#still not normal about that episode :(

[vagueconfusion]

Feeling real ridiculous for not having realized that Baron's "stark father" was the Nightmare King until now

[tinyydinosaurr]

trying to fall asleep at night but then i remember literally every episode where scully thinks mulder is absolutely insane but she follows him anyways because she loves him and she’s not letting him do this alone and how mulder was willing to give up the x-files if it meant scully would be safe and how if one of them is in danger the other would literally burn down to the world to pick each other from the ashes and now i can’t fucking sleep

[anonymouscryptid]

HEAR ME OUT

[captainofthetidesbreath]

imago from Latin imago: an imitation, copy, image, representation, likeness.

[just-tell-him-you-love-him]

I say the phrases that keep it all going, and everybody plays along.

House MD, s2e19, Euphoria (Part 1) (2006) // Romeo + Juliet (1996) // Richard Siken, Planet of Love

[hephaestuscrew]

The great thing about fiction podcasts is that you can experience emotionally impactful stories while just going about your day. The downside to this is that you may be emotionally impacted while just going about your day.

[joseigamer]

Patalliro! is fascinating to me because of stuff like this. It's unapologetically gay - even within its anime which aired during primetime hours in 1982 - in a way that many later BL manga would never be, like the ones from the early 2000s which would never dare to call their characters actual homosexuals. Patalliro has actually aged quite well in this regard, there's something comforting about how campy it is.

[quatregats]

Something I've been thinking about is how Patrick O'Brian manages so skillfully to write characters whose actions contradict their beliefs, which I think is honestly a big part of why his characters feel so real. Mostly with Stephen and Jack—e.g., and perhaps most notably, Stephen has notably leftist sympathies (honestly I have no idea how to characterize his politics in period terms) who nonetheless becomes very comfortable with his rise to the landed gentry, while Jack is a card-carrying Tory who much of the time sympathizes far more with working class sailors and farmers than with the upper classes—but I'm sure he does it to a lesser degree with some of his minor characters (James Dillon, while perhaps not precisely minor, comes to mind), and I love that he's able to do that, especially the way in which he embeds it in the narrative. We see how they're all unreliable narrators of themselves; we understand how they want to be seen and how that does and doesn't coincide with the reality, but most importantly, this isn't presented as something reprehensible, just as a part of their own humanity. They are not their expectations for themselves, but they don't need to be those expectations to be beloved.

[unluckyprime]

nicks like . fine. he’s fucking it up in hell as a torso rn <3

[waitineedaname]

Finally, after months of work, I have completed it: the collection of all* character appearances in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood!

edit: if you want a more detailed spreadsheet on the homunculi in particular, @vuullets has a collection of all homunculi appearances in the manga! you can find it here

Some notes on this spreadsheet:

there are spoilers. obviously. proceed with caution

timestamps indicate when a character first appears in a scene, not every time they appear. if the scene changes to one without that character, and then we return to that character in another scene, that's another timestamp for a new appearance

all timestamps are approximate, give or take a few seconds based on how quickly I could pause the show

only unique flashbacks count as an appearance. if the flashback is to something we've seen in a previous episode, that is not counted as a unique appearance, but if it provides something new that we haven't seen before, it counts!

I didn't include background easter egg appearances, like when you can see Mei in the background at a train station before she's introduced

I didn't actually do all characters. there are a lot of characters, and I am just one person. sorry if you're a big fan of minor members of the military, i just couldn't do it

since Greed is kind of a special case, he deserves a specific explanation: OG Greed and Greedling are not counted as separate characters, they're both just Greed. when Greed is in control of Ling's body, that counts as an appearance for Greed, and it's not an appearance for Ling unless he's in control. if they're both in a scene together (talking in the mindscape, for example, or switching control back and forth) they each get a timestamp for when they first appear/speak in a scene

feel free to use this as a reference! I made this as a useful tool for myself, and because I'm a nerd about data. if you are also a nerd about data, I tallied up some stats, which I'll put under the cut:

only six characters broke 30 episodes. the characters with the most appearances are Edward (60), Alphonse (58), Mustang (45), Hawkeye (42), Scar (40), and Winry (31).

next highest on the list are Alex Armstrong and Mei (tied for 29), King Bradley (28), Hohenheim (26), and Ling (25).

