making mistakes in the past, even if those mistakes caused pain, doesn't make a relationship toxic--it just makes it human.

(Okay, just a real world side note here that you can entirely skip if you don't want to hear me rambling... Maybe this is coming from the fact that I'm old, your local fandom mom for real for real, but I sometimes find myself genuinely concerned that younger people seem to really struggle with the concept of conflict. There seems to be this sentiment that relationships should be entirely free of fights, that you shouldn't have to reason with and critically examine your stances on conflicting moral perspectives, that you shouldn't be confronted with criticism--I think this extreme avoidance of conflict is at the heart of a lot of issues we're facing in fandom today, such as fans' inability to handle characters who do bad things or the war over whether shipping reflects people's morality. We operate on black-and-white instead of seeking dialogue and accepting nuance.

Embracing conflict as a core part of life involves recognizing the person facing you on the other side of the conflict, accepting that others' perspectives may differ from your own, making peace with the idea that people may say things you don't want to hear...

Somewhat hilariously, I think that the inclination to view Alhaitham and Kaveh's early relationship as toxic perfectly aligns with the core issue that Alhaitham and Kaveh themselves had--neither one of them could tolerate the discomfort brought on by an opposing ideology, the same way many people nowadays struggle to accept situations that are not perfect from the start, where mistakes are made and truths are sometimes spoken too harshly.

Just sayin'!)

[jgnico]

How do you feel about Gojo saying Sukuna was holding back and the people saying that this is out of character? Because to me it doesn’t seem out of character in the slightest considering how Sukuna didn’t actually go all out??? He didn’t use any of his techniques and relied on ten shadows. Which is great btw!! I think Sukuna using ten shadows is a nod to how ingenious Sukuna can get during battle and in general him solely relying on ten shadows doesn’t discredit him or anything it just shows that he is still got a lot up his arsenal. Also Gojo saying he put his whole soul and body into the fight is true he gave it his all and that’s all that matters idk why people are saying that the writing of this specific part is off because it was very clear that Sukuna was holding back on using his original form and techniques? I could be missing something idk

Short answer? I think it's silly. I've seen people call Gojo's scene in the airport outright character assassination and all that that tells me is that either a) they weren't following the fight very well or b) they don't give Gojo as a character the credit that his writing deserves.

As often as I rag on Gojo for fun, I do genuinely think that he's one of the best written characters in the manga, and his conversation with Geto, Nanami, and Haibara only adds to that. There's nothing wrong with Gojo acknowledging that Sukuna's strong, because he is. Likewise, it's not ridiculous for him to say that Sukuna didn't give the fight his all or that he might have lost even if Sukuna didn't have Ten Shadows. All of that is true and Gojo, out of anyone, would know that.

Long answer?

I think that a lot of the confusion over Gojo calling Sukuna strong comes from Gojo's confidence in the fight and people's own emotions toward Sukuna. We've all seen the fraud memes and Gojo did an expectational job showing his own fighting prowess during the second half of the fight, but a lot of people seem to be forgetting that Sukuna almost killed Gojo as soon as the fight started. Up until the fight flipped in Gojo's favor (after Sukuna was hit by Unlimited Void) Gojo was struggling. If Sukuna hadn't been holding back his other techniques to a) keep them a secret from spectators and b) ensure that Mahoraga adapted to Unlimited Void out of sight, it's very possible Gojo would have died after their first Domain Clash ended in Sukuna's favor.

Quick Explanation: In chapter 226, after Gojo's Domain breaks and he loses his technique for a time, but before he uses Simple Domain to save himself from Malevolent Shrine, Sukuna could have used his fire arrow in the same way he did against Mahoraga in Shibuya. With the amount of damage Gojo was taking at the time, we don't know if he would have been able to survive it, especially when all of his CE was being focused on healing the slashes Sukuna was dealing and likely couldn't have been spared to reinforce his body. (But once again, Sukuna was holding himself back, so neither us nor Gojo will ever know if he could have eneded their fight there.)

This is why I personally don't see anything wrong with Gojo being unsure if he could have beat Sukuna even without Ten Shadows.

But moving on to the less combat focused section of what I want to talk about. What was up with Gojo's confidence up until the literal end, only for him to doubt himself after the fact? I have two points for this one:

Gojo has to be strong for his students.

I touched on it in my response to one of your previous posts, (read: here) but I can't stress enough how Gojo's strength and, by extension, his confidence in his strength is for his students' sake. He teaches through his actions, but more importantly, he never shows them his own doubt.

