#is that not a fascinating and tragic backstory for a character????

[gothsuguru]

YOU TAG ME IN SUCH CUTE STUFF BELLA ILYSM :3

— for free time i usually like reading mangas, writing, watching anime, listening to music, & hanging out with my friends or going out! :D

— ooh for hobbies i’ve been trying to write fics just as a creative outlet & i also want to try my hand at properly being able to do art/draw! i also like fashion because of self-expression and how wearing different outfits can make you feel/act a certain way! i also would like to get into scrapbooking + jewelry making as a hobby! also i would love for traveling to be a hobby of mine 🙂‍↕️

— “the song of achilles” by madeline miller is still to this DAY my favorite book of all time! it was one of the very few times a book enraptured me wholly and made me want to analyze! i love greek myth and just to see it interwoven with such beautiful prose & imagery & characters was awe-inspiring. “i feel like i could eat the world raw.” is still my favorite quote of all time <3 and as for movies i genuinely love kung fu panda 2 for having such an amazing storyline & well-rounded fascinating characters/villains! i also love john wick bc i love sexy dilfy assassins being covered in neons & blood <3

— i listen to a lot of music! rn i’ve been listening to a lot of rap, r&b, indie alt/rock/pop, & kpop!

— favorite character of all time is toji fushiguro! <3 he’s just EXACTLY who i wanted from a media for a long time (dilf assassin) who has a tragic backstory yet does awful things! i like how he has no remorse for most things in his life and how his anger & pride fuel him! he’s very calculating yet also reckless! he has lots of contradictory actions and i think he’s fascinating for it! i also just love how he truly loved his wife and loved megumi, i think him killing himself for megumi really solidified for me that toji is one of the most broken characters that we don’t really know much about — but he also had a lot of love! it was messy, he’s done a lot wrong, but he also genuinely just wanted a stable life with his wife & kid. he’s the most fascinating character to me and i love him so much. i could talk about him forever & just imagine his backstory. anyways i’m a toji fushiguro apologist for eternity. rip to my man he did nothing wrong he was just going through a midlife crisis… he’s a dilf he gets a pass <333

tagging: @teddybeartoji @storiesoflilies @connorsui @rinachains @risuola :3

tag + q&a game ₊˚ෆ

hello! i thought it would be cute and exciting to do a tag game with all my mutuals to not only talk about themselves, but have fun! so here is my short little game:

alongside this picrew, share 5 things about yourself!

• how do you spend your free time? • what are your hobbies and how did you get into them? • what book or movie left a lasting impression on you? • what kind of music do you enjoy? • who is your favorite character (atm or all time) and why?

i will start first!

my name is rurumi and i enjoy spending my free time writing!

some of my hobbies (outside of writing) includes: drawing, building gundams and keyboards, and fashion! i got into most of them on a whim and became instantly hooked. aside from self-expression, being into fashion also helps with making friends in college because you always have something to talk about!

a book that left a lasting impression on me would have to be either kafka on the shore by haruki murakami or before the coffee gets cold by toshikazu kawaguchi. both stories have kept me up at night thinking a lot about the 'what ifs' in life.

i enjoy soul/r&b alongside anything of jrock influence, but i will basically listen to anything that sounds good. i am currently listening to 'so what' by lucy!

my favorite character at the moment is rin itoshi from blue lock because hes so ridiculously edgy, but at the same time i sympathize with him a lot. on the other hand, my favorite character of all time is suletta mecury from the witch from mercury series, she's an absolute ball of sunshine that i aspire to be.

tagging (+ no pressure) ₊˚ෆ

@kaiser1ns @naenaex0xx @shomatoriashi @choccorin @ryescapades

@rindreamery @soleillunne @kissxcore @rainswept @mitsvriii

[applestorms]

hello apple. the common folk ask for your fervent musings on Naomi Misora!!

