#(tbh he's a easy one to give to; child abuse.)

[arobraindead]

I have two fics planned that are in the simpliest way; henry comforting ralph. I am addicted, and I will write so many fics with that idea. C:

It's the role reversal. The idea of putting the both of them into the opposite roles that they usual fit themselves into. Ralph is the one always comforting Henry and Henry is used to being comforted by Ralph that making them do the opposite is fun to write.

Henry isn't used to comforting somebody all that often, sure he's had times where he's comforted Peter but not enough to stick a landing when it comes to it.

On the otherhand, Ralph has this... interesting guilt in his head that venting about his issues or even having issues in the first place is a bad thing for him to have.

I will say that the both of them do semi have a hard time being comforted but still... Henry is more used to it. A bit stiff when he is but eventually gets used to it. While Ralph would tilt his head in confusion if Henry even pulled that on him.. it's weird.

Secondly; Ralph (in canon) doesn't have much to work with (ik i've said this 200 times but it's true) so I gave him lore and issues (and a bit is due to his parents) but besides the point. I wanna expand on the lore I gave him lol. Make that boy angsty!!!

[saetoru]

✩ ‧₊˚ ✩ my life with you (that’s way over now)

synopsis. some people get drunk calls from their exes, maybe even flowers with hand written apologies. you get a knock on your front door with two random kids and a murder case

length. 3.0k words (once more it was supposed to be short)

contents. exes to lovers, ex boyfriend! suguru, gn! reader, slightly deviated from canon (he doesn’t kill the entire village + doesn’t defect), slightly a fix-it fic, blood, murder, child abuse + neglect (canon events with suguru and the twins), angst to slight fluff with hopeful ending (pretty much happy tbh), mentions of family + kids, suguru pretty much being a broke and depressed lil guy lollll

notes. idk what this is but it was written for me i just wanted to write it so here. take it and look away

right before you graduate, you and suguru break up. you don’t want to, but he insists it’s only fair—he can hardly be there for you the way you need him to be, he says. something’s changed in him, it has since that day last year. but still—you don’t want to break up.

so you argue, he stays firm, you cry, he doesn’t change his mind, you break up, he leaves, and the world momentarily collapses.

it’s the way things work, you suppose. they don’t quite always go the way you planned. you graduate not long after that, leaving him behind to throw yourself into work while you toe into the baby steps of adulthood. real adulthood—the jujutsu world has a way of thrusting you into that faster than normal, anyway.

by the time it’s late summer, you get your first apartment. it’s a rundown place—the bathroom tiles look dirty no matter how much you scrub, the walls haven’t been repainted in what seems like decades, and the thermostat never works properly to feel like what the temperature indicates.

but it’s yours—you leave jujutsu high fresh into the real world, paying your taxes and buying your groceries all while you exorcise curses for a living. barely an adult, barely getting by, barely alive as you get up each day and live.

and then suguru comes knocking on your door half past midnight.

“hey,” he says nonchalantly, like there’s nothing wrong with standing there—but you know him better than that. you can hear that detachment in his voice as he stares between your eyes, but not quite in them.

“you—” you start, staring at him incredulously before you decide to give up. there are no surprises with suguru, not anymore you suppose. you don’t really know him anymore. “suguru, it’s midnight,” you sigh—and that’s when you see them: two small children that can’t be much older than five.

bruises are clear as day on their arms, even while standing in the darkness outside. there’s also the slight swollen curve of their eyes, and you can’t help but notice how they’re practically skin and bone. children who have probably not yet even lived for five winters, and you almost wonder if they’ve been through more than you have in you’re entire lifetime.

suguru clears his throat before you can stare at them any longer.

“this is nanako,” he gestures at the blonde, “and this is mimiko.” the brunette one seems more shy, curls behind his leg further as her name is uttered.

you don’t know what to say, so you settle for smiling—you’re not sure if it comes out too genuine, but you try. it’s all you can offer, really.

“hello,” you hum for a moment. and then you turn back to suguru, “it’s midnight.”

“i know.”

“you should be at school grounds.”

“i know.”

“suguru,” you sigh, eyeing the blood stained on his cheek. you don’t like where this is heading. there’s a sick feeling twisting in your gut, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling.

bile. you can taste it. something’s not right.

“where did you find these kids?”

“on a mission,” he says simply, “village heads were keepin’ em locked in a cage like animals. can you believe it?”

again, that casual tone. it almost as easy as humming your favorite tune, as smooth as your skin on freshly washed sheets, as quiet as the first day of snow when the world is still. but something about it is hollow—something’s not right.

“why’d you bring them here? instead of school? shoko should look at them—”

“i told them they’d be safe here.”

they’d be safe anywhere, you think. as long as suguru’s there too. as long they’re under his watchful gaze, nothing could hope to beat down on their youth like it already has their whole lives. but you don’t say that—something tells you he won’t believe you.

maybe not right now.

you don’t look at him. you can’t. something’s not right, but there are children present. so you throw on your best smile and open the door wider, offering them to come in.

your apartment is small, just one bedroom and one bath. there’s hardly enough food for yourself for tonight, you still have to go grocery shopping this week. the missions were lined up back to back to back—but that’s just life as a sorcerer, you suppose. most days you hardly have the energy to eat more than a few apple slices when you return home anyway.

you wave your hand at your place dramatically as you say, “come on in, ladies. your humble abode awaits.”

they giggle slightly at that—it’s the first time suguru hears them laugh. you have that effect, he knew you would. it’s why he brings them here and not there. and…well, there’s a more complicated issue at hand. but that’s for later.

right now…well, for right now, he lets you guide them to the bathroom.

“you have money on you right?” you ask. he blinks, staring at you for a moment before slowly shaking his head.

“spent the last of it on cigarettes this morning.”

great, you think, before sighing and trudging over to grab your wallet as you press a few crisp bills of cash in his hands.

“here.”

“what’s this for?” he raises a brow.

“go buy them clothes,” you look at him like he’s stupid. he might be, in all honesty. just a little. “i’m not putting them back in…those once they’re all cleaned.”

“wha—i’ve never shopped for children before,” he gapes, “and i don’t know what size they are, or—”

“figure it out, suguru,” you say tiredly. it’s half past midnight—by now, you’d be passed out from your mission. he seems to take the hint. “and bring some snacks too. should be enough.”

“fine,” he grumbles—and then he’s walking out the door.

for a second, it feels familiar watching him leave. but then you decide not to dwell on it—there are much more important matters at hand.

you turn to the two girls before crouching in front of them with a gentle smile, “who’s ready for bubbles?”

——————

nanako and mimiko have never had a bubble bath before. you decide to let them taste the first tendrils of youth by splashing in your tiny bathtub while you find suguru for some much needed answers.

he sits on your couch, shirt wrinkled and hair falling loose and blood still staining his cheek as he hunches over his legs, elbows resting on his thighs as he thinks. and thinks. and thinks and thinks and thinks.

you wonder about what—what could be plaguing his mind? a lot you’re sure, but this isn’t suguru. not the one you know, at least.

the one you knew, the voice in your mind hisses—do you really even know him at all anymore?

“so,” you sit on the opposite side of the sofa, curling your legs under yourself as you eye him from the side, “care to explain?”

“i killed them,” he mutters. you go still. “the village heads. i did it without hesitating. that’s bad, right?”

“well fuck, suguru,” you breathe, restless, “that’s certainly not good.”

“i had a reason,” he argues, “all i needed was one.”

“there’s nothing that excuses murder—”

“oh, but we can excuse locking kids in cages, is that right? why? cause they’re sorcerers? they’re not—they’re children.”

“i didn’t say that,” you rub your forehead. this is all too much. too, too much.

being a sorcerer is too much. being in front of suguru is too much.

you finish your third year with a broken heart and graduate in spring—at one point you’d hoped graduating wouldn’t change anything between you and your friends, between you and the boy you loved. everything would be the same, even if you’d leave the place that held you all together—you’d still find a way back to each other, you liked to think. but then it all changes before you can even comprehend.

haibara is dead. nanami is hardly coping. gojo is everywhere but here. shoko is in high demand. suguru is hardly present even when he’s right in front of you. nothing is the same and you don’t think it ever will be. you lose the one thing you count on being yours forever, and now, he’s right here again. but not really here—not with you so much as near you.

suguru has killed people, sitting on your couch with you while the two children he finds are bathing happily in your bathtub.

there’s some irony in that—maybe in a perfect world, suguru and you would sit on the couch, much happier than right now, though. maybe you’d be tucked under his arm and curled into his side as you both chuckle at the happy squeals in the distance. maybe in a perfect world.

but this world is cruel. too cruel, in fact. it forces children to grow up too fast during some times and lets adults continue to be children during others. it’s sickening and all too much.

but this is the world you live in. there’s not much to change in that—not much you can change. maybe sitting on the couch with suguru is what you should be grateful for, whether it’s in this world or another.

“i came here because it’s safe,” he mumbles, quieter this time, “i don’t…i didn’t trust anywhere else.”

something tells you he’s not talking about the kids. you look at him for the first time that night—really look at him. you take in the lost weight, the sunken cheekbones and the bruised under eyes from the lack of sleep. the cracked lips from being chapped and the dry hair that’s lost its normal shine.

something’s not right—you won’t be able to mend it, but you think you can keep it from getting worse.

“it is safe here,” you murmur, nodding in assurance, “but you can’t…i can’t let you do that. not again.”

“what? kill people?” he snorts in dry amusement. it’s quiet for a bit—you open your mouth a few times like you want to say something, but nothing ever comes. he finally decides to fill the silence. “i don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore. people shouldn’t kill. but some people shouldn’t live.”

“i think jujutsu is supposed to save people. not everyone will deserve it, but i suppose we wouldn’t be much better than them if we used it for anything other than that,” you whisper. he looks over at you at that, peers at you deep in thought as he contemplates your words.

“that’s funny,” he chuckles, “i used to think that too.”

“what changed?”

“everything.”

“then change it some more,” you shrug, “until you think it again.” he looks at you incredulously at that, eyeing you like you’re crazy.

“you’re an idiot,” he scoffs.

“says the killer,” you scoff back. you look at him this time, in the eyes and full of conviction, full of promises you couldn’t make before but fully intend to keep now. “don’t kill anyone else and i’ll help you. with those kids, i mean.”

