i always feel bad when i see how the point of a lot of saiki's personality traits flew right over the heads of a lot of fans due to him being an unreliable narrator and a tsundere lol.. so a lot of things he says are immediately proved to be untrue and often just him putting up a front, but some people dont pick up on it..
like i see a lot of "haha saiki would never want to watch a romance movie" guys there is an entire chapter (170) dedicated to him being like "i much prefer mysteries to romance stories.." and then immediately becoming absolutely enamored with a romance story.. he was lying, guys, LMAO
less specific ones include:
"i hate children, they annoy me" *goes out of his way to help kids, comfort them, be kind to them, etc.*
"i only use my powers for self gain/my own convenience." "anyway my mama told me to never use my powers selfishly so i always use them to help people and i try my best not to use them for personal gain<3"
"those guys are so annoying, i would never hang out with them willingly." "yeah it took them about two sentences to convince me to go with them. their thoughts seemed like they really wanted me to go, so i did. i didnt want them to be upset. not that i care about them or anything."
(sorry i post about this kind of thing a lot, i just giggle a lot at how the entire manga is so easily misinterpreted and thousands of people have watched the show but didnt pick up on the main characters most defining character traits and frequent bits.. i think there needs to be a masterlist or something disproving all the extremely common misconceptions about saiki k lol)
622 notes
·
View notes
There is a nebulous jordie lives au which lives entirely in my head in which jordie recovers from the plague while Kaz is still sick. He gets up to find them food and water only to return and discover Kaz is nowhere to be found. Still recovering from the fever, he searches the barrel for days before he finally sees Kaz wandering down the staves in a sort of fugue state, soaked to the bone with a haunted look in his eyes.
Kaz won’t tell him what happened, but jordie knows it’s bad because his baby brother flinches every time he touches him, and soon enough he’s started wearing gloves, even in the height of summer.
Soon, they discover kazs gift for cards, and it keeps them fed and clothed, if not much else. Kaz is angry at jordie for losing the money, refuses to let him make any decisions. Jordie is beholden to his angry traumatized little brother because he can’t deny that he failed them the first time around.
Kaz is offered a place in his pick of the gangs, but the only one willing to take both him and his tag along older brother is the dregs. Jordie dies a little bit inside when they join up, when they take the tattoo side by side, but he’s not sure they’ll survive another winter on the streets.
And the plot of SoC generally goes on from there. Jordie tags along on the ice court, he and Jesper test kazs patience at every turn, he’s constantly offering unsolicited annoying older brother advice about Inej.
This lends itself to a really interesting exploration of Kaz and jordies relationship, what holds brothers together in the face of incredible trauma, the skewed power dynamic of Kaz becoming the breadwinner for them both at the age of nine, etc etc. But mostly, this au is a vessel for the sailing of the ultimate crack ship, which is of course, jordie/alys Van Eck.
333 notes
·
View notes
So I've already shared parts of this on a discord server, but I have to scream about Ketheric Thorm on here as well. Obviously spoilers about the character under the cut! It's a long one.
The entirety of act 2 is about him, right? Jaheira, Shadowheart and numerous other NPCs shit on him for his fickle faith. First Selune, then Shar, then, as we meet him, Myrkul. You hear about his changes of faith on a whim, you hear that he's the person responsible for the shadow curse, he is painted as a villain, plain and simple.
You can figure it out pretty early on that Isobel was resurrected and that she is his daughter; the detail as well that he wants Isobel alive is so on the nose, it gives him away completely but there are still a few questions that remain unanswered, mainly about his faith.
And then you get to the mausoleum and the picture assembles; this entire tragedy, the death of hundreds if not thousands and the complete ruination of a landscape was all, ALL because you had this absolutely wrenched, heartbroken father who had lost everything and nobody answered his grief. He was left woefully alone, the Goddess whose daughter his daughter was involved with did nothing to save Isobel.
Imagine outliving your wife and your daughter. Imagine dedicating your life to fight the Lady of Loss, your Lady of Silver's enemy, and then be left so completely alone and in silence with your grief, with your loss. It's so, so poetic how and why he turned from Selune, and it's so understandable as well; he broke. His spirit completely broke. He couldn't deal with that void of having lost the only two important people in his life, seemingly undeservedly so. He was going mad with this and a lot of his ire was likely targeted at Aylin who, in his eye, represented Selune; she's literally her daughter, after all, and it was implied that even before the deaths of his family, he sort of saw Aylin courting Isobel as Selune taking his daughter from him, despite his service. This relationship was clearly not seen by him as a boon of "giving his daughter to the Moon-maiden".
His ways in the past clearly didn't spare him from tragedy and having to cope with it (which he clearly didn't, he snapped under the weight of his grief). He was clearly angry and unable to do anything, furious and helpless, which is a dangerous combination. A good part of his first change of heart must have been fuelled by a sense of revenge.
But then Shar didn't provide any balm to his aching heart either. If you read his letters in Grymforge and in act 2, he is so focused on enacting the will of Shar because he believes that healing lies in oblivion. Everything would be easier if he could just forget, if the damn world could just forget, if nothing was remembered because without Melodia and Isobel, nothing was worth remembering.
