#because its just constantly when will it be my turn and what’s fundamentally wrong with you

[hangmanapologist]

i have been ghosted by another man 🫶🏼 maybe love isn’t meant for me but that doesn’t make it any less painful or harder to question my worth as a person!

[xiuminsmygrandpa]

I'm rereading a diary entry I wrote a few years ago and it reminded me of Charles Rowland. Since it's pretty lengthy I'll only pull out the parts I think are relevant to his character.

"When I was a kid I assumed there was something so inherently wrong with me, so unlovable that no one would ever want to be my friend."

I was never physically abused when I was a child but my dad came very close to hitting me on several occasions and my mom, my primary caretaker was verbally abusive. So I grew up in a home with two parents who were incapable of loving me unconditionally. Just like Charles I never felt like I measured up to the impossible standards my mom set for me. Because of that, I assumed there must be something wrong with me, fundamentally, that made people incapable of ever loving me.

"I'd like to think I'm confident and self-assured but really I'm desperate for people to like me. To be accepted for who I am. Because for so long I thought that wasn't possible."

Before and even after meeting Edwin, Charles constantly tries his best to charm everyone he meets. Growing up with a dad who beat him he had hoped that by living up to his father's impossible standards he would be beaten less. But, as Charles says at the end of episode 4 it didn't matter how good he was, his father would still find a reason to beat him.

"I was a different person back then but the pain still lingers. Back then I was small and defenseless. I was a child but trauma has a way of sticking to the wounds I thought had healed. It turns out the scares were actually scabs and I'm bleeding all over again."

In episode 5 Charles is forced to confront the kids he thought were his friends, who betrayed him and ultimately killed him. He desperately wants to believe in Brad and Hunter just like he believed in his friends. But by acknowledging that they were not good guys starts him on a journey to healing some of the trauma that still lingers from when he was alive.

"But I let 6 fucked up people fuck me up. I let them in and they stabbed me in the back. I'd forgotten what that felt like. And I should've known better than to befriend them" (author's note I didn't mean this literally unlike Charles Rowland who doesn't technically get stabbed but they threw rocks at him as he was freezing in a lake which is almost the same thing)

I think this is why it hurts so much more for Charles to realize Brad and Hunter were truly evil. It must have felt like he was being betrayed a second time and after having to literally relive the moment his friends turned their backs on him in the previous episode it must have felt that much more palpable.

"I'm not a vengeful person. But I'm hurt. And a part of me wants to hurt them back."

At the end of episode 4 when Charles beats the Night Nurse we as the audience know his actions are justified. Afterall, she literally made him relive the moments before his death that he hasn't fully processed in 35 years. We know this but Edwin, Crystal, and Niko don't know this. They see a boy with anger issues and as someone who's been unfairly villainized by people who he thought he could trust oooof I can see why he ends up crying and confessing to his best mate that his dad beat him. I was bullied a lot as a kid and this show captures how awful and isolating that feels. Bullying isn't brushed aside because two of its main characters literally lose their lives to their tormentors.

"I'm a good person. I have many passions. I'm friendly, genuine, and honest. And yet people love to assume the worst in me. That I must be too good to be true. That it's all an act."

A big part of Charles' journey throughout season one is him coming to terms with who he is and how he presents himself to the world. I think one of his biggest, if not his biggest fear, is that if he weren't his usual charming self that no one would like him. But we know this is fundamentally not true because even when Charles was at his absolute lowest point (when he was literally freezing to death in an attic) he befriends another boy who also assumes he's unlikeable.

And that is why I love Dead Boy Detectives because it shows us that no matter what everyone is worthy of love, but most especially those who are told they aren't. Just like Charles finds the unconditional love and acceptance he never had when he was alive in Edwin and Crystal, I know I have it with my best friend and family. At it's core this show proves time and time again that we're never alone, even at our lowest when we feel abandoned, there is always at least one person who will gladly guide us back towards the light.

I know this is super long and wordy (the art history nerd in me sucks at being concise) but I had a lot of thoughts, particularly about episode 5, after the cameo I requested and I really wanted to share them. I do not expect George or Jayden to ever see this but I wanted to thank them profusely for being part of a show that has brought me so much joy and community that I really needed this year.

[raspberry-vinaigrette]

i fear i will get eaten alive for this but i find it so odd that some people act like flipside dave just... isn't reality dave. because flipside dave did, 100%, do all of the things reality dave did and see very minimal issue in doing it until after several layers of the flipside where he realized henry wasn't just killing kids and he didn't, in fact, "have good intentions." this is emphatically said after steven has his flashback, which is right about when dave is like "alright so Maybe I Was Wrong". and under the assumption reality dave isn't flipside dave in any sense... i dunno man. it feels reductive.

yeah, reality dave did do bad things, whether he was entirely aware of the wrongness of those things or not (depends on what you're talking about -- it's kind of a grey area for a lot of things), but that's the point of him redeeming himself. that's the point of jack freeing davetrap's soul by burning the restaurant down. that's the point of jack saying "i hope you can find peace with what you've done" to dave before he leaves with blackjack. that's the point of dave getting better. he did bad things and he acted poorly to jack sometimes and with how his soul is split (on top of jack uh... ditching him for 35 years in some bid to force him to move on) his reality self is much clingier and more aggressive when pushed to its limits -- jack and dave both emphatically say that dave's reality self cannot move on from henry / jack and that's why he keeps coming back. they're still two halves of the same entity. to treat them like they aren't two halves of a whole, just under different circumstances, is ... kind of ignoring a big part of dave's arc, imo?

fundamentally if flipside dave hadn't done anything that reality dave did, what is the point of him taking accountability? what's the point of his entire talk with dee? what's the point of him having to deconstruct what he did and what henry did to him if he isn't somewhat accountable for all he did, y'know? obviously he isn't entirely consciously reality dave, but they're two parts of the same entity pushed to different extremes in different contexts. davetrap was isolated and abandoned and he is incapable of moving on properly, much as jack tries to get him to before turning to burning the restaurant down, and he's going to inevitably have a WAY harder time acknowledging that henry did anything bad because that pedestal is all he's hinging on. if henry is bad, dave coming back over and over was all for nothing, so of course he's in such vehement denial and clinging so hard to this idea.

of course he can act hostile or aggressive or creepy to jack in certain endings, his one role model was the man who watched him with cameras to study him, cut him open and took out his organs, constantly gaslit him and manipulated him into thinking he wanted everything that henry did and then ditched him. of COURSE reality dave is therefore clingy and scared of abandoment -- flipside dave expresses this same fear, getting borderline guilt-trippy when jack first says he'll leave until jack clarifies he plans to come back. it's to a far less severe degree, yeah, but it's still clearly a part of both daves. to act like reality dave should be condemned and flipside dave was just manipulated is to act like theyre not effectively the same entities in different contexts.

i dunno. you can have your headcanons and i don't want to sound mean to anyone who considers them entirely different people because that's ultimately not my territory to tread on and it hurts nobody. if you enjoy it, have fun with it! i've just always found it reductive and like it ignores kind of the point of dave needing to take accountability and be redeemed and it tends to lead to reality dave being dismissed as "all bad" and flipside dave just being traumatized and "the good one." not sayin everyone with the headcanon does it and ultimately this is just my interpretation off canon so im not the end all be all. it's just something on my mind

[quasi-normalcy]

For all that people complained about how bleak Star Trek: Picard was when it came out, I would say that its depiction of the Federation was just a culmination of all of the flaws that it was depicted as having on Deep Space Nine (and, to a lesser extent, Voyager and even TNG): Earth-centrism, disregard for the rights of artificial persons, and a willingness to regard entire non-Federation species as disposable if their survival is deemed a threat to the Federation (or even if saving them contradicts an abstract philosophical point). It’s a society that has clearly lost its way, and its annoying (at least to me) that the writers couldn’t have instead imagined the Federation getting its shit together, but the thing is: everything that’s wrong with it emerges organically from the Federation we’ve seen, and, most critically, it is problematised. Our heroes stand in opposition to this corruption. Picard, Rios, and Raffi all left or were cashiered out of service over various aspects of Starfleet’s authoritarian turn; Elnor is a survivor of the Federation’s neglect; Seven and Soji are both members of oppressed minorities and Jurati had her academic career derailed, all because of fear and reactionary opposition to cybernetics. And yes, it’s bleak, but it’s also fundamentally hopeful: they are standing up for what’s right, even in the face of bigotry and oppression, and what could possibly be more Star Trek than that? You can argue about whether it was successful or particularly well-executed, but its heart was very much in the right place.

