#please tell me someone is interested in hearing abt it it would solve all my problems i think

[smallvictorianchildwhofoundwifi]

Me every time I watch the Umbrella Academy: omg I can't wait to have mha characters do this exact thing

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 31

the drama continues....

so I got like halfway thru the issue and my liveblog got deleted bc I accidentally zoomed in really far and for some reason that deleted fucking everything :) thanks tungl!!!!

like ik I probably shouldn't type these up right in the tungle post but ugh. why would THAT delete all my shit. fuck this

anyways I didn’t write that much but I’ll try to rewrite it...

I love the mexican standoff cover, ratchet and megatron and chromedome look so hardcore and serious, meanwhile nautica is having the time of her life. respect

ooooughhhh flashback w/drift and pipes, ooof

is that chromedome and rewind??? hhhhhhhh they're on a date....

drift: don't ask where I got my blood money credit card pipes.

pipes is so cute I love him

and riptide!! I love him too

I love that transformers have a whole language that they speak by holding hands. fuckign superb you funky little robots

two trucks holding hands...

the lost light hhhhh ;_; best spaceship

its sooo cute that nautica thinks of brainstorm as like, the number 1 genius...her calling perceptor ‘brainstorm-level brilliant’ is adorable, I love those two sm

nautica ily sm

‘quanton technology’ vhbsjdfbsaf tailgate ily

in this art style, getaway has like, a mouth? looks super weird

nightbeat is so rude I love him

I fuckgin love the sci-fi bullshit w/the quantum stuff

I'm sorry but ‘dipstick’ is still such a funny name lmao. so is ‘huffer’ tbh

the fact that there’s something called a Smartplanet™ is hilarious. reminds me of the SmartBoards™ of my youth

and ofc the galactic council created them and added tuition fees. smh

cyclonus’s disgust at tuition fees is so relatable

tailgate pulling a gun on megatron...oooomg

the top of megatron’s head is weirdly round in this art style lmao

megatron: ...is that baby threatening me with a gun??

aaand then megs and riptide pull their guns out too

ok yeah so I guess cyclonus DID go on a murder spree prior to mtmte, but also at this point who HASNT done some war crimes, lbh

aaaand there’s ravage!

ravage and megs speaking hand 👀👀

cyclonus ik you’re worried abt tg and also terrible at communicating your feelings but please be nice :( :( 

and there’s getaway, sliding in smoothly...get AWAY from tg tbh

‘I'm fighting the urge to diagnose you’ lmao ratchet

nightbeat is like oh hell yea a mystery is afoot

tailgate telling cyclonus he’s scared :( give your tiny roommate a hug cyclonus

and here we get to hear abt MTOs...such an interesting concept, I love it

hoist mentions he knew an MTO named scattergun...wasn’t that one of chromedomes husbands? oof

interesting point, that w/out the war, the MTOs likely wouldn't exist - so does megatron get credit for that, then? does that get subtracted from his kill count? lol

also I feel like it’s noticeable even here that nautica doesn't distrust/hate megatron as much as a lot of the others - which makes sense bc she wasn't ever involved in the war, and never had to deal w/any of the decepticons or megatron in any context except post-war

and for tailgate, who also missed the war, it makes sense that he’d distrust megatron, because all the people tg is closest to hate megatron, and tailgate is trying his best to be an Autobot™

‘prenatals’ jro what the hell is that

I started writing up my reproductive themes spiel but it got so long so I think I’ll make a post just for that lmao. channeling jro w/that one

poor riptide...it’s tough when you’re not made for academics

fascinating how at first the MTOs/CC bots did get at least a basic education which involved cultural information, but as the war went on the education dwindled until it was just the basic stuff needed to fight in a war

ratchet has an interesting point, with MTOs being more likely to have ‘mystical experiences’ bc they're essentially newborns thrown onto a battlefield trying to make sense of things

and we also get to hear about information creep, another important concept! lots of relevant exposition this issue

