#anyway that's it in a nutshell anon!!!

[inkykeiji]

clari i’m so confused 😭 if touya-nii is so possessive and such why does he let natsuo do stuff with the reader?

because i am a whore because natsuo is his lil brother and is 100% wholly and entirely devoted to his big brother. touya is, ultimately, in complete control of both of them. technically, unless natsuo has touya’s explicit permission, he isn’t allowed to touch reader. that’s why they get in so much trouble during beautiful when the damage is done. very rarely will natsuo ever fuck or play around with reader without touya being literally present to watch/dictate. they aren’t allowed to do anything otherwise. natsuo, when he is alone with reader, should be acting solely as a big brother type (and a big brother type only). he’s there to watch her + keep her safe, to help her if she needs it, to be touya’s eyes and ears and report back to him, and that’s it.

it’s important to note tho that natsuo isn’t constantly present with reader when touya has to go away for ‘business’. natsuo has his own life, he’s in med school depending on where we are in the timeline, he’s working under street doctors and learning the pill mill trade + underground prescription dealing, etc etc etc.. he just stops by whenever touya wants him to, basically! this ask touches on the relationship dynamics and this ask touches on why touya-nii isn’t jealous!

[elegyofthemoon]

4, 13, 24 for the song ask game

4. is from an underrated artist - "introduced species" by hands like houses idk if theyre underrated but its not like i ever see anyone talk about them jdjfjd honestly its between i the mighty and hands like houses for underrated artist but i love this song in particular about accepting your own differences from the norm. i prefer the acoustic though. if im feeling particularly Spicy then yeah sure the og version

13. should be in a movie - hmmm 'without you' by ursine vulpine... tragic couple scene one partner dying in the others arms and a montage of the other trying to get them back idk idk idk it has the cinematic drama to the song though

24. i want to be my theme song - ok ik i answered this w a different song but what if i said "look up" by stars? maybe it works better as a credit or insert song idk but i kinda like how the songs verses talk so much about some sorrows that the characters have but the chorus and the music itself holds some sense of hope and light. "rain is falling, looks like love" is probably my favorite line from the song, mostly bc it flashes me back to the oz alice scene where alice is dancing in the rain.... yeah also i grabbed this song as my theme bc it makes me think of oz and. well. oz.

[verysium]

I’ve been seeing some discourse around twitter about the blue lock boys and whether they’d be a loyal bf or not 😭 Curious to know who do you think would be more inclined to cheat or who just wouldn’t at all!!!

I saw someone say sae would 100% cheat like whattt I feel like he wouldn’t even bother looking at anyone else if he already has someone (Cuz I mean dating him would likely mean you actually mean something to him) but I digress

ok anon you had me pulling up a whole argumentative essay here cus WHO TF SAID SAE WOULD 100% CHEAT??? 😔 that mischaracterization is so painfully inaccurate. twitter really took the whole emotionally unavailable itoshi archetype and ran with it. let me just clear the air here because my man deserves some explanation.

sae itoshi would not cheat. as in capital N and capital O. he took nearly an entire decade off his life just to work on his own issues and finally form a functional and healthy relationship with another human being. and you're telling me he's just going to let all that wash down the drain for someone else? 😒 twitter logic really be showing its illogical side here. apparently a man can be loyal to a professional sports career for eighteen years, but he can't be loyal to his significant other.

i think this misunderstanding probably happened cus of shidou. people read the manga and saw that sae dropped rin for a bug-eyed freak and automatically assumed he was disloyal. 😑 let me just say two things here:

(1) sae and shidou's relationship is strictly professional. imagine being stuck in an god awful corporate office with coworkers who bore you with their weaponized incompetence and a boss who annoys the living shit out of you. and then one day, the company hires a new recruit who is probably the most unhinged and debauched creature known to man. you're probably left wondering how he even got hired in the first place. but then you find out...he's useful. he takes risks and gets a high return on what he invests. it's impulsive and stupid, really. but at least it's unconventional and outside-the-box. he has your interest piqued. that's basically sae and shidou in a nutshell.

