#boy is really going thru it

[bookbloghellscape]

Darrow when he's become so numb

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

[mylittlecrow]

i will never shut up about jon promising to protect sansa in 6x09 and then the parallel of lyanna begging ned to promise to protect jon IN THE NEXT EPISODE. something something “if the day should ever come when your lord father was forced to chose between honor on the one hand and those he loves on the other what would he do?” and we KNOW ned picked love. ned loved his sister so much he lied to his king and bff to protect jon. ned loved his daughter so much he sacrificed his honor and duty to the realm and lied to protect sansa.

the writers intentionally put sansa at the center of jon and dany’s conflict. sansa’s not in king’s landing during the battle in 8x05 or 8x06 but she still haunts the narrative, her name is brought up by FOUR different characters. jon was ready to die if dany saw him as a threat to the throne. “i'm tired of fighting it’s all i've done since i left home.” and the only way to get through to him and to get him to fight again and to kill dany is to mention sansa and how she’ll never be safe with dany around. “if we don’t take back the north we’ll never be safe i want you to help me but i'll do it myself if i have to.”

and sansa is so used to being alone. she spent months waiting for robb to rescue her from king's landing, and it never happened. robb chose the north, his duty, over her. and she's beaten for the north's independence and then sold to two different families who stole the north from her. and then she finally finds help in theon and brienne and podrick but she doesn't feel completely safe again until she's in jon's arms. but even then she's still ready for more disappointment, to be separated from her family again because “life is not a song” and “there are no heroes.” but jon isn’t robb. “jon isn’t tormund. jon isn’t davos, or the red woman, or stannis for that matter. jon is jon.”

“where will you go? where will we go. i won’t ever let him touch you again. we need to trust each other. until i return the north is yours. touch my sister and i’ll kill you myself. what you did for her is the only reason i’m not killing you. i’m her family too. what about everyone else? what about the other people who think they know what’s good? i’ll protect you, i promise. no one can protect me, no one can protect anyone.” but jon proves her wrong, he can protect her. he will keep her safe. because when his day comes and he has to chose between love and duty, he chooses her. there still are heroes in her story and their story isn't over yet.

[magick-missile]

[elloras]

[b4kuch1n]

sunstroll

[feline-evil]

Wrench looking at Literally Anything and Anyone: (Rage. Disgust. Trying to kill with his gaze alone.)

Wrench looking at Numbers:

(Well listen. Ok. This is Wrench we're talking about so still some rage and still some killing-gaze but. Softer....Soft....Reserved only for This One Guy. I know it's subtle, he's Mr Wrench. But look, see hims face.)

[dandeyrain]

i've been rotating the "this doesn't make any sense!" response to boy and the heron in my head and i wonder how much of it comes down to like...the kind of audience that engages with ghibli movies vs the kind of audience that mostly only engages with weird art movies vs the kind of audience that only really engages with blockbusters and marvel movies, and the overlap of those groups in the theater.

because, like, the boy and the heron is far and away more straightforward, from a plot perspective, than a lot of other Weird Extremely Personal Art Movies i've seen and love, but it IS a Weird Extremely Personal Art Movie even so. usually the only people seeing Weird Extremely Personal Art Movies, especially in theaters, are people who like that and expect that and have seen those types of films before and are therefore capable of engaging with them even when things aren't as clear as they'd be in an average blockbuster flick. like, nobody who only cares about Cinema to the extent of marvel movies and MAYBE john wick is going to see beau is afraid, and if they did they wouldn't have the tools to engage with such a dream-logicy movie. it would just be a weird thing that doesnt make sense to them, at least until they worked their media engagement muscles with other weird films. there's a lot of self-selection to the kind of person who usually sees these kind of movies.

