#the first chapter sets him up as a character who fundamentally SAYS THINGS HE DOESNT MEAN

[imbrella]

one thing that always gets me when it comes to bkdk fanon is the bk "when have i ever said anything i don't mean!" line

like cmon. all the damn time. that's your fucking character, to scream 'die' and 'i'm gonna kill you' etc etc and NOT mean it

that's why the apology hit so hard - because bk is such an acts of service type, i feel like a lot of people just assumed there were going to be no words spoken, much less such a meaningful admission

[solarapplejuice]

what the fuck is going on in oshi no ko bruh ;n; (part 1)

155 spoilers / spoilers for all of the oshi no ko manga akasaka is scaring me maybe i just have too many rose-tinted memories of love is war but it feels so much more tightly written than whatever is going on in onk right now. the most recent chapter and really the entire 15 year lie arc feels like a bit of a letdown compared to what was being built up by this entire story.

my fuckin thesis is this: the final arc of this story reeks of akasaka not liking the story or the characters and wanting to get things over with. he insists on ending almost EVERY chapter with a cliffhanger instead of letting the story progress naturally, concluding core and fundamental parts of the story's plot in one to two chapters which denies them of further growth and speculation, the worst thing you can do to your fucking mystery novel. admittedly this is a pretty biased opinion but i will explain!

the recent chapter is the most emblematic of this because it's the perfect embodiment of why oshi no ko is so frustrating, because if i were to describe the narrative up until this point it sounds like it makes sense, but the way it was handled and the sheer SPEED at which it came out is what makes it bad. specifically in 154 and 155 we learn that kamiki just didn't think that ai actually loved him, but turns out she did and now he regrets killing her! and it turns out NINO also had involvement in ai's death and is maybe the actual villain.

none of this is necessarily bad and i actually really like the idea of nino being the true antagonist at the end of the tunnel. nino is just more compelling; she's ai's coworker and peer but can never be an equal to her because she wont let herself, because she wont let ai in, because she both looks up to ai as an idol to be loved and despises her as an entertainer to compete with. if we are to believe that 45510 is from her perspective, it makes this turn of events all the more tragic.

kamiki never playing a big part is also kind of expected. queer manga fan moment but i never thought the idea of ex bf being the killer was super compelling esp since you can see the "she never really loved me" coming from a mile away, so it's good to see it being played straight for AI's development. turns out that ai "lies are love" hoshino was just trying to protect him from the inevitable backlash of the world's top idol having a boyfriend and thought she was doing the best for her first relationship as a teenager who was forced to grow up too fast.

all of this is really cool, too bad it doesnt land like that in the story because it all gets resolved in one chapter! just because kamiki was the red herring doesn't mean that he should have been wasted like that, it would have been nice to see more conflict between him and the hoshino siblings, perhaps threatening other characters the way he has other idols. lets not forget that this dude is a serial killer who likes targeting women! we were waiting for him to try and pull something on say, kana or akane (i have FEELINGS about them and ill get to that). meanwhile all that would have been done to set nino up as the true villain in murder-mystery fashion is to just include 45510 as a part of the manga before the 15 year lie arc. it would be a one-off look into the horrors of the ways in which ai hoshino's would-be peers rejected her as an equal, later re-contextualized as the hiding-in-plain-sight motive and backstory for the villain and the entire plot as a whole.

we don't get any of that, instead we get aqua and ruby moving past kamiki so quickly that you almost get the sense that they knew more than the audience. which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but feels almost insulting considering how important he and the conspirators of ai hoshino's death have been so far. nino being reintroduced again is jarring since the setup with her intervening in kana's attempts to emulate her is not enough of a setup, and instead feels like they wanted to hamfist her in as an 11th hour threat.

and the problem is, pretty much every major narrative plot point in oshi no ko has been resolved like this and its a pattern that seems to not stop. it started when goro and sarina finally found each other, a moment that is so important and we've been waiting for a while, and it spiraled from there. aqua and ruby's incest will-they-wont-they was pretty much handwaved, the very fucking important and good conflict of ruby and kana's competition for success mirroring ai and nino was denied any sort of growth or possibility in the like three chapters they spent on it. it's just like, theres so many things that while they have been alluded to before, that's just it: theyve been ALLUDED to. the reasons for these conflicts to happen are there, but the conflicts never really got the chance to happen, instead it's just a character initiating the fight and the other character shutting them down a chapter later by being the bigger person or whatever, something that is jarring for a cast of characters defined by not simply bad communication but the BELIEF and CORE THEME that LYING IS LOVE! the very thesis that we're supposed to be constantly contending with, if it's true or not, and the reason that these conflicts drag out; because the characters lie, and sometimes those lies can make relationships worse instead of better for some illusion of stability. why are these characters all of a sudden excellent communicators when they historically haven't been, in a MYSTERY story where incomplete information and unresolved threads should be common place? the story ending soon is not an excuse for this to be happening! it doesn't feel like we're earning these conclusions, more like aka is forcefully shutting the lid on pandora's box and letting it blow up in our faces.

ill be making a second part of my thoughts since this is already so long but i also gotta talk about how akasaka did my girls kana and akane dirty.

