#so they think that their past actions are the problem instead of their present inability to let people in

[oldworldwidgets]

i once again find myself falling in love with a character who constantly finds himself feeling the need to beg anyone who will listen for forgiveness but, because he will never actually ask, he never finds that forgiveness and instead resigns himself to his idea that he's unforgivable even though he had no control over the situation that changed his life for the worse.

when is it my turn to be happy.

[drdemonprince]

hi, devon. i’m a very socially anxious white autistic person who has been quite active in protests and some related events and actions the last couple of months. i really agree with your opinions on how white supremacy can shift our focus away from community, but i find it nearly impossible to actively parttake in community. i show up with a mindset of actively contributing but feel paralyzed when faced with the chance. i don’t really know how to make social connections in general, but i so badly want to contribute to community. i think white guilt kinda plays into things as well and that makes me so ashamed and then i spiral. ik it’s a lot but do you have advice on navigating a deep urge and feeling of responsibility (as it pretty much is my responsibility as someone who wants to fight for liberation) but feeling paralyzed whenever a chance to connect actually presents itself? i always end up fumbling and unintentionally rejecting people who try to connect w me as well. i used to be very politically active as a teen but that was through organisations with a lot of structure which enabled me to feel more able. i do whatever actions i can, but being hindered by my inability to form connections makes me worried i won’t be able to end up in the communities that fight for liberation in the long haul. i’m ready to this this for the rest of my life, but not alone.

I understand this feeling so much. Please keep at it. One of the biggest problems with the white supremacy brain disease is that it expects us to do more & more quickly than is reasonable or helpful to expect of a person. So it is very likely you are beating yourself up for not speaking up, for not jumping in to offer help, and for not asserting yourself to the degree that you think that you "should," but in reality many of those efforts would be misplaced or self-defeating if you were to embark on them right now. This is a long journey, and white supremacy culture believes in urgency above all things too, and so it's important for you to give yourself some grace as well as to accept that progress for you will be a long haul, and that's okay.

Many people have told me that becoming even a neutral member of a community as a white person is an uphill battle. So many of our impulses and the social tools that we wield actively destroy community. to learn to become a good community member, we have to listen and learn a lot, and keep showing up, and risk looking foolish, inert, useless, or whatever else we worst fear. If you're not doing much right now but still showing up, you might be a neutral member! That's a good start actually. Keep going.

Also try to keep an open heart and an open mind when people of color or longstanding members of the space challenge you, correct you, playfully tease you, or try to include you, even if it feels embarassing or like an attack -- it isn't an attack, but white supremacy brain will have you thinking that it is. If you read my essay Moments of Protest, I describe a moment like this at the Powwow I recently visited. Indigenous men singled me out, brought me into the dances, included me, taught me the moves, and gave me an award even tho I was doing a miserably bad job -- I was MORTIFIED and the white fragile person inside me wanted to run away and apologize for being so inept and never come there again. Instead, I pushed past my stupid ego and kept dancing and felt incredible gratitude in my heart. This kinda thing happens in a lot of POC-led activist spaces too. People will ask you your opinion, tell you how to contribute, correct you, include you, and it will humble you, and it will be scary at first, but do your best to just stick with it and stay present doing the thing, even if you feel red-faced and guilty. Slowly you will get more used to it and you don't reflexively withdraw or push people away. It took me no joke YEARS to get to this point. I used to flee instinctively or even be mad at people for bursting my self protective bubble. You can work through it.

A lot of my usual distress tolerance building advice also applies here (see my substack for more). But I think that if you are already showing up to actions a lot and are self-aware about it, you are on the right track. You just need to keep going. Attend organizing meetings, not just protests themselves if you can. Contribute your opinion when it is warranted. Don't beat yourself up for being silent sometimes and don't beat yourself up for disagreeing with people or having questions and your opinions. Accept conflict as a healthy form of intimacy and dont run away when a moment gets awkward. Just keep learning and retraining yourself and noticing the love that people show -- by offering food, by making jokes, by acknowledging your presence to make you feel welcome, by allowing you to be there and helping you to be a better version of yourself. we all have a long way to go in this work, but you can do it. you're already doing it! you got this.

[missywritesfor7]

❤️‍🩹Lifeline | MYG❤️‍🩹

Synopsis: It’s long been controversial for idols to date, but idols dating each other can be really beautiful or a complete nightmare. When Yoongi's relationship with another idol is discovered, he decides maybe it’s time to break the taboo and show people it’s ok for idols to date. Instead, they find themselves caught in the midst of one media frenzy after another and struggle to keep their relationship as strong as it had been the past 2 years. Yoongi finds a self destructive way to cope, and it causes even more problems than it solves. As they fight for their relationship and their careers, they discover that sometimes, the only way to truly be free is to let go.

Pairing: idol!Yoongi x idol!OC

Warnings: nsfw, alcoholism, cheating, depression, anxiety, Yoongi goes through a bisexy ho phase, Yoongi is also in his alcoholic phase, post-military BTS

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Ch. 28: The Last

Yoongi may not know where Hyeri is staying but he knows where she’s shooting. In the week since she’s been gone he’s sent her flowers twice, a basket of snacks, a coffee truck, and the cutest rainbow purse big enough to fit everything he knows she carries with her when she’s working. He’s also sent her texts daily expressing his love for her and how much he misses her. He tells her how his days are going, and at the end of each day he asks her to at least come home for Christmas. With the holiday coming up and still no response from her he’s afraid he may be spending it alone.

Hyeri has been wanting to respond to Yoongi but she hasn’t been able to bring herself to do so. The gifts are sweet and the coffee truck was perfect, but she still feels like she needs a bit more time. Between her loaded shooting schedule and her inability to find the words, she hasn’t said anything to him since she left.

Yoongi is thankful to have Minho to help him along while Hyeri is gone. He’s sure he would be buried 6 feet deep in insanity by now. He’s also found solace in their comeback schedule getting back on track. He and the guys have been busy and it keeps Yoongi from slipping deep into unhealthy thinking. Everything is great until he gets home at the end of the day and there’s nothing there. He feels like Hyeri’s scent is fading and that just makes the place feel even less like home.

There’s now only about a week left until Christmas and Hyeri still hasn’t said anything to Yoongi. Haeun has been scolding her daily because she knows it hurts Hyeri the longer she’s away from Yoongi. It definitely hurts Hyeri, but she’s not doing this to play some sadistic game of self torture, she’s doing it because she’s been scared into paralysis. A complete numbness that fools her into thinking she’s safe from feeling pain when in reality it’s cutting off the blood flow to a huge part of her that will shrivel up and die if she doesn’t take action soon enough. Hyeri is being fooled and hasn’t realized it yet. Haeun has.

Haeun’s methods of trying to get Hyeri to speak to Yoongi have been unsuccessful so far, so she gets a perfect idea while she and Hyeri are talking. They got into a conversation about shoes and Haeun boasting that she can do any dance in any type of shoes no matter how high or uncomfortable. Haeun has always been more of a sneakers type of person, but she knows Hyeri has an extensive collection of shoes, especially high heels. She takes this opportunity to make a bet with Hyeri; Hyeri will present her tallest most uncomfortable pair of heels and if Haeun can do a full routine in them she’ll grant whatever wish Hyeri wants.

The bet doesn’t matter to Haeun, but she gave Hyeri a reason to go home. She hopes just reentering their shared space may spark a bit of a fire in Hyeri to realize whether that’s a place she wants to return to or not. Haeun is convinced that Hyeri’s heart is with Yoongi and that’s where she should be, but Hyeri needs to realize that herself.

Just as Haeun wanted, Hyeri was hit with a wave of emotions when she returned home. She and Yoongi still know each other’s schedules through their shared calendar, so she chose to go at a time that she knew Yoongi would be away from home. As she heads toward the bedroom she can hear the shower running and her heart begins pounding.

What Hyeri didn’t know is that Yoongi’s schedule changed at the last minute. The guys were meant to be shooting an episode of Run BTS, but there was an electrical issue at the location they were meant to shoot at, so they rescheduled and the guys found themselves with the remainder of the day off. Yoongi hadn’t been home long, he and Jin stopped at a restaurant for lunch then both headed their separate ways. Yoongi got home and stepped in the shower to wash up, then found himself standing under the stream of water lost in thought.

He wishes Hyeri would speak to him. He just wants to know she’s doing ok. He wants to know how her days are going and if she’s eating well. He wants her back so bad. He feels like hes going mad as each day goes by. He can see her face when he walks into a room. He can hear her voice whispering to him at night. Even now he feels like he can see her quickly moving across the bathroom through the fogged glass shower door.

Hyeri peeked into the bathroom to see Yoongi’s fogged silhouette standing motionless under the water. She considered leaving and getting the shoes another time, but she didn’t want to have to try going through all of this again. She waited until she was convinced his eyes were closed and bolted through the bathroom straight to the closet. She knew which shoes she wanted to grab, now it’s just a matter of her finding the shoes in the dark since she can’t turn the light on for fear of being seen.

Yoongi’s eyes were not closed at all. His hallucination seemed a bit different than the other ghostlike sightings he’s been having in his head, it seemed a bit too real. He isn’t sure what he saw, but fearing that someone may have broken in, he goes defensive. He leaves the water running then quickly and quietly steps out of the shower. He wraps a towel around his waist and creeps toward the closet.

Hyeri can hardly see a thing so she tries to use her phone screen as a dim light to guide her. She knows the general area of where the shoes are, but she still has to sort through tons of shoeboxes to get to them. The first two boxes are a bust, the third is too but she sets it aside as a backup in case she doesn’t find the pair she’s actually looking for. Thankfully the 5th box has the pair she’s looking for. She quickly puts the other boxes back then grabs her haul and prepares to sprint her way back out. She turns towards the door then lets out a high pitched scream while dropping her phone and shoes at the shadow of a half naked Yoongi.

“Hyeri?” Yoongi says in disbelief. He turns the closet light on and confirms that he somehow managed to manifest her back home.

Hyeri can’t speak. The sight of a wet Yoongi wearing nothing but a towel that’s barely hanging on has her frozen solid. His loose dark curls hang in front of his face dripping an endless stream of water down his chest all the way to his belly button that sits just above his gray towel. She’s so stuck on his gorgeous body that she forgot where she was. Hell she doesn’t even know who she is right now.

“What are you doing?” Yoongi asks hoping the answer is anything along the lines of her coming back to stay.

“I-I um,” she sputters. “I’m-I just needed some shoes.” She quickly picks up her shoes and phone that she dropped.

“Oh,” Yoongi says disappointed. He can’t help but notice the shoes she has. They’re the one pair of shoes she has that gives her a height advantage over him. The shoes she’s only worn twice. With him. His chest aches at the thought of her wearing those shoes out with someone else. He needs to get her back.

“I’m going to go now,” Hyeri says trying to walk past Yoongi but he blocks her way. Her head is down and her eyes are on the floor. She can’t look at him without getting weak in the knees. She must resist.

“Hyeri, wait,” Yoongi says lifting her chin so their eyes can meet. “Talk to me, please. I don’t know what else I can say or do to get you to answer me, I just miss you so much. I love you and I’m so sorry for everything. Please come home. I just want to make it all up to you, baby. Anything you want I’ll do for you.”

“Yoongi,” she says softly. Her gaze goes back to the floor but she scans his entire body along the way. Why did she have to show up while he was in the shower?

“Please,” he begs. He cups her cheeks in his hands. “Christmas? If you don’t want to come back home, can you at least come for Christmas? I wanted to give you something.”

He looks like a sad puppy, and though Hyeri is trying to maintain the most stubborn levels of restraint, she can’t resist his pout.

“Ok,” she nods. “I’ll come for Christmas.”

It’s a small victory but it has Yoongi feeling pumped with optimism. Her agreement to at least spend Christmas with him spurs him into action to make sure what he gives her makes her want to stay. If he’s not working on anything with the group, then he’s working on her Christmas gift. He only has a week, but he has a lot of connections.

Haeun was happy to hear that Hyeri would be spending Christmas with Yoongi. Things are finally progressing and she hopes Hyeri will accept how she truly feels. Trust takes time to rebuild, but it can’t be done if she never speaks to him.

When the day came, Hyeri was nervous as she approached the front door of their apartment. She isn’t sure what to expect but she slowly opens the door and pokes her head in as if she were stepping into a stranger’s house. At first it almost looks like a stranger’s house. The entire place is decorated to look like a shimmering winter kingdom with the walls lined with sparkling garland, the light fixtures made to look like sparkling snowflakes floating through the sky. When she reaches the living room she sees that all of the furniture is gone and there only sits an all white grand piano in the middle of the room. There’s a vase of white roses atop the piano and the smell of something delicious coming from the kitchen.

“Hey,” Yoongi says coming out of the kitchen.

Hyeri turns and is taken by surprise by Yoongi dressed in an all white suit as if he’s about to go to the opera. She suddenly feels a bit underdressed in her light blue semi-casual dress.

“Hey,” she responds timidly.

“You look gorgeous,” he says walking towards her. He takes her hand making her blush from his missed touch. “I’m really glad you came. I know you still hate me, but I still wanted to give you the gifts I got for you, and if you want…I cooked too. Nothing fancy, just a little beef stew since it’s a bit cold out.”

“Yeah,” she nods already falling victim to the smell of his food. It’s late afternoon and she hasn’t eaten anything all day because she was so nervous about coming over.

“Great, it’s ready for you,” he smiles and guides her to the kitchen while still holding her hand that she hasn’t bothered to reclaim.

She takes a seat at the dining room table that he’s also decorated with a white tablecloth and more white roses. What used to be a more modern style black light fixture above the table has been switched out for a sparkling chandelier with crystal gems cascading down the entire fixture like icicles. She can tell he’s put in a lot of time and effort into this and she can’t figure out how he found the time or energy.

Yoongi serves her a bowl of stew and a glass of sparkling juice then has a seat across from her with his bowl and glass. Things start off quiet. Very quiet. Hyeri is trying to make it not seem so obvious that she’s enjoying the meal, but Yoongi knows her too well. He gets a boost of confidence seeing how quickly she’s eating.

“It’s ok,” he laughs. “I made plenty.”

“Right,” she blushes. “I just didn’t want to take too much of your time.” That’s a lie and she isn’t sure why she even said it. He’s no fool.

