#im fine evidently

[bucktommys]

ways to say i love you without saying i love you (eddie’s version)

[kaladinkholins]

Very interesting to me that a certain subset of the BES fandom's favourite iterations of Mizu and Akemi are seemingly rooted in the facades they have projected towards the world, and are not accurate representations of their true selves.

And I see this is especially the case with Mizu, where fanon likes to paint her as this dominant, hyper-masculine, smirking Cool GuyTM who's going to give you her strap. And this idea of Mizu is often based on the image of her wearing her glasses, and optionally, with her cloak and big, wide-brimmed kasa.

And what's interesting about this, to me, is that fanon is seemingly falling for her deliberate disguise. Because the glasses (with the optional combination of cloak and hat) represent Mizu's suppression of her true self. She is playing a role.

Take this scene of Mizu in the brothel in Episode 4 for example. Here, not only is Mizu wearing her glasses to symbolise the mask she is wearing, but she is purposely acting like some suave and cocky gentleman, intimidating, calm, in control. Her voice is even deeper than usual, like what we hear in her first scene while facing off with Hachiman the Flesh-Trader in Episode 1.

This act that Mizu puts on is an embodiment of masculine showboating, which is highly effective against weak and insecure men like Hachi, but also against women like those who tried to seduce her at the Shindo House.

And that brings me to how Mizu's mask is actually a direct parallel to Akemi's mask in this very same scene.

Here, Akemi is also putting up an act, playing up her naivety and demure girlishness, using her high-pitched lilted voice, complimenting Mizu and trying to make small talk, all so she can seduce and lure Mizu in to drink the drugged cup of sake.

So what I find so interesting and funny about this scene, characters within it, and the subsequent fandom interpretations of both, is that everyone seems to literally be falling for the mask that Mizu and Akemi are putting up to conceal their identities, guard themselves from the world, and get what they want.

It's also a little frustrating because the fanon seems to twist what actually makes Mizu and Akemi's dynamic so interesting by flattening it completely. Because both here and throughout the story, Mizu and Akemi's entire relationship and treatment of each other is solely built off of masks, assumptions, and misconceptions.

Akemi believes Mizu is a selfish, cocky male samurai who destroyed her ex-fiance's career and life, and who abandoned her to let her get dragged away by her father's guards and forcibly married off to a man she didn't know. on the other hand, Mizu believes Akemi is bratty, naive princess who constantly needs saving and who can't make her own decisions.

These misconceptions are even evident in the framing of their first impressions of each other, both of which unfold in these slow-motion POV shots.

Mizu's first impression of Akemi is that of a beautiful, untouchable princess in a cage. Swirling string music in the background.

Akemi's first impression of Mizu is of a mysterious, stoic "demon" samurai who stole her fiance's scarf. Tense music and the sound of ocean waves in the background.

And then, going back to that scene of them together in Episode 4, both Mizu and Akemi continue to fool each other and hold these assumptions of each other, and they both feed into it, as both are purposely acting within the suppressive roles society binds them to in order to achieve their goals within the means they are allowed (Akemi playing the part of a subservient woman; Mizu playing the part of a dominant man).

But then, for once in both their lives, neither of their usual tactics work.

Akemi is trying to use flattery and seduction on Mizu, but Mizu sees right through it, knowing that Akemi is just trying to manipulate and harm her. Rather than give in to Akemi's tactics, Mizu plays with Akemi's emotions by alluding to Taigen's death, before pinning her down, and then when she starts crying, Mizu just rolls her eyes and tells her to shut up.

On the opposite end, when Mizu tries to use brute force and intimidation, Akemi also sees right through it, not falling for it, and instead says this:

"Under your mask, you're not the killer you pretend to be."

Nonetheless, despite the fact that they see a little bit through each other's masks, they both still hold their presumptions of each other until the very end of the season, with Akemi seeing Mizu as an obnoxious samurai swooping in to save the day, and Mizu seeing Akemi as a damsel in distress.

And what I find a bit irksome is that the fandom also resorts to flattening them to these tropes as well.

Because Mizu is not some cool, smooth-talking samurai with a big dick sword as Akemi (and the fandom) might believe. All of that is the facade she puts up and nothing more. In reality, Mizu is an angry, confused and lonely child, and a masterful artist, who is struggling against her own self-hatred. Master Eiji, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

And Akemi, on the other hand, is not some girly, sweet, vain and spoiled princess as Mizu might believe. Instead she has never cared for frivolous things like fashion, love or looks, instead favouring poetry and strategy games instead, and has always only cared about her own independence. Seki, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

But neither is she some authoritative dominatrix, though this is part of her new persona that she is trying to project to get what she wants. Because while Akemi is willful, outspoken, intelligent and authoritative, she can still be naive! She is still often unsure and needs to have her hand held through things, as she is still learning and growing into her full potential. Her new parental/guardian figure, Madame Kaji, knows this as well.