the homunculus in the most episodes is Wrath (28), and the one in the least is Lust (11)

as previously mentioned, Alex Armstrong and Mei are in the same number of episodes (29), as are Olivier Armstrong and Marcoh (24), and Buccaneer and Ross (18)

Hughes is in only 10 episodes, the same number as Grumman and Fu

Yoki is in a whopping 23 episodes. what the fuck

the chimera in the most episodes is Zampano (21), closely followed by Darius and Jerso (20), with Heinkel falling behind at 16. The Devil's Nest chimeras are only in 2 episodes, with the exception of Bido, who is in 3

[dinitride-art]

“Mike wheeler’s armpit of a basement”

“I’ve seen Mike’s room look worse than this”

“I was being a total self pitying idiot”

“Why am I the bad guy”

“One day she’s going to realize that I’m just some random nerd”

“At least Lois Lane is an ace reporter for the Daily Planet”

“I’ve been bullied my whole life”

“Mike’s always whining about it”

“And yet you still have a C in Spanish”

“You can’t even write it Mike”

“You made it super clear that you’re not interested in anything I have to say”

“-and if I said that thing then maybe she’d want me there with her, wherever she is”

“The bad government dudes are after your super-girlfriend right? Right?! Okay, so, maybe the cops can help us find out where she is because they’re gonna kill her, man. And if they kill her, there gonna kill us!”

“Oh, no, no, no, no- it’s a shitty knock off, yeah”

“Who’s that twig with her?”

“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I mean, if that guy would’ve lived one more second- one more second- th- we could know where she is. Wh-why didn’t he just say the number? I-I should’ve explained myself, cuz then maybe, Eleven would’ve taken me with her and things would be different but I-I didn’t know what to say”

“And I feel like maybe I-I was worrying too much about El, and I don’t know, maybe I feel like I lost you or something”

“Y’know the last few days, I’ve had to think about the last talk we had. You know, before the cops and the whole word went to shit and everything? I- I guess- I just- I- I dunno- I guess I just wanted to- to say-”

“But… but what if after all of this is over… sh-she doesn’t need me anymore?”

“No I… it’s so stupid, given everything that’s going on. It’s just… I… I don’t know. I just”

“I, love you.”

Mike’s flopping on the floor like a miserable and suffocating fish out of water season. His friends make fun of him. Eddie made fun of his clothes. Karen told Dustin he’s welcome at the Wheeler’s anytime which implies that Mike isn’t really talking to his friends outside of school. Dustin and Mike didn’t know when Lucas’ basketball game was, which implies that they haven’t really been talking to Lucas a lot. Mike did call the Byers but wasn’t able to get through. El and Will are have been in Lenora for months and Mike hasn’t really been able to talk to either of them. El’s been lying to him in her letters and writing and signing letters is a reminder that he’s avoiding writing the word love. Everyone’s telling him that he’s doing something wrong. This kids going through it.

[posletsvet]

A Somewhat Messy Exploration of the Concepts of Purity and Impurity in Satosugu, and perhaps some more

The yin and yang symbolism in Satosugu (here I'm using 'Satosugu' as a short way to refer to the relationship between these characters, not necessarily a ship dynamic) has been brought up and discussed a lot in fan analyses lately, and by those who have mental capacity to express it far better than I ever could. However, there is one more thing I would like to talk about in relation to Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo's dichotomy, and perhaps some more.

As much influence as Chinese philosophical concepts (such as already mentioned yin-yang) have on Japanese cosmology, religious views of the people of Japan are actually an intricate and complex amalgamation of various teachings and beliefs, with Shinto being numerically the most prominent faith of the country. I was curious as to how the ideas found in Shinto could be applied to Gojo and Geto's relationship, and I guess I've stumbled upon some inkling of a thought in this regard -- so please bear with me while I rant.

Before this gets too long, I'm putting my rambling below the cut.

To begin with and give a little bit of context, the core teaching of Shinto is to have profound respect and reverence for nature. As a polytheistic and animistic religion, Shinto is defined by its belief in the kami, who are stated to inhabit all things, including objects of the surrounding landscape and various natural forces. Due to such elemental qualities of the faith, purification takes place as one of its central aspects and a widely followed practice, as well. There is a great emphasis laid on spiritual and physical purity and cleanliness. That being so, the moral categories of good and evil (or virtue and sin), so important in the western worldview, give way to a different outlook on things: the world is perceived in terms of 'clean' and 'dirty' rather than 'good' and 'bad'.