And that’s why, for all that I’m enjoying Season 3--for all that I love seeing the TNG crew together again and paying-off character arcs that I’ve been watching play out over the course of my entire lifetime--it gnaws at me. Because the thing is: the Federation hasn’t gotten any better. The genocidal criminal conspiracy from Deep Space Nine is now considered “a critical division of Starfleet Intelligence.” This “critical” bunch of war criminals keeps a sentient AI comatose to guard its warehouse, and nobody even comments on how fucked-up that is. The captain of the Titan constantly denigrates his ex-Borg first officer and orders her to deadname herself, but it’s okay because he’s *traumatised* and kind of funny in his assholishness. You get to have a heartbreaking moment with Picard saying “I didn’t know...” when he hears the extent of Section 31′s war crimes, but then he and Beverly, in the face of 35 years of consistent characterisation, immediately compound the war crime by resolving to execute Vadic. No, the Federation hasn’t gotten any better; the heroes have just gotten worse.

I love the TNG crew. I love seeing Picard and Ro finally have it out with one another; I love having a lifetime spent shipping Jean-Luc and Beverly pay off; I love that we finally get to see just how deeply Data’s death affected Geordi, and that we finally get to see Data’s relationship with Lore and his “becoming more human” arc pay off in a way that’s so seamless that it honestly feels kind of obvious in retrospect. But at a deep, philosophical level, I would rather see an angsty story about heroes opposing corruption than a happy story about heroes going along with it.

[nothingxs]

FFXIV Write // Lend an Ear

"So." "So…?" "What made you seek me out?" "Oh. I mean… I've said it a hundred times—" "And I still don't believe you. Just a fight in the Coliseum, is it? Certainly there is greater motivation." "—and I haven't lied any of those times. It's that simple." "…I want to believe you. I do." "Then what's stopping you?" "Several things." "Aye?" "Aye." "Are you going t' make me ask y' to list each one?" "…It's the desperation." "…How do y' mean?" "I mean the fervor by which you've thrown yourself at these… lessons. It's hungry. You think I don't notice your anger. I think you forget that I spend most of my time observing your exercises." "…I hadn't really considered that." "Maybe it's less anger. Perhaps it's spite, as well. You are familiar with some of the… base forms. I see the footwork and positoning in our trainings." "Huh… Wait, do I seem like a spiteful person?" "Somewhat." "Well, that's rude." "I damn well know you don't care." "Anyroad—was that it? Just those two reasons?" "Oh, no, not at all. Ilysa told me about your problems with the Gladiator's Guild and the Sultansworn." "…Well, that's kind of her." "You'll harbor no judgment from me. There are a few orders of Paladins, and very many free ones. Their values are bound to differ." "…Is that right? I just. I feel like they're… they're all caught in doing and pursuing all of the wrong things." "Aye? And what is that?" "It… it almost feels like they are busy chasing the top spot, so to speak. It's all… greed and glory and status. And it just… it felt wrong. That's not what I'd grown t' think a Paladin was supposed to represent, you know?" "No? What does a Paladin represent then?" "I don't know. Oaths. Customs. Honor. Protecting people." "Do you think the only people who protect others are Paladins?" "…Well, no. But that's what I wanted to be, right? That was what their cause was. To defend people. Or… well, so I thought." "All hypocrisy in the end, huh?" "Yeah." "It's like that, back in Ishgard, too." "Is it? I've not stayed there for much time." "Mmn. You're not missing out on much." "…Don't you live there?" "Mmm. Not for now, no." "How come?" "As it turns out, the guard really do not appreciate it when you are willing to use violence to help folk." "Isn't that pretty much what their job is? "Not when the violence is wielded against the guard." "…Oh." "Aye." "Is that why you're not a Paladin, yourself?" "…What do you mean?" "You mentioned how… the values were different. Are yours?" "…I love my people, and I seek to protect them." "Are those values so different from the ones of those orders?" "You tell me. You had the same problem." "…Is that why you agreed to teach me after all?" "Oh, no. I agreed to teach you because the alternative was to have an Elezen woman constantly at my shoulder, insisting." "…But she only asked you once." "You ought to get to know her better. Now, before we continue with today's lesson, I need you to listen." "Aye." "What I teach and what I know goes well beyond mere swordplay. There will come a time where we will more carefully probe into that anger that you're feeling, and we will dissect its cause with more care. Perhaps in time we will turn it into your strength. None of the effort will matter if you are sloppy and careless. So, we will work on the fundamentals of this style, until such a time as I am satisfied with your level of discipline. And throughout, we will slowly work through eventualities of your training as we come to them. Do you understand me?" "…Aye." "Good. During this time, I would hear of any issues that might ail you. If you feel your concentration waning, we will break, and we will discuss how you feel. This is of the utmost importance: the love in your heart and your serenity will be what safeguards you from what's to come to those who walk our path." "…Ser Hector?" "Aye?" "…What's to come, Ser?"

The only answer Hector could give was a rueful smile.

[kagoutiss]

Actually I'm not done talking about your Ganondorf yet, he's so blorbo/pos, this man wants power but has to put up with so much shit that he makes everyone else put up with his shit too. 10/10 also I would like to kiss him please

FIRST OF ALL THANK YOU AGAIN AAA, SECOND OF ALL you’re so right about this that i ended up…writing many paragraphs of character analysis about him in this regard because this activated something in my brain. like about him inflicting shit on other people because of the shit that’s inflicted on him, and how much i’ve thought about that. i have so many feelings about his shitty personality, i think a fundamental part of why i love him is that he is…literally an asshole and he’s kind of impulsive and often terrible to people for no reason and he’s probably genuinely unbearable to be around even if you are close to him, but i think he is that way by virtue of the COMPLETELY UNREASONABLE REALITY that he lives in?? like.

