#shut up goop

[marshmallowgoop]

Oh gosh. Oh man.

So, onesidedness is probably the main criticism of the Heiji and Shinichi friendship, and when potential romance is added to the mix, the prevailing thought—at least, in my experience—is that Heiji's affection would never be returned.

If Shinichi is interpreted as a character who experiences romantic attraction, it's an argument that doesn't sit well with me. "It feels a lot like, 'Well, of course the desirable protagonist could never romantically love the dark-skinned boy,'" I once expressed in the tags of a post. "And maybe that's unfair of me, but I can't deny that that's how I feel. Shinichi clearly has a lot of love for Heiji, and this OVA [9, 'The Stranger From 10 Years Later'] shows that he finds Heiji attractive. Like... I really don't think it's as implausible as it's made out to be."

But it's not that I don't understand the reasoning behind the hopeless, unrequited reading. There are implications of Shinichi's strong feelings for Heiji, bits and pieces that you can put together if you turn your head to the side and squint, but Heiji is loud with his love, unabashed, an open door. He speaks so fondly of Shinichi that Kazuha initially believes they're dating (Episode 118), and yet, any similar sentiments that Shinichi holds for Heiji are only quietly mentioned and barely tangible. There's a reason that Dr. Agasa calls Heiji to help Shinichi (Episodes 189, 277), a reason that the most constant adult presence in Shinichi's life believes no one else can reach him, a reason that Heiji is considered Shinichi's best friend, but on the surface, Shinichi brushes off Heiji's invitations to get together (Episodes 238, 381), states on more than one occasion that he's only accompanying Heiji because Heiji forced him to (Episodes 381, 479), and consistently has a sour look on his face whenever the two of them cross paths unexpectedly (Episodes 166, 189, 221, 381...).

I've always chalked up the attitude to Shinichi's inherent tsundere nature. He's embarrassed to show his affection for others, so he conceals it with annoyed faces and pouts and teasing (that I know is supposed to be fun but tends to come off as overly cold and meanspirited to someone as sensitive as me). Heiji isn't the only one on the receiving end of this kind of behavior from Shinichi—even Ran, Shinichi's childhood sweetheart, experiences it (Episodes 58, 927...).

So, I've never read Shinichi's grumpy behavior around Heiji as evidence that he doesn't love his friend or enjoy his company. There are plenty of examples of how that's clearly not true. Literally every Heiji case after the Reveal (Episodes 57-58), so far as I've seen, at least, depicts an excited, enthusiastic Shinichi who pointedly cherishes sharing deductions with the Detective of the West—even the cases that began with a cranky Cone!—and Conan is notably devastated whenever he's separated from Heiji or left to solve a puzzle on his own (Episodes 117, 118, 174, 224.).

It's not that Shinichi dislikes Heiji. He just doesn't shout his love to the heavens like Heiji does for him. Shinichi's love is whispered and soft, but that doesn't make it any less meaningful or real.

Still, I'm also fully willing to admit that the level of reciprocity I do interpret or could interpret in Heiji and Shinichi's relationship is simply an overanalysis—a desperate, futile attempt to justify why I'm fond of these two and their interactions despite the snotty attitude that Conan often directs towards his fellow detective.

But that's just the thing I only now realized: Conan's snotty attitude towards Heiji. When Shinichi is Shinichi, the nastiness he subjects Heiji to vanishes. The irritation that colors their dynamic fades away. There are broad smiles (Files 257, 653). There's an eagerness to work together. In "The Scarlet School Trip (Bright Red Arc)" (Episode 927), the partnership arguably takes precedence over the case, as Shinichi doesn't instantly race to solve it only to belatedly remember Heiji's presence, but instead immediately wakes Heiji so that they can unravel the mystery as a team.

Even the first time the two ever directly meet (Episodes 48-49), Shinichi treats Heiji kindly, explaining the flaws in Heiji's deduction without being insulting and devoting his time and energy to encouraging his so-called rival to be a better detective—all while he suffers horribly from the effects of the antidote wearing off.

So, this thought crawled into my head, built a nest, and refused to leave me alone: maybe the main source of Shinichi's grouchiness around Heiji is not his tsundere tendencies, but rather that he hates being Conan in Heiji's company.

It makes a heartbreaking amount of sense. Heiji is comfort to Shinichi, a reminder that, to quote Undertale, a game I've never actually played, "Despite everything, it's still you." But it's comfort that aches, a warmth as soothing as it is agonizing, because Conan is Shinichi but not, because as reaffirming as it might be to spend time with someone who always sees you as you are, who flounders and struggles and fails spectacularly at seeing you as anything else, there has to be pain in that, too, the pain that you aren't yourself anymore, you can't be, and you're trapped being something you're not, that you never wanted, that no amount of "Kudo"s can fix or undo.

More than that, Heiji represents everything Shinichi's lost. Conan can't be the teen detective that Heiji's freely able to be, with his name in the papers and his deductions widespread. Whenever the two are together, Heiji has to be sneaky or lie or conjure up excuses to keep them that way. Whenever Heiji calls, Conan has to hide or pretend he's talking to someone else. Whenever they speak, Heiji has to crouch to meet Conan's eyes—a gesture that's meant to signify their equality but simultaneously underlines how they're not equals, not as things are, not to the rest of the world.