“you want to co parent with me?” he chuckles.

co parent—the word makes your stomach twist. even after all this time, after all the hurt and pain, suguru is easy to imagine that with. he’s easy to imagine anything in the future with, really. he’s always been perfect like that, but you’re starting to realize there’s a lot more imperfections to him than you initially thought.

but it’s okay, you think. if you didn’t stop loving him before, you certainly don’t stop now. blood on his hands or not, he’s yours—even if he doesn’t want to be.

“don’t say it like that,” you murmur softly, hugging your arms around yourself, “please.”

you let yourself be vulnerable for just a moment—not because you want to, but because he needs to know. he needs to know how unfair he’s being and how patient you are with him despite it all. you deserve that much.

“sorry,” he mutters—he has the decency to look away and drop his smile.

“you don’t kill anyone, and i’ll look for a bigger place. deal?”

“for us…all?”

“yes. just until you figure it out, i’ll help you out with them. and then you’ll responsibly use your paycheck as a full time special grade sorcerer and maybe send a few checks my way to say thanks to my good will.”

he chuckles at that, shaking his head. “i’ll repay you,” he hums, tapping his foot. he does that when he’s nervous, you still remember—you could never forget anything about him. “i…i owe you, anyway.”

it’s quiet some more. you don’t know what to say, and quite frankly, you don’t want to say anything at all. but once more, he fills the silence for you after a while.

“what if…” he starts, “what if i want to co parent with you?”

“you dumped me,” you point out, unable to hide the bitterness any longer. it cracks from your tongue through your words like honey that went dry. “remember that? cause i sure remember.”

you’re an adult now, just barely, but an adult all the same. you should handle this the mature way—but you’re still young. still hurt. still blanketed in the fresh wave of nostalgia that leaves you aching with grief.

so you let yourself be bitter. suguru can handle that much after he left you to pick up your shattered pieces.

“i didn’t want to,” he says quietly. “i never wanted to.”

“but you did.”

“i didn’t…you didn’t deserve to see me unstable.”

“you’re not very stable right now either,” you pinch your nose tiredly, “you killed people, suguru. but somehow you can manage to have two kids now. but not me.”

“they need me,” he defends.

“i needed you too,” your voice cracks.

you did. you needed him—and you like to think he needed you too. maybe it wasn’t perfect, nothing ever is, especially not when you fight curses and see their ugliness every day. but that’s the best part of having each other—having something pretty amidst the hideousness.

he left you with more ugly than you knew what to do with. it’s unfair, you think for a moment, unfair that two girls who hardly know him at all have more of him than you ever did. he’d never abandon them—that much you know for sure.

you’ve laughed with him, held him and wiped his tears and kissed him under the moon until it became the sun. you’ve seen him with his hair down and his guard lowered. you’ve seen him in every way possible but in the end, he walked away.

they’ve seen him for less than a day and somehow, he’ll be there forever. there’s something unfair about that and you hate that you’re bitter with children but the world in cruel like that.

suguru slowly inches over—it’s cautious at first, and then he fills the gap all at once. you pretend you don’t feel the way your thighs touch.

“i need you too,” he admits, voice small. there’s a small, shaky crack that eats away at your heart, trying to gnaw into the raw part. the easy to reach part. the part you shouldn’t let him see anymore. “i…i always needed you. i’m sorry.”

“we were supposed to need each other,” you sniffle.

“we do,” he slowly slumps his head onto your shoulder. you let him stay there—don’t dare move a muscle in case he pulls away. “you’re the only thing that keeps me stable. i don’t think that’s fair.”

“needing someone isn’t unfair, suguru,” you scoff.

“okay,” he grabs your hand, squeezing. for the first time, he lets it all go. lets tears slowly slip from the corners of his eyes as he slumps into your side. he cries for riko. for kuroi. for satoru and the time he lost him for a moment. for their youth. for haibara. for not being enough even when he shouldn’t have had to be. somewhere amidst all that, your arms wrap around him and he’s pulled into your chest—that familiar feeling of your fingers threading into his hair makes the world start spinning again. “i need you,” he chokes.

“okay,” you say shakily, nodding slowly as you let yourself hope, “as long as you don’t stop this time.”

he buries his face into your chest, and you kiss the crown of his head.

cruelty is an unstoppable force. your love for suguru is an immovable object. neither is going anywhere, but perhaps they can coexist.

“satoru’s gonna have a massive headache when he explains this one to the higher ups,” you snort after a while.

he laughs into your shirt, real for the first time in a long time. “i’ll buy him something sweet. should make up for it,” he hums. and then he looks up, smiles innocently as he asks, “wanna lend me some cash? i’ll pay you back when i’m a responsible handler of money.”

“you’re hopeless,” you chuckle, “but at least you’re here.”

————— BONUS —————

“okay,” satoru starts, holding his hands up in surrender as he stands before the higher ups. damn old geezers, he thinks. “so he did kill a person or two…but—”

“there is no excuse,” a voice hisses.

“he didn’t mean it,” he huffs indignantly, “it was an accident. those can happen sometimes.”

“what—”

“he’s going through a phase, okay? let him work through it, he’ll be fine.”

“that’s not—”

“i’ll let him off the hook this time,” satoru grins, pushing his glasses up his nose as he shrugs, “he’s got a family now, y’know? kids and a spouse, and they’re looking for a home. can’t take that away from them.”

“he’s not even married—”

“it’ll happen eventually,” he insists, “so let’s all just calm down, yeah? great, thanks!”

“gojo—”

“see ya!”

he walks out, flashing an obnoxious peace sign at the higher ups as they hiss at him to return as he’s walking out. that takes care of that, he thinks, as long as suguru doesn’t make his life harder and kill more people, he can handle it—you did promise him kikufuku if he does.

satoru is babygirl defender no. 1 ain’t nobody doing it like my guy 🤞🏽 he would be loyal to you while you were in jail no doubts

[quarterlifekitty]

am so late but medieval fantasy with arranged marriage/wrong bride trope and a "supposedly" cold duke who found out that their wife/partner's family is toxic and how DARE they make their beloved life's hell aaaaa

I LOVE the trope of like arranged marriage to super fucking scary guy but then it’s actually soooo easy to get him pussywhipped. At first I thought of this for ghost but PSYCH you ghost hoes because it’s Nikolai time tbh

cw: arranged marriage, allusions to abuse

Duke Nikolai is getting married, so it is whispered, purely for two reasons: legitimacy and heirs. He’s known far and wide for some less than savory reasons, and he was not born into nobility— his service to the kingdom has seen him be granted wealth and land quickly. While a marriage to him would grant greater wealth and stability, it would be considered something akin to social suicide.

Enter you, a lady of noble birth and some small renown. Only child of a rapidly declining house, finding you a match is the only way to save your family from complete destitution.

You have had a weak constitution for most of your life, and as such have lived in isolation. You’ve received almost no socialization, a cowering thing with no poise or dignity to speak of. You are, in a word, unmarriageable by noble standards.

It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement born from desperation on both sides. You’re engaged without even having met, your first meeting at the altar. Your handmaiden tries not to cry as she prepares you to wed the dark head of such an unsavory house— she’s heard every rumor, and fears for what will happen when she can no longer accompany you.

Nikolai cannot help but be amused by how you tremble against his hold. He sees you as a frightened doe. At the reception, he pulls you into his lap and rubs a thumb into your hip as he holds you, settling your frayed nerves.

The trend continues in your wedding bed when he keeps your back to his chest and has you come apart on his fingers before giving you his tongue, despite your protests about properness. But that’s what happens when you marry an uncouth commoner who’s made a name for himself in brothels across the continent instead of some high-born pup who’d be content to have you bleed on his sheets for the three minutes it would take him to cum and fall asleep.

Before, Nikolai saw this marriage as a union in name only. You’d have your dalliances with whatever stableboy or neighboring lord you pleased, while he chased the skirts of maids and tavern women. But when he has you tucked against him that first night, he gets the strange feeling that the bond you’re forging is one that can’t be traded or ignored. That there’s something to this… matrimony thing.

You’re still a bit fearful of him. He understands. You’ve been raised to think of your husband as the master, the one who decides your fate and keeps your bones unbroken as an act of generosity. But what he cannot stand is the flinching.

Your parents and teachers tried no small number of ways to try to make you an attractive, upstanding lady, you admitted— not angry at their methods, but ashamed at how they hadn’t worked. And he burned inside— a feeling not felt when a woman is your wife in name only.

Don’t worry, lanyashka. He has enough anger for the both of you.

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

in an interview a while back, vivzie compared stella to beatrice horseman from bojack horseman. if you haven't seen it, beatrice's childhood AND adult life were awful but at the exact same time it's also very clear that nothing about it justified how she treated her son bojack - much like how bojack's own abusive childhood didn't justify the way he treated people. it just explained it.

we'll have to wait and see if viv can actually pull this off (signs point to 'no' atm tbh) but stella being written with this particular comparison explicitly in mind is giving me a little hope she'll at least try.

Hey, Anon! Thanks for the ask!

I’m really glad you brought this up because I had actually been planning a post comparing Beatrice and Stella because I find it kind of fascinating that the writers say Stella is similar to Beatrice Horseman. Because so far they’re really, really, really not.

In fact, the way Stella and Beatrice are introduced and developed as characters are inverses of each other. (Explanation below)

Beatrice is introduced to us as being unambiguously the one in the wrong—she’s so ridiculously abusive towards Bojack, her own son, that it sometime crosses over into pure black comedy. Bojack is clearly the wronged party here, as he was a literal child. He depended on Beatrice for everything and was met with abuse.

Even when Beatrice’s abuse becomes so over-the-top that it’s almost comedic, the audience still understands she’s in the wrong. We understand even though it’s played for black comedy, Bojack was clearly very negatively affected by the abuse, and that her treatment of him was horrific.

During the flashbacks to Bojack’s childhood in earlier episodes, the audience has no further details or information as to why Beatrice would act this way, (not that there’s any excuse regardless) so it seems like there’s not a lot of depth to Beatrice because of this. Season 1 Beatrice Horseman is a very flat character.

But after season 1, the writers of Bojack Horseman continue to develop Beatrice. In the beginning of season 2, we learn that Beatrice is aware of her abuse and how it affected Bojack and, in her own messed up way, tries to apologize to him. She acknowledges that she is a deeply flawed person, and acknowledges her own part in Bojack’s terrible upbringing.

We learn that she regrets the way she acted, that she thinks of herself as being broken, and she sadly admits that Bojack inherited this broken-ness from her.

