#the path to perfection is trying

[passthroughtime]

sunday six (but i don't write anything beside kuwagami)

@jichanxo @four-white-trees @overdevelopedglasses @mike----wazowski

i'm getting my groove back with chapter 5 and don't really want to distract myself with something else, so this week's kuwagami is the ever-changing edition

He got to know. He had to figure out what to do to help Kuwana. Even though the best help he could possibly provide now would be to step away, Yagami wasn’t about to do that. He wasn’t good at that. And if he didn’t do something, then… It was proven time and time again that he couldn’t ever leave anything in Kuwana’s hands.

Out of the two of them, Kuwana was the most prone to fucking up. He was reckless. He was used to taking risks. He wasn’t concerned about his safety— about his life.

Yagami had to do everything for him. How irritating it was, that he cared about Kuwana more than Kuwana cared about himself. He had no right, no capacity to deal with it on his own. How couldn’t he understand? How could Yagami possibly step down and let everything run its course, trusting Kuwana to follow sound judgment? He had none. Yagami knew that better than anyone, and because of that, he had to make sure Kuwana hadn’t done anything stupid and was staying away from further trouble.

If it came to it, Yagami would even risk his life and safety; wouldn’t be the first time, right? He never promised Kuwana that he wouldn’t, and Kuwana had to know him better than to hope his plea was listened to. He should’ve already come to realize just how stubborn and unruly Yagami was… unless he didn’t know him at all.

[assmaster-8000]

no because what if gojo satoru had found another special grade child. a child whom the jujutsu higher-ups wanted satoru to mentor because they'd be a useful trump card to the jujutsu society so naturally they'd want this child's talent to be honed till they potentially surpass satoru and be used. but satoru had seen too much of what this world had done to the person he'd love the most and he wouldn't ever be the one to subject another person to it like a tool. like a weapon. like a machine. so of course he takes them under his wing and gives them the guidance he never had, suguru never had. a 20 year old prodigy fresh with wounds of loss and grief taking in a child with greatness sitting on their head like a heavy crown cutting into their skin underneath his cape of power and blood stains. satoru is an enigma and even he himself doesn't know if it's because he wants to mold more strong jujutsu sorcerers who will change this world (because what greater irony than the child you wanted to utilize like a cold knife being the one to bring reform right to your door?), or if he wants to give them everything everyone else didn't have (please, he can't have someone follow in suguru's footsteps.), or if being number 1 was too tiring for him (but he doesn't know if it's selfish bringing them up to this blinding spotlight.)

years pass and he vehemently denies the higher ups control over his protégé, his student, his brat. he'll give them control and the means to break out of the shackles of this damned hierarchy. and even if satoru cannot outwardly say it, they're his child. as though he was there at their birth and has been ever since. his child and his best friend and he's their father and their best friend. it's either he sees too much of himself in them or too much of suguru because they're rising to the top fast and he's proud of them and so full of dangerous hope their wings aren't made of wax. (but he'll be there to catch them if they'll ever fall, of course!) they're so strong now. if he was blessed by the heavens and the earth then perhaps they were born of it because look at them go! giving the great gojo satoru a run for his money! not everyone can do that, you know? they're such a great student and person! isn't he such a great mentor?!

so he decides to have faith in them. bring them along with him to shibuya to deal with those reports of special grade curses he was being told about. this is how your teacher deals with these curses! better watch closely because you'll probably have to do it too! he has them positioned on the sidelines to ensure the civilians aren't hurt and if anything, to aid him because they're gonna be the strongest some day too so they can't be lazing a round on their ass all the time.

and they're doing so well until kenjaku comes along. satoru's breath stops and his heart rattles against the prison bars of his ribcage but it isn't the stupor of seeing his lost love that doomed him to the box. his special grade student lurches to -- what, attack kenjaku? pull satoru away? run? it didn't matter what. it was all a blur -- wards him and his body moves on an instinct that's even stronger that the compass needle pointing to suguru's body.

