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[id: gifs from the television series “The Untamed” showing various pairs of siblings. The first two show all three Jiang siblings, first standing up to greet their mother at Lotus pier, then Jiang Cheng smiling as Wei Wuxian wipes Jiang Yanli’s tears. The next show the Wen Siblings, first with Wen Ning handing his sister a cup of tea, and then Wen Ning stroking his head after he regains consciousness. The next show the Nie siblings, first as they enter Nightless City after the Sunshot Campaign has ended, and then Nie Huaisang looking at his brother over his fan. The final set show the Lan siblings, first Lan Xichen putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder, then as the two turn in tandem to face their uncle. /end id]

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congratulations to the straw hats for adopting their first adult!

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let them be whimsical young kids

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"I won't pretend to understand what it's like to bear the burden of the legacy you've had to shoulder. But I think... that these days a person doesn't have to bear it alone."

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hey guys do y’all mind if i just AAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

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frances treecakes' recent poll about whether clara/arisa is good or evil got me to thinking: clara/arisa has done some suspicious shit, but at the end of the day she's the lady who has given natsume a ride. not once but twice! that should count for something. and swift on the heels of this epiphany came the thought: you know what, maybe it should count for...everything? so please allow me to present to you a system allowing one to determine the alignment of any adult natsuyuu character based on the all-important question: would they give natsume (or tanuma) a (safe, not perilous) ride?

we are using the law/chaos and good/evil system, and in the context of our specific question we will define the axes as follows:

are they a good driver? lawful: they follow the rules of the road neutral: they are when it suits them to be chaotic: natsume fears for his life

would they offer natsume/tanuma a ride? good: yes, even when they're not getting anything out of it neutral: yes, if they're getting something out of it or if it's not out of their way evil: no, they make him go places without even giving him a ride there

with my lived experience as a carless person who sometimes relies on the kindness of the carred, i have taken it upon myself to take this baby for a spin. we know of at least four recurring adult characters who have given or have offered natsume and/or tanuma a ride, but because i wanted to do a full 3x3 chart, i have also roped in several characters whose carness is either unknown or almost certain to be nonexistent. i have gotten around the lack of evidence by the handy method of extrapolation based on both related and unrelated canon activities. you'll see what i mean. here's what i came up with [id in alt]:

justifications:

the fujiwaras as lawful good: i'm almost certain they don't have a car, but if they did they would for sure be driving natsume very safely anywhere he wanted to go. the only evidence in opposition to this is that they believe very strongly in fostering his independence and even if they had a car would still be encouraging him to go out on his own on the train all the time. but all their decision-making around this issue would be based on natsume's wellbeing and happiness rather than their own convenience. also, i subscribe to the headcanon that they borrowed a car to take natsume home from the hospital :')

ban as neutral good: this one might be a bit of a thinker because at first you might say, but didn't he only give tanuma a ride because they were going in the same direction, and not out of the goodness of his heart? sure. but you would be forgetting the time that his accomplice used knockout gas on tanuma and left him lying in a hallway somewhere and ban picked him up in his own arms and carried him to a sofa. WHILE exhausted himself from manipulating all of those puppets. so as you can see ban is actually a man of the people. i think he usually drives normally but he's perfectly capable of zipping through traffic in his clunky van if there's items to steal...theft waits for no man.

natori as chaotic good: this is just canon. practically canon. if you read between the lines it's canon...okay so it's not canon. but remember at the end of homura when natori offers natsume a ride and sensei is immediately like uh, no thanks? that's because his special youkai senses are tingling and they are saying, stay away from that car if you want to live. even matoba doesn't want a ride home from natori, and matoba's obsessed with him. natori is a Bad Driver and i will die on this hill. it was however very nice of him to offer!

clara as lawful neutral: i'm basing the "lawful" on the fact that 1) upon arrival at the auction natsume didn't seem at all nauseous or like he was dying or anything, and 2) he got BACK INTO her car at the end of the day. she couldn't have been too bad or he would have been like hey tanuma how did you get here originally maybe we should just do that. she's neutral rather than good because she just really wanted to go to that auction and she had to bring natsume because he was the one with the invitation. the ride was for clara's benefit, not natsume's. she did give both him and tanuma a ride home but that doesn't make her good, it just makes her not evil.

matoba as true neutral: i struggled with him a bit but in the end true neutral feels exactly right. it's matoba's driver who is driving and not matoba himself, but i think that should count; matoba's the one calling the shots. his driver is probably perfectly capable of driving safely all the time, but when the boss says to floor it he's gonna floor it, and sometimes matoba wants to be somewhere faster than safe driving will allow. so that's half of it. the other half of it is. well. matoba has TECHNICALLY given natsume a ride. but TECHNICALLY this ride was accepted under duress. it's another classic case of, someone needs natsume for something so they put him in a car and take him there whether he wants to be going there or not. kidnapping is such a loaded word, don't you think? so let's go with "neutral".

isamu as chaotic neutral: so here's one where i'm just making it up because he definitely doesn't have a car (at least not in the chapter translated into english). i don't think he would go out of his way to drive his sister's friend to the mall or whatever the kids are into these days, but he certainly wouldn't mind dropping natsume off somewhere if it was on his way. in fact he would assume that's what was happening even if it hadn't been discussed and would get all grouchy if natsume wasn't already waiting in the car. the chaotic part is going to seem counterintuitive but stay with me. i think he actually drives like an old man...he follows all the laws to the letter which is in fact kind of unsafe - going the speed limit instead of the speed of traffic and then getting pissed when people keep passing him, that kind of thing. he makes annoyed comments about people not using their turn indicators and what do they think he is, a mindreader? it's not a pleasant experience for the passenger even if he is technically in the right about everything.

