I'm getting a little teary eyed thinking about how, because of Neil, Andrew gets to experience a soft and gentle love where all his boundaries and traumas are respected. I think it says so much that Neil was basically raised on the run by a mother who ensured he only ever looked out for himself, and his own needs, and yet Neil doesn't ever once think about crossing Andrew's boundaries.
He creates such a safe space for Andrew that eventually he doesn't even have to ask Andrew for permission to touch him bc Andrew is comfortable and secure enough to allow it because he KNOWS Neil will never harm him. Neil provides an outlet for all of Andrew's love to spill out freely without him ever having to worry and i find that so goddamn beautiful.
Like i don't think Andrew probably ever thought he'd get to a point in his life where he'd be living in domestic bliss with a lover and pets. Yet Neil stumbled into his life and gave that to him. He gave him safety, and trust, and comfort. Neil gave Andrew a quiet after the storm he probably thought would never leave him!!!
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'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.
I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.
About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'
-Casey Plett, Consciousness
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I forget who in bookclub mentioned this (pls call yourself out and I'll @ you with credit in this post), but someone pointed out that we don't know if anyone knows what Meryl went through. What she knows. Wolfwood has a conversation with her earlier, but it's just about what Vash is, probably clueless as to their shared memories. Vash doesn't give any hints he has any idea what she's witnessed--he's so fearful of what he is and what he's capable of, it's possible he doesn't know what his powers are. Eventually, at the very earliest, it's seven months from now before we see her admit aloud what she's seen. And, hell. With how much Wolfwood and Vash tuck away and don't talk about, why would she feel like she could talk about it?
And yet, despite all that. Despite having trauma unlike anything she's ever known in her life before. Despite having trauma that no human should have to bear. Despite not being sure what to even do with that, with herself, with Vash (who she's seen witness and commit unspeakable horrors!). She still chooses kindness. She still chooses love and peace. She still chooses Vash.
We see a lot of people handle their trauma in really shitty ways in this story; in many ways, it's a story deeply about trauma. And Meryl, isolated and afraid and with this pain fresh within her, doesn't turn away from what she knows is good and worth saving on this hellhole planet. And, idk, I think that's beautiful, and I love her for it.
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A Ramble about Phase 19 of the Fifteen Manga Ft. Storm Bringer spoilers
Just absolutely cannot get over the 15 manga. I love the light novel so much, but this manga adaptation is so ridiculously amazing. Dazai and Chuuya’s proximity/touching has been amazing of course. I adore the way Hoshikawa draws Dazai and Chuuya as well (my baby boys, especially Chuuya). But these last two chapters with Rimbaud and Verlaine. Like, fuck. The whole “At least, one of them felt that way,” part just hits so much harder in the manga for me, with the art and page placement. And this whole most recent chapter. Like firstly, you don’t have to end every chapter with like Chuuya getting stabbed okay, help me out here.
Comparing the last page of phase 18 with Verlaine and the first page of phase 19 with Chuuya makes it so obvious that Rimbaud is seeing the similarities between them with just that parallel, which is confirmed later with Rimbaud quite literally seeing Verlaine standing behind Chuuya.
Not to mention in phase 18 the “That’s right Paul, I remember you,” in conjunction with him seeing Verlaine in Chuuya.
Then that flashback with Verlaine carrying Chuuya and Chuuya’s just so small I could cry.
Like, I knew he was small, but he's just so young, I can't. People were experimenting on him. Like, how??
The way Rimbaud wants to ask Chuuya something and Chuuya crouches down to him. Which leads to Rimbaud putting a hand around Chuuya as he tells him to live. How close and personal they are when Rimbaud says all of this just make it feel so much more impactful for Chuuya. Kinda love too that Chuuya isn't just standing over Rimbaud. He's making it obvious he's open to listening.
Rimbaud says a lot of shitty things to Chuuya up to this point, even complaining that he has to kill a kid while only referring to Dazai, completely not acknowledging Chuuya as anything more than Arahabaki. But once he fully remembers what happened with Verlaine, I feel like that’s when Rimbaud remembers what he truly believed about Verlaine and his humanity and how that extends to Chuuya’s humanity. Because Rimbaud’s whole final speech is most definitely things he’d also thought of or told Verlaine before (as I think is confirmed in SB). I think those are Rimbaud’s true thoughts and beliefs on the matter, it just took that long for him to remember the full story and how he felt about it all. Rimbaud saw Verlaine’s struggles with humanity, and now he also remembers why Verlaine betrayed him. And so he tells Chuuya to live, just as Verlaine wanted him to back then, live without the burden of worrying about your humanity or where you came from, because “you are you.” It doesn’t matter if Chuuya (and Verlaine) “are but a pattern etched on the surface of raw power.” In Rimbaud’s mind, and honestly where we eventually end up at the end of SB, is that it really doesn’t matter what your origins are, whether someone is an artificial personality (aka pattern) etched onto raw power, because really everything is some version of a pattern upon the world. And in a word with abilities, a lot of people are a pattern connected to a power. Just as in SB Chuuya decides that even though Adam isn’t human and he knows it, it doesn’t take away from Adam’s actions, his sacrifices, or his dreams. Same goes for Chuuya and Verlaine. Their origins don't affect how human they truly are. Their humanity is significant no matter what. It just took a bit more convincing for Chuuya to get there, a little more than what Rimbaud could offer on his (almost) deathbed.
