#something something end rant

[chiisana-lion]

[bluerosefox]

BREAKING NEWS! Youngest Wayne's Secret Lovechild?!

Teenage Ellie taking care of deaged Danny and moving to Gotham to hide from Vlad because Lady Gotham offered them sanctuary and will keep Vlad out.

BUT

Chaos is set into motion when during a Rogue attack, Damian Wayne (not as Robin at the moment) saves him and returns Danny to Ellie...

The internet/news happen because of course it did.

And people mistake Danny as his kid and Ellie his baby mama.

[egberts]

ALSO if prisoners could get educated then prisons could run themselves more reliably and function like communities which is conducive to a growing/healing/learning/absolving mindset

[ganondoodle]

got this reblog on one of my posts were i talked about being anxious about the future of the zelda series after totk and-

i even went back and unblocked them just to check my own post and check twice what they meant exactly- but i still dont know how they got to these conclusions

i never said i 'want a good uwu ganondorf' (bc that would mean hes aligned with hyrule bc thats how goodness works!!!!11!1!!!), i also dont think of any of the zeldas as 'whores' (seriously, where did that come from?? neither me nor the addition of someone agreeing with me said anything like that??? did they think bc the addition called tloz misogynistic means we think zelda is a whore????? huh???)

its also funny how they say they want zelda to stay a simple fairytale rather than have 'people like me' bc .. one point i talked about in the og post was how the evil arab thing VS good white people media likes to do so much is so normalized here that its simply seen as a simple harmless fairytale trope instead of a big underlying issue in general media and the writers might not even realize it (which is worse) bc the most 'generic' appeal is to people who dont think of it as a problem in the first place, because it is so normalized

(huh, i wonder about what kind of person that part was about .. hmmmm)

(ALSO funny they mention princess hilda as nuanced villain ... like ... wow they are so nuanced about purple haired people!!- like guess why we want a nuanced/less badly/less flat written ganondorf and what he, in particular, has not in common with other villains! its not his hair color! .... or was that point supposed to mean .. look we have one female character that is a villain, its not misogynistic! idk honestly)

(and the classic, "you just call it this/dont like it bc its not what you wanted !!!!!!!2!"1!112!!")

also funny how its 'never gonna be progressive enough' like asking for the franchise to maybe put a little more thought and nuance into their white divine right vs evil desert man simulator instead of making it worse is already asking too much

(i dont know what the last point has to do with anything??)

(also yes totk is racist, like most if not all of the franchise and a alot of other media as well, shocker- you can still like it though, i and plenty of other people are still fans of it, we just wish they did a little more with their stuff and maybe not make the racism problem WORSE)

(also yes the hyrule monarchy is also evil :))) )

(and also not so secretly so either :)) )

[arthursfuckinghat]

"I was gonna say you're like a son to me.. but you're more than that."

"It ain't that complicated!"

How quickly that shoulder pat of comfort turned into a condescending one.

[elven-kisses]

I feel like a lot of the way jimmy is treated as incompetent and or stupid in fics and fanon is a direct knock on effect from scott in third life I mean what

[bilolli]

I finally finished and edited it! This time there shouldn’t be problems with sizes and messed up colors.

Anyway, this scene lives rent free in my head and I HAD to draw it.

Solar Lunacy belongs to the talented @bamsara​ , (seriously, it’s a wonderfull fanfic, read it.)

Process GIF and variants under the cut!

On PC this one looks better, but on my phone it’s wayyyy to saturated and dark. Ujsdbidfshf I hate screens differences.

[mymindimpaired]

Something cool about Saiki K is that he's one of those characters with like a Past in which they were Different and did some morally fucked up stuff, but he wasn't like an oppressively invading general or anything like that. He was just a kid! He was a kid who did the normal childlike thing of acting on impulse but he also has godlike powers. He just did he wanted, he didn't understand the consequences. "Mom wants something from the store, I'll go get it for her," "Getting high grades is good, so I'll get even higher grades than is possible," "I want these things, so I'll win at rock paper scissors to get them," "I don't like standing out, so I'll make it so that I don't." There was this time that I think was cut from the anime where the government of a country found out about his powers and wanted to experiment on him, so he destroyed the entire country. Which is extreme, but I think in character! He didn't get that his actions had severe consequences! I don't think he understood that people could get really hurt by his powers until he lost control with those bullies in elementary school. That's when he changed so much. That's why he doesn't like his powers so much, you know? He gets what he was doing now. And in the present he's like "I worry about what kind of longterm effects all the mind control I did is going to have, but there's nothing I can do to make things go back to the way they were."

