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Chapter 419 Analysis or "How to completely break Tenko Shimura" a manipulative guide from All For One (part 1)
This is mainly a character analysis of Shigaraki Tomura or Shimura Tenko, any other character present is there to help.
Chapter 419 was hard to comprehend even with just summaries right on April 4th. Some things need at least fan translation to fully make sense. Or just hurt more in that matter.
Warning of spoilers to the whole manga to the point of chapter 419! All of the warnings from the respective Tomura chapters are applicable.
So like... mentions of death, killing other people, manipulation, emotional abuse and many more!
This is Part 1 - See Part 2 for something less depressing
This is going to be long! So let's start, shall we?
First of all we'll need to take into understanding ALL the chapters that we'll need to remember/reread just make this chapter worse (skip if already familiar with them):
Chapter 222 - Tomura Shigaraki: Distortion
Chapter 234 - Destruction Sense
Chapter 235 - Tenko Shimura: Origins
Chapter 236 - Tenko Shimura Origins, Part 2
Chapter 237 - Tomura Shigaraki: Origins
This is your "Tenko and Tomura understanding" starter pack, basically. Without them it's harder to even start unpacking what just happened with Tomura's perspective in mind
Well then.
The chapter starts and we are immediately greeted by AFO semi-agreeing without wanting to, that Tomura was strong enough before Izuku started trying "saving" him in his own way and even succeeded making Tenko's will all the more fragile than it was when he returned using his hate to his advantage.
Even after Izuku holding Tenko's hands for the whole chapter he was still stubborn enough to continue even without that hate in his heart
And the thing that initial summaries missed was the fact that Tomura actually reacted to AFO reapperance.
Still not understanding why AFO was even saying that.
Tenko was literally taught by AFO to follow "what he wants" in ch 237 with Tenko making his first decision to kill someone himself. And never actually hiding that Tomura just needed to never forget that hatred and those bad emotions that Tomura never really understood. And it took Izuku seconds to decipher them.
With AFO reassuring Tomura that he has no need in following morals of society and just should follow whatever he wants - his want to destroy everything that hurts him. And only AFO would accept and help him. He was constantly reminded of that.
Even if Tenko was feeling sick from killing at first, even if hands that he wore were still making him sick 15 years later without him understanding anything. Decisions made while person is emotional are usually the ones that the person might regret the most and Tomura lived with those unstable emotions for years. Knowing that they hurt him and make him feel sick.
But Sensei said that it's okay to follow those emotions. That's it's actually great that he does it.
Everything was for his sake, everything was for Tomura Shigaraki and Tomura Shigaraki only. He was his Sensei's successor and no one should argue with it. He's the only one to be next ruler of the underground and the next king. And Tomura gladly accepted that as truth.
Since it was easier than facing his guilt.
Because AFO just needed Tomura to have enough willpower to get OFA when the plan is ready. To make Gigantomachia to follow him while Garaki was watching knowing full well how the plan is going. Both knowing full well that Tomura is still holding himself back.
In this chapter however we finally see how all of the things AFO told and taught Tenko were just to make him so sure that HE was in control and allowed to do whatever he wants to completely break his worldview in the end "after he gets OFA" which is an unreachable goal now since OFA is gone for good.
By just saying that Tenko never had any choice to begin with.
Tomura already knew that AFO manipulated him and he was just a pawn, needed only to get OFA and piss off All-Might he accepted and embraced it as something unimportant. It was his choice and he was free to do it and not feel bad about it. Since he's born to destroy.
Until suddenly it wasn't just his life after Decay that was manipulated.
But his whole life from birth. Just because AFO didn't get his hands on Hana sooner and she was happy while AFO needed someone hurt and broken. And Shimura's household wasn't as bad as he needed it to be at first with Kotaro loving his children, wife, in-laws and even his mother.
And AFO destroyed it by creating so much conflict and even going out of his way to make sure Tenko's father knew that he was playing heroes with some kids. And even saved them by putting his own quirkless life in danger.
In some sense narrator-Tomura's words at the end of ch 236 still might hold true. AFO didn't just create his hate out of nowhere, to make it feel like even if Tenko remembers everything it's still he's doing not a villain appearing, not just some accident that it actually was.
Although AFO doesn't say anything about people who didn't help Tenko even though he he knew that it happened so he most probably was watching it happen until Tenko lost all hope entirely to finaly make him dependent on his help.
And he succeeded for the most part.
Tomura was making an assumption after he remembered everything that he "must've been yearning for that" and from that point onwards explains everything that happened as "I wanted it - I did it" and was clinging to it like a lifeline to explain everything.
He accepted that if Re-Destro is talking about his Decay quirk affecting him he exists only to destroy.
And now it seems he found a false motivation for himself that AFO created by cruely manipulating everything from his quirk to his family. Making him believe he had a hand in it. Breaking one of "safe" truths that Tomura never doubted. They only made his decisions feel right.
Which makes that a hopeless loop of broken memories being staged just to let Tenko become Tomura who hates and destroys everything believing that it's his choice. Only choice at that.
And if destroying is him only choice because of his quirk... then what can a quirkless person do while having so many people dead from his own hands? Hands that were literally cursed to have destruction quirk in them not because he was born to do it. But because his own Sensei wanted that.
And he's "unwavering heart" is now nothing but an illusion that was destroyed by both Izuku and AFO together.
There's no "Can I be a Hero?", because can he even be a Villain if most of the choices that were from Decay and the hatred in his heart weren't actually his own?