I love information creep as a concept so much, bc it makes sense that even mechanical beings with like, computers in their brains wouldn't be totally infallible - bc if they’re really alive, and have souls, then that means there HAS to be fallibility, bc otherwise they would just be completely fact-based and logical, and that would make them less ‘alive’

also, the fact that they live so long would definitely contribute, and it’s cool that there ARE some sort of consequences to living for literal millions of years

aw nautica :(

tailgate aw man :( cyclonus will be back don't worry 

nightbeat is such a dick vhbhdjskhfbsjkf ‘someone tell tailgate to get a grip’ his bf just disappeared ok

and we get a brief reappearance of magnus and his humansona before he disappears too

nightbeat: enough of this bs! ratchet, break every hipaa law ever! go! 

and then ratchet DOES bvhajdbfajskfbajhd I am once again asking for somebody to care about patient confidentiality in cybertronian medicine, 

cant believe riptide got KO’d for 2 days straight and got left behind by the lost light as a result. Ls

nightbeat solved the mystery! woohoo! megatrons still gonna be rude abt it tho

OOOOH man and there’s the slaughterhouse lost light. oh boy oh god

I'm so not prepared for slaughterhouse oof. I'm glad we’re done with the court drama stuff bc that's so not my speed vbhdjkbfjksdf give me wacky sci-fi adventures or give me death!! 

I'm honestly just so excited for the time travel arc lmao give it to meeeee

so yeah, til next time!

[sleepingfancies]

please go off abt detective loki,,, im curious to hear what u have to say abt him!!! 💖

*SLAMS CHAIR DOWN*

SO. YOU WANT ME TO GO OFF ABOUT LOKI.

Praying for you that this read more link works bc otherwise this is gonna be a Cursed Post to all my poor followers. Shit gets long. I have A Lot to say akdjfshfk

Thanks to the investigative skills of the amazing and wonderful @deputyrook (ily), I recently learned that Detective Loki’s backstory included such things as: serving time in juvie, he was formerly religious, and he also possibly suffered from some kind of drug addiction he’s now clean from. It was briefly mentioned in the movie that he spent 6 years in a boys’ home (a rather rough one, by the way Loki talked about it). Boys’ homes are, by definition, “residential sectors where boys are provided food and care when they cannot be adequately cared for by their families, either due to a family crises or the child’s own behavioral issues.”

What this tells me is that:

A) Loki most likely had some heavy childhood trauma that drove him into being a “bad kid” (not that such a thing actually exists, imo, but that’s another essay for another day). It probably took well over a decade to get himself stabilized.

B ) Loki of present day has no family, no personal connections, no friends, absolutely nothing to call his own except the clothes on his back, his car, and... maybe a place to live? I assume he has one somewhere, but we never see him there - he’s constantly either prowling around town or at the station.

C) Loki’s occult tattoos, and his general distaste for anything religious, probably come from an internal place of feeling like some higher power abandoned him along the way. I have no doubt he carefully selected each one to have some personal meaning, but ultimately they all tie back to distancing himself from Christianity (double that if he was religious as a child, or came from a religious family). This also makes me wonder if his last name was something else, and that he changed it to “Loki” upon getting himself back on his feet.

D) Heading off of the boys’ home note; boys’ homes, like most other institutions in the US, legally can’t force residents to stay once they turn 18. Assuming his time there ended at 6 years because he aged out and went off on his own, well, for one that means he was admitted when he was 12 years old. Which is... wow. For two, that means his behavior was never necessarily resolved. Which, given how Jake plays Loki, I’m inclined to believe (I’ll touch on that later).

All of this leads me to some interesting observations during the movie.

For one, Loki is amazing at staying the “adult in the room” in the face of belligerence (e.g. Keller Dover losing his shit in Loki’s car). I know personally, it is almost physically impossible for me not to get my back up when someone else decides they want to take some aggressive tone with me - and I am about as far as one can get from a “troubled kid.” So I have to wonder how many years and how much abuse Loki endured to be able to choose not to respond to people antagonizing him? I have a hard time believing it was just police training that got him to this place of neutrality. And it seems to me like he’s making a genuine effort to stay calm, and to calm the people around him (”please just let me do my job”).

