#im posting to keep myself sane

[junimo-hexed]

Alien

[slavhew]

butt

[ironicsoap]

you are expendable, you are not expected to return

[fearowkenya]

i love three things in life and they are: 1) putting cloud in Situations, 2) letting aerith Perceive cloud whenever hes being put in Situations, and 3) cloud having to endure knowing that aerith is actively Perceiving him while he's in Situations

anyway this is more of the 10k monster im in the middle of writing about yuffie accidentally concussing herself on a zipline. as you may have gathered this is the immediate aftermath of that. please enjoy cloud getting Perceived

[kkoct-ik]

is this a safe space

[1eeminho]

im starting clinic tomorrow and everyone keeps asking me if im looking forward to it and am i excited. i WISH. i wish i could focus on being excited but it feels so daunting and intimidating idk i just need to get started and see how it actually is and maybe then i can get excited

[kollector-of-stims]

I CANT-

Just reorganized all my plushies and got into a SQUISHMALLOW PHASE and got together my ENTIRE COLLECTION AND CHANGED MY SLEEP AREA AND TOOK PICS-

THEN FOUND OUT THE COMPANY IS BAD IN WAYS I KNOW ARE BAD BUT DONT HAVE THE SPOONS TO LEARN ABOUT CAUSE I AVOID IRL ISSUES-

I guess me being into other plushies like Aurora and such is a better thing than I thought, but fr I JUST bought 2 new squishmallows EARLIER just to look on here for more wholesome stuff about them and then...

Well, guess cheaper alternatives and knock offs were the better option after all! My two knockoff bats make me happy knowing I didnt support jazwares! As for the official ones? Nah, not getting those irl anymore. So look at my collection now cause no more official ones from irl stores will join this group anymore~

Aurora is still my fave plushie brand 😁

[99naive]

getting pizza for dinner & william got a text from a much better paying , not seasonal job so small victories i suppose !! trying to work on some commission stuff first & then im gonna reward myself with some writing over here me thinks ♡

[todayisafridaynight]

Sorry to keep throwing Miscellaneous Asks your way, but I finally had a moment to get my thoughts in order on one of the points on your Venn diagram I wanted to talk about! I always kind of debate whether or not to send other, semi-unrelated long asks like this when we've already got a chain going, but oh well. I'll try and address anything brought up in response here in the main one and hopefully it doesn't get confusing lol.

So I was thinking about the extent of Jo and Arakawa's relationship. It is completely true there's not much you can say that's concrete, especially since most of what we see is from Jo's perspective. Although his perspective is crucial to forming an understanding of their relationship, it's not sufficient. This is particularly the case because, coming back to giri-ninjo for a moment, Jo is largely bound by giri; it's clear his loyalty runs deep, but it's not a choice for him.

Arakawa, on the other hand, can choose who he places his trust in, especially early on. And I think it's incredibly important that, despite having men who've already been with him from day 1, men who've already been helping him with his son, Arakawa chooses to "place every confidence" in Jo (per an old Famitsu profile, one of the first official ones) and chooses to make Jo his captain.

Similarly, he kind of chooses Jo "over" Ichi in sending Ichi to prison "instead of" Jo. Perhaps the family really would collapse without Jo's talents, but… does it have to collapse entirely? Didn't Arakawa make it pretty far on his own? I guess it's neither here nor there, but I've always wondered if things would've really played out as feared if Jo went to prison instead. Not to understate Jo's role in the family, of course.

