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wait i'm laughing jdnsjdj shut up rafayel 😭😭😭

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This part hit me like a ton of bricks. Imagine someone loving you so much that even the smallest glimpse of you makes them smile 😭

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Me as an artist & writer

when drawing requires you to draw

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friends or friend? // i want you, mitski

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AMEN AMEN

Bro is aro you cannot convince me otherwise. Y'all can ship him, idc, but to ME bro is too busy fishing and committing crimes to date

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whos your favorite version of snufkin?

um.. I don't know, hard to pick..

I guess 90's snufkin is okay...

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everyone shut up i have an announcement to make

….

that is all.

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I really loved the part in Jennifer's Body when she killed the goth guy because of what it represents. Needy having a life outside of Jennifer. Jennifer's the cool one. Jennifer's the hot one. Jennifer's the one all the boys want. Yeah the goth kid wants to get with her obviously he does, but he's not her types so she shows no interest in him. When Needy tells her he's a good guy she doesn't know that she's leading him to an early grave. The movie leads you to believe that Needy is Jennifer's dorky sidekick because that's how Needy sees herself. Ask yourself this though who have you seen Jennifer interact with other than guys who want to sleep with her and the guys who used her as a human sacrifice. It's just Needy isn't it. Needy who Jennifer doesn't allow to show cleavage. Needy who she plays boyfriend girlfriend with.

When Jennifer walks into Needy room and she asks if they've been "porking" it's framed as a joke, but she's dying to know. Jennifer tolerates Chip's proximity to Needy for most of the movie because she doesn't view him as a threat, but when he has sex with Needy all of that changed. He has crossed a threshold with Needy that Jennifer hadn't. Chip indulged in what Jennifer had always denied herself, and just like that he's on the menu.

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MEGAN FOX and AMANDA SEYFRIED as JENNIFER CHECK and NEEDY LESNICKI

JENNIFER'S BODY (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama

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"Don't look"

When I was writing my last post about Yashiro's issues with emotional intimacy, I also briefly mentioned that I see Yashiro's attempts at hiding his face as a sign of his struggle with emotional intimacy. He doesn’t want Doumeki to look at him because he feels vulnerable in that situation. Feeling safe and being able to be vulnerable in front of the other person is a key element of emotional intimacy and clearly Yashiro doesn’t feel safe enough (anymore) to be vulnerable in Doumeki's presence. However, it’s interesting to consider the contrasts in how Yashiro reacts to someone's gaze in different situations.

When Doumeki was still impotent and Yashiro would perform orally on him, Yashiro even encouraged Doumeki to look down on him, saying that it turned him on, i.e. chapter 1:

This is not surprising because Yashiro doesn't seem to have an issue with facing his partners during intercourse in general. We see this in a lot of flashbacks from his days before he joined the Yakuza, in one of the first chapters with Ryuuzaki or even in one of the latest chapters when he was about to have intercourse with Kido. In this context let’s consider how these people see Yashiro and how he feels about it. In one of my previous posts, „Pity… and Doumeki’s eyes“, I talked about how Yashiro gets off of people's disdain for him and can’t stand it when people pity him. This is a quote from that post:

One of the reasons as to why Yashiro felt drawn to the Yakuza was the fact that they didn't take pity on him, they hated him or looked down on him. He wasn't able to accept the pity but he was able to accept being looked down upon.

Considering the topic of emotional intimacy, I think it's interesting to take another look at the question of why Yashiro enjoys disdain for him but can’t accept pity. Presumably Yashiro enjoys the disdain or even disgust in peoples eyes because that's how he sees himself (depraved, inadequate, broken beyond repair, etc.) but I think another aspect which might come into play here is the fact that disdain is void of any emotional warmth or connection. You instinctively keep an emotional distance to something or someone you despise. Pity, on the other hand, is an emotion that necessitates a certain level of empathy and therefore emotional openness towards the other person. Feeling pity means you care, even if it's only on a superficial level; you actually look at the person and put yourself into their shoes. To some degree it already establishes an emotional connection with the other person. It's one step towards affection. It's not surprising that Yashiro who cannot accept love at all struggles with being the recipient of such an emotion because, on the surface, he doesn't want to be seen as a person, in the sense that he doesn't want people to care because he believes that he doesn't deserve love and affection because the only attention he ever received growing up was of a sexual nature.

