#back at it again with my observations

[xmicrophonyx]

A little theory relating to the secrets

So I was rereading the recent QnA the DRDTDev did, as one does, when I noticed something interesting.

Arturo and Hu both list the same color with the same reasoning when asked for their favorite/least favorite color. Arturo’s is his favorite while Hu’s is her least favorite.

Now, I’m kind of an idiot and I didn’t know what sterile meant, so I looked up the definition and

I don’t think the first definition is being used in this case, as anything relating to reproduction was never hinted at or mentioned by Arturo or Hu. So we’re going to be looking at the second definition.

“Free from bacteria or other living microorganisms; totally clean”.

This makes sense with Arturo. He is a plastic surgeon and has been shown to care a lot about cleanliness 

It can be assumed that sterile is being used in the context of medical vicinities. Now, why would Hu dislike that? Well, I bring you this secret:

Many people believe that this is Hu’s secret. The phrase “Dying once wasn’t enough” seems weird. How does one die while being alive presently? By being resuscitated in a hospital, of course!

Dying and then being revived has got to be a traumatic experience, so it would make sense why Hu would associate colors in a hospital with bad feelings. The secret also says that the person has attempted suicide three times, so maybe Hu either voluntarily or was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I’m not a medical professional nor have I ever been to a psychiatric hospital, but I would assume that at least some rooms in a psychiatric hospital would consist of blueish whites and similar colors.

To conclude, I think that a silly QnA about characters’ favorite colors might actually be evidence that the “Hopeless Child” secret is Hu Jing’s.

[itzharplikealways]

Now that I started thinking about Evbo's monologuing...

Does Evbo talk ALL THE TIME? Is it only when he is stressed? Or when he's afraid? Perhaps when he's happy? Or sad?

Does Evbo mutter when he's trying to be stealthy? Does the kid shout wildly and loudly when he's fighting, speaking his opponent's every move? Does Evbo's voice shake when he gets hurt?

When he was used as the ultimate revival tool- fighters killing him without so much as a doubt- did his voice shake as he spoke how they approached him in that bloodied and dark room? How they swung and hit with their iron swords?

Did he try to stop himself from speaking, but it's become such a habit.. An instinct. For him that he couldn't stop even as he tried over and over again to clench his jaw and stop his mouth from moving as pain erupted once more?

Did his lips become bruised and bloodied as people got more and more annoyed at the fact that this stupid tool they use daily keeps talking? Did they plunge their swords right through his tongue, gouging and slashing at it every once in a while to stop him from muttering their every movement?

Did Evbo ever stop talking in that cell?

[celestialrealms]

Anyway, the card itself was about MC and Barbatos going to the past and Barbatos reflecting on his history, and how ultimately the place he ended up the happiest is the present day Demon Lord's Castle because Diavolo and MC are in his life.

And this didn't happen outright in the card, but can we appreciate that the non-bloomed version of the UR implies the one thing that can make Barbatos cry is how important Diavolo (and now MC) is to him?

[starjumpingpanda]

Colin Bridgerton...

Writes with his left hand

He drinks with his left hand

He toasts with his left hand

He drinks his English Breakfast tea with his left hand (moodily)

He twirl his gal with his left hand

He-... ah.

Well, he's ambidextrous? 😉

[wyldblunt]

fiction vs reality is one thing. the way huge chunks of a fandom will rise up to very clearly enforce that a certain line of criticism is unacceptable or overdramatic or somehow unfair, or to shut down concerns that are centered in racial justice, is another — and witnessing those ranks swiftly closing up and that social enforcement mobilizing is very, very real, especially when you're a person of color. it sets a tone that is real. it replicates systems of social power and control that are real, and presents very real indications of whose discomfort and whose pain is prioritized.

[lokh]

ive been thinking about this but. i think shuro understands laios' character pretty well, but he doesn't value his strengths or interests (monster knowledge). in the DVD extra where laios imagines what would have happened if they'd been on better terms, shuro STILL leaves because he thinks his chances are better with a trained crew (which....... is likely to be true but. look at how he ended up anyway lmao). meanwhile kabru recognises that while the party isnt particularly strong, the reason they get so far in the first place is BECAUSE of what laios knows about monsters. shuro seems aware that laios knows about monsters or has an interest in them, but views this as frivolous and a waste of time and doesn't seem to realise how much this knowledge carried them in the first place

[sergle]

I noticed you weren't posting much for a while, you seem more active now adays and I hope you're doing okay! Say hi to Hugo!

omg... I appreciate the concern!! I'm not great but I am feeling better rn than I have been, and do not currently have a gun in my hand. also Hugo says hi back.