NONE of this makes the abuse okay for course, but we’re given more insight into her as a person. As Bojack Horseman progresses, the audience is continually given more and more information about Beatrice that explains her in depth. We learn why she acted the way she did, how she coped (and failed to cope) with the intense trauma from her childhood, and how everything that happened to her affected her behavior and outlook on life, and how that in-turn affected Bojack.

The writers develop her from being a flat character to one with depth, one that feels like a real person.

In contrast, the VERY first thing we learn about Stella, before we know anything about her personality, or how she usually talks, or what her relationships are like, is that Stolas cheated on her. She is literally introduced to us as someone who has just been wronged, and presumably, hurt by her husband’s cheating on her.

I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that audiences immediately understand why Stella acts the way she does around Stolas in season 1. Being cheated on sucks. It’s a breech of trust, and extremely hurtful.

Unlike Beatrice, Stella is introduced to us as the wronged party.

Again, that doesn’t mean her actions are warranted or should be excused, but it’s very easy to understand why she is acting the way she is.

Due to this, while Stella still starts as a relatively flat character to b/c we don’t know much about her (other than how she acts directly after being cheated on) she has a lot of potential. The writers could have gone in lots of different directions in her character development.

So naturally, in the first episode of season 2 of Helluva Boss, we learn that Stella strangled puppies as a young child, was always mean to Stolas all the time even before he cheated on her, loves “tormenting” Stolas, and is physically abusive. We learn that since she was a young child she’s always been terrible and evil.

Any potential for some further depth to be added to Stella at the beginning of season 2 is fucking steamrolled by this writing decision.

Since S2E1, The Circus, Stella has been written consistently as being mean, rude, vindictive, and stupid. The audience has been given no further information on her, other than that she has brother who is smarter and than her, and that we should hate her for standing in the way of Stolas and Blitzø’s relationship.

Due to all of this, I have absolutely no idea how HB’s writers could possibly develop Stella to be even 1/8th as nuanced or “real” as Beatrice.

At this point, I think it’s too little too late for Stella’s backstory. Why would I care about her upbringing now? What important bit of information could the writers possibly give us about her past that would make her behavior understandable, or develop her character further??

I’m not saying it’s IMPOSSIBLE. But I can’t think of anything they could do to build upon Stella’s character after they already cemented her so firmly as a one-dimensional villain.

So. To summarize (TLDR)

Beatrice Horseman started out flat, and was developed over time until she felt like a fully realized person.

Stella started out flat, but with the potential to be developed into a more nuanced character.

Instead of being developed more gradually, like Beatrice, starting in season 2, Stella was written to be as evil as possible in all her appearances.

Due to this, the writers have made it incredibly difficult to go back and give Stella a backstory that will matter or explain her behavior in any meaningful way.

[bibibbon]

something that i can’t stand when it comes to this fandom is that basically no one can wrap their head around the fact that a victim can also be an abuser.

yes, rei was physically and emotionally abused by endeavor. yes, she was literally sold to him.

but she also just completely checked out and left fuyumi to pick up the slack.

yes, it’s not her fault that the abuse caused her to shut down, but as a result of that she neglected her children.

after she left fuyumi had to raise her brothers and become the woman of the house.

again, at the end of the day the root cause of the abuse is endeavor, but rei had checked out even before dabi's death.

it’s not victim blaming to point out the fact that rei neglected her kids. victim blaming would be saying that the abuse she suffered was her fault.

sometimes this fandom can be so fucking braindead. it’s always black and white, good or bad, hero or villain.

there is not a soul on this earth who is 100% a pure and good person.

all might, knowing full well what one for all contained and the massive responsibility that came with it. including an old wrinkly guy who will stop at nothing to take it, to a child and then proceed to not tell the aforementioned child what he was getting himself into. he with held crucial information because he knew that if he told izuku everything there was a chance he wouldn’t take it.

on the flip side, no one is 100% evil.

dabi cares deeply for the league, even though he doesn’t show it. shigaraki is literally the only person he will take orders from. some people may think he showed everyone hawks killing twice just for more ammo against the hero's. but thats not true at all. he cared about twice, and he wanted the world to know who he was. he wanted the hero’s to know that twice was human.

again i’m fucking rambling but i just hate how this fandom can be allergic to nuance and critical thinking.

I do think that many people do want a simple answer because at the end of the day it's easy to root for the good guys and boo the bad guys. There's also the fact that the narrative itself does sometimes struggle in creating a proper grey space morally.

Take for example the abuse victims in MHA. A lot of them are straight up innocent perfect heroes victims like izuku (who can never feel resentment in the narrative) and shoto while the others are straight up villains like Dabi and shigaraki. There's no in between with these characters and it's annoying. I remember talking with @mikeellee she has her saying of Shigaraki being the dark deku which honestly after that chapter where izuku comes into contact with a evil version of himself makes more sense.

I do agree with you in the sense that no one is 100% good or evil and in a way almost everyone is a victim to hero society. All might did willingly give a quirk that has a big responsibility to a naive quirkless child and all might is a bad mentor. However, at the same time all might is also a victim to a society he contributed to creating which is honestly so ironic and I wish horikoshi would explore these aspects of all mights character yet he doesn't and just gave us iron might (I dont like iron might tbh).

Also I love the fact that you brought up Rei himura and honestly Iam a big advocate for giving rei a redemption arc since it would of been more interesting and it would actually make sense to give her one than giving enji todoroki one. Rei was a victim and yes motherhood is difficult especially with the fact that she was abused and stripped of autonomy or agency but she also wasn't the best mother and that's something she does recognise in the narrative. My main problem however, is that the narrative doesn't allow her to fully engage with the family and she doesn't do much about it. Yes she apologises to both shoto and touya but what about her other children?!?! What about fuyumi who had to take on the role of a mother and shoulder a huge family burden? What about natsou who was also neglected?!?!. I say by giving rei himura a redemption arc the series can do so much that being actually involving the entire todoroki family into this, having more introduction to the hospital arc that may connect both touya and Rei and you can also have Rei make a connection with genten as @nyc3 suggested.

However, this also applies to the flip side. Characters like twice, shigaraki and Dabi aren't completely evil. Yes they have done bad things, yes they are bad people but they are also victims of the hero system and hero society. I do think that the leauge is a bit underdeveloped and I did definitely want more development between Dabi and shigaraki's while frenemies fiasco going on.

In the end I do think that almost every fandom may be allergic to nuance in one way or another. I do actually mean this because I remember seeing people try and say that Eren Yeager is completely good while some tried saying that he is completely evil but in reality he is complex and layered. You really can't put a definitive label on the aot characters because they all did their fair share of good and bad things and that's what makes them well written and enjoyable.

[joejhang]

my input into the thea discourse in the aftg fandom

tw: rape, SA, abuse, violence

spoilers ahead !!! full disclosure: these are my opinions and no one is obligated to agree w me but if u don't i'm literally begging u pls explain urself properly in replies or just don't engage. it's rlly not that deep i just can't w mfs who just say shit like "ur wrong" without giving it any real thought and acting mature and explaining their opinion. if ur a hardcore thea hater/lover honestly just do the smart thing and don't even read on. thanks pooks !!!

gotta preface this by saying: i am not a thea hater. she's done a lot of things wrong that i'll go into but i don't have a strong hatred or even dislike for her. that being said i'm fully aware that if there's anything that will get the aftg fandom riled up it's thea muldani or the extra content. one of those.

first off, i'm well aware that thea is very much a victim of the nest, as much as jean or kevin. and also we don't even fully know how deeply thea was entrenched in the shit that went down in the nest, all we know is that she probably didn't abuse kevin or jean the way others did, considering how she interacts w them in tsc. one of the main criticisms i see of thea is how she "handled" the whole situation w riko and kevin and finding out all of riko's abuse. ppl didn't like her "no harm no foul" attitude re: kevin's broken hand. i get this, considering it wasn't rlly "no harm no foul" given the lasting trauma left on kevin from the incident, and also how long he spent recovering. that shit leaves a long-term impact on ppl and riko still remains kevin's abuser, and thea was wrong for considering it to be "no harm no foul" bc there was harm done. that being said, i think ppl need to be aware that the nest was very much a cult, as neil so aptly puts it. and tbh i have had very little experiences w these sort of environments but i do know that the nest's mentality likely had a long-term impact on thea asw. no matter how deep the abuse went w the other ravens, they were all still subject to the deep-rooted competition and fear that everyone experiences in the nest. idk the full extent of it, but it's pretty safe to assume that thea (given how good of a player she is) is pretty deep in all the cult mentality. this isn't an easy thing to just grow out of, and a lot of the brainwashing that went on in the nest probably stuck w thea and contributed to her responses to finding out exactly what happened to jean and kevin in the nest.

one of the things i most dislike abt thea is the whole conversation between her and jean in tsc. i appreciate that she cares about jean and sort of took him under her wing, but i feel like what rlly stuck w me abt it all was the whole "tell me you weren't up to your old tricks again" line. obv this pissed a lot of ppl off in the fandom too, so i'm just gonna say my piece briefly; thea referring to the older ravens repeatedly raping jean on riko's orders as jean's "tricks" is fucked up. she probably didn't know that jean wasn't consenting and she didn't know riko ordered it, but she did know that jean was a child at the time and can't legally give consent, and she did know that it wasn't like he fucked his way up to the top cos he's had his number from the beginning. she was an adult at the time, and should've done more to protect jean. still, it's obvious why she didn't, cos again, she was also a victim of the nest, and was definitely not in the best position to help jean. that being said, her line does imply that it was jean's choice/fault for messing around and the wording is just pretty fucked, so i'm not gonna completely absolve her of any responsibility in this convo just cos she was also a victim.

another thing i see when ppl r responding to thea criticism is referring to the criticism as victim blaming. tbf, a good amount of it probably is, but i think there are still a lot of things to criticise about her, and just dismissing it as "blaming the victim" is a disservice to the ppl trying to make a valid point. stating that the way thea responded to finding out abt riko's abuse towards jean and kevin was wrong and careless isn't victim blaming. victim blaming is, as the term suggests, blaming the victim of a situation for the situation they're in. listen. thea is not a victim of riko's abuse, at least not in the same way jean and kevin are. thea was a victim of the nest, yes, but it's pretty clear that what jean and kevin experienced was out of her hands, and not on the same level (esp jean. idk what rlly went down between kevin and riko before the hand breaking incident). at the end of the day, i think the way thea dealt w the issue of riko and his treatment of kevin and jean was thoughtless, and pretty dismissive. but it also bears remembering that there wasn't much for her to do by the time she found out. riko died shortly afterwards, kevin took his place as the best striker on the court and jean was sent to the trojans to heal and recuperate. her response could've been more...sensitive (i don't think that's the right word but we'll go with it) but still, y'all will complain, but what was she supposed to do? nora already stated that she was angry at riko, but riko died soon after and other than her anger, there was nothing else for thea to do in her response.