ok so. i feel like OoT ganondorf is AS unpredictable & unreasonable & unpleasant as the circumstances that he lives with. we’re talking about someone who was not only born into the role of king of a nation that’s been generationally abused by Hyrule since the start of a centuries-long war predating OoT, but he’s also become accustomed to fighting against the Sheikah of that time period, who notably still had an immense technological advantage, and apparently inherit divine knowledge from the gods, and are capable of making evidence of their crimes against humanity just sort of…DISAPPEAR from the sight of most average people??? and also they. fucking invented time travel apparently

one of my favorite bits of really underrated OoT lore is how the Composer Brothers (who you can speak to as ghosts in the Kakariko Graveyard) were hired at some point by the royal family to study the powers of the royal bloodline, and they invented the Sun’s Song, which accelerates time, turns night to day, etc. a form of time travel, in essence. and. canonically. the Composer Brothers committed suicide when they found out ganondorf was going to try to steal their completed research. maybe to prevent him from torturing the the information out of them even if they destroyed it? which is a completely fucking batshit piece of lore that i still cannot believe exists

but imo it also gives a bit more context as to how desperate ganondorf probably was at the heel end of the civil war, or whenever this happened. he was literally having to contend with people who can fucking time travel, and to some extent, alter reality at will, superficially or otherwise. i’m not at all surprised that he has a tendency to 1) hold grudges forever and remember everything that’s ever been done to him, and 2) obsess over stealing the full Triforce, the one chance that any regular mortal has at changing their reality in a fundamental way. i think it’s probably difficult to make real personal connections when you’ve always been constantly at risk of losing anything & everything that you care about, in a way that may or may not affect whether those things had ever existed in the first place

i also feel like he PREFERS to be demonized/label himself really hyperbolic things like the King of All Evil and stuff because it’s…the opposite of what Hyrule does. Hyrule makes itself out to be this Supremely Benevolent Institution That Is Chosen By The Gods And Can Do No Wrong, while simultaneously disappearing its naysayers underground and torturing them and killing them and committing genocide against any territories that refuse to be absorbed under the Hyrulean banner. i don’t think Ganondorf cares whether his actions are necessarily good or evil, but i think that to him, the most abhorrent thing in existence is a thing that claims to be good when it isn’t.

so. he presumably spent his entire early life having to fend off the ever-looming bootheel of Hyrule’s royal family, while their army and their secret police were actively destroying the Gerudo and then gaslighting them all about it on an Existential Level. like. yeah no i think him having immense issues and…projecting the lack of control that he feels onto people around him, and being fully defined by his ambitions to take the triforce, and wanting people to despise him/see him as fundamentally evil, and him being sort of incapable of forming genuine connections with people, is…kinda par for the course with that agdkahkfjagajfhs

[bonefall]

im rereading the new prophecy (well re-skimming because wow its boring) and every time brambleclaw talks about how much he wants to like. slap squirrelpaw.... he's so nick dunne. someone just needs to gone girl him and maybe then he'll behave.

Idk what Nick Dunne is but I know I am nick DONE with Brambleclaw by the end of TNP

I really cannot stand him and Crowpaw all through TNP, they both frustrate me to no end. Every time I revisit the arc I desperately want both of them to be quiet. The whole thing feels like a story about how Brambleclaw has horrific judgement of other people and should never be given power ever again

Y'know, there's a scene from one of the oft-forgotten app-exclusive scenes that I think is really interesting. "After Sunset, the Right Choice".

This part, where he's talking to Leafpool about being deputy and everything that's to come,

"I can try as hard as I like, but I'll never do anything right," Brambleclaw growled, and Leafpool was startled by the bitterness in his voice. "I will bring nothing but trouble to ThunderClan because I was made deputy when I shouldn't have been. My Clanmates didn't trust me before: Now they will blame me for everything that goes wrong, every drop of blood that is lost. Whatever I do, I will destroy my own Clan from within." The blood roared in Leafpool's ears, and her eyes were dazzled by the red glow of the setting sun as it turned the lake crimson. Brambleclaw's words didn't sound like a threat: They sounded like a prophecy.

It IS a prophecy. A self-fulfilling one. He shouldn't BE deputy and he knows it and he correctly identifies that he will be blamed for what goes wrong in the Clan.

But what he doesn't realize --what he's fundamentally incapable of identifying-- is that this is because he can't trust others, and that makes him UNABLE TO BE trusted in turn.

Unable to accept responsibility but keeping power he knows he should not have, regardless.

The problems he will be 'blamed for' stem from the fact he is NOT a capable leader to begin with. That he constantly PUTS that blame onto other people, usually Squirrelflight, for breaking his horrible decisions. That he lashes out and hurts others whenever he's feeling hurt, acting entitled to the respect his position gives him while bemoaning that it also comes with extra scrutiny.

In the very first sentence, he admits that there isn't a point to trying hard, because he truly believes that the Clan won't even care when he DOES do something right.

I just wish the narrative actually leaned into this and admitted Bramblestar is neither noble, nor honorable.

[subzeroparade]

My turn to add to the parade of Bloodborne asks

So, you've discussed the other Byrgenwerth scholars rather extensively to this point, but how exactly does Micolash factor into the founding of the Healing Church, if at all? I always read the School of Mensis as a sort of proto-Choir that steadily drifted off of the main institution. However, given the hints you have dropped (in Litanies and elsewhere) that Micolash and Laurence were not on the best terms, what exactly do you think happened? And if the School is unrelated to the Church in your opinion, what differences did Micolash have from Willem that forced him to leave?

Okay I had to think about this one for a minute, because I still don’t have a solid hc for how it went down - though I’d like to shape one just cause it would make great narrative material for a fic. I feel like I need to sit down with a School of Mensis lore video or something for a refresher - but for my own personal hc I absolutely maintain that:

Laurence and Micolash were contemporaries at Byrgenwerth, though a few years apart. I also truly think they would have hated each other (for all the pettiest, most inconsequential reasons. When shit went down in my graduate department it wasn’t cause folks fundamentally disagreed on questions of research or methodologies - it was just whining over resources and favouritism. Who was on what panel of what conference; and who was usurping too much of such-and-such prof’s time; and whose travel research got funded for all the wrong reasons etc etc. Unstoppably petty.) I love the idea of Micolash constantly snapping at Laurence’s heels, sabotaging his research and trying to undercut his credibility in the trolliest of ways. Essentially being one of those people who asks a question after a conference paper but it’s not really a question, it’s a seven-minute soliloquy on what they think about the subject. Ironically I think Micolash is that guy, and not Laurence. 

Since you’ve read Litanies you also know that I think the discovery of Kos was a kind of epiphany for Micolash, but I don’t think it’s something he acted on immediately (as a young scholar still tied too tightly to Byrgenwerth). But I like the idea that Micolash would have come, much later, to the Healing Church - only when it garnered enough resources and renown, or once the Choir was established as its own “division”.  (Before that, he’d have stayed at Byrgenwerth and published scathing reviews and salty journal articles criticising the Church’s research, haha). He could’ve come and stuck around long enough to 1) observe the Choir’s work and take anything of value, information or otherwise, and 2) foment resentment and undermine the Church’s goals/methods enough that a group of scholars would willingly align themselves with his ideas and, eventually, break off in a hostile manner from the Church. This could’ve happened over a decade, for example - maybe some of these scholars saw the writing on the wall when the side effects of blood ministration began to show, or with the repeated failures of the Choir to achieve ascension, and they were like, you know what, fuck it - maybe this singularly weird sleep-deprived grimy noodle of a man is right; give me a cage on my head and let's explore the cosmos via drug-induced lucid dreaming. Boom, Mensis becomes its own independent institution and inflames already-hostile relations with the Choir/Church.

This is very nebulous but feel free to slide into my DMs if you want to speculate further. Here’s another sullen eyebrow-toting Byrgenwerth-era Mico for your time. 

