#can be so interesting and nuanced

[quierd-kitten]

It’s really fascinating to me how intricate “being in/out of the closet” can get when your identity is more complicated than “just gay or trans”.

Like, everybody knows that I’m a trans guy. Some people know that I’m actually transmasculine non-binary, if it comes up. My closer peers, friends, and family know that I’m actually genderfluid and shift between guy, non-binary, and very occationally girl. Only my best friends are aware that I also shift between xenogenders.

Even more complicated : I’m out to my mom as gay and asexual, but not bi or aro-spec. One of my sisters I’m out to as gay, the other I’m out to as bi and ace. Most people catch on pretty quick that I’m bi even if I don’t say it. My friends know that I’m bi and ace. My really close friends know that I’m bi, ace, and aro-spec.

[adastreia-12]

poseidon’s relationship with percy is something that is so personal to me. love so flawed and complicated, so wary and tentative. your father is here. he’s always been here. he’s not sure what to make of you but he is proud of you. you’re not sure what to make of him either. you’re sally jackson’s son, but you have your father’s eyes. you are the sea as much as he is. trust him. trust yourself. breathe. the sea does not like to be restrained.

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[redysetdare]

"This fandom is so queer friendly!" This fandom literally hates, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and aspec people but ok.

[alphaketoglutaricacid]

when toshiro got on laios ass for being inconsiderate and never thinking about how his actions affect others like he was mean abt it but hes not wrong. Thats a pretty major character flaw and a pattern of behavior for laios — w not choosing jobs that made money for namari who is in a pretty dire financial situation where she cant even get off the island and has to go adventuring in the dungeon to get out of debt, who even explicitly brought this up, eating marcilles familiar immediately even tho she was attached to it, kidnapping shuro into his party and putting him in life threatening situations without like really checking he wanted to be there…?, wanting to see if izutsumi has more than one set of nipples when dehumanization is a HUGE huge issue for her the list goes on and on and on. Like when a friend does this to you its just kinda annoying but when ur the leader u really should be checking if everyones needs r met without them telling u. Like the autism plays a factor for sure, his cultural upbringing plays a factor for sure, but as ppl regardless I think u gotta step up to meet the needs of ppl in the moment or realize u shouldnt be calling the shots. just bc its influenced by factors out of ur control does not make it not a serious character flaw. And its written as such in the story.

[calware]

"i happened to not find this character very interesting or likeable" doesn't automatically mean they're an objectively bland and boring character it just means you have a personal opinion

[fallcolorspringrapid]

hi. if you like weirdly intense mentor-protégé relationships, War of Faith (追风者) might be for you.

the protégé: Wei Ruolai, a little potato, a poor, brilliant, idealistic boy whose n:o 1 ambition in life is to... work for advisor Shen Tunan of Central Bank. apparently. as his personal assistant.

"My life is not worth much anyway," Wei Ruolai says,

wow. ok.

and this is Shen Tunan, Wei Ruolai's boss and mentor. here he's looking at Wei Ruolai who has just said something very smart.

i'm going to eat that little potato for breakfast —Shen Tunan, probably.

people. these two have Chemistry. Shen Tunan keeps looking at Wei Ruolai like he can't quite believe his luck at having found such a sweet potato and can't make up his mind about which part to bite into first. and Wei Ruolai is just *incoherent noises* he's just so earnest. he's quiet and smart (and also very stupid) and tenacious and a tiny bit of a brat, and he lights up under Shen Tunan's attention.

Shen Tunan: "You spoke well earlier."

Wei Ruolai, having looked bashfully away:

ahem.

praise kink, anyone?