no, no.. that isn't suguru. it's his body and that's not him. somethings not right. but his student is right infront of him and that's them and he can't let anything bad happen to them now. flexing infront of his student can be saved for another day. but it's this mistake that ends up setting him right into kenjaku's trap and the box. the moment his gaze snaps to them and his body is torn between suguru infront of him and them kenjaku sees an opportunity and snaps it up like it's golden.

satoru doesn't even get the mere moment of chained freedom before he's fully trapped in the box. with the special grade student there, kenjaku needs to make it quick. make it count. he does. satoru is pulled into the box and satoru can't even say anything to his student. and he worries in his infinitesimal prison. satoru never usually worries unless if it's his leftovers have gone bad in the fridge.

they'll be alright.

they'll be alright.

they'll be alright, won't they?

they're strong.

they're capable.

they're smart.

he's raised them well they'll be okay they've got friends.

they'll do the right thing.

...

and when satoru finally exits the box he's sees faces changed. they tell him a lot about what they've been through, about what has changed since he's been gone, what changed about them.

he sees yuuji has been weathered with pain and a unique sense of hope.

he sees megumi has been puppeted with the strings of despair by sukuna.

he sees maki has faced the fiery trials and tribulations of this cruel world and bears it like her trophy.

he sees...

he sees nothing of his student. his special student. where are they? injured? somewhere off in the game? will they be back soon? time's a-running out, you know.

he sees the looks his students exchange and his heart drops. he knows. he knows. he knows what must've happened.

they're dead, aren't they?

and he's brought back to the time he carried riko's dead body in his arms and he was met with the disappearing suguru in the crowd and suguru slumped against the wall.

it's happened again.

they tell him they were a hero. that in satoru's absence, they did the heavy lifting and protected shibuya from the full-on destruction it would've suffered if not for them. that if not for them, the jujutsu world would've been left in even deeper disrepair. they saved some of their fellow sorcerers from certain death and suffering! they were the one to grapple with sukuna when he let all havoc ravage the city.

they paid with their life.

all because they were too worried about getting these normal civilians back home safe. about keeping their friends and mentors safe. and satoru wonders if there was someone else worrying about keeping them safe.

... atleast he didn't have to worry about them following in suguru's footsteps and the hatred of regular civilians. they were good of heart and soul. they were strong.

they did the right thing.

and satoru has a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that the person he's raised for, what, 10 years? is dead. gone. deceased. that's just preposterous! he was there when they were a snobby little kid and he was there when they were going through that awkward phase and he was there when they were learning more and more as a teenager and where are they now?

sukuna asks him that. "where's that miniature personification of yours? hah, don't tell me they died the last i saw them. have the special grades of this era started to slack off?"

satoru has all the more reason to kill sukuna now. he has to show his students who are watching that he can do it.

even if they will no longer watch him do anything.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I wouldn't really agree that boys are just arm candy in magical girl shows and only there to look cute. Yeah, sure the girls' friendships are the focus, but the boys are usually very much involved in the plot and most shows do explore their feelings about the odd things that happen due to magical shenanigans even if they aren't in the know (It's why ML baffles me even more with how they screwed up Adren's arc when he's the deuteragonist, when all these boys are supporting cast and get well rounded arcs)

I'm not much of a winx fan, but the specialists were very much not arm candy. Did the girls talk about them being cute? Yes, it's what teenage girls do. Did the narrative suggest they were good looking? Yes, but that's standard for most love interests in any genre. But we still got scenes with them talking amongst themselves about how they themselves feel and they got a fair share of badass fight scenes even if they wield no magic. A large amount of episodes actually included the boys and girls working as a team solving a mystery or fighting a villain. The girls might deal the finishing blow but the boys were still integral to the plot.

I hope this doesn't come across as hate, it definitely wasn't my intention. I'm just a bit too passionate about the magical girl genre.

I do think you have a good point with ML having a problem choosing a genre or blending two genres successfully.