[running-with-kn1ves]

sooo you know how you wrote jealous bf x reader...would you ever considered writing the same reader witnessing someone flirting with jealous bf and flipping the roles on him?

On a crunch time so I'll just write some shortsie stuff for this ^^

I think jealous bf would want to see what reader would do before he acts. They'd be at a bar together, maybe reader went to the bathroom only to come back and find another pair of hands trying to roam against their boyfriend's shirt, a new untouched drink on the counter that this mystery person is tempting him to drink. Malachi would purposefully entertain them, subconsciously testing reader to see what they would do. Do they love him enough to stake their claim? How far are they willing to go, as far as he would?

I imagine reader wouldn't be as aggressive as Malachi-- likely stunned for a moment, before coming up and trying to drag him away.

"Hey, what's going on?"

Reader might ask, feigning cluelessness while wrapping his free hand in both of theirs, gently pulling him away from the bar rat.

"Nothing, just waiting for you. Seems i've caught the eye of a few others."

He'd prod, trying to invoke a reaction out of reader, not letting this sink into unspoken discussion like so many things between them do. He wanted, needed, you to verbalize your thoughts on watching him potentially get snatched up like a prize for the taking. He'd never betray or abandon you like that, but what did you think?

"Yeah? Maybe we should start wearing rings whenever we go out then."

Reader would joke, but the idea strikes Malachi so wonderfully that he won't hesitate to start shopping for garishly obvious promise rings for you both to sport before the night is over.

If it was a friend of reader's who kept pushing themselves onto Malachi or shamelessly flirting, I imagine reader would get pretty pissed, complaining and ranting to Malachi how they had the audacity to act so cutesy around THEIR boyfriend. This, Malachi likes best. He likes seeing reader pissed, upset over someone else wanting him. Makes him feel like maybe he's not the only obsessed, needy one in the relationship. He'll soothe reader, saying he's not going anywhere, that no one could replace them. And yet, the next time someone tries to flirt with him around reader, you won't find him discouraging their advances as obviously as a boyfriend should. He wants you to come in and be his savior.

[delicatepointofview]

gonna have to deal with people missing the point of louis singing 1d songs in festivals... don't get me started on the other covers

[luckthebard]

I don’t know why this is something we apparently need to re-explain to parts of the CR fandom every few years, but if I see one more post that implies that the way Samuel Oscar Riegel is approaching his character’s faith journey is “culturally Christian” I’m gonna McFucking lose it.

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[froschli96]

You know what, fuck it, I have to speak my truth! (this is gonna be a rant, so anyone who actually likes assassin's creed revelations and/or the secret crusade, be warned or maybe don't read this at all)

remember how altaïr talks to king richard at the end of ac1, and richard is like "[humans] come into the world kicking and screaming, violent and unstable. it is what we are. we cannot help ourselves."? and how altaïr answers "no. we are what we choose to be." and how that ACTUALLY has meaning bc he himself was "violent and unstable" at the beginning of the game but he has learned and is now CHOOSING to be a better person who cares about others and humanity at large? remember how his calmness and gentleness was something that he ACQUIRED over the course of the story?

and remember how in revelations they then suddenly had a PRE-AC1 altaïr say about the first of his targets "no man should pass from this world without knowing some kindness." and be all wise and calm and collected during a nice little chat with al mualim, who suddenly acts all fatherly? (like, this is suddenly supposed to be a positive relationship? what??)

