#he would have died for saying no. horrific

[nimrochan]

Genuinely, Anon, what do you want from us?

Between 80 years of suicide bombings, cafe bombings, mall bombings, car bombings, bus bombings, plane bombings, school bombings, rocket attacks, shootings, stabbings, kidnappings, car rammings, rape, and infanticide, what do you want from Israelis? From Jews?

You want us to have specific, narrow opinions before you approve of us through little social media postings?

We KNOW that not all Palestinians want us dead! We know that innocent Palestinians have died or been horrifically injured by Israeli strikes! We know that some IDF soldiers did bad or fucked up! That’s a given that we know, or it should be! We don’t want the land and we don’t want innocents to die.

We shouldn’t have to express all this before you give us permission to talk!!!

We know they die in higher numbers than us! Anon, after 11 months straight of Hezbollah and Hamas UNPROVOKED rockets, how many more Israelis have to die before you approve of our country destroying the source of rockets? Because we’ve never sent a rocket first since Israel’s inception. Because through the same breath as “not all Palestinians are bad” so many of you turn around and say “all Israelis are evil.”

How many more Palestinians have to die by Israeli strikes before you say, “maybe Hamas should just stop sending rockets?” Instead of blaming US for others attacking us! And for not dying as much!

It’s very easy to have an opinion on the internet from a rocket-free home, when you don’t have to run into a bomb shelter twice a week, like my family does. It’s easy for you to have an opinion when you’re not bordered by a state run by Jihadist terrorists who want nothing more than you and your entire family dead.

We offered land 5-7 times, Palestinian leaders said No, we want you Jews dead.

We cured Sinwar’s brain cancer while he was in jail for multiple murders. And he wanted us Jews dead.

Israeli hospitals treat Palestinian kids, and sometimes this happens (spoiler: mom wanted her kid to become a terrorist and kill Jews when he grows up, literally after Jews treated his condition SAVING HIS LIFE, for free);

Some of them hate us so much, they’ve raised their kids to martyr themselves against us;

Some of them hate us so much they crossed over the broken border on 10/07 to continue raping and looting our people after Hamas was done, 3000 of whom were noncombatant Gazan civilians.

Some of them hate us so much they celebrated with music and handed out candy while Hamas drove around dead naked bodies on 10/07:

Some of them hate us so much they celebrated the recent release of terrorist who have killed us and raped our women;

Despite all of this and all of decades of antisemitic propaganda seeping into mainstream western culture, the current Israel-Palestine war has the lowest combatant-to-civilian ratio in modern warfare history (1:2, when the average is 1:9 for urban warfare) because the IDF literally goes out of its way to evacuate people from military targets and limit civilian casualty;

Hamas killed 1200 people in one day. With superior weapons, air space, and 100 times the soldiers, the IDF has not killed 1200 Gazans a day for 470 days straight.

(Imagine how much more violent the US and other countries would be after such an ugly terrorist attack.)

And then you sit there, acting like we have no right to grieve for our own losses? Like we have no right to demand safety for our own families? Like antisemitic assaults and vandalism didn’t rise 300% around the globe this past year because PEOPLE. HATE. US?

This isn’t some passing internet activism trend for us, this is our real life.

If you ACTUALLY care about Palestinians, you need to demand Hamas to stop firing rockets from densely populated areas! And to give back all our hostages! You need to demand other countries stop giving them money to build weapons and tunnels!

So I ask again, what do you want from us, oh Great Expert Of The Middle-East Anon? How would YOU fight an impossible evil willing to kill their own to kill yours too?

Why is the burden always on us?

Tell you what, Anon. Maybe next time another country’s literal leaders break over our border and kill as many civilians as humanly possible while putting some babies in ovens and beheading others, cutting open pregnant women, raping women with nails and knives, kidnapping people and dead bodies, and shooting their pets on top of that, we’ll just be nice and not go to war because a bunch of safe, non-Jewish people halfway around the world have opinions to express.

