#like. they parallels oops

[imminent-danger-came]

Spider Queen and MK Parallels

Okay strap in everyone this is a long one.

Spider Queen: "Do you want to know what you are? You're my ticket back to the throne. All that power the Monkey King gave you? After I've made my dinner it's all gonna be my power." (1x04 Noodles or Death)

(Obvious but important for later, there's a power motif between these two)

-

(2x03 Pig Pong Panic) (2x05 Minor Scale)

MK: "Hahoh! A super special package from Monkey King!? Oh, this day just hot a whole lot more interesting."

Spider Queen: "Haha, the monkey boy! Well this day just got a little more interesting!" Lady Bone Demon: "My Queen, perhaps-" Spider Queen: "Sooorryy, can't hear you over the sound of me rushin' destiny."

-

MK: "I'm TYRING to find something that will make me super super powerful so that I can defeat-" "-S- someone, anyone! You know, to be sure that I got what it takes to take on the next big bad!"

Sandy: "The wise warrior leads their enemy into their own destruction. What's that mean?" MK: "It means I need to be stronger! Be so powerful that it'd be certain defeat to fight me." Sandy: "Maybe you need a break little man." (2x06 Game On)

Spider Queen: "You ruined everything! It's all over because of, because of-" MK: "-Her. You were making it to fight her! The Lady Bone Demon!"

Spider Queen: "Agh, Lady Bone Demon! So it IS her! Well, if she wants to-" MK: "-Yeah, she scares me too." Spider Queen: "I'm not scared! I am the queen!" MK: "Please! She's the Bone Demon. I don't know, maybe if we work together-" Spider Queen: "Hmhmhmhahaha- work together haha—I don't need help from a child. I will rule this world, not even some ancient bone demon will stop me." (2x09 72 Transformations)

(In case it's not clear, I'm drawing a connection between MK trying to become stronger to stop the Lady Bone Demon and Spider Queen trying to rebuild her mech. "The strongest move isn't always the rightest move", eh?)

Fun bonus parallel to the above (and below) interaction:

Spider Queen: "*Laughs* Don't tell me you're scared of spiders?" Pigsy: "Kid, run!" (1x04 Noodles or Death)

-

Lady Bone Demon: "Just a piece in a game you can not possibly comprehend." "Run along, destiny will find you soon enough." (2x05 Minor Scale)

Spider Queen: "I was just a pawn in the game! Like you." MK: "It's not too late, you can run." Spider Queen: "Haven't you figured that out yet, there's no running from what she is." (2x09 72 Transformations)

-

(2x09 72 Transformations) (2x10 This is the End!)

-

Spider Queen: "I had the Monkey King's power! The city was MINE! And I still lost." (2x01 Sleep Bug)

Lady Bone Demon: "Now do you understand? From the start you never had what it took to defeat me. All your power could do was make me stronger." (2x10 This is the End!)

-

(2x09 72 Transformations) (2x10 This is the End!)

-

Lady Bone Demon: "You promised me my destiny!" "A promise I did not break my queen, this is your destiny." "Do not lament your fate child, you can rest knowing you've served your purpose. Destiny has found you." (2x10 This is the End!)

-

When the s2 antagonist and the protagonist are both doomed by the narrative together <3

[posalis]

"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself." Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

[al-luviec]

day 18 - sacrifice

[reunitedinterlude]

promise me (2024 // 2021)

[daily-odile]

Odile patting Molly Epithet Erased on the head, you know why

have two bc i care them

[discocandles]

i wanna talk about romantic killer and how impactful anzu is. the narrative has a theme with anzu having more impact than she seems to notice.

Before the show even starts, Anzu's been impactful. It could be blamed on the long-time crush, but Junta's a big case of this. Anzu bluntly told him he'd likely be good at baseball, so he tried it and she was right. One observation led him into a lot of his friends, and possibly his future career, but Anzu's oblivious to it. I think she noticed her impact with Saki, but in anzu's mind, there was nothing else to do. Someone hurt her friend and she was going to stand up for her so Saki wouldn't have to keep dealing with that.