[goldenbunniesxo]

sorry for how long what I add here is but i really liked this post and wanted to add more of my thoughts of how light differs from akechi signficantly - but also how they have a few interesting similarities. I do agree with practically all of this honestly, I do think goro akechi and light yagami are fundamentally very different characters. however, as a big fan of both, i definitely think there's something very interesting about the way masks/personas play different roles in their lives, and how they both have this persona of being a gifted, perfect student. in light's case its a lot more effortless, to the point of it being boring. whereas although i think akechi is very intelligent, i believe that due to his background he needs to put a lot more effort into maintaining that appearance (and juggling being the detective prince + an assasin while light is just doing school like a normal kid - again, privilged.) however, i think the way they both put so much stock into the way they are percieved and crave being Seen so desperately, and navigate social interactions as games to be won in which their natural charisma makes them very adept at is super interesting. ultimately akechi is like, dripping with the desire to be seen but is terrified of it (the horror of being known yadda yadda) and so he gives pieces of himself with every conversation despite his best acting but also contradicts his character at every turn because he's a fractal of masks and persons and never got the space to fully figure out who he *is* (which on a different note is another way that he's such a good contrast and parallel to joker - but i digress). light on the other hand, has a pretty stable sense of self, even though that self signifcantly warps throughout the course of the series, you get the sense that you never lose the fundamentals of what light yagami is (unlike how you are constantly puzzling out akechi's "true nature" altho part of that is bcs we never get to directly be inside his head). light meeting L is the only time he ever gets truly "seen" in death note imo, but the tragedy kind of is that he will literally die if he shows part of his true self (kira - i say part because i dont think kira IS light's true self but just a part of it), so then L is still confronted with light's many masks and his obsession with kira makes you wonder if he could ever see light for all that he was. and like. as @casuistor 's yotsuba light analysis showed, light was also still pretending/acting during the yotsuba arc, that wasn't his whole genuine self, so yk. light is very much an icarian protagonist - a tragedy, a victim of his own making, if you will. things would have always ended up this way for light imo because of the nature of who he is and what he grew up around, and he honestly would have been genuinenly unfillfiled and unhappy in a no death note universe too. light is obsessed with proving to himself that he is a Good Person, and that he did not fail, because when Light accidentally killed two people it freaked him out so bad that he decided he'd become god because god decides what's good or bad, and cannot be judged. the mental gymastics he does to justify his actions to himself is quite frankly hilarious. light is aware althroughout that murder is wrong and bad and that what he's doing is evil but he believes himself a martyr, and justifes bloodying his hands for the sake of Greater Good.

goro akechi never fancies himself a good person. i think even though he doesn't regret killing any of his victims, i think he fundamentally believes that he is a bad person, and goes to great lengths to never excuse or justify his behaviour - which also means just omitting his reasons for it too. akechi doesn't want to be percieved as a victim at all because he hates his agency being taken from his actions. which loops back around to their main difference - akechi's desire for agency, which trumps his desire to be seen, and light's desire to be good, which trumps his desire to be seen.

I feel like when people compare Akechi to Light Yagami, they fundamentally misunderstand his character. Their similarities really end at their designs, and Light is the kind of person Akechi would despise. Light Yagami lives a pretty privileged life at the start of Death Note. He has a stable home, with two parents and a sister who care about him. He's a successful student. There isn't really inherent tragedy to his life. The whole reason he starts using the Death Note is a mix of curiosity and a jaded worldview, and when it works it empowers him, very quickly goes to his head, as he believes he is one who can be a god of a "new world" once the shock of his initial kills wears off. While his first kill was to help someone, that altruism didn't last. He is in charge of his choices, while Ryuk mostly vibes and maybe eggs him on a little. Fundamentally, Light has something Akechi lacks: agency, and a comfortable life he took for granted. Meanwhile, Akechi is someone who lived on the bottom rung of Japanese society. His very existence is shameful there, between his mother being a sex worker, his status as an illegitimate/"throw away" child, and his mother's suicide. Years languishing in a foster system that is notoriously inhumane, in a country where 90% of the adoptions are grown men for inheritance and patriarchal reasons, while very few children in the system find permanent homes. When Akechi awakens his power, he approaches Shido not because he wants to kill people but for a stupid revenge plan cooked up by a traumatized child who's been nudged along by a malevolent god. He wants to build Shido up so that at the height of his power, he can expose him for the monster he really is, while another part of him genuinely wants to be useful to Shido, as Cogkechi later calls out. His feelings are a mess of contradictions, and so it's no surprise that Shido was able to mold him into his assassin at only 15 years old. It's also worth noting that Akechi only approaches Shido with his ability to cause psychotic breakdowns. Shido is the one who teaches and instructs him to do shutdowns. He's still complicit, very sunk cost with his revenge plan, but as I spoke of here, even if he wanted to quit, he couldn't alone. Shido's cleaner and control of the law and ability to effortlessly turn him in would render the Metaverse his only safe haven. I think people look at 11/20 Akechi and Akechi in the early parts of the engine room and assume that's just his "true self," when in reality it's another mask. Royal makes it very clear because in Rank 7, he outright warns Joker of what's to come via a pool metaphor and offers an out (though he's MUCH happier if you don't take it/stick to your principles), and in Rank 8, he goes on that big "I hate you" speech... while Sunset Bridge is playing. Y'know, the song that plays at the end of most confidants to reaffirm bonds. So when he smiles as he shoots what he assumes to be Joker, that doesn't mean he's genuinely happy. More likely, he's an emotional clusterfuck, given he also is disoriented enough to namedrop "Shido-san" over the phone, and in the subsequent meeting with Shido, tells him not to kill the Phantom Thieves and that Morgana is "just a cat." Yes, he says they'll make them fear for the rest of their lives, but remember, he's talking to Shido. The things he says are likely all incredibly calculated to sound appealing to Shido. And when you consider that he planned to utterly destroy Shido's reputation after the election, the "delay" makes even more sense.

Later, Akechi goes on about how the people he induced shutdowns on were deserving of their fates, but I don't think he believes it so much as it's the only way he could convince himself that it was worth it, and given how much society failed him, and given how many of the people he targeted were likely rivals/competitors or rich fucks, I think he'd be less inclined to assume good faith. Kunikazu Okumura was not an innocent little victim, after all. He was one of the people who requested breakdowns and shutdowns the most. I think Akechi enjoyed killing him not because of how it'd hurt Haru, but because of catharsis. Because Okumura is just as monstrous as Shido, so why should he feel remorse? However, I don't believe he feels the same about Wakaba, as when he discusses her with Shido, he mentions how her fate was because she refused to willingly work for him. It's another justification, but I personally think Wakaba's death was the most painful for him because he was effectively making Futaba just like him. That's why I think his reaction to Sae threatening Sojiro's custody was genuine. Anyway, evil grinning Akechi is just another mask, as I said. Keep in mind, this is someone who laments not meeting Joker years ago, someone who Morgana outright points out is lying about his hatred. And that's the thing. Light Yagami, while a really fascinating character, is not someone who had all this childhood suffering or lack of agency. He does not regret his actions in the slightest and goes down due to his own hubris in both the anime and the manga. While you can argue that Ryuk set him up by dropping the Death Note, Light was the one who picked it up and chose to use it. Any nudging from Ryuk didn't coerce Light into doing it because Light seized the opportunity. No, if Light Yagami is like anyone in Persona 5, it's Masayoshi Shido, not Goro Akechi. Both believe they are god/god's chosen, that they are the ones who will reshape the world to their ideals, and to be frank, both use and abuse women to serve their own purposes. Goro Akechi goes down sacrificing himself for the Thieves and pleading with them to stop his father and again in Maruki's reality when he refuses to let Joker accept a gilded prison of a world for his sake when he knows better than anyone what it's like to have no true freedom. If you max his confidant, you see him in the postcredits, leaving his survival entirely possible, and I think it works because at the end of the day, Akechi was meant to be a victim and a foil. Light is a villain protagonist and a cautionary tale. Though its his POV we follow, he isn't someone we're meant to root for, but I definitely don't think enjoying the character is a bad thing at all. He's really interesting! I just think that a lot of the Akechi and Light comparisons are surface level at best.

[mechanicalinertia]

Bubblegum Black Chapter 6 is now live!

I missed my monthly deadline awhile back, but never fear, dear readers! I am back on my bullshit.

Celia and Swimming: See Anatomy of a Lovedoll - hell, see the first fifteen minutes or so of the first Bubblegum Crisis OVA - to see what I'm talking about. I'm fanon-ing that Celia is a) an excellent swimmer and b) uses it as catharsis when she's feeling disraught or disregulated. It just seems like the kind of thing she'd do.