So with all that being said, now that we know that Mizu and Akemi are essentially wearing masks and putting up fronts throughout the show, what would a representation of Mizu's and Akemi's true selves actually look like? Easy. It's in their hair.

This shot on the left is the only time we see Mizu with her hair completely down. In this scene, she's being berated by Mama, and her guard is completely down, she has no weapon, and is no longer wearing any mask, as this is after she showed Mikio "all of herself" and tried to take off the mask of a subservient housewife. Thus, here, she is sad, vulnerable, and feeling small (emphasised further by the framing of the scene). This is a perfect encapsulation of what Mizu is on the inside, underneath all the layers of revenge-obsession and the walls she's put around herself.

In contrast, the only time we Akemi with her hair fully down, she is completely alone in the bath, and this scene takes place after being scorned by her father and left weeping at his feet. But despite all that, Akemi is headstrong, determined, taking the reigns of her life as she makes the choice to run away, but even that choice is reflective of her youthful naivety. She even gets scolded by Seki shortly after this in the next scene, because though she wants to be independent, she still hasn't completely learned to be. Not yet. Regardless, her decisiveness and moment of self-empowerment is emphasised by the framing of the scene, where her face takes up the majority of the shot, and she stares seriously into the middle distance.

To conclude, I wish popular fanon would stop mischaracterising these two, and flattening them into tropes and stereotypes (ie. masculine badass swordsman Mizu and feminine alluring queen but also girly swooning damsel Akemi), all of which just seems... reductive. It also irks me when Akemi is merely upheld as a love interest and romantic device for Mizu and nothing more, when she is literally Mizu's narrative foil (takes far more narrative precedence over romantic interest) and the deuteragonist of this show. She is her own person. That is literally the theme of her entire character and arc.

[ittybittybumblebee]

i want to see exactly how many people actually have thought i am for research because ive gotten this quite a few times from different people i just wanna see how far it goes

[martin-enjoyer]

Hey guys, what if we're wrong about the "totally new system" thing? Or more like, not wrong, just not completely right?

It's just that the two out of the three cases Chester has read sound a lot like Eye statements, with today's sounding like a Buried or Stranger statement, but with Norris's cases, while you could connect them to Smirke's 14, feel a lot different. Unfamiliar, unlike Chester's. It's easy for me to see how Norris's cases could be under new entities, but it's kind of hard to see most of Chester's as anything but The Eye. So after some thinking I was like, "Why are we assuming that the existence of the TMA entities and the existence of TMP's entities mutually exclusive?" Because it's not like The Fears were ever bound to normal logic or human understanding- they weren't things that made sense, just things that were, and there's currently no reason to believe that the TMP entities are any different.

And if you sort all the cases we've heard so far into "TMA-like" (Chester's) and TMP (Norris's, and the non text-to-speech files) then there are four TMP cases and three TMA-like cases, this could maybe indicate that both entity systems act independently of each other, and that the TMP entities are still stronger or more influential than The Fears since they show up more, or that Freddi is just better equipped to pick up accounts related to the TMP entities.

I haven't really addressed Augustus, though, and that's because the one case file he has read was kind of odd. It felt a bit like something Chester would read, making it somewhat a TMA-like, but it was different enough that it feels a lot closer to the TMP cases. Putting Augustus in the middle of them could mean his cases have influences from both the TMA entities and the TMP entities, but since they tend to stay independent the two don't tend to cross paths often, which could be why Augustus talks rarely, since there many joint occurrences.