Tsukasa is an interesting case in regard to anzu's impact. It's basically camouflaged until Kishi shows up. Anzu saw him blaming himself, after all, that's what most people did the first time. But anzu hits him with the most amazing line about wishing she could've been there to believe him then. and in the moment before he tells Kishi off, we see how much that impacted him.

the impact to Hijiri is the most obvious. Like we hear from Tsuchiya that Anzu's rejection led him to try seeing from a "commoner's point of view". Which helped him not simply rely on his status and wealth, aka influencing his life for the better. So anzu's far more aware of this, but she seems so shocked about it im more sure she doesn't notice her impact.

and then there's Riri. I think it's kinda a 2-way street, as these two changed each other for the better simultaneously. Anzu by calling out how Riri's lack of understanding humans would only hurt them, and Riri calling out how Anzu only caring about her greatest desires was isolating her(specifically from romance but it was hurting her friendships too). anzu's impact on riri shows more in their actions, like staying in human form more and trying to act like a human would. and those attempts build into them caring about anzu beyond just their job, esp in the last couple of episodes. Riri's barely in potato form and breaks the rules 3 different times for anzu, things the riri from episode 1 would've never done, lest they get a pay cut.

In conclusion, anzu is that friend who apropos nothing says the most insightful thing that will stick with you for years, but totally forgot about it right after.

[waterghostype]

i have so much to say about them not in a good way not in a bad way but a secret third thing way.

[chase-the-ladybug]

Went back to compare shima-ujie interactions

It’s interesting how the words revolving around Shima and Ujie when he was practising volleyball in chapter 41 compare to what their interactions this chapter(61) were.

Shima had said before how he couldn’t get angry before bc he couldn’t empathise, but here he is, clearly upset. He’s come far from the kid who wouldn’t bother getting upset bc ‘it’s not worth it’. What specifically changed though?

Let’s compare to Mitsumi in the past. She was upset in chapter 41 when ujie told her to stop playing a good person, bc it means something to her to look out for other people, and she values it. She could empathise with ujies pain and yet he treated her with disdain in response.

Shima however didn’t care at the time. But now, he’s finally learning to look forward and go after what he wants, so when ujie says what he does, it hurts him. It’s like a dismissal of what he’s working toward, but it scares him bc it’s also a feeling he empathises with.

Ujie says here he probably doesn’t understand that. But Shima got mad bc he DOES UNDERSTAND, it’s a point of contention for him that he just can ‘play along’ in whatever way to please others. He wants to change that though and Ujie hadn’t recognised it.

There’s also the case of how he still holds in a lot of self-hatred for the type of person he is, imo. He finds it incredibly hard to be ‘selfish’, and it’s already taken so much for him to chase acting again, but there’s always this worry that he’s just taking advantage of the people around him. Even though him pursuing this doesn’t logically hurt them at all.

In the end though, when he does talk to Ujie again to explain what he thought, it comes back to the words of assurance he himself gave Ujie in chapter 41

Because since that chapter he DOES know what it’s like to try hard for something, he DOES care about the role he worked towards, it’s NOT a role he stole from someone more deserving. And in the end, it resonates with Ujie too.

[brown-little-robin]

The color red in mob psycho 100

So I've been thinking about color symbolism in mp100. And I've assembled a roughly chronological analysis of the moments that red is particularly symbolically interesting, in my eyes, anyway!

(buckle up, this gets long. also, warning for blood and a little bit of gore. I talk a lot about the Mogami arc in here.)

What got me interested in the color red in particular was the fact that Mob's eyes occasionally change color from black to red. The first time we see that happen, it's in episode three of season one, where Mob snaps and unleashes his repressed rage against Dimple. (Interestingly, his aura is also unusually pink-heavy in this scene—usually it's more blue than pink, but along with the deep dull red of the background, everything in this environment is turning red.)

So, okay, we've got your standard red = rage thing. It's also interesting to note that Mob is usually a monochrome character—his gakuran (uniform) is black and white, his hair black, skin pale, eyes black and white—and when he gets simplified into anything more cartoony, he goes monochrome instantly. The only colorful thing about him is his powers, which are blue and pink. But here, when he shows his rage, he gets red eyes. Color is associated with emotion in general in mp100; in this same episode, when the narrator explains how Mob has locked away his psychic powers with his emotions, the emotions are shown in color, Mob himself in black and white.