[felikatze]

the recent chapters r really making me like olivia like damn. at first she's just kinda this pitiful person to be saved from her awful situation, yeah? but the story still says, "her survival is super important, actually" and it doesn't rlly click. cuz after she's free olivia turns into a bit of a stock character.

she's then just always kinda flirty and irresponsible and clingy. and that makes sense to me, cuz her upbringing was super strict and repressive, so she wants to sever all ties with that and is acting in the opposite way than she was raised. priests of her religion aren't allowed to marry so she starts flirting with reinhardt not because she's romantically interested in him but because she enjoys the promiscuity and he's the one who helped her most so he's easiest to talk to like this. this also shows especially in how she reacts to compliments back; she becomes easily flustered because the flirting is just a face she puts on for fun and beneath that she's still deeply inexperienced with such things.

the sponsorship event chapters really hammer home that she's a kind person truly deserving the title of saint. she's been raised to do good and be kind that she doesn't know how to live for herself at all.

add to that the gradual collapse of her religious beliefs. obviously she cuts ties with the knights templar cuz they tried to kill her and her own stepdad lead the charge to do so, resulting in a distrust toward the gods, because what kind god would have followers like this? but she at least still believes the gods exist. But then the tiamata arc happens and she discovers that even the gods themselves are a falsehood. the gods of purity and corruption are the same being in two directions; so if your own faith decides the nature of your god, does said god exist at all? if your will shapes god's will, does god have a will at all? she's basically discovered this setting's version of atheism.

tlde she's just plain lost. And yeah the novel is always blatant abt feeding you character details like this but i still think it's set up well.

all her eccentric behaviours are attempts to find herself but nothing sticks. she has no more dreams, no ambitions, just drifting with the flow. she just doesn't know how to have ambitions not dictated to her, how to do anything besides following orders.

and again like. the story says "her survival is going to change things" and we learn its bcuz olivia is an insane fucking powerhouse who can outclass ellen. and with her being the way she is now, any faction could snap her up. she'd just go with the first one that suited her fancy. as long as its not the knights templar, she'll be fine with anything.

which i think reflects a lot of people with impending graduation on the horizon? i sure know when i finished high school i didnt know what to do. i'm happy with my career path atm but i also feel like i could've been happy doing anything else. i just stumbled into it. olivia reflects that feeling of not knowing who you want to be, with all these external pressures, religion, family, peers, that have all these expectations for her.

also how the story then immediatly contrasts this against reinhardt. he's presented as like, a pretty selfish, self-assured character. he knows who he is and what he wants. but olivia asks him, "do you?" and challenges him to reevalute. cuz is he selfish? he's just acting that way, when he's actually concerned with the well-being of others above all, same as olivia. the only thoughts he'll spare for himself are for his own survival.

and like, again!! olivia was putting on a selfish seeming face when she's fundamentally still just kind beneath it all and both of them don't know how to be any other way!!

hell, even the circumstances are similar! olivia ditched the knights templar to save her own life but doesnt know what to do with the life she saved, and reinhardt escaped the demon king's castle to save his own skin. the main difference here is reinhardt is still working toward averting the crisis he's written into prophecy. he's still essentially trapped in the beginning of olivia's arc. so comparing the two is asking what will he do when the world's saved?

Chapter 244 i am kissing you on the mouth.

[fearlessjournalism]

ok here comes the first of my hopefully more coherent the burning god posts (spoilers in case you haven’t muted the tags!! last warning!!!)

the last chapter of tbg does. a lot. obviously. and i have so many thoughts about a lot of it. but one of the most interesting things about it to me is how quickly it deconstructs the idea of kitay that we want to see, all contained in “I didn’t think I could, either. I thought I couldn’t deny you anything. But I can, I always could, I’d just never really tried.” there’s so much contained in this about his relationship with rin, and it’s all messy and heartbreaking, but I want to talk about what it does for kitay himself.

the dragon republic established that, internally, kitay is really fucking angry all of the time (and understandably so, given the things he’s seen! I’m not trying to undercut that by any means). it’s this deep, burning rage that surprises rin, and yet we don’t openly see it expressed much in the burning god. sure, he gets in some arguments and he snaps at people sometimes, but with a couple exceptions that’s irritation more than anger. it’s not something that would’ve been totally unexpected from sinegard kitay. none of that is an expression of soul-deep anger, and at parts of tbg I was kind of wondering where it was, and in a more general sense, what he wanted.

the last chapter I think set out that he doesn’t just swallow his anger down, it doesn’t just go nowhere, it’s in the things he allows rin to do. at the same time she’s using him as a conduit for the fire, he’s using her as a conduit for his anger, because if she expresses it for both of them he doesn’t have to feel the same kind of responsibility. I don’t think he wants for people to get hurt, I really don’t, but I think on a deep subconscious level (that he maybe won’t even necessarily admit to himself), there’s a kind of perverse gratification in allowing this expression of rage and vengeance.

it’s not that I don’t believe him when he says he didn’t think he could stop her. I do think he truly believed that, and I think part of it is absolutely just that he loves her and has trouble denying her things, but I think if he really wanted to know he would’ve tested it earlier. even back when he first became her anchor, I think they tested just about everything, but I don’t think they tried that. maybe he was afraid of getting overwritten, but again, they could test it on a small scale in a controlled environment. he’s so analytical that that seems like a weird thing not to want to know, but I think deep down he didn’t want to know because not knowing gives him plausible deniability. if even he doesnt think he can stop her, he doesn’t have to admit to himself or anyone else that part of him doesn’t always want to occupy the moral high ground.

