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#it's about being haunted by the living
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Thirteen/Amy/Rory writing update (pt. 51)
It's kind of amazing to me that I have absolutely no emotional attachment to the original Hide episode one way or another (it's a perfectly decent episode, I don't love it or hate it) but with a couple of changes in the companions/the identity of the time-travelling "ghost"/the nature of the TARDIS' voice interface, I'm actively sobbing, because even though there's very little discussion of ghosts the Orpheus/Eurydice parallel is back and swinging hard, the story is being haunted by the past and the future alike, and the fact is that River's been dead since before she was born and Clara has been a ghost since the Doctor met her and that's still not even close to the most devastating thing that's coming in the next update because Eleven, even at his happiest, was still lonely because he was still hiding the truth from Amy and Rory even as he married them and thanks to him, Thirteen is haunted from the moment she is born and I'm fine, y'all- *voice cracks*
Anyway, word count for today is 215k.
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bixels · 5 months
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The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.
#also idk how to tell you this but even if it were true. wealthy children potentially sacrificing their educational careers to protest is#a good thing actually. idk how to tell you that caring about people from other nations is good#personal#“this war has nothing to do with most students cuz nobody's getting drafted” idk how to explain to you that we should be angry#that our tuitions of 10s of thousands of dollars that we pay every year for an education is being used to fund a genocidal campaign#also the implication that if you go to a uni institution you are automatically privileged by participation no matter your bg#i didn't /want/ to go to this school. i was supposed to go to a school with an art/animation program. but i realized my immigrant#parents have been working their whole lives to get me here. and turning the opportunity down would be a disservice to their sacrifice#this is getting into convos of “what 2nd gen kids owe their parents” which is different for everyone but. yeah#i just get pissed off at seeing people misrepresenting student bodies as “wealthy” and “privileged” and “elite” when it's such a blatant li#i remember a year ago a friend told me they can't fly home to hong kong for winter break because the plane tickets are too expensive#so they have to find temporary housing around the area#last quarter for a film doc class my film partner made a doc on a small group of marxist grad students from india discussing praxis#during a rally a few months ago in response to police presence the coalition invited palestinian students to speak about their experiences#and lead songs and read poems they wrote. these are STUDENTS. are they elitist too?#this is not to disregard my own personal privilege either.#this whole narrative's just to rationalize a lack of empathy to me. seeing a 19yo student get shot by a rubber bullet and your first#reaction is “HAW! HAW! bet richy rich didn't see THAT coming when she put on her terrorist hood!”#newsflash. these big uni campuses are HAUNTED by the violence of past protests and revolutions and police brutality. we know.#why do you think these coalitions have been making reinforced barricades at record speed
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opheliapurple · 1 month
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The juxtaposition of Louis’ monologues on Claudia and the actual scenes with Claudia are so funny to me.
Louis: she was an obsessive whirlwind
Claudia: let’s spend more than .05% of our immortal lives looking for and researching our own kind.
Louis: there was nothing in her but feverish fixation
Claudia: omfg Louis uncurl from your ball of depression we have shit to do.
Louis: she was a perfect killer, forever teetering on the edge of madness
Claudia: *possesses the ability to eat people without writing tearful poetry about it*
Louis: she was mercurial- always abandoning me to chase her desires :(
Claudia: I hate your boyfriends
Louis: she was never satisfied, and rebelled and suspected Armand and the coven
Claudia: I HATE YOUR BOYFRIENDS
Louis: god I feel so responsible for her- even for the bad stuff that happens her- it’s such a burden
Claudia: you told your boyfriend we did WHAT on your second date???
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ropes3amthoughts · 10 days
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I know people are just joking when they say stuff like “Mithrun is an old grandpa he doesn’t know he can’t say those words anymore he doesn’t know they don’t have any book tokens anymore” because of these extras below:
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and whatever but like it honestly drives me kind of crazy. Like can we look at this for a second.
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He was the lord of the dungeon for five years. Then he was being rehabilitated for TWENTY YEARS. That’s not super long for elves, that’s like four years for us, but that’s still a long time. And then he was the captain for another fourteen years, but he didn’t have any desire other than getting revenge on the demon.
