hey guys i just realized ive been genuinely really happy for a month straight and i’m gonna take a moment to just really appreciate that because i went through hell for most of everything before that and i’m not gonna take it for granted that i’m just smiling all the time now without thinkin about it
you know what i think is really cool about dungeon meshi? the fact that it really handles the whole 'how our food is made' so gracefully. in this day and age, we've become so disconnected from how our food is produced and distributed that the thought of how our food is obtained brings disgust to many people (and for the big industry farms, it honestly should! but im referring to our existence as omnivores in the food chain). marcille acted ridiculous whenever the thought of killing a monster for food is brought up, but honestly, she's a great model for how many people nowadays react whenever they have to truly think about what they are consuming/are brought to a meat farm.
senshi shows the characters (and us, the audience) about the process of making food in a respectful, genuine way to the creatures he has used to produce nourishing meals. by explaining the nutrition and benefits of each creature, he creates and healthy relationship between the consumers and the meal they have. the show really brings a new dimension of respect for each of our meals. truly the bob ross/marie kondo of cooking.
he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.
except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?
at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.
except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.
about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.
he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.
My brain gaslit me into believing that Valerie got her outfit upgrade in D-Stabilized because she was the only remotely acceptable thing about that episode, so imagine my surprise upon watching Flirting With Disaster again and Technus, Lord of Drip and Shipping Gray Ghost, shoots her with the drip-upgrade beam and she (and everyone else standing around her) doesn't even question it.
Thinking about how Leo says he uses his jokes to cope and y’know, thinking harder on it I think it may very well be because of what else uses one-liners and puns and that type of humor.
Specifically, 80’s action movies and campy sci-fi. Even more specifically, the protagonists of these.
So I can imagine why, exactly, Leo leans toward this brand of humor. It’s directly linked to things he loves! But even more than that is why I think it’s used as a coping mechanism.
In these genres, these quips tend to be said by the winner - or, if not a winner, then someone who will stay alive. So there’s a confidence behind them, an assurance, almost, that even if things go wrong, things aren’t ever too serious. There’s no bad endings here! It’s all good fun, even if the stakes seem high.
Leo canonically has been known to steer his brothers away from the more brutal villains and toward more fun, lighthearted activities and not-so-dangerous criminals. So for Leo, these jokes definitely make things less heavy, make the situations they find themselves in less intense.
It’s kinda not just coping, but also can be seen as a form of escapism. A safety blanket. A way for Leo to defuse the tension of knowing just how dangerous their lives are and replace that with a levity which implies that things will be okay.
Unfortunately, levity alone does not alter reality.
for my feline friends: this purr generator is my favorite thing on the internet, you can adjust the timbre as you wish and it's so warm and calming
for my canid friends: these generators for wolf pack howling and sled dogs running are by the same sound engineer on a different website, also adjustable, the sound quality is great and they never exactly repeat
overall i really recommend the site mynoise.net!! it's got so so many different noise generators and you only have to donate like $5 once to access them all there's no subscription or anything. some of my favorites are northern woodland, sailing ship, japanese garden, mr. rhodes, distant thunder, and dreaming nautilus <3
rapid fire french rayou strikes again (transcript below the cut)
[Video transcript:
[ENG] Etoiles: I— I’m speedrunning it [Mario Party], but it’s like—
[FR] Etoiles: The next person to bust my balls by saying, ‘he’s going to miss the Ascension [French competitive event happening this Saturday 28/10]’ even though my plane is at six PM, you bunch of morons, it’s not because ZeratoR [Ascension event organiser] said once that I’d miss my plane that I will miss my plane, because what you guys don’t understand is that a plane doesn’t get missed if you arrive three hours in advance, and the last time I missed the plane was because my corresponding flight was one hour and a half [late]!
[ENG] Etoiles: I was just saying to my chat that I love them :)
Tina: Awhhh
Foolish: See, once again I have a feeling maybe that wasn’t—
one of the things about being an educator is that you hear what parents want their kids to be able to do a lot. they want their kid to be an astronaut or a ballerina or a politician. they want them to get off that damn phone. be better about socializing. stop spending so much time indoors. learn to control their own temper. to just "fucking listen", which means to be obedient.
one of the things i learned in my pedagogy classes is that it's almost always easier to roleplay how you want someone to act. it's almost always easier to explain why a rule exists, rather than simply setting the rule and demanding adherence.
i want my kids to be kind. i want them to ask me what book they should read next, and i want to read that book with them so we can discuss it. i want my kid to be able to tell me hey that hurt my feelings without worrying i'll punish them. i want my kid to be proud of small things and come running up to me to tell me about them. i want them to say "nah, i get why this rule exists, but i get to hate it" and know that i don't need them to be grateful-for-the-roof-overhead while washing the dishes. i want them to teach me things. i want them to say - this isn't safe. i'm calling my mom and getting out of this. i want them to hear me apologize when i do fuck up; and i want them to want to come home.
the other day a parent was telling me she didn't understand why her kid "just got so angry." this woman had flown off the handle at me.
my dad - traditional catholic that he is - resents my sentiment of "gentle parenting". he says they'll grow up spoiled, horrible, pretentious. granola, he spits.
i am going to be kind to them. i am going to set the example, i think. and whatever they choose become in the meantime - i'm going to love them for it.
Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....
And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.
The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.
And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.
Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.
HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.
But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.
That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:
His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.
Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.