“Hyeri,” he says choosing to cut to the chase. “I know I’ve fucked up in the worst way and a day doesn’t go by when I don’t regret it. I love you so much. You know that. There’s no excuse that I can give to justify my cheating. There’s nothing I can say or do that will ever make up for that, but please give me the chance to prove to you that it will never happen again.”

Hyeri looks on while still shoveling spoonfuls of stew into her mouth. He looks pitiful. He also looks absolutely stunning. Why is he dressed in this white suit like he’s hosting a fancy holiday gala? She didn’t come here to give in to him, she came because he was begging her while he stood wet and naked in front of her.

Maybe she wants to give in a little. She told herself she would wait until New Year’s before giving in to him. She thought with her stressful schedule she would need that much time to feel confident in her decision to return home. She doesn’t fully trust herself to make the right choice. She’s made so many bad ones that she isn’t sure who she trusts least, Yoongi or herself. Regardless, she wants to give herself more time. What she will do now is let go of everything she’d been feeling these past few weeks.

She told him how painful it was to see people talking about being intimate with him when he’s only supposed to be with her. She had been trying to move forward from it, but then it was like it was being rubbed in her face. Like the world was taunting her for not knowing what he was doing. It’s humiliating to her and it made her question everything about their relationship. She doesn’t trust him and it hurts. She says a lot, but comes just short of saying whether she’ll return home of not.

Yoongi has exhausted every possible apology he could give. He feels like he has nothing left, so he tells her he wants to give her her gifts now. Everything he put together today is the last of everything he can give to get her to come back home. Everything else is up to her. He clears their bowls then returns with a few neatly wrapped presents. He places them in front of her and eagerly waits for her to open them up.

Hyeri starts with the smallest box. It looks like it’s possibly a necklace or bracelet. When she opens the box she’s surprised to see that it’s neither of those things. Instead there’s a heart shaped golden pocket watch with a small chain attached at the top. Engraved on the back is “until the end of time” in Yoongi’s handwriting. It’s sweet and a beautiful piece that makes Hyeri crack a small smile.

She sets the box aside and moves on to the largest box in front of her. It’s a tall rectangular box and when she opens it she reveals a pair of red thigh high boots. Ones she had fallen for after she saw them on a model during a fashion show she attended. As much as she loved the shoes, she felt like there was no way she would be able to pull off the look. Now she has a pair of her own that will be perfect during these colder months.

The next box isn’t as tall as her boots but a wider square box. Inside is an electric foot warmer and massager. One that’s top of the line with many features and functions to heal her aching feet after a long day on set. It’s something she’s wanted a long time but never got around to getting one for herself. Yoongi knew she had her eyes set on a foot massager so he got her the best one he could find.

Finally Hyeri picks up the last box. It’s only slightly bigger than the box with the pocket watch but it feels lighter. Inside is only a card with a handwritten letter from Yoongi.

For my love

I know things have been a rollercoaster

I’ve done things I regret

But when I’m with you I’m a better person

That I will never forget

As she continues to read on she realizes it’s not just a letter, but lyrics. She pauses and looks at Yoongi who’s still standing next to her. He holds his hand out inviting her to follow him.

Yoongi quietly takes Hyeri out to the living room where the grand piano awaits. He doesn’t say a word or make a sound which makes the silence seem so much louder to Hyeri. She stands by and watches him take a seat at the piano bench. He looks up at her a moment with a quiver in his eyes. His heart is beating out of his chest and he’s starting to sweat. There’s never been a performance that has made him so nervous in his life, but this one means the most.

He takes a deep breath and begins to play a light melody on the piano. This isn’t the same song he played her for her birthday. This song is completely new and makes Hyeri feel like she’s being swept away by a cloud. She instinctively closes her eyes and gently sways to the breezy sounds Yoongi is finessing out of the piano.

“For my love…” Yoongi begins singing.

Hyeri freezes at the sound of Yoongi’s voice ringing out. Writing a song for her is one thing, but she never expected him to start singing. He’s singing the lyrics written on the card he gifted her.

“I’ve done things I regret…”

Hyeri opens her eyes and watches Yoongi closely. She can see the emotion in his eyes. She can feel the rawness in his voice. His body sways more as he continues working the piano keys. What started as a gentle soft melody begins to gradually pick up intensity. Yoongi’s fingers hit the keys a little harder while his voice grows a little deeper.

“You’re the air I breathe…”

Hyeri can start to see him straining as if he were trying to hold back. The more he struggles, the harder he hits the keys. The melody grows louder and much more intense sending a rumble through Hyeri’s knees. The coarseness of his voice singing his love for her and vowing to be better brings tears to her eyes.

“I never thought I’d be worthy of your love…”

Yoongi’s voice cracks and he drops his head down trying to push himself to continue squeaking the words out of his throat as best he can. Hyeri can see how hard Yoongi is trying to keep it together but the more he tries the more his melody roars through her soul. Tears are running down his face but he continues singing through it all until he can’t anymore. His fingers keep moving but his throat is rendered void of sound. He leaves everything he has on those piano keys, everything he can give. All of his love, tears, and regrets carry the song to its final notes.

“I love you,” Yoongi whispers with his head still hanging down.

Hyeri tries to speak but nothing comes out. She can hardly see through the tears barreling out of her eyes. She sits on the piano bench next to Yoongi and cups his face in her hands. She wipes his wet cheeks with her thumbs trying to find the words to say to him. The song wasn’t just beautiful, it was powerful and emotional. She felt something that she can hardly explain through his song. She saw a Yoongi she’d never seen before.

“Yoongi,” she squeaks. “I love you so much. This is all so…how do I even deserve any of this?”

“You deserve more,” he says taking her hand from his cheek and holding on to it. “So much more for everything I put you through.”

“You make it so hard to love you,” she cries. “You hurt me so much then you make me feel like the only person in the world. You’ve got my mind and my heart so messed up, Yoongi.”

“Please,” he pleads nearing another wave of sobs. “Give me the chance to earn your trust back. I promise I will never hurt you like this again. I’m just asking for a chance, Hyeri.”

“Ok,” she whimpers with a nod.

Yoongi cracks a smile then pulls her into a tight hug. She returns his squeeze feeling like she was just freed from her shackles of numbness. She sat there and let everything go. The past few weeks she’d been crying her troubles to Haeun, she let them all out here on Yoongi’s chest. Everything she’s held in since the night he drunkenly admitted to cheating on her came through her fingers digging deep into his back. All of the lonely nights, stressful days, and anxious dreams burn their way up her throat into a loud cry that pierces Yoongi’s heart. He holds her tighter and kisses the top of her head. He felt her pain in that cry and he never wants to hear her cry like that again.

[nonbinarygamzee]

What about Terezi thoughts?

the thing with terezi, for me, is that she is quite possibly the only character to rival the level of unease and distrust i have for interpretations as i do with gamzee, in all the opposite ways. she was really important to me in the early days, because for all of the gripe i have about how it was ultimately handled, her story was always about her own guilt and attempts to reconstruct her own worldview because of that guilt, struggling with her own inability to justify herself because in ways she understands her own behaviors are rooted not in reality but in a position and expectation and place of power which she was born into. its so hard to talk about her, and really i feel like i am even more willing to go into the vriska stuff than i am the terezi stuff because as much as vriska conversations are complicated by the fandoms past (on either side of that debate) there is just an even more intense air of refusal to engage with terezis character assassination than anybody else....... which i guess makes sense, shes one of if not arguably the most frontal character, shes beloved weirdgirl, (mostly) unapologetic in her convictions. all i guess admirable traits if you are not like..... from my specific sphere of homestuck fans who have been worn down for all of those reasons. and yknow, a lot of vriska fans will disregard my opinions as inherently unserious and bad faith upon realization i like the clown, which sucks, but its mostly the terezi circles that have treated me like im personally committing some kind of violence by trying to discuss gamzees agency and the problems i have surrounding. what the comic did to these two together.

i guess that isnt really all that much About terezi but really i do think i have said most of the sweeping things i have to say about her as an actual character before. we are given this character who clearly does not have much awareness for the systems which lead her to her worldview, has little to no interest in being actually Fair (i mean come on even for the mess homestuck is her introductory interests in justice and murderstuck investigations are Meant to be read as her being clueless and on board with alternias laughably unjust judicial system. thats textual!) until she and people she knows are hurt by the actions shes up to then encouraged and taken part in. and that itself isnt an issue it is a pretty fascinating position for a child whos then being placed(/placing herself) into a role of an arbiter amongst an increasingly unstable group of isolated children, all of whom including her are very much products of the social conditions which they have been raised. the problem is that any real attempts to reckon with this stuff got shoved aside in preference of a shoehorned narrative about abuse that, if you were around and in the right places at the time, you KNOW how bad faith that shit was from inception. all of the interest in her guilt and insecurity about her own ability to think beyond that instinct that has been instilled into her that hinged on her own decisions and regrets are instead reconstructed to be all about shitting all over the plot device character who already didnt get to Be somebody, and was the subject of so so so many harassment campaigns that we know damn well hussie and the people working with him at the time were well aware of. to me the only way you can see any of that as a genuine attempt to touch on toxic relationships or domestic abuse are if you had no idea what kind of shit he (and the fans turned friends turned contributors) was doing, actively, at the time and it doesnt help that in releasing psycholonials he kind of just got to rewrite the narrative about how the fandom vitriol was spreading (and his extremely direct hand in that) or what was actually being said a lot of the time at all.

and like, yes i have an inherent distrust of people who arent going to examine all of the biases that go into presenting the character who is an amalgamation of all of hussies terrible biases wrt blackness and mental illness and addiction as the only of the kids who is somehow not just as much a victim of the antagonism of the narrative they exist within (while literally working under the child abuse demon!!!! i will say it again i will say it forever), duh, we know this, but i dont think you have to like or sympathize with gamzee to admit that shit was contrived and BAD. it isnt that strong, smart characters, especially girls, can never get abused or manipulated, or whateverrrr, but the second the story decides to reveal this detail is the start of a refusal to engage terezi as the intelligent and hyper-competent character we were initially presented with. her dialogue for literally the rest of the comic from that point on is a hollow, horrifying ghost of what she was before, any attempts to write her as unaware due to her emotional state more often just come across as a caricature of an emotional woman and the fact that it literally gets so bad that people were analyzing that shit at the time wondering if she wasnt also literally being psychically manipulated or barred from information in the same ways is, to me, proof enough of that. homestucks got this very very potent kind of misogyny going on with certain characters where they are allowed to be smart, often smarter than any of the men in the room, but not smart enough that theyre actually allowed to be right, and if they are right its usually as a result of the universe kind of.... dropping the info into their lap, moreso than deducing shit. and part of that is for sure i think that hussie is just better at telling than showing, but if you have READ any of their past works you also know that the idea of women being just generally stupider and flatter and lesser agents in their own stories is something he has always kind of had an issue with. im tired of stepping around it, im tired of stepping around the cop character having an investment in lynching imagery and then getting to be victimized by the manifesations of hussies discomfort and perception of black men! and being told im crazy by people who didnt have insight into how insidious so much of this all was at the time it was happening!!!! tired of not letting her BE flawed because people would rather avoid all of the discomfortttt. aaaand ok this is where im cutting it

[mettasing]

[rant-esque post about some of my nasty childhood experiences bad habits and their possible correlation. also trying to practice my english]

i know (and i heard) about my tendency to play the victim, to sometimes explain my own grudges by actively shifting the blame on someone else, not just pointing out something that offended me, but shoving it onto my so-called "opressor". it shows in verbal arguments, when i do not have the advantage be relatively calm or hide the agression like in the heated internet discussion. i know i can be dramatic, but in my hardly controllable fits in the middle of argument caused by my still present problem of inability to control myself it really shines.

sometimes i think what could cause this... i don't know, defense mechanism? actively seeking something in my "opponents" words, intonations, postures, past deeds to hop on, to point out, all to get them all away from me. maybe it's because i was that weird kid that wanted the attention and friendship of the others, but often didn't receive it. maybe it's because of me seeing that the kids who were in quarrel with me always received their parents' help who would (no joke) threaten me when i wasn't the one who started the situation...

(CRINGEY TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE)

like that one when a kid bullied me in the kindergarten and i bit his cheek lmao. i know it was wild and i could do something better even if i fucking hated the kid and that action really wasn't processed by me and his mother wanted to defend him BUT i still find kinda bizarre the scene where the adult is threatening the child who frantically tries to explain themselves, while not even understanding the situation completely, how the other was bothering them (and the other adults in the room just laugh yeah rofl one kid bullies the other kid and the other kid assaults them really funny). or when in music school mother of one girl from our violin ensemble wanted to "give me a warning" because i supposedly "pushed" her from out little (a few centimetres above the floor?) stage. AND I FUCKING DIDN'T, that little piece of shit lied about it because apparently she noticed that i didn't like her and looked at her wrong a couple of times at worst. but did someone care? hell fucking no. there were a few more times of such cases. i also remember how i was ehh a second or third grade of elementary school and one mother was threatening me to rip my tongue web off or something... well, she wanted to destroy my mouth. i do not even remember what was the problem, i remember how i was confused – like, what have i even done? – and really fucking scared to tears after she went home or some shit.

the first two knew my parents, and, if i am not wrong, they could settle things with them. but instead the chose to mess with some helpless kid whose tries to explain their pov they could ignore without bother.

(END)

the main point is: i saw how often parents of other children (no matter if i had conflicts with them or they were some random kids i saw around) would go out of their ways to defend them, even if it meant physical threats to the kids who supposedly were upsetting for their offsprings. i'm going to be blunt and obvious – i wanted that protection. i envied those kids i was close to despise. look what their mothers and fathers could do! how was i different, eh? but when i would go to my parents to ask them to stand up for me i would hear that classic stuff "you should stand up for yourself". now that's a helpful advice in the long run. but at that time, with all of the examples of the opposite i wasn't thankful for the thought. i would stop to bother them for many reasons, but i still carried on this cringe inside of me, and it still shows.

i find many flaws in myself and i have my theories about the most of them. but now i think i absolutely do not wanna dwell on the reasons why i turned out like this. i want to know why to be better. i am not a helpless six year old anymore, after all. these little childhood... inconveniences are still bothering me, that's why this post turned out so long (and i didn't expect it to be like this). but where they belong to and what should i do with them? A – in childhood and in one of the not main corners of my head. B – remember them, but not create my pride flag with them.

i feel kinda relieved.