[farmdog]

coyotes @ colorado wolf and wildlife center (10/3/24)

[sukibenders]

It's kind of annoying to see some depict Annabeth as not having/being able to have relationships, especially friendships, outside of Percy or them having a connection to him as well in some way. I'm not saying that she can't be paired with people who are also friends with Percy, I'm mainly talking about it from this perspective---if Percy and Rachel can be friends with one another without connecting back to Annabeth, the she can have the same. Like, sometimes whenever I read fics that mention Annabeth having a relationship with Connor, there always seems to be a mention of Percy in some way (either Connor being dropped for him or being used as a way to make him jealous), but that's long since stopped when it comes to Rachel being added (which is good because my girl was fighting for her life in this fandom). Not even just Connor, but I would like to see more of Annabeth's life highlighted outside of Percy and sometimes even outside of the big hero quest that she goes on. I want to see more of her interactions with Grover, Silena, the Stolls, Clarisse, etc. And this isn't any hate or shade to Percy, because I love him, but he's given more depth at times (when done right because fanon!Percy can be...) than Annabeth, even though they both are complex characters.

[todayisafridaynight]

it's important to keep in mind that RGGS is making games for 1) to make money and 2) the ENTIRE fanbase which is way more broad than just the fandom. Majima is and historically has been the most popular character. the gaiden-style game only just proved itself to have potential. of course RGGS is gonna have Majima headline the second gaiden game. Plus the story jumps off IW so people who boarded the franchise with that entry can pick this up without having to worry too much about previous installments. RGGS wants the game to be successful so these choices shouldn't be surprising (one would think...)

^^^

[therealcallmekd]

Reflection Chamber _ ! 🪞

[alternativeproject]

Hall of famers love starting shit with beefed up , slightly damp, heel factions.

[milfbrainrot]

i feel like i type so much more than is reasonable when i do talk to people but i also don't get to socialize a ton so i just have soooo many words in me and if i'm like, tired or short on time, it is so much harder to restrain to the already-pushing-it point i can sometimes manage ;-;

[ink-the-squid-gremlin]

Endouma is a terrible ship, and here is why.

‼️WARNING‼️: Post not only contains semi spoilers for KNY, but it also contains mentions of things like suicide, depression and noncon/sexual assault. If you are uncomfortable with those topics, please refrain from reading.

TLDR: Enmu and Douma are not compatible with each other because that ship is mostly built up on fetished MLM tropes, overly sexualized versions of the characters and the romanticization of SA.

(God, I feel like I have been posting nothing but hot takes on this account as of late. I promise I will go back to posting art, cosplays, and more just chill stuff after this.)

Enmu and Douma are not characters that should not be shipped together, for multiple reasons. Starting off, THEY ARE NOTHING ALIKE!!!! I don’t know where or how it was decided that they were alike, or that Enmu is “Douma 2.0”, but it makes no sense. While both are meant to be irredeemable monsters, Enmu was an irredeemable monster from the get go. From what we know about his backstory, he knew he was scamming people and targeting the weak and vulnerable for it. Douma’s backstory goes a bit more in depth and explains that he was put into the role of “all mighty god” as a child, which lead to the power of it going to his head as he grew up. Douma was still an impressionable child who was failed by the adults around him, and as he grew up he took on some of those same traits as the adults he was surrounded by. The bottom line is this: Douma, while a shitty person, still has some way to sympathize with him, Enmu does not, and thats just on the story side of things.

Enmu and Douma also share nothing in common personality wise. On face value, they may kinda act similar (i.e how they talk (sorta)) but it really just stops there. Enmu ultimately had a goal to kill Tanjiro and gain more blood from Muzan so he could climb the ranks of the demon hierarchy. He wanted to gain more power and to overthrow one of the upper moons for the sake of power. He doesn’t care how many people he has to torment, hurt or kill, as long as he has spot in power, he is happy, hell, he literally has vulnerable and even sick children do his dirty work! Enmu is a sick and twisted individual and he prides himself on that. Douma on the other hand put on the happy and up beat facade to hide that he knows he was failed. Douma is aware he was failed as a human, and so he decided to fail his followers by being the embodiment of false hope. He plays into the false icon lifestyle by pretending to be hopeful and happy around his followers and even the other demons to an extent. He doesn’t care so much about power, rather he cares more about control. Douma keeps up his false religion persona to keep control over his followers. He knows he’s failing them, but he doesn’t want to lose the control he has over them.

Now onto the elephant in the room: the mischaracterization I’ve seen of both of them in the Endouma ship. In both fanart and fanfics I’ve seen and read (well more so forced down my throat since thats all I’ve seen with Enmu in recent times) both Enmu and Douma are mischaracterized to high hell just so we as the reader/viewer will feel pity for them. I’ve seen more of this with Enmu, in that all the stuff that made him unique from the other KNY demons is stripped away so his “savior boyfriend” Douma can comfort him and coddle him. Now, writing an AU is one thing, but if you’re just going to make content of the ship with the characters as they are in the series, then their actual personalities should be honored or at the very least acknowledged.

Going more in depth about the mischaracterizing I’ve been seeing with Enmu, almost all (ALMOST all, not all in general) Endouma content I’ve seen have made him either a depressed and anxious baby that Douma is meant to coddle, or an overly fetishized hyper feminine man thats there simply for sexual reasons. It just goes against their roles in the story of KNY.