so much of the fact that we’re drawn in by this (or at least I was, I guess I can’t speak for everyone) is that we only see him through rin, who loves him intensely but fundamentally sees him as weak. she knows he’s a genius, obviously, an incredible strategist and inventor, but she sees him as weak-willed and trying too hard to be Good. we don’t see much to dispute that either, at least in this book. he’s never in battle, which prevents her from remembering until the end that he’s a goddamn good soldier. he wins a couple arguments about costs and ethics, but loses a lot of others. and we know rin is using him. the nature of the anchor bond kind of ensures that, of course, but she’s also just very up front about the fact that she’s using him. it makes it harder to see the subtler ways in which he’s using her, both because it’s less conscious and because she doesn’t believe he could.

and like... it kind of hurts to realize that he’s allowed himself to be a conduit for the worst of her actions for the whole book, even the ones that he put up a fight against on the surface level. we want to believe that he’s Good, that he’s there through all of this both bc he loves rin and can’t leave and because he needs to be the mitigating force, always pushing her towards the lesser evil. and I don’t think any of those things are untrue. those are all very real motivations for him, but I think this part at the end pointed to something else as well. maybe it makes him a less good person than we wanted to believe, but it makes him a miles more interesting character.

[toxicpineapple]

Please give me your amami essay, I'd like to know the TEA! I was also gonna ask for the mastermind essay, but honestly I REALLY wanna hear your thoughts on his characterization (and your thoughts on his shitty fanon characterization)

HOOO BOY OKAY. this is good, it gives me an excuse to procrastinate on reading that new amasai fic on the latest feed. (note that i REALLY WANT TO READ IT, i’m just anticipating commenting and tbh the spoons,,, i lack them. it’s okay though i’ll get over it.)

so!!! let’s start with general attitude, because i think that amami’s is really unique. he’s a subversive character. in general i feel like that was the biggest goal with his character design and personality combination-- he looks like a total playboy, kaede even comments as much moooore than once. but he’s the absolute opposite. i’ll rant about that in a bit. i’ve already gone off on a tangent and i said i was gonna talk about attitude.

amami is laid back, but not to the point of complacency. y’know what i mean? like, he’s relaxed, but he’s on his guard, too. his speaking style is pretty casual (typically he’ll greet people with a “hey,” whenever he’s slightly uncomfortable he’ll probably say “haha”... this isn’t necessarily a canon thing but i like it when people have him talking in sentence fragments. ex. “forgot to grab my jacket” or “wanted to get a snack” sort of thing) and that’s just,,, the type of person he is. he’s casual. it’s remarkable considering how wealthy amami is-- though bear in mind, he still IS wealthy, so there are bound to be things he doesn’t understand about people-- that he can be so normal and like, down to earth, in a way. when people mess around with him he’ll probably just laugh it off.

to cite a fic i read once that had REALLY phenomenal characterisation, imo, ouma ends up dumping a bucket of water on amami’s head (on accident; there are some semantics and i won’t get into it but again the fic is really good and funny and you should totally read it) and amami just squeezes out his shirt and makes a couple cracks before walking away. (sorry this isn’t meant to be a “dumping love on fics” post but GOD that fic is hysterical.) he’s an enabler too, at least i think so-- remember that anthology chapter where kaede, shuichi, and kaito are trying to catch ouma and kaito sets an “amami trap” to stop him? all ouma has to do is flutter his eyelashes and go “pleeeaaase let me go amam~niichan!” and then he just. he does. what a fucking doormat i can’t believe him.

he’s like that though. i feel like big brother stuff is kind of his weakness. (and not in a kinky way alright i will destroy you. he might make a joke about having a sister complex in one of his ftes but he DOESNT that joke was just tasteless COME ON RANTARO WHFKLDSJFK) which brings me to his whole older brother thing, because like,,, YEAH. guy grew up with twelve younger sisters!!! and he remarked in his ftes with shuichi that they’re mostly step sisters, which means he just.... has a nurturing personality. i mean amami is somewhat conservative (if you try to come on to him during salmon mode you will be brutally rebuffed; amami tells u to keep your horny thoughts to yourself, though you shouldn’t be ashamed of having them) so i imagine he’s not the biggest fan of his father’s tendencies-- not that i don’t NECESSARILY interpret his father’s behaviour as him sleeping around.... it’s possible he just likes children and deliberately marries women who already have kids so he can take them... i mean it’s exceedingly decent to keep considering ur step children to be your children after a divorce so i have a hard time reconciling this common image of rantaro’s dad as some kind of player figure with the impression i got of him in my head but that’s just my daddy issues coming into play again so ignore me-- and yet he still considers all his sisters to be his sisters.

not to mention he feels a great deal of like, responsibility, when it comes to taking care of them. i find it impossible to believe that all the losses were his fault. you could ARGUE that the one he tells you about with his younger sister was to be blamed on him? but i mean, amami is a child. he didn’t even know his sister was following him out. sure he blames himself for it but there’s no real good way to blame him just considering that,,, he’s a kid. and he was so young-- he was obviously so young-- when it happened. so like, not to be all Good and Bad on you, but i do feel that amami is fundamentally a good reason. and you SEE that too, in the killing game. i’m certain he was on the fence about trusting that note he woke up with. would you trust it? he had no memory whatsoever of writing it, all he had were the words “ultimate hunt” and a map of the school to guide his way. i imagine he wasn’t even sure if he should do what the note said. but then ryoma started talking about sacrificing himself for everyone else, and rantaro probably thought, “well... if i have a way to get us out of here, even if it doesn’t work, i can’t just let ryoma sacrifice himself without having tried.”

