#i admire him so very much

[xinamie]

— kung lao thoughts !

just saw someone on another platform say that kung lao is not complex and lemme just. ok hold on. he's more than a cocky, food loving man.

i'm gonna focus on mk1 for now, but hear me outtttt !!! mk1 story spoilers ahead, you've been warned!

kung lao, a humble farmer, who is the descendant of the Great kung lao (lord liu kang's champion in the past iirc and like they were CLOSE bcs remember the scene with the jade statue? anyway off topic).

of course with family honor like that, lao would have this confidence, this arrogance, this ego that everyone groans about. he has this reputation to uphold - this legacy. he wants to be as great as his ancestor!

in the beginning, you find out that he isn't satisfied with the farm life like raiden is. he's the first to jump and react when liu kang tells them all about earthrealm after the test with the lin kuei. he craves adventure, glory, and a sense of just ... achievement.

he loses the title of champion to raiden, but sucks it up and congratulates him. he supports him along the way - bragging about raiden to general shao and cheering for raiden through the outworld matches. even if he was upset that he wasn't the chosen one (re: liu kang hitting him with that one line 'if you trained harder, you would have been champion' LIKE OW DAMN ok) - he still honors raiden and accepts the outcome.

let's talk about his story ending, kung lao messed up with shujinko! shujinko went haywire and it was because he didn't learn humility because kung lao couldn't teach it to him!! lao had always been so confident that he didn't put that into lessons for his student which led to liu kang and raiden stepping in. in this moment, i like to believe that lao learns how important humility is. not through himself directly, but seeing what had happened to shujinko.

omg what about the funny little lines about acting? how johnny offered them movie roles in the end and when raiden politely declined, lao whined. maybe he's intrigued about being able to work on a movie, to get out there and experience the world than just that farm life he knew.

kung lao didn't get to be champion, but he was able to go on missions in outworld and i like to think that he thrived. he got a taste of that adventure, that journey, you know?

kung lao is playful - those lines about wanting to spook raiden's sister with syzoth or how he whined to kuai liang(? i think or tomas?) about how he wanted to test raiden's sister too. how he flashed johnny with the flashlight LMAO. how he gets scolded by madam bo for making excuses sometimes.

LASTLY and also something i think people forget here and there, kung lao is ALSO respectful to some degrees omg. remember when johnny pulled that ripley line and kung lao was like bro??? that plus how he stood up for raiden as mentioned before, he literally becomes a shaolin master ... he may not be a saint, but i don't think he'd be treating people horribly or the type to be flirty every single time.

all in all, there are many sides to kung lao and i think there's a lot to be explored here. i'm down for the silly fandom lao moments, but also serious lao, conflicted lao, focused lao, etc etc. he's a champion to me.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Assisting Acquaintance Acquired.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[suzuberto]

You got booped by Panini the wanderer frog

He likes you very much and wishes you good booping day

(or only day if you aren't into booping)

He also documented it on his little journal

Image ID

A photo of a green and white belly hand knitted frog wearing a lavender hat and yellow hoodie carrying a little crossbody bag and booping to the camera (frog + clothes are bought but handmade from local ladies, the bag is made by me)

The same frog as before but with an upper photo. He's holding a pencil on his left hand and a journal over his little legs that has a frog hand with "1 apr 2024" and "boop" written on the left page and a "today i booped strangers on tumblr ♡" with a little self portrait below on the right page. At his left side there is a pen holder with other pens and a calendar, and oh his right a plate with cookies and an empty mini cup, he already got his morning tea!

(frog + clothes are bought but handmade from local ladies, the bag + journal is made by me, the other thingies are from sylvanian families sets)

[love4hobi]

J-HOPE & BOOGALOO KIN Hope on the Street (2024)

[yugsly]

The TV star must look his best!

[amoritasart]

He learned from the best ! ☺️

Meanwhile Caleb

Based on my AU

[kami-kun1003]

TWST fic writers stop reducing Silver’s entire personality to just “sleepy boy who falls asleep all the time and is sooooo sleepy and tired and did i mention he sleeps a lot and also he loves his dad” challenge (impossible) (gone wrong)

[daily-hanamura]

[ohmuqueen]

[sysig]

Take care of him (Patreon)

[thepersonperson]

On the note of sukuna inflicting insane amounts of violence onto those he finds interesting, I wanna bring up the parallel between gojo and sukuna with how in shibuya gojo in the 2v1 goes for hanami first and how many times he mentioned how unique her presence and technique is in chapters before that like he goes for her first bc he believes jogo to be weak (and maybe he expected more from hanami, having survived a hollow-purple from him before and all, but she doesn't respond or entertain him the way he wanted and just dies, also the glee with which he crushes her with his limitless like he expected her to overcome it somehow and the angry/irritated look he has after she's dead and he's left to fight choso and jogo)

I never thought about Hanami and Gojo's relationship that way, but looking closer there is definitely something going on. And I think it has everything to do with Toji.