[engie-the-profit]

worst popular infinite headcanon?

oh my. this one got long so im going to spare peoples dashes by putting this under a cut haha

anyways my answer is: making him out to be a little crybaby who is driven purely by revenge and sadness to make the world pay for shadow killing his squad mates, whom he loved in a normal way and saw them as family or whatever. it makes his character so goddamn flat and boring bc thats such a standard villain motivation, and it entirely strips away a lot of his personality even when theres already so little to work with LMAO

i know ive spoken about it at length in the dog&hog server but to me, infinites most notable trait is that hes selfish

in the prequel comic rise of infinite (yay, prequel comic talk. everyones favourite, i know) he deliberately ignores any protests from his gang against accepting eggmans deal of working with him, because eggy singles him out and offers him a place at his side to bring his fantasy of ruin into reality. not infinite and his crew, just infinite

(image has two comic panels. in the first one, eggman is reaching a hand out to infinite as he says "now you are an interesting guy. i like you. how about i hire you to lead my forces? together we'll take over the world!" in the second panel, one of the jackal squad members says "boss! dont be tempted by him. we'll be fine!")

and infinite says yes after briefly talking about how he personally feels bored and tired of how the world is right now

(image has two panels. in the first, infinite is mumbling to himself, first laughing and then saying "interesting. all this time ive been going through the motions. ive actually grown quite tired of the world as it is." in the second panel he stands and says "lets do it doctor! i'll help you change this world!")

again, its a decision based off an entirely personal and individualistic opinion that only takes his own feelings into account. you would think that if he valued his squad to the extent that they were "like family" to him, he would have listened when they said he shouldnt make a deal with eggman. if he actually cared about them as much as he cared about himself, he would have trusted them enough to say no. instead he only thinks about what he wants and what he can get, not about what will happen to the others

ive always been of the opinion that infinite used his squad and position of authority as their leader to prop himself up and viewed them more like underlings or subjects that he could order around and be superior to, rather than equals whose opinions and input he valued. maybe he started out having more camaraderie with the other jackals, but it certainly doesnt show by the time we get to the events of the prequel comic, and even less so when we get to episode shadow/the main game

the idea that he saw his squad more like tools to make himself look better than people also makes more sense because when in episode shadow, eggman calls infinites squad "useless" directly to him and all infinite says is "yeah, yeah" in a very uncaring fashion. even when he then spots shadow and says "you.. you destroyed my squad!" its entirely unconvincing to me that he said it out of sorrow or sadness; to me it was more like simple anger that it happened. because now without his little group of followers that looked up to him and did whatever he told them to, he had nobody to feel superior to. he couldnt go on any more power trips by being The Boss bc there was nobody left to indulge him, no one to stoke his ego, nobody to be the boss of. so thats why he felt slighted by shadow in the first place; how dare this hedgehog take away what made him feel special and important. and then of course the ensuing humiliation that came afterward was just the icing on the shit cake haha

it also explains why infinite never brings up his squad in any of his monologues (besides the prequel comics and episode shadow being obvious afterthoughts to the main game loool); he just doesnt care. if anything, their loss was his gain bc it pushed him towards acquiring the phantom ruby and getting to go on the ultimate power trip of world domination and near total subjugation of the population. i think that also ties into his mindset that friends make you weak and you cant rely on anyone but yourself; in his case, thats literally true. if he hadnt lost his squad, if he had initially listened to them, the chain of events we know well would not have come to pass and he would not have gotten to become the powerhouse he did. he would have still been leading his monotonous life and following the same old script. from his perspective they really did hold him back, and only once they were gone was he able to become stronger. he reiterates this by thanking shadow in the dlc for doing what he did in mystic jungle (killing the jackal squad and kicking infinites ass) bc otherwise he wouldnt have gotten the incentive he needed to take on the mantle of becoming a super powered weapon

and if you want some more evidence thats admittedly a lot more of a stretch, you could also interpret infinite creating a posse of past sonic foes as him filling the void of using the jackal squad that was created after shadow had taken them down. he gets to control people again (even if theyre clones that had no choice but to obey him but nyeh i told you it was a stretch), he gets to be a leader again

idk, i just think that having a sob story as a main motivation is (funny joke here) weak. i have never once thought that infinite needs to have some kind of sympathetic or tragic backstory. and maybe thats just my own personal bias coming through bc i prefer villains that are evil for reasons like their moral philosophies or have some kind of goal that makes the audience go "maybe they do have a point tbh" and villains that are just evil for the sake of it over villains that say "my mom died" as if that is any kind of justifiable explanation. imo it almost always comes off as them making an excuse, and its lame. just own it, yknow?

so yeah if i could block one thing from the minds of infinite fans it would be the hc that infinite was tightly knit with the jackals and wanted what was best for them. bc with all the evidence ive seen, its not supported at all, and hes actually the exact opposite; he does what he wants and uses who he wants for his own purposes and gain

also yes i do think shadow straight up killed the other jackals and i do think thats in character for him but thats a conversation for another day

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

having a history of chronic suicidality is a little funny when you get intrusive thoughts that feel so unserious and then you realise that you're seriously thinking about it and it's like... where did that come from?