Mithrun hasn’t really been properly socialized for a total of FORTY YEARS, which is like eight years for elves. He was totally shut off from the world, then he was rehabilitated, and then he was with the Canaries on a onetrack mindset to go after the demon. Mithrun was doing bad, he was recovering, and then he was better enough to be the captain of the Canaries again, but he was still not “better.” In all that time, the world didn’t wait for him when he was at his low point. It didn’t wait for him when he was spending all that time recovering. And by the time it’s near the end of the story where these comics take place he’s just been so far detached from the world. Like he’s most likely never tried to go buy a book token after becoming a dungeon lord. He’s most likely never talked to people and learned the new slang of the time, he’s never been caught up which words are good versus outdated. Mithrun is technically better enough to be captain, he’s better enough to have reintegrated into society, but he’s not quite adjusted yet. He’s been out for so many years suffering under the hands of the demon and scraping his way through recovery and trying to work to get to the demon that by the time he’s stopped and done stuff like gift exchanges or whatever many aspects of the world are vastly different from what he remembers. I think that’s a lot like a lot of people in real life too who have similar experiences. People in mental health centers or hospitals who spends even just months recovering can miss out on so much.
Does this make any sense? It’s kind of late so I don’t really know what I’m saying and I’m probably repeating myself but like Mithrun was at a low point and then he was recovering for so long!!!! And then when he’s reintegrated back into the world it’s changed without him!!!! He’s not some racist old man!!! The world just kept on turning when he was struggling and how is he even supposed to deal with that? Like he doesn’t have much desire but everybody is so upset with him for not knowing things like outdated terms or using cash because he didn’t know there were no more book tokens and he just can’t have known that because he literally wasn’t in a state to keep up with all of the stuff like that and now everything is different and maybe he doesn’t care because he has no desire to but like aghhhhhhhhhhhh sob sob sniffle oughhhhh 😭😭😭😭 Mithrun 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 imagine I’m shaking him back and forth that’s how I feel right now oughhhhh
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cruelplatonic · 3 months
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my personal headcanon is the vees were unremarkable nobodies when they were alive. i just love it as a thematic throughline for them. they love to let the public of hell speculate on them being famed and acclaimed since before death, but the the truth is they were a d-list failed influencer that got by on cheap controversey and scamming, a broke junkie who burned every shaky bridge he ever had, and a worn-out broadcast production assistant with more rejected auditions and tossed out script pitches than he could count. nobody missed them when they were gone, nobody cared who they were until they were dead.
#because villains who didn't start off supremely powerful are more interesting to me#vees#it's not that they CAN'T be better. or that they're simply ignorant of the ways they fuck up others lives#they actually all do have that knowledge of being the underdog. and it's made them all the more shitty#because they never want to be those people again#narratives about people who make each other worse <3#to be clear they were still shitty people in life. manipulative. consumed by greed and envy. all their individual flaws etc etc#but hell made them into the absolute worst versions of themselves#of course what their Worst Self is and the journey/length of time/initial reaction to being in hell varies#like val sees hell as a continuation of the things happening in life. just w/ the power dynamics always privileging him#it's the same drugs and violence. except the violence isn't just survival anymore but the chance to indulge his deeply sadistic desires#vox has completely dissociated from his time alive. that person is dead and he's reinvented himself 1000 times over since then#90% of the time he has those memory files shoveled into a hidden directory#he refuses to acknowledge that he's still haunted by some of the same insecurities from almost a century ago#val doesn't necessarily see his living self in a fond light but he does see that person as fundamentally him#velvette thinks life was full of people who weren't her demographic but fortunately that's been fixed by sinners!#they just couldn't Get Her and that was all their faults#the primary way they view their past selves can be summed up as: scorn (vox) apathy (valentino) and in denial (velvette)#sorry the bulk of the post was in the tags. i will be doing this again#the scorn is the coping mechanism for shame. of course
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confused-stars · 5 months
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Wriothesley as an extension of the Fortress itself
a living, breathing part of its organism, his heart beating in tandem with its machinery. that deep hum that's always present in his mind and lulls him to sleep at night is Meropide's ancient power coursing through his veins and he doesn't even know it, let alone understand it
he was a blank slate when he arrived, a non-person by his own choice, and so the Fortress claimed him as her own
sometimes he seems to know exactly what is happening five floors below, and inmates joke that it's some sort of magic, but they know that the Duke is simply well-informed and uses the in-built security system to keep on top of things... surely that's all there is to it
a young Wriothesley was once pursued by a handful of other inmates who wanted to kill him for a perceived slight. he ducked into the shadowed hallways of the lower levels, took turn after turn, and eventually made his way to a safe room where he could hide for the night. the next day, he learned that the other inmates never made it to their morning shifts
his footing is always sure on the walkways, he never loses his way, and he can always tell when there's something up with the machinery at first glance
sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night with the taste of copper in his mouth, and he mistakes it for a memory of blood... but every time, he gets up and he finds that something has happened that requires his attention - usually the violent kind
he doesn't think there's anything special to it all, but Sigewinne sees. Sigewinne knows. she'll cross that bridge in a few decades, when Wriothesley realizes that he's stopped aging
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thepersonperson · 4 months
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Sukuna's Loneliness Part 2 (Sukuna is a fraud and it's funny.)