[synodic-lupine]

Nine and Ten's arcs go hand in hand as a collectively great PTSD narrative imo. I think Ten's wishy-washiness about relationships and inability to fully open up to Rose is often characterized as plain old fear of commitment yet I see that as a progression to another presentation of PTSD. When we first meet Nine, he seems like he's halfway to planning on how to get himself killed. He meets Rose, he heals, he changes, he grows. Then he regenerates into someone with a desire to live and the seeming capacity to just be happy. At the same time, he regenerated for and because of Rose. Recovery that hinges on one person is a tricky thing. When you're with that person it can feel like there's no more work to be done, like you're totally 'fixed'. Every moment with that person feels like the best thing in the world... which makes it significantly harder to open up about anything trauma related. When you're feeling high on a person's presence why would you ever want to think about the bad things? THEN because he finally properly wants to live, The Doctor gets hit with the realization that living a full life means losing Rose in the end and it's downright intolerable to him. It makes him push and pull and act like a bastard sometimes. We get glimpses of who he is without her in the moments when she's threatened. He loses his damn mind any time she's threatened- he gets that crazed look akin to Nine in Dalek more than anything. This is also in contrast to how Nine used to react to Rose being threatened, where he used to still be able to keep it reined in. THEN... he loses her for real and he backslides majorly. We see the effects in Turn Left, that if Donna hadn't been there he would have died right after saying goodbye to Rose. He's more or less back where he started as Nine in the beginning of series one, looking for a way to die. He lives though, and has to accept that no, he's not perfectly recovered and keep on working on it. He opens up about things in ways we saw him struggle to in series 2. Though he's more callous in series 3 and 4, he seems to struggle more with relating to humans, his bastardous tendencies pop up more. He's also a freaking disaster man in series 4 with the number of times he offers or tries to give up his life for others. He DOES make recovery progress through series 3 and 4, just is slow like in real life. All of that makes JE make sense to me in that this is a man who is experiencing turbo PTSD triggering. He pushes everyone away all at once, because maybe being alone will hurt less than losing people after all. Even after all that in the end when he is dying he says he doesn't want to go. He was born into wanting to live and be happy so of course he doesn't want to go.

[hauntingofhouses]

(concept art of young taigen - source ; art credit: @abigaillarson)

i cannot get over this concept art of young taigen. god.

just look at this angry bratty boy, too many feelings that he doesnt know what to do with! an abused 9 year old kid in poverty always playing with sticks in the dirt, obsessed with greatness and dreaming to escape his decrepit village—and he does!

he does escape. he runs away. this angry little boy, all claws and teeth and biting words uttered with a lisp, going on the run into a world he's never seen before until he makes his way to kyoto. and knowing him he probably forced his way in to be accepted by the dojo, growling and kicking even as he's thrown out, back into the streets, too stubborn to take no for an answer and never knowing when to give up.

taigen calls mizu a dog, weak, an orphan, a scrawny street urchin. but i can't help but think that he feels so bold to use those words because he had them spat at him too.

because taigen had the idea of "this is how the world is" beat into him from birth. he learned quickly that if you couldn't beat the world you could join it. but that meant losing your way, your values, your principles. and isn't that what true honour is? not just titles and status and glory?

we don't get to see what taigen, as a child surrounded by peers encouraging and goading him on, would've actually done if that meteor hadn't fallen right in front of them at that very moment. would he have really tried to throw that stone on mizu, killing her? we don't know.

but we do see what taigen (his true self, with no one around) does, when presented with the same opportunity. when mizu passes out in front of him, unconscious and near death, vulnerable, the path to restoring his honour lays itself out for him on a silver platter. and he wants to take it, wants to kill mizu, to claim what is his and return to kyoto and get back everything he'd worked tooth and nail for. he feels like it's what he should do. but he doesn't.

and later, again he is presented with the chance to betray mizu, likely offered by heiji shindo to get his rank reinstated within the shindo dojo. and again, taigen doesn't take it. he refuses. "stupidly loyal," fowler calls him later. loyal, like a dog.

because now, pulled away from the sneering looks and jeering words of people around him, telling him that this is what the world is, taigen had met ringo and mizu, two outcasts who refuse to follow a predetermined path to greatness. and so inside something blooms in him. something like hope. a chance to live in a world that doesn't kick you down every chance it gets, to live in a world where genuine kindness and and love and friendship and even weakness is possible, allowed to simply exist without fear.