But I digress. Back to red specifically!

Coming right on the heels of the LOL cult arc comes the Teru introduction arc, where we learn exactly why Mob locked away his powers for good. He accidentally hurt his little brother—gave him a head wound, in fact, that bled copiously. Mob's memory of the event is fragmented, and it's all in washed-out blue, except for the horrible stark red of the blood splattered onto Mob's face and from Ritsu.

It's blood red. Mob's eyes turn blood red when he stops repressing his powers. Is it a reference to the importance of that red color to Mob personally? A kind of visual reminder that he can commit evil, can hurt others badly? In the Dimple arc, his eyes turn red when he becomes willing to exorcise Dimple—effectively killing him. Mob himself says "I'm terrible" when he reaches out to exorcise Dimple. Clearly the red ties back to that capability within Mob to hurt others, consciously or not. But!! It's more complicated than just "evil/willingness to hurt people". For one thing, the chronological first appearance of red in Mob's life is Ritsu's blood, which was an accident. When Mob's eyes turn red later, those are all instances where he has made a choice. And that choice is not always to hurt people—later, his eyes turn red in a moment of 100% courage. Red does not map perfectly to "evil" or even "rage".

We're almost to the Mogami arc, which is where this meta REALLY gets interesting, but first: season two episode three, which is easy to overlook but sets up a core question which the rest of season two answers. In this episode, Reigen gets a client who asks him to curse someone, and ends up cursed himself. The question which Mob ends up asking himself at the end of the episode is: if he, Shigeo Kageyama, ever wanted to curse someone, use his powers for evil, or eliminate people rather than spirits... would anyone try to stop him?

And!! look at the curse that ends up on Reigen's back in this episode!! It sets up the idea of curses (malicious actions taken against another person with intent to harm) as connected with the color red!

The next time red becomes particularly narratively significant, it's in season two: the Mogami arc (episodes four and five). Mogami's defining color is the exact blood red of Mob's eyes. In Mogami's aura, the red is mottled with black (see below, Asagiri Minori with Mogami's aura radiating off her.) His aura is nearly the exact color of the gore we later see him bathed in when Mob tries to exorcise his spirit and fails to achieve it. (side note, Mogami is controlling the entire world in that scene—this is a battle of imagination, and Mogami absolutely made that scene gory and horrible on purpose to upset Mob. his stated goal is to provoke negative emotions in Mob to make Mob realize that negative emotions provide more psychic power than positive ones, and to make Mob embrace vengeance and suffering as a way of life.)

Interestingly, Mogami occasionally has red eyes too, just like Mob, but they're red in a black background, unlike Mob's red in a white background. (Slight tangent: Mogami's pupils get insanely smaller when they go red, whereas Mob's pupils actually usually get larger when they go red. I think that's because when Mob embraces his emotions, it's a widening out from his usual refusal to acknowledge his own emotions and willpower. When Mob's eyes go red, it's because he's seeing something he usually doesn't allow himself to see. Whereas for Mogami, both times that his eyes go red in episode five are narrowing moments when he begins to maliciously focus in on Mob specifically. The one below on the left is when he realizes Mob is trying to possess Minori's body to remove Mogami from the inside; the second is when Mob grabs Mogami with his aura while inside the mental space. Both moments are ones where Mogami begins to see Mob as a potential... second Mogami. A potential sympathizer—someone with a lot of power, which, in Mogami's worldview, comes from negative emotions. So Mob is like Mogami—someone who has suffered! When Mogami's eyes go red, it's because he has selected Mob as someone he could groom to be like Mogami himself. See below for Mogami's horrible little red eyes.)

Once Mob gets locked into Mogami's artificial world, red continues to be symbolically important. It's the one saturated color allowed in a world of depressing grays, greens, and browns. A red glow indicates Mogami's presence speaking to Mob in his messy room. And red is the color of blood, of course, which appears again and again in Mogami's world. I won't belabor the point that it's associated with trauma, and specifically the trauma of Ritsu's head wound caused by Mob. Mogami doesn't know about that, but we the viewers do. The point of red in this world is the intentional, inexcusable causing of harm; Mogami tries to convince Mob that the only way to deal with trauma is to embrace it and become the trauma causer rather than the victim, bringing justice (red) to a bleak world (Dull Trash Brown/Green, the color of depression and meaninglessness in this show). See below.

