#In a meta sense and an animation sense

[ayara012]

@shinkai-kaiju

what's funny about one piece is that for all that it takes place on a strange world filled with weird and silly looking characters, they do take their pirating and politics very very seriously and every big confrontation involving one of the big players of this world always has massive worldwide repercussions, but our protagonist is literally just anime bugs bunny and doesn't give a shit about any of that. the essence of this series is really the juxtaposition between the importance of the situations luffy finds himself in VS how little mind he actually pays to them. it's like this image as a 1000+ episode show

[mikuyuuss]

I love that Mitsuri is a little silly and stupid at times, shes a girlboss AND a girlfailure to me <3 but apparently there are some people that genuinely dislike her for those things? I understand Mitsuri's character isn't for everyone, BUT WAIT, HEAR ME OUT.

I've always had this headcanon that Mitsuri had a somewhat sheltered childhood growing up, since In the Rengoku Gaiden, she randomly got discriminated by a stranger for her hair color, so I can only imagine that she probably got that on a daily basis.

I'm sure Mitsuri's parents don't enjoy seeing their eldest daughter bring harassed, so perhaps they might have coddled her a bit. Maybe that could explain why Mitsuri comes off as childish, innocent or """"stupid"""" as many people would say. For me, it's more like her personality just screams "sheltered kid", through no fault of her own tho.

(this is taken from the second fanbook, translated by @/violetheart08)

The fact that she's happy to have friends at the corps, suggests to me that she probably didn't have many friends growing up, she most likely got bullied too, and if that's the case, it's understandable that she can come across as overly friendly and excitable whenever she's befriending new people.

She's actually socially awkward like Giyuu, but just on the opposite end of the spectrum lol, that's why I love them both.

But still, it's not that Mitsuri is straight up incompetent. She's very creative and thinks outside of the box with her breathing style. She also adapts pretty well in high stress situations, we saw this in swordsmith arc, but also we see this very clearly in the Rengoku Gaiden too.

The fact that it only took her two years to become a hashira shows that she has a level of discipline to attain that title. Not only did Rengoku trained her well, this is also no feat that a truly "stupid" person can achieve.

The reason why I have this particular headcanon about Mitsuri is because some families do put A LOT of importance on reputation, especially asian families, when their kids start showing traits that would make them "different" they tend to "hide" the kids in order to protect their reputation so they won't lose their chances at marriage.

(Though I'm not saying all asian families are like this. This is mostly just based on my personal experience that I won't elaborate further)

It reminded me of this scene, when Mitsuri's family suggested that she can just stay with them forever when she was worried that she won't be able to find someone. I love Mitsuri's parents and they are VERY GREAT for their time, but also this is really relatable to me personally :(

And given how marriage was such a big deal in Taisho era, I imagine that it was a mixture of that and the pressure to conform and protect their daughter at the same time that led me to imagine that Mitsuri probably had a sheltered lifestyle.

And you know it's possible that I'm wrong about all of these lmao, but just the fact that she has a comparably normal childhood is a good enough reason as to why she's more positive and naive compared to her peers. I know this is all just a headcanon, but I do wish people can be a bit more considerate towards Mitsuri before hating on her for being "loud" "stupid" and "annoying"

[kideaternomnom]

Azula antis: She’s pure evil.

Me: ...Well, Zuko changed so why can’t she get a chance?

Antis: Uh- she was born evil! She had no empathy!

Me: My guy, she was raised by literal Ozai and was neglected by her mom along with Iroh. Zuko could’ve been the same and so could’ve ANYONE. That was the whole point of that one episode showing Roku’s backstory. She’s also still only 14 in the finale and 16 in the comics.

Antis: Erm- uh...She rejected redemption! Yeah- she’s pure evil for that!

Me: Zuko rejected redemption in season 2. But he still changed.

Antis:

[serpentface]

Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

[soullessjack]

another tally on the “things about jack that have been almost erased by the baby au” is how genuinely fucked up and weird and scary and violent and horrifying he is. the body horror of his existence is so. Palpable.

he looks human, but he still fundamentally is not human, and the thing that separates him from being human or belonging or being normal and loved and accepted without strings attached is his own bloodline. his own family, his own father. the blood that runs through his veins is the blood of the devil and he wasn’t fed it like Sam. the anger and rage and capacity for violence inside him isn’t an ancient curse like it was for Dean. It’s just who he is. It’s his neurology. Jack enters a guilt/grief-induced psychosis so bad he starts hallucinating his own dead evil father who proceeds to say “I’m in your head, your DNA,” and goes on about how Jack’s place with the only chosen family he ever cared for is that of their little pet monster who’s only kept around to kill things for them. And this is his subconscious, remember, these are all Jack’s own thoughts being given a hallucinatory voice.