also, during the confession the target says to altair: "you put too much faith in the hearts of men, altaïr. [...] humans are weak, base, and petty." and altaïr answers: "no. our creed is evidence to the contrary." KJASJFJDKL???? like, it’s almost insulting how close this exchange is to the one with richard. you know, the one that was actually earned after a whole game of character development. like WTF??? cool congrats now that development means nothing. like, apparently that was just altaïr reverting BACK to being the exemplary assassin who understands and believes in the creed that he was apparently just born as. (i also hate how having a young inexperienced altaïr saying this implies that altaïr's faith in humanity is a sign of naivete instead of a sign of the wisdom he has gained after being confronted with counter arguments for a whole game, and also something that distinguishes the assassins from the templars who use humanity's supposed wickedness to justify controlling them like in AC1, but whatever)

altaïr’s development in AC1 mattered BECAUSE he is not NATURALLY a good person, it actually said something about humanity's capacity for both bad AND good and how humans don't have to be forced to be good through mind control bc they can by their own free will choose to be better when taught how and when allowed the freedom to grow. but no. apparently altaïr has just always been calm, wise and gentle. and he just sort of forgot about that during AC1 bc…. ? bc of adha?? bc of abbas???

oh don’t get me started on the whole abbas thing. (it doesnt even make sense that abbas is so hung up about his father and "his family’s honor", like what about the whole point of al mualim not allowing parents to be close to their children bc it would make them weak? like, my dude, you’re not supposed to HAVE any family aside from the brotherhood)

they used the throwaway character that had like 5 lines and made him into altaïr’s main antagonist in revelations… like, abbas wasn’t supposed to be this ONE dude who had personal beef with altaïr, he was just supposed to show how while altaïr’s revered by many, a lot of his brothers also hate him, bc 1) altaïr is a shitty person at this point and 2) bc there’s no real feeling of community and family in this version of the brotherhood, but just a pervasive sense of competition and jealousy — these assassins don’t care about their goal of safeguarding humanity bc they’re too hung up on petty squabbles and divided by rivalries (you know, the things that made malik hate altaïr even before solomon’s temple and that he overcomes in the end which enables him to forgive and to reconcile with altaïr so they can work together and stop al mualim? (you ever just think about "we are one. as we share the glory of our victories, so too should we share the pain of our defeat. in this way we grow closer. we grow stronger." and cry? bc i do. all the time. malik, the man that you are))

and now abbas is altaïr’s childhood best friend turned lifelong enemy?? like, bowden bent over backwards to come up with an explanation for why altaïr is an arrogant ass at the beginning of AC1, when the explanation is right there: he was raised to kill without asking questions and was constantly praised for how good he is at murder, which resulted in him becoming arrogant and disregarding human life. like, it doesn’t have to be some shakespearean family feud type shit. and guess what, this "simple" explanation actually plays into the story’s themes, who’da thunk!

(like, abbas might not have been a "fleshed out" character in AC1, but he had a specific function and now that function is gone. mr bowden, mr mcdevitt, you know characters are allowed to simply exist to tell us something about their worlds and the systems they live in and sometimes that’s more important and also more interesting than having every single character have a detailed backstory to explain all their behaviors, right?)

with all of this revelations loses all nuance in regards to the levantine brotherhood and also the creed in general. like, altaïr being a master assassin at the beginning despite being a terrible person and not actually understanding the creed is a criticism of the brotherhood and the creed itself. like, it said something about the order that someone like altaïr was able to get that high in rank, simply bc he's good at killing, which also tells us what is considered important in the al mualim era assassin order. when you make altaïr’s arrogance the result of his personal conflicts instead of how we was raised by a brotherhood that only valued one's ability to kill, you lose that characterization of the assassin order itself!

