#but if i say that it feels like quitting
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damn . internalised ableism got hands
#and in disability pride month too! disgraceful#anyway i can't shake the feeling that i'm a fucking disappointment#i can't cope with. anything#and i know it's. neurodivergence and physical disability and my Ever Concerning untreated mental illness lmao but#i just feel like. a failure. how am i supposed to cope with actually doing the job i love so much if i can't even get through-#-the leadup?#i can't physically keep up. i can't mentally keep up. i can't emotionally keep up#but if i say that it feels like quitting#even though i'm barely contributing anyway. most people there won't give a fuck if i never turn up again. i hardly know the blocking anyway#it's 6am and i can't sleep#my knees r throbbing n my brain is screaming and all i can think is how much of a disappointment i am#and how pathetic i must look from the outside. how much people must judge me and my fucking dramatics#because normal people don't have fucking breakdowns over the tone of their texts.#and normal people don't stay awake until dawn bc they can't sleep until the sun rises.#and normal people don't feel like they're walking on fucking shattered glass every time they go outside#i just want to curl up into a ball and scream#why can't i just pause the world. why can't i leave this whole fucking thing and come back when i'm ready to keep going#god. fuck#i need to sleep but it's rlly hard when my knee hurts every time i move#og#vent#internalised ableism tw
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[Day 365 | Ref to Day 1]
And that's a wrap 🪻🥀
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fhksjdkwjw ITS OVER. ITS OVERRRRR I MADE ITTTTT
Screaming and losing it. It only started to feel real as I'm posting this rn HRKSJAKSJLELH. A year... 365 pieces (probably a bit less bc I did post wips?) of desert duo... I would make a collage maybe but its prob a lot of work HJASKDHAHEHW
🫵 @vesperionnox @cherrysherin without u guys I wouldn't have been here <3 This challenge kinda became its own thing at some point, but I didn't forget where I started :D
💥💥💥 AAA I hope you guys enjoyed this challenge as much as I did!! but also WOOOOOOOOOOOOO FREEDOM. I WILL DEF STILL BE DRAWING DESERTDUO THO LOL BUT LETS FREAKING GO ONE YEARRRR
#dddaily4sherin#desert duo#grian#goodtimeswithscar#3rd life#third life#third life smp#traffic smp#trafficblr#my art#quite happy with how these came out too. esp grian :D#I feel crazy#:DDD YIPPEE#i feel like i should say more things tbh but all thats on my mind is holyshit i can fucking play minecraft#+ holyshit I can make The Bug real in minecraft /ref hgcz HASHDAHSHEBA#putting this in the tags too im thinkinggggg i could make some of the ddds into posters or prints later?#i will look into it and ask u guys a bit more officially later but ye if anyones interested :D
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listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded mfer happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.
#seeing some discourse and im not saying lucy grey didnt know#im saying she never dropped the kind of hints that she knew like she did in the movie#or if she did snow isnt worried about them until he very suddenly is consumed by them#snow is not concerned about whether or not she believed him. of course she did! hes snow!#but then shes gone…. for a while……#and its the sudden immediate drastic unravelling that comes across so clearly in the book#that i knew wouldn’t translate to screen yet still cant help but miss#the hunger games#coriolanus snow#tbosas#lucy gray baird#not a crime or anything just a note that i cannot stop thinking about#the ballad of songbirds and snakes#this is all from memory of reading it quite a while ago. so maybe 3 pages is an exaggeration#but i remember it happening VERY quickly and without much external cause#like we as the reader have no indication as to whether shes nearby or not.#snow has no idea either. he just SUSPECTS. and his suspicion breeds the hatred that has been bubbling inside him all this time#he hates how she undoes him. he hates that he WOULD run away with her if shed let him keep his secrets#and he HATES more than anything that she makes him WANT to tell his secrets#he wants to be vulnerable and reveal the ugly nasty parts about himself and still be loved#but he does not let himself and it is everyone’s downfall#he chooses cruelty bc it is easy and familiar and makes him feel more powerful than the vulnerable give and take that real love requires
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it's zoro's birthday!! happy birthday big guy, may you say many more insane things to your enemies in the coming years
#one piece#zolu#comic#a while ago I reread some of the earlier arcs in one piece and was caught off guard by zoro's dialogue in the daz bonez fight#finally got around to making a comic abt it#boys fluctuating wildly between chatting shit n making jabs at eachother n having a sweet heartfelt moment#they have the range#the weird shape next to zoro's face in the second panel used to be a question mark#umm but it didn't get erased fully apparently#and im too lazy to do anything about that now that i've noticed it so enjoy!#oh also when luffy says baaastard hes imitating zoro saying temeeeee#does quite have the same feel...“baaaa” like a sheeps bleat vs the kinda drawl-y rumble of “meeee”...oh well
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I love the pale garden and how it's like a parallel to dark forests. I love how the two divert expectations.