lastly, another argument levelled at thea is re her relationship w kevin. i actually am not sure abt their age gap (i think kevin was 15 and thea was 18 when they first met???) but i do know that their relationship didn't start properly until kevin was an adult and a player for the ravens. i really don't see the problem with this, considering three years (as far as i know, it is three years) isn't a HUGE gap in maturity and by the time they were together they were both very much consenting adults. as far as we know, thea didn't make any moves on kevin when he was a minor, and (if i'm correct) kevin being 18 and thea being 21 when they first properly started getting together isn't anything problematic. they're in similar stages of life, in a very close environment that's toxic, yes, but that they're both familiar with, and it's clear that the feelings they have for each other aren't the same as the violent, repressed sexual feelings held by some of the other ravens. they do genuinely care about each other on some emotional level, much as the fandom may want to deny it, and i don't really think there was anything wrong with their relationship re: consent and the age gap.

anyway, that's really all i have to say except that i do think thea is a complicated and honestly pretty realistic character, given the horrific circumstances she experienced in the nest. i think the fandom is well within their rights to criticise her actions but it bears remembering that she is just a human being and is never going to be perfect, and i think the way she acts is very real and true to her personality and circumstances and she makes a lot of mistakes, but that's just the human condition. it's also insane how much hate thea receives when she's honestly pretty on par with most of the other aftg characters on the moral "scale", if that even exists here. it's pretty baffling how much hate thea receives when she doesn't act all that differently to andrew, neil and kevin. it erases a lot of her complexity and does a disservice to her character (which, if you think about it, we don't know all that much about) to just label her as a purely "good" or "bad" character. aftg is not meant to be portraying conventionally "good" people, and i just think all the thea discourse is really interesting to put under a microscope and dissect.

thanks for reading and i will say it again: if u don't agree with me, that's fine, feel free to explain ur opinions and ur side of things. if ur just gonna be bitching and moaning abt how wrong i am or how much u hate/love thea, take it elsewhere. just don't engage. how easy is that??? just keep scrolling.

[batsplat]

casey's story breaks my heart. im reading your post about amatriaín and jorge now as well and i just........ these were only kids :( this isn't to assume that all parents/caregivers/people in their lives are negligent and/or abusive but i always wonder who is protecting child/teen/younger adult riders and drivers esp when they are in the highest levels of their sport at such a young age. it seems like, especially in years gone past, there was just so much scope for these kids to be abused. although i remember a couple years ago that clip of a young rider getting hit by mechanics so that kind of stuff isn't even in the past rly.

yeah not much to say really, I mean honestly it's... I'm not going to say every guardian of a professional athlete is abusive because that'd be a crazy thing to say, but I would say that the process that makes these kids so good at what they are does also in many, many cases not reflect particularly well on the parents. tbh a lot of the safeguarding has to be taken more seriously way before these kids even get to a grand prix paddock, but that also isn't easy to do... I can only speak to my own experiences, but as someone who spent a lot of my teenage years hanging around tennis clubs, it is pretty horrifying how normalised parental abuse is in sports circles. it's just something you see all the time - and this is obviously still only the public stuff, the gossip you hear, where you can read between the lines. though honestly, a lot of the times you really don't need to be reading much between the lines. the most extreme example was when a father of a kid I trained with went so far he had the cops called on him when they were at a tournament, but again. obviously this is only the extreme. even a lot of the public abuse is tacitly accepted, and there's a lot of parental behaviour that might not qualify for the 'abusive' label but sure isn't in line with what I view as acceptable. and that's just the parents - you essentially get a lot of cases of them outsourcing this stuff to the coaches, who often get a carte blanche to do with their kids what they please. obviously I'm only familiar with this stuff personally on the juniors circuit, but unhealthy coaching relationships is also a recurring and troubling talking point on the pro circuit. especially in women's tennis you get some pretty horrifying stories. the whole thing just feels pretty rotten

ideally what you've got to do to at least TRY and stamp this stuff out is having a zero tolerance policy - whether it's in clubs or in paddocks. a system of consequences in place where physical or verbal abuse comes with repercussions... I know the risk is you just take this stuff behind closed doors, but to me the starting point problem is that it's also the culture of juniors sports - where if anything treating your kid like absolute shit is almost celebrated at times. you have to make this stuff more shameful. I have no clue to what extent motorcycling juniors clubs look like what I was accustomed to, but in all honesty I reckon you'd see a lot of the same behaviour from parents/mentors - and that at least you've got to address. but obviously that doesn't just like. fix the problem. with someone like jorge, you very obviously did need someone else to step in... but if you don't have very visible, obvious abuse, then how do you enforce that? talent spotters like amatriain have immense power within the system - jorge's father was practically begging this bloke to take jorge on, jorge wouldn't have thanked you for getting rid of him until towards the very end of their partnership, he very likely wouldn't have the career he did without the guy. and it's one of those jobs that (like sports parent) tends to attract the exact type of person you really don't want to give power over kids. again, I'm not saying they're all like that, I wouldn't know, but so many of these managers just have so many stories that raise an eyebrow... even when it's not actively related to how they're treating children, but the fact that so many of them have a history of being aggressive to reporters? the thing is, if they're being awful to these kids in all likelihood we'll never hear about it - but reporters are obviously way more likely to tell people about it. which means that every time I read one of those stories, my main takeaway is that these managers are blokes who will get aggressive when things don't go their way. also not ideal

and below that is a layer that becomes increasingly impossible to even begin to address. I mean, look at casey. I have no reason to accuse his parents of being abusive towards him. I'm not trying to make it sound like I think they're horrible people. and I do think we do always need to be clear here - like yes, I'm talking about a general concern I have here about the relationship between mentor figures and the kids in their care, but obviously that covers a very wide variety of sins. I am not drawing any equivalences between them. there's 'being a bad mentor' and then there's 'having a restraining order filed against you'. so with that massive caveat in place... I agree with you, anon, that I also feel sad about casey's story, and yeah, it makes me uncomfortable

casey does think his parents pushed their dream onto him and ensured that his future would always lie in motorcycle racing... which, I mean. god. if you read him saying it was always his parents' dream side-by-side with him saying they always put pressure on him to work for his dream, then it's just one of those parental dynamics that read as achingly familiar - kids who have been convinced they're doing this for themselves and are then made to feel guilty when they're not living up to their parents' standards. we've sacrificed everything for you, right, you need to make it worth it... casey was told that this was his dream, and the stakes for success and failure were horrifyingly high. he had his entire family's livelihood on his shoulders from age fourteen... his family invested everything into him, told him it was all for his sake- and ensured that he would feel like he was letting them down every time he didn't perform. by some miracle, he had the talent to make it through the system, but think about how precarious his journey was despite being perhaps the most talented motorcycle racer in the history of the sport. how many turning points in his career easily could have gone the other way. for every casey, there are so many more kids who won't make it, and will somehow have to live with the consequences of that failure. and these dynamics... again, I'm not going to label them outright abusive, but think about the kind of stress they place on the parental relationship. idk. it might be a reality of professional sports... parents do often have to sacrifice a lot for their children's career - and given how early kids need to start out to succeed these days, inevitably quite a bit of that desire and drive will come from the parents. but it isn't a reality that sits comfortably with me

so, what do you do about any of this? well, again, I do think you need to do the bare minimum and not tolerate clearly abusive behaviour in sporting environments. which feels like stating the obvious, but this is a low bar that often just isn't being cleared. and yeah - that recent example within the motogp paddock of a rider being assaulted by a team member... definitely not going to be a one-off. just feels inevitable that this will be happening behind closed doors, especially when you get to the lower rungs where the competitors have less power and are less likely to be willing to risk anything (+ are also generally younger)

there's other safeguarding measures you could put in place, but it probably won't happen because people just don't care enough. first off, you need a riders' union - an organisation that's there solely to listen to riders' problems and act on them, advocate on their behalf etc. a big reason why young riders simply are not going to report any abuse is that this will almost certainly cost them professionally. you are essentially asking them to cut off their already limited support network, often the people providing them direct financial support or even employing them. if you cannot build up trust by having the mechanisms in place to take action against the abusive party (through cooperation with the series organisers), as well as provide support to the rider, then the reality is that basically none of them would ever come forward. secondly, you simply need stronger regulation of the career ladder. there's too many of these big name talent spotters who just coast through the paddock by having accumulated influence over the years, with zero reason to believe they have their charges' best interests at heart... often former riders themselves, but that's not exactly a pedagogical qualification. look, it's tricky to regulate because the exact roles these blokes play in riders' lives is so malleable and comes associated with all kinds of job titles - maybe you're a rider coach or manager or team boss or something else entirely. but ideally you want a system where certain privileges - like even entry to certain areas of the paddock - has to come along with accepting a certain level of regulatory oversight. make these blokes directly accountable and force them to uphold a professional code, in line with what you'd expect of any other professional who hold power over a vulnerable population. make it clear to them that they're being watched. I also don't think it's crazy to suggest that if you let minors race in a grand prix paddock, you should have some sort of system in place where the series organisers directly and regularly check in with the minors in their care. there will be a lot of behaviour that children do not themselves see as abusive - obviously it's very plausible that they just won't tell you the truth, but you have to start somewhere. motorcycle racing does actually have an advantage over many other individual sports in how centralised it is, how everyone is constantly going to the same location. they would have the power to enforce some of these standards

