#also blather

[imadhatt3r]

It kinda irks me when people call Black Mask "Truekechi", because that's not really the case...? Not entirely, at least.

I mean yes, of course, Black Mask IS a part of Akechi's personality, I'm not denying that. The thing is, that it isn't Akechi's WHOLE personality. This kid just went through the biggest crashout of his life, his whole plan he's been meticulously working on for years failed, and the worst part is that it didn't even lead to what he was after, so he didn't even get the revenge he wanted. Of course he's unstable and edgy, I mean, who wouldn't be?

That is not to say that his anger and edginess aren't a part of his "true self"; I'm sure that his glee at taking out shadows is absolutely real, for example, but I believe that it comes from him just being angry in general- at Shido, at Maruki, and at himself. Akechi is rough around the edges, has a short temper and has a tendency to look at others from above, but the situation he's in boosts these parts of his personality as a sort of defense mechanism.

I think that his mementos conversations give a really good insight into this too; Perhaps it's due to my older age compared to the characters in-game, but a lot of Akechi's lines feel so... Forced on his side? He's the one to bring up that other Thieves probably don't want to have him on the team, or that they're unsettled by how he fights, but nobody even said anything about it in the first place...? Even other characters seem kinda done with his act, either that or they accept him being on the team due to their shared goals; Some are even quite nice and friendly, all things considered. This just feels like Akechi's self-loathing twisting itself into this kind of quips because he himself doesn't want to get too comfortable on the team; He's scared of growing closer to the other Thieves, so he tries to keep them at arm's length. He can't just tell them "I think I'm a horrible person" straight up (his pride wouldn't let him), so he has to make himself "unappealing" in other ways.

There's also the other side of these conversations, where you can see him just... Being a kid. He whines about being hungry, or thirsty, or his legs getting stiff in the car, he talks about mundane things with other Thieves like graduation or sports... He's just a teenager as much as his teammates are- it's just that the others weren't hired as assassins at 15 and didn't grow up obsessed with the plan to kill their father. His emotional development and maturation process have clearly been impacted, on top of everything else he had to deal with. So he may act "adult" and more mature than others at first glance (at least before he reveals Loki), but inside he is just as much (if not more, in some aspects) of a kid as the other Thieves are. This means that he is still at the age and mental development level where he is still figuring out himself, who he is, what path to follow etc. It also means that he is prone to being overly dramatic, emotionally extreme, and have poor emotional control- you know, teen stuff.

The key to it all becomes his ultimate persona, Hereward. We all know that Akechi has two personas, but he doesn't get two ultimate personas, he gets only one. I think that it's symbolic of his psyche slowly melding itself into one again. It's not that either one of his "sides" was truly fake or real; Both the Detective Prince and Black Mask ARE parts of the "real" Akechi- it's just that he has been systematically compartmentalizing his whole self into two for YEARS. The awakening of his ultimate persona is him starting the process of healing and allowing these two sides of him to mix and reconnect back into one.

I honestly think that, with enough time and the right environment, Akechi's most extreme traits would even themselves out, and he would stop being AS short-tempered, snarky, and blood-thirsty as he is in the game. He will never be the perfectly plesant Detective Prince, but he also won't be the angry, self-loathing and vengeful Black Mask. He will be something new, something different, a fusion of the two opposite ends of his personality spectrum. Only then he will live as his fully true self.

[affectionatecorpse]

Redd will never stop being the absolute funniest Animal Crossing character to me. It's illegal how underrated he is. He's got either a londoner or new yorky accent depending on how you read it. His logo is a blatant ripoff of Tom Nook's. He's fuzzy. He wears nothing but an apron. He's a bastard. He's clever. He's amazing at art. He does not utilise this talent in a genuine way. He painted the Mona Lisa at least 5 times but with angry eyebrows and no other change. He went to art school. He's divorced from Tom Nook. He has a million cousins. His old colleague now works for his ex instead. He lives on a boat. He has to hide said boat from Tom. He doesn't even know if half his art is real or fake. He's a kitsune with no powers so is essentially just a normal fox. He recreated an entire stone tablet and the only thing he changed was he made it bright blue. Blathers hates him. He's an enemy of the state. He openly admitted he was crazy before realising that was a bad sales technique. He replaced the adjective with 'jolly'. In old games people were blatantly racist against him being a fox. He has the same criminal motivation as Nick Wilde. His name is just the colour of his fur. His password is a spiteful jab at his ex. He's REDD.

He's just so damn FUNNY.