Next time we’ll just give them the land, and it’ll all be peace and rainbow and sunshine farts.

And when Jihadists have our land and kill us all, they will come for you next.

🙄 the AUDACITY of some of you people.

i genuinely used to follow u on ur main. i cant believe the heinous shit youve said on here. oct 7 was an atrocity and NO ONE not a single israeli that day deserved to die. but atp, why not a single post saying that you hurt for palestinians? even if not in the same way. what abt the hostages israel is killing? there is no plan to wipe out hamas, not without wiping out gaza. i cried seeing that little boy who was released from hamas eating food in a hospital, cried for the mothers and fathers begging for their children back, and i will continue to weep yet you can't even seem to shed a single tear for the thousands of dead palestinians.

ok i spent 3 hours writing a long and detailed reply to this and then tumblr fucking crashed and deleted everything and i am so so tired so :/. I did appreciate that you condemned October 7, and I was genuinely glad that you showed care for Israelis and Palestinians both, which is a rarity in my anons, which is why I tried to do a more lengthy reply in good faith. feel free to send me a dm if you want to talk further. cannot type that out again but please check out these:

Whispered in Gaza

Builders of the Middle East

Palestinian Youth for Development < please donate to this, info on how is in the comments. Started by Moumen Al-Natour, who's on the ground directly getting food to other Gazans, despite being tortured and targeted by Hamas. This org is a great way to provide actionable help and aid without Hamas stealing it.

rootsmetals < educator, meticulous sources in captions of her posts. frankly i'd recommend just reading every one of her posts since october 7

basic summary of what I typed: I have made posts about the Palestinian people caught in this war, and it is tragic and horrible and awful. I want nothing more than an end to the fighting, but this will never happen with Hamas in power. I'm also allowed to centre my own experiences and my own grief and fear on my private blog on tumblr.com, and it is deeply unfair to demand that a Jewish person should make more posts about xyz to prove they're compassionate enough, especially when antisemitism is rising at insane rates and the only people posting about it are overwhelmingly Jews.

[strangerthings-haventhappened]

Batman x AFTG pt 2.

continuing on from this post

Neil uses the fact that he is from Gotham to explain away anything the team thinks is weird about him. Why does he have so many scars? Well this one on his ribs is from when he got mugged on his way home from school and the iron burn was from that time with the Riddler. The bullet wound? Did he ever tell you about how he met red hood? The foxes don't know that he is a Wayne and only know that he got adopted by someone he calls B and that he was homeless after his mom died. A lot of the weirdness about him is wayne weird not Gotham weird. The couple of other students who came from Gotham keep trying to tell people that he isn't normal for Gotham but nobody believes them.

When the monsters take him to the club and try to drug him he's very condescendingly like I'm from Gotham do you really think I'd have survived this long if I were that easy to drug? He leaves them there and walks/hitch hikes his way back to campus like in the books but this time in the dark. He gets back and everyone is panicking like Neil you could have died. Neil: why are you so worried there isn't even any real danger here and I had my weapons on me.

When they go on Kathy's show and he insults riko and everyone is like why would you do that he is going to kill you. Neil's response is to say riko is just a nepo baby throwing a tantrum he can't compare to the average Gotham goon much less the rouges. Neil will be fine.

Neil is fine. Seth is not.

After Seth dies Neil is like oh okay i guess I'm taking on the Moriamas. I was going to stay out of it but they just made it my problem. He knows that he could use the bat resources to get the adults arrested but he really wants to take down riko in the way that will hurt him the most. So obviously the foxes need to beat the ravens. He motivates and unites the team the same way he does in the books except this time he has his family helping him take down the rest of the family in the background and getting proof of everything that is happening in the nest.