Dark forests, despite their name, are saturated and full of life. Even compared to regular forests, there's a lot more biodiversity than many of the "basic" biomes. There's three whole different trees found there, giant mushrooms, and plenty of flowers. They're one of the biomes capable of spawning a lush cave underneath it. It has its dangers just like any other overworld biome, obviously, but it's nothing overly more than anywhere else. Traversing it can be tricky sometimes and illagers may take residence in the biome's woodland mansions, but it's ultimately a very colorful and lively environment.
Opposing it is the new pale garden. Usually white and light colors are seen as pristine and good, but the pale garden takes it the opposite direction and goes right into uncanny valley territory. It has none of the color of dark forests, none of the biodiversity, none of the liveliness. It has trees and moss that look familiar, but something is off. It has a signature mob, but even the creaking is just a puppet of the trees, not really sentient, not really even plotting against anything. There's "life", but, once again, it's wrong.
I think the pale garden is a wonderful addition to Minecraft's world building as it is, but the deliberate parallel to dark forests? Delicious.
#minecraft#mineblr#minecraft live#minecraft live spoilers#<<(just in case!)#I've seen some people saying the pale garden is lazy or too modded looking but there honestly looks like so much thought went into it#Reblogged a post before this where the person mentioned how it almost feels like a callback to the emptiness of early versions of the game#Which I think is a wonderful observation because it does encapsulate that stillness that's not quite foreboding but still very noticeable#Another parallel to be found could be between the pale garden and the deep dark#Which could be a whole post on its own lmao#But there's so much depth and parallels in this drop that are relatively easy to overlook at first but once noticed are so intriguing imo#Lore enthusiasts are eating GOOD
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~ Extremely Unwilling Magical Protagonists Attempt To Outrun The Plot And Not Fucking Die ~
(@takofukkatsumi this tag is from a while ago but it hasn't left my brain -- L-Space got very weird all of a sudden)
#discworld#rincewind#the luggage#svsss#shen qingqiu#sqq#takofukkatsumi honestly thank you for this tag i've been chuckling on and off about the luggage overtaking sqq for a while now#something about it feels Right. no one expects the luggage until it's on you#honestly my main goal out of this picture is to force svsss fans to witness The Luggage and its horrible legs#shen yuan and rincewind hit that awkward point where you're keeping pace with a stranger#you can't quite manage to speed up or slow down at the right point to break contact#so they end up having a VERY weird conversation#at least anything sqq says is not the weirdest thing rincewind has heard#got sucked into a book? let him introduce you to the librarian#actually now i want the librarian to meet the system#if anyone could figure out a way to beat the system's head in it'd be an orangutan offended on behalf of literary characters everywhere#conversely both sqq and sqh are capable of ''speaking'' with pratchett style footnotes ARE are capable of seeing each other's footnotes#they weaponize this against each other immediately#honestly intrigued to see how many notes this gets - what's the general overlap between discworld fans and mxtx fans?#or is it literally the two of us here in this venn diagram?#i feel like it should exist though - are both not simply fantasy parodies in one variety or another??#my art
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maknae line + gestures of love 🫰🏼💋🫶🏼🌹🤟🏼 happy birthday @jkvjimin! ♡