[shaydh]

when i "ship" a thing really it just means "I would like to see more interactions between these two characters" regardless if the relationship is romantic, platonic, whatever. I just think it'd be interesting if you put these two together. usually there is also a coke and mentos aspect to it.

[c00kietin]

acnh+kny kyo!!! His concept probably came to me the fastest <3

Click for better quality + do not repost please! Thank you :]

[plusultraetc]

hey what did Aizawa say when he realized Mic's hair was too tall to fit through a doorway?

duck :)

[entens]

manifesting Shiba training Hakuri again by thinking about how Hakuri could semi-replicate Shiba's teleportation sorcery by using the storehouse the way Kyora did when he summoned him & the Tou

[ducksdontdraw]

Blathers and Celeste are now available as both mini prints and stickers in my Etsy shop!

[huidol]

What a deceptive use of the word "you."

uncovered version under the cut

[eulaliasims]

Bits and bobs about supernatural inheritance in Veridia that I mostly wrote for my own reference, but I know I like reading about how people handle these sort of things in their game, so I'm just gonna slap it up here. :)

Now that Veridia's population is actually growing, I've been using bog standard number rolls to decide who inherits magic/lycanthropy. It's not at all meant to mimic genetic inheritance, because it's magic.

Sims who have one parent with a supernatural life state get a d2 roll. 1 = yes and 2 = no. For Helenet and Elmet's kids, I roll twice, one for each supernatural state. So Lune and Fiona could witches, werewolves, both, or neither.

Some sims like Maddan have at least one parent with a supernatural state even if it didn't manifest in them. If such a sim has children with another "mundane" sim, their child has a 1 in 4 chance of inheriting, where a 1 = inheritance.

(For sims who only have a grandparent with a supernatural state, I may not bother to roll at all. If I do it'll be something like a d10 where again 1 = inheritance.)

Maddan and Orla's children have a 3 in 4 chance of inheriting magic because of Maddan's ancestry (1 = no inheritance and all other numbers are positive).

Does all this gibberish mean the children of two sims with the same supernatural state will always inherit it?

Well, we have sims like, again, Maddan (child of two witches with no magic), so that can't be. So instead there's a d6 roll, where 1 = no inheritance and all other numbers = inheritance.

If Wyll's witch families sounded somewhat incestuous in that other lore post, this is why.

Obviously werewolves can also pass on their lycanthropy by biting (under a full moon, except that's only a thing in my head and not the game). Elmet and Arturo are Very Responsible wolves, though, so I don't see that happening again soon. I also won't be using the spell to turn other sims into witches, but they probably arise spontaneously in the "normal" population from time to time. When will that happen in game? idk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've got the beginnings of an idea for vampire lore (something to do with a cave in Drossburh/a cult/a death god), but I have no inclination to explore it further than that yet, lol.

[imadhatt3r]

There's a sort of small personal story arc happening in Koujaku's route that I haven't seen talked about much, and it is one relating to Aoba's struggles with his masculinity and his perception as a man by others.

This story arc heavily deals with cultural gender norms and expectations, and so I will be working with them; This doesn't reflect my personal view on gender roles and expectations in real life. This is also not for or against any headcanons regarding any character's gender- I have no opinions on them or problems with people seeing any character as trans.

Okay, without further ado:

The moment where Koujaku and Aoba canonically meet for the first time happens during their childhood. Aoba was bullied by other children for his long hair and for "looking like a girl". Koujaku stepped in to protect him, thinking that Aoba's a girl, and was allegedly suprised when Aoba turned out to be a boy, but his attitude towards Aoba never changed.

This event clearly had a big influence on Aoba, on how he views himself, Koujaku, and how he thinks Koujaku views him. When we first meet Koujaku in-game, he is seen defending himself from a woman's overly protective boyfriend and being a charmer to her in turn when she apologizes for his behavior. It's established that Koujaku has a lot of female admirers, and a bit later it's revealed that he attracts a lot of men too, but moreso as a kind of role model/aspirational figure- that's why benishigure exists in the first place.

Aoba is shown to be annoyed or downright kinda scared of Koujaku's fans; Of course, it makes sense- Aoba is shown to be a private person that dislikes attention, but I believe that there is a second layer to all that- jealousy.