rantaro is self-reliant too, i think. in the talent development plan mukuro remarks that she noticed he was injured a good number of times, but never said anything about it because she felt like he was trying to keep it under wraps. (note: good idea for an amami and mukuro friendship fic. must write. someone remind me.) i think amami kind of feels isolated from his classmates? either because he has these perceived notions of like, independence and whatever, not burdening anybody else with his problems (honestly not to go chabashira on main but wtf men ask for help c’mon i promise if you find a person who’s worth being in ur life they won’t treat you like shit for feeling ur feelings) or just because he’s not around a lot. i think amami is the type of person to invalidate his own problems a lot, or at least downplay them to others. he blames himself for all his sisters going missing, took the responsibility to find them all. you know the blow that’s going to be to his education? traveling around the world looking for twelve different people? and he plans to keep doing that!!! forever!!! ugh ;-; poor babey. but anyway i feel like he doesn’t want to tell anybody about his problems because he feels like it’s his thing to deal with.

i also believe that rantaro is a bit prideful. i mean, anyone can be prideful under the correct circumstances, and in fact there is a great deal of pride that simply isn’t addressed by the fandom in analysing characters and that makes me really sad because pride is such a SEXY character flaw but i’ll leave that alone for now. he hates being told to give up on what he’s doing. i mean everyone in his life has been telling him to stop looking for his sisters. that’s got to suck, but also, DAMN look at what his reaction was. this utter refusal to open up to anybody. shuichi’s ftes with him are spent pretty much just trying to get amami to stop squirreling around and actually TALK to him. amami asks shuichi at one point if he has any siblings and when the response is negative, amami immediately assumes that shuichi wouldn’t understand, would tell him to quit. just like everyone else.

(i mean, even with kiyo and mukuro, whose circumstances mirror his almost painfully at least in willingness to sacrifice stuff for their siblings, he doesn’t tell them what he’s doing, just that he’s doing it for his sister-- singular-- and that he would do anything for her. kiyo and mukuro!! out of ANYBODY, they would understand. in tdp they DO talk about it-- kiyo encourages him to keep searching-- as his friend...... fuck amaguji is such a good ship even if the implications of kiyo saying he wants to meet rantaro’s sister after he finds her bc she must be suuuuch a good person if he’s doing all this for her are uhhh not great-- and mukuro immediately understands when he says it’s to do with his younger sister. like, full stop. she just goes “okay” and goes serious. all at once. damn rantaro, mukuro, and kiyo really do be a power trio huh. i need to write more fic about them i miss them.)

this is more into baseless conjecture so take this as you will, but i also think rantaro is kind of,,, easily distracted lmao. he mentions helping out a village with a disease-- been a while since i’ve seen his ftes, sorry for any inconsistencies-- among other shit and like... bro what are you DOING. you have sisters to find. and he can’t be getting injured all the time, getting wrapped up with gang violence and all that, looking for people who were lost traveling. i mean sure, you could say they went all over the world and got wrapped up in all sorts of mess, but more likely they stayed in roughly the same area, waiting for him to come back. and also? i have a hard time believing his sisters were lost in these remote forest places people always put them. COME ON, who the fuck goes to some village for a vacation? a RICH person no less. i’m on another tangent. sorry. but yeah, i love the people who write rantaro as an absolute airhead. i headcanon that he has no way of judging the passing of time and thus is the absolute worst in the bathroom bc he sits there for twenty minutes thinking about the universe and then walks out like “:) ok ready to go” like wtf are you even doing there stupid akljdf anyway.

i think rantaro is softhearted and thoughtful. in his ftes with kaede he demonstrates an ability to look past what people show at surface level-- you can ask him about miu, kiibo, or kiyo and he’ll give u Good Fucking Insight(tm)-- and analyse their intentions more closely. and i mean this is just from a couple day’s interaction. he’s down to earth for sure, understanding when people are intimidated but also caring and observant. (his “talk about a first impression” line is so fuckaindgf.... good for his characterisation. i love romantic amamatsu but he so clearly takes an older brother role in those ftes, he’s really such a sweetheart,,,, hnadhfkj ;w;) rantaro is just. he’s patient with people. and selfless and kind. idk it’s all the good stuff. warm smiles and indulgence. all the way. probably lets kokichi steal his lunch.

THAT BEING SAID: i think rantaro also has a very serious streak. he doesn’t show it a lot but there are moments. he’s self-sacrificing-- i mean, obviously. he was the ultimate survivor, after all. some people hc that he got there by killing, or maybe everyone else in his game died but one person, but bro that doesn’t make any sense???? no. what happened was there were probably like three people left, and monokuma was like “one has to be sacrificed” and rantaro thought, welp. it’ll be me then. and i wouldn’t say the choice would be immediate because rantaro DOES has self preservation instincts-- he’s only human-- but i don’t think he’d have let anybody else make that decision. i think ultimately he would try to protect other people.

he can be scarily confrontational too. i do believe he’d usually only do it in the defense of others-- like, his base instinct is to protect. i read a fic once (oumami, unfortunately) where ouma was committing crimes and went to hide behind rantaro and rantaro instinctively moved to protect him, and that’s.... that’s good characterisation. point one to the oumami stans, point zero to me. motherfucker. (love u oumami stans, it’s just not my thing.) i really like it in fics when he’s stern, lecturing people for hurting other people, but i also think rantaro is too understanding to be truly unforgiving. like if two people got into an argument and one came out of it more hurt than the other, i don’t believe that amami would be unsympathetic to the less hurt one. i think he’s mature enough to take a look at the situation and go, well, okay.