While I can't say I'd ever excuse the undeserved annoyance that Shinichi pushes on Heiji, considering the behavior with this lens makes it a whole lot more sympathetic. It's humiliating for your friend to see you sitting on someone else's lap like a little kid when you're not one (Episode 166). It hurts that you can only talk candidly with your friend after he's manufactured a reason to send everyone else away (Episode 189). It stings that your friend has to orchestrate a plot so that you can attend the Detective Koshien when, had you been in your own body, you could have made the decision to go yourself (Episode 479).

It's not that Shinichi dislikes Heiji. He just dislikes the unfortunate necessity of being relegated to the child sidekick instead of the peer that he is. He just dislikes that he can't fully be the Kudo that Heiji thinks of him as.

If you consider "Conan's Dream Vacation," after all, it's one of Shinichi's greatest desires to be by Heiji's side, with Ran and Kazuha... but as himself.

Anyway. I already liked Heishin, but the idea that Shinichi's bouts of stinkface around Heiji are largely because Heiji reminds him of how desperately he wishes to return to himself does soften what I considered to be one of the friendship's most glaring flaws. And while the answer to the question of onesidedness here is of course up to interpretation, that Shinichi clearly has a lot of trust in Heiji (asking for advice in Episode 189!), and that Shinichi enjoys Heiji's company in cases and misses him when he's gone, and that he displays a palpable joy when working with Heiji as Shinichi (Episodes 522-523, 927-928), and that he dreams of being together in an official illustration, all demonstrate to me that there's a lot of love here.

The thought that Shinichi is upset that he can't be Shinichi for Heiji only adds to that feeling.

[kazieka]

one of the dumb things i like about flight rising is that you can just dissolve familiars for alchemy ingredients. like what the fuck. some nice centaur comes out of the woods like “I Have Seen Your Deeds And I Submit Myself To Your Clan To Learn About You” and youre just like fantastic. get in the cauldron

[kaladinkholins]

yeah taimizu IS toxic and off putting actually ‼️‼️🗣️🗣️🗣️

EDIT: TO BE CLEAR THIS IS A POST IN FAVOUR OF TAIMIZU!!! I AM A DIRTY TAIMIZU SHIPPER!!!!!

[gonkaccino]

HAVING A NORMAL ONE OUT HERE IN THE OLYMPIC EXCLUSION ZONE

[svtskneecaps]

yknow what GOOD i'm glad there's a spy this server was missing espionage. everybody lip wags on and fuckin on about trust and secrets and hiding SHUT UP IF YOU'RE HIDING WHERE ARE THE CIPHERS. WHERE ARE THE RIDDLES. WHERE ARE THE CODED MESSAGES. WHY IS BADBOYHALO THE ONLY ONE TALKING IN METAPHORS. WE HAVE CELL "THE ENIGMA" BIT.

MAKE YOUR DAMN BASE A LABYRINTHIAN NIGHTMARE. my waystone is at the entrance and you can ONLY ENTER MY BASE IF YOU KNOW WHICH DOOR ISN'T THE ENTRANCE TO A ROOM WITH A FAKE FLOOR AND SHARKS or what the fuck ever. there's a hidden path amidst ghost blocks FOLLOW IT OR DIE. PLEASE friends there are so many POSSIBILITIES. not to be twelve years old on main but a book series i read a while back had a secret area that was only accessible via a crazy ass alice in wonderland set of puzzles that would dump you in a moat if you failed, the concept being those who knew the path would take less time to enter than those who didn't. COME ON. secret rooms in secret rooms. this is my library but shhh this is my REAL library behind the fireplace and then THIS IS MY REAL LIBRARY BEHIND THIS BOOKCASE. make the world's most unintuitive create factory for big daddy breakfast and hide something in the middle of it WHO'S GOING TO COMB THROUGH THAT MUCH MACHINERY. NO ONE. NOBODY.

like bruh. i want them leaving notes like it's prohibition and they're trying to find a speakeasy. i want them smuggling information like the revolutionary war. i want them to talk like truckers when a cop is on the frequency. i want "one if by land two if by sea" type shit. ESPIONAGE. IS. COOL. DAMNIT.

[twosidedcherrytrees]

"...What?"

"Not Purple enough."

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

In the last scene in thanks to them, after flapjack sacrifices himself and hunter wakes up, you can. Like. FEEL luz's guilt. As soon as she's sure hunter is alive luz immediately removes herself from the situation. While camilla willow and gus are helping hunter up and checking that he feels okay, luz shuts her eyes and walks away from the group. She refuses to face her friends until they have to go to HER. Even before that, when the gang watched belos go through the portal, everyone else's expressions were of fear. But luz's expression was of resignation and determination.

