#deep thoughts by z

[moltensunlight]

I’ve got to figure out how to better characterize calm/level-headed characters — I’ve got TWO oc’s now that are pretty calm 90% of the time and I feel like their personalities end up feeling stale compared to what I can describe for more energetic/upbeat/rambunctious characters

[peanutbutterfiles]

oh. OH. I have POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome). I definitely fucking have POTS. jesus.

[statementlou]

hello :) could you maybe explain a little bit how dan wootton blackmailed louis?

ugh sorry for taking a while to get to this. The problem is I feel like the only two ways to answer this are by spending a week and a half of full time labor sifting through old posts and evidence to get every detail right and lay out an airtight case, or to halfass something very serious, and so I felt a little stuck. So since I can't seem to find a good halfway point, apologies but here is the half assed version, if you want to get into it more I invite you to do your own deep dive or talk to other people, but here's how I remember things. Louis has almost never on video explicitly said things about Larry not being real and/or anything negative about fans and their theories (mostly the opposite), up until the last couple years when he obviously decided to make a major change he didn't talk about Freddie much at all let alone saying he was his kid, honestly not that much about Eleanor even; except for in two major interviews with Dan Wootton, each of which lined up with a serious traumatic Tomlinson family event that they managed to keep out of the tabloids until the very end (Jay's illness and Fizzy's struggles with substance abuse). After the fact of those events a lot of small things that didn't make sense at the time came together to look very much like Louis traded those interviews (and those answers) for having his family's private matters kept private. Story trading of this kind is a publicly known real thing that happens, and there were various clues that suggested he was being leaned on about those stories to lend legitimacy to the idea that it was something that happened in these cases. Given what we know about Dan Wootton and how he operates even before the recent flood of information and even more now, I think it's more than likely that he has been holding the threat of outing Louis (as he has done to many other public figures) over his head for over a decade, and has used his family's tragic struggles to get Louis to dance like a fucking puppet for him and I will REJOICE at his downfall when it comes whether it is now or 20 years from now... because someday it will, he has made too many enemies to stay above it forever

[fabuloustrash05]

Me thinking about how Future Bulma never got a chance to meet Vegeta again and see the good man, loving father and devoted husband he has become:

[textfromthelookout]

just read ur entire essay about vegeta and like.. goddamn you just gave me a whole new perspective on that funky little man. i love the way it was written and organized

ALSO ALSO i read this bit and am begging u to expand on this concept it sounds so interesting /gen

Oh you would, would you. I am delighted to oblige.

So. Super Saiyan. A transformation available to Saiyans past certain power thresholds that, while more or less freely accessible after first awakening to it, needs a trigger to become accessible in the first place. Over the course of Z in its many adaptations, we see the first awakenings of Goku, Vegeta, Future Trunks, and Gohan onscreen. Goten, Trunks, and Future Gohan are also Super Saiyans, but we don’t know for sure how that came about. Goten and Trunks in particular are why I say that Super Saiyan (more specifically, the first time you access Super Saiyan) can be read as a trauma response, because there’s no real evidence this is the case on their parts. You can make an argument for them, but in general I choose to believe they’re exceptions to this take, so I won’t be discussing them.

Oh and as for Cabba, Caulifla, and Kale…… they’re literally from an alternate universe. Super Saiyan just has different rules there. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Getting back on track. Goku’s the obvious place to start, so let’s look at him first. In the entirety of Dragon Ball (that I’ve seen), not counting the comedic needle bit in that one episode of GT, Goku has only ever been seen crying three times. Once was his reunion with Grandpa Gohan in early Dragon Ball. Once was in the anime’s version of the Tournament of Power, after Roshi’s near-death incident.

Once was at the beginning of King Piccolo, when he finds Krillin dead. King Piccolo saga is a little infamous for the sudden tonal whiplash—yeah, Tien breaks Yamcha’s leg in the tournament just prior, but they make up about it and it’s not as dire as someone dying. What’s really striking to me about it is Goku’s reaction. He’s more upset than we’ve ever seen him. And he loses worse than we ever see him lose because of it. Sure, in the end everything is put right, but.