[filipinoizukuu]

hello mr simp do you have any thoughts on the leeks 👀

FIRST OF ALL. THEY CAME SO FUCKING EARLY??? BRO I WAS ASLEEP

SECOND OF ALL

holy SHIT YALL

Okay, it's no secret that I'm an All Might stan. I LOVE All Might. Very very much. Not just as a simp, but genuinely, I enjoy his character SO MUCH.

--And unlike what some people may think, I'm not totally blind to his flaws. I know he sucks as a mentor and that he's done way more harm to Deku than good. He's.... not perfect. in every sense of the word. The whole point of AM's character is that he is a DEEPLY FLAWED individual— but at the end of the day, still good.

This new chapter gave me SOOO many new feelings. I'm not gonna lie to y'all and say I was a Stain apologist beforehand because I wasn't. I disliked Stain to a certain degree, but I also knew he was morally grey enough that I was able to still quite appreciate him as a character. This chapter was about EVERYTHING to me because I honestly did NOT expect Hori to go in this direction and for things to happen the way they did. It was too good to be true! Too fanfic-y! The disbelief I felt when I read what happened was on par with when Bakugou and Deku had that apology and kinda-hug in the rain!

But this disbelief is not because it was a bad thing.

I think the writing in Chapter 326 is phenomenal. The moment that All Might was really beginning to lose hope in not just himself as a hero, but himself as a PERSON... we finally hear the opinion of someone who would abso-fucking-LUTELY make or break the last of his spirit.

Stain is, as much as his views are pretty agreeable and his label is that of a vigilante, still a pretty shitty guy. He's tried to kill literal kids who got in his way, even if said kids made pretty dumb decisions. AM hearing what he has to say is absolutely mind-boggling to him because he knows all of that. He knows Stain is a shitty person and that his worldview is perhaps terribly skewed. He knows Stain has spent a hot minute frying his brains down in Tartarus and isn't good at making judgment calls. Knows that for all intents and purposes, Stain's opinions are not to be trusted.

But the thing is... Toshinori also knows that Stain, regardless of the soundness of his mind, is telling the truth.

Regardless of how fucked-in-the-head Stain is, we as readers are able to acknowledge that he isn't blinded by hero worship. Sure, he's bitter, cynical, and quite the absolutist--but Stain is still clear-headed enough to be able to see AM's flaws for what they are and accept them, ultimately proving to Toshinori that the power of All Might was never his own but rather the legacy that he inspired.

The society MHA takes place in is flawed. We all know this. Heroes, as a concept, had been corrupted into being purely about good and evil. Purely winning fights for money or fame or the abstract concept of victory (coughs Endeavor and the no.1 spot coughs), making heroism as we know it about flashiness and power instead of mercy and the desire to help others.

All Might symbolizes the ideal version of the Hero Society. He represents doing the best you can. Being a hero until you reach your limits, and then going even past that. He symbolizes pure intention and the desire to be a hero not for material gains but because of the pure want to make society a better and safer place. Stain refers to Kamino Ward and the statue as a "holy land" because he believes that through and through, AM's only had the purest of intentions and morals. To him, Toshinori was like a deity that had no fault in making society what it was in the present because that accountability fell on the generations of heroes that failed to fulfill his legacy.

The point being, Stain understood that All Might was fundamentally not about 'being there' for everyone 24/7, but rather the message his presence had sent.

All Might's monologue at the beginning of the chapter essentially boiled down to the ideas that:

A. He regrets not being there properly for Deku

B. His image was a delusion that ultimately led to the downfall of hero society.

To break this down, his problem with Deku is his inability to be a competent mentor. It shows that he has led him down dangerous and horrible paths (Deku's stubbornness to do things by himself and his 'dark' arc post-war), and is unable to bring him back into the light even if he tries. It was only when Class 1-A had intervened that they were able to get Deku to rest and let people tag along, after all, which is why Toshinori was far too embarrassed to follow him into UA's walls even after everyone had come out with umbrellas.

Stain disproves this in two ways.

First, he says that it was never about All Might's ability to actually be there for people. The whole point of what inspired Deku to be the inherently good-hearted "true hero" he is today is because of the values that AM's brand had instilled in him as a child. AM's biggest positive impacts came from behind the screen where he was used as the proof that true heroes can and do exist. Deku does want to be exactly like All Might, yes, which is why we see Toshinori leading him down the same path that he walked--but the underlying message of this is that the very first thing All Might gave him even before OfA was the courage to help fix society.

I do believe Deku is an innately compassionate person. Most people in the series are. However, what makes All Might's smile so uniquely impactful to what it did to Hero Society is the way it gave people courage to help people. Less hesitation. Less bystander syndromes. The ability to move without thinking. Because you can feel the want to help a person, but the courage to be nosey and actually do it? That's portrayed as something AM's image teaches people.

The second way he disproves AM's insecurity of dragging Deku down is that he makes it clear that this pain is somewhat of a necessity in reforming society. He says, interestingly enough, that this is but the 'middle process' in reforming society. This spills over to how he addresses Problem B, but what Stain is essentially saying here is that this sort of brutality and isolation that Izuku faces is impermanent. A phase. It implies that even if Deku is struggling and Toshinori is unable to help him, it is something that needs to happen before they re-realize the ideal heroes All Might's image is meant to create.

The second problem in regards to how All Might feels about current society (how it's collapsing because of him, etc. etc.) is more interestingly addressed. There are many things that Stain says--like how Toshinori doesn't need to actually be the one to fix society with his bare hands. The current society is not his fault because of the fact that it is not finished developing. I'm not sure if I can go so far as to say that Stain means this in the sense of the Scorched Earth method of tearing everything down to build it back up better-- but I can say that Stain still has faith in society to rebuild after this period of chaos.

This rebuilding starts with the old generation of heroes correcting what they messed up (i.e. Endeavor v Dabi) and more importantly, paving the way for a better generation of heroes that was inspired by All Might's image. Heroes that are led by people like Deku, who is defined by his proclivity to help without thinking. The violent deconstruction of society is about exposing society to the raw truth of All Might's image that not everybody can be as strong as him-- which is why we have to take care of each other.

When the lady comes in to remove the sign and start cleaning the statue, it's symbolic. It's a clear metaphor that the past few chapters are the turning point for society as a whole, and how people are starting to remember what real heroism is. From the distrust that was seeded in society ever since LoV had surfaced, we are seeing that trust being returned TEN-FOLD now that people can see not only the mask of a hero's smile, but also the person underneath.

I think it's some really neat symbolism here too about how Deku, who's metal mouth guard was literally all about representing All Might's smile, is shed.

This is hero society dropping their masks. Letting people see them for as they are. Toshinori revisiting the statue in this form makes all the more impact because he shed his mask ages ago during the Kamino Bust, so this is him coming face to face with the image he's created and seeing the differences between them, and how his image continues to live on even after he's almost completely Quirkless. The lady cleaning the All Might statue shows off the fact that things can be repaired again--that society can be clean (hehe stain pun) again.

It's interesting to me here how Stain offers the information from Tartarus.

He doesn't care anymore about his life. It's evident. He disagrees with what the LoV is doing, but believes enough in Deku to think that it's time for him to retire the mantle of 'Stain'. Unless this is another test, it's very odd for me to hear that Stain is offering a blade and his life to someone he isn't even sure is All Might.

But the impact of this action reads loud and clear.

This is Stain taking pity on All Might. This is him realizing that All Might too is a person behind the hero. That Toshinori Yagi is incapable of doing anything past the image he had already created. By offering that knife and information on Tartarus, Stain is giving control back to Toshinori. He is giving AM the chance to do something big again to help society's reconstruction. To be a part of the revolution that he so badly deserves to see. That knife is essentially an exit ticket from the sidelines, and one last chance for All Might to be able to see what his image has done for people.

I personally think that the main reason Stain is willing to die then and there by Toshinori's hand, despite not being sure that he is All Might to begin with, is because of the final impact it creates that it isn't about Toshinori Yagi's true power as a person, but the image of All Might. It is because he looks like the symbol of peace, that Stain (the literal HERO KILLER) feels comfortable laying his life in his hands and giving away valuable information.

If that isn't a great testament to the power of AM's image, I don't know WHAT is.

I guess all I have to say is I absolutely love what Stain did in this chapter. Everything felt so incredibly symbolic and emotional and as someone who absolutely ADORES All Might and what he stands for in the story, this felt like a cool balm after seeing Deku tragically reject his bento box a good few chapters ago. I have a few more opinions about symbolism, and how I think Deku's generation of heroes is going to stray from the old gen, but I think that's a discussion for another time.

Thanks for reading 'til the end!

[ultramemoriesofthespotlessmind]

Moonlight lovers is a disaster: part 3

Oh! is it a clown or is just Ivan?

Ivan, Ivan, Ivan... a disaster, a completely disaster. If one thing has taught me this route is to take things humorously. This is one of the worst routes together with Raphael's.

Let's start with the positive points. chapter 1-3. That's it. Everything is good until chapter 4. Then it's stupid jealousy, toxic behaviour...(and when i say toxic i say real disgusting stuff that I don't think people like to experience as a player in a romantic game). Again, another route which could have been a hit, wasted.

They have let escape the chance of him and Eloise talking about the 2010's. When he was human there was a "boom" of musical hits: Lady Gaga's bad romance, rihanna, katy perry... I know he likes metal, but dude he could have been a bridge to create instant empathy with us. He is the character that could have been the most easy to talk to, and instead, he is the most difficult to seriously communicate with.

Ivan was kinda sweet vibes "he was a punk, she did ballet, what more can I say?". Vibe with me. The skater punk boy that OBVIOUSLY plays music and is good at rhythms. That's cool. Honestly, he was an interesting character to develop. We have a torment man who is obssesed with his human life and cannot accept his new condition. Also, he feels extremely guilty about his actions in the past and the present, and has problems to control his thrist.

Having said that, the first two chapters were focus on his inability to selfcontrol. Okay, fine by me. The third has a really cute dancing scene. Everything is okay except Ethan, who is predatory and d i s g u s t i n g (but i'll judge him in his own route to be fair).

But, here comes Constaaaance, how incredible it is that this company is forcing me to feel jealous about a 2d drawing. Nah, seriously I still had hope. I thought: "maybe he isn't in love with her but what she represents. The last link to his human life, his family, his friends, his dreams... everything. That 's why" I thought. So consequently, the game wants us to make him aware about what he truly feels to channel it from a perspective more filosophical. HA!

wHAT aN IDiot i was.

After, a lot of fights, jealousy, irrational and delusional behaviour. It turns out, Constance is super evil and killed him (incredible resolution). And suddenly, the love for her abandons ivan's body. Dude, it evaporates. And suddenly, Ivan understands that he actually wanted to fuck his childhood friend, the one he bullied, yeees. And the one who married his girlfriend.

At first I got angry but then i thought, this is actually super funny (except for the tortuous chapters about jealousy and shit). I mean... in the neutral ending this bag of shit breaks up with us to start dating the friend he never reminded in the past 10 years.

As a queer person I don't desire Ivan in my community. By the rights I don't possess I declare him heterosexual. I don't want this skinny runt inside my group, what a bad representation. Ivan you should learn of Aaron, my bi king.

What can I say? I remember the end and the memories and everything... It's so bad... so bad that I wanna forget. Still, iconic twist. At the end Ethan was right about him.

[labarch]

Witch Hats and Prejudice Part II

<-- Part I

Olruggio, my love, my man, I’m sorry your proposal to Qifrey in chapter 40 didn’t go as you hoped, let’s sit down and discuss your workaholism, temper issues and saviour complex, yes? Yes. It’s couple therapy time at last, we’ll have a look at Qifrey and Olruggio’s relationship and at chapter 40 in particular through the following points:

-Panelling in the Orufrey conversation in chapter 40

-Prejudice and power imbalance in Qifrey and Olruggio’s interactions

-Help as a collaboration between equals (spoiler: they haven’t made it to that stage yet)

-What Olruggio wants from Qifrey

 Panelling in the Orufrey conversation in chapter 40

The conversation in chapter 40 is never framed as a happy reunion. If we reuse the analysis of the panels from Coco and Qifrey’s conversation I made in my previous post, we find the same markers of unease between Olruggio and Qifrey. Most of the panels are narrow, and get darker and darker as night falls. Qifrey and Olruggio rarely share a panel, and even when they do, they rarely make direct eye contact: Qifrey looks down, or Olruggio walks away from him, or they are curled in on themselves or standing on a slope at different eye level. For a while Qifrey is up in the air and mostly talking to himself. Oh yeah, and there’s a hat that gets in the way at some point.

It gives the sense that they are having two separate conversations, and that they never truly achieve the connection that we saw between Qifrey and Coco. On top of that, while the conversation is supposed to be about comforting Qifrey and earning his trust, Olruggio never manages to get a smile out of him, except for wobbly, miserable little grimaces. So what’s going through both of their heads, and why are they failing to meet halfway?

The chapter has an outward pull to it. The scene takes place on a slope that leads away from the atelier. The chapter opens with a herd of dragons flying away and into the night. Then Qifrey takes flight to look into the distance, while giving a very contradictory speech about how fulfilling yet dull his life is here, how happy yet trapped in an illusion he feels. He has to hold on to his cape as it flaps in the wind. It brings those dragons back to mind, like they are a metaphor for the side of him that wishes to escape. Qifrey’s migration season is just starting folks, it’s a confusing time for him okay.

In contrast to Qifrey looking ahead into a dark wilderness, Olruggio in this chapter is almost always looking back. He walks away from Qifrey to talk to him over his shoulder, or he looks back towards the atelier. In the only scene where he faces Qifrey full-on, the past is so present on his mind that he de-ages them both. It’s interesting, because it adds a caveat to his pledge of listening to everything Qifrey has to say: he is not so much trying to adapt to Qifrey’s new situation as he is trying to bring them back to the childhood stage of their friendship, when they were always together and kept no secret.

