I think we haven’t mined Harrow’s tendency to leave multiple long overly detailed notes for romance potential. Like I’m imagining Gideon waking up to a note on her face and 3 more on the bedside table and it’s like-
Note 1: I have gone out to pick up some things, I am expecting to be back by 10:30. If I am not back by 11:00, assume some unforeseen complication. If I am not back by 12:00, you may assume I have been kidnapped and react accordingly.
Note 2: If you were planning on making food for yourself, don’t. I will be bringing you a smoothie and a breakfast sandwich from the cafe down the street. And before you start fretting over me, yes I am getting food for myself as well.
Note 3: Please try to be finished with your workout before I get back, or wait until after I return. I know your muscles wait for no man or some-such nonsense but I’d like to eat breakfast together.
Note 4: I love you 🖤
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teru & socialization
i've posted about this before but something ive been thinking about a LOT is mp100's themes of loneliness (and eventual connections). i think this is an aspect of teru's character (in particular) that gets left out because it's not as explicit but i've been wanting to do a deep dive on it for a while and i finally sat down to do it. just a warning, this post is gonna be LONG.
these two panels are from chapter 16 of the manga (which i'm using for my evidence because i. dont want to scrub through the anime LOL). initial sentiment: teru uses his powers to cheat having friends/a good social life and wouldn't have that if he tried earnestly. this is a fair interpretation of the scene. with what we know, at this point of time (as in within the teru-mob fight) teru would not be able to connect with other people earnestly, due to his mindset. which i think is a fair interpretation, HOWEVER:
(from chapter 17 ^^) the first panel shows teru's expression to be strained and the second is visibly unhappy. this puts the first set of panels into a different context, that maybe underneath all of this, teru doesn't WANT any of this life that he's built. keep in mind that i'm analyzing this with teru's possible autistic tendencies in mind & you dont have to believe he's autistic, im not your dad, but i do find this a pretty meaningful indication of masking if he were
(note: yes, the strain can definitely be read as comp-het, and i would agree but that's not relevant so go read this post on that instead)
even if the rest of these panels show teru content with his life, i think these expressions are pretty vital to how we read his life especially because we know so little of it. think about it, if you were a kid desperate for affection because you couldn't get it anywhere else, especially not in a way that would come off as "mature" or "unaffected", wouldn't you also look for validation in your popularity? even if it aligned you with people who you consider fundamentally different to you? my point here is that teru can't not stand out-- it's in his nature-- and we are shown how he tries to blend in & receive attention in the only way possible to him; which is to say that he molds himself into something that is palatable, likeable, and superior to other people. if he's nothing, like mob, he has spent his entire life covering up for it. if he fails socially, like mob, he has to be good at everything (even if he cheats to do so) so that everyone else can look past it.
(side note for my teru angst enjoyers: this is a panel of his mom. the mom who he hasn't seen in years. doesn't it make sense that, if he hasn't heard his mom say he's proud of him for literal years, that he would overachieve in response? not related to the autism thing i just have the teru bug. also don't be misogynistic in my notes both his parents suck we just get a singular mention of his mom)
so if teru couldn't meaningfully have friends before mob, that could very easily be because of his past mindset, right?
...except, we don't.. really... see him make other friends afterwards.
but, the awakening lab, right?
(ok i lied to you sorry there is one anime screenshot and thats because it stood out to me while i rewatched it earlier this month. sorry.) id like to bring attention to this screenshot during the cultural festival because the awakening lab can definitely be seen as a direct contradiction of this and i'd like to point out a couple things:
1) in this scene the shiratori brothers are in another room
2) them and the other three are friends with ritsu (or at least close enough acquaintances to want to see him).
considering this is one of the only times they appear together for Fun i am more inclined to believe this is an encounter where they went together because they all would've gone separately anyway. this isn't to discount the possible bond that these characters might have, but thats the thing. we... aren't really shown that they're friends and enjoy spending time together outside of this screenshot, where two out of six of the members are not even present. not to mention that teru is still placing himself in a role separate from his peers. despite stripping the superiority away, teru is still the awakening lab's mentor, not friend. teru still views himself as fundamentally different in a context where his psychic powers don't make him that way.