(2) just because sae gave shidou his number after the u-20 game does NOT mean he would do the same to any other person who would try to encroach on your relationship. and let's be real here. sae would get one text from shidou and block his contact.

anyways, here is my analysis on the bllk boys in general. introducing the anti-cheating to pro-cheating spectrum:

(A) cannot cheat under any circumstance (as in they already hate the fact that they live on a planet with 8.1 billion other people who are not you):

itoshi brothers (atp they don't even have the physical or mental capacity to entertain a third party), ness, reo

(B) cannot cheat due to physical incapability (literally cannot pull anyone within a five-meter radius to cheat with):

ego, igarashi, raichi, bachira (not that he's in any way unattractive...it's just...i feel like he would purposefully act weird to drive off people who aren't you)

(C) could not cheat (basically option A and B but less problematic version)

yukimiya, barou, kunigami, noa, loki, gagamaru, chigiri, niko, hiori, karasu (baby boy literally felt inferior cus his crush was the cutest in his class), kurona (head empty, just you)

(D) would not cheat (on you but everyone else is not included)

isagi (unintentionally a homewrecker to others but would never let anyone homewreck his relationship with you), leonardo (idk why but i just don't trust him entirely)

(E) could cheat (depends on what they get out of it):

kaiser, shidou (honestly what did you expect when you willingly dated a blonde man...)

(F) would cheat (either proven by canon or they accidentally fucked up somehow):

otoya, oliver, nagi

[yuri-is-online]

Hi👋! 📻 anon here

Reading about Deuce!Yutu now I'm curious about Adeuce being uncles to any Yutu! We already have the granddaddy Crewel (😉😉), so.

I imagine Ace flexing about it and Deuce being (or trying to be) a somewhat responsible figure? "Watch uncle Ace and learn" vs. "You can always lean on your uncle Deuce *cough* while he freaks out *cough*". In nutshell they're happy, but idiots about it. While their relationship depends on and kid's personality (or who's the daddy, lol), they must have something they do regardless.

Anyways, eat well, sleep well, treat yourself kindly!

Yuu's little found family in Twisted Wonderland is always heartwarming to see.

I feel like Deuce is super serious about it. He takes Yuu's safety really seriously already so to have a baby Yuu? Oh he's so worried about him it's not even funny. It's 10x worse if Yutu is a Heartslabyul baby because Deuce feels like he should have been protecting his dad too. Riddle! Yutu gets it the worst because of how openly traumatized he is; he's very soft with Trey! Yutu and Yushi. He has no idea how to deal with what happened to them so he just awkwardly hovers around trying to be reliable.

Ace says that he hates this because he can't stand having another person to look after but honestly? He kind of likes it. Ace does like boring domestic stuff and he likes the thought of having a nephew. His flexing comes in the form of trying to make life a bit normal for Yutu. He'll play basketball with him, make him try a whole bunch of snacks, picks up a bunch of "classic" movies that he absolutely needs to see, and basically all the other things he does with Yuu and Deuce because hey. The kid is old enough to be his friend he can worry about being an authority figure and role model in the future.

[sgiandubh]

https://www.tumblr.com/thefrsers/727642239173525504/samcait-watching

Did you write something about their moment 😍🫠with Josh?

Dear Moment with Josh Anon,

Once again, I do apologize for the very, very late answer. As Relocation Week-end is now within reasonable sight, days are shorter and you do find yourself caught in a thousand little idiotic details. Car insurance, doggie shots for Bebe, car check-up, bank, boxes and the whole Marie Kondo tidy geisha circus - you'd be surprised to find out how many things don't spark joy anymore and will be donated to the local Catholic parish, for example. All this hullaballoo will somewhat slow my presence here: not to oblivion (they'd wish!), just a tad & I am already sorry - but (as JAMMF once said) I must.

But we're here for S&C and this is what you should read about in this answer, Anon.

Here is a relevant clip of last summer's Happy Sad Confused Special, I found online, just to make sure we are on the same page:

Anyways. Even if I am not Horowitz's most devoted groupie, I must admit the guy knows perfectly well how to navigate the S&C Narrative River and even its Dissimulation Straits, without ever pushing things up to the Point of No Return. He definitely knows things and if anyone still imagines by now all these 'impromptu' interviews are not at least discussed before the event, well...

In a nutshell, there are - as a rule of thumb - very few spontaneous things about interviews, lately. But then, you can also have unexpected gems like the one above, because it is my belief that this has not been rehearsed or discussed before: their reactions are genuine.

I know many people have talked about it before, so I am not sure what I could add to what was already said, except perhaps a couple of cursory observations.

When she is moved, her Irish accent comes back with a vengeance and then she gradually returns to 'normal' as she relaxes back. But that, to me was a giveaway of how surprised and moved she was to see that reel.