i think he’d be TERRIFYING when angry. he’s patient, y’know? so it takes a lot to get him to that point. he’s really, ah, accommodating of people. puts up with a lot of bs kind of thing. but i imagine the best way to get him to snap is by hurting someone he cares about. and at that point: ur fucked. i’ve never written it before because i’m terrified of what i’d do with that kind of power but.... imagine the shuichi whump. holy god.

i’m NOT here to talk about shuichi whump (though i’m down to do that any time of day believe me) so i’m gonna like. shhhhiiiiiiffft.

i project on characters a lot so at this point it’s difficult to distinguish if some of my characterisation things are like, actually characterisation things? or just me venting, so like, take nothing i say as canon, but also,,, akdsjf we love a man who bottles up his emotions.

because rantaro just doesn’t have the TIME to be crying all over the place. he was probably a total wreck when he lost his first sister. and his second. and maybe even his third. but then he started to gather his composure, more and more. because if there’s anything that rantaro has in excess, it’s composure. the more losses he suffers the more of a shield he builds up. and the self hatred and the guilt and the blame and the responsibility are piling up and up and up, but god he hates it when other people see him sad, because he needs to be the strong one, he can’t just pile that up on other people. that’s not their weight to carry, and besides, he’s the older brother, he should be able to deal with his own problems. he’d just be burdening the people he cares about by letting them see his demons.

and then he doesn’t have any coping mechanisms because he never lets himself feel enough to cope, and when people get close enough to actually CARE about him, when people notice he’s upset or struggling and offer him help, he doesn’t know how to deal with it-- and god he hates lashing out at people but it’s so much easier to deal with the consequences of being mean than the consequences of breaking down. only conflict is scary when he’s one of the causes so he needs time to recover, and well, what better way to do that than to get on a plane or a boat and go look for his sisters? after all he’s wasting time whenever he’s just sitting around, they’re still out there and he needs to find them, so might as well just keep pushing himself to the limits, because it’s his fault they’re lost anyway...

something mukuro said to rantaro in the talent development plan stuck in my brain. like, initially it’s just a funny and cute interaction (rantaro even blushes and a blushing rantaro is a GOOD FUCKING RANTARO) but when i thought about it more i was like.... huh. hm. angst ideas. mukuro makes a joke about rantaro going over to her stand at the festival to flirt with her-- i think that’s the context, i know it’s play-boy related-- and rantaro assures her (as he always does) that he’s not that kind of guy, and mukuro agrees, saying she was just pulling his leg and that he seems like the kind of person who gets dumped because he doesn’t show his emotions enough. rantaro laughs, blushes, and says “haha, not touching that one,” and akdjfnnnnnn god mukuro you’re so blunt i love you fkdjf but wow. i usually have rantaro as not having dated anyone, just because i feel like he kind of hyperfocuses on finding his sisters? and given that he’s like sixteen (seventeen at the MOST) there’s not much of a timeline for when his sisters got lost. in my fic search i had to cram all the losses into a four-year period and damn that was rough. anyway i just don’t think he’d really prioritise romance. but that reaction implies that that’s EXACTLY his experience with romance, which makes a bit of sense because mukuro is ridiculously sharp, and also it’s,, it’s just sad idk poor rantaro. getting dumped because he’s like the emotional equivalent of a doorknob when it comes to his own feelings.

i do think rantaro is a bit cowardly. not in the sense that he’d shy away from danger-- i think he’d RUSH INTO IT HEAD FIRST because he’s a man or whatever, i know he respects women but he does seem to hold some of those very stereotypically masculine ideals of constantly protecting those around him, which is like.... ok toxic masculinity mcgee can u and kaito stop throwing hands every time u see each other ty-- but more in the sense that he avoids,,, confrontation. emotional confrontation just ain’t his thing. and i think he’d rather run away from it or otherwise find some way of ignoring it than try to address his problems.

he would, with that in mind, probably try to associate with people who don’t push the matter. kiyo and mukuro, for example. they both have a fair amount of baggage themselves so they’d probably be respectful. ryoma is lowkey enough that he just, he wouldn’t bring that shit up, that’s uncool. i also think rantaro would get along REALLY WELL with kaito, and i actually don’t think kaito would pull his sidekick stuff with him? just because in a way they’re kind of kindred spirits, and i think kaito would see an ally in rantaro before seeing someone to try to nurture, so they’d probably have some kind of a truce like, if you don’t force me to be vulnerable, i won’t force you. one of the reasons why i love amamota so much is because it involves the two of them growing to care about each other beyond that sort of unhealthy camaraderie and breaking down each other’s barriers and i just..... hhnnfhhdkfj they could be so good for each other but nobody wants to talk about thatjslfkj

you weren’t asking for my amamota mess lmao sorry anon i get sidetracked SO easily. but yeah, amami gravitates towards people who wouldn’t try to get him to be more honest with himself. and i honestly think the v3 cast would be pretty good about that overall, except for shuichi who is a detective and has a habit of sticking his nose in places it shouldn’t be, but i see no reason to write that out because amami’s ftes already display that beautifully. (well, that’s a lie, i’m absolutely plotting out a slowburn in my head already that involves shuichi stripping down his walls one by one, but forget about all of that rn we don’t need to talk about why amasaimota is my ot3.) also he is softer on childish people like ouma and himiko. ain’t nobody wants to TALK TO ME about how brilliant it would be if rantaro and hiyoko were friends because hiyoko has such problems in that department and he would take one look at her and go hm. i’m adopting her. and he’s so fucking patient and nice and she’d lose the will to make fun of him and i have to do ALL THE GODDAMN WORK AROUND HERE but it’s fine. at least i get to write it.