But, the thing about trauma is that it makes time go weird. Fast forward about ten years. It’s suddenly happening again. His best friend is dead. He couldn’t do anything to stop it. He doesn’t know that Porunga can revive people who have already died once. As far as Goku knows, Krillin’s gone for good this time. And he watched it happen and watched Freeza laugh about it.

And he reacts essentially the same way. Only this time, he’s orders of magnitude stronger than he was when he was 15, and he has the experience and the wherewithal to control himself somewhat better. Emphasis on somewhat, because it’s very clear that he’s worried about going completely off the deep end in the grips of this power. And he’s right to be! I’m willing to bet money that in Gohan’s whole life, Goku has never pulled the ‘I’m your father, don’t talk back to me’ card on him, and that’s one of the smallest ways this power changes him. When he’s fighting Freeza, he’s a lot more like Vegeta, down to the way he smirks. He’s condescending. He’s brutal. I’ve seen comments to the effect of ‘Freeza’s not fighting Goku anymore—now, Freeza’s fighting Kakarot’ and that’s truly what it feels like.

I could go on, but the particulars of the Namek fight aren’t the important part. The important part is that Goku recognizes how badly that whole thing fucked him up and stays on Yardrat for a year explicitly to get a handle on Super Saiyan before returning home. He knows that if he loses control like that again, there’s a very real possibility he’ll end up hurting someone he cares about, or worse, becoming someone he really doesn’t want to be. (Call it a reach, it definitely is one, but I like to believe Goku picked up Instant Transmission while he was there so he’ll never be too late or too far away to help ever again.)

Vegeta’s case is less… visible? So, much of this is going to be purely my extrapolation. If you take him at his word, Vegeta triggered Super Saiyan with the sheer amount of hatred he felt toward himself for his inadequacy and like. Hello. That’s already a giveaway. I don’t believe he’s outright lying, but I also believe he’s simplifying matters a little. Or a lot. Per My Last Long-Winded Essay, he only gets that far because he leaves Earth entirely for areas uninhabited, which is good for him in some respects and bad for him in others.

The sweet irony of it is that it was Vegeta’s own efforts that locked him out of Super Saiyan. He tried to brute-force his way into it singlemindedly, in the belief that he was simply not strong enough, but Super Saiyan’s trigger is raw, overwhelming emotion. It can be one very clear emotion, or several different ones mixed up, but it’s emotion. It doesn’t answer to logic by its very nature, and frankly, neither does trauma. So Vegeta’s removed all the distractions to his training, yes, but in doing so he’s also removed all the distractions from everything else. Without anybody else around, he doesn’t have anything to get himself out of his own head, so now he’s got a whole universe of space for two and a half decades’ worth of repressed shit to come raging out. Funny how the minute he lets himself feel actual emotions other than the ones he wants everyone to see, the transformation explicitly tied to and powered by emotion rears its head, huh.

Vegeta makes several really dumb decisions once he gets back on Earth, in sharp contrast to the way he handles himself on Namek before he’s face-to-face with Freeza. On Namek, he’s careful to fly under the radar whenever he can, which is why I love the fit he launches into when he realizes Gohan played him, because that’s his control slipping. He’s opportunistic and sneaky and it’s clear he’s doing his damnedest to get what he wants without having to fight people who can kill him. He doesn’t hear the Ginyu Force is coming and rush off to challenge them, he’s like ‘oh shit’ and immediately fucks off elsewhere. I can only make sense of the way he acts during the androids/Cell as a symptom of his need to prove himself.

And make no mistake—it is a need, not a want. The power’s meaningless without people to witness and acknowledge it, the same way the authority of royalty is. His chosen course of action, though, is sort of like painting over rotten wood, if that makes any sense. Letting himself get high off the power, pretending that everything went exactly the way it should have gone from the start, refusing to acknowledge all of his Issues more than passingly. Furthermore, his victory must be complete and unquestionable: that’s why he lets Cell take Android 18. He can’t just… not lose, he has to win. Anything less is anathema to him. You see, he hasn’t yet figured out that he can survive without it.

Okay sorry that got a little in the weeds but I hope you get what I was driving at there. Vegeta’s a mess and talking about him makes me Unstable. Let’s move on.

