#partly because i would kill to see this same concept in either of them too lol | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

whatifyoulivelikethat · 4 years ago

Text

snake | myg

pairing(s): yoongi x reader

summary: Your parents have no qualms on doing whatever they can to climb the social ladder. That includes assigning you a betrothed you've never met, an offering to the crown prince. You, the one the gossipers whisper under their breath... the Snake Princess.

warnings: implied parental emotional and physical abuse; language; non-idol!AU - prince!Yoongi x aristocrat!reader, ft overprotective (but secretly soft), tattooed, little brother!JK; based on this

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“I don’t care what our father said, you’re not marrying him!”

You scratched your ear, partly shielding it from the loud voice of your brother.

“He’s an asshole!”

“You don’t know him?” you offered, affixing your earring, somewhat annoyed. The yellow gold wasn’t quite your style. Your parents liked such gaudy, ugly things.

Both in fashion and tradition, unfortunately.

“Do you?” your brother shot back, throwing himself up from your bed where he was yelling at the ceiling about nothing he could change. It was a favorite past time of his, along with following you around like a talkative shadow.

“No, that’s why I’m meeting him today,” you replied dryly. You switched to the other ear, adding the dragon-shaped ear cuff above the gold earring. Your parents hated it when you added such aggressive accessories – they’re not womanly, they would say – but if you were going to be betrothed to some guy on the sole basis that they had ambitions and he was the man who so happened to be the next-in-line for the throne, you weren’t going to lie about what kind of woman you were.

“Aren’t you pissed?”

You shrugged. “Is it so bad?”

“Yes!”

You sighed and flickered your eyes to the mirror, seeing Jeon Jungkook’s furious expression, long black hair tied back with lingering strands framing his high cheekbones, his black and gold robes wild, poorly tied and revealing half of his tanned, toned chest. His dark brown eyes flashed, pressing his cherry-painted lips together, jawline sharp and defiant. That’s how Jungkook always looked, messy, undone, borderline furious.

Everyone called him the Reckless Prince.

You just called him little brother.

“Noona…”

“Hmm?”

You saw him frown and you looked away, running a hand through your hair, browsing your hair accessories. You used to have an aide to help you at one point, but you told your parents to get rid of them, preferring to get ready by yourself. And besides, Jungkook liked to burst in and interrupt you with his relentless tirades about how unfair your arranged marriage was. There was no point in having hired help when you could coerce your brother into doing things as you put up with him.

“Can I brush your hair?”

“You have arms and hands, so you’re physically capable, yes.”

You heard him click his tongue in annoyance and smirked, shifting your eyes to the mirror. He was behind you now, face no longer visible. It didn’t matter. You already knew his cross expression quite well. He snatched the ornate comb from your vanity, the black snake head clearly visible on the side of his right wrist, inked near his thumb. Your parents scolded and beat him for getting it, but Jungkook could care less, breaking the wooden paddle with ease, right out of your mother’s hand.

You hadn’t said anything.

The rumors called you the Snake Princess.

Quick-witted, sharp, vicious. Not to your face though, because that was just foolishness. It wouldn’t be only your wrath they would be evoking.

Jungkook ran the comb through your hair, gently separating the strands, careful not to pull too hard. He was better than any aide anyway. They merely yanked and pulled you into their standard of beauty, ignoring your opinions or input, always citing that it was important to not look like a peasant, important to always look above your status, using your beauty to save face.

Saving face.

You hated those words.

“What if he’s a horrible person?” your brother asked quietly, tucking the strands away from your eyes only for them to slip back stubbornly.

“Then he’s a horrible person,” you replied, applying your makeup. “And you’ll probably do something about it.”

Jungkook made a noise between an aggravated bear and an injured tiger.

“If he so much as puts one fingertip on you, I’ll kill him.”

You snorted. “I’d hate to tell you what marriage entails, Jungkook.”

The comb in your hair paused.

His anger subsided, just like that.

“You’re really going to do it?” he asked softly. “Really, really?”

You heard the pain in Jungkook’s voice.

You recalled when you received the news many years ago, silent fury as your parents gave you away, turning you into a transaction to raise their own reputation and status. Your reaction was nothing to your little brother’s, him running to your room and crying in your arms, distraught and upset that you were leaving him, declaring he hated your parents, everyone, and everything.

“You’re supposed to protect me,” Jungkook had sobbed, already too big for you to hold like this but you did anyway, patting his head and wiping his tears with your sleeve. “You’re supposed to be here, with me, forever and always.”

He had taken your hand, tucking his fingers in yours, pressing your pinkies together.

“You promised me.”

And you had, from the very beginning, the shy kid always following after you and making you speak for him, your parents yelling and scolding him to be a man, but you defending him, taking the slaps meant for him, sneaking him sweets when he was hiding his tears, telling him it was okay to cry and that noona would stay here and listen to his worries, no matter if it was as stupid as a butterfly flying away or the teacher once again reprimanding him for his poor scores.

The amount of pressure they put on him just because he was the son was immense.

“I wanna play,” he had cried softly. “I don’t have to study anymore.”

“You want to be stupid?” you had teased, patting his head. “What if I had my lessons with you? I can make that happen.”

“R-Really?”

So, you made it happen, telling your parents and tutors that it would be better for him to be exposed to more complex concepts earlier rather than later and watching someone learn would improve his own scores. You made yourself a better student for his benefit and he, in turn, followed obediently, doing what you did, always overjoyed to hear your praise.

You and your snake tongue could made anything happen for him.

“This servant is bothering me.”

You found some questionable information on that servant and they resigned rather quickly.

“I don’t like the girl our father introduced me to.”

Suddenly said girl was no longer interested in Jungkook. For… reasons.

“I wish I could go on vacation, even for a couple days.”

That one got you both beaten for your three-day adventure to the sea, mostly because you had to run away from your duties to do it. But it was worth it to see the smile on Jungkook’s face.

Then Jungkook became a teenager.

You might have taught him that rules were for old people, for the generation too uptight.

He wanted to do a whole lot of things and you made it happen. Getting him out of those sticky situations was a bit tough, but nothing unmanageable. And now Jungkook was a young adult who did not care about anyone’s opinion other than yours, getting tattooed and spending all of his time with his friends, lackadaisical and free, your parents giving up and calling him a disgrace, relying on your marriage to restore the reputation they valued so much, the face they themselves ruined with their own poor decisions, taking out their frustrations on you and Jungkook, sometimes without warning.

You stayed home, playing good daughter so Jungkook could be the bad son.

Ah, maybe it was your fault he was the Reckless Prince.

You turned, looking up at him now from the corner of your eye, up his loose robes and exposed collarbone, up the line of his jaw that was similar to yours, his lips not quite as full, his round brown orbs that were actually much more innocent and purer than he liked to admit, similar to your eye shape.

But not the same.

Because your eyes were sharper, cold-blooded, predatory.

Even with Jungkook, there was no mistaking the power behind your gaze.

“Do you think just because I’m married to some man that he can control my life?” you said with a sly smile, your lips painted lush red. “I’ll come visit you whenever I want. You can come whenever you want. You can live with me if you want.”

You turned back, sweeping your hair and twisting it in place, deftly and quickly pinning it back, leaving some strands loose and messy that your parents would highly disapprove of, but why did that matter? If this man was to be your husband, then he would see you completely undone at one point, so he should get used to it.

Your parents wouldn’t approve of the black and dark green combination you had chosen either, but that’s why you learned how to sew to dress yourself as you liked. You have to be a lady. You were a lady. Just your version of a lady and not theirs. They tried to gatekeep you by saying that the pink and yellow fabrics were all they could afford. They had a tendency to underestimate your craftiness.

No obstacle was too high for the Snake Princess to slither over.

“Really?” Jungkook asked as you stood up, smoothly adjusting the tie at your waist.

You chuckled at him as he began to follow you out of your bedroom.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll do it for you.”

“You brought your brother.”

“I don’t bring him anywhere. He comes and goes as he pleases.”

Jungkook was sitting behind you, arms crossed, glaring at the dark-haired man sitting in front of you. You had mildly fixed his appearance before entering only from him to push up his sleeves so he could reveal the entire snake tattoo wrapped around his arm, a black snake surrounded by thorned vines.

“Hmm.”

This man had requested to meet you first, alone, without the parents. Untraditional, but as long as his father agreed to the request, it was done. Your father had no say in the matter, although he did protest rather loudly and uncouthly.

You had poured the tea for your future husband and you.

Neither of you were drinking it.

The man before you had a piercing gaze, cloud-white skin, shapely lips. Somehow, he surprised you by being dressed in black and gold as well, although he was much neater than Jungkook, black hair tied back in a the usual, curated traditional style.

“I intend in marrying you, you know.”

He had a deep, rough voice, reminding you of dead leaves and winter.

“Is that not the point of this meeting?” was your dry response.

A dark eyebrow lifted.

Jungkook clicked his tongue dismissively.

Those shapely lips curved into a slow smirk.

“I thought I wouldn’t like you,” the dark-haired man mused, reaching over to the teacup and pulling it to him. “I was fully prepared to refuse this proposal and put your family more in the dirt than your brother has already put them into.”

“You bas–” Jungkook hissed, but you held up a hand, cutting him off.

You kept your eyes on those dark brown orbs, cat-like and predatory. He took a deep inhale of the aroma of the tea, letting out a satisfied, smokey sigh.

“I thought you would be like the others. Prim, proper, begging for me to take your hand.”

You raised an eyebrow. “What do I need to beg for? You either will or you won’t. It has nothing to do with me.”

A dark chuckle. “Indeed.”

He took a long sip of the tea, savoring it. You watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing, tongue flickering out to lick his lips. Slowly lowering his head, scrutinizing gaze on you. He made you wait for his words.

“And besides, snakes can’t kneel, can they, Snake Princess?” he purred.

“Don’t you dare call her that!”

“No, they cannot,” you replied calmly, ignoring Jungkook’s outburst, staring into the eyes of the man who was going to decide whether or not you were going to be his wife.

“They can’t pray either.”

The dark-haired man tilted his head, intrigued.

“I have no need for gods to be able to live the life I want, Min Yoongi,” you said quietly, venomous edge to your voice. “The ties you put on me cannot restrain me from living as frivolously or ambitiously as I like.”

Min Yoongi, the man who would decide whether you would live an honorable or disgraceful life, the man who was next-in-line, the crown prince. You were meant to be his, but, unlike you, he was free to refuse. Unlike you, he had nothing to lose. Unlike you, he could destroy your life in a heartbeat with a simple no.

“You believe that?” Yoongi questioned, daring you.

You didn’t back down, small serpentine smile on your lips.

“I do not need to believe when I know.”

Silence.

Then Yoongi’s shoulders shook, raspy laughing bubbling from his throat, smirk on his lips.

“You want me to refuse. You want to ruin your parents’ lives.”

You didn’t say anything, your smile fading.

“Ah, but the problem is, I really do like you, Snake Princess,” Yoongi hummed. “You sharp tongue and you even sharper mind. A simpler man would have been tricked by you.” He tapped his long fingers against the table, keeping his feline poise directed at you. “I did not want some placid, useless little thing but a real woman, someone who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks. Why have a trophy when you can have a weapon?”

He placed his chin on the back of his other hand, clicking his tongue thoughtfully.

“What shall we do then? You absolutely must be my wife.”

“You–” Jungkook hissed, rising up behind you, glaring at Yoongi over your shoulder. “You know she doesn’t want to marry you and yet you’re going to do it anyway?”

The dark-haired man raised an eyebrow. “She doesn’t want to marry me because she wants her parents to pay for using her so carelessly to further their status. However,” he added with a sweep of his hand on the table, palm upward towards you. “Has she actually said she has no interest in me as a person? During this entire meeting, has she declared that I, the crown prince, am not to her liking?”

Yoongi gave Jungkook a sharp look.

“Do you think she would hide her disdain for me if she had some?”

Silence.

“N… Noona?”

“Yes, Jungkook?”

“You don’t like him at all… right?”

Silence.

You let out a deep breath, slow and controlled.

“Hmm, you are very intuitive.”

Yoongi grinned. “You know we would be a good match, you and I. Here,” he murmured, pointing to the table. “On the throne.” Pointing outside, indicating the land. His cat-like eyes locked with your snake-like gaze, lips forming his next words slowly and deliberately.

“In bed.”

Your eyes trailed from those glittering dark eyes to his pleased smirk. Not a malicious expression somehow. An exciting one. You fully expected to be walking into this room to tear down an arrogant, gaudy man with grandiose self-centeredness.

Instead, it was Min Yoongi.

He ticked his chin to Jungkook, now right next you instead of behind you, clutching your arm tightly.

“Do you want him to be with you? That could be arranged. I can make that happen.”

You really thought you would hate Min Yoongi and yet it seemed as if you were being drawn closer and closer to him. You pursed your lips, not ready to give up yet. He continued.

“And, of course, there’s no reason for your parents to enjoy luxuries that they didn’t earn, is there?”

You narrowed your eyes at him. Yoongi smiled, calm with an underlying slyness.

“That would reflect on you if you treated your in-laws poorly,” you responded coolly.

Yoongi shrugged. “And so? I still have you.” He tilted his head. “Why take a wife if you’re not prepared to do anything for her?” He nodded to himself, tapping his fingertips on the table once more. “Whatever you want, I can make it happen. Be it your brother tagging along, your parents’ lives in ruins…”

Yoongi’s eyes found yours and there was a kindness, already knowing your and him were meant to be.

You weren’t so sure.

And yet.

His next words made you fall in love.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll do it for you.”

masterpost

#yoongi x reader #yoongi scenarios #bts fanfic #yoongi x you #min yoongi x reader #min yoongi x you

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aspoonofsugar · 4 years ago

Note

What is your opinion about the Maidens in RWBY and their importance?

Hello anon!

I like the Maidens and especially how they explore two main ideas:

1) The concept of cycles and generations.

2) The trope of the chosen one.

THE CYCLE OF SEASONS

I think it is clear Ozpin created the Maidens partly because he wanted guardians and partly as a way to grieve his four daughters. He has symbolically dragged them into the cycle with him and Salem.

In a sense, the story keeps repeating. Salem kills Ozpin, he is reborn and his daughters are victims of the conflict between them.

Because of this, the four Maidens have become one of the many symbols of this endless cycle, which is clealry breaking its protagonists more and more.

This is well conveyed by the Maidens having a season theme. Seasons are in fact linked to the repetition of time aka one of Ozpin’s motifs:

At the same time, the idea of an older woman passing the torch to a younger one can be easily read as a metaphor for a mother-daughter dynamic. This is not always the case, but so far this interpretation is important for two of our four Maidens:

Penny receiving the Maiden’s powers from Fria is important on multiple levels and it plays on Penny alluding to Pinocchio. Fria (The Blue Fairy) recognizes Penny as a real girl, something she has been struggling with since the beginning:

Penny: Ruby... I'm not a real girl.

And is still struggling with:

Cinder: I don’t serve anyone. And you wouldn’t either, if you were built that way.

That said, Penny is not only struggling with enemies that consider her a robot, but also with the (understandable) overprotectiveness of people who love her:

Pietro: I lost you before. Are you asking me to go through that again? No. No. I want the chance to watch you live your life.

Penny: But dad… I am trying to.

She is not only a robot, who wants to prove she is a real girl, but also a daughter, who wants to grow into her own person.

This idea is made even stronger by Penny having been “created” through Pietro’s aura. She is a part of Pietro becoming someone completely different and independent from him. Still, isn’t it what all children are?

Raven is instead Penny’s opposite since she is not a daughter, but a mother. Not only that, but she is a mother, who fails three times.

She fails her biological daughter Yang by abandoning her and putting her in danger.

She fails Vernal, who dies for her.

She fails the previous Spring Maiden, who clearly looked up to her and was betrayed:

Cinder: Vernal was a decoy the whole time. The last Spring Maiden must've trusted you a great deal before she died. I bet that was a mistake...

This is well conveyed by Raven’s case being the opposite of what should ideally happen. Normally an older Maiden should pass her power to a younger girl, so that the cycle keeps going and that a new generation can keep fighting for good. However, Raven steals the powers of the Maiden for herself, just like she uses her shape-shifting ability for selfish objectives:

Ozpin: Everyone has a choice. The Branwens chose to accept their powers and the responsibilities that came with them. And later, one of them chose to abandon her duties in favor of her own self-interest.

She presents herself as a mentor for young women, but in the end she is a failure because she is too self-centered.

In conclusion, Rwby is both a coming of age story and a story that deals with cycles. Let’s think about the many abusive cycles in the story or the damaging cycles present in society, for example. All these cycles need to be broken and I would not be surprised if this will be the case for the cycle of the Maidens as well.

THE CHOSEN ONES

Up until now, the person who should be a Maiden never becomes one.

a) Pyrrha was destined to be the Fall Maiden, but Cinder stole the power.

b) Vernal is foreshadowed to be the Spring Maiden, but Raven turns out to be the real one.

c) Winter has been preparing herself to inherit the Winter’s Maiden’s role, but Penny is the one chosen by Fria.

Why is that so?

The story is clearly playing with the idea of the “chosen one” and asking some questions.

Are people chosen by destiny:

Cinder: It’s unfortunate you were promised a power that was never truly yours.

Or do they choose it?

Red-Haired Woman: She understood that she had a responsibility… to try. I don’t think she would regret her choice, because a Huntress would understand that there really wasn’t a choice to make. And a Huntress is what she always wanted to be.

What if the chosen person is the wrong one?

Lionheart: She was determined, at first, when she inherited her powers, but the weight of responsibility proved to be too much for the child. She... ran. Abandoned her training, everyone. That was over a decade ago. There's no telling where she could be now.

Finally, is it even right to choose a person?

Weiss: Doesn't it bother you? He practically groomed your entire military career.

Winter: It did at first, when the General first proposed it to me. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw it as a privilege, a chance to do some real good for Atlas. For Remnant.

Weiss: But your destiny was chosen for you, without your input.

So far each Maiden has explored this concept in a different way. Moreover, the story has highlighted many problems with the method used by Ozpin and his allies to select their guardians.

First of all there is the machine used to transmit aura:

Ironwood: We've made... significant strides. And we believe we've found a way to capture it.

Qrow: Capture it and cram it into something else. (gestures to Pyrrha as she takes a second to realize what that means) Or in your case ...

Pyrrha: (to Ironwood) That's...

Ironwood: Classified.

Pyrrha: ... wrong!

This method has been presented in-universe as sketchy and unethical both for the person who is having her aura taken and for the person receiving it.

It is also interesting that this machine is basically the technological equivalent of the Grimm used by Salem and Cinder to steal the powers in the first place:

One is the product of destruction (The Brother’s Grimms), while the other is the result of creation (in-universe technology is linked to creation). However, they both do essentially the same thing. They steal another person’s aura and change the one absorbing it:

Raven: You turned yourself into a monster just for power.

Secondly, there is the fact that so far several Maidens have died or have been targeted in horrible ways.

Some of them were specifically attacked because young and less experienced than others, like Amber. Some others made their choice without truly understanding it, like the Spring Maiden. And some of them. like Pyrrha, were not even given all the elements to make an informed choice.

In short:

Hazel: You send children to their deaths for a cause that you know has no victory, no end!

It is true that Hazel is a hypocrite that feels anger for Ozpin sending students to their deaths only to be the one killing them. It is also true that he does not respect his sister’s choice:

Oscar: Did she know the risk of being a Huntress?

Hazel: She was only a child! She wasn't ready!!

Oscar: She made a choice! A choice to put others before herself! So do I.

However, the narrative harshly criticizes Ozpin for not giving people all the information, “the knowledge”, they need to make that choice:

Yang: There was so much you hadn't told us! How could you think that was okay?!

Finally, we arrive at the current volumes where we see how Ironwood has tried to control Penny, Winter and Fria aka all the three people involved in the passage of the Maidens powers...only to fail miserably.

And in this failure probably lies the true mistake which has been made over and over again. The whole point is that probably the whole cycle (thematically) can’t and should not be controlled to this extent:

Goodwitch: At first, the only thing that was certain was that the powers were specifically passed on to young women. But as time went on, it was discovered that the selection process was much more... intimate.

Pyrrha: ... Intimate?

Goodwitch: As we understand it now, when a Maiden dies, the one who is in her final thoughts is the first candidate to inherit her power.

The powers are passed from a person to another through emotions. It is not by chance that the last person in a Maiden’s mind is the one who gets the power. It is because the power is linked to emotions and to ties and you should not try to weaponize them.

MAIDENS AND RELICS

Finally each Maiden is clearly linked to the theme represented by her respective relic.

Pyrrha and Cinder are both linked to the idea of destiny and choosing. I have shared some thoughts on them here.

I would say that Cinder wants to be chosen. She wants to be special and to be given value. This is probably why she is serving Salem. It is because Salem has chosen her for an important role:

Salem: When I chose you as my vessel for the Maidens, I put my trust in you.

This is not positive. It is dehumanizing:

Salem: This game is not yours to win, Cinder, it’s mine. Just because you’re more valuable to me than a pawn, does not make you a player.

But Cinder sees this as a chance.

Pyrrha is instead a person, who chooses her own destiny:

Pyrrha: When I think of destiny, I don’t think of a predetermined fate you can’t escape. But rather… some sort of final goal, something you work towards your entire life.

In other words, Pyrrha has an active role in her own destiny, while Cinder so far has accepted it passively.

This might seem ironic because all in all Cinder has been a pretty active character. She was born as nothing and fought to free herself and to become more powerful. However, she is still leaving her own life in the hands of another person, who is specifically coded as an abusive mother-figure. It is probable that her arc will be about taking back the agency Salem is clearly stealing from her.

This might very well be why she is the Maiden of choice. It is because in the end she’ll make an active choice to get her own freedom back.

At the same time, Pyrrha being active in her choices still leads to her demise. This is because she represents a choice without knowledge, as I have stated in the meta linked above:

She had been explained only a fragment of the truth, while the whole point is that one should learn, meet creation and destruction and then make a choice. This is why we have yet to meet the relic of choice.

As a matter of fact it is clear that knowledge and choice are complementary, just like destruction and creation.

This is highlighted also by their respective relics. On one hand the Lamp offers knowledge of the past. On the other hand the Crown gives its user a vision of a future choice.