i’ve described the fundamentals of his characterisation pretty well by now i think. i have some throwaway headcanons, like uhh,,

he’s claustrophobic

plays the guitar and the ukulele

he prefers warm weather and perishes in the cold

high pain tolerance

he’s a Good Cook

doesn’t like sex jokes (they make him uncomfortable)

asexual (i do like a good demisexual hc at all times of day tho)

master of piggyback rides

does his own piercings

impulsive as hell

gets lost easily but can always find his way back

has a lot of scars from travels

hands are rough and calloused (again from travels)

morning person

smells like evergreen (you know i had to, you know i did)

Radiates Heat Like A Fucking Toaster Oven

good hugs

hates tying his shoelaces

likes being the big spoon :)

has a tongue piercing

i said “some throwaway headcanons” but i ended up listing way more than i mean to. i’ll make a separate list of my rantaro headcanons someday and talk about them all in detail but for now, uh, there’s that.

SO AS FOR THE RANTARO CHARACTERISATIONS I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE:

god where to fucking begin. actually i know exactly where to begin. it’s my least favourite one just because, like i said at the very beginning, rantaro is a subversive character. i mean i think he’s kind of a low hanging fruit when it comes to that. there are plenty of other subversive characters in the dr series but rantaro is like that. you expect a flirt and u get,,, a sweetheart. but then some people (usually the ones who ship him with female characters exclusively though i will see it on occasion in an amasai or oumami fic) decide to throw that out the window and make him a total playboy!! and listen, i have no problem with people who are a little flirty. we’re kids!! flirt ur heart out!!! and hey, that’s not what this is about but y’know what? so long as everything is safe, sane, and consensual, then yeah!! exercise your sexual freedom and sleep with whoever you want to!!! i don’t think there’s anything wrong with messing around a little, dating who u wanna and experimenting with ur tastes and preferences. if rantaro WAS a playboy, then there would be nothing wrong with that. i would love him just the same because he’s such a fundamentally GOOD character.

except that.... he’s.......... NOT. you slaughter one of the biggest aspects of his character by throwing away what matters to him and making him some hunky-deep-voice-dreamboat dude meant to sweep kaede/tsumugi/whomsteverthefuck off her feet. rantaro is one of those characters where he’s so blatantly not that kind of person, and it’s like. it’s an affront, almost, to portray him that way? and i do believe you should have the freedom to write what you want, since we’re in that age (aside from romanticised pedophilia and incest; that shit ain’t cute, i say this often but pro-ship DNI) where u should be able to take some liberties, but it’s just. hnnn. it’s so frustrating. rantaro does not know how to smolder! if he DID smolder, he wouldn’t even realise he was doing it. he doesn’t have people lying at his feet, okay? he’s too flaky for that. i wouldn’t say he’s unreliable but he definitely ain’t at school as much as he should be.

another one that i hate: st-stalker? what the fuck? that is not sexy that is creepy and weird?

another another one that i hate: yandere? what the FUCK??? that is not sexy that is glorified ABUSE???? the yandere trope is AWFUL bc you’re taking a controlling relationship and turning it into a fetish. NO. if he limits ur contact with other people, if he follows u everywhere, if he threatens ur loved ones, if he tries to control you, ladies and gents and nonbinaries, he’s not a yandere, he’s an abuser and you need a fucking restraining order. actually, people of ANY gender or sex can perpetuate this behaviour and IT IS NOT CUTE. I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK WHAT BOUNDARIES U SET IN PLACE, IF YOUR FREEDOM IS BEING RESTRICTED THAT IS ABUSE.

hate it when people make rantaro violent. hate it when people make rantaro a murderer. hate it when people make rantaro controlling. hate it when people make rantaro overtly sexual. some kind of sultry deep voice dominant kind of figure. dude, what the fuck? i don’t,, want to make any public comments about sex positions because i think that’s kind of Strange to just talk about on a post, but i do think that the way people portray him for their smuts is,,, idk it’s weird. i’m not gonna kinkshame u but like. :eyes:

i will however accept rantaro as a thrillseeker, or a highstrung rich boy, or a total space cadet, or a himbo, or a cryptid. these are all very good interpretations of the Mans. just, like. be wary of making him two dimensional. a good character is multifaceted. if you can take a trait that clashes with all of these and SELL ME ON IT, i will buy it. if u give me good justifications, or even just good writing?? then i will accept it.

the long and the short of it is, anon, he’s my favourite so i think about him a lot. i love writing rantaro. he’s just, he’s a Guy. y’know? He’s A Good Dude, If You’ll Give Him A Shot. :) we don’t get to see very much of him but i think that there’s plenty of material if you overanalyse everything, which, as you probably all know by now,,,, i absolutely do.

thank you for the ask, this was a delight to spend an hour talking about.