Part 1 Part 3
Before we start...
1) I will be mainly using the TCB scans because of their accessibility. 
2) This was written as of JJK 262.
(Click pictures for captions/citations.)
Fraudkuna
You’ve probably heard JJK dudebros call The King of Curses a fraud. Fraudkuna to be exact. I want to say that they’re 100% right, but that doesn’t make Sukuna a bad fighter. Sukuna is a fraud in the way Saul Goodman is a fraud. He’s so good at being fraudulent that it’s his very way of life.
This person puts it succinctly. 
And remember Reggie’s Star’s words of wisdom.
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The best sorcerers are masters of deception.
Mimicry
Sukuna constantly steals from people—he takes something that isn’t his, and then morphs it into something for his purposes whether it’s bodies, Cursed Techniques (CTs), or strategies. This guy barely has original ideas of his own, using someone else’s work as the base and then building himself on top of that. This is fraud behavior. 
Puppeting Megumi
In a 2 for 1 special, Sukuna steals Kenjaku’s original idea to turn body parts into cursed objects and Megumi’s 10 Shadows along with his body.
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Naturally he steals the hand signs for Megumi's CT too.
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What’s interesting about this copying is that the hand signs are inversed for every Shikigami except Mahoraga.
I think the inversion for Sukuna is an act of disrespect or a form of acknowledgement for a lesser since the hand sign for Mahoraga, who Sukuna respects greatly, is identical to the original form. Sukuna’s Mahoraga is virtually unchanged in design as well. It might be slightly bigger, unlike the other Shikigami whose forms are distorted compared to Megumi’s.
I lean towards distortion being an act of disrespect since Sukuna despises Choso almost as much as Yuji and steals his Piercing Blood while tweaking the hand sign.
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They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. And just about everyone has picked up on Sukuna’s Megumi obsession. However, what most don’t realize is that this obsession wasn’t for Megumi the person, but his potential. Mahoraga to be exact.
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And though Sukuna adores Mahoraga, his obsession with this Shikigami is in service to someone else…
Professional Gojo Satoru Simp
When I was writing this section, I was greatly surprised. I went back and scanned through everything post-Gojo Death (JJK 236-262) to see how often Sukuna copies Gojo as evidence of fraud. What I found fundamentally changed the direction of this analysis. I will tie it all into how Sukuna is a fraud don't get me wrong, but there's something else at play here...
Post-Gojo's demise, Sukuna thinks of Gojo whether directly from himself or implied by the narrator. 15 TIMES.
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Sukuna, for no discernable reason, keeps copying everything Gojo did. It's not a one-off thing like Megumi for a long-term goal, it's a consistent non-stop mimicry after their fight. Here's all of them so far:
1. Using Reverse Cursed Energy (RCE) to heal a burnt-out CT.
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2. The hand sign for Unlimited Void. (Aside: Yuta inverts the hand sign as Yujo, but in his case I think it's an act of respect since he doesn't see himself as Gojo's equal.)
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3. The hand sign for Red.
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4. Shrine based Infinity barrier.
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5. Using Blue's gravity to fast travel.
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6. Black flashing to restore Cursed Energy (CE) output.
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7. The chanting and Honored One Pose at the same time. (And there’s even more layers to the chants themselves check out this post.)
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8. Detonating his own technique on himself.
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9. Even the way in which he smiles as he beats teenagers up.
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By the way this face punch he did to Yugo is a replica Gojo's very first punch he landed on Sukuna.
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They say imitation is the highest form of flattery but got dang. This is a bit obsessive to put it lightly.
But it didn’t start here. Sukuna’s Gojo obsession started from this panel. As Sukuna himself confirms.
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No. Let’s go back further. This is when it began. Chapter 2 of the manga and Episode 1 of the anime in early June of 2018.
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This motherfudger has been planning on how to slaughter Gojo for 200+ chapters. In canon time that is about 6 months.
I want to point out that his promise to kill Gojo first wound up being a lie on multiple fronts (more fraudulent behavior). He admits that it's the wrong brat's body while leaving out the fact that Gojo wasn't his first kill.
Technically Sukuna made Yuji's body his temporarily in Shibuya and killed thousands, but that wasn't deliberate. Sukuna didn't target those civilians specifically, they just got caught up as collateral in his fights with Jogo and Mahoraga. The first person Sukuna went out of his way to kill was Yorozu/Tsumiki (killing Ryu along the way). And he didn't tell Gojo that for a reason.