#bnha#shigaraki tomura#tenko shimura#all for one#bnha analysis#character analysis#character study#bnha manga spoilers#bnha spoilers#my hero academia#phew that's a lot of normal tags!#honestly I think it's a mess of a post (the first draft)#and this part 1 is depressing as hell#that's what you get when LoV is not here#thankfully part 2 exists#bnha 419#rewrote most of the thing and it got even more depressing oh no#part 2 is still existing#somewhere#also I didn't add that but AFO is never talking about the people that didn't help Tenko again#like... they just rejected him and it's still true#he's still living with a 'did they reject me because I killed my family?'#the more I rewrite this the more depressing it becomes#I really like Tenko's arc so this chapter broke me for couple of days at least#and the more I was writing this more horrified I became with what exactly it all meant#we either need a whol OFA team again or at least Izuku returning into that hell that is AFOmura's mind#but once again I plan on a part 2 since even if Tomura's life is depressing LoV existed and some of them even are still alive#god this post is a nightmare of this blog
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she’s like if the virgin mary smoked a pack of pall malls every day 🚬
#sims 4#the sims community#simblr#ts4#sims 4 edit#mysims#drawing/editing these tears took actual years off my life#editing this in general did but the tears were my hell#her name is norma jean named after her grandmother but she goes by either jeanie or jj#she works at the local convenience store and bartends at night when shes able to pick up shifts#shes the worst bartender in existence and refuses to lift anything over 2 pounds#she once convinced a customer to buy her a sweater because she looked a little cold while working#she lied and said her manager never lets them turn on the heat and casually mentioned pennys was selling her favorite sweater#and then described in detail exactly where the sweater was in the store#all she had to do was blink her big brown eyes and call them baby a few times and they immediately folded#she goes to church 7 days a week even though she hates it because that's what she did when her mom was still alive#and its one of the few things that helps her feel close to her mom#her mom died after she had to drop out of highschool to take care of her#she holds a lot of resentment for having to give up such a big part of her life#but at the same time blames herself for not being able to make her mom better#she doesnt believe in banks and hides money around her house to store it but she's also super forgetful#she'll randomly find money around the house and then treat herself like it was present she meant to leave for her future self#she loves crosswords but treats it like a fun game and refuses to check if her answers are ever right#there's ur fun little facts about jeanie 🫵🏼
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tales of the passerine - danny fenton being bruce wayne's first kid
okay okay. so this is like a continuation/elaboration of my oneshot/prompt i wrote about the idea that Danny was the first batkid. We have a lot of aus where he joins the family after the rest of the bats do, right? So hey! Lets shake things up a bit. Danny is the first to be adopted by Bruce Wayne.
Danny's parents and unfortunately Jazz die shortly after the events of TUE -- how so? I was gonna say an ecto-filter explosion, that would call back to the TUE explosion and trauma behind that. But lets do something new! Carbon-monoxide poisoning.
It's not too unexpected for something to break in the Fenton house, especially with the Fenton parents' questionable understanding of proper weapon handling and lab safety. The water heater broke from a stray shot by one of the weapons, and was promptly MacGyver'd incorrectly. Danny went to stay with Tucker for a guys' night, and came back to a dead silent house.
(Danny's neighbors got a very unfortunate shock when he ran to the next house over in hysterics.)
There was a lot of shuffling around with CPS, the police. People had to be called in to handle the equipment in the lab, and the GIW was rumoring to show up in aid to clearing the scene. When Danny heard of that, he immediately went and dismantled the ghost portal to the best of his abilities. He burned the physical blueprints of all his parents' inventions, their blueprints on the ghost portal, and their most dangerous weapons were destroyed beyond recognition. Anything to prevent the GIW from getting their hands on his parents' tech.
It opened up another investigation, but he was not under the list of suspects. He was placed in the care of Vlad Masters, where they then went back to the rebuilt castle mansion in Wisconsin. Danny, terrified of the future that has once passed and may do so again, shuts down in his grief. Inadvertently, he ends up somewhat repressing his ghost half. Something Vlad, who is grieving Madeline but relishing in Jack's demise and his custody of Daniel, is not very happy with.
Vlad's... gone into a bit of a mental health spiral. He's becoming increasingly possessive over Daniel, the final remnants of his friends and a liminal being like him. He doesn't like that Danny's repressing his ghost half -- both out of genuine concern as a ghost, but also because of his desire to control Danny and groom him into the perfect son. If you ever had a phase where you read Dark SBI found family fics, first off; me too bro, and second off; those are the vibes I'm thinking of.
Danny's mentally shut down from grief! And fear. He's dropped into a bad depressive state -- paralyzed with grief and the terror of the inevitable. Clockwork saved his parents because he believes in second chances, but what's the point of that when his family ended up dead anyways? Danny doesn't wanna believe that he's destined to become evil, and he's holding out onto that hope, but it's a thin line, and he feels utterly hopeless and trapped. He hasn't used his powers or ghost form since he trashed the lab, and Vlad has alarms set up to prevent him from trying to escape.
He's also unintentionally cut off Sam and Tucker -- both of whom are so scared and concerned for Danny too, and are trying their damndest to reach out to him. He keeps ignoring their texts. Danny basically haunts Vlad's manor. He goes out to eat if he has to, attends parties Vlad drags him to, and stays in his room all day if he can.
At parties, Vlad doesn't allow Danny to leave his side, or really talk to anyone -- not that Danny wants to. A product of Vlad's increasing possessiveness. Well, he almost doesn't let Danny leave his side. Danny has a habit of slipping off to hide somewhere for the parties whenever he can, and Vlad reluctantly allows it so long as he stays alone.
This becomes an advantage when eventually, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham after missing for years, and holds a bright charity ball to celebrate the return. Vlad has been chomping at the bits to get his hands on Wayne Industries, and with the return of its owner there is no better opportunity to wipe out his rival. He goes, and he as normal, brings Daniel with him.
Vlad thinks Wayne will bleed his little heart out for Daniel's poor orphan sob story -- he's a fellow orphan himself, after all. He's not wrong; Wayne's little heart will bleed, just not in the way that benefits him.
Bruce sees Vlad and Danny approaching before they're even close enough to introduce themselves - and like with many of the children he will soon come to care for, it's like someone set a mirror into the past right in front of him.
Danny Fenton's suit is tailor-made for him, and despite the fact that it's his perfect size, the sag in his shoulders, the ducked down head, and the way he hunches into himself all pictures the image of a child in shoes too big for him. There's a far away, glazed over look in his eyes and grief marble-cut into the lines of his face. There's not enough makeup in the world that will hide the dark circles under his eyes.
("My nephew, Daniel Fenton." Vlad's hands are possessive on Danny's shoulders. Bruce immediately notices the way the boy tenses under his touch. "His parents passed recently, and as his godfather I was designated his guardian.") ("I'm so sorry, the loss must've been terrible.") ("Yes, carbon-monoxide poisoning caused it. Daniel was out with friends, when he came home... they had already passed.") (Bruce immediately dislikes that Vlad shared the details of their death unprompted -- he likes it even less when Danny flinches at the reminder and hunches into himself.)
Danny runs off at some point earlier into the charity. At this point, parties are still being held at Wayne Manor (because iirc google search mentioned that was a thing at first before it was changed), so he disappears and hides in one of the empty rooms nearby. It just so happens to be the same room Bruce Wayne hides in when he needs a break from all of the socialization.
Thus begins a long, long process of trust. Bruce can't reveal his hand as being smarter than he looks, but he can be compassionate. Kindness needs no measure of intelligence. He keeps Danny company for as long as he can before he runs the risk of being found.