#jungkook#jungkook*#tae#taehyung*#jimin#jimin*#btsedit#btsgif#dailybts#userpat#underbetelgeuse#trackofthesoul#usersevn#annietrack#usersky#usersan#usermaggie#*gifs#comp#happy birthday darling pat!!!#just a reminder that me and vminkook love you!#i hope you have the best day full of even more love than this bc you deserve it#you put so much of it out into the world yourself that it should only ever come back to you tenfold#i actually made something kinda cohesive?! at least in the first half...feels like it loses its steam a bit after the 10th gif lol#this was only supposed to be 12 gifs but i had more time to keep it going so it ended up being 18 whoops#this is scheduled so i hope it's posting at the proper time (zone ahem)#ALSO at first i arranged this in their age order but i switched jimin and jk's place so it would spell out jk + v + jimin like your url :)#i hope you like this! i'm kinda jealous even tho i made it lol it's quite pretty if i do say so myself#yes i put a heart overlay on the gifs against a white bg to keep the color scheme going..idk i TRIED#p.s. to anyone seeing this and thinking you can't rb it bc it's dedicated to pat for her bday....WRONG! PLEASE REBLOG IT IF YOU LIKE IT! ty
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Felt a bit nostalgic watching RT shut down…Here are the og faves again for old times sake 💙
#rvb#agent washington#agent Carolina#lavernius tucker#michael j caboose#epsilon#my art rvb#ahhh a lot of feelings…of course I stepped away from rt as a company a long time ago#but RvB is special to me!! it was my first fandom experience ever#and the community here on tumblr specifically was so instrumental to me growing up#I really could not have asked for a better community of artists and writers to grow up in. I know it sounds like platitudes when I say#that everyone was super nice and talented but REALLY. People were so kind to me and somehow I became well known despite#my art and writing and me in general still being immature and hashtag cringe#I found my creative legs and#people would respond to my stuff with walls and walls of support in the tags and we would do exchanges and events every year#I made my first lyric comic and it’s still doing extremely well on YouTube even today!! my dad who passed away recently always loved it#and my favorite RvB writer came out of hibernation to write me a bunch of text wall asks about it#I’ve never had another fandom experience quite like RvB#I still keep in touch with many of my friends from that time period even though we’ve all moved on the other things#these guys will always always have a place in my heart#so long reds and blues….
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Did you think I was done? Ahahahaha no, I have more.
Because chapter 70 of MOMU gave me the very dynamic between them that I missed so much, I just blacked out and started drawing uncontrollably lmao
Also. ALSO. I noticed a while ago that Prowl has the habit of..like…constantly frowning. So. I did a bit of research and made this graph.
In 70 chapters, Prowl frowns rougly 104 times. And the intensity of this gesture is very clearly correlated with the development of his relationship with Jazz, as you can see ahahahahah It might be wrong tho don’t take me seriously I’m not good with graphs
#maccadam#transformers#prowl#jazz#jazzprowl#fic fanart#momu fanart#I just#mmmmm#For the whole fic Prowl had to think twice about everything Jazz says#every information could end up being wrong#sometimes even without Jazz realising it#so when Prowl says#he’s trusting Jazz. it’s.#also it totally wasn’t me googling ‘believing and trusting nuance difference in english’#the moment I realised the difference I think my brain started rollercoaster loops#he can’t believe him but he found enough faith to trust him#while. YES. For the whole story Jazz couldn’t fucking be believed#list e n#Jazz did a lot of things for Prowl#fucktons of big and small gestures to show that yes he likes loves and appreciates Prowl#I’m so happy Prowl is returning this energy#like#remember that scene a while back when Jazz kissed Prowl? Cool cool okay. Did Prowl kiss him? nope. It was one sided gestures#*gesture. That kiss didn’t make me feel like it’s truly something precious because Jazz started it but Prowl didn’t do quite the same#but this👆. This feels so much more important for me. Because Prowl#who is for the whole story was mister I calculate every chance of possible betrayal. Prowl whos entire personality is to trust nobody#Prowl goes. Fuck that I trust you. You feel me?#it wouldn’t be the same if he said I love you. Because love is very much something you don’t have a lot of control over.#but to trust someone? It’s a choice Prowl had to consciously make. You see what I mean? I love it. oh fuck I ran out of tags..