Unfortunately the monsters go to see nicky's parents the same weekend that there is a major arkham breakout so they don't notice it's a set up in time. Fortunately Neil is a Wayne and he is able to make sure that Andrew is going to a good place where all the doctors have been thoroughly vetted so he doesn't get assaulted again. Neil because he is a martyr still goes to the nest over Christmas so that he can collect more evidence. Does riko know that Neil is Nathaniel or not i don't know that's up to you. What's important is that Neil and Jean bond and that Neil still gets a bit tortured. Dick and Jason are ready to storm the nest and kill everyone when they find out what happened. Neil gets back to palmetto and acts like what happened is fine because he has had worse. Allison is ready to help him with makeup to cover the bruises on his face but Neil tells her he can do it himself because it's not the first time he has had to cover up injuries like this.

The team had already thought that Neil's adopted family was abusive because he doesn't really talk about them much and he has all those scars. After Christmas in the nest they are convinced that they must be. But then some of his siblings show up (Jason and Duke as the ones least likely to be recognized as Wayne's) and they basically smother him and make sure he is taking care of himself. The foxes are so confused. Like sure Jason is weirdly violent about forcing the kid into self care and may have threatened Kevin for being the reason Neil got draged into all of this, but it doesn't seem like either of them would let their brother be abused. So why is Neil so cagey about his family and how does he keep ending up with such horrific injuries? The betting pool is getting intense because nobody can figure out what is going on.

Neil still ends up getting kidnapped just before spring break. He knows that he could probably keep them from taking him if he fought back immediately but he also knows that his teammates will get hurt if he does that so he lets his father's men lead him outside. It's not until the riot separates him from the rest of the foxes that he starts to fight and since he has vigilante training it's more effective than in the books but it's not enough. They end up drugging him which has the upside of meaning Lola doesn't spend the car ride torturing him since he's unconscious but downside is that he can't try to escape before they get to Nathan.

When Neil wakes up he is already in the basement chained to a chair. Nathan does the whole torture thing and Neil is trying to figure out the best way to get out and incapacitat Nathan and also if this justifies braking Bruce's no kill rule. Neil is morally fine with killing Nathan but he also realy doesn't want his real dad to be disappointed in him because Nathan isn't worth that. In the end it doesn't matter what he wants because uncle Stewart show up and kills Nathan for him.

When he is getting questioned by the cops Bruce shows up and demands that they let Neil go see his family and team. The cops try to argue that Bruce has no authority because technically he isn't Neil's dad since he was using a fake identity when he was adopted. It does not go well for the cops Bruce isn't going to let anyone sy that he isn't his kids dad especially not right after one of them has been tortured and needs to be with family.

Neil gets taken to the hotel where his team is waiting and Bruce and all of his siblings follow. Neil explains to the team about being Nathaniel and how he had been running from Nathan since he was ten and everything that came with that. He explains ending up in Gotham after his mom's death and how he ended up being taken in by Bruce when he was 14. He tells them that he kept quiet about being a Wayne because was worried that the media attention that would come with that would lead to Nathan finding him. The team understands but also they are tiny bit upset because none of them won any of the bets about his past or his family.

They go on their team vacation. Jean gets rescued from the ravens and Neil decides it's time to enact the final stage of operation take down riko. He and his family gather all of the evidence that they have on what's been going on in the nest and give it to their favorite reporter(Clark) so that an article revealing all the abuse and the police cover ups and everything gets released just before the championship game starts. Neil has full faith in the teams ability to beat the ravens and he knows that riko will be upset enough about loosing that he won't be able to even try to cover up the article. Neil expects that when riko is asked about the article right after the ravens loose he won't be able to hide his hatred and violence. Neil does not expect riko to try to murder him on national t.v. before he even finds out about the article. Andrew saves him and hey it got the point across so he counts it as a win.

The Moriamas are scrambling trying to do damage control knowing that they won't he able to use the ravens as a front for their illegal activity anymore. They try to use the whole Kevin, Jean, and Neil are Moriama property thing to regain control and Neil tells icharo that he was able to do this much damage to the family's business in only a few months and that he won't stop until either they let him Kevin and Jean go completely or he has destroyed their entire operation and the family has nothing left. Icharo tries to call Neil's bluff at first but Neil reminds him there is a reason their organization has never even tried to touch Gotham. In the end all three boys end up free to heal and live their lives completely free of mafia ties. Neil tells Kevin and Jean that if they have any issues in the future to let him know and he can call someone to deal with it.