because he'd been running away from the very idea of it the whole time. when he ran from kohama, he never looked back, never wanted to remember what it was like to be a child, afraid and hungry and angry and hurting, without the words to make sense of it, desperately wishing for something. something more. he doesn't know what. but he hears stories of great swordsmen and decides, yes, this must be it. this is what i want: glory, greatness. the twisted seed gets planted and thrives in this barren land.

and when he returns to kohama with mizu and ringo, he at last is forced to stop running. he must face the child within him again, and he tells that child to put down the stones in his hand, tells him to stop barking at anything that moves or looks at him wrong.

the child drops the stone, and taigen buys dumplings instead, gives them to mizu. the child within him, wide-eyed at the prospect of friendship, moves him to pick up a hammer and toss it to mizu. he's smiling inside even as he does it; giggling like a kid hiding a silly prank. as soon as mizu drops the hammer after him, he leaps at her, tackling her to the ground and they wrestle and laugh unbridled like two children playing while the adults aren't around to barge in and yell at them.

and then his gaze catches on mizu's lips, he stares into mizu's eyes, a sparkling blue, inviting like the open sea in good weather.

it's a man's desire that takes hold then, the child in him sinking away again, and he curses himself for it, because it ruins the moment.

everything goes to shit from there, and then it's back to being a man, back to putting on his grown-up's armour to play hero.

it fails. the shogun dies. fowler's beatings reopen all the wounds left by heiji shindo's torture. "honour is meaningless," mizu tells him. "nothing comes from being a samurai but death."

the words follow him, and he follows the words.

as everything burns down, he runs, leaving the fire behind him, and sees akemi, as well as the verdure of spring behind her, calling him. he does not hesitate then to hold his hand out to her, inviting her to come with him. "i don't want to be great," he says. "i just want to be happy."

what is happiness to him? perhaps he doesn't know it yet, or perhaps he does. but really, i believe happiness is what the child in him always wanted but never received. happiness is a home.

[beldaroot]

dagda voicing the absurdity of how a hat can distinguish between good and bad and then coco specifically ripping the brim of coustas' hat to show how easily you can switch between a brimhat and a pointy hat... there are layers to this!

[lord-squiggletits]

The reason this fandom hates IDW Optimus isn't because he's a cop (plenty of people are fine with Prowl) or because he's a bastard (most characters in IDW are) but because he commits the crime of being an actual person who's messy, flawed, and makes a shitload of high stakes mistakes fitting for the intense situations and pressure he's put under constantly.

But we can't have Optimus actually react to his situations by lashing out or being unpleasant, no, he has to have the personality of a cardboard cutout of G1 whose only defining personality traits are "dad, funny, nice," and if he ever vents negative emotions it can only ever be #relatable depression or him being sad on his own without ever letting it show during the important parts of the story. If Optimus dares do things like be angry or frustrated or bitter it's just a sign that he's a bastard and LITERALLY the worst Optimus ever. If Optimus ever makes mistakes or does wrong things in the heat of anger/frustration/stress it's because he's just an evil bastard with no redeeming traits.

God forbid Optimus go through an unending gauntlet of war, politics, atrocities, near-complete loneliness, and a seemingly endless cycle of violence for his entire life and come out of it kind of bitter, angry, and tired of dealing with people's shit. He's not allowed to be a realistic person, context doesn't matter, sympathy doesnt matter. IDW Optimus doesn't fulfill the fandom's fantasies of Father Figure or Perfect Cultural Icon or Twinky Fucktoy and since that's the only reason most people care about Optimus in general, the fandom collectively trashes on IDW OP.

All because he can't fit into the overly simplified and childlike double standard the fandom has where if any other character is messy and flawed, that's good writing and interesting and compelling, but if OPTIMUS is messy and flawed, he's Literally The Worst and he's an asshole for no other reason than He Sucks, context be damned

[mythalism]

.