[sasukebarmitzvah]

Do u think naruto was ever able to rebel against the village? Like if he truly understood what the state did, if sasuke made him see that things must CHANGE not just get burried. The idea of civil war in naruto and the justice for neji and sasuke...i love it but naruto doesnt know how to deal with things unless he blames himself for them... anyway, thots?

i do think naruto reached a place where he would have defied konoha but the problem is that kishi took the narrative in a more jingoistic direction after that which kinda blew any chances of that arc actually being resolved in any other way.

imo the key moment is during kage summit when obito confronts naruto and kakashi and tells them everything he told sasuke, about the truth of the uchiha massacre and itachi’s role as the scapegoat. naruto hears this and he gets mad about it like he’s ready to go tell everyone what happened, his blind faith in konoha is really shaken. 

i mean before that i think naruto already had a subconscious predisposition to wariness re: konoha because of how he grew up abused and alienated, but he never really wanted to address it before—instead of being outright in his anger towards the village, he turned to attention-seeking and gunning for the hokage seat. then eventually he was accepted, with the village hero role foisted upon him after the pain attack, and despite it bringing him some discomfort he still powers through it because it’s easier for him to chase that praise than stir up more conflict.

but when obito tells naruto about the uchihas it clearly makes something click in his mind, like, ok it’s not just me something’s wrong here. when he and the rest of team 7 meet with sasuke a few chapters later, naruto tells sasuke that he understands why he’s doing what he’s doing and doesn’t even blame him for it. 

then when sasuke says he’s gonna kill everyone in the village including naruto, naruto is like, well, no, that’s just putting the onus on a lot of otherwise clueless people. naruto says that sasuke would have to kill him first, that when their battle inevitably happens they'll both kill each other in the intensity—but naruto doesn’t even mind, because he and sasuke will be free of the burdens thrust upon them both by konoha. to me this attitude makes it seem like naruto is still struggling between his upbringing as a konoha loyalist and his anger towards the village that he tried for so long to repress that’s finally surfacing because of what obito told him. he’s really struggling because he Can’t reconcile these two lines of thinking and so he opts for the easier choice as he always has in the past (dying a martyr, because at least he’ll be dead and won’t have to make a hard choice).

kage summit sets that internal conflict up for naruto’s character and it’s SO interesting and i would’ve loved for that to actually have been explored properly, to have had that arc carried through the climax of the story and more explicitly play a part in vote2. but i think around this time kishi’s editors told him to “make naruto the main character again” aka Stop it with the sasuke sympathizing aka no more questioning the authority of konoha is to be done by the protagonist. which is so disappointing! 

so that brings us to waterfall of truth where naruto directly confronts his inner self, the one who is angry, who is empowered by his rage, who wants to run away from konoha and owe them nothing more. this is a really interesting scene to me because it had the potential to be that pivotal moment where naruto finally decides to stand up for himself and start acting completely of his own will (or at Least openly condemn the corruption in konoha). but then what actually happens is Happy Konoha Naruto shuts down Angry Naruto. 

his reasoning is what's really striking: naruto literally says to his “bad” inner self that he can’t harbor that negativity anymore, that he has to suck it up so he can be the person that the people of konoha believe him to be. again, he’s deferring to the easier path of conformity to acceptance because from childhood, he was a pariah, he was hated by everyone and didn’t even know why—this conditioned him to seek approval and praise wherever he can get it. even after having his hurt dredged up by obito’s words, sasuke’s actions, and his confrontation with his inner self, the effects on his psyche that his childhood created are a more powerful influence on his decision making. he represses his anger because rebellion isn’t what’s going to get people to care about him, and what he wants the most is to feel loved.

like bro thats so fucking upsetting..... naruto just spends his life being manipulated by the entity that caused all his problems, and every time he comes close to breaking out of that cycle, he chickens out at the last minute because he thinks he’s already getting what he needs on a psychologically fundamental level from the village. but he’s not. 

so with that having been said i intellectually understand why he acts the way he does from waterfall of truth on, but i don’t agree with it lol. like this poor child deserves better but with the direction kishi was forced to take with the series at that point in it, it’s no surprise that the jingoism won over. i wonder how naruto’s internal struggle would have played out if that hadn’t been the case? i certainly think he could have completely rebelled against konoha. the anger was there, and he was completely justified in it, but the problem is that he keeps repressing it and doesn’t let himself truly feel it.

i wasn’t planning on writing this much in response to this ask sdhfjfjsdg i just have a Lot Of Thoughts on this tl;dr i love naruto he deserved better and we need someone to rewrite the series and do it PROPERLY and also read all the bits above that i bolded

[askderynsharp]

Prince Aleksander Ferdinand of Hohenberg and Midshipman Dylan Sharp have been my ultimate otp to end all otps since I first read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld in the eighth grade. 

This could be because they exist in one of the coolest examples of biopunk meets steampunk I’ve ever experienced. 

It could be because the one of the pair is a subtextual transman so instrumental to my own gender expression that I named myself after him. 

But I think that out of everything, its because the romantic aspect manages to be the center of attention without subtracting quality from the plot. 

The reason that I’m so invested in these two more then anything else in the series is because the book isnt about anything else. Scott Westerfeld seems pretty open about the fact that Leviathan is supposed to be a young adult romance with the backdrop of characterature of the great war. But unlike so many romantic stories, especially those geared towards young adults, Scott uses the dual narrative to expand on both of the lead’s experience. The story could have very easily been Alek’s alone, while a major player in the world Dylan’s point of view wasn’t completely necessary if the intention was ever going to be Alek getting his throne in the end. 