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ENERGETIC ⚡️
you make me feel so high
#atsuoikage#haikyuu#oikawa tooru#kageyama tobio#miya atsumu#oikage#atsuoi#haikyuu!!#they are not any specific member i just chose based on shot composition and vibes#so pls dont come at me saying u think so and so should be X member instead of Y member#I just want the vibes of them being on a competition show like p101 and then debuting together bc i think them being the JP members tgt#would be very sweet and help bridge some animosity or rival tension that exists like they are competing but also#they feel solace in eos presence being from same culture same language etc#tobio looooooves oikawa HAHA hes sooo starry eyed over him... tobio calling oikawa hyung im gonna kill myself#atsumu and oikawa get close maybe after iwaizumi gets eliminated maybe earlier/midway in the show? bc tsumu understands what it feels like#to suddenly pursue ur dream alone.. samu maybe trained with tsumu at same company but quit before they even enrolled on the show#atsumu being the mediator whenever oikage bicker LOL#oikawa being stressed af and snapping at tobio and tobio is so sad tsumu is like there there... ill go talk to oikawa hell come around itok#ats comforting oikw like telling him to ignore the netizen / bad edit etc and calming him down slowly and getting oikw to apologize to tobio#also tobio crawling into oikawas bed in the dorms to sleep with him at night and oikawa wants to complain but likes cuddling... deep downLOL
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My thoughts here mainly revolve around YSA as the mary sue/female lead type character:
She goes from being this perfect woman to. just being a woman. And my idea is that the weight gain isn't there to make her "unconventionally attractive," or whatever other dumb phrase you wanna use to avoid calling someone ugly, but to make her conventionally attractive, yet realistic.
Instead of looking like a skinny waifu character, she looks like a skinny human woman. Her hair swaying in the nonexistent wind isn't as perfect, her magic blush is missing and she has eyebags. She's still hot, just more human.
#and if you look at it then the left ysa looks a lot more like her doesnt she?#congratulations if youre the exception but most folk seeing this would prefer the left#or at least feel like the left resembles ysa more#and im not saying this judgementally. 1) i draw tons of women like this and 2) they're drawings and not real life humans#(theres a time and place to discuss representation of body diversity etc but this post isn't about that rn.#its an important discussion that deserves respect and its own space. this is a 5am ramble)#anyways. ysa strays from the ideal woman. she grows to be more human in her behavior and depiction and everything#and it would be quite fun to reflect that in the way she's drawn#orv#omniscient reader's viewpoint#yoo sangah#my doodles#orv meta#i guess?
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Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will
#svsss#scum villian self saving system#shen qingqiu#shen yuan#the fact that people think scum villain#-a series that examines and criticizes common tropes in fiction-#is somehow against criticism or being a little hater is wild to me#especially since shen qingqiu never gets punished for being a hater#heck- he's still a little hater by the end of the series#he mostly gets punished for treating life like a play and like he and the people around him are characters#(or in other words- he suffers for denying his own wants and emotions and his own sense of empathy)#I think some of y'all underestimate how much writing/art is inspired by creaters being little haters#like example off the top of my head-#the author of Iron Widow has been pretty vocal about the book being inspired by their hatred of Darling in the Franxx#I think my interpretation of Shen Yuan's transmigration is also supported by the fact that this series is an examines writing processes#side note- though i understand why people say Shen Yuan is lazy and think its a valid take it still doesnt sit right with me#i am probably biased because my own experiences with chronic pain and depression and isolation#but ya- i dont think Shen Yuan is lazy so much as he is deeply lonely and feels purposeless after denying parts of himself for 20ish years#like yall remember the online fandom boom from covid right?#being stuck completely alone in bed while feeling like shit for 20 days straight does shit to your brain#the fact that no one came to check on him + he wasn't exactly upset about leaving anyone behind supports the isolation interpretation too#+in the skinner demon arc he describes his life of being a faker/inability to stop being a faker now that he's Shen Qingqiu#as “so bland he's tempted to throw salt on himself” and “all he could do is lay around and wait for death” (<-paraphrasing)#bro wants to be doing stuff but is stuck in paralysis from repeatedly following scrips made by other people#another point on “Shen Yuan isn’t lazy” is just the sheer amount of studying that man does#also he did graduate college- how lazy can he really be#he doesnt know what hes doing but he at least tries to actively train his students#and he actually works on improving his own cultivation + spends quite a bit of time preping the mushroom body thing#+he's experiencing bouts of debilitating chronic pain throughout all this#but ya tldr: Shen Yuan's transmigration is an encouragement to write and not a punishment and also i dont think its fair to call him lazy
