#I THINK THEY'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL BUT THEY STILL LOVE EACH-OTHER YK

[rosesvineyard]

OH! they yearn for and want that cookie so damn bad..(CLICK FOR BETTER QUALITY!! )

my moot @nokaru said "sloppy makeout" and i passed out and made this <3 a hearty midnight (slightly horny) meal to get the willscuella nation through a few of these tough winter days!

reblog if you can!! love y'all <3

[gildeddlily]

yk what I really hate? people defining soukoku's relationship as toxic and headcanon chuuya as a violent person who physically assaults and abuses Dazai cause he "makes him mad", or Dazai as the one who constantly manipulates him into doing what he needs.

like who ever told you this? first of all, no. second of all, no. They have the strangest relationship I've ever seen, but it's something beautiful built with trust from both parts so how can you call that toxic to this point?

we've never saw Chuuya physically hurting Dazai in both manga and light novels, at least not seriously (the basement scene doesn't mean anything, they didn't see each other for like four years and chuuya's a fricking mafia executive no shit he's gonna beat up the mafia traitor. but seriously, after seeing him fight for real you think that was violence?). Do I think that at least once Dazai got beat up? yes, cause Dazai is constantly getting on Chuuya's nerves. the nerves of a dysfunctional teenager, that works for the mafia, that has a partner who tries to kill himself every two days, that is emotionally constipated and never learned how to love and be loved (the sheep betrayed him, the Flags died, Dazai is Dazai) so yeah, I don't think he knows how to express his feelings (he was all "I'm gonna act like I don't love you but in reality I love you a lot" with the flags at sixteen, what do you pretend from him if he's interacting with Dazai?) but not to the point of beating up Dazai every time they fight.

Dazai is ever worse: he's traumatized as fuck too, and is always going with the "I'm not human" bullshit (shut up sometimes he's so human he makes me cry) that most times prevents him from enjoying practically anything. Chuuya is not someone he know how to act with, but he spends three years with him so he fricking learned how, alr? They know eachother better than everyone, to the point that Chuu is able to understand Dazai's "misterious as fuck no one can understand me why people call akutagawa emo when im here" plans and attitude. They trust each other to the point of constantly putting each other lives in the other's hands.

Dazai manipulates everyone, yeah, but not like Fyodor does. Stop treating his efforts to respect Oda's last wish like nothing and only seeing him as the man he was in the mafia. Bungou Stray Dogs is so beautiful because it's realistic in portraying human's life and emotions, so stop trying to make Dazai act and seen as the mean demon who hates everyone except odasaku. his "chess pieces" are used and directed in a gentle way, just see Atsushi and the relationship he has with him, or the ADA. (the drowning thing. there was world's peace at steak, you think he should have chose saving Chuuya instead of everyone else? And that he really didn't think ab Chuuya saving Fyodor with his ability? I'm sure he knew, purely for the "what a shallow bond" thing. Asagiri spent the last years making us understand the deep bond they share, only to make it really shallow after one hundred chapters?)

Chuuya knows Dazai, he knows the way he choose to act, how his mind works and how he plans the future, Asagiri said that himself, so it actually is canon. He truly knows him (best and worst part of him, and we're talking ab mafia!dazai) and still trusts him with his life, knows Dazai always hides something up his sleeve and's always "i trusted you with this *random insults*" after almost dying for Dazai.

They just voluntarily ignore their connection, but they're both aware of it, just see how Chuuya in Dead Apple is sure that Dazai has something in mind that involves him using Corruption (risking his life) and punching him in the face, or how Dazai is sure that Chuuya will use Corruption risking his life and punch him. (the soft way he punched him while using Corruption really is... strange. he was throwing buildings around and then punch Dazai like he wasn't even using his ability? there wasn't any real strength behind it, at least not the corrupted one. so yeah we also have corrupted!Chuuya loving Dazai like the normal one) (I'm chewing a gum (my throat is hurting sthu) and I feel like the woman from that asmr meme that types on a pc) so yeah the point is. people can write or create media ab everything they want, but going around talking ab how they'd be a toxic couple cause they're abusive and bad for eachother is bullshit, especially if they're talking ab 22!Soukoku that has the potential to be endgame. teen!Soukoku could be toxic, yes, cause it's always disfuncional teenagers we're talking ab, they wouldn't even know ab how to be a good couple, but they'd manage, and still do more good for each other than bad. (this is all to say that I cry when while searching for good skk ff I find that type of ff that antagonize one of them by portraying them as abusive (like taking out of the context Chuuya calling sixteen Dazai inhuman after he said that the death of a man that Chuuya respected was a luck for them- no shit he was angry(still could have not said that)) and the other as an innocent kid that doesn't know better)

we stan the "the other was the only really good thing in their life for a long time" trope

[raytorosaurus]

I have seen maybe half a season of TUA and didn’t read the comics so let me tell you seeing those panels where Vanya is yelling “We belong on that stage” (and in reference to herself and her taller blonde bass-playing brother) drawn in profile with literally Gerard’s haircut and outfit was a big shock to the system. I never even considered that he’d inserted elements of himself and his bandmates into TUA except for a bunch of weird edits people made comparing how much Aiden Gallagher looks like Frank but now I feel like I really need to read it.

im really looking forward to rereading all of the comics after this semester's over because i haven't done that since volume 3's run ended and i'll definitely make more coherent posts about it then but like. it's really really interesting to compare to all of gerard's other art because he is just...so distinctively him, even across different mediums and genres. tua and mcr and hesitant alien and kjna and his visual art etc etc etc like his artistic fingerprint is stamped so boldly and unapologetically all over them and that's something i really love about him. like his art, love it or hate it, is sooooo genuine always. even when he's purposely imitating other artists, he's very consciously doing it in his own voice, putting his own spin on it.

