#unsure abt their future themself

[chisatowo]

Unit swap au making me feel things. Specifically Mafuyu. Stupid motherfucker who cares too much abt everything all the time

[loudmound]

nin brain go brrrrrr so i wanna talk abt the thematic parallels and overarching themes of some albums. specifically tds, hm, wt and the fragile.

for starters, i think some people find the fragile to be more disjointed than tds because it doesn't follow the same cohesive plot that tds does, but i think the disjointed nature of the fragile works really well because the whole theme of the fragile is a broken person trying to put themself back together, having been broken by the previous events in tds, of which ends in a sui attempt. i interpet those more "thematically inappropriate" songs such as starfuckers inc as memories of the person's life that catapulted their decent down the spiral in the first place. they're scrambling for pieces to put back inside them, but at the end of it all, they end up back at the start, hollow and unfulfilled. they feel as if all they can do now is rot away because what built them up in the first place ultimately led to their ruin.

i also know that this is probably quite obvious as tds and hm are very much intentionally juxtaposed with one another, but i just can't help but gush about the complete 180 hm does in comparison to tds in terms of musical style. it's incredibly minimal and way softer, contrasting with tds' aggressive and insanely layered musical noise that assaults the listener (which is fitting because you're bearing witness to the downfall of a person's psyche firsthand, which is a pretty intense concept as it is). hm also offers closure for the protagonist where tds did not. granted it's cautious and a bit pessimistic (take everything and while i'm still here for example) but nonetheless, it's closure. the protagonist's life has been filled with pain and hardship after hardship but they managed to trudge their way thru recovery and come out a better and more whole person, and while they may not know what's in store for them in the future, they're finally home and free.

SPEAKING of themes of recovery, wt is pretty much the album just for that. while i see the fragile as the protagonist slowly trying to fix themself thru their own means and failing, that being the catalyst to them realizing "ok you know what? FUCK this. i'm sick of hurting myself and the people around me and i'm going to get REAL help," and then the protagonist's story segways into wt. i don't think it offers the same amount of closure that hm does because it doesn't mirror tds in the same way, but it definitely offers a lot of reflection on the protagonist's part in terms of mental illness (somewhat) and recovery from substance abuse and addiction (mainly) and is a good midway point in terms of plot.

note: i do realize that wt and hm are very much rooted in trent's own experiences and i'm definitely not trying to speak for him. he reuses a lot of the same themes that he did in previous albums such as tds and the fragile that it's kinda hard for me not to think about it in the sense that it's an overarching story about a person struggling with their sense of self, trying and failing to fix themself while their lack of solid identity permiates their wellbeing, and finally coming to the realization that they need real help, and while it's hard and while it still leaves them unsure as to what the future might hold, they've finally gotten better and will continue to.

(trent's work on nin may or may not have inspired a story that i've been developing for literal years now that i hope to bring to life someday and some of those story elements have been discussed in this post OOPS)

ANYWAYS that's all i have to say. thank u for taking the time to read this post bc the brainrot's simply massive this evening ❤

[benevadeca]

THIS ONE is the shit talk post. bc i started volume 7 of the LN and i sure did have issues previous to this but....just oh my god it sucks full offense. Like I know I shouldn't expect particularly skillful prose from an isekai LN written abt bad otome / harem tropes with like zero irony but GOD. spoilers under the cut and its EXTREMELY long apolgies to anyone scrolling by.

My full feeling towards hamefura is great concept, incredibly disappointing execution the futher the plot drags along, and it was never particularly Fantastic to begin with outside of initial “oh fun” vibes. Like def gonna recognize some of the issues w it lie in shall we say constraints of the medium itself, the anime/manga/LN market is a deep trench of capitalist hell i dont wanna wade into too deep, but i do get the importance of grabbing attention off the bat / necessity of having easily recognizable characters. but there are ways to do the above without like, completely destroying all concepts of pacing (the 7 yr timeskip for one), or just completely Reducing yr characters to say 2-3 recognizable traits with zero character development / concern for them outside of convenient gags / plot convenience. but hamefura does both of the above completely ad nauseum and with neither awareness of the irony nor concern

also just gonna get this out of the way, but also the more just. blatant Issues of the series, the fujoshi-ism whenever LGBT stuff is handled At All (so just...generalized ignorance rather than willful, but nonetheless the comments like...kat wanting to “protect her brother from becoming Like That” when she suspects he has a crush on nicole / worry abt the danger of sophia “falls into that hole” when she reads stories with gay people in them. *kermit weed meme* its not all fucking yaoi you stupid fujoshi ALSOOOOO the fucking. new characters introduced in vol 7 and one of them being like...explicitly and unrepentantly a transmisogynist caricature. like BRO???

and ofc there’s the pseudo-incest BS of having keith be completely and unironically treated as a potential love interest to kat, and again w/ new character intros having a 13 yr old included in the ~new love interests~ like...yr killing me. yes you can argue it’s just bc they’re BS anime tropes but that’s exactly why the potential for parody and subversion is so ripe, and to have it just fall into the same pit of ZERO reflection nor examination is just pathetic