Anyway, I think that trust shows not only in overt gestures such as entrusting Masato and the family's finances to Jo, but also in more subtle behind-the-scenes ways, such as what we were talking about before with regard to New Year's 2001. There's also the fact that leaking information to Aoki was Jo's idea; for that to be the case, Arakawa would have to discuss Aoki's threats at length with Jo. (Unrelated, but come to think of it, "complying with him [to] make him see value in keeping us around" is very often the strategy of victims of abuse and neglect…)

And this one's an underrated detail many people miss, but after Arakawa shot Ichi, while he was able to come up to Ichi to tell him he's counting on him and sneak in the fake bill, if the goal was to not arouse suspicion, I don't think he would exactly have been able to excuse himself from the dinner to drive Ichi to Yokohama. Time was of the essence in terms of Ichi's survival, so that leaves Jo, who was conveniently already at the scene and who was certainly in on the "secret rule" that constitutes part of the Arakawa Family's agreement with the homeless camp. Overall, there is a pattern of Arakawa approaching Jo before anyone else, isn't there?

Sort of branching off of that, I would personally feel comfortable saying that Jo knows Arakawa better than anyone else. He seems to know details about Akane and New Year's 1976 no one else does, details Arakawa would have had to volunteer himself, and that plus his own experiences are what allow him alone to have the most complete picture of that night.

I also get the impression Jo understands Arakawa better as a person than anyone else--certainly better than Aoki, but perhaps even better than Ichi in some cases. There are multiple instances where he defends Arakawa and challenges their perceptions of him--that he's "betrayed" the Tojo Clan, that he's betrayed Aoki, that he's the type to scheme and make power-plays behind Aoki's back. He hasn't. And, despite how little Jo's "allowed" to say, he turns out to be right every time. Also worth noting Arakawa does something similar in asking Ichi to try and understand Jo's frustrations, though he's more or less enabling Jo's abuse in doing so.

Lastly, The Smallest Detail that drives me kind of insane. Them arriving at the office in the back seat of the same car in one of Ichi's flashbacks. I wouldn't think too much of it if it were any other time of day, but the first-thing-in-the-morning quality and the fact Jo isn't driving (thus it's not as an act of service but as an equal) is like… Okay. You're carpooling to work. And if you're not carpooling, you're honest-to-god living together. What the hell.

So a lot of it is this web of inferences--it has to be, at least currently--but I really do think there's a lot to chew on. More than meets the eye, anyway. I've also been stewing in all of this for years, especially since drafting Jo's relationships section, so I might just have inhaled the fumes for too long lol

Thank you for coming to me about the nature of their relationship! Although I did put it down as being more-or-less 'uncertain' on my chart, I do agree that their relationship isn't as cut-and-dry as other relationships might be (it's going back to appreciating the complexities of RGG relationships, especially in the case of the Arakawa's where for every party involved it really IS complicated)

I wanted to exclude making any definitive statements on things that couldn't be verified without making a detour on the original post (I know I already mentioned frequently that Arakawa is able to joke about Jo being 'softer' on Masato, but I do think about their relationship often and the implied depth of Jo's loyalty if- as you said- he was able to climb through the ranks of the Arakawa family much quicker than preexisting members), but there are clear points in the game that due allude to a great trust between the two (and I also note that carpooling detail during Ichi's flashback- or at the very least I know I'd find myself noticing Jo sitting in the back opposed to the front/driving). It's definitely not hard to assert that Jo knows Arakawa well either, it's hard not to come to that conclusion when we have evidence from the game to infer that.

[lombaxfloof]

No one follows me here but I don't think I'll ever go back to twitter again. I've been working on a super long alister/ratchet fanfic for the past two years and forgot to draw in the meantime so i never got around to updating anything there ever again and now im too ashamed to show my face lmao... I may just use this acocunt if I continue posting art and just hope for the best 👍

[sillywebz]

can i get private idaho by the b-52s unstuck in my head please. i think im going to go bonkers

[willthespy]

the lineart and greyscale of the (mortal) world’s biggest enemy

waaaaa scary guy! scary son of scary god! aaaa!

look at my son. he has killed several people, but he did it while looking badass, so it’s okay!!

Redraw (one year difference)

[ah0yh0y]

.

[moonstandardtime]

also while im talking about normal things i think about. its fun to imagine what ud do in a time loop

[cherrylight]

le sighs and screams loudly into my hands

[dokjaism]

may have to bring out the journal again 😻