#it's the similar beats okay

[grapejuicegay]

phi bbs + nong msp (2/?)

"You're avoiding the topic." | "Mr. Gun, you haven't answered my question"ep 10 | ep 8

[mostmagical]

I really love the detail of garrus always being that one step behind shepard... and not in the literal "got your back" sense (though of course I love that too), but in the figurative "just short of crossing the finish line" sense. like ME1: when you meet garrus, he's already been on this saren case, he's just been unable to get anyone to take it seriously. in walks shepard, and shepard is able to do all these things garrus couldn't quite do: becomes spectre, is taken (somewhat) seriously, goes on galaxy-wide chase to take down saren. wins. garrus has always been trying to do "right" in a way that makes sense, and here's this human that just already knows how and DOES IT.

then ME2, garrus is still on this quest to do right. he manages to put together a team, but ultimately, this enterprise is a failure too. he just can't quite make it. but that's when shepard arrives, picks garrus up, and in one day defeats the gang leaders that garrus has been after for MONTHS. also important to note without getting into the whole religious symbolism of it: his team is 11 people, with garrus himself being the 12th. by the end of ME2, shepard successfully accomplishes their goal with a team of 12 total. 12 followers. 12 disciples. I'm not getting into it. but. just look at those numbers. you know what I'm trying to say.

by ME3, garrus DOES make it over this finish line. he DOES get his promotion and people respecting him. but it sucks. after years of striving to get to the finish line, to cross that mountain, he gets there and it's so much pressure. but the wonderful thing is, now instead of being a step behind, he's shoulder-to-shoulder with shepard, which allows for the open communication and support that the two of them get to have because he GETS IT. he was watching the whole time from behind. he's seen all the highs, and the lows, and now in the low low, he knows what it's LIKE. it's like this wonderful full circle moment where he's able to support the person he's looked up to for so long.

[seawing-vibes]

Some images of my Tsu plush from Creep Cat Toy Co. !!! I love her lots one of my fav plushes <3 !! Her glow spots are glow-in-the-dark fabric ,, its super neat !

[rebellum]

I feel like... Perhaps... Arguing that transphobia is defined by murder and that anything other than murder doesn't even matter... May NOT be conducive to fighting for trans rights.

Like... people want the right to exist as they are. They want to have access to hrt and surgeries and prosthetics. People want access to clothes that fit them and reflect how they want to be seen. People want access to medical care (eg. Getting screened and treated for sex-based forms of cancer can be impossible if you have the "wrong" sex listed to receive those tests). People want to be respected and treated well. People want to not be sexually assaulted and beaten and abused. People want to have access to housing and jobs, and the protection to not lose those things for being trans. People want access to shelters for homeless people or survivors of domestic abuse. People want name changes.

Acting like all of those things don't matter because at least they weren't murderered by an individual (and instead die of suicide or state violence, or survive and suffer) isn't okay.

[hecksupremechips]

To also go off of the point about cop!akihiko being annoying to me I gotta say that Akihiko as a character is very hit or miss with me because of how different adaptations of p3 will subtly alter his character. I felt like in portable with the femc route he comes off best, he’s a bit of a hothead with an obsession with fighting, but he’s overcompensating his strength so he doesn’t feel as weak and helpless as he’s been in many situations. He defines strength in a very literal sense, being physically strong and using that to protect others, but he’s lacking in emotional strength as a result. And in particular in this version I think he’s portrayed as a bit more goofy and sweet in a sense. He cares deeply for you as a friend and leader but he struggles with finding the words to describe how he feels. Hes kinda naive and gullible and has trouble noticing his surroundings. He has no clue what he’s doing but his heart is in the right place. I think he just comes off much more human and he has flaws, many many flaws, and that makes him all the more lovable

But then in other adaptations and spinoffs it’s like. They look at him through some hetero male bullshit filter and seem to view him as a lot more admirable and cool. Like in p3 dancing, theres literally an event where he’s talking with Junpei and Minato and they’re gushing about how perfect Akihiko is and how he doesn’t seem to have ANY flaws at all. And it becomes clear his inability to flirt with women just gets added as a way to make sure you, the Straight Male Player, don’t get insecure being next to such Perfection because at the end of the day, you’re still more charming and sexy than he will ever be because you’re better. It’s a “flaw” that’s only there to shield a sensitive male ego. And then in arena I mean, come on. He’s overly beefy and is a damn cop and travels the world and loves Protein™️ it’s his whole personality and he’s so clearly meant to be seen as hot but like, he’s just some shitty hetero male fantasy. Hes what the writers deem to be a Perfect Man that every guy wishes he could be, but don’t worry he’s still bad with women so you don’t gotta worry about him stealing your property- I mean, girlfriend!

