#<- just a little bit

[exgirlfiend]

was drawing something else but didn’t like how it was looking so I erased it and hard pivoted to drawing this instead

[maximumqueer]

God episode 37 might just be my favorite episode of Ouaw yet, which is saying something because I have adored every single fucking ep. so far.

But there is just something about the way Nikkie went about describing Bavlorna's hut, how it was done so viscerally -especially the taxidermy room - that was equal parts deeply horrifying and deeply interesting. Add to that the secrets that the krew kept from each other, and it makes for such a dynamic session!

Kremy taking the basilisk eyes was a particular a highlight, as it acts as a good reminder that Kremy - while believing that the decisions he makes are the right ones and will benefit everyone (but mostly himself) - is willing to go behind the others backs if they disagree with him. God, just him listening to the call of gold and the echo of Mr. Garou's voice in his head instead of Gricko's, ignoring his want to put the basilisk to rest, is so fucking good! And I really hope we see some form of fall out from it later on (I'm not fully caught up yet, so please no spoilers if that happens by ep.56). Because Gricko has always pushed back against the more morally dubious actions of Kremy (and Gideon) the most, always trying for a kinder option than the two of them (mostly). And having that trust and kindness he has in those two -despite them being more willing to exploit and kill their way to the top - be betrayed in the form of preventing him from fully putting a beast to rest would make for beautiful inner party conflict.

Also the implication that Gideon is fully aware that Kremy stole the eyes (based off the way Mace reacted as Gideon to Kremy supposedly doing something kind for Gricko with seemingly no catch) but decided not to say anything is just *chefs kiss*. Crime husbands my beloved <3

[kenzan-kiwami]

i think i need to finally rip those substories apart. going to start with chapter 8 since obviously that comes first

beware, it's long. mentions of a substory in ch.12, but nothing main plot-related beyond ch.8

edit: i'm a bit tired and i'm letting off steam by doing this so i think my wording outside the readmore is a bit aggressive but i assure you this is a 1.6k word lovepost

first thing i did was have a look at nanba's line about kashiwagi being a sweet guy deep down, because i'm told tsuruno's line about him being a "scary-ass bartender" wasn't totally faithful to the intent of the original, but i think it (and all of the other ones i checked here) are, for the most part, close enough. i may get into the others more later. from what i can gather nanba just says, "the bartender is kinda scary, but he's a good person so you'll be alright/don't worry," sort of thing.

but the way kiryu and kashiwagi stop when they see each other is shocking to the core. you get some nice sort of establishing shots of the top of the bar counter and kashiwagi polishing a glass before they show his face (potentially also where kiryu's eyes went first?) and then the next time you see his hands he's paused right in the middle of what he was doing. he's practiced (or seen) enough that his jaw doesn't drop the way kiryu's does, but he has to purse his lips a little in an attempt to stop them from quivering. it takes until nanba asks if they've met before for him to scramble inside his head for something to say, and only then is he able to lead the conversation on (but not without his voice catching in his throat a little bit). the game never says this outright, but the way kashiwagi is as shocked as kiryu is when he walks into survive definitely says to me that he'd also found out kiryu "died" in 2016

kiryu's eyebrows tremble quite visibly after kashiwagi speaks up for the first time to deny they'd met before - how could he say that, with that voice? - but he rolls with it, much to his (what i'm reading as) visible dismay. but then he pulls out this unnecessarily deep bow to kashiwagi?? and i didn't think much of it at the time, but this comment i found on a youtube video recontextualised the entire exchange to me:

literally driving me insane. kiryu's SO choked up over this and trying desperately not to show it. there's simply no other reason for kiryu of all people to be bowing so deeply to someone he's "just met" and "mistaken" the identity of.

kashiwagi's next line (jpn: いいえ、どうかお気になさらず) is a bit contentious to me, but i can't tell at this point if i'm nitpicking too hard or not - it seems to translate fairly literally to "no, please don't worry," but he's subtitled as saying "please. it happens to the best of us," which is (again) close enough but it feels like another one of those strange lines that got edited a bit too hard. i don't think the inferred meaning of "no, it's ok, there's nothing you could have done differently" is totally lost, but you take a slightly different route to get there, kind of thing?