Of the main four Saiyans, I think Future Trunks’ awakening is the simplest to understand: his trigger is that moment of pure, crushing grief when he finds Gohan dead in the rain. And it’s no wonder. Aside from Gohan and his mother, who does Trunks even talk to in that timeline? We never see him with friends, not until Super. Trunks’ ‘You were everything to me’ in the dub version of the special might be only debatably canon but it’s hardly an exaggeration. Friend. Teacher. Comrade. Brother. Perhaps even a father figure, in some ways. Certainly the only other one of his kind—half-human, half-alien from a long-dead warrior race. There was literally nobody else in the world who could come close to understanding him to the degree that Gohan could have. Gohan dies and Trunks is effectively all alone, the terminarch of one species left to shoulder the fate of another.

It’s a staggering loss for anybody, let alone for a boy of 12 or 13.

Speaking of. Gohan. I think Gohan’s a strange case—not powered by grief or anger, but something different. In the moments before he unlocks Super Saiyan, he’s thinking ‘I have to do it’ before flashing abruptly to all the different times where he was ‘too weak or too scared’ to fight. I personally believe that it’s less determination or ‘the power coming in response to a need’, as Goku puts it, that tips him over the edge. Fear, I think—while not being the whole reason, there’s surely some self-directed anger or disappointment involved—is probably the biggest factor. That’s Gohan’s whole thing—he’s scared of fighting, and to some degree of his own power. If I laid out all the specific examples we’d be here for another thousand words, so I’ll just say that he’s been Through It. We all know this.

This sort of has a continuation in the iconic Super Saiyan 2 transformation against Cell. It’s all on him and it’s not until Cell actually kills someone in front of Gohan that it really twigs that it’s do or die for him. And as much as he’s angry at Cell, the realization that Cell means business, that he really will kill them all? It scares him. Fight or flight takes over. The only real difference is that he chooses fight. The change in how Gohan handles Cell is what really convinces me that emotionally he’s going through something similar to Goku and Vegeta—because it’s almost to the letter exactly what happens with Goku against Freeza. The cruelty, the condescension. I’d argue Gohan leans into the mean demeanor, subconsciously or not, to keep from feeling the fear. And it costs him. But the Gohan discussion is a whole other discussion.

As for Future Gohan, I’m putting a disclaimer here now that none of what I’m about to say is really provable—just really really interesting to think about.

Future Gohan’s life is maybe the worst-case scenario. Like the future timeline sucks specifically for Gohan because he doesn’t like to fight and he has to anyway because what other choice does he have? Let everyone on Earth die without at least trying? He couldn’t, not in good conscience. And it’s not like he’ll have a normal life so long as the androids are around anyway. So in the middle of grieving basically everybody he’s ever known and felt affection for (sans his mother and grandfather, it’s more implied that he’s estranged from them, or at least intentionally distancing himself from them to keep them out of harm’s way), he's also making himself channel anger he hates feeling so he has a shot of even surviving these killers that only exist because of something his father did at least ten years ago. This shouldn’t be his fight, and yet.

Here’s my personal theory. Gohan goes into that final fight with the androids fully intending to die. Not just expecting to, but hoping to. He knows that if he was only barely scraping through those fights with both arms, there’s no way in hell he’ll kill them both when he only has one. He’s not an idiot, but you know what he is? Exhausted. Twelve years of this, being the only resistance to this threat and failing each and every time. He knows what will unlock Super Saiyan for Trunks. He knows there’s someone to carry on the torch and lift the burden. And it’s cruel and selfish of him to put all of that on Trunks and throw himself to the wolves, but it was cruel that he had to carry that all by himself for so long.

He’s fucking tired.

Anyways. That’s my TEDtalk on Super Saiyan. If you read it all the way to the end you’re a real one. Thanks for this ask, you two!

[meteorcare]

"why are you so defensive????? all i did was accuse you of supporting genocide :/"

[rayyzcosmos]

no one hurt them eldest daughters more than their own fathers

[zeb-z]

Cellbit who hates being alone, who’s dreaded ending up alone, finding out he has a sister, someone who has gone to the ends of the earth trying to find him, promising he’ll never be alone again - but he can’t accept it or let himself get near because all he can feel is anger and resentment at the fact that he lost her, his family, in the first place (all he can feel is fear, this terror, rooted somewhere deep in that 13 year old kid with blood on his hands and flesh between his teeth, who’s had everything taken from him before - why would this be any different)

[generation-fucked-nostalgia]

Even as a kid I knew there was something just wrong about A Bad Case of Stripes

It gave me a weird feeling as a kid too, and I think it's a combination of the illustration style and the subject matter.