Much like Gojo, Sukuna is a 2 birds and 1 stone person as in he has multiple reasons for doing a single action. This can make his motives appear dubious or have plausible deniability. Sukuna on the surface went after Yorozu/Tsumiki to subjugate Megumi's soul. But that too was still in service of killing Gojo. Yorozu’s Perfect Sphere, if you remember, acts just like Infinity. And Sukuna trained Mahoraga on it deliberately to get past it.
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This also means that retroactively, his Megumi and Mahoraga obsession is a part of his Gojo obsession. He saw his personally trained student’s potential, found out about Mahoraga’s adaptation, and used it specifically to upgrade his CT for the sole purpose of killing Gojo. Sukuna admits to this himself.
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Not with his own technique by itself, but with Megumi’s because deep down he realized Gojo’s CT was better than his and he’d lose to him in a fair fight. A fraudulent way to victory.
By the way, when Mahoraga finally adapts to Infinity in a way Sukuna can copy, he's observing the adaptation from the shadows, fully bumming the fight, as Gojo 1v2s Agito and Mahoraga.
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What’s so fascinating about this planning is that it was made up on the fly. Sukuna has been obsessing over how to kill Gojo Satoru since their first 10 seconds interaction. (Toji behavior much?) Megumi and Mahoraga being a part of his plans occurred by chance. There’s a certain level of adaptability and skill needed to think on the fly like this. It truly makes Sukuna the Best Fraud in verse.
Lies and Hypocrisy
Simply copying those you admire is base level fraudulent behavior. What makes Sukuna the King of Frauds are the contradictions in his words and actions. This isn’t like Gojo Satoru who is actively hiding his true feelings as a trauma response. Sukuna betrays his own inner logic on convenience. Uraume even notes this as his “capricious nature”.
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These are excuses made by a Professional Sukuna Understander who also acknowledges just how much he was into Gojo despite Sukuna actively denying it himself. (He’s just a fish? What kind of fish engages in 6 months of psychological mind games and preparation to catch outside of Moby Dick? Yes I know he’s a whale but the obsessiveness bordering something else is there.)
We'll get back to this eventually. For now we will focus on how Sukuna picks on children.
Hating Ideals and Roles
Sukuna hates ideals. Everyone knows this because he tells Yuji constantly how much he hates them. He spits on Yuji for having ideals and goals. And then turns around and gets hyped when he finally has his own goal to chase. The hypocrisy speaks for itself.
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But that’s not the end of it. He also berates Yuji for seeking a role in life, outwardly teasing him when he finds one besides cog. And then gets this excited when Maki “forces” one on him.
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He’s not just being a hypocrite here. I think it’s envy. Yuji gets all the things he was denied—a society that does not exclude him for the circumstances of his birth, clear cut goals and purposes alongside others, and fulfilling connections with equals. In the worst case of Sour Grapes I’ve ever seen, he derides the things he believes he’s incapable of having. But the second he gets a taste, he starts salivating.
Hating Love
Sukuna's hatred of ideals and roles in society is but a microcosm of his one true hate—love and connections. Anything soft like bonds makes people weak. Sukuna seeks only strength so he believes the following:
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Not only does Sukuna admit here that connections with other people are a weakness, he believes Gojo to be the modern pinnacle of casting them away to obtain strength. In a very roundabout way this is him praising Gojo for being a monster like himself.
And that's where the next contradiction lies. Despite Sukuna preaching the benefits of isolation, he still craves that monster to monster connection. He adores anyone just like him. Monsters who throw all their humanity away just like him. He wants that connection so badly. Look at how often Sukuna gets excited when he thinks others might be like him. (Notice the half-assed Brat is Sukuna calling Yuji out for not committing to monsterhood.)
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Uraume of all people should fulfill a bit of that social want Sukuna has, but they put him on a pedestal. They are his servant and he is their master. Even though they can intuit his needs, they can’t fulfill all his emotional ones since their relationship is one with inherent distance between them. That being said, Uraume still understands exactly what Sukuna is looking for—other monsters.
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Professional Sukuna Understander once again gives insight onto how this fraud thinks. Sukuna is strong enough to endure solitude. He is fearless and alone by embracing power.
And yet Sukuna cannot abide by his own principles against love.
December 24th is the most romantic day in Japan. This information is in part how we infer Gojo Satoru is in love Geto Suguru time and time again. Kenjaku calls Gojo out for this. Setting a battle date to December 24th is romantic in nature. And Sukuna, of his own volition starts seeing Gojo as the one who will teach him love.
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No. That's not right either...