thirdly, and this is even less likely than the others to gain any traction. ... man, you've got to make sure these kids have options. this is becoming worse and worse the more professionalised sports become, the more they all chase their youthful prodigies... but, y'know, think about how early so many of these children drop out of school, how it's increasingly unlikely they've had the time to foster any sort of other interest (another theme of casey's account, "I don’t know if I was allowed to have any other attraction"). how motorcycle racing is the only thing they've ever known, how it's their whole world. you're raising a group of young people to whom leaving that world would basically feel like dying. it makes the stakes of everything so enormous, it twists these parental relationships, and it also ensures that certain figures have so, so much power over these kids. obviously nobody is forcing them at gunpoint to race - but in reality, it feels like they don't even have the option of walking away. again, this is obviously a massive problem to address that no sport has entirely sorted out, and the series organisers can rightly say it's not their responsibility to make kids go to school. honestly, my first step would be to just... do something about these age limits. they're too low! too many of these kids are too young for grand prix racing! a starting point is to try and make it so that kids aren't being actively penalised for attempting to pursue an education. this feels another area where you'd really want to have an actual union - even to just have someone to talk to. and again, as long as the series organisers let children race, then I do think it's actually also some of their responsibility to look out for them. realistically, a lot of these kids don't actually want to walk away from racing - however you get to that point, it is also very much their dream. but anything you can do to lessen the influence of the worst people in their lives, anything you can do to at least remind them they can walk away... idk. it's the right thing to do. especially for the kids who aren't succeeding, help them on their way out

now look, this isn't a detailed manifesto. I do know that some other sports have implemented similar-ish measures to the ones above but I couldn't give you a breakdown without some research. I'm not an expert on preventative measures for child abuse, and I'm sure some of these could come with unintended consequences I'm unaware of. I also know all of these things range from 'desperately unlikely' to 'never going to happen'. and even if you did, it's really only taking a pickaxe to the tip of the iceberg. or something. to reiterate what I said at the top, I don't want to make it sound like I think all parents of athletes are abusive. I also don't think the mentors are either. I do think a lot of them are... and even beyond that - the way sports is structured, the way the ladder to professional sports is structured, you are going to see a lot of unhealthy dynamics involving very young people in vulnerable positions. and I don't think that's in any way easy to address... but y'know. sometimes it'd be nice if somebody were at least trying. the sport is doing less than the bare minimum. and for every story we hear, there's going to be so so many more where we'll remain entirely ignorant

[nonbinarypirat]

I’m catching up on Bungou Stray Dogs and I got to chapter 39 and wow… what a bad chapter. Or I should say, I VERY purely written, mishandled chapter. So I wanted to talk about why I hate this so much (even though so many people have probably talked about this here and other platforms.) Get ready for a rare known Iruma breakdown. But also I’m so mad about this chapter so this is going to be more of an unhinged rant then a well written post. Warning: child violence, abuse, abusive cycles, and sympathizing an abuser

This chapter is somehow a thousand times worse than what the anime did? I wonder if the people in charge of the anime also didn’t like this part and decided to cut it short and get through it as soon as possible and move on. Though it could also just because of how fucked up it is. No matter the reason, I went into this chapter hoping that maybe there was some context lost from the anime to manga but nope! In fact the manga goes further with trying to make you sympathize with a literal child torturer? It honestly makes me appreciate the episode just a tiny bit more for not including his oh so tragic backstory 🙄. Look, no matter what you have gone through, you don’t get the right to abuse a child. Plain and simple. Just because you were abused doesn’t give you the right to do it to someone. I get that the abuse cycle is not easy to break but once you fall down the same path you are ALSO a fucked up person! And you deserve to suffer for your actions. I wished he got a worse death than a car accident tbh 🤷.

Anyway, I hate how every character in this chapter acted like Atsushi was being irrational about not wanting to know why the headmaster was around? That’s his torturer, the man that literally made his life hell? If he doesn’t want to know, don’t force him. Like, could it give him closure, I guess. But he should be the one seeking that out. Quite frankly, once it was found out the headmaster was involved Atsushi should have been pulled from the case. Give him some distance to process everything rather having to learn about his abuser’s life story or whatever. Like I said, if he wanted to learn that info he should but only if he wanted. Idk why it treated him not wanting to know as acting irrational. I feel like every character treated him like this, from Tanizaki to Akutagawa to Dazai. Instead of comforting him in this difficult time they just… didn’t do anything? Obviously Akutagawa wouldn’t but why didn’t the other two do anything to make him feel better? Only Dazai did really and it was shitty. Full stop bad.

Which leads me into the crutch of it, I hate how they made the headmaster out to be a father figure or mentor. He’s not?? What the fuck are you on about. Like, I could see it if there was fake comfort, subtle or advert manipulation by being nice sometimes. Then it would have been a situation of, he’s the only father figure I ever had but he hurt me in the worst ways. And that’s where the ending could be. Not to say it would still be a well written depiction of abuse, it still tries to get you to empathize with the man, however, I could get where all the complication in Atsushi would lie. But this man was literally the worst human being to walk the face of the Earth the entire time we see him in the manga. So it makes ZERO SENSE. I guess that’s the angle they were going for, he’s the only adult man I know but it does NOT work at all. How is he a “mentor.” Just because he said to hate me not yourself? Fuck that shit, Atsushi does not need to feel bad for that man just because he was trying to make him strong or whatever bs excuse he has. Oh wow, he got him flowers. How ‘bout you pay for his therapy bills?!

If they really wanted to have some nuance, instead I feel like the conflict should have centered around Atsushi still not feeling safe or like he isn’t really dead. Like he can’t allow himself to relax despite the fact that he knows the facts. Especially since the headmaster was a big threat throughout his life, having him suddenly die would be a large shock to the system and go into denial mode. Thus, Dazai or someone else could help him move on and he could finally breath a sigh of relief. Or maybe he’s scared that other workers of the orphanage will try to find him. Maybe he tries to go back to normal, doesn’t give himself time to process, and it all comes crashing down and he has to grapple with the fact that he will never know WHY the headmaster treated him like this. Honestly, not having it answered would have been better because often people don’t get an answer why abusers act the way they do. This idea could add another reason why Atsushi is conflicted between happy and deeply upset because the headmaster is gone but now he’ll never understand why he was treated so horribly. And grappling with the idea that maybe he will never know or understand. Which is tragic but would be a better written and understandable conclusion.

BSD just really dropped the ball with that chapter. It had a great opportunity to bring a nuanced perspective onto why Atsushi may not be elated with his death and get further perspective on him as a character. But instead it focused too much effort on making a child abuser sympathetic because he also faced abuse in an orphanage and some people died and so he tried to make Atsushi strong or whatever. Atsushi deserved a better end in than chapter that Dazai calling that gross piece of shit his father.

Edit: I wanted to add that as much as I hate this chapter I liked the parts where we got to see how bad Atsushi’s life really was at the orphanage. I mean, it hurt for sure but getting to see this put into perspective fully why Atsushi has a hard time pushing through his trauma and past. Like, PTSD is no joke and that was reason enough, but seeing how far it got really showed that. Which makes me mad when people imply he should have gotten over it already or similar statements. Like, dude if that was me I wouldn’t have made it to 18. It’s actually impressive his resolve to live despite everything. Kind of wished we saw that in the anime as dark as it was but once again, I think it was not included specifically because of how poorly it handled this topic. Not gonna lie, it would piss me off enough to not finish the show (not that it’s too much of an improvement but it at least is like, bad writing but a pass).

[stari-hun]

Under the Oak Tree has this special quality of somehow having no chemistry but having very interesting and compelling characters. It’s Riftan. Riftan is the issue. They want a historical series but they’re ignoring that the core appeal of a historical series is an easy meet cute of an arranged marriage, fancy social etiquette, and most importantly the fashion. Riftan isn’t a historical ML in the way people like it cause he’s not just a gentleman wearing historical inspired clothing and or armor, he’s genuinely a misogynist controlling man and I’m like 😭😟 spooky. It’s giving that one sentient gingerbread man book that was randomly set in like the Victorian era with an extremely abusive husband that’s NEVER warned about in most of the reviews.

Like you come into the series and see a FL who’s neglected and mistreated by her family and ur like dope, this is a trope since the founding fanfics of Wattpad. The trope is ex common but it’s like a Sold to One Direction kinda thing, it’s a core part of the history of modern writing. Angst is such a popular genre and people love whump, like it’s good. ITS COMMON BUT ITS GOOD. People love overdone tropes cause even if it’s done a lot it’s easy to do well. Under the Oak Tree does SO well with Maxi’s trauma and she feels like such a human character. But then Riftan is just like- The appeal of the whump is that someone comes in and comforts the person and saves them from their past life. Riftan fr just comes in picks her up without a word, no communication, no nothing, constantly angry at her because she’s fearful of him and had no idea about their engagement (despite knowing that her father hated him and wanted him dead, so there would’ve been no reason to give her hope that she’d be saved from her household by a man soon to die). He’s just not comforting or appealing outside of sex appeal and smut TT, like he literally isn’t around for the first like what? 80 chapters unless it’s getting mad at her, degrading her and telling her to just be a decoration, or smut. LIKE GIVE US SUBSTANCE. Than her distress with him all the time is so scary and unnerving TT , it literally feels like for the first 2 seasons that she’s literally just having a fawn response around him and that’s why she seems to handle his presence. Not to mention that entire arc where any time she’d try to talk to him and have a genuine conversation as partner, he’d just kiss her and shut her up which was SOOOO weird.

He’s just SOOOO. It’s so weird. They only seem to like being around after 100 chapters. AND EVEN THEN IN THE TRAVELING TO THE SEA ARC HES UNRIGHTFULLY RUDE RUDE TO HER. literally anyone who spent all of their time locked up inside and doing close to no movement besides walking around and collecting plants for close to a year would struggle with a journey like that. In fact Maxi was a whole trooper, I’ve spent a whole day on horseback before and I literally couldn’t walk the next day and I was aching for 2 after that.

The appeal of the angsty insecure protagonist with a past like that is that the new environment welcomes them with full acceptance and love. RIFTAN ISNT LOVING SHIT. HE LIKES THE IDEA OF MAXI AS A NOBLE LADY. Sure we’re likely gonna see a generic plotline later of ohhh I met you as a child and you changed meeeeeeee, forgive all my bad traits and how I hurt you let’s make out ~~~~ but NO???? I REFUSE TO TAKE THAT TBH. He causes her so much more distress and it feels like another “My Husband Who Hates Me Has Lost His Memories” , like just a female protagonist enduring extreme constant emotional distress and trauma at the hands of the male lead but we’re supposed to just support their romance because ohhhh he doesn’t know what he’s doing despite being a full adult with autonomy and the life exp and capabilities to understand his actionssss. Noooo support their romance even though he’s constantly putting her in bad situations and she’s never been as happy with him as she does with women she’s just met in that hour.

TLDR: I wish authors would stop being insane and making their status of in the closet everyone else’s issue in the historical genre. Like pls stop cooking up the most divine wlw then force feed us abusive comphet, I see you, please free yourself babe.