And though I’ve not played reload and don’t really plan to anytime soon, judging from his social episodes they seem to have a similar problem. Akihiko comes off as a lot less approachable, like the year age gap is just too much of a barrier to get to know him properly. And he doesn’t have that dorky sweetness he has in portable, he’s just that perfect hetero male fantasy guy and don’t you fucking worry- he still has his protein powder with him

[ninashiki]

i feel like almost everything in utena has sort of already been extensively discussed in the last two (almost three) decades of utena's existence (not that there aren't new interpretations to be made, there always are) besides black rose arc (mikage+mamiya+tokiko). which is why they're so much fun to think about. i think the need to read between the lines makes it unfortunately easy to misunderstand or look past obvious stuff if you don't pay attention, but to me it's always been really obvious that mikage's arc is a literal representation of the erasure of queerness in ohtori (society?) by akio/everything he represents. and that's so fucking tragic! nemuro was never able to find a name for his desires. he lived and died as a puppet in the shadows.

[aeide-thea]

[polarisbear]

i don’t know if i’m the first to come up with this idea but i needed to get this au out of my head

[image id 1: a drawing of all four members of nightcord at 25. they’re all dressed in their casual outfits except for mafuyu who has shorter hair, a dress shirt, and slacks. they’re drawn in a style reminiscent of bocchi the rock!

image id 2: a drawing of all four members of nightcord at 25. they’re all drawings of expressions from the bust up. they’re all in their casual outfits except for mafuyu who has shorter hair and a dress shirt. the drawings are mimicking bocchi the rock!’s art style. there are chibi’s drawn next to them in the style of bocchi the rock!’s endings.]

[notmoreflippingelves]

I need to ramble more about Esteban Flores, because everything about this character and his arc seem as though it was tailor-made for me and specifically designed to make me absolutely feral.

This going below the cut, both because I do not want to spoil the entire show for my friend who is think of watching Elena of Avalor and because I go full-on apologist here and I feel like that will annoy some people.

Imagine making the absolute worst mistake than anyone could possibly make, because you are 18 and scared and stupid and tired of being ignored. And it results in you losing your family and your freedom and what little self-respect you had left because you know all of this is very much your own fault.

 And so you proceed to spend the next 41(!) years eking out a miserable existence in an oppressive state. Upon fear for your life, you are forced to be the reluctant right-hand of the evil witch-queen who conquered your country, killed your aunt and uncle and trapped your cousin in magical prison. In spite of this, you nevertheless do everything within your limited power trying to hold the kingdom together and make sure the people don't starve, because the queen certainly doesn't care about anything except greedily bleeding your country dry.

And no exaggeration, this is just what canon explicitly gives us outright in the pilot. Like that's not even getting into head canons/interpretations/common sense of what exactly this sort of life entailed for you. Because this is a children's show so there's only so much they will let us imply about living under that kind of system. Especially as a young, attractive, terrified person who is the last living member of the previous royal family who is likely being kept alive partly as a combination trophy/punching bag for the evil queen (even if the show never actually states this outright).

And then by some miracle, what's left of your family comes back after all this time. The evil queen is overthrown, partly because you yourself finally stood up to her at a critical moment. You and your country are finally free again, and what's more, you and your family are finally together again after over 4 decades. But you still feel like an outsider--partly because you always were an outsider in your family even in the better times and partly because  over the past 41(!) years, time stood still for all of them except you.

And as a result, no one ever cares to ask what those 41 years were like for you or even just if you’re doing okay. Not only because your family can’t even begin to comprehend what it must have been like, but also because they don’t care to even *try* to understand. Because the narrative has decided that everyone else’s respective traumas is worth way more than your own.  (Though tbf the narrative really doesn’t dwell much on anyone’s trauma in general but yours gets especially neglected , except to briefly play it for laughs or to remind you that your trauma is *your own fault and only your own*).

For a little while, life is pretty okay. It’s weird not having to watch your step every instant to make sure you’re not putting a toe out of line. And so you never really fully break out of your “survival mode” conditioning, making sure that you are still considered important and valuable enough to keep around.

But all the while, you know that your past—and especially your terrible little secret—is eventually going to come back to haunt you. And it does. First via blackmail and then via the return  of the evil witch-queen herself. Fortunately, she is defeated for good before she can take avenge your “betrayal of her” but you still have to deal with seeing the ghost from the past who terrorized you for 41(!) years.

And then, your secret finally comes out in the open and you are disowned by your family—the family you *just* got back a few years ago—for an admittedly super bad decision that you made over four decades ago and have regretted ever since.  Rather than face the rest of your life in isolation (as though you didn’t already have enough of that during the previous regime), you escape before you can be sent into exile. This puts you directly in the path of *another* terrifying, evil magical milf who you are forced to ally yourself with. Because you have 40+ years of conditioning that when a woman like that says “jump,” you say “how high?” if you are to have any hope of survival.  Especially given that the only people who could’ve protected you from her are the family and friends who have just definitively washed their hands of you.