[lollytea]

How do I say, without coming across as a jaded miserable little bitch who likes raining on everybody's parade, that the PJO Disney plus adaption is nostalgia bait, in the same way that their live action remakes are

[theyarewrestling]

oh i love phil so fucking much he is literally one of us like he GETS it🙏🙏🙏

[keynb]

So I usually don't share my opinions due to my worry that people's lack of media literacy will misconstrue my words, but with some of the behavior I'm seeing I felt tempted. This is not to invalidate anyone, and what I'm about to say is entirely just my thought process. If you disagree that's fine, I'm not posting this to start an argument.

Anyway, was I super mega-bummed about Buddie karaoke being cut? Of course! Is it kinda messed up that the karaoke was a big part of the promo and now we won't get to see it? Definitely, yeah I was really upset. But after thinking about it for a little bit? It's not that big of a deal and I get it. I mean I am advocating for them to, like, release some extra little bits of the karaoke moment after the episode is released or at least tell us what the song was cuz Oliver and Ryan seemed to have a good time doing it and Oliver was so nervous about singing lol. But they made it clear that this season was a very "build as we go" situation and I believe they genuinely thought they were gonna be able to include more but that it just ended up not working out that way. I don't think they meant to shipbait us or anything either, I think they focused on Buddie in the promo cuz the main event was the madney wedding and chim being missing so they didn't wanna reveal anything about that particular plot, so they focused on the bachelor party instead. I know being teased about something and hyping it up repeatedly just to have it cut completely the day before is terrible, but with the workflow they're doing right now I feel like we shouldn't have been as surprised that they ended up, like, miscalculating a bit and having to cut more than they anticipated. And I'm sure they also prioritized the Madney content more than the bachelor party (which is good cuz this episode is about them) so those clips had to go. I feel like it was just an unfortunate series of events and not intentional on anyone's part. I've decided to give them some grace because making a TV show is hard, let alone doing it all so close to the release of each episode. I AM begging for the name of the song they sang at least!! Oliver was terrified to sing so he deserves that much lol. (BTW people saying "he got DRUNK for that scene how could you!" If you're joking then that's whatever but if you mean it seriously, I would like to say that he seemed more tipsy than anything, Oliver didn't say he had to be completely wasted to do it. He said they drank a little to loosen inhibitions but I don't think they'd get DRUNK. Lol Oliver has a hard time keeping an American accent sober, you think he'd be able to do any better genuinely tipsy?)

So TLDR: I don't think ABC meant to make us feel tricked, I just think their "lay the tracks while the trains still moving" method messed up a little. I also don't think they were intentionally shipbaiting us because with Madney being the focus of the next episode, they wouldn't wanna spoil or tease anything regarding their storyline, so they mainly focused on the more lighthearted Buddie bachelor party shenanigans, and they just overestimated how much they'd be able to fit in, and Madney should be the main focus anyway as this is not The Buddie Episode. If they continue to do stuff like this (tease and hype up scenes in promo that end up being cut, whether its ship baiting or not) then I will have more of a bone to pick

Also also, not to make it all about Buddie but as an endgame Buddie truther, I would really like to make a good impression to encourage them to make the moves to make Buddie canon. Like vent on your social media as much as you'd like but don't comment on official ABC posts saying they're like traitors or smth WE GOTTA BE PROFESSIONALS GUYS, this show isnt just about Buddie!! We need to find a balance between expressing our love for Buddie so they see our passion for it but not so much to the point it becomes insane, you know? And I say that with THE utmost love.

[azurdlywisterious]

Me learning about the fallout show via tumblr and a brief stint over on Reddit

[pinkeoni]

In order to prove my point I think it might be time to make a long post on the AIDS metaphor

[carfuckerlynch]

hahaha apparently people I used to be friends with are spreading rumors that I'm "predatory toward trans men" sure hope this won't have any consequences!

[fullsunsunoo]

Nakamoto Yuta | NCT 127 'Ay-yo' Commentary Live

[oofuri2003]

i cant overcome abe being so convinced that mihashi is pulling him along that when the others imply he's the one pulling someone else along he's just like. huh? I don't feel that way...

[early-october-skies]

Me when we don't speak anymore by bears in trees

[smoosnoom]

me giggling twirling my hair over this scene of a fic for a fandom that has approximately ten active people in it that barely anyone will read 🥰