When jack is first born he doesn’t even register that he’s not a full human. It’s not until he catches dean telling the sheriff that he’s a Nephil and gets stabbed all the way through his entire heart to the hilt of the angel blade and survives, that he realizes he’s Not Normal. Jack stabs himself 18 times with “grim determination,” dedicated to making a wound stay open in his body, but nothing happens. He doesn’t know what any of this is, but he knows it’s dangerous and he’s seen firsthand what he can do, because he sent the sheriff careening backwards into glass when he didn’t mean to do anything more than push her away. He tells Dean he will hurt someone again [whether he means to or not]. And he tells Sam, using his powers is like breathing; it’s a subconscious, physical, neurological part of his system that he cannot (currently) consciously control or stop.

He’s literally a living weapon. These powers of his that hurt people are akin to breathing. His violence and his evil is deep seated and runs through his heart and bleeds out of him. But he can’t bleed the evil out. He can’t escape what he was born into or what keeps him alive. He can’t even live without this nuclear power that ostensibly others him from everyone forever. He’s foaming at the mouth and seizing and fainting and bleeding and going into total systemic failure and subsequently dying as a human because he just isn’t human and he can’t live as one even if he wants to, even if that is a part of him it still isn’t the only part of him. The other half that makes him untrustworthy and violent and angry and dangerous and nuclear and evil and feared and hated is the one part he is left dying without.

His body dies a first time because it couldn’t live without its own hereditary disease, he died as a human and goes to human heaven and sees and rekindles with his human mother, the part of him that he wants to be and loves but can’t exist as. He’s brought back but now he’s a time bomb, a nuclear reactor internally melting down. he’s a weapon, but he’s alive because he was born as a weapon, and neither of these things were his choice.

and then a second time his body dies because he was only registered as a threat with no humanity. his eyes are burned out of his skull and instead of heaven with his mother, instead of humanity, he wakes up in the pitch black abyss where other nonhumans go when they die, then he’s brought back and he’s a weapon for the third time. He’s a living bomb, a collapsing black hole, and he has to eat human hearts ripped straight from the chest to keep his bomb body alive and ready for detonation, ready for collapse. He’s so far from human, further than he ever wanted to be, further enough to make his deep rooted fear a reality that he’s too suicidal to bother rebuking. Why rebuke the truth? The absolute truth that the devil, the evil of all things is in his blood and he is evil and he was a born weapon whose body exists to destroy and kill and not even his own love or will can stop it.

He is a gun that doesn’t want to be a gun and hates that his body is made to shoot and kill, but he has no choice in being anything else but a gun. He cannot ever be good, he was never good to begin with, he was just malfunctioning, glitching, experiencing an error and virus and flaw that he wishes was his entire programming. His eyes glow yellow like the corrupted Star Wars Sith and Rosemary’s Baby and a whole slew of evil things that are evil and meant to be rejected. When he gets angry, people stare at him as if he’s a cornered animal, because that’s what he is to them. To both sides of the equation, he is an animal. A foreign creature, a thing, he’s not human enough to be human and he’s not angelic enough to be an Angel. He’s some weird mixture that nobody can understand or accept. He’s unpredictable and violent and wild and born that way and only in his subsequent domestication, only in the extension of personhood and humanity can he be deemed worth loving. He’s like a dog, detrimentally loyal, old yeller going rabid while saving his family and having to be shot in an act of mercy. Barking and biting at people who might hurt his loved ones and killing them as an act of love. Sam wanted Nick to burn so Jack burns Nick and that’s why Jack says they would be grateful. He did what Sam wanted. Same for the other biblical killings. He’s the cat sinking its fangs into rodents and birds. Leaving the punctured corpses on the doormat as a gift, I did this for you because I love you, don’t you love me too?

I haven’t eaten well in the past two days does this click click anyone’s boom. Saliva

[nicholasmoorethetwittermigrant]

Digital Circus Theory

The crew are all programmers who created Caine/the circus, but in particular Pomni’s head programmer. The other’s are her subordinates and she’s the last one to arrive in the circus because she ordered everyone sent ahead of herself to investigate/fix it until she was the only one left.

[cheese-water]

I’m sorry HELLO?????

I was rewatching vods just to feel something and this popped up outta nowhere like huh

WHY ARE HER WINGS CALLED J0029?????