...except with mob. i bring this placement of power up because where he is the awakening lab's mentor, teru declares mob to be his rival, or, in other words, teru is just like him. he is accepting that mob and him are the same. (and if we view mob from an autistic lens... so on and so forth)
as if to hammer in that point even further-- in the summer vacation omake, teru explicitly states that "summer break is just a super long, super boring stretch of alone time." i'm not sure of the timeline here, but guessing from the hair, we're at least post season 1. which gives us explicit confirmation here that teru is spending the break alone despite his relationship to the awakening lab. his connection to mob is a lifeline here because mob is one of the only people who can intuitively understand teru's isolation without judgment
(also, on that point of teru's autistic tendencies: teru does and says a LOT of things that would raise other peoples eyebrows and doesn't seem to notice.
here we get teru actively admitting to his home life, right in front of reigen, WHO COULD CALL CHILD SERVICES ON HIM? this genuinely made me rethink this character entirely. teru's filter is... minimal. he isn't constantly volunteering information and generally minds his own business, but if you ask? Well.
teru is a social person, but to say he is proficient in understanding social situations seems... wrong. teru views his loneliness as boring because, despite being fairly open, does not actually allow himself to think about his own feelings and how they affect him. this loneliness is boring because he doesn't have enough of a reference to realize its not
if we are taking pre-mob teru to be a version of himself who is masking, or at the very least someone who is faking a lot of stuff in a less autistic sense, the fight with mob changes teru to the point where he no longer hides himself. in the same way that mob was able to shake teru's fragile superiority complex i think the change in appearance marks the end of the self teru had built up. from this point on we see him become a lot more... Him. his appearance and his fashion choices are, presumably, completely normal to him and we get no indication that he believes otherwise despite the reactions it gets-- which is... well, i wouldn't be writing this post if i thought it was one of his most neurotypical traits.
in fact, he seems... pretty oblivious to what other people think of him. which is an interesting distinction to make considering the intelligence we Know he possesses (which is not to say that you are unintelligent if you don't pick up on social cues, just that its common for media to depict it that way.) these traits are made pointedly, even if unintentionally, separate, ESPECIALLY when you note the amount of characters who Do ruminate on or stare at teru's appearance.
some examples. i don't even think this is all of it-- case in point.)
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Fully of the belief that Miko is only seen as an annoying character because of the dynamic between her and Jack.
Miko in isolation isn’t an annoying character. She’s reckless, and unwise, and has to be bailed out of trouble every five seconds, but this isn’t really an issue for any of the bots because as far as they’re concerned, this is Normal Human Behaviour™. They are constantly having to work with and around humans or bail them out of trouble.
Bulkhead adores Miko. He is exasperated by her like a parent is of their toddler, sure, but I wouldn’t say he is annoyed by her in any way. Her interaction with wheeljack is another example. When she exists with the bots by herself, she doesn’t come across as burdensome. She’s just limited, as every human is, by the curse of being small.
It’s only through her interactions with Jack, and his continuous challenging and calling out on her behaviour, that Miko becomes an annoying character. Frankly, it’s the tension between them which annoys the audience. We can only watch the same cyclical bickering between children before it gets old.
I have noticed that there actually are a lot of people who do like Miko, and find Jack super annoying instead. It seems like people pick one or the other depending on how you interpret which one is causing the tension. When I watched tfp as a kid, I loved Miko and hated Jack. Like, hated hated him. Because I saw Miko as a fun punk rock kid and Jack as the one needlessly calling her out. Upon rewatching tfp as an adult (who works with kids a lot) I related far more to Jack, and so the situation flipped; I saw Miko’s actions as more frustrating to watch.
The writers did eventually try to fix this, with the one heart-to-heart scene between Miko and Jack. But it was kind of rushed, and didn’t leave any lasting change to their dynamic. They went right back to arguing.
Tldr: Miko and Jack are annoying together. Fans usually pick one of em as the cause to be annoyed at but honestly, they are both fine on their own. Children bickering is annoying even in a fictional cartoon lmao
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