This whole looking ahead / looking back dichotomy brings me back to the mentality of the Great Hall, a society obsessed with keeping itself in an insulated bubble, wrapping itself in good intentions and noble ideals, and ignoring its own inner darkness and complexity. Qifrey, because of his inability to be content and stay in place, threatens that delicate balance. That sends the other witches around him into such a state of panic and outrage that even those who genuinely love him end up lashing out at him with uncharacteristic brutality.

Prejudice and power imbalance in Qifrey and Olruggio’s interactions

I have described in my previous post how vicious and oddly personal Beldaruit got in his attacks against Qifrey in chapter 36, but you can make the same case for Olruggio, especially since the two scenes run in parallel. There is something excessive about the violence with which Olruggio confronts his friend. For one, he is choosing a hell of a time to do it: the girls are safe, there is no urgency to press Qifrey for answers right this instant – except if he is hoping to shock Qifrey into honesty while he’s disoriented. Qifrey has just woken up from a three-day coma; he is half-naked in a place Olruggio knows worsens his nightmares; his scar is exposed; he is half-blind because Olruggio has taken his glasses; Olruggio is literally an angry dark blob looming over him. I’ve often heard it say that Qifrey is manipulative towards Olruggio, but in return Olruggio isn’t above using intimidation tactics against him, consciously or not.

There is also the staggering lack of empathy of the approach: what started this whole thing is that Olruggio learnt about Qifrey’s impending blindness. And his knee-jerk reaction was to attack Qifrey about it. Like, um, my dude, your friend almost died, he is going to go blind and lose his job, you wanna try being sensitive about it? (Note that Qifrey running after the Brimhats didn’t trouble Olruggio that much at first: after his interview with the Knights Moralis he is mainly concerned with “getting his story straight with Qifrey”; it’s only later on, when we see him staring at the glasses he’s just repaired, that he starts voicing his doubts about Qifrey’s intentions). He may be right to suspect that Qifrey is hiding things from him, but there’s a pretty big leap between “you are keeping secrets” and “you are wilfully using your own child as bait”.

This whole suspicious climate, that makes Olruggio jump straight to the ugliest conclusion possible, is once again a feature of the Great Hall mentality. The mind of a person who has been in contact with forbidden magic is forever corrupt, and his actions are forever suspect. Had Qifrey been anyone else, he would probably have been given the benefit of the doubt for losing track of his students while he was, you know, extremely concussed and suffering from blood loss. Interestingly, Olruggio’s concern – whether, when faced with a chance to go after the Brimhats, Qifrey would choose his quest over his students’ safety – is addressed as early as chapter 22: after an instinctive movement to rush into danger, Qifrey pulls himself back and takes measures to keep Coco and Tetia safe, and even plans to call Olruggio and the Knights Moralis as reinforcements to help rescue the others. Then he gets hit in the head by a giant snake golem, and the rest is history.

In general, Beldaruit’s and Olruggio’s accusations that Qifrey is using Coco as bait without caring for her wellbeing just don’t hold up. First, all the attacks by the Brimhats so far have occurred in completely mundane, teaching-related settings with other adults present (at the stationary shop, or during an exam), so pushing blame onto Qifrey clearly comes from prejudice rather than evidence. Second, if Qifrey’s sole aim was to get clues on the Brimhats, he would pressure Coco into taking the Librarian test as early as possible, but we keep seeing the opposite: he encourages her to take breaks and to enjoy her training rather than be laser-focused on her goals. Hilariously, out of the two tests Coco passed so far, Qifrey gave his approval for none, thinking it was too early for her (extra-hilariously, Beldaruit is the one who speed-ran Coco through her second test). I’m just saying, if Olruggio hasn’t noticed any of this and can’t take it in consideration before bringing out the accusations and threats, maybe he’s not doing that good a job as a Watchful Eye.  

Another thing about this climate of suspicion, added to the power imbalance between Qifrey and Olruggio, is that it prevents them from having a healthy fight. Olruggio invokes his duties as Watchful Eye to berate Qifrey whenever he steps out of line, but when Olruggio lets his temper carry him too far and misuses his own power (when he drags Coco out to the Knights Moralis even though she had already been officially accepted as an apprentice in volume 2, or when he accuses Qifrey of using Coco as bait in volume 7 without proof), Qifrey never criticises him for doing so. It’s not that he is shy about speaking up to power – he is more than happy to yell at Beldaruit and Easthies when they mistreat his students. But when it comes to Olruggio, Qifrey is compelled to shoulder as much blame as he can, and seems almost afraid of saying anything negative to him.

It would have been justified for Qifrey to start chapter 40 by getting mad at Olruggio for his earlier accusations: Olruggio had been insensitive, unhelpful and completely out of line. But instead Qifrey pretty much encourages Olruggio to attack him again: from his “I thought you might be mad at me” to frantically denying that Olruggio might have ever done anything wrong. In return, there is something defensive in Olruggio’s delivery during the “I’m angry that I wasn’t someone you could trust” segment: he walks away from Qifrey as he gives the non-apology, and it comes out sandwiched between criticisms of Qifrey for being reckless and a long speech of Olruggio praising himself, and how everything would be alright if only Qifrey behaved himself and relied on him more. It’s an issue that this old distribution of roles is so well-entrenched between them, with Olruggio as the golden student and Qifrey as the eternal problem child.

Qifrey’s exaggerated gentleness and praise towards Olruggio participates in the feeling of wrongness that weighs on chapter 40. The memory erasure scene is framed like a kiss, and Qifrey keeps complimenting him even after sending him into an unnatural sleep. It would come across as condescending and manipulative, except for how fervently Qifrey seems to want to believe that Olruggio is perfect, and that any dysfunction in their relationship has to come from him.

Qifrey, focused as he is on his own dark secrets, is utterly unwilling to see any darkness in Olruggio. It makes sense when you consider that Qifrey has also been absorbing the prejudices of the Great Hall: he thinks very little of himself, and has probably been looking up to Olruggio as a moral compass ever since Olruggio took him under his wing as a child. He must also comfort himself with the thought that, when/if his quest drags him away from the atelier, Olruggio will be a perfect teacher for the girls. Having to come to terms with Olruggio’s flaws must be terrifying to him. But what about Olruggio’s perspective in all this?

Olruggio is an example of how even those who materially benefit from an elitist, close-minded society are damaged by it in some way. He grew up in the Great Hall as a bright-eyed, idealistic genius, and even as an adult he clings to the principles of that society like a mantra: “bring the blessings of magic to the people”. He is successful and respected by his peers, popular with the nobles and well-liked among the commoners. Yet somewhere along the way he became a ragged, workaholic hermit.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I suspect Olruggio of grappling with his own, deep-seated fear of being unwanted and left behind. He betrays that fear in the way he is attacking Qifrey: his concerns about Qifrey’s treatment of Coco aren’t based on evidence, and underneath that veneer he is mostly complaining that Qifrey is neglecting him. “Be straight with me”, “Don’t lie to me”, “You wouldn’t even tell me about it”, “You took her as a student without a word to me first”. There again, Olruggio is being a bit hazy on how far his influence goes as Watchful Eye: from what we know, Watchful Eyes are meant to ensure that students don’t get mistreated, but they don’t get a say in who teaches whom: it’s the disciples who choose their masters. Olruggio grumbling about Qifrey adopting more and more children behind his back is cute when we treat them as a couple. But from the perspective of their professional relationship, Olruggio is claiming the right to veto Qifrey’s students and take them away from him without any evidence of abuse.

The problem is that Olruggio is very bad at expressing his feelings without using his job, and therefore his authority, as a crutch. It’s endearing when he uses it to explain away his gifts to the girls (“I just want them to test a prototype”) or his marks of affection and care (“Drying your hair so you don’t catch a cold is part of my duties as Watchful Eye!”). However, it adds a layer of threat to his arguments with Qifrey, because he is constantly dangling that authority over his head, even when he is urging Qifrey to trust him. In his more agitated moments, it turns into a one-man good-cop / bad-cop performance (“Step out of line and I’ll report you” / “Why won’t you confide in me? I’m your best friend!”). Sure, he is willing to side with Qifrey against the Knights Moralis when he deems it appropriate, but here’s the catch: Olruggio gets to decide where the line in the sand lies, and that line seems to shift depending on how hot his temper is flaring at any given time.

It’s no wonder their conversation lends them in a dead-end when it is so one-sided. Thourghout the manga, and in volume 8 in particular, the author explores the idea that help should be a collaborative effort between equals, that encourages both parties to grow and learn more about themselves. Trying to unilaterally “save” someone is almost guaranteed to miss the mark and come across as condescending; it might even cause further harm.

Help as a collaboration between equals

Therefore, Qifrey and Olruggio can’t really come to any connection unless they make it clear that they are helping each other, not just endlessly acting out their roles as the golden student who knows all the right answers, and the problem child who must be saved from himself.

Aside from the framing, help as an equivalent exchange is the other key difference between chapter 40 and Qifrey and Coco’s dialogue earlier in the volume. In order to counter Coco’s doubts and growing self-hatred, Qifrey reinforces everything he admires about Coco: from her social skills and capacity for teamwork to her practical skills and her straight lines. He reminds her of all the things that she achieved so far. He also strongly hints that her fight is his fight, too, and that they should hold onto hope for each other’s sake. Finally, he makes a (pretty dramatic, unnecessarily literal and definitely unsafe, but still awesome) leap of faith by letting her decide what direction she wants to take next. His support isn’t conditional on Coco making the “right” choice, but freely offered. In return, Coco makes a display of saving Qifrey as well, saying she wants him right by her side while she figures out her path. The rescue itself is symbolic (it would actually have been safer for Qifrey to go back on his own), but Qifrey’s gratitude is genuine, because Coco made him feel valued, irreplaceable, just as Beldaruit and Olruggio were making him doubt his place as a teacher.

By contrast, Olruggio’s speech of friendship contains a grand total of ONE compliment, served in such a back-handed way that it sounds almost like a warning: “To Coco, you are a good teacher, so don’t betray that trust”. This is weighted against a slurry of criticisms about Qifrey’s recklessness, and heaps of self-praise. Olruggio is making a case for why Qifrey needs help and why Olruggio is best-qualified to deliver that help, like he is making a sales pitch to a client. It’s probably not a coincidence that Olruggio is remembering his successful bout of diplomacy in chapter 39 as he gears himself for his conversation with Qifrey. Olruggio, look, I get that you have more faith in your professional persona than in your regular self, but you can’t talk to your best friend like you are doing customer service, it just doesn’t work that way.

The help that Olruggio offers leaves no room for Qifrey’s input: once Qifrey has confided everything and laid himself bare, Olruggio will pick apart “where he needs the help” and “when he is about to do something stupid”, and either support or stop him as he judges appropriate. It reinforces Qifrey’s inferiority complex and interiorised guilt, by implying that his moral compass can’t be trusted. It also places the blame for Qifrey’s rash actions solely on his lack of judgement, rather than on having to grapple with complex, life-threatening situations and being caught in a pincer between a terrorist group and an oppressive system. There’s no mention that the definition of what’s “lawful” and “responsible” and “just” has gotten a bit messed up lately, and that Olruggio himself has had to compromise with his duties to cover for the kids. Olruggio fakes confidence in his capacity to fix everything, and pretends that things can go back to the way they were, but it would have been more honest of him to ask Qifrey to work with him so they can form a united front to face their new, complex reality.

Instead, by claiming that he is helping Qifrey out of a sense of duty, as Watchful Eye and as a friend, Olruggio reinforces the feeling that Qifrey is a burden to him. This gives Qifrey more incentive to keep his friend away from his investigations, and to see himself as expendable. In that light, since their friendship brings Olruggio so much trouble and so few benefits, betraying him and stealing the memories that relate to Qifrey’s secrets start to look like the lesser evil.

The only way that the conversation in chapter 40 could have gone well is if they both freely admitted to needing each other. However, it is too early in Olruggio’s character arc to be honest about his own feelings and worries. And it is too early in Qifrey’s character arc to see past his own self-loathing and recognize that his “perfect” friend also needs support and guidance. Yet, when they do, it is hinted that Olruggio can draw inspiration from Qifrey, and help Qifrey in a more meaningful way by highlighting how Qifrey matters to him, letting them reach this stage of true collaboration.

What Olruggio wants from Qifrey

I think Olruggio is repressing a sense of disillusionment about his work, the fairness of the system, and his usefulness as a witch. We see glimpses of his anxiety in chapter 39 notably. While he says that his true role is to help the commoners, circumstances keep reminding him that like it or not, his main function is decorative. He gets dragged in on short notice to be yanked around by petty nobles and arrange light shows at weddings; he has to act in secret to help the destitute, and even then can only do so much before the rules of magic society get in his way. So far he manages to keep his head above water, using his talent for diplomacy and showmanship to keep the nobles appeased, and finding small, creative ways to help commoners without breaking any law. But it leaves him with the feeling of being trapped in an increasingly constraining role, and is slowly pushing him towards a burn out.

He seems to feel a kinship with princess Mia, who like him is used as a tool in petty squabbles between nobles. He even metaphorically puts himself in her shoes: after likening her situation to being trapped in the spotlight in a dance she doesn’t want, he applies the same metaphor to himself and his inability to act outside the narrow constraints of witch rules, of being constantly watched and judged. And then, adorably enough, Olruggio actually brings Qifrey into the metaphor. He muses that Qifrey, who has gone against established rules before, might be the key to escaping that dance.

For all that the “problem child” / “star student” dichotomy has been weighing on Olruggio and Qifrey and warping their friendship, there is a flip side to it as well. As a prodigy who always pressures himself to perform perfectly (to the point where he will work himself to a zombie-like state and then hide behind a mask to look perfect and pristine in front of his clients at parties, Olruggio no), Qifrey provides a chance at escapism. For all that he berates him for causing trouble, Olruggio seems to fondly remember their old adventures. It’s possible that he valued the opportunity to do rebellious, forbidden things without having to jeopardise his reputation. His fear of being left behind by Qifrey is then also a fear of losing his hope that, when the pressure of being the perfect witch becomes too much to bear, Qifrey will be there to break him free.

In summary, Olruggio wants Qifrey to be his rebellious prince who breaks him free from the ballroom, and we respect him for it. Qifrey had his reasons for not being able to confide in him, and they both have a lot of character development to do before they can reach a stage of actual collaboration and trust. But I don’t dispute that taking his memories was a dick move. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.  

