For a moment, imagine yourself in Mithrun's brother shoes.
Your brother - stronger, prettier, more charismatic, but also distrustful and disdainful of everyone especially you - is to be sent to the Canaries. It is the rule, it is the duty of all noble houses. But you know what goes on there, Mithrun knows what happens there. Yet you see him off, bidding a temporary farewell as you do, because someone from the House has to go and it won't be definitely you. Mithrun knows this, you know this. And you wonder, very briefly, if Mithrun hates you now more than he does already.
Your brother - powerful, agile, a good soldier just as he is as an heir, if he could only be an heir - suddenly disappears. The unit he belonged to suddenly disappeared. And you're speechless because - how? why? No one wants to answer you; they will instead try to bring back a body, they promise to you. But that is not what you want. You grieve for your brother. but your own family doesn't grieve with you. Wasn't Mithrun family too?
Then you found out: MIthrun is alive.
Your brother - now weak, despondent, his eyes always looking for something that is not here nor there - is to be sent home where people can take care of him. It is not your first choice, you want him home. But he is - sick. Not quite there. He needs someone who can look after him and you look at yourself - your gait, your constitution - and you know it can't be you. So, you follow the advice of your family and pour out all your resources to find him the best of healers and caretakers. You ask yourself, almost daily, if Mithrun would ever return to who he once was.
Your brother - strong, pretty, uninterested of anything and anyone else aside from what he calls 'the demon' - is now better. He can walk on his own now, eats without throwing up on himself. The color on his skin is back and the scars of his injuries have faded into thick bumps and discolored skin. But he still isn't quite there; still needs help and probably will for the rest of his life. And you can live with that. You can provide that. Just as long as he comes home.
But doesn't. Your brother - now a husk of his former self, and you hate thinking of him that way, but you can't help yourself, the Mithrun you knew is gone - runs straight back to the Canaries. His mission is not over, he says. He doesn't care how long it takes, he says. And you see him off, again, because someone from the House has to go and it still can't be you. Mithrun knows this, you know this, and you can't help but wish, very briefly, if things would've been different if you went instead of him.
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anyway anyone who thinks that blue is the poster boy for the "jerk rival" trope when silver is quite literally right there has clearly never paid any attention to any of blue's dialogue in the games, where there are Quite Literally Multiple Instances of blue giving red advice meant to aid him on his journey in the same way that many of the later friendly rivals and neighbors do, even if the tone of it isn't as sickeningly sweet as the later rivals are. blue literally, in the game, waited in the middle of silph co. to challenge red to a battle to make SURE he was ready to take on giovanni because he was worried about him. do some of you genuinely think that blue was so mean to red when they were eleven that red is like. still traumatized by it when they're in their twenties or something.
red and blue's whole journey is actually kind of hilarious because you have professor oak very clearly favoring red to the point where blue isn't even an afterthought and blue's clearly decided that he's sick of it and hates red now but he still shows up to give him advice and check on him to make sure he can actually handle fighting team rocket and whatnot. it's just a constant loop of "yo! red! crawl around in grassy areas to find more pokémon! go visit bill (who gives red the s.s. anne pass) and thank him for creating the P.C.! i waited here in silph co. for you because i knew you'd turn up! you collected all the badges, too? that's cool! i was looking forward to seeing you!" that he buries under another loop of eleven-year-old "I'M SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOU LOOK HOW COOL AND STRONG I AM" bullshit because again. he's just up and decided he hates red now because he's clearly & understandably jealous of all the attention professor oak is giving him ("you and your rival used to play nicely together when you were little, but lately, he has become mean." -> pokémon blue manual) but that doesn't change the fact that they've been friends since they were toddlers and that never once goes away no matter WHAT happens between them. do you think blue's phone call ("I'm Blue. Man, this guy called Red brought me down in a heartbeat. I haven't seen him in a long time...I wonder where he is and what he's up to… Come to think of it, you look a little bit like Red. Yeah, you do. Just...Just a little bit. Whatever...") came from nowhere. Do you think that isn't the sound of a fourteen-year-old missing his best friend. Grabbing you all by the shoulders here. Do you think they ever stopped being friends. If you answer wrong you get tossed into a volcano
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Something really great about the persona 2 cast is that they all individually fucking SUCK to talk to casually. Every single one of them. They are all infuriating. We have:
Tatsuya, who will stare at you blankly if you try to initiate conversation (IS) and will dip without saying a word afterward (EP)
Batsuya, who will scoff and brush you off/otherwise act dismissive
Eikichi, who might honestly be the best to talk to in the IS crew and that is not saying much, who WILL talk extremely loudly over you (probably not on purpose?) and will not be paying particularly close attention to the conversation beyond whatever he wants to say (gets points for talking about his gf. gets points taken away for constantly talking about his gf)
Lisa, who will automatically assume bad faith and will be rude to you the entire conversation unless you manage to defuse her temper (good luck)
Jun, who is uncommunicative at BEST and requires an encyclopedic knowledge of flowers, metaphor and body language just to get a HINT on what he’s thinking, and who will be extremely polite but completely unhelpful. If you tried asking him what he wants for dinner I guarantee it will be the longest 30 minutes of your life as he goes “oh I have no opinion :) whatever you want. :))” EXCEPT HE DOES HAVE OPINIONS. He has SO MANY OPINIONS. He is Expecting you to be able to pick up on his “obvious” clues. He will be passive aggressive if you don’t. (Jun babygirl you suck so bad I love u)
Maya, who is a delight but will very quickly become grating if you try to talk to her about anything serious as she hits you with the white suburban mom's "how to live a happy, healthy life" lifecoach slogans. You can’t even mention, like, stepping in a puddle or something without her hitting you with the positivity beam.