[moongothic]

Hey so also have Sir Crocodile brainrot and have recently reread Impel Down. This is probably nothing at all but it made me question the artistic choice made. Like we dont see Crocodiles full face until Luffy recognizes him. Before that tho he joins in on Jinbei & Ace's convo about Whitebeard and is shown to (non-)react to Boa Hancocks visit. But we only get his face in shadows or see the hook. Which. Why. Oda we know what he looks like and who the guy with the stitches on his face and the hook is. WHY OBSCURE HIM.

My friend, this is what we call a "cocktease"

Okay jokes aside, yes it was an artistic choise. More specifically, a storytelling technique Oda masterfully used to build up hype and excitement to Crocodile's eventual reveal and re-introduction into the story.

So thanks to Ms Goldenweek's cover story (which ran back during Water 7/Enies Lobby) we already knew Crocodile along with Daz, Bon-chan and Galdino had all been sent to Impel Down, when we also learned about Impel Down, Marineford and the Gates of Justice (+ the giant whirlpool between the three locations) to some extent. ((Now of course, if you were an anime-only then you would've had no idea about the former BW members being in Impel Down. And even if you had read the manga you still would've had to actually pay attention to the cover story and its lore, and not forgotten all about it))

So even before Luffy decides he's going to head to Impel Down to save Ace, we know Crocodile's going to be somewhere down there. The second Luffy arrives there, we are immidiately reminded of the fact when Domino mentions Crocodile taking the traditional "bath" new inmates take at the entrance. And as we descend deeper and deeper into Impel Down, with those cuts to what's happening down at Level 6 every now and then, as well as with the Baroque Works Countdown, Oda time and time again keeps on reminding of us of Crocodile's looming presence in the background. This is all absolutely deliberate. Crocodile was arguably the most iconic (maybe not most popular but iconic) One Piece villian at the time, if given an opportunity of course the readers wanted to see him again. But just letting us see him right away would be anti-climactic, and distracting from what's actually important (Ace, and Luffy getting to him as fast as possible). So keeping him hidden could serve multiple purposes:

For one, Crocodile doesn't get to steal the spotlight from the other characters (at least not too early). We can focus on Luffy, Ace, all the new Impel Down characters and the other returning characters in peace, while Crocodile waits for his turn. Another thing is that Crocodile's presence being downplayed gives off the impression that perhaps him being there isn't that important to the story. Thus, him teaming up with Luffy to break out isn't such an obvious twist (and so when that happens, it's ever more hype as a result)

But indeed, the most important part is that by teasing us constantly through out Impel Down, Oda creates hype. He makes us the readers excited if/when we might get to see the bastard, even if it was just a quick little cameo. So when Luffy finally reaches Level 6 and we finally do get that reveal, everyone loses their fucking marbles over the HISASHIBURI DANA MUGIWARA when we finally get to see The Motherfucker Himself. (And indeed, then getting to see him fight alongside Luffy is cool as fucking hell, completely unexpected and absolutely delightful)

But there's also another thing building up to Crocodile's reveal does. Compare his original introduction to the re-introduction

Compare Crocodile at the height of his power and influence, to the absolute rock bottom he has hit. No longer happily laughing while looking down on people (literally), he's filthy, he has given up on life, with sunken eyes and a hollow look on his face, only moved by a thirst for petty revenge (/an opportunity to go out with a bang). He doesn't even get the whole page for his grand reveal anymore, he's been shuffled to the side so the plot can progress on the same page.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

And to some degree, this is kind of meant to be a shocking realization to the readers. That this is not the same Crocodile we remember from Alabasta, that Crocodile died when Luffy defeated him. This is just the husk that remains, a shadow of what was once there. It's a sad sight, and probably not what the readers who loved Crocodile The Villian wanted to see. It's not the epic Return of the (Evil) King they wanted. And that juxtaposition helps, because Crocodile doesn't return into the story as a villian, but as a frenemy/ally-on-thin-ice. And that idea is easier to signal to the readers in a lowkey manner when you do his re-introduction like this.

So yes, Oda refusing to show Crocodile's face until Luffy found him was 100% a deliberate artistic choise. This is fantastic storytelling

[essektheylyss]

Okay, if we're actually talking "wish list ideals that are not make or break but I would lose my mind", my actual real dream season 1 Essek concept is that there are a few scenes, probably around the Zauber Spire attack, establishing Essek working with Ludinus and Trent, a la how Cassandra was structurally established as associated with the Briarwoods before the party actually met her, in a way that wasn't possible to see in game. Nothing major, just to lay down foundations now that the medium allows it. You probably wouldn't even need to come back to him until Rosohna in a couple seasons, and everything else can play out as it did.