and by suddenly making al mualim a semi good "father figure" you also downplay his manipulation of not only altaïr but all those under his care. (altaïr says something about al mualim being "as a father" to him exactly twice in the codex, but he doesn’t mean by that that he WAS a father to him, what he means is that he was the CLOSEST THING he had bc HE DID NOT HAVE PARENTS, not because his mother died in childbirth and his father was executed when he was young btw, BUT BECAUSE IT WASN’T ALLOWED, like his parents actually lived but weren’t allowed to be close to him, he says he came to view al mualim’s "weak and dishonest" love as enough and even better BECAUSE HE HAD NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE AL MUALIM ISOLATED HIS ASSASSINS FROM THEIR FAMILIES. al mualim "loved" him bc he was good at killing people for him! hm, i wonder if this could be trying to say anything about cults and indoctrination and the inherent contradiction in fighting for peace and free will by taking children away from their parents and raising them to become killers?? like, altaïr wasn't ~the special orphan boy~ taken in by al mualim bc his father died a hero's death, it was "the way of the order" to have al mualim be the closest thing to a parental figure for everyone to ensure absolute loyalty! altaïr saying al mualim was like his father is not supposed to make you go "oh, he must have actually been a good guy for altaïr to consider him a father", it should make you go "oh that's kinda fucked up that he considers the dude who made him into a killing machine and who manipulated him a sort of father figure"!)

and then in revelations they suddenly portray that relationship as positive and healthy??? like, it would be one thing to give it some nuance by delving into the psychology behind al mualim’s "love" and maybe showing how al mualim did care about altair in a complicated, fraught sort of way (like, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could say about al mualim at several points addressing altaïr as "my child" in AC1 and how that parallels Garnier referring to the people he drugged and abused as his "children", and what that says about how the templars view the people who they say they want to save and in whose best interests they supposedly act (in any case, al mualim doesn’t use that phrase because he has any real parental feelings but rather to patronize and to invalidate any objections, like in a "mother knows best" way))

but they even fucking DARE to parallel that relationship with that of altaïr and darim in revelations, by having the reflection in the puddle of darim hugging altaïr showing altaïr hugging al mualim…. like their relationship wasn’t inherently abusive but just tragically cut short because al mualim was just "corrupted by the apple"… like WHAT???? so it’s not the very real problems like grooming, manipulation and indoctrination and the hierarchical structure of the brotherhood itself (all of which are antithetical to the assassin ideology), it was just the evil apple all along. great. that’s DEFINITELY a lot more interesting.

god im sorry i really dont want to spread negativity but this is driving me INSANE. like, somebody please tell me im not crazy bc i feel like somehow most of the fandom is in agreement that revelations and the secret crusade have better storytelling and characterization than ac1.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, can we talk about how, even IF we completely ignore AC1 and treat revelations altaïr as his own character…. the narrative still doesn’t really work?

basically, the whole point of his story in rev is that "he gave his whole life to the brotherhood", this obsession led to him not using his time with his family which has him ending up dying alone in a dark library and this in turn makes ezio reevaluate his life choices…. except. he doesn’t? neglect? his family? or whatever? like, his devotion to the assassins is sort of painted as this tragic flaw that leads to a lonely death bc it supposedly comes at the cost of his family, but… his wife has joined the assassins, (at least) one of his sons is in the brotherhood and even when he goes to protect the assassins against the mongols, he takes his family with him (except for the son who stays behind bc he has a family of his own and who, ironically, ends up dying bc of that)… like, you can’t describe altaïr as a good husband and father in the database and have his son tell him that "everything that is good in me began with you, father" when they say goodbye, and then want to make us believe that he put his family behind the brotherhood and that that is a character flaw that leads to his tragedy.

because you HAVE to have a character’s tragedy be the result of a character flaw. like. that is how tragedies work. otherwise it just becomes tragedy for the sake of tragedy which is… boring bc it has no purpose. and we know it is SUPPOSED to have purpose bc ezIO FUCKING QUITS BEING AN ASSASSIN AFTER WITNESSING IT!

it’s like they want to have their cake and eat it, too — they didn’t want to actually make altaïr a bad husband/father, but still wanted to make his life a tragedy where he loses his family which is why instead they outsource all responsibility to abbas who now has to be the reason for ALL the deaths.

like, they try to make at least maria’s death kind of sort of the result of altaïr’s rashness or whatever but like… these guys KILLED THEIR SON and TOLD HIM THAT ALTAÏR HAD ORDERED HIS DEATH. like, altaïr losing it in response to that is not rash, it’s fucking logical and justified! if anything the scene made me angry at maria for trying to stop him. like, GIRL, he was YOUR son too??? but god forbid we give female characters actual real emotions, she has to fill the role of "voice of reason who dies for altaïr’s man pain" i fucking guess.

