#romeo's ramblings

[cynicalstardustkingdom]

get to know you game! answer the questions and tag 9 people you want to know better.

tagged by: @ratfink-kryptonite :)

last song i listened to: hopeless wanderer - mumford & sons

currently reading: "hamlet", and "daughter of the bone forest" by jasmine skye, both for school lol

currently watching: lost - on season 4

currently obsessed with: sayid jarrah and his dynamic with any and everybody he ever spoke to lmao

tagging (no pressure): @i-will-sing-no-requiem @jemmalynette @xgoddessivy @lila-walker @gayshipsandanxiety @motherfuckingbrad @marshmallow-xphile @will80sbyers @troybarnesbabygirlconfirmed

[kazthropology]

On love

Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl); Liana Rādulescu ; “Spending More Time” (Ron Hicks); Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) ; It’s Been a Long, Long Time (Harry James, Kitty Kallen); Unknown ; Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1 (Shakespeare); Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo); Unknown, Quora ; Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl)

[mercutiosblog]

bromeo oh bromeo, where the fuck art thou, bromeo

[foldingfittedsheets]

My betrothed saw a person walking two identical dogs and said, “Two dogs, both alike in dignity,” and I fucking died. I repeated it for an hour and it never got less funny.

[shiongenkai]

Taiga, Romeo, and Gluttony

NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the entirety of the recently released Auction chapter. Read at your own risk.

So the recent chapter was everything to me. It was the shortest, but in my opinion it showed us a lot about Taiga and Romeo and their relationship to one another, and it also helped me refine a specific thought I had about Taiga and his whole deal he has going on.

To put it shortly; I think Taiga has a gluttony curse, and I think it functions as a mirror to that of Romeo's stigma, and is part of why they had a falling out, and why they can't seem to get away from each other.

To put it horrifically, horribly long....

So what do I mean when I say Taiga is cursed? Well, exactly that. I believe he's cursed in a similar way Rui or the MC are; he has an insatiable need to eat anomalies. I believe that this grants certain side effects like the MC and Rui's curse, and that one of them is a sixth sense for anomalies and anomalous circumstances.

I want to explain this before the Romeo part, because it's the basis for my analysis and thoughts on the two of them.

To start from the very beginning; I think Taiga, during one of his missions, was cursed by something like a jikininki as punishment for his 'gluttony' — the rapid rate at which he completed missions in his first year. This left him with his insatiable need to eat anomalies, but more specifically, is the reason he doesn't seem to want to eat them.

While I'm not certain the anomaly is for certain a jikininki, especially because there's certainly other similar folk legends out there, I chose that one specifically because they are noted for their sharp teeth and for not liking the insatiable need to eat corpses.

Now, what does this mean for Taiga? I think he's stuck between being a ghoul and being a jikininki, or whatever anomaly it ends up being, and I think this has given him a sixth sense that messes with his perception of time, self, and memory. But why would it do that?

Jikininki are immortal creatures, and wish to be freed from the torment they're in for the most part. If one was cursed to be part Jikininki, it would make sense for their existence to be similarly excruciating, with a difference being a lack of full immortality.

Remember the Mortkranken chapter, with the failed mermaid flesh? How their bodies continued even as their minds didn't? Taiga has multiple lines detailing how his 'body' remembers, even if his mind doesn't. Yuri and Jiro also explain that part of the side effects of the reaction are rapid mental deterioration. If Taiga had gone through a similar deterioration, it would explain his seemingly sporadic memory loss (not total blackouts like Jiro, nor specific category based amnesia either, just like. Random shit) and the fact that he doesn't have a concrete sense of identity (showcased through his constantly shifting first-person pronoun choice in Japanese). His cells of his body are reverting to their pre-aged self, and his mind is attempting to do that too, but it's imperfect and messy.

The key to the idea of the sixth sense comes from the fact that he's specifically cursed for anomalous gluttony. I think that he can sense anomalous material or anomalies themselves, and as demonstrated from Ed, this includes some sort of future sense. While we don't know the full specifics of what a sixth sense grants, we can see him utilise it in multiple different places. It's also, in my opinion, why he was sent on the Prologue mission.

Some examples of his supposed sixth sense are how he intuitively understood the anomalous dealer's entire thing, the scenes where he knows the Like Dove will appear before it does, when he senses Romeo approaching (Romeo is carrying an anomaly: his artifact), how he understands the auction is an anomaly, when he gets the mask under unknown circumstances, when he directly knows there's no anomalies... the list honestly could go on forever.

There's one other fact that I personally believe sealed this theory for me; his association with Haku.