After (subjective) months of bullying, Mob gets a head wound and is subsumed in a despairing red haze, but fortunately, Dimple breaks him out of it, adding a much-needed pop of green color to the bleak-and-red world, a reminder that other emotions than bleakness and rage exist. and THEN it REALLY gets interesting!!!

I've already talked (here and in this post) about the next instance of the symbolism of red in MP100: 100% courage!!! Despite being nearly consumed by despair (represented in Mogami's black and red) trying to fight Mogami's horde of spirits and break out of this mental world, Mob remembers that he's here for a purpose: to save someone. Again, his eyes turn red when he makes a critical choice (in this case, to keep fighting). Only this time, his choice isn't to hurt anyone. So given the fact that red has been set up through the entire Mogami arc (and the whole series) as the color of pain, trauma and intent to harm, why have Mob's eyes turn red and have it be beautiful??

I think the key is that Shigeo initiated this change in himself in order to save someone. The Mogami arc, to me, is the key to the entire series: it's at this exact moment, when Mob makes the switch from "the world is so cruel... can I really do anything worthwhile" to "I'm here for a reason and my powers are here to let me help people". He's using his ability to harm, but in his service of other people and in the rejection of the bleak outlook Mogami offered. And it's being used in service of goodness that makes his power to harm, represented by the color red, beautiful. He clings to the idea that people can change, that bullies need not always be bullies, and he does not have to take revenge. His powers appear as vibrantly blue and pink as ever, and he expels all of Mogami's spirits from Minori's mind.

The show doesn't leave it at that, though. Mogami Arc is almost exactly halfway through Mob Psycho 100 for a reason: Mob has to grapple with his decision to accept the color red. He has to come to terms with his own ability to fight back, come to a nuanced understanding of his own decision-making process (when to fight, when to have mercy.)

Mogami shows up a second time in season two, episode eleven. He threatens to kill Minegishi (a man who was just trying to kill Mob), and Mob pleads for Minegishi's life. And the lighting in this scene is really interesting! Mob is in a blue shadow, the sun blocked out by Mogami's red miasma, until Mob states that he can't guarantee that anyone will choose to change, but he wants to give them a chance anyway, because you have to trust people to get anywhere. When Mob says that, Mogami fades away, letting the sunlight in.

Also, this isn't about the color red, but I have to note that it is not an accident that Minori (who bullied Mob in Mogami's world, and who Mob chose to save), and Minegishi, both have this same light lavender hair color. They are parallels—both bullies, both having shown no sign that their apologies will be sincere and that they will change. And Mob chooses to give both of them another chance... although this second time, he takes it to heart that Mogami (Mogami-san, he calls him), told him that he has to be hard on people sometimes. Few people would know that Mob is capable of hurting others given the right circumstances more than Mogami does. And Mob respects Mogami, I think. He gives him the honorific -san, which is more than he does for Suzuki. I theorize that Mogami and Mob recognize each other as fellow sufferers from psychic powers. Fellow red-eyed (potential) monsters.

Shortly thereafter, Mob goes to fight Touichirou Suzuki. Suzuki is a red-coded character too. And although his red is more orange, less like Mob's blood red than Mogami's red is, he does resonate with Mob similarly. He brings out the worst in Mob: power-drunk ecstasy. Again, characters associated with red are associated with Mob's worst side, and they're typically the ones capable of bringing out his red side, not only because they force him into corners where he has no choice but to fight them with force but because they get him in a way that no one who doesn't share Mob's level of power really can.

The thing that snaps Mob out of this haze is, fascinatingly, another person associated with red in Mob Psycho 100: Ritsu. Mob sees Ritsu on the ground, has a flashback to that traumatic memory with Ritsu bleeding, and stops laughing. He becomes mindful of his own choices again.

Mob's eyes remain black as he tries to reason with Touichirou. But when Mob gives up, acknowledging his own weakness, his inability to show Suzuki another path, his eyes turn red once again.