it also doesn't really account for the way bowing to people like that isn't as much of a thing outside east asia. of course, most people with a cursory knowledge of japanese culture are aware of the existence of bowing, but the nuances of its use here i feel could have been made slightly more obvious in localisation to get that point across. absolutely not to the point of making it glaringly obvious, but easier to infer for people who aren't totally immersed in japanese culture.*

kashiwagi, in his infinite wisdom, whips out his next trick: to say he just has one of those faces. with a huge scar running right across the middle. i don't want to say he's pissing about with the tone of the cutscene and his delivery, but it really is an absurd thing to say (and he knows it).

and then they just go back to staring at each other... kiryu's eyebrows are still going and kashiwagi's lip twitches again and i'm so glad they let this game cook for so long because all of the animations have had such thought and care put into them. it's BARELY noticeable and i've been obsessively playing back each close-up of their faces where they're not talking trying to catch any miniscule movements they make.

this next part felt heinous to watch back after seonhee's fifth drink link because who ELSE but her would also know who kashiwagi is? she knows exactly what's happening between the two of them, and swoops in to save them from another awkward staring contest. she's lying through her teeth in front of saeko and nanba, which honestly just makes me wonder what kashiwagi's conditions for hiding his identity are if he's not telling the party. i can't imagine it'd be tojo clan related since the great dissolution had happened four years ago by this point, but the daidoji kashiwagi theories i've seen floating around feel equally ridiculous to me. what use does daidoji have for a guy in (probably) his sixties who's spent the last decade of his life running an empty bar on purpose? (he's still holding the glass and towel still in his hands at this point.)

he perks up again when seonhee railroads them all into getting the karaoke going, and it's really... nice? to see a man like kashiwagi expressing his gratitude for them being there so openly. he mentions it himself in a later conversation, but being a yakuza meant he was never really allowed to show much emotion. the HLA was his side gig kiryu never even found out about until after the helicopter attack, and the other patriarchs in Y3 called him "soft" for working to resolve conflict rather than instigate it, but 7 and 8 are the only times you get to see him wholeheartedly express things like pleasure and joy on screen. it's refreshing to see, and even more so after he says he consciously had to repress himself to get by before. i'd done a whole thing before this game came out about how he IS a deeply caring man under his harsh exterior and i'll tell you now i'm feeling extremely validated by his appearances here.

kiryu bows again as he walks past the bar to sit down - this time just his head - and kashiwagi hangs his head in return. both nanba and seonhee turn and catch him looking down with the glass still held awkwardly in his hands, and i'd imagine seeing him like that is something completely new to everyone in the room at that moment. it cuts away and he finally finds himself again, and he goes back to polishing the glass. he's stood there for the better part of a minute and a half with a glass in his hand not even doing anything with it, just out of pure shock and awe. i'm honestly not sure who handled that exchange worse (comparatively) out of the two of them.

next part doesn't have as much for me to go crazy about, but that look they exchange while kiryu is up singing makes me melt every time. every movement they make says so much. two brothers who each thought the other was dead meeting again for the first time in nearly fifteen years while kiryu ticks one of his favourite pastimes off his bucket list.

what's making me really mad, however, is the choice to use the "singable" english dub lyrics to bakamitai in the subtitles, because when you look at the more literal translation listed on the RGG Fandom wiki (only showing the lines he sings in full here):

Went chasing a dream and got hurt

Poorly disguised behind a joyless smile

"I love you" is hardly ever said

Tongue-tied and downright self-conscious

But even so, even so, why is it

"Goodbye" came so naturally?

