#if his arc was presented as one of self-actualization

[meiusoo-twistedtwst]

NRC Faces the Sorting Hat…

Hear me out this is ranked by a serious Potterhead who has DELVED into the associations of each house so allow me to share my thoughts on which Hogwarts house the NRC guys would possibly be sorted into —>

TREY & Cater seem like master manipulators, especially if all those overthrowing Riddle to reclaim Cater’s title as dorm leader theories are true (haven’t read Cater’s ch. 7 arc I rlly need to😭)

Azul & Vil are literally so ambitious, like Azul tried to erase his own past to theoretically present himself as a whole new, blank-slate person with absolutely no embarrassments or flaws while Vil’s determination drove him to insanity as he cunningly used Neige’s trust to try to POISON him

I think Ruggie & Jamil are very self-explanatory as they’re both ambitious & cunning, scheming guys. I chose Slytherin over Hufflepuff for Ruggie as although he’s extremely hardworking & relatively patient (he cleans up after Leona, not a job for the impatient) but he’s not actually all that loyal I don’t think. He only bonded with & followed after Leona because it would benefit him though… (now as I’m writing this I’m starting to think he might actually be a Hufflepuff-)

Silver & Sebek both showed lots of Hufflepuff traits but ultimately the events of Ch.7 pushed me to place them in Gryffindor instead. Just imagine how difficult it would be to turn your sword against the guy you’ve known & loved your whole life? The guy you had once sworn absolute obedience & loyalty to? They’re prime reinforcers as to why Neville Longbottom was in Gryffindor (it takes bravery to stand up against your own friends)

Ace & Deuce: Same thing as above but to a less extreme extent. Arguably, if the Ace is a traitor theories are true then he’d be a strong runner up for Slytherin with how cunning he is. I was hesitant with Deuce since he might be a Hufflepuff, but his background as a delinquent & his willingness to rebel against authority (cough cough Riddle cough) when he could have just stayed completely loyal like Trey (who may have just been plotting Riddle’s fall from grace then) made me put him in Gryffindor

Floyd was between Slytherin & Gryffindor but I don’t think he’s actually all that cunning? Like he knows he’s intimidating & uses that to his advantage but otherwise he doesn’t actively use detailed plots the same way Jade or Azul do? Plus, he’s just not afraid of anything; very brave

Epel was brave for being rebellious & rejecting peer pressure for the most part- definitely hard to say no when your dorm leader is a literal celebrity & accomplished student. Jack is also very self explanatory with how he’s not afraid to stand apart from the crowd (seen in Ch. 2) & he was never so blindly loyal to Leona to the point where he’d ignore or not notice his flaws

+He wasn’t on the Tier maker but I’d put Grim in Gryffindor with how recklessly brave he is (literally so chaotic & constantly defies authority)

I know what you’re all thinking but hear me out… Crowley is a bad (or at least morally grey) Hufflepuff. He preaches love, graciousness, & kindness- which are all dominantly Hufflepuff ideals, & people always overlook this but you don’t actually have to be a nice person to be in Hufflepuff. Every house is capable of producing dark wizards (there was an evil Hufflepuff in Hogwarts Legacy !) so even all those suspicions that Crowley might be downright evil could still make him a Hufflepuff, just not the stereotypical one. If he 100% idealizes kindness, even if he doesn’t positively reinforce it, then he’s still a Hufflepuff (though he is admittedly really Slytherin too)

Kalim is self-explanatory but I did kinda consider Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. Kalim is brave to keep Jamil around even after he tried to defame him & he’s strong enough to keep a genuine smile on his face despite being betrayed & facing near death situations all his life. Now I know Kalim isn’t book smart but he has really high emotional intelligence, he knows a lot more than he lets on, as shown by some of the inquisitive things he says to others

my house :p

Crewel’s got that academically smart (alchemy must be hard) & creative mix (his passion for fashion), I feel like Sam values insight & knowledge mainly to increase sales but just valuing those things makes him a Ravenclaw, & I just put Trein in Ravenclaw because he likes history & different cultures (although he could be a Hufflepuff with his loyalty, dunno though since that’s really just him being a good husband)

Lilia could be a Hufflepuff, with his love & loyalty to the Draconia royal family, but his vast wisdom & eccentricity made me put him in Ravenclaw instead, though I am kinda hesitant about it. With Leona, I know he’d totally be a Slytherin with how cunning he is & although he’s very ambitious, he’s so lazy it’s counterproductive to his desires. But I put him in Ravenclaw because he’s actually so smart & very knowledgeable, wise even

The Shroud brothers honestly could have been in Hufflepuff with their family loyalty, but Idia’s attitude pushed him into Ravenclaw instead. He also loves delving deep into his passions & interests, using knowledge to his advantage. Same with Ortho since he’s a walking encyclopedia & also takes full advantage of his constant access to data banks & the whole internet. The Shrouds are almost like eternal, nonstop knowledge gatherers, especially with how their family literally devotes themselves to researching overblot

Rook is pretty self-explanatory with his intense curiosity & his pursuit for beauty could also be interpreted as a pursuit for diversifying one’s knowledge of the world so one could embrace all the beauty within different cultures & such. But he is also very Hufflepuff with how nice & insanely loyal he is… (so loyal to all he almost isn’t loyal….)

Jade could be a Slytherin, but I don’t think he’s as ambitious as Azul? He uses cunning much more often but otherwise, his genuine fascination with mushrooms & human life places him in Ravenclaw as at his core, Jade’s really into research & gaining more knowledge of a world on land that he was once a stranger to

I was thinking Slytherin could be a good fit for Malleus but I’m hesitant for some reason ..??

Don’t know much about Vargas’s personality & I wanted to avoid just tossing him in Gryffindor to mindlessly follow the jock=Gryffindor stereotype

I know many would put Riddle in Ravenclaw, & at surface level, I would do the same. But to be in Ravenclaw you actually have to believe knowledge is power…& Riddle doesn’t actually love constantly pursuing knowledge. Even if he thinks academics are important, he would have never been studying so diligently if it wasn’t for his mother’s influence and control over his childhood….

•°. *࿐ •°. *࿐ •°. *࿐

Where would you sort everyone?

🎄Merry Christmas everyone~

[heavencasteel420]

Does Steve have the best redemption arc in TV, or does he simply have the loudest?

[ilynpilled]

what do u think is jaime’s biggest flaw

oh he has a bunch

Biggest one: his fear of truly confronting things. his cowardice (the brave knight is deconstructed)

Arrogance is a given. His obsession with perception and his ego. His destructive dissociative tendencies and forced detachment. His self delusion and cynicism he uses to enable acts that his conscience knows are wrong. He also often falls into the trap of cynicism when he expects quick results and does not get them. When he makes choices to become better and people keep dehumanizing him and expect the worst from him he gets super frustrated and petty (less so atp, just compare his behavior to Brienne’s reaction when he gives her Oathkeeper and she misreads his intensions vs the gate not being opened for him in ADwD) His misogynistic and classist blindspots. Him weighing his values wrong even when his conscience is screaming at him (multiple examples of this, e.g Jeyne Poole: “her eyes were sad and wary”, “then why do you sound so frightened?”: vows from so many vows speech in conflict: obey your father vs protect the innocent. He obviously chooses wrong. George was telling us the way he changed by the end of ASoS is not enough he is not where he needs to be yet) His desperate want to make his “so many vows” compromise instead of making the correct choice and drawing the hard line he already did at 17. His desire to become Goldenhand the Just (just a mess frankly, gold tends to have negative symbolism in his story, his goldenhand also is associated with violence and is his desperate attempt to recreate his old self, his phantom fingers — again, has to be addressed in a dream.) While we are here also his need for his subconscious to literally repeatedly slap sense into him (his dreams addressing things he refuses to consciously address because it would hurt to do so). His tendency to repeat his father’s dogma when he is viscerally aware that that man is the worst man oat (Lannister sibling parallels! uwu!), unwittingly contradicting it in every way, then trying again. His desire to pursue glory as well as honor (and whatever they mean in the subtext) when the symbolism is very clearly established that the two cannot be achieved simultaneously for him, he cannot ride two horses at once. It might be that both get turn down at the end in some form. The honor related to the KG, and the glory related to duty to house Lannister. I think that conflict is getting picked apart right now with the choice he makes in ADwD to abandon his position/hunting down the brotherhood any kind of glory tying to house lannister pursuit etc to follow an injured and suspicious Brienne alone (mind you he was also riding Honor in that chapter, ntm the half moon). I think both honor and glory are very abstract and are rooted in some form in his desire for love as well (honor and glory paid their parts but in the end it was for cersei is something he reflects on) but “the things we do for love” has to be something not destructive and prejudiced. He is disillusioned by both honor and glory, especially after aerys. “What is honor?” A horse. Like deep down he knows. His arc in AFfC-ADwD was about about taking apart and looking at all of these flaws imo, put him in a spot to make his choice in adwd. and all that matters are choices. He is also an asshole.