Rinse and repeat. Vlad insistently wants Wayne Industries, and he'll go to as many Wayne parties as he can to get his hooks into the man. The problem is that Bruce Wayne is never alone, and getting him alone is impossible. Finding him too. It's like the man never stops moving. Always talking to someone, always circling somewhere. He orbits around the room as if he isn't the sun of the Gotham Elite's solar system.
Danny's had such repetitive behavior that Vlad never thinks to believe that Bruce Wayne is disappearing to go talk to him. That "Vlad's" son is even interacting with him at all. Danny never gives him a reason to think so, and neither does Bruce.
Danny doesn't actually acknowledge Bruce until a handful of parties in, where he hands Bruce a small slip of paper he smuggled in that says; "don't trust Vlad". Danny's face stays carefully blank, but he's so tense that his hands are trembling, and he's purposely looking away from him. Bruce plasters a smile onto his face, slips the paper into his pocket, and tells him "okay".
(he's been busy with his own goals with the mafia, but he sets aside time to investigate Vlad Masters. He was holding off. Until now.)
Danny does eventually start speaking to Bruce, he's starting to really like the guy. He's starting to see a little hope, even as Vlad is starting to get more and more agitated with him the more he refuses to use his powers.
He reaches out to Sam and Tucker again, and starts trying to reconnect with them. Vlad has spyware on his phone, and he limits the amount of times he can talk to them. A weird parental control lock of some sort that leaves a time limit on how long he can talk to them for. 30 minutes. Danny doesn't tell them anything about Mr. Wayne.
Danny, slowly, wants out of here, and he's slowly gathering the motivation to do it. Vlad is genuinely scaring him -- and Danny wonders just how truthful the past-future Vlad was when he told him that Danny wanted his ghost half separate. He starts trying to come up with an escape plan.
Vlad has anti-ghost wards everywhere around the mansion, and while they're always on, they boost to full power at sunset. The doors and windows are always locked, all main exits have alarms set on them. The only reason it's not super extensive is because Danny hasn't tried leaving at all yet, so Vlad hasn't had to tighten anything.
At night, Vlad locks the door to his room and puts up an anti-ghost ward around the room. The mansion is on the outside westward side of Madison, more entrenched in rural Wisconsin. The closest town is a four-way stop sign with one house on three corners, and an open bar on the fourth. Not much to go.
He refuses to go to Sam and Tucker; Vlad would look there first. It's too dangerous. Vlad would sound alarm bells and have a manhunt looking for him, Danny can't risk going just anywhere. Too much risk of being found, sold out, or caught. There's really nowhere for him to hide.
Until there is. Bruce is telling Danny about the history of Wayne Manor, and says, as casually as saying the weather; "The manor has dozens of empty rooms, I'm sure Alfred wouldn't mind filling another one if he could." And quietly, hesitantly, Bruce places a careful hand on Danny's shoulder, unrestrictive and gentle; "He wouldn't mind getting one ready for you if you need one."
And there it is. There's his out.
Danny, just as quietly, replies; "I'll keep that in mind."
The ball starts rolling.
Now I've been trying to summarize this au as much as possible for length convenience, but Vlad has been steadily growing more and more controlling. More emotionally manipulative. More agitated at Danny for not using his powers.
He wants Wayne Industries under his thumb but he's been steadily growing more and more concerned with Danny. He's started grabbing him, yanking him around, shaking him; trying to goad him into using his powers. He gets angry when Danny doesn't react, or tells him he doesn't want to use his powers. He hasn't outright attacked him, but he's getting there. This has been happening over the time it takes for Bruce to indirectly offer Danny sanctuary at his home.
It all comes to a head when Vlad stops going to parties at all -- something Danny has to pretend he isn't upset about -- because Vlad doesn't want him around other people anymore. Vlad rarely goes now without him, and only leaves to go to a Wayne function or to handle something at VladCo.
Danny can't wait for Vlad to leave long enough to escape. So he leaves during the night of a big storm. Vlad's locked him in his room, but Danny doesn't bother trying to go for it; he goes to the alarmed window instead. Danny's been repressing his ghost half so long that he can't access his powers immediately anymore -- he can feel it, he knows its there, but he can't quite reach it.
He breaks the lock by hand.
Immediately the alarm goes off through the entire castle, filling the room with red, and he scrambles for the rope the Wisconsin Ghost left for him a few months back. Danny's already out and climbing down the side of the castle before Vlad even reaches his door -- the only good thing about the entire room being ghost-proof is that Vlad can't get in that way.
The rope ends before it reaches the bottom, and he's still twenty feet in the air. It won't kill him if he lands it right. Danny takes his chances, and drops. He breaks his ankle, but he survives.
And he fucking books it to the back garden. He hears Vlad shrieking over the thunder and rain.
I'll save the full experience for a future oneshot, but Danny makes it out into the nearby woods and forcibly experiences what it's like to be in a horror game, trying to hide from the thing that's hunting you. There's only one thing going through his mind; "i'm going to die"
I have this mental image for this scene. Very stereotypical horror imo. Where Danny is hiding behind a tree, with a hand over his mouth, and Vlad is a few feet away from him, glowing ominously red through the trees, trying to search for him.
Danny doesn't get away from this unscathed, but he does get away alive. That's all he could ask for. He gets away by getting his ghost half awakened long enough to transform into Phantom and fly to Gotham.
But he gets to Wayne Manor, he gets to Bruce. Or, at least, Alfred answers the door from his insistent pounding. Danny's just in tears and Alfred gets him in the living room, wrapped in a towel, with ice on his swollen leg before he has to step out and alert Bruce.
Bruce already breaks multiple traffic laws on a nightly basis. And that's just with the sheer existence of the batmobile itself, not including the speeding and military artillery attached. He breaks double the amount trying to speed back to the cave and get out of the suit.
Right off the bat: Bruce will know, at least before Dick enters the picture, about danny's powers. He'll figure out something considering the fact that Danny traveled from Wisconsin to New York in a single night. That'll be a bit of complicated affair, but I've already got something in mind.
Actually it'll probably be very soon after Danny joins the family, because Bruce tries to offer to fight for custody for Danny - the state Danny was in at arrival is clear enough evidence for a trial. But Danny immediately shuts it down, says it's not going to work and then Vlad will know Danny's with him and he won't be safe. He tells him that Vlad cannot know Danny was with Bruce.
Danny's biggest regret was not telling his parents he was a halfa, and while he doesn't want to tell mister wayne (yet), he does tell him about Vlad being one. He needs to know why Danny can't be seen with Bruce. So he tells him, and Danny's current plan is to just hide out from Vlad until he turns 18. That way, he has no more legal jurisdiction over him. After that? He's not sure.
