#ig i'm i feel like my life would suck so much if my sister treated me the way that dean treats sam LMAO

[sammyluvr]

first of all I’m blushing cause u said baby (what do you mean it’s a generic name no I’m delulu) and um second of all one of them talked to me in such a condescending way today (but also I made a mistake so I get it but she didn’t have to talk to me like I was 2 ugh)

the only good thing about this job is that I get to help the kids cause it’s like a beginner class so they’re all new to the subject and I wanna help them and I’m so happy when they ask me questions and things

sorry I rambled about this for no reason but I did have a question for you, thoughts on dean? There’s a little hatred of some kind there I can see it, but I wanted to ask why you don’t like him, only if you’re comfortable!!!

— kiss

omg no baby is said with flirtatious intent to make you blush, honey <33

BUT THAT'S SO RUDE ACTUALLY ugh i'm sorry they were condescending :((( but i'm glad that you're feeling like there is something good about the job!! it's awesome that you get to help the kids!!! and don't ever be sorry for rambling, i love to hear it all!!

i also rambled about dean a lot and it's definitely not coherent LOL

as for dean LOL i just have very complicated feelings and i think a lot of my hate/negative feelings are sometimes misplaced in him a little too strongly. i mostly just really really hate the treatment of him versus sam within the fandom :// if we're being honest with ourselves, he's kind of really not a good person sometimes!! and he treated a lot of people really awfully pretty consistently, especially sam. and i think that's part of how fascinating he is as a character!! he's incredibly interesting and i do hold love for him in my heart, not just for his good aspects but for his fucked up parts too hehe <33

it's just that i think he's very often misinterpreted and excused for actions he had full control over (sure, his trauma can explain lots of it, but does not excuse it!!), while sam is often harshly blamed (by both the fandom and by dean) for things he did not have complete or any control over (not saying he's never made a bad decision that he could control. it's just that a core aspect of sam's character and character arc is his lack of autonomy and people will very often literally victim blame him). both sam and dean are very flawed people and have made many many mistakes, my issue is that people both in the fandom and in the show are willing to overlook or excuse or whatever dean's mistakes and flaws but not sam's.

also people pretend like dean is a great brother to sam. he loves sam so much and would do anything for him, yes. they are codependent, yes. sam is not great to him all the time either, yes. but i view lots of dean's treatment towards sam as abusive. i don't think dean ever breaks the cycle of abuse. he is the angry man in the house. he has the power in his relationship with sam, he is the patriarch and perpetuates toxic patriarchal values.

more so than hating him, i think i hate what the fandom has done with him. can't we love him because he's awful??? and can't we recognize that he treats people in pretty awful ways lol. sometimes, he's so very lovely. sometimes, he's a piece of shit. and i love him for it! i'm very dean critical, but i think that my love for him has just been tainted by the way the fandom views him/acts towards him (versus sam especially).

and at the end of the day, as mr. jared padalecki put it, sam winchester is my only concern!! it's all about sam to me <33 i'm completely biased towards him and i love him more, and because i think dean treats him badly, i get angry at dean often! i recognize that i'm 100% biased towards sam and don't always look into nuances because of that. but i try not to actively hate hate on dean for stupid reasons. just reasons where he definitely was in the wrong LOL.

i just think sam deserves so much love and that the fandom hasn't given it to him partially because of the dean bias. i think a lot of people watch the show through dean's eyes, which means blaming sam and blaming mary and blaming cas and whoever he can. and thinking that he's in the right all the time (but wake up!!! dean blames himself too!! he knows he's done wrong, he thinks about it all the time!! he is constantly grappling with and weighed down by the consequences and implications of his actions!! he said so himself!! so let's love him for that too <33)

and also he bothers me sometimes <333 hashtag i love sam hashtag everything is about sam hashtag i just don't care about him as much as i care about sam! <333 lots of love <333 at the end of the day it's not even about him personally it's about sam lmao <33 and that's literally just the way that i enjoy this show the best, is by focusing on sam. i can absolutely be a dean enjoyer at times, i just prefer to completely obsess over sam all the time lol. and it's so completely valid if one enjoys the show the other way around or enjoys them equally <33 or doesn't give a shit about either of them and loves rowena the most, maybe we should all just do that instead <333