The first time he fights Sukuna, he points out that Megumi is watching and, in his own words, "shows off."

Then, going into their actual fight in chapter 222, he looks serious in a way that we never really see from him. At least, up until the point where Yuuji reminds him that he and all his other students are there, that they're confident in him, and we see his entire demeanor going into the fight change. He's smiling; he's not worried in the least. He says, "Yeah, I got this," with a grin on his face, and that, more than it'll ever be for himself, was for his students.

There's another shift after the opening stage of their fight in chapter 224. What always stuck out to me from that chapter was Gojo noticing that their fight was being broadcasted. I won't go so far as to say he was less confident before that point or even that he wasn't trying as hard because that simply isn't true. But after he realizes that his students can see the fight as it's happening, Gojo's approach to fighting Sukuna changes almost entirely. Before, he was visibly having fun. Before, he was treating Sukuna as an equal to cut his teeth against. Was he getting on Sukuna's nerves intentionally, yes, but there was an aspect to it that felt more similar to how he spoke to Geto in their teenage years. Still antagonistic, that's just how his personality is, but not degrading in the way that he is later. (I'll expand on this thought in another post. For now, let's get back to my original point.)

After he spots Mei Mei's crows, Gojo never, not once, for the remainder of the fight expresses doubt in himself in any outward way.

We see frustration, we see anger, we see surprise, but never doubt. Never worry. And what does he say as soon as he get's the upper hand in the fight?

But why? Why is making sure that his students remain confident in him so important? Well, what's the answer to almost any question when it comes to Gojo's motivations?

Hidden Inventory and losing the person that mattered to him the most: Suguru Geto.

The same confidence that Gojo shows as an adult is what we see here, with one important distinction. He shares the place of being the strongest with Geto. "We're the strongest" isn't about them individually holding the title; it's about them together. They as a unit are the strongest. But here, Gojo tries to shoulder the burden of his fight against Toji alone while he sends Geto off with Riko and Kuroi. He seperates them and that duality of strength becomes weaker. Gojo loses, Riko dies, Geto loses, and they fail.

In the aftermath, Geto takes the guilt from that loss onto himself, and it only widens that separation into a chasm that Gojo is never able to cross. But we spend so much time talking about Geto's guilt over Hidden Inventory that I think we overlook Gojo's.

Even in a state where he'd feel nothing over killing a roomful of people, where he can't feel anger toward Toji over Riko, he feels like he messed up. He places blame on himself for their failure. Not just because he had lost but because Geto --someone that shared the position of being the Strongest with him-- expressed doubt in him shouldering so much of their mission at multiple points, only for Gojo to give him confidence in return and have that confidence ultimately be misplaced.

But isn't he making the same mistake with his students? Yes, and no.

Yes, in that he's giving them reassurance that is tragically (for lack of better word) misplaced, but no, in that they never expressed doubt in him. Not just because they aren't on his level when it comes to strength like Suguru was, but because he never gives them the chance to doubt him.

From the very beginning, when Yuuji first becomes his student, he makes sure that Yuuji doesn't have any doubt in him winning against Sukuna. And even when he's asked again at a time where none of his students are present, he thinks of this exchange with Yuuji. And his response to Kenjaku now was the same that it was to Yuuji.: "Nah, I'd win."

This isn't to say that Gojo didn't have faith in himself going into the fight or even through the majority of it. It would be at least disingenuous and at most outrageous for me to say that Gojo's confidence in himself was an act only for his students sake. What I'm saying with all of this is actually my second point in this post:

Gojo only expresses his true feelings to himself and....

I'm quickly running into the photo limit for this post so I'll be using quotes, but in chapter 233, we get, "Even though the opponent was the King of Curses, said to be the strongest in history, a thought nobody considered possible began to spread; Satoru Gojo could lose. Gojo himself was aware of that prospect. Yet, along with the signs of defeat came an undeniable feeling of satisfaction."

I've read through the entire fight multiple times now, and this is the only time that we see Gojo express doubt in himself. But instead of it feeling like a loss, as we'd expect, it's written as a positive. Gojo isn't upset at the idea that he might lose. He embraces it. As was stated both in chapter 233 and again in chapter 236, he's satisfied. Not just because he gave this fight everything that he had, but because him losing means that he'll return to the person that understood him --and the burden of being the strongest-- the best.