And to wrap this up, since this has already gotten very long and I can make more posts about this au later; I've thought about it, and I'm going to say that Danny does become a vigilante before Dick enters the scene. He goes by, as you probably guessed; Nightingale. "Gale" for short.
#dpxdc#dp x dc#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dp x dc crossover#dpxdc crossover#tales of the passerine au#i dont want to overemphasize how much vlad sucks but also i dont want to downplay it. but also i didn't wanna make this post too long#i didn't emphasize enough on vlad's possessiveness but i wanted to make this post as general enough as possible for the au.#for some more wiggle room in the future if i make more posts about this au.#the consequences for Danny repressing himself was not a concern i was focused on for the post but i am thinking about it and mulling it ove#i'll be blunt my main specific reason for why this occurs shortly after tue is bc it means dani doesn't exist yet and it means i dont have#to include her in the continuation of this au. i love that girl but she's a dead weight. i dont wanna come up with an elaborate reason as#to why she's not in the picture when i can just say 'she never created in the first place' instead. i don't have anything for her to do#I don't want to risk giving her a poor plot line just so that she exists in au.#sometimes i really hate just how long my posts get. i feel like it kills my engagement. but i also don't want to make posts that have#a part 1 and part 2 just because I think it got too long.#i feel kinda bad for having Danny take the spot of 'first partner' from Dick. But that was part of the reason i was inspired to make this a#i've already got the skeleton of a reasoning for danny becoming a vigilante being made in my head.#He can't go by Phantom since that risks drawing Vlad's attention -- a new vigilante showing up in Gotham. a place the visited frequently#who goes by the name Phantom? He'd be on that faster than chickens on meat. and nightingale has familial meaning behind it due to being#part of an ancestral name. it follows robin's theme of using it to honor his parents while still having its own unique enough lore to stand#on its own without feeling like a cheap copy. plus the bonus meta reason that it follows the bird theme. which personally is vital to me#my other alternative to Nightingale is Sparrow. mostly because it has good phonetic structure for a hero name. not too many syllables#a good balance of consonants and vowels. dont want a hero name with too many syllables or unbalanced consonants. or worse; both.#my reasonings is that hero names should be easy for a civ or teammate to yell while still being understood. max amount of syllables before#it threatens to become too wordy is 3. If it goes over 3 it should have a balanced consonant-vowel ratio. Wonder Woman is a good example#some things got cut here that were in the initial oneshot. like danny giving bruce his physical ghost core and showing up bloody.#the first son au
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☆ de fontaine
{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k
This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!
She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.
She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.
Furina is tired.
But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?
So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.
Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.
Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.
An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.
She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.
She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.
She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.
And Furina has always been good at lying.
It's the believing that's the hard part.
There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?
Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.
She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?
She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.
Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?
Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.
Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?
They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?
"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"
Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.
Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.
Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.
Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.
"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.
But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.
They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.
She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.
If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..
Furina will make sure they do.
#sagau#genshin sagau#self aware genshin#genshin impact sagau#self aware genshin impact#genshin cult au#genshin impact cult au#fic tag#furina#so um. looks around. okay look. i know im like THE ts@r1ts@ dealer (censored so it doesnt show in tags. hopefully)#but the moment i saw furi in fontaine the day it released she became my fav even more then the tsaritsa SORRY SHES SO..#this is my love letter 2 furi (making her suffer unimaginable horrors)#open ended kinda in case i decide on making a sequel maybe#furi makes me feel cuteness aggression so bad i start acting like a rabid animal#furina the woman that you are. thats my girlprince meow meow id kill someone for her#playing her part as archon so well but being so horribly irrefutably human in every way..#five hundred years not even knowing what the real plan was. when it would end. knowing if she slipped up it was over.#and in the end almost no one knew what really happened. a select few people know the real weight of her sacrifice.#furina's story was always a tragedy. it was never going to be anything but a tragedy.#and thats one of the most tragic parts of it isnt it? she didnt know how itd end. she didnt know her story was always going to be a tragedy#furina never knew a thing. and still she did it for the people of fontaine and succeeded.#how do you define “yourself” when you havent existed for 500 years?#to be so selflessly human you give up “yourself” to save people who will never know of your sacrifice.#sometimes i think about the confrontation on the stage and have a week long mental breakdown#sacrificing EVERYTHING for fontaine and still. still! the people closest to you turn on you.#heavy on clorinde. she was as close 2 furi as neuvi fight me on this. i bite.#her bodyguard and friend and she ends up staring down her blade wondering if this is it. she failed. she failed them all#because even when faced with the trial. with losing everything. she still thought only about fontaine. oh furina.#do you think she has nightmares. wonders if she was never meant to win this game of g-ds. that her story was always meant to be a tragedy?#do you think she still wonders if she was ever meant to have a chance at a happy ending? a doomed tragedy from beginning to end
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made some franmaya keychains today :3 for me and my best friend :3 cause we're literally them if they were platonic besties ever (instead of madly in love ofc)
v individual photos and also sketches yay hooray!!!!!
I love ace attorney guys............ I love girls......... I love girls who love girls also..................
#Maya wasn't supposed to be so tall she just ended up that way :P but no franziska being shorter makes sense actually so it works out#the ace attorney fixation is so incredibly strong rn I FINALLY BEAT RISE FROM THE ASHES GUH#I THINK IVE BEEN PLAYING THAT CASE SINCE LIKE LAST MAY#to be fair I was stuck on this one part for like 2 months BUT STILL#mixed feelings about it tbh#but now........ now I can play the game that actually has franziska in it......... :3 the world is beautiful and kind#the world is beautiful and kind because franmaya exists and I LVOE THEM FOREVER#squirrel art#ace attorney#ace attorney fanart#franziska von karma#franziska ace attorney#maya fey#maya fey ace attorney#franmaya#crafts
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I still think about how much detail they put into child!Jessamine's design even though she only appears in a static flashback image for less than a minute.
They could have easily recycled her existing default hairstyle + outfit from the main game for her child self, but they actually gave her flashback incarnation an entirely unique look.