[luvdsc]

hi miss cat sooooo i feel abit queasy rn?? idk so sTORY TIME :D i have this guy friend,,,, let's call him 'beer' (idk what to call him oKAy OHMYGOD) LMAO. his family and my family are pretty close but we only met personally in the beginning of last year since they moved here to my city and they didn't know anybody else in the area except me n my fam so not only did we helped them move in to their new place but we also helped them familiarize the area. and they would constantly go to our house and vice versa. me being anti social and introverted, i never really interacted with them much?? after eating i would just walk straight back to my room and lock myself up there until they're gone OR.... i would wait for them to leave so i could eat JKGFDJSDKS (i have social anxiety n interactions seem draining at times so i just avoid ppl i'm unfamiliar or uncomfy with ;-;). tURns out,,, we were the same age???? JDFKDKV me and 'beer' got close during my sister's bday party. it was just a small n intimate gathering (only like 5 ppl,, including me n my sis) nd he was invited. my sis was so drunk, we had to bring her up to her room and tuck her into bed,,, my sis friend was in the bathroom puking the night away JDFKSSJNK and the others were just either passed out drunk or just didnt wanna drink anymore. but there was so much drinks left and we didnt want to waste it, so me and 'beer' ended up tryna finish the cocktails that was made since it was such a waste to throw them out and since i was under the consumption of alcohol i became more outspoken and confident than i usually am JFVDSJKVDJK we had a couple drinks earlier so while we were abit tipsy and we looked like crazed people talking and giggling n shit,, we became close after that night. and from there, we became each other's designated "drinking buddies". IDK IF THATS AN ACTUAL THING BUT YEA :D LIEK, EVERYTIME WE DRINK LIKE WE'RE JUST ALWAYS TOGETHER, KINDA LIKE A DUO,, DRUNK PARTNERS IN CRIME OR WHATNOT JKDSKFFJV and we would even make bets on who's had more drinks or sumn. and as time went by, i noticed how he got alittle comfortable with me?? he'd try to like make advances or do some gentlemanly stuff (which he doesn't normally do around me??) at first i didn't rlly mind since he prob was tipsy or something. and then during new year’s,, as in when the clock struck 12 am,, he messaged me and confessed that he started harboring a crush on me and that he had feelings for me ;-; IDK WHAT TO REPLY SO I WAS LIKE: "HAHA U'RE PROB SHITFACED DRUNK RN,, GO TO SLEEP :)" and he was like: "nO IM SERIOUS, IHAVE FEELINGS 4 U, AND NO I DIDNT DRINK ANYTHING TODAY" KJFNXCSKJDVF I JUST LEFT HIM ON READ AFTER THAT CUS IDK WHAT TO DO?? HJSDNDFSKF ++ i'm not rlly into these kind of things and i just dont see him that way,,,, i'm the type wherein if i just don't see anything even just a teeny-tiny spark, it's just NO. + commitment scares me :( i just felt so scared n weirded out so after that i just started avoiding him :// there were times where his fam n him would stop by at our place so i literally just lock myself up in my room whenever they're there and wait til they left. but today, they came again and we all ate dinner together. i sat across him and he greeted me saying "hi". i can only offer him the most awkward smile cus i didn't wanna be rude to him infront of everybody. his sister literally squealed HJFDVKSJK and i think she knew what was going on LMAO. after eating, i went to the kitchen and i was just washing the dishes and he suddenly came in, he seemed so nervous i honestly felt bad :( and he was like tryna bring up the 'confession thing' but the tension was just so bad n awkward. and he was like,, "let me just wash the dishes" and i was like "nO, u're a guest just leave the dishes here and i'll wash) and we were just bickering back and fort having a banter of who's washing the dishes, but i just was so fed up i grabbed his plate and i washed it myself FJBKDNVSJF and he was like,, "we good?" im like"yea?? ig" KFDJNSS idk now it just feels weird, he's cool but i just dont rlly like

him that way and although i admire him for being honest with his feelings abt me, i just dont think we can hangout anymore like we used to. so yea im srry if this is so long holy shit im so sorry. i hope life been treating u well bub!! <33

bdudidkdnfjjdjd oh god, lovebug, this all sounds really awkward, and I totally get how you feel 🤧🤧 like when they say “we’re good?” it’s like that when you say that you’re fine but you’re not really fine meme fjjfkdkffkck 😀😀 because the friendship gets so awkward after that, and it sucks because you see him as a really good friend and really liked hanging out with each other but now feelings made everything weird and you’re never gonna be able to go back to how it was before because those feelings will always be on the back of your mind and the friendship is not the same and you eventually drift apart and god, it just really sucks to lose a friend /: it’s basically the eventual slow death of a friendship and it’s just so complicated and I’m sorry you have to go through that, honey bee ): I hope you’re able to work things out with him tho 💗 and thank you, honey bee !!!! Aside from this, I hope life has been treating you kindly as well, sweetpea 💕

[arrtemisia]

Hey so... If you could redo cannon Makoto what would you do? How would she change? I'm curious cause out of the main cast she was the only one that I just couldn't get a solid interest in (aside from Ann but that's just cause the idea of her being a fashion model confuses me more than anything I think)

God. So much stuff.