This is because one has to know the past to change the future:

Bartholomew Oobleck : History is important, gentlemen! If you can't learn from it... you're destined to repeat it.

In a sense, knowledge is the passive condition of choice, while choice is the active goal of knowledge.

This is why one needs both to contribute to the world in the most effective way possible. If one acts without knowledge they might make the wrong choice. At the same time, knowledge without choice is just passiveness, as shown in The Indecisive King fairy tale.

Too much knowledge might lead to indeciveness or even cynism. This is why Raven is the Spring Maiden. It is because she is Pyrrha’s opposite aka knowledge without choice:

Yang: Which is it, mom? Are you merciful, or are you a survivor? Did you let me walk into that trap because you knew I could handle it, or because it meant you could get what you wanted?!

Raven keeps making decisions only to run away from them immediately after. Knowledge did not make her braver, but just a coward.

Finally we arrive to Penny and the idea of creation.

I have mentioned Penny in the meta linked above:

Penny is an artificial human, a creation who was given life because her father loved her so much that he sacrificed a part of his aura for her… twice. She is at the centre of the theme of creation and it represents the good sides of it. She is a creation with a soul, a child, the fruit of parental love. It is because of the love she received that she is willing to protect creation.

Penny is at the centre of the theme of creation in two ways.

a) She is a child, who wants independence.

b) She is a good declination of technology.

On one hand children are new lives that join the world. They are the embodyment of creation.

On the other hand technology is an expression of human creation and a way humans have to change and influence reality.

Penny is both. She is Pietro’s girl and a robot with a soul:

Pietro: When the General first challenged us to find the next breakthrough in defense technology, most of my colleagues pursued more obvious choices. I was one of the few who believed in looking inward for inspiration.

Ruby: You wanted a protector with a soul.

Pietro: I did. And when General Ironwood saw her, he did too. Much to my surprise, the Penny Project was chosen over all the other proposals.

Ironwood choosing Pietro’s project over others is very interesting and ambiguous. Did he choose this project because at the time he understood the importance of “a protector with a soul”?

Probably consciously yes, but the way he has treated Penny since volume 2 suggests also something different. It suggests a desire of domination. The idea that putting a soul into a metallic body would make it easier to control it.

After all:

Ironwood: For the past few years, Atlas has been studying Aura from a more scientific standpoint; how it works, what's it made of, how it can be used. We've made... significant strides. And we believe we've found a way to capture it.

Each one of humanity’s gift has another side of itself. Knowledge can lead to fear and choice is linked to passivity/agency. When it comes to creation, this gift brings with itself the temptation of control.

Why shouldn’t a creator “own” theis creation? Why shouldn’t they be entitled to it? Why should they share it with the rest of the world?

If one looks at Ironwood, at Atlas and at the other protagonists of this volume this way, a lot of things resonate.

Atlas is the most technological advanced kingdom, but instead of sharing its resources it closes off. Ironwood’s embargo is just another declination of this same idea of losing control.

Similarly the Ace Ops and Winter are all repressing their emotions. They want perfect control over themselves. They are taught they should be like drones.

Technology itself is often misused by the characters. Technolofy should be like Penny. It should have humanity and a soul, but Ironwood likes it because he sees it as something logical that can be controlled (and of course he keeps losing control over it). Ironwood wants to become like he thinks Penny is aka a controllable soul. He fails to understand that Penny is special because she has her own free will.

Finally, this same desire of control is present also in familial relationship. It is not by chance that the Schnee Family is in Atlas. Weiss’s story has always been about exploring this specific idea of a family. A family, which is cold and controlling, just like ice. Weiss’s arc is about melting this ice, in herself first and now in others as well.

Technological control and the control of people. In short, the control over two aspects of creation. This is the the idea Atlas represents and this is why it is currently falling.

In short, the creation must be free and it is not by chance the world is in its current predicament because the Gods tried to control their creations with disastrous results.

CONCLUSION

These are my main thoughts on the Maidens so far. That said, they might chance since the story is far from over as the arcs of all the maidens we have met so far.

As a final note, I find interesting that so far none of our four protagonists is a Maiden. It is an interesting choice and I think that it lets the series make a good use of its ensemble cast.

That said, I wonder if our four protagonists will end up calling back the original Four Maidens instead.

The fairy tale is interesting on multiple levels.

In-universe, it is interesting because it tells us something about how Ozpin was probably inspired by the original Four Maidens to try to save the world again. Ozpin is inspired by four normal people, who are just trying their best to help others.

This is a recurring idea in Rwby and this might be why none of the four protagonists has been selected to be a Maiden yet.

If read as a stand-alone, the story is an interesting tale on how to overcome depression.

The story starts with the old man closed in his house and it shows how he progressively opens up until he himself is able to help others.

Winter is the one who teaches him how to work on his own interiority even when the world is cold.

Springs prepares the terrain for him to come out. It makes the garden more welcoming. It is like when a person has to find the right environment to open herself up.

Summer is the one who finally drags the man out and gives him energy.

Finally Fall is the one who makes the man realize he can now share his new found energy with others.

Theirs is a virtuous cycle and I would say it is very different of the tragic cycle that sees the current Maidens as protagonists. Who knows? Maybe it is about going back to that virtuosity.

Thank you for the ask!

#rwby #rwby meta #maidens #cinder fall #raven branwen #penny polendina #pyrrha nikos #asksfullofsugar #anonymous

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babymush46 · 3 years ago

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I just finished watching Post Covid so here are my thoughts! Spoiler Warning though •)

Overall Review •)

It was VERY good and I give it 10 / 10. It was very mysterious and I was excited to see how the characters turned out after all these years. The ending really did shock me and I was not expecting it. But it was so good and I'd definitely watch it again.

The Main 4•)

Kenny: It was really sad for me when I found out Kenny actually died for real. He was my favourite character. I really did not expect for him to look the way he did either - which was a huge surprise. Although I did partly expect him to be dead // dying since that is tradition within Kenny's character. We never got to see what happened to his family either which was kinda disappointing but it's okay.

Cartman: He had changed ALOT and turned out to be kind of a hypocrite [in my opinion] since he made fun of Kyle for being Jewish but then actually became Jewish - along with his wife and 3 children. That was one of the things I expected Cartman NOT to be. But I am glad he changed for the better.

Stan: Because of the teasers and clips I already knew what to expect from Stan - so there really isn't that much to say. What I will say is that I was kind of underwhelmed with him because I did expect him to still reside in South Park, and at least have a partner or some sort of family. But that could have interfered with the story's main plot if he did still live in South Park or have family. And the plot was great so I wouldn't change that. I did expect something with Tegridy Farms and his family though. I really didn't think that he would go so far to kill his Sister and Mother - or so his Father says. But I did half-expect him to lash out at the concept of Tegridy Farms, resulting in him burning the place down.

Kyle: Shares the same way about Stan. Kind of underwhelmed but knew what to expect because of the teasers. I thought he would at least be a bit nicer though - like Cartman for an example. It's almost like they switched roles, in my opinion. I thought he would still have a Best Friend connection with Stan too. But the teaser said otherwise so it kinda gave out mixed signals. One thing I will say is that I really like his character design and that It really suits him well. His style is my favourite out of the main 4.

Other Characters •)

Jimmy: I am so glad he is famous! I didn't expect it but he deserves the fame so good on him. He is just how he was as a kid too [character style] and I think it's really cool.

Token: It's good to see that Token is still keeping contact with his friends and I am happy he was remembered because Token is one of my favourites.

Clyde: I didn't know what to expect for Clyde and I definitely didn't know he would be such a major character in the special.

Butters: Since Butters was never shown throughout the show I'm guessing we are getting a part 2 of some sort. Particularly because he definitely had something to do with the ending. That was a real shock.

Wendy: I love her so much. I have always liked her character design from the beginning and it's managed to stay for the special too. I'm happy we get to see her too because she is also one of my favourites.

Tweek & Craig: Putting these together since they are always seen as a pair. Anyway I KNEW they would still be together and I am so happy they are because I love them. Tweek's new character design fits him so well and so does Craig's. They also seem to have the exact same personality as they used to and I love it.

I CAN'T REMEMBER ANYTHING ELSE SO IF I MISSED ANYTHING PLEASE LET ME KNOW

#south park #post covid #south park post covid #review #thoughts

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sith-shenanigans · 7 months ago

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- Her general initial reaction to being made a Sith was “I’m expendable and out of my depth and belong to a much more powerful and knowledgeable person who could just kill me if she felt like it, this isn’t actually different from my previous situation.” She doesn’t really conceive of herself as free until Act 2 starts, and it’s kind of iffy even then (sometimes she forgets, emotionally speaking). She’s harsh on herself whenever she thinks she’s “forgetting the realities of her situation,” which ranges from vaguely justified to “apparently this is how we are processing our trauma today.” (Though she’s harsh on herself in general, too—partly because she learned to bend her life around the threat of punishment and using that kind of discipline on herself feels like control, partly because she sees it as a defense against Sith arrogance.)

- The pursuit of power isn’t 100% uninteresting to her, but she always ends up grabbing at it sideways because she’s going “ooh, a useful tool” and that’s. Uh. That’s what power is. Like, it’s also a lot of other things, but that’s the basic unit of it: a useful tool that gives you an advantage. And she is so good at collecting every potentially useful thing that crosses her path. But she’s not… thinking of it as pursuing power? She’s not thinking “I’m going to be so powerful that no one can hurt me again,” even subconsciously, she’s thinking “I’m going to get such a good grade in being cunning and resourceful, a thing that is normal to want and possible to achieve,” and when she does think about power it’s usually to remind herself that it’s just a tool. Which is, it’s important to note, not the same as not pursuing it. It’s just an unusual relationship to the concept; she doesn’t idealize the thought of having it, she in fact has baggage about the thought of having it, but she doesn’t really want to not have it (why would you want fewer tools?) so much as she just has a lot of Big Weird Feelings about being default seen as entitled and dangerous.

- She has, like, excessively mixed feelings about any kind of luxury. She is very much not one of the (very common and probably often somehow slightly better-adjusted) inquisitors who is going “now I can… have nice things?” and making grabby hands at it. Except in the most complicated ways, at things that are either way too basic to actually count or just. Really weird. She likes to eat poisoned gifts, is what I’m saying. She thinks it’s funny. But she has a tendency to see “nice things” as emotional bribery (yes, specifically emotional bribery)—either by anyone trying to give them to her, or by the Empire itself somehow. This swings around in intensity and inconvenience depending on how badly she’s Having A Trauma right now. When she’s doing well she just has a weird ascetic streak; when she’s doing badly, she ends up repressing panic attacks about eating normal food. A lot of that is linked to being in the Empire—she tries to draw a red line where she might exploit people for what she needs, but not what she wants—but some of it is about idealizing the ability to endure hardship.

- Just… doesn’t really care about reminders of her past? She has so very much trauma about it, but her triggers don’t live in Being Reminded. Even about how it felt. (Replicating, yes, but reminding, no.) She’ll bring it up herself even when she isn’t using it as a weapon, which I feel like most inquisitors. Don’t? Except the ones who are using it as a weapon all the time, kind of.

- Her relationship with Kallig is so weird. She was not happy to be related to a dead Sith! She conducted a weird bargain with him so he would release the expedition! She sees using his name as a concession she made rather than, like, something to help her get ahead! She certainly doesn’t see blood as any actual determiner of family. But he… chose her? And she chose him back, even if it was to save the expedition? So he gets to count, not because they’re related (which she believes they basically aren’t, after over a thousand years) but because they chose each other. But it’s complicated.

I don’t think I could have made Ahene a more off-model inquisitor if I’d tried, and that’s very funny to me.

#i love every inquisitor! there are also some frequent commonalities. she did not get the memo on them #swtor #oc: ahene coris

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years ago

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The Mandalorian Chapter 14 reactions: HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME BUT ALSO I’M CRYING edition

- the good good din characterization is back after all the weirdness last episode!!!! that soft way he says ‘no, no, I’m not mad at you’? THAT’S din djarin, he would not be fucking impatient with his son having just been informed and seen for himself that he is terrified, go away mr filoni I know you’ve got all of canon memorized but you don’t get this lol. this feels much more right in how din being conflicted and still thinking he should give the baby away for his own good plays out too

honestly every line of dialogue for him in this one was perfect I was just whispering ‘I love this awkward clueless wonderful man just doing his best’ to myself any time he said anything. “...does this look Jedi to you?” sir I adore you more than words can describe

- we got din chuckling. asjdklfhsdkafghsdafsadhjkfsdahjkfh. fskahfksjad. side note: I can’t believe my joke post about din desperately trying to Force home school the kid with the one (1) jedi trick he knows about and the baby being delighted by it over and over anyway -- listen to his expectant excited laugh when din takes the ball and sets up the game!!!! -- was canon all along. and then the baby & mando music kicking in when he gently put the silver ball into the baby’s hands again and tells him he’s special (because he IS special. to din)? hmng. hmmmmnnnnn

they opened on the height of softness so we would all crumple under the weight of the rest of the episode and that was very mean of them in a way I sincerely appreciate

- nothing to see here... just a dad trying to walk through the literal manifestation of the unassailable underlying forces of the universe to get to his baby again and again........ the desperation in that, the love, the foolhardy devotion................... shit

- okay so I might be a dumbass, but I’d never noticed this before -- the silver ball has a blue spot on the top, like so:

and in addition we get the room where the baby goes full darth grogu (I have to laugh so I don’t cry okay) on those storm troopers, and there’s a red light in there dominating the room (and it did even more in the concept art):

in star wars blue means light side and red means dark side (it’s very sophisticated that way), meaning the visual storytelling here is that there’s a battle for the baby’s soul and gideon and all his nonsense (and the trauma bb’s been through in the wider sense) is pulling towards the dark, while grogu and din’s connection leads him towards the light. just... the image of the baby looking at his own reflection in the symbolic representation of his relationship to din? the way children find their sense of self through being safely reflected and held by their caretakers? god help meeeeeee I will go in there and fistfight gideon myself for disrupting that in any way

the smaller light seems to be blue too, like there’s still the presence of light even if it’s dimmed and small in that shitty horrible room, which is a change from the concept art!

- FENNEC SHAND SURVIVED BITCHES!!! I even called that she’d be back with new shiny robot parts back in season 1, could not happen to a cooler lady, I hope we get more backstory and interaction from her the next episodes -- sounds like she’s basically sworn herself to boba’s service in gratitude for saving her life, I wonder if that’s a cultural thing of whereever she comes from? does she live aboard slave 1 now too?? because that would be hilarious and amazing, it must be like two strange cats trying to get used to sharing the same space

- everything I could ever hope for about boba fett in this series came true, they went down the much more interesting and nuanced route with jango and boba’s identities as mandalorians, he looked cool as fuck and made din as a character shine rather than overshadowing him... amazing beautiful yesss

(I did 100% not anticipate just how ‘cool uncle boba here to help you fuck shit up’ he was going to be but I am delighted to get it anyway. uncle points deducted for getting someone to point a gun at the baby, but the main point still stands lol)

the power and brutality of his hand to hand fighting too... a w e s o m e , I enjoyed the action scenes a lot in this one

- they even recanonized him actually wearing jango’s armour. what more could I ask for. I’ve had confused parent & child feels about these two since I was like eleven and here we fucking go again. and jango fighting in the mando civil wars too!

- so I’m grieving the razor crest (and I always will be, rip you magnificent jalopy, always in my heart) but also there’s the grim satisfaction that my reading on it was sort of true -- it is (...was. oh god it’s going to take a while to sink in huh) a symbol of din’s self and life, and at this point when they take the baby it tears everything else to pieces. the only thing that’s left in the ashes is the beskar and the thing that connects him to the baby. and there’s... a strange solace in seeing that that’s all he needs to keep going? he’s fucking obliterated from orbit but he still has his love for the baby and the beskar and that can keep him going until he finds something new, everything else can be replaced?????? weirdly healing, though he is probably going to have a solid breakdown at some point after they get the kid back (shut up they are getting the kid back) and the cold distant fog lifts

also this scene/shot feels like it carries some Meaning, doesn’t it? I’m on record several times saying I never want din to be mand’alor and that’s still true, but there’s something about the framing of this and the way boba looks at him that’s like... hm. I’m not sure I have the words for it. there’s something heightened about it, anyway, for a moment he looks like something mythic there in the wreckage

(something I would be much cooler with is our clan of two growing a little bit and those new people rallying behind him, actually, that might be neat. imagine if a force user does show up for the baby and gets adopted into the clan somehow??? so many possibilities.)

- from the way he picks up the silver ball... din djarin is on his way to straight up murder some people huh

I think part of what reassures me about this scene is the music -- this mando flute is not distant, is not beaten, is not despondent, it’s clear and determined and strong.

I love this. I love when we get explicit baby POVs, it makes it feel so real and intimate and... like home. (I especially loved baby’s point of view inside the razor crest, which just made me tear up again. baby lost the closest thing he’s had to a home in a long long time on top of it all. everything is suffering)

Emotionally Significant Thumb Grabbing tm; the show

- din djarin looking for the ‘on’ switch on a magic rock fhsdakjfhsadlfhsdjah I can’t breathe

“Well, this is the seeing stone. Are you. Seeing anything?” fsafkdsajhfsa sdhfksjalhfkjsdahfkjsdhf

- the energy around the baby as he’s, in ahsoka’s words, ‘choosing his path’ is blue, and the force sort of works across time and space, right?? so there’s definitely still hope for our lil green bean to not have to come up with a really dumb unsubtle sith name for himself, as is regrettably yet delightfully tradition. darth babbu should never come to pass (I do like how they’re interrogating the normal dark/light side dichotomy in this series, seeing as this is a literal baby who can’t really be responsible for that stuff himself yet and has such capacity for both.)

- listen. listen, the way din says ‘can you please hurry up’ with no sarcasm or real impatience whatsoever, more like a harried worry, to his force-meditating son as he jogs off to make sure no one’s trying to kill them. is hilarious and also YES this is what the character is!!! weirdly and incongruously polite under stress sometimes and with a slightly odd reaction pattern to things!!! he’s not just quiet and badass, he’s a little strange sometimes and it’s so good!

- a friendly opening volley warning shot from boba there

also din uncertainly asking BOBA FETT if he’s a jedi... now this is the dramatic irony I’ve been looking for haha

I guess neither shand nor boba actually know din’s name after this either. baby you gotta start introducing yourself at some point it gets real confusing when there are two mandos on screen

oh the long weary sigh going through din’s frame when boba says he wants ‘the armour’ and he thinks it’s just someone trying to peel the beskar off his corpse again. sorry the galaxy’s so shitty dad

- “But fate sometimes steps in to rescue the wretched” is a killer line well done mr favreau. I like that boba actually offers din a good deal as well and seems to intend to deliver on it from how things are going.

- din using his beskar-covered bod to cover someone he’s fighting alongside!!! literal moving cover haha. also I love fennec’s costume design

- I don’t know where din got more whistling birds from and I don’t care, it was really cool haha

wow haha um so anyway --

(cue all the ‘who wore it better’ with cobb vanth’s ‘spiderman’s first home made costume’ look on one side and ABSOLUTE UNIT DADDY boba fett on the other side posts lol)

- aaaghh the music almost like a stunned desperate fluttering heart beat as din watches the razor crest be destroyed

- for someone who has willingly worked for them in the past boba sure sounds less than thrilled about having the empire back in any capacity

- oof the deadness in din’s voice when he says “The child is gone”. ooooh no that got me h e l p

- guessing next episode is at least partly a ‘gathering old allies and preparing the assault’ step before the grand finale, then! they cannot go for the season ender cliffhanger with this, I will fucking riot. anything can be up in the air except baby and dad being separated, I will not allow it

it would be very funny if the force user baby called out to comes stumbling into the middle of all this like the troy entering the room with pizzas meme too

- the music in the darth grogu scene is partially a dark mirror of the baby & mando music :’( is nothing in this world sacred

also from how he reaches out for it baby might have used a light saber before in the past with the jedi? ngl the idea of baby wielding the dark saber not when he’s all grown up but in like two episodes -- with all the chaos a toddler holding a laser sword would involve -- is all that is keeping me sane here

‘liable to put an eye out with one of these’ well gideon you sure have doomed someone to lose an eye with that one, here’s to hoping it’s you, for full dramatic payoff

he is a deliciously smug awful force with great musical cues tho, you have to give it to him

- okay so this

is obviously awful and horrible and it makes me so sad... but it is undeniably also very very very funny in how it’s framed. you know what? after all this bullshit baby grogu can have a little dark side tantrum, as a treat, we’ve all been there right

(forget finding a jedi, we need to go out there and find a child psychologist who can help him deal with this without adding the fear that he’s on the path to become a two foot tall evil space sorcerer to the mix Y_________Y)

- rip the razor crest except for the second time :’’’( gone but never forgotten

- the last thing din tells the baby is “I’m gonna protect you; I’ll be back soon”. and I hope that stays with the kid somehow and that it actually comes true, that din will be back for him as soon as humanly possible and all this pain and fear can be repaired. ggggghhhhh my emotions are too big for my dumb human body

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta #okay I'm gonna have to. go take a calming walk or something after this haha

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sukirichi · 3 years ago

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hi suki! wanted to tell you this bc i have no one else to talk about it with ><

( you can answer this when the English chapter releases! i was able to read it because my friend bought the WSJ issue)

I was trying to udnerstand Naoy's character, so I was reding everything from CH138-151 again. I'm kinda sad at how people just calls Naoya a Toji fanboy (though true LMAO) and not realizing how Toji really influenced his persona. Like the admiration Naoya held for Toji is so deeply engraved in him that he, who was called a genius sorcerer as a child, looks up to a man who was called a failure. Toji is probably the only man in the clan that he respected, that's why toji's level of strength became his "picture" to follow. And I think a lot of who Naoya has become is because the Zen'ins literally groomed the decency out of him. Still, though groomed to be everything he is, he himself chose not to change anything about it.

(wait but also?? little naoya looks cute like he would guide old ladies on the ped xing so what the fuck happened after that)

I guess one major reason why he does not respect anyone else in the clan (besides his superiority complex) is because of the Zen'in's concept of what is marked as strong. Like, the way they see and treated him as if he's the best sorcerer in the making, yet failing to see Toji's powers and rejecting him fully. It's something similar to Mai when she said "Maki has talent that I don't. And the clan rejected that; that talent that I lacked", except Naoya is raised to be a confident (arrogant?) child, thus he takes it as a challenge instead and works to achieve it.