Then came Myrkul. Literally the only god who was not only able, but WILLING to give back his daughter to him. Imagine spending your all, EVERYTHING you have to serve two gods who would not give a single shit about the greatest suffering in your life. You were basically nothing, your loyalty didn't matter for shit, everything that was taken from you amounted to no recognition whatsoever: you should simply cope and seethe. Your grief will not simply go unanswered (which is not inherently antagonising) but ignored.
And then comes this supposedly evil entity who can alleviate your pain just like that, snap of a finger and it's a done deal.
I am so serious when I say that I believe Ketheric's main incentive was to extend Aylin's immortality to Isobel as well. You can read in her diary that she feels a taint after having came back, and there are things not even Selune can cleanse, but at this point, Ketheric doesn't care about Selune, vengeance is secondary if not tertiary, he's done that war during his Shar years and what did it give him? Literally nothing.
He doesn't even care about the fact that Isobel is still her cleric. He cares about the single most important fact: Isobel is back. Life is worth living again, there is something for him, and it was not Selune or Shar who gave it to him but Myrkul, and for this singular gift, he would raze the world for the Lord of Bones. Like people can clown on him for being disloyal but the man has the loyalty of a dog bonded to its owner.
He is powerful and is willing to go to insane lengths for crumbs. What is raising a single life for a god? Nothing. It has happened and it will happen again. But Ketheric will go to the ends of the earth to serve the single god who actually listened to him. The one god who didn't ignore him.
He knows that what he does is not the morally upright thing! He is so insanely self-aware that allying with Orin and Gortash and doing this entire plot with them only to then betray them is morally reprehensible at the best of times, he knows that people hate him, etc-etc. He was a Selunite at one point and he's not stupid. He just doesn't care; it could be literal Asmodeus and he wouldn't care as long as he got what he wanted, no matter the price.
He is probably the only one from the three of the chosen who has complete clarity over his situation, he almost sways (if you pass the check during his confrontation), he is not an inherently evil man blinded by power.
But he is inherently loyal to those deserving, and as of the story's standing, completely broken by his grief. In his eyes, at this point, the only one deserving loyalty is the one who actually listened to him. Isobel lives. It doesn't matter that she hates him, that his entire life has fallen apart, that literally nothing else that is good has come of it, because Isobel lives.
I don't think he regrets a single thing. His consciousness might tear at him at the end, but I believe he would do everything over again, exactly as he did, because in the end, his daughter was brought back. Because what would a grieving, broken parent give to bring back their child? Everything. Absolutely everything. And it's such a simply given answer, no second thoughts, no doubts.
Nobody can tell me that this man is fickle. Nobody. This man was willing to burn the world to the ground, create a Boudica destruction layer all by himself for the one single thing he wanted. For any God that would listen.
I don't know, I just have a lot of thoughts about his character.
342 notes
·
View notes
it takes far too long for soap to realise ghost won’t touch him anymore
he doesn’t avoid him, which he considers no small a miracle given how he usually treats his emotions, and he’s too busy being thankful to notice. thankful he didn’t run from him, thankful his simon has returned to him, no matter how changed he is from the man he knew. ghost doesn’t shy away from his touch so long as he knows it’s coming and he spends long nights just tracing the scars on his newly bared face; following half-remembered tracks and memorising new ones
but ghost never reaches back. he’ll press into his hands like a starved man, melt beneath the smallest of touches but he never initiates. and now, his regular touches have disappeared; no longer does he clap him on the back after a job well done, doesn’t cheekily nudge him after making a recruit shit themself just by giving them a look and soap hadn’t realised how much he’s come to rely on them until they stopped. how much he’s grown to care for ghost the way he used to care for simon
he can’t confront him about it; ghost’s fight or flight always firmly tuned to flight when it came to matters about himself. soap would’ve if it meant fight; if ghost would just put his hands on him again, he’d take his violence with the passion of a lover, wear the marks he left behind with grateful pride. but he remembers the look on ghost’s face when he’d ripped his balaclava off, when he’d stripped his barrier and his protection and spat, “i ruined you the moment i touched you!”
so soap waits. he waits for ghost to crawl into his bunk, to take off his mask and surrender himself to his touch; a touch that seems to burn as much as it freed. and instead of taking his face in his hands and worshiping it the way he has every other night ghost’s come to him, soap takes his gloved hand in his own
ghost flinches, the preemptive bliss fading from his eyes as reluctant fear takes its place. soap brings it up so it hovers between them and already feels him edge backwards. he doesn’t let it stop him and gently tugs his fingers free of the glove one at a time until his hand is bare to him; visibly shaking in the dark. soap brings it towards his face, holding firm when ghost tries to yank it back and presses into it; his breath hitching as he finally gets the touch he’s missed for years
“stop, john,” ghost whispers and it hurts to hear the pain in his voice; closer to begging for the soft touch to end than he’s ever been under torture
“no,” he refuses, pressing a kiss to the centre of his palm
his eyes shine in the dark, arm twitching as he fights himself; pulling back against his grip and leaning into him in turn. (how can he stand to put his mouth on him; can’t he taste it? the dirt and decay that lives under his skin? the maggots that swim in the slow beat of his blood; the rot he’s been trying so hard not to spread to him but he’s weak.) “you don’t know how broken i am. i’ll ruin you, john.”
soap kisses him again; thick, phantom blood coating his lips. “i’m not letting you slip through my fingers again,” he promises, swallowing it down. “i’ve missed you too much to be afraid of getting cut, simon.”
211 notes
·
View notes