Anyway, Chuuya holding Rimbaud’s hand as he dies just does things to me. Like, the book described that “Both Chuuya and Dazai quietly listened as if there was something in what Randou (Rimbaud) was saying that they couldn’t allow themselves to miss… Some things, however, would not return to normal: the body of a man who no longer felt the cold, and the hearts of two boys who stood rooted to the spot, staring at him. A gust of wind peered through their souls as it passed them by.”
This page just so well depicts that last line. It truly feels these boys have heard something so monumental, that they won’t ever forget. Standing in the aftermath of their first fight together, hearing these words about humanity that both mean so much to both of them. Dazai’s expressions really convey this to me in the manga, and convey it just so beautifully. And Chuuya being so close to Rimbaud when he speak those words just makes it feel like those words truly are so monumental for him. And also this means that Chuuya fought to kill a man, that to be entirely fair and clear was trying to kill him first, and then held to his hand as he dies, and there’s just something about this added detail that’s so significant to me in portraying the weight of it on Chuuya. Chuuya's connection to Rimbaud is a complicated but important one. But really these words are important for both boys, because let’s not forget that Dazai also struggles with his humanity. Even if he doesn’t have a physical reason to doubt his humanity, like Chuuya, there are many other reasons that he does doubt it. So hearing that all people and all of humanity are really just patterns within the physical world, human or not that’s true of everyone and everything, and that’s important for Dazai to hear too. I think both boys think back to Rimbaud’s final speech quite a bit, if I’m being honest or did for a while.
I am NOT getting over the detail that someone (Chuuya??) put Rimbaud’s scarf on his grave. I just… it does something to me and I love that detail so much. And cutting back to that “You are you” line while Chuuya’s talking to the grave is just so perfect in my opinion, and again just shows the significance of it so, so well. It’s like, he's talking to Rimbaud, complaining about his actions really, and then it cuts to that “you are you” and it just shows almost the contrast I guess between Chuuya feeling unrest at not finding stuff about his past that Rimbaud could’ve given him, but maybe wouldn’t have anyway, and Rimbaud’s statement that those things don’t matter because Chuuya is who he is beyond all that. Also the little dandelion blowing into the wind, to me also signifying a wish being spread.
Anyway, entirely unnecessary to end the chapter with a big knife in Chuuya’s back, thanks. Especially after Chuuya mentions how he’s still exhausted from everything. Like let’s just, stop, please.
He's just a boy, leave him alone for the sake of all things good.
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What was your inspiration for Yara? how did she come to be?
Oooh good question!! Yara, like the vast majority of my OCs, underwent a lot of tweaks and changes and development to the point I have her at right now, where I've got her story and personality and abilities and all that pretty tightly nailed down.
Her character concept started as Mihawk's daughter (I just thought he was EXTREMELY COOL the first time he showed up in the East Blue arc), since I have a thing with my OCs where they always end up being related to a canon character somehow (i.e. Circe Mackinnon (Soul Eater) being the half-sister of Franken Stein; Lilletz Lucilfer (HxH) being the younger sister of Chrollo; Haganezuka Minako (KnY) being the niece of Haganezuka Hotaru; Joey Armansky (Death Note) being the cousin of Mary Kenwood/Wedy; (Iryna Kovalenko (BnHA) fits this mould too but I haven't revealed who she's related to just yet heheh it's a bit of a doozy)). Funny enough, I initially envisioned her travelling with her father and perhaps encountering the Straw Hats at Baratie, so the whole abandonment plotline actually didn't come into play until later, when I decided to make her a Whitebeard Pirate after meeting Ace in the Alabasta arc and absolutely falling in love with him (which only grew as I learned more about him and the depth of his character).
Sometimes, the funny thing with OCs is that after a certain point, their stories just sort of begin to write themselves and all the pieces start to fit together in some really nice thematic ways. Yara and Ace's relationship developed as they found common ground with their resentment towards their fathers and both looking to Whitebeard as a surrogate father figure, which in turn developed Yara's internal struggles with her own identity (not knowing where she came from for the longest time and then even after finding out who her father is, dealing with the pain of being an unwanted and neglected child who grew up into an fiercely angry, yet profoundly lonely young woman). The more I thought about what Yara's early life must've been like, the more I could get a good grasp of who she is as a young adult, what her major plot beats are, and how those connect with the canon story.
Her relation to Wano and the Shimotsuki family (and Zoro, who became her second cousin on her mother's side) was a later addition, as I continued to learn more about the One Piece world and how she could potentially fit into each arc. Marineford and Wano were the two natural places where she would exist, so I've really tried to figure out her development in relation to those two arcs.
I hope that answers your question okay! I could really talk about Yara (or any of my OCs) all day heheh
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