It's a horrible moment, the moment when Mob chooses to try to kill Suzuki instead of reasoning with him. Right after he makes this statement, he does something he's never done before: uses his psychic powers to directly alter someone's body. He has hit people with his powers before, but that was like a slap. What he does to Suzuki is something he learned from Mogami, who used his powers to twist Minori's finger joints until they cracked. Mob does the same thing to Suzuki, using his powers to twist Suzuki's body until his bones break. It's an exact parallel to what Mogami did. It's a tough call, figuring out what to think about this moment, but we're given clues to this moment both earlier and later. Mob cannot change everyone's mind, as Mogami said; Suzuki refused to listen and posed an active danger to Mob's little brother and friends, and Mob had no one to turn to for help here, so he chose to kill Suzuki.

Given Mob's pacifist outlook up to now, this was a huge change. He'd exorcised ghosts before, but he never killed a human being. But this was not the soul-destroying acceptance of revenge that turns the whole world red, like what almost happened in Mogami arc when Mob was about to accept Mogami's way of life. This was a one-time, no-win situation that Mob could not get out of. And because he'd been prepared for this by Mogami, and because he made the choice to use his powers instead of running away, his eyes turned red in determination. Again, it's about making a choice to use your power, not about the goodness of the choice. And you'll note that the red of his eyes here is flat and blank, like Mogami's eyes. Again with the subtlety. Red in mob psycho 100 has the common thematic thread of pain and power, but its meaning flexes based on context.

The significance of red has one more major comeback in MP100, and, fittingly, it's at the end of the series, where Mob's powers go out of control. Other people have spoken at length about the final arc of MP100, and it speaks for itself. But I have to briefly touch on this to bring this analysis to a conclusion—

Shigeo Kageyama's powers, walking a path of destruction through Seasoning City, is red, red, red. Red and black.

The red is a menacing color here. Although Mob's powers still come across in his bright, sparkling blue and pink, his body is surrounded in an intense blood red that gets stronger to the point of filling the background (in the style of Mogami's world). The red could be read as a symbol of evil, of malicious intent, like it was in Mogami's world. Except... Mob's eyes are the unconscious white of ???%, which represents Mob's fight or flight instinct and all of the things he represses because they are unsightly. Things he doesn't actually want to do consciously. Mob is doing this by accident, although as a natural consequence of what he has done to himself. Ritsu puts it well when he's talking to himself about how Mob locked away his emotions and powers:

This other side of Mob represents everything Mob fears about himself (power, rage, destructiveness conscious and unconscious.) But fearing Mob's other half does no good. For better or for worse, it is part of Mob.

In this instance, I think the significance of the color red lies in its association with fear. People are scared of things that can hurt them. Mob, specifically, is afraid of the power that he has seen hurt people, from himself hurting Ritsu to Mogami and Minori hurting Mob to Touichirou Suzuki hurting everyone.

The red, here, is a warning sign. It says get away from me before I hurt you. It's what Mob tries to prevent people from seeing. And it does represent malicious intent, but it also represents self-hate. It's everything Mob has fought over the course of the series, only it's also Mob himself.

But. But. Red is the color, consistently, of accepting and using your power. It's blood, sure, but it's also justice. It's rage, but it's also courage. It's determination. It's used in moments of wholeness of purpose—power and willpower agreed on a course of action. And in the end, Mob has to accept that his power is part of him, and it doesn't have to scare him. It doesn't have to be red suppressed within him (meaning blood, meaning Mogami, Suzuki); it can lie dormant when not needed but not repressed within him.

I don't have a good ending to this analysis. Just watch the series. It speaks for itself.

