this is sort of pathetic, but when you were younger, you were sort of puzzled by the cartoon representations of fathers: how a kid would be outside with a mitt, waiting to play catch.
it's not that your father never played catch with you, but you also didn't like when he did. something about a hard ball coming quickly towards your face doesn't seem exciting. not that you'd ever say you don't trust him. you trust him, right?
it's not like he never tried to teach you anything. or never tried to parent. on rare days, a strange person would walk in your father's skin. bright, happy, magnificent. this version of your father was so cheerful and charismatic that you would do anything to keep him. and this is the version of your father that would laugh and gently coax you try again. this is the version of your father that would break down the small elements of a problem and point them out so you have an easier time with them.
as a kid, those days happened more often. but somewhere around 11, you started being too much of a person, and he was often cross about it. when he'd try to sit you down to learn something, you spent the whole time with your shoulders around your ears, nervous, uncertain. terrified because you didn't immediately understand how to navigate something. worried you will run out of his goodwill and then you will have the Other Father back, and you will have ruined a good day for your entire family. something about you being visibly afraid - it just made him angry. he would accuse you of not wanting to learn and storm away.
on tv, it's not like there's a lot of versions of men-who-are-mostly-fathers. they can be good dads, but usually their stories are not told in the household. so it's normal that your father is there, but he's never around. you know he was in the house, somewhere, it's just not that you guys ever... "hung out". he just seemed to get kind of bored of you, annoyed you weren't made in his perfect image. frustrated with how much energy it took to raise a kid. over time, you kind of adopt a bittersweet band around your throat - he knows nothing about me. he says at least i never abandoned my family.
and it's technically - technically - true. he was there for you. sometimes he even made an effort and made it to the big moments; the graduations and the dance recitals. he grins and tells everyone that he taught you. it almost erases the days in between, where he complains because you need a ride to school. the weeks that go by where he doesn't actually ever speak to you. the times you say i am struggling and he says figure it out on your own. i can't help you.
and that's fine! that's all fine. you can call him if you are having a problem with your car. or if you need a ride to the hospital. he loves playing hero, he just doesn't like the actual work that comes with being a father. and you've kind of made your peace with that; because you had to, because you don't want to live your life like he does; the whole world at a managed distance, a little rotating and controlled orb he can witness and take credit for but never truly love.
as an adult, you are rewatching some dumb cartoon - and again, the child standing in the rain, with a mitt, waiting for their father to come play catch. as an adult, there's this strange creeping dread - this little thing? this little thing, and their dad can't even show up for that? oh god, holyshit, it's not about the mitt, is it. oh god, holyshit, your father spent most of your life leaving you hanging.
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I have seen a wild amount of people complaining about the context of Wind Breaker and how "unrealistic" it is for the characters to go to school but without any teachers or adults being shown or protecting them and... First of all, realism is not what you're going to find reading a Shonen and if you want a full-on high school experience, read another manga. It is very common to skip those details as a writer because they are not interesting in the slightest and they have confirmed multiple times that all of their grades are awful, so you won't get a silly little arc about them studying, because they directly don't. To say it is "unrealistic" is to ask for boring, pointless, plotless occurrences in a Shonen manga about fighting. Are people even hearing themselves when they complain?
But it's not only from a writer's perspective skipping what's unimportant that justifies the lack of teachers and responsible adults, but the plot itself. At first, it is confusing, but I think you only have to look a bit deeper into the cultural context of the story to understand why there aren't teachers/adults shown.
I'm around chapter 100, so I am not sure this gets explained further in the manga, but my theory as to why they behave this way is pretty simple, honestly: They are poor and in ruins, and adults with the power to change things do not care about them. Easy as that.
Whether it is real or just an exaggeration of what's actually going on, it has been shown countless times (especially in Umemiya's backstory, explaining directly how authorities don't care about the kids or anybody, really) that the whole city is made for outcasts and left to rot by the government. It is not some apocalyptic bullshit, it is stuff that happens every goddamn day in real life. They go to school but they aren't shown studying and the place itself is a mess. We only see Umemiya running the school but it is confirmed that there's staff and somebody grading them somehow, despite never being shown studying or doing anything other than patrolling. But they have shown us that the city used to be extremely problematic and chaotic and only recently have things started to change for the better. Most villains and even main characters are orphans and live on their own. There's a whole arc about a group of kids being left to rot in poverty without any means to study or live a normal life. Even our main character lives on his own in a horrendous apartment. Like--
I believe you have to be blind to not see that, if this isn't just literally some people turning their backs against poor kids in a place in ruins, it is at least an exaggeration of these things happening in real life. Because they could have classes and teachers and everything you want in the manga to make it more realistic, but this is, after all, from the perspective of teenagers who can't rely on anybody but themselves. There's only so much a teacher can do, and we know most of them do nothing for these kids. So if it is "unrealistic" perhaps you aren't aware of what damn hyperboles and metaphors are, but this is from the students' points of view, and when you live in a place like this, it doesn't matter how many teachers there are or police, because they won't help. So they are directly erased from the story to be replaced with Sakura's point of view of Umemiya running the whole place.