So, when Maki reached the level of Toji, I think his reaction wasn't simply stemmed on his "fanboy" antics, but his desperation of being part of that level of strength. I think he's more irritated in the fact that Maki, someone who he does not see anywhere near as strong as he is (though he does say Maki is strong in chapter 138), reached a level of strength that he hasn't; that he is trying hard to achieve. It's also the same with having your favorite superhero getting defeated. And Naoya's in denial that there is someone else who could be the same as Toji.

I like how he's an antagonist that was not build under the foundation of a sob backstory (though it was a v small sneak peak of his background and was mainly centered with his admiration for toji, plus I think people forget that Naoya is an antagonist), how he acknowledges that he has not reached that level of strength. Of course, I'm angsty about his misogynistic ideals. I get that he's from a very traditionalist clan so... yeah. I mean, no child is born evil. Children learn from those around them (I've seen many people say he's trash since he was a kid when he said that "i wonder what miserable face he has", but like he's a kid, he doesn't know what he's saying AHSJFJWJQ8QR he was either taught that or he just learned it from others. Funnily enough, he does say toji has a pretty face now LMAO). Maybe it stems from something else, maybe it didn't.

I'm not saying him trying to kill Megumi is forgotten (Though, the Jujutsu Society is a place where teens get executed for the simple fact that they are too strong, so im not surprised. Just like Noritoshi said, age does not matter in Jujutsu Society). I see now why he was really pissed about Megumi being the head, since Naoya has been promised the position since he was young, only to loose of a 15 year old who is the son of the man he admires :')) However, still, none of it excuses the shit he did. He still has a shitty personality, but it's nice to know a bit of a background.

Anyway, that's all for now. My English is bad so that might be all over the place •`,`• That's just my take on it so I could be wrong or maybe seeing him wrong since we still don't know much abt him. I'm always scared to talk about naoya because the last time i did (on twt) i got a backlash of hate (ppl really do get hate just from admiring someone's characterization). Your blog is like a safe haven for naoya stans, so i thank you for that hehe.

Have a nice day suki!! kisses~

(also this is a PSPSPSPS to a naoya childhood friends au fic pls 👁👁)

bestie omg I am so sorry, I found this deep in my inbox and I am *shakes* and yes yes let’s talk about naoya, I would be more than glad to and I’m sorry I didn’t see this any sooner!! more rants and simping under the cut

I'm kinda sad at how people just calls Naoya a Toji fanboy (though true LMAO) and not realizing how Toji really influenced his persona. Like the admiration Naoya held for Toji is so deeply engraved in him that he, who was called a genius sorcerer as a child, looks up to a man who was called a failure. Toji is probably the only man in the clan that he respected, that's why toji's level of strength became his "picture" to follow. And I think a lot of who Naoya has become is because the Zen'ins literally groomed the decency out of him. Still, though groomed to be everything he is, he himself chose not to change anything about it.

omg for this…I’m actually like��like I love the detail that naoya admires toji? as we can see from the panel of little naoya, it’s like people have already planted in his head that no cursed energy = loser, yet he ended up admiring him and I am,,,my heart is just soft! exactly! just think of naoya born as a genius sorcerer yet his admiration for toji, who is painted as the clan’s failure, helped shape him into who he is! idk but I just really love the fact that naoya, who is like born with the pressure and role of being clan leader, somewhat strays from tradition and ends up finding strength into toji and even strives to follow him or “stand by him” someday. for me, it just shows that perhaps naoya isn’t really half as bad as he should be in an honest sense, meaning that he’s evil or morally corrupt because he was born that way or because he chose to be that way. I do agree that perhaps he is the way he is now because he’s groomed to be like that, but of course, I’m not going to disregard the fact that somewhere along the way, Naoya could’ve matured to choose himself to not embody the misogynistic tradition of the zen’in clan.

This could just be me, but my interpretation of it is that Naoya seems more like the perfect product or embodiment of how the clan shaped him to be, blinded him with false morals and the patriarchy presiding into them. Rather than Naoya being just “a misogynistic arrogant man” in my perspective and my opinion, I see him more into the bigger picture of his toxic upbringing to begin with. Like, no child is born evil unless there’s like a predetermined curse deciding their fate for them, so its partly the Zen’in clan’s fault he’s that way. But Gege showing that Naoya admiring someone the Zen’in clan disregarded, it shows that he is capable of being himself without the clause of his clan enforcing things to him once again, like the whole “he’s gonna be the future clan leader” thing, though that is still heavily embedded within him.

(wait but also?? little naoya looks cute like he would guide old ladies on the ped xing so what the fuck happened after that)

OMGGGG PLEASE THAT’S SO CUTE, HE LOOKED SO INNOCENT AND ADORABLE BUT EVEN AS A CHILD HE WAS ALREADY CALLING PEOPLE A LOSER LIKE EYE

I guess one major reason why he does not respect anyone else in the clan (besides his superiority complex) is because of the Zen'in's concept of what is marked as strong. Like, the way they see and treated him as if he's the best sorcerer in the making, yet failing to see Toji's powers and rejecting him fully. It's something similar to Mai when she said "Maki has talent that I don't. And the clan rejected that; that talent that I lacked",except Naoya is raised to be a confident (arrogant?) child, thus he takes it as a challenge instead and works to achieve it.

Anon, is it just me or like…was his superiority complex also enforced on him by the Zen’in clan as well? Again this could just be me going all psychologist mode on Naoya but the nature of superiority complex is quite interesting, you know! As a psych student, I perfectly understand that superiority complex either stems from several things like a) wanting to live up to one’s or others expectations, b) masking it with a deep stem of insecurity, or c) it’s a coping mechanism. See, I could go on and on about but then I’d have to link all my past studies lmao so let’s just put it on layman’s terms that my interpretation of Naoya’s superiority complex is once again, influenced by the clan. Imagine being a kid born into a clan where people remind you again and again that you’re the future leader, that you would be the one to guide them or protect them or discuss the clan’s future and status once you grow, and you’re quite groomed for it.

For such pressure to be put on a child’s shoulders, it kind of strips off his youth and instead of him enjoying his youth, I can imagine that it took a toll on little Naoya, and the reason he grew his superiority complex is his way to cope and reach the standards and expectations that is given to him. Of course, he’s a kid, he might start to wonder, “Can I even do all of that?” but seeing as the Zen’in clan highly measures strength and growth based on abilities, cursed energy, and overall just to conform into the image they’ve held for years, it’s quite obvious that Naoya can’t exactly voice out his worries over this, so instead, he masks it with a superiority complex that absolutely boosts him to a higher level, thus giving him the confidence he needed to carry out his tasks and the reassurance that, “Yes, I am worthy and I will be the clan leader.” As for your theory that he takes it as a challenge, I can see where you’re coming from! I think Naoya is the type of person who definitely likes to challenge himself, but one of the reasons I love his character so much is because he’s not completely a brainless “head on straight to war” type of person too.

He knows his limits and knows which side he should be in, as showed when Yuuta came and mans surrendered easily. Idk why but to me, Naoya, who is such an arrogant confident man who has high trust in abilities, but at the same time can admit when someone is stronger than him (like him admiring Toji and Gojo) just makes him more human and a little more beautifully flawed. Like, he’s not perfect and he’s most definitely an irritating character, but the way he was written is just *chef’s kiss*

Yes, ah I really do love this theory that he’s more irritated because in his mind, he’s like, “I’m a genius sorcerer! I was meant to be clan leader! This is my rightful spot to be a strong one, so how come Maki, who is a woman, with no zero cursed energy has reached the level of the person I looked up most to?” again, Naoya didn’t say that and those are just my opinions and brainrot so don’t come at me for it uwu, but yeah I do think that he’s very aggravated that he didn’t react that level first. Because I guess you could say, he’s probably alluding that Maki reaching Toji’s strength = them being equals, and ofc Naoya wanted to be the one standing beside them. It probably hit his superiority complex that he wasn’t the one in Maki’s spot especially when he tried so hard to achieve it, and considering the gifts he was given (same cursed technique as his dad and him having cursed energy) it threw him off.

Yeah, Naoya is most likely in denial and becomes aggressive over it, although I don’t really mean physically aggressive because Naoya is actually quite calm and ‘composed.’ If ever he did go on a rampage, he does it in such a suave, calculated manner with this silent confidence that he will win. It kind of makes you root for him because he even fools the audience (by audience I mean ME) that he’s going to OWN that fight but whoop, he got his ass kicked. Plus ten points for confidence and a bonus thousand points for being sexy though!!! Yeah, omg he’s probably in disbelief that a woman of all people could be like the person he admired most.

OMG YESSSS ANON YES YES YES *slams down simping button angrily* That’s what I like about him too! Even though Naoya is cocky and wayyyy too arrogant for his own good, I also like that he acknowledges he’s not quite in a level he wants to be in yet. And hah, his backstory, it wasn’t totally sob because it’s obvious he was much too doted on, but I still hate how they made him like that. True, if he’s still carrying the same misogynistic ideals as he is now in an age where he has the mental capacity to improve and be different, then the belief has become more of a choice than something engraved into him, which I am really disappointed and not really into because of course, he’d be much better if he wasn’t like that in the first place. LOLOLOLOL yes yes he’s a kid, it sure as hell doesn’t excuse the way he is now but like just think !!

if a kid was spouting out such mean words and CLEARLY no one is correcting him, who really is the problem here? A child has a harder time deciphering what is right and wrong by himself without proper guidance. And he didn’t have proper guidance, they really just let him be like that and it’s because the clan!! sucks !! ass !! YEAH he probably called toji with a miserable face because he hasn’t seen him before but after seeing the iconic dilf, Naoya gone be like, “anyways, I lied, moving on—”

I'm not saying him trying to kill Megumi is forgotten (Though, the Jujutsu Society isa place where teens get executed for the simple fact that they are too strong, so im not surprised. Just like Noritoshi said, age does not matter in Jujutsu Society). I see now why he was really pissed about Megumi being the head, since Naoya has been promised the position since he was young, only to loose of a 15 year old who is the son of the man he admires :')) However, still, none of it excuses the shit he did. He still has a shitty personality, but it's nice to know a bit of a background.

yeah no of course, no worries! even as a hardcore naoya stan, I can admit this dude is TERRIBLE for so many reasons! yeah I mean that could be pretty irritating because he was born for it, raised to be clan leader, groomed and expected he’d have that role, but nah someone else took his throne. yeah I’m with you on that, naoya has a shitty personality and I would totally smack him if he was real because he makes my eyes roll to the back of my head, but knowing his background and theorizing (read: me going all psychologist mode because he’s the only character I ever cared about to apply my studies into) his character is quite fun. I wish we had more scenes with Naoya though, I really hoped he’d play a bigger role but he just…died, I guess, though I’m starting to believe that maybe he really isn’t dead! Gege did him dirty omg I’ll cry again if it’s really GENUINELY confirmed my baby is gone.

ah no worries about your English, I didn’t really notice anything wrong with it tbh! And I understand, these are all just our opinions/theories/perspectives, we could be wrong or not, we don’t really know because we’re not Gege (⋟﹏⋞) NOOOO PEOPLE HATED YOU ON THAT? ISTG I’VE NEVER SEEN A FANDOM CANCEL SOMEONE AS MUCH AS JJK FANDOM CANCELS NAOYA AND NAOYA STANS LIKE – he’s just a fictional character omg, cancelling naoya is understandable because I would too but attacking his fans? or generally anyone who talks about him in a neutral or not in a way that goes, “yeah I would punch this mfer” is just?? doesn’t make sense to me bestie, people really choose to do that with their time yikes.

AND AWWW THANK YOU YES I PROTECT ALL MY FELLOW NAOYA STANS HERE, I respect who people simp for because if it’s what you enjoy and as long as you’re not hurting anybody, then it really doesn’t matter and it’s not a big deal! and you’re always welcome here uwu. have an even nicer day bestie and I’m sorry I didn’t see this sooner AAAA I really loved talking about this tho HEHEHEH I’m not actually too much of a JJK theorist since I’m not smart enough to pay attention or infer from all the details but NAOYA HMMMMM also childhood friends fic? hmu let’s hear it!! also ahh hmm idk but i get really happy whenever people talk to me freely about naoya bcos even tho i have been a naoya simp for like three months, it was not until recently that people came to me about him and i have just been simping alone (bcos people MADDDD) spsppsps okay rant over thank you anon i love you kith kith <3

#asks with naoya's trophy wife #jjk: manga spoilers #tw: misogyny

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cry-stars · 3 years ago

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May I suggest an AU where Don Paolo finds the Golden Apple first and adopts Flora instead of Layton? :)

Absolutely!! Thank you so much for asking! This turned out to be... pretty long, actually, almost 2000 words :'D I'm going to post it here under a cut, but I also put it in Puzzles Left Unsolved if you'd rather read it on Ao3. Thank you again for the request; it was a great chance for me to write for Don Paolo for the first time!

...

“Welcome to the Future.”

Dr. Allen smiles broadly, throwing open the clock shop’s door with careless abandon. Flora can’t hold back a gasp at the sight before her. Yes, the scenery in front of her is Midland Road, but it’s unmistakably changed: worn down, and dirty with ten years’ worth of grime. The bus stop is gone, and tall poles mounted with loudspeakers tower above the ground.

Could they really have travelled through time? It seems impossible, but then again, the evidence seems too solid to brush aside. Flora’s still reeling from the trip through the “time machine.” Between the rocky ride down here, and the changed London that she sees before her now, she’s almost convinced that she truly is in the future.

Hesitantly, she looks toward Paul, hoping that she can take a cue from his reaction to what Dr. Allen referred to as “The Future.” Her mentor looks almost as dumbfounded as she does. Then, he seems to notice her gaze. He clears his throat, calming his expression, and turns toward Dr. Allen. “For ‘Future London,” it’s not all that futuristic, is it? Where are the jetpacks and the robots?” he asks, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I’m so sorry that the future isn’t completely what you’d hoped it would be.” Dr. Allen shrugs nonchalantly. “Now. If you’re done gawking, then we can begin discussing business. Follow me.”

As they follow Dr. Allen through the streets, Flora casts a questioning glance up towards Paul. “What do you think about this?” she whispers.

“Feh. It’s all a trick. Although I’ll admit it’s a good one.” Paul waves his hands dismissively, then brings his arm to his mouth, stifling a theatrical cough. “As bad as the air quality is in ‘present’ London, it’s nowhere near this horrendous. Coupled with the yellow sky, either the Apocalypse happened within the last ten years, or we’re underground.”

Flora’s half-disappointed, but half-not. An underground city, particularly one that so closely mirrors an existing city, is almost as fascinating as a future one—and, as Paul had said before, now that she thinks of it, she’s a little disappointed at the lack of futuristic technology. “So there’s still a chance for the jetpacks, then,” she says thoughtfully.

Paul chuckles. “If you get started on inventing them tomorrow, then there’s a slim chance that they’ll be around in ten years.”

“You could invent them too, you know,” Flora says mildly.

“Let’s stay focused on the present, my friends,” Dr. Allen says lightly. “Right this way.” Turning the corner, they enter a large tunnel, and Flora stares up in awe at the sloped roof above them, the beautiful stone-tiled road, and the pretty shops lining the walls.

“A pretty little arcade, isn’t it?” Dr. Allen says proudly, leading them toward a restaurant built into the wall of the arcade. “It’s a pity that it has no counterpart in the present. I hope this restaurant is to your liking. My partner is very fond of the place, although I don’t entirely trust his judgement.”

“You’re paying, right?” snorts Paul as the group steps through the door.

Dr. Allen raises an eyebrow. “Of course; you’re my guests. Paul, you wound me.”

“My name is Don Paolo, Allen.”

It’s strange to hear Paul reacting adversely to being called… well, Paul; Flora’s grown so used to calling him that over the last several months. Yes, he wanted to be called “Don Paolo” at first, but after the first ten times she’d called him so, he’d grunted that it was “too formal, and that she should call him “Paul” instead. Flora’s secretly glad of that; the name had always struck her as funny, but she’d hate to offend him by giggling by mistake.

Dr. Allen shrugs, and the three of them take a seat at the table, the cook coming to take their order. “Just coffee for me,” he says nonchalantly, “but give these two whatever they like. I’ll be paying.”

Paul gets a coffee as well—a smart move, Flora thinks; he wants to seem like an equal match to Dr. Allen. Flora would do the same, but upon further consideration, she just gets water; she’s not sure that she could handle anything more right now, with the amount of butterflies in her stomach. Her nerves are frayed, and being seated here, in the Future, in front of the man that summoned them here, is only exacerbating her anxiety.

“I supposed I was careless, Paul,” Dr. Allen finally says, as the coffee arrives at the table. Once again, he raises an eyebrow, glancing in Flora’s direction. “I never thought to tell you to come alone, simply because I never thought there’d be anyone who wanted to come with you.”

Flora blinks. What a rude thing to say! But now that she thinks about it, Paul really doesn’t seem to have any friends, except for her. He doesn’t often leave their flat, except when they both go to the lab to work on their engineering projects. Occasionally he’ll go off on his own, but he never talks about seeing anybody else.

Of course, there is his archnemesis, Hershel Layton, but they certainly aren’t friends, not with how Layton hurt Paul in the past! Paul never talks about what that man did, but Flora doesn’t want to force him to tell her, as curious as she is. Whatever it might be, it must’ve been traumatic, and she wouldn’t want to make him remember anything painful. But other than Layton, Flora can’t think about anybody else that Paul even knows.

Well, there is that framed picture of that pretty lady with glasses on his work desk, but Flora doesn’t even know her name, let alone if she and Paul are friends.

“If you want to know who she is, you can just ask,” Paul scowls.

“I’m his apprentice,” Flora chimes in eagerly. “I’m studying engineering, and disguises, and robotics, and… and lots of things.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting?” Dr. Allen chuckles. “I never thought you had it in you, Paul. I knew you were good with disguises, but masquerading as a mentor is a new one for you.”

“As far as you know.” Paul shrugs. “It’s not as if we were ever best friends or anything. There’s a lot of things that you don’t know about me.”

“True, true.” Dr. Allen leans forward, resting his chin on his hands. “But at least there was one thing that we had in common. And that’s what I’d like to talk about today.”

A shadow crosses Paul’s face. Is that… sadness in his eyes? “I’m not really in the mood to reminisce, Dimitri.”

“Maybe not. But perhaps you’re in the mood to help me make those precious memories reality once again?” There’s a feverish light in Dimitri’s eyes, despite his serene expression. “What if I told you that my time machine—”

A time machine?

Flora’s mind starts racing. A real time machine? Could it really exist? How does it work? What—

“That’s what killed her, Allen.” Paul’s harsh voice cuts through Flora’s daydream. “You’re delusional if you think that it’ll actually work, or that I’ll waste my time helping you.”

“I don’t think I’m delusional,” Dimitri says calmly, but Flora can see pain in his face. “But even if I am, at least I’ve got a plan. What are you going to do if you don’t help me? Continue living in your delusion of thinking Layton cares one iota about being your ‘archnemesis?’” He stands slowly. “I’m giving you a chance to help bring her back. It’s up to you if you’ll take it. I’ll give you five minutes to think it over.”

Before either of them can say anything, Dimitri exits the room.

Flora avoids looking at Paul, staring into her water glass. She feels like it isn’t her place to say anything, as curious as she is; she should wait for—

“I suppose you want to know what in the world is going on.” Paul grunts, crossing his arms, and stares into one of the paintings adorning the wall.

“If you want to tell me,” Flora says hesitantly. “I mean, it’s not really my business, is it?”

“Well, you are my apprentice, so it’s at least partly your business. Especially since you’ll be helping me make my final decision.” Paul sighs. “You’ve seen that picture on my desk, right?”

Flora blinks. “That pretty lady?”

A small smile colours Paul’s face. “Yes. She was… well, she was a friend. Well, she… she died almost ten years ago.”

Flora bites her lip. So that’s why he takes such good care of that picture. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly, not knowing what else to say.

Paul shrugs. “It was a long time ago,” he says dismissively, but Flora can hear the sadness behind the words. “She worked with him,” he says, gesturing dismissively toward the door, “building a time machine, and she died because it malfunctioned, exploding and killing her and nine other people. I… Well, I blamed him for a while, even though it wasn’t only his fault. I felt like, since he was lucky enough to work with her, he should’ve been there to save her. My only satisfaction was that he blamed himself too.” He chuckles wryly. “You probably think I’m awful now, don’t you?”

“N-no, not at all!” Flora hurries to assure him. “I… I understand why you reacted that way.” It’s all too easy to search for a scapegoat when there’s nobody else to blame. She remembers how much she hated and feared Dahlia for replacing Mama, when Dahlia really did nothing wrong… but it’s too late to mend that. She pushes the thought to the back of her mind. “But there’s a chance to bring her back, then isn’t there? If he’s got the time machine working, now.”

Paul snorts. “No way that he’ll ever actually get it to work. Not after it failed so spectacularly last time.”

Flora shouldn’t feel so disappointed at his words, but she does. She wants to find out more about this time machine. Before today, she’d hardly even thought of the concept, but now that she knows it’s something that could plausibly exist, she wants to find out more. But Paul so easily dismissed the idea. Maybe he’s right about that; after all, it did fail ten years ago. But that doesn’t mean it will fail today.

(What if she could bring her parents back?)

(What if she can bring Paul’s friend back to life?)

“Shouldn’t we give him a chance?” she asks tentatively. “Maybe he can tell us exactly how he plans to do it, and then we can make a more informed decision.”

“The only thing he’ll inform us with is more of his delusions.” But Paul looks at her curiously. “You’re really excited by this time machine thing, aren’t you?”

Is it really that obvious? Flora flushes, staring into her drinking glass once again. “Maybe a little bit. I just… I just think that if there’s a chance that it works, then we should consider all our options.”

She waits in silence for Paul’s reply. Finally, he sighs, chuckling. “Why is it always so hard to say no to you?” He stands, heading towards the door to let Dimitri back in. “Fine, fine. We’ll listen to him ramble for a few more minutes, and find out what he wants from us, and then we can decide what we’ll do.”