When he is moved, he immediately blurts something cheeky and (often, but not here) borderline inappropriate. 'Actually it's interesting seeing that, like, how physical we were and we just met' (01:50). These, I believe, are coping mechanisms. And yes, I am aware that some believe they met before or that he knew at least something about her. I respectfully disagree: I think what we saw that day, at that chemistry test, were two actors desperate to get a much-needed part and giving their best for it. But, unlike the cynical and corny know-it all out there, I also think we witnessed two human beings who also happened to fall in love at first sight. And that, Anon, is something extraordinary and very rare to experiment, let alone to watch.

And this is something that they both know: how could you ever forget that happening to you? And yes, they are very guarded (he, more than her) but if you watch closely enough (and manage not to feel like a filthy voyeur), you'll understand there is more than meets the eye about These Two.

Once again, I am sorry for the delay. This should serve me well as a lesson in leaving the cheap drama behind and focus on what is important.

[lyrqxa]

i never anon-ed you and...and the name is the confessional...why do i suddenly feel guilty..

ANYWAY DO UR BISHOPS PLAY ANY INSTRUMENTS CMON DROP THE HEAD THOUGHTS

i suppose it is a little intimidating LOL.. dw i am very nicey u will always be forgiven

leshy is a percussion kid. his playing is always chaotic and he would probably handle like 3 different percussion instruments at once . yk that one video thats “breakcore in a nutshell” yeah leshys the drummer

heket would sing. she would sing her prayers before eating pre-godhood, and it followed her all the way to when she led prayers at her feasts. but she cant sing anymore, so she’s resorted to the guitar. for no other reason other than it reminds me of kermit and how he plays the banjo

narinder plays the violin. it is the most attributed to the devil, after all (thanks paganini!!). i like to imagine that when his most faithful were dying, he would play a parting song for them should they request one. he told the lamb that he would play the violin for them when he was freed. he meant it in the final wish sort of way, but after a week of living in the cult the lamb appears w a violin and is like “so. that promise”

kallamar… i think similar to weapons, he is a master of many. the piano would be his favorite, simply because its easy to play with his tentacles and all, and he likes the sound of it. thanks to his mastery, he’s also probably researched sound therapy too.

shamura plays the harp. plucking the strings is like weaving their silk, and it feels right at home. it would take many years for them to master, and while they stopped playing it entirely after narinder’s exile, they would probably pick it up again upon joining the lamb’s cult. i also just love the image of shamura playing the harp ngl…

[ask-prismaknight]

Is everything okay? Did something happen?

I'm ok! I forgot there's probably some people here who don't come from my main, that's my bad ^^; here's my post about the person in question and here's what they did to my friend @ferahntics

Gonna try and wrap this in a nutshell, but basically there's a user in the Kirby community who goes around asking for Kirby characters/OCs sleeping (seems like a fetish, which is fine but they don't disclose it as such and send it to sfw artists) and got real nasty at Ferah when she didn't make them the art. They sent her death threats as well as other horrible threats all because she wouldn't do their request (while her requests were closed, by the way).

Since then, they have made flimsy apologies, made hate accounts to harass people with and was spamming my reblogs for a while trying to get me and Ferah to forgive them. And now they're trying to fly under the radar, sending anons with the same requests as if it never happened and stealing art from artists that had no idea this person was so foul.

Anyways, I got a couple anons on this blog that appear to be from them given the timing and subject matter of a character sleeping. So I'm turning off anon asks for the time being to hopefully get them to go away/reveal the blogs they're using so I can call them out and block them. This person has no place in our community and I will continue to block them until they finally leave me and everyone else alone.

[ca-suffit]

It's not even particularly for you to post (you can if you want) but just to show you the kind of responses you get if you're voicing even a slight concern about the difference of promo.I'm not saying one is right one is wrong but can we have the conversion without calling the other party annoying?

https://x.com/starswheeled/status/1817694495510761671?t=-ng3Yh2_XwIKXcT-QdjwEA&s=19

Also I hate seeing post like ''let the people celebrate we have been waiting for decades'' I doubt even 30% of the active fandom are long term fans. I do respect the joy of (non

-racists) book fans who dreamed for the time they would finally see TVL adapted and i'm really hoping for them,AMC won't screw this because as a comics fan myself,i know the deception when they don't do justice to something you cared for a long time.

I get why so many fans are just quitting,i'm a comics fans racism in fandoms is totally normalized so i didn't expect TVC to be different,well i did still expect because the cast was 3/5 with POC...i'm rambling anyway thanks for this Tumblr.