Which leads me into something Mrs. Dover said. “They say you’ve solved every case you’ve ever had, is that true?” And to be fair, I assume Loki’s silence there is supposed to imply that that isn’t true, but it implies so much beyond that. It implies he puts 100% effort into his cases, that he barely sleeps when he knows there’s a chance he can put dangerous people behind bars and save innocent lives. It also implies he feels deeply about the cases he hasn’t solved, or the ones where he got the perpetrator put away but the victims didn’t make it out alive. He carries that with him, constantly.

We see more of this when Keller recognizes his daughter’s bloody sock. His immediate response is to blame Loki. “This is your fault. You didn’t try hard enough. You did this to my daughter.” And Loki says nothing, he doesn’t make any different expression - but his eyes twitch. Jake Gyllenhaal remarked that this was a physical tic he improvised for Loki, one that served as Loki’s channel for intense emotions and/or becoming overstimulated with thoughts and information. Rather than actually emote, his eyes twitch. There is nothing newly informative or particularly overstimulating about the bloody sock scene, which leaves only intense emotion to be the cause of that twitch. And given Loki’s panic when he was searching Bob’s house and boxes for Anna and Joy, I doubt it’s anger. I’m willing to bet it’s that Loki already feels that way. He’s blaming himself. Keller just spoke Loki’s own feelings into existence.

I’ll circle back to that in a minute, because I think Loki making his cases so personal is very telling of his character.

Now, to go back and touch on why I think it’s most likely Loki aged out of the boys’ home rather than graduated - Loki has adapted with his behavior, he hasn’t resolved it at all. It does not seem to me at all like Loki has therapeutic strategies, especially considering I’m 99% sure any therapist or behavior counselor would not encourage bottling up your emotions and disconnecting yourself from human contact. Loki made these steps on his own. He learned to redirect his anger to people who deserved it by becoming part of law enforcement. He decided that he was safer closed off and unavailable to intense emotions. He might’ve even decided other people were safer stuck on the other side of his walls.

There are a whole of two times Loki clearly loses his temper - when Bob keeps drawing mazes rather than giving him a straight answer, and when Bob kills himself and Loki realizes he just lost his best lead. While these are both reasonable things to get worked up about, he reacts so intensely and so personally to them that (circling back to my earlier point) it tells me, deep down, there is an incredibly soft and vulnerable heart in there that’s been locked up for decades.

Loki didn’t want Bob to kill himself. He didn’t mean for things to escalate that far. You can hear it in his voice, he’s genuinely shaken and upset by what just happened. In the following scene when he basically destroys his desk, that is directed at no one and nothing but himself. He’s so angry at himself - for not understanding Bob’s maze, for getting Bob killed, for having to tell the Dovers their one suspect is gone, for feeling helpless when it comes to finding the girls. Loki doesn’t deal well with other people’s failure, but he doesn’t even accept his own.

And I mean - do I even need to mention when he finds Anna? The man is bleeding profusely from a bullet wound in his head, he’s half unconscious, he’s a long way from the hospital, but he doesn’t even think about any of that. He makes it his one singular goal to get her to the emergency room even if he dies trying. And the way he talked to her? “Stay with me Anna, don’t die, just hold on.” I know on the surface it’s obviously just a tactic to keep her (and himself, let’s be honest) awake. But it was so deeply feeling, so honest, so raw, so panicked?

I don’t know, man. I’ve said things to other people before that I wished someone had said to me, and that’s what those lines sounded like to me. Which, if he had been a drug addict at one point, and if he overdosed but no one was there for him? The puzzle pieces fit.

And then to have people visit him in the hospital? To have someone call him a hero? He has no idea how to react to that, because I’m guessing neither of those things have ever happened to him before. And he isn’t really sure what to say to someone being so overwhelmingly grateful for and to him. So he doesn’t really say anything. His eyes just twitch. We can fill in the blanks.