(Used TCB Scans. Click images for captions/citations.)

Gojo both massively respects and fears Toji for getting past Infinity. He respects him enough to steal his fit and raise his kid free of Zenin nonsense, but he also fears being made that vulnerable again. So Gojo does this thing where he simultaneously looks for other Tojis while mercilessly destroying anything that resembles Toji. The go to example of this is:

The cursed tools capable of piercing Infinity have been personally dealt with by Gojo so another Toji incident won't happen again. It's a reasonable trauma response all things considered. What's unreasonable was his treatment of Miguel whose Cursed Technique (CT) mimics Toji. (Though it doesn't seem like it was ever activated in full during their fight.)

Despite part of that beatdown being racially motivated, Miguel's Black Rope did remind Gojo of Toji's Inverted Spear of Heaven, hence him getting rid of it. So while Gojo has enough respect for Miguel as a strong individual he can trust with training his students, there's that underlying fear from being too much like Toji. (Tbh Gojo being wary of his build is similar to how unnerved he was by Toji's physical prowess too.)

Now that we've established Gojo's weird relationship with Toji ghosts, back to Hanami. The first thing he notices about them is how good they are at hiding their presence and running away. Who else specializes in that kind of stealth? Toji.

So while Gojo is excited to have someone who might be his equal again, the fact that they're enemies has Gojo jumping straight to Hollow Purple to get rid of that threat. I don't think it's a coincidence the damage Hanami and Toji receive looks similar side by side.

And going to their fight in Shibuya, Gojo does something really weird to this curse that resembles Toji—he puts Limitless down. It was a bait tactic for sure, but it's almost like he is forcibly reliving his trauma. Toji first attacked when he turned Limitless off and from behind. And here Gojo turns it off again, and puts his back to the not-Toji.

But unlike with Toji, he senses when Hanami goes for him and turns around to torment and kill them. The cruelty with which he deals damage to Hanami exceeds even that of Jogo. It feels like he's using them as some kind of emotional punching bag where this time he kills the Toji before everything goes wrong.

I think his facial expressions being a more monstrous version of the ones he made while fighting Toji supports this theory as well. Gojo makes weird frog faces during the Sukuna fight, but they're just nowhere near this unhinged.

This could also be why he looks so upset after they're dead. Yes he killed the Toji, but now he doesn't have that rival. (Wow it's just like Sukuna being upset at the toys he broke.)

[eikichi-supremacy]

and they were singin', bye-bye Miss American Pie // american oldie i think kuwabara unironically listens to

(low effort lyric edit im queueing here in May cos im probably gonna forget it exists otherwise)

[pastelhooman]

My recent cause of extreme emotional turmoil

LOVE!! and PEACE!!!!

[jrueships]

pretty privilege in general is a terrible tool. but when the racism that it's ingrained in really has a platform to activate, it's just absurd .

[normalenjoyer-png]

i need to dwell on brad's line about villains being the heroes

[whoblewboobear]

Ooooh I’m having Porter thoughts. His masculinity is so performative, he knows how to play into it. He’s comfortable in it but he’s also comfortable not presenting typically masculine. He’s connected to his body and the feelings of it and he can notice a change in it the minute he wakes up and find a way to get back to his base level normal.

But he can’t comprehend his emotions to save his life. He knows rage, he gets anger, but he can go beyond that, he hasn’t stopped at anger in years. He feels and expresses love in the way he does everything else: physically.

Whether it’s through sex, fist fighting, screaming, squeezing the thing so hard until it pops, eating a gift, whatever. If it’s a physical, tangible, bodily expression of love it makes sense to him. But saying it? Hardest thing in the fucking world. Because it requires so much vulnerability and he doesn’t do anything vulnerably. It might fucking kill him.

He loves giving gifts though. He loves cooking. He loves saying “I love you,” in all the ways that don’t involve saying it. The person will understand, right? Jace will understand?

His Jace that is so in tune with his emotions, so vulnerable but in a way that’s so strong to him. He looks at Jace and sees strength in his smiles and soft touches and the kisses he leaves at the corner of his mouth. His Jace that doesn’t hesitate to say I love you for the first time.

Porter still kicks himself for not saying it back in a way that Jace would appreciate. He should’ve said it back, he just didn’t know how.