#is not very compelling tbh

[wastrelwoods]

i am just so occam's razor about why hannibal is asleep by abigail's hospital bed at the end of aperitif holding her hand in his hand with her blood still staining the cuff of his shirt. you can believe he has no honest regard for anyone and never has and every time he says or does something that implies he cares if she lives or dies it's a deliberate lie to make himself seem more like a good person so he took the time to carefully stage this little scene by her bedside for the benefit of no one purely on the prediction that will would stop by hours later and see it and trust him more. or, uh,

you could just sort of buy in to it. listen. hannibal lies a lot but usually he does it by saying things that are true in a way that disguises his meanings and intentions. personally i don't think committing this hard to something that is completely false and without a true emotional core makes any sense or brings him any benefit. i think maybe he just likes her.

[shesmore-shoebill]

"I had choice paralysis :(" is a KILLER line.

He's such a comedic powerhouse, I'm glad more people are getting exposed to him :'D

[turbo-tsundere]

*superglues them together*

Aka, eeeeh fok it. Here's some ougoku stuff I've been sitting on. Happy THOSE GUYS day.

[andresylupin]

Mushishi week 2024 - Day two : favourite side character -> Adashino

[liquid-geodes]

This day after mothers day, and every other holiday where you're running to the grocery store the day before/day of/day after said holiday, please for the love of God be so very kind to your grocery store employees

Some of us are the only person, yes person singular, running three, yes more than one, departments.

Some of us are doing this with no holiday pay for the minor, but busier, holidays.

Some of us have never been home with our families on these holidays while you're scrambling to get home to your family.

Some of us are barely making $11 an hour.

Some of us are very tired.

Some of us are me.

Be so nice to me.

Please.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Hey (^-^)/

I have a question: What did Atsushi mean in this panel when he said "the fact that you're the one standing in front of me"? I don't get it.

And why Akutagawa's face seem conflicted by hearing that?

I'm not entirely sure - that line is fairly ambiguous - but I can share my own interpretation! Here, Atsushi is trying to explain Akutagawa that the reason why Dazai has not acknowledged him yet is not, as Akutagawa is convinced of, because he isn't strong enough, and that his being powerful is actually of no interest to Dazai. Atsushi suggests that there's something else Dazai is waiting for Akutagawa to grow better at before acknowledging him, and Akutagawa will only be able to see what it is by keeping himself from killing (likely, what Atsushi is thinking Akutagawa lacks is moral virtue to some extent, compassion and humanity. I feel like that's also consistent with how Dazai sees Akutagawa in Beast, and what believes is wrong with him: “It’s human nature to lash out with violence. But if hurting others is your natural instinct… then you are nothing more than a mindless beast” (Dazai, Beast novel, page 18) ).

Akutagawa so far has believed that everything he could do to be seen by Dazai, was proving his own strength; and that his current situation of not being yet recognized was due to his own limits on that front. With that last line, I think Atsushi is telling him: “The reason you are where you are now [both in terms of his path towards being acknowledged by Dazai and overall current status as conjunction of events that led him to be where he is] has nothing to do with your strength or lack thereof. You're here in front of me [in your current situation that led you to this place in this moment] because there's something you've yet to realize [that would be, once again, that strength is not what Dazai seeks in him but rather for Akutagawa to accomplish a moral step up]”.

Additionally, I think Atsushi might also imply: “The reason you're here in front of me, the reason Dazai decided you had to be here, is so that you could see something you still can't grasp”, since both sskk and the bsd author seem to be fairly assured that everything sskk themselves do is because Dazai wanted them to, in some sort of weird determinism (“Why were you so eager to put Akutagawa-kun against that tiger lad? [...] How long have you been aiming for this scenario?” “From the time I met Atsushi-kun.” (Hirotsu, Dazai, chapter 37); “Why do you think Dazai-san put us together?” (Atsushi, chapter 51); “Dazai-san didn't abandon me after all. This was all a trial. A guidepost, lined with wailing.” (Akutagawa, chapter 85); and even more examples could be made; everything sskk do, seems like it's because Dazai wanted them to at some point.)

The reason why Akutagawa looks so conflicted, then, is probably out of bewilderment for Atsushi's words, for the revelation that proving his strength - that is everything Akutagawa has tried to do since meeting him - is actually not the way to make Dazai acknowledge him.

Here's an alternative fantranslation to the official English translation + the raws of that page for further insight :)

[sergle]

I showed my 80yo grandma your before and after pics and she said "oh bless her heart, I bet she feels so much better. And it looks like the doctor did a fabulous job."