This concept finds a reflection in Gege's writing primarily through Tsumiki as someone who's essentially an embodiment of the virtue of being innocent and pure at heart. When she's brought up in the narrative, the image is frequently accompanied by flowers -- and more often than not, especially when it comes to Megumi's perspective, those flowers are white lilies. And those are one of the most common and prominent symbols of purity. When Tsumiki's innocence is symbolically destroyed with Yorozu taking over her body, white blossoms are depicted as thrashed and stained in the background. Her purity is further defiled by her death as everything related to death and decay is considered foul as it desecrates the world's natural state of cleanliness, fertility and life.

I'm only bringing this up to show how Gege incorporates this religious framework into the body of symbolism in his story. And the further you search with these concepts in mind, the more you are able to uncover.

Satoru Gojo as purity and perfection

Satoru Gojo is a character whom you can't help but read as a perfection within the context of the world he exists in. He's the absolute strongest, wielding the power to bring all the knowledge of the universe and the forces which shape it under his control, he's repeatedly elevated by the narrative as someone unreachable and untouchable whereas nothing seems to be beyond his reach. He also has an extraordinary appearance, matching vibrant aquamarine eyes with fair hair, so rarely found among full-blooded Japanese people. He embodies an ideal for his society.

Satoru is associated with white and sky blue -- the colours most widely believed to represent purity, innocence, perfection, serenity and safety. Those are lofty, noble, airy and spacious hues which also bring in mind vast open spaces and immeasurable and unreachable heights and depths, symbolizing Gojo's detachment from the mundane world where corruption and putrefaction take deep root. Not to mention Satoru's noble background as an heir of one of the Big Three Sorcerer Families.

Actually no, forget this, I do want to mention it and expand a little on my thoughts regarding Satoru's family and upbringing. It's highly likely he was overprotected and sheltered as a child, and along with a teenage-years rebellion on his part which such a childhhod brought about, it also thwarted his ability to make connections with people around him as he basically lacks common experiences and/or interests with them. He's somewhat sterile when it comes to displaying empathy and emotional intelligence, which results in a peculiar sense of innocence about him. For the lack of any better way to articulate this idea, I'd say he's pure in this regard: clean and untouchable and spotless, devoid of nearly everything that comprises a regular person's experience.

This shows even in the way Gojo chooses to cope with his trauma in the aftermath of the Star Plasma Vessel Incident. That traumatic experience seemingly barely leaves a mark on him because he opts for pushing it aside and moving forward, while going out of his way to make sure there's a safe distance between him and the source of his vulnerability by improving his technique. He fixates on bringing his Infinity technique to perfection, and as a result it leaves no opportunity for anything to touch him if he himself does not want it to. Yet again, it leaves him stainless.

Not only that: he becomes emotionally detached from the cruelty and filth of the jujutsu world, becomes numb to it, with little to no emotion ever reaching his core to shake it. He's neither angry nor vengeful on Amanai's behalf after her death. He does not allow for hatred and spite to poison his mind, neither does he feel any doubt. He stays clean from all the negativity at the cost of coming off as cynical and unsympathetic.

He masks this by putting up a front of an emotionally immature individual with childlike mannerisms and an attitude resembling that of a teenager rather than a fully grown man. He also nurtures a somewhat naive belief that Suguru still can be trusted, that there's some hope for him turning away from the path he's chosen. In this regard, he still bears the innocence of a child.

Last but not least, shedding away the more humanly parts of himself, Gojo instead becomes more attuned to the natural world through his ascension -- the main source of purity, as Shinto has it. Moreover, he basically rejects death by coming back from the dead after finally grasping how Reversed Cursed Energy works. And I've already explained the importance of something like this when talking about Tsumiki's passing.

Gojo Satoru's mind is free from resentment and hate, his body unstained by death. He's a character who represents complete spiritual and physical purity.