:3c oh goodness, naomi thoughts huh… let's make a list for this one:

i will forever Love the LABB murder novel for expanding naomi's characterization and backstory, it is forever So tragic that she died so quickly in the series. her back and forth with both L and beyond is fantastic in that book, and the additional lore set up about all those characters really adds to the canon of the series in an interesting way.

i knowwwww people (justifiably) hate on raye for all the "You'll be happy when you don't have to be an intelligent woman and can just be a Mother :)" bullshit, but naomi as a kind of mother figure is genuinely a notable aspect of her characterization and i kinda wanna Talk about it. particularly in conjunction with that one image of her in the anime opening where she is the stand in for mary holding jesus like in the pietà and also the fact that LABB murder canon sets up the idea that she dropped out of the FBI due to her inability to shoot a child (?? should double-check this but i'm near Certain). she often comes across as quite harsh, and for good reason since she's quite Brusque with the people we see her interacting with the most (light, beyond, L, even raye to some degree), but there's an intriguing Softness to her also that is a big part of what makes her an interesting character to me. it's the Contrast of it all, y'know.

(and yes, some of this may be included purely bc ohba is a sexist writer and doesn't know how to see women as anything other than "fuck object" or "mommy." even with that in mind, i still think this is a point genuinely worth consideration... though i'm not gonna forget that either askldfjsldkf)

naomi and matsuda both are kinda weird actually in that i always Struggle to really place their ages. they both just come across as so Young, despite the fact that they're older than even L by a couple years. i suppose both of them are also often quite underestimated by the people around them, which perhaps contributes to them coming across so green.

speaking of... it seems like quite notable, if somewhat under-utilized lore that naomi was a japanese woman working in the american FBI. again, LABB murders goes into this a Bit, what with naomi struggling to connect with her (presumably largely white, male) coworkers. the fact that her true first name is written entirely in katakana (usually used for foreign words/names) too... i'm assuming she's a first generation immigrant, since they're visiting her parents in japan? but it does give her that pulled-between-cultures kinda feel. i find it quite relatable, actually, as an asian american myself.

there might be an interesting connection there too with regards to how that might influence the ways in which her and raye's relationship functions. i suppose we can't really assume raye's background or race in too extensive detail, particularly since he is presumably speaking fluent japanese throughout the series (???), but i also can't help but see how the "american man with a non-japanese name in a relationship with a japanese woman" might be of note in terms of the particular kinds of sexist assumptions/views he exerts onto her (or even that she applies to herself...)

i've said this before, but i think it's a combination of both that and her more Maternal tendencies that gets her so on board with both L and light, two characters who are both decently younger than her and Take Her Seriously. the fact that she explicitly states seeing L in light, and that she is one of the few characters, really the only person outside of the japanese task force, to actually meet L in person is also. fascinating.

speaking more on the FBI though, i can't help but wonder about what naomi's motivations were for joining the FBI in the first place. or even what her motivations were for leaving japan at all, if she really was the first in her family to immigrate. clearly the american dream did Not live entirely up to expectations, from what we can see of how hard she was putting all her stock into this marriage with raye... but i also desperately wonder what she was Going Through post-beyond incarceration/L-meeting and pre-KIRA. that seems like a particularly juicy time period fanfic-wise, especially considering how beyond himself dies... sigh. onto the wip list.

actually. considering both birthday massacre and raye, it's kinda fucking funny to consider the fact that light killed both of naomi's main love interests. even L, if you go for that. not to mention naomi herself. RIP girl, she must've been frothing at the fucking mouth in that grave putting all the pieces together. first person to kick light's ass in the nothingness afterlife fr.

anyways, in conclusion: naomi fucks hard, best girl, desperately underrated character in the series that i will love forever. there's probably more that i could add to this but my brain is all blissed out on thanksgiving food so ig that's it for now. hell yeah naomi👍

[mamawasatesttube]

yknow for as much as people talk shit about sb94, im gonna be honest. it is NOT the worst comic ive ever read. that dubious honor goes to either batgirl '08 (she would not fucking say any of that) or jeph loeb's run on supergirl '05 (which was SO bad i nearly gave up on the entire run as a whole).