[crossbackpoke-check]

re last answer: please don't stop, being very unhinged about these two pretty white boys is helping distract me from the sharks losing streak rn so bring it on

https://www.tumblr.com/bondedpairs/764566430180147200?source=share

(sideblog woes but there's the link for you) anyway in the vid they talk about going over to each other's houses to have dinner and things and while that is a delicious example of their codependence i love it bc through an rpf lens there is definitely some old man ******* going on. they can have the dilfs and each other.

(someone else mentioned kept boys which i could write an essay on but i fear being Perceived™️)

anyway if you have anything to add to this please do, if not ignore me and i will hide under a rock until the stress-related insanity has worn off and i am a functioning member of society once more 😂

- @bondedpairs

ty for the video!!! and please, WRITE THE KEPT BOYS ESSAYYYY i promise i will read it with my hands over my eyes if you don’t want to be perceived. do it scared!! do it anyway!! we’ll all love you for it!!!

[asakamasanobu]

can nakamura please bring back ritsu’s father issues …….. please i’m asking for a friend

[bijoumikhawal]

I won't lie the jokes about how Dukat was actually calling Garak a homophobic slur when he said "tailor" like that are disquieting for a few reasons

[artbyblastweave]

A few years ago, there was a thread on r/asksciencefiction where someone was fishing for a superhero story with an inverted Omni-Man dynamic, or a setting where Homelander's initial presentation is played straight- a setting where the Superman figure actually is the paragon of morality he's initially presented as, but no other superhero is- a situation where you've got one really competent true-blue hero standing head-and-shoulders in power above what's otherwise a complete nest of vipers.

Someone in the thread floated My Hero Academia; while I haven't read it, my understanding is that that's not really an accurate read of what's going on with Stain's neurosis about All-Might being the only "real hero," that the point of that arc is that Stain's got an insane and unreasonable standard and that taking an endorsement deal, while bad, isn't actually grounds for execution. My own contribution to the thread was Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility, where a major part of the backstory involved the faux Justice-League's Superman analogue having a little accident because he's the only one who thought they were morally obligated to go public with the secret life-extending macguffin that the rest of the team is using to enforce comic-book time on themselves and their loved ones; while only a couple members of the team are directly in on it, the rest are conveniently incurious. And Jupiter's Legacy gets tantalizingly close to this- The Utopian, a well-meaning stick-in-the-mud, ultimately gets blindsided and couped by his scheming brother who creates a superhero junta staffed by a Kingdom-Come-style glut of third-gen superheroes, who are framed as fundamentally self-interested because only came onto the scene after most of the situations you legitimately need a superhero to handle have been neutralized. (The rub, of course, is that the comic is also highly critical of the Utopian's intellectually incurious self-righteously 'apolitical' approach to superheroism- if for no other reason than that it left him in a position to get blindsided by a coup!) While Jupiter's Legacy gets the closest, all three of these are only loosely orbiting around the spirit of the original idea, and there's something really interesting there- particularly if the Superman figure isn't hopelessly naive in the same way as Utopian. Because first of all, if you're Metaman or Amazingman or whatever brand-name alias the writer goes with, and you really earnestly mean it, and you put together a team of all the other most powerful heroes on earth in order to pool your resources, and then with dawning horror you gradually begin to realize that everyone in the room besides yourself is a fascist or a con artist or abuser or any other variant of a kid with a magnifying glass eyeing that anthill called Earth- What the hell is your next move?

Do you just call the whole thing off? Can you trust that they'll actually go home if you call the whole thing off? I mean you've put the idea in their heads, are you sure that they aren't going to, like, start the Crime Syndicate in your absence? Do you stick around to try and enact containment, see if getting all of these people on a team makes them easier to keep on a leash? But that's functionally going to make you their enabler pretty quickly, right? Overlooking "should you kill them-" can you kill them? You're stronger than any individual one of them- are you stronger than all of them? The first time one of them really crosses a line in a way you can't ignore- will that be a one-on-one fight? Are they the kind of people capable of putting two-and-two together and pre-emptively ganging up on you if you push back too hard? Do you just start trying to get them killed, or keep them at each other's throats so they can't coordinate anything really nasty? Can you squeeze any positive moral utility out of them, or is that just a way to justify not doing the hard work of taking them down? There've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that Superman in specific would be a good person, and there've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that superheroes in general would be good people. Something to be done, I think, with questioning the default assumption that everyone Superman becomes professionally close to would be good, and to explore how he'd handle it if they weren't.

[aroarachnid]

"but if it were me, I'd really wanna be, a giant woman"

stevens relationship with gender is so fascinating to me. his entire diamond days arc is a clear trans allegory, but more specifically reads as a transmasc allegory, what with everyone reffering to him as "rose" or "pink" and feminine terms despite his repeated insistence that he is *steven*. and yet he never actually corrects anyone when they use she/her. he only corrects his name. this was pointed out in the tags of that one post youve probably seen:

this post doesnt show it, but steven is delighted when blue said this. obviously you can read this as steven being glad that shes making an effort, even if incorrect, and is just choosing to let the wrong pronouns slide. but its never explicitly stated. and like i said, he never corrects she/her, he only corrects his name. although it is interesting that, by the time the movie rolls around, the diamonds have switched to he/him.

its also interesting to mention how excited he was to put on pink diamonds outfit, and also how quickly he took it off once he got the chance.

of course stevens relationship with his mother and his identity issues are going to play a big part in how he percieves his gender, given that for a large chunk of the show he actually belived they were the same person, at least to some extent. ("im my mom and my sister?! what kind of magical destiny is this?!). how would you define your "agab" when half your family is telling you that you are a centuries old alien called rose/pink who has no sex and used she/her? not to mention all of the various gender identities and pronouns his fusions have.

thats not even getting started on how the gems percieve gender, which is to say, they generally don't. gems are sexless beings and their society has no concept of gender, although after spending a long time on earth im sure the crystal gems have a better understanding (i actually could talk about the gems relation to human gender a lot more but ill save that for another time). for steven, a child raised by gems for a good chunk of his childhood- who use feminine terms as a default-i can see how that would lead to some interesting perceptions on gender presentation.

thats not even getting into stevens gender noncomformity. and while gender presentation doesnt necessarily have anything to do with your gender identity, its interesting to note and i just think its really cool that a male protagonist is so unapologetically feminine

also i could talk for days about connie and stevens knight/princess dynamic, and how it parallels pearl and roses, but in a healthier way that nips the whole "obssesive self sacrifice" thing in the (rose) bud as soon as steven notices it. but then id have to talk about pearl and then wed be here all day lol

so yeah, stevens relationship with gender fascinates me. I mean, does the concept of "cisgender" even apply in the way we usually mean it to, given stevens unique experiences?

[invinciblerodent]

This is going to be very ranty and disjointed, probably borderline incomprehensible post, but with the "return" of Dragon Age Discourse (and really, did it ever go anywhere?) and me repeatedly seeing the complaints and dismissals of DA:I as a "chosen one"-type of a narrative, I just.... I keep finding myself thinking about the relationship of truth and lies within the game.