In the recent chapter, when the MC is thinking about who to talk to about curses, Taiga instantly knows who we're thinking of, and rejects it on the basis that '[He] can't get rid of curses unless the anomaly that did the deed's right in front of him.' and that he's a 'Simp for the rules anyway.'

... Which is interesting, since it seems like Taiga has tried to ask him about this before. But if you think of this as Haku's stigma, and imagine Taiga trying to get his curse cleansed before, it makes sense! It would also be a good reason to put Haku and Taiga together in the prologue; Taiga can track the anomaly with his sense, and Haku can cleanse whatever curse it gives so long as Taiga manages to capture it or subdue it for long enough.

(Which, side note, is so tragic for the MC...)

Okay, now that the basis of 'Taiga is cursed' is out of the way, how on earth does this relate to Romeo?

Simple. I think Taiga's curse directly mirror's Romeo's stigma, and it's what caused their rift.

Romeo's stigma, as we learn in the new chapter as well, is dependent on his attachment to the items he throws. This, thematically, works with Romeo, who is known to be greedy. Everything he does is motivated by a profit of some kind, whether that profit is social or monetary or whatever. He wants special privileges so he does special missions. He wants money so he raises fees and coerces people to gamble. He wants popularity so he dresses nicely and pampers himself. It doesn't always mean he is money grubbing and stingy (because we see he's willing to spend lavishly on grooming and decor!) but it means that he's attached to what he has. His stigma requires him to give up that attachment. It is a punishment, a sacrifice, as a result of the pact. Similar to how Luca lost his brother (and gained a protective stigma), Romeo has to lose what he feels is worth something in order to fully utilise his ability. Call it a sort of pride.

I think, on the other hand, Taiga's curse is one of envy. He has a desire to eat anomalies, yes, but the desire becomes stronger the more attached someone else is to the anomaly. He doesn't need any interest in it, really. If someone else likes it he will need to eat it.

Taiga covets Haru's Peekaboo to eat instead of the wild one that we also know is in Jabberwock. He's composed about the Like Dove (barely, but he restrains himself!) until Romeo wants it. He steals the plants from Rui's BAR, not the ones in the garden outside (both are Rui's, but his bar is arguably the more loved thing of his since it was fully his choice). He covets Mortkranken's anomalies, and becomes mildly obsessed with the immortal one as soon as it becomes a major research subject. He's also completely fine holding and handling the mask, presumably for a long time, up until Romeo sees it as valuable and worthy.

Now, this doesn't necessarily make them instantly incompatible. But when you take one of Romeo's core traits being 'Greed towards anomalies' (He wants to collect them and frequently complains that other houses are 'stealing' them from under him; he sells them; he gets missions from Hyde to get them; etc), it becomes evidently clear that Taiga's curse is directly oppositional to it.

I think it's pretty obvious by now that Taiga and Romeo have a pretty turbulent relationship now, but were extremely close in the past. Multiple characters state that it would be nice to see them on good terms again, and it's certainly worth mentioning that Romeo is one of the few people Taiga consistently remembers. They both know each other exceptionally well, too. Taiga knows how to get under Romeo's skin and Romeo knows Taiga's habits.

Going back to the idea of this curse causing their rift, if Romeo was constantly on the verge of an important capture, or even if there was just one mission that was important, and Taiga ruined it by eating the anomaly, I doubt Romeo would easily forgive and forget. I think it could very easily cause a massive rift that just kept growing with each new snack Taiga picked up.

I think a moment that gets its nuance overlooked a lot is the scene just before Taiga eats the dove. The Japanese line emphasises that Taiga is referring to HIS heart, that Romeo could shoot through HIS heart, not just a general appraisal of sharpshooting. He even points directly to his heart as he says this, and it makes Romeo hesitate. They're BOTH in pain in this scene. They're both conflicted; this is their ex-partner (which I don't mean in the romantic sense, just in the general sense) who they were very, very close with, and who is now literally at arms length with a loaded gun. Romeo could just shoot him. Romeo could put an end to all of this supposed pain. And Taiga might even let him. And wouldn't that be karma for all he's done? But he can't. He hesitates.

And you know what appears after that? The dove.

This dove that symbolises both general desire (flies over peoples' heads when they're thought about) and Romeo's desire. His desire to escape probation. His desire to make money. His desire to capture, not kill. His desire to reconcile instead of fight. His desire to shoot.

And Taiga kills it. Eats it.

