#also me: you didnt connect shit

[help-is-on-the-way]

Now that i've listened to Coco Moon nonstop for like 3 weeks, i kinda feel like rambling. I cant keep my thoughts contained.

I like connecting songs to one another. I wanna point out something that stood out to me and i havent been able to get it off my mind since.

In Vitamin Sea, adam says "I ain't concerned if i sunburn, i'll catch all the rays i can". And then 1 song later the blonde girl in Learn How to Surf says "Kick up the sand cause your tan proves you lived through the burn". And, like, i know adam has a TON of ocean/water themed songs, and sunburns are obviously common in the beach. But i just can't help but think of Sunburn (the song). Cause, uh, duh.

It's actually super cool to think about, comparing the quotes side by side, plus adding Sunburn's very own chorus of "We both put our sunblock on / Played on the beach / And vowed that we'd live and we'd learn / But she got a tan and i got a sunburn". Especially since, to me, Sunburn has always been about a relationship that reached its end, and the persona adam sings through seems to have gotten the "bad end of the stick". He got sunburned, hurt, stuck to all those memories he can't let go, while the girl, tanned, with a heartstopper of smile, is able to move on.

And it's super interesting how easily it all ties together. She got a tan and I got a sunburn. I aint concerned if i sunburn. Cause your tan proves you lived through the burn.

Idk id probably have a more eloquent conclusion to this if i actually knew how to express my thoughts, but yeah. Its cool to me. It's like a character development, if you assume those three quotes are from the same persona. At some point the boy stopped being scared of getting sunburned, of putting himself out there. An experience is an experience, let it be good or bad, and sometimes the consequences won't matter that much. And he's willing to go through it. He's tanning, after all the sunburns. I think it's very fitting, also, considering how much more confident adam has been presenting himself in his songs lately.

[transhades]

On my fourth relisten and I just thought of something cool — In MAG 38 (Lost and Found), the statement giver's husband's gets eaten (or, more accurately, erased) by the Spiral vase. His name was David, and the statement giver was at some point afraid that David was gaslighting him, since he kept telling him all the disappearing things had never existed in the first place (due to the effect of the vase), and I just found it extremely cool that in the apocalypse in MAG 177 (Wonderland), Doctor David is part of a Spiral domain that deals in gaslighting the victims within it. Again, it's coincidental, but IT'S COOL NONETHELESS

[lunarneo]

Poor Neo- "Wait a Second...."

[the-nihilistic-rhapsodaire]

OK, see, here's the thing:

I'm fine with Rei and Kazuki being friends only. That's absolutely fine! A family doesn't need to have two parents that have romantic feelings for each other! And also, we need more queerplatonic relationships and platonic life partner representation in media anyways! So, screw romance!

But then. The mf show pulls this sh*t on me:

LIKE, KAZUKI, MY DUDE WHY YOU HAVE THAT LOOK IN YOUR EYES HUH?

That scene is the definition of "and his gaze softened" YOU CAN'T TELL ME OTHERWISE

P.A. WORKS WHY YOU GOTTA DO THIS TO MEEEEE

[redrobin-detective]

Me watching any media that takes place in the hospital and aggressively pointing out equipment I use and stuff I do. Bonus points is they're totally doing it wrong.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

@real-oddity YOUR WISH IS MY COMMAND ok before i wordspill, keep in mind that this is all pure assumption and speculation cobbled together from looking at the map and tidbits i hope i'm remembering correctly. take all of it with a Hefty grain of salt

so.

i think that Julie's character arc might be about societal norms, the pressure of expectation, and how those conflict with the self. because i think the puppet show intended for her to be Wally's love interest - but that's not what either her or Wally want.

STAY WITH ME I HAVE EVIDENCE. first, lets look at Julie's house:

all of the blatant heart decoration, from her tree to the windows to the hedges and even the welcome mat. no other building has heart imagery, and especially none this heavy handed. it just screams Love Interest to me.

like if i was designing a house for a love interest character for a children's puppet show in the show's time period, i'd go ham on it. children's shows are rarely subtle. and more often than not in shows, especially in older ones, the "main character" (in this case, Wally) always has a love interest, and that love interest is always blatant. usually the Moment they appear onscreen, the viewer goes "oh, ok, thats the love interest."

not only that, but look at the windows. to me, they look a lot like eyes - reminiscent of Home. The way the curtains fall, the placement, even the structures under the sills looks like eye-bags. Julie's house is also the only house other than Home to only have one floor, not two. and then there's the fact that she has no flowers outside her house, but she has white daisy decorations - mimicking the white daisy flowerbeds flanking Home's door.