Gojo has never been the one trying to teach Sukuna love. He never heard those words from Yorozu. Not once. It's the other way around. Sukuna is the one trying to teach Gojo about love. Every single time "The one who will teach you about love is..." appears, Sukuna is in the final frame. It's never Gojo. It's always Sukuna.
The loneliness that comes with unrivaled strength. The one who will teach you about love is...Sukuna.
Kashimo takes Sukuna up on the offer. He has Sukuna teach him about love. When Sukuna first starts his speech about love, he speaks of Yorozu as someone who could've taught Gojo of love—as in Gojo was the one who needed teaching. He also spells out for Kashimo that the strong love with their violence. Sukuna himself admits that he loves by slaughtering. All while saying it's worthless in the end, because the only thing that matters to him is strength.
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Wanting love and strength is greedy. You can't have both. Sukuna killing Gojo was not only an act of love, but an act of denial in pursuit of self-preservation. Sukuna found someone he could possibly love and he did everything in his power to kill him for the sake of maintaining his strength.
This could be proof he's not a fraud when it comes to hating love. But he still engaged with it and became stronger as a result of it—contradicting the very principles on which he decries love as weakness.
In retrospect, this makes this particular Gojo glazing Sukuna sequence from the infamous JJK 236 ironically hilarious.
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Gojo never realized that Sukuna obsessed over him for 6 months nonstop after meeting him for 10 seconds. He never realized that Sukuna's cruelty and cuts were trying to reach him. The most Gojo knew was that Sukuna bagged Mahoraga to kill him. He didn't know about the planning that went into it or the heart behind it all. Gojo has always been iffy about understanding other people's feelings towards him mind you, but...
In the same way Geto did not understand Gojo's love for him until both of them were dead, Gojo did not understand Sukuna's love for him even in death. Because Gojo and Sukuna are the same person.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni (When the Seagulls Cry) is a visual novel about a person who is fundamentally misunderstood by those around them. They desperately want to be loved without being perceived, believing themself to be unworthy due to trauma and immutable characteristics given to them at birth. Instead of telling anyone these feelings directly, they play games akin to torture. They torment the ones they love over and over in hopes they'll see through their actions and understand them.
The Consequences of Fraudulent Behavior
The tragedy of Sukuna is his inability to fully realize his desires. He wants an equal in strength to play with or be killed by, but he crushes anyone with the potential to do that. Gojo was the closest thing Sukuna ever got to realizing that desire. Hence the “You cleared my skies. I shall remember you for as long as I live.” and subsequent "Where's Gojo Satoru?" ad nauseum.
Instead of allowing these potential companions to realize their abilities fully, he kills them and then gets upset about it. There's honestly no difference between him and a dog impulsively tearing his favorite chewtoys to pieces and getting confused by the outcome. (And in the case of Gojo Satoru, that's the dog catching the car but if the dog had spent half a year studying the exact speed and timing down to the stud before ripping the bumper off.)
I genuinely cannot tell if Sukuna is aware of this problem himself. Seriously, I don’t think anyone has told him that if he wants a matured fighter, he needs to let them…mature in the first place. I know he was treated like animal since birth, but he’s smart enough to know better. 
He’ll never reach satisfaction like this and it’s as funny as it is pathetic. Even Megumi, the first person he saw with the potential to entertain him, was chewed up with ease. Not just him, but the very reason he took interest—Mahoraga. Instead of having a Shikigami that will always evolve with him and therefore always be a source of everchanging entertainment, he tamed it and added it to his arsenal.
Sure all of that was to kill Gojo via masterclass frauding, but that too cucks him in the long run. Gojo is still the only person in Sukuna’s entire existence to keep up with him and nearly kill him on his own. If Sukuna were smarter, he could’ve developed a lifelong rivalry that fueled both of their growths. But Gojo beats him fair and square, so he binding vow frauds his way out in a way that permanently destroys this source of fun.
And on top of that, his killing of Gojo may have also been Sukuna trying to trick himself into believing he doesn't need anyone to satisfy him ever. He probably believes this from the bottom of his heart. Kashimo calls him out for it. "Then why mince your soul into cursed objects and watch all those years go by?" Why get so excited when Uraume shows up too?
I'm not saying that Sukuna has been secretly craving romantic or sexual love for the past 1,000 years. He has had plenty of opportunities to engage with this kind of love and has chosen not to. (Though I do think Sukuna saw his fight with Gojo as a some warped version of a date at this point.) The kind of love Sukuna seems to crave is one between friends, peers, and equals. What I'm saying is that Gojo shattered his world view in the same way Gojo also shattered Toji's world view. But unlike Toji who was able to admit his way of thinking was flawed, Sukuna is actively in denial.