I think this is the most tragic scene between the two of them. This is the crux of it; they both want to reconcile. They want to be friends, to be close, to stop the war raging between the two of them that has done nothing but hurt them both AND hurt the wellbeing of Sinostra, but they can't, because Romeo will ALWAYS desire, and Taiga will ALWAYS take that from him.

It's a cycle they can't escape. The auction chapter shows it too. Taiga is almost disappointed at Romeo's greed. He seems jaded by it, and seems proud and happy when Romeo gives it up for once. Romeo is happy too; MC goes out of her way to say that Taiga handing him the mask makes him look more peaceful than he ever has before. It is quite literally a perfect ending for the two of them and a perfect way to reconcile.

And then Taiga eats it! Again! But I think the most horrifying part of it is that he tries to warn Romeo.

The comic doesn't translate or even transcribe it, so it's so, so easy to miss, especially if you don't speak Japanese, but Taiga grunts out the words 'I', 'Eat', and 'Next' as he approaches Romeo and the mask, and it's the direct reason why Romeo is able to realise that Taiga is about to eat it before it actually happens. He basically just grunts out 'I'm gonna eat that next' as he's fighting against it! But inevitably, neither of them can stop it. The cycle continues.

As long as Romeo is greedy, and as long as Taiga is gluttonous, they will never be able to fully reconcile, no matter how much they both want it. Both of them have to change, but I want to point out that at this moment Romeo is the bigger active obstacle between the two of them. Romeo can't let things go, he holds onto everything and lets it build until it explodes in one way or another. Tiris, his stigma, is symbolic in that sense, that he has to learn to let things go, because if he lets it build too much it will explode spectacularly.

(All of the ghouls have this sort of symbolism with their stigma, so it's not just a Romeo thing, but it's definitely important to his character.)

But Romeo can't get over it yet. He can't get over his greed, he can't let go of things he can't achieve (like getting Kaito's necklace), he can't get over past betrayals (Taiga, what happened with his family, etc)... He's too stuck and stubborn, and his refusal to budge has therefore lead to Taiga's refusal to push. Taiga has stopped caring about getting on good terms because he knows it won't turn out well. He's given up and become cynical, which in turn means that IF Romeo were to change, Taiga... still probably wouldn't. They're cyclical again. Always, always missing each other. So close and yet so far.

I hope the MC can be the catalyst for this cycle to end. Or Ritsu, who is a good equalizer to the two of them. But until she learns to see her own worth in the Academy, and until Ritsu accepts that sometimes he's wrong / he doesn't always know the most out of everyone in the room, I'm afraid Romeo and Taiga will remain stuck in this loop forever...

[cosmic-chemist]

Chat I think I’m going insane do yall see him too

[meraki-yao]

GUYS HEAR ME OUT

COME ON

YES I'M BACK ON MY FIRSTPRINCE/TAYNICK GAY TANGLED AGENDA

Prev

[galactic-rhea]

[ID: Screenshot of a chat that says "just leave my queen alone, she's already suffered enough. She wanted a life with her malewife murder monk pilot mechanic racer and you should respect her for that!]

It's Padmé defending's hours for me

I have been seeing more negative (with very weird connotations, tbh) posts about Padmé on my dash lately, and while I'm a firm believer of the "scroll past it" rule, it really irks me a lot because MOST of these takes sound a bit mysoginistic to me and also (to me) shows a lack of trying to understand her as a character, not in a "you don't get her" way, but in a "you don't even try to understand the character and her context in the damn story just because you wanna sound holy than thou" way.

I'm all for accepting takes about Padmé's flaws or having a slightly more privileged/closed view (and that makes sense, she's aristocracy) but these people are SO WEIRD whenever they wanna talk about her 🤨

I'll forever mad that George eliminated SO MANY scenes with Padmé in the movies, but I feel like even if we had those scenes, people's complaints would be exactly the same.

But also i think half of the time people fail at understanding Padmé is because they're also failing to understand Anakin's as a character, idk

[tetraharmonic]