like, it’s this weird mix where his tragedy is simultaneously painted as his own fault but also not really bc abbas is the one responsible for all the shit that happens. it just… it just doesn’t really go together.

the only way to make his story make sense narratively and to give it actual purpose is by looking at it in the context of ezio’s story, bc the things he sees in altaïr’s memories are supposed to be a revelation (ha!) to ezio specifically. and i guess that’s maybe the crux of it all — altaïr’s story in revelations was conceived of first and foremost to support ezio’s story and development. which is probably also why many people maybe don’t notice bc, having skipped ac1 and started with ac2, the majority of people mostly care only about ezio and only really appreciate altaïr’s story in as far as it serves to push ezio forward. (tho i’ve also seen a few people say that ezio is also written kind of weird in rev, but i’ve never really been an ezio girly myself so i can’t speak to the truth of that)

like, altaïr dying alone in the library doesn’t really have to make sense for his character, i guess, bc it’s only really supposed to be a cautionary tale for ezio.

so, i guess, for once, they actually had a MAN dying for another man’s character development, which is pretty woke actually. ubisoft, i take everything back jksdsfjhgdsahfhsdhfghfdsgjhsdgjh

[local-limebug]

getting emotional about dream of the endless again today. but this time it's daniel, not morpheus.

like, aside from just the trauma of being a little kid that gets the memories and power and legacy of an aeons old being. he's still dream.

you know that panel, where matthew says to daniel, "i was his friend. i'm not your anything." that is so horrifying to me.

morpheus was lonely. he was so lonely even though he had death and delirium and matthew and lucienne and every damn dream in his realm. and then he died, and a new soul became dream of the endless.

and now he has a new soul. a child's soul, that's so scared and so lonely again. and daniel didn't want to be lonely. he called matthew his friend. and matthew rejected him. and it was probably the same with lucienne and his siblings and hob.

morpheus!dream was terrified of reaching out when he had people that loved him. and now that daniel!dream is reaching out, everyone is treating him like a stranger. but he's still dream.

i understand that daniel is a new soul. a part of dream that everyone thought would never change over millions of years has changed, and it's terrifying. he's acting like a whole new person.

but how much of a person is really their soul? a human has the same soul their entire life. would a 5 year old and his own 80 year old self act or think like the same person?

daniel has morpheus' memories. daniel is morpheus. he is dream of the endless. he could take on morpheus' appearance if he wanted to. do his memories, that he remembers as his own experiences, that are his experiences, count for nothing?

and all the people he loves, he is meeting again for the first time. and there is no guarantee that they will still love him, even though now exists the potential for dream of the endless to start loving openly again.

it's just so horrifying and so heartbreaking to me. morpheus was so tired when he passed on. and now he is so scared and none of his friends will help him.

EDIT: and not to mention that daniel can't go back to anyone he knew as a human either. they all see him as dream of the endless, and all of morpheus' friends see him as daniel.

he has changed irreversibly because of something completely out of his control and he is so so lonely for it. and naturally as a person with no problems, i am being so normal about it.

[ganondoodle]

another thing i feel has deepend my hatred for totk is... how quickly people jump to defending it, as soon as there is any criticism at all, no matter how little or legit, anyone that expresses disappointment, even in the most tamest way possible, the comments are filled with excuses for it like nintendo can do no wrong

(saw someone express disappointment about a concept art in the totk book that they would have liked more than what we got, and the comments were filled with people making excuses for it-)

often the process of cool concepts getting less cool over the development cycle, especially in this modern gaming industry, isnt bc it just wasnt 'possible' or not the best choice, but bc it gets filtered through many layers of corporate "mass appeal" ideals for greater profit, "mass appeal" i think is always going to give you something more generic, losing its edge, its spark, you cant make soemthing that literally appeals to everyone, thats not how it works, but they certainly try anyway bc it promises greater profit in theory

of course, that doesnt mean that has to be the reason for whatever they decide to go for in the end, but they can do wrong, very questionable, and very much bad things, they have done that and ARE doing that, and you should be able to express disappointment about that without getting swarmed by a weird nintendo defense squad, in fact, it SHOULD be criticised, sometimes that can even be fun, sometimes mroe frustrating, but it should be done regardless, does it sound fun to jsut fully accept everything they throw in front of you without question??? does that sound like you will only get better things???