"I'm the anon who send you the twitter link,i wanted to add,that I do know a lot of hype we are seeing is not totally because of AMC it's just fans doing most of the tractions and it's not the executives fault if a rockstar is more fun and attract more people than the dark tales we had in the 2 first seasons and it wouldn't be honest from me to recognize this fact."

ur ok to ramble, that's what this is here for<3

like u wrote, it's not so much that AMC is doing different marketing, it's that the fandom's response is so different and ppl notice that.

it's rly hard to talk about anything in most spaces bcuz there's so much effort put into downplaying the real issues most of the time (especially if it's about race / racism) that ppl get confused and then talk about shit they don't know what they're talking about. then the internet encourages dunking on ppl and "winning" instead of having any discussion. it's forever counterproductive.

it's also crap when ppl downplay concerns bcuz of gatekeeping shit. that's fandom racism in a nutshell tbh "I don't care about ur feelings bcuz mine are more important." u can have both??? idk how ppl can enjoy things while knowing others aren't having the same experience, but we normalize being selfish assholes in fandoms so much so here we are.

[workingforitallthetime]

hi bestie i was pointed to your blog today because i was wondering if you knew any of the fantilli brothers lore. like the older one plays for umich and is older but the younger one was a top5 draft pick??? like what is going on i need a comprehensive guide because something something younger brother overshadowing older brother, something something Cain and Abel?? or no?? or is more in depth than that? anyways no worries if not, i just fell down an Adam spiral earlier

absolutely the furthest thing from a cain and abel story, anon. this video has the fantilli bros story in a nutshell, and this article is also a sacred text. my tagging system is practically nonexistent but i do have some fantilli bros material here. and this is fic but it's my fantilli bros thesis statement.

basically, adam worships and adores luca and spent several years following him around the USA rather than taking the typical canadian hockey path for a high-level prospect from the greater toronto area. he got hate messages in his DMs because he bailed on the GTHL and he had to hold a press conference to explain that he missed his brother and wanted to go play with him.

luca, meanwhile, is very invested in being adam's keeper. he's the laid back one who makes adam chill out. they facetime every day. they had a little pregame ritual that involved adam summoning luca from across the ice for a high five. sometimes luca has a 'missing adam day.'

i could go on but seriously this is like my entire blog from the last year and a half. scan my archive for a ton of fantilli bros content (try february-april 2023 in particular, also around the draft in june.)

[inkykeiji]

OMG PLSSS LMK WHAT U THINK ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS!!!

oH MY GOSH okay it was very interesting, as a film i quite enjoyed it, definitely feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to the utter trash hollywood keeps trying to churn out. LOVE that it was written, directed and (co)produced by a woman!!!!!

farleigh is so so so gorgeous i could’ve stared at him for HOURS, he was absolutely enrapturing and his actor did a phenomenal job. plot-wise i thought it was good, i kinda wish there were a few more thriller elements but that’s just a personal taste and has nothing to do with the film’s merit imo. i find myself more interested and captivated by imagining what life at saltburn was like before the film’s events took place—like, the history of the place, the family, imagining all of the insane shit that must’ve went down there in general etc., i dunno i’m just so fascinated by that. the sets were gorgeous but if i have to praise this film for one thing in particular, it would be its cinematography. i could talk your ear off about this but i won’t ehehe i’ll just say that the use of shot scale, shot duration + camera angles was superb in building tension & conveying subtle emotion/instigating subtle emotion in the viewer themselves

[the-holy-ghosted]

Putting on my sunglasses again wow hello another anon about Ghosted (2011)

Care to share your thoughts about what happens after the final scene like wow how do these characters spend the remainder of their sentences after such dramatic events. one really does have to wonder *points the microphone in your direction*

ok putting on my spoilers hat again but im not putting it under a cut. if you feel like watching ghosted then dont read this post. if you dont feel like watching ghosted then feel free to listen to my rambling madness

