up thinking about the bonnie and charlie kelly tragedy again. ohh their relationship is so not normal. she loves him in a way that she doesnt realize is selfish she never taught him to read or take baths he probably found out the stove was hot from touching it. bonnie's relationship with charlie is inherently abusive but shes not some mastermind or criminal she is just a very ill woman who doesnt realize when shes being manipulative or when what she calls empathy is actually just fear or sadness for herself.
charlie spent his whole life parenting his mom back and coaching her through her episodes and internalizing her superstitions and compulsions and in the end he didnt break any kind of cycle he just ended up worse than she is. he doesn't speak to her now he never even calls her he hates being around her... hes a dick to her maybe more than she deserves but in charlie's mind it's not about what she was trying to do its about what she ended up doing to him in the end. she depends on him in a way he never could on her. charlie could never be a dad and maybe its because bonnie kelly wasnt really ever a mom to him but also what else could she have possibly been but a mother. so much of her is reflected in him and they are so entirely unalike and he hates even thinking about her but he also won't leave philadelphia because she's in it and isnt it all so sad and strange
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i'm still hung up on oliver's "and i believed him" on felix's "if you get sick of us, you can leave. i promise". it's one of the rare cases when present-day oliver interjects and adds something to the past-oliver story, reflective, analyzing. it is sort of shift of responsibility post factum. felix promised; oliver believed; oliver didn't leave; felix was to blame. an act of revisionism, one attempt to absolve himself of many.
but if read in a sympathetic way, it is so painful to me. read in a way oliver was approached by barry keoghan, as a boy who was lost and confused and pulled apart by too much desire to know what to do with, it is probably the most tragic line in saltburn. refusal to go was impossible for oliver. all he needed was reassurance, knowledge that something would be there to understand, recognize, pull back, control. in the sea of confusing desires, tricks of the house, as oliver probably saw it, he needed something he could believe. and he was tethered to the world by felix, in every way; but felix was not insightful enough to realize it. not because felix is a horrible person, necessarily, but because oliver put so much trust in him it was quite unlikely that felix could ever answer in kind. it's a tragedy in so many ways and it is all contained in this one short exchange, through time. "and i believed him" is so, so vulnerable, and so, so betrayed.
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Thinking abt ages of blue eye samurai characters.
Mizu is like. Im pretty sure canonically 19/20. Im leaning towards 20, cuz im choosing to believe fowler meant 20 years literally n the white men came to japan also during the spring. Its just a very literal n simple read of the scene but yh im choosing that. Mizu is a spring bby :'))
Ringo, as carefree and unburdened as he may act, he is not a child or even a man-child, hes an adult man who's just very very sweet n cute. Imo? He's like. 23. Hes just infantilized a lot by his father n others that he seems way younger
Taigen is only a few months older than Mizu imo. They seemed basically the same age as children, but i think taigen is justtt a wee bit older, n yes he does use that against mizu when he finds out. Im votingggg a november bby. Between autumn n winter
Akemi i can only see as being 21/22 for some reason. Idk if its even logical i just see that. I need to research more into what edo period japan thought was normal for when a woman should beat children, but i think it was young, like maybe around the 18 years of age. It also depends on how old do those men think a woman needs to be before shes barren or smth. I do think akemi is 22, more because its obvious she is still young, but not a teenager.
For funsies i think takayoshi is like. Between 25-27. Im still undecided. But he is a few years older than akemi. I dont think hes older solely cuz hes the younger brother, n im just going off of what i see in their mother, but if she had the eldest son at 18, and i hc her as being around 45-50, then i think he has to be (the older brother) around 27-32. She probably had the two sons n they went "thats good enough, anyways", n left it at that.
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Turning tragedy into hope-Let him lose those arms
I’ve tried making this post three times so let’s hope that third times the charm y’all.
I’m just gonna come out and say it but when I saw that panel where Izuku doesn’t have any hands I literally got so excited.
AND ITS NOT BECAUSE I LIKE MY FAVORITE CHARACTER GETTING BRUTALIZED (well? I do think it’s a little funny but shhh)
But it’s because this has been foreshadowed almost as much as the handhold itself between Izuku and Katsuki. And it’s wonderfully tragic in the best of ways. Literally half of the commentary surrounding it when it came out in the leaks was “omg I thought of that!” Because literally everyone and their mother KNEW this was coming in some form. Izuku was going to lose an arm, and that would be the case.