[koipepo]

That omake of little Kabru not being able to show off his howetown sweets because of Misril gets to me a lot so...

Here's a happier Kabru (and Lairu)

[anonymous-chicken-was-taken]

I Am Rattling The Stans Around In My Brain Aggressively Like A Maraca

[agnesandhilda]

some final thoughts on iron widow: I wish the main throuple had either had longer to cook or that zetian and li shimin's relationship wasn't made romantic (as is it seems like zetian goes from hating and resenting him to completely forgiving him for the women he did kill, albeit incidentally, and accepting him as another boyfriend way too fast). I also wish that li shimin had actually done some of the bad things zetian believed he did at the start of the novel maybe

[misconceivedcapricorn]

Ride the Cyclone's development as a musical will always fascinate me because the probability of a recording of the original performances is most likely nonexistent but what we do have of it is also quite interesting

[dent-de-leon]

help i am once again thinking of ways the animated nein could avoid killing molly off so early--

[devotedlystrangewizard]

letting this particular character consume all the tadpoles they can AND letting volo do the surgery thing and slowly a tragic backstory reveals itself

[thebiballerina]

I cannot emphasize enough that not only do I not care what a fictional character would think of me, I know for certain that I would find at least half of my favorite characters absolutely insufferable as real people. Maybe they should be worrying about what I would think of them.

After all, the fictional villain can't kill me if I manage to kill them first.

Absolutely wild that people assume I particularly care what a fictional character would think of me if we were on the same side of the fourth wall. "[insert villain here] would kill you" yeah so would a polar bear that doesn't mean that seeing one isn't a delightful part of a day at the zoo

[intermundia]

so apparently in the earliest drafts of phantom menace, lucas had anakin at 12 years old, but eventually knocked it down to 9, because anakin leaving his mom at 12 "is not nearly as traumatic" as it would be at 9. this separation really is a foundational trauma for the tragic character, and he needed to make it hit as hard as possible, so he found the sweet spot of bad timing for qui-gon to find anakin. it makes me think of AUs where he is both older and younger and able to handle separation and transition better, both help avoid the problem of his psychological misfit with the jedi. his age of discovery is a vital part of all the things that had to right (for sidious) and wrong (for the jedi) for darth vader to happen, like the deck was intentionally stacked against anakin's happiness from the beginning on purpose for dramatic reasons. lucas's design of the backstory for such an established villain was really an archaeology of trauma that led to such a disaster, scraping away layers of the adult psyche to see the damaged child inside. many didn't like that the movie was about a whiny kid, but it's fascinating to me that lucas wanted vader to be understood as having that child weeping inside.

[oblique-lane]

idk if youve done it yet but i would actually lose my mind if you did an analysis for demo

Aye aye captain 🫡 Time to overdramatize again!

Let's address Demo's wounds

(Demo's backstory was changed through the years but I'm sticking to the older version because I find it more grounded)

Demoman's story is easily one of the most tragic of all the mercs. Imagine you have been abandoned from birth, your parents simply rejected you for what you are. But luckily you have been adopted by some good people who replaced your parents and made you a relatively happy child.

And then you accidentally kill them. You're 6 years old. How does that feel?

I can't even imagine how a child's brain can't comprehend the idea of being a murderer. It was an accident, of course, they were blown up by a big explosion he created (genius kid found out how to do that, huh?) but still. His parents were dead and he knew it was his own fault. He learned he was dangerous as he is.

How was it like pondering about it in the orphanage?.. "I didn't want this! I want to go back and fix it, I'm so sorry", something like that. But he couldn't go back in time, so being covered in such an avalanche of guilt, he learned he needs to repress himself.