#dishonored#dishonored 2#jessamine kaldwin#still thinking about this game's art direction and character designs almost ten years later#a huge character design pet peeve of mine is when a show or game introduces the child version of an existing character#and the child version has the exact same hairstyle as the adult version#i know part of it is keeping the character recognizable for the audience but it's so bland and it just irritates me for some reason#illustration by Sergey Kolesov
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inspired by this post and others that have pointed similiar things out: the thing about sang-woo hunting the narrative in squid game season 2 is that he does it in two different ways
like first of all: gi-hun takes on the role of sang-woo. he does things that sang-woo did. he brings up the voting, informs about the red light/green light situation, but he also just acts more like him. gi-hun is more subdued than ever, and plays his cards closer to his chest. when his cheery friend from the outside world runs up to him he is not like himself. the friend notices but sticks to his side anyways. towards the end of the season, he gets into the "we need to make sacrifices" mindset. they need to win the game no matter the cost, the idea of winning is just different.
but also: in-ho takes on the role of young-il, who is not only similiar to sang-woo, but he's also sort of who gi-hun wished sang-woo was. intentionally or not. like they're similiar: collected, steady and focused. sort of the same hair and physicality. but young-il is also easier than sang-woo. he opens up about his situation unprompted. he'll apologize for stepping out of line. he states clearly how much he trusts gi-hun. he is the one who initiates teaming up. he asks for gi-huns opinions and plans. when young-il suggests something he checks if it's alright with gi-hun. he risks his life for others, especially the ones considered weak. young-il shares a lot of traits with sang-woo, but ultimately is not burdened or guarded in the same way. so young-il is both a stranger and something familiar to gi-hun. but also young-il is not real. not in the perfect way in-ho tries to present him. beneath it all there is that flawed and cold complicated person. gi-hun hasn't discovered that person yet, like he once discovered that side of sang-woo.
but sang-woo is still dead. he's haunting it in two different ways but also kind of a third one, which is arguably a combination of the two: he's simply a dead man and gi-hun wishes he lived. gi-hun has nightmares about his decapitated head. he looks after sang-woos mother. his money might as well be covered in sang-woo's blood. gi-hun looked up to him and admired him (feeling like he never could be as good as him, but maybe hoped). sang-woo failed and betrayed him, but was still redeemable (there was a good well-meaning person underneath but it was ripped away from him by circumstance). sang-woo was real but now he haunts the narrative and haunts gi-hun and haunts us all. but he's still dead.
#squid game#squid game spoilers#squid game season 2#cho sang-woo#sangihun#squid game blogging#IM SO NORMAL ABOUT SQUID GAME DONT WORRY YOU GUYS!!!!#im putting it in the sangihun tag alright it feels relevant#here's the things: people have been pointed out how sangwoo haunts the narrative.#but comparing sangwoo and inho/youngil it CLICKED#like idk if it's intentional BUT THIS IS IT TO ME#he tries to be sang-woo without the flaws#like important: this isnt a 'sangwoo is bad and inho is good' post#young-il is perfect to gi-hun but!! young-il as gi-hun knows him doesnt exist!!#i think parts of young-il ARE like in-ho but he iS STILL THE FRONT MAN#sang-woo was a rly messy person and like!! he tried to do a bunch of those good things young-il did!! but in the end he couldnt do that#or chose not to#but gi-hun still found him redeemable and important to him and he mourned him#and bc of that he stays in the narrative.#MAN IM SORRY#i will simply just have feelings about cho sang-woo after all these years#he feels so wildly mischaracterized and i feel like i understand him so 100%#and that in the end the emotional arc really landed to me.#so to see it actually (intentional or not) be so relevant to the storyline still??#HEY SQUID GAME SEASON 2 IS REALLY GOOD BTW??? HAVE I SAID THIS
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Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol
Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.
I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).
The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).
A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).
All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.
The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.
An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.
At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.
(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).
They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:
(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)
The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.
The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).
(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).
The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.
This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.
Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).
This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).
#I'm kind of fascinated by the quasi-religious beliefs that have developed around recreational hallucinogen use (ESPECIALLY DMT)#In contrast to like. Uses of DMT-containing substances like ayahuasca for long-established religious purposes#So this concept is basically 'what if a religion was FORMED from pretty much the ground up out of DMT usage'#Like the common 'entities' people encounter in recreational use being identified as the Real Gods and producing a religious worldview#that is mostly rooted in this experience (while still influenced by other cultural factors)#Also the like. Meta going on here is that the fungus is a 'living god' and the oldest one on the planet#It is a VERY rare type of living god that is 'created' by non-sophont (non-sentient even) beings and exists as a mycelial network#that perfectly supports and protects an entire forest. Basically a god for plants. It is so deeply interconnected with its forest that the#usual power sophont belief would have over it has basically zero influence. This is absolutely the closest thing to A God in canon.#(While still not being a Creator/sapient/or even supernatural within the framework of this reality. Just VERY unique.)#The Ur-Tree has always been above water and grows very very slowly over the course of millenia by kind of 'pulling up' plant life from#the ground (so you see ancient long extinct plants in its higher branches and contemporary plants close to/on the ground)#The mycelium helps shield and feed extinct plant life that could not otherwise survive in the contemporary environment#And the forest is big enough to produce its own weather (it is a rainforest and has been ever since the capacity for rainforests Existed)#It's not really a tree at all in any normal sense but an amalgam of thousands of types of plants-#Some growing on top of others and some interwoven beyond any distinction. It does form a superficially treelike structure#(mostly in order to physically support its own mass) with a very wide 'trunk' and massive 'roots' (which end in actual roots).#It feeds on its own perpetually shedding and decaying 'body' and any animal life that dies in the forest is VERY rapidly#decayed and absorbed by the mycelial network (to the point that many large scavengers cannot survive in this forest)#(If you kill a cow and leave it on the ground for just 1/2 hour you'll see little strands of mycelium already growing up around it)#The fungus fruits and spores on a very infrequent basis (scale of ten-thousands of years) which causes the forest to very slowly spread#Fortunately this isn't really an existential threat because the spread is VERY slow (even on a geological scale) and the fungus#itself is rather mundane in nature and cannot usually compete against established fungal networks in other places.#Though there are little Ur-Tree mycelium groves and woodlands in other parts of the world that may (over untold millennia)#generate their own Ur-Trees (there's already a few but they are all MUCH smaller and not readily recognized as the same thing)#WRT THE TRIP:#Most of what I'm describing is a DMT trip but consumption of high doses of Ur-Tree mycelium has both mundane psychoactive effects#and IS kind of the person experiencing the fungus' entire lifetime and seeing flashes of the world's actual evolutionary history.#The amount of material knowledge that can be accurately gleaned from this this is VERY limited though.
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yeah u can put "i hate jkr" and "fuck terfs" in ur tumblr bio but. can u listen + reflect when a trans woman criticizes hp fandom without immediately getting defensive.....