There's a couple big things about her that bug me, and none of them really change at all in her canon vs fanon portrayal, which means it's hard for me to enjoy her even in fanworks. In my opinion, I think her biggest flaw is that she's simply miscast, and her character would have worked much better as a confidant instead of a thief, which would've given her a place of her own to shine and avoid the weird dissonance between different aspects of her character (and this was actually their original plan, so Hifumi would have taken her place which. She would've fit in much better imo bc she's actually suffered under another's will like every single one of the others and she's an actual strategist instead of just """smart,""' but that's a topic for another post), but since we're talking about how I'd personally fix Makoto in the role she currently fills, I'm going to list some of the issues I take with her and potential solutions.

First of all, just to get it out of the way, she needs an actual reason to be here. She doesn't have one, full stop.

The big thing tying the thieves together is that they're all victims of abuse and oppression who rebel against their tormentors and want to prevent anyone else from suffering like they did. I'm not saying Makoto has never struggled, because she has, but it's really, really not the same type of struggle.

This leads to weird moments where everything about Makoto's personality and characterization, such as being a stickler for the rules, idolizing the police, etc mean that she has no in-character reason to stick with the thieves after kaneshiro is dealt with and should maybe even be opposing the thieves' way of doing things, but the plot drags her along anyway because the game really wants her to be a party member. And really, what's up with her awakening? She gets threatened once and then bang-boom-kapow she has a persona? It's weak.

Also before anyone says "well all those things about her personality change when she awakens and she sheds her good girl personality and yada yada," no she doesn't, actually, and I'm getting there I promise

The easiest solution here is also the most drastic. Swap when Makoto and Akechi join. This kills two birds with one stone; Makoto gets an actual reason to awaken through Sae, and Akechi's betrayal hits harder because he's pretending to be with you for longer (although admittedly this is much less needed on Akechi's part ever since royal).

Not only does this give Makoto a much stronger reason to awaken and join in the first place (Sae starts twisting into something horrible and Makoto wants to help both stop and save her), but it also gives her an internally consistent reason to stick around. Before, unlike the others (who all at least have "I want to stop others from feeling like I did," or in Futaba's case, "I wanna find the ppl who killed my mom."), once Kaneshiro is done with, Makoto has no real big personal reason to stick around other than "I'm a thief now and the plot says so ig." Now, of COURSE she'd want to go after Shido because he's the one that was manipulating her sister, and after that of COURSE she'd want to help take down mr divine sippy cup in order to get Shido tried and jailed.

However, if we're not going to shuffle around the order of party members bc that'd nuke the canon plot a little, then we need to rework the entire Kaneshiro arc and/or Makoto's backstory and values as a whole. Yeah this is why the first solution was the easy one.

I'm going to go in-depth about how I feel Makoto's personality and values should be reworked later I'M GETTING THERE, so I'll talk about that then. As for reworking Kaneshiro, I... don't have a whole lot of ideas. The palace itself is fine, it has one of the coolest atmospheres in the game (c'mon, there's got to be a fun bank heist in a game like this), but Makoto's connection with him is very weak. Maybe have it be that he was extorting her for years in secret and she never said anything? Maybe have him be the one that ordered the hit on her father? I'm not sure what would be strong enough to match to the other palace leaders, without feeling forced. I'll have to come up with more ideas for this one.

The second big issue I have with her is less of one specific thing and more of a collection of smaller problems that all come from the same source. She waltzes in, takes over, and starts acting like she's the boss of things. She then names herself the "strategist" and yet only ever states the obvious and, to use a word I hate, mansplains things to you that you already learned two palaces ago. She's constantly condescending and passive agressive to the other team members, especially Ann and Ryuji, berates everyone for not being as naturally book smart as her when all the other characters are smart in their own ways and just not good at academia, all the while everyone around her, even characters that normally wouldn't take that (ryuji, ann) or are too prideful to admit to anyone bring better (mona), are constantly like "You're so cool, Makoto!"

It's a classic case of show don't tell, and rhe game is obsessed with telling you that Makoto is "smart" and "cool." Once she joins the team, all the characters that were originally shown to be smart in their own ways are never allowed to say anything meaningful ever again bc Makoto is the "smart" one. She never does anything particularly different compared to the other party members, but the game is constantly insisting she's special.