anyways i think that after the final events of the film where jack and paul """reconcile""" and it cuts off i think they do truly reconcile afterward. i dont think theres a bone in either of their bodies that is not enraged beyond belief over what the other has done to them but theres also no bone thats not wracked with guilt for what theyve done to the other in return. very deeply, they believe they owe each other. although it was jacks own fault for getting put in prison, i think paul very much does feel solely responsible for having ruined his whole family. (something something do we remember jacks "what do you know about it? what its like? to take someone's life and know that youve ruined so many others?" that he spat at clay.. i think paul knows very intimately) and he feels he owes jack what he can never give him. he owes him a son, for one thing. indirectly, he owes him a wife. he owes him a happy family he couldnt return to after doing so much time for a mistake that ended in the loss of a life and although it was pauls own fault for getting put in prison, for what its worth, what else did he have going for him? he had no stable family and no consistent friendships and paul was essentially forced to grow up impossibly fast and skip out on all the nice parts of growing up. having people who loved him. who wanted to take care of him. who knew him and who he didnt have to lie to. at the end of the day yes paul did it and it hurts jack more than he could ever tell him but hes so young... jacks already gotten his payback. god hes probably responsible for so much physical and mental damage and weeks upon weeks upon weeks of physical therapy that will get paul to a place that is funtional but nowhere near as capable as he was before. paul ruined his life but hes ruined pauls, too. in a way he owes it to him to take care of him for that. he owes paul some semblance of stability. and for jacks own sake, he needs to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesnt ruin anybody elses lives. to make sure nobody else hurts him.

in a nutshell i do think they stick very close together after their altercation. for the remainder of their sentences and to an extent once they get out, too. who else do they have, now? neither of them have anybody they want to see outside waiting for them. they have destroyed each others whole lives and they need to keep each other as close as possible because of it. theres no moving on from this whatsoever with what they know of each other and how theyve already bonded in the three months they were together. what can they do but stay that way? they will collect what they are owed from each other one way or another

... also this is only partially related but i do believe that for the entirety of jacks time in solitary confinement, he didnt know that paul was alive. he was fully convinced that he'd killed paul and was able to come to terms with that. i think it just adds a good layer of emotion on top of everything to think that hes only informed that pauls been asking for him, tha tpaul is alive, after hes let back in with the rest of the wing. he didnt prepare himself for this outcome and, as depicted in the scene, looks to donner in disbelief and then starts to cry before he even sits down next to paul. i think it would be good. i think it would hurt him real bad

[nothorses]

Oh god, thank you, like if we did assume anon comes from a good place we understand where anon comes from but also like...yea nothings going to help if we don't like, Have A Replacement and you definitely know more than us about this one.

If it's alright to ask: we're wondering if you have any sort of knowledge that could be passed onto us (and others in a situation like ours) to mitigate that?

For more specific context, people definitely sing their praises to IEPs a lot and we saw someone mention them somewhere, but we have very unfortunately been on the end of it where it has been used as a vehicle for oppression and ableism anyways (WE PROMISE those twitter threads will be moved here to Tumblr we just haven't done it yet sory sksksk), because we had abusive parents who were "only" emotionally abusive if that makes sense.

We understand IEPs are helpful to lots of folks but it can be isolating as all fuck when praise is all people do rather than look at some of the tiny nuances or the ways people use it to keep the status quo instead of helping folks. Like how it was used as an extension of Autistic conversion "therapy" / applied behavioral analysis "therapy" when we had to put up with it.

Nutshell/TLDR: how do people use what they have learned to improve education when they didn't really. Learn anything. And how to bring attention to some of the things that nobody wants to talk about without sounding like we're being dismissive. We're so burnt out here when it comes to discussing any education system before university. Please share your wisdom (but only if you want to)!

I am not like, The Expert here, but I will offer some thoughts! Just take them with a grain of salt; I don't know everything, and I could always be missing things.

I will say that IEPs/504 plans are of particular interest to me right now, and imo, the problem is pretty broad and pretty deep.

My own personal context is that my brother was diagnosed with ADHD before even starting school, was put in SpEd early on, and had some pretty traumatic experiences because of that (we picked him up from school once to find him in an isolation room- a closet with one bulletproof window in the door carpeted floor-to-ceiling- because he had acted out in class. In first grade). He believed wholeheartedly that he was incapable of controlling himself, and he developed extremely low self-esteem. I don't know if no diagnosis would have been any better for him, but his diagnosis and "accommodations" (iirc he had an IEP) actively did him harm.

I, on the other hand, was not diagnosed with ADHD until I was 22, and I had to go out and do it myself. I had struggled with school my whole life, I had been in shouting matches with my mom about it, I have trauma about it, and I developed a different kind of low self-esteem around being told I was "choosing" to fail. Once I was medicated, my grades suddenly shot up, my GPA shot up, and I got into a pretty damn good grad school about it. I'm left wondering how things might have been different for me if I'd been understood as someone who was trying but struggling, and who needed support, rather than someone who was not trying at all.

I also don't think it's reasonable to expect that every disabled kid is going to be identified by the system, which is what most teachers seem to think is the issue: that they aren't good enough at armchair diagnosing 6-year-olds yet. It's just not gonna happen. Someone will be missed, and they shouldn't have to struggle alone because nobody else realized what they were struggling with.