Throughout the course of DA:I, the idea of a malleable, flexible personal identity, and a painful confrontation with an uncomfortable truth replacing a soothing falsehood, follows pretty much every character throughout their respective arcs.

There are some more obvious ones, Solas, Blackwall, The Iron Bull, their identities and deceptions (of both those around them and themselves) are clearly front and center in the stories told about them, but this theme of deception (both of the self- and the outside world) is clearly present in the stories of the others as well.

Like, for example, ones that come immediately to mind are stories like that of Cullen, who presents an image of a composed and disciplined military man, a commander- all to hide the desperate and traumatized addict that he sees himself as.

Dorian grappled with the expectations of presenting the image of the perfect heir to his father's legacy, the prideful scion of his house, his entire life (he even introduces himself as the result of "careful breeding", like one might speak about a prized horse)- all while knowing that his family would rather see him lobotomized and obedient, than anything even just resembling his vibrant and passionate self.

Cassandra calls herself a Seeker of Truth, and takes pride in that identity- only to learn that in reality, she has been made a liar, a keeper of secrets, without her knowledge or consent, and it is up to her to either uproot the entire organization and painfully cut out the abscess it is to build it back from the ground up into something respectable, or let the information she had revealed sit, and continue to fester.

And this theme continues and reframes itself in, among others, things like Sera's own inner conflict between her elven heritage and her human upbringing, or in Cole being caught in this unconscionable space in-between human and spirit, between person and concept, etc.

The Inquisitor isn't exempt from this either.

I feel like this is where the core of the many misunderstandings of this plot come from, why so many people continue to believe that Inquisition is a "chosen one" or "divinely appointed" type of story, because I think many might just... not realize, that the protagonist's identity is also malleable, and what they are told in the setup/first act of the game is not necessarily the truth.

The tale of the Inquisitor is the exact opposite of that of a "chosen one" story: it's an examination and reflection of the trope, in that it is the story of an assumption that all wrongly believe to be the truth, and thrust upon you, even if you protest. The very point is that no matter who you choose to say that you are, you will be known as the Herald of a prophet you don't even necessarily believe in, and then that belief will be proven wrong, leaving you to cope with either a devastating disappointment if you believed it, or a bitter kind of vindication if you didn't.

There's a moment just after Here Lies the Abyss (when you learn of the lie you've been fed your entire journey in the game) that I don't often see mentioned, but I think it's one of the most emotionally impactful character moments, if you are playing an Andrastian Inquisitor who had actually believed themselves chosen (which I realize is a rather unpopular pick, lol): it's when Ser Ruth, a Grey Warden, realizes what she had done and is horrified by her own deeds, and turns herself in asking to be tried for the murder of another of her order. As far as she is concerned, she had spilled blood for power, and regardless of whether she was acting of her own volition at the time, whether she had agency in the moment, is irrelevant to her: she seeks no absolution, but willingly submits to any punishment you see fit.

And only if you play as an Inquisitor who, through prior dialogue choices, had established themselves as a devout Andrastian, can you offer her forgiveness, for a deed that was objectively not her fault- not really.

You can, in Andraste's name, forgive her- even though you, at that point, know that you have no real right to do so. That you're not Andraste's Herald, that Andraste may or may not even exist, and that you can't grant anyone "divine forgiveness", because you, yourself, don't have a drop of divinity within you. You know that you were no more than an unlucky idiot who stumbled their way into meddling with forces beyond their ken.

You know you're a fraud. You know. The game forces you to realize, as it slowly drip-drip-drips the memories knocked loose by the blast back into your head, that what all have been telling you that you are up to this point, is false. And yet, you can still choose to keep up the lie, and tell this woman who stands in front of you with blood on her hands and tears in her eyes, that you, with authority you don't have, grant her forgiveness for a crime that wasn't hers to commit.

Because it's the right thing to do. Because to lie to Ser Ruth is far kinder than anything else you could possibly do to her, short of refusing to make a decision altogether.

There are any number of criticisms of this game that I can accept (I may or may not agree depending on what it is, but I'm from the school of thought that any interpretation can be equally valid as long as there's text that supports it, and no text that contradicts it), but I will always continue to uphold that the Inquisitor is absolutely not- and never was a "chosen one".

They're just as small, and sad, and lost, as all the other protagonists- the only difference is that they didn't need to fight for their mantle, because instead of a symbol of honor, it acted as a straitjacket.

[haine-kleine]

after sitting with my thoughts about the epilogue for some time, I think the thing that broke the story had started right after Dabi's dance. said thing is LOV' utterly out of character treatment of each other and Shigaraki specifically.

them just standing there and passively observing the scene makes absolutely zero sense, if you use anything from their previously established relationships within the organisation for reference. especially with All for One's creepy comments. Spinner even points out shortly before this chapter that AFO!Shigaraki seems nothing like his normal self and this person is not the one he had chosen to follow.

and yes, Spinner does approach screaming Shigaraki and tries to help him, and his concern later leads him to seeing Shigaraki's mutated form in the cave, and on its own this development for Spinner is in line with his character and all around fine. pretty reminiscent of Toga and Twice, too.

(except Spinner is not allowed to really help Shigaraki in any way, unlike Toga was allowed to help Twice, and this entire thing between Shigaraki and Spinner only ends with Spinner's regrets and survivor's guilt instead of anything good or meaningful that isn't meaningless angst porn)

it isn't Spinner approaching Shigaraki that is the issue, it's the other's complete lack of action or even reaction besides appearing mildly disturbed. this is simply out of character for all of them, just judging by Twice's example who had similar breakdowns and wasn't plainly ignored by the others until his fit stops. this reaction makes even less sense, when you take into account the current state of the League. Twice had just been murdered by Hawks, the double agent who had infiltrated the League via Dabi, and Mister Compress had just sacrificed himself to give the League a chance for escape, and was sent to Tartarus immediately after his condition was no longer life threatening. Kurogiri is also being held captive by the heroes. there are only four of them left, with two dead and two captured. and none of them even mention the dead or the captured outside of the context of Kurogiri and his quirk.

this straight out makes no sense if you look back to the Overhaul arc and remember how far Shigaraki and the rest of them were willing to go to avenge Magne's death and Mr Compress' destroyed arm. this was important.

the event had motivated Shigaraki to be a better leader, because he had realized these people depend on him, and he won't let them be hurt under his protection. it had started the seed of self-doubt in Jin which would eventually grow to the desperation that allowed him to overcome the mental block against his quirk in the MVA arc, because he wanted to do everything he possibly could to help the League. it allowed him to make his clones despite the crippling trauma, because he saw Toga's hurt, bleeding body, and he didn't want her to die.

even fucking Giran, a broker whose very profession requires him to care about himself and his own well-being first and foremost, had sacrificed all of his fingers to prevent Redestro from getting his hands on the League. because he wants to protect them, to save them. and then we never actually see his mutilated hands or hear anything from him ever again.

and when Twice actually dies? all we get in response to that are two upset faces from Dabi and Toga's fury. that's it.

i really want to stress how out of character this barely-present reaction is, because Magne's example is right there and when Overhaul had killed her, the League knew each other for no longer than a month. this League has been together for at least half a year, had been through thick and thin together, had spent months on the run, homeless, having no one but each other to rely on, has defeated the Meta Liberation Army, quite literally, with the power of their friendship. they all cared enough about each other and Shigaraki specifically to stay with him during those months they had to fight Gigantomachia with barely any breaks for rest, still homeless, barely scraping by. it was imperative that they all survive through this together, especially for Shigaraki, who had went on this quest of getting stronger at least partly so that he would become a more reliable protector for the League. and when Twice falls victim to the hero who had murdered him in cold blood, because no one except for Dabi was there to save him, Shigaraki doesn't even get to react to Twice's death, and possibly never even learns about the fact.

on topic of Dabi, his reaction being exactly two frames of sad expressions and including the footage of Twice's murder into his broadcast, and ending immediately after that, also makes no sense. Dabi is someone who holds himself accountable and despite his declarations, cares about the League, it's the very reason he was keeping Hawks from the League and sprinted to Twice as soon as he realized Hawks' intentions with him, to protect him. Dabi's unsuccessful attempt to save Twice is another iteration of Overhaul, a combination of Shigaraki and Twice's roles in the tragedy. but unlike Shigaraki, who had steeled himself into taking care of his subordinates and becoming a responsible and strong leader, or Twice who had never forgotten about his role in the incident, Dabi just somehow forgets about the entire thing as soon as the first war is over. Toga is the one whom the narrative allows to actively react to Twice's death and express her grief. it makes sense that her reaction would be the strongest, as she was the closest with Twice, but why are two LOV members no longer allowed to care about the same incident at the same time? why aren't they allowed to protect each other anymore, when Giran, who is not even in the League, had made that sacrifice for them?