So I think that instead of looking for realistic interpretations of their high school experience, perhaps you should empathize a little with the actual real high school experiences of people like them.
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Tbh... I don't think TOH should get a pass for it's shoddy plot just because some of the stuff that happens within the plot invokes an emotional response in people.
First of all, people react to concepts with varying degrees of emotional intensity based on what they like and/or their life experiences. Secondly, you can still create resonate moments with a good plot lmao.
There is no reason TOH should get a pass for making Belos a non threat for most of Season 1 just because people think x, y, z moment is wholesome or whatever.
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your last post abt icemav vs. interior design has me cry laughing and also makes me want to ask: how does rooster (millennial gay man, fairly good at being open about his sexuality in comparison to the the environment he came from) feel about being one-uped in the gay department constantly by Mr. and Mr. Can’t Talk About It?? like him and jake have to have conversations about it [jake, meeting ice the first time: oh this is the gayest man i’ve ever met. he had everyone fooled for thirty years???? // bradley: “yeah but you didn’t have to grow up with him. i was on the front lines.] like—they were willing to get married at the same time as icemav as a distraction, so they have to be aware of how groundbreaking icemav is to the structural appearance of the Navy. but they’re also fully immersed in Navy culture and customs, so are civilian gay people even surprised??? do they care??? or is everyone collectively reading through twitter like “gay men in navy? okay fork found in kitchen 🙄 who cares.”
this is all just a long way for me to ask if icemav is easier to pick up on/less surprising if you’re gay. bradley clocked them early because he was in close quarters with them constantly, but he’s also gay—in comparison, slider knew ice for years, but only added it up when it was way too obvious to ignore. and to other straight people they seem to be at an Ethan Hunt level of undercover, but are they really??? (this is kind of a dumb question so feel free to do whatever you want with it lol)
see i feel like i haven’t been writing them very obviously clockingly gay at all! i actually feel like it would piss Jake and bradley off how STRAIGHT ice & mav act all the time!
1st excerpt from post-marriage, second excerpt from a scene that got deleted from WWGATTAI chapter 9, wherein compacflt ice approves the promotion of a fictional “first female admiral to be married to another woman” and then runs into her at a DOD Xmas party and chats about gay marriage for a bit out of curiosity… (deleted bc chapter 9 was already 9.5k words) like it is still a secret even if they aren’t actively trying to keep it secret anymore
but you’re right hold on. here’s christmas 2017
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(OG post has Reblogs turned off. You can find it here!)
(OG post has Reblogs turned off. You can find it here!)
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Thinking. Abt this but with Bones. Like. Post-Tholian Web? Post-Mirror Mirror?
For AOS, could be after Into Darkness and/or Beyond.
A Bones who's just. So anxious. So stressed. So overwhelmed that it starts taking a toll on his health. Maybe he doesn't even realise - or maybe he does and tries his best to push through it until it knocks him on his ass. Kind of in the vein of "You don't actually know how tired you are until you stop. And then you just physically cannot start again." It becomes his new baseline, a problem that just brews and storms in the distance.
And he just carries on. And keeps going and going and going until one day he realises that 'Oh fuck, I'm not okay' and has about 5 seconds of warning before he straight up collapses, doesn't matter if it's on the bridge, in the madbay, on a planet - he's going down. (Maybe a repeat of Tholian Web where he just straight up faints into Spock's arms? Full whammy, why not)
Maybe it's a high-tension situation getting resolved that does it. The pure relief of it reminds him of how tired he is. How tired he's been for a while. His body sees that momentary rest and goes "More of that, please. And I'm not asking."
And he's so rendered by it that he doesn't grumble about being coddled like he normally would when he wakes up. He knows not to fuck with the medbay staff - they're just as firm as he is on recovery, and that's not by accident - and he knows that Spock and Kirk will be hovering, because they see any problem as something they, too, should shoulder the burden of.
...And because they're some of the most protective people in the damned universe. And that goes for pretty much all the people on board the Enterprise.
In some scenarios, it's just a case of letting his body and mind rest properly. In others, there's a lot more recovery involved than anyone initially expects. Luckily for him, he has a found family who are determined to be there with him at every step. It just takes a couple reminders, every once in a while.
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handsome theys should have an allowance to pay rent in a spacious luminous apartment and furnish it to its coziest, comfiest potential and then giving their lovers a nice break from real life by cooking them a nutritious and delicious meal and then giving them a good night’s sleep on the comfiest bed and giving them head until they can’t take it anymore
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