#i dont want to ever talk to people again

[bangowang]

still thinking about conversations from months ago where i was unable to put the right words in my mouth… they probably thought i was stupid… i speak english every day and yet i still cant convey what im thinking sometimes

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

wear headphones :)

Transcript:

As much as I'd love to witness more of your prowess, I'd very much like to have that body of yours.

Is that a strap-on?

Machine, I'll cover you in more than blood.

Fuck. *exhale* Shit. Fuck-God! mmmm-ohohoho. fuck. fuck. h-Harder, Machine. Mph! *whimper* Hah... Come on!

End transcription

Sorry for this. I promise this is the worst thing I'll ever post. Unless he somehow manages to do something worse.

I can't really provide the audio sources in a neat way because this is 6 clips stuck together.

[stromblessed]

Mizu's spectacles, and the levels of her disguise

In drafting some more Blue Eye Samurai meta posts, I find myself writing out the comparisons between what Mizu can and cannot hide about herself, and how that affects how she moves through the world.

Like, I get the jokes about Mizu's glasses, if only color contacts had existed back then, etc. etc., and I think (hope) that most viewers don't take the glasses jokes seriously, as in "I don't care about the suspension of disbelief because BES is a cartoon." But I wanted to write these thoughts out anyway without burying them in a text post about something else.

I think the points I'm going to lay out here are viewed very differently by different people, so please feel free to add to this post, reply, or put your thoughts in the tags!

Not only do Mizu's glasses not actually help her that much, there's surely more to Mizu's mixed race appearance than just the color of her eyes.

In my view, this was pointed out in episode 1:

I'm willing to bet most of us were expecting young Taigen to say "blue eyes," not "ROUND eyes."

Obviously this is still about Mizu's eyes, but not even spectacles can hide their shape.

I don't think the show is obligated to point out everything about Mizu's face that isn't quite as Japanese as the people around her expect. Though the creators have said that they specifically designed Mizu - and her clothes - to read both as "white" and as "Japanese," as well as both male and female. I think there's more about Mizu's features that read as "white" than just her eyes.

This is where my own headcanons start entering the picture, but it's my impression that people can just tell that Mizu looks different, whether or not they can put a finger on exactly how.

There's the little girl who looks at Mizu and then hides on the way into Kyoto:

When there's more to your face you'd like to cover up than just your eyes, big hats are a big help!

By the way, most of these examples have to come from the first half of the season, since by the second half, either Mizu is too preoccupied with fighting henchmen, or everyone Mizu is facing knows who she is already, and she therefore has no reason to hide her mixed race identity.

It's worth mentioning that the mere fact that Mizu has to hide multiple aspects of her identity - her mixed race and her sex - results in her having to choose clothes that really, really cover her up, which doesn't win her any favors either:

(Zatoichi reference, anyone?)

If it were as easy as, for example, tying her glasses to her head and wa-lah, nobody would ever know she was half-white - then (1) Mizu would've just done that long ago, and (2) Mizu wouldn't be so on guard and on tenterhooks 100% of the time the way she's depicted in the show, even when her glasses are on.

Her spectacles sure don't help her in the brothel, which is full of observant women who are trying to seduce her, meaning they get good long looks at her:

Mizu never takes her glasses off, but they still send a woman to her who has light eyes, thinking that must be what will interest a blue-eyed man:

No wonder Mizu gets mad after this, lol

So Mizu never takes her spectacles off in the brothel, it's dimly lit inside, and the women can still tell that she has blue eyes. I'm getting the sense that Mizu putting on her spectacles isn't a guarantee that people suddenly can't tell that she looks different.

And yet no one spots that she's female.

Mizu can hide her breasts, can wear her hair in the right style, can hide what's between her legs, can walk and talk and behave like a man - and she's been doing it for almost her entire life, to the point that not only is she very good at it, but the threat of being found out as female is deadly, but isn't presented in the show as omnipresent.

Let me explain.

She threatens Ringo for nearly saying the word "girl" out loud, because while she's constantly ostracized for being mixed race, being a woman traveling without a chaperone, carrying a sword, and disguised as a man will get her killed or flogged or arrested or some combination of these things.

But in addition, it's been drilled into her since she was a child that if she is discovered as female, the combination of her being mixed race and female will identify her as someone extremely specific, someone known to some bad people, and she will be killed:

I think of it as Mizu thinking to herself, "Being found out as mixed race means I'm treated badly. Being found out as mixed race and a woman means I'm dead."

