#AND I ALSO. cant really bear to talk thru gintoki himself directly either kjsdfg emotionally. so. MESSY RESPONSE

[joelletwo]

oh my goddddddddd im losing my mind about the katsura comparisons u draw that i hadnt considered. i hate thinking abt oba-z i hate elizabeth gags visually lol but GOD....... white ghost sheet wearing circumstantially maybe-human maybe-oni................. undeniable. emotionally meaty

i do think a postcanon gin+zura is the most stable configuration of any chars involved in the cliff incident both just by circumstance of being the only two that make it out but also as the two most able to grow in the ways needed TO make it out. (and u have killed me framing katsuras actions in the tower that way. augh.) which.

i agree with everything else youre saying about shouyoutsuro 😭😭 the whole tragedy of, the more you think about shoukason, trying to gordian knot find the solution where everyone could have been safe and happy becomes more impossible. theres a lot of contradictions going on with shouyou and gin's relationship that you point out. and no neat way to resolve a lot of them bc of who they are and how that interacts.

AND I THIIIIINK to me youre so right about the distinction between shouyou and utsuro being not a solid real thing. when i was thinking about how shouyou dies and is immediately resurrected as the most bitter destructive version of himself, that still feels like its in reaction, not an absence of shouyou. he TRIED and it didnt WORK and now hes acting out.

(and what he triiiiiieeeeed was casting a kid who loved him and wouldve spent his life with him into the same role of every other human that ever hurt him, and simultaneously making him forever human who hurts him and monster who loves him, and what gintoki diddddd with that was accept it knowingly and willingly. AND. right. i think despite them both walking into this knowingly theyre both still ANGRY at the other for doing it.

normal kid-parent relationship stuff! honestly! i find it perfectly reasonable on both their parts kjsdf)

utsuro-the-new now becomes all at once. how to say. a vessel for all the unrestrained parts of shouyou? the destructive (since constructive didnt work), the suicidality giving up (since existing can only bring him pain no matter what path he takes and he cant even die about it and trying to die about it hurt him more), but also the childlike fear and resistance of dying, and the childlike anger at gintoki THAT GETS represented as utsuro (when i think about the image of shouyou looking kind of resentfully over his shoulder on the cliff at gintoki and utsuro in identical execution poses - ITS SO INTERESTING. blaming both "the meaner self" who wouldnt "let him keep living" and also the tool he himself used - raised! - to do it)

(WHICH!!!! YEAH!!!! is exactly the kind of contradictory and somewhat unwilling mental gymnastics about how he should react to what gintoki has done for him, and reductive pedestalizing/demonizing of gintoki-the-symbol, that takasugi is also doing.

which is to say more largely. I LOVEEEE how unclean everything is thruout gintama. human to have all sorts of feelings about something that effects you and those are your feelings to have, no matter how justified or logical. and theres no neat way to break free of the worse ones u dont think u should have, u just have to live w the contradictions.)

i rambled even more and didnt even touch on everything u brought up kjsdfg i just get so excited about utsuro as an exploration of the unsayable things about shouyou. i still cant even begin to draw Moral or Effectiveness Conclusions bc i doooooooo love that utsuro is an emotional mess and that shouyou was kind of a dick lol. not at all a condemnation of him either. and my thoughts about katsuras treatment of gintoki are a whole other train of thought growing in me i could say a million words about but 😭 i love everything u point out abt him

like shut the fuck up kjshdfg