[starmocha]

Mr Love: Queen's Choice - Lantern Ballad

Love and Deepspace - Grassland Romance & Mountain Journey

[ohgaylor]

Slut! // cowboy like me (all lyric connections)

[applestorms]

i was just gonna leave this as a comment, but my response started spiraling sooooo. guess i'm makin' this a full on post lol =3=" uhh anyways, responding to @skyborneveggie's tags on this post:

#really good analysis #always here for high-functioning depression light takes #i want to add; while Light is better at reading & manipulating people in the moment he also tends to overlook some things in the long run #because of his superiority complex #like his father volunteering for the eyes in matsuda's place #and matsuda in the ending. As much as i like to think of matsuda as wholesome- #-i do think if light played his cards right he could have manipulated him over to kira's side #but he didn't because he didn't think matsuda was important in the grand scheme of things

very good points!! about matsuda in particular— it’s interesting in retrospect how consistently he’s set up as a side character, particularly with how he is almost always immediately pushed off to the side despite that. like, alongside soichiro, he’s really the first member of the JTF we see pre-lind l. tailor (in the anime, anyway. in the manga it’s a bit more ambiguous, though matsuda definitely shows up to mention KIRA bringing the crime rate down in ch.3, still quite early).

he’s always the one counterpoint within the group, playing devil's advocate in a way with how he brings up the pro-KIRA side of things, yet as you say light underestimates him So consistently that he even ends up evolving into a full on joke/shakespearean fool character by yotsuba, which is really what makes his actions in the end so incredibly significant.

i distinctly remember reading that section where aizawa & mogi are getting more deeply involved with near and, in the case of aizawa in particular, are starting to genuinely consider the possibility that light might be KIRA, and just getting sooooooo so SO goddamn suspicious of what matsuda was doing. this was in part because i already had some spoilers about the ending, specifically about matsuda shooting him, but goddamn do his actions start looking suspicious when you begin taking him seriously as a threat. like, while aizawa is starting to live through his own psychological horror novel come to life, realizing that the innocent kid & strong leader he's been taking care of & following all this time might actually have been the fucking serial murderer they've been after for literal Years, here's what matsuda is up to in the background:

(light's face here. fuckin freak LMFAO)

(this one is particularly notable to me as it shows that even aizawa underestimates him— it's not just light, it's the whole damn team. even ryuk joined in earlier.)

(and of course, my absolute favorite example. the contrast between their expressions alone here is absolutely golden all on its own, but matsuda's heartfelt "don't worry, light!! i'll never betray you!!!" in comparison to THIS only makes it all the more juicy:

like, light doesn't even bother responding to him until he's got a goddamn bullet in his hand. he just sits there confident in the expectation that matsuda will lick his soles like a dog. jesus fucking christ.)

anyways, as i was saying: he's mostly just doing a bunch of dumb shit, making silly jokes in the background, fucking around with ryuk and being written off as an idiot by most characters, especially light but again also aizawa and ryuk. AND YET. he is Always hanging around over light's shoulder, lurking somewhere behind him in almost ever panel he shows up in, perfectly innocent to the point where it's can almost be more off-putting than if he were outwardly, actively questionable. like, this panel in particular, and i mean goddamn, just look at it again:

it hits So Hard in retrospect, not just because matusda is the one to shoot light in the end, possibly being his cause of death had ryuk not stepped in when he did, but also because it's true. as incredibly fucking suspicious as this panel may seem if you are armed with the knowledge that matsuda does, eventually, end up being the one to shoot light, it's equally easy to write it off as normal dumbass matsuda behavior because that is Exactly What It Is. and you would be right!! matsuda is trusting of light to a fault— when he eventually breaks, it is Not due to his own betrayal. it's the evidence of light's. and not just of his manipulation of the task force, for years and years and years on end— it's soichiro's death specifically that finally makes matsuda lose his faith in him.

the idea that light could've manipulated matsuda over to KIRA's side had he just tried a little harder is fascinating, but i think i can also understand why he didn't exert any more effort— it was kinda unnecessary. for basically the entire story, from the moment matsuda is formally introduced, to the minute light breaks and admits he's actually KIRA, matsuda is one particularly dedicated conversation away from being a full-on KIRA supporter— or so light believes, anyway. and he's probably not that far off.

really, i'm of the opinion that it's matsuda's existence as this KIRA-sympathetic figure in the task force in the first place that causes light to believe so strongly that he could eventually convert the entire JTF over to the side of KIRA— possibly even saving all of them their lives in the process. like, as i've said before, for all that light monologues about how he's Definitely Going To Kill The Task Force, Don't Worry, I Can And Will Do It When I Have To, he. never actually does it. instead, light goes through all the trouble of keeping the JTF strung along behind him for more than half a decade following L's death, holding on to all of these strings of his former life even when they are almost undoubtedly more of a pain than they're worth. unable to kill his father, unable to kill misa, unable to kill matsuda— even when he directly tries to.

