#so i have someone else to talk to abt this

[mydotguy]

A motion of LOVE!!!

[fungerisms]

O'saa doodle page cuz ive been playing as him and having him on my party a lot and hes just the coolest

[blackwaves]

#thank you for COOKING op ily for this #hhhh “eternal child soldier even when that's not true” is painfully true #i have WAY too many thoughts about how the fandom's interpretation of her character as “misogynistic” is misogynistic in turn and have #discussed it in length in the safety of my friends' DMs but it really drives me insane how her devotion is portrayed and reasoned with #of course the months old child would get unhealthily attached to her saviour. that's a very normal response. #the part about wanting her to NOT be infantilised is so so so important to me!!! “she's just twelve” yeah and also not #she's twelve and she's a woman and she tortures people till they break and she's the fearsome second-in-command that gets piggyback rides #imho one HAS to always account for the fact that BSD takes place in an Ability-ridden world where the Ability users are weapons first #and people second (if at all). how the characters live within that reality and adjust their humanity as much as possible... #teruko of the hunting dogs is an excellent character to analyse that #ngl i gotta add that fukuchi wasn't very willing to have teruko kill him and did in fact try to scout akutagawa for that case? #that's something to think of as well #anyway. yeah thank you for this ( from @deathbedtime-story )

okay responding in bulletpoints bc somehow all my teruko thoughts come out in lists but:

sooooo glad this cld be helpful at all <3 i love teruko i think everyone should love her and be nice to her forever. she's so important to me. bratty agefucked childsoldier supremacy.

re:devotion i think i've been like. i get it with teruko, for aforementioned reasons, but in general with bsd esp though also with other medias i've been rotating the fact that i think western (possibly specifically american, regardless eng-centric) fandom tends to add in like... a negative cast to a character's canon devotion+loyalty+obedience and the gravity with which the source material affords it. i have been turning that over in my head in conjunction to this article for a second specifically because i think this happens to each of the bsd dynamics that is rooted in similar emotions.

regardless: genuinely, asagiri justifies her loyalty and gives it weight in the canon. of course the child that knows nothing except pointless, meaningless-to-her war would have her brain fucking rewired by someone who gives her a reason to fight and live and would be weird about it in the aftermath. this is the "why and how do you live" manga.

the infantilization makes me so so so mad. take her seriously. the other hunting dogs offer her respect and follow her lead, it's not mutually exclusive from everything else about her. (and yeah!!!! all of bsd's child characters are treated like people/weapons first, children rarely, u know? teruko is in another zone to me, but— it's frustrating to me.)

fascinating point re:fukuchi— i think i didn't pick up on specifically the concept of akutagawa being the one to do the deed, but i'm staring wideeyed at it right now. genuinely i think people interpret him as more... malicious/manipulative towards teruko than i do? to me it's like. that's the kid he picked up who's not quite a kid to him but also not Not. i think he wouldn't have done it like this (teruko as the one with her hands on the blade in him) if he'd had another option he thought was available to him, and i think people underplay the fact that he does care about her in return.

anyway tldr always up to talk abt teruko ty for giving me an excuse to o7

sorry if you've already made a post abt this because my memory is a sieve but i would LOVEE to hear your thoughts in depth about teruko. she's one of my favorite characters but i haven't gotten around to dissecting her beyond like. how the story holds your hand through her lore lol. especially with how you hold her in conjuction with higuchi (!!!) i'm so interested

oh god oh god. lies down. i'm so passionate about teruko forever. trying to compile a list of thoughts like. hm. okay so. okay firstly this got incredibly long so i'll put it under a cut, but:

(1) i love her. so much.

(2) she gets sorted into one of the like... feudal loyalty/fealty/selfless devotion-to-a-commander characters in my head (ranpo and louisa are prominently that to me) in a way that isn't entirely right given that i think her devotion is intentionally colored by a crush in a way the others don't have on-going, but— i'm fond of it. it makes me crazy. i haven't read into her irl counterpart's work because very little of it is accessible in english, but i've seen it noted that it's unsurprising her character lives like this, in a similar and parallel way to higuchi's crush on akutagawa being a homage to her irl work.

(3) i noted this in my tags about her but— i bingewatched s4 and s5 in like two nights altogether as a (mostly) anime-only fan at the time, minimal time for critical thought allowed and having not touched bsd in a few years, so i dismissed the way she is about fukuchi as being a misogynistic caricature at first + was disappointed in asagiri to see it. the fact of her taking the throughline of her character, a foundational fact hammered in her every appearance, and following through with killing fukuchi on his orders retroactively justified all of it to me and made me literally insane. even before we got the backstory that gave reasoning for her loyalty.

