#esp with the afterwards

[yamatonikado]

translators dropped an english translated version of okaeri, alice's final afterword. if you're not familair with the work and it's author, Okaeri Alice, or Welcome Back, Alice, is a seven volume manga written by Oshimi Shuzo. It follows three middle-school students: Yohei, Mitani, and Kei. All three were childhood friends, that grew apart due their own circumstances. The story starts really starts when they enter highschool and Kei moves back into town, only he's a bit different from before...

Okaeri Alice is one of Oshimi's more controversial works. It's one i've blogged about before, albeit briefly, but i have been following and reading each update as it's come out. I would not recommend it for the faint of heart or for people unfamiliar with shuzo's works.

One of the most talked about parts of this work in particular, are the volumes afterwords, where Oshimi talks about Okaeri Alice and how it relates to him as a person and author. They get pretty serious and pretty explicit. They're very emotionally charged afterwords, and this last one was no exception.

i originally wanted to post this in the chapter forums but i decided not to, mainly because the forums are full of all people and this has turned into an essay, not fit for forum posting. i'll post it under a read more. especially because i mainly wrote it for myself lol

i think i get whats going on here. he's upset that he's always viewed/been expected to view women a certain way as dictated by gender roles and expectations. ever since he was a young he's been viewing women as a sort of male fantasy. growing up he's seen women as society expects them to be, cute, clean, prim, proper, and most of all innocent/naive. 

however, as he's grown older, it seems like he's realized that women/girls aren't like how they're portrayed in sexual media--at all. as we can see from all his works, the women he writes about are messy, they're a bit mean, manipulative, and they're selfish. he knows that women still have desires and their own personhoods. because women are still people. just like men.

(if you struggle to understand this, look at how mitani is portrayed in the earlier chapters as yohei uses her as "material". pay attention to how she's presented in his sexual fantasy. now compare that to how she's drawn when he actually is in a relationship with her, when he tries to kiss her in the park he says "i need to move on as a man!" and she looks at him filled with disgust. she rejects him completely. especially when compared to kei-----wait now im just rereading with brainworms uhm anyways----in later chapters when she does have intercourse with him, it deviates so much from his first fantasies with her, that he's been pursuing under this notion that he needs to prove himself as a man, it throws him off and he's unable to perform).

and he struggles to wrap his head around that. a lot media, not just Japanese in origin, portray female characters as a sort of light in the darkness. a good woman will open her arms and accept her man for all he is and fix him. she will be his emotional support, follow his every command, and give unto him everything he demands of her. 

so he's struggling to understand why that is. why are girls reduced to such a sanitized image when they're human too and have the same desires, wants, and needs? and why can't men be seen or portrayed as women are--pure, clean, submissive, innocent. (in fact i don't even think many female oriented narratives portray men that same way, not unless they're being satirical). 

he wants to be loved the way a girl would love him. if he could become a girl, then he wants to be a girl that would love someone like him. but he knows a girl like that doesn't exist, because women like that often don't exist. he knows that even if he did become a girl, he could never be the sort of girl he idolizes because that sort of person doesn't exist at all, especially if they view the world in such a sexual way as he does. his sexual history would follow him, and that sexual history is less close to his ideal, and closer to the kind of person he despises and wants to be away from. 

i think he's just upset that there's no way for him to become what it is he aspires to be. im sure that there's a lot more too it, but i also think labelling it as tran-ness is oversimplifying it. he's really trying to find the answers in gender and sexuality, but it'll be hard to do that since he's trying to understand something very societal, patriarchal, personal, and above all--stigmatized. 

also to everybody saying he needs therapy where is he supposed to go for therapy? as if therapists in the united states aren't shoddy in quality as is you think he'll be able to find a therapist that'll easily agree to help him work through his issues with sexuality, masculinity, gender/dysphoria, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation without signing him into a ward? even if he does have a therapist. that's a lot of work to get done, and it'll take more than a year to address all that.

[m4gp13]

Why did Rick do this to us?

Seriously, he went, "Yeah I'm gonna establish a history between two important characters on opposing sides of a conflict in which one of them clearly has negative feelings about the other. and then never bring it up again 🤪" BITCH COME BACK HERE!!!

There was so much that could have been going on between these two! I was talking to @nakamurastorrington about this on twt the other day.

Like, Annabeth's fatal flaw is hubris and Ethan's mother is the physical embodiment of the punishment for hubris, they are diametrically opposed! They have their shared history at camp but very different experiences with the system where Annabeth was pretty much immediately claimed and became the head councillor of her own cabin from a very young age, establishing her as a respected veteran at camp. Meanwhile, Ethan was shoved into a corner of someone else's cabin because he wasn't worth his own cabin, and so he just faded into the background. Also, Their relationship with Luke! They both had Luke as a big brother figure. Annabeth saw him as genuine family and Ethan would have looked up to him as his brother while in the Hermes cabin. Then Luke left and Annabeth still held out hope for him and refused to believe he'd ever truly passed the point of no return even while everyone constantly told her she was wrong, and Ethan, despite spending a year working for Kronos and seeing the worst of the results of Luke's actions, still believed he was in there fighting Kronos. Not to mention, THEIR MOTHERS??!?!!?!

