he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.
except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?
at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.
except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.
about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.
he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.
5K notes
·
View notes
Is it better if John erased their memories, or if they came back that way and he just decided not to fix them?
It's immensely better if he intentionally mindwiped them. TO ME.
I'm a John fan. I think he's a tremendous tragic antagonist, and that everything he does in the HtN backstory is relatable if not painful familiar. He was under immense pressure, trying to mitigate the literal end of the world, having his mind and his whole self changed in ways he had no frame of reference to understand. He went from being desperate and trying to do his best to being carried away by circumstances to going absolutely fucking insane. There are many ways to rationalise John's actions all the way to the end, which is what makes it such an effective corruption arc. If you want to engage in some blorbo apologism, there are plenty of excuses to be found.
There's absolutely no fucking way to excuse mind-wiping his friends. THAT is why it's so important to me that he did it deliberately, in cold blood, justifying it to himself as a way to take their burdens upon himself so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. He removed their agency. He didn't want any peers in the world he'd created. He could have acknowledged what had happened, for better or worse, and tried to make amends - but instead, he chose to remove their knowledge that something had even happened in the first place. It's the turning point! I need him to go into that with his eyes fully open. He's doing it on purpose! He weighed the pros and cons and prioritised his comfort over his friends' identities.
EYE believe that his story arc is infinitely more powerful if there's a point we can look at and say "here is when John's story went from things happening TO HIM to John doing terrible things". Especially in a backstory that's ultimately about divine corruption and losing touch with your humanity, I think that turning point needs to be something that has a personal value to him, something that can't be chalked up to "he was high on death" or "humanity was doomed" or even "he touched the soul of the earth and went insane."
I think it's important, thematically, that one of his first actions after acquiring godlike powers was to make sure that no one would be able to remember his human self and challenge him on equal footing, even if he's still internally lamenting his own loneliness and wishing things were different.
Obviously, this is all coming from a known John Girlie™ and Eldritch Alecto Enjoyer — I interpret John's ascension to quasi-divinity as something that was mostly imposed ON him and he couldn't control, which is why I need him to cross the moral event horizon outright with the mind violation of his inner circle. Someone who views John as more directly culpable in the end of the earth might feel less strongly about the importance of the mindwipe in his story arc than I do, but TO ME it's the culmination of the tragedy. You've become the inhuman horror, baby.
/post that inspired the question
256 notes
·
View notes
For the Swanatello fam: what does everyone miss most about Donnie during his lake-induced absences?
for donnie, leo will gladly give every scrap of patience and grace and gentleness he has. he doesn't mind explaining things. he doesn't mind telling his brother the same things over and over. he doesn't mind it when donnie forgets or doesn't understand or needs his help to remember or process things.
but he misses the banter. the back-and-forth. the stupid fights and pranks and 'you said's' and 'i told you so's.' and, perhaps a bit selfishly, he misses when he didn't always feel like he had to be the bigger person for him. he misses when he still had the space to be childish and immature and petty towards his twin, and it wouldn't hurt either of them the way it tends to now.
[ swanatello ]
369 notes
·
View notes
[ID: a digital drawing of characters from the owl house based on the song "up the wolves" by the mountain goats. At the top of the drawing there's a rectangular panel showing Camila and Eda. Camila looks out at the boiling isles at night with her bat. Eda mirrors her pose, with her arm covered in feathers. Shadows form to look like the collectors face, covering Eda's eyes and parts of Camila. Beneath this panel is a star with King and the Collector inside of it, holding hands and spinning midair. Beneath this is the archway portal from thanks to them, which is glowing, and at the bottom of the image is the hexsquad lined up in their designs from for the future, lit by the portal light and looking determinedly into the distance. The lyrics that span the image are "our mother has been absent/ever since we founded Rome/but there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home". The background is black. End ID]
I knew I couldn't say goodbye to this show without redrawing one of my favorite old pieces, this lyric comic based on Up The Wolves by the mountain goats. I made it pre-ttt and was honestly really vindicated by all the wolf imagery that ep, lmao
828 notes
·
View notes
the zine’s officially out, so I can post my contribution for the @extraordinaryzine :D!
my piece is an interpretation of the caverns on Iron Island 🏝️ so I wanted to incorporate more of the water surrounding it by creating a sea cave to have light spill inside (akin to the modra špilja/blue grotto)
the focus of the zine was on the daily lives of trainers and their pokemon, so Riley uses a spot inside the caverns like this to meditate with his team, although any new Riolu he trains can’t resist wanting to jump into the water to play υ´˶ ・ﻌ・ ˶`υノ”
this piece alongside a ton of amazing artists can be found free to download digitally here! (and lastly some closeups bc I liked getting all the little deets down)
153 notes
·
View notes
i love how fraught and complicated discourse around various utena characters ‘dying’ is when anthy is literally stabbed to death eternally by a million swords imbued with human hatred. and then utena gets stabbed to death by them also. like. ‘death’ is incredibly interesting in rgu because most of the time it’s this ambiguous figurative thing that has interesting implications re: ohtori as a closed-off world one can escape. we are all trapped in our coffins. mamiya is the only named character with a grave. nemuro memorial hall functions as one all the same. ruka is implied to have died in the hospital— was he dead all along? who was the boy we saw for these two episodes? is this dead boy the same boy, or is this just another coincidence from the shadow girls, cutting like a knife? it’s heavily implied that akio and anthy murder kanae by poisoning her, adding to the previous implication that they were poisoning mr ohtori too, but there are no perceptible consequences of this. kanae’s absence is not felt. she’s fed an apple slice. what happens to the bodies? we know what happened to the 100 boys, but what about everyone else? and so on and so forth. ‘death’ is a tricky thing in utena, i think it’s constantly functioning on figurative and literal levels in very different ways for very different purposes. dios died. dios was dying. dios didn’t die. he grew up. etc etc
74 notes
·
View notes
florian first realizes he's developing feelings for kieran when they go to the festival of masks together, but i think he'd really fall for them when kieran reveals that they told the town the truth about ogerpon.
he'd be stunned by kieran doing something so risky, ( after all, there was a possibility that telling the truth would've ended poorly like it almost did with their ancestor, ) and how much courage it must've taken them to do that for ogerpon. he'd have so much admiration for them in that moment and think they're so amazing... it'd really be his " oh. oh, i really like them a lot. " moment.
68 notes
·
View notes
What classical paintings would you assign the ROs?
PANDORAS BOX PANDORAS BOX PANDORAS BOX. Being really normal about this ask thank u
Bautista: Pietá by William-Adolphe Bougureau (1876)
Nazeri: The Leopard Hunt — Paul de Vos
Devin: Judith Slaying Holofernes — Artemesia Gentileschi (c. 1612-1613)
Trace: The Last Judgement (middle triptych) — Hieronemous Bosch
59 notes
·
View notes