#and i just. why am i pointless

[freakpit]

being in your 20’s sucks cause it’s like oh boohoo i have bills and pressure to make permanent life plans. guess i’ll get so stressed i want to kill myself about it

[persona-brainrot-real]

Sae Niijima is such a good character it drives me insane a little. She's not a mother nor a maternal or doting older sister but instead a twenty four year old who was thrown into a position of responsibility that she never asked for. She loves Makoto just as much as she resents her and its so apparent every time they talk up until November. "Are you studying?" (I want you to do well) (I need you to get a job and stop making my life harder) "I'll use any method necessary to get this promotion" (Life will be easier for us) (So stop distracting me with your problems) "Focus on your future" (I know that you're capable) (I can't afford to waste my time on you, so stop wasting time on others)

Makoto is not only the sole reason she pushes as hard as she does for a promotion, for success, and the reason that she loses herself in her animosity over her fathers death, but also someone she can't stand for so long. Makoto was 14-15 when their father died. Sae was 21. As soon as she got the career she wanted and things started to look up, her stability was robbed from her and she was disillusioned with the system that her father had taught her to rely on and completely adhere to. How do you manage, the daughter of a cop, following his footsteps towards law enforcement, when you're suddenly reminded of how unfair it is? You can't quit, your little sister relies on you and she's so young and struggling just as badly with this grief. So you pick yourself up and you get moving again. You push harder, press further. You abandon your morals and your ethics because punishing criminals (guilty or not) is almost like punishing the man who killed your father.

And the whole time she's fighting for promotions, going for drinks with the SIU Director to make herself more favourable for promotions, trying to navigate being a woman in a competitive, suffocating, male-dominated field, falling behind despite doing so much where others are promoted for doing so little - all the while your little sister comes back from school and her biggest issues are so small compared to yours.

Persona 5 revolves so heavily around grief and loss and change and Sae embodies all of that so well, all of the sharp and unpleasant and jagged parts of grief.

[silusvesuius]

testing out drawing maormer 🪸🐚🪸 and a nelvas 🧣📜🩷 i'll ramble about maormer a bit in the tags

[mythological-mayhem]

Zeus: Nothing in life is free.

Aphrodite: Love is free.

Apollo: Adventure is free.

Hermes: Everything is free if you take it without paying.

[benevolenterrancy]

Jin Guangyao Is In Desperate Need Of Human Contact And Is Constantly Trying To Find Ways To Make Himself Feel Safe: Therefore He Would Definitely Be A Little Spoon, In This Essay I Will

[foundfamilynonsense]

Y’know. Anakin was a real asshole in Ahsoka’s hallucination.

Like. She mentions something about what she’ll be able to teach her padawan one day, since all she’s being taught is how to be a soldier, and Anakin’s like “teaching’s not all it’s cracked up to be”

And like. Asshole move. And Ahsoka rightfully calls him out on it. And he goes on the whole “uuuh I was joking. Lighten up.” Literally a complete jackass.

But beyond how he answered the question, it’s a valid complaint Ahsoka is bringing up! Anakin’s teaching her how to live or die. But Ahsoka wants to be taught how to be a jedi.

What happens after the war is over (order 66 never happens) and she now has to navigate a galaxy without a war? The Jedi take teaching very seriously there’s no greater honor than teaching a padawan. And she’s not being accurately taught, so she will not be able to pass anything on to the next generation.

But Anakin brushes it aside because he simply does not respect her or her wishes. Like. He never wanted a padawan, despite teaching being foundational to the Jedi. And he only took ahsoka in because he started to like her and became attached to her. He doesn’t care about jedi legacy, not really. So he brushes her comment off with a joke.

But in the rest of the vision… idk it didn’t feel like we were supposed view Anakin as entirely wrong here. He wasn’t in the right, he was definitely channeling Vader and being an ass, but he was basically the reason Ahsoka survived the fall, right? Bc he was making her choose life? When Ahsoka wins against him it’s sort of like she’s both learned his lesson and moved beyond him. And then for the rest of the season he’s only talked about in positive ways.

And like. That one line ahsoka said was really powerful in relation to the entire point of the show. What does she have to pass onto her own padawan (Sabine) if she wasn’t properly trained herself? That is, perhaps, the only valid plot question asked in the entire show. And it doesn’t get an answer. It’s never even brought up again.