These are pretty small things, but it's these instances of Toga and Dabi preventing Machia from being injected with the sedative, protecting the League that are sorely missing in the second war.

and the biggest act of devotion and protection to the League, which was the last time we saw anything like this for them, Mister Compress' last moments with the League.

Mutilating his own body just to buy them five seconds to possibly escape. Because he loved the League, because he wanted all of them to be happy and achieve their dreams, to be free, and to live.

and in return for the favour, not only do they not come back for him like they did for Kurogiri (because his quirk is important for the plot, while Compress' isn't), but none of them mention Compress ever again. same with Twice (with the exception of Toga), same with Magne. from this point onwards, none of them are allowed by the plot to even care about the League of Villains. the interpersonal relationships between two individuals still shine through, occasionally, like Spinner's devotion to Shigaraki (and him alone), Dabi and Toga's pyromaniac trauma lane visit to her house and him giving her Twice's blood, Kurogiri reaching out to Shigaraki in the very end. but what about the League? ahd what about the dead members of the League, or Mister Compress?

somehow, at the point of the final war it boils down to the generalized conflict of heroes vs villains and the morality gymnastics involved in the concept. on its own, this would have been an okay development, if the examples the story was using to prove its point weren't people who had become very close friends and who had lost four people to this war against the heroes.

if the individual conflicts, like Toga's desperation to be acknowledged as human being deserving of affection, Dabi's familial abuse trauma and Shigaraki's lifelong manipulation by All for One not giving him any chance to be saved at all, were the finishing line of the villains' story development, why join them within the League at all? LOV is a separate concept functioning as a collective uniting all these villains, giving them a place to belong and people who give a fuck whether they live or die. except not anymore, because for some reason after the first war this concept is scratched completely.

so why not make them mere acquaintances who sometimes collaborate to bother the heroes together, if the bond between them got in the way of the story and wasn't the point of the story? why prove the depth of their bond with the Overhaul and My Villain Academia arcs? why make Shigaraki develop relationships and a sense of responsibility for these people at all, if in the very end his desire to save these people is denied by the author himself?

the previous arcs have spent a great deal of effort establishing that the villains are human too. they have human feelings, human desires and human relationships. so why is it that in the final arc their ability to experience human emotions towards each other is turned on and off manually by the author? at the very end even the author stops pretending like anything happening to the villains is evaluated on the scale of human experiences (unlike the heroes, whose injuries and deaths are talked about and mourned in great detail) and Kurogiri and Shigaraki are wiped out like plot inconveniences rather than important and well written characters.

honestly? it's ironically meta that the story ended up proving the very point it has spent 400 chapters arguing against.

[thewertsearch]

I’m pretty sure this is from back at the start of Act 5.2, when John was wingmanning hard for Rose. We’ve never seen Vriska talk to an incarnation of John from before the session, but we know it happened at least once, because he remembers her threatening to kill him...

...which, now that we've seen the full breadth of Vriska's arc, is a little strange. I thought John might become a thorn in her side later, leading her to seek vengeance, but that didn't end up happening. Vriska is at her least murderous when talking to John, so why would any incarnation of her actually want him dead?

AG: Hi, John human. [...] GT: excuse me, alien time troll, but i am TRYING to wrap a present. GT: really, you all have the worst timing.

Aradia might officially represent the Aspect, but they’re all Time trolls to John, and Kanaya literally just got done trying to explain Paradox Space to him. Hell, he probably thinks this is Kanaya’s alt.

AG: Yes, I can see that. Two ugly garments, and seeds for some kind of strange earth vegeta8le? Pretty lame present, John!!!!!!!! GT: nope, not going to ask how you know my name, or what i'm sending, don't care.

We’re back in John’s Denial Era. The deeper truth of his existence is currently hidden from his perception, a fact represented in his sleeping Dream Self.

I don’t think we’ve ever seen him ignore this much weirdness, though. It’s incredibly suspicious that Vriska knows so much about him, but the suspicion just rolls off his brain, like water off a duck's back.

GT: and one of these ugly garments is for me, also, it's not ugly, it's awesome. AG: Not as awesome as something you will 8e wearing later, thanks to me.

Ah, this is starting to make sense. She’s not really threatening John, she’s just promising to kill him. Which – look, I know that sounds just as 8ad, 8ut hear me out, John!

AG: I will 8e giving you the gift of immortality! GT: oh sweet, that has been on my wish list, ranking just below a mint condition little monsters poster, starring hollywood superstar, howie mandel. GT: can i expect it to arrive on my next birthday?? AG: Yes, as a matter of fact. Nice guess! AG: It will come at a cost though. GT: the mandel poster, or immortality?

John, you funny fuck. It’s quips like these that made Vriska fall for you.

[andhumanslovedstories]

chapter eleven of what feels like the most soap opera ass fic I've ever written and then just a bunch of thoughts about writing it, which contains vague spoilers for my plans:

The inception of the fic basically went like this:

haha lol i'd be fun if sqq got real mad at the state of education

what would need to happen in this fic that doesn't happen in canon to motivate him to do something about it

oh shit he didn't unlock OOC so he has to figure out how to be his coddling indulgent self (which he's in denial about) while also being shen jiu

But the thing that really made the story get so much bigger in scope was when I was reading a fic with yqy coming clean to sj, and sj being like, "GASP. I forgive you." And I was "I simply do not believe that this is how it would happen." And I would have moved on with my life, but then I thought, "but like how would it happen." And more importantly, how could this conversation happen within the canon timeline but still involve Shen Jiu, the person this information affects.

The OOC idea and the need for Shen Jiu to be present in this fight scene came together to be like "what if sqq got sj's memories so he could rules-lawyer his characterization more accurately, and ends up being furious on sj's behalf?"

(This, btw, is why I knew I had to get much fonder of YQY and get a much better understanding of his character. When a pillar of your fic idea is a character getting ripped into for his choices, it is sooooooo easy to for it to come off as the author yelling their personal opinions or for it to be completely flat character bashing. Neither are interesting to read or write! Hence the crash-course in YQY appreciation, so now he gets his own emotional arc too. Everyone gets a goddamn plotline.)

Meanwhile I was also thinking about the implications of downloading another person's life into your head. If you have their memories and their body, are you them? What makes you not them? I didn't know! I sort of just kept writing and posting with the assumption that I'd figure something out, which I've finally nailed down btw. That's a relief! Also kinda the fun of WIPs where you're building the railroad track as you're on the train. I end up fanficing my own fanfic. Once stuff is posted, that's the canon, and I look at it and think, "if this was a book I was reading, what is the way I would extrapolate what's there to make a new but coherent story?"

That's why my outline becomes pretty useless after a while. The big picture doesn't change too much--I know roughly where all the major characters are going to be emotionally by the end of the story--but I discover the path I'm going to take there. Which usually means adding stuff. Liu Qingge wasn't going to get a POV, and now every chapter I'm like "fuck am I building a throuple". Ming Fan will have waaaay more a story line than I originally conceived. Early on, I was like "eh I'm not going to go too far into the brothel stuff," and can you guess what is going to be coming up prominently in the next few chapters? God help me.