"but why do you think that's not what she or Wally wants" so glad you asked. lets start with Wally:

for one, there's the smiley-face balloon featured in the above image, tied to the swingset. two heart-shaped balloons colored red and blue are on either sides of it. as soon as i saw the balloon, i went Oh, that looks like Wally. but when have you ever seen a smiley-face with closed eyes? when does Wally close his eyes - he loves eye contact! to me, it seems indicative of Wally ignoring or avoiding the hearts.

that, and - now this part is definitely a stretch - the trees behind Home are set up in a strange way to me. Julie's house gives the appearance of "staring" directly at Home. but the trees behind Home are hiding it from the house's view.

(also, just imo, Wally doesn't seem very romance-oriented to me. he just gives off huge aromantic vibes. i could be completely off the mark and might be proven completely wrong <3 i probably am <3)

now here's why i think Julie is also not on board with this:

one, it's interesting to me that Julie's house has a lot of heart symbolism, but her character design doesn't. Wally has hearts on the soles of his shoes, but those have been explicitly linked to Barnaby's heart-shaped paw pads.

Julie's character design and symbolism is all about flowers instead of hearts. Which ties to her being in a best-friendship with Frank, a distinctly platonic relationship.

now, an argument could be made that the show might've wanted her to be Frank's love interest, or have had a Who Will She Choose, Frank Or Wally subplot. what backs this is her being close to Frank (the platonic nature of their relationship could've been a deviation from the "script" due to our lovely fruity Frank Frankly), and the fact that outside of Wally, Frank is the only other neighbor to have a white daisy growing in his "yard". though that could just be to depict his closeness with her - like Barnaby having paint supplies outside his house despite not being a painter like his bestie.

(if you want to read a dissection of neighborhood flowers and their symbolism, here's a post all about it)

also, it just occurred to me - the only design thing she has in common with Wally is her little tie thing. it's very reminiscent of Wally's ascot. but it's also Very vaguely similar to Frank's bowtie. it just stands out - Sally doesn't have any neck accessory (that we can see), Poppy has her shawl, and everyone else has ties. im stretching again. this is a yoga post

and again, despite her house being heart-infested, nowhere in Julie's canon images (outside of the Valentine's Day cards), her character description, or pretty much anything relate to romance. she's centered around friendship and fun.

all in all, it gives the vibe of the show wanting her to be a love interest, but Julie either ignoring it or actively going against it.

obviously something like that would influence her character arc, if not be a big part of it. then - HOLD ONTO YOUR GRAIN OF SALT HERE, FELLAS, I COULD BE MISREMEMBERING - there's the thing Clown said about homophobia being a... not quite theme, im missing the word rn, but it'll be a factor. which makes sense, this is a cast of mostly queer characters from a late 1960s / early 1970s kid's show.

the obvious target for any homophobia, internalized or otherwise, would be Frank & Eddie. but they're not the only gay folks around. Julie (i believe) has been stated to be bi, Poppy is a lesbian, and i'll eat my cats if Sally isn't some flavor of gay.

so i think it's entirely possible that Julie might get in on that storytelling element. if the show wants her to be a love interest, maybe she is. she's just interested in the wrong person (looks intensely at Sally)

all in all, i think she's going to have an arc about resisting the role chosen for her and her struggling with that. and i think it's going to be a Big struggle. i think she might make some Horrible mistakes while grappling with her inner conflict bc of the intense effect expectation/pressure have on a person's mind

(which might uh. which might tie into the flower symbolism i rambled about yesterday, but that's so much of a stretch that it's practically molecular. still. im Thinking.)

[lord-squiggletits]

Speaking of Tyrest. A lot of people forget that he treated Pharma with absolute disdain, not only using him as a test subject for a clearly painful mass murder machine, but talking to Pharma like he saw him as nothing but some henchman to order around that was nothing more than a 'diseased cripple' if Tyrest hadn't come to rescue him.