#if a trans woman says 'my firsthand experience with hp fandom is that it's transmisogynistic'#in what world is the correct response to get angry at her and demand that she reassure u that not EVERYONE is transmisogynistic in fandom..#like either a) u have not been transmisogynistic in which case...just keep scrolling#or b) u have been transmisogynistic in which case. u should take such posts as an opportunity 2 reflect on ur own behavior#and whether or not a or b applies to u is a personal evaluation for u 2 make privately#but EVEN if u feel the post does not in any way apply 2 u. it's still good 2 reflect!!! we are all participating in a fandom#that is tied inherently 2 a virulent transmisogynist#the least we can do is be vigilant in our personal circles + spaces abt transmisogyny.....#also personally. i think trans women can say whatever they want about hp lmao#especially on their own personal tumblr blogs that u can very easily just block if it's so upsetting 2 u....#anyway. valid critiques and criticisms of hp fandom exist + part of being in this fandom in 2023 is accepting that imho#txt
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I know my ass says this every time there’s a new season but god DAMN, heartstopper is such a good show for teenagers
#the klock keeps ticking#heartstopper#and also before i go on my ramble let me get my obligatory angy moment out of the way#i wish aled was in the show im never gonna be over this i think isaac is turning out great but like#every time i see him it just feels so wrong lol its like. WHERES MY BOY WHERES MY GUY RADIOOOO#okay anyways#i only watched the first 2 episodes of s3 but damn its just like so good at the tone#so good at being sweet but serious when it needs to be#so good at showing healthy communication methods in a way teenagers can practice#and just like saying that hey. your partner is struggling with something and you arent responsible for fixing them cuz you literally cannot#do that and you are literally 16 theyre gonna need much more than this#and this is a part of growing up and having your relationships mature like you will have to go through shit like this together sometimes#and its a lot but you can still show love and support without straining yourself it just takes practice and patience#im so glad a show like this exists for teenagers cuz damn i havent seen anything be this good for that specific demographic in uh#like ever? something thats so good at acknowledging that teenagers have these problems or drink or have sex#without doing some euphoria bullshit#just tows the line so well
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Bleach’s Issue with Queer characters (3/3)
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So then there’s Giselle (and to a less canon extent Shutara) who I think Kubo erroneously categorizes as similar to both eachother and to the above gay men stereotypes. And I think understanding Kubo’s approach to Giselle hinges on what he set up (but didn’t follow through on) with Shutara.
I’ve mentioned before, but I’m pretty certain think Shutara Senjumaru is meant to be a kabuki onnagata*. Not in-world, mind you; I don’t think she is somehow employed as an actor in a literal kabuki theater. (i would hope that was obvious, but one can never be too sure...) Just like Tier Harribel isn’t literally a light skinned, dark haired person doing gyaru/ganguro fashion, her presumably naturally tan skin and blonde hair is based on the general aesthetic. Shutara likewise is channeling distinct look and feel that draws from a mix of oiran, geisha, and kabuki aesthetics. (granted all three are closely related in influencing one another’s aesthetics in the first place)
But while the look and even the demeanor tend to play all three ways, I think the particular fixation on clothes, costuming, and the somewhat adjacent theme of “disguise” that Kubo has shown to put emphasis on in this kinds of situations, as well as the fact that he gave her a distinctly masculine name, Senjuumaru, point to her being some form of queer, albeit something Kubo seems to pretty clearly lack the understanding to better articulate himself. Is she a trans woman? Gender fluid? A male identifying transvestite? There’s not enough real material for us to draw that particular line, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to conclude that she’s not a cis woman.
*Kabuki is traditionally an all-male theater form, and “onnagata” refers to actors who specialize in playing women roles. Generally all actors train in the delineated masculine and feminine styles, but an actor’s career sticks to just one or the other...
...There is a whole big thing about how cultural institutions like kabuki and takarazuka theaters’ creation of socially acceptable and even celebrated, public and professional genderqueer spaces creates a myriad of gender dynamics that just don’t exist in the West, and it’s something that has made the attempt to adopt a globalized understanding of queer identity a little trickier in Japan:
In the West the gender binary was rigidly enforced such that to explore alternatives was basically uncharted territory (that’s an oversimplification, but you know what I mean; There’s a lack of contiguity with those who came before) but with japan there were already nonbinary spaces in place, and the lines around those don’t neatly line up with the ethnocentric western ideas some people try to pigeonhole those into. In general, it gets dangerously close to just flat up colonizer rhetoric.
(forgive the outdated reference image, but honestly I don’t know what even counts as a recognizable example of a “““trap””” character these days. And I use that term with GREAT reluctance, but I want to differentiate the exploitative cliche usage of a trans caricature from any actual representational trans character.)
(ya know what, let me pull these out of the tags because not everyone is seeing this from my original post and obviously the context has changed around bridget since i wrote this... #geez this thing is so old that bridget wasn’t even reintroduced to guilty gear yet #in fact strIVe wasn’t even a thin on the horizon this far back)
Anyway... That all just leaves Giselle. And let’s be real, there’s no excuse for this one. Maybe that seems like a weird anticlimactic place to take this series of posts... like, after all this, maybe it feels like I should’ve had some equally obtuse logic to explain this one away as a matter of escalation or as a Rule of Threes. But no, not really. I just think it’s a little unreasonable to treat the massive screwup that was Giselle’s portrayal as part of some sort of bigger ongoing trend, when it’s really more of an unrelated outlier in a bigger umbrella subject.
She is in fact a bad case of the long standing anime/manga fetishization of transwomen as a concept, as a spectacle to be gawked at and made the butt of jokes or to be included specifically as an anomaly. And in Giselle’s case her specific depiction as a depraved, physically/sexually abusive villain on top of that is an explicitly toxic combination.
In spite of that, I still don’t think Kubo actually meant for it to reflect poorly (not that that matters or diminishes its harmfulness) I think he genuinely just has no real grasp of what that kind of characterization means. I say that largely because of the way he treats a lot of her role in the plot. Not that she’s integral to moving it forward, but that she occupies space and survives in the plot as long as she does, even when she could've been conveniently (and frankly more neatly) written out;
He seems to like drawing her and gives her a range of expressions and gestures (something he doesn't afford all his characters, even some of his major ones)
He likes to expand on her powers and gimmicks beyond what was necessary if he'd been aiming for minimum effort
He even paired her off against his personal favorite character, Mayuri.
Point being, Kubo seems to personally like Giselle as a character, but he took a horrible insensitive and ignorant path in writing her character.
But an undeniable fact is, she’s not alone as this kind of villain, she’s just the only one that happens to be trans.* Mayuri himself, Aaroniero, Szayelaporro, Zomarri (just a little bit), Tousen (at the very end), Tsukishima, As Nodt, Gremmy (a little), and Askin all to some degree dip into this shtick Kubo does where his villains aren’t just sadistic but ecstatically so, to the point of intoxicated, gleeful derangement. Yet in spite of that, those characters are all usually meant to be “cool,” not detestable.