Actually, there's only one major part of the outline that I cut: Shang Qinghua. He was originally very prominent early on, but turns out having the literal Word of God in a story about slowly discovering backstory is difficult to reconcile. So sadly, he doesn't get a real role. If you're curious, the original plan for him was that SQQ would realize he's a transmigrator much earlier in the canon, but the System would be like [shen jiu would not tell shang qinghua he is a transmigrator. ooc] which would lead to this series of SQQ trying to figure out how he can communicate around this. SQQ at a peak meeting being like, "do you think these DEMONS are PROUD of having made their WAY to us IMMORTALS?" while SQH is like, "AM I HAVING A STROKE?"

What's some other stuff about this fic? I've got a lot of thoughts bottled up, in part because I'm kinda snobby tbh in how I post. I'm like "*pushes glasses up my nose* the author's takes on the story should not be unavoidably present when reading the text" so I don't like to use ao3's author's notes. It's ridiculous and not a standard I hold anyone else too, but whenever I find myself wanting to address something in the notes, I know I must feel insecure about that part of the story. So either fix it or don't draw attention to it. But this is fine, you have to come here for this. This is DVD commentary.

My favorite part of writing this fic has been balancing Shen Jiu's character. As I'm fleshing out his sad backstory, I've been wary of essentially woobifying him. Reducing him to just someone who greatly suffered is so boring and flat. He NEEDS to suck. Or more accurately, he needs to be a very imperfect victim. Exasperating at his mildest, despicable at his worst. (Truthfully, I do think I can and should make him worse. Luckily this story is nothing but flashbacks to him at his worst so there's plenty of opportunities.)

This whole mental breakdown section has been an interesting balancing act because it's explicitly about how bad Shen Jiu's life was and now how bad Shen Qingqiu's is. It's the point at which I had to decide how torturous his time at the Qiu manor had been (me and Shen Qingqiu really discovered that together). On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the absolute worst saddest brutalist ideas I had for this era in his life, I'd say I settled on about a 7. Most of it is backstage in my head, but once I locked that down, I could start figuring out how much was bleeding through.

Anyway, it's been fun writing the angstfest of the last few chapters, but oh my god am I ready for a tone shift. There's usually jokes in my works, even the saddest bits, but jokes relieve tension which is the opposite of what I was going for. I didn't want any humor in the YQY conversation, then you have to keep not joking for a while to get the point across. There's still a lot of planned emotional shit, but I'm happy to not be wallowing for a while.

AND GOD AS MY WITNESS THIS STORY WILL NOT BE LONGER THAN 20 CHAPTERS. MAYBE IT'LL EVEN BE LESS!! IT IS DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO BE A WHOLE CANON REWRITE. PROBABLY!! IF TIANLANG JUN HAS ANY SIGNIFICANT SCREEN TIME, PLEASE KNOW THAT I HAVE FAILED.

[whatdidtheydotomygirljinx]

Jinx just never really liked Vander that much.

One of the things that, to me, seemed like a main theme in Jinx's arc in season 1 was the contrast between her two families, and how her switch from Vander's daughter to Silco's drastically changes the way her personality takes shape.

And I hate that the fandom, and now the show, too, has reduced Silco to an unhealthy influence in Jinx's life, pushing her towards her "bad" side (being Jinx) when, for all his flaws... he gives her a better childhood than she ever had with Vander. The first three episodes of the first season, to me, when I watched them, illustrate quite clearly that Powder feels unhappy in her family life. She is the most mal-adjusted of Vander's kids. Her older brother constantly berates her, and it's quite clearly having a big effect on her self-image. She later takes up the Jinx name and persona once she feels like she has become irredeemable as a person. Her other brother never defends her. Vi is the only one who is there for her, and they care for each other, but at the same time you can see there's still a little insecurity in their relationship. Vi is worried that maybe Powder is indeed too weak, and Powder worries that maybe Vi does indeed see her as a Jinx like her brother does.

And when it comes to Vander... he's just not really all that present in her life. And I don't blame him, the man has four kids to take care of, on top of keeping things running in the Undercity. It's clearly not his intention. But it doesn't change the fact that he's not there for Powder, not as much as she needs. To me, when I watched the first season, it seemed like Vander was a figure that felt far away to Powder, someone that she admired but also feared being completely herself around, and someone that she ultimately wished to be closer to than she actually was. It's worth mentioning that Jinx never says his name post time skip, and he is not a hallucination for her, not until Vi brings him up in the finale. Hell, Claggor is somehow a hallucination for her and he never even speaks. Vander was just not an influential figure in Jinx's life.

I always found the scene at the end of ep3 of s1 fascinating, because Powder never once mourns Vander. She never once cries for him and never once says his name. When she sees his dead body, she becomes shocked and starts crying, but it's not actually what breaks her. What breaks her is Vi's rejection. Had it just been that she accidentally caused the deaths of her brothers and adoptive father, she would not have crumbled mentally. It's Vi's rejection that destroys her. Now, of course, a little girl that cares more about her sister's affection towards her than the lives of her family members is kinda messed up, but that's what makes her character interesting. And we can see that that little girl doesn't go anywhere, as Jinx displays the exact same one-mindness about her sister. Because Jinx and Powder were never really that different, after all.

She is quite clearly placed with her back to Vander's body, that she never turns to, barely looks at, only enough to recognize him and see he's dead, and never says the name of. She's turned towards Vi, calling for Vi, crying because of Vi, and no one else. Heck, Vi had just been crying over his body a few moment ago. Vi is clearly distraught over his death. Vi is devastated, she literally punches her sister and curses her in the exact worst possible way she can, in the way she know it will hurt her sister the most. But Powder... she just honestly dgaf.

So to then hear Jinx say this line in season 2...

...is just straight up jarring. I was pulled out of the story when I heard this. This is Jinx saying this to Vi. This kinda makes it seem like it was Jinx who was most attached to Vander, or at least that she was just as attached to him as Vi was. Which is just not how things seemed in the story at literally any point until this one. And then season 2 continues this way, and somehow makes Jinx seem like the closest daughter to Vander. Flipping Warwick literally acts more attached to Jinx than Vander ever did to Powder. Like literally. Season 1 clearly sets up that Vi is the favorite daughter, and then they just... flip it?? Warwick cares more for Jinx and responds better to her than to Vi. It's actually insane. It's true they sanitized Jinx's character to hell and back this season, but this is a straight-up rewrite. I can't wrap my mind around why they did this. Plus, the entirety of act 2 they set up this weird and pointless arc of Jinx rekindling her relationship with Vander or something... and like literally her story was genuinely never about that.

(This COULD have been Vi's story. And that might have actually been cool, and made sense. Maybe Vi is the one who finds him, and she is the one who helps him calm down. And then she brings Jinx, and maybe Jinx is terrified because she was never that close to Vander, and then she literally killed him, so seeing him again is the last thing she wants. Maybe VI is the one who tells Jinx that "he was your dad, too", which would make A LOT more sense, and maybe that's the first time that Jinx thinks that oh, yeah, he was... And then maybe they have a cute moment where Vander forgives her. Or maybe she sees the state he's in right now and loses it completely. Or maybe they look at each other and they both see the monster each of them has become. And then maybe Vi looks down at the enforcer uniform she's wearing, and, privately, sees it too. Idk. The things we could have had.)

Silco was actually a good dad to Jinx, in all the ways that Vander wasn't. He gives her all the attention that she never had before. He not only listens to her, but actively asks for her side of the story. He never insults her, and he defends her against Sevika. He trusts her and gives her opportunities to prove she's capable. She goes from being one of four siblings, and getting lost in the shuffle and often ending up feeling forgotten and alone, to being the most important child, always taken into consideration and almost put on a pedestal by her dad (this, like, has to have cured some inner wounds, i think).

Silco understands Jinx better than any other character in the show, and I'm genuinely sad that we didn't get to see any flashback of Jinx growing up with him. Because their relationship was so unique, and so integral to Jinx's character and to the rest of the story, that the fact that we never get to see any other glimpse into their bond is just...

