#and my heart is failing me

[whitecollarcrimekids]

Oh god oh god oh god im back

I gotta be honest, the ‘i know this is coming because i read the fics first but HOLY FUCK’ train is NOT A FUN ONE TO BE ON!!!!!!

I know Rebecca is a literal murderer and stalker and working with Hagen and I KNOW I KNOW OKAY but GOD do they make you work for it. Ughhhhh they slather it on good. They make her dorky and innocent and fiery and you want to like her. You desperately want Neal to have something good. And then its just utter disaster. Horrible. Awful. Terrible. I practically screamed my way through like 9 episodes. Holy fuck sometimes knowing something is coming just makes it worse and you have to sit there and watch it happen

[qiinamii]

You gave Xiao your heart.

He thought it was a spar invite.

[Next]

[russell-crowe]

S08E21: Holding On

[jjoneechan]

✨Happy one year to TWWTH tour!!🎶

💚 Missing droncert era 🥺

[smile-files]

NO ONE ELSE CAN HELP YOU

NO ONE ELSE CAN HELP YOU

(objectober 2024 day 20: dream)

[kitamars]

so it was valentines day yesterday huh

[multistanninglifestyle]

[hella1975]

noah kahan really said growing up in a small, bitter hometown is about the rage and the hatred that's been sung about many times before but it's also about love and devotion and the 'all three of us were drowning and we didn't know how to save each other but there was an understanding that we were all drowning together' of it all and knowing people so intimately yet not being able to help anyone and he's morally grey at best in a lot of his songs and objectively the bad guy in others and that's just how it is and it's about substance abuse and normalised crime and teen suicide and country roads and failed exams and leaving and being left and love and hate and love and hate and love and

[espurr-roba]

practicing values in storyboard pro :D i'm sure nothing canonical is about to happen to strelitzia :D

[ruporas]

only human

[ID: Two page comic in color of Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun Maximum. The first page has a black background and the upper half, behind the panels, is splattered with stylized red blood, scattered bullets, and lifeless hands. In the first panel, it focuses on Vash's boots, showing him stepping through the panel and into the bloody scene. The second panel shows his bloody footprints and the third panel shows his face, his down-turned eyes looking downwards. It's a neutral, vague expression with confliction. At the bottom of the page, the back of Wolfwood's head and shoulder is seen, blood dirtying the white color of his shirt and side of his face. Vash's hand reaches out to him from the right side of the page.

The second page shows the entire scene in full, half the page in light and the other in solid black. At the center, Vash leans down onto his knees as he wraps his arms around Wolfwood's shoulders into a hug. Wolfwood's back is turned away from the viewer, his left arm holds onto his bloodied punisher and his right hand sits on his lap. Light casts from the left side of the page, showing the bloodied surrounding, but the held up punisher casts a shadow on the both of them, shielding them from the light. END ID]

[sundiced]

'why did you grow up without me' will always be one of my favorite relationship dynamic tropes. doesn't matter if it's romantic or platonic it's about the loss of someone you thought you would always know better than anyone and the day you realize that they've changed into someone you can barely recognize and there's nothing you can do about it. mourning a person who's still alive but the version of them that you loved is dead. it's not even that they've done something wrong they just got older and so you can't even rationally hate them but sometimes you do anyway.

[cowgirls-blues]

One of them knows how to install a doorknob.

[drivinmeinsane]

My top ten favorite shots of Officer K's hands.

[whump-softie]

Whumpee’s running to exhaustion.

Escaping through the woods, tripping on everything and anything their bare feet touch. Their loud, shaky breaths are the only noise beside the occasional gunshot from behind them. They were being hunted. They couldn’t give up. They’d force their body to shreds, to keep running, if it meant escaping what was behind them.

Running tirelessly behind Whumper on their daily training sessions. Whumper is by far the superior being, and can effortlessly do, well, pretty much anything. Whumpee stumbles and hobbles behind them, dumped in sweat. Whumper is disappointed, but what are they to do? Whumpee is inferior in every way, after all.

Whumpee desperately searching through the house for a missing “safety thing.” Their favorite blanket, favorite twig, favorite speck of dust… it doesn’t matter. This is their thing, and it’s missing. There is nothing more important than finding it. Running and slamming open every door, fearless of the punishment awaiting them, Whumpee will stop at nothing.

Running towards safety. Into the arms of Caretaker. Breaking down into sobs, out of breath but so relieved they can hardly breathe anyways. Collapsing to their knees after what felt like an eternity of running, hiding, scavenging… and they finally made it. They’re safe. They’re home. 🫰

[panncakes]

Phi. Hmm? Why can't I see you?