(4) i've seen criticism on the s5 finale plot beat wrt her btw? it always makes me frown. disregarding fukuchi's orders would've left no narrative payoff to her devotion to me, would've left her feelings for fukuchi as a joke and caricature with no depth to them, whereas asagiri takes what we know and turns it like a knife within us. we know she's loyal to fukuchi. every single appearance that she has is relentless about insisting, she's loyal to fukuchi first and foremost and transparently, and he matters to her. i think that doubling down on it and insisting, she believes in him, she says fuck justice this isn't about that anymore (-> the other core defining point in her as a character being her belief in justice and in right + wrong) and does the single thing we know would kill her to do because he orders her to. is incredibly important to me.

(5) (bsd has an ongoing theme about smaller, narrower loyalties not overriding the ones that matter, when it comes to ideological conflicts— it shows up with fukuzawa with both mori and fukuchi, prominently to me esp because the fukufuku divide appears in the same arc. teruko's belief in fukuchi's orders overriding her more personal love for him, overriding the more selfish choice to not kill him because she doesn't want him dead, matters to me. again: underlines her loyalty and retroactively justifies it for me.)

(6) i think she was partway-manipulated into what she did. i think she didn't have time to think about it in a balanced, level way. i think if she had been given time, she probably would've sided with him anyway when he explained it, despite the conflict it provoked in her; that's her commander, and she has her own reasons to be wary of another great war, despite how misguided fukuchi was in his beliefs. it doesn't not align with her ideologies. i think she's going to be fucked up and conflicted and wrong-in-the-head about it forever.

(7) she's somewhere between a child and not for me. agefucked forever. ik there's been people discoursing about her age and providing reasoning for one or another, but it genuinely doesn't matter to me except to figure out exactly what flavor of agefucked she is— imo she's too-mature and too-immature and somewhere halfway-between forever. i think she's an eternal child soldier even when it's not true. she sees herself as her role in the hunting dogs before she sees herself as any age at all, and she got plucked off the battlefield by fukuchi from hollow combat to become a different kind of living weapon, this time with a sense of purpose.

(8) the hunting dogs see her as a child just as much and as little as they don't, and they respect her as dangerous before anything else. relevantly to me. i think she's their most terrifying member and is vicious and powerful and they follow her lead, she's their second-in-command, and she's also twelve years old in weird ways and she gets indulged with piggy back rides and sits on people's backs while they do push-ups. both things can be true. group of living weapons who made their bodies into tools and are weird about it. (btw it does make me murderous to like. see her infantilized the way i do in fandom sometimes. she's a brat and childlike and a nightmare. take her seriously forever; the other hunting dogs do, and they always always always acknowledge her as someone worthy of respect.)

(9) the sky casino conflict makes me crazy. she's good at what she does. she was raised doing this. she takes the pain and keeps moving and she sees herself as a slave to society and she's never had the chance to be anything other than what she is and she'd say she chose it if asked, i think. child soldier of all time.

okay that was a lot sorry i have. so many thoughts about her please please please feel free to respond as much or little as you want i could talk about her forever. obligatory notes for:

fic rec for to be named the generation unafraid by @obsidianstrawberrymilk which is theeee teruko fic of all time to me when it comes to being weird about age and about being a child soldier.

shameless (okay. shameful.) linking of my own fic if i'm old enough to die for your mistakes, which is the companion to my f!fukuchi manifesto fic and can be read without context except in the genderbending sense bc it's most prominently just about. teruko in a hypothetical where fukuchi dies in this arc, being weird about it. i'm normal about her (-> lies)

[mayahawkeswife]

i think people really do lack the understanding of just how much representation matters.

like, chappell roan. not only is she an out and proud LESBIAN, but i just saw a interview where she opens up about how she is also demisexual. that truly struck a chord with me personally, because i’ve been struggling with figuring myself out in those terms and just hearing someone talk about it, knowing i’m not alone in my feelings and that it’s okay, really does help.

representation MATTERS. DIVERSE representation matters.