while boy and the heron is weirder and more complex than a lot of other ghibli movies, as far as weird art films go it is incredibly, INCREDIBLY straightfoward. every weird plot point is explained very clearly to the audience, very little is up for interpretation from a strictly "what was the plot" point of view. boy loses mother. father remarries and moves the family. boy struggles to contend with grief. boy is pulled into a magical world by an old man who wants to use him. time is weird and fucked up in the magical world, but the movie is going to go out of it's way to highlight who's who and make it clear how the time travel works and the characters' relations to one another. the boy refuses to take over the magical world because he wants to live in the real world with the real people he loves. boy leaves the magical world having learned an important lesson about moving on. but the boy and the heron trusts its audience, doesn't handhold, and expects the audience to engage seriously and with focus to its plot and characters and stories.

a lot of people never watch movies like that! a lot of people are used to uncomplicated superhero movies and romcoms and that's it. the difference is that those people were never going to see beau is afraid, so the discussion about that movie instead comes from people who have the tools to engage with it. but because of the aesthetic-ification of ghibli, a lot of people who don't Do art films but are really into the aesthetics of cute little guys and girls in pretty dresses went to this art film and were confused that it was weird and dream-like and dark and strange and requires more of its audience than just passively watching.

anyway there's nothing wrong with not having the muscles to engage with weird art films, though i do think everyone should challenge themselves with the kind of stuff they watch. there's nothing wrong with preferring simple straightforward uncomplicated plotlines. but it is really interesting seeing people talk about the movie like it's insanely weird and doesnt make any sense meanwhile me and the friends i've chatted with about who DO have experience with this kind of film all feel insane because the movie is SO clear and SO straightforward by the standards we're used to. its just a neat crossover re: the kinds of movie fans that exist

[bitchkay]

Toa had a brief emo phase when he was younger but I fear it was in fact just a phase💔 Unlike lance who's just emo to his fucking core Toa just wanted to feel edgy and it was never truly him, he did however develop a respect for alternative subcultures

[skrunksthatwunk]

idk if i've discussed it before (i have certainly THOUGHT about it) but someone on my kuwa suffering ep 89 comp mentioned it and i just had to go off about it like. ok. sensui tells yusuke something along the lines of "you heard itsuki" when itsuki's inside the uraotoko, implying that not only can sensui hear those inside the uraotoko, but that he expects yusuke to be able to as well. which means that yusuke Almost Certainly Heard And Kind Of Ignored kuwabara's prolonged mental breakdown and wailing about how much he needs yusuke to live etc. which. guHHH i hate him yusuke you ass but also listen.

the only acknowledgement yusuke gives to this (if any) is when he says something like "sensui you're sooo fucking cooked this plan's going perfectly (my friends are going to get strong and kill you when i die)." he's trash talking to sensui, ignoring the others because, i think, he doesn't want to acknowledge what he's doing to them.

yusuke is explicitly recreating the experience he had with kuwabara's "death" at the hands of toguro, complete with the announcement of intent (and power) to kill, the inability to impede the threat in any way (barring a power-breakthrough), and the target in some way racing towards/volunteering for their death. yusuke learns through doing, and through tough love-style approaches. it's only effective if it hurts. watching kuwabara die like that was devastating to yusuke, but it sure as hell fucking worked. he beat toguro because of that maneuver. so even if he has to (re-)traumatize his friends in the process, this method will make his friends stronger, and he feels confident in that. but he never had to live with the consequences of kuwabara's death, not really. that's something hiei makes clear before they enter the cave as well, that there are no fake-outs ready to make him or anyone else stronger. the only deaths here will be real. the only power gained will come at a high, permanent cost. hiei's warning is an attempt to keep everyone alive, to keep yusuke from being stupid. and then yusuke decides to take that fatality into his own hands, but it's kind of his friends who would pay the price. he's going to make them live through the days, months, years without him, the actual permanency of loss (assuming they survive for that long), something he never experienced with kuwabara (a new facet of that traumatic scenario), AND he's escaping the emotional fallout of this choice through death. he doesn't have to see them mourn, won't get yelled at, won't watch them fail to move on. he's tapping out and choosing to believe they'll be fine.

but i think he feels guilty. just a little. i mean, yusuke couldn't even believe that people cared about him enough to want him alive in episode one. he's staked everything on his friends, which means he still kind of... doesn't value his own life, at least not compared to theirs. but he believes his friends love him and want him around, and we know that because he has to, or else he wouldn't make a plan that depends entirely on that love. he is actively leveraging the care he doesn't think he deserves, trying to hurt them in a way he is intimately familiar with (only worse), for.... what, exactly?