Demo have always had an explosive temper (no pun intended), it was his true nature, pure emotion: if he's happy, it's 100%; if he's angry, it's a full blown storm. If he loves, he loves with all of his heart, and he has a big one.

Living on the impulse, all or nothing, that crucial accident revealed that letting his true nature go will only end up as destruction in the end. Irreparable damage.

We don't know what exactly was happening to him during his orphanage years, but if I'm to guess, repressing everything about him: his interests, his character, his whole nature, was a thing to choose. He thought that he had to become still and quiet as to not to repeat that kind of tragedy ever again. He probably didn't have people to be friends with either, either because people rejected him for his past, or he avoided them himself due to his internalized shame, at least that's a guess.

But everything repressed returns to the surface sooner or later. As a child, living for so long under overwhelming guilt, grief, hate, pain and sadness, under the skies that are almost never sunny in a all-year-long damp and coldness of the Ullapool. Incomprehensibly grey. It was depriving.

He was always fascinated with explosions. He didn't touch it for a long time, but maybe something like seeing fireworks again one day made something inside him tremble... And to remember.

Explosions. Launch... Acceleration... Release. And every time the release happens, his soul fills with excitement, the body feels lighter and shivers go up the spine. Release happens inside his head too, for the explosions make his worries and pain go away for a moment.

He couldn't find another way to release his bottled up emotions, so gradually he returned to make explosives again.

It was something like an addiction. Similar to pyromania, except no one bothered to research this one. At the moment of explosion he could let his anger out, he could scream, he could run around freely, he could sense heat in his chest; he could be himself. As he once was.

Everything was cold. But the explosions were hot.

He thought it was under control, just a little bit of KABOOM after school, but he craved more and more every time, more vivid, more violent...

That's how he lost his eye. (...Was it a subconscious act of selfharm?)

The missing eye was a forever reminder of how deviated he actually was. He learned that he couldn't repress or change what he truly is - a monster. A Black Scottish Cyclops, wether it were his peers who called him like that or he himself, out of misery. There was indeed something seriously wrong with him.

It seemed like the only thing he was capable of is destruction. Destruction is the only environment he's comfortable with. Peace was always so anxious and depriving, and breaking things felt calming, so he figured it must be right.

And then his birth mother came and took him back, "now that's he's a worthy DeGroot". It was unexpected but... Pleasant. So he wasn't THAT worthless after all, huh? Turns out, it was really familial, the destruction thing. At least he found out that there was a reason behind all of this.

His new mom was, saying honestly, pretty cruel with words. She was not at all gentle, she was very strict, demanding and straight up abusive. It was never enough for her no matter what Demo did. She didn't want results from his work, she's just always wanted to mess with his brain.

And for whatever reason... This setup felt right for him. To be thrown around like that, to be humiliated harshly, it felt fitting, it wasn't causing anxiety or anything. He has to be a scapegoat, he had to forget about being a child and to start working as an adult, at the same time somehow replacing a father he still didn't have, but it felt good enough. Confusing relationships felt good enough.

Destruction was his habitat, and his heart could no longer accept anything else.

Cruelty wasn't warm though, just familiar, just an environment to not to go insane. But he craved warmness so badly... Yet every time he would get close to someone and receive a little gentleness and care, it would feel sickening. It felt unnatural, it reminded him of his lost parents and of everything that's wrong about him.

The only warmness his body could accept was alcohol, making him bubbly and comfortable and relaxed. He almost felt normal, happy even. Alcohol heat made him melt, and he felt so fulfilled as if he was in paradise, back to the womb.

Yet after the effect wears off, he feels lonely as ever. Quickly, existing without alcohol becomes pain. Existing at all. He became an addict.

Not that everyone he met rejected him, rather, he subconsciously reached out to those who would be cruel to him. Again, gentleness hurts wether he knows it or not. He's only good in destruction.