There could have been such interesting conflict between them! Annabeth should have gotten to talk to Ethan during the parley. If anyone should have gotten to snap at Ethan about his mother, it should have been her because he would have snapped back so hard!

[kamaluhkhan]

read below the cut if you wanna know more about each option ;))

HER CANINE TEETH IN THE SIDE OF MY NECK (werewolf!vi x vampire slayer!reader)

slightly canon-divergent....basically set during pit fighter!vi arc except in this world we've got vampires! and werewolves!!!! (can you tell i've been rewatching buffy the vampire slayer and first kill???)

so reader is also a pit fighter -- they literally meet for the first time when they're competing underground. the next morning vi wakes up with a wicked hangover in some stranger's apartment and that stranger is you! and your dog! vi doesn't realize this yet but you saved her drunk ass from a vampire anyways, you invite vi to train with you and some other girls, which she denies at first but vi's eventually like,, tired of the whole lone wolf thing but still very scared to let people in after what happened with caitlyn,, so she joins somewhat reluctantly and you become friends ("whoever wins the most fights that night picks up the tab for the bar.") and vi maybe has a crush on you but she tries very hard to keep her identity a secret.....while you're also trying to keep the whole vampire slayer thing under wraps....perhaps unsuccessfully, but i don't want to spoil it hehe. i will however share this moodboard thing that i spent a bunch of time at work making

IS IT CASUAL NOW? (college fwb!vi x reader)

SO this is probably my most self-indulgent fic oops - it's kinda inspired by leighton's arc in sex lives of college girls season 1! basically, vi's on the varsity soccer team and after a series of unfortunate events (anger issues, bad breakup) is put on academic probation and has to volunteer at the women's centre or else she'd get kicked off of the team. she goes for her first shift and she's like...that president looks awfully familiar?? and reader's like, yeah, i work at that bar you keep starting fights in....so off to a great start. reader and vi don't really get along at first bc obviously vi doesn't wanna be there and reader is just not having it so there's TENSION. but then vi's like ,, oh this actually isn't so bad??? these ppl are kinda cool??? and maybe wait is reader kinda hot??? and reader's like....maybe this angry butch lesbian has a soft heart (vi is the definition of looks like she could kill you and she COULD but is also a huge cinnamon roll). eventually turns into a friends with benefits situation. (yeah, we bang on the couch.....yeah, she's knee deep in the passenger seat eating me out vibes). but then there are like moments where it's like....are we dating? like, reader will run into vi at the library where she's checking out feminist literature and reader's like...since when are you into this stuff? turns out vi is taking a gender studies elective so she can impress reader; vi starts showering at reader's place after practice bc she just really loves smelling like reader's shampoo, and reader keeps her fridge stocked with those energy drinks vi is obsessed with; reader wears vi's jersey to one of her games, meets her family, and they insist that reader join them for dinner to celebrate (i fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner!!! your parents at the table, you wonder why i'm bitter!!!); one night vi is worried when reader doesn't show up for her shift at work so checks in on reader and turns out she's having really bad period cramps and is like super stressed so vi stays in bed with her watching movies until she falls asleep and then cleans up her apartment (vi is such an acts of service person!!!); they both hate doing laundry so they do it together on a sunday morning after spending all of saturday night fucking. something about being happy doing laundry and taxes with someone (iykyk). spoiler alert, it'll end with the centre in dire need of funding so reader's scrambling to save it and one day reader sees vi talking to her ex and gets super jealous but then vi's like ,, babe ,, i was trying to convince caitlyn to get her family to donate and it WORKED !!! so ,, yeah ,, reader is convinced vi's the woman she'll one day make her wife (and she's more than happy to get down on her knees for her oop). the centre is saved and reader and vi confess their feelings for each other and live happily ever after <3

GLORY AND GORE (the hunger games au)

basically sapphic katniss x peeta. vi and reader are picked for the 74th annual hunger games ,, they do the whole fake relationship for the camera thing that eventually turns into them needing each other to survive in the arena...and then after they're like oh shit not only can i not survive without you, i don't wanna survive without you.

LIKE SOME MISPLACED JOAN OF ARC (spiderverse au)

vi is spider-gwen spider-woman! she's in college, plays drums in a band, has an internship at some lab and spends a lot of her time saving the city but there's the lingering guilt that she couldn't save you (canon event: losing their first love). one day she's fighting some villian and....a portal opens? and she's transported into another universe?? the only place she knows of for sure is her apartment and when she knocks on the door, her heart almost stops -- because you're the one who opens it. turns out in this universe, you're spider-woman, dealing with some demons of your own (two canon events rolled into one: losing their first love and not being able to save the life of a police captain....and your vi was an enforcer). basically you have to work together to get vi back home and maybe fall for each other along the way even though you both really really don't wanna go through losing the other and it seems like it's inevitable. but, fuck the universe, right?