i just realyl hate that weird cult following (exaggeration) the game has amassed where you either worship it or must unreasonably hate it, that you cant express any sort personal feelign towards it that isnt praise without being hit by the squad tm

its not just annoying, its weird, what are you defending them for?? why??? i had this problem a while too, but its died down sicne then, probably bc people realized im not the 'average' fandom guy but a very specific kind of fandom guy- whenever i view outside my little bubble though i see it still happen ... even for the most miniscule of criticism

(dont get me started on how i have MASSIVE gameplay and design frustrations about totk and dont really understand how so many people can say the gameplay is stellar and jsut the writing sucks .... bc its not ..)

[rosemaryreality]

So like i know i just posted about the "You're so reliable Fushiguro" scene with itafushi lenses. But i want to talk a little more seriously about from Megumi's pov.

Look, I know that we itafushi fans usually interpret it as a scene of Megumi being down bad for Yuuji. After all after the compliment his irritation subsided and he looked away. And i loved that interpretation, I really, really did, but then I read a tweet that completely changed the scene for me.

I cannot find the tweet, trust me i tried, but basically what it said was that the scene was actually Megumi being unable to respond to the compliment, not out shyness or tsundereism, but because Itadori praised him for "saving a lot of people" (by giving them a escape route for both them and the possible survivors), when Megumi didn't have any intention of saving anyone at all.

Which makes a lot of sense, honestly, the tweet also pointed out that while Nobara agreed with Yuuji about saving the woman's son, Megumi kept quiet.

And this paints the scene, and Megumi's reaction in a very different light. In the anime it feels more lightheaded because we see a chibi Megumi go from annoyed to surprised, but in the manga...

The way he looks down and changes the subject. I could be wrong, but I wonder if part of him feels guilty, maybe not for not being interested in saving the prisoners, but for "deceiving" Yuuji into thinking he's a better person than in reality. I joked about this in the "simptadori" post but Yuuji basically did call him a hero (his hero).

Megumi sometimes feels like a very conflicted character to me because he genuinely seems to believe in his own beliefs about who deserves to be saved, to the point it causes conflict between him and both Tsumiki and Yuuji, and he genuinely seems to be frustrated with them, yet at the same time, he clearly admires the goodness in them.

This might be a hot take, but i sometimes wonder if Megumi wishes he was more like Tsumiki and Yuuji. Yes, he thinks their kind of thinking only causes pain, yes, it frustrates him, but idk man... he tells Tsumiki he finds her goodness disgusting, but was the disgust he felt actually towards her, or himself? Megumi has never thought very highly of himself, especially compared to the pedestal he puts Tsumiki and Yuuji on.

Even before Jujutsu Kaisen as we know it, back in Sousen when Megumi was the MC, he thought highly of them, and little of himself.

I kinda wonder if he might resent himself for not being able to be more like them, someone he could see as "good" and deserving of the carefree life he wanted for Tsumiki.

Even in the latest chapter, Megumi pictures Tsumiki and Yuuji walking side by side, with their backs to him and talking about "sending her off" alongside someone like Itadori. Like, even in his dream world he pictured Tsumiki leaving his side, alongside someone like Yuuji, someone "good" that would "deserve" it.

Actually...what if that whole thing wasn't about a romantic partner for Tsumiki (??) or even my own belief that it was about Megumi simply wanting Tsumiki and Yuuji to be side by side the way they are in his heart, but about Megumi being replaced instead. Like, between the image in the panel and the expression used, it gives that vibe of a goodbye. As if Tsumiki was moving on from Megumi, with someone just like her to keep her company. Like in his own fantasy, Tsumiki would be freed from him.