For the CCS fans, I will add though that Cardcaptor Sakura had both Tomoyo and Syaoran serve as sources of motivation for Sakura. And both Sakura and Syaoran collecting cards even if Sakura is the only one who could seal them and yet never made you question whether Syaoran was even necessary for the job the way ml does with Chat.

I wasn't trying to say that boys have no part to play in magical girl team shows or that they're always treated as having no lives beyond the girls, that's why I mentioned that the Winx Club boys - aka, the Specialists - have their own (mostly off screen) lives and occasionally show up help the girls:

the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship

Even then, this is certainly a simplification of the roles that they play in the story, but I kind of had to simplify their roles down to their base components for the original post's discussion as I was talking in broad strokes of how these stories are written.

In terms of those broad strokes, the Specialists are absolutely only there for shipping fodder. That's why each one is assigned to a girl from the start and why their main role in the narrative is supporting their assigned love interest or causing relationship-based drama for their assigned love interest. If it weren't for shipping, then the Specialists would not exist.

While the Specialists do have fleshed out characters and may even effect the plot, the execution of those elements is designed around the girls. A really obvious example of this is the character Timmy, who has character development as the boy's tech guy. Why is he into technology? Because he's the designated love interest for the fairy of Technology and we have to show why they're a good match. Along similar lines, the boys don't really get plots that are removed from the girls because this is the girl's show. Every episode features one or more of the Winx, but the boys are optional and often don't appear.

This is because, narratively speaking, the boys are just love interests and that brings us back to Miraculous' big problem. You can't have a show where Adrien is written like a Specialist while also being part of the Winx Club and where Alya is written like she's part of the Winx Club while technically being more of a Specialist in terms of power set and actual narrative role.

I'm was thinking back to my memories of various Winx Club plots to find one that really highlighted what I mean here and I remembered that one of the big dramas in season one was the reveal that Bloom's love interest - Sky - was in an arranged marriage and had just never told her. As it turns out, that's a great example of what I'm talking about re Adrien!

Is that plot line technically based around Sky and letting his life effect the plot? Sure, but the fallout of that reveal revolves around Bloom, not Sky. The story doesn't really care how Sky's feeling as the conflict progresses. Instead, it focuses on how it affects Bloom and her friends because of course it does! She's the main character. It would be really weird if that plot suddenly focused on her side character love interest and his friends during one of her darkest hours/biggest moments.

Think of that and then consider how the ending of season five is written. Notice any similarities? Sure, this is Adrien's family drama, but because he's just a Specialist, the focus isn't on him. It's on Winx Club member Marinette and Adrien only shows up at the end for a kiss. That is the problem. That is what I'm talking about when I say that Miraculous will randomly write him as if we're watching a magical girl team show where Adrien is just the love interest.

In fact, let's really dig into this example because it's a good one.

You can have a look at the transcript for the finale episode of Miraculous season five here and see for yourself that Adrien doesn't even show up on screen until the final scenes when the big drama is over. The Winx Club wiki also has episode transcripts, so I took a look to see what happened in Winx land during the arranged marriage reveal plot (I love that this is a thing. It's so useful for fact checking myself!) This is the script for the episode after Bloom learns the truth. Sky does not appear even though his lies and family drama are the fuel for this episode's events, which are a major part of the season's arc. Note how perfectly that matches Adrien's writing?

Similarly, Sky's dialogue in the reveal episode is all about Bloom. He's worried about her learning the truth and thinking less of him. To match that, here's Adrien's only real dialogue in the penultimate episode of season five (full transcript):

Adrien:(Covers his ears.) I cannot transform... (Looks at his ring and tries taking it off.) Plagg: What are you doing?! Adrien: I'm not in my right mind. I'm too angry — at myself for falling short of Marinette's love, at my father for sending me here in London, at this stupid app and these rings that use my image... it makes me sick! This nightmare is giving me the horrible feeling that, if I transform, I'll get akumatized and destroy everything with my Cataclysm — Marinette, Ladybug... (Takes off the ring and hands it to Plagg.)