Like it really is an interesting background dynamic with some curious implications, but when you look at fandom posts from around that issue/the years after, for some reason people just saw "Pharma worked with Tyrest" and concluded Pharma is a card carrying bigot ksjfnskxkd. Like yeah Pharma didn't do anything to stop Tyrest but it seems his main beef with the Autobots was with Ratchet in particular and maybe a general disdain for his ex-comrades. As well as continuing to hate Decepticons which like, not even the "good Autobots" are immune to (even in Pharma's introduction, First Aid says in his journal something like "yeah we all hate Decepticons, but Pharma REALLY hates them"). And despite what fandom likes to construe there's really no evidence in IDW1 that Autobots and Decepticons are different "races" or "types" of Cybertronians, so Pharma hating Decepticons really isn't a bigotry/robot racism thing. And instead probably has something to do with, idk, the 4 million year long galaxy-spanning blood feud war, or maybe being blackmailed and tortured into insanity by the Biggest and Most Decepticon-y of Decepticons.

Tyrest treated Pharma like trash, the other Decepticons working for Tyrest (how come no one ever brings that up btw) also hated him, so if anything it seems that Pharma was more of a rogue element only staying with Tyrest bc he was his best option and probably had no way to even escape.

I'm glad that at least in recent years the fandom has acquired a keen reading eye and good taste to finally recognize Pharma as the (accidentally) complex character he is instead of making him some posh, racist Starscream clone SHSJDGSGDH

[doctorweebmd]

a really nice comment on 'nothing else fills' made me actually reread it for like, the first time in its entirety and.

wow. its... actually really good. like. i teared up multiple times and i'm the one that wrote it. why was i so mean to myself about it.

[hauntingblue]

Try not to make fights between two women look homoerotic challenge level impossible

[skrunksthatwunk]

yakuza: dead souls - american vibes, bigass guns, and why zombies are super weird to have in ryu ga gotoku thematically/ideologically speaking

so i've been playing dead souls recently (hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah) and although i'm having the time of my life with it, there was something about it that kinda felt off to me, and i think i've figured out what it was, but i'm gonna have to walk you through a bit of my thought process to get there.

my first instinct was that it felt... american? and upon further examination i think that boils down to a couple of things:

everyone suddenly has lots of guns and also way way bigger guns

high emphasis on individual heroism (this itself is quite typical for rgg, but it manifests differently here; more on that in a bit)

military/government incompetence, which must be solved by the right individuals having the biggest and bestest guns

[for the sake of transparency i will note that my experience with zombie media is pretty limited and skews american (and i myself am american), so that may create bias. however, the 'this feels american to me' instinct is a rare one for me even in genres where i have seen little/no non-american media, so i think the fact that it did occur to me is notable. what about dead souls triggered that response when little else has? that's why i examined it and, truthfully, i think there's merit in the idea itself.]

the first point is pretty self-explanatory. america's got more guns than it does people, and its gun worship is infamous. japan's ban on guns (aided by its being an island state) means there's far fewer guns in the country, as well as far fewer people with guns (and likely far fewer guns per gun owner, excepting arms dealers/smugglers) than somewhere without such a ban. obviously, there are guns anyway. due to their illegality they are clustered within the criminal population, which explains their presence within organized crime within the series. very few guns will be sitting around in the homes of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

and yet, when the zombie outbreak hits kamurocho, plenty of civilians suddenly have access to quite an arsenal. everyone has the knowledge they need to aim, fire, and reload smoothly and quickly; ammo is infinite for certain guns. characters we've never seen using firearms before suddenly have shotguns under their couches (looking at you, majima). it's not only very different from reality, it's very different from guns' place within the series up until this point, when they were limited weapons used primarily by the enemy.

and they're making a zombie shooter, so of course they would have to do this. it has to be unrealistic to be simultaneously in this setting and in this genre, in the same way that yakuza solving their problems with bareback fistfights instead of guns is itself both unrealistic and necessary to being the kinds of games rgg are.

my point is that this is a kind of focus on and valorization of gun ownership and competency unusual for the series and setting. further, it serves as an argument for why an armed, competent populace is crucial typical in american media.

which brings us to the third point (we'll get to 2 in a minute). guns are often marketed as self-defense weapons. the implication is that the government's defense of the individual (via law enforcement or the military, but particularly the former), are insufficient. this is objectively true. if someone pulls a gun on you at the gas station, will a cop manifest out of thin air to intercede? no. that's impossible. but if you have a gun, or if some bystander has a gun, you or they may be able to do something with that gun to stop the armed person. thus, there is an undeniable gap in the effective immediacy of such responses.

many gun advocates also point to the incompetence or insufficiency of law enforcement, even when they are present to stop an armed aggressor. the fact that law enforcement do not have a 100% success rate in protecting the citizenry is also objectively true.