Going off of the hyper feminine man mischaracterization of Enmu I’ve seen in regards to the Endouma ship, having him be pretty much a “femboy” not only contradicts him as a character, but it also is pushing toxic heteronormativity on a queer relationship. Making Enmu essentially the “woman”, while putting toxic heteronormativity in a very much MLM ship, it also just boils him down to a sex object and nothing else. Now, I will not say that portraying Enmu as a very sexual and even gross character is wrong, because there were plenty of scenes in KNY of him that had very sexual and perverted undertones, but that is what they were, undertones. There is more to his character than just the sexual undertones he has (as I stated earlier when describing him), and by boiling him down to a “sex doll” for Douma just kind of shows that there wasn’t much of an understanding of his character while making the ship art or a fic. He is much more than a sex object.

Moving onto the mischaracterization I’ve seen of Douma, while not nearly as bad as Enmu, it still feels very off from his character. Making Douma someone who GENUINELY cares for another person is also very contradictory to how he acts in the series. He is someone who cares very little for anyone he comes to meet, whether it be his followers or other demons. Now you may be asking “but, Ink! Douma saw Daki and Gyutaro when they were on the verge of death and decided to save them!” Which is exactly what I am talking about. The only reason he “saved” them was to keep up his facade of a savior and to get himself “brownie points” (for lac of a better term) so his public appearance would look good. Because he cared very little for Daki and Gyutaro, it shows that he only cares about looking like a good person and nothing else. Portraying him as essentially “Enmu’s therapist” that coddles him and such just feels weird. Douma has no emotional connections to anyone, so why would he have an enmotional connection to a demon that is considered lower than him?

Now similar to what I said about Enmu earlier, Douma is also much more than a sex obsessed pervert. Douma being portrayed as basically a male nymphomaniac in the Endouma ship is a very strange way to portray his character. Yes, he may have been fine with letting women seek refuge in his temple, but again, it was to make him seem and look like a good person. We should all know, or at least have the understanding that Douma is literally a woman eater. The women he houses in his temple ultimately have the fate of being nothing more than food. Viewing his reason for taking in women as something sexually driven is a complete misunderstanding of his actions. This misunderstanding of Douma paired with the sexual misunderstanding of Enmu not only creates a toxic relationship, but it also fetishizes and sexualizes MLM pairings. This is something I’ve noticed more in Endouma art, but a lot of it that I have seen feels very fetish-y. I can’t go too in-depth about this aspect, as I am a queer woman, but the way the ship is portrayed in a lot of the art I have seen of it feels as though it is pandering to the appeal of yaoi obsessed straight girls. While yaoi has been a term used for decades to refer to MLM based pairings in media like anime and manga, over the past couple of years, its meaning has become more based around fetishizing MLM pairings rather than just being about MLM pairings.

I now want to bring up something that I’ve seen associated with Endouma (and also the Enmuzan ship, but that is a topic for another time) that really makes me uncomfortable, and that is noncon and the romanization sexual assault. I don’t want to talk too much about this topic, as it is not only triggering for me, but it should also be common sense that fetishizing sexual assault is wrong. Again, this is more so something I have seen in artwork, but it seems almost normalized for Douma to be portrayed forcing himself onto Enmu. Now, I know you are all probably saying “Ink, if you don’t like it/are triggered by it, then don’t interact with it”, but when its all that has been made in regards to newer Enmu content as of late, and how people are hyping it up, its kind of hard to avoid. It makes me truly question just how many people really missed the point of their characters, and only focused on things like Enmu being more androgynous, and Douma being tall and muscular. In a general sense, if a ship is built on, or is popular from fetishized and romanticized sexual assault, it shouldn’t be a ship.

Finally, I just want to mention that these characters have NEVER once interacted in canon. I know that hasn’t stopped people from shipping characters before, but it’s just something I want bring up. (As well as the fact that the Upper Moon’s hate the Lower Moons)

I want to end off this post by saying that all of this is by no means targeted at a specific person, nor am I trying to say that my opinion is correct. I am just stating my own opinions and just stating observations I have made after being in the KNY/Enmu fanbase for nearly 4 years now. People are allowed to ship characters together (within reason) however they like, but just be aware of how it will look on your own part, and what views it may look like you have.

[brasiliangp]

I haven’t said much about the Vini situation because honestly just thinking about it makes me pissed but it is interesting to me how a bunch of neanderthals on twitter who are the type of men who I’d literally be afraid to be alone in a room with seem to grasp the systemic racism issues within UEFA (and the football community at large) better than football fans in this website who seem to have way more progressive views

I don’t know what that’s about but….ew? Do better?

[uncanny-tranny]

I hate the idea that because people can change, that means that survivors of abuse must lower their guard or forgive the person/people as though their old self has died and thus is incapable of bringing others pain, or that somebody is foolish for being traumatized by abuse because "people can change!".

Yes, statistically-speaking, anybody can change. Yes, maybe even an abuser can change. More often, that's not reality. Oftentimes, their abuse might be rewarded in some way, further solidifying that behaviour and the thoughts that led up to them deciding that they had the right to treat another that way.

Maybe you're a survivor, and your abuser seems to have changed. You might feel guilty that you're "holding on too long" to a person who isn't there. That doesn't mean that you have to let your guard down around them or permit them to be in your life.