Yukino is great actually. 10/10. She’s fabulous we love her. Incredible conversationalist, chill and fun and easy to get along with. But she’s from Persona One, she doesn’t Count.
Ulala, who WILL bring up her relationship problems in every conversation within 10 minutes at least once. Any longer and she will start talking about Maya.
Do I even need to explain Baofu. Have you seen him.
And finally, Katsuya, who is a cop and a kiss ass and Very Obvious about these things. Also he can't talk to women. He can barely talk to men. Help Him.
And yet they all work wonderfully as a group. They are so annoying I love them
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I don't think we talk about xiyao exes to lovers enough. I understand that in canon the "breakup" ended with death and imo it was never going to end any other way (I have a lot of feelings about how jgy is doomed from the start) but even in aus where survival is an option I barely ever see their full potential realized. The fact that there is this heartbreaking gap that is between them now, and yet that, despite it all, they can't stop loving each other. When you have drama this good, why is the conflict relegated to outside threats and we end up with little to no exploration of internal strife, of the fact that these guys have been living a domestic lie for a decade (I cannot stress this enough, the amount of parralels between xiyao and jgy's marriage to qin su are staggering.)
And let me be clear I will NEVER begrudge anyone their hurt/comfort and wanting their faves who are denied happiness and peace at every turn to find it. god knows I need that sometimes. Or even the less healthy but so emotionally devastating fics where the caring isn't good, and it doesn't fix anything- might only make things worse, actually- and xichen ends up recreating his father's fate. I love all of those things. But. Man. This divorce was over 11 years in the making it should take AT LEAST that long to resolve. What do you do when the person you trusted the most lied to you for years? What do you do when the only person who's ever believed in you loses that faith so completely they'd hurt you over a lie without hesitation? I need me some xiyao who try to get over each other for 20 years and fail. I need them to meet after not seeing each other for years and have it hurt like no time has passed at all. I need arguments where no one raises their voice but that feel like a screaming match anyway. Do you see my vision?? Do you see what we could have?
(if fics that do exacly this are out there, recs are of course welcome)
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Rewatched the ep for like the 100th time and needed to categorize the major points. So here are the major mistakes they each made throughout the last 5 minutes, and why they made them
Mistake no.1: stolas calling off the deal and springing the confession on blitz without any buildup or warning
Why i think he did it: he was nervous as fuck, he'd been thinking and overthinking about this for a very long time, and blitz was trying to get them into bed and stolas saw how he almost gave in, so he immediately started talking to avoid temptation. He was also, judging by the duet at the beginning, a bit hopeful that blitz would stay. So he wanted to get to that point quick, to "set them free" as soon as possible. I also think that maybe he (wrongly) assumed that blitz would be expecting it, since stolas kept canceling their fullmoon plans and instead invited him just to talk? And blitz mentioned to fizz that stolas kept asking him about how his day etc. Stolas doesn't know that Blitz firmly believes that someone like stolas couldn't care for someone like him, or that he never entertained the possibility of stolas actually caring about him.
Mistake no.2: blitz taking the confession as a joke/roleplay
Why he did it: "am i not fucking you good enough?" "I can always do better" he got a whiplash from thinking he was being thrown away cause he, once again, wasn't good enough, to stolas suddenly saying what he said. Given how things went at Ozzie's, he was still under the impression that "it's nothing more than stolas wanting blitz to fuck him". Again, Blitz never thought someone like stolas would ever actually care about someone like him, and he also didn't want to lose stolas. So he immediately convinced himself that 1)it must've been a joke and 2)he HAD to do something to change stolas' mind and keep the deal, to keep stolas around.
Mistake no.3: stolas dismissing blitz and walking away instead of giving him time to process
Why he did it: stolas saw blitz' reaction not just as a rejection, but basically a confirmation of what he was worried about, which is that it's always just been about sex, and he's been forcing blitz into this transaction, that being with him was never what blitz wanted. Which is why he immediately tried to leave, he wanted to "set them free", as he said in the duet.
Mistake no.4: blitz yelling and getting aggressive, kicking the door and swearing at stolas.
Why he did it: for one, he doesn't know about Stella and how abusive she was, so he had no way to know that acting like that would cause stolas to shut down. He also was feeling frustrated with how stolas didn't give him a moment to process, he even said that he needed time to think. He actually wanted to have the talk, after he was done yelling, he waited for stolas to snap back, and the moment he saw stolas cry, he went to apologize. He didn't want to actually hurt him.
Later things got worse because Blitz, in not knowing about Stella and how her abuse and literal attempt at killing stolas was affecting stolas, accidentally triggered stolas' flight response by yelling at him. I'm almost fully sure stolas didn't register anything from blitz' yelling, other than the insults and the general aggressiveness of his tone.
Also, about what stolas said before teleporting blitz away:
"I think so very highly of you" was in response to blitz implying that stolas thought blitz was "smaller and not as important". He needed to let blitz know that that wasn't the case at all.
"I didn't realize you think so low of me" as a statement/observation, because he never actually knew how blitz saw him. It hurt him. Which is why he immediately sent blitz away. He most likely didn't want blitz so him break like that.
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