He denies his own feelings and desires for companionship while running around looking for another Gojo Satoru that will never exist. All that Sukuna is left with are disappointments and ghosts to chase. The only person who keeps getting up stronger every time he knocks them down is Yuji. And he hates Yuji. 
I’m not sure what this all means in the grand scheme of this story, but I am fascinated by how this absolute menace sabotages his own chances at happiness because his power and fraudulent behavior has stripped him of his ability to socialize.
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sideblogdotjpeg · 3 months
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ive been thinking about the red string superstition recently and also sol bufo always and it makes me sick how uncannily caldwell tanner has made sol to perfectly target me personally
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(+ cropped versions !)
#naddpod#ba2mia#ba2umia#solum bufo#swag daniels#calliope petrichor#calder kilde#alexandrite#posts by me dot com#okay..... SECRET TAGS RAMBLE!#so basically this superstition is like ... i think a chinese/buddhist/taoist superstition?#ive taken some creative liberties with it... but its mostly accurate to how its been told to me?#but of course theres lots of variations! some more abt bad luck; some say to tie it on the doorknob#etc etc ... lots a variations#i was also rlly interested in the .... weird illogic? of the thing?#like the red attracts and repels spirits at the same time#so thats something i was thinking about with too. red is assocuated with both swag and alexandrite. which to me was kinda reflecting like#i think what murph said . swags place in the wild is in a way. an extension of what he learned from the network#mothership s inextractivle from sol and swags lives. they will always be held doen by it. thats the spirit that will follow them forever#that they choose to hold on too! as much pain as it brought ... some of the experience was worth it#and anyway. theres somethingwrong w me that the minute someone brought up this superstition my brain went#'ohhh just like sol!' < needs to touch grass moment#but i CANT BELIEVE. CALDWELL DID THE RED STRING. AND ITS LITERALLY A MOURNING RITUAL#caldwell keeps accodentally makig that frog ASIAN. to MEEEE!!!!!!#but. anyway. idk. ive always hced sol kept the piece of yarn and it makes me kinda .... what if y let the malicious spirits follow you.#and haunt you. what if its the closest you can get to keeping the person still around#and sol and swag obviously have so much about homes .... so!#(ok. weve reached the pt where maybe nobodys reading? so confession is this is sort of a well. ive just been doodling this comic everyday#after a wake. and it was sort of inspired after realising i was even a bit sad about it maybe. so. idk its about sol but also?#i guess the projection doesnt end at him being asian. hehe. is what i mean. LOL. okay secret tags over . buried lore. dont look here folks)
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swearingcactus · 6 months
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can we talk about how V gives other people second chances to live when he was only granted a second chance to die, and how little v is kind of a dying sunflower because he, too, is something cheerful that’s wasting away..?
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haunted-xander · 1 year
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So. Fatebreaker, right? Ryne's biggest fears made manifest, daddy issues personified, yes?
He's an amalgamation of Thancred and Ran'jit, his face, his voice and his weapon is Thancred's, but his body, his fighting style and his words are Ran'jit's.
Throughout the fight Fatebreaker constantly makes comments about how only he can protect Ryne, only he can provide for her, only he has even the right to so much as stand beside her, to be in her general presence. He's possessive and obsessive, repeatedly asserting that she is HIS and his only. Which is exactly what Ran'jit says basically every time we encounter him.
But this time it's in Thancred's voice. This time it's with the voice and face of a man she actually cares about.
Ryne isn't scared of Thancred, she never has been. Even when she first met him she was barely even nervous (as clearly shown in Thancred's short story). There's a lot of different feelings happening between those two, but fear has never been one of them.
But now, after things have gotten so much better, she is scared of Thancred becoming like Ran'jit. Because if Thancred was just a little further gone, if he was just a little less compassionate, he would've. It wouldn't be hard for him to go down the same path as Ran'jit did, to be incapable of letting go of the ghost of that girl he loved so so much to the point he'd stubbornly grip anything close to her he could. He didn't, but the fact he could've is terrifying.
It makes his final words, words that are Thancred's, so very important. This is her deepest fears made manifest, but he still says he wants her to be happy. Her happiness not only matters, but is important to him.