i forget which post this was on, but i believe someone pointed out before that potentially a major part of light's grief following soichiro's death comes from the fact that he springs a shock on him at the last minute before passing: soichiro never stopped suspecting his son. when he sees light's lifespan above his head his first thought is to be relieved, because the question he's held at the back of his mind for Years has finally been undoubtedly assuaged. light is desperate to believe up until the end that he can make the world truly and genuinely pro-KIRA; his final actions in the moments of clarity before he starts begging at ryuk's feet for his life involve an enthusiastic speech as he makes one final bid at converting the JTF and SPK to join him and believe in his vision of Justice.

and yet. he never quite gets mastuda.

never bothered? or never could? perhaps a bit of both, but it's a fascinating character progression nonetheless, and easily one of the most interesting arcs in the series. poor, poor mastuda, indeed.

sidenote: this is a somewhat half baked thought, but i can't help but make a somewhat minor connection between light's treatment of matsuda and his treatment of misa, as well as his relationship with takada. like, let's think through the list of his main (human) supporters throughout the series, the ones who end up taking on the title of KIRA themselves: in the first half, misa, in the second, takada & mikami. if we add matsuda to this list, we get two mirroring pairs: misa & matsuda for the front half of the series, takada & mikami for the latter.

light's treatment of each of these pairs is quite different, despite the fact that they all essentially fulfill the same purpose to him: misa & mikami act as KIRA's eyes, killing those light is unable/unwilling to himself, while takada & matsuda fill the role of KIRA's spokesperson, albeit to very different audiences. thus each half of each pair executes a different side of KIRA's ideology: misa & mikami the practical side, becoming killers themselves, and takada & matsuda the persuasive side, pointing out the positive influences KIRA's actions have had on the population to The People and the rest of the task force respectively.

it's not quite as simple as i've laid out here, of course— tadaka eventually ends up killing before she dies at light's hand herself, misa lives as light's partner until she loses her memories and never quite recovers, mikami becomes quite static, just playing at a killer for Appearances, until his actions eventually end up accidentally betraying light and leading to his downfall. yet it still seems notable to me that despite light treating takada & mikami noticeably better for the majority of the time that he's working with them, those two are the ones who eventually end up dead, betrayed and betrayer respectively. yet, in the case of misa & matsuda... for all that light degrades them and treats them like shit, those two are the ones that get to live on past him while remaining stubbornly loyal until the end, until light's own actions twist back and smack him in the head.

i think perhaps part of the reason why light never ends up converting matsuda is not just his own ego blowing Shit outta proportion and assuming that matsuda will either very easily convert/is too much of a dumb liability to even bother with, but also light's own discomfort with having followers at all. like, it really takes him that full time skip to get fully on board with the idea that people will Submit to KIRA, despite the fact that he logically must know how necessary that is. light wants the recognition and love and commitment of other people, but he doesn't necessarily want the responsibility of their own stupid actions— a sentiment perhaps reflected in how easily he kills criminals, seeing their "evil" as something to be Purged, an annoyance just as much as a liability for the happiness of the Good, Pure People of the world.

as i've outlined before, misa is the main person who's enthusiastic submission consistently gets on light's nerves and icks him the fuck out, but i can't help but wonder if this same reaction applies at least in part to his distaste of matsuda. it's easier to get away from matsuda at least, considering he doesn't have to play the Good, Heterosexual Boyfriend around him, but that doesn't mean it isn't still somewhat present either. this also gets interesting if you start considering lawlight dynamics during yotsuba as well, and L's similar (if somewhat more overt, even) dislike of matsuda during that era BUT. that'll perhaps have to wait until another essay lolol =3=

[fairyroses]

— SMALLVILLE, “Reaper” (1.17) & “Tempest” (2.01) 

[scarletfish]

you gave me a key and called it home

the foxhole court // the sunshine court

[timothyslucy]

heartbreaking thought... but what if lucy gives tim back the necklace he gave her????? 😔💔

[braceletofteeth]

Never Let Me Go (1x02) | Our Skyy 2 (2x01)