I'm very hesitant to call her a mary sue, because I don't think she is one, and also I disagree with the use of that term at all as these days it's just meant to devalue powerful characters that happen to be girls, but I definitely think she's emblematic of a common writing flaw that can lead to mary sues. The problem with making a character the "smart" one as a personality trait instead of something that just comes naturally is that you have to dumb down everyone else's characterization to make them look smarter or cooler by comparison. It means that the character you're trying to prop up bends everyone else around them, making them act in ways they normally wouldn't in order to make the one character you're trying to look cool seem better by comparison.

This has an easy solution: cut that shit out. Have her slowly find her place on the team naturally instead of forcing her way in as a pseudo-leader. Don't give every single "well, duh" line to her, and cut the scenes where she stands around explaining obvious things you already know in a condescending manner so she looks smarter. Let the other characters actually act like themselves when they're in the same room as her instead of bending around her to prop her up. Have her treat those characters with respect in turn, bc for all intents and purposes when it comes to thief stuff they are her senpai, instead of just having her act like she's better than them, or boss them around, or be passive agressive about the fact that their grades are bad. Show that other characters are smart in other ways instead of acting like Makoto's book smarts are the end-all be-all. And for fuck's sake, stop acting like "smart" and "punches stuff real good" are personality traits, which leads me into my last big point.

Makoto and Queen don't really feel like the same character. Okay, so to explain this, let's walk through her awakening again.

Makoto is a good girl who's a stickler for the rules, sucks up to authority, idolizes the police, is obsessed with her grades and academic performance, and looks down on others who don't do the same. A couple people call her useless and then she gets threatened by a mob boss, after which she decides to live her life for herself and completely shed her good girl lifestyle and rebel against everyone pressuring her.

That is, except for the teensy tiny detail where she doesn't.

Nothing significant about her personality changes all post her awakening and joining the thieves, aside from the part where she sucks up to authority maybe a little less. She's still uptight, her grades (and the grades of those on her team) are still her top priority, she still idolizes the law and those enforcing it.

Y'see, persona has a bit of a common problem with saying one thing about a character, be it making a reveal or saying they're gonna change in some big way, but not fully committing to it. You can see it most in p4 (party members saying they're gonna quit/stop/do whatever and then backtracking in the last two ranks of their social link), but it's rarely so severe that it completely ruins their personality and character arc as a whole. Makoto, I feel, is the main exception.

The writers want Makoto to become this tough, rebellious biker queen who oozes badassery in every move and will never follow anyone's wishes for her ever again, but they also want to keep her old personality of the uptight naive rule-following law-abiding academic. So, instead of altering one to better fit the other, they try to do both... badly.

Instead of integrating the two parts of her personality, it just feels like she swaps between them whenever the plot calls for it which is really, really jarring. She'll be stuttering about following the rules and getting to know her generation one second, and then the next she'll be yelling about mowing down shadows with her motorcyle the next. It feels like Queen and Makoto are two separate uninteresting half-characters, with only a couple personality traits each, instead of one whole well-rounded character.

Either rework Makoto's thief aesthetic to better suit her personality as a whole and give her something other than "I'm totally not a good girl anymore" to make her compelling, or actually commit to Makoto shedding her past life everyone around her had forced on her and change her personality. Have her grades start to slip, have her talk back to Sae, change the way she dresses so it's rougher and less perfect, hell, maybe even have her quit student council. Just, anything to make her more well-rounded as a character.

I have some other nitpicks with her here and there, like the fact that her confidant is actually just Eiko's confidant and doesn't give Makoto herself any development, or the way the game keeps trying to set her up as Joker's waifu or whatever, but those are just that; nitpicks. The three big things I mentioned earlier - her not having a compelling personal reason to be a part of the thieves, the way the writers shove her into the spotlight by putting down everyone around her, and the fact that her characterization is just one badass half and one smart half that don't mesh and have little else in between - are the problems I feel are what's actually holding her character back.

Again, I do think that all of this stems from the fact that she's miscast, but it's too late to fix that now. While I personally really dislike Makoto, I do kind of understand her appeal for others when she's written well, and she's a totally valid character to like. I just wish she was portrayed better.

(Also, if anyone wants to reblog this, feel free I ask that you please don't put this in Makoto's main character tag. I know how much it sucks to get a bunch of negativity in a character's main tags as I am an Edelgard fe3h fan)