LAST TWILIGHT (2023)

[mari-lair]

Let's talk about Akane's overprotection of Aoi and the dangers of not properly setting up a narrative tone.

We are told that Akane stalks Aoi because guys have been trying to force her into a relationship for years, so he protects her by beating up anyone who approaches. Nene and Kou are understandably horrified by this.

But in the very next page, Aidairo hit us with this tone switch:

What Akane is saying is contradictory to the violent and possessive narrative that was shown during his introduction, to this yandere role he played the entire chapter, but the manga is trying to convey that we should take him seriously here. Even the lighting and composition are the ones used when characters are vulnerable and Aidairo wants to show that what they feel is real.

It's strange...

Being possessive is never framed as something that leaves other characters in awe, just compare Akane's melancholic and peaceful gaze to the creepy tone used when Kou and Hanako have their "you are possessive" moment.

Both Kou and Hanako hate that part of themselves, Kou even rejects it, but it's still clear the rejection doesn't make him any less possessive. Both want to be dependable, they want to be the only choice, no one else is acceptable. It's a selfish feeling. Being 'the most important person' is more important than the joy of the person they want to help (Kou's wish is Mitsuba needing him, instead of Mitsuba happy as a human. Hanako wants to be the one to save Nene, the idea of Nene being saved by someone else does not satisfy him even if it would make her happy and safe)

So this isn't a "Akane is lying to himself" or a "he is delusional" case.

The narrative, which had presented Akane as a yandere, wants us to believe that "I will protect Ao-chan... Even if she never looks my way" is not only what Akane believes to be true, but also something admirable. A sentiment Nene craves directed her way, claiming to be 'a little jealous' of Aoi, despite calling Akane scary a single page ago.

Let's rewind to see how we got here.

Akane and Aoi's stories suffer from being mostly given to us in gags for a good chunk of the manga, as they are not very relevant in the early arcs, but the crumbs come together after their confrontation in chapter 69.

Why is Akane stalking Aoi? Because he worries about her. Not about someone stealing her necessarily, but about her being hurt or forced into situations she is uncomfortable with.

They are very codependent. They have been for years.

We can see Akane being shocked at the sight of people bullying Aoi since they were kids, it isn't just 'boys who want to date her' that makes her uncomfortable. Jealous girls do too.

Even when Aoi is left alone, using clothes completely out of her cutesy style to attract less attention, and just living her life, she is still harassed.

Aoi's life is a nightmare, it straight up sucks. She hates that, and when Akane notices this discomfort, he hates that too.

He is far more protective than possessive, he doesn't care when people are touchy with Aoi as long as she welcomes the touch: Take Nene as an example.

Akane never touches Aoi at the start of the manga but Nene does, a lot. He never think "Nene is touching my Ao-chan! Unforguivable". "Maybe Ao-chan likes Nene more than me is not far!" or anything of sorts

Even when Aidairo uses the same over-the-top/creepy gag humor I personally find excessive, and Aoi straight up flirts with Nene, Akane's only thoughts about it are the usual "I love her so much"

When he does show dislike for Nene it's never because she is of value to Aoi. It's because of how dismissive Nene can be, not taking Aoi's safety seriously and easily excusing Hanako's actions.

We only see him be aggressive with Nene when Hanako possesses her and makes Aoi uncomfortable.

The problem here is the framing, the comedy focus. It's hard to take it seriously.

Everything about Akane's intro chapter is hard to take seriously. We are told he is "Hard working. Reliable. What a nice and sweet person."

But we aren't shown these honorable qualities much, not explicitly at least. The big panels, the main focus, is on his gag.

And his main joke is that he loves excessively, even for this school standard where everyone is weird (like Nene writing a self-ship fanfic with Teru) so he needs to be over the top, his behavior has to stand out!

How do they try to achieve this? Yandere jokes.

It is overplayed, they spend pages on it. WHOLE PAGES on it.

It is an old narrative trick to present a twist character as a comic relief to lower suspicion, to keep the more important characterization for after a reveal when they are oficially important, but framing all his actions as comedic and devoid of dept to make his reveal as No.1 more unexpected leaves him in a strange position: Akane is intended to be written as a protector but framed as a joke, to the point his introduction become the satire of a protector.

When he is revealed as the clock keeper and allowed to be given more focus, Aidairo try to explain his behavior and show signs of him being a genuinely caring and kind person, as the first part of his intro had promised.

But it's to late.

His crazy actions and anger issues is in most people's minds, a few lines can't erase pages and pages of his introduction as a yandere like archetype, so it's easy for first impression bias to come into play and interpret all his actions as a simple "He is obsessive." instead of trying to find dept or nuance to the established dependence he has on Aoi.