She cant bear be around hunter. She cant even stand to look at him. Not when she blames herself for what happened to him and flapjack. Hunter would never blame luz for anything, but luz has a habit of taking every event that tangentially relates to her and twisting it to fit her self loathing. If she had helped look for belos better, maybe hunter wouldnt have gotten possessed. If she hadnt teleported to grab belos, maybe flapjack wouldnt have been close enough to get caught. We the audience know luz couldnt have stopped belos, but to her is just another item in her long list of mistakes.

Judging by her expression when hunter comes up to talk to her, luz is HORRIFIED at the new scars that belos gave him. (That she "let" belos give him) And i cant help but wonder how this new guilt is going to eat at her for the next two episodes. On top of the belos thing, the guilt she likely still has about leaving her mom and everything that happened with eda in the s1 finale, and everything with king, now one of her best friends (and family member she said shed protect!) has lost his palisman because of her. Every time luz looks at hunter shell be reminded of how he was hurt because of what she thinks are her mistakes.

Idk if theyll explore this in depth or even mention it because luz already feels really guilty about everything else and thats already going to take the whole finale to unpack. But this is one more thing for luz to tear herself up over and i cant wait to see how that goes

[aleprouswitch]

Tonight I received the first "real" criticism of my music: it's "not relaxing enough".

"Why don't you make more music that's soft?", this guy wrote, "people like listening to that when they go to sleep".

I don't think he quite understands what the point of noise is. I'm not trying to lull anyone into a peaceful slumber, I'm trying to jar their senses with thought-provoking sounds. Sorry, sleepy dude!

[istherewifiinhell]

IM. so affectionate for the goop baby. honest.

[mamahoggs]

i wouldnt call myself a critter but here we are

dorian storm enjoyers rise up

[toffeebeantable]

Why do they just randomly have a swing set next to a factory like “what a great view of pollution and apocalyptic environmental damage”

[marshmallowgoop]

Sometimes I think about all the things I've learned because of Detective Conan:

How to rip DVDs and Blu-rays, and make disc backups

How to easily tell if a DVD/Blu-ray is probably a bootleg

How to retime subtitle files (to work with my DVDs)

How to extract subtitles via OCR

How to make soft, not-burned-in karaoke subtitles! That work on YouTube!

How to change the "FPS" of audio (in order to edit English dub audio with HD Blu-ray footage, which often has a different framerate)

How to hack a Nintendo Wii (and I hacked two!)

How to use a capture card to capture game footage

How to digitize VHS tapes

How to make an AMV with DaVinci Resolve, and a myriad of skills that comes with that, but most notably and difficultly, how to force myself to use my brain to apply what I've learned to new contexts

I am so normal about Detective Conan...

[kaladinkholins]

mizutaigen is literally like. the first "toxic" m/f ship i've ever cared for. cuz like usually my taste in m/f ships is basically "unhinged baddie" x "badass wifeguy" *

* (see:yen/geralt. trevor/sypha. adolin/shallan. kataang but katara is sane and they're literally so wholesome like theyre traumatised kids in love who are each other's emblem of hope in a war-torn world! so basically they don't count. anyway. i'm rambling.)

and to that end my friend called mizutaigen yaoi-adjacent and im like. yeah you're right actually cuz like hell yeah non-binary mizu and bisexual taigen rights and all the gender fuckery in the show in general

but also like.

theres just SOMETHING else about mizutaigen that just GETS me. like there's a special secret sauce like the pheromones in that one sephora lotion attracting spiders and i am the silly spider!!! there's just something about it!!! it's not even the enemies to lovers trope cuz i personally am not even usually into that (obv it's fine if you are. but yk.)

so as i keep rotating these thoughts around i thiiink it's the fact that, yknow, theyre so similar. like i honestly truly think they could be besties in another universe: a kinder universe where taigen was not taught to hate. a universe where mizu was not born a girl in a deeply misogynistic society or half-white in a xenophobic homogeneous society.

yeah now that i think about it that really just might be THE secret sauce!!! like the fact that they COULD be perfect and happy together, if only things were different, if only they werent themselves.

smth v bittersweet about that's just driving me insane and makes me want to root for them to overcome all those obstacles, to say "fuck all that" (re:the world and all its fucked up shit) and find each other in the end. to eventually become each other's fav person and confidant. who obv still bicker and tease and insult each other all the time but they dont really mean any of it and over time it just becomes a running gag between them and no one else has to get it because it's just between the two of them.

[promithiae]

My coworker and I were talking the other day about how they don't like eating around people because they eat really fast and I was right there with them But I had a revelation tonight while eating dinner. If I have a Task with nothing to bounce my attention off there are 2 options for the speed with which I finish it. 1) I hyper focus and finish The Task in record breaking time or 2) My brain provides distraction for me and I spend 45 minutes on step three and then have to finish everything else in a rush. If I have something to bounce my attention off of (whether that's a youtube video, a book, scrolling through tumblr, or whatever) I generally eat at a socially acceptable pace. But if there's nothing else for me to fiddle with I will either finish a 3 course meal in 5 minutes or wander off halfway through to do something else.

[trashcreatyre]

Bro is so goofy lol

[glipathor]

ghow do join goophous discord...

u can go to the epic goop house website..... here >:3