[hanzajesthanza]

god we need to bring crackfic back. or just short and idiotic ideas that wouldn’t happen but would be funny to read

[pictureday2005]

i dont need therapy or medication i need it to be 2007. i need it to be my full time job to learn and explore and be curious about the world around me again

[deus-ex-mona]

sena 🤝 yujiro

older siblings (who see themselves as unreliable) who look out for and love their (relatively aloof) younger siblings unconditionally

[prolibytherium]

The extent of possessiveness some people have on art that they post on the internet is crazy to me like, I'm seeing someone on art fight all caps serious business warning not to save image files of their characters UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Like Oh no your character ref png is on another computer!!!!!! Who cares

[bean-spring]

Not to mention Voltron and Klance/Allurance in our year 2024 but I find it very telling how they didn't have anything planned for the ending and how they made Lance choose Keith on "The Feud!" by saying "He's our leader, plus he's half-galra so he's like, the future" when a season later he refers to Allura as "the best thing that has ever happened to him".

And yes, you can love somebody to death and yet think somebody else should get to be the one to live, logically thinking, but Lance is pretty much the most emotional out of all the paladins. He's loverboy Lance. He speaks and acts with his heart all the damn time and thinks about the people he loves first and foremost. And I am not saying this is "wooahhh Klance proof!" because we are pretty over that. Just saying it feels like they didn't have shit planned for the last season because Lance (a Lance who is in love with Allura, in theory, from the start) would have never, even if it's logically speaking, let another person that wasn't her get out of there alive. And even if he wasn't in love with her, he has said multiple times how much potential, strength, and importance he sees in her role.

So it is just stupid to make him vote for Keith and say something extremely damn endearing like "he's the future" instead of saying it about his romantic interest.

Not to mention that they could have easily fixed this if they wanted Allurance to be canon. They could've made the bond and conflict Allura has with Keith deeper by making her vote for Keith and saying he is the future for being half-galra (something that is personal to Allura and it would've made more sense for her to say and eat her pride and hatred towards the galra. Character development who?). Then it's just easy to make Lance vote for Allura and make him go "She's our princess and her strength is what the world needs and the universe would be lost without her" or some bullshit like that. And then make Keith vote for Lance because the joke was actually perfect and I have nothing against it and it's pretty in character for him to say "I don't wanna be stuck with him" instead of saying that he truly believes Lance is crucial for the future. And idk, make Pidge and Hunk vote for each other because they are best friends and it makes sense to reaffirm their bond (although I do find really cute and in character their original votes).

I am just saying what we already knew and is that Allurance was so not planned and they could've written a way better build-up. And look, it would've still been shitty and forced and awful but at least it would've been written thoughtfully. Kind of. Instead, we got... Deeper bonding between Lance and Keith? And I am the first one to say that they barely have scenes together with the amount of drama people make about their canon relationship but... Why give these two this moment (plus the other two only emotional and well-written scenes of season 8) that could've been great to build up another romantic relationship?

[ikishima]

Some losers are clogging the death note tags with AI art. DN fandom… please stop interacting with AI & hyping these people up. We have SO many talented artists constantly contributing to the flow of beautiful fanart free of charge. There is literally no fucking reason to generate DN fanart (unless you get a kick out of destroying the planet).

The person I just saw doing this was also selling prints, it’s literally a grift at the expense of the planet & especially toward people living in areas that the climate catastrophe is affecting the most. Please do not waste your time, attention, or money on AI.

[modern-alebrije]

i feel like growing up my family always encouraged us to be independent and self-reliant. so i don't understand why they seem upset at the fact now that i'm an adult who's self-reliant and lives independently

[beevean]

A theory I've read more than once is that this one frame of Lenore entering Hector's cell for the second time is proof that she is not actually enjoying what she has to do:

The wiki describes it as such: "Lenore has a sad expression when entering the dungeon to visit Hector the second time."

Also this, from a comment I found:

Like for example when she goes to meet Hector the second time, you can see sadness on her face when she is walking alone in the dungeon, but as soon as she approaches Hector she puts on a smile. I.e. may be she already knew she had to use the ring at that point and felt bad about it but didn't want Hector to realize that. A lot of such small animation details really provide a glimpse into what the explicit writing was lacking.