so, when you are in danger, arming yourself increases your chances of being able to put down (or at least take armed action against) a present or potential threat. whether it is viewed it as a supplement to or a replacement for law enforcement, it is meant to make up for the shortcomings of the government's ability to completely protect all its citizens. it's a safety net for state failure.

back to dead souls. rgg has always centered political corruption in its stories, including politicians, the police, and sometimes even the military, though usually the former two. sometimes this is treated sympathetically (i.e. tanimura, a dirty cop, whose dirty-cop-ness allows him to work outside/against the law to help disadvantaged people, not unlike how kiryu views being a yakuza), and other times it's simply a matter of greed or lust for power (i.e. jingu).

however, something that's almost never touched on so clearly is government incompetence. when the government fails to help people or hurts them or does corrupt things, it's usually due to a competent, malicious bad apple who is removed from power by the end of the game. this implies holes in the system because it keeps happening all the time, but that's on a series-wide scale, a pattern ignored by the series in favor of the individual game solution of "this guy's gone now :) yay".

but in dead souls, the SDF's barracades fall, their men are killed, they are unable to help protect the people outside or inside the quarantine zone. they are weak in a way the government usually isn't in these games. and who is stronger than them? our individual good guys with guns. so we need to be armed because the government is weak and can't protect us. boom. america.

returning to point 2, i'd like to say that dead souls is not particularly more individualistic than any of the other games in the series (other than, perhaps, y7). rgg is an incredibly individualistic series, actually. its protagonists are usually men who defy, oppose, and skirt around the law as a way of helping others and doing what is truly right (with a few exceptions, like shinada and haruka). the romanticized view of the yakuza as a force for helping the community in the face of government incompetence is a real one, and one that tends to manifest itself most in kiryu and how the series treats him. it shows us yakuza who aren't willing to kill, yakuza who cry about honor and justice and humanity and brotherhood, yakuza who never dip their hands into less palatable crimes, or only do with intense regret (and only ever as part of their backstory). the beat-em-up style emphasizes this as well. i mean, what's more individualistic than a one-man army?

put more clearly, this series is about men defying legal and social laws and expectations to live in a way that feels right to them, and about making themselves strong enough to combat those who would get in their way. the individual is placed before the society in importance, (though generally in a way that benefits the community, because they are good guys who want to use that agency and power for good).

all of this is true in dead souls as well, technically. those who live on the outskirts of society are the ones who actually save the day, and the ones who go in there and save people rather than just walling them off and pretending like they don't exist. they have the guns, which are illegal and mark them as criminals, but this broken law is what gives them the power to save themselves when the government will not, and to save their community if they so choose.

where dead souls differs is in the nature of that strength.

rgg places a lot of emphasis on self-improvement, both of one's body and of one's character. do both of these, and you will be strong enough to back up your ambitions. what allows someone to carve their own path in life is the ability to put down ideological and physical resistance by having resolve and the ability to tiger drop whoever won't be swayed by your impassioned speeches. you make yourself a weapon. you make yourself strong. in dead souls, that strength comes from an external, material possession. strength is something you buy (or that you take from someone else). who is able to survive the apocalypse comes not from the heart, nor from rigorous training, but from who has the most, the biggest, and the most bestest guns. it's an intersection of capitalism, militarization, and individualism. simply, deeply american.

[when i was talking myself through this a few days ago, i spent a lot more time on the capitalism + individualism stuff, but i think i'll keep this moving. consider this aside the intermission]

dead souls also differs for a few other interlocking reasons. it can be described with this equation:

zombification of enemies + lethality of guns = loss of emphasis on redemption

if your best friend turned into a zombie, could you shoot them? or your child? or your lover? it's a common trope, but it's a damn good one. watching your family, your neighbors, your town, everyone turn into a husk of themselves, something that looks like them but cannot be reached, is deeply tragic. it's even more tragic when these husks are trying to kill you. unable to be reasoned with and unable to be cured, you must incapacitate them before someone innocent is hurt--or hurt, then themselves made dangerous; each loss adds to the number of threats surrounding you. your life is seen as more valuable than that of your zombified friend, not only because the zombie is attacking you and it's self defense, but because they are no longer a person to you. to be a zombie is to no longer be human; zombification is dehumanization.

and so in a series so focused on connection with one's community, on saving innocent civilians, often on saving kamurocho specifically, one would expect similar tropes to occur. even if one's friends aren't turned, perhaps the cashier at poppo you chat with sometimes is. it's the destruction of that community and of the members one has tertiary relationships with that i expect would occur most within a kamurocho zombie story, since they are likely unwilling to axe anyone more important than that, even if dead souls isn't canon. i'd especially expect to see that in the beginning, before the need to kill zombies rather than contain or redeem them becomes apparent.