when i say tua and mcr are completely separate projects i mean it - i don't think one should only ever be discussed in relation to/in the context of the other - and, above all, tua is certainly not like...autobiographical, or a direct representation of real people/events. it's led by gerard but it has a different creative team than mcr does and that really shows as well - i definitely wanna talk ant this when i have more time but part of the reason im not sold on conweap as an album is because it's too umbrella academy - it's really evident that gerard was working on both of them at the same time, and letting one influence the other too directly. mcr's a band, not a Gerard Project, and umbrella academy is largely a duo (w gabriel bá), so they can't just be transplanted onto each other yk.

anyway I'm rambling but all this to say - tua isn't meant to be "about" mcr any more than bullets is "about" 9/11. but gerard's life was changed and shaped by his experiences in the music scene throughout his life, by dropping everything and living as a penniless artist, by becoming suddenly (in)famous, and that really shines through in tua. he says he drew inspiration from touring band life to write a dysfunctional family, and the dehumanising effects of fame and attention, and of being categorised and scrutinised on a private or public level, are huge themes - as is addiction, mental health, complicated grief.

like...i actually got into mcr through the tua comics lmaooo. i read volume 1 because of wonderful @blackmoldmp3 talking about it and immediately said oh. i need more from this dude's brain right now. and i was soooo not disappointed haha. i really am obsessed with quite a lot of the things gerard is also obsessed with as an artist. the particular themes and imagery and scenarios he's fixated on are really very consistent throughout everything he does - only the way they're discussed or portrayed does change over time. i don't rly subscribe to the idea of gleaning specifics abt artists' personal lives from their works because, beside all else, it just does them a huge disservice (that's my number one gripe with the popular talking pounts around hes alien and frank's solo work in particular; however "confessional" you wanna read art as, it's still art that was created with skill and intent.)

anyway that's way off topic dkfnfj. what i do love about this kind of thing is looking at distinct creations in the context of the rest of an artist's body of work. like...yeah, gerard's said there's a lot of mikey in klaus. has dressed similarly to vanya and the kraken and the seance at times etc etc. has compared himself to the rumor, because she's the one he relates to most. puts a lot of his familiar ideology surrounding music and performance into vanya. puts angry teenage vanya in a shitty punk band with her disillusioned teenage brother on bass, and puts a classical music prodigy in a punk band as an excellent guitarist, writing songs about killing the president etc etc. i could go on! because these things are just scattered everywhere through the comic, just like all of gerard thematic and aesthetic and ideologic fingerprints.

so what's reallyyy interesting to me is looking at umbrella academy as something gerard wrote on the road with mcr across multiple years. volume one was released while the tbp world tour was ongoing, and volume two only a few months after. the progression of parade -> tua -> conweap -> danger days is SOOOO fascinating to me, especially because one of the things that really works about danger days imo is the way it kind of shakes off some of the tua-style gritty cynicism and returns to mcr's defiant, extravagant theatricality. if you go through tua with a fine-tooth comb you'll definitely find the most direct comparisons to conweap, in terms of mcr. the way dd approaches the themes it has in common with tua is just.....so different, and so so mcr. and then you can see the at times self-referential development on those things in hesitant alien - AND THEN VOLUME 3 COMES AROUND AND LIKE. AUUUGGGGHHHHH the change and growth there is SO apparent. btw i don't mean "growth" "progression" etc in this post to mean "improving" - i just mean change and development in a neutral sense, bc it's so interesting to see it laid out there in an artist's body of work. but like. man it makes me crazeeee actually the way gerard picked tua back up....almost certainly around the same time mcr started discussing a potential reunion. and the way that foundations revisits and reconceptualises mcr's existing catalogue is paralleled in the way vol 3 of tua is, like...........like there's so much life lived there, between those things. gerard's even said he's changed his plan for the ending (if we ever see it 🥲) because he has more compassion for his own characters now and doesn't want to see them broken down for good. he says he's gotten better at listening to other people - for starters, he's a lot more conscious of his own subconscious racism/whiteness that came through at times in the original run and has expressed regret for that (namely, the entire main cast being white, with a couple of side characters being uncomfortably stereotyped).

but just like. augh. im not gonna lie man i have no idea what i've just typed im sorry it's probably so rambly bc I'm so dizzy rn and definitely am not gonna proofread it or whatever skdjfj but. I LOVE ART! I LOVE ARTISTS! I LOVE DIVING DEEP INTO AN ARTIST'S BODY OF WORK AND WATCHING THEM REINVENT THEMSELF AND/OR DOUBLE DOWN ON THEMSELF (SOMETIMES FOR BETTER, SOMETIMES FOR WORSE). obvs this fandom genuinely does have a big issue with invasive/un-self-aware parasocial behaviour but there's a difference between that and like. getting obsessed with a particular artist. that's so normal and in fact necessary to life imo. i think every artist literally has to have ppl like that i can't imagine any other way to live it's just a specific type of human connection at a distance baby. don't get me wrong tho i also wanna chew on his thigh. anyway.

my god. how did i get here what even was your question. tua. yes it's crazy. it's not for everyone for sure but it has enough of the shit that makes me crazzzzyyyyy that it got me into mcr which made me crazierrrr so. yes i can recommend. especially if ur like me and lovvvve stories that are a little bit fractured by design. that dance around big parts of the story, where there's as much significance in an absence or in a tiny background detail than there is in any dialogue or action scene. most of the criticism i see of tua is about the pacing but like. to my tastes it's a really great use of the comic medium yk? lmk if you want content warnings or something there are plenty skdjfj.