Hell, even outside of the story the amount of official art and AU’s Horikoshi drew that had Izuku without an arm is astounding. Like it’s so painfully obvious that this was coming, and so he upped the shock when he made Izuku lose them both.
Izuku is even doing his white eye thing, he isn’t shocked, he’s angry. My dude is pissed. Clearly, to me at least, the loss of his hands is less of a shock to him and more so that he’s angry that afo took away the reason he lost them in the first place—Tenko.
Y’all gotta remember who Izuku is, he’s the stubborn motherfucker that refused time and time again to give up on his dreams, he’s the one that illegally saved Iida and Katsuki, he’s the one that refused to let go of Tenko’s hands because when he was in his time of need, it comforted him.
Izuku has been told by his doctors for over a year atp that he was going to eventually either lose his hands, or lose the function within them. He’s accepted that. He can try to stop it, hold it off through equipment and treatment, but at the end of the day, everything breaks eventually. He knows that. We know that.
So if he was going to lose his arms in some way, it’d be through this: saving someone, holding their hands, never letting go, comforting them.
It’s tragic and sacrificial, but Aizawa’s the same. Did we make theories about how Eri is gonna heal him from being an amputee? Did the story say “actually due to this cool magical illusion/quirk it was all a mirage/eri could heal it”? No, it didn’t. Did Mirko somehow get her arms and legs back because they’re tied to how she views her strength? No, she didn’t.
And there’s a reason they didn’t. Multiple reasons they didn’t. They’re heroes, their scars tell their stories.
Not even mentioning how that’s such a trope (“everyone else keeps their long term injuries except for the main character because he’s special and gets main character powers, like not getting a disability from a dangerous job! :)”), but why should eri, a little girl, be responsible for everyone’s injuries? She doesn’t even have full control yet, she’s playing it by day. (People LOVE to talk about how all the 1-A kids are just kids fighting in a war, except when it comes to a little girl being responsible for everyone’s injuries, somehow)
The reason eri was shown wasn’t because she was going to somehow save the day, but because she wasn’t. It was supposed to stop those theories from having actual merit, because eri doesn’t actually have the built up strength to help.
So, with that out of the way, I wanted to say how this is so fucking beautiful. It’s tragic yes, Izuku and Katsuki never got to hold hands, not properly, but maybe the measure of their trust is beyond that. Maybe, an embrace could suffice—this would go back to Izuku’s vigilante arc. Where, instead of holding hands, Katsuki caught him when he needed to. And he’s going to do it, again and again.
Maybe holding a robot or silicone arm won’t feel the same, but it’s the feelings surrounding it that matters, not the act itself. The hand hold is still there, the hands still haunt the narrative like a mouse within the walls. It bites at cords like their own emotional walls.
Katsuki missed his chance, over and over again, and he’s going to have to come to terms with that. But that’s not to say that the story won’t let this aspect haunt the narrative like it always has. It’s still THERE, and I believe in Horikoshi to continue to write a story about hands while the main character doesn’t even have them.
Izuku’s hands are tied to his strength, physically and emotionally. He views them has the glue that ties his heroics to himself. His hands have always reached out to others, his hands have always punched those who were wrong, and even when he had to switch fighting styles he still saw them as the reason he was able to fight at all. They represent OFA, his love, his anger, his weakness, his strength. They represent his sense of self, and yet he’s more outraged than hurt that he lost them for Tenko to be free—only for AFO to take away that freedom all over again.
THATS why the loss had to happen. THIS. He lost something so incredibly valuable to himself, but he lost them of his own accord. He could have let go of Tenko at any moment, yet he didn’t because he wanted Tenko to know comfort and freedom. He wanted him to be free.
You could say that Tenko was telling Izuku to let go because he was breaking down his emotional resolve, and I believe you could also say that he was telling Izuku to let go so he doesn’t hurt someone who tried to help him all over again. You could say it’s both. It’s selfish and selfless, like everything in this story is. But Izuku refused to, and that was a choice Tenko could never take away from him.
So, that’s how I’ll turn this tragedy to hope, because this was done out of Izuku’s love, why take away that meaning?
Why put them back?
Why take away those scars?
Scars tell stories, they tell you how we became the greatest heroes.
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