The man has a soft heart, a vulnerability that he refuses to let anyone see, but it’s there. He’s just as scared and angry and confused as Keller 90% of the time. He just hides it better.

Which, ultimately all of this leads me to the conclusion that - for as far as Loki’s distanced himself from religion, as clean as he is now, as stable as he is, as well as he’s channeled his anger, as guarded as he keeps himself - this entire job, to him, is a chance at redemption.

Loki doesn’t think he’s deserving of love. He doesn’t believe he’s capable of having the kind of stability the Dovers are so familiar with. He doesn’t think he can just slide into a friend group after all these years. He doesn’t regard his own life highly. But the ability to save other people’s lives and keep dangerous people locked away - that’s his apology to the world. Of course he cares about these cases because he’s a good man, but it’s more than that. It’s that he believes this is the only way he cant repent for not always being a good man.

Which leads me to his first name. I’ve rambled about the symbolism of his name to @deputyrook before, but David. David. Given all of the Biblical symbolism in this movie, personally my mind immediately leaps to David and Goliath.

David - detective Loki and his desire to be a good man - is in a constant war against Goliath - Loki’s own trauma and troubled past. And there really isn’t a way to have one without the other, which makes Loki’s character so tragic. He isn’t ever going to heal, not completely, not when his entire career is him trying to apologize over and over again. He solves almost all the cases he’s given because he won’t, can’t, accept more failure.

Loki’s last line in the movie is “pray for the best, prepare for the worst.” For being a character so deeply centered in anti-religion, that’s an odd line to make his last. Combine that with how strange it is that he wouldn’t also change his first name, if he changed his last name to distance himself from religion. His name, and that last line, might just be symbolic of the few shreds of hope he has for himself. Hope that maybe he can have what the Dovers have, the hope that maybe one day when he’s gone he’ll be remembered by somebody and for something good.

Because that’s really all he wants, all he can hope, for himself. Since he doesn’t think he’ll ever have human connection, or love, or a family - as much as he would like to have those - he’ll settle for being just a little more than somebody’s bad memory, or being a little more than some name on a headstone.

[avecorviidae]

Fic: Three - Epilogue

Fandom: Mob Psycho 100 Rating: G Relationship(s): Kageyama Shigeo & Reigen Arataka Word Count: 1901

Ao3 Link

After a certain point in one’s teaching career, graduation ceremonies are just plain boring.

Following the disaster that was Salt Mid’s brief flirtation with the 21st century last year, they’d stuck to a traditional ceremony, with speech after speech after speech, and absolutely no pop songs of any kind. Ever. Still, she usually drags Toyoda to the graduation every year, if only because she needs someone who it’s socially acceptable to fall asleep on during the principal’s speech. They both know the drill by now: sit towards the middle of the gymnasium, in the middle of a row, preferably behind some tall and/or chatty parents. Once they’re comfortably seated, they can safely zone out until the scripted speeches about success and school spirit and moving on to do great things have been run dry again, and wake up just in time to watch the graduating class receive their little diplomas. The real fun in this, of course, was the gossip. It’s not that Katsuko doesn’t like her students, or isn’t incredibly proud of them. It’s just that, as a teacher, becoming invested in the lives of teenagers is the only way to stay sane. “Did you have him last year?” Toyoda asks, as a lanky, awkward boy that Katsuko vaguely recognizes stumbles on stage to collect his diploma. She shakes her head. “No, I think he was in Amori’s class.” “Kid sniffs pens.” “What, like a drug thing?” “No, that would’ve made sense! Just, he sniffed them, Kano. Always. During lessons, while he was working, just always… sniffing.” “Weird.”