[lorephobic]

literally nobody asked for it, but here's my list of saltburn essays that i've slowly been drafting over the course of the last week which WILL be required reading for anybody trying to engage with me about this movie. my very personal saltburn 101 syllabus just dropped

A Wolf in Deer's Clothing: Saltburn's Attempt at Innocence

an examination of party costumes and our character's last attempts to masquerade as something they're not: felix—an angel, all-forgiving and all-knowing, something to be worshiped; and oliver—a prey animal, prey to class-divide, prey to saltburn, prey to felix.

thoughts about oliver specifically are loosely organized in my #bambi tag

A Midsummer Night's Mare: Farleigh Start as the Ultimate Victim of Saltburn

a farleigh character study, about the ways he was mistreated and manipulated at saltburn, about fighting to stay alive and the scars left behind by knowing when to give in

alternatively titled "QuickStart", may be adapted into a conclusive essay specifically focusing on oliver and farleigh's relationship

The Eye of the Beholder: On Saltburn's Voyeurism & Violence [working title]

how wealth and class pushes the catton's toward the volatile reality of being able to look, but not touch. on desire and the lack thereof, and portraying yourself as an object to be desired

may end up as two separate essays on wealth and aestheticism but i'm pushing toward a conclusive essay about the intersection of the two, which i feel is at the heart of saltburn

alternatively titled "Poor Man's Pudding: A Melvillian Approach to Saltburn's Class", again, may be adapted into it's own essay

Gender-Fluid: A Study in Sexuality and Saltburn's Desire to be Dry

a deep dive into the bodily fluids of saltburn and how oliver upsets the standard of men who are just so lovely and dry. on the creative choice to lean into the messy wetness of sex and desire and the audience's instinct toward repulsion

a celebration of the grotesque and an examination of why we would label it as such

least developed of the four, heavily inspired by @charnelpit's lovely post about the fluids in saltburn

if anybody is actually interested in any of these, i can work toward something closer to a finished piece instead of just bullet points and quotes in a google doc, but mostly this is so i can share my very brief takes on a multitude of themes in saltburn that have been haunting me

edit for people seeing this in the future: all posts about my essays are being organized into my #saltburn 101 tag if you’re interested in following these through to development!

[sludgekludge]

kind of surprised you didn't talk more about valentino getting merch, honestly. but yeah, totally insane how viv treats her fanbase. /gen

i don't find the way he's handled in the show (or the posts vivzie makes/likes about him) to be any more distasteful than making merch of valentino to be honest. i'm not saying i don't think it's weird or offputting, but stella (at least according to the show) is intended to be this turbo abusive violent husband beater and she consistently gets sexy merch all the time. there's one (maybe more) old valentine's art of her literally featuring impact play gear. the woman who apparently hits her husband enough that he can expect it enough to effectively intercept it

there's 0 tact when it comes to earnestly attempt to depict abuse in these shows and i'm not really surprised they get merch. tasteless but not at all surprising

[themyscirah]

Complaining abt Suicide Squad yet again but the fact that they have Waller exposing the alien community to space racist attacks and talking abt how she got to her position through deceit and being a terrible person and stuff is just. Ahsfiwueh JUST SAY YOU DONT KNOW WALLER.

Anyways literally the 3rd mission of the Squad ever (and the first framed as smth Waller picked and not orders from above) was the Squad discrediting and stopping a rogue vigilante who was only arresting POC and funneling white people into white supremacy groups (of which he was the most prominent member) in SUICIDE SQUAD #4. and it's explicitly framed as this mission being personal for Waller that she's hiding from the government bc its illegal like. Guys. Please why are we having her incite (space bc comics) racist attacks now

Also the whole "Amanda got her position through deceit and being a terrible person" NO. she KEPT her position through being shitty and playing complicated political games!!! She wasn't always that way like there is a difference and it is IMPORTANT ppl PLEASEEEE. In Secret Origins #14 we learn Amanda's backstory and she used to be a normal, caring person! Like even after she entered into working in government and politics she wasn't automatically morally bankrupt like please people. She was originally given control of the Squad by Reagan (*sigh* 80s comics...) to distract and get rid of her because she was so successful at pushing progressive social policy in Congress. Acting like she's this static pillar of evil is such a waste of her character and so fucking uninteresting and disrespectful to her arc it drives me MAD.

Like I am NOT saying Waller is all sunshine and rainbows, she fucking SUCKS (said w love <3) but like there's a human being there. It's a progression, she has a character arc like please, DC, please!!! They've fucked up Waller so bad and made her so opaque and uninteresting she can't even be the protagonist of her own story for fucks sake!

Like I don't know how many times I have to scream it until DC hears me or remembers but WALLER IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF SUICIDE SQUAD. ITS HER BOOK. yet right now she's a cutout to be used as the villain wherever the writers please. Even in her book we get none of her perspective really displayed, no exploration of her thoughts with any kind of understanding of the role she traditionally has played and was made to play in the story.