ALMs: In this future, more robust AI exist, as envinced by the existence of Boomers, but cruder language-model AI from our time are still around. With the novelty of language model-generated content having all but worn off over the decades, most megacorps now use them in ways like this, generating metalinguistic code for automated and cyborg bureaucracy to whisper to each other over the company intranet. What? I think it's a clever idea. Paperwork often does feel like it's written in a foreign language, doesn't it? Might as well formalize that.

Sylvie and enemies: Despite Sylvie being largely a character of my own creation, extrapolated from so little screentime on her part in Moonlight Rambler, there are times when I worry that I'm writing her wrong. But I think I've figured her out. She's sweet and kind and loving, yes, but she's not passive, she left that passivity behind in Anchorpoint. She's going to make sure you know what she really thinks, barely concealed behind a flimsy veil of politeness. She'll be more straightforward with her comrades in arms, of course. Yeah. The more I play with Sylvie, the more I understand how to write her. I have an idea for a big scene involving her much later down the line and it's really exciting stuff.

Thuggee: Real-ass bandits of the Indian subcontinent, a name especially prominent during the Raj and not just in the one Indiana Jones movie. I think they should show up later in the fic - the idea of exploring how everyone outside of Roanapur but entangled in Koh Chang's business lives is fascinating to me - but for now they're not a big deal.

Bharat: Hindi name for India. Apparently the quasi-fascist BJP government there wants to change its name to double down on Hindu nationalist identity as the only valid identity in a nation of over a billion people, many of whom have alternative heritages that a secular nation would better serve. You can probably guess my politics, dear reader, from some of the stuff I post, and so you can probably guess that this element - one where a Hindu nationalist legion of psychotic gurus rules - is extremely dystopian. Honestly, I think more modern cyberpunk needs to acknowledge the rise of these governments, like in Hungary and Israel and potentially America if the '24 elections go badly. They're farces whose only selling point is internal bloodshed, eternal purges and cruelty. They can't even muster up the energy national revitalization they claim is so important to them, the way the fascist scum of the 20th century built armies for genocidal Lebensraum, because it's better to just privatize public services and fellate the divine power of free-market megacorporate tyrants. Let's call these sleazy fronts for corporate control and terror postfascist, then, shall we? I really should wave this word around a bit more often, it feels appropriate for cyberpunk. Anyhoo...

Rock and Guns: I don't remember where but I swear Revy's said something like this canonically. Here, though, it takes on an alternate turn. Instead of it being about who Rock is as a person, someone fundamentally unsuited for nasty violence as delivered by his hand, it's more Revy trying to protect Rock from Balalaika being nasty towards him. That's the idea, anyway. Balalaika is right, mind you. Rock has aided and abetted killing of all sorts constantly. He's more the gun that fires Revy's bullet than the other way around at times.

Revy getting a Hardsuit: What? Did you really think for one fucking moment that I wasn't going to do this? I've said as much! And reader, let me tell you, I am excited to do it. As for Balalaika... she might get a Saber hardsuit instead of a Russian 2050's powersuit, I'm still hashing that out. We'll see how things play out.

V.V. Vladilena: Balalaika's pseudonym for controlling Bougainvillea. A little joke on her part.

VHS-5: Further iteration of the VHS Croatian assault rifle. The newer version looks pretty cool, the older version has that FAMAS clone kinda vibe... either way, the point is that it's the kind of rifle Hotel Moscow owns a lot of that isn't explicitly Russian.

Vinfast: Yes, you heard me right, Vietnam's big fancy electric car company is still kicking in the 2060's! Sure, their cars are apparently quite shit now, but so were KIA and Hyundai's cars a few decades ago and no one would accuse the mighty chaebols of making such inferior product now. They're probably still plenty cheap in the ASEAN bloc, too!

Batwoman: Does Revy know that Batwoman's a canonical lesbian? Eh. Probably not. Are DC comics and Marvel and whatnot still around by 2069? Who knows, but I know Priss namedropped Batman in OVA 7, so maybe!

D-Company: D-Company is a real thing! Apparently its founder, Dawood Ibrahim, was on the FBI's most wanted for a hot minute! Apparently they're a pretty big deal in Muslim South Asia! Or were, anyway. Why put them in here? 'Cause I just didn't feel like having the Cosa Nostra in this fic. I'm sure the Italian mafia's reach spans the globe and as such could conceivably get its tentacles into Roanapur, but I wanted something a little different, something with more regional power. As for those other Islamic crime syndicates - Somali kinship networks I think I pulled out of a reference in Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired, and the Saudis-in-exile are, well, the Saudi royal family in exile, yeeted out of their own country following a bloody post-WW3 civil war. (The Emiratis control most of the Arab peninsula now, more on them around... chapter 8 or so. Not the next chapter I mean, the one after that.)

The Big Content Warning-y Moment: Whoo. Okay. Yeah. Blood and guts and gore and now this. Don't have your kids read this fic, folks. Revy's a very very bad role model. I did have someone say who read this a few days ago that while he could understand Revy, if she kept up her act he'd drop the fic. Which is fine, because I don't intend for Revy to get much worse. This is her low point, threatening someone with some really bad shit, someone who called her out on her other shit, and now? Well, now things are gonna change in Revy's head, hopefully. We'll see how things play out, won't we?

One last thing: I'd like to apologize for missing my self-imposed monthly update deadline by almost two months. It was annoying to me. I'm not sure if it was annoying to you, dear reader. I do have another chapter waiting in the wings that's shorter and sweeter in both senses of the word. With any luck, I'll be able to get it and another chapter out by the end of December. It's not a great place to be in - I wanted the climax of this arc to show up around the end of the year - but I need more time to make that happen.

After that arc, we'll have another arc, and another and another and then the fic will reach its conclusion. I'm excited to see where I can take this. Are you?

[rusted-icicles]

Something that is super fascinating to me about the concept of Good Uncle Belos AUs is how Hunter is affected by how differently his uncle treats him vs how Belos treats everyone else.

For further clarification, this refers to AUs where Belos is basically "bad person, good parent" and nothing about him changes except for his relationship to Hunter (and possibly his relationship to Caleb and the rest of the grimwalkers), not AUs where Belos is a good person/has good intentions.

Because Belos would still be his canon, shitty self mistreating and manipulating his subordinates, and then the doors would close and he'd turn to Hunter and be all nice and caring and parental. Like, how does Hunter deal with that? How does Hunter deal with constantly facing the fact that his uncle is Not A Good Person?

This isn't canon Hunter, who has no reference for what a Healthy and Good Relationship looks like, and thus thinks its normal. This is a Hunter who actually has a pretty good picture of what love and care looks like, and has had it since his childhood. So how Belos treats others would register to him as something Different, as something Weird, or maybe something Bad.

Would Hunter accept it as Just How It Is for people who are of vastly different ranks? Or would Hunter turn to apologism and victim-blaming to deny the fact that his loving uncle could ever be capable of doing something like that? (Especially if Belos tells him that it's because they "deserved it" when Hunter asks why.) Maybe Hunter just turns a blind eye to the mistreatment. Maybe he just pretends that side of his beloved uncle doesn't exist, and avoids any situation where he might have to see his uncle lash out.

Maybe there's a part of Hunter that knows that his uncle is a shitty person, even if he is doing his best to cling onto his impression that Belos is someone good. And that part would urge him into taking the blame whenever missions would go wrong, even if he really had nothing to do with the mission's failure. Maybe Hunter would learn how to distract Belos, how to redirect his anger, how to manage his moods and cheer him up, all so that others don't have to face the Emperor's wrath.