As a final note, I'd also like to add that I dislike when people say that Silco "groomed" Jinx. I think a much more realistic analysis is that he enabled her. And as for all the times he tells Jinx that Vi "betrayed her", that's just a reflection of his own trauma, and also because he fears that if Jinx knew Vi was alive, she would go back to her and leave him (which, considering what goes down in the s1 finale, not an unfounded fear). It's wrong that he does that, but it's not out of malicious intent (also tbh Jinx never really seems to believe him anyway).

And for all the people who say that Silco "turned Jinx into a terrorist" (dumbest people in this fandom fr, im sorry), that's just straight up not true. Powder was already like that. That is quite literally why Silco adopts her. Because he sees that she's like him. Silco would not have taken Powder in if he thought she was just a cute, innocent kid who was orphaned (to, what, raise her for years so that, MAYBE when she's older, she MIGHT be useful to him? when they meet he doesn't know she's the one that caused the explosion, he just knows that she's been abandoned by Vi). This is the kid who thought playing around with explosives was a fun hobby. This is the kid who giggled at the thought of hurting others. This is the kid who already suffered from explosive emotions. This is the kid who saw her father and her brothers dead, because of her, and all she cared about was whether her sister was mad at her because of it. This is the kid who throws herself at the first person she sees, someone who her sister hates, who is the cause of all this destruction, and with an anger that shocks most viewers, declares that Vi is not her sister anymore. She is livid in that one moment.

Powder already had it in her from the beginning. And it's also ok to like a character (and to write one) even if they are not 100% morally pure in every single way under the sun, cause that is quite literally what stories are for.

[linkspooky]

If there's a next time, maybe I'll change how I live...

Sukuna's last moment in the manga ends with him accepting that his loss, and showing even the strongest of all time Sukuna, someone powerful enough to do what he wants, when he wants, could not only lose but he could be wrong. This is something considering that you could make an argument that the entire manga, and sorcerer society as a whole is shaped around Sukuna's morality of the pursuit of selfish desire and strength of all else. In fact someone else argues it right here.

What led to this journey of the most irredeemable character in the comics who lived only for selfish pleasure acknowledging the love he rejected in the end? Well, we'll cover that under the cut.

The Cycle

Before analyzing Shinjuku as a whole, I want to start with its conclusion. I'll first break down the final moment in Sukuna's character arc, and then go back to the start and analyze how we got there. That being said, let's get on with it.

Sukuna loss begins with him contradicting his own nature. I'll explain what I mean by this. If you read the thread above, detective_critics observes characters like Sukuna who live for themselves and characters who embody Sukuna's ideals like Gojo are rewarded in the manga whereas characters like Yuji who fight primarily for others are punished relentlessly.

This is well supported by Yuji's continual losses throughout the manga. Yuji swallows Sukuna's fingers in order to permanently execute Sukuna and stop future people from being harmed by curses, but because of Yuji's decision to swallow the finger thousands die in Shibuya. Yuji's desire to save others only seems to backfire and he's continually presented with those he can't save, Junpei, Nanami, Nobara. He's even robbed of his own purpose of being Sukuna's vessel when Sukuna takes Megumi's body instead.

I mostly agree with this idea that the manga rewards people more true to their desires like Sukuna and Gojo, but I'd like to add an addendum that the manga doesn't specifically reward selfishness, but rather self-actualization.

To backtrack slightly, Sukuna observes that many sorcerers in the past have faced him but they didn't truly believe in their ideals the way that Yuji did. Yuji is punished by the narrative yes, but he's not unceremoniously killed off the way that Toji, and Mahito are. Rather, Yuji's durability, his ability to cling to life instead of just dying off like Sukuna suggests weak people should do comes from the fact that his ideal is unshakable.

Let's look at Sukuna's words a little more closely. He says that many sorcerers killed him in the past and they all had different ideals, but none of them truly believed in their ideals. Because Sukuna could so easily point out how their idealism was false he came to think of all ideals as worthless. This is shown in the way that he easily picks apart both Gojo and Hajime, two characters who lose because they ultimately don't believe in their own ideals. Sukuna is very easily able to point out the hypocrisy in both of them.

Sukuna basically points out that Kashimo and Gojo were both happy to bully anyone who came near them, they'll throw around their power all they like and revel in their own superiority and then go back and complain about being lonely. A classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, or as Sukuna said they were being greedy. They were the ones who rejected everyone around them, they were the ones who rejected the love they were shown, and yet they put the blame on everyone else.

Gojo even in death acts like everyone else is a flower, an inferior being incapable of understanding him. Yet, a few panels later he says that the fight with Sukuna the only person who rivaled him in strength and therefore shouldn't be able to understand him didn't satisfy him, and he would only have been satisfied if Geto were there.

These two statements contradict each other. The thing is, Gojo has at this point long surpassed Geto in strength. People often clown Geto on the fact that he never had a domain expansion, and that Kenjaku seemed to use his cursed technique far better than he ever could. Geto is someone who's far behind Gojo in strength, and yet he's the one who could satisfiy Gojo, not Sukuna. Which means Gojo was the one who was wrong. Gojo was betraying his ideals. He believed he was living to be the strongest, that he was satisfied being the strongest while all along wanting something else and it's that contradiction that killed him.

Let me make a brief comparison to another manga. Aizen from Bleach is a character with a god complex to rival Gojo's, and just like Gojo exists on a different level of power than everyone else. He is not only the strongest soul reaper, but one of the smartest, and has been isolated by that strength since he was a child. Aizen then believes that he needs to become god, because it's his right as a naturally superior being, but Aizen is a fraud.

Aizen loses becuase the hogyoku the source of his power rejected him right as he seemed to be at the peak of his power. However, Ichigo reflects that maybe the Hogyoku didn't reject him. The Hogyoku is in plot, a wish granting macguffin, that grants your subconscious desire. Ichigo speculates that maybe Aizen didn't truly want to ascend to godhood, but rather he wanted someone like Ichigo to defeat him. That he wanted an equal like Ichigo so he wouldn't have to be alone on the top anymore. Aizen not being fully aware of this desire and clinging to his sense of superiority instead, the very thing that makes him lonely is what causes him to lose. Aizen is cut down by Ichigo, and instead of becoming a god he becomes just another soul reaper.

Sukuna cuts through Gojo by cutting through the world, bypassing the infinity, and therefore making him just like everyone else. Just as Aizen wished to be just another soul reaper, Gojo becomes just another sorcerer now that his position of the strongest has been taken by Sukuna.

So Gojo's loss came when he betrayed his ideals. His stated ideal of "I am the strongest", but this was contradicted by what he really wanted which was the time of his life when him and Geto together said "We are the Strongest." Strength didn't satisfy him, but rather it was Geto and Gojo's inability to realize the real reason he was fighting leads to his loss.

The manga doesn't reward selfishness, but rather self-actualization. Characters with a strong sense of self are just more likely to be self-actualized, because they possess a deep sense of self awareness.

Sukuna at least is self-aware. He knows you can't be the strongest, to relentlessly bully others with your power and yet want to be close to other people too. He knows that's wanting to have your cake and eat it too, so he rejects love. Sukuna knows you can't have it both ways, so he decides I don't need love, love won't satisfy me, I'll live only to be the strongest.

My main example of a character betraying their ideals is Toji though.

Toji moves to face a newly awakened Gojo. He has not only a solid plan to fight him, curse tools that can penetrate his infinity, but he's also got inside knowledge of the Limitless. Toji believes he can win, and yet at the same time he feels uneasy.

As he died, Toji reflects that the reason he died is because he deviated from his true self. He believed that he was jumping from job to job, just working for money. That he didn't care about the sorcerer world. He killed sorcerers, got paid, and then gambled it all away.

Yet, when he was faced with the pinnacle of Jujutsu his motivation changed from living to fulfill his own selfish desires, to revenge. Toji wasn't as over the way the Zen'in Clan rejected him as he thought he was. He needed to defeat Gojo in order to affirm himself, and the moment he betrayed his own ideals like that he lost.

Now this moment can be directly paralleled back to Sukuna, who feels a similiar unease the entire time that he's fighting Yuji, an unease that makes him more and more irrational over the course of the fight.