The foxes + Jean all end the series a little bit happier and a lot more scared of Neil than they originally did, but it works out.

[k1d1c4rus]

thinking about how armand was turned bc he was dying from being stabbed by a scorned grown man who was in love with him. he nearly died from rejecting unwanted advances. its such a key explicit detail of his origin that teaches him yet again that what he wants is utterly unimportant and even deadly in the face of survival. everything about his character is informed by the fact that he adapts entirely to the situation he is forced into because that's the only way he can survive. he adopts the satanic doctrine for 200 years not because he believes in it but because he knows that is the only way he'll survive and as soon as lestat arrives he knows he can abandon it. for half a millenium he believes he can't get what he wants and also survive, he has to choose one or the other. God.

[baphometsss]

if i see one more post about how solas/mythal/elgar'nan had a weird love triangle thing going on i'm gonna scream

[chonnyjashh]

There's a toxic person who genuinely emotionally tortured me for a couple weeks that I strongly, strongly dislike who draws super peak dialtown fanart as well as dsaf fanart, and has a parody account on twt, which is how he met me. I'm worried now that we dont talk he'll move onto somebody else and do the same. I genuinely live in fear of this happening. This person also has over 8k subs on Youtube because of fucking course things couldn't be easy lmao.

I would so totally out who this person is but considering he threatened to kill himself multiple times and outright had attempts a few times whilst in contact with me, I literally can't. It sucks but like. Yeah.

Just... Know that one day you'll come across a really, really good Randy x Gingi fanart, and you'll never even know it was made by somebody who ruined my emotional state to the point I honestly don't think I'll be able to recover 💀

.... Ugh. Damn it. He's popular and well liked and I'm a complete nobody so regardless of the fact I screenshotted literally everything, it... kinda just doesn't matter, does it. Idk. The only reason I'm hesitating until I know for sure people care is bc I don't wanna do this unless I know for certain it'll have SOME effect other than just making him emotionally destroy me again/possibly harm himself. I want to be heard and I don't think him having an audience is safe in the slightest considering he severely emotionally abused a pretty badly disabled person (me) to the point I had seizures and almost ended myself too, but... like... it's not worth me dying over it if nobody will even hear me.

[dullahandyke]

Sidenote I was never her biggest fan but whenever I see someone talk abt dahlia hawthorne as if she's some evil seductress who breaks hearts for fun I feel the intense urge to hit them with hammers. Fucker can you read????

[swdgf]

certain qidian authors shld start a side hustle writing dnmei actually 🙂‍↕️

[sinecosinewheel]

i finished reading the 489 page transformers essay just now and i watched the first three movies over the last couple days. cinematic garbage. but it compels me

[nomaishuttle]

the two rules of sweeney todd cast recordjngs is 1. theyll never be better than 2012 london cast talk to the hand 2. theyll never be worse than 2005 broadway cast talk to the hand

[mooniyuta]

i don’t think a book has ever broken me like mdzs did with the nightless city arc. the grim hopelessness and dread i felt watching everyone turn against wei wuxian just because he defended the wens. the absolute heartbreak of yanli’s death. the utter shock of jin zixuan’s accidental death when everything went wrong. like when wwx asked the wen siblings what to do and broke down crying i genuinely never cried so much with a character before

[absolutedestinyapocalypsse]

i love how as you read more into tlt, the ninth house seems more and more normal. Like if i'm at an immoral evil government competition, and i use human fat as soap and animate skeletons to do menial labor, i'm gonna LOSE if my competition is the third house, represented by ianthe "who HASN'T eaten human flesh and fucked a corpse" tridentarius. My weird skeleton thing seems normal, suddenly. Well-adjusted, even. It's recycling. They're using resources in a sustainable way. Normal and regular and productive for a post-climate change apocalypse universe.

