“-and that's why I ain't allowed in Pier Point no more!” Boothill throws his head back and cackles, somehow completely comfortable on the bare floor of the archives. He's the very picture of ease, his arms behind his head, his legs bent and crossed.
Dan Heng barely looks up from his notebook, not much surprises him anymore after the first few tales of lawless exploits. “So they really have that many laws and restrictions there.”
“And prob’ly a few more now that I've been through there! Heck, ya think they named any after me? I'm hopin’ so.” There's so much smug cockiness seeping through his voice Dan Heng could bottle it.
Silence settles in, stretches out. Dan Heng doodles pensive circles in the corner of his page.
He shouldn't ask. It's a private matter. It's none of his business. He of all people should know-
Something pokes his shoe, and when he looks up, Boothill has stretched one arm up to tap metallic fingertips against his foot. “Ain't like ya to hesitate.” With his head tipped back on the tiles and gazing at him upside down, Boothill's hair is out of his face and spooling out all over the floor, offering a rare view of his right side. His right eye is sealed over with a pitch-black patch, stark against his skin. Dan Heng wonders what he looks like behind it. “C'mon, then, out with it. Spill the beans, brother, just say it.”
“What does ‘Boothill’ mean?”
The man blinks at him, the crosshair in his cybernetic left eye flickering. Dan Heng shifts, smooths out his long coat. “I tried to look it up once. It's not in any database as a name...other than your wanted posters.” There's a thread beginning to fray near the hem, he should sew it up. “I couldn't find it anywhere.”
He nearly takes it back, but- “Heh, ya that curious about me, darlin’?”
Dan Heng quickly levels his face into the most impassive, nonplussed expression he can muster, but Boothill has already turned away, head pillowed on his arms and face once again turned to the ceiling.
“But nah, ya wouldn't. Hah, like they'd allow any record of the language, fudgeheads.” One arm sweeps around blindly until it finds the edge of Boothill's hat, sets it back where it belongs on his head. Dan Heng shuffles around, scoots a little closer, but the brim is pulled too low to see his eyes anymore.
“It's ‘cause it's not a name. It's a noun.” All that's visible of his face is a sharp grin, pulled too tight at the edges.
“It's my people's word for a grave.”
Dan Heng's pencil stops.
“It's the kinda grave fer someone who died with their boots on. If ya catch my drift there.” Boothill's foot starts to bounce. “There was a war, and it got reeeeeal intense, yup. Folks started droppin’ like flies, ‘n’ there was bodies faster'n what we could bury ‘em.” A cooling fan kicks on somewhere. Dan Heng is pretty sure it's not any of the Express equipment.
“We lost some real good people there, real good. Mighty shame.” His hidden Vidyadhara ears detect a quiet metallic click, a whir, pressurized gas. Boothill's next words waft steam from his angry circuits into the air. “When I left, I decided to leave my name there, too. Didn't feel right otherwise. The life I lead now is a whole ‘nother existence.” And then Boothill turns his head, raises his hat, and Dan Heng suddenly feels pinned dead center, caught in that crosshair.
“Ya know what I mean, don'tcha?”
Dan Heng swallows.
Does Boothill know? Who he is and who came before him? There had been that moment in the Penacony Grand Theater, after he activated the Jade Abacus… Dan Heng had tried to shoo him out, keep him from seeing anything, but Boothill has the astounding ability to turn up exactly wherever people are trying to keep him away from.
If he did see, does he actually understand it? Does he know what a High Elder is? Does he know about the sedition of Imbibitor Lunae, the transmutation arcanum, everything Dan Feng had done and Dan Heng was punished for?
He doesn't want to explain it all. Not now. Possibly not ever, truth be told.
And it's not the same as Boothill leaving behind his old identity when whatever event happened that caused him to leave home. Not really. But…
But so far, Boothill has slid so easily into Dan Heng’s routine. His presence never feels like an intrusion. He's already figured out what he can push and when to back down. And even Dan Heng finds himself able to roll with whatever punches Boothill throws with baffling ease. They share too much in their methods and ideologies, and sometimes Dan Heng knows what Boothill will do seemingly before even Boothill himself knows.