[noxiatoxia]

Can you give komahina (toxic yaoi?) headcanons

lemme see here. this is hard bc i dont necessairly have ~komahina~ headcanons i just have headcanons for komaeda and hajime it really has nothing to do with them as a ship;. but uh

ok so here's one. long winded. but i think from what we can gather about hajime he was a bit of a loner child. his parents didnt seem to gaf abt him. so i think he does get attached to people easy. tbh sdr2 was like a miracle scenario in some ways bc there's this guy who has little to no friends (be he never goes out of his way to make them) and then hes stuck with 15 other people his age and he's like i guess i'll talk to them what else can i do....and turns out everyone desires him carnally. tbf he's able to match ppl's freak and he's just good at listening (or pretending to listen) so this makes him popular. so its like ohhh ok we're friends now. hajime is that kind of guy who if he talks to someone once he calls them his friend. but like everyone IS actually his friend. anyways i think if hajime goes a long time without talking to someone he knows he starts to get a little nervous like if its been 1 whole week and he has not even exchanged small talk with like idk mahiru he's like "something is Critically Wrong" so then he'll go find her and be like "hi hows it going". its like disrupting his routine or whatever. i think the time periods for "how long hajime can go without talking to this person" varies depending on the person obviously. like with hiyoko it's like. they don't interact much so if it's been a week and a half he'll be like ohhh ok...maybe i should say something to her....but someone like kazuichi it's like. 3 days hasn't spoken to him once he's like Where Is That Mother Fucker.

this is all to say when it comes to komaeda in a komahina scenario it's devastating bc if he does not see komaeda in a while he gets fucked up abt it in like his anxiety/ptsd spiral his first thought it KOMAEDA IS DEAD. HIS LUCK GOT HIM KILLED. HE KILLED HIMSELF. and then hes like banging on komaeda's cabin door and shit like KOMAEDA. PLEASE.PLEASE. and komaeda is like um hi. flip side: komaeda is also very much like this but with people he's close-close with bc if he does not see hajime in like three days he's like HAJIME IS DEAD. MY LUCK GOT HIM KILLED. HE KILLED HIMSELF. and then he also goes crazy so they have to at least be makin small talk every day to ward off the demons....

as for like. TOXIC YAOI headcanons idk........anything in the chapter 4 area would be bad. i think. i have read so many hate fucking doujins in the chapter 4 time period. while dat all doesnt seem very canon to me (i just dont think hajime be doin all that. nor komaeda really) i see the vision. kamukoma was probably unhealthy on both sides if we want to go there. but like komahina. idk . 1) my brain is fogged up rn so it's hard to think you can ask again later if you desire but 2) really they aren't all that toxic like outside of a killing game environment. komaeda tends to keep to himself and hajime tries to understand people. so like. hajime is very much a "if it sucks hit da bricks" kind of philosopher so if komaeda was being a detriment to his health and he DID have a way out then it's not like he'd stay. hajime does put his foot down when things get too much. (if komaeda was a woman tho she could abuse hajime and he wouldnt gaf #mikanislandmodeending #hiyokoislandmodeending ) but see again komaeda wouldnt be doin all that. i cant see him intentionally hurt hajime post sdr2 canon, at most unintentionally toxic/unhealthy but again i thinnk hajime would in that case try to help him out like couples therapy style or something. WHERE AM I GOING WITH THIS. im bad with headcanons it seems.

[vouam]

just found this guy’s answer to a question on quora (“is misandry a problem in the US?” or something of that nature) and was wondering what your reaction to it would be. there are some points i wouldn’t be sure how to refute, though it’s certainly not enough to change my radfem beliefs lol. i’ll copy and paste it since i can’t send ss in anon

Q:“is misandry prevalent in today’s society?”

A:“I would say so.

Woman: doesn't want a child so she secretly aborts it.

Man: doesn't want a child and is forced to pay child support for 18 years while being ridiculed as a dead beat dad

Woman: my body, my choice

Man: has his genitals forcibly mutilated for no good reason at birth

Woman: free drinks at the club on ladies night

Man: there is no men's night. Drink prices increase to cover all the free drinks ladies get

Woman: oh please keep yourself safe

Man: forced to sign up for selective services (a.k.a. draft) at 18.

Woman: complains about low paying job

Men: 67% of work place injuries happen to men, 93% of work place fatalities happen to men. No one bats an eye

Woman: mostly automatically given custody of children no matter what

Men: you can see your children on the weekend only and pay for child support

Man: simply accused of abusing a woman and goes straight to jail.

Woman: beats the man senseless and if the man defends himself goes to jail. If he doesn't defend himself he still might go to jail or if he is lucky police will tell him to quit making a big deal about it. Has 1 place in the country to go to for sheltering battered men despite the fact that women are the perpetrators of domestic violence some 40% of the time. Woman, have countless battered women shelters to go to.

Man: gets raped by woman at gun point being forced to give oral sex and held captive for days. Society has a good laugh

Woman: gets raped and her perpetrator is rightfully punished. No one is laughing about it. Woman gets psychological help and all kinds of assistance from society. Also if she makes false accusations of rape, ruining a man's life, no one says a thing about it and she is free to go on accusing.

Men: penalties for the same crime as women are much longer sentences.

Men: comprise 60 some % of homeless population

Men: comprise of a majority of suicides

I could go on but it's only going to anger the feminazis more and more”

reading crap like this makes me so mad tbh, like i understand moids don’t have easy lives just because they’re moids but GOOD FUCKING GRIEF it’s like they just can’t fucking get enough of acting like society wasn’t built by men for men. 🙏🙏 sorry it just gets me upset. anyway love ur blog!!

Oooof this is a really great ask so thank you for sending this in! I guess I’ll approach this by answering each one individually (although I might repeat myself)

Men pay child support while women can just have an abotion

This is a very strange argument. Because firstly not every country has fully legal abortions. 47 countries only allow it for health reasons, 43 to save the mother’s life and 22 it is fully illegal. A lot of men like this seem to forget that there are other countries on this planet. I’d personally rather be the gender that has to pay child support for an unwanted baby. Even in the case of legal abortions, abortions are not easy to go through. It is mentally very difficult and can be an invasive procedure. Women are shamed for having abortions in every country, even the most ‘accepting’ places.

Circumcision

I am very against circumcision and this was probably his most valid point(?) But his point excludes the fact that FGM is practiced in many countries and cultures. And while male circumcision is usually done for religious reasons claiming its ‘hygienic’ and has little to no bad side effects while FGM can kill women and girls, and is done for far more malicious reasons that I can’t even begin to describe.

Men’s drinks night

Does he know the implications of what ‘buying a woman a drink’ means?? Yeah, I’d much rather be a man in this situation 😭

Drafted at 18

I am against anyone being drafted, and I’m against any military work period. But men made this rule because they deem men to be brave and strong - a stereotype designed to benefit them.

Work place injuries and fatalities

Most injuries and fatalities happen with manual labour, construction/factory work etc. Same stereotype as listed in the point before this.

Custody over children

Again, this happens due to a stereotype that benefits men. Women are ‘better parents/nurturing’ while men are not and should go out there and work and achieve their goals while women stay at home. Literally designed to benefit men. Also, a lot of men view the custody struggle as a privilege because they cannot be bothered to be fathers.

Going to prison because of a simple accusation and less abuse shelters for men

This is the craziest point because men do not go to prison over some random accusation pulled out from thin air. In order to accuse someone of abuse, you need extensive indisputable evidence. Even then, the police will not take it seriously or the defence will win the case for whatever reason. These are the hardest crimes to prove in a court and the statistics show this. Less abuse shelters for men because they are far FAR less likely to be a victim. Yes, its’s sad but this literally proves misogyny is a thing rather than misandry - because I know damn well which sex I’d rather be in this instance.

People laugh at male rape victims and women are given full support/legal justice

I addressed this in the previous point. Women are ridiculed and not believed/not given justice at an extremely higher rate than men.

Longer male prison sentences

Same stereotype that I’ve said before about being stronger/braver vs weak/nurturing. The stereotype was made to benefit them. Also this ignores that a lot of the time there are other aspects to a crime that result in a higher sentence given. For example 1st degree murder done for financial motive vs sexual motive.

Larger male homeless population and male suicide rate

I guess this is more of a question of why men are more likely to be homeless or commit suicide. Make suicide rate studies suggest it’s harder for men to admit mental health struggles/reach out for help. Again, it’s sad but the strong brave stereotype was designed to benefit them, like I’ve said before. Permanent homelessness is largely due to addiction, mental health, childhood poverty, financial crisis, loss of relationships to family/partner. These can all happen to women, except a lot of the female homeless population are trafficked, resort to prostitution, enter abusive relationships to escape the streets. In a lot of countries, people seem to think its 99% men that are homeless, but its usually not. You just typically only see male homeless people sitting/sleeping on the street in public spaces - that’s a more terrifying place for a woman to be compared to a man.

—

I guess this guy’s main problems is that he:

- Thinks USA/Europe/western countries are the only places that exist

- Can’t see that bad things that happen to men are actually a result of stereotypes designed to benefit the male population

- Makes up statistics in his head that aren’t true

- Has a crazy victim complex

- Can’t see that the women’s position in his scenario is actually worse

I hope this helps with any future debates and refutes! And I hope I explained myself well enough 😭

[gayathreya]

kanguva fixit fic time

okay i've seen it multiple times now and while i don't hate it, i think it's mediocre-below average and it is filling me up with sooo much frustration cos.. it doesn't have to be. there are relatively easy fixes for the script when this much effort has already gone into the production design and setting! i don't mind waiting 2+ years for a suriya film, but i just hate it when i do that and it's bogged down to be another loud action entertainer, a genre i thoroughly despise more and more these days as i age. i say i don't hate it, but tbh... the more i think about this film, the more i'm starting to dislike it.........