Flora smiles after him. “Thanks for listening to reason, Paul,” she says jokingly.

Paul grins back at her. “Don’t mention it.”

#professor layton #don paolo #flora reinhold #dimitri allen #layton AUs #my fanfiction #this is the first thing I've completed in more than a month so I'm kind of rusty haha...#but I'm really glad i managed to complete something finally

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years ago

Text

chin fucking up, amigo.

Titans 3.02

... eh?

SPOILERS ahead.

1. you know that music video for billie jean where michael jackson would dance along the pavement and the tiles would light up under his feet in different colours? yeah? me too.

titans hasn’t met a table top or a support arch that it doesn’t want to light up in a headache-inducing blue like the world’s most boring nightlight. i mean, i’m not an expert on lighting or cinematography or just... colour by any means, and the quality of the video i’m watching is poor given that i can’t access hbo max, but all the orange and teal and neon is making it very difficult to really differentiate between say, the batcave and the gotham police department and hell, the titans tower. i feel like there’s oftentimes a gap between idea and execution with titans, with gotham being this almost otherwordly hellscape with an aesthetic pulled from a gothic horror novel, but the colours and design just... leave it flat and dark and dull.

1.5. like what really frustrates me is that titans has a delightful mix of tones--the fights often remind me of schumacher-era batman camp, with the contrived quips and the start-stop rhythm and krypto just sallying in and ending the fight with a fucking SuperBark (tm) but in the same episode you have red hood just casually pulling out severed heads out of a duffle bag and desperate people blackmailed into killing themselves out of drug overdoses. I MEAN. it’s wonderful! but it looks all the same. it sounds Absolutely Bonkers on paper but on screen both Quip and Murder happen in the same washed-out blue and i wanted to be excited about the batcave, dammit!

2. things re: red hood have happened at such a breakneck speed that it feels like there’s so much that’s happened off-screen that we’re not privy to. a real proper mystery!

things that are intriguing about the red hood arc so far:

a) what was that chemical he huffed just before going to fight the joker? is it a regular old performance/adrenaline booster or is it something more lazarus-juice adjacent? if it’s the latter, i can’t imagine he got that much information from a lone chemistry textbook. and where is he getting the resources to set up his little chemistry lab? is somebody else orchestrating things behind the scenes?

b) the red hood persona, costume and mask, plus the elaborate plan he’s putting in place to both string along gotham’s rogues and enact his revenge against the titans seems too... fully-formed and elaborate to have been concocted in just a few days. how long do you think jason’s been planning this? just... stewing in resentment and building rage, dismissed and passed around and underestimated and realising that the power he thought he would get by being robin is no power, no protection at all, but something that’s left him even more vulnerable than before?

c) do we think that the scarecrow is at least partly behind this transformation? because yes, it was batman that set up this whole hannibal lecter-esque situation with him, and he would be irresponsible enough to have jason-as-robin go talk to him regularly regarding “~profiling~” criminals. it’s not too far of a leap to assume that scarecrow could’ve been manipulating jason at a very vulnerable time, and that he could’ve passed along some of his chemistry know-how, too.

d) ... or fuck, i wouldn’t put it past titans to introduce ra’s al ghul in a fucking ten second aside

e) anyway, the thing that won’t leave me alone is jason seeking out the joker not necessarily to fight him, but to orchestrate his own death. the whole thing has to have been part of a bigger plan. he broke batman with it, after all. and he’s starting to break the titans, too.

f) i love it! i mean, it does re-tread some of the storybeats we had with deathstroke last season (turning the titans against each other as revenge, etc) but it’s... tighter, this time, and at least for now seems better-executed. and as a red hood story it’s different enough to be really interesting, and i appreciate the ways in which its reframed the revenge story to focus on the titans rather than just the batman. like fuck everything up, i say! turn it on its head! slash the innards out of that sacred cow and strew it like garlands in the path of the Story You Want To Tell!

(and yes i am fully aware that by the time i post this review, there will be a whole lot more information out but if i come across like a fool then goddammit i will be a fool!)

2. i love how every season of titans starts off with, ‘oh dick, you thought you were settling into a role and a life and a pattern of relationships? well fuck you, here’s a terrible and traumatic thing, tons more responsibility, and circumstances that will lead you to uproot your entire life and move somewhere else.’ and dick’s just like, ‘well, ok. fuck you, but all right’.

can you imagine? the man was just settling into leading a team in sf and smiling for the first time in years, and now he has to deal with jason’s death, bruce experiencing a full fledged breakdown, coming back to a city that represents more bad memories than good, red hood, and a frightening new case that seems to be targeting him and his team. it’s a testament to dick’s growth that he’s not reacting to this stress like he did last year, shutting everybody out, making irrational decisions and experiencing sharp, short bursts of anger. (not to mention a full fledged psychotic episode.)

2.5. but i’ve also talked about dick performing a fair amount of unwarranted emotional labour for his team(s) in that he just lets them take out their frustrations on him and... does nothing. be it his team exploding at him for jericho (both in flashback and present-day) or donna and hank needling him for handling deathstroke poorly or barbara berating him for not handling the bank situation as well as she thought batman would though just the previous episode she had talked about how fucked up it was that bruce just expected dick to step up and replace him in gotham without any real notice. i mean it’s all perfectly understandable and sympathetic from their end--and i’m not trying to bash them here!--but hank, my man, the same chin you’re asking your amigo to keep up is the one that you punched last year and never apologised for. just sayin’.

2.75. @superohclair did a wonderful breakdown of what the ‘fear’ contract could imply here and there’s not too much i could add to that. it’s just really interesting that fear ended up being such a defining feature of their lives, albeit it’s the fear of seeming less than invincible in the face of bigger, more tangible fears. am i making sense? dick feared loss, and abandonment, and the more existential concept of turning into something that he didn’t want to. bruce so feared being alone that he’s scouting kids to replace robin within days of jason dying.

it also goes some way in explaining the tense sort of... restraint that bruce and dick show in the wake of loss and tragedy, like anything less than complete control of your emotions can lead to tragedy. it’s conditioning that dick couldn’t shake off when he was at his lowest in detroit, hating his legacy but unable to let it go either.

2.775. but i definitely appreciate the softness that dick displays with his team now, checking on them after a mission-gone-bad, welcoming back old members with no caveats or resentments (and kory’s delight in seeing hank back! hank and dick hanging out together and hank trying to prop dick up!), and appreciating their teamwork in solving cases. that’s always been the essence of dick as a person, and the beating heart of this show: flawed and traumatised people coming together to a place that will always be open to them, where they can be their worst and be supported still, allowed to make mistakes and grow from them. that’s family.

2.8. coming back to bruce for just a sec, it’s interesting how that gotham rogue was so certain when he said that ‘batman doesn’t kill’ but it’s not a rule that either jason or dick put much store by when they were robins. the ‘no-killing’ rule clearly didn’t mitigate dick’s fears about turning into batman and jason’s never been seeing giving two shits about it. it seems to me of a piece with bruce’s distant, second-hand sort of parenting that we see in dick’s flashbacks from s1 where the fear was never about personally disappointing batman, but taking lessons from him on finding a place in gotham’s hellish ecosystem and surviving.

3. kory having waking flashbacks! i don’t buy the bullshit parasomnia episode explanation from fake!HPG (because c’mon, justin has to be some sort of tamaranean ruse) because for one, you have to be actually asleep for that diagnosis.

(and here i was, hoping against hope that HPG would actually end up as the team’s therapist)

curiouser and curiouser! i wonder if these flashbacks are from the time between kory landing on earth and the beginning of season 1, when she was completely amnesiac? it’d be cool if the show was considering repercussions from that time, and if kory hasn’t gained all her memories back.

4. i just love the vibes between gar and conner and kory. gar Having Things To Do is only one part of my wishlist for him, however: other parts include having an actual story arc, and actually bonding with members who are not conner and kory. (dick! dick! hank! dick!)

anyway. time to move on to watching ep3 and seeing this family bond and nothing terrible and tragic happening at all, nope, nosiree.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #dick grayson #jason todd #red hood #koriand'r #garfield logan #bruce wayne #his name is justin.#a byronic cupcake #a tragic jalebi #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart

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mmmonie · 4 years ago

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This is kind of a mix of my first post and my second post? But with a focus on the brothers. I’m linking them just so there’s less confusion LOL this probably won’t make sense unless you’ve read the other posts (I’m so sorry sjnwsjsj) hcs under the read more hellll yeaaaa

* Because Satan is the only natural demon of his family, he did go through a (kind of) juvenile phase and it was absolute madness.

* Literally no one (save probably Barbatos) knew this was going to happen.

* U know that comic that’s like “master what’s happening to me!!!” And the master’s like “I don’t know....that’s scary.....” uhm Satan and his brothers at the start of this LOL

* I’m gonna say that Satan was fully formed when he was born (though tbh I could go either way baby Satan is SUCH a good concept) So he was having a moment more akin to a human born. His juvenile phase was even more delayed because for a while there he really was just Wrath incarcerate. (I could go into more depth about how/why he forced himself out of that but LOL no not right now.)

* So for literally everyone in the house this was completely out of left field. Satan already had demonic forms and his powers so no one expected the sudden influx of instincts he would get.

* Since the first part of a juvenile phase is the instinct to play, Satan was (poorly) trying to get his brothers in on it. At this point he still wasn’t good at expressing even basic needs and wants so this was. Very confusing to say the least LOL.

* The first one to realize he wasn’t attacking (with the purpose to kill LOL) was Mammon. He was the first to research and actively play fight with him (and getting Beel to join in) sometimes if Satan is feeling particularly rambunctious, he’ll still ask Mammon or Beel to play fight in the garden.

* It’s a rarity now though. Satan doesn’t like giving into his baser instincts and hates that he seems to be the only one who has those inclinations. However, everyone in the family has the same problem, some just have a better facade (Lucifer & Asmo) and others are just too lazy or anxious (Levi & Belphie)

* Beel and Mammon in particular are susceptible to those feelings that’s (partly) why Beel started working out and why Mammon is as restless as he is. Beel and Mammon will regularly tussle and both see it as bonding.

* Satan did go through a sleepy second half, though this was probably a combination of instincts and the effort he was putting into calming down rather than what happens in a normal juvenile phase. There are a lot of pictures from this time LOL he hates it. Like stop showing mc that time i dragged everyone into my nest and wouldn’t let them leave fuck you

* This was kind of a soothing balm on the loss everyone experienced. Of course it wasn’t enough to take the pain away, but your newborn brother being extra cute is a nice momentary reprieve from your daily guilt and grief right? It’s also helpful that he purred so much LOL

* Speaking of purring...

* You will often hear Levi purr, not because he’s happy but as a self soothing mechanism. He will purr A LOT if he thinks he fucked up that day. He will also purr if he’s stressed in public. (please don’t bring it up it embarrasses him.) His happy purr is very quiet, but you can hear it when he’s talking excitedly about something (Or if you say you want to hang out with him lol)

* Belphie doesn’t consciously purr that often but he does purr in his sleep. If you get Beel (or MC) to lay next to him it increases tenfold. Don’t tell him...but if his other siblings lay next to him too, his purring increases.........just a bit.........(a lot) he will also purr to act cute and get his way with his siblings. (SPOILED BRAT LOL) it works 99.9% of the time.

* In contrast, Beel is probably the most liberal with his purrs. He’ll purr for just about anything. The weathers nice? He’s purring. His brothers are getting along today? He’s purring. He’s thinking about his favorite snack? You get the picture. Also it’s loud as fuck because he’s a big boy. “Woah, was that a motorcycle?” “No it’s just Beel thinking about his next meal.”

* Beel also purrs in his sleep. However, he purrs more when he’s having nightmares because he’s trying to soothe them away. (Haha...........sorry that hurt me too)

* Asmo tends to talk through his purring which is so very cute (and he knows it) it’s almost like talking through a laugh, it can make just about anyone smile because it’s infectious. (He learned this from Mammon as a tactic to get what he wants.) There is a difference between his actual happy purr and when he’s just putting on a show. You’ll also hear him self soothe on a self care day. Not because he’s unhappy but because he read its good for you.

* Lucifer, of course, doesn’t purr very often, but when he does he’s just about as loud as Beel. Something about bottling it up just makes it come out as loud as possible I suppose... He really has to suppress it when he sees things like his brothers sleeping in a pile after a movie night. He has to leave the room to go purr in his office or whatever. Loser. Just tell your family you love them. 🙄 Much like Levi, he’ll also purr at his desk when he’s stressed, though he’ll only do it when he’s absolutely sure he’s alone.

* Satan used to purr A LOT. Especially around his siblings and ESPECIALLY in his juvenile phase. it was the one thing that stopped them all from going crazy. Satan would be a nuisance all day long and then at the end of the day he’d curl up near his siblings and unconsciously purr his little heart out. Everyone would immediately forgive him for whatever he did that day just because it was SO fucking cute. And when he hit the sleepy part of his phase? It was over for EVERYONE. Suddenly all that fighting was worth it, especially when Satan would drag them over to the little nest he made to nap and purr because of the safety his siblings provided him <3 I fucking WEEP

* Needless to say he doesn’t do that much anymore. What, do you think he actually loves his siblings or something? Tch.

* Mammon is the second one you’ll hear purr the most. Though he does do it to be charming, he will naturally purr through talking or laughing. He learned he can easily get his way with that with weaker willed demons early on and he’s not above using it to his advantage. Like Levi, if you can hear it if he’s especially excited about something. Though you can barely make out his words through his purr.

* Surprisingly (besides Beel & Belphie) Lucifer is probably the least touched starved, just because Diavolo is so naturally touchy. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it half the time. I imagine it annoyed Lucifer at first but he’s grown to appreciate it. I don’t think I need to say who the most touch starved is. (*coughs and points at Levi’s room*)

* The two who are most acclimated to the way demons use causal touch are Asmo and Mammon. Asmo’s a little obvious as to why, but Mammon learned so he could swindle people out of their money lol can’t come off unfriendly to your new buddy now, can you?

* Satan is naturally touchy, but he’s learned to curb those instincts because of his previously angelic siblings and their aversion to touch. he still tries to (subconsciously) touch his siblings though like sitting thigh to thigh with Asmo on the couch, or letting Mammon ruffle his hair.

#I LOVE WHEN THEY HAVE SIBLING MOMENTS MORE SIBLING MOMENTS RIGHT NOWWWWW #like UHHH siblings learn a lot from eachother I JUST WANT TO SEE MORE OF THEM IN EACHOTHER THEYVE LIVED TOGETHER FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS #I KNOW U MFS PICKED UP TRAITS FROM EACHOTHER WHERE ARE THEY'#I gotta do everything myself huh. smh #obey me!#obey me headcanons #BETWEEN THIS POST AND THE SECOND ONE I WROTE 3349 FUCKING WORDS WHATS WRON #G WITH ME #mental eelness...........#my talking tag says it all tbh..............

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gillian-greenwood · 4 years ago

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My Episode 7 Predictions!

Mother of God! How have these weeks passed by so fast?! I've decided to share what I think will be answered tomorrow night and some of the fates of our beloved characters! The series has gotten off to an even bigger success than it's predecessor and EVERYONE'S talking about it! Without further ado, let's see what I'm predicting!

Who's H/fourth man (or woman) and will we find out?

The question that's on the nation's minds. That has been boggling us since 2017... My personal prediction still stands as CC Philip Osborne, however... I think he's purely sitting on his arse and pulling the strings, whilst others are doing his dirty work. Those people are Patricia Carmichael: who in all honesty I'm manifesting isn't actually bent but is so career driven and a bit of a lick arse that she's just taking orders and not questioning anything, plus she doesn't think much of Ted either... I have joked that she's been shagging Osborne on the side which would be quite funny. I also believe Buckells has been Osborne's true scape goat for years. Someone as laid-back and unpassionate as Buckells is easily manipulated - I mean how the hell has he become a super? As Steve rightfully says, he couldn't order a piss up in a brewery. Seeing the connections go well back into the early noughties whilst Buckells was part of an oasis tribute band, it's an easy conclusion to make. Lastly I will mention Thurwell, now I think Thurwell may have been more involved on his own doing anyway but I think he'd still been pretty busy doing things on behalf of Osborne up until his alleged death in sunny Spain (Belfast but shh). I know a lot of people still think Buckells, some reckon pas-agg Pat is the top woman... and a few still think our beloved Kate is 'H'.

Now the other part of my point is actually finding out... I think us as viewers will certainly know the identity of this mysterious individual. But, I think we'll find out in the very last few seconds and poor AC12 won't be any the wiser which will open up the foundations for a possible series 7. I think a lot of things will be answered for us viewers but not everything for the characters. I know that if they had a series 7 there would be an other primary focus but I just think it would be clever. Just like how we found out as viewers at the end of series 1 that Dot was a wrong'un.

Is Thurwell really dead?

I'm still very amazed by the whole induction of Jimmy Nesbitt as a series of photos. I know we were supposed to have a secretive guest actor appearance and I believe it was Robert Carlyle's name floating about which would have been insane! But that moment we saw Jimmy, I yelled at the screen. So, this answers the question of seeing a character that had only been mentioned previously - which has been very much hiding in plain sight. Even with a rewatch, I had forgotten about Thurwell and therefore hadn't even considered him. But, I did mention the list from series 3 which did loosely tie in. Anyway, when we learned that Thurwell and his Mrs were now dead and clearly had been for a while - it was cleverly shot so we didn't see who it was, only the Spanish Police's word. You know, I think if we were to get a series 7, Thurwell could appear and he's in fact not dead. It's very rare you get a very well known actor in for something so small without it leading to bigger things. Although, they got Andi Osho, a very much loved comedian in purely for archival photos and videos... I do feel that Thurwell could have easily been on the other end of the fake MSN, and doing Osborne's dirty work - especially with the Spanish connection. In a BTS photo we have seen a clue to a piece of paperwork regarding a time share (Spain mentioned) in front of Kate which will likely have a connection to Thurwell and Spain. I think he's possibly still alive but we'll see...

Joanne Davidson

Kelly Macdonald has been welcomed with a very warm reception. Wow, her connection to Tommy Hunter (albeit disturbing, homozygous DNA... nasty business) was not something I ever expected although I guessed very much so when we learned of the DNA match with a nominal. Would I define her as bent? I mean in layman's terms, yes she is. However each guest star has had a very complicated relationship with the definition - all have done dodgy things and usually for good reason... But I do sympathise with her because of her background, born into trouble, it was very hard to escape - even if her mum took her to Scotland for a life away from it all. From the very start of her career she was doing the OCG's bidding and it transpires she was in the police on Tommy's orders - so very much another caddy. I do feel Jo had always wanted to be a good person and do right and in some ways she did - however she's in too deep. Next I'll mention her relationship with Kate and it's something I'd never have predicted. A lot of suggestive and sapphic behaviour from the off. Now, I do think Jo cares deeply for Kate and has developed strong feelings - and I think Kate deep down has also but I don't think anything will happen sadly. And that's more for the fact that they had run out of track before they could even get going as so much has happened. Kate's gonna save Jo when her transport gets ambushed, that's a given... but I don't think we'll see anything happen that we want to happen. I hope I'm very wrong and we get something but with the hour we've got I don't think it'll be the case. And as for her fate? I think she'll survive. Guest leads usually die, eventually... with the exception of Roz who's serving time with one arm in Brentiss. Giving how unfortunate her life has been from her conception, I think it'll do her justice to escape with her life. Witness protection? Hmm perhaps... Although I think she's done enough dodgy stuff to warrant a prison stretch. Will she be instrumental in revealing who the fourth dot is? Well yeah actually, I think she grew up thinking Thurwell was her dad... and of course having connections to both Osborne and Buckells. Jo joined the force just before the turn of the millennium so would have been a copper when the Lawrence Christopher case occurred in 2003. Even though not directly working with them, I'm sure she knew what was going on and would have come across Osborne and Buckells at that time. I have a strong inkling that she knows exactly who she's been talking to and has been under their wing since the start. If she dies I will be gutted.

Kate

Where are we going with Kate? Well she's just killed Ryan (lawfully) and has gotten away with it. But Carmichael isn't thick... and nor is Steve and Ted. They all know but I think that'll be that for now. For ages I thought she was gonna D word but I think she's gonna be alright now. I hope that somehow she gets back into anti-corruption permanently because that's where she's best suited. I'm shocked that she hasn't had a glass box spectacular - my predictions for her to be accused of being bent and all that were way off the mark... and not a single mention of the two dying declarations... With only an hour tomorrow and so much to deal with, I guess that's not going to be mentioned. And Kate ain't gonna be sanctioned either. But, there's always opportunity with a series 7... She'll definitely be back in AC12, interviewing... I can't see all the BTS photos being Jed Herrings. But we'll see tomorrow!

Steve

Poor Steve eh? He's not had an easy time of it. Addicted to painkillers as I rightfully predicted, unable to trust his gaffer, torn on a transfer and a up and down friendship with his 'mate'. Oh and the car, actually let's not talk about the Mazda... Anyhow I believe that Steve will talk about his back and recent struggles with meds after a lot of emails from occupational health. Will he get pulled off the job at the last second because he didn't book an appointment... yeah I think that might happen and Kate takes his place or something. But there is a counsellor or something credited so I'm pretty certain on that. Will he lose his long overdue promotion? It's possible! I don't think the test was going to come back as a fail but more of a cause for concern - just that the levels of codeine etc in his system was higher than it should and it would be best advised to talk to someone. We haven't seen much pill taking going on since the drugs test so has Steve been going cold turkey? Or have they just veered away from that part of the story? In all fairness he's appeared fine with his back since the Windermere convoy - he ran across an industrial estate... I mean. I hope Steve gets a glimmer of hope and happiness because he rightfully deserves it. Ever since the start he's had his fair sharing of aggro and he deserves a break. I do think however he may be partly responsible for nailing the final nails into Ted's coffin - especially after he discovered the 50K up Merseyside and the truth from Lee Banks. I think he could be potentially happy with Steph, it would be nice for something to happen with them but we'll see. Steve needs a big hug.