Much like Suguru couldn't smile from the bottom of his heart until his last moment with Gojo, Gojo couldn't be truly happy in a world where no one understood him. If Geto had been there with him, if Geto had been alive and by his side to share the burden and isolation of strength in the jujutsu world, he could have been truly happy with his life.

But that wasn't the reality that he lived in, nor was it something he could ever hope to accomplish.

Gojo's dream was to raise stronge allies, but that was never so that they could share the burden of strength with him. It was so that they could share it with each other. So that they never experienced the isolation of being strong alone the way that he did for the majority of his life. He wanted them to have their own Geto in each other.

It's not that he changed up his attitude regarding the fight and Sukuna after he died, but rather that his death brought him back to the person that he could finally (finally, after so long of being a pillar of strength rather than a person) express his true feelings to.

Or, to continue the quote from 233: "Being the strongest came with a sense of isolation. So the source of his present sense of fulfillment was..."

[black-butler-meta]

I'm really glad you made this blog, I've just gotten back into Black Butler after not being able to get my hands on the manga and only watching the anime + movies when I was in like middle school?? I've been having a hard time finding any blogs that catch my interest and also aren't s3baci3l weirdos so I'm happy to know this place exists, once I'm all caught up on the manga I will definitely be back because I have so many words in my brain about this series.

Hello! Welcome to the blog, I'm happy to have you here! I understand the discomfort around the sebaciel shippers; I'm glad this can be safe space for you within the fandom. Keep in mind, proshippers are welcome to interact with this blog as well, so long as they follow the rules I posted, so I may receive asks from them at times and engage in discussion with them. Just wanted to make that clear for you in case that's an issue.

Feel free to drop by as you make your way through the manga! I might update my blog profile to include where I'm at in the manga so others can come talk about it up to that point. Also I'm a sucker for spoilers, so some stuff I already know. But I'm waiting to read it myself before I comment on it.

[artbyblastweave]

The fact that they're doing another Marvel Swimsuit Special in the year 2025 is interesting because there's sort of a level of sleaze associated with that entire project, you know? And it's the kind of sleaze where if you poke it too hard it draws attention to how little daylight there's been historically between express cheesecake pinup art and the basic default costuming conventions of female superheroes, particularly in the 90s when those came out. And I do think they've been trying to tone that tendency down over the last 15 to twenty years, to varying levels of success, right? (Carol Danvers, for example, being a big aesthetic beneficiary of the shift away from ubiquitous leotards.) So I'm really curious what the behind-the-scenes exigence was for bringing it back, and what aesthetic the thing is going to pursue, how they're gonna thread that needle

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

Does Seaglass represent the OG Steven? The Steven WD!Steven didn't get a chance to become due yo how his story played out?

How he could have been born and raised among the gems. Doing silly things on the beach. Befriending even the oddest persons. Getting up to shenanigans.

Yeah, she absolutely does!

She kind of fills in that role that Steven would have. Not exactly, mind you. She's kinda like Canon Steven - but she's also kinda like Pink. (She's not pink, obviously, she's green, which is another sort of metaphor, but you get it). Except she's also obviously NOT Pink OR Steven.

As a Steven metaphor, she's not subjected to the Destiny of having to live up to someone greater that preceded her. She's just a little kid (she's technically not, but you get it) and she's growing up (metaphorically) surrounded by people who care for her and love her despite her slightly childish and annoying antics.

As a Pink metaphor, she's actually got what Pink never had - a creator who, despite his own flaws, DOES care for her and her autonomy. While they still mirror that relationship, and still go through the same ups and downs, the consequences and the outcomes of them not agreeing on things are very different to what White and Pink had.

And that is still being explored! CG is growing up (not physically) and getting to know herself better and realizing all the things she can do. It's going to be fun.

[alltimefail]

I posted this on my Twitter, but I thought I'd share it here, too! I isolated the audio from Charles' death scene to answer a commonly debated headcanon in fandom: did Charles go by something else when he was alive?

Well, at least in this video, I can confirm that all the "Friends" who killed him call him Charlie. 😭

I reckon that is what his peers, teachers, and, even his abusive father likely referred to him as... Charlie Rowland. Makes sense for a teenage boy in the 80s; particularly a sporty, alternative, charismatic boy like Charles who hung around "lad-types."

It's no wonder he flinched when Brad/Hunter called him Charlie Boy. This show really doesn't miss a single detail. It's brilliant and intentional in every single thing it does.

FUCK it deserves a season 2! It's so well-written and in its first season. *Chef's kiss* from beginning to end.