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space sweepers but they're delivery people and are at no point on screen through the entire movie
#fantasy high#riz gukgak#kristen applebees#gorgug thistlespring#adaine abernant#fabian seacaster#figueroth faeth#the bad kids#half tempted to say these names are forum handles they use so much it pretty much became their professional names lol#I keep them teenagers bc its funnier that way#no real lore I just like drawing this. but I do think abt how theyre all weirdos too also bc thats funny to me#riz is a huge conspiracyhead who does everything by hands. he has a casio fx-570 in mint condition. nobody knows how he's maintaining it#he is nonetheless Really Good at his job. which somewhat tracks bc it's a job that requires keeping up with interstation conflicts#and new policies and an obsessive amount of planning. but he is Too Good at it. and also he dresses like that#kristen has the atomic engine that theoretically lets her unmake and remake matters with her mind. but it consumes a huge amount#of energy so it's mostly useless. she's still a cult survivor also#gorgug lives his entire life on a ship with his parents who quit a cushy deal maintaining a space station bc he wouldn't be allowed on#the low gravity let him grow very tall but also his oxygen saturation is pretty bad so he's got breathing support#fig is a robot who just found out she's a robot like two months ago. she's been assuming everyone's a robot like her and she's been feeling#very betrayed by her mom lying about that part. she's on a body mod spree which is rough bc system-specific parts are expensive#and so is adapting random parts to her system#fabian's still a pirate captain's son. can't say anything that'd be able to get the vibes across clearer than that#adaine went to tech/business school. she put her monthly allowance towards an ecoterrorist group in her academy which turned out to be an o#and she's currently wanted by UTS. more than fabian. which makes him slightly mad#she's also acquired a passion for low-tech weaponry on the way. she likes ice picks and cleavers#I think up all of this for no reason except that once again the idea of all these people being 1/teens and 2/on the same ship to be posties#is hilarious to me. esp. if they were in a forum group chat beforehand
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"Toshiro Is Sexist," "Toshiro Owns Slaves": What's Really Going on With This Guy?
I've seen a lot of debate on whether or not Toshiro is problematic because he's a slave owner or because he's sexist in the context of his crush on Falin. While I do want to examine his relationship to Falin, I'd like to take a few steps back and unpack his upbringing first. We'll dive into the gender and class dynamics he was raised with and how it impacts his behavior in the main storyline.
Like all people, Toshiro is shaped by the environment he grew up in. Toshitsugu, Toshiro's father and the head of the Nakamoto clan, is the most impactful model of authority and manhood in his life. Toshiro does recognize some of his father's flaws and tries to avoid replicating them. But whether or not he emulates or subverts his father's behavior, Toshitsugu is often the starting point for Toshiro's treatment of others, particularly marginalized people.
The Nakamoto clan exists under a patriarchal hierarchy with Toshitsugu at the top. As noted by @fumifooms in their Nakamoto household post, his wife has more authority than Maizuru. She's able to ban Maizuru from parts of their residence, but despite disliking his infidelity, she can't divorce him or stop him from cheating on her. Their marriage is not an equal partnership.
On an interpersonal level, Toshitsugu and Maizuru also have a fraught relationship. While she does seem to care for him, she's often frustrated by his thoughtless behavior.
For example, he drunkenly buys Izutsumi for her — without considering how she'll have to raise this child — and invades her room in the middle of the night. When he cryptically says, "It's all my fault," she replies, "I can think of a lot of things that are your fault." She calls him an "idiot" and "believes that [Toshiro] will grow up to be a better clan leader than his father," implying that she takes issue with Toshitsugu's leadership.
Because Maizuru and Toshitsugu are described as being "in an intimate relationship" and "seem[ing] to be lovers," Maizuru appears to be a consensual participant. Still, this doesn't negate the large power imbalance between them as a male noble clan leader and his female retainer. This imbalance introduces an insidious undertone to Maizuru's frustration with Toshitsugu. Like Toshiro's mother, Maizuru doesn't have the agency to do as she pleases in their relationship; he has the ultimate authority. For instance, she doesn't seem to want to raise Izutsumi, but she has to anyway.
While Maizuru's role as Toshitsugu's mistress is significant, she's also the Nakamoto clan's teacher and Toshiro's primary maternal figure. She cares deeply for Toshiro: tailing him, feeding him, and taking responsibility even for his actions as an adult. While it might seem sweet that she cares for him like a son at first, Maizuru was notably fifteen years old at the time of his birth. In the extra comic below, he's six years old and has already been in her care for some time. Even if we're being generous and assuming that she didn't start raising him until he was six, she was still only twenty-one at the time she was parenting her boss/lover's child with another woman.