#Now we -the audience- ofc knew Thancred was unlikely to go down that path#bc if theres one thing hes been consistent in even in his darkest moments its living up to his loved ones' wishes and legacies#the only time he even speaks against it is his conversation w minfilia in amh araeng#and thats more a case of all his (poorly) repressed grief and stress exploding than him actually meaning what he says#and trying to control rynes life after minfilia literally told him to just let her live her life goes directly against that#i think about fatebreaker a lot. as i do all things related to ryne & thancred#and to me its so important to note that hes more or less ran'jit with just enough thancred in him to be *too* thancred for comfort#its so. her greatest fear isnt even the thing thats been haunting her her whole life (being forced to fill in for minfilia)#its having her free will taken from her by the person she cares about the most (thancred)#and for him to be trapped in endless suffering because he cant move on#just like ran'jit did and was#its not even necessarily that shes all that scared of ran'jit himself#what shes scared about is caring about someone like that#because then she wont say no or try to be anyone but minfilia#(thats also why this fear appears specifically after things get better)#(because she was already ready to forsake herself if it eased thancred suffering)#okay im gonna stop now i need to sleep gnight everyone#ryne waters#thancred waters#ran'jit#final fantasy#final fantasy 14#final fantasy xiv#ff14#ffxiv#xander rambles#at this point i should make a tag for ryne ramble posts i make so many of them#tomorrow. maybe. if i remember#edit: i made it#xander being insane about ryne
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simplydnp · 7 months
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what's your opinion on fanfics about dnp? (more in a way of do you think that it's crossing boundaries and/or being parasocial)
i'm of the same mind of dnp in that phanfic is fucking incredible. it's an important and valid way to express yourself, as well as a building block of our community. i don't think it's crossing boundaries, as it's fiction. i don't see it as parasocial either--you're writing for you and others like you. most people don't want dnp reading their fics, it's not for them in a sense, it's for us.
i think dnp are extremely aware of fanfic and its value and place in community. they've always encouraged it, appreciated the support, and given us space about it. they're not ones to make videos about it and mock fans for it (which happened to some of our lovely fic writers here writing for other yt fandoms, and i'm so sorry about it). dnp are fandom culture people. they've written fic themselves! and published it in their book!
the word parasocial has been twisted lately to imply any fan support is unnatural and should be shamed, which is complete fucking bullshit. making art is always important and valued. and it is necessary for your existence as a human, but also for the thing you're a fan of to thrive.
the parasocial side comes in once you start believing you know this person. and that you're their real friend. when in reality, they do not know you specifically, and you are not their friend, you are an audience member.
so a parasocial relationship only occurs when people start crossing boundaries (digging for not publicly available information, contacting people in their personal life, showing up to their house, etc). which, is absolutely nowhere close to real fan behaviour.
tl;dr: phanfic is great, i love you fic writers, parasociality is a problem but not one that we have
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aroanthy · 6 months
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i love how fraught and complicated discourse around various utena characters ‘dying’ is when anthy is literally stabbed to death eternally by a million swords imbued with human hatred. and then utena gets stabbed to death by them also. like. ‘death’ is incredibly interesting in rgu because most of the time it’s this ambiguous figurative thing that has interesting implications re: ohtori as a closed-off world one can escape. we are all trapped in our coffins. mamiya is the only named character with a grave. nemuro memorial hall functions as one all the same. ruka is implied to have died in the hospital— was he dead all along? who was the boy we saw for these two episodes? is this dead boy the same boy, or is this just another coincidence from the shadow girls, cutting like a knife? it’s heavily implied that akio and anthy murder kanae by poisoning her, adding to the previous implication that they were poisoning mr ohtori too, but there are no perceptible consequences of this. kanae’s absence is not felt. she’s fed an apple slice. what happens to the bodies? we know what happened to the 100 boys, but what about everyone else? and so on and so forth. ‘death’ is a tricky thing in utena, i think it’s constantly functioning on figurative and literal levels in very different ways for very different purposes. dios died. dios was dying. dios didn’t die. he grew up. etc etc
#what am i trying to say here?#idk! think about all of the pieces you have#dying is complicated in ohtori in countless different ways#and i find it boring to see so much ‘this character is dead and that’s it’ stuff#when death is used farrrrrrr more figuratively than some ppl give credit for#and i think the movie too does wonderful things with death#and what ‘dying’ really means#being disbelieved. being forgotten. being rejected. haunting despite this#much more interesting to think about wrt commentary on abusive relationships than it is#to think about what?? oh me when my brother died but plot twist he’s alive and can walk on this road all cool. like?????#akio doesn’t have the power to make himself revenant#he THINKS he does and he absolutely has power when he’s alive and he imbues that power with such meaning that it does live on after him#but ANTHY. anthy is the one struggling with herself and her feelings and the impact of trauma and abuse (that power!!) in aou#he’s dead? he died? she brought him back through her memories? or she’s left him (metaphorical death) and he’s haunting her??#all such interesting interpretations#i haven’t mentioned touga bc i don’t have the energy today. if dead and just illusion of others memories then why active. why awful#like in aou akio is only Obviously scummy when he’s alive. his illusory self is based upon anthy’s love for him#if anime!touga is nothing more than nanami/whoever’s memories of him before he died……. why does he actively choose to suck again and again#like nanami wouldn’t do that. unless it was meant to be a subconscious thing like ooo he’s dead all along but that’s not what her arc is#it’s not ‘he’s been dead all along’ literally or figuratively. it’s ‘he’s unsafe and i don’t want him’#sigh. once again i am asking people to think about nanami and touga’s dynamic through touga’s eyes#it’s so interesting to me how people forget to consider his motivations or feelings on ANYTHING#like sure his motivations and feelings are scummy but they’re interesting!!!!! they intrigue me!!!!#compel me even#anyway ignore how i said i didn’t have the energy for this and then typed it all out anyway#dais.txt
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dirtytransmasc · 8 months
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concept, cause the dynamics at play would be super interesting:
when Tuk and Neytiri are sucked into the hold of the Seadragon, what if Spider, unwilling to watch another one of this baby siblings, nor his siblings mother (despite everything cause he's a good kid), die without doing anything, jumps in after them?