[isalabells]

„Es ist auch interessant beim Fußball, es ist immer noch ein Spiel. Stehste da einmal richtig, machst das Tor. Das sind genau diese Momente. Das Glück muss auf deiner Seite sein, da muss einfach so viel zusammenlaufen. [...] Es gibt auch Momente, wo ich sag, ‚Okay, wär vielleicht zu einem anderen Zeitpunkt besser gewesen.' Wenn ich ein bisschen älter gewesen wär, noch ein bisschen mehr Erfahrung. Aber im Nachgang– im Finale zu sein und zu spielen, ich mein, was gibt's Besseres für einen Fußballer?“

2014 FIFA World Cup Final | Maracanã Stadium | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 13 July 2014

Germany 1 – 0 Argentina

Götze 113'

[dogrocks]

thinking about how in long shadows, right before the gathering patrol discovers ashfur's body (which is in hollyleaf's pov, by the way) hollyleaf is actively suppressing that she had just murdered him

i know it's likely because his death is meant to be a murder mystery and the reader is not supposed to know who the killer is right away, but still. having this scene in hollyleaf's pov was a choice. hollyleaf had literally just killed him at this point and is trying to not think about it. she doesn't think about her next move or how long she can keep this a secret. she's literally an unreliable narrator here.

[faunandfloraas]

I am fairly over the continued "let's make seungmin the butt of the joke" thing. Not bc he's a poor little baby or something, he purposely courts that attention /sometimes/ but because it's frequently unfunny and like. Been done way too many times? Like when those moments organically happen, they can be good fun but lately it's just forced and I'm like Oh this again?

[akai-anna]

@livmadart The Bug-Saga Continues

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

[labyrinthofcrystals]

MOVIE SHADOW DOESNT KNOW PLUTO ISN'T A PLANET ANYMORE

[deus-ex-arcana]

Following the canonization status of jayvik at Riot in the months after Arcane has been like

[mamawasatesttube]

tim told kon about the cloning but like did cassie ever actually tell him about the cult? i don't think anyone ever told him about the cult. i need to reread 52 and refresh myself on how absolutely batshit that was but like cassie? can we talk about the cult. cassie i think you need to tell someone about the cult. does kon know about the cult? cassie i think kon should probably know about the cult

[wardensantoineandevka]

I'm not saying that Veilguard was perfectly written and could not have been written better—because there's so many places it could've been written better or more carefully or more elegantly—but some of the rewrites some of you are proposing are truly dumb as shit and often blatantly misunderstanding what the actual text is portraying or ignoring basic tenets of storytelling

[variousqueerthings]

watched east of eden and i did enjoy it, but i felt like something was missing and apparently the book takes place over a much longer timespan. the movie worked for me on the basis of james dean's acting, because cal's struggle feels so real through him

but when i stop to think about it, the other characters feel too underdeveloped for their parts of the drama to make it fit together for me. the "good" brother, the brother's girlfriend who transfers her affections to him, the holier-than-thou father, the mother who ran away and is now running a brothel... i think they all just needed more time

the entire narrative as a rewrite of cain and abel has got Stuff to it, but i suppose it's in the limitation of the characters who never come alive for me so much. i did find the wwi anti-german sentiment happening within the story and the lack of the so-called good son's understanding of what prejudice really is and that in some ways he manifests it himself

enjoyed myself though. but certainly there was a dearth, for me, a sort of shallowness to it in the end, even though i liked the brushes of characterisation we were given

[frankiebirds]

anyway: last thing about the fox.

I think the order in which the team reacts to frank fielding* hurting himself is pretty interesting.

Gideon and Morgan are first, simply because they're the ones closest.

Hotch and Elle are next, with Elle a little behind...

But when it comes to actually restraining Frank, Elle, who is still new and less experienced, lingers behind. If you watch the scene carefully, she actually backs away, too.

And finally, Reid stands at the very back. He enters the room but doesn't go any further, and the camera pans down to show him rocking back and forth on his feet, like he can't decide if he wants to run into or out of the room. I think it's possible that Diana self-harmed at some point in the past (although granted, the self-harm in this scene is a different "type") and he may have been having some unpleasant memories.

*the brother of one of the victims, who goes to her house despite her husband not wanting him there, is seen by her through the window, and thinks she mouths "go away" at him when she actually mouths "help me"

[xxplastic-cubexx]

still thinking of my fave marvel rivals interaction where my jeff and i were hanging on the point after knocking out the other team and lil bro sprays the space in front of me and emotes and we both said thank you at the same time like i fear im never forgetting that ever

[balteus]

k im gonna be honest i like hades 2 so far but like. from what i understand there are two female love interests for melinoe and both of them are terribly fucking rude to her or dismissive which. man. maybe im not far enough into the game maybe there's character development but "lol you're weak like your dead mom" the character isn't growing on me that much

[emmawintertowne]

femme wheelchair diy :)

i used these stickers (which i realised were from a dropshipper only after purchasing, thank you fatigue brain. oh well. hope they still inspire <3)