this does not happen.

i cannot speak for the entire game, but i can speak of gameplay choices that affect this, and ones i think will not be subverted throughout, even if they are somewhat contradicted by plot events i am presently unaware of.

kamurocho is not a community to protect, nor is it filled with your fellows. it is a playground filled with infinitely respawning, infinitely mow-downable, infinitely disposable zombies. you are meant and encouraged to kill them by the thousands, and never to hesitate or consider whether they may be cured or who may be mourning them. who may be unable to identify their loved one because you were trying to reach a headshot goal from hasegawa. you are not meant to consider them as human, nor beings that were once human, nor beings that could be human again, in the eyes of the zombie shooter. they are merely bodies, targets, and obstacles.

the zombies are contrasted with the true humans, those barricading themselves within the quarantine zone or those living in ignorance outside it. humans are meant to be saved, zombies are meant to be killed. the player character is the only one who can truly help with either of these goals, because the other humans are cowardly, ignorant, or unarmed/helpless. you must be their savior. to be a savior is to eliminate zombies, who are less than human.

the black and white nature of this is also emphasized by another gameplay characteristic: the lack of street encounters. when you traverse the peaceful parts of kamurocho, you are never attacked. you are also never directly attacked by the humans within the quarantine zone. kamurocho feels very different without its muggers and hooligans, but it's because this is a zombie shooter, not a beat-em-up. in a normal rgg title, you'd subdue threats by punching, kicking, and throwing them. you'd use your body in (supposedly) nonlethal ways. dead souls does not have a combat system meant for civilians. you have your guns. you subdue threats by shooting them, preferably lethally. the game doesn't want you to do that to humans, so you never fight humans. this furthers the black and white divide between the salvation-worthy, noble humans and the death-worthy, worthless zombies. combat is only lethal, and only used against the inherent other.

this leads me to the part of dead souls i find most conflicting with the ethos of rgg broadly, and perhaps its greatest ideological/thematic failing.

because the enemy are incurable, dangerous, and inhuman, you must kill them to protect yourself and others, others who are still human. humanity is something that is lost or preserved, but never regained. once someone's gone, they're gone, and you not only must kill them, it is your duty and your right to kill them. you should kill them.

in dead souls, there is no redeeming the enemy.

and that's a big problem.

rgg is about a lot of things, but a key one is the ability of people to change for the better. its most memorable, beloved villains are those who see the light by the end and change their wicked ways (usually through some form of redemptive suicide, though that's another essay in itself). its pantheon of characters is full of those who come from questionable backgrounds struggling to be the best people they can be, to live as themselves authentically and compassionately. it's about the good and the love you can find in the moral and legal gray zones of life/society, and the potential/capacity for good all of us have, no matter how far we may have fallen. it is a hopeful series. it is a merciful series.

this is something bolstered by its gameplay. countless substories are resolved by punching a lesson into someone until they improve their behavior, either out of fear or genuine remorse/development. the games don't just discourage killing your enemies, they don't allow you to (yes, we've all seen the "kiryu hasn't killed anybody? umm. look at this heat action" stuff before, and while they've got a point, i believe it's the narrative's intent that none of this is actually lethal, based on how laxly it treats certain plot injuries (cough cough. y7 bartender) and the actual concept of taking a life, the gravity it is given by the text, particularly when it comes to characters crossing that threshold into someone who has killed. explicit killing is not an option open to you, even when you're being attacked by dozens and dozens of armed men. conflicts are resolved by simply beating up enough guys in this nonlethal manner.

but dead souls is a shooter. to avoid conflict with the series' moral qualms about letting its characters kill, the enemies cannot be human. furthermore, the zombie shooter genre can only fit within the series if its zombies are completely inhuman. this means their pasts as humans cannot be acknowledged, nor the possibility of a cure, nor the characters' own potential conflicts about killing them; or, at least, not in a way that impedes their or the player's ability to gun them down afterwards.

if you can't kill humans in your series, then it cannot be possible to save (in this case, rehumanize) zombies. this is especially true in a game where you are unable to fight humans, and thus human lives are universally more valuable than zombie lives. because if you kill a zombie that can be cured, you are, in a way, killing a human.

