#but if this already exists. oops

[summertide-treehouse]

i havent had any new art to post and im still finishing s5 but in the meantime i think an au with jay and nya dating casually as their normal selves but as the lightning ninja and samurai x they're enemies would be really funny

[thedaythatwas]

on nagito komaeda and love

I just think it’s sort of funny that for a character whose (arguably) most well-recognized CG is this: 

komaeda’s narrative so heavily centers love. and I don’t just say this because I’ve had komahina brainrot for years (though this is true!!). even if you don’t care about komahina, it’s tough to deny komaeda is a walking tragedy in large part because of the role that love plays in his life. his characterization is driven by the way his luck has denied him love, and how he seeks it out regardless. in that sense, I think that without understanding komahina as at least one-sided, you miss out on one of the juiciest, most miserable pieces of komaeda’s character development.

tldr; a love-centered reading of komaeda makes sense, recognizing komahina as “a thing” in DR2 (whether you ship it or not) is pretty important to understanding how komaeda operates, and I’ll try to prove it right here under this page break!!

Part 1: Komaeda’s Love Life (or, his life without love)

I think it’s safe to assume that if you clicked here, you know about komaeda’s absurdly miserable, tumultuous childhood, but I’ll do a quick recap just in case! meteor kills his parents on a plane, he inherits a ton of money. he’s kidnapped by a serial killer, he finds a winning lottery ticket in the garbage bag he’s thrown out in. he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer and dementia, he gets into hope’s peak.

in his free time events, komaeda *explicitly* frames his luck cycle as something that takes away the people he loves. it only “takes action” against him after his relatives have died (for the sake of this essay, let’s assume that komaeda loved his parents, or would have at least been hurt by their passing). by way of other close connections… well, his wording here implies that by the time of his diagnosis, he didn’t really have anybody in his life. 

either komaeda didn’t allow himself to get close to anyone after the meteor incident, or he did, and they were taken away by his luck. at some point during his childhood, komaeda learned he should view himself as a death sentence.

so, how does this loss of love shape the komaeda we know? I’ll talk about this in terms of four of his defining (and connected!) traits in DR2 canon – the ones that really make his actions make sense: his self-loathing, his hope-seeking, his learned helplessness, and his certainty that his existence poses a threat to those around him. komaeda’s experience with loss makes him view himself as a source of death, which in turn fuels these tenets of his character. ultimately, his loss and the complexes that arise from it give him good incentive to push people away.

his self-loathing

komaeda hates himself. he views himself as worthless outside of his potential to serve as a “stepping stone” for the hope of the ultimates. he claims that this is driven by his beliefs around talent, which are in turn linked to the way his worldview rests on viewing hope as “absolute good.” the talentless (himself included) are only good for advancing the hope of the talented. still, his self-loathing is a bit more personal than that. take what he says and dig just below the surface, and it’s a clean cut trauma response all the way down. which leads us directly to…

his hope-seeking

komaeda is willing to do literally anything to serve hope. on the island, this (in short) means dying. this is where I prod at komaeda’s reasoning a bit more: komaeda’s willingness to act the way he does in canon also stems from his belief that his dying would be a net good for the world. his existence kills the people around him. his illness will kill him anyway. he has less than no value, and hope is invaluable. to go out for the sake of hope would give his wretched life purpose; it’s his dream come true.

and it’s no mystery why komaeda cares so much about hope: again, it’s a coping mechanism! komaeda’s belief that all bad luck is a necessary precursor for good luck and that hope will always triumph over despair is (as he himself says!) the only reason he’s managed to stay alive. I’ll say it again because I really can’t emphasize it enough – komaeda thinks that just by existing, he kills the people he loves. ouch!

learned helplessness / his existence as a threat

komaeda has, essentially, learned to submit to his luck cycle. all bad luck is good luck in the end – isn’t that amazing?! almost paradoxically, he’s hyper-vigilant about the negative impact his luck has on those around him. this is a tricky one. I make sense of it this way: komaeda’s perception of how much his luck impacts the people close to him isn’t inflated, like, at all. the supernatural way the world bends around komaeda to screw him over really does pose a danger to himself and others, and he takes measures to minimize that danger. his stated acceptance of his luck cycle is… well, again, he’s coping. 

if komaeda really thought that all bad luck is ultimately good luck, he wouldn’t try to protect his classmates from his bad luck. but, as we see in island mode, he does!

but really, who could blame komaeda for lying to himself? I’ll restate the facts. komaeda thinks that luck is absolute power. he says that he’s powerless against it. his luck has taken his family, and it’s left him with nothing but money that he doesn’t want. he’s certain he’s a curse, and there’s no end to that in sight: so long as komaeda exists, he’ll keep on losing – murdering – everything he loves. 

in the face of all of that despair, what can you do but abandon your self-esteem and pray for something good to come out of all of it? how else could somebody possibly survive carrying that burden, truly believing that load will never be lightened?

tldr; komaeda thinks his existence is a threat, and a big chunk of his personality is a frankensteined way of surviving the pain that comes with that. still, we should question how much of his worldview komaeda has really internalized without inner conflict. 