Imagine a fic where Romeo guides someone through skincare. They don't really know how to take care of themselves, or they neglected to do it, so now they look at the shelves in the convenience store, confused out their mind. For a moment, they think about giving up, returning to their depression slump. Or, to what would be Romeo's horror later if he found out, they'd just go back to using a generic soap bar on their face. Romeo can't let that happen. So he sits them down, seeing how much they're genuinely trying, and can't help but feel a bit sympathetic. He walks them through toners and moisturizers and serums, sharing lavish face masks and perfumes, before gifting them all sorts of nice hot oil treatments, clays, and a jade roller. Of course, seeing the pile, they have no idea what to do, and get overwhelmed. Not to worry, Romeo has decided they're now his latest LOL. He applies it all himself, suprised to find so much patience in him, pulling their head back into his knees as they sit on the floor, and him in his nice seat, massaging hair treatments in and working out knots. He knows the ache, the post depression everything shower, the gender panic when giving yourself the proper care you deserve is seen as overly feminine, but also the struggle of not quite wanting to he feminine either. Wanting to just be. If they ask him to teach them how to do makeup, he'll teach them. Whether it's to present as feminine, or sharpen their features to present as masculine, all while reminding them that this isn't exclusive to one or the other. He teaches them to draw hearts in the smears of moisturizer with their thumbs in the mirror, so they never question whether or not they have the right to care for themself the way they should. That Romeo insists they deserve, but swear he doesn't give a damn. They feel so much better too. Sometimes they pretend to be lost to talk more. It's been a while since they've been heard. They ask "why the abbreviation?" Doesn't he know that LOL stands for laughing out loud?

He shakes his head. His tone isn't romantic, merely to the point, like stating a truth. An observation. "Nonono, belli*. Labor of Love."

* probably improper use of Italian. Someone help, what's the gender neutral way to say beautiful, I'm dying here.

[dedusmuln]

i don't think we can "Toodles!" our way out of this one

[dragonbma]

Hear me out… obsidian cages with bars instead of solid walls.

Pros of bars:

Better view

More spacious

Fresh air (not really, it smells like fish)

You can kick your feet if you feel like it

Cons of bars:

Everything is LOUDER

Elder guardians can see you if you lean too far

Probably see a familiar inventory pile…

My headcanon that Romeo sometimes visits Vos still stands. Except now he can’t be sneaky and listen in on this old man rambling to fish because Vos can very much see him. The Admin definitely has to make excuses to why he can’t free the adventurer. “Well if you fell from that height, it’s doubtful you’d survive.” or “I’m not really allowed to tamper in the lives of mortals.”

“But… isn’t this your temple?”

“Yeah, and I make the rules. Helping you is cheating. And that’s against the rules.”

[cynicalstardustkingdom]

who else thinks snw 2x06 was the best thing to happen to them this year cuz like..

[mercutiosblog]

fuck it

un-montagues your benvolio

(I shall make him an escalus fr)

😌💍

[royallygray]

y'all I understand mercutio and tybalt

it's so fucking hot I want to kill someone. something. I violently want air conditioning. most of my clothes are unflatteringly wet because I was just existing outside.

just saying I totally would've tried to kill my enemy if they happened to walk up to me in this fucking heat. maybe murder is the real therapy we needed all along.

[spacetime-asriel]

Almost two months ago now, I noticed something odd while going through the MCSM skintones site. I had gone onto the site to grab the Warden's skintone for reference, but, out of curiosity, I decided to look at other characters within the Sunshine Institute section too. When I went into the Guards subsection, I noticed that Guard A seemed strangely familiar. I decided to grab them as well and placed them next to the Warden.

Then I realized why they seemed familiar - they were perfectly identical to the Warden!

I went to look in a video to verify and sure enough, there she was!

I use feminine pronouns for her because of her feminine voice. (Also side note: she has a lot more dialogue than other associates for some reason? It's a little weird, but very welcome to me.)

Here's a clip of her! (I apologize if the video is cropped really weirdly or distorted!)

So, my (likely not canon headcanon) explanation for this girl?

My base headcanon is that she is the Warden's identical twin and one of them transitioned.

My sillier, yet sadder, headcanon is that she ended up here because Romeo mistook her for the Warden while he was on the surface and he sent her "back." He only realized his mistake when he went to the Institute himself to punish "the Warden." The real Warden reasonably freaked out at the sight of his sister and Romeo proceeded to refuse to put her back when the Warden begged him to. Eventually, they compromised and she became an associate.

As a final note to this post: in the intro of Episode 3, her model is used twice in a single scene. From what I know, there are only four models in her group so it isn't quite a surprise that this happened. Personally, I believe the guard that chases Jesse in the intro is NOT her, as the one in the tower speaks with her voice. Perhaps this is actually an identical triplet situation and Romeo messed up twice? How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?!

Anyway, here are two bonus images!

Thank you for reading this, if you did! - Lemon :D

[musical-trash-goblin]

I literally have nothing to say. This is the post. Enjoy

Left: Bereczki Zoltán as Mercutio [Rómeó és Júlia musical]

Right: Lillium White [Countdown to Countdown webcomic] by @velinxi