As sniffer boy is clapped off of the stage, he’s replaced by a petite girl that it takes Katsuko a moment to place, but when she does… “Hey, isn’t she the one who told everyone she dated a high schooler?” Toyoda squints at her. “Did she? I swear I saw her flirting with my first years.” They get so caught up in trying to piece together the tangled mess that is the middle school dating scene that Katsuko almost misses Shigeo’s name being called. The only thing that alerts her is the sole whoop! among the polite clapping that follows him on stage. As subtly as she can, Katsuko turns around in her chair. Sure enough, at the back of the gymnasium, Reigen is standing against a wall with the others who couldn’t get a seat, clapping and grinning with an enthusiasm that seems to be giving other parents secondhand embarrassment.

Shigeo has managed to grab his diploma and shake the hands of most all of the officials in the span of about three seconds, and Katsuko reminds herself to add a tally on the break room whiteboard to Satoh’s secret agent theory from a couple of years ago (“The quiet ones are always the shiftiest, Kano!”). Still, she manages to get a couple of claps in as he scurries off of the stage.

Toyoda always ditches as soon as the ceremony is over, which, frankly, Katsuko doesn’t understand. In her opinion, there’s little point in attending the ceremony itself if you’re not going to stick around for the classroom party afterwards. The only real draw is the promise of more gossip and convenience store cookies, but still. The desks in Sugita Ken’s classroom are pushed around haphazardly, and Katsuko works her way through the maze, past little cliques of students and chittering parents until she finally manages to reach the food table, and the long-awaited cookies. Objectively, it’s not a huge distance from the door to the food, but Katsuko has been cornered by a series of her former students and, of all people, the Kageyamas, so finally getting to the back of the room feels like an accomplishment. She’s surprised that the Kageyamas are sticking around, given that all four of them seem to be incredibly uncomfortable talking to people in general. Of course, the parents had had no trouble thanking her for all her work, gushing about their sons and such, but both of them are mingling with the overly-happy tone and strained smiles of adults who would rather like to be done being adults for the day. Ritsu is far less subtle about his discomfort, fidgeting and tugging on the collar of his dress shirt. Whenever he thinks nobody's looking, his nose scrunches up, glaring mercilessly at the nearest person or object. He seems to be sticking to his parents’ sides, unlike Shigeo, who she’s seen speaking to no less than four other students. All of them were in the telepathy/body improvement club, but still, she thinks it might be a new record. Compared to the rest of the boys in his year, mostly wearing baggy suits, scuffed shoes, and ties that hung down half to their knees, Shigeo is surprisingly sharply dressed. His black suit jacket actually seems, well, calling it tailored would be a stretch, but it actually fits. The matching pants have to have been hemmed, and the collar of his dress shirt is crisply ironed. The only thing that’s not new-looking is the tie, and by this point, the faded pink of the ratty thing is actually familiar. She loses sight of Shigeo when he disappears behind some of the girls’ soccer team trying to take a picture, so she scans the room for Reigen instead. It isn’t difficult.

He’s amassed a decent following in the corner of the room, and looks to be entirely in his element, leaning back casually against the wall and presumably telling stories that are accompanied by extravagant sweeping hand motions that usually make the group burst into obnoxious laughter. She’s seen him twiddle his purple bow tie no less than fifteen times since she arrived.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket.

FROM SATOH: im gonna be able to get over there in 5 mins, is reigen still there TO SATOH: Yep, but I don’t know for how much longer. Until Shigeo leaves, probably. FROM SATOH: listen. katsuko. this is the LAST NIGHT for us to get to the bottom of this TO SATOH: For YOU to get to the bottom of this, you mean? FROM SATOH: not important, listen, katsu, if u see him going to leave, u gotta stop him. talk to him abt idk old rocks or whatever your minor was until i get there TO SATOH: Anthropology, but you were close.

She’s so caught up in looking at her phone that she almost startles when she sees Shigeo in front of her. His telltale nerves are on full display, scuffing one shoe on the linoleum tiles, but he’s smiling softly up at her, and his hands are behind his back, clearly hiding something.

She smiles back at him. “Congratulations, Shigeo! I’m sure everyone’s very proud of you.”