Part 2: Enter Hajime Hinata

we get some answers on that front when we see that despite the clear and obvious danger it poses, nagito komaeda still finds himself falling hard for hajime hinata. that’s really, really loud.

I’ll preface this part by saying that you don’t need to actively ship komahina to understand what I’m trying to get at here. this said, I’ll be recapping an argument you’ve almost definitely seen before: komahina is definitely “a thing” – at the very least as a one-sided thing. to this, I’ll add the (perhaps bold?) claim that without recognizing that much as true, you’re missing out on a big part of what makes komaeda so interesting.

komaeda’s FTEs make it abundantly clear that komaeda has feelings for hinata. apart from his famed failed love confession, the fact that komaeda is willing to allow hinata to get close enough to learn about his views on hope and luck is telling. 

(the smoking gun here hinges on trusting that komaeda was telling the truth during the time you spent with him; in so many words, that he only lied about lying. so, for the sake of argument, let’s assume this is true! there’s good proof for it, anyway.)

if you read his final FTE as komaeda flashing his soul to hinata and making a decision at the very last second to retreat, turning to old coping mechanisms to protect hinata from his luck, it’s sort of a komahina bombshell. that capitulation spells out for us that komaeda understands sharing his life experiences with hinata to be one of the most intimate things he could possibly do.

he recognizes the exact moment he lets hinata get too close – when his life story is finally told – and he does what he’s learned he needs to do to get them both out of that situation safely: he tries to make hinata hate him, and tells himself (and hinata!) that he did it for the sake of hope.

(and yet, komaeda let hinata approach him every FTE, knowing damn well that they were both playing with fire… very interesting.)

now, let’s say you don’t consider the FTEs to be integral to canon. I mean, you can really easily miss out on all of komaeda’s content if you choose not to hang out with him in chapter 1! so, for the skeptic, in the unskippable main story, komaeda tells hinata this:

komaeda cares about hinata despite everything. and I really, truly mean despite everything. at this point in the story, the fact that he still cares about hinata calls into question basically every single one of his core beliefs. he’s read his final dead room prize – not only does hinata not have a talent, we can presume that komaeda also knows hinata became ultimate despair along with the rest of them. 

hinata has continually sought out komaeda’s company, even though komaeda knows himself to be worthless at best, lethal at worst. komaeda was willing to let him get closer, even though he knows how dangerous that is for hinata. he can’t help but let hinata try to know him. 

isn’t he awful? to want what he knows he can’t have, even though that wanting has never done anything but cause pain? he’s really the lowest of the low, to love someone who destroyed the world, who makes him question the views that will allow him to do the only good thing he’s ever been able to do for it: to die for hope. 

and yet, it’s a nod to how incredibly capable of love komaeda is that he’s still willing to reach out for it, no matter how many times it’s burned him in the past, and how much it hurts him in the present to want it. he understands more than anyone that his feelings can only result in disaster. reading komaeda as someone who can’t help but go on loving anyway makes his story hurt so much worse. 

but, you miss a whole lot of that without an eye for komahina. seeing hinata as the eye of komaeda’s emotional hurricane (and keeping tabs on their connection accordingly) allows us to glimpse past the cracks in komaeda’s front. we see that komaeda’s worldview is less stable than he presents it as – hinata is where komaeda’s coping mechanisms, for better or worse, run up against a wall. that tends to be uncomfortable for a guy who’s just barely coping in the first place. then again, growth is supposed to be uncomfortable, isn’t it?

Part 3: The Future He Chooses

so, all of this considered, I think one of the most interesting ways you can flesh komaeda out post-canon is by asking how he’d find himself willing to accept love. whether that love is from hinata or the ultimates, whether it’s platonic or romantic, love is the thing that komaeda wants AND fears in equal measure more than anything. it’s the source of his self-loathing and his obsession with hope. it’s the reason he’s lived the way that he has for so long – lonely, and afraid of being anything but.

getting into a relationship wouldn’t solve komaeda’s problems for him, and that’s a good thing. it would force him to confront old ones, and probably create dozens of new issues for him, too. writing him through that makes for great character study!

hinata (or anyone else, for that matter) can’t love komaeda into loving himself, but he can give him a shoulder to cry on while he works through 22 years of fear and sorts through the wreckage of a worldview that’s long since stopped serving him. I don’t think his progress would be linear. but, I think that he could do it. komaeda learning to accept care is what his healing looks like. 

(well. and physically recovering from cancer and dementia. but that’s neither here nor there!)

a post-canon komaeda learning to love narrative is also in line with the themes of DR2. hinata leads the survivors out of the neo world program because he makes the decision to choose his own future, creating a new version of “hope” for himself and his classmates. likewise, komaeda can make the decision to save himself. that is, if he trusts himself enough to actually touch and hold the thing that he’s never been able to stop reaching out for, anyway.

after all, hinata is lucky too. (and if it turns out he isn’t… y'all like angst fics, right?)