Establish the Cerberus Assembly's villainy, their willingness to manipulate ambitious young mages for their own ends however they see fit, and the fact that Essek is in so far over his head and hasn't even really realized it yet, while setting up some really delicious dramatic irony well down the road where the audience knows and the Nein don't, which also puts new viewers on a slightly more even playing field.

It means that Essek's guilt is undeniable, and his circumstances fraught, but also puts into perspective precisely why Caleb later sees himself in him and twists the knife in real time during all of their eventual interactions.

[russenoire]

one thing that strikes me about mob psycho 100 is how closely it hews to shigeo's direct emotional experience. depending on your tastes in worldbuilding and characterization, this can either be a strength... or a weakness.

the only characters fleshed out somewhat are those shigeo is truly close to; almost everyone else is painted with just enough detail to make them feel like people. but not much more... not unlike real-life acquaintances. this rings mostly true for events in the story, too. MP100 also shines very little light on what strangers think of its protagonist, in part because he doesn't notice or care all that much.

and even those people who matter most to him? shigeo doesn't really ask about anyone's inner lives, so we only get to know others at a 'surface' level. what's ON that surface is still rich AF, but it's mostly free of backstory: we get impressionistic flashes of who reigen, and dimple, and ritsu, and teru are almost entirely from what their lives are like in the present. as a result, the story is a very autistic (and for me, relatable) headspace to walk around in.

the mutual bond ritsu and shigeo share would not feel as strong without ONE letting us rummage around inside the younger kageyama brother's head for a bit, of course. shigeo loves his little brother more than anyone else in the world, but he isn't even privy to ritsu's emotional landscape until ritsu lashes out at him in an alley one day.

and we wear reigen's skin the longest, apart from shigeo's, because the boy spends most of his free time at spirits and such. but who was he before shigeo shyly opened his office door in search of empathy? surely he was more than a bored salesman everydude looking for something to give his life meaning, but this is all that we are shown clearly. unfortunately reigen's inner life is terra incognita to shigeo: he doesn't share it with the boy and shigeo doesn't even begin to ask until the story is nearly over.

shigeo in turn shares so little of his inner life with reigen that the man isn't even aware the child has friends his own age. and his immense, map-redrawing destructive capabilities frighten reigen all the more because shigeo never fully trusted him with that knowledge. the wrath of shigeo's shadow self is as ruinous as it is because shigeo couldn't trust anyone with his emotional insides, either.

how well do we really know those we love? how well can we know them?

how well can we know anyone?

[perenlop]

going from isat to edging back into kirby is so insane to me because i forgot just how much the kirby fandom loves fandomified found family

[sweetandglovelyart]

Knightfall in Dream Land - Page 4

Meta Knight shares what it was like to grow up being raised by Nightmare.

[astralleywright]

given ashton's specific issues, it's quietly tragic that they don't have someone on team uthodurn to specifically remember them, the way orym and laudna do. fearne goes to the wildmother shrine specifically to reach out to orym, and imogen- well, thoughts of laudna run through everything imogen does. fcg is ostensibly that person, for ashton, but they've known each other for significantly less time than fearne and orym or imogen and laudna, and fcg wasn't emotionally reliant on ashton in the same way. and fcg's had his hands full with meeting frida and all the new feelings coming with that, and maybe it's an intentional reflection of the fact that, as much as they care, fcg is a little self-absorbed, and also still very bad at processing and expressing their feelings.

but when frida asks if they ever had a person like frida has deanna, they mention dancer. which is- fcg was essentially a servant to dancer, she told him what to do. ashton's place in their life is much more parallel to deanna. and i think it makes sense for fcg to mention dancer, given their own issues and belief that someone else has to give them meaning (which is something that could be very interesting to explore in their relationship with frida!!), but. ashton's definitely gonna be worried sick about fcg when we eventually get to team ???, so seeing them apparently occupy fcg's thoughts so little is sad.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Y'all, I think I've figured it out. Operating on the assumption that the finale is indeed an alternate timeline from the manga, then someone could have written on a page of the Book to rewrite reality to lead to the events of the finale sometime during season 5's events. In other words, this would explain the INCONSISTENCIES with things that were established or at least heavily implied/assumed prior and in the manga: Chuuya being a real vampire and not in control, nothing being planned, Dazai giving sincere speeches, Dazai really being shot and saying his "last words", Fyodor's hand not being injured, soukoku not killing Fyodor while in Meursault because they literally couldn't and Dazai needing Sigma to discover Fyodor's secrets because of that, Fukuchi's goal not being one that relied on Fukuzawa being alive since he clearly intended to kill him, etc etc too many more to count