they're now stuck in a flooding ship, spider knows his way around to a decent extent, they're all tired, they're all scared, they're all hurting. they have to depend on each other for survival.
Neytiri has to not only trust Spider, but has to follow his lead, has to trust him to guide her around a demon ship, has to untrust not only her own life, but the life of her youngest child to this boy.
Maybe they're separated, they have to find one another (my personal favorite scenario is that Tuk and Spider are together and he has to try and find her/guide Neytiri to him)
Spider taking Neytiri and Tuk's arms so they aren't separated by stray currents and raging waters (a parallel to "Sully's stick together"). Spider talking them through the breath holds he learned as a kid in case his mask malfunctioned before bringing them through the depths of the submerged ship (parallel to Jake and Lo'ak)
anyway. I just can't stop thinking about it. think about it.
Neytiri is faced with the fact that Spider jumped in after her and Tuk. he came for them, he put himself in danger to save them, to save her daughter. even after what she did to him. even after she held a knife to him, after she cut him, after she intended to kill him even after Kiri was released. he still jumped to her aid, even if he could have stayed with Kiri above deck where he was safe, he could have just aided Tuk and left her behind, but he didn't.
and there's so many ways to play with it and the aftermath. like.
Spider dragging both Tuk and Neytiri up the surface, trying his best to keep the trio afloat (namely Neytiri who was much less adjusted to the water and is exhausted by the night they've had) as they hope and pray to be reunited with the rest of their family.
maybe the stress gets to them and Spider just starts apologizing. I should have fought them harder. I shouldn't have let Lo'ak and Neteyam try and leave with me, I would have been fine. I should have seen it coming, should have taken it myself. it should have been me. my baby brother shouldn't be dead.
maybe he becomes partly delirious as he too gives into exhaustion, the big brother in him being the only part of him left coherent, so he takes Tuk close, whispering prrnen tsmuke [baby sister] over and over into her braids, assuring himself that she's safe and unharmed. he keeps praying to the Great Mother for his siblings to return to him unharmed. maybe he keeps asking where they are, if they're safe as his awareness fades and his memory weakens. all of his siblings. asking if Neteyam is ok, only to remember he's gone the second the words leave his tongue.
Jake and Lo'ak finding them when they come up with Payakan, both worse for wear, exhausted, clinging to one another, the only thing keeping their heads above water being spiders life vest, Tuk cradled between them. what a sight.
Neytiri watching as Spider looks over each of his siblings, taking them close, holding onto them as if they will be ripped away from him. the realization that he would die before he let that happen again hitting her like a ton of bricks the second she sees the look in his eyes.
a peace being made between the two in the wake of this event. spider silently claiming the role of big brother (he always was, but he had to pretend he wasn't. with Neteyam gone, he can't pretend he's not anymore), Neytiri silently agreeing.
idk man. it would be interesting.
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I'm-I'm--I'm not a crook
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Zane’s greatest fear is losing his humanity And they did That to him in the movie
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natjennie · 9 months
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I love ghosts so much because fundamentally it's about love. about how to be loved is to be changed. about how the love was there, it didn't change anything, but it matters that it was there. about how there's always been love, about how there will always be love. about what could have been and about what is and about what might be. about what we want and what we get and what we should have done but couldn't do and what we might do differently next time. about family, biological and otherwise. about being a stranger to your own life, about otherness, about finding a place you belong. about houses and homes and memories and stories and love. it's about love.
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