Switching back to Winx. After Bloom learns the truth about Sky, bad things happen because she's depressed. This results in her and the Winx going off on a journey to learn the truth of who Bloom is. After the girls share this big plot moment and Bloom gets her mojo back, the boys show up to be their ride home and to give Bloom her romance moment where Sky wins her back by declaring that he broke off the arranged married because he loves her.

Sky notably doesn't get an arc about choosing between his arranged marriage and his true love. We don't even know that the marriage is broken off until he tells Bloom because that was never really a conflict as far as the narrative was concerned. Of course he's going to pick Bloom! He's her designated side character love interest! He only exists to be with her. We don't need to treat this as a serious thing for him. The arranged marriage plot was never about him anyway. It was about giving Bloom a reason to have a darkest hour moment that moves the plot forward. Similarly, Sky calling off the marriage is nowhere near as important as him telling Bloom that he's called off the marriage to be with her in a grand romantic gesture.

This perfectly mirrors Miraculous' season five ending where Adrien doesn't appear until after Marinette is done fighting her big girl power fight against his father. As far as the writing is concerned, that fight isn't about him. His connection to the villain only really matters in terms of how it affects Marinette's actions during the final battle. Then, when the battle is over, Adrien shows up to give Marinette her big romance moment because, while the plot may be driven by Adrien's family, he is not a Winx club member. He's just a Specialist. Or, in the words of the head writer:

[image text: She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?] (The full, even more damning context of this tweet can be found here.)

What else can I say other than, "I rest my case."

Oh, and also that I didn't take this as an attack. I just thought it was a good opportunity to really dig into the nuances of this and what I was talking about in that original post as I never know how obvious this stuff is if you don't closely study story telling. As this case study hopefully shows, if a show is about a group of girl friends using the power of friendship, then their love interests may have important roles, but the boys are never going to be more important than the girls and most of the boy's screen time will be focused on romance and how their existence effects the girls because it's ultimately the girls' world. Without them, the show wouldn't exist. Without the boys? Well, then we just wouldn't have a romance plot.

[notpercieved]

"Jingyuan is a terrible parent towards Yanqing"

Where?? By all means hes not perfect i am well aware but hes very much trying

Yanqing didnt get manipulated by a heliobi because he feels like hes not good enough/a disappointment to jingyuan AND breakfree from it by realizing that jingyuan was never disappointed in him and has always believed in him from the start and that jingyuan has hopes that he will one day understand why he trains and perfects his swordsmanship for people to call jingyuan a terrible parent

And even so, jingyuan then proceeds to blame HIMSELF for not doing EVEN BETTER when it comes to teaching yanqing and told him not to worry to much about what had transpired

Yanqings worries about not being good enough and wants to make jingyuan proud is very understandable, its like a kid who just wants to make their parents proud in general, and jingyuans worries about yanqing being in grave dangers is also like a parent worrying over their kid regardless of their age, because thats what children and parents are just like in general, no one was wrong in that situation or in any, its just part of life and thats why finding the middle ground is very important as to not make one side feel belittled, but Jingyuan had never held yanqing too tightly till the point yanqing feels trapped, he just worries for the boy, and yanqing had gotten to decide on his own what he wants to be, it was not forced upon him

Not to mention the many instances we see in game or even events that jingyuan cares for yanqing too

They are very father and son, and i refuse to believe otherwise

[ria-starstruck]

after everything, does your father still shine so brightly in your memory that it blinds you to his flaws?

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[pigeonsareevil]

Idk about all of you but it never sat right with me when people portrayed Dutch as evil, manipulative and money driven ever since begining. I mean pre-canon pre-gang begining.

I think if it really was that way there would be no way the gang would trust him that much and that blindly after making so many bad and dangerous decisions. I know from expierience that emotional manipulation can go far but not that far. I simply cant see the younger him as the giant asshole that he becomes during the second game. I believe that, in order to achieve this level of trust and loyalty he mustve really loved all of them.