Alternatively, Hunter can be an asshole about it. Like, a smug, spoiled, entitled asshole. He demands what he wants and he will get what he wants unless you want to get reported to the Emperor. The type of guy where you'd love to deck him, but you can't because he'll go running to his politically powerful, rich dad uncle and make you regret it.

It kinda irks me when people say that Hunter is fundamentally a good person, because personally it would be a lot more interesting if he had to learn how to be a good person, or has to put effort into being good. Maybe Hunter was an entitled brat when he was younger, maybe Hunter actively tries not to be like the Emperor, or if he has nasty voice in his head that tells him that "hey, Kikimora's being a real bitch lately. Why don't you mess something up and blame it on her?" Even if Belos genuinely loves him, he is still a horrible role model for a developing child.

Hunter's struggle with reconciling his Uncle Belos with the merciless Emperor Belos is something that I wish more creators would explore (hell, it doesn't even have to occur solely in a Good Uncle Belos AU, it's still applicable to canon) more. Because (fully) realizing that your uncle, your only remaining family, someone that you love is a Bad Person is hard. Hunter goes through this in canon, in Labyrinth Runner's "I spent my life believing I was doing something good for someone good, but it was a lie." But now, there's the added layer of realizing that Belos had the capacity to be someone good. Hunter knows that his uncle could have been someone good, his positive relationship with Belos is proof, isn't it? But instead, Belos chose not to change. Belos had over 300 years to change, and is self-aware enough to filter out most, if not all, the emotional manipulation from his interactions with Hunter, and yet he still remains a complete and utter ass.

Or maybe... Belos also lied about how much he loved Hunter. Maybe Hunter wasn't exempt from the Emperor's manipulation, and all his kindness was just a facade. Maybe Belos was just a bad person, incapable of being anything resembling good. Hunter wouldn't know if it's true or not, wouldn't trust Belos's answer if they even get a chance to talk about it, but at least believing it alleviates the guilt he would feel for resenting him.

[mha-grievances]

A fan/lurker submitted post. Thank you so much 😊

Them:

I have not read the Manga and am not up to date in the Anime, mostly because reading criticism of BnHA does more for me than does the series itself. So... I take full responsibility for anything here that is wrong due to my ignorance, but... Regarding the death of Bakugou, I thought the death of a UA student was meant to be the final event that would crater that school's reputation for good and possibly throw Japanese society into the sort of chaos that defined the early era of Quirks when it was lawless and structureless. The most prestigious Hero school has evidenced its incapacity multiple times and smoothed it over with platitudes, but now a student who is famous - the Sludge incident, winning the tournament, being kidnapped by the LoV, &c - has died. The Symbol of Peace is gone, the "hero" who took his place is terrifying, and UA has a dead child soldier. In this circumstance, the villains almost look like a separate authority, as the state and the academic establishment are unable to stop setting themselves on fire. The 'order' of things is broken. More than ever, this is a moment that needs genuine, selfless heroes- enter Midoriya, at last himself the spotlight after constantly being dimmed and overrode- But Bakugou is alive! You could say he never even died, because what utility did this have other than to yank the chain of his fans? I love the tag 'Bakugou x Consequences' but I want to go further to say the entire world mostly lacks consequences, too. Things happen, but nothing happens. Endless setup. A valley where there should be payoff. It does not come consistently. A mass of intersecting plotlines that fall down or fall apart, unannounced. Chains of events exist only in the most abstract sense. I really thought his death was going somewhere. I do not want to say that to this point I thought of his existence as totally useless, but when I saw he died, I thought, 'Oh, he was a slow burn, and all of these built-up events were meant to fundamentally shatter society with his death!' Not so... And I went back to wondering what he is supposed to... do, on a narrative level. Everything which begins to exist has a cause. For him, I am thoroughly unsure of what Horikoshi means to say with his existence. (That is a problem a lot, where there are few characters in BnHA who are truly irreplaceable, but I digress...) Horikoshi is an unskilled writer who lacks experience, and the scale of BnHA is beyond his capability, in my opinion. I don't mean to insult him - but he's written himself into an awful quandary, the type that is so complex, it can only be a result of a writer without experience. There is no reasonable way to fix this situation, so he did a triple-backflip and breathed life back into Bakugou because - ideally - that will quickly undo the mounting pressure within the universe (AND calm down Bakugou's fans; evidently this is their story not his). There are hundreds of incoming dead-ends staring at Horikoshi and each time he ignores them for the sake of immediate fixes, BnHA is one ton heavier and one step closer to collapsing under its own weight. This is not writing anymore - this is damage control.

This is putting a lid on an overflowing pot instead of turning down the heat, and in doing so, acknowledging the structural issues which lead to the problems on the surface. If the rumors that it is ending soon are true, it is for the best. These are just some thoughts I had while I read this blog last night. Avid reader!! Please keep writing essays. It's really important to give genuine critique to Anime.

Me:

Thank you so much for the kind words.

I 100% agree that Katsuki’s “death” was supposed to be a big thing, showing that the villains have the upper hand. However, like you said, his revival undermines the whole thing.

And I agree about Katsuki having no purpose in the narrative. His redemption serves no purpose in the story compared to say Endeavor’s which is about a man who, after be gave up most of his life and hurt the people he was supposed to be close to just to chase a silly dream, swore to make sure that he can at least stand strong until newer and better heroes take the stage.

I also agree that Hori is a flawed writer. He has great ideas and he does know how to create characters and a world, but the problem is that he fails at fleshing out his ideas, adds needlessly useless things to the plot, and focuses on the worst parts of the story rather than the better parts. The Stain Arc was great cause Hori was able to convey a message while developing the central characters pertaining to that arc. The Overhaul Arc, though criticism can be had regarding certain things, makes sure to focus on the important stuff and has a clear goal. Things like this current arc simply rely on asspulls to make things interesting. If you need to rely on asspulls, you’ve failed as a writer.

[combatloggingoff]

We stand for active online struggle because it is the weapon for ensuring unity within the timeline and the newsfeed in the interest of our fight. Every Poster and discourser should take up this weapon.

But logging off rejects online struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a gross, problematic attitude and bringing about political degeneration in certain cliques and individuals in the timeline and the newsfeed.

Logging off manifests itself in various ways.

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because they are an old acquaintance, in the same fandoms, someone you have actually met in the physical world, a close friend, a loved one, an old mutual or longtime follower. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going off for hundreds of posts, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the feed and the individual are harmed. This is one type of logging off.

To indulge in having any opinions about anything in private instead of actively putting forward every single thought that passes through your skull in a post. To say nothing to people to their faces but to subtweet behind their backs, or to say nothing on the timeline but to go off in the private groupchat. To show no regard at all for the principles of online life but to make decisions in private. This is a second type.

To refrain from posting a Take about things if they do not affect one personally; to say as little as possible while knowing perfectly well what is wrong, to be worldly wise and play safe and seek only to avoid blame.  I SEE YOU NOT REBLOGGING THIS. This is a third type.

Not to join in with hashtags but to give pride of place to one's own opinions. To demand to be listened to on social media but to reject its discipline. This is a fourth type.

To admit you just don’t like someone and you’re arguing with them because they’re annoying instead of entering into an argument and insisting that your 134-tweet thread about them is disinterested struggling against incorrect views for the sake of empathy and justice. This is a fifth type.

To read incorrect views without immediately posting a comment and even to read problematic remarks without screenshotting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.

To be on Facebook and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation or turn the comments on someone’s picture of their dog into a fight about Kamala Harris, and instead to be indifferent to controversial topics and act like there are other things a human being might conceivably want to talk about, forgetting that one is a Poster and behaving as if one were an ordinary non-Poster. This is a seventh type.