When we are shown that above wanting to date her, he just wants her to be safe and happy, it does not become clear. The reader needs to pay a lot of attention to small moments like these:

Which a casual reader likely won't. Most are reading for the toilet trio at this point in the manga.

This fumble on his character introduction makes it hard to know what should and shouldn't be taken seriously. Aidairo discarded the yandere narrative relatively quick (we haven't seen Akane's bat in ages) but this gag about being happy as long as Aoi is happy turned out to be important:

It was used to further contrast Aoi's and Akane's mentality on their big arc, and highlight how much nearly losing Aoi affected him.

So the only way we can tell what joke to take seriously cause it will be used to build up his character and what isn't important is hindsight.

I did not care about Aoi and Akane's relationship when I first read the manga, i went 'oh cool!' on their conflict, cause that was very well done, but since their characters were not well introduced, I did not notice a lot of the ideas being shown to me.

Akane is a sweet boy. That's his core, his consistency. Even with Aoi, being kind is the priority over being with her.

Let's compare him with Hanako, who is an openly possessive character, and see how they approach their love interests when they don't know if their love interest likes them back yet, and they aren't reduced to a gag (so we'll dismiss Akane being 'a yandere with a bat', and Hanako's joke of him being a tactless pervert, like peaking under Nene's skirt when her time was frozen)

(so pre-chapter 86 to Hanako and pre-chap 69 to Akane)

Hanako traps Nene, he will cling to her anytime he can, he cares about Nene and loves her dearly, he even says he "loves everything about her" but he is greedy for her attention, he is selfish, always trying to make her focus on him out of everyone in the room and keeping her in his hold, out of others reach. His unsubtle possessive nature is a charm of his, makes for an interesting character.

Akane has a different vibe to it. He doesn't have many serious moments with Aoi before their spotlight arc, unfortunately, but when he does, he focuses on reassuring her (even when her time is frozen and she can't hear him) and avoids touching her at best he can. He has known her for more than 10 years, but he doesn't act as if she belongs to him.

I am not saying Akane is not possessive of her, he is. But he tends to be more worried about her than anything.

Using hanako as the trademark of possessiveness again, check out these two scenes:

At the start of the manga Kou likes Nene, and Akane is under the impression Teru like Aoi, so both scenes follow the basic premise of "A know B has a crush on their crush, and they get possessive over a possible romantic rival being too close."

Hanako doesn't say anything, but his message is clear "She is mine."

Akane explicitly says he doesn't like Teru near Aoi but he doesn't try to remove Aoi from Teru or try to do anything violent. Why would he? Aoi is in no danger, nor is she uncomfortable, so he changes focus to the person who is troubled, awkwardly reassuring Teru that his distress is, in his personal opinion, stupid, so "chill bro".

He wasn't like that with Teru before.

He was so determined to stop the wedding he even rejected hanging out with Aoi, crying tears of blood and asking for her forgiveness in his mind but prioritizing not making her get together with Teru above her joy.

Is that because of his development? Yes! A big part is. Notice the way he treats his mental image as reality? That was his biggest flaw, he imposed his views on Aoi (the view being "everyone is stupid in love with Teru" in this case), and assumed what he believes is a universal truth, doing exactly what Aoi accused him of: Not seeing her, just an idea of her.

But the reason he went so crazy and determined, it's because Akane saw Teru as someone dangerous. Someone who would use Aoi. Hurt her. He believes he is protecting Aoi from the big bad president. A view that makes sense when we take into consideration both Aoi's history of being forced into relationships, and when we go back to their interaction.

Look at this and tell me this isn't a threat:

Teru acts as if he barely remembers her name, she is just 'that cute girl', mostly a tool for him to use against Akane.

When his view of Teru changes to someone kinder who genuinely cares about Aoi as a person, he no longer enters protective mode.

He is still bothered about the idea of Aoi being with someone else, he does noooot look pleased even with his fairy tale vision of a happy couple, but the way he treats this possible 'rivalry of love' when he does believe Teru loves her is so different from his "Don't get close to her!! I will NOT allow it!!" approach.

There is no insecure overthinking. No aggression. He is playful about it. He even teases Teru.

He just wants to focus on rescuing Aoi. A 'rivalry' isn't important. He needs her to be safe.

These two parts of Akane have been juggling for a long while.

But now, character focus is the priority, and I am thankful the damage is being undone, that Aidairo let Akane's love take up whole pages instead of small panels buried under pages of jokes.

Their codependence, no matter how many issues it has, and how it can sabotage them, is based on so much care for each other.

It's a shame I only believe Akane was sincere when he said he'll always be there to protect Aoi regardless if he 'gets to be with her', because of what we see later in the manga, not because of what had been set up in his intro.