SO... I'M JUST GONNA WRITE SOME BULLETPOINT PARAGRAPHS ON FIXING IT THE WAY I AS A FAN WOULD DO i think it will help process some more of my frustration with it after my lbxd reviews. the 3 biggest problems i have with the film are direction+editing (i consider these together, and by extension, the lack of patience and fleshing out given to the worldbuilding which deserves it), the sound and screaming dialogue (also, really, part of a director's failing) and the abhorrent cameo, so my points will seek to address that most.

we open with the present, yes? actually, i think the fact there's this timeline is fine, unlike quite a few saying it wasn't needed. i disagree because if your main plot is about reincarnation, you MUST have different timelines, because the whole mythos and trope of reincarnation is the unfulfillment in a past life coming back to haunt you in the next. there is something that needs to happen, and the related souls cannot rest until a wish is met. if you don't want the present portion, the core plot itself has to change, which meh, i don't want to put in this much effort into thinking about this film cos it irritates me.

i don't want or need to change the entire story cos idc about this film to put in that energy, but one of the first marketing failures is that they seemed almost embarrassed to admit it was a reincarnation story, which i don't get at all. reincarnation themes are one of the biggest and most easily acceptable ideas in indian mythos and storytelling.. why would u be embarrassed about it? there were actual interviews where the background crew involved kept saying it was an ''interesting'' connection and straight up lied that it wasn't reincarnation, which is the main reason why so many fans were coming up with different thoughts on what the key plot was; namely, an immortality curse/boon affecting hero and villain directly and how the elements of faith and the kid tied into that. none of this is true, ofc, and that's fine, i won't slam the film for not giving me what i myself thought. but if they had said this from the start, which isn't even a spoiler cos it opens with that instantly, people would have had a clearer mind going into it. false marketing is worse than no marketing, and i'm still seething about all the bullcrap they uttered about it

my issue with the present timeline really is just the sheer dogshit idea of their jobs and conflict. we didn't need francis as a bounty hunter, he could've just been some guy working a normal job with his ex-girlfriend and he stumbles across the kid, who also didn't need any of that science fiction biomedical shit ripoff to happen. he literally could've just been A RANDOM CHILD who is abused or used in some bad fashion, whom francis accidentally meets and wants to save, cos their bond doesn't let them go. idk, i think these are simple things that could make any movie better, cos it wipes away the unnecessary shit and over the top bs with tech, we don't need that. i have no idea why directors do not want to keep their films simple to focus on the core emotion, instead wasting so much time and money to have hired guns and soldiers in loud explosive action scenes. action sequences and soldiers btw, which were reeeally bad cos the english dialogue writing was horrible

just think about how this portion in the intro and climax could've been soo much better if it was stripped down. none of the aeroplane nonsense and high tech trucks and guns and random white thugs like what is the fucking reason!!! only shitty directors who can't write hide behind needless extravagance. and siva is definitely a shitty director who can't write. i would much rather the kid be a child who is under a kidnapping ring, no matter how cliche it sounds, cos it's still miles better than uhhh *checks notes* giving him mutant superpowers after his brain has been operated on. wowz so cool da. is this 1990.

like this just makes me so angry thinking about it, this artificial inclusion of a sci fi trope, when the film already looks so ugly in that horrible ai intro which looks so ghastly and obviously fake. for that alone, i'm almost at the zone of saying i'm happy this flopped. on top of obviously using ai to ''enhance'' suriya's voice in other languages as they said... like bro.... FLOP DESERVED. if an actor can't even be fuckin arsed to learn the dialogue and DUB IN A FUCKING STUDIO FOR HIS OWN MOVIE??? then piss off. if i were a fan of his from telugu lands or something i'd feel honestly deeply cheated and hurt. what's to stop anyone from saying he doesn't even need to dub in tamil anymore? we have his fake voice coming from a computer that they clearly believe is acceptable to throw into other languages, thinking that emotion and inflections are worthy of their audience. do the same in tamil then. how about it. such lazy, horribly unethical filmmaking deserves to be thrown to the dogs. fuck gen ai use in art and fuck studio green and fuck everyone who agreed to that shit

the period portion... where do i start, man. what a mess. why wasn't there any breathing points.... why didn't we have any lull in the screenplay. that's the first thing i would change, and anyone disagreeing cos they want to make it ''racy'' or ''crisp'' needs to be kicked to the curb. you are not a child. have some patience. horrible filmmaking style that does nothing but induce a headache. i just mentioned this elsewhere but even slow paced 3 hour films would get fans, because there'll be something in there to warrant a revisit. but fast paced vomit spat out onto a script won't, cos there's no rewatch value at all. i have very minimal interest in sitting down to rewatch this cos the scenes are all just blurring together and i can't even catch a breath to analyse anything. imagine if we just had suriya in pain, suffering, a film exploring his psyche about his guilt, betrayal, both physical and emotional hurt, perhaps a disability from the stab wound... just nothing. fucking give me 10 mins of suriya crying or having his wounds tended to, it'd be better than this trainwreck garbage of scenes whizzing by that i can't even separate. i really... HATE!! editing like this. i haven't seen worst editing in a suriya film except in singam 3. this is almost on par imo

there were so many things mentioned in interviews by suriya/the team that never happened on screen. suriya for example, talked so much about the aspect of faith and their deities, how the different clans operate with different economics, worship, even their disposition in relation to their worshipped elements.... sorry, these are either flat out lies or more likely, things told to him in passing that siva never bothered to fuckin put in script. they never had any prior script reading, btw. suriya legit said siva writes his dialogue early morning at 4-5am, and at 7am or so he's given the papers and thrown into set to act. well of course this film is gonna be shit, brother. what else did anyone expect!!! no practice, no script reading, no chemistry between actors to act out and perform, no voice modulation and testing that's why every other scene it's him shouting alternately and pissing all of us cos we can't even watch a movie in peace.... saying ''they're tribals'' as an excuse for the constant shouting is also such a poor understanding and dehumanisation of our ancestors, who also had calm, peace, quiet love and contemplation, in their longings or beliefs. this actually isn't a movie. it's a reels fest for instagram and tiktok wanker teens. it's clear siva didn't think of his whole as a film, but merely events and moments to stitch together, cos there's no way in hell any competent director would create a film like this otherwise. can't stand films crafted solely for events and spectacle, cos where is the character drama and arcs of highs and lows? even an amateur writer would know this.

speaking of breathers... what i really want in films is vulnerability and fragility of the hero to be depicted. i legit couldn't believe my eyes after what happens in the interval, cos i was so sure once that betrayal happens, we'd be spending the next 10-15 mins of suriya hurt, in both physical and emotional pain at his failure in taking care of the boy and convincing him of his good will. i thought we'd see kanga struggling to walk or fight, one of his arms useless to him now, but... notHING EVER COMES FROM THIS!!! we just continuously get pulled into narrative plot point after narrative plot point. there is no time at all to be spent on exploring kanga's psyche.. a better writer-director would certainly think about this. siva didn't. even the present timeline when francis dislocates his own thumb, i thought it would come up - the idea of casting self-injury on himself this time to save a boy who stabbed him in the past, it's almost poetic. but... nothing. just fucking nothing. where is the literary value and tension and poetry that all this potential has???

this obviously extends to all the other moments the movie could have slowed down and added more dialogue or atmospheric tension - the burning at the stake, the rock of justice, any of the worship and politics and economic push and pull these clans have with each other... instead, we get literally nothing apart from ''evil blood clan'' who hates ''good fire clan'' BRO WHAT ARE THEY EVEN FIGHTING FOR!!! what is their conflict? there's no point of moral or philosophical discussion point at all between these clans in the film. this also ties in to the first crime - koduva killing 100 (-99, really) men, and the fallout from that. why not just make him kill 1? then wouldn't there have been an actual avenue to discuss capital punishment and revenge, and eye for an eye vengeance or rehabilitation? where's the conflict point in executing a piece of shit who murdered ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE?! this could've so easily been turned into commentary on how one views justice and crime against the backdrop of tribes. the audience is given nothing for us to think about their sides and who to root for, what mistakes or crimes they may have committed against each other, or any kind of conflict in their faiths or ideology that one goes against. just typical one-dimensional bad guy who hates the typical one-dimensional good guy. you spent almost 3 years making this.. this is what you came up with?? fucking juvenile. even a beginner writer would be embarrassed to put this out. obviously, this happens when your whole team is just thinking about how to make hero mass entry and cOO0llLL YOuTh gEN Z moments, rather than expanding upon the world and potential themes to flesh out. there is no point saying in every interview siva has great knowledge in tamil literature. so fuckin what. none of that shit matters cos his writing isn't literary at all. this looks like a grade school paper a child puts out for what makes a ''cool'' hero and nothing more cos they do not have the capacity for literary analysis.

the cameo.... watha i'm pissed as f. i cannot tell u how angry i was watching that shit first day. sooo stupid and unnecessary, completely spoiled the expectations of waiting for rolex/dhilli clash on screen just cos siva had a stupid idea to make this into 2 parts which didn't need to be. FUCKKK YOUU, MAN!!!!!!!!!!! this should've just been a single, longer movie, and with kanga failing both his promises (protecting the boy like he promised his mother, and letting himself be killed by him), should've just killed himself in the climax. it would've been a great ending for him actually as it intercuts with the present (i did like the intercut of both timelines in the climax actually, i think this is the only portion where the editing is done decent), where in one time we see him throw himself to the sharks to be ripped apart after his failure, and in another time he manages to save the boy from whatever it is, and maybe even inadvertently dies in the process because of the kid due to a past sin of his own in the role of the present kid's harsh life, but dying happily so, creating a bittersweet tragedy of broken promises mending itself in another lifetime. this could've easily been made up to be a tragic literary piece on reincarnation and promise, and it would've worked. idk. i'm just spitballing. it's not that i've had a long time to think about this, these are very basic things i already thought of almost immediately after my first show, and i'm just stumped no one else in that whole shit team bothered to take a step back and think to make this more compact into 1 solo film. if everything just has to be about milking money from the audience and dsp blaring shitty loud music every second, then fuck you.

i think this got longer than i intended. there're still so many other problems apart from direction and editing, pacing, but these above things are the biggest ones for me. cos even with the extremely painful and poor quality bgm by dsp, i also believe it could've been naturally avoided if given a slower film, and he wouldn't have made this so loud for no reason. it'd be very natural for a md to provide quieter moments if the scenes themselves are softer with more intimacy and atmosphere, not stitched together from all high moments, which ofc would only make his job louder.

so many dumb fight scenes... the opening francis fight and editing style with coloured words and childish intercuts (sorry idgaf i am a thallumaala hater because i am not 12 years old thinking this is cool).. the croc fight.... which served literally ZERO PURPOSE. no really. they even dared release a video on that making, to show how much HarDWOrK they put in for it, making a river and animal from scratch, painting and animating it, and it's like ??? tf for???? the only bit that served was to make the boy injured, and to make kanga take care of him leading into the mannippu song. this could've been achieved in soo many other ways... poruva could've been bitten by a dangerous insect. he could've eaten the wrong fruit. he could've slipped and fell down a bad ravine or cliff that looked inviting but is actually deadly. LITERALLY ANYTHING else would've saved them so much time and money, and yet still prove and highlight the same idea to the audience that the forest they've been exiled to is dangerous and not easy to survive in. nothing though.... just nothing.

i can't believe i'm still talking about this given how frustrated it makes me and how lazy i feel these scenes are written in for what they think is mass appeal. spectacle, scale, budget, visuals.. NONE of this substitutes good, calm pacing and editing and story. man, i'm tired. ok whatever i'm done

[skaruresonic]

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen the fandom of a Konami franchise being filled with anti-woke dudebros poisoning the well of criticism against a product, giving the fans of said product an easy excuse to dismiss every criticism against it because "You're just X-phobic" I'd have 2 nickels

How quaint

(bonus: both games are 2001 sequels to seminal first entry titles and considered overhyped/series' golden cows by some :P)

Yeah, like. It's hard to wedge in a discussion on what the game is actually about when both sides are too busy accusing each other of being bigoted. Meanwhile you're just standing there like "can we talk about the themes and gameplay now." Lol.