Sukuna betrays his ideals in two ways, one that he's never once cared what other sorcerers think and say and lives only for himself and two that he is merely killing time before he dies. The first leads to his breakdown over the fight as he tries to crush Yuji, but finds himself unable to. The second is as I said above the final nail in the coffin.

When faced with a stronger opponent, or rather opponents as the sorcerers of the modern era all work together to trump the sorcerer of the golden age of sorcerery Sukuna doesn't accept his death. In his last moments he's clinging desperately to Megumi, trying to keep living in his body. At which point Megumi remarks that even someone like Sukuna must fear death too.

You could connect this to Mahito too. Many people even said that Sukuna got the Mahito treatment. Both characters lived freely slaughtering everyone else, and yet when they are about to be killed they try and run away from it. This is obviously deliberate as not only do the words "You are Me' parallel "I am you" but Sukuna's last moment in the manga is a conversation with Mahito.

Mahito also betrayed his ideal. Number one curses don't truly die, Jogo and Hanami and Dagan all accept their deaths because they'll be reborn as different curses but they'll always come back. However, Mahito clings to his own existence. Mahito is also not true to his nature, because he longs to be a true curse, but Mahito is also the most human curse. He's the representative of the fear and hate humans have for one another, and he spends his last moments terrified of the human being known as Yuji Itadori.

Which is why Mahito is appropriate to have this final conversation with Sukuna. Mahito calls out the way Sukuna betrayed his ideals. Sukuna always believed he was only living to satisfy himself and he didn't care what others thought, but Mahito points out that he was really living for revenge towards the people who rejected that unlovable wretch. Sukuna wasn't rejecting people because he was a god towering far above others, but because he had been rejected and hated in the past and then decided to hate them in turn.

However, unlike Mahito Sukuna is able to grow up so to speak. Mahito doesn't want to be anything else but Sukuna comes to the realization that you can choose your nature. That the decision to hate and reject everyone was a choice, and that he can choose a different path in another life.

You define who you are, that is the literal definition of self actualization. So we see Sukuna having become enlightened about himself escape the cycle, whereas Mahito who's still a curse is still trapped in that cycle. Something that Mahito complains about, that he's just a child unable to grow up while even Sukuna has changed.

Escaping the Cycle

Now that I've shown you how Sukuna has changed, I'm going to go over all of Shinjuku to describe the events that led to this change. This change is brought about everyone, but most of all by Yuji Itadori someone who unlike Sukuna reached self-realization. Yuji is the one who remains true to himself, whereas Sukuna who has only lived for himself is the one who betrays himsellf in the end.

The first hint that Sukuna may not entirely believe his own words comes in his conversation with Kashimo. Sukuna lives for his own self-satisfaction, other people exist for him to amuse himself until he dies. Since he's a complete being who doesn't need anyone else to satisfy him, since he's satisfied then why did he need to divide himself into twenty parts and keep living after death.

Sukuna doesn't answer this quesiton, but rather just continues on with his monologue. If life to Sukuna is just killing time until he dies then why does he go above and beyond to prolong his life? Why not accept his natural death?

Then after quickly dispatching Higuruma, Sukuna finds himself unsatisfied. Even though he was doing exactly what Kashimo told him, he was tasting an interesting sorcerer and swallowing him whole.

Sukuna doesn't feel satisfied in his victory. At first he thinks it's just because Higuruma lost too early, and then he realizes that his current disatisfaction comes from Yuji. Sukuna doesn't care what others think, he hates the concept of ideals themselves, at yet the same time Yuji holding an unbreakable ideal bothers him. If Sukuna is being true to himself, then he shouldn't care what Yuji believes in.

Yet, Sukuna changes for the first time in a thousand years. He acquires a new ideal and that's killing every sorcerer present and then initating the merger. Something that Kusakabe even notes is out of character for Sukuna. He thought Sukuna wouldn't have a need to start the merger, he doesn't care about big picture things like Kenjaku he just wants to strong opponent.

Sukuna begins to drift further and further from his nature because of Yuji over the course of the fight. As I said Sukuna shouldn't have to fight Yuji to prove that Yuji's ideal is wrong. If he rejects all ideologies then he shouldn't even care. Yet the things that set Sukuna off the most in the fight, the things that motivate him to fight the hardest to crush his enemy are people like Yuji and Maki who challenge his beliefs. Yuji by fighting for others instead of himself, and Maki by rejecting cursed energy entirely and instead having a strong body to fight.

Sukuna who is supposed to be completely satisfied with himself, has something to prove when fighting against these opponents. We learn that Yuji isn't just some boring child like Sukuna suggested. He's actually made from the other half of Sukuna's soul. Rather, Sukuna rejected his twin and ate him in the womb. All of his superiority as a sorcerer, his four arms, the mouth on his stomach comes from this. However, that twin didn't disappear, he reincarnated and mated with Kenjaku to produce Yuji.

So Sukuna is Yuji's uncle technically, but symbolically, Yuji is the other half of his soul. The half that Sukuna rejected. How can Sukuna be someone at peace with all of himself, if he rejects half of himself? It goes along with what Mahito said, Sukuna didn't reject others because he was compeltely satisfied with living alone, but because of revenge. He was born a malformed retch and never shown love so he rejected all forms of love.

Sukuna is not at ease with himself because he's not whole. Yuji represents the love that Sukuna rejectected. Rejecting yourself doesn't work though, because one he tried to reject his twin and his twin's soul reincarnted, and two rejecting yourself is completely at odds with the complete self-acceptance that Sukuna preaches is the source of his strength.

Sukuna's incessant need to reject Yuji, to prove that Yuji is wrong, that he's inferior is what leads to his demise. Not only that, but Sukuna's rejection of Yuji's method of fighting, relying on his allies leaves him blind to several elements of Yuta's strategy. He falls for the copy technique bluff twice, because Sukuna didn't factor that both the original users Angel and Toge could still use their techniques too. He's beaten by the cooperation that Yuta uses in his strategy, because Sukuna rejects that same kind of cooperation and sees it as a weakness.

Sukuna's proven to be wrong. He told Jogo that working with others limits your individual strength and he should have tried fighting on his own, but Sukuna is continually outfoxed by Yuta's strategy which relies entirely on team coordination.

It's also a direct parallel to the way that Gojo lost in Shibuya. Gojo was absolutely infuriated that the curses would work together to fight him and they'd rely on a strategy instead of just overpowering him with brute strength. But Gojo lost, precisely because they made a strategy around Gojo's exact weakness, that he's strongest when he's alone.

If Sukuna didn't feel the need to reject the others, then he wouldn't be so blind to Yuta's way of fighting with strategy and cooperation. If he could accept other ways of thinking other than his own he wouldn't have been hoodwinked multiple times in the fight. Yet, it isn't just Sukuna rejecting them on principle, he has to reject companionship otherwise the curses and hatred churning inside of him would burn him up inside. So Sukuna isn't really choosing his nature as he believes, but rather he's a slave to it.

There's also parts where Sukuna just straight up lies. He says he feels nothing, and yet two panels later he's completely enraged.

You could say that Sukuna is just saying he feels nothing about Yuji's attempts to empathize with him, but that's not the case. He definitely feels something, because that empathy, or rather pity as Sukuna frames it compeltely infuriates him.

if Sukuna lived entirely according to his own desires and didn't care about the opinions of others, as he stated a hundred times above why does Yuji's pity infuriate him? If he was so confident in his godlike superiority to others, why does he feel the need to prove it, by ripping apart all of Yuji's friends right in front of it in a gesture of revenge for being pitied.

This leads to what is the greatest moment of growth for Yuji, and the greatest moment of stagnation for Sukuna. Yuji's moment of growth isn't just in rejecting the cog mentality, but also in accepting Megumi. Specifically, he accepts the fact that Megumi is different than him, that it's alright if Megumi's not strong enough to keep living.

Sukuna is compelled by his own nature, his desire for revenge to reject everything around him, but the conclusion of Yuji's character arc is defined by acceptance. Not only does he accept that Megumi's own feelings are different than his, but he's willing to accept Sukuna back into his soul.

