#return for the brainrot

[overwhelmedandlonely]

returning to tumblr because your brain rot has returned is such an odd feeling. like i’m here because i saw les mis and now want to go back to my high school tumblr days, but the last time i was here it was for the magnus archives. the crossover is nonexistent and yet every post switches back and forth and i never know what’s coming next

[athena-theunicorn]

I saw a post abt this the other day but it's been eating me up inside so I gotta get it in writing. Plus it was in meme format when I saw it so I wanna make sure the gravity of this particular thing is out there somewhere bc I said so.

Annabeth was under the impression for most of her life that she had to earn love and respect from those around her. First from her father after he remarried, and she had to earn his attention back from his wife and kids. Then once she got to camp, she had to earn the admiration of the other campers, her siblings, Chiron and Mr. D, and basically everyone but Luke (because she earned his and Thalia's respect by simply surviving so long after running away). AND THEN she had to earn Athena's respect. That was the ultimate reward in her opinion, because that's kinda what I imagine they teach at camp: "You have to earn the respect of the gods to get them to look at you, let alone respect or, heaven forbid, love you." It's fucked up but its true. It's one of the first things Luke tells Percy upon his arrival. It's how you get claimed, earn a quest, and get all these things that Camp deems so important.

And then Annabeth meets Percy.

Percy, who, despite having his own traumas and tough road to hoe, still knows the feeling of an unconditionally loving home and person. He never had to earn Sally's love. She loved him despite him getting kicked out of school every year, despite him being stubborn and kinda an ass sometimes. She loved him despite his own view of himself. She shoved all that aside and loved her son because THATS HOW PARENTING WORKS.

And then you shove these two little kids together who've had wildly different backgrounds and I bet you'd get some interesting conversations (although they aren't shown a lot in the book or the show). Like Annabeth having to explain all the shit she's done to get her mother's attention and Percy being like "well damn."

And then he starts to notice that she applies this to other relationships too. She starts doing certain things that Percy notices as trying to gain his respect and it gets worse as they get closer and he finally has to be like "hey, you know I like you, right? like you don't have to prove yourself to me" and Annabeth has whiplash because she's never not had to earn love.

It just makes their relationship so much better to me.

[cryinginthedeep]

matthew tkachuk - florida!!! (also uploading on tiktok later, might be the first and last vid i'll ever post there lmao)

[justrustandstardust]

this moment never fails to make my breath catch in my chest. gojo knows that every step he takes forward brings him closer to his last moments with geto, and yet he drops down to geto’s eye level, drawing out the moment nonetheless.

there’s something so heartbreakingly loving in the way gojo refuses to take geto’s life from a literal and figurative place above him. gojo dropping down to meet geto head-on in his final moments is an undeniable act of love, because it tells us without telling us that even after everything that happened, gojo has never viewed himself as superior to geto.

gojo refuses to mar their last interaction with the godlike superiority thrust upon him. he won’t look down on geto, literally or figuratively, purely because he loves and respects him too much to do so. it’s so unbearably tender, the way he lowers himself down, almost akin to the way one would comfort a child.

gojo knows he has to be the one to do it. despite the viscerality of the act, he remains so, so breathtakingly gentle. gojo simply will not take geto’s life in any way that does not honour him.

by dropping to his feet, gojo is saying ‘i never considered you beneath me’. it’s him saying ‘i never left you behind even after you left me’. he’s saying that even as i take your life, you’re taking mine too.

we don’t have to hear his last words to geto to know what he said. we see it now, plainly and indisputably. he shares his last words when they’re at eye level because to gojo, they never stopped being equals. and his last words, which were for geto alone, were never going to be shared from a place that didn’t honour the mutuality of their connection.

it’s true that gojo loved him, yes, but he loved all of him, a fact which remained true right up until geto’s last breath and every day after that.

[phantasymistart]

they are still everything to me <3

[elven-butts]

im not joking when i say i was anxious they would FALL the entire time drawing this Y_Y

[harmonysanreads]

The intimacy of your relationship with Sunday could be represented through the distance he's maintained from you whenever you sat together on the couch.

Like the majority of acquaintances, it started from the respectful distance from where he remained rigidly planted at the other end of the sofa. Nothing more than basic pleasantry and information that any passerby of Penacony would also be able to provide traveled that bridge of cold courtesy.

The Oak Family Head is an excellent actor, albeit you realized this at a latter point in time. Your conversations remained unremarkable — at least in your opinion. But Sunday expertly kept the extent of his burgeoning interest under wraps and the increasing boldness in his inquiries seemingly as normalized as the shrinking distance between you two. You hadn't noticed back then, or was it that you chose not to?