Events and explanations in the finale feeling so contradictory and out of place, and characters feeling so ooc and not acknowledging any discrepancies, makes perfect sense if you consider that, up until a certain point, this was our canon timeline — until someone rewrote the ending of the arc with the Book, starting with Fyodor injuring his hand...! We only have one example of the Book being used to majorly rewrite reality in the manga, and when that happened, the main players — the ADA members — were aware that reality was changed, even though they did have memories of the new rewritten reality. BUT, Nikolai was unaware of this during that scene, and so also were all law enforcement because of the clause written on the page accounting for that, so what if the same thing could happen in this instance, to prevent all our characters in the finale from being aware that things had changed? We literally saw someone writing Nikolai's dialogue for him; imagine someone doing that during Dazai's final speech in the episode, and during all the rest of it! I don't know who this would be, but possibly a mysterious third party who got a hold of a different page from the Book somewhere and wrote things to turn out this way, because they wanted the ADA to win against Fukuchi and Fyodor? Maybe even because... this is the only way they can win?

Remember Atsushi asserting this plan, and how silly and too simple it sounded? What if someone else ended up doing just that, writing their own simple outcome for the ADA to win (as a narrative of course, which is probably why it had to start with the major catalyst of, again, Fyodor injuring his hand)? Additionally, if that's what happened, maybe the ending of the finale is a sort of side effect to the Book being used improperly in this way, leading to a destabilization of the timeline or a mishmash of other timelines into the anime one, leading to the alternate Fukuchi and Akutagawa we see there?

[alstroemerian-dragon]

izuru is so interesting to me conceptually. like i know in canon he’s kind of nothing unfortunately. at least in game canon, he shows up right at the end, says some eugenics-y shit, voices hajimes intrusive thoughts, and then hes gone, but. the concept of him, as hajime, but with everything that made him Hajime Hinata stripped away and buried under so much conditioning and bullshit that he cant reach it, is so. its SO. yknow.

its the whole argument about what makes us the people we are, right? if you take a person, and then erase literally all the memories they have of their own identity, are they still that person? have you taken away everything that makes them Them and made them a completely different one? how does that change, and pardon the philosophical question, their soul?

and the thing about izuru is that you can not tell me the memory repression was perfect. you can not tell me that hopes peak academy perfected the art of lobotomy so well that they completely erased every speck of hajime hinata that existed inside izuru kamukura. that boy felt what was missing he knew there was a hole the size of the fucking ocean in his head and he felt every centimeter of it. did he care? up for debate. izuru didnt seem to care about anything, really (which… i have some thoughts about his eugenics conditioning by the academy in regards to that but thats maybe another post). but i definitely think given enough time, some of that would have started to come back. maybe even after the events of the first game, when the school was open again, and junko was dead, and izuru was able to actually explore the place he was held and experimented in and look at the files, and discover his old name. something like that would definitely trigger some memory recovery, or at least a moderate breakdown of some kind.

i dont know. people have said before that izuru is kind of an interesting metaphor for depression if you think about it, and theyre right, he is. he doesnt care enough about anything in life, he doesnt care about hygiene, nothing is going to catch and hold his attention because he thinks he knows how everything in the world works so whats the point in even trying? but he isnt just a metaphor. thats who hajime was during that time. now im definitely one of the people who thinks hajime was a pretty depressed kid anyway, unable to fulfill what he thought he needed to be, constantly pressured to be something he wasnt and couldnt be. but izuru was so much worse. they gave that boy fucking. ultimate depression. super high school level depression. i definitely think the only reason izuru didnt ever do anything drastic about how utterly miserable he was is because. a lot of it was background noise to him? his brain was just blocked off so those triggers were unable to fire? and because. to be honest. thats truly so much work. especially with the reflexes and instincts and empowerment the experiments gave him. and junko’s despair was just intriguing enough to keep him moving

its just something i think about. if someone had been willing or able to just. talk to izuru and offer him a hand. understand that he was hurting and that he didnt have to be. that just because there were holes in his identity didnt mean he couldnt create his own pieces to fit into them. i truly think that if he’d had that kind of presence during the tragedy his brain would have unlocked itself. maybe not all the memories would come back, but he’d be able to feel stuff again at least. and thats… something.

[cakemoney]

finding out that kaito and shinichi have been revealed to be cousins is like finding out there was a huge earthquake in the country you used to live in