Despite this, you are still trying to seek your cousin’s forgiveness and to protect her in the little ways that you can. But you are constantly getting rebuffed over and over again, and if anything, your attempts at reconciliation only seem to make your cousin angrier, and she now hates you just as much as—if not MORE than—the woman who actually murdered her parents.

Your cousin is so angry at you specifically that she actively ignores the greater threat of Witchy Milf 2.0, because she happens to see your face and is enraged. This ends up backfiring spectacularly for you both, though it does indirectly lead to the defeat of said Witchy Milf 2.0.

But guess what?  There’s no time to breathe or celebrate, because her defeat occurred during the successful summoning of a third power-mad, feminine-presenting magical humanoid and her allies. At least, this one treats you with some initial respect and actually gives you outright what you-think-you’ve-thought-you-always wanted. But she also turns your family and friends to stone in front of you as a warning of what’s to come if you dare to defy her.

But this time, you are finally done with this, have finally lost enough that you have paradoxically found your courage. You sacrifice yourself to save your cousin, and she is finally able to accept that you’ve sacrificed and changed enough that she can forgive you. And her forgiveness is so powerful and pure that it not only restores you to life but also undoes all the other evil magic. Together, you defeat this final enemy, paradoxically by banishing her to the same Underworld where your mistakes accidentally sent your aunt and uncle and her parents long ago.  Peace has been restored. You have returned for good and are finally secure in your family’s love.

And after all that, there are *still* people (both presumably in universe and in the fandom outside of it) who say it's too little, too late and that it would've been better for everyone if you'd simply stayed dead.

Like I'm just... are we really victim-blaming the character who has 45 years of unprocessed trauma and guilt (both survivor's guilt and guilt in general) because of a decision he made when his brain was still developing and he was being manipulated by an older, much more powerful person?

[milimeters-morales]

(NOT ATSV) my ideal miguel and miles friendship (bordering on enemies) dynamic is where Miles is sort of a Mean Girls figure where he’ll say the worst things to Miguel, who actually has no problems dishing that shit right back out, is usually too fed up or somewhere else mentally to reply. They fight a lot, more physically than verbally, usually in a slapstick comedy type of way. Miles is banned from Nueva York once a month and got a restraining order against Miguel in his own dimension. His parents fucking hate him and Miguel hates them right back. Rio has tried and failed to poison him via food and Jeff is considering hiring a hitman. Gabriel is beloved by them. Miles takes Miguel’s money at least twice a week to go spend it just because he can. Miguel has tried (and succeeded once) to get Miles sick with a future illness because he figured out the lesbian bar Miguel liked to perform at in drag. Miles has cried at least once in every room of Miguel’s apartment and Miguel has been confused on what to do each time besides an awkward hug and pat on the back. People are rightfully worried for Miles’s safety at least 80% of the time but when they aren’t they’re shaking their heads at the two’s antics. They need to be separated until they have a healthy “this is a grown ass man / this is stupid little girl i don’t like at work” relationship and it’ll take an act of god for either of them to realize their current one isn’t healthy at all and has extremely negative impacts on their mental state.

[no-light-left-on]

hi I am still not normal about how we never get much of an epilogue for Emily and Corvo in the second game we are told how the rule turned out and that Emily is the beloved empress now but nothing beyond that and I get that the entire game is very much built on that I get that the first game we have close relationship with Emily and become fond of the staff that work with the Loyalists so we feel alone because we do not quite see eye to eye with our allies and all we have left is this little innocent child that sees Corvo as someone who can do no wrong in this world which is strongly contrasted with the second game where Emily (or Corvo) has few trusted allies that they can actually rely on and it feels like a group of almost-friends working to dismantle the conspiracy but at the very end of it all Emily is all alone, even her return to the Tower is so much more grim, her taking down Delilah, the entirety of Dunwall- it all feels so incredibly and thoroughly isolating, she is all Alone now, and maybe that's why it bothers me so much to see the story end so abrupty.

it would've been so, so poetic if both the first and the second game ended with Corvo and Emily embracing

[netherdevil]

unnormal vivilly dweller thoughts in my head

[petrichorium]

The fav I have the most frequent (and most intense) fights with is actually jing yuan btw

[ihopethisendswell]

When you realize that Jolee is literally just Hunter from toh.

[fiomeras]

When I was a kid I hated the smurfs so so much i had dreams where i would chase them around to step and kill them and theyd turn into blue goop. i really wanted gargamel to kill those blue little freaks and turn them into magic powder or something. Not sure why i hated them exactly and what was wrong with me back then.