[brown-little-robin]

HI so sorry to barge in here unannounced like this but u seem to have a lot more knowledge about japanese language/culture/social etiquette than i do and i've seen u mention dimple's mannerisms in canon once or twice and like . i'd love to hear more abt that if ur willing to ramble for a bit. i've been Very curious just how far dimple's Rudeness goes, but i know very little about the culture. i'm sure some things he does or says seem fairly normal to me but is considered very rude or disrespectful to the characters. no pressure tho ofc :]

hi Rika!! literally drop in anytime! I,, I appreciate this ask so much and will answer as best as I can, but I'm a very new student of Japanese and Japanese culture, so take what I say with a grain of salt! also I personally am going to tag @russenoire to respectfully invite them to partake in this conversation if they think it would be fun (no pressure of course!). they have been studying this much longer than I have :}

putting my thoughts under a cut because !!! I love to ramble!!! note: all of this is based on Dimple's Japanese voice & mannerisms from the anime. I don't have the manga in Japanese yet 🙏

As a preface: Ekubo's direct/rude/familiar speech style is typical in anime and not unheard-of in real life, but it's definitely worth noticing! Mob Psycho 100, particularly, gets a lot of its unique interest out of taking unrealistic anime expectations and saying "HEY pay attention to this, WHY is this happening, this is immature behavior, why are adults in this universe letting this happen", and making it funny and/or serious. So!!! let's dive in.

So, okay, Dimple's mannerisms. The first thing to know is very general. he usually speaks in the casual register (which has a whole distinct vocabulary from the more polite registers: for instance, he tends to end his sentences with "da" rather than "desu", which are both "is" verbs with the exact same meaning, just a different connotation). the casual register is comparatively... direct. Dimple using casual implies that he thinks of himself as on familiar terms with and/or higher in the social hierarchy than whoever he's speaking to. casual Japanese is par for the course in anime in general, especially for people expressing arrogance, like Ekubo does all the time. But still, that's A Choice. it expresses simultaneous superiority (I am allowed to speak to you in informal terms because I'm above you) and also, possibly, desire for closeness (Ekubo speaks to Shigeo in familiar terms like they're brothers).

(Politeness, respect, and distance are linked in Japanese. Casual language isn't always rude, but in the wrong situation, it can be jarring and disrespectful. Using casual Japanese is a sign of confidence and personal closeness in your relationship with someone—new friends will switch from formal to casual language at some point and typically never go back; siblings use casual language with each other as a matter of course. It's very situational.)

The second thing to know is, there are choices of first person pronouns in Japanese!!! And Ekubo's choice is spectacular. He refers to himself as "ore-sama". "ore" (roughly pronounced "o-ray") is one of two typical Japanese casual male pronouns, ore and boku. (the formal first-person pronoun for men is watashi). To my knowledge, "ore" was originally the only casual male pronoun, and then "boku" entered popular use as a more humble option and changed the meaning of the formerly more neutral-sounding "ore" by competing with it, which is fascinating. but I'm getting distracted. "ore" is the more aggressively masculine pronoun; it's considered rough/direct to the point of being rude in many contexts. And Ekubo doesn't just use "ore" (ore is a widely-used choice!), he adds the honorific -sama to the end. This is extremely macho. SUPER arrogant. It tracks with his desire to become a god: -sama is the honorific for kami as well as the honorific for people who are way higher ranked than you. giving someone the honorific -sama expresses a greater gap between you and them than -san does. this is hilarious to me. Dimple is over here referring to himself as 🔥 ME 👑 every time he uses first-person pronouns. (Mob uses boku, btw.) ore-sama isn't not used irl, but it's, uh. highly highly unusual, from what I can tell. sounds like a biker gang boss kind of thing to me—something someone on the fringes of society would use. no shade to those outside "polite society" from me, btw, I'm just stating the general connotation from a majority cultural perspective.

OH AND SPEAKING OF HONORIFICS. I'm guessing you've seen analysis of this before and/or just Get It from cultural osmosis, but Dimple calls Shigeo "Shige-chan" the second time they meet. -chan is a usually-affectionate diminutive usually given to girls younger than yourself or celebrities people find cute; I think they translate it as "li'l Shige" in the English dub? -chan has cutesy connotations and can be infantilizing if it's not used with permission and/or some kind of... y'know... familiarity and understanding between the person giving the honorific and the person being referred to with -chan. it is super disrespectful of Dimple to call Shigeo Shige-chan having just met him, and having gotten off on a terrible foot with Shigeo, no less. what the heck, Ekubo!!