Imo, what we need to be pushing for most urgently is universal accommodations, available without any need for diagnosis, disclosure, or anything else: Buckets of fidgets kids can grab whenever, alternative seating options, built-in breaks and frequent snacks, no penalties for late work/tardiness/absences, no graded tests, etc. (I would also like to see more project-based learning & growth-oriented grading, personally!)

As far as learning more: I can recommend some readings to start, and I'll link them here. They're also pretty dense; the grad school recommendation is to read the intro and conclusion in full, and just read the first and last sentence of every paragraph aside from that.

Here's the big folder (which I need to update) of all of the education-related readings I have ever been assigned. I recommend specifically searching "disability" and "democratic"/"democracy"; those will probably be the most relevant to what you're interested in.

Some good starting points:

Leonardo, Broderick (2011) - Smartness as Property: A Critical Exploration of Intersections Between Whiteness and Disability Studies

Carolen, Guinn (2007) - Differentiation: Lessons from Master Teachers

Alverman (2001) - Reading Adolescents' Reading Identities: Looking Back to See Ahead

Veletsianos, Houlden (2020) - Radical Flexibility and Relationality as Responses to Education in Times of Crisis

[bonefall]

heyyy its the anon who asked you abt rain world here, AND the one who mentioned they wanted to go into linguistics cause of clanmew! i decided to try translating a few rain world character names into clanmew for fun, since the way Clanmew's naming works already reminded me a ton of it, even if it doesnt match up 1-1. apologies if its sloppy, i tried to research but im a bit low on energy rn

Five Pebbles -> Rarra Wibra

Unparallelled Innocence -> Boe Eefrriwang Grryrr [little-sibling-ness i-contain] [really funny to me that you can shorten this one to beefgrr. that sure is ui in a nutshell]

Sliver Of Straw [VERY fun character. no she doesnt ever appear canonically in the game. ONLY one to achieve what thousands of other funny robots were trying to do] -> Ul-arra Kroon [one whole hay]

BRUH it's totally fine to not match up completely, but you knocked it out of the park anyway. The fun of seeing translation is exactly that every language has its own quirks and meaning, there is no 'perfect' reflection.

Sliver of Straw's is especially interesting, Clanmew fits them like a glove. You say they don't show up in the game, right? That totally fits the air of loneliness that Ul-arra contains. All they are is One Whole Hay, just a little lonely thing, that achieved a whole lot. You never meet them and yet you live in the shadow of their legacy

At least, I'm guessing lmao. I should play Rainworld sometime.

[ruiniel]

What is Mononoke about? I’ve never seen it and I keep seeing you talk about it and make cool art. So what it?

Why I'm glad you asked, anon, because now I'll never shut up!

Mononoke (2007) is often classified as mystery and psychological horror. The main character is a wandering merchant, only known as the Medicine Seller (kusuriuri). No, we're never given a name or an origin story, but there is fanon speculation as to 'what' the main character is via hints in the series.

There's only one season composed of different arcs, each arc being 2-3 episodes long, each with its own characters and story, all set in late Edo period Japan.

The medicine seller encounters, combats and destroys 'mononoke' during each arc, which are hmm unnatural spirits that linger in the physical world by binding themselves to powerful negative human emotions. And they're all inspired from or are actual entities in Japanese mythology and folklore.

Now, in each arc the medicine seller proceeds in the same way, more or less. There's a cast of characters, a situation, and a lot of psychological investigation melded with a confrontational presentation of human suffering (most often that of women).

The medicine seller has a sword, which drawn destroys the mononoke but there's a catch: he needs to find out the source of the unrest before it can be exorcised, otherwise the sword won't lend its power. There are three necessities:

~the spirit's shape or form (Katachi)

~its truth (Makoto)

~its reasoning (Kotowari)

Once each is revealed, the sword can be unsheathed and does its duty. And the medicine seller turns from this:

to this:

*bark* (by the way the transformation scenes are always different never the same and always gorgeous in the making)

ANYWAY

Those three necessities support a 'story within a story' - the embedded narrative is extensively used in each arc as a storytelling device. The viewer learns together with the medicine seller the source of the mystery and (usually) the horrifying depths of human nature which, by the end, is the true horror.

Some main themes: abuse, hubris, guilt, corruption, violence against women, murder. There is hope, but this is not a fluffy show.