[gh0st-patr0l]

ADHD in DSMP

So about a week back, I made a post about Karl Jacobs (a bit of a passive aggressive one, I’ll admit, but I think it was justified), complaining that a lot of the ‘criticism’ I see about Karl is actually rather insensitive towards his ADHD. I got a lot of responses to that post, and the most common sources of confusion I saw were:

People not understanding what I was saying they should avoid being judgmental of, or-

People who didn’t know that Karl had ADHD or didn’t understand which behaviors were caused by it.

First of all, Karl has confirmed that he has ADHD.

(NOTE: Yes, I know he said ADD. ADD and ADHD used to be categorized as separate disorders, but in the most recent edition of the DSM, it was decided that they are both simply subtypes of the same disorder- ADHD is the correct technical term. ADD is still sometimes used as shorthand by some practitioners to diagnose primarily-inattentive ADHD, but it's a bit outdated.)

Secondly, that original post made me realize that a lot of people who may be well-meaning may genuinely not fully understand ADHD and its symptoms as well as they want to or think they might. If you aren’t aware, Karl isn’t the only one in the DSMP with ADHD- to my understanding, both Technoblade and Dream have confirmed that they have it as well. So, I thought it would be helpful to put together a comprehensive crash-course on ADHD symptoms and how they effect people’s behavior!

Now, before we go further, I want to address something- as I said earlier, I saw some people unsure of whether certain behaviors are ADHD or “just his personality”. I feel the need to point this out above the read more so people will see it. To answer this question, as someone with ADHD;

A lot of times, it’s both. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, meaning that it’s caused by the way your brain developed from birth. A lot of the symptoms and effects of ADHD are extremely influential towards the way we think, act, and behave, to the point where “symptoms” and “normal behavior” really don’t have a clean differentiation. This is why it’s technically classified as a ‘disorder’, instead of an illness. While certain aspects of it can require treatment, the condition itself as a whole is not something to be mitigated or eliminated- it’s a part of who we are as a person. This is also why sometimes, even if you don’t have ADHD, you’ll look at certain specific behaviors or experiences and go “Oh, but I do that too!”. A lot of ADHD ‘symptoms’ are just a bunch of normal traits or behaviors, but in combination with each other and some actually problematic aspects, form the appearance of the disorder.

So, what are you allowed to nitpick about it? Well, there’s no real ‘authority’ on this, and even if there was it certainly wouldn’t be me. But if you want my opinion? Nothing.

See, here’s the thing- what I was trying to say when I made that post was not that you can’t be critical of Karl. If you want to say something about his Actions, his Ideals, or the content he creates- sure, go for it, that’s fair. I will agree that there are some very valid and constructive points to be made. But when you post ‘criticism’ about the way he speaks, his interests or preoccupations, his personal behaviors? That’s not criticism. That’s just judging someone.

And you’re allowed to think that stuff! Nobody can control what annoys or bothers them. It doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. But you don’t need to be vocal about it. You can keep your mean thoughts to yourself. And if you do make posts or communities or whatever about judging someone for things they can’t change about themselves, don’t call it “criticism” or try to morally justify it. It’s not productive or righteous, it’s just rude. Nothing else.

Anyway. Back to Education!

The following will be a descriptive list of visible ADHD behaviors, using Karl’s behavior as examples.

I feel the need to add a disclaimer here- I am not a mental health professional. However! I have ADHD myself, I have taken some psychology courses and done a Lot of research into this stuff, and I’m the daughter of a therapist with access to a DSM. While I’m not an expert, I’d like to think I’m fairly well versed and knowledgeable on at least ADHD. (That being said, if by chance anyone who Is a professional sees this post and notices mistakes, by all means let me know and I’ll fix it!!)

WHAT IS ADHD?

You’re here for the behaviors more than the science, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. ADHD is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Known in the past as Attention Deficit Disorder). Despite its name, the root problem of ADHD is not in the person’s ability to pay attention, but their brain’s capability to manage itself. In simple terms, people with ADHD have a lot less control over what their brain does and wants. This results in some behavioral differences along with some personal challenges, namely a difficulty with attentiveness and self-discipline.

Now, onto the symptoms!

ATTENTION

This is perhaps the most visible and pervasive of the ADHD symptoms, hence why it’s the namesake. Inattention is a lack of focus and an inability to stay present and occupied with certain tasks or thoughts.

Because ADHD impairs self-management of the brain, people with it have an extremely hard time directing themselves anywhere but where their brain instinctively wants to go. This results in inattentiveness and the easiness of distraction that is often mocked or stereotyped for people with ADHD.

Here are some examples of how Karl can sometimes display his inattentiveness;

When he has an idea that he seems passionate about, only to drop it or switch to something totally different without warning soon after (either forgetting or getting bored of his original idea).

When he sets out to do something like a build, works on it for a short amount of time, and then immediately gives up or gets someone else to do it.

When someone else is talking and he totally zones out. (NOTE: While I wont make a whole section for it because it’s not easily observable, maladaptive (constant and intrusive) daydreaming is a common ADHD symptom as well!)

It’s important to remember that the whole problem with ADHD is that we can’t control when or what we focus on. When someone with ADHD zones out during a conversation or activity, it doesn’t mean they’re doing it on purpose, and they likely don’t mean any offense! We often are trying our best to listen or participate, but our brain just wont cooperate.

However, inattention is not the only way ADHD effects our focus. There’s also what’s called hyperfocus or hyperfixation, which is when we are so absorbed into a single subject, task, or idea that it is extremely difficult to get us to think about or do anything else. This is usually because our brains have found something that is getting those satisfaction chemicals flowing, and it’s clinging to that with everything it’s got.

People with ADHD will often experience brief periods of hyperfocus. Think of how Karl talks about spending hours straight working on a build or project without eating or drinking, or how he’ll sit down to play a game with someone and end up going six hours without even noticing.

There are also hyperfixations, where someone with ADHD becomes extremely preoccupied with a certain subject, topic, etc. for a period of time. These can be short term- personally, my hyperfixation can sometimes change as quickly as a couple weeks at a time. However, it can also be long term. Karl has been obsessed with Survivor since the second grade- not to mention his memorabilia, rambling, and constant references to Kingdom Hearts.

HYPERACTIVITY/STIMMING

This is a BIG one for Karl. I should clarify; ‘stimming’ is not a technical term, and in professional situations these behaviors are just referred to as Hyperactivity. However, I personally like the term stimming much more and find it far more accurate to what the behaviors actually are, so I’ll be using that instead for this post.

If you’re not already familiar, ‘stimming’ (derived from ‘stimulation’) is an unofficial term used to describe consistent and abnormal patterns of physical and vocal behavior typically expressed by people with ADHD and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). This includes things that people usually call fidgets or tics.

(NOTE: There are differences in how people with those two disorders stim. This post will explain stimming specifically from an ADHD perspective! ASD stimming is caused by very different factors and presents itself in much different ways. Do your own research if you’re curious!) 

There are two major observable forms of stimming- physical and vocal. Karl expresses both VERY often! I’ll use examples for each type;

Physical Stims: Flapping his hands/arms, jumping up and down when he’s excited, twisting around into odd positions in his chair, throwing, hitting, or tapping things, standing up and pacing around when he’s hyped up or laughing, twisting his rings, etc.

Vocal Stims: When he gets excited and repeats a certain phrase incessantly (Think any variation of “I’m popping off”), making certain repetitive noises while he’s focused on something or bored (”la la la”, the meow-noises, the weird heart-beat noise, etc.), singing or humming, tongue clicking.

It should be noted here that it’s pretty common for people with ADHD to get “stuck” on certain phrases or noises, and be unable to stop repeating them (reminiscent of echolalia, a symptom of ASD, but not the same thing). Think of how Karl might sometimes keep making a weird noise for an extended period of time even though it’s not that funny, or that one time he was physically struggling to keep himself from singing the Bakugan theme. These repetitions are completely impulsive and trust me, we usually know how annoying it is while we’re doing it, but we physically cannot stop.

ADHD stims are caused by the fact that the barrier between our brain and body is much weaker than a normal person’s. Because of this, most ADHD stims are actually very positive expressions of joy, excitement, or enthusiasm! Y’know how when you get excited, you feel like you wanna jump or dance? The ‘hyperactivity’ of ADHD is basically just that, but we don’t have the self-control to Not do it.

Stims can be caused by negative feelings like overstimulation, but in ADHD this is not nearly as common. Usually, the most negative reason we’ll stim is when we’re bored- in that case, our brain isn’t getting the Constant Stimulation that it naturally wants, so stimming is a way to make our own.

Whatever the cause, stimming is natural and impulsive. While different people experience it to varying degrees, those who regularly stim typically have little to no control over it. Suppressing stims is very hard and very frustrating to do.

Besides that, like I said- ADHD stims are often an expression of joy, excitement, or enthusiasm. They’re a beautiful thing that shouldn’t be seen as shameful or annoying!

BEHAVIORAL DIFFICULTIES

ADHD is a disorder which causes a lack of self-control. Naturally, this means that people with ADHD are inherently reckless, impulsive, and struggle with a lack of self-discipline that they cannot fix.

Of course, people with ADHD do still have some level of self-control, and they are still responsible for conscious, long-term behavioral patterns and decisions. However, in regards to most things, they are much, much less capable of controlling themselves than an average neurotypical person is.

These are some examples of how this will often present itself in Karl;

Excessive rambling, dragging on a joke or conversation when it could and should probably have been dropped, etc.

Speaking over or interrupting other people (NOTE: As someone with ADHD- THIS IS ALMOST ALWAYS UNINTENTIONAL. I know it can seem rude or annoying but I promise, 90% of the time if someone with ADHD talks over you, they either didn’t realize or physically couldn’t help it. Please try to be patient!)

Lack of awareness towards social cues (NOTE: Unlike ASD, in which the person is incapable of/has problems fully understanding social cues, ADHD results in a lack of awareness. For whatever reason, we’re often just not paying close enough attention to pick up on things like body language, tone of speech, and facial expression as well as we would normally.)

Indecisiveness and overthinking

Bluntness, lack of subtlety

Unintentional dismissiveness, accidentally ignoring things/people (NOTE: Again, this behavior is purely accidental. In this case, it’s usually just the person genuinely not hearing or processing things.)

Making noises, speaking, joking, etc. at inappropriate times

There’s probably more, but I think you get the idea by now. A lot of the time, behavior which results from ADHD can be seen as rude, lazy, dismissive, or otherwise intentionally harmful. In reality, we just aren’t wired to navigate common social interaction with grace.

In Karl’s case, he’s clearly an incredibly sweet, empathetic, and kind-hearted person, if the various close friends who have talked about him are to be believed. Just because he talks over people or makes a poorly timed joke, that doesn’t mean he meant any harm. 

I think that’s about it for how much I wanted to point out! You can do more research if you’re curious, but I feel like this post should be enough to tell you what to keep in mind and be understanding about when talking about/making judgements on Karl, and other people with ADHD.

[chaotic-noceur]

puppy therapy

pairing: Sukuna x reader (ft. Yuuji, Megumi, and Megumi's dogs)

summary: when Sukuna finds you in a slump of burn out, he calls in a favour from Yuuji in an attempt to help

universe: modern + roommates au ; same-ish universe as what's unspoken isn't unknown

warnings: depression/burn out symptoms, wearing his shirt, headphone usage, no-shoes-in-the-house living setting, kisses

a/n: i'm tired, probably going to fail something, and i really want to pet a dog so i self projected :) shoutout to @ezrasarm for being the bestest hooman ever and beta-ing this even though she has never read/watched jjk in her life 💕💕

Sukuna does a double take when he passes your room on his way for a coffee refill. The last thing he expected was to find you still curled up in bed, watching an episode of whatever it is you had borrowed his Netflix account for. As he takes in your figure, a frown forms on his features. He doesn't need to see the look of exhaustion on your face to recognise the sure signs of burnout. He knows the feeling all too well himself.

He knows the wave of indifference that washes over you every time you're reminded of your deadlines. He knows the hollowness in your chest that refuses to be filled, no matter how hard you try. He knows the heaviness in your limbs that are so worn down by fatigue that every move feels like a workout. He knows the insults that your mind hurls at itself for its own inability to push past this slump. And he refuses to let you wallow alone.

The sound of your door being nudged open catches your attention and you pause the show before glancing towards Sukuna, unamused at the interruption. “Get dressed,” he says as he tosses one of his shirts at you — knowing you find comfort in wearing them, “we’re going out.” You move to protest, instinctively drawing up an excuse about how you have work to do. But you stop yourself short, it’s not like you're going to get anything done anyway.

"Good morning to you too," you grumble instead as you move to pick up his shirt from where it had landed on your bed. Sukuna snorts in response and you roll your eyes before moving to usher him out of your room. Mechanically, you shrug out of your sleepwear, and get yourself into a semi-presentable state before meeting him at the door.

Sukuna hands you your keys as you walk up to him, his sunglasses pushed into his hair. You do a quick check to ensure you have everything you need as Sukuna does the laces of his boots. Putting your shoes on, you spare a glance at your reflection in the mirror before following Sukuna out the door.

You slip your hand into his when you catch up to him by the elevators and he brings it up to his lips before pressing a kiss to your knuckles. He smiles at you with a softness that you rarely see in public but when your eyes turn to meet his gaze, there's a tiredness behind them that makes his heart ache. Sensing his concern, you squeeze his hand in silent reassurance, and he returns the action.

As you step into the street, you're tempted to ask about his plan. But Sukuna was never one to reveal his surprises before they unfolded in natural order and you're in no mood to pry the answers from him. Instead, you connect your earphones to your phone, pass the other earbud to Sukuna and shuffle your shared playlist as he leads you through the streets.

You lose yourself in the melody as the pair of you make your way to the secret destination. Occasionally, Sukuna tugs on your arm to signal that you're turning but otherwise, you allow your mind to wander, trusting in him to keep you out of harm's way.