Maizuru's roles as mistress and maternal figure, in addition to her role as retainer, demonstrate the intersection between gendered and class oppression in the Nakamoto household. Despite her original role being a retainer trained in espionage, Toshitsugu presses her into performing gendered labor for him and eventually, Toshiro. She's expected to be Toshitsugu's lover, perform emotional labor for him as his confidant, care for his child, and carry out domestic tasks like cooking. She says, "Even during missions, I was often dragged into the kitchen." If she was a male servant, I doubt she would have been expected to perform these additional tasks. She can't avoid these tasks either, stating that her "own feelings don't factor into it."
Toshitsugu disregards his wife's and Maizuru's desires and emotions to serve his own interests. Because he has societal power over them as a nobleman and in Maizuru's case, her master, neither woman can escape their position in the household hierarchy.
As a result, Toshiro grew up within a structure where men and male nobility, in particular, wield the most societal power. The hierarchical nature of his household and society discourages everyone, including him as a clan leader's eldest son, from questioning and disrupting the existing hierarchy.
The other Nakamoto household members also internalize its sexist, classist power dynamics.
For example, Hien expects that she and Toshiro will replicate the uneven dynamics of the previous generation, regardless of her personal feelings. She sees her and Toshiro's relationship as paralleling Maizuru and Toshitsugu's relationship; she is the closest woman to Toshiro and his retainer, so she's shocked when Toshiro doesn't attempt to begin an intimate relationship with her. Notably, she doesn't have actual feelings for him. Her expectations are centered around the household's precedent of placing emotional, sexual, domestic, and child-rearing labor onto the female servants without any regard for their personal desires.
Hien also probably knows that her position in the household will improve if she is Toshiro's lover because she's seen it improve Maizuru's position. However, the fact that being the future clan leader's lover is the closest proximity she, as a female servant, has to power further reveals the gendered, class-based oppression she and the other women live under.
It's important to note that the Nakamoto clan bought Benichidori, Izutsumi, and Inutade as slaves, so they have less power and agency than Maizuru and Hien. The clan further dehumanizes Izutsumi and Inutade as demi-humans; their enslavement contains an additional layer of racialization.
Toshiro isn't oblivious to the gendered, class, and racial power dynamics of his household. He tries to distance himself from participating in its exploitative power structure. He walls himself off from Hien, who he's known since childhood, to avoid replicating his father's behavior and making his servant into his lover. He disapproves of his father's enslavement of Izutsumi and Inutade, and he lets Izutsumi go when she runs away in the Dungeon.
But does any of this absolve him of his complicity in his household's sexist, classist power dynamics and racialized slavery?
The short answer is absolutely not.
Despite his distaste for his father's exploitation of his servants and slaves, Toshiro still uses them. He refers to his party as "his retainers," and he has them fight and perform domestic tasks for him. You could argue that Toshiro doesn't like to and thus, doesn't regularly use his servants and slaves. In the context of him asking his retainers to help him rescue Falin, Maizuru says, "The only time he ever made any sort of personal request was for this task." But it shouldn't matter whether exploitation is a regular occurrence or not for it to be considered harmful. Toshiro asking Maizuru to cook him a meal still constitutes asking his female servant to perform gendered labor for him. He's also very accustomed to her grooming and dressing him.
Maizuru sees feeding, washing, and even advising Toshiro romantically as fulfilling Toshitsugu's orders to care for his son. They aren't fulfilling a "personal request." But just because her labor has been deemed expected and thereby devalued doesn't mean that it isn't labor or that she isn't performing it.
Maizuru's dynamic with Toshiro is also complicated by her role as his maternal figure. She loves him and wants to take care of him, and she doesn't have a choice in the matter. During Toshiro's childhood, the onus was on Toshitsugu to cease exploiting his lover and release her from servitude, but Toshiro is now an adult man. Seeing as how Maizuru defers to his wishes and calls him "Young Master," they still have a power imbalance that he's passively maintaining. Ideally, he would not ask anything of her until he has the authority to release her from servitude.
Throughout the story, Toshiro acts as if he has no agency and quietly disapproving of his father's actions absolves him of his participation in maintaining oppressive dynamics. While his father still ranks higher than him, he's essentially his father's heir. He has much more power than Maizuru, the highest-ranked servant. At the very least, he could leave his slave-owning household.