Remember, Mayuri was initially written as, hands down, the most despicable characters in Bleach —he was abusive and sadistic, misogynistic, actually physically grotesque, predatory, dishonorable sneaky & underhanded, complicit in a genocide, just in general a clearly communicated mad scientist villain, and he was all of this in direct and deliberate contrast to Uryuu’s chivalrous personality type(already established in his defending Orihime from Jiroubou) as well as Nemu’s noble stoic subservient victimhood— and yet he’s also Kubo’s favorite character in the series. Kubo doesn’t actually write Giselle any particularly worse than the others, BUT he also doesn’t disassociate her being trans from her being villainous, and again, even incidentally, that manages to perpetuate a harmful narrative in the overall.
*(Actually, I’ve kinda touched on it before but I sort of suspect Mayuri could be trans, in which case; OOPS, that makes two, and that doesn’t make it better....)
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#bleach#bleach meta#KUBO TITE#senjumaru shutara#giselle gewelle#geez this thing is so old that bridget wasn't even reintroduced to guilty gear yet#in fact strIVe wasn't even a thing on the horizon this far back#also weird that preupdate drafts still adhere to outdated formatting#because typing these tags now and editing these drafts#is working on weird janky tumblr formats that i kind of forgot existed#anyway like i already said in the tags of part 2#im kind of super not satisfied with the wording on a lot of this#feels muddled#and i think i sort of lost track of the root of things#where someone was calling kubo ''obviously'' transphobic#and i think that's not entirely accurate#even if the bottom line almost doesnt make any difference#but there's a difference between ignorance and insensitive#and just outright malice#but the former is very much fixable and even reclaimable#the latter is absolutely not#again tho i get why to a lot of people that doesn't really make a difference#even this far out i dunno how i thought i was gonna end this#or how id do it any differently if i tried now
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How fortunate am I to have so many Things to love and be excited about, to appreciate and look forward to?
Things I feel so strongly about that they stumble into my mind, univited, at random times of the day? Things that spill into my speech and vocabulary without me noticing? Things that impact my vision to the point where everywhere I look, everywhere I go, I see ghosts of them?
How lucky am I to have so many Things I love and cherish enough for them to reshape my very person, change my beliefs and make me grow? Things that make my own loved ones see the Things out in the wild, and go out of their way to make sure I see them too?
How wonderful is it that I have Things that I love so much that the very act is deemed and dubbed "not normal", making my love for them seem like it's more than they are supposed to recieve? An out-of-the-ordinary and above-the-norm appreciation for the Things that make the people around me shake their heads, call me "silly".
My dear, beloved Things, may I always stay silly for you ❤️
#yes this is yet another post about legendborn lmao#but also one of my friends sent me a post with a reminder to log into Genshin today#just to get the birthday-greeting card for one of my/my favorite character#and they send me this because even though it's my favorite character#this person also knows I don't actually play genshin that much and knows that I would probably miss it if they didn't remind me 🥺🥺#and my friends let me yap about Legendborn the other day lol#and my fellow legendbornian-in-crime commented on my insta story about annotating the book that “noone loves this series more than you”#which ofc isn't *TRUE* true but it still made me feel all fuzzy lol#my parents also got me a few sets of silver earrings for christmas bcs I mentioned in passing I wanted more silver jewelry#and one of the pairs they got me was with owls because Owl City has been one of my favorite artists since forever#and I THRIVED in 2012-fashion bcs the owl jewelry was fkn EVERYWHERE and I got SO MANY because it made me think of Owl City lol#and my brother got me The Book Of Bill bcs both he and I love Gravity Falls SO MUCH#I just love ✨️ loving ✨️ things I guess#so this post is very much a love letter to my special interests and hyperfixations <333#currently have had 'Tears Run Dry' by Patrik Jean on repeat for the past 2 or so days bcs it's fkn STUNNING#but it also makes me think about my friend's ArleFuri fic bcs it just fits so welll 😭😭#and at the same time (and the reason I have it so within reach lol) is bcs I have added it to an OC's playlist for a story I'm writing#I have so damn many things I love and I almost start crying thinking about how fortunate I am to have all these things I love so dearly#and live in a time where all of these things exist and I get to experience them all at a moment's notice#and just simply get to indulge in fandom behaviour and have people around me who also LET ME do that#i love hearing people yap about what they're passionate about regardless if I know what it is or not#like how beautiful isnt it to see someone's eyes sparkle and looking like they're itching all over because they simply can't help it#they just can't contain their love and passion for the Thing ??? absolutely incredible#tove rambles#oh and don't fkn get me started on how 'Dream Catcher' by Set It Off basically is the reason I'm so determined to become one#and it being part of how I made my 17-year old self believe I could actually do what I CURRENTLY DO nearly 10 years later
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Hoyo has been so carefree trivialising death in recent years that with the "would result in the death of another group" foreshadowing, I completely expect us all to just break up and go our seperate ways by the end of things.
Fucking prove me wrong Hoyo. Prove me wrong and kill half the group of HI3 Part 2.
Xiao, Navia, everyone in part 1.5, Misteln, Tingyun, Firefly, Sunday. None of the deaths you've shown since Himeko have been real.
FUCKING PROVE ME WRONG.
Im kinda pissed because I dont buy this foreshadowing at all. Hoyo has completely trivialised the threat of death. I want to be proven wrong so badly but I just dont believe it any more.
They cant keep using the threat of death, show characters basically or certainly dying, and oh no actually that's just how the misunderstood creature transports characters between dream worlds.
Dont fucking use this threat if you're not going to act on it. Prove me wrong. Fucking do it Hoyo. Kill someone. 100%, 120%, 150% kill a beloved character permanently.
Or stop using the threat of death.
I am at my breaking point with this. They get no more freebies with the threat of death.
I am so fucking pissed. Stop using it, or actually fucking kill main characters permanently in HI3 Part 2.
#ranting about part 2#<- mute this if you want#misha and gallaghers deaths do not count#they die at the end of their arcs and their purpose for existing#their deaths have no impact on the story or really any impact on any characters#very little would change if they were still alive#meanwhile himeko sends kiana on an entire arc which would be vastly different if himeko survived
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miscellaneous danyal al ghul things
specifically about the danyal al ghul from my post/prompt here and i wanna get my misc. headcanons/thoughts on him (especially in his early stay with the fentons) out here before i make any other danyal al ghul aus
list under the cut because whoops this got longer than i expected. which really i should have expected
the Fentons are unaffiliated with the League, which was perfect for Danny faking his death.
he struggles with empathy. Empathy was not taught nor encouraged while he was with the League, so it's a skill that's been pretty stunted. At 15 he's better at empathizing with people, but he still struggles with it. He's pretty bad at reassuring/comforting people and usually acts as an emotional rubber duck for Sam and Tucker to vent to if need be. He sometimes offers blunt and sometimes mean opinions, especially if its about another person.