People go on and on about how Muir drops you into gtn hearing from the person who knows the least about whats happening, and does not hand hold the reader through the crazy shit that occurs, and that's all true. It truly is a crazy writing decision to make your first pov character come from the universe's equivalent of amish fundamentalists. But the reader is actually done a huge favor being dropped into the ninth house first, because we already understand that space is cold and what catholic nuns are, and what goths look like, and what lesbians are. Very little time is wasted in the first chunk of gtn ripping hair out of your head wondering what the fuck is going on, because for all of its strangeness, the ninth house is already the most familiar thing we're gonna get.

Because THEN we learn that this whole universe's medieval chivalry system is designed to groom people from CHILDREN to not only be exploited and used as human batteries for necromancers, but to LIKE it. to wax poetic about it. to confuse it for love, to write fucking academic papers about it! Then we learn about planet flipping, an act so horrific and violent it turns the planet's soul into a massive vengeful monster capable of killing GOD. Like what do you MEAN the animals "change"? Is this why noodle has six legs? I would MUCH prefer to wear skeleton makeup and repent forever if the alternative was to witness my family dog grow TWO EXTRA LIMBS because the planet he lived on fucking died. Suddenly, living in the asscrack of a planet where no light gets in seems like a sweet deal when the whole solar system is lit by a sun that MAKES YOU GO CRAZY. The ninth house's WORST sin, killing 200 babies to make Harrow, a waste of resources and an act so terrible it haunts Harrow for the entire span of her life, is like a BLIP compared to the death count Jod's empire. God even hears about it and he's like, no big deal! The cohort probably kills that amount of people in a DAY.

And its ALSO tragic because you realize that all of this trauma and abuse that Gideon goes through is not really because of the ninth house at all. It's really just an individual skill issue that she wasn't treated with compassion. Nobody hated her because she's jesus or a bomb, nobody even KNOWS she's a bomb. It's just Priamhark and Pelleamena being deeply guilty and scared people that motivates her treatment, and absolutely nothing else.

They did something bad, and they know it, and Gideon survived it, and they can't kill her to cover it up, and that's IT. They killed themselves for pride, because they were afraid of the consequences of their actions (both the baby killing and Harrow opening the tomb) coming back to bite them. You can argue this is the catholicism of it all, and I wouldn't say you're wrong, but compared to the cavalier system, where exploitation is in the very lining of the house's institutions, the ninth house is really removed from the space empire's blood factory. This is compared to the fourth house where they have tons of children to be CANNON FODDER to join the cohort at fucking 14, compared to the eight house uncle nephew fuckery, even the fifth house which actually does seems nice to live on but also seems to have the fourth house in some sort of fucked up political bear hug??? (maybe the fourth house has so many kids in order to fight the fifth's battles? which is EXACTLY what jod's whole empire is about; politely stirring your tea and acting nice while you destroy everything) compared to ALL OF THAT, the cruelty that Gideon faces is really more a bug of the ninth's system than a feature.

There's nothing baked into the culture and everyday life of the ninth house that necessitated that cruelty; in fact, for such a pragmatic and resource-scarce place, it's WEIRD that a strong able-bodied young person was treated like a waste of space and resources. It could just have easily not happened, if Harrow's parents had been different people. Maybe they were products of their environment, but so was Harrow, and she values Gideon's life SO MUCH that she'd literally rather carve out parts of her own brain than exploit her. Gideon grows up knowing really NOTHING about cavaliers, so remote from the horrors of the empire that she develops an idea of what the cohort is from porn magazines. And in a lot of ways, that upbringing was desolate and terrible, and in a lot of other ways it literally DID NOT HAVE TO BE.