By the time the space waned by half, you eliminated any probing suspicions. The contents of your discussions evolved beyond polite tete-a-tete and exciting prospects such as inside jokes soon joined in. You were thrilled at the unravelling of a Sunday unknown to many, perhaps a touch too thrilled. While his ‘accidental’ touches disrupted the quaint rhythm of your heart, his soft smile sowed seeds of appealing scenarios. But even then he had been at a safe margin, it is wholly your fault for giving him the incentive to continue testing your boundaries.

From that point onwards, every decrease in distance came at a sacrifice from yourself. It was faster than before, yet so much more agonizing. Some pieces of you were negotiated, while others greedily stolen and a good portion you surrendered voluntarily at the enticement of trust. After all, it takes two to start a quarrel and you definitely and regrettably, played your role in his schemes.

Because by the time you came to know of the true Sunday, the couch had been replaced by his person entirely.

──⚝ You may also like [ Aventurine and Couches ]

[dapper-lil-arts]

THAT'S RIGHT BABEY I'M WRITING A FIC OF SHREK 1 BUT IT'S RARIJACK LETS GOOOO And it's gloriously dumb. I love it.

[stil-lindigo]

i made a truly feral entry level powerpoint presentation on claymore my favourite manga ever and felt compelled to share the title screen

[jaylillustrates]

✨️You and Charon have an unspoken bond✨️

[huepou]

i haven’t posted in a while hiii

[brainbleedo]

[sophsun1]

9-1-1 – 7.04 | 7.05

[bluekiivi]

keeping warm

[justrustandstardust]

it's established that gojo's blindfold is a hallmark of his character. it's understood that the blindfold keeps things out; however, i also think there's something to be said about how it also keeps things in. despite the fact that there's already a lot of discourse regarding his blindfold, i think there's more to it than meets the eye (or doesn't, in the case of gojo).

this is going to be somewhat of a long post, but i promise that if you stick around, the end will make the journey worth it.

(this analysis is the lovechild of mine and @chiarrara, whose sexy big brain sponsored this whole thing).

as a character, gojo is unknowable without his eyes. it's very much proposed that gojo is his eyes; he's even repeatedly referred to as "the six-eyes brat". he's the strongest, and his eyes embody that status/symbol/role in the narrative. his eyes and his character are so intertwined that they almost become the same thing.

we are repeatedly reminded of his eyes throughout the story; they are perhaps his most distinct and identifiable feature. when we're shown the progression of gojo's life from birth to adolescence, we only see his eyes.

during this scene when toji is remebering him, he repeatedly refers to him as the "six-eyes brat". he is his eyes, and nothing else. that's the only thing that toji knows about him because to the jujutsu world, that's all he is.

however, when he's a teenager, although his eyes are more present than we've ever seen them throughout the series, they're noticeably un-glorified. they're undeniably present but they're unremarkable.

they're less symbols of his power and more what they are, which are just eyes. we see glimpses of his eyes so often that we almost forget that they're special, until he steps into his role as the strongest and reminds us of them.

it's important to note that what sets the depiction of his eyes apart here (versus when he's an adult) is the presence of geto. if you comb through every single scene with geto in hidden inventory, you will find that gojo's eyes are not the focal point of his character. they're backgrounded features; his eyes are either half-hidden or entirely obscured by his shades, and they rarely glow.

his eyes make themselves known when geto is absent, like during gojo's fight with toji. in these moments, he is the strongest, invariably leaving room for nothing else. the only exception to this rule is when he's carrying riko's body, in which his eyes glow when he toes the line between human nature and godlike power. if we understand his eyes to be conduits of his power, then their noticeable downplaying can be understood as gojo leaving behind his title as the strongest and stepping into his humanity.

when geto breaks up with gojo, his eyes are not only uncovered, they're un-emphasized. they're perhaps the dullest we've ever seen them, and their distinct, eye-catching blue is swallowed by the whites surrounding his irises. his strength and power don't matter in this moment, and his eyes reflect that. when he's losing geto, he is not the strongest; he is purely gojo satoru.

the emphasis on his eyes in his youth makes their absence in his adulthood even more stark. we rarely see his eyes now, and it's only in the direst of circumstances.

everyone is familiar with the dictum '"the eyes are the window to the soul", which is true: eyes let people see into us. however, they function both ways; like a two-way mirror, they also let us see the world. eyes let people look in, but they also let their beholder look out.

there's a reason gojo only put on the blindfold after geto left. why didn't he wear it from the start? why did he start wearing it at all? all the credit to @hijinks-n-lowjinks for their masterful analysis that inspired this idea, which is as follows:

"....Gojo wants nothing more than to leave the memory of Geto unscathed....There's still a part of Geto's memory that's untarnished if he keeps it private instead of exposing the depth of Geto's crimes to the students, and I think that's what he's clinging onto."