beniko as lawful evil: okay HEAR ME OUT this one is actually really obvious. natsume has encountered beniko three times so far, always at her grandfather's mansion, which is, according to chapter 72, "an hour and a half drive deep into the mountains. the only house for miles around." the first time, he gets a ride from a random one-off character (aimiya, who is probably lawful neutral if you were wondering but that's beside the point). beniko doesn't know natsume yet and didn't invite him, so she can't be judged on the basis of this. the second time, she asks him for help but it's a little unclear whether she asked him to come in person or not. i think she probably did though because he seems too polite to come up with it on his own. maybe he offered and she accepted? but in any case he walks in by himself, so she definitely didn't pick him up, and she probably didn't send someone for him either, unless they dropped him off kinda far from the door (seems unlikely). the third time, she even says, "i made you come all the way out here..." she's admitting that she KNOWS it's a trek AND that she didn't even help him get there!! she also doesn't give him a ride home (they wave goodbye at the door). girlfriend there's no shame in asking for help but how is this teen supposed to get there! he can't teleport!! she values like, following social norms so let's apply that to sharing the road and say that she is probably a good driver. unfortunately natsume is not reaping the rewards of this in any way.

shinobu as neutral evil: she seems to get chauffeured around by her lackey ban (he's lurking in the vicinity of the haunted house because he's picking shinobu up, right? and we see him holding a car door open for her at the end of the auction), but she could be telling ban to give natsume rides. she is not doing this however, and she will not do this, and perhaps this makes her a safer person than the adults who cart natsume around for their own purposes, but at the end of the day natsume still needs to get places. look at your priorities, madam. she does try to help natsume find clara (his ride) when he needs to go, but that might be primarily because she wants to see clara lol. she definitely isn't precious about safe driving..she can do it (or make ban do it), but it's not always the best tool for the job. if they pass a pretty woman on the street you better believe she is telling ban to throw it in reverse or flip a uey regardless of what the other cars on the road are doing. but one time she chewed him out for cornering too hard when she was putting on cologne and causing her to spill it all over her new suit, so. there's nuance.

yorishima as chaotic evil: this guy does not drive but we have already decided to live in the hypothetical world where all these people could be ferrying natsume to and from his various events and are just choosing not to. the most important evidence we have as to what yorishima would be doing in such a world is in chapter 106, when natsume and sensei run into yorishima on the bus. they are minding their own business but somehow end up accompanying yorishima on HIS errand?? sure, they "got on the wrong bus" and have to kill some time, but you know the main reason natsume went with him is yorishima did his whole pathetic antisocial old man thing and natsume's teen dad senses went haywire. he was like i must protect this fragile little guy from the cruel world of the daughters of dead friends from college. so somehow this turned into natsume giving yorishima a ride, basically. maybe it's unfair of me to say yorishima would be a bad driver but since in this analogy it's natsume driving i think we can say yorishima is a bad backseat driver and that will count. he does not strike me as a guy who would sit there quietly and respect the driver's process. he probably also braces his hand on the dash whenever natsume so much as lightly brakes. he accuses natsume of learning to drive from natori, which is so completely unfair and unfounded it boggles the mind. but that's what you're in for with peepaw as passenger.

the only recurring (multiarc) adult i could remember but didn't assign an alignment to is nanase...there's no direct canon evidence so i feel like there's a lot of room for speculation. i'm fairly confident she is neither good nor chaotic, but i could be convinced of any of the lawful/neutral and neutral/evil combinations. true neutral is the most obvious but feels like a cop-out because her boss is true neutral. oh i know. going off of that time she gave natori/natsume a sealing jar and then stole it back after they sealed the youkai: she gives natsume a car so he can drive himself to a gathering, but as soon as he shows up she tricks him into leaving the car with the engine running, hops in the driver's seat, and peels out, leaving him not only carless but also stranded in the woods surrounded by exorcists. (he'll be fine. it's character-building.) the next time he sees her he asks if he can at least get the cd in the cd player back (he borrowed it from nishimura) but she just makes fun of his taste in music and bounces. it was a natori shuuichi album, so it's a real two birds one stone situation. all in a day's work for nanase-san.

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natsume doodles

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this one made me a little emotional

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You know... destruction is one thing the Matoba family excels at.

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the heir of the notorious matoba clan has a sweet tooth

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SHUT UP. they’re so cute.

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new natsuyuu official art for a collaboration with a crepe store

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you guys i love indie games but i have a problem where i buy too many of them and then i barely play any 😭 i bought like 5 already this year and now i wanna buy 2 more 😭😭 it's just that they're cheap and most of them are so high quality too, my only prob is that i start playing one get obssessed and then i dont wanna play anything else lol

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need more scenes where ppl are like "matoba what are you doing here" and he hits them with "i'm an adult with a job,". lowkey my fav genre of matoba scenes

this one counts too. actually it's even funnier bc this time the answer to the question is "i manage the fucking property"

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it gets smart every now and then

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auction arc genuinely has so much going on:

matoba siblings exorcist politics as the main plotline

tanuma gains confidence in his ability to deal with youkai outside of natsume’s supervision

establishes the idea that ban & tanuma have the same ability to discern genuine from non-genuine exorcist tools, and that ban knows tanuma has the same ability

a portrait of reiko smiling and happy exists in an exorcists’ auction, but we don’t know how it got there or who painted it. natsume does not recognize his grandmother because she looks genuinely happy

the natori family six-eyed mask that “reveals treasures” makes a second appearance but it’s a replica this time

the whole background plotline of morio & the nakatomi collection which helps inform several of these but i really don’t feel like analyzing it right now also i’m late to leave for work

shinobu’s evil lesbian situationship

whatever is going on with clara/arisa