Ted

This is going to pain me saying it. But, I don't think Ted is going to make it to the end. His retirement is inevitable. I can see the argument of the retirement being rescinded if they unmask the fourth dot etc and solve stuff but realistically, he's past retirement age. He's so focused on getting to the end of this marathon that I don't think he will see it through and know who it is - because he'll... yeah I don't need to say it. How? I've been saying his heart is gonna pack in. He's going to be in deep trouble over that 50k because Steve and Kate know the truth. But why would the likes of Carmichael find out... Well we've seen a clue of 'definate' on some paperwork - I reckon Ted by coincidence also makes this spelling mistake often as it is one of the most commonly misspelt words and therefore will be in the 'H' running again - he wont be 'H' as I reckon Osborne makes the same mistake... He alleges he misspelt it cos he studied the texts carefully but I think he spelt it how he usually would. They'll all go down the wrong path and accuse him which will lead to his ultimate downfall. Another little teaser is Steve appearing to listen to Ted's 2019 glass box spectacular however notably Carmichael says AC12 interview and not AC3... so mixing two different interviews to tease us? Maybe Ted might feel he has no choice but to sacrifice his career for the truth. However it all gets too much. Lies cost lives... I can't see Ted going on from beyond here and Ted was always supposed to be a minor character until he was very well received by the audience and he was made a main character. Realistically, his story is told and he's at his endgame. I hope he survives, by god I do... He's one of the most loved fictional characters at present. But I have a really bad feeling and I'm worried! It seems a total Jed thing to do for Ted to meet his end without ever finding the truth... seeing that's what his heart has been set on for about four years... I'm sorry to even be going there but it's what I think will happen. And I want to be wrong.

Miscellaneous Predictions

I want to round this all off with other little points. Carmichael won't be bent, maybe still involved with anti-corruption, you love to hate her, there's so much more they could do with her character. I don't think Steph's dodgy at all, she's just a widow whose been helped out by Ted in an unlawful way. I think her and Steve would be well suited. I hope Chloe will get to the end and continue on in anti-corruption, she's got a lot of potential. If Osborne isn't sussed, I reckon he'll still be CC. DCC Wise isn't bent either, just getting on with her job. But if Osborne does get caught and I'm wrong, there will be a lot of chaos for both him and Wise. Farida gets out of jail and starts afresh. Buckells I reckon will get out but won't be apart of the police force anymore. Lomax isn't bent, just a regular cop trying to get the work done. The rest of Jackie's remains will be found under the workshop floor, maybe with someone else? God knows who. Or maybe with some evidence that helps lead AC12 on the right track. Steve will still be an officer and Kate will be back where she belongs. There's probably more but my head hurts.

Will there be a series 7?

Yes.

Thank you all for reading my jumbled thoughts all packed into a text post. I'm nervous but excited for tomorrow night's finale. Let's see if I get anything right... probably not...

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dreaming-of-assclass · 4 years ago

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UwU would like to hear your thoughts on Irina civil war

Nao! (I’m so sorry, this is so late. It got buried in my drafts ihhhhh)

Ah yes: one of my favorite Civil War concepts 😤

So basically the class would be split in:

A) Allow Irina to stay in the class. She’s young, has lived a very traumatized life...she deserves a second chance.

B) Hell no. She tried to kill us, she betrayed us. I don’t feel comfortable being around her.

I mean, those are the basics. All of this is way more nuanced than that.

Side A would bring up the argument that Irina was stuck in a tough position herself. She was heartbroken, vulnerable, and you can’t exactly say no to the Reaper. He would have killed her immediately. She was trying to protect herself too.

Side B would say to keep in mind that things had gone well for few months...like Irina was getting adjusted to the class and truly seemed like she cared for them. And then she betrayed them...they almost died. That 180 switch in how she treated them...how can they trust her again?? How do they know this won’t happen again no matter what she says??

Both sides have understandable views on the matter. Unfortunately they both feel that the other is either invalidating their feelings...or being plain cruel.

THE SNIPERS ARE SPLIT UP FOR ONCE OOOOOOOOHHHHH. Yeah I bet y’all weren’t expecting that hehehe.

Side A: Irina, stay with us!

Her trusted students: Yada and Kurahashi. They both are fiercely protective of her return to the class and are the most vocal in their opinions.

Terasaka...he was the first one to forgive her in canon and I think that’s very true to his character. After his redemption, he wants to give others a chance...just like how everyone gave him one.

In a similar vein to him, Kayano also knows that she’s far from being a perfect person...in fact the guilt from the tentacles is always in the back of her mind, even if her desire for revenge far outweighs it. She believes it’s only fair to give Irina another chance.

Also similar to both of them is Itona, who also feels weighed down at times by his past actions. He knows he had a rocky start to the class...and so he feels it’s not really his place to just write Irina off. He feels a bit of solidarity between their experiences as well: they’re pretty similar ngl.

Okano, Kataoka, and Nakamura also were some of Irina’s fave students. And although they don’t feel as strongly as Yada and Kurahashi, they are attached to her...and want her to stay as their teacher in the family they’ve built in 3-E.

With Kanzaki...she’s naturally an open-minded person. And in regards to this, I think she could easily find it in herself to forgive Irina and understand why it all happened. She’s good at including every detail, analyzing situations and seeing things from Irina’s point of view. (Haha our literature nerd cutie)

Takebayashi has a similar case to many above: he’s betrayed the class himself (although on a way lesser scale). But he gets it: and he thinks Irina deserves the same kindness that was shown to him.

Maehara and Okajima are both pretty lighthearted and forgiving guys. This situation hits them both hard and they have a difficult time deciding...but ultimately they believe Irina really does care for the class. And that the last months they spent with her meant something.

Kimura...has a somewhat skewed sense of justice, due to personal things (cough his dad cough). And he does A LOT of reflection after everything. And as scary as it was...he decides that Irina can redeem herself. Even though he hates her boob lessons...she’s still his teacher who’s taught their class so much and was apart of their family.

Chiba is a naturally kind and empathetic person. I think once he really sits down and processes what Irina went through, the logistics of the situation, just so many nuances...he can find it in himself to give her a second chance.

Side B: Irina, get out of here!

Ooh, this is gonna catch you off guard. But yes, Nagisa, Sugino, and Hara are anti-Irina. The latter two are kind and empathetic people yes...but they’re also both fiercely protective of their classmates/friends. And in this situation, the safety of their friends would definitely be more important than Irina’s feelings. They’d see her as a threat.

For Nagisa...I think the experience of dealing with 2.0 hit him harder in a different way. He saw how Reaper tried to break Kayano’s ribs. That’s his best friend...he felt so angry and hurt in this situation, WE SAW. That’s why I truly believe Nagisa would be less than forgiving towards Irina, who aided in hurting him and his friends.

Hayami gets hurt in a different way in this situation...she’s gotten taken advantage of and never allowed to express her dissent in anything for SO LONG. And now after finally building confidence in 3-E...she’s supposed to just let their traitor teacher come back?? And act like she’s totally fine?? Hell no, she’s not.

Karma is pretty self-explanatory lmao. He really has a near-impossible time trying to forgive her and feel comfortable in the class again. He’s on high-alert all the time and feels protective over his friends... Like this kid has bad trust issues in general, there’s no way he can ever feel totally fine with Irina again let’s be real.

Okuda was legitimately terrified for her life that night with Reaper. And she never ever wants to feel that paralyzing sense of fear again. She also has a hard time being around Irina again.

Isogai! Surprise haha. There’s lots of angst with this one. The class could’ve died that night partly because of Irina’s actions. And he can’t forgive that easily. Like he has an impoverished family to think about. His sick mom and siblings need him. He’s the main provider at home. If he died that night because of Irina...his family would just break apart. And thinking about such awful possibilities cements Isogai’s opinion that she needs to leave. They’ll be fine without her.

Sugaya, Muramatsu, and Mimura all have pretty much the same view. They were terrified for their lives, are pissed that she did that, etc. They’re slightly torn since they’d like the class to go back to normal but...it needs to be addressed.

Fuwa kinda was brought back down to reality after all that. Like yes it was kind of a cool experience to talk about, like action-packed. But once the adrenaline left, it hit her how much danger she was truly in. Fuwa wants adventure, but not at the cost of her safety or others.

Hazama and Yoshida are on the same wavelength...they’re partly there to support Muramatsu and Hara, and also because Irina leaving is the safe way out. Like logically speaking...the woman is an assassin. She’ll just move on with her life, they’ll be safer, etc. So much more good to come out of it.

Ritsu remains neutral, just like she does in canon.

Korosensei and Karasuma both step back and decide to let the students figure it out, having trust in their decisions...and because it’s ultimately an experience that only the students have shared. It’s not their place to dictate how the kids feel. They both push aside their personal feelings about Irina to focus on the kids, who are top priority.

Irina is...trying her best to keep a cool face. A small deep part of her is on the defensive, wanting to continue to prove herself as a teacher and assassin. But the majority of her understands how they feel and respects that completely. She mentally prepares herself to leave the class and forget the kids forever...even though it’ll be so hard.

#assclass #assassination classsroom #ansatsu kyoushitsu #irina jelavic #3-e #ask #feel free to ask me more about this au!#its kinda interesting #to think about all the opposing sides #clownao #irina civil war au

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elyvorg · 4 years ago

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Kaito Momota: How ADHD Can Be

It’s about time I properly shared a take of mine that I never really talk about in my usual analysis posts, which is my very firm headcanon that Kaito has ADHD. While this is partly thanks to me having ADHD myself, self-indulgence is far from the only thing making me think this. There are so many reasons why this makes every single bit of sense, and this post is going to talk about all of them.

And, see, I don’t want to alienate anyone by having them think I’m about to present an interpretation of Kaito that looks nothing like the Kaito we know, because that’s not it at all. I’m here to talk about how so many of the things that were already abundantly true about him also happen to fit perfectly with ADHD. Really, you could think of it more as me talking about how ADHD actually looks a lot more like Kaito than most people might have realised.

After all, ADHD is a frustratingly misrepresented disorder that’s way more complex and interesting than most people are aware. So not only does it make a huge amount of sense to see Kaito as ADHD, it’s also just genuinely fascinating to think that this could be influencing how his mind works and the way he reacts to things throughout the story. Imagining that Kaito has ADHD could never make him any less Kaito, but I do think it makes him yet another layer of interesting on top of everything else he already has going on.

So even if you don’t have any personal investment in ADHD yourself, I hope you can follow along with me for this. There’s a lot of fun stuff to talk about here.

(Since ADHD is so horribly misrepresented that I can’t expect the average person to know what it really involves, this post is also going to include something of a whirlwind explanation of ADHD itself, in order to help people better appreciate why all these things about Kaito are potentially ADHD things. With that said, obvious disclaimer: I am not remotely a mental health professional, just someone with self-diagnosed ADHD who’s read up a lot about it. Some of this will be from things I’ve read, and some of this will be from my own experiences that I’m now pretty sure are an ADHD thing. My descriptions of these symptoms are likely to be somewhat oversimplified because I’m focusing on explaining this headcanon rather than explaining ADHD itself, so please don’t take this as a definitely-100%-accurate ADHD resource. I’m happy if this can raise awareness of what ADHD is really like, but you should look elsewhere to learn more.)

Hyperfixations

One major thing that ought to be more commonly known about ADHD is that it’s really not a lack of attention; it’s an inability to properly control where our attention goes. It’s been described as an “interest-based nervous system” – we’ll involuntarily focus on whatever seems most interesting to us in any given moment, regardless of its objective importance.

This plus a reduced amount of dopamine receptors means that when we manage to find something that gives us a lot of dopamine, ie, is fun and engaging to think about, we cannot stop thinking about it even if we wanted to. Our entire lives will begin to revolve around this Thing that we enjoy, thinking about it, doing things related to it and consuming more information on it to get as much of that sweet dopamine as possible. This can often be to the detriment of everything else, including more objectively important matters, because who cares about that stuff when Thing is the best thing ever!?

As an example: as you might imagine, I have been hyperfixated on DRV3 and especially on Kaito for over two years now. I have not been able to stop thinking about Kaito even when I’m supposed to be doing other things, and there’s literally nothing that’s more fun for me right now than sharing all these thoughts of mine with other people. We also love to infodump about our hyperfixations to anyone who’ll listen, after all. That’s precisely why this post exists, along with many more like it on both my blogs.

SPACE

So, this is perhaps one of the most easy-to-spot signs that Kaito might be ADHD. Because, man, he really loves space. Sure, any astronaut would have at least some level of interest in it, but Kaito is so obsessed with space that he introduces himself with a grandiose space-themed title, wears a galaxy print on his slippers and the inside of his jacket, and simply couldn’t wait for a college degree and had to make sure he got up there as fast as possible.

Granted, it’s not like Kaito talks about space 100% of the time. He is stuck in a killing game, after all, which is also kind of important to pay attention to. But, still, no matter what more-objectively-important things they can push themselves to focus on when necessary, there’s always a part of an ADHDer’s brain that’s near-constantly thinking about their hyperfixation anyway and will take any opportunity to bring it up and make things about that if they possibly can. And, well, Kaito still talks about space quite a lot considering that he’s in a life-or-death situation that doesn’t have anything to do with space at all (at least, as far as he knows for most of the story).

There’s one delightful bit of white noise I absolutely love in a debate in trial 4 where Gonta is suggesting a vehicle could have crossed the river. Someone responds to this with “Like a rocket?”, despite the fact that, A, there were obviously none of those in the Virtual World, and B, you don’t use those to cross rivers. Kaito, you dork, now is not the time. But of course now’s the time, there is always time to be thinking about space-related things, no matter how impractical and irrelevant it might be. Someone has been murdered, everyone else’s lives are on the line – not to mention his illness and the huge pile of inferiority issues he’s struggling with at this point in the story – yet amongst all that, Kaito’s brain still found time to go, “hey, speaking of vehicles, aren’t rockets the coolest!?” And… yeah, that’s genuinely what hyperfixations are like.

Then there’s the time Kaito asked Maki what her favourite spaceship was, like this is just an obvious go-to conversation starter in his mind, because of course he has a favourite spaceship. He has thought a lot about his favourite spaceship (or spaceships; let’s be real, there’s probably several that he thinks are SO COOL and might call his favourite depending on the circumstances) and could fill ages talking about nothing but that. Even though he knows this conversation ought to be making its way towards helping Maki open up about her past – this is one of his training sessions, after all! – there is still a part of Kaito that really just wants to talk about space, because a part of him always wants to talk about space.

We can see this as well in multiple FTE invitation dialogues (those brief lines describing how they hung out before the actual event starts) in which Kaito apparently spends it talking to Kaede or Shuichi about space, just because he can. There’s also several of his hangouts in the Salmon Team bonus mode where Shuichi’s suggestion of what to do doesn’t really have anything to do with space, but Kaito finds a way to make it about space anyway. ADHD minds are hyper-associative and make connections between concepts very easily – and, naturally, they’re particularly liable to make connections to the thing that the mind is already spending the majority of its time thinking about. So it’s really not so surprising or remarkable at all that Kaito can find ways to make even seemingly-totally-unrelated topics about space somehow, not if he’s ADHD.

(…To be fair, a particular fixation on a certain topic to the point of repeatedly bringing it up when it’s not called for isn’t necessarily that uncommon among Danganronpa characters, what with their talents. But hey, that doesn’t have to make Kaito any less likely to be ADHD. Rather, it would actually make sense for Ultimate students to have a higher than average proportion of ADHDers among them, since an ADHD-fuelled level of intense interest in a thing is more likely to make someone become hugely talented at it out of accumulated knowledge and practice. I’ve been increasingly thinking that Kaede could perhaps be ADHD, too, for example. But that’s not for this post; we’re talking about Kaito here.)

The longevity of space

ADHDers will generally go through many different hyperfixations throughout their life, sometimes one at a time, sometimes somehow managing to juggle more than one. An individual hyperfixation tends to last anywhere between a few weeks to a few years depending on its intensity and the longevity of the topic, but it’s rare for it to be more than that. Usually, sooner or later, the overwhelming passion for the thing will wear itself out.

And admittedly, Kaito’s passion for space has been there since he was a kid and never faded – and never will, of course! – which is far more persistent than most hyperfixations tend to be. But then again, there’s so many different things related to space for him to get excited about! Hyperfixations fade either when something else comes along that’s more exciting because it’s new and fresh, or when you’ve squeezed every last possible drop of dopamine out of it such that it no longer holds quite the same thrill. But with a topic as vast as space, there’s always more to learn to keep the excitement fresh, especially now that Kaito’s an astronaut trainee and is really on the front line of new space knowledge and technologies and is actually going to get there himself one day!

Besides, it’s not like ADHDers’ hyperfixations are completely outside of their control. My own hyperfixation on V3 and Kaito would probably have faded ages ago if I hadn’t kept it going by constantly making more content about it such as this. And similarly, there’s no way Kaito would have wanted to let go of his passion for space, not if he had any say in it himself, so he’d have done whatever he could to keep it burning during the times when the spark maybe wasn’t quite there as much. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable that Kaito could have remained hyperfixated on space for so unusually long and still be showing no signs of stopping. We all know how stubborn he is.

(House plants)

Kaito has probably had a few other, lesser hyperfixations alongside his lifelong passion for space. For example, I like to think that his fondness for house plants, according to his report card, is to such an extent that he was once hyperfixated on them. (This would have been for reasons that totally don’t bear a suspicious resemblance to other things he cares about.) I doubt he’s currently hyperfixating on them at the moment – at no point does he ever try to shift the conversation to being about house plants unprompted – but that wouldn’t stop him from still being generally fond of them and retaining all of the “useless” information he learned about them back when he was obsessed. One very rarely ever stops caring about a hyperfixation topic entirely; rather, the fixation just fades and the topic becomes no longer constantly on someone’s mind. I’m sure Kaito still could and would talk your ear off about house plants just as much as he would about space if you happened to get him started.

People

More importantly, though, I think that another of Kaito’s less obvious and intense hyperfixations – but still a very long-lasting one that’s active right now – could be, simply, people. Just, people in general: their flaws and complexities and differences, all the many ways in which they can communicate and work together, and the amazing potential they have to achieve great things if they do so. Kaito is so passionate about this stuff and has so many fully-formed opinions on things of this nature that make it seem like he’s spent a lot of his free time thinking about this, just because he can. Maybe he began to get interested in it after realising that communication and teamwork is important for an astronaut – but it also reads to me like Kaito is into this kind of stuff not because he needs to be for the sake of getting into space, but simply because he finds it genuinely fascinating and couldn’t stop thinking about it even if he had to. (Which would also help keep him interested in space, because it’s intrinsically linked to this other topic that Kaito finds fascinating!)

And within this, Kaito definitely hyperfixates in particular on his sidekicks. Once he’s made someone into his sidekick, which functionally means that he’s going to devote himself to supporting them through their issues and helping them reach their potential, he really devotes himself. It’s his hyperfixation on people in general, but concentrated on a specific person(s) that he can have a direct and tangible impact on, which means even more to him than just his feelings about how awesome and fascinating humanity is as a whole.

Kaito is really, really good at supporting his sidekicks, after all. He spends so much time, even when he’s not around them, thinking about what their problems are and the best ways he can help them. He was clearly eyeing up both Shuichi and Maki as potential sidekicks at least a day or two before actually acting on it and inviting them to training, as if he was trying to gauge exactly what their struggles were and how best to help before jumping right in. He approaches helping each of them in very different ways, making it clear that he’s specifically thought about who they are and the best tactics to help them individually instead of just carelessly using the same old script each time. On more than one occasion, he drops something on them one morning – the nickname “Maki Roll”, and the “bonus” training that becomes the katana scene – that he hadn’t mentioned at all the previous night, meaning that he’d been thinking further about how to keep helping them while on his own overnight.

So it seems to me like maybe it’s not just his selflessness, or his somewhat unhealthy co-dependency (more on that later, actually) that makes Kaito so good at this. I don’t think he could even stop thinking about helping his sidekicks if he tried. Figuring out how to help another human being grow and change and reach their full potential is so fascinating and engaging and rewarding to him that how could he ever not be compelled to do that as much as he possibly can?

The price of caring

This does, however, come with a downside. Because Kaito is fixating so strongly and uncontrollably on supporting his sidekicks, because doing that matters so much to him, it’s only going to hurt him more when he begins to feel like he’s failing at it. He can’t just brush something like that off as not really a big deal, because of course it’s a big deal. It’s everything to him, and it’s literally not possible for him to make himself feel like it isn’t.

It’s just as bad as if space suddenly twisted and became painful to think about somehow. Which… I guess that actually kind of happens too, when Kaito starts to realise that he’s never going to make it up there. And he can’t deal with that by trying to tell himself it was never that important, either, because space is always important to him. Even if he wanted to switch that part of his brain off or ignore it to help himself cope, he just couldn’t.

Caring so intensely about things feels amazing and makes a person wonderfully passionate, but it can also be a double-edged sword.

(Executive dysfunction?)

One big negative side to ADHD is that it tends to cause executive dysfunction, which, to massively oversimplify it, more or less means the profound inability to get yourself to do things that you know you’re supposed to be perfectly able to do. That interest-based nervous system does not do well with motivating us to do tasks that are objectively important but aren’t interesting or fun to actually carry out, resulting in a mental block that can appear to the outside observer like wilful laziness, even though it really, really isn’t.

This appears to be one part of ADHD that Kaito manages to avoid having to deal with. (He may superficially seem “lazy” during training, but that has nothing to do with his brain and everything to do with his body and the fact that he’s sick and doesn’t want anyone to know.) But I think that’s mostly because none of the reasons that ADHD causes executive dysfunction actually apply in the killing game.

One of the few things other than interest that motivates an ADHD brain is urgency – suddenly they can do that boring essay they’ve been putting off when the deadline is tonight, showing remarkable speed and focus in a fit of nervous anxiety over the potential consequences of turning it in late. And there’s plenty of literal do-or-die urgency to motivate Kaito during the killing game, so there’s no way he’d ever not be motivated to do what he feels he needs to do to help everyone there. Plus, the things he’s trying to do involve helping people, something he inherently finds interesting, so he’d be motivated for those reasons anyway even if it wasn’t quite so life-threateningly vital that he does so.