(edit: turns out that they were the same person)

Okay.

First things first: I doubt she has the ring in mind already. It's hard to tell because Lenore pulls it out of her ass with zero foreshadowing whatsoever, but with the way it was framed, the ring was likely a direct response to Striga's idea of buying mercenaries to make Hector unnecessary, which comes later into the story: Lenore even uses the information she eavesdropped from Striga as a way to lie to Hector about her loyalty to the sisters. In theory it makes sense, because Hector needs to be reliable to be allowed to live, but the ring is... a very poor solution the more you think about it, even if you ignore how S4 neutered it, because it only addresses one of the many logistic problems that come with forcing Hector to make an army of Night Creatures, and it's not the dead bodies/living livestock paradox. And going with the story, it's unlikely Lenore was already thinking of raping the ring into Hector: why would the sisters be amazed at her plan if they were the ones suggesting her to speed up things? And if Lenore came up with it, why would she be remorseful at her own idea? Sure, Hector showed defiance during their first encounter, but did she have so little faith in her own manipulating skills that she already felt that she had no choice but to use her pussy, the only good weapon in a woman's disposal "brute force", after one understandable incident? Then why even bother interrogating him to understand his motivations and needs? Just skip straight to the sexual molestation to make him believe she likes him. As I pointed out, that interrogation was not for the sake of painting herself as particularly caring: she was collecting intel, intel that she wouldn't need if her plan was already tricking Hector into slavery via a magic ring.

Second: that expression honestly doesn't look sad to me. I would be willing to give the interpretation some credit, because she's looking downwards which can be a sign of sadness, but after that one frame, she switches to this expression:

Now she looks mildly pissy, like the idea of talking to Hector is just soooooo annoying, ugh. She even has the sassy cocked eyebrow lmao.

Of course that can't be it, so I propose the most obvious interpretation: she's serious and deep in thought. That is because their first encounter ended up disastrously: Hector assaulted Lenore with the intent of threatening her, which pissed her off, and she assaulted Hector by beating him to an inch of his life, which is not the best way to win a pet's trust. So she's most likely thinking the best way to approach him again.

And I'll even praise a small detail: the first time Lenore fed Hector, she made him crawl towards her to eat from her hand. The second time, however, she tosses an apple to his feet. Both gestures are demeaning, but after that incident she seems to be more cautious towards him - shown as well by her insistence that he is so dangerous that, well, she has no choice but to put a leash on him like a dog. I'm honestly surprised that her final solution is stupid as fuck when she can be intelligent when she wants to. real reason she's hector's soulmate: both of them have braincells like christmas tree lights :V

Third: oh, do you want to talk about explicit writing?

These are not freeze frame bonuses. The scene lingers on this expression on Lenore's face as Hector is screaming in pain over the ring she put on him.

So, you're willing to believe Lenore didn't want to use the ring but felt forced to because in one frame she has an expression that mildly looks displeased... but somehow you ignore this blatantly sadistic reaction? This screams, at the very least, "haha, sucker, I've won"; but add to this that Hector is visibly and audibly in pain, shocked and scared at the curse overtaking his body during a vulnerable moment...

This ties well with how she beat Hector to a pulp not just out of self-defense, but because she wanted to feel strong and powerful when surrounded by people who underestimate her - the writing might imply that she was offended that Hector too saw her as vulnerable and stupid, but she was explicitly laughing and mocking him while showing off her strength (a strength she doesn't display when, say, Isaac enters her cage: he easily intimidates her). You might read the implication that Lenore spoke about Hector so disgustingly to the sisters to be taken seriously as a vampire mistress and didn't actually want to dehumanize him, but explicitly, even ignoring the forced pet play that showed she had fun treating him like a dog, she reduced him to a "problem to be solved" when complaining about her woes, and when she could have apologized or explained herself she minimized or doubled down on the harm she caused, never once expressing any remorse or doing anything worthwile to make up for it (like, for example, talking about the ring and how it's a shame Hector is only there because he has no choice because she feels they'd be good friends without it: that would imply guilt).