this is kind of my sticking point tbh. i don't think the answer is... super clear, but let's start with what it's not.

yusuke is not doing this because it is the most practical way to save all of humanity; that would be the mafukan, which he stopped. it could be a gamble to save all of his friends? the mafukan strategy would guarantee koenma's death/eternal imprisonment, whereas this strategy gambles all of humanity on the chance that his friends come out of the Easy Break Oven strong enough to avert the end of the world. if the sacrifice of even one friend is completely intolerable, perhaps he'd accept those slim odds and their steep consequences. yusuke tends to take risks like that, especially when he's got fight-induced tunnel vision. he doesn't think things through too much; his schemes are usually dependent on surprising his enemy enough to oneshot them. truthfully, i think this is the closest we'll get to an answer, and it's a more conventional one for this kind of story. but there is another layer i haven't been able to get from my mind.

i think yusuke is gifting each of his friends an honorable warrior's death.

so, in case it needs saying, yusuke, kuwabara, kurama, and hiei all (at least once, if not several times) exhibit a desire to die in combat in a way they deem noble to give their lives purpose (usually by self-sacrifice, but sometimes by another metric of honor, like hiei's duel with shigure and his desire to die in mutual defeat against an evenly matched opponent; or even kurama's decision to fight shigure in his human form, displaying a sort of passive suicidality via placing being true to himself in this (somewhat symbolic/inconsequential) way over survival). they need to make their lives count for something, because they feel guilty for being alive (kurama and hiei feel guilty for their past actions (hiei's is most evident in his distance from yukina, though that's not its primary reason), hiei, kuwabara, and yusuke have all been ostracized and made to feel like burdens on/unwanted by their caregivers and general society; all four of them have felt profound isolation even from their loved ones (yusuke and hiei are rather obvious; kurama can never tell his mother about the majority of his life nor what she truly means to him in the context of it; and kuwabara is separated from his peers for his spiritual awareness and his "stupidity" (plus his parents aren't around? and he is Desperate to define manhood/manliness through a broader pop cultural one which includes the warrior sacrifice thing bc he has no male role models BUT that's for another post) (i will admit kuwa's the most tenuous one here irt isolation)). they want to die for a cause so badly it's actually physically painful to me. it is passive suicidality, and they define their lives and identities by their relation to, engagement with, and skill at doing violence, etc. they live to die by the sword. anyway. nobody talks about it but i think it's very important to understanding what yusuke's doing here.

because i think he knows that about himself and his friends. they're kindred spirits. at the very least he knows this about kuwabara, who literally made a speech about this before diving into toguro's fingers In The Event That He Is Recreating Explicitly. he is dying nobly like they all want to on the chance that they'll get to break out and fight sensui rather than dying without even getting to take a swing. it's about his pride and theirs. but i don't think yusuke necessarily believes they'll win. he knows better than anyone how strong sensui is, and how wide the gap is between sensui and team urameshi. his stated position that humanity is doomed and that he doesn't care about its fate is, i think, not completely genuine, but if we take it at face value, he's not killing himself so that his friends can survive the end of the world. something's going to come around and kill them eventually. he's doing it so they can survive long enough to fight sensui. he needs them (specifically kuwabara) to be strong enough to free themselves to begin round two. but he's given up on their side winning, on humanity surviving, on his own victory---why should he think his friends are capable of winning? this could be another case of yusuke's fight-blinders. it could be another gamble, more blind faith put in his friends. but honestly it reads more to me that yusuke's giving them a chance to die together on the battlefield. them winning would be great, but it's not his goal. it's a pipe dream.

he knows he's going to be killed. they're probably going to be killed, too. but to make it so they last a little longer against sensui, to make the odds a little more even, so they are killed not like livestock, but like worthy fighters, he'd die a little faster. it's the best kind of death someone like them can have; and he'll deprive himself of it just to make their ends a little sweeter. even if the road to that is far more bitter.