And then Dimple proceeds to call him just Shigeo with no honorific at all, which is ALSO disrespectful?? given that Dimple doesn't know him, really?? too familiar, too abrupt! As a strange adult, he should be calling him Shigeo-kun! But he's treating Mob like a little brother. (For instance, as the older brother, Shigeo has the right to call Ritsu by the first name and only the first name, whereas Ritsu usually calls Shigeo "Nii-san". To my knowledge, that's not unnatural in Japanese the way it would be in English; it's not Ritsu reiterating their bond every five seconds, it's just the Expected Thing for the younger brother to refer to the older brother as "Nii-san" out of respect. you'll see the Shiratori brothers, Daichi and Kaito, doing the same thing if you pay attention. to each other, they are "Kaito" and "Nii-san". BUT ANYWAY)

Another Dimple regularly does that reads as arrogant/direct to me is sometimes speaking in a Really Low Voice. This is where my knowledge gets hazy—it's more about pronunciation and accent than "behavior" as such, so bear with me, but the general pitch of one's voice is important in Japanese. Girls and women tend to pitch their voices higher than their natural range in Japanese, especially when doing "polite" or "customer service voice". Japanese speaking men often raise their pitches for politeness/to express humility or a conciliatory attitude too, even though it's not as extreme as with women. And men who are performing aggression will often lower their pitch on purpose, creating a growling kind of effect. Dimple does this a lot. Let me see if I can embed a video of him doing it here

YES. OKAY. Listen to the difference between his mental voice and his spoken voice here!! Dimple uses a higher pitch when talking to Mob because he's trying to ingratiate himself with Mob, but then when he's muttering to himself, he reverts back to his evil-spirit, gang-boss, stereotypically-yakuza-sounding kind of... deep growl.

Relatedly, Ekubo rolls his r's. he rolls them hard. That's a really rough way of speaking, definitely not typical in "polite" Japanese. people learning Japanese are told not to roll their r's unless they want to sound like they're yakuza wannabes. (He also, to my ear, tends to kind of roll his vowels?? he puts his voice backwards in his mouth, pronouncing things either near his nose or deep in his throat, and kind of crushes them with his mouth as they emerge. I don't know if there's a word for this, but to my synesthesia it looks like his voice goes spiky. it's a COMPLETELY different sound than the smooth pronunciation of polite Tokyo-style Japanese. I don't actually have a point this is just interesting to me)

That's about all I have for now! I'm fascinated by Dimple's speaking style and what it says about him. Sorry this was more about accent than behavior—as far as behavior goes, I mean, he's weird. he's weird! as a ghost, he's not really a part of society and he just wanders around making fun of people, which would be rude in any culture. I have a whole Other rant about how Dimple improved as a person after Reigen started treating him as an employee and how that adds to MP100's theme of society and connection, but now is not the time. I hope this has been interesting to you!! Thank you for the ask!

[seventeendeer]

the tf2 fandom on tumblr is in such dire straits, it wraps around from being annoying to being funny

no one knows anything about the time period it's set in. no one knows anything about the time period it was written in. no one knows the media genre it's parodying. no one knows how to write mostly-middleaged, mostly-white men who are intentionally and comedically a product of their time and individual cultures. no one seems to even realize each character is hugely informed by (the stereotyped version of) their culture. no one is comfortable engaging with the old war propaganda it's satirizing. no one knows anything about guns. some people actually think the sniper is 26

it's hard to watch, but then again the official comics post-2015 fall into every single one of these pitfalls too so like. maybe a lack of media literacy isn't just a fandom problem

[mahoutoons]

people will see a morally grey female character and either go "she's a little baby angel who did nothing wrong ever 🥺" or "she's an irredeemable monster who deserves to DIE 😡" taking away everything that makes her character interesting.

case in point

[fromtheseventhhell]

People erasing Asha's attraction to/relationships with men because she's a non-conforming woman is very weird (i.e. homophobic and misogynistic)