The number of times I've heard a YouTuber sneer "woke," as if that even meant anything to the SH2 remake's standard of quality in general, and noped out of the rest of the video are... well... more than one, to say the least.

Like, I don't really care in the slightest about whether Bloober injected "DEI" into the game; I care about whether they made a faithful remake, and in my estimation they haven't.

I don't think they had an agenda other than to gratify their own egos by leeching onto the creative work of Team Silent, because they've pretty much said so in their own words. It's frankly kind of stupid to go the conspiratorial route with how Bloober are pushing some "woke" agenda when the Silent Hill series has always been, more or less, "woke." Maybe not along the axis of race - it'd be nice to have an indigenous protagonist - but certainly along that of gender.

Seriously, if 1-4 released as-is today, they'd be decried "woke."

Harry Mason, an adoptive dad proving to be a far superior parent to his child than Dahlia Gillespie, an abusive mom who subjects her child to years of torture for personal gain? Preposterous! What do you mean he's not a secret predator?

A game where a terminally-ill woman is not portrayed as a total martyr, and her husband isn't an alpha male? Insulting! Not to mention how they ~sexualize~ Angela's trauma: Team Silent must be pedos somehow!

Don't even get me started on 3 lmao. The fucking field day they'd have with 3. "This game is a load of garbage because it's pushing a trans agenda!" (game is one big metaphor for unwanted pregnancy but also covers topics like religious trauma, guilt, revenge, abuse, and sin) "Why do they expect me to empathize with a girl protagonist? Everybody knows girls don't suffer the way boys do! Do they want me to change my gender right this second????"

4... well, tbh, I think they'd be okay with 4 since Eileen and Cynthia receive sexy outfits. But idk, they'd probably find something to bitch about there too ig. Maybe something about how Henry isn't chad enough to defeat Walter, or how Walter is a beta cuck because mommy issues. (shrug)

[anatheyma]

Indeed, is not a easy instrument to learn. When I left home and I got my first job I saved enough money to buy a violin and learnt to play it from scratch, without any help. I learnt to play the cello briefly after that, when I was around seventeen. I've tried to learn piano but as same with languages, I am often too busy at work to do it properly.

I am a big fan of describing people I enjoy being with. I could talk about how I perceive you for hours without any problem and even in deeper detail than how I did before. Cute puppy boy.

You do have pretty eyes and curls, though, so they're right about that. I practically raised most of my youngers neighbors and one of my first jobs was being a babysitter, so little kids love me in a really curious way. And because, well, I can carry them around on my back or let them sit on my shoulders and they enjoy it just because I'm tall, hah. Also, maybe I give dad vibes? Not sure.

Do you ever miss your family? I'm deeply sorry if it's a personal question, you don't have to answer it if you don't feel like it. I think of my mom sometimes when I do stuff that she used to do.

–🦴

impressive! once again. too bad you're too busy to learn piano, it sucks when responsibilities get in the way of our interests!

i think it's interesting to hear what other people have to say about me, so i don't mind at all. it's very flattering. i'm a good listener and i love it when people talk to me about anything in deeper detail tbh! especially things they're passionate about. i tend to remember small details about other people. as long as there's nothing on my mind to distract me so i'm able to fully focus.

and thank you! i'm not sure i've shown too much of myself on here... but still, thanks! that's also very cute! love some good dad vibes. and the kids love it too apparently!

i do miss my family often. but i know it's better this way! i especially miss my dog and my dad. my dad's like my best friend. i also miss my little brother. he's an adult now too and lives on his own, we kind of grew apart. used to be really close. oh well. my mom on the other hand... let's just say it's complicated. she was my abuser and we were regular clients of the child protective services who ended up not doing Shit about the situation, mostly because my mom's a great manipulator. but i got out of that house and that's all that matters! better late than never.

[arcplaysgames]

Well you said "gender" so now people give a shit.

gosh you know what yeah, in America we get taught that Frankenstein is the first work of science fiction, but the story of Kaguya honestly fits the bill much better-

gurl what

MORGANA IS A VOLKSWAGON NOW

This line made me laugh out loud tbh. Way to hang a lampshade.

Okay so instead of Tartarus, we have Mementos. Admittedly not as pithy of a name. Morgana is hoping to unlock the secret of their true form by exploring deeper into Mementos, delving into the collective subconscious.

I love you, Ann.

Does Morgana not remember whether they are boy or gorl or other? That's very telling. By all means, if he feels like a boy, neat. But the fact that there are a lot of question marks around that makes me think once again that Morgana isn't human but is some manifestation of something from the collective unconsciousness, like Teddie was.

Also Morgana gives me massive Teddie vibes anyway. Oh, the annoying mascot character who I wind up liking a whole bunch? but a CAT THIS TIME instead of a white guy? Perfect.

Maybe Notigor is the Big Bad of the game while Morgana is the Big Good. Notigor represents confinement and false accusations and abuse of authority masquerading as "rehabilitation." Morgana has thus far enabled actual rehabilitation.

But we're so early on, who fucking knows. I am very interested in Morgana's arc tho. Like Teddie as the Star, Morgana's SLink is on a plot-progression time table, so I assume he's going to be tied to the themes of the story like Teddie was.

also the degree to which i mistrust this child cannot be overstated. FEAR ALL PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN. You better fucking not be the Justice arcana, child, i swear to fuck.

WOW Mishima's personality change now that Kamoshida is gone!!!!

Which: makes sense. He was one of the preferred punching bags and was the fucking grim reaper to his classmates, sending them to see Kamoshida for their daily beatings. Breaking loose from that would inspire a dramatic turn, easy.

He's the one who set up the Phan-Site (lmao, nice pun tbh) for the Thieves. He really really really wants to get in on helping them out and is, uh. Mildly overeager.

Moon arcana, huh. I'm being a nerd and staring at one of my own Moon cards rn.

Moon and Hanged Man are very similar in my eyes. Hanged Man is about the Choice but with the Moon, it's a place you find yourself eventually. When there has been a dramatic change in your life, the Moon represents the period of calm after. The usual depiction is of the Moon's reflection, actually, bouncing up from a pond or river, and drawing the attention of a fish or scorpion or something else.

The Moon is like staring into a mirror. It can help you understand yourself and become re-acquainted after a traumatic event. But it can also drag your journey to a halt and even lead you into madness if you don't figure out how to look away and understand what reality is.

Mishima has def been through the traumatic incident. My fear is that he throws himself too far into the Phan-Site thing and needs help clawing his way out.

also, in the Death route, I am picking the most ridiculous options and I cackled at her response. there ain't a drug that can fix Reverie Vantas The Fifth lmao.

anyway, LOOK AT THE FUCKING POLLEN

As someone living in the american south, I can look out my window right now and see my car fucking covered in a sheet of pollen. IT'S HELL. IT SUCKS. FUCKING GODDAMN TREES, STOP IT!

[chaoticfandomthot]

Started watching Mouse and at first I wasn't going to talk about it on tumblr to avoid getting spoiled but i have sooo many thoughts so i'll ramble under the cut ignore me

DO NOT SPOIL ME

Okay so i just finished episode 7 which ends with the mouse and the vague flashes of memory, right?

And i've always found it weird that Yohan would have been abandonned to a family and then picked back up by his mom, like that didn't make sense to me

I was led astray by the mom choking him reveal but like why would she even be there? Was she the wife and she remarried? No we would've heard of the other guy and having 2 other kids? She wouldn't risk it i think

So! Here are my theories as of now and a short explaination for each:

1- yohan's mom did a switcharoo somehow

->supporting evidence : the genetic papers yohan hid (i think it was proof he's not the killer's kid), the mom's weird looks at Bareum (could be just like 'damn my kid almost killed that guy but i doubt), the weird flashes of the mouse thing

I think the mom heard about the mouse thing and freaked, tried to kill him but couldnt and decided fuck it im exchanging my child or putting him up for adoption and picking up a new one. Sadly she has terrible luck

2- Bareum has not been switched, is the kid of the other mom (actually shown in the picture) and just repressed his memories of the mouse incident, nothing else weird happened to him and the genetic thing is a different thing altogether

->the most logical but i think they're putting too many pieces down for it to be so easy? Idk might be overthinking this show (def am)

3- a little out there tbh but my first one was a switcharoo so i think its too late to try to appear logical; bareum is actually responsible for his parent's death and in the process of whatever happened he lost his memories and his murderous tendencies got repressed with them

-> idk i just thought about that and why the hell not at this point

Random thoughts; the kid pf the mouse incident seemed to really enjoy it while the kid of the fish, dog and siblings seemed to do it more out of revenge/duty/lack of giving any fucks. To me that makes it clear it's not the same person, but it could also just be the development of being abused following the first incident.. i still think if the mouse kid was the siblings kid he would've looked to be enjoying the deaths more? Idk this post is a hellish mess and i cant wait to laugh at myself once im further along

Development theories that are just about future things i think will happen;

- while investigating i think bareum will get more and more into the mind of the killer until he can't repress his own urges or gets too curious and tries it himself

If above happens; might eventually get a hannibal type situation of helping investigate his own crimes and enjoying either figuring it out so easily or leading other people in circles

This is all because i need traces of my theory for how much i figured out / was wrong about once im further along