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Mary Howitt, The Spider and the Fly

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yeah.gif

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🕷⛓ wedding night be like

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Something about how both Chrollo and Kurapika have assumed precise and self defining roles to abide to no matter what

"I don't know who I am, so I will wholeheartedly and completely devote myself to my duty and responsibilities and I will make them the basis upon which my identity is founded" / "I know exactly who I am and I cannot allow myself anything but that person, so I will do my best not to be swayed in my objectives"

And yet neither of them feels imprisoned by these roles. Chrollo wants to find the key to understand himself, but he doesn't intend to reject his position as the leader of the phantom troupe to do so. Kurapika's fueled by anger and guilt and he knows his actions won't grant him any true solace, but his path is something he chose entirely on his own, and he's willing to see it through to the end

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The sheer romance of being so tormented by the passing of someone important to you, one of the very, very few people important to you, that you decide to challenge time and space, even life and death, at the risk of your own safety to see them again

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Physically stronger than half the troupe and cool af. Certified girlboss

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It's the way Kurapika is the only person capable of understanding Chrollo's loss, his anger, and his desire to protect his loved ones while also being the same person who isolated him from said loved ones and having the power to do so again if he so pleased, and if he had the chance, for me...

I feel like some people really underestimate Kurapika. When I stumble across talk about how krkr is abusive and whatnot, it's always Chrollo this, Chrollo that... And fine, let's entertain the thought of their relationship being "abusive" because of... past murder of family and friends, sure... Have you then forgotten about "now you'll know what it feels like to lose your family"?

Physically? Ok, maybe Chrollo would be able to overpower him (though with nen and all you can never be sure), and he certainly knows what to say to get under his skin, as during the car scene he easily figured him out and was able to provoke him. Still... not only is Kurapika no less strong or cunning than him (not that this is what abuse comes down to, but y'know. Fandom™), but he also has chain jail and judgement chain on his side, and if he managed to successfully use them Chrollo wouldn't be able to do anything, again as we've seen from everything that happened in York New.

Kurapika doesn't enjoy inflicting pain on others - quite the contrary, in fact - but he's willing to suppress his own feelings for a greater cause... and, while that cause at the moment is limited to finding the scarlet eyes, his initial objective was to eliminate the phantom troupe as well. Due to the nature of the spider and because he was shocked to see that they are human too he's chosen to neglect this one aspect of his quest for the moment, but the fact remains that he's not beyond killing, and he's not beyond taking advantage of people.

In the context of krkr, I don't think he'd ever be capable of forgiving Chrollo, and neither would Chrollo blame him for it. And to go back to my initial point, since people love to bring up power imbalances so much, I feel like Kurapika would actually have the upper hand under this point of view. Because, despite knowing what it's like to have your loved ones being taken away from you, he wouldn't owe Chrollo neither forgiveness nor pity, and he'd actually have the power to deprive him of any form of sympathy or comfort. By actively refusing to give him any, by using judgement chain again to separate him from the remaining spiders, you name it. Because in a way it'd feel like justice: the cause of all his trauma and pain would be going through the same experience he had been put through. And again, he really wouldn't owe Chrollo anything.

But Kurapika doesn't find any pleasure in other people's pain. When he was fooled into thinking that some spiders had died he didn't feel any satisfaction. Only emptiness, because he had made it his objective to destroy the Phantom Troupe and what was he to do after that? He buried Uvogin after having killed him, he emphasized with Pakunoda's desire to save Chrollo. He hasn't killed anyone else since then, but he still feels that he's losing parts of himself because of the things he has to do to get the eyes of his people back.

A part of him would probably feel that Chrollo deserves to suffer the loss of his loved ones, like he did in York New. But if even the feelings of someone he hated managed to resonate with him at that time, then how could he be completely satisfied, or happy, to see someone he has grown to love suffer?

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Izaya/izashin angst propaganda on this fine day but the fact that Shinra is literally and self admittedly who made Izaya become how he is, the fact that the thought of Shinra alone is the one thing that manages to get through him and through all the barriers he has built around his heart, the fact that just the thought of upsetting Shinra upset him to the point he physically lashed out and hurt himself because he couldn't handle how it made him feel, the fact that Shinra is the only person he can consider a friend despite how much he tries to suppress his true feelings like he always does and think of him as just another one of the humans he says he loves when in reality said indiscriminate love is only a way for him to detach himself from other people in order not to get hurt

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I don't think Chrollo would ever care or want to atone for his actions, not even if he managed to find his own answer to the question "how can you kill people who have nothing to do with you?". So far we've seen that anyone who isn't among his circle of companions and loved ones is just... completely irrelevant to him, so how could he bother with atonement if he doesn't care? How could it even cross his mind?

In the context of krkr, I can see (and even love the prospect of) him being affected - or rather, growing to be affected - by Kurapika's trauma, though not out regret for his actions per se, but because he is the cause of said trauma. Not intentionally, because the killing of kurta clan wasn't a way for him to purposely hurt Kurapika, but he's the direct cause no less. To me it's much more of an "I'm sorry that my actions have hurt you" than an "I'm sorry that I've hurt people, and that you're one of them". In this sense, the prospect of him helping Kurapika collect the scarlet eyes reads more like an apology to Kurapika himself than to the people he's tortured and killed to me.

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They (Shizuo) just hate to see a gaslight gatekeep girlboss (Izaya) winning

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Nobody say anything I'm thinking about Kurapika canonicaly being referred to as "half angel, half death bringer" and I'm thinking about Chrollo representing both the devil and death itself

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Logical brain says Theta wanted to kill herself after having killed Tserriednich because otherwise she would have suffered terrible consequences and probably because the part of her that was genuinely amazed by his capabilities pushed her to wanting to atone for his murder that way, irrational monkey brain says lover's suicide

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Imagine one moment you're with your friends and the next you're being shoved in a car by a stranger and you have no idea what the hell is happening but you look sideways to see what your kidnapper looks like and you end up staring at them for so long and so intently that the first words they speak to you are "what are you looking at?", like, I'd be soooo embarrassed

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Togashi really teased a torture scene and then peace signed-disappeared huh -_-

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Something about Tserriednich having been shown to mainly torture and kill women while also giving a single woman authority over all her colleagues