Like!! a big draw for me of this kind of isekai, the “the new world im in is a piece of media i consumed from my past life” there’s a lot that could be done with that! and something i basically never see done, not fully, is the ability to oh say...distinguish fact from fiction. take out the anime context of this and all isekai are just a conneticut yankee in king arthur’s court, or dante’s the inferno. the basic plot tends to boil down to: MC gets swept into a new world armed with Secret Knowledge/Ability, and included within this is knowledge of the future and their imminent destruction. the dramatic irony! the self fulfilling prophecy! this is greek tragedy bullshit my dude! fuckin shakespeare or whatever. it has SUCH potential for fun- a hero trying to act against fate but unsure if the future is immutable, that some events will always be preordained? or if their actions will themselves cause their own end, that they could be walking themself blindly into the path of their own ending? listen the potential for introspective development is astounding and we get none of it. like the closest to a soliloquy we get is kat’s inner mind conferences but even then it’s ONLY for humor, and i love the humor dont get me wrong, but it’s just totally unbalanced for some of the content included (like...including the doom and destruction as a fun backdrop but they RLY continuously use the same child abuse/murder/misogyny/kidnapping plotlines ((fucking the thing with nicole?? i still havent processed that actually but im PISSED.)), reiterating these things absolute ad nauseum with ZERO respect for any of the characters they then place in these situations. not even in just this way the worldbuilding is just so haphazard and strung together with paper clips it rly feels. like im all abt throwing logic out the window to make something fun happen but...it seems like its only ever done to make things Edgier or Worse somehow....pls pick the tone you wanna set and have some damn consistency.)

also in that vein they rly cross a line with raphael’s character for all that they make the PERFECT narrative foil to katarina and having him be relevant ONCE before completely sidelining hm literally i have SOOO much to say abt raphael it makes me want to go absolutely crazy. i wanna throw bricks through peoples windows.

 also, re the LN, the prose just str8 up sucks. i get no LN is ever particularly great with the combination of amateur authors being put through the washer of amateur translations to then be posted on sketchy bootleg websites, but even then. it’s just...tirelessly repetitive, in gags and dialogue, in katarina having the exact same priorities and character and awareness she had age (8-but-kind-of-a-teen-also) to the modernity of (almost-an-adult-and-past-the-climax-she-built-up-in-her-head-for-almost-a-decade). also having Real Things happen, like gerald and (ugh) keith’s confessions and...not even putting them on the backburner so much as just, having them brought up when convenient and no other time. writing katarina with no willingness to be proactive in her own life so she lets things just Happen to her while she herself remains unchanged like....author are you perhaps projecting yr own habits? yr own writing skillz?

there are maybe 40 more things i could complain about on end (raphael, the treatment of kat’s realization of her new doom, the more general worldbuilding issues, the NICOLE THINGGGG, just my own general gripes on how you could very easily make these characters have consistent personalities and developmental arcs/that diatribe i had abt the possibility for exploring metatextual analysis thru Fun Quirky Anime PlotlineTM/once again even more of my #Thots on the missed potential of isekai as a genre at large)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

i was writing out a bunch of bitterness abt how disingenuous and inaccurate ppls notions about how to Deal W Someone Being Suicidal is, and it was so long even i stopped caring, but tldr i guess it feels like people, although also misguided in not having any actual idea abt what being suicidal is like, also mix up "preventing a suicide attempt" with "making someone not suicidal anymore." like, what leads someone to be suicidal is complicated and individual and more related to being unable to make a necessary change to their lives vs needing you to remind them that there's beauty in the world and suicide isn't constructive. but i think its really just a matter of distracting someone until the moment passes. lord knows we do it ourselves. going online shopping for a bit and then trying to convince yourself that you can at least the 4-7 days longer to get that shirt. because in 4-7 days or fewer it won't feel as pressing / you won't have the same energy levels. its just trying to get yourself through the period of time where you feel strongly enough that there's actually a chance you'll do something. and whether just talking about stuff or doing something else that'll keep your focus elsewhere or whatever, it's just getting through a passing urge. you can't overnight get rid of something like that. there's always this idea that you're going to solve it via some Realization, but i'm not really sure that's true. for example, if i'm gonna have a realization of what to live for, its not going to be anything it's supposed to be. its tricky when all someone has is themself to find The Reason To Live within but its their personal situation being too horrible that makes them unsure they can tolerate living in the first place. you can't always tell people that life is worth it because of Love b/c some people are lonely and don't need it emphasized. i'm p sure that there's no universal (or technically any) Reason To Live(tm), its just that most people never need to look for one. there might not be a long term answer at all, just keeping people alive enough that they happen to discover something(s) that consistently helps them distract themselves / convince themselves to wait 4-7 more days. and/or if they're able to make the necessary changes they couldn't have before and have the chance to have a different relationship with their life. but short term, when it comes to getting through the danger of an impending attempt, just try to do what works to distract someone. there's no actual easy answer that will work for sure in every situation that everyone should know, i think. and it implies that everything is preventable actually if only everyone had just known the obvious magic cure, when its loads more complicated than that. i dont even like talking about the concept of people who have killed themselves as people who werent as strong or as smart or something. i hate it pretty much. and its just really rare it feels like people are talking about how it is being suicidal honestly, one of the only times i can remember is a guy telling a story about how a friend called him from a hospital / psych ward or whatever after a failed suicide attempt to ask his advice on how to get through it because he'd been in the same situation before. and he told her that you get out because they hear what they want to hear, and you just have to play the part and tell them it was a wild mistake and the stupidest thing you've ever done and you regret it so much and you'll never do it again and you see how much you have to live for now and this is the start of the rest of your life and they're so right about everything. because nothing is going to actually be fixed overnight, and also forced institutionalization is only ever a thing that needs to be escaped. yeah sure it can prevent someone from harming themselves but so can other things, and those alternate systems could do so while not harming people. anyway, the guys story didnt have any happy ending or promise or even implication that things would be better for her or him or anybody.

it was just about what it was like. thats not a dramatic space, tumblr just wouldnt let me write any more without a space for some reason. sorry for the wall of text. it was just inspired by how trying to improve my mood doesnt get rid of me being suicidal, cuz thats not really how it works. plus sometimes its chill to know i feel like all my options are still on the table. i have extremely little way to make any plausible predictions about any part of my future and that isnt that fun