It's no use, no use, no use at all

and the line re-recorded for this scene:

So then what are they, these tears—what a fool

bakamitai is vague on purpose. ostensibly and according to the wiki it's about a woman reflecting on her relationship with an ex, but the lyrics omit gendered pronouns at the beginning, and no women actually sing this song in the games... karaoke is one of the few methods kiryu has to really express his feelings, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that, here, he's singing about himself, about kashiwagi, to kashiwagi. and the official translated lyrics don't hit anywhere close to the same in this regard.

now i will admit i've been having some difficulty discerning kiryu's tone in this last part i'm going to talk about. he gets annoyed that everyone was chatting through his song, and goes to sit down and lecture them. my first thought as i originally watched this was that he queued judgement himself, but looking back now and thinking about how stuck in his own head kiryu can get, i'm not so sure that was the case.

once again it was a youtube comment that got me thinking (so thanks for that), but he does seem so genuinely annoyed that he wants to sit down and drink again - which he does, but then the song starts up and he drawls out this どうゆう意味だなぁ？and i can't tell if it's meant to be sarcastic (which would line up with him having queued the song himself) or... incensed? exasperated? i can't think of a good word for it, but it's that kind of fake-annoyed only a good friend or sibling can drag out of you, which would imply he really had planned to sit down, and kashiwagi started his favourite song to cheer him up and get everyone going again.

i think i like the second option better.

[nikoisme]

I hate it when people ask me what genre of music i listen to because i genuinely have no clue. It's called Music I Like genre. The best genre out there

[ionomycin]

temple at the end of the road

[kaogens]

i love you weird long miku

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[humming-fly]

I love how Gerald was trying to keep Shadow from spoiling anything about the future meanwhile literally everything Shadow says and does around Maria is the biggest death flag ever

[fishcop]

If I had a nickel for every time Scott sacrificed himself for pearl… that would be three, actually!

[nothingbizzare]

Taking off a costume

[plushiefucker]

just saw a really stupid post on tumblr where someone showed the prices of vegetables in china and how, when converted to US dollars, only costs a couple of cents, and the post was like, "ugh why must us americans suffer such high prices when the rest of the world doesn't !!!" and it's like. you are aware that you come from a country with an extremely strong currency, yes ? and that, just bc a loaf of bread costs R20 (or 1.06 USD) here in south africa, that doesn't make it affordable to the average working class south african, just bc it seems cheap to you, yes ? u are aware that many ppl around the world make wayyyyy less than even the minimum wage american, yes ? that, even though you may be struggling financially in ur country, ur dollar still has significant power over the majority of the currencies around the world. yes ?

[vamprisms]

they should let you put footnotes on your blocklist so you remember what the final straw was

[saphushia]

btw. i made this quick guide of some of the natural size and proportion reference points in the human body. of course this all varies even irl, and you can stylize however you want, so ymmv but thought it might be helpful for some folks.

[flowersforthemachines]

Sheryl Chee (Harding's writer) on the state of things

[uncanny-tranny]

I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.

I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:

Add "guilty pleasure" songs to playlists and actually listen to them (I have a ton of late 1990s-early 2000s music I listen to now proudly that I never listened to in the past out of shame)

Getting the décor item, bath set, bed spread, ect. in the patterns you like, even if it's "childish" (I got a dinosaur-themed wastebasket from the kids' décor section and I adore it)

Taking a new route to get to a place you go to often

Eat dessert first

Celebrate well, and often

Collect things that are "odd" or don't seem like an "acceptable" thing to collect (somebody on my "for you" page collects dandelion crayola crayons and it was so cool!!!!!!)

Incorporate one new piece in an outfit you wear frequently (e.g., a new chain, a necklace, ribbons, bracelets, ect.). Challenge yourself to add onto the outfits if you feel up for it.

Sing along to songs without worrying that you sound "good" or your intonation is completely accurate

Read a book from a genre you weren't allowed to read as a kid (comics, thrillers, mysteries, anything!)

Walk without having a specific destination or goal

Pick up a new craft without expecting yourself to master it or to ever be "good" enough. Get your hands messy.

I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.

[dirtflunk]

deranged freaks. absolute weirdos. throw rocks at them