Aoba identifies as a man in-game and asserts it multiple times. He is aware of his gender. Koujaku is shown to be both flirty and chivalrous towards women around him- he spends time with them, initiates physical contact, compliments them etc. Aoba is always annoyed whenever he sees Koujaku doing that, but his reasons aren't fully clear- it seems like he feels like Koujaku's behavior is, in some way, fake, or that he just dislikes PDA in general. Aoba isn't jealous of the female attention Koujaku gets- he doesn't want to be in his place, because, as we established, he doesn't like being the center of attention. This isn't a dick measuring contest with Aoba being salty that he's coming up short.

Aoba is jealous of the women. He's the one who wants Koujaku to flirt with him, touch him, be chivalrous to him, protect him, but he believes that it will never happen, because Koujaku only acts this way towards women. Men want to be him, women want to be with him, but Aoba is neither; He's not a man who wants to be him, nor is he a woman who wants to be with him- there's not a place he can comfortably occupy, in his mind.

Mind you, I don't believe that he is aware of his feelings- hence his clusterfuck of an attempt to make Koujaku's flirting with women a bad thing. It's not coherent, it doesn't really make any internal sense, because Aoba has no idea he's even trying to lead himself away from something.

In the good ending, Koujaku briefly mentions that he thinks Aoba sleeps in so much because he wants to get his attention, and I can 100% see it as being true- Aoba doesn't know how to get Koujaku to treat him like he does women around him, so he chooses more covert ways to get that desired attention and care.

I also see Aoba's haircut to be symbolic/meaningful of his relation to his masculinity being percieved by others. Aoba's hair was the reason why he and Koujaku met as kids and established their friendship and later relationship. When they were cut, Aoba started to look more conventionally "masculine", and yet the haircut is also, in a way, representative of the beginning of his and Koujaku's relationship. It's because Koujaku doesn't care that Aoba is a man- hell, in the CD drama, he even admits that he's straight up attracted to Aoba's masculinity. If Koujaku liked Aoba BECAUSE he saw him as female-like, wouldn't he want to keep his hair long/feminine?

This is kinda explored in various extra material like the summer side story and valentine's day story- Aoba seems to believe that while Koujaku is with him out of love/attraction, he's being treated more as a novelty, a "girl-boy" that's going to be replaced by an "actual woman" one day. He's afraid that the chocolates he made for Koujaku for valentine's day will be seen as "gross", and he expects to see a mountain of chocolate given to Koujaku by women when he comes to his apartment. In the summer story, he expects Koujaku to deny their relationship when they're being harassed by drunk benishigure, and that he will be left behind when Koujaku is approached by female admirers. This never happens- Koujaku actually reassures Aoba that he's never going anywhere, and that Aoba has nothing to worry about. This is framed as Aoba being simply jealous, but I think that there is enough evidence to imply that his gender has a lot to do with it. We don’t know how would he react if Koujaku was approached by a man, but it's mentioned multiple times that it's seeing and thinking of Koujaku being surrounded by women gets Aoba down especially hard.

I feel like it's also important to look into the bad ending for Koujaku's route too, because if you look at it through that lense, you can see some interesting stuff. First and foremost, Shiroba is dressed in a sexualized version of the miko garb (miko are shinto shrine maidens, and they are exclusively women) that includes stockings, and his hair is just as long, if not longer, than Aoba's. He also has red tassels in his hair, right behind his ears, which sort of look like earrings. In short, it would almost appear like Shiroba is trying to look more "feminine" in order to appeal more to the way he percieved Koujaku's tastes- after all, Shiroba/Desire is all of Aoba's impulses, thoughts, and desires taken to the extreme. Aoba thought that Koujaku likes women and femininity, so Shiroba WILL make himself look as feminine as he can to make Koujaku like him more.

There's also the fact that, compared to their good end sex scene, Shiroba is much more... Placid. In the good end, Aoba speaks, he laughs, he laughs AT Koujaku, he tries to turn his head away but agrees to look at Koujaku in the end; He is an active participant who is willing to laugh at his partner (in a way) and make demands. In contrast, Shiroba mostly goes with what Koujaku wants to do; He participates to a degree, sure, but he allows Koujaku to bite him, lick his blood, and fuck him pretty violently without any sort of resistance. This might be a stretch, but it can be seen as Shiroba trying to play a more "feminine" role- which means being passive, allowing your (male) partner to do whatever he wants to do with you (even when it's painful or uncomfortable), and let him essentially use you as a receptacle of his emotions and bodily fluids.

This is a very narrow understand of conventional gender roles, but given that Shiroba is a being of extremes, it makes sense for him to see his own gender and dynamic with Koujaku as that simple and two-dimensional. This whole ending is all about misunderstood intentions/desires, so Shiroba is doing all he can to embody the most extreme conventional femininity in an attempt to appeal to Koujaku, while not having a clue that Koujaku was actually attracted to Aoba's masculinity.