Lonely and clingy, ready to overshare, overall mess yet carrying a big baggage of love that has no one to give it to. Maybe because he can't give it to himself in the first place. There's so many issues unresolved because he can't handle them alone, yet there's no one to help since he was already trapped in a closed circuit of self sabotage.

He will keep acting like a party beast, always crazily emotional and overdone upbeat, a simple drunken man who will not be taken seriously that way. Maybe that's what he wanted, to not be seen as deep by anyone for not be reminded of his misery once again.

Seems like we bought that too.

...

The enemy Soldier might be an exception though. The man he really treasures his friendship with turned out to be an enemy; repeating the rule again: it's only acceptable when dangerous. Soldier deeply cares for Demo, however he's not gentle or pitying, he's as destructive and explosive as Demo is, and these two are a very rare perfect combination of destructing each other in the act of love. Both broken beyond repair, soul on soul, forever to be misunderstood by the outsiders. This is something about this relationship that looks like a golden lining.

They will not fix each other, but they sure are going to have a good time!

[daftmooncretin]

I’m not sure if this is a hot take or not but oh my god in terms of character depth the show has completely eclipsed the original books. obviously lestat was always an insanely fleshed out character because anne rice was obsessed with him but tbh armand, daniel and louis have been given more depth in this 5 episode run then in what 14 books of the vampire chronicles? i mean armand was already a fascinating character to begin with and assad takes what he’s given from the source material and just creates a whole new being with his performance!! plus the additions to his backstory and relationship with louis add a lot i think. but daniel and louis in the source material? they had none of the original armand potential! louis was a white plantation owner.! plus he was incredibly whiney and i always found him flat and kind of two dimensional in the books. how the writers and jacob anderson managed to create the perfect horrific anomaly that is our louis from that…? fucking astounding to me. and daniel??? book daniel is a fine character, sure. but the layers the show added by letting daniel move on from his first encounter and grow into eric! daniel add so much to his charcter!! ITS THE WAY OLD AND YOUNG DANIEL CONTRAST EACHOTHER COMPLETELY AS INTERVIEWERS YET ARE STILL COMPLETE EMOTIONAL MIRRORS OF EACHOTHER. ITS THE WAY THE DYNAMIC BETWEEN THE VAMPIRES AND 70’s AND PRESENT DANIEL SEEM LIKE OPPOSITES AT FIRST BUT GRADUALLY WE SEE ITS BEEN THE SAME BETWEEN THEM THE WHOLE TIMS. DANIEL IS STILL TERRIFIED AND DANIEL IS STILL BRAVE DESPITE IT. HE’S STILL FUCKING SIMULTANEOUSLY PRISONER AND JUDGE. he’s the idealistic boy high off his mind and he’s the cynical dying old man and he’s both and he’s neither. (can you tell daniel molloy is the most fascinating and tragic character in this show) ITS SUCH A FUCKING FANTASTIC PARALLEL. anyway i love you amc iwtv. you are doing such a good fucking job. also thank you eric. i love you eric. your performance both haunts and captivates me eric.

[zombie-eats-world]

Literally never seen anyone turn Crocodile is a poor little meow meow. He’s evil, no one’s arguing that but no one has to continuously bring it up when focusing on other facets of his personality.

I’ve seen the fandom take a bastard character and make them a poor little meow meow, twice now

Which isn’t a lot but it’s fucking disappointing.

[faruna]

I’m back with the promised Faruzan comic!

I've always been kinda fascinated by the tragic implications of Faruzan’s backstory, though it’s rarely touched on in the game itself.

All the text in the comic is taken directly from Faruzan’s 4th and 5th character stories.

As always, thank you for reading!