[puppppppppy]

whenever someone asks me for help or advice i want to beam all my lived experience and advice that helped me through it directly into their mind to try and spare them as much pain and stress as possible, but because i cant actually do that what ends up happening is i dump everything i know related to that topic hoping something helps them like

[rooolt]

rattling the bars of my cage, cobra kai’s “too many characters” disease simultaneously invites speculation on a wide variety of possibly interesting character dynamics between characters who don’t frequently interact while also making it impossible for there to be any room or time in the story to even properly handle established character dynamics, let alone explore new ones

[fujobritta]

Hello! You are like one of the other five people in the mythic quest fandom in here haha.

I really like the show and I'm spiraling down into watching every single thing Danny Pudi has ever been in, so I was in twitter scrolling trough my current obsession and I saw a post of yours talking about the movie "Running". After some investigation I found that this is an extermely difficult piece of media to find, so I must ask you: Where did you watch it?

You're the only person I've seen mentioning it, and I just have to ask you. Sorry for the intrusion.

HIIII ive been getting some people asking about it so ill just post it publicly :) heres a link to it on a drive, lmk if it doesnt work and ill fix it ^_^

tap here to watch running

its an absolutely gorgeous film and i think everyone should watch it . its written by danny himself and dives into his experience as a second generation mixed immigrant as well as his fathers absence and how that impacts his own role as a father ! his son and mother are in it and its overall just so tender and emotional . i cried so hard when i first watched it i love him so bad ... to anyone who likes abed nadir or brad bakshi please please please watch running

[puckpocketed]

15/11/2024 - WSH @ COL

Dubois when asked about linemate Connor McMichael -> (˵ ‘• v •`˵)

You've got a front row seat to what Connor's done. What's gone into him having the heater that he's on right now? Yeah, it's - I don't want it to stop, nobody does, especially me and - and Tom, I think, so, whatever he needs we're there for him. Um, I had my hands up in the air, I thought he had that one at the end, but, when you're hot it's just a matter of time, so, y'know he missed that one but he'll get one - hopefully he'll get one next game.

[mumblesplash]

for my own peace of mind i have decided all self professed ‘lesdaughter’ truthers fully understand the irony of a portmanteau made of lestat’s name + claudia’s idealized relationship to him and are simply making a very clever joke at their own expense

[arsenicflame]

absolutely delicious flavour of edizzy is where theyre Actually Married but neither of them know it, while also being acutely aware of everything-

they celebrated 25 years of their matelotage. they are having sex on the regular. both of them think the other thinks their contract is purely for financial reasons and the sex is just fun + convenience.

[mars-ipan]

Hi, it's me again. I decided to follow your advice and try to seek out your 'actually serious' analysis, which led me to your komahina bible, the most easy to find compilation of this supposed analysis. Here are my thoughts-

1) Overview

- Most of this 'analysis' isn't analysis but a summary/overview of the game. It's not so much a 'bible' as a children's book summary of the bible, which at that point it would be better to play the actual game itself. It's clear it was made for a presentation on the 'uninitiated' if you will, but if that's the case, you shouldn't be advertising it as the literal bible on the subject.

- When you are not regurgitating points from the game beat by beat, the screen is halfway filled with either manga panels or fanart. My gripes with manga panels are, that even though they do depict the events of the game, the way they can be depicted by the artist can be pretty subjective due to the freedom of the medium in comparison to sprites, and that the role of one character can differ depending on whose pov manga it is (chiaki vs nagito). Fan art therefore should be scrutinized even more since it fully depicts abstracted and even the fandomified version of events, leading to situations where it's either unclear what is actually happening or betrays your more shallow view of the characters (i talk abt this later.)

- When you do use pictures directly from the game it's either a possible screenshot from a memorable moment or dialog from the wiki, limited almost exclusively to the freetime events. This leads me to believe that you haven't actually played the game(there are other factors hinting towards this) or watched a Let's Play of it, but going off of merely information that's already widely known and circulating within the fandom, and easy to search on the wiki.

2) Incorrect/Questionable information

Here I'll compile a lot of information that's either plainly wrong or baffling to having come to that conclusion , leading more credence to the theory that you either haven't actually played the game or your memory of it isnt as good as you think.

-"if Nagito's plan went off of without a hitch, he would have killed anyone that was closes to him at the time" plainly wrong. Komaeda's goal from the start was to make himself the victim, so by dying this way his death could have meaning and help the others. For somebody that keeps talking about Komaeda's "Martyr complex" this is truly a weird take to have.