The funniest part of it all is that Koujaku is actually a pretty feminine man himself; His very design blends masculine and feminine elements, which @asarigg points it out in her excellent essay on Koujaku, (among plenty other things), and the way he acts mixes masculinity and femininity too. However, Aoba either doesn't see it, or he treats Koujaku as a "special case"; It's probably the most clear in the scene in the CD drama where Aoba says that hairpins "usually" look bad on men (after Koujaku asked him if he'd like to wear one), but that Koujaku makes it work. The whole plotline/emotional core of this route centers on Aoba relying on his simplified image of Koujaku when it comes to how he thinks about him, only to be proven dead wrong and forced to confront how multi-layered of a person Koujaku is- to reject the image he made of him in his head as a child and make a new, more nuanced one as an adult.

When Aoba was a kid, he saw Koujaku as his hero, someone who protected him, watched over him; He was kind of his masculine ideal, someone he wanted to be when he'll be older. Now that they're adults, Aoba still sees Koujaku as someone hyper-masculine, whose feminine traits and behaviors are glossed over because Koujaku is "allowed to" be feminine a bit. The sad thing is that a lot of Koujaku's masculinity is kind of a ruse that was taken on as a defense mechanic, learned back when Koujaku was living in an abusive household, when he was a victim of abuse, saw abuse inflicted onto his mother, and was possibly forced to perform violence to some degree as means of "education" (things like learning to fight hand-to-hand or swordfighting).

Koujaku can fight because he tried to fight his abusive father and was trained to kill in the future, once he takes over the criminal empire. He flirts with women to fill the void he feels due to his rock bottom self-esteem and because he doesn't want to see women sad or mistreated after what he saw his mother go through. Koujaku's persona is carefully build and maintained, because all masculinity (or gender in general) is performed- this is what people around him expected him to be, that's what he was taught to be, and so he performs, even if it twists him up inside (we know he bottles up any negative emotions and doesn't share his struggles and trauma with anyone, which is also a part of toxic masculinity). It also seems like he's often out drinking with someone and he's a smoker- that's more of a theory, but people often find brief respite from their stress/unadressed emotions in substances, and while people of all genders do it, there seems to be a bigger social acceptance for men to indulge in order to "deal" with their problems and avoid showing "weakness" for just a bit longer.

The good thing is that Koujaku seems quite comfortable in his femininity. He loves his (stereotypically feminine) job, he remains kind and gentle to those who need it, he respects women around him and treats them well (even if that relationship is far from ideal of course), he's always considerate and caring towards Aoba, etc. It's interesting that despite liking and being attracted to Aoba's masculinity, he encourages him to branch out and seemingly embrace his own femininity more (he tells him he'd look nice in a hairpin, or that he'd love him no matter how he'd look like). I wonder if Koujaku found some kind of respite in his femininity back when he lived in his father's house and was potentially held to strict masculine gender roles enforced through violence.

It feels like one of these things that Aoba needs time to process and accept; In a couple years, he'll be doing deliveries with the most complex braid with flamboyant decorations and the most bitching eyeliner ever performed on Japanese soil.

[kwillow]

Hi! I discovered your blog a little while ago and read through almost the whole thing in like a day- I love Theo! In one ask you mention you could write 5,000 words about him and still have more, and I’d just like to say I for one would gladly read a Theo encyclopedia if you ever wrote one 😂

How did he get that notch in his ear?

Thank you so much! That's extremely flattering. I think my blog is effectively my Theo encyclopedia at this point, haha.

As for the notch in his ear, I obliquely referenced its origin in this earlier little comic where Theo talks about his tendency to be, shall we say, reactive:

The notch in his ear is the scar left over from a brutal fight with his old school bullies. (They fared worse.)

[sailorsun546]

I need to stop fucking scrolling and go clean my kitchen but how am I supposed to do that when all I can think about is Silco's fingers in. My Mouth.

[shaydh]

People on here be like "You can't call that toxic yaoi it's not yaoi it's a power imbalance!!" yeah...that's why its toxic

[treasuredplanet]

I do prefer the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries to any other adaptation but it must be said that the 2005 film including this shot of Bingley looking mournfully out the window of his carriage like a dog being taken home from the dog park was cinematic gold

[plusultraetc]

so I finally downloaded mhui and as predicted I am sooo confused, however I did also immediately read this as Kurogiri serving 💁‍♀️ darkness