Sam and Tucker do not know he's an ex-assassin, they are however, pretty positive that he used to be part of an eco-fascist cult with a focus on martial arts?? They've been helping him tone down some of his more,,, extreme views on humanity ever since they caught wind of his more extreme ideologies.
He and Sam are still avid environmentalists and feed into each other quite a bit. They spend plenty of time at protests and pestering the school into more eco-friendly options.
Dash is not dead on the sole fact that Danny knew he had to lay low in Amity Park and killing someone was not, in fact, 'laying low'.
he did, however, traumatize him when Dash first tried to bully him. Safe to say, Danny is not bullied at school and neither are Sam and Tucker.
Danny didn't make any friends in his first year at Amity Park. He was surly, grumpy, standoffish, more stubborn than Sam, and pretty self-important about himself. Jazz was trying to teach him against these things, but she is a 12 year old unaffiliated with the League. Danny did not respect her nor listen to a word she said. It wasn't until like, year two that he finally started paying to mind what she was saying and slowly started to improve on himself
Sam approached him first, he rebuffed her quite harshly, and then Danny approached her sometime afterward when he overheard her talking about environmental rights. Sam completely ignored him though when he agreed with her, and Danny had to later learn that he needed to apologize for being rude to her when they first met. He did so eventually, and they started to talk more with Tucker and Sam.
Danny's a bit more reserved than he is in canon, although he steadily learns how to act as a regular teenager when he's out in public. He's a bit more friendlier at least, although when he's around Sam and Tucker he drops the act. He still has a somewhat formal way of talking, it's just become more casual after a lot of ribbing from Sam and Tucker. When he's angry or annoyed he starts talking poshly though.
His humor is relatively the same as in canon, if somehow dryer and more insulting at some points
Those rare moments where he gets really pissed usually ends up with him insulting someone in arabic or any of the other languages he picked up from the league. He is the go-to for Tucker's Spanish homework. (Tucker makes that mistake and learns that Danny is a very strict teacher)
while Danny doesn't view the Fentons as his parents, even five years after living with them, he does respect them to some amount. He respects them enough at least that when Vlad Masters comes sniffing around, he is suitably offended on both Maddie and Jack's behalf. And when he finds out Vlad was the one who tried to kill Jack and tried to tell him to renounce him as his father/parental guardian, danny threw a suitably sharp object at him and insulted him quite horrendously
Vlad still wants him as his kid. In fact perhaps even moreso after this.
Danny trains with Maddie to keep up with his training. It's not quite the same but it prevents him from getting completely rusty
Sam and Tucker know that Danny has a little brother, but nothing else beyond that other than Danny cares about him quite a lot and that he got his facial scar from keeping him safe.
Danny cares about Sam, Tucker, and Jazz quite a bit, but he struggles to convey it. Especially early on when he realized he cared about them and like instinct started being harsher to them and more critical of their actions. This resulted in quite a few arguments with Sam and Tucker and Jazz until he got sat down and told outright that the way he was treating them wasn't okay. It's a process he's still trying to unlearn even at 15. He has become kinder towards them as a result, and has begun looking for what they did right rather than what they did wrong.
He harbors a lot of guilt over how he treated Damian in the League, and its a pretty big conflict he has with himself since he's torn between telling himself it was for the best to make sure Damian survived the League, and feeling like crap over how harsh/critical of Damian he was and realizing that he probably could have come up with a better way of training him despite being a child himself at the time. Danny comes to the realization that more than anything, that he just wants to apologize.
His ghost form, specifically is outfit, is a combination of his hazmat suit and his uniform from the league, and he carries a sword with him. He also doesn't know how to react to Dani, honestly. Although it is fair to say that he figures out she's a clone instantly because of her whole 'I'm your third cousin once removed' thing and he freaks out. She spills the beans pretty quickly after that. And Danny is pretty skittish around her - or the equivalent of skittish. Her being younger than him kinda reminds him of Damian, so he's uncomfortable by her presence but learns to warm up to her.
#dpxdc#dp x dc#dp x dc crossover#danny fenton is not the ghost king#dpxdc crossover#dpdc#dpxdc headcanons#dp x dc headcanons#danyal al ghul: exists#me: lets give him emotional constipation :) as a treat#older brother danny#sam+tucker: dude... were you part of a cult???? danny: excuse me? sam+tucker: were you. part of a cult#danny: it was not a *cult--* sam+tucker: oh my god you were part of a cult. that explains sO MUCH#danny is pr morally grey even at 15. he's starting to get the hang of this 'human life' thing though! he thinks.#but he is still the embodiment of that tiktok audio 'why dont we just kill these fucking people' even if he keeps it to himself sometimes#sam+tucker+jazz: dont litter danny: yes of course thats obvious s+t+j: okay then dont *kill* danny: now you've lost me#danny nearly stabbed dash when they first met. more accurately he nearly took off his finger like the train scene from the mummy movie 2#with alex and that big guard guy who stabbed the table in between his fingers. “woah.” “Tt. i missed”#late night starry posts#not proof read and thus there will prolly be mistakes
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Not ominous at all.
#still trying to deny the existence of part 2#joel miller#the last of us#cymraeg#welsh#tlou#tlou hbo#ciwiau'n debygol
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i do like the tiktok dsmp nostalgia videos but I only like them because they’re about dsmp since im still in the fandom I only get nostalgia like sometimes and the other half of the time im like why would I feel nostalgia all of that was yesterday… like I dont never get it I just never get it like “yep those were the dsmp days!” like uh. now is the dsmp days… how can I miss something thats like not over yet 2 me
#maybe its that part of me is still eternally waiting for the next dsmp stream or stuff like that that can never exist again#but ive gotten used to waiting for because those streams ended up being like 4 months apart anyways most of the time#which like#justified because why did we get 2 lore streams in 24 despite the shit show of the beginning of it#fueling my fantasy over here…#anyways dsmp I love you 5ever please never die (i know its dead but i still hallucinate its corpse everyday and thats enough)#anyways idk if ill one day be nostalgic for it all i mean i have been before but i mean like honestly rn it feels like this era is forever#so yk maybe it will be lol maybe it will be my new longest special interest record#dsmp
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