Your thoughts drift to the list of deadlines that should induce more stress than they currently do and a pang of guilt spreads across your chest. If you had any sense, you should've said no to this impromptu date. You don't deserve to take a break, not when your list of responsibilities continues to grow and your care for them dwindles by the day; not when you know you're setting yourself up for failure but don't have enough care left to give to change the ending; not when —

Something in your expression must have alluded to the thoughts swarming in your mind because Sukuna stops the pair of you then. He moves to stand in front of you before sliding his sunglasses into his hair. "Stop thinking so much," he says as he runs his thumb along your cheek, forcing you to meet his eyes, "just focus on me. Focus on us being here, okay?" You nod minutely and he sighs before bringing his lips to your forehead. He intertwines his fingers with yours again and continues his journey, hoping that his surprise will lighten your mood.

"Does this mean you'll tell me where we're going?" you ask after a moment. Sukuna snorts.

"No way in hell. Besides, we're almost there."

As the sound of laughter and barking fills the air, you perk up and glance around at your new surroundings. You turn to Sukuna, curious, but he's tapping away at his phone. He comes to a stop when he reaches a clearing, a sea of dogs running around before the pair of you. You're about to ask him what was going on when a head of strawberry hair enters your peripheral vision.

"Sukuna!" Yuuji cheers as he runs up to the pair of you, his phone clutched in one hand. Sukuna removes the earbud from his ear and passes it to you as you do the same.

"Brat," comes Sukuna's response before Yuuji turns to greet you. He moves to hug you but falters when Sukuna puts a hand on his shoulder, unsure of how your current state mixes with hugs from sweaty individuals. Yuuji seems to understand. He shrugs his brother's hand off before spinning around and guiding the pair of you to his picnic blanket.

You spot Megumi a little way away, Ghost and Shadow running in circles around him as they wait for the tennis ball in his hand to be released. When you notice the snacks and your favourite drink perched on the blanket, the pieces fall into place and your mouth falls open in shock. "Sukuna! You didn't have to trouble them into all this!"

Yuuji responds instead of his brother, waving off your exclamations. "It was no problem! We were planning on coming here anyway and the dogs love people!" As if on cue, Ghost and Shadow come bounding towards you, Megumi following after them. Sukuna lets go of your hand to kneel and pet the bundles of excitement that have huddled around your legs, a chuckle escaping him as Megumi settles into a seat beside his friend.

"You didn't have to do all this," you say to Megumi as you take your seat.

"It's fine," he shrugs. "The food was on the way and those two needed to expend their energy." He gestures towards his dogs as hints of a smile creep its way onto his face. Ghost detaches from Sukuna to come greet you then and settles his head into your lap once he'd given you several affectionate face licks. You giggle at the sensation as you ruffle his fur.

Yuuji and Megumi fall into conversation amongst themselves and you grab what you assume is yours and Sukuna's drinks from the cardboard holder. He seats himself beside you not long after, Shadow retreating back to Megumi's side. You offer him his drink once he's settled and he takes it with a quiet 'thanks' before falling naturally into the conversation between Yuuji and Megumi. Sipping from your drink, you bask in the air of joy around you as you rest your head against Sukuna's shoulder and let your eyes fall shut.

You chuckle as you watch Yuuji dote on Shadow, Megumi begrudgingly handing over yet another treat. They're far away enough that their voices are drowned out by the screams and barks of the others in the park but judging by their interaction, you imagine Megumi's saying something about spoiling the dog in question.

Sukuna returns from disposing the trash that you had collectively cumulated and slings his arm over your shoulder as he seats himself once more. Ghost stirs in your lap, blinks lazily at Sukuna before closing his eyes again. You lean into Sukuna's side, skin tingling when he places a kiss onto your temple.

"You really should stop taking advantage of your brother's kindness," you chastise after a moment, but there's no bite to your words. A soft smile lingers on your face as you card your fingers through Ghost's white fur.

Sukuna shrugs before running his thumb over the curve of your lip. "It made you smile again though didn't it?" The beginning of a smirk forms across his features and you refrain from rolling your eyes at him. Instead, you lean your forehead against his before connecting your lips together, a silent thank you exchanged.

The remnants of numbness still linger in your chest and your mind still drowns in a dizzying fog. There’s no guarantee that you won’t wake up tomorrow without an ounce of motivation. But, for now, it’s enough. For now, you relish in the warmth of the sun that beats against your skin, the sound of joy and bliss that filters into your ears, and the love that Sukuna envelops you in — safe and ever present. He is your light, and for now; that’s enough.

[raymondebidochonlifechoices]

All fans are equal but some are more equal than others. NOT.

There’s been quite a few people in the fandom lately getting very stressed, feeling they’re obligated to constantly be on the defensive re: their fandom choices.

Apparently, whoever has a different opinion about a character or a ship must be said character’s/ship’s stan i.e. overzealous and/or obsessive, i.e. not an objective viewer. Even worse, they must be a dreadful person, who condones a number of moral offences that said character/ship perpetrated (or is thought to have perpetrated). Because, of course, the only acceptable reason for appreciating/enjoying a fictional character or dynamic is their morality. And, by that reasoning, fans who support the correct character/ship must be better fans and better people.

Nothing is more ridiculous than the notion of the objective fan. An “objective” fan is called a “viewer”. You and I, Riverdale friends, we are not just viewers. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have created blogs and dedicated hours of our lives to a fictional couple from an extremely mediocre show. We are still undoubtedly capable of critical thought and objective analysis but we are also aware of our own emotional investment in the show. (Or, at least, one hopes). As a fandom, we engage in activities that exist independently of the show. Fandom is a space of free expression. No one gets to play the higher moral card here. Needing to loudly tell everybody how wrong they are? That’s not the sign of an objective viewer. That’s the sign of a viewer who is also extremely invested, just for different reasons than I am.

Are we seriously holding the morality card over people’s heads for a show that used a poc woman’s pregnancy (Toni) as the means to retroactively establish trauma for a white male (Kevin), all the while touting it in every media possible as a woke response to the BLM movement?!

Are we seriously holding the canon card over people’s heads for a show that treats its 5th(!) season as a tabula rasa?! If the Lodges new backstory in 5x12 shows anything, it’s that s5 is not a time-jump. It’s a reboot.

There are so many people “enlightening” others on their inability to understand canon …

Seriously? That’s the hill you’re willing to die on? Canon Riverdale? You think that people don’t understand what they’re watching? That they’re interpreting canon incorrectly?

No, but seriously: canon for a TV show consists of what the characters say, what the characters do and how the actors portray them. Does this really apply to Riverdale?

Let’s take Donna for example.

Canon explicitly tells us Donna did what she did to avenge her grandmother. At the same time none of her canon actions were against the people who were actually responsible. So, riddle me this, fandom friends: why did Donna do what she did, as per canon?

Let’s try this another way:

Donna is a psycho bitch. Both in terms of Riverdale’s canon (the writers’ intention) and real-life criteria. To create a tag that reads “Bonna for ever uwu!” is deranged.

On the other hand, her character is (like a lot of Riverdale’s characters) an inconsistent caricature. Canon uses ridiculous dialogue and a lot of the Bonna scenes are cartoonishly enemies-to-lovers tropey. To create a tag that reads “Bonna for ever uwu!” is hilarious.

This doesn’t mean that Bonna is a canon couple. It does mean, however, that a Bonna crackship is based on Riverdale’s campy and over-the-top canonic writing.

A viewer who thinks Bonna is disgusting is not more “objective” or more “correct” or more “true to canon” than a viewer who thinks Bonna is funny. Nor are they a better person for it, and this cannot be stressed enough.

Similarly, who is canon Cheryl?

1. Cheryl is an absolute bitch: if a privileged student was calling an actual homeless boy a hobo in your real-life school, you would neither think her a queen nor use “hobo” affectionately in your tags, comments etc.

2. Cheryl is a deeply traumatized person: her father killed her brother, her mother killed half the town and forced her in conversion therapy, she attempted suicide and more.

(Note #1: this more does not mean more than the other Riverdale characters).

(Note #2: nor is it an excuse for her rudeness, affectionately called “mood for chaos” by the writers).

3. Cheryl is also a caricature of the archetypal mean girl who’s there for laughs and meta comments. She’s not to be taken seriously.

4. Cheryl is lgbtq+ representation …

5. … who canonically shits on other lgbtq+ characters.

6. Cheryl is one half of Choni, who are canonically presented as an uber couple.

7. Choni is also, as per canon, a couple with an acute power imbalance (cough!gaslighting!cough) that visually very clearly panders to the male gaze.

But most importantly:

8. Cheryl canonically is not the sum of her parts. The different facets of her character do not intermingle in any meaningful way.

Was Betty kissing Archie specifically a sore spot for Jughead?

Canonically no [2x14]. But, also, canonically yes [5x03, 5x10].

Are there seriously fans that are astonished that Betty is making some highly questionable choices while investigating?! Did they just discover Dark™Betty/Killer Genes Betty? That is canon Betty! Was it ok before because she was then smooching Jughead instead of giving him the cold shoulder? Honestly, the only newly outrageous part of s5Dark™Betty is the fact that she still believes in “killer genes” despite having spent 4 years at Yale …

As for liking/disliking Betty and morality …

Look, I’m going to be very honest: I am NOT particularly enjoying s5 Betty. And it’s not because of b*rchie.

S5 Betty has 99 problems but the sexcapades ain’t one.

For me, it’s the fact that she’s turned into s1 Alice 2.0. But surely that’s not news either? Ever since the first info about the time jump, everyone and their mother have been speculating about the teens becoming their parents …

Just because Jughead is better written (and written to be more likable), it doesn’t make him more worthy of redemption. Just because the writers are keeping Betty’s redemption “secret” (insert eye roll) for their big reveal in the season’s penultimate episode, it doesn’t mean she won’t have one.  

Simply put, the writers have made Jughead more likable. He’s still the underdog. He’s the only character in Riverdale actively trying to deal with his trauma, since the very first post-time jump episode (working at Pop’s explicitly to fend off the debt collectors). He has scenes with a new and extremely likable character (Tabitha). He has the only new plot line (the Mothman). Said plotline is narratively already tied to both his unknown past and the town’s destruction by Hiram. His behaviour is explicitly explained, even as his recent trauma remains unknown. He’s transparent.

In comparison, s5 Betty is traumatized but not the underdog. Her trauma (TBK killer) is both known to us and a repetition of previous storylines, which makes it narratively less exciting. She is completely disconnected from any other storylines. She comes out as being judgmental and self-interested: telling Tabitha Jughead’s not her business while previously accepting his help? Berating Polly for lying while not keeping in touch and lying about her own life (TBK)? Please note: I’m not saying there isn’t a reason behind her behaviour, just that it comes out in a negative way.

You don’t like Betty’s current behaviour? You don’t consider trauma a good enough excuse? Cool.

You feel sorry for what she’s going through? You consider trauma to be a valid explanation for her behaviour? Also cool.

Personally, I don’t give a flying fig, either for Betty’s trauma or Jughead’s. Because, even though Trauma™ is s5’s actual mystery plot, narratively speaking, trauma never affected the plot of the past 4 seasons, nor s5 trauma will affect future plots, once revealed. And you know what? That is also cool.

None of the above is better.

And just because I’m not enjoying Betty right now, it doesn’t mean that I don’t want her to overcome her current situation or that I won’t cheer for Bughead like a River Vixen on fizzle rocks, once they reunite.

This thing though, where people are made to feel as if they owed anyone in the fandom an explanation about why they like the things they like, because, somehow, their preferences are a reflection on their character or their cognitive abilities to read a TV show? This is a joke.

There is no “wrong” way to consume any show, let alone Riverdale, with its fractured format, its short-term memory and its see-sawing characters.

Look, everybody’s here for their own reasons. For most people this is a place of escape. No one’s escaping better than the other, because of how they enjoy their teen TV show ... 

[elevatorladylady]

Series Analysis: The Folk of The Air

I went through this series a couple of times before setting it down and I wanted to break down some of the things that really worked with this series and what didn't.

The Pros

Morally Grey Characters

This series does a really good job of introducing a lot of morally grey characters. Madoc is a murderer and puts his daughter and eventual foster daughters through a huge trauma, but he is also the only kind of parent these kids have after that and more or less treats them with love and respect in the household.

This sets up some really interesting dynamics as well that just have to be complicated and weird for everyone. Vivi is the priority when Madoc comes to Jude’s parents, but she’s also the oldest and is least interested in following along with Madoc’s interests. Jude and Taryn end up being more interested in the life Madoc has forced them into and they have to grapple with the guilt of actually enjoying any parts of their life with him.

There is also always a bit of grey morality when the culture is more or less okay with cruel and murderous acts whether it’s used as a way to dispense justice or if it’s just because the people in power cannot be held accountable for their actions. 

But despite this wonderfully nuanced set up, I have some complaints about the way a lot of these things get simplified.

Humans and the Folk

I really love that we get to explore the differences in the cultures and biological differences between these groups. The inability to lie presents a lot of interesting moments between Jude and Cardan that really show how that kind of difference can impact the words you choose and the ways people can use language to put on a front with or without lies.

The differences between the two worlds is a really interesting juxtaposition and I  think it’s great to get to see our main characters navigate both spaces. The folk have an advantage in the human world and can more easily inhabit it than a human can inhabit the faerie world. We see how Jude has been hardened by her experiences and can’t easily just take up a normal human life.

Vivi and Heather are such a great dynamic to explore the power dynamic between humans and faeries. Vivi has good intentions with her human girlfriend but by ignoring the ways fae can and will harm humans, she inadvertently puts her human girlfriend in danger, and uses that power against her.

Jude and Cardan’s Character Arcs

I do have some complaints but I love the way these arcs unfold. Jude is a powerless girl and then she becomes as powerful as she possibly can when controlling cardan and has to grapple with the cost of having this power and how the power didn’t end up protecting her in the way she thought it could. She learns that at some point she cannot control everything in her life through sheer will and force, and that she is going to be more fulfilled and potentially safer by learning to put her trust in others.

Cardans arc is more about finding himself. He is not respected or appreciated by his family and friends unless he’s being awful, but we start to see change almost immediately when he’s removed from that. He can just be with the court of shadows and he can be more open and honest about his desires and motivations with Jude. As king he is once again forced into a role, but this time he gets to try on different variations of being king. He’s one of the spies with the court of shadows, he’s his old self with his friends minus the cruelty with his friends, he’s a king in front of his subjects, and he’s a more open and vulnerable version of himself with Jude. He’s still being forced into a lot of these roles, but this gives him a chance to find his footing and decide who he might want to be when Jude isn’t forcing him into things. And he ends up choosing to be a better person in those roles than before.