David Shannon has such a particular, oil painting esque style. Most of his illustrations are very cartoony, like his iconic No David books:

Like look at that! The features and proportions are exaggerated! Full of bright colors! Reminiscent of something a kid might draw.

But then there's A Bad Case of Stripes. In this book Shannon seems to lean much more into the realm of surrealism, and the result is...

...uncanny. I mean look at those faces!!! Nothing like the caricature bulbous head of little David. These guys look like they crawled out of a Renaissance painting! Look at the shading!!! It looks like you could reach out and touch those little fuzzy blue pompoms! Which brings me to my next point...

A Bad Case of Stripes is just... kid-friendly body horror. There's no gore in it, but what this girl goes through is something straight out of a fever induced nightmare.

Just like those creepy realistic renders of what Patrick Star or Homer Simpson would look like in real life (remember those?) It's the realism, the 3d look, the impeccable shading that makes Stripes so damn creepy. In a more cartoonish style, Stripes probably would've been a wacky little kids book. But because of how realistic the illustrations are...

...We wound up with the suppressed birthplace of body horror phobias for generations to come.

[moltensunlight]

Made that other post and then immediately turned around and created a ton of lore for Lorella and I’m a lot happier about her characterization

For Syldyr though, maybe it’s that he doesn’t really have a goal after the events of b/g/3 that’s tripping me up. Cause my other characters have dreams and goals and aspirations, but Syldyr just doesn’t after the events of the game are done. I do have a lot of post-story content for him where he ties up a lot of loose ends surrounding his childhood, his personal traumas with Bhaal, and his connection with his sister, but after that it’s basically just one big ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for what he wants to do. And I mean I guess every time I make a character they’re in the beginning or in the midst of their story rather than the end, so maybe that’s how I’ve got to start looking at this for the sake of his characterization?? Idk

[peanutbutterfiles]

Suffering can provide opportunities for growth, but it is never a gift, it is never deserved, and you never have to be thankful for it.

[sanus-sandra]

,,When you touch one life, you don't just touch one life. You touch every life that that life touches''.

~ The Good Doctor s7e10

[rehamramzi]

CHAOS

Our minds are so chaotic. So lost. Always wondering where to go. What’s the destination? When does the search stop?

The search for something new, something better and something unknown. Sometimes, the minds themselves are unable to comprehend what they’re searching and longing for.

People, thoughts, words, actions are all led astray.

What am I trying to signify? What do I mean when I write this? Why am I imposing this when I myself am lost in the puddle of my own thoughts?

That is because I know there are people who feel the same. There are individuals out there who are going through the same thoughts.

This is the age which feels overwhelming. New people, new opportunities, new experiences and goals. Each day, something new appears, even if you don’t want it to. Such is life.

This is never ending, it’s a loop.

“But it shall get better” Is what we all hope for.

[thespoinkyspunge]

so my dad is a writer. he asked me and my sister to give him slang terms that teens would use casually.

trying to explain what "bro thought he ate" means to a middle aged man was. an experience .

[starlightwanda]

it’s so weird that young teens online used to be all about deep thoughts and inner feelings in early 2010s and earlier. compared to now where we’ve flipped so far over where every response to something that encourages you to think a bit deeper is met with countless comments of “it’s not that deep”, “who cares”, “the world kept spinning”.

granted, most of these posts in 2010s were mostly surface level, but at least people were putting in the effort to see different perspectives. it’s just so bizarre and kinda sad to me that within a few years, we’ve lost a lot of the creativity and have become so apathetic.

[rayyzcosmos]

we always want to move a big city and enjoy our lives but when you actually start living alone, in a new city, yes the thrill is there but one thing that ticks you the most is that, you only have you. from as trivial as to open a can or cook a meal, to as hard as getting the medicine in high fever, YOU ONLY HAVE YOU. noone is coming for your rescue and when that reality settles in, you realise.. how fucking lonely you are in this huge crowd of fake glory and sparkling materialistic world.