#god the context makes his face so much sadder doesn't it

[breadboylovin]

ok i have to make my own longwinded post about this song because it makes me so incredibly sad and i NEED to get my thoughts out somewhere

just. just the intro alone is crazy. the fact that he is either sobbing or on the verge of tears the whole time. the fact that he's so emotional that he can't even finish some of the lines. the fact that right after saying the last "it's time" he is so overwhelmed that you can literally hear him get out of his chair and leave the room

the sob turning into a laugh that starts verse 1 makes me feel like my heart is being torn to shreds. jesus fucking christ. i personally think "being human" in the context of this song means being emotionally vulnerable with a partner/friend/etc, like letting your "ugly" side show a little bit. with that interpretation, this first lyric of verse 1 is one of the saddest things i've ever heard:

like. man. yeah i've been there. this lyric coupled with the laugh right before REALLY hurts, it feels like he's saying "god, i'm so stupid for getting myself hurt like this, it's actually funny"

that's not the saddest part of the song to me though. i think what's even sadder to me is the bridge:

this bridge really reminds me of verse 3 of fantasyworld, in that it's a point in the song where the singer (the ghost pov character in imdthy/actual quad in scrapyard) makes the objectively wrong decision (suicide in fantasyworld and not "being human" in this song)... and it's also the part of the song where they sound the happiest. i think what makes both of these songs hurt so much (at least for me) is that they know they're making the wrong choice, but they've been hurt so bad that it feels like they've run out of options, and the idea of not having to try anymore becomes a comfort. fantasyworld's "i won't have to suffer anymore if i'm dead" and utttwuh's "no one can hurt me based on my true self if they never see it". for utttwuh in particular, it's heartbreaking hearing him basically say "it was nice while it lasted :-)" over something that doesn't have to end. i need to go lie face down on the floor

i also think it's interesting where quad put this in the mixtape. despite being his "scrapyard" for songs that didn't fit on anything else, it's obviously deliberately sequenced- if it wasn't, then he would've just put them in the order the packs were released in. him putting a song that is (in my interpretation) about deciding to hide your true self right after a song called "being yourself" is not a fucking accident. when i hear them back-to-back i imagine this song as a response to being yourself's chorus, like "i can't be myself, this is why". but obviously there's a whole litany of reasons as to why he could've put them next to each other. also this is admittedly a stretch but the sort of "ramping up" that you hear in the instrumentals of both songs (starting at 2:27 in being yourself and 3:30 in utttwuh) feel really similar and makes them seem connected to me

tl;dr every time i listen to this song i feel like this

[doki-doki-imagines]

you can absolutely refuse!!

but could i ask a hc for kamui where the fem reader has an ed? and maybe he doesn't notice at the beginning?

Before writing your request I’ll write about the funny story behind this ask. I searched for “ed” because I didn’t know what it meant. “Erectile dysfunction” was the first results, at first I was like “AHAHAHA funny, it could come out something funny”, then I read “fem” and I was like “OH? Lol I don’t think we suffer of impotence, let’s search more”. To make it short only at the end of my research I found out that in these context you meant “ed” as “eating disorder”. Thank God I found the right meaning or this request would have been a disaster! 

I don’t know too much about eating disorders, so I hope I got it right and that I won’t hurt the sensitivity of some readers.

WARNING: mention of eating disorder! 

Kamui:

-He is not an idiot, or better, he is not that dull.

-After finishing his fo,od he would notice his partner's unusual behaviors during meals.

-Or how much they look at their body with such a sad expression on their face.

-At first, Kamui won’t say anything, he would just observe his partner.

-Maybe it’s just a bad period, they feel sadder than usual, it is something that happens to everybody.

-His worries spike up to two thousand when he notices that this “bad period” never fades.

-At that point Kamui is quick to act, he wants explanations and there is no way he is gonna move until he finds out what’s wrong.

-It doesn’t matter if they cry, they shout, he won’t move until he finds out the truth.

-From that point, he will take the reins of the situation into his own hands.