Mizu's hair is cut as a child. But she isn't made to wear a big hat, or cover her eyes somehow, or anything like that. Because hiding her sex is a more successful endeavor than hiding her race.

Ringo finds out she's female by accident, but once Mizu accepts the fact that he won't rat her out, she relaxes pretty early on in the season. Because the threat of being found out as female is mitigated pretty much 99.9%, since Mizu has gotten so good at being a man. And also, because most of the time, people see what they want to see. Even if Mizu's face makes her stand out as "not 100% Japanese," no one in the world of BES looks at Mizu's clothes, her bearing, her sword, hears her voice, and will ever in a million years conclude that she is a woman, because expectations around gender roles in the Edo period were so rigid and so widely enforced.

One detail that proved this to me is after the Four Fangs fight:

Ringo takes off Mizu's clothes so he can stitch her up, then leaves her clothes off even after he's done. He doesn't even throw her cloak over her as a blanket or anything. There's a little a straw (pallet?) as a divider there on the left, but anyone could just peek around it and see Mizu and her chest bindings. (I think it's mostly there as a windbreaker.)

And Taigen is right there, but he doesn't give a shit:

Opinions probably vary hugely on this, but my impression is that because the show doesn't make any kind of deal about Taigen being in the room with Mizu here, my guess is that Mizu isn't in any danger of Taigen thinking she's female. Even when I watched the show for the first time, I assumed that Taigen had seen Mizu out of her clothes here, and that he thought nothing of it.

Eat your heart out, Li Shang (Mulan 1998). I actually do think that this scene is a direct and purposeful side-eye to that movie, lol

There's obviously some nuance to how "severe" being mixed race is compared to how "severe" being a woman is for Mizu:

After all, Swordfather can't bear to listen to Mizu confess to being a woman.

So a Japanese man can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants in BES. A Japanese woman has limited options: marriage, religion, or a brothel. A mixed-race man is an eyesore in this story. A mixed-race woman is a death sentence.

May as well eliminate the female aspect, and do what you can about the mixed-race aspect. Because that's just realistic.

Meaning Mizu can avoid the strictures Edo society places on women. But she can't avoid the repercussions that come with being mixed race. And I truly don't think that it's just because "there's no brown contacts yet."

[streetcorner-2inthemorning]

Thinking about how in season 2, the Doctor asked Rose "How long are you going to stay with me?" He could have asked her that in so many ways. "How long do you want to travel with me?" "When do you want to go home?" But he chose those words specifically. And Rose could have answered in just as many ways. "As long as I live." "As long as you'll have me." But instead she said one word. "Forever."

And the sad thing is that her answer was truer than any other answer she could have given. Because whether she realized it or not she wasn't saying how long they would be together. She was telling him how long she would be with him. As a memory, as a ghost, in his hearts. No matter who the Doctor is or how old they get, somewhere deep inside their soul, Rose will remain. Forever.

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

OH. okay so normally i dont touch discourse with a 20 ft pole, but this has been niggling at my brain tonight and i finally realized why

the people who are mad at qbbh for the memory loss and “dodging consequences” dont understand that he doesnt want to dodge consequences. Like they cant know that, they werent focused on him when he was literally feeding himself to the soul vultures and planning his eventual imprisonment and also. The Many Many Many hints he made towards suicide/sacrifice/Just Fucking Dying.

ccbbh is a subtle roleplayer, he’s been building this shit up for two whole months- it was day FIVE of the eggs going missing that he resolved to do whatever it took (hurting his friends) to get the eggs back. It was day three that he followed in dapper’s footsteps and started feeding himself to the soul vultures (and gaining a Massive headwound beneath his hood in the process- you can only see it if you go on namemc and remove the layers). He’s got impaired judgement. Even the memory issues arent a new thing- i cant remember exactly when they started, but one of the first big moments i remmeber was september 30th where he spent an hour falling into a delusional frenzy searching his base for cameras that he forgot he asked aypierre to plant.

The super murder of purgatory and the memory loss afterwards probably all feels very sudden for people who havent been following his story, but as someone who has been- all of this has been true to character. The only cheap swings he’s made have been combat-based in purgatory, and even the motive for those was built up in rp.