-"Nagito...got the nurse for sure sick" is there any proof that specifically points to Komaeda for this? I believe the takeaway should've been that Mikan got sick because she was around all of them AND she overworked herself trying to take care of them. Is this just an awkwardly phrased attempt to make more of a connection between Tsumiki and Komaeda? I don't think you needed more than the ones that already existed.

- "he helps Junko brainwash a bunch of students" Kamukura at neither point in the anime or Danganronpa 0 was ever specifically implicated in the brainwashing. He never 'helps' Junko, especially in that way. If you meant, participates in the student council killing game, you should've said that, but even then his agency and influence is limited.

-"they found the Remnants and captured them!"...no, they didn't. The Remnants presented themselves as survivors and the Foundation took them in. They handed themselves over willingly. It was a pretty big piece of the final part of the game...

3) Komaeda and Komahina

- "Nagito's habit of putting people on pedestals" Where. Sure, he certainly parrots the belief that the "Ultimates" as a unit are at the top of the food chain and should be prioritised, but its clear that doesn't exactly carry over to his classmates like teruteru, Kuzuryu and even Souda sometimes. Just because of a few positive comments refering to them as Ultimates and the trial which he literally breaks down in, this is a hard position to support.

-"Nagito manipulates Hajime into playing the game" How. He literally just told him to play it. How is that manipulation. Also, isn't it a bit unfair to put the blame on Koizumi's death to him as well? I think they were multiple factors playing into this, but sure, how else are you gonna convince people that Komaeda is a twisted fucking cyclepath that loves leading people to their deaths.

-The way that you say the Kuzuryu/Pekoyama relationship mirrors Komahina as 'I will give up my agency for you/ I just want you' is also confusing. Unless of course you mirror Peko's struggle with her agency and harmful beliefs the clan enforced on her with Komaeda's own belief system, in which case, idk man, i feel like you are giving a bit too much credit to the supposed severity of Komaeda's views and trying too hard to make Hinata the 'rational' and 'grounding' one in the relationship.

- Again, the amount of times you refer to Komaeda as a freak for doing something 'weird' or even being drawn weirdly doing it , mostly in the manga, makes me belief this isn't just an affectionate tongue in cheek joke as you claim, but an actual way in which your interpretation of Komaeda is colored.

-"it doesn't excuse his nonchalance towards tragedy and murder but explains it" what needs to be excused here exactly? Komaeda doesn't need to immediately bawl his eyes out when someone gets killed or else he's suspicious and...bad? I am confused with what you mean by this. If you mean that Komeada shouldn't be so nonchalant about murder because he's constantly trying to kill someone else, that is plainly incorrect and i explained above why.

-Posturing about Komaeda's 'black and white thinking' while in the next exact slide you show fanart of him smugly explaining he has Borderline. First, i want you to explain to me the black and white thinking in a way that isn't "oh, the friends and classmates i previously liked turned out to be fucking terrorists". I think that's a pretty justifiable situation for your thinking to go from white to black. Also, if that is enough credence to assign Komaeda BPD, you really don't know how BPD works, especially since you assigned it to the one character you constantly talk about being a freak (and also lust...pseudo lust? after).

- The insistence with Hinata not really understanding Komaeda and running away, even if he wants to understands him is pretty suspect, especially when compared to the game. Hinata is confused and overwhelmed yes, but it's not just that he wants to understand Komaeda but that he still feels fondness for him, he still follows his advice and puts his faith in him and the way he mourns him in Chapter 5 is also pretty indicative of this. It's just another part in the pattern in you making Hinata the confused, rational, 'morally pure' man that's 'tempted' by 'corrupted' manic pixie mentally ill demon Komaeda. Something tells me your priest AU isn't so much playing with dolls as much as...what you actually believe these characters dynamic is.

- The whole page where Servant is basically made into a joke about how hot and sexy and freaky he is doesn't help your point either.

-The most damning evidence of course is a drawing in the second to last slide, wherein Komaeda is supposed to be analogous to 'guy who has something wrong with him' (distorted, freak, mentally ill) and Hinata is analogous to the guy that 'is the only one that understands them' (the rational one, the relationship of understanding doesn't go both ways).

- Your slide with sources is pretty vague and unclear. Also the way that you credit "Your superior mind" before the game itself when all you've been doing is repeating and misinterpreting the plot of the game is ...ironic

So yeah, that's all I got. Feel free to 'debunk' my observations as much as you please, I just want to know if there's actual basis behind everything you just said or I should go digging for 'the actual serious analysis' yet again.

i think you forgot that fandom is meant to be fun

[crowley-exploder]

It's late thinking hours and im very sleepy but hear me out, occasional possession as a love language