For reference, I'd previously brought up your gofundme with my mom and she'd asked about it

You KNOW I was working with too much square footage on my chest when Gameemamaw busts out the "oh bless her heart". That's how you know it's SEVERE

[good-wine-and-cheese]

Favourite character meme! Based on this meme from twitter.

I don't really have any guilty favs however Seven is probably guilty of the most & worst crimes so she's guilty I suppose. Guilty of teaching me I wasnt straight also

Runners up are Ginko and Keaton, there just weren't enough boxes to include them.

[usertoxicyaoi]

the balance of flavour between bratty and babygirl that yoh has is soooooooooo. mmmm. yeah. delicious. rightly seasoned. neither here nor there. not too much of one or the other. it's just right.

[good-to-drive]

If you're into mclennon I think you should get into Abraham Lincoln discourse because he was straight but his letters to Joshua Speed would melt your brain

[dyna-myght]

Niclays devotion and heartbreak over Jannart is so moving, I really enjoy reading his heartfelt thoughts and memories over him. I really wish the romance between Ead and Sabran was as moving…. Idk what it is but they don’t click very well for me. I am trying my best to enjoy them but the writing for their romance feels so distant. Maybe it’ll get better, I do still have like 300 pages left to read.

Maybe I just need to lower my expectations for lesbian romances but I don’t want to settle for bland relationships just for the sake that they’re lesbian 😔.

[amelikos]

It's really interesting seeing moments where Liko is overly careful with her words, to the point it feels like she is walking on eggshells and prefacing her thoughts with "it's fine, I really think it's fine but..." even around her friends.

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[surreal-duck]

you single handedly both made me love midori and yuzuru more and also ship them i love your art sm <33

TYSM!! :> if mdyz has 1000 fans etc etc ive truly never recovered.

they both on their own too are rly neat characters that are very dear to me go listen to mahiru no zanzou and green to the sky btw. or again if you already have. did u know how much midori loves and adores ryuseitai. he means everything to mee her growth is soooo good i think abt climax so much hearing the voiced clips still kind of break me. and yuzuru where do i start. all i can say is that im doing this to him

[iirulancorrino]

Just logged onto Facebook to find out another woman I went to college with got married and changed her name to her husband's name...please say sike

[decepti-thots]

Minimus for the villain ask meme!

Fun fact: no less than THREE people immediately asked for Minimus, ahaha. I am therefore going to give… well, one option and two bonuses, not really three answers, but yknow.

Option one: so I actually think in some ways, Minimus is one of the easiest main-cast-member in the MTMTE/LL cast to put into this role! That might sound counterintutive. But the crux of Remain in Light revolves around him having had extremely close ties with that arc's main villain this entire time. If you change it so that prior to the big reveal about his ultimate plans, Minimus gets back in touch with Tyrest and is persuaded that Rodimus and his crew are a dangerous liability that need to be prevented from doing further damage… my thought here is that when the LL gets stranded without comms, whatever weird tech Tyrest outfitted the Magnus armour with is powerful enough to make contact, and Minimus reaches out for help. And is told that in lieu of being able to just arrest the lot of them and bring the Lost Light back (since they're stranded), Magnus' role as Enforcer is to do silent damage control, ensure none of Rodimus' big plans come to fruition, and wait for an opportunity to arrange pick-up by Tyrest and his lot for arrest.

Without the very extreme circumstances we see in Remain in Light- the mistreatment of prisoners, the 'built my own army' thing, the abuse, the reveal of Tyrest's eventual plan for mass murder and his overall emotional instability- I think Minimus would squash down basically any uneasiness and Do His Job. He does know how to question authority when it tells him to do things he knows to be immoral… but it takes a loooot to get to that point, and I truly think he'd wave away his doubts for the opportunity to have a defined role and orders to follow as an Enforcer again. Tyrest shows up and Rodimus and the crew get handed over, and THEN you have Minimus trapped in a sunk-cost fallacy where he can't admit Tyrest is in fact clearly acting in the wrong and abusing his power, so he keeps going along with it. Minimus is a character I can very, very easily see taking on a role showcasing how 'good intentions' when it comes to morality can enable very bad things, not because of any particular malice or evil in the person doing them, but just because they hand over the issue of morality to big, impersonal structures they put too much trust in.

Bonus one: Magnus goes along with the mutiny. This was a literal proposed plot at one point, lmao. I maintain that Magnus' insecurity and remaining dissatisfaction with the post-Megatron captaincy situation (both of them!), combined with Getaway's canon ability to play people dealing with feelings of inadequacy like a fiddle, makes this completely plausible. I can a hundred percent imagine him as Getaway's muscle and backing in the mutiny arc, tbh.

Bonus two: not reeeeally a 'villain' take on it in itself, but I'm linking this old post I made about an AU where Minimus originally joined as a Decepticon anyway.