In a way, i think he also loves them during the course of the second game in his own, twisted way. I think he truly wanted to get them out of the trouble he caused, but had no idea how, and with his own paranoia and whispers about traitor in the gang, he kept making desperate decisions that in the end, resulted in even more trouble and suffering.

Now, i know there were no traitors in the gang (not counting Micah) and if he got his head out of his ass he would probably realise that but sometimes i think about how he mustve felt, thinking that someone that he loved, raised and gave so much to, would turn back on him and the rest of their family, let them die for a pile of cash, not even realising he himself was doing exactly that, but that feeling alone would be enough to drive someone crazy.

Combine this with the grief he mustve felt for the fallen members and the fact that none of this has ever happened before Blackwater, he must have thought that him failing and showing weakness would be the reason someone would betray him and it would explain his insane plans and attempts at regaining control over the situation, only realising just how wrong he had been when he saw Arthur dying at his feet.

Im not apologising him and DEFINETELY not trying to paint him as innocent. He did manipulate Arthur and many others during the game but i think it came from a different place then just wanting money. And of course he wanted the money, his greed was one of the many reasons the gang ended the way it did but there were deeper reasons as to why he wanted them so desperately, besides just for the sake having them and i choose to believe it was because he really wanted to provide and have enough for his family to live comfortably.

I just think the way he acted during the second game was, as tragic as that sounds, mostly out of fear of losing the people he saw as his family. Not even realising it would be that fear that would eventually kill them all off.

[fiendishartist2]

imagine going somewhere that you know you might not come back from. imagine leaving behind half-formed friendships and the facimile of your old ones, hand in hand with ppl who want you dead, because its the right thing to do. imagine you don't come back, just like you anticipated, except thats not entirely true. you dont survive, but some force stops you from leaving in peace; it leaves your body lifeless because it has no use for you besides the terror your mind can inflict on others, but it just won't let you die. imagine one day, you're free from the mental prison you've been trapped in. you wake up, but you're still not alive. you're cold and empty and no one looks at you the same because they can't stand to look at you. it hurts because you can't do anything but hurt people anymore. imagine you had no choice in this, except you did, didn't you? its all your fault because you were too curious, too naive, too prideful, too stupid. its all your fault, just like you always thought, and now everyone agrees with you. imagine they wish you hadn't woken up, and you can't help but agree with them. and yet, you do everything in your power to save them all, while you still have people left to save. because you're still you, even if your friends see an animated corpse in your place. you hold onto your humanity with white knuckles and gritted teeth because its all you have left of yourself. and you still lose by the end because you were set up to fail since the beginning. because you are jonathan sims, and the world has no sympathy for you

[yinyuedijun]

I think what happened to me as a writer is that in hell fic I wrote the ultimate kindest most sweet-hearted doormat reader character in all existence (I love that girl she is my daughter my princess and no one else is allowed to call her a doormat, but she is a complete doormat) and she got so horrifically fucked over by the plot because of her personality that for every reader afterwards I was like "okay if I'm going to pair this mc up with a man who will traumatize them I need to give them the capacity to traumatize him back" and that's how we've ended up with translation mc lol

[zenpandaxo]

I don’t judge Ascended Astarion apologists, because based on the narrative of the story I can’t help but wonder how many of them are just people who never broke their own cycle either. Did they become what they hated most in the end as well?

[ohdeargodwhy]

Okay but if we actually get tedtrent endgame my crops will be watered for 10000 years

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

haunted by the thought of roman’s voicemail on logan’s phone and it being a sort of bookend to dickpickgate, where both instances are “proof” of roman/gerri on logan’s phone but the voicemail is proof that, after the damage has been done, gerri feels more important to roman than trying to get logan to love him

[dirt-str1der]

What ive learned about the yakuza community is that you guys are way too hung up over that scene in y4 where he pinned haruka to the ground then started panting really heavily , that didnt happen for me , that scene wasnt real to me i forgot about it.

[boyczar]

[toothmarqed]

screaming at my brain STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...