It's just... gorgeous. No I mean the animation and music and voice acting and designs are a feast to my senses. Combined with the gravity of the themes it leaves me unsettled and emotionally rent in ways few other forms of media have achieved.

Trivia: the 2007 series is a spinoff drawing on the last arc of another horror anthology (Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror, 2006) where the medicine seller's character makes the first appearance

There's so much more to say, I may come back and add to this but in a nutshell it's worth it, it's worth it, it's worth it.

[eternitylarva]

okay, so uh. danbooru anon. deciding not to be anon now. it's me! here's the full story, as much as I think I can remember and tell, at least. buckle up?

so this all started, I think, back in like... I wanna say 2018? we were having a hell of a bad time in our life because of being trapped in Mexico by our parents who were very insistent upon us learning Spanish and refused to recognize that we were horribly mentally ill (their fault mostly) and that spending months in an unfamiliar country when we were already scared to talk to people in the language we already knew, was, like, not helping anything, at all... Long story for some other time.

so while being there, lonely and shit, we started looking at various anime images when not, like, watching anime. Partially on twitter, partially on pixiv, and partially on deviantart. We were, for the record, like, 19, not yet egg cracked, not plural cracked, not any of these things yet. Nonetheless all these things were making us very hyperaware of our kinks and making us wonder what the fuck we even were. Our egg cracked after about a year of exposure, to which I credit a lot of things in hindsight, but they're all of or related to anime. Monogatari, houseki no kuni, Madoka, FLCL Progressive, that one scene from the second-to-last chapter of Bloom Into You being circulated online with a fan coloring and extremely confusing us and making us dysphoric, and the nail in the eggshell was joining The Pedantic Romantic's discord server and the many other trans people there making us wonder if maybe this trans of gender thing was how everything could be made some fucking sense of.

But also one other very important contribution to our Extreme Aaah Gender Feelings was one specific image of Nagisa Madoka Magica groping Mami's breast and nomfing her hair. We found this on deviantart, and, at some point, it went missing, the artist's account got nuked, and we were not able to find it again.

Except we were! thanks to danbooru! someone had saved it there. Here it is.

So, this particular experience convinced us that danbooru was instrumental in archiving anime fanart. Eventually we came across some different more active artists whose yuri shipping works were giving us more different gender euphoria, but no one was uploading it there, so I decided we'd best be the change we want to see. etc

Anyway this is where the problems start. Because it turns out danbooru is not an archival site. It's not run like one, it's not intended to be one. (or if it is intended to be one, then it fucking sucks at doing that.) It's a closed community of people (seemingly mostly lonely cis men) who want to maintain an ongoing gallery of the hot anime girls they like.

Consistent with this apparent aim is their (frankly fucking stupid) system of upload limits. You can read how that works for yourself, if you want, but in a nutshell, it means that as a new user you have to get your posts approved in the moderation queue before they're visible, and you can only have so many uploaded to the queue at a time. The more pictures you get approved, the more you get to keep uploading, and if your uploads go unapproved by the moderators, you get penalized with less permitted uploads. If enough of your images get approved and few enough of them are deleted (they're not really deleted per se, just, banished to invisibility in the site's search unless you specifically search for the deleted images), then, eventually you become a "Contributor" which basically means you can bypass this nonsense system and upload however much of whatever you like whenever.

They claim that this system is to prevent people from spamming the site with too many low quality images. But the thing is, the moderators aren't actually obligated to approve images, and most of them only approve an image if they like it. So, this results in a dynamic where, rather than uploading something that meets a reasonable standard of quality and being sure it'll go through, you have to guess what the moderators personally like, and hope to god that you're correct. If your tastes align with the mods, this is probably a cakewalk. If not, then, well, you have to fuck around.

I eventually noticed that there's a discord server, so, in an effort to get an edge in this piece-of-shit mind game, I joined there and got friendly with the regulars. Asking them and the admins for help helped me figure out what to put up there, and, it turns out, that if you're willing to talk there, you can just, like, share the image you want to upload and ask if it's likely to make it through approval. Sometimes you get lucky enough for a moderator to say "go ahead, I'll approve that". Easy win! kinda. if you ignore the having to join another goddamned discord server.

...still, for a little bit, it went fine, they seemed nice enough, I was open about my queer identity and none of them gave me shit about it, so I was like... this is fine, right? they're fine. they seem fine. There were at least a couple who seemed like good people, and I thought, yeah. Fine.