Unfortunately, his refusal to confront injustice is consistent with his character's major flaw: he does not express his opinions, desires, or needs. While this character trait obviously hurts his friendships, it also furthers his complicity in the injustices his household runs on.
Toshiro's relationship with eating food — the prevailing metaphor of the series — also parallels his relationship with confronting injustice. Maizuru mentions that he was a sickly child, so the act of eating may have been physically uncomfortable for him. As an adult, his refusal to eat crops up during his rescue attempt of Falin. Denying himself food might have been punishment for not accomplishing important tasks like rescuing Falin and/or a way to maintain control over something in his life when he felt like he'd lost control over the rest of it, again in the context of losing Falin. (Note: I suggest reading this post on Toshiro's disordered eating by @malaierba.)
But he cannot and does not avoid consuming food forever.
Similarly, Toshiro keeps his distance from his retainers and tries not to use them until the Falin situation occurs. His efforts to avoid exploiting his retainers amount to inaction — things he doesn't ask of them or do to them. But his inaction does nothing to dismantle the existing hierarchy that places his retainers under his authority, denies them agency, and often marginalizes them as not only servants or slaves but as women, and he ends up using them as servants and slaves anyways.
Returning to the narrative's themes of consumption, Toshiro cannot avoid eating just as he cannot avoid perpetuating the exploitative system of his household. The Nakamoto clan consumes the labor and personhood of those lower in the hierarchy. The retainers' labor as spies and domestic servants is the foundation of the clan's existence. Thus, the clan consumes their labor to sustain itself.
Within this hierarchy, the retainers' personhood is also consumed and erased. As Izutsumi describes, they are given different names and stripped of their agency to reject orders or leave. Maizuru and Hien also say their feelings are irrelevant in the context of Toshitsugu's and Toshiro's wants and needs. Both women are expected to comply with whatever is most beneficial and comfortable for the noblemen. Clearly, despite Toshiro's detachment from his household's functions, these social structures remain in place and harm the women under him.
Although we know the Nakamoto clan has male retainers, the choice to highlight the female retainers seems intentional. We're asked to interrogate how not only being a servant or a slave in a noble household impacts a person's life and agency, but how being a woman intersects with being a member of some of the lowest social classes.
Toshiro only distances himself from his father's behaviors of infidelity and exploitation so long as it doesn't take Toshiro out of his comfort zone. He doesn't free his slaves. He's far too comfortable with his female retainers performing domestic labor for him, and he barely acknowledges their efforts; they're shocked when he thanks them for helping him save Falin. He hasn't unpacked his sexist (or classist or racist) biases because he perpetuates his household's oppressive hierarchy throughout the narrative. Considering all of this, he inevitably brings this baggage to his interactions with Falin.
Falin is presumably one of the first women he's had extended contact with that isn't his relative or his family's servant. Because of his trauma surrounding his father and Maizuru sleeping together, he understandably falls for a woman as disconnected as possible from his father and his clan. He seems to genuinely like Falin, respects her boundaries, and graciously accepts her rejection. His behavior towards her is overall kind and unproblematic.
But if Falin had gone with him, she would've likely been devalued and sidelined like the other women of the Nakamoto household. No matter how much he loves Falin, simply loving her cannot replace the difficult work of unlearning his sexism. Love, of course, can and should be accompanied by that work, but by the close of the narrative, we gain little indication that Toshiro acknowledges or seeks to end his part in exploiting and devaluing women and other marginalized people.
A spark of hope does exist. Toshiro expressing his feelings to Laios and Falin suggests that his time away from home has encouraged him to speak up more. Breaking his habit of avoidance may be the first step towards acknowledging his complicity in systems of injustice and moving towards dismantling them.