-Kamui knows that nothing will change if they don’t want to do it, so the maximum he can do is finding the best doctors around the universe and bring them to his partner.

-He isn’t the best boyfriend, he cares about them, but he doesn’t have patience, so he will often get angry if they don’t want to visit a doctor because “everything is okay” when obviously it isn’t.

-Kamui doesn’t understand why some don’t want to be happy. He really can’t.

-To sum up, Kamui would be a really supportive partner if they want to feel better, in that case, he is the number one boyfriend, his douchebaggery really cool down, but if they don’t want to change and keep feeling bad about themselves….mmh, he won’t act as well as in the first case.

[motherstone]

Noice. Anyways, Trellis has no concept of a home. Anyways, more under the cut

Look... It's kind of implied that Trellis and the elves' situation in Alledia is pretty similar to what colored people experience in real life (albeit a somewhat sanitized version of it because hey, it's for kids). Book 4/5 very much serves as the explicit evidence of this, and you can't really divide that + real life context because Kazu was a fourth generation Japanese-American

Considering time + page constraints, there isn't really much focus on Trellis's experience on suddenly being (albeit self-inflicted) exiled from his home country, surrounded by people of an entirely different culture from his own, who are not only hostile to the fact that he's an elf, but explicitly, (from what they know) the only son of the very leader that's enacting this war in the first place.

God. Can you even imagine the sheer amount of isolation that would bring? He's literally in great potential danger wherever he went, and has likely faced frequent offscreen discrimination. While I don't think Trellis would have fond memories of his home, it was still home, and it was familiar, it's what he, from his perspective, grew up with and understand. It's among people who look like you. And unlike other immigrant elves (Riva, who lived and grew up in Lucien), he doesn't get the privilege of being able to interact with an elven community, and even then, Riva's is a stretch because being a native of your country vs. an immigrant are two different experiences. You literally get ripped away from your life.

But Valcor isn't home either. One of the most consequential effects of abuse is that you don't — you can't feel safe. Even month or years after it's all over. You calculate your thoughts, you calculate what you do, you try very hard to read people so you could discern a pattern and set up a defense to get them off your back, and you could avoid the attention, because attention often means danger. I rarely, if ever, has slept in our original bedroom because one of my worst memories happened in it.

And the thing is, Trellis eventually has to go back to Valcor, where the bulk of his abuse and where most of his abusers and enablers are located. And it's gonna suck. It's gonna be bad. That's where the capital is, that's where he should operate, and it's the very place he has to look over his shoulder every five minutes because even if there is no one out for his life (which is unlikely), old habits die hard. You can't even call the room he sleeps in back then a safe space for Trellis because it's very much bare and impersonal. Eating won't be comfortable, sleeping won't be peaceful, work or leisure won't be pleasant, unless he eventually moves on. But moving on in the environment where that caused all of it? Extremely difficult.

I guess the closest thing he has that's like home is his room in the Luna Moth, but making it feel like one was likely also arduous for him, because most of the crew are either wary or hates his guts during the early weeks he's there. And even then, there was lingering suspicion (Cogsley book 7).

I dunno. It's just if you factor in all these, Trellis is likely a very lonely and long-suffering guy. I'd probably characterize him minimizing his interactions with others to avoid all the hostilities. Augh my thoughts are sadder than this, but I hope you guys get my point

Oh and another thing: while we do see the Elf King being abusive, it's usually enacted by those under his rule (soldiers, Luger). Some explicitly express that they do so with the King's permission, likely with willingness/pleasure or seeing hurting Trellis as an acceptable target because if they can't take out their frustrations against the King, they could at least take it out on the son, and he'd be unable to do anything about it.

The thing is, even if there are others who doesn't want to hurt Trellis, they can't! They'd likely die from disobeying! So they enable it. It's their life against his. And it sucks! Trellis must've known that his situation is fucking awful because of how helpless he is! He's not gonna get help from anyone, because they either hate him or too afraid of the King to do something about it. And don't you guys think that's like a great reason for him to have massive control issues because of how little he has over his own life during its many early years prior to his exile?

May I talk about Trellis angst