It was all going just fine and dandy, except that I didn't like having to talk to people, I found the whole process of getting approved tedious, and I was also noticing some of the site admins talking about how the immense backlog created by the general inaction of most of the mods was causing problems for like, the one or two moderators who actually try to keep up with the backlog and approve everything that's basically fine, and also even the regulars really don't seem to like this system, but not one person questioned... the need for the upload limit system in the first place? or why they couldn't just... delete spam on a case by case basis (I've looked time and again; it's really not that common, most of the shit that gets uploaded is just, fine), instead of screening everything for possible subjective spaminess?

Like, if Wikipedia, instead of reacting to vandals after they've done things (like they do here in reality) went and manually reviewed EVERY SINGLE EDIT for possible vandalism, and then y'know, a bunch of the Wikipedia admins took this as license to just, delete edits that say true things they don't like? And then everyone had to like, carefully police their edits to ensure that they fit with the personal views of the admins most likely to approve them? Like... that would suck for editors, and also would not fucking work and make a lot of unnecessary bullshit busywork for everyone involved, and also is basically exactly how danbooru works.

Honestly I am still flabbergasted that they just run the site this way. Like how has no one stopped and questioned this. Why the fuck are they still doing this. Sincerely: danbooru admins, what the fuck is wrong with you? You don't have to do this! I-agh. I didn't even get to the transphobia. Okay. uh

So anyway at some point in the discord server I took a swing at suggesting a more inclusive approach to tagging the genders of characters who appear in images (another questionable system that maybe doesn't need to exist, but whatever), Bridget Guilty Gear came up, many of the regulars openly complained about how a flame war over her gender tag starts any time anyone uploads a picture of her, and eventually, one of the admins responded to me like this:

I saw right then that there was no way I was winning this discussion, so I left an :| emoji on the message to express my disapproval and promptly exited the discord server. I then spiraled a bit for a few days, had an internalized transphobia panic attack that I manifested in a vent thread on bluesky, and then talked over my feelings on the situation with our girlfriend who expressed sympathy but also said "i told you so, y'know" and also emphasized to me, "you need to accept it's not an archival site. it's a closed circle of assholes" and I said, "yeah, I know"

Anyway, I uploaded a little bit more after that, and eventually got promoted to "Contributor" status, after which point (this was back in November of last year) I have uploaded a total of... maybe 60 times? give or take. The fact that I no longer need to go through the approval queue means that I do not need to fuck with the mods in any way shape or form, and, y'know, I prefer that. I do not like the site's community, but like, it's a thing I use, and I'm gonna keep making use of their servers to host my particular special little girls for as long as they keep the servers online, I guess. And I mean, also, I guess everything I post there is inevitably getting mirrored on some other site, so. Yeah

...I mean I guess it also helps that I know nothing about guilty gear and don't follow any artists who draw Bridget. At least not currently. so

I hope this has answered all of your questions!

Thank you very much for writing all of this up. It was a fascinating read! I've been a casual Danbooru user for over a decade at this point, just using it to search for art of characters I liked or posing/framing inspiration for my own creative outlets. I too treat it like an archival site, but I've always got the vibe that it was mostly run by what I can most charitably describe as weirdos -- and it's eye-opening to hear just how backwards their systems are. I'm sorry you had to endure all of that over the years.

As for Bridget, I was pretty dialed in to the discourse on the site when it cropped up. Though I don't ever interact with the community, there was so much debate about her on the comments of some pieces that I was compelled to seek out the forums to see what they were talking about. It was largely the same as the experience you had with that Discord mod, I'm afraid. Supposedly, you tag what you see, unless you know the character is a "trap", then you tag what you know, unless that character is Bridget and she doesn't have visible breasts, vagina, or trans colours/themeing in the art. Yes, that seems to be the current compromise as of time of writing. The 1girl/1boy/2girls/etc. tagging scheme is really bizarre and they really need better solutions. Penises are considered a boy-only feature in their tagging system, but "futanari" exists and it gets the girl tag still. Is that tagging what they see or what they know? But every so often the discussion comes up on the forums again and the regulars defend the status quo because, well, to them it's a "ain't broke don't fix it" sort of situation.

Anyway, thank you again for this. It's not a website I get to discuss often or think about much, but since it's been in my life for so long, it's been rather interesting to get another side of it. Keep up the good work on archiving your special blorbos! o7

[xero013]

Chapter 15 in a nutshell;

(Finally posted the other half which iterally drained me entirely lmfao

Still felt I could've done more, might come back to it and edit some stuff like I did with previous chapters if I have the time for it)

(Anyway, I'm gonna go draft out that prompt that Anon asked me for.

Now that would be so fun.)