The Cons

Black and White Ending

Jude and Cardan are morally grey earlier on and we get a lot of Jude questioning her own decisions, but by giving the ending giving her ultimate power as king and queen and the narrative affirming this as good takes away the complex morality of these characters.

By the end they are considered benevolent leaders by the land and the people, and Madoc and those that followed him are bad people who deserve punishment. Jude gets to hand out punishments as she see fits without anyone but Cardan being able to check her (and we know he probably won’t). Jude is even encouraged to treat everyone as if they are beneath her. These two have ultimate power and they will likely be harmful to some of their people regardless of their efforts otherwise and even more so if they aren’t proactive about how they lead.

The book ends with a toast to schemes, but they aren’t scheming anymore. They are fully embracing their public facing roles and enjoying their personal roles. While Oak is still technically supposed to take the throne there is zero indication throughout that he wants it and they are also clear that they won’t force him into it, so it no longer even feels like a temporary thing for Jude and Cardan to rule.

I would have preferred an ending where we see Jude map out a new ultimate scheme to dismantle the monarchy or distribute power to lower courts or something more radical to show that shes not just going to be another person with unchecked power.

It also squarely puts Madoc as bad and everyone on his side as bad with the punishments Jude hands out. Madoc is the main antagonist here, but is Jude really better than all of the people that were willing to follow Madoc? Do those people deserve to have their hands stained or live as birds when Jude will be shown deference by every person in their kingdom. Jude made a play for the crown too, and the only reason she doesn’t get punished is because she was successful. And then we’re supposed to joke about the idea of Madoc’s punishment in the human world and he’s just reduced to the blundering bigot in the family that you just accept as such.

And Vivi’s dynamic with Heather also gets simplified to just caring about the betrayal of the glamour instead of the ongoing dynamic that Vivi has to be an advocate for Heather in the faerie world and she has to always be mindful of the power dynamic.

The final scene really just feels like the end of a rom com even though these dynamics have really serious and troubling elements. 

Taryn’s Redemption

This dynamic also suffers from the shift to a black and white but it starts even earlier. Taryn’s betrayal with Locke is horrendous. It’s so personal and it cuts really deep compared to the political betrayal with Madoc.

I don’t believe the level of acceptance and forgiveness Jude gives Taryn at nearly every step. Her initial interest into wanting some kind of relationship once she becomes hand of the king is understandable, but it quickly turns into Jude doing quite a lot to preserve Taryn’s feelings. Jude wants Cardan to keep Locke in check, Jude doesn’t want to bother Taryn before her wedding with her almost murder, she doesn’t want her to know her husband tried to kill her, and she threatens Locke to keep him in line multiple times. It just doesn’t make sense that she would care so much to protect Taryn’s feelings from the guy that she chose over Jude especially when Taryn’s only kindness to Jude is designing great clothes for her.

All of this sets up even more problems for how things go in the final book. If Taryn’s only betrayal had been the political one, I could see Jude getting past it, but she does it when hasn’t even remotely atoned for the deeply personal one. Jude is rightfully angry but forgives her almost immediately when she learns about the baby. Jude has maybe one line about whether or not she can trust her sister again but her actions suggest she’s completely over it and eager to have a nice sisterly dynamic.

This could have been a really interesting dynamic about dealing with someone you love but can’t trust. It could have been more interesting if Jude had actually killed Locke when he came after her and Jude had to grapple with the guilt despite him being awful. Or even Taryn realizing her mistake earlier and pleading for Jude’s help to get out of it.

And Locke also just becomes a full on villain. Maybe you need that, but he was more interesting when he seemed to have a boundary with the physical violence.

[peniswrightjusticeforballs]

The Victim Behind the #Girlboss: Analysing the Tragedy of Dahlia Hawthorne

   **WARNING: this essay will contain mentions of pedophilia, grooming, and neglect, as well as (obviously) spoilers for Trials and Tribulations**

   Dahlia Hawthorne, as the major antagonist in Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations, is often seen as one of the most evil villains in the series due to her multiple attempted and successful murders, as well as her targeting of Phoenix Wright and Mia and Maya Fey. She is often portrayed through fan content (as well as even in the games writing) as a cruel, heartless, and evil bitch. However, the story of Dahlia Hawthorne is one of the most tragic in the series, and I would even be so bold as to claim the reason it’s not recognized as such is due to flagrant misogyny. While perhaps not moral or excusable, her actions certainly are not without reason; and are unquestionably owed some sympathy.

EARLY LIFE

Dahlia's childhood is one of pain and neglect. Her parents certainly don't care for her. Her father saw her and Iris as a means of power and left Kurain with them when it became clear they were not of use for power. Even Iris points out that Dahlia had a neglectful childhood and never had an actual parental figure. Furthermore, Iris theorizes that it’s likely she would never committed murder had she had that support and guidance in her life.

One point brought up against Dahlia showing her “evil” in childhood is that she convinces her parents to send Iris away to Hazakura at a young age; this blatantly ignores both the reality of sibling relationships and their neglectful parents. Fighting with and getting angry at your siblings is a common experience as is wishing for them to go away. Considering her father and stepmothers' uncaring attitudes toward their children, it certainly must not have been hard to convince them to send Dahlia's twin away. Rather than being a sign of manipulation and heartlessness of a child, this event is a sign of the inability to care for their children that her parents had. This is amplified by the implication in the game that her father thought “two girls is enough”, so he would have been already biased towards sending one away as he had an older stepdaughter.

This point brought up also brings to light part of why Dahlia ends up like she is, alongside what Iris says. When a child is constantly told, whether explicitly or implied, that they are evil or cruel and value-less, it is reasonable for them to step into this role and boldly claim it. While not impossible, it shouldn't be expected of a kid to avoid evil and to be good when they've never been given the opportunity or resources to be anything BUT evil.

In addition to the neglect, it is implied that Dahlia’s father cares more for his job and the illusion of power and a perfect family than the wellbeing of his family and children. That implication is also supported by his belief that two children is enough-three would be outside what he thinks fits the perfect family. It is stated that Dahlia’s plot on Dusky Bridge is intended to “exact revenge on her father”. It is clear how a neglected and mistreated 14 year old could think it necessary to resort to such drastic measures as theft for attention and revenge.

TERRY FAWLES

   Dusky Falls, of course, is where it starts to go steeply south. Terry Fawles is 20 when he enters into a relationship with 14 year old tutoring student Dahlia. Dahlia is a victim of pedophilia and grooming un-debatably. There is no defense for Terry’s actions toward Dahlia, regardless of whether Dahlia considered the relationship mutual or not. Faking her death and consequently getting Fawles jailed may not have been a necessarily good decision when considered on its own, but is not morally wrong-for starters, it very well could have seemed a great or perhaps the only option to a traumatized 14 year old. Also, Fawles being incarcerated was a good toward society.

   Terry Fawles being manipulated into drinking poison was a good thing. That isn't necessarily proof of tragedy on Dahlia’s part, but rather an assertion I have decided to include here.

   Valerie Hawthorne’s murder should also be considered when looking at Dahlia and her actions. At first glance, her death appears to be an act motivated by selfishness and self interest-but upon deeper look, has two major motivations that make perfect sense. The first is that Valerie Hawthorne was directly complicit in Dahlia's grooming by Terry Fawles. She was part of the plan to steal the diamond that involved seducing Fawles. The second, of course, is panic. Valerie telling the truth about the events of Dusky Bridge could not only reveal Dahlia and her part in attempted theft, but also get Fawles a lighter sentence or even free once it is exposed that he didn't push Dahlia.

TRIAL(GODOT&MIA)

   Flash forward to when Dahlia is on trial. Diego Armando and Mia Fey take the defense of Terry Fawles in the murder of Valerie Hawthorne. While they are defending him on the charge of the murder of Valerie, they are still defending Dahlia’s groomer. Dahlia has every reason to hate them for this.

   Diego specifically has a way of speaking condescendingly to those around him. Most women are familiar with the humiliating and belittling experience of being talked down to by an older man. While as players it's visible that this is how Godot often speaks to other people regardless of gender(Phoenix and Ron Delite for example), a young woman on the stand would have no way of knowing this. In addition, he calls Dahlia words such as “Kitten”. Again, Dahlia is a victim of grooming and pedophilia. Like previously stated, Diego calls multiple people this; however, without this context his words come off as misogynistic and belittling at best and hostile and taunting at worst. Being talked down to and treated like this is such a viscerally humiliating and angering experience even without the life experience Dahlia has and it’s completely reasonable for her to react with vitriol. (Although likely less of a factor and of lesser relevance to the case, the judge’s treatment of her certainly couldn't have helped, despite working to her advantage at the beginning of her first trials.)

   Mia, on the other hand, does not call her these terms, but still does defend Terry Fawles. While avoiding the hostility Diego shows in his condescending nature, she presents her own hostility through viewing Dahlia as a threat from the beginning and treating her accordingly. Mia only ever truly views her through the eyes of a lawyer defending her client against a criminal, despite the twisted nature of her client and the reasoning of the perpetrator. Mia is a stubborn and vicious lawyer, and while those are not necessarily bad, they place her as Dahlias biggest threat. In addition to being a threat, Mia's open hostility inspires further anger because she treats her as suspicious and villainous from the start, just as she was as a child, as well as coming off as extremely confrontational.

   It is often less energy to pretend you were always evil from the start instead of looking back and acknowledging issues with your past and how they affect you. Pretending to be purely cruel and heartless and never anything more allows Dahlia to put up protective barriers. Her trial with Mia and Diego forces at least some of her painful past to come to light, knocking down some of her walls. It's only reasonable that Dahlia would become upset at this.

DOUG AND PHOENIX

Dahlia's treatment of Phoenix correlates to the threat he presents to her. Everything she's been building up can be ruined if he is too careless with that necklace. Similarly, Doug Swallow presented a threat when he tried to warn Phoenix. Dahlia has never had the chance to handle things in a “reasonable” way so as far as she was concerned, his murder was the only option.  

Her  murder of Doug Swallow and attempted murder of Phoenix Wright can certainly be attributed to girlboss behavior, but are also tied with everything else in her life-both in that her problems with them stem from everything thats been stacking itself since she was a child, and in that her methods of dealing with them stem from the trauma shes experienced.

IN SUM

   Dahlia's characterization as a pure villain with sole motivation of evil is one void of critical thought and sopping with misogyny. While the way Capcom sometimes writes their female characters and their villains means that it would make sense for Dahlia to be a one sided character motivated by pure cruelty and evil, the dismissal of her character cannot be fully chalked up to that. Taking into consideration the way she was raised and treated in life, growing to be manipulative with a twisted view of the world and morals is completely logical. While Dahlia Hawthorne WAS unequivocally a Girlboss, she was also a victim and her story is ultimately one of tragedy rather than depravity.

[iturbide]

the fact that edelgard is the villain in 3/4 routes and yet intsys STILL glorifies her to no end enrages and annoys me. no other villain has been given that perspective of “well actually maybe they arent so bad” except for the hypocritical tyrant. even when she has *literally become an inhuman monster* intsys is still like “oh no dont worry she was right actually!” and it upsets me deeply

It upsets me, too, friend.  IntSys seems to really like glorifying people who don’t deserve it, especially in recent games (Walhart in Awakening, Rudolf in Echoes -- I can’t say if his whole ‘orchestrating a plan to have his son murder him’ thing is carry-over from Gaiden or not, but it definitely exists in the recent remake so I’m including it), but Edelgard actually ends up as a bit of a weird case. 

(I have a lot of thoughts about this, so I’m just going to cut preemptively.)

Now, I’m actually not opposed to Edelgard being the protagonist of the fourth route in Three Houses.  Anyone who’s been here a while knows that I generally see Grima, a figure that IntSys generally tries to paint as a rote villain, as at least a sympathetic villain (and possibly even a secret hero in the events of Awakening itself); it’s entirely possible for someone that’s a villain in most of their appearances to have legitimate reasons for what they’re doing and why, and revealing that in their personal route could be incredibly powerful if done well. 

And here’s the thing: Edelgard really is a compelling character, in large part because of her moral ambiguity.  I actually agree with her when she says that the Church of Seiros is corrupt at its core and the system needs to change.  She’s right about that!  While Seiros might have had decent reasons for establishing things this way, over the past thousand years human societies have changed while the church itself remained stagnant -- something potentially exacerbated by her selfish ambition to restore her mother -- and this has led to a structure that once served an important purpose becoming a toxic and destructive mess for humanity at large.  Edelgard has a completely valid point there, and it’s something that I could absolutely get on board with if she had gone about achieving change in some other way, because she does have other methods available to her that she writes off without real reason -- and even that can relate back in part to her deep trauma and difficulty trusting people after the betrayals she faced at the hands of her “uncle” and her own father’s powerlessness to stop the nightmare she and her siblings suffered through. 

IntSys probably could have crafted a narrative that showed from her perspective why she believed war against the Church was the only valid option available to her.  The issue is that she undercuts her own argument by targeting all of Fodlan, rather than specifically going after the Church: she doesn’t give the Kingdom and Alliance a “stay out of my way or else” warning, she literally turns her sights on the Kingdom as soon as the monastery falls and attempts to fully annex it once Cornelia sets up Dimitri’s fall, leaving the Alliance only because she has her hands full with Faerghus.  She didn’t have to take Cornelia up on her offer of making the Kingdom into the Dukedom of Faerghus and sending troops to finish the job: she could have just left the woman to her own devices, forcing the Twisted to utilize their own people to maintain and secure full control of the region while she worked on addressing the systemic issues, which would have had multiple benefits:

The Imperial Army doesn’t get overwhelmed and exhausted fighting in conditions they’re not equipped to deal with, leaving them stronger overall while the Twisted forces are potentially weakened by the same

Hubert is able to better assess the threat they’re dealing with, including learning their capabilities and possibly even where they’re coming from before Merceus

Edelgard actually puts her money where her mouth is and ends up helping the people she claims to be doing this for, rather than just using them as fodder for the war to grind up

Unfortunately, the way she’s written ends up just making her an imperialist.  She’s not just going after the corrupt core of the Church, she’s trying to forcibly unite the continent and return Fodlan to some long gone ideal where it was all united under the Imperial banner because she refuses to believe that Adrestia could have split by natural causes.