People are calling for consequences, but he has alrwady been experiencing self-inflicted consequences for months. The blue on his usual outfit is blood. This recent memory loss isnt a restart to get away with the atrocities - it is yet another consequence of his egg-protecting complexes and the ways he punishes himself for failing them.

he is NOT a moral character. he’s a demon hiding in plain site. he has eaten people. he has killed people. he understands the cruelty of his actions, and the consequences of them for the loved ones of his victims. but it matters when that harm is being done to his loved ones. he’ll still do it, because he will do anything for the eggs, but it matters, and that means that he has already started the process of self-inflicting those much-demanded consequences

[sallytwo]

Jennifer nearly jumped into the water / and she was tired like no one's ever been tired

[mamawasatesttube]

sorry i need to be a hater for a minute. tim drake: robin is a plague upon this earth because it is late 2024 and i Still can't go into kon tags without seeing that stupid fucking blond bitch. enough

[codacheetah]

It's deeply important to me that Loop kind of sucks

[bugflies00]

in other great news dtumblr/dttwt are mass reporting wilbur quackity ranboo etc fan accounts and threatening mass doxxing 👍 i dont care if its meant to just be some elaborate prank this isnt Fucking normal behaviour . seek help

[sammygender]

being a child is fucking crazy like the first 13ish years of your life are just spent entirely controlled by some random person and it has no bearing on how smart you are or the people around you actually are but you cant like. move 10 meters without someone elses permission.

[artheresy]

An argument over whether or not Dan Heng is Dan Feng seems to have begun getting sparked again in certain parts of the Fandom and it does nothing but hurt my head to no end

Both sides cherrypicking or treating it like a strange situation, making false equivalents. "Yknow governments don't consider people who've lost their memories to be separate people" that's a flawed argument to use in favorite of DH = DF because it's not just he lost his memories. He literally grew up, experienced his own childhood, had a whole identity cultivated based on those experiences and that life and continues to live his own life. To treat the situation like it's just him getting a bit of amnesia is wild to me

But also I hate when people continue to insist he's running from Dan Feng and his past and how he's miserable and shouldn't ever confront the past and deal with it as if his and Blade's whole stories aren't centered around rebirth and karma, paying for your past life's karma. He needed to confront the past to ensure a freer future! He literally has!! And he will continue to do so because he realizes this, DH isn't dumb and he's grown since we first saw him. He understands

But yeah uh I'm so tired

This whole thing feels very Ship of Theseus. What makes the ship what it is, the physical aspects of its planks, its sailing history, or both?

For him, the question is what makes someone who they are? Is it the body that makes them up and any inherent genetic factors (like traits)? Is it their experiences, how they've grown up, and the identity they've developed in that time? Or is it both factors mixed together?

Personally in the case of Dan Heng, I think it's both! Yeah he has a lot of traits from Dan Feng. There's a lot inherently there. But we can't disregard his own experiences and the identity that has formed based on his history and what he's seen.

Again I can't stress this enough... It is a false equivalent to compare him to people who lose their memories or get amnesia, he didn't just lose those memories. He started life from the beginning, a whole different kind of life. And even then, the amnesia topic comes with its own debates. Isn't there a whole other thought experiment regarding someone put to trial who ends up with amnesia and what their verdict should be?

I guess in the end, it's all up to people's own philosophical beliefs after what constitutes a person. My personal belief that DH and DF will always be connect but the separation between them is also meaningful is something based on my own ideas of what consisitutes a person and their individual identity, similar situation with how I see Rukkhadevata and Nahida as connected but still not the same person exactly. At the end of the day again, it's personal beliefs

But what I can't stand and can't stand by, is someone acting all high and mighty like they're perfectly right and everyone else is wrong, especially when they're cherrypicking or not holding all their evidence to the same standard. According to some ppl, apparently it's better in the CN fandom where instead of treating it like "I'm right you're wrong" people have divided themselves into "DF and DH one person" and "DF and DH two people" groups and most importantly of all, they treat both like theories and just keep to their space and tag which they believe when it's relevant. Why can't we just do that? Why can't we follow in their footsteps instead of bringing up this argument every so often with the same tired flaws from both sides?