(Kaito is a bit flakier and liable to miss important details during the investigations and trials, mind you. This might be because, while the urgency of “if we don’t solve the case we die” is looming over him, the actual details of the case aren’t something that instinctively feels urgent or that he inherently finds interesting, so it’s harder for him to pay proper attention and take it all in even when he’s trying to. Kaito has plenty of intelligence in a lot of ways, but his brain is evidently not wired for investigations and deductions like Shuichi’s is – he’s perfectly capable of following Shuichi’s logic and understanding it, but not of figuring any of that stuff out himself in the first place. This could partly be down to Kaito having ADHD and just not being interested enough in these particular kinds of mental exercises to be able to get his brain to focus on them as much as he’d need to in order to solve them.)

I also don’t think executive dysfunction would have got in Kaito’s way much during his regular life before the killing game. (You know, if he’d actually had one, but let’s pretend for now that he did.) Motivation issues can be helped a lot by an externally-imposed structure telling you what you need to do and when, which is why a lot of ADHD people don’t even notice any problems while they’re in a school system and only fall apart once they’re adults and are suddenly expected to structure their own life. Kaito’s astronaut training would definitely give him plenty of structure to work from so that he always knew what he needed to do and never had this issue. It’s also really challenging, which is another thing that helps keep ADHD people interested and motivated. And while the actual end goal of getting to space is far-off enough that it wouldn’t be able to work as a direct motivator to an ADHD brain (we are bad at things with delayed gratification), everything Kaito’s learning would still be related to space and communication and teamwork, so he’d be interested in learning all of it simply for its own sake.

Emotional hyperarousal

Another big defining feature of ADHD that isn’t nearly as well-known as it ought to be is that it amplifies emotions to a far greater intensity than those of neurotypical people. ADHDers’ feelings and reactions are naturally bigger and louder and just more than most people’s – which sounds a lot like Kaito, doesn’t it? He’s always larger than life, energetic and passionate about everything, not just his specific hyperfixations. Look at how excited he gets about just seeing snow! And he has so much enthusiasm for so much else, too – as he puts it: “there’s nothing unnecessary in this world!” When Kaito feels things, he feels them full-throttle, with no half-measures, which is just how Kaito would always want things to be!

…But, whether he likes it or not, that also applies to the painful feelings just as much as the good ones.

Emotional dysregulation

Kaito can often be very reactionary and get unnecessarily riled up over minor things that don’t really warrant such a dramatic response. If you think about it, this isn’t really something he’d want to do, because he’s always trying to stay positive and keep people on his side. So apparently it’s something he simply can’t help, as if his brain is just wired to make him more liable to do that.

If even minor slights can cause an overreaction like that from an ADHD brain, then imagine how much worse it is when the stimulus is something genuinely worth being upset over. That already-painful emotion gets amplified to even greater levels, to the point that it can be almost unbearable. People with ADHD can often have a more difficult time dealing with things, not necessarily because they’re emotionally weaker, but because they simply feel things harder than most other people do.

Kaito goes through a lot of emotional pain throughout the story – and he’s really pretty bad at dealing with it all. He basically has only two not-very-healthy methods for doing so. One is to try to ignore it entirely by focusing on something more positive, which on its own could be put down to his desire to come across as an invincible hero who can inspire people. So this particular unhealthy tactic doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t be able to properly deal with these emotions if he actually stopped being an idiot and tried to.

However, Kaito’s second unhealthy coping mechanism is to turn the pain into anger – sometimes to the point of lashing out in ways he doesn’t mean to. Punching Shuichi at the end of the first trial is very much caused by Kaito being unable to contain his pain over Kaede’s death rather than any controlled attempt to push Shuichi forward, since he regrets it and apologises for it the next morning. And then the agonising truth that Gonta killed someone is even harder for Kaito to bear, leading to him lashing out at Shuichi again in what was very much desperate pain-fuelled anger with no rational basis for it. Unlike with simply hiding his pain, lashing out like this is not something Kaito would ever want to do; it’s not exactly very heroic of him, after all. So this suggests that there’s more to Kaito’s bad coping mechanisms than just him trying to appear strong and not worry people – that sometimes the pain gets so unbearably intense that ignoring it isn’t possible and he just can’t deal with it and loses control of himself.

Uncontrollable bouts of rage can be a common problem that comes with ADHD because of the amplified emotions and difficulty properly regulating them – and it’s definitely a problem Kaito suffers from, too. That part of Kaito that lets him get so wonderfully passionate in helping everyone around him might well be exactly the same part of him that simply cannot handle it when he realises Gonta murdered someone and leads to him lashing out at his best friend.

Moping (…not a technical term)

…Okay, I just said Kaito has only two unhealthy coping mechanisms for painful emotions, but maybe there’s also kind of a third: unconstructively moping about it. This doesn’t sound like Kaito at all – he frequently gives others advice about not doing exactly that – but he can actually be seen falling into doing so a couple of times if you look closely.

In chapter 2, when Ryoma’s behaviour bothers him for all the wrong reasons and he has no intent of actually doing something about it, Kaito really should be just trying not to think about it at all and focusing on something more constructive like helping Shuichi. However, the places he hangs out in for his chapter 2 FTEs and his invitation dialogues indicate that he spends a whole three FTE slots just brooding unhelpfully about the state Ryoma’s in. This is definitely not something he wants to be doing, since he hastily changes the subject if Shuichi hangs out with him.

And in case 4’s investigation, after Shuichi’s cell phone experiment makes Kaito feel useless and unneeded (he thought Shuichi needed his help! – but, no, turns out he actually really didn’t), the pain of that feeling noticeably lingers with him for most of the rest of the investigation. He’s in enough of a bad mood about it afterwards that Maki notices it through his less-expressive virtual avatar, and he doesn’t even come with her to call Shuichi back from the rooftop and just logs out on his own in a sulk. Then he also ends up explicitly unaware in the trial of some of the information Monotaro shared with the whole group once they’d logged out, meaning he was apparently still too wrapped up in feeling useless to be paying proper attention.

(And these are the two examples of Kaito doing this that are noticeable thanks to subtle clues in his behaviour – but since Kaito would obviously never draw attention to it, maybe he actually does this a lot more than those two times and we just can’t normally see it.)

See, another thing about emotional dysregulation – plus the difficulty in controlling the focus of your attention that comes with ADHD – is that it can be hard to stop yourself from thinking endlessly about painful things, even when you very much don’t want to be thinking about them. I once saw a tumblr post describing ADHD as Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder, and I can confirm that, yes, this is very frustratingly accurate, for the bad things as well as the good. It’s possible that Kaito’s advice about not moping when you could be doing something to make a difference might have originated for himself, to try and mitigate his brain’s tendency to do this. But while I imagine this helped quite a bit in letting him control his thoughts and stay focused on the positives, it appears that, despite his best efforts, it still doesn’t always work.

Impulsiveness

The Primarily-Hyperactive subtype of ADHD (aka the one that’s definitely the subtype Kaito has, for obvious reasons) is sometimes called Hyperactive-Impulsive type, because impulsiveness tends to be a big part of it, too. I think this is kind of a combination of emotional hyperarousal and inability to control attention – the impulse to Do A Thing gets amplified to the point that it floods the entire brain, and it becomes nigh-impossible to ignore it and consider the potential negative consequences before acting on it. It’s like that Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder gets concentrated into a single instant of frequently-terrible decision-making.

It’s no secret that Kaito is impulsively reckless – and if you think about it, it’s to an extent that’s honestly kind of pathological. Cheating his way into the astronaut exam early, for example, could very well have permanently ruined his chances of ever being allowed in and making it to space. He should never have considered that a risk worth taking. So apparently he just wasn’t properly considering the risk at all – not even for the most important decision of his life.

A lot of the time, these kinds of bad decisions can be fuelled by those amplified painful emotions that get turned into anger like I talked about before. The stress of the killing game causes Kaito to very nearly get himself killed on two occasions early in chapter 1, almost lashing out in a way that would have broken school regulations. Kaito is perfectly aware of the consequences for doing that – but in the heat of the moment, it just doesn’t matter to him. His overwhelming desire to express his pain-fuelled rage simply blocks out everything else from his mind. A similar thing happens in chapter 5 when Kaito’s attempt to punch Kokichi after the supposed mastermind reveal only results in him getting knocked out and captured by the Exisals that were very obviously there and under Kokichi’s control. It’s summed up pretty well by the fact that Kokichi outright tells Kaito that punching him won’t fix any of the things he’s angry about, and Kaito’s response is, “Even if that is the case… I can’t get over it if I don’t punch you!” To Kaito, in these moments, it’s never about the consequences; it’s about needing to let out his too-strong emotions right now and to hell with everything else, even if that “everything else” literally might include his life.

Then there’s everything that happens with Kaito at the casino. The consequences for him here aren’t exactly dire, since all he loses out on is the chance to buy a prize, but still – that uncontrollable fixation on the anticipated thrill of winning and the inability to consider the really-very-high possibility that he’ll lose is exactly the type of reckless thrill-seeking that people with this type of ADHD often have.

In fact, the bonus scene at the casino is literally titled “Kaito’s Gambling Problem” – and as you might imagine, impulsive-type ADHDers are at a higher risk of developing harmful addictions to things such as gambling. While this isn’t an actual gambling problem here because no real money is involved and it does seem that he never gets tempted by the casino again after the second time, the scene’s title apparently wants us to consider that Kaito has the potential to develop a legitimate gambling problem should he ever get old enough to legally gamble in the real world. Which is a weirdly specific thing for the writers to make a point of when it has no bearing on the plot… so it makes me wonder if they could have actually been trying to tell us something here.

This kind of impulsiveness can also cause people to blurt out their thoughts without thinking about the consequences, potentially resulting in upsetting someone or embarrassing themselves. At first glance, considering that he has a lot of thoughts he’s determined to hide from the surface, Kaito doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with this kind of impulsiveness. If he did, you’d think he’d find himself muttering stuff like “I feel like crap”, or “I hate this place” all the time and then having to hastily paper over it and insist that no that’s definitely not how he’s really feeling at all. So apparently, he’s fairly good at thinking before he speaks when it matters to him?

Except, when he’s in the Virtual World, Kaito makes multiple unthinking comments to the effect of “I like this avatar body”, which he has to awkwardly brush off when Shuichi questions him, since it rather hints that something’s up with his real body. He’s suddenly really bad at this, even though he was pretty good at it the rest of the time.

So maybe what’s going on is this: in an effort to stay positive at all times because he’s Kaito, Kaito trained himself to have a constant, unshakeable mental filter that prevents himself from impulsively blurting out how he’s feeling if it’s something negative. However, he can’t stop himself from still randomly blurting out whatever positive things are on his mind. This usually isn’t a problem, but it can sometimes include things – it feels so great to not be dying for once! – that he really doesn’t want to be voicing either, if he only gave it a moment more thought.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria

Often shortened to RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria is a specific and especially nasty kind of emotional hyperarousal / dysregulation that almost all ADHDers suffer from. (At least, I feel like it should probably be classified as a subtype of that, though I’m not sure if that’s the official take, so don’t quote me on this.) The ADHD researcher who coined the term defines it as: “extreme emotional pain triggered by the perception – not necessarily the reality – that a person has been rejected or criticised by important people in their life. It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short and failing to meet their own high standards or others’ expectations.” That second sentence is important and frequently overlooked, because it indicates that, despite the name, this isn’t only about perceived rejection by others; it can also be about an entirely personal sense of failure.

I first read about this concept while I happened to be hyperfixating on Kaito’s mindset specifically in early chapter 5, aka that time he avoids Shuichi out of shame over feeling like he failed him in the previous trial, due to his own unreasonably high standards for being a “hero”. (If you didn’t realise that this is what’s going on with Kaito in early chapter 5, go read this other post of mine and get caught up, because you’re going to need to be for the rest of this section.) And, naturally, though I was supposed to be reading that article about RSD to help me figure out if I had ADHD, my brain made some connections. That was the moment I began to have this headcanon; everything else in this post blossomed from that as I thought about it more and realised a lot of other things about Kaito also fit this incredibly well.

The null hypothesis

So, let’s consider early chapter 5. In fact, let’s assume for a moment that Kaito doesn’t have ADHD and his emotions function like a regular person’s. He would still, of course, feel like he’s utterly failed Shuichi by showing himself to be weaker than him and doing the opposite of supporting him during trial 4. That part’s not specifically based in anything ADHD and is just a product of Kaito’s psychological issues about heroes, which I’ve already talked about plenty in that post I just linked. (I don’t want anyone to think that my ADHD headcanon is getting in the way of or diminishing any of that; this is just another layer on top of it.)

Kaito really wants to make things right and apologise for his mistakes in the trial (and for his really-not-actually-mistakes too, for that matter). He really wants to fix the rift between him and Shuichi and not leave the two of them painfully torn apart like this. He knows the responsibility to do so is on him and not Shuichi. But… he doesn’t do it. Why not?

The only possible reason would be that he’s just being a coward and running away from the guilt and shame he’s feeling rather than facing up to it. Except… Kaito’s not a coward. He may arguably seem like one in some ways given how he refuses to acknowledge his weaknesses to his sidekicks – but that’s not to protect himself and his own emotions; it’s because he’s idiotically convinced that it’s better for them that way. Here, now that he believes he’s already failed Shuichi as badly as he ever could, he should feel like he has nothing more to lose on that front (and Shuichi never even needed him anyway, right?), so there should be no harm in owning up to it and at least apologising for what he’s done wrong.

Granted, Kaito is busy trying to make up for his failure through his totally-great escape plan – but that’s still no reason why he can’t also apologise first and then keep trying to make up for things with the plan anyway. And it’s not at all like it was in the trial itself, when he was too wound-up in the heat of the moment to be thinking clearly. He’s had plenty of time to process what happened and regain control of himself and become consciously aware of what he knows is the right thing to do here.

The guilt and shame Kaito would be feeling from his belief that he’s failed Shuichi would still hurt pretty bad, sure – but I don’t think, if it really is a proportionate emotional response to what he feels like he’s done, that it’d be something he couldn’t face up to. He’s incredibly resilient and knows that sometimes you’ve just gotta face painful things head-on, and he should be more than willing to do so for the sake of making things at least slightly better between him and Shuichi.

So, I argue this: Kaito avoiding Shuichi the way he does in early chapter 5 doesn’t quite make sense unless he has ADHD. (Or perhaps some other neurological disorder that would have a similar effect on his emotions, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to be sure what other possibilities could fit.)

Too much pain

I can confirm from experience: RSD freaking sucks. Any feeling of “I should be able to do this, but I messed it up”, or any seemingly innocuous comment from someone you care about where they either point out a mistake you made or that could possibly be interpreted to mean they don’t really care about you that much – these things can hurt like hell, so much more than they have any right to. It’s as if that insignificant twinge of disappointment that most people would feel just gets multiplied by like a thousand until it practically feels like you’ve been stabbed in the chest. And I should note: the rejection version tends to be triggered by people important to you, but I find it’s especially bad if it’s someone I not only care about but also look up to. You know, like Kaito very definitely does to Shuichi.

Case 4 has plenty of things that would trigger RSD for Kaito before even getting into the worst parts of the trial. That cell phone incident in the investigation I mentioned earlier, where Kaito thought Shuichi needed his help for a second and then ended up feeling like he really never did at all? And all the times Shuichi shoots down one of Kaito’s arguments in the trial and tells him he’s wrong (which happens seven times, by the way)? Every single one of those seemingly-minor moments would have hurt Kaito not just a little, but one hell of a lot. It’s honestly really impressive and a testament to Kaito’s resilience that he managed to keep himself together and show barely any signs of how he was feeling for as long as he did.

It’s also very relevant that RSD is known to potentially trigger an externalised response of instantaneous rage, exactly like the outbursts of anger I mentioned in the previous section. I’ve already talked plenty elsewhere about how a lot of the pain that’s causing Kaito to lash out in trial 4 isn’t just over Gonta’s guilt but is also over how he’s being made to feel like a horribly inferior failure compared to Shuichi – and, yep, that’s still a perfect match to Kaito having ADHD.

By the end of the trial, Kaito’s issues and irrationalities have rendered him convinced that he’s utterly failed to be the hero he’s supposed to be, and that Shuichi obviously doesn’t need him or care about him any more (if he ever even did in the first place). That’s giving Kaito plenty of genuine conscious reason to be hurting pretty damn hard to begin with, before his ADHD brain-wiring even sinks its claws into it. Now try to imagine that pain getting disproportionately multiplied by like a thousand – fucking ouch, and then some. Nobody, not even someone as brave and resilient as Kaito, should ever be expected to be able to face up to that, to actively make it even worse by talking about it and bringing those feelings to the forefront, especially not when doing so would just be showing even more weakness to the person it hurts so much to show weakness to. I don’t believe it’d be fair to call anyone a coward for that.

Kaito’s not a coward; he avoids Shuichi in early chapter 5 because he is genuinely in too much pain to bear. The only way he can deal with it at all (now that he’s not in the heat of trial 4 and is very determined to at least not make things even worse by lashing out in anger again) is by simply trying to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. If he manages to prove himself as a hero, maybe it’ll stop hurting quite as much and he’ll be able to face up to it, but until then, avoiding the pain is all he can do.

(Obligatory Harmonious Heart mention)

Since I relish the opportunity to bring this scene up whenever I can, I might as well add that Kaito’s Harmonious Heart event is another instance in which he’d be feeling some pretty rough RSD – at least, in every outcome except the best one in which Shuichi reassures him that they’re friends and it’s okay to open up to your friend. It’d be especially bad in the worst outcome where Kaito realises Shuichi has seen his “weakness” and feels like he’s failed him. Probably not quite as bad as in canon, but still, ouch.

In fact, an interesting thing about that worst outcome is that Kaito specifically says he feels “so embarrassed”, which, when you think about it, doesn’t really sound like the kind of thing anyone would expect Kaito to ever describe himself as feeling, even at a time like this. However, I know from my own experience that “embarrassment” is in fact something that it’s easy to mistake RSD for when you don’t know what it is – just an embarrassment that’s somehow agonisingly painful, because that’s totally how embarrassment usually works for most people, right. So, A, this fits perfectly yet again, and B, since you’d usually not think to have Kaito ever use that word… it makes me wonder if the writer for this scene knew.

Coping methods (and why Kaito doesn’t have them)

Of course, it’s not like there aren’t methods to try to combat and mitigate the incredible pain that RSD can bring. One that I’ve found works really well (thanks to Kaito himself!) is exercising. It really helps to burn off that excessive emotional energy – and not necessarily just RSD, but any of the disproportionately painful emotions ADHD brings – by translating it into physical energy. “Let your sweat wash away all your sadness, fear, worry and hardships; just start moving your body and your pain will become memories before you know it,” actually sums up how this feels pretty well! It’s quite possible that this advice – heck, maybe his entire exercise-to-help-the-mind thing in general – is something else that Kaito first came up with for himself, after he found that it helped him calm down and feel better whenever he’d get too upset about something.

…So it’s really rather cruel that Kaito’s worsening illness also happens to lock him out of one of his only genuinely-healthy coping mechanisms for what he’s going through emotionally in chapters 4 and 5, isn’t it.

Another thing that’s really helped me in dealing with my own RSD is simply understanding it. When you know that it’s a disproportionate emotional response, you can remind yourself that things aren’t truly as bad as the pain is making them feel like they are, which makes it easier to take steps to stop it hurting, such as talking to the friend who unintentionally triggered it and having them reassure you that of course they care about you. Without that understanding of it, it’s all too easy to think, “if it hurts this much, I must deserve to be hurting this much,” which, yeah, that’s a bad path to go down.

One pretty important part of my headcanon that Kaito has ADHD, then, is that he definitely has no idea he has it. If he’d been diagnosed with it at some point in his life, he’d understand these problems of his better. Even if the doctors never told him all these things I’ve been mentioning here about how ADHD actually works (which is way too disappointingly common, so I gather), Kaito would have researched this stuff himself at some point, in order to better understand himself and know his limits so that he can work around them to be the best person he can be. He wouldn’t want to let anything get in the way of him helping others as much as he can and achieving his dream of going to space, not even the idiosyncrasies of his own brain. And, heck, he’d probably find it interesting if only he had a reason to look into it in the first place! Many ADHDers hyperfixate on ADHD, and Kaito definitely seems like someone who would have if he’d known.

So, if Kaito was aware of his ADHD, he’d be able to recognise what he’s going through in early chapter 5 as RSD and handle it better. He’d know that, no matter how much it hurts, things aren’t actually quite as bad as it feels like, and that apologising to Shuichi sooner rather than later is almost certainly the best way forward even if the prospect of doing so seems terrifying as all hell. For that matter, if Kaito knew about his ADHD and what it really involved, he’d almost certainly have trained himself to be able to deal with a lot of his more troublesome symptoms better than he ever does in canon.

Friendship difficulties

Because of their differently-wired brains, ADHDers can often struggle to connect with the rest of the world that doesn’t think the same way as them. And here’s a fun subtle thing about Kaito that ought to get talked about more: he’s not actually very skilled or experienced at making friends. Having sidekicks that he can inspire and support, and being a general encouraging influence on a wider group of people to keep them working together – sure, that stuff comes naturally to him. But regular, everyday friendship? Not so much.

This isn’t that easy to spot, because most of the time we see Kaito, he’s deliberately focusing on motivating people, which he’s great at. But there are a few instances here and there where Kaito interacts with people in a not-specifically-motivational way: his attempts to befriend Kaede (who doesn’t need his support), his earlier FTEs with Shuichi (which should be happening before training starts), and the conversation with Shuichi and Maki in chapter 4’s second training scene (before Maki begins talking about her past).

In all of these, Kaito turns out to actually be a huge awkward goof who doesn’t seem to have the first clue how to do regular interpersonal interactions. And basically everything about him being this way can potentially be explained by ADHD.

Too many thoughts

It’s never quiet and organised in an ADHD brain; whenever we’re not hyperfocusing on one specific thing, our minds always have like five different thoughts rattling around in them at once. So, consider the conversation with Shuichi and Maki, which Kaito was attempting to treat like a Regular Conversation (rather than the chance to help Maki open up that it definitely actually was in his head). Perhaps, in his efforts to do small talk, not one but several different possible small talk questions popped into his head at once and clamoured for his attention, such that a couple of them – “what blood type are you?” and “what [something] do you like?” – got accidentally merged together when he opened his mouth to speak. That plus his impulsive lack-of-filter meant that out came “What blood type do you like?” and Kaito sounding like a doofus.