Crimson Flower ultimately ends up being a particularly egregious example of this glorification phenomenon in action because they give her a personal route that makes no effort to critically examine her actions and make her face consequences for them.  This, I think, does her a massive disservice as a character, because that aforementioned moral ambiguity that makes her so interesting could have been utilized to great effect -- and the proof is actually there already, because they do it in Dimitri’s route.

Dimitri is himself another interesting character, and outwardly presents as Edelgard’s polar opposite: he recognizes that he doesn’t have all the answers, struggles to figure out the correct course of action when presented with difficult subjects that have  no clear-cut answer -- like the fact that reliance on the Crest system is toxic for noble families, but it’s those very Crest-bearers and their Relics that help keep Faerghus safe from invasion by Sreng -- possesses incredible strength but specifically refrains using it in most cases to avoid harming others, and generally takes everyone’s problems onto himself to his own detriment.  He’s also deeply traumatized and was never given a chance to deal with it in a healthy manner, which contributes to how he snaps -- and Azure Moon starts with Dimitri being so far out of reach that you can’t unlock any of his supports and can’t even engage with him in the weekly discussions.  He’s lost himself to his survivor’s guilt and need for vengeance, considers himself to be nothing more than a monster, and has no qualms about killing if it helps advance his quest; as the story progresses, he faces a direct consequence for this murderous inclination in the form of Fleche who attempts to exact vengeance for her brother’s sake in the same way that he’s attempting to claim it for his family and friends -- only to lose Rodrigue, and have his dying words be a plea for Dimitri to live for himself rather than those who died before him, at which point Dimitri sets his sights on opposing Edelgard rather than killing her and seeing to atone for the crimes he committed.  While I think the game made the change a little too abrupt, it’s handled well overall, and shows a real development arc complete with both actions and their associated consequences that directly relate to Dimitri’s growth as a person.

Contrast this to Edelgard in general and Crimson Flower as a route.  Edelgard believes that she has all the answers despite not trying to engage with anyone outside her own House, decisively chooses what she believes to be the right and proper course of action regardless of how difficult the subject matter, possesses great strength (both physically and of sheer will) that she uses to dominate others, and forces others to join her in addressing what she sees as problems -- such as her line about making her own people into “worthy sacrifices” for her “higher cause.”  Crimson Flower is the only route where her attack on the monastery fails to capture Rhea, but once Byleth returns she sets her sights on attacking and subjugating a territory that has remained entirely neutral through the past five years, turns on the Twisted while she’s still in a vulnerable position which ultimately causes the deaths of at least a third of the forces she left at Arianrhod once they fire their warning shot, lies to her friends and allies about what happened there, murders her step-brother, and allows a city full of trapped civilians to burn unchecked while she deals with what she considers to be the “real” threat on the opposite side of the Faerghus capital -- and all of this is capped off with her never dealing with the Twisted, and cute little endcards that talk about how everything worked out fine and there were no problems ever, The End.  Edelgard doesn’t get a development arc in her route: she’s never challenged, she never faces real consequences (and the one she does face she literally lies about to her friends and then leaves as a problem to deal with later), and she pretty much ends the game exactly where she started it: completely assured that she made the right choices.  The moral ambiguity inherent in her character is instead cast as “of course she’s in the right, she’s so great and there’s nothing at all wrong with what she’s doing or how she’s going about it, isn’t she wonderful?”

At least in the main game, Hegemon Husk Edelgard is treated with real gravity, shown as the pinnacle of her drive to see her ambition come to fruition and the tragic consequence of her inability to change course and find another path.  The Forging Bonds event just takes the CF brush and paints her actions as the right ones, even though what made her so compelling is that her reasons were right while her methods were horrific.  Edelgard really could have been wonderful.  The potential is right there in her character.  But IntSys completely botched the execution of it, so that her route feels rushed, incomplete, and at best unsatisfying (or, if you’re me, utterly disgusting for how it glorifies imperialistic conquest), and her Heroes appearances only make it worse.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep1 and 2

After what’s felt like an eternity, we’re finally back to our good old fashioned anime about trauma and murder :)

Like with my posts about Gou, this will contain spoilers for all of the original series.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

Continuing on from how the second half of Gou went back in time to show Satoko’s descent into villainy, Sotsu is starting off by going back to Onidamashi and showing what was happening from Rena’s point of view, as a way of basically doing it’s own version of the answer arcs from the VN.

This isn’t 100% the same as either Onikakushi or Tsumihoroboshi, but effectively these two episodes were still almost entirely taken from material in the VN, which reminds me of how I still think that this show is more of a reboot than people would like to admit. Even if in practice it’s probably still better to just read the VN first and then watch all of this. I just feel like a lot of VN readers are going to end up kinda bored with this because of how much of it is just retreading stuff from the VN, like with the first half of Gou.

Anyway, I’m entirely on board with this being a new take on the answer arcs, and thus far I think the execution has been done really well. Rena ended up getting kinda sidelined in Gou, so I like how they’re really focusing on her perspective in this. It’s obviously not quite as in-depth as the VN, especially if this arc is just going to be one more episode long, but like with Gou I think they’re doing a great job of getting across the characterization and development without many internal monologues or anything.

Although this ended up basically playing out the same way as Rena killing Rina in Tsumihoroboshi, it turns out that this version of Rina has gone through the same sort of character development as Teppei did, and now she’s way more sympathetic than she was in the VN, with her wanting to cut ties with Rena’s father out of sympathy instead of just being out to extort all of his money no matter what. The way that this new series has been going about ‘redeeming’ it’s more evil characters has been kinda polarizing with people, but I think it worked out really well here. Partly because they don’t really spell out whether or not Rina has gone through the same process as Teppei with getting traumatized by nightmares of previous loops, and we just see her being a more sympathetic person instead. I think it also makes Rena’s actions here even more tragic, since in this timeline Rina would have left them alone if she’d done nothing, and by the time she found out about that she was already past the point of no return. It doesn’t exactly erase or make up for all of the shit that had already happened between Rina and Rena’s dad, though. It still makes sense why Rena ended up snapping like she did.

Which gets into the whole topic of Satoko injecting her with the syringe, which basically sealed the deal on Rena irreversibly going insane in this arc. In practice she ended up just going down the same path that she already did in Tsumihoroboshi without needing to be injected with anything, but it still raises the possibility that she might have been more willing to abandon her plans if she hadn’t been injected.

Sorta like how the VN was already about the inherent tragedy of how in a perfect world none of these things should have happened and nobody should have resorted to murder, this adds an extra layer of dramatic irony with how Satoko’s looping has caused a situation where the external forces triggering people’s insanity have been slowly going away, but because she’s so intent on keeping Rika in the village by mentally breaking her through continued tragedy, she’s having to go out of her way to force all these things to happen, when otherwise all of these loops might have ended up being ‘perfect’ if she’d just left it alone.

And just for the record, a lot of people seem confused by it, but I think Gou already made it clear enough why Satoko is trying to convince Rika to stay in the village by subjecting her to repeated torture. From a meta perspective, it’s all just about setting up the premise of Rika going through the original arcs again so we can have a part-sequel/part-reboot, but in general her whole plan with this seems to be to traumatize Rika enough that she’ll accept the idea that she’s being punished by Oyashiro-sama for wanting to leave the village. Obviously it’s a pretty extreme and convoluted way to try and convince her to stay, but Satokowashi went to great lengths to show how Satoko tried basically everything else she could think of to stop her without resorting to violence.

And yes, the point of ‘she should be able to just talk to Rika directly and work things out that way’ is an intentional part of the whole tragedy of the situation, lol. If this was a story where people were willing to calmly open up about all of their problems and achieve peaceful resolutions, basically none of this entire story would have happened. And honestly, at least on an abstract level, I can totally relate to that feeling of being willing to do literally anything instead of just talking to people openly, no matter how much extra time and effort it takes.

I also just don’t even think that ‘just talking about it’ would even be enough. Partly because Rika is really dead-set on leaving the village and would prefer to take Satoko with her instead of staying in the village just for her sake [which is the entire premise of what happened in Satokowashi], but also partly because in the long run this is more about Satoko’s personal trauma and her inability to accept leaving her childhood behind. No matter what she does, she’d have to eventually contend with the idea of her friends moving on in their lives, or the village itself changing.

She doesn’t just want Rika to stay with her, she wants to keep everything the same forever because this is where she feels safe and in control. And that’s just not something that you can actually achieve without, well, the ability to loop through time, lol. That’s also why I don’t really think it’s ‘unreasonable’ that Satoko was so willing to sit through Rika’s loops, and to enact her own loops. The looping isn’t just something she has to put up with to achieve her goal, it IS her goal. She isn’t exactly aware of it since she’s so focused on the point of keeping Rika with her forever, but what she wants is to keep repeating this time period forever, and that’s what she’s doing. 

Funnily enough I wasn’t really onboard with the idea of Satoko being the villain for most of Gou, but I guess by this point I’m a Satoko apologist, lmao. I just think her whole character arc makes a lot of sense, with her doing everything she can to cling onto the present and avoid the future, but obviously I also get why people think she’s irredeemable.

Either way, I’m kinda curious to see how the next episode goes, since it seems like there’s just going to be one more episode to this arc. It feels like there’s a lot still left to be covered, but maybe I’m over-estimating it. I think they still have to cover the flashbacks with Rena after she moved, her getting more paranoid about Keiichi until finally killing him, and then whatever happened with Rika and Satoko at the end of the arc, so hopefully that’ll fit nicely into one more episode.

I’m still curious to see what happens when we see Rena’s perspective on her fight with Keiichi, though, since there’s been so much speculation about it partly being a hallucination from Keiichi as he rapidly descended into L5 when Rena attacked him. There’s also still the possibility that they’ll reveal that this is an entirely separate timeline to Onidamashi, but I think that’d be a bit convoluted for no good reason. It’s be enough of a twist to just show that the fight scene went differently to how it was originally presented.

Other than that, I think that Rika probably ended up killing herself in despair at the end of this arc, and Satoko kills herself to jump to the next loop. I think that’ll all be pretty straightforward, but hopefully it’ll lead to an epilogue scene with Satoko and Eua.

After this, I guess the next three episodes will be the answer arc for Watadamashi, going by the Sotsu blu-rays being split into sets of 3, 3, 5, and 4 episodes. Unlike how this arc was very straightforward and predictable for people who’ve read the VN, I’m really excited to see what happens in the next arc, since Watadamashi was kinda confusing in a lot of ways, even after we found out about the Satoko stuff. But we’ll get to that when the time comes.

The third arc should then be an answer arc for Tataridamashi, but it’ll be interesting to see if they fit in Satoko’s perspective of Nekodamashi there as well, or if they push that to the final arc, or if the Nekodamashi arc will overlap both arcs. Either way, the fourth and final [unless they reveal more episodes or even another season later] arc will probably then continue on from the end of Nekodamashi and show however things manage to wrap up after that point. It’s really hard to tell how much time they’ll actually need after that to wrap things up, though, which is why I’m not sure if they’ll actually be able to finish things in these 15 episodes, or if we might get more later. Unless we get some major curve balls, I don’t really think it’d be that hard to wrap things up that quickly, but we’ll see.

Anyway, Sotsu is off to a great start, and I’m excited to see where it’s going to go, but mostly at the moment I’m just relieved that the last four months of my life are over now, and I can go back to live-blogging about anime where kids murder each other, lmao.

[justaghostingon]

Gyrus and the Metaphor of the Self

Or the theory about why fusing the two Gyrus is a GOOD thing.

To prove a point to my sister.

So we all know this happened:

In his own words, Gyrus is both versions and neither. He remembers both his time in season 1 and his time as Past Gyrus.

And some people might find this disappointing that we’ve lost our sweet innocent Gyrus character and out edgy bad boy Gyrus character for a mashup of both, or that New Gyrus was absorbed because he hasn’t been around nearly as long as past Gyrus. Which isn’t true, because this is so much more than sticking two characters together or losing one. Because every one of those Gyrus’s were still Gyrus, his choices, his actions, just in different situations.

And together they make Gyrus one of the most well-developed characters I’ve ever seen. A character we as an audience get to know and watch develop in a way that feels very human.

Take our first meeting of Gyrus, he’s smart, clever, kind, scared, and just a bit generic. We see what Tori sees, a good hearted protag who’s gonna help us explore this world. Then we watch him grow, watch his impulsiveness and inability to think things through get him hurt, and for the first time we are introduced to a flaw in Gyrus: that he thinks if he’s strong enough, he can change the world. But we don’t dwell on that, its a heroic quality right? Makes Gyrus more interesting.

Then we discover the incident, see Past Gyrus in all his glory, learn who he is from the way the others react to him and the flashbacks and the black box. And we’re taken aback. Because could this edgy, dangerous man possibly be out Gyrus? It seems completely out of character.

He’s all of Gyrus’ flaws wrapped up in one, we hate him, and guess what? So does Gyrus. Because who doesn’t hate their own dark side? Who doesn’t hate their flaws? So he rejects Black box Gyrus and the help he offers, and the audience cheers him on, thinking he’s just another “monster within” type of villain we’ll see Gyrus reject to prove himself better than his flaws.

But that’s not how the real world works. You can’t just punch your flaws away, or your choices. You’ve got to live with them. A point brought up by Kodya of all people, who breaks up a fight between the two that comes across uncomfortably like the negative self-talk we all to often fall into. He points out that everyone makes mistakes, and that black box Gyrus is trying to make things right. He’s trying to change, so Gyrus should go easy on himself.

Then we get to know Black Box Gyrus’ story, to see who he was and who he became. And the more we see, the more we can see the similarities between our Gyrus and Past Gyrus. Gone is the edgy stranger wearing Gyrus’ face. Instead we see Gyrus’ kindness, his insecurities, his impulsiveness, his brilliance, and his fear. We see how his desire to save everyone, to save the world, led to his downfall.

We see Gyrus, and Gyrus sees himself too. He realizes for the first time that his past version is him too, and that he is worth saving when he dons the cape. He has learned to accept himself, all of himself. From his failures and his flaws, and see the good in him that comes not simply from his nature, but by his concious choice to try and fix the problems he’s created, starting with his own mind.

So of course he fuses. He’s accepted his past and made peace with his present. He’s finally whole.