[scarycranegame]

> be me

> come across fellow selfshipper

> nice.wav

> read their pinned post/carrd/fo list/etc

> see that they're a beefy die enjoyer as well & selfship with characters from there

> NICE.mp4

> look at their dni

> "basic criteria, proship..."

mfw

[autisticlee]

is it strange to genuinely not know what people think of you or how they feel about you? most people seem to just know if someone dislikes them so they can move on, or they just know when someone enjoys their company and is their friends. I have no way of knowing without people explicitly telling me, and people are horrible at doing that.

I don't know what my first impression gives. I don't know what vibes I have or what type of energy I have. I can't tell if someone hates me, doesn't care about me, or genuinely likes me. I can't tell what people's opinions on me are, if they think i'm nice, funny, rude, boring. I don't know if i'm bothering or annoying someone. I don't know if i'm upsetting someone or making them uncomfortable. I don't know if they are comfortable around me. I don't know if they enjoy my presence. I don't know if they are being fake nice and fake friends. I can't tell when someone loses interest in me. I cant tell if someone is trying to be a friend or is just being polite. I don't know if i'm easy to get along with, or difficult to be around. I don't know if my presence fills someome with joy or annoyance. to make it worse, each person thinks and feels different things. so i'll never figure out all of them.

if I try to think about what my presence and existence means to other people, i'm met with a massive blank hole. there's nothing there. I could never answer the questions "my friends/family would descove me as ___" because I genuinely don't know. I can only say what I think of me. unless someone explicitly told me with clear words, i'll never know. i'll usually know how I feel about another person at some point, and I try to tell them if I have the chance. but it's never reciprocated. they never tell me. so my presence in other people's lives is always a blank enigma I can't figure out.

any time i've tried talking about this, I just get a response like "stop worrying and caring about what other people think about you/just be yourself that's all that matters"

that's not the advice you think it is. that's more of what you'd say to someone who beats themselves up because they are worried about people disliking them in general and it fills them with anxiety to be disliked. they usually have low self esteem and think their worth lies in other people liking them. that's not the case here. hate me if you want, I don't care. i'd just rather know upfront before investing my time and energy in you.

this type of "caring what others think" is more about human connection, rather than acceptance....I wonder...is one reason I struggle to connect with people because I can't feel the presence of their feelings towards me? all I know is they are aware of my existing. thats it. try being in a group chat and not knowing if any of them actually like you or secretly hate you, not knowing if they are your friends or just being nice, and not knowing anything about how they feel about you, but you enjoy them very much. I try to share inner feelings with them, but theirs don't reach me. so I wonder, do mine even reach them? somewhere between us, the connection fails to reach. perhaps this is one of the problems i'm having with connecting to others.

if you don't know what people think or feel towards you, how can you connect with them? either you make assumptions, like "I think they hate me" and you could be wrong and push away someone that thinks you're friends, or think "i'm sure they enjoyed talking with me" and they later tell you they were just being nice but never wanted to talk to you becuass you're annoying. but assumptions are dangerous because those reasons, so the only other choice is to assign a blank slate to them and wait for them give you words to write on it. but if they don't use their words, they stay blank. you will never know if you are making a connection or it's staying superficial.

it's selfish to only go off your own feelings towards someone. you could really like someone, want to be friends, want to hang out and chat, but if they don't feel the same way, you just cause them problems and inconvenience. you bother them and ruin their time. i've noticed people often won't be direct about that and get even more upset because I missed it. I thought we shared a vibe or similar energy. but I might have mixed up my feelings with their vibes. if I like someone and enjoy them, not knowing how they feel about me can lead to me wasting my time and energy and also annoying that person unknowingly. it's bad for everyone.

if you can't assume the worse or even the best, you have to assume they feel neutral towards you until told otherwise. the problem is, most people go off of subtle hints, but if you can't see those, you get left out. while neither good nor bad, neutral feelings are still that of strangers. if you can't read people's thoughts and feelings on you, but it's rude to ask or people don't tell you the truth, you end up with many neutral people in your life. many strangers.

is this normal? do other people have an idea of what someone feels about them? or do you all "not care" what they think and go off of how you feel about them instead? is everyone making guesses, or do most people actually know without asking? how do you bond and feel connected if you aren't sure if someone enjoys your presence or if they actually loath it? I truly don't know....all I know is, not knowing makes me feel very disconnected from everyone.

I haven't gotten anyone else to talk about this or seen anyone else talk about it. so there's a good chance it's just a me thing. this type of topic usually gets reduced to "stop caring what people think" and goes nowhere beyond that. but!!! I think it's actually important to be able to know what people think or feel about you!!! at least to an extent. not obsessively caring to the point it becomes a mental disorder like social anxiety. but just enough to at least know if you are actually making a connection with them. just enough to know if you are able to reach them....