The same goes the other way, if it were just a story of a transman’s developing gender identity, we wouldn’t have any reason to hear from Alek. Both Alek and Dylan could easily have been shoved into a ‘supporting character’ role, but they weren’t.

Simply put, Dylan and Alek are in a love story where neither of them are love interests. They’re both player characters, people we see inside the heads of. We spend the entirety of the first book getting to know them as individuals before they even meet, we see their interactions in a non-romantic light for the first few chapters, and the romance doesn’t start to bloom until it makes sense based on what we know of the characters.

Dylan doesn’t just think Alek is hot and decide he likes him just because outta all the men on the ship theres just something about the one that happens to be the other main character (*cough* kaider *cough*)

The reason he likes Alek is because they shared a very intimate and emotionally charged scene together that strengthens their friendship and ends with with a physical embrace. Its kinda like that trope where a kid goes to a party and then sits on a patio and talks with a complete stranger about life for an hour and is convinced they’re totally in love by the end of it. 

Even if this exact scenario has never happened to you, you can see how someone so young ,and in Alek’s case vulnerable would develop a little bit of a crush

But even then, its just an infatuation at first. Something dumb and stupid that Dylan dismisses as such. It’s not till they share ANOTHER couple of emotionally charged and intimate moments in Behemoth that Dylan starts to take his crush more seriously, and only in Goliath does Dylan stop dismissing his feelings altogether. There is time devoted to Dylan coming to terms with the fact that maybe the crush is a bigger deal then it probably should be, and that he cant make it go away by telling himself that its a bad idea. 

The Leviathan Series is kinda a double edged sword to me. It is a love story, but done so well people dont think its a love story. When I talk other fans about it being a love story, they insist that it isnt. Its an adventure story because there’s so much action. Its a drama because the characters struggles don’t revolve around their relationship. It cant be a romance because there’s so much other stuff going on. But those elements dont mean its not a love story, those elements just mean its a competent one. 

There’s a reason that the last book closes on the romance coming to a fruition instead of the peace treaty signing. There’s a reason the bonus chapter is a fanservice one shot of them basically going to prom together. There’s a reason Goliath opens with the quote: “To everyone who loves a long secret romance, revealed at last.” 

Becoming emperor and ending the war wasn’t Alek’s destiny. Being an emperor at all is probably his ‘bad ending’ 

People make him incredibly uncomfortable, he cant take even the smallest criticism, sucks at anything to do with being in command, constantly doubts himself, and has a fundamental blind eye to gaging other people’s emotions. As a starting point the series could have easily made him overcome these things with an arc that would make him into an ideal leader, but they didnt go that rout because it wasnt important. 

The war was never the real plot of the book, but rather the setting. The lesson we learn by the end is basically that you have to let go of old ambitions sometimes and open yourself up to new ones. The new destiny that Alek made required him to abandon a throne he probably wouldnt have wanted in the long run. Dylan has to leave the Leviathan, but does so gladly because he understands that his destiny is fluid. Both of the main character arcs revolve around letting things go, and their mutual attraction is what pushes them to understand that. The priority of the series has always been the romance.

The fact that we think its not a romance story because the plot and characters manage to stand on their own is rather telling about the level of quality we expect in the genre. I think by calling Leviathan a love story it demands that other love stories take the time and effort Leviathan did to flesh out its world and characters before trying to get us invested in their relationship.

 I think that its incredibly pessimistic to say that if a romance story manages to execute other elements well it no longer counts as a romance. As if to say that romance as a narrative theme is so shitty that you need to dum everything else down to properly appreciate it. 

So often I see people praising books solely because there’s no romance in them, or because the romance has some new dumb twist that makes it not like other romances. Boy meets girl can be interesting on its own if boy and girl have names you can remember and personalities that you want to cheer for. Just because Leviathan is cool doesnt mean its not romantic.  

I’ve made no secret about my issues with the Lunar Chronicles narrative, but at least in the trainwreck of truly ludicrous cause and effect, it puts its characters first and foremost and uses the setting to its greatest advantage. It takes the time to explain why they do the things they do, why they like what they like, and even if the outcomes of their decisions are improbable, they still feel earned because the author makes sure to let you know why the plan would work in her world as opposed to ours. 

Saying that The Lunar Chronicles isnt a love story is insulting to the work. You dont read those books for the sci-fi or the plot. The plot’s a joke and the sci-fi is terrible. The world makes absolutely no sense and couldn’t exist anywhere within our reality. Not only is the science impossible, but identical to the foundation of any cyberpunk setting with even the smallest bit of thought put into the way shit works. (one example includes an evil mistress who doesnt give a enough of a shit about her pet hacker to supply regular haircuts, health inspections, or clean water but was kind enough to install artificial gravity in her satellite prison and keep it running even when she herself isnt aboard.) But the rivalries and friendships between the factions are unarguably excellent, and the obvious priority of the author when she was writing these books. 

And thats fine because she does it well, and if our mass perception of the quality of romance is any indication, its hard to do romance well. She is celebrated for doing the romance so well. 

So why cant romances that manage to do both be celebrated as romances? Why do we have to demean the YA romance genre to praise the YA romance genre? 

I meant for this post to be like a paragraph, mod out.