(When Maki points out that this is a strange question, Kaito awkwardly laughs it off. It almost seems like he’s used to accidentally saying things people consider weird during his attempts at normal conversation and has learned to try and act like it’s nothing so he doesn’t push anyone away.)

This disorganisation in ADHD minds also tends to make them get too caught up on unnecessary details they find interesting and wander off down random mental tangents rather than whatever they’re supposed to be talking or thinking about. I once saw a tumblr post that said ADHDers are likely to tell “stories that start sooner than they need to and end somewhere other than the point” – and this happens to be a literally perfect description of the story Kaito tells Shuichi in his second and third FTEs. He was supposed to be telling Shuichi how he became interested in space. He began by talking about finding a treasure map and conquering the seas, and he finished with how he was busy conquering the land when his summer vacation ended. At no point did he mention space; he’d got so wrapped up in the story itself that he’d completely forgotten that was meant to be the point.

Kaito also has a bit of a tendency to make strange statements that appear to make perfect sense to him even though they kind of don’t to anybody else. He wants to learn to play the piano for when he goes to space? Well, of course; he might meet an alien! You can’t ever know how malicious other people’s secrets are? Sure, but that’s why you just gotta believe in… yourself! These really do make perfect sense in Kaito’s head (the first is about communication; the second is about people-reading skills). But it seems, perhaps, that his overly-active mind made connections too fast and jumped several tracks at once, to the point that he didn’t realise he was skipping a few steps of his explanation and that it wouldn’t make so much sense to the people listening. Which is also a thing that ADHD people are liable to do.

Too loud and excitable

A less immediately obvious thing that’s strange about Kaito’s behaviour in the chapter 4 training chat is that, when Shuichi essentially just straight-up asks Maki to start talking about her issues, Kaito admonishes him for being too direct and claims he can’t just do that. This seems odd coming from Kaito, who’s usually nothing but direct in his approaches to encouraging people, and who definitely also intended to prompt Maki into talking about her issues here.

But, apparently because he’s trying to present this as a Regular Normal Friend Conversation, Kaito didn’t think he was meant to be so direct in this context. Which suggests he’s learned through experience that his usual kind of directness that works great for encouragement apparently just kind of puts people off when it’s used in a regular conversation. So instead, he was trying to work his way towards hopefully maybe getting Maki to open up through awkward small talk that he must know he’s terrible at – no wonder he was miffed when Shuichi casually went and committed the exact social “faux-pas” he’d been trying to avoid, with complete confidence that it’d actually be fine, and it turned out it was. (Whoops, there goes Shuichi effortlessly being better than him at everything Kaito finds difficult, like always.)

Nonetheless, Kaito probably has good reason to be worried about coming across as too direct (outside of sidekick contexts, where that’s just the best way to get through to someone and help). Because, when he’s not actively trying to avoid it, he does have a tendency to get a bit carried away with things and put people off as a result. Remember the time he asked Kaede for a hug? There’s absolutely no reason to assume this was romantic or sexual in nature, because it already makes more than enough sense to think that Kaito was just so excited at meeting someone so similar to him and thought she was Super Cool and just really wanted to be her friend!!! So he impulsively expressed that sentiment in a rather-too-forward way that he was too caught up in his excitement to realise was going to come across as rather inappropriate.

Not that being too overly excitable and direct about things necessarily has to lead to behaviour that’s outright inappropriate in order to cause problems. (Though please never forget that Kaito asked for the hug and respected Kaede’s boundaries when she said no.) Even if he’s not doing anything wrong, Kaito being his usual larger-than-life self all the time might just come across as a bit Much and be kind of weird and off-putting for a lot of people. It’s that emotional hyperarousal again, which I mostly talked about the negative side of in the earlier section – but the positive side of it, amplifying the good emotions to make someone more enthusiastic and passionate, can still (completely undeservedly) be a negative thing in a social context with others who just aren’t wired the same way.

In Kaito’s second FTE, wrapped up among his ridiculous overblown childish fiction, he appears to potentially be talking about an actual playmate he had at the time who joined in his game of pretending to be a sea captain. Then they had a fight and Kaito never saw him again – and he presents that like it was just part of his game, too, but this can likely be taken to mean that they had a falling out that never got resolved and stopped being friends. If so, I can’t help but assume that this was probably because tiny Kaito was a little bit too boisterous and excessive in his playing – while still not necessarily doing anything wrong – that it overwhelmed this other kid to the point that he didn’t really want to join in any more.

There’s also one bit of FTE invitation dialogue where Kaito claims he’s about to teach Kaede how to have peace of mind… and then he tells stories that make her question his definition of that. Which makes a lot of sense considering that ADHD minds, particularly hyperactive-type ones, are never relaxed for even a moment. Kaito doesn’t know how not to be energetic and over-the-top even when the people he’s with just want to wind down and relax, which also wouldn’t really do him any favours in terms of making friends.

But none of that is Kaito’s fault; he’s not trying to be selfish or drive these people away. It’s simply the way his mind is, always going full-throttle when most other people’s usually aren’t. He just gets so excited about so many things and has a hard time toning that down. Besides, why would Kaito even want to tone it down and be boringly down-to-earth when his mind could be up in space instead!? That’s much better! …except that most other people don’t see it that way.

Too much infodumping

In the training chat, after embarrassing himself with a bungled small talk question and being shown up by Shuichi making it look like it’s actually somehow not a problem to be too direct after all, Kaito attempts to bring things back around to small talk with the, uh, “safe” option of asking Maki what her favourite spaceship is. Which isn’t really small talk at all, of course – but then, actual small talk is hard for ADHD people, because it’s not interesting enough to care about paying proper attention to. They’d much rather be acting on that constant desire to talk about something they’re interested in, such as one of their hyperfixations, which is not always the best way to connect with others who don’t happen to be interested in the same thing.

(Fortunately, since another of his hyperfixations is Maki and her issues, Kaito is perfectly happy to listen once she starts talking about her past, and the conversation shifts back to a comfortable hero-and-sidekick situation again rather than an awkward and confusing how-do-I-friends???)

There’s another of those FTE invitation dialogues in chapter 1 where Kaito tells Kaede he’s a good listener… and then apparently Kaede spends the entire time listening to him instead. Except, obviously Kaito really is a good listener when it’s in his hero-and-sidekick context and he’s helping someone with their problems, because he’s invested in supporting them and so it’d be easy for him to pay attention. But perhaps, when it’s in a regular friendship context and the person he’s talking to doesn’t need his help (like Kaede doesn’t), Kaito’s not quite so good at listening because he’s not necessarily as interested in what they have to say. So he might be liable to just impulsively act on the desire to talk about the things he wants to (such as SPACE; there is always time for space) and then get so focused on it that he overlooks the other person’s feelings and genuinely doesn’t realise he’s coming across as kind of brash and self-absorbed.

Kaito’s second and third FTEs with Shuichi are an even better illustration of this. Upon Shuichi choosing to hang out with him for a second time, Kaito apparently realises Shuichi is interested enough in him to possibly want to be his friend. So he responds to this by… launching into a huge ridiculous story about his (completely make-believe) heroic adventures as a kid. This kind of one-sided conversation and bizarre topic choice is not, in fact, a great way to make friends with someone, but Kaito doesn’t seem to realise this. He finds his story so cool and exciting that he impulsively assumes Shuichi would too and jumps into it without actually confirming whether Shuichi wants to hear it or not. And, honestly, it seems like Shuichi doesn’t, at least not particularly, and is only listening out of politeness and an inability to get a word in edgeways. His less-than-enthusiastic response to Kaito’s story suggests that these FTEs are canonically meant to happen before training begins and Shuichi comes to properly consider Kaito a friend – and therefore that Kaito’s not really doing the best job here of making Shuichi begin to consider him a friend.

Still himself despite it all!

All of these potentially-ADHD-fuelled idiosyncrasies of Kaito’s make it a lot harder for him to make friends in the normal way – and he seems to be somewhat aware of this. Some of the things from the chapter 4 chat hint that he’s slightly insecure and afraid he’s going to put Shuichi and Maki off by being so dorkily himself. There’s also a little more of this in the Salmon Team bonus mode, in which friendship is the entire point, and yet a few lines when he’s inviting Shuichi to hang out hint that Kaito isn’t completely convinced that Shuichi would want to hang out with him as a friend rather than as a sidekick who needs his advice and support. If he was more used to having friends, he probably wouldn’t still be so insecure about this – so this honestly kind of suggests that Shuichi and Maki could be the first real friends Kaito’s ever managed to make.

Because of these kinds of issues in connecting with people, a lot of ADHD kids grow up unconsciously learning to suppress their true selves, hiding their boundless enthusiasm and unusual interests to seem more “normal” so that they can fit in. I know this because I was one such kid, and I’m still struggling to unlearn this as an adult. So I have huge admiration for Kaito having managed to not do this, refusing to let anything stop him from being himself at all times. His convictions about staying true to himself are even more impressive when you realise that he would have felt so pressured to break them and pretend to be someone he’s not in order to more easily make friends.

As strong-willed as Kaito is, I doubt he’d have been able to do this as a kid without help. His parents and grandparents must have been really, really good in validating his passion and energy and never making him feel ashamed for being the way he is, assuring him that if other kids can’t see how great he is then that’s their problem and not because he’s doing anything wrong. He wants to go to space more than anything else in the world? Awesome; he should chase that dream with everything he has and not care how ridiculous and childish and impossible everyone else seems to think it is! Not all parents would do that.

After all, there are a lot of occasions in which Kaito does just brazenly present his larger-than-life self to someone in a clumsily overbearing attempt to make friends, without showing even the subtlest sign of being worried it might put them off. For that matter, Kaito is generally very willing to just throw himself into things he’s unfamiliar with and possibly end up failing spectacularly and making a fool of himself – something that’s likely to be pretty painful for him, given how RSD is. While some of this is probably down to his impulsiveness and not even considering that he might fail, I’m sure sometimes he’s got to be aware of it, and if so, that’s some impressive resilience and determination. People with ADHD can become unconsciously inclined to never try at anything out of a fear of that painful failure, but of course Kaito would refuse to let that happen to him – which is really quite admirable.

Interestingly, all of the times Kaito is subtly insecure about his social skills – the chapter 4 scene, the Salmon Team bits, and maybe that time with the former friend in his FTE if you assume that him wrapping it up in a fiction means he’s still uncomfortable about what happened – involve someone he’s already friends with. After all, it’s probably easier for him to fearlessly dive in with someone new, because it’s less of a blow if he messes up in that context �� not everyone’s going to click with him and that’s just how things go. But once Kaito’s already built a strong connection with someone, he becomes more afraid of messing up, because being rejected by someone important to him would be agonising. You might think that he ought to feel more comfortable around people he’s already friends with because he should trust them and know they’re not going anywhere no matter how much of a dork he is – but when RSD is a factor, it makes perfect sense for it to be the opposite.

Sidekicks can be friends, too!

Perhaps part of why Kaito is able to remain so confident in himself most of the time is because he nonetheless hasn’t grown up alone and lacking meaningful connections to other people. Despite his difficulty in making regular friends, he’s compensated for this by having sidekicks, which are a very different matter that his eccentricities conversely make him very good with. Being enthusiastic and energetic and over-the-top like Kaito can never not be is helpful when he’s being an inspiring hero, not weird or off-putting at all!

Still, while Kaito has a far easier time forging that initial connection with someone through the sidekick approach rather than the friend approach, that doesn’t make him worse at actually being someone’s friend (and not just their “hero”) once he’s got his foot in the door. If Kaito had told the story from his FTEs to Shuichi after they’d started training and properly bonded, Shuichi’s reaction would have been completely different: still probably exasperated, but in an affectionate kind of way, because he knows that’s just part of what makes Kaito who he is, and it’s actually pretty fun to be around. He has a lot of this sort of response to Kaito once they’re friends, and it’s adorable. It’s the same in the chapter 4 training chat – neither Maki nor Shuichi are at all put off by Kaito’s awkwardness, partly because they’re not exactly great at social skills themselves, but also because they know how much Kaito cares about them, and no amount of arbitrary social missteps could ever change that.

When someone becomes Kaito’s sidekick, meaning they’ve accepted his support and understand how much he wants to help them, they can see everything else about him that they might have found weird before in a new light. They learn that his eccentric behaviour isn’t him being deliberately rude or self-absorbed at all. It’s just genuinely how he is, and it’s part of how he can support them so well like he does, but that’s not all it’s good for. They come to appreciate Kaito not just for his incredible supportiveness, but for everything else about him, too. He’s not just their hero, but also their friend.

However… Kaito apparently can’t see that. Since he’s never been that good at forming regular friendships with people who don’t explicitly need him, he’s all too liable to assume that the people who do need him are only sticking around because of that, and no other reason. That co-dependency of Kaito’s I mentioned earlier, aka his rather unhealthy need to be needed? While the stressful context of the killing game definitely made it way worse throughout the story, it seems it was already slightly a thing in the first place – and if so, Kaito having ADHD could very well be the root cause.

Kaito is Good

Being realistic about how sadly uncommon well-represented neurodivergency is in fiction (and how misunderstood ADHD tends to be), I don’t know if I should try to assert that Kaito being ADHD was definitely the writers’ intent. However, almost every major facet of his character and personality fits with it so damn well that I want to think it’s at least possible that someone on the writing team could have had it in mind. Especially with the couple of bits I mentioned that seem like they could have been deliberately included by someone who Knows.

Still, even if it wasn’t intended, it’s amazing how good of a fit this is. Maybe it’s just that, in creating a character as intensely passionate as Kaito, the writers naturally wrote into him all the downsides of being that way as well, without even realising they were near-perfectly modelling the highs and lows of ADHD. After all, the human mind’s ability to simulate other human minds even when they’re not real is freaking magical. Kaito is such an incredibly well-written character with so much thought put into him whether or not he was meant to be as extremely ADHD-coded as he is.

I’ve always believed that Kaito is a fantastic example of how the best way to write realistic and interesting flaws into a character is to have them organically draw from traits that, in other situations, can be that character’s greatest strengths. And in my opinion, this is also kind of true about ADHD. When I figured out I had it and what it really meant, it was hugely validating for me, because I learned that almost everything I’d been struggling with was basically just the logically-inevitable downside of some of the things I’d always liked about myself, such as my ability to get so ridiculously analytical about stories I love like this. I wouldn’t trade those parts of myself away for anything – and I can’t imagine Kaito would, either.

I’ve seen a few posts and articles focusing on the bright side of having ADHD by listing some of the positive traits ADHDers often have because of it, and, delightfully, so many of them – fun to be around! compassionate! persistent! to name just a few – are things that Kaito has in spades. So, well, if ADHD can look so much like Kaito… then surely it can’t be all bad.

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(P.S.: High-five to anyone who headcanons Kaito as autistic! There’s a lot of overlap between that and ADHD. Many of the symptoms I’ve talked about here can also be symptoms of autism, and even with the non-overlapping bits, a lot of Kaito’s idiosyncrasies that I linked to ADHD could be interpreted slightly differently to link them to autism instead. I believe ADHD fits him somewhat better than autism does, but then I’m more knowledgeable about ADHD so my data is skewed, plus I’m pretty obviously biased since I’m personally invested in the idea of Kaito being like me. Taking a step back from my more specific headcanon here, though, there’s still every reason to assume that Kaito is at least some flavour of neurodivergent, and I think that’s pretty awesome.)

#danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #kaito momota #character analysis #kaito's hero issues #ramble #adhd #adhd headcanons #creating that tag because i can already tell kaito won't be the only adhd headcanon i make #oh my god this ended up *longer* than the hero ramble how did this happen #and yes i will link to the hero ramble in every single other kaito ramble because it is always important #i also talked about myself in this more than i ever usually do on here so uh #personal?

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tothedarkdarkseas · 3 years ago

Note

The way Vampire AU has taken off has really warmed my heart! So many great thoughts all round. I sent you some elaborations on my own personal headcanons for it as a submission, just for the fun of it. Enjoy!

Hi! I got your submission last night and read over it-- it's very elaborate, you've clearly put a lot of thought into fleshing this AU out and it sounds like a ton of fun. I know you mentioned at the end that you had no intentions of writing it because you're busy with other fandom projects, but I'm sure there are many who'd be interested in reading your ideas if you ever decided to make a sideblog for it. I'll post your submission for others to read below a cut here so that the post won't be too long on the dashboard, and I'll reply to some of the specifics underneath!

Yes! I have so many more thoughts on a vampire AU, I figured it would be easier to put them in a submission. Hope you don't mind.

The concept is just so fascinating to me, because so much of it lines up perfectly with the character dynamics we're given in the canon, and what doesn't has the potential to expand on and explore those dynamics in a really interesting way.

I agree 100 percent about the tone it would have to be written in. An actual brooding, dark prince Murdoc type of thing wouldn't work for me. (Murdoc would try to play up that persona, but in reality, he'd be far from it.) In my mind, the tone would be half What We Do In The Shadows and half Being Human UK. Four misfits living in a mouldering mansion somewhere, getting on each other's tits - but deep down they've got each other's backs. There's a bond, even if they can't quite explain what it is.

In my mind the bloodlust would function as an addiction. Murdoc is no Mother Theresa but he's not comfortable with indiscriminate murder either. (Guilt and self-loathing is not a good combination in Murdoc.) Knowing there is no in between for vampires - you can't have a sip here and there, it's abstinence or nightly slaughter - he stays teetotal from blood and tries to channel his desires into other addictions instead. Any and every addiction, really. Drugs, booze, sex, theft, you name it. Which is how he comes to be doing donuts in a stolen car in a Tesco car park, at the exact same time Stuart Pot is making a midnight run for condoms and Tango.

I picture Murdoc's turning of Stu would be this confusing moment that even he can't fully explain, so he's always switching his story about it. One day he'll say he didn't want to deal with the police, another day it'll be vampire enforcers he was afraid of - "total killjoys, they'll bung you in a blood-filled coffin for a hundred years over the TINIEST infraction". Other days he comes close to admitting he felt guilty, that he flipped out over the idea of killing someone after all, when he's dedicating all his energy to avoiding doing just that. Sometimes he just calls it a moment of madness.

But in every vampire movie, there's that moment. The moment where the newly-turned vamp rises from the grave as this beautiful unearthly creature of the night, and I mean . . . this absolutely would be Murdoc's experience of it. He's almost convinced himself there aren't real vampires like that, that it's all Hollywood bollocks, and then Stu rises up in front of him like some black-eyed, blue-haired god, and the part of Murdoc that isn't utterly gobsmacked by it can't help resenting the little sod for making it look so easy. Murdoc likes to take the piss out of him and claim he's like one of those Lost Boys California pretty boy vampires, but he's jealous really.

I imagine Murdoc would be similarly mercurial about how he was turned. There's always some hyperbolic story about it, designed to paint Murdoc in the best light. Sometimes he was the premier occultist of his day. Sometimes he sold his soul to the devil for immortality. Sometimes he was turned by a beautiful vampire seductress, who was bitter he broke her heart. It's all bollocks. The truth is definitely something less glamorous, and I would imagine actually much sadder as well? I'm not sure what, but I'm picturing something like Murdoc's father being some small-time occultist who sold his son to vampires, or maybe Murdoc was working some menial job and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he was turned by some vampire who would have drunk him dry, if Murdoc hadn't fought him off. Or maybe it's a bit of mystery, like the mystery of his mother in canon. Someone did this to Murdoc, someone made him what he is, but he has no memory of it. And all the different stories are actually partly a coping mechanism for that, as he tries on different explanations for size. (It would also explain why he would refuse to abandon Stu after turning him. Because navigating this new reality alone is something he wouldn't wish on anyone, even some dumb kid.)

I think the supernatural element would also be a great way to expand on and deepen Murdoc's relationships with Russell and Noodle. In supernatural fiction there are always two types of beings that hate each other. Usually vampires and werewolves, but often vampires and ghosts too. As, obviously, vamps can't drain ghosts, and they spend their lives running from the guilt of all the people they've killed. Ghosts are a constant reminder of that - and of the afterlife they both fear, and resent that they were denied. I can picture Russell maybe helping Murdoc exorcise the ghost of Hannibal or Jacob, and that's how they meet. (And why he has more patience with Murdoc than most. He's seen him at his most vulnerable.) Noodle would be great as a vampire hunter too. Her dynamic with Murdoc would be fraught as on the one hand, she respects Russell and venerates him for his connection to the spirit world, so to a certain extent anything he says she'll try to respect. And Murdoc is supposedly reformed, and she has moments where she even almost quite likes him. But her instinct is not to trust him. Her instinct is to put him down, and they both know it. As much as he battles his bloodlust around her, she battles her urge to put a stake through his heart, Van Helsing style.

Finding out he turned someone would be a MAJOR ruck in their relationship. But I think Murdoc would use 2-D to convince her and Russell to stick around - because he turned him, but it wasn't like he was chowing down on the lad, it was practically an act of charity, really. Practically an act of atonement. And if they both leave now, Stu is only left with Mr Bad Influence Murdoc Niccals, to teach him how to be a vampire, and restrain his urges and whatnot. And Murdoc has never been much good at all that AA, 12 step stuff, so unless they WANT poor sweet Stuart Pot to wind up spending eternity as some kind of crackhead . . . it would be a kindness to him, really, to stick around.

I could not agree more about how Murdoc turning Stu would mirror their Phase Two dynamic, with Stu literally having become "the thing Murdoc turned him into", and resenting that. But also, having moments of perverse gratitude for it? Stu is vain, and vampire Stu would be gorgeous, which I reckon he'd love. And though I think he'd hate that his normal life of footy with the boys and Sunday dinner at his mum's was over, I can also imagine him feeling this whole new world has opened up in front of him, something most people aren't special enough to gain entry to. And he likes that.

I can even see the fame thing and the band happening. Music would be a great, healthier way to channel the urges he can't act on. And I can see Murdoc agreeing. Admitting that he's been playing in bands for years, because it's actually a great cover for a vampire lifestyle. Being nocturnal is practically a prerequisite, when you're a rock star, and you can get away with looking all kinds of weird when you're in a band, because people just chalk it up to the aesthetic. Still, until he met 2-D, none of the bands he'd been in were actually any GOOD. 2-D reawakens his love of music, the same way he is the turning point for Murdoc's career in the canon.