but it's not like yusuke's friends know what he's thinking or agree to it, and he can't exactly make his case for it in the moment. he's making that choice for them. whatever his intentions, whatever odds he thinks they have of beating sensui, he's kind of sealing all of their fates. so how the hell is he supposed to acknowledge kuwabara screaming at him not to die, trying desperately to express what yusuke means to him in what could be their final moments together? this plan is going to hurt his friends terribly. it is already doing so, and he can hear it. his choices to stop koenma from using the mafukan and to die for his friends' strength are both selfish in some way, no matter how you read the scene. if yusuke comforts kuwabara, he might not get strong enough. if he twists the knife, well... how could he forgive himself? and either way by responding he would have to face them all and say yes, i'm doing this regardless of your feelings (with the intention of hurting you). so i think he does what he often does. he avoids it. he lets that emotion glance off him and his bravado and his one-liners so he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he's hurting people, that he's scared and guilty and unsure of himself. that he's about to die again, about to put kuwabara through the grief he saw at his wake again, only worse; about to put his quieter friends through something similar.

yusuke is confronted with the responsibility one has to the people who care for them, and he runs from it in an attempt to give them some small peace. just like when he died before and thought hey, at least my mom and keiko won't be burdened by me anymore. because the only thing he can really do for them is die.

[koszmarnybudyn]

So anyone want a rant about my thoughts about the teens looking diffrent now than they did at the start? Well top bad you're getting one anyway. (Or good, depanding on your reaction)

Heads up this will probablly be incohereant. So i like to imagine Scary looking more and more like she did as terry now, like her hair grew out so she pushes her bangs out of her face more, wears more sporty clothes, and wears a ponytail more aften, her bangs used to be pink/red at the start but now she dyed them purple/a blueish color, she fights a bit more soccer like etc. She also has a scar on her wrist from that time it was cut off, and her hook earring is gone, replaced with one that belonged to terry jr or something.

Taylor dyed the tips of his hair blue, he looks more ninja like now since becoming a rougue, he has a diffrent sword, and a scar at his neck. His cane also has new stickers on it (one from each of the teens, a sdh sticker from norm, a garfield from link, a band one from scary, and maybe a death note musical one or something from hermie. His hair is also slightly longer so sometimes he puts it half up, and his porkpie hat is a diffrent one.

Normal constantly loses his clothes thrugh out the season, so they end up always being borrowed, never quite fitting right, right now i feel like he's wearing Henrys clothes, hes always wearing his own shoes tho, the one last thing keeping him himself, he still has that love/san dimas blue/teal but now there are more red (for anger) purple (for balance) and green (oak color) elements. His hair is longer than when he started, and he has eyebags now.

Link looks older, he doesn't look worried anymore, just..indiffrent, he isnt a boy anymore, hes a man, his shoulders are broader, his hair isnt as short or neat anymore, he has eyebags, he has scars (on both his legs from the soccer game, a larger one like a starburst on his back, and a nick on his eyebrow), hes always wearing his shin guards now, ready for battle, and i feel like he wears a backpack now (easier for battle than a gym bag) and a hoodie more aften (givving us grant vibes), hes gained muscle and he has a completly diffrent posture.

[twinknote]

auughhhhh i feel rly anxious and i need to get this somewhat out of my head. cw breast cancer screening

ok so i have an appt scheduled at planned parenthood tomorrow bc i found a lump under my armpit and there is history of breast cancer in both sides of my family. and first of all i need to call them tomorrow bc i forgot that when i scheduled the appt online it said they didn't accept my insurance even though i've literally been to planned parenthood before and my insurance website says they're covered? so i have to fucking call them and idek if i'm going to end up having the appt. which is stressful on its own

but also there is the factor of being TransgenderedTM and not really knowing if whatever doctor i might see will be trans-competent or if it will be a deadnaming + "girl power!!!" situation. plus just. yk. having anyone see and feel my fucking titties who i'm not fucking is like. strange and unnerving. and there is Also the factor of having sexual trauma so having anyone see and feel my fucking titties who i'm not fucking (and sometimes even who i Am fucking!!!!) is EXTRA strange and unnerving!!!! also idk if i would just be having some kind of exam or if i would be having a mammogram or if they even Have the ability to do a mammogram or if they would just be like Yup that's a lump [insert thumbs up emoji bc i'm typing this in an anxiety-fueled rage on my computer] have fun!