and so, in a series where you should always assume your enemies (and everyone, for that matter) are capable of reason, compassion, change, and redemption, and where they are always worth that effort, even if they reject it in the end, dead souls' enemies are irredeemable and only worth swift, stylish slaughter. there are only good guys and bad guys. good guys must be protected, lest they be turned irreversibly into bad guys. good guys are only protected by killing bad guys, and the only way to save good guys is to kill every last one of the bad guys. do not spare them, and do not ask whether or not it's right. only kill.

i love dead souls. it's a silly game. i like seeing daigo in decoy-drag and majima gleefully cartwheeling his way through zombies and ryuji with his giant gun arm prosthetic. it's fun. but when i was trying to figure out what felt off about it to me, one of the words that came to mind (besides american) was indulgent. that, too, felt odd, because i love indulgent media. i am not one to scorn decadent, hedonistic, beautiful high-calorie slop type media. if dead souls was just fan servicey, that wouldn't really bother me. i am a fan and boy do i feel serviced. it rocks. but i think my problem is in what dead souls is indulging.

i think dead souls indulges in the desire to cut loose, and to see these characters cut loose. thing is, they're cutting loose all over kamurocho, and all over the bodies of people they used to (at least in concept) care for. with lethal weapons. it is catharsis via bloodbath, not by pushing your body and mind to the limit in man to man combat, but by pulling a trigger before the other guy can hurt you, or even think about hurting you, for the crime of existing as the wrong kind of thing.

and i just don't think that's in line with rgg's beliefs.

yes, it's probably fair for dead souls' characters to kill zombies. i'm not against that. i'm also not against games letting you do purposeless violence. i spent a good amount of my elementary school years killing oblivion npcs for shits, like. that's not what bothers me about dead souls.

rgg as a series has always taken a hard stance in both its game design and narrative choices against killing and for the potential for redemption in its enemies. and i think the lengths to which it goes to promote that despite the probably-lethal moves you do and the improbability of a harmless do-gooder yakuza is one of the most endearing things about the games. so for this one entry to disregard that key theme for the sake of a genre shift that flopped super hard, well? i dunno. it feels weird i guess. it's out of place not just because it's a dramatic shift in gameplay and style and also zombies are only a thing here (and the supernatural/fantastical are thus only prominent here), but because of what those shifts imply.

so, uh. yeah. my pre-dead-souls thoughts that dead souls wasn't that out of pocket bc rgg's just kinda weird? turns out it was actually super weird to have a zombie shooter in there, but for way way deeper reasons than anyone gives it credit for.

(footnotes in tags)

[netherdevil]

unnormal vivilly dweller thoughts in my head

[marsixm]

im trying to wrap my head around why i dont get enthusiastic about reddit style fiction (not a dig but a descriptor) like scp and shit like that, bc its not that i can’t enjoy them but i think its like… when stuff is framed as if it were real, but its fiction, its like, well KNOWING its fiction eliminates a huge element of the intrigue, but also, crucially, i like character-driven stories, or at least stories WITH characters. but i also like it when things are interesting for said characters to experience, like, i want the ghosts and monsters and conspiracies but i want the characters to be character-ing, yknow? not that i dont enjoy slice of life and… what would u call the first thing, non-character specific horror? idk? but i prefer when its both. its like i love kirk and spock but also i do enjoy watching them Experience Situations when i watch star trek. i enjoy the idea of spooky national forest monsters that arent real but experiencing it alongside a character would be better, and i want more trans and gay characters whose lives are clearly trans and gay but i want a plotline to unfold too

[moafleco]

i hate that duality that your mind can be your safe heaven that helps you get through some difficult things, keeps you going and brings you happiness at the worst of times. and at the very same time it could be your worst tormentor that won't let you rest and won't let you breathe, literally for no particular reason at all. and you can't leave or silence it. can't get it to stop when it gets dark in there. can't get the light in when you desperately need to feel a respite instead of suffocation.

[piplupod]

sometimes i think maybe it's a good thing i'm so traumatized and fucked up mentally and emotionally bc then i never expect ppl to be kind or even just plain old nice to me, so when they ARE kind or nice i feel overwhelming gratitude and almost a sense of awe HFDSJKL like... i dont know if i would have had this appreciation for each little piece of kindness if i wasn't the way that i am. but also i know thats kind of an absolutely wild way of thinking about this LMAO

[selenealwayscries]

Day 6: Friends!! (Evil X)

guys I'm so sorry past selene keeps lumping zedaph and wormman together I don't know why they do that :( they're obviously 2 different people right?