[good-beans]

(Milgram self-insert oc masterpost hehe)

Name: For the sake of posting online I’ll call her Rose!

Color: #E7355B [the pink in the art]

Age: I guess she’d be 20 given when Milgram started huh.

Status: Milgram Staff, Machine Technician

Symbols/imagery: ballet/musical theater, science experiments

Song genre: very similar to Mahiru's, something upbeat and extra pop-y

Tentatively she's number 011? She's not really prisoner but she's also not free to come and go, so I'm not actually sure if she'd get a number (Edit: I've decided she'll actually be 012. Staff is given the 01X range, and even though Es doesn't actively have a number they'd be staff member 011, making her 012.)

Story: Since the project is supposed to be realistic/present day, the mv machine would be brand new and unpredictable tech, so they’d want someone keeping up on maintenance and making sure the brain-invasive process won’t cause any harm to the prisoners. Rose was studying abroad in Japan working on some cool neuroscience tech (irl I know nothing about technology or brains but shh) and she stumbled upon some secret tech/plans from Milgram. Long story short, she was dragged into the experiment to make sure things ran smoothly.

Writer's Reasoning: She’s really fun for me to play around with, as she allows me to work with a character who has a tiny bit of pull over Es’ mindset in conversation but not the final decision (aka mirroring the voting system), and someone who is simultaneously trapped in the prison but has a reason to see all the canon content.* I really enjoy the character interactions and dynamics Milgram has set up so far, so it’s been super fun seeing how things change for better and worse when someone not quite aligned with either Milgram/the prisoners is thrown into the mix!

*As much as I love dramatic irony in fiction, it would drive me crazy if I knew every detail of of the vds/mvs but Rose didn't – and every single Milgram character is The Worst Communicator Ever so I couldn’t justify that she’d hear it secondhand from them...

Story roles:

She’s a bit conflicted -- she’s officially Milgram staff and knows she should remain neutral on the prisoners, since she won’t be allowed to interfere with the process/executions. At the same time, her job description is literally “make sure the machine doesn't hurt them and everyone's safe :)” and she's way too emotional to avoid getting hopelessly attached to everyone 😅

I really enjoy the theory that the machine extracts videos based off of priming, so one of Rose’s duties involves listening in on the interrogation and making sure there’s been enough material discussed/not too much time has passed overall (hence the ringing of the bell happening at different lengths for each vd -- That's her ringing it :3). She then watches the mvs along with Es to make sure there are no machine glitches, and know how to calibrate it better for next time.

(IEdit: I've since decided to add in official trial mvs, but before when I wasn't ready to tackle that:) She has to run some tests on the machine to make sure things are calibrated correctly, so she'd extract little things here and there. It gives me the opportunity to think up lyric snippets and recurring symbols for her without worrying about full encompassing music videos.

I'm not afraid to admit she can fall into Mary Sue territory every so often by being everyone's friend, because it's less about "aw everyone likes her" and more about "canon is too painful rn and I need a fix-it tool to take care of these guys and give them hugs and tell them someone forgives them and cares about them and unfortunately these characters wouldn't let anyone less than a friend do that." Rest assured she's definitely not perfect and will fuck everything up on occasion :3

Miscellaneous: Whenever I play around with normal au ideas she's still working on the machine (but in a public, more ethical setting), and she's Mahiru's roommate :) Her character isn't super focused on love, but if I had to pick a cover song it'd be Stickybug II. It's very much my vibe, the lyrics fit well enough (better than most songs, at least lol) and it's one of my favorites out of my limited knowledge of unchosen Deco songs! (Edit, I've actually given her non-deco cover songs hehe)

So yeah, I hope she's not too boring without a cool crime to decipher, but I wanted to share since I was really proud of her! It took a bit of tinkering to find a way to fit her into a perfect secret-third-thing role that runs very smoothly with all of canon, so I was very excited!

[spitblaze]

todays award for 'man what the fuck' goes to reddit for making me see pr0/-ship discourse in goddamn 2023. thought we were past that but i guess not

[perilegs]

being homesick and changing as a person so much the place you grew up in isn't your home anymore is such a core part of ati and upon further inspection i think i was projecting a little