In fact, going back to the moment when Lenore decides to use the ring, it is far more likely that it was in response to this part of the conversation Lenore has eavesdropped:

Striga: We can possibly push east as far as Lake Balaton before I run out of soldiers, but that exposes our Western border. Morana: Sleep. Striga: We can't do it without Lenore turning the forgemaster, and she's just taking him out for fucking walkies. Morana: She will land him. Striga: It's going to have to be soon.

Considering that it's shown that Lenore highly resents being seen as a stupid animal lover, it's far easier to think that this is when she got pissy and decided to use a quicker method, even if it destroyed all the hard manipulation work she had done.

One frame might paint her as a reluctant villain only trying to make everyone happy and being stuck between a rock and a hard place, but multiple scenes paint her as a vile bully and abuser who enjoys feeling in power and control, whether she uses kindness or harm to achieve her goal.

I'm sorry, subtext can absolutely enrich the understanding of a story or character, but not when it actively contradicts the text.

Do you want my personal example? I'll play the same game of overanalyzing expressions. When Isaac attacks the castle, Lenore goes to rescue Hector first thing, instead of checking on Carmilla. For one moment, she even looks torn on where to go:

I will praise this moment: this shows her concern for him quite nicely and that she believes his safety is the first priority, without having to spell it out - no declataration of love, no "you're too important to me", no "Carmilla can handle herself without me", the action speaks for itself. However, there is also her reaction when Hector severs his finger to get rid of the ring, after he explains that "command and control flows through [him] to Lenore here and to her friends":

It could be simple disgust because, well, there's a severed finger and pools of blood lying near her. But I also see what the commenter saw in that frame in S3: sadness. Defeat. Lenore has lost control of the Night Creatures. She can't do anything to protect Carmilla and the castle. And she has lost control of Hector, who has gone behind her back and is protecting her at the expense of her sisters and home: he may chose to stay with her, but he also gave Isaac all the tools he needs to destroy her life. She's powerless. Everything she has worked for went up in smokes and was pointless. Which, as it was shown and told, greatly bothers her. (this is also why I believe her suicide makes sense for her state of being, an opinion apparently not shared by her fans)

I see all of this encapsulated into that expression that mixes disgust, concern and quiet, horrified realization: and it's also fully backed up by the context.

This leads to the message I keep insisting on and which is something that more people need to learn, and the reason I keep eviscerating this character because the writing and the fandom piss me off something fierce: abusers can care about you. They can care about your safety and well being, they can want what (they think) it's best for you. What makes them abusers is that they place more importance on their own need of control. Lenore wanting to save Hector because she pitied him, has grown close to him and eventually finds in him someone who listens to her doesn't at all erase in the slightest all the harm she has caused him: which, I reiterate, includes lying to him and taking advantage of his feelings and need for love to trick him into sex with the objective of placing a slave ring on him, and enjoying his suffering when she won - and when Hector called her out on this, her response was "SHUSH, YOU WERE HAVING FUN".

At the end of the day, she has never stopped behaving like a vampire, a creature whose definition of love is "acting to keep something with you for as long as you can". Even in her most wholesome scenes, like this one or the one where she pleads for more of Carmilla's patience, it's easy to see at the core of it all a need to control the situation and people involved, and reluctance to admit her needless cruelty. This is nuance, not "she's actually good deep down, pls ignore all the sexual abuse because it was for Hector's own good 🥺".

On one hand, it's true that when you do character analyses, you will always be biased, because you come in with your ideas and preconceptions. I am biased too, of course, you can tell. On the other, it's dishonest to cling only onto the most convenient hidden details to look like you have fully understood the text, when you dismiss the most obvious ones that are so obvious you have to actively try to.

[the-dye-stained-socialite]

hate making a little vent post and spending half an hour fucking agonizing over how to phrase things because it's a vent post, not a fucking nuanced discussion of all the 'real' issues with something, and i still get people fucking missing that and tellung me to go read articles and shit. i KNOW the fucking nuance about copyright I'm fucking AWARE, this is a fucking vent post about how people don't want their shit jacked like that!!!!! I'm sorry i reacted in anger and hurt and didn't launder my arguments properly!!! must i be a perfectly rational machine all the damn fucking time?!

edit: no we're not on the same side please disregard. i hate ai. i was still somehow reading into the argument with too much good faith