idk man i'm justreally really anxious abt this and it's making it worse not actually knowing if it's happening or not or if i'll have to make one billion calls around to find somewhere else to go or if i'll have to wait like 2 months to see someone back home in which case the cancer will have spread to my entire body and killed me and i also won't have insurance. basically i should just die anyway bc this all seems like way too much stress and way too complicated and maybe i should just not see a doctor about it and just simply keel over and die [insert another thumbs up emoji for good measure]

[moongothic]

Crocodile having such an explosive debut in his early 20s and such deep trust issues could also point to him having an even EARLIER start a la Shanks as an apprentice or something to an older pirate and their crew as a child/teenager — doubling down on the humiliation factor from facing off whitebeard as also a failure to “come of age” and broader sense of betrayal in watching eager encouragement fickly turn to “what did you THINK would happen”s like the kid who gets egged on by their peers into doing something dangerous and then immediately abandoned when they hurt themselves

Can't say if he did have like an early start for sure, since we really don't know anything about Crocodile's early childhood

But simply considdering how Oda typically layers backstories, I absolutely agree, I do think it's more than likely he has somekind of pre-Whitebeard trauma, be it either unrelated childhood trauma or early-pirating-life trauma (or something else)

Like the way Oda structures backstories, although we always remember like The Big Life-Changing Tragedy that happens at the end of the flashback, more often than not the flashback already begins with something horrible to indicate the character's already had a rough life

Robin was already alone, abused and rejected by most of Ohara even before the Buster Call Incident (followed by a life of running in fear for decades)

Franky had already been abandoned by his family before he lost Tom and got ran over by a train

Law had already lost his entire family before Doffy killed Rosi

Etc etc. Like not all the flashbacks are entirely like this, especially the East Blue-saga ones, but the backstories have been growing in complexity and structure, adding layers to the tragedies (like 🧅 onions 🧅) as the story has gone on

And with Kuma, his backstory doesn't end at two layers of tragedy. Like there's the early childhood tragedy of slavery, then there's the tragedy of losing his loved one in the most cruel, inhumane way possible, and we know there's at least one more gut-punch of a tragedy coming in the next two chapters to finish it all off

So with Crocodile especially I feel like... Like yes, possibly getting betrayed once in his life and having his dreams crushed by Whitebeard could break the man's psyche. But considdering just how seemingly broken his psyche might be, I do absolutely believe there's more layers here. Like his trust must've been broken more than once for him to end up the way he has.

Which alone gives Crocodad a bit more plausibility in my mind, because being rejected by the person you loved and trusted the most would most certainly break your heart (even if it was understandable why). And that really would make for a fine Final Nail on the Coffin for Crocodile's ability to have faith in others

But to really get that broken trust to be an on-going theme in his life that just happens again and again.... yeah it needs to start earlier

Personally, I think some kind of early childhood trauma would make the most sense, at least to me, not just because it could help Crocodile get started "on the wrong foot", but also because Rough Childhoods is just. A General Theme in One Piece lmao. Of course, it wouldn't be The Key Life-Changing Tragedy (I think Dragon would be that), just a "bad start"

[usertoxicyaoi]

“Because Sung Ho was the only one sitting on his left side ...” HIS MAN 2 (2023). Jun Sung + Sung Ho in Episode 5.

[fisheito]

HolyAdhhrShert IT'S ACTUALLY OLIVINE??@!!,,,,?@,@?@@?@,??

I ffidid not expect that either what is going on over at nuca HEAdquartees

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

EVEN MORE Pokemon Horizons Episode 25 spoilers under the cut! (I know these warnings may be redundant but I wanna be courteous to those who haven't gotten to watch it yet - I'd love to preserve the experience of a series as much as possible as someone who usually steers clear of spoilers myself hehe ✨)

Ceruledge Zirc & Onia 🤝 being worried for their angsty teen boss