“...Tell me about Talia and the Nailscrap Town.” Boothill must know he's avoiding the topic. He must. But the man just throws his head back and cackles, melting easily back into what they had been doing before, as he speaks fondly of a planet that Dan Heng has never visited.
Not today. But.
Dan Heng inches just a little closer, just enough to nudge his foot against a metal leg. Boothill doesn't pull away.
Maybe someday.
67 notes
·
View notes
part of the process of learning to take responsibility for your actions is learning what things you can't take responsibility for. not just to protect you (e.g., from your own feelings of guilt; from people taking advantage of your willingness to take responsibility by attributing blame to you unfairly), but because to take responsibility is not just to say "it was my fault and i'm sorry" but to actually do things (to make amends and to mitigate and prevent future harm), and if you don't understand what to take responsibility for, you aren't going to understand how to take responsibility.
there is a lot that's outside of your control. people put a lot of emphasis on forgiveness in a way that i think is missing the point. being forgiven is not my priority. my priority is that i am doing what it is in my power to do. i can't control how that's received. i'd like it to be received well; i'm doing what i'm doing because i want to repair harm that i have caused to another person, so it matters to me if what i'm doing is actually achieving that goal or not. but there's only so much that i can do to achieve that goal, and if i'm doing it, and the harm is not repaired, that's okay. that's beyond my control. i have to make my peace with the fact that i've caused harm to another person that is not resolved, because i'm doing what i can and i have to continue living on this earth, and in continuing to live i'm going to be living with the fact of that unresolved harm. the most important thing at that point is for me to use my knowledge of the specific ways in which my actions harmed that person to change my behavior going forward to avoid causing that harm again, to the extent that that's within my power.
it doesn't do anyone - you or the people you have harmed - any good for you to assign responsibility to yourself for things that you can't control. if you're going to attempt the active work of repair and change you have to first identify what it's possible to repair and change. you can't actually repair a relationship all by yourself! you can only change your own behavior. you can only offer amends to the other person that they may or may not find sufficient. not to go all serenity prayer on you but guilt for the sake of guilt just makes you feel way more powerful than you actually are (because you think that everything happened because of you) and at the same time completely incapable of exercising your power (because you don't understand what your power actually is). to effect change you have to focus on the things you can actually change. focusing on the things you can't change is a problem not just because it's taking your focus away from the things you can change, but because it means you don't actually understand the sphere of your own influence. you're operating under what is essentially a self-centered worldview in which you could make everything better, you could prevent all harm, if only you were trying harder, if only you were a better person. who does that serve? it doesn't reflect reality. it makes you hate yourself and feel sorry for yourself at the same time, and it doesn't actually improve things for the people you harmed. it doesn't help keep you from harming people in the future, because you don't understand the territory and the limits of the causal relationship between your actions and other people's reactions to them.
you can only do what you can do. what you can't do, you can't do, and you can't take responsibility for doing, either in the past or present. after you realize that there is harm to repair the next step in the process of repair is to ask yourself what your responsibility is for the past and what your agency is going forward. everything else will follow from that. you simply cannot skip that step.