Special thanks to my very smart friend @atialeague for bringing up Toshitsugu's relationship with Maizuru and the replication of dynamics of consumption and class! <3
#toshiro nakamoto#maizuru#hien#toshitsugu nakamoto#falin touden#izutsumi#inutade#benichidori#shuro#dungeon meshi#dunmeshi meta#dunmeshi analysis#quite literally free my girls#i got so sad after finding that parallel between maizuru and hien both saying their feelings don't matter#reading maizuru's character bio and how she's a brilliant woman#but she's stuck w toshiro's dad like#i'm toshitsugu's number one hater he better watch out#also thinking about how toshiro looked up to maizuru not even his own parents until he found out about maizuru and his dads relationship#that's devastating bro#im entering my clickbait title era LOL i was told my prev titles were too academia pilled and boring sounding#i think i want to write about izutsumi's and inutade's relationships w gender next#delicious in dungeon#dunmeshi#*mine#*meta
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can we talk more about avpd being a (proposed) schizospec disorder? because i almost never see that theory talked about but i wish it was. like…
avpd makes me censor my thoughts because i think someone might hear what i’m thinking and see what a horrible person i am on the inside or judge me for thinking embarrassing things.
avpd makes me so afraid of someone walking in on me doing something i Shouldn’t Be Doing that my brain twists background noise into the sounds of whispers and footsteps behind me.
avpd makes me so worried about people staring at me that in my peripheral vision, anyone near me looks like they’re already staring at me, and it’s only when i look at them directly that i realize they’ve been looking in a totally different direction the whole time.
avpd makes me so convinced of how much everyone must secretly hate me that i often start thinking everyone secretly wants to hurt me too, to the point where i’ve had panic attacks from a person walking too close behind me because i feel like they’re getting ready to attack me (when i haven’t had any kind of trauma that would create that fear), and the paranoia just serves to reinforce my need to avoid people.
avpd makes me lose my ability to speak or reduces it to nothing more than one word answers only when spoken to, turning the thoughts i wanted to express into a jumble that’s impossible to turn into words or just throwing them away completely and making my mind go blank, so i end up just staring at people silently or even acting like i don’t see them standing there at all (not on purpose but because my brain won’t let me engage with them).
avpd makes me look damn near emotionless around everyone but my safe person (and sometimes even around my safe person) because showing my emotions would be far too vulnerable for its liking, so it completely takes away my ability to express them.
and i could keep going! there are so many things i experience because of avpd that i’ve seen really closely reflected in the experiences of schizospec people. i don’t know how common these kinds of things are in avpd overall, but they’re a really prominent part of my experience with it, so when i found out that some research suggested it could be considered a schizospec disorder itself, that made so much sense to me! and i’d be so curious to see how many other avoidants have dealt with this stuff but haven’t talked about it because it’s never mentioned as being part of avpd.
#this post was brought to you from the Looking Over My Shoulder Frozen In Fear Because Of The Whispers™️ position#which is. quite a common position for me#im honestly kinda nervous to post this bc i feel like somebody’s gonna be like ‘thats not avpd!’ or ‘thats not schizospec stuff!’#but oh well. that’s just how it is on the internet#i also feel a little weird about the wording bc i don’t really see avpd as an outside force that Makes Me do things#but it’s 5am and im too tired to think of a better way to say it#poss.speaks#discussion#avpd#actually avpd#actually avoidant#avoidant pd#avoidant personality disorder#cluster c#schizospec#schizophrenia spectrum#schizo spectrum#schizotaxic
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#a doodley#i had to make this blue so tumblr would stop hiding it from the dash#anyway no caption this happened 2 hrs ago#im happy abt my surgery but it and other things this year keep beinging conversations like these up#and i cant handle it at all.#everything my dad tells me just makes me feel worse and not bc its anything bad but bc I Feel Bad#like the conversation then continued to him being like no dont cry im just saying i wpuld have wanted to#quit my job decades ago and set aside money so I wouldnt be struggling as much now but that didnt happen#and i just dont want that to happen to you guys :)#so we have to support u so that your life is what u want it to be#and i cried even more bc what do u mean. thats so sad. ur a person and u were a child and baby once and ur gonna die#and you always almost cry when u talk about your mom who passed away decades ago#and your brothers that passed away#recently and im going to be your age and still sobbing bc i miss my dad. just like i have been prematurely crying about since i was 7#the other day my dad asked my mom if i cried a lot when i was a baby/kid and my mom said no and then my dad#said that when i Did cry it was so severe he thought i would ''drown in my own tears''#bc i could never stop. like. thats still true today. ive been crying on and off since then#i think i mentioned he's just been telling me stories about his life lately and it further fuels this. i get so sad. im sorry your life was#like this. i dont want to die i dont want you to die im sad im sorry im sorry#im scared. im never going to see you again. how horrible. how horrible#i cant enjoy my day today bc every day is a day closer and i get sad
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