Suguru Geto as impurity and corruption

Where Gojo's character exhibits perfection, Geto shows abruptly stunted growth and degradation gnawing away at him bit by bit; where Gojo stands to symbolize cleanliness and purity, Geto presents desolation and decay and that filth which is left in their wake. Geto is a character whom the narrative treats as a symbolic foil to Gojo, starting from him being expelled from Jujutsu High and ending with his death being described in the light novel as a curse purged from existence. If Gojo serves as an example of a perfectly fit cog in jujutsu society and sets up a desirable ideal, Geto, named the worst of all known curse users, represents everything that the very same society fears and despises.

Starting with colour symbolism again, such colours as black, dark brown, warm beige and mustard yellow are the most common colours to be associated with dirt and a filthy, dingy appearance. And while I'm not saying Suguru himself has such an appearance (although he does forsake taking care of himself at some point), those all are the colours found in his palette. Black is also considered to be the hardest colour to keep clean, even more so than white, as it shows all the stains and grime so well. Which is quite interesting if you consider that Suguru's downfall and defection ultimately bring out, both to the audience and to Satoru, everything not only malfunctioning, but straightforward cruel, vile and despicable in the existing system.

Geto's deeply empathetic personality is the basis for his own corruption, his inability to set boundaries between his own emotions and the suffering of others leaves him extremely vulnerable in a society which actively punishes people for being unable to extract emotion from their duty and caring too much. The thing is, Suguru is elbow-deep in emotion. For instance, if Satoru managed to shove his feelings aside in order to put together a plan of action when Kuroi got abducted, Suguru immeadiately plunged into self-blame. His own empathy is what's clouding his vision, his feelings pile up within him without any healthy outlet until they start rotting him from the inside.

Geto lets the rot in by caring too deeply, vile emotions that he feels on behalf of others festering in his mind. He can't stand the sight of atrocities commited by Jujutsu society and finds them nauseating, while the rest of the world he exists in treats those abominations as a norm. And even so, he dives deeper into all this by trying to make a difference and save ordinary people.

This is symbolically represented by Geto's Curse Manipulation, with him consuming curses which are basically a corporeal manifestation of all the negative emotions people vent into the world in their daily lives. The more curses he absorbs, the more doubt and resentment he lets inside and the more they consequently stain his once pure ideals and aspirations with bile building up inside of him. His very sense of self is twisted by the weight of the unsightly hideous reality, and while he stays true to his strict set of ideals he is forced to adapt by the trauma of his experience as a sorcerer and the 'realisation' which it brings. Because if one endures such severely traumatic events, one must sooner or later come to the conclusion that there's something inherently wrong and malfunctioning -- either with you or the world you live in. Geto chooses to stay true to himself by assuming it's the latter, and this choice results in his corruption in the eyes of those who run that very world.

There's also something to be said about the intimacy of the act of consumpton: you let the thing you consume nurture you and become a part of you. Cursed spirits taste absolutely foul, and what that means to put this despicable thing in your mouth and swallow it is unimaginable. Geto's absorbtion of curses is supposed to represent how he basically desacrates himself by letting himself experience everything at such a deep emotional level, inevitably tying himself to putrefaction of the world.

And of course, the last thing that plays its role in the defilement of Geto's character is his death.

Brief wrap-up thoughts

I could honestly ramble on and on about this for ages, but I guess it all just boils down to my admiration for Gege's ability to break the mold with his writing. He takes a trait which is largely associated with protagonists of their stories and shapes his villain's whole personality around it -- and vice versa, with Gojo and his seemingly egotistic tendencies.

Once again, Japanese religious beliefs organically encompass so many elements originating from so many cultures with no coherent systematization existing up untill late 19th centuary, and I find it absolutely fascinating how Gege's story reflects that. It leaves us with such an interesting controversy of an emotionally detached hero dwelling in a morally grey area alongside with a deeply empathetic antagonist whom both other characters and the audience find deserving of sympathy and pity.

[freshbaked-bread]

realisation

[acekindaneat]

tomgreg succession except its serirei

this is how i cope with bones studio still not including the "i hope i can become a partner like that" line

[moomeecore]

recently did my annual rewatch of over the garden wall, so here's a dump of otgw inspired trees frm my sketchbook that ive done since then

[bfdifan26]

demonstrating true self indulgence