Gideon's MAIN THING is that she wants to be useful, to be needed, to be loved and it SUCKS that she couldn't even get it in the one place where she was actually an invaluable resource, where the death empire had the weakest reach. Gideon can't even blame her lack of love on the fucked up chivalry system like everyone else can because it JUST WASNT REALLY RELEVENT!?!?! This is like if i rolled up to the trauma competition and everyone else was raised in a nuclear warzone by wolves or something and i grew up in like, the suburbs and was raised by teachers and i somehow STILL WON. truly what the fuck guys.

[woodlandscab1n]

Man. I'm glad I have Bishop as a character, they were a character that I used to beat the shit out of myself for what I considered my "bad traits", a complete extreme of this side I didn't wanna touch even with a stick.

But then I did. And, it's just...wild? I guess, I never thought I would even come close to redeeming this character, or making him any more sympathetic than what I established as the base. And it ended up happening anyways.

Through out the writing of their character I put myself the rule of never, ever change his core of being...because I wanted to make them irredeemable, by them never wanting to truly change, they'll never be redeemed but, I was wrong.

Redeeming him wasn't about changing his core, about making him more human-like, making him love and feel like other people do, completely overhauling his way of thinking. It was just... accepting it, and that doesn't mean you're doomed to be a bad person and hurt people just because of how, what you are.

I still have a long way to go to fully accepting those parts of myself, as well as seeing it on other ppl, but this character has given me a perspective I honestly didn't even know I needed, or even know it was a possibility for me.

[threewaywithdelusion]

I wish more people liked Canon Nicky. Like yeah, he sucks a little bit, but that’s the point.

All the Foxes suck a little bit. They’re not perfect victims, they use slurs, they do bad things to each other. Seth’s a selfish homophobic asshole, but he saves Allison. Kevin’s a one-track-minded alcoholic who hears his teammate died and wonders how the team will keep playing, but he also gives Andrew a chance before anyone else does. Wymack’s lucky they didn’t have cancel culture in 2006, because some of the things he says are horrifically not PC. But he’s not some perfect savior of a coach. He’s a guy with a terrible past who decided to make it his life’s mission to help troubled kids. And if he gets it wrong sometime, it’s because absolutely no one in these books is 100% mentally well and they’re definitely not coming across mental health tips on TikTok or reading books about how to do better.

Nicky is terrible at boundaries and consent. It’s probably a trauma response to his upbringing and conversion therapy, but that doesn’t make it okay. He makes creepy comments all the time and he assaults Neil in Columbia.

I’m not excusing any of that. But Nicky isn’t only that, and that’s why he’s interesting.

He’s the one who texts Neil a million times a day, until Neil stops looking frightened every time his phone beeps. He gave up Erik and Germany to raise two angry teenagers who never reciprocated his affection. He had a relatively normal upbringing (religious trauma aside) and then got thrown into dealing with the twins and having to navigate 1) Andrew locking Aaron in the bathroom to get clean (is he being a good or bad guardian by letting that happen?) 2) working two jobs to pay for the house 3) Andrew being arrested 4) Andrew being put on meds that made him manic and unreliable 5) Aaron’s homophobia 6) Andrew’s violent threats and so much more.

When exactly did he find out Andrew had killed Tilda? Which of the twins told him? And did he ever wonder if Andrew would kill his newest guardian if Nicky messed up?

Nicky is incredibly selfless, brave, and patient. And he’s also pushy, kinda creepy, and incapable of understanding boundaries. He’s both. And I wish the fandom wouldn’t sanitise him, because I think that’s part of the point.

[charafansmile]

Asriel could easily be like the god of familial love, of hopes and dreams, partnerships (friendships, companionship, puppy love if you must) and children/youth and then when he's flowey he could be the god of betrayal and spite, ala nemesis and eris. Still rooted in the ideas of love but twisted into what happens when love turns sour. Still a god of youth but also a god of lost time. Actually making him a minor god of time would also really work to tie into his character. Him being Pandora and the box at the same time would be interesting.