Shigeo looks down at the floor as he mumbles, “Oh, um, thank you, Miss Kano.” She waits patiently as he stares at his feet, biting his lip as he gathers his words. “I wanted to, um, to thank you for… everything, and Shishou helped me a lot to pick it out and plant it, so, uh…” He holds something out from behind his back. “Please accept this from both of us!” As she gently takes the little pot from him, he explains, “It’s a sweet pea plant. Shishou says it means ‘goodbye,’ so… oh! Um, they can grow kind of big, so if you want to, you can plant it in the ground, or a bigger pot, and tie it onto something so that it can grow straight… ours is tied to a yardstick that Shishou found. Yours should flower soon.” The tiny green stalk is bending with the weight of the buds, already splitting down the sides to reveal streaks of white petals. It’s impossible to place the way she’s feeling, the thing in her chest that’s heavy and light all at once, and she thinks, a flower that means goodbye. All she can do is meet his eyes, and she her voice comes out sounding soft and awed when she says, “Thank you, Shigeo. Thank you, for everything.” Shigeo’s hug is too quick for her to reciprocate, just a quick squeeze before he’s stepped away, eyes towards the floor again. He perks up when he hears Reigen calling, “Oi, Mob!” from his corner of the room. Katsuko puts a hand on his shoulder as he moves to leave. “You’ll thank your shishou as well for me, won’t you? And I certainly hope this won’t be the last I see of you. After all, your brother is graduating next year, isn’t he?”

Shigeo nods, and he smiles up at her again, eyes bright. He actually waves a small goodbye as he walks over to Reigen, whose audience has since dispersed. Reigen bends down to say something to him, hand clasped on his shoulder. Satoh Miyu sidles up to her, quickly following her line of sight. “Oh, thank goodness, he’s still here.” She looks at Katsuko. “Katsu, you have a plant.” Katsuko adopts the dry deadpan that’s more or less necessary to be friends with Satoh. “Indeed I do. Shouldn’t you be supervising your own class party?” Satoh waves her off with a small scoff, but doesn’t actually answer the question. Katsuko sees Shigeo walking away from Reigen, and towards his parents and Ritsu, who are all idling near the door in the manner of people who are very ready to leave the party. Reigen, as well, seems to be gearing up to head off. Katsuko points in his direction. “Looks like your window of opportunity is closing to… what are you actually planning?” Satoh looks over at Reigen and hisses, “Shit.” Then, to Katsuko, “I’m going to solve the mystery once and for all, Katsu.” At Katsuko’s blank stare, she leans close and whispers conspiratorially, “The ‘relationship-to-student’ mystery.” Ah, right. She supposed it never had been filled in, had it? The students even updated their information at the beginning of every year, and while Reigen’s phone number had changed once, that little box had still been blank. She follows behind Satoh as she walks towards Reigen, but drifts away to find an inconspicuous eavesdropping spot. This should be interesting. Satoh, chatterbox that she is, makes easy smalltalk, the kind of oh, I’ve heard about you from Shigeo’s teachers, lovely to finally meet you, isn’t this whole ceremony simply lovely, so excited to see them all graduating, bland sort of talk that just disguises the real point of a conversation. Tone still innocuously sweet, Satoh finally asks, “So, I’m just dying to know. How do you know Shigeo?” Reigen’s answer is immediate. “He’s my kid.” The duh is unspoken, but Katsuko can hear it clear as day in his unimpressed tone, and she stifles a laugh. “If you’ll excuse me, Satoh-san, I’ve really gotta get going.” Reigen excuses himself politely and beelines for the exit while Satoh is still floundering a little at the response. He catches her eye as he’s crossing the room, and waves her a quick goodbye before disappearing through the door. Katsuko should probably head home herself, soon. It’s been a long night, and these things always tend to tire her out. Teachers aren’t known for their active party lives. First though, she needs to drop by her classroom and clear the textbooks off of the windowsill. Her little sweet pea flowers are going to need all of the sunlight they can get.