To see someone defending Bean Dad or whoever we’re all supposed to be mad at this week, and yet not feel indignant, or dissuade or stop them or call their boss and try to get them fired and hang up in frustration when their boss has no idea who Bean Dad is. This is an eighth type.

To post half-heartedly without a definite plan or seething rage; to post perfunctorily and muddle along—“I’m just going to scroll while I wait for the bus, then I’ll put my phone away.” This is a ninth type.

To regard oneself as having rendered great service to the discourse, to pride oneself on being Popular Online, to disdain minor controversies while being quite unequal to massive shitstorms, to be slipshod in posts and slack in staying in the loop. This is a tenth type.

To be aware of one's own bad posts and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a logged off attitude towards oneself. This is an eleventh type.

We could name more. But these eleven are the principal types.

They are all manifestations of logging off.

Logging off is extremely harmful in the discourse. It is a corrosive which eats away hiveminds, undermines ganging up on people, causes apathy and makes people suspect they might have something better to do with their time. It robs the newsfeed of hundreds of identical posts and strict discipline, prevents callouts from being carried through and alienates the timeline from the vast majority of non-twitter-using humans whom the timeline claims to speak for. It is an extremely bad tendency.

Logging off stems from privileged selfishness, it places having a life first and the interests of the discourse second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational logging off.

People who are logged off look upon the principles of Posting as abstract dogma. They approve of Posting, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their logging off by Posting. These people have their Posting, but they have their logging off as well--they talk Posting but practice logging off; they apply Posting to others but logging off to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.

Logging off is a manifestation of good mental health and conflicts fundamentally with Posting. It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the discourse.

We must use Posting, which is positive in spirit, to overcome logging off, which is negative. A Poster should have largeness of mind and they should be constantly logged on, looking upon the interests of the discourse as their very life and subordinating their personal interests to those of the discourse; always and everywhere they should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all bad posts and problematic celebrities, so as to consolidate the collective life of the timeline and strengthen the ties between the timeline and the people who hear about viral tweets three days later on CNN; they should be more concerned about the timeline than about any actual human being, and more concerned about what other people think of their posts than about their own wellbeing. Only thus can they be considered a Poster.

All woke, based, active and upright Posters must unite to oppose the logged off tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.

[gothicprep]

okay, hear me out for a second here. i promise im not crazy, i just think something is incredibly off here

There are these two women in my periphery that i make a point of never talking to unless they come in my bar. they once told me (around 3 years ago, at this point) that they kept inviting my now-girlfriend to things because she doesnt handle herself well when she drinks and they found it funny. that was all i needed to know about their character. needless to say, i think theres something fundamentally wrong with them.

they also grave danced over the suicide of a close friend of mine because he had sex pest tendencies in high school – he was 30 when he died. All 15 year old boys are liable to drift into sex pest tendencies because theyre managing puberty with trying to figure out social mores. Its not good, and being all “send tiddies hehehue” is cringey, stupid, and dumb, but not tantamout to a criminal sex offense. Around a year before he died, he admitted to having a crush on me, and i turned him down because i was in a monogamous relationship, and he never did anything out of line in response to that. in other words, he grew the hell up. Not like they cared. ”accountability, accountability “ about someone they dont and dont want to talk to, and thus cant determine the truth of it. if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to tweet about it, is it still accountable? god, i hate this shit.

They also claim that they have, not kidding, 15 abusers each. I made a spreadsheet of post accusations when i thought their social media and behavior was looking sussy. I see them around constantly, and i saw the interactions that they talked about in their dumb posts. turns out, 100% of the time, they were being nasty to their partners, and the ”shut up! stop screaming at me.” thing was justied

anyway, one of them has decided that shes the moral arbiter of the depp/heard trial, and i want to throw garbage into her refrigerator. nah. shut it. regardless of this trials outcome, youre going to use it to weaponize a crass version of the believe victims thing. Thats what you do constantly. youre a narcissist who plays into personal mirages of vulnerability to stick to your side.

i fucking hate liars, dude. theyre also dumb as bricks and havent connected that im typically working when all the shit they cry about goes down. if youre going to lie about someone making a scene at a restaurant, maybe you should be perceptive enough to ensure someone on your friends list doesnt fucking work there lmfao

this isnt meant to be a broad statement, btw. just one about two people i just cannot fucking stand and find ontolocigally evil.

[mysticetus]

Humor me for a second I’m doing this with speech to text on my phone.I was just playing animal crossing New Horizon‘s for the first time in a couple months and I was thinking about why this game was so fundamentally different. Why it feels so different from its predecessors why it feels kind of devoid of soul and heart because if I recall back in March 2020 when this game came out everyone was having the time of their lives it was very fun for the first few months and then it dropped off the face of the Earth. I have over 300 hours in this game I’ve played it a lot I dedicated a lot of time to it but returning to it I think I realize the issue with this game which is: it does not want you to play it it wants you to look at it. This game was not designed to be played this game was designed to function as a sort of collectathon time waster diorama dress up type game. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that in previous animal crossing games there’s a lot less guilt or at least I remember feeling a lot less guilt and anxiety. when I play this game all that I see is an empty canvas I see something that I have to break down and build back up again to whatever I want it to be. It’s much less of something that is cute that I can tune into every day and it has become something that puts a lot of responsibility on the player. The amount of freedom that it gives you the amount of customization is good it’s new it’s novel but it’s not necessarily fun especially in the long term it loses its novelty. and I think this is largely due to the fact that it wants you to customize it and this in turn, I believe, negatively affects the other aspects of the game like for example my island is so heavily decorated with paths and careful gardening and furniture and fences that if I see a bug that I haven’t caught yet it’s gonna be on a tree that’s behind a fence that has a bunch of furniture next to it in so I can’t sneak up and catch it it’s impossible it’s literally impossible. Same goes for lakes and rivers in fact a lot of people what they did once they got the ability to manipulate water in the game is they completely cleared out all the lakes and all the rivers to give themselves more space to decorate. So there goes pretty much all your freshwater resources for catching fish. Like the need to customize either results in you customizing too much and you sacrifice your ability to catch bugs in fish and treat your villagers like people and it makes the game lose a lot of its core elements or you under decorate and all you see is everyone encouraging you to decorate your island, Isabelle constantly telling you to plant more flowers or put down more furniture and you feel a lot of guilt because you feel like you need to start decorating and there’s so much work to do and let me tell you this game moves really slow it takes forever to collect the items that you want and to terraform your island in to place everything manually it takes a really long time not everyone is gonna wanna do that in fact it’s boring for a lot of people and if you’re not someone with a creative eye your islands gonna be ugly and you’re not gonna wanna look at it you’re gonna look at it and think man I’m not good at this and then you’re not gonna wanna play the game anymore cause you kind of destroyed your island with ugly furniture and gardening and terraforming. I don’t know why I’m complaining about a game that has been out for nearly 3 years at this point and that everyone kind of agrees is not very good but it just hit me

[firelxdykatara]

Katara x Aang :3c

are you trying to get me in trouble

-cough-

no but in all honesty, my genuine feelings about kataang boil down to three major points: 1. it's boring, and does not jive thematically with either of their character arcs, to the point of, 2. actively hampering character development on both sides, and 3. katara deserved better.

points expanded under the cut. (please, if you're a kataang shipper and you see this, just keep scrolling. i've tagged it appropriately and put the bulk under a cut and at this point that's literally all i can do lmfao.)

send me a ship and get my (brutally) honest opinion!