Transcript: ooh are we talking about reapertale? okay time to bring flowey into it because i was actually thinking about him recently—

first off, unrelated tangent, i think they did chara pretty decently? like, they used to be kind, but they were betrayed by monsterkind, etc etc. i like that, it honestly brings up what i think is a tragically unexplored part of their character. they hate monsterkind in some way for being so nice, and i think that’s why we can drive them to support genocide so quickly. i do think they shouldn’t have been evil right off the bat, of course, but hey! they’re a mythological figure. that stuff happens a lot in mythology, and more importantly it works in tangent to undertale.

flowey, though. god. amnesia does not suit him. they stripped him of character and expected him to still be flowey. it’s illogical. really reflects the early fandom’s perception of flowey and asriel as entirely different people. like being a flower makes you want to kill people or something. smh.

sorry i turned the topic to flowey but like. does he have to be the embodiment of despair. him being obsessed with chara is in-character i guess but he does it in such an out-of-character way. honestly that’s a big problem with every au! they make him a sweet little guy without actually addressing the roots of his canon problems. i mean, that or they make him the living embodiment of evil. they gave him the chara treatment, seriously.

he has so many layers though. it’s hard to fit him into one category. personally i’d make him some kind of pandora’s box thing. like an embodiment of the world’s pestilences where he used to be a closed box. helps highlight that he didn’t change, the box was always there, dying just opened it.

that might not make any sense. but man i’m tired of people making flowey chara’s lapdog. when in genocide he clearly sees himself as a partner in crime, at least until the end. (and then he defies them and ruins the whole killing humanity thing. so.) and don’t even get me started on pacifist. he tries to kill you repeatedly because he thinks you’re chara.

flowey is driven by (platonic!!) love. but it’s not the soft love you see on greeting cards or tv. it’s angry love. aggressive love. he’d do anything for the person he loves. even kill them.

honestly, maybe flowey would work better as a god of love. (yes i headcanon him as aroace but still.) “asriel” is soft, caring love. hugs and kisses and warm blankets and all that. “flowey” is the kind of love that slaps you in the face to get you up in the morning. he’s possessive, angry, passionate.

WHOO this got long.

[onthecrescentofthehill]

it’s funny when ppl talk about the harpy omelet scene and say things like “why did he do all of that? he didn’t need to. JUST doing that for laios???” (seen these nearly verbatim on posts i’ve made.)

i don’t really get how you can hear his backstory & not understand that every decision he makes within the dungeon is fueled by a profound trauma borne out of horrific, structural negligence. of course he would do fucking anything to enact his plan? if he computes “getting in laios’s favor = proxy control of the dungeon” and he has very limited time to do so, he will jump at the chance. he’s already DIED for this.

kabru has maybe the clearest possible motivation that a character can have. he has a Protagonists Motivation, and it guides him forward in a very coherent way in the beginning of the story. things get more complicated in later acts that directly address how that motivation manifests itself/gets contradicted, bc ryoko kui is great at exploring this, but it’s still extremely present.

and as a labru fan i strongly dislike the implication i see from some ppl that his interest in laios is mostly personal or romantic (posts that range from pure joke to actual ship meta.) even when taking the “confession” at face value, where i think he was telling the truth, there’s still a lot more to it than that. i think at first kabru does see laios as a means to an end in a way that’s impersonal, partly because he tends to keep everyone in his life at arms length. but that “end” (preventing history from repeating itself) is something foundational to his psyche, and we should consider that potential sense of safety getting mixed in with his warring fascination/apprehension towards laios. he’s drawn to him for visceral reasons, and his stated motivations are so intertwined with his sense of self that untangling this push-pull is much more interesting than boilerplate Yearning, to me.

it’s just confusing when any meta or basic discussion of kabru diminishes the weight utaya has on his inner world and i’m really surprised every time i see it? like i understand that different types of meta will put other lenses on things intentionally, and in most cases i think it’s an interesting tool to work with. but it’s a massive disservice to his character to put the most foundational experience of his life on the back burner ESPECIALLY when it’s in favor of shipping. dissecting character relationships, romantic or otherwise, is at its best when you have their full personhood in mind!!

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.