I don't think Yuji empathizes with Sukuna. He still doesn't understand him. However, in spite of that lack of understanding, he's willing to accept Sukuna into his soul and keep living with him, because as I said above Yuji and Sukuna are two halves of the same soul. Sukuna is the embodiment of everything he hates, someone who carelessly disregards life and hurts others with a thought, and yet Yuji is willing to give a second chance to that person.

In that moment Yuji lives true to his ideal of saving people, whereas by clinging to life Sukuna was betraying his ideal. I think it's important that Yuji didn't empathize with Sukuna though because Yuji and Sukuna might be two halves but they're meant to represent opposites.

Sukuna also had to learn to accept that Yuji was different than him. He spent the entire story trying to reject him and step on him like a bug. If Sukuna were truly confident in his ideals he wouldn't care that other people had different thoughts, but no Yuji had to be wrong.

Yuji doesn't empathize with Sukuna but he does change him. He alters Sukuna's fundamental nature "You are me" by showing Sukuna there was a different path he could have taken all along. That Sukuna wasn't the strongest he could be, that someone could have compeltely different ideals and be stronger.

Uraume says that the main characters didn't win because they were stronger, but because Sukuna was in Megumi's body a thousand years later instead of his own original body. Which basically means that Sukuna being a parasite in the modern era, pointlessly extending his life is exactly what led to his defeat because he couldn't accept his own death.

I think it's significant that it's not Yorozu or Yuji who Sukuna finally decides to accept as someone he can love, but Uraume. Sukuna even references there were people who tried to teach him about love in life. Assuming the one on the right in Yorozu, the way both uraume and Yorozu approach their relationship with Sukuna is compelte opposites.

Yorozu in the end seemed to recognize Sukuna's isolation, but she projected her desires onto him entirely like everyone else in the manga. Yorozu, Gojo, Kashimo, they don't seek to understand Sukuna but rather to make him understand then. They're in the end kind of self-serving in their love, making Sukuna into a symbol. Specifically Gojo and Kashimo project their loneliness onto Sukuna when Sukuna never asked for it. I mean if you want an example Gojo says this in his dying dream.

Yet, moments later Sukuna declares that Gojo Satoru cleared his skies. That he would never forget his name. Sukuna was completely satisfied with the fight, Gojo just didn't understand him.

Ironically, the one who Sukuna finally shows love to is the one who never bothered to try teaching love to Sukuna in the first place. Ura Ume spends the entire time at Sukuna's side, and while they seem to have more of a servant master relationship I'd argue that Ura Ume has a better read on Sukuna than anyone else. They can tell when Sukuna is enjoying himself, they can tell when Sukuna is holding back, they don't ever try to make Sukuna into something he's not they just stay by his side and accept them.

Sukuna's final scene in the manga is a deliberate callback to this scene. Jogo begins to cry and Sukuna says he doesn't undertand the reason why Jogo is crying. Immediately afterwards, UraUme appears in front of him.

Then, in their final scene together Sukuna is shown musing on how two people showed him there were different ways of living, Uraume and Yorozu. As he decides to go north, and become someone new as Mei Mei once put it in the going north and going south metaphor, he holds Ura Ume's hand and comforts him as he cries.

There are two people in the manga who showed Sukuna unconditional acceptance, Yuji and Uraume. Through them Sukuna was finally able to accept his own humanity.

So in conclusion: Sukume canon!

[bonefall]

what's your opinion on moonkitti's video?

It's a good video and an excellent analysis for anyone who prefers to get their essays as videos over text.

Though I do have to mention, she did miss a couple of things. I don't blame her at ALL though, like she said, discussing Bumble is a rabbithole and you will find yourself tackling several chronic problems whenever you try to explain exactly how fucked up the entire situation is. Nevertheless, discussing Bumble is my specialty so I have to point out;

Moonkitti makes the mistake of accepting Clear Sky's premise that the territory he kills Bumble on is his. It is not.

Bumble was actually not trespassing-- Clear Sky slaughtered Misty because he is expanding his borders and wanted to steal her land.

The parcel Bumble was standing on is, in Clear Sky's own words, "This NEW part of MY territory."

As a result, I think Moon missed another chronic issue present in the DOTC narrative; Colonialism.

Also-- I know Moon is trying not to swing TOO hard at Gray Wing because his fans are downright bloodthirsty (and I'm sure she is reluctant to go through Bramblestan Harassment 2), but, as a result...

She kinda glosses over the fact that Gray Wing's turn on Bumble does make sense if you read it like he's doing it because he HATES the idea of his object of affection having friends who are not him.

In other words-- Gray Wing is controlling. Xenophobia against Bumble didn't "come from nowhere." It came up because he is toxic and it is a good self-justification for his feelings.

She also quickly summarizes a lot of the Tom the Wifebeater stuff... and ends up implying that Tom just found the kittens all on his own, when Gray Wing actually told him where to find the children.

This was technically an "accident" because Gray Wing is both cruel AND stupid.

I hate him so much Gray Wing SUCKSSSS

But again, I can't blame her for it because clearly she wasn't trying to get into the utterly shambolic mess that is the "Tom the Wifebeater Sleeper Genes" subplot.

yknow. The subplot where the kids decide the man who raised them isnt their real dad because the wifebeater boinked their mom before he started beating her and eventually got her killed.

dotc is a wonferful arc adn the best in the whole sries. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee

That all said! Moonkitti didn't miss. She thoroughly gutted Clear Sky's lie and covers most of what's especially rancid about Bumble's treatment. I especially love the sentiment she had in pointing out, "Bumble hated no one; and everyone hated her."

It's a great video, she's been working on it for weeks and it shows. This is yet another victory for the BUMBLE BATTALION. Soon we will invade England and take Harper Collins by force

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Tips: Character Motivations

There are many ways to build believable characters with complex motivations. Here’s what to keep in mind:

Character notebook. A character’s backstory colors everything the character wants, and what they’re willing to do to get it. Create a character notebook for your novel’s protagonist, where you can collect ideas for your main character, big or small. Include traits, attributes, impactful events, and objectives that you can always reference when exploring the character’s motivations. Obviously, this will not be published, so go as in-depth as you’d like.

Internal monologue. One way to create intimacy with your reader—and to get them to care about your main character—is to use internal monologue to allow the reader to see a character’s thoughts as they happen, laying their motivations bare.

Moral grey area. When creating motivations for heroes and villains, a key principle to remember is that making a decision between good and evil is never really a choice. All humans will choose what is good based on how they see it in their own story. You must elaborate on why your villain is choosing his own good (which to readers appears evil). This is where your moral gray area becomes important. ⚜ Morally Grey Characters

Complex character. Usually, the bad guy’s motivations will create a crisis for your hero, so spend time crafting a thoughtful character. Every villain needs to have his own morality. If a villain spends part of the novel killing people, you need to give him or her believable reasons for doing so. Make the reader understand exactly what desperation or belief has driven him to it.

Leave space in your character descriptions. Remember that the way you present your character speaks to what that person’s motivations are as much as what they look like or how they dress. Be spare with the words you use to describe a person or a scene. The more elaborate you try to be the more you betray your own biases into the text. You want to leave space for the reader to fill in the blanks.

Switch a character’s motivations. Real people change their minds all the time, for any number of reasons. Part of creating a believable character arc might involve a motivation change—when the characters’ desires shift to accommodate new information, for example.

Story pacing. Utilizing elements of time and pacing, like a ticking clock, is a great motivator often deployed in the thriller genre. You’ll find that desperation will very quickly distill a character’s goals.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Sociologist Maslow’s pyramid places things like self-actualization and self-esteem above more tangible, concrete needs like food and safety, might be a good place to start when building believable motivations for complex characters. Only after someone satisfies their needs at the base of the pyramid are they driven to consider the more intangible, philosophical concerns at the top.

Source ⚜ Notes & References ⚜ Writing Templates ⚜ 50 Motivations Character Goals & Motivation ⚜ External & Internal Journey