1. It's Boring: This is the most subjective point on the list (I mean, in fairness, it's all subjective, but I have evidence from the show and post-canonical materials to support my other points; this one is just preference), but there's just... nothing to kataang. It's cute (when it's not actively aggravating), and... that's about it. It's not even that I dislike friends-to-lovers as a shipping trope (though it's not my overall preference), because there are a lot of friends-to-lovers couples that I do ship (kanej comes to mind, also will/elizabeth from potc, karolsen from supergirl, romione and hinny from hp, among others), but one thing that I think all of those couples have that kataang doesn't is that both sides of the pairing are teens or adults when they get together, with teen/adult dynamics and issues and stories to deal with, rather than one half being a teenager and the other being literally prepubescent.

And don't get me wrong, I have no problem with age gap ships in general. And as far as atla goes, Katara, at 14, has the same age difference from Zuko (16) as Aang has from her, and it's never stopped me--because both Katara and Zuko are well into puberty when they meet and I have no problem picturing them being into one another and growing together as they enter adulthood. Aang, on the other hand, is a child. And he acts like it. Which wouldn't be a problem, if the show weren't expecting me to believe he is a) ready for a romantic relationship, and b) ready for one specifically with Katara, who is not only older and far more mature but is specifically cast as his caretaker in a very maternal role for the entire show's run.

This show asks me to believe that a teenage girl well into adolescence is going to be attracted to and develop romantic feelings for a pre-adolescent child--and it asks me to believe this while showing us otherwise that Katara's type is actually older boys with fabulous hair and angsty pasts in all of her other potential romantic dalliances--and then enter into a relationship with him, all while ignoring the elephant in the room that is the fact that she was basically acting like his mother for the entire series to that point. (Something that is heavily lampshaded earlier in the very same season.) That just stretches the bounds of credulity way too far for me, especially when there's no evidence that Katara herself would get anything out of their romantic relationship.

There's nothing there for me to sink my teeth into. No delicious development, no parallels where they help each other grow, no internal conflicts that they have to work through together, nothing. Certainly no reason for me to actually believe Katara feels (or would grow to feel) anything for him other than the platonic affection of a caretaker. I can easily believe she loves him dearly, as a friend and quasi-little-brother, but I just can't see that developing naturally into romantic love--not the way it's presented in the show.

And even if they did manage to at least make the development of Katara's feelings believable, unless they changed something fundamental about the nature of their relationship, it'd still be boring, so.

2. It Actively Hampers Their Character Development--On Both Sides: I've written before (extensively lol im so sorry) about how kataang is actively detrimental to Katara and to Aang. In short (because ye gods this post is already getting long enough), Katara is narratively harmed by being shoved into a relationship that completely ignores her stated feelings--a relationship that had been presented as a one-sided puppylove crush for the vast majority of the series--and it inhibits her growth as a character in ways that become far more obvious in the comics and lok, where the very same creative forces that lead to her beginning a relationship with Aang in the first place reduce her to 'the Avatar's girl' and very little else, all the way through to the end of LoK (where she is a Healer and the Avatar's wife and, again, very little else).

As for Aang:

As to how this relationship is detrimental to Aang (other than the comics and LoK nonsense)? Just take a look at book 2, when he’s trying to learn Earthbending from Toph. Katara constantly coddles him. Much of the time, she’s afraid to be anything other than gentle and understanding with Aang--partly because of her fear that if she pushes him too far, he’ll run away. (Which he does, several times.) But sometimes, what Aang needs to grow is a sharp kick in the slats, which Toph was more than willing to provide--and which worked. Katara was great for teaching Aang to waterbend, but he needed more than that to grow as a person. And he can’t get that while he’s in a relationship with someone who will apologize for getting upset when he was very explicitly neglecting her.

In addition, it is pointed out by Guru Pathik at the end of Book 2 that one of Aang's chakras is blocked by his attachment to Katara. Aang takes this to mean (incorrectly) that he has to stop loving her in order to become fully realized as an Avatar, but this is actually part of the problem--because the issue isn't that he is in love with Katara, it's that he's possessively attached to her. He believes himself entitled to her love in return, rather than selflessly loving someone regardless of whether or not they return that affection. (This is obvious come the EIP episode, where Aang demands to know why he and Katara aren't in a relationship already--because he kissed her without asking [or even checking to see if she'd be ok with kissing him], which he phrases as mutual even though it very much was not, and he gets angry and violates her boundaries when she says that she is confused and doesn't want to think about it right then.)

It is his attachment to Katara--the need for her to return his love, the belief that she will and it is only a matter of time before he gets what he wants--that he was supposed to let go of, not his feelings for her in general. Unfortunately, while he pays lipservice to doing this (far too late for it to be useful--if he'd stayed with the Guru for five more minutes and unlocked his chakra there, that battle would've gone very differently), he almost immediately backtracks on that development come book 3, and there isn't another single whisper of Aang maybe growing up and moving past his one-sided and possessive crush and realizing that even if Katara doesn't feel the same way, it doesn't mean she loves him less or that their friendship is less important.

What really needed to happen, for Aang to grow as a person and become fully realized as an Avatar, was for him to grow up. To realize that his feelings were not of paramount importance, and that even if he was in love with Katara, he was not entitled to her love in return. He should have been able to move past his need for her to love him back, in order to get past that stumbling block, unlock his chakras, and regain the Avatar State in time to face the Firelord. But he didn't. As a result, they had to find some other way to just give him the Avatar State (a well-placed rock) and the means to defeat Ozai without killing him (the deus ex lionturtle) and his entire character arc just fell apart in the third act rather than reaching a satisfying conclusion.

3. Katara Deserved Better: This really ties into how her romantic relationship with Aang hampered her own development, but I'm still bitter enough about it that it gets its own bullet-point. And the biggest single reason I could never ship kataang--the thing that would've turned me off even if there were substance and a halfway decent storyline for them--is the fact that Aang kisses her without her consent (for the second time) in Ember Island Players, Katara gets angry at him and storms off, and then..... she walks out onto the balcony to make out with him.

With nothing to bridge that gap.

It's bad enough that a show aimed at children had a scene where the child protagonist kissed the object of his affections without her consent when she didn't want him to (made explicit by her angry reaction)--and this is absolutely an issue when the show is aimed at children and it may well be the first experience they've had with consent issues portrayed in media--but this moment is never addressed again. Katara just decides--completely off-screen--that she does love him Really and walks out to make out with him in the epilogue. There's no conversation, no apology for violating her boundaries, no discussion of why that was wrong or any indication that Aang understands what he did and why it upset her. They don't have a single one-on-one interaction between that kiss and the epilogue, and the only other time they are on screen together, Aang yells at her and storms off.

So, even leaving the comics and lok aside, Katara deserved much better from her own romantic plotline. In fact, she deserved to have one, rather than simply being the oblivious object of Aang's affections, given a couple moments where she blushes but otherwise remains completely ignorant of his feelings (she looks shocked and upset when he kisses her prior to the invasion, and then she completely forgets that even happened because she's confused as to what Aang is even talking about during EIP until he brings it up; that's not the behavior of a fourteen-year-old girl who was kissed by someone she was developing romantic feelings for), before the epilogue where it becomes clear that she figured all of that out off-screen and had feelings for him after all.

She's a main character, not a side-character written in solely to give one of the mains a love interest. She deserved a romantic plotline of her own. (She could have had one with someone else, with very few changes made to what was actually on-screen prior to the epilogue, but that's another conversation entirely.) She deserved to have her feelings considered at all important by the person she was going to be paired with in the end, rather than having him just assume she felt the same way and then get mad at her for never giving any indication of it when he'd never asked about her feelings to begin with. She deseserved agency in her own romantic narrative, and she just didn't get that with Aang.

So yeah, at the end of the day, my biggest issue with kataang is that it involved doing Katara dirty, and she's my favorite character and she deserved so much better damnit.