(shoutout to @cynopter for looking this over and confirming that I'm not spouting nonsense <33 thank you for reading my thesis of the week <33)

[youremyonlyhope]

Me years ago: Yeah I never really understood why people are attracted to the Master. I get that Simm and Gomez are both attractive as the Master, but I've never really been attracted to the Master.

Dhawan!Master:

Me: ...... Oh ok I get it now.

[bleue-flora]

Thought in light of my playlist with all of the Tommy lore, (btw if I missed anything let me know and I’ll try to find and add it) I’d also share all the playlists I have saved that could be useful to people watching lore or making their own playlists. There are also some other ones on my channel that you can check out if you want to, some of which I’m still working on (marked *). I have also posted lore resources before [here] and [here], which mention people like @spit-bite-glitch and @Wishdreamerx on youtube who have playlists by month.

{Also, I am trying to put together a dream playlist, which since he mostly doesn't have his own pov and sticks his head into everything, is quite a challenge, so if you are currently going through lore or something and come across the green boy it would be a big help if you would let me know, no need to provide time stamps or anything just a link, or even like just informing me of maybe some smaller lore you know he shows up in. I'd really appreciate it<3}

Timeline Playlist Links:

<> - <> - <> - <> - <> - <>

Anyways, this one is probably one of if not the best playlists I found. It does a pretty thorough job and includes lots of povs, it is understandably missing a few small things, but it’s really good and can definitely help you get a good view of the timeline too:

Characters:

Awesamdude - <> - <>

Sam Bucket*

Badboyhalo - <>

Dream*

DreamXD*

Eret

Eryn

Foolish - <>

Fundy

George

Michaelmicchill - <>

Niki

Philza

Ponk

Puffy

Punz* - <> - <>

Purpled

Quackity

Ranboo - <> - <>

Sapnap

Seapeekay

Skeppy - <>

Techno

Tommy

Tubbo - <> - <> - <> - <>

Wilbur - <> - <>

Arcs:

Disc Saga

War for Independance

Exile

Egg - <> - <>

Las Nevadas - <>

Prison Arc - <>

Post-Prison Arc

Daedalus * - <>

Finales*

And just for fun, while I'm at it, here are some other lore resources for you:

Transcripts Archive

Exile Transcripts

Exile & Prison Visitors

DSMP Members' Ages

DSMP Map Coordinate Archive

[cizzle-freezy]

it was meant to be a doodle but no i unlocked something brand new and different instead

(the dusknoir and grovyle is from @/paco-png's pmd: explorers of sky adventure, in which our friend group contributed design elements until eventually we got this. i love how people draw grovyle all battered and with torn leaves and full of scars it makes me feral)

[justewil]

mmy image

[benevadeca]

LBH / SJ as parallels makes me crazy bc on one hand there's the themes of personal responsibility and the hard work necessary for taking agency for your choices and them being what shapes the kind of life that is reachable but on the other SJ was literally replaceable by the narrative and even when he did sporadically try to be Good it always blew up on him / never knew anything else and so was unable to be anything else.

VS LBH was not / protagonist halo / literal bloodline superiority / did at least know love which is what made him able to transcend the world by knowing the abuse he faced was something wrong and not something natural. Anyway

[shooks-stupid-stuff]

no but actually, what the fuck did he mean by this

[baltears]

sorry just going insane about them again (day that ends in y)

[luminarai]

I often think about all the people who were forced to go through their periods before reliable painkillers were invented. I just had period cramps so bad, I was frantically googling ‘how to tell the difference between period cramps, ovarian cysts, and a cute appendicitis’ while waiting for the painkillers to kick in and trying not to throw up from the pain. And how period cramps were probably the least of their problems. Absolutely insane. How did we survive as a species.

[shaeshark42]

Ok, here’s my dream players for an “Oops, All Barries” season of D20:

- Murph (Brian Murphy)

- Caldwell Tanner

- Jacob Wysocki

- Raph Chestang

- Brian David Gilbert

- Iffy Nwadiwe

[fluffytheocelot]

Hi I’m doing things don’t worry about it :)

[rxttenfish]

please understand. if you sit close to aaravi while shes deep in thought, you can hear her Clicky Clacky her mandibles. they might be useless but they ARE stimmy as hell.

[filepathnotfound]

I didn't know this blog existed until I went to look at the posts i just reblogged and realized i was on this now hello? Hello??

um I'm Vash, I'm the host, he/him only and uh. my father figure named me after the main character of Trigun and then I ended up hyperfixating on it many, many years later. I'm not an introject nor am I cool enough to be one.

love and peace!!!! 🤟

[cryptvokeeper]

WHERE is the picture of the little monkey that says the grief is never ending but so is the love I am in need