To come back to the fact that Yashiro encouraged Doumeki to look down at him when he was performing orally on him. I think this might be the case because, at that point, for Yashiro any sexual act is completely disconnected from any level of emotional intimacy. We are shown that whenever anyone began to actually care about Yashiro as a person it made him feel sick and he did everything he could to get away. He couldn't bear the affection. However, he doesn't mind Ryuuzaki or the others looking at him because it's purely physical. He doesn't care about them as a person and they don't care about him either (or as for Ryuuzaki; Yashiro is led to believe that Ryuuzaki doesn’t care about him). He doesn't feel vulnerable in those situations at all because there are no emotions involved it’s simply „putting it in someone’s hole until you shoot“, that’s how Yashiro put it in chapter 23. His words reflect the idea that at that point that in Yashiro’s mind intercourse is completely detached from any emotions:

In the beginning he didn’t feel vulnerable with Doumeki either, because at that point there were no emotions involved yet. Yashiro felt physically attracted to Doumeki and vice versa but they didn’t develop any feeling for each other yet which is why he didn't mind him looking at him.

In contrast to how Yashiro reacted to Doumeki’s gaze in a sexual context his reaction was different in other situations – whenever Doumeki looked at his face for too long, Yashiro would reprehend him for staring at him. This contrast becomes already apparent in the first chapter because this is what happens after Yashiro was done with the bj and they had talked a bit:

Why is his reaction so different to Doumeki looking at him? I’d argue because Yashiro is opening up to Doumeki when their interaction isn't sexual. When they are alone and he's laying in Doumeki's lap or Doumeki is driving him somewhere, he's interacting with Doumeki on an emotional level. Those are the moments when they are opening up to each other and Yashiro allows Doumeki to get to know him as a person. This openness leaves him a lot more vulnerable and whenever Doumeki reaches too far into his soul, like asking whether it was Kageyama who Yashiro was in love with as in chapter 4, Yashiro shuts down and acts upset:

He’s a lot more self-conscious in those situations and is more uneasy with Doumeki's gaze because when he’s sharing his thoughts and experiences he’s not merely a sexual object but an actual person with feelings and desires that go beyond sexual desires and pleasure. He probably feels safe enough to share parts of his inner world with Doumeki in those situations because of Doumeki’s impotence and because he feels in full control of the situation.

As long as Doumeki didn’t show any sexual desire for him, Yashiro was able to let him in, even though there were limits. However, the more this emotional connection that he shared with Doumeki became intertwined with a sexual intimacy between them, the more uneasy Yashiro became with their relationship and it hit a breaking point during their first intercourse. Their conversations in chapter 22 and 33 are very interesting in that respect but I will take a closer look at those in a later post.

In conclusion, after the time-skip Yashiro may not be consciously aware of Doumeki's feelings for him but he's aware of his own feelings and their emotional connection. Sex with Doumeki isn't purely physical for him regardless of whether Doumeki has feelings for him or not. Yashiro feels vulnerable because he's already involved on an emotional level and this shows in the way he reacts to Doumeki looking at him. Tragically, Yashiro isn’t able to open up to Doumeki anymore but he can’t bear to lose him again either, so all he is left with is a physical relationship while remaining closed off to Doumeki emotionally.

Phew 😮‍💨 Somehow I really struggled to get this together... I kept thinking about other aspects that relate to this topic and kept getting off track. In the end I had to exclude a lot in order to keep it concise – it's a testament to how deep and complex this manga is ☺️ Therefore, I have plenty more things to write about until the next chapter comes out 😅

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the lovers

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its the month!!!

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getting bored of tumblr so I get off tumblr and open tumblr

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