24 notes
·
View notes
this is a pass to do a couple things:
finish the manga!!! u can do it so u can follow all the other blogs without getting blindsided by a spoiler
do the ship ask thingy for amoneki :]
Gahh I'm trying !! I'm so busy with school and life stuff so it's hard to squeeze in time to read but I'm trying! I'm getting through volumes very slowly but hey, I'll get there ! Just. Well. There's 16 volumes so. Okay it might take a bit orz
For now I'll just be in my little fandom limbo corner I suppose orz, as for the ask thingy:
when I started shipping it if I did: Several months ago, probably a few months short of a year? It's a bit complicated, Basically I decided to rewatch the anime (because my original exposure to tg was. the anime :') ) and vaguely remembered that I really liked Amon (honestly the encounter at Kanou's Lab/Cochlea was one of the scenes I remembered the most), and after rewatching and seeing Amon and Kaneki's interactions they piqued my interest again. Then I got into the manga and. Yeah that interest turned into insanity and now i'm here
my thoughts: Well I have a 119-slide 15K+-word google slideshow for starters. But I'm taking that to my grave so I guess I gotta condense that somehow. On one hand I feel like everything needs to be said about these two to the point that there's too much to talk about but also nothing needs to be said at the same time. They parallel each other in just about every way possible, it's impossible to ignore the ways that they foil each other. They also have had irreversible effects on the others' character. Kaneki finds resolve in Amon's words ('the world is wrong'), and turns to them at pivotal moments (when he leaves Anteiku, Kaneki's own mantra is also basically a derivative of Amon's, wishing to take out the "bad/wrong" things in the world, and he basically takes them to his grave, "The world is wrong", Amon's own words, being his opening to his final dialogue in the last chapter of the original series)
Similarily Amon is just haunted by Kaneki. Like. In general. He thinks about him constantly (even under more mundane circumstances, in the novels he gets reminded of Kaneki just by staring out a window because it reminded him of the Aogiri raid. lmao). Kaneki is basically the catalyst to his character development, and Amon is constantly bothered by his presence/existence, and even comes to recognize how they always encounter each other at important moments. Amon is so haunted by This Guy (creature) it's both a little funny but also makes me very insane. He's basically being a failure of a ghoul investigator, and it's even more ironic, given his hatred of himself for being raised by and potentially caring about a ghoul (also he's catholic, something something religious guilt), yet he seems to have a lot of faith in Kaneki, even to a faulty degree (I'd daresay it's almost to the point where he puts Kaneki on a bit of a pedestal/idolizes him to an extent. I have a whole other ramble about Just that on the self-rb'ed half of this post. Like I'm sorry but Amon definitely fell hard for this guy I'll die on this hill and I'm going to poke fun at him endlessly for it, he could've done so much better, he starts off the manga hating ghouls with a passion and his mentor's disdain for ghouls runs ten times as deep but nope now he's chasing after the dangerous somewhat unhinged (/affectionate) half kakuja guy and it's not even to fight/kill him like okay, sure.) They have affected each other in irreversible ways. They reflect each other so much even if they don't know it. They just want to sit down and have a conversation. They didn't get to. And instead They Killed Each Other (okay not really but it was very close and they absolutely could, not that they want that) ((It's also partially Kaneki's fault for losing control of himself and he feels awful for that (sidenote but any scenario with Centineki and Amon make me lose my mind))). They're also married by first-encounter marriage bite, apparently. I think we should talk about that more that's kinda?? Donato approves btw
What makes me happy about them: Everything that makes me miserable about them makes me simultaneously happy about them because I am an Angst Guy but honestly just how much they clearly respect each other. While they're not allowed to understand each other because of their circumstances they still very much Want to. They recognize that they probably share a lot of views and could really have a meaningful conversation with each other, and it really shows, even if they're fighting. Amon again has a surprising amount of trust in Kaneki (not assuming he's fighting for Aogiri when he saw him during the ward 11 battle, having faith in Kaneki as a person even if he just saw him potentially killing his superior and being presented with the possibility that maybe he was just being fooled all along, when he's nearly dying at Kaneki's own hands but says he won't die because that would make Kaneki a murderer, having faith still that he hasn't turned into one). They recognize that they're equals (well technically they're not, obviously Kaneki is much stronger objectively, being a ghoul, and a kakuja at that), but they treat each other as equals and that's what really matters. I just think it's a very neat dynamic and their roundabout way of caring about each other despite their positions makes me happy :)