Vampirism would also be a great way to explore Stuart's flaws. His vanity is an obvious one, but I can also see him avoiding his family and not letting them know why he'd disappeared for years. Just too self-absorbed to appreciate the harm it's caused. I can also see the pill problem happening as he imitates Murdoc's habit of abusing substances to try and blunt his bloodlust. I can imagine him saying stupid stuff like "you never even took me to the hospital!" and convincing himself he experiences phantom headaches, because he doesn't want to admit he's becoming just like Murdoc, actually. He tells himself the pills are medicine and he really needs them, and it's not the same at all.

And I can see him getting too carried away with his lusts, and having several near misses or disastrous incidents where he brings girls home and loses control of himself. Where Murdoc jumps in and saves it from getting too out of hand, but at the same time exposes how he's basically been stalking Stu "for your own protection", with a side of decidedly voyeuristic intentions. Stu has . . . strong (and somewhat confused) feelings about this.

I think Murdoc would be the same trouble magnet in the vampire underworld that he was in the criminal one. Feelings about Murdoc range from "this unwashed oik should NEVER have been allowed to become one of us" to "I WILL STAKE MURDOC FAUST NICCALS IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO". Murdoc would definitely continue his streak of petty crime any time he entered the hallowed halls of the vampire hoi poloi. He'd be pilfering left and right. And I can't imagine he'd ever kowtow to the aristocracy, which, in a subculture as obsessed with class as vampires . . . yeah, he's insolent, to say the least. And they hate it. They just hate Murdoc, generally. I imagine 2-D might consider crossing over to the dark side to join them, to spite Murdoc, before eventually he realizes that - amazing as it sounds - even Murdoc has higher moral standards than these people. Maybe he's better off with the devil he knows.

I love what you said about Murdoc and Stuart being hung by the same rope, for all eternity. That's exactly the dynamic I think a vampire AU would bring about. I also think Murdoc being Stu's vampire sire would be interesting in the romantic sense, as part of them would always second guess if that was the reason for the bond they feel. Are they developing feelings, or is all of this just the blood bond? I can imagine Stuart hating his own inability to judge why he feels so drawn to Murdoc, and I can see Murdoc trying to convince himself any possessiveness or pride or protectiveness he feels over Stu is just what all vampires feel when they turn someone. (Even though it's not.) It would be a potent brew.

Anyway, this was long but I will never have the time to actually write this (I have five WIPs in other fandoms already) so I thought I'd let it out somehow. Thanks for giving me the space to talk this over!

(If anyone wants to run with this and make something of it, by the way, have at it! Just credit me somewhere for the idea. That'd be good.)

This was quite a ride! I love the idea of Stuart Pot's mortal life ending when he's mowed down in a Tesco car park buying condoms and Tango. It's cruel to say it's what he deserves and frankly the complete antithesis of the whole conflict I'm begging for, but... it's what he deserves. I'm also very intrigued by the angle of treating bloodlust as an addiction: it could theoretically be overcome, but practically speaking, rarely is. This makes it easy to see how Murdoc spins off into such a cartoonishly extreme life of debauchery. I love the bit about Murdoc changing his story of what happened, both the night he hit Stuart and his own origin-- the difference being that Stu does know what happened to him, whether he ever chooses to believe Murdoc's ever-shifting justifications for it or not, but no one can ever really know where Murdoc came from except himself. I definitely agree that the truth has to be less glamorous, less thrilling, less worthy of tales and legends. I like Stuart and Murdoc best when they are not men born into greatness nor men born for greatness, not inherently, and I love the private grappling with the belief that they are special and the fear that they probably aren't. Your explanation of the foil-like dynamic between vampires and spirits/ghosts is interesting, I don't know if that's an established piece of vampire lore or if that's your own invention, but I think it's a really solid one. I don't know if I've truly seen those two creatures explored in a world together with such a direct emphasis on that ghoulish ecosystem, so to speak.

And, well, I'm quite predictable but I'm ready to invest $5k in a full novel exploring Stu's estrangement from his family and friends following the transformation, the psychological toll it takes to choose-- though he may feel he has no other choice at all-- to abandon those relationships, how his own descent may mirror Murdoc's as he shelters himself in chalk-tablet excess and a vibrant, at times frightful carnal life to distract himself from the guilt. I'm dying to see how he could approach mending those fences again after years away. It isn't something one sweeps under the rug, isn't something that he can make amends for. This sort of thing shatters a family, and in my imagining of Rachel and David, it certainly shattered his. This kind of permanently-marred family drama really captivates me and is something I don't think we should shy away from in stories about addiction, and it would be fascinating to explore the human element of that against the metaphorical monstrous one.

I love what you mentioned about the "blood bond" and how it factors into the pull between them they're too unsettled to really name. This adds an extra layer of confusion, as you say, and better justifies why they find themselves orbiting each other, pretending there's a blood-coloured chain tethering them and ignoring the heavy weighted padlock in the middle that pulls them down, down, down. I've spoken a lot on this blog about why Stu is participatory in the relationship when he dislikes Murdoc in such a profound way, and while I absolutely never tire of the messy, bleak human weakness and ego of that, it would be quite special to explore that with something that almost feels like an excuse for Stu, a macabre justification entirely out of his hands; it gives him permission to be part of this broken spiral and absolves him of the responsibility of acknowledging his choice. I'd like to think he still lives with it, as Murdoc does too, but they may appreciate the safety of the smokescreen as much as they struggle to see through it.

Thanks for sending me your ideas, I hope other readers will enjoy seeing your elaborations, and if you're having fun thinking about these two goons I'd encourage you to consider making a blog. Sometimes you get lucky and draw in people who are incredibly kind!

(Lastly, unrelated fun fact about vampirism in my life: my first job was playing a vampire at a haunted amusement park. Our "Scare Zone" was designed as a junkyard taken over by a vampire gang, and I was the "queen" with a throne made of old tires. It was... a fun job and also not a fun job, haha.)

#anon au #thank you!

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courtneystriker · 4 years ago

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My Thoughts on the HG Prequel

I just finished reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and I got to say, my feelings are mixed. Below I have an entire review for the story which included how I felt, the expectations, the biases I had going into the new book, and how I felt after reading. Please note there will be spoilers. Also this review isn’t meant to hurt anyone and if you absolutely love the book so far...good! Enjoy it fully! As an aspiring writer myself and someone who studied in college/loves creative writing I’m well aware that people just have different takes on writing. Glad you are enjoying it :)

Anyways, here it goes…

The Expectations

As the Hunger Games series is one of my favorites of all time, I had a strong bias to like this book. Since it was first announced, without knowing any details, I was extremely excited and optimistic. I re-read the entire Hunger Games series twice beforehand in preparation; once with my fiancé and once on my own. The only thing I really wanted, knowing that it took place during the tenth hunger games, was that the arena reflected how new the hunger games were. Then, when we learned what the series was about, people started voicing some concerns or were disappointed by the plot, instead wanting it to be something like Finnick’s arena, Haymitch’s, Mags’, etc. etc. I was not among this group. However, I understand where they were coming from, because I always thought the idea of the first Quarter Quell (the one where the districts voted for the tributes) was an extremely interesting concept.

Yet I think these things are best left explored in fanfiction as they add nothing to the series and Suzanne Collins did an excellent job just giving us enough information to get the idea. At that point it’d just be a book on details, which could fall short or be a gimmicky, cheap way to keep people reading the series and keep her name relevant. And wasn’t that part of the message in her series, the thing Katniss so heavily criticized that gave a great irony to the books? Who would watch children killing each other for entertainment? Meanwhile, we as the reader are reading these books as a form of entertainment. Plus, Suzanne Collins so skillfully painted the illusion of knowing but not fully knowing their stories that it’s haunting, and I think that is one of the many reasons (along with the battle royale trope being naturally compelling, liking the characters, etc.) that a lot of us are more drawn towards these stories rather than (at least for me) a book on Snow.

That being said, I was not against the idea of a book on Snow because I find villain characters, especially grey ones, to be very interesting to read about, and I was pretty certain Suzanne was going to handle this beautifully, especially since you could already feel this atmosphere coming off of Snow in the Hunger Games series. I know some were really concerned about a Snow redemption arc, but to me it felt very obvious that it couldn’t be and it would be more of him sliding into evil.

I did have other concerns when I read the description for the first time. I could not believe they went with the whole tribute from District Twelve thing again. I loved Katniss and District Twelve, but I did not want Katniss 2.0. I said right from the beginning to my fiancé that she’d have to make the tribute from District Twelve extremely different for me to get on board (though I was holding on faith that Collins would). It just felt cheap and gimmicky to rehash the District Twelve thing, it sort of made me feel the same way I would have if she had written about one of the games I mentioned above. Sure, it’d sell, but it wouldn’t add anything to the series. I was thinking she better not hunt, sing, or have any qualities resembling Katniss really.

Another thing I worried about was the love story they hinted at in the description. It just didn’t make sense to me. Because how was Snow going to ever support the games if from an earlier age he fell in love with a tribute and vowed to protect her? Then later he’s all like pro-hunger games? Just this itself could weaken the entire series if done poorly, because it would weaken the main antagonist’s motives for not only the prequel but also the Hunger Games series as well. I kept thinking either the girl has to die in the arena betraying Snow somehow (which is what I was hoping for), Snow will have to betray her, or perhaps he would have been faking love for her for some sort of personal gain I couldn’t imagine. Either way, I thought it weakened the story's appeal to me. Yet overall I was still excited, desperately waiting for the book’s release.

And now that I have read it, I have to say it felt forced at a lot of parts and lackluster overall…

*Spoilers start here*

My Review:

Suszanne Collins’ writing style is one I’ve always loved and has consistently appealed to me. Even though this book is written in 3rd person (which some may like less if you don’t particularly like third person) it holds up well against the original series. So I really had no complaints in this regard besides the excessive use of songs (felt like fanfiction a bit). I think if you liked the original series and don’t mind third person you’ll feel right at home with her style.

The concerns others had about Snow’s redemption are completely dismissed in this book. Like I had predicted, she writes about his fall into evil, and although it’s not black and white evil (as I don’t like anyways) you can very much tell he’s a bad guy and that the hardships he faced in life only further pushed him towards obtaining status and power. Overall, he feels true to the character when we end up seeing him in the Hunger Games series, and his journey to power fits the images Finnick painted in Mockingjay. He is very well characterized in the book and perfectly unlikable while maintaining an intriguing internal dialogue (although it does occasionally feel tedious, but not enough to bother me; others may feel differently).

The way he is written is very much in line with Collin’s great characterization, one of the reasons I always loved The Hunger Games. All the characters felt like real people. They all had an extreme depth to them and I felt they all resembled people I had actually met in real life. There were little to no characters that relied solely on gimmicky personalities to get by. Even very minor characters that seemed depthless and swallow at first--like Katniss’s prep team--had more to them. So I thought going into this book I had nothing to worry about in that regard. I didn’t even really spare it a thought, but boy was I wrong.

I think Snow and Lucy Grey were the only characters that had (at least partly) the depth that the original Hunger Games cast had. I’ll discuss Lucy Grey later but first let me talk about some side characters. Where to even begin really? There’s a LOT of characters in this book. Frankly, way too many, which I think contributes heavily to the lack of depth in the characters. Honestly there’s so many that the names of characters were hard to keep track of while listening to the audiobook (my hard copy of the book was still in the mail and I didn’t want to wait). Things got a bit clustered in my mind quickly. There were twenty-four tributes, twenty-four mentors, Snow’s family, The Dean and Drs at the university, Snow’s Peacekeeper crew, and the Covey, and those are just the groups that I can cluster together. At least, the ones I remember having names and getting introduced, but I think that’s everyone really important. There was no real time to develop or get to know them really, which made the tributes’ deaths more meaningless as I could barely recall their names. It caused impactful scenes to weaken significantly overall and it made characters serve only to characterize and amplify Snow’s fall into evil.

Here’s what I mean by that. The head Gamemaker, Dr. Gaul, really was the character I hated the most while reading this. She was just evil without reason (one of the weakest villain types with little to no personality besides being evil). She even made creepy rhymes as if she was in some sort of horror movie, and the entire point of her character was to contribute a lot to some of the forced plot points driving Snow’s moral decline. For example, there were all her tests, which seemed contrived and all directly connected to getting Snow to think the Hunger Games was a good idea. She was seemingly supposed to be a Dr. Mengele type character, as this book has a lot of Holocaust-esqe imagery. I’m fine with irredeemably evil villains, but instead of getting the depth that a Dr. Mengele character could offer (as some may know, many children that were part of his experiments actually said he was kind and gave them candy, and I find that deeply haunting to this day.) She is a flat, one-dimensional character whose entire personality could be described with one word: sociopath. Evil people are master manipulators, which is how they get away with evil things. I think at one of the funerals she puts on a good public face, and she seems to have power, money and influence. Yet the book doesn’t show this seemingly present quality nearly enough to make her a haunting character. Instead we get nursery rhythms and clearly driven lessons towards evil at are contrived. Like “Write about what you most liked about the war” or the assignment to improve the hunger games? Like what class is this? Why are they taking it? And why are the young kids of the influential deciding this instead of the influential people themselves?

Another character I feel was just there for Snow’s development and to represent an opposite viewpoint but lacked Collin’s usual depth is Sejanus Plinth. As a District 2 citizen whose family got rich off the war and moved to the Capitol, he is the main opposing viewpoint of the book, presenting Snow with a chance to do the right thing. I’ve seen people say he’s a Peeta-like character, but I completely reject that idea. He lacks in the charm Peeta has, relishes in self-pity (although he’s completely justified in his sadness and has a right to be upset), and while he has a heart like Peeta, he ultimately doesn’t know how to use it. Instead of working within his position to get influence like Peeta so masterfully does, he’s hot-headed and continuously makes poor decisions that ultimately don’t help anyone. It’s like he wants to help but doesn’t know how as he’s driven completely by emotion without reason. He too contributes to some forced scenes, particularly my least favorite in the book; when they sneak into the arena. Overall, he just falls flat for me. Again, I feel I don’t know anything about him beyond what he contributes to Snow’s story line and he doesn’t come across as realistic. It’s like Collins just wrote how someone would normally react to the hunger games, slapped a district number on him and went on her merry way.

I just wasn’t prepared for these sort of characters when the Hunger Games series made even the smallest of characters stand out dramatically. I feel neutral to annoyed by most characters in this novel. I could expand this portion, and maybe if people inquire I’ll elaborate on some of the other characters as I have strong opinions on them, but this post is already getting long, so I’ll move on to Lucy Grey.

Lucy Grey is by far my favorite character even though she is bordering towards being a character from a fanfiction. Not quite a Mary Sue in my opinion but there is a certain connection to fanfiction I made with her. You may have guessed some issues I had with her by reading my expectations earlier in the post, but that has not displaced my love for her. Her personality is very different from Katniss’s, or even Peeta’s or Haymitch’s. She had a different type of charm than all of them, is a natural performer, and seemed more extroverted. Also, the whole idea of the Covey and her “not really” being district was intriguing. It really highlighted the displacement that war can cause and how people can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Although I was confused on how much mobility between the districts there were….and did District Twelve have a fence or no?) It really emphasizes one of the main themes of the book, extreme prejudice against both Capitol and District. Her spot sort of in between really drives home the point that there's literally no difference except extreme poverty, and even then there was poverty in the Capitol, only better hidden. Her bright mood (and clothes), her poised attitude, and her optimism made her endearing. She was confident in her skin yet still held the fear of a sixteen year old going into the hunger games.

There were only two main things that bothered me about her, which was of course the direct connections made to Katniss (which I’ll elaborate on) and the forced “love” story between her and Snow. I suppose that has less to do with her and rather more to do with my dislike of that subplot. And I'm a sucker for some good romantic subplots, but yikes!

I think having one strong connection to Katniss was all that was really needed in this book. I really liked the idea of that connection being the Hanging Tree Song, as I can only imagine how it made Snow feel watching “The Mockingjay” sing it in the propo. Despite me not liking that fact that Lucy Grey is also an enchanting singer as that felt like directly stepping in Katniss’s territory, I did enjoy the little twist of Lucy Grey writing the song. Yet the connections between the two when the plot took us to District Twelve went too far. It felt like it took away all of Katniss’s special places and things. The lake, her katniss roots, her gift towards music, her fondness for the meadow, sneaking into the woods, etc. I think one solid connection would have solidified their bond beautifully. Having so many seemed like it was really trying to force the reader to make the connection when it was already painfully clear I guess? Plus, having Lucy stand out at her reaping ( the whole song part read like a bad, contrived fanfiction bit to me) and having people care about her in the Capitol while moral questions of the hunger games were still surfacing made me start to think...isn’t this how the rebellion for Katniss got started? At least partly. I get it’s a different time. Too close to the war. It just felt way too similar. I guess Collins was going for the idea of a lost rebellion that in a way Lucy Grey started that Katniss later revives. Yet it feels like that invalidates the specialness of what Katniss does in the original series as it’s already happened; it just got erased. I guess history repeats itself, but I really just didn’t like it. I could see the appeal to some extent, and it could be a beautiful connection, but it just wasn’t for me.

Now on to the plot, which is the last thing I’ll talk about as this post is getting ridiculously long. A lot of the plot felt very forced or contrived, which was another shocker coming from Collins because her pacing and plot was done really well in the original series. Of course, a lot of this was driven by Dr. Gaul and Sejanus Plinth as the entire plot hinged on the moral debate of the hunger games these two represent. Other plot points just hinged on what happened to establish the games. I mean the rebel bomb explosion seemingly only happened to change the terrain so Dr. Gaul can then bring up the idea of the different arena and how that made the tributes act differently, thus creating the crazy arenas we see later in the series. I do have some praise for how Collins established the disparities between the earlier hunger games and the ones we see in Katniss day. From the way they lock the tributes up, don’t feed them, the spotty coverage of the arena, etc. All of that was exceptionally well done. The only complaint I have was that so many tributes died before they even got to the arena (though not because I wanted to see them fight). I had been expecting one to escape or something to further establish that this was new territory and was waiting to see how they handled it in earlier times, but I wasn’t expecting that many to die before the arena got started. It just seemed like a huge Capitol failure that they advertised loudly. I really wasn’t expecting that level of incompetence, just an escaped tribute that threatened to embarrass or harm the fragile beginnings of post-war Panem. Instead, most of the pre-arena stuff felt disastrous. A lot of the mentors' deaths felt forced, and it was weird that the academy never really came under fire at all from all the rich and powerful parents whose children were getting killed because of the mentor experiment. Like it seemed there should have been some interaction there, but there wasn’t. Maybe some was passively mentioned but still, it could have been a whole subplot that further established the debate of the hunger games.

While the pre-arena up to the break-in to the arena felt like the most forced part of the book and certainly I felt it needed more workshopping plot wise, it also harbored some great and powerful scenes, like Arachne pulling the sandwich away from the tribute while she was starving and laughing about it. Basically, all those interactions of poverty and captivity meeting the citizens of the Capitol were done well, but nothing spectacular (unlike the scene of Katniss screaming at Buttercup at the end of Mockingjay which is heart wrenching.)

The last plot point I’ll talk about is the “love” story. I wasn’t a fan, but it was sort of what a lot of the plot hinged on and led to the great scene at the lake between Snow and Lucy Grey. How easy it was for him to betray his “love” for status. This led to some of the most interesting and evil internal monologue Snow had in the entire book. I honestly feel the ending scene, the interaction Snow had with the jabberjays and Mockingjays in District Twelve, and the lynching scenes were among the strongest and most memorable.

The love story again felt forced (sorry I’m using that word so much it’s just so accurate) into the story. This hindered the book from having a strong plot in the same way the weaker characters caused forced interactions and plot points to move things along. Yet at the same time the kind of abusive and lackluster nature of their relationship throughout the book fit perfectly with the ending. Unfortunately, it didn’t really make it very compelling for the reader. Luckily Lucy’s personality kept my interested during these parts. I wouldn’t say their relationship was poorly written at all; in fact the way it was written makes perfect sense. I just think the plot relied too heavily on their “love”, which was gross because of the way Snow is, and the reader knew it had to inevitably end in some kind of betrayal or reveal that there was no love at all. This creates tension for the reader, but I kept wondering: if the love plot had been ditched could we have gotten a stronger plot altogether?

So overall, like I’ve said I’m really conflicted. I know I focused heavily on things I didn’t like, but honestly the book was well written in some regards, plot bouncing between really compelling and a little contrived, the two main characters being written well enough but other characters not so much. Some connections between Lucy Grey and Katniss made at the end were powerful, I loved the Covey, Collins still excelled at writing a lot of the social issues/scenes in the book, and honestly the idea of Lucy Grey being completely forgotten in the Districts that hurts my soul a little. Nothing compared to the feelings I got in any of the Hunger Games books but there’s still something there.

I really hope someone made it through this long ass post. The book was entertaining. I mean I listened to all 16 hours of the audiobook in like a day. I can’t wait until my hardcover comes so I can look through it. Maybe once I know what I’m getting into I can enjoy the book a little more than I did, because right now it’s sitting at very average for me. Maybe I went in with my expectations too high? I certainly like the Hunger Games a lot more and probably always will. Honestly, I love new content, but I’m also the type that likes firm, planned endings to stories (even though it hurts to let things end and the fandoms can suffer from lack of content). I think fans can oftentimes get caught up in what they want and pressure the writer into writing more, which ends up a disappointment since it wasn’t originally planned in the series from the beginning. While I don’t think this is by any means the case with Suzanna Collins or that Lionsgate even pressured her to write this book (I don’t like conspiracies of that sort of thing as a writer myself that plans to have a series in which a book comes out many years after the original part of the series is released), I do wonder if this is the end of the Hunger Games for good. I sure hope so, especially if she would be writing about the other victors. I love them too much and really don’t want to feel similarly about their books, and like I said at the beginning, it wouldn’t add to the series just to my guilty pleasure lol.

Hope you all have enjoyed your reading of the book more than I did :) Again sorry if I wrote anything to upset you! Please if you loved this book ENJOY IT! I’m actually kind of jealous if you did. Feels like missing out on something special.

#The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes #suzanne collins #tbosas #lucy grey #coriolanus #Dr. Gaul #Sejanus Plinth #Hunger Game Prequel #Hunger Games #Katniss #Peeta #hunger games series #review #catching fire #mockingjay #books #writing

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