gojo wears the blindfold for two reasons: one, to keep people out, and two, to keep geto in.

in donning the blindfold, gojo seals geto in his mind and simultaneously seals himself off from the world. he holds geto inside of himself, rendering him (or gojo's construction of him) untouchable by anyone else. in order to achieve this, however, the practice necessitates that gojo keeps everyone else out, because they belong to a world without geto that gojo literally and figuratively refuses to see. the wall functions like eyes: twofold, both keeping in and keeping out.

geto can be understood as gojo's blindfold: he is the reason it exists and why gojo put it on the first place. the blindfold is an intractable element in how he (doesn't) navigate the world without geto, because geto's departure from his life catalyzed his withdrawal from the world, which is symbolized through the blindfold.

when geto was in his life, gojo let the world in because it had geto in it. after geto left, he wasn't there for gojo's eyes to find. the permanent blindfold operates like schrödinger's cat— instead of seeing a world without geto, gojo simply chooses to stop seeing.

it's worth noting that the literal barrier pairs with the figurative barrier gojo puts up, which is in his disposition.

there's a reason that gojo's cocky, lighthearted persona comes out when he's wearing the blindfold. it's a figurative barrier that matches the literal one. like i said before, we only see his eyes in the direst of circumstances, and his goofy, cocksure demeanour is notably absent from these instances. i'm not saying it's fake, but the persona is a front, designed to keep people at a distance. he plays it up, and it feels even more distant because we can't see his eyes.

however, gojo isn't the only person with a barrier.

after the breakup, we never see geto wear casual clothes. we always see him in his cult leader outfit, which is distinct and elaborate. geto knows it's a costume, evidenced by the way he even says it himself when someone asks why he's wearing the cult getup:

we also see a notable shift in his persona, to a crazed and almost manic disposition that contrasts starkly with the gentle, kind nature he had in his youth. geto's literal barrier is found in his cult outfit, whereas his figurative one is in his disposition. although they present differently, gojo and geto's literal and figurative barriers mechanize the same modes of expression that seem to be at odds with one another.

gojo’s disposition is designed to counteract the loneliness that shapes his character (a loneliness that geto abetted in being his companion) and geto’s disposition is designed to push people away, because he decided no one could understand him (a role which was previously fulfilled by gojo).

gojo can read geto in a way that no one else can, and geto is gojo's counterpart in a way that no one else can be— they’re missing something only the other can provide and compensating with two dispositions at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

when geto is dying, gojo drops the literal and figurative mask. he's almost unrecognizable; he's not laughing, he's not smiling, and he's not wearing the blindfold, because he doesn't need it anymore. the only person he wants to see, the only person he's ever wanted to see, is in front of him now.

however, once again, he's not only one whose walls have come down.

geto drops the manic persona (although he retains the ideals) and he gently smiles in a way that's reminiscent of his youth. his cult leader outfit is also falling off, exposing him in more ways than one. he admits that he never had any hate for anyone at jujutsu tech, and in doing so, materializes the version of himself that lived in gojo's mind for a decade. that's why gojo doesn't bother with the blindfold; the geto in his mind and the geto in front of him are congruous and he's looking at the person he's been seeing inside his head all along.

it's been established that we don't know what gojo says to geto. however, it is also absolutely key that we don't see gojo's eyes in this deeply intimate moment. his eyes, which are inextricably linked to his strength and his role. his eyes, which are the medium through which he limits his engagement with the world. his eyes, which he sealed after geto left and only brings out when he's tasked with fulfilling his role.

in this moment, he considers the question geto asked him during the breakup. "are you gojo satoru because you're the strongest? or are you the strongest because you're gojo satoru?"

and in shielding his eyes from us, gojo answers him.

"i'm gojo satoru because of you, suguru."

his eyes, as the windows to the soul and witnesses to the world, are looking at geto suguru not as the strongest but as gojo satoru, and they are meant for geto alone. yes, the eyes are the windows to the soul but they're also two-way mirror— gojo opens his eyes for geto to look into his soul because the material manifestation of his soul is dying in front of him right now. in baring his eyes, he bares his soul.

before geto dies, we see him the same way gojo does. he seems bashful, almost shy, even mirthful; all traits that are antithetical to the crazed front he put up earlier. conversely, gojo is the most solemn we've ever seen him. in this moment, we see them both for who they really are, because they literally and figuratively only reveal themselves to each other.

after they part ways in shinjuku, geto and gojo embody the same barriers through identical mechanisms: fabric and persona. these barriers function to do the same thing, which is to keep people at a distance in order to leave space for the one person noticeably absent from their lives. it's very fitting that their walls come down as they meet for the last time, because the only people who could've torn them down are the same people for whom they put them up in the first place— nobody else but each other.

[artisticalassassin]

gently holds