[bromcommie]

tbh I still think Brock Rumlow was an interesting character and upon further examination way more unsettling a villain than most to me because like. Let’s be real, the second you lay eyes on Robert Redford as Pierce monologuing in his pristine suit and glass office high up in the sky he just screams Evil Politician! at you. You can see it coming a mile away. Meanwhile Rumlow is….Just Some Guy. On the surface, he’s just some side dude. He’s not enhanced, he’s not in some major position of power, he’s just someone who’s really good at what he does and seems dedicated enough to the work and functions well with his team. He respects Steve, might admire him even, but not so much that he gets starry eyed like everybody else. He’s lighthearted but focused, he’s no nonsense, he’s the everyman Steve can relate to way more than spooks like Natasha or Fury.

And okay, maybe what Rumlow does for a living is beat intimidate and kill people, but it’s not like that’s the primary objective, right, because SHIELD are the good guys and this is what Steve does now, too, anyway; except that Steve doesn’t really use any weapons other than the shield, he holds back, he doesn’t carry a gun anymore which is usually fine since he’s dangerous enough without it. But when that leaves him vulnerable, he’s covered: Rumlow’s got his six, and he does it well, and he earns some of his trust. This is familiar to Steve.

And maybe Rumlow’s a little too good, fine, maybe he shoots a guy in the head within the first fifteen minutes of the movie when he doesn’t necessarily have to and then cracks jokes immediately after but that’s alright too, because that guy had Steve at gunpoint and that guy was Bad whereas Rumlow is One of the Good Guys just doing his job, right. Rumlow’s joking around because he’s used to the violence, they’re all used to it, and this is just how it works. They’re just soldiers doing the grunt work and following orders, and this is familiar, too.

Except that they’re not soldiers and this isn’t a war, except that the work is for an intelligence agency whose job it is to hoard and steal information and monitor civilians and orchestrate and sabotage and meddle in internal and external state affairs. Except that the Good Guys, in reality, are extremely grey at best. Except that many of the Good Guys turn out to be Nazis on top of everything else, and it’s not that far of a stretch.

But when it’s all starting to unravel, you’re still thinking well maybe some of these guys didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t do it out of individual belief, and if faced with the right choice, they can be redeemed.

That is until you realize that Rumlow maybe didn’t respect Steve and what he did so much as what Steve could do if only Steve weren’t “weak” in other ways, if Steve had chosen the right side. That it not being personal is less a cop out and more a taunt the same way just following orders has always been, for Rumlow and many many men that came before him and will continue to come after. Until the vault when, by the most charitable of interpretations, Rumlow looks at the Winter Soldier letting himself be smacked around and crying and getting shocked like he’s maybe a little unnerved (if not just downright fascinated) by the whole thing, but not enough that it really changes anything for him, because the end justifies the means and it’s not really his problem, anyway.

Until Sam shows up and Rumlow looks at him like a bird of prey and says This is gonna hurt with a fucking smile on his face, and then you think: shit, man, obviously. How was it not clear from the start.

To me, what makes someone like Rumlow a good villain, even a side one, is not that he’s straight up Insane & Evil™️ or suffering from Tragic Backstory Syndrome or all hopped up on magic superstrength juice or whatever, but precisely the fact that he’s Just Some Guy with a cockroach survival mentality who operates well within the established system and just so happens to be really good at his job - a job that he might’ve even joined thinking it was for a good cause, or because he had something to prove, or simply because it gave him one hell of an excuse to be a bully. Because he either wholeheartedly believes in HYDRA or he just doesn’t give much of a shit either way so long as he gets his due in the end, and both are just as bad.

Because when you strip away all the grand scale superhero theatrics, you’ve seen this before. You’ve seen Rumlows in your school and in your neighborhood and in the military and the cop car patrolling your street. They’re the ones who sometimes say or do somewhat offputting shit but you figure it’s fine because they’re otherwise real nice or charismatic or normal looking, or maybe they work a job that’s framed as helpful or protective or inherently good despite the power dynamics at play, or they share your background and interests and you chat about the weather being crap this time of year.

And every time one of them turns out to be a violent, hateful piece of shit, you’re still somehow surprised then, too, when you really shouldn’t be.