What makes me sad about them: I was gonna put images but then I quickly realized that I'd basically be pasting almost all of chapter 133-134 just uh. The fact that Kaneki really lost control of himself and the parallel with him biting Amon's shoulder escalates to him cutting off his entire fucking arm, the way that Amon's first thought in regards to that is simply that Kaneki is strong, how he doesn't reprimand him for it whatsoever (also Amon's blow pretty much takes out the entire area of where Kaneki's kakuhou should be, which is a detail I find Extremely Interesting and I think it should genuinely be talked about more). This fucking line that happened literally the panel before all of that despite their mutual wishes for the other to simply Not Die:
Amoneki divorce. Absolutely life ruining :thumbsup:
(Also just. Again Amon Please. This guy bit your shoulder (probably gave Amon rabies honestly) and almost ate one of your colleagues; when he loses control of himself for the second time you just tell him to take a break, and now he's cut off your whole damn arm and you're Still not complaining and are instead praising him by calling him strong. I just. Yeah that's Not Normal. It's kind of impressive, really /derogatory)
Oh yeah also the fight at Kanou's lab also kills me and takes over my brain constantly but I wouldn't classify that as making me sad I would classify that as making me lose my mind, laugh hysterically and start climbing up and clawing at the walls (like Centineki, actually)
things done in fanfic that annoys me: Maybe I'm just extremely picky but I feel like people tend to fumble Amon's characterization a lot. It's kind of a fine line, and Amon has a lot of conflicting feelings as is, so I get it, but I'm especially bothered when Amon is written as way too harsh. When he's first introduced he has a strong hatred for ghouls, and it's not like that just goes away, but when he's written as especially harsh or even cruel towards Kaneki, especially if it's just because for him being a ghoul it feels like it kind of defeats the point, as Kaneki is supposed to be the reason why Amon starts changing his mind. When Amon sees him for the second time he doesn't think about fighting him at all, even that early on he decides he wants to talk instead, 'cause He's Different. I don't see this kind of characterization too often but I don't really vibe with it at all when I do (Also this is definitely just a me-thing but I wish there was more angst in the tag. Which is ironic considering these guys are surprisingly normal most of the time and have so much potential to be actually Happy but uh *vague hand gestures*, hurt-comfort would also be a decent compromise)
things I look for in fanfic: I love pre-:re fics that explore the complicated-ness of their dynamic. I'm really fond of fics where they kind of dance around each other in a sense, they won't just straight up completely directly interact because that's Still a bit dangerous but they see each other in passing, maybe Kaneki watches over Amon sometimes, etc. Also you probably saw this coming a mile away but yeah religious references mean instant bonus points from me. I could go into some (too much) detail but. uh. stares down at my feet look I'm normal I swear
Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Saying Amonhaise is definitely cheating but I'm not really invested in any other Amon ships. I'm not particularly against any I'm just neutral. As for Kaneki, like I mentioned in a previous post, I see potential with Etoken, and it's pretty hard to go wrong with Hidekane, though neither drive me to insanity like these two do at the moment
My happily ever after for them: Let them finally officiate their marriage ghsfdljbhf
who is the big spoon/little spoon: Well that's pretty easy huh. Kaneki small spoon he is a Little Guy just let him feel comfortable and secure y'know? Kaneki is probably someone who runs very cold and Amon is very warm so it works out :) If he's super tired he very carefully (and cautiously) wraps his kagune around Amon he will now be Trapped there until Kaneki wants to get out of bed (good luck)
what is their favorite non-sexual activity: Well I would say that Kaneki loves cooking for Amon probably. He makes food at home and tries to make new sweets following recipe books. It's a bit of a mess because y'know, he's a ghoul, and at first Amon tries to hide that, unfortunately, his previous experience with cooking does Not, in fact, hide the fact that he cannot taste or smell human food, but eventually Kaneki is able to get a hang of it (with Amon's help) and it's very nice :) That's what I would say but. well. Amon is Also a Ghoul now so that doesn't really work :')
20 notes
·
View notes