#should I give it a try one day ?

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[afterthelambs]

i adore Maruki as a character because he's simultaneously the most relatable depressing character that will make you cry with empathy, and the goofiest wettest cat loser in the game like what do you mean youre a licensed therapist and your first response to trauma is to brainwash a girl, project ur relationship issues onto a 17 yr old boy, and then rule the world in a golden leotard? bro went from 0 to 100 so fast??? anyway he's like 30% of the reason why p5r works as well as it does

[writer-room]

Obsessed with Lloyd never mentioning his grandfather is the First Spinjitsu Master, apparently to the point even Arin didn't seem to know, because "eh, it never came up". Cause like, yeah, sure, my grandfather is God, what of it? Normal day for me. Shit happens. My dad is also evil, you wanna talk about that? I sure don't.

It's also funny from a character arc perspective. Here's itty bitty baby first season Lloyd, loudly proclaiming he's the son of Garmadon, and probably also making sure everyone knows he's God part 3 electric boogaloo. And then one Tomorrow's Tea and a few more years later and he's doing everything physically possible to NOT care about his heritage. In fact he'd probably rather his parentage was literally anyone else. Dude could care so less he forgets about it most of the time. King behavior.

[sysig]

“It could be that the loss of her children drove the Queen deeper into her darker desires...but, I don’t believe she was fighting against them that hard before that particular tragedy. No monster does.” (Patreon)

Bonus:

Hmm, wonder what he could cover those holes with :3c

[solcarow]

seafood trio portraits !

+ some alts. with spoilers !

[governmentmandatedryujinstan420]

I FORGOT TO THROW OUT AFTER THE EPISODE RELEASED NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[lunarharp]

i wanted to put these four together chatting, cooking, dancing, and trust

[skyrigel]

I don't feel loved

[razberrypuck]

troy should call may "mayday"

[beybuniki]

messy deku is so real with his round doe eyes acting all innocent like he isn’t stirring the pot

i don't think he has any malicious intents when he overshares other people's business he has no awareness for that

[sydmarch]

drew this after the last dream to cheer myself up lmao (based on this)

[icewindandboringhorror]

Just curious what the average level of personal investment in these sorts of things is. Like, how much do people usually get into silly stuff like this their friends ask of them? etc. etc. Which I know, only surveying a small sample on a very specific website means I'm not getting an exact average idea lol, but.. curious nonetheless .. Maybe reblog for bigger sample size but also this is not very serious at all/not worth a call to action gbhjbhjb

[arttsuka]

I couldn't not draw anything with them for Valentines day 💖 Here's a song for them 💝

These two drawings are not supported to be together exactly but I drew them so close that I couldn't take separate photos :/ (they are technically together but not next to each other. Imagine them being in their own offices while receiving these gifts)

Oh well.

[bookrat]

Pretty sure my little man has a case of abundism affecting the marble tabby coat under all those white splotches

[kikizoshi]

Hello, Kizo! you've also mentioned some of the interesting aspects of Gogol's personality I haven't thought about before. Like his pessimism. He is so constantly and desperately wants to seem excited, amused, thrilled, that he's managed to fool me. But it makes sense. "The only salvation from emotions is mine or smn else's death". He is quite pessimistic, just like Dost. And he's a perfectionist. He wants an absolute perfect freedom and nothing in between. Why is he like this, maybe trauma?

Thanks for the interesting asks!

It's neat to me that Nikolai manages to fool you. What I love especially there is that, like you said, while putting on that act he's so energetic, vivacious, and drawn very enthusiastic and animated. But when he breaks character, there's a stillness to him. His shrill tone softens into a meditative tenor; his grand gesticulations withdraw into intimate gestures; his stretched mouth and squinted eyes relax into the visage of a quiet, thoughtful, introspective young man. Harukawa expresses all of this beautifully with their drawings, and I just love it so much. The glimpses we see of the Nikolai under his mask are what made me fall in love with him in the first place--it's what makes his character for me.

One thing I really love expressed in characters like Nikolai is the 'sad clown paradox', which I think fits him pretty well. It's the playful jester character who's internally cynical. Nikolai creates a persona of a spontaneous, silly, horrifically brutal psychopath, but the scant few glimpses we get of him, we see a thoughtful and caring person, so much more and so much opposite just under the surface. I absolutely adore that duality.

I'm not gonna talk about potential backstories for Nikolai; I feel like speculation there is kinda pointless for me, since it could be literally anything. But, I can talk about Gogol's influence on him a bit.

Regarding this:

"The only salvation from emotions is mine or smn else's death". He is quite pessimistic, just like Dost. And he's a perfectionist. He wants an absolute perfect freedom and nothing in between. Why is he like this, maybe trauma?

I see a lot of Gogol's influence here. I'm not sure how much you know about Gogol as a person, so sorry if this is reiterative, but it's important context (and please take my cliffs notes version with a teaspoon of salt; I'm by no means a Gogol scholar). Gogol, at the end of his life--though probably during too--was very concerned with the purity of his soul. Why isn't something I can really comment on, but it seems to have culminated in him going to a radical priest, who advised him to undertake an extreme fast (meant for monks, I believe). Gogol then burned his manuscript for the second part of 'Dead Souls', and starved himself to death over the course of about twelve days (whether or not he meant to die isn't agreed-upon as far as I can tell, but that he died as a result of this fast is). All to reach a purity of soul he felt he didn't have, and couldn't get without drastic actions.

I genuinely have no idea if this story inspired Nikolai's, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. There are a lot of parallels, and if you replace Gogol's 'religious purity' with Nikolai's 'freedom', you get a similar tragedy. Both seem based on the belief "my mortal/inherent failures/limitations are holding me back from what I need". And rather than go inwards and seek clarity through introspection, both externalise their problems and try to "fix" themselves via grand--and painful--proofs of their "faith/conviction".

There's also the parallel with Gogol's priest and Fyodor, though I'm not sure how much it tracks. Fyodor does seem to have some influence on Nikolai, but it sounds like Nikolai was already on his path when they met... that's all backstory stuff though, so who knows.

Then there's still the missing piece of 'why', with Nikolai. Why does he feel he needs to free himself from his emotions? Gogol's motive makes sense several ways: fear of Hell, self-hatred, a deep, spiraling depression. It's understandable, it's human, it's relatable. But Nikolai's freedom?

That Asagiri chose 'freedom from emotions' to be Nikolai's pursuit isn't something I've ever managed to understand. I just don't get it. I can't connect it to anything. You hear about people wanting to be numb, sure, but Nikolai's wants seem more about being capable of doing anything, or proving that he can... And he said (paraphrasing) "in spite of happiness I choose free will," so at the very least Nikolai thinks he's capable of happiness, and it's just not as important to him as his "freedom."

Yeah, idk. There's definitely something interesting there, though, that Nikolai's Ability gives him the freedom to do pretty much whatever (as Atsushi said in Sunday Tragedy), but he's so wrapped up in his own mind that he either can't see the freedom he has, or physical freedom is ultimately meaningless to him--which would make him seeking freedom through external actions an interesting failure to understand himself.

Then again, I don't know how honest Nikolai's being with himself, honestly. His whole "freedom" thing is an ever-moving goalpost. First it was torture people to death and kill himself. Then it was kill his best friend. Then it got so convoluted I won't even try to summarise it. And now he just seems lost. Giving Asagiri the benefit of the doubt and assuming this is intentional characterisation (and not just giving him plot-convenient reasons to take certain actions), Nikolai seems at best very confused (and trying to appear like he very much isn't). And, well, I'm confused too.

So yeah, all that's very interesting. Not sure how much of it was intended. Hard to tell with a character that gets like one scene every two years. And hard to tell where he'll go, considering how rarely BSD characters stay true to who they were past their debut.

Regarding the pessimism thing: ironically, I'd say Fyodor's pessimism is more optimistic in nature than Nikolai's. Because Fyodor believes in a world that can change. Fyodor believes he can make the world a better place, and is doing everything he can to achieve that. Nikolai, however, in his best case scenario, proves that it's technically true that complete freedom exists. But his world is still comprised of people in cages. It's cynical and oppressive, and his grandest hopes don't come close to changing anything for the better. I think that fits mostly very well with some differences I've observed between Dostoyevsky and Gogol.

[sualne]

hii! honeslty just curious, I read/watched kuroshitsuji AGES ago and I don't think I've finished the manga anyway, does grell go by she/her?? I vageuly remember ppl headcanonning them as enby though iirc in canon he's a guy?

Your tags peaked my curiosity, I haven't seen any Kuro content in a hot minute, but I remember it being the absolute must watch in my peak anime watching years lol And I absolutely loved the manga's artstyle

in canon grell is a trans woman, yana toboso has said something like "grell is a man with a woman's heart" ages ago and sometimes around 2014/16 had tweeted something about wanting to be more careful with her representation of people like grell in the future, don't quote me on that thought because i only read that tweet once and only remember reading a shitty screenshot of a translation of that interview where she allegedly said that.

i can however show you this:

it's from a bonus chapter (after chapter 108) about the popularity polls (it's a very convoluted non canon chapter) but it's one of the most blatant example of her being trans.

there's also the way she constantly refers to herself as a "young maiden" ect. idk how it goes exactly in the og but in french they translated it so grell always refers to herself with feminine terms while everyone else misgender her including the narrator. she very consistently reaffirm herself as a woman through every single ones of her appearances, like it's a thing she very much does, every single time she's on screen.

i haven't watched the anime in forever (cause it's kind of a disgrace and insult to the manga lol) but if i remember properly (which i mostly likely don't) they did omit/lowkey censor some of grell explicitly going "i wish i had been born a woman/could have been able to carry children" when she first properly introduce herself as a shinigami & the other half of jack the killer. (the anime also really did lean a lot more into the pervert queer caricature whereas in the manga she's given a bit more dignity, especially the further the story goes. though that might be my own impression and maybe it didn't change that much i just love her a whole lot).

also because i have to, please forget the anime (the first two seasons that is) and read the manga first and foremost because oh boy, what a disaster the anime is (nostlagia and atmosphere wise it's entertaining, i really love the op & ed, but it just, i just cant man it doesn't even compare to the manga at